(BL) The Villain wants a Divorce!

Edgar felt like he was living in a dream. This was more than he ever could have asked for.

When Fiona was first found and his father had suggested that he get involved with her, Edgar didn’t have big hopes anything would come from it. There was a small, teeny tiny part of him that had hoped that maybe he would get a regular life from it. Maybe he would be able to live out the fantasy of a normal home where people wanted to see him.

Instead what he got with Fiona was a whirlwind engagement and then marriage, living in inns while they fought monsters he’d only heard priests mention in passing from reading books and the small encounters they had been allowed outside, and rain. Lots and lots of rain.

It had been anything but the ideal life he’d thought he’d have. He knew he’d been asking for too much and thought that maybe it was the gods punishing him for being too greedy. Edgar had been angry for several reasons. One being that he’d had to go along with whatever the others wanted, he had to be nice to everyone, he had to hide who he truly was.

Two, Fiona didn’t really care about him, but he just tried to brush that off and not look at it too hard. He’d known it, felt it, but he’d just been intentionally blind because thinking that your partner doesn’t really love you and knowing that your partner doesn’t love you are two different things. Plus, Fiona’d had four husbands. She had her hands full managing all of them and Edgar respected that.

Edgar had liked that he had been able to be around Gideon more. They’d had to lower the amount of contact that they had as they had gotten into their teens, but when he saw Gideon again it was like the man had been a fortress. All Edgar had around him really was his adoptive sister Ava, and himself.

He’d grown a little closer to some of the men, but there was too much jealousy and anger between them for an actual friendship to form and back then the only other mage around was Blackburn. They were not on good terms and he thought that Blackburn was looking at him like he was shit on the bottom of his shoe.

He knew he was wrong now, but back then it had been...hard. It had been really hard.

Now? Now Edgar woke up every morning surrounded by warmth. Human hearts, beating slow and low. Calm. Relaxed. Supportive. Edgar was given tasks that he was fully responsible for. No extra managing, no being sent off with someone monitoring him, he was feeling like a part of the team.

Who he was wasn’t seen as a problem. If people were angry about it, it wasn’t directed towards him, it was directed towards the people who had forced him into this deal. He was supported and protected, given food when he needed it. Encouraged to take his fill daily when he knew that was just him being a glutton.

He didn’t need to eat as frequently as Cass did.

Then there was the Cass of it all. If Fiona was the people’s perfect Hero, Cass was his. The man didn’t like thinking that he was the hero, Edgar could tell, but he didn’t shirk his duties. He might complain or moan, but Edgar saw the way his brows furrowed whenever something bad happened to people who didn’t deserve it. What changed between him and Fiona was that Cass wouldn’t always go in person.

He couldn’t go in person right now.

He trusted Sir Forsythe and Gideon to handle it. To find a group of knights that would either be able to assess what was going on and send back a report, or deal with it themselves. No more of the nobles trying to take advantage of the hero just because they were lazy. Cass also made sure that if they were wasting his time they got a hefty fine.

Fiona had never done it because she was thinking of the people underneath the nobles. Cass didn’t have to worry about that. He practically funded the whole kingdom through backdoor means. He could move money around with a flick of his finger and make sure that the nobles suffered while the people didn’t.

He was a true hero, and damn it, Edgar was head over heels for him. His kindness, his generosity, and his ability to see the whole picture when Edgar couldn’t, made the man more loveable. His stubbornness was also cute, and so was his flustered face. When he was embarrassed he was cute, when he was annoyed he was cute. Edgar was just head over heels for the man so anything was cute.

Even when he was angry, but only when he wasn’t angry with him. If Cass was angry with Edgar? That was a bad day. A very, very bad day. Thankfully, Edgar had been on his best behaviour. He was doing his tasks on time, he was helping Cass out, he was keeping an eye on any suspicious behaviour around the mansion.

He was still getting jumped by Lucian and Gideon in their attempt to have sex in every room in the mansion but thanks to Cass’ interference it was less frequent. They had gotten in trouble while Edgar hadn’t.

It was great.

Edgar didn’t have to go back to his large, empty chambers alone and wonder when Fiona would come by and visit him. He didn’t have to sit in the dark, his thoughts his own worst enemy and wonder how he could make himself more appealing to a wife who barely looked at him, let alone her other husbands.

Edgar got to go to the large bed that Cass had custom ordered so that there was enough space for all of them on the bed. They honestly could lie any way that they wanted and they all would fit. Cass had gone a little crazy for the size, but Edgar would never badmouth it. Not after Cass had given them a tour and then berated them for changing his tub at his other home without his consent.

