Work Text:
“You know what mellifluous means, Ser Dunk?”
“No.”
“You’re not even going to try and bullshit me and pretend?”
“I don’t—well, I’m not a very good liar. I’ve never even heard that word before.”
Lyonel pushed a hand through his hair, swaying his head to the side to stretch his neck. His other hand remained planted on Dunk’s shoulder, steadying himself as he listed tipsily in the direction his head was pointing. Dunk's hand came up to his hip, gentle and quick. He has a very good set of instincts, Lyonel thought to himself, hand slipping to Dunk’s chest. Moves fast, sees the problem before he thinks about it. And he dances well enough to dodge my heels. I’d love to see him fight. He gave a soft grunt and finished the stretch.
His mouth carried on. “Heard it from Beesbury. Told me it’s how they describe honey, all thick and sweet and golden. The way it flows over the hands when you grab a comb. Like liquid gold, spilling everywhere…” His amber eyes flashed to Dunk. “Mellifluous.”
(Yes, I know what mellifluous means now, Dunk thought, entranced by the warm glow of Lyonel’s eyes, the warm candlelight flickering across his warm skin, the drink making his lips glisten like burnished gold. Even the bold yellow silks he wore, the cape now discarded, added to the pretty picture in Dunk’s head. He is honey on legs.)
“But not all honey is gold, do you know that?”
(Dunk was a hedge knight from Flea Bottom. He did not know that. He’d listen to Lyonel talk about anything, though.)
Lyonel spun his tale as expertly as he’d spun Dunk around the dancefloor hours earlier. Now, they were the only ones left in the tent together, swaying and dancing to music neither could hear, only feel. Dunk was tired, sure, but couldn’t remember that whenever Lyonel looked at him. The weight of Lyonel’s antlered coronet on his head felt double what it had when he’d first been crowned with it.
“In the rainwood, there were direstags. Massive beasts, thirty feet tall, antlers big as houses. Nigh impossible to hunt, though my bloodfathers supposedly rode the things, if you can believe it.”
(The image of Lyonel seated upon a great, antlered beast, gleaming honey-gold and grinning, made Dunk’s vision go hazy for a moment.)
“One of these beasts died one day, and its body was taken not by the earth but by creatures of the air. Bees, crawling, infesting, eating—building their combs in the hollows of its skull, in its ribs, along its legs. The honey made from the body of this beast dripped thick and dark as blood, may as well have been blood—because the bees could make this stag move, Ser Duncan.
“It wandered the rainwood like a wraith, a moving fortress of forbidden honey. I see that look on your face, ser, and I tell you this—where do you think honeybone comes from?” he tilted his head back, looking down his nose at Dunk’s astonished expression.
Honeybone was certainly known among any knight who’d seen battle. It was a hard-crack sweet shaped into animal skulls, bones, or antlers. It was supposed to bring luck to any warrior who ate it on the eve of battle. Dunk had even seen it passed around campfires a few times, though always preambled with now, this isn’t the real stuff, but…
Dunk had never thought about where such a tradition came from. But Ser Lyonel Baratheon spoke with the authority of a man born unto legend himself, and—
His laughter cut through Dunk’s reverie, clear and musical and sweet as he called his joy out to the silk and bone and fire above them. It took Dunk a moment to realize: he’s been the one bullshitting me!
“You’re terrible,” Dunk grumbled, very nearly releasing his dance partner and returning to the elm tree. Lyonel seemed to sense this, and dug his hands into Dunk’s shoulders preemptively.
“That I am,” Lyonel grinned, “I apologize for my yarn-spinning. Sailors tend to revel in stories. I more than most.”
Dunk swallowed his embarrassment at being so led on, but had to laugh along. “It was a very good story.”
“Mmm, but not entirely untrue, either.” He took flight from Dunk’s arms for a moment, returning with a black-glass bottle. It sloshed a little bit, only a few mouthfuls left at the bottom. An embossed deer skull had been stamped on it in black wax. “Beesbury brought along a few cases of this at my request: black honeybone mead. Rare as virtue, dark as vice. Instead of the frames and houses their farms usually use, this mead is made from honey harvested from hives built inside deer skulls. A rather lovely bit of inter-house collaboration, certainly more fun than a boring old marriage would be.”
“What did it taste like?”
Eyes Dunk once thought amber flooded with black, Lyonel’s pupils expanding to a heart-pounding eclipse until naught but a ring of soft brown remained. “You want to have a taste?” he asked, voice dropping to a molten purr.
“Yes.”
Lyonel brought the bottle up to his mouth and tugged the cork out with his teeth. The sight of his pointed canines stole Dunk’s breath, and suddenly the prospect of a drink seemed less of an indulgence and more of a necessity. The cork came loose with a pop! but Lyonel wasn’t done with it. He maneuvered the bottle so he could also hold the cork, and leaned down to breathe in its scent. He gave a low hum that Dunk could feel in his bones.
