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The world of nobles had countless rules to it. Many nonsensical. Most unspoken. All crucial.
Some of them, Henry had already known, just from plain common sense. Others, Hans had taught him—initially with haughty superiority and condescension, later with genuine desire to help him navigate this strange new life he’d been thrust into.
But there were a few that Henry had figured out for himself. Rules so unspoken that he’d wager Hans wasn’t even aware of them. Rules about what sort of relationship they were allowed to have with each other.
His ma and Radzig had loved each other, but the difference in their stations had prevented them from marrying. So too was friendship made complicated by class.
Hans was Henry’s lord. He wasn’t his friend. Henry wasn’t allowed to consider him his friend.
Henry wasn’t allowed to.
Hans was, though. Hans was a noble—if he wanted to consider Henry a friend, he was free to do so. And Henry hoped he did want to.
But Henry didn’t have the luxury or the privilege of doing the same. Of believing that they were friends, equals, rather than master and servant.
If Hans addressed Henry as his friend, Henry was allowed to respond positively. But he wasn’t allowed to address Hans as his friend.
If Hans clapped him on the back or hugged him in greeting or showed him any kind of affection, Henry was allowed to reciprocate (only to a reserved and appropriate degree). But he wasn’t allowed to initiate any such behavior himself.
Henry was allowed to indulge Hans’s whims. He wasn’t allowed to ask Hans to indulge his whims.
These were all things he doubted Hans knew, because Hans was a noble. He’d never been in the position of having to think about these things, and never would be. Yet it was such an intrinsic part of how his world had always worked that Henry was sure he would be startled and perhaps even offended if Henry did ever call him his friend or hug him uninvited.
And so Henry never dared to try. No matter how much he might want to.
Stepping out of Bozhena’s hut and seeing Hans seated at the table, alive and well and merrily chatting their hosts’ ears off, Henry was so overwhelmed with relief that he took an aborted half-step forward, about to run to him and sweep him up in a hug.
But he couldn’t, he remembered. He wasn’t allowed.
Instead, he came to sit at the table with them. Smiled at Hans and told him how glad he was to see him in good spirits. Did his best to find a tone that was warm enough to show Hans he meant it, but not so warm as to be inappropriate.
As they prepared to head off to Trosky Castle, Hans came up to him and slung an arm around his shoulders to start walking together. Henry let himself lean into the touch, like a weak sapling in a shady forest desperately reaching for the sun.
It felt like a dream, seeing Hans at the wedding after all those weeks apart.
All those weeks wondering where he was, worrying about his safety, cursing him out for getting them into this fucking mess. Replaying every word of their argument by the stocks. Wishing he’d been kinder, wishing he’d been crueler.
Hans folded his arms and looked away to study the opposite wall. Pointedly ignoring Henry, as if Henry hadn’t heard him cheering him on during his sparring match just now. He could pick out Hans’s voice in any crowd.
Henry stood rooted to the spot. He wanted to grab him, shake him, yell at him for being such a spoiled brat. Wrap his arms around him and hold him close and make him swear never to leave like that again.
But Henry had forgotten himself back at the Troskowitz tavern. He’d forgotten that Hans wasn’t a friend he could berate, and Hans had been swift to remind him. I’m still your master.
Just as Henry had always assumed. Hans might not consciously think about the difference in their stations as much as he once had, but as soon as Henry crossed the line, he instinctively knew that it was wrong and that such behavior ought to be reprimanded.
Though that hadn’t stopped Henry from crossing the line again at the stocks. Nobody could be proud of you, Capon. Nobody.
That time, Hans hadn’t reprimanded him. He’d just stood there in silence, looking like he might cry. And that had felt worse than any reprimand.
Henry wasn’t going to cross the line again. So he wouldn’t insist on striking up conversation now, when Hans clearly didn’t want to speak with him.
Their relationship had to exist on Hans’s terms, not Henry’s. Always.
Henry turned and walked away.
Henry was shaking uncontrollably as he watched them remove the noose from around Hans’s neck. It was over—they were letting him step back down onto the platform, they were escorting him down the stairs and onto the ground.
It was over. Hans was safe. Hans was alive.
Henry sagged in relief. Some of the tension in his body eased up, leaving every muscle feeling like half-melted butter, but his heart was still pounding too fast, his lungs still heaving too shallowly and too quickly.
And he still felt strangely disconnected from reality, as if he were watching the proceedings while standing outside his own body. Watching the guards walk with Hans back to the castle, back towards him.
Henry moved closer to put himself into their path. Hans met his eyes as they approached.
Henry had seen Hans in his fair share of shit before, but never, never had he seen him look the way he did now. Pale and clammy and trembling, eyes wide and frightened like a deer’s. Relief not quite able to override the sheer terror of it all.
