![](http://cobalt-company.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/writing:2023-09-28-officers/style="margin:/medium.jpg) |
| Details |
| Author: | Luridel |
| Summary: | Amadeus has cleared his office hours, anticipating a visit from his friend Kyris, ready to talk him out of his decision to leave the army. ~2300 words. See content warnings. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Amadeus has dismissed Ms. Landry early for the evening. Ordinarily, he takes his evening meal with the other officers. Today he has it sent to his office to eat privately at half past five. He has his dishes taken back down to the mess hall by a quarter to six, and is left with fifteen minutes to ensure that his office looks as pristine as it can.
The chair he has placed in front of his desk does not look quite as comfortable as his own chair, which has armrests. Perhaps Amadeus ought to switch them and let Kyris have the better of the two. However, the possibility that such a switch would be taken note of and somehow misconstrued is too great.
Would the slightly-inferior chair feel more welcoming if it were rotated at a slight angle to the desk? Amadeus rotates the chair, backs up, and studies it. Perhaps there is some improvement, perhaps not.
He moves to the door, where he regards his office critically. It is as nice a room as his peers, and no nicer. It is, perhaps, kept more clean than many of the others. He knows he is fortunate. But he does not know how to make his office look less… official.
Six o' clock. Kyris will be here any moment. Amadeus sits straight in his chair, hands folded on the desk, watching the closed door of his office.
It will be different this time. He will not allow his thoughts to stray. He will be an honorable husband to Gardenia. He will do nothing untoward. He will think nothing unbecoming of a married man.
Perhaps he should have kept Ms. Landry at her post. But Kyris would not have wanted to speak about something this personal with an audience, he knows this, and thus they will be alone.
Sir, could you just be a normal person for once in your bloody life?
Amadeus will follow Ms. Landry's excellent advice and be a normal person, and everything will be fine.
But Kyris is late. Amadeus looks at the clock at ten past six and realizes that his friend never responded to his letter. There is a possibility that Kyris may not be coming at all.
Should he have given Kyris more notice? But he thought, given the contents of Kyris' letter, that his friend would want the opportunity to speak with him as soon as possible.
Amadeus did tell him that he cleared his schedule.
Malton's report is right there on his desk, sent up to him with his dinner tray, which he got halfway through reading while he was eating. He doesn't need to draft a response until tomorrow, but if Kyris has not arrived, surely there's no harm in at least reading the rest of the report.
Half past six. Kyris is still absent. Amadeus reaches for his stationery. If he can complete this report now, he will not be dwelling over it when his friend arrives.
If.
If his friend arrives.
At half past seven, Amadeus begins to lose hope. His correspondence has been finalized, he just needs to go downstairs and have it mailed.
For once, he looks at the other door in his office. Not the one that leads to the hallway, the one that leads to the bedroom he rarely uses. It contains a bed, a nightstand, a wardrobe, a small heater, a washbasin, a mirror, and a little shelf on the wall, everything packed so tightly together that there's almost no standing room.
Does Kyris have something like this at Fort Wildervar? Or is he forced to sleep in a tent like the rest of his men while construction drags on? Amadeus has not asked.
The clock ticks on. Amadeus watches it, and he worries, and he waits.
At eight o' clock, Amadeus rises from his chair and brushes off his uniform coat. Disappointment sits heavily on him, perhaps more than it should. It has simply been a few months since he has seen his friend. That is all.
Regardless. Time to go downstairs and mail this letter.
Amadeus puts his keys in his coat pocket, picks up the letter, and opens the door to the hallway. The door opens inwards, which means he does not hit the person standing right in front of it.
The hallway is dark, but the light from Amadeus' office shines out to illuminate the face of a friend that he scarcely recognizes at first. Had he not been expecting Kyris, he might not have recognized him at all, and in truth, he needs to see the sword Kyris wears at his hip before he is certain this is actually him.
He has to look down. Kyris is five inches shorter than him, delicate, all thin brows and long lashes and few of the creases that should mark him as the same age as Amadeus. His usually pale face is flushed from the cold, and his lips are chapped. He is not wearing his Alliance uniform.
Kyris is dressed in an evening gown made of subtly shimmering white mooncloth, strapless, the sweep of his collarbones fully exposed, his shoulders and muscled arms completely bare. He must be freezing. His long hair, which Amadeus has touched once when they were both young and once in recent years, has been left fully loose. There is the sword, of course, one of Kyris' shorter blades, but Kyris is not carrying a bag of any kind that Amadeus can see - no coin purse, nothing - and then Amadeus catches sight of the suitcase leaning against the back of the hall.
Amadeus' fingers go slack, and the envelope in his hand begins to flutter towards the floor, and Amadeus only notices because deft fingers snatch it out of the air and offer it back to him.
This is a dream, this is a fantasy, this cannot be happening.
The most logical explanation is that Amadeus has fallen asleep at his desk again, and at any moment he will wake up to a knock on his door.
Spellbound, Amadeus accepts the letter back.
Kyris steps away from him, the wrong way, back into the hall, and something in Amadeus' chest balls up tight. He's ruined the dream already, he's done something wrong–
But the man simply picks up his suitcase and steps back to the door.
Amadeus opens it wider, gesturing for Kyris to enter. The dress has a slit along the leg that Amadeus should absolutely not be looking at. He is wearing… slippers? Slippers and no stockings. There is not a chance in the world that Kyris traveled here like this. He must have stopped somewhere in Westguard Keep to change.
Kyris enters, and Amadeus shuts the door. For some reason, he is still holding this letter. He sets it on an empty shelf near the door.
"You must be freezing," Amadeus says, because what else can he say? A hand - his own hand - reaches out slowly to touch Kyris' cheek. Soft, so soft. And cold.
