Chapter Text
The fall of 1588 was, unfortunately for Rico, shaping up to be no better than summer, or spring, or any season that had come before it.
First there had been the nastiness in his hometown that had forced him away from business in Holland—not his idea, but war was war, and Rico generally did his best to do as he was told. Only that nastiness had turned out to be a Spanish battle column, which had turned out to be a Spanish siege force, and practically overnight his brief sojourn home had morphed into a two-month clusterfuck of frankly epic proportions.
The relief force was close at hand, at least, but not close enough. As if the whole thing wasn’t miserable enough, once he finally had been relieved, his complaints fell on deaf ears. The army was spread thin—that much was true—but apparently if he was so upset about how far away relief forces were at any given time, it was up to him to wrangle the most rebellious of the rebel troops so that they could be at least slightly closer at hand.
So Rico has been turned loose into the countryside to locate their bloodthirsty little lions and drag them back into the loving embrace of the rebel army, teeth and claws and all. He’d been briefed, though not well. The IJssel is lined with pockets of rebel camps. Many came from Brabant; some came from Limburg. They follow the disgraced Lord Verstappen, a refugee from Spanish territory. They hadn’t been resupplied in months and were expected to be in a sorry state.
A sorry state is not what greets him.
His guide leads him across mucky ground that gives way to wooden planks weaving between rows of tents. The smell of woodsmoke wars with decaying leaves and mud. No doubt the Spanish can smell the fires and the meat cooking far beyond their little camp concealed by the treeline. Rico doubts they know how many people are hidden here, though.
They come to a stop in front of a tent near the camp’s center. It’s identical to all the others, and Rico shoots his guide a skeptical look. The man just ducks his head before stepping aside.
Rico clears his throat and pushes through the flap.
A handful of people occupy the space within. A farmboy is seated near the fire, staring into the flames. A young envoy dressed in French colors stands behind a table covered in maps and tiny battle figurines. And there, seated behind the table, an exhausted looking man is rubbing his eyebrows with one hand and holding a stack of scrawled papers in the other.
Rico removes his hat and steps forward. “Lord Max Emilian of House Verstappen, I presume. My name is Rico Verhoeven, third emissary of the Duke of Brabant. I’m here on behalf of the States-General.”
Silence greets him.
“I believe they warned you I was coming,” he tacks on lamely.
Verstappen purses his lips into a thin line. His papers meet the tabletop with a soft thwap. He says nothing.
Behind him, the envoy straightens. “State your business, Verhoeven,” he says smoothly in French.
Rico glances at Verstappen uncertainly, then addresses his counterpart. “As their letter suggested, the states wish to extend their well-wishes toward his lordship and congratulate him on this battalion’s success.”
“I am sorry to say that no letter reached us here,” the envoy answers politely. “We are poorly connected to traditional supply lines, as I am sure you have seen. We are working to seize the river, which will better connect this region with the north.”
“It will,” Rico allows, eyes flicking to Verstappen and back, “though I’m afraid Brabant’s need for aid now is much greater than her ability to develop infrastructure to support it.”
“I do not believe we requested any aid,” the Frenchman answers politely, his green eyes wide.
“No,” Rico says, biting off an incredulous laugh. “No, forgive me…”
“Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc, Viscount of Savoy,” he blinks, then rattles off a series of monikers too rapid and too French to parse.
Rico ducks his head. “It’s an honor, my lord. The States-General understands nobody here sent for aid. I’m afraid other cities in the province have still requested it. They would greatly benefit from the…fluidity of their neighbors in responding to local matters, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
“You mean the siege in Bergen op Zoom,” Leclerc replies patiently. “We were not ordered there by the States-General, of course. This company is not equipped for field battles.”
“Can you drill?”
He scoffs lightly. “Of course we can drill.”
Still seated behind the table, Verstappen just watches Rico with impassive grey eyes. Rico wishes he would say something. His silence is unsettling.
“I heard the siege in Bergen op Zoom lasted several months,” Leclerc continues in the same soft, polite tone. “It is a good thing it did not last longer. Starving cities to surrender is a terrible part of war. Shameful,” he adds, his eyes clear and wide. “This is why supply lines are of great interest to us. We are not equipped for field battles, but had we been given orders, we would have come to the city’s aid.” He shrugs softly. “But we did not receive any, just like we did not receive your letter. We are quite remote, after all.”
Rico feels his jaw tense. There’s a headache forming behind his eyes that he refuses to acknowledge. “Had you been closer to other rebel forces,” he bites out, “you may have been more easily reached.”
“So you want us to fall back,” a soft voice rasps.
Three sets of eyes snap to the farm boy, still warming his hands in front of the small fire. Rico’s eyes flick over him quickly: his lace-lined shirt a soft shade of blue, perhaps once precious but now loose and nearly threadbare; dark breeches and darker boots in the oversized style that the peasants favor; no doublet or cloak. The collar of his shirt dips low and then comes together again, fastened below his throat with a floppy knot.
The details are unimportant, Rico thinks, tearing his gaze away. He’s unarmed and wiry, not a threat by any meaning of the word. Rico’s hackles lower, but when he turns back to Verstappen the man is just watching him as if waiting for Rico to answer the boy’s statement.
He sighs. “It’s not about what I want, it’s about what’s best for the country,” Rico says.
“No orders ever reached us,” the farm boy replies, echoing the Frenchman’s previous words and drawing Rico’s attention to the other side of the tent once more. His eyes leave the fire finally, and Rico is abruptly faced with piercing, stormy blue. “It is not because we are remote and it is not because we are unequipped for field battles. It is because no orders were ever sent. The siege lasted for two months for the same reason they always do. The north couldn’t agree on whether it was worth it to help or not.”
Rico blinks.
“I am sorry it happened this way,” the boy adds. “I know who you are, of course, and I know you were there. I have been on both sides of sieges and I know it is never good. Perhaps those in the Hague have forgotten how it feels to starve, though I don’t know how anyone could.” He sneezes into his elbow.
“You should be resting,” Leclerc mutters, but the farm boy waves him off.
Rico turns back to Verstappen, but the man just sighs and scrubs a hand over the top of his bald head.
The control of the northern provinces had been a particularly sticky matter last month when Rico had been assigned to make this trip. Verstappen’s home province straddles the defensive line between rebel and royalist territories, and its people have no representation within either territory because of it. Verstappen had been disinherited by his father when he’d defected, but that had hardly mattered. In the eyes of the people he still has a claim to the title, and all that power would be his for the taking provided he manages to somehow unite the territory under a single flag.
So far, the rebel north assumed he either wouldn’t be able to do it, or he would have no interest in matters of state even if he did show surprising military prowess with his ragtag army. This resentment against the states’ government is a rude awakening, and it won’t go over well with the north.
“Are you interested in matters of state, Lord Verstappen?” Rico asks lightly.
