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Pirkstein is asleep, or close enough, the torches outside quietly extinguished, the horses in their stalls, the corridors dark and empty. There are only a few hours in the night when she’s truly still, a scant handful left now before the kitchen staff will wake once more and light the fires in the hearths, although it’ll be hours before they expect Lord Capon to rise and require furnishing with breakfast.
They’ll be waiting longer than usual, Henry thinks, because their lord is here with him, the candles in his room burning low but bright, and neither of them with any plans to sleep soon. Hans is stretched out languidly on the bed while Henry sits against the headboard at his feet, Hans in braies and hose and nothing else, eyes half closed. His lips, even still, are kissed pink and soft in the candlelight.
He nudges Henry’s thigh with a bare foot.
Henry yawns. “What?”
“You didn’t answer my question. Will you stay here until the wedding?”
The shape of this conversation is a familiar one, the edges around this particular question still uncertain, however many times Hans determinedly prods at it.
“Mm. Maybe.”
Hans nudges him with his foot again, more insistently, so Henry catches his ankle with a lazy grin.
“Don’t you dare,” Hans says primly, and then hisses through his teeth as Henry tightens his grip and Hans tries in vain to retrieve his foot from his grasp. “Henry, don’t you fucking dare—”
Hans is hopelessly ticklish on the soles of his feet and becomes wonderfully indignant when forced to endure it. What had been a delicate dusting of pink high on his cheeks turns to an uneven red spreading across his neck and ears. Henry dodges the foot that Hans aims at his head with a triumphant laugh, trying to grab at that ankle too, but Hans twists in his grip and catches Henry’s wrist.
“You oaf,” he says, in a half-whisper, “if you wake the entire castle—”
“So stop squealing like a piglet, then.”
“This is entirely your fault!” Hans’ cheeks are pink with both laughter and outrage. “Henry, really, this isn’t dignified for a knight.”
“Well, lucky I’m not a knight, isn’t it?” Henry grins, this time going easily as Hans wrestles him down onto the bed. He wraps an arm around his waist instead, presses his open mouth against Hans’ neck and hears a quiet hum from within his throat, a small spark of interest, perhaps. Henry kisses him next along the tendon in his neck, behind his ear. He breathes in the smell of him, the smell of Rattay, of being home.
Eventually, they’ll fall asleep, maybe like this, and untangle themselves reluctantly as the castle starts to stir. The door can’t stay locked forever, or Hanush will come to batter on it. It’s almost like it used to be before Trosky, but for the way Henry wants to bury his face into the crook of Hans’ neck and silently will time to stop. It never does, of course. The closest they come to it is this, the quiet of the night where it seems only to trickle by, at least for a time.
There’s something strange in Hans’ voice when he replies. There often is, these days. Things they can’t chase away like they used to. “Aren’t you?”
Henry pauses. “What?”
“You ought to be, shouldn’t you?”
“What are you on about?” Henry can’t keep the groan from his voice, the exasperation that Hans can’t seem to let things go, sometimes. He can’t just let them be and ignore the things that can’t change. “I’m a blacksmith, you idiot. As you’ve reminded me many times, might I add.”
“And how many blacksmiths are the hero of a siege like Suchdol?”
“I mean, at least one,” Henry says, but doesn’t get the smile he’d hoped for.
“Radzig should knight you.”
“Jesus,” Henry mutters, rolling over onto his back and rubbing his forehead. The moment feels lost, suddenly, even with the salt of Hans’ sweat still on his lips. “Well, he hasn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“Do I?” Hans props himself up on one elbow and regards Henry sharply. “Why shouldn’t you be a knight? He can hardly say you haven’t performed courageous deeds.”
“Yeah, I’m a very courageous blacksmith.”
“Henry.”
“He can’t knight his bastard.”
“Why not? There’s precedent.”
“Hans,” Henry says wearily, pressing his fingertips against his closed eyelids for a moment. “Can we not—”
“If he won’t, then I will.”
