Archive of Our Own

“Get that lazy layabout back to the castle at all costs or you can go to the stocks in his place!”

Hanush’s booming voice echoes on the walk to the bathhouse. Sir Radzig – his father – had very subtly rolled his eyes at Henry and awarded him a slight shake of his head, silently reassuring him he wouldn’t find himself getting pelted by rotten vegetables any time soon.

It’s been only two weeks since Henry’s entire life took a turn for the bizarre after his life already took a turn for the worse in the weeks before. Pa is not his father, Sir Radzig is his father, and in the presence of so many nobles and soldiers, Henry has gone from plucky peasant to noble bastard in the span of a day. He can’t decide which is worse yet – being hated for not having enough blue in his blood or having too much.

“Evening, Henry!” a passing guard calls out cheerfully. 

“Good evening, Master Guard,” Henry smiles, unable to forget how this particular guard constantly followed him around whenever he would go visit the Bailiff as though he was about to go on crime spree in the middle of the day.

He saves any perceived thievery for nighttime when the guards are at their laziest and the desire to practice lock picking rears its ugly head. There are only so many times he can break into Hans’ room, rearrange the stuff in his trunk, and then wait outside his door to hear his confused ranting about how his favorite scarf keeps moving from one side of the trunk to the other. His noble friend is half convinced he’s being haunted by a mischievous ghost.

Eventually, Henry will let Hans in on his little jest, but only once he starts accusing servants of any wrongdoing. Henry doesn’t want anyone to get in trouble on his behalf, but in the meantime, Hans can live with a little fear of the undead playing with his hose.

Hans’ horse is chewing on grass outside the bathhouse, his yellow caparison bright against the droll brown and white building. Henry gives the stallion a firm pat on the neck as he passes by, the coarse hair tickling his palm. 

The owner of the bathhouse is mid sweep when Henry stops in front of her, a barely welcoming smile thin on her lips.

“Hullo, Henry! Stopping in for a bath, are ya?”

“Sorry, not today. I’m actually here to collect Sir Hans. Is he in?”

The woman’s already waning smile twists into an outright scowl. “Aye, His Lordship is here,” she grumbles. “Got my best girls fighting over who has to service him after he chucked the last one out.”

“Ah.” Henry shifts from one foot to the other, never happy to juggle Hans’ sour moods either. “Sorry to heart that. Mind if I…” he trails off with a vague gesture towards the bath house.

“I’ll be thanking you if you can get rid of him, lad.”

Henry nods hastily and hurries inside. One of the bathmaids he sees semi frequently grins up at him as she passes him by. He catches her by the elbow. “Hi there, which room is –”

“First one,” Dorota laughs, patting his hand. “Will I be seeing you later, Henry?”

“I, uh, probably not. I’ve promised to visit a friend this evening.”

“Aww, well, I hope you visit soon! You’re the nicest fellah we get around here.” Henry flushes at the compliment. Dorota leans in closer, her green eyes big and round, and her red hair spilling across her ample chest. “I shouldn’t say this, business is business after all, but since it’s you…Sir Hans seems in a terrible mood. He’s sent three different girls away and now they’re bickering over who made him mad. Is everything alright up at the castle?”

Henry bites back a groan. Nothing good can come from Hans in a bad mood. Nothing.

“I’m not entirely sure. I hadn’t noticed anything out the ordinary but…I should go find Sir Hans to see what’s the matter.”

“Of course,” Dorota says, a hint a of disappointment in her voice. “See you soon, Henry. I hope you can improve Sir Hans’ mood. I think he needs a bit of cheering up.”

He watches her walk away, the sway in her hips hard to look away from but he quickly gathers himself and moves to knock on the door.

“Sir Hans? It’s Henry, can I come in?” Henry calls out. 

“Enter, peasant!” Hans singsongs. 

