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His brother was king.
Clive shooed away the boy who’d helped him out of his uncomfortable finery and sank heavily onto the edge of his bed. Silence washed over him the moment the boy closed the door behind him, but Clive wasn’t truly alone. Guards marched just outside in the hall. They would never stray all that far from him, not since everyone realized Joshua really would become king, and Clive his sworn protector.
He exhaled and rubbed a palm over his face. His hand was calloused from years of sword training. Stubble roughened his cheeks. He was supposed to shave it off, but the flurry of coronation activities rushed by in such a blur that he’d lost track of many niceties, that among them. Someone had dressed him every day. Someone had done his hair. Someone had escorted him around to that function or this. Someone had told him whom to shake hands with, whom to flatter, whom to stay away from.
Clive understood little of it. He was just a shield, his brother’s shield.
“Why does it matter if people see me?” he’d grumbled a week before the coronation.
“Because they must know you stand at my side, Clive,” Joshua had said, weary.
He’d stood on a platform while two boys dressed him, buttoning up his doublet and fastening on a cloak. Clive’s hands had trembled when he watched one of the boys lower to his knees to fix Joshua’s trousers. Clive had gripped his own pants and looked away.
“What does it matter if they know?” he’d said.
“It matters because it sends a message.”
He’d scoffed. “A message.”
Joshua had swivelled to pin Clive in place with his pale eyes. “Yes, a message. A message that your sword is ever within my reach. That I am strong. We are strong.”
Clive shivered as the words rang in his mind. They’d gone through so much to reach this point. How many times had Joshua flirted with death? There was Phoenix Gate, yes, but that was only the beginning. Many more attempts on Joshua’s life followed, and Clive thwarted each and every one. Somehow.
It was often a near thing.
Now, at last, Joshua was king. He’d taken his rightful place, and so had Clive as his shield.
Clive tugged off his boots and let them thud unceremoniously to the floor. At least his underthings were plain and normal. Freed of his finery, he finally felt like himself. He stripped down to his thinnest layers and crawled into a bed far too large and magnificent for a man like him. He was supposed to be sleeping on the ground before marching to a battlefield. Who was he to sleep in this expansive, canopied bed in a room full of gilded furniture and glass windows warmed with thick, crimson curtains? He had his own writing desk, as though a man like Clive had any use for a writing desk, his own closet full of clothing finer than anything he’d ever wear, his own private latrine that some unfortunate castle servant cleaned every single day.
As Clive lay in bed staring at the drapery stretched overhead like wispy clouds, he felt like an imposter. But this was what Joshua wanted, Clive close at his side, and who was Clive to deny a king?
That did not make it chafe any less.
Perhaps someday Joshua would send him to some battlefield where he belonged, but for now Clive would perform his duty. He would keep his brother alive. He would serve the king at all costs.
He nearly fell asleep thinking of nothing but that conviction, but then a knock issued from within the wall.
Clive bolted upright in bed, all thoughts of sleep forgotten as he leapt to his feet. He dropped into a fighting stance, for all the good it would do him when he was nearly naked. He looked around, but the nearest probable weapon was the candle holder sitting on a bedside table.
The knock came again, echoing hollowly from behind a tall dresser Clive had never bothered to fill with clothing.
“Clive, let me in,” a muffled voice called.
Clive’s stance slackened. “Joshua?”
“Yes. Come. Hurry. It’s dark.”
Clive rushed to the dresser and hauled it aside before he could think about the strangeness of his newly crowned brother hiding in the walls. When he shoved the furniture aside, he glimpsed a small hole in the stone. Joshua climbed out of it on his hands and knees, then stood and brushed off his trousers. He’d changed as well. He would have had to with all that fabric they’d swaddled him in. He looked more like Clive remembered, more like himself, especially with dust on his simple tunic and in his light hair.
“What are you doing?” Clive said.
“Coming to see you, obviously,” Joshua said as though the king sneaking into Clive’s bedchamber was the simplest thing in all the world.
Joshua planted his hands on his hips and took in the room.
“Awfully different from when we were kids.”
“It is,” Clive said.
