Post by Kris11 on Feb 16, 2013 17:56:46 GMT 10
Title: Hope in You for Me
Rating: G
Prompt: Wistful, #79
Summary: Kaddar feels the space between Kalasin and himself and doesn't know how to get to the other side.
They did not often take their meals alone. The royal wedding of the Emperor of Carthak to Kalasin (formerly) of Conté was too recent for the court and ambassadors to not want to watch them, even as they took their meals, or for the palace staff to not be professionally scandalized if the lavish feasts were abandoned for quieter, common fare taken only by husband and wife in a cool, private dining room.
Kaddar had smiled through a month of feasting, watching his new wife from the corner of his eye as the court stared, shameless in their curiosity. He had thought of all they were missing out on, had wished fervently, even as he nodded regally or smiled at the music or entertainment, of all the things he would say, the light touches he would be allowed, the woman he could – perhaps – finally – get to know, if only they could have just one moment alone.
Sitting in the small dining room, alone except for a single servant waiting by the door, Kaddar fought the urge to clear his throat or ask,again, if Kalasin was enjoying this particularly warm autumn weather. His lip practically quivered as he fought against the need to break the silence between them. This was not what he had wanted.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted. He regarded the woman sitting across – his wife – and tried to understand the restlessness that had settled in his joints, setting them to ache and to aimless movement at unfortunate hours.There was a wall of propriety and cool air and distance – all the distance that stretched between Carthak and Corus, all the ocean and forests and differences between them – that separated Kaddar from Kalasin and the Emperor wished not that he could break it down, but perhaps that it would be lowered for him, or that he could slip around its edges and inside where he could feel the warmth again.
She must have sensed his gaze, which had lingered a touch too long, because Kalasin looked up and smiled, polite and distant but beautiful nonetheless. Immediately, her blue eyes dropped their gaze back toher plate and she continued fiddling with her fork as if she hadn’t just caught Kaddar’s breath in her hands, drawing it away and leaving him empty, dry,abandoned.
Her pale hand rested on the table between them, painted nails dark against the tablecloth and the rings her attendants had wrapped around her slim fingers glittered in the candlelight. Kaddar held his own hands– king’s hands except for pens’ calluses and garden’s dirt beneath his nails –together tightly, refusing to allow them to reach treacherously across the space between them, to hold that hand that tapped a rhythm on the table-top.
Kaddar refused to allow his hand to breach the barrier the Empress had put between them, but he couldn’t help but stare.
And he couldn’t help but want to.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!