FIC: "One good thing to come of wishes and hopes" (Davos/Stannis)
Title:One Good Thing to Come of Wishes and Hopes
Fandom:A Song of Ice and Fire
For: fortinbrasftw for the fourth round of got_exchange
Pairings/Characters: Davos Seaworth/Stannis Baratheon; Renly Baratheon, Robert Baratheon, Maester Cressen; mentions of Selyse Florent Baratheon, Shireen Baratheon, Marya Seaworth, and the Seaworth children
Rating: PG13ish
Words: ~5700
Warnings: set pre-series, although no spoilers for ASoIaF proper; depictions of drunkenness and mild blood/gore; UST with tormented semi-fulfillment
Prompt:A combination of "injury, either one tending to the other" and "feast dynamics, possible drunk!Stannis or drunk!Davos"
Summary:It's circa 290 AL, about seven years after Robert I Baratheon took the Iron Throne, and it's the beginning of the long spring/summer in which the series proper begins. The feast for Renly Baratheon's twelfth nameday occurs and Davos and Stannis experience how blood and alcohol can change--and fail to change--relationships.
Davos Seaworth had grown comfortable with Storm’s End when it was just the siege--just a siege, he thought, grinning at the notion, like it was a picnic--despite its association with the loss of his fingertips. As he walked through the courtyard with the laughter of Robert Baratheon ahead of him, however, a meat cleaver seemed infinitely preferable to sitting in the back of the great hall watching Stannis suffer through a night of associating with his brothers.
“Onion Knight! Seven hells, I thought you’d shack up in the middle of nowhere with that ripe woman of yours rather than come to civilization for the festivities.”
“Your Grace.” Davos’s knees protested as he knelt, but this was Robert the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and however else it went, and his lord’s elder brother in any case. “It is good to see you well, and my wife and I are honored that you would have given us any thought at all.”
“Not think of the onions? That would be cruel, Ser Davos.” The king’s grasp on his shoulder was powerful, pushing him further into the muddy ground than he would have liked, but there was little to say to that. “Onions go so well with a feast for spring, don’t you think, Renly?”
Davos glanced up; the youngest Baratheon stood alongside his brother, grinning down at him with eyes that sparkled with the kind of mirth he expected from his sons, not from the Lord of Storm’s End.
“Onions go well with most anything--especially stag.”
Seven years ago Davos would have colored as prettily as a maid at that, coming from the brother of the king, but seven years ago Davos had not known nearly so many nobles as he did now, least of all the boisterous storm lords. He met Renly’s stare, smiling through the sudden hammering of his heart.
“You’re yet a bit too young and tender for anyone’s taste, I’m afraid, my lord, though I offer you my best wishes for your nameday.”
Renly’s laugh was surpassed only by Robert’s in volume. “Pert thing you are, Ser Davos,” he murmured as the chortling Robert removed his hand from Davos’s shoulder and walked off. “I could have your other fingertips for that.”
“Your brother would not like that, my lord.”
Renly glanced away, his mouth puckering. “What would Stannis even like, Ser Onion?”
This castle, his mind answered. Perhaps a son to inherit it. His mouth, however, twitched a few times before replying, “Why, I am only a lowly retainer knight, my lord; I could not answer that nearly so accurately as Lord Stannis’s own brother.”
“If you’re a smuggler, Ser Davos, then speak like one, not like the pretty courtier I know Stannis hates.” Renly was smiling at him once more, but his eyes were elsewhere. “Come along inside; it’s cold as winter out here when the sun goes down, and Lord Stannis will be so anxious to see you that he won’t dot his is or cross his ts until he knows you’ve returned to him.”
My smuggling days are over, and I did not tell my lord I was coming, Davos thought as he got to his feet, but Renly was already disappearing inside, leaving Davos to enter the great keep unaccompanied.
A glance inside the great hall at the empty high table was enough to tell him that Stannis was not here; judging by the ruckus the lower household was already kicking up at the tables close to the door, Davos suspected that Stannis would remain in his rooms as long as was possible. Robert and Renly were also nowhere in sight, although in their cases he suspected a need to preen before the feast was more to blame. He had backed out of the hall and begun considering what would be most appropriate for an upjumped smuggler to do until the feast proper began when a hand brushed his shoulder.
“Ser Davos, greetings.”
He looked up into the lined face of the man who, rumor had it, had raised Stannis Baratheon more than his own father; he certainly had loved Stannis enough to follow him to Dragonstone despite the fact that a maester’s vows were to a castle, not a man.
“Maester Cressen, oughtn’t you be with the ladies on Dragonstone?” Despite the seriousness of the question, Davos found himself smiling, the response he always had when encountering the stalwart counsellor.
“The lady Selyse is strong enough once more to care for Shireen, who is quite well now herself, ser, and I am as fond of Lord Renly as I am of any son of Steffon Baratheon, may the Stranger rest his soul.”
A lightness came over Davos at those words; the last time he had seen Shireen Baratheon, she had been a squalling and feverish infant whose skin turned more gray by the day. Stannis had paced the nursery like a wounded animal, demanding things of Maester Cressen that Davos doubted even a god could do. Davos himself had been sent back to Marya and his own children, although he had stopped in the Dragonstone sept to light a candle to the Stranger to keep the girl with her earthly family.
“I would have been there, maester, believe me--”
“You I always believe, Ser Davos, where your loyalties are concerned.” Cressen was smiling in a way that sent blood coursing far too quickly through Davos’s veins. “You were ordered away and away you went, to cherish your own children’s lives.”
As Stannis cherished Shireen, the girl who was but shouldn’t have been. And who cherished Stannis’s life and saved his sanity? You, maester? Selyse Florent?
Davos started from his reverie. “How do you mean, maester?”
The maester laughed. “You did not tell him you were coming, ser. We would all have known if he knew.”
His cheeks burned. “Maester, I--”
Cressen was drifting towards the staircase. “My lord Stannis has taken up residence in his usual rooms. You had best let him know you have come; it is duty, after all, and I think he may need you.”
“Duty,” Davos agreed, mind whirling, as Cressen ascended out of sight. Need was not a thing Stannis Baratheon knew--Cressen was mistaken there, surely--but duty was Davos’s watch word when it came to the Lord of Dragonstone and duty, duty, duty was the rhythm he matched his steps to as he climbed to the fourth floor.
The door to Lord Stannis’s usual chambers was shut, without even a guard posted outside; Davos hesitated before knocking. The response--an instantaneous grunt that sounded somewhat like “Enter”--created sweat on his forehead, as there was no denying the identity of the occupant. He opened the door and slid inside with his eyes trained on the ground.
“My lord.”
The silence that greeted this was long, broken only by a raspy breath. When answer came, it was in a light, uncertain tone he did not know how to associate with Stannis.
“You are not a maester, Ser Davos.”
“No, my lord.” Despite himself a smile flowered on his lips--to wilt when he looked up.
The Lord of Dragonstone was seated at a desk where a pair of sweaty hunting gloves crowned a stack of paperwork. He cradled a right hand that was red--red with blood, you know blood, smuggler, Davos told himself as he took a step forward. Just blood.
