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i.
It was expressly forbidden for the king’s personal bodyguard to touch the king.
Wyatt had thought this an odd rule upon his appointment to the position, but he quickly realized the logic in it. For dressing and undressing, the king had attendants. For hand-to-hand combat and weapons practice, he had the palace guards. For grasping his hands in supplication, he had his subjects. For affection, he had, theoretically, a future spouse.
Wyatt had permission to touch the king only in life-or-death situations, which meant that even a simple nudge of his arm would immediately raise the king’s alarm. If touch was forbidden but for emergencies, it became a powerful tool for communication.
Three months into his position, it occurred to Wyatt that he might spend his entire career as the king’s personal bodyguard without once making contact with the king’s, well, personal body.
He was wrong.
ii.
They were both eighteen years old, Wyatt and the newly crowned King Nathaniel. The king, Wyatt was learning, was a bit of a disaster with paperwork. His secretary was often to be found running her hands through her hair with an exasperated sigh in the mornings when she discovered the state of the king’s desk.
This night was no exception to the rule. The king shuffled books and loose sheets of paper from hands to desk to floor. Wyatt stood just to the side of the entranceway to the bedchamber, one hand resting absently on the hilt of his sword. He watched the king’s back as he sat as his desk, or paced, or stared out of one of the large windows, the papers in his hand fluttering in the slight breeze.
Wyatt knew better than to ask him what he was reading about; the two of them never spoke. Wyatt gave an internal sigh. His position was oftentimes much more interesting than farm labor had been (he sat in on extremely private and confidential meetings on a daily basis), but equally often it was mind-numbingly boring. He shifted from foot to foot every once in a while to keep the blood flowing in his legs, trying not to let his armored breastplate make any noise, and he watched the king.
An attendant’s slippered feet padded down the hallway, and Wyatt pivoted so that he faced the outer chamber through the doorway. The attendant bowed and handed Wyatt a tray of food and a goblet of wine. He frowned—the king had not ordered any food to be brought—but he thanked the attendant anyway.
His feeling of wrongness intensified as the king made a delighted exclamation of surprise and took the tray, placing it on the desk in a precarious position atop a small stack of books. The goblet of wine was especially suspicious; the king did not often drink wine.
Wyatt moved hesitantly back to his position by the doorway, but he kept his focus on the king, who sat at his desk and reached for the wine. With the goblet lifted against the backdrop of the large, dark window, Wyatt could see a slight silver mist rising from the surface.
He didn’t even think. He lunged forward and heaved the king bodily from his chair.
He was heavier than Wyatt had expected.
His velvet clothing was very soft.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” the king shouted as Wyatt set him on his feet on the floor. The velvet was covered in wine, and the mist was now rising from the fabric as well.
Wyatt was breathing hard, from exertion or fear, he wasn’t sure. “Poison,” was all he could manage to say.
“Why didn’t you just yell for me to stop? Or knock the cup out of my hand?” The king was now removing his soiled clothing with efficient movements.
Wyatt had no answer. He was certain he was blushing. Why hadn't he just taken the wine away? He had acted completely without thinking.
“Gods, I can’t believe I almost drank that.” The king put his face in his hands. “That was such an obvious assassination attempt it was almost laughable.”
Wyatt pressed his lips together. He would keep his agreement private.
The king finally, grudgingly, looked at Wyatt and said, “Thank you.”
iii.
They became more familiar, after that. Despite the king’s animosity in the moment, it turned out that he couldn’t survive an assassination attempt without gaining a least a little bit of appreciation for his rescuer, and perhaps even some feelings of friendliness.
So, at night when the king went on his rambling way through his books, he told Wyatt what he was learning about. He had not been granted access to the entire depth and breadth of the palace records while his aunt was Princess Regent. She had been a fair ruler but a strict one, and she had kept the young king under her watchful eye. Now that he had his hands on every bit of information he could possibly wish for, he couldn’t get enough.
Wyatt found it all a little hard to follow, not because of any lack of intelligence, but because the king jumped between topics with disorienting speed. He would find a record of the money spent on shoeing the horses of the Palace Guard from thirteen years ago, and suddenly he would want to know the name of every single spy placed in neighboring countries in the last decade.
“Horseshoes, horses, that’s an obvious connection,” the king explained, pacing back and forth across the bedchamber in front of the windows. He gestured with his hands as he spoke. “Horses are used in war. What do you need in order to gather information in wartime?” He didn’t wait for Wyatt to answer. “That’s right, spies. Spies are used in peacetime, too, like the peacetime in which we currently find ourselves. Thus, current spies,” he concluded as though it should have been obvious.
