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Gilbert Chetter had been very young when he first met the son and later successor of Count Wheelsman - four or five, perhaps. Numbers mean very little, that far back. It was most likely at a meeting between their fathers or of the like, something where they brought the children to show them off then left them to play elsewhere. Even as a child, Gilbert knew how to socialise.
They had ended up in a garden, along with another nameless child or two. Or three? Maybe Amiru was there, or Cale. Maybe it was where the four of them first met, too. What did he know?
They played tig, then hide-and-seek-tig, in a garden bigger than Gilbert's had ever been. It had a pond with a bridge (and newts) and rushes by the side, with a neatly kept lawn and those carefully trimmed bushes in spirals or a vague impression of a rabbit. He hid in the shadow of some ornate bird table just by the rose bushes; the Count's son was It and everyone else had been found. When he heard his breathing just 'round the corner he tensed in his crouch on the floor and dodged the bodily throw of this other child, then raced past him into the wider lawn.
The rest of them were in a drooping pile on the lawn, starfished over grass. They whooped when he sprinted past, breathless. One tried to trip him and laughed into the ground when they failed. He jumped over a low hedge and skidded on yellow gravel, then set off down the ordered lines of plants, the boy following. This memory was a funny thing. Usually Gilbert was the one chasing after him.
He caught him running a little too fast, and as he delightedly shouted "tig!" they both went down, a crashing sandcastle to root-filled dirt.
It was not love, not yet. It will be.
**
Time passes. They find themselves in the same garden, but the bushes are different and themselves a little bigger. Under a willow, watching the rain fall through trailing leaves, Gilbert is told a story so old graveyard yews would bow to it. His companion does not have glasses yet, so he's free to rub at an eye as he talks without dislodging them from his nose.
After he's done, Gilbert goes out into the downpour, turns a circle and trips over a root. He sits up with mud on his elbows. His friend has his palms through the willow's tears, cupping the sky's; Gilbert asks if he is trying to drink it. He laughs, and tells him he's holding the weight of the air, all there in his hands.
**
It is a great many months and moments later and they've met again. Their friendship is several years older and so are they, so they end up in the library at Gilbert's house this time. At that age, paper held more magic than Baroness Chetter's lilies. No grand thing it is, but it is a library, which is better than most commoners can boast.
They end up in the corner where the oldest books were kept, the ones leather-bound and yellowing. A younger Gilbert had been entranced with the burn marks encroaching on a corner on one he could see on the bottom shelf, seventh from the left. Now, with his companion paging through another, equally as engrossed in it's words as he was in those fading brown stains, Gilbert leans on the wood between aging frames and watches soft grey hair fall into soft grey eyes. Pain, he thinks, is not being able to reach out and brush it away.
"Are you not getting a book?" the boy (and god, he's almost a man) asks, startling him. His denial is stuttered. The other one looks at him, something like a frown between his brows, but he only hums and turns back his book.
Once he gets his book, they retire to the desk by the back wall. Gilbert digs out pen and paper, sketches a willow and a rose on a bush. The leaves have barely begun to rise from behind sprawling petals when his companion puts down the book, still open, and traces his eyes over loose-lying lines. He keeps drawing. They sit like that for a while, one stroking the inside spine of a novel, the other's hands giving life to ink.
"Do you want to swap?" Gilbert asks, when this had gone on long enough and his flower cannot grow any more.
His companion tilts his head and says "if you want, Gilbert. If that's what you want," and he breathes by the grace of his name on those lips.
So one draws and the other reads. Drawings turn to words on paper and a rose not in steady curves but in poetry. One chews his pen every so often, asking for a reminder of a phrase, fingers shaking themselves out on yew wood. Eventually, he bites his pen hard enough that ink spills into his mouth and spits it out, making disgusted noises into cloth, and Gilbert loves him for that.
He accepts another napkin from Gilbert, cleans his pen. Blue on his lips, swearing, he is beautiful and the other knows that if he asked he would go on his knees, but fear curls somewhere. What would his father think?
