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The candles had burned down to their wicks long ago. Shifty-eyed servants that held little fondness for any of house Hightower had begged they be allowed to fetch new sticks, and all had been sent off with varying levels of unpleasantness. The cold made him feel numb enough on the outside to match the numb he felt inside. His eyes welled with wetness, though Gwayne couldn't tell at any given moment whether it was thanks to grief, or that he'd forgotten to blink.
Ormund and Daeron supped with Lord Corlys; Gwayne hadn't been invited or fetched but he found he preferred the quiet, even as the longing curl of hunger cramped up in his stomach.
He had grieved Criston long before his cousin had declared him dead. He'd grieved him several times, in fact. When their path became fraught with danger that never seemed to settle on the man's shoulders, when they threw themselves beneath the feet and flame of the dragons at Rook's Rest, and Gwayne could not see his pale armour in the fray, and then that final time as he'd stepped away from the camp, unwilling to stand by and find out whether he'd have the chance to grieve him once more.
Suppose part of him had thought Cole to be the type of vermin that could survive anything with spite and resolve alone: a plant that grew on rocks and feasted only upon insects that died inside of it. Gwayne had spent many an evening watching the man eat and take his drink if only to convince himself that he remained a man, and not some revenant leading them all to their doom.
The glee his cousin held in declaring the death of The Kingmaker was little more than dirt in Gwayne's eye- a stinging annoyance that scarcely held a candle against the still-bleeding wound of knowing Criston had finally gotten what he wanted. His blood fed the earth and his soul turned to dust on the wind.
He hoped only that the songs Cole spoke of would honour him as he wished. Or that they would be sung at all.
There was anger beneath it all: his efforts to help carve a path beneath Criston's feet scuffed and refused, all that he could of said and done that had caught itself in his throat, the moments he'd let nights go unremembered and the details he'd let get washed from his recollection by exhaustion and fatigue. If he'd known sooner that Criston's ambition were as grave and bottomless as it had been, perhaps he would have acted sooner, before the foundation had settled.
He would have liked to see Criston's mettle meet Ormund's, if just to watch them crash against one another like warring ships. It would be a spitting fury that would cow even the Seven themselves.
Gwayne had not been able to curb that madness in their departed Hand of the King; they'd melted through their forces save for the handful that had lived to follow Gwayne to Tumbleton, and he'd stood before his cousin empty-handed and half-drowned in sorrow.
He thought he understood then what Criston had meant when he'd said his father had died of it.
That was why he was left untethered now: brushed aside and left to his own company in the dark. He had proved himself inconsequential. He could not be expected to succeed beyond the warmth of Ormund's gaze or beyond the guiding touch of his palm. He would say so, eventually, Gwayne was sure.
He couldn't measure the passage of time now that the candles had burned out. The curtains in the room were drawn, and it was only by the slightest slit of light at their hem that he could tell time was passing at all. He waited and ached. From behind his eyes to beyond the soles of his feet he waited, and he ached.
He'd ended each night he'd spent thus far in Tumbleton waiting. The only constant aside from weariness and grief.
The door creaked slowly open some unknowable time later. The voice that spoke was not of servant, nor Daeron. Rather it was the voice of the man he'd expected would have waited in his own chamber, immovable and too stubborn to come himself.
"You're still moping, I see," Ormund spoke into the darkness, breaking open that yawning blackness of the room with the warm glow of the light at his back. He looked much like some hallowed being, that same light glinting off the silver and metal he finished himself in- the baubles and all that chimed and clinked when he walked incase his presence could be missed otherwise.
Gwayne kept his eyes affixed away from him, throat trembling as he swallowed. There was a pull he could feel forming in his gut and it cut him open anew. The cut would not be so painful if he stood any chance at reaching into it and wrenching Ormund free. He knew the removal would kill him. He knew if he had not returned, he would have died.
A dagger in the gut would kill whether it was removed or not.
"You fool yourself into sorrow," Ormund continued, always glad enough to preach to an unwilling audience. The door shut at his back and the heavy slide of the bolt spoke to how their evening would end. That tugged at Gwayne once more, a compelling yearn that made him ill. "You mislike your guilt and you name it grief instead."
He was guilty and he wouldn't hide from the fact, but Criston had been a friend and a solace before he was a doomed man… though perhaps Criston had always been a doomed man.
That wouldn't change it, it would just make Gwayne foolish for anchoring himself to those same stones, feasting on the dead insects caught amongst the man's roots, hoping they would fuse and grow and survive. He'd been free out there. A man that served but a man that chose his own steps, killed his own supper and found his own flesh to warm himself against in the night. He had lain with a corpse and hoped to make it otherwise.
Criston would despise that Gwayne deemed himself a man that served others, but Gwayne had served him. He'd even been glad to, at times.
Ormund filled the doorway with his crushing presence a moment longer before he made a dry, bemused sort of huff and stepped closer. He smelled of incense and the smoke of whatever they'd had roasted for supper; Gwayne's tongue pooled with saliva and his stomach turned in on itself in hunger.
"You should be glad your folly did not see you dead, nor your cowardice. He would have had every right to strike you down for desertion should he have wished to pursue," Ormund walked in a slow and meandering manner, his hips not so much swinging but rocking with his steps. It made him look heavy and hard to move. It made one's thoughts stop to consider why.
Delirium had set in.
Ormund moved ever closer, until he could reach out and brush the tips of his fingers over Gwayne's bare shoulder: he'd bathed and undressed for bed when it had become clear he was unwanted before their guest. "I had not thought you'd grow so attached to a lowborn playing at nobility," his voice was softer because he'd made it so. Never had Gwayne met a man more put together than his cousin. Every breath, every swallow and every curl of his mouth around a word was thought over thrice before it left his lips. He was only ever loosed when he let his rage swallow him, before he could seal the lid back atop it.
