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It has been a few weeks since John started his little collaboration with the Jews of Kuttenberg, and to be honest, he was starting to get into the worst kind of state of being a man can get- utterly, mind numbingly, absolutely bored.
Oh, there was work to do, of course. Staring at letters, staring at maps, staring at people when they brought intel, staring at people when they did not bring any intel and occasionally, staring at caught spies.
When there was no work to do, he usually stared at the ceiling, stared at the walls, and stared at the door. This was mostly his own fault, because he severely underestimated the number of books he should bring with him.
However, when the universe was kind to him, the door would open, and he got to stare at Sam instead, his self-appointed bodyguard and basically the only point of contact he had with the outside world. And lover. John shouldn’t neglect that.
And Sam was just so wonderfully easy to stare at. With his eyes that were green like spring grass, with that ring of brown right around the pupil, making the green even more vibrant. And his long legs, and his waist accentuated by the belt he wore, and the peek of collarbone John sometimes got when Sam leaned forward just right and his undershirt fell open a little, and his warm palms, which John sometimes imagined were-
Yes. Sam was very nice to stare at. So easy John sometimes didn’t catch what Sam was saying, because he was busy staring at Sam’s lips.
“- as far as I know, he sent no letters out of Kuttenberg. Are you listening? John?”
The sound of John’s name broke him out of his reverie, and he was forced to shift his eyes from Sam’s wonderfully pink lips to his wonderfully starburst hazel eyes.
“Of course I’m listening, dear Sam,” he said, hoping Sam hasn’t robbed him of the ability to lie convincingly.
Sam arched an eyebrow, “And what was I talking about?”
“That the man didn’t send any letters.” John answered, trying to dredge up any details he might have subconsciously caught while he was staring at Sam’s lips. Thinking about how wonderful Sam was. About his arms and his defined biceps, and-
Sam kicked his leg under the table. “Stop staring at me and start listening.”
“But you’re the most interesting thing in this basement, Sam! You’re the most interesting thing for miles around!” John didn’t whine and definitely didn’t sulk.
Sam sighed, exasperated. “Fine. Is there something else your lordship would like to do? Since telling you information you yourself asked for is apparently useless.”
“No, Sam! I value all the information you bring me and all that you do for me, but it’s just that I’ve been so mind numbingly bored recently, and then you come here and are all distracting, you can’t fault me for focusing on you rather than some boring townsman with his boring letters!”
John desperately needed to disabuse Sam of the notion that he wasn’t extremely grateful for anything Sam did for him. “If we did something else first, I would better concentrate on what you brought for me afterwards,” he batted his eyelashes at Sam.
Sam squinted at him, a bit suspicious. “Really? Right after lunch?”
John got up to sit on Sam’s lap, putting his hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on the nose. “That wasn’t actually what I had in mind. For once.”
“Then what?” Sam put two fingers on John’s lips to stop him from pressing another kiss to Sam’s nose. But honestly, how could John stop himself? It was just too adorable. So instead, he kissed Sam’s fingertips.
“Actually,” John said, pulling Sam’s wrist away from his face, “I thought we could play a game of cards!”
Sam opened his mouth, and John rushed to explain, “I know, I know, no gambling,” Sam had explained to him, before, that his people frowned upon gambling. As far as John knew, Christians weren’t supposed to gamble either, but that never stopped anyone. Maybe if more people were inclined to follow the teachings they were supposed to live by the world wouldn’t be such a messed up place. Diliges proximum tuum sicut te ipsum, and all that.
“But honestly,” John continued, undeterred, “did you think I would suggest playing for money? That’s so boring, Sam!”
John got up from Sam’s lap and walked over to his chest, where he found his pack of playing cards. They were decorated mostly with plants and animals, and sometimes people, too. A queen or king here, a knave there.
“I thought,” John smiled at Sam as he sat down at the table again, “that we could make it interesting! Every time one of us wins, he gets to ask the other a question.”
In John’s line of work, information was often times more valuable than money. Not that he needed, or God forbid, wanted any information he might use against Sam. He simply wished to know more. Sam was sometimes so cagey, this could be the perfect opportunity to understand his beloved more.
Sam, however, didn’t look all that thrilled.
“Please Sam,” John batted his eyelashes at him, “I could make it up to you later, if you want.”
