
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/326277.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Major_Character_Death, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire_-_George_R._R._Martin, Game_of_Thrones_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Renly_Baratheon/Loras_Tyrell
  Character:
      Renly_Baratheon, Loras_Tyrell, Robert_Baratheon, Margaery_Tyrell
  Additional Tags:
      Canon_Compliant, Falling_In_Love
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-01-24 Words: 28237
****** hearts and bones ******
by honey_wheeler
Summary
     Loras is gliding the razor carefully over his chin now. Renly hates
     this part; Loras is too close for too long, concentrating on his task
     with a focus that makes it too easy to stare at him. And Renly has
     done far too much staring. He could probably provide a tally of
     Loras’s eyelashes by now (a staggering lot), or identify which side
     of his lower lip Loras bites when he’s concentrating (the left), or
     number the tawny flecks in his eyes (eight in one eye, five in the
     other). He could probably even find the freckle just under Loras’s
     eyebrow in the dark. With his tongue. Gods.
Notes
     Canon compliant, spoilers for A Game of Thrones, the epilogue has a
     major spoiler for A Clash of Kings and minor stuff from A Storm of
     Swords. Stop at the double-starred rows if you don’t wish to be
     spoiled. Depending on whether you go by book age or show age, this
     could conceivably be underage. I wrote it with show age more in mind,
     though, so go with that if it helps.
*
You take two bodies and you twirl them into one
their hearts and their bones
and they won't come undone
Hearts and Bones, Paul Simon
 
It used to be a perfectly innocent activity. Well, not perfectly innocent. Few
things with Loras have ever been perfectly innocent, fewer still since he came
of age. But certainly it was less fraught with awareness. Renly would have
thought someone holding a well-honed blade to his throat would always be the
most harrowing aspect of being shaved, but Loras, as he does so often, has
proven him wrong.
It’s not as if Loras hasn’t always been a flirt. Even when he’d first come to
Storm’s End as barely more than a child, he’d had the whole household wrapped
about one finger within a matter of weeks, Renly being little exception. From
the start, he’d been irrepressible, a boy with more ideas than years, one whose
tongue was as quick as his mind. Renly frequently had cause to lament the fact,
given the number of feathers Loras had ruffled, but he’d always been loathe to
quash Loras’s irreverence. In some ways, Loras had been Renly’s conduit,
someone to voice what he couldn’t and risk what he daren’t. Loras was the
freedom Renly never let himself truly have, as much companion as he was squire.
The change had been subtle enough that Renly only really noticed it after the
fact. Loras’s flirtation with him had become suggestion, his charm had taken on
a seductive air. Renly would love to proclaim himself immune, to steadfastly
maintain that Loras is still a boy, still almost his ward, and that his
feelings are nothing more than paternal and friendly. He’s just never been a
very good liar.
The whole thing has made his morning ablutions something akin to torture. It’s
entirely too much casual intimacy for Renly’s system to handle. Loras may no
longer act as a true squire, the rigors of training taking over most of his
time, but this one vestige has remained. They’d never explicitly discussed it,
both simply continuing as if this one thing should remain unchanged, something
that Renly probably should have examined more carefully. Maybe it’s just the
vulnerability of it, the implicit trust with which Renly gives himself over to
Loras’s care that affects him so. But no, Renly’s had this done by someone
other than Loras before, and while there was a definite intimacy, there was
never such painful awareness. Only Loras makes Renly’s pulse speed, his
smallest movement catching Renly’s attention like a rabbit in a snare.
Inwardly, Renly curses himself for opening the gate in the first place, for
allowing himself to become aware of Loras as a man grown, however young a man
he may be.
Things are particularly bad this morning. Renly doesn’t know what it is – Loras
looks more handsome than normal, he stands closer than usual, he smells better,
Renly is lonelier, something, nothing, anything. Renly couldn’t give it a name
if he tried. Whatever it is, it’s driving him beyond mad.
“You’re fidgeting,” Loras remarks mildly.
“Am not,” Renly counters, surly at being caught out. At least Loras thinks it
merely restlessness, rather than a bone-deep awareness of Loras’s proximity on
Renly’s part.
“You’re going to get that lovely throat of yours cut, if you don’t hold still.”
“We both know you’ve never cut me,” Renly says. Loras has never so much as
nicked him. Renly’s never even had half a notion he might, honestly. Reflecting
overlong on his instinctive trust in Loras is too unsettling, though, so he
pushes the thought aside.
Loras is gliding the razor carefully over his chin now. Renly hates this part;
Loras is too close for too long, concentrating on his task with a focus that
makes it too easy to stare at him. And Renly has done far too much staring. He
could probably provide a tally of Loras’s eyelashes by now (a staggering lot),
or identify which side of his lower lip Loras bites when he’s concentrating
(the left), or number the tawny flecks in his eyes (eight in one eye, five in
the other). He could probably even find the freckle just under Loras’s eyebrow
in the dark. With his tongue. Gods.
Renly is halfway to hard already when Loras makes an absent humming sound and
steps closer, casually insinuating a knee between Renly’s thighs. Renly’s
breath dries up in his lungs. He tries to hold as still as possible, but Loras
moves again and brushes right against Renly’s crotch, the sweet ache of it
followed immediately by the sharp bite of the razor against his jaw when he
jerks involuntarily. So much for never cutting him, and it’s his own bloody
fault.
“Fuck,” Renly hisses. Loras looks at him, eyes wide.
“Sorry,” he says. “I told you to hold still.”
“It’s fine,” Renly snaps. “Keep going.” The pain has cleared his head, at
least, dissipating the tension that had been gathering low in his belly. He
takes a deep breath, sure that now he’ll be able to control himself, only to be
hit twice over when Loras leans close enough that Renly would be able to hide
nothing and swipes his thumb over the nick on Renly’s jaw, popping his thumb
unthinkingly into his mouth to suck the blood off. Every other drop of blood in
Renly’s body feels like it’s rushed straight to his crotch as he watches the
purse of Loras’s lips, watches them slide over the pad of his thumb in a way
that wouldn’t seem amiss to anyone else, but which to Renly in his current
state is practically obscene.
“On second thought, maybe that’s enough,” Renly rasps – somewhat desperately,
really, he can’t pretend otherwise. He’s trying to back away, to pull his knees
together and put some space between them, but the chair won’t budge and neither
will Loras, bloody infuriating Loras, who’s standing there watching Renly,
looking nonplussed and faintly amused and really far too smug. “Thank you,
Loras,” Renly says when he’s finally managed to stand and disentangle himself.
“Well done,” he adds inanely. He tries to convince himself that Loras didn’t
feel his arousal, that Renly’s escaped with a tiny shred of dignity. That
comforting illusion is shattered when Loras’s eyes flicker downward, punctuated
by the mischievous cock of an eyebrow. Seven fucking hells.
Somehow he manages to walk from his solar into his bedchamber like a normal
person, rather than bolting as his instincts demand. There’s a maid there,
tending the fire, and she startles at his entrance, then again once she looks
at his face. It’s not until she’s bobbed an apologetic curtsey and fled from
the room that he realizes he still has shaving cream around his mouth and chin
and must look like a dog gone mad. Irritably, he swipes a sleeve over his chin
and curses himself again. Himself and bloody fucking maddening, far too
appealing Loras. Renly doesn’t know what he did to deserve such torment, but it
must have been awful indeed.
*****
It itches. Loras knows it too, that’s the most irritating part. Renly never
knew how itchy growing a beard could be. Every time he moves to scratch, Loras
gives him the most infuriating smirk and he has to stop himself, even though
it’s driving him half mad.
“You could always rub up against a tree like a horse,” Loras says after Renly’s
started to raise and then immediately lowered his hand for the third time that
afternoon. “Or you could just let me shave you again.”
“I’m growing a beard,” Renly repeats firmly. He’s growing a beard if it bloody
well kills him, because the alternative most definitely will.
“So, I was doing some reading earlier,” Loras says, changing tacks. Renly is
immediately suspicious; he knows that the more innocent Loras’s tone, the less
innocent the content of his thoughts.
“How enriching for you,” Renly says, resolving that whatever Loras is up to
this time, he’ll ignore it.
“Indeed,” Loras agrees. “Educational, really.” Renly won’t ask. He will not
ask, he will not ask.
“Oh?” he asks. Seven hells.
“The illustrations in particular were quite illuminating.” Renly chances a look
over to where Loras stands. He hadn’t noticed the book in his hands before, but
now he recognizes it with a sinking feeling. He thought he’d squirreled that
securely away, safe from prying eyes and nosy squires. Seven bloody buggering
hells.
“I’m not sure that’s the sort of enrichment you need,” he mutters.
“Nonsense,” Loras says. “Why, the things I’ve learned! I thought this sort of
thing was only for farm animals.” He holds the book up, open to the page in
question to show Renly the illustration, as if he hasn’t seen it half a hundred
times before. As if he didn’t pour over that book when he was younger than
Loras, reading the words and studying the pictures with a giddy sense of shame
that only increased when he touched himself alone in his chambers remembering
them. He wonders if Loras did the same when he found the book and heat floods
him, making his cheeks burn, guilt mingling with unwanted need.
“Loras, be a good boy and put that back where you found it.”
“I’m not good,” Loras says, the look on his face proving it. “And I’m not a
boy.” He isn’t, Renly knows, not anymore. Thinking of Loras as a boy makes it
easier to push aside this awareness, these thoughts and feelings that never go
away for long no matter how Renly tries. But Renly has to admit that Loras
hasn’t been a boy for years now, even if he only admits it to himself.
“Put it back,” he repeats.
“Shall I read aloud to you?” Oh, gods.
“Loras, no-”
“’He stroked my manhood, each touch like a bolt of lightning through my
loins.’”
“Oh, gods.”
“I know, and it only gets better. ‘I swelled in his grasp, rigid and tumescent,
my turgid shaft cradled in his calloused palm.’ Look at all these big words I’m
learning!”
“This is ridiculous,” Renly says weakly.
“Not yet,” Loras says, and Renly can see he’s trying to hide his grin, “but I
see both ‘engorged’ and ‘pulsating’ in the next paragraph. And it looks like
there’s an illustration on the next page.”
Renly remembers that particular illustration vividly. Somehow it’s not just the
memory of his own youthful curiosities that has color rising to his cheeks, but
also the idea of Loras looking at it as well. Renly wonders if Loras will feel
the same ache Renly always did, if he’ll be alternately embarrassed and
fascinated by the pictures showing things he hadn’t even known to imagine. If
he would want to try them. All at once, Renly is very glad he’s seated at his
writing table with a heavy plank of oak between his crotch and Loras’s eyes.
“Don’t you have other things to be doing?” Renly asks, trying to keep the
desperate edge out of his voice. Loras looks at him over the top of the book
and cocks an eyebrow.
“Now that you’re growing a beard, I have more free time on my hands,” he says
pointedly. “Now where was I? Oh yes, the pulsating.”
It should be ludicrous. Comical. The last thing it should be is arousing. The
edge of the table bites into Renly’s palm, his grip is so tight. He’s right on
the verge of getting a hold of himself when Loras flips the page and his eyes
widen in genuine surprise and interest as they take in the picture before him.
He makes a low sound, and Renly’s pulse gives a dull throb in response. So much
for his great scheme of avoiding inappropriate situations by growing a beard.
Renly would order Loras from the room but he knows his voice would come out as
a squeak, and he’s hardly keen to add yet another indignity to the mounting
tally.
“I'd no idea human bodies could achieve that position,” Loras says once he’s
recovered himself. There’s a complete lack of artifice on his face, an almost
innocent wonder, and somehow that’s all the more stirring than his mischievous
teasing, so much so that Renly has to bite back a groan. “We should try it,”
Loras continues, his eyes flicking up to Renly’s, and Renly does groan at that.
Loras smiles. If Renly hadn’t already wondered if Loras was teasing him on
purpose, the smug satisfaction on his face now would cinch it.
“You’re late for your…” Renly gropes for some pretext to send Loras out of the
room, some innocent activity that doesn’t involve lances or swords or anything
even remotely suggestive, and comes up short, “…thing. The thing. You’re late
for it. You should go.”
“To the thing,” Loras echoes, lips pursed in amusement.
“Yes, the thing.”
“That I’m late for.”
“Mmhmm.” If he’d thought Loras might leave quietly and leave him unscathed,
he’d been painfully naïve. Loras takes a few casual steps towards Renly’s
writing desk, dropping the book before him and planting his palms on the
surface, leaning over until his face is close enough that Renly can feel the
puff of his breath and count those tawny flecks in his eyes again, eight and
five.
“Sure you wouldn’t rather I stayed to read the next chapter?” he asks, a world
of suggestion in his tone. Then he licks his lips, the bloody bastard, he
actually licks his fucking lips.
“The thing,” Renly repeats, his voice definitely verging on a squeak that time.
He bends his head to his parchment and dunks his quill vigorously in ink,
stopping only when he realizes even that is laden with suggestion and that
Loras is probably smirking at him this very moment. He chances a glance.
Smirking, sure enough. Fuck.
“Wouldn’t do to be late for the thing,” Loras says. “I’ll just leave this here
for you, shall I?” He slides the book under Renly’s nose, almost upsetting the
inkwell. He hums to himself as he walks through the door, casual and carefree.
Renly can hear him chuckling all the way down the stair. He takes a deep breath
and expels it through his nose. If he’d thought he was in trouble before, he
knows now that he’d had no idea of it.
*****
Loras is wearing the shirt. The shirt Renly hates – for good reason, as it’s a
truly ridiculous shirt, all laced up the front with leather cords, as if Loras
is some sort of pirate or brigand, standing on the prow of a Lyseni ship with a
great curved blade and an eyepatch. It’s beyond horrible, is the point, and
Renly has always hated it. He’s frequently suggested that Loras burn it, even,
which Loras always ignored. So it seems quite unfair that, lately, the shirt
has been making Renly feel flustered and overly aware and as if he might jump
from his skin. It’s just that all he can imagine when Loras wears it is hooking
his finger under those laces, tugging them free loop by loop, touching the
golden skin beneath, tasting every bit of it with his tongue…
“You’ve an odd look on your face.” Loras’s voice jolts Renly to attention.
“Nothing,” Renly blurts nonsensically. “I mean, what? That is…it’s nothing.”
Then he cringes at himself. Loras looks at him, his face a mix of confusion and
amusement. Renly can only be grateful for the small mercy that Loras has no
idea what that idiotic shirt is doing to him. If he must make a fool of
himself, at least he can be spared the knowing smirk that Loras seems to have
so at the ready of late. The one that Renly can’t seem to stop giving him
reason to use.
“I see you haven’t burned that shirt yet,” he says, in a weak attempt to dispel
the fantasy that still plays in his head, an endless loop that ends with
Renly’s hands beneath the shirt, with Loras beneath him, with… Gods, Renly, get
a hold of yourself, he thinks. But then, maybe the fantasy is easier to handle
than the feelings that simmer below it, like water on the brink of boiling. It
would be so easy to surrender, to take what Loras promises and give what he
asks, but in his weaker moments when he allows himself to examine it, Renly
knows that easy isn’t what he’s after with Loras. Easy would never be enough.
“And deny you the very thing you love to complain of most?” Loras asks. “What
sort of monster do you take me for?” Renly’s lips twitch in amusement, despite
himself.
“It is a favored part of my routine,” Renly admits. “Though perhaps I shouldn’t
be so dependent on a single article. Have you no other ugly clothing for me to
hate? For variety.” Loras laughs, a cheery happiness in it that Renly realizes
has been missing from Loras for quite some time. He hadn’t realized it was gone
until he heard it again.
"There's the Renly I know,” Loras says. “You've been so unlike yourself
lately."
"Have I?" At Loras's nod, Renly frowns. "How?"
"You've been...I don't know. Surly. Rather distant. Just...not you." Loras
shrugs sheepishly, as if he regrets even saying it, and guilt floods Renly. The
fault of this whole mess doesn’t lie with Loras, not truly. Were Renly the
kindly, almost paternal lord he pretends to be, Loras’s flirtation would be
nothing more than an endearing sort of flattery, something to be appreciated
and deflected until it dissipated, not brooded over until it’s got Renly
twisted in knots and snapping at everything like a mistreated hound.
“I haven’t meant to be,” he says quietly, studying the toes of his boots as if
a safe explanation might be scribbled upon them. To his surprise, Loras traces
a tentative fingertip from the hinge of Renly’s jaw to his chin, lifting his
face to Loras’s soft, searching gaze.
“I know,” he says gently. “I just worry.” There’s no suggestion in Loras’s
touch, no warm seduction. His fingers are careful, his expression affectionate.
Familiar. Comforting. Without his mind’s leave, Renly feels his body leaning
into Loras’s touch instinctively, his eyes dropping closed as if weighted. A
sweet ache starts in his ribcage and spreads, curling through his body like
smoke. It leaves a trembling need in its wake, a hollow feeling in Renly’s
breast that could only be soothed by Loras, by everything he could give. This
is so much more dangerous than any fantasy. This is all too real and all too
frightening.
The stricken look on Loras’s face when Renly stands abruptly is enough to stop
his breath, enough to turn buried need into panic. Loras’s hand hangs uselessly
in the air until he remembers himself and lowers it awkwardly, more awkwardly
than Renly has ever seen him do anything. He wants to explain. He wants Loras
to understand. But how could he make Loras understand when Renly doesn’t
understand himself? So instead he leaves, keeping his head down as he moves
past Loras to the door, so as not to see that wrenching look on his face again.
It doesn’t matter. He sees it in his mind long after he’s left the room.
Indeed, he might never be able to erase it.
*****
There’s something craven about it. Renly’s basically fled in the middle of the
night, with no word to Loras, only instructions to the household to tell him
Renly is in King’s Landing and will be back in a fortnight. Renly’s never
thought himself especially brave, but he’s never thought himself so cowardly
either. But somehow he couldn’t tell Loras he was leaving. Mostly, he thinks
he’s afraid of how easily Loras would have been able to talk him out of it. And
he needed to leave, he needed some space to collect himself. Some space to make
him stop thinking of Loras, as if distance could break the imaginary bones and
skin and sinew that seem to bind them together.
