Summary: The Lion and Luther pine over (and fantasize about) each other, each firmly believing his feelings to be unrequited. (PG-13)

***

The sharp bite of self-hatred was always there, a constant burn right under the skin. It was not being the person he wanted to be. He knew how he should be, but he was reminded again and again that his force of will had not made it so.

Lion el’Jonson hated it, hated those distractions of feelings he didn’t want to feel. But the pressure built up. It made him tense. It made him devote more and more of his attention to keeping himself in check rather than whatever he was doing. It made him short-tempered and sharp, and made him slip up and give himself away.

Luther was angry with him too now. Even he was aware of that and he did not consider himself an authority on the subject. For a totally unreasonable reason too! Luther hadn’t been injured in the least and was perfectly capable of standing on his own. This also had the benefit of avoiding Luther’s rough, calloused hand gripping his own and feeling his full weight pull against him as he got his feet under him and getting a congratulatory slap on the back for winning the bout.

If the Lion couldn’t trust himself with such things, then he couldn’t have them. Better to keep Luther at a distance and be professional and unbrotherly, which Luther would understand and get over, than risk the other man seeing through him to the truth and recoiling in disgust.

He didn’t even have to wish he could ask his mentor’s advice on the subject. He’d already heard it, if framed more in the theoretical. ‘There are rumours, but it’s just idle talk. I know you’re busy, but it’s for your reputation.’

‘What rumours?’

‘About your prowess as a man and, you know…’

‘No, I don’t.’

Luther would always defend his reputation against any insinuations of perversion. He couldn’t make Luther a liar. That made him almost sick to contemplate as the other thoughts, the ones he didn’t have about the women at the brothels like he was supposed to. No, not about them.

Once, when he was younger, he had accidentally seen Luther with one of the camp-followers who buzzed around the edges of the fortresses near towns like flies. He had been in the loft to get feed for his horse and hadn’t expected them to decide to use that haystack. The Lion had known he should look away, but he couldn’t bring himself to, watching mesmerised and burning with arousal and shame, hiding rather than running before they saw him.

He told himself it wasn’t the girl he was jealous of. Never came close to believing himself.

He needed an outlet, a catharsis, or the tension would build until he couldn’t look at Luther no matter how many cold rivers he jumped in.

The Lion’s eyes flickered to the door, even though he remembered perfectly well that he had bolted it. No one was going to interrupt unexpectedly. Luther wasn’t speaking to him and wouldn’t show up with his best diplomat’s face on so soon.

He let himself unwind, just a little, let himself dwell on the thoughts that were always lurking beneath his consciousness, flights of fancy. He wasn’t sure how accurate his fantasies were to how the real thing would be, it hadn’t happened, but he had a very good memory. It shamed him to pervert his memories of perfectly innocent events in this way, but, well, he could remember so easily and vividly.

He imagined he had reached a hand out to Luther earlier, but instead of pulling him up, he had let Luther guide him down. It was much easier to silence the thoughts that said Luther would never… He would flinch away if I…

The Lion could remember the exact shape of Luther’s lips against his temple, back when he was younger and he had been treated like a boy to be coddled rather than a man. He could remember the heat like a brand against his cool skin.

In his fantasies, those lips trailed down his brow, to the corner of his eye, across his cheek to his mouth. The Lion licked his lips, trying to imagine kissing. Everyone raved about it, though he wasn’t exactly sure how the manoeuvring of tongues went. He knew how Luther smelled, the slight differences in his sweat from anyone else’s that he didn’t have words for, and shivered to wonder what he tasted like.

He unlaced his breeches and slipped his hand inside. He had so many memories of Luther’s hands closing around his and guiding him through new moments with a ‘Like this.’ Luther would show him what to do, exactly how to touch him. He could imagine Luther’s familiar chuckle and ‘Good’ when showing him new things, and shifted the sound of them to be a little breathier, more like the deep throaty sound when he and that girl had been…

Blushing faintly with shame, he cleaned his hand meticulously and cast his handkerchief into the fire. This was how things had to be. Luther would understand that which the Lion could allow him to understand, and must never know that which he couldn’t.

***

The Lion thought he could live without him? Then let him, good riddance. If the Lion didn’t want him, didn’t need him, then Luther wasn’t going to go crawling back to him.

Deep in his heart, he knew he’d give up his pride, his dreams, his self if he could have his brother back. But the Lion would never forgive, even if he got down on his knees for him. He’d lie down for him if it meant getting touch him. None of these things would ever, ever happen.

In turn, he would not beg to closed ears and a closed heart.

Why come before him as a beggar? he heard sometimes in the night in his own voice. He would not understand even if you walked from the sea to Aldurukh barefoot like they did in the elder days. A man who was strong enough, one who could not be cast aside…

Why did you obey? he sometimes wondered. Jealous because you’re not his equal, but jumping to follow him without argument like those star-eyed children. When have you not done what you thought right, whatever anyone told you? Will you blindly repeat stupid orders now? There’s an entire galaxy of possibilities out there. You can do anything, go anywhere.

He couldn’t, though. Even if it were physically possible for him to seize an armada and leave this galaxy for one no one else had claimed yet across the great emptiness, he knew he could not escape the gravity well he was caught in. A galaxy without the Lion in it would have no meaning. There was one man he needed to impress. To overcome.

Hate, dismissal, contempt, scorn, those were easy to bear from a stranger or enemy. It was love that broke a heart, that brought him to his knees.

He knew perfectly well the callousness was born from sheer inhumanity, and blaming the Lion was a pointless as blaming a machine for how it had been made. The Lion had broken Luther and had not noticed. Even if Luther had explained it to him, he would not have cared. He needed strong right arms, someone who could always support him and obey him, not love.

I should have done better. If I were not distracted by this darkness within me, I could be who he needs me to be, be someone who would not add to the pain and isolation I know he feels.

He shouldn’t want this.

The Lion had been right to send him away, that was what hurt the worst. Luther was disloyal. He should not want to degrade the man to whom he owed fealty, who…

No, that way of thinking still went against the grain. He would never be a good subordinate, and all those years of being young and having a vision had trained him out of the habit of caring if people said he overreached himself. Things had fit then, when it was the two of them against the world, brothers.

He couldn’t quite dismiss his anger at the Lion casting him away even on a good day, but that was different. Whatever the circumstances between them, he still loved the Lion as desperately as he always had. On his very honour as a man, he should not yearn for him in such a way. It was disgraceful.

There were always rumours in the old days about what the men who lived in the knightly orders apart from womankind got up to, but such things were not spoken too loudly. Such an accusation was only flung around to ruin a reputation or to force a man into a challenge duel, for he could not let such an insult lie.

It shamed Luther to know he had long found the Lion fair to look upon, his strength and beauty more alluring than any comely maid he might dally with then forget. Such appreciation had gone further than it should have long ago, but his thoughts had turned darker of late, past all that might be excused.

He imagined the Lion’s familiar expression of complete bafflement, where he’d look at Luther and silently ask him ‘Explain this to me.’ How that look would turn from confusion to surprised ecstasy when Luther put his hands on him and showed him how it was done. The Lion moaning under him and pulling Luther to him as he knelt between his spread legs as decisively and heedless of consequences as he did everything he put his mind to.

He imagined love returned in the Lion’s beautiful green eyes, instead of emptiness, and knew himself for a delusional fool.