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Being a prince, as it turned out, was not just a figurehead job.
Lesley was busy when he was at the castle. People constantly needed to meet with him, documents needed to be written and signed, and Lesley held some kind of ceremonial position within the church because of his roles as a cleric and prince which Julian didn’t fully understand. All in all, Julian saw him every day – they lived together, after all, and that was still a weird thought – but he was often gone from morning until evening.
It was hard, then, to pinpoint exactly what it was about the past couple of weeks that was bothering Julian so much. Lesley was sleeping in their room, he still kissed and smiled at Julian the same and almost-fearlessly ignored the people who stared when Julian was given a place of honor at any kind of public dinner.
But something has definitely changed. He is coming back later, quieter. He is reading more books than he is talking to Lesley and he is more irritable, more nitpicky about the texture of the sheets and the cleanliness of their table.
Julian nearly comes to the point of saying something, even if it’s just what’s wrong?, about half a dozen times. Every time, though, Lesley does something that makes him think he has got to be imagining it. He complains about irritating officials in the castle and jokes with Julian about their eccentricities until they’re both laughing too hard to continue; he kisses Julian fingers, almost absentmindedly; he wakes Julian on the mornings when he doesn’t immediately have to run off, smiling and with his mouth still tasting like sleep.
He convinces himself, over and over, that it’s probably nothing. And really even if it was something, it must be secret and princely and a matter of state importance.
Or else Lesley would definitely tell him, right?
He’s still worried, though. He’s worried on the day that he’s gotten back to the room and he’s combing through a report that was passed onto him, about pirates and someone who sounds far too much like Luck, and he’s wondering about Toivo when Lesley comes into the room.
It’s immediately obvious that something is wrong. Lesley is storming around the room like a thundercloud, stripping off the outer layers of his clothing and folding and then refolding them with jerky movements. As Julian’s watching in concern, he brushes his hand against the wood of the wardrobe and hisses in pain, which is enough to make Julian get up and come over.
“I’m fine,” Lesley says, before Julian can even grab his hand.
Frowning, Julian gently reaches forward and grabs his hand anyways, pulling it towards him. “That sounded like it – “
He grabs Lesley’s hand in the wrong place, apparently, because Lesley flinches hard again and jerks his hand away, snapping, “I said I’m fine, good lord, can’t you just leave it alone?”
Julian takes a step away, can’t really help it.
Lesley’s stressed, he tells himself, tells his heart to stop beating quite so hard. He feels so much more upset than this warrants, can feel the strain of the last few weeks of irritable silences and unexplained late nights piling up on him. He’s stressed and this shouldn’t matter.
It does, though.
Julian doesn’t know what look is on his face, but it’s enough to make Lesley shift immediately from irritated to guilty. “No, don’t,” he says, and then, “I’m sorry.” He picks Julian’s hand back up, gingerly, and Julian can see from this angle that his hand is covered in tiny welts, like burns. They look painful, and Julian wonders why he hasn’t healed them. And then about where he got them in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” Lesley says again. “That was – thank you for caring.” He presses a kiss to Julian’s hand. “I’ve been stressed, is all, and today it was particularly – “ He breaks off.
“It’s all right,” Julian says, and remarkably enough, it sort of is. It always is, when Lesley is close to him like this, sweet and honest. Julian just wishes it would stay like this. “I know it’s – whatever princely thing you’re working on now.”
He quirks a smile, but Lesley doesn’t return it, too busy staring at Julian in confusion. “Princely thing?”
“Yeah,” Julian says, slowly. “The thing you’ve been working…. on….”
It is not, Julian realizes, a princely thing. Lesley does not look like someone who has been caught out in having a top-secret state issue that he’s been working on. He looks far too confused for that.
“It’s not,” Lesley says, confirming Julian’s thought, but then doesn’t seem to be able to continue. “I don’t want to lie to you,” he says, which isn’t at all reassuring.
“You don’t have to,” Julian says, and he means it as you can tell me, but he can see in the tension of Lesley’s shoulders and the press of his mouth that he’s not going to.
After a long moment of silence, Lesley says, quiet, “Let’s go to bed.”
It takes Julian forever to fall asleep, and by the time he wakes up Lesley is gone. The day drags by, the mystery of Lesley and his ongoing stress weighing on the back of his mind the entire time. He makes a point of keeping himself busy, gets back late from his apprenticeship, but even so Lesley isn’t in their rooms yet.
He tries to find something to do, ends up settling on reading a book that he can’t focus on. He doesn’t know what he wants to do, once Lesley gets back.
He wants to want to let Lesley do whatever it is at his own pace. He doesn’t owe Julian anything, an explanation or otherwise. It’s fine, and Julian wants to be able to wait and do his best to be there for Lesley, and it’ll work out.
He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to swallow his anxious insecurity long enough to do that, though.
When Lesley steps into the room, he looks harassed again. His hands are in worse shape than the day before, a large welt across the back of his hand visible even from across the room. His hair, uncharacteristically, is a mess of pulled-on strands, with – is that soot mixed in? He looks like a mess, and Julian is getting up before he even realizes what he’s doing.
