Smoke break

I.

Two boys are standing outside of a castle during a light rain, leaning up against one of many stone pillars with a shallow overhang. Chance is fourteen, and so is Nicholas. The former has a black eye and his left arm in a sling, while his mouth clamps a lit cigarette and his good hand holds a fresh one. Without looking at him, Chance extends the unlit cigarette to Nicholas.

"So, she's done? Your sister?" Nicholas asked, not particularly curious. Chance held his smoke in for a moment in a way that seemed fairly show-offish, nodded, and exhaled, "Yeah. She's done. They're sending her to some medical facility and then back to Italy."

Nicholas waved away the offer of a light and did it himself. "Sorry. That sucks."

"Didn't your friend get expelled, too? That Ravenclaw?" Chance knew the Ravenclaw's name, but he didn't like people knowing he paid attention.

"Jack," corrected Nicholas. "Yeah. But he lives out in Hogsmeade, so I think it'll be fine. I'll go and see him."

While Nicholas squinted out into the rain, Chance studied the side of his face. He thought about asking if Jack was his boyfriend, or if he had really done what hearsay said he had. Chance wanted to ask a lot of questions about Nicholas as a matter of fact, but he swallowed them all in smoke and saved them for another time when they might be alone together again. After a brief pause, Nicholas looked back to him and gave his sling a poke. "It hurt?"

Chance winced. "Nah. Not as much as getting kicked off the team. They were going to expel me, too, but I guess what I did wasn't as bad. Fucking stupid, though. We've got no shot at the house cup if they care that much about a little harmless rule breaking." It bears noting that Chance had dislocated his shoulder by riding a broom full Charlie Horse and trying to play a contact sport. He hadn't minded the swarm of concerned girls rushing over from the stands, but the way Snape made eye contact as he marched up held the promise of a bad omen. Chance passed out in his last moment as a quidditch keeper with a smile, feeling beloved and famous.

"I'm glad," said Nicholas, taking his time following up, "I'm glad they didn't expel you too. I'd have nowhere to get free cigarettes."

Chance laughed, "Keep talking like that and you can have them all. With that sort of flattery, here - two more for later." He kept his own in his mouth and fished out two more, extending them to Nicholas in offer.

"Nah." Nicholas pushed them away gently. "I'll just come find you later. Then I'll collect. It's boring, smoking alone."

With that, he tossed the butt into wet grass and turned on heel without another word. Chance watched him go for a moment, and when he was sure no one was watching, ducked his head down to smile to himself. Both cigarettes went back into the pack.

That could have been the first moment Chance fell for Nicholas, but it wasn't. That time was a small distance away on a couch during a particularly long night, and the many strands that led to it hadn't yet been knitted together by the old women of fate. That wasn't to say that it was nothing, however, and so a first ember began to glow.

II.

Nicholas was fifteen, and nearly as tall as he'd ever be.

He was standing close to the rails of an astronomy tower balcony, looking up at the stars in the night sky. Between two of his fingers, he absently rolled a cigarette that looked terrifically stale. The tobacco leaves crunched softly against one another.

"I thought this was my spot." Gabriel was a much younger fifteen, and he didn't smoke cigarettes. Instead, he drank scotch from a water bottle that had seen better days. "Go brood somewhere else."

"Your brother's a lot nicer than you are. Shame." These days, Nicholas purred more than spoke. He was always amused and everything was a euphemism. Everything he said was flirted and always carried the implication that things would have been better with fewer clothes. He often got his way.

Gabriel was very much the opposite and had even less humor when he was drunk. "Well, he isn't here, now, is he?"

Nicholas twisted at his cigarette without ripping the paper. He hadn't bothered yet to look in Gabriel's direction. "What's that about?" he asked, sounding very much like he didn't care. Gabriel shrugged. "Family emergency." And when Nicholas regarded him with an expression of skepticism, he added, "His family, not mine." As if that cleared up any misunderstanding.

Gabriel didn't bother to expand. He had little love for Chance, but something felt wrong about telling an acquaintance that he was skipping a year because he'd had a son, and then he didn't. The empty scotch bottle sailed wide past Nicholas' head into the far below beyond, and Gabriel left him to his thoughts and the crickets.

