A/N: Welcome to the angsty filth my brain churned out before I could finish Ch. 69 (which is going up tomorrow, by the way). That chapter's coming soon, but until I finish with the boat shenanigans, have a smutty alternate throne room scene. I mourned the lack of smut in Ch. 69, y'all tossed ideas at me, and this is the result. If you like, you can choose to read this like Caspian's having an ✨unsettling dream✨ onboard the riverboat en route to Cair Paravel, or you can read this as the throne room scene we would've gotten if I was less mean and Caspian wasn't courting Lilliandil. (So, what this last arc was about 2 years ago). Mind the tags, y'all.
Content Warnings: sexual content (fingering, oral, sex), orgasm delay/denial, choking kink (maybe not the best kink negotiation here, folks)
Caspian
Four years.
Four years of praying and raging and longing, and this is the moment she returns?
Caspian cradles his chin in his fist, leaning on his throne's arm rest. He's not sure who is crueller: Adelina, or Aslan.
All a matter of agency, perhaps.
To his satisfaction, he does not move when the throne room doors creak open. Addie's silhouette fills the doorway, backlit by torches, and he does not so much as blink, though the sight of her jolts through him like lightning.
Her hair is short.
The minotaur guard who ushered her inside dismisses himself with a bow Caspian barely acknowledges - a distracted nod, because he cannot keep his eyes from her. Yet Addie cannot seem to meet his eyes. She inches toward his throne, unsteadily crossing the polished stone floor and the Telmarine 8-point star painted there, startling when the great doors boom shut.
She's unsettled.
Good.
Caspian straightens, the throne unyielding at his back, crown heavy on his brow. This cold metal and burnished gold of royalty is all she left him.
"Adelina," he says, voice echoing in the cavernous room. "You've returned."
Her steps falter.
"It was an accident. I shouldn't have… I just wanted…" Addie breathes and appears to steady herself. "I'll go. Give me back the rings, and I'll go."
"Go where? Back to England?"
Addie swallows. "Yes. Doctor Cornelius has the -"
"Why?"
Addie stutters into silence.
He waits. He is more patient than she deserves, but he waits.
Addie offers only silence.
Caspian repeats the question, the singular query that has haunted him every moment since she slipped through his fingers.
He only realises that his voice cracked, that his chest is a-hum with something he cannot force down, when Addie's eyes glisten.
"Why what?" she whispers.
Caspian stands on suddenly weak legs, muscles that have borne a hundred spars shivering at the mere sight of her, here, before him after so long of missing, hating, loving, regretting.
It is laughable, this farce his body would make of him. Is he not a king? Is he not a man now, no longer the boy prince Addie turned her back on?
Caspian descends the steps of his throne one at a time, willing his slow pace to lend gravitas rather than pain.
"Why have you returned?"
Addie wets her lips, pink and slightly chapped. "I didn't mean to."
What pretty lies she still tells, with that same pretty mouth.
"You have lingered here nearly a week," Caspian says, clasping his hands at his back. "Why did you not leave again?"
Addie's breath has quickened at his approach, the apples of her cheeks flushed with something he cannot name.
"Doctor Cornelius -"
"You could have used them before he took them. Why did you not?"
Addie stares up at him, unblinking, and only then does Caspian realise how close he's wandered. She is close enough to touch, if he wishes.
He does not wish to.
He doesn't
"Why are you here?" he murmurs.
Addie's lips part.
"I wanted to…" she trails off with a sigh. "I was being selfish. I'm sorry."
Selfish?
Caspian waits.
Addie's shoulders soften, and something behind her hazel eyes gives way.
"I wanted to see that you were happy," she says, barely louder than a breath. "That you were alright, so I could find a way to let go. All of you, Lola and -"
"Happy?"
The word burns his tongue, acrid in the way of smithy soot.
A bitter laugh escapes him.
"Did you think I was happy when you left?"
Addie's mouth tightens, and her eyes leave him in favour of the walls, which are now draped with banners of his insignia.
