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Henry of Skalitz was many things.
A devoted page, a skilled warrior, a good man, and perhaps most importantly, the greatest friend Hans could ever have asked for. It's for this very reason that Hans finds it impossible to miss the heavy shroud around said friend as he moves about the smithy.
With deep purple grooves dug beneath his eyes and haggard breaths, Henry's rhythm stutters such that even his well-loved song can't salvage it.
So it is that Hans finds himself there now, two tankards in hand, insisting his stubborn page remember his charge.
"Your forge can wait." He says, tipping his mug towards Henry and hoping the smirk hides his worry. "I, however, cannot."
With a roll of his eyes, Henry accepts his own mug and contemplates its contents. "This is important, Hans." He repeats, as if he hasn't said the same thing for every order since Hans arrived at his newfound home some days ago. "Besides, if I don't get the work done then-"
"-Then what? Your customers will go elsewhere? Good." Hans circles the anvil, watching the burning blade cool upon its face.
Henry, with the hint of a smile in his eyes, laughs from beneath the rim of his cup. "Are you serious? Don't tell me you're jealous."
"Well, you're awfully full of yourself now, eh, master blacksmith?" A bit of ale slips from between Henry's lips, joining the sweat dribbling down his chin. "I'm not jealous." Hans insists, reaching out and thumbing away the wayward drop. The way Henry leans into the touch, without even a single thought spared for who could see, is all the reason Hans could ever need. "I'm worried."
When Henry pulls away, it's not from want, dipping his face away to hide the poppy-colored blush of his cheeks. "There's no need, Hans." He speaks under his breath, like an overgrown child with a secret. Then, with a laugh that sounds too forced: "A little hard work never hurt anyone—well, excepting his lordship of course."
But a little hard work was never the problem. No, the problem came only because Henry would never stop. Hans remembers it so clearly, the way Henry pushed himself to the brink of breaking. Hans can see it in the way his hand trembles when the hammer falls too heavy, and he hears it in the words Henry speaks in the morning before waking.
Hans has known this for forever, of course—or for as long as he's known the man at least, which is all the same to him. He's known this: that the blacksmith's boy must be made to stop, in much the same way a snare snags a frightened jack hare. Because, like the jack, he'll leap and bound and run, and never ever stop to remember the home lost to hounds.
"Henry," He murmurs beneath the embers, watching them curl around the wet of Henry's eyes. "You've worked plenty hard enough, I should think." And he knows that Henry understands because his shoulders fall, the weight slipping away as Hans tells him again and again, however many times he must: "You know I'm here for you. You can rely on me, too."
"I'm… You're right. I should take a break."
"Talk to me, Hal. God knows I've nothing better to do."
So he does, bearing to Hans all his worries about the state of the roads and how he can't possibly finish his latest sword by the end of the day, not while knowing the butcher's girls haven't slept a wink since his tooth turned sour.
He goes on, telling all tales of how the fisherman's wife hates him for indulging the man's fantasies, but Henry can't bear to send him away because when he smiles, it reminds him so much of how some Matthias from long ago would show all but one of his teeth each time he'd won one of their little games.
And as one cup becomes two becomes three, so too does Henry's mask loosen just enough to let slip a need, a want, a silly little something that lights the tips of his pointy ears in scarlet shades of red.
So while Henry's face falls, the corners of Hans' lips rise, and with his voice steeped in vice and wine, he rumbles:
"You just leave everything to me."
When he was small, he'd steal kolach from the kitchens.
Or rather, Bozhena let him. Younger then, with silvered hair and not yet missing her favorite tooth, she'd watch and pretend she couldn't see when the youngest lord of Pirkstein weaseled his way below the tables and snatched the treat left farthest away from all the rest. And when she'd find him later, with sticky-sweet fingers and poppy-stained teeth, she'd wink and hold her finger high over her lips.
Magdaléna, he finds, is much the same. A mother who never was. She spends her days among the chickens and whispers her woes into the ears of their gentle-eyed cow as she does her work. It's while doing just this that Hans finds her, smiling beneath the pallid, flaking walls of their reborn forge.
Hans doesn't mind her in truth. In some ways, she's a comfort he'd forgotten to miss. Even so, he'd made a promise, and it's to keep that promise that he's come.
"My fair lady," he says, cheeks wide with a grin like a summer-worn hound's, "I'd like to make an order."
Her own face, weathered from a joyous life, matches his own. So she says to him: "My word, I'd have thought you'd go to Henry if you needed something made, lad." Then, as she stands and dusts the dirt from her dress, "The Lord knows he'd do anything for you."
It's truer than Hans would like, and he likes even less that it's a truth well-known. Magdaléna, though, is like Bozhena, which is to say she looks at him just the same way, as if this conspiracy they share is nothing less than pilfered sweets for little boys. It must be that motherhood, Hans thinks, that they had never known.
His own mother had been sweet too, even as her womb soured, and every not-quite sibling earned a name that tore away another piece of her. It was she who'd read to him, deep into the nights of Polna, while father drank away the memories of too-late baptisms. Indeed, it was his mother who taught him what it was to be a knight, with her tales of Arthur and his table, long before his uncle had taught him what it meant to be a man.
It was mother, too, who'd lied for him when asked why his little hands stank of wet dirt when the priest's garden came unrooted after he'd claimed her body broken.
So to Magdaléna, he says: "That he would, but he's no armor smith." And then, "I need it delivered anyway. To Pirkstein."
"To Pirkstein?" She purses her lips, and with a tilt of her head, all of Hans' careful planning slips away. "That's quite far for an old woman like me, lad."
"Well then, you'll just have to take someone with you." The reasoning is sound, he thinks, and he can't help but add, "You and Standa seem close…"
"You mean that we sleep together?"
Ah. Less like Bozhena then, and more like Zuzana, a mother to her girls within the Rattay baths. A simple fact that made things easier. So his dog-toothed smile softens into something easier, canines resting behind dimpled grooves. "Sleep isn't the word I'd use for it."