Nicholas stared at his unlit cigarette. Little of his time was spent wondering about Chance. Still, he considered, things didn't feel quite as balanced without the both of them. There was an ebb and flow to their class that wasn't exactly right this year, like a once great dish missing an ingredient and becoming unremarkable. The cigarette went back into his pocket, still stale. It was no fun smoking alone.

III.

Chance was sixteen and Nicholas was fifteen. They were standing outside of the Great Hall near a yellowing tree, and Chance was handing a cigarette off to him as if out of habit.

"Jesus, Lafayette. You didn't need to try and kill the kid." Nicholas waved off the offer of a light, smirking dryly into the yellow-orange glow of his own magic. Chaos was more of a comfort zone than a concern for him, and he swam easily through it like a duck in water. There had been a number of dormitory pissing contests over their time in school, but the fight Nicholas had just witnessed had an edge to it that led him to believe it might not have ended if he hadn't started trying to pull Chance away. It wasn't that Nicholas worried about the other boy, he'd just been impatient and wanted a cigarette, and he thought that fist fights were blindingly dull. "It's not fair anymore, you gangly ass-fuck."

Puberty had hit Nicholas more in the face and chiseled away any childish baby fat, leaving him handsome enough that most people turned to look twice; in Chance, whose features had always been vaguely fox-like, it showed in height. They resembled young men more than boys this year, and it fit in well with the sudden increase in terrible behavior.

"I'm fucking sick of it," Chance took a drag, still out of breath, ranting more to himself than anybody. There was blood on his sleeve he hadn't noticed and his collar was torn. "I'm not putting up with this picked-on kid shit this year..I'm not stopping anymore if some other smug fuck starts it. I'm trying to make a point. Don't fuck with me. I'll fuck back."

Nicholas studied his cigarette quietly for a moment, wondering whether or not Chance really meant it. He was the only student with a Ministry family in their grade besides his brother, and the price for his lack of shame was an unrelenting onslaught of physical fights which, in reality, were only hormonal young men posturing for pecking order. Over time the common room had become a boxing ring whenever another Slytherin felt like showing their dominance, and while Chance usually won handily, those little punching games were nothing compared to the world Nicholas lived in. To him, it sounded like hot air, like someone who had no idea exactly what went into making a point like that. Nicholas came from a world of cruel adults who cracked their knuckles with magic and broke young men in like horses, and everything else seemed almost juvenile. Underclassmen trembled in the knees at the mere mention of unforgivable curses, and rumor had it that Nicholas was not inept. Nobody picked fights with the Sparrows. Nobody wanted to find out.

Chance, who was rarely comfortable with silence added, "It's not like I've ever had a problem with you, anyway," And Nicholas smiled to himself, letting the words hang in smoke above them.

After a deliberate pause, "No, we've never really had a problem. You don't step on my toes too much." Nicholas stopped himself there, feeling no need to explicitly state that if he had, Chance might have learned harsher lessons. For now, it only needed to be implied that their relationship was better off uneventful.

"I'd hate to inconvenience you." Chance didn't sound at all like he would.

Just then, a small, thin boy with a Slytherin tie and tawny hair hustled his way into the open mouth of the hall behind them, looking for all the world both rattled and late. He paid neither of them any mind. Both Chance and Nicholas turned their heads, cigarettes suspended in mid air, staring just a moment longer than either needed to.

"I'd hate that too," said Nicholas, watching until Jame disappeared.

IV.

Chance was sixteen and so was Nicholas.

Things had happened between then and now, and only a small epic would be enough to summarize. 'Complicated' fit best, but it's still too simple of a word.

Perhaps the most noteworthy Complicated Thing to have happened was that Chance and Nicholas had kissed. Actually, they had kissed, fucked, fought, yelled, and otherwise done things vastly more complicated than smoking outside. Other people had joined in to do Complicated Things with them, each bringing their own terrible contributions, one after another, until nobody knew what was up or down anymore. The world in which they lived decreed that bodies were an acceptable choice of weapon, and Nicholas could do so much more with his body than a knife or a gun; those last two things healed over eventually. He preferred to leave something stronger.