Henry ached to take another step closer and hug Hans tight and hold him until they’d both stopped shaking. The thought of failing to comfort him when he looked like this made Henry feel sick.
But he wasn’t allowed, he reminded himself, with more difficulty than ever before. If Hans sought comfort from him, Henry could give it, but he couldn’t foist comfort upon him.
Hans’s wrists were still tied and his arms still held in the grip of two guards, so Henry supposed he would never know whether Hans had wanted to reach for him in this moment.
Henry imagined he probably looked almost as ill as Hans did right now, but he tried to offer an encouraging smile. That would have to be enough to replace everything else he wished he was allowed to do.
And Hans managed the smallest, shakiest of smiles in return.
Henry poked around his new bedroom near the castle gate, but he wasn’t really taking it in. While he was climbing up the ladder, discovering that there were additional beds upstairs, and getting scolded by their occupants for barging into their room, it was Hans that he was seeing.
The noose around his neck. The frightened deer quality of his eyes afterwards. The trembles visibly running through his whole body.
Henry climbed back down the ladder, stepped outside, and strode up to the castle proper.
It took him a while to retrace his steps—this castle was a bloody maze—but at last he managed to find the room Hans had been shown to. He knocked on the door. “Sir Hans?”
“Henry?” came Hans’s muffled voice. A moment later, he opened the door. “Has something happened?”
“No, no,” Henry assured him. “I only wanted to…I only wanted to make sure that you were all right.”
Hans’s eyebrows pulled together. A series of emotions flashed across his face too quickly for Henry to identify them.
Henry bit his lip. Had he overstepped?
Has something happened? Of course that would be Hans’s assumption for why Henry was here. It was an unspoken rule. Henry would go to Hans if Hans summoned him or if Henry had something important to inform him about, but that was all. He wouldn’t seek him out just to chat. Just to ask after his wellbeing as his friend, rather than as his page.
Henry cleared his throat and tried to spin it in that direction. “That is, are your accommodations to your liking?” he said. “I’ll take it up with that bastard of a chamberlain if they aren’t.”
He’s my lord, he reminded himself. Not my friend.
Hans rolled his eyes, but with only half his usual gusto. “You would find it more productive to argue with a brick wall than that toad,” he said. He stepped back into the room and gestured around. “Rest assured, these accommodations are perfectly adequate. Certainly an improvement upon my previous ones.”
The sentence started out with a lighthearted air and ended with a wobble. Henry stepped into the room too under the guise of inspecting it to make sure it was indeed satisfactory, but he could only keep up that pretense for three seconds before his eyes landed back on Hans.
He was clean and dressed in his usual fine clothes, but otherwise, he looked much the same as he had coming down from the gallows. Small and scared and lonely.
To hell with it. He was Henry’s friend.
Henry pulled him into his arms.
Hans stiffened in surprise and for a moment Henry feared he’d made a terrible mistake. But then Hans exhaled softly and relaxed against Henry’s chest, resting his forehead on his shoulder and bringing his own arms up to wrap around him likewise.
Henry held him close, trying to be strong and steady for him. Trying to be the friend he needed after everything he’d been through today.
Because Hans was Henry’s friend, and Henry was his friend too. All those bloody ridiculous unspoken rules hadn’t only been depriving Henry of Hans’s friendship, but also Hans of Henry’s.
And Henry wouldn’t stand for that. Hans deserved better than a servant who let him pretend they were friends while secretly thinking they weren’t. He deserved a true friend. And by God, Henry would be that for him until the day he died.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” Henry said, and for the first time, he didn’t try to limit how much warmth seeped into his tone.
Hans huffed out a laugh into his shoulder. “Me too, my friend,” he said. “Thank you for trying to help me.”
“I didn’t do shit,” Henry pointed out. It had been von Bergow’s arrival that had saved Hans in the end, not Henry’s efforts with Captain Thomas.
“But you tried,” Hans said. “It was—it was nice to know that you’d tried. That you were there. That I wasn’t alone. When I heard your voice, I—” He broke off with a sharp breath and hugged Henry a little tighter. “Well, I was glad to know that, even if it wouldn’t do any good, you were there with me.”
Henry didn’t know what to say to that, and he feared the lump in his throat would prevent any words from getting out anyway, so he just kept hugging Hans in silence.
He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself to truly take in how it felt, holding Hans in his arms. It felt—it felt lovely. It felt right.
At long last, Hans began letting go, so Henry followed his lead and released him. But they were still standing rather close together, and Henry realized that, without his permission, his eyes had landed on Hans’s mouth and were lingering there.
His stomach jolted like he’d missed a step going downstairs, and he swiftly wrenched his eyes away.
Oh.
That definitely wasn’t allowed.