Chapter Text
I
They don’t tell anyone at first. The habits of discretion have burned themselves into Oliver’s psyche after two decades and he does not feel comfortable going public with their new-found status as lovers. And is even less comfortable at the thought of the packs of scientists who will want to dig into the whys and hows of their possibly unique soul-bond. Cordelia is a little bemused by his request for silence, but as always, she won’t do anything to violate his trust or consent, so she agrees.
With one exception.
"I need to tell Gregor. I won't have it coming to him in some blasted report when one of those children who follow me around finally tumbles to the fact we're sleeping together."
Oliver grins wryly at her description of her ImpSec detail. "Well, Gregor has always known everything. I assume you plan to tell him about the girls, too?"
"When I tell him about my plan to resign, yes," she says evenly. "I plan to let everyone know about the kids. Well, my brood anyway, at least until you’re ready to discuss your potential trio."
"Might as well tell Gregor about that, too,” Oliver says resignedly. “Best for him to have all the information, just in case."
ImpSec will know all eventually anyway but, like Cordelia, he doesn’t want the Emperor to find out from a report. Gregor is, after all, his Commander in Chief. Oliver cannot imagine that his pending family-building decision might affect any military matters but that's just it, he doesn't know. So, better to err on the side of caution.
II
It is several weeks before Oliver confesses to Cordelia just how long he has been carrying a torch for her. They are flying back from another trip to Lake Serena, with Rykov piloting and the privacy screens in place. To his bafflement, and slightly bruised ego, she laughs.
She must read it in his face because she forces her own expression back to seriousness. "Oh, I'm sorry, Oliver." The grin steals back onto her features, eyes alight with some inner joke. "I'm not laughing at you. Really! I'm laughing at me."
"Ooo-kay," he replies, a touch skeptically but as always willing to hear her out.
Suddenly he has a lap full of lovely red-roan-haired woman, kissing him with an enthusiasm he just as enthusiastically returns. All thoughts of any embarrassment or hurt feelings flee for several very breathless and wholly incredible minutes.
"Don’t you get it?" she asks when they are forced to come up for air - neither of them is as young as they used to be. "I love you, too. Have loved you for, oh God, I'm not sure how long. It snuck up on me and by the time I realized… well, you'd been back with us for a couple of years, and I was afraid to upset the apple cart."
"Apple cart?" Oliver asks, the only thing he can grasp onto firmly in that torrent of words.
"Oh, good grief, screw the metaphor, Oliver," she says impatiently. "I was worried I would mess up our marriage." And Oliver feels a thrill of happiness at her use of that word. "I was afraid it might make things awkward, maybe even drive you away. I couldn't live with that."
And now it's Oliver's turn to laugh. "So much for your Betan frankness!"
She hangs her head, though an embarrassed smile plays at her lips. "Again, I won’t say you're wrong. But I just couldn’t tell you. I couldn't even tell Aral, though he almost certainly would have been fine with it.” She winks at him. “Then again, you also didn’t speak up, either so this is clearly all your fault!"
“You said there was only ever Aral for you so many times that I figured it was a bad idea to speak up,” he admits. Then he grins mischievously at her. “Teach me to take you at your word!”
“Low blow, Admiral!” she says with a laugh.
“Ha! You laughed at my declaration of unrequited love! Don’t talk to me about low blows!”
“I already told you I was laughing at myself,” she protests, laughing harder. “And I said that ‘only one man for me’ line one time! And it was before you came to us at Sergyar.”
“Huh.” Oliver ponders that. In retrospect, she’s right. He chuckles. “We are both idiots. Not exactly news.” A head shake. “So much time wasted….”
“Not wasted,” Cordelia corrects firmly. “Never wasted. I was content to share Aral with you, and you with Aral.” She looks momentarily disturbed. “Weren’t you happy?”
“Always,” he assures her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. It’s not entirely true. The price of the time he had with either or both of his partners was loneliness and longing when they were apart, but he always paid it willingly. “I already told you what we three had was more than I could ever have imagined. It was just thinking about the last few years since… well, if we had both known how the other felt, might it not have been different?”
She purses her lips, clearly thinking this over. “I-I honestly don’t know, love. It might not have made a difference. So much of my identity, both our identities, really, were bound up with him. I believe we both really needed the time to reorient before we could come together again.”