There had been other instances, but they'd been long forgotten and muddied by time. Ormund wouldn't let such incidents come to pass these days.
Ormund shifted his weight onto one side, his fingertips still playing at Gwayne's bare skin and the hair that tickled at the tops of his shoulders. "It troubles me that you could have come to harm out there. That you sullied yourself with men you should lead from atop a horse and clean from familiarity troubles me worse."
"No such thing happened," Gwayne finally answered with a brittle sense of defeat, even as he felt Criston's hands against his chest and stomach. "Battle is not as you told me it was."
That would have had him struck once- when he was small enough to fall aside and clutch his face and tip just as easily into Ormund's chest when beckoned. He was both the strike and the lips that soothed the burn.
Instead, Ormund let his fingers curl, the blunted edge of his nails scraping soft over his skin. "Is it not? Your voice quivers when you so much as think of it all- how truly horrific it must have been."
Ormund thought him weak and fragile. He must think their path had been free of snares and their campaign softer than melted butter. Gwayne understood now what creased the faces of the older men as they stared upon the young blood at tourneys, swinging their swords as haphazardly as they swung their cocks and thirsty for battle that could be no cleaner.
"It matters not," Ormund sighed, tugging at a lock of Gwayne's hair as he retracted his wandering hand, "you understand why I did not send for you? You are in no state to be put before a man like that."
He feared Gwayne would have shown even a mite of the disgust he'd been so easily throwing in Ormund's face in front of Lord Velaryon. Gwayne's 'state' was one of unrest and tenuous obeisance. He had not yet fully fallen into his complete surrender, and Ormund disliked risk.
Gwayne remained sullen and quiet, his eyes drifted to Ormund's front where his other hand fiddled at the delicate chain his pomander hung from, as if he were teasing himself with seeking its comfort- necessary or not. "You made a grand showing, I'm certain."
"You have changed, I see it now," Ormund breezed past Gwayne's first interjection and sat himself down on the very edge of the mattress, perched so carefully it was almost laughable. Gwayne jostled and turned under the sheet to make room Ormund did not bother to claim. "You've become some… unknown beast of the wood. So very dangerous and unpredictable."
His hand was back again, skirting the harsh line of Gwayne's collarbone and brushing up his throat until he could tug at his bottom lip. "It's no way to behave. You've no need to bite the hand that feeds you… houses you," Ormund pulled in a long, serene breath, "makes love to you… when you've earned it."
It was not a spat unless it ended in bed. It was no argument unless it ended with Ormund's hands on him and a brewing apology in Gwayne's throat, whether he'd been at fault for starting it or not. It was instantaneous, how that threatening sharpness in Ormund's voice put his teeth on edge and made his skin crawl and writhe with that halfway feeling between fearful and feverish.
The lamb that sought to hide itself within the jaws of a wolf. So long as it were him and not the boy. Daeron had more sense than Gwayne had had at his age: it was one truly noble thing Gwayne had done to stand between them as he had.
Until he ran from it, a single beckoning call from his father and he'd left. As unceremonious and willing as Daeron had accused it of being.
"I preferred you as you were before," Ormund sighed, his detached and cold gaze raking over Gwayne's face as if his nose had shrunk or his lips had twisted: some ugly, changed feature that ruined him completely. "I can only hope you'll return to yourself. To Daeron and I, too."
"I'm fatigued," Gwayne whispered, the excuse familiar on his tongue. "I mourn my friend."
The pinch in Ormund's face stated plainly that Gwayne should have kept the afterthought as such. "So you say." The room was quiet enough that the beat of Gwayne's own heart declared itself the loudest sound in the room. "You honoured him with your… camaraderie. You lend yourself to those who would use you- our support."
"He did not want me," Gwayne blurted, feeling as the conversation slipped its way through his grasping fingers. "He did not want our men, either."
"That is a bleak picture you paint of your own perceived worth, then. Throwing yourself at the feet of a man who didn't want you."
He was not there, Gwayne reminded himself. He sat ahorse and strolled at a most leisurely pace towards his own glory.
"Father did not trust him- I sought to ensure our house would see the bounty of his crusade."
"So not only have you painted yourself a coward, but an ineffectual one, at that."
Ormund struck like a viper. You could snatch at him and hope to keep his fangs from your flesh at the first strike, but he twisted and writhed and caught you upon the second. He wrung Gwayne in his hands and caught him over and over.
"I would have brought him to you- his meagre compliment of men as well. He would not come," Gwayne's next attempt saw his voice shrunk. "I told him you would have a plan, one finer than dying up to our necks in mud and Rivermen. I wanted to come to you sooner."
The slight curl to Ormund's lip felt sweeter than a kiss for the space it freed in Gwayne's chest for his lungs to catch their first proper breath. He cupped Gwayne's cheek and hummed, mirth swimming behind his eyes as Gwayne stroked at his ego. "Your letters did express your willingness to return."
"He would not turn his gaze from his own bloodied glory. Dornish men are a… foolhardy breed."
Cole was Dornish in looks alone, but Ormund revelled in that sort of dismissal.
His cousin smoothed the backs of his knuckles down Gwayne's chest until he brushed the luxurious fabric of the sheet. "You've readied yourself for bed."
"I did not think you would send for me," he said, partially honest and partially hoping to be corrected.
Ormund's gaze seared into him, his cheeks creased in the slow spread of his smile. "You bite me and still yet hope to be pet. You've grown no less curious in your time away."
Ormund spoke of him as if he were some creature to be reared and trained, and it had chafed at him since he was young- when he was called 'pup' and 'boy' and 'stripling' by the men in his life, and always with no small amount of judgement and dismissal. "You know my anger and frustration is warranted. It should speak to my love for you that I'm willing to forgive so easily."
