#gildyn

Gilgamesh groaned. “What?” He demanded, putting the parchments down and glaring at his king, who was currently making a concerted effort to sit on him. “What are you-- don’t you have work to do? That doesn’t involve distracting me from mine?”

“It’s done already,” Ardyn said petulantly, honey colored eyes peering out from beneath the flyaway strands of wine-dark hair he really needed to learn to brush properly. “It’s been done. You’ve been holed up in here for two days, Gil. Two!” He held up two fingers pointedly. “Days.”

“...what,” Gilgamesh said, blinking. “Two-- two days?” That didn’t sound right, he thought, and squinted out of the window. Was it-- it was dark out? When had it gotten dark? “I-- oh.” He said. Had he really...oops. He had completely forgotten to keep track of time, he’d been so busy, and...oh, no, he was starting to act like Pyrrhus. “Oh.”

Ardyn snorted. “Yes, oh,” he said fondly, draping his arms on his Shield’s shoulders and looking up at him from where he was now firmly planted on Gilgamesh’s lap. “Welcome back to Lucis, you silly man. We’ve all been worrying. You’re not supposed to be the one pasted to your desk.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, amused, leaning so that his forehead met his king’s. “Daemons have been sighted at the border more often, and though the anti-Lucian factions are getting much scarcer, there’s...still been trouble. I just worry.”

“I know you do, Gil,” Ardyn said gently, fingers playing absently in his Shield’s long white hair. “I worry, too. We all do. But we do what we can, you know that.” He smiled at him, that smile he had always, always loved-- the smile that was like the sun itself, just as bright and full of warmth. “But you can’t worry all the time. Come on, it can wait until the morning.”

“If you say so, then it can,” Gil said with a soft laugh, standing and laughing again as Ardyn yelped, instinctively wrapping his legs around his Shield’s waist to keep from falling. “Did you have something in mind, or are you going to chase me off to Jasmina? I can’t imagine she isn’t about ready to give me a tongue-lashing.” His wife was quite a woman, even if they were only friends in practice -- a marriage of convenience for his family and for the sake of children, he was always glad they got along so well despite that. Always glad that she, uninterested in romance as she was, allowed him to be with the one he truly loved.

Ardyn kept smiling, leaning up to kiss Gilgamesh gently -- he tasted like honey and wild berries, like he’d eaten dessert before he had come to him -- and leaving his lips close. “I do have something in mind,” he says softly, the whisper of his voice almost tangible with how close he lingered. “Put me down and I’ll show you.”

Gilgamesh really didn’t have any reason not to, so he eased Ardyn to the floor, and the king linked his arm with his Shield, tugging him out of the office and through the halls of the Citadel. It was still a new building, barely two decades, but it was impressive. Tall and made of pale stone, it stood above the rest of the Crown City, a beacon and a watchman. No trace of Sol was in its facade, all pale stone and gentle arches, but Soltech slipped in every so often anyway. It was in the lights, their soft artificial glow better than candles or oil lamps, the way the stones were laid to last centuries, the walled off moving platforms that took people up and down the castle’s heights, and...well, and the baths.

And that, it seemed, was what Ardyn had in mind. There were several on one floor, enough for most of the citadel’s population, and Ardyn led him to the one reserved for the royal family’s -- well, such as it was -- use. There was a small room in between the hall in the bath, and as soon as the door on that shut behind them, Ardyn was on him, tugging at his belt impatiently and frowning at the buckle.

