Archive of Our Own

Richard lies in the dirt, Buckingham above him.  It is early spring and it is cold.  He should feel the cold.  He’s had his clothes ripped open, and his cursed body exposed to men.  But he is not cold.  Buckingham is undoing his own pristine trousers and he’s certainly saying a great deal.  Kings and oaths.  Richard vaguely knows what he means to do, why he’s been bound and pinned even though the Woodsville lackey lies dead a few feet away in a pool of his own blood. 

It just doesn’t seem as terrible as Richard once thought.  It doesn’t feel like the same thing.  Richard is just a body, and bodies are used.  He doubts it will hurt very much.  Not as badly as a knife.  Not as much as the death of a soul. 

And at least this is a use for his body.  The person who had him captured and cut the clothes from him hasn’t turned away screaming in horror.  He has a use.

“I want to be king,” he says when prompted, numb and quiet and exhausted as he waits for the man above him to make Richard useful.

One second, he lies in the dirt, waiting for Buckingham to get on with it, quietly reflecting on the epiphany of why women lie still and let it happen, why, when Richard would have sworn he would fight and scream and bite the whole world bloody if someone dared.

And then there is a heavy thump.  Buckingham’s busy hands go still, and then his weight lands on Richard.  It’s only for a moment.  Then Buckingham seems to vanish—rolled aside—and there are rough hands hauling him up and Richard wonders why he should care about this either.  Let everyone see.  Let everyone use him.  Let it be over now, he is so tired, and his head hangs forward limply, the world obscured behind the veil of his hair.

Another body comes upon his, but it does not press him into the dirt.  Richard manages a soft sound of protest as his feet leave the ground.  Nothing feels quite real as he floats along above measured footsteps.  He turns his head and knows at once that he’s hallucinating.  Perhaps he’s still in the dirt, and Buckingham is busy using him.  He doesn’t really care about it.

“Henry,” he whispers.

It takes him a while.  The darkness of the woods closes around them.  He becomes aware of the arm bearing him over a strong shoulder.  Five fingers splay over his back, separate points of contact that make Richard itch. 

One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five.

His brain recites the count, forgets, then counts again.

He realizes there is a filthy, tattered traveling cloak draped over him like a mantle, and it smells horrid.  He flexes his fingers to get feeling back in them.  They are frozen stiff.  When did that happen?  All the while, he gazes at the vision in front of him.  A Henry unsmiling and cold-eyed, hair grown out like a madman, dirty and rough-cheeked with stubble.

He realizes his wrists are sore from Buckingham’s rope and abruptly, he is trembling.

“Wh-what the devil?”  Richard manages, mostly to himself, and there’s another wave of shivering, more violent than before.  He gasps.  All the things he has become aware of seem to slip away, and then he is on the ground again.  He is sitting up, with his back to a tree.

Anything but lying down.

He has his hands again because he clutches at himself with them, fingers jabbed in hard, because he needs to feel it.  His touch, no one else’s.  His pain.

He’s so, so, so cold.  He’s still too tired for it, why must he be cold now too?  And he chokes in misery and drags the cloak tighter over his shoulders as a man crouches in front of him.  Henry.  Henry, but altered, wild and tattered, and only one blue eye left.  Richard blinks.  He doesn’t understand this vision.

Henry’s hands are warm when he touches Richard.  Richard screams.

No, it’s not Richard who screams.  Something in his chest screams for him.  It tears out of his throat in a roar, his trembling hand shoving the apparition back.  And it keeps coming, and his throat feels like it’ll bleed, until Richard slaps a hand over his mouth and stifles it.

He won’t behave so appallingly.  He is stronger than this and he will damn well act like it.

The world tilts and his vision dims, as Richard’s lungs fight the convulsing grip of his hand.  His chest heaves.  He curls in on himself.  Henry is probably still there, but Henry doesn’t matter now when Richard is in the middle of fighting himself.  It’s a battle he doesn’t get to lose.  He can’t seem to swallow the scream, and it doesn’t really occur that he’s suffocating himself to stay silent.

He wakes up with a pounding headache in what must be somebody’s barn.  The smell is unmistakable.

Leaden exhaustion weighs his limbs.  He sits up anyway, feeling particularly wary about the possibility of anyone’s eyes on him.

And there are eyes.  He goes still at once.

He is no longer out of his mind with numb exhaustion.  He knows what he’s looking at, and he scrambles for his bearings.

“Who are you?”  He demands.

The impossible man in front of him blinks his single eye and says, “James Tyrell.”

(It’s not his voice.  It can’t be.  Henry is dead.  Henry is gone, like Richard’s brothers.)

Richard is cuttingly aware that this James Tyrell has seen Richard dissolve into a screaming fit, never mind what he’d seen Richard surrender to before that.  He lets his humiliation fuel the sharpness of his tone.  “You are a fool, Mister Tyrell.  The man you attacked was a duke.  He will have your head for it, and that’s if you’re lucky.”

James Tyrell leans forward, eye wide and intent.

“Do you know me?”  He asks. 

There is much that Richard must do.  He cannot afford to let the young king and his brother fall into the clutches of their enemies.  The legacy of York is teetering, the beautiful promise of the crown threatening to dissolve into blood and vengeance all over again.  There is Anne to think of too, the duties he has sworn himself to, and who knows what else will come writhing up out of the pit of vipers at court in Richard’s absence.  He cannot afford to turn his back.  He cannot afford to rest.  Duke Richard is hated and feared, and his power must be secured with an iron fist, more than ever now that he has lost his most influential ally—

Richard doesn’t do any of these things like he should.     

