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Black Box Exchange 2021
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Published:
2021-08-10
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Ten Things Rodrigo Will Never Tell Carlos

Summary:

What the title says.

Notes:

Thank you to iberiandoctor and sprocket for beta!

Work Text:

10. Eboli guessed long ago the way Rodrigo feels about Carlos. She also knows perfectly well that Rodrigo will never say anything about it. Rodrigo flirts with her a great deal because he knows she knows it doesn't mean anything. Carlos teases him about Eboli, but Rodrigo just smiles and says nothing in return.

9. Rodrigo will never tell Carlos exactly and in detail how bad Flanders was. He has told Carlos about it, but in sweeping generalizations only. His great hope is that one day Carlos will go there to help the people, and at that point Carlos will have to see it for himself, but until then Rodrigo does not want Carlos to have the images in his head that Rodrigo does.

8. Sometimes Rodrigo dreams about Carlos. Some of the dreams are nightmares, where Carlos is drowning or sinking into quicksand or fighting off soldiers while hopelessly outnumbered, and Rodrigo tries to save him, but he's just a few seconds too late and the only thing he can do is take Carlos' hand as he dies, and he wakes shuddering, with tears on his cheeks, and profoundly relieved that it was only a dream. Some of the dreams are ones where Carlos kisses him, and then Carlos' long clever fingers and surprisingly soft lips do other things that make him blush when he wakes up the next morning and feels the wetness on his sheets.

Rodrigo is never going to tell Carlos about either kind of dream. But if he were forced to choose one, he would tell Carlos about the latter a thousand times, embarrassing as it would be, before he would breathe a word about the former.

(And even so, those nightmares are better than dreaming about Flanders, because he can wake up and know they are not real. The nightmares about Flanders are real. That is the worst thing about them.)

7. Rodrigo loves Carlos dearly, and he knows Carlos will be a great king if he manages to live long enough, but every so often he just wishes that Carlos would think through things just a little more. He always feels so disloyal for thinking this that he squelches the thought right away. It doesn't come up all that often, after all. And if Carlos lives long enough he will grow out of it.

(If he lives long enough. There are so many dangers surrounding him, and sometimes Rodrigo despairs of how they are going to thread their way through it all. But he will hope, and help as he can.)

6. King Philip told Rodrigo to speak to the Queen, and Rodrigo has been doing so; at first because of the King's commandment, but now because he enjoys her company and feels sorry for her. He likes the Queen a great deal, although he has never been able to break through the melancholy he senses in her -- except the one day when he was feeling rather flippant himself, and he attempted (and failed) to juggle for her, and she laughed. It's the only time he's ever heard her laugh.

Rodrigo won't tell Carlos that he is friends with the Queen, because he knows it will remind Carlos of all the things he wants and can never have. Carlos could never be friends with the Queen, for a myriad of reasons.

And Rodrigo will never, ever tell Carlos is that one of the things he likes immensely about the Queen is that he knows she has the honor and good sense never to give in to Carlos.

5. There was a moment, when King Philip was telling Rodrigo about his family problems, where he clamped his hand on Rodrigo's arm and gazed into his eyes, frowning, not letting go even when Rodrigo stepped back away from him. It felt to Rodrigo as if he were drowning. It was a very strange moment. Then the King released him and the moment passed, but Rodrigo still wonders sometimes what was going through the King's mind. And he also wonders whether he really wants to know.

4. Actually, Rodrigo does know one of the things that was in the King's mind. He knows that King Philip wants to think of him as a son. He knows that King Philip loves Rodrigo more, much more, than he loves Carlos. His own actual son! Rodrigo does not understand this at all, and it makes him almost sick to think about it.

3. Rodrigo knows that Carlos is committing treason by corresponding with the leaders of the rebellion in Flanders. He knows that if Philip were to find out, Carlos' life would be forfeit. Carlos knows these things too, and he still does it. Rodrigo will never tell Carlos how much he worries about what will happen, that he wishes Carlos would stop. It's not his place to approve or disapprove, only to help Carlos, and perhaps to nudge him into better ways to help Flanders, like asking the Queen to ask the King to send Carlos there. But he still worries.

2. When Rodrigo and Carlos were boys, Carlos kept pestering Rodrigo to be his friend, and Rodrigo kept resisting, saying that Carlos was too high in station, that it wouldn't be right. It was only after that incident where Carlos was whipped for Rodrigo's sake that Rodrigo gave in, and from then on he's never looked back.

Rodrigo will never tell Carlos the real reason he resisted being Carlos' friend. He always wanted to be friends with Carlos. He always knew that Carlos was worth all his devotion. But he knew even then, he has always known, how this story would end. He has always known it would end in him dying for his prince, in one way or another. And he wasn't ready, when he was a boy, to embrace that destiny.

He's ready now.

1. Rodrigo loves Carlos more than any other person or thing in the world. He loves him more than he loves life.

He loves him more than he loves Flanders, even.

(He will never, ever tell anyone that last one. Including himself.)