“Patience, Your Majesty,” Gilgamesh said teasingly, removing the king’s hands from his waist. “Undress yourself first.” He did at that, tugging his scarf off and then his coat, undoing his own belt and pulling his vest and tunic off with enough frustration that the Shield was half-sure he’d been waiting for this for the entirety of the past two days. It was...gratifying. Certainly Ardyn loved Pyrrhus, too, and their dear Hermes, and of course he adored Stella, practically worshiped the ground his Oracle walked on, but...it was times like these that Gilgamesh felt truly special. Ardyn did make love to Stella, it was true, and half the Citadel expected them to have a child one day, even if King and Oracle could not be wed due to their duties. But...but as much as Ardyn’s heart belonged to her, the other half of it belonged to Gilgamesh himself. And all of Gilgamesh’s heart belonged to Ardyn, all his heart and soul. Every fiber of his being was Ardyn’s, from the moment when the fourteen year old boy knelt to the six year old Chosen King and became his Shield, from the moment ten years later when he realized like a bolt of lightning that he loved the man more than just a friend. From the moment two years after that when the king came of age and confessed openly to all four of them that he loved them more than life itself, and would be the happiest man in the kingdom if they felt the same.

(They all had. It was impossible not to love Ardyn Lucis Caelum, with the sun in his smile and the way he drew people to his orbit with his charisma and his pure, passionate soul.)

Undressed, the two slipped into the bathing room itself, the marble floor cool on bare feet -- half the room was taken up by the bath itself, sunk into the floor by a foot or so, and counters with sinks and bowls for bathing took up the walls beside it, bottles and jugs of soaps and perfumes and other such toiletries strewn upon them. The Soltech ran beneath the bath, pipes circulating the water to keep it clean, fancy bits of something-or-other (Gilgamesh never understood it) keeping the water heated no matter the time of year. It was small things like this they thought to keep, afraid of using more after Ifrit had turned upon them and caused the war that had lasted so long and taken so much.

Ardyn turned, wrapping pale hands around Gilgamesh’s darker wrists. “Come,” he said with mischief and something more intimate in his eyes, darkening them and sharpening his smile in a way that made his Shield’s cheeks warm-- oh, he had been waiting for this, certainly. “Relax with me, Gil.”

“I can never say no to you, my king,” Gilgamesh breathed, leaning in to steal a kiss as Ardyn led them into the warm water. “My Ardyn.”

Ardyn laughed, the sound echoing slightly in the room, and his hands slipped from Gilgamesh’s wrists to trace the pattern of feathers upon his arms and chest, coming up and around his waist to run nails along the lines of ink tattooed upon his back, the eagle that Gilgamesh had marked permanently onto his skin in honor of his king, the king that so loved birds that it was easy to compare him to one himself. “I still love this,” he whispered, leaning in to press lips to his Shield’s chest, against the lines of the bird’s beak. “You did this for me. Only for me.”

“Only for you,” Gilgamesh whispered back, lowering himself to his knees into the water and pulling Ardyn down with him, cupping his king’s face in his hands and kissing him hard. “It will always be only for you, my sun. My life is yours, my heart and soul, everything I am. I belong to you, always.”

He would lie with Jasmina, certainly, and they had three children -- but they were friends, nothing more than dear friends. All that he was and would ever be belonged to Ardyn. And...he would never, not once, begrudge Ardyn sharing his heart among them all. They all knew the largest parts of it were held by Stella and Gilgamesh himself, of course, but Ardyn...he had a fire in his chest, Ifrit’s touch upon his line, and that fire was all but an inferno, warmth and passion and love enough for them all.

That fire was warm beneath Ardyn’s skin, and Gilgamesh’s head dropped to his king’s chest and lower, kissing every inch of it and enjoying the sounds he could prise from him-- Ardyn’s nails dug into his back, and he felt the king’s lips trace his neck, up to the scar that ran from cheek across the bridge of his nose, the scar that had bound them together.

“Mine,” Ardyn whispered, voice low and thready with pleasure. “You’re mine, Gil, always. My Shield, my sword, my love.” Pyrrhus was his wisdom, his better judgement, Hermes his own little spot of sunlight, and Stella was the other half of his heart, but Gil was part of his very soul. He could not imagine a world where he didn’t have any of them, but-- to be without Gil would be to simply tear him in two. “Now shut up and kiss me.”