Frederik stayed over him for a moment longer, breathing hard, his forehead pressed into the curve of Cecil's neck as if sheer proximity were the only thing keeping him from tearing the rest of the day apart with his bare hands.
Cecil's fingers slid slowly into his hair. "For someone reminding me about time, you knotted me and know that it won't go away for another ten minutes."
Frederik raised his head enough to glare at Cecil. "You asked for it."
"I ask for many things," Cecil said with a wide, smug grin, entirely too pleased with himself for a man currently pinned under the consequences of his own decisions, "and you still indulge me."
"That is not the argument in your favor you think it is."
"It is in every argument that matters."
Frederik stared at him for one long second, as if considering whether irritation could be meaningfully separated from devotion after this many years. It could not. That had always been the problem.
Or the advantage.
