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They have bathed him. They have anointed him with scented oils—a clag of roses like vomit in the back of his throat—and adorned him with gold and pearls. They have placed him atop silk sheets in a chamber so high up all he can see through the narrow slit windows are slivers of grey-white cloud, and they have left him to wait.
He thinks about how he got here. His memory is in fragments; it all happened so terribly fast. He was riding toward Doldrey, all but triumphant, the Hawks already raising his banner from the battlements. When he saw Gennon approaching, the old man’s stooped figure mounted on his war-horse ridiculous as a gargoyle in a crown, he felt a flicker of something that was almost pity. He knew it would not stay his hand, but allowed himself to feel it nonetheless, already secure in his victory.
Perhaps he was practising magnanimity. A king needs a measure of it, after all.
That was his mistake. The old bastard’s personal guard closed in around him as though out of nowhere. He kicked his horse into a canter, but knew it was too late. He was already surrounded.
There was a dull blow to the back of his head.
Then, nothing.
Now, gold and pearls.
He's alone in the room. He knows, with a sinking feeling, what comes next.
Sure enough, when the door next opens, it is Gennon who enters. His eyes gleam victorious, like chips of obsidian amid their nest of wrinkles, and there’s a blob of spittle on his lower lip. Griffith has to suppress his shudder of disgust. He has to remember how to act this charade.
The false smile comes too easily for his liking. His body remembers how to get through this: how to simper and bat its eyelashes and make the right sounds at the right moments. How to please. The memory is never too far from the surface. His limbs feel heavy and slow, as though he’s been drugged, but he props himself up on his elbows as best he can.
The sheets are slippery underneath him and his head swims with the movement. He isn't sure how long he was unconscious. His sense of time is askew, and it makes everything feel faintly unreal, as though the world he’s in right now is running on dream-time and not the hours and minutes of real life.
More importantly, he has no idea whether the Hawks will yet have figured out what’s happened to him, or whether anyone is coming.
The thought makes his stomach lurch. The thought of needing rescue at all is faintly distasteful. Rescue from this...
No. His mind rebels at the thought. Better to make his own way out—cast around for something he can use as a weapon and strike when he finds an opening. Gennon only had a handful of soldiers with him. There can't be too many stationed here, wherever 'here' is. He needs to figure that out first. Then he can plan his escape.
The old man’s oily smirk derails his train of thought. “The White Hawk,” Gennon says, as though he is telling a fine joke. “Flown home at last.”
Griffith looks up into Gennon's face, making his eyes as wide and guileless as he knows how. The old, placatory patterns come quickly back to mind—though whether they will still work is another matter. Perhaps the old bastard has grown bitterer in the intervening years, less credulous, more fixated.
“You know it wasn’t personal,” he lies. “The King gives orders and we follow them. That’s all.”
Gennon sinks onto the bed and shuffles closer. Griffith watches his expression carefully, not certain whether the proffered excuse will placate or provoke.
Gennon cocks his head, the delicate listening gesture grotesque on him. “Of course not,” he coos, at last. “My poor little bird.” Then his smile turns sly. “But I wonder… did you take the job so you could see me again? To make sure I hadn’t forgotten you?”
Ah. So this is what he wants: to have his ego stroked. It’s so pathetic Griffith feels, once again, a dash of pity mixed in with his revulsion.
With an effort he hopes doesn’t show on his face, Griffith pushes both feelings down. He slides closer to the old man, and the slender gold chains that have been looped around his head like a parody of a crown tinkle gently against his forehead. There is a great teardrop-shaped pearl that sits there in the centre, almost between his eyes. The get-up reminds him of a painting he once saw of an odalisque in some sultan’s harem, sloe-eyed in silks and gemstones. He remembers wondering if the poor girl knew her jewels were mockeries; thinking, for the first time in years, about his mother.
He makes a show of hesitancy before laying his hand on Gennon’s thigh. “I was afraid you might have,” he says, and looks up through his eyelashes. “But you wouldn’t, would you? I know that now. You always saw me, even when nobody else did. You're smart enough to see potential where others can't.”
The flattery does its job. Caresses follow. They are odious, leaving behind what feels like a greasy film on his skin, but he can tolerate them. He has before.
The old man’s wrinkled member has to be coaxed upright. He remembers this part from their past encounters, too. Remembers one of the thin-faced children Gennon kept as pets (each of them a warped mirror image of himself, sans dreams and purpose) saying that he rewarded them with a sweetmeat for the one who could ‘wake him up’.
As Griffith pumps his flaccid shaft, he distracts himself with fantasies of revenge. Of Gennon’s smirking head impaled on the battlements of his toppled fortress, eyes plucked out by ravens.
No: by hawks.
Later, loose skin and bitter salt on his tongue. He’s not sure whether to be grateful that Gennon clearly bathed in anticipation of this, or unsettled by the parody of consideration. His head bobs between the old man’s chicken-leg thighs and he thinks of the clean, sure slice of his rapier, of entrails spilling from a slit belly, of a sharp knife popping testicles from the sack, white and wet as raw scallops.
