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“Aw, Oliver, no!”
Cordelia looked up from her plate with a mildly concerned smile. “Now, what could your golden boy possibly have done to merit the tone of disapprobation usually reserved for our son?”
Aral held up the hand viewer he had been perusing at the breakfast table. Cordelia couldn’t quite tell what was displayed there but she didn’t think it was a message from her sometime metamour.
“He’s gone and taken the posting as Assistant Deputy Commander, Sergyar Fleet!”
Cordelia leaned forward excitedly, grabbing the viewer from her husband’s hand. “Oliver’s coming to Sergyar?” She skimmed through the document – a report on the recent high-level command structure shuffle – and found Oliver’s name, and new rank, next to the position Aral had mentioned. She looked over at him and her grin slid into a frown. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, Aral.”
“He’s not supposed to take a new posting now at all,” Aral griped. When he could tell this did not clarify the matter for her, he expounded: “The plan was for him to do two or three more tours in command of his escort group before coming back to Vorbarr Sultana to join the General Staff. This” – he pointed to the viewer still in her hand – “is a lateral move. It doesn’t advance his career at all!”
Cordelia tilted her head. “Being in line for command of Sergyar Fleet doesn’t advance his career?”
“It’s the least of the three fleets!” Aral exclaimed. “He could be running the whole shebang in a decade if he sticks with my plan!”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be running the whole shebang, Aral,” she remarked neutrally.
“Nonsense!” And he sounded remarkably like Lady Alys. “It’s what we’ve always planned. He said he wanted it.”
“Well, he’s apparently changed his mind,” she observed, trying to maintain her dispassion in the face of his increasing petulance – yes, ‘petulance’ was the right word – over this development. “So, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess he did not consult you before making this decision.”
“He did not!” Aral reached across to snatch the viewer back from her none too gently. Cordelia fixed him with a frown, and he glared down at his plate. “Apologies, dear Captain,” he murmured.
“I’m gonna circle back to the fact that, even after ten years, you and Oliver still have the worst communication,” she said, her face once again bland and her tone only mildly acerbic. “Is your only objection to him coming here that he’s deviated from your careful plots? You haven’t, for instance, decided you no longer care to pursue a relationship with him?”
Aral’s head snapped up. “Of course not!” It was his turn to frown. “What kind of question is that?”
“An honest one,” she said smoothly. “One I’d like a truthful answer to, please, as my next moves hinge completely on how you respond.”
His frown deepened but he turned his eyes down to the plate again, toying with his fork. “I still want him.” It was said so quietly she had to strain to hear.
“Good,” she said firmly. “Because I for one am very happy that we don’t have to wait another two or three years for him.”
Aral grinned a little self-consciously at her and she placed her hand affectionately on his.
“He’s good for you,” she declared. “And despite whatever self-deprecatory notion you’re entertaining in your head just now, you’re good for him. And last but not least, I like having him with us.”
His eyes softened at her admission, and he gripped her hand slightly too hard. “Thank you, my dear Captain.”
“As always, your happiness is my happiness.”
“I love you, too.”
*********
Oliver was not wholly surprised when he disembarked from the shuttle to find the familiar forms of Aral and Cordelia waiting for him on the platform. His face turned hot as the couple made their way toward him. He wanted to rush to intercept them but there were so many people here. So he waited for them to stop before him, she smiling brightly while he maintained a poker face, though there was a barely perceptible watery shine in his eyes.
“You didn’t think you would get away with sneaking in a day early, did you?” Cordelia asked as she turned a cheek up to him to accept a kiss.
“I had planned to surprise you. I should have known better,” he replied wryly. He held out a hand to Aral as neither of them was in Service uniform; Oliver had noted from his recent messages the older man’s new tendency to dress down. "Hello, sir."
Aral stared at Oliver, then at the hand, for a long beat before he finally took it. Then tugged him into a rough hug. Oliver stiffened a little at this impropriety but then melted into his lover’s arms briefly.