“Right,” said Wyatt, as though this train of thought made any logical sense.
The king made a note for his secretary to find him a list of all current spies in the morning. It was charming, in a bizarre way.
When they weren’t discussing the king’s research topics, they talked occasionally of other things. The king told Wyatt of his childhood in the palace (noisy, lonely), and Wyatt told the king of his childhood on the farm (crowded, lonely). They discussed the plays they’d seen. Wyatt, as it turned out, loved theatre. He accompanied the king everywhere, including to parties and entertainments, and he had emerged from his first play with a dazed, floating feeling all around and inside him. He had felt as though the world had mixed itself up and forgotten how to put itself back to its normal state.
Those first three months of silence already felt like the distant past.
iv.
The king was reading again.
Wyatt suspected it was the book of fairy tales he’d found in his bedroll by the king’s enormous bed the previous night. The king often read books of tales and legends as he fell asleep, and occasionally he would kick one off the side of the bed and onto Wyatt. Wyatt set them aside without complaining.
It wasn’t nighttime now, though. It was broad daylight, and it was the once-weekly appointed time when any citizen could petition the king directly, and the king was lying on his stomach on his bed, reading.
As the palace clock chimed fifteen minutes after the hour, Wyatt grew impatient. “Your Majesty,” he tried, and received no answer. He cleared his throat and said louder, “Your Majesty. Your subjects are already at the gate.”
Still no answer. The book must have been incredibly engrossing. Ordinarily the king cared a great deal about meeting his people.
“They’re going to break it down soon.” Through one of the open windows, he could hear the clamor of people gathering to be let in.
“I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
Six minutes later, Wyatt gave one of his ever-constant internal sighs. “If you don’t get up, I’m going to pick you up and take the book away.” He was hoping they were familiar enough now that he could make this sort of joking threat. They both knew the rule about touching, and reading wasn’t life-or-death, and so it was funny. He hoped.
The king chuckled softly but didn’t move. “I have two more pages.”
He was actively choosing to ignore his subjects, putting a book of fairy tales above people’s real, immediate problems, and Wyatt had had enough. He paced over to the bed, giving the king plenty of time to get up if he so chose.
He did not so choose, and Wyatt made good on his threat. He grabbed the king by the underarms and hauled him off the bed. “Hey! Put me down!” the king cried, with no real anger behind the words.
It had been a month since the assassination attempt. Wyatt thought of it often, and so he had expected the king’s weight this time, but he had not expected his warmth.
Their bodies were pressed together, Wyatt’s front to the king’s back, as he lifted the king from his bed and deposited him, standing, on the floor. The king whirled around.
Wyatt took the book from the king’s hand and dropped it onto the bedroll. “You can have that back later, Your Majesty.” They were still standing close together. Wyatt looked down a scant inch into the king’s eyes, which had slightly widened.
The king audibly swallowed and said softly, “You don’t have to call me Your Majesty.”
Wyatt was fairly certain he’d be jailed for insubordination if he didn’t. “That’s a very kind offer. Your Majesty.”
“Nathaniel. Please.” He looked unaccountably sad. “I don’t have anyone left who calls me by my name.”
“Nathaniel, then.”
v.
As it turned out, the book was not a book of fairy tales. It was the king’s sister’s diary. Princess Miriam had died two years prior, of a sudden harsh fever that had swept quickly and brutally through the palace and surrounding city.
Wyatt picked up the little book that evening to give it back to the king, and did a double-take. “MIRIAM,” the cover said in big, bold letters. He pretended he hadn’t seen, and handed it over.
“You saw,” said the king quietly.
Wyatt nodded. He understood now why the king had taken his time with the diary earlier, and why he hadn’t wanted to face a crowd of people.
“It was stuffed into that book of tales I found last week. She must have been reading it shortly before she… before the fever.”
“I’m sorry,” said Wyatt. It felt catastrophically inadequate. His hands hung limp at his sides, and the king turned away.
Later, in the dark, Wyatt heard muffled sobs. The king must have been crying into a pillow to hide the sound. He sat up and knelt by the bed. “Your Majesty,” he said to the faint outline of the king’s shuddering body in the moonlight. “Nathaniel. Shall I bring you some water?”
The king rolled to face him, tears glistening on his cheeks. “I had new words from her today. Nothing for two years, and today it was like she was speaking again. And now it’s over, and there are no more new words. Ever.” His face crumpled and he began to cry afresh.
Wyatt’s throat felt tight and painful. “I’m so sorry,” he said, and just like earlier, it wasn’t anywhere close to enough. He had never been good with words.
The king reached out his hand and took Wyatt’s.
Wyatt jumped at the touch, suddenly afraid they might be in mortal danger.