The distance hasn’t helped, though. He’s missed Loras, is the bugger of it.
Here he is with Robert badgering him at every turn, telling him he wants Renly
on his small council, discussing truly important matters of rule and realm, and
all Renly can do is moon about like a lovesick sot and wish Loras were with
him.
Of course, being in King’s Landing with Robert comes with its own trials,
whether Loras is present or not; Cersei has always been the least appealing
thing about seeing his brother. It’s a mark of how disconcerted Renly is by
everything that he would willingly subject himself to her presence.
“She’s a delight,” he says drily after suffering through yet another encounter
with her sharp tongue. She's never cared for Renly overmuch.
“Aye,” Robert sighs with a weary chuckle. “Wedded bliss. Something it’s quite
time you joined me in, you know.”
“You do make it seem so appealing.”
“You might as well be a Septon, Renly. I can’t recall the last time I saw you
with a woman.” A frown creases Robert’s forehead. “Come to think on it, I may
have never seen you with a woman.” He levels an accusing finger at Renly. “It’s
not healthy. Baelor the Blessed you’re not.”
“Robert,” Renly says with a roll of his eyes.
“Hells, you can have one of mine,” Robert says, waving his hand expansively.
“Is this your clever way of pawning Cersei off on me?”
“Ha, that would be a trick, wouldn’t it?” Robert laughs. “Nay, I’ll save her
for my enemies.” They both laugh at that, though Renly suspects it’s for
different reasons. He’s always thought Cersei would be brilliant unleashed on
the enemies of the realm. If someone had given her a sword instead of a gown,
there might never have been war or unrest again.
“There is…someone,” he says at last, hesitantly. This is far from the sort of
thing he and Robert usually discuss and it feels strange and foreign. Delicate.
“Someone,” Robert grunts, and something in it makes Renly think maybe Robert
knows more about him than he lets on. “How very specific. Have you bedded this
someone?”
“No.”
“Do you want to bed this someone?”
“I…” Renly hesitates, then decides to put a name to it, which is far more
discomfiting than just knowing. “Yes,” he says, ignoring the color staining his
cheeks.
“Does this someone want to bed you?”
“Yes, I think so.” Robert grunts again, in confusion this time, and Renly
frowns defensively. “It’s complicated.”
“Forgive me if I don’t see the complication, little brother.”
Renly tries to imagine telling his brother all that’s in his heart – how it’s
no simple matter of bedding or desire. He’d thought leaving Loras behind would
make things better, but it’s only made it worse. It’s been a shock to realize
how much he’s come to depend on Loras’s presence. Without Loras everything
feels precarious, like Renly’s trying to walk over quicksand. It’s a glimpse of
what will be when Loras moves on, Renly supposes, as he inevitably will. The
thought is somehow terrifying. Maybe that’s why he resists so, to limit the
damages.
None of which could he ever articulate to his brother. The very idea of telling
Robert he has feelings for someone, let alone for his former squire, is far too
undignified to consider. Robert, who consumes only food and drink in greater
quantity than he consumes lovers. He'd not understand that Renly couldn't bear
being just one in a line to Loras. An unwelcome pang of sympathy for Cersei
hits Renly all of a sudden. To be the one waiting, wanting, feeling too much
and having too little... It makes Renly's insides feel tied in knots.
“Where is that squire of yours anyway?” Robert asks. It hits too close to
Renly’s thoughts, gives him the uncomfortable notion that Robert is listening
in on his mind. “What was his name, Larad, Lorcan…?”
“Loras,” Renly supplies reluctantly. “He stayed at Storm’s End. And he’s not my
squire, not anymore. He’s training to be a knight. He’ll be a bloody good one
too,” Renly can’t resist adding, a note of pride in his voice.
“Aye, a bloody good one, is it?” Robert asks skeptically. “And is he taking
lessons in bridling that impudent tongue of his?” Renly sighs. Robert will
tolerate cheek from some, and downright enjoy it from others – though as far as
Renly can tell, only Ned Stark falls into that second group – but impertinence
from an untried boy like Loras is quite another thing altogether.
“I like that he doesn’t bridle that impudent tongue of his,” Renly says, and
it’s entirely true, he does. No matter how infuriating it may sometimes be.
“You should have trained that out of him,” Robert growls.
“Whatever you say, Robert.” All at once, Renly feels trapped and restless. A
wave of longing for home hits him and he has to fight the sudden urge to call
for his horse and head back to Storm’s End this instant. It’s nothing to do
with Loras, he tells himself. He just wants to be home. That’s all it is.
He stays another day anyway. Just to prove to himself that he still governs his
own mind.
*****
They’re all staring at him, every single one of them, including Loras. Renly
knows he must make quite a sight to have them all goggling so. He hadn’t been
thinking when he’d charged from his bath, too panicked at hearing Loras was
wounded during the day’s training to worry about making a more appropriate
entrance. After all, seeing him there wouldn’t have been anything to bat a lash
over in ordinary circumstances. But seeing him there frantic and damp and
disheveled, baying Loras’s name like a frenzied hound…Well, that must be quite
unexpected indeed.
“Gods,” he’d breathed the second he threw open the door and saw Loras, pale and
shirtless, blood streaking from the joint of his shoulder like a child had
painted it on with his fingers. He could hear the shakiness in his own voice,
the faint whine of nerves and fear. That, more than his presence in the room,
was what had brought all eyes to him. They were fighters, after all, blooded
and battle-worn, hardly prone to hysterics over what they no doubt saw as a
scratch, even though to Renly, it was so horrendous a wound as to be
unthinkable. But then, it was Loras who was wounded; deep in his hidden heart,
Renly knew that even the barest splinter would seem unthinkable to him were it
Loras who suffered it.
“Out,” he says now, sharply, imperiously, hitching his high birth up like a
mantle to ward off the embarrassment. “All of you, out.” Quietly,
unquestioningly, they file out, leaving only Loras, slouched low in a chair
with a wet cloth on his shoulder, watching Renly with curious, cautious eyes.
Renly drops his eyes to Loras’s shoulder, his usually golden skin now
alarmingly pallid against the bright pattern of blood. Too late he realizes
he’ll have to tend that wound, the maester tasked with it before now somewhere
beyond the confines of the room on Renly’s own order. “Bugger,” he mutters
under his breath.
“Didn’t really think that through, did you?” Loras asks with a wry quirk of
lip.
“It was a bit off the cuff,” Renly admits. He can see it in Loras’s eyes, how
much he wants to ask the question of why, what was so urgent, what’s Renly
about, charging in like this. But he holds his tongue – for once, Renly might
add – and it’s a relief. Dealing with his wound will be trouble enough without
Loras’s usual provocation.
Warily, tentatively, he moves to Loras’s side and reaches for the cloth to peel
it away from Loras’s blood-streaked shoulder. To his dismay, a fresh well of
blood bubbles up where the cloth had been, forcing him to clap it back down
with a yelp.
“You’re a natural maester, my lord,” Loras says, a barely-suppressed chuckle in
his voice.
“That’s enough out of you,” Renly returns. Steeling himself, he eases the cloth
off again, this time ready with a dry bandage to press over the wound. “Hold
that,” he instructs, and Loras dutifully holds it in place with his other arm,
seeming to feel little pain. Or at least be little bothered by what he does
feel.
Renly can feel Loras’s eyes on him as he works, carefully swiping the now-dried
blood from around the bandage, from Loras’s shoulder and chest and arm. For a
moment, he convinces himself that the shakiness of his hands isn’t noticeable.
A very short moment. The softness in Loras’s eyes when he sees the telltale
tremor is more than Renly can handle. Then Loras lifts a hand to Renly’s
throat, traces the path of a water droplet from jaw to throat to collarbone
with one questioning fingertip, and Renly holds no illusion of that tremor
escaping Loras’s notice either.
“Did they roust you from your bath?” he asks, low and soft. Renly flicks his
eyes to Loras’s and immediately regrets it; that familiar spark is there, and
Renly feels too vulnerable to withstand it, too laid-bare in his worry. He
wants too much for it to be sincere and specific, rather than Loras being
Loras. He's missed Loras too much.
“You weren’t supposed to notice that,” is all Renly says.
“I wasn’t supposed to notice you skidding in on your heels, flushed and
breathless, shirt only half tucked and clinging damp to you, after you’ve been
gone over a fortnight?” Loras asks, disbelief plain. Frustrated, Renly makes an
impatient noise.
“If I ordered you to stop noticing it, would you?” he asks. Loras looks
thoughtful and then shrugs.
“I could try, but I doubt it would be effective.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Renly mutters darkly. Loras only gifts him with that
sly-fox smile of his.
“So you say.”
No fresh blood wells this time when Renly lifts the bandage to apply ointment.
Even in his irritation, his fingers are gentle on Loras, delicate in smoothing
the salve over his skin in circles. Carefully, he wraps the wound, circling the
binding strip about Loras’s shoulder and arm snugly.
“When did you return?” Loras asks quietly, after a long silence.
“Just now. I was bathing the dust of the road away when…” Renly trails off.
Surely he’s imagining the pained look on Loras’s face. Surely Loras wasn’t hurt
to find Renly gone. Surely he hadn’t missed Renly the way Renly missed him. He
braces himself for some sort of comment from Loras, but none comes, so Renly
just tucks the end of the bandage in place and gives it a pat.
When he steps back to survey his work, he’s satisfied, and perversely proud.
The bandage is clean and neat. Loras has even lost some of that sickly pallor
that had made Renly’s stomach drop so when he first barged into the tent. A job
well done, he thinks to himself. He’s cleaned his hands from a ewer of water
and made to move away from Loras when a hand catching the untucked tail of his
shirt arrests him in place.
“Is that all?” Loras asks. It seems that every bit of Renly’s body freezes at
the fluid invitation in Loras’s voice, even his blood slowing in his veins and
his breath stopping motionless in his lungs.
“What else did you have in mind?” Renly asks, forcing evenness to his voice,
feigning a lightness he doesn’t feel.
“I could do with soothing,” Loras says, silky and inviting. “After my ordeal.”
“Soothing,” Renly echoes, even while cursing himself for his weakness, for
playing Loras’s game.
“Mmm,” Loras purrs, “some cosseting, perhaps. Some soft touches.” He walks his
fingertips up beneath Renly’s shirt to feather along the bare skin above the
line of his breeches. It’s too much, too intimate by half, a fresh shock of
sensation that he’d only had opportunity to dream at before, and Renly catches
Loras’s hand instinctively, defensively.
“None of your games, Loras,” Renly orders, but it comes out thin, breathy,
weaker than a day-old kitten.
“And if it isn’t a game?” Loras asks, and under the teasing lilt in his voice,
there’s a disarming intensity. Renly closes his eyes against the ache in his
gut. Loras keeps his hand motionless in Renly’s suddenly tighter grip, but
Renly can feel the warmth of it, can imagine all too well letting that hand
roam where it may, over all the places Loras’s tone promises so easily. But
that’s the trouble of it; Renly can’t bear so easy a promise from him, not from
Loras of all of them. Not when Renly’s heart feels anything but easy.
“You should survive, so I believe I’m done here,” he says briskly, dropping
Loras’s hand and stepping away, as far and as quickly as he dares without
making a fool of himself. The disappointment in Loras’s eyes, the hurt on his
face – surely they’re only play. Renly can’t afford to let himself believe
otherwise. No matter how that face haunts him all the rest of the day and well
into the night, and each night after that, until Renly can hardly bear to be in
the same room as Loras at all. He knows the household must think it curious,
that Renly would disappear to King’s Landing without Loras, then spend a
handful of days bolting from the room whenever Loras appears, and the
unhappiness on Loras’s face every time it happens is too wrenching to allow
himself to think on. It’s all entirely foolish, Renly knows, but as with many
things concerning Loras, Renly can’t seem to stop himself.
*****
The whistling is what wakes him, discordant and sporadic as it is. Renly has
learned to sleep through many things, but the sour, shrill notes he’s currently
hearing might be enough to wake the dead. He pushes himself up on his elbows,
peers across his bedchamber towards the door; the whistling echoes around the
solar, punctuated now by a thud and the scrape of furniture along the floor.
Renly would be nervous, but then he hears Loras’s voice, the unmistakable sound
of his cursing.
“Fantastic,” Renly mutters. He scrubs a hand over his eyes and debates with
himself on whether he should go out there. Well. On whether he will go out
there, as he knows full well he shouldn’t. The sound of something falling to
the floor with a great crash makes up his mind for him. With a heavy sigh, he
pushes himself up from the bed and searches for a pair of breeches. After a
moment’s hesitation, he reaches for a shirt as well. Normally he wouldn’t,
but…well, best not to give Loras any ground before he’s even started.
He finds Loras standing in the solar, staring in dismay at the vial of ink he’s
managed to upend all over Renly’s writing table. Even steeling himself for it
does nothing to dissipate the impact of seeing Loras. He should be used to that
feeling by now, the pull in his gut that happens every time he sees him or
hears his voice or even thinks of him. But he isn’t used to it. He might never
be. He’d thought staying away might help, but it only seems to have made it
worse, to make everything heightened and all the more painful.
“Problem?” he asks, and Loras jerks his head up at Renly’s voice, then wobbles
a bit to the side. A claxon goes off in Renly’s head when he realizes Loras is
drunk – not just drunk, but well and truly foxed.
“I spilled it,” he says, waving broadly at the ink still puddled on the table.
“I should fix it. But I don’t want to get inky.” At that he raises his hand and
waggles his fingers, and there’s something so endearing about it that Renly
feels an alarming lurch in his ribs. It’s mostly to distract himself that he
walks to the table and rights the bottle, throwing a blank sheet of parchment
over the ink to absorb it.
“All fixed,” he says.
“Brilliant,” Loras beams. He leans towards Renly, grinning like a sot, smelling
of drink and that spicy scent he always seems to carry and…sugar, curiously.
Renly weighs his interest in knowing where the sugar factored in against the
pleasing mystery of it and decides not to ask.
“You’re in a merry mood,” he says instead, unable to keep the fondness out of
his voice. It seems safer, somehow, than it would if Loras were sober. Like no
harm will come of it if Renly gives in to the things he fights. The keep is
quiet around them. The room is barely lit from the embers of the fire, sleep
still clouds Renly's mind, and none of it seems real. None of it will count.
“I’ve gotten quite drunk,” Loras tells him conspiratorially. “Very, very drunk.
Don’t tell Renly.” Then he grins and giggles, taps Renly on the nose with one
fingertip.
“It’ll be our secret,” Renly assures him. “Who let you have so much wine?”
“It wasn’t wine. It was yellow stuff. Amber, really. A nice, deep amber color.
Very pretty. Would look smashing with your coloring, you should have something
made.”
“Indeed,” Renly agrees as he ducks under Loras’s arm to steady him, guiding him
towards his own room off the solar. “And who let you have that?” Loras is warm
and solid along Renly’s side. Every step has his hip bumping against Renly’s,
his ribs pressing almost sharply into Renly’s shoulder. He’s so slight; strange
how much power there is in him.
“I don’t know, but he should be punished. Or rewarded. Possibly a little of
both.”
“I’m sure tomorrow morning will help you decide,” Renly says. “Probably on the
former.”
“Will you spank him on my behalf, my lord?”
“Mm,” Renly hums noncommittally.
“I can think of others who need a spanking.” Loras draws the last word out,
sibilant and suggestive. His weight against Renly now is no stumble; it’s
deliberate, a mute request. Renly groans. He’d thought he could escape from
this unscathed. More the fool he, then.
“Down you go,” he says, lowering Loras to his bed a bit more hastily than he
should. Loras flops onto the mattress with a heavy sound, giggling when his arm
slides off Renly’s shoulder and lands on his own face. His shoulder can't be
fully healed yet, surely it must still hurt, but he seems to take no notice of
it.
“I’ve never been this drunk before,” he says conversationally, his voice
trailing off into a soft mumble.
“Is that so.” Renly pays him little attention, trying to decide if he should
attempt to make Loras at least a bit comfortable or if he should leave him as
he is to sleep it off. The boots are easy. Renly pries them off one by one,
gently placing Loras’s feet back on the mattress before dropping each boot to
the floor with a soft thump. Loras’s feet are paler than the rest of him,
strangely vulnerable looking. Renly wants to loop his hand around Loras’s
ankle, see if his fingertips will touch, but he curls his hand into a fist to
stop himself. The shirt and the breeches Loras can sleep in. The knife at his
waist is another story. Cautiously, Renly glances up at Loras’s face. He seems
to have fallen asleep; small surprise given how drunk he is. For a moment,
Renly just watches him, watches how the breath from his slack mouth stirs the
curls tumbling down his cheek. He looks back at the belt. It’s gotten twisted
all around, the buckle somewhere beneath Loras, and Renly inhales deeply.
“It’s fine,” he mutters to himself as he levers Loras’s shoulders up enough to
get at the buckle and slide the belt from underneath his body. “Nothing
untoward about this.”
“How disappointing,” Loras murmurs, and Renly jumps at his voice, the knife
belt clattering to the floor.
“I thought you were asleep,” he accuses.
“Luckily, no. Care to take off anything else?”
“Stop,” Renly warns.
“Do you truly wish me to stop?” Loras catches Renly’s wrist with insistent
fingers, quite serious now. Renly doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. He would
have thought it was the easiest question to answer in the world, but now that
it’s before him, he’s struck mute. “If you ask me to stop, I will,” Loras
whispers, as if it pains him to say it, and for some reason – for no good
bloody reason – a jolt of sheer panic shoots through Renly at the idea that he
really might.
“It’s nothing,” he dissembles, the tightness in his throat giving lie to his
indifferent shrug. “I don’t think of you that way.” It’s an evasion, he knows,
and no real answer to the question at all. It’s just all he can manage. He
can’t bring himself to lower the blade somehow.
“Oh?”
“Yes.” If he says it firmly enough, he can convince himself it’s true.
“Then you wouldn’t mind giving me a goodnight kiss.”
“A what?”