“A scratch,” Stannis grumbled as he approached. “Entirely normal for hunting in bracken.”
“Entirely normal for a man who hunts, my lord, but you are not that, if my lord will pardon my saying so.”
“You are impertinent,” Stannis mumbled, gripping the bloody hand in the other. “On a boy’s nameday his wishes must be honored, no matter how absurd.”
Davos smiled at that. “His wishes or Robert’s?”
“A courtier’s wishes do not differ from his liege lord’s.”
Their glances met for a moment, long enough for Davos to curse the thudding of his heart at the whole situation. The blood, he reminded himself as he knelt before Stannis. It’s the blood, you haven’t seen that in ages, and it must be cared for before it festers.
“In that case, my lord, I know you will want Maester Cressen to tend this--that is my wish for you.” He leaned toward the hand. “If my lord will let me--?”
“No, no Cressen,” Stannis said, allowing Davos to examine the hand. “It’s just a scratch, come of my inability to keep my head when Robert decides to call the boar to us by grunting like one.”
Davos frowned. “You do not startle at noise, my lord, even at hunting noises.” He ran a finger along a scratch, following it from wrist to fingertip.
Stannis hissed through his teeth and shuddered. “I startle,” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, “when one brother bellows like a boar and the other jumps on my back from behind like a grubby peasant.”
Davos stopped his examination midstream and looked up into eyes that glinted like raw sapphires, hard and blue. “My lord--”
“Spare me your my lords and your sympathy and your protestations of duty, Davos--it was a trip for the ages. The bards will sing forever of the ferocity of Robert Baratheon, the First of His Name, and Lord Renly Baratheon of Storm’s End, who felled their savage brother on their family’s lands.”
In spite of himself, Davos felt the laughter a moment before it spilled from his throat. He trembled with it as he stood and fetched the ewer and basin and returned to Stannis, where he sat grimly smiling on the edge of the desk chair with a ragged piece of fabric in his outstretched hand. Davos choked back further laughs as he filled the basin with water and submerged the fabric in it.
Silence fell as Davos swabbed the scratched and bruised hand with the wet strip of fabric--bedsheet? he asked himself, then what does it matter?-and scrubbed away dried blood. The skin beneath his fingers was moist, callused on the palms and fingers, and striped with more hair than his own hands. Hard, large, rough for noble hands, more tanned than his own--Davos turned his head aside rather than continue this line of thought. Stannis was there, watching, his face without expression.
“You ought to turn maester, Ser Davos,” he said as Davos returned his gaze to the wounds. “Useful sort of thing, they are.”
“If my services currently do not please my lord--”
“Less courtier and more honest counsel would please my lord.” Despite the hardness of his voice, Stannis wore what might have been a smile, if Davos squinted. He smiled in return and turned his attention to the hand once more.
“My honest counsel is that this requires more bandaging, at the very least, my lord.”
A grunt, a rummaging sound, and a fresh line of cloth in his hands; Davos accepted it with a murmur of thanks and wrapped the hand all in white, keeping his thoughts focused on the cloth and not the skin underneath. When he finished and looked up, he was surprised to find small sunbursts darting across his vision.
“You look ill, Onion Knight.” Stannis’s gaze was direct, his face smooth, his voice flat, but his freshly bandaged hand twitched within its wrappings. “Ought you attend the feast looking like you’ve climbed fresh from the grave?”
Davos wiped sweat from his brow. “I serve at your command, my lord, and I attend the social functions you tell me to. I came without notifying you, and if it is your wish that I remain away from Lord Renly’s feast, then so be it.”
Stannis rubbed his wrapped hand. “It’s my wish that I remain away from Lord Renly’s feast, but the gods rarely answer my prayers.” He stood, abruptly enough that Davos leaned away in surprise. “You look as if a man had knocked you between the eyes, and I look like the bramble-courting idiot my brothers have tried to make me, but duty is duty.”
“Duty is duty,” Davos murmured as he got to his feet. He shook wrinkles from his tunic, miraculously unstained by his maestering, and glanced at the still-rumpled Stannis. “Shall I send for more water for bathing, my lord, and whatever feast clothes you’ve brought?”
Stannis Baratheon raised an eyebrow. “You’re a knight, not a servant, Ser Davos. I shall see you in the Great Hall.”
“Of course, my lord.” Cheeks red, Davos bowed and backed his way into the hall.
His skin was still aflame when he took his seat midway up the hall with the other minor knights of the extended Baratheon household. Most of his table companions were from Storm’s End and the surrounding region, men Renly had knighted at Robert’s order upon taking the seat, and a few could not have been older than the boy lord himself. Squires, surely, Davos told himself as he drummed his maimed finger stubs on the gold plate before him. Not even Renly would be so bold as to make untried boys knights.
Could that be worse than Stannis knighting a smuggler from Flea Bottom? another part of him asked.
He turned his attention to the high table rather than continue that line of thought, just in time to be caught full force by trumpeting. The hall around him fell silent as a door in the wall behind the table opened and Renly and Robert emerged, resplendent in silks and velvets, Robert with a circlet crown askew on his head. In the roars of approval that floated up from the smallfolk only Davos seemed to have eyes for Stannis, stolid in blue and brown linen edged with gold silk, who slid in after the lord and king to sit at Renly’s left as Robert sat at his right.
As the feast progressed Davos found his eyes drawn regularly to the thin blue and brown blot who sat picking through each course with his inscrutable face. If anyone noticed the wrappings around Stannis’s right hand, not a word was said, although Davos thought he saw Renly shoot an amused glance or two in his older brother’s direction. Whether that was objective truth or wishful thinking born of his third glass of wine--so sweet and fine, still a marvel even years after he’d left Flea Bottom--Davos did not know or care; he kept eating, drinking, and making the sort of politely ribald jokes that passed for courtesy and camaraderie among lesser knights. If he snuck occasional glances at the high table, well, that was no more than any other noble-struck man or woman down in the bowels of the hall.
He had emptied the third glass and was debating calling for a fourth when a movement of color at the head of the hall drew his attention--Robert, he realized, on his feet with a chalice as large as his head in one hand, hooting after a pair of redheaded serving women in Baratheon black and yellow. When one of the women turned back to lift her skirt to eye level, Davos realized his mistake in assuming them mere maids; he looked aside, rather than partake in the visual feast that had ensnared his king, and found himself watching the two other Baratheon brothers. Renly looked both amused and vaguely queasy, his blue eyes wide in his smooth face, while Stannis--Davos felt his own eyes widen as he watched Stannis drain his glass, a drop of red rolling down his chin.
Davos wiped his own chin before he processed that, no, that drip of wine was on Stannis, not him--Stannis, who drank only lemon water and eschewed alcohol of all sorts as frivolity. He glanced up again, but the drop of wine was gone; had Stannis wiped it away or had it never been there at all? A question for the ages, he thought as he called for another glass for himself.
