[He slides his thumb along Marcus's wrist, leisurely.] Under the circumstances, it sounds to me like you're careful of preserving our happiness not because you don't want to be here, but because you care about us being happy. I can hardly begrudge you that. But ... look, I can't speak to what you and she were like alone before now, I wasn't there. But speaking from what I've observed and what I've felt myself ... while acting on this may have been abrupt, the groundwork was there. We wouldn't have reached for you the way we did, if it hadn't been.

[The dream had illuminated the solidity of some footholds Julius had been wary of, and in that way it made a difference. But it didn't plant any new ideas, whole cloth. He's conscious of how much they still have to learn about one another, but he's always rather liked that part of a new lover. The sensation of gradually relaxing is a pleasant one.]

We haven't, for now, the option of making official promises, the way some people can. But she and I have kept choosing one another, every day, for more than two years now. And it is not hard for me to imagine the three of us doing the same.

[However long they have the option, for all he's disinclined to dwell on the fact. Two mages and a rifter, in the middle of a war; it's not as if it's ever far from his mind.]