Wound and Salve
Jan. 20th, 2005 03:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
second_bananaw00t! I finally got it done! This is a true labor of love.
Title: Wound and Salve
Author: Susan
Pairing: Hector/Paris, Hector/Andromache
Rating: Light R
Feedback: I live for it.
Beta by the ever wonderful![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
montmorency
A/N Takes place three years into the Trojan War. Set roughly six months after Scars
Summary:Andromache looks for Hector. She finds more than she expected.
Part I: Wound
Andromache had never witnessed it before. Oh, she had known. She had seen the suckled bruises on Hector’s chest and shoulders. She had seen the vivid guilt that stormed its way through his once contented features. But she had never seen Hector on his knees. Before another man. Before his brother.
She had been awaiting Hector’s return from what had become hours worth of council with King Priam when she had the urge to walk near the houses of her brothers-in-law and their wives. She had spoken kind words with the wives of Cebrione, Axion, and Echemmon whose names would fade from history. She had just parted with the fair Laodice when she had heard a disturbance from Prince Paris’s house. It sounded as if furniture was being thrown about.
As Andromache approached, she could tell those noises must be coming from Paris’s private chamber. What she heard made her blood run cold.
“Hector, please!”
It was his brother’s voice.
The door to Paris’s chamber was not closed all the way.
Through the small opening she could see shadows of figures. As she drew closer, she could make out slender hips pressed backwards against a table. Then large hands pressing sharply into hipbones. A head of long dark curls came into view, obscuring more intimate places. Hector’s curls.
Tears burned at Andromache’s eyes and her heart clenched in her chest. She could not breathe. She watched her husband’s strong hands wrap around the velvet erection that had now been exposed. Every fiber of her being stung with betrayal. The power of seeing the act itself was fiercer than Andromache could have expected. But then she saw…
Hector’s hands moved with love.
His entire body came into view as Andromache swayed. She longed to run to him. To be wrapped in the strong arms that necessary duties and countless battles had too long denied her. To raise him off his knees and bring him onto a soft bed. To place her lips on the lips of her husband. Lips that were now denying Paris the contact he so clearly desired.
The young prince’s hips writhed as much as was possible in Hector’s strong grip. He began to moan plaintively when Hector refused to touch the center of his need. “Hector… oh please, Hector… please…”
“No!” Hector’s voice was fierce. Ragged and worn as if he had been raging against Poseidon himself. “You will not undo me so easily, Alexandros. I will not become your puppet. A toy to play with as you see fit. You will not own me, Paris. You will find completion when I desire you to do so. You will succumb to me, not I to you. You will…”
But the rest of Hector’s castigation was lost beneath a wail from Paris. Andromache gasped. It was not Poseidon with whom Hector fought. It was Aphrodite herself.
Paris thrust his hips once more and Hector roared. Andromache’s eyes grew wide as she saw her husband open and take his brother past his lips and into his mouth. She whipped her head away.
Never had such sounds been made within the walls of Troy. The gasps and wails and moans that issued from the young prince’s mouth were those of death and bliss. Andromache shook as she slowly slipped to the stone floor against the outside wall of Paris’s house. Those sounds spilling forth were the fault of Hector. Of Hector’s mouth and lips and tongue. Andromache’s eyes snapped shut as Paris’s turmoil began to exorcise itself in words.
“Hector! ... I am… I am… Oh, Hector!”
The wail was inhuman. The sound of a goddess done toying with her prey.
Andromache choked back a sob. She wished to flee to the safety of her own house. But no matter where she turned she would not be able to drown out the voice of the young man calling to her husband for completion. She could not escape the vision of Hector, tamer of horses on his knees before a shepherd boy.
Part II
Title: Salve
Author: Susan
Pairing: Hector/Paris, Hector/Andromache
Rating: PG, but Angsty
Summary: Three months later Paris has taken Ill.
Hector was due back in the city tomorrow after weeks of hard warfare. Andromache did not know if Paris had been informed, but it seemed unlikely. Paris had come down with a fever yesterday morning and the servants believed it best not to excite him while he was feeling poorly.
Andromache laughed at their logic. If anything, news of Hector’s return would spark new life in Alexandros. By the god’s will or his own he would be well enough to meet his brother after so long an absence. If Andromache was anxious, her patience with her husband wearing thin, then Paris would be intolerable. That is if he were in any state to maintain one of his princely sulks.