Wine or ale or harder, it made no matter to Davos; he had drunk them all, and plenty of them, in his time. Four glasses or five at a feast of this size, with this much food, was the same, and the fizzing that ran up his throat as he nursed his fifth glass of wine and a small plate of sweets was a pleasant reminder of the power of alcohol to make men absurd. Robert, the redheaded follower in his lap and the contents of his latest chalice spilling down his front, was another, but that was an expected part of a feast; if Cersei Lannister could stomach the sight of her husband with his hands down some other woman’s bodice, as she had at Prince Joffrey’s naming feast years ago, surely Davos could do the same now. The woman was different--he was pretty sure of that, anyway, though all women began to look alarmingly alike to him with each cup of wine--but Robert’s hands and boorish grin were the same, if fleshier.
“Sweet brother, where is your wife?”
That drunken taunting was the same, too; Renly was between his elder brothers, when he had been absent at Joffrey’s name feast, but Robert’s voice, able to penetrate several tables down, was more than sufficient to reach Stannis, five feet away. Davos found himself watching in a strange fascination as Stannis’s cheeks--already a pinkish hue, he realized; when had that happened?--turned a deeper red and he drank from the cup in his hands, a draught that went on for several of Davos’s heartbeats. When Stannis set the cup down once more, it landed on the edge of his plate, not the tabletop proper, and, slowly enough that Davos could see it coming, spilled down into his lap.
Robert’s laughter rang in Davos’s ears; he had gotten to his feet, automatically, nearly knocking over his own wine, but none of his tablemates seemed to notice either the scene unfolding at the head of the hall or his own reaction. As Davos watched Robert murmured something in the redhead’s ear; grinning, the woman stood and went to Stannis, bending over him until her breasts were level with his eyes. Stannis fought to keep her in focus, but his eyes were clouded, and his gaze seemed to dart from her to the wine to Renly to the table and back again without making sense of what was before him, so that he merely sat, mouth slightly open, as the woman lifted her skirt to use it as a napkin to clean the wine from his lap.
At this Robert’s laughter reached such a pitch that the rest of the hall turned, in a drunken stupor, to see what had caused the uproar. As his tablemates tittered Davos pushed his way forward, drawing glances from others that lasted only a moment before turning back to the head of the hall. The high table, he told himself, fighting for a grasp over his own floaty thoughts, the high table, Stannis, the high table. His limbs had the responsiveness of molasses, and he thought of watching his sons chase one another, waist deep in water, tripping and fighting for each step. They inevitably would fail to reach each other, giggling all the while, and it was with their boyish laughter in his head that he watched Stannis stumble to his feet, push the redheaded woman aside, and disappear, while he floundered.
The boyish laughter of children turned into the drunken roars of the king of the Seven Kingdoms and the disappointed shrieks of the redheaded woman, now exaggeratedly pouting at Robert. As she returned to him she paused, turned to the hall at large, and curtsied, lifting her skirts high enough to draw whistles from the mass of men around Davos. Their hooting broke the scene’s fascination for him and, under cover of their cat-calling, he stumbled toward the main exit, careening out into the great keep at large and panting for breath.
Maiden bless me, that is not what I came to see. He closed his eyes and thought of Marya and the breasts he buried his face in at night, the fine black hair that covered her head and genitals, softer than one might expect, certainly softer than the boar-like bristles that grew from King Robert’s chin or the thinning tufts on Stannis’s head...
He jerked himself awake at that, ignoring the pounding growing behind his temples. Stannis had gone out the back door, into a part of the great keep he was not familiar with, and for all Davos knew he was dead of embarrassment or alcohol.
And if he is just hiding, smuggler, what will you do? Davos asked himself as he walked to the interior courtyard the Great Hall emptied onto. Oh, I’m so sorry, my lord; I didn’t expect a grown man to be able to care for himself? His steps faltered at the courtyard’s entrance.
Stannis will not thank you for babying him.
And if he drowns in a pool of his own vomit, what then--will Robert raise you to a lordship for your service to the realm?
You mustn’t let nobles be embarrassed before their subjects!
But this is--
“Davos?”
The Lord of Dragonstone was draped over the courtyard’s fountain, staring in his direction with bleary eyes. Davos approached him, pushing back the thudding of his heart, his eyes trained on the unraveling bloodstained bandage on Stannis’s right hand.
“My lord, your hand--”
Stannis upended part of the contents of his stomach into a neighboring bush, and Davos fought back a sudden, absurd laugh as he knelt next to his lord in the grass. Whiled Stannis vomited and dry heaved Davos cupped his hands into the fountain and, murmuring gentle nothings, dribbled the water onto the back of Stannis’s neck. He murmured while Stannis trembled and found himself thinking of toddler Matthos, covered in feverish sweat, soaking Davos’s nightshirt with tears while Marya cleaned the boys’ bed of vomit. She had been singing soft lullabies while scrubbing, turning every now and then to smile at her husband and son, and Davos’s heart had swollen with every glance in his direction. His heart was the same fragile thing now, fluttering in his chest, as Stannis gripped his arm and attempted to stand.
They shared no words until they had returned to Stannis’s chambers, where Davos allowed him to sink down onto the bed as he poured water into a cup and placed it in Stannis’s hands. “You must drink, please, my lord, to wash your mouth clean and relieve the hammering in your head.”
“There’s no hammering,” Stannis muttered, taking a sip. “Just a floating, like the sea has come to my head.”
“You are a poet, my lord, a bard for the ages.”
Stannis’s only reply was a grunt, a sound that set Davos’s heart racing all over again. That’s the Lord of Dragonstone I know. He might have said that out loud, so close were the ties between his wine-clouded mind and his mouth, but Stannis had drained the water cup and let it fall to the floor with a clatter, falling back against the pillows.
“My lord, such clumsiness is unlike you,” Davos murmured, watching Stannis’s face for signs of distress.
“So is alcohol.” Stannis’s eyes were closed, but his mouth twitched briefly before settling into a frown. “Forgive me my lapse of duty, Ser Davos.”
“I know of no lapse of duty. My lord,” he amended as Stannis opened his eyes to glare at him.
“You are to tell the truth to me always, Ser Davos, alcohol or no.”
Davos knelt next to the bed, wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, clenched his tunic with a trembling hand. “I do, my lord, and I did.” Before his common sense could catch up with his tongue he added, “What is more apt for a Baratheon than drunken insanity?”
The silence that followed this set his stomach roiling as he watched Stannis roll over until his eyes were level with Davos’s own. At this proximity he fancied he could see the wine swirling in them, tinges of red-violet amidst the blue. They match the bruises on his hand, those eyes, those burning, dancing eyes, he realized, and you should look away, impertinent lowborn idiot.
Instead he found himself staring, afraid even to blink, while Stannis placed his bandaged right hand over Davos’s shortened fingers. The motion, the sudden warmth against his stubs, reminded Davos of the swing of a certain knife, and in the blink of an eye he was standing in the kitchens, unable to look away from an eighteen-year-old wielding a meat cleaver. Look at your fingers, in their last moments, he had told himself then; instead he had ridden out the downswing, the burst of agony, in two blunt pools of blue, stealing glances again and again as Cressen bandaged his hand.
