Chapter 8: The War
The memory arrived not as a dream, but as a physical scent.
It was the clean, milky smell of Baelon’s head as he slept against Gwayne’s chest that did it. Such profound softness, such total trust. It unlocked a vault deep within him, and what poured out was not soft at all.
The air in the Wolfswood tasted of damp rot and cold iron. It was autumn, but the chill had teeth here, biting through wool and leather. The Hightower host was a scar upon the forest floor—a thousand men, their campfires flickering like earthbound stars amidst the gnarled sentinels of oak and ironwood. The war was a distant, grinding horror to the south. Here, there was only the march, the exhaustion, and the waiting.
Gwayne couldn’t sleep. The ground was a frozen plate against his back. The sounds of the camp—the snores, the muffled curses, the restless shift of horses—were a tapestry of unease. Next to him, rolled in his own woolen cloak, lay Ser Ormund Hightower, his cousin. Ormund was a year older, broader, with a laugh that could shake frost from branches and a temper that could start a fire in the rain. They had shared a wet-nurse, then a master-at-arms, now this frozen patch of dirt.
Ormund wasn’t sleeping either. Gwayne could tell by the rigid set of his shoulders, by the too-steady rhythm of his breathing.
They had chosen this spot away from the others, near a trickling stream that whispered secrets to the stones. A space for family, they’d said. A space for silence.
The silence between them was a live wire.
It had happened before. Twice. In a storage room in the Hightower, drunk on summer wine and stupidity. In a stable loft, after a tourney, the air thick with hay-dust and animal heat. It was always the same. A blur of frantic hands, a choked-off gasp, a mutual ruin followed by a silence deeper than any well. They never spoke of it. By dawn, it was a phantom limb—an ache where something had been violently amputated.
The wanting was a sickness in Gwayne’s gut. It was sharper out here, honed by the proximity of death, by the crude jokes and the whores who followed the army. It felt less like desire and more like a need to prove he was still alive, that he could feel something other than dread. And Ormund… Ormund was familiar. Ormund was safety and sin wrapped into one.
Gwayne turned onto his side, facing his cousin’s back. The world narrowed to the space between them—six inches of frosted moss. He could smell Ormund: sweat, leather, the faint pine-tar soap they both used. His heart was a war drum in his throat.
He moved not with passion, but with a terrible, graceless resolve. He closed the gap. His lips, chapped and cold, brushed the nape of Ormund’s neck, just above his woolen collar.
Ormund went utterly still. A stone. A corpse.
Gwayne froze, regret ice-flooding his veins. He began to pull back.
Then Ormund turned. It was a violent, sudden motion. In the bruised moonlight filtering through the canopy, his face was all hard planes and shadow, his eyes black pits. There was no tenderness in that look. Only a raw, recognizing hunger.
He didn’t kiss Gwayne. He attacked his mouth.
It was all teeth and desperation. Ormund’s tongue was thick and demanding, pushing past Gwayne’s lips with a guttural sound. The taste was of stale ale and something profoundly, essentially male. Gwayne’s hands came up, clutching at Ormund’s tunic, pulling him closer. Their noses smashed together. It hurt. It was perfect.
Ormund shoved him. Gwayne landed on his back with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him. Before he could inhale, Ormund was on him, his weight a crushing, welcome anchor. He straddled Gwayne’s hips, his knees digging into the frozen earth on either side.
“Fuck,” Ormund breathed, the word a hot cloud against Gwayne’s mouth. It wasn’t a curse. It was a prayer.
He rutted against him. Through layers of wool, leather, and mail, the hard, thick line of Ormund’s cock ground down against Gwayne’s own aching erection. There was no finesse. It was a brutal, clumsy piston motion, all friction and frantic need. The metal studs on Ormund’s belt dug into Gwayne’s pelvis. The pain was a bright counterpoint to the building, terrifying pleasure.
Gwayne’s head fell back, exposing his throat. A broken noise, half-whimper, half-snarl, tore from him. He bucked his hips up, meeting Ormund’s downward thrusts. The rhythm was chaotic, animal. They were two beasts in the dark, trying to climb inside each other’s skin, to forget their names, their house, the war, everything.
