Renly spotted him almost as soon as he stepped out into the parking lot, a lean silhouette against the artificial light that streamed through the doorway behind him. Loras Tyrell. Loras Tyrell. The name was stuck in his head, like a song or a desperate prayer. He froze where he was on the hood of his car, cigarette dangling from his lip and trailing smoke toward the darkening sky.
This is your chance, Renly thought to himself. He hasn't seen you, he has no idea that you're here. You can walk away now, and he'll have no clue. But he couldn't do that. He knew that he hadn't driven all the way to Long Beach just to hide in the shadows like a coward. All of a sudden he had decided what he was waiting for, and it wasn't to just watch from afar. Renly wanted answers, not just more half-truths and not infuriatingly vague responses.
He waited until the other men around Loras had climbed into their vehicles and pulled out of the lot, leaving only a few empty spaces between their cars. He rolled the cigarette's filter between thumb and forefinger, resting the back of his hand against his chin. He waited. Waited. He opened his mouth to speak half a dozen times, and each time the words died on his lips. What the fuck was one supposed to say when confronting one's potential stalker-slash-very own crazy person, he wondered. Finally, when Loras had come around the driver's side of his own car, he opened his mouth again and this time words came out.
"You look different when you're smiling," he blurted out, rubbing at the back of his neck and half-hoping that Loras wouldn't hear him. It was true, though - somehow, in all his obsessive consideration of the strange man from the other night, Renly hadn't ever thought about what the man might look like when he laughed, much less with a flower in his hair. Somehow, he looked more beautiful than Renly had remembered.