WHAT: Angst over other worlds and truth sex WHERE: Loch Laggen WHEN: Wednesday afternoon WARNINGS: Here there be explicit yet character-developing sex STATUS: Complete
Allergies, Lan Xichen had thought, were the sort of thing that happened to other people. Sneezing was undignified and to be avoided. This spring, however, he was suddenly under the influence of the most terrible stopped-up nose he’d ever experienced, subject to sneezing fits, and carrying around a profound headache that started behind his eyes and made his whole head feel like it weighed fifty pounds. It was dreadful.
Worst of all, when Abi asked him how he was doing, he’d just told her. The words had come spilling out before Lan Xichen could even think to stop himself. Normally when someone asked how he was, especially now that Prompto was gone, Lan Xichen simply replied that he was well and then asked politely after the other person, no matter what he actually felt. Today he’d looked right at Abi and told her that he felt wretched and he was seriously beginning to consider going home early.
That part had been so upsetting that he actually did go home early. He took his hair down, certain that it was contributing to his headache, and he stripped down to his bottom layer of robes so he could crawl into bed and feel sorry for himself. With any luck, he thought, he could take a nap and force himself to feel better by the time Will returned home for the day; as diminished as Laurence had been in these days since his forced return from the other world, the last thing he needed was to hear his husband whine over a petty run of allergies or a head cold or whatever this dreadful business was.
But of course fortune would grant Lan Xichen no such luck. His breathing was too impeded for him to sleep, so he could only lie in bed for a while before giving up and forcing himself upright to go to the kitchen and make himself a pot of tea. He was there when he heard the door open, signaling that despite his best efforts, he would not be back in proper form before his husband arrived. With a quiet sigh, he accepted his fate, and startled himself once more by muttering the thought that came into his head aloud.
“I do not need this misery today.”
Laurence had been doing his best to keep his mind from the week before, and that had meant keeping himself as busy as he could, whether it be making arrangements for their anniversary dinner, dealing with the herds, or triple checking his paperwork as the team coordinator of Team D.
He’d not, all things said, been doing a very good job of it. He knew that both Temeraire and Lan Xichen had noticed his mood, as much as he’d tried to keep it from them, and more than once in the last week had he seen and heard the life being sucked from Temeraire by that wraith instead of the person he’d been speaking with. Sleep had come with nightmares, when it came at all. But he’d taken a great deal of comfort in his husband’s arms on the worst of those evenings, even if he was, unfortunately, keenly aware of how much pain he was causing him.
Lan Xichen had shown only the greatest understanding that first evening, when, sobbing, Laurence had confessed that had Carol not dragged him through the portal back home, he couldn’t have been sure he’d have returned at all. Since then, he’d not shown the slightest sign of resentment for it. But something had changed. His husband had been more subdued, more reserved, and while Laurence couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just reacting to Laurence’s own mood, he had the suspicion that Lan Xichen worried that Laurence wished he’d stayed with that other Temeraire instead of coming home to him, and Laurence hadn’t the slightest idea how to assure him it wasn’t the case, especially not when Lan Xichen had never said as much directly.
He was a little tousled when he returned from the fields, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, trousers dusty, and hair windswept, when he made his way into the house, and to the kitchen to brew himself a strong cup of coffee. If he hadn’t heard Lan Xichen’s voice just before he entered the room, then he would have started to see him.
“You’re home early,” Laurence said, and the look of mild curiosity on his face shifted rapidly to concern when he caught sight of the man. He quickened his step to cross the industrial-sized kitchen, laying a hand on Lan Xichen’s elbow. “Are you ill? You should have called me; I would have returned home posthaste.”
No, no, all is well, Lan Xichen meant to say. Instead other words entirely came tripping off his tongue.
“I am miserable,” he said. “My head is filled with goo, it pulses with pain like a drumbeat inside my skull, and I—”
Startled by his own confession and mortified by having done exactly the complaining to his husband that he had meant to not do, Lan Xichen stopped himself. No sooner had he done so than he sneezed violently: once, twice, three times in a row.