But before that, Chance kissed him first. He was half asleep and half listening to Nicholas threaten him, and everything still had a layer of dreamlike quality to it, full of infinite possibilities and consequences that would disappear as soon as he woke up. Nicholas' tone was so earnest, and Chance wanted him to know that nothing he was saying was worth the breath it wasted. Nicholas' face had never been so close before, and all of its remarkable little details fascinated Chance. Iris strings, a freckle. He kissed him to be derogatory, at first, to imply that Nicholas' lips were better used for different pastimes. Instead, Chance's head swam and his heart was in his throat. He had kissed a great many people before, but none of them made him stir quite like that.

For Nicholas, he was unaccustomed to being surprised. He wasn't sure if he hadn't thought of kissing Chance before, or if he hadn't thought that kissing Chance would feel so out of the ordinary, or if he simply hadn't accounted for kissing as a way to shut him up during an argument. It went on an atom of a second longer than it should have, before Nicholas moved away to leave and think. They were supposed to be kissing Jame, not each other.

When he was alone again, Chance sucked his lower lip softly and wondered what he'd done. Nicholas looked so different suddenly, while Jame remained the same: innocent and naive and full of dreams.

That was more or less what had happened.

Tonight, they had both been asked to leave their evening magical theory study group. It never had a hope of going smoothly, and a number of factors at work were responsible: one, most of the ten gifted students were gifted enough to have impulse control problems. Two, and most inflammatory, the teacher looked at Nicholas in a tender, wholesome way that set Chance's veins on fire. It was never clear who started it, but it got out of hand quickly, and making them both go outside was an old fashioned last resort. Still, there they were: seething, boiling, ready to "work it out someplace else," as Shayne suggested. Two people had never crossed their arms harder. How naive, Nicholas thought. He was falling in love with Shayne, but Shayne had no blueprint for the nuances of bitterness between the two students he assumed just needed to have a good talk. There were things he would never understand, and it made him more kind, more chaste in Nicholas' eyes. Shayne held so much clean promise.

- a brief addition about Shayne Discordia:

In the wizarding world, there were three prominent families that made up the majority of mental magic wielders. Each branch had their own hallmarks and tactics unique to them, and they never got along or agreed on anything. All of them tutored their children in the arts of legilimency and occlumency, and they guarded their precious secrets well from one another. The houses were called Grey, Lee, and Lafayette, all descended from the same two wizards who had furiously gone off to start their own lives after an argument from which there was no recovery. About ten years ago, a young Aurel Lee disappeared from the humid swamp banks and overgrowth of American Louisiana, causing something of a commotion. A generous sum was offered in exchange for his safe return (or so the poster said, complete with a photo of his face) and then abruptly withdrawn, as if his family had learned something unsavory about him that made Aurel better off forgotten. Sophie Lafayette spent much of her childhood around this time uninterrupted, free to study and read and query as she pleased; such was the advantage of being a youngest child, and a girl. Family histories interested her, and the exciting saga of the disappearing Lee boy felt like a real live mystery novel. When Shayne Discordia began teaching at Hogwarts, Sophie thought she recognized something familiar in his face. Without knowledge of how tantalizing this information actually was, she mentioned as a by-the-by to her older brother Chance that she thought Shayne Discordia resembled the missing Aurel Lee quite a bit. He, in turn, pretended to misspeak one late night, just the two of them, after Professor Discordia claimed that he was not equipped to tutor Chance in occlumency. "Thank you for your time, Professor Lee," Chance had said with a placid smile, and just like that, he had caught a mouse's tail between his paws without realizing it was a tiger's. They met every other evening until a personal issue caused an abrupt end to their lessons.

- an end to the brief addition

"No respect for tradition?" Asked Nicholas, extending a hand.

"Oh, go get fucked." But Chance nevertheless threw the pack in his general direction, too proud to look. He did not offer a light. A childish part of Nicholas blushed and fawned and smiled, whispering inside, He still Likes me, while the larger one shut it into a vault for later.

