[FICATHON] Harry to Harry Shall, for house_kitten
Title: Harry To Harry Shall
Author: speak_me_fair
Play: Henry IV, Part I
Recipient: house_kitten
Characters: Hal, Hotspur, Kate Percy
Warnings: Slash, threesome. Um, sex.
Rating: NC-17, for language and sex.
Notes: Hal/Hotspur/Kate. Hal/Poins implied.
Summary: Hal's drowning his perpetual sorrows. Hotspur joins him. Kate rescues them.
"Cos, cos, cos..."
"I'm not your coz," Poins muttered to the table.
"No!" Hal thumped down a fist, sending everything rattling and provoking various desultory shouts of complaint. "Be-cause. Hah. Be. Bebebebebebe. I don't stutter. I can say it."
"Wish you'd stop," Poins said, in great sympathy with the grains of wood, which he was tracing with a wine-stained finger.
"Won't."
"Hal....'m too tired. Shurrup." They had, admittedly, been awake for about forty hours and been drinking for something around that, but that was no excuse, because Hal wanted to explain about his father, and he wanted to say just how much it hurt when someone wanted you to be another Harry, and -
"What wuz I sayin'?"
"B'cause," Poins provided helpfully, yawned, and cradled his head on his arms, his eyes closing. He had little purple shadows under the silly long eyelashes, and normally Hal wanted to kiss them - the eyelashes, that was, not the shadows, because shadows melted with the dawn, and...
Huh. It was early afternoon.
And he really didn't want to kiss Poins at all right now, mostly because he was snore-burping, and he smelled of mud, which was funny, because had anyone been in mud? - and in any case, Hal was angry.
He couldn't remember why, but he was, and it had been for a really good reason.
"Wish he was his Harry," he mumbled, against a counterpoint of Falstaff explaining why one should never sugar lampreys. "Wish he was. He'd be a great murderous Plantagenet, he would."
Oh. Yes. Hotspur. That was it.
"He can change us over, and he can be his Harry, then, cos I'm Hal!" he yelled to the room in general, blissfully ignoring the confused pronouns.
"And so you are," said a deep, amused voice in his ear. "Well, well, little princeling. I'd change you over for a tankard, right n-now."
Hal twisted his head around, and blinked through black sparkles, which should have been impossible, and definitely weren't, because they were dancing over a horribly familiar hawk-face, and into fair hair.
"Shit. H'lo, Percy."
"I," said the Hotspur of the North with enormous feeling, "have had a r-really bad day."
The tankard in his hand smelled of spirits.
Aquavit.
Harry Percy was drinking a full tankard of aquavit.
"Christ," said Hal, impressed despite himself. "What did my father do?"
"Enough to send me to a-an Eastcheap t-avern."
"Well, he already did that to me, doesn't take much."
The hawk-face crinkled up in amused fellow-feeling. "How t-rue."
He had a nice mouth. It was thin, and a bit funny, and it quirked up at one corner, and the corner went deep in, like a wall-bracket, and Hal wanted -
"I'll teach you to w-whistle Mortimer, lad, but I'll no' k-kiss ye."
"I'm too drunk to know what you're talking about," Hal said with mendacious innocence. "Why're you here?"
"Because I w-wanted to be t-oo drunk to r-remember what I w-was talking 'bout."
Well, that made sense. Poor old Hotspur. Poor old Hal. Poor old Poins, who was still snore-burping.
"Poor everyone," Hal sighed.
"Your father," said Hotspur, draining the tankard, he drank a whole tankard of aquavit and he's getting brought another, and damn, can I be him? Now? "is a b-astard damned."
"No," Hal said, using the full power of very wide eyes and an encouraging look, "my father is a murdering cunt. Actually."
Hotspur stared at him over the cheap pewter rim of his new drink, and suddenly choked on an inhalation of very fiery, badly stored spirits.
"Why, thank you for that, little p-rinceling!"
Damn. Course he wouldn't fall for it.
"Kate's back at our l-lodgings," Harry Percy said then, irrelevantly, but the look in his eyes was absolutely unambiguous.
Oh. Oh.
"If y-ou still had those designs on my m-mouth, that is."
The only man in the kingdom to make halting words sound like pure well-water clarity.
Hal drained his cheap sack, even swallowing the dregs of it, the faint grit telling him this was real.
"A'right."
*
When he married, he would take him a woman like Kate, he decided, a woman who simply welcomed him, with the smell of mud and worse on his clothes, and accepted his sweet-wine stinking kiss.
