Chapter 1

Lon'qu strolled down the castle hallways, re-familiarizing himself with his old haunts. Here was where the senior generals held their war councils, there was the servants' door where Lon'qu had ducked into after 'borrowing' an extra dinner serving. Little had changed in the port castle in the years he had been away.

The castle by Port Ferox was not the largest of Basilio's castles but Lon'qu had spent his first years in Basilio's service fighting, learning, and growing strong within these walls. Here had been where a Chon'sin slumboy had proven himself worthy of standing by the West Khan's side.

Now the Shepherds, having been across the long sea and back, occupied it as a temporary garrison. It had been a whole year since Lon'qu and the others had been on native soil and he could not think of a more fitting place to spend his first night back. The only thing missing was the West Khan himself.

His feet took him to Basilio's personal apartments by habit. The drawing rooms were still covered in dropcloth, creating ghosts out of the furniture and Lon'qu's footsteps left prints on the dusty carpet. Past the first set of doors, he saw another pair of prints leading towards the bedroom, piquing Lon'qu's curiosity. No one else should have access to these rooms excluding the castle staff or perhaps Flavia. And Lon'qu knew for certain the East Khan would be immersed in the celebrations in the large Feroxi halls. He pushed the door open with one hand and it swung open with ease.

The fading sunlight seeped through the cracks between the drawn curtains and most of the room remained in shadow. Lon'qu stepped in- this too was familiar territory, how many times had he been forced to fetch tea for the Khan on a chilly Feroxi night?- and saw the sheets that should have been covering the bed piled on the ground. His hand went to his sword hilt on instinct.

Someone was sleeping in the Khan's bed.

Lon'qu edged closer. Then, he snorted and let go of his sword when he saw who occupied that bed, blissfully unaware that she was drooling on the West Khan's pillow.

He sat down on the edge of the mattress and watched Haura's chest rise and fall. Lon'qu had spent many long nights watching over her sleeping form as nightmares kept him awake until several hours before dawn. She was not an elegant sleeper, with her mouth hanging open and her breath shallow and prone to stopping. Her unbound hair had splayed out across her face and the pillow. Lon'qu reached over to pull a sticky strand out of her mouth and his fingers brushed the shell of her ear as he tucked it away.

She sighed and from the flutter of her eyelashes, he knew he had woken her.

"Haura, you're not supposed to be here." he said, leaning in, voice low, trying not to drag her out of the sweetness of sleep but not wanting her to fall back asleep.

"...Five more minutes." She whispered, her voice slurring with drowsiness. Her eyes closed again and he could tell from the way her breaths slowed that she was falling back asleep.

This he knew how to deal with. Lon'qu slipped his hand underneath the bed sheets and pinched the soft skin of her thigh, hard enough to hurt but not bruise. Haura's eyes flew open at once and she swore loudly.

"We're not even on march." She hissed, glaring at him.

"You are not sleeping here." He said unapologetically.

"Oh, I'm going to kick your ass the next time we spar." Haura said with a huff as she stretched out against the sheets to shake the sleep from her body.

"You speak as if you are my better in swordsmanship." he said with a snort. Still, he laid his cool fingers against her warm skin as an apology. Lon'qu rubbed his thumb against the sore spot and she pressed back against his fingers with a sigh.

"Don't need to be better when I'm a tactician. Just you wait. I have...stratagems." She said through a yawn as her back and joints cracked into place. Lon'qu could feel the warmth of her body clinging onto the sheets and blankets around her. Although the setting sun had left the corners of the Feroxi castle cold and sharp, this corner of the bed stayed invitingly warm.

A trickle of sweat crept down his collar. For a moment, the bed blurred in front of his eyes, and it was not Haura that lounged there but Basilio- no, Basilio's memory, with his laugh and his rough words echoing in his mind.

'What are you doing, boy? She's a beautiful lady and you should do somethin' more than grunt like an impotent seadog. Bwa hah hah, no need to roll your eyes at me again. Your lady problem only gettin' worse, huh? You try working with Flavia, that'll give you somethin' to actually be scared of in a woman. If that piece of armor even contains one, aha hah!'

The memory of the woman by Basilio's side was fuzzier and Lon'qu could not really remember anything about her aside from her open slumped posture, an alarming amount of skin, and an expression meant to put men at ease but only injected the fear of the gods in Lon'qu. He felt his stomach drop with years old embarrassment as she did not deserve the harsh words Lon'qu blurted out in an attempt to ward her off. At least Basilio stopped making Lon'qu run errands to his bedside when he had...company over.