It’s unexpectedly easy.  He thinks of all that he must do, he thinks of the great catastrophes his absence will allow.  And then he just doesn’t move.

James Tyrell might have something to do with that, come to think of it.

“I think you know me,” James announces.  Richard has been watching, utterly bemused, as James scaled the barn roof with an armful of dirty hay, and proceeded to thatch it with brute force efficiency.  The former king of England’s double is repairing a roof to stop it from leaking on his head.  The sun glistens off of him like water droplets, igniting his tangled snowy hair, tracing down the elegant lines of his lean torso.  He is shirtless.  He’s been going around like for days now.

Richard has managed to wrangle James’s oversized shirt into something respectable, tucking it into his belt.  His own shirt was beyond repair, so he tore it into bandages and bound his chest. 

He feels almost like himself again. 

“I don’t know you,” Richard says as James leaps down from the roof, landing at Richard’s feet like a pale, shaggy dog.

“But you do,” James says solemnly, gazing up thoughtfully.  “I’m certain I know you.”

“No concern of mine.”

“You’ve forgotten, is all,” James says, rolling to his feet.  The motion is alarmingly fast.  Not a dog, but a wolf.

Every time Richard slips, every time he stares too long and too hard, every time his eyes catalogue the scars that embrace James’s bared chest and he mentally calculates the strokes of the knife that might have put them there, James will do something like this.  Henry would not—could not have moved like that.  Henry did not have calloused hands or bloodthirst in his eye when a twig cracks too close.  Henry prayed for god to save him; James draws his knife without any expression on his face.

The cottage by the barn is abandoned, but it hasn’t been for very long.  There were people here once.  Richard isn’t sure what happened to them, but he’s fairly certain James played a part in their fate.

“Come,” James says.

And Richard has nothing better to do than get to his feet.

James takes Richard someplace new every chance he gets.  Unlike Henry, James apparently does understand the necessary things like the thatching of roofs and the ways to find food.  But he also seems filled with the same restless need to wander.  Henry was forever turning up where he was least expected. 

James is an explorer.  Richard would not have dreamed there were so many places to find in an untamed forest.

One day it is a cave filled with bones, another it is a bonfire burnt out and sprouting wildflowers at the edges.  There is a tree whose roots are consumed with mushrooms (they will make you sick and you will want to die, don’t eat any, James had informed Richard).  There is a fallen tree trunk so rotted that it takes no effort to put a foot through it.  There is an outcropping of stone that rises above the forest floor, and when they sit, they can see where the horizon turns to mist.

Today, James takes him to a winding stream that leads to the most perfect tiny waterfall and says excitedly, “Here.  Here.  Do you feel it?”  He turns a shining gaze on Richard, and when Richard stares back, perfectly confused, James frowns.  “But you must feel something.  It feels like being alive.”  He smiles a little, an unexpectedly handsome expression that is very much lost on the waterfall he’s gazing at.  “I think it must be a memory.”

“But not one of mine,” says Richard softly.

And he wonders what the world Henry saw was like, without Richard.  Without Richard, when Henry could be in the light.

James blinks.  He looks away.  He rolls his shoulders once, then steps into the water.

“Wai—”  Richard swallows the sound before it can form all the way.  The water might be moving fast, but it is no concern of his.  James can handle himself.  It’s not that deep anyway.

James holds out a scarred hand, and the gaze he turns on Richard is solemn enough to make his chest squeeze.  “Then,” he says gravely, “We will make a memory here.  You and I.”

Richard does not take his hand.

In sudden mischief entirely unfit for his age, Richard splashes him instead.

James’s lips part in surprise, glowing droplets clinging to the curve of his cheek.  When he smiles, he glows.

When he returns the favor, Richard shrieks, because the water is frigid.

They do not get washed away in the river, even though they would both certainly deserve it, acting like this.

They end up soaked and stumble back shivering and, Richard is embarrassed to admit, giggling.  James shakes the water from his hair like a dog.  Richard calls him one, and gets a playful snarl in return.  Later, they huddle by the fire, side by side.  The cold drives them closer together, and Richard can feel James’s eyes on the top of his head.  He swallows hard and allows their shoulders to lean together for the sake of heat.

Richard does not think about how long it has been since he was touched, because then he will hear his father’s ghost growling in his ear about how he must return now and do his duty.

He still doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.

James is still like a statue where they touch.  He lets Richard be the one to come to him, to slowly, slowly lower his weight until their sides are pressed together, a warmth that locks him in place as effectively as chains.

As rope.

“You’re cold,” James observes, a show of deductive reasoning that any man would envy.  Richard glares at him, and he follows this up forlornly.  “And you are so small.”

Richard has grown quite a bit from the scrawny boy he once was, thank you.  He never grew so broad or heavy as some of the men, never had a beard, but his shoulders finally filled out, and he is tall enough that he could not be called a runt.  He’s not misshapen in that aspect, at least.

Henry never saw Richard filled out and full-grown.  Henry would surely be impressed that sickly-thin, sleepless Richard had managed to at last grow healthy.

But of course, this is not Henry.

“You’re shivering too,” Richard points out acidly.  “What is your excuse?”

“You are too small.  You will freeze,” James says, having the cheek to both ignore Richard’s reasonable statement and also look even more saddened over it.  “Please don’t die, Richard.”

“Preposterous,” Richard grumbles.  “I’ll do no such thing.  I’ve had much worse than this, anyway.”

James’s breath catches.  How Richard could have found him unexpressive at first, he doesn’t know.  If anything, Henry was more reserved—

It’s Richard’s turn to stop breathing as James reaches out.