Henry rolls his eyes, the title rolling off his back with ease. While their first – and second and maybe third – meeting left little to be desired, he and Hans have grown closer than expected over the past few weeks. He, much to his own continued surprise, likes Hans, pompous whinging, and all, and feels bizarrely accepted by him. Everyone else in Rattay has started to look at him differently, even the refugees from Skalitz who have yet to move to Pribyslavitz don’t see him the way they used to. No longer is he Henry, the son of Skalitz’s blacksmith, but Henry, bastard son of Sir Radzig Kobyla. Hans just looks at him and sees, at last, a friend his own age who he can lord around.

Or, well, at least try to.

Henry has no trouble telling Hans off when he gets extra prickish. 

Inside the private room, the air is warm, steam flowing low around his feet, and the windows shuttered. Torches and candles are lit, and wine is splashed across the ground and the walls. There are no bathmaids to be seen, only Hans lounging back in the tub, soap suds spilling across his slick chest and wine staining his lips. 

Henry drops his hands to his hips. “What the hell are you doing?”

Hans tilts his head back, trying to grab every drop of wine he possibly can out of mug clenched in his fist. Mouth dry, Henry tracks a droplet slide out of Han's stained mouth, down his chin and along the line of his throat. It falls to his chest before disappearing in the soapy water. 

“Is there something wrong with your eyes?” Hans asks, kicking a foot up on the edge of the tub and flicking the water off his toes at Henry. “I am bathing, Henry. Obviously.”

The air is too warm, thick in crowded lungs, and Henry has to clear his throat twice before he can find his voice once more.

“You’re terrorizing the bathmaids,” Henry corrects. He rounds the tub, careful not to slip on any wine or water splashed out and swipes the mug out of Hans’ hands. “Hanush sent me. You’ve missed a meeting with him, and he is not happy about it.”

“Tch, he’ll live.”

“He’s threatening to send me to the pillory in your place,” Henry informs him as he sets the mug on a cabinet full of towels budged into the corner. A folded towel sits on the edge, purple splotches of wine staining the linen, but Henry decides it will do in a pinch. Hans won’t know the difference in this state he’s in

“Radzig would never allow it,” Hans huffs, a petulant curve to his lower lip. “You’re his boy.”

Hans’ smarmy tone rankles Henry to no end – it was no secret that Sir Radzig has always been fond of him, treating him kinder than he did the other lads in Skalitz and further along in Rattay, but it’s not like he’s gone out of his way to really speak to Henry. To make a proper apology for lying to him all his life or willingly tell Henry a single thing about his mother.

(The mother he feels now he never truly knew. A mother who had a past, deeper, and more complicated than anything he could have ever imagined. A mother who was a person and not simply Henry’s Ma.)

“He’s really pissed, Hans.” With a flick of the wrist, Hans unfurls the towel in a snap. “Come on, I don’t have time to fuck around.”

Hans rolls his neck lazily, the whites of his eyes redder than the obscene mark sucked into his neck. 

“Eh, don’t say that,” he whines, stretching his arms across the edge of the tub. Heavy shadows flicker across his body and Henry, unable to look away, notices how the corded muscles flex every time he moves. Hans is taller than him, leaner, his strength taking on a different, terribly pleasant form. “There’s always time for a fuck. Hop in.”

Henry flinches back and clutches the towel to his chest as though he’s wearing as much as Hans is and not a full set of clothes and chest plates.

“What?!”

“Hop in,” Hans repeats, then squints one eye up at him. “We can call a wench in and share her. I’ve heard plenty of soldiers do that. Some sort of bonding experience.”

Henry can only gawk at Hans. He wants to…share a wench. How in the world would that even work? Would they do it at the same time? Fuck her together? Or would Hans go first and he would watch, then he…

“I have plans to see a friend,” Henry says, blood pounding thick in his ears. What’s wrong with him? Hans is being Hans. 

Hans’ regal nose wrinkles up. “A friend?” he repeats in disbelief. “Who?”

“Does it matter? Come on, get out.”

“No, you come in,” Hans shoots back, as he flicks his fingers through his wet hair. “Who are you going to see?”

The linen towel twists in Henry’s hands, the hold he has on the fabric close to tearing it in two and a strange, foreign energy broils in his chest, searing his ribs from the inside out. 

“Theresa.” The name falls from his lips, like a droplet of bitter wine spilling down a soap touched chest. “I’m going to visit Theresa at the Mill.”