That word left him breathless as it always had. Ormund did not shy from it as others may, perhaps because he sincerely meant it, and had grown comfortable using it in all manners. Gwayne had never heard it often enough to be fussy over how Ormund wielded it.
"You have a right to anger as well, do you not?" Ormund asked him, fingers hooked into the sheet and pulling slowly down, unveiling Gwayne's pale chest inch by inch. His cousin's eye had grown bored of his face and now feasted upon the revealed flesh instead. "I have not found the time for us to have a moment to ourselves proper- scarce few days though it has been."
He spoke true enough: after that first burst of hurried coupling by the window, Ormund had busied himself whilst Gwayne sulked and played mother to Daeron. Ormund and Roxton had kept one another's company, and Gwayne would wonder the nature of their closeness if he wasn't so sure Ormund fancied the taste of blood and skin younger than Jon's.
It could very well be jealousy that kept him staunch in that declaration, but Gwayne figured he had little right to that.
"You keep yourself busy as ever," Gwayne rasped, his throat dry and his skin crawling with chills as Ormund released the sheet to pool at his hips. His hand was warm and broad when it smoothed up his stomach, rings a sharp coldness where the band brushed his skin. "I didn't wish to seek you out and risk disturbing you these past nights."
Ormund's fingertips skirted scars new and old, tickling over the soft pink bud of a nipple until it hardened under his touch. He hummed again and again, both in response and to himself. "You are right to have waited. Ser Jon would bristle at your presence at my elbow. He is much like your father in that he is private and unafraid to protect the fact."
His cousin stood at once, a mess of creaking leather and clattering chains of silver. Gwayne sat himself up, breath lodged in his throat as if there existed a world in which Ormund turned and left. His hand hovered above the mattress, a silent intention to grasp at Ormund and hold him. "We can make amends to one another. Would that please you, Gwayne?"
If only it did not. If only he could sever himself from this attachment he seemed doomed to return to. Criston had been the closest he'd gotten to it. For Gwayne had gone too long tucked into another's shadow, he feared he couldn't bear the heat of the sun himself.
He opened his mouth though the words would not free themselves from the tightening squeeze of his throat. There was a sharpness when he swallowed, honesty ripping him apart from within. His neck ached when he nodded, his teeth gritted together until his jaw ached, too. Ormund caught his chin in his grasp and bent slightly at the heaps to lean in and butt their foreheads together. "I'd like to hear it."
"I wish to make amends… it would please me to do so," Gwayne winced around each word, guilt and hatred swimming in his guts amongst that heaviness that kept his legs pressed together beneath the sheet. He had endured too much change and discomfort these past months, and his body knew no better comfort than Ormund's own.
One last time. On the morrow he would flee to Oldtown with his tail between his legs and cleave his preoccupation with Ormund in twain in a setting known to him. He could fuck pretty men and drink enough wine to make his days and nights melt together until the war ended. Ormund would buckle in the face of the Rivermen and cower beneath the collective might of Rhaenyra's dragons. He would not force Daeron to follow him into ruin.
"How much of you must I clean of his filth?" Ormund asked, mouth brushing Gwayne's as he spoke. "Did you put your mouth on him? Your hands? Must I cleanse you from head to toe?"
Gwayne shifted onto his knees as Ormund's grip tightened and pulled at him. "Does it matter beyond that I had him at all?"
"I could not forsake you a curious hand in the night," Ormund reasoned, though his tone was thin and suggested he wasn't speaking truthfully. "But your flesh is holy and sacred. Desecration must be known to be remedied."
When had Gwayne last fallen to his knees in prayer? When had he last found himself within a sept? When Ormund had been at his back, most like. He felt the eyes of the Seven too keenly in holy places- picking apart the frayed threads at his edges. He found knighthood and those vows rest more comfortably on his tongue. They had been solace in the bogs and woods that he could not have found knelt and in prayer.
They reminded him that he was not a beast.
He'd felt beastly of late.
Ormund had always seemed to know what drew the approval of the Seven- what earned their love as conditional as it was and as imperfect as men were. Their transgressions- though rejected by their faith- had made him feel closer to it.
It was much like how he'd felt towards his own father: a being beyond flesh and blood that held its love aloft for one to grasp at. He had never stopped lunging for it even as much as he hated to do so.
"We laid together," Gwayne stated as Ormund's hands came up about his face, dancing lightly over his brows and the fallen strands of hair that obscured his eyes and tickled at his lashes. Gwayne's eyes had caught on a loosened thread in the stitching of Ormund's tunic and though he knew it made him looked cowardly to not meet his cousin's eye, he found it the only way to bare the truth to him. He wished to be held and touched more than he wished to be left alone by now. "Not often in those final weeks, we were…" he drew a sigh that rattled through to the very marrow of his bones, "tired. He misliked being close to one another beyond it."
"Your honesty will earn you forgiveness for your straying," Ormund said softly to him. It was the very tone Gwayne imagined he'd take on when speaking with Daeron; it had always felt encompassing and warming when Gwayne was his age. As if Ormund were not priming himself to bring down the hammer in the next breath.
Ormund leaned in and pressed a kiss to the crown of Gwayne's head, arms falling against his shoulders and hands still clutched at his cheeks. Gwayne felt another of those exhaustive sighs build in his chest and release in a shiver, his own hands having raised to clutch at the fine dyed leather of Ormund's tunic. He buried his face against Ormund's chest and breathed him in, hoping to smother and render himself delirious with the herbal acridity of his cousin's scent.
Ormund bid him several long moments there, pressed into him and clinging to him as if he were afraid to be left alone. When at last he squeezed Gwayne's cheek and turned his face up, the younger man lunged like he'd been waiting for it. Their mouths met in a painful crash, perhaps more vessel to express their grievances than a true meeting of desire.