She laughs at that, sweet and lilting like springtime bird-song. "You're handling this better than our Henry did, the poor thing."
Unsurprising really. If that first night together at the baths had been any indication, then Henry had practically been a virgin before meeting Hans. Not literally, of course. No, Henry had a sweetheart before all this, whose name he sometimes whispered in the worst of his walking-dreams. He'd fucked her, Hans was sure, and yet his cheeks still burned red as the dawning sun each time he glimpsed a tit.
It was endearing to see how far the flush could spread when the bathmaids spoke of handsome knights. More so, to see how long he'd last when Hans did just the same.
"I'd have paid to see that."
"Well, I'll just have to come find you the next time I'm short on groschen, and it will be our little secret."
"Speaking of groschen, I'm happy to pay extra if you'll get it done today." He circles them, stepping over the hens who peck at his shoes until the leather splits, and leaning down to stare into the deep brown eyes of that single cow Magdalena tended so dearly, as if he might hide within their shadows.
"I'm sorry, dear, but I don't think I'm quite up for it, not even with Standa."
Hans' eyes snap up. He's failed at the first step, tripped over the roots and brush, and found himself lost already, as a simple boy-child loses himself in the woods because he ran deeper than he should. What could he do now? Henry needed this, needed him, and like so many others who'd thought just the same, he'd be left wanting.
Magdalena, who was never a mother but knows well enough the wide-eyed look of boys who never knew their worth, pats the side of her kindred kine and tries to speak again, but it is Hans who beats her to it.
It is Hans who remembers, hidden behind the farms and shrubs between Sedletz and Kuttenberg, there is a place he'd come upon in his many wild runs. Small, hidden enough, where he'd bring doe-eyed girls to whisper of their pretty names and lovely laughs, if only he'd cared for such things anymore with Henry so near.
He'd meant to bring him there sometime as well, before the sun set on their last summer days.
He says to her this: that there's a lovely place so close, that she and Standa should go, really! He'll give them silver, he says, he'll explain everything to Henry when he asks and take their orders and, yes, even care for every hen even though they hate him so, honest.
Magdalena looks at him, no, she witnesses him. She sees him beg without begging, she brushes her hand along the side of her mother-cow's hide, and her eyes shine with all the light she's ever known as she whispers to him: It's still there…
She tells him, as she sprinkles the ground with seeds and leads her fellow not-quite mothers from his bruising ankles, of a place much like he describes. She says to him, as if walking through a dream, that her Škoda built it for her. Or maybe that he'd simply found it, and claimed it from the weeds and dust, that the two had spent their spring painting over the memories trapped in the rain-logged wood with hopes and dreams and all the other things young lovers do.
Magdalena tells him that they'd go there often before she took, and lost, and lost and lost again. He doesn't know why she tells him this, or why the hens that lay their empty eggs and her milk-fat cow seem almost to listen just the same.
He thinks, perhaps, that they, too, are just the same. The hens have no cock, their cow knows no bull for her bastard-calf, and Magdalena's Škoda, she tells him, lies buried with their children who never truly were.
She shows him how and when to feed. She guides his hand as he grasps an udder for the first time, and cuffs him on the ear when he compares it to his cock. She makes sure he knows, before she leaves, the name of every beast; of Judith, of Anezka, and Betty, and Klara.
Then, when finally she's satisfied, she takes his silver and holds his shoulder. You're a good lad, she tells him.
As she leaves, she smiles.
Hans wonders, then. He wonders if his mother, who bore enough dead that their coffins fill the smallest graves around his father's own, wouldn't have been better off had her first never come. He wonders if she'd have survived father's loss just the same as Magdalena, had she not borne his grief alongside her own.
He wonders if he'd have done the same had Henry never come back to him, and rubs at his wrist until the skin turns raw.
He wonders if Bozhena, who lived her life loving and spoiling and making not-quite children of boys who'd already had mothers of their own, will too when he tells her old Oats will never come home to her.
He scatters the birdseed along the pen, and he wonders.
It is within the baths that Hans first felt at home in Rattay.
He'd almost been a man, but not quite—his gangly limbs grew tall before they grew strong, and his teeth sat crooked in his mouth from not growing all at once. The girls, though, saw him, and they knew as well as he that he belonged.
They took him by the hand and scrubbed behind his ear, and they told him what a handsome lord he was when he'd only just begun to know he wanted that. To him, they said: You're so strong, sing for me, and please touch me, just like this.
They said to him, as he grew into his role of forever-boy behind the walls of Pirkstein, Talk to me.
So he did, to Zuzana first, when she had still been just a whore who let his hands wander lower than the rest, and then to Magda when the old proprietress died and left the baths to her. Magda had been shy, quiet, mousy. She'd listen, and she'd wash, and when Hans grew bored, she'd ask after another. Never did he touch her, because she'd frozen the first time he had, and because he liked it better when she touched him instead.
They might have loved him, he'd thought, insofar as a whore can ever truly love a man.
They might have loved him, he'd thought, for as long as goodwill and the promise of a future lord's favor could buy.
The girls are different here, he thinks. They smile and lead him away and let him watch the water wet their tits until their dresses hide nothing from him just the same, but they treat him more the lord than friend. He's come to know them well in his time here, wasting away the hours that Henry isn't there.
Zlata is pretty but loud, and she tips his cup too far when she holds it to his lips just to watch him choke on the ale, but she laughs with her chest and washes the drink from his chest with brighter eyes after.
Annie is the most plain by far, more suited to laundering than bathing, but she smiles with her whole face when she speaks of her smallest sister down in Maleshov, who's pretty as a spring-born jill and smarter than the foxes chasing her tail.
Klara is the chattiest of them all. She talks and talks and talks until every word blends into the next and Hans' eyes grow heavy beneath the steam, and she lets him rest his head between her tits when they close and talks some more. Her favorite drink is schnapps, she thinks the bowyers boy fancies her, she wishes to ride a horse as boys do, and run and roll and breathe deep of the marigold fields as she crushes the flowers beneath her heels. She's the prettiest, like his Klara back home is, but she'd let him fuck her if he'd only ask.