"I'm trying, but you keep cock blocking me with your little.." Nicholas waved his hand, groping for a good description. "..Your little attention seeking fits."

Chance scoffed, "What, now you want a nice vanilla boyfriend to hold your hand and write you poems? Is that the next step now that Jack tossed you aside for something new?"

Not enough attention was ever paid to Nicholas' own restraint, he thought. If Chance ever stopped thinking about himself, he'd appreciate how many, many, many things Nicholas did not say. This was the only arena in Nicholas' life where the high road belonged to him.

"At least I got a safe word. That's more than you're getting, from the looks of it."

"Whose fucking fault is that?!" One of Chance's last nerves burst into flames. He was struggling to light his cigarette, but Nicholas' tom-foolery deserved his full physical attention. "You're such a fucking piece of shit. I didn't want to fuck with you-" Nicholas snorted dryly, shaking his head and mouthing the word bullshit. "I'm serious. What the fuck was I supposed to do? You went out of your fucking way to make it look like anything that belonged to anyone was your personal buffet. You inserted yourself. Jame sat in my lap - he didn't even know your fucking name. I told you I wasn't fucking around anymore and you made so many passes at him that I couldn't ignore it without looking like a fucking cuck. I didn't have a fucking choice. You're the last person I wanted to make an example out of."

"Yeah?" asked Nicholas, sounding unimpressed. "And how'd that work out for you?"

It had worked out very strangely, as a matter of fact. Chance stopped to reply in a lower, calmer pitch. "I think you know. You were there, after all." He took a very long drag.

"Nobody feels bad for you and you sound like an idiot. I think you'll be fine on the cuck thing, though. What's your body count now, five at a time? Half of them are in that class."

"Listen," Chance defended himself, "It's just hard, you know? It's hard watching him watching you." He looked at Nicholas, "I miss you. I hate the way he looks at you."

For one indulgent moment, Nicholas let himself believe that - it sounded so satisfying and sincere, as if he was Chance's private audience, like a letter marked "only for your eyes" in suggestive red. It tasted right. Chance's words had their own gravity sometimes, and they were always arranged just so.

The moment Nicholas came too close to feeling sorry for him, though, common sense hit like a cold shower from a water cannon; he thought of Rowan, and Judas, Alita, Jame and Jack, of all the people who bet their hearts on well phrased horseshit. He stubbornly swallowed back the idea that he was being told anything other than the same five scripted lines Chance used on everybody. Nicholas loved Chance too, but it was defensive and thorny, cloudy from the conviction that Chance loved chasing Nicholas and nothing more.

With Gerrolt Sparrow in Azkaban and his new son surrounded by decent, sane people who would give him a shot at a whole childhood, Nicholas reminded himself in no uncertain terms that he owed Theo more. It was a constant tug of war, the bloody, salty scent of the life he'd been bred for and the far away dream of something better. The place where Nicholas should have been proud of himself felt hollow, but he thought of Shayne, and sucked in a long breath of cold air that sobered him.

After Nicholas walked away, Chance thought long and hard about yelling at the sky.

V.

Nicholas was seventeen and so was Chance.

"Are you happy?"

This was closer to the end of a conversation whose beginnings were more combative, and so the two of them were hunkered underneath an alcove to keep their cigarettes from the late summer downpour, talking quietly. Chance lit another to give himself an excuse to linger a while longer. "No. Are you?" And he said it as if happiness were a thing of little consequence, fiddling with his filter instead of chancing a glance at Nicholas' expression.

"I think.. I think I could be. With Shayne."

Without sound or gesture, Chance broke apart inside. His body was well versed in working without his mind's help, and so his eyelids only fluttered. He stopped turning his cigarette in mid air for a moment, as if pausing to steady himself. Homesickness was the closest thing he could think of to call the painful crush in his throat, but that didn't make any sense. Chance did not yet understand that a person could be home.