A kiss had once been the greatest of asks. More intimate than a hurried fuck or a hand laid in another, Ormund had twisted and glowered and squirmed before he finally allowed Gwayne that one concession that meant more than any whispered praise in the throes of lovemaking or the softest of touches upon his face.
'It's all I have asked of you,' Gwayne had pleaded, watching his cousin wrestle with some ornery pulse of resistance behind his eyes. There was a shame in it that Ormund hadn't been able to bear- a final concession that he could not hide behind his own base lusts if he treated Gwayne with such an intimacy. He'd fallen into it with no intent to resurface, biting Gwayne's lips bloody and cutting his tongue with his teeth.
He felt that passion now as Ormund tugged at him and angled his head every which way to taste the insides of his cheeks and the pad of his tongue. The pain tasted of home and Gwayne threw himself forth for more and more. He knew it like the ache in his muscles, and he found it as obscenely satisfying as pressing into a day's old bruise.
His body thrummed to life as Ormund leaned down into him, a hand shifting to hold him by the throat- just on the edge of too firm to be comfortable. "How could I be upset with you," Ormund hummed against Gwayne's lips, thumb digging firmly over the spot on Gwayne's throat where his pulse throbbed beneath the soft flesh, "when you've returned yourself to me as I hoped you would."
Hope had little to do with it and they both knew as such.
"I did not think you glad when you received me," Gwayne retorted, tugging at the thicker of Ormund's two belts, a knotted heap of leather and brass keeping them apart.
"I could not be seen to let cowardice go unaddressed in front of our boy. He has too much of his father's curdled character in him as it is." Gwayne felt his insides shrivel at the other's words, how they sliced up the centre of Daeron's belly and spread his innards to be scowled at and sorted through until the rot Ormund sought was found. Ormund had never been so calculating with Gwayne; perhaps it was the reason they'd ended up as they were. Perhaps there was a cruel mercy in it, but Gwayne could not hope to see it past all the blood and viscera. He had been too distracted by it to flush with heat as he usually did upon hearing 'our' used in place of 'the' when discussing Daeron.
Ormund's free hand joined his in a joint effort to loose the buckles in a feat that would be cumbersome and inefficient if they hadn't perfected it over so many years. Ormund kept himself layered tightly and buried in leather and wool and silks to keep his flesh hidden away from the grime of the outside world- it made for hurried couplings worse than a suit of plate.
The belts both fell to the bed, dropped by Gwayne's hand as they started on the buttons running from Ormund's navel to his throat. Hellish little things they were to undo, until Ormund finally released Gwayne's throat and let him at them uninhibited. His palms slid against Gwayne's cheeks and into his hair, his face once again at the crown of his head, his chest expanding as he breathed in lungfuls of Gwayne's clean scent.
"You do not smell any different, at the least," Ormund near purred, "Daeron reeks of that dragon, no matter how hard he is scrubbed of it."
"You will be sincerely glad for having that dragon soon enough," Gwayne muttered as his skin crawled with the tickle of Ormund's breath against his scalp and neck. He shoved Ormund's leather tunic apart as he undid the final button. The tunic was unlaced easy enough, as were his breeches. Upon having the ties apart, Gwayne yanked them down only far enough to tug his head free of his cousin's hold and lunge down at his filling cock.
Full as his mouth was with spit, he felt it drip down over his lips as they parted to take Ormund's cock between them. He smelled strongest of himself here, earthy and human with dried sweat that Gwayne made himself dizzy with as he suckled at Ormund's leaking tip, peeling the soft skin of his cock back and moaning as he stuffed the length of it against the back of his throat.
He was eager and lacked performance, for the performance was in how badly he'd come to miss his cousin's taste. His time away had not been without intimacy, and yet he greeted Ormund's prick as if he'd come off the back of a years' long abstinence. He could recall how it felt slammed up amongst his guts, how it felt when he tensed himself around it and made Ormund curl in on himself with pleasure. He hoped Ormund could fuck away the fog of grief that threatened to burst him at his seams; he hoped Ormund could trick him into forgetting.
With something in his mouth and begging so sincerely for his attentions, he accepted the moment of quiet it brought to mind, his breath loud and rhythmic in his ears, the hand in his hair repetitive and even in its strokes. He could taste the salt of Ormund's appreciation at the back of his throat and he moaned, taking him near to the root though he was out of practice and clumsy.
"Take care not to choke on it…" Ormund's breath caught with an audible gasp as Gwayne's teeth threateningly grazed a throbbing vein along the top of his shaft, "you know I dislike when you do that."
Whether he meant teeth or Gwayne choking himself was irrelevant: Gwayne knew he had little and less love for both. It made Ormund's skin crawl to hear the wet, punched out noises of a throat spasming around a cock, no matter how blissful it felt to be the one being choked upon.
Gwayne let a hum rise in his throat until he felt Ormund jerk against him, a shuddering groan to follow. His grasp in Gwayne's hair tightened until he could wrap a hand around his base and pull himself free. Spit and slickness coaxed from Ormund's tip drooled down his chin as they were separated, Gwayne watching it strain with its weight, wishing to stand proud and upright as his cousin stepped away and began to shed all the layers the younger man had so hastily shoved aside.
Ormund undressed himself with the indulgent slowness of rolling the tension from one's shoulders, until he at last kicked the final piece aside and approached Gwayne.
He fell back against his elbows as Ormund put a knee into the mattress, sliding his hands to the backs of Gwayne's knees to tug him close again. His own arousal became evident with the movement as the sheet fell aside and bared him. There was heat in his skin where Ormund's gaze scorched at it, taking in his pale skin and the ruddy trail of hair from his navel to his cock.
At times, the bare look of Ormund's hunger frightened Gwayne worse than the stormiest of his foul moods.
Perhaps it was the natural culmination of habitual withholding beyond said anger- finally unable to be contained or masked or obfuscated with his facades and ploys and bursting free all at once.