“It was justice.” Stannis’s voice was a rasp as he looked at the overlay of bandaged hand and missing fingers. “This is too,” he murmured, prodding the blood-stained fabric with his good hand. “Penance for my thoughts, the old septon would say, the Father’s distaste for my dereliction of duty.”
Davos touched a hand to the bag of fingerbones at his throat. “My lord, my fingerbones are justice and penance. Your wound is an accident, angry bramble and foolish brothers, nothing to do with--”
“All the foolishness in the world does not excuse me hating them, Ser Davos.” Before Davos could reply, Stannis pulled his hands away, rolled onto his back once more, stared up at the ceiling. “They are my brothers. One is a drunken sot, the other a little fool who doesn’t think of anything more important than his dress, but they are my brothers. I can’t--” he swallowed, chest heaving, and Davos fought back the urge to grip his hand “--I can’t help that I do not like them. I can help wishing for things to be otherwise.” The jerk of his head happened quickly enough that Davos was caught off guard when he stared into his eyes once more. “All any of us can do is our duty, Ser Davos, and duty...”
Stannis’s voice trailed off. Davos sat up straighter and leaned forward until his ear was close to Stannis’s mouth.
“And duty what, my lord?” he murmured.
“Duty has no relation to what we want or like.”
Davos was aware of a roaring in the back of his skull--wine or sorrow or something else entirely, he didn’t know, but whatever it was it seemed to have taken possession of his limbs, to move his arms without his permission as he took Stannis’s bandaged hand in both of his. Skin blazed on skin; his breath jerked in his chest.
“Duty is duty, my lord.” What was his tongue doing, making these words? “Wishes are another thing, but so important--”
“Not more important than duty, ser.” Stannis’s eyes were boring into his own--blue all over again, too blue, where’d the wine go? Davos asked himself. “Name for me one good thing to come of wishes and hopes.”
“Me.”
Stannis’s laugh shook the mattress, making Davos’s arms vibrate. His mouth moved of some will, be it his or the wine’s.
“You wished for salvation, my lord. I brought it to you, with fish and onions. I did it for money, for the dare, for the reward that I knew would come of it. When you hacked half my fingers off with a cleaver was when I stayed, and that was no wishing or wanting on my part. I liked my fingers, my lord, but from that point on my duty was clear.”
Stannis snorted at that. “What is this, a fable? You saved my life and I saved your soul, brought you to see your duty?” A smile grew on his lips, the faintest hint, so that Davos found himself sweating profusely, struggling to breathe through the racing of his heart. “What am I, a septon? You may have more faith in them than I do, but I know no septon could ever make me live my duty.”
“Septons don’t wield cleavers or make honest men of smugglers. Lords do.” Before he could stop it, his mouth added, “You do. You took my ability to smuggle with one stroke and forced me to start my life anew. Duty happened to me, inadvertently, with no relation to what I wanted, and it was you.” He bent his head over the ring finger on Stannis’s left hand, where most lords would keep a signet ring. Most lords would not wield a meat cleaver, either, he realized, then giggled. Stannis wasn’t a lord then, he decided, only a blue-eyed boy with the most determined, desperate face in the world, torn between love and hate.
“It was you.”
He kissed Stannis’s finger.
Davos’s lips burned against the bare skin as sweat seeped into the crevices of his mouth. It was a brush, lip on finger, the gesture peasants had given to their liege lords a thousand times and more throughout the course of the Seven Kingdoms, but it was not a gesture Davos Seaworth had ever given to anyone, even on the dark night when Stannis Baratheon had taken his fingers and made a future for his family. He couldn’t have said why he did it now or why it made his entire chest ache.
It means nothing, he told his heart, lingering over Stannis’s hand. Move, leave and let him sleep it off and let the world flow back to normal... His thoughts were so desperate, careening around his brain, that he missed the shuffle of mattress as Stannis leaned forward, but he felt in painful clarity the blaze of lips on the top of his head, the fire that rushed down each nerve of his scalp and pushed his mouth up to meet Stannis’s.
When he kissed Marya on the mouth Davos felt every part of him rise up, light as air, and drift free, so he knew this heaviness, this sour yearning, was atrociously wrong. Logic would tell him that as well--you are kissing your liege lord, you are insane, if this is duty you are the king, Marya and Selyse Marya and Selyse Marya and Selyse--and he waited for either his lips or Stannis’s to move, for Stannis to slap sense into him. Instead they both seemed to lean in further, and Stannis’s hands grabbed his chin and pulled, a hard motion that nonetheless set the lower half of his face tingling. Noses mashed together, brows scraped, lips were so forcefully placed together that momentum carried them apart a moment later, and still neither man moved, for one heartbeat, two heartbeats, three...
After perhaps five frenzied heartbeats in total Stannis fell back against his pillow, leaving Davos kneeling and gasping to the side. His mouth worked, searching for some kind of phrase to say, but Stannis simply lay quietly, eyes closed, wearing an expression that was not entirely sad nor angry, and at the sight of that placidity Davos felt his need to speak curl back into his bowels. Instead he picked up Stannis’s wounded hand, undoing the bandaging while his eyes sought something to tear for fresh fabric.
“The bedsheet,” Stannis whispered. Startled, Davos focused on his face--and noticed the long strip missing from edge nearest the wall. Before he could move, Stannis, without opening his eyes, tore a new strip and held it forth, with a smile on his lips.
Davos washed and changed the bandaging somehow, paying more attention to his hazy mind than to anything physical before him. Once he had finished he sat back against the floor, watching Stannis’s chest rise and fall and listening to the slow breathing--sleeping it off at last, as you wished, he told himself. The thought had barely occurred to him before Stannis’s mouth opened and he found himself leaning forward to hear.
“The world is spinning.” Stannis’s voice was barely audible. “If I sleep...does the hammering not come later?”
“The Smith only knows, my lord,” Davos replied in a murmur that, he thought vaguely, reflected the slow fluttering of his heart.
“If I sleep...does this night not happen?”
Davos’s good hand clutched his fingerbones, digging in.
“No, my lord.”
The corner of Stannis’s mouth twitched. “Good. Every night is a lesson.”
“My lord, I am--I mean--”
“You are my most trusted adviser.” The words, amazingly, set Davos’s heart afloat all over again. “You are a just man, an honest man, whole and dutiful...” His voice dropped to almost nothing again. “You know who you are and you know what you want.”
“My lord,” Davos whispered, trembling. “I have no words for you.”
“Words are wind, and there is enough of that in this castle. What I need is...you.”
“To...advise you?”
“To give good counsel, by being...yourself.”
Davos smiled at the ceiling. “I am yours, my lord, to do and advise as you see fit.”
“Then sleep.” Stannis slid to the other side of the bed, and Davos stared at the spot left near him. “The floor is hard and the bed too large. Even in alcohol I mustn’t...be wasteful.”
Slowly, so slowly he wasn’t entirely sure whether he actually moved or simply dreamed it, Davos climbed up onto the mattress and lay, arms stiffly at either side, as Stannis seemed to slip off into sleep. His own body had just begun to relax when a hand brushed his hip and rested there.