Not when the normally rough and stoic man had admitted that he’d already plotted out how they were all going to live together, in one set of chambers, under one roof.

Edgar didn’t know much about Cass’ former life. He didn’t and while that frustrated him, he understood that for Cass a long time hadn’t passed. He was probably still hurting and he swore he caught him looking grief-stricken every once in a while before he tucked it away again. Edgar’s heart ached for the man. At the same time, he was deeply, deeply grateful for Cass having come from a different world.

Without that, he would never be able to experience the kind of life that had been a fairytale to him as a child. Couples living in the same rooms? That was unheard of. There was a reason that Blackburn had originally built everyone their own rooms to make their own. Or as Lucian called them, ’dens’.

There had always been this thin line of separation between married couples, even those in relationships with multiple people. It had always felt cold, business-like to Edgar. It was something wonderful to be able to go to bed with the men who were close to him and wake up knowing that even if one or two were gone to do tasks, one would always be there.

Edgar wasn’t alone anymore.

There was no way to put his feelings into simple words. He couldn’t. He felt like he was grinning every day. His smiles wouldn’t stop. It didn’t even matter that his funding from his father had stopped coming, Cass would handle it. In fact, when Edgar had attempted to broach the subject, Cass had stared at him like he’d grown another head.

”So? Just ask Sam to send a tailor. I’ve got it.” That’s all he’d said. He was so manly sometimes that it made Edgar want to smother him in kisses. If Cass wouldn’t have bit his head off, he would do it all the time.

The man was a hero, even if he himself didn’t consider that he was. It also didn’t matter that the gods had declared him as a hero either. To him, Edgar, Cass was the one who had shown him the error his ways. Who had shown him that he’d been biased and an idiot. That sometimes it was those that were pushing you away that needed help the most.

It had been a very important lesson to Edgar, one that he didn’t think he would ever forget.

It was just a shame that Edgar wasn’t able to do as much for Cass as the others were capable of. Edgar couldn’t feed Cass the same way that they could. Not that he wasn’t actually capable, but he just knew that that wasn’t what Cass wanted from him. Not how Cass wanted to have sex with him, and that was fine with Edgar.

Edgar liked being the only one that Cass entered. He liked watching Cass tremble as he tried to hold himself back from the pleasure of being inside of him. He liked having that kind of power. He liked being Cass’ resting place, and the resting place of the others as well. Edgar had no issues with that.

It was just...he didn’t feel like he did enough to earn his place. He felt like he was falling behind the others.

Sure, Lucian didn’t do much outside of feeding Cass and hunting, but that was because he was very capable inside of dungeons. He could also eat people, and was ready and willing at a moment’s notice. Edgar could also eat people but it was a drawn-out kind of eating. They also didn’t disappear like when Lucian did it.

Gideon was especially hardworking. He was helping Cass in ways that Edgar couldn’t in both capacities. Edgar was very proud of his friend.

Edgar was very proud of his lovers, but...he felt like the odd one out. He’d always been the diplomat. The one who spoke to the others, made deals, covered their asses. They didn’t need that with Cass around. Cass didn’t need his ass protected, he needed an assistant. So that was what Edgar had turned into, but...was that enough?

What if he didn’t pull his weight and Cass got tired of him? What if his happy moment cost them too much and something terrible happened? Edgar wasn’t allowed happiness, that was something that had been drilled into him since he was a child. Any happiness that Edgar received often came with very terrible consequences. Edgar didn’t want to bother them with his own troubles, or if he did, he wanted to be so helpful that they didn’t want to get rid of him.

These worries plagued him constantly, tainting the idyllic life he was living with the familiar colours of his family life before he’d left the Vespertine house. He couldn’t help it. He was a Vespertine, whether he liked it or not, and now that things felt good and safe and warm, he couldn’t help but wonder when things would go wrong for him?

When would the rug be pulled out from under his feet and he would fall into that all too familiar pit of despair?

Edgar sighed, clutching the letters that Cass had given him to pass off to be delivered close to his chest. He wondered if he would ever feel enough to be by his side? By Gideon’s side? By Lucian’s? It burned Edgar from the inside out that the answer was no. He wasn’t like Cass and Gideon who had gotten proper educations. He’d gotten just enough to get by with, his father telling him that his pretty face would be enough otherwise. It was only now that Edgar knew that wasn’t true.

Like always, his father had set him up to fail, and this time, Edgar felt the loss in his soul. If he got kicked out of this home, Edgar wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue afterwards. He might just go find a place to lie down and wait for the sun to rise.

He just had to make sure that they never had any reason to turn their back on Edgar, but then he was back to square one. What could he do that would make him so vital that they couldn’t live without him?