Work Text:
The clash of swords briefly disrupts the bustle of sunset at Trosky. Hans follows the sound, pulled in the direction of the arena. The orange glow of sunset falls just so over the edge of the horizon that he can see through gaps in the high wooden walls and glimmer off of all the plate on guards and knights as two figures clash amidst a small gathering of men.
All Trosky guards wear red and white, so he knows right away that the two sparring are not Trosky guards. One of them is most certainly Henry. Although the armor he wears is not familiar to Hans, picked up, perhaps, during their brief separation, his stance and the way he dodges and feints are most familiar, surprisingly so. Hans watches him move for a moment, anticipating a feint before he sees him do it, pulling to his left, sword over his head, just before he brings it down on the right at the last moment. Gasps of surprise and murmurs of approval run through the small crowd that has gathered to watch. The opponent, wearing red and black, is muffled by the visor over his face as he says, “Where did you learn a dirty trick like that?”
Henry doesn’t wear a visor, and his face becomes more clear to Hans as he steps closer and stands just on the edge of the crowd, by the empty dice table. A shimmer of sweat on his nose and what Hans can see of his forehead, the rest of his face covered with a growing beard, a still somewhat unfamiliar sight. Another thing changed in their separation. Hans had managed to shave each day anyway, maintaining his appearance, trying to remain the same as he had been before. Henry’s hair has grown, almost past his neck, pushed back with his fingers whenever it got too close to his forehead, and the shadow of his beard made him look more grown up, more manly.
The opponent, by that measure, is also manly, and he pauses in their sparring now to remove his helmet, revealing black hair that falls over his sweaty forehead, and a mustache over a smiling mouth.
Henry says, “On the road somewhere. People will teach you all sorts of things if you just ask.”
“You’re receptive to learning,” the knight replies. “Good! I have a lot to teach you.”
The crowd begins to disperse. Light from the sunset reflects on the plate around him, polished Trosky guards, their polished swords and halberds. The air takes on an almost shimmering effect, giving the arena a dreamlike quality as Henry suddenly looks over at the shade of the awning Hans stands under and meets his eyes.
Hans waves him over. Henry says something to the knight and then hops the low wooden railing, his armor clinking as he makes his way over.
“Sir Hans,” he says, his breath still up. A lock of his hair sticks to the side of his face, dark with sweat, and with one gauntleted finger he pushes it behind his ear, a novel movement that Hans follows, casually, with his eyes.
“How do you have the energy for sparring after the bullshit we went through?” he asks. “I’ve been asleep all day. I’m tired as hell.”
“Well, I don’t want to let this opportunity go to waste.” Henry nudges his chin back in the direction of the arena, where the knight leans against the railing, his helmet still in his hands. “That’s Black Bartosch. He’s a knight. It’s not every day you get to spar with a seasoned knight like that.”
Hans raises his eyebrows but says nothing. A breeze blows between them, bringing with it evening smells, fires being lit, food cooking, horses chewing through hay. Over Henry’s shoulder, Bartosch looks over and gives Hans a small wave. Hans doesn’t wave back.
“Alright, just make sure you meet me for dinner. I don’t want to sit there alone with the bastard chamberlain.”
“I might be a little longer,” Henry says.
Something light and fluttery settles in the pit of Hans’s stomach, like nerves. Something new, and new has been happening a lot lately despite his best efforts for everything to remain as close to what it was as he can keep it. Despite the shaving, and the shiny golden brocade pourpoint he chose out of the multitude of offered clothing from von Bergow’s closets, and the steady presence of Henry before him. He feels, briefly, before he shoves it away, the ghost of the rope around his neck. The unwelcome, hostile change to the neat and clear boundaries around him. Henry looks back at the arena again.
“Not too much longer, then,” Hans says.
Henry gives him a small smile, then turns back to the arena and the knight, who pushes himself off the railing as he approaches. Hans can see him smiling. He realizes his mouth is pursed and consciously relaxes it, forcing his gaze back up at the sky, where a few stars poke through the glow of sunset, twinkling softly.
Murmuring. Henry’s chuckle, a gentle sound. Bartosch says something with the word “legs” in it. Hans’s mouth is pursed again. It takes a little more effort to relax it this time.
