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“Can I talk to you?” Sam asks, hoping his smile and his fancy suit might sway Riley enough to give him the chance.
Riley’d always been a sucker for Sam all dressed up. He’d learned that lesson in entirely too many church closets, hoping his mama and his daddy wouldn’t go looking for paper towels at just the wrong time and see their son getting a hickey from the boy next door on the Lord’s Day.
“I didn’t see anybody out on the patio,” Riley replies, jerking his head towards the French doors leading outside the venue, his voice a little too cautious for Sam to not have a lump in his throat.
Sam thinks about reaching his hand out to lead Riley out there but he’s afraid it wouldn’t be welcome. Instead, he freezes and does nothing, looking between Riley and the doors while he figures out how to keep his hesitation from making things even more awkward than they already are.
Thankfully, Riley’s been dealing with Sam’s “freeze” variation on the fight or flight response since they were both too young to tie their own shoes. He grabs Sam’s hand instead, leading him through the crowd of people and clearing a path for Sam to walk through despite the fact that everyone in the room wants an audience or a dance with him right now.
It’s enough of a shock to his brain that he remembers to smile and wave and greet everyone that passes by as Riley leads him across the room, and he manages to greet or shake the hand of everyone that tries as Riley determinedly gets him away from everyone vying for his attention.
Sam feels a little bad about not giving them each a short and personalized conversation per the “guests to know” booklet he had poured over with Peggy, but Riley’s too important to pass up an opportunity to talk. Even despite everything else he’d managed to achieve tonight—including still managing to accept his new title as Prince of Genovia despite his truck breaking down and him arriving to the venue soaked to the bone due to walking the rest of the way in the rain—he wouldn’t feel like he’d succeeded if he still lost his best friend at the end of it all.
Riley stops when they make it out to the patio, closing the doors firmly behind him, but Sam takes up his hand again and leads him right out to the gardens. They stop next to the red roses, Sam sitting down on the edge of a fountain and Riley following suit.
“A red rose was the first gift you ever gave me, you know?” Sam says, fondly reminiscing, reaching out to touch one of the petals on the rose nearest to him.
“A gift is a nice way of putting it,” Riley replies, laughing. “That flower was half-dead and I’d given it to you specifically because my mama was gonna kill me if I ruined another one of her bouquets and you were the nearest person to me. Also we were five, but if you want to consider that the start of my long game to get you to date me, I’ll accept the status of romantic mastermind.”
Sam laughs, grabbing the Swiss army knife out of his pocket that Peggy would kill him for having at a diplomatic event and cutting down a bloom to hand to Riley. “You were some kind of mastermind, all right. Your mama would’ve yelled at anybody else, but I was the new kid and the pastor’s son, so I got a free pass that day. Everybody went home happy, and I accidentally landed myself a troublemaker best friend.”
Riley makes sure the partial stem is free of thorns and tucks the rose behind Sam’s ear. “Everybody went home happy except my mama, you mean.”
“Well, that’s a given. Her poor roses.”
Riley lets his fingertips skirt lightly down Sam’s cheek after he finishes placing the rose behind his ear. “I remind her often that I got something a lot more precious that day by trading for the life of that poor rose, and she admits I’d have destroyed a hell of a lot more roses if you hadn’t been around to make sure we got into trouble a little more discreetly, even if we still got into plenty of it.”
Sam turns his cheek and kisses the palm of Riley’s hand. It always feels so easy, even when things seem rough.
Riley inhales shakily when Sam kisses his hand, and Sam might never get tired of just how expressive Riley’s always been when it comes to Sam, of how something as chaste and simple as that kiss can still drive him crazy. “I’m sorry, Sammy,” he says, taking both of Sam’s hands in his and properly looking him in the eye for the first time since they’d fought when Sam had to leave prom early because of the paparazzi. “I’m a jackass.”
Sam huffs out a laugh, but he knows his eyes are shining. “Yeah, Ri, you kind of are.”
“I know you had to leave that night. Hell, I didn’t particularly want cameras in my own face all night long while I was just trying to dance with my boyfriend either. It wasn’t that you left, it was more that all the royalty stuff just kept taking up more and more of your time, and it felt like you were slipping away from me. We’d had it all planned, you know?”
Sam does know. He also knows Riley means more than just their ruined prom night, or the weekly pizza and video game nights Sam’s had to skip more and more regularly. He means their after-school plans, the plans to join up together, to go be pilots and explore the world.
“I’m sorry for that too, Riley. You know I am. Things got busier than I’d thought very quickly, and all of a sudden being a prince wasn’t just some cool thing that made all my teachers exponentially nicer to me overnight. It was royalty lessons and missed plans and packed schedules and paparazzi. I didn’t mean for it to affect you the way it affected me, but I really don’t think there was a way around that given how much time we spend together and have spent together for over a decade now.”
