Detrich/Kirschen forced marriage AU snippet

[guardiansverse]

His husband is a banked wildfire. Sometimes, deep at night, when Ander lies with his back to the young mutineer - not truly so young, but Ander is fifty years old and feels five hundred - he can almost feel it. A heat lives in Festus Detrich's bones that will melt iron with ease if loosed. And Ander knows himself to be flawed chains.

His husband. The perversion is already in the words, the mockery. Men do not marry other men. They do not lie close to them at night, romance them, admire their eyes and their voices, certainly do not lust after them. Or at least, Ander has been dreadfully good at withholding from action, even if his own mind has ever been as much a traitor as the man now in his bed. Fifty years he had been so flawlessly good, and one slip - but that is his own fault for letting lust stray into affection. And now the object of that affection is dead under the summer wheat, but Ander is Freiherr Kirschen, the Freiherr of Stadtgard, and in Hyem rank hath its privilege. And his privilege had been a marriage proper in every detail, legal, ceremonial, spiritual. All but the one.

He knows very little with any certainty about Detrich: the commoner, the agitator, the would-be revolutionary. But he is certain that Detrich hates the Freiherr of Stadtgard.

Why Detrich keeps his head bowed to their shared yoke of humiliation, Ander cannot guess. He knows better than to think Detrich afraid to die; in truth, he suspects the man perfectly able to arrange his escape if he put his mind to it. The Kaiser, and Duke Ernst Stattenholme whose brainchild the whole scheme was, linger about the castle providing a great range of distractions: public appearances and the like, where Ander and Detrich sit or stand next to each other, in their florid dress of newlyweds, and it is Ander's task to make sure Detrich has no chance to speak to any commonborn man, woman, or child. But the Kaiser's attention will drift on, as it does, and the Duke will return to his own province. And if the plan succeeds both may forget that popular ferment had ever been brewing in their country, with Detrich its lightning rod.

And then it would be only Ander, and Ander - Freiherr Kirschen of Stadtgard, cool, standoffish, friendless, a freak of nature and a joke - would be easy for those common folk to blame for the abuse of their hero.

Perhaps that is what Detrich is waiting for.

Waiting does not come naturally to him, Ander observes. Detrich struggles with inaction, struggles with the the poisoned luxury of his new life, struggles even with basic comforts at times. He lies in their bed at night, as he must - though always with their backs turned - but he does not sleep. He sits by Ander's side at the table where the Kaiser enjoys the produce of Stadtgard, a new husband's garland brilliant against the ink of his hair, but he fumbles with the silverware and recoils at the elaborate dishes. The Kaiser's retinue find this wildly entertaining. They tell Ander that he should enjoy softening up his new bride (at least, Ander thinks with acid bitterness, they do him the grace of calling Detrich the bride) and trade tales of having bedded peasant girls from the backwater southwest, wild as young stallions and twice as sweet when broken.

"Ah," the Duke said with a grin. "But this one is another sort of challenge, fromen. He was after all an officer. One hears he had even gone to university."

At this, at last, Ander watches a hot flush blaze across the warm copper of Detrich's skin. He wants to say - anything. But saying nothing had been all his life.

He has no cause to care for Detrich's pain. They share nothing but a lie and a fetter. And he had never seen such hate as he sees in Detrich's eyes. But that evening he makes some subtle arrangements around the castle - his castle, after all, is he not the Freiherr Kirschen of Stadtgard? - and gives Detrich his first opportunity to slip into the library.

Detrich does not come to bed that night. Ander is unsurprised, and mildly concerned with explaining the matter to the watch he knows it kept, and relieved to be alone for the first time in weeks - and cold. Oddly cold, even in midsummer.

He goes down to the library just before dawn, before any servant comes into the bedroom to wake him. Detrich is on the floor under a bookshelf, a pile of books to either side of him - histories, Ander sees, easily every one in the library - halfway through the thickest tome of the lot. His lips move silently as he reads. He is not truly so young, Ander remembers. It's only here and now that he looks like a boy.

Detrich looks up at him. His eyes harden, like molten steel being quenched.

"Freiherr."

Ander laces his hands together behind his back. Keeps his spine straight. "I do not mean to interrupt," he says. He does not know how to address Detrich; there are no words in Hyemi for a man to address his husband. "Except that I believe it would be unwise for my valet to come into our bedroom and find you absent."

Our bedroom. Sun's grace, it is a mercy that he is so old. In his younger days the words would have choked him. Detrich tilts his head a fraction, looking at him, then snorts.

"What would they do, flog me?"

"That is not an impossiblity."

"Me, perhaps. Not you, Freiherr."

"I am hardly safe from sanction."

"Like what? What would they take from you? Money? Land? You'll forgive me if I can't bring myself to care. It might even be worth a flogging." He looks back down into his book. "All power ever is, is tricking others to think themselves unworthy. Perhaps if you lose it, you'll see."

And he goes back to reading, leaving Ander to stare, silent, suddenly breathless.

He has never been more sure that Detrich could escape if he put all he had into it: that however wise the Kaiser and the Duke are to keep him from talking to his people, their caution cannot suffice. And yet Detrich is here. A prisoner, victim of constant insult and abuse - not from Ander, perhaps, but then Ander's very existence is the worst humiliation of all. He has seen the hate in Detrich's eyes at the Kaiser's table. He knows hate intimately. Has seen men run from it all his life.

And yet Detrich is here.

Ander drops to his knees on the floor next to his husband.

He moistens his lips, and quietly asks, "What are you reading?"

Detrich looks at him. A look he cannot read. Curiosity, perhaps - but it has too much of an edge. Sharper than mere interest, deeper than assessment. Something deep and wild. Something Ander cannot look away from.

He raises the book so Ander can see the spine. "Rhetoric," he says. "Changing hearts and minds."

Someone is certainly watching, Ander thinks. Someone will know. In the end, however one hides, however one keeps silent, someone will always know.

He says, "Tell me more."