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Yes, it was definitely boredom and nothing else. His main guiding principle in life was the desire to avoid silence, conversations that boiled down to moralizing (unless he was the one doing the moralizing), and awkward pauses that demanded too much from him: sudden revelations or uncharacteristic actions — it didn't matter what, the main thing was that something was immediately required of him. Following these simple rules, he had become the sort of man who never shied away from any kind of fun, was renowned for his reckless nature, and any piece of nonsense he committed, in his right mind or otherwise, could always be justified by that very nature. He was simply Lyonel Baratheon. A Laughing Storm, easily capable of sweeping anyone off their feet. But for someone to sweep him off his — that had never happened to him before. Of course, there had been youthful infatuations, when feelings ran high after training, and then they had to be taken out on someone else who was in just as agitated a state, but that wasn't it at all, none of it could compare to what was happening to him now.
He had sobered up. He remembered the previous evening and night in fragments, but a few specific memories were clear and sharp, as if captured by a skilled artist's hand: the length of his fair eyelashes, their agitated flutter, the naive, simple surprise in his eyes when he drew closer. And then there was the kiss. In front of everyone, beneath the ecstatic roar of the drunken crowd, beneath women's laughter and squeals, beneath the cacophony of musicians who had lost the rhythm. Why had he done it? Lyonel didn't know, but now, pressing a cold cup to his splitting head, he told himself: it was all about boredom. He had simply gotten bored.
He knew many kisses. Each one resembled the last. Rough, quick male kisses, slow, tender female touches of the lips — it had all merged for him into one vague something, a distant and faceless memory that didn't touch the soul. Dunk didn't know how to kiss at all: his light eyes flew open, then his eyelashes fluttered, his eyelids began to lower, and in Lyonel's chest, a feeling suddenly arose — so vast, so enormous, so aching — that he sharply pulled back and hid his awkwardness behind loud laughter. It was a joke. That was all. The drunken guests forgot about his little stunt, and the dancing continued. The conversation with Dunk had been empty and hopelessly drunk, and that was the only thing that saved them from inevitable awkwardness. Dunk, that fair-haired giant, didn't ask unnecessary questions, although sometimes in his quick glances from under his brows and his tensely pressed lips, Lyonel saw, clearly saw that silent question, the one he would never dare to voice aloud. Why?
"If only I knew," Lyonel groaned, clutching his hair, his shoulders slowly relaxing as he bent low over the table where he sat. A whisper escaped his lips again: "If only I knew..."
Torment of the soul was not characteristic of him — at least, he had lived three decades and had never once suffered from that category of pain. Everything came easily to him, infatuations came and went without giving birth to any strong attachment in his heart, and he perceived others' tears as something that didn't directly concern him. He wasn't to blame if one night became everything for someone, while for him it remained the same nothing.
But Dunk, curse him, had changed everything he was used to. Who was he now? What had one kiss turned him into?
At first, he truly suffered. Never having known this feeling, he plunged into it headlong and started drinking more often, more heavily. In his tent, he imagined Dunk everywhere, but having recovered from his hangover, he couldn't say for certain that the knight had actually come. He tagged along everywhere with that bald boy of his, and even if Lyonel thought about striking up a casual conversation with him, he was stopped by the surprisingly perceptive look in the boy's eyes — as if he, the little squirt, understood everything, saw everything. And then Lyonel would be seized by a strange shame: why was he bothering this youth, what was he after?
When the boy showed up in his tent late at night, Lyonel already knew his true origin. Aegon Targaryen stood up, assuming a serious and therefore amusing expression, clasped his hands behind his back, straightened his shoulders, and looked at Lyonel with that penetrating gaze of his.
"There will be a Trial of Seven tomorrow at dawn," he said in his thin but commanding voice. "You will fight on the side of Ser Duncan the Tall."
"You're not even leaving me a choice, my lord?" Lyonel gave a humorless smirk. Everything inside him clenched with anxiety.
"I've seen the way you look at him," Aegon snorted.
"And how do I look at him?"
"The same way he looked at that Dornish girl from the puppet troupe whose finger my brother broke."
"Little shit," Lyonel thought.
At dawn, he invented another reason for so readily agreeing to Aegon's proposal.
Perhaps it was this fiery feeling in his heart that moved his body during that duel. Time ceased to exist, extraneous thoughts ceased to exist, only pure impulse and reflexes honed to mastery remained. But he still missed one blow when, somewhere in the corner of his eye, Duncan's figure collapsed limply into the mud. Fury seized him, and laughter burst from his chest — so that's how it was, was it? He had lived for three decades, gotten gray in his hair, only just learned love, and was going to lose it immediately? Was that how it would be? And how was he supposed to live with this feeling afterwards? How was he to wake up in the mornings, knowing he had been so close to that proverbial happiness, that he had practically caught it, that ever-elusive moment, by the tail, and then lost it in an instant? Curse you all. If that was the case, he would fight even more fiercely. He would become the embodiment of a storm if necessary, he would lose his humanity, and let the sound of his laughter turn into a desperate cry. So be it.
It all ended quickly.
Ser Duncan the Tall, a knight of no birth or lineage, stood alone in the middle of the churned-up ground. Lyonel looked at him, for a brief moment their gazes clashed, and then that short instant slipped away from him. Dunk fell.
They met a few days later, when both their wounds had begun to heal. Lyonel saw him from afar: he was lying under a spreading oak, lonely and miserable, his long legs absurdly stretched out in front of him, his hands holding his bandaged stomach. He was so simple, so sincere, even in the way he desperately blamed himself for the death of Prince Baelor. Lyonel wouldn't have. He blamed himself only for having so hopelessly fallen in love with a simple knight who saw him as... who? A drinking buddy?
The words slipped from his lips easily, simply, as if held only by his dwindling willpower, and there it was, this half-joking, mocking:
"And I will love you like a brother."
Important clarification: he didn't specify which noble family's traditions he associated with the concept of brotherly love. Undoubtedly, he meant the Targaryens.
They lay side by side. Dunk's shoulder was warm, even hot, and Lyonel lowered his gaze to look at his trembling fingers, then slowly raised his eyes higher: lips pressed into a stern line, the dull gaze of his one good eye, a scattering of scrapes and bruises on his face. So kind. So simple. If he kissed him right now, what would happen? No. Now was not the time. Now he was grieving.
Lyonel had been right when he got angry: in the end, he alone had fought out of love, and not a desire to spill someone else's blood. But Dunk would never know that.
He was already about to leave, disappointed and irritated, when Dunk weakly called out to him, called him by name. Lyonel stopped dead in his tracks and slowly turned his head.
"Why did you kiss me then?"
Lyonel turned his whole body towards him, looked down at him condescendingly, and smiled.
"No reason."
He was simply bored.