Verstappen snorts, his eyes brightening with mirth as he finally decides to speak. “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him that, won’t you?” he says in what is decidedly an English accent. He turns to the farm boy. “What do you think, Max? How do you feel about working at the Hague?”
“I’d rather choke on a musket, mate,” the farm boy grunts.
No, not the farm boy. Max. Max Emilian Verstappen.
“Ah. There you go,” the Englishman replies, oblivious to Rico’s stupor. He gives Rico a congenial smile. “You can report that back to them. I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear it.”
At a loss, Rico studies the boy with fresh eyes: boots worn loose with age, the traces of finery clinging to his dirty clothes. Something hard in the lines of his shoulders screams nobility, but only now that Rico is looking for it.
He kicks himself mentally. He should have known. The boy before him may be more a cub than the lion Rico had prepared to face, but it’s been a long time since he underestimated someone for their size.
Besides, he should have recognized him by his eyes alone: Verstappen eyes, icy blue—petrifyingly so.
“I thought you’d be older,” Rico blurts before he can stop himself.
Verstappen’s lips downturn in a scowl. Those sharp eyes grow sharper. “I’m seventeen.”
“You’re seventeen.”
“Perfectly reasonable age to go to war. He’s seventeen,” he adds, gesturing at Leclerc.
Leclerc scowls too. “I’m more mature than you.”
“Whatever,” Verstappen scoffs, turning back to Rico. “Listen, I frankly don’t give a fuck about working in government, so you can go ahead and tell them that. Believe it or not, some of us have more important things to do than sit around all day squabbling about politics. No offense,” he adds. “I know you probably understand that. Unless they have orders for me, though, I don’t really care what they get up to.”
Rico purses his lips.
“They have given orders, right?” the Englishman tacks on.
“No orders,” Rico answers. “I wasn’t lying. You can call this a friendly visit; nothing more.” His eyes drift to the desk behind which the Englishman still sits—the piles of letters in four different languages; the maps and plans and the battle figurines set along the ink line that represents the IJssel. A handful of tiny orange and blue men face off against a veritable wall of red porcelain horses. “I’m sure the States-General will be pleased to hear you’re doing well here.”
“Send them my regards,” Verstappen replies in as flat a tone as Rico has ever heard. He sneezes again. “Sorry again about the siege.”
Rico grunts. “It’s been a pleasure. My lords,” he nods to Verstappen and Leclerc. He realizes belatedly he still doesn’t know the Englishman’s name or title, nor does he care. He sends the man a simple nod before stepping out of the tent and retracing his steps down the boardwalk to where his horse is waiting.
At least his higher-ups will be pleased. Verstappen poses no threat; a child has no hope of conquering anything. Even if the people were willing to rally behind someone so young, he has no hope of defeating the Spanish army on his own. Rico spares a brief thought for Leclerc and the Englishman, and however many of their countrymen the two have dragged into this mess. They’re guaranteed to be dead within the month.
It’s just like the inevitable loss of the ground beneath their boots, he thinks to himself grimly as he mounts his horse. An unfortunate sacrifice, but not a particularly noteworthy one. Not worth shedding tears over.
He can feel the weight of those cold blue eyes long after the camp has disappeared behind him.
By the time Rico has returned home, the little camp on the IJssel is far from his mind. He winters with a handful of his men, and as the sun thaws the frost on the first clear day in spring he tries his best to avoid thinking of everything they might’ve lost to the snow.
Between visits to the Hague and border skirmishes with the Spanish, the years pass quickly. They manage to press further south into Brabant that year, swallowing precious territory back into the embrace of the north, and they retake Breda the year after that. Over time they learn that water is the Low Countries’ greatest weapon: flooded farmlands, rainy marshes, the merchant ships braving the coastline and the army weaving skiffs deftly through the waterways inland. Ships can carry them across their territory much more efficiently than the soggy, uneven marshlands can.
Water is the key to winning the war. They need to control the rivers. Three years and a handful of months after he left the camp behind himself, Rico is sent back to the muddy banks of the IJssel.
He rides from Breda to Zutphen, narrowly arriving behind the full force of the rebel army. From Zutphen he’s given orders to ride further north to where a small garrison was sent to secure the supply lines upriver, allowing rations and munitions to travel through.
There have been skirmishes, he’s told, and mines were being detonated late into the evening. The rebel army is in control, though not for the enemy’s lack of trying. He’s told to expect a fight, and he arrives in full battle armor just as the sun peeks up above the horizon.
He needn’t have bothered.
Even so early in the day the air is heavy, the promise of the summer sun dragging fog up from the damp, peaty ground. It drifts over the gentle grass and wars for space with the gunpowder that still lingers in the sky. The air tastes of stale battle, but any fight that had happened here is long since over. In the trees, the birds sing to welcome the sun.
The camp appears just below a ridge of low hills as he approaches from the road, the tents lined up across a field in orderly rows of creamy white. As he draws near the familiar signs of a garrison at peace greet him: the soft whinnies of horses, voices chattering, and the smell of meat cooking somewhere nearby.
To his left, the IJssel swallows a broad swathe of countryside up into its slow, dark expanse.
The riverbank is lined with scraggly trees, and he leaves his horse to graze below a small poplar as he dismounts and paces closer to the water’s edge. The current drifts by sluggishly, carrying a gaggle of ducks with it. On the other bank, smoke is still hanging low over the water, as if whatever fire caused it was only just put out. The river drifts onward, oblivious.
Something splashes into the water just beyond the bushes.
His head snaps around toward the source of the sound, his hand immediately on the hilt of his sword. There’s something moving beyond the brambles just a few meters away from shore. He cranes his head to peer over the soft leaves.
A man bursts upward out of the glassy water, his hands pushing his sopping wet hair out of his face.
He’s facing away from Rico, his broad shoulders glistening, and Rico lets out a breath as he realizes he hasn’t been spotted. He watches as the man shakes his head, droplets glittering as they’re thrown from his hair. The water that slides down his back leaves pale lines in its wake, sweeping the russet tone from his skin and splashing down where the river laps at the base of his spine.
Blood.
It’s clinging to him—every inch of him, practically—but he doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. He splashes under the surface again in one long wave of motion, his body following his head under the current, and then he stands to his full height as he scoops up handfuls of water and uses them to scrub the blood and grime off his chest in quick, efficient passes. The soft trickles of the water pick out a countermelody to the birdsong and the whisper of the grass.
The man shakes his hair out again, and Rico is just close enough to catch a glimpse of his side profile—strong features softened by his melancholy eyes and his full, plush mouth.
It has been a few years, and he’s grown. His shoulders are more muscular than Rico remembers, criss-crossed with awkward tan lines. His youthful wiriness has been replaced by the hardiness brought by war. Still, his face is one the pamphlet artists in Amsterdam love to render, whether his features are exaggerated out of ridicule or softened by fondness.
Rico would have to be blind not to recognize Verstappen.