.
Bartosch swings his sword in a loose arc, watching as Henry’s arms raise his own sword over his head to block the hit.
“Good!” Bartosch says, as their dulled swords meet in the air, the sound almost covering up his words. “Again, slower this time, so I can watch your stance.”
Henry meets his eyes. “My stance,” he repeats. A smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. A little knowing, a little hesitant.
“Yes, your stance,” Bartosch says. He aims his sword down, toward Henry’s boots, which are spread on the packed dirt floor of the arena. Knees bent, body tilted away from him. “Go again.”
Henry blocks another slow hit with his arms over his head. His hips shift as he widens his stance to keep his balance. Slender, but a weight to him. Bartosch recalls a mention of blacksmithing. Certainly he can see the effects of labor on his body, the way he moves, heaviness in his arms when he swings the sword, but a lightness on his feet. Contradictions. Bartosch watches his arms relax as he lowers his sword.
“How’s my stance, sir knight?” Henry asks.
Bartosch looks up from his waist. “Good, Henry. You know a thing or two.”
“You must know a bit more than that, since you gathered so much from my stance by watching my arms and chest.”
Bartosch raises his eyebrows. A thrill runs through him, like a build up of static electricity from running his hands over wool. Henry only smiles. He smiles back.
A flash of yellow. Bartosch glances over Henry’s shoulder and notices his noble lord, leaning against the post that holds up an awning by the dice table. The gold brocade catches the afternoon sun. Henry follows his gaze and waves at his master. The man doesn’t wave back.
“He’s in a mood,” Henry says under his breath.
“Should we pause?” Bartosch asks.
Henry’s face undergoes quick changes. A nobleman would be better able to contain his true emotions. There is something honest about Henry, about his inability, or perhaps his lack of desire, to completely control the flicker of a frown that passes over his mouth, or the way his dark eyebrows droop lower over his eyes for a brief moment before he says, “No, let’s continue. I’ll just stretch, my right leg is recovering from something.”
Henry places his practice sword against the low fence of the arena, stretching his leg out in front of him, using the wooden post beside him for support. Bartosch leans against the same post. The warmth of Henry’s body is like standing before a fireplace. Radiating heat. Past Henry, the lord in gold and red also stretches, his arms over his head as his face breaks into a yawn he doesn’t cover.
“Does your lord watch you train often?” he asks.
“He isn’t watching me,” Henry says briefly.
“I’m not sure what else he could be doing.”
“He likes walking around outside.”
“Usually wherever you are, yes?”
Henry shrugs. “Well, I am his page. He should be close to me at all times.”
Bartosch watches him closely as he says, “It should actually be the other way around.”
Henry meets his eyes. Bartosch feels another pair of eyes on him but doesn’t acknowledge them. He slides his gaze down Henry’s armored body, his eyes catching on parts of him, his exposed neck where a drop of sweat slides down also, into the collar of his gambeson, the width of his shoulders, the slender hips, the extended right leg as he stretches. Slowly they come back up to Henry’s face, which is flushed now, a diffused pink, almost like sunrise.
“Henry,” the lord calls.
Henry hops the fence without another word, without delay.
.
Henry scratches his beard before he rolls his dice, watching them clatter across the table, one landing in front of Hans, a five.
“Are you planning on keeping the beard?” he asks.
Henry puts his hand out for the dice. Hans drops it into his palm. His fingertips brush his skin just barely. There is a fresh callus there between his fingers that Henry hasn’t noticed before, probably from shooting an arrow barehanded. He has, casually, noticed small changes that had occurred during their separation. It appears that Hans has too.
“I’m not sure yet,” Henry replies. He smoothes over the sides of his face with both hands, thick and wiry hair still half unfamiliar, as though he wears someone else’s face.
“And your hair is longer,” Hans says next.
Hands behind his head, hair between his fingers, until it ends on the back of his neck. There, the old growth stops, and everything else is new, everything else he is not yet accustomed to. He looks across the table at Hans and sees that he looks more or less exactly the same as the last time they had sat together at a dice table, in Rattay.
