#patch gosling

Winter looked, rather helplessly, at Patch and Viridi. “I only have one pair of boots.”

“You won’t lose them,” Patch said hurriedly, reaching down to pat Skip on the head. “Just leave them here, no one will take them - he’s right, we’re going to be swimming -” and they scampered after him.

Winter blinked.

She looked at Viridi, who raised his eyebrows, as if to say, Good God. Then, defeated, he exhaled and started off at a more stately pace.

Winter, staring at her feet, didn’t move until Skip twined through her legs and raced after him. Then she yelped and shucked her boots off, hopping on one leg as she peeled off her stockings, and shouted, “Wait for me, Skip!”

The summer sun burned hot in the dove kingdom. It shone off the lake, glittering blue; it lit up each waving blade of grass in the fields behind the castle. Not that there were many fields - the castle walls extended almost to the edge of the island. Their path traced the shoreline north, to the part of the island that pointed further out into the lake and not to the mainland city; the shore grew steeper and steeper until it sloped up into rocky cliff walls, overhung with vivid overgrowth.

Rowan had infuriatingly long legs. Winter caught up with Viridi first, which was to be expected but was still unfortunate, because then she felt obligated to keep his pace, and Viridi, for all he’d healed since his accident, was slow. Both of them were sweating by the time they reached the others - Patch, bent over puffing; Skip, circling excitedly around their legs; and Rowan, fording up the slope into the bushes.

“It’s steep,” Patch wheezed, straightening up and smoothing down their tunic. “Watch out for the branches.”

It was, in fact, steep. More of a climb than a walk, really; there was a faint suggestion of a path, where the undergrowth was more worn down, but really they were scrambling up over rocks and under bushes, dirt wedging itself under Winter’s fingernails, rocks gritty beneath her spread-wide toes, the scents of earth and leaves and sticky sweat hanging close around her body.

It didn’t particularly help to have Skip scrabbling up along with them, crawling through Winter’s legs and lapping at her fingers. But she wasn’t very well going to send him back.

Rowan took the head, Patch right behind him, and Winter followed at their heels, excitement already singing in her chest. She was slightly ashamed that it took hearing Patch call back, “Vee, how’re you doing back there?” to recall their fourth’s disadvantage.

When she turned around, Viridi was a ways behind her, further down the slope, past a particularly steep bit of ground. His good arm was braced against the side of the boulder the others had climbed over; his left arm was held tightly to his chest, as always.

Winter scrambled back to meet him. She was close enough to see him mumble a foul word under his breath before he called back, “I’m managing!”

Then he looked up to see her inches away and startled back.

“Here,” Winter said, offering her arm. “Put both your hands - right. And now if you put your foot there -”

When he gripped her arm, she could feel the raised edges of the scars on his palms. The whole affair seemed harder on his end; she’d borne the weight of sheep at home that were heavier. When he scrambled up beside her, Viridi dropped his hands from her arm - though he didn’t drop his gaze from hers - and exhaled heavily.

Winter tilted her head, scanning him. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she was scanning for, but she reasoned that if he was about to collapse she should be able to notice that. “Are you all right?”

“I’m f…” He wobbled over the fine for a moment, lips puffing out, then settled on, “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“If you’re tired -”

“I’m always tired,” Viridi said sourly. Making a face: “Dahlia says I ought to push myself.”

Winter grinned at him. She offered her arm again and nodded after Patch. “Well, in that case, I think Patch and Rowan are halfway to the raven kingdom by now.”

It wasn’t a far climb, though Viridi leaned on her most of the way. They caught up with the others at the top of the cliff - including Skip, who had once more wandered ahead. “Traitor,” Winter told him, ruffling his ears, before she rose to look around.

The island dipped here, pinching inward like the bread Winter’s mother used to fold - a little cove cut into the side of the cliffs. They stood atop a lip of rock overhanging the water, nothing but open space in front of them.