Or perhaps he truly had missed Gwayne. There existed no way of knowing for certain, and he was sure whatever Ormund would claim would be some illusion of the truth.
But there was no hiding that he wanted- that his mouth watered and his blood flushed and boiled in his veins as he found Gwayne beneath him, easing his legs apart and outwards to make space for himself. What was most damning was that neither spoke, their mouths sealed shut and their eyes roaming. It felt like a true reunion then: a husband and wife together after war forced them apart, a lock returning to its key.
Gwayne let him look, growing warm with the heat in Ormund's attention, glad to take that maddening fuzziness beneath his skin in place of the hollowness he'd been battling with since he pulled himself from the Riverlands. Ormund could make him feel so very small: could flip him onto his stomach and mount him as if it were an obligation to his own physical needs; he could handle him as if Gwayne were a paid whore with a willingness to be struck if he topped his price with a gold dragon.
But beyond the initial frenzy and rush of their frustration breaking over one another, Ormund touched him as one would a lover. He supposed they were lovers, there was little use in denying that. If decency didn't demand they exercise discretion they'd have shared chambers back in Oldtown.
Ormund pawed at his stomach and his thighs before he fell over top of him, taking his face back in hand and laying claim to his mouth. His weight was instantly familiar and comforting, anchoring Gwayne to the mattress and covering him with the smell of home- or all that he cared most for at home. His cock lay squished between his stomach and Ormund's, leaking over their skin and dribbling each time he felt the blunt tip of Ormund's own jab him in the thigh or hip.
"Not biting anymore, I see," Ormund murmured, his tone distinctly lacking in mirth. Threatening or not, it made Gwayne's stomach flip. His cousin shifted his weight between his knees and stuck a hand down between them, fumbling until Gwayne felt him guide his cock between his legs. Without the aid of oil, their flesh proved too dry for much beyond a touch, but to feel it so near to where it belonged made Gwayne's head light with anticipation. "Did you put your teeth into your simple, lowborn bed partner?"
Their mouths disconnected with a wet smack as Gwayne dropped his head against the mattress, their eyes meeting in two resolute glares. "That you keep electing to act as if his name eludes you only serves to make you sound pettish."
Ormund regarded him for a moment, eyelashes fluttering whilst he decided whether to continue to be as Gwayne had said, or to let himself uncoil just the barest amount. A muscle in his cheek pinched and he groaned around a chuckle, pressing his cock against the space behind Gwayne's sac, "I should have you renounce him and declare your fealty to me once more."
He would take teasing and petty demands over a sincere and vicious argument, but his patience hadn't been the best for a great many weeks, and he wished not to be goaded into such a mutual humiliation even for a cock such as Ormund's. With lips pressed into a fine line, he cleared his throat and shoved his palms against the mattress, sliding himself out from under Ormund to back himself against the headboard and the cushions once more.
Without looking to his cousin he leaned over and grasped for the drawer on his bedside table, reaching in for one of few necessities he'd bothered to unpack since he'd arrived. Oil was an unfamiliar luxury, having been relying on the versatility of the tallow they kept for polishing arms and armour. He would like to reacquaint himself with the opulence of it if Ormund could keep himself from picking at Gwayne's still-bleeding wounds.
The pot was placed on the table and Gwayne folded his arms against his chest, watching Ormund's face pinch and his jaw twitch with each purposeful clench of his teeth. There existed a fine line between playful teasing and snapping with the intent to wound when it came to Ormund, and whilst Gwayne figured he'd tend towards leniency now with the older man's hopes to couple, he knew the line he walked was a tenuous one.
Ormund leaned forward and hesitated, trying to pick Gwayne apart with his eyes. Within his chest, Gwayne felt his heart stir and shiver, pattering against his ribs and thrumming at the bottom of his throat. He was nervous, and he knew it would show plainly enough on his face.
He wished he could ignore Ormund's taunts- he wished he'd learned how.
Ormund lowered himself onto his belly and grasped at Gwayne's ankle, lifting it enough to drop it atop of a shoulder. His eyes were sharp and yet his lips soft when he dusted a kiss to the inside of Gwayne's knee, inching slowly back up between his legs.
"I remember when you were young… hot-blooded," he started, voice scarcely above a whisper as he pushed aside Gwayne's other leg and dipped his head down to kiss along his thigh, leaving wet tracks against the skin. Gwayne swallowed the sounds that threatened to rise in his throat as his stomach tied itself in knots and his resolve frayed as only Ormund could make it. "I allowed you all of those flights of fancy you couldn't seem to ignore. Jousts, tourneys, feasts. The hour would grow late and you would vanish beyond my grasp with some handsome young thing you'd hounded for hours."
The story was spoken as if Gwayne had sought affection for the novelty of it. He knew better: Ormund had not treated him well. He'd teased and hinted and perfected the art of working Gwayne to a lather, only to slip from his hands at the very last moment. The final soft exhale before a kiss, the hand that drifted and yet halted before it could touch where it was most wanted. He could remember plain as day how Ormund's lips had stretched across his teeth as he withheld his praise.
He hadn't ever known why Ormund chose to consecrate their relations when he did- he'd figured it some battle of will and morals that Ormund had surrendered to. Ormund's other arm wrapped about Gwayne's thigh, now holding both apart. Gwayne sunk against the bed, breaths shallow in his lungs and heart pounding as his blood flushed his skin and pooled between his legs anew.
"I allowed it because I knew you would compare," Ormund's kisses burned as they neared the joint of his hip, Gwayne's cock twitching and leaking and begging so prettily without the need to say a word. He knew Ormund would not take him into his mouth- he misliked that, for whatever of his little reasons. "At every moment you would compare them to me and find them lacking."