It is Elishka, though, the merriest of all the Kingfisher's girls, who lathers his hair now. Hans likes her because she smiles and laughs and isn't afraid to bite his ears when his poems hurt her own.
"Oh my," she says as her slender fingers slip down his neck, and as they brush over his newest scar, she asks: "Does this hurt?"
"That old thing?" Hans asks her, letting his head lull back until she catches it and giggles in his ear. "Hardly."
He smells sweet like freshly flooded grass, like the damp wood of a summer-warmed tree. He smells just how Henry likes him to; like Belladonna and Wormwood and Linden trees in spring.
Elishka scratches him behind the ear until his arms go slack, and lets her dress slip down one shoulder as she asks again: "Well now, where did you get a nasty little thing like that?"
She asks things like this often. Not just of him, no, but of every man lucky enough to have her company. She flashes a dimpled smile and kisses the top of his head and promises to make everything better as her hands move lower, lower, lower, scratching the fine hair on Hans' chest and belly as he tells her again of his knightly virtue, of taking an arrow to save a priest, of… of…
He wraps a hand around her wrist, too hard at first, before he remembers, and brushes his thumb along her slender wrist as he guides her away from where he stirs.
"Not today." He says, and the words taste foreign on his tongue, sour like muddled wine, because his body knows he's never denied himself the pleasures of a pretty girl like her.
He didn't come here for her, though.
No, he came here for Henry.
Elishka pouts at first, and lets her long brown hair touch the water as she kisses the scar on his shoulder, and again behind his ear, and she whispers to him: "You're Henry's boy, aren't you?"
She reminds him of sharp-tongued Zdena then, who always knew too much, but knew also to pretend she knew nothing at all around lesser men.
"His lord."
Elishka giggles next to his ear, rubbing her nose into the small hairs on his neck. "Of course."
Zdena had always been his favorite back home. She'd suffer him not, she'd cuff his ear, she'd guide his hand to her cunt and tell him, with a bitter sort of fondness known only to whores, that he was her favorite too. Because he listened, because he waited, because he knew too that she knew more than most men could ever hope.
It was Zdena who told him how best to fuck a girl so that she'll love you for a night, and it was Zdena, too, who held him as he spewed bile over the bath floors the first time he'd brought another of Hanush's squires to the baths just to know, only to drink in hopes he could forget.
Zdena, who stitched his knuckles closed and wiped the blood from his lip each night he'd gone too far.
To Elishka, he twists a lock of her hair around his finger and pulls until she smacks at his hand, and he tells her, "You little minx, most men would take offense, you know."
"Most men aren't like you, m'lord." Her voice drops as he presses her fingers deep into the muscles on his chest. "Or are they, down in Ratty?"
"Rattay."
"Aye, that's what I said innit?" She laughs, too pleased with herself already. "Well, are they all like you two?"
"And what are we, exactly?"
"Handsome, strong… a good fuck." Elishka waits a moment before her hands drift down his sides, and she leans in to giggle in his ear. "Arse men."
The water spills from the tub as Hans jerks away, sopping over its sides and crashing to the tile floor below, and Hans' eyes narrow at Elishka when she moves to follow until she stops. "That's enough." The tone brokers no questions, harsher than he'd expected it to be, and the instinct to strike out burns bright in his chest, his fingers clenching until they leave little crescent scars upon his palm. He swallows it down like bramble-thorn, forces away the thought of what such rumors could mean for Henry, and says to her instead, "You're the devil."
"He isn't half as fun." She blasphemes in the same casual cadence Zdena used to, but her eyes and face are softer, and she moves closer as if approaching a struck hound. "I meant no offense, sir, just a bit of fun is all."
As it goes in places like these, Hans relaxes. He lets Elishka approach and leans his head this way and that as she lathers his hair, and pinches at her arse to hear her gasp. He tells her it's fine, and he means it; he really does. His anger is a fickle thing; it burns and burns and burns, but never swallows whole the forest. It dies just as bright, smothered by laughter because it really and truly was quite funny, wasn't it? So long as it's only him she jokes about.
He tells her she's like his Zdena, but prettier, and with bigger tits, which they both laugh at as if it were really something worth laughing over at all.
It should be Henry here, he thinks, laughing with him.
The conversation turns to him again because it always does. His blacksmith's boy has never been only his, for it seems that all the world must love him so sometimes.
It leaves him bitter sometimes, knowing that. Because what was one man's love among the flood?
She asks if he's been well. She asks how long he'll stay. She asks, and asks, and asks—where he's been. He hasn't come in so long, she says, giggling to herself again.
As he leaves, wrinkled and freshly pinked, it is Elishka who stops him. She takes his hand in her own, she places something within his palm, and she curls his fingers around it before kissing his knuckles twice.
Before he goes, she says to him, "For Henry."
Amd as he leaves, his fingers smell of belladonna, wormwood, and linden blossoms.
When Henry comes home for the first time, the sun has already crested.
It's not new to Hans, this feeling. This waiting. He remembers it clearly: how the days became weeks, then months, without Henry by his side, when they were still separate but not whole. It's unfair, he'd think, then chew his roast goose until the gristle shined his chin. It's not alright, he'd say to no one but the birchwood trees and string his newest bow. He doesn't know, Hans would think, what it is to be so lonely.
Hal is covered in sweat; it soaks through his apron in little damp spots beneath his arms and sticks down the hair along his brow. When he sees Hans, though, he smiles, all lopsided and stupid like he always does, and he laughs just the same when Anezka pecks Hans' finger bloody.
So Hans kicks at her, he swears and hisses through his teeth, and kicks again when her sisters come for him as well. "Fucking—Henry, call off your fucking birds or God so help me-!"
He doesn't, not at first, too busy laughing until it must hurt for the way he curls in on himself like a half-crushed insect. Hal laughs, and laughs, until the choice between laughter and breathing comes—and then he laughs more, the fucker, because he's always said he wants to die smiling.
