Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/396632.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural, Henry_V_-_Shakespeare, Henry_V-Branagh_movie_'verse
  Relationship:
      Dean/Sam
  Character:
      Sam_Winchester, Dean_Winchester
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-05-02 Words: 10064
****** We Happy Few ******
by SylvanWitch
Summary
     When Dean, Archer of Winchester, stumbles over Sam, boy, he discovers
     that there's more to his future than the Battle of Agincourt.
Notes
     This was inspired by my love for Shakespeare's Henriad and the
     Branagh film version. Please note that though Sam is underage for our
     time, he's well into his young manhood for 1415AD.
     Also, I wrote this years ago and am at last migrating it to a
     permanent archive.
It’s raining.
 
Of course, it’s been raining for days.  His boots are heavy with mud, his
stockings rotted clear through, blisters rubbed to popping and then down to
bone against his big toe, at the back of his heel.  He’s got his head down
against the rain, the heaviness of it on his woolen hood pressing his chin into
his chest, which is why he doesn’t see the boy until he trips over him.
 
The boy’s talking before Dean can figure out what’s happened, before he can
peel the sodden wool out of his eyes, shuck his wet hair back out of his face
and look at what—who’s—laid him out on the muddy road.
 
Around them, the trudging continues, the men too exhausted even to make the
usual comments a brace of bucks down in the mud would usually raise.
 
“I’m sorry, sir.  I’m so sorry.  Let me help you up.  Here, let me—“
 
He takes a boot to the ribs, grunts, tries to roll away.  But his cloak is
pinned beneath him, choking him, and it almost doesn’t seem worth it to try to
get up.  It’s the first time he’s laid down in days.  They sleep leaning up
against barrows and hedge-posts, in the rise of a sunken road or in the lee of
a tree, afraid if they stretch out on the ground, they’ll drown, sink down into
brown and never rise again.
 
Then again, the limbs of his bow dig into his back, the fletching of his
quivered arrows scratching his neck.  It’s not as comfortable as he might have
hoped.
 
“Oh, Jesu—I’m sorry, sir.  I can—“
 
“Enough!”
 
He hasn’t got much of a bark left, his voice ragged with spent breath and the
wetness they all carry on them, but it must get through, for the infernal
chatter finally ceases.
 
Dean struggles to his hands and knees, trying not to think about the indignity,
and then stands gingerly, half expecting to lose his footing again.
 
The late afternoon light is thin, stretched out over brown landscape and
diluted by the steady rain, but he can make out sharp features, big eyes limpid
with terror, hair in a wild wreath around the boy’s face.
 
Tall, too, and lithe, though a little underweight—but who isn’t?
 
“Sir?”
 
The boy whispers it, as though afraid of Dean’s wrath.
 
“What’s your name, boy?”  It’s not at all what he’d meant to say.  He’d meant
to dismiss the boy with a snarled injunction to watch his place.  Instead, he’s
getting—
 
“Samuel, sir.”
 
“Your people?”
 
The boy shakes his head, wet hair clinging to his cheeks.  He should have a
hood.  Dean quashes the thought, frowns.
 
“None, sir.  Mum and Da have been gone for years.”
 
“Who do you march with?”
 
“I’m attached to Erpingham, sir.”
 
“Page?”
 
“Oh, no sir.  No…” 
 
That can only mean he’s—
 
“Just a boy.”  Sam’s voice is barely audible over the driving rain.
 
“How old are you?”
 
Sam answers quickly, though Dean knows it’s a strange question, out of place
for their current situation, taking up space on the march to the end. 
 
If the boy notices, though, he doesn’t indicate it.
 
“Fifteen, May Day’s revel, sir.”
 
“Old enough to use a bow, I wager.”
 
For the first time, Sam meets Dean’s eyes with his own.  They’re bright with
hope, and Dean’s staggered by it, that any of them can have a look so fresh
when they’ve been marching and dying as regular as moonrise for weeks.
 
“I could, sir.  I mean, if I were taught.”
 
Dean’s spent a lot of time gaming, bent over the cups in smoky public houses,
yellow-eyed cut-throats across the table from him.  He knows when he’s being
gulled.
 
“You think I can teach you to draw a bow?  It takes strength, boy, and you’re
hardly wider around than my grip.”  His laugh is a hollow, wet sound, deadened
ominously by the shifting downpour.
 
“I’m stronger than I look.”  There’s more desperation than aggression in his
words, and Dean feels a pang of sorrow that the boy’s so eager for battle.  He
suspects none of them will have such an appetite for war after the coming fight
is joined.  Then, too, none of them are likely to live out the week.
 
“Aye, that could be true.  I’ll tell you what, Samuel of Erpingham’s, if you
can find me when we’ve stopped for the night, I’ll see to it that you get your
first lesson on the long bow.”
 
“In truth?”
 
“A man keeps his word, Sam.”  Thinking to say no more, feeling the fool as it
is, he rejoins the line, only to be halted a moment later by a thin voice
carrying to him from behind.
 
“By what name are you called, sir?”
 
Dean sighs, considers the ankle-deep mire, wonders if it can open up and
swallow him now, before he compounds his error.
 
Squelching boots enter his view a breath after the regret, though, and he’s
left with saying, “Dean, Archer,” he says, still proud despite what that
proficiency has already cost him, will cost him again ere long.  “Of
Winchester.”
 
“Thank you, sir,” the high, clear voice replies, but Dean cannot look up,
cannot see the lips that breathe the grateful words. 
 
“I’m too old for this,” he mutters, moving onward.
 
In sooth, he’s nineteen and a half, but he’s been at war—never a shortage of
border skirmishes, always a Scotsman or a Welshman to quell—since he was
younger than young Sam.  It doesn’t seem possible he was ever the boy’s age.
 
Sighing again, he puts his mind to walking, one heavy foot after the other,
dragging with every step the bloody French earth.
 
*****
 
He’s almost gone, in that space of breath between the little death of sleep and
still waking, when he hears low cursing moving like a wave of imprecation
toward him across the soldier-strewn ground.  They’d lucked upon a mounded
thicket, hollowed out by years of animals making their dens in its drier
embrace, even scared up a brace or two of coneys for supper in the process.
 
There’d been enough space for a few of them—Evyn and Merl, Cocker and Edmund,
and Dean—to wrap themselves in their damp cloaks and stretch out without fear
of drowning in the night.
 
He’d deny it if anyone had asked him what he was hiding from.
 
Dean groans, spends a few tired breaths on curses of his own, and sits up,
rubbing his hand over his face to smooth away the lines.
 
Soon enough, a moon-bright face looms into his nearer view, and Dean’s having
to brace the boy at the shoulder to keep him from tripping over his legs.
 
“It’ll be cock crow ere long and you’re waking the dead with your racket,” he
growls