Yet Paris’s illness did trouble Andromache. It took a great deal to lay up a prince of Troy, even one as inclined to indulgence as Paris. But more than that, Hector would be troubled when he arrived home. And a troubled Hector was something Andromache had seen too much of in the last three years. Three years of bloodshed and grief were molded into his brows. Written on his hands. In his touch.
Andromache knew that she should go and see to Paris. Knowing the full extent of his illness, she could better prepare for Hector. He would take the news better if he received it from his wife. But her heart chilled at the thought of being alone with Aphrodite’s prince. Small, lean, childlike Paris had conquered Hector of Troy. She had seen it with her own eyes. How could she face the youth who brought her husband willingly to his knees? This boy had again shattered her husband into a thousand pieces only to place him back together again, working himself deeper under Hector’s skin.
Andromache could not heal a shattered Hector. She was one the shards.
With a silent prayer to Athena for strength she made her way to Paris’s chambers.
***
Alexandros was lying prostrate on a soft reclining lounge. His servants drifted quietly about him tending to his needs as gently as if he were a woman swollen with child. They started when they saw Andromache enter the doorway to the prince’s house. Paris looked as if he wanted to flee.
Andromache spoke clearly to the servants. “Leave this house. I have need of a word with Alexandros.”
The servants paused, unclear of how to respond. Andromache would one day be their queen, this was certain, but as a woman she had no right to dismiss the prince’s servants without his consent. But Paris nodded his head and the room was quickly emptied of help.
“What is it you wish to see me about, dear Sister?” Paris’s voice seemed strained by fever and fear. He was not fully well, but he had not missed the import of Hector’s wife calling upon him late in the evening.
“I wish to see that you are well,” Andromache answered calmly. She had never seen Paris in such a state. His skin was flushed with fever and his eyes were wild. His robe had fallen open exposing his chest. The fine dusting of hair at his navel was dampened with sweat. He looked the picture of debauchery. Wild and fierce.
He looked… like his brother.
Andromache’s stomach tightened. She had never paid much mind to the fact that Alexandros was of the same blood as Hector, but now there was no mistaking it. Paris’s curls, wet against his brow, were the same curls Andromache’s own hands had grasped in the heat of passion. His skin was the same skin she had marked with her lips and teeth. She knew he would taste like Hector. And she wanted to taste.
At this she relaxed. Smiled. He looked nervous. Aphrodite’s beloved he was indeed. Bewitching, of that there was no doubt, but he was not his brother. Not her beloved Hector. No. The similarities were there of course, but Paris was narrow where Hector was broad. He was youth where Hector was experience. Andromache need not fear him.
She crossed the room and knelt beside his lounge. Paris shifted uncomfortably. Whatever she was doing, it was clearly not what he had expected. He had never been overly close with Andromache. He loved her dearly, but there was an unspoken tension between them. She knew that the marks on his neck were placed there by Hector’s lips and hands and he knew that Hector’s fears and words of love had only Andromache as their witness.
Hector had been gone for weeks yet faint bruising still lingered on his brother’s wrists, shoulders and undoubtedly his hidden hips as well, a faint yellow against the heated bronze. Had Hector kissed those wounds? Had his eyes been full of sorrow when he saw what he had done? Had he held Paris in his anchoring arms, just as he held Andromache on those nights when he forgot gentleness for passion? Had Paris enjoyed it as much as Andromache had?
Paris’s eyes followed her hands to a towel and basin of cool water one of the servants had been using to wipe his brow. She dipped her smooth fingertips in and grasped the cloth.
“May I?” she asked quietly.
Paris sat up abruptly. That was a job for a servant! There were several things Paris was ready to accept from Andromache: anger, harsh words, tears, ambivalence, or even cold queenly tolerance. Paris had not anticipated… this.
Andromache watched the frantic struggle behind the prince’s eyes. She intended him no harm, but she was in no mind to ease his fear. Andromache was well aware of the thin line Paris walked with her. She was Hector’s wife. The highest princess of Troy. One word from her could tilt the already precarious balance of power between the brothers.
Paris seemed to regain some semblance of control over his emotions and schooled his face into a neutral expression. His eyes drifted down to his lap and he gave a small nod.
There had been several occasions for Andromache to tend the sick. As a child she had watched over her brothers and father when they took ill, her mother having a strong distaste for illness of any sort. And Hector was always more than slightly reticent to see the healers. He insisted that it worried Hecuba and the people of Troy to see him weakened. Andromache had seen him through everything from fevers and broken bones to head injuries and torn muscles.
