Macnair had stepped back and was looking annoyed, and Ford had an impulse to try and chase it away by stepping in and kissing his jaw, despite the fact that it was Ford who had put that look there in the first place. He could kiss Macnair now, but it likely wouldn't last. He could start to undo the buttons on his shirt and try to just focus on that, but sooner or later he'd have another one of those paralyzing realizations, and another nauseated feeling creeping through his stomach.

The apology was somewhat mollifying — at least Macnair acknowledged that maybe Ford did deserve a letter, which Ford certainly thought was the case. The ask afterwards was pointless, though; Ford didn't understand, and he didn't think he could understand, no matter how he tried. Sure, all of the words Macnair was saying made sense, and if he could really divorce the idea of marriage from all of his feelings then it was perfectly logical. If it was just a business arrangement, it would have been a sensible choice. But it wasn't a business arrangement, and Ford didn't really think that Macnair thought it was, either — and by the time Macnair had finished he'd come full circle and more or less admitted that it wasn't, because he was talking about a life of loneliness.

On the one hand, that was such a horrible thing to say that Ford immediately wanted to reassure him. He wanted to reach up and touch Macnair's face, so that he could look him in the eyes again, and say no, of course not. On the other hand, he wasn't sure he could touch Macnair right now — he'd taken a step back, and he was obviously upset, and — well, they'd only started doing this a week ago, so maybe he didn't really want Ford to try and comfort him. It wasn't as though Ford understood, anyway, and no matter his intentions whatever he said would have just been empty reassurances. And Macnair was right, was the thing, and there was no way to say he wasn't. Marrying someone you didn't love did mean you were in for a lifetime of loneliness, or at least a good long stretch of it until you could settle in and maybe learn to love them a bit. But Macnair knew that, and he'd chosen that — he'd proposed of his own free will and now he was engaged — so why had he phrased it like a question?

Oh. Ford's eyebrows shot up. "You want to keep doing this after you're married," he said, realizing this for the first time. This cast the earlier parts of their meeting tonight into a significantly different light. Ford had been thinking it was cruel to keep winding him up like that knowing that this might be the last time they would see each other like this, or that it would be ending imminently, but Macnair hadn't been thinking about that at all. To him tonight was no different than last week had been, because it didn't seem like there was a brand-new expiration date on their liaison together. No wonder he was frustrated with the way this conversation was going.

"And — how do you think that's going to work?" Ford couldn't help but ask, tone incredulous. "I'm going to come through the floo, say 'hullo' to your wife in the parlor, and then pop up to your bedroom to spend the night?"

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Set by Lady!

Valerian already knew he and Greengrass weren't on the same page, but it only seemed to be getting more apparent by the second. At what point would it have been better to ask Greengrass what exactly his expectations were? Valerian's brows shot up at Greengrass' question, because though Valerian had made it clear that he intended to let Tatiana have no bearing on their affair—or at least he though he had—it seemed Greengrass thought his engagement had put an expiration date on it.

"You talk as though it's an impossible feat," he said with a frown. They wouldn't be the first pair to have an extramarital affair, and they wouldn't be the last; there were ways to work around it, especially given that they were the same sex. On more than one occasion he'd had friends over at the Inverness-shire manor without questions, and there were more people living under that roof than there would be in London. Of course, there was a very real possibility that Greengrass would not be up for such blatant deception; he couldn't see Greengrass as the sort who'd be willing to walk past his wife knowing what they intended to do once they were out of her sight.

"I hardly doubt Tatiana will want to stay at home all day. Women have parties to host and attend, calls to pay—plenty to keep them occupied." He could not envision Tatiana sitting in the parlor mindlessly embroidering in the late evening hours. "And if you haven't notice, I'm not lacking for fireplaces—the floo could easily be rewired." Of course it would not come without its complications, but he would do what he must to ensure that his marriage did not disrupt his life too much.

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Macnair was actually serious about this, and he seemed to have put at least some degree of thought into the logistics of it. Ford didn't know what to think about that. It had never occurred to him that people could get married with the intention of sleeping with other people after they did. Obviously he knew infidelity happened, but he’d thought it always occurred because one party grew unhappy as the marriage progressed. It was unsettling to think someone might enter a marriage already expecting to be unhappy, or already making arrangements to accommodate that unhappiness. It was even more unsettling to think that anyone was making those sorts of arrangements featuring him.

"— not rerouting the floo," he said, after a long moment. He wasn't sure he was comfortable with any of this, but Macnair's matter-of-fact explanation of how it could work, divorced from any sense of shame or guilt, had him so off-balance that he wasn't sure he was capable of doing much more than setting some small boundaries, at the moment. "I won't sneak in one room while she's in another."

