Fic: "A Long Way from Calormen"

[nfe-gremlin.livejournal.com]

Title: A Long Way from Calormen
Author: animus_wyrmis (pinch-hitting)
Recipient: angela_weber
Rating: PGish
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Set during The Horse and His Boy, and there is slash.
Summary: Peridan wants Edmund; Edmund turns to his sisters for advice.
Original Prompt that we sent you: What I want (e.g. specific ship or character, England fic, Golden Age fic, AU, set during a ball, someone falls ill, whatever, etc.): Edmund/Peridan Golden Age fic; Edmund's POV. Peripheral Susan/Aravis, or at least a hint of it, would be fantastic.
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: First kiss!
What I definitely don't want in my fic: Pevencest; anything above PG-13. Other than that, you are free to do whatever you like. :)
A/N: I hope you like it, and I apologize for the shortness and for the fact that Peridan seems to be making his way through the Pevensie clan. I'm not sure how that happened. (Also! Omg, thank you for this prompt, because Peridan/Any Pevensie is now my new favorite pairing.)


There are a great many things Edmund hates about Calormen. He hates the heat, for one; he hates the noise and the filth and the way no one can say anything without beginning, “Oh great barbarian king whose kingdom spans the northern wastelands…” He hates the way Rabadash’s eyes follow his sister (“He’s disgusting, Su,” Edmund tries to say, but Susan only answers, “Is that because he wants me in his bed or because he nearly defeated you at our tournament?”) and how Corin seems to find Calormene urchins to fight at every turn.

Most of all, though, he hates how Peridan is always saying, “Well, if you hadn’t said it like that, Ed, the Tarkheenas wouldn’t have gotten so miffed.” He is glad of Peridan’s council, of course—he always has been—but he rather wishes Peridan would stop giving it quite so much; it distracts him when he’s trying to draw up treaties. “Do you know what I mean?” he asks Susan, but Susan only sighs.

“I think you ought to listen his advice,” Susan says. “He did grow up here, you know. Have you seen Prince Corin?”

“Not since tea,” Edmund replies. “Why? Isn’t he here?”

“Aslan’s mane,” Susan groans, “I hope so.”

The rest of their evening is spent searching for Corin and planning their escape from Rabadash’s clutches, and Peridan vanishes from Edmund’s mind.


--


“I’m glad that’s over,” he mutters to Lucy as they check over their weapons at the end of the battle for Anvard. “Damn Rabadash. Damn Calormen. I rather wish Lune hadn’t stopped me fighting Rabadash, though.”

“I thought it was a particularly good stroke of luck for us that he attacked,” Lucy says, proving once and for all that Edmund is the only sane one in his family. “We did win, and few losses on our side—and now Rabadash has lost all credibility abroad, and that’s no bad thing.”

“Hmph,” Edmund says, but then he adds, “I say, Lu, it is good to be in the north again.”

“Yes,” Lucy agrees. “Susan seemed terribly glad to come home—she even kissed all the dogs, and you know she hates when they jump all over her.”

“Indeed,” Edmund agrees, but he cannot blame his sister: his heart is singing as well, now that he is past the southern mountains.

“Ed,” Peridan says, with only a short bow, “lunch is about ready—hello, Lucy, I didn’t see you there.”

Lucy smiles, and then Peridan bows again and walks off, and she turns to Edmund with her eyebrows raised. “‘Ed’?”

“I…don’t know how that happened, really,” Edmund confesses. “He just started calling me Edmund one day, and then it turned into Ed. But there’s no reason for you to go on about it; he calls you Lucy, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, well,” Lucy says. “He only started that when he started trying to sleep with me.”

“Agh,” Edmund says, because that is something he definitely does not want to hear about. “Wait, did you?”

“Possibly,” Lucy answers. “Let’s go to lunch, Edmund.”


--


Edmund feels very thoughtful for the rest of the week. He isn’t entirely sure what Peridan is playing at, and he definitely isn’t sure he wants anyone Lucy either rejected (a man should always have better taste that his sisters) or bedded (a man should never share suitors with his sisters). All the same, he remembers that there were some things about Calormen that he enjoyed: the spices, for one, and their stories. But he also misses the way the men stood much closer together than they do in Narnia, and he misses standing out in the warm Calormene evenings with Peridan’s hand lightly resting on his arm. There are men like that in Narnia, he knows, but Edmund has never bothered to seek them out; he was surprised to find that in Calormen it was glossed over without comment or excitement.