"I didn't… not at first. But eventually, I thought -"
"I was not," Caspian interrupts. "How could you have thought I…"
But he did. He survived, he ruled, he carried on because there was no other choice. Because no matter what ruin Addie had made of his heart, Narnia still needed her king.
He is both more and far, far less than the young king she left.
"You ran," Caspian says, voice rough when he wants it cold. "Why?"
Addie flinches, and for a moment her balance shifts.
Will she do it again? Run, foolishly, when now he has guards nearby who will stop her on his order?
Caspian's muscles coil in anticipation, because he has never been a king who sits on a throne and lets others act for him, but Addie's face twists and…
Is this a stalling measure? Meant to elicit sympathy, to lower his guard? Is she preparing a new lie for him?
Caspian clenches clammy fists at his sides. Addie had many faults, but she was never quite that cruel.
Is it possible that she has suffered these years, too?
"You have no conception," he says, "of the desolation you left in your wake."
Addie whispers his name, and Lion, how he hates the vice around his heart, tightening at the first sound of his name from her lips.
Then, worse, she says it again.
"Caspian," she says, fragile as cracked glass. "You… you told me to go."
A truth, but no less cruel for its honesty.
For months, that was his biggest regret.
"Yes," Caspian manages. "And you left."
"What else could I have done?" Addie recoils, pain writ across her face - pain his choices and hers put there - but her cheeks remain dry. "You didn't believe me! You didn't trust me, and I didn't trust you, and…"
Her voice splinters, grief echoing in this, the room where he was first blessed with and shackled to his kingdom, and her gaze abandons him.
"And?"
Addie squeezes her eyes shut and half-turns away.
"Do not turn your back on me," Caspian says. Cold, yes, but what is left of him but bitterness?
"And it wasn't enough!" Addie winces at her own cry. "I was not… what was left between us, Caspian? No trust, no forgiveness, nothing but mistakes."
Is that what she believed? While he was planning his proposal under the summer moon, this is what Addie thought of him? Of them?
"I'd already failed you," Addie continues. "I tried to be better. God, I tried, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough for you. And I don't blame you, really I don't, but that doesn't change that I… that we…"
That what? That the love they had - that she spurned and he did too, in a way - that such love was not enough?
England has made a crueller cynic of her than she was before.
And yet…
And yet, did he not treat her cruelly, too?
"Tell me this, then," Caspian says. "If there was nothing left, why have you come back?"
Addie's eyes widen, a certain helplessness shadowing the fire he would have expected from her years ago.
It fades, and then, for a moment, there is a spark he tastes like blood in his own mouth.
That spark, too, retreats, leaving nothing in its wake but a woman not quite a stranger, but foreign to him all the same.
"I didn't mean to," Addie says. Not quite a lie, but not the whole truth, either. She has the quiet resignation of years-old heartbreak about her, so unlike the excuses he once cracked in two on a sun-dappled hillside.
He is not the prince he was. He ought to return to his throne, declare that her and Doctor Cornelius' research into the rings will continue, and leave the past in the past. Is he not practised enough in locking himself away, ensuring King Caspian is all his kingdom and its people will ever see?
And yet.
Caspian moves without thinking, his own hand a traitor, and all at once Addie's skin is like fire against his palm, her heartbeat thundering under his fingers, and she is real, no ghost spun from a sorcerer's spell book.
"The boy at the station. Who was he?"
Her brow furrows. "The train station, in London? How did you -"
Her eyes widen, lips falling open as understanding dawns.
She did see him.
Addie's throat bobs. "His name is Ted."
"Who is he to you?"
"We… I… we were seeing each other. For a time."
So she moved on, as he suspected. How casually she speaks of this Ted.
Caspian forces his grip to loosen.
"He's expecting you?"
It is his imagination that Addie leans closer.
"Depends on how time passes," she says. "Between Narnia and England."
Caspian clenches his jaw.
"You love him?"
"No. I mean, I did, a little, but not like… only because -"
Addie's eyes dart between his, searching, but he does not know what she seeks.
"Because?" he prods, his fingers whispering over her cheek.