That, he could say quite definitively, was too far. The rest of it he wasn't sure about. He never would have contemplated it a few hours ago, but Macnair was acting as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Would Ford visit for an hour or so while Mrs. Macnair was out paying calls? He didn't know. Half of him said no, but — he was still here, even though he hadn't wanted to come by tonight at all, so — he didn't know.

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Set by Lady!

It wasn't going to be simple, then. He tried to think about it from Greengrass' perspective, tried to think about how it probably looked, but those considerations were drowned out by the constant stream of thoughts—the this will work and the he'll eventually understand what I'm talking about. All it would take is Greengrass seeing him interact with his cousin to understand how different their marriage would be from society's ideal marriage, which was rooted in romantic love and mutual affection. But then... Greengrass probably wouldn't want to meet his wife, not ever—probably not even at a ball, where introducing her would be customary. Valerian wished he could, but he just knew it would probably not end well.

"There are other places we could go as well," he said, stepping closer to Greengrass again, his frustration having passed. Now his focus was on convincing Greengrass how this could work—not trying to convince Greengrass why he should agree to it in the first place. "We could find another place. Somewhere she won't be." He wasn't sure where, and he wouldn't be able to avoid admitting that if Greengrass thought to ask—but he'd always been good at making promises. This was one, with time, that he could follow through on.

(This was, assuming Greengrass was around by the time of the wedding.)

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Macnair didn't seem to be annoyed anymore, which did a great deal to lessen the tension in the pit of Ford's stomach over this. It seemed like the stakes were lower, if Macnair wasn't annoyed — like there was less pressure to sort this all out right away when he still wasn't even sure he totally understood what this all entailed. Macnair had taken a step closer, and it felt different than it had the last time, though that almost certainly had more to do with Ford than it did with Macnair. Last time it had felt like Macnair was closing in on him, and he didn't feel so trapped this time. Not now that Macnair had apologized for not writing, and not when he seemed willing to accommodate the boundary Ford had verbalized, however slight it was.

That, and — he knew he shouldn't think of it this way, because he'd already beaten himself up enough for similar sentiments, but — it was something to hear Macnair suggest he'd find another place. Ford knew he shouldn't think of it like that, because he doubted Macnair was thinking about it that way, but — a place Macnair picked out for them — for him. It made his stomach flutter in a way he knew it shouldn't, in a way he'd later try to convince himself it hadn't.

Ford chewed his lower lip and took a tentative step towards Macnair. He wanted to touch him, but he wasn't sure he ought to, given everything they'd been talking about. "Alright," he said, tone still nervous. "That's — alright. When is — when are you — the wedding?"

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Set by Lady!

Greengrass moved closer, and Valerian instinctively closed the space between them again so he could reach out and let his fingertips rest on the other man's wrist. The touching helped feel less distant, less lost—and yet, they were still talking about Tatiana, and Greengrass was asking questions he couldn't really answer with any certainty, and it still felt like they were one misguided sentence away from falling apart.

He doubted he was going to get Greengrass into bed tonight. As the thought went through his mind his lips slid into a frown. "I... really can't say," he admitted, "but I think she wants to marry—soon. I can't envision a hasty rush to the alter, but we'll likely be married... this year." He watched Greengrass' face as he spoke, looking for any signs that he wouldn't be okay with that. He needed him to be okay with that.

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Macnair reached out to touch his wrist, and Ford leaned in to the contact. He'd been wanting to touch Macnair, so this slight invitation was all it took to see their bodies fit together once again. Ford snaked his free hand around Macnair's waist and leaned his head on his shoulder. He wanted to be held. Really, he wanted to be comforted, but that was probably the sort of desire he should chase away, not indulge.

(It was because he'd stayed the night, he figured. He shouldn't have done that. He should have made an excuse and left after the act, after they'd both cleaned up. This wasn't a relationship founded on comfort or mutual trust, which this conversation about Macnair's fiancee had made obvious. It was just sex, and they should have just left it at that, and then maybe Ford wouldn't have felt so desperately lonely when he'd read the news of the engagement).

The answer was a non-answer, really. This year could have meant six months from now or six weeks from now — but if Macnair didn't know yet, then it probably didn't mean six days from now. So they had tonight, and Ford didn't have to decide how he felt about this or what to do about it, because tonight didn't have to be the last time.

"Alright," he said softly, nuzzling in to Macnair's chest despite knowing he shouldn't — despite knowing he was looking for something there that Macnair won't give him. "That's alright."

He wouldn't expect Macnair to tell him about the wedding, Ford decided then. He could just watch the paper society news for an announcement and put the pieces together himself, and he could take whatever time he needed to sort things out in his own mind at home. If he ended up needing to call things off because he can't stomach it, he can just write — Macnair doesn't like him, isn't invested in this, so he won't mind. And if he wraps his mind around this and decides it's alright, then they can work through the logistics in letters, too. They don't have to talk about anything else tonight. They can just have tonight.

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Set by Lady!