Hans foot splashes down and Henry hops out of the way before he’s drenched by a wave of soapy water. Arsehole.

“Theresa!” Hans whines, shifting in a manner that Henry catches a glimpse of his lower half – he’s not wearing braies. And why would he? He’s taking a bath. Having a fine time with the bathmaids. Why would he ever need braies? “What business do you have with the miller wench?”

“I don’t have any business with her – she's my friend. We’re spending time together,” Henry grumbles, averting his gaze to the ceiling. A spider weaves an intricate web in the corner, crisscrossing and twisting all around the wooden beams. Henry feels as though he’s tangled up in its spiraling web.

“Oh, your friend. We’re both men here, just say you're off to have a fuck.”

“We’re not – I’m not –” Henry clenches his jaw almost as tightly as he clenches his fists. “I told you. It’s not like that between us.” 

At least, not anymore…or maybe it never was and Henry is telling the God’s honest truth. Theresa could see what he didn’t want to admit after their tumble in the barn. They bonded in grief, stitched themselves together with the threads of tragedy. What they were building wasn’t sustainable, Henry is going to places she never will and it took her saying that to him, spelling out the obvious, for him to see the truth for what it is. They aren’t meant to be.

Henry wants to see Theresa happy though – to see her find a good man with priorities that match her own and to start a family if that is what she desires. After all she did for him, she deserves a world he can’t give her, not with Istvan Toth and von Aulitz still out there, waiting to taste his blade.

Hans lets out a decisive snort. “What man wouldn’t bed a pretty girl who’s willing?” he asks, though it appears rhetorical. “You’re a fool, Henry of Skalitz.”

“I’m not the one wallowing alone in a bathhouse, drinking wine and talking to my pizzle,” Henry barks. “What is your problem? I thought you –”

Hans tilts his head back, and Henry can’t keep his eyes off the long line of his neck. The bite mark bruised into his skin is a vivid red, the promise of a purple bruise itching to be made. Slick with water dripping down, his skin shines in the candlelight. Henry knows if he presses the pads of his fingers to the side, the thud of a slow pulse pounding just beneath the surface would greet him like a lost lover. 

What’s wrong with me? Henry wonders to himself, a lightheaded spell descending upon him all of the sudden.

“What did you think, Henry?” Hans drawls. “That after getting shot in the arse and dragged through the mud and shit that I’d be a changed man? Ha! Men like me can never change. We’re useless layabouts who can never surpass our fathers.”

That is…a great deal to parse through. Henry eyes the flare to Hans’ nostrils and the angry set of his jaw, and any irritation eases into worry. Hans has been known be abrasive, Hanush mentioned having to stop him from fighting with his own subjects long before he and Henry got into it at the tavern, but over the past few weeks, Henry thought he had matured somewhat. Grown past outlandish arrogance while still remaining an arrogant but lovable pain in the arse. He’s been a part of a siege, he’s acted with true nobility and knightly intentions, and – and he never lets Henry pay at the tavern and he searches him out first thing in the morning for a chat and a meal and he smiles a lot easier when he’s around. He’s different from the vain, buffoonish boy Henry first met.

And today, there is something very wrong with him.

“Are you well, my lord?” Henry asks, keeping his voice soft.

“Am I well?” Hans echoes with a sardonic scoff. “Am I well? Of course, I’m well, you turnip picking fool! Jesus Christ be praised, life is wonderful! We won a great a battle and I’m the Lord of Pirkstein, just like my father – only with less power and sense.”

Henry glances at the door and prays no one is listening in. All Hans needs is rumors of madness to go along with the other outlandish behavior the townsfolk whisper about.

“You have sense,” Henry frowns. “Did someone tell you that you didn’t?”

It says to how far they have come that Henry feels immediately defensive on Hans’ behalf. He can say what he likes to Hans, Hans is his friend, but if anyone dares to say a word against him in his presence, he will respond. 

Hans’ toes poke out of the water then disappear again. He blows a few suds away, sends them scattering across the hazy water, and then splashes up along his chest, leaving a glistening sheen that leaves Henry's mouth dry.