That has Henry’s eyes snapping back open with a start. “What?”
“I’ll knight you.”
“You can’t.”
“I can. After the wedding—” Hans falters only briefly, before clenching his jaw and continuing, “—when Hanush hands over my inheritance, I can knight whomsoever I please. And it just so happens that you please me.”
“Hans—”
“And if Radzig doesn’t have the sense to honour you correctly—”
“Stop,” Henry says, loud enough that they both go still for a moment, ears straining towards the door. He lowers his voice again. “You know you can’t.”
“I can take the political consequences.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“It’ll all blow over soon enough anyway, it won’t matter when I’m installed properly as the Lord of Rattay. Besides, I haven’t thanked you—”
Henry can’t resist a grin. “Haven’t you?”
“—formally, I haven’t thanked you. Doesn’t a knighthood seem appropriate for saving my skin several times over?”
“Stop,” Henry says again, though more quietly this time. “Hans, what makes you think I want all that?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Hans demands, prodding Henry in the chest with a sharp finger. “You’ve earned it.”
“Not sure it works like that.” Henry catches Hans’ wrist this time, doesn’t let him pull it away, isn’t sure why he’s trying, however half heartedly. “Why does it matter so much to you?”
“Why doesn’t it matter to you? You’d be my sworn knight, not simply my bodyguard. You could represent me, accompany me in a more official capacity. I need people around me I can trust—”
“Hans,” Henry says gently, still holding his wrist, “I don’t need to be a knight for you to trust me, do I?”
“Obviously not.” Hans’ voice is brittle, even so. “It’s how it looks. To everyone else.”
“Hans,” he says again, finally losing his grip on his wrist as Hans yanks it back. “Look, you know that wouldn’t—”
“I know.”
“I have a forge,” he adds uselessly, “in Kuttenberg, I have—”
“I know, Henry.” Hans says shortly, half turning away. He looks up at the ceiling, jaw clenched. “I know.”
Henry touches Hans’ shoulder, helpless against the jagged edges of the conversation taking shape. It’s why he never wanted to have it. He doesn’t see the point.
He presses his lip to that same soft patch of skin, feels something in Hans soften too. He kisses it again, more decisively, then sits up abruptly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and kneeling on the floor.
Hans sits up too, blinking at him. “Henry?”
Henry reaches for him, one hand on his knee, one taking Hans’ wrist once more and bringing it to his cheek, holding it there beneath his own hand. He turns to place an open mouthed kiss to his palm, his eyes never leaving Hans’.
“Don’t,” Hans says quietly, a hint of bite beneath it, but he carefully weaves his fingers through Henry’s hair. He doesn’t push him away.
Henry breathes, “Do you trust me?”
“With my life.” A pause. “You fucking idiot.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how it goes.”
“What would you know?” Hans retorts.
“I wouldn’t, I suppose.” Henry turns his head again, just enough that Hans’ thumb sits at the corner of his mouth. “So I’ll have to make it up: you can rely on me. Always.”
“You’re not supposed to talk,” Hans murmurs, the pad of his thumb pressing gently, gently where his lips meet. “Jesus. Henry, this isn’t something to make a mockery of.”
“I’m not mocking anything,” Henry says, as earnest as he knows how, then adds, “I wouldn’t.”
Hans breathes out a laugh, slips his thumb just briefly into Henry’s mouth, a subtle flush starting near his collarbones and blooming up his neck. “Yes, you would.”
“Not this time, my lord,” Henry says, a brief and warning flash in Hans’ eyes that tells him he’s dangerously close to an invisible limit. He presses on even so. “Do you accept my loyalty and service?”
“Christ. That’s not how it—“ Hans swallows, shakes his head minutely, “—fine, yes. I accept it. But that’s not how it goes.”
“So talk me through it.”
“Henry,” he says, another almost warning.
“Have you even done this before?”
“You know I haven’t,” Hans says, waspish and impatient, and maybe a little agitated, too.