Nathaniel didn’t let go. He tugged on Wyatt’s arm. “Please, will you just… Will you come here?”
Wyatt obliged, climbing cautiously into the vast bed and easing himself down onto the mattress beside Nathaniel, who immediately moved to lie almost on top of him and began to cry quietly into his chest.
Wyatt’s arms tightened around Nathaniel instinctively, cradling him. His heart raced, bracing for threats that would probably never materialize. It seemed the problem with using touch to mean “DANGER” was that any touch at all caused him to jolt into a state of high alert, let alone touch like this.
He tried to calm both himself and the king, taking deep breaths and rubbing Nathaniel’s back in what he hoped was a soothing way.
Eventually, they slept.
vi.
Over the next year, they broke the physical touch rule more and more often. Or, more accurately, Nathaniel did. Wyatt was the very model of a stoic bodyguard, maintaining his distance and his composure. Nathaniel took his hand and dragged him across the room to show him a diagram of a crossbow. (“Is this diagram life-or-death?” “For the animals that will die at the hands of the archer who wields this crossbow, yes. ”) Nathaniel requested that Wyatt massage a stubborn knot out of his upper back. (“Are you in mortal danger if you have to wait five minutes for a palace healer to arrive?” “Wyatt, I swear to all the gods, you and I will both surely perish if you don’t help me this instant.”) And so on, and so on.
Most nights, they talked for hours in the dark, Wyatt on his back in his bedroll, just able to see the side of the king’s face as he lay on his side at the very edge of the massive bed. He’d never had a closer friend. (He knew it was strange to consider one's monarch a friend, but he couldn't think of a better word to describe what Nathaniel was to him now. The king was so much more than just a body and a title to protect.)
On nights when the king was evidently feeling melancholy, he would reach out his hand and pull Wyatt into bed with him. Wyatt grew to look forward to those nights and wish for more of them. He told himself it was because of the king’s soft mattress, compared to his own thin bedroll directly on the tile floor.
Sometimes he would wake with his limbs entwined with Nathaniel’s, or their faces just an inch or two apart, and he would breathe carefully, drinking in the moment, and try not to examine the fond ache in his chest. The king looked younger in sleep, like the twenty-year-old he was. There weren’t so many thoughts whirling around in his head or responsibilities on his shoulders.
Sometimes it was the other way around, and Wyatt would wake to find Nathaniel with his eyes open, just looking at him. Wyatt wondered what he looked like in sleep. He didn’t ask.
vii.
“I’m going to request a new bodyguard.”
Wyatt’s stomach dropped right out of his body. “You… you’re… why? ” was all he could manage.
It was early morning, and he had awoken in the king’s bed again, on his side, face very near Nathaniel's. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spent the night in his bedroll on the floor.
“Call it a conflict of interest.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not an effective bodyguard if I care about your life more than I care about my own.”
“I—”
“And it’s driving me to madness that I have to keep my distance from you in public.”
This was confusing. “I’m with you all day, have been every day for four years.” They were twenty-two now.
“Yes, and the entire fucking kingdom sees us carefully not touching each other, and thinks you’re just there to guard me, and doesn’t know I value your opinion on political matters—on everything— above anyone else’s, and I’m sick of it. I want them to recognize your value to me. To all of them.” He was somehow making his usual wild gestures while still lying on his side.
Wyatt’s heart was thundering against his rib cage. “Are you relieving me of my duties or promoting me to some kind of official advisor?”
“Neither. I’m proposing marriage.”
Wyatt was completely and utterly speechless. “But— you— we— we’ve never even kissed!” He didn’t know why this was the detail on which he was fixating.
Nathaniel paused for a long moment. The volume of his speech dropped as he said tentatively, “Would you like to change that?”
Wyatt saw the hope in his eyes, and the world blossomed, like that first time at the theatre when he’d felt as though whole new colors were making themselves known to him. He nodded and leaned closer.
The king’s lips were soft.
Before he had time to think anything else, Nathaniel pulled away, a nervous anticipation in his eyes. “Was that all right?”
Wyatt nodded again, fervently, and brought their lips together.
viii.
They sat side by side on the desk, surveying the exact same bedroom they’d shared since the age of eighteen, only it was now officially theirs , with no more bedroll on the floor, even for show. A new bodyguard stood outside the entranceway. They had decided he wasn’t needed in here; Wyatt would do for protection, in a pinch.
Nathaniel leaned in, and Wyatt pulled back, holding up his hands. “Is this a life-or-death situation, Your Majesty?” he teased.
The king let out a frustrated puff of air. “It will be, my Prince, if you don’t kiss me right now.”
Wyatt obliged.