Rowan smirked at Patch. “I’m going first.”

Patch stuck their tongue out. “Oh, by all means.”

Winter tipped her head back to the sky, so blue it almost hurt her eyes. The wind ruffled her hair. The far edges of the lake were hemmed in by hills dappled with trees, brilliantly green. The forest, technically - but here, in the sun, dirt-smeared and breeze-tousled, she felt incredibly far from it. The forest couldn’t touch her here. Not with all of them here together, in the open; not with the sky singing in her heart.

“What now?” she asked.

Patch grinned lopsidedly, showing their dimples. “We jump!”

“Jump,” Viridi repeated, eyes flaring wide.

“There’s a path back up from the water! You can’t see it from here, but we’ve done this a thousand times.” They pressed a hand to their heart. “Jester’s honor.”

“You have to jump out far,” Rowan said, nodding toward the edge. “To clear the rocks.”

“Rocks,” Viridi echoed.

Winter peered over the precipice, toes curled over the stone. There were, in fact, rocks just beneath the surface of the water, large and formidable. The wind tossed the water around, exposing a peak here, a jagged edge there.

They weren’t too high up. She’d jumped from the loft to the barn floor, at home, and it was about the same distance. And all right, maybe she’d broken her ankle in the barn, but she had been landing on a hard stone floor and not plunging into a lake, and so it was different, she was pretty sure.

Winter clung to the rocks and grinned.

She barely had time to draw back before Rowan flashed past her. He whooped as he leaped; a moment later he splashed down into the lake and bobbed back up, a small red-haired shape down below, spitting out brine.

Looking up, he raised one arm out of the water, pumping his fist, and whooped again.

Winter returned the motion from above, huge-eyed. “Hurrah!”

“Careful, Winter,” Patch said gently. Winter glanced back to Patch and Viridi - the former poised for a running leap, the latter looking distinctly queasy.

She shifted to make space. A moment later Patch ran past, one hand held up to plug their nose, and jumped. Their splash was bigger; Rowan caught most of it in the face, and his colorful string of curses was audible even from up above.

Skip pressed his wet nose into Winter’s hand, panting. She ruffled his ears. “Oh, are you going to go follow them now, too? You want to jump off the cliff with your new best friends? I thought I was your b-”

Skip licked her face. Winter squeaked, laughing, and almost fell backwards off the cliff.

She glanced up to see Viridi standing beside her, neck arched so he could squint over the edge. “Our turn, Viridi?”

“Mm,” Viridi said, stepping back.

“Come on.” Winter removed Skip’s paw from her face. Skip replaced it; Winter removed it again. “It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t swim.”

“Well, you made it all the way out here; you might as well.”

Viridi squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

“No,” he said, exhaling, “I mean I don’t know how.”

Winter shoved Skip off her lap and stared at Viridi.

“What?” she said.

Viridi gave her a sullen look. He enunciated slowly enough that it offended her a little: “I never learned how to -”

“I heard you, I just…” Winter shook her head. Skip shook his head, too, as if he were agreeing, though it may have been because his ear was inside-out. Winter flipped it for him. “How?” She had grown up swimming almost every day in the summers - the lake behind her house was much smaller, of course, but when she closed her eyes and dove toward the bottom she could pretend that she was in the ocean, seaweed tangling in her fingers, salt catching in her hair. She’d never seen the ocean. But she’d read storybooks. She’d dreamed about it.

Viridi was once again engaging in uncomfortably direct eye contact. This time made all the more uncomfortable by his scowl. “I just… never learned. I mean, I… my… we…” He shrugged jerkily. “I didn’t do that.”

Winter tossed a look over the edge of the cliff. Patch and Rowan had swum out a little ways to engage in some sort of mid-lake wrestling. As she watched, Patch splashed Rowan directly in the face, wriggled out of his grasp, and called up, “Come on! I promise it’s fine!”