“A kiss,” Loras repeats. “For sweet dreams.” Loras says it as if it’s an
eminently reasonable suggestion. Parts of Renly agree. Too bad and thank
goodness they’re governed by the parts that don’t.
“Loras.”
“You don’t think of me that way,” Loras reminds him. “It’s nothing.” Renly’s
been painted quite neatly into a corner, he realizes. Still, he shouldn’t kiss
Loras, he can’t. Loras is drunk and just flirting and oh gods, what a bloody
mess. Loras seems to have no such reservations. The fingers looped about
Renly’s wrist give a sharp tug that has him tumbling down onto the bed, half
atop Loras.
It’s the closest Renly’s ever been to him. His body is hot under Renly’s, as
warm as the stones before a hearth and twice as inviting. Loras’s eyes focus on
Renly’s and he smiles. “Hello,” he says, and gods, it’s soft and warm and more
seductive than Renly can bear. He doesn’t know if he gives in or if Loras grows
impatient, or possibly some of both, but Loras’s lips are on his, his breath is
feathering into Renly’s mouth now as he pushes himself up on his elbows, and
every bit of the control Renly’s been holding on to for ages snaps.
The kiss is wild, animal. Too much pent-up need, too many ignored emotions. Too
much feeling with nowhere to go but Renly’s mouth and hands. He snakes his
fingers around Loras’s neck to tilt his head up for a better angle, kissing him
more roughly than he should. Loras doesn’t seem to care. He’s straining against
Renly, meeting Renly’s tongue with his own, hot and hungry and welcoming. Only
the way Loras quivers beneath him like a bowstring about to snap brings Renly
back to himself. It takes everything he has to stop, but somehow he manages,
pulling away to suck in unsteady breaths.
“Why did you leave me?” Loras asks shakily.
“Loras-”
“You left without a word. Not even a bloody fucking note. And now you flee from
me like I’m diseased.”
“I didn’t leave you,” Renly says, but he knows it’s a poor defense. The words
sound lame and useless to his own ears, so they must sound even worse to Loras.
“I went to King’s Landing, that’s all.”
“I missed you. I still miss you.” It’s plaintive enough to destroy him. Renly
closes his eyes, dropping his forehead to Loras’s shoulder for a brief moment
until he can collect himself against the ache spreading beneath his skin. He
wants to apologize, to tell Loras he missed him as well – the words are right
there on his tongue – but he can’t. “Tell me you want me to stop and I will,”
Loras says.
“I,” Renly begins, but he doesn’t know what he wants to say. Doesn’t know what
he even feels anymore.
“Stay with me,” Loras whispers. Renly’s desire to stay is almost as desperate
as his indefinable terror at the idea. All his doubts and reservations shout in
his head until it’s ringing with them. Loras clings when he eases away, trying
to hold him but still fumbling and slowed by drink.
“You need to sleep.” When Loras opens his mouth, Renly speaks quickly to stay
the words he knows are coming. “Alone, Loras.” He won’t remember any of it
tomorrow, Renly thinks. He's counting on it.
Loras looks at him for several long moments, one emotion chasing another across
his face until Renly feels Loras is as confused as he himself is. For once.
Then he drops his eyes in resignation and turns to face the wall, effectively
dismissing Renly. It makes no sense; Renly was the one who pulled away, he was
the one who told Loras to sleep, so there’s no good reason for it to feel like
a rejection. But that’s exactly how it feels.
*****
Morrow dawns far too soon and far too bright. Renly winces and throws a wrist
over his eyes. One would think he’d been the one who was drunk last night given
his aching head and bleary eyes today. And then it hits him like a physical
blow; he kissed Loras last night. Not just some friendly peck on the cheek or a
chaste press of lips, either. He well and truly kissed him. And it was even
better than you imagined, a small, traitorous voice whispers in Renly’s head.
“I am a bloody fool,” Renly says aloud to himself, and then cringes at the
pounding it starts up in his head. It’s going to be a long fucking day. He
thinks about getting up. It's a decidedly unappealing idea. Well, is he lord of
Storm's End, or not? He rolls over, pulls a pillow up over his head to block
out the light and falls back into a restless sleep.
Loras is in his solar when Renly finally forces himself to face the world, well
into the afternoon. He hadn’t expected it, so he has no defenses up, he hasn’t
braced himself for the encounter in the slightest. Seeing Loras feels like
being unhorsed, the breath leaving Renly’s lungs in a whoosh, everything
becoming an alarming blur. He has to steady himself in the doorframe, he feels
so shaky.
Loras is looking far too hale. He’s even wearing that bloody laced shirt, which
should have been too complicated for someone who was drunk to the point of
idiocy last night. It feels insulting, somehow, that Renly is suffering all the
after-effects when Loras was the one who indulged. Renly straightens, walks
stiffly into the room, his annoyance overriding his chagrin at the past night’s
events temporarily. Irritably, he sits to pick over the plate of food Loras has
had brought up.
“I suppose it’s too much to ask for you to have a blinding headache,” he says
when he’s eaten as much as he’s going to. Gods, he sounds like a surly
adolescent. “What are you doing in here anyway? I’d have thought you’d be off
retching and cursing your existence.”
“I thought…” Loras starts. “That is, after…” He trails off, darts his eyes
towards Renly and then away, and a sickening realization steals over Renly.
“Tell me you don’t remember last night,” he begs. The look on Loras’s face
confirms it. Renly’s heart drops precipitously into his stomach. “You remember
last night.”
“I remember everything to do with you,” Loras says. There’s something wary in
it, something cautious. As if he’s afraid to say too much. It’s not something
Renly is accustomed to from Loras. Normally such a statement from him would be
flirtatious, suggestive. Normally it would make Renly's chest feel tight and
crowded. Instead it puts him wrong-footed, unsure what to think. He sighs and
circles his fingertips over the knit of his forehead.
“Not sure it was all that worth remembering,” he says, thinking on how rough he
was, lacking all skill or control. It certainly wasn't his best performance.
He’s surprised to see the change that comes over Loras’s face instantly at his
words; Renly has never seen him look so wounded.
“It was to me,” he says quietly. “But I suppose I have no comparison.”
“Well, you-” Renly stops short as the meaning of Loras’s words hits him. “Wait.
What? What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve no other kisses to compare it to. Nor anything else.” Loras’s chin
comes up stubbornly, but the hurt is still there.
“No other kisses,” Renly repeats, stunned. “You…none?”
“None.”
Renly feels like he’s just learned that up is down. It’s as if he’d been
looking at things all wrong but now that he's cocked his head to the side,
everything has shifted and reassembled itself, showing him things he never
realized were there. Loras is an innocent. Despite all his flirting, all his
suggestion and invitation. That flirting seems entirely different now,
possessed of a different weight and tenor than Renly had always thought. His
heart begins to pound with it, with the feeling of sliding headlong and
unchecked into some new circumstance. A tiny spark flares into existence deep
in Renly’s breast and he catches his breath against it, forces himself to speak
to Loras evenly.
“You never said.”
“You never asked,” Loras points out – not entirely unreasonably, Renly has to
admit.
“I suppose I just assumed,” he says. “Loras, if I’d known-”
“If you’d known, you wouldn’t have done it.” And there it is again under the
defiance, that horrible hurt, clear on his face, making him look as young as he
really is.
“You give me far too much credit,” Renly says mildly, sounding far steadier
than he feels. The flummoxed look on Loras’s face when he realizes Renly’s
meaning is staggeringly satisfying, even in the face of Renly’s regret. But the
regret has changed. Instead of regretting the kiss, now he regrets his haste,
his lack of care. Gods, Loras was an innocent, and Renly attacked him like a
sex-starved sailor. With a pang, Renly realizes he doesn’t regret it merely on
Loras’s behalf, but also on his own, for the lost opportunity of knowingly
being his first and all that would have entailed had Renly only known the
weight of his role. “I would have… Loras, your first kiss should have been a
bit gentler than that.”
“And yours was roses and starlight,” Loras scoffs and Renly has to laugh.
“No,” he admits. The first was horrendously awkward and inept, and the handful
after brought little improvement. “I suppose the second wasn’t either. Nor the
third…” He trails off, realizing he’s stepped all over his own point.
"Have you much experience?" Loras asks - lightly, like the answer doesn't
matter overmuch to him, but Renly doesn't miss how he keeps his eyes downcast,
how the toe of his boot twists in the pile of the rug. Renly thinks back on all
he's done. The women first, when he'd wanted to believe that was where his
interest lay. Then the men, furtive and secretive in the beginning, sometimes
even unknown, strangers he'd found in places he didn't admit to going then and
would rather not remember going now. Maybe it’s the dimming of years gone past
– maybe it’s stupid, bloody, romantic idiocy – but somehow he can't quite
remember even the most intense experience among them as being half of what he
felt when he'd finally allowed himself to touch Loras with intent, to taste the
mouth that had tortured his dreams for what seemed forever.
"Enough, I suppose," is all he says.
“Was I so terrible in comparison to your others?” It’s said with as much
bravado as Loras seems able to muster, but Renly can sense the hurt still
lingering beneath, increasing with every ill-thought thing Renly says, and he
could kick himself.
“No,” he says as firmly as he can. “It was me who was lacking. I regret not
making it better for you.”
“It was exactly what I wanted,” Loras says.
“Only because you didn’t know what to want,” Renly counters immediately.
“So show me what to want,” Loras fires back at him, and Renly has to admire his
daring. He certainly wasn’t so capable of asserting himself at Loras’s age.
Hells, he’s probably not so capable of it now. He knows it should only
reinforce his reserve, but somehow it has the opposite effect. The thought of
all the awful uncertainty he felt when he was younger than Loras and figuring
everything out, all the fumbling and disappointment and anguish… It’s the last
thing Loras should go through. Renly couldn’t bear to see his confidence
dimmed, his certainty tarnished. Renly may not be good for him, but he can
certainly be good for this.
“All right,” he says finally, and has the sheer pleasure of watching Loras jerk
in surprise.
“All right?” Loras echoes faintly. Even more satisfying is the way Loras
retreats in step, backing before Renly as Renly walks towards him, shepherding
Loras into his chambers. Nerves are plain on his face, but need is as well,
need and longing and hope. The click of the latch as Renly locks the door makes
Loras swallow visibly, his eyes growing dark and unfocused.
“So I’ll show you what to want,” Renly says. Loras’s eyelids flutter, only the
whites showing beneath them before Loras gains control of himself.
“Right here?” he whispers, making a weak gesture at the floor between their
feet. Renly fights a smile.
“I could,” Renly allows, “but my bed would probably be more suitable.”
“Right,” Loras says. “The bed.” Tentatively, he turns towards the mattress, but
Renly stops him.
“What are you doing?”
“I,” Loras starts. “The bed. I thought-” Renly steps close to him, all but
touching him, and Loras’s voice dries up.
“I intend to put you there myself,” Renly tells him, low and full of promise,
and he’s glad of all his experience when Loras shivers and closes his eyes,
swaying towards Renly with a needy moan. It’s all too heady, too intoxicating.
Renly never wants it to stop. He lifts one hand, catches the end of one of the
laces on Loras’s shirt and gives it a gentle tug. A whimper sounds in response
from Loras’s chest.
“If you knew,” Renly says, pulling the lace slowly and deliberately, until the
tie comes loose, “how many times I’ve imagined doing this with these laces…” He
lets his voice trail off as he hooks one finger under the criss-cross of lacing
at the top and pulls, the leather cords sliding free with a soft hiss. “All
these bloody…maddening…laces,” each word punctuated with another tug, another
slide and hiss, another inch of Loras’s skin appearing in the widening vee of
his shirt. Loras’s breathing is uneven. A flush creeps up his chest and over
his cheeks, a pink stain that somehow manages to make him even lovelier.
Suddenly Renly loses his desire to play. He ghosts his fingers over that golden
skin he’s revealed, wanting nothing more than to touch but still holding back.
“Tell me to touch you,” Renly whispers.
“Renly, please,” Loras gasps.
“Tell me,” Renly insists softly, every part of him screaming to touch Loras,
every part but one that bids him wait, that needs this to be what Loras wants,
beyond the reach of any doubt.
“Touch me,” Loras says. “Please, Renly, I want you to, I’ve always wanted you
to.”
The knotted skein of Renly’s control breaks, and he’s stepping flush against
Loras, dropping his hands to Loras’s arse and lifting him up as if he weighs
nothing. He’s lighter than Renly expects, easy to hold, easy to maneuver to the
bed where they topple like felled trees, Renly’s body settling so easily atop
Loras’s that it’s as if he belongs there.
“Eight and five,” he says softly as he looks down at Loras, counting the flecks
in his eyes as he’s done so often in the past. Confusion flits across Loras’s
face.
“What does that mean?” he asks. But Renly doesn’t want to say, not yet, so he
only answers with the barest of kisses, keeping his eyes open to see those
flecks – even if it makes him almost cross-eyed – until Loras’s eyes flutter
closed and Renly lets his own follow suit.
It’s the complete opposite of their last kiss. There’s no rush, no haste. Renly
draws everything out, lingers, tastes every bit of Loras’s mouth until they’re
both trembling and straining against each other. Everything seems heightened,
more intense: Loras’s hands clenched into fists in Renly’s shirt. His throat
working in a swallow under the hand Renly has banded from ear to ear. The
smoothness of his teeth, the sweet tang of his mouth, the smell of him. Renly
kisses Loras until Loras is writhing beneath him, arching up into the pressure
of Renly’s body on his, as shaky and keen as a colt taking its first steps.
Renly remembers this, remembers the sweet thrill of exploration, the sure
feeling that you were discovering something new and dangerous and exciting. He
opens his mouth on Loras’s neck and palms him through his breeches, smiling at
the choked noise Loras makes in response, at the surge of his hips into Renly’s
hand.
“Renly,” Loras gasps, head thrown back into the mattress.
“Mm?” Renly purrs. The motion of his hand ensures that Loras has no words to
respond, only a shaky slide of sound managing to escape his lips. Ruthlessly,
he works his hand over Loras, knowing it won’t be long. There’s so much more to
show him, so much more Renly could do and wants to do, but this is all he’ll
allow himself. At least for now.
Loras’s fingers clutch at Renly hard enough to bruise when he finds his
release. Renly holds him through it, allows himself to push his hips against
Loras’s side, knowing he’ll have to take care of himself later. For now, he
only buries his nose behind Loras’s ear and listens to his breathing even out,
tongues the pulse under his skin as it steadies and slows.
“So,” he says after they’ve lain together long enough for Loras to relax and
curl into Renly’s hold with such comfort and familiarity that Renly could
almost forget they’ve never done this before. “Have you a better idea on what
to want now?”
Loras props himself on his elbow to look at Renly. Something in his gaze
unsettles Renly, makes him feel like the roles have been flipped once more and
he's no longer in easy control. “Seems I want precisely the same thing I did
before,” he says meaningfully. He leans up to touch his mouth to Renly’s, so
gently it makes Renly’s breath snag in his throat. He feels like a great chasm
has opened up beneath him and he can do nothing but fall. It should be
terrifying. It should be, but somehow it isn’t, and that’s what’s so terrifying
about it.
*****
Loras has always been striking. He’d gone from pretty child, to prettier youth,
to handsome man, years only adding to his appeal. He's always been aware of his
appeal as well, something that should have been off-putting but in Loras
managed to be only charming, flirting as he did with everyone, youthful and
aged, comely and plain, high and low alike. It seems fitting, Renly supposes,
for someone so pleasing in manner to be just as pleasing in appearance. So
Loras has always been forgiven his vanities, his rich garb – too rich for a
mere squire, even a son of Highgarden in service to the King’s brother – and
his extravagances, his fastidiousness.
All that fastidiousness is gone now; Loras’s hair is in complete disarray, his
jaw and neck are marked red from Renly’s beard. His lips are bruised-looking.
He’s turned towards Renly, one hand curled under his cheek, pushing creases
into his skin in his sleep. Renly’s never found him lovelier.
The skin on his shoulder is pink and new where he’d been wounded, a thin scab
twisting down the center, small enough now that it's almost gone. Renly ghosts
his fingertips over it, remembering how grievous it had seemed at the time.
Hard to imagine it’s nothing more than a trace and a tender spot now, soon to
disappear entirely. Loras’s shoulder shifts under his hand and Renly looks up
to find Loras watching him.
“I wasn’t very gentle with this last night,” Renly says, covering the spot with
his palm.
“I didn’t care,” Loras says.
“You should have.”
Loras shakes his head. "I know you wouldn't hurt me." The words pierce Renly,
as moving as they are false. He’s already hurt Loras. The idea that he might
hurt him again – that he’s almost guaranteed to hurt him, that he’ll only hurt
them both – has a chill settling deep in his ribcage. Loras is so young. He’s
young and innocent and Renly could not feel any more like a depraved old man at
the moment.
He’d never taken off his breeches the night before, a small measure of self-
preservation in the face of temptation, and he’s glad of it now as he slides
shakily from the bed and paces the steps to the window and back. Loras had not
kept his breeches on – indeed, most of the things Renly had done to him would
have been difficult if not impossible if he had – which is not lost on Renly
when Loras slips from the bed to stand bare before him. Gods, he’s beautiful.
Renly closes his eyes and swallows hard, need and fear and disgust with himself
warring so fiercely within him that he feels paralyzed.
“Perhaps we should take a couple of days,” he says. “Some time to ourselves.”
Loras looks as if Renly slapped him.
“Don’t you want me?” he asks, small and beseeching, and already Renly is making
lie of Loras’s words, already he’s hurting him.
“You know that I do,” he says roughly, every bit of his longing in the words,
so much so that he feels vulnerable and exposed, a crab without a shell.
“Then why are you saying this?” Loras asks. Renly grapples with what’s in his
head and heart, searches for words to encompass things he doesn’t fully
understand himself.
“I don’t...” he starts. “You shouldn’t feel obligated… Seven hells, Loras, this
is not exactly a typical situation. You’ve trusted me, and now…” Disgust at
himself overtakes the need and the fear, and Renly pushes a hand into his hair,
clenches it so tightly that his scalp aches. “Gods, I am a wretched, horrible
old man.”