“It’s so in fashion to be precious about wines. Me, I can’t tell the difference. I think they’re all liars. But Ser Humphrey has certainly given me a nose for mead. Here. Smell.”
Dunk nearly flinched when the cork was held beneath his nose, but he gave a dutiful sniff anyway. He’d grown up in Flea Bottom, where you had to have a dull nose or a strong stomach just to get by. Few things made him retch from the smell alone, but those hard years (not to mention the years spent just with him and Ser Arlan, when bathing was, at best, a recreational obligation) had dulled any finer sense of smell in favor of practicality.
“It smells like honey, ser.”
Lyonel practically pouted in his face. “Breathe deeper.” He cupped his hands around the cork and held them to Dunk’s face, gaze intent. The cool glass of the bottle pressed against his heated cheeks, and for a moment Dunk wasn’t certain he remembered how to breathe at all.
But he did.
“Only the very strange can recognize the taste of bone. And around the honey: the scorch of the sun, bleaching a skull white while the honey inside turns black. It’s nearly sweet, the taste of death.”
Dunk exhaled a shuddering breath. He wished he could taste what he did, but he’d just have to take Lyonel’s word for it. Finally, the lord drew back and offered the bottle, not bothering with a cup or tankard. He held it for him, so all Dunk had to do was open his mouth and receive what he was being offered.
The taste was very different from the smell. It sat, cloying, on his tongue. It was both bright and heavy, sweet and bitter, burnt and fresh, wild and mystic—and a little terrifying. (Though perhaps that was all Lyonel.) Dunk drank until Lyonel decided he’d had enough, pulling the bottle back from him and making him gasp for air.
Without missing a beat, Lyonel replaced Dunk’s mouth on the bottle, taking a drink directly off the wet mark left by Dunk’s lips. He hummed at the taste before the mead ever hit his tongue. His eyes didn’t move from Dunk as he finished off the rest of the bottle, nor when he set it down on the table behind them. “Oh. Don’t move.”
His hand came up, the side of his thumb swiping at the side of Dunk’s mouth.
“Open.”
Dunk obeyed, not really certain of why.
The thumb, bearing a single errant drop of mead, pushed into Dunk’s mouth past his lips, past his teeth, depositing its burden directly onto his tongue. Between the strange, dark honey taste and the salt from Lyonel’s skin, Dunk was certain he could grow to appreciate the finger taste of mead if it came to him always like this. Dreamily, he closed his lips around the digit, dragging all of its taste back even as it withdrew. He nearly whined at the lightheaded feeling it left in its wake.
“Good, no? Black honey?” Lyonel practically leered.
Dunk nodded dumbly, making the antler crown on his head wobble precariously in place. Lyonel’s hand came up to the back of his neck, one wet thumb dragging across the sensitive skin beneath his ear. Nerves fluttered in his belly, and his breath hitched at the way Lyonel was looking at him.
“It is quite late, Ser Dunk.” His voice came out hushed, almost confessional. He made no move to break apart.
“Aren’t you meant to joust on the morrow?” Dunk asked, just as quiet. Their faces were tilting closer together, shadowy antlers flickering across Lyonel’s brow.
“The morrow can wait. Ser Duncan?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
Dunk’s astonished, half-lidded look would be seared into Lyonel’s memory for the rest of time. The rest of his senses would fade: the taste of the mead, the sharp touch of teeth, the soft moans that followed. But that hazy blue gaze would remain etched in his skull long after he was dead and gone.
Hands, so gentle and loose before, became fists, from which it was now impossible to break free. Lyonel was sure he could hear something tear near his shoulder—the seams of his shirt popping beneath Dunk’s desperation. With an equally strong grip on Dunk’s shirt, Lyonel forced them to a low bench and pushed Dunk down on top of it. The hedge knight sat with a grunt, looking up too quickly and nearly tipping the crown off.
“Don’t lose your head, ser knight,” Lyonel panted, adjusting the crown before climbing into Dunk’s lap with all the might and surety of a king ascending his throne. He settled his hand at the back of Dunk’s head, anchoring the heaviest part of the crown in place so they could continue uninterrupted. He resumed their kiss, letting his other hand wander where it pleased.
Dunk did the same after a while; it seemed he was a bit affected by the onslaught of attention. If Lyonel had to guess, he must have only been kissed a few times before now. It was a tragedy; his mouth was the sweetest thing to sip from, and every kiss made sweeter for the warmth of the man it belonged to. Were he anyone else, he’d ensure Dunk never went a moment unkissed.
As their sweetness turned to passion turned to desperate, clawing need, Lyonel leaned back with a snarl, clawing off his torn shirt and dropping it to the ground, shedding his multitude of cuffs and rings as well. Gold fell from his fingertips without a care; the only riches he wanted on hand had a beating heart and eyes as blue as the summer sky.
