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caparrucia · 2 years

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Hello! If you’re willing, could we get a ship of your choice and #48 for the kiss and a ship ask?

…out of habit.

Titus is like clockwork: predictable and measurable and perfectly, spectacularly rational, thank you so much for noticing.

When... this - whatever the fuck this is, he's far too smart to even try to describe it, much less define it - happens, he assumes it will throw his lovingly calibrated routine into chaos. Instead, they consume it and make it their own.

Because of fucking course they do.

So now Titus wakes up at five on the dot, just like always, but rather than a redundant alarm clock he kept purely for paranoia's sake, he wakes up to the concert of low groans and miserable moans that crawl out of Regis the moment he so much as twitches. Aulea snickers, mean-spirited and shameless, and leans in to press her lips to the corner of Titus' mouth. Regis whines when she shoves him out of the way, and Titus is free then, to squirm out of the monstrously comfortable bed while she shuffles in to take his place as Regis' source of warmth. He doesn't think about the fact Aulea doesn't sleep - she's got lightning and justice trapped under her skin and her scars give out the barest glow in the dark and her eyes are blue right up until they're purple and then someone is dearly wishing she'd just kill them instead of making them repent - but he does notice the progress on the book by the nightstand, when he reaches out to grab his cane. If she's close to done he'll have to figure out a new one, and that'll take a few hours out of his day.

She reads slowly, ponderously. It took Titus entirely too long to realize it is because she's spent so long speaking to and for her god that Lucian became a second language. She does love her poetry though. The more obscure, morbid and wholly intractable, the better. Titus is retired, a decorated war hero. He's got a pension and everything. All the titles Regis has given him - he does not think about them, any of them, or what they might mean - come with little to no expectations or obligations for him to fulfill. His time is his own, and he is listed as optional in every meeting Regis invites him to listen in on, though he always allows Titus to say his piece if he wants, regardless of context or rank or audience. He doesn't have anything pressing to do, except keep existing, keep living this life he's somehow ended up living, out of inertia or habit or just pure dumb fucking luck.

Titus comes out of the bathroom an hour later: Before, when he didn't need the cane and he could shower standing up and his knee didn't cramp horribly if he took too long shaving, he'd been utilitarian, about his mornings. He'd shower and dress and be out and about in under twenty minutes, and the thought of lingering under hot water - of even using hot water - seemed like a waste of time. But that was Before, and this is now. This is the life he has and he will live it as best he can, because all of the hateful fucking bastards who tried to kill him failed.

Sometimes, when he's sitting on the edge of the bathtub, digging his fingers into the corded knots of muscle above his knee, gritting his teeth and demanding the fucking thing stop spasming long enough for him to get his day started, Titus remembers the sight of Regis, kneeling at his feet. He remembers the way his throat went dry and his lips pulled back into a snarl, and he remembers the words. Upon this knee rests the entirety of this kingdom, he'd said. Because Regis just... said things. Specially when he meant them. The kingdom is fucked, then, Titus hadn't said then. He still hadn't now, even though he entertained the thought sometimes, when the pain broke through the usual thresholds and he needed to sit down and pay attention to it, and only to it. Like the entirety of Titus' world was sequestered behind his misaligned patella.

(And some mornings, very rarely, the pain will throb, twisting like a red hot iron curling through his thigh and into his hip, and he'll make a sound. A tiny, cursed, miserable sound, and then they'll be there. They'll be there. Aulea with a wrist for him to bite into, to muffle the scream into, and Regis with his hands glowing green, magic forcing its way in, useless and desperate anyway. It's the strength of Regis' fingers digging in that coaxes muscles back in place, not his magic. He cannot magic a new knee for Titus, even if in the peak of delirium, Titus would let him even try. Those mornings meetings and audiences are rescheduled, and Titus thinks it's so stupid, an entire country held hostage by his fucking knee. But Regis did warn him, he supposes. That's the thing about Regis, the impossible, infuriating thing: Regis doesn't lie. He's so good he doesn't have to.)