“Fine, then,” Sam conceded, “but only three times.”
John beamed at him, making Sam roll his eyes. He shuffled the cards and gave both of them four cards, then slapped one card face up on the table so they could start playing.
The first round went to John, and he pretended to think of his question for a moment. In reality, he had long known what he would ask. “Sam. You really like it when I wear the boots you gave me, don’t you?”
Sam’s face turned carefully blank. “It is all the same to me what you wear.”
“Oh?” John leaned across the table toward Sam, “So the fact that whenever you come down, the first thing you do is look towards my feet and then nod to yourself, satisfied, has nothing to do with it?”
Sam’s face stayed blank, but now sported a faint blush. “So I am right!” John exclaimed, “Sam, the entire point of this is that you have to be truthful. Please?” John didn’t whine again.
“Yes, yes, alright,” Sam sighed, “I won’t lie. But I’m also going to beat you from now on, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh! Someone is feeling confident!” John shuffled the cards again.
But the second round did go to Sam, to John’s eternal dismay. Sam looked John in the eyes, intently, and John stared back, not wanting to lose this battle too. Stared at Sam’s wonderful eyes, which were so beautiful and-
Sam’ s voice interrupted his fawning, again. “Why don’t you like your mother?”
Oh. Well that was not a fun question at all. Still, he himself chided Sam for not telling the truth, so he couldn’t very well weasel out of this.
He supported his head with his hand and pursed his lips, looking at Sam. Euhg. He would much rather think about Sam than his mother.
“We simply do not get along.”
Sam shot him a knowing look. “That’s almost the same as not liking her, just rephrased.”
Ah, damn it. Of course Sam would not be satisfied by such an evasive answer. John looked down at the table, trying to find, well, any words to explain. His family was a subject John preferred not to think about, lest he start pitying himself again.
And talking about it was another matter entirely. He closed his eyes, briefly, to better organize his thoughts.
The sound of Sam getting up from the table made him open his eyes again. Sam rounded the table, and sat down next to John on the bench. Putting his arm around John’s shoulder, he tugged on it until John relented and shuffled closer to Sam. John got to smell him now, that wonderful sweat-soap-dried herbs smell, and forgot the matter of his mother for a second.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Sam said, sounding apologetic. But John found he suddenly really, desperately, wished to tell Sam. He didn’t think he ever told anybody, and the knowledge felt like a stone in his chest.
“It’s fine, Sam” John gave Sam a small smile, “it’s just that I don’t really think she was ever fond of me. I was a bit strange, as a child. Too unpredictable, I suppose.”
Privately, he still felt many saw him as strange, but it was tolerated due to his usefulness. He wondered whether his mother took one look at him, when he was born, and knew he would be different. That he would not like sword-fighting very much, that he would have no interest in hunting, that he would always ask too many questions, which were always the wrong questions. That he would cry when she yelled at him and ordered him to fast.
“She is only trying to set you on the right path, John, the one given to you by God. She is looking out for you,” his father would say, looking down on him. “You would not want to embarrass me, correct?”
John always managed to recognize the threat in those last words.
He wondered whether his mother suspected he was a sodomite. It wouldn’t surprise him. She always smelled people’s weaknesses like the hunting dogs his father was fond of smelled blood. And she enjoyed using them like the dogs enjoyed holding the necks of deer in their teeth.
Should he widely become perceived as stain on his family, all she would need to do is bite down.
John took one of Sam’s hands in his own, needing a point of skin to skin contact. “She probably thought I fell short when compared to my older brothers. I was a bit of a disappointment overall, I suppose,” he confessed.
Sam frowned, and how John hated himself for putting that expression on Sam’ s face. “I can’t imagine in what way you would be a disappointment. But I’m sorry I asked. And I’m sorry that… that that’s the way it is.” Sam apologized, even though it was not needed. He was too kind already. Leave it to John to ruin the atmosphere.
It must have been incomprehensible to Sam. His mother, his grandfather, his friends, all around him loved him. And how could they not! Sam was kind, and brave, and witty and wonderful.
John loved him. It felt like Sam was the sun and John but a white poppy flower, unable to do anything but turn towards it and bask in its warmth.
Sam told John he loved him too. Not too often, since Sam preferred actions over words; a sweet roll given to him after lunch, new boots, a hand in John’s hair, tugging just right, a bitemark on John’s inner thigh.
