Barrayar

but here we go anyway!!

A lot can happen to a legend over a period of almost a thousand years of isolation. Although the original settlers of Barrayar were Earth-born scientists-- leading even modern day Barrayarans to consider themselves atheists-- people are still people, and over time, the medieval level of technology they had been plunged into after the wormhole collapse had fostered superstitions. Old folk legends brought from Earth took on a life of their own, and warped.

It takes a while for Barrayarans to start being a presence around the Nexus even after contact is reestablished. They spent the first twenty years in a bloody, gruesome, guerrilla war, after all, and then lurching forward in tech development, using the scraps left behind by Cetaganda after they'd pulled out to launch themselves into space. This means it's not really until around the time of Gregor's father's generation that Barrayarans can be casually seen on space stations and other planets. Infrequently, and always out of place in their old-fashioned military uniforms or full skirts, but increasingly common if not accepted. Most of the city dwellers, probably, are not so prone to buying into superstition, but carrying death-charms around their necks was still fairly standard practice for servicemen and gone unquestioned.

The first time Jack probably notices anything different about the Barrayarans is when one of the country-bred ones looks directly at him on a space station somewhere and shrieks, leaping backward, clutching their chest where the death-charm is. This sets a trend: not often, but occasionally, a Barrayaran will see or hear him, and react dramatically. They are never very cooperative for interacting, though, and certainly not in public where they're trying to combat a galactic reputation of being backwater barbarians barely accustomed to indoor plumbing. (This is unfair; they've had indoor plumbing for a whole generation now.)

As for Gregor, he was one of very few Barrayarans raised by a scientist who is also a theist, and encouraged by her to think openly and freely about the universe around him. He also is prone to trying to make friends with his servants, feeling weird about living in the sprawling Residence with them while having them be quietly underfoot, and as a hungry teenager is similarly likely to sneak into the kitchens for snacks. His servants indulge him at this age, for the most part; and so he'd grown up listening to a good amount of these country stories, and had questions about the supernatural patiently and thoroughly answered by his foster-mother, who always maintained a position of informed skepticism but not certainty.

Regularly he can be found reading outside in the Imperial Gardens, a sweeping expanse of manicured land maintained as green rather than the native reddish-brown of Barrayar by painstaking effort. Gregor's favorite places to read are all off the pruned pathways and out away from easy eyesight, curled up against trees, sometimes doing his studying for classes and sometimes reading books of poetry, guiltily, and sometimes doing neither and wistfully daydreaming. Today is a daydreaming sort of day; he's a lanky, tall form not quite used to his height dressed in overly-expensive hand-tailored clothes, which he is getting dirty on the ground not out of carelessness but simply because he needs to do some things to keep himself sane.

It's not the first time this has happened.

Neither Gregor nor Duv are the sort of people to race to the finish line, as if sex were a contest or a task to be accomplished. They're both busy enough, Gregor especially, that when they do have time to see each other they're prone to savoring it, quietly and respectfully and, frankly, most of the time, sweetly. That suits Gregor just fine. Sometimes this leads to sex, as it had tonight, and when it doesn't it doesn't bother them. This attitude translates to their approach to intimacy as well, with their foreplay unhurried, almost more the point than getting each other off.

It's something Gregor has cherished deeply about Duv, this space to be completely unpressured about physical intimacy, where they are both on the same page without discussion. It means when they do sleep together it's emotionally affecting for him, love swelling up inside him and making him tender and overwhelmed. Sometimes, this also means he forgets himself. And even further down inside than Gregor's well of deep affection are desires that he has been ashamed of his whole life, and accordingly never let up for air.

With Duv, he's resurrected one of them: that he's attracted to men and not women, explaining a considerable amount of his early life problems with dating, or even caring enough to try to date, anyone. Gregor has mostly made peace with that now. But the rest of what's down there... when it does bubble up to the surface, with what Gregor can only think of as a misplaced sense of security, he corrects himself with alacrity.

His hand, which had reached out to reposition Duv where he wanted him, palm firmly to the back of his neck and pressing his head down to the sheets and holding it there, snatches back. His heart leaps to his throat. God, and of all people to do this to-- Duv, who already displays so much trust by being with the Barrayaran Emperor, to force him into acting subservient-- resulting nausea absolutely kills any arousal Gregor had been feeling, and he vainly tries to recover it. Tries to smooth over his reaction and move on, as he's always done before.

"Sorry," he breathes out.

[ Gregor had fought a long, hard slog to get Edrehasivar here.

Understandably, his people were reluctant to relinquish their emperor at all, much less on a multi-week trans-galactic voyage through two wormhole jumps to a frighteningly advanced militaristic empire that could stomp them flat and was refraining out of the goodness of one very determined Emperor's heart. Said emperor isn't actually sure what he's expecting from the visiting one; it's not as if he's ever hosted one before, the only other in the Nexus that he's aware of being the Cetagandan Emperor Fletchir Giaja, who he's not about to invite to tea, much less to be hosted by the Imperial Residence for an extended stay and hopeful opening of cordial, formalized relations.

Vorbarr Sultana, of course, pulls out all the stops, wanting to impress the only possible audience in existence that will think of them as more advanced rather than less. For once, they aren't the backwater barbarians, and it pulls out the best in those who are on board with a peaceful sponsorship of the planet. There is respectful fanfare-- those apt to scorn what will be seen as a mutant kept carefully away by ImpSec-- and with some pomp and circumstance Edrehasivar and his retinue are escorted to Vorhartung Castle, a towering gray structure meant to withstand bombardments looming over graceful, serviceable bridges across wide rivers.

Gregor receives them in a formal receiving room, one papered with yellow silk damask and set with only two pintucked stately armchairs and a side table. A secretary of his is off in the corner seated at a desk, but she has an entirely anachronistic tablet-pad as her notetaking device, and the full set of sober-faced Armsmen that loom along the walls are equipped with stunners instead of swords.

Emperor Vorbarra himself is dressed in the always-appropriate suit of his house, black with silver edging and delicate embroidery of olive leaves sparsely along the cuffs and collar. He's heard tell that the elves (and goblins?) are an extravagant sort, more like Cetagandans, and moreover that Edrehasivar himself is quite young and new to the throne, comparatively speaking. Gregor is beyond curious, despite himself, to finally be meeting one of the very few beings that could ever be called his peer. He's poured over the cultural and political reports coming in from ImpSec with assiduous interest. ]

Welcome to Vorbarr Sultana, Your Imperial Serenity, [ he says in greeting, in his characteristic quieter tones, but Gregor is upright and almost placid in demeanor, a man utterly unruffled by circumstances. Curiosity neatly packed away for the time being, until he gets a sense of him. Above all else, he is going to require his goodwill and cooperation to secure a nonviolent resolution. ]

It is Our sincerest hope that We may receive you in the spirit of friendship and cooperation to come. If you have need of anything during your stay, please bring it to Our attention personally.