His big hands radiate warmth.  He holds them on either side of Richard’s face, close enough that Richard feels their heat upon his cheeks.  Richard doesn’t dare move an inch lest they touch.  He cannot look away from the undisguised wonder on James’s face. 

“Like this,” says James, awed.  “I can reach you.”

Richard swallows.  He plays along.  His pale fingers like spider legs curve along the shadow image of James’s jaw, his cheekbones, the glimpse of his smile.  Thick, tangled hair brushes his fingers, making them twitch, readjusting their path.  James’s eye sparkles. 

“Richard,” James says, and nothing more.  He sounds content.

How silly.  Their arms will grow tired.

Richard does not move until he cannot hold up his trembling hands.

If James has not run out of places to show him in this dull place, how can Richard leave?

One more day, he tells himself.  One more day, and he will face all the rest.  But just for right now—

He can’t bring himself to go.  As if there is a terrible weariness that seizes him at just the thought, and he has only the strength to turn his eyes away.

When they sleep, they no longer do so on opposite sides of the barn.  James, if not chased away, will creep closer and closer.  If Richard opens his eyes and glares, he will freeze, at once managing to be guilty and astonishingly guileless.  “I wanted to look at you,” James mumbled once.  “I don’t mind if you sleep.  I am so sure I will remember if only I can look at you just a little more.”

“You won’t,” Richard hissed back into the evening quiet.  “You don’t know me.  You’ve never met me.  I’m nothing to you.”

James lowered his head, seemingly chastened, but his expression was resolute.  “You’re Richard.  I know that much.”

He proves impossible to deter and entirely helpless to whatever impulse tells him to draw close.  He doesn’t even stare as he promised.  Once settled close, James’s eyelid droops over and over and he always falls asleep first, long eyelashes tracing rays of starlight over his cheek.  His scent envelopes Richard, and the air warms in a halo around them both.  His fingers lie uncurled on the floor, never crossing the drawn lines.  Only offering.

It seems impossible that this same man was the one to strike Lord Buckingham, to haul Richard up over his shoulder like a sack of wood.

“Why did you save me?”  Richard asks, lips shaping the words but no sound ever comes out in the dark.  The knife in his chest twists.  Somewhere inside, he is fraying apart, but he cannot reach the wound.  He squeezes his eyes closed, and lets the nightmares take him out of his wretched skin.

One day, Richard brings James a flower.

It’s meaningless, really.  It was his turn to go hunting, that’s all, and he just... saw it.  It caught his eye.  So why not?

It’s silly and pointless just like the other things James finds so fascinating.  And it’s... maybe it’s a little unusual, with petals such a cold purple they’re almost blue, and petals so insubstantial and delicate they seem like they will dissolve like ice chips under Richard’s touch.  James likes things that are a little unusual, if him hauling Richard all over creation to point out errant twigs is any indication.  So perhaps he’ll like this.

And that’s all it is.  Game slung over one shoulder, the flower caught between his fingers, and Richard thinks nothing of it at all until he reaches the barn.  Then it occurs to him that he must operate his arm and hold the flower out, then make his mouth move to say, For you.

At this striking revelation, he freezes, sinking into a quagmire of nameless, utter panic.  Whatever James sees on his face, his eye darts.  It lands on the flower.  Gutted, Richard flinches.  He fights the powerful urge to hide his hands behind his back.

James drops all the firewood he was carrying.  He’s in front of Richard before he can blink.  Richard chokes on thin air and frantically averts his gaze, and he can’t hurry enough to be rid of the thing.  He drops the flower into the cradle of James’s cupped hands, stomach churning at how gently it is handled.  Their fingers brush.

He does not say for you.  He clears his throat and grunts, “We have food for tonight.”

“Thank you,” James says breathlessly.  He must be very excited about having rabbit.  He beams far too bright, too honest.  Richard swallows, looking away again. 

“Richard.  I’m happy.”

“It’s just a flower,” Richard snaps.

“I love it,” James says, peering down at his gift, and Richard risks another look at him.  His hair is falling thick into his face, unkempt and still framing it so beautifully.  Even the curve of his nose is noble, but the expression is nothing like Henry’s gentle, patient smiles.  There is no restraint in the wild man cackling over what’s his.

James’s glee is infectious.  Richard’s jagged heart crumbles a little.  The corners of his own mouth twitch.

“For you,” he whispers when James looks up again, voice no longer locked up tight in his bones.  It aches in his throat to speak such a thing.  To admit any softness at all is unworthy of mighty Richard.

And yet—

James looks down at the flower again.  His pale skin seems to flush for a moment, and then he’s looking at Richard again.  There is something in his gaze that tempers his happiness.  It almost looks like despair.

“Richard,” he says, “You’re so kind.”

How absurd.  Richard laughs without meaning to, and James laughs along, such a sweet sound it startles something in Richard’s chest.  A restlessness that calls his hand there, gripping into the fabric to feel for the source of his affliction.  And oh.

It’s his heart.  It’s beating.

Oh.

Something is wrong with James the day after that.

He’s restless the next morning, chattering as he eats his breakfast, gesturing wildly and darting too close, then back again when Richard frowns.  He paces circles around Richard like he can’t sit still, and when he stops a moment, it is only the flower he seems to see, resting in its place of honor by the loft. 

Richard keeps very still.  He watches James draw his knives one by one, to sharpen them and test their edges, grinning bright and feral, an animal baring his teeth.  He names targets and throws them expertly, turning to Richard for praise.  When Richard isn’t forthcoming to his satisfaction, James spins to face him and strikes, viciously fast.