Dunk blushed at the ferocity, blinking and lightly prodding at his kiss-swollen lips with the tip of his tongue. He swallowed roughly and took in Lyonel’s half-naked form with unfiltered interest. Many men who shared their preferences sought to conceal them, but Dunk had no choice but to be earnest in each passing moment.
“Fair’s fair, take it off,” Lyonel demanded, leaning back to tug the hem of Dunk’s tunic out from where it was trapped beneath them. Dunk was more worried about keeping Lyonel balanced on his lap and wasn’t much help. They wriggled and laughed through the task until finally, the crown was righted atop Dunk’s head again, and they could simply stare at one another’s bared skin.
What Dunk lacked in loquaciousness, he made up for in reverent touches and slack-jawed stares. Lyonel was used to pretty platitudes, teasing touches, sultry stares—but the silence of dumbfounded desire was what made his heart skip a beat. Or three.
Lyonel marveled at Dunk’s naked chest, tracing the places where scars had healed to puckered lines across his body. He was no stranger to scars, himself—a great deal of his life had been spent at sea, and it was no kind place for those seeking quiet and comfort. Dunk’s muscles were only slightly toned beneath his skin, but a quick pass of his fingers over them showed the strength there beneath the illusion of softness. His hands itched to pinch and pull, to claw and mark. Mine, mine, mine, crowed his heart. It was a voice used to censure, but it still sang.
“Lovely,” Lyonel proclaimed.
The rapid flush of Dunk’s blush stretched clear across his chest, as if he’d been suddenly splashed in wine. It made Lyonel laugh. Never derisively, or insensitively, but for sheer enjoyment. He leaned in to kiss the look off Dunk’s face, gentling him back down from wherever his more delicate sensibilities had so abruptly launched him.
Dunk’s hands went to Lyonel’s thighs as the kiss deepened, now turning slow and sensual. Their bodies moved in a rolling tandem that Dunk soon got the hang of following Lyonel’s lead. This close, it was quite easy to feel how affected Dunk was by all this closeness. He shivered slightly. Not from cold, but from the warmth of touch itself.
Lyonel spared a thought for the lonely plight of the hedge knight; if he’d only been kissed a handful of times, he must be starved for touch. The drink had spared him the jumpiness he’d had at the beginning of the night, but at the end of it, he was still handling a raw nerve of a man. “Alright?” Lyonel asked, once he’d released Dunk’s lip from between his teeth.
Dunk took three seconds to realize Lyonel had asked him something. “What?” he asked, the word round and dreamy in his mouth.
Lyonel chuckled. “Are you alright, dearest?” he said, speaking more clearly.
He nodded, brows furrowing. “I’m—I’m fine?” He seemed to realize just how hard he’d gotten from their kissing, like his mind had been fully disconnected from his body until Lyonel’s question. “I’m—oh, I’m sorry, ser—”
“Do not,” Lyonel cut in sharply, “apologize for what your body likes. Especially when it’s me.”
A little startled by the heated chastisement, Dunk just nodded, biting down another apology. Both their lips looked obscene, nearly bruised with how red they were. Lyonel pressed their chests together, kissing down Dunk’s jaw to his neck and grinding his hips down on Dunk’s erection. The noise Dunk made sounded like he’d been struck by a lance.
“Gods, your body is—” Lyonel couldn’t finish the sentence, suddenly too busy worrying at the thick, biteable muscle in Dunk’s upper shoulder. Dunk gasped out a high-pitched little moan as he arched into the feeling. Lyonel followed the noise like a hound to the center of Dunk’s neck, the softest part of his lovely hedge knight. He pressed another kiss there, no teeth, just a little affectionate hum against the hard point of his throat.
“Ser—” Dunk sounded nearly strangled.
“Stay here,” Lyonel said, standing from Dunk’s lap and staring him down. At a distance, he felt the loss of body heat a little more keenly. For all the candles in the room and the triple-insulated silks and cotton covers that made the tent, it was still spring. And spring meant cool nights unsuited to out-in-the-open dalliances such as this.
In the summer, I’ll have him outdoors. Spread him out in a fucking field like a maiden in a song. Make him sing it, too, make him howl at the moon as I take him apart.
Dunk's eyes remained fixed on him as he tugged off his boots and stepped out of his skirts and trousers, baring himself entirely. Their weight fell away, and he didn’t let the cold catch him as he returned to the cradle of Dunk’s legs. They spread apart on instinct at his approach, making room as he went to his knees. “What are you—?”
“Hand.” Lyonel held an empty palm up expectantly. Dunk hesitantly gave him his right hand, which was then firmly placed on the back of Lyonel’s head.
“Hh??”
