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“There is one more matter to settle” Vulko says and the table freezes.
More than a few of the ministers were half way out of their chairs and it’s almost funny, watching the next most powerful men and women in Arthur’s kingdom look like middle schoolers reminded they haven’t turned in their homework a minute before the bell.
They’re all trying very hard not to look at Arthur himself, and the way his palms have gone carefully flat on the polished tabletop. By now they know him well enough to understand that it isn’t a good sign.
“Is there?” Arthur says, voice low and warning. It’s not something he wants to discuss right now. It’s not something he even wants to think about.
One of this thumbs seems to be beheading the triumphant ancient king, one of his ancestors, leading the charge carved into the stone. Unlucky, maybe, from the way they glance at it.
“King Nereus has reiterated his offer. I don’t think we’ll get a better one” Vulko says because the old goat is, and Arthur can say it as a man who knows Green Lanterns, fearless.
He feels his lips pull back over his teeth and holds back the rumble in his chest, but only barely. “I will not. Sell him. Like cattle” he manages.
The ministers exchange puzzled glances. To them, the offer is more than a mercy, it’s an honor and, depending on their political bent, an undeserved one.
Vulko’s eyebrow goes up, the way it has since Arthur was a kid. The way that says oh you stupid surface raised dumbass.
“You have to do something with him. Or are you going to keep him in the Tower forever?”
Yes, says Arthur’s treacherous heart, I want to and I will. But he won’t. He’s not that selfish. Or that cruel. Orm would be disappointed.
“No” Arthur says, pushing the word through gritted teeth. He can feel the room tense, a feedback loop of muted aggression that threatens to wipe out the highest officials of Arthur’s reign in one fell swoop.
Orm would laugh over their graves, he thinks. It helps keep him from the edge.
“I’m not going to have this conversation tonight. It’s gone midnight, everyone should be tucked up in bed” he says instead, pleased at least a few of the ministers seem to exchange approving glances.
They’re married for the most part, all with wives and husbands and lovers and children they’d rather be with right now. The only exceptions are Vulko and Arthur himself.
That’s actually another big part of the problem, if he’s being honest. There'd be a lot less pressure if he was, but Mera can't give up her crown and there's no one else he trusts. The offer from Nereus is an olive branch, a consolation prize, that he should take, then find his own wife.
But he doesn’t want to be married, anyway, not right now. All he wants at the moment is to swim up a certain corridor, take his supper and some very specific company. Not necessarily in that order.
Which is exactly what Vulko doesn’t want him to do.
For a whole host of reasons, and some Arthur is only guessing at. Of all the words that can be said of him, unobservant isn’t one of them.
Maybe it’s possible that they’ve really gotten away with it for months now, right under everyone’s noses. Maybe everyone is politely pretending not to know. But Arthur has to assume that Vulko must know.
Only an idiot would underestimate him, and Arthur can’t afford to be one. Orm told him that.
“How about this, we have lunch tomorrow and talk about it” he says, trying to sound like he’s humoring him, like Vulko is the one being irrational.
He stares back at Arthur, unblinking, before nodding. There’s no way to get out of it, but at least he’s bought some time.
The ministers file out, satisfied there won’t be a show tonight, and Vulko, of course, leaves last while giving Arthur a warning look over his shoulder, neck twisting to an almost Exorcist level.
Arthur should, could heed it. He could go to bed and forget the whole thing, leave it lie, the way he knows he should. He doesn’t.
Instead, he lifts the gorgeous burnished coral and mother of pearl tapestry hanging in the odd curve of the third floor northwestern hallway.
Nobody needs to see him going into the infamous Grey Tower and its tallest room. It’s the roomiest one, the most famous among the cells, reserved for misbehaving royals and traitorous nobles that couldn’t be executed outright.
It’s why it’s got the fancy and creepy as hell secret tunnel, too, like something out of Scooby Doo and Dracula all at once.
The silence, at least, leans more toward eerie than calming. Not that he’s alone in the dark for long.
"It went that well, did it?" Orm says without turning to look at him as he floats into his little big room. Like Orm knows there's no one else it could be.
Arthur doesn’t know if he should be irritated at the fact that he's right.
Beyond the narrow window, where Orm spends a concerning amount of time, Atlantis pulses with life, absolutely indifferent to them.
Arthur wraps his arms around Orm's middle, tucking his face into the slope where his neck meets his shoulder, breathing him in deep.
It's better than Valium. Instant relief. A perfect fit.
Orm pats at him absently, like he's a needy pet. It probably says something terrible about them both that this is exactly how they like it, no hints of the feelings that are inevitably involved no matter what they said when it started.
When Arthur wasn’t sure if this was proof that he was a monster or that he had found his missing half.
He moves his face, pressing his nose against the back of Orm’s neck and sighing. It’s not what he wants to think about tonight.
"Have I told you?" Orm begins and usually it’s a lesson on statecraft and a good one. Or a primer on who’s fucking who and why it matters.
Arthur wouldn’t have got this far without him. It’s only part of why he refuses to let him go.
Instead what Orm says is "my meal hasn’t been cleared yet, and they brought more than I needed. You must be hungry". His tone, as always, betrays nothing.
Arthur rumbles happily against his neck, unsure which hunger to feed first. There is food on the table, cold but appealing, and enough to sate him. Which is worrying.
Either they’ve caught on that Orm has late night company, or he’s not eating enough. Probably the later, from how slender he feels under Arthur’s palms.
Broaching the subject will probably get him a slap, if he’s lucky, a verbal flaying if he’s not.