"We hadn't laid together yet," Gwayne excused with a put-on chuckle, "what could there have been to compare?"
Ormund's brows raised and lowered as if conceding a point, though he'd only gained ground since he started talking. He inched up closer and kissed around the ruddy hair about Gwayne's cock. The avoidance made him catch a whimper on the back of his teeth, his hands forced to remain atop the mattress rather than on Ormund, for he knew if he touched him he wouldn't be able to stop himself.
"You would have given it a whole lot of thought. I saw it in your eyes. So much of you was ruled by your cock, the confusion it brought to you for wanting what it did," Ormund's tone was rasping and careful as he kissed up Gwayne's stomach, chest squeezed between Gwayne's thighs and legs draped near fully down his well-muscled back.
He released Gwayne's thighs and pressed his palms into the bed, rising up to meet Gwayne once again, the tips of their noses so nearly brushing. "The best deterrent for your straying was to let you disappoint yourself," he said against Gwayne's mouth, breath sharp and sweet-smelling like mint leaves. "I wonder now when you will stop fucking running from me: from our family we've built, and the holy purpose we serve to bring our boy to greatness."
Ormund had slotted himself once again between Gwayne's legs, now leisurely, teasingly rolling himself into the younger man. The threat in his voice only made Gwayne's blood sing as he scrabbled to find an answer, an apology- anything.
"Ormund, cousin," Gwayne murmured, now fully laid out once again. He reached up and clasped his hand against the nape of Ormund's neck, straining to pull him down that final bit to bring their lips together. Ormund resisted, humming and tutting even as he ground himself down against Gwayne, jostling their cocks together and smearing wetness between their stomachs.
"Are you done?" Ormund asked him as Gwayne tugged again at his neck, his own now craned up to try and capture Ormund's mouth. "Have you yet been convinced? Will you allow me to take care of you?"
"You're a prick," Gwayne hissed, a scowl on his lips even as Ormund slowly lowered himself and joined their lips. Gwayne's knees dug sharp and mean into the other's hips as they rocked together, the friction pitiful and just barely enough to keep him hungry.
"And you disappointed yourself once again."
He didn't have the wherewithal to argue any further, his head cottony and hazy with Ormund's proximity. There was little doubt that once his blood cooled and he laid curled into Ormund's chest in the quiet that his regrets and miseries would come and haunt him once again, but for now he knew of one thing he wanted: one thing he'd been quietly missing for months.
"I won't beg for it," Gwayne murmured against the softness of Ormund's mouth, tongues flickering in a curt, polite greeting amongst the slant of their mouths. He chased that minty sweetness in Ormund's spit, moaning as Ormund's hips bucked and grinded.
"I could make you if I wished to."
He could. That was undisputed.
Ormund reached for the oil and pressed two fingers between Gwayne's cheeks, sliding them into his hole with a familiarity that made Gwayne's breath leave him in a rush. His body knew what angles to take- how wide to keep apart his knees and how to measure his breaths to coax that anticipatory tense from his tendons. He rejoiced in knowing what was needed of him, and for it not to be some great, galling thing.
He did not need to claw his way from the mud, he did not need to untangle Daeron from a war he had no part in, he did not need to consider how he may keep his house from ruin.
All he needed was to let Ormund in; all he needed was to allow his cousin to take care of him- the way Ormund had taught Gwayne he should be taken care of. Every want and every little thing Gwayne enjoyed had begun and would very likely end with Ormund. There was a dire simplicity in that.
"I haven't so much as made love to my palm in your absence," Ormund admitted in a hushed tone, with all the barely contained mania Gwayne would expect from him. It must have been a giddying test of self, to remain celibate and unmoved for so long. "It was an underwhelming conclusion to have brought myself off against your rear. I should have saved myself just a moment longer, for this…"
"You're mad," Gwayne grit his teeth against the breadth of Ormund's fingers plunging into him, stretching and willing him open. Ormund's mouth remained plastered to his, tasting each curl of pleasure he could pull from the younger man. Ormund crowded him often when they laid together: hands clasped together, breath hot and shared, legs tangled in all manners. It was a stark change to how carefully he kept himself gathered when they were before others, it made Gwayne cold when they were apart.
He'd tried to fend off that cold, Criston had so nearly done it- may have done it were he not promised to the dirt and were Gwayne not such a beaten dog of a man who knew only how to return to its master when strangers' palms emptied.
Ormund would wait for him and that made it all the worse.
The working of his cousin's fingers was brief and thorough. Gwayne shuddered when he was suddenly without them, and Ormund rose up onto his knees to order his body how he wished. That was Ormund's favourite part, Gwayne thought: to spread him out and twist him up and watch his efforts pay off in cries and whimpers. Ormund stretched out one of his legs and laid it against his shoulder as he guided his cock against Gwayne's arse, sinking down low to talk once again against his lips.
"You look your most beautiful like this: waiting for me to join us."
He choked on a sigh, then a gasp as Ormund breached him, the smooth slide of his hips burying him deep within the man under him. He kept their faces pressed close, feeling every stutter of breath he wrung from Gwayne's throat. Ormund's sounds of pleasure were gritty and low and then feverish as he tested himself not to slam himself in to the root, the arm he'd wrapped around Gwayne's thigh squeezing his pale flesh as both anchor and leverage to keep him steady.
Gwayne's muscles burned as they were bent, but he had been stretched out in far more exhaustive positions. For a time, it had felt as if Ormund could ease him open just that bit further upon every coupling- as if his muscles were willing to bend more and more to please. A handy trick, if only ever useful when his cousin was atop him.
Once he was fully seated, Gwayne watched Ormund's flushed skin begin to bead with perspiration, his eyes lidded and mouth ajar with the heavy draw of his breaths. He'd raised himself from Gwayne enough that they could both breathe a moment and relax into one another. A great calm settled over Gwayne that he had forgotten the feeling of- that stuffed full, liberating sort of helplessness. Ormund was all that existed around him, Ormund was all that needed to exist around him.