Laurence was startled himself by the confession, though he hoped he’d kept most of the surprise from his face. He had never heard his husband complain of anything, let alone illness; he must have been ill indeed.
Laurence rose onto his toes to kiss Lan Xichen lightly on the cheek. “Go to our rooms and rest. I will finish your tea here, and will prepare something for your cold as well.” He considered for a moment. “Ginger noodles?” he asked after a moment’s consideration.
“Ginger noodles would be very good,” Lan Xichen replied, because that was now the thought at the top of his head. “Ginger might be strong enough to break through this so I might actually taste something.”
Lan Xichen realized that he was once again rambling whatever his truth of the moment was, and once more complaining. “I am so sorry,” he said, his dismay with himself all over his face. “I intended to keep all this to myself. I know you are in no state to bother with these petty concerns, and I…”
No, no, he was saying too much! Lan Xichen stopped himself, and once again the foul sneezing fit took him. Four in a row this time, making the whole situation even more humiliating, and it was all so awful that Lan Xichen rather wanted to cry about it.
Laurence couldn’t stop the flash of hurt that flitted across his face at that, but he hoped that Lan Xichen was too occupied by the sneezing to have noticed it before Laurence was once again able to school his expression. If Lan Xichen thought him so calloused to his needs, then it was only because Laurence had given him reason to doubt him.
“Lan Huan,” Laurence said, gently but firmly. “There is no concern more important to me right now than my husband’s health. Please, rest and let me care for you.”
“The concern that is most important to you is—“ No, he could not say that! Lan Xichen clamped his jaw shut, even as the headache compounded and his nose began to run. His eyes watered and itched, and he wanted to melt into the floor.
“I want to melt into the floor,” he said aloud, though he would usually never do any such thing.
Laurence’s mild concern shifted to true worry. If Lan Xichen complained of being ill, Laurence could simply assume it was because he had so little experience with illness. If he made a comment of Laurence’s concerns, it was only because Laurence's behaviour had warranted it. But he had never known Lan Xichen to express any embarrassment. Not that he doubted Lan Xichen had ever experienced it before, only that the man has always borne it with grace and equanimity.
Laurence raised his hand to Lan Xichen’s forehead. He didn't feel feverish, and so Laurence couldn't blame it on a severe fever, though it was very clear that Lan Xichen was ill. He wasn't sure if he was grateful for that or not; at least that would have given him some explanation.
He slid his hand from Lan Xichen's forehead to his cradle his cheek, and, using the voice of command he'd perfected over more than a decade as a captain, he said, “Lan Huan. Go to bed. I will join you shortly, and I'll not hear any arguments against it. You will let me tend to you, as is my husbandly duty.”
Lan Xichen’s reply was pure exhaustion, through the filter of a nose that could not successfully pass any air through it.
“As you wish.”
He was relieved, really, to be ordered to bed. Every moment that he kept his anxiety in, his illness increased. Maybe if he just went to bed, it would stop. He could hope for that much. Before he could ruin his own life by spilling thoughts that would better remain inside, Lan Xichen took himself out of the kitchen and up the stairs to their room, where he gingerly put himself to bed. The pressure inside his head began to ease, though he hadn’t yet put together why.
It was with a small, worried frown that Laurence watched Lan Xichen leave the kitchen, but the man seemed able to walk well enough, and Laurence didn't think he had to worry about Lan Xichen collapsing before he made it back to their rooms. It was times like this when he wished the two of them lived in a smaller, more intimate home, however.
He finished making the tea Lan Xichen had started, and it didn't take much longer after to finish the noodles, both of which he brought up with a bed tray.
“I hope this helps,” Laurence murmured, setting the tray up over Lan Xichen's lap, before he undressed, carefully putting his dirty work clothes to the side and changing into his clean bedclothes. He kissed the top of Lan Xichen's head, and then slipped into bed next to him. “Are you feeling any better?”
He didn't mean physically. He hoped Lan Xichen was feeling a little better now that he'd had a few minutes on his own to compose himself again.