He didn’t add that the room was basically unrecognizable. It was plain when Clive was a boy, with a simple cot and a chest and little else. It felt huge and cold back then, but now rugs warmed the floor and a fire crackled in the fireplace set into the far wall, the flames casting a sedate, rosy glow. There was even a painting of a battle on one wall. And the bed...
Joshua strode to it, plopping onto the edge and testing the cushioned mattress.
“I’m glad your accommodations aren’t so dreary anymore,” Joshua said.
Clive stepped cautiously toward him, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed beside Joshua. “Why are you here?”
“That’s a bit rude,” Joshua said.
Clive shrugged.
“We’ll have to work on courtly manners if you’re to be my shield,” Joshua said.
“A shield doesn’t need to speak.”
Joshua snorted something like a laugh. “Are you inanimate then? Just a tool?”
“Yes. That’s all I need to be.”
“And what about what you want to be?”
Clive shrugged again. What he wanted had never once mattered, even before their father died. Clive had merely done what was necessary, as he was now, as he would continue to do for Joshua’s entire reign.
He didn’t realize he’d dropped his gaze to the floor between his feet until Joshua’s hand landed softly atop his and Clive jerked his eyes up.
Joshua didn’t acknowledge the touch, as easy and casual as ever. Clive had told him he’d have to stop being so familiar with him. He was the king now. But Joshua just smiled whenever Clive said things like that.
“Do you remember when I used to come here?” Joshua said softly.
The flames in the fireplace might have leapt free of their confinement at that. Clive tensed, sweat prickling the back of his neck. He looked away, but Joshua’s hand remained atop his.
“We were children,” Clive said, his voice a low scrape like metal against the stone floor.
“We were,” Joshua agreed easily. “And then we weren’t.”
Clive gripped the sheet under his hands.
“I confess, I fit rather more easily in that passage back then,” Joshua said. “I’m glad I can still manage it.”
“We should have sealed that up,” Clive hissed. “It’s dangerous. If someone else were to discover it...”
Joshua finally removed his hand from atop Clive’s, but only in service of batting aside his warning.
“No one will find it,” he said. “It’s only for us.”
His voice dropped on the word “us,” caressing it in a way that tickled Clive’s ears. Clive knew they were bright with warmth. He could feel the heat crawling up his neck as well, but he stuffed it down as much as he could.
“Joshua, it has been a long day, a long week. I really think—”
It happened all at once. First, nothing, then a leg slung across Clive. He reacted on instinct, catching Joshua’s hips as Joshua settled on his thighs and braced against his shoulders.
“It has been a very long day,” Joshua said. “A very long week. A very long year. I have hardly seen you, brother.”
“I have served faithfully at your side,” Clive said. His hands tingled where he held Joshua’s thin waist, tingled like they had when he’d watched that boy undress Joshua, get close to Joshua, touch him.
“That isn’t the same,” Joshua said. “What we must be out there, who we must be, it isn’t real. Figureheads. Symbols. We perform our roles, and it is like standing beside a stranger. I’ve missed you.”
Those final words, I’ve missed you, brushed against Clive’s face like silky petals warm from basking in the sun.
“Joshua—”
“Have you missed me, Clive? Have you thought of me?”
Clive could not possibly answer that. He could not possibly confess to the thoughts that plagued him, the dreams that haunted him, that shiver in his hands when others got to touch Joshua and he had to restrain himself and serve as the perfect shield and brother.
Joshua leaned forward, his back curling, his fingers sliding into Clive’s hair, his lips a finger’s breadth from Clive’s.
“I’ve missed you,” he said again. “I’ve thought of you.”
Clive was running out of room, running out of options, running out of resistance.
“You will have a queen soon,” he said, a final, desperate gambit.
Joshua’s brief, mirthless laugh puffed against Clive’s lips. “Will I? Well, I should not like to go to my marriage bed inexperienced. How disappointing that would be for our nation’s queen.”
Clive might have pointed out that Joshua already wasn’t inexperienced, but he never got the chance. Joshua closed the last fragile bit of distance between them, and Clive’s eyes fluttered shut.
Warmth washed through him as Joshua’s lips met his. Joshua’s hand seized more tightly in his hair, tugging as though Joshua meant to drag Clive somehow even closer. But there was nowhere closer to go, not with Joshua in his lap, his lips pressing hard against Clive’s.
