(no subject)
but some flare up with love - Renly Baratheon/Loras Tyrell (aSoIaF) - R
love love is going to lead you by the hand
into a white and soundless place.
now we see things as in a mirror dimly.
then we shall see each other face to face.
My pretty boy, he calls him. My heart.
In the frozen north, the cold north, they kneel in the godswood. In the soft south they have the Sept and the Seven. The King in the south prays when it suits him, pays lip-service to many gods, but this, right here, this boy-knight with rumpled green velvet open across his chest and his hair slipping into his eyes is all that Renly Baratheon has ever needed to believe in. Loras Tyrell slides down with his hands on Renly's hips to steady him as he leans, his lips as pink as any Highgarden rose finding the bare skin between doublet and breeches. Renly lets his head all back, gloriously unburdened by his crown and Loras looks him straight in the eye before he takes him in his mouth.
The greatest knight need kneel only to his King.
Loras' hands are beautiful…quick and clever, strong and slender and, sometimes, Renly marvels that they can wield weaponry so deadly, with such skill. These are lover's hands, if ever he saw lover's hands. These are hands which unbuckled and unlaced and slid into Renly's bed as naked as the rest of Loras Tyrell on Renly's eighteenth birthday. Loras was thirteen, then and what Renly has come to realise since that night is this:
That what gods there are are cruel, and years fly by too fast.
If Renly looks at Loras too quickly or out of the corner of his eye, while he's reading, perhaps, or lying in rumpled white sheets with his face turned to one side, he might almost mistake one Tyrell for another. His wife is flawless, a prize rose bought to him wrapped for safety on the journey from her father's gardens, but Renly knows each of Loras' scars intimately; a pock-mark from a childhood illness to one side of a brown nipple...a knick in his chin picked up in one melee or another. Tiny things, but there.
The touch of Loras' mouth makes Renly gasp and, for a moment, the green silk of the ceiling swims. His pushes his fingers into brown curls pretty enough for a girl, brushes his thumb against Loras' forehead, still bruised courtesy of Brienne the Beauty and he tugs lightly, touches Loras' chin with his free hand and he turns his face back up into the light.
"What are you afraid of, love?" he asks him.
"Nothing," says Loras, and he turns his head and kisses the soft, fleshy part at the base of Renly's thumb, and a girl at a tourney, a fresh white rose in her hand or in her hair might have believed it. Anybody might have believed, but Renly of all people knows where the Knight of Flowers ends and Mace Tyrell’s youngest son begins.
Some days, he knows that better than he knows himself. Perhaps Renly the King doesn't end anymore. Perhaps that's how it should be.
"Liar," he says.
When the Knights of Flowers smiles, girls swoon. There's a way that Loras smiles that he saves only for Renly when they're alone together like this. It's a private thing, and Renly guards it jealously. Loras smiles and then he leans forward and rests his head against Renly's belly. Renly's hand finds the back of his neck, stroking through the soft brown curls there.
"Losing you," he says, quietly and, though Loras can't see him, Renly shakes his head.
"Never," he says, and he means it, wife or not, war or not, and all the brothers and all the nephews of the world be damned. "Never, ever, my pretty boy, my heart."
At Storm's End and King's Landing (and occasionally at Highgarden too), they'd lain together in wide rumpled beds and Renly would take great care with him, take the time to trace his graceful profile, drop a hundred gentle kisses onto perfect lips. He has kissed Margaery but nothing more and perhaps he fell in love with the wrong Tyrell but maybe there was never another way for his heart to fall, not since Renly was eighteen or even when he was thirteen and he saw Loras Tyrell for the first time? Whatever the cause, whichever the day, he likes to think that it has less to do with the gods, such as they are, and more to do with the workings of his weak and decidedly mortal heart.
So be it and nothing to be done.
In a bed that's narrower by far, he wants to take his time but finds himself urgent, pushing into Loras hard enough to make him gasp and Loras swear. Perhaps it's the knowledge of the battle that does it to him; Stannis will fall, of course, but it must be the most human thing in the world to imagine your last night on earth? He kisses Loras deeply, breathes I love you straight into his lungs and doesn't give thought to either of them dying without the other, like something from a singer's song.
Afterwards they lie as close as any man would with a seventeen-summers old wife, and Loras leans across him, curls tumbling across his forehead. His eyes are lighter than his sister's, closer to gold than rosewood.
"What're you thinking about?" he asks him, leaning down to kiss him, no honorific, no need for names at all, not when they are so long practiced at knowing each other in the dark.
"I"m thinking about how things might have been different if you were a girl; your father's only daughter." Firstborn sons served their father's lord leaving the others to find their own glory while the girls were wed. "What if it had been you, Loras: sent for Robert, given to me? What if it had been you instead of Margaery?"
Loras looks at him for a long moment and then he smiles and turns his pretty face and kisses Renly's palm.
"It was," he says.
In the end, they do it again, slower this time and sweeter too. Renly tips a cup and dribbles white wine between Loras’ lips and down the hollow of his throat and then he bends his head to suck and kiss and this time Loras sighs before he comes and Renly pretends that he won’t lose another brother in the morning, if these gods are good. Loras falls asleep with his head on Renly’s chest, his face relaxed in sleep and, for a little while, he looks less like a King’s most favoured knight and more like Mace Tyrell’s youngest son, the one who found his love and his glory where he could.