“So do you even know what to do, then?”
Hans scoffs, leans forward slightly. “This isn’t a joke to me.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Henry shuffles closer, the floorboards worn smooth by the boots of Hans and his ancestors, and now Henry’s knees. “Tell me. How does it go?”
“Not like this. You’re supposed to have been awake all night holding a vigil, for one.”
“Well, close enough,” Henry says, catching the bitten back smile that flickers across Hans’ face before it disappears. “I don’t have my sword.”
“It would be mine anyway, you dolt.”
“Don’t think you’re supposed to insult me this much,” Henry tells him, earning a half-hearted glare. “Should I get it?”
Hans shakes his head again, but more as if he’s trying to clear it, and with only a hint of reproach. Perhaps it’s one step too far, however sincere Henry is being about it all, too close to a formality that it isn’t. He pulls his hand from Henry’s to instead touch his shoulder, the two calloused fingertips of his draw hand against Henry’s bare skin, always softer than they surely ought to be. Since Suchdol, Hans has favoured his bow once more, and spent long and lazy hours hunting before their journey back to Rattay.
Those fingertips move to Henry’s other shoulder, Hans’ expression perfectly serious for a long moment, then he huffs out a self-conscious breath of laughter as he withdraws his hand. Briefly, he won’t meet Henry’s eyes.
“I think you’re supposed to say, arise—“
“God, shut up,” Hans says, inexplicably flushed. “You’re supposed to thank me for bestowing you with this great honour.”
“All right,” Henry says, and places both his hands on Hans’ thighs now, moves them slowly upwards with his expression carefully level. “I can do that.”
He thinks for a moment Hans is going to stop him, but he just bites the inside of his cheek instead, lets out another laugh. “That’s certainly a break from tradition.”
“Is it? Thought you hadn’t done this before.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hans says fervently, and then, “Get up, for God’s sake.”
“Why? Ideal vantage point, isn’t it.” Henry pauses at the laces to Hans’ hose, raises an innocent eyebrow. “But if my lord objects?”
It’s a delicate line to walk, Henry has found, feeling out the boundaries of what Hans thinks is inappropriate and then pushing right up against them, and pushing his luck, probably. But it’s worth it when he succeeds, worth it to see Hans try to look haughty and fail completely as he says, “I suppose I’ll allow it.”
There is something faintly disrespectful about it, maybe, or at least there’s a kind of hushed gravity about it, here in Pirkstein, in Hans’ home and birthright, in the solemn stone and timber of Rattay. It certainly wasn’t quite like this in the Den, or Kuttenberg, or anywhere else. Hans’ fingers tighten this time in the fine linen bedsheets laundered by his staff, his breath catches in the silence of a castle that will spring awake in just a few hours, and they will with it. They can’t while away the day carelessly anymore. Soon, Henry will even have to share the nights.
Hans tangles his fingers in Henry’s hair, the brief brush of those same callouses against his scalp followed by the soft rasp of nails. Hans gasps into the stillness, and Henry doesn’t pull back to see his face, not yet. He knows it well enough to imagine it, knows the way he’ll half screw up his eyes as he fights not to make a sound, Henry easing his lips around him.
The first time he’d taken Hans in his mouth, he’d taken them both by surprise. Hans, frozen and flushed with his lips parted, and Henry, suddenly grappling with the logistics of something he hadn’t ever really expected to be on that particular side of. He hadn’t done a very good job, probably. Neither of them seemed to have cared all that much.
It makes his jaw ache, and now his knees are starting to throb too, but then there’s Hans’ fingers in his hair, his own fingers pressing into Hans’ thighs and the tense muscle beneath his palm, the taste of him and the way his breathing turns uneven.
He doesn’t know what to do with this, sometimes. The thought of never touching Hans again, never feeling his warm and soft mouth in return; all the indistinct fear of that catches in his throat. It’s the kind of feeling Hans always wants to examine, and Henry prefers to chase away.
