Page 34 of A Queen and Her Knight

Rennet absolutely had a soul, but tried to convince the world he didn’t.

“I grew up around a lot of other kids,” Rennet said once, and then went quiet, the way he only ever did when something reminded him of his childhood.

John had done the math and made some guesses about Rennet’s past, but he watched and waited and didn’t push. In the meantime, Rennet begged John to fuck him, and ate his food, and cared for his house without charge like it was a pet project, and visited him at work, and never slept through the night in John’s bed. He said not a word about what they were to each other, and could go days without contact before he’d reappear, and then smile tensely and disappear again whenever John would attend an event in the fairy village.

None of it made John want him less. Someone who didn’t try for the impossible every day might have given up and ended what they had the first time Rennet flirted with someone else in front of them.

John, in his darker moments, had thought that fighting against ridiculous odds was too ingrained in him to quit now. But the truth was he’d never been in love before. The truth was Rennet throwing himself with fists and teeth and a lashing tail at a racist drunk in a holding cell with him, or singing in soft French under his breath as he worked, or never, ever staying over despite how much John wished he would. The truth was Rennet had been alive for decades before John was even born, and there were years of trauma in him that he didn’t talk about, and probably a trail of lost loves and broken hearts in his wake. The truth was, Rennet must have been in love before, and if he wanted to hold John close and brush his teeth next to him in the bathroom in the morning and fall asleep on the couch at his side with the TV on, or hell, even go out to dinner with John, he would have done so.

And he hadn’t.

A lifetime of reading and fighting and fucking hadn’t equipped John for the world of romance. Dating was such an unknown concept that he relied too much on popular media when he’d asked Rennet out, and it had taken him months of teasing, banter, and fucking to realize that once the sex was over, Rennet was out the door.

He came back, swaggering into City Hall and John’s office as though he owned the place, visiting John for reasons of his own, only to tiptoe out without even a stolen kiss.

John was known as a miracle worker, but even he couldn’t make someone love him. So, he’d ignored the knowing looks from Margery as he stayed at work longer and longer, and he didn’t allow himself to call Rennet, and when he went to the fairy village and a fairy he’d never met before complimented his shine, John asked him to dinner.

He wouldn’t call it a mistake. He’d prefertactical maneuver. Or more realistically, throwing a cat among the pigeons.

Or, even more realistically, waving a red flag in front of a stubborn, defiant, childish, irksome, hilarious, sweet, sexy bull with wings and a penchant for black eyeliner.

Margery had been right; John had been stupid and Rennet had been scared.

He spent his first night with John on a mattress on the floor, tail slung over John’s hips, his face at the back of John’s neck. He walked into City Hall the next day and came straight to John, like he always did, but this time his red eyes sparkled more than a fairy when he looked up. And he said, “…This human, this human and no other,” to stop John’s heart and replace it with heat and flashes of lit gunpowder.

Rennet loved him. Him, an ordinary man with an absorbing job and a tendency to light fires, but only under people who neededto get off their asses and do something. Maybe that was what Rennet liked—loved—about him. The fucking was good, great, but there was no fighting, and no need for it, and still John couldn’t get enough of him and Rennet couldn’t seem to stop climbing onto him the moment they were alone. He didn’t want John for anything anyone else had ever wanted John for, and he worried for John like no one ever had, and confessed, in stops and starts, that he’d never stop worrying for John, and why that was.

His reasons were good ones. John could admit that, despite a passing moment of jealousy for the childish crush Rennet had had for someone long dead, who had left him with a burning devotion to bookish and rebellious soldiers.

Honestly, knowing Rennet thought of him that way had robbed John of speech for a while. Rennet had startled out of his reverie, then wriggled closer beside him in their brand-new bed. He’d had purred, teasing John even while folding John protectively within his wings. “Sunshine, don’t you know what you are? Don’t you know what you could do?”

Rennet stared at John with wonder, as if Rennet wasn’t the most remarkable person John had ever met, beautiful and not beautiful, the wicked and caring love of John’s life. He loved John, and thoughtJohnwas the exceptional one of the two of them.

So John, who could not and would not hide, looked at him and said what he should have said the day he’d met Rennet. “I could marry you.”

He could admit to some amusement at the disbelief in Rennet’s expression, the shocked blinking and the utter stillness of his tail. But John hadn’t said it to be funny or cruel, and when he waited, watching, needing to know what Rennet would say before he could do anything else, Rennet gave him a recklessgrin that meant John could ask again, ask him seriously, sometime in the future.

It was the most remarkable thing. Enough thatcouldshifted towillin John’s mind and gave him a goal.

John was going to marry Rennet, and he would test, bend, and break every law standing in his way. Almost as if he’d been born to do it.

The End

Something Involving Nuts

Also posted as part of a charity event in 2017

Set after the events ofThe Imp and Mr. Sunshinebut beforeThe Wolf in the GardenorThe Dragon’s Egg. It’s really a part two to the previous story.

Summary: Rennet is feeling anxious. And a bit horny. But mostly anxious. m/m

“Rennet.” John’s tone was oh-so-careful. Not mad, butcareful. “Rennet, is the water not working, or is the sink broken?”

Rennet poked his head around the dividing wall between the kitchen and the living room. John was at the entrance to his bedroom, wearing a towel around his waist and nothing else. He’d bothered with the towel possibly on the off chance that they weren’t alone, which had happened once or twice. Daphne hadn’t minded the view, but the mailman had just been uptight.Everyone else usually worked for John and made scandalized noises before averting their eyes.

Averting their eyes was a crime, as far as Rennet was concerned. His human was a fine figure of a man at almost fifty. Rennet took a moment to appreciate the body on display, but stopped when John sighed. “Rennet.”

“What?” Rennet gave him the most innocent look he could muster. “I can’t help it.”

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