Eventually, he comes. Which is to say, he leans down and c'meres, opening his arms wide until his favorite lady, so he calls her, comes to him. "Is this guy bothering you?" He asks her as blackened fingers scratch between her ruffled feathers. The hen swipes at Hans, raking her talons through the air and stretching her stupid, fat legs as far as they might go.
"Well, there's only one thing for it then." The happiness carries so easily in that voice, so much so that it tugs at the corners of Hans' mouth until he's smiling too, despite himself. Henry looks to him from beneath his lashes, eyes half lidded and shining, and like a boy child pretending at authority, he says: "You'll just have to apologize, sir."
Absolutely not, Hans tells him, no fucking way, you yokel. Though he does after some cajoling because his Hal really does ask so sweetly. So Hans looks at the hen, with all her ruffled cream feathers, and tells her that he really and truly is sorry, and that he hadn't meant it at all when he said she'd be tomorrows breakfast.
She takes another swipe at him, because she really is just a stupid fucking bird after all, and Henry starts again, so loud with his joy that Hans has to laugh too, and Henry has only a moment to toss Anezka aside before Hans is on him, their bodies collidling as he drags them both into the dirt.
Warmth, Henry has always been warm. His blood must run hot like Hans' own, for all the heat he feels beneath his friend's skin.
The first time he noticed was in a tavern, which is where he first learned that Henry's blood tasted just the same as his as well, whether blue or red.
Together they roll, tugging at each other's ears and biting at their necks. Hans chews on Henry's pointiest ear and tells Henry it's just a little too long, and Hal pinches at his cheeks until they turn pretty and pink, and asks if the little hairs on them will ever grow right.
They jab their fingers deep and spit at one another until every insult feels like a confession, for all the little ways they hurt that only your best friend could ever know really.
When they're done wallowing like rutting hogs, when the grass and dirt has painted them in ugly stripes of brown and green that bleed together, when finally they've dragged each other beneath the shade of their little tree and Hans has Henry beneath him, he kisses him.
He kisses him for all the world, digging his thumbs into the side of either cheek until Hans can feel the sharpness of Henry's teeth. He kisses him in that way which always made Zdena smack him, but Henry opens wider for every lick even has he beats at Hans' chest. Hans doesn't stop though, and neither does Henry, not until their noses go all crooked and the world goes wonky from lack of air.
When they finally part, Henry's lips chase him.
There's never been any fun in a fight without struggle, Hans has known this since the day he was born.
Every moment, from his very first steps, has been handed to him. Soft-bellied boys with softer hearts assigned to win his favor by sycophantic parents, who could never keep up and never said no. Pretty girls with pretty songs who'd hang on his every word if it meant another gift. His title, his education, even the very wilds he fled to to escape the endless nothing he'd earned. All of it given, none of it won.
So Hans learned to seek his own fights. He'd bruise his soft-bellied boys and push them from trees and tell them little lies until they beat each other black and blue. He'd fuck his pretty girls and tell them pretty words until he'd fucked enough that they'd finally learned better.
Such a terror he became that his subjects grew to fear him. Such a fool he was that they knew to fear his future. So because they knew, he'd decided to be worse, until the world itself stopped fighting back.
Then came Henry. Henry, who's been nothing but fight since the day they'd first met.
Small, unassuming, with doe-like eyes and doughy cheeks. Henry was, to him, a curiosity first, and an annoyance second. How could that boy, with his too-heavy brow and his spit-licked hair, who made demands of lords and struck them just as fast, be real?
Because he wasn't, not truly. He was a blade dulled, incapable of feeling much of anything at all and so it waits to be discarded or broken, whichever should come first.
It is Hans who sharpens him again.
Because like their blood and their eyes their angers burn the same; all at once. It's like watching a jack kick at his hounds, or a mutt bite at his hand, a glory found only in the rage of a beaten thing that refuses to stay just so.
It's why Henry twists beneath him now until both their arms ache, and why he bucks his hips like a wild mare until Hans breaks him with his own.
They are equals, these two boys born to be wild, and because they are wild things they know too well of nature's truth: there are no stronger dogs, only those who dance the edges well enough to win.
Hans finds his edge when he twists Henry's wrists until they're pinned above his head, and it's as if the breath leaves his blacksmith's boy all at once, taking with it all the fight too.
Those doe eyes widen, and his lips part, and though Hans' muscles still burn he knows he's won.
His prize is splayed beneath him waiting, and it's a strange thing, the trust Hans sees beneath those too-deep eyes. And though every part of him sings to take, though his prick sits heavy in his hose and steals his better thoughts when it meets with Henry's own, he won't. Not now. Not yet.
So instead, Hans lowers himself, resting his lips against Henry's furrowed brow until it relents.
"Do you still want this?" He asks.
"Worried I'm having second thoughts?" A question meant to counter his own as Hal retaliates with a kiss to his chin, his cheek, and an attempt to steal another before Hans pulls back with a laugh.
Always, he wants to say. It's God's honest truth—That not a single moment passes where Hans hasn't wondered when Henry will remember himself, that he craves a life Hans can never give him, that he'll one day wake from this dream and regret choosing it over all the things that could have been.
It's all too easy to forget those fears when Henry looks up at him, though. So, brushing the hair from Henry's face, he smiles.
"I doubt you've had the one already."
"Well… what else have I got to think about when I'm with you?" His voice goes soft and sweet, in the way it does when he remembers home.
Nothing, Hans tells him as he noses beneath Henry's jaw, and he means it too.
Henry lets him. He gives to Hans however much he'll take, leaning back his head and sighing as Hans tastes the salt on his skin. Pliant, just for him.
It makes Hans want him more than anything.
It doesn't last nearly as long as his lonely-boy's heart wants it to. Henry tries to sit up, pushing at Hans' shoulders with a sudden urgency as he curses, "Fuck, Magdaléna—"
"Relax, Henry, I took care of it."
"You what?"