Richard does not react in time.

The knife hilt taps against his chest light as a butterfly’s wings, but—

“Try it,” James coaxes, smile pulled like a mask over his face, eye cold as ice.  “I know you can do it.  Let me show you how to throw.”

Richard stares him down, speechless, and does not bother to hide his fury.  The blatant challenge is not something he will meet unless he really does intend to cut James’s throat.

And he won’t.

He can’t.

(never again, please no more)

James’s smile slowly curls until it is a grimace.  When Richard closes his fingers around the knife, James lunges away.  As if he’s inviting it, a wolf baiting out a hunter.  Richard’s arm has already dropped to his side, driving the knife into a place on his belt.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Richard says instead, mastering his temper.  “It’s too tiresome to be cooped up in this place.”

And James, to his credit, looks abashed.  He agrees quickly and sticks too close to Richard’s side, alternating between nonstop, grating chatter and a moody silence.  In the silence is a stark absence of pretense. 

Richard does not really know where to go adventuring in the woods.  He does not know how to find places James would like.  He knows only how to forge ahead, battling his way through the darkness, his eyes not meant for seeing the beauty in little things, his gifts not meant to soothe.

On they go anyway, until James abruptly stops walking, and all but snarls, “I want to kill him.”

Richard turns, startled.  But James is not drawing his weapons this time.  He stares at Richard hungrily, almost unrecognizable with his face twisted up in hatred.

It is a very familiar expression.

“I do that, you see,” James continues.  “I kill people.  When I’m told to, or when I want to.  I save them from their suffering, or from making someone else suffer.”

Richard returns his gaze.  He knows about suffering, knows about death.  He knows there are many people who would like Duke Richard to have his share of both.

Some closer than others.

He deserves it.

“And I want to kill him,” James says, voice rising into a nearly bestial howl.  “He hurt you, he hurt you—I want to hurt him too!”

“What?”  Richard whispers.

“I don’t want to save him, I just want him dead, and I want him to bleed.”  He takes a step towards Richard, who is blinking, uncomprehending.  James reaches out a hand.  He cries out to Richard, “I can’t touch you, but I could, with him—I could take my fists to him.  I could hurt him again and again until he died.  Until he begged.  I want to.”

Richard has never had a nightmare as strange as this.  “James,” he says, trying to make his voice firm.  “I’m not hurt.”

James’s lips peel back from his teeth and the cry he makes is horrible.  A beast’s howl.  Richard weathers it only just barely, stumbling back on unsteady feet.

“He was with you,” James rasps as he lifts his head again.  “He knew what it was to be at your side.  I watched, I saw it all.  He knows how kind you are, how good.  And then he still hurt you.”

Richard’s feet slide out from under him.  On his knees, he gasps, “James, I am neither kind nor good.  I am an abomination.  And you know nothing about me.”

“I know you,” James pleads.

“Who am I, then?”  Richard asks, hand over his eyes as he bows his head.  “Who am I, James?”

“You are Richard.”

“And what else?”

When he looks up again, James is gone.

Richard half expects their little barn to be gone too when he makes his way back, but it is there, just as he left it.  The flower sits atop a throne of hay.  The remnants of their breakfast are still laid out.

James is not there.

Night falls. 

And in his isolation, in the darkness that has always been kindest to things like Richard of York, Richard finally lets himself cry.

He wraps his arms around himself, squeezing fragile bone and overstretched sinew. 

He cries for this body he never wanted, for the shock and humiliation of a brave man denied his blade during assault.

He cries for the horror that is weeping, when he knows he is too strong to weep over something so trivial.  He cries harder because it won’t stop, goddammit.

He cries for the awful truth that was his trust, just enough of his heart left in this monstrous shell for him to put some faith in—

In Buckingham.

Who would have raped him, then put him on the throne to be hollow and tired and stared at every second of every day until not even pride would suffice to keep him upright.

And Richard would have let it happen.

Because otherwise he would be a damned victim, a weakling.

Buckingham found his pride, pinned it on a knife—

And left it there, in a world with so many new nightmares.

Richard cries.  He does not think anyone will find him now that James has gone.  It is safe to cry.  It is safe to be alone again.

And he must fall asleep crying, because when he wakes, his vision is full of shaggy pale hair and broad shoulders the color of cream.  It is warm, because James has spread his cloak over them both, and done his best to curl himself around the tight ball Richard is wound into.  His body is a fence, guarding without touching. 

“James?”  Richard whispers, and sits up too fast, and when James bolts upright to steady him, his hands cover the distance.  Richard’s body tenses, then eases.  He must be too tired to pull away.

And he is also too warm, too breathless.  Too tender.

James seems not to realize at first that he has Richard in his arms.  His eye flits around for danger first, then to Richard, where it becomes a soft and familiar gaze.

“Richard.”

“You came back,” Richard says.  James lowers his head, abashed.  His hand does not retreat.

“I had to,” he says.  His hair brushes over Richard’s upturned face, and their warmth mingles.  James rests his shaggy brow upon Richard’s, its weight instantly calming.  Richard’s shoulders go slack.  He does not manage to hold himself up, but James holds them both.  “I cannot leave yet.  You still must tell me who I am.”

“An idiot, that’s who you are,” Richard says instantly.  “You cannot go kill the Duke of Buckingham for something so trivial.  He is too dangerous and has an army of his own, besides.  Thank goodness you were sensible and came back.”

“You have an army,” says James.  His voice is rough and gravelly with sleep.  “I will be your army, Richard.”

“I am a cruel and terrible master, so you’d better not,” Richard says.  James pulls away.  Richard mourns the loss of warmth even as he opens his eyes and his face is taken between those two strong hands and supported as if it were crowned in gold.

