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Movement. Armor, thick and heavy gambeson shifting, gauntleted fingertips tapping, a loud clink, clink, clink.
“Wearing armor on a quick hunt,” said with a sigh and a smile. Impatient but still fond.
“Our last quick hunt ended in a four on two fight, if you recall.”
“I recall.”
Wind rustling, leaves, dryness of autumn threatening. More armor shifting against armor as a golden pourpoint stretches, a bowstring tightens, then loosens, an arrow flies. A thud, a heavy animal falling. Armor shifting again, boots pressing into the packed earth as he stands.
“Good shot.”
“Of course, it was.”
“Humble, too.”
A nudge, an elbow pushing into the gap between plate armor. Finding softness, yielding to it. The armor is hard. It’ll only get harder. Something slips into the soft and quiet spaces left open, for him.
.
Chatter, mostly drunken. Men talking. The lingering smell of beer and liquor, like a haze in the air, a miasma.
Drunk. Tired. Happy. Tankards set down onto wooden tables. Armor moving as he shifts a little closer along the bench. The softness of a hose covered thigh pressing back. The haze grows heavy.
“I drank too much.”
“I did warn you.”
“You’re getting annoying.”
Under the table, a hand on his knee. Barely felt through the thick fabric of quilted hose, a necessary evil in this heat, a barrier between him and cold steel. Fingertips press in. A harder touch felt through the fabric.
A particularly loud laugh across the room, masking his words, his pink mouth moving around them, “I’m annoying, am I?”
More laughter. More armor moving. Everything is so loud.
Over the din, a whispered, “You’re annoying.”
His smile is louder than anything but no one else can hear it.
.
Skin shifting over skin. A sigh, then a whisper.
“You feel so good.” Almost whimpered. Almost a breath and not words at all.
It should be quiet, but there’s a rush of blood in his ears. His heartbeat. Two heartbeats, two sets of lungs exhaling, the air in the room at once heavy and light, high, thin, too thin to breathe. Too much to say. Better not to say anything. Better to just be quiet.
But Hans is never quiet, although Henry is the one whose armor is always clinking, whose sword is always tugging at the belt around his waist, whose hands are always dripping with blood, whose memories are loud, the rush of flame, the wind in his ears from his flight, the end of the world, the beginning, the everything.
“Henry.” At times, the way he says his name is almost accusatory. How could you make me feel this way. How could only you do this. Why do I let you.
A kiss. Hans opens his mouth. Gentle breath, vaguely wet. The opposite of fire. But the touch of it burns just as hot.
“Henry.” Other times, the way he says his name is almost like prayer. How could you make me feel this way. How could only you do this. Why do I let you.
.
The wall around the city traps sounds most of all. Loud, very loud. Horse drawn wagons, wheels in water filled divots from the last rain, splashing through mud. Men yelling. Dogs barking. Mutt bristles, holding in a bark of his own. Quiet, mostly, except when he’s killing.
Women talking, softer. A giggle. A girl looks at him then looks away, her cheeks pink. He thinks of Hans. He thinks how loud he is, and how quiet girls are. He could be a girl, except for the armor. He can be quiet, except when he’s killing.
Beside him, Hans has already grown bored and leans against the wall of the forge. His golden pourpoint, freshly laundered, matches the clean, newly painted walls. He crosses his legs at the ankles. Bright blue hose that clings to places Henry has touched with his hands and with his mouth. The sounds made when he does it, so loud even just in memory that he looks around, briefly worried that someone else can hear.
As he turns his head, his chest plate brushes against his plate couters on his elbows, an almost gentle chime. Hans turns his head and only his hair moves, a breeze rustling through it, and Henry has been around him so closely and so often that he knows the sound of wind through his hair, and anticipates it, and feels the satisfaction of hearing it despite the city noise and the armor noise and the dogs and the men and the women.
“Are you bored?”
Hans shrugs. “It’s interesting enough here.”
“You look good leaning against my wall.”
A smile, hard earned. In public, Hans remains an untouchable noble. Still and steady, and more beautiful than anything around him. Like a pillar, a column, a mountain face. How loud would it be to chisel another smile out, or to make him as animated as when they’re in bed, or to make his mouth look the way it does when it’s been freshly kissed or fucked. Perhaps it’s quiet. Perhaps it can be done without a chisel.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Hans says, and maybe he means it some way other than the way it sits like a pit in Henry’s stomach, falling with a warning whistle, landing like a stone.