A woman who simply gave him a new drink, in a clean silver cup, and asked him with all the formality of a prayer if he would care to bathe.
Oh hell yes, Kate. Can I take your husband with me?
He could, apparently, take them both with him, take small soft hands and hard, large, calloused ones, moving a cloth over his shoulders and chest and neck while the heat of them, oh God, the heat of them, seared through the linen.
"We're going to take you to bed," someone said.
Not put you to bed, not a child, no, take him, and Hal relinquished himself into touch and sweet smells and hardness - and all of it hands, until he was helped out of the water and wrapped in a clean silken robe that somehow managed to smell of horse and worn metal and Harry.
"You're Harry," he said, ridiculously.
"I am that," agreed the deep voice, free of any halting blemish.
He found joy, after that, sudden and surprising, tumbled into clean linen and a good straw mattress, touched and touching. There were small breasts in his hands, the aureoles contracting, tightening, thyme-scented hair curtaining over his face in waves that he had never dreamed existed.
He thrust, blindly, into welcoming warmth, but it was not a soft cry of acceptance and delight, such as he was used to, that he heard, but a man's shout of outraged permission.
And still the huge dark eyes looked into his, and the small soft hands caressed him, and as he released his own self, that was Hal and Harry both, into the other self of the wanted Harry, the needed Harry, the father-loved Harry, he might have wept a little.
Might have and would have, save that the waves of hair were over his eyes, and it was sweeter to watch the candlelight create him a dark myriad of browns, than to blur his sight with salt and half-felt pain.
"And next, dearling," said the soft, slightly Welsh-tinted voice of the woman whose hands reached around him and Percy both, "it shall be you."
It was, and it was, but never her. Never her, except the touch of her, the need of her, the desire of her that locked them both together. Never her until he woke from a small sweet sleep into unfuddled clarity, and saw them by his side, watched her arch above her lord, naked and unashamed, those small sweet breasts that had been in his hands brushing his mouth until he caught one between his teeth.
And this was no suckling child, longing for a might-have-been. Hal watched as all he had believed they were giving him was made flesh beside him, and drowned in envy as they drowned in bliss.
They laughed, and pulled him between them, and slept.
When he woke, to the morning and their absence, he knew it for the gift it was.
Harry to Harry shall....
They had. They would.
But not yet. Now he could lie in the scent of their love, and rejoice in it.
Author: speak_me_fair
Play: Henry IV, Part I
Recipient: house_kitten
Characters: Hal, Hotspur, Kate Percy
Warnings: Slash, threesome. Um, sex.
Rating: NC-17, for language and sex.
Notes: Hal/Hotspur/Kate. Hal/Poins implied.
Summary: Hal's drowning his perpetual sorrows. Hotspur joins him. Kate rescues them.
"Cos, cos, cos..."
"I'm not your coz," Poins muttered to the table.
"No!" Hal thumped down a fist, sending everything rattling and provoking various desultory shouts of complaint. "Be-cause. Hah. Be. Bebebebebebe. I don't stutter. I can say it."
"Wish you'd stop," Poins said, in great sympathy with the grains of wood, which he was tracing with a wine-stained finger.
"Won't."
"Hal....'m too tired. Shurrup." They had, admittedly, been awake for about forty hours and been drinking for something around that, but that was no excuse, because Hal wanted to explain about his father, and he wanted to say just how much it hurt when someone wanted you to be another Harry, and -
"What wuz I sayin'?"
"B'cause," Poins provided helpfully, yawned, and cradled his head on his arms, his eyes closing. He had little purple shadows under the silly long eyelashes, and normally Hal wanted to kiss them - the eyelashes, that was, not the shadows, because shadows melted with the dawn, and...
Huh. It was early afternoon.
And he really didn't want to kiss Poins at all right now, mostly because he was snore-burping, and he smelled of mud, which was funny, because had anyone been in mud? - and in any case, Hal was angry.
He couldn't remember why, but he was, and it had been for a really good reason.
"Wish he was his Harry," he mumbled, against a counterpoint of Falstaff explaining why one should never sugar lampreys. "Wish he was. He'd be a great murderous Plantagenet, he would."
Oh. Yes. Hotspur. That was it.
"He can change us over, and he can be his Harry, then, cos I'm Hal!" he yelled to the room in general, blissfully ignoring the confused pronouns.
"And so you are," said a deep, amused voice in his ear. "Well, well, little princeling. I'd change you over for a tankard, right n-now."
Hal twisted his head around, and blinked through black sparkles, which should have been impossible, and definitely weren't, because they were dancing over a horribly familiar hawk-face, and into fair hair.