“Hans.”

“I received a letter,” Hans finally mutters, refusing to look at him. “From my mother.” 

The former Lord of Pirkstein is dead, entombed in a crypt in St. Matthew’s. He was good and skilled, beloved by the people of Rattay and by his son. As for Hans’ mother, Henry doesn’t know much about her, other than she lives away from Hans in Polna. Hanush threatened to send Hans to live with her once, though the threat felt empty, like many of Hanush’s threats do. 

Never, not once has Hans brought his mother up.

Henry hooks his ankle around the leg of a stool and drags it closer to the tub. He sits down and faces Hans, the towel bundled up in his arms. 

“Is she…also well?” 

Hans shrugs a shoulder. “She’s ill, apparently. I wasn’t given specifics in her letter, but it can’t be good if she’s mentioning it at all.”

Henry has no idea what to say to that. Back when he was a little lad, he cried senseless whenever his ma caught so much as a sniffle.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It is what it is,” he says, again ambivalent. “She didn’t write to talk about herself though. Oh no, she wrote to let me know what a wild disappointment I’ve been as a son.”

Henry is really, really out of his depth. He swears he solved a problem in every single village and town in the Sasau region, but this might be his most difficult to date. He had his fair amount of arguments with Ma and Pa, no one is perfect and he would never claim to be the perfect son, but there is nothing he is surer of than the love they held for him. And he can even firmly believe that Sir Radzig is fond of him, despite the newness of their relationship. He’s never had a problem with any of his parents, new or old.

“Come off it,” Henry says, skimming his fingers across the warm bath water and flicking it at Hans. “She didn’t actually write that.”

“You don’t know my mother, of course she did,” Hans replies darkly.

“I…”

“I am the very image of my father and yet nothing like my father at the same time, and that, according to my dear mother, is my great curse,” Hans chuckles. He knocks his knuckles on the side of the tub, then extends his long fingers – fingers perfectly poised to hold an arrow, to set it free on the unsuspecting – and smiles. “I wrote her right after Talmberg. I thought she might be proud of me, of what we did. Maybe she would care I was injured in the middle of it all.” His smile drops. “She didn’t. I’m as much of a fuck up as I’ve ever been in her eyes.”

“I’m sorry.” 

Hans shrugs again. “People don’t change.”

“Yes, they do. People change all the time,” Henry argues back, inwardly hoping he never meets Hans’ mother. He can’t be trusted to be polite. “I’ve gone and changed since Skalitz. I’ve seen my friends like Theresa and Johanka change! You, Sir Hans, have changed since we met.”

Blue eyes, bright as the clearest of skies, skim over Henry’s face. “Ha, think highly of yourself, don’t you?” he scoffs, though he doesn’t have a direct argument to Henry’s point because he knows it’s true. They both know it’s true. “Fuck ups stay fuck ups, Henry, but it’s kind of you to think otherwise.”

“You’re not a fuck up,” Henry snaps, glaring at his friend. Hans blinks at the abrasive reply, not used to Henry getting worked up like he would in the off chance he comes face to face with a Cuman and a sharp sword. “You’re intelligent and you’re loyal and I wouldn’t have managed these past weeks without you in my life. Your mother is wrong. You can be a right prick but… deep down you’re a good man, Hans.”

The silence sticks to Henry’s body like second skin, a thin layer of the unspoken, now spat out, threading between them. Hans stares at him, openly taken aback, as a pink flush spreads across the smooth flesh of his chest and up to his neck.

“You can’t –” Hans’ voice breaks and he slinks down into the water, until his shoulders are covered by the sudsy water and his chin bobs along the surface. “You can’t just say things like that, Hal,” he finally mumbles, blowing a petulant bubble. And yet, despite trying to push the kindness Henry is offering away, he can plainly see the corners of his mouth tilting upwards in a soft smile. 

Henry pretends like he too doesn’t want to burrow into the ground and never rise, and instead squares his shoulders, chin lifted in stubborn rebuttal. “I only speak the truth. As long as you keep trying, you can be the kind of knight people will read stories about and emulate one day,” he declares, a foreign fervor overtaking any good sense he may possess, as he reaches to out to grip the side of tub. “You have the bravery and the ideals already. And, of course, you’re handsome and just and –” his voice suddenly stops working, his tongue sticking to his teeth and his eyes widening. 