Thinking about those times only made Lon'qu aware of how, even after he shot up taller than the Khan, Basilio had been a titan beyond Lon'qu's reach. In his bed, both Lon'qu and Haura combined covered only a corner, leaving the majority of the sheets empty and cold. For the first time in many years, Lon'qu was unnerved by Ferox's frigid surroundings. His hand brushed up the skin of Haura's hip, burrowing deeper for warmth, before he realized the lack of fabric against his fingers.

"...where in the name of the gods are your pants?" he asked.

"You know I don't like sleeping with pants." Haura said without shame.

This was true to Lon'qu's continuing consternation.

"And if someone were to discover you?" he challenged.

He ran his hand absentmindedly down her calf, her body heat loosening his stiff fingers, and felt the familiar prickle of her leg hair against her sea-salted skin, rough from the road. The calluses on his fingers from years of swordplay caught against her. It was a reminder of how they had beaten and bent their bodies to acquire the strength in their arms and the prudence in their minds. Haura may had not been raised in Regna Ferox but within all of her Plegian fire and Ylissean nobility, she had Feroxi guts in her belly and Feroxi steel in her spine.

It was also what made both them both so stubborn.

"That's what the blankets are for, silly. And this isn't the ship. No one will walk in." Haura said amidst a yawn. Lon'qu frowned. While he admired her fearsome prowess on the battlefield and the command in her voice as she conducted their troops to victory, a Haura relaxed and drowsy in a warm bed was not to be divulged to anyone else. He guarded those moments as he thought he should, a jealous lover, Haura had termed him gleefully, with no intention of sharing. That had been in part what made the last month on the ship so unbearable.

The dank belly of the ship hardly allowed for privacy. Plegian crafts were not designed for their crews' comfort and while Haura got the one tiny cabin on the ship thanks to her rank, being married to her did not let him escape sleeping in the communal area. Lon'qu would not mind as he barely slept anyway, but it proved challenging for other reasons.

Haura's cot barely fit her, let alone Lon'qu and even from that small room, everything echoed into the bowels of the ship. Sleeping on the ship meant always being in the company of others and sleeping on the ship meant biting down into pillows, sneaking in and out through creaky doors, and keeping one's clothes in order at all times. Lon'qu and Haura, as stubborn as they were, flagged out after the second week. It made him flush just to think about it.

Biting back his retort that he had just walked in, he bent down to retrieve her trousers from the ground.

"And why did you think it was a good idea to just sleep half-naked in a khan's bed?" He said through gritted teeth. He avoided her eyes in embarrassment as he tossed her trousers to her. His aim was off and they landed on her head as she was sitting up.

"You're bad tempered all of a sudden. What happened? You were thrilled to be back in Regna Ferox earlier." Haura asked, squinting at him.

"It's nothing. You haven't answered my question."

"For your information, it was Flavia who suggested, well, demanded that I should crash on her bed." Haura said and scowled as she pulled her pants off her head. There was a real irritation in her voice now, but Lon'qu was too distracted by her words to back off.

"Wait. You said Flavia said this was her bed?"

"Yes, Lon'qu. So I said, it's fine-"

"Haura, this is Basilio's bed."

She fell silent and whatever remaining sluggishness in her expression disappeared with her narrowed eyes. Her shoulders had tensed up and her back had straightened. Lon'qu was uncertain, but she seemed to struggle with something for a moment before her confrontational air vanished and her entire expression fell.

"I see..."

Her face filled with concern despite how exhausted she looked and Lon'qu cursed his unwieldy tongue. He wished he had just stayed silent, that he had let her return to sleep because if there was something that disarmed him completely, it was when she demanded to show him exactly how much she cared for him.

"This castle was where you first met Basilio, wasn't it? Do you need to talk about...?" she asked and climbed out of the sheets, careful to smooth them out behind her. He watched her with guarded eyes as she kneeled by his side with her knees against his thighs. The light touch made his skin prickle but he stopped himself from pulling away.

"The Feroxi are no stranger to great warriors falling in battle-" he said.

The old irritation returned on her face for half a second before she managed to smooth it away. "If you're going to feed me those lines again, I'm actually going to get angry. You can hide your feelings to everyone else, if it helps you get by, but we've always been honest with each other, haven't we?"

"My apologies. I am not-" Lon'qu said, closing his eyes for a moment.

"Good with words." Haura finished. When he opened them to look at her, his face full of innocent surprise, she laughed. "I am your partner, you know. I'd like to think I know you better than you give me credit for. Take your time. I'm going to be here until we're both old and grey."

Lon'qu felt his breath catch and could not hold her stare. Perhaps a few months ago, he would not have been able to place the sensation rising from his stomach to the roof of his mouth. But now that he could put a name to this desire, to touch her, it overwhelmed him. Perhaps he wanted to since the first moment when he saw her sprawled out and relaxed in those sheets and it was only now under the honesty of her eyes that he could no longer suppress the feeling.

