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Entry tags:
Pink Horizon
Title: Pink Horizon
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion/Terence
Rating: T
Word Count: 3043
Notes: Written for RustyCactuar on AO3 for the Teredio Brainrot Secret Santa Exchange on Discord. Dion celebrates his new position as commander of the Holy Knights Dragoon with those who matter most.
-
The sugary dough is sweeter than Dion likes, but he breaks the soft cake in half and ignores the tackiness if leaves against his skin. Terence dusts his fingers off on a handkerchief and stares at the basket before them, rotating it to see more clearly into the treats below. Jam pockets and custard cakes and flat cookies shaped into the soft form of Sanbreque’s shields alight within. Powdered sugar coats half of the treats like a dusting of snow. The flowers that accompanied their arrival are already in a slim vase on the table; Dion had slipped them in the water pitcher in exhaustion before Terence had noticed and gone hunting for something more suitable. The display is overzealous for a campaign tent. The poor man sent to deliver the gift was not delighted when Dion had willfully given him a quarter of the treats in return for himself.
Milord, forgive me, but these are from the capitol--
I am aware. And such gifts are better shared. Please, partake.
He thinks now he should have given more. But there are solutions, yet.
A humid wind blows across the edges of the tent, pushing in the loose fabric where the ground has settled and creating drafts in the corners. Snow threatens on the horizon, clouds threading around the moon in silver ribbons. But in the center of the congregation Dion is warm.
Terence presses in against his side on the bench, making room for Sir Ames to present a fine bottle of red at the head of the table. His gray hair nearly matches his armor, or the collection of silver platters spilling across the desk, and all under Dion’s immediate command spread crumbs and stories across it in a rare display of camaraderie after the cork is pulled. It’s not unlike water pooling together across a muted surface, or the calm stillness of the sun descending along a frosted field, and when Dion’s cup is filled multiple times and more bottles are upturned, stories take their turn to fall from his own mouth that he didn’t know he still carried. But mostly, he listens.
Sir Bernard leans across the table and peels back a layer of cloth in the basket to reveal more treats still. He’s entirely obscured by the vase of lilies until he gently pushes it aside. “All from the Cardinals, Your Highness? Truly? They must be ashamed that our backsides are cold.”
“It’s certainly bribery,” Dion agrees dryly. Someone snickers.
“It’s a holiday,” Lady Lafayette’s voice protests gently. “And I counted five carts with extra rations arriving this morning. They mean to have us afield all winter. I’m sure it’s two-fold.”
“Did you not see the garlands of oranges above the physicker’s tents?” Lady Nivelle sighs. “Those arrived from the capital as did our other luxuries with your accompaniment.”
“I make it my intentions to not be a visitor, surgeon,” Bernard protests. “And I only pray to Greagor, bloodthirsty as her daughters are.” She mimes slicing him, and Terence laughs.
Dion bows his head. “It’s a bit despicable to command your absence from your families during an otherwise quiet time of year. I am sorry for this, but grateful for all of you just the same.”
Silence descends, and he thinks in his looser state he’s said too much too quickly.
“Your Highness,” Terence intervenes, “No one here holds you in contempt. This revelry is for you,” he insists.
Gillian speaks for the first time, Hugh quietly shuffling cards at his shoulder. Dion does not know who brought them or what games they should play. He finds he has not been keeping track of much of anything, save the warmth steadily rising in his chest. “And you, Clement. Perhaps you should also know your efforts are seen.”
Terence raises his hand mid sip and hastily swallows. “Please, do not continue. I have done little save pursue my own interests.”
“The men won’t hear that they are men now,” Sir Ames announces. There’s a twinkle in his eye that precludes the ten summers Dion had spent as a boy trading blows with him in a fragrant courtyard of gilliflowers and lilies. And now their roles are reversed. He took his knee a month after midsummer and pledged his loyalty to his order. “Unless His Highness has a complaint, I should like for us to be heard.”
Dion gestures wide, defeated.
“To Dion the Bold of House Lesage,” his captains crow. “To Commander Clement and his infinite aptitude. May Greagor safeguard her vassals and see them always to victory.” Dion smiles, warm to his core and all of twenty summers and newly seasoned as their leader, and insists to Sir Ames with increasing force and some fragility he dare not name to give him the bottle so he may pour for them in turn.