The truth leaves her in a rush, honesty as soft as a lover's whisper.
"Because sometimes he… he reminded me of you."
In the minutes, hours, days after this moment, Caspian will wonder what decided him. What madness of the mind or heart or judgement overwhelmed his senses?
The answer, of course, is her.
It's always been her.
The first taste of her lips is not how he would have imagined when grief was still his closest companion. He would have given anything - his sword arm, his kingdom, the very beating heart from his chest - for forgiveness.
Now he is a king, giving her his loathing.
Now he has missed her for longer than he has known her.
Now, she is here.
It is not joy, this thing between them. No tenderness, no adoration, none of the amorous reverence of youth.
There are the pieces of his broken heart, shards sharper than the legendary blade Rhindon itself. There is the taste of regret and you did this to me, and where have you been?
Here lies pain and anger, insult and grief, and yet beneath it all, something buried, something that feels a little like at last, and he has not felt so alive since his last day with her.
They were never supposed to have a last day. That was her doing.
He kisses Addie like a punishment, like he is the one wronged (and he is, surely he is, isn't he?) and he has not forgiven her (what forgiveness can he ask of her when it is he who has missed her all these years?). She ran from his love, so he will give her the bitter, hollow king she made of him. And if the loathing turns inward, if he almost whispers that there is one person he has never forgiven and it is not her, she need never know.
Addie yelps, throaty surprise he swallows down like healer's tonic and wine as she clutches him closer, the opposite of the rejection he never anticipated until this fleeting, foolish moment when his tongue is already in her mouth.
Can she taste how bitterly he has missed her?
Has she missed him, too?
"Tell me about him," Caspian says, the demand muddled by messy, imprecise kisses. "Tell me about this paramour of yours."
Addie arches into him and whines. Somewhere in this mad rush of I missed you and how could you and here you are, his free hand found her breasts, just as supple as he remembers.
Lion, how hard he tried to forget.
"Former," Addie gasps as he tweaks her nipple through her dress. "He's my ex."
Caspian bites her lip, enough to sting without breaking skin.
"Did you leave him, too?"
Addie nods, and she tastes of something beyond heartbreak, something warm and soft like candlelight and old books and window seats and -
He fists a hand in her hair and pulls, yanks harder than he needs to, and if he relishes the smooth, unmarked plane of her neck, if he sucks her freckled skin into his mouth and sucks until she hisses…
Well. He is only a man.
"Answer me," he says, teeth still clamped under her jaw.
Addie pulls him closer, grabbing at his gilded overcoat, the trappings of royalty he donned to show her what he has become without her.
"Yes," she gasps.
The pup must miss her, this Ted she loved in his place.
Caspian worries Addie's skin with his teeth, sucks until a bruise blooms and ah, here is the proof she was his first.
"Why?"
Addie pushes at his chest, a stifled complaint tickling his lips.
Caspian relents, but his arms pull her closer on their own, anticipating and dreading her withdrawal.
Addie sucks her own kiss-red lip between her teeth and holds him fast when his grip on her loosens.
"We were better as friends," Addie says. "Ted and I."
"Is that so?"
A hand warms his collarbone, slips beneath his overcoat and presses over his heart.
"He wasn't you," Addie whispers, hoarse though he knows not why.
Pretty words, poisoned by her own decisions.
Caspian holds her chin and licks every crevice of this lie of hers that tastes like truth. He sucks it from her tongue, bites it from her lip, inhales its sweet treachery and gives it back to her tenfold.
"You left me," he reminds her.
His thumb finds moisture, a new trail on her cheek.
Adde's eyes swim as he sucks her tear from his thumb, swallows down the salt and sadness of her, and it is not enough.
She did not suffer as he suffered. She found a doppleganger to distract her, a lookalike to toy with.
He had the heaviness of his crown, and nothing more.
"You told me to," Addie says again - strained, as if he's forgetting something. "Caspian, you… you wouldn't even look at me."
That is unfair.
His hands fly to her cheeks, an unforgiving cradle to hold her in place, to make her face him in case she runs again.