Lan Xichen found it harder to hold the words in when he was asked a direct question. He wanted to spill everything out at once, all his worry that had there not been another Temeraire waiting on him, Laurence would have stayed in that other world. The harder he tried not to, the worse the pressure inside his head became.
“No, it is now much worse,” Lan Xichen confessed instead, hoping that complaining would make the trouble ease. It did, but only barely. It wasn’t enough to make his eyes stop watering—spilling over now, as if he were crying. He was crying, he supposed, something he had not done in front of another person since he was eight years old and his mother died.
“Everything is worse—” Oh no, not this again. Lan Xichen tried to keep it back, but he was forced to sneeze into the sleeve of his robe again, and when he was done with that latest array of sneezes he could stand it no more. The truth would have itself out no matter how Lan Xichen tried to hold against it, with the tears trickling down his cheeks all the while.
“—because I know this is not where you want to be.”
Laurence removed the food and tea from the bed – they could wait, and this could not – before he placed his arm over his husband’s shoulders and pulled him in tight against him.
“Lan Huan,” he said, low and fierce, burying his face in Lan Xichen’s silky hair. “Lan Huan, listen to me: there is nowhere else in all the world where I would rather be. There is nothing else that I would rather be doing right now, nothing I would prioritize higher, than being here with you.”
“You said Carol had to drag you through the portal,” Lan Xichen said, and sniffled the greatest sniffle as his headache finally began to ease. With the excuse of his itchy and watery eyes, he let the tears fall as his head dropped to Laurence’s shoulder. For days now, he had sat with the knowledge that were it not for Carol forcing Laurence through, Laurence would have remained on the other side. He had ruminated all too long on what that meant about Laurence’s feelings for him, and no amount of telling himself that he had always known Temeraire was Laurence’s first priority could make that feel good. No reminding himself that though he was separated from his duties as clan leader here, if he were at home they would have to come first, made him feel any better either. He just kept coming back to the fact that this was not where Laurence truly wanted to be.
“Oh. Oh my darling,” Laurence breathed against Lan Xichen’s hair, squeezing him tight. It felt like Lan Xichen had reached directly into Laurence's chest and squeezed, and Laurence could not blame him. He had been thoughtless, not at all cognizant of how that must have felt to Lan Xichen. He placed his hand under Lan Xichen’s chin, turning his head up, and bent his own so he could look into Lan Xichen's dark eyes.
“And Carol made the right choice,” he said, softly. “I was not thinking right. At the time, I could think only of how I was watching Temeraire be killed, and how I couldn't abandon him. I dare say that if I'd seen the other you being likewise injured, l would have tried to fight her to stay as well, and you didn't know me from Adam. But I would have regretted it. I would have regretted it fiercely as soon as that portal closed with me on the wrong side of it. I would have never stopped trying to find my way back to you. Please, please do not take a decision that I would have made in a panic, with no thought behind it at all, as my heart's true desire. My heart's true desire is right here, in my arms.”
Relief rushed through Lan Xichen, enough to wash away the shame he felt at having stated his worries aloud. This was what he desperately needed to hear, and he allowed himself to believe it. Laurence would not lie to him about anything of importance, even if the truth were hard and terrible.
With another sad little sniffle, he brought himself in close to embrace Laurence and hide his face in Laurence’s shoulder. “I am sorry,” he said, because the compulsion to voice the truth wasn’t gone. “I never meant to say any of this. I did not want to trouble you further when you felt such troubles of your own. I meant to be a comfort to you, not another burden.”
“You are not a burden,” Laurence promised him, stroking his hair. “I promise you that. And I am glad, very glad you did address it.” He kissed the top of his head. “I knew you were upset, but I did not know how to broach the topic myself, if you would not. I had not meant to cause you distress, and I am glad you've given me the opportunity to rectify it.”
With the truth out, Lan Xichen felt better—emotionally, and strangely, physically as well. His eyes no longer stung with tears, his head had stopped pounding, and the urge to sneeze was almost entirely gone. He stayed resting against his husband, getting his breathing back in order and that closed-up feeling out of his throat.