After significant amounts of folly, the party ends, and they depart one at a time.
When Lady Nivelle says her parting words to Terence and slips a pack of medicines in his hands that Dion pretends to not see, they are left alone in the silence. Outside the tent the wind has stilled, the skies have lightened in the aftermath of a storm, and snows falls in soft, thin flakes through the canvas entrance. But he doesn’t rise, yet.
Terence rejoins him on the bench and presses his face against his neck. “We did not have any water,” he says regretfully. “The world is moving without me.”
Dion cannot help it: he laughs. He rises unsteadily to his feet, fetches his water skin from his bedside, and presses the open mouth to Terence’s lips. They both partake until it’s gone. Before them, a joyful mess greets them. The candelabras burn steadily still turning their skin pink in the light. The woven baskets are devastated by greedy hands, and Dion’s relieved, reaching for the nearest and finding naught remains but crumbs. His captains are nothing if not thorough in their plundering. He is lucky indeed.
“You did not eat dinner either,” Dion says, considering. “I did.” Terence grunts, but doesn’t protest. He’d not seen much of him until the scouts returned, occupied organizing the new legion that descended fresh from Northreach to join them while Dion settled the ugly paperwork of it all. Dion presses a kiss to the side of his head and silently cleans up what he can reach.
He might not be allowed to be a man at all when he is on the field, he thinks, but only the beast for which he is honored; Terence reminds him, while casually hosting their company across the war table and later sharing his pillow, that it is the man’s safety he concerns himself with the most. Dion believes him above all others, but that doesn’t make his appreciation any less for those who choose to conscript under a young commander prone to acts of heroism. Tonight may have been simple foolery, but it confirms that their collective judgment has rewarded them with loyal companions -- companions that, if Dion fails, will follow Terence wherever he may choose to lead them.
It’s why Terence indulged for once. He fully believed in their own safekeeping.
“Do you miss it,” Dion asks softly. Terence cracks his eyes and smiles blearily at him. He’s pale with near sleep, slicked hair loose around his forehead.
“Hm? Oriflamme?”
“Our time as children. You brought it up often.”
“I would not trade it for what you and I have now,” he starts carefully, “but it seemed clearer then, what purpose you were kept for.”
“Kept,” Dion muses. “For you to follow after, you mean.”
“No, no. I mean you were always set for a grand destiny," he slurs, soft. "I worried you would end up alone if I did not catch up with you.”
“You are a persistent one," Dion relents. He trails his fingers across the heat of his back. Stills. "I think simplicity was the illusion. But you never have been." Dion allows himself to marvel. He can't bring himself to say the names of those in their order without them all spilling out like loose change, though his mind roves to his earliest days in the monastery, of relations of convenience that have rewarded him now but are somehow still distant things; his attention is wanting for one.
Terence says nothing. He turns his head and presses his sweet mouth against his own, warm and pliant, and cups the back of his neck to hold him. It’s a soft kiss, one Dion has received and given many times in their courtship, and for all that war has tried to make them both brutish and obeisant in their five years of service, Dion still remembers how to be gentle, and Terence is no worse for wear, enduring like a tall, growing tree. Dion presses closer. He will flourish beautifully as he settles into his role as his right hand, Dion has no doubts. It's where he's always been anyway.
“Are you well enough for a walk?” Dion murmurs.
Terence drags his short nails along the back of his scalp lightly, considering. “If you have patience. Fresh air sounds nice.”
“I won’t let you go,” he promises.
They find their footing and after relieving themselves and adding layers to their bodies, slip quietly out into the glittering night.
Torches burn and the night watch patrols in small groups. When they pass, they murmur their greetings, blinking white flakes from their lashes, and Dion still feels some disbelief, despite his own incentive to take agency over what army he may have — he’d thought the loyalty he earned came from only a trusted few, and the rest could only ever be falsehoods. A soldier should never be promised such a title after two seasons of combat he knows — but Bahamut inspires much. The confusion lies then in how they had called his own name with an honesty he finds impossible to believe. Your Highness. Your Lordship. Commander. Is he so distrustful? Is his faith so tortured to view them with suspicion?
