[Closed Post: A Shared Meal]

[timebethine]

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.

Comments

[wickedwit]

It's a gentleness Claudius doesn't deserve, he thinks, but dearly needed when he feels this fragile in himself. Later, he might like Laertes to be rougher with him, to throw him back against the bed and bite at him until he bleeds, or to be such a brat Claudius will have to push him back and hold him in place, or tie him to the bedframe. Right now, he leans back and lets Laertes kiss him like a cherished thing, hands already undoing his own tie and collar, baring more of himself to kiss.