Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1976592.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire_-_George_R._R._Martin, Game_of_Thrones_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Renly_Baratheon/Loras_Tyrell
  Character:
      Renly_Baratheon, Loras_Tyrell
  Additional Tags:
      Canon-Typical_Underage, Homophobia
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-07-18 Words: 1436
****** the ribs of a broken umbrella ******
by ennta
Summary
     "They'll mock and they'll tease," Renly had murmured, his brow
     furrowed, his hands a welcome distraction, "and you're a proud thing,
     Loras. I won't ask you for anything that will shame you."
Notes
See the end of the work for notes

                                      ***
As the sun slips off beneath the waves, the slide of steel on steel and the
curses of friendly combatants fade down to whispers in the training yard,
whispers that crackle like the heat lightning on the horizon, whispers just
loud enough for Loras to hear as he cleans his melee equipment off for the
evening:
"C'mon now, we all know Tyrell does for free what most whores charge double
for!"
A burst of laughter, then, from one of the squires: laughter loud and open as
only a young boy's derision can be.
The lure hits and hooks someplace deep behind Loras's rib cage. He swallows to
displace it, to reduce it to a scar, a callous; maybe the next barb won't
catch.
"Perhaps our lord still hopes to find a cunt between Tyrell's legs!" This taunt
rings louder still, the lilting hint of a question to it as it tumbles from an
older knight's mouth. Loras imagines they are watching him, waiting for his
temper to spill over like high tide. "He still looks enough like a maid. Think
there's been a mistake, and that fat old flower sent his daughter to squire
instead of his son?"
Loras grits his teeth hard enough that he sees spots in the black at the
corners of his eyes. His hands have gone to fists, his shoulders tense and
ready, but he keeps his back to the other men, because after the first round of
accusations began to fly a year before, Renly had sat him down and stroked his
hair and made him promise not to let the japes and jibes of his fellow squires
and soldiers get the better of him.
"They'll mock and they'll tease," Renly had murmured, his brow furrowed, his
hands a welcome distraction, "and you're a proud thing, Loras. I won't ask you
for anything that will shame you."
Loras stands as the last light leaves the courtyard, imagining the roses he
will plant across that lowly squire's torso on the morrow, roses brought up to
bloom the color of the Stormlands sky where Loras's morning star will catch the
boy across the ribs.
Such delicate bones, the ribs, and yet how easily hooks elude them for the soft
flesh beneath, and weapons break them into chalk dust.
                                      ***
When Loras slips away to Renly's chambers, he finds Renly in silhouette against
a large window, staring out into the sudden squall that has risen on the waves
in the sun's absence. Loras locks the heavy door behind him, the reassuring
weight of it barring him from the rest of the castle, and strides closer to
Renly, removing his worn leather gloves and placing them on the edge of Renly's
ornately-carved writing desk.
"I'd think you'd have tired of storms by now," Loras sighs, and Renly's smile
unfurls across his handsome face as he turns. His long legs carry him to meet
Loras in the middle of the bedchamber, but Renly doesn't speak, only reaches
out, sliding his hands up Loras's neck, into his hair, cradling his head in
long, careful fingers as he tilts Loras close for a kiss. Loras still has to
crane his neck to meet Renly's mouth, but there is such safety in Renly's sure,
broad form that he can't help but sway up against Renly's chest.
Renly untangles one hand from Loras's dark curls and slides it purposefully
down Loras's side to splay across the small of his back and tug him even
closer. Thunder echoes over the waves,  into the chamber, and something inside
Loras surges to match it. He grips the front of Renly's doublet in tight fists,
opens his mouth to take their kisses from soft and meandering to something
deeper, something darker, something that only lurks in the heat of summer
storms and the black of midnight skies.
There is so much Loras wants of the world:
He wants for those who see him to admire his grace, his confidence, his skills
in combat; wants crowds of smallfolk to cheer for him, wants women to swoon at
his smile and men to look on him, brows dark with envy. He wants all of this,
has wanted all of this, since he could understand the songs his nursemaid sang
to him, and yet in the humid, breathless silence between his body and Renly's,
he wants nothing more than to toss his ambitions to the angry sea below.