“Yeah,” Ormund panted, his voice gravel. “Fucking… yeah.” He braced his hands on either side of Gwayne’s head, his arms trembling with the force of his movement. The rough wool of his trousers was scorching against Gwayne’s. The sound was obscene—a wet, rhythmic scratch, the jangle of mail, their ragged breaths syncing into a ragged, shuddering tempo.
Gwayne was unspooling. The tension coiling in his gut was a white-hot wire. He fumbled a hand between them, palming the solid, heated bulge of Ormund’s cock through his clothes. Ormund groaned, a deep, ragged sound that went straight to Gwayne’s core. He increased his pace, his hips slamming down harder, faster.
“I’m gonna…” Gwayne choked out, the warning a useless gasp.
“Do it,” Ormund snarled into his neck. “Come, you fucking… come.”
The permission, filthy and urgent, was the final lever. Pleasure detonated at the base of Gwayne’s spine, a shockwave of pure, mindless release. He cried out, a sound muffled by Ormund’s shoulder, his body bowing off the ground as his cock spasmed, pumping hot seed into his smallclothes and trousers. The world blurred into sensation—the weight, the smell, the brutal, perfect friction.
Feeling him pulse and go rigid, Ormund let out a choked curse. His movements grew even more frenzied, ragged. Three more frantic, grinding thrusts and he followed, his whole body seizing. Gwayne felt the hot, wet spread of Ormund’s release through the layers of fabric, a second soak of heat atop his own. Ormund collapsed onto him, his full weight driving the air from Gwayne’s lungs, his face buried in the crook of Gwayne’s neck. His panting breaths were scorching, desperate gulps of air.
They lay there, glued together by sweat and spend. The forest sounds rushed back in—the stream, the distant owl, the endless wind in the trees. The reality of what they’d done, where they were, settled over them like a burial shroud.
The heat between them curdled into shame.
Ormund was the first to move. He pushed himself off Gwayne with a force that felt like revulsion. He rolled onto his side, his back to Gwayne once more. He adjusted his trousers with a rough, hurried tug. Then he closed his eyes, his breathing deliberately slowing, deepening into a false semblance of sleep.
The message was clear. It was over. It had never happened.
Gwayne lay on the frozen ground, the wet, cooling stain in his breeches going cold, then icy. The blissful emptiness was gone, replaced by a hollow, yawning self-loathing. He stared up at the tangled black branches against the grey sky, the cousin he loved and feared lying a world away beside him.
He learned the shape of loneliness that night. It was not an absence. It was a presence—the heat of another man’s body turning cold on your own skin, while the world slept on, oblivious.
It was a presence—the heat of another man’s body turning cold on your own skin, while the world slept on, oblivious.
That particular flavor of loneliness always smelled of spilled wine.
The memory of the first time unfolded now, sharper than the frozen forest, painted in the warm, stupid hues of a summer night in Oldtown two years before the war truly bit. They were in some antechamber off the Feast Hall, the stone walls vibrating with the muffled roar of a celebratory feast for Gwayne’s thirtieth nameday. The air was thick with the scent of roasted meat and beeswax candles.
They were both fucking legless.
“You can’t even stand,” Ormund had slurred, grinning. He held Gwayne upright by the front of his silk doublet. “Pathetic. I’ve seen newborn foals with more coordination.”
“S’your fault,” Gwayne laughed, his head swimming. “You kept filling the cup. ‘To my cousin, the last decent man in Westeros!’ You said that. Twice.”
“Because it’s true,” Ormund said, the grin softening. His hazel eyes, so like Gwayne’s own but flecked with gold, were warm and unfocused. He hadn’t let go of the doublet. Their faces were close. Ormund’s breath was sweet with Arbor gold.
The noise from the hall faded into a dull hum. Gwayne looked at his cousin’s mouth. He looked at the familiar scar cutting through his brow, at the stubble shadowing his jaw. A feeling, vast and terrifying and drunk, rose up in his chest. It was simpler than thought. It was need.
He kissed him.