Her hands were gentle as they wrung the damp cloth and brought it to Paris’s forehead. He began to relax as the cool water and Andromache’s skilled hands eased his burning skin. He shivered slightly as a fever chill took him, and he found his shoulders quickly wrapped in a soft woolen blanket one of the servants had left. Andromache brushed the curls away from his forehead as Paris closed his eyes. He looked like a demigod. Defiant of his own weakness, but with a quiet tinge of mortality.
Andromache let him rest, soothing the still exposed skin of his neck, chest and legs. There was much she wished to say to him. She wished to give him her blessing. Or perhaps her forgiveness. She wanted to yell and scream. She wished he had never come to Troy. Had never been taken by her husband. She wanted to comfort him and curse him. Such was the enigma of Paris: a blessing and a curse; beloved of the Gods.
Her hands paused on this thought and Paris’s eyes drifted open.
“What troubles you, Sister?” He had always called her Sister, never simply his brother’s wife. She had not allowed herself to pause and wonder why.
Andromache’s response was halted by the door to Paris’s house being wrenched open with the force of a hurricane. It slammed against the wall and Paris bolted straight up with something akin to fear or expectancy.
Hector appeared in the doorway.
Every muscle of his body was tight as a bowstring. His eyes saw only his brother. Nostril’s flaring he looked like a raging bull ready to charge. As his desperate gaze raked down Paris’s body, he was halted at the sight of a woman.
Andromache.
His wife… On her knees before his wanton libertine brother.
His heart stopped. He took in the picture the two created. Andromache’s lips were dark. Her hands still held a moist cloth. Had she been bathing Paris? Bathing him? Hector’s eyes went to his brother. Finding his robe in disarray, lain out on his most decadent recliner, his skin slick and his hair wild, Hector’s mind told a tale he did not wish to hear.
“Hector.”
His attention flew to Andromache, who had risen during his perusal of the younger prince. Her eyes showed no betrayal and Hector began to breathe normally again. Andromache watched and waited for her husband to compose himself. She had seen the accusations forming in his eyes. The anger. The hurt. She saw it transform into something else now.
Guilt.
Hector’s intentions when he had stormed into Paris’s room had been clear. He wished to take. To possess. To own. The carnality in his movements spoke volumes to Andromache and doubtless to Paris as well. Hector’s time in the city was limited, and he had sought his brother before his wife and child. Again.
“Your brother is not well,” Andromache said softly, taking pity on her husband. “He has been confined to his house.”
Hector tensed almost imperceivably. “I… I had heard,” he spoke forthrightly though the news had been unknown to him. “I had merely thought to see if he was healing.”
Andromache did not give Paris a chance to speak. “His fever has all but broken. He should be well before the sun rises.”
The young prince looked at once affronted and relieved. He trusted Andromache’s judgment on his health, but she was clearly giving Hector the chance to leave gracefully with minimal discomfort. He would not stay after this.
Paris did not want Hector to go. And that was enough to tip the tables against him.
Hector wished his brother a speedy recovery then turned on his heel and left, presumably expecting Andromache to follow. Looking back once at the petulant young man behind her, Andromache followed the black cloud that was Hector down the long corridors to the house they shared.
She did not pretend to understand the relationship between the two brothers. Hector loved her, of this she was sure. Loved her more than life. His actions with Paris were those of a man possessed. Indeed, Aphrodite had long ago discovered the joys of beguiling Troy’s chief defender. Hector had often said it was the intervention of the Gods that returned his caravan to the city the morning of Andromache’s first formal dinner at the palace with her father and brothers.
Priam had desired lumber from the fine trees on her father’s land. A young Andromache had been brought along to keep the men company; there were hopes also that one of the noblemen of Troy would desire her for a bride. No one suspected the eye she would catch would be that of Hector the High Prince.
Their courtship had been fast and passionate. Hector had once professed that he had felt as if the entire city of Troy was burning with the force of his desire. That the only way to slake the flames was to take her as his wife. The memory made Andromache smile. Not often did Hector profess his love openly in such poetic terms. Instead he showed her with his touch, his eyes, and the ragged whispers that found their way into her heart from where they were panted into her shoulders, neck and hair.
It had been too long.