“Welcome to Sergyar, Commodore!” Aral rumbled, gently putting space between them.
“Thank you, sir.”
“If you’re not too tired or your time too mixed up,” Cordelia said, a smirk in her voice if not on her lips, “we’d love it if you’d join us for lunch.”
“I’m still on military standard time but it’s near enough evening mealtime that I could eat.” The ship he’d arrived on kept Vorbarr Sultana time, like all of the Barrayaran fleet. It was midday here on Sergyar, a fortuitous overlap of timing.
“Good, the groundcar is waiting.”
He started to shoulder his duffle – most of his worldly possessions still fit into one – but Pym stepped up onto the platform and took it from him. Oliver shook his head minutely but suffered himself to be served.
The groundcar was one of the smaller official ones, which made sense given the reduced need for ground travel; the Viceroy’s Palace held both home and offices, as he understood it, and transportation between the settlements was mostly accomplished by air. Cordelia waved the two men inside ahead of her, fussing until they sat down next to one another, then taking the bench seat across from them rather than her accustomed place by her husband. Pym shut the canopy, and with a sly smile Cordelia engaged the privacy seals.
At Oliver’s inquiring eyebrow lift, she opened a hand toward Aral, as if in invitation. His neck blushed hot pink – he rarely showed physical affection toward Aral when his wife was present, even less so in such a semi-public venue – but emboldened by this overt encouragement, he pressed closer to the man at his side. One hand slipped up around the back of Aral’s neck and he traced the fingers of the other down the flowery shirt's buttons.
“May I?” he asked his lover breathily.
Aral glared at his wife – whose eyes fell oh so innocently to the reader she’d fished out of a compartment in the seat back – then back to his paramour. His stern expression metamorphized into tenderness, and he turned his face up to meet Oliver's lips. After a few seconds, his body relaxed and he began to return the kiss with equal passion.
Aral was disturbingly breathless when they broke apart. Oliver flitted another glance at Cordelia who gave him a ‘don’t worry’ wave. He didn’t return to the previous more strenuous kissing, instead laying his lips softly on Aral’s forehead.
“I missed you.” It came out as a whisper against the white hair.
The older man hummed discontentedly, tensing again.
Oliver closed his eyes and vented an impatient sigh. “You’re pissed at me.” The words were said quietly, neutrally, but some of his anger bled in to the statement.
His lover sat up straight, breaking all contact, looking at neither Oliver nor Cordelia now. Oliver could practically hear Aral’s jaw clamp down on some less than kind comment. If they were not stuck in a 'car, Oliver knew his Admiral would be up and pacing, or standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, eyes burning holes in his boots. The image made him smile despite the strain of the moment.
“You should have talked to me first.”
Oliver had an inkling of how much restraint Aral was exerting to keep his tone mild, the language reasonable. Oliver stomped down on the temptation to throw around phrases like: “How does it feel to have your future decided without being consulted, hmm?” It was an old argument, and Aral had gotten better about it. Mostly.
Cordelia, clearly annoyed by this storm that threatened to ruin her little reunion scene – the Countess was easily as dramatic as her husband, however much she tried to hide behind Betan logic – cut them off before they could get started:
“Could we save the inevitable fight for after lunch please?”
A long beat.
“Of course, my Captain,” Aral said, so deadpan that Oliver was certain he was laughing on the inside.
“Yes, Cordelia.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. He hadn’t said it in his faux-henpecked voice – one of the few ways in which he ever teased her – but she sensed it lurking under the surface. He and Aral had been months into their personal relationship before he understood that his lover liked to be teased, that he had placed his dignity in Oliver’s hands as surely and completely as all of the other pieces of himself. But it had taken years, nearly to the end of his tenure as the Prime Minister’s ADC, for Oliver to even consider trying to tease Cordelia. And now was certainly not the time.
“Go back to kissing,” she instructed, fond but imperious; she was obviously not going to brook any of their nonsense, as she’d call it, at this time.