“Thank you, my heart,” he said softly, and let a little more truth spill out. “I should not need to hear you say it, but I did.”
“I should say it more often,” Laurence said. “And I am sorry I do not. I hope that you will let me know if you ever need me to say it again.”
“I will try,” Lan Xichen quietly replied. “I am not in the habit of expressing that which troubles me, especially if it will inconvenience another, but…you are my husband. I should be more open with the love fate has brought me.”
“I understand.” And Laurence did, readily. It had only been recently, largely in part to Vallo, that Laurence had begun expressing such sentiments himself, and he still felt awkward about it much of the time. “But when I married you, I made your problems my own, so that I might share their burden with you.” He slipped his hand under the sleeve of Lan Xichen’s robe so that he might run his arm, skin-to-skin. “And I have no duty right now that I value more highly than the duty of being your husband.”
“That duty may involve me sneezing out more foolishness,” Lan Xichen sighed. “I think the two must be connected. None of these are truths that I chose to reveal, any more than I would tell you that I would like you to tie my hands with my headband some—oh no.” He picked his head up suddenly and turned his head to sneeze from trying to stop his own words. With his cheeks flushing in embarrassment, he looked sadly at Laurence. “Please do not think me too terrible for my desire to misuse a sacred item.”
Laurence grinned, rakishly, at the unexpected confession, and bent his head to gently nip at Lan Xichen’s ear. “I cannot think any such thing, without being the worst of hypocrites. I've fantasized many evenings of doing the same.” He kissed his temple. “Perhaps this illness might pass more quickly if you divulged all your deepest desires to me?”
It would take a strength of will not to enact them all right now, while Lan Xichen felt so poorly – though he did, in fact, look much improved – but he was sure that not letting this opportunity pass him by was also part of his husbandly duties.
Normally Lan Xichen was reserved—he’d little experience before his husband, the content of his desires relying mostly on instinct and the extensive reading of texts that would have been forbidden if the authors of the Precepts had any idea they existed. He’d been brought up strictly, and with a definite emphasis on keeping all emotional and physical matters to one’s self. He didn’t often say what he wanted, not in any detail, fearing that Laurence might find him entirely too wicked (mostly because he had no idea how very ordinary the things he wanted were).
“I like it when you pull my hair,” he admitted, because he had been asked, and it was so difficult not to say things now. “You could do it harder.” His headache eased a little more, and that felt so good that Lan Xichen kept talking just to have more of this relief. “I like it when you forget yourself and treat me roughly. I would not want it every time, but sometimes...and I have thoughts about my desk at Cloud Recesses that would make you think me horrible and shameless indeed.”
Laurence stirred beneath his bedclothes at the thought. Perhaps this line of questioning had been a mistake, if he did not intend to put Lan Xichen's suggestions into immediate practice. Still, he found it even more impossible to stop now that he'd started. He could enact enough self-control to not ravage his husband this afternoon, he was sure.
“Is that so? Would you like me to bend you over and claim you as my own, over that desk?” he asked, voice thick. “I would, if you asked me to.”
Lan Xichen closed his eyes and his lips parted in a soft gasp. That was—
“That is precisely what I have imagined,” he confessed, and the pressure in his skull eased up still further. That was a pleasure in and of itself, and it combined beautifully with the rush of pleasure at hearing Laurence offer exactly what he wanted. Lan Xichen was going from feeling a bit better to feeling amazing.
“I thought of it often, when I was working too late so many days in a row,” he went on, his voice soft as he turned his head to nuzzle Laurence’s jaw. “I have a very detailed fantasy of you coming into my office determined to distract me from my work, and another of you finding me there and punishing me for neglecting my duty to you, and I have enjoyed them both much more than I should.”
Laurence tilted his head back, opening his throat to Lan Xichen, his grip on the man's shoulders tightening. “My apologies, my deepest apologies, for not making your fantasies a reality,” Laurence murmured. “I will be sure to take that into account going forward. I, too, have had many ungentlemanly thoughts of that desk. Of having you on the edge of it while I take you in my mouth, for instance.”
