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Ashe Ubert can’t recall another time he wept into his food, but he finds the meal Dedue saved for him even more delicious in the wake of shedding his tears. After the loss of his parents and his adoptive brother and father, he’s more than familiar with grief. Yet the release of that grief is a catharsis he rarely allows himself. What time is there for grieving in war, when every moment feels so tenuous? If he lets himself cry for every person he’s loved and lost, he’ll never stop the deluge. He’ll weep until he’s wrung his body dry and nothing remains but an empty husk.
Still, he feels no shame as Dedue watches him weep and gently teases him about over-salting the food.
“Please sit with me,” he says, gesturing to the chair across the table. Ashe can’t abide the idea of Dedue standing beside him, as if waiting to serve him. They are, and always have been, equals.
Dedue accepts his invitation, and Ashe finishes his Duscur-inspired meal in companionable silence. By now, he’s long accustomed to Dedue’s quiet reserve. Dedue is not a man of very many words, which Ashe counts as a pity because he can’t think of anyone else whose voice soothes him more.
“You know,” Ashe says, setting down his fork, “I’m so happy to have you back with us. I… Dimitri wasn’t the only one to mourn you. I did, too. I thought of you often, and I wished I could see you one more time. When you appeared at the Great Bridge of Myrddin, I…” Ashe had nearly fallen to his knees. Would have if he wasn’t mid-battle with lives at stake and his housemates and the professor depending on him. The boy he’d loved from the Officers Academy, suddenly, inexplicably back from the dead? Ashe could scarcely believe his eyes at the time.
It’s too revealing, too raw a confession, so Ashe lets the words wither on his tongue. He settles for saying, “I’m just so glad, is all. I missed you.”
Dedue’s eyes widen, his surprise obvious. In Ashe’s opinion, there shouldn’t be any cause for shock. He didn’t think he’d hidden his pining very well in those days. But then, Dedue had always been so focused on his liege. Ashe isn’t sure Dedue noticed much beyond His Highness back then. His dedication to their Crown Prince hasn't changed, even now, though there are moments when they share kitchen duty or cross paths in the greenhouse that Ashe feels a certain tension between them, when he senses Dedue’s gaze lingering on him a little longer than is strictly proper. It’s enough to inspire hope, but until the war ends, Ashe has no real expectations. Hope is a fragile emotion in times of peace; in war, it feels almost reckless to wish for anything beyond survival.
“I should wash these dishes and get to bed.” Ashe pushes back his chair and starts to collect the dirty plates from the table.
“Please, allow me to take them,” Dedue says, standing. “It is late, and you are tired from your mission.”
Ashe shakes his head. “No, you made me this delicious meal. The least I can do is clean up after myself.”
Dedue appears as if he wants to protest, but he’s silent as he follows Ashe into the kitchen and watches him wash the dishes in a tub of soapy water. The rest of the area is spotless, which Ashe has come to expect from Dedue. He’s careful and precise in everything he does, and that includes constantly tidying up while he works.
Once Ashe has dried the dishes with a cloth and put them back in their proper place, he smiles up at Dedue. Both the kitchen and the dining hall are dim, most of the candles and torches having been extinguished for the night. Dedue’s hair is a shock of white in the semidarkness, and Ashe, as ever, longs to touch the closely shorn sides, to see it loose about his face instead of in its customary ponytail. It’s something he wouldn’t dare ask, of course, but he thinks about it often. And now, as tired and emotionally worn as he feels, the urge to touch and draw comfort is stronger than ever.
“Well,” Ashe says, tearing his gaze away, “I’ll be off, then. Thank you again, Dedue. I appreciate you thinking of me and remembering what I said about wanting to try more Duscur cuisine.” Ashe starts to turn, but Dedue says his name, stopping him mid-motion. “Yes?” he asks, tipping his head back for a better view of Dedue’s face.
Dedue’s jaw works. “I… I am grateful for what you said, about mourning me. I regret to have caused you any pain. I did not intend to let you and the others believe I had died.” He hesitates for a moment before stepping closer, until they’re close enough to touch and Ashe can feel his body heat through his armor. “During the years I spent searching for His Highness, I also thought of you,” Dedue adds softly. “If I had known you were all at the monastery, I would have come here directly, but I heard rumors it had fallen to ruin and been overrun by thieves.”
