timebethine | [Closed Post: A Shared Meal]

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[Closed Post: A Shared Meal]

Laertes has spent all day bent over a cookbook, preparing a meal that he hopes a prince will have no cause to criticize. He's made flaky little apple and brie pastries with their crusts twisted in whorls, roast carrots swimming in honey sauce and garnished with walnuts; for the main course, he's been stewing a pot roast for hours. The entire kitchen smells of beef and and onions, celery and parsley and rosemary.

Now, as he arranges his bounty on the table in his rooms, there is just enough space for anxiety to score a touch. He knows full well that, if this night goes as he expects, he'll be taking Claudius to bed--and that will be a choice that he can never take back, if this long dream ends and he finds himself in Elsinore again. He knows that if there is a way that Claudius can use this tryst to his advantage, he will, even here in what might as well be Arcadia.

He shakes his head as he works free the cork of a wine bottle--sweet and red, of no vintage he can recognize. What will come, will come. He has no reputation here to protect, and that's perhaps the most freeing thought he can imagine.

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"I knew not that such things could be done," Laertes admits. "He ... illuminated the possibilities."

"Thou didst not catch my meaning," Claudius realizes aloud, and if he laughs, it's not unkindly. It's half at himself. "Thou wert more innocent than I imagined ... though thou hast in Sagramore a learned instructor. What possibilities were most illuminating to thee?"

The blush on his cheeks only deepens. But if he demands plain speech from Claudius, he can ask no less of himself. "He said that he might hold me in his lap, and thou couldst fuck me," Laertes says, low. It feels almost humiliating to speak it, when hearing it from Sagramore had felt wild and giddy and freeing--as though Laertes's voice has made the act small and coarse and filthy. "Or I could take thee in my mouth, while he fucked me. Or we could take him both at once. And all of those thoughts put such a flame in me that I could have had him right there on the grass."

"Thou hadst the right of it when thou didst say Sagramore is a man admirable in any occupation," Claudius says, with clear admiration for this litany of pleasing filth. "But he rarely lets himself be driven to distraction. For all his charming directness, he's too giving a lover to be overwhelmed for long. Thee and I might work to overwhelm him, if we shared him between us. Is that a thought thou wouldst enjoy?" His eyes are bright, speaking possible debaucheries over a civilized meal, gazing intently at Laertes across the table. "Or wouldst thou prefer to be the one overwhelmed by us?"

A part of him recognizes that this is only Claudius attempting to distract himself from a grief that would devour him--but the rest of him feels as hot and fragile and ductile as new-blown glass. "I have no greater charge than his pleasure," Laertes manages. "And ... I think it would please him, to be overwhelmed."

"It would please him to have thee pleased," Claudius says, believing it -- there's truth in men's cups and Sagramore is already so generous, it's easy to imagine him devoted entirely to Laertes and fulfilling his desires. Claudius enjoys imagining it (and it's a distraction, yes, from imagining anyone else, but enjoyable in itself). "We may make our own rules, as thou saidst."

"What dost thou want of me?" Laertes asks. "A brief pleasure? A fashion, and a toy in blood? Or something lasting?"

"A promise of something lasting is a promise too easily broken, in a place where circumstances change as frequently as they do here. But so is a promise I will never feel anything for thee." Galahad might've been a passing flirtation, and even after it grew to fondness and caring, Claudius still might've turned away and preserved his heart. It doesn't soothe the aching at all to think of it that way. But it's proof enough Claudius can never predict what will happen. "I like thee well. I enjoy thy conversation, thy dancing, thy unashamed joy in thy skills and the learning of them ... as in the dinner thou hast sincerely made to share what thou hast learned from thy books, with the gift of time to read them. I think thou wouldst be sweet to teach and praise in anything. But as thou hast a tutor, I confess myself charmed by how thou wouldst train me to honesty with kisses."

