Red Queen One Shots

All we could've been

A gift for @thomaven on Tumblr for Red Queen Secret Santa 2017!!! Merry Christmas!

Takes place during Kings Cage while Maven reminisces about all those years ago with what he once had and what it could've been. Slightly smutty, so you've been warned.

***

His lips were gentle against his own as they moved together as one. Thomas ran a hand through his hair, pulling Maven even closer as their lips continued its descent. Down his neck, fleeting ones across his stomach that spoke of such love and tenderness that Maven hadn't even known was possible.

Such a feeling was exhilarating and yet so infinitely gentle. A raging storm and the soft shades of dawn blooming against the the sky. It was a war of emotion that battled in his chest and in the end the high that Thomas was giving him won out.

Their shirts had been thrown onto the floor and Maven felt slightly dazed at his ability to even do such a thing so quickly. He'd never kissed anyone, had never even thought of it until he met a certain blond haired boy with a cheeky grin and a knack for fixing broken things.

It so happened that Maven considered himself a broken thing.

Thomas always treated him as an equal, perhaps even as what others called friends. He'd asked Cal what the literal definition of a friend as he seemed to have many of those, though Maven knew as well as anyone that most were forced out of politeness.

His older brother had explained that a friend was someone who you could trust, a person who when you saw them, your heart lifted and you longed to share your hopes and fears, the smallest details of your day and the hilarious stories. A person who would love you for you and wouldn't abandon you in the darkest times.

Maven had decided from that day on to call Thomas his friend.

But even then as time passed and feelings changed, the word "friend" no longer encapsulated what Maven wanted from Thomas and vice versa.

As touches became more daring and words more bold came forth, they both knew that what they had was no longer friendship but something more. Something wonderful and wild and reckless.

Was it love?

The question was constantly in the back of his mind as he tried to push it farther away. Love was a foreign thing to him. His mother claimed to love him but were her sharp whispers and twisted words really love? Deep down in the good remaining shard of his heart, untouched yet by Elara's ability, Maven knew it wasn't love. What about his father?

The man who couldn't look him in the eye when he said he was proud of him. No, that couldn't be love either. He supposed the only bit of love he knew was with his brother, and even that seemed to wane day by day. But that was different from what Thomas and Maven had. A stronger and deeper kind of bond ran between the two of them.

Thomas whispered something in his ear that Maven couldn't quite catch, but when he began to nip at his neck, all thoughts of that unheard sentence shattered. This, Maven thought. This was love, it had to be.

Maven had seen how girls at court looked at Cal, with their fluttering eyelashes and shy smiles. But their eyes held something else. Lust. For power or for him, Maven supposed it depended on whom. Their key to the throne had a pretty face at least.

What Thomas looked at him with wasn't like that at all. There was the same cloudy lust, sure, but when they locked gazes, time seemed to slow. He looked at him as if he were the most precious thing in the world to him. And when his hand brushed his cheek, it was so gentle, as if he were caressing glass.