The usual disclaimers; I own none of these characters (more's the pity), I make no profit, nor any claim to historical accuracy. Read, enjoy, review if you like.
Just a one off Geoff slash
Geoffrey Chaucer runs a hand over the naked breast of his love. In his heart, he knows this is his last bright thing, the greatest and brightest in a youth full of great bright things. The future holds only shadows of this promise, contented sighs, quiet murmurings. Geoffrey is no longer a youth. His appetites will change. Love is a thing for the young, with hearts hail and strong enough to bear it, not for hearts shorn up with the framework of experience and age, frail under the strain of thwarted expectation.
He knows he is being watched. Those eyes, chips of amber spark up at him from the pillow of grass. Fingertips breeze over his cheekbone, his lips, his collarbone, touch each scar with the sure accuracy of intimacy, then curl around the back of his neck and pull him down. Lips meet his, cajolingly milk a kiss from him. He capitulates, melting, body to body, skin to fiery skin, soul into molten soul, then they part and a whisper floats up out of the gloom.
"What, my sweet poet? Nothing to say?"
"Words fail." As does courage. Tears slip out the corners of Geoff's eyes.
"Only three I need."
"And when you have them, you rise and leave." A thick thatch of hair, robbed of its colour in the dark, settles on his chest.
"Would you send me into war without them?" Silence, filled with all the words Chaucer cannot say, settles over them like a thick blanket. "Then I will say them." The sharp chin digs into his chest, and those great orbs gaze at him, bathing him in something that needs no words, cannot be encompassed by volumes of them, let alone three. "I love you."
Something like a groan escapes Geoffrey as pain ricochets through him, leaving him shattered. "Don't go." The plea is past his lips before he knows it is loose. It has been held behind the closed doors of his heart for weeks since the Black Prince's call. He twines his fingers through the thick locks.
"You know I have to go."
"Then go. With my heart."
"Geoff."
He deflects the pain. "Take care of our William." He will not say come back. He cannot. He knows this is final. His writer's intuition tells him all great love must have the decency to end in tragedy. He pulls the red head closer, no longer content with words. As the dawn approaches and they love for the last time, they are brighter than the rising sun, and each of Geoffrey's kisses ends in "I love you," as though he can armour his beloved in words, shield him with his ardour.
They sit, afterwards, wrapped in a blanket on the hillside, and Geoffrey Chaucer feels, for the first time in his life, empty of words. There is nothing left to say. Nothing left to do but bask in this last, brightest thing.