“Hopefully I still look the part of a lord’s retainer,” Henry says, only half joking.
Hans shrugs, glancing down at the table, and doesn’t respond although he had been the one to initiate conversation. Another mood. The walls of Trosky seem to press in, despite the open sky overhead, just outside of the shadow of this awning. Across the way, two guards spar in the arena in a flash of red and white, and Black Bartosch leans against the low fence and talks with a comrade, his arms crossed over his chest, a stillness about him that makes him look almost like a statue.
Hans says, “Are you going to roll again?” and pulls Henry’s attention back to their game.
He counts his points, sets his dice aside, and watches Hans roll. A bad pull right away, a bust.
“Fuck,” Hans says. “My luck has been absolutely fucked lately. Actually it’s good we aren’t playing for money. I should avoid the game.”
“Just a bad run,” Henry says. Some deeply ingrained instinct to cheer him up.
And some deeply ingrained instinct within Hans to deflect must prompt him to say, “You seem distracted.”
Heat rises to Henry’s face. His cheeks, his neck are, he’s certain, pink now. He can feel Bartosch’s presence just across the path, can keenly hear the grunting of the men in the arena as their swords meet. One of them carries a shield now, and the other slams their sword against it, the sound bouncing off the stone walls around them. Henry had sparred with him earlier and asked him to carry a shield, and Bartosch had taken hit after hit on it without fighting back, and each time Henry had hit him, a sound pushed past his lips, followed by a smile.
“Just tired,” Henry says dismissively.
“Because of all that sparring.”
“Because of other things too.”
Hans sits back a little, narrowing his eyes at him. “What other things?”
Henry shrugs. “I don’t know. Just things going on around this castle and the village. And other villages. I accidentally made myself useful to too many people. Pulled in too many different directions.”
“Your own fault, surely.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
Henry rolls his dice. Three fives on the first try. Hans’s mouth is pursed into a fine line. It’s an easy thing to look at his mouth, then let his eyes slide down to his throat, where a shadow seems to persist, the threat of a bruise and broken skin, or perhaps just a trick of the light. The only thing about Hans that’s different. Otherwise, everything persists in exactly the same manner as before, almost doggedly so.
Hans glances across the way, watching the guards finish sparring and hop the fence, leaving the arena empty. Bartosch still leans, idling. Henry recalls suddenly that he likes poetry, and wonders whether he constructs any lines in his head even now, in this quiet beat where he and Hans notice him, and at that moment Bartosch turns his head and notices them.
Henry turns back to his dice. Hans’s profile is in perfect view, his head turned to look at the arena, at Bartosch, the afternoon light bouncing off the slant of his nose, the curve of his chin, his mouth as it purses into half a pout.
.
The castle is stuffy, stifling, despite how large it is. Hans keeps one hand on the wooden railing of the battlements that extend between the two towers. At his back, the Maiden, light and sound spilling from the door he left hanging open, rowdy drunk nobles, some arguing, some laughing, some familiar sounds of dice clattering across wooden tables. Ahead, the Crone, quiet and empty. In between, his hands on the edge of the battlements, closing around the wood, watching the torchlight play on his knuckles, which turn a ghostly white until they ache and he loosens his grip, and blood rushes back to the skin over his joints.
An evening breeze brings the sound of quiet voices, across the courtyard on the other side of the battlements. He spots a flash of moonlight on armor. Two figures walking. It takes him but a moment to recognize Henry. It’s the particular type of walk, leaning into a jog, always eager and on his way to something very important. Beside him, another flash of moonlight, this time on very dark hair. Hans’s stomach drops. He clutches the edge of the battlements again. Henry and Bartosch continue to walk toward the Crone, unaware of him.
Hans stays perfectly still. If moonlight illuminates their armor and hair, then surely he would also catch the pale light on his own hair, and the golden pourpoint he favors, the golden embroidery on his hood. But they don’t notice him, reaching the stairs by the Crone and descending, Bartosch first, Henry following. Hans creeps closer, softening his footfalls by landing each step on his tip toes. He stands between torches and gazes down at the courtyard, where the two part ways, Bartosch heading into the baths and Henry into his room by the blacksmith’s forge, and both doors close behind them, separately.
