When he'd woken the next morning, it had been to the gentle but familiar sensation of Kyrie lightly brushing her fingers through his hair. She did this sometimes in the mornings: not aggressively enough to wake him, but just because she loved him and was effectively savoring the moment. When the first stirrings of consciousness rose in him, he had almost thought that it was a morning just like any other, but a sharp ache in his back and neck and the feeling of one of Kyrie's hand still laced with his brought him back to reality with an sickening crash. He'd shifted with a bit of a groan, and Kyrie had gently supported him, yet one look at her face erased any doubt in his mind that all of what happened last night had just been a dream. She had looked, quite frankly, terrible, and she'd stared at him with such anxiousness that he just couldn't meet her gaze. He'd mumbled something about needing to tend to the horses and as he left the look of utter abandonment on Kyrie's face lingered in his brain.
Even now, thoughts of her still haunted him.
As he brushed down the horses, watered them, cleaned out their stalls, and gave them their breakfast, the only thing that he'd been thinking about was Kyrie. It wasn't all bad, either. There were plenty of fond memories flitting through his mind: him out in the garden watching her draw on that bench he knew so well, him in the bedroom with her in his lap, him showing her the horses out in the stables... but interspersed with those were more negative ones as well: Renard touching his lover in ways that Isaac had thought only he'd done, Kyrie willingly going into Renard's arms, her telling him that she'd slept with Renard with tears on her face...
None of it made any sense. Kyrie loved Isaac, he knew that she loved him, it was so evident from all of the more positive interactions they had, and the positivity hadn't even gone down in recent memory either. If she still loved him though, then why had this happened? How could she possibly reconcile sleeping with Renard and her love for Isaac? It just didn't seem real to him that not once, but multiple times she had been in Renard's arms instead of his own.
Bile rose in his throat as he finished his chores for the morning, and he simply sunk down on to a bench, the very one he'd had sex with Kyrie on before. It felt like it had been in a completely different era that he'd done that, but in reality it couldn't have been that much longer than a couple months ago.
… How had everything gone so wrong? Had he been a bad lover in some way? He knew that he was often away from the manor just from the nature of his work, but how could he help that?! To resist that would be to resist the lady and besides, it had never seemed to be a problem for Kyrie before! She missed him, sure, but he'd always thought... He'd always thought that she would never seek comfort in the arms of another.
But maybe it wasn't even comfort she sought. She'd said that Renard helped her grow? Why did he help her grow while Isaac himself didn't? Why was it always fucking Renard?!
Burying his face in his hands, he was thankful for the solitude of the stables. For whatever reason Jared wasn't there yet, and if he had to guess it was probably because Renard had found him first. Usually Isaac would go out to the garden himself now that his chores were finished, but he didn't want to face Renard.
He just didn't know what he was going to do to the man.
He could hardly even figure out what his feelings were on what Kyrie revealed to him last night so trying to introduce Renard while he was still effectively volatile felt like a terrible idea. Especially considering that the mere thought of the other man caused his body to tense up in anger. Not only should Kyrie have known better than to deal with that snake, but if Renard had truly valued their own friendship he should've known to let her be! Isaac had made that perfectly clear to Renard, yet here he was, having sex with Kyrie anyway. Isaac just felt in his bones that the only reason this whole thing had even started was because Renard had made it somehow, and it both hurt and enraged Isaac that the man had so blatantly disregarded his wishes. He couldn't have kept it in his pants for a friend of over 15 years?!
One woman. One fucking woman. Was that really so much to ask for?!
The universe was intent on testing Isaa, because the sound of laughter was soon heard along with a pair of footsteps getting steadily closer.
"--really don't know why you hate these chores so much. What do horses have that plants don't?"
Jared opened his mouth to start with the first response that came into his head but he really didn't get a chance to before Renard stepped past the threshold of the stables.
"Isaac! We need your help wit--"
Renard cut himself off mid sentence, his advance stopping abruptly enough that Jared just ran right into him. The younger boy, clearly annoyed by this stop, turned a furrowed brow up at Renard's face only to have his features soften with surprise; he couldn't help peeking around the blonde haired man to see just what it was that he was looking at. Honestly, it wasn't the sight so much as it was the feeling.
Isaac was hunched over as he sat on one of the benches, but upon the approach of Renard and Jared, he had slowly moved his hands away from his eyes, bracing them against his legs now as he looked towards the door with unspoken malice. Jared had never seen such a hostile expression on the usually amiable man's face, but today... Well... There was always a first for everything. Renard's expression wasn't so much surprised as it was intimidated: Renard had lost all color in his face, and Jared could see just how hesitant he was to even breathe for fear of disturbing the beast that was Isaac.