Davos covered Stannis’s mangled hand with his own and closed his eyes.
Fandom:A Song of Ice and Fire
For: fortinbrasftw for the fourth round of got_exchange
Pairings/Characters: Davos Seaworth/Stannis Baratheon; Renly Baratheon, Robert Baratheon, Maester Cressen; mentions of Selyse Florent Baratheon, Shireen Baratheon, Marya Seaworth, and the Seaworth children
Rating: PG13ish
Words: ~5700
Warnings: set pre-series, although no spoilers for ASoIaF proper; depictions of drunkenness and mild blood/gore; UST with tormented semi-fulfillment
Prompt:A combination of "injury, either one tending to the other" and "feast dynamics, possible drunk!Stannis or drunk!Davos"
Summary:It's circa 290 AL, about seven years after Robert I Baratheon took the Iron Throne, and it's the beginning of the long spring/summer in which the series proper begins. The feast for Renly Baratheon's twelfth nameday occurs and Davos and Stannis experience how blood and alcohol can change--and fail to change--relationships.
Davos Seaworth had grown comfortable with Storm’s End when it was just the siege--just a siege, he thought, grinning at the notion, like it was a picnic--despite its association with the loss of his fingertips. As he walked through the courtyard with the laughter of Robert Baratheon ahead of him, however, a meat cleaver seemed infinitely preferable to sitting in the back of the great hall watching Stannis suffer through a night of associating with his brothers.
“Onion Knight! Seven hells, I thought you’d shack up in the middle of nowhere with that ripe woman of yours rather than come to civilization for the festivities.”
“Your Grace.” Davos’s knees protested as he knelt, but this was Robert the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and however else it went, and his lord’s elder brother in any case. “It is good to see you well, and my wife and I are honored that you would have given us any thought at all.”
“Not think of the onions? That would be cruel, Ser Davos.” The king’s grasp on his shoulder was powerful, pushing him further into the muddy ground than he would have liked, but there was little to say to that. “Onions go so well with a feast for spring, don’t you think, Renly?”
Davos glanced up; the youngest Baratheon stood alongside his brother, grinning down at him with eyes that sparkled with the kind of mirth he expected from his sons, not from the Lord of Storm’s End.
“Onions go well with most anything--especially stag.”
Seven years ago Davos would have colored as prettily as a maid at that, coming from the brother of the king, but seven years ago Davos had not known nearly so many nobles as he did now, least of all the boisterous storm lords. He met Renly’s stare, smiling through the sudden hammering of his heart.
“You’re yet a bit too young and tender for anyone’s taste, I’m afraid, my lord, though I offer you my best wishes for your nameday.”
Renly’s laugh was surpassed only by Robert’s in volume. “Pert thing you are, Ser Davos,” he murmured as the chortling Robert removed his hand from Davos’s shoulder and walked off. “I could have your other fingertips for that.”
“Your brother would not like that, my lord.”
Renly glanced away, his mouth puckering. “What would Stannis even like, Ser Onion?”
This castle, his mind answered. Perhaps a son to inherit it. His mouth, however, twitched a few times before replying, “Why, I am only a lowly retainer knight, my lord; I could not answer that nearly so accurately as Lord Stannis’s own brother.”
“If you’re a smuggler, Ser Davos, then speak like one, not like the pretty courtier I know Stannis hates.” Renly was smiling at him once more, but his eyes were elsewhere. “Come along inside; it’s cold as winter out here when the sun goes down, and Lord Stannis will be so anxious to see you that he won’t dot his is or cross his ts until he knows you’ve returned to him.”
My smuggling days are over, and I did not tell my lord I was coming, Davos thought as he got to his feet, but Renly was already disappearing inside, leaving Davos to enter the great keep unaccompanied.
A glance inside the great hall at the empty high table was enough to tell him that Stannis was not here; judging by the ruckus the lower household was already kicking up at the tables close to the door, Davos suspected that Stannis would remain in his rooms as long as was possible. Robert and Renly were also nowhere in sight, although in their cases he suspected a need to preen before the feast was more to blame. He had backed out of the hall and begun considering what would be most appropriate for an upjumped smuggler to do until the feast proper began when a hand brushed his shoulder.
“Ser Davos, greetings.”
He looked up into the lined face of the man who, rumor had it, had raised Stannis Baratheon more than his own father; he certainly had loved Stannis enough to follow him to Dragonstone despite the fact that a maester’s vows were to a castle, not a man.
“Maester Cressen, oughtn’t you be with the ladies on Dragonstone?” Despite the seriousness of the question, Davos found himself smiling, the response he always had when encountering the stalwart counsellor.
“The lady Selyse is strong enough once more to care for Shireen, who is quite well now herself, ser, and I am as fond of Lord Renly as I am of any son of Steffon Baratheon, may the Stranger rest his soul.”
A lightness came over Davos at those words; the last time he had seen Shireen Baratheon, she had been a squalling and feverish infant whose skin turned more gray by the day. Stannis had paced the nursery like a wounded animal, demanding things of Maester Cressen that Davos doubted even a god could do. Davos himself had been sent back to Marya and his own children, although he had stopped in the Dragonstone sept to light a candle to the Stranger to keep the girl with her earthly family.
“I would have been there, maester, believe me--”
“You I always believe, Ser Davos, where your loyalties are concerned.” Cressen was smiling in a way that sent blood coursing far too quickly through Davos’s veins. “You were ordered away and away you went, to cherish your own children’s lives.”
As Stannis cherished Shireen, the girl who was but shouldn’t have been. And who cherished Stannis’s life and saved his sanity? You, maester? Selyse Florent?
Davos started from his reverie. “How do you mean, maester?”
The maester laughed. “You did not tell him you were coming, ser. We would all have known if he knew.”
His cheeks burned. “Maester, I--”
Cressen was drifting towards the staircase. “My lord Stannis has taken up residence in his usual rooms. You had best let him know you have come; it is duty, after all, and I think he may need you.”
“Duty,” Davos agreed, mind whirling, as Cressen ascended out of sight. Need was not a thing Stannis Baratheon knew--Cressen was mistaken there, surely--but duty was Davos’s watch word when it came to the Lord of Dragonstone and duty, duty, duty was the rhythm he matched his steps to as he climbed to the fourth floor.
The door to Lord Stannis’s usual chambers was shut, without even a guard posted outside; Davos hesitated before knocking. The response--an instantaneous grunt that sounded somewhat like “Enter”--created sweat on his forehead, as there was no denying the identity of the occupant. He opened the door and slid inside with his eyes trained on the ground.
“My lord.”
The silence that greeted this was long, broken only by a raspy breath. When answer came, it was in a light, uncertain tone he did not know how to associate with Stannis.
“You are not a maester, Ser Davos.”
“No, my lord.” Despite himself a smile flowered on his lips--to wilt when he looked up.
The Lord of Dragonstone was seated at a desk where a pair of sweaty hunting gloves crowned a stack of paperwork. He cradled a right hand that was red--red with blood, you know blood, smuggler, Davos told himself as he took a step forward. Just blood.