Hans releases a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. His hands once again relax on the edge of the battlements. He realizes that from this vantage point, his eyes had registered Henry’s walk first, but the rest of him still seems unfamiliar, the longer hair, the beard, the newly acquired armor. The likes of Bartosch, new friends in this new place, don’t know what Henry’s face looks like without the beard covering half of it. Or what his ears look like, with the hair that only sometimes is pushed back behind them. And Hans, still leaning against the battlements, staring down at Henry’s closed door, is thinking about these details and feeling a simmering sort of anger just under his skin that he can’t shake or understand. Can only feel it. Can only try to hide and ignore it and try, try very hard, to keep things just as they were.
Henry’s door opens. Dark within, no candles lit. Closes behind him quietly. He walks across the courtyard to the baths. Opens the door, closes it. Hans lets go of the battlements, his knuckles aching. Quietly, like a shadow, he moves, his feet taking him silently to the stairs, down each step, to the baths where the door seals off sound but the sound of water comes from somewhere, and Hans follows it, hand trailing against the stone along the side of the Crone tower, looking for a window high up along the wall, listening for something new.
.
Henry naked is what Bartosch expected, and is somehow also completely novel.
There are silvery stretch marks across his biceps and along his thighs from muscle that has grown too quickly. A thick layer of dark hair covers him, his chest most of all, and a line that stretches down his belly to stop between his legs. Under the ripple of water as Henry raises and lowers his hand on the surface, playing a little game with himself, Bartosch sees scars, old burns, a bad stitch job, something new on his back just below his shoulder blade, like an arrow wound that is still healing. He himself is slightly less hairy, slightly less muscular, and his scars are far older. Henry looks like a fresh sword, newly forged, still liable to break, and as sharp as he’ll ever be.
“What do you think?” Henry asks suddenly.
Bartosch meets his eyes. Steam lifts from the surface of the water and hovers in the air, blurring them slightly, and creating a halo around the single candle that burns on the small table just outside of the tub. Henry looks up at him from the game he plays with the water, at an angle. His eyelashes are thick and obvious, like a girl’s. His boyish face doesn’t match the rest of him, the thick hair about him, the beard. The stretch marks on his inner thighs. The thatch of hair around soft pink skin between his legs.
“What do you mean?” Bartosch asks.
Henry places his hand flat against the surface of the water again, barely breaching it. A ripple originates from there and spreads, eventually reaching Bartosch’s skin where the waterline ends just at his chest, brushing his nipples. A shiver runs through him. Anticipation.
“You’ve been looking at me. Here, and at the party, and at the arena. I wanted to know, what do you think? About what you’ve been noticing?”
“That’s very forward, Henry.”
“Is that good?”
Bartosch turns his head to hide some of his wide smile. “Yes.”
“So, you’ve noticed that I can be forward.”
“Yes, and I’ve noticed you’re a good fighter. An interesting mixture of good training and on the field learning. Who trained you?”
“Mostly the guard captain at Rattay, Bernard.”
Bartosch turns his head back. Henry is already looking at him, his game forgotten. Both hands submerged in the water, floating there around his legs. Bartosch extends one leg and his foot brushes Henry’s ankle very briefly. Henry twitches as though to move his leg but he doesn’t.
“Rattay is where your lord is from?” he asks.
Henry’s gaze drops to the water, to where their legs touch under the clear surface. “Yes. And where I’m from now too, I suppose. Have you… noticed anything about Hans?”
Bartosch pretends to think about it. As the silence stretches, Henry seems to grow suddenly nervous and shifts under the water, causing more ripples and disrupting the clear surface.
“I’ve noticed that he watches you very closely,” Bartosch says in measured tones. “Which surely is appropriate for a lord alone in a foreign place. It means he trusts you.”
“Right,” Henry mutters.
“You don’t agree?”
“No, I agree. Before we arrived at Trosky, we had… a disagreement. And separated for a time. Actually it’s only since we both arrived here that we’ve been reunited. And things are… a little different.”
