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“Ow, ow ow…” Hector held the saddle horn in a death grip as they crested the last rocky moor overlooking the low forests of the Caelin march. They could finally see castle Caelin in the distance. Without much prompting his horse started down the winding, rocky trail towards a dense forest below, where there was no doubt a stream with fresh water.
Eliwood and his steed followed Hector’s lead, starting down the path with a little more care than Hector’s mare exhibited. “You doing alright there, friend?”
“Peachy,” Hector grunted as the horse barreled none too gracefully over a particularly rough patch of path.
“Won’t be long until we reach castle Caelin. Lady Lyndis will no doubt have a meal and a room waiting for us.”
Eliwood and Hector had come to visit for both a Caelin rain festival, as well as a newly implemented Sacaen Moon and Sky celebration. Lady Lyndis was fighting tooth and nail to incorporate a part of her culture in this new march she’d inherited; Hector and Eliwood came to show their support. They would be staying in Caelin for the next month.
Hector hoped they had a doctor that could amputate his saddle sore ass. “She’ll have a room for you.” He told Eliwood, “I bet six gold pieces that she puts me up in a chicken coop.”
Eliwood laughed, and patted the side of his steed. “And put out the chickens?”
Lyn was going through a mountain of paperwork when a big blue-maned berserker stormed into her study.
“Lyn!”
She tried to catch a wobbling stack of papers before it toppled over the edge of her desk and onto the floor. She failed.
Lyn ran a hand through her bangs, and looked up as the man stalked over to her massive cluttered desk. “Hello Hector, an elegant entrance as always.”
“What are you doing in here? Eliwood and I have been here for nearly two hours and we’ve not seen hide nor hair of y—gods this place is a wreck.” Hector shook one of his boots to dislodge a letter that had attached itself. He tried to carefully step around the flurry of papers on the floor.
“Not all of us have an Oswin to manage our affairs while we galavant across the countryside.”
“Oh,” Hector leaned a giant palm on Lyn’s desk. “Kent not working out? Tell Sain to pick up the slack.”
“If I did that the only papers leaving this office would be raunchy love letters.”
“A marked improvement over the letters Ostia has received from Caelin of late,” Hector snipped back. He revealed a beautifully carved and stained oak box and slammed it down on Lyn’s desk. He opened the box, plucked out a letter, and waved it at Lyn.
“Why Hector,” she raised her brows and smiled coyly, “I wasn’t aware you desired raunchy letters from me.”
Hector sputtered, and attempted (and failed) to hide the blush that stained his cheeks. She could see him trying to quash an embarrassed smile.
He proceeded to unfold the letter in his hand, a letter marked with the Caelin seal. In fact every letter in the chest was marked with a Caelin seal. “‘Dear Hector,’” he read “‘I find myself at a loss for words that you would propose becoming pen-pals. Delighted as I am, Sir Oswin is busy enough with Ostian affairs, surely he doesn’t have the time to transcribe these letters for you.’” Hector tossed the letter on her messy desk. “Implying I can’t write, Lyn?”
She opened her mouth to answer with a barbed remark, but Hector didn’t even finish the first letter before opening another letter from his box.
“‘The coffee stain footnoting your recent letter was a bold flourish to compliment the elegance of your brigand prose.’” He proceeded to dump the entire contents of his box over the top of her desk. There were a lot of letters. “Say it to my face, Lyn. Tell me again how my penmanship brightens your day like a parade of drunken caterpillars.”
She turned her face, an attempt to hide the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
While Hector prattled on about the contents of her letters, Lyn slowly and carefully placed a hand on her own stack of letters sitting on the corner of her desk. Every letter in the stack bore the Ostian seal, and the bundle was tied up neatly and lovingly with a ribbon of dyed and woven Sacaen grasses. She very slowly slid the stack to the edge of her desk, where she had toed open a drawer to receive them.
“‘It’s lonely in Caelin these days.’” Hector unfolded yet another letter in his quest to make up for lost time. As if she hadn’t written these all herself, and knew exactly what she’d put in them, “‘The castle is so dreadfully quiet since Grandfather passed. Sometimes I find myself reminiscing about our adventure, longing for the companionship we had then. Tragically I’d even prefer your snoring, that could shake the walls of a tent, over this mind-numbing solitude.’”
She didn’t normally keep the stack of Ostian letters on her desktop where anyone could find them. But she’d just recently received a letter from Hector, mailed off before he and Eliwood had departed for Caelin. It had arrived the other day, but she’d been so inundated with paperwork, she’d only just managed to sit down to read his letter and really appreciate the message today. And like every other letter she received from Hector…it joined a slowly growing collection.
But Hector didn’t need to know that.
Actually, there was a giddy flip in her stomach to find out that Hector kept all her letters in such an ornate box. Or maybe the box was just for the ease of transport while they traveled.