Every impassioned declaration of love Chance could have responded with stopped just short of his tongue and died away. The words he had not said to Nicholas could have filled a stunning and pointless library. Here he was again, the old man screaming at the stars - it didn't make sense, it hurt, he didn't want it anymore, and variations of the above. Chance was bewildered at his love for Nicholas, the sheer bulletproof quality it had. He gestured, inwardly, at all of the evidence. He did not understand it, and hadn't since limping out of Purdue house at four in the morning, leaning on a sixteen year old girl for support. Nicholas moved on, and Chance sat alone with his love, his rotating showcase of one night stands, and his anger, unsure what to do with any of them. Nicholas would not have listened to him, anyway, not when Chance spent more time at Purdue House than his own bed. He was trying to satisfy the ache with people and with drugs, losing his temper when they wouldn't work. He would drown the idea of Nicholas in alcohol and heroin and sex every night, and the next morning it would always rise up again, defying explanation. Chance begged every God ever written about for reprieve, and then he cursed them when he didn't get it. He felt stupid often.

What neither of them had pointedly said was that Nicholas wanted a relationship shaped relationship. It had come up before. Once, half a year ago, Nicholas stood over Chance as he sat on the hearth of a fireplace. He wound his fingers through Chance's hair and closed them until his knuckles turned white. No one has ever given me that, he said, smiling with equal parts sadness and cruelty, No one has ever bothered giving me a real relationship. No one has given me all of themselves. And when he yanked Chance's head up to look at him, the absolute, burning fury in Chance's face nearly sent him back; it was like looking down into the eyes of a snarling animal, and it startled Nicholas. A gunshot cut their conversation short, and instead, Chance gasped at the sudden bloom of blood darkening Nicholas' belly.

Shayne didn't smoke or drink. In fact, Shayne had a suspiciously low number of vices aside from being warm blooded and susceptible to suggestion, but Nicholas could forgive him that. Shayne loudly wanted to be in an exclusive relationship with him in a way that was fully realized and not at all transactional; he was gentle where everyone else in Nicholas' life was rough. He was earnest, sincere, kind, and adapted with aplomb to Nicholas' son. Shayne was reliable and predictable only in the positive sense, and he protected Nicholas, listening for hours on end about Nicholas' plans to abandon his family legacy and become a better man. Shayne was safe, and they loved each other.

During the loneliest evenings where Nicholas paced back and forth through the hallways, sleepless, feeling like an imposter, Chance had a way of finding him. It was like Nicholas' uncertainty fed him, and Chance always murmured the just right things, speaking to him like a frightened kitten, dissolving him. And when Chance kissed him like he wanted to fuck, Nicholas thought and thought and thought about all of Shayne's wonderful qualities. He repeated them to himself like a prayer, even as he followed wherever Chance wanted to take him. There was a way Chance touched him that bordered on infatuation and worship - like Nicholas was the only person he ever wanted to touch again, and he'd never be satisfied unless he spent all of his days and nights making a study of how to and where. Every time Nicholas made an encouraging noise or sigh, he'd smile to himself and do it again. But Nicholas assumed Chance touched everyone that way, because, why else would they willingly make such a fickle choice?

The long quiet between them continued, and Nicholas looked at his friend. Chance was staring out into the rain, and his expression was unreadable. His cigarette had turned into one long ash, but he hadn't noticed.

The old women of fate continued knitting, unmoved, unmotivated to untangle them.

VI.

Nicholas was seventeen and Chance was eighteen.

They both stood outside on an old but grand porch in Hogsmeade, at the mouth of Purdue House. They were each in a state of standoffish body language, leaning on opposite sides of the landing, facing away from one another. Dusk fell, and lights flickered on one by one to usher in the late August evening. Chance wore a wedding ring on his left hand, and it glinted whenever he raised his cigarette to his mouth. They said nothing to one another, and Nicholas left first. Chance looked over his shoulder to watch him go.

VII.

Chance was nineteen and so was Nicholas.