He didn’t just…did he just…

Sakra.

Hans’ bashfulness seems to melt away and his smile twists into a shit-eating grin, which assures Henry he, in fact, just did say too much. “Henry,” he purrs, popping up out of the tub just enough to lean over the edge, their fingers close to touching, “did you just say I’m handsome?”

Jesus Christ, I did. He was actually dumb enough to tell Hans he’s handsome to his face. 

It’s not that Henry doesn’t believe Hans is a handsome man, because he does. He really believes it. Sees it. It’s not odd to notice when another man is handsome, just as it isn’t odd to notice when a pretty girl walks by. It is how it is.

And yet…no matter how many times Henry tells himself it’s normal, no matter how many times his ma told him it was normal, everyone knows when men are handsome and women are beautiful, it doesn’t stop the unrelenting shame from filling his heart for looking too long at Hans.

(He’s been thinking of Novice Lucas lately and the quiet loneliness ever present in his pale blue eyes. Though he claimed he was happiest alone, Henry can’t imagine a life lived in solitude without his friends, without Theresa and Hans and all the people who have helped fill the empty spaces in his heart the raid on Skalitz left behind.)

“You don’t need me or anyone else to tell you you’re good looking,” Henry says gruffly. He stands, legs stiff, and prepares to throw the towel to the ground and call it a day, stocks be damned, when Hans snatches his wrist in his watery grip. “What?”

The awkward angle leaves Hans’ palm pressing into his own, and Henry’s imagination pulls a cursed trick on him – the image of their fingers interlocked, the same way he used to hold Bianca’s hand, flashes across his mind’s eye.

Why is my heart beating so fast? is his first question.

Why am I so bothered now? is his second. I’ve admitted plenty men are handsome before in my mind and it never bothered me then. Why now?

“Why so shy all of a sudden?” Hans purrs, his shit eating grin not going anywhere any time soon. “Afraid to be alone with a handsome man?”

“I hope you drowned in your own filth, Capon.”

Hans’ laughter, for some unfathomable reason, fills Henry with such joyful, resplendent, unrelenting happiness, it almost replaces the confusion and shame weighing him down. “Hand me the towel,” he says, propping his chin up on a folded arm. He looks up at Henry through sweeping lashes dusted in gold, and a knot settles in Henry’s throat. “I won’t have my uncle throwing my favorite stable boy in the stocks.”

“Blacksmith,” Henry corrects without second thought.

“Same thing.”

“No, it really –” 

Hans rolls his eyes and starts to stand, forcing Henry to act. He blindly shakes Hans off and drops the towel on his head. 

“Hey!”

“I’ll see you later. Go to your dammed meeting!” Henry says on his way out the door, a cold sweat beading on the back of his neck. He sweeps past multiple bathmaids, ignores the owner’s call, and Hans’ bored horse, and marches down the well-traveled road to the mill, his legs on pace to outrun the rapid beat of his heart.

Fucking Hans Capon…

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Theresa comments once he stumbles into the yard of the Mill. Sheets and aprons and dresses, all sorts of laundry and linens cover the table out behind the barn. Mutt is rolling about, chewing on a stick in happy abandon. Theresa has sat herself down on one of the benches closest to the hound, folding each linen with lazy care. “Did you run here all the way from the castle? You’re so flushed!”

“Bathhouse,” Henry heaves, throwing himself down across from her.

Theresa wrinkles her nose. “Henry, I know we’ve come a long way, but I don’t have any desire to hear –”

“What?” Henry blurts. “No! I wasn’t – I would never – It’s bloody Sir Hans’ fault!”

“You can’t blame Sir Hans for falling into a bathmaid’s lap,” Theresa says wryly. She tilts her head. “Or, well, maybe you can. His reputation is what it is for a reason.”

