Work Text:
His brother was still taller than him. Unbearably so.
It wasn't his physical height alone that bothered Vortigern – though he could admit to himself that he had hoped he would return home to find that his last growth spurt had put him ahead, that Uther was less imposing than Vortigern's eyes had believed him to be when he'd left home, that he would no longer be the little brother even if he was still the younger one. But he was past the age when a boy could maintain hope to grow taller yet, and Uther still towered over him. Tall, straight-backed, broad-shouldered.
He dwarfed him. Not only through that physical strength, nor even through his kingly bearing – Vortigern had mastered that as well as his elder brother. It wasn't the golden crown on Uther's brow or the midnight-blue velvet that hugged his powerful shoulders and thick arms tightly, though they certainly helped. It wasn't the thick black beard Uther had grown in Vortigern's absence, which made him look older than he was and experienced enough to sit the throne he had inherited at so young an age.
Uther exuded raw, effortless power. He commanded a room as easily as he breathed – the only man who could draw the attention away from Vortigern when he entered, without raising his voice or even clearing his throat. When Uther spoke, men listened. When Uther led, men followed. When Uther rose, men knelt.
Even with the tantalising prickle of magic in his fingertips, the confidence bestowed on him by a different kind of power that Uther could never hope to master, even with that strength that Mordred had awakened strumming through his blood, Vortigern felt an ache in his chest that threatened to break his ribs, crush his lungs, push the bones deep into his flesh and his heart until that raging blood of his spilt over the floor. Over the flawless ermine of his collar, over Uther's broad hands.
His long absence hadn't prepared him for the force with which Uther's smile struck him. Blindingly white, kingly and yet warm. A man who was not only respected, but loved. Who made others want to be ruled by him.
“It's so good to see you.”
Uther's voice ripped through the tangle of Vortigern's thoughts, deep and closer than it should have been, and before he could muster an answer he was enveloped in his brother's arms.
He hadn't felt a touch so scorching in all the years when he'd been away from home. The mages only touched to instruct, rarely out of affection, but Uther had never been able to keep his hands off him. As children they'd held hands, slept in the same bed, kissed each other's eyelids and temples and lips. Their mother had joked once that if Vortigern had been born a girl, they'd have to worry about the siblings falling in love. As if love came even close to describing how his brother's closeness tore Vortigern apart. His skin screamed, and his blood sang, and he wrapped his arms around Uther to hold him close. The prickle of the newly grown beard against his cheek was unfamiliar, but those strong arms felt just right – still longer than his own, still encircling him so easily. It awakened something in him, a blood-curdling, roaring need he could barely contain.
Other brothers would have only clasped each other briefly, but minutes passed and they still held on, as if they were afraid the other would vanish into thin air if their bodies parted. Both of them refused to let go, and Vortigern wondered what it was Uther saw when he looked at him. Was he aware of the new-found power in his little brother, his prince, his heir for the time being? Did he see the hunger in him, the desire, the yearning? Was he truly relieved to have Vortigern back or secretly wishing his brother had stayed far away with the mages?
No, not the latter. Subterfuge had never been Uther's domain. He had no need for it. Why lie when he could merely command, demand, take? Lies were for the powerless. Lies were for younger brothers, not for kings.
Vortigern breathed him in like a strong wine, smelling sweet notes of berries and warm summer woods, and throughout it all a stronger, intoxicating scent, one that made him dizzy, made him dig his fingers deeper into Uther's back. His brother had ducked his head a little to nose at Vortigern's neck, just between the soft fur of his collar and the vulnerable skin below his jawline. Nosed, and kissed, tickling slivers of sensation that crept through Vortigern's skin into his pulse, coursing through him, mixing with the heat that was already searing him from the inside.
By the time Uther pulled back, both of them still clasping the other's shoulders with their hands, Vortigern felt all but drunk on him. Drunk and greedy, the kind of drunkenness that makes the idea of drinking even more sound irresistible. He felt himself smile without remembering that he'd decided to do so.
“You must tell me about everything you've learnt, brother,” Uther said. The words sounded genuine, interested, caring, but they were tainted by a hint of paternal condescension. A grown man's indulgent inquiring over his little brother's pastimes, pastimes that weren't half as important as a king's duties.
“Haven't I written to you about them in great detail?” Vortigern asked. His hands hadn't left Uther's shoulders – they felt even stronger than he remembered. Shoulders that carried heavy armour as easily as silks and velvet. Vortigern wasn't skinny, wasn't weak, hadn't felt like either among the mages.
“That's hardly the same. I've missed talking to you.” Uther was still smiling. His soft lips, his white teeth, those warm, brown eyes that had always puzzled Vortigern because the rest of their family had eyes like ice. He'd dreamt of those eyes looking down at him, had dreamt of them shining in a breathtaking blue that couldn't be real. Too bright, too powerful. Magical, when they both knew there was no magic in Uther.
“Dine with me tonight,” Uther continued when Vortigern remained silent. He'd spent so much time alone with thoughts of his brother that it was unsettling to see him again – not the memory of him, twisted by a child's eyes and years apart, but the reality. More glorious than anything but those blue-eyed dreams Vortigern both craved and feared, of Uther with a magnificent sword in his hand that thrummed with the same ice-blue power as he did, like an extension of himself. “Just the two of us, no one else.”
He heard a promise in that voice, in the way Uther's hands held his shoulders, thumbs caressing him through the ornate leather. Uther didn't tease any more than he lied, Vortigern knew that. But hunger was a powerful thing, twisting and suggesting, and that hunger was all Vortigern's, and he was no stranger to subterfuge.
He was no stranger to waiting either. To bearing the unbearable, swallowing the bitterness he almost choked on, suppressing the gnawing desire so he could still see clearly, think clearly.
“Of course,” he said. His hands slid up over Uther's shoulders, past sleek fur to his bearded cheeks. He did not have to lean in far to press a kiss to his brother's lips, dry and chaste in appearance, and yet hot with the power that pulsed through Uther's veins, the strength, that unwavering certainty of who and what he was.
It lasted only for the length of a shaky breath, but it burnt Vortigern's lips like a poker pressed into his flesh and at the same time made him shudder like a single drop of water falling onto a parched tongue.
“Tonight,” he said and let Uther go, let him step out of his arms with that smile still clinging to the edge of the lips he'd kissed, for the first time since they'd been children, warm and familiar and yet nothing alike. When he'd been a boy, he hadn't known yet. Hadn't wanted yet.
He watched Uther turn from him and leave, his lips and his hands and his chest and every other part of his body that Uther had touched burning with the same ferocity as the magical fires he could conjure, he pictured their lips touching again at dinner, imagined licking the wine from Uther's lips. In his mind he saw Uther on his knees, Uther smiling, Uther with the crown on his brow and that gleaming sword in his hand and ice-cold rage in his eyes, Uther bowing his head and kissing the ring on Vortigern's hand.
Maybe it was not drunkenness he felt, but insanity, and yet there was only so much restraint even he could bear.