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He hates the way they talk.
“Your Arab.” Telling him how he should control Faisal. Treating Lawrence like the only intelligent person in the Arabia delegation, like the real power who needs to manipulate the weak brown men to do his bidding, for King and Country. He sees the ache in Faisal’s eyes when the reporters swarm around Lawrence, call him “Uncrowned King of Arabia”—like he could be, or would ever want to be anything like that. Like he would ever challenge the true king before him.
Of course, some of it is part of their game. Faisal pretends not to know English or French so they say things in front of him they think he can’t understand…. assuming that Lawrence will decline to translate back. Even if Faisal were so monolingual, Lawrence would never betray him. Lawrence would never do wrong by his real king. Back in the desert, he knelt and swore fealty like a knight of old—and kept kneeling, kept swearing his devotion in his own way.
He hates it because they have it all wrong. They’re so blinded by their prejudices that they cannot see the obvious truth.
In the desert, when they’d steal away to each other’s tents in the dead of night, and now in the halls of the palace, in Faisal’s apartments…the truth comes out.
“You’re mine, Lawrence,” Faisal hisses in his ear, all venom… right before he bites the lobe, pulling and lapping at it, and Lawrence has to hide his face in the pillow to muffle his scream. Faisal trails bites down his neck, just grazing his teeth at first, but pressing harder, deeper, sharper once he dips below the threshold where Lawrence’s shirt collar would be.
The king pinches his nipple and Lawrence’s eyes bulge as he ruts into the sheets. Faisal’s face is against his shoulder and Lawrence can feel his grin as he scrapes his nails down the scars on his back. It’s been a long time since he first earned those, they’ve long since healed over, but he likes to imagine the king opening them back up. He wants to bleed for Faisal.
“My colonel. My servant.”
“Yes.” Faisal’s hands finally reach his rump and he gives it a loud, hard slap. It is so loud that Lawrence wonders if they can hear it all over the giant Palace and its even vaster grounds.
He screams into the pillow again.
“You haven’t yet given me what I came for, have you?”
“No,” he moans.
“So you must be punished until you do.” He hits him again, on the side of his face. The pain blazes on his cheek, brilliant and hot as the desert sun. He reaches his hand to that heat, but Faisal slaps it away.
Lawrence sees stars when Faisal finally grabs him by his length, his grip vicelike. With his other arm around Lawrence’s chest, he yanks his body backward.
Faisal grabs his neck and kisses him, long and hard. His hot mouth is another clamp chaining Lawrence to this bed, this man.
Just how they like it.
The next day, as the British and French delegates begin their condescending entreaties again, Lawrence thinks about everything they can’t see. It’s not just his back that’s scarred anymore. There are fresh, bright red marks, blooming in the sparkling winter sun like a Christmas rose. They are a brand, marking him as belonging to one man and one man alone. When he and Faisal look at each other, smirking, sharing their private jokes, it’s not just about the translation game. It’s all the things they know that the others don’t. Who Lawrence really is beneath all the lofty words and stances. Who he belongs to, who he serves.
Sometimes, Lawrence would like to pull down his collar and show them. When they call his king a savage. When they talk about him like a wild animal that Lawrence has to tame, to bring to heel under the yoke of empire. He would like to show the truth of what Faisal can do. He’d like to show them that this is a brilliant, beautiful, inspiring man who has brought so many others to heel, and made a once-loyal Englishman into his own subject in every way he could. He has ripped out Lawrence’s heart from his chest and made an exhibit of it for all to see, conquered him as totally as he conquered Damascus.
Yet because he is Faisal’s, and he delights so much in being Faisal’s… He keeps them hidden beneath his collar. He loves that the garden on his neck is for his king alone to observe. He likes that there is so much of him that is for Faisal’s eyes only. A private show. He never wants anyone else to see him bared again. Certainly, no one who underestimates his lovely King of Syria should have any right to look upon his private grounds.
Ultimately, Lawrence plays his role because that is who he needs to be for the master he loves. They will not win this war on the field, they will win it in the bushes—with hiding, with deception, with lies. So he plays the game, plays the part of the brazen, cocksure Colonel Lawrence, because that is what his king needs of him. His play of dominance is how he submits.
Lawrence knows that things are not going well. He worries that soon, the British government, or their French allies, will decipher the truth. They have already uncovered their translation game. They are digging in their heels, assembling more and more justifications for keeping Syria under French and British control.
He worries that they will separate him and Faisal. That their nights together are growing fewer.
He can feel the tension mounting between them. Faisal is angry that they are losing, and his touch grows rougher. There is more pain, more punishment. The garden grows. Faisal's hands alone no longer suffice; other objects enter their bed. Lawrence's favorite is the riding crop that Faisal uses with his horse. Finally, his wounds burst under his king's attentions, red splattering across their bodies and sheets like rose petals. He feels used. He feels spent. He likes his lover when he is angry; it makes him more imposing, powerful, the mighty king that they all knelt to in the desert, and Lawrence feels honored to even know him. Faisal's cock hits Lawrence's prostate with each slash of the whip at his back, and he finds tears welling in his eyes. Water for the garden.
Lawrence wants their garden to grow as large as the gardens of Versailles, and hurt just as much as his feet after a long walk in them. He relishes each slap, each cut, each brush of the whip, like it's a paintbrush and he is Faisal's canvas, a great work of art to be hung in the museums of his new country. Lawrence deserves this. He needs this. He needs to be brought to heel until he can win his king his kingdom. He hopes it continues even once he does—if that day ever comes.
Yet still, every night, after they have both sprayed their white blossoms across the pillows—after Lawrence has been duly punished—Faisal holds him, sweetly kisses the buds on his neck and shoulders, rubs salve on his scarred back, and calls him other possessive terms. My Lawrence, my darling, my love.
The sweetness with the salt, each taste enhancing the other. It is the combination that drives Lawrence so mad, so tantalizing, richer than all the delicacies of Paris. It is what first drove Lawrence into his service and his arms. It is why he keeps coming back. It is why he knows that as long as he is able, he will never not come back to his King Faisal.
They have it the wrong way around.
Faisal is not Lawrence’s Arab.
Lawrence is Faisal’s Englishman.
Their governments and rivals will do what they can to separate them, forbid them. It will not change a thing. Lawrence will be Faisal’s until his dying day.