She very much wanted to jump. In fact she itched with it. She desired nothing more than to run at the precipice and fling herself out into open space as quickly and as enthusiastically as possible.

Still. She felt some degree of responsibility for Viridi.

It wasn’t that hard to learn to swim, was it? Her parents had taught her when she was tiny. If a tiny person could do it, it probably wasn’t too bad. “You can do it,” she said encouragingly. “You just sort of…” She mimicked Skip’s paddle with her hands.

Viridi’s squint got narrower.

“Ah,” he said. “I just sort of.” He exaggerated the motion back at her with his good arm.

Winter huffed, somewhere between impatient and sheepish. His arm… did present a complication. “Oh, don’t be like that, I’m trying to help you - I’ll be right there, and so will Patch and Rowan, it’s not so far down…”

His silence was the most unnerving possible response. Winter looked up to see him eyeing the edge, looking more than a little ill. Without tearing his eyes away, he reached sideways for Skip, patting the air futilely until the dog trotted over to meet his hand.

“Are you scared?”

She watched his mouth form the no; she heard the puff of his futile exhale.

“Come on.” Winter kept her voice low and gentle as she got to her feet. “It’s okay. It’s not so far down. Patch did it and they’re shorter than you -”

“Patch is shorter than everyone,” Viridi snapped, reaching up to press at the hollow of his throat.

“Exactly!” When he didn’t move away, Winter reached for his good hand - slowly, carefully, keeping her movements in his field of vision, the way her parents had taught her to approach skittish animals back home.

His palms were rough, ridged with the lines of his scars. He intertwined his fingers with hers immediately.

Winter smiled at him, feeling sun-warmth unfurl in her chest. “I’ll be right here,” she promised. “And Skip, you stay up here, all right?”

“You can exchange him for me if you’d rather,” Viridi muttered. Winter shushed him.

They approached the edge together. Viridi’s grip on her hand kept getting tighter. Winter squeezed back, smiling comfortingly at him. “On three we’ll run up and jump, okay?”

Viridi nodded, eyes locked on the cliff’s edge, throat bobbing.

“All right,” Winter said, bending her knees. Already her grin was spreading. “Three -”

“You can’t - you can’t start with three,” Viridi objected, yanking on her hand. “You said we go on three. You have to start with one.”

Winter rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “One…” She squinted sideways at him, watching for any possible escape attempts. “Three!”

Viridi’s yelp was lost in Winter’s laughter as she pulled him forward. One, two, three steps -

His Royal Majesty the King Dusk Doveclaw liked to joke that their heart was too big for the rest of them. Patch, at twelve, had crossed their arms and protested, “I’m not so short,” to which Dusk had just quirked an eyebrow and ruffled their hair. At sixteen, Patch was willing to concede the point, if only because the idea of feeling too much made them a bit more confident about their acting skills. They hadn’t been assigned the role of the court fool. They hadn’t asked for it, either. They had sort of grown toward it, like a tree tilting toward the sun.

They had grown up made of odds and ends: a jumble of fine clothing without heir status, Dusk’s watchful eye but not his fatherhood, no designated duty but a tendency to run errands, no defined past but a six-pointed star hung round their neck and a great deal of faith. As a child, they had very firmly believed their parents, or whoever had left them with the star, were coming back for them. They had gone on believing this until they were nine. Then, rather abruptly, they’d realized it wasn’t the case. Patch had sobbed for three days straight, gripping the star so tightly it left red imprints on their palms.

That was their style. They had loved every friend they’d made in the castle, without fail, usually within days of knowing them. Their faithful heart had swelled. Their words had spilled out recklessly.

“Because we’re friends!” they exclaimed, or maybe, “Since you’re my best friend -” And the look they got in return had always been the same: a little bit alarmed, a little bit pitying, and very much discouraging.

Too much, too fast, too vulnerably: it was the only way Patch knew.

