Title: Brand
Fandom: Henry IV
Rating: R?
Length: ~300
Content notes: cuts, bruises, scars, rough sex though not very graphic
Author notes: Counting towards The Lost Hour badge please.
Summary: Hal and Poins, before the rebellion and afterwards.



It's a distraction, this thing he does with Poins; against the walls of Poins' bedroom while his sister pretends not to hear, in the upstairs rooms at the Boar's Head, in the dark alleyways of Eastcheap when they're both too drunk to care. They enjoy it for what it is, and neither of them has any illusions.

He comes back from the North with a million bruises and cuts, and all he wants is a long bath and someone soft to sink into and make him forget this map of pain he's wearing. The cross he wears on his wrist has burned itself into his skin somewhere along the line, as though Hotspur, even in death, has marked him in some twisted humour, branded him with a symbol he doesn't much care for and that, by rights, should set his skin on fire any time it touches him, anyway.

Poins isn't the first one he seeks out, but they end up together again before long, as well they should, drifting in the same small sphere as they are. It's painful, and not in a good way. Poins is desperate; greedy, but Hal's still too injured to either get swept up in that or fight it properly. But it is a fight, in the end, and Hal feels something breaking inside of him when he comes, rough and messy and against resistance. The salt in their sweat burns in the not-quite-scars on his skin like an aftertaste and the scent of iron in his nostrils is heady. He closes his eyes on the battlefield they've created here and doesn't say anything.

Poins falls asleep, as is his wont, and Hal follows, but wakes soon after, skin burning and mind unquiet, and with the knowledge this isn't what it once was.

He'll need to end it before long, else Poins will find ways to hurt him that have much wider consequences than a few bruises.