.
Hans is happier on horseback, out in the wilderness. Between towns, between noise. He himself a more consistent source of it outside, alone, even despite his lack of armor. Clothes and hair rustling, mouth moving around a story or a laugh, or both at the same time, words distorted by ha, ha, ha, sometimes even a giggle that sits in his throat and that Henry, riding slightly behind, can almost see in the air. Summer sounds, insects and birds and animals, Hans. Hans.
The more they ride, the farther from the drunken haze of the Den, or from the restrictive and prescriptive walls of Kuttenberg, or the places Henry stayed alone while looking for him, the loneliness hanging over each place like a heavy rain cloud, a thunderstorm, loud, too loud. Until another hunting spot beckons them, away from everything. Leather moving, stretching, a loose knot tied around a tree branch. A horse pet, fingers moving through a thick mane. A whispered, “Good boy.” Chills down his body, a ripple of awareness.
Eyes on him. Heavy how they fall, unnatural almost. “You need to stop wearing armor to my hunts. I bet you’ve scared away all the big game.”
“Every fucking time we go on a hunt, we get attacked.”
“That happened exactly twice.”
“Two out of five.”
“Because you’re so loud.”
“I need to be.” Suddenly frustrated, hand on the pommel of his fathers’ sword. His sword. Hard to claim it, even when he forged a copy to try and make it more his. How loud the workshop was that night, and into morning. How comparatively quiet his bed, Hans in it. Everything that matters is so quiet.
“Take your armor off then.”
A flicker of laughter in his mouth that he swallows down. A retort pops in right after and melts when their eyes meet. A smile, big and beautiful. He doesn’t offer to help. Chest plate off, leather stretching as it’s untied. More leather pulled off the backs of his thighs, more plate removed. Armor clanging against armor, flashing in the sunlight. Couters removed, poleyn removed. Hans opens his mouth as though to speak but nothing comes out, and his lips remain parted. Henry steps toward him. His footfalls quieter now. Hans still doesn’t speak.
He presses him against a tree. Overhead, leaves rustling. It sounds like a quiet fire. A less deafening roar. Mild but still reminding him of the fire he ran from exactly once. He pushes his body against his until he earns a little gasp, and collects it with his mouth, this slip up, this show of the Hans only he sees, that he can only see when they’re alone.
“I took it off. Now what?”
“You’re asking me?”
“You’re the one with all the ideas on how to be quiet.”
“You want quiet?” Another little inhale as Henry presses harder against him.
“No. I don’t.”
Hans tilts his head back. Exposing the line of his neck. The jumping pulse. The Adam’s apple shifting as he swallows. “It was quiet in Pirkstein. Rattay is loud but Pirkstein was like a tomb. It’s different now. Well, since you arrived, it’s been quite different.”
“Different bad?”
“No. Idiot. Of course, no. I like the way you are, even though you’re like a boar, you’re big and loud in your armor and outside of it. I like to listen to you.”
A shiver that ends in another half gasp. Henry’s beard scrapes against the softness of his neck. The hairs catching where Hans has shaved. Audible, despite the breeze and leaves moving and animals and insects and even the sun, even its rays fall like objects, a weight to them. Everything too loud when compared to Hans, that at least in bed, the quiet amplifies him, but outside, it swallows him.
Everything will swallow them, because it doesn’t know. The armor, the blood, the sword, the city, the yelling men, the drunken men, the giggling girls. The dogs, the horses, the leather untied and dropped to the floor until he’s as quiet as he can be. No one and nothing knows how quiet they’re being. How hard it is not to say, “I love you,” in the street, and have to keep it quiet. To hold in the need to shout instead, to be as loud as men are when they’re yelling to get a woman’s attention. To let the way he feels around Hans take up as much space as he can, and to manifest it on his face in a smile that anyone would know if they saw it. So they don’t smile. Hans leans against a wall and is casual although Henry’s knowledge of his hands and mouth and body should be like a church bell, so loud as to be impossible to ignore, and yet everyone ignores and everyone is unaware and everything else is so loud it washes them all out.
He kisses him, hard, and pulls another sound out of him. Holding both his arms until his grip hurts.
“Henry.”
“Louder.”