“Oh, you’re positively ancient,” Loras says drily.
“I’m taking advantage.”
“You’re not taking advantage!” Loras cries. “How can it be taking advantage
when I’m throwing myself at you?”
“You’ve practically been my ward for years.”
“But I’m not your ward. And I’m no longer a boy. I know what I want.” His face
is blazing and sure, but still Renly holds back. There’s so much at stake, for
both of them. There’s so much that would be risked.
“This isn’t some bizarre case of hero worship?”
The snort Loras gives is genuine. “If it were, I might have picked a less
unlikely hero.” Renly is torn between being reassured and being mildly
affronted. He’s about to argue when it strikes him how absurd it would be, and
he shakes his head.
“Are you sure?” he asks Loras.
“Sure enough for the both of us.” Even hearing Loras’s certainty, Renly
hesitates. “How many times must I tell you?” Loras demands, almost on a laugh
and Renly meets it with an almost-laugh of his own.
“Always once more,” he says.
“I’m sure,” Loras says, stepping close, hands on Renly's ribs. Then he says it
again, and again, the words turning into a chant, “I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m
sure,” until Renly silences him with a shaking hand against his mouth. Loras
bites at the edge of Renly’s palm, strains towards him, and Renly can hardly
bear it, can hardly bear the distance when he presses his lips to the back of
his own hand and then pulls it away so he can kiss Loras’s mouth. He can feel
himself turning a corner; giving in to this is giving in to all of it and never
looking back, refusing all doubt or question. It’s giving himself over to
Loras, wherever it may go and however it may end. All Renly can hope is that it
never does end.
*****
Renly's relationship with Loras has always been intimate; hard to say otherwise
of any man and his squire, as distance makes for an uneasy partnership. Renly
could easily list what Loras likes, what he doesn’t. What he thinks and what he
feels. He could give all manner of information about Loras’s past and his
future, about everything Loras has ever been. And still being with him like
this is like meeting someone new, seeing something familiar from a different
angle and barely recognizing it. Everything is a fresh surprise, even the
things already well-known. It's a heady feeling. Renly feels drunk on it,
addicted to it. Addicted to Loras, who seems to feel much the same. They
haven’t managed to be apart yet.
Tonight they’re sleeping in their own rooms. It had been Renly’s idea. Loras,
predictably, hadn’t cared for it, but Renly had insisted. He needs to prove to
himself that he still has boundaries. That he can still control himself. That
he isn’t entirely at the mercy of his heart and his cock. The illusion lasts
all while he readies himself for sleep, telling himself he’ll see Loras on the
morrow, that he isn’t some child who can’t be away from his favorite toy. He’s
a grown man, for fuck’s sake. Then he finds himself at Loras’s door, pushing it
open without even knocking, and the illusion burns up like fog in sunlight.
Loras looks up with sated, sleepy eyes at the sound of the door opening. When
he sees Renly, he smiles. “Took you long enough.”
Renly is across the room and on to Loras’s bed before he’s even entirely aware
of what he’s doing. The mattress dips under his knees and they’re kissing,
straining against each other as if Renly hadn’t left only an hour before. Renly
bears Loras down beneath him, struggles with the furs over his body, groaning
when he finally wrestles them away only to find more cloth between him and
Loras’s skin. He supposes he's been spoiled. Always before, clothing hadn't
been an issue when he and Loras had gotten around to sleeping, every piece of
it having long since been removed, some of it less than gently. Now the delay
seems unbearable.
“Why don’t you sleep naked?” he growls in frustration, wondering why the bloody
thing doesn’t seem to have a hem.
“Usually I do,” Loras supplies helpfully. That only fires Renly’s imagination
and makes his hands all the more graceless and urgent. Finally, finally he gets
his hands on Loras’s skin, slides his palms up thighs and over hips, across the
shallow dip of Loras’s waist and the ridges and grooves of his ribcage until
the shirt is gathered beneath Loras’s arms.
“Off,” he says. For once, Loras is obedient, immediately wriggling the shirt
over his head with movements that test Renly’s control. Renly wastes no time.
He touches his tongue to the places Loras’s blood beats hot and fast under the
skin – his neck, his wrists, the crooks of his elbows. When his tongue drags a
wet line along the thin, soft skin where thigh meets stomach, Loras makes an
incoherent sound and bucks his hips up in an unsubtle request. Renly lifts his
head to look at him. Loras’s hands are fisted in the linens, his face is
flushed as he bites at the left side of his lower lip, always the left.
“Was there something you wanted?” Renly asks, all innocence. Loras’s cheeks
redden yet more, but he keeps Renly’s gaze.
“You could, er,” he breathes, trailing off and moving his hips again in
suggestion. “That is, I liked it when you did it before.”
“Did what?” Renly asks, deliberately moving his head to the side just to see
Loras shift his hips automatically to follow.
“You know,” Loras insists. Renly does know, but it charms him to no end to see
Loras grow so shy at such unpredictable times. He grins and decides to amuse
himself a bit.
“This?” he asks, before lowering his head to set his tongue to the skin just
below Loras’s navel. Loras shivers and gasps out a no. “This?” Renly bites
gently at the soft flesh on the inside of his thigh, close enough to Loras’s
cock to make him jump.
“No,” Loras gasps again, even more shivery this time.
“Maybe this,” Renly suggests mildly, as he slips his fingers low and presses
his knuckles in a place that has Loras crying out and twisting halfway off the
bed.
“I didn’t even know that was something to want,” he says on a choked laugh, and
Renly can feel his pulse racing even faster, hottest under the skin that’s now
just a breath away from Renly’s mouth.
“I’ve no more ideas, I’m afraid,” he says, allowing his lips the barest brush
over Loras’s cock as he says the words.
“You are the worst sort of tease,” Loras pants, straining and reaching and
wanting.
“I’m trying to be more like you,” Renly answers. One more moment, he decides.
One more moment before he takes pity and ends Loras’s torment. When he finally
takes Loras into his mouth, Loras sighs as if he’s been waiting for this his
whole life.
Loras’s stamina has definitely increased. The first time Renly had done this,
Loras lasted barely more than a handful of moments before spilling in Renly’s
mouth and turning bright scarlet in embarrassment. Now Renly can go about it
more leisurely, teasing and exploring and doing all the things to Loras that
he’d tried so hard not to imagine before. Drunk on the freedom of it, he pulls
back to work his tongue at the head and then drops down to take Loras in
entirely, Loras’s moan vibrating through both of their bodies. Renly’s jaw is
aching by the time Loras stiffens and jerks up against him, spending in hot
pulses against the back of Renly’s throat.
“I take it back,” Loras mumbles in a daze after Renly’s licked him clean. Renly
rests an arm over Loras’s stomach, props his chin on it to watch him and make a
questioning noise. “I apologize for calling you the worst sort of tease, when
clearly you’re the best sort there is.” He tangles his fingers in Renly’s hair,
stroking through the mass of it and making Renly’s scalp tingle. Everything
feels so drowsy, so comfortable.
“Tell me how it is you managed to still be an innocent up until now,” Renly
says. It occurs to him after the words pass his lips that Loras may find it an
uncomfortable subject, that he might be embarrassed to discuss it. But Loras
watches him with soft eyes and smiles.
“It’s not as if that’s a difficult thing to accomplish,” he points out, and
Renly understands what he means, but still thinks it’s far more difficult than
Loras is admitting. He remembers the state of his own urges when he was younger
and he would have found resisting those urges a daunting task indeed.
“Had you no desire to experiment?” he persists. “Was there no one you ever
wanted?” Loras is silent for a long moment. His hand tightens briefly in
Renly’s hair before relaxing.
“No one but you,” he says at length. The emotion that crashes through Renly at
the words takes him off guard, so much so that he has to press his face against
Loras’s stomach and struggle for composure. Loras strokes his hair, as if
comforting Renly, almost. It takes more than one shuddering breath for Renly to
trust himself, to have his emotions under control. Suddenly he needs to kiss
Loras; his chest is tight from wanting it, his throat crowded with everything
he can’t say. He pulls himself up the bed, dragging his half-clothed body over
Loras’s bare one to take his mouth, sweeping his tongue past Loras’s lips to
taste him from the inside. They kiss and explore until Renly’s cock aches so
much he thinks he might fly apart into pieces and he can’t stop himself from
rocking against Loras’s hipbone.
“I could…you know,” Loras breathes against his mouth. “I could do, er. That.
For you.”
“Do what?” Renly says, laughing breathlessly. He knows precisely what Loras is
saying. He simply can’t resist the urge to tease, even as he aches at the
thought of Loras’s doing to him what he’d done to Loras. Loras rolls his eyes.
His hands on Renly’s shoulders are surprisingly forceful when he pushes at
Renly, flipping him and bearing him down to the mattress. Renly always forgets
how strong Loras is. Then Loras’s strong fingers are deftly unlacing Renly’s
breeches and freeing his cock, holding him still for the expectedly skillful
exploration of Loras’s tongue, and Renly forgets his own name.
“Is that all right?” Loras asks, pausing to look up. Renly misses the touch of
his mouth, even for such a brief moment.
“Gods, yes,” he rasps, stroking Loras’s upturned face with a shaking hand.
“It’s bloody fucking perfect.” Loras smiles and lowers his head again,
exploring with the tip of his tongue. Just the sight of it might be enough to
reduce Renly to ash even without the feel of it. Loras takes him deep, works
over him a while before pulling back to flick his tongue just right along the
underside, returning to slide his tongue over the spot more firmly when Renly
jerks. The desperate moan that escapes Renly would be embarrassing if he had
the presence of mind to care about such things at the moment.
“You like that,” Loras says, no question in it, only satisfaction and a bit of
wonder. His smile is knowing, filled with the power of having Renly twisting
and shaking beneath him, on the cusp of release. Then uncertainty creeps onto
his face, a startling contrast. “Wait, now what? Should I swallow as you did,
or…”
“Only if you want to,” Renly manages, his gut nothing but a great knot of need.
“I want to,” Loras says. “I’m just not sure how.” It’s almost painful, how much
Loras’s desire to please Renly touches him, how it strips him of his already
tenuous control, until he knows the whole conversation will be rendered moot in
very short order. So instead Renly fumbles for Loras’s hand, wraps it around
his cock and guides it from tip to base in a slow, twisting stroke. Loras picks
up the rhythm quickly, easily, his hand moving only a few times before Renly
spills, Loras’s hand wringing his release from him to stripe his stomach.
He thinks he dozes off. It’s hard to tell when the world feels so unraveled,
when Loras is curled warm against him. But he can’t muster himself to get up,
and when Loras moves to wrestle Renly’s undone breeches down his legs and tug
the furs over the both of them, Renly doesn’t protest.
“We were supposed to sleep in our own beds tonight,” he says sleepily. Loras’s
head settles on Renly’s shoulder as if it belongs there.
“Would you like me to wake you in the middle of the night so we can go sleep in
your bed for a while?” Loras asks. “After all, we didn’t say we’d sleep in our
own beds alone.”
“Maybe tomorrow night,” Renly laughs, and Loras laughs with him, the sound of
it vibrating through Renly’s side.
“Maybe tomorrow I can figure the, er. The swallowing bit out.”
“You didn’t have to do it,” Renly says. “You don’t.”
“I know.”
“You don’t,” Renly repeats, insistently, despite the weight of his tongue,
despite the sleep stealing over him. He means all of it, any of it. He wants
Loras to understand. “You never do. If you don’t want to.”
“Renly,” Loras says, and gods, the warmth of his voice could drive away the
chill of the Wall even, Renly thinks. His arms tighten on Renly’s ribs, his
legs tangling with Renly’s to bind them together. “I know.”
Renly wants to answer, wants to say something as good as Loras deserves. But
sleep is claiming him and he can only hold Loras fast.
*****
He’s gotten much better. So very much better. That’s all Renly can think as
Loras sprawls down low on the bed, his arms curled under Renly’s thighs, hands
pressing over the jut of Renly’s hipbones to hold him steady. And his tongue,
oh gods, his tongue, it’s doing such wonderful, wicked things.
“Clever boy,” Renly breathes, sliding his heels along the linens, levering his
toes against the waist of Loras’s breeches, feeling the delicate shape of
Loras’s ears under his palms. “Oh, my clever, filthy, lovely boy.”
It shouldn’t feel so surprising. After all, Renly has given him more than
enough practice. But even though this is the third time today, and probably the
hundredth time this month, each time still feels like the first, each one is
new and shocking and wonderfully unbearable. So wonderfully unbearable that
Renly’s brain is slow to work, taking too long a moment to realize that Loras
has stilled his movements and has lifted his head. The air seems chill after
the heat of Loras’s mouth, the moisture from his tongue, and Renly’s response
to it, drying into coolness.
“Loras, what-”
“Tell me what eight and five means,” Loras demands. Unwilling laughter explodes
from Renly’s throat. Loras has chosen his timing well. Renly might pay all his
fortune, commit treason, might promise his own life just to have Loras
continue.
“Loras!” Renly moans.
“No,” Loras tells him firmly, authoritatively – so authoritatively that Renly
finds it intensely appealing, even though it’s working against his own
interests at the moment. “You always say that and I want to know. I refuse to
do any more until you tell me what eight and five means.”
“Then we are at an impasse.” Renly’s quite proud of himself for managing that
so evenly, under the circumstances. He’s impressed, actually. He would have
expected to dissolve into a begging mess at Loras’s hand. He likes the
authoritativeness far too much, clearly.
“Oh ho, resistance!” Loras crows in delight. “We shall see who crumbles first.”
He leans down, ghosts his mouth over Renly’s cock so he’s as close as he could
be without touching. Renly can feel his breath, can feel the slow, maddening
rub of Loras’s thumbs over the points of his hipbones. Loras’s lips purse as he
blows gently, the rush of air on such sensitive skin making Renly shiver
uncontrollably. He gasps, then draws hitching breaths in through his still-open
mouth.
“Do your worst,” he pants. Please, please, do your worst, he thinks.
“What does it mean?” Loras demands again. “Tell me.” Renly shakes his head and
Loras's tone takes on a distinctly whining quality. "Tell me!"
“Death first,” Renly says and grins. Loras crawls up his body, plants his hands
on either side of Renly’s head. He keeps Renly’s gaze as he moves his hips, the
cloth of his breeches rough on Renly’s cock in the best way. Renly sets his
hands at Loras’s waist, hitches his legs up to press his heels into the backs
of Loras’s thighs and increase the pressure until they’re both panting and
Loras’s elbows shake with the effort of holding himself up. With a moan, Loras
drops fully onto Renly, his forearms a loose cage about Renly’s head.
“Tell me,” he whispers, sweetly this time, soft and entreating. Renly slides
his face against the smooth plane of Loras’s cheek, then looks into Loras’s
eyes, numbers the golden streaks.
“Eight and five,” he whispers back, and smiles when Loras groans, smiles when
Loras captures his mouth like a man starving for it.
“I’ll find out someday, see if I don’t,” Loras says, the threat of it blunted
by the way he licks sweetly at Renly’s lips, the way his hands tangle gently in
Renly’s hair, spreading it out on the pillow like a corona.
“I’ll enjoy the attempts,” Renly tells him before he kisses him back.
*****
Every single bit of Renly's body hurts. Muscles he wasn't even aware he
possessed are sore. Gods, he'd thought himself reasonably close to fit, not all
so far from fighting shape, but one day of training with Loras and he's
dragging up the stairs like an old man. It's a fight to continue up the stairs
to his chambers without pausing, but he manages it. Loras has already made
countless jokes at Renly's expense, Renly doesn't want to provide him
opportunity to make yet one more.
“I can barely move," he says when he's finally gained the door of his chambers.
"That’s the last time I try to train with you.” Why he'd even attempted it,
he's not sure. Loras has got him so humming with energy, full to the brim with
vigor and vitality, that it's probably only natural for his body and his brain
to seek ways to direct it, but really. He couldn't have taken up something
sedate like cyvasse instead? Stupid body. Bloody stupid brain.
“You’re out of practice,” Loras says. “And your armor is in dire need of care.
I could hear it creaking from across the yard.”
“That wasn’t my armor,” Renly moans, lowering himself gingerly into a chair.
“That was my bones.”
“Come on, old man, I’ll rub the knots out.” Loras helps him pull his shirt over
his head, tugging it down his arms and over his hands with practiced movements.
He moves behind Renly and digs firm fingers into Renly’s shoulders, wringing a
new sort of moan out of Renly with little effort.
“I forgot how good at this you are,” Renly sighs in contentment as Loras works
over his shoulders and arms. He feels quite like clay under Loras’s hands, soft
and malleable. Loras smiles every time he hits a tender spot and Renly makes an
inarticulate sound of pleasure. He focuses his attention on each spot until
Renly’s body is somehow humming with energy again, even as it relaxes
completely.
“I haven’t done this for you in a long time,” Loras says after a while. He
moves to stand before Renly, lacing their fingers together and rotating Renly's
hand at the wrist, then squeezing their palms together in a way that seems
altogether different than it used to when Renly still allowed this, before the
intimacy became too dangerous. As if reading his thoughts, Loras fixes him in a
searching gaze. “Why did we stop?”
Renly looks up at Loras, sure his every emotion is plain on his face. Unbidden,
his eyes flicker down to his crotch, then away and back up, and realization
dawns in Loras’s eyes. Something about it seems to catch him off guard; he
forgets his task, his hands growing still, and he can only look at Renly in
surprise.
"And here I thought I seduced you past the point of control against your will,"
Loras says, and despite the teasing tone, Renly can tell there’s an element of
truth in it. That Loras had no idea Renly had resisted him for so long.
"Not quite," he mumbles.
“You’re a fool for not giving in earlier,” Loras tells him, lightly, though his
hand grips Renly’s almost too tightly for a moment before he controls it.
Renly looks at Loras, surrendering to the urge to reach up and brush the hair
from Loras’s eyes with his free hand, to run a careful fingertip over his
eyelashes and down the slope of his nose. “You know, I think you’re right,” he
says quietly.