“You are my Richard,” he says, and Richard begins to suspect it is not sleep after all, that makes James’s voice so thick.  His eye gleams, and he whispers, achingly soft, “Mine.”

Oh.

Again, it is his heartbeat.

“Richard,” James pleads, thumb easing away a final, lingering tear.  Richard sucks in a harsh breath.  “Please.  I want you to know me.  Won’t you say it?  Won’t you call my name?”

Richard’s lips tremble.  His heart cracks in two, a joyous unmaking, and in its fragments swells a hope all too fragile without its stone shell.

“Henry.”

He still cries so easily.

Richard should be out of tears entirely, but it’s as if it’s some sort of permission and he knows only relief.

“What should I call you?”  Richard asks, after they’ve both calmed down.  They’re calmer, certainly.  They’ve pulled themselves together, though not quite managed to pull apart yet.  Richard’s fingers are lost in thick hair the color of starlight, unable to stop drinking in the familiar face he has tried so hard not to look at.

Henry—James?—blinks at him, then contrives to look so hurt it’s all Richard can do not to cling to him in hopes that he will stop.

“James is a name given to me by another,” he says, “But my favorite sound in the world is when you call me.  The name you always call me, the one you taught me to love.”  He smiles slyly.  “I remembered it first, before anything else.”

“Henry,” Richard breathes.

It is not a name that is easy for him to love.  But for all its weight, the grin that explodes across Henry’s face makes Richard feel so light he could fly.

There are some dreams worth never waking up from, but that is not what this is because Richard’s dreams have never been sweet.

“I tried to kill you,” Richard says, just once.  He looks off into the night sky, anywhere but Henry before him.  He does not understand Henry lying defenseless for him, on his back and soft-eyed as he makes himself a place for Richard to kneel over, to lay beside.  He does not understand how anyone could be so brave.

He understands the daggers better, and he would let Henry bury them deep.

There is a part of him that wants this to hurt.

He cannot see Henry’s face, but Henry takes Richard’s hand in his, fingers trailing over one another, the strum of an instrument, and Richard startles as he realizes it is the hand that he used to plunge a dagger into Henry’s chest.

And Henry’s lips are upon it, gracing it with absolution too gentle to behold.  Richard tears his eyes away, terrified of the beautiful thing he is touching.

“We knew only death,” Henry says quietly, “And we were repaid for our sins.  God forgives you, Richard, as do I.  I would have found you again in heaven or hell, and still I would have kissed this hand.”

“You cannot,” Richard says, strangled and starved by this hell of his own making.

“I can,” Henry says, “And I do.  My beloved Richard, if I must be cut open a hundred times to have this life with you, I would find the price fair.”

Henry is not king anymore.

And Richard... Richard is likely not a duke anymore either, a theory he has no real desire to test.  There is no longer a place for him in the palace.  The intrigue and scheming he could involve himself in to try to direct England’s future, to guide the boy-king to a stable rule... it does not call to him.  The wars that may follow, do they need his sword to spread a plague of death again?  His family is gone.  York is gone.  His father’s dream is finally dead, and without York, what is Lancaster?

And if that is so, it means that Henry is just a man.

And Richard is just a demon.

“Not a demon,” Henry tells him softly when they curl up together.  “Not unless you wish to be.”  Richard stares at him, at the hands that ease over him, and cradle his burning cheek.  “Do you wish it, Richard?”

He has never been asked.  He blinks hard, then again.  “No,” he says, and then he finds he cannot stop saying it.  “No, no, no—”

Henry tucks him closer.  “Then that is more than enough,” he says, face pressed into Richard’s hair.  “Yes, you are enough.”  Richard shakes his head desperately, and Henry lets him, but nods just as fiercely. 

“I have never been equal to my task, I have always failed—"

“And you have tried, and you have done good, and you should be unashamed.  It is enough—it is enough already and always.”  He kisses Richard’s brow, and it stills him, “Yes, and my dearest, you shall hear it from me twice as often as anyone has ever condemned you as such.  You, Richard, are a human being.  You are flawed.  And you are also perfect.  God does not make mistakes.”

Richard wants to give him heaps of flowers.  Castles and crowns.  Anything and everything, only he cannot escape the cage of Henry’s tenderness.

“You are enough,” Henry tells him, and Richard needs to hear it a thousand times before it will make any sense.

He tells Henry, desperate, “My love is yours, my body is yours, my mind and heart and soul, my life—”

And Henry’s breath catches like it’s not an offering of scraps, but a feast, and he cries, “Richard, Richard, Richard—” on his knees, kissing first his hands, then his cheeks, and then, helplessly, their mouths touch too and Richard knows himself to be a man, because he is at the mercy of desire, in a way no creature of temptation can ever know.

Henry takes every opportunity to touch him, now that he can.

They do not kiss again.  Richard’s heart will not allow it.  The wretched thing, once more aware and beating, contrives to beat out of his chest whenever he thinks of Henry’s lips.  And so, to survive, he does not dwell on thoughts of lips.

Richard is not used to being touched in the first place.  He is not used to warmth, not used to how a caress can turn him inside out and make him shudder with secret weakness.  He bristles like a cat, even as he longs for the touch of that hand, and Henry will smile at him anyway no matter how ridiculous he is being.  The distance, it turns out, is easily crossed when someone opens their arms, when they open a hand.

So Richard touches when he cannot be touched.  And Richard finds out soon enough, how men come together.

There are so many ways.