Lan Xichen was feeling decidedly better now, getting all his hidden truths out. He felt improved enough to kiss a line down Laurence’s throat to the edge of his collar, then lightly back up the other side. He could almost breathe through his nose now, and that was encouragement enough to speak more.
“How long could you endure on your knees, if I asked you to?” Lan Xichen asked. “I have been tempted to test the matter before. And to—” He broke off with a light laugh at himself. “This, you will certainly think strange, but I am compelled to speak. Would you let me write on you with my brush and ink?”
He was certain that one was weird, but… “It is only that at times I see your bare skin and all I can think of is poetry. I would see it writ out upon you, black against white, and see if you would shiver at the light touch of the brush.”
Laurence could not quite stifle the groan that Lan Xichen's mouth upon his skin coaxed out, and he shifted his hand from Lan Xichen's shoulder to tangle it instead in his hair.
“I would do whatever you commanded of me,” Laurence said. “Whether it be to stay on my knees until I could no longer feel my feet, or if it be to be used as your canvas. If it were your brushes upon my skin, then I would surely go mad for want of the touch of your hand, but I do not think I would regret the agony of it.”
He swallowed, hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I am sorry, Lan Huan. I think if I do not leave now, I will be unable to control myself any longer, and I would surely disturb your rest.”
Despite his words, he made not the slightest attempt to disentangle himself from Lan Xichen.
“Do not leave me now,” Lan Xichen murmured, his breath soft and warm against Laurence’s ear. “With so much said, I find that I feel much better. I think the two must be connected. And since you have been so instrumental in my recovery, it seems only proper that I reward you for it. Perhaps with my mouth, while you take a nice tight grip on my hair?”
He was beginning to like talking this way, he found. Lan Xichen was not in the habit of voicing his desires so clearly and specifically, but now that he had begun, he was discovering the discussion alone to be arousing. Perhaps he would do this again without allergies compelling him to.
Laurence’s cock gave a sudden, swift leap against the cotton of his trousers at the suggestion, and he did not wait to tighten his grip in Lan Xichen’s hair, turning his own head so he could kiss him, sloppy and rough.
“Please,” he rasped, when he broke away, loosening his fingers but not removing his hand from Lan Xichen’s head.
This was exactly what Lan Xichen wanted, and the spring pollen demanded that he say so aloud, not merely imply it with his reactions. “I love it when you forget to be polite with me,” he said, taking a line of kisses down the side of Laurence’s neck. He proceeded more quickly this time, ducking low to push Laurence’s trousers out of the way and take him down in one long, slow push.
“A-Huan,” Laurence gasped, back arching, his entire body flooding with pleasure as Lan Xichen’s lips closed around him. His hand tightened, almost convulsively, in Lan Xichen’s hair. And then, almost hesitatingly, he used that hand to guide Lan Xichen’s head, not so deep that he worried about choking him, but enough that he could set a rhythm to his liking, if he chose to. “Is this okay?” he managed to ask, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He supposed he didn’t have to worry about Lan Xichen saying it was when it wasn’t, not with whatever had afflicted him earlier still in effect.
Lan Xichen pulled off just to look up at Laurence and answer with an unguarded smile on his face and a wicked gleam in his eyes. There were no more signs of the allergy attack; when he spoke his voice sounded clear.
“This is very good. Give me more,” he said. He leaned in for a kiss while he was up, another wet and messy affair born of a desperate lust. “Take my mouth for your pleasure, and do not let go until you are finished with me.”
He bent down again then, swallowing Laurence’s cock to the hilt just to remind him that he could take whatever he was given. Lan Xichen had never expected to be grateful for the headache he had been afflicted with, but now he truly was. He’d never felt so desirable in his life.
Laurence's heart very nearly stopped at the sight of that smile; he thought it likely he could have been undone by the force of it alone, let alone when it was paired with the kiss that followed.