The whole display is like the river itself—as vulgar as it is beautiful, almost grotesque. A sight so idyllic shouldn’t be stained with blood; a place so peaceful shouldn’t bear witness to whatever horrors have occurred here. The current continues to drift along, carrying the blood along with it. It makes him sick to his stomach.
And this man: innocent yet murderous, so at peace and yet so clearly a threat. Rico isn’t sure how such contradictions are able to exist.
Behind him, someone clears their throat.
Verstappen’s head snaps around, his eyes widening as they meet Rico’s before they flit to something just behind him. With his hand tightening on his sword for the second time in as many minutes, Rico spins.
The man picking his way across the grass raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Who are you?” he asks.
“Rico Verhoeven,” Rico blurts out. “I rode from Zutphen.”
The man’s other eyebrows joins his first. He peers over Rico’s shoulder. “Were we expecting someone from Zutphen?” he calls.
Rico turns to the sound of rhythmic sloshing just in time to see Verstappen wading back to shore. Water drips down his now-clean chest and catches in his belly button. His waist is pale and narrow, tight with wiry muscle, but the barest softness clings just below the crook of his hips and begs for Rico’s touch.
Rico has just enough time to register his cock, soft and pink against his thigh, then Max’s eyes on his own and a slow grin spreading across his face. He snaps his gaze firmly away and up toward the smoke still drifting through the sky, swallowing hard.
Nudity around an army camp is nothing unfamiliar to him. The second stupidest thing he could do is ogle someone who’s just trying to wash off the grime of battle.
The first stupidest thing he could do is be embarrassed when he’s caught.
If Verstappen’s comrade is at all shocked by the display, he doesn’t say anything.
“I brought new clothes,” he huffs. “Are you clean?”
“I just got out of a river, do I look clean to you?” Verstappen grunts back. “Who’s this?”
“Rico Verhoeven,” the man says loftily before Rico can respond. “He rode from Zutphen.”
Cloth rustles, and Rico lets out a breath when he looks down to see that those gorgeous pale curves are now obscured by a wrinkled linen towel.
“Verhoeven,” Verstappen muses. “Why does that sound familiar?”
Rico swallows. “Lord Verstappen—”
“Just Max, please. I’m not a lord.”
“There are some who would disagree with that,” Rico says. “Your men, first and foremost.”
Verstappen—Max—tilts his head. “Would you?”
“As I understand it, you’re the rightful heir to the Duchy of Limburg. Not according to the Spanish, maybe, but nobody cares what they think.”
Max snorts, startled, and his eyes crinkle with amusement. He wordlessly takes the shirt the other man offers him, pulling it over his head. It falls just low enough to hide his cock, and Rico tells himself firmly that the shadow falling below the hem isn’t drawing his eyes.
“I remember you,” Max says through his laughter. He ties his collar into a quick, efficient knot; stands on one leg at a time as he pulls on his breeches. “You came to see us two years ago, didn’t you? You wanted to see if the States-General should be worried.”
“That’s…” Max is smarter than Rico may have originally given him credit for. He changes tactics. “You’ve become a valuable asset. I was sent here to see if you needed aid.”
Max quirks an eyebrow. “Aid,” he repeats with a slow onceover across Rico’s armored torso.
“Yeah, in battle. Someone to watch your back,” Rico offers.
“The battle’s over,” Max says with a pointed glance around them. “Only took a few hours.”
“The fort only took a few hours,” Rico echoes, skeptical.
He gets a shrug in return. “We Trojan Horse’d it. Like Breda.”
“Trojan Horse’d.”
“Yeah. You’re welcome to stick around, though. Want breakfast?”
As if on cue, Rico’s stomach growls.
He follows Max through camp, half-dazed as he tries to take in his surroundings while Max chats in front of him, pointing out various tents and occasionally stopping to greet his men. Tent is orderly, Rico notes, and unusually clean. The battalion hasn’t been here long, yet everything is under control. The atmosphere is calm; almost uncannily so.
Rico had fully prepared to ride into battle that morning, a gun on either thigh and his sword on his back. Instead, he’s assigned a tent and given steak and eggs to eat while Max chatters away about ancient siege tactics, his little battle figurines marching in lines between their plates.
Territory secured. Holding for orders, Rico writes on a scrap of paper that’s hurriedly whisked away by a messenger.
“That’s our biggest weakness,” Max is telling him through a mouthful of steak. “Our lack of men puts us at a disadvantage in sieges, and we don’t have the strength to face off against the Tercio in field battles. We’re quick and light, though, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. We make a good reconnaissance force, and guerilla tactics have proven to be very effective.”
“Right,” Rico says.
His eyes are fixed on Max’s fingertips: his pink, clean skin and his tidy nails. His grip is very careful around the red porcelain.
“The Spanish are so focused on brute strength that they forget to think of other options. It’s easy not to, when you’re so used to having brawn on your side. Maybe you think in a similar way.”
“What?” Rico startles.
Max’s lips twitch. “I mean that you look very strong.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
The tent’s flap rustles, and Rico turns to look over his shoulder as a familiar bald-headed man pushes his way through, his eyes trained on a stack of papers in his hands.
“Max, whatever you’ve put this requisition in for, it’s not going to work,” he says, stumbling somewhat blindly toward the little foldable table where the two of them are seated. “If you want to talk about a plan—”
Rico clears his throat quietly. Grey eyes snap up, squint, then turn their accusatory gaze on Max.
“GP,” Max says politely, “Rico Verhoeven from the States-General. Rico, this is Gianpiero Lambiase. He commands the English battalion we’ve been traveling alongside for the past few years.”
“Pleasure,” Gianpiero tells him, though the twist of his mouth informs Rico that it’s quite the opposite. “I do believe I remember you came to see us a few years ago. Emissary from Brabant, was it?”
Rico takes his offered hand. “Your Dutch has gotten better.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Did you come to fill out a report?”
“Something like that,” Rico replies. “I’m here to offer aid until they call me back.”
“Well, we appreciate the thought, though I’m not sure how much aid we really need. Max,” he says, the sharp attention of his gaze pivoting just like that. Wordlessly, he places his papers down in front of Max’s breakfast. A few of the little porcelain horses go toppling over.
Max’s mouth scrunches into a moue. “Don’t worry about it,” he murmurs. “I’ve already sent them the money. I was just explaining to Rico about how we’ve come to rely on untraditional tactics.”
“Is that so?” Gianpiero lowers himself slowly into the seat between them. “And that’s why you didn’t run this requisition by the others, I suppose?”
Max shrugs, his attention back on his food. “No need. I know it’s going to work,” he says. “This has always been our strength: moving quickly, working together, and thinking differently. The others will only agree with me. Hell, eventually the other battalions will learn, too. You’ll see,” he adds for Rico’s benefits. “This is how we’re going to win the war.”
Accompany battalion to Deventer and await further orders, the States’ message reads the next morning.