Oliver, grinning, reached for Aral again, pulling him forcefully back into an embrace and enthusiastically licking his way into his lover’s mouth. There was no hesitation from Aral this time; he opened obligingly to Oliver’s caressing, anger and annoyance forgotten in the simple pleasure of their touch.
********
“It’s a hybrid position,” Oliver was explaining to Cordelia as they lingered over the last of the midday meal. He kept anxious eyes on Aral as he spoke, though his mentor was keeping his feelings in check for the moment. “Eight weeks topside and twelve planetside. Though my first shift up will be longer so that I can catch both sides of the transition routine before Admiral Bradshaw leaves for the First Fleet.”
“And in addition to being in charge of Sergyar Fleet readiness, you manage all of Sergyar local space traffic?” Cordelia mused.
“Yep, all incoming and outgoing civilian and military ships. I know it sounds a little like glorified traffic control duty, but there’s a lot more to it than that.”
Aral made an editorial grunt, but she silenced him with a glare.
“It sounds like a challenge to me,” she said pointedly.
“I confess, I’m a tad nervous,” Oliver said, giving her a shy, grateful smile. “It is a major change of focus.”
Cordelia’s hand landed with a loud smack on Aral’s arm as he attempted to offer yet another comment.
“Can we please get through a meal before you start something?”
“I wasn’t going to start anything,” he protested, a blatant lie as both of his partners could plainly see by the set of his jaw.
Oliver sighed. “It’s okay, Cordelia. He and I have to have it out sometime. Might as well be now as later.”
She pursed her lips and examined him – how else? – analytically for several moments. Then she laid her silverware down, wiped her face with a napkin and set it down too. “Alright. Am I staying, or going?” She looked an inquiry between the two men.
They both gaped at her for a solid second, then at each other. Oliver shrugged noncommittally, opening a hand to Aral, tossing the metaphorical ball squarely into his court. Aral scowled slightly but nodded acceptance.
“Dear Captain, could you excuse the Commodore and me for a little while?”
Cordelia sighed resignation, squeezed Oliver’s hand, leaned over to kiss Aral’s cheek, then rose from the table. Aral and Oliver popped to their feet out of life-long habit, but she waved them both back down impatiently.
“Thirty minutes,” she said to Aral, and slipped out the door.
“Do you have another appointment?” Oliver asked, surprised. He’d been under the impression they’d cleared their afternoon for him.
Aral threw his napkin on the table. He stood, turned the chair around and sat astride it, arms crossed rigedly over the back. “That’s not what she meant.”
Oliver caught the hint: Cordelia intended to return to sort them out if they didn’t sort themselves.
“Ah,” he said stupidly.
His plate was empty, but he picked at the small crumbs around the edges, deliberately not watching Aral. The Admiral just as assiduously did not look at him, glaring off into the middle distance. Oliver realized they were both trying Cordelia’s trick of remaining silent to get the other to fill the void. It normally worked in Oliver’s favor; Aral couldn’t help himself most of the time. But after several moments of awkward silence, it was Oliver who broke.
“I’m sorry.”
A smirk of triumph snuck onto Aral's face. “No, you’re not,” he said, more amused than annoyed as far as Oliver could tell.
He grinned back, sheepishly. “No, not really.” He stood and made his way around the table to Aral’s chair. “I’ve missed you.” He embraced his lover from behind. “I was tired of missing you.”
“Cordelia is right,” Aral murmured. “We are so bad at this.”
A snort of laughter. “What? Our relationship?”
Aral chuckled in return. “That, too, belike. But she was talking about our communication, specifically.”
Oliver toed a chair up next to Aral and sat down without releasing his hold. He did spare one hand to card through the white mane of Aral’s hair; he was wearing that far more casually these days, too, Oliver noted with a little thrill of desire.
“We always have ways of making things right,” he hummed in Aral’s ear.
A shiver ran through Aral’s body. Oliver began to lay kisses behind one ear but Aral’s hand came up to gently cup his chin, stilling his movements. With a grace that belied his years, Aral rolled out of Oliver’s grasp and sat up, trying to look stern.
