fine elven angst, direct from arlathan

The grass rustles beneath Hans’ palm as he pats the earth at his side. Henry squints up at the sun- midday, now, and they’re but halfway to Trosky. They ought to press on, he thinks, but then his stomach rumbles and he changes his mind. There is time for a short rest and for food.

Henry hauls himself to the ground and takes an apple from the sack. Juice runs sticky down his fingers as he bites into it, and as he chews he offers the next bite to Hans. He expects for him to take it in hand but instead he pushes himself to his elbows, mouth gaping like a fish so that Henry can hold the apple out for him to bite off.

“ ‘Slike feedin’ a horse,” Henry says around half-chewed apple.

Hans nickers, a perfect imitation of Aethon, and takes Henry by such surprise he chokes.

Times like these, Henry wonders what it would have been like had they been born the same, as two peasant boys in a small village. Whether Hans would always be soft around the edges as he is now, or if the arrogance that only a shy man can exude is innate. If he would feel for him as he does if he were different.

Perhaps nothing would really have changed, Henry thinks. They’d still have brawled in a tavern, wound up at odds until one saved the other and suddenly they were fast friends. Maybe in every lifetime the story of how they came to meet is unchanged.

Henry takes another bite. Holds out the apple for Hans, and his fingertips go aflame where Hans’ mouth brushes against them. The heat rushes from his hand all the way into his face, and Henry takes the excuse of tossing the apple core across the field to hide his blush.

“What d’you think Von Bergow will be like?” he asks to fill the silence between them, as though Hans could hear the beating of his heart.

Hans shrugs. He falls back into the grass, hands behind his head as a pillow. “A prick, probably. Most nobles are. Frankly I don’t care how he treats me or how he responds to the letter so long as he gives us a warm bath and a feather bed to sleep in.”

“Ahh, you don’t mean that. Thought you wanted to broker peace?”

“I do. I’ve just learnt that it’s best not to hope for things so as you can’t be disappointed when you don’t get them, is all. It’s as the old Roman philosopher said, ‘The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.’”

Hans stabs his finger in the air as he recites the quote. Henry falls back onto his elbows beside him, face tipped up toward the sun, and pictures him as a school boy. Little blonde haired Hans with a book in his lap, feet swinging, as an old, stern tutor points at him in just the same way.

“You sure that’s what that quote means?” Henry asks.

Hans cracks an eye open to glance at him. “You dare question your learned betters?”

“Just think maybe you’re interpreting it different, is all. I don’t think it means to never have hope. Sounds more like he’s saying you have to have hope, or else things will turn out bad because you’ve already decided they’re bad.”

Hans purses his lips as he turns Henry’s words over in his mind. His eyes narrow and then, when Henry thinks he’s about to argue, they crinkle at the corners.

The bark of his laugh sends birds rushing from the linden tree just a handful of paces away. On black wings they beat their way across the sky.

“My body guard, my squire, and now my philosopher. What else will you become for me, Henry?” Hans asks as he rubs at his face with the edge of his palm, and leaves a streak of dirt behind.

By God, they are a filthy pair. More like two street urchins than a lord and his human dog, and Henry wishes they could stay this way forever. No Rattay, no burning villages. No dead parents’ expectations to live beneath the weight of. Just the two of them and a field, and Hans’ laughter in the sun.

Henry shakes his head. “Suppose it’ll be your bath maid. C’mere, you can’t meet Lord Von Bergow with filth on your cheeks.”

“As if my clothes are fine enough that my face even matters at this point. But go on, if you insist.”

Hans tips his face up. He is loose limbed and in the giddy sort of mood that makes him easy for this sort of thing, liable to one up Henry in any jest. Henry licks his thumb like his ma used to do and leans over him.

The bridge of Hans’ nose is burnt, bringing his freckles into sharp relief. When the skin there peels and then darkens there will be even more splotches on his skin. Little remnants of their journey, left upon his face forever, and Henry only meant to rub off the filth.

But he cannot help but touch his thumb to the freckle that sits in the no man’s land between his cheek and his eye, the dark spot at the edge of his nose. Henry’s scrubbing slows to a gentle stroke and Hans’ eyes flutter closed, golden lashes fanned on his cheek.

They have done this before. Often when they’re drunk and can blame it upon the wine. Once in the woods on the hunt. The Greeks loved their friends as they loved their wives, Hans had reasoned, and so why should they not?

When their lips touch Henry does not think he is loving him as a friend. A friend would not lick the sticky taste of apple from Hans’ mouth, or bear the sour taste of a mouth in need of a linen cloth dipped in herbs and salt. A friend wouldn’t clutch at the back of Hans’ skull and suck at his lower lip until it is pink and flushed.

Hans gasps. Henry swallows the sound. He tries to etch into his mind the way Hans’ fingers cling to his ragged pourpoint, how he lifts himself from the grass to press up into the kiss, as though this will never happen again.

He must have good thoughts, full of hope. Good thoughts will beget a good ending. Hans’ wise men of old must be right, Henry reasons, or else they would not still be quoted.

The grass whispers in the wind. It’s only when Henry is breathless that he breaks off, but even that does not come easy: he has to touch his mouth to Hans’ once more, then a second time, until he reconciles himself with the fact that the moment is over.

“Am I suitable now?” Hans asks.

His voice is ragged. His tongue darts out to lick at swollen lips and Henry wants to say no. That he looks obscene, as if he is fresh from the bath house. That he wants to take him into the trees and truly ruffle him up. Stay there forever and forget this whole mad plot.

“If you look too flushed when we get there we’ll just blame it on the sun.” Henry drags himself to his feet, holds his hand out. Hans takes it and allows himself to be pulled up. “Tell me more about this wise man of yours- was he Greek, you said?”

“Roman!” Hans says as they set off down the road. “He was an emperor, in fact, I have a book of his at home in Rattay, you can use it to practice your piss poor Latin-“

“It’s not piss poor! I’m just- I'm new at it, is all!”