Behind Chance through an open set of enormous double doors, a raucous affair carried on inside the Great Hall, and the scent of cold in the winter air outside was electric. The moon shone full and the snow glowed white, but both of these particulars went unnoticed, because Chance was promised that he wouldn't be outside on his own for very long at all. He waited, then, for Nicholas to follow him, but instead Chance only saw the odd couple here or there stumbling out to point at how bright and frosted the night was, or for an overwhelmed student to gulp at air that didn't taste like hundreds of warm bodies.

Nicholas was nowhere to be found, and Chance felt equal parts annoyed and concerned. He dropped his cigarette into the snow and went back in, bird hunting.

The mischief at the Ball was palpable. Rowan stood up straight against a far wall with his gleaming uniform and insignia, sensing it, stern, waiting for trouble. It was only a matter of time, he supposed, and he was always ready.

Sophie was seventeen and her best friend happened to be Nicholas' estranged little sister. Because she paid attention to everything around her, she was able to point Chance down the labyrinth of hallways she last saw his date dip into. What he didn't know was that she had been feeding Nicholas bits of information about both Atienne and Chance for years and a modest fee, and their grandfather would have been proud. Sophie was the most intelligent Lafayette child by an impressive margin. Most people chronically underestimated her, and she didn't mind.

- a small addition about Sophie Lafayette

She is sitting in a drawing room in Sicily reading a book six months prior. Her mother is sitting across from her, and they are chatting idly. Sophie is closest to her parents of all four children, and it was a relationship she fostered carefully.

"If he got a divorce, is it because of somebody else?"

"Mhm. I'm pretty sure, anyway." Sophie flipped a page. "I think he's into Atienne's brother."

"Sparrow?"

"Yeah, that one."

Sophie's mother puts a hand against her chest and sighs an expression of terrible disappointment. "Mon dieu. He is my stupidest child."

"Not by too much, right?" Sophie thinks of Gabriel.

"..No. Not that big. Still." Vanessa frets and drinks her tea sadly.

- an end to the addition

A ways away from the noise and splendor, Chance found Nicholas. Nicholas was sitting, smoking by himself in front of an office door. He resolved to remain very quiet so as not to interrupt, flattening behind the corner that fed into the corridor. Out of pure desperation, he crossed himself and started to plead with God, because it was Shayne Discordia's dormitory door Nicholas was sulking against, and Chance truly believed that he might actually choke the life out of him and be done with it.

Anger was Chance's favorite antidote to pain. What he did not know was that her real name was Grief, and that he'd always seemed too fragile for her to correct. She let him mispronounce her name for years and years, but right now seemed an inappropriate time to not just admit to himself that he was sad. Still, the bile of jealousy rose up in his throat and he pressed a hand against his mouth to keep it there. Chance was vastly more likely throw up than to ever cry. He lingered against his little wall for a moment, breathing as quietly as a mouse and screaming and cursing inside loudly enough to deafen the ghosts.

Without ceremony or announcement, Chance left his spot, walked the short ways up to Nicholas, and kicked him in the ribs as hard as he could.

"Are you actually fucking kidding me?" Rhetorical, because Nicholas was on the ground grabbing at his throat and coughing. Chance's voice was loud enough to make the paintings wince. "What the- what the f-" Nicholas had inhaled some of the ash from his cigarette and was having a difficult time articulating his outrage, staring up at Chance, equal parts disbelief and anger.

"Did you invite me out here so you could watch me hang myself? Did you do this so I could come watch you mourn your relationship with Saint Shayne Discordia? Why am I here? Why are you-" his voice cracked and it embarrassed him, "Why are you fucking doing this?"

"I think you broke my ribs," Nicholas croaked. Chance thought very seriously about kicking him again. From below, Nicholas sucked in a rattling breath and let out one or two more weak coughs. He braced heavily against Shayne's door, pulling himself back into a sitting position, holding an arm protectively over his chest. Then, he began slowly, as if talking to a toddler, "I'm not mourning anybody, Chance. It's hard, alright? Give me a break. Shayne's the only one who really, really loved me. He's the only one who put the effort in and really meant it, and now he's gone. He wasn't inappropriate and he didn't try to manipulate me or abuse his power. He wanted to help me be better. He- I..I tried. I couldn't be something I'm not."

