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David returns from his first military assignment driving a Philistine chariot. Jonathan laughs when he sees it, not because of the image it presents—straight-backed and radiating pride, but at the same time intently focused on the task at hand, David looks nothing short of regal—but out of pure relief. David’s back. He made it home alive. What’s more, based on a rough count of the dusty column behind him, over half his force made it back as well. Given the odds they went up against, that’s a victory.
The chariot’s horses pick their painstaking way up a road built for donkeys and small-wheeled carts, toward where Jonathan waits beside his father and Abner on the steps of the citadel. His father frowns, but from the way his crossed arms don’t quite end in fists, Jonathan can tell he’s grudgingly impressed. Abner grumbles about young men being show-offs. Jonathan concentrates on keeping both feet in contact with the stone beneath him. David’s back.
David halts the horses clumsily, but leaps down with his usual feline grace. He glances behind him, an unspoken cue that prompts one of the dusty soldiers to hurry forward and take the reins. David walks to the foot of the steps and bows before Saul. “Your Majesty,” he says, “Ekron is secured.”
“Are you having fun?” Saul asks acerbically.
The chariot was too much, Jonathan realizes. David has misstepped, perhaps badly. He’s put on a spectacle Saul can’t match, and Saul’s pride now demands that he take David down a peg.
David, bless his quick perception, must realize it. He ducks his head, pushes thick curls back from his temple and shuffles his feet, a show of embarrassment he’s probably never felt in his life. “I hope you don’t mind, Majesty. I wanted to present you with the best of the spoils, as thanks for giving me my own command. But I couldn’t resist giving it a try first. It is fun, yes.”
Saul’s frown doesn’t waver. He must be thinking hard.
“You took heavy losses,” he observes, and despite knowing his motive Jonathan wants to strangle him. Of course they took heavy losses. That’s more Saul’s fault than David’s, for sanctioning the mission yet refusing to send enough men.
David gives a rueful smile. “The size of the unit is my fault, and for that I must beg your forgiveness a second time. The Philistines had trashed the fields around Ekron, and our people had a late start on the harvest already. I left fifty men behind to clean up the mess and help salvage what they could. They’re under Rimmon’s command, and he has orders to bring them back to Gibeah when they’re done.”
Jonathan is only vaguely aware of the pin-drop silence that follows. He’s running the math in his head, and then running it again, because how?
Saul breaks the silence. “You’ve done well,” he says, though his eyelid twitches. “Get yourself cleaned up. We’ll speak later.”
David bows again and takes his leave. Jonathan feels a twinge of disappointment, then figures out why: throughout the audience, David never once met his gaze.
Jonathan waits a count of ten, for propriety’s sake, before excusing himself from his father’s presence.
*
He finds David in the guest quarters he’s been using, shucking off armor and studying each piece like he’s never seen it before. He doesn’t look up when Jonathan enters.
“You left fifty men to help with the harvest,” Jonathan repeats, still disbelieving. “So you lost… twenty? Fewer?”
“I underestimated how fast their chariots could move,” David says as he inspects a blood-spattered greave. “It won’t happen again.”
“Won’t happen—David, twenty is phenomenal. Your first time out? You’re amazing, you really are. We can have someone clean those for you, by the way, should I take them?”
David turns toward him, finally, but there’s something astonishing in his face. Something confused and vulnerable, like he’s looked up to find himself in a place he never expected to go.
“You’re happy for me,” he says, half-questioning, the words and tone so jarring Jonathan stumbles over a response.
“Of course I… shouldn’t I be? Why wouldn’t I be happy?”
“Because you resented me taking the mission.” David speaks in the same halting way a blind man might navigate an unfamiliar room. Compared to his usual confidence, it’s surreal. “You wanted it for yourself. You were arguing with the king, before I left, that it should be you instead.”
This is absurd. David knows him better than this, or at least should trust him better. David has spent nights in his bed, for God’s sake, and yet he thinks—?
“I wanted the mission because I didn’t want you killed! You think I wanted, what, the glory of it? This mission was ill-conceived from the start. We knew our scouts weren’t getting through, we knew they had enough to besiege Ekron but not how many they had, and he sent you into the jaws of the enemy with less than two hundred men? It’s a miracle you came home at all, much less covered in glory!”
“I see.” David chews his lip and glances at his discarded pile of armor. “You didn’t want it. You just didn’t think I could handle it.”
“Of course I didn’t think you could handle it!” Jonathan almost laughs. This conversation isn’t funny, but he still can’t believe they’re having it, and the urge to laugh hasn’t fully left him since he saw David in that chariot. “I wasn’t sure if I could handle it, and I’ve led raids like this for years! You’ve never led before, the men barely know you—I mean, they know who you are, but not what to expect, and that’s important—and you led them against a superior force, a better-equipped force, on flat terrain with chariots in play, which is something you’ve never seen before, and you freed Ekron without losing more than twenty? Are you even human?” He lifts a hand towards David, a gesture meant as a joke: If I touch you, will you dissolve into mist? Then he freezes, hand stalled in midair, seized by an irrational fear that it might be true—that he might even now be conversing with an angel, or a spirit, or his own fevered imagination.
David’s eyes have gone wide, in a way that’s impossible to read. Maybe he intuits Jonathan’s fear, because he slowly takes Jonathan’s hand in his own, entwining warm, solid fingers.
“Am I human?” he echoes, and mischief flashes across his features, and he’s David again, not some otherworldy mirage. He lowers their joined hands to his side, meaning Jonathan is pulled just a little off balance. He could step forward, almost has no choice.
“Why don’t you find out for yourself how human I am?” David pulls harder and tips his face in invitation, pretty lips parted, and Jonathan kisses him like falling.
David has said he never knew a man before Jonathan, but there must have been women, must have been someone and probably several. He’s always kissed so sweetly, no fumbling or awkwardness; always seemed to know exactly what he wants and how to coax Jonathan into giving it. He wants it slow, right now: little kisses interspersed with noses or foreheads brushing, and as always, Jonathan follows his lead. The laughter Jonathan’s been suppressing all morning bubbles out, just a little, a faint shudder of breath against David’s mouth.
David cups both hands to Jonathan’s chin and presses back, creating space just wide enough that all Jonathan can see are his eyes. This is new, he’s never done this before and it might have been unsettling, but David’s eyes are alight.
“You’re happy for me,” he marvels, soft with wonder. He kisses Jonathan again, deeper this time—and not just deeper but hungrier, hands roaming, something strange and raw and desperate and uncontrolled, pulling Jonathan in like the breath of life, oh God— And it’s Jonathan’s turn to wonder, because for all they’ve done before he never guessed David was holding back, was being cautious all along, not until this moment. Jonathan has loved David since the instant he laid eyes on him, but this, this—this is David loving him.