Protest and resistance melted away. For all that Clive had pushed back, he crumbled the moment Joshua took his mouth. When he breathed, the air tasted of fire, the smoky warmth that signals home and safety on a bitter winter night.
Even so, when Joshua finally relented, Clive held him more firmly by the waist, keeping him away.
“You’re the king now, Joshua,” he said. “We can’t.”
“We’re only practicing,” Joshua said. “There’s no harm in practicing.”
“We aren’t boys fumbling around anymore, Joshua. We’re men. And you a rather important man. Too important for the likes of me. Even if we weren’t…”
“Brothers? But doesn’t that make you the safest person I could choose? There is no risk. It’s only us, Clive. We don’t need to worry about the rest of the world or who we are to them. Here, we’re only ourselves.” Joshua thumbed over Clive’s lip, still warm from his kiss. “I need you to show me how to do this properly. They’ll choose a queen for me soon. What if I can’t even fuck her?”
The crassness of the word shot through Clive, jolting him. His throat tightened. His fingers flexed instinctively on Joshua’s hips. Joshua must have noticed. He spread his legs wider and scooted even closer on Clive’s lap, thumbs stroking his rough stubble.
“What if she found my cock a disappointment?” Joshua said.
“She wouldn’t.”
That was the wrong thing to say. A tiny smile curled the corner of Joshua’s mouth.
“Ah, but she might,” he said, “if I didn’t know how to use it.”
He reached down, and Clive abruptly remembered just how thin the clothing he’d meant to sleep in was. He wore nothing but thin cotton underwear tied at his waist. Joshua deftly picked that tie loose and slipped his hand past the fabric.
When he reached inside Clive’s underwear, Joshua found his cock hard and waiting.
The smile spread, taking up not just a corner of Joshua’s plush mouth, but the entirety of his full lips. He stroked down, taking his time, feeling Clive’s entire length, then dragged his hand back up and thumbed over the head. Clive fought not to groan, but he was already hard in his brother’s hand. No amount of artifice would save him.
“Perhaps my queen will start by touching me this way,” Joshua said, low and silky. “I hope she will want me like this. I hope she’ll want to feel all of me, the warmth, the slickness, the way I fill her hand.”
He stroked as he spoke, the motion emphasizing every heated word gusting against Clive’s face.
“And then,” Joshua said, “when I’m hard and wanting, she’ll…”
He shifted, releasing Clive so he could climb onto the bed. Joshua peeled off his tunic and tossed it to the floor as he crawled backward on the bed, letting his body recline long and lean. Clive gave up any pretense, fumbling his way out of his last flimsy piece of clothing and crawling after Joshua until he perched over him on hands and knees.
“She’ll ask me to fuck her,” Joshua said.
He grabbed for Clive, dragging him down so Clive fell atop him. This time, Clive didn’t bother to resist. He slammed his mouth into Joshua’s, seeking the warmth of his perfect lips. Joshua groaned, and Clive used the opportunity to jab his tongue into Joshua’s mouth, licking along the roof in a way that had always, always made him shiver.
It worked again, even all these years later, even with Joshua now a king. He clung to Clive all the same, nails digging into his bare back as their mouths and bodies collided in a tumult of heat. Joshua’s legs spread open around Clive, allowing their bodies to slot together.
But the frustrating barrier of Joshua’s trousers remained between them. Clive pushed himself away with a grumble. The moment he sat back and reached for Joshua’s laces, however, cold reality crept back in. He flailed for an excuse, anything that might propel him forward.
“You ought to, um, to undress her,” Clive said. “To show your interest.”
“Of course,” Joshua said. “Yes, of course.”
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to set Clive’s hands back into motion. He unlaced the trousers and pulled them down with everything under them.
The farce crumbled when Clive saw Joshua sprawled naked on his bed. Clive blocked most of the firelight with his body, but anything that squeezed past him was drawn to Joshua. The rosy light glowed against his pale skin. It darkened his light eyes and licked along the golden-red strands of his hair, splayed out now against Clive’s pillow. With every panting breath, the light danced over Joshua’s skin like flames flickering over ivory.
“Gods…” Clive breathed, forgetting himself for a moment.