“A scratch,” Stannis grumbled as he approached. “Entirely normal for hunting in bracken.”
“Entirely normal for a man who hunts, my lord, but you are not that, if my lord will pardon my saying so.”
“You are impertinent,” Stannis mumbled, gripping the bloody hand in the other. “On a boy’s nameday his wishes must be honored, no matter how absurd.”
Davos smiled at that. “His wishes or Robert’s?”
“A courtier’s wishes do not differ from his liege lord’s.”
Their glances met for a moment, long enough for Davos to curse the thudding of his heart at the whole situation. The blood, he reminded himself as he knelt before Stannis. It’s the blood, you haven’t seen that in ages, and it must be cared for before it festers.
“In that case, my lord, I know you will want Maester Cressen to tend this--that is my wish for you.” He leaned toward the hand. “If my lord will let me--?”
“No, no Cressen,” Stannis said, allowing Davos to examine the hand. “It’s just a scratch, come of my inability to keep my head when Robert decides to call the boar to us by grunting like one.”
Davos frowned. “You do not startle at noise, my lord, even at hunting noises.” He ran a finger along a scratch, following it from wrist to fingertip.
Stannis hissed through his teeth and shuddered. “I startle,” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, “when one brother bellows like a boar and the other jumps on my back from behind like a grubby peasant.”
Davos stopped his examination midstream and looked up into eyes that glinted like raw sapphires, hard and blue. “My lord--”
“Spare me your my lords and your sympathy and your protestations of duty, Davos--it was a trip for the ages. The bards will sing forever of the ferocity of Robert Baratheon, the First of His Name, and Lord Renly Baratheon of Storm’s End, who felled their savage brother on their family’s lands.”
In spite of himself, Davos felt the laughter a moment before it spilled from his throat. He trembled with it as he stood and fetched the ewer and basin and returned to Stannis, where he sat grimly smiling on the edge of the desk chair with a ragged piece of fabric in his outstretched hand. Davos choked back further laughs as he filled the basin with water and submerged the fabric in it.
Silence fell as Davos swabbed the scratched and bruised hand with the wet strip of fabric--bedsheet? he asked himself, then what does it matter?-and scrubbed away dried blood. The skin beneath his fingers was moist, callused on the palms and fingers, and striped with more hair than his own hands. Hard, large, rough for noble hands, more tanned than his own--Davos turned his head aside rather than continue this line of thought. Stannis was there, watching, his face without expression.
“You ought to turn maester, Ser Davos,” he said as Davos returned his gaze to the wounds. “Useful sort of thing, they are.”
“If my services currently do not please my lord--”
“Less courtier and more honest counsel would please my lord.” Despite the hardness of his voice, Stannis wore what might have been a smile, if Davos squinted. He smiled in return and turned his attention to the hand once more.
“My honest counsel is that this requires more bandaging, at the very least, my lord.”
A grunt, a rummaging sound, and a fresh line of cloth in his hands; Davos accepted it with a murmur of thanks and wrapped the hand all in white, keeping his thoughts focused on the cloth and not the skin underneath. When he finished and looked up, he was surprised to find small sunbursts darting across his vision.
“You look ill, Onion Knight.” Stannis’s gaze was direct, his face smooth, his voice flat, but his freshly bandaged hand twitched within its wrappings. “Ought you attend the feast looking like you’ve climbed fresh from the grave?”
Davos wiped sweat from his brow. “I serve at your command, my lord, and I attend the social functions you tell me to. I came without notifying you, and if it is your wish that I remain away from Lord Renly’s feast, then so be it.”
Stannis rubbed his wrapped hand. “It’s my wish that I remain away from Lord Renly’s feast, but the gods rarely answer my prayers.” He stood, abruptly enough that Davos leaned away in surprise. “You look as if a man had knocked you between the eyes, and I look like the bramble-courting idiot my brothers have tried to make me, but duty is duty.”
“Duty is duty,” Davos murmured as he got to his feet. He shook wrinkles from his tunic, miraculously unstained by his maestering, and glanced at the still-rumpled Stannis. “Shall I send for more water for bathing, my lord, and whatever feast clothes you’ve brought?”
Stannis Baratheon raised an eyebrow. “You’re a knight, not a servant, Ser Davos. I shall see you in the Great Hall.”
“Of course, my lord.” Cheeks red, Davos bowed and backed his way into the hall.
His skin was still aflame when he took his seat midway up the hall with the other minor knights of the extended Baratheon household. Most of his table companions were from Storm’s End and the surrounding region, men Renly had knighted at Robert’s order upon taking the seat, and a few could not have been older than the boy lord himself. Squires, surely, Davos told himself as he drummed his maimed finger stubs on the gold plate before him. Not even Renly would be so bold as to make untried boys knights.
Could that be worse than Stannis knighting a smuggler from Flea Bottom? another part of him asked.
He turned his attention to the high table rather than continue that line of thought, just in time to be caught full force by trumpeting. The hall around him fell silent as a door in the wall behind the table opened and Renly and Robert emerged, resplendent in silks and velvets, Robert with a circlet crown askew on his head. In the roars of approval that floated up from the smallfolk only Davos seemed to have eyes for Stannis, stolid in blue and brown linen edged with gold silk, who slid in after the lord and king to sit at Renly’s left as Robert sat at his right.
As the feast progressed Davos found his eyes drawn regularly to the thin blue and brown blot who sat picking through each course with his inscrutable face. If anyone noticed the wrappings around Stannis’s right hand, not a word was said, although Davos thought he saw Renly shoot an amused glance or two in his older brother’s direction. Whether that was objective truth or wishful thinking born of his third glass of wine--so sweet and fine, still a marvel even years after he’d left Flea Bottom--Davos did not know or care; he kept eating, drinking, and making the sort of politely ribald jokes that passed for courtesy and camaraderie among lesser knights. If he snuck occasional glances at the high table, well, that was no more than any other noble-struck man or woman down in the bowels of the hall.
He had emptied the third glass and was debating calling for a fourth when a movement of color at the head of the hall drew his attention--Robert, he realized, on his feet with a chalice as large as his head in one hand, hooting after a pair of redheaded serving women in Baratheon black and yellow. When one of the women turned back to lift her skirt to eye level, Davos realized his mistake in assuming them mere maids; he looked aside, rather than partake in the visual feast that had ensnared his king, and found himself watching the two other Baratheon brothers. Renly looked both amused and vaguely queasy, his blue eyes wide in his smooth face, while Stannis--Davos felt his own eyes widen as he watched Stannis drain his glass, a drop of red rolling down his chin.
Davos wiped his own chin before he processed that, no, that drip of wine was on Stannis, not him--Stannis, who drank only lemon water and eschewed alcohol of all sorts as frivolity. He glanced up again, but the drop of wine was gone; had Stannis wiped it away or had it never been there at all? A question for the ages, he thought as he called for another glass for himself.