"I ran after you! I fell to my knees before my kingdom grieving you!"
"Do you think I wanted to leave?" Addie grips his collar and shakes him, an ineffectual attempt. "You didn't believe me, I didn't even believe it, but just the possibility of seeing them again… What was I supposed to do?"
"You were to defy me!" Caspian wipes her cheeks, though no more grief has spilled. "Damn you, you were supposed to defy me as you always had. You were to stay, to prove me wrong, to… Addie, you were to be my wife!"
He can count on one hand the times a single word has broken Addie's defences.
This is one of them.
Her lip trembles, and he kisses it.
"You never asked," she whispers.
"And if I had? Would you still have run from me?"
She shivers, and more salt waters his lips - hers, his, both. Who's to say?
"Would you have believed me?"
"Yes," he says, because he can't confess that perhaps not, because he still cannot fathom how she didn't remember where she came from, but he'd have borne it better had he known she was still his.
"And now? Do you believe me now?"
Caspian looks into her eyes, the face he missed and longed to forget, the woman who has come back - the first he has loved to return to him. He remembers the endless nights of his empty bed, the hollowness in his chest that he papered over with duty because it would not heal.
Addie asked the wrong question.
Moments ago, he gave Addie his anger - his pain, resentment, the harsh mask hiding apologies years too late that might diminish his heartbreak if he lets himself say them.
His next gift to her will be her pleasure. Most likely, he can still give her that. He will wring pleasure from Addie until she weeps with ecstasy and screams loud enough for the entire castle - the entire capital - to hear, and then, perhaps, he will remember that he is not only a creature of loss.
But not until.
Caspian reclaims her mouth again, that soft, sweet damnable mouth he once trembled for like a colt. Addie rises to meet him, no passive recipient as she starts to recall the reckless eagerness that once captured his heart.
How prettily she manages it, as if no time has passed.
Did she kiss her English lover like this?
Caspian groans, swallowing down the burn of something acrid, a poison in his throat, pain still tight in his chest. The force of his kiss, his tongue, pulls a small sound from Addie's mouth, and though he has let her go - he had to, to survive losing her - his balance narrows, threatened with vertigo.
He is a man on a cliff again, staring down into an endless abyss, and Addie has brought him to it.
It was she who first pushed him off.
What right does she have to drag him back to this cliff?
Addie whimpers, squirming against him and his too-rough hands. He's gripping too tight, knows it's bruising, that her hips will bear his fingerprints if he isn't careful and he isn't careful. Another woman would protest this harsh treatment, but Addie, she -
She arches into it, into him. Presses closer, mouth open, wordlessly asking for more, baring her neck before he can pull her hair, welcoming him, never complaining, never shying from his anger, his…
Not hate, this, but something close. Something like it but not quite, stinging like a clean cut, not so cold as hate. And still, the incessant drumbeat of why, why Addie why?
He can make her answer. There must be more than his own cruelty, than Aslan, than parents she might or might not have found. Truth exists somewhere beneath this new, quiet woman who has Addie's face but an English accent and short hair, resignation in place of fire.
He can fuck her until honesty spills out. Addie's half-truths never survived the bedroom.
Or has that changed, too?
What other methods does he have?
Caspian finds the laces at her back, her servant dress softer than her old shifts, because he couldn't stomach anyone living in discomfort, especially people Addie came from. Addie stiffens, hands slipping from his hair to his shoulders.
"Won't someone -"
He silences her with a kiss, even harsher than the last.
"I am the king," Caspian says. "No one will enter without my word."
Again, he pulls the knot at her waist. Addie grabs his arms, her breath sharpening.
"Even so," she murmurs. "I'd rather…"
"Rather I fuck you fully clothed?" Caspian's lip curls, something like disdain crimping. "I've seen you before, Addie."
A fragility, there, in her eyes - sudden and fleeting but familiar.
"I know," Addie says. "I know, just… not now. Not… not like this."
Caspian's breath stills, a stone he has felt before in his chest.
Addie is hiding herself away.
A prelude to leaving.
She will run again.