Andromache pushed open the heavy door to Hector’s chamber. He stood before the large window that overlooked the homes of Troy bent over unlacing his greaves. He had already removed his breastplate and bracers leaving only a wrap of linen which hung about his hips. Hector finished removing his armor and stood slowly upright.
The expanse of his back filled Andromache’s awareness. Smooth. Firm. Solid as the man before her. She watched as every breath expanded his ribs and slowly raised his shoulders. A fine glow of sweat covered him from head to toe. Every muscle seemed to still carry the weight of his armor. She paused to consider her husband. He had loved her as none other. Unfaithfulness was not in his nature. The one time he had taken a mistress, at his father’s urging as was his right as a prince of Troy, he had fathered a child. He had come to Andromache to beg for her forgiveness, though there was nothing to forgive. Andromache had nursed the babe at her own breast to ease her husband’s suffering.
And now he suffered again.
Hector bore her gaze in silence. He did not turn, could not face her familiar gaze. What she saw in his actions with Paris, she knew he did not know. He had no desire to face whatever emotion plagued his wife. He… feared what he would see.
“Hector.” The word came as a whisper. A prayer. Still he did not turn. His head fell forward. He did not turn as he heard the soft footsteps of his wife coming toward him. He did not turn as he felt her hands move up his back, one traveling around his shield arm and over his shoulder to the broad expanse of his chest, the other over his side to rest at the top of his abdomen. He felt her lips touch the relatively unmarred skin where his shoulder and neck met, just above a bite mark he knew was not quite healed. Felt her breath across his guilty skin.
He turned.
Andromache met her husband’s eyes. Slowly his lips parted waiting for fumbled words to fall gracelessly from his mouth, no doubt excuses for crimes yet unspoken of, but a hand rose between them. To protect them both from any lies that might come between them now.
Andromache spoke softly, not trusting her voice beyond a whisper. “You are here now, my love. That is all I need tonight.” Arms wrapped around her and she felt the gentle scrape of a beard against her cheek before she was fully encased in the arms of her beloved Hector.
FIN
This fic is dedicated to the extremely patient(ish)elvensorceress who is the wind beneath my wings. She goes through each bit with me and makes me fight for every line. *smushes*
~Susan
Title: Wound and Salve
Author: Susan
Pairing: Hector/Paris, Hector/Andromache
Rating: Light R
Feedback: I live for it.
Beta by the ever wonderful
montmorencyA/N Takes place three years into the Trojan War. Set roughly six months after Scars
Summary:Andromache looks for Hector. She finds more than she expected.
Part I: Wound
Andromache had never witnessed it before. Oh, she had known. She had seen the suckled bruises on Hector’s chest and shoulders. She had seen the vivid guilt that stormed its way through his once contented features. But she had never seen Hector on his knees. Before another man. Before his brother.
She had been awaiting Hector’s return from what had become hours worth of council with King Priam when she had the urge to walk near the houses of her brothers-in-law and their wives. She had spoken kind words with the wives of Cebrione, Axion, and Echemmon whose names would fade from history. She had just parted with the fair Laodice when she had heard a disturbance from Prince Paris’s house. It sounded as if furniture was being thrown about.
As Andromache approached, she could tell those noises must be coming from Paris’s private chamber. What she heard made her blood run cold.
“Hector, please!”
It was his brother’s voice.
The door to Paris’s chamber was not closed all the way.
Through the small opening she could see shadows of figures. As she drew closer, she could make out slender hips pressed backwards against a table. Then large hands pressing sharply into hipbones. A head of long dark curls came into view, obscuring more intimate places. Hector’s curls.
Tears burned at Andromache’s eyes and her heart clenched in her chest. She could not breathe. She watched her husband’s strong hands wrap around the velvet erection that had now been exposed. Every fiber of her being stung with betrayal. The power of seeing the act itself was fiercer than Andromache could have expected. But then she saw…
Hector’s hands moved with love.
His entire body came into view as Andromache swayed. She longed to run to him. To be wrapped in the strong arms that necessary duties and countless battles had too long denied her. To raise him off his knees and bring him onto a soft bed. To place her lips on the lips of her husband. Lips that were now denying Paris the contact he so clearly desired.