“‘I miss those late nights~,’” Hector quoted in a ridiculously wistful impression. Lyn made a choking noise, ears catching fire, and fumbled her stack of letters, flinging them over the front of her desk instead of into the drawer. Hector continued reading as he blindly bent to scoop the stack of letters from the ground, “‘sparring with you under the stars. Exhausted but determined, pushing ourselves to our respective limits. There was a language between us in those moments that I fear I lose a piece of day by day.’” It was from one of her more recent letters to him. A letter she wrote on a night when she’d been more sentimental and melancholy than usual.
Her face heated when she thought of the letter Hector had sent her in response. She buried her face in her hands and willed the fire in her skin to die out. It still made her heart stutter thinking about it. Regardless of his boorish prose, he certainly had knack for…
“What’s the matter Lyn, can’t stomach your own words?” Hector loomed over the desk, sneer pulling his mouth. “What’s this anyway?” He held up the bundle of letters he’d rescued from the floor.
“They’re nothing!” Lyn bolted up from her seat and made a grab for them.
Hector dodged her. “Ostian seal…” a spark ignited behind Hector’s eyes. She swore his gaze was burning as it shifted between her and the bundle of letters. The biggest grin spread across his face. “No way…is this a Sacaen ribbon? This has to be imported, unless… you made this yourself? But then you definitely imported Sacaen grasses to make it…”
“Give them to me!” She practically leapt over the desk at him.
Hector danced away, escaped papers crunching under his boots. “You keep all my letters!”
“So what,” Lyn snipped, “you kept all mine! In a fancy box no less. I thought for sure you’d burn them.”
“But you’re my best friend.”
Lyn about tripped, and actually did slip on a few papers. Her heart hammered erratically within her chest, knocking the air from her lungs. When she found her voice she said, albeit roughly, “I thought Eliwood was your best friend.”
“He is. I can have two best friends. Don’t put me in a box.”
Clearly the definition of “best” eluded Hector. Despite herself, Lyn began to shake as she broke into a fit of silent giggles. She shut her eyes as tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks. Leave it to Hector to say something so recklessly sincere.
“Wh-what’s wrong.” Hector crossed the room in a couple of strides, he placed a large hand on Lyn’s shaking shoulder. “Gods, I didn’t say something stupid again did I?”
Of course not you oaf. Somehow you say the exact thing I needed to hear. She couldn’t put into words how worn thin she’d felt, running Caelin all by herself after her grandfather passed. How she’d had to hold everyone, even Kent and Sain, at arms length while she erected an icy barrier around herself bit by bit; her only defense from the other nobility and their ever present scrutiny. Everyone around her was pretension. Their words a dagger dipped in honey and poison. She realized quickly she couldn’t trust anyone no matter how flowery and sweet their words.
Hector’s letters were never that.
They were brutish and playfully antagonistic, much like the man himself. But they were also honest and heartfelt. And the longer they traded letters the funnier and sweeter his words had become. She’d be lying if his letters weren’t the highlight of her every week.
She wanted to tell him he was the only person she felt like she could be “just Lyn” with.
Instead, her near hysterical giggling just devolved into straight up sobbing when Hector pulled her into the most awkward hug. He held her like his strength might break her.
Lyn buried her face in his shoulder, blotting tears against his shirt. “H-hug me f-f-for…real, mo-oron.”
The air was forced from her lungs as Hector wrapped her in a crushing embrace. He smelled of horses and sweat and fresh clean linen. A mix of scents that were as grounding as they were familiar.
She needed this. Gods, she needed this. Lyn buried her fingers in the front of hector’s shirt. In his embrace she finally felt safe enough to let out all the tears she’d kept bottled up inside. Vulnerability she could never let anyone else in Caelin see.
Hector’s body was so warm, radiating heat like a furnace.
Lyn didn’t want to let him go.
He held her until her sobs abated. Until all she felt was the heavy weariness coming down from the emotional high.
“I’m here,” Hector whispered into her hair. “I’m right here.”
“Everyone is so…fake,” Lyn whispered hoarsely back.
As if Hector finally understood, the tension in his body relaxed. He pressed his cheek to the top of Lyn’s head and replied, “I know.”
“You’re not.” She turned her face until her nose brushed his throat.
Hector swallowed thickly and she could feel it. “I’m not,” he agreed. “I promise you, I’m not.”
“Your last letter…” Lyn trailed off, she struggled to say out loud what he’d written.
“I meant it all. Every letter, it was me, Lyn.”
They both fell into pensive silence then, their breathing punctuating the moments. Lyn was pressed so close she could feel Hector’s heartbeat in her own chest. It was a steady thump-thump that comforted her.
Hector loosened his hold just enough to run a hand down her back, smoothing the fabric of her Sacaen clothing. So touch starved, Lyn had to resist the urge to arch into that touch like a cat.