He moves without thinking, pain and fresh fury bringing his hand to her neck, squeezing as she once taught him as he plunders her mouth, yanks her flush to his body so she can feel the desperation of what he wants. Addie's mouth falls open, invitation and surprise as he sucks bruises where her neck meets her shoulder, under her jaw, anywhere difficult to hide.
He lingers there, waiting for Addie to protest, to push him away, to run.
She only pulls him closer, moans encouragement into his ear, more poison and treachery because it almost sounds like I missed you.
Not as much as he missed her. Addie found a way to bear it.
He had nothing.
But here, now, he has this moment of her.
"Will you have me?" he growls. "Here, in this room? Will you give me that, at least?"
Addie's nodding before he finishes, and he is barely strong enough to look in her eyes, to see if the wobble in her "Yes" is fear or overwhelm.
"Yes," she says again, stronger, more certain. Addie holds his wrist and pushes his hand tighter under her jaw.
"Yes," she repeats, this third affirmation the steadiest yet.
Well. That is something.
Caspian wraps an arm around her hips and lifts, pleased when Addie's legs promptly encircle his waist. A familiar angle, this - Addie above him, her mouth open and willing, love marks already darkening on her neck. But her hair tickles his cheeks, too short, not like the Addie he longed for.
Much of her body is still familiar; he will be content.
He almost trips on the stairs - weight he's not used to carrying, that's all. Caspian steadies himself and distracts Addie with unforgiving kisses before she can notice.
Even her scent is strange, more clean cotton and old books than hearth smoke and lye. Is this another mark of her life in England, or her week with Doctor Cornelius, searching for answers in the castle archives?
Caspian buries his face in her neck and breathes her in, searching. Searching…
Yes, there, a sweet tang, her. Buried, hard to find, almost lost but here.
There's an easier way to find what he craves.
Caspian kneels before his throne and settles Addie into the royal seat she abandoned him to, glad that the cushion is plump and comfortable for hours of sitting.
Addie whines a complaint as his mouth leaves her, charting a hurried pace down her body. Lion damn this dress, her insistence on staying clothed!
Addie plucks at his overcoat, deft fingertips unfastening gold clasps, beautiful hypocrite that she is.
Caspian obliges to cool the fever consuming him, a consequence of her presence, but no more. Addie's hands linger on his shoulders, charting the muscles that battle and training have strengthened in her absence.
He didn't wait four years to indulge in nothing but her touch.
Palm to her chest, Caspian shoves Addie into the cradle of his throne and pulls her hips to the edge. She gasps a complaint he ignores as her hands leave him, only to still when he pushes her skirt up.
He finds a cloth barrier in his way, a flimsy scrap he tears off and Lion, how he missed the sight, the scent of her.
"I liked those, you know."
Caspian can't tear his eyes from her wet curls, the proof she still wants this as he does. Proof that she missed him.
"I'll commission new ones," he mumbles. No time for anything else, because his tongue is busy.
In this, the tangy wetness he laps up, she has not changed.
But have her preferences?
He tries soft, flat circles and wins low, throaty groans. He sucks and receives sharp, shallow gasps, a prelude to satisfaction he is not kind enough to give her yet. Flicks with the tip of his tongue make her hiss - too intense for her, but a fitting punishment. Long licks make her writhe in frustration, her face crunched in impatience.
The first touch of his finger makes her arch up, thighs straining against his grip. Caspian goes no further, alternates slow circles and insistent sucks and strokes her without pushing inside.
He is not so kind, so indulgent as he once was.
Addie whimpers and bucks against his tongue, legs and stomach tense with the finish he holds just out of her reach.
Is this not what she deserves? To suffer this frustration, the torment of almost as he has in her absence?
"Cas -" She chokes on a gasp as he pushes the tip of his thumb inside, enough stimulation to frustrate her further but nothing more. "Caspian, please, I -"
Begging already? When he has barely begun?
Caspian sheathes his thumb to the knuckle and relishes her sharp inhale.
"Be patient," he says, vicious with the pride that he can still affect her so much. "You've managed four years without me, haven't you?"