Wine or ale or harder, it made no matter to Davos; he had drunk them all, and plenty of them, in his time. Four glasses or five at a feast of this size, with this much food, was the same, and the fizzing that ran up his throat as he nursed his fifth glass of wine and a small plate of sweets was a pleasant reminder of the power of alcohol to make men absurd. Robert, the redheaded follower in his lap and the contents of his latest chalice spilling down his front, was another, but that was an expected part of a feast; if Cersei Lannister could stomach the sight of her husband with his hands down some other woman’s bodice, as she had at Prince Joffrey’s naming feast years ago, surely Davos could do the same now. The woman was different--he was pretty sure of that, anyway, though all women began to look alarmingly alike to him with each cup of wine--but Robert’s hands and boorish grin were the same, if fleshier.
“Sweet brother, where is your wife?”
That drunken taunting was the same, too; Renly was between his elder brothers, when he had been absent at Joffrey’s name feast, but Robert’s voice, able to penetrate several tables down, was more than sufficient to reach Stannis, five feet away. Davos found himself watching in a strange fascination as Stannis’s cheeks--already a pinkish hue, he realized; when had that happened?--turned a deeper red and he drank from the cup in his hands, a draught that went on for several of Davos’s heartbeats. When Stannis set the cup down once more, it landed on the edge of his plate, not the tabletop proper, and, slowly enough that Davos could see it coming, spilled down into his lap.
Robert’s laughter rang in Davos’s ears; he had gotten to his feet, automatically, nearly knocking over his own wine, but none of his tablemates seemed to notice either the scene unfolding at the head of the hall or his own reaction. As Davos watched Robert murmured something in the redhead’s ear; grinning, the woman stood and went to Stannis, bending over him until her breasts were level with his eyes. Stannis fought to keep her in focus, but his eyes were clouded, and his gaze seemed to dart from her to the wine to Renly to the table and back again without making sense of what was before him, so that he merely sat, mouth slightly open, as the woman lifted her skirt to use it as a napkin to clean the wine from his lap.
At this Robert’s laughter reached such a pitch that the rest of the hall turned, in a drunken stupor, to see what had caused the uproar. As his tablemates tittered Davos pushed his way forward, drawing glances from others that lasted only a moment before turning back to the head of the hall. The high table, he told himself, fighting for a grasp over his own floaty thoughts, the high table, Stannis, the high table. His limbs had the responsiveness of molasses, and he thought of watching his sons chase one another, waist deep in water, tripping and fighting for each step. They inevitably would fail to reach each other, giggling all the while, and it was with their boyish laughter in his head that he watched Stannis stumble to his feet, push the redheaded woman aside, and disappear, while he floundered.
The boyish laughter of children turned into the drunken roars of the king of the Seven Kingdoms and the disappointed shrieks of the redheaded woman, now exaggeratedly pouting at Robert. As she returned to him she paused, turned to the hall at large, and curtsied, lifting her skirts high enough to draw whistles from the mass of men around Davos. Their hooting broke the scene’s fascination for him and, under cover of their cat-calling, he stumbled toward the main exit, careening out into the great keep at large and panting for breath.
Maiden bless me, that is not what I came to see. He closed his eyes and thought of Marya and the breasts he buried his face in at night, the fine black hair that covered her head and genitals, softer than one might expect, certainly softer than the boar-like bristles that grew from King Robert’s chin or the thinning tufts on Stannis’s head...
He jerked himself awake at that, ignoring the pounding growing behind his temples. Stannis had gone out the back door, into a part of the great keep he was not familiar with, and for all Davos knew he was dead of embarrassment or alcohol.
And if he is just hiding, smuggler, what will you do? Davos asked himself as he walked to the interior courtyard the Great Hall emptied onto. Oh, I’m so sorry, my lord; I didn’t expect a grown man to be able to care for himself? His steps faltered at the courtyard’s entrance.
Stannis will not thank you for babying him.
And if he drowns in a pool of his own vomit, what then--will Robert raise you to a lordship for your service to the realm?
You mustn’t let nobles be embarrassed before their subjects!
But this is--
“Davos?”
The Lord of Dragonstone was draped over the courtyard’s fountain, staring in his direction with bleary eyes. Davos approached him, pushing back the thudding of his heart, his eyes trained on the unraveling bloodstained bandage on Stannis’s right hand.
“My lord, your hand--”
Stannis upended part of the contents of his stomach into a neighboring bush, and Davos fought back a sudden, absurd laugh as he knelt next to his lord in the grass. Whiled Stannis vomited and dry heaved Davos cupped his hands into the fountain and, murmuring gentle nothings, dribbled the water onto the back of Stannis’s neck. He murmured while Stannis trembled and found himself thinking of toddler Matthos, covered in feverish sweat, soaking Davos’s nightshirt with tears while Marya cleaned the boys’ bed of vomit. She had been singing soft lullabies while scrubbing, turning every now and then to smile at her husband and son, and Davos’s heart had swollen with every glance in his direction. His heart was the same fragile thing now, fluttering in his chest, as Stannis gripped his arm and attempted to stand.
They shared no words until they had returned to Stannis’s chambers, where Davos allowed him to sink down onto the bed as he poured water into a cup and placed it in Stannis’s hands. “You must drink, please, my lord, to wash your mouth clean and relieve the hammering in your head.”
“There’s no hammering,” Stannis muttered, taking a sip. “Just a floating, like the sea has come to my head.”
“You are a poet, my lord, a bard for the ages.”
Stannis’s only reply was a grunt, a sound that set Davos’s heart racing all over again. That’s the Lord of Dragonstone I know. He might have said that out loud, so close were the ties between his wine-clouded mind and his mouth, but Stannis had drained the water cup and let it fall to the floor with a clatter, falling back against the pillows.
“My lord, such clumsiness is unlike you,” Davos murmured, watching Stannis’s face for signs of distress.
“So is alcohol.” Stannis’s eyes were closed, but his mouth twitched briefly before settling into a frown. “Forgive me my lapse of duty, Ser Davos.”
“I know of no lapse of duty. My lord,” he amended as Stannis opened his eyes to glare at him.
“You are to tell the truth to me always, Ser Davos, alcohol or no.”
Davos knelt next to the bed, wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, clenched his tunic with a trembling hand. “I do, my lord, and I did.” Before his common sense could catch up with his tongue he added, “What is more apt for a Baratheon than drunken insanity?”
The silence that followed this set his stomach roiling as he watched Stannis roll over until his eyes were level with Davos’s own. At this proximity he fancied he could see the wine swirling in them, tinges of red-violet amidst the blue. They match the bruises on his hand, those eyes, those burning, dancing eyes, he realized, and you should look away, impertinent lowborn idiot.
Instead he found himself staring, afraid even to blink, while Stannis placed his bandaged right hand over Davos’s shortened fingers. The motion, the sudden warmth against his stubs, reminded Davos of the swing of a certain knife, and in the blink of an eye he was standing in the kitchens, unable to look away from an eighteen-year-old wielding a meat cleaver. Look at your fingers, in their last moments, he had told himself then; instead he had ridden out the downswing, the burst of agony, in two blunt pools of blue, stealing glances again and again as Cressen bandaged his hand.
