After that night, John's cot lay empty at night. During the day, he perched on it and performed his armor-labors, speaking with Bane when he was present and reeling through daydreams of shame and delight when he was not. He swore to himself, again and again, that he must stop this; that he was taking advantage, that he would be hurt, that he would hurt Bane. He had seen a hundred campaign arrangements such as this begin and end- it was no oddity in war, no more than a married man would be judged odd for dallying with a whore after a battle. If he had been a less honest man, he would have consoled himself with this knowledge, but he had known himself long enough that this lie would not heal him. He did not want a night's relief with Bane, or even an arrangement after battles; he wanted the man himself, wanted the weight of him sleeping in his bed, wanted the rich voice and the careful touches... wanted a life full of this, whatever life could be built on the love of two men who took no wives.
Two things tore at him: one, that Bane would not kiss him, though by the golden light of the brazier he seemed more than willing to learn John's body and trace the lines of his face with those broad fingertips, and in fact since that first tryst he had only removed his mask in John's presence to eat; and two, that he could see the way Bane's eyes followed Talia, longing twisted and denied until it had become a sickening thing, and he knew that he had once again cast his love after someone who could not return it.
And still he could not restrain himself; each night he crept into Bane's bed and lay, taut and silent with unasked questions, until Bane's strong hand found the bare skin of his shoulder or his collarbone or his ribs and set off the chain of desperate touching and stroking that would ultimate leave them gasping and spent, lying side-by-side. Gradually their fucking evolved, until John slept at night with Bane curled around him, until John laid kisses on every inch of skin exposed by Bane's mask and trailed them down his neck and chest and belly, until Bane was driven mad enough with desire to press John into the mattress with his full weight and rut against his belly until he found his release.
And each morning John accused himself, and found himself guiltier. Bane was ferocious in his pursuit of pleasure, inexhaustible as a boy with spots, and as clumsy and innocent as a man with such sure hands and such brutal experience could be. John wondered if he had been a virgin, and finally asked him; "No," said Bane, his voice dark and distant, and John pursued no further.
Clearly, whatever had been Bane's past knowledge of love, it was not a memory of pleasure. The horror of this assuaged some of John's guilt, and drove him like a goaded beast to fulfill his master's every need- especially given that the things John feared to indulge, given Bane's mass and power, seemed so alien to Bane that they might never occur to him unless suggested.
At last Bane told him a bit more: as a youth in the pit, before he came into his strength and his man's height, he had performed certain favors for other prisoners in return for food, swallowing seed so that he might have bread to swallow as well. No one had ever returned that favor; there had been no enjoyment for him, only humiliation and loathing.
John hated the thought of this, the mental image of jeering criminals fucking his beautiful knight's mouth and leaving him in despair with crusts for his food. He knew Bane had done it willingly, that he had counted it a fair trade; but he hated that now Bane's mouth might as well have been locked away behind a fortress of soldiers as behind a mask, fearing the intimacy of kissing and dreading the thought of more. And he knew that he would never ask for any of it, only lie awake at night with Bane's warm sleeping skin blazing at his back, resting his fingertips gently against his mouth and imagining the sweet crushing softness of those full scarred half-remembered lips.
Two months had scarcely passed since the death of King Bruce, and John was appalled at how swiftly the wounds in his heart had healed. Perhaps, he thought, he had been grieving for years, knowing that what he craved could never be; perhaps his love for Bruce had at last been soured beyond repair, as Bane's crippling love for the Lady Talia seemed now.
Bane's voice was almost pleading when he ordered John to stop his spying. He had spoken to Lady Talia about the attack and given a cold rebuff; she claimed that her maidservant had been harassed, and her men were under orders to treat harshly any man- regardless of rank- who appeared to be bothering her. "I would not have your talented hands broken by violent fools," said Bane, his voice amused and his eyes dark, and John agreed because there was nothing he could hold back from Bane at all.
And he did not spy, but whenever he saw Selina hurrying through the halls, he followed her as nonchalantly as he could, keeping his distance. This is not spying, he told himself, observing that Talia had switched her corseted clothing for a selection of loose fawn and green kirtles. He even had some rationale for slipping into the maid-quarters of Talia's suite when he found the door unguarded, though it flew from his mind immediately when he heard a familiar voice raised in unmistakeable pleasure.
The maid-quarters' door stood open just a crack, and from his vantage point he could see the bed, where the Lady Talia and her skulking maid Selina were locked in a startlingly athletic embrace- Selina devouring her mistress's mouth while her wrist worked furiously below, and Talia groaning between kisses and arching her back until her heels bunched the duvet nearly off the bed.
If John had been a man who desired women, he might have been enticed to watch a while; instead, he felt the shock of this discovery rising to choke him, and staggered back from the door in shock.
Only to discover that the guard had returned, and he was now in a locked and guarded room, beyond which his master's object of tormented desire lay shrieking her way through climax under the ministrations of another woman. You might have done well to be a maid after all, Bane, he thought ruefully, and he knew that he could never, ever tell his master the truth. He wondered how he could bear it, knowing that Bane would still long for her; but he could not imagine Bane's fury, his sorrow, at learning the truth.
Now they lay, slim arms and legs twined, speaking in low voices, and gods help him John was still at heart a spy; he placed his ear to the crack in the door and listened. "You are a woman of passionate convictions," Selina was saying, as if soothing her mistress's conscience.
"And what if I am passionate, but my convictions are not my own?"
"Is that quality not what makes your schemes so effective?" Selina's voice was playful, teasing. "Whatever you say, you say it with such passion that you will never be questioned for it; whatever you wish to be, you are to the bones."
"What does that leave of me, though," replied Talia, murmuring so that John could scarcely hear her. "Am I a devoted daughter, a mourning widow, a wicked queen, a princess to be won by her favored knight? Selina, love, I have been a liar for ages, for longer than I've known even you, since I was a child in the pit; I am very good at it. I worry that I will never learn how to tell the truth."
"I only question this," said Selina, stealing a kiss from Talia's worried lips; "is there anyone to whom you can tell no lies?"
"There is no one," said Talia, bitter and sad. "Anyone I would give all my secrets would be endangered by them, and anyone who knew all my truths would swiftly cease to love me."
Outside the door, the guard coughed and moved around the corner, probably rounding to check on his fellows at the front; this was John's chance to depart, and he must take it.
"If you lie so thoroughly that you have yourself become a lie," said Selina, "do they still love you, or your lies?"
"I cannot decide whether you are trying to wheedle my secrets out of me or protect my poor heartbroken knight," said Talia, and a laugh crept into her voice. "I swear to you, love, the only secrets I keep from you are the ones that can kill."
"Mmm," replied Selina, the last thing John heard as he crept from the tiny room into the deserted hall, and he knew the doubt and sorrow in that voice, the doomed hope of the lover who could place no trust in their beloved. He hated every echo of it, every memory of a word from the last five minutes; now he, too, had a secret to keep from his beloved, a secret that had already cost him his own new love.