“It’s been known to happen,” Loras says, ducking his head, trying desperately
to conceal the emotions that skim over his face like cream over milk. Renly
permits himself a smile. It’s not often that he’s the one discomfiting Loras
with emotional honesty rather than the other way around. Loras clears his
throat and shakes his fringe out of his eyes. “Lie down,” he commands. “And
take off your breeches.”
"Oh, the number of times I've heard that," Renly says, lips twitching in
amusement as does as requested, kicking his discarded breeches into the corner
before climbing atop the bed in his smallclothes and laying his head on his
crossed arms near the foot of the mattress. He hears rather than sees Loras
fetching a vial of oil, can smell it musky and sharp when Loras pours a bit
into his palm and rubs his hands together to warm it. It warms further,
smelling even more strongly, when Loras stands at the foot of the bed, his
stomach warm and solid where it presses against Renly’s head and forearms as he
smoothes his hands over Renly’s skin to rub the knots from his back. It feels
crowded and intimate, familiar, reminding Renly of Loras’s days as his squire,
when they lacked any boundary between them.
“How does that feel?” Loras asks after his hands have covered every bit of
Renly from neck to breeches. He punctuates the words with the firm sweep of his
palms along the muscles flanking Renly’s spine. Renly’s only answer is an
inarticulate sound wrung up from the bottom of his lungs. He could swear he can
feel Loras smirking through his fingertips. He knows just how it feels, the
smug bastard. It’s all Renly can do to keep from pushing his hips into the
mattress like a randy boy with no control over himself.
“Roll over,” Loras says.
“No,” Renly mumbles into his crossed forearms, his cheeks growing hot. Loras’s
laughter peals out bright and delighted.
“You’re allowed to let me do something about that now, if you’ll recall.” He
raps Renly’s skull gently with his knuckles.
“I didn’t want to presume.” Renly’s still surprised that he’s allowed this,
sometimes, that he’s allowed to want Loras and moreover allowed to do something
about it, no matter that the only one disallowing him before was Renly himself.
It’s the best sort of a surprise.
“Oh, how I long for you to presume,” Loras sighs dramatically. “But I suppose
if this is what I have to work with…”
Before Renly can even begin to wonder what Loras has in mind, Loras is
stripping down to his own smallclothes and climbing atop the mattress, climbing
atop him, first straddling the backs of his thighs and then stretching out over
him, the oil still on Renly’s skin making him slide interestingly.
He’s never thought to wonder if the oil tastes pleasant. He supposes it must,
or at least not unpleasant, as Loras kisses and licks every bit of Renly’s
skin, bites at the back of his neck, rubs his face against Renly’s shoulder
blades like a cat. It leaves Renly pliant and helpless, thoroughly seduced. At
least until Loras snakes his hand low and gooses Renly, making him jump and
twist partway off the bed, letting Loras see for himself precisely how stirring
all of it is.
“Loras!” Renly barks.
“Mercy is for the weak,” Loras breathes, just before he claims Renly’s mouth
over his shoulder.
Renly rolls to his back, allowing Loras to cover him with his body, quite
thoroughly outmaneuvered. Loras kisses his way down Renly’s body, still rubbing
Renly’s muscles with his fingertips, though the tension in them is of an
entirely different character now. The tug of the drawstring at Renly’s waist
feels strangely evocative. Once Loras has gotten Renly’s smallclothes worked
down his legs and thrown onto the floor to join his own, he crawls back up
Renly’s body and straddles him, settles his arse squarely on Renly’s cock. He
spreads his knees and shifts, gasps at the feeling when Renly’s cock pushes
against him.
“Will you?” Loras asks, grinding his arse against Renly’s cock to leave no
mystery in his meaning.
“Oh,” Renly says faintly. The feel of Loras against him is making him dizzy and
light-headed. Unbidden, his hips surge a bit, and he has to catch his breath
against the pleasure of it. His palms stroke over the fine furring of Loras’s
thighs, the flesh there yielding perfectly against Renly’s fingers when
tightens them.
“I want you to,” Loras says. Renly can tell quite well that Loras wants him to
from his angle.
“Are you sure?”
“We’ve been over this,” Loras reminds him. Renly’s lips twitch into half a
smirk.
“Always once more,” he reminds Loras. “Besides, this isn’t quite the same
thing.”
“You’ve already done it with…” Loras pauses delicately, then catches Renly’s
index and middle fingers by the tips to give them a wiggle, “with other bits.
This is just a different bit.” Renly snorts at Loras’s phrasing, and Loras
gives him a saucy grin. “Just one tiny difference.” Before Renly has time to
even consider taking affront, Loras squirms against Renly’s crotch. “All right,
one really quite sizeable difference.”
“It’ll probably still hurt some, even with the…other bits.” Renly feels his
brow knit at the idea of hurting Loras at all. “It’s…Loras, it’s really quite
different.” Loras shrugs.
“If it’s awful, we won’t do it again,” he says. Still Renly is hesitant. A sly
look crosses Loras’s face. “Perhaps you’re worried you won’t be strong enough,”
he posits. “After such a strenuous day and at your advanced age…” Renly laughs,
knowing he’s been painted into a corner yet again.
“I’ll show you strong enough, you little wretch,” he mock-snarls, though
honestly, he does have his doubts.
“Is that a yes?” Loras asks, grinning. He holds up the vial of oil, gives it a
tempting wave. Renly sighs. It’s all so obvious, almost pathetically so – the
firelight, the oil, the massage. It could almost make Renly hate himself.
“Gods, this could not be any more predictable.”
“Definitely taking that as a yes,” Loras decides. He immediately slides off
Renly to sit on the mattress, so quickly Renly thinks he must be trying to keep
Renly from changing his mind. Then he scoots back against the headboard only to
seem at a loss, trying his legs a few different ways, seeming to debate the
correct position. “Do I… Should I… How…?” Renly smiles, sitting up to watch
him. Loras always seems to know how to start the sentence when he wants to try
something new, but rarely how to finish it. It’s bizarrely endearing. And too
stirring by half.
“Here,” Renly says. He catches Loras behind the knees, hauls him down the bed a
bit so one leg is thrown over Renly’s thighs and the other is behind his back.
Loras catches his breath at the rough handling, a little hitch in the back of
his throat that Renly knows he only makes when he’s especially aroused.
Interesting. Renly will have to remember that. He holds out a hand and Loras
wordlessly gives him the vial of oil, biting that left side of his lip again as
he watches Renly coax the stopper free and pour oil into his palm.
Slowly, deliberately, Renly slides one palm over the other. Loras follows every
movement with his eyes as Renly coats his fingers, the oil warming against his
skin. He can’t resist drawing it out, smiling when Loras swallows hard, even as
it makes warmth unfurl low in his gut. The oil leaves a glistening path in the
wake of his finger as he trails it down Loras’s ribs, his belly, the soft skin
on the inside of his thigh. Loras twists under his touch, drops his knees to
the sides to make himself vulnerable to Renly. Still, Renly waits, traces his
fingers everywhere but where Loras is now desperate for them.
“I’m supposed to be the tease, you prick, get on with it,” Loras hisses,
gripping the furs and arching his back until it’s curved off the mattress like
a bridge.
“Bossy little thing, aren’t you?” Renly chuckles, but he obligingly circles and
presses, smiling at Loras’s sharp intake of breath. He works over Loras deftly,
until he’s squirming, limbs moving restlessly. “Another,” Loras gasps, and
Renly pushes one more finger in, waits for Loras to adjust before moving again.
When Loras seems as ready as he’ll ever be, Renly withdraws and moves to kneel
between Loras’s thighs. He reaches for the oil again, but Loras stays his hand.
“Let me,” he whispers. Renly closes his eyes against the violent tremor that
pushes through him. Wordlessly, he sits back on his haunches, barely able to
keep still as Loras sits up and smoothes the oil over his cock with deliberate,
painfully arousing motions. It takes Renly a moment to collect himself when
Loras is done. He needs his control. He won’t take Loras like some wild animal.
“Are you ready?” he asks. Loras swallows visibly and nods, swallowing again
when Renly slowly, carefully pushes against him, easing into Loras and gritting
his teeth against the heat and the tightness, wanting nothing more than to push
into him completely all at once. It seems to take forever, he moves so slowly.
Finally, he’s entirely sheathed in Loras and he exhales shakily, holding
himself still to allow Loras to adjust again. The expression on Loras’s face
could be pain or pleasure; Renly isn’t able to tell which for several heart-
stopping seconds until Loras makes a high, thin sound and presses his heels
alongside Renly’s spine.
“Renly,” Loras says in hazy wonder. “D’y’know, I think you’re strong enough.”
Renly would laugh if it weren’t taking every shred of control he has to hold
still, to go easy for Loras’s sake.
He won’t last long enough to give Loras his release without help, Renly knows.
Loras’s hand is still slick with oil when Renly finds it, sliding easily as
Renly wraps it around Loras’s cock and guides him for a moment, until Loras
gets the idea and does it himself. They manage a mismatched rhythm, one that
increases in speed as they both get closer.
“Come on, Loras,” Renly rasps, balancing on one hand to reach down with the
other, helping Loras along with the touch of his fingers in sensitive places,
his hand bumping against Loras’s as they both move. “Come on. There’s a boy.
There’s my lovely boy, come on.” He feels Loras’s whole body tense when his
release hits him. Renly waits it out, keeps his control as Loras tightens
around him, as the spill of his release coats both of their hands and stomachs.
He waits until Loras is boneless and relaxed before he pushes into him once,
twice, then a third time to find his own release. It’s a long time before they
stop quivering, before Renly feels even halfway capable of moving. He knows
he’s heavy on Loras, so he pulls out, shifts his weight to the side to lie half
atop him.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“I’ve no idea,” Loras says in a daze. Renly chuckles, presses a kiss over
Loras’s heart before settling his chin on Loras’s breastbone to look up at his
face. The skin on the underside of Loras’s arm is unimaginably soft and Renly
strokes his knuckles over it, gently, soothingly, Loras moving his arm to the
side to give Renly better access. “It’s not quite how I expected it from your
book.”
“That bad?” Renly teases, knowing full well that’s not what Loras means.
“Don’t be smug,” Loras tells him, fighting a smile. “You’re ruining this
beautiful moment.” His hair hangs in his eyes and Renly catches it over his
knuckles, runs his fingertips behind Loras’s ear to tuck it out of the way. One
piece immediately springs back, one particular curl that always refuses to stay
tucked behind Loras’s ear, no matter how many times Renly pushes it there.
That’s what he likes about it.
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I can make it up to you by showing you a few more things
you can’t learn from books?”
“That would be lovely,” Loras agrees, then gives a massive yawn, so big that
Renly can practically see down his throat. There’s no vanity in it. Renly’s
surprised by how glad he is of that fact, of all it implies. “Remember to do
that right after this nap we’re going to take.” Then he’s asleep, so fast that
Renly doesn’t even bother to answer. He’s always envied Loras his ease in
falling asleep.
It’s not until he’s almost asleep himself, his mind relaxed and muzzy, that it
occurs to him he’s fallen in love to quite a staggering degree. Maybe if he
were fully awake, he’d be terrified by the idea. But then again, maybe not.
*****
Loras is in a mood.
Renly doesn’t know what’s gotten into him, but he’s been quiet and irritable
all day. It’s all the more marked in contrast to his usual easy demeanor. At
first Renly wondered if he wasn’t enjoying their travels. He’d thought the
journey would appeal to Loras, a chance to visit the bannermen of Storm’s End
and explore the Stormlands. But Loras’s curtness had increased with each new
place until now he’s almost surly, something that hasn’t especially pleased the
lords and ladies who’ve been their hosts. Renly can’t make sense of it.
"If I have to dance with one more daughter, I might scream," he says when
they’re back in the apartments offered to them for the night by Lord Buckler.
He’d hoped to jolly Loras out of his black mood, but Loras seems determined to
resist any such attempts.
“At least you know how to dance,” he says sourly. “I’ve never learned.” Renly
sighs and studies Loras, as if some clue to his mood might be written on his
face, but there’s nothing on Loras’s face but a foul temper.
“If you learn, you’ll have to dance with all those daughters as well,” Renly
points out. It seems every unwed daughter in the whole of the south has been
trotted out to dance with him wherever they’ve gone, their families watching
with sharp eyes, ready to negotiate marriage at the slightest encouragement.
“I’d as soon skip that part.”
“You seemed pleased enough to dance with that…girl in Tarth,” Loras points out,
wrinkling his nose at the memory and Renly frowns at him, surprised.
“Don’t be unkind.” Loras averts his eyes and scowls. It occurs to Renly that
somehow Loras is jealous of the girl, a strange idea indeed, especially given
that particular girl, an almost pitiful creature at the mercy of the cruelties
of those around her. Renly had only thought to shield her from derision, to
offer her some softness in what was most likely a very hard life. It had never
occurred to him Loras might think anything of it. “Loras, you must know I
wanted nothing of her. She was in need of kindness, that’s all.” Then he laughs
a bit, tries to leaven the air around them. “You’re quite enough for me to
handle.” Loras doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t even smile.
“Yet you would dance with her and not with me.”
“Loras,” Renly says, frowning. “You know I couldn’t have, all those people-”
“Have you danced with many girls?” Loras says, speaking over Renly’s excuses.
The wistfulness in it lying beneath the impatience brings Renly up short.
Loras’s ill temper is starting to make much more sense.
“None as pretty as you,” he says softly. Some of Loras’s spark shows through
and he plays at a pout.
“How dare you,” he says. “I’m ruggedly handsome.” Renly smiles, flicks one
finger through that tumble-down lock of hair perpetually on Loras’s cheek.
“With those curls? Hardly.”
“How many girls?” Loras persists, and Renly’s smile fades.
“You want to learn to dance so much?” he asks, choosing his words carefully,
knowing there are some questions he daren’t put into words, not yet.
“I want to dance with you,” Loras answers equally carefully, sounding far
smaller than Loras ever should. It makes Renly’s heart feel as if it’s
cracking, like a boulder breaking apart from water freezing within it.
Silently, carefully, Renly reaches for Loras’s hand. Then he easily pulls him
into a dance.
Loras is an apt pupil. His body has always been his tool, instinctive and
reliable in a way that Renly’s own body was never able to manage, and he uses
it now to follow Renly’s lead, carefully mimicking him as he steps and dips and
turns. It’s only when Renly pulls Loras into his arms to guide him in mannered
arcs that Loras stumbles, and not from the steps, Renly doesn’t think.
“Look at me,” he says, “not at your feet.” Loras looks into Renly’s eyes and
immediately stumbles again, but Renly catches him, holds him steady.
Their feet slow, until they’re barely shuffling, swaying back and forth
together in the middle of the room. Loras ducks his head, burrows against
Renly’s shoulder. That curl is on his cheek again and Renly tucks it back even
as he holds on to Loras’s hand, smiling when it only falls forward immediately.
“How are you always so good at everything?” Renly asks, tucking Loras’s hand to
his chest and holding it there.
“I’ve always had good teachers,” Loras says. He bumps his nose meaningfully
against Renly’s jaw. Then his feet grow still, pulling Renly to a halt along
with him before he steps back, eyes cast down to the floor.
“Loras?” Renly asks.
“We’ve no music.” Renly hears what he doesn’t say in the wistfulness of it, in
the sweet sadness of his voice.
“So I’ll make music,” Renly says, pulling Loras back into his arms and turning
them in slow circles as he hums the first song that comes to mind. He rubs his
cheek over Loras’s hair, knowing it’s a poor sort of an apology for how things
aren’t what Loras would wish them to be. How the world outside the walls of
Storm’s End will never be quite as safe and easy as the world they’ve created
within. How there will always be obligations and dances and lords with
daughters.
“But the song will end and we’ll have to stop,” Loras says.
“Don’t worry,” Renly tells him. “I know a lot of songs.”
*****
He isn’t the only person who’s been here. Renly knows that. He isn’t naïve
enough to think that no one in the entire history of Storm’s End ever found
this spot, that no boy ever claimed it as his own, much as Renly did. That
doesn’t stop him from feeling like he discovered it himself, that it’s his
alone, that no one but him could ever find it. No one but him and now Loras as
well.
Bringing Loras here was a surprisingly easy decision. Renly would have thought
he’d agonize over it, debate on whether to share this part of himself with
Loras. But once it had occurred to him, it had been as good as done. Of course,
when he thinks about it, he realizes he’s been deciding on whether to bring
Loras here for years, almost as long as Loras has been at Storm’s End.
He finds he’s holding his breath as Loras looks around. When Loras smiles and
looks at Renly, happiness in his eyes, Renly exhales, relief curling through
him like smoke. He couldn’t say why it was so important for Loras to like this
particular place, but it was.
Loras’s head appears in Renly’s lap immediately after he sits. He’s all gold in
the sunlight, lazy and happy, and he nudges his head against Renly's hand
encouragingly. Obediently, Renly combs through Loras’s hair with his fingers,
finding and rubbing the spots on Loras’s scalp that Renly knows he likes best.
“Why did you never bring me here before?” Loras asks, closing his eyes under
Renly’s ministrations. Before Renly can even attempt to answer, Loras cracks an
eye open, gives Renly a pointed look. “Ah, yes, because you thought I was an
indiscriminate flirt and were reluctant to open your life to me.”
“Is that what I thought?” Renly laughs, surprised, like he’s just been reminded
that he wanted to become a sorcerer or a dragon tamer when he was a little boy.
“You’re not going to pretend you didn’t, are you?” Loras asks, squinting up at
Renly in disbelief.
“No,” Renly shakes his head. “I’d just…I’d forgotten, honestly.” It seems so
distant, so foreign. So completely and totally implausible.
“You forgot?”
“It just.” Renly laughs again, he can’t seem to stop. “It seems so ridiculous
now. I can’t believe I ever thought such a thing of you.”
“Shall I take that as a compliment?”
“No, you’ll only become even more insufferable,” Renly says. Loras slants him a
knowing look.
“You like it when I’m insufferable,” he says.
“I like it when you’re tractable,” Renly counters, but Loras will have none of
it.