They proceed to Deventer.
Whatever Max had submitted a requisition for, it doesn’t reach them by the time they make camp, and the matter remains a mystery. Max is sullen as he meets with his advisors to discuss strategies: Gianpiero, and a handful of others who Rico is introduced to quickly but then forgets the names of even faster. The men are a mix of Dutch, English and French, though Rico isn’t quite sure of the breakdown.
“We need recon done tonight,” one of the men—Callum?—pipes up toward the end of the meeting. “I can ride out once we’re done and take a look at the fortifications, at the very least. It’s better to do it under the cover of darkness.”
“You’re not going until your shoulder is healed,” someone else replies.
“I’ll go,” Max says, and there’s immediate uproar.
“Absolutely not,” Gianpiero’s voice cuts through. “Not after last time.”
“It makes the most sense,” Max argues. He waves a hand, the voices quieting around him. “I have the fastest horse, I’m quieter on my own, Greg is still injured, Charles isn’t back yet, Matt doesn’t even have a horse—”
“Who will go with you, then? You’re not going alone,” Gianpiero says.
All eyes turn to Rico.
“I did come here to help,” Rico offers.
“Problem solved, then,” Max says. “Get ready. We’ll leave in ten minutes.” With a pointed look to Gianpiero, he turns and leaves the tent.
Callum turns to Rico as the others break out into quiet conversation. “Don’t let him out of your sight,” he warns. “He’ll try to slip away, but you can’t let him.”
“Why? What happened last time?”
“The kid just thinks he’s invincible. Everyone’s waiting for him to learn the hard way that he’s not, but he’s been too lucky so far.”
“I’ll look after him,” Rico promises. “It’s not my first battle. He’s safe with me.”
“I hope for your sake that’s true.” Callum claps his arm. “Be careful. Some of us are starting to like you. It would be a shame if something happened.”
Rico snorts. “Trust me, I’m hard to kill.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. I mean be careful with him, though,” Callum warns. “If anything happens to him, you won’t last to morning.”
Of course, Rico is cursing Callum’s name two hours later.
He pours another stream of liquor across his shoulder wound, fighting to hold back his grunt of pain as dirt, blood and gunpowder are washed away. Maybe Callum should have worried about Rico a bit more, or at least gone to the effort not to jinx him.
It’s barely more than a graze—mostly bad luck, if he’s being honest. He and Max had made it halfway across the tree-dotted field that surrounded the fort before the whinnying and footfalls of their horses began to sound just a little too loud to their own ears, and they’d been forced to abandon them for fear of being caught.
Max had led the two of them closer to the fort’s walls, and they’d nearly been right below them when a bullet had whizzed by, practically taking Rico’s ear off in the process.
Rico hadn’t hesitated before shoving Max bodily into a ditch, sheltering him with his own body and pressing him down into the safety of the earth.
“When they reload we’ll run,” Max said to him, his eyes wide in the darkness.
Rico had nodded, and as soon as the gunfire paused they stood up and ran in a half crouch all the way down the ditch, away from the fort’s wall. The very last bullet had grazed past Rico’s shoulder in a parting kiss.
Lucky him, he thinks, pouring brandy over the wound and biting his lip hard to keep from gasping out at the sting.
When the pain has lessened enough not to throw sparks behind his eyelids he wraps the wound, then takes a long swig of liquor and falls back against his cot. Outside, camp is quiet. The white canvas walls of his tent flicker softly with the glow of braziers outside. He closes his eyes against the sight, and his alcohol-addled mind is filled immediately with images of Max instead.
He understands why the men speak about him the way they do, now. Rico had heard about his self-sacrificial streak before he’d even made it back to the IJssel, and he knows how much that kind of thing can mean to units like this one—a commander who’s willing to go through the same discomfort as his men, and more if it will alleviate their burden; a man who’s willing to put himself into harm’s way rather than see that harm befall someone who made him an oath. It’s the kind of attitude that makes men into legends; a trait that buys loyalty worth more than any coin.
Still, it doesn’t account for what Rico saw tonight.
Max moves across a battlefield like no bullet can touch him; like he isn’t afraid of anything at all. It’s not recklessness. Rico has met enough reckless madmen. Max’s eyes were clear and his posture was settled. He moved like he was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t going to be hurt.
It’s no wonder he’s ensnared the affection of seasoned war veterans, the loyalty of foreign ambassadors, and the suspicion of anyone whose power he could legally claim if he so chose. It’s the report that Rico now desperately owes the States-General—that Max Verstappen is very much a threat, and they should be incredibly concerned about what will happen if he manages to recapture his home province and claim his rightful title.
There’s something stopping him; something that drives him to take another swig of liquor rather than reaching for his pen—the same thing making his breeches tight and his fingers tremble.
Max fights like a god and walks like a king, but when Rico had shoved him down against the earth and sheltered Max’s body with his own, he was only a man.
His breath was hot against Rico’s throat when it rushed out of him at the force of his fall. His eyes were wide and startled, his gloved hands pressed to Rico’s chest as if his first instinct had been to try uselessly to push Rico away. He looked so young. His cheekbones were so delicate, the tip of his nose bitten pink by cold. His eyelashes were very long and very, very soft.
And then the bullets started flying, and he relaxed into the dirt. Something gentle swept across his face; something like wonderment at the fact that so new an acquaintance felt the need to protect him. Maybe he really is immortal. Maybe he was wondering why Rico had bothered to risk his own life for him at all.
The pink of his nose spread across his delicate cheekbones, then the glowing shells of his ears. Rico knew then and there that he’d rather take a hundred bullets than see that beautiful face pinched with pain.
It’s a ridiculous thought. They both have jobs. They’re fighting a war that started long before either of them were born, that’s cost more lives than either of them can comprehend and will most likely be the cause of both their eventual deaths.
Still though—still.
His thoughts are interrupted by a soft whimper.
He freezes, listening. There’s no telltale sound of footsteps or soft clink of armor. Nothing is moving. It’s a full moon, a poor night for an ambush, and he’d seen the guards not half an hour ago as he returned to his tent for the night. They’re safe, so surely—
Another soft noise, then cloth rustles in the tent next door to his own.
Max’s tent.
There’s no way. He struggles to convince himself even as his own cock twitches, but the now-rhythmic sound of rustling cloth is unmistakable. If he strains to listen he can just make out soft, panting breaths and the wet sounds of skin on skin.
Max is getting off barely three paces away from him, separated by a few sheets of canvas. Max is touching himself—Max who barely more than an hour ago was pressed against Rico’s chest, sheltered against his body, looking up at him in wonderment.
There’s another whimper, this time muffled by something—cloth? Skin? Rico needs to know what he’s doing to himself all at once: whether he prefers his own touch to be wet or dry, what he has in his mouth, what he looks like—
His own cock twitches at the thought. It’s wrong to get off like this; impolite, even. Army camps have a sense of decorum about such things, as packed together as they all constantly are. The proper thing to do would be to roll over and try his best to ignore it.