"Fellow-students, then, each of us perfecting our art," Laertes offers. He takes a bite of the roast and finds it flavorful, juicy and infused with the richness of wine, and for a moment his relief is so enormous that it nearly swallows him. It would be the worst thing, to be found wanting when he had tried so sincerely to do well. "I do like thee. There's a great love of knowledge in thee that wells over like water in a fountain, and nourishes all that it falls upon." He smiles, swift and flickering, a fishscale smile. "And thou art a swordsman par excellence with words. There's pleasure to be had in finding the gaps in thy guard."

It's a smile Claudius longs to trace before it swims away again, to lean in and kiss. "Thou hast a way of disarming me with plain words," he admits. "But even plain words aren't as plain as they appear. Sagramore may be charmingly, naturally direct, but I wasn't trained to use my words like blades to make a direct hit. At best they're a quiver of many arrows, rather than a single weapon. I can fire as many as I like, but if I don't know where to aim, I'll still miss. For instance," he says, with a laugh, "I truly did believe thou knew'st what I meant, when I asked if thou wouldst share Sagramore's bed with me."

"Mayhap I might have guessed, hadst thou not compared it to the woods," laughs Laertes. "I was so concerned for thy tender back!"

"He brought a blanket," Claudius assures him. "It was quite comfortable. Or was that not yet in thy imaginings, either?"

"It was not," Laertes answers. "I'd imagined thee like Adam, naked amidst the weeds and thorns."

"What a fanciful mind thou hast," Claudius laughs. "Well, when I know it better, I'll know better how to aim. If thou wilt continue to cross words with me, and seek out my defenses."

"An archer will soon undo a fencer, be he ever so light on his feet," says Laertes over another sip of wine. "Wouldst thou undo me, sir?"

That casual sir shivers through him, more than he thought it could. The plainest of titles, one that could be spoken from one fellow-student to another -- only given because Laertes chooses to give it to him, not because of an accident of birth. (It's better than my lord right now. My lord would make him think of Galahad pale and naked, flinching away without even the blankets to cover him, and the uncrossable distance between them -- Claudius isn't thinking about that.)

He stands, slowly, carefully -- it wouldn't do to let Laertes imagine he's standing to escape -- and leans across the table to touch Laertes, not his smile yet, but his cheek. "Wouldst thou be undone by me?"

And Laertes turns his head to graze his lips over Claudius's palm, tracing kisses down the deep groove of his lifeline--and yet his eyes never leave Claudius's. "I would."

Claudius claims a kiss, then -- it's slow, careful. If Laertes preferred to pull away, to reject this last impropriety, he could. But Claudius imagines he won't, so the kiss still has that surging hope in it, that expectation this won't last so he should take whatever he can from it.

Laertes, though, does not permit the kiss to be slow or careful. He catches Claudius's face in both hands and surges up against him, licking into his mouth, testing how he likes it when Laertes rolls Claudius's lip between his teeth.

The suddenness draws a sigh from him, lost between their lips -- half surrender, half acceptance (and another, inexplicable half, a wild, unreasoning hunger that won't fit into categories, that will only surge and seize and want). His mouths opens for Laertes, and it's a foregone conclusion, all defenses dropped.

"Hast sated thy hunger?" Laertes asks. He shifts his chair back and urges Claudius into his lap, the better to stroke his ribs and back.

"Far from it." Claudius flows into Laertes's lap like mercury, sharp intelligence in his eyes -- but it's intelligence waiting to be whetted, not turned towards any purpose. "I'm still ravenous for thee."

"Come to bed," says Laertes, even as he sways up to nip and kiss beneath Claudius's jaw. "Let me taste thee."

Claudius laughs, low, and it's an agony to pull away when he could stay here and grind against Laertes's lap, arching his neck for more of Laertes's kisses. "Then lead me, sir," he says, breath short.

Then Laertes rises, gathering Claudius up like a bride to carry him into the inner chamber. His bedroom is narrow--the two rooms he occupies are together no larger than most of the bedrooms in the Mansion--but almost all of it is taken up with a large, comfortable bed. He gently sets Claudius down on the edge of it, then swarms over him to cover his throat with kisses.

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wickedwit - 2023-10-22 22:35 (UTC) - Expand

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