There's a full-body tremor from Kyris at the contact. "Lieutenant-Commander Aspenwood," he says, looking up at Amadeus with an expression that Amadeus cannot read.
Lieutenant-Commander Aspenwood.
Ice. It's like a full-body dunk into ice water. Amadeus snatches his hand back, stunned. The Kyris he dreams of would never call him that. Which means–
No.
Oh, no.
This is happening. This is real.
"Forgive me. I did not expect…" Amadeus can barely speak. There must be a way to salvage the scraps of his dignity. "Knight-Champion Lysander." Light. Amadeus is above him in rank, still, as Kyris just made a point of reminding him. And there will be no more promotions. Kyris is leaving.
"Not for much longer." Kyris sets his suitcase down inside the door.
Why are you dressed like that? Amadeus cannot ask. He does not deserve to know the answer. "Please make yourself at home. I can get you something warmer, if you would only give me a moment."
Kyris nods and moves towards the desk.
The office is cold, typically on purpose. It helps him concentrate better than the heat does. He usually keeps the little heater in his bedroom running during the evenings, and on days when he has the opportunity to go to sleep there, it is already warm. But he is off his usual routine tonight, because he cleared his schedule for this man who showed up late looking like temptation itself.
Amadeus starts the heater and fetches a cloak, Alliance blue with gold trim, which he drapes over his arm as he returns to the office. He leaves the door to the bedroom open so that the heat can spread.
Kyris stands facing away from him, one hand on Amadeus' desk, dressed like that, and Amadeus does not know how he can possibly be normal about this.
"I'm ruining my life, Amadeus." There it is, his name, and a fragment of the ice around his heart melts away. The least he can do, all he should be doing right now, is to be a good friend.
"Here." Amadeus offers his friend the cloak. Kyris turns, takes it, and draws it around his shoulders, clasping it shut.
"Thank you," Kyris says, and his voice breaks, and the next thing Amadeus knows he is standing with his arms around his friend while Kyris makes miserable little choked-up noises and hides his face in Amadeus' coat, clutching at him.
The cloak keeps most of that beautiful curtain of hair out of Amadeus' reach, which is in itself its own kind of sweet torture. He has not earned the privilege of touching it the way he longs to, and he scarcely trusts himself right now.
A good friend. Anything more is forbidden, forbidden, forbidden for multiple reasons, the most important one of which is his wife.
Gardenia. He tries to call her image to mind and gets only a hazy impression - a soft, round face, pink lips, dark hair.
He does not recall the color of her eyes.
Their marriage has always been a political one. Two powerful families, two seats on the House of Nobles, mutual respect and honor and children that Amadeus barely knows. He read one of her books, once, to be polite. It was not to his personal taste, but it was well-written.
Amadeus' evening has already spiraled well out of routine. He had imagined his friend showing up in uniform, hair tied back, beautiful and untouchable, and Amadeus would have offered him the slightly worse chair with no armrests and sat on the other side of the desk and attempted to talk him out of this mad choice. Leaving the army without telling his father? Lord Lysander would…
Truth be told, Amadeus has no idea what Lord Lysander will do.
Judging by the way Kyris is trembling in his arms, whatever it will be, Kyris is frightened of it.
He cannot talk his friend into staying, he knows that now. The gown has wiped every logical argument he had lined up clear from his mind, but even without that, he has a growing sense of the finality of the decision Kyris has made. The ball has already been set in motion. If he were to try and mitigate the damage - Lord Lysander retired due to a permanent injury, perhaps if Kyris were to do the same - but Amadeus cannot bear the idea.
The ticking of the office clock, a sound Amadeus ordinarily tunes out, has become one of the loudest sounds in the room. Amadeus waits, and waits, for Kyris to stop shaking. Slowly, gradually, over the course of what must be minutes, Kyris does.
Amadeus looks at the clock. It's twenty past eight. And still, Kyris has not let go. "Is there anything I might do to be of assistance?" Amadeus offers.
Kyris looks up at him. His eyes are reddened; his lips have cracked and possibly bled. The two of them are alarmingly close. Amadeus loosens his hold, drops his arms to his sides, but Kyris does not quite take the hint to let go. "Let me stay the night?" Kyris asks. "I'll return to Fort Wildervar tomorrow, I must, but I… don't believe I can face anyone else tonight."
"Of course, I understand. You would have better accommodations at the inn, but if this is your preference, you may have the bedroom. I rarely use it."
Kyris' expression sharpens somehow. It might be something about his eyes - like a predatory bird spotting movement - but Amadeus does not know what it signifies. "Where do you sleep?"
"At my desk," Amadeus answers. He should have thought that would be obvious.
Apparently not to Kyris, who finally releases Amadeus' coat and leans back against the desk. "Amadeus!" His friend sounds strangely relieved, which is at odds with his actual words: "That's terrible for your back."
Oh, he knows. "Ah, well. Regardless, it has a tendency to happen. No matter. Have you eaten? Can I fetch you anything to eat or drink?" Going downstairs will give him an opportunity to dispatch the letter. More importantly, to clear his head.
"I ate earlier, but thank you." Amadeus is not certain that he believes him, but it doesn't matter, because Kyris walks smoothly around the desk with silent footfalls and sits down in Amadeus' chair. "You sleep here when there's a perfectly serviceable bedroom right over there?"
His mouth has gone dry. Fully off-balance now, Amadeus sits down in the slightly inferior chair without the armrests, the chair he had expected to be for Kyris, quite grateful for the desk in between them. He nods.
Why are you dressed like that? Amadeus still cannot ask. But perhaps he can ask something else. "What changed? Why leave now?"
"I…" Kyris looks down at the surface of the desk. "I decided I was done acting like the son my father wants, rather than the son he actually has."
And there is nothing Amadeus can say to argue with that.