Step One: Seeking Permission from Your Intended's Family
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Basil tincture. Garlic oil. Salt water poultices. Baked onions. Each efficacious for the treatment of disorders of the ear, and each readily available in the apothecary's stores.
Dylan is tempted to get up from his seat at the kitchen table and use every single one of them on himself, all at once, because there must be something horribly wrong with his hearing.
As fleeing from his brother and making a desperate grab for curatives mere moments after his otherwise extremely welcome return home could so very easily be misconstrued, however, Dylan restrains his self-medication to a simple, brisk shake of his head in an attempt to rattle loose the ill-humours that must surely have settled there.
Though, if they have, they've obviously infected Michael too, as he blinks in bewilderment and asks Alasdair, "You're kidding, right?"
Alasdair blinks back at him slowly. "Naw," he says in an equally ponderous tone. "Why in the hells would I joke about something like this?"
"Surely you can understand that it might seem a little farfetched to us?" Dylan says when Michael looks towards him beseechingly, begging him to step in and offer support to bolster his position. "Not even three days ago, you were still adamant that there was absolutely no truth in the rumours going around about the two of you, but now you say you're..."
The word withers on the tip of his tongue, then dies trapped tight behind his teeth, as though his entire mouth has become inimical to its very existence. He can't even manage to spit it out on his second attempt, and all that emerges for his efforts is a inchoate hiccough of breath.
Alasdair appears to have no such difficulties. "Courting," he says without either inflection or hesitation, like its just any other word with no special meaning or implications at all.
"You are courting a prince," Michael says, emphasising both pronoun and title so heavily that they sound almost scornful.
"Francis," Alasdair corrects him gently. "Francis and I are courting, and—"
Michael scrambles to his feet with such violent abruptness that he nearly upsets the table as well as his chair, and he shoots Alasdair a wounded glare before stomping away up the stairs. A few seconds later, the door to his room slams shut; the impact reverberating down through the floorboards and setting the lamp hanging from the centre of the kitchen ceiling to swaying back and forth on its anchoring chain.
Alasdair sighs. "I promised him he wouldn't have to worry about this kind of thing with me," he says, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms. "Wait here a minute, will you, Dyl? I'd best go and try and sort this out with him now before he has chance to worry himself half to death about it all over again."
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Alasdair takes rather more than a minute to pacify Michael, though nowhere near as long as Dylan had been anticipating. As it is, he manages to time his return perfectly with the kettle coming to the boil, and he hovers at Dylan's shoulder as he prepares a second mug; a silent sentinel, ever vigilant for evidence he is being short-changed on the honey.
They stand side by side together afterwards, leaning up against the counter as they wait for the tea to cool enough to drink. The top of Alasdair's arm is pressed close and warm against Dylan's shoulder, but the contact is not as comforting as it usually is as there's a tension in his muscles there that bespeaks a certain measure of unease.
"Mikey's all right," Alasdair says eventually, his fingers picking out a syncopated beat as they drum against the side of his mug. "He seems to have started getting used to the idea already. He says he's going to move into palace if me and Francis do get married. He wants the biggest bedchamber going, a feather bed, and a pony, apparently."
He chuckles, but Dylan can't join in with him. The whole situation feels too unreal, and he fears his own laughter may end up being slightly hysterical as a consequence.
"If you get married?" he asks, clutching at that one little word like a lifeline, because it seems to hint at an old normality that everything else Alasdair has said thus far has lacked.
"It's not exactly a foregone conclusion like it is with you and the bard." Alasdair shrugs. "Hells, the whole thing might not even last to the end of this week, for all I know."
Dylan takes a sip of his tea to try and disguise the fact that he needs a moment to gather his thoughts. It's still too hot, and the blend is a mite too heavy on the ginger for his liking. It scalds the roof on his mouth and leaves an unpleasant, tingling aftertaste on his lips, and he swipes his tongue across them compulsively to rid himself of the sensation.
Alasdair clearly misreads the gesture as an unwillingness to voice his opinion, as he implores him to, "Just say whatever it is you want to say. Please, Dyl. I want know if you're all right, too."
Permission thus granted, Dylan finds himself blurting, "Why on earth are you doing this, Aly? You've never been interested in getting married before."
This outburst appears to surprise Alasdair fully as much as Dylan himself, judging by the swift upward arc of his eyebrows.
"When have I ever said that?" he asks, his voice thinning to a knife-edge sharpness.
"You," Dylan begins, but his confidence fails him before he can even form his next word. He had, he realises, assumed that was the case, given his brother's indifference when it comes to amorous entanglements otherwise. "You want to get married?" he finishes, a little uncertainly.