**
Another year goes past with alarming speed and he's off to the capital, representing his family there for the first time. His peers in the Northeast accompany him there, all but Cale, who was... kept at home in favour of Basen.
Amiru stands next to him, the younger Basen following his mother's footsteps elsewhere in the hall. She holds a deep red wine, beautiful in a velvet of winter green and white, and he finds himself once again in awe of his friend. She'd always been one of the most clever in any room she walked into and she'd grown so much. They'd all grown so much. Half the nobles surrounding them couldn't take their eyes off of her.
She's turned away to greet the son of some southern Viscount when the dance ends and he catches the Wheelsman heir in the corner of his eye, stepping forward with some unknown lady settling across from him. They are both clothed in blues, his of a lighter sort and hers a brilliant deep colour, something from a great ocean's depths. The tails of his coat are detailed in red and it looks planned against her red-lined collar, the ribbons at her skirt and the slits in her sleeves.
From where he stands he can only see his - the Wheelsman heir's back, but as his partner he can see the lovely curl of her mouth. Something like jealousy strikes him - she can dance together with him. She can look at him like that. Gilbert imagines his storm-eyes, all crinkled up in the corner at him. He wishes then for his own wine, something to ease the want in his chest.
Her smile has nothing on Amiru, he thinks fiercely, nor on his love. He tries not to consider this woman against himself. Some part of him knows which he'd choose.
He doesn't quite realise how intent his gaze has become until Amiru brushes subtly against his arm and he turns his flinch into a smooth tilt of his head toward her. A child, he'd been behaving like a child. When a nearly man laughs, bright and loud, she hisses 'socialising' at him. The pity in her eyes trips him up, but the knowing in them catches in all the sore places in his soul. Gilbert looks away, introduces himself to an elderly marchioness and invites her onto the floor. She accepts.
He watches his love all dressed up, dancing at a ball, and like any good politician, pretends he's untouchable.
**
They are left alone for a few minutes, in a meeting between parents they no longer get sent out for. Expected to participate these days, expected to play the part of soon to be leaders for their entire territories, but when Gilbert sees his face, beloved rests somewhere in his Adam's apple. He feels the stirrings of disgust deep in his belly. Talking together, their voices low and turning conspiratorial, they get so close their breaths touch. Something soars between them but a servant comes in so they lean away, once again.
*
The crown prince summons the nobles to the capital once again. Gilbert doesn't quite know why, but he does know that somewhere, a mile or a hundred or a half ahead, his love travels upon the same long, winding road. They write each other letters, these days, so he knows Cale Henituse is attending in the place of his younger brother. He knows from those letters that they should be more than worried but then he stands in the big open air and finds the snags of his heart flattening into something like peace.
*
They meet with the eldest Henituse son, the three of them, talk him out of getting drunk or whatever he did with his time these days. He's unusually nice. Compliant? His companion doesn't notice, too excited by the prospect of his old friend behaving himself, but him and Amiru exchange a glance. Their peer has changed, and for the better. But what caused it? He's almost afraid to consider what could have such an effect on a person.
Now, Amiru sits on a Wheelsman desk, eating cheese and making plans to secure their future. Sometimes, Gilbert thinks, as she discusses assassination and then giggles at their eyebrows, he's a little scared of her.
He moves to the casement, leaves Amiru to be unrepentantly unhelpful and his love to sigh behind him as he presses his forehead to cool glass. Beyond the window, on the street a carriage passes, emblazoned with a golden turtle. He raises his head in slight interest. Below him, Cale Henituse looks out onto grey stone, elegant hand supporting one of the prettiest faces in the Northeast. Gilbert knows his love is prettier.
This other Count's son does not see him, but Gilbert does, and sees the burning of men in those eyes. He looks again, and thinks he hallucinates. By him, his companion writes another letter.
He doubts Cale will read it.
***
One day the war will end, and Eric Wheelsman will kiss him in his study, sat in his father's chair, hand still holding his fountain pen and papers scattered across his desk. Gilbert will cry into his collarbone, choking on a lifetime loving, and the dawn will move forever forwards.