#OL is the most frustrating fucking fandom ISTG

[brotherhoodoftheblade]

You cannot tell me that DG (back before she lost her mind and dropped the ball at the homestretch) didn’t mean for us to read this scene:

“....It’s coming is a gift, which I accept with gratitude, but when it’s gone, there is no sense of abandonment or deprivation. I’m only glad to have had it for as long as it chose to remain.”

“And you’re saying your relationship with Manoke is the same. Does he feel that way about you, do you think?” I asked, fascinated. He glanced at me, cleared startled. 

“I have no idea.”

“You, um, don’t...talk in bed?” I said, striving for delicacy. 

His mouth twitched, and he looked away.

“No.”

We lay in silence for a few moments, examining the ceiling. 

“Have you ever?” I blurted.

“Have I what?”

“Had a lover that you talked to?”

He cut his eyes at me. 

“Yes. Perhaps not quite so frankly as I find myself talking to you, but, yes.” 

(An Echo in the Bone, Ch.95)

...and draw a straight line in our recollections to the times John lay abed with Percy in BotB, speaking of intimacies they shared with no one else. Because obviously, Percy was the only lover of his he really talked to about deeply personal matters in bed. (That we were shown anyway. He probably confided in Hector at least about some things, I hope.)

“Shall I tell you a great secret?” Percy’s voice was soft, breath warm in his ear. Grey reached a hand through the sheets, slid it over the high round of a still warmer buttock.

“Please,” he whispered.

“My name is not Percival.”

.....[Percy] laughed a little unsteadily, took a deep breath, and lay down on his back, drawing the sheet up over his chest.

“My name is Perseverance,” he said in a rush.

“Per -” Grey lay completely still, holding his breath and concentrating fiercely on his belly muscles. 

“Go ahead and laugh,” Percy said from the dark, with exceeding dryness. “I won’t mind.”

“Yes, you would,” Grey said, but was still unable to quell the bubble of mirth that rose up the back of his throat, and being there firmly suppressed, emerged through his nose in a strangled snort. To keep from committing further offense, he said the first thing that came into his mind.

“What’s your middle name?”

Percy laughed, sounding a little easier, now that the dreadful confession was made.

.....Just now, he was realizing exactly the magnitude of the the gift Percy had given him. 

He was the only one who knew. Percy had been right; it was a great secret, and John felt the weight of his lover’s trust, warm on his heart.

He groped for Percy’s hand and found it, slightly cold. They lay silent for a bit, holding hands, bodies warming to each other. 

..... “Shall I tell you a great secret?” Grey whispered, at long last. ...

“Please.” Percy’s hand tightened on his.

“My father was murdered.”

..... Somewhere in the telling, Percy had gathered him into his arms, and held him now, close against his body. His head lay in the hollow of Percy’s shoulder, and the curly hairs of Percy’s chest brushed soft against his lips as he spoke. ...

Percy’s hand smoothed the hair away from John’s face, gentle. 

“Your mother likely thought whoever’d killed your father had got you, too.”

“Yes, she did.” For the first time in the telling, a lump came into his throat, recalling his mother’s face when she’d seen him, filthy, trailing hay and mud across the Turkey carpet in her boudoir. “That’s - that’s the only time she cried.”

Percy’s arm tightened round his shoulders. He could hear Percy’s heart, a muffled steady thump beneath his heart.

“And you?” Percy said at last, very quietly. “Did you weep for your father?”

“I never did,” he said, and closed his eyes.

(BotB, Ch.18)

~*~

Percy did return to the matter a few days later, though. No doubt it was a matter of Percy’s own upbringing in a religious milieu, Grey reflected. Or perhaps it was only that Percy had never been with a man willing to discuss philosophy in bed. Grey hadn’t, himself, but found the novelty mildly diverting. 

They had left the barracks separately and met in Percy’s rooms for a few stolen hours. Where, after the initial delights of the flesh had been tasted, Grey found himself with his head pillowed on Percy’s stomach, being read to from a collection of legal opinions. published a year or two previous. 

.....

“So,” Grey remarked, “we must be exterminated, because our pleasures are insufficiently ecstatic?” 

Percy’s brow relaxed a bit, and he closed the book.

.....Still, he considered the matter, enjoying the peaceful rise and fall of Percy’s breathing beneath his cheek. 

“I think a gentleman conducts his affairs with kindness and with honor,” he said, at last. ...

Percy gave a short laugh.

“Kindness and honor? That’s all well - but what of love?”

Grey valued love - and feared it - too greatly to make idle protestations.

“You cannot compel love,” he said finally, “nor summon it at will. Still less,” he added ruefully, “can you dismiss it.” He sat up then, and looked at Percy, who was looking down, tracing patterns on the counterpane with a fingertip. “I think you are not in love with me, are you?”

Percy smiled a little, not looking up. Not disagreeing, either. “Cannot dismiss it,” he echoed. “Who was he? Or is he?”

“Is.” Grey felt a sudden jolt of the heart at the speaking of that single word. Something at once joyful and terrible; the admission was irrevocable.

Percy was looking up at him now, brown eyes bright with interest.

“It is - I mean, he - you need not worry. There is no possibility of anything between us.” Grey blurted, and bit his tongue to keep back the sudden impulse to tell everything, only for the momentary ecstasy of speaking of Jamie Fraser. He was wiser than that, though, and kept the words bottled tight in his throat. 

“Oh. He’s not...?” Percy’s gaze flicked momentarily over Grey’s nakedness, then returned to his face.

“No.”

It was late in the day; light skimmed across the room from the high attic windows, striking the dark burnished mass of Percy’s curling hair, painting the lines of his face in chiaroscuro, but leaving his body in the dimness of shadow.

“Is friendship and sincere liking not enough for you?” Grey was careful to avoid any tone of pettishness or accusation, making the question merely one of honest inquiry. Percy heard this, and smiled, lopsidedly, but with answering honesty.

“No.” He stretched out a hand and ran it up Grey’s bare arm, over the curve of his shoulder, and down the slope of his breast, where he spread his palm flat over the nipple - and took a sudden hold of the flesh there, fingers digging into the muscle.

“Add that, though...” he said softly, “and I think it will suffice.”

(BotB, Ch.19)

That their story will never have a happy resolution - after all that they were, and could’ve yet been, to each other - is just tragic. 🥺😭😭😭