It is a sin between men, but gone is the Henry who prayed for absolution that would never come.  That man is dead, much like the black-clad boy who made vengeance his only reason to live.  This is a Henry with a wild gaze, whose knife can appear in his hand in a blink, who smells more of blood than of roses.  His laugh is a wonderful, endless thing, and he still cries so easily.

They touch in the dark of night, not to hide from sin, but for the excuse of a bright fire to huddle around.  They reach into the space between bodies and marvel at the drunken warmth of clasped hands.  They brush shoulders and elbows while they laugh, resting upon each other’s sturdiness for the quiet delight it brings.  Richard finds a home at the crook of Henry’s neck, where his heavy head may lie and be at peace.  Henry wraps gentle embraces across Richard’s hips and waist, like belts of gold, and Richard’s heart sings. 

One evening before bed, Richard brushes a bold kiss against Henry’s cheek. 

After that he gets no peace until he gives Henry one more each night, and watches with amusement as Henry falls asleep grinning like he’s won such a fine prize.

And they embrace, again and again, like men drowning at sea, clinging to each other.  Chest to chest, heart to heart, drowning on the honeyed whims of love.

It is beautiful between men.  It is the most beautiful thing Richard has ever known.

And somehow, as if a curse has been lifted with the seeking hand that finds its mate, there begin to be kisses too.

Richard learns what a kiss is when it doesn’t taste of tears and bitterness, when it comes with arms around his body that are strong and sure, but do not wish to steal.  His own strength brings Henry’s mouth to his when Henry would pull back after pressing such sweetness to his lips. 

It is the only country Richard has ever truly wanted to claim.  He claims that mouth, those kiss-reddened lips, the little gasps Henry gives as he pulls Richard closer.

“Oh, Richard, Richard,” he groans between kisses, “You are so wonderful, so lovely.  I thought I had to be forgiven for seeing your beauty.  I thought if I confessed it and was denounced it would be enough—”

“Who dared—?”  Richard bristles.  Henry is not done with his mouth, though, and Richard gives up on thoughts of vengeance as he tastes his lover’s lips once more.  His arms wind around Henry like creeping vines, their nature irrepressible.  He has found the shape to wrap himself around.

“You are beautiful,” Henry says, weeping once again, “To touch you is beautiful.  So beautiful it frightens me.  And yet I have it only once and I must kiss you again.”

“I will kiss you all you like,” Richard swears.

Henry looks rather shifty for a moment.  “I might like a great deal,” he warns.

“I am Richard of York,” says Richard loftily, “And my word is my bond.  Do come here or make me a liar, Lancaster.”

They do not have fine linens or polished floors.  No flower petals, no priceless wine, no gilded brocade (though Henry has somehow procured another shirt, which Richard at once resents terribly and is grateful for).  They have a dirty barn and the unvarnished earth, and they must work for every meal.

Paradise, paradise, holiest paradise.  Richard weeps as Henry covers him in kisses, his body made to writhe, to collapse into a tide of alternating wanting and joy.  Henry loves him so intently, every inch of skin given to his attentions, every shameful thing anointed in his kindness and intertwined fingers, in sighs and laughter shared between their mouths. 

It has been so long without kisses, and for all that Henry is patient, he is starved, and Richard is every bit as mad for it as he’d been fearing.  But he does not pull away.  Henry may look upon his fear.  In truth, there is very little Henry hasn’t seen.  Richard’s heart spills to him at a glance.

Their clothing stays on, for which Richard is grateful.  In this place, nakedness is not a requirement to be loved.  And it is a relief.  All his life, nakedness has nothing for him but horror. 

Or so it is before his Henry has fed him on touches that soothe and enflame at once, and the once-parched desert runs dry no more.

This is how men love.

They bloom.

Richard’s manhood is invigorated with delight of Henry.  His taste, his scent, his throaty sounds of delight, all of it is dizzying and Richard’s will is iron when it comes to ignoring the damned thing and its efforts to interrupt him. 

Kissing Henry every bit as sweet as he deserves to be kissed—now that is a challenge Richard would like to meet.  He keeps his hips well away from his lover’s body.  The habit has been perfected through practice.  Richard would have sworn he had no such passions within him even a few weeks ago.  Now he leaps into the touches he is given, and aches with Cupid’s sweet (but misguided) whims.

But they are pressed too close for Richard to miss that Henry has risen too.  He almost cries out.  Where once another man’s arousal would have terrified him, Richard is dizzy with the tenderest impulse of his life.  He channels it into kisses, the reassurance of his arms, but Henry breaks their kiss.  His face presses to Richard’s neck, kissing gently at his skin and Richard holds him there, stroking his hair—soft and clean once more with Richard’s efforts.  Henry has not moved his hips away, and he whimpers quietly as Richard, entirely on accident, rubs against him.

“Henry,” he says softly.  “Henry, would you like—?  I mean,” he swallows.  “My love, there is no need.  But if there is a want, may I hear it?”

“I don’t know,” Henry admits. 

“Are you frightened?”  Richard asks.  In love, much is frightening.  It is a lover’s duty to shoulder it together, when a blade will not suffice.

“Not of you, my dear,” says Henry.  His voice is small.  But he doesn’t pull away.

“Then stay with me like this,” Richard murmurs, stroking his hair again.  “Just like this, for as long as you need.  Take your time, and then you may tell me what you wish.”

“A-alright,” Henry manages, and they hold each other.  It is their quiet world, their warmth and love, their arms.  Their kindness, forged over these hours spent rewriting the sins of what came before.  Slowly, slowly, Henry relaxes.

Slowly, he breathes.

Richard feels blessed beyond belief.