“It was justice.” Stannis’s voice was a rasp as he looked at the overlay of bandaged hand and missing fingers. “This is too,” he murmured, prodding the blood-stained fabric with his good hand. “Penance for my thoughts, the old septon would say, the Father’s distaste for my dereliction of duty.”
Davos touched a hand to the bag of fingerbones at his throat. “My lord, my fingerbones are justice and penance. Your wound is an accident, angry bramble and foolish brothers, nothing to do with--”
“All the foolishness in the world does not excuse me hating them, Ser Davos.” Before Davos could reply, Stannis pulled his hands away, rolled onto his back once more, stared up at the ceiling. “They are my brothers. One is a drunken sot, the other a little fool who doesn’t think of anything more important than his dress, but they are my brothers. I can’t--” he swallowed, chest heaving, and Davos fought back the urge to grip his hand “--I can’t help that I do not like them. I can help wishing for things to be otherwise.” The jerk of his head happened quickly enough that Davos was caught off guard when he stared into his eyes once more. “All any of us can do is our duty, Ser Davos, and duty...”
Stannis’s voice trailed off. Davos sat up straighter and leaned forward until his ear was close to Stannis’s mouth.
“And duty what, my lord?” he murmured.
“Duty has no relation to what we want or like.”
Davos was aware of a roaring in the back of his skull--wine or sorrow or something else entirely, he didn’t know, but whatever it was it seemed to have taken possession of his limbs, to move his arms without his permission as he took Stannis’s bandaged hand in both of his. Skin blazed on skin; his breath jerked in his chest.
“Duty is duty, my lord.” What was his tongue doing, making these words? “Wishes are another thing, but so important--”
“Not more important than duty, ser.” Stannis’s eyes were boring into his own--blue all over again, too blue, where’d the wine go? Davos asked himself. “Name for me one good thing to come of wishes and hopes.”
“Me.”
Stannis’s laugh shook the mattress, making Davos’s arms vibrate. His mouth moved of some will, be it his or the wine’s.
“You wished for salvation, my lord. I brought it to you, with fish and onions. I did it for money, for the dare, for the reward that I knew would come of it. When you hacked half my fingers off with a cleaver was when I stayed, and that was no wishing or wanting on my part. I liked my fingers, my lord, but from that point on my duty was clear.”
Stannis snorted at that. “What is this, a fable? You saved my life and I saved your soul, brought you to see your duty?” A smile grew on his lips, the faintest hint, so that Davos found himself sweating profusely, struggling to breathe through the racing of his heart. “What am I, a septon? You may have more faith in them than I do, but I know no septon could ever make me live my duty.”
“Septons don’t wield cleavers or make honest men of smugglers. Lords do.” Before he could stop it, his mouth added, “You do. You took my ability to smuggle with one stroke and forced me to start my life anew. Duty happened to me, inadvertently, with no relation to what I wanted, and it was you.” He bent his head over the ring finger on Stannis’s left hand, where most lords would keep a signet ring. Most lords would not wield a meat cleaver, either, he realized, then giggled. Stannis wasn’t a lord then, he decided, only a blue-eyed boy with the most determined, desperate face in the world, torn between love and hate.
“It was you.”
He kissed Stannis’s finger.
Davos’s lips burned against the bare skin as sweat seeped into the crevices of his mouth. It was a brush, lip on finger, the gesture peasants had given to their liege lords a thousand times and more throughout the course of the Seven Kingdoms, but it was not a gesture Davos Seaworth had ever given to anyone, even on the dark night when Stannis Baratheon had taken his fingers and made a future for his family. He couldn’t have said why he did it now or why it made his entire chest ache.
It means nothing, he told his heart, lingering over Stannis’s hand. Move, leave and let him sleep it off and let the world flow back to normal... His thoughts were so desperate, careening around his brain, that he missed the shuffle of mattress as Stannis leaned forward, but he felt in painful clarity the blaze of lips on the top of his head, the fire that rushed down each nerve of his scalp and pushed his mouth up to meet Stannis’s.
When he kissed Marya on the mouth Davos felt every part of him rise up, light as air, and drift free, so he knew this heaviness, this sour yearning, was atrociously wrong. Logic would tell him that as well--you are kissing your liege lord, you are insane, if this is duty you are the king, Marya and Selyse Marya and Selyse Marya and Selyse--and he waited for either his lips or Stannis’s to move, for Stannis to slap sense into him. Instead they both seemed to lean in further, and Stannis’s hands grabbed his chin and pulled, a hard motion that nonetheless set the lower half of his face tingling. Noses mashed together, brows scraped, lips were so forcefully placed together that momentum carried them apart a moment later, and still neither man moved, for one heartbeat, two heartbeats, three...
After perhaps five frenzied heartbeats in total Stannis fell back against his pillow, leaving Davos kneeling and gasping to the side. His mouth worked, searching for some kind of phrase to say, but Stannis simply lay quietly, eyes closed, wearing an expression that was not entirely sad nor angry, and at the sight of that placidity Davos felt his need to speak curl back into his bowels. Instead he picked up Stannis’s wounded hand, undoing the bandaging while his eyes sought something to tear for fresh fabric.
“The bedsheet,” Stannis whispered. Startled, Davos focused on his face--and noticed the long strip missing from edge nearest the wall. Before he could move, Stannis, without opening his eyes, tore a new strip and held it forth, with a smile on his lips.
Davos washed and changed the bandaging somehow, paying more attention to his hazy mind than to anything physical before him. Once he had finished he sat back against the floor, watching Stannis’s chest rise and fall and listening to the slow breathing--sleeping it off at last, as you wished, he told himself. The thought had barely occurred to him before Stannis’s mouth opened and he found himself leaning forward to hear.
“The world is spinning.” Stannis’s voice was barely audible. “If I sleep...does the hammering not come later?”
“The Smith only knows, my lord,” Davos replied in a murmur that, he thought vaguely, reflected the slow fluttering of his heart.
“If I sleep...does this night not happen?”
Davos’s good hand clutched his fingerbones, digging in.
“No, my lord.”
The corner of Stannis’s mouth twitched. “Good. Every night is a lesson.”
“My lord, I am--I mean--”
“You are my most trusted adviser.” The words, amazingly, set Davos’s heart afloat all over again. “You are a just man, an honest man, whole and dutiful...” His voice dropped to almost nothing again. “You know who you are and you know what you want.”
“My lord,” Davos whispered, trembling. “I have no words for you.”
“Words are wind, and there is enough of that in this castle. What I need is...you.”
“To...advise you?”
“To give good counsel, by being...yourself.”
Davos smiled at the ceiling. “I am yours, my lord, to do and advise as you see fit.”
“Then sleep.” Stannis slid to the other side of the bed, and Davos stared at the spot left near him. “The floor is hard and the bed too large. Even in alcohol I mustn’t...be wasteful.”
Slowly, so slowly he wasn’t entirely sure whether he actually moved or simply dreamed it, Davos climbed up onto the mattress and lay, arms stiffly at either side, as Stannis seemed to slip off into sleep. His own body had just begun to relax when a hand brushed his hip and rested there.
Davos covered Stannis’s mangled hand with his own and closed his eyes.