The young prince’s hips writhed as much as was possible in Hector’s strong grip. He began to moan plaintively when Hector refused to touch the center of his need. “Hector… oh please, Hector… please…”
“No!” Hector’s voice was fierce. Ragged and worn as if he had been raging against Poseidon himself. “You will not undo me so easily, Alexandros. I will not become your puppet. A toy to play with as you see fit. You will not own me, Paris. You will find completion when I desire you to do so. You will succumb to me, not I to you. You will…”
But the rest of Hector’s castigation was lost beneath a wail from Paris. Andromache gasped. It was not Poseidon with whom Hector fought. It was Aphrodite herself.
Paris thrust his hips once more and Hector roared. Andromache’s eyes grew wide as she saw her husband open and take his brother past his lips and into his mouth. She whipped her head away.
Never had such sounds been made within the walls of Troy. The gasps and wails and moans that issued from the young prince’s mouth were those of death and bliss. Andromache shook as she slowly slipped to the stone floor against the outside wall of Paris’s house. Those sounds spilling forth were the fault of Hector. Of Hector’s mouth and lips and tongue. Andromache’s eyes snapped shut as Paris’s turmoil began to exorcise itself in words.
“Hector! ... I am… I am… Oh, Hector!”
The wail was inhuman. The sound of a goddess done toying with her prey.
Andromache choked back a sob. She wished to flee to the safety of her own house. But no matter where she turned she would not be able to drown out the voice of the young man calling to her husband for completion. She could not escape the vision of Hector, tamer of horses on his knees before a shepherd boy.
Part II
Title: Salve
Author: Susan
Pairing: Hector/Paris, Hector/Andromache
Rating: PG, but Angsty
Summary: Three months later Paris has taken Ill.
Hector was due back in the city tomorrow after weeks of hard warfare. Andromache did not know if Paris had been informed, but it seemed unlikely. Paris had come down with a fever yesterday morning and the servants believed it best not to excite him while he was feeling poorly.
Andromache laughed at their logic. If anything, news of Hector’s return would spark new life in Alexandros. By the god’s will or his own he would be well enough to meet his brother after so long an absence. If Andromache was anxious, her patience with her husband wearing thin, then Paris would be intolerable. That is if he were in any state to maintain one of his princely sulks.
Yet Paris’s illness did trouble Andromache. It took a great deal to lay up a prince of Troy, even one as inclined to indulgence as Paris. But more than that, Hector would be troubled when he arrived home. And a troubled Hector was something Andromache had seen too much of in the last three years. Three years of bloodshed and grief were molded into his brows. Written on his hands. In his touch.
Andromache knew that she should go and see to Paris. Knowing the full extent of his illness, she could better prepare for Hector. He would take the news better if he received it from his wife. But her heart chilled at the thought of being alone with Aphrodite’s prince. Small, lean, childlike Paris had conquered Hector of Troy. She had seen it with her own eyes. How could she face the youth who brought her husband willingly to his knees? This boy had again shattered her husband into a thousand pieces only to place him back together again, working himself deeper under Hector’s skin.
Andromache could not heal a shattered Hector. She was one the shards.
With a silent prayer to Athena for strength she made her way to Paris’s chambers.
***
Alexandros was lying prostrate on a soft reclining lounge. His servants drifted quietly about him tending to his needs as gently as if he were a woman swollen with child. They started when they saw Andromache enter the doorway to the prince’s house. Paris looked as if he wanted to flee.
Andromache spoke clearly to the servants. “Leave this house. I have need of a word with Alexandros.”
The servants paused, unclear of how to respond. Andromache would one day be their queen, this was certain, but as a woman she had no right to dismiss the prince’s servants without his consent. But Paris nodded his head and the room was quickly emptied of help.
“What is it you wish to see me about, dear Sister?” Paris’s voice seemed strained by fever and fear. He was not fully well, but he had not missed the import of Hector’s wife calling upon him late in the evening.
“I wish to see that you are well,” Andromache answered calmly. She had never seen Paris in such a state. His skin was flushed with fever and his eyes were wild. His robe had fallen open exposing his chest. The fine dusting of hair at his navel was dampened with sweat. He looked the picture of debauchery. Wild and fierce.
He looked… like his brother.
Andromache’s stomach tightened. She had never paid much mind to the fact that Alexandros was of the same blood as Hector, but now there was no mistaking it. Paris’s curls, wet against his brow, were the same curls Andromache’s own hands had grasped in the heat of passion. His skin was the same skin she had marked with her lips and teeth. She knew he would taste like Hector. And she wanted to taste.