Or do they believe in the image his father cultivated within him — a child of prophecy who should see them arrive to a perfect victory nigh every time? Eventually, Dion fears he will disappoint them. But for now, all that exists is today and the one he worries about the least, silently trailing after him and his inclinations for impulse. Most of that has been tempered, but when the opportunity arises, he will go to meet it. The one evil he cannot purge is himself.
They walk silently for some time. When the edge of camp is reached, Dion threads his fingers with Terence’s and starts silently for the hill. “I did not bring my sword,” Terence protests, stopping. “We shouldn’t go any further.”
“You are off duty, Terence,” Dion replies smoothly. He lets himself be pulled after him. They stumble upward, through brush coated with powder and the naked limbs of branches snagging on their clothes. Then, a clear rise greets them and animal tracks, where beasts had trotted under a large, swollen moon. Behind them, orange light bleeds softly into an amber glow above the camp. It should have its own heart Dion thinks, and it beats slowly under the quiet silence of winter’s arrival.
Terence exhales and sweeps his foot through the powder. “It stormed nicely.”
Dion walks forward and watches it collect upon his boots. Snow in Oriflamme rarely lasted long in the streets but it would accumulate, wet and heavy, against the base of Drake’s Head and flood the streets upon its melting. At least campaign season allows him the joy of this. Though in a week they will march south, and the stillness will be sundered by a call for blood and the sloppy footfalls of men.
Dion turns, considering, then walks backward into the field. He discards his wool cloak and few loose provisions where they sink and nearly disappear. “And where are you going,” Terence calls.
“How’s your stomach?” Dion asks. “Are you well?” Terence shrugs, then hastily steps back.
Dion lets his wings unfurl in soft incandescent light. His arm twinges in modest protest where the curse has begun to remind him of his limited time in this world, but Dion tries not to think of it, only the warmth he’d been gifted all evening, and lets it blossom carefully outward. What focus that lets him prime is always driven by the necessity of violence — but it would be nice to use his gifts for more peaceful intentions. Gifts that would let him lift what matters higher, to greater heights than the wings he was bestowed at birth. All under his command, who took a vow of loyalty and gave themselves to him, must be elevated far above himself.
If not for posterity, then love.
“Dion you must—”
Before Terence can finish his sentence, Dion catches him in his arms, hefting the bulk of him with a wyrm’s strength against his chest, and leaps upward.
Terence presses his face against his neck while Dion’s hair whips wildly around them, gold and otherworldly. Wind rushes by their ears, cold and piercing as they rise through the darkness, though Dion feels little of it. He shifts to allow Terence’s cloak higher passage around his neck and the vulnerable skin. He doesn’t feel the bite of cold, only knows that it exists.
Low clouds descend to meet them and Dion parallels their misty edges, feeling the aether of his wings as extensions of himself. They glide beneath a round moon and the slow fall of powder does not touch them, blowing past into nothing at all. At last, Terence loosens his death grip to look at him. His steel eyes reflect himself. “So suddenly?” he asks, laughing a little.
“I’m happy,” Dion admits. “And this is the season you were born. I so rarely get to surprise you.”
He huffs, shaking his head. They are not children anymore and Dion is not free to give into impulse without paying his dues. But neither is Terence, who chose to chain himself close out of very convincing fealty. Thinking on it, not much has changed under their own command. Terence still attends to him every day before himself, and Dion still cannot quite believe he’s earned any of it. But somehow, he must convince himself. And he must make sure Terence forever knows what gifts he has given will never go unnoticed.
Dion squeezes him closer and Terence turns his head to watch where Dion looks, arm tightening around his neck. All before them, trees glisten silver, and the moon illuminates the entire landscape into harsh shadows where the hills rise and bend. The cloud cover slides east to give berth to a blanket of stars. In a week, they will march south to meet their Dhalmekian invaders, and the valley will run pink, and the air will taste of copper. For now it smells clean and like the soft human warmth of a man.
Dion wants to hold this moment in memory, so when there is nothing before him but destruction, he will know he has done right before the end.
“You’re trembling,” Terence observes. “Let us go back.”
Terence touches one of his wings at the base, making Dion shiver. After several minutes of purposeless drifting, Terence presses his mouth to his ear: should drakes not be in their caves mooning over their hoard of treasures. Dion finds a patch of fog to fly them through to irritate him, then carefully returns to the open field with tiring wings. He puts Terence back on his feet, then standing tall, lets his shape fade and returns to himself, ordinary and soft limbed. Terence takes a step toward him and immediately folds on numb legs. Laughing gently, Dion follows him down, and instead finds himself flat on his back, breathless from impact, heat and cold tugging at him in equal measure.