Heat prickles on the back of Ashe’s neck. He tries to ignore the sensation, but Dedue is standing closer than he ever has before, and he smells amazing, like sharp, freshly cut herbs and the spices he put into the food. Ashe wonders if he’d taste the same.
Ashe wets his mouth, a nervous swipe of his tongue. “I… It was, yes, for a time. We took care of that when we arrived. It seemed the most logical location for a base of operations, once we’d all come together.”
“It is, yes.” Dedue reaches out with a bare hand, having removed his gauntlets when he joined Ashe at the table, but he pauses before his fingers connect with Ashe's skin. “May I?”
Ashe isn’t sure what Dedue is asking permission for—to simply touch him or do something more, but he nods anyway.
Dedue’s big, scarred palm cups his cheek, and the touch is as gentle as the one Ashe has seen him use when handling delicate plants and seedlings in the greenhouse—so very careful, so mindful of his own strength and how easily he could crush fragile leaves and petals if he wasn’t cautious.
Ashe has only ever been touched this gently in the distant, gossamer memories of his mother. With her, it was simple comfort, the warm succor of a mother's embrace. With Dedue, the contact burns through Ashe’s body in a wildfire rush. He trembles, breath stuttering out of him, and reaches up to cover Dedue’s hand with his own, to keep it there pressed close to his face.
“I missed you as well,” Dedue says, and Ashe shakes again, his chest tightening. “There was not a day that passed that I did not think of you.”
“Oh.” Ashe’s eyes sting, and the trembling is so bad now he fears his teeth will start chattering. Overwhelmed, he turns his head and presses his lips to Dedue’s palm. A kiss for the hand that touched him so gently, for the man with the kindest of spirits, the man Ashe yearns to call his own.
It’s when Dedue’s thumb brushes his cheek that Ashe realizes he’s crying again, for the second time this evening. “I did not mean to cause you distress.” Dedue’s voice sounds pained, and his eyes are dark with remorse.
Ashe chuckles weakly. “Oh, no… these…” He sniffs and attempts to collect himself. “These are happy tears.” He lifts his own hand toward Dedue's face. “May I touch you back?”
Dedue nods, just once. “Of course.”
Ashe cups his cheek, traces the scar that cuts through the side of his mouth, another from a wound that must have split his chin. To Ashe, no other person has ever been more handsome, and the evidence of former injuries does nothing to detract from his appeal.
“I dream of touching you,” Ashe tells him, and maybe it’s too much, too revealing, but it feels right in this moment, in the candlelight, here in the kitchen where they’ve shared so much, talked and prepared countless meals together.
Food and flowers have always been Ashe’s love language, and now he realizes perhaps Dedue has been speaking it back all this time, but Ashe had been so scared to hope, to read anything into gifts given and looks exchanged, the words lost their meaning along the way.
“I dream of that also.”
Ashe's heart thuds heavily, the ache of longing a familiar presence in his chest.
In the end, he's not sure who moves first. Maybe it’s both of them, moving together. Somehow, they meet in the middle, Ashe up on his toes and Dedue bending down. The first brush of their lips makes Ashe gasp. The second, deeper kiss sets his head spinning.
Dedue’s tongue touches his lower lip, and Ashe opens for him like petals blooming. His fingers brush the short hair at Dedue’s nape, and he presses closer as Dedue’s big hands span his waist. Dedue tastes how Ashe imagined he would, warm with a hint of the spices that seasoned his food. Ashe moans into the kiss, chasing that flavor, their mouths meeting and parting again and again, this act another, more intimate language. One he fully intends to memorize.
By the time Dedue draws back, Ashe’s lips sting pleasantly. Ashe stares up at him, and the world feels hazy and soft, not fraught with danger and trauma and despair. They’re safe, sheltered here in each other’s arms, if only for the moment. But Ashe knows in his heart this memory will help sustain him until the war is finally won.
Dedue’s tender smile is one Ashe has never seen before. “Ashe,” he says, and there’s so much emotion packed into that single word, Ashe trembles from the power of it.
He kisses Dedue again. “Walk me to my room?”
Dedue pulls away from him, but he doesn't go far. When he steps back, he offers Ashe his hand.
“It would be my honor,” he says.
Smiling, Ashe accepts his hand, and together, they step out into the night.