Still, Max isn’t exactly playing fair by sounding so beautiful mere paces away from where Rico is meant to be resting.
He lets out a shaky breath and unties his breeches, sliding his hand below the hem to circle his cock. The head is already tacky, and he smears the moisture across his skin as he takes himself into his hand fully and builds a slow rhythm, straining to listen to the soft sounds of the neighboring tent.
Max doesn’t need to know. It’s fine; this happens sometimes. Max will never find out, and if he does neither of them will acknowledge it. There’s no privacy in camps like these.
Rico would want Max somewhere private, if he were ever allowed to touch him the way Max is touching himself now. He would want to keep every tiny gasp and moan to himself.
Max chokes out a soft sound. His pace quickens. Rico can just barely hear the rhythmic smacking of it, and he does his best to match it at risk of Max hearing. His toes curl against his bedroll as pleasure zips up his spine.
Yes, he’d want Max somewhere private where he could be as loud as he wanted—where he wouldn’t have to muffle himself. Rico would want to see his face; his plush mouth; his beautiful eyes, that piercing blue going soft as he fell apart under Rico’s hands.
He’d want to take him somewhere far from the war where they wouldn’t have to look over their shoulders. He’d want to take his time with him.
The sounds in the other tent go abruptly quiet. There’s a quick rustle, then a broken, cut off whimper, like Max had tried to come silently but hadn’t quite managed it.
Rico would want him to be loud, he thinks, crazed. He would want to watch him let himself go. How long now has Max spent in army camps, trying to bite back the sounds of his own pleasure? How long has it been since someone coaxed it out of him—held him down, worked him over, took him apart until he couldn’t hold anything back anymore—
He squeezes his eyes shut as he comes across his own fingers. He can’t quite hold back the soft groan, and belatedly he prays that Max is too tired, too disoriented and too wrapped up in his own blankets to hear.
He can always excuse it away tomorrow. He’ll say he was tending to his wound and the sting of the liquor had made him groan. He can say he was asleep—that he never heard anything from the tent beside his own, and that his own gasps and moans must have been from a nightmare. He’ll happily accept whatever ribbing it gets him.
He wipes his hand off on the towel next to his bedroll, then rolls over and shuts his eyes. If he listens closely, he can just make out Max’s still-ragged breaths a few paces away.
If Max knows or cares about what transpired in Rico’s tent the night before, he doesn’t show it the next morning.
“Two new battlements were added since we last mapped it out,” he tells the men just after breakfast, his closest advisors huddled around the wooden table in the center of his tent.
Standing in the back, Rico is just tall enough to be able to see over their heads to where Max is stabbing at a map with his finger. Part of him wishes he couldn’t. The tent is large, a central square with two tiny wings. The square is where they’re all standing, but Rico is just tall enough to see across the room to where the canvas curtain that closes off one of the wings is hanging ever so slightly open.
Max’s bedroll is visible in the shadows: soft furs and linens with a stack of books sitting beside them. He wonders if they’re all military history texts, or if something in that pile had gotten Max riled up the night before. He wonders if his come is still smeared on the linen somewhere.
He clears his throat sharply and forces his eyes back to the pile of maps.
“Guns here, here and here,” Max is saying, placing little figurine cannons as he goes. “This rampart is the best patrolled, though it doesn’t help us much. There’s marshland on the other side of the fort.”
“Not much we can do on that side, then,” GP mutters. “Can we tunnel?”
“We’d have to wait for the tide to go out, and even then the groundwater might still be too high for it to work.”
“What about the ditches?” Rico finds himself asking.
Icy blue eyes snap up to meet his own.
“We hid in a ditch when they started firing at us last night,” Rico adds for the benefit of the others. “It was deep. It looked like an old trench.”
“The Spanish entrenched here thirty years ago,” GP replies, frowning. “They have to be fairly decayed by now.”
“They were, but they were still deep enough to provide cover.”
“We could use that,” Max murmurs.
A general grumble spreads through the room.
“We’re not equipped for a siege,” Callum pipes up.
“They don’t know that, though,” Max answers. “They won’t be able to tell how many of us are in the trenches, just that they’re being surrounded. Well, not surrounded.” He traces out the southern half of the map. “Just this side. If they think we’re entrenching there, they won’t be as focused on the north. Why would they? It’s just useless marshland and an old canal. We can’t dig in it, so there’s no point in them watching it.”
“Even if you draw fire to the south, they won’t just step aside and let us waltz through the canal,” someone says.
Max just hums.
The strategy meetings continue all through the week. Their list of attendees grows shorter and shorter every time until finally it’s just Max and GP, arguing long into the hours of the night, the command tent flickering softly with candlelight.
When the voices go quiet and the candlelight moves to the little annexed space that holds Max’s bedroll, Rico lays back and listens.
It’s like clockwork. Pages turn softly against each other for half an hour, then the light disappears. Then, music—Max’s soft whimpers and gasps and the whisper of skin on skin.
And if Rico can’t help but clamp his jaw around his blankets as he gets a hand on himself, well. He’s only human.
Summer settles more deeply over the countryside as the weeks drag on. There’s a new heaviness to the air, and the grass grows dry and brown beneath his feet. The scorching heat of the sun is nearly unbearable, and they spend as much of midday in the shade of their tents as they can.
He bathes in the river with the rest of the men as the sun goes down, when the water feels coolest against the muggy air. Max spends barely two minutes washing himself down before he gives up and starts wrestling his men instead, yelping and laughing as they push and drag each other below the river’s surface, sending wide ripples lapping against the shore.
Everyone is watching Max. They look at him like he placed the moon in the sky himself—like he’s the sole reason the sun continues to rise over the Low Countries every morning. The men are watching, so Rico gets to watch, too. He gets to laugh and stare, and pretend it’s not because of the way the dying sun shines golden off Max’s water-slick thighs or the curves of his glutes.
As they dry off, Max looks at him with eyes that are just a little too knowing. Rico does his best to ignore him.
They occupy the trenches, doing their best to keep concealed from the fort. They erect banners all up and down the line: a crimson bull jumping over the sun, set on a blue background so dark it’s practically black.
“House Verstappen’s crest has two bulls, not one,” a curly-haired man who introduced himself as Greg tells him. “It’s funny—it always looked to me like they were charging at each other. They say the house tore itself apart after Maastricht fell in ‘79. They couldn’t bear the shame.”
“Funny,” Rico echoes, expressionless.
“Yeah, well. We all like Max’s crest better, anyway.”
The banners dot the line of trenches, joined by torches. From camp, it looks like there are several thousand men occupying the fields, not the scant few hundred Rico knows they have. The effect from the north side of the fort is even greater: the big, black mass of shadow that makes up the fort’s walls, and the glow of torchlight rising up around it into the foggy night sky.