“Liar,” he says, brash and bold, not the slightest hint of uncertainty in it,
and Renly smiles.
“It’s fortunate you’ll make such a good knight,” Renly says. “With that
demeanor, you could hardly be anything else.”
“I’m not a knight yet,” he says, but there’s no hint that he thinks he’ll be
anything but. Loras has never been one prone to doubt.
“Will you…” Renly starts, and then hesitates. “Have you thought about what
you’ll do? After you’re knighted. Will you return to Highgarden?” Just saying
the words aloud makes Renly feel ill. Giving voice the questions that have
plagued him more and more of late feels like it will make the fears behind them
too real, but he knows he could never stop the path of the future simply by
remaining silent.
“What?” Loras looks entirely puzzled.
“I just wondered if you’ve thought about…” The words stick in Renly’s throat
and he has to clear it to continue. “If you’ve thought about your plans. What
your future will be.” It pains Renly to even consider the idea that Loras might
leave. But it pains him more to think that he might limit Loras, that he would
keep Loras like a bird in a cage. Loras sits up abruptly, twisting to look at
Renly.
“My future is with you,” he says with a quizzical air, as if the answer is so
obvious as to make the question unnecessary. Warmth floods Renly's chest,
rising in his cheeks to make him blush.
"I didn't want to presume," he says, aiming for casual but landing on
overwhelmed. His relief feels as real and palpable as the sun on their faces,
the soft grass beneath their bare feet.
"Again with the presumption. My future is with you," Loras repeats, and this
time it's firm, certain. The relief that fills Renly makes him feel almost as
ill as asking the question did in the first place, but it’s a feeling he’ll
gladly suffer through. If his smile is wobbly, if his hand shakes as he turns
Loras's face into his kiss, Loras is kind enough to pretend not to notice.
*****
“What on earth have you done with your hair?” Renly asks. He supposes he
shouldn’t be surprised. Loras has spent the whole day blowing his fringe from
his eyes irritably. It’s grown quite shaggy lately. Renly likes to think that
it’s for his benefit, that Loras knows just how much Renly loves it long. But
now it’s at an awkward length and it seems Loras has reached the end of his
patience with it.
“I’ve tied it back,” he says.
“I see that,” Renly answers. It’s pulled away from his face and into a
ludicrous sort of topknot that’s got a wild tangle of curls springing away from
his head at strange angles. The soft, shorter hairs at his nape have already
escaped their confines. “It’s… You look ridiculous, honestly.”
“It was being a bloody nuisance,” Loras says with a shrug. “It’s either this or
shave the whole mess clean off.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“See if I wouldn’t,” Loras counters, but Renly can see his tiny smile. He
wouldn’t, not knowing how much Renly likes it. Renly's sure of it.
Unfortunately, that leaves him looking like...this.
“I cannot take you seriously like that,” Renly says on a sigh.
“Oh?” Loras asks, moving towards Renly with predatory grace. “Not even when I
do this?” His tongue is warm on Renly’s neck, on the sensitive spot behind his
ear. Renly shudders, his hands come up unbidden to cup Loras's elbows loosely,
but he manages to keep his voice even.
“Not even then.”
Loras leans back and gives him an appraising look. A spark of mischief fires in
his eyes. He reaches up and pulls the leather strap free, his hair tumbling
about his face. He holds each end of the strap between his fingertips, pulls
them in opposite directions swiftly enough that the leather makes a snapping
sound, and then twirls the leather strap with one hand.
“Loras,” Renly warns, “what are you up to?” Loras only catches his hands, holds
them in his own as he wraps his arms about Renly. Then he kisses him, pressed
full against him, their hands entwined behind Renly’s back, and Renly forgets
to be suspicious, forgets everything entirely. It isn’t until Loras pulls away
and Renly tries to follow – tries but can’t – that Renly feels the leather
strap binding his wrists behind his back.
“Loras, what?” Renly pulls against the strap. It’s looped around the bedpost,
he thinks. Whatever it’s tied to, Renly can’t move more than a few inches.
Loras looks at him in satisfaction.
“Oh, I do like this,” he says, tracing his finger over Renly from shoulder to
waist, the drag of his touch along the cloth almost tickling.
“You little bastard,” Renly says, but the only heat in the words comes from the
sudden surge of arousal he’s feeling. The leather binds just enough to hold
him; if he truly wanted to be free, he could wriggle loose or snap the binding.
But knowing he could makes him not want to. He's surprised to find he rather
likes being at Loras's mercy. He wouldn’t have expected to enjoy such a thing.
It occurs to him that they probably should have discussed it beforehand, but he
feels no nervousness, no fear. His trust in Loras is so deep as to be
unthinking, he’s realizing, which should probably frighten him all on its own,
but it doesn’t.
“So much potential,” Loras singsongs, walking his fingers back up Renly’s
chest. Instinctively, he brushes the hair from Renly’s face before it can
bother him, reaches back to adjust the strap where he seems to know it bites a
bit uncomfortably into Renly's skin. Then he’s flicking the looped buttons at
the neck of Renly’s shirt open, running his hands under the cloth to touch him,
setting his mouth to Renly’s neck to lick and suck at him until Renly is
quivering from his need to touch Loras back.
“I hate you,” Renly moans. Loras closes his teeth over the lobe of Renly’s ear
at the same time as he pulls Renly's shirt free from his breeches and feathers
his fingers over the skin there. Renly's moan skitters up into a whimper. “I
hate you,” he pants. The crook of Loras’s shoulder where it curves into his
neck is warm, and Renly tucks his face there, inhales the spicy scent of
Loras’s skin.
He protests when Loras steps away, just farther than Renly can reach. The strap
bites into his wrists when he strains forward, only making him feel wilder.
Loras steps a bit further and gives Renly a knowing smile, slides his hand down
his stomach and rubs it over the placket of his own breeches.
“That’s my job,” Renly says, voice rough with need. Loras merely cocks his
eyebrow and slides his fingers beneath the waist of his breeches. He moves his
hand beneath the cloth, his eyes flutter and narrow in pleasure as he touches
himself, and Renly’s whole body aches to the point of pain. “Loras, untie me,”
he begs. “Let me do that.”
“What will you give me in return?” Loras asks, his breathing uneven.
“Anything,” Renly promises. “Just untie me.”
“Will you give me my very own castle?” Loras smiles dreamily, withdrawing his
hand and sliding it over the front of Renly’s own breeches.
“Done.”
“A hunting hound that I can name Loras the Lesser?”
Renly laughs, despite the need making his gut clench like a fist. “Name him
Renly the Greater, if you like.” Loras gives a boyish giggle. It only makes
Renly want to touch him all the more, and he strains against his bonds until
Loras relents a bit, stepping close enough for Renly to slide his lips across
Loras’s temple, his cheek and his jaw, down to his neck to suck a dark bloom on
his skin.
“A golden suit of armor worked in emeralds?” Loras asks.
“Two,” Renly answers against his throat. “One to wear when you ride east, one
for when you ride west.”
“Your cloak?”
“Are you cold?” Renly laughs. "I could warm you if only you'd untie me."
“You know what I mean,” Loras says, softly. Seriously. Renly pulls back to look
at him, to see the intensity in his eyes. To read the real meaning of the
question. “I know you can’t,” Loras continues, ducking away from Renly’s
searching eyes for a moment. “But if you could. If that were something that
were done. Would you?” The question is entirely unexpected. It feels as if a
carpet has been yanked from under Renly’s feet, leaving him dizzy and
disoriented. He tries to imagine his wedding, tries to see anyone beside him
but Loras, tries to picture his hands fastening his cloak about any woman’s
shoulders. But he can’t.
“Surely you know it’s already yours,” he says when he can speak, his voice
sounding rough and unused. Loras’s mouth drops open wordlessly, his face looks
almost stricken. He kisses Renly urgently, desperately, snaking his arms around
Renly’s back and pressing so close it’s as if he’s trying to climb inside him.
“Merciful gods, Loras, un-fucking-tie me,” Renly rasps when he lifts his head.
The leather strap is pulled so tightly that it snaps at Loras’s tug. Renly
surges against him, pulls him up into a bruising embrace, one that he’d fear it
would crack Loras’s ribs if he were in any state to think of such rational
concerns.
“So I can’t quite tell,” Loras says impishly, craning his head back to look up
at Renly. “Did you like the tying up bit?” Renly laughs so hard it almost
hurts. Even after Loras has walked him back to the bed, even after they’ve
fallen atop the mattress, even as Loras pushes all their clothing aside to let
them be skin to skin, he can’t stop laughing. It’s as if something has broken
loose inside him, something free and floating and wonderful. It feels better
than anything.
*****
Loras’s question comes out of nowhere. There they are, lazing away an afternoon
on Renly’s bed, Renly stretched on his side with his head propped on one hand
to face Loras as he sits cross-legged in the middle of the mattress, when
suddenly Loras fixes Renly with a look that makes Renly feel like he’s the fox
and Loras is the hound.
“Have you ever been the one receiving?” he asks. Renly blinks at the question.
He’s on the verge of asking Loras where that came from, when Loras, clearly
thinking Renly confused, decides to clarify. “I mean have you ever been
fucked.”
“Loras, a bit of delicacy, if you please,” Renly chastises mildly, smiling at
the tremendous roll of his eyes Loras gives. “I understood the first time.”
“Answer the question, my lord.”
“Once.”
“And?”
“And what?” Renly asks. “Did I enjoy it?” Loras gives a shrug, as if to
indicate that’s as good a place to start as any. Renly thinks on the answer. A
simple yes seems inadequate for a situation that wasn’t entirely simple. “I
did,” he finally allows. “It wasn’t… I had no…” He makes a helpless gesture.
“Who was he?”
“Never learned his name,” Renly says with a dry laugh. Gods, it sounds terrible
now. “It was very early on, and that part wasn’t my idea.”
“You didn’t want it to happen?”
“It wasn’t my preference,” Renly corrects.
“Why didn’t you say so?” Loras asks, a certain amount of dismay lacing the
question.
“I don’t know,” Renly says. “It seemed impolite?”
“Impol- Renly!”
“I was figuring everything out,” Renly shrugs. “I had no idea what I truly
liked or didn’t without trying.”
“And that ended up on the no list.”
“Not necessarily.” Loras raises an inquisitive eyebrow, silently prompting
Renly to elaborate. “It wasn’t my preference with him, that doesn’t mean I
might not enjoy a time or two with someone else.” Loras’s mouth drops into a
small oh as he mulls that over, before some of his typical mischief creeps over
his face.
“Would you let me fuck you?” he asks. Renly laughs out loud at that. He nudges
Loras’s knee with his thigh playfully.
“You make it sound ever so romantic,” he says.
“Would you?” Loras persists, the mischief still there, but an unexpected
sincerity lurking beneath it.
“Would you want to?” Renly asks. He can’t pretend he’s not a bit surprised.
Loras has never quite seemed the type.
“I should figure everything out too, don’t you think?” Loras tries for casual
with his shrug, but Renly knows him well enough to hear what he’s not saying.
“Do you want to, Loras?” he asks again. Loras meets his eyes, watching him for
a long moment.
“Yes,” he answers. “I want to do everything there is to do with you.” Renly
lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Loras looks at him
expectantly, almost nervously. It’s so strange to think him even capable of
being nervous. Renly’s never met anyone less prone to anxiety than Loras.
Renly’s chest aches at knowing that he’s the cause, that he’s one of the few
things in the world to matter so much to Loras.
“What are you waiting for?” he says, the casual words belied by the roughness
of his voice. Loras needs little prompting. He’s got Renly onto his back in the
blink of an eye, and he kisses him, long and drugging and deep.
It’s much the same as it was before, the first time Renly did this to Loras,
but inverted, like looking at something reflected in a mirror. The pieces are
all familiar – Loras’s exploring hands, the gentle pressure of his fingers,
Renly guiding him and helping him – but they’re not put together quite the same
way. When Loras tentatively pushes into Renly, it feels new and thrilling, a
strange sort of surrender, like holding on and letting go all at once. The
first time Renly had done this, he’d been nervous, unsure. His partner had been
the skilled one, he’d been the one to tell Renly what to do and how to move.
Now Renly is the one instructing Loras, telling him slower, faster, harder,
yes, that’s right, that’s just perfect, don’t stop, never stop. It comes as
little surprise that Loras applies himself with the same attention and
diligence he brings to training, and it would make Renly laugh, if his body
were capable of such a thing at the moment.
“No wonder you’re such a good knight,” he pants out when Loras follows his
direction and hits a spot that has Renly seeing stars behind his closed
eyelids.
“Renly,” Loras gasps. “I can’t… I’m going to…”
“It’s fine,” Renly tells him. “It’s all right, it’s all right.” Loras looks so
distressed that Renly pushes up on his elbows, strokes his face with a
reassuring hand as Loras shakes out his release, the changed angle almost
getting Renly close enough himself, but not quite. Loras collapses on him.
Renly’s still-hard cock is trapped between them and the feel of Loras’s heavy
breathing is just stirring enough to be completely maddening.
“I’m sorry,” Loras manages after a moment.
“Don’t be sorry,” Renly whispers. “Never be sorry.” Loras lifts his head and
takes Renly’s mouth in a searing kiss, one that only makes his cock ache all
the more. Then Loras gives him a wicked grin and slides down his body, and
Renly can only brace himself while Loras brings him off with his mouth, the
crook of his fingers inside Renly the final impetus for his release.
“Was it at least a bit of an improvement?” Loras asks, when he’s moved up to
lay his head beside Renly’s on the pillow. Renly smiles, eyes closed.
“I will ignore your blatant habit of fishing for praise this one time, in light
of the unusual situation, and tell you that it was a vast improvement.”
“Is that so,” Loras says with false humility.
“Mm, yes. I might even be interested in repeating it from time to time.”
“Is that so,” Loras repeats, but with far more satisfaction this time. “Well.
We’ll just see, won’t we?” Renly chuckles, and wraps Loras up in his arms,
rolling them over on the bed until Loras is atop him.
“You’ll just have to let me know when you’re willing.”
“I suppose I have it lucky,” Loras muses. Renly makes a questioning sound. “I
feel perfectly free to be…how did you put it? Impolite with you.” He grins, but
Renly understands the weight of what he’s saying.
“Maybe we’re both lucky,” Renly says after a while. Loras’s grin softens,
becomes something infinitely sweeter.
“Maybe so,” he agrees.
*****
Usually Renly enjoys Loras’s adventurous nature, his eagerness to explore and
try new things. There’s a certain charm to his enthusiasm, his boundless
affinity for the new and exciting. And there’s been more than charm in the
results, for the most part, at least for Renly. Indeed, much, much more than
charm. He’d just never thought to wonder what might happen when Loras had gone
through all the traditional options and began to grow curious about activities
ranging farther afield, so to speak. And now he wonders if he should have been
all so encouraging of Loras’s adventurous spirit.
“You want to do what with what?” he asks, eyeing Loras dubiously.
“I want to use wax,” Loras repeats. “Hot wax, specifically. And I’d like to
drip it on you. Haven’t you ever heard of that?”
“I might have a time or two, but where on earth did you get the idea?”
“Tyrion Lannister told me about it,” Loras answers with a blithe wave of his
fingers. Fingers that up until a moment ago had been deftly sneaking beneath
the placket of Renly’s breeches to tease him into hardness and clearly coax him
into a willing state. He feels tricked.
“You’re no longer allowed to speak to him,” Renly says. Good gods, they
couldn’t speak of the weather like normal people? "Or any other Lannisters, for
that matter."
“Being in King’s Landing is really providing me with all sorts of
opportunities,” Loras marvels, as if Renly hadn’t spoken.
“I should have been suspicious when you insisted on so many candles,” Renly
grumbles.
“So will you let me?” Loras asks, giving Renly an impossibly eager smile, like
he’s a great hound begging a treat under the table.
“Gods, why do I let you talk me into these things?” Renly says by way of
agreement, and Loras’s smile turns giddy.
“What color would you like?” he asks, turning to look at the candles he’s
arrayed on the bedside table.
“Color?” Renly asks in disbelief. “What possible difference could that make?”
“I thought I’d let you choose,” Loras shrugs.
“Whichever color is least painful,” Renly quips, and Loras looks at him
reprovingly.
“There’s no need to be cheeky,” he says, and the irony of that statement coming
from Loras of all people ties Renly’s tongue entirely until Loras has taken up
a fat scarlet candle and carefully dribbled a bit of wax over the hairless skin
at Renly’s ribs.
“A little more preamble!” Renly yelps at the touch of the wax, even though it’s
not too bad, if he’s honest.
“You’d like me to work up to pouring wax on you?” Loras snorts, tipping the
candle again and catching the rivulet of wax with his finger before it hits
Renly’s nipple, for which Renly is grateful. He’d held the candle closer that
time and it was definitely hotter. The next drip is from closer yet and it
downright stings.
“Loras, that is rather painful, you know.”
“Hold still.” Loras moves the candle lower, positioning it over Renly’s belly,
and the slide of the wax on the sensitive skin around his navel has Renly
squirming and jerking away.
“Ow. Ow! Gods, is this the sort of thing you like?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know since I’ve never done it, but that’s no reason for you
to be such a baby about it, Renly.”
“Here, you try it if you’re so tough,” Renly fires back, sitting up to grab the
candle and tip a bit of the wax onto Loras’s chest. Loras takes it in far more
stride than Renly did.
“Not bad,” he says. “Stings a bit. Blow on it.”
“What?”
“Blow on it! By the Maiden, Renly, you can be daft sometimes.” Renly does as
requested, feeling not unlike a fool as he purses his lips and blows over the
hardening surface of the wax. Loras makes a thoughtful face, and takes the
candle back. He holds it aloft, cocks a questioning brow at Renly. With a roll
of his eyes, Renly consents, settling back onto the pillows behind him. This
time, Loras blows on the wax immediately after it hits Renly’s skin, peeling it
off when it’s still soft and soothing the spot with his tongue.
“Oh,” Renly says, voice gone a bit soft around the edges. “That’s definitely
better.” Loras repeats the process, this time sucking at the spot hard enough
that Renly feels an answering pull in his crotch.