“I don’t think sex is the answer here, Oliver.”
Oliver still had a hold of Aral’s hand; he brought it to his lips. “I know,” he whispered. “I just want to be close to you.”
All the breath went out of his lover’s body. It was his turn to reach out, pulling the younger man against him with crushing strength.
“I’m right here, love,” he answered just as quietly. “I’m fine now.”
“I almost lost you.” The desperation from all those weary weeks of worry and pain ground out. “And I was so far away from you when it happened.”
Aral pressed his face into the crook of Oliver’s neck. “I’m sorry.” And there was wretchedness enough in that statement to match Oliver’s own. “I never meant....”
Oliver drew Aral’s head up and pulled him into another kiss, nothing soft about it now. He wanted to make his paramour understand all that he was feeling; things that only teeth and lips and tongue on skin could communicate in this moment. Their breath became fast and shallow, their touches more urgent and frenzied. Then, frustrating Oliver's intent, Aral regained sufficient control to force a small distance between them.
“That door doesn’t lock,” he gasped out before the younger man could try to reclaim his mouth.
“Cordelia said we had thirty minutes!” Oliver managed to pant in reply, then dove back onto Aral’s lips. His blood was now rushing pell mell for parts far south of his brains, dragging caution with it.
Somehow his lover extricated himself once more, though it obviously took more discipline on his part to do so than the first time. “It isn’t Cordelia I’m worried about, it’s the servants.”
“Ah!” Oliver rocked back in his chair, fighting against the nearly overwhelming urge to beg Aral to bend him over the table anyway. “What contingencies do you have for this, then, oh Master Strategist?”
With a growl, the older man leaned in to latch his teeth none too gently on Oliver’s neck. “Bedroom,” he grunted out around the bite. Then proceeded to nip upward, detouring slightly to suck on an earlobe.
“Not yours!” It came out a whine, a plea. His one hard and fast rule: they did not make love in Aral and Cordelia’s rooms.
The older man released his ear, glowering in mock-offence. “Oh, ye of little faith!”
The break in contact gave Oliver time to catch hold of his rapidly eroding self-control. He stared contemplatively at the door. “Can we make it there unseen, d’ya think?”
Aral pondered but shook his head. “Doubtful.”
Oliver pushed his chair further back, not quite out of arms’ reach, but far enough to make the point of this distancing maneuver clear.
“Gonna have to give me a minute before we try leaving then.”
“Same.”
The bit of his anatomy that he was struggling to calm took far too great an interest in this declaration. Oliver waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “That’s promising.”
When they’d last had time and privacy to explore each other, some of Aral’s relevant functioning had been rather erratic. It hadn’t stopped them – Cordelia had finally hit upon a drug for that issue which Aral tolerated well – even if they had needed to be more creative than usual. Oliver, for one, had been amazed anew with Aral’s creativity.
“One of the side benefits of the new heart,” the older man admitted with only a tinge of embarrassment. “I really do feel twenty years younger.”
“Gonna have to show me!”
“Shut up and think cold thoughts, you!”
They sat without touching, just grinning at each other, each trying to return to a state in which they could walk through the Palace without advertising their intentions. It was a surprisingly short time before Oliver felt the tightness in his trousers ease. He winked at Aral, trying not to let it be too lascivious a glance lest he undo the effects. They waited another minute for good measure before Aral got up to ease the door open.
Muttered curses in Russian escaped his lips and Oliver crowded against him to get a glimpse at the reason.
Cordelia sat primly on a bench against the opposite wall.
A disgustingly self-satisfied, and very salacious, grin lit her face as she caught sight of them.
“That didn’t take long!” She laid the viewer she’d obviously been occupying herself with on the bench beside her. “I figured it would be another ten minutes at least before you figured out you needed a more secure room.”
“I hate you so much right now!” Aral said in a voice pitched to carry only as far as his wife.
The grin got impossibly wider. “Oh, I know.”