“I didn’t meet with any bathmaid! No falling either! No nothing!”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s true,” Henry insists, frowning. “Sir Hanush sent me to collect Capon and – and –” He has to stop himself; his tongue is wagging faster than his hazy thoughts. Dropping his head into his hands, Henry groans. “I was there on orders for Sir Hanush. Okay?”

Theresa ceases folding, her hands kissed by sunlight after spending hours middling around the yard doing countless chores, and nails chipped from helping keep a bountiful garden well intact. “Okay,” she says, drawing out the word. “I was merely teasing you, Hal. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Henry winces, a flash of Hans’ lean body, covered in suds and water and wine, stealing away anything close to coherent. “I know. I know, it’s just…” He licks at his dry lips and slips his hands behind his neck, fingers interlacing at the base. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course. You can ask me anything.”

The battle to fight intrusive thoughts, ones that help feed the uncomfortable shame bubbling in his chest, forces him to stay quiet for a long moment. He looks at Hans and sees something – feels something he shouldn’t, simple as that. Being his friend has been a welcome balm against the healing scar of all that he lost. 

Henry cares about him…and Henry likes to look at him.

“Have you ever liked someone you shouldn’t?” Henry blurts out, a little stunned by what his own audacious self asks. 

Theresa, ever patient Theresa, looks at him expectantly, a small dip forming between her brows. “Henry,” she says, a touch of hardness in her tone, the sort she must have built all by herself in the aftermath of all they suffered. “I liked you very much in a time when I shouldn’t have.” Henry stares at her, mouth ajar. “Bianca was my best friend but there was nothing I could do to stop feeling the way I did. If there was a way, I would have taken in an instant.”

Ears blazing hot, Henry’s gaze drops to the table. “Ah. I didn’t mean – I’m sorry, Theresa. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Will it always be this way between them? The awkwardness of the past haunting their every footstep in this path of friendship they have descended down?

“Don’t be sorry, silly,” Theresa sighs. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty, but I do know what it’s like. You can’t stop having feelings from someone, even if it’s someone you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t have feelings for anyone,” Henry says hastily. 

“But you can be a bit sweet on someone,” Theresa says with a heave of her shoulders. “Things like that happen.” She smiles at him, even if he is drowning in awkwardness under her kind stare. “Is there someone you fancy? A special bathmaid who’s caught your eye? Or are we setting our standards higher now that we’re a fancy noble?”

Theresa is teasing him, good natured and willing to listen, but Henry cannot let of the slight fear nipping at his heels. Sweet on someone. Feelings. Liking someone he shouldn’t. Everything leads back to Hans, and he doesn’t want to tread down that path, not when it’s full of danger and heartache and a distinct lack of Hans Capon’s friendship.

Henry forces a scoff that tears it’s way clean from his throat. “I’m no more a noble than you are, Tess.”

“My pa wasn’t the Royal Hetman.”

“Neither is mine,” Henry replies quickly, easing into another topic that makes his skin crawl but slightly less so. “My pa was a blacksmith…my father is the Royal Hetman.”

The distinction makes Theresa laugh, sweet enough that Henry almost changes his mind and asks her to try again. To tell the past to go fuck itself and to take the easy path with him. Henry can ask his father to help him set up a forge here in Rattay. They can get married in St. Matthew’s and the Lord of Pirkstein will stand in the crowd and smile at him with golden acceptance, blessing their union with his lordly presence, and Henry will hold no regrets, no curiosity, no wonder. He will do what Pa would want of him – settle down, marry, have children that can take the easy path as well.

Henry wonders what Sir Radzig wants of him. Does he want a son who does just as Pa wanted? Or would he be more easygoing as Ma was? All she wanted was for his happiness, no matter what path that may have led down. Sword fighting and adventure never made her happy, but that’s the thing, it wasn’t about her happiness but his own. She could have very easily gone to Sir Radzig and had Vanyek sent straight out of town, Henry now realizes, but she didn’t. She let Henry get his scrapes and bruises and kept it all quiet from Pa.

Because at the end of it all, no matter her own disapproval, Ma let him make his own choices.

I don’t know what to do! I like picking flowers with Matthias, Henry once told her, a frown screwing up his young face, but I like cloud watching with Bianca too. They both asked me – what do I do, Ma?!