His cousin was rather beautiful like this, too.
He glowed with a levity that Gwayne scarcely saw in him, he touched him firmly but kindly. It reminded Gwayne that there lay a man beneath all that veneer and fabrication and performance. One that wanted and yearned and enjoyed the moments where they lay together after, reeking of sex and perfume long sluiced off with sweat.
The rhythm was slow and deep once Ormund allowed it to form, rocking himself back nearly to his tip before he rolled inwards to his base, curling his hips carefully to drag against Gwayne's insides and fill him until it pressed a groan free from the bottom of his chest. He planted a hand by his cousin's head and Gwayne grasped at his wrist, digging his thumb in beside the tendons and veins that thumped with Ormund's pulse.
"I dreamed of that sound," Ormund chuckled, hair growing increasingly stuck to his brow with the sweat he'd begun to shine with. "I hoped you dreamed of me, so that our souls may meet where we all go in sleep."
"Ormund," Gwayne whined, daring to look down between them, where he watched the breadth of his cousin's cock disappear into him, shining with oil.
"Did he keep you up in the night? snorting and choking on his own breath? Or did you find rest evasive besides in those grubby, paltry tents?"
The pace had quickened with the burst of Ormund's jealousy, a dull thud cracking through the air as his hips smacked into Gwayne. He leaned forward and brought Gwayne's leg with him, groaning as he lost himself to that hastening for a moment. As easily has his control slipped, he grasped it again. "You'll forget all of it soon, I'll make sure of it."
"It'll be what I remember that'll keep us all safe. Stop ruining our union with your chatter."
A wicked sort of grin dawned on Ormund's face, threatening as the glint of a dagger in the light of the moon. "To think it was you that called me pettish."
Indignity twisted in Gwayne's belly, though that was remedied quickly when Ormund's cock slammed up against it. Gwayne's head fell back against the mattress, his eyes fluttering shut as Ormund rode that thrust, following it with more and more until the bed knocked heavy and damning into the wall. The older man cursed and tugged Gwayne further towards him, bundling him up beneath him. Gwayne felt as the small of his back lifted from the mattress, then was shoved back down against it with each jerk of Ormund's hips.
Sounds of pleasure left him freely now as Ormund's cock and the arrangement of their bodies sent shocks up his spine and through his innards with each fall of his cousin's against him. He felt too big for his flesh and only growing more so as he was taken as if it were their last chance to do so: hurried and needy and brutal in its relentlessness.
When he forced his eyes open, he saw Ormund had lost himself to the roll and grind and slam of their coupling. His face had turned simultaneously crazed and dumb as he buried his cock greedily and heavily into Gwayne's body. He couldn't get enough; he couldn't sate himself. He tugged Gwayne against him as he thrust out with his hips, bent over and clutching Gwayne's leg as if it remained the only thing tethering him to reality.
He felt raw and tender like a bruise and Ormund pressed him over and over, brow twisted and lips red from the worry of his teeth as he chased his release with a single-minded commitment. Ormund was stripped down to his centre now, unbothered by the wetness of their skin or the thickening smell of sweat and sex within the room. He let his pleasure be heard in his rushed breaths and low, keening groans, Gwayne's name never far from his lips but stammered over as if speaking it was too much.
It was only thanks to Gwayne's own limberness that he did not cry out in pain when Ormund finally fell against him, folding Gwayne's leg fully to his chest as he rutted down into him. His breaths became short and desperate, Ormund's own hot and wet against his cheek until the older man stuffed his face into his throat and began to breath him in with the same reverential desperation that he'd bring his pomander to his nose with.
They were quiet again, beneath the wet meeting of flesh, the forceful sounds of effort and pleasure, and the thin whimper of a plea for more and its reply in the rasp of a shudder as the need was met. They could be the most honest with one another when neither said a word. When they were both much younger it was in the crash of knuckles into ribs and cobbles rushing up to meet elbows, then the studious quiet of a moment stretched out between two young men that wished not to be the one that reached out first.
They had this quiet now, squeezed together tighter than what allowed for a full breath, each hoping the other caught the silent admittance in such shared pleasure. That it was missed, that it was wanted and needed.
He'd missed Ormund so dearly he thought it might split him open and spill his guts across the sheets. He wished he could feel that yearning without wanting it to do so- without wanting himself punished for it.
His release hit him with a surge that brought his back near fully off the mattress, hitting him all at once with a suddenness that caught him unawares. He could feel in the ache within his ears that the wanton moan he couldn't hope to stifle was too loud, ringing like a chime as his cock spurted hot and wet where it had been getting squeezed and rolled between his thigh and both he and Ormund's stomachs. It should not have been enough to work him to completion and yet there he lay, spasming on the end of his cousin's cock, feeling as the squeeze of his body in its release made Ormund squirm and jerk and curse as he followed Gwayne off the edge.
The hot flood of Ormund's seed over his insides could have been enough to stir his prick anew were he in better condition. He thought there would have to be a bruise across his thigh from Ormund's arm as he squeezed it tight to his chest and rutted short and quick against him to ride his release. He only released it to trap Gwayne's head between his arms and bring their mouths together in a messy smear of a kiss.
Even as he felt Ormund's body loosen, he continued to grind his hips in those slow, deep circles where he remained seated within the younger man. He was impossibly heavy on top of Gwayne's chest, a shudder already half-lodged beneath his skin at the thought of how they would peel apart from one another when it came time to do so. He could feel a wetness where Ormund had fucked his own seed out of Gwayne and where it now dripped down onto the mattress and sheets.