The images are soothing. They help keep him from retching.
Occasionally he remembers to moan as though in pleasure. An absurd performance, but one Gennon apparently chooses to believe.
There’s noise from somewhere downstairs. A clatter, muffled shouts. Griffith goes still, listening, but Gennon either can’t or won’t hear. He winds his hands into Griffith’s hair, the chains catching and pulling, and holds him in place.
Griffith breathes through his nose. Braces himself not to gag.
Then: sound and movement, so quick and sudden he barely has time to take it in. The door slams open. A shout, incoherent and animal with rage. Footsteps cross the room toward them. A dull, wet thunk.
Gennon’s body stiffens, but not in the throes of pleasure. He slumps abruptly forward, so that Griffith has to scramble aside to avoid being squashed. Something hits the floor behind him with a thud, and when he pulls back, he sees that the old man has no head. Blood flows over the lip of his severed neck like wax from a candle.
Guts is standing over them both.
He’s spattered in blood from head to toe, the spikes of his hair standing up stiff with it, the tip of his sword leaving a crimson puddle where he’s let it come to rest against the floor. He's breathing hard, mouth slack with shock. And he is staring at Griffith.
Griffith pictures himself as he must look, from where Guts stands—sprawled on silk sheets, dripping gold like a king’s whore, face shining with sweat and spittle—and realises, with a sinking feeling, that he recognises that stare. That wild confusion. It is born from the place where desire meets disgust, and he has seen it on the faces of so many men who are outraged at their own desires and blame him for making them want him.
Dealing with them is usually simple. Humiliate or destroy. Make them feel how dangerous he is and shy from the blade’s edge.
But he does not know what to do with that look when it is on Guts’ face. He can only gaze back, speechless with fury and longing.
Guts finally shakes off that awful stillness. “Casca got your sword,” he says, voice a touch gruffer than usual. He looks as though he is about to proffer his hand and thinks better of it. “C’mon, let’s get outta here.”
Griffith wobbles to his feet under his own power. White silk swishes about his hips like a bride’s train. “My armour first,” he says.
“Oh. Yeah.” Guts ducks his head, angles his body away. There’s a hint of a blush high on his cheeks. He steps out into the corridor, hollering for someone to move their ass and bring Griffith’s armour here. Griffith suspects he is relieved to leave the room.
He dresses, armours himself. Replaces his missing pieces. Plucks the gold chains from his head and body as though they're cobwebs that have tangled round him.
For reasons he cannot quite name, even to himself, he does not throw them away.
###
Back at Doldrey, the Hawks clap him on the back, raise their drinks to him and congratulate him on his victory. None of the rescue party comment on what happened, if indeed they know. He can’t imagine Guts letting slip what he saw, but rumours about Gennon’s proclivities abound. Beside that, there are the small boys rescued from the cells in Doldrey, each one of them with pale hair and a heart-shaped face and eyes full of fear.
The conclusions cannot be that hard to draw. Still, nobody says anything.
Guts makes himself scarce. At the Hawks’ informal victory celebration, he slips away to bed down in some hidden corner before Griffith can extricate himself from the throng of tipsy revellers. On the ride back to Wyndham, he is always somehow about to go and do something important—scout ahead, or give orders to Gaston, or go gather firewood. Griffith could order him to stay behind, but never quite manages to think of a plausible reason in time. The wave of emotion that comes over him each time he tries dulls his wits, gums up the inner workings of his reason.
Or, perhaps, he doesn’t want to know what he’ll see if he forces Guts to look him in the face.
They parade through Wyndham on their return. Princess Charlotte gazes at him with stars in her eyes. Girls in the crowd throw roses.
Guts is there with the rest of them, at the centre of it all, smiling and a little stunned. He looks relaxed, confident in public in a way he rarely allows himself to be. But still, when the fuss is over and Griffith finally has no more nobles pressing his hand and offering insincere congratulations, Guts is nowhere to be seen.
This, he decides, cannot continue.
He will find Guts. He will look that disgust and desire in the eye—and ensure Guts does so, too. He will retake the control Gennon stole from him. Perhaps things will not be as they were, but at least they will be different in a way Griffith has dictated.
So, late at night when the castle is quiet, he returns to his chambers. He sheds his fine clothing, and shoes with their gleaming silver buckles. He leaves his rapier atop the bedclothes and pulls his hair loose.
The gold chains and pearls, he has stashed away in the bottom drawer of his armoire. Now, he pulls them out, untangles the slender, gleaming strands, and drapes himself in them. The great teardrop of a pearl settles between his eyes and he runs his fingers over it, the surface flawlessly smooth and still somehow warm, as though newly plucked from a lady’s neck.
His cloak hangs by the door. He swathes himself in it, covering himself completely, so that any passer-by would have to stare hard at a bare ankle in the castle gloom to know he is naked underneath. He gathers all his determination and sets out.