"Shit. H'lo, Percy."
"I," said the Hotspur of the North with enormous feeling, "have had a r-really bad day."
The tankard in his hand smelled of spirits.
Aquavit.
Harry Percy was drinking a full tankard of aquavit.
"Christ," said Hal, impressed despite himself. "What did my father do?"
"Enough to send me to a-an Eastcheap t-avern."
"Well, he already did that to me, doesn't take much."
The hawk-face crinkled up in amused fellow-feeling. "How t-rue."
He had a nice mouth. It was thin, and a bit funny, and it quirked up at one corner, and the corner went deep in, like a wall-bracket, and Hal wanted -
"I'll teach you to w-whistle Mortimer, lad, but I'll no' k-kiss ye."
"I'm too drunk to know what you're talking about," Hal said with mendacious innocence. "Why're you here?"
"Because I w-wanted to be t-oo drunk to r-remember what I w-was talking 'bout."
Well, that made sense. Poor old Hotspur. Poor old Hal. Poor old Poins, who was still snore-burping.
"Poor everyone," Hal sighed.
"Your father," said Hotspur, draining the tankard, he drank a whole tankard of aquavit and he's getting brought another, and damn, can I be him? Now? "is a b-astard damned."
"No," Hal said, using the full power of very wide eyes and an encouraging look, "my father is a murdering cunt. Actually."
Hotspur stared at him over the cheap pewter rim of his new drink, and suddenly choked on an inhalation of very fiery, badly stored spirits.
"Why, thank you for that, little p-rinceling!"
Damn. Course he wouldn't fall for it.
"Kate's back at our l-lodgings," Harry Percy said then, irrelevantly, but the look in his eyes was absolutely unambiguous.
Oh. Oh.
"If y-ou still had those designs on my m-mouth, that is."
The only man in the kingdom to make halting words sound like pure well-water clarity.
Hal drained his cheap sack, even swallowing the dregs of it, the faint grit telling him this was real.
"A'right."
*
When he married, he would take him a woman like Kate, he decided, a woman who simply welcomed him, with the smell of mud and worse on his clothes, and accepted his sweet-wine stinking kiss.
A woman who simply gave him a new drink, in a clean silver cup, and asked him with all the formality of a prayer if he would care to bathe.
Oh hell yes, Kate. Can I take your husband with me?
He could, apparently, take them both with him, take small soft hands and hard, large, calloused ones, moving a cloth over his shoulders and chest and neck while the heat of them, oh God, the heat of them, seared through the linen.
"We're going to take you to bed," someone said.
Not put you to bed, not a child, no, take him, and Hal relinquished himself into touch and sweet smells and hardness - and all of it hands, until he was helped out of the water and wrapped in a clean silken robe that somehow managed to smell of horse and worn metal and Harry.
"You're Harry," he said, ridiculously.
"I am that," agreed the deep voice, free of any halting blemish.
He found joy, after that, sudden and surprising, tumbled into clean linen and a good straw mattress, touched and touching. There were small breasts in his hands, the aureoles contracting, tightening, thyme-scented hair curtaining over his face in waves that he had never dreamed existed.
He thrust, blindly, into welcoming warmth, but it was not a soft cry of acceptance and delight, such as he was used to, that he heard, but a man's shout of outraged permission.
And still the huge dark eyes looked into his, and the small soft hands caressed him, and as he released his own self, that was Hal and Harry both, into the other self of the wanted Harry, the needed Harry, the father-loved Harry, he might have wept a little.
Might have and would have, save that the waves of hair were over his eyes, and it was sweeter to watch the candlelight create him a dark myriad of browns, than to blur his sight with salt and half-felt pain.
"And next, dearling," said the soft, slightly Welsh-tinted voice of the woman whose hands reached around him and Percy both, "it shall be you."
It was, and it was, but never her. Never her, except the touch of her, the need of her, the desire of her that locked them both together. Never her until he woke from a small sweet sleep into unfuddled clarity, and saw them by his side, watched her arch above her lord, naked and unashamed, those small sweet breasts that had been in his hands brushing his mouth until he caught one between his teeth.
And this was no suckling child, longing for a might-have-been. Hal watched as all he had believed they were giving him was made flesh beside him, and drowned in envy as they drowned in bliss.
They laughed, and pulled him between them, and slept.
When he woke, to the morning and their absence, he knew it for the gift it was.
Harry to Harry shall....
They had. They would.
But not yet. Now he could lie in the scent of their love, and rejoice in it.