by Cooper, R.
“When I see you again,” Godric agreed with such lights in his eyes that Bertie took a step forward. He halted himself, just barely, only to have a moment of confusion when Godric’s hand took hold of his arm, when Godric came to him and was so near.
Godric’s brow was lined like the corners of his eyes and he moved with a flash of color that held Bertie still.
Bertie breathed out hard, shuddering with awed, delighted confusion as Godric tucked the handful of flowers into his hair. Godric pushed the stems into the dark strands to ensure that not one would fall but Bertie did not protest the tangles. There were flowers in his hair that Godric had put there. He wondered if Godric had had the same vision of all ending well, if Godric also thought that it had to be so, so that Bertie could pull him close on the palace steps as garlands of victory fluttered down around them.
When Godric was finished and had lowered his hand once more, Bertie slowly reached up to feel what had been done, only to hesitate without daring to touch a single petal. Around them, others were watching, amused or shocked or disgusted, he could not tell. He did not much care to take his eyes from Godric to look.
But Godric was wrong. “These are for soldiers,” Bertie said at last, and was answered with a single, perplexing nod. Bertie glanced around quickly, once, at knights and horsemen and peasants alike, and then lifted his chin. “I had not thought Southern men so bold,” he declared over the blood rushing in his ears, using his last bit of control. There was only one meaning for this.
“You’d be surprised, my lord.” Godric gave away nothing and yet everything, and Bertie could not help himself any longer. He fell forward into the man’s arms. His Godric, who caught him and held him there, letting Bertie absorb the sound of his heartbeat.
He had to come back.
With that thought, Bertie reached up to yank one twining stem from his hair, uncaring of how messy his hair must look. There was no finer decoration.
He held up the single bloom of fired gold and could have fainted at how Godric bent his head without comment.
It was a momentous occasion, a scene from an epic song, a crucial part of history, the last moments he might ever have with Godric.
Thus, he knew that when he opened his mouth, something stupid and a little mad would undoubtedly fall out.
“Sir Godric of the South, you will return to me alive and well when this is over.” Bertie slid the flower behind Godric’s ear as smoothly as he could with his hand trembling and twined the stem among the thinning strands of silver. His voice was raised too high, not that anyone would dare comment, but when he realized that what had issued forth had been a firm and serious order, he gasped.
It was perhaps his first direct order to Godric.
Godric merely raised his head and gave another simple nod. “Yes, my lord,” he agreed, with all the particular heat and fervor that he had always put into the title. Bertie swallowed dryly and then was shaking too much to bear it any longer. He ducked his head to let his mouth rest at Godric’s throat, against his much-debated stubble. Godric’s hand met him to pull him closer.
The cat yowled in protest at being crushed and the soldiers around them resumed their duties. The air stayed icy as the sun rose but for one moment longer Bertie did not move as he allowed himself to dream of what could be, what would be.
Neither, he noticed, did Godric.
Epilogue
“I had not thought you find you in the kitchens, my lord.”
Bertie jumped at the first few warmly spoken words and hit his head on the edge of a wooden shelf. Not hard, but enough to make him wince and then sigh and think to himself that even now he could never stop making a fool of himself around Godric.
Mathilda, the Keep’s Mistress of the Kitchens, only directed an unsurprised glance at him before looking beyond him to where Godric was no doubt standing and watching Bertie rub his head.
Bertie could have lifted his chin and demanded to know what was so funny that she could not meet his eye, but to do that would be to act like the sort of noble that Godric despised, and in any case, Mathilda was impervious to any attempt at intimidation unless it came from Aethir himself, who would never have dared.
No one would. No one made honey cakes for the Harvest celebrations the way Mathilda did and only a fool would anger her and Aethir was not a fool.
Bertie was of course, but not for angering her. He turned and straightened and lifted his chin anyway, in case Godric was laughing at him.
Godric was standing in one doorway, leaning to one side and looking perfectly at ease, which was a lie, because he was not at ease, as his color hinted. But he was smiling, a soft curve of his lips that made Bertie drop his chin and offer another sigh as he hopped forward.
“Why wouldn’t I be in the kitchens?” He stopped short of Godric with a move that was nearly a curtsey and which left his skirts and borrowed apron swishing around his ankles. Godric’s smile seemed to grow, though perhaps it was Bertie’s imagination.
He did not mind, whichever was true. He loved to dream about Godric’s smile and he loved Godric’s real smile, so much so that he could not seem to get enough of it. He would wear an apron and cover himself in flour and sticky honey and fermented grain mash and all manner of spices and then hit his head everyday if it made Godric smile sweetly at him.
Perhaps not hit his head, Bertie adjusted his own thought.
Godric inclined his head to greet him and Mathilda as well before answering Bertie’s demand. “Because there is much to do in these kitchens with your brother and his retinue at the Keep, and you would not wish to get in the lady’s way.”
Calling Mathilda a lady was blatant flattery. Bertie had not thought Godric capable of it and gasped at him for a moment before sweeping forward again. He remembered the honey coating his clothing and stopped just in time to spare Godric a sticky fate.
