Present Day
"No," Holland replied, keeping his tone short. "I don't expect you'll be wearing that old coat to the festivities either."
Kell's expression flickered at Holland's tone, but he seemed to shore himself up—he always did, as if Holland was some challenge to master—and smoothed his already smooth lapel. The coat looked good on him. It fit as if tailored, as if being worn so much had somehow molded the sturdy fabric perfectly around the shape of Kell's shoulders and the bend of his elbow. "No, I will not. Do you already have whatever you're planning to wear?"
When they walked past the side door that led into the upstairs of the palace, where both Holland and Kell spent most of their time, Holland quickly surmised where Kell was headed: the courtyard, the center of preparations for tonight.
The scene exhausted Holland just to look at, inevitably reawakening the desire to retreat into his room in the palace and stare out the window at the sky, or lie on his back with his eyes closed. For a moment, he considered excusing himself from Kell's company to avoid it.
He opened his mouth to utter some excuse, but what came out was, "Have you switched faces with your brother while I haven't been looking?" Damn Kell. Damn Kell and the way he made Holland do all the things he didn't want to, like engage in conversation. Kell was always winning, and when Holland caught Kell's self-satisfied smirk, he could tell Kell knew it. "Since when is Kell Maresh this interested in clothing?"
Coming around the corner of the castle was like stepping into another world. While the gardens remained undisturbed—which is why Holland had retreated there when he felt that painful prickling at the back of his throat—the courtyard was awhirl with suffocating activity. People in bright uniforms bustled to and fro, clipping hedges, carrying tables between them, tablecloths, platters of food. The floor had been swept clean until there wasn't a stray leaf or speck of dirt, but it was perpetually being re-swept as workers came in and out, carrying trace amounts of dirt on the corners of their boots. There were lights strung up, and garlands, and a bar with what looked like hundreds of drinks behind the counter, all lined up perfectly in gleaming rows.
As expected, discomfort tugged at the edges of Holland's consciousness: a cold feeling in his stomach and buzzing at the base of his skull. He tightened his mouth and allowed himself, just for a moment, to look over at the other Antari beside him, surveying the workings before him with something like excitement, pleasure. The sight strengthened Holland just enough to quiet the buzzing and the cold.
Holland swallowed and looked forward again. He felt Kell's eyes on him and fought to keep his face expressionless. Perhaps his mouth tightened a little bit, but that was all.
They continued to walk along the edge of the courtyard in silence. It seemed Kell was making his way out the other end of the courtyard. Holland hoped so. Was Kell going to respond? At last, Holland had broken down and offered a piece of conversation; he'd thought that was what Kell was nagging him for.
He counted: three steps, four, five in silence.
Kell cleared his throat just as they exited the courtyard, coming out on the streets that opened out before the walls of the palace. "I was headed to Calla just now."
Oh, thought Holland. It almost seemed as if Kell had been working up his nerve. An interesting thought. The idea gave Holland some semblance of satisfaction, though he didn't think it was likely to be true.
"You're not being clever." Holland could feel his heartbeat in his palms. Hands in pockets, he curled and uncurled his fingers. "If you want to invite me, just ask."
As it always was when Holland didn't play right into his hands, Kell's expression cycled through several successive emotions: first he seemed surprised, then a little put out, and then gratified. Holland watched Kell's mouth and eyebrows move through these motions, feeling warm.
"If you don't want to come," Kell countered easily, "just say."
Holland did want to go. He didn't want to want to go, but he did want to go. His throat prickled, and he tasted blood. He'd just coughed up several blossoms in the palace gardens not ten minutes ago, but they were getting more and more frequent as his Heart Sickness grew worse. Every moment of time Holland spent with Kell made it grow worse.
And Kell? His footsteps didn't even slow as he made his way through the streets in the direction of Calla's tent.
As if he knew, without looking, that Holland would follow.
Past
"How are you?" Kell asks, a stripe of light falling just so across his face from the crack in Holland's curtains. It lights up Kell's blue eye and leaves the black in shadow, it highlights the cupid's bow of his lips and the very beginnings of his right collarbone where it dips beneath Kell's white shirt. The sunlight is the rich orange of sunset, while the rest of the room is lit gently with white light.
There are two plates on the tray in Kell's hands.
Holland makes a meaningless grunt and, with a sweep of his hand, moves the desk in the corner into the center of the room silently.
Kell's smile is evident in his voice when he says, "That's an improvement."
Holland makes another meaningless grunt. "I'm sorry to have offended your princely sensibilities previously, then." He makes the mistake of catching Kell's eyes as they sit, feet knocking awkwardly under the desk for a moment before they both pull them in. He hates being able to tell that Kell has assigned some sort of meaning to Holland's slight change in routine.
They eat, silent.