It was nothing like the desperate clash in the woods. This was slow, tentative. A clumsy press of lips that tasted of wine and uncertainty. Gwayne’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird in a cage.
Ormund froze. His hands tightened on the silk. He broke the kiss, pulling back just inches, his eyes wide with pure, sobering shock. “Gwayne?”
Gwayne said nothing. He just looked at him, his own panic flooding in. He’d ruined everything.
Then Ormund made a sound like a drowning man finding air. He kissed him back. It was a confirmation, a surrender. He pushed Gwayne back until his shoulders hit the cold stone wall of the antechamber, the tapestry rustling beside them. The kiss deepened, turned wet and searching. Ormund’s tongue slid against his, and Gwayne moaned into his mouth, his hands fisting in Ormund’s tunic.
“Fuck,” Ormund breathed against his lips. He shoved his thigh between Gwayne’s legs, the pressure making Gwayne’s head thud back against the stone. Ormund’s hips began to move. It was a rough, immediate grind, his hardened cock dragging against Gwayne’s through the fine layers of their clothing. The friction was brutal, exquisite. “Is this…?”
“Yes,” Gwayne gasped. “Gods, yes. Don’t stop.”
Ormund didn’t. He lost himself utterly. He rutted against Gwayne like a beast in a trap, his movements growing jerky, feral. He buried his face in Gwayne’s neck, biting at the skin there, his breath coming in hot, ragged gusts. The rough weave of Ormund’s trousers, the slick slide of silk and linen between them, the hard, unyielding wall at his back—it was an avalanche of sensation.
“You feel that?” Ormund grunted, his voice thick with a pleasure that sounded like pain. He thrust harder, his belt buckle biting into Gwayne’s hipbone. “Feel what you do?”
Gwayne could only whimper. His own hips bucked, meeting every desperate drive. The coil of pleasure wound tighter, a white-hot spring in his gut. It was obscene. It was glorious. He was going to come in his breeches like a green boy.
“Ormund, I’m—I’m gonna—”
“Come,” Ormund snarled. “Come all over yourself, you pretty fucking mess.”
The command, filthy and direct, snapped the last thread. Pleasure erupted, blinding and total. Gwayne cried out, a high, broken whine as his body convulsed, soaking his smallclothes with hot, pulsing release. The intensity wrung him out, left him trembling and boneless against the wall.
Feeling him spasm, Ormund let out a choked, guttural roar. His thrusts became a frantic, stuttering rhythm before he, too, shuddered and went rigid, his own climax shuddering through him. Gwayne felt the damp, heated spread of it through the fabric, a second claim.
For a long moment, they stayed there, pinned together by pleasure and stone. Panting. Sated. The world was a distant, muffled thing. Ormund’s forehead rested against his shoulder, his breath slowly regulating.
Then, as if a spell shattered, Ormund pushed away.
He recoiled so violently Gwayne almost stumbled. Ormund looked down at the dark, damp patches on their clothes, his face draining of color. His expression crumpled from satiation into something like horror.
“Seven hells,” he whispered, not to Gwayne, to the room, to himself.
He didn’t meet Gwayne’s eyes. He adjusted himself with a sharp, angry tug of his trousers, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped. Without another word, he turned and shouldered through the antechamber door, disappearing into the roar of the feast, leaving Gwayne alone against the wall, stained and stunned.
The cold from the stone seeped into Gwayne’s back, cutting through the post-coital haze. He slid down the wall until he sat on the floor, his head in his hands. The smell of their sex, musky and souring, mixed with the scent of wine and wax. He heard Ormund’s booming laugh return to the hall, a fraction too loud, a beat too forced.
That was the template. Bliss, then rupture. Connection, then a void more absolute than any stranger’s indifference.
In the present, lying next to his wife and son in the lord’s bedchamber, Gwayne stared at the canopy. The memory of that first time, and all the desperate, silent times after, was just another ghost in this tower. It was a part of the foundation, hidden but essential, holding up the man who now gently kissed his wife’s silver hair and wondered, with a profound and aching tenderness, if she could ever sense the other shapes living in the hollows of his heart.