“We will need to have frank conversations more often,” he managed, somehow, as Lan Xichen took him again.
And then he have himself over to pure, animal lust, pulling hard at Lan Xichen's hair, and if he used him rougher than was his wont, he did so with the knowledge that this was what Lan Xichen desired, and that he would let Laurence know if, at any moment, that ceased to be true. It was, somehow, extremely erotic to watching Lan Xichen enjoy such right treatment, though Laurence was surprised to be so aroused by it, and the low, “oh, fuck,” escaped past his teeth before he could call it back.
It was over nearly embarrassingly early, the climax explosive and accompanied by wordless cry. “Oh, God,” he panted, nearly a prayer, and gave himself three gulping breaths before he dragged Lan Xichen up by his hair to kiss him.
This, Lan Xichen thought, might be best of all. He said so as soon as he came up for air, comfortably straddling his husband’s lap and so hard it ached. “I loved that,” he murmured, his lips barely leaving Laurence’s. He wasn’t trying to hold anything at all back now, and it felt glorious. “I love feeling that you want me so much you cannot possibly control yourself.”
“I can so rarely control myself when I am with you,” Laurence said, raising his head to kiss him, brief and light, before he took Lan Xichen and began to stroke him, firm but gentle; his other hand he used to cup Lan Xichen's buttocks. He had no mysterious illness, but Lan Xichen’s new openness filled him with a compulsion for his own. “When we are in public, it takes all my will to stop myself from touching you.” He kissed him again. “I always want to be touching you, to hold your hand,” a kiss, “to tuck your hair behind your ears,” another kiss, “or to take you in my arms and kiss you in front of all onlookers, so they know that you are mine, and I yours. Will you lean back, so that I might better see you?”
Lan Xichen obliged immediately, untying his robe and letting it fall open as he braced his hands on the bed behind him. He knew he looked good like this, half out of the last of his clothes, lithe muscle and soft skin all on display, and he was long past any self-consciousness about being looked at. The unusual thing was the monologue that slipped out as he met his husband’s eyes.
“I have thought so many times of abandoning all I was taught of restraint simply to hold your hand in the street,” Lan Xichen confessed. “To kiss you, heedless of who sees. I should feel shame to even want such things, but I do not. I should fear any love that I would place before my principles, but I do not feel that either. I simply want more of everything I may have with you.”
Laurence broke eye contact, briefly, to watch his hand working Lan Xichen’s cock, licked his lips, and then brought his gaze back up to Lan Xichen’s face as he increased the pace.
“There is no shame in loving you, A-Huan,” Laurence said, soft and earnest. “And no shame that I would go to the devil if it meant staying by your side. The only shame, perhaps, is in my reservations, especially so if they made you doubt how fiercely I burn for you.”
Lan Xichen cried out as the touch increased in speed and pressure, and he dropped back from his hands to his elbows. It felt so good, he wanted to simply shut up and enjoy it, but he couldn’t. He spoke with only half his breath as he thrust into Laurence’s grip, but he could not stop himself from speaking.
“I am—I am every bit the madman my father was,” he gasped out, admitting a truth he had never spoken aloud. “Obsessive and greedy for you. I would—”
He was cut off by his own cry of pleasure, as he reached completion with a full-body shudder. Still panting for breath, he reached for Laurence’s hand to drag him down beside him, and at last he whispered the rest of his thought.
“I would burn all the world to the ground for you, even if I must submit to death for it afterward.”
Laurence let himself be dragged beside Lan Xichen, pressing his body lengthwise against his husband's. “Then we would go mad and burn together,” Laurence promised him, cupping his face so he could kiss him, pinning him to the bed with his body injecting the all passion of his words into his kiss. He broke apart, and lifted himself into his elbows above Lan Xichen. “Two years and more with you has not cooled the flames of my desire, but has only stoked them to burn brighter. I think, my dear, that I will never have enough of you to feed them.”
“It is the same for me,” Lan Xichen replied softly. He lay back on the bed so he could drape his arms over Laurence’s shoulders, languid and content despite all the confessions he had made. “The more time I spend with you, the more I think there will never be enough time in one life. I can only hope that the red string of fate binds us in the next as well.”
