#their parent

“You love me,” his voice is so soft Wilbur nearly thinks he imagined it, a mere little thought wondered, pondered out loud. It’s clear to Wilbur that it was not something he was meant to hear, but he responds anyway.

“You say that as if it is hard to believe.” Wilbur reaches over to tuck a piece of George’s hair behind his ear, fingers grazing against the jewel attached to his lobe. An icy teardrop, a tiny thing in the grand scheme of things, and yet it still makes Wilbur’s heart swell due to what it represents. “Are you not as beloved here, as I am in my kingdom?” George turns his head, letting Wilbur’s touch stray against the warmth of his cheek, and smiles quietly at him.

“Maybe it’s because it’s me, and you.” An echo of a former conversation that makes Wilbur’s smile turn even more honeyed, and this time he finds that he doesn’t quite hate the term nearly as much.

“You’ve not said it back,” he remarks, his tone making it clear that he’s only teasing. Though Wilbur’s strength lies with his words, he does not need them to feel secure. Not when he already knows that his feelings are reciprocated, if only from the way that George brandishes his earring so proudly and only ever seems to smile and laugh and blush as much as he does when he’s around him.

Their moonlit garden seems even more lovely in the reflection of George’s dual-colored eyes as he smiles wider, tilting his head further into Wilbur’s touch, and he once again is reminded of a cat due to his lover’s antics. “Won’t you rather me say I’m yours?”

“No,” is his pensive reply after not even a beat.

George quirks an eyebrow. “No?”

“You don’t have to be mine, though I’ll have you if that’s what you wish. What I want is your love, not you necessarily.” Wilbur captures George’s lips in his, who softly sighs into the kiss. Part fondly and part exasperatedly.

“Must you always out romance me at a time like this?”

“Well, won’t you humor me and say it? Why are you so shy?” George turns back to gaze at the roses, leaning his body into Wilbur’s side and therefore his warmth.

“My family never did any of that ‘love is weakness’ bullshit,” Wilbur raises his eyebrows at the sudden vulgarness of his words, but stays silent as George continues, “but they’ve always equated vulnerability to weakness, and I know love makes even the strongest men vulnerable. It’s hard to unlearn something that I’ve been taught since before I could even walk,” he pauses, a breath.

“But I think I’d like to try if it’s with you.”

(“you are the first person to make me speechless” :handshake: “you make me feel like it’s safe to be vulnerable” georgebur in my royalty au making me want to throw up /pos)

“Careful, dove,” Wilbur murmurs. He must be drunk on moonlight and their time spent together; he doesn’t even realize that the words had escaped his mouth until George turned towards him.

“Dove?” George questions, pulling Wilbur’s hand away from where it covered his mouth as though he could take the words back. “What is that? Not ‘love’?” He tilts his head and Wilbur pretends as though the word in the sense of a term of endearment in George’s voice doesn’t make his heart stutter. Most things, in that sense, make his weak heart tremble, but Wilbur is but a weak man himself when it comes to his lover.

“It’s nothing. Forget it, please.” A sliver of desperation to cover up his mistake. He doesn’t even realize, once again, how his words seem to mirror something from a past conversation that flickers almost dangerously across George’s face.

“We know what happened the last time you told me to forget about something,” George says remorselessly, in both a forgiving and unforgiving way that makes Wilbur wince the tiniest bit. “Don’t we, dove?” He leans towards Wilbur with a curious ‘I won’t let this go’ kind of expression, repeating the word mockingly to show Wilbur that he won’t just forget it this time. Not that he did any other time.

“It’s-it’s something my parents would call each other, sometimes. I’m sorry. It just-it slipped out.” The vulnerability that comes with admittance makes Wilbur almost want to shrivel up. The underlying meaning behind ‘it slipped out,’ the idea that at Wilbur’s most honest self, he mirrors the way his parents act is, to put simply, embarrassing. Wilbur thought that he was past embarrassment at this point.

George’s eyes soften. More like, his whole expression both melts and brightens, eyes flickering with a hint of shyness that seems to bubble and bubble until he turns away, looking back to where he had been looking before. “Don’t apologize for something like that,” he coughs, bashful. The hand that’s holding Wilbur’s tightens.

(woahh george pov moment!! not sure how i feel about this one. honestly i don't know how i feel about his character as a whole in the fic but I'm trying it out a little and what better to test it out than to write bits and bobs of george's pov of their first meeting?))

“Look, George. All those sparkling lights in the sky are the twin gods’ tears blessing you, and our land.” George cannot remember his mother’s face. No amount of portraits scattered across the castle nor remarks that he and his sister carry her countenance well would ever amount to the gentleness in his mother’s expression that he fights every single day to remember and hold on to til his hands are balled into fists and shaking. He cannot remember her face, but he remembers the sweetness of her voice and her gentle touch on his head as he cranes his head up to look at the blanket of stars that seemed so unfathomable to him, only a child’s mind at the time.

Every time he looks at those same stars, he wishes he had looked longer at his mother instead. What was her expression on that night? Had she known her fate? George does not often lie, but he will admit now that to him, it is not the twin gods’ tears that stain the night on this supposed momentous day.

Frankly, he’s not sure why he said such a thing to the boy with the beautiful starstruck eyes, nor does he know why he’d asked him to stay when normally he’d force him to leave. Maybe it’s because his eyes, if George could go back in time to see his child self, must be the same as his that night. Maybe it’s because of ‘fate,’ as his mother might say if she were still-

If she were still-

Maybe he had been desperate for a distraction. Not from the celebrations, all meticulously prepared, all meant for him when all he wanted to do was count stars til his vision was too blurry to differentiate constellations from each other, and all else that was happening just beyond the closed doors to the balcony they were in. And maybe it was fate after all, though there was something in George that somehow knew that this stranger would be the only one to humor him when he asked to pretend. Pretend. As though foregoing his name and his title and abandoning his claim to this land and the stars above would make everything that happened on this terrible momentous day only a lie and not something that George will have to live with for all his life.

Well, it works. The twin gods must truly favor George, or perhaps they pity him, perhaps they are apologizing and perhaps George simply chose well. The kind and beautiful stranger told the most vivid and alluring tales and spun life with his voice both in speech and in song and George did not forget. How could he, when he knew too well what those icy blue eyes represent? But maybe, he allowed himself reprieve; he laughed harder than he’d had in years and smiled, genuinely, eyes creasing and heart both heavy and oh so light, and for that night that was more than enough.