Guts has adopted as his own a room in the barracks, near the rest of the Hawks. A private one, befitting both his status as a captain and his solitary nature, for which Griffith is grateful. Guts doesn’t always sleep there, preferring to bed down under the stars on warmer nights, but tonight Griffith sees the faint glow of a candle creeping through the gap beneath the door.
It’s locked, of course. Griffith learned to pick locks almost as soon as he learned to walk, and the technique comes back to him easily now, though he hasn’t needed to use it in years. A quiet click and the door opens silently, and there is Guts. He's on his back, snoring, the blanket bunched around his waist leaving his powerful arms and shoulders bare and golden in the dim light.
Griffith swallows hard. Old desire wars inside him with something newer and grimmer. He breathes in deeply, out through his nose, and sheds his cloak, letting the white fur drop to the floor like a snowdrift.
Guts rarely gets drunk—something to do with being ready to strike at any time, Griffith assumes—but tonight he’s heavily asleep, his sword beside the bed rather than clutched to his chest. He doesn’t wake until Griffith straddles him.
Then he starts into awareness, hips jerking beneath Griffith’s bare thighs. His skin is terribly warm, so that Griffith wants to press them together, chest to chest. Guts blinks bleary eyes. His voice is a mumble, gravelly with sleep. “Griffith? That you?” He blinks again, finally seeming to really see Griffith atop him, but not pushing him away yet. “This some kinda dream?”
Griffith tries not to blush at the thought of how he must look; tries not to wonder if this is a dream Guts has had before. “Does it feel like a dream?” he asks, and rolls his hips so the cleft of his ass brushes against Guts’ soft cock.
That, at last, startles Guts into motion. He scrambles up into an awkward sitting position, shoving an arm out to keep Griffith at a distance. “The hell is this?”
His hand is on Griffith's chest, palm flat over his breastbone. Griffith's heart hammers beneath it. He lays his own hand over Guts’, his touch soft and his voice hard. “Don’t pretend that you don’t know. I saw how you looked at me that day. How you haven’t looked at me since.”
“That day?” Guts echoes, stupidly. “You mean…?” A flash of disgust crosses his face, and Griffith has to steel himself not to flinch at it. “I didn’t—”
“Deny it all you like,” Griffith tells him. “They usually do. But I saw. I know what you want.” He lifts Guts’ hand to his mouth and kisses the knuckles. Guts smells of spilled ale and honest sweat. No cloying roses here.
Guts’ arm tenses, like he’s about to snatch his hand back, but he doesn’t. “The fuck would you know about what I want?” he says, but Griffith hears the waver in his voice.
“Do you think I don’t know what men want?” he says. “Do you think this is new to me—having them lust for me and then spit on me, as though to banish whatever weakness they think revealed in themselves?” His voice drops to a whisper. No: a hiss. “Don’t you dare do that. Not you.”
“I don’t…” Guts fumbles with his words. “It ain’t like that— I just—"
Griffiths patience is at its end. He hooks his fingers around the back of Guts’ neck and pulls him in close, and kisses him. Guts stills beneath him, rigid and awkward. For a moment Griffith thinks Guts will push him away again. Then he sighs into Griffith's mouth and allows it.
And for the first time since Doldrey, the victory Griffith has been celebrating for weeks finally feels within his grasp.
###
It's quick and frantic between them. Griffith is in no mood for lingering caresses or shows of chivalry; Guts, he suspects, has no experience at all. Still, it’s enough to make him sweat and shudder as he spills between them, alight with triumph and relief.
He flops down on the mattress afterward, listening to Guts catch his breath. The silence stretches out long enough that he’s startled when Guts speaks into it.
“It ain’t like that,” he says, and pauses again. “What you said before.”
Griffith turns his head fractionally. Guts isn’t looking at him; he’s on his back, gaze directed firmly up at the ceiling, as though he expects the words he's looking for to reveal themselves out of the rafters. Griffith props his chin on his hand, brows drawing together. “What isn’t it like?”
“Disgust, or, or weakness, or whatever the hell you said. Not about you, anyway. It was that asshole.” He doesn’t say Gennon’s name. “The way he put his hands on you.”
It isn’t funny, not really, but Griffith smiles. “Who knew you’d be so protective of my honour?”
“It ain’t that, either.” There is another long silence. Then: “When I was a kid. There was…”
Guts hesitates, lapses into silence. Griffith pushes himself up on an elbow to look him in the eyes, the blankets falling away to pool around their hips. “There was what? Guts?”
A sharp, cold feeling is starting to form inside him; a feeling that perhaps he has got something terribly wrong here.
He watches Guts’ face, and Guts chews his lip and watches the ceiling, and finally sighs and turns onto his side. “Nothing. It don’t matter. Get out or get under the covers, I’m freezing my ass off here.”
The invitation feels like a peace offering, and Griffith takes it. He settles back onto the mattress, pulls the blankets up over them, and slings his arm around Guts’ waist, anchoring him to the bed.
The warmth of the bedcovers and Guts’ body is pleasant, lulling, but he cannot help the irrational fear that if he closes his eyes he will wake to find Guts vanished into the night, and it is a long time before he sleeps.