Ma smoothed out the wrinkles on his shirt, kissed the furrow on his brow away, and lightly pushed him out the door. Whatever will make you happiest, sweetheart. That’s the best thing about getting bigger, you get to make your own choices. 

“Do you think Sir Hans is handsome?” Henry asks abruptly.

Theresa blinks. “Do I – what?”

“Do you think Sir Hans is handsome?” Henry asks once more, his heart picking up speed once again. “Agreeable. Good looking. You know, fair.”

“Where we just not talking about your fathers?” Theresa wonders out loud, before shaking her head in slight exasperation. “I don’t know, Henry. I don’t know him well. We haven’t ever spoken. The things I’ve heard though…”

“Disregard everything you’ve heard, he’s great, a bit of an arse on occasion, but you have seen him,” Henry pushes, leaning forward on his arms. “He’s handsome, isn’t he?”

Theresa tries to be polite but it’s hard to hide that she thinks he’s gone and lost his mind. “I…suppose, yes. He cuts a fine figure but –”

Henry lets out a deep exhale full of relief. “Exactly!” he exclaims. “It’s a mere fact. I’m being ridiculous.”

Ridiculous. He has to feel like this entire matter is laughable otherwise he will start tiptoeing down the wrong path with Hans. With – and Christ’s wounds, he can’t believe he’s even thinking this but – his best friend. Hans Capon has become his best friend.

Brown eyes narrow at him from across the table and Henry is as good as shot through the heart with an arrow carved out of his own pointed panic because Theresa is not dull witted. Theresa is quick, fully capable of making connections even where Henry desperately wishes there were none. “Henry, do you think Sir Hans is handsome?”

I think men are handsome and women are pretty and Sir Hans Capon might trump them all, Henry thinks, his mind betraying him even quicker than his heart had. It was never shame in the idea of being partial to both men and women, but shame in the face of growing to care too deeply for someone he shouldn’t. It was never people or thoughts…only Hans.

“Oy, blacksmith’s boy!” Henry flinches, another arrow, this one through the ears, as Mutt hops to his feet and charges at Hans, freshly dressed and slightly slumped against the barn. Theresa’s brows climb high enough to reach the clouds. “Oh, don’t even start, you drooling – yes, yes, hello, Mutt. Now get off me before I start telling tales of what happened to my last pair of hunting hounds.”

Mutt doesn’t seem to care much about past canine catastrophes and drops down to bear his belly up at Hans, his feet paddling at the air. 

Hans sighs. 

Loudly. 

And gives him a firm pat on the stomach.

Henry feels himself soften, even as he wishes to build walls that can never crumble, never fall. “I told you to go to your meeting, Capon,” he replies, wishing desperately, to not be caught under Theresa’s calculating stare. “Your uncle is going to be livid.”

Stretching back to full height, Hans stumbles a little and grabs onto the building for support. “Funny you should say that because I think he will also be livid if I show up completely pissed -or dead from falling off my horse. Do you know how big that hill is, Henry?”

Henry rubs at his forehand, fingertips digging in. “And yet you made it here just fine.”

“Not a hill.”

“What do you want, Sir Hans?” Henry sighs, ignoring the small smile curling at Theresa’s mouth. “I told you I have plans.”

The sneer that sneaks its way free from Hans’ attempt at a nonchalant attitude intrigues Henry, as does the way Hans pretends like Theresa doesn’t exist. An act that seems to try and portray her as nothing more than a piece of furniture.

“Sorry to spoil your date, but as my page, I request your presence at once.”

“What in the world do you need me for?”

“I need a proper escort to my uncle.”

“Come off it, Hans, you can make it to the Upper Castle just fine by yourself. You’ve done worse far drunker than you are now.”

“Henry,” Hans stresses, lips pinched and still refusing to cast a single look at Theresa. Admittedly, the lack of respect for his friend is unfathomably rude but knowing Theresa as well as he does, if she wanted to make herself known, she would do so. She doesn’t need him fighting her battles for her. “You can play with your little girlfriend later. I need –” His voice falters, stutters over his teeth, and Henry remembers how raw he was in the tub. The way his mouth drew tight, and his eyes flashed, speaking of his mother and all she wrote. “Will you just come?”

