Work Text:
The tavern in the Jewish quarter smelled of bread that had been burnt and scraped, of old wine, and woodsmoke.
It was not yet evening, but the sun had already begun to slide down the throat of the sky, bleeding gold between rooftops and soaking the cracked panes in amber.
Samuel stood behind the counter, sleeves rolled, fingers dusted in flour and uncertainty.
"He said he’d be back by the sixth bell," he muttered. "The sixth bell was half an hour ago."
Across the room, John did not look up. He sat like a painting that had been mistakenly placed in a tavern. Too still, too polished, and clearly unbothered by the distant panic hanging in the air.
His cloak was folded neatly beside him, his goblet half-full. He was drinking something sweet, imported, and completely unsuited for the room they shared.
Samuel sighed and picked up a cracked wooden ladle.
The boy, Jakub, had disappeared hours ago after announcing the cook had gone to bury her cousin and wouldn't be back “until God wills her to.” The tavern’s owner had sent apologies, but apologies did not help.
And there were people coming; five, maybe six men from the council, two scholars and a guest from Prague.
And now here he was, flour on his cuffs, a pot bubbling with questionable intent, and no one to help but the man who was least likely to lift a finger.
John finally glanced over.
“You look troubled,” he said.
Samuel’s eye twitched.
“There is no cook,” he answered tightly.
“No server. No staff. There is stew that may or may not be edible, and I have guests arriving in less than an hour.”
"I see," John returned, his expression polite, curious, and vaguely amused, as if he’d been summoned to watch a man wrestle a goose.
"Is this the part where I offer my condolences?"
Samuel stared.
"You’re still here," he said sharply. “That means you can help.”
The word hung in the air like a foul smell.
John tilted his head, and something in his expression shifted slightly colder, a bit incredulous.
"You’re asking me," he said slowly, "to help you serve in a tavern."
"Yes."
"A man of my station."
"You’re a man in a room with two working arms," Samuel snapped. "And I’m a man about to serve six councilmen, two scholars, and a visiting emissary with a pot of grey water and no bread. So forgive me if I don’t have time to flatter your station."
John looked, very briefly, as if someone had poured lukewarm water into his wine.
“This sort of thing-” he started, but wasn’t allowed to finish.
Samuel placed both hands on the counter. His voice lowered.
“Then let this be an exception,” he said, “I won’t make a big deal out of it if you do the same.”
The hearth crackled. Somewhere outside, a dog barked once and was silent.
John studied him, carefully, like a scholar reviewing a suspect manuscript. Then, slowly, he stood. He didn’t roll his sleeves up (that would’ve been far too domestic), but he did set his goblet down, and that was a small miracle in itself.
“I make no promises,” he said.
“Good,” Samuel replied. “Neither do I.”
The nobleman moved to the counter. He stood beside it as if it might bite him. The ladle – gnarled, greasy, and somehow both too heavy and too light, hung limply in his hand.
He turned it over as if inspecting a weapon he’d never trained with, before the other man snatched it out of his hand.
“I want to add, that I am not, as a rule,” John said, “accustomed to liquids that do not come in bottles.”
Samuel, hunched over a blackened pot, snorted. “And I’m not accustomed to nobles who turn up their noses and still offer a hand. Yet here we are.”
John narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t offer a hand. I was conscripted.”
“Is that what you’re telling yourself to cope?”
A brief pause.
John did not reply.
Samuel stirred the pot in front of him in slow, deliberate motions, his nose tilted slightly above it.
The stew was thickening, finally, though not in any manner that promised confidence. But it smelled better. Salt, thyme, onion. A touch of caraway. Passable, if one closes their eyes.
He glanced sideways and saw John trying to uncork a bottle of red with his teeth.
“Stop that,” Samuel said, alarmed. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t find the opener.”
“That’s because it’s under the counter.”
The noble crouched with a great deal of dramatic sighing, retrieved it, then regarded the corkscrew like a man deciphering a riddle from the Talmud.
The other returned to stirring, suppressing a smile. “Do I need to open it for you?”
“No,” John said tightly.
The cork came out with a pop and a brief splash of crimson onto his cuffs.
He looked down. “Sakra.”
Samuel offered him a scrap of cloth. “I’m impressed.”
“I don’t want your pity.”
“That was sincerity.”
John gave him a look. The kind that would have stopped a lesser man mid-sentence, but Samuel merely returned to the stew, humming softly under his breath.
A few minutes later, with the wine open and the pot behaving itself, Samuel set two tin goblets on the bar.
“You pour. Carefully.”
John raised an eyebrow. “I can pour wine. I’m not a peasant.”
The first goblet overflowed instantly. A small red river spread across the counter.
Samuel said nothing, just offered him another rag.
John, uncharacteristically sheepish, dabbed at the spill.
The second attempt was better – barely. The wine wobbled, but remained inside the cup.
Samuel took the goblet, weighed it in one hand, and took a sip.
“Not bad,” he said.
“Thank you,” the other, adjusting his sleeve, as if it were the wine’s fault.