“Eat” Orm says, pushing him away with a look. Irritated with an undertone of fond, which is the softest he ever looks.
Unless you count the way his face breaks wide open when Arthur moves inside of him and he comes with a tiny gasp that always makes Arthur melt.
He collapses on the not sofa, the folds moving around him like a cocoon to support his weight in the water, made of some soft indeterminate leather than probably comes from something that breathes oxygen he hasn’t wanted to ask about.
Orm stares him down until he finally starts to eat and realizes he’s ravening, gulping it down without any grace.
He’s assured Orm that he’s a lot neater at banquets and functions, but there’s no point in pretending around in each other.
It’s another reason in a thousand to keep coming here, where he can be plain and honest and himself, with someone that doesn’t expect anything else.
Orm begins to untense, to a degree anyway, as Arthur polishes off the rest of the meal and stands, stretching.
He tilts his chin up, because normal people wilt when they want to be kissed and Orm just has to be contrary.
His teeth are sharp on Arthur’s lips, almost as bad as his nails digging into the wrist of the hand he uses to hold Orm’s chin.
Arthur can’t get enough of his skin, so eerily smooth, hairless, the shark skin scrape of his callouses, the strength of his legs squeezing Arthur’s middle, all of it taking his breath away.
“What has you so upset tonight?” Orm hisses in his ear as Arthur’s tongue moves down his neck, tasting the strange tang of his sweat, not at all like a human’s.
“Your marriage came up again” Arthur growls, incandescently angry all over again, digging his too flat teeth into Orm’s shoulder.
On land his canines would seem pointed, something laughable in Atlantis.
The only place Arthur has ever fully fit, slotted in like he belongs, is between his half-brother’s legs. Who ever said the gods didn’t have a sense of humor?
Orm purrs, half laughing, running merciless fingers through Arthur’s hair the way he likes.
“Any particular candidate?” Orm says, something like teasing, as he slips a strong hand between Arthur’s legs, making him groan.
Instead of answering, he hauls Orm up, legs on Arthur’s shoulders, to lick him open where he’s already wet and slick and eager.
He doesn’t want to think of it, anyone else touching Orm like this, seeing him like this, naked and gorgeous and vulnerable and his, the way no one else ever will be.
“Ne-ereuus, then” Orm moans and Arthur feels his blood catch fire with rage and sorrow, to hear any, and especially that, name that isn’t his from Orm’s lips like that, sex soaked and rapturous.
He growls and pulls his hips back down, thrusts in, and realizes from Orm’s half gasped laughter that it was what he was aiming for all along, then hard snap of Arthur’s hips, moving inside him.
His thighs tighten around Arthur as he shivers, rocking his own hips back against him.
His nails clutch at Arthur’s broad shoulders, dragging down in a way he couldn’t hide if he did have a wife or husband tucked away in some cold bed somewhere, waiting for him chastely.
Arthur can’t pretend he wouldn’t be here if there was. Because Orm is wet and slick and perfect around Arthur, and he’s the one Arthur can never truly have.
Arthur bends to bite at where his nipples should be, if he were human, working at the flat discs of discolored skin that he has instead, and Orm comes around him, bruising Arthur where he can.
And Arthur loves him fiercely for it.
It’s enough to make Arthur come too, deep inside Orm, proof that they both enjoyed it just as badly, the rules they refuse to stop breaking, handed down from a crown that has cost them both so much and won’t stop taking.
He holds Orm cradled against him, enjoying his token protests, pretending that he’s squirming and not just settling there, happy to be held.
Arthur is the last person to touch him gently, since perhaps their mother decades ago. The thought should make him want to throw up. Instead he just feels more protective.
"Will you agree to the match?" Orm says at last, quietly, with a sort of control that Arthur hates. Like he’s bracing for a blow.
Arthur knows there’s too many people to blame for that for him to actually be able to track them down and kill them. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to. Or that he won’t do what is, in the end, actually best for Orm.
"Do you want me to?" he says, when he’s sure he has his voice under control. Orm goes still in his arms.
It takes everything in Arthur to not tighten his hold, to force him down. It isn’t who he is. The man and king he wants to be.
“There is unlikely to be a better offer” Orm says, voice still too far away.
Once upon a time Nereus would have been his father-in-law. Part of him knows he should ask Orm how he feels, another knows it would go badly, and remembers he doesn’t actually want to, anyway.
The silence isn’t uncomfortable, but it’s fuller, now.
Arthur knew he couldn’t keep getting away with this. He didn’t think it would be over this fast, either.
So he asks, at last, the question that has been keeping him up at night since the subject got raised the first time.
“Who would you marry...if you could?” he says, watching the way Orm’s hair moves with the water. He’s beautiful.
Orm answers, truthfully.
“No one” said quietly against Arthur’s skin.
And Arthur loves him with his whole heart, kissing his forehead to say the words he doesn’t have.
Orm looks at him, his eyes not wide or fearful. Just open, in a way that hurts.
He kisses Arthur carefully and lays back on his chest where they’re floating idly through the room.
“Whatever you decide, I will obey” he says at last, breathing slow. Arthur’s arms tighten around him now, with another kiss to his impossible, perfect skin.
"I will decide. But not yet" Arthur says, trying to be as honest as he can be too.
Orm snorts against his chest, giving into the laughter, at everything that Arthur is.
He’s so happy that Arthur has to kiss him again, slip his fingers into his slit and breathing in the way Orm sighs against his lips.
It’s not that late yet, there’s time.
Tonight at least.