"I found somewhere for her to go. Standa, too." Hans plucks a wayward feather from behind Henry's ear and lets the wind carry it away as he tries not to feel insulted at the shock in Henry's voice. "I told you to leave everything to me."
They roll in the grass, until Henry lies on top of him now, and their legs become a tangle in that awkward space as they each try to find their own comfort. Grabbing a fistful of Henry's apron, Hans drags his blacksmith down and whispers in his ear, "You're mine tonight."
He can hear Henry swallow, so he cants his hips up until Henry can feel the shape of him again. "You mean—tonight?"
"I gave you my word, didn't I? What kind of lord forgets his subjects needs."
He runs his fingers through Henry's, hair once more, marveling at the kingly reds and golds hidden so well within his curls until the sun hits them just right, and scratches up a handful by which to pull back his head.
Henry's eyes are gentle, almost girlish really, all heavy lashes and honest love when Hans looks into them. It would be all too easy to drown in them, carried deeper as he is into their depths, were it not for what lies beneath that softness: exhaustion.
"Rest now," he murmurs beneath his breath, feeling light even as Henry's weight presses him into the earth at his request. Hans rubs little circles against the small of Henry's back, he breathes deep of the tangled scents of smoke and sweat trapped within his hair, and he laughs when Henry tries to protest even as they melt together.
Soon, when the snoring starts, Hans finds himself hurting from the happiness.
Because the third thing Henry became to him, he knows, is irreplaceable.
Steam rises from the little wooden tub tucked away deep within the bowels of their ramshackle forge. It curls around their ears as it rises, choking the stone walls until they drip with linden-sweet dew.
An hour of work, back breaking and grueling, is what it took to reach this point. An hour of hauling water from the pond and to the forge, boiling it just enough that it would still be hot when Henry returned, and then carrying it to the tub itself.
Hans has, frankly, never appreciated the bath maids more.
It did, at least, prove worthy of his time. Because even though he'd drawn the water too hot, and even though he'd left the steps muddied where he tripped and spilt his forth cauldron just a little too close to Judith for her comfort, Henry throws his head back and sinks, all heavy bones and and broken sighs as his pale skin goes pink beneath the water.
Hans is there as well, just across from him, both as naked as freshly baptized babes.
They lean over the edges of the tub, too small even just for one of them, let alone the both, and so their legs knock together at awkward angles that leave them shifting against one another until finally they've had enough and Hans says to Henry, "Come here, then."
He spreads his arms wide as he speaks, and feels his chest swell when Henry shifts towards him, the water spilling over the edge as he settles himself between Hans' legs and lets his head fall back upon his shoulder.
There's something about the way Henry goes lax within his arms, as if he knows that for all the weight he carries, Hans can lift it as well, a trust in him that he would sooner die than break—and Hans Capon will never die, he's said as much since he was a freshly blooded boy at the apex of his first hunt.
"Go on then, tell me a story, blacksmith." Hans presses his fingers into the muscles of along Henry's side, kneading his thumbs into the toughest bits and fighting the urge to swallow the sighs he earns from his boy, his man, his Hal.
And Henry, well, Henry does as he always has and falls deeper into that relief, his voice thick with it when finally he remembers to speak. "And what is it his lordship wants to hear? Shall I tell you tales of shoveling shit and plucking turnips?"
"About your day, you cunt." His fingers slip up and over Henry's shoulders, leaving little pale lines along their path.
"C'mon," Henry says, "Since when have you cared about a thing like that?"
Since forever, Hans wants to say, for every day since they'd come together Hans has wondered what it is to be free like Henry is, in that same guilty way a child wonders after the toys of another just because they are not his.
Instead he lets his fingers tangle into Henry's hair and smiles against his shoulder as he gives it a tug. "Questioning your betters already?"
Henry scoffs, an embarrassed little noise more fit for a boy than man, and reaches back to take Hans' other hand in his own.
He tells Hans of how he ran from one side of Kuttenberg to the other, of how he delivered his blade and chased down the butcher to finally pluck that rotten tooth and finally, finally found just the right words to appease the fisher's wife, who pinched his cheeks pink and fed him kolach cakes before he'd left.
Henry says to him, as Hans' thumb glides of his knuckles and the heat seeps deep into their bones, that the guild masters think he shows promise and of how he plans to honor that. He speaks of wild things, like fixing the great abandoned clock at Kuttenbergs heart, so Hans asks him, "And after that?"
I'll build a fountain, he says, just for us.
Hans reaches over the tub, his fingers dancing over wooden ducks and boats until finally they find the pouch Elishka gifted him, wrapping his arms around Henry so that they both might watch as he reveals it's contents.
Soap, of course, and dried linden blossoms tucked away beneath the tallow.
Hans asks Henry, who watches as Hans crushes the petals into a powder he sprinkles into their bath, just the way the wenches do for him, "And where will you build this fountain, Rattay? Here?"
Home, Henry says as he flicks at the wayward petals just to watch them float, Wherever that may be.
Hans lathers the soap between his fingers, then scratches it into the hair behind his squire's ears. He turns Henry's head this way and that, knocking away the dirt and smoke trapped within his little curls, and when he's satisfied he does it one more time just to hear the noises Henry makes when he does.
Because he's sweet like this, and because Hans wants to linger in this space awhile longer, he takes his time soaping down Henry's shoulders, watching as the soot and grime bleed into the water, swirling lines of black and white dancing together as the evidence of a days work is washed away.
Indulging in the way Henry's breathing grows heavy beneath his fingers.
His hands drift down, through the thicket of hair upon Henry's chest, and then lower to where his stomach grows soft again with love and bread and days they'd never thought they'd have. Lower still they go, until Hans' fingers break the waters surface, and Henry arcs back against him with a gasp when they find him below.
Hans is no stranger to this, he's been tugging at himself since the day he discovered his own prick, but it's far sweeter to hear Henry's sighs as he holds Hans' arm still, calloused fingers digging divots where they fall. Henry presses back against Hans, and Hans nearly takes him there for how badly the need settles in his gut.