Fortunately, Joshua remembered for both of them.
“What should I do first?” he said. “How should I please my queen?”
Clive had to swallow before he could speak. His mouth watered. All thought fled but the stark, violent urge to taste him.
“You should…” The words stuck in his mouth like molasses. He lowered himself, lying on his stomach between Joshua’s legs. “You ought to … to lick her. So that she … so she’ll be … ready for you.”
“Oh,” Joshua said. Then Clive pushed his legs backward, exposing him, and leaned down to lick him, and he gasped out the word a second time. “Oh.”
Clive dragged his tongue over Joshua, tasting the warmth of his skin, the flowers they put in his bath, the fancy soap fit for a king. He licked around Joshua’s hole, tongue pressing at his rim, and Joshua squirmed in his grasp.
“Like that,” Joshua said, breathy and broken. “Like that. Yes, like that.”
“Like that,” Clive popped up to agree.
“Don’t stop.”
He nodded. “Not until yo- she’s ready.”
He dipped back down, eager to get his mouth back on Joshua. The fragrances and soaps were only a thin outer layer. Soon, the licking stripped them away, leaving behind only Joshua himself, only the warm, familiar scent of his bare skin and nothing else. No perfumes. No soaps. No heavy, ominous titles.
Joshua writhed pitifully, his breathing taking on a high, whining edge with every gasp. Clive pushed and found it surprisingly easy to get his tongue inside Joshua’s tight hole. He closed his mouth over Joshua as he wriggled his tongue in deeper, and Joshua moaned until the sound seemed to fill the whole room.
Clive pulled away, but only because his cock ached. It verged on painful, and the sight of Joshua flushed and spread open from Clive’s tonguing did not help whatsoever.
“Clive, please,” Joshua rasped.
Gods help him, Clive lacked the strength to prop up their thin pretext. He lacked the strength to do anything but lunge for the oil he kept hidden under his pillow. It was a small vial, and he thought to keep it there for himself, for his most desperately lonely nights. Spreading it on Joshua now made him wish he’d acquired something finer, something fit for a king.
Joshua’s eyes traced every movement as Clive slicked himself up as well, but they flickered up to Clive’s face when Clive climbed over him. Joshua turned onto his side, grabbing himself and holding himself open, his tight pink hole shining and slick in the firelight.
Clive straddled Joshua’s bottom leg. He pushed the other leg back as he fit himself against Joshua’s hole, letting the head catch and tease before he pushed with intention. Joshua’s face opened with agonized pleasure as Clive entered him, his body stretching around the intrusion of Clive’s cock.
No queen would ever look at Joshua that way. No queen would open her body in this way. No, this was only theirs. It would not avail Joshua when he had a wife; it would only burden him.
But Clive pushed deeper anyway, incapable of stopping himself as Joshua’s head dropped back and his eyes squeezed shut with pleasure. Clive held one thigh, his other hand on Joshua’s hip, his cock buried inside Joshua as deep as it would go. With him straddling Joshua’s bottom leg, he could gaze down at him, even as he drew his hips back. When Joshua arched, his expression slackening into a gasp, Clive witnessed every flicker of desire as it played out across his face.
“Gods,” he said again, soft as a prayer and just as hopelessly beseeching. But was his brother not the embodiment of a god? And what had that ever done but draw him more deeply into this obsession?
He lost himself in it now, in the warmth, the musk, the grip of Joshua’s body squeezing him. He pulled out only to sink back in, only to plunge himself more deeply into an all-consuming warmth that threatened to burn him to ash. He would gladly burn, however, if it was in the Phoenix’s flames.
He gripped Joshua’s thigh more tightly as his pace quickened. Every thrust jolted Joshua on the bed. Clive’s hips slapped against Joshua’s skin, but the clap of body against body was nothing next to the moans that burst from Joshua’s throat. Clive could offer nothing but a low, rumbling accompaniment under that sweet song, but then, Joshua had always been more beautiful, more alluring, more enticing than Clive could ever hope to be. Why he came back to this bed anyway, Clive would never know, but clearly Clive could not deny him, even when he ought.
“Clive,” Joshua gasped. “Clive, harder. I need … harder.”