Oliver pushed past him and strode over to her. “I, on the other hand, adore you!” he exclaimed. And he bent to kiss her on each cheek.
Approval and appreciation radiated at him. “See, Aral, Oliver knows how to thank a woman properly for being accommodating.” Her face straightened minutely, though it retained its smugness. “The room next to mine and Aral’s is ready for you,” she informed him. “The bathroom is jack and jill with ours, so he won’t even have to sneak down the hall at an ungodly hour of the morning.”
Whatever suave attitude their beloved had been trying to affect fled from him instantly. “That’s why you chose that room?!” he sputtered.
Cordelia shrugged nonchalance. “Not entirely. It’s the biggest in the place at least until they finish the second floor ensuite. This was just one of the side benefits.”
Oliver choked at that last sentence, hoping like hell her use of that term was coincidence. He couldn’t really imagine her listening at doors but….
“Go on!” she urged them impatiently. “I’ve cleared Aral’s schedule for the rest of the day but eventually the hounds will descend again! Go!”
“Thank you, Cordelia,” Oliver said with sincerity. Turning back to Aral he quipped: “Close your mouth and take me to bed, love.”
His lover seemed to have lost the power of speech, but a little nudge got his feet moving in the right direction. The walk was short. The afternoon was long.
Oliver was happy to be home.
********
He left Aral sleeping in the bed they’d spent indulgently long hours in. Despite the exertion and his wacked body-clock, he was wide awake. And hungry. He did his best to make his clothes presentable – Pym had left the duffle untouched knowing Oliver would prefer to unpack what he needed himself – and wandered out into the hall in search of the kitchen.
Unlike Vorkosigan House or the residence at Surleau, Oliver did not know his way around the new Viceroy’s Palace. Ordering its complete rebuilding had been very nearly Cordelia’s first act on Sergyar. There was still quite a lot of construction going on but the already limited quarters for the Armsmen and servants had forced them to move into the livable bits while the rest was brought up to snuff.
The completed portions were lovely, with large rooms and hallways and high ceilings. There were windows everywhere, wide open even after darkness had fallen. There were screens, he noted, to keep out the insect-like radials that plagued Kareenburg during the warm months, which was most of the year, or so Oliver had read.
He was contemplating his next move when Cordelia proved she had, as always, anticipated him. She stepped into the corridor before he could get much further than a few hesitant steps in the direction of the bench where she’d waited on them earlier that day.
She looped a guiding arm through his.
“Kitchen’s this way.”
“God, I love and hate when you do that!” Oliver announced, unresistingly falling in step with her.
“What?” She looked genuinely concerned for a split second.
“Read my mind.”
“It’s hardly a large leap to figuring out you need food, Oliver. He may have taken to eating like Miles in manic mode” –she jerked her chin back in the general direction of the room they’d left Aral in– “but you certainly require refueling.”
“He hasn’t been eating?” Oliver couldn’t disguise the naked fear this image produced in him.
She patted his arm reassuringly. “He’s had a bought of depression. The doctor says it’s not unusual after a surgery of that kind, even a year or more after the physical recovery has finished. Akin to post-mission blues, I gather.”
“Ah. Yes, I get that.” And of course, he did. He hadn’t seen the amount or variety of fighting the Admiral had – Service these days was mainly about preventing war, not actively engaging it – but he’d suffered the post-action doldrums more than a few times in his career. It was many times worse when the body had been injured as well as the spirit, as he knew from too-personal experience.
She squeezed his arm. “You’re here now. We’ll get him past this hump together.”
He beamed at her. “Yes, Cordelia.”
She slapped his arm playfully. “Don’t give me that tone.”
He chuckled and they walked on.
She tugged him down another corridor and they eventually emerged into the fully functional kitchen. She shooed him into a chair and set about rummaging through the stasis bins for ingredients to build sandwiches. She’d been an indifferent cook before throwing over her whole life for Aral and nearly thirty years of being an adoptive aristocrat hadn’t improved the situation. But bread and meat and cheese she could be trusted with.
