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The king’s solar is far more magnificent than its king is, Renly thinks, studying the tapestries draped across the walls as he sips at his wine. Robert’s company may be unpleasant, but the ornate furnishings of his chambers and the heady wine he provides make evenings drinking with him a bit more tolerable. Renly settles himself on a divan, leaning back against the plush golden cushions, his boots on the floor by his side. He supposes he’s prepared for this evening, for his brother’s bitter reminiscences and rambling rants, but he knows he won’t enjoy either any more than he ever has. He imagines Loras waiting for him back in his chambers, clad only in his sleeping tunic, and sighs wistfully.
There’s a knock at the door, then, and Renly frowns when a maid leads Stannis into the room.
“Renly.” Stannis nods courteously, though as always there is a note of steel present in his voice, a flint of it in his eyes. They’re blue, as all the Baratheons’ eyes are, but while Robert’s are blue as the summer sky and Renly’s tinged green, Stannis’s eyes veer towards grey. Renly has always thought that suited him, made him look as unyielding as the castle he was lord of.
“I didn’t realize you would be joining us, brother,” Renly says conversationally. Robert still hasn’t graced the solar with his presence; Renly assumes he’s either in the privy or already too drunk to move from his bed. Just a moment more and Renly will check on him.
“I had no desire to, but one does not refuse an order from the king.” Stannis sits stiffly on a straight-backed chair. He does not fidget, though Renly wonders if he’s suppressing the urge to do so.
Renly watches Stannis for a moment, then pushes to his feet and walks over to the small table laden with a platter of meats and cheeses and three carafes of wine. He fills a goblet and offers it to Stannis, smiling when Stannis grits his teeth but accepts it. Stannis isn’t one for drinking, and Renly doesn’t care.
There’s a weighted silence as Renly sinks back onto the divan, and then Robert stumbles into the room, lurching into a cushioned chair large enough to hold his bulk. He may have been comely, once, but over the years he has somehow both faded and expanded, become both less and more than Renly had known him to be.
“A drink!” Robert commands, and Stannis hands his untouched goblet over. While Robert gulps it down, Renly stands and pours another cup for Stannis, pushing it into Stannis’s hand with another innocent smile.
“That’s right, Renly,” Robert says, droplets of wine in his coarse black beard. “Make sure he drinks. That one, he’s never known how to have fun.”
Stannis takes a small sip and frowns. “Why are we here, Your Grace?”
“I wanted to drink with my brothers! Is that too much to ask of you?” Robert frowns at Renly and Stannis in turn, as though he doesn’t understand why they would rather spend their evenings elsewhere. “I never see the two of you anymore. You may as well be back in your own bloody castles.”
Renly raises an eyebrow. Stannis is gritting his teeth hard enough that a vein on his forehead stands out.
“Perhaps if Your Grace attended more Small Council meetings--” Stannis starts, but Robert dismisses him with a wave of one bejewelled hand.
“Small Council meetings are no place for a warrior,” Robert grumbles.
Stannis stiffens and Renly bites his tongue. Whether Robert meant his words as an insult to Stannis or not, Renly is content to take them as such.
“There are still matters of the realm that need your attention. The High Septon, for instance, seeks an audience with you in the hopes that the king may bring a septon to justice, as our Master of Laws will not,” Stannis says, looking at Renly with those cold, appraising eyes, clearly intent on turning the evening into an impromptu Small Council meeting in spite of Robert’s wishes. Renly sighs and runs a finger around the rim of his goblet.
“If we punish a septon for a bit of buggery, we open the doors to punishing brothels for allowing the same,” Renly says lazily, staring up at the ceiling. He should have known Stannis would bring this matter up; it has been a sticking point between them for weeks, though not because of any particular sense of piety on Stannis’s part. “Their boys will lose business, as the men that frequent them will be frightened away.”
Robert grunts. “Renly’s right. I don’t care where some bloody septon sticks his cock. The king doesn’t answer to the septs. Let the High Septon punish his own.”
Renly smirks at Stannis, watches the vein on his forehead bulge a little more. “There, we’ve settled that at last,” Renly says, and raises his glass to toast Stannis.
More silence, then. Silence filled with all the years between them, the years between who they were and who they have become. Renly drinks to the silence and refills his cup.
“If either of you knew war, you’d know it’s a much better thing than sitting on that damned throne.” Robert stands, sways, steadies himself, and grabs a carafe of wine. He seems as though he’s trying to refill his goblet, but his hands tremble, so he simply sits back down with the carafe in his lap. Renly feels a bit sick watching him.
“You’ve never known what it is to fight for something,” Robert continues. “You’ve never loved someone so much that you would tear seven kingdoms apart to get her back.”
Renly drains his goblet, refills it, and sets to draining it again, conscious of Stannis’s judging eyes on him. As far as Renly can tell, Stannis hasn’t taken another sip of his wine, and Renly wishes he would. He wonders if that would stoke a fire in the dry coals of Stannis’s stomach.