“Hm.” Bartosch extends his other foot and brushes Henry’s ankle again. Over the waterline, he sees Henry’s nipples harden as a wave of goosebumps rises over his skin. “You want them to be different?”
Henry touches his beard, tugging briefly at the hairs on his chin, as though surprised to find them there. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
Bartosch feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Carefully he withdraws his legs and pretends to reach for the soap on the floor by the tub, and glances through his hair over his forehead at the high window across the room, where a flash of yellow is visible for a fleeting moment before it disappears, caught.
He leans back in the tub and hands Henry the soap. Their hands brush. Henry smiles, almost shyly.
Bartosch says, “Let’s get clean and get out of here.” And smiles gently back.
.
Bartosch’s room is small but private, wedged deep within the Crone tower. Henry closes the door behind him as he leaves. His feet touch the ground as he walks back down the stairs and out onto the courtyard, but there is a lightness to him that makes him feel as though he’s floating, like the bubbles on the surface of the water after he had poured in the soap, like Bartosch’s hands floating through the air to him in his room. Echoes of sounds and whispers in his ears as he stops before the door to his room and takes a deep breath of night air touched by woodsmoke and horses. His hand on the door knob still warm from Bartosch’s body, his bed. Henry touches his beard again with his free hand. Behind him, Hans says, “You’re out very late, Hal.”
Henry gasps and spins around, his hand reaching for his sword, which is not there at his side, and although he knows it’s only Hans. The pleasant sensations he had just been considering, new feelings, slip away like a fog burned off my morning light.
“Fuck, don’t sneak up on me like that,” he says, his hand on his chest. His heart beats hard against his palm. He takes a breath, then squints at Hans in the low light of intermittently placed torches around the upper courtyard. He’s still dressed in his brocade, still golden, even at this hour. “What are you doing here?”
“Walking around,” Hans says, his voice perfectly neutral. “You know how I like to walk around.”
“In the middle of the night? You said you’d gone to bed hours ago.”
“A man isn’t allowed to walk when the fancy takes him?”
“Not when you’ve already told me, your page, that you’ve retired for the night. If you needed something or got into trouble, how would I know?”
Hans considers this, his fingertips brushing his clean shaved chin. “Well. I didn’t need anything. So no harm done.”
“Alright,” Henry says slowly. “Do you need anything now?”
Hans glances back at the Crone tower, the dark windows that look out onto where they stand in the courtyard. Henry is seized by a sudden need to distract him and loudly says, “Why don’t you come in here for a little bit, if you don’t have anywhere specific to go?”
Hans’s eyes slide over Henry’s shoulder, to his door. “In there?”
Henry shrugs. He opens the door and holds it open for Hans. After a beat, Hans steps inside.
Henry hasn’t spent much time here besides the past two nights of sleep, jumping out of bed before dawn and running out, around, up, down, and now he sits on the edge of his bed, and he looks around and sees the room from Hans’s perspective, seeing the bedside table, the chest, the candles, and then further in the room an unoccupied bed, and the breathing and snoring other guards upstairs. The proximity of other people is both a comfort and an imposition. Surely for Hans, the latter.
Just as he thought, Hans lingers in the threshold, looking out of place. “You’ve got some privacy in here at least,” he says. “They’ve got me in von Bergow’s private rooms. He walks around a lot. Disrupts my sleep and also it feels like I’m a prisoner under watch.”
“Probably he just wants to make sure you’re comfortable,” Henry makes room on the bed but Hans stays on the threshold. “Well,” he says. “You’re used to privacy now, I suppose. After your camp in the rocks.”
“Yes, that was the only good part of all that. Being alone.”
“Did you…?” Henry clears his throat.
“Go on,” Hans says, looking very closely at Henry suddenly.
“Nothing important. I was just wondering how you kept your hair and beard under control. I’ve simply let everything grow, I couldn’t find the time to get regular trims. Did you go to the barber’s often?”
“No, I couldn’t,” Hans says. “I didn’t want to stand out, and bathhouse girls and barbers talk a lot to everyone. So I just did it all myself.”
“Did you?” Henry gets to his feet. “No, I don’t believe that. Can I see?”
“See my hair?”
“Yes, can you turn around? So I can see the back of your head.”