Alasdair gives a small, brisk nod of his head. "Always have done," he says gruffly. "I never thought it'd happen, though, because... Well, I'm sure you'd already worked out for yourself that there are certain aspects of marriage that have never appealed."
It is, indeed, something else Dylan has always assumed. He's never once expected to have it confirmed outright, however, and the admittance throws him completely off-guard. Alasdair has always been so evasive about the subject in the past that Dylan had stopped asking him even oblique questions about it when they were both still in their adolescence, thinking that it was something that his brother found either too painful or too embarrassing to discuss.
It's become such a taboo, in fact, that Dylan can barely summon sufficient courage and force of will to ask, "But... But they do now?"
He quickly raises his mug to his mouth again, even though he has no intention of taking another drink. It simply provides a convenient shield to hide his own blush behind whilst he watches Alasdair's own colour heighten out of the corner of his eye.
"I'm... I'm honestly not sure," his brother finally admits. "But that's why we're courting. That's what it's supposed to be for, isn't it? A year to see if you're both compatible? Francis is... He wanted us to give it a go, see where it leads us."
Which would all be very commendable – he would even call it sweet if the term didn't seem too undignified to apply to the deeds of royalty – but Dylan can't help but think that the prince's idea of what this 'courtship' might entail is probably out of step with Alasdair's, who can be more than a little naive about such matters.
"He is aware that courtship is supposed to be a prelude to marriage if it works out, isn't he?" he asks gently.
He can scarcely believe Alasdair's answering, "Aye," even though it is very firmly and promptly stated.
"And he's allowed to do that? Marry a..."
Dylan can't quite think of a polite way of putting it, flustered as he is, but Alasdair helpfully provides, "A commoner? Governor's are as good as kings here, Dyl; he can do whatever the fuck he likes in his private life. He doesn't have to answer to anyone about that.
"His da doesn't give a shit what he does anymore outside his work, so he's hardly likely to object anyway, and his ma..." His cheeks grow a fraction ruddier. "Well, he says his ma would probably take a shine to me. Once she's wrapped her head around me not being a duke or the like, in any case."
"Oh," Dylan says, nonplussed.
His brother, who hasn't ever shown the slightest inclination towards the romantic, might someday marry a prince. It seems so fanciful, so improbable, that he doesn't know what to think, or say, or do. He stares down into the depths of his mug, but, unsurprisingly, they have no insight to give.
Alasdair must take his take his lack of reaction as indicative of some inner turmoil deeper than straightforward shock, as he briefly wraps Dylan in one of his constrictive, rib-bruising hugs. "It might well come to nothing," he says, dipping his head down low to press his bristly cheek against Dylan's ear. "There's no guarantee you're going to be rid of me, you ken?"
That thought had yet to cross Dylan's mind, but as he suspects Alasdair might find that truth somewhat insulting, he chooses to keep quiet about the matter.
Alasdair gives him one final squeeze, then takes a step back and hurriedly gulps down his tea. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to love you and leave you for the time being," he says as he rinses his mug half-heartedly in the sink. "I've got a meeting scheduled with Lu at nine, to debrief her again about everything that happened at the palace, and sort out my patrols and so on. I shouldn't be more than an hour or two. We'll talk more when I get back, okay?"
"Okay," Dylan echoes dully, hoping against hope that it'll give him enough time to digest everything his brother has just told him to such an extent that he can at least pretend to be happy about it.
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Despite the morning's upsets and revelations – and with the aid of a second cup of tea and a furtive and slightly conscience-stricken pipeful of tobacco – Dylan manages to regather sufficient of his wits in short enough order that he feels equal to opening the shop only twenty minutes later than usual.
The sky is darkened with a bank of clouds the colour of unpolished granite which hang so low above the rooftops that they almost seem to be within arm's reach. What little sunlight has trickled through their enveloping shroud is weak and wavering, and lends the street outside the dusky hues of twilight.
Dylan sighs dejectedly when the first, fat drops of rain begin to rattle against the windowpane. He very seldom gets passing trade as it is, but a downpour of the magnitude that the thunder rolling overhead loudly promises will ensure that none but the most desperate are likely to venture outside.
There seems little point in rousting Michael from his bed once more simply so that he can join him in finding ways to idle away the hours until five o'clock, so Dylan resigns himself to spending yet another tedious day bored and alone.
He takes out the shop's ledger for the third time that week, and spends a pointless half hour checking that the miniscule amounts of money entered therein balance, and that his taxes have been properly calculated, just as he did yesterday.