Holland wonders if Kell is listening to the sounds of the palace going about its business outside the door: the clattering of the kitchen just below them, or the occasional set of footsteps outside, bustling into rooms and fixing them up while their guests are at dinner. Or perhaps Kell is listening to Holland's fork against his plate, the crunch of the salad leaves as he spears them, and the pattern of his breathing. Holland finds himself hyper-aware of all of these things in regards to Kell.
He wonders if Kell ever has any thoughts about Holland's bare room, and what they might be. Holland finds no use for decoration, and nothing—from the color of the neatly tucked blankets on his bed to the stationary on his desk—is personalized. Kell seems to be under the impression that Holland refrains from altering his room because it is presumptuous to begin decorating no matter how many times Kell tells him he can stay as long as he wants or needs to, and that the room will always be kept for him anyway.
The truth is Holland has nothing to put on his walls, and hardly anything to hang up in the wardrobe. He doesn't care whether his bed is hot pink or midnight black; he's satisfied with having a bed at all.
He remembers that, even as a boy, his nights were restless and paranoid, and that as an adult, he'd slept plenty of nights on cold marble or chained up in a jail cell.
Ruler after ruler forced him to bleed, and to kneel, and to shackle himself before them.
"Holland."
Holland blinks, realizing he's staring at his plate, motionless, his fingers curled too tightly around his fork. The metal edges of it dig into his palm. "Excuse me," he murmurs. He looks up to find Kell studying him, his gaze soft. "I'm thinking of White London."
He doesn't mean to say it, but once it's out, it's out. He watches Kell carefully.
Kell watches him back, just as carefully. When he speaks, it sounds as if he's treading on eggshells. "What about it?"
"Oh." About his own brother turning on him. About whips burning his skin: No one suffers as beautifully as you. Holland turns his fork between his fingers. "I want to go back."
He doesn't know why he says that either. Holland lives for White London, of course—although there are times when even White London doesn't feel like enough to live for—but the thought of returning hasn't truly imprinted itself in his consciousness more than once or twice.
Both of these times, he has pictured checking what the new magic has done to the ecosystem of his world, who's filled the power vacuum now, whether the single mothers and orphan children in the cracking abandoned buildings are doing better, whether statues are still being shattered and blood still being spilled at the palace.
He imagines fixing whatever he can which has not already been fixed, imagines the satisfaction of finally, finally, feeling his being an Antari has served some purpose to the betterment of the world.
And he imagines finding a tree to lean against, and trying to offer his life up to White London again.
Every time he pictures going back home, he imagines dying: it is immediate, and it is what Holland imagines real happiness might feel like.
Kell looks at him for a long moment. His hair is getting a touch too long; it falls into his eyes a little bit. Then Kell makes a thoughtful hmm, and doesn't say anything more on it that night.
But the next day, he's turning a white coin between his fingers, offering his hand to Holland with no preamble.
Holland curls his arm tightly around Kell's waist. He has to, for the travel. He's not yet powerful enough to do it himself, despite the progress of his magic. He's taller than Kell by enough to feel Kell's curls against his face. Close enough to discern the shape of Kell's shoulder, the slimness of Kell's waist, the worn, rough fabric of his signature coat.
One breath in, one breath out. The air drags in his lungs, making his chest ache, and he knows he's going to be coughing more roses into his handkerchief soon.
Kell's hand tightens in Holland's own jacket.
"As Tascen."
White London is not what he remembers it to be.
Having drained him of half his life's magic in the span of a couple minutes, before Kell brought him back to Red London and insisted on nursing him back to full health against his will, White London now has the gentle whisper of magic in the air. Nothing overwhelming—if this is a whisper, Red London is a scream—but it's so different from the absolute silence that used to rule his world that Holland feels weak, as if the air has been knocked out of him.
Unthinkingly, he tightens his arm around Kell's waist. Kell quietly squeezes him back, as if to say, I'm here. Or, it's okay, or maybe, take your time. That seems like something Kell would say.
This is White London, this is his world, and his world has changed. Perhaps this is what a parent feels, when they blink and suddenly their child has grown up into someone more beautiful and more capable than they could've imagined.
It is fuller, and brighter. It flows over Holland, making the back of his neck tingle.
Looking around, Holland slowly begins to register other changes. They're standing on the twisted streets of the city, but the colors look brighter: the white is cleaner, and the sky bluer, the grass has lost its dull brown in favor of hopeful greens and the trees have actual leaves beginning to sprout. Somewhere far off, he thinks he hears a mother's scolding and a child's laugh.
He can sense Kell's gaze on him once more. "Holland?" The way Kell says his name makes him feel as if the air has been knocked out of him all over again; the second time in the past few minutes. There's a question in it: Are you okay?
Holland gives a single nod, without looking back. He's not sure Kell understands what this trip means to him; in fact, he's sure Kell doesn't. But he doesn't try to explain. He's afraid if he does, it will be in blood and roses.
Holland doesn't have to make a decision. Like a magnet, like a compass turning home, he makes his way towards the castle.