Terence drapes himself over him and brushes his pale hair from his eyes. His mirror whatever light they take in and swallow it; Dion stretches his neck upward to lay a careful kiss upon the rapid pulse in his throat, then a chaste one against his cheek. “My poor knight,” he says. “I exhausted you.”
“No,” he grunts, reclining against him more carefully in the wet snow. “It’s simply late.”
Dion scoffs and holds his face, tracing his thumbs against the soft bags beneath his eyes. “Did you like it?” he asks, quiet, rapturous. "Was it alright?"
“Yes,” Terence admits. He smiles handsomely. “The valley is beautiful. I’ve forgotten such heights.”
“You need not. Anytime, I would remind you of your post. You are still a dragoon. I would not see you feel demoted.”
Terence lays his head against his neck and laughs and groans. Their chests vibrate. “Dion, I had only ever wanted to catch up with you. The rest does not matter. I got my wish. I can bear it."
A pause. "I know. What a man you are,” Dion says, slowly, disbelievingly. He sinks his fingers into his cold hair to pull him close. Terence kisses him luxuriously for minutes or hours before pulling him upward and brushing the snow from his shoulders. Dion fists his hands in his cloak to warm them and draw him closer. A soft indent remains marking where they had laid tangled that will melt with the warm winds to come, but what they have will not fade with any amount of time or strife. Of this one thing, Dion could swear it to be true before Greagor herself.
In the morning, the men and women groan around camp as they rise from the cold, a pink sunrise blooming over white crested peaks and disappearing into foggy low flung hills. The trees drip glitter and sparkle like jewels, contending, briefly, against the majesty of Drake’s Head. Dion thinks someday he might like to press into that far horizon and greet the dawn without a blade to meet it. When Terence returns with hot drinks and supper for them each, worn and pale from deep sleep but impossibly fond, Dion believes Terence will be the one to help him make it so.
Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI
Characters/pairing: Dion/Terence
Rating: T
Word Count: 3043
Notes: Written for RustyCactuar on AO3 for the Teredio Brainrot Secret Santa Exchange on Discord. Dion celebrates his new position as commander of the Holy Knights Dragoon with those who matter most.
-
The sugary dough is sweeter than Dion likes, but he breaks the soft cake in half and ignores the tackiness if leaves against his skin. Terence dusts his fingers off on a handkerchief and stares at the basket before them, rotating it to see more clearly into the treats below. Jam pockets and custard cakes and flat cookies shaped into the soft form of Sanbreque’s shields alight within. Powdered sugar coats half of the treats like a dusting of snow. The flowers that accompanied their arrival are already in a slim vase on the table; Dion had slipped them in the water pitcher in exhaustion before Terence had noticed and gone hunting for something more suitable. The display is overzealous for a campaign tent. The poor man sent to deliver the gift was not delighted when Dion had willfully given him a quarter of the treats in return for himself.
Milord, forgive me, but these are from the capitol--
I am aware. And such gifts are better shared. Please, partake.
He thinks now he should have given more. But there are solutions, yet.
A humid wind blows across the edges of the tent, pushing in the loose fabric where the ground has settled and creating drafts in the corners. Snow threatens on the horizon, clouds threading around the moon in silver ribbons. But in the center of the congregation Dion is warm.
Terence presses in against his side on the bench, making room for Sir Ames to present a fine bottle of red at the head of the table. His gray hair nearly matches his armor, or the collection of silver platters spilling across the desk, and all under Dion’s immediate command spread crumbs and stories across it in a rare display of camaraderie after the cork is pulled. It’s not unlike water pooling together across a muted surface, or the calm stillness of the sun descending along a frosted field, and when Dion’s cup is filled multiple times and more bottles are upturned, stories take their turn to fall from his own mouth that he didn’t know he still carried. But mostly, he listens.
Sir Bernard leans across the table and peels back a layer of cloth in the basket to reveal more treats still. He’s entirely obscured by the vase of lilies until he gently pushes it aside. “All from the Cardinals, Your Highness? Truly? They must be ashamed that our backsides are cold.”