Instead, he nips again at the shell of Henry's ear and whispers there: "Run out of stories for me already?" Which earns him a laugh that breaks upon a well timed stroke.
"I- You- Fuck!"
"Oh, I plan to." Hans tightens his grip and smiles meanly into the curve of Henry's shoulder. He places the soap in Henry's hand and says to him: "Show me, where you need me, Hal."
The floral sweet scent of linden thickens on his tongue, and the bitter taste of tallow joins it when Hans sinks his teeth into Henry's neck and kisses away the little marks they leave behind. It's nearly suffocating, this heat they've built between them, leaving Hans' head thick with honey-warm thoughts as Henry's lathered hand drifts down too, to join his own, brushing past his knuckles as they travel lower still, and the water sloshes over again where Henry's foot rises to rest over the edge and keep himself spread.
Henry whimpers, burying his face just beneath Hans' jaw, and that greed Hans has always known rears it's head once more as he imagines what joy, what bliss it must be to feel Henry's body welcome him again.
Soon, he'll be reminded, and Henry will know a greater pleasure than fumbling fingers to fall apart on.
"Tell me more about your fountain, Henry."
"Hans-"
"Come on now, don't leave me in suspense."
"It- fuck, it'll be like the one here."
Hans grinds himself up, slipping along the curve of Henry's arse until he can feel where Henry's fingers fumble in their attempt to play his role, and the both of them sigh as one when his prick slips farther and threatens to take their place already.
Henry is speaking nonsense now, babbling about green grass and flat rocks and a home with as many sticks as they might like for which to hit one another black and blue, and then their fountain so that they might preen themselves like birds and wash away each other's bruises and, yes, fuck each other by its edge until they need to bathe again.
Where one hand tugs at Henry's cock until his voice tilts stupid, the other traces circles into his stomach. His fingers know the place of every scar by now, having learned them over countless nights spent seeking out every piece of Henry that Hans hasn't yet owned, until they knew better the story of Henry's body than their own.
Beneath the water, Hans' hand quickens, and he knows so well by now what it means when Henry tenses just the way he does now. Hans can picture it clearly then, the way the little divots at the bottom of Henry's back flex into the perfect shape to fit his thumbs, and all the little noises Henry makes for him crumble into a whimper full of need as he reaches back and curls his fingers into Hans' hair just to have one more reminder this is real.
Hans lowers his face anyways, relishing the pull against his scalp and the scratch of Henry's stubble against his own when their cheeks meet. "Where will our home be?" He asks, not because he's cruel but because he needs to know too of this life Henry wants to build for them.
And Henry, who moans so softly as their bodies slide together, he says to Hans: Wherever you are.
It doesn't matter, fuck, Hans.
He's panting now, turning his head to pepper Hans' chin in wet and desperate kisses as he seeks out his lips. Henry bucks into his hand, and the water blots where his cock leaks, his answers fade away to nothing in the way they always do when Henry starts to drift away, and Hans knows as surely as he knows the forests he'd made his that Hal won't last.
His fist closes tight, white-knuckled and cruel as Hal's cock jerks beneath his fingers, desperate to find a release he won't allow. Henry whines, honest to God, and the sound is nearly enough to break Hans right there.
"You're not allowed to come." He says, donning the airs of a spoiled heir like an old skin he'd left along the bedrock. "Not until I've had my fill."
Hans holds Henry until the shaking stops, even as Hal calls him a spoiled fuck and curses his name.
Frankly, Hans has half a mind to remind Henry that he'd asked for this, but he's found he cares more for Henry's comfort these days than his own, and so he bears every strike against his heart until they're both left raw.
Hans stands, he drags Henry up with him, and finally, finally, he leads Henry to their bed.
Admittedly, Hans hadn't really understood why Henry wanted this. Which isn't to say he wasn't adventurous himself, or that he hadn't tried the same many times before, only that it had never really appealed to him in all the times he'd found himself at the mercy of another.
That changes when he sees Henry fall into their bed, scrambling backwards as Hans stalks over to him.
Written in the wild's law is this: that one must never show fear when staring down a wolf, because to act the prey is to become it.
It must be that hunters instinct, Hans thinks as the bed creaks beneath his weight, that makes him want to drag his tongue along Henry's neck and taste the beating of his rabbit-heart.
The look in Henry's eyes tells him all he needs to know, that Henry wants that just as much as he does.
So he does, he leans down a chews a bruise Henry can't hide away into his skin, relishes the thrum against his teeth, and when Henry tries to touch him—because Henry is just as eager for Hans in truth—Hans slams each hand against the head board, drinking down the gasp Henry makes as he flexes in his hold.
"Keep them there." The command sounds rough, unpracticed, but any doubt is doused when he pulls back and finds Henry frozen there, staring, his body trembling with the need for him.
On their bed is a set of chains.
Freshly polished, every lock checked and rechecked and then checked again in all of Hans' nervous preparations for this night, they catch the amber candlelight as they sway upon their hook just above Henry's hands.
They're for sleeping, Henry had told him the first night when he'd arrived. True enough, that Henry might night such a thing to keep him from wandering, such is the curse that drags him from his bed and to God-knows-where. It's why Henry had shared his bed even before he'd warmed it.
It must have been lonely sleeping here after so many nights together.
Hans shakes the thought from his head, and fastens the manacles around each of Henry's wrists, for they serve a new purpose for him tonight.
Because Henry needs him still, and this time he'll be there.
As the cold steel slips along his wrists, it's as if a spell is broken, and Henry tests his bonds only to find them true.
Hans, ever wanting for more of Henry than he could possibly know, sits back upon his heels and watches. He watches the way Henry's shoulders strain against the chains, just barely broader than him and no less strong, cracked and broken from where the muscle grew to fill out the man he had to be too fast. His chest is covered in hair, darker than whats on his head, and beautiful in it's own way for how it frames each and every dip and divot. There are the scars too, of course. Pale and bright on against his heat-pink skin, earned in the service of lords who never truly deserved him, and Henry shivers each time Hans places his lips to one so he might promise there will never be another, not while he yet breathes.