“I meant the wine,” Samuel added, lips twitching.
But then he set the goblet down gently and looked at him, really looked.
Not like a man teasing another, but like someone taking quiet measures.
“You’re more capable than you let on,” he said, voice low, not meant for an audience.
“Even when you're pretending to be above it all.”
John blinked. Something unreadable passed behind his eyes, but it didn’t settle there.
Instead, he reached for the next cup.
“If you flatter me again, I might faint.”
Samuel gave a soft snort, and for a moment they stood like that, side by side, the air filled with the smell of wine and stew, their shoulders just close enough to feel the heat of the other.
By the time the first guest should arrive, the room had transformed.
There were still problems, of course. The bread was too hard. The fire too low. But the stew, somehow, had reached a state of edible equilibrium.
John stood behind the counter, his hair slightly mussed, a streak of something unidentifiable across his cheekbone. Samuel caught it just before the door opened.
“You have…something there,” he murmured, and reached to wipe it away with his thumb.
The noble didn’t flinch. He didn’t move at all. For one second, just one, he looked at Samuel not as a fellow man or a weary comrade, but as something else entirely.
“I don’t think this is what either of us planned for today,” he said quietly.
Samuel smiled, one of those rare, honest smiles that made his eyes crease.
“No,” he said. “I think this is even better.”
The guests arrived in pairs, damp from the night air and smelling faintly of parchment and tallow.
Samuel greeted each of them with his usual composed courtesy, voice pitched low, manner exact. No sign of the hour’s earlier chaos remained, except, perhaps, in the slight flush to his cheeks and the flour still dusting the back of one hand.
The first bowl of stew made it to the table in one piece.
The second less so.
John had insisted on serving it himself. He approached the task with the same misplaced confidence he might’ve used to inspect the fortifications of a town he didn’t intend to fight for.
One hand beneath the wooden tray, the other balancing the bowl just so, he turned from the counter with a kind of ceremonial stiffness.
Samuel watched from the doorway, drying his hands on a cloth.
“You’re walking like it’s a relic from Jerusalem,” he called.
John didn’t turn his head. “It’s hot.”
“It’s food.”
But John was already halfway across the room, carefully navigating between low stools and fire-warmed floor tiles.
His steps were deliberate, jaw tight with focus. The elderly scholar at the corner table looked up with some interest, his brow wrinkling at the sight of a nobleman playing the part of a tavern hand.
“Your dinner,” John said, and set the bowl down with a bit too much force.
The stew sloshed. Not catastrophically, but enough to draw a line of gravy across the man’s manuscript.
There was a pause. John stared at it as if it had personally betrayed him.
“I see,” the scholar said mildly. “Is this some new custom of your house?”
Samuel crossed the room with a practiced gait, pressing a cloth into John’s hand and offering a smile so smooth it had to be polished from experience.
“My apologies,” he said. “We’re running short tonight.”
The scholar chuckled. “On stew or servants?”
“Both.”
Once John was back behind the counter he looked… not exactly embarrassed, but unsettled in a new and quiet way.
“I was trying to be helpful,” he said, still holding the rag like his life depends on it.
“You were,” Samuel replied gently. “You just weren’t very good at it.”
John’s lips twitched, and for the first time in an hour, he laughed, just once, softly, like a breath that had been stuck in his chest for days.
“Are you always doing that?"”
“What. Manage minor disasters with someone out of their depth beside me? Yes.”
“I meant... this. Calm people. Soften the blow.”
Samuel shrugged. “Someone has to.”
But they couldn't continue the conversation. There was a request for wine and John immediately complied.
Out in the room, the hum of conversation had begun to die down, with only a few lingering murmurs and the scrape of a spoon against the side of a bowl.
From behind the counter, Samuel had watched John’s improvised circuit through the tavern with mild amusement: the way he stiffened his shoulders with every jostle, how he offered the wine like peace offerings rather than drink.
At one point, near the far table, a man had reached for his wine before John had even lowered the tray.
There had been a small lurch, a clatter, and a muffled curse that never quite escaped John's throat. Miraculously, nothing spilled, but it was a close thing.
When he returned to the counter, he balanced the now-empty tray with an air of forced dignity.
His sleeves were rumpled, his collar askew, and there was a faint smear of something reddish on his knuckle; tomato, maybe, or wine. Despite this, he looked marginally less miserable than before.
Samuel handed him a damp cloth.
John took it and began wiping his knuckles like the stain had personally offended him.
“You didn’t say I’d need reflexes.”
“I assumed you had some.”
The noble gave him a sideways glance. “You assume too much.”
“And yet,” the other man replied, “you’re still here.”
John went quiet for a beat, folding the cloth over itself. He was no longer looking at Samuel, but at the half-full stew pot, still steaming gently beside the hearth.
“It’s not the stew that kept me,” he said, voice quieter now.
Samuel didn’t answer at first. He looked at the pot too, then slowly turned back to John, eyes steady, unreadable but softened at the edges.