His lover leaves brief, almost apologetic kisses along his throat, slowly succumbing to their trust, and Richard could stay like this forever.  Despite that, the shy rock of Henry’s hips against his still has all his attention at once.  Richard’s breath catches.  Warmth crashes over him, immediately in his blood.  Upon pain of death, he clenches his teeth and holds still.

Henry breathes raggedly, then does it again.

“Henry,” Richard murmurs, “Henry, I love you.  And I love this with you.  If you need my permission, you have it.”  Henry goes still, but then bends to him just a little more.  Richard strokes a hand down his strong, lean back, feeling it tremble in desperation.  “With you, it is love.  And you may love me.”

His lover’s breath gasps at his ear.  The strong man above him trembles.  Henry’s hips grind against his, a little desperate, and Richard nods, stroking his hair again.

“That’s it, my love.  I adore you, you know?”

And then Henry’s cock finds his through their trousers, sliding together, and Richard cannot stifle a cry of ecstasy.  He blinks stars from his eyes, biting his tongue to contain himself.  Never, never could he have dreamed it would feel this way.  It is too much of a miracle.

Henry goes still at his cry.  Richard must have shocked him—but oh, then he is seeking Richard’s mouth.  Richard kisses him breathlessly, still a little stunned, and Henry squeezes his shoulders as he all but begs, “Will you cry out for me again, Richard?  Will you let me hear you?  Please, I must hear you—”

“Yes,” Richard swears, gasps, cries out against Henry’s lips.  “Yes, however you wish—”

Later, after the mess is cleaned up, they can scarcely look at each other without blushing.  Ridiculous as it seems for two grown men, that is the way of it.  And they are still twined together because to do otherwise would be torture.  It is then that Richard thinks to ask, “Is it the womanly aspect of my body that you do not like?”

Henry stares down in bafflement.  Richard, idly scheming of how best to remove such parts of himself from Henry’s sight, blinks back patiently.  Well, he cannot do away with his feminine body parts entirely, but if it will ease Henry’s fears, he can surely come up with something—

And then Henry is gasping, “No, Richard, nothing like that!  You are perfect as you are, and beautiful—so beautiful,” he says, blushing brightly because they have now made entirely too much eye contact for either of them to bear it.  But Henry does not look away, and takes Richard’s chin in hand. 

Richard’s eyes go a little wider.  Henry’s sudden conviction is a surprise.

“You are a man,” Henry declares.  “I know this, though I cannot pretend I do not find your womanhood tempting as well.  Both are Richard.  Both are my angel.”

Richard, flustered, tries to argue, “Bah, what angel?  When I showed you my body, you—”

“My god, Richard,” Henry cries, looking scandalized, but Richard has no chance to tease him, “I was mad with desire.  I do not fear it any longer, but you do not have to offer me any part of you that you do not wish to show.  Be true to yourself first, and let me admire that.”  And he kisses Richard as if sealing an oath, firm and stubborn.  Richard melts into him.  “I am so very in love with you.  I ask that you never ask me to be the instrument of your pain.”

Richard, beginning to realize they have misunderstood each other dreadfully, eyes Henry for a long moment.  When he speaks again, the words are measured.  “When you saved me,” he says, “Buckingham had just finished declaring that my womanhood had never been loved.”  His lip curls.  “And it would not have been, however he might have flattered himself.”

Henry gets visibly restless at the mention of Buckingham, his eye flitting and a shiver crawling through his limbs.  One hand slides away from Richard and he toys with the knife buckled at his hip.  But his attention is drawn back to Richard.  The ice thaws.

“You are love,” Richard says to him, tenderly.  “And I am loved.  All of me is yours, if only you wish it.”

There is no need to pretend otherwise.

Henry’s love is without borders, and it does not require Richard to contort himself into shapes to be allowed it.

Two nights later, Richard undresses before Henry’s searching gaze.  He sets aside his shirt, his trousers.  He unbinds his breasts with shaking hands.  Henry cups them.  His hands are rough with work, but kind.

Then these breasts too know a shower of kisses long denied to them.  They come alive in ways impossible to comprehend when they have been so long bound.  Richard opens his legs to Henry, the womanhood that so despised even the thought of a man now wet and quivering.  Henry touches it with reverence, parting the delicate lips, teasing at it with a pleasant shyness that makes Richard tremble and feel shy himself.

“Richard, my dearest,” Henry says, suddenly serious as he watches Richard blush and squirm, “There is something I must do first before we make love.  Something that I will very much enjoy, and I hope you will not dislike it.  It must be done, or you will be in pain when you have your first.”

Richard realizes he is being asked, Henry’s gaze beseeching and soft as he supports Richard in his arms.  It is difficult to think when he teases again and again at Richard’s womanhood.  Richard is struck by love, folding to embrace Henry as best he can like this.

“Would that it hurt,” Richard says bitterly, “And that you had never been made to learn a woman’s body without love.  Henry, I am sorry I could not protect you."

Henry responds by kissing Richard’s breast again and again.  He takes the nipple into his mouth and leaves Richard quaking.  “Let me know love now, then, my dearest,” he says between kisses.  “Let us learn it together.”

Richard can deny him nothing, so of course he acquiesces.  Henry lies him down and guides his legs wider still.  He leans down until Richard gasps, realizing his intent only seconds before he is kissed between his thighs, soft and unmistakably in worship.  His legs jolt and Henry looks up at him, gaze innocent despite where his mouth his, kisses sending flames licking through Richard’s belly.