He leaned forward, a little uncertain and hesitant. His lips felt dry and he licked them, feeling her eyes watch him. He rarely took initiative like this and it took her a moment to make the connection. Lon'qu did not dare move, suspended in the moment, watching, and waiting. Then, she tilted her head to invite him.

Lon'qu paused for half a short breath before dipping down to press a kiss to her lips.

Haura smiled against his mouth and pushed herself closer. Her hands flew up immediately to cup his face, but she restrained herself to a feather light touch. He could taste the remnants of her slumber, languid and comfortable, on her mouth and it washed away his anxious thoughts to nothing but her.

"Can I…?" He asked when she pulled away to part her lips. And the words were too embarrassing to say out loud, especially when their noses touched and Haura's closed eyes fluttered open to watch his, leaving his breaths shaky.

"I'd like that." she mumbled. He reached out to wrap his arms around her shoulders. Haura scooted onto his lap, piling herself into him and throwing her naked legs over his right thigh. She warmed him from toes to the tips of his ears as she snuggled against him. Her pants fell to the ground, forgotten.

"Sometimes you're an ass and I can't stand you. Then you go and do something like this," Haura grumbled into his neck. "This is for being so cagey and trying to push me away." She nipped at his throat, not hard enough to bruise yet but with enough sting to make him jerk a little. Wherever her teeth caught, she made sure to lay a kiss ontop and Lon'qu could feel his cheeks burn. He tightened his hold on her.

"Haura, please-" he muttered and tried to angle away from her distracting mouth.

"Mm, okay." She pulled away from his neck and Lon'qu relaxed. Wrapping her arm around his shoulders to steady herself, Haura settled into his let the silence fall over them, listening to each other's steady breathing. It had been a long time since a moment like this.

"Do you remember how Morgan kept waking up and being sick in the middle of the night?" Haura murmured, trying not to disturb the quiet. Lon'qu grunted. "And he came to me but you didn't let me go to him?"

"I was up already. There was little reason to call you out of bed."

"Morgan told me you stayed with him until he fell asleep and brought him to Libra the next day. You took wonderful care of him. You will be- no, you are quite the father." Haura said and traced vectors on her own leg, some familiar graph to her eyes but just a series of random motions to Lon'qu.

"...cease with the flattery. It is embarrassing."

"Aw, I know you like it a little bit. Just a little bit." Haura teased.

"...He prefers to learn under you regardless. He is his mother's- no, your child through and through." Lon'qu said. Before Haura could object with some clever retort, he continued, "But I prefer him the way he is. Everyone from child to warrior needs their idol. Basilio...was mine. You are Morgan's."

Haura could not help the bashful smile that spread across her face.

"Who is flattering who now? When we get a baby Morgan in this timeline, perhaps this time around it will be you he looks up to most. ...actually, do you think we should start trying to make a Morgan now? Chrom's had Lucina for a good two years now."

"I am going to drop you."

Haura continued cheekily, "Or maybe we could give Morgan a tiny baby sister. Would you be okay with a itty-bitty grumpy Lon'qu daughter? We could even start right now- no time like during the celebrations of a war's end, right?"

"Nnrgh-!"

Lon'qu swung her forward as if to dump her onto the floor and Haura's laugh was punctuated with a reflexive shout of alarm. She threw both her arms around his neck to keep herself from falling out of his lap and when he pulled her back, she slumped against his chest with a groan. Then, she started laughing again and he even let out an amused huff.

"Feel calm enough to talk now? That enough distractions for you?"

Lon'qu snorted. Of course that had been her plan. Haura herself was the best distraction when she wanted to be. And as usual, her strategy had worked perfectly. He did feel far more at ease than when he first entered. And yet, even if he wanted to say something, he realized he had little idea of where to start. Looking around the room, he racked his brains for some inspiration. Then he remembered exactly where he was.

"...when I first was recruited into Basilio's service, this was the castle I trained in. I looked up to him first as a warrior. I suppose he was also the one that taught me a little about fatherhood, when he took me under his wing..." Lon'qu began. Haura slipped down to sit between his legs so she could put her head against his shoulder and listened.


A/N: So this started off as a joke and a bad smutfic idea at 3 am and quickly bloomed into something far more elaborate. So have some slice-of-life married army life...sort of. We never got to see the effect of Basilio's death on Lon'qu and Olivia. Bundled with the fact Haura knows about the bait and switch, there are just layers and layers. ^^

I like to showcase a bunch of different aspects of Haura and Lon'qu's marriage: their disagreements, their communication, and their sex life. (◡‿◡)