“It’s certainly bribery,” Dion agrees dryly. Someone snickers.
“It’s a holiday,” Lady Lafayette’s voice protests gently. “And I counted five carts with extra rations arriving this morning. They mean to have us afield all winter. I’m sure it’s two-fold.”
“Did you not see the garlands of oranges above the physicker’s tents?” Lady Nivelle sighs. “Those arrived from the capital as did our other luxuries with your accompaniment.”
“I make it my intentions to not be a visitor, surgeon,” Bernard protests. “And I only pray to Greagor, bloodthirsty as her daughters are.” She mimes slicing him, and Terence laughs.
Dion bows his head. “It’s a bit despicable to command your absence from your families during an otherwise quiet time of year. I am sorry for this, but grateful for all of you just the same.”
Silence descends, and he thinks in his looser state he’s said too much too quickly.
“Your Highness,” Terence intervenes, “No one here holds you in contempt. This revelry is for you,” he insists.
Gillian speaks for the first time, Hugh quietly shuffling cards at his shoulder. Dion does not know who brought them or what games they should play. He finds he has not been keeping track of much of anything, save the warmth steadily rising in his chest. “And you, Clement. Perhaps you should also know your efforts are seen.”
Terence raises his hand mid sip and hastily swallows. “Please, do not continue. I have done little save pursue my own interests.”
“The men won’t hear that they are men now,” Sir Ames announces. There’s a twinkle in his eye that precludes the ten summers Dion had spent as a boy trading blows with him in a fragrant courtyard of gilliflowers and lilies. And now their roles are reversed. He took his knee a month after midsummer and pledged his loyalty to his order. “Unless His Highness has a complaint, I should like for us to be heard.”
Dion gestures wide, defeated.
“To Dion the Bold of House Lesage,” his captains crow. “To Commander Clement and his infinite aptitude. May Greagor safeguard her vassals and see them always to victory.” Dion smiles, warm to his core and all of twenty summers and newly seasoned as their leader, and insists to Sir Ames with increasing force and some fragility he dare not name to give him the bottle so he may pour for them in turn.
After significant amounts of folly, the party ends, and they depart one at a time.
When Lady Nivelle says her parting words to Terence and slips a pack of medicines in his hands that Dion pretends to not see, they are left alone in the silence. Outside the tent the wind has stilled, the skies have lightened in the aftermath of a storm, and snows falls in soft, thin flakes through the canvas entrance. But he doesn’t rise, yet.
Terence rejoins him on the bench and presses his face against his neck. “We did not have any water,” he says regretfully. “The world is moving without me.”
Dion cannot help it: he laughs. He rises unsteadily to his feet, fetches his water skin from his bedside, and presses the open mouth to Terence’s lips. They both partake until it’s gone. Before them, a joyful mess greets them. The candelabras burn steadily still turning their skin pink in the light. The woven baskets are devastated by greedy hands, and Dion’s relieved, reaching for the nearest and finding naught remains but crumbs. His captains are nothing if not thorough in their plundering. He is lucky indeed.
“You did not eat dinner either,” Dion says, considering. “I did.” Terence grunts, but doesn’t protest. He’d not seen much of him until the scouts returned, occupied organizing the new legion that descended fresh from Northreach to join them while Dion settled the ugly paperwork of it all. Dion presses a kiss to the side of his head and silently cleans up what he can reach.
He might not be allowed to be a man at all when he is on the field, he thinks, but only the beast for which he is honored; Terence reminds him, while casually hosting their company across the war table and later sharing his pillow, that it is the man’s safety he concerns himself with the most. Dion believes him above all others, but that doesn’t make his appreciation any less for those who choose to conscript under a young commander prone to acts of heroism. Tonight may have been simple foolery, but it confirms that their collective judgment has rewarded them with loyal companions -- companions that, if Dion fails, will follow Terence wherever he may choose to lead them.
It’s why Terence indulged for once. He fully believed in their own safekeeping.
“Do you miss it,” Dion asks softly. Terence cracks his eyes and smiles blearily at him. He’s pale with near sleep, slicked hair loose around his forehead.
“Hm? Oriflamme?”
“Our time as children. You brought it up often.”