The silence stretched out between the three of them: Isaac wasn't speaking at all, simply fixing them with a stare as his mind raged about just what it was that he wanted to do. Renard, for the moment, couldn't bring himself to talk and Jared didn't feel like it was his place to talk.
Renard swallowed hard: he'd been expecting a confrontation, but perhaps he hadn't really internalized the sheer magnitude of this confrontation. He felt like he'd just stepped into the den of a hungry lion and all he had was his own wits to try and get out of this. He'd seen Isaac fight before, and every time he'd always considered himself truly lucky to be on the same side as the man. Now though... Now he was standing against him.
The obvious course of action to take in this situation would be to abort hard, wouldn't it?
Choking out a laugh that sounded wrong even to his own ears, he spoke in a steady tone for someone desperately trying to avoid a fight.
"On second thought, both Jared and I could use a bit of muscle work. We'll be out by the fountain if you need us, alright?"
There was a moment of silence and Renard thought that he was in the clear, but as he went to take a step back Isaac spoke.
"Is that all you have to say to me?"
Renard could feel a cold sweat on the back of his neck, and he pushed Jared back so that he would be away from him, effectively out of the line of fire if things came to blows.
"You know exactly what's wrong with me, I can see it on your face, but the only thing you're trying to do is avoid me?"
"I'm not trying to avoid you, per se, just that Jared here--"
"Jared? Jared is what's stopping you?"
Isaac turned flashing eyes to the younger boy, and this just caused the younger man to tense up in nervousness. He hadn't fought Renard at all when he had pushed him back, and he was glad now that he'd allowed his own distance to increase between himself and the much larger man in the stables. It was just so strange though... How quickly a man that had been so nice could change to absolutely terrifying. What in the world could have happened between these two to cause the nicer one to effectively blow up?
Isaac stood up then, and both of the other two were frozen to their respective spots; or at least, Jared was frozen, Renard was mostly doing his best not to act scared. He shouldn't be scared, there was really no reason to be: he might get thrashed a bit but Isaac wouldn't kill him, right? There was... there was no way that Isaac would do that. Effectively convinced by his own thoughts, he forced himself to speak, putting himself more effectively on even footing with Isaac.
"Well you don't want him knowing about your affairs, do you?"
For a moment Isaac paused as he looked between the two of them, but soon his eyes were steeling over with a quiet determination.
"No... No I think he should hear about it. So that he knows exactly what kind of snake it is that he's standing next to."
By the time Isaac had finished saying this, he had quickly closed the gap between him and Renard, grabbing onto the other man's shirt and staring down at him with fire in his eyes. Renard reacted by immediately grabbing hold of Isaac's hand, trying to mitigate whatever damage and get Isaac off of his shirt.
"Now let's just calm down--"
"Calm down? Calm down?!"
Isaac was taller than Renard, and Renard had to admit that it was intimidating having a man of Isaac's bulk threatening him, but quailing in fear wouldn't accomplish much of anything now would it? As Isaac swelled with anger Renard couldn't help but think that this whole scenario really wasn't looking good for him. He had hoped that Kyrie telling Isaac would've been able to prevent him from lashing out but apparently that had been a rather vain hope on his part.
Isaac briefly turned his eyes over to Jared, just to make sure that he was still watching, and even though Isaac spoke as if he was addressing him, his eyes were instead boring into Renard's, effectively accusing the man in his grip with every statement he made.
"This man, Jared, will be your friend for over 15 years. He will get into mischief with you and help you get out of scrapes like any other friend, but what he will also do is ruin your love life. Women flock to him like bees do to his flowers and he welcomes every one of them with open arms. After years of being alone, I'd finally... I'd finally found a woman who saw me over Renard. It wasn't noticing me after noticing Renard, or only seeing me and not being exposed much to Renard, she saw the both of us and actively chose me."
His face contorted with emotion as he spoke all this, and Renard just couldn't seem to meet his eye. He'd known that Isaac really hadn't had that many partners, and a part of him also knew that it was mostly because Renard would monopolize them, but what he hadn't realized was just how much of an impact it had had on the other man. Isaac had always just laughed it off with him before, or poked fun at his own habits, but that was it, really. Sure there was sometimes a hint of sadness to Isaac's comments but he'd never... Never expected that it ran this deep. Deep enough to cause Isaac's face to contort with something more akin to despair in the middle of his anger.
Suddenly it felt so much worse that he had tried so hard with Kyrie. He had known Isaac wouldn't like it, he had known that Kyrie wouldn't have gone for it unless he pushed, yet he'd gone for it anyway. It was... It was understandable that Isaac would be deeply hurt by what he'd done. But what if he tried to spin it as being for Kyrie's own good? Maybe... No... That would just make things worse, wouldn't it? Besides, the fact of the matter was that he had tried so hard for Kyrie because she intrigued him. There was no other reason aside from that. So he was just... At a complete loss, really. What was he supposed to say to Isaac? How was it even possible for him to be able to salvage their friendship?