Clive gritted his teeth and threw himself into the task, holding nothing back now that Joshua had pleaded for more. Joshua shouted, voice bounding off the cold stone of the bedchamber. But Clive also caught him touching himself when he managed to creak one eye open. Joshua pumped himself hard, his head thrown back and back arching so severely part of his body lifted off the mattress.
Suddenly, the heat and pressure intensified. Clive’s eyes slammed shut, and he knew they weren’t reopening for some time. Joshua’s body somehow gripped him even more tightly, and Clive’s head fell back even as he kept jerking his hips in a graceless effort to pry what he needed out of Joshua.
“Yes,” Joshua cried, “yes, like that, yes, Clive, oh gods.”
Then he was gripping Clive, gripping him so hard, so close that Clive’s eyes tried to roll back even though they were closed. He drove himself deep, his body slapping against Joshua’s as he searched for some further depth he hadn’t yet managed to plunder, and everything shattered as his body careened over the edge.
Thunder roared in Clive’s ears. Every muscle went taut. His fingers dug into Joshua’s supple thigh as Joshua’s cries rang through the room. Heat and pressure blinded Clive for one delirious, senseless beat of purest pleasure—
And then he was falling, crashing back into his body. Everything sagged. He released Joshua, falling forward onto his hands and panting with his hair hanging over his face and into his eyes.
After a few ragged breaths, soft fingers combed through his hair. Clive dragged his gaze up and found Joshua smiling dreamily beneath him, soft and flushed with satiation. Joshua’s other hand was curled into a fist, presumably holding his own mess.
Clive struggled to remember himself; he could not leave them in such a state. He pulled himself slowly out of Joshua, trying not to linger too long on the sight of Joshua’s blushing hole and the mess dribbling out of it. His mess. He’d done this.
Clive shook off the thought as he stumbled around the bedchamber on hollow legs searching for any cloth they might use. He eventually came across an old sword cleaning cloth. It wasn’t pristine, but it was good enough. He brought it to the bed, and Joshua cleaned his hand, but he didn’t get out of the bed. When Clive sat awkwardly on the edge, giving him space to leave if he needed to, Joshua simply lay there, languid and open.
Eventually, the bed rustled, and Joshua hugged Clive from behind. He kissed along Clive’s hunched shoulders and wrapped his arms around Clive’s middle, resting his cheek against Clive’s back.
Clive could not deny what he’d just done. The evidence was drying sticky on their skin and turning the bedchamber musky and warm. So he merely set his hand over his brother’s and let Joshua nuzzle in as close as he liked.
#
The boy who came to dress him the next morning would not look him in the eye. He was one of the usual boys, but Clive brushed off the strangeness of his avoidance, at least until he’d gone down to the kitchens to steal something to eat and a fellow shield smirked at him as Clive attempted to pilfer a fresh roll.
She wasn’t the only one.
Another of the shields elbowed him, quirking an eyebrow when Clive regarded him.
“Entertaining a guest last night, my lord Rosfield?” the man said with mock formality.
Joshua’s cries rang in Clive’s ears. Gods, how loud had they been? He hadn’t thought about it at the time. He hadn’t thought about anything, in truth, but Johsua’s body beneath him. Could someone have passed down the hall and recognized their king’s shouts of pleasure? He went cold, crushing the roll in his hand.
The shield laughed and smacked him on the shoulder. “Relax, Rosfield. Most of the others are happy for you. Even a lord needs a good tumble now and then. It’s nice to know you’re human like the rest of us.”
Clive was saved from having to reply by a hush that swept through the kitchen. Clive turned, and there was Joshua. No, there was the king, swallowed in thick, embroidered fabrics and surrounded on every side by advisors and attendants.
Every shield and cook and servant dropped to one knee and bowed their heads. Clive kept his eyes trained on the floor beneath him until a hand lightly touched the top of his head. He would know those fingers anywhere, even though they did not tangle and pull as they had last night.
“There you are,” Joshua said. “I was looking for you.”
“Your Majesty?” Clive said.
“I have a busy day ahead,” Joshua said. “I will need my shield beside me.”
Clive dared not answer, but when Joshua smiled and turned away, Clive rose to follow him, ever at his side, ever his loyal shield. Ever prepared for whatever the king should need.