Chapter Text
After the last general leaves the meeting room, Damen bangs his head against the large, ornate table. Dawn is breaking, soft light entering through the iron lattice work of the large windows. It's a beautiful day, and his head feels like it's splitting down the middle.
He knocks his chair down when he hastily rises up. He stomps along his way, each footstep heavy with barely restrained displeasure. Every palace servant he comes across wisely scrambling to get out of his way and avoiding eye contact. An older man with a stained apron gets as far as bowing and asking him if they should serve the roasted boar honeyed or not before Damen walks quickly by, leaving him with more words hanging off his mouth.
Finally, he reaches the royal bedchamber, nestled between two armed Veretian guards alongside each engaged marble column. They retreat their spears as soon as they see him coming and step aside. Damen slams the door open with such force it trembles in its hinges.
There's a servant besides Laurent, a young woman with brown hair braided with golden string. It had been a while since anyone in Vere had cared about whether or not their catamite King spent time alone with women, Laurent had told him.
"Out."
The young woman glances at Laurent for a moment before he gives her an indifferent wave of his hand, then she leaves in a swift walk that rustles her skirts.
When Damen lifts the hem of his chiton, Laurent smirks.
He's sitting at a big table, decorated in the Veretian style, and Damen allows himself three seconds to scoff at all its useless carved wood in flowers and spirals. Sitting on top there are books with leather covers and old spines, and silver plates brimming with fruit and cheese. He was not particularly busy then.
Laurent only looks over Damen's naked cock for a few more seconds before he resumes reading the book in his lap, but idly offers his right pale hand, elbow resting on the arm of his chair.
Damen doesn't need to be told twice, he approaches and shoves himself until Laurent's hand fits snugly against the fevered skin. His hand is long and masculine, and it still doesn't even come close to covering the whole thing.
"General Gautier again?" Laurent asks, moving his hand up and down as if he's bored.
"Fucking bastard keeps riling up the Akielon soldiers," Damen grunts, madly thrusting his hips inside and out. His stomach begins to tingle pleasantly and clear fluid starts slowly dribbling from the head. He watches it quickly coat Laurent's fingers, "I want to put his head on a pike."
"Good, I never liked him, myself."
"I see the way he looks at you, you know? When you walk up all serious and laced up." He's rubbing himself more desperately now, Laurent barely moving his hand. He takes a look at his face, his cold eyes still looking at the book, but Damien realizes, with mirth, that he has yet to turn the page. And his cheeks are red below his thin skin.
"Such a shame then, he's not the one that sleeps in my bed," Damen's hard cock feels heavier, hips stuttering. "The one who fucks me well into the morning."
"Yes," he gasps, tumbling closer and closer to the brink, he fucks into the fist provided to him without any sense of rhythm anymore. And it feels so good, Laurent talking to him calm and collected, so good, while he is falling apart beside him. Previous anger and stress slipping away from his body like the sweat that coats his arms and back.
"The only one who makes me like it."
He suddenly wants Laurent's mouth on him, licking his neck, his chest, whatever it can reach. He wants his arms holding for dear life while his thighs hug Damen as he pounds into him over and over. And it feels so good, and Laurent is still not looking at him. And he comes.
Damen closes his eyes as his entire body trembles with release, balls tensing up. He feels suspended in time for a moment, in bliss. Heavy drops fall onto the floor, Damen can hear the sound of them splattering, some of it probably reaching the table.
"That's it, let it all out," he can hear Laurent say beneath the buzzing filling his ears, his tone as gentle and encouraging as it can sound coming from Laurent. He feels his fingers squeeze his cock from root to tip, getting every drop out, only stopping for a moment to thumb beneath the sensitive head as Damen hisses. "You have another meeting soon."
Damen groans as he opens his eyes, reality setting in, the chamber materializing slowly around him, he looks down, some of his spent remains on Laurent's thumb, and he watches as he brings it to his lips, unconcerned, and licks it clean with a pink tongue. Damen's cock gives a last valiant effort to swell again before he pulls down his chiton, covering himself.
"Don't you dare make that poor woman clean it."
"I think you'll find that Irene has seen far worse already." A sudden memory flashes across Damen's head: of Laurent, all soft and pliant beneath him, of himself... and of Irene, the woman from earlier, red from the tips of her hair to her feet, leaving the tray of clean towels inside the room while making eye contact with the floor the whole time, after Laurent yelled at her to come in. One aspect of Veretian culture he still has a hard time getting used to.
Now he knows why she walked away from the room so quickly, no questions asked.
In the end, it's Damen who cleans up with one of Laurent’s discarded chemises, turning a deaf ear to his crude protests. He throws it at his face on his way out.
Later at night, as Damen is dodging courtiers and aristocrats and soldiers at that day's feast, he catches sight of Laurent languidly sitting in a plush, deep purple lounging couch, his body draped in soft Akielon clothes. An ankle crossed over a leg strapped in knee high sandals.
His posture is disinterested as always, but Damen recognizes the book laying at his side, being lazily thumbed. The cover bears an almost unnoticeable, small, clear stain.