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The moment the lock is in the latch and there's a solid barrier between the two of them and the rest of the rotten world, Henry’s hands dance frantically down the buttoned and tied front of Hans’ gambeson.
“It's already been looked at, Hal.”
“Not by me.” He tugs at padded fabric, carefully dislodging the clothing from his lord’s uninjured shoulder and freeing the arm that's not held in a makeshift sling. “Let me do my job.” Pale blue eyes are boring into him as he works and he refuses to look up and meet them, lest he forget his place again. “Sit, sir.”
And so what if the frantic need to see this wound laid bare, to prod and investigate, remedicate and wrap his own bandages around where the arrow pierced Hans’ armor, also happens to quiet the avaricious beast that's been roaring low in Henry’s stomach since the battle fell quiet enough for him to think past the next three steps forward?
He lifts Hans’ arm delicately out of the sling and settles it to rest on his lord’s thigh. Whoever bandaged this did a passable job, Henry begrudgingly admits to himself as he unwinds the linen.
The wound itself is more bruise than gouge, the point of entry neat and clean. The arrowhead had been sharp enough to pierce into muscle but not barbed or jagged, not made to tear when removed. Henry throws a poorly organized and frantic prayer skyward as he digs through his bag for the poultice he wants.
The clay jar clinks against the wooden floor. Henry holds his open hand over the discarded linen bandages and pours clear alcohol over his fingers, shaking off the excess as the rest evaporates, and dips his fingers into the little pot of crushed yarrow and comfrey he’d made the afternoon before he left with Sam to retrieve their reinforcements.
Hans hisses as he pours some of the spirits directly into the wound before packing it with the herbal mash. “Warn a man next time, Hal,” he says, chuckling, an easy invitation to engage.
Henry does not take it, does not trust himself to behave when he is so terribly close and Hans’ chest is so terribly bare. Pulling the fresh bandages closer on the bed, he adjusts where the injured arm rests on his lord’s thigh and sets in on rewrapping the freshly cleaned and medicated wound. Up, over, under, around. Repeat. Do not breathe too deeply. The sheets still smell of them both. It’s unbearable.
He tucks the tail of the fresh linen bandage under itself and braces to rise from where he's kneeled between Hans’ feet.
“Henry.” Hans’ good hand presses down on his shoulder and his weight sinks back onto his knees. “Look at me, please?”
That it's a question and not a directive works the bellows in his heart, hope flaring bright as the dawn, and he finally looks up and allows Hans to steal his attention.
His lord’s eyelashes are limned with errant tears, none of which have been allowed to skitter free down his face.
“I thought we were both done for, and-”
The bright flame of hope in his heart sizzles dark under a thrown bucket full of the weight of what they'd done.
“I understand, Sir Hans.” Henry’s gaze falls to his hands, empty in his lap. When there had been no hope for consequences, it had been permissible for the impossible gulf between the two of them to be bridged.
Hans scoffs and lifts Henry’s chin with his curled fingers, his thumb gently brushing across the beginnings of a beard on Hal’s jaw. Henry refuses to meet Hans’ eyes again, not trusting his own dedication to his station to keep him from doing something unforgivable. “No, you don't. Listen. Please.”
There was that damnable word again.
“I thought we were both done for, and could not bear for either of us to go to the grave without you knowing how deeply loved you are, Henry of Skalitz.”
Loved. Their eyes lock and Henry is found and lost in the same breath.
“I told you I did not have my own words for what I needed to say to you - yet, once you left, and once I'd been shot, everything became a lot less complicated somehow.” Hans shrugs and quickly winces. Henry reaches for his lord’s injured shoulder and Hans tilts his head to the side, brushing his lips over Henry’s bruised knuckles. “I love you.” He laughs breathlessly as though it's a relief, not that they're not about to be buried under the weight of what he's just admitted. “And I know you love me.”
Henry leans up, following the path his hand just took, and cups Hans’ face between his hands. “Sir-”
“Not sir. Not Lord Capon. Not to you, at the end of the day, when it's just us two.”
“Hans.” Henry tries out the solitary syllable sober, tries it out redolent with affection instead of derision or frustration or wrapped in a tease. Pressing their foreheads together, he breathes it again. “Hans.”
“Hal. My Hal.”
He is, isn't he, at the end of it all? His, in every way that could possibly matter?
“Can I…?” The tip of his nose skates along the elegant line of Hans’ own.
“You don't ever need to ask again,” Hans murmurs, closing the minute leagues between their lips.
Henry surges up between parted thighs to meet the kiss with the fervor he’s been smothering for this entire interaction, wrapping his arms around Hans and swallowing the pained noise the other man makes when his injured shoulder is jostled. The fine hair at the nape of Hans’ neck and behind his ears bristles under Henry’s fingers. Someone keens when Hal’s tongue sweeps into Hans’ mouth and neither of them will ever admit it was him.
Henry is breathless like he's running uphill in full plate. His heart is hammering, hammering at his breastbone, trying to crack through and climb home into Hans’ chest. Hans, his Hans. His.
“Love you, I love you,” he manages between reckless, graceless presses of lips and teeth. Hans’ arm is around his neck, curled up so that he can fist his hand in the longer hair atop Henry’s head, and he's tugging hard enough that Henry can feel it in his groin. Hal follows the pull and tilts his head back, chest heaving, meets ravenous eyes and bruising lips.
“Say it again.” Vulnerable, Hans Capon is vulnerable under Henry’s hands and mouth. His eyes are fixed on Henry’s lips, waiting to watch the words fall from them.
“I love you, Hans.”
They are entirely lost to anyone but each other for the rest of the afternoon.