It didn’t really matter to him whether the next life looked more like a repeat of this one or more like the Heaven Laurence believed in. What mattered was that they would be together in it.
Laurence gazed down at Lan Xichen, fond and warm. He was pleased to see that Lan Xichen did, in fact, look much improved; it had been difficult to tell for sure when he’d been in the throes of passion. But his eyes were no longer red rimmed, nor did his nose seem to be running any longer.
He tried not to think of the fact that he would be passing on to that next world much sooner than Lan Xichen, but wasn’t entirely successful at it. He tried to remind himself that a few decades would be nothing to spending eternity together. He bent to kiss Lan Xichen’s brow. “Of course it will,” he said. “We are married.”
The reminder of that made Lan Xichen smile, and once more the truth came tumbling out of him—but this was the sort of truth he had readily admitted to many times. “I never grow tired of hearing that, or thinking on it: that we are married. The thought of it brings me joy every time it comes to mind, even when I am annoyed with you for taking too long about pressing your suits when I would rather have your attention for myself.”
…right, maybe it was still a little more truth than he would normally admit.
That startled a laugh out of Laurence, and it felt good enough that he allowed himself to keep laughing for a few moments. It had been weeks since he'd last had the occasion.
“Yes, well, we can't all have magical clothes-pressing powers, and I am sure your robes would take a good deal longer than my suits to press if you didn't.” He pressed another smiling kiss to Lan Xichen's lips. “But I will attempt to be quicker about it, or try to do more of it while you're out.”
“I am sorry for this rattling on of every thought that comes into my head,” Lan Xichen replied, but he was smiling as well. After today, he felt as though there was nothing he could tell his husband that would ever make Laurence love him any less. “I should probably stay out of any company but yours until it passes. I would not fare well with coven leaders and parents of students hearing all my true thoughts.”
“Oh, no, do not apologize. I’m finding it quite endearing.” He kissed the corner of his mouth, then his cheek, and then the underside of his jaw, before flopping bonelessly – in a figurative sense, not because one of those horribly Moopsy creatures had snuck into their room – beside him. “But no, that would be an absolute disaster and best avoided. What a pity that I will have you all to myself until this is over. Would you like me to make the necessary calls for you?”
“Would you?” Lan Xichen gratefully replied. “If I try it myself, I fear I will either say far too much or be taken with a sneezing fit I cannot stop.”
“I would,” Laurence promised. “Though, not now.” He didn't think now was necessary in any case; Lan Xichen has, presumably, already mentioned he was leaving the Cloud Recesses today. “Right now, I think I would rather just spend the afternoon in bed with you, being indolent.”
Lan Xichen smiled and shifted onto his side so he could give Laurence one more kiss before sitting up. “Allow me to throw this robe in the pile for washing, and I will happily join you in that. We are overdue a day of indolence.”
Laurence finished kicking his trousers off the rest of the way, and slipped his bedshirt off over his head, not bothering again with the buttons. “If you would, dear heart,” he said, offering the garments up to his husband. “I think that bothering with bedclothes at all at this point would be entirely superfluous.”
And, to prove his point, he smacked Lan Xichen’s bottom as he stood, feeling very daring but not at all regretful for his actions.
“Will-ge!” Lan Xichen laughed, surprised and delighted all at once. He took up the clothes in one big pile and pitched them carelessly off to the side, embracing this new attitude of disregard for proper behavior. The clothes could get the rest of the way to the laundry basket later. For now he would jump back onto the bed, tackling his husband with undisguised glee.
Laurence laughed, loud and deep, and allowed himself to be tackled. “Oh, I am very sorry, A-Huan,” Laurence said, though no one would have ever taken his tone, or the grin on his face, as contrite. “That was dreadfully rude of me. How can I make it up to you?”
Lan Xichen gave him a saucy grin. “For your penance, I have a list of ideas. Let me tell you, and you can choose.”