He’s so distracted he loses his footing. His boot splashes down into the mucky water.
“Careful,” Max hisses at him. “That’s precious cargo.”
Rico swallows and pulls his boot from the mud. He adjusts the straps on his shoulders and continues after Max in the almost total blackness of the countryside. The three barrels strapped to his back creak in protest.
“Is this your requisition, then?” Rico asks him. “Seventy kilos of gunpowder? If you’d told me you were that low on funds I would have put in a budget request.”
“Who told you it’s gunpowder?”
“Nobody did. I can smell it. I’m a soldier, Max. I might be an idiot, but I know what powder smells like.”
“You shouldn’t be able to smell it, it should be sealed.” Max whirls around, prodding the barrels and steadfastly ignoring Rico’s protests. “Can you smell it right now?”
“Relax, it’s on the straps. You probably had it all over your hands.”
Max huffs and steps away. He adjusts the strap over his own shoulder—an ornate hunting musket, something much too pretty for a place like this.
“The requisition wasn’t the gunpowder, it was the barrels,” he says with a frown. “They’re wine kegs. They’re watertight. Brand new ones are hard to come by this far into the country, and once they’ve been used they start to leak.”
“That’s what you’ve been keeping a secret this whole time?”
“We thought there might be a mole.”
It takes him a second to click the pieces together. “You didn’t trust me,” he says slowly, a wry smile spreading across his face. “Is that why you brought me out into the mud, Verstappen? You didn’t want me to know the plan until it was too late for me to tell anyone?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I brought you out here because you’re the only one who could lift all three of those.”
“Well, I’m more flattered now,” Rico replies. He grins to himself. “Could have lifted four.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He turns, walking carefully down into a mud-soaked gully. “You can set them down in here.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here.”
Rico follows him. He makes a show of setting each barrel into the mud one-handed. Max makes a show of rolling his eyes at him. He draws his musket flat along his back as he stands back up.
“So what’s the plan, then?” Rico asks, following him. “Now that it’s too late for me to run off and tell the Spanish you might as well explain it.”
“I don’t exactly trust the state deputies either, for the record,” Max says over his shoulder. “They don’t seem to like me that much. I get the sense they’ve actually been waiting for me to die.”
A faint twist of guilt rears its head in Rico’s stomach. “You’re much more valuable gaining them territory than you are dead.”
Max’s head rears back as he laughs, then covers his mouth. “I’ll remember that,” he whispers. “Quiet, now. We’re getting close.”
They’re nearly below the walls of the fort when they come to a stop. A scraggly bush grows along one of the muddy ridges. It’s not much, but it’s cover. Max crouches behind it, and Rico follows suit a moment later.
“We’ll wait here,” Max whispers. “At high tide the river will back up. The water will rise,” he points down the marshes, into the darkness where the barrels are waiting, “and the water in the gully will be swept into the canal, all the way under the fort’s walls. I will shoot the barrels,” he inflates his cheeks, then lets all the air out: boom. “They assume the entire rebel army is waiting in the trenches and not a battalion half their size…”
“They’ll admit defeat and hand over the keys to the fortress, not that we’ll need them,” Rico finishes. “What happens if the water doesn’t flow the right way?”
“It will, but that’s why we left the barrels all the way back there. If it doesn’t work, you don’t have to carry them back as far.”
“Considerate.”
“I try to be.”
He slips off his musket and tucks it inside his thin linen cloak, then leans back into the grass, one arm curled behind his head and his other clutching his clothes tighter around himself. He’s going to be soaked through with mud by morning. The temperature is rapidly dropping, a rude shock after the heat of the day. As Rico mirrors his posture he’s grateful that he thought to bring his warmer wool cloak.
Only a handful of stars are visible. The marine fog continues to roll by, glowing with the nearby torches of the fort.
“Can I ask you a question?” Max whispers.
“Only if I can ask you one in return,” Rico whispers back.
“A question for a question?”
“Sure.”
They’re so close together that he can hear the click of Max’s throat as he swallows. “How did you end up running errands for them? You’re clearly a fighter. You’d be of more use on the front lines, not carrying messages back and forth.”
“It doesn’t hurt to have a messenger who can hold his own in a fight.”
“You’re not just a messenger, though. You’re too quick, too brave…” He makes a dismissive noise. “No commander benches their best man. So why are you here?”
“Again, I’m flattered,” he jokes, but when Max doesn’t fill the silence he sighs. “You’re not wrong. I joined the army when I was fourteen. I was already big enough by then that nobody questioned it. But things were different back then than they are now,” he adds, forcing his tone level, “and…I don’t know. I think even at that age I knew there had to be a better way.”
“Politics,” Max hazards.
“Logistics,” Rico corrects softly. “We weren’t winning. We were barely surviving. We were losing territory every month, men were dying by the thousands, and we were making stupid mistakes on top of it. Logistics were losing us the war. Sickness, starvation, lack of training, poor intelligence…none of our commanders ever understood it.”
“You did.”
He cocks his head. “I did, yeah, but I’m not a noble. I don’t hold any titles. People like me don’t get promoted. We’re more useful as cannon fodder.”
The statement hangs heavy between them. A cold wind rips through the marshland, and Max shivers.
Rico swallows. “Anyway,” he says, “my old commander got shot and was replaced with some kid. His father happened to be the Duke of Brabant, and he took a liking to me. I was promoted to his security team, then to emissary. The rest is history.”
“But the Duke lost his title,” Max murmurs. “He’s like me. Like my family.”
Rico purses his lips, staring up at the sky. “It was wonderful while it lasted. When we lost Brabant in ‘87 I began serving the Hague in a more general role. It’s just temporary, though. We’ll get that territory back someday.”
“You like it?”
“You asked your question,” Rico whispers with a wry smile. “My turn. You really aren’t interested in politics?”
Max huffs. “I’d claim my title, sure. I don’t care about working in the Hague though, mate. I want the power to command an army, and I wouldn’t mind having my ancestral home back, either, but government work sounds like a pain in the ass.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“Mh. Do you like working for them?”
“I don’t know,” Rico says. He settles further into the grass, watching the stars flicker above them. “It’s probably a better use of my skills than being in the infantry. I’m good at close combat, you know. Hand to hand. There’s not much room for that on the battlefield.”
“You’re an easy target.”
“That too,” he huffs a laugh. “I don’t mind being a guardsman, or running errands. There are things I miss about traveling with a company, but as far as jobs go this isn’t a bad one.”
The wind rustles the bushes above them. Max shivers again.
Taking pity on him, Rico sighs. “Come here,” he offers quietly, opening his cloak. “You’re not going to be able to make the shot if you’re frozen half to death.”
“I’m muddy.”
“I know, your cloak is thinner than mine,” Rico says. “Come on. GP will kill me if you get sick out here.”