But he did say it sometimes.
John was in part elated, that someone, anyone, would look at him and see something in the shell of a being he was.
The other part of him was horrified. Mere shells with nothing to offer inside should not be loved. What if he took and took and took until the gnawing hollowness in his heart and mind was gone? What if he syphoned off everything Sam had in the process?
Maybe rather than a poppy flower turning towards the sun, he was a ball of mistletoe. No, nothing like him could look so pure, so clean and honest. Instead, he was hanging on the branches of the juniper that was Sam and the Jewish quarter, doing nothing but leeching off.
Sam stood up, and John resisted the urge to clutch at his clothes. Sam put a lock of John’s hair behind his ear, and John didn’t let himself lean into the touch. Sam started saying something, and John distantly thought it might be about bringing John a new book, but John didn’t hear him. This time, he couldn’t stop himself from begging.
“Please,” he breathed, almost inaudibly, not knowing what he was asking for. Maybe anything Sam would give him. Anything would be enough. Any scrap of Sam he could get he would guard like the eyes in his head for the rest of his life, a scrap that he could never repay.
And Sam, oh, he pulled John up by his arms and hugged him. John got to hide his face in Sam’s neck, and got to feel Sam’s arms around his torso, and Sam’s breath in his hair, and his chest against John’s. One of Sam’s thumbs was brushing the back of John’s shoulder, up and down, up and down, soft like a feather.
How selfish of John, to use Sam’s time like this. He probably had a thousand more important things to do than manage what went on in John’s head. It sometimes came over him, it would pass on its own too. No reason to bother Sam extensively.
So John pulled back, giving Sam his best practiced smile, praying Sam wouldn’t recognize it for what it was. “It’s alright now, Sam. Thank you. But please don’t feel bad for asking. Me not being in charge of my own moods is not your fault.”
Sam didn’t look all that convinced, but also turned his head towards the stairs, probably thinking of his other duties. “Well, still, I am sorry. I’ll see you in the evening, alright?”
“If you want to, I’ll be glad to see you,” John replied. Glad to see him, glad to feel him, glad to listen to him, to take, take, take and take.
Giving John a parting squeeze on his shoulders, Sam turned to go. His steps echoed, just slightly.
At the foot of the stairs, he paused, looking up the corridor. “I’ll bring you something sweet for supper,” was his chosen method of execution for John, and with that, he was gone. How kind of him, to indulge John’s tastes like this. He shouldn’t.
John sat down heavily at the table. The mess of the playing cards, his various documents and letters, it irritated him. He should clean it, put it away somewhere safe, but instead, he simply stared at the table. His gaze landed on a card depicting a woman surrounded by hounds. Her stare was unnerving. He wanted to turn it around but found he didn’t have the strength to do so.
So, after an indeterminate amount of time, he did the next best thing- put his arms on the table and rested his head on them, closing his eyes.
***
When he woke, it was to a hand on the nape of his neck, Sam’s thumb drawing little circles. John mustered up all the effort he could and lifted his head, meeting Sam’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he felt the need to apologize, “I was a little tired. Probably the late night yesterday,” he chuckled, wanting nothing more than to close his eyes again.
Sam was standing above him, a plate in his hand. Right. He had promised to bring John something to eat. When Sam put the plate in front of him, John just shook his head, not really having any appetite.
“You didn’t eat since noon,” Sam chided him. John just shook his head again, and Sam thankfully didn’t press it further.
Sam was already in his sleepclothes, and if John had more energy, he would get up and kiss Sam’s collarbone. As it stood, it felt like an impossible task. Sam made him stand and cross the room towards the bed, his body feeling heavier than all the damned silver in Kuttenberg. While John took off his boots and pourpoint, Sam tried to organize the disaster that was the table, parchment scattered all over.
Once John’s pourpoint was finally off, he fell into the bed still in his hose and linen undershirt. He didn’t think he could take it off even if the ghost of Charles IV himself ordered him to.
Sam climbed into the bed, next to John, his warmth like a gentle blanket. John turned so he was on his stomach, laying his head on Sam’s shoulder, so close to that beautiful collarbone. So close to Sam’s beating heart.
And if John sobbed a little when Sam pulled him half on top of him, wrapping his arms around his neck, the stones of the basement would keep it a secret.