At this she relaxed. Smiled. He looked nervous. Aphrodite’s beloved he was indeed. Bewitching, of that there was no doubt, but he was not his brother. Not her beloved Hector. No. The similarities were there of course, but Paris was narrow where Hector was broad. He was youth where Hector was experience. Andromache need not fear him.
She crossed the room and knelt beside his lounge. Paris shifted uncomfortably. Whatever she was doing, it was clearly not what he had expected. He had never been overly close with Andromache. He loved her dearly, but there was an unspoken tension between them. She knew that the marks on his neck were placed there by Hector’s lips and hands and he knew that Hector’s fears and words of love had only Andromache as their witness.
Hector had been gone for weeks yet faint bruising still lingered on his brother’s wrists, shoulders and undoubtedly his hidden hips as well, a faint yellow against the heated bronze. Had Hector kissed those wounds? Had his eyes been full of sorrow when he saw what he had done? Had he held Paris in his anchoring arms, just as he held Andromache on those nights when he forgot gentleness for passion? Had Paris enjoyed it as much as Andromache had?
Paris’s eyes followed her hands to a towel and basin of cool water one of the servants had been using to wipe his brow. She dipped her smooth fingertips in and grasped the cloth.
“May I?” she asked quietly.
Paris sat up abruptly. That was a job for a servant! There were several things Paris was ready to accept from Andromache: anger, harsh words, tears, ambivalence, or even cold queenly tolerance. Paris had not anticipated… this.
Andromache watched the frantic struggle behind the prince’s eyes. She intended him no harm, but she was in no mind to ease his fear. Andromache was well aware of the thin line Paris walked with her. She was Hector’s wife. The highest princess of Troy. One word from her could tilt the already precarious balance of power between the brothers.
Paris seemed to regain some semblance of control over his emotions and schooled his face into a neutral expression. His eyes drifted down to his lap and he gave a small nod.
There had been several occasions for Andromache to tend the sick. As a child she had watched over her brothers and father when they took ill, her mother having a strong distaste for illness of any sort. And Hector was always more than slightly reticent to see the healers. He insisted that it worried Hecuba and the people of Troy to see him weakened. Andromache had seen him through everything from fevers and broken bones to head injuries and torn muscles.
Her hands were gentle as they wrung the damp cloth and brought it to Paris’s forehead. He began to relax as the cool water and Andromache’s skilled hands eased his burning skin. He shivered slightly as a fever chill took him, and he found his shoulders quickly wrapped in a soft woolen blanket one of the servants had left. Andromache brushed the curls away from his forehead as Paris closed his eyes. He looked like a demigod. Defiant of his own weakness, but with a quiet tinge of mortality.
Andromache let him rest, soothing the still exposed skin of his neck, chest and legs. There was much she wished to say to him. She wished to give him her blessing. Or perhaps her forgiveness. She wanted to yell and scream. She wished he had never come to Troy. Had never been taken by her husband. She wanted to comfort him and curse him. Such was the enigma of Paris: a blessing and a curse; beloved of the Gods.
Her hands paused on this thought and Paris’s eyes drifted open.
“What troubles you, Sister?” He had always called her Sister, never simply his brother’s wife. She had not allowed herself to pause and wonder why.
Andromache’s response was halted by the door to Paris’s house being wrenched open with the force of a hurricane. It slammed against the wall and Paris bolted straight up with something akin to fear or expectancy.
Hector appeared in the doorway.
Every muscle of his body was tight as a bowstring. His eyes saw only his brother. Nostril’s flaring he looked like a raging bull ready to charge. As his desperate gaze raked down Paris’s body, he was halted at the sight of a woman.
Andromache.
His wife… On her knees before his wanton libertine brother.
His heart stopped. He took in the picture the two created. Andromache’s lips were dark. Her hands still held a moist cloth. Had she been bathing Paris? Bathing him? Hector’s eyes went to his brother. Finding his robe in disarray, lain out on his most decadent recliner, his skin slick and his hair wild, Hector’s mind told a tale he did not wish to hear.
“Hector.”
His attention flew to Andromache, who had risen during his perusal of the younger prince. Her eyes showed no betrayal and Hector began to breathe normally again. Andromache watched and waited for her husband to compose himself. She had seen the accusations forming in his eyes. The anger. The hurt. She saw it transform into something else now.
Guilt.
Hector’s intentions when he had stormed into Paris’s room had been clear. He wished to take. To possess. To own. The carnality in his movements spoke volumes to Andromache and doubtless to Paris as well. Hector’s time in the city was limited, and he had sought his brother before his wife and child. Again.
