Love is a Battlefield (a Game of Thrones fanfic)

The Accidental Pop Duo

Renly

His brother had brought him back a banjo from a trip to the north when he was twelve.  The purposes of the trip had been two fold - a visit to Renly's uncle Ned, and to give a speech at a university that sat in the shadows of the great Stark fortress of Winterfell.

"Ned said you might like it," Robert had explained, slapping Renly on the back and ignoring the glare that his pretty wife (who didn't like Renly at all) was giving them both.  "He'll teach you, if I can ever get him out of local government and down here."

Renly goes to university with a banjo slung over his back. Robert got his wish, Ned Stark had come to King's Landing to serve in Robert's cabinet, and Renly had grown up in a world of politics and smoke-filled back room dealings. Renly had grown up seeing more of his Uncle Ned than Ned's own children as Robert, Ned, and a coalition lead by the Lannister golden boy dissolved parliament, called for elections and rose to political prominence all in the course of what felt like years of long, hard-fought war.

He's too young to remember anything else, an uncle at already and going away from the protective bubble of his brothers' careful watch for the first time in his life.  He'd lingered, after finishing school, to help out and try his hand at politics, but one year had turned into two years of mind-numbingly dull clerking for his brothers and uncle.  He could speak the language of politics, but without some sort of a degree, they all said, he was useless to them beyond being a very efficient clerk.  He'd spent a year teaching under-privileged children too, trying to see if he liked that before he invested four years into a degree in it.

"D'ya really play that?" The girl across the hall wants to know as he settles into his new home in the student housing complex a few blocks from the university. She's popping gum and staring at Renly's battered banjo with some trepidation.  "Because you and the guy in 3G should get together and make some music sometime."  She waves her hand dismissively.  "He's from the Reach, I think, so he's probably never met a northman, but I saw him moving a keyboard into his room."

"I'm not..." Renly begins, but the girl is gone smacking her gum and closing her door before Renly can clarify that he's not from the north at all.  He's never even been there.  He's saved the moment of standing awkwardly in the middle of the hallway by his phone, and he answers it to hear his brother's voice on the other line.

Stannis is calling to see if he's settled.  Robert probably won't call at all, but Renly is used to that. He leaves the door half-open and heads back to his bedroom, slumping down onto the mattress that he's yet to put sheets on.

"They think I'm from the north," he whines.

"It's the beard, Renly," Stannis says with a chuckle.  "Even if you're older than most of the first years, you're far too young to have one. Just shave and they're sure to recognize you for who you are." He pauses, "Or were you sitting in your room picking on that damn banjo again?"

Stannis has never been much of a fan of the banjo.  But then again, Stannis hates fun.

"I was moving it into my room," Renly replies, "The girl across the hall saw it and made all sorts of totally wrong assumptions."  He sighs and listens to Stannis talk his ear off about what Robert's up to, and his worries about the pending debt crisis that's facing the nation.  Renly just wants to be in school, but it seems the politics will follow him no matter where he goes.

He's half-way unpacked when there's a knock on the half open door.  "It's open," Renly calls, shoving boxers and underwear into a drawer hurriedly. He tugs on the collar of his battered t-shirt advertising some community run he'd participated in a few years ago.  It is impossibly stuffy in here.