Loras fumbles to unlace Renly's doublet, the rich green fabric twisting in his
hands as he pushes it off Renly's shoulders. Distantly, he hears Renly chuckle,
a thrum that vibrates from Loras's lips down through his skin to his stomach as
he undoes Renly's undershirt and discards it with the doublet. His fingers
shake, just a little, just enough that Renly breaks the kiss to rest his
forehead against Loras's.
"Something's troubling you," Renly whispers.
There is a moment where lightning sparks across the sky, and another moment,
quiet, as the world braces for reaction.
"Nothing's troubling me," Loras tries to sneer. His voice has gone hoarse even
as his head has cleared, and he reaches down to work at the laces of Renly's
breeches. His hands aren't trembling anymore.
Then, thunder; a second later, a downpour that echoes off the great stone walls
of Storm's End, and Loras drops to his knees, mouthing at Renly's cock through
his smallclothes, desperate to have him, to be the only one allowed to have him
like this.
"Loras," Renly murmurs, his voice barely audible over the rain, and his hands
tangle back into Loras's curls, tugging gently as Loras slides Renly's
smallclothes down and off and leans in to lick a hot path down past Renly's
navel. Loras brings Renly's thick cock to his lips, stretches his mouth around
it, then stops, his fingers digging into the back of Renly's thighs as he
braces himself.
The night exhales in a fresh swell of rain, a louder gust of wind. Loras raises
his eyes to meet Renly's, savors the way Renly's jaw has gone soft and slack,
his blue eyes glassy with pleasure and something more, something that stakes a
claim on Loras's heart more surely than any mockery ever has.
Loras moves in time with the cracks of thunder, the waves against the ramparts
crashing to the sound of his heart; he sucks slowly when the wind subsides,
swallows desperately when it rages, and Renly, Renly who so rarely takes
anything seriously, begs him to take more, to move his head faster, and his
voice cracks around moans and pleas and half-formed declarations of love.
There's a tipping point, somewhere in the tempest, and the lightning crackles
like the flames in the great stone fireplace, fast and sudden and everywhere at
once, and Loras surges forward, feeling Renly's cock inside him from lips to
throat, and there's something wild and wanton and desperately right about the
way Loras is pressing the hot skin of Renly's cock between the curl of his
tongue and the roof of his mouth. He touches his nose to the dark curls at the
base of Renly's cock and licks, swallows, forgets how to breathe as Renly jerks
and spills inside him.
Loras sinks back onto his haunches, distantly surprised to find that his own
breeches are sticky, that he has managed to bring himself off without so much
as Renly's hand for help. He looks up, into wide worshipful blue eyes, and then
Renly slides to his knees so he can pull Loras forward into another kiss.
"What did I do," Renly hums, catching Loras's bottom lip with his teeth,
seemingly oblivious to the taste of his own seed in Loras's mouth, "to deserve
someone so wonderful as you?"
Those are the words that calm the seas, that stop the storm; Loras feels
himself relax as his release catches up to him, as he leans into Renly's arms
and lets Renly's palms roam his back. This is all the adoration he needs,
Renly's eager hands and mouth in this bedchamber lit by braziers and
candlelight, this echoing room damp with the smells of sweat and sex and the
sea. If the smallfolk never cheer him on, Renly's words always will; for every
bit of laughter at Loras's sake, Renly will chuckle hushed praise against his
throat; and for every dark bloom of blood Loras beats beneath the flesh of
those who doubt him, he will kiss another bloom, lovelier and deeper, into
Renly's warm skin.
Such a brave thing, the heart, to sit behind the ribs, to love and wait while
cradled in a chalk-dust cage.
                                      ***


End Notes
     Title from Bell X1's "The Ribs of a Broken Umbrella." Visit me on
     Tumblr at in-static-pallor for more Renly/Loras + House Tyrell fun.
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