Addie grits her teeth, stifling a whimper he wrenches from her with a hard suck.
"Thirteen," she whispers. "It was thirteen for me."
Thirteen?
Caspian regards her flushed cheeks and heaving chest, the sheen of sweat beading at her hairline. How is that possible?
Time can flow inconstantly between England and Narnia; the Kings and Queens told him as much.
Caspian hauls her back to his mouth and slides two fingers inside her, a quick stretch he worsens with the careful circles that he knows bring her to the edge. He will question the details later. For now, he has seventeen years between the two of them to make up for.
He curls his fingers and sucks, another of her favourite combinations. Addie tightens around him, legs trembling and breath shallow, a beautiful preface to her finish.
Addie's eyes squeeze shut. Her breath stills.
He stops.
It is not a loving smile, this curl of his mouth as Addie groans in frustration.
Enough of this – of what if, should have, and why.
The past is the past. Let her taste and his tongue and their shared frustration be the only things that matter, because she is here now.
He will carve pleasure and pain into her memory, make the entire castle hear how she screams for him, and then she will have no thought but him, no longing for anywhere but his kingdom, his Narnia, where she will never escape him again.
Caspian's tongue aches and his forearm burns with effort, but he brings her to the edge again. Addie's face twists, breathless silence overtaking the sweet sounds of pleasure he has brought her. Him, no one else.
He stops before she tips over, retribution he enjoys perhaps too much. Addie's thrashing is for naught, her sharp curse ineffectual.
Yet never does she tell him to stop. Her every movement, every manoeuvre, every writhing complaint only struggles to close any distance he creates.
She still wants him.
She still wants him.
Caspian suckles her cunt a final time, forces himself to stop when Addie's cries crescendo then crack into her silent almost.
"Will you have me?" he pants into her thigh, sucking a bruise there, too.
Addie's answer is instantaneous, breathless, a high whine of a "Yes, yes, please, Cas."
In this, he will not deny her.
Caspian frees himself from his dampened trousers and yanks Addie into his lap. There is a moment of fumbling, of slipping and adjusting and Addie centreing herself over him and then -
And then.
Home.
Addie falls into him, head tucked into his neck, scattering soft kisses and tremulous gasps across his skin. Every touch of her lips is a benediction, balm to a wound, salve to a burn, everything. She is everything.
How has he survived four years without her?
Never again, Caspian promises himself as he begins to move, a slower rhythm than he originally intended.
Never again.
This is not lovemaking. This is supposed to be fucking - reclaiming.
"You will never run from me again," he grits out, teeth sinking into her shoulder. "Never, do you understand?"
"Don't give me reason to," Addie pants, her hazel gaze sparking and her thighs like vices around his hips.
Damn her reasons! All that matters is that she stays.
Caspian grips her waist and thrusts harder, faster, deeper, until Addie's cries float up to the ceiling and echo around the room.
"Never touch those rings," he continues. "Never do that to me again."
Addie quivers around him, her answer stillborn, and if he thought to stop again, he's too late. Her finish rips through her, silence breaking into a hoarse scream she tries to stifle in his shoulder.
Caspian grips her face and fucks her through it, fighting the burning in his abdomen as he tries to force his own down.
Later. He can finish later, when Addie -
Too late, again. Addie clamps around him, and he's gone, dropped off the cliff into freefall like he's a love-struck prince again.
How easily she unravels him.
When his mind clears, Addie is still here. She kneels above him, her cunt still fluttering with aftershocks. His face is tucked into her breasts, the fabric separating his cheek from her skin bordering on unforgivable, though her nails massaging his scalp nearly make up for it.
Addie murmurs his name, and any anger he wanted to cling to evaporates in the afterglow. It may return later, but for now, she is in his arms, her scent in his nose, her body cradling him in warmth.
She kisses his sweaty brow and murmurs, "Where else would I go?"
He doesn't care. So long as Addie never abandons him again, the rest does not matter.
A/N: Written in loving memory of the smutty Ch. 69 we could've had if I hadn't cooked up the whole Heartworm arc.