“I would not trade it for what you and I have now,” he starts carefully, “but it seemed clearer then, what purpose you were kept for.”
“Kept,” Dion muses. “For you to follow after, you mean.”
“No, no. I mean you were always set for a grand destiny," he slurs, soft. "I worried you would end up alone if I did not catch up with you.”
“You are a persistent one," Dion relents. He trails his fingers across the heat of his back. Stills. "I think simplicity was the illusion. But you never have been." Dion allows himself to marvel. He can't bring himself to say the names of those in their order without them all spilling out like loose change, though his mind roves to his earliest days in the monastery, of relations of convenience that have rewarded him now but are somehow still distant things; his attention is wanting for one.
Terence says nothing. He turns his head and presses his sweet mouth against his own, warm and pliant, and cups the back of his neck to hold him. It’s a soft kiss, one Dion has received and given many times in their courtship, and for all that war has tried to make them both brutish and obeisant in their five years of service, Dion still remembers how to be gentle, and Terence is no worse for wear, enduring like a tall, growing tree. Dion presses closer. He will flourish beautifully as he settles into his role as his right hand, Dion has no doubts. It's where he's always been anyway.
“Are you well enough for a walk?” Dion murmurs.
Terence drags his short nails along the back of his scalp lightly, considering. “If you have patience. Fresh air sounds nice.”
“I won’t let you go,” he promises.
They find their footing and after relieving themselves and adding layers to their bodies, slip quietly out into the glittering night.
Torches burn and the night watch patrols in small groups. When they pass, they murmur their greetings, blinking white flakes from their lashes, and Dion still feels some disbelief, despite his own incentive to take agency over what army he may have — he’d thought the loyalty he earned came from only a trusted few, and the rest could only ever be falsehoods. A soldier should never be promised such a title after two seasons of combat he knows — but Bahamut inspires much. The confusion lies then in how they had called his own name with an honesty he finds impossible to believe. Your Highness. Your Lordship. Commander. Is he so distrustful? Is his faith so tortured to view them with suspicion?
Or do they believe in the image his father cultivated within him — a child of prophecy who should see them arrive to a perfect victory nigh every time? Eventually, Dion fears he will disappoint them. But for now, all that exists is today and the one he worries about the least, silently trailing after him and his inclinations for impulse. Most of that has been tempered, but when the opportunity arises, he will go to meet it. The one evil he cannot purge is himself.
They walk silently for some time. When the edge of camp is reached, Dion threads his fingers with Terence’s and starts silently for the hill. “I did not bring my sword,” Terence protests, stopping. “We shouldn’t go any further.”
“You are off duty, Terence,” Dion replies smoothly. He lets himself be pulled after him. They stumble upward, through brush coated with powder and the naked limbs of branches snagging on their clothes. Then, a clear rise greets them and animal tracks, where beasts had trotted under a large, swollen moon. Behind them, orange light bleeds softly into an amber glow above the camp. It should have its own heart Dion thinks, and it beats slowly under the quiet silence of winter’s arrival.
Terence exhales and sweeps his foot through the powder. “It stormed nicely.”
Dion walks forward and watches it collect upon his boots. Snow in Oriflamme rarely lasted long in the streets but it would accumulate, wet and heavy, against the base of Drake’s Head and flood the streets upon its melting. At least campaign season allows him the joy of this. Though in a week they will march south, and the stillness will be sundered by a call for blood and the sloppy footfalls of men.
Dion turns, considering, then walks backward into the field. He discards his wool cloak and few loose provisions where they sink and nearly disappear. “And where are you going,” Terence calls.
“How’s your stomach?” Dion asks. “Are you well?” Terence shrugs, then hastily steps back.
Dion lets his wings unfurl in soft incandescent light. His arm twinges in modest protest where the curse has begun to remind him of his limited time in this world, but Dion tries not to think of it, only the warmth he’d been gifted all evening, and lets it blossom carefully outward. What focus that lets him prime is always driven by the necessity of violence — but it would be nice to use his gifts for more peaceful intentions. Gifts that would let him lift what matters higher, to greater heights than the wings he was bestowed at birth. All under his command, who took a vow of loyalty and gave themselves to him, must be elevated far above himself.
If not for posterity, then love.