He put his hands on his hips but he knew he did not look very fierce.
“I am learning Mathilda’s secret for making her honey cake, oh treasure of my heart.”
After all these months of having Godric to himself, months that almost totaled a year now, Godric still paused in momentary embarrassment at Bertie’s openness in adoring him. He twitched, as if he wanted to look to gauge Mathilda’s reaction but her chuckle must have been enough of an indication because Godric kept his eyes where they belonged—leveled right at Bertie.
“And why is that, my lord?” he asked seriously in a graveled voice that made Bertie want to swoon. Instead of swooning, Bertie suddenly and maddeningly lost his ability to speak. He leaned closer, swallowing once or twice as Mathilda cackled knowingly at him the way she probably did to every scullery maid and cooking assistant that came in looking for secrets to please their men.
Godric, in that way he had of anticipating nearly everything there was to anticipate, leaned forward at the same moment, meaning that if Bertie ducked his head he could whisper into his beloved’s ear. It was not a chance he wanted to waste. He wet his lips.
“Tomorrow there will be balefires and music and wine and honey cakes,” Bertie murmured and felt a surge of frustrated heat when Godric nodded but clearly did not understand his meaning.
Why should he understand? Bertie whined silently to the gods. It had been Bertie who had dreamed of sharing the Harvest revels with Godric for years, not the other way around. It had not been Godric using the images of what might someday be to comfort himself during the long months of winter and Godric’s absence and the awful fears of never seeing Godric again. Enjoying the festival of the Harvest and the new year with Godric had not been the careful vision for the future that Godric had allowed himself after Godric had returned to him injured and unwell and spent months walking on a crutch to spare his broken ribs and healing flesh.
Just the same, Bertie could not be sure that Godric had not guessed and was simply teasing him with what the people of the South called humor.
“I need all to go well this year, Godric. Perfect wine and the sweet
est cake and the best music, for there will be dancing,” Bertie went on, taking his time to savor the words and the glancing touch of his lips against the shell of Godric’s ear.
“Dancing?” Judging from the way Godric echoed him and flinched he had not guessed at Bertie’s real meaning at all. He looked alarmed and went a shade paler. He clutched at his side as he obviously thought about more pain. It was a gesture he couldn’t help; Bertie had seen it many times since Godric and Aethir had triumphantly reentered Camlann after months of battle, but each time he witnessed it, it was a struggle not to grab Godric close and squeeze him tight. If it would not have hurt Godric more, he was not sure he would have been able to stop himself.
But Godric was standing before him now. After having walked from the stables where he had been looking over horses with Aethir Godric was standing there, not out of breath and not too pale and with no crutch in sight.
Bertie grinned.
“Dancing,” he repeated slowly. Mathilda cackled again, but only nervous and shy Southerners would pay her any attention at a moment like this. “With the dark wines and rich cakes and lively music, should we not dance?’
He did not know if Godric’s stillness now was from embarrassment at the idea of taking part in the Keep’s wild festivities or worry over his ability to dance, but either way, Bertie had to respond to his distress.
He stepped in, sparing a second’s thought for the gooey mess of cake ingredients all over his apron that were now also all over Godric, but then he bent his head to lay it at Godric’s shoulder, gently, gently, so as not to cause pain.
Not that Godric seemed to care about pain when they were alone and this close, but Bertie thought it right that he should care.
“Dancing.” He could not keep the satisfaction from his voice. He did not feel much like moving although his first batch of cakes should be ready soon and he was not at all sure of how they might taste or if they would be as hard as rocks. “In any way that will not hurt you, Godric.” Bertie inhaled, and instead of horse and stables he detected cloves and nutmeg coming from the oven. It made the air sweeter but it was not the oven warming Bertie’s blood; that was the heat of Godric’s cheeks as he listened to Bertie’s crazy words. “Perhaps we will dance in this way, my beloved. A new style, pressed close together, just like this.” A dance like that with two bodies pressed close enough to share breath was not so different than what would go on in the fields after the dancing tomorrow. It was not so different at all.
Godric must have had a similar thought, for he coughed. “Aye,” he accepted this idea softly, for Bertie’s ears alone, because he might be embarrassed but he was brave enough to try.
Bertie pulled back to catch a glimpse of the redness in Godric’s cheeks at what they were discussing. He grinned again. “Of course, the dancing will never be as important as what follows after,” he offered, making his voice like honey and wine and balefires combined. The music he left to Godric and the quickening of his breath as their eyes met.
Somewhere behind them, dealing with the cakes that Bertie had quite forgotten, Mathilda laughed.
The End
About the author:
R. Cooper is a big ole dork who is pretty much always writing even if that writing isn’t always fit for printing. She loves shameless sluts and brave heroes and eye patches and spies and space pirates and werewolves and writes about many of these things.
To find more snippets about Bertie and his Godric, or information on any of my other works, please visit my journal http://r-cooper.livejournal.com/
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