“Henry!”  Richard begs.  “Oh, Henry, there—”

Henry pulls away after a time, mouth drenched, and his kisses burn one by one into Richard’s thighs.  “Let me love you,” he says, voice rough.  “Let me kiss you here, Richard, until it knows what your heart knows too.”

Again and again, he kisses where Richard is defenseless, drawing away only for Richard’s lips, or even Richard’s manhood, which has lifted full and desperate over the place of their union this night.  Henry kisses there until it runs hot and wet as lifeblood, until the slide of fingers makes Richard beg, and even then, he only pulls away after he sears a promise to the devastated landscape of Richard’s pleasure, reassuring him, “I will be very gentle with you, my love.”

They come together slowly, achingly, and Richard feels only a slight and momentary pain before his womanhood begins to draw Henry in with embarrassing eagerness.  Henry is large in a way that is only intimidating as he is making his first volley—then all Richard knows is being very, very full with the warmest and most blissful instrument of love.  They are so close, and Richard never wants to be apart.  Henry is gasping against him, falling apart so beautifully, and Richard can’t stop kissing him, thanking him for his blessing.

They make love then.  There is no possible other meaning.  Shaped for each other, made for each other, a perfect fit in each other’s arms, in each other’s bodies.  They come together like lightning meets the earth. 

“I love you, I love you,” Henry gasps over him.  “I love you so much, my Richard, I have so much love for you.  My beautiful angel, you humble me.  I can never repay you—your love is so, so very—”  He cannot seem to speak just then, crying out softly instead.

There are other words, poetries of madness, symphonies of joy.  They lie upon the tongue like jewels, and reach the ear as the relief of rain.

Richard hugs him close.  This person is his light, and he gasps, “I cannot be without you again.  Oh, take me, take me, take me—”  Unfathomable, that all his life he has had to fight to be unconquered, and now he begs for it.

Perhaps it is that with Henry, it is not conquest.  It is a love without war.

Henry makes love to his womanhood thoroughly and completely.  Richard’s ecstasy leaves him gasping and weak where he lies as Henry draws out of his trembling sex.  He leaves behind his warmth and the gift of his seed.  He strokes at Richard’s trembling sex, fingers immediately wet with him.

He leans over and they kiss as if they have only just begun.  Richard cries out softly to be breached and teased where now love is forever engraved.

“May I have you as a man too?”  Henry asks.  Richard does not understand it at first, but Henry is not shy right now, and when his fingers go to the tight furl beneath his womanhood.  Richard’s eyes widen.  He’d heard that men might... but he does not think it could possibly... but his fluids, his wetness might ease the way...  He finds himself nodding, shy and mute with inexperience, but entirely given over to trust.  His wetness is put to use in this new place between his legs—tighter and more resistant, perhaps, but it eases for Henry well enough.  The bite of pain makes him cry out, but his cock is in his lover’s hand then, and he becomes eager.

Hearing of the act, it was impossible to mistake it for anything but sin. 

Having it with someone so dear, it is impossible to mistake it for anything but a miracle. 

Again, Richard is crying out and moving to claim Henry, to take him deep, and his pleasure runs over.  He is made love to in ardent strokes, losing his virginity as a man eagerly to his love, learning pleasure there until his cock spills and again, Henry goes weak and starry-eyed with his own release, gazing at Richard like he doesn’t believe he’s real.

And after the passion there is a cascade of breath and touch, and they are nestled together like little creatures in the warren.  It is easy to succumb to being held.

Come morning, Richard is baffled by the peculiar soreness, which is not quite painful enough to deserve his attention, but also entirely impossible to ignore when it comes from such unusual places.  He finds it particularly aggravating because no sooner does he consider the ache, then he remembers what put it there.

And then he blushes furiously.  He growls at himself more than once for acting the part of such a maiden.

Henry is mad for him, devouring him with kisses and touch, anxiously searching his eyes for any trace of regret.  There is none, for Richard does not think he could ever regret Henry.

He is soothed anyway, to be granted so much affection.

Two nights later, he once more bounces on his lover’s cock, gasping and alight with unbearable pleasure, losing control so sweetly in his own body as his beloved’s warmth takes its due.  His womanhood accepts love urgently, and reduces Richard to trembling disbelief twice, gasping helplessly while his lover’s gaze holds him upright.  He rises tall, being looked at so.  Henry takes his own pleasure as he cries out Richard’s name into his mouth, and Richard is the one to tug at his arm, pleading wordlessly.  His fluids will be dry by morning, and he would be a man for Henry too.

“Please,” he says weakly.

“Of course,” Henry says, voice hoarse with feeling.  “Yes, yes, yes, my love.  I will love you desperately, let me fill you with all of me.”

And love is all he knows, skin and bones.

Touch, touch, and more touch.

Their paradise is not eternal.  They will leave behind the barn eventually.  Henry is a wanderer after all and Richard has spent his life being trapped in prisons, often of his own making.  Freedom is a concept he isn’t fully sure how to explore, but he is brave enough to try.

They travel, sometimes selling the services of a blade, other times helping with a local harvest.  They go hungry some nights, and have only each other for warmth on others.

There are storms.  There is sickness.  There is blood.

There are tears shed in anger, and arguments, ones that lead to a thorny darkness that seems to have no way out.  There is danger.

But that is not all there is.  Truthfully, Richard has never longed for a happily ever after.

He lives the way he knows.  It is enough.

“Henry,” he calls, and there is a garden of tiny moments that lives deep in his heart.  There, blossoms accumulate, guided by a gardener’s wisdom.  They are roses, dyed in colors too many to count.  Another flower blooms for each time a strong and familiar hand reaches back.

The garden’s splendor grows fit for kings.