Isaac's face, which had been tinged with a bit of sadness soon steeled itself with anger again and he shook Renard a little as he spoke.
"But this man, this fucking man, decided that he couldn't live without all the women being interested in him. He stole her from me without a second though. 15 years of friendship meaning absolutely nothing to him! And all he has to say for himself when he realizes I know what happened is 'I'll be over by the fountain?!'"
Wetting his dry lips, Renard just had to speak, there was one thing that he had to clarify here.
"Look, I didn't steal her--"
Before Renard could even complete that sentence, his whole world became dominated by pain. His head got violently thrust to the side from the impact of Isaac's knuckles crashing against his jaw. Renard did his best to lean backwards, to try and move his face away from the other man's hand to avoid getting punched again, but his vision swam with stars while he could feel the iron tang of blood taking over his mouth. Everything was horribly disorienting at this point, and he had to struggle to remember what it was that he was trying to say. Slight movement on Isaac's part caused Renard to tense, and his free hand (the one not holding onto the hand Isaac still had on the neck of his shirt), raised up to create a rather flimsy block towards the side of his face that just got punched.
"Didn't steal her? Didn't fucking steal her?! Renard, you had sex with her and somehow made it so that she would keep coming back to you. How is that not fucking stealing her?"
Coughing a little and spitting up the mixture of blood and saliva in his mouth onto the floor, Renard knew he had to respond quick or risk even more of Isaac's anger.
"It's not stealing her because she still loves you! Your company will still always trump mine in her mind and if there was ever a conflict between who would get her you would always win, hands down. The only thing I've done is given her more options on what to do when she's not with you but since she'll always be going back to you at the end of the day then what does that matter!?"
Renard had almost been expecting another punch, clenching his eyes shut and tensing for an impact that he was sure was coming. Isaac's grip did tighten a little on Renard's shirt, but the punch never actually came. When Renard tentatively opened his eyes to see what the delay was, he saw the raw pain on Isaac's face, so much pain that it honestly looked like the other man was going to cry. Effectively dumbstruck by this sight, Renard opened his mouth to speak but really just winced because he didn't even know what he was trying to say and it hurt quite a bit to open his mouth.
Isaac lowered his eyes along with his voice.
"It matters because she finds something in you that she can't seem to find in me."
Renard wanted to say something, anything in an effort to help his friend, but it didn't really help that he still felt a bit dazed. His cheek was throbbing in agony and it was hard to really think past the sound of his own heightened heartbeat. Before he could formulate a response through the pain, Isaac was letting Renard go with a bit of a shove. Renard stumbled backwards but thankfully didn't fall. As he was straightening himself back up and trying to orient himself Isaac spoke up.
"Get out."
Isaac was still effectively staring at the ground, and Renard could see now that the impact Isaac had made on Renard's face had left its own marks on his hand. A part of Renard was eager to get the hell away from those fists, but another part of him felt like just leaving Isaac like this would be worse than getting punched again. Did he really think that Renard was somehow superior to himself? If that was the case he really had to understand that Kyrie wanted to share her life with Isaac, she didn't particularly want to share her life with Renard, she mostly just wanted to be able to explore with him. There was a huge difference between these two things, and Renard felt like he had to at least try and explain that to Isaac.
"Isaac--"
Renard's approach was quickly halted by Isaac turning burning eyes up towards him.
"Get. Out."
Stopping his advance immediately, Renard hesitated for only a moment before lowering his own gaze. Would it really do any good to try talking to Isaac now...? It felt like he was seeing too much red for it to be beneficial... If Isaac ever tried talking to him while he was in the middle of tearing up the garden he didn't think that'd go particularly well, so why did he think it'd be better if he was to talk to Isaac during a time basically equivalent to that? With that thought in mind, he gave his friend one last slow look before turning his back on him completely.
He was a little surprised to find Jared still standing there, watching all of this completely wide-eyed and looking poised to go and get the guards at any moment. Renard had completely lost track of the boy in this little altercation, and if he had disappeared to go and get guards Renard hardly would've noticed. Renard had nothing to say to Jared though, and simply tentatively brought a hand up to his very sensitive cheek, wincing a little when his hand made contact with the quickly swelling and broken flesh.
Letting out a soft hissing noise, he just headed off towards the house, letting Jared figure out what to do next all by his lonesome. He had to see if his face could be fixed up a little: Dessi had to at least have something that could stop the pain, right?
… He couldn't help feeling like that whole exchange could've gone better, and he hung his head as he let out a soft sigh. He would try and talk to Isaac later, maybe. After the man had calmed down a bit. Though honestly, Renard wasn't sure that was going to be anytime soon.