"What are you doing here, Iris?"
Yunho froze and looked back to meet eyes with the Grand Duke. He rubbed the back of his neck and held the perfume bottle in his free hand.
Shoot! Why does he always show up at the most awkward times???
"Ah, nothing in particular… I didn't have anything to do, so I decided to take a walk around the base." Yunho answered.
The Duke raised an eyebrow and gestured at the bottle in Yunho's hand.
"And during your walk, you decided to start spraying perfume everywhere?"
Yunho went red.
"Ah, well… about that…"
He could afford to reveal some of the truth, right? Emphasis on "some."
"I'm actually allergic to black dewbird feathers. So, just in case, I brought some of this perfume with me because it can deter black dewbirds. I don't want any feathers to be left on the ground and cause me to flare up, so I'm trying to chase away all the birds right now."
Yunho rambled on.
"Well, like half of that was the truth, so in a way, I am being honest." Yunho thought, but he made sure to keep that comment in his head.
The Grand Duke stared at him and sighed, giving up on questioning Yunho any further.
That's when Yunho noticed the dark circles under the other man's eyes. He hadn't realized it before, but on closer inspection, Dorian looked like he hadn't had a restful night in ages.
"Is Your Grace alright? You look a bit tired…"
Dorian looked surprised at the question.
"I've just been busy these days. A little lack of sleep won't kill me."
The Grand Duke paused for a moment and continued.
"Oh, and you can stop with the 'Your Grace.' We're more peers than anything at this point. Somehow, it doesn't sound right coming from your mouth."
Yunho didn't expect the Duke to say that, so he was silent for a moment before replying with a smile.
"So, do you want me to call you Dorian?"
The Duke paused, letting the sentence hang in the air. Only two people in his life just called him by his first name. His mother and the Crown Prince. Hearing it said so softly cut through his exhaustion and gave him an odd feeling, like his heart was being squeezed.
He suddenly felt that if he looked at the other man's face, he would become strange.
Dorian turned his head away.
"No, that… that doesn't sound right either."
Yunho raised an eyebrow.
"Okay… So, I'll stick with 'Your Grace' then."
Dorian nodded, still facing away.
Yunho was left to look at the back of his head, which felt awkward but also gave Yunho some time to think.
His thoughts circled back to the Duke's answer to his initial question.
Had the man really not slept for days?
It made sense. The Grand Duke was the strong General, the commander, the person in charge of settling all the matters in this war and making sure Lucivia came out on top of any resolution. The Duke, of course, had power, but at the same time, he was used as a pawn during wars and political conflicts. Though the royal courts sang him praises when he came back with victory, they still schemed behind his back, cautious of his close friendship with the Crown Prince. The Grand Duke was a "dog." A wildcard that was invaluable but also discardable.
A flood of empathy washed over Yunho. He could remember sleepless nights in the hospital very well. Despite feeling so weak and exhausted, sometimes he couldn't fall asleep no matter what he did. Sleep deprivation is a torture in its own right. Back then, Yunho would wish that someone would just hold him and lull him to sleep, like the doting parents in the family movies he used to watch as a child.
Yunho contemplated and took a deep breath. He outstretched his arms.
"You can use me."
Dorian turned back around and stared at the man in front of him.
"What does that mean?"
Yunho then realized how oddly his words could be taken. His face flushed red.
"No! No, not in any strange way. Like, you can use me to sleep with."
The Duke's face grew even stranger.
"NO! That came out wrong. I meant actually sleeping."
Yunho felt like Dorian's red eyes were burrowing into him.
"Like a pillow! I don't mean anything weird by it. I just haven't been of much help to you, so I want to do what I can. You're the General after all. I just thought that it was important you stay well-rested."
Dorian didn't say anything for a long while.
Finally, he opened his mouth.
"Is this you trying to seduce me?"
???
"What"
Yunho had an incredulous look on his face.
"I... I don't even know how to answer that."
"With a yes or a no, preferably."
Yunho shook his head and turned around.
"Nevermind. Forget everything I said."
Yunho began to walk away when he heard a voice call out from behind him.
"I take you up on the offer."
Yunho stopped in his tracks and looked behind him. Dorian was closing the gap between them.
"I really didn't mean anything weird by it."
"And neither do I. Just, I admit a good rest sounds very appealing to me right now."
The Duke hummed.
"But I do wonder... What does being a pillow entail exactly?"
Yunho dropped the perfume bottle on the grass, careful not to break the glass, and raised his hands, letting them rest on the sides of the Duke's face.
"..."
The two men stared at each other, like they were both equally as surprised and confused at what was happening.
Yunho was inwardly beating himself up. "Why did I do that?"
He moved to remove his hands, but before he could, the Duke pressed his hands on top of Yunho's.
"You're warm."
Yunho acquiesced, his face growing redder.
----
Yunho leaned against the tree he was sitting under. The area was secluded, a contrast to the busy center of the base. He had the peace to look around to distract from the heavy weight on his lap.