Later, as he's unsteadily perched atop a rickety stepladder, making an inventory of the bottles and jars arrayed on a shelf he knows full well hasn't been touched for a month at least, he wonders again why in the hells he persists in engaging in the ridiculous charade that is his working life.
The apothecary's trade in its essentials is one that he is both good at and takes great satisfaction in, but he has never had, and probably will never have, any aptitude for salesmanship. He has not the ruthless heart required to peddle useless sugar water to those whose ailments need only a bit of rest or fresh air to remedy, nor can he master the sort of patter which persuades people to part with far more coin than a physic is worth, no matter how diligently he has practiced over the years.
He would be much happier and more productive, he thinks, if he could work solely in his laboratory, and avoid the mercantile aspect entirely. If he shut up the shop, Michael would doubtless thank him, too, as he has never had any interest in becoming an apothecary, never mind a shopkeeper. Dylan would have gladly spared his little brother, had he ever been in the position that he could afford to take on an apprentice in the usual way, but such a thing remains a pipe dream, and thus they are unhappily yoked to suffer together.
Because giving up on ma's shop feels far too close to spitting in the face of her memory for Dylan's liking. It has been in her family for four generations now, and no doubt she had wanted it to continue thus for at least four generations to come, as well. Both of her sisters live outside Deva with no intentions of returning – married to farmers; their children destined to become farmers, too – so the weight of that responsibility had fallen entirely on Dylan's shoulders. And as he had never dared to assume that he might one day have children of his own, he had reluctantly sacrificed Michael on the altar of tradition as soon he turned fourteen.
Just for the moment, however, Dylan allows himself the guilty pleasure of imagining what life might be like if they were all free to pursue their own hearts. Perhaps Llewellyn would allow him to set up a small laboratory in the Bard's Hall, in order that he might make up any medicines that Gabriella ordered – and maybe, the prince, too, if he had no apothecary of his own on staff – but avoid dealing with any customers besides. And perhaps Michael could move to the palace as he'd discussed with Alasdair, and learn to be a clerk, or librarian, or—
The muted clunk of the bell above the shop door comes as such a shock that Dylan loses his balance and nearly topples arse over tit from his precarious perch. Only a frantic, last minute grab for the edge of the nearest shelf as he feels his feet start to slip out from underneath him saves him from such an indignity. He leans his forehead against it for a moment, ragged fingernails clawed deep into the wood and panting like a frightened dog, and then peers apprehensively back over his shoulder.
The shop floor seems an extremely long way away, and at the centre of it stands the prince, staring up at him with naked concern in his eyes.
"My apologies, Mr Kirkland," he says, his voice softened so much in his contrition that Dylan barely recognises it. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"It's all right," Dylan says as he hurriedly descends the ladder. "I'm fine. No harm done."
Back on solid ground once more, and without the threat of a sudden plunge into broken limbs or cracked skull looming large at the front of his mind, Dylan becomes uncomfortably aware that his stock-taking endeavours have left him in a deplorably dishevelled state. He runs his fingers through his hair, shaking loose the worst of the dust, cobwebs, and knots that have settled there, and tugs his ridden-up shirttails back down to cover the exposed lower curve of his belly.
Recomposed to the best of his meagre abilities, he offers the prince a bow. "Your Highness."
The prince looks horrified to see it, and he shakes his head vigorously. "Please, call me Francis."
He darts forward, and before Dylan has chance to protest or even register what he intends to do, takes hold of Dylan's right hand in a firm clasp with his left.
The prince's fingertips are icy cold, his palm clammy, and Dylan belatedly realises that the man as a whole is practically wringing wet. Water is dripping from not only the end of hair turned to corkscrew ringlets by the rain, but every sharp point of him, from the tip of his nose, to the darted sleeves of his overcoat. His boots are splattered with mud all the way up to his knees.
"You didn't walk here, did you?" Dylan asks, aghast and wondering what in the many hells would possess a person with at least three carriages at their disposal to even contemplate doing such a thing.
"I did." The prince smiles ruefully and drops Dylan's hand after giving it what Dylan can only deduce is meant to be a last, reassuring press. "The weather showed no signs of turning when I set out from the palace. It's so deceptive here, though. After near seven months' acquaintance with it, I really should have learnt better than to let it lull me into a false sense of security."
"So you came all that way on your own?"
Even lacking his brother's guard instincts and presumably tender feelings for the man, Dylan is horrified by the idea all the same. Although one murderer has lately been removed from Deva's streets, there are likely many other unsavoury characters lurking as yet undetected, and willing to risk the gallows for a chance at getting their hands on a noble's fat purse.