Henry reaches for him too, oh yes, and whines when he's denied the simple pleasure of holding Hans the way that Hans holds him.
And that's the thing, isn't it? That one simple pleasure he was sure he'd lose the moment it became his. Because Henry is always running, always fighting. All to protect him, all a part of some fool notion that he needed to be saved. Henry had worn himself ragged to save all of the fucking kingdom while Hans wasted his days riding and complaining to a Frenchman.
A fool's notion indeed, to think Hans needed Henry to be anything more than just that: Henry.
He'll make sure that Henry knows. Hans will carve it into every scar with his teeth and chase away each doubt with whatever words he needs, whenever he needs. Not because he's a lord, or because it's his duty, but because he can see it in the exhaustion locked deep in the dark of Henry's eyes, drowning in the softness of his gaze, that Henry needs him now to be the hand that calls him back from the brink he always chases.
So in a low voice, Hans tells him, "Stay still." A gentle command, quieter and yet more sure than the last. Henry, who has never once obeyed him without question in all the months they'd known and loved, does so for the second time that night, all that strength and power going slack beneath Hans' touch.
It's intoxicating almost, to see the way Henry looks at him now. It's the same as he always does when they're alone, and even when they're sometimes not but the love becomes too much, heavy lidded and full of what Hans had never thought to know: pride, the kind he'd imagined only came from a brother or a father who finally looked up from his cups, the kind he knew you'd only ever find in the eyes of one who knew not just your name or your story or even the taste of bitter red upon your tongue.
No, Henry looked at him with the pride and love a man who knew what he could be. It's terrifying to think Henry could know so much that he does not. It's euphoric to think that Hans, however much a fuck up he might well and truly be, can do this one thing right for the only one who'd loved him back.
He shakes away those thoughts, distractions that they are, and smiles as he continues his path down.
Henry's stomach is soft again, a fact that pulls at Hans' heart like a vice when he remembers, and he wonders, grabbing a handful just to prove it's real, if they might one day grow to be fat old men with a fountain fucking lazily in a field of meadowsweet afterall.
Further down, Henry's cock reaches for him, thick and flushed and just as messy as it always is, leaking at just the thought of what Hans might do. Hans gives it a single stroke just to tease, the soft flesh just as yielding and perfectly fit for him as the man himself, and Henry breathes like it'll be his last.
So Hans does it again, and again, until his fingers are sticky with the proof that Henry wants him and he has to remind himself of his own rules for their game.
"Look at you," Hans' voice is low as he releases Henry from his grip, raising up his sullied hand and watching the thick strings that form between his fingers as they separate. Henry is watching too, entranced. "You should at least make me work for it."
"Oh, fuck you…" Henry manages, with none of the bite it should have really.
"Begging too! Never thought I'd see the day."
Henry wants to continue their banter, Hans knows this because he sees the way his brow creases just the same as it always does when he's thinking too hard.
Hans doesn't want him to think at all though, not now, not while he's laid out before him. So, he takes those fingers and brings them to his own lips, savoring the taste of salt against his tongue and wishing, above all else, he could drink it from the source.
Henry has never lasted long for him though, and as flattering as that may be, Hans knows that his blacksmith's boy would break beneath his tongue.
He watches Hans now, his eyes devouring each leisurely stroke of Hans' tongue along his finger. Those lips of his, pretty and pink and kiss-bruised from every moment Hans stole from his day, open just enough to welcome Hans' thumb, should he wish.
And isn't that a thought?
Hans leans in close, and Hal follows until Hans can feel every warm breath against his lips. He wants to seize the moment, Hans wants to kiss Henry slow and deep until he forgets each and every kiss that came before. Hans wants, stupidly, to steal away the memory of Henry's first love and his mill girl and even every bathmaid they'd ever shared. Hans wants even to replace himself, because with every kiss he loves Henry just a little more and one day, one day, it might finally be enough.
Hans wants to lose himself in Henry always, in truth, but he forces himself to have more control than he has had in his entire life and turns away to nose at Henry's jaw.
"Patience, Henry. You'll get your just reward when I'm satisfied." Hans pulls back, and when Henry follows, straining still for his kiss like a lovesick boy, he can't help but laugh, just a little, and Henry's smile upon hearing it is as charming as it is dazed.
Hans presses his fingers to Henry's lips instead, forcing himself to look stern as he pushes Henry's face away. Henry goes without protest, without fighting back, and something about that leaves Hans dizzy with the thought that Henry might do anything he asked of him.
Maybe, just maybe, he didn't even need to ask.
He leaves his finger there, waiting, just to see, and it takes only a moment for Henry to understand, openining his mouth and watching Hans as he presses past his lips. Hans lets himself enjoy that a moment, feeding Henry his own release and relishing the feel of Henry's tongue as it laves his fingers clean. He presses deeper, and Henry's body goes lax as he sighs around them, soft and deep as he loses himself just to this.
"Let's see how well you did for me." Hans says when he finally pulls away, sitting back and gently running his hands along Henry's bare thighs before he smacks them.
He watches then, from where he's perched, as Henry spreads his legs, and Hans' own cock gives a twitch at the sight of all that strength laid out before him, eager and waiting.
Wasting no time, he places both his hands upon the curve of Henry's arse, indulges in a quick squeeze, and opens him.
Hans sucks in a breath at the sight. Henry has always been eager for him, from the very moment they'd first kissed at least, and with every time he's taken Hans his hunger has only grown.
Now, as Hans presses a spit-slicked finger against the pretty pink rim, it takes him as if it's nothing. A second follows, and then a third, and it takes every ounce of Hans' sense to keep him from fucking Henry just like this as they disappear inside of him.
It wouldn't be the first time he's picked him apart like this, watching Henry drool into their bed sheets as his fingers found their mark, but the glaze in Henry's eyes matches Hans' own, and at once he understands that they're each of them gluttons for the other.