Renly smoothes his hair and kisses his forehead. In the corner, on the stand, his armour, and, for a moment, it’s like somebody standing there watching them together. Renly closes his eyes and holds Loras tighter, his white knight, his pretty boy, his heart.
love love is going to lead you by the hand
into a white and soundless place.
now we see things as in a mirror dimly.
then we shall see each other face to face.
My pretty boy, he calls him. My heart.
In the frozen north, the cold north, they kneel in the godswood. In the soft south they have the Sept and the Seven. The King in the south prays when it suits him, pays lip-service to many gods, but this, right here, this boy-knight with rumpled green velvet open across his chest and his hair slipping into his eyes is all that Renly Baratheon has ever needed to believe in. Loras Tyrell slides down with his hands on Renly's hips to steady him as he leans, his lips as pink as any Highgarden rose finding the bare skin between doublet and breeches. Renly lets his head all back, gloriously unburdened by his crown and Loras looks him straight in the eye before he takes him in his mouth.
The greatest knight need kneel only to his King.
Loras' hands are beautiful…quick and clever, strong and slender and, sometimes, Renly marvels that they can wield weaponry so deadly, with such skill. These are lover's hands, if ever he saw lover's hands. These are hands which unbuckled and unlaced and slid into Renly's bed as naked as the rest of Loras Tyrell on Renly's eighteenth birthday. Loras was thirteen, then and what Renly has come to realise since that night is this:
That what gods there are are cruel, and years fly by too fast.
If Renly looks at Loras too quickly or out of the corner of his eye, while he's reading, perhaps, or lying in rumpled white sheets with his face turned to one side, he might almost mistake one Tyrell for another. His wife is flawless, a prize rose bought to him wrapped for safety on the journey from her father's gardens, but Renly knows each of Loras' scars intimately; a pock-mark from a childhood illness to one side of a brown nipple...a knick in his chin picked up in one melee or another. Tiny things, but there.
The touch of Loras' mouth makes Renly gasp and, for a moment, the green silk of the ceiling swims. His pushes his fingers into brown curls pretty enough for a girl, brushes his thumb against Loras' forehead, still bruised courtesy of Brienne the Beauty and he tugs lightly, touches Loras' chin with his free hand and he turns his face back up into the light.
"What are you afraid of, love?" he asks him.
"Nothing," says Loras, and he turns his head and kisses the soft, fleshy part at the base of Renly's thumb, and a girl at a tourney, a fresh white rose in her hand or in her hair might have believed it. Anybody might have believed, but Renly of all people knows where the Knight of Flowers ends and Mace Tyrell’s youngest son begins.
Some days, he knows that better than he knows himself. Perhaps Renly the King doesn't end anymore. Perhaps that's how it should be.
"Liar," he says.
When the Knights of Flowers smiles, girls swoon. There's a way that Loras smiles that he saves only for Renly when they're alone together like this. It's a private thing, and Renly guards it jealously. Loras smiles and then he leans forward and rests his head against Renly's belly. Renly's hand finds the back of his neck, stroking through the soft brown curls there.
"Losing you," he says, quietly and, though Loras can't see him, Renly shakes his head.
"Never," he says, and he means it, wife or not, war or not, and all the brothers and all the nephews of the world be damned. "Never, ever, my pretty boy, my heart."
At Storm's End and King's Landing (and occasionally at Highgarden too), they'd lain together in wide rumpled beds and Renly would take great care with him, take the time to trace his graceful profile, drop a hundred gentle kisses onto perfect lips. He has kissed Margaery but nothing more and perhaps he fell in love with the wrong Tyrell but maybe there was never another way for his heart to fall, not since Renly was eighteen or even when he was thirteen and he saw Loras Tyrell for the first time? Whatever the cause, whichever the day, he likes to think that it has less to do with the gods, such as they are, and more to do with the workings of his weak and decidedly mortal heart.
So be it and nothing to be done.
In a bed that's narrower by far, he wants to take his time but finds himself urgent, pushing into Loras hard enough to make him gasp and Loras swear. Perhaps it's the knowledge of the battle that does it to him; Stannis will fall, of course, but it must be the most human thing in the world to imagine your last night on earth? He kisses Loras deeply, breathes I love you straight into his lungs and doesn't give thought to either of them dying without the other, like something from a singer's song.
Afterwards they lie as close as any man would with a seventeen-summers old wife, and Loras leans across him, curls tumbling across his forehead. His eyes are lighter than his sister's, closer to gold than rosewood.
"What're you thinking about?" he asks him, leaning down to kiss him, no honorific, no need for names at all, not when they are so long practiced at knowing each other in the dark.
"I"m thinking about how things might have been different if you were a girl; your father's only daughter." Firstborn sons served their father's lord leaving the others to find their own glory while the girls were wed. "What if it had been you, Loras: sent for Robert, given to me? What if it had been you instead of Margaery?"
Loras looks at him for a long moment and then he smiles and turns his pretty face and kisses Renly's palm.
"It was," he says.
In the end, they do it again, slower this time and sweeter too. Renly tips a cup and dribbles white wine between Loras’ lips and down the hollow of his throat and then he bends his head to suck and kiss and this time Loras sighs before he comes and Renly pretends that he won’t lose another brother in the morning, if these gods are good. Loras falls asleep with his head on Renly’s chest, his face relaxed in sleep and, for a little while, he looks less like a King’s most favoured knight and more like Mace Tyrell’s youngest son, the one who found his love and his glory where he could.
Renly smoothes his hair and kisses his forehead. In the corner, on the stand, his armour, and, for a moment, it’s like somebody standing there watching them together. Renly closes his eyes and holds Loras tighter, his white knight, his pretty boy, his heart.