“Hmph,” he mutters finally, and wishes for a moment that Aslan had waited around for a bit longer, so Edmund could ask his advice. (He wishes this only for a moment because he cannot picture himself actually talking to Aslan like a young naiad after her first meeting with a particularly attractive river god.) He cannot go to Peter, either, as Peter is bust fighting giants up in Ettinsmoor; that leaves his sisters. And Edmund is damned if he will talk to Lucy about Peridan.

“Susan,” he asks that evening, “would you care for a walk?”

“Indeed,” she says. “Lucy was just telling me the whole story of Prince Cor. Fancy that! If we’d only realized—”

“Then he wouldn’t have been able to save the day,” Edmund says firmly.

“Nonsense,” Susan tells him. “We’d have gotten Aravis at the tombs and sent Swallowpad to Anvard. I should like to meet her, by the way; she sounds lovely.”

“She’s a bit snobbish, I think,” Edmund said. “But she stuck with Cor through thick and thin, so she can’t be all bad.”

“You’re terribly pessimistic,” she chides, taking his arm. “Did you ask me for a lovely walk through the gardens to tell me about Aravis?”

“No,” Edmund says. “I asked you for a lovely walk through the gardens to talk about Peridan.”

“Lord Peridan? Whatever for?”

“He just—if I said I thought he and Lucy were together for awhile, what would you say?”

“I would say that the Lord Peridan is quite handsome,” Susan answers slowly, “and that she should continue being so discreet.”

That is not quite what Edmund expected to hear. He isn’t sure, really, what he was expecting to hear, but it definitely involved Susan being scandalized. And it didn’t involve Susan calling Peridan handsome. “Do you really think he’s handsome? He doesn’t seem like your type.”

“It’s the eyes,” Susan says absently. “Don’t you agree? You were all over him in Tashbaan.”

“I was not,” Edmund protests, annoyed that he appears to share his taste in men with his sisters. “Anyway, this isn’t Calormen. We can’t—people will talk.”

“You could take a leaf out of Lucy’s book,” Susan says tartly, “and learn to be quieter about it. Everyone knew when you took up with that Terebinthian duchess. You tied Peter’s hands, you know.”

“Peter was trying to marry me off!”

“He wasn’t going to actually marry you off,” Susan says with an exaggerated sigh. “He just wanted to use you as a carrot—which he couldn’t, because you and the Duchess of Per—”

“Hmph,” Edmund says. “Just because Peter has never been attracted to anyone in his life means the rest of us have to live like trees and never love another person.”

“Just be quieter about it,” Susan sighs. “You don’t hear about my dalliances, do you?”

“I would prefer,” Edmund grinds out, “to believe you don’t have any. And that’s the last I want to hear about it.”


--


He finally retreats to the library. Few dare to disturb him here, not least because he is the only one who knows the best hiding places. But tonight he only has time to get through fifty pages of Queen Swanwhite’s tenth journal before the door creaks open and Lord Peridan comes in. “Sire?” he calls, and Edmund forces his head out of the tattered journal.

“Over here,” he says. “What news?”

“Nothing,” Peridan says. “I just thought you might like some company; you have seemed rather anxious, of late.”

“I have been rather anxious,” Edmund admits. “Please, sit.”

Peridan pulls up a chair, and they sit in rather companionable silence, reading through Queen Swanwhite’s journals. Every few paragraphs Edmund finds himself studying Peridan: the curve of his jaw, the way his hair curls at the tips. His eyes are large and soft, and Edmund is rather disturbed to find that he agrees with Susan: it is the eyes that make Peridan so handsome.

Ten pages later, he looks at Peridan to see Peridan looking at him. “If I can be so bold,” Peridan says slowly, “I think that we have been dancing around each other for some time.”

Edmund is tempted to say, Did you sleep with my sister? but decides against it. “I think we have,” he says instead, because it’s true. “But if the court finds out Susan is going to kill me.”

Peridan laughs, and when they kiss Edmund’s heart sings again, that Narnia can keep the good things of Calormen and yet still stay Narnia.