“What are you nervous about?”
Florian paused, considering. He had only been on a plane a few times before: twice for vacations when he was young, and once for a school trip when he was in high school. He had never been to Canada, much less a place as remote and cold as Nunavut; and he would be meeting the wolf clan for the first time, Kade’s family.
“What if your family doesn’t like me?” he said. The other things seemed too silly to admit to being nervous about, but he heard a sharp breath of a laugh escape Kade.
“They’ll like you,” he said. “Well, most of them. My mom is... difficult to get along with for just about everyone. Other than her, they’ll all like you. You’re the Fae king.”
“Tell me about your mom,” Florian prompted. He could only recall Kade ever having mentioned her once or twice before—for how much he and Jerah had discussed Kade’s father, his mother seemed a mysterious figure in comparison. Kade sighed, rolling onto his back as he considered it.
“She’s very opinionated and set in her ways,” he finally settled on. “She resented my dad a lot for leaving so often to help Jerah, and she was really angry at me when I left to do the same. That’s... Kind of why I never really went back.”
“Oh,” Florian replied, mulling it over.
“But I think I understand where she’s coming from,” Kade continued after a beat of silence. “I get it. She felt like my dad was forgetting his responsibility to the clan, and she had to pick up the slack. So she might let some of that project onto you. But once she gets to know you, I think she’ll like you, too. So don’t be nervous.”
“I’ll try,” Florian sighed, but the words weren’t exactly comforting.
“My brothers and sister will like you,” Kade said. Florian could hear the smile in his voice as he said it. “They’re always happy to see me when I come home. If they know I like you, they’ll like you.”
“What about everyone else?”
“They’ll like you too.”
“Because they support the fae kingdom.”
Kade paused at that. “Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s a big part of it, of course. Florian...” He trailed off, sounding uncertain. “I like you for you. It’s true that I cared a lot about Jerah, but that has nothing to do with you. You could have been anyone, and I would have felt the same. You being Jerah’s son is just how we met.”
Florian wasn’t entirely reassured, but it was nice to hear anyway. He rolled onto his side so he could press closer to Kade, who wrapped one arm around him.
“Okay,” he murmured, his voice muffled against Kade’s chest. “I trust you.”
They set out early the next morning, getting another Uber to the airport. The cost made Florian sweat, but from what Tatiana had told him, the coffers of the Winter Court were deep and old even on Earth. She had reassured him before they left that whatever travel costs they incurred were of no worry. Still, he had never spent so much money in such a short amount of time in his life, at least not on something that felt so... frivolous. He wondered if the nervous feeling it left him with would ever fade.
Luckily, he had managed to snag a direct flight to Montreal—a layover in between would have added several hours to what was already a seven hour flight. He felt restless, and Kade, who was sound asleep in the seat next to him for half the flight, didn’t do much to ease his anxiety. But eventually they touched down in Montreal, with their next flight to Nunavuk scheduled for the next day.
“Go shower,” Kade told him, once they settled into their hotel room. “You’ll feel better after.”
Florian scowled at him—he had been nervous all day, but for Kade to comment on it so easily felt like a jab. But more than that, he was full of pent-up energy with nowhere to go, and it had been days since Kade had been inside him.
“Come shower with me?” he offered, relishing in the hint of color that rose in Kade’s face and the slight grin pulling at his lips. Surely he wanted it as badly as Florian did.
“Alright,” he said. “Get in, and I’ll join you in a minute.”
Grinning, Florian began to undress in front of him, kicking his underwear toward the taller man. Kade rolled his eyes and gathered his dirty clothes into a pile, but there was an unmistakable heat in his gaze when he looked toward Florian.
“Don’t keep me waiting,” Florian teased, before closing the bathroom door behind him.
Much to his chagrin, the hot shower did make him feel better almost instantly, washing away the grime and sweat of their travel and his nerves. His hair was drenched and his body slick with soap when he heard the bathroom door open again. Kade pulled back the curtain, naked and already hard.
“Feeling better?” he asked, as casually as if they had showered together a hundred times before, and Florian stifled a laugh.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, reaching for Kade as he stepped into the shower. “Better now that you’re here.”
Kade leaned down to kiss him. “You’re lucky it’s big enough for both of us, then,” he murmured as he pulled away, and Florian grinned wickedly in response.
“Big enough to do this, too,” he said, and dropped to his knees.
“Florian,” Kade started to protest, only to be cut off with a gasp, as Florian took his cock into his mouth. Despite his protest, his hand trailed through Florian’s hair, grabbing at the base of his skull. Florian breathed him in, the taste of him flooding his senses, as he let Kade push into his mouth until the tip brushed the back of his throat. “Fuck, Florian.”