“Your brother is not well,” Andromache said softly, taking pity on her husband. “He has been confined to his house.”
Hector tensed almost imperceivably. “I… I had heard,” he spoke forthrightly though the news had been unknown to him. “I had merely thought to see if he was healing.”
Andromache did not give Paris a chance to speak. “His fever has all but broken. He should be well before the sun rises.”
The young prince looked at once affronted and relieved. He trusted Andromache’s judgment on his health, but she was clearly giving Hector the chance to leave gracefully with minimal discomfort. He would not stay after this.
Paris did not want Hector to go. And that was enough to tip the tables against him.
Hector wished his brother a speedy recovery then turned on his heel and left, presumably expecting Andromache to follow. Looking back once at the petulant young man behind her, Andromache followed the black cloud that was Hector down the long corridors to the house they shared.
She did not pretend to understand the relationship between the two brothers. Hector loved her, of this she was sure. Loved her more than life. His actions with Paris were those of a man possessed. Indeed, Aphrodite had long ago discovered the joys of beguiling Troy’s chief defender. Hector had often said it was the intervention of the Gods that returned his caravan to the city the morning of Andromache’s first formal dinner at the palace with her father and brothers.
Priam had desired lumber from the fine trees on her father’s land. A young Andromache had been brought along to keep the men company; there were hopes also that one of the noblemen of Troy would desire her for a bride. No one suspected the eye she would catch would be that of Hector the High Prince.
Their courtship had been fast and passionate. Hector had once professed that he had felt as if the entire city of Troy was burning with the force of his desire. That the only way to slake the flames was to take her as his wife. The memory made Andromache smile. Not often did Hector profess his love openly in such poetic terms. Instead he showed her with his touch, his eyes, and the ragged whispers that found their way into her heart from where they were panted into her shoulders, neck and hair.
It had been too long.
Andromache pushed open the heavy door to Hector’s chamber. He stood before the large window that overlooked the homes of Troy bent over unlacing his greaves. He had already removed his breastplate and bracers leaving only a wrap of linen which hung about his hips. Hector finished removing his armor and stood slowly upright.
The expanse of his back filled Andromache’s awareness. Smooth. Firm. Solid as the man before her. She watched as every breath expanded his ribs and slowly raised his shoulders. A fine glow of sweat covered him from head to toe. Every muscle seemed to still carry the weight of his armor. She paused to consider her husband. He had loved her as none other. Unfaithfulness was not in his nature. The one time he had taken a mistress, at his father’s urging as was his right as a prince of Troy, he had fathered a child. He had come to Andromache to beg for her forgiveness, though there was nothing to forgive. Andromache had nursed the babe at her own breast to ease her husband’s suffering.
And now he suffered again.
Hector bore her gaze in silence. He did not turn, could not face her familiar gaze. What she saw in his actions with Paris, she knew he did not know. He had no desire to face whatever emotion plagued his wife. He… feared what he would see.
“Hector.” The word came as a whisper. A prayer. Still he did not turn. His head fell forward. He did not turn as he heard the soft footsteps of his wife coming toward him. He did not turn as he felt her hands move up his back, one traveling around his shield arm and over his shoulder to the broad expanse of his chest, the other over his side to rest at the top of his abdomen. He felt her lips touch the relatively unmarred skin where his shoulder and neck met, just above a bite mark he knew was not quite healed. Felt her breath across his guilty skin.
He turned.
Andromache met her husband’s eyes. Slowly his lips parted waiting for fumbled words to fall gracelessly from his mouth, no doubt excuses for crimes yet unspoken of, but a hand rose between them. To protect them both from any lies that might come between them now.
Andromache spoke softly, not trusting her voice beyond a whisper. “You are here now, my love. That is all I need tonight.” Arms wrapped around her and she felt the gentle scrape of a beard against her cheek before she was fully encased in the arms of her beloved Hector.
FIN
This fic is dedicated to the extremely patient(ish)
elvensorceress who is the wind beneath my wings. She goes through each bit with me and makes me fight for every line. *smushes*~Susan
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Date: 2005-01-20 11:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-20 01:46 pm (UTC)Andromache's characterization in based quite a bit on the Iliad and then the plays of Euripides (The Trojan Women and Andromache).
yet not above temptation
You'll find very few people are when faced with a nearly naked fever flushed Paris. *g*