“Well, it’s water under the bridge now. I do think Aral would have been glad we found our way back eventually.” He blushes a light pink. “I kinda think he meant us to… inherit each other. If that makes sense."
“I’ve been thinking something along the same lines.” She snuggles into him. “In fact, it’s led me to a hypothesis about the new soulmarks.”
Oliver gives a little ‘I’m listening’ hum.
“Quantum biology is not in my wheelhouse, but I do try to keep up with the latest thinking,” she begins in the by-now very familiar Betan Survey lecturer’s voice. “Several researchers have posited that the force which causes the entanglement of souls and creates soulmarks can be manipulated by a will, or wills, that are strong enough. I know few souls with a stronger will than Aral Vorkosigan. And I don’t think he kept encouraging us to be together so often just for his little voyeuristic streak!”
And, God, yes, it seems so possible, that Aral could have willed their bonding so hard that it eventually became fact. But… “Wait, if it was him, why did the marks not show before now? While he was alive, I mean.”
Cordelia shakes a finger at him. “I think because we were both in denial. For as often as we each gave way to him, even his will wasn’t stronger than that force.” She giggles. “No, it took you coming at me with intent, and me at least half-way acknowledging I wanted you back, for it to… take, I guess.”
“‘Half-way acknowledging?’” he asks wryly. “You seemed quite oblivious to me.”
He can hear the smirk in her voice when she says: “Just before you kissed me, I was thinking how outrageously jealous I was at the idea of you being with anyone else but me.”
“Ah!” He feels a little smug about that admission and hugs her tighter. Then a more serious idea occurs to him. “Maybe… maybe we can start telling a few people. And, I don’t know, run your hypothesis by a more qualified scientist?”
She sits up and puts him at arm’s length, looking at his face searchingly. “You’re sure?”
He nods with only a little hesitation. “Just Alys and Simon and Kou and Drou to start with. You can tell your sons we’re… dating. Not about the marks. Or the boys. Not just yet.”
Her smile is lopsided and amused but genuine. “As you wish.”
III
“Say, Oliver, when did you acquire a second soulmark? And why does it appear to be in my mother’s handwriting?”
Shit! Should have had the doctor cover those up! Oliver has just enough brain cells to think.
“Miles,” says Cordelia sharply, “we’ll discuss that later. Out of other people’s hearing. For now… I was going to ask you this,” she says to Oliver, “but you’re pharmaceutically impaired.” She turns to the physician. “They’re holding the fireworks for him. They sent me in to see if he could make it or not.”
When the physician clears him to go, he bemusedly allows himself to be dressed by his partner and her son, then escorted to the grandstands and their VIP seating.
The fireworks do not make him flinch once.
IV
At least we don’t have to explain everything from scratch, he thinks as he listens to Cordelia outline to Miles and Ekaterin the bones of her theory on their new soulmarks. They’d read Miles in on their ‘arrangement’ years ago during one of his leaves from Academy. That conversation had played out exactly as Cordelia had predicted at the time – a lot of yelling by both father and son, requiring her intervention to sort out. Then the boy had taken to their conspiracy of discretion as if he were the one that designed it. Oliver wasn’t sure when Miles apprised Ekaterin, but she wasn’t at all thrown by his presence at their wedding. She was also among the first to offer him condolences on Aral’s passing.
“You know,” Miles says in an impish voice. “You’re going to have to add one more to your future child count now.”
Three sets of eyes reflect confusion back at him.
“Why do you say that?” Cordelia finally bites.
Miles grins broadly. “Well, isn’t one of the prevailing theories on soulmates that it produces some of the best offspring? I mean, take me for evidence!” He says that last with a little wink at his mother. She rolls her eyes at him, then exchanges fond exasperated glances with Ekaterin.
Oliver, who knows a straight line when he hears one, takes a swig of the electrolyte drink Cordelia foisted on him and launches his next salvo. “Yes, well….”
Miles’ head snaps around to him, dawning horror and then calm resignation passing over his features. “She already offered you an egg, didn’t she?”
“Yeee…no. Yes and no. Not quite. It’s more complex than that.”
“You know, people keep telling me that, and then not telling me what. Makes me ready to bite.” Since he doesn’t even look ready to stand up again, Oliver figures the threat for empty. Still, he looks over at Cordelia for support.