Most mornings, he manages without trouble, and by the time he's mostly assembled into a semblance of passable humanity, Regis is awake enough to look smug. He always looks smug, here in his personal quarters. He's personable and affable and kind and generally well-loved, outside his own rooms. He's a good King, after all. In Lucis, far and wide, people do not starve. People do not die to the elements or monsters or even war. Regis is the King who brought peace to his people and when the time came, fought to defend it. None of that, Titus thinks, is a mask, either. He is sincerely what he is, and that is in part why he's so good at forcing people to meet him halfway. Even his enemies respect him, and his followers revere him.

Even the revelation of his magic, the depths of his power, did not destroy him. He didn't have to do anything about it, they all wrote it off for him. Just like that.

But here, in private, when there's only him and his wife and Titus - Titus has a title that he dares not think about, because titles carry meanings and he's too smart for that, at his age - he is smug. In ancient times, the worship of Bahamut was widespread and the Kings of the Crystal were often called the Dragon Kings. Regis is smug in a way that makes Titus shiver. He stands in the doorway, taking in the scene: the King, lying on his side, disheveled and shameless with it, hair unkempt, beard a mess, with bruises and bites and scars on display, looking at him with half-lidded green eyes like the world's smuggest dragon sitting atop the world's most precious hoard.

Titus wants to stab him. Again. Possibly kiss him. It's insane. Inane! He is nearly fifty fucking years old. Regis is nearly fifty fucking years old. Aulea is barely a year younger than Regis, for all she's been frozen in lightning and judgment, for all her eyes give away her true age. Together there's almost a century and a half worth of history in that bed, they cannot keep pretending to be children, fumbling about feelings and nonsense.

And yet, when Regis offers a hand, Titus walks back into the room and takes it.

And yet, when Aulea slithers to his side, pressing her lips to his and steals the kiss Regis had been aiming to, the same way she does every morning, Titus does not do the smart, sensible thing. He does not run when Regis laughs and pulls him down and kisses him, like he's staking a claim.

Upon this knee rests the entirety of my kingdom.

"What shall we do today, love?" Regis asks them, both of them, and Titus should run, should scream, should flee before they cost him something far dearer than a knee.

"I don't know," he says, instead, the same thing he says every morning - every morning he's not buried under Regis' bulk, held in place and smothered in them, like they can somehow excise the agony away, occupy too much space and leave it with nowhere to go but away - leaning on his cane and looking carefully unamused. "Some treason before noon, I suppose."

It's a stale joke, by then. It should have run its course, like a shattered wheel, all jagged edges and bleeding shards. Instead, Regis laughs, every morning, that same little, breathless laugh. Aulea rolls her eyes and smiles, and Titus swears, just for a moment, the perpetual clouds above the Citadel part, ever so slightly, when she does. It's almost like Regis can read the words Titus does not say, cannot bring himself to say, every time he says that. Every morning. On the dot. The same stale joke.

I love you.

"Well," Regis laughs, shuffling out of bed at long last, pressing a kiss to the corner of Titus' mouth, opposite to Aulea's earlier one, which Titus can't tell if he means to or not, and he refuses to dwell on it much. "Can't betray the King if he's not there to be betrayed, I suppose."

Titus is nearly fifty fucking years old. He survived Mors Lucis Caelum and what Insomnia became after he did the world a favor and died. He survived the war. He survived Cor Leonis and his infinite fountain of bullshit. He's too old and too jaded and too himself for it, but every morning, on the dot, Regis kisses him in passing and promises to put up a good show. And despite it all, despite himself and Aulea's snickering and the fact he'll never live it down: Titus smiles even as his face heats up, because somehow, he'll survive them another day.

Fuck it, he's going to make them survive him.

#rie answers #sleepingamaryllis #titus drautos #regis lucis caelum #aulea lucis caelum #the ot3 #i love them your honor #they're great #i fucking love puppy titus #you don't understand #he's my favorite

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