"Ah, no, Aly insisted on hand-picking a new personal guard for me from the palace staff before he left. He might not have the liberty of my chambers as Aly did in the same position, but he is tasked with following me everywhere else. He's sheltering from the storm a few doors down for the moment as I wanted to talk to you alone."
The request itself is intriguing enough, but the conspiratorial whisper the prince's voice drops into makes it doubly so. "Of course," Dylan says with slightly more alacrity than he thinks is probably seemly. "I'll just—"
The bell does its doleful best at pealing again as Alasdair stumbles in through the door, bringing with him a fresh deluge of rainwater to puddle across the once neatly-swept floorboards, and muttered complaints about how he's 'soaked all the way down to his drawers'.
The prince muffles his giggles at hearing that by pressing his clenched fist against his mouth, but they're still loud enough to attract Alasdair's attention.
His eyes widen, the colour drains from his face, and he barks out in an almost accusatory fashion, "What the fuck are you doing here?"
The prince's hand drops to his chest, and then splays out over his heart. "Perhaps I had begun missing you already?" he says. He sounds earnest, but when Alasdair's jaw drops incredulously low, he laughs again as though his words had been intended as nothing more than a joke from the beginning. "Or perhaps I came to ask your brother's permission to start courting you?"
"You only need to do that if your intended hasn't come of age yet," Alasdair says, his eyebrows scrunching together in puzzlement. "I thought we went through that already?"
"Of course we did," the prince says, though the note of revelation in his tone is so forced that Dylan is convinced in an instant that his first explanation had been the correct one. "I'm afraid it must have slipped my mind in all the subsequent excitement." He hangs his head as if chagrined. "My apologies again, Mr Kirkland, for taking up your time for no purpose."
"It's all right, Your— Fr-Francis," Dylan stammers as he desperately tries to work out what his part in this particular bit of playacting should be. He thinks that Alasdair is just surprised by the prince's presence, not unhappy, but whilst that uncertainty remains, he cannot be sure of whether or not he should be offering the man any reasons to linger. "I'm sorry you made a wasted journey in conditions like these."
"Not wasted." The prince offers Dylan a soft smile. "Though this visit may have proved to be unnecessary, it was merely a detour. I was headed into Old Town on other business anyway, and thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone, as it were.
"And now I suppose I should be on my way again. I have a meeting scheduled for eleven o'clock with the head of the Butcher's Guild that I really cannot be late for, and I wanted to call in on the Bard's Hall and see how the restoration work is progressing beforehand."
He sets out towards the front door, but before he reaches it, Alasdair calls out a quelling, "Wait!"
The prince turns on his heel, and tilts his head up to look at Alasdair in a way that isn't direct enough to be expectant, though it does seem somewhat akin. Dylan is inclined to call it hopeful.
"What is it?" he says.
Alasdair extracts a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket that is, amazingly, somehow bone dry. "Here, I jotted down the times for this week's shifts like you asked me to," he says.
His expression immediately crumples into something that closely resembles anger when he presses the note into the prince's outstretched hand and their fingers briefly brush together.
"For fuck's sake, Francis," he snaps, "you're freezing. Can't you at least stay for long enough to have a cup of tea and warm up a bit? You'll likely catch your death of cold, otherwise."
The prince's answering smile is as sudden and bright as a burst of sunshine, and so broad that it makes his cheeks dimple. "I could probably spare a minute or two," he says. "That sounds lovely, Aly. Thank you."
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The prince lowers himself onto the chair Alasdair has pulled up close to their hearth with the sort of low groan of mingled pain and pleasure that Dylan has heard escape the lips of rheumaticky old men as they settle themselves in the Antler's snug after a long day of aching joints and despairing at what the world's coming to.
He takes off his filthy boots, and then stretches his feet out towards the fire; toes wriggling in what looks to be contentment.
Alasdair regards their dance with evident amusement when he returns from his room, freshly clad in dry clothes and bearing the one towel they own that still retains enough of its fuzzy nap to be properly absorbent.
"Don't go getting too comfortable," he says. "That poor guard of yours is out there getting drenched, and if you fall asleep and miss that meeting, the guilds will be calling for your head to be mounted on a spike all over again."
"Your concern for the integrity of my neck is, as ever, very touching, Aly," the prince says with a lop-sided smile that makes Alasdair first roll his eyes, and then ball up the towel and launch it towards him.
Dependent on his intentions, his aim is either perfect or embarrassingly woeful, as the towel sails within mere inches of clipping both the prince's ear and his shoulder, and instead lands neatly on his lap.
The prince clearly believes the former to be the truth of the matter, as he mumbles a few words of gratitude before unfurling the towel and scrubbing his head almost viciously with it. This ruthless attack leaves his hair floating up from his scalp in a fluffy cloud, but he quickly scrapes back it into a neat, orderly queue.