“‘Not quite’ is a literal answer,” she says, taking the hint. “You’ve both been through the assisted reproduction process so you know there are often leftovers. In this case, due to a few extra interventions required, what was left over were enucleated ova, rather than whole eggs. Which, along with gametes from Aral, I offered to Oliver.”
Miles takes a rather long breath. He sits very still for a long time. The other three adults hold their breath as he processes. Finally, he turns to Cordelia. “All right. That I would not have guessed, I’ll grant you.” He turns to her and says through his teeth. “Mother!”
She shrugs, very unrepentant.
Oliver takes another swallow of the awful mixture, wishing he had something stronger to wash it down. Cordelia had put the kibosh on the cider he tried to filch from the kitchen. “I’ll start the first of the three boys as soon as I am honorably retired,” he announces; that gets his partner’s attention along with the rest. She makes a squeal of delight. “Which I hope will not be too long after your mother does so.” He turns to her. “I sent my polite regrets to Desplains before the party this morning, after a heads up note to Gregor. I was going to tell you, well, tonight.” He waves vaguely at the darkness outside the dining room.
Only the remembrance of just how physically compromised he is keeps Cordelia from flinging her arms around him in elation, he is sure. Her smile is a joy to behold. He basks in its radiance for some time until Miles – because of course it would be Miles – breaks the spell.
“I guess that answers the question of whether you’re taking the OPS posting then.”
Oliver’s mouth falls open in startlement and not a small amount of betrayal. Cordelia throws her palms up in expiation. “I didn’t tell him. He guessed. The brat!”
“Really pissed her off, too,” Miles concurs complacently.
“Miles, please,” Ekaterin scolds in a tone so like the one Aral used to use for his wife that both Oliver and Cordelia stare at her for a moment.
“Like your father, you have entirely too good a memory and fast a mind for my comfort,” Cordelia remarks after a beat.
Miles preens at this comparison to his father. Oliver is just about ready to plead fatigue to put an end to the conversation when the younger man turns to his mother again. “I know I had issues with being an only child, but really, Mother, nine more siblings?”
“Ten,” she corrects, looking to Oliver with a sly grin. He widens his eyes in shocked inquiry. “Maybe,” she adds.
“Let’s discuss that after the first few, shall we?” he retorts.
“As you wish.”
Miles stares back and forth between the two of them. He’s drooping, too, if Oliver is any judge, but he’s like an old terrier with a rat now. “So, are you planning to marry?” he asks. Which, fair enough.
Cordelia shakes her head in the negative. “Not just yet. Not in the Barrayaran style anyway.” She looks to Oliver. “We haven’t discussed all our arrangements just yet. Especially since I just found out he’s not going anywhere any time soon.”
Oliver grins a little stupidly at her.
“And on that note,” Ekaterin breaks in before Miles can continue his interrogation. “We should let your mother put her partner to bed, Miles. Not to mention you have a long overdue medical procedure of your own.”
Miles crumples a little with that reminder, but Oliver is pretty sure it’s half an act. The Count has grown to accept, if not always give in gracefully to, his limitations. “Yes, my love.”
They all rise from the table. Cordelia hugs her son and daughter-in-law. “Don’t hurry down for breakfast,” she says. “We’ll probably takes ours in my rooms.”
“Freddy’s coming to take the big kids out again in the morning,” Ekaterin remarks. “So we’ll likely do the same if Frieda isn’t too swamped.”
“I’m sure that will be fine, dear.” She puts an arm through Oliver’s. “Come along, love.”
They are around the corner when Miles’ not sotto voce enough voice drifts to their ears. “Oh, thank goodness. I wasn’t sure how I was going to trip him up for Mother if he decided to return to Barrayar.”
“Shush, you!” his wife says a little more quietly.
Oliver covers Cordelia’s mouth with his hand to stop her laughter.
“He really would have done it, wouldn’t he?” Oliver whispers as they start up the stairs.
“Oh, yes,” is her firm response. “I told him not to, but he would have anyway.”
“Just as well I chose you then, eh?”
“Yes,” she replies, voice catching on a small sob. “Just as well.”
“I intend to love you forever, Cordelia,” he asserts, deciding he’ll blame it on the pain meds if she thinks this is too sappy a statement.
But she just kisses him softly.
“All right,” she murmurs when they part again. “Forever might be enough.”