Ormund had turned well and truly soft by the time he reached down between them and pulled himself free, releasing Gwayne's leg in the process. He did not immediately jump to his feet and set to scrubbing himself clean, but gathered Gwayne to him once more, parting his lips to lay them softly over the other's.
Ormund's eyelashes looked long and pretty in this soft, moonlit light. His curls were thoroughly wetted down and stuck in awkward little clumps, an ornery rosiness still spread unevenly over his cheeks. Do not mention him, Gwayne thought with no small amount of sincere desperation. Do not mention him and ruin it all.
"You look better now," Ormund whispered instead, a lazy curl to his lip. Gwayne had forgotten how disarming he was like this. Sweet as honey on the tongue and lacking the usual lingering fear that it would be ruined by some sudden, explosive outburst. "Tired. But better."
It was a leading sort of question that for once Gwayne was glad enough to answer, albeit with a momentary hesitation. "Mh, I feel better."
Ormund's eyes became very round and soft at their edges, the lines of his face flattening until he appeared as a vision of the boy he once was. Before they made it all a mess. "I hope we may do it again."
Initially, he thought Ormund meant that he hoped they would find their energies and enjoy one another once more before the light rose. He caught an incredulous chuckle behind his teeth as he realised that Ormund meant instead that he hoped they would both live to see another evening with one another.
A heavy enough matter without the knowledge that the woods beyond Tumbleton lay packed with wolves.
"I am sure we will," Gwayne forced from a suddenly dry throat. He tousled the curls along Ormund's brow with his fingertips, hoping to draw them from the yawning void of considering their own peril. It would only make him miss home and foolish, youthful courage.
They made way with their usual routine of cleaning themselves once feeling had returned to their limbs, Ormund rubbing at his flesh with a hasty roughness, bringing redness to its surface with the force of his actions. He wiped away sweat and spend with as much thoroughness as one could muster without the use of a bath.
Ormund stood at the basin a long while, the bare length of his body pale and tense like the arch of a drawn bow. Gwayne lay half under the covers, eyelids heavy as he watched his cousin stand still enough that he'd blend into the furniture were he not so magnificent. Perhaps he had fallen asleep standing up, Gwayne thought before Ormund finally shifted, each muscle from his shoulders to his calves shifting beneath his skin.
There was an expectation borne from habit that he would redress and leave to his own chambers. Ormund was insistent upon that: had always said they could not let themselves slip into laziness or overindulgence, no matter how badly Gwayne had wished he'd stay.
When Ormund approached in withdrawn silence and slipped onto the opposite side of the mattress, Gwayne kept his surprise to himself. As an arm slung itself low on his stomach and Ormund's face fitted itself against the back of his head he feigned exhausted indifference. Anything to avoid snapping Ormund out of this tenuous, stolen moment.
"It would please me to not need to chase you any longer," Ormund whispered into his hair and sealed with a kiss. "It would please me if you wished to stay."
Gwayne knew he could not lie well enough to trick him, nor could he speak honestly and not risk Ormund hating his answer, so instead he let his eyes shut.
It was early when he woke. Early enough that the town hadn't yet worked itself into the quiet hum of the day. Ormund was a warm weight beside him, his arm across Gwayne's chest and his face softer than Gwayne could ever remember seeing it. It felt too private and vulnerable of a moment for Gwayne to look upon, his cousin's eyes shifting beneath their lids as if he were dreaming.
He didn't dare stop to ponder what a man like Ormund Hightower dreamed of, nor what the odds were that he featured in such dreams.
Fondness settled as an accursed and regrettable weight in his chest as he watched Ormund. To be fond was a dangerous thing: obsession and fixation took hold like a fever, quick and ferocious. Fondness was insidious and careful and so often overlooked until that single damning moment of realisation.
He was glad that Ormund decided then to stir, breaking Gwayne free of the thought.
Without so much as opening his eyes, his cousin curled closer into him, face quickly pressed against the crook of Gwayne's neck, an equally slow and lazy breath drawing in and Gwayne's scent with it. He took such an act from him as a compliment.
"I see you haven't turned to a fine mist and drifted out of the window in the night," Ormund murmured, voice rough with sleep and sensual in its heaviness. His leg hooked over Gwayne's beneath the sheets and the bridge of his nose brushed against the hinge of Gwayne's jaw, another indulgent purr rumbling in the base of Ormund's throat, "I'm glad for it."
His throat proved too tight to answer Ormund as the older man shifted and finally blinked open his eyes, his eyelashes long and golden under the warm glow of the sun. He watched the soft morning's light fall upon Ormund's face, a tender, private smile curling the edges of his mouth. Gwayne struggled to meet it, nausea rising in his throat.
The feeling of looking upon something he shouldn't returned to him. Ormund was very nearly unrecognisable when he was free of the guise of control or reservation or deceit. He heard the longing in the sigh wrung from his lungs and Ormund shifted again, this time to bring a hand to Gwayne's chin and tip his face towards Ormund's.
Their lips met gently, very likely too much so. He conceded to it and to those insidious, sentimental stirrings in his chest. The wolves would soon be at their door, take it.
He turned into Ormund and let his lips part, guiding the older man onto his back with ease. The town had grown noisier beyond their chamber, and thus the time in this ambiguous peace grew nearer to its end. "You speak as if we've shared enough nights to have developed a penchant for fleeing before sunrise."
Ormund's hand grasped at the back of one of Gwayne's thighs, kneading the soft flesh, "mm, you tend to care not of time, nor circumstance when you slip your leash."
What could have been a cutting remark had turned playful with the half-asleep sort of innocence Ormund wore, his curls flattened against his head and his skin impossibly warm where Gwayne tried to spread himself over it. He enjoyed this man before him, would mourn him as Ormund dressed and buried himself beneath armour both physical and not.
"Not this time, nor this day."
He said it as if he very nearly meant it and Ormund looked upon him as if he wished to believe him.