“Keep that there for me. Pull if you like.” He looked up and gave a wink. “I like.” Lyonel worked quickly, plucking open the front of Dunk’s trousers and shoving down what he could around the man’s thick thighs. He didn’t need much to get where he wanted.
Dunk’s cock was as thick as the rest of him, much to Lyonel’s delight. He set his mouth to work quickly, mouthing at the base as he freed the rest. Dunk was a young buck, hard as a rock in moments and moaning. The noises he made were nearly startled out of him. Lyonel tried not to grin as he laved his tongue over the hot, wet head. He tasted musky, like cheap soap and sweat and a little like the wine he’d spilled on himself earlier when Lyonel made him laugh so hard he cried. Lyonel made the same noise as he’d made when tasting Dunk’s mouth on the rim of the bottle from before.
When he chanced a look up, a thin line of light glistened along Dunk’s lower lids. He gasped for air, overwhelmed by sensation. He looked so beautiful, sparkling and flushed as he was, sweet as honey. Now, Lyonel couldn’t help his smile. It was just a little wicked, reveling in this man’s undoing, but what an undoing it was shaping up to be.
“Lovely,” Lyonel said again, his voice nothing but a growling rasp before he swallowed Dunk’s cock down with ease.
The low, punched-out noise Dunk made almost had Lyonel tensing and ready to swallow, but the man held out, somehow. Lyonel couldn’t speak the word, but the pleased hum may as well have been a murmured good.
After a while, Dunk’s hand started to really grip Lyonel’s hair, not to push or pull but to hang on. The grip a man would have on a lifeline at sea. The slight pressure sent a full-body shiver through him, so strong he almost expected the floor to shake from it. Dunk's noises scaled higher and higher, the thighs around his shoulders going tense as boards. Ah, there it was.
Lyonel was not a cruel man, but he was a selfish one. He pulled back, letting spit connect them for a few hot breaths before he laughed, delighted at how wrecked Dunk looked after so short a time.
“Why—why’d you stop?” Dunk whined and panted, his chest heaving like the sea.
“Well, if I let you come now, you’ll have to promise me you’ll be hard enough to fuck me when I’ve readied myself to take you.”
Dunk gaped at him. “You want me to—?”
“Why wouldn’t I, my dearest hedge knight?” He gave another sweet kiss to Dunk’s shaft, smiling through it all. Dunk hissed a little, still sensitive, still perilously close to coming, but also still in control of himself. That will change. “Now, will you be able to keep your promise, or can you be patient for me, good ser?”
“Patient. I can. Yes. Patient.”
“Good,” Lyonel purred, clambering to his feet with a hastily concealed frown at the stiffness in his back. It was the peril of any slouching rake to be faced with such issues. He maintained perfect posture around those for whom it mattered; alone, relaxed, he was all curves and sinew. That came with consequences as he aged, unfortunately. But those consequences could be ignored. “Now, let’s see.”
This was his party tent. He knew what tended to happen at his parties. He spotted one of the little concealed drawers set around the room and dashed over, fully nude. “Stay there!” he called again, when he heard Dunk trying to sit up.
He returned victorious, carrying a few little bottles of golden oil. Dunk, still a little dazed, asked, “Is that more mead?”
Lyonel leaned in, rewarding him with a kiss. “It most certainly is not. But what it allows for is twice as sweet.”
The preparation was minimal, but Lyonel was a bit of a naughty hedonist in that he liked to remember his conquests. Not in song, but in flesh, in the sweet notes of bruises and soreness. Dunk didn’t need to know they probably should have gone with four instead of three. All the same, Dunk watched him with awestruck eyes, moaning along with him as he fucked his fingers from atop his lap.
I’ll make it up to him. When it’s his turn to take me, he’s going to be treated like a fucking king. I’ll spend all day stretching him open, until he’s begging for me, begging—
“And—” Harmonized noises of desperation and feeling twined in the air. “—there.”
Dunk had his eyes screwed tight as Lyonel sank down on him at long last. Depriving himself of the sight was the last bulwark of his control against the onslaught. He hardly breathed for gasping. That he could only take in life in little sips filled Lyonel with pride to have been the one to feed him something so rich as this—as him.
It took time to adjust for both of them. Lyonel was a large man, and most of his partners for this kind of revel tended to be smaller. Dunk was by far the largest he’d ever taken, and with the minimal preparation devoted to the task, it proved quite the daunting obstacle. But he was a Baratheon of Storm’s End. He would not fall to siege or storm. Not even this siege.
Alright, you dumb fuck. Let’s save the war jargon for another time.
Lyonel reached out to trace his thumbs across Dunk’s ruddy cheeks, gentle as moonlight. “You’ll need to breathe at some point, darling. Unconsciousness is surely better meant for another time.”