Sam thinks that’s all he has to say, but alongside his sympathy for Riley’s life changes comes residual hurt from his own. “But I needed you too, you know? I find out all this crazy shit about my family being royalty and me never knowing, find out the older brother I apparently had is dead, and that all of this is on me now. That was more than enough bullshit for me to have to face without all the added stress of learning to be a royal and dealing with cameras and journalists and gossip mongers taking over our tiny little town. I needed my boyfriend there to help me work through it, but more importantly I needed my best friend to help me work through it. Instead he just got angry at me for ruining his perfect life plan.”
Riley has the good grace to look guilty, so Sam just squeezes his hands and waits for him to talk. He knows it takes him a while to formulate what he wants to say sometimes, especially when it’s something this important.
When Riley finally speaks, it might be the most sincere that Sam’s ever heard him. “I wanna be there for you, Sammy. Just like I always have been, like I hope I always will be, the last few weeks notwithstanding. Even through all the paparazzi and the altered plans. And that’s what they are: altered. Not ruined. You couldn’t ruin anything for me if you tried, Sammy, even if I get frustrated about the changes to the plan sometimes. I love you too much.”
Sam scoots so he’s sitting up next to Riley and lays his head on his shoulder the way he’s done since they were kids. “I know you never listened to your mama about those roses, but she had a point all those times she told you you needed to be ready for when plans A, B, and C didn’t work out, until you got all the way down the alphabet. Sometimes things have just gotta change, Ri.”
Riley brushes his lips across Sam’s forehead. “And I’ve gotta change with them, especially if I want to avoid hurting the most important person in my life. I am so sorry, Sammy. From now on, it doesn’t matter if we’re in the longest distance relationship in the whole world, but I’m gonna be there for you. Even if something happens and we end up apart, I’m still gonna be there for you when you need me, any other plans be damned.”
Sam sits up at that. Riley’d always talked about hating the idea of long distance, even with friendships. They’d made their plans early enough that Sam had never paid it any mind until a few months ago. “You’d be okay with that?”
Riley tilts his head the same way he always does when he’s confused. It’s almost comforting, the gesture as familiar to Sam as breathing. “With being there for you when you need me? Of course I am.”
Sam shakes his head. “No, with long distance. You always said you were sure you’d never be able to do it, even before we ever got together.”
Riley smiles a little sheepishly. “Kinda figured I’d never have to. We’ve had those plans since we were little, and I just kind of assumed we’d be together forever. Figured it’d be as friends when we were kids, of course, but as I got older, even before we got together, I don’t know. Just kind of figured it’d be me and you against the world always. In all kinds of ways.
“But now you’ve gotta go learn how to rule a country and I’ve still gotta learn how to be a pilot and we’re gonna make it work. I love you and I’m gonna get my head out of my ass so I can make it work. They’ve got an air force in Genovia, right?”
Sam nods. “A small one, yeah. We’ve got regular airports too, not just bases.”
Riley nudges him. “You want me to go commercial? Maybe I could be the pilot for your private jet. Take you wherever you want to go.”
Sam’s about to say something embarrassingly cheesy in return—something like “Wherever you are is where I want to go”—when the doors to the patio open and Peggy steps outside, obviously looking around for Sam. He sees the moment she spots him, once again tucked back into Riley’s side, and smiles down at them.
“Don’t want you to catch cold, Sam,” Peggy says despite the fact that they’re in Louisiana and it’s May. “Best to come inside soon.”
Sam takes that as the warning that people are waiting that it is, but he knows Peggy isn’t going to break up his and Riley’s moment just yet, so he just shoots her a thumbs up. She shakes her head fondly in the way Sam’s found her wont to do in recent weeks and heads back inside, leaving the doors open.
Peggy is a great many things, but she isn’t subtle.
Music wafts out into the garden through the open doors. The piece is a little slow for a fast dance and a little fast for a slow one, but Sam assumes it’s probably perfect for idle chatter and socializing. Peggy wouldn’t have allowed it to be played if it wasn’t good for something.
Despite the odd tempo, Riley gets up from the fountain and offers Sam his hand, bowing just a little. “We never did get to slow dance at prom. Wanna make up for it, Sammy?”
Sam takes his hand and lets himself be pulled to his feet, smiling when Riley immediately pulls him in close and settles his other hand on Sam’s hip. They just sway for a while, in no rush to get back to the party or any other reminder of Sam’s hectic new life as a royal, with Sam’s head on Riley’s shoulder.
They don’t talk for the duration of the song, instead just enjoying the closeness they haven’t had enough of since Sam’s life turned upside down. It feels nicer than prom ever could have, Sam thinks, tucked away and by themselves, surrounded by roses.
When the song ends, Riley pulls back enough to tilt Sam’s head up. He presses his forehead against Sam’s, rubbing their noses together, before kissing him for the first time in weeks.
Sam’s foot pops.