Max snorts, but he rolls closer until he’s pressed against Rico’s side, the cloak wrapped around them both. His body is warm through the thin layers of linen between them, and he lets out a sigh when Rico adjusts his wool until it’s tucked up below Max’s chin.
“That doesn’t count as my question, by the way,” he adds as an aside.
Max lets out a shuddery little laugh. Rico can feel the force of it shake through his body where they’re pressed together. “Go on, then.”
“You won’t be able to avoid politics as the Duke of Limburg. What happens if you don’t like what the States-General have to say?”
Max huffs a sigh. “My only interest is in my people being safe and happy. I’m sure you can understand something like that, can’t you? It’s really not that complicated.”
“That wasn’t really an answer, Max.”
“Wasn’t it?”
Max rolls over, one hand braced on Rico’s chest as he looks at him. His face blots out the sky, his eyes round and bright like the moon.
“We’re fighting a war for independence and for the continued prosperity of our people,” Max says softly. “My home province is being harassed by soldiers, taxed into poverty without representation in government, their religion is controlled by the state—oh,” he adds with false brightness. “And then there’s the half that’s not under rebel control.”
“We’re not the same as the Spanish,” Rico says cooly.
“And that’s why I’m on your side and not theirs,” Max answers. “I’ve never forgotten what this war was about, though, and I’ll keep fighting it until my people’s prosperity is secured.”
“That wasn’t an answer either,” Rico says. “You’ll put a target on your back with that kind of talk, you know.”
“Were you sent here to kill me?”
Rico pauses, watching him. “If I was going to kill you, you would be dead by now.”
“I know,” Max murmurs, “but that’s not what I asked.”
The silence stretches. Max blinks languidly, a slow brush of eyelashes against cheekbones.
“They’re keeping an eye on you,” Rico answers finally. “They don’t want you dead; not yet. You’re still useful, but if you become a problem someone might change their mind. You already knew that though, didn’t you?”
“I had an inkling,” Max shrugs. “It wouldn’t be the first time assassins have been sent. It’s just a question of who sent them.”
Rico frowns. “The Hague has sent assassins?”
“Honestly, I’m not really sure who’s sending them, just that someone is. Would you kill me if it came to it?”
The question makes him pause. The answer should be simple: yes, if he’s ordered to, he would kill Max without question.
It’s the obvious answer. He’s just not sure it’s the truth.
“You don’t think I could?” he says instead.
“Why’d you take a bullet for me?” Max counters, leaning closer over him. His breath is very warm.
“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Rico answers without thinking. “Why did you trust me to have your back?”
“I had a feeling you’d be good at it,” Max says. “You confirmed I was right. I see how you look at me.”
Rico’s breath stutters in his chest.
Max leans closer. “When you touch yourself at night,” he whispers, “are you thinking about me?”
Rico swallows hard. “You started it,” he whispers back.
“You won’t finish it,” Max replies. There’s a furrow between his brows that Rico knows well—the same one he gets when he’s trying to work out a problem in the command tent. “You could hear me, couldn’t you? Why didn’t you ever come over? I can tell you want to.”
“That was two questions, and it’s not your turn,” he says, just to make Max’s pout deepen.
His hands have found their way to Max’s waist without his permission. They’re pressed together chest to chest, the air fogging between them. Being cold is the furthest thing from his mind.
“Ask me, then,” Max says.
Rico huffs a laugh. “You’d let me in if I came to your door?”
“For what exactly?”
“Depends,” Rico breathes. He squeezes at Max’s waist just to watch how it makes his breath catch. “What are you thinking about when you’re moaning in your tent at night?”
Max’s smile spreads like sunrise. His eyes drift to Rico’s lips, slow and heavy. When he leans forward to kiss him it’s warm and sweet—practically chaste.
Rico can’t have that. He reaches up to cradle the base of his skull, pulling him closer as he licks into his mouth. Max nips at his tongue in retaliation, forcing a gasp from Rico’s chest. As he pulls back he tugs Rico’s lower lip between his teeth.
“Why don’t you come find out?” Max whispers.
The sky is just barely grey with the coming dawn when Rico feels water lapping at the toe of his boot. He cranes his head up from the muddy ground.
Around them, the marshes are just barely illuminated. He and Max are surrounded by water, narrowly sheltered beneath the bush on their little scrap of grassy land.
The fort is dark and quiet a scant fifty meters away. The walls arch up to let the canal flow through, a thick metal grate blocking anyone from entering. He can just make out the familiar barrels resting against the black iron, bobbing slightly in the water.
“Max,” he whispers.
In his arms, Max groans. He’s clinging to Rico like a limpet, gratefully borrowing his warmth. His nose is like ice against Rico’s neck.
Rico jostles him a little. “Wake up. It’s time.”
He’s close enough that he gets to watch Max’s golden eyelashes flutter open in real time, revealing eyes soft with sleep. Max pulls his face from Rico’s neck slowly, emerging pink-cheeked and glancing blearily at the marshland around them.
Rico’s arm is still slung over his lower back. He feels the moment Max spots the barrels and stiffens, reaching for his gun.
“We’ll have to run once I take the shot,” Max tells him. “You remember the way we came in?”
The marshlands are practically a labyrinth, but Rico nods anyway. He’ll run straight through the water if he has to.
Max unearths himself from Rico’s cloak, gathering his own cloak around himself and straightening up with the musket in hand. With him sitting on his knees, the gun is almost as long as he is. Swirling oak leaves and maple vines curl in strands of silver around the barrel. Two bulls butt their heads together just above the barrel’s mouth.
“I don’t have a musket stand,” Max murmurs. He eyes the bush warily, then the ground in front of them.
“Use my shoulder,” Rico offers.
“What?”
Wordlessly, he crawls in front of Max until they’re facing each other. He lowers himself until he’s sitting on his own heels. Still on his knees, Max is just barely taller than him.
“Like this,” Rico says. “I said I’d protect you.”
Max’s eyes flick over him, assessing. He raises the musket slowly and rests the barrel on Rico’s shoulder. “If we’re lucky you won’t have to. Don’t move.”
He rests the butt against his own shoulder, sighting down the barrel. His fingers are deadly still against the wood. There’s barely more than a breath between their faces.
Max cocks the gun, and the mechanism clicks softly next to Rico’s ear.
“It’s going to be loud,” he warns. “You have to stay still.”
“I will,” Rico whispers. “Ever made a shot from this far?”
Max’s open eye flicks to his face, then back at his target. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t,” he murmurs. “Ready?”
Rico purses his lips. He studies Max’s face: his scrunched brow, the sharp, unwavering focus in his open eye, his hands steady and his breathing slow.
“Ready,” Rico whispers.
Max flexes his fingers backward slowly, then returns them to their positions. “On my count I’ll fire,” he says, “and then we run. Three.”
The first rays of sun kiss the treetops behind him.
“Two.”
Rico swallows. He locks his muscles. Don’t move.
“One.”