“Do that again,” he says. “Without the wax this time.” Loras shakes his head,
his eyes rolling a wide arc full of fond disgust. But he complies nonetheless
and Renly’s breath whistles from his lips on a content sigh. Much better.
He’s not sure where the candle ends up. It should probably be more of a
concern. He’d hate to set the place alight and have to run naked into the
streets, but Loras is using that clever tongue of his, sliding it over all the
places he knows Renly likes best, and honestly, a little fire seems
inconsequential at the moment.
"Loras," Renly chokes out, his hands gently gripping Loras's hair as Loras
licks a line from one hip to the other. He draws it out, teasing Renly with his
tongue everywhere other than where Renly wants it, until his name is all Renly
can say, “Loras, Loras, Loras,” and Loras finally takes him deep enough that
his nose is pressed to Renly's abdomen. He hums and swallows, his throat
working, and that’s all it takes.
“That wasn’t all terrible,” Renly admits, once he’s stopped shaking and Loras
has crawled up to lean against the headboard at his side, their heads tilted
together.
“Remember that next time I suggest something and you’re such an old man about
it,” Loras tells him tartly.
“Next time, remind me about those last bits you did and promise more of the
same,” Renly counters. “Then maybe I won’t be such an old man.”
“Bribery,” Loras sighs. “How inelegant.” He picks at a spot of wax on the
linens, dried now, well and stuck to the cloth. “This will take some getting
out.”
“Breda will hate her job even more than usual,” Renly groans. “Come to think on
it, we might need to get a new head of house altogether. You should have seen
the look she gave me this morning. I think your, er…your volume last night
unnerved her.” Loras has the good grace to blush, ducking his head to pry up
another bit of wax with his fingernail.
“Only just set up house in King’s Landing and already we’ve scandalized
someone,” he says. “We’ll have to look for someone harder to shock.”
“Much harder,” Renly agrees, laughing, and Loras shoots him a look.
“I’ll give you much harder,” he threatens, and there’s no more talk of
housekeepers, not for a good long while.
*****
“This is entirely your fault.”
It’s not the best looking glass in the Seven Kingdoms, but it shows Renly’s jaw
and neck plain enough, and the paler skin on his chest where he’s unbuttoned
his shirt to examine himself. The one right below his collarbone is the worst,
a purple-red bloom marring his skin, darker than any of the others. It’ll be
black tomorrow.
“Hm?” Loras thrums absently, not seeming especially interested from where he
lounges on Renly’s bed.
“These bloody marks you gifted me with,” Renly grumbles, making a quick
inventory. “One on my jaw, three on my neck, two on my chest…not to mention
that my lower lip looks like it’s been stung by a bee.” He makes a pout into
the glass and reassesses. “An entire hive of bees.”
“Suits you,” Loras says on a languorous yawn. Renly refuses to notice him back
there, stretched over the bed like a lazy cat. He certainly refuses to do any
petting, not when Loras won’t play by the rules.
“Not one of them took me seriously looking like this.”
“Oh, pfft,” Loras shrugs. “Bunch of wilting flowers, they are. They could do
with some biting themselves. Might loosen them up. As it is, they’re no fun at
all.”
“Even Varys made jokes at my expense,” Renly says, turning from the mirror to
glare at Loras. “A eunuch. No more.”
Loras makes a face. “Am I to have no fun either?”
“No more bites, Loras.” He follows it up with an admonishing finger and then
feels a fool, like a child pretending at authority. As if Loras has ever
followed a direction he wasn’t already inclined to follow. Loras pushes up from
the bed and stands in front of him. He presses a careful fingertip to the worst
mark, watching with glittering eyes as Renly’s mouth falls open and he sways on
the spot.
“I thought you liked them.”
“I do,” and gods, does he, “but-”
“You would live your life by their rules?” It’s a serious question now, even as
Loras plays his fingers over the bruises.
“Loras.”
“Are you ashamed of what we do?” It’s their one argument, the one they return
to time and again, worrying at it like hounds at a bone. It’s one of the few
times Renly truly feels the difference in their ages, the deceptively narrow
gap in years suddenly widening into a chasm. But then perhaps that’s not fair;
Renly thinks maybe Loras will be this brash, this impulsive and heedless his
entire life.
“You know that I’m not,” he says softly, and he isn’t. He never could be.
“Yet you hide,” Loras answers. Renly counts himself lucky that there’s no
condemnation in it, no anger or blame. He hesitates.
“It’s not that simple,” he says at last. Loras watches him, and for the
hundredth time, Renly wishes he were something other than what he is, that they
were nameless men in another place who could live and do as they pleased. Loras
seems to think they can live and do as they please, but Renly knows
differently. He traces gentle fingertips over Loras’s face in an inadequate
apology. Loras leans into them, pushes his face against Renly’s hand like a cat
wanting to be pet, and then moves fully into Renly’s arms, insinuating himself
under Renly’s chin. Renly can only marvel at his whole-heartedness, at his lack
of censor or reserve. He envies it. But he knows he can’t afford it.
“Very well,” Loras finally concedes with only the barest ill-grace. “No more
bites for them to see.”
“Thank you,” Renly says. Funny. He’d expected to be relieved. And he is, to
some point, but there’s a sadness in it. A disappointment. It takes him a
moment to realize that sometimes he relies on Loras not to give in. His
disappointment is shattered, though, when Loras pushes one hand into his open
shirt, sliding it down to set his teeth at Renly’s shoulder and nip.
"Loras!" Renly gasps, Loras's hair wild and curling around Renly’s suddenly
clenched fingers. The look Loras gives him is hot enough to curl his own hair.
“I said there wouldn’t be any for them to see, not that you wouldn’t have any,”
Loras points out slyly, and Renly laughs, he can’t help it. He couldn’t help it
even if he tried.
“You’re too clever for your own good,” he sighs, his own voice sounding hazy
and far off as Loras returns to his task, his mouth hot and insistent on
Renly’s skin. “But not so clever that you’ve realized you’d have an easier time
of it if I were lying on the bed.” Loras smiles at the hint. His hands shove at
Renly’s shoulders and the bed comes up to meet him, his sudden weight on the
mattress sending tiny white feathers flying about on invisible currents of air.
Loras hovers over him, arms braced on either side of his head, grinning and
happy and bright as the sun. Renly pushes his hands over Loras’s face in an
affectionate fumble, wishing there were words to say everything he feels. But
then, words seem pointless when Loras is lowering his body onto Renly’s, the
movement of his hips frankly sexual. Too clever indeed, and not the slightest
bit shy.
Loras opens his mouth over Renly’s skin through the cloth of his shirt, his
tongue hot and wet, the feel of it barely blunted by the fabric separating
them. He tests Renly’s nipple through the shirt with his teeth. Strange, Renly
thinks distantly, how something can be violently exciting and somehow
comforting all at once. Everything around him is different, his life has gone
in a whole new direction, but with Loras he’s who he always was.
“Enough of this,” Loras decides. He pulls Renly up, yanks the shirt over his
head with little ceremony, and pushes him back down only to apply with teeth
with no barrier this time.
“Gods,” Renly chokes out. Loras peeks up from beneath his fringe, gives Renly a
sly smirk.
“And what do they have to do with it?” he asks, affecting a note of mock-
petulance. “I do all the work and they get all the credit.” Renly grins,
despite himself.
“Blasphemer.”
“I suppose we’re lucky, though,” Loras continues, ignoring him. “Something nice
and short to call out when consumed by lust. Just consider the alternatives.”
He punctuates the words with a firm bite on the underside of Renly's arm, just
above the elbow, coupled with the steady pressure of his thigh between Renly's.
He laves the mark with his tongue, sucks on the skin with soothing pressure,
and Renly has to work at concentrating enough to understand. He’s mindless and
Loras is practically giving a speech. Bloody unfair.
“Alternatives?” Renly manages. He has cause to regret it when Loras pulls away
and looks thoughtful, leaving the spot on Renly’s arm throbbing and tingling
and far too distracting for conversation.
“Can you imagine calling out to the Drowned God in the throes of passion?
Dreadful. No wonder the ironmen are so dour. And Rh'llor?" He gives a delicate
shudder. "Now that's just ungainly." Renly laughs, but it comes out sounding
like he’s dying or in pain – neither of which seem too far off the mark,
actually.
“Here I thought we were in my chambers, only to find we’re in the Citadel
making comparative religious studies.”
“I have a lot of thoughts,” Loras shrugs.
“Yes, and that tongue you voice them with is too quick by half.” It’s going to
get you into a lot of trouble someday, Renly thinks but refuses to voice. This
is not the place for worry.
“I thought you enjoyed my quick tongue,” Loras says, his shrug replaced by
suggestion, the quirk of his mouth positively wicked.
“Gods help me but I do,” Renly sighs, then gasps as Loras nips at the skin just
beside his navel.
“Rh’llor help you, you mean,” he says. He grins, and it’s bright and boyish,
like to turn Renly’s heart upside down. “I know, I know, I’m incorrigible.” He
moves lower, trades teeth for tongue and lips, and all Renly can do is drop his
head back and grip the furs in his fists.
“At least you’re self-aware,” is the last thing he manages to say that’s actual
words.
******
It’s a lazy afternoon, something that’s grown short in supply since Renly
joined Robert’s small council. There’s always some pressing discussion, some
problem to solve, some bit of Robert’s life that wants sorting out. Loras makes
no secret of his impatience with the demands on Renly’s time. Renly suspects he
puts on some of it, though. He certainly seems to enjoy Renly’s efforts to pull
him out of his sulks.
Today’s sulk has been more difficult to soothe than most. Renly can’t blame
Loras. Robert has really been in a state lately, returning again and again to
his least favorite and most favored topic of Targaryens and what’s to be done
about them. Renly’s had to spend most of the previous night and all of the
morning practically being Loras’s slave to make up for it. A willing slave, but
nonetheless.
“Better?” he asks, once he’s coaxed Loras into a warm bath with him. Loras lies
back against Renly’s chest, idly twines his fingers with Renly’s along the rim
of the tub.
“I suppose,” Loras says, affecting a sullen tone that Renly knows he doesn’t
quite mean. Loras’s body has always betrayed his mood and right now he’s far
too languid to truly be put out. “But Robert really needs to find himself a
nursemaid of some sort and leave you be.”
“If you’ve any ideas on how to accomplish such a thing, I’d be glad to hear.”
“What we should do is marry him off to Margaery,” Loras says. “She would have
him sorted in a second.”
“Margaery!” Renly exclaims. “That is daft.”
“Why?”
“First of all, he’s already married, in case you’d forgotten.”
“She’d be a far sight better as Queen than Cersei,” Loras says.
“And second,” Renly continues, “she might not be so much better than Cersei
after Robert got a hold of her, with all his eating and swilling and whoring.
That’s bound to turn any maid sour. Your poor sister.”
“She’d be more than a match for him,” Loras says.
“She’s not a bloody magician,” Renly counters, and Loras gives a snort and
shakes his head.
“Honestly,” he says, “you would think the man wasn’t your brother.”
“Do you disagree?”
“No,” Loras sighs. “But it does make sense. It’d be advantageous for the
family. And for you. And thus for me. You should think on it.” There’s a
certain kind of sense to it, Renly knows. But the last thing he wants to be
considering at the moment is Robert.
“Right, that’s enough talk of politics,” he decides. “Dunk.” Obediently, Loras
slides beneath the water’s surface and comes up, shaking his head like a dog,
drops spattering Renly’s face. “Loras, good grief.”
“You love it,” Loras tells him. Renly lathers his hands and pushes his fingers
into Loras’s hair, massaging at his scalp. Loras makes a pleased sound, tilts
his head back into the pressure of Renly’s hands. “I’m the squire,” he says at
length, his voice sounding heavy and content. “Shouldn’t I be doing this?”
“You haven’t been my squire for some time, in case you’ve forgotten. Rinse.”
Again Loras obeys, refraining this time from soaking Renly when he surfaces.
“I’ll always be your faithful squire, my lord.” Loras’s words fill Renly with
some indefinable emotion. The feeling that fills him when Loras reaches behind
him to run a mischievous palm over Renly’s abdomen, however, is much more
definable. Loras’s fingertips skim a teasing line along Renly’s cock before
retreating entirely and Renly groans.
“Why must you always tease me so?” Renly asks.
“Because it’s the secret to my power over you,” Loras answers impishly, and
Renly laughs.
“And people would say I’m taking advantage of you.” That stops Loras short and
he twists a bit to look at Renly over his shoulder in surprise.
“They would?”
“I… Well, I suppose so. That’s how it would probably look if they knew.” If
some of them don’t already know, that is. Jaime Lannister has made more
suggestive comments than Renly is entirely comfortable with.
“That’s absurd,” Loras says, turning back around and settling more comfortably
against Renly’s chest. “If anything, it’s the other way around. What is it they
call it in the Iron Islands? A thrall. You’re clearly my thrall.” Loras pauses,
and considers. “Or my saltwife.”
“I think I prefer thrall,” Renly half laughs and half groans, glad of a reason
to laugh. Loras’s immediate dismissal of the idea has left him feeling far
shakier than he would have expected. Deep down, he supposes, he’d worried about
it, constantly, even after he decided he wouldn’t worry. He doesn’t know what
to call this emotion that’s welling in his chest – some combination of relief,
gratitude, need, fear, love – but it leaves him feeling unsteady.
“Don’t ever ask me to do anything truly terrible,” Renly says suddenly, his
voice breaking the silence that had settled over them comfortably. Loras stirs
the tiniest bit in his arms, a lazy cat resettling into another nap.
“Would you think less of me?” he asks, his voice languid and almost bored, as
if he barely even believes the notion of it possible. Renly swallows against
the knot in his throat, against the unbearable pressure of everything he feels
pushing out from his chest and into the world.
“I would do it,” he says, “whatever it was,” and the seriousness of it breaks
through Loras’s laziness. He cranes his head around to peer up at Renly over
his shoulder, water rippling around him at the movement. The intensity of his
gaze is too much. It’s all too much. Renly can’t bear it and he knows he’ll
never be able to live without it and he knows that’s in his kiss, all of it,
every bit of power he could give another. It’s right there, leaving him raw and
vulnerable, and he gives it to Loras anyway and doesn’t care, doesn’t regret it
for a single second.
Water sloshes over the rim of the bath and onto the floor when Loras turns to
face him, his kiss becoming insistent, growing drugging and deep. Renly tilts
his head back, not caring at the water everywhere, not caring that the bath
grows cold. All he cares is that Loras doesn’t stop, that he never, ever stops.
Their hips slide and slip together in the water, the contact all too teasing
until Loras catches hold of Renly’s hand and wraps it firmly around his cock
before taking Renly’s in his own hand. The rhythms don’t quite match, one fast
and one steady, but rather meet and then depart, only to meet again, as if
intertwined in a dance. Loras goes first – Loras always goes first – and he
moves and twists his hand even as he’s spilling into Renly’s, as he’s shaking
and dropping his forehead to Renly’s shoulder, until Renly follows. Renly
always follows.
They slump against the lip of the bath, Loras pliant against Renly’s chest.
Renly feels equally relaxed. He might not be entirely surprised to find that he
has no bones at all at the moment, that he’s nothing but skin and flesh and
nerves. His head lolls back to rest on the rim of the tub and he smiles at the
ceiling. It isn’t until Loras shivers against him, the tremor relaying through
Renly’s body, that he realizes how cold the water has become. Reluctant as he
is for Loras to move, he knows they should at least rise and dry off. But then
Loras shifts his hips and the water doesn’t seem quite as cold as it did only a
moment ago.
"Hold still, you minx,” Renly groans. “Have mercy on an old man."
“Shall I move away?” Loras asks, the look on his face pure cheek, nothing but
teasing and insincerity. Renly wraps his arms about Loras tighter, though. Just
in case.
“You’re the only thing keeping me from slipping under the water and drowning at
the moment,” he says. Satisfied, Loras tucks himself into the crook of Renly’s
shoulder again, tracing idle patterns on his chest before reaching up to touch
Renly’s beard.
“You're getting shaggy again,” he notes, rubbing the tips of his fingers over
the coarse hair, pressing them against Renly’s jaw.
“I’ve rather grown to like it,” Renly says. "The beard, I mean, not the
shagginess."
“So have I,” Loras admits, and Renly knows him well enough to know a “but” when
he hears it.
“But?” he prompts. Loras’s eyes flick up to his and there’s something wistful
in them, something small and just a bit sad.
“I miss shaving you.” It’s a simple enough sentence. It shouldn’t make Renly’s
throat feel tight. He wouldn’t trade what he has now with Loras for anything in
the Seven Kingdoms or beyond. But still. It’s easy to forget his agony from
those early days and remember only the heady thrill, the feeling of potential.
“Of course,” Loras continues, quite a different tone to his words, “that’s not
the only place I could shave you…” He lets it trail off suggestively before
twining his fingers in the hair on Renly’s chest and giving it a sharp tug, one
Renly feels deep in his gut.
“Is,” Renly starts, then catches his breath. “Is that something you might be
interested in?” Loras doesn’t answer. He just gives Renly that sly smile, the
one that Renly knows means trouble or bliss or frequently both. Renly laughs,
bright and open. "Rh'llor help us both," he says, and Loras laughs with him,
laughs into his mouth even as he kisses him, laughs and renders him whole.
*****
“You’re in a disgustingly good mood today.”
“Am I?” Renly asks in surprise.
“You’re walking around with a soppy grin on your face, humming and singing and
being a general ray of bloody sunshine,” Loras points out, smiling almost to
match that soppy grin. “I’d say you’re happy.”
“I suppose I am.”
“And what’s got you so happy?” Loras asks. Renly tilts his head and thinks on
it. He looks up at the blue of the sky, looks around them at the life of the
household, looks down at his feet where they’re tapping with happy energy on
the cobbles in the yard. Looks at Loras’s face, the face he’s truly allowed
himself to believe he’ll see every day for the rest of his life.