“Dion you must—”
Before Terence can finish his sentence, Dion catches him in his arms, hefting the bulk of him with a wyrm’s strength against his chest, and leaps upward.
Terence presses his face against his neck while Dion’s hair whips wildly around them, gold and otherworldly. Wind rushes by their ears, cold and piercing as they rise through the darkness, though Dion feels little of it. He shifts to allow Terence’s cloak higher passage around his neck and the vulnerable skin. He doesn’t feel the bite of cold, only knows that it exists.
Low clouds descend to meet them and Dion parallels their misty edges, feeling the aether of his wings as extensions of himself. They glide beneath a round moon and the slow fall of powder does not touch them, blowing past into nothing at all. At last, Terence loosens his death grip to look at him. His steel eyes reflect himself. “So suddenly?” he asks, laughing a little.
“I’m happy,” Dion admits. “And this is the season you were born. I so rarely get to surprise you.”
He huffs, shaking his head. They are not children anymore and Dion is not free to give into impulse without paying his dues. But neither is Terence, who chose to chain himself close out of very convincing fealty. Thinking on it, not much has changed under their own command. Terence still attends to him every day before himself, and Dion still cannot quite believe he’s earned any of it. But somehow, he must convince himself. And he must make sure Terence forever knows what gifts he has given will never go unnoticed.
Dion squeezes him closer and Terence turns his head to watch where Dion looks, arm tightening around his neck. All before them, trees glisten silver, and the moon illuminates the entire landscape into harsh shadows where the hills rise and bend. The cloud cover slides east to give berth to a blanket of stars. In a week, they will march south to meet their Dhalmekian invaders, and the valley will run pink, and the air will taste of copper. For now it smells clean and like the soft human warmth of a man.
Dion wants to hold this moment in memory, so when there is nothing before him but destruction, he will know he has done right before the end.
“You’re trembling,” Terence observes. “Let us go back.”
Terence touches one of his wings at the base, making Dion shiver. After several minutes of purposeless drifting, Terence presses his mouth to his ear: should drakes not be in their caves mooning over their hoard of treasures. Dion finds a patch of fog to fly them through to irritate him, then carefully returns to the open field with tiring wings. He puts Terence back on his feet, then standing tall, lets his shape fade and returns to himself, ordinary and soft limbed. Terence takes a step toward him and immediately folds on numb legs. Laughing gently, Dion follows him down, and instead finds himself flat on his back, breathless from impact, heat and cold tugging at him in equal measure.
Terence drapes himself over him and brushes his pale hair from his eyes. His mirror whatever light they take in and swallow it; Dion stretches his neck upward to lay a careful kiss upon the rapid pulse in his throat, then a chaste one against his cheek. “My poor knight,” he says. “I exhausted you.”
“No,” he grunts, reclining against him more carefully in the wet snow. “It’s simply late.”
Dion scoffs and holds his face, tracing his thumbs against the soft bags beneath his eyes. “Did you like it?” he asks, quiet, rapturous. "Was it alright?"
“Yes,” Terence admits. He smiles handsomely. “The valley is beautiful. I’ve forgotten such heights.”
“You need not. Anytime, I would remind you of your post. You are still a dragoon. I would not see you feel demoted.”
Terence lays his head against his neck and laughs and groans. Their chests vibrate. “Dion, I had only ever wanted to catch up with you. The rest does not matter. I got my wish. I can bear it."
A pause. "I know. What a man you are,” Dion says, slowly, disbelievingly. He sinks his fingers into his cold hair to pull him close. Terence kisses him luxuriously for minutes or hours before pulling him upward and brushing the snow from his shoulders. Dion fists his hands in his cloak to warm them and draw him closer. A soft indent remains marking where they had laid tangled that will melt with the warm winds to come, but what they have will not fade with any amount of time or strife. Of this one thing, Dion could swear it to be true before Greagor herself.
In the morning, the men and women groan around camp as they rise from the cold, a pink sunrise blooming over white crested peaks and disappearing into foggy low flung hills. The trees drip glitter and sparkle like jewels, contending, briefly, against the majesty of Drake’s Head. Dion thinks someday he might like to press into that far horizon and greet the dawn without a blade to meet it. When Terence returns with hot drinks and supper for them each, worn and pale from deep sleep but impossibly fond, Dion believes Terence will be the one to help him make it so.