Dunk burst out laughing, releasing all his tension at once and suffering for it. Lyonel let his body relax fully when he saw the look of joy on his lover’s face, and took Dunk nearly to the hilt.
“Ser!” Dunk practically wailed, head thrashing just like the beast who’d last owned the antlers atop his head.
“Careful, careful—!” Lyonel said, dodging the points.
Alright, perhaps the logistics here should outweigh aesthetic. But we can be careful. I like it when he wears my things. And he’s technically wearing me, too.
Dunk seemed to have reached a state of determined, trancelike focus. It made him look slightly nauseous, if adorable. They moved together with an unspoken cautiousness at first—things could go wrong before they go right, in these things—and then rocked together with greater confidence as their bodies became used to it.
A heady haze fell over Lyonel’s head and trickled down to the rest of him, making him feel like his blood was glowing. It wasn’t unlike being drunk, thoughts occurring to him in fragments. He had, until now, been entirely neglecting his own cock. It drooled lazily onto Dunk’s lower belly, shining up his skin just like the oil had done. He left himself untouched for now, instead focusing on riding Dunk harder. He kissed him with all the ferocity befitting the heir to the Stormlands. Every downward thrust of his hips sent another bright shock of sensation through him, numbing any aches and heightening any—
“Fuck!—ah,” Lyonel gasped, bending over himself and stuttering to a shivering halt atop Dunk.
“W-what is it? Have I hurt you?” Dunk asked, his voice coming out slurred.
Lyonel closed his eyes and gave a shudder, shaking his head. His curls fell in his face, and Dunk gave in to the impulse to reach up and brush them away. When Lyonel looked at him, his golden brown eyes sparkled with surprise. Before Dunk could even start to speculate what for, he smiled. Not the biting, irreverent, witty smile he’d used to ensnare Dunk into where they were right now, but a warm, honey-sweet, wax-warm smile borne from the mouth of a man born to laugh.
“My dear hedge knight,” Lyonel rasped, tilting his head sideways to press a kiss to the heel of Dunk’s hand. He caught his breath, stealing yet another kiss from his lips. “Would that you brought me anything but joy.”
But Dunk still looked worried about the abrupt pause.
Lyonel groaned, a little embarrassed. “I’ve seen too many summers, I think. My body is meant for sitting thrones, not riding horses day and night—let alone great knights of the realm.” His following laughter, belly-deep, made him squeeze around Dunk in a way that made the candlelight sparkle all the brighter. The crown nearly fell off Dunk’s head again from the way he reflexively slumped at the feeling. An aftershock of laughter came on the first’s heels as Lyonel reveled in Dunk’s affected state. “It’s just a twinge in my back,” Lyonel relented, giving the poor man a break.
“Where?” Dunk said, his hand trailing over one bared shoulder to slide along Lyonel’s flank. The pressure was soothing and consistent, the same surety as one would pet a horse. Lyonel didn’t know why the comparison set fire to his blood, a mix of indignant shame and breathless lust. Dunk's fingers made little steps toward his spine, crawling and probing inch by sweaty inch. Clarity had returned to his blue gaze, and now Lyonel felt like he was the one pinned beneath it. “Higher?”
“Some, yes,” Lyonel breathed. He held very, very still. He was no stranger to the pleasures of the flesh, nor its many aches and pains. To share in the former with others was bliss; to share in the latter… He hated to admit it to himself, but there were certain lessons he learned as a scared little boy that, when reinforced in life, reverted him to that frightened youth. Don’t show your belly. Hold your head up and your guts in. Smile through the blood. Leave your whimpering for the deathbed and nowhere else.
But in matters of love… a burden shared is a burden halved.
So he let Dunk search for that icy knife twinging into his back. His heart pounded in his chest, and he swore it skipped and stopped right when Dunk’s thick, calloused finger got on top of it. A gut-deep noise better suited to a wounded animal ripped from Lyonel’s mouth at the blinding rush of pain. His cock flagged fully between them, pain eclipsing what pleasure he’d reveled in until now.
“Shh, shh,” Dunk said, removing his finger and pressing his whole palm over the point. The pressure and warmth from the touch brought a wave of relief so great that Lyonel’s knees trembled. He felt as weak as a newborn faun, just from the slightest press of Dunk’s fingertips against where it hurt most.
“I’m alright, we don’t—it usually goes away when—just give me a moment and we can—” Lyonel babbled, like some dam in his composure had been smashed to pieces by a single fingertip.
“Do you trust me?”
The question brought Lyonel up short. In approximately fifteen seconds’ time, he’d gone from suave, cocksure lover to trembling, stammering fool. He’d met the man mere hours ago, he didn’t even know where he hailed from, if he was technically a subject of his realm or not (like it mattered), he didn’t know his prowess in battle or if he was needlessly cruel, and that was the reason you don’t show your belly, Lyonel Baratheon, because anybody could come up and put a spear in it—
“Yes. By the Seven, I trust you.”