Lesley looks up at Julian, at Julian’s face, and the look on his face melts from irritation to something complicated soft in the space of a breath. Julian freezes halfway out of the chair.
“Are you okay?” Julian asks, when Lesley says nothing.
After another beat of silence, Lesley says, “Yes.” He sounds sure. “Yes, come here.”
Julian crosses the room and Lesley kisses him, and he feels present in it in a way he hasn’t in several weeks. It takes that for Julian to realize just how much he has missed him; he’d forgotten how flattering, how overwhelming, the full force of Lesley’s attention was.
“I’m sorry,” Lesley says, and Julian’s cutting him off before he has the whole word out.
“No, you don’t have to be – “
“I am,” Lesley says, a hint of a laugh in his voice. “We shouldn’t be fighting about this.”
“We’re not fighting about this,” Julian says, because excepting Lesley’s outburst yesterday they haven’t even raised their voices at each other.
“Well, we probably should be fighting about my behavior over the past few days, but we shouldn’t – oh, god, just come here.” Lesley gingerly takes his hand and starts pulling him towards the door.
“What?” Julian says, though he follows.
“I’m going to show you,” Lesley says, and the smile he offers over his smile is sheepish and thrilled and Julian is so confused and also a little terrified at how much he would follow Lesley nearly anywhere for that smile.
They move quickly through the corridors, which are completely empty at this time of night. After a minute, Julian recognizes the path they’re taking as one that leads down to the craft and blacksmith rooms.
Julian expects them to slip past them and out into the courtyard, but instead Lesley slips into one of the fine metalsmithing rooms. The room is cast in a warm, burnished auburn from the glow of a still-warm furnace in the corner, and pieces of finely twisted metal are all around the room. This isn’t a room for crafting weapons; jewelry, amulets, and decorations are stacked on the shelves and hung on the walls. They glint in ways slightly inconsistent with the light, hinting at magic.
Heart beginning to speed up, Julian says, “Lesley, what – “
“It’s not done,” Lesley says. He’s stopped by the furnace, standing there cast in glowing emberlight. He runs his hand through his hair, which messes it up even more. He looks more flustered than he’s looked since the time he asked Julian to move into the castle with him. “It’s not even really good yet. You make this stuff look so easy but I’ve been trying for weeks – “ He breaks off, a soft, self-depreciating laugh coming out. It’s not a good look on him. “Anyways, I think the enchantment should work? It’s hard to test this.”
He looks up at Julian, who is just so, so confused. And nervous. He was sort of expecting something – bad, from this. But Lesley’s been making something, and enchanting it, and Julian is trying to slow down a mind that wants to race ahead.
Lesley draws in a deep breath, opens his mouth, and then abruptly turns around and grabs something off the table behind him. When he turns around, his hand is clenched into a fist.
He steps up to Julian, turns over his hand, and opens it.
Two roughly-hewn, soot-streaked gold rings lay in his palm.
All the breath leaves Julian’s body at once. His heart skips a beat or three.
“They’re just – they’re promise rings,” Lesley is explaining, and Julian doesn’t know if he’s relieved or disappointed. “I mean, not that I don’t plan to – “ he cuts himself off, and Julian’s heart pounds again. “But these are for, uh, when we can’t be together. They – well it’s easier to just show you.” He takes Julian’s hand in his free one, and then looks up at him. “Can I?”
Julian isn’t sure he can form words, but he manages, rough, “Yeah.”
Lesley smiles at him in a way that lights up the whole room.
Lesley examines Julian’s hand for a moment, holding up one of the rings to determine which finger it’ll fit on. It’s more of an oval than a circle, so it’ll be tricky regardless, but he eventually manages to get it onto Julian’s pinky finger.
He slips the corresponding ring onto his index finger, where it hands a little loosely. Scowling slightly at it, Lesley says, “So, uh, the other part of this is the enchantment. It’s – well, here.”
He brings the ring on his hand up to his mouth, looks up into Julian’s eyes, and kisses the ring.
Julian breaks eye contact in surprise as the ring on his pinky heats up suddenly. He looks down just in time to see a soft glow fade from it as Lesley puts his hand back down. Lesley laughs, delighted. “They work! I mean, I knew mine worked, it just took so long – here, try yours.”
Matching Lesley’s smile, Julian raises the ring to his mouth and kisses the ring. They watch Lesley’s ring as, sure enough, it glows a soft gold.
For a second, they stand together in the silent, warm workshop, and feel overwhelmed together.
“Julian,” Lesley says finally, in a softer version of his princely-edict voice, “would you do me the honor of being promised to me, and allowing me to be promised to you?”
Julian’s choked-off, “Yes,” is nearly unintelligible through a beaming smile and tears.
(They refuse to take the rings off for a full day afterwards, even though Julian’s is too tight and Lesley’s keeps nearly falling off.
They finally go down the next night and they figure out together how to get the rings perfectly-formed to their fingers. They burn their hands when they exchange the barely-cooled rings again, but Lesley heals it and it’s perfect.)
(Over the next three days, Julian’s ring lights up hundreds of times, and he’s reasonably sure Lesley’s is at a similar number.
He can’t remember ever being this happy.)