„I know.” he said.
The last guest left with a muttered blessing.
The door shut behind him with a soft thunk, and the tavern seemed to exhale.
Silence took the room. Not oppressive, but worn-in. Familiar, like a coat left by the hearth to warm.
Samuel stretched his back, rubbed his knuckles, and surveyed the aftermath.
Bowls abandoned in twos and threes. Bread crusts curled on plates. A wine stain slowly drying near the far bench like a pressed flower.
John found his place behind the counter, one hand braced on the wood, the other dangling a soiled rag like a conquered flag.
“You can sit, you know,” Samuel said as he passed him, collecting two bowls into the crook of his arm.
“I’m afraid if I do, I won’t get back up.”
“You’ve done worse things than sit.”
“I’m not sure if that’s true.”
Samuel glanced at him, just a sliver of a smile, and disappeared into the back room with the dishes.
John looked around, then sighed tiredly. He grabbed another rag and began wiping the counter properly this time, slowly and deliberately , as though polishing away the evening.
“You touched the pot?”
John stiffened. “It was off balance.”
“It’s older than both of us. That wobble is earned.”
“Then it should wobble in place, not toward the floor.”
Samuel gave a theatrical sigh and set down the bowls.
“You’re relentless.”
“And you’re too tolerant of chaos.”
Their eyes met.
“And yet,” Samuel said, quieter now, “you stayed.”
John looked away, then back again, his voice low. “You already used that line.”
Samuel stepped around the counter, slow and deliberate, and stopped close enough to reach out if he wanted to. For a moment, he didn’t.
Then he did.
There were breadcrumbs clinging to John’s shoulder, just a few, flattened where the tray strap had pressed against his coat. Samuel brushed them away with a featherlight touch, his knuckles grazing fabric, then collarbone, then nothing at all.
John didn’t move when the other man brushed the crumbs from his coat. He didn’t flinch or made some wry comment to cut through the sudden nearness. He only watched, jaw tense, breath steady.
Samuel stepped back half a pace, just enough to ease the pressure of the moment, but not enough to leave it behind.
“You did well.” he murmured then, more to himself than to John.
“I served stew,” John replied, but it lacked the usual crispness. “And wine.”
“You helped. That’s more than most would.” The other man corrected.
Outside, the wind pushed against the shuttered windows.
Inside, the hearth murmured in its corner, red with afterglow.
The stew pot was almost empty, the bowls scraped clean, the guests long gone. But neither of them made any move to leave.
“You didn’t eat,” the older one said after a while, voice quiet.
Samuel blinked. “Didn’t have time.”
John crossed to the hearth without waiting for permission, grabbed the ladle, and scraped what little remained from the pot into a bowl, two good spoonfuls and one stubborn bit of carrot.
He brought it to a table, put the bowl down with ceremony.
“Eat,” he said. “For simplicity’s sake.”
Samuel raised a brow. “You’re bossy when you’re tired.”
“I’m always bossy. You’re just usually busier ignoring me.”
A corner of Samuel’s mouth curled. He moves towards the table and sits down on the bench.
John sat beside him. Not across, not at a nobleman’s distance, but shoulder to shoulder, their knees nearly touching.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
They shared the bowl in companionable silence, passing it back and forth like something sacred. The stew was cooling, but the room wasn’t. Not anymore.
Samuel ate slowly, without hurry, as if trying to learn something from each bite.
John took his turns like he’d forgotten it was food – less about hunger than about presence, about staying.
Eventually, when the bowl was empty and the spoon rested inside it with quiet finality, the nobleman leaned back against the wall with a soft sigh.
A long silence stretched, full of everything that hadn’t been said, everything that didn’t need to be.
Then Samuel stood and crossed the room, slow and steady, to the shelf behind the counter. He lit a smaller lantern, just one, and returned with it, placing it on the table where the bowl had been.
“Too late to walk back through the quarter,” he said.
“The guards will be drunk, and the road’s a mess.”
John arched his brow. “You’re inviting me to stay?”
“I’m telling you the bed upstairs is warmer than the street.”
“And if I prefer a cold walk?”
Samuel met his gaze with perfect calm. “Then I’ll fetch your coat. But I think you’d rather stay.”
A long beat. John looked at the lantern, at the worn wood of the bench beneath his hand.
At Samuel, still standing there with that quiet steadiness, neither demanding nor retreating.
He didn’t answer aloud.
Instead, John stood, slowly, without flourish, and joined Samuel where he stood beside the lantern.
For a breath, they simply looked at one another. No sudden declarations. No sharp turns.
Just the quiet fact of it: two men, tired and full of the day.
Samuel gave the smallest nod, then turned toward the stairs behind the counter, lantern in hand.
And the other followed.
The stairs creaked beneath their weight, but neither man spoke. There was nothing to explain. Only a kind of mutual understanding that needed no shape, no sharpness, just nearness.
And above them, a small room waited, quiet and warm, with just enough space for two men who had already decided, without quite saying so, that tonight, they wouldn’t part.