"Well…" Henry's voice is low, and just barely above a whisper as he lifts his hips to take Hans deeper. "Did I do good for you…sir?"
"Better than good." Hans lets his fingers slip away, and leans down to kiss the side of Henry's knee when he shivers in protest. "You were perfect for me, Hal."
Finding the oil is quick from there, any doubt erased by the burning need pooling in Hans' gut and the lazy look on Henry's face as he watches, hypnotized, following every languid stroke as Hans slicks his cock more than he probably needs, but he'd never take that gamble with Henry.
And when he's done, when all that's left is to make Henry his, Hans tells him once more not to move, not yet, and takes hold of the chain holding Henry's arms aloft. He takes it from its hook, watching as Henry rolls his shoulder and looks at him in confusion before Hans tell him, "Turn around."
Euphoric, the feeling in Hans' body when Hal complies, rolling onto his stomach and propping himself up upon his knees, presenting himself.
"Do you trust me still?"
"More than anything, sir."
"Then give me you hands."
It takes a moment for Henry to work out how, but he slides his bound hands between his legs until Hans can grasp the chain connecting them and guide Henry where he needs to be, securing them too the footboard.
The sight of Henry like this, spread out and entirely at Hans' mercy, and the knowledge that Henry had wanted this above all else, that he trusted him this deeply, is sweeter to Hans than any promise heaven ever made.
He kisses Henry's shoulder first, whispers his praise into the space between his shoulders, and then slaps the head of his cock against Henry's hole just to hear the breath leave his lungs again.
Hans asks him: "Is this what you want?"
And it is, mercifully, Henry mouths his plea as he strains to look over his shoulder, trying to find the words to beg properly somewhere within the scramble Hans has left of him. Yet even as he presses himself deeper into the mattress and arches his back until Hans can see the muscles strain, it's not enough.
So Hans brings his hand down, leaves a pretty red mark along the side of Henry's arse, and allows the facade to break for just a moment, flinching at the sharp intake of breath Henry makes before it settles into a sigh.
"If you want it so badly," Hans' voice is rough now, close to losing himself as he massages the hurt away, "You'll have to beg."
It's a cruel request, Henry's been begging this whole time, with every twitch of his brow and loss of breath. With every flex of his muscles and obeyed command, Henry begs with all he can because he knows as well as Hans that when this fever takes him, it takes his voice as well. It's all he can do, really, to push back as far as he can, just far enough for the broad head of Hans' cock to press against the rim, but no farther.
Hans lets them sit like that a moment, every muscle in him screaming to thrust inside and finally give them both what they so desperately crave, until finally he says to Henry: "Go on then, take what you want."
Hans had worried, that very first time, that Henry wouldn't like it.
It would be understandable really, to be taken as a wench is hardly the first choice of most sane men surely, and Hans knew well that even maids sometimes shied away from taking him when they learned of his size.
He'd been prepared to switch, to offer up himself for Henry's use if that's what it took.
He needn't have been concerned.
From the first moment Hans had been inside of him, Henry had made clear with every moan it's where he'd always belonged. He took Hans better than any whore, always begging him for more, to go deeper, to take him harder.
Now is no different, Henry's body yielding for him as Hans presses himself inside, sighing in satisfaction as that familiar warmth surrounds him. He grants Henry two shallow thrusts just to tease, then seats himself fully on the third, drinking in the sounds Henry makes as he does.
Hans digs his fingers into the sides of Henry's hips, too light at first, so he digs them in deeper until he can feel the bruises blooming beneath his grip.
It's easy, you see, to read his Hal. He wears every want upon his sleeve, so much so that words are unnecessary when it's just the two of them like this. Hal's desires were just another language, and with every new thrust Hans became more fluent.
And Henry knows, he must, that Hans would give him anything. Hans would grant his every wish, no matter how shameful or strange. Henry must know, above all else, that he'll always be safe with Hans.
He tells Henry as much, grabbing a fistful of that sweat-soaked hair. He says to him, I have you, Hal, and kisses behind Henry's ear before letting him fall again.
Then, because he knows well what it means when Henry's thighs begin to shake and his whimpering goes silent, Hans goes harder, pressing down on Henry's back as he lifts himself up to drive himself as deep as he can. The slick sounds of slapping flesh and the creaking of elderwood echo along the stone walls as Henry's skull thuds against the bedframe, and Hans bites his own lip to keep from thanking God as Henry tightens around his cock and spills onto the bedsheets.
Hans takes from Henry three more before he follows, a record they'll have time to laugh about later, and his fingers can't work fast enough to release Henry from his chains so that they can collapse together.
There's a dream-like look in Henry's eyes as Hans kisses him, the very same one he gets on his more restless nights, but with none of the fear, and his lips curl against Hans' own as they mold together.
It's in the twi-lit dark, long after the last of their candles have burnt to waxen stumps and the sweat has cooled upon their skin, that Henry comes back to him.
He's sluggish at first, like moving against a spring-chilled current as he reaches up to brush side of Hans' cheek. His eyes are wide and wild and searching until they settle in Hans' own, and all at once the fear of waking is gone.
Hans cups the hand against his cheek in his own and turns to kiss it, once, twice, and as many more times as it takes to satisfy him in this haze.
He tells Henry, in this space where he could tell him anything, of their green grass and little fountain. He promises Henry it will be blue, or red, of maybe even green; the color of their home away from home.
He thinks of Škoda, who built or stole one of his own for Magdaléna and kissed her so sweetly they'd forgotten the pain of yesterday within those walls and promises Henry the same.
They'll plant a linden tree, he swears, right beside the garden. And in spring, when the meadows grow sweet again and the belladonna blossoms, he'll kiss Henry stupid beneath its branches and weave him a crown fit for a king.
And as their eyes grow heavy and their limbs fall limp, when they are naught but two lovesick boys entangled on a heady summer night, he thinks of every night that may come after.
He promises, smiling against Henry's brow, to make them good.