Dunk smiled softly up at him, a little flustered by the compulsive vow. He nodded, clearing his throat. “I—growing up bigger, your body makes bigger aches, is all. You learn to deal with them, just to get by.”
Lyonel knew. His blood grew tall as trees, antlers caught in the rafters by their second decade. He remembered the few summers of his youth spent in agony when the storms rolled in, his shins and spine aching so fiercely he once gnawed on the bedposts to keep from screaming. Now, his body had fully settled, but the price of the Seven’s blessing of tallness demanded payment here and there. He had a few silvery stretches of skin on his legs and beneath his ribs where he’d stretched beyond his skin’s capacity to heal, and loved when lovers kissed and touched them.
Looking down at Dunk’s own thick body, taller than his own, Lyonel felt a rush of excitement at the prospect of repaying the favor.
“I’m familiar, though perhaps not nearly as much as you, Ser Duncan.”
Dunk gave another lopsided smile and nodded. “This has helped me before, ser, may I see if it works the same for you? I’d not have you in pain, while—um.”
This is perhaps the fourth-oddest conversation I’ve had with something up my arse.
Lyonel nodded. “If this works, I’m going to ride you so hard you forget your name.”
Dunk blushed even deeper but chuckled, a rolling noise that rippled all the way through him. Thunder in his chest as I have in mine—what lovely storm have I found here in Ashford?
The hedge knight pressed his hand a little firmer against Lyonel’s back before rubbing in slow, deep circles. It forced Lyonel’s hips to move in lazy gyrating circles. Dunk’s pace faltered, and he choked on a moan before looking up half-accusatorily at Lyonel. He only gave a breathy laugh and a shrug. “I’m behaving; this is your fault.”
“All due respect, milord, I don’t believe you’ve behaved a day in your life.”
Now he received that biting, witty smile. Another hook sank into the hedge knight’s heart, connected once more to the one in Lyonel’s.
When he’d built up a precedent of pressure, Dunk suddenly slid his hand down, almost straight off Lyonel’s body, to press at a tight knot on one of his cheeks. The point of his finger dug between his muscles, and felt like he was trying to touch his bones. The shock of it made him shout, eyes flying wide open as he looked down at Dunk in surprise. How in the seven hells is this meant to—?!
“Breathe, ser. That’s it.” Lyonel blinked, dazed, but did as told. “Relax into it. Just let go. I can—ha—I can feel how tense you are.” From the inside, no doubt.
Lyonel gulped, breath sawing in and out of his lungs like a bellows. He grunted softly and forced his shoulders to relax, then his neck, then his spine. His forehead came to rest on the juncture of Dunk’s neck and shoulder. He distracted himself from the dull, roaring pain in his muscles by licking at Dunk’s skin, tasting the sweat from him and thinking of little else but his touch. It was bliss to be made to forget the world existed past your lover’s arms.
Dunk brought his hand up to the back of his neck, then pushed into the sweaty mess of his curls, gently rubbing at his scalp in soothing motions. It struck Lyonel so deeply that he nearly sobbed with longing. All at once, the muscles in his legs gave out, which sank him deeper onto Dunk’s cock and onto the point of pressure he was grinding into his ass muscles. His soul-deep moan was muffled against the man’s shoulder.
“There. Didn’t even know you had a knot right there, did you? It’s all the riding, ties you up.” Dunk kept his voice low and even, smooth as silk. Like he’s gentling a horse. I’m really no better than a beast when he touches me, am I?
He gently massaged away the surrounding tightness, then brought his hand up to Lyonel’s waist. He sounded dazed as he spoke. “Might be able to wrap both hands round—”
“Remove your hand from my hair, and I remove the hand from your wrist, Ser Duncan.”
“I thought you said you were behaving.”
“Mhh.”
It took a moment, but when Lyonel could finally string together two thoughts without tripping over them, he realized the pain that had stopped him was… gone. Slowly, he shifted his hips and wriggled his spine, frowning in concentration. No pain.
“How—?”
“There was a lady. In Dorne. She taught me.”
“How well-traveled you are, Ser Duncan.”
Dunk gave another laugh, then reached down to squeeze Lyonel’s hip. “You’re feeling better, then?”
“Well enough to ride you—”
He tutted at him. “That’s what got you into this mess, ser. Why don’t—I can’t promise I’ll be any good at it, but—let me take care of you.”
“I promise I can take care of my—”
The hand in his hair suddenly became a fist. Like a puppet, he tilted his head back where Dunk wanted it to be. There would be no hiding from that sky-blue gaze, and there would be no back-talk tolerated. Many a lover had tried this gambit against him, and many had failed—but something in Dunk’s eyes encouraged him to give in.