“Nothing,” he says, shrugging. “Everything. Just happy, I suppose.” It’s a
strange impulse that seizes him, to pull Loras into a dance. Renly’s never been
one to surrender to impulse. But today is different. Loras is shocked when
Renly catches his wrist, swings him into his arms. He stumbles along, watching
Renly with bemusement.
“People can see,” Loras reminds him, eyeing Renly warily even as he
instinctively moves with him in the steps Renly’s taught him. Renly hums
absently and Loras picks up the rhythm, moving expertly to the sound of Renly's
voice.
“I know,” Renly says. The answer flummoxes Loras quite thoroughly. Renly would
be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy it. He swings them in a long-striding arc,
Loras’s chest flattening to his from the pressure of Renly’s arm, the walls of
the yard spinning about them until Renly feels a bit dizzy.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Loras says, breathless. Dazed. Maybe
even happy himself.
“Just enjoy it while it lasts,” Renly tells him with a grin.
“Oh, I plan to.” Loras moves his hips suggestively, his face full of mischief,
but Renly can see the softness on his face as well, the fragile hope. It makes
him want to protect that hope. To nurture it like the spark of a flame. To
build a fortress around it and keep it always safe, to construct a life for
them out of mortar and stone and a roof to keep out the rain. The fact that
Renly feels like he can do such a thing, can and will…well, there are few
things more worth being happy about.
“What am I to do with you, Loras Tyrell?” he says, and the words are stupidly
affectionate, so fond and admiring that Loras flushes, ducking his head in
embarrassed pleasure.
“Shall I give you the list in alphabetical order or ranked by preference?” he
mumbles.
“Surprise me,” Renly decides. “You know, I have something very important to
tell you.”
“What’s that?”
"Eight,” Renly says, leaning close, pressing their foreheads together and
staring into Loras’s eyes, “and five." The words don’t mean the same thing that
they did the first time Renly said them to Loras, but rather much more. They
encompass everything Renly feels for him, all the love he has in the world. But
then, maybe that gives them precisely the same meaning they’ve always had.
"You bastard,” Loras laughs. “You're never going to tell me the meaning of
that, are you?"
"Someday," Renly tells him with a smile, tugging Loras just a bit closer.
"Someday I will."
*****
“He’s not supposed to be human.”
It’s all Renly can think, all he can say. When he’d been a boy, he’d always
thought of Robert as invincible He’d been aware of the danger, he’d known
Robert rode off to war, to blood and death and destruction, but the idea had
never occurred to him that Robert might not return, alive and well. Robert had
been too strong, too vital, even after he’d traded battle for wine, armor for
supper and dessert, his battleaxe for willing women and handsomely paid whores.
It was still impossible to think him capable of dying. Renly had watched the
boar tear into him, he’d seen Robert’s blood and guts laid out in the afternoon
sun, the red obscenely bright and festive, and still he’d had difficulty
comprehending the idea that Robert was anything but immortal.
His chamber in the Red Keep had always seemed spacious before, but now it feels
tiny, cramped, too small a space to hold him in his agitation as he paces, from
table to window and back to table. Loras hovers near him, his face stricken, as
unsure what to say now as he was when he’d found Renly on the hunting party’s
return, already having heard of Robert’s injury as news of it swept through the
household like wildfire.
“It just… It cut right through him,” Renly says, his voice sounding strange and
foreign. “Like he was made of paper.”
“Ren…”
“Like he was nothing.”
“Renly, please.” Loras looks so helpless. He looks as helpless as Renly feels.
Renly reaches out, catches handfuls of Loras’s shirt and pulls Loras to him,
their foreheads colliding uncomfortably.
“He’s not supposed to die,” Renly whispers. Then he’s kissing Loras, if such a
punishing act could be described as a kiss. Their lips and teeth clash
together, the metallic tang of blood spreading on Renly’s tongue, though he
couldn’t say which of them it came from. Loras doesn’t shrink or shy from the
contact; he grapples at Renly, fighting closer to him, taking all of Renly’s
fear and anger and leaving him only need as Renly bears them down to the floor,
fumbling at their clothing.
It isn’t gentle, not in the slightest. The floor must be hard under Loras’s
shoulders; it bruises Renly’s knees, leaves his body feeling as battered as his
soul. But Loras makes no protest; he only curls and clings to Renly, holding
him with strong arms, kissing Renly as if he could draw his anguish from him.
“Loras,” Renly gasps, desperate and overcome, gripped by the greatest fear he
can imagine, the most staggering loss he could ever suffer. “If I ever lost
you-”
“I’m alive,” Loras says against Renly’s mouth. “I’m alive, it’s all right.”
It’s a release only in the barest sense of the word. Renly stiffens, spills
into Loras, but it feels shallow and wrong. Loras combs Renly’s hair with
gentle fingers, bats Renly’s hand away when Renly would have brought him to
completion. It’s a relief, in a way, since Renly isn’t sure he’s capable of
making anything good for anyone at the moment, but it feels wrong as well. He
rocks back onto his haunches, takes in their state as Loras sits up beside him.
They’re disheveled, clothing askew and pushed aside. Renly can’t meet Loras’s
eyes as they right themselves, tucking and lacing and smoothing. Loras gingerly
rotates his shoulder and it hits Renly like a fist. He hasn’t been ashamed of
anything with Loras for a very long time.
“I hurt you,” Renly says quietly.
“I’m not complaining,” Loras points out. Renly can’t tell him that only makes
it worse. A stinging sets up behind his eyes and he squeezes them shut, covers
his face with his hands. “Renly,” Loras says, and it’s full of pain and
compassion, love and sorrow and too much feeling for Renly to bear. He allows
Loras to cup the back of his neck, to tug Renly down to lay his head in Loras’s
lap. He allows Loras to soothe him. Indeed, Loras is the only person who could.
“What will happen now?” Loras asks. Renly’s on his side, his ear pressed to
Loras’s thigh, the cloth of his breeches rough and scratchy beneath him. The
feel of Loras’s hand over his hair is comforting, familiar, a piece of normalcy
in a world gone topsy-turvy.
“I don’t know. If Robert dies…” Renly’s voice dries up at the still impossible
idea. He has to clear his throat and swallow to continue. “I’ll have to talk to
Ned. Surely he knows we can’t leave Joffrey to the throne. Perhaps he’ll stand
with us.”
“Do you think that likely?”
“No,” Renly says ruefully. “Ned Stark and his blasted honor. And I suppose we
won't be getting Robert married off to Margaery anymore," he says, an almost
hysterical urge to laugh bubbling in his throat and making him feel sick.
“You could marry her,” Loras says, even and quiet. Like he means it. But he
couldn’t mean such a thing.
“Be serious,” Renly tells him.
“I am,” Loras says. “With my family’s support, you could declare yourself.”
Renly sits up to stare at Loras. There’s not a trace of jest or jape in his
face. Loras truly means for Renly to marry his sister. The idea is as
impossible as the idea of Robert dying. “Loras,” is all Renly can say, no words
seeming adequate.
“You should be King. Not any of them. You.” Certainty blazes in Loras’s eyes,
the set of his lips is grim.
“But you and I…”
“That wouldn’t change. That would never change.” Loras says it fiercely, so
fiercely that Renly could believe it. It’s that fierceness that Renly clings
to, as the rest of the life he thought he would have slips through his fingers
like sand that can’t be held.
“Promise me,” he says to Loras, holding the nape of his neck with insistent
fingers, pulling him close and setting their cheeks together. “Promise me we
will never change, no matter who dies, marriage or no marriage, no matter what.
Promise.” It’s all too urgent, too desperate and raw and vulnerable, but Renly
just watched the beginning of his brother’s death. He can probably be excused.
“I promise you,” Loras says, just as urgent, just as desperate and raw and
vulnerable.
“No matter what,” Renly says, his throat feeling thick and crowded.
“No matter what.” Renly kisses Loras then, kisses him like to fall into him and
never come back. Kisses him and trusts him and believes his words like he’s
never believed anything, because that’s all Renly can do.
*****
He’d met Margaery before, when she was just a slip of a thing, hovering shyly
at her father’s side to welcome them to Highgarden. They hadn’t gone often,
only a handful of times over the course of the years before Loras began to
travel on his own, and Loras would always slip off immediately with his sister,
not to be seen the rest of the day. Renly had known they were close, had heard
the deep and true affection in Loras’s voice when he spoke of her, but seeing
it for himself left a bittersweet ache in his chest, envy at Loras’s closeness
with his sister something he’d not thought to anticipate; his relationship with
his own brothers had always been cordial at best, after all. Brother, he thinks
with a start, I only have one brother now, and the dull clutch inside his chest
has almost become familiar.
She’s little more than a slip of a girl still, grown as she is. But there’s a
strength in her, a steely core under her soft façade. Renly hears it in her
voice when she asks Loras to leave them, feels it in the steadiness of her gaze
as she looks at him. This is one person there’s no need to dissemble with,
Renly knows.
“Is this marriage what you wish?” he asks, not bothering with niceties or
preamble. The barest warming of her expression tells him he read her correctly.
“I am happy to do what’s best for the realm, my lord,” she says, as obeisant
and demure as any Septa could hope for, the steel only returning to her voice
when she adds, “and what’s best for my family.” Suddenly Renly’s tired,
overwhelmingly so. He slumps into a chair, scrubbing his hand over his face as
if to clear it of the weight of reality so he can smile again.
“That makes one of us,” he mutters. “Happy, that is. Please, sit.” Gracefully,
she sits, hands folded at her knees. Her face betrays no clue to how she’s
taking his reaction, staying smooth and placid, like a lake on a windless day.
She would make a good Queen, he thinks. Steely. Calm. Inscrutable. All the
things Renly’s not.
“Have you no suitors? No…” He gropes for a delicate word. “No interests? Surely
this can’t be what you’ve wanted for yourself.”
“I want what all girls want,” she counters coolly. “A good and advantageous
marriage.” Only the barest twitch of her serene smile says what she truly
thinks of her words, of the underlying sentiment that young girls from noble
houses doubtlessly have hammered into their hearts until they believe it, all
those little pawns moved about by the whims and politics of men. Renly wonders
if Margaery was ever so young as those girls. He imagines she seems a pawn to
those around her, but something about her suggests to him that she’s as much a
knight as her brother in this arena. Yes, a good Queen indeed.
“As for interests,” she continues. “Well. We both have our secrets, my lord.”
“Yes,” he says after looking at her in silence for a long time. “Yes, I suppose
we do. And I suppose we also have a wedding to plan.” She permits a small smile
at that, and rises to leave. At least that’s what Renly expects her to do.
Instead she steps beside his chair and places a single fingertip under his chin
to bring his eyes to hers.
“I love my brother, Lord Renly,” she says. “And my brother loves you. He always
has.” It’s the most honest thing she’s said yet, and there are a thousand
meanings in it Renly couldn’t hope to decipher. He closes his eyes against them
all and when he looks again she’s gone.
*****
Nothing feels right. Renly plays the smiling lord in the days leading up to the
wedding, the happy groom eager to be wed, but it weighs heavily on his
shoulders, an uncomfortable mantle. If his somber mood shows through, no one
has the ill grace to mention it. They carry on in their celebrations and their
festivities, making a riotous swirl around him and Loras and Margaery, little
noticing or caring if Loras’s face is drawn, if Margaery is far too serene, if
Renly can’t meet anyone’s eyes, staring instead over shoulders at indeterminate
points in the distance when he speaks. And why should they notice? Marriage has
seldom been about love, after all.
Renly begs off early the night before the ceremony. Tomorrow will be enough to
endure without subjecting himself to more this eve. When he finally extricates
himself, his face sore from the false smile he’d worn for what seemed hours,
Loras is there in his chambers. He seems at a loss, for one of the few times
Renly has ever seen him so. Silently, Loras unties Renly’s cloak, tugs his
boots from his feet, helps him shed the finery that tonight seems little more
than a shell concealing his true self, until Renly stands before him in only
his smallclothes. Loras says nothing, but his hand shakes when he sets it over
the beat of Renly’s heart, until he presses his cheek there instead, listening
to the steady drumming.
“This seems wrong.” Loras’s quiet words cut Renly to the quick.
“It was your idea,” he says gently. His hands come up to tangle in Loras’s
hair, spearing through the mass of it to cradle his head like something
precious and fragile.
“I know,” Loras says. He looks up at Renly, anguish plain in his eyes. That
tumbledown lock of hair is on his cheek again, and Renly tucks it back to watch
it spring forward, eyes stinging so that he has to blink against the dampness
in them.
“I told you never to ask me to do something truly terrible,” Renly whispers.
Loras looks at him miserably. Renly can’t hold him tightly enough, can’t kiss
him deeply enough. Nothing will be different, he tells himself, nothing will
change. But already their touches are strained, Loras’s hands are
heartbreakingly tentative.
“Tomorrow-” Loras starts, but his voice cracks, and he makes a soft, sad sound
without words.
“We promised each other,” Renly tells him fiercely. “You and I will never
change. No matter what.”
“No matter what,” Loras echoes.
“I’m yours, Loras.”
“Renly…”
“I’m yours,” Renly says again, as if he could present himself to Loras as a
gift, body and mind and soul, “I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours,” with every
kiss, as if the repetition could make it true, true entire and not just in
Renly’s heart. True enough that nothing and no one could ever keep them from
one another. Truer than anything in the whole of the world and beyond.
 

*****
*****
 

It doesn’t fit. No matter how hard Loras tries, no matter how he pushes or
pulls or contorts himself. He can see the look on Garlan’s face, that half-sad,
half-cautious look he wears whenever he’s around Loras now. It makes Loras want
to rip something apart with his bare hands.
“Loras,” Garlan says, his voice as half-sad, half-cautious as his face. Loras
ignores him. Another inch of padding and he’ll have it. Another inch and
Renly’s breastplate will cinch over Loras’s chest perfectly and Renly will be a
little in the world again and maybe this horrible, gaping hole in Loras’s heart
won’t feel so awful and overwhelming, if only for a handful of moments.
“Loras, you’re hurting yourself,” Garlan says, reaching for his hand when
Loras’s fingers slip and he bashes his knuckles on the edge of the metal, blood
showing bright around the broken skin. He snatches his hand away from Garlan,
too raw still for the touch of another person. For the touch of the wrong
person. Trouble is, they’re all the wrong person now, and they always will be.
The breastplate still hangs wrong despite all the padding, pinching where it
should be loose, loose where it should be fitted. His hands swim in Renly’s
gauntlets, the greaves rattle about his ankles and reach far past his knees, so
he couldn’t bend them if he tried. It seems inconceivable, that something
belonging to Renly could be so wrong on Loras. He’s seized by a brief,
irrational urge to destroy the armor, to kick it into pieces as small and
broken as he feels. Instead he tries even harder. If he can only make the
breastplate fit, some desperate part of his mind thinks, then everything else
will be fine. The metal binds strangely over his chest, making it hard to
breathe, every inhalation a struggle. But then, every inhalation has been a
struggle since Renly fell, since Loras saw his face dead and lifeless, the
light gone out of his eyes for good. At least now the armor gives the struggle
a corporeal reason. Something physical, some way to direct and disperse the
rage and sorrow within him, is what Loras needs more than anything right now.
Other than Renly. The rage and the sorrow only intensify at the thought,
unfamiliar and agonizing, a poison in his veins.
When his hand slips again and a gash opens up on his palm, Loras has to accept
the inevitable. He can’t fight if he can’t breathe, can’t face enemies if he
can’t even handle a sword. And he wants to fight. He needs to. If only to keep
the emptiness from consuming him.
“You’ll have to wear it,” he tells Garlan dully, knowing he sounds as dead as
he feels. Dismay crosses Garlan’s face, along with uncertainty. He has no idea
what to say, Loras knows, hasn’t since Renly died and Loras was changed
forever. He’d never fully understood what was between Loras and Renly, though
he’d done his best. Love and desire come and go so easily for Garlan, always
simple and uncomplicated and brief. He’d no idea what Loras had with Renly, and
he’s no idea what Loras has lost without him.
Garlan takes the armor from Loras, grimly begins to put it on. Loras should
help him, should fit the pieces and secure them as any squire would. As he once
had for Renly. But the memories are too painful; they leave no room for him in
the tent. He startles the boy standing just outside the flap of the tent when
he bursts through, gulping down air like a man drowning. Loras orders the boy
inside to assist Garlan with a perfunctory jerk of his head. Quick as a
thought, the boy obeys and Loras is left alone for the moment. Alone to think,
alone to remember, alone to curse his heart for beating yet when Renly’s is
still.
“I never did learn what eight and five meant,” he says aloud, the sudden
realization so incongruous and unexpected that it almost makes him laugh.
Almost.
It’s like seeing a ghost when Garlan appears outside the tent in Renly’s armor,
if only for a heartbeat. The illusion is ruined when Garlan moves – he doesn’t
hold himself as Renly did, doesn’t have Renly’s same casual grace and easy
manner, and worst of all, he’s not attuned to Loras the way Renly always was,
like there was a current between them that bound them inexorably together – but
for just one moment, Loras can pretend all is well. They’re just training
together, or Renly is riding tourney, or they’re going into battle with one
another the way it should have been, and it was all just the most awful sort of
nightmare; Loras didn't bury Renly with his own hands, didn't lower him into
the cold, hard ground where he didn't belong. Then Garlan moves, flips the
visor of his helm up to reveal the wrong face – oh, they're all the wrong face!
– and everything shatters all over again. Loras stumbles away to retch
painfully onto the grass.
“Will you be all right?” Garlan asks when they’ve moved to the head of the
column and are preparing to ride, lords and knights and bannermen all around
them. “Will you be able to fight?” He has no way of knowing how absurd the
question is. Loras had never once in his life expected to be without Renly.
He’d made no plans for a life without him, had no thoughts of ever leaving his
side. They’d never said it aloud, but he knows they both only worried it might
be the other way around, that Loras might be slain, leaving Renly to a life
alone. But this… This is worse than anything he’d imagined because he’d never
thought to imagine it. He’d known he would fight for Renly, but he never
dreamed it would be like this. And now it’s all he has.
But all he says to Garlan is, “I will.” For Renly, he will. “And I’ll win.”
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