He looked down at the Grand Duke who was quietly resting his head on Yunho's thighs. The man had made zero noise or movements so far, so Yunho assumed he had fallen asleep already. His black hair fell upon his forehead and down the sides of his face, and his eyes were closed and peaceful.
Yunho chuckled to himself at the sight.
"Hm, even someone like the Grand Duke looks like this when they're asleep."
It really surprised him when the Duke took him up on the offer, despite it being all Yunho's idea. Yunho himself didn't even really know why he said that, but seeing someone suffering in a way he once had to, it was always unbearable.
Yunho had to be honest with himself. This world and everyone in it were growing on him far more and far quicker than he thought they would.
Is it so wrong that the only place he's ever felt like he belonged was in a body that didn't even belong to him?
Yunho's eyes suddenly felt hot. He started humming to distract himself. He used to watch this one specific movie over and over again when he was very young. It was the typical Christmas family movie, but the main reason why he loved it so much was this scene at the end of the movie: the father cradles his daughter in his arms and begins singing this soft lullaby. Yunho would always hang on every note and let himself fall asleep to the lullaby, like he was the small child in the movie. Like he was a child to parents who loved him so dearly that their hearts threatened to overflow.
The lullaby came back to him quite clearly, and he began to hum the notes quietly into the wind. His eyes began to feel heavy.
Yawn...
----
Truthfully, Dorian hadn't been sleeping. He wasn't someone to fall asleep that quickly. The Grand Duke liked staying aware. But it still felt nice to rest his eyes, so he had just been doing that while lying his head in Iris' lap, which was comfortably warm despite being a little small.
However, he was caught off guard when he heard the soft, almost sad lullaby leaving Iris' lips. Dorian didn't think it was the right time to open his eyes, but he was deeply curious...
"What kind of face are you making right now while humming such a melody?"
But Dorian kept the urge to himself, slipping it into a corner of his brain.
His pretend sleep slowly slipped to a real one as he was pulled into a dream of the past.
.
.
.
He was pulled back to when he was a young boy. In this memory, he was in a carriage, riding through the main roads of the capital. His mother sat across from him, not bothering to spare him a glance. She was staring out the window listlessly, like her thoughts had drifted elsewhere even though her body remained stationary.
They had never been a close mother-and-son pair; Dorian wasn't exactly born from love after all. But he wasn't at the age where he could fully understand things like that. Dorian was always considered precocious, but there are some things even smart children have trouble grasping.
He peeked through the carriage window, brushing the curtain aside. It was fun to look at the people below, but one pair of people caught his attention. It was a mother and son pair, but one very unlike Dorian's and his mother's. The mother below was holding her son to her chest, looking at him with such kind eyes that Dorian felt a strange anger blooming within him. His large eyes fell upon his own mother once again. She was still lost in thought and paid no mind to him.
Suddenly, the silence in the carriage became very apparent to him.
"How unfair..."
.
.
.
The memory faded away, like the curtain close after the end of a play, and his sleep returned to the usual darkness.
----
The temple workers, Irene, and the Crown Prince eventually came back from their aid mission in the nearby towns and villages, and Nikolai immediately went to look for the Grand Duke to give him an update.
The villages were in a worse state than expected, and the Crown Prince felt like they were being watched the entire time. It was important information that he needed to share with Dorian, but the prince found himself at a loss when he couldn't find him in any of his usual spots.
He resorted to an alternative option.
"Irene, I'm sorry, but can you disperse your holy power to locate the Grand Duke? I can't seem to find him anywhere."
It would cost quite some energy to scan a large area like the base, but Irene agreed nonetheless.
She drew power from within herself and focused on radiating it out, looking for the Grand Duke's energy. Eventually, she hit it.
Irene was tired from the exertion but still led the Crown Prince to where she detected the Duke's energy. The Prince made it clear that she didn't have to follow along, but Irene insisted on going.
Because something was odd. Just then, she didn't just detect the Grand Duke's energy but also that one's.
The two arrived at the spot and were shocked at what they saw.
There, underneath a tree, the Grand Duke was sleeping with his head on an also sleeping silver-haired man's lap.
And that man was... Iris.
"..."
Nikolai looked on with a flummoxed expression. He didn't have a good impression of Iris de Evastine; he knew how horrible all of Irene's family treated her, especially from the stories she let slip. But he had a nagging feeling that this Iris de Evastine would play a bigger role in his life than he ever initially thought.
"This is interesting."
---
Irene stood behind Nikolai, obscuring her face from his view. Her fists were clenched, her nails almost digging into the flesh of her palm.
She muttered under her breath.
"You... Why can't you just accept your place in this world?"
She swallowed down a chuckle that was about to leave her mouth.
Her icy blue eyes gleamed.
"Heh... Enjoy this while it lasts... Iris."
-----
End of Chapter 34