Hans hesitates, then turns to the door, giving Henry his back. Henry realizes his heart is beating hard again, hard and fast. He gets to his feet and steps closer to Hans. He’s just a little taller than Henry, and the back of his head is right at Henry’s eye level, where he can see now the unevenness of the trim, the shaved parts slightly out of alignment, a good job from a distance but a little messy close up. A feeling comes, suddenly. Like his hand skimming over the surface of the clear water of the bath he shared with Bartosch. A game he played with himself to see how far he could reach before he disrupted the surface of the water. Each time getting closer and closer until the first ripple appears, an uneven shave of the head, a lock of blonde hair cut slightly lower than the others.
He realizes that the back of Hans’s neck has grown a little pink.
“Good job,” he says, with intentional evenness. “I did notice that you’ve kept yourself just the same as before.”
Hans turns his head to show his profile. In the dim candlelight, the slope of his nose is prominent, and so is the familiar pout. “And I’ve noticed that you’ve changed your… appearance quite a lot.” His tone is one of forced calm. There is something else he’s noticed, but won’t mention, not here. Not now.
With the same inflection, Henry says, “I’ve noticed you noticing.”
Hans smiles a little, his cheek lifting. He turns all the way around. Leans, as he always does, against the wall just beside the door, facing the bed. The brightness of his clothes contrasting against the neutral colors of unpainted walls and undyed sheets on Henry’s bed. Henry realizes he’s alone again with a man in a small space, and this time he feels more exposed, somehow, than when he was naked in Bartosch’s bed.
“What were you doing outside, sir?” Henry asks.
Hans’s smile falters just a little, before he catches it. “Walking. And you?”
“Also walking.”
Hans’s arms are crossed over his chest, and Henry can see his hands clench into fists under his arms. A minute movement, covered and in shadow, but still noticeable to Henry. The echoes of Bartosch’s hands on him are also noticeable, on Henry, to Henry. To Hans too perhaps. His mind plays a little trick. Replaces those hands that had been on him with Hans’s. A full body flush overtakes him in response, as though he’s walked into a bathhouse.
Before Hans notices, he says, “I don’t mind shaving and cutting my hair. If you think I look better without it. Or more suitable, perhaps. For someone in your service.”
Hans thinks about it. Henry watches him. The breathing of the other guards up the ladder fills the air for a moment.
“No, Henry, you can keep it. I don’t have specific standards for how someone in my service should look. And it looks good on you besides,” this last part added almost as an afterthought, but too casually tacked on and hoping to be overlooked.
Henry obliges him. He bows his head. When he looks back up, Hans is opening the door. Torchlight outside creates a perfect silhouette of his hood, his shoulders, his chin. He closes the door behind him without saying goodnight, and the candle on Henry’s bedside table flickers in the shifting air, once, twice, then it goes out.
.
Hans puts his helmet on, the chainmail rattling softly around his neck.
“And this too,” Henry says, and holds out a pair of gauntlets. “Needed a polish but should be sturdy enough.”
Hans accepts the gauntlets and looks up at Henry, analyzing his armor. His head still uncovered, his beard stark against the pale morning light that falls upon his face, and the dark smudges under his eyes that indicate insufficient sleep. His hair falls onto his forehead, his heavy brow. Familiar parts of him, and unfamiliar pieces. Different hair. Different experiences. A rope around his neck. Henry smiling at Bartosch. Bartosch’s eyes as they fell on him while he stood on a pile of crates outside the baths to see through the high window and only catching a glimpse of the men in the bath.
Hans swallows the memory. A fluttery feeling in his belly. At the thought and at the sight of Henry now also analyzing him, presumably to check his armor, but lingering on his face. Here with him. Checking his armor, assessing the state of it. Eyes lingering in places where perhaps they ought not to, on Hans’s nose, on his forehead, and fleetingly, like a summer breeze, on his mouth.
New looks. New feelings. Hans takes a breath and says, “Looks good, Henry, thank you. Ready for battle?”
Henry pulls his gaze up from Hans’s chin and meets his eyes. Hans pretends not to notice. “Yes, sir. I’m ready.”