When Rowan Hawthorne arrived, the castle consensus was that this second ward of the state felt too little. After all, he was so quiet. His face never shifted. His voice was monotone. He was skilled at ignoring others’ emotions. An odd child, for sure.

It took about a day for Patch - eleven at the time - to determine this wasn’t true. They stumbled onto the topic of dragons by accident, while showing Rowan around the castle and babbling about old myths, and were rewarded with an excited burst of theories, and the two of them went from there.

Maybe Rowan’s gaze slid away from eye contact, but the fluttering of his hands and the curve of his almost-imperceptible smile spoke volumes. That first day, they spent two hours in the library and another swordfighting with sticks. They were inseparable within a week.

Rowan’s eyes were spring-green. He never did meet Patch’s gaze, but that gave them no trouble. Rather, they sat and watched his eyes flit around, narrowing to focus on whatever he was tinkering with. (“I know you’re watching me,” he said once, and crossed his eyes so violently that Patch actually squeaked and threw a pillow at him. “I don’t mind, you’re just conspicuous.”)

Most people stopped listening to Patch fairly quickly. Rowan let them ramble, listening with his head tilted and his face soft. Patch talked, and Patch watched his slender fingers work at metal and wood, freckled hands twisting and turning, and Patch’s stomach squirmed in a lovely sort of way.

Their first kiss was in the library, at fourteen: an experiment.

“Just to try it,” Rowan said.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Patch agreed.

It meant something. Their first real kiss was a week later, in the hallway behind the infirmary, teeth bumping clumsily against each other’s lips, Patch on their tiptoes and Rowan with his hands cupping their chin. Patch drew back, cheeks burning, head spinning, and managed, “Ro, I just… love you so much.”

Immediately they froze, wishing to bite back the confession.

“That seems characteristic of you,” Rowan said, giving them a crooked grin. He didn’t say it back - he wasn’t the sort - but his own confession breathed in his lips, his fingertips, the laughter in his voice, the way he draped himself over Patch when no one else was allowed to touch him.

That was fourteen. The next two years were warm and light.

But Patch was a fool. And then there was Viridi Doveswing.

Patch and Rowan were the ones to find him: where the woods met the capital city, a stranger crumpled at the edge of the treeline, left arm twisted under him, burning up with fever and mumbling about leaves and feathers. They, too, were the ones to visit him in the infirmary. He looked very small, curled against the white bed. His ribs showed through his ragged shirt. His arm was held to his chest in a sling.

The first fact he established was that he didn’t remember anything. He said it haltingly, voice singsongy, hands twitching and tugging at one another in a way that made Patch want to reach out and hold them. They resisted. Not only because they had a decent sense of personal autonomy, but because they didn’t want to break open the barely-healed wounds across Viridi’s palms.

The second fact he established was that he couldn’t lie.

“I don’t remember,” he had insisted again, eyes darting around the room, and Rowan crossed his arms and countered, “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“Rowan!” Patch hissed.

“There’s something about the way he’s saying it,” Rowan said firmly.

Viridi met their eyes. His gaze was so green that it made Patch’s knees a little weak. “I always tell the truth,” he said. Calm, weary, self-assured. “I can’t lie.”

Patch offered a smile that wasn’t returned. “I mean, me neither, Rowan says I’ve got a lot of tells -”

“No,” Viridi repeated slowly, “I can’t lie. I’m - I’m unable.”

They stared at him. Viridi shrugged. “It hurts,” he offered.

A more cynical person might have said that set the tone for the rest of their friendship. But Patch didn’t have a cynical bone in their body - though Rowan said they were so flexible that it wouldn’t have surprised him if they didn’t have all the bones they were supposed to, anyway. Regardless, Viridi remained the same: singsong voice, deliberate blinding gaze, matter-of-fact statements he refused to explain. He was standoffish, at first, but he relaxed the more the two of them visited.

“We’re the castle outcasts!” Patch informed him one day, flopping down onto the bed. “Welcoming you to our ranks and such.”