“You think I don’t know that?” Dunk said, his voice so soft it could have been genuine, were it not for the glint of fire behind his eyes.
Lyonel panted slightly into his face, hyperaware of every single sensation. The movement had rattled his earring, and the little clicks of brass and gold by his ear only heightened how hard he was breathing. Not a single fucking word felt like it deserved to be spoken in this instance.
“You told me you trust me, Ser Lyonel. By the Seven, you swore it. So trust me a little longer.”
How long? Tonight? Tomorrow? The end of time? Anything you like.
Lyonel resorted to a soft uh-huh, words and nods escaping him.
In one motion, Dunk lifted Lyonel from his lap. The sudden wet emptiness drew a whine, but it soon morphed into a yelp as Dunk picked him up and set him down atop the table behind them. It had served as that ubiquitous place found at all parties, where everyone seemed keenest to doff their coats and cloaks, which made the table still firm but quite lush indeed.
“Going to make a mess, are we?” Lyonel asked, still slightly breathless at the dizzying feeling of being picked up for the first time since he was about four years old.
Dunk loomed large above him, worsening the feelings of sudden smallness. His heart may have skipped. He’d never tell. Then, Dunk stole all the air in the room with a simple promise. “Just because you’re on your back now doesn’t mean I can’t put you on your knees—or over mine.”
Lyonel gawked at him, and had no time to guffaw at his audacity or beg yes please before Dunk had raised his hips in one hand and guided his cock back into him in one go. Stars danced in his eyes as he was filled again, the angle hitting so many untouched nerves and reigniting the oversensitive ones from before. His cock gave a valiant throb, still desperate for release at being so thoroughly manhandled. “Fucking hells, man,” Lyonel groaned.
Dunk paid him no mind, moving in slow, long thrusts with the same ease as a man well-used to the saddle himself. Gods, I really am his horse to ride for the night, aren’t I? A low, keening whine left him before he could help it. He bared his throat against the indignity, prey begging for mercy.
It earned him a low, gravelly groan from Dunk. The blue in his eyes had nearly gone, pupils blown wide as if in thrall to a potent vice. This black-eyed angel bearing down on him seemed shocked—by his actions, by Lyonel’s reactions, by the feelings both things brought forth. Lyonel finally assumed control of his legs and attempted to hitch his ankles over Dunk’s shoulders, but the distance was too far. He had to make do with resting them in the crook of Dunk’s elbows.
“Fuck—shit—” The new angle was a lot, opening him up for Dunk to fuck him even deeper without even trying. Dunk’s hips stuttered once, losing rhythm for the new territory to fuck and mark as his own.
“You—wow,” Dunk gasped. A look of wonderment took over his sweet face. Lyonel wished he had an artist’s hand, not a warrior’s, to capture the look there. Antlers slightly askew atop his head, but no less regal for it, Dunk looked thoroughly undone and still showed no signs of stopping.
“Like what you s-see?” Lyonel said, his rakish grin interrupted by a low moan. The cloak he lay upon was silky and cool, but clung to his skin from the sweat. It’d cling to him from other things soon enough.
Dunk flushed practically down to his waist. “Yeah,” he said, chewing on his lower lip and slowing down a little from his fervent pace. When he released his lip, it was shiny with spit and ruby-red.
“Think I’m pretty, Ser Duncan? Pretty like a maid?”
Dunk’s brows furrowed. “No,” he said, blinking a few times. “I mean! Not. Not no, but. Yes. Pretty.” The quandary seemed to stall him entirely, and Lyonel cursed his fat mouth. But he entertained his hedge knight’s line of thought.
Perhaps I’m not so good a lay as I think, if he can still form words and thoughts like this.
“What kind of pretty am I, pray tell?” Lyonel had meant it as a joke, everything was always a joke, it had to be, but Dunk seemed to take him quite seriously indeed. He stroked a calf up Dunk’s bicep, melting against the table.
Dunk adjusted Lyonel’s hips once before planting his feet and shifting all of Lyonel’s supported weight to his elbows. He seemed pensive as he gave Lyonel’s naked body a long look over. Inspecting him, in that thorough way farriers and stablemasters did with their charges. “You’re pretty like a—”
“—if you say horse—”
“I wasn’t going to say horse!” By the shade of red his ears had gone, Lyonel couldn’t tell if he spoke true.
“Deer, stags, elks, also off the table.”
“I’d argue there is a stag on the table.”
“Do I need to take you over my knee?”
A slightly glassy look took over Dunk’s expression, and Lyonel nearly laughed. The two of us are quite the match, aren’t we?
“Tell me I’m pretty, Ser Duncan,” he teased.
“I can’t,” Dunk said, sounding agonized.
“Why ever not?”