Afterwards, he picks up the mug of tea Dylan had set at his feet, cradling it close to his chest as he sinks even deeper into his seat.
Alasdair studies his face for a moment, maybe searching for signs of oncoming drowsiness, and then, with a sharp nod that seems to signal satisfaction, retreats to the table with a periodical Dylan knows he has already read from cover to cover at least once before.
The silence lengthens, deepens, and then feels to bear down on them with all the suffocating weight of a pall. At least, it does to Dylan, and he starts to believe that he really is intruding, even though both Alasdair and the prince had reassured him he wasn't. That his brother might prefer to sit wrapped up as close and warm and tight to the prince as Dylan would if he were in Alasdair's place and Llewellyn in the prince's.
He readies himself to get to his feet, an excuse he hasn't quite formulated lying half-baked on his lips, but the sound of the prince's voice freezes him in place before he can even part his arse from the seat.
"I see from your notes that you're free on Saturday night, Aly. Would you care to join me and my family for dinner?"
Alasdair chuckles mirthlessly. "Gods above, I can't imagine that being anything other than a shit show," he says. "Have you broken the 'good news' to them yet?"
"I have. There was as much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments as you might expect from certain quarters, but plenty of congratulations, too. Three days should be sufficient for Lovino to reconcile himself to the idea, but even if that proves not to be the case, I'll find some way of persuading him to restrain his vitriol for a couple of hours."
Although Alasdair worries at his bottom lip with his teeth for a while, his eventual nod is decisive. "Aye, go on, then," he says. "And what will you be expecting me to wear for this grand, and no doubt excruciating, occasion?"
"I'll have something sent to you." The prince must already have developed some preternatural sense for when Alasdair is about to mount a protest, because he neither turns Alasdair's way, nor has Alasdair finished opening his mouth, when he adds, "It won't be a kilt, or a frock coat. I think our meals at the palace could stand to be a little less formal now and again."
Alasdair subsides, the slackening curve of his back radiating relief.
"Dylan," the prince says as he inclines his head towards him, "you and Mas— Michael are of course very welcome to attend as well, if you so wish."
Dylan can imagine little worse than being introduced to the prince's royal relations when the consternation caused by his courtship is still so fresh in their minds. Besides, he will need at least a month or two to do his research on how to address them, what protocol he should follow at mealtimes, and what topics of conversation are liable to be the most pleasing, in order that he doesn't make a complete fool of himself.
"I'm afraid I will have to decline," he says, trying his hardest to ape Da's beautiful, cultured way of speaking as he delivers the words he had been taught were the politest way to refuse such invitations. "Perhaps another time?"
"I'll look forward to it," the prince says with a surprisingly genuine-seeming smile.
-
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The Bard's Hall will clearly have to wait until after the prince's meeting, as it's closing in on twenty to eleven when he finally starts to make a move towards taking his leave of the apothecary.
He buffs his boots with a borrowed cloth that is – to Dylan's shame – not much cleaner than the leather itself, and then puts on both them and his still-damp overcoat, his nose wrinkling in obvious distaste.
Once he has buttoned it all the way up to its high collar, Alasdair walks him – in accordance with yet another of their da's lessons in etiquette – to the kitchen door. They stand there, facing each at a distance of less than a foot, for a handful of seconds that seem to stretch out into something approaching an hour to Dylan.
And something closer to days for his brother, he suspects, given the hunted cast that descends across his eyes, and the compulsive twitch of his hands where they rest, uneasy, against the tops of his thighs.
The prince's own gaze has taken on that same, indefinable quality that Dylan had noticed in the shop earlier, but it's soon dispersed by a sudden rush of delighted laughter.
"À bientôt, mon cher," he says, in a low, purring tone that feels to curl up deep and inside both Dylan's head and stomach, never mind his brother's.
Alasdair's body sways slightly closer to the prince, which would suggest he isn't completely unaffected, even though his expression doesn't brighten one iota until the prince closes the small gap that still remains between them and presses the lightest and swiftest of all possible kisses to his cheek.
His brother's entire face looks to catch fire, then, turning a scalding-looking shade of red, and his hands move seemingly of their own volition to catch hold of the prince's shoulders.
He doesn't return the kiss, however; simply pulls the prince into a hug that appears just as tight as any he's ever inflicted on Dylan, albeit significantly shorter in duration.
"Go on," he says in a growling-rough rasp, as he steps back from the embrace, his eyes fixed very determinedly on his feet. "You'd best get a move on. And try to keep out of the rain if you can."