Henry pulls back to watch him, because he can’t just look at him all day now, can’t spend the morning lounging against a tree and watching Hans draw and release a precise arrow with a furrow of concentration on his brow. Can’t take his boots off and wade in the cool river cautiously as Hans dives fully into the deeper current, splashing Henry and grinning, trying to tempt him further in. Can’t spend the afternoon kissing wine from his lips, pressing him into dewy grass and not having to share a single moment of his time or his attention.
But this is close enough. He can mouth a wet kiss to the inside of Hans’ thigh, watch the line of his throat in the flickering candlelight, breathe him in as he works his length with his hand and say, “Do I please you?”
“Shut up,” Hans groans, and then, “you can’t— Henry, Jesus—”
Beneath the attempt at irritation, there’s still a brittle quality to Hans’ voice, a tension running through him that’s only half familiar. Henry pushes a little further. “Do I please you, my lord?”
“Henry,” Hans says again, in the kind of plaintive tone that always makes him grin. More than that, Henry’s own breath catches, and he shoves away the distant urge to touch himself too. “Could you shut up, and please—”
Henry’s mouth is back on him before he can finish the thought. Hans tightens his hand in his hair and his hips jerk upwards. There are things that will be taken from him soon, but not this. She can’t have this. How could she? This is Henry’s. He digs his fingers in fiercely and swallows Hans whole.
Hans’ breathing evens out slowly, loosening his grip on Henry’s hair, one careful finger at a time.
“Get up,” he says, breathless.
“Don’t you mean arise—“
Hans hauls him upwards anyway into a bruising, open mouthed kiss, as if searching for any taste of himself, every last piece of evidence that Henry is his, too. Henry had thought he was done for the evening, but maybe not; he’s hard again, his heart beating faster and his mouth dry.
“Henry,” Hans breathes then, not pulling back, a quiet murmur against his lips. “You do please me. You do.”
“You know it doesn’t make any difference, don’t you?” Henry’s voice has gone hoarse. He aches everywhere, pleasantly enough, but urgently. Like he can never quite kiss him enough, touch him enough. “Not to me. I carry your shield. You can rely on me for anything. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I know.” A candle flickers behind them, not long left in it. Dawn can’t be so far away, either. Hans frames his face with his palms, kisses him again. It’s always a good look on him, rumpled and flushed, pupils wide in the dark and his lips slightly puffy. Henry pushes him down onto the bed, the sheets a poor substitute for the dewy grass, the candlelight a pale imitation of their campfire.
Hans’ eyes flick downwards with a sudden grin. “Well, well. Arise, Sir—”
Henry kisses him with an indignant noise, suddenly not wanting to hear those words in jest. He follows that with another kiss to Hans’ shoulder, one to his collarbone, and then pulls back just to look at him before he can get too lost in it.
“Listen, Hans,” he says softly, “I can’t wait two months to return to Kuttenberg, not the way things are right now. Maybe eventually, I don’t know.”
Hans looks for a moment as though he might protest, but then just nods slowly, one hand touching the corner of Henry’s mouth. “Will it be for long?”
“No, no. Not long.”
“And you’ll be back before—”
“Yes. Of course.”
“It’s only that the stags start rutting soon,” Hans says, a smile still tugging at his lips. “So it’ll be the last hunt of the season for them, I should imagine. I wouldn’t want you to miss it.”
Henry lets out a quiet laugh against his neck. "Well, if it's about the hunt.”
“Obviously, it's about the hunt. A good hunt in the autumn is auspicious for the winter.”
“Mm. Big party, then?”
“I was thinking I'd keep it small, actually." Hans hooks his ankles over Henry's. "Perhaps just two. Myself and a trusted companion.”
There are things that are Henry's. There are things he'll never share.
“As my lord wishes,” Henry says, and kisses his smile in the quiet of Pirkstein at rest, the hours before dawn a vigil of his own.