"If you say one more goddamn time that Shayne is the only person who loved you that way, I will lose my fucking mind. I can't fucking stand it. Don't you say that shit ever again." Chance was electric and furious, and the dam broke. "I love you. I love you that way. Me. I can't stop loving you that way, even when it's been all I wanted. I love you in a way that has ruined literally every other relationship I've been in, no matter how fucking hard I tried to make it work. Look, I don't give a shit if you're a better or worse or whatever fucking version of yourself you are, it doesn't seem to make a fucking difference to me. Turns out you can act like a complete cunt on a date, and here I am, still maddeningly, stupidly fucking in love with you - only with you. Don't fucking say it again."

The stubborn part of Nicholas that refused to believe anything Chance said felt forced concede, because Chance was not that good of an actor. Nicholas had spent years pretending to buy his song and dance to spare his feelings. Even a poor actor could seem convincing enough, he thought, if he believed his own lines. Nicholas wheezed at the ground skeptically, letting the tiniest 'what if' peek its way into his mind. "Beautiful. Really." A glance upward bolstered Chance's claim; he suddenly looked as if Nicholas had the power to hurt him, and he was afraid of it happening.

"You act like you know how to be loyal to anyone. What are you saying, you think you could?"

Inch by inch, they were reluctantly handing back each others' weapons, hoping against hope nobody fired. Chance did not know how to answer Nicholas' question because he had no example of ever having been able to keep a promise like that.

"I don't know, Nicholas, I've never been in a relationship with you. It's not like you've never stepped out on anybody."

"With you, you dumb bimbo."

Chance continued, waving it off, "But if I can't - if you wont..even try, then what was it all for? Why have we been wasting our fucking time?"

It was an excellent point, if not the exact answer Nicholas had been hoping for.

Ever uncomfortable with a pause, Chance added, "..I want to. I want to try, I mean."

Then, since Nicholas was not going to make an impassioned speech because somebody had kicked him in the ribs and his lungs burned terribly, "Okay. Alright, fine."

"Just like that?"

"What the fuck else do you want? I love you. I..don't..just don't fuck me over, alright?"

"Alright, Nicholas."

Chance smiled and closed his eyes, and the terrible anger in him fell into a deep sleep. He sat down against the wall opposite Nicholas, exhausted, and wondered what to do now. He had never had a boyfriend before. He'd had lovers and arrangements and friends with benefits and almosts and a husband, but never an actual boyfriend. Half of him expected to see glitter exploding from the cobblestone gaps, or for the sconces to glow green instead of warm-yellow. Nothing of any consequence happened at all, and he marveled at how wonderfully ordinary it seemed. Even as an explosion went off in the Great Hall, they sat across from one another and considered how long this had all taken.

VIII.

Chance was twenty, and Nicholas nineteen.

Chartres was calm in the late summer evening. Humid, dark blue and golden, black trees backlit by the encroaching dusk, lights twinkling on from the ground. Chance watched the sky move and listened to the night begin. He was exhausted, as anyone in his position would have been after leaving Nicholas' funeral. How that extravagant bit of theater had come to pass was a story for another time, and what mattered was that Nicholas' very much alive body lay adorned in quilts a ways behind Chance's back, breathing softly in twilight. Most of Robin's apartment was dark and quiet, dimly lit by the lights of the cathedral.

After a few minutes, he heard Nicholas stir. "Hurry up. I'm cold." He couldn't have been, because the apartment was warm and there were easily five blankets and however many pillows tucked tight around him. Still, Chance obliged, moving away from the little balcony window and crawling into bed with him. "It's no fun sleeping alone."

"I know," Chance said, smiling to himself. "You wont, not anymore. Shut up and get some rest, you've had a long day." And Nicholas might have complained more about how difficult it was to live through his own wake, but Chance was there with him, stretching close like a warm dog. Nicholas yawned into his shoulder as they tangled up together, falling into an easy sleep.

That is where we will leave them, for now. There hadn't been many nights of real rest before this, nor would there be in the coming years. After all, a war was raging. But here, just for this evening, the two of them slept the sleep of people with nothing of consequence on their minds.