The world explodes. The bang of the gun is deafening so close to his ear, enough to disorient him. He doesn’t move, his eyes squeezed shut, following Max’s last order to the letter.
Then behind him, the ground shakes.
He can hear the roar of stone collapsing inward and the shouts of soldiers. Max tugs frantically at his arm, and he pries his eyes open just to turn and see the fort’s wall unraveling downward toward the breach the barrels left in their wake.
“Rico, run,” Max is yelling.
He turns, darting between the canals. His ears still ringing, Rico chases after him.
Max isn’t wrong. By the time they return to camp the fort has surrendered, and Rico takes his breakfast on the banks of the river, watching the soldiers march out in full battle regalia.
Max is generous; he gave them better terms than Rico might have offered. He has no doubt they’ll just retreat upriver where they can face off against Max’s little battalion again within the month.
Still, Max’s glow could rival the sun, he’s so pleased.
They’re sent to Zutphen that night to recuperate before continuing the trek north. It feels strange to Rico to retrace their steps along the river, and even stranger to arrive in Zutphen and find the town in an almost uncanny state of peace. A new flag flies over the walls, and deep pits dot the masonry, but when Rico steps foot in the town square for the first time the citizens mill around him unbothered, sweeping away rubble and patching up damaged walls.
“Terms of surrender were light,” GP tells him over dinner that night in a little tavern, bowls of soup and tankards of ale spread across the table between them. “Unusually so, but it makes sense. From here it will be easy to launch attacks upriver, especially with the fort cleared. It will help us to have these people as our allies.”
A man slips through the door, shrouded in black. He glances around slowly, and when he spots Rico he cuts a straight line through the crowd toward their table.
“The war is changing,” Rico murmurs. “They leveled this town the last time it changed hands.”
From the corner of his eye he sees GP shrug. “Times change,” he replies, taking a deep drink from his ale. “Friends are worth more than enemies.”
The stranger arrives at their table. “Verhoeven?”
“Yes,” Rico says warily.
The man hands over a sealed letter. “Orders, sir, from the Hague.”
GP’s brow furrows. He shoots Rico a cautious look, but Rico just takes the parchment with a nod toward its courier. He pops the seal with his thumb, scanning it over twice before folding it again and tucking it into his doublet. The mug is warm and the ale is bitter when it hits his tongue.
“Well?” GP asks.
His drink goes down poorly. It’s too watery, yet the foam is thick with sediment that sticks in his throat. He swallows it and fights not to pull a face.
“You’re stuck with me a while longer,” he says when he’s finally forced it down.
He’s not often called a man of delusion, but the look GP gives him is almost fond. “I had suspected it,” he says, his lips quirked and his grey eyes warm, but his dry tone gives nothing away. “Back to Deventer, then?”
“Delfzijl,” Rico corrects. He clears his throat, chasing the grit of the ale away. “We’re to take the fort. The states are looking for another miracle.”
GP snorts. “Miracle,” he says with a slow grin. “There’s nothing miraculous about it. You saw it, didn’t you? You were out there with him.”
Rico swallows; purses his lips. “I was,” he says finally.
“There’s no magic trick, it’s just Max. Just him doing what he does best—getting in where he doesn’t belong.”
His tone is practically dripping with affection, but Rico can’t help the chill that crawls up his spine. He remembers the way Max moved across the marshlands and the easy confidence in his stride; the fearless gleam in his eyes that night when Rico pushed him into the dirt, sheltering him with his own body.
Max is too reckless for his own good. A man like that doesn’t belong anywhere near the firing line, and yet it’s exactly where they need him most. He’s not immortal, but his exploits will fool the people into thinking he’s a god. It will hurt all the more when he inevitably gets himself killed.
“You saw it. You know,” GP says, snapping him back into attention.
“Yes,” Rico says quickly.
“And you’ll tell them?” GP asks, his grey eyes suddenly sharp. “The states, I mean. You’ll pass it along.”
Rico’s mind churns. GP can’t know the contents of the letter in his breastpocket. He can’t know something Rico only just learned himself.
Can’t he? Except that Max had guessed exactly what role Rico was destined to play in all of this, and he and GP practically seem to read each other’s minds sometimes. By that token, is it really a secret? Is Rico the fool for not having seen it coming?
“Friends are valuable to have,” GP repeats softly, “and Max is a very valuable friend indeed.”
“I’ll tell them,” Rico insists. “I saw. I know.”
GP watches him for another beat before nodding, turning back to his meal.
It’s another hour before Rico turns in, climbing the stairs to the inn above the tavern and piling his cloak on the chair beside the door. The mattress is straw, and it sags in the middle. Still, after a month of sleeping on mud he feels ready to cry from relief at the sight of it.
He pulls off his boots, then unbuttons his doublet. The letter rustles in the pocket as he pulls it off, and he removes the parchment carefully, his thumb tracing over the wax seal.
A knock on the door startles him.
Throwing the doublet quickly over the chair, he tucks the letter beneath the hem before straightening again. “Yes?” he calls.
The door creaks open. Max’s head appears in the gap.
“Can I come in?”
“I thought I was supposed to come to you,” Rico deadpans.
“You were taking too long.”
The door closes a little too loudly behind him. Rico pays him no mind as his footsteps pace slowly across the room. He fiddles with the ties of his shirt, tugging at the knots a little uselessly until pale, blunt fingers nudge his own larger ones out of the way.
“You’ve made a mess here,” Max tuts.
Rico’s laugh is pinched. “We got orders,” he says.
“Mh?”
“To Delfzijl. I’m staying with you.”
“I heard,” Max says on a sigh.
He steps forward, propping one knee beside Rico’s hip before climbing soundly into his lap. His fingers tug at the knot once more, more teasing than actually effective. When Rico looks up his eyes meet icy blue only barely thawed by the warmth of candlelight.
“GP told me,” Max continues slowly. “All anyone wants to talk about is the new orders. It’s not that interesting. We finally get a break and still all anyone wants to talk about is where we’re going next.”
Rico quirks a brow. “Oh? What do you want to talk about, then?”
“I’d rather not talk,” Max scoffs, then he leans forward to slot their lips together.
Just like last time, it’s sweet—startlingly so. Max licks into his mouth carefully, and he lets out a soft, shuddering breath when Rico trails his hands up to the dip of his waist and squeezes.
GP wasn’t wrong. Max has a talent: he digs in where he doesn’t belong, and by the time anyone realizes it’s far too late to do anything. He’s going to bury himself somewhere deep in Rico’s chest and make a home there. Maybe he already has.
Trying to rip Max out now might just destroy him.
He pulls Max closer, swallowing down his desperate moan as he falls backwards into the bed and lets Max drape himself across his chest. He lets Max’s solid warmth and sweet mouth push the letter from his mind, even as its presence weighs down one corner of the room, its contents impossible to forget.
Proceed north. Conduct reconnaissance of Delfzijl. Kill Verstappen.