How unfamiliar it all is, isn't it? It is. The laughter, these movements, and that warm inside his belly -- and oh lord, terribly, unrepentantly, the knowledge that he's seen. And it's rather different now, isn't it, hunter?, to be more than just endured like a draft in the winter? Here, it's like his name has dusted that smile, its scooped vowels like the flame-winks in the lines of those eyes, and if he'd but dare with all his heart to chase the blues that they would cradle? Himself. He is there, soul naked, and unmoored. Free.
Goodness, when has he last been seen so vulnerably? Or perhaps tenderly? Or so easily, trussed young and unburdened by his years? It's a wonder if Henry would always see him in this manner, in such a color so unshadowed and blushed tenderly man. Perhaps he would jolt to this discovery, to now see himself divested of his bulwarks and pretense, but Henry would dance so merrily, all of those nightmares of his seasons gone gentling at the seams. Yes, perhaps Arthur has but a life swarmed by a shadow and has perhaps tasted the full of a lifetime gone souring young, but how Henry howls his laughter and pins him with its rumble? Humanity. Even now, a wolf in his middle, it's clear that he has supped on love in too-full spoons.
He isn't starving like Arthur is.
In his chest, he has but a hive thick with combs steeped syruped with warmth.
He doesn't shiver to this discovery, to Arthur's shy humanity that would shake his world, and instead, if he could but pry between his ribs and spill in him his honey? He longs to. Bee-song. As the tavern roars aloud, it is April's chiming potpourri and a ballad of growth.
What are you doing? Arthur might think. Owning you, I'm supposing. Or better yet, possessing you, maybe, in whole or in parts. And that's normal, isn't it now?, when you would so fight for one another and so bleed for another and nurse one's wounds? Yet, Henry would wager that even that's not honest, something considerably weightier burgeoning in the riddle. Alive, he would sweat with the frolicking in the tavern, his hunter meeting him in points from his chest to his hips. All the same, it has never been so saccharine as this, so needless and so full and so missing their wounds, but Arthur still hemorrhages in his center, his world rupturing with the thaw of the green through the snow. It's crackling. The dirt and the ice and the wood of his coffin -- Reviving. When Arthur trips, Henry rights him, and--
Lent about his body, it's like Hal's breath is a kiss.
Brain stuttering, Henry gapes as Arthur bolts for the hills.
What...has happened? Henry looks on. Uncaring, or perhaps more unknowing, really, the ale-wenches continue with their pouring as the men belt out a shanty fit for sailors. In his fingers, he would still feel the soft of Arthur's tunic and the shy whisper of his heat had that had rippled through cotton and dark-dyed hemp. He can scarcely righten his mind suddenly, that bloody riddle again discordant in his mind like a horde of bees. When he moves, he feels like they're the same bees from his chest, the one that had constructed those hives swelled with honey. Damn. Whatever could it mean, he frets, that just gazing at that man would so fill him with syrup? He's nigh on dribbling with it, its thick lapping up his throat and hoveling in his gullet like a half-shout whisper. Oh, God. Whatever is this mystery? Whatever is this feeling? Slipping out that body-warm tavern, Hal spies him: alone, strut like willow stood in the shallows.
Strange. Well, trees don't tower in the seas, now do they? Yet, as he moves, Henry still feels dragged with waves.
"Arthur? You alright?" he calls out. His pulse is still going. In Henry's skull, it thunks like this: bam, bam, THUD!, like them hooves of a horse. Of course, he has warred to Armageddons by now, the sound of death caught lingering in his ears like a young Viking's lullaby. He scarcely knows why he would of that now, of massacres and stalemates and the goring with a polearm, but he does, and still, always ever onward does this knight go forward. Sallying. Brave, and perhaps foolish, he takes Arthur's shoulder. "Hey," he says. He's comforting. He's swallowing. "What's gotten into you, ey?" he tempts. Always tempting. The broad of his shoulders and the home in those hands... I can reshape you, Sir. "Got your head spinning in there? Weak in them knees? You could have just leant on me, Sir." That lands somewhere ungainly between them. Dammit. His palm burns down to his bicep. "Aren't I always there to catch you?"