“So, did you two get any talking done, or just fucking?” she asked in that too analytical voice as she worked.
The blush flashed across his whole body. She was looking away, but he knew she knew the effect her words had had. She could still bloody well do that, every damned time.
Man up, Oliver! He told himself. “We managed to fit some begging for forgiveness in at least. Though the fucking rather riveted our attentions for an astoundingly long time.”
She threw another smug smile over her shoulder at him. “It’s fabulous, isn’t it? He really is in such good health now. He overdoes like mad, still, but he’s not driving himself into the ground the way he did back on Barrayar.”
She brought the sandwiches over and sat down unusually close to him. Oliver found he didn’t mind. From their first greeting on the shuttleport platform, he’d felt comfortable with her in a way he never had in all the years they’d known each other. It was as if he was finally beginning to see himself as she did, an equal partner in their relationship to Aral. He had no idea whether it would last, but he was relishing the sensation while it did.
“Renewing things on the same terms, then?” she inquired after a few bites.
“More or less.” His demeanor turned serious. “I should probably let Aral broach the subject with you, but we were discussing a more… extended term this time.” He paused. “Indefinite, in fact.” He paused again, concerned by her sudden stillness. “Though only if you consent, of course.”
“Oh, don’t mistake me thinking for me disapproving, Oliver.” Her face was as serious as his but her manner still soft. “I’ll need to discuss it more with Aral, and the three of us will need to talk. But I can see it working if we’re all invested in making it so.”
“I sacrificed the career path Aral and I laid out for me to be here, Cordelia. I’m not giving up my Oath, partly because I don’t have any clue what else I’d do, but as long as the Service – and the two of you – will allow it, I have no intention of leaving his side again.”
This speech produced the most appallingly elated expression from Cordelia; his heart skipped a beat at the sight. And it hit him that Aral wasn’t the only one he had been missing, been wanting to rush back to for months now. It wasn’t entirely a new realization: his love for her was not the pining, aching need he had for Aral, but a profound trust and tenderness that had grown up unexpectedly over time and been even more unexpectedly returned in kind.
Caught up in these contemplations, it took him several heartbeats to realize she’d been speaking to him, had in fact said his name more than a couple of times. He shook his head to clear it.
“Sorry, sorry, was off with the fairies,” he murmured. “What were you saying?”
Her head tilted half in frustration, half in affection, she replied. “Nevermind. You’re clearly not in the headspace for negotiations. Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out when you and Aral are both conscious.”
He ducked his head, trying and failing to fix his attention on his sandwich.
“You’ve changed.” It was said in that straightforward way she always affected, but with an undercurrent of… pride? Maybe. Something deep and positive anyway. “In a good way,” she hastened to add, prompted by something she saw in his countenance. “You’ve… matured, I guess is the word I want.”
“I am nearly forty. Not the callow youth you once knew.” It was meant as a joke. She took it seriously.
“You were never callow. Not even for a minute.”
“You flatter me. It’s getting older and being forced to be the adult in the room for the last several years that have changed me.”
She dismissed this with a flick of her fingers. “Yes, age and command didn’t hurt. But I think you worked hard, too, all that time away. And you seem more… settled, confident.” She grinned at him. “I do so love a competent man.”
“As do I,” he quipped.
She rolled her eyes at him, but her expression remained pleased. Then something in her eyes shifted, turned sly and mischievous.
“So, tell me, Oliver,” she practically purred. “When do you have your first topside rotation?”
Somewhere in the back of his head, an alarm sounded, but he gamely answered: “In a couple of weeks. Admiral Clemence wants me back dirt-side in time for some big to-do here at the Palace, I’m given to understand.” He winked at her, knowing exactly what occasion was being marked, knowing his lover was going to hate it. But the Viceroy’s Birthday was traditionally nearly as highly anticipated an event as the Emperor’s here on Sergyar. “You, too, I’m guessing.”
“Yes, though not for the reasons your CO does.” Her mischievous look transformed into something positively sinful. “What I have in mind is a unique present, for Aral.”