#aldovah

[highaver]

@aldovah asked: ❛ patch . help my muse patch up a wound .

"Is it bad?"

Balfour is sat with his head tilted back just slightly, trying to give Ásgeirr a better view as he stands over him, dealing with this bloody nose situation. His shirt is ruined but that isn't the end of the world. Balfour is more worried about his face - call that shallow or pragmatic, considering his face is his job - than any shirt that he can replace or the fact that he's just been headbutted. Now, that's just sports.

He could do without the taste of blood in his mouth though.

"Be honest," he says, and smiles because he can't help himself. "Don't call me pretty just because it's what I like to hear."

[highaver]

@aldovah. call.

"How long will you be in Solitude this time? I have missed you."

[highaver]

@aldovah asked: i don't quite know how to tell you.

They stand in one of the quieter corridors in the Blue Palace; he cannot be too far from Elisif, these days, but Ásgeirr has seemed... concerned by something. A short while alone, while not ideal, is the best that they can perhaps ask for at such a time as this. Balfour reaches to touch Ásgeirr's arm, gentle as anything, face soft and open as his eyes travel over Ásgeirr's own.

"Take your time. You can tell me anything, Ásgeirr. You know this." There is an anxious twist in his gut all the same, as if Balfour is expecting the worst. Is that not the way?

[highaver]

@aldovah liked this post for kisses.

There are certain sacred things in the world that should simply not be disturbed. A well-deserved, restful morning, perhaps, chief among them. What a shame for Ásgeirr, then, that Balfour has no care for such things - at least, not on this morning, and not while Ásgeirr sleeps in his bed.

So there is no warning before Balfour throws himself atop his lover, all big grins as he straddles his back, hands steading himself against Ásgeirr's shoulders. Technically, yes, he is asking for a stabbing. Only an idiot pounces on an ex-assassin and doesn't expect to do himself an injury - but what can Balfour say? He's special. And a moment later, besides, he is leaning down to press a kiss to Ásgeirr's face, followed by another and another, and yet more at his neck, at his shoulders.

"Wake up, you lazy bastard! I have exciting news." Another kiss to the shoulder, to the cheek. "I will not let you sleep it all away!"

[highaver]

@aldovah. call.

ㅤ"You're looking very handsome this evening." Balfour wears the sweetest of all smiles as he says this. After parties are much better, it turns out, when he can find somewhere quiet to stay with Ásgeirr. "Might I even say distractingly so."

[highaver]

@aldovah. call.

ㅤ"I have a favour that I must ask of you." Balfour does not sound proud to ask such a thing, but it is Elisif's safety on the line. Irritated as he may be by her, Balfour still takes his work as her housecarl seriously. "But I cannot ask you here. Will you be in Solitude much longer?"

[highaver]

@aldovah asked: holding your lover by the jaw to kiss them .

ㅤHis husband is a busy man. It is one of the unfortunate truths of the world, wherein there are always people to whom trouble is drawn, naturally and unfairly. It comes as no surprise to Balfour, then, that Ásgeirr has duties to attend to far from Solitude. If he could travel alongside him again, Balfour would not hesitate to do so - but Elisif needs him now, close at hand, not gallivanting off across half the country after his man.

ㅤThey are saying their goodbyes when Balfour, as gently and softly as ever, reaches a hand to Ásgeirr's jaw and turns his face toward his own. He worries. He always worries. There is a knot in the pit of his stomach that twists sickeningly every time Balfour thinks too hard about how far Ásgeirr will be from him soon.

ㅤ“ I will pray for your safe return. And swift. ” His eyes search Ásgeirr's face for a moment, something almost desperate within them, before he kisses him. His other hand comes to rest at the other side of Ásgeirr's jaw, and Balfour sighs, eyes closed as he nudges his forehead against his husband's. “ You will return to me, my love. Or I will come and find you myself. ”

[highaver]

@aldovah asked: ❝ do you never long for home? ❞

ㅤ“ Ásgeirr, I don't... ” That sentence had an ending a moment ago, but by the time Balfour had spoken the words, it had flittered away like a gull on the wind. Home was almost all he ever thought of. The long lost familiarity, the people who had made it such a place, the comfort of his mother's singing or of his sister's laughter. There was an ache in his chest, filling in the absence that loss had left behind. But how was he to ever find the words to explain such things?

ㅤHe recalled, suddenly, when Elisif had witnessed her husband being Shouted to pieces before her. He recalled her scream, and how, in the following days, he had thought that he had understood her grief and what had shaken her to her centre. And then, barely a month later, he had learned that no words could do such a feeling justice. He had learned that he did not understand at all. Do you never long for home? Of course. Always, endlessly and painfully. And more. And more and more.

ㅤ“ Don't ask me such things. ” A soft request, offered to their feet rather than to Ásgeirr's face. He shook his head. “ Please. I... I cannot bear it. ”