“Because I don’t know the right words,” he blurted. “And-and…” He let one of Lyonel’s legs go, so he could lean over him, meet his eyes. The candlelight above made the finer parts of the antlers disappear into naught but light. But Dunk was there. Nothing could erase him. “You deserve to hear it right.”
“My dear hedge knight,” Lyonel whispered, bringing Dunk down to him. “Ser Duncan.” He peppered kisses along Dunk’s nose, ghosted them over his lips. “You can say things without words, you know. You’ve been doing it all night. I’ve been listening.”
“Y-you have?”
“Mhm. When you looked at me, stealing glances through the ‘eve. I heard your eyes say, oh, Ser Lyonel, won’t you call me over to your high table?”
Dunk scoffed and nearly moved back, but for the hand suddenly wrapped around the base of the antlers on his head. Lyonel was not finished. He would not escape this. His eyes burned in amber fire as he went on.
(Scorched honey, Dunk thought.)
“And when we danced, I heard your body tell me isn’t this fun? Let’s never stop, you and I.”
The timid look he got told Lyonel he’d hit the mark on that account.
“When I kissed you, I heard your tongue say more. Taste me. Take me. Bite me. Like a bloody beast, ser.”
Dunk looked like he very much wanted to hide his face in Lyonel’s shoulder, like how Lyonel had done earlier, but between the antlers and Lyonel’s unyielding grip, found he could not move. It was as effective as a hand in his hair, if a bit unorthodox.
“So really, Ser Duncan, you’ve already been telling me I’m pretty all night long. Don’t need any words for that.”
Dunk kissed him so hard his head hit the table with a dull thunk. He kissed like he could devour Lyonel whole, like he was—so hungry he could eat a—“You love smiling, don’t you?” Dunk said, when their teeth clicked together.
“I do. I’m so glad you give me cause for it.”
Dunk’s expression melted, and the kisses that followed were much softer, more tender by far than anything Lyonel felt he deserved. He started moving in him again, hips swaying less as a rider’s and more as a lover’s. Lyonel hooked his freed leg over Dunk’s hip to—oh, sod it—to spur him on to the pace he needed.
“You’re quite pretty, too,” Lyonel panted, nipping at Dunk’s lower lip, since he’d made it look so tempting to chew on before. “In case you needed words to know.”
They moved in that way of heavenly bodies, endless and inevitable and slow, but only in retrospect. To them, each movement was hungry and wanton, intense enough to threaten tears from both at times.
When their peaks came, it took them both by surprise. Lyonel's breath hitched, mouth falling into a small O-shape. He couldn’t stop his cry of release, and nearly brained himself on the brass of his own crown from how sharply he bowed forward. Dunk's reflexes saved him, meaning he only pressed his face into his shoulder in the end.
But the sensation of Lyonel’s body in rapture was too much for even Dunk’s mighty self-control. He gave a bitten-off shout and brought a hand to the back of Lyonel’s head, clutching him close as he spilled inside of him, hips stuttering and stalling once the last of the dazzling feeling had gone. The crown finally fell, clattering to the table and bouncing down onto the bench.
Dunk pulled back, and the sight of his tear-sparkling eyes and pink cheeks silenced all impulse to ruin the moment with a joke or pithy remark. You’re the one ruined, you idiot, Lyonel thought to himself. He reached out and brushed away the wetness beneath one blue eye, and kissed the tears off the other. “There,” he whispered.
Dunk returned to himself and looked down at where they were joined. “Do-do I—?”
“Yes, just—slowly.”
He did as bade and pulled away with glacial care. Lyonel gave a low groan and let his head hit the table again, his legs falling open in a molten-warm wave of exhaustion. He grinned, closing his eyes and reveling in the afterglow. It’d be too much strain on the table to invite Dunk up to join him, so he rolled to a seated positon, humming with delight at the soreness radiating from his hips and thighs.
Dunk's hands fidgeted at his sides, and he looked quite at a loss as Lyonel stretched like a cat before him. His trousers and smallclothes had fallen down to his calves, revealing thick thighs begging for a bite—someday. Lyonel let himself indulge in just a single once-over before reaching a hand out to drag his hedge knight closer. “Come here.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you closer and it’s fucking cold. Come here.”
Dunk went, standing between Lyonel’s legs. Pressed together, staving off shivers from their cooling sweat, they said nothing. Just the muffled sounds of nature outside and the soft hissing of lit candles spoke for them. They’d been, in Lyonel’s estimation, no louder than normal, when it came to Baratheon after-parties. Still, there was a measure of propriety begging to be acknowledged. Lyonel was practiced at ignoring it.
“Think I know what those deers feel like now,” Dunk said, a breathy laugh catching on the end of his words.
“What deer?” Lyonel said, rubbing his face over Dunk’s chest like a cat.
“The ones with honey in their heads.”
Lyonel’s delighted laughter could be heard halfway across camp.