I really should not be posting a new fic before I try to update my masterlist (which I will be doing soon, I don't think there's many to add this time but there are one or two) but this one has been sitting essentially finished in my drafts for months so I'm just posting it! it is my most niche ship yet lol but if you're also in the niche read on and enjoy!
Orry turned to go.
….And then he stopped.
He was warm, and mostly dry, and as safe as he could be in the middle of a war—because he had George with him. It would be crazy to storm out of the barn, back into the cold and thunder where he had no friends, where he might be killed, where….
Where George would fall far out of his reach once more.
Orry returned his horse to its place beside George’s and sat down by the fire again. “I’m sorry, George,” he said quietly. “Let’s not talk about the war. It just makes us hate each other.”
George smiled, a more melancholy expression than a happy one, as he reached out to brush a stray curl of greying hair from Orry’s face. “I don’t think I could ever hate you,” he said, twisting the thick tawny strands between his fingers.
As though no time had passed, no war was raging, Orry leaned into George’s hand. His touch had been gentle since the Mexican War, when his hand on Orry’s arm had been his only lifeline, and it was no more cruel or unkind now. His eyes, a warm shade of grey Orry was more devoted to than the pale, cold one that comprised his own uniform, were as kind as ever.
It was difficult to stay. It was harder to go.
Orry scooted forward on the bale of hay he sat on, ignoring a twinge in his leg as he inched closer to George. “I can’t hate you either, George,” he said. “No matter who says I should.”
The fire snapped, one of the sticks sending up a scattering of sparks as George leaned in as well, sighing.
“Right back where we started,” he said, and he might have been talking about the beginning of the night or about the time before the war. His smile, still rueful but tinted with something else, something hard and blazing as the fire that cast shadows across his face, tilted up at one side, and Orry quickly closed the few remaining inches between them to kiss that corner of his mouth. It was a single, tender touch that was as much a part of them as the blood in their veins or the breath in their lungs—it was seared into the fabric of their shared existence by years of stolen moments with teasing grins that tip-tilted George’s lips up irresistibly just like that.
Both of them should say “I love you.” Both of them needed to hear it, after all. And it was true.
Neither of them did.
Orry Main and George Hazard had never known quite what words to use with each other. That was another fundamental truth of their relationship, the errant-colored thread that ran through what was otherwise a beautifully-woven disaster. But what they lacked in words, they made up for in gestures—or tried to.
For once, Orry had made the first gesture, and now he made the second as well. The words were trapped in his throat, so he shifted to kiss George full-on. And because George could no more easily speak, he simply pressed forward to kiss Orry back, tongue between his teeth.
After a long, sweet moment locked together, George pulled away. Emotionally, that was Orry’s domain; when it came to physicality, however, George had to make it his or suffocate. Orry hated to stop kissing him, to stop tasting George’s ever-present cigar smoke on his tongue, and would willingly have choked them both to continue.
“We’ll have to leave early,” George said. He couldn’t resist the urge to thread his fingers into the hair at Orry’s temple again. “You especially can’t risk being seen.”
“I know,” Orry said, a little testily. His eyes, however, were soft. “I don’t sleep too well these days anyway.”
They were too old to bivouac in the rain, and they were too old to sleep on the bare floor of the barn. The stacks of hay piled up near the walls, then, were the best place for George and Orry to lie down together. The circumstances were all wrong, and the surroundings nothing like the slightly smoke-scented air of Lehigh Station or the swampy stillness of Mont Royal, but having George’s head pillowed on his abdomen let Orry imagine that for these few, dark hours, the two of them at least were as they should be.
And if Orry’s soul cried out that he was home in the dim and the rain, in enemy territory, as long as George was settled as a comfortable weight on him, but he didn’t say it aloud, it was still true.
And if George’s screamed that he was at peace in the midst of war, within himself and against a rebel army, because he could feel the beat of Orry’s heart beneath his uniform, but he didn’t say it aloud, that was true also.
And if neither of them fell asleep, despite being the most contented they had been in ages, while neither dared to break the silence…then that spoke of the truth in a way neither of them needed words to understand.