Fingers undoing a few buttons of the golden, shimmering pourpoint. Just enough to slip in and press against his stomach, the yielding skin there, pressing in until Hans says, a little over a whisper, “Henry.”
As loud as it gets. This is all they get. If Henry had still been wearing his armor, the sound of his name would be barely audible over the metal clinking against metal, the leather straps stretching, the sword’s pommel hitting his plate. Just this.
.
The Den is always loud, but their room is quiet, and their bed creaks underneath the sound of heavy breathing and whispered promises that neither of them will hold against the other.
Things like, “I’ll build you a castle,” and “We’ll have a hunting lodge,” and “You’ll be in my household forever, right?” This last one more like a question but the way he says it is more like an oath. Hans speaks with certainty, even when he’s uncertain. Especially when he’s uncertain.
Henry nods, his hair slipping over their shared pillow. He could go across the room and grab the pillow from Hans’s now rarely used bed, and as he comes back he could look at Hans’s body, draped over the bedding on the far side of the room, his limbs loose and his hair on his face, the sheet tangled in his legs, the exact shape of which is visible when he wears hose and is still a shock when the hose is not there. His footfalls are heavy as always. He doesn’t know how to walk quietly. This doesn’t come naturally to him. He has to try, every time he has to do it deliberately. He has to be quiet. He cannot say, “Don’t leave me,” or “I wish I could hide you away from everything,” he cannot say, “Stay with me,” or “My forge has enough space for us,” he can only nod and tell him, “Yes, I’ll be with you forever.”
He earns a smile. Quiet. And too tired to press for anything else.
He smiles back. Their breathing is loud. Hands skimming lazily over skin. Hair rustling. Downstairs, rowdy laughter, tankards on tables, now and then a girl’s voice rising then falling.
Hans curls into him. An arm draped around his waist, uncovered, for now. Finding softness, yielding to it. His body is permanently armored now. Even when he’s naked. The armor is hard. It’ll only get harder. A sound slips into the spaces left open, for him:
“Henry.” Quiet. Quieter.
“Yes?”
“Talk. Say something. I want to hear you.”
Words building in his mouth. Laid like brick, then plastered over, then painted. Pretty things emerge, a scene of knights, a flower border, something beautiful Hans can lean against. Whispered, slipping underneath the chatter downstairs that is allowed to take up more space than they ever will.
He falls silent when he realizes Hans is asleep. His breathing fills the air. Hair shifting, skin slipping over skin, a kiss, so soft it’s barely noticeable, except for the burn it leaves behind on his lips, all quiet things, all deafening, all the time.
.
“No armor this time?”
“I’m tired of disrupting your hunts, let’s say.”
“How courteous of you.”
Quiet footsteps, except for the occasional twig snapping, echoing through the forest. Birdsong, tiny feet skittering around, leaves rustling, brushing against one another. Hans’s smile. Henry’s heartbeat.
“When we’re done hunting,” he says, “I want you to shout my name as loudly as you can.”
Hans’s smile only widens. “You cannot stop disrupting my hunts. It’s a compulsion.”
“I want you to say my name.”
A hand on his arm. Fabric shifting as his fingers clench. Knuckles cracking. Birds. Wings.
“Henry.” Shouted, birds flapping and flying out of trees around them, footfalls of hares and game running off, a wind rising as though on cue and pushing around leaves and branches and shifting the light that falls through, making Hans’s hair look like spun gold. At times he says his name like a song, stretching the vowels, twisting the consonants on his tongue, pulling out a tension in Henry’s chest, like a held breath.
“Henry.” This time whispered and still somehow loud, perhaps even louder. “There. Happy?”
A kiss, also loud, despite the lack of armor and their distance from the city, the Den, men and women, the world around them. No animals even, birds and game chased away. Only summer air that cools too quickly. Fall approaches, time moving forward, time running out. The kiss becomes desperate. Henry clutches at his clothes. Pushes him against another tree. Leaves fall around them, disrupted. Like rain.
“Henry.” At times he says his name and it hits like the crack of a pistole, the recoil slamming into him, unarmored, unprotected, with only a stupid smile to defend against this deafening roar, this impact. Although whispered, almost breathed, almost no words spoken at all.
He presses against him, earning a sound halfway between a whimper and a gasp, so quiet that even their now empty section of the forest swallows it and them and will leave nothing behind.