“They mean since most people think you’re mad,” Rowan filled in.

Patch swatted him gently. “Most people don’t think that!”

“I can’t say they’re entirely unreasonable to say so,” Viridi allowed. “Most people never come out of the woods.” His full lips curved into a smirk. “And Rowan’s right. You do have a lot of tells.”

Patch pouted, but they couldn’t hold it for long. “It’s good to see you smile, Vee.”

“What’s that all about, anyway?” Viridi demanded. “Vee?”

“Well, I call Rowan Ro, it’s the same -” Patch halted midsentence.

Oh, dear.

“It’s part of their charm,” Rowan said, slinging an arm around Patch’s shoulder. “Their unique jackass charm.” Patch breathed in the familiar scent of his shirt and tried to smile through the epiphany clanging around their skull.

Oh, dear.

The issue wasn’t anything innate. It wasn’t even about Viridi, really. Viridi could do what he liked with his feelings or lack thereof. The issue was how to tell Rowan: specifically, how to tell Rowan without making him feel unwanted. Because the thought of making Rowan ever, ever feel unwanted gave Patch a lump in their throat.

So they didn’t say anything. They just went about their days, and ran errands, and made a fool of themself in front of the court, and wondered what the polite way was to say I love you very much, and that won’t change, despite the great deal of time I’ve spent thinking about Viridi Doveswing’s lips.

By the time Viridi had recovered enough to leave the infirmary, the king had proclaimed him a third ward of state. Patch and Rowan were tasked with showing him his room in the castle. Viridi was strong enough to stand now, but he still bore the scars of malnourishment. By the time they reached the door, he was leaning on both of them, gaunt face drawn with effort.

“Thank you,” he said as he sat down heavily on the bed.

“Of course!” Patch grinned at him. “What would we have done? Left you in the corridor? Just sitting there all night?”

They were startled by the intensity of Viridi’s gaze. He looked at them for a moment, then at Rowan, then down at his hands. “I have trouble with this,” he said softly. “I know I act a certain way, but… I do appreciate… even if I’m…”

Rowan, behind Patch, touched their wrist, nudging them to ask. “Trouble with what?” Patch ventured.

“Liking people,” Viridi said simply. “Friends.”

It was a great feat, to strike Patch speechless.

Rowan picked up their slack: “Are you all right now?”

“I should be,” Viridi murmured, looking around the small room with some trepidation. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Patch managed, trying to keep the smile off their face. “Good night, Vee.”

“Good night, Patch, Rowan.”

The two of them left him there and retreated to Patch’s room, which was closest. Patch went to the window. Rowan flopped down onto the bed immediately. “Going to storm,” he murmured contentedly. “I love storms.”

They were right. Patch could see the thick gray clouds. The first rumbles were already starting. They drummed their fingers on the windowsill, stomach flipping, and started, “Ro -”

“It’s his hands, isn’t it,” Rowan said.

Patch looked at him. He was staring at the ceiling, eyes half-closed. “He’s so careful, I mean. He’s got artist’s hands.” He nodded to himself, as if confirming it, and added, “He acts like a bastard, but he’s got gentle hands.”

Patch, dumbstruck for the second time in one day, sat down next to him. Then they laid down, brushing his side, and let their smile grow. “Yeah,” they said. “You got me.”

Rowan edged closer, pressing against Patch like a cat. He radiated warmth. “Either we have really good taste,” he said, “or really bad taste.”

“You… too, then?”

“Unfortunately.”

Patch’s chest bubbled. They let out a shaky laugh. “I was all flustered over how to tell you without - without giving the wrong idea, you know, and -”

“Well. You do call him Vee.”

Patch mock-gasped. “Am I so easy to read?”

“Your heart’s my favorite book,” Rowan hummed, adding, “Asshole,” for good measure as he drew them in closer, and Patch’s foolish, faithful heart sang and sang.