Huh. Perhaps Hans needs him more than Theresa does right now…

“Henry and I are merely friends, Sir Hans,” Theresa interjects brusquely, getting to her feet. She rubs her hands down her front and dips down to pick up a half-full basket of folded linens. “Go on, Hal, help your lord. I have plenty of chores to keep me busy tonight. We can catch up another day.”

“But –” They were supposed to spend time together. Henry had promised.

Theresa’s smile is gentle as it falls upon him, sweet as the fading sunlight. “We have all the time in the world. Go ahead,” she says, then glances back at Sir Hans with a wrinkled nose. “But I must admit, I don’t see what you do. At all.”

A warm flush crawls its way into Henry’s cheeks. There goes fact…

“What was that about?” Hans demands once Theresa slips into the barn. Undoubtedly, she can still hear them, the doors are wide open, but the illusion of privacy is kind, if not unnecessary. Hans would have blurted out whatever he wanted to with or without her here. “See what?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Henry replies, pushing himself up to his feet. The subtle breeze that whisks through the air carries the scent of roses – Hans’ favorite bath oil. “Next time I tell you I have plans, don’t assume you’re invited.”

Hans perks up somewhat when Henry grabs a hold of his arm and flings it over his shoulders, a shiver sneaking its way down his back. He ignores the sensation and calls a pleasant goodnight to his beloved dog as he starts dragging Hans’ arse back to Rattay. 

Though Hans is a bit pissed, he’s not far gone enough to actually need help walking. His weight isn’t heavy enough for that, and his two legs are more than willing to work on their own. He wanted Henry here, at his side, and he’s certainly not shoving him away, even as their hips and sides bump up the uneven path together.

Henry, a little lightheaded, wonders why that is.

“Of course I’m invited, this is my town,” Hans says, smug as can be. His fingers fold lightly and brush over the hand Henry has wrapped around his wrist. “You’re my page.”

“Until my father says otherwise,” Henry reminds him with a snort. Hans’ silken pourpoint is smooth under his palm, every footstep a keen reminder of what’s hidden underneath. “What will you do then, hm? Badger me with poetry under my window until I appear?”

Hans tosses a little extra of his weight onto Henry’s shoulders, his smile extra wide. “I couldn’t do that – if you’re not there to whisper it to me, how would I know what to say?”

“Find another idiot to do it.”

“Ah, so you admit you’re an idiot?” Hans laughs and Henry considers throwing him down the hill. The guardsman from earlier sends him a grimace of support, wholly unsurprised by the sight of Henry dragging Hans into town. For a moment, Hans keeps quiet, no one really giving them a second glance on their way, and then his voice grows serious. “If you’re not my page anymore…we’re still friends, aren’t we? I can still badger you into helping me…right?”

The hope in Hans’ voice stings as badly as the bitterness on his face did earlier. People can change and grow. Enemies can become friends and friends can become…

Appearances, Henry thinks, hurting on Hans’ behalf, aching from his own internal war, are deceiving.

“Aye, you can,” Henry says gruffly, tugging Hans a little tighter into his side. The flash of Hans’ white smile is too much to look at straight on and he drops his gaze to the ground. “Just don’t do it when I tell you I have plans!”

“Then only make plans with me and then you don’t need to worry about that!”

“You’re hopeless!”

“No, I’m a man of great forethought and wisdom,” Hans retorts, blue eyes sparkling mischievously. “You should be delighted that you can bask in my excellence.”

Henry barks out a laugh, unable to keep his amusement hidden, not when, despite everything, he’s happy to see Hans more himself. “Whatever you say, my lord, whatever you say.”

Maybe he is delighted to bask in Hans and the golden glow that seems to shine from within him. He can be exasperating and silly and too willing to ruin Henry’s plans, but Henry can’t say he minds much. He doesn’t feel a lick of shame in his hearer right now – not when Hans is looking at him like he’s the only other man in the entire world. It is what it is.