“I loved a brother enough to commit treason. ” Stannis’s voice is low and measured, but Renly hears a tremor of anger there.
Renly frowns up at the ceiling. He says, “I loved a rather fetching emerald doublet made by a seamstress in Lys,” because the melancholy has arrived far earlier than he would have liked. “Alas, Robert, you vomited on that doublet on my last name day, and try as they might, the washing women couldn’t out the stain.”
“The world’s a grand old joke to you, isn’t it, Renly?” Robert mutters. “You swan around in your pretty clothes like a maiden, carrying on like a jester for whoever’ll laugh at your japes. The only thing you’d die for is a silly piece of cloth, and only then if you could be buried in it for the smallfolk to admire.”
Renly sits carefully, his head spinning just a little, and rests his elbows on his knees as he stares across the sitting space at Robert. “You’re a great deal more coherent than you usually are, this far into your cups.”
“Some men speak the truth more freely when they have had too much to drink,” Stannis points out mildly, and Renly glares at him.
“Little shits, the both of you.” Robert takes a swig directly from the carafe and points accusingly at Stannis. “I think you've forgotten what it’s like to love at all. If you ever knew. You’ve got a cold heart to match your cold marriage bed and your cold castle.”
Renly smiles a twisted little smile at Stannis. “You’re right, brother; drunkards are the wisest of us all.”
“You’ll never know what it’s like.” Robert drops his eyes to the thick rugs covering the stone floors. “Lyanna, she was--she was beautiful, more beautiful a girl than the kingdoms have seen before or since. We used to hunt together, when I visited Winterfell; she was a better rider than I was, and we would race, sometimes--”
An unbidden memory crowds to the front of Renly’s mind: chasing Loras on horseback, racing across the hills outside of Storm’s End, Renly laughing because no matter how well he rode, he could never catch Loras.
“--always loved them, those blue winter roses, though it was hard to get ‘em; Ned said she’d wear ‘em in a crown around her head--”
Another memory, sharp and hot as lightning: Renly very carefully picking the thorns off a yellow rose, very carefully braiding it into Loras’s hair, laughing at the mess he made of Loras’s brown curls and the scowl on Loras’s face as he observed the damage in a looking glass.
Robert rambles on, and Stannis grits his teeth, and Renly hates what love has done to them. Love, was it, that turned Stannis cold? Love for a brother that brought Stannis naught but a useless pile of rocks to rule and a wife he whose embraces he shunned?
And love, oh it was that damned love that had made Robert a warrior; love, that made him shed blood and wage war and crash a spiked warhammer through the heart of a dynasty that had ruled for hundreds of years. Love that, as a memory tinged with grief, drove him to quaff wine and leave bruises on his queen, spurred him to forget forget forget in another flagon, another cunt, another night of mindless pleasures unremembered come morning.
What was love but destruction? Where did love lead but to evenings like this, to bitterness and wine, both equally sour, both too easy to overindulge in?
“I really loved that doublet,” Renly says loudly, interrupting Robert’s stream of words. “It had a high collar with a notch in it, and I had the hems of the sleeves embroidered with roses and peonies in pink and gold.” And Loras had torn it off him the first night he wore it, had thrown it carelessly to the floor as he sought out Renly’s bare skin.
Robert’s brows draw together and his mouth hardens into a thin line. Renly amends his earlier thought: no, Robert’s eyes are not the blue of a summer sky, not anymore. Now they are the heavy blue of storm clouds in the early evening, full of thunder, pregnant with destructive promise.
“Get out!” Robert yells, teetering to his feet, upsetting the carafe in his lap. Wine spills over the rug, seeping into the thick, finely-woven wool, and Renly has only a moment to mourn its ruin before he has to duck the goblet Robert heaves at him. “I said, get out!”
Even like this, even less and more on his way to being nothing, Renly finds Robert terrifying; he backs away, careful not to trip on his unsteady feet, and it’s only once he’s in the hallway that he realizes he left his boots behind. Robert’s anger sparks a feral, childish terror in Renly that he wishes he could suppress, but still he nearly trembles at the force of it. He can still hear Robert raging, and Stannis offering curt replies, and so he stumbles back to his own chambers, smiling a false, self-deprecating smile whenever a maid or page looks down and notices that their drunken lord has lost his shoes.
Loras is waiting in Renly’s bedchamber, as Renly had known he would be, but he is asleep, curled up on one side of the bed under a sumptuous fur blanket. The wine churns dangerously in Renly’s stomach at the sight of him. Love has turned Stannis to stone and Robert to storm, and Renly wonders, his heart heavy, what love will twist him into. He doesn't wake Loras, because Loras is far too perceptive and Renly is in no mood to talk about the evening.
He crawls into bed, and in his dreams, Loras wears a crown of blue winter roses, and whispers in Renly’s ear that the glory of the realm depends on him. In his dreams, Renly raises his banners against those he is bound by blood to love.