Normally, while in Caelin she wore Lycian fashion. Mostly to appease the Lycian nobles. But lately, homesickness had set in, and she’d begun blending Sacaen and Lycian fashion. Today though, she wore a familiar ensemble. Clothing she’d kept from her late tribe, the Lorca. She’d wanted to dress in something familiar to greet the boys; something from the time she’d spent traveling with Hector and Eliwood.
“The Lycian nobles,” she started to say.
Hector gave a hum of acknowledgment, his hand caressing her back paused briefly to comb through her long ponytail. She shivered, and he must have felt it.
“I’m so tired of the feigned niceties, their insincere flattery; flowery but otherwise shallow talk.” She tilted her face to trace her nose along the corner of Hector’s jaw, causing his breath to hitch. It was a modicum more forward than appropriate, but given the contents of the last couple letters he’d sent…well. When her nose reached his ear she spoke lowly, “I’d trade a million pretty words for one touch that is real.”
Hector made a very tortured noise in the back of his throat.
All at once he twisted his face down and to the side to press a kiss to Lyn’s cheek.
Had her mouth not been at his ear, he might have kissed her lips.
Regardless, the chaste kiss sent a pleased shock from the base of her skull down to her toes.
“Lyn…” he breathed, voice low and throaty at her ear. “Can I touch you?” 
Lyn could only nod, pulling back just enough for Hector to capture her mouth in a proper kiss.
It was all the confirmation he needed.
Months of pent-up restrained emotions—having been stoked to a fever pitch by their respective letters—boiled over and set ablaze.
Hector’s fingers dug into her back as he kissed her with all the desperation of a man drowning. She met his enthusiasm in kind, throwing her arms around his neck and burying one hand in his stupidly coiffed hair.
He let out a covetous groan, both his hands running down her body, over her hips, until they reached her exposed thighs. His touch ignited fire against her skin. With strength akin to a bear he gripped her thighs and hoisted her up off the ground effortlessly.
Lyn unconsciously hooked her legs over his hips. She pressed her body to his, chest flush against him, delighting in the touch of someone real.
Nights spent fantasizing paled in comparison to this moment.
Hector tilted his head to deepen the kiss. His lips were rough, almost chapped, no doubt from elements during the long trip from Ostia. But Lyn didn’t mind because this too felt so real. It was him, and he was actually here in Caelin, and he wanted her the way he’d alluded in all his letters. The same way she wanted him.
She tugged at his hair as she kissed him back, matching his energy. When he gasped into her mouth she savored the noise.
Lyn took the opportunity to slip her tongue past Hector’s lips, drawing a throaty moan from him. His grip on her thighs tightened.
Hector took a step back towards her desk, his boots crunching papers.
She should have been concerned about those papers—and she had no idea where Hector had placed her bundle of letters—but found herself too blissed out to give a damn.
She knew the moment his backside reached her desk, because her shins struck it too. The scandal of making out on her desk sent a crack of heat straight to Lyn’s stomach.
With the added support of the desk, Hector shifted her weight to his hips and one arm, so his other hand was free to tug at the saffron colored sash around her waist.
With the shift, their kisses lessened to a series of smaller sweet sensual ones. The glide and pop of lips pulling over lips.
Hector was struggling to find the ends of the sash, and Lyn dropped her hand from his hair, fingers over his, to guide him where to start.
He made an appreciative noise against her mouth, and they both felt the fabric begin to fall away when the door to the office creaked open.
“Excuse me, Lady Lyndis?” A familiar shock of red hair poked into the study. “I don’t mean to intrude while you’re busy, but have you seen Hector, I can’t find-“ Eliwood froze in the threshold, hand still on the door handle, and words stuck in his throat.
“Shit!” Lyn cursed, breaking away from Hector so fast that pain lanced through her neck. She pushed against his chest.
The brute of a man didn’t release her.
Instead he had the audacity to give his best friend an exasperated look.
“I-I am—excuse me. Gods, I’m sorry.” Eliwood clapped a hand over his eyes, “I should have knocked!” He fumbled blindly for the handle of the door with his other hand. The speed in which he slammed the door caused a rush of air that displaced a bunch of the papers littered over the floor. “You have my blessing. Carry on!” They both heard his muffled call from the other side.
Lyn’s whole face, ears neck and shoulders all burned with shame.
Honestly the state of the room looked about as compromising as their position.
“Someone put me to death,” she whined, pushing once more against Hector’s immovable chest.
Hector frowned, turning his cobalt gaze to Lyn. “Why? It was only Eliwood.”
Lyn fixed him with a glare that could have cleaved steel, “because the Marchioness of Caelin was just caught in a compromising position with the Marquess of Ostia! This is a scandal. Never mind that I’ll be seen a Sacaen “dog” who’s seduced the most powerful Marquis in Lycia. The other Lycian nobility have been waiting for me screw up, be given reason to depose me from Caelin. Hector, we’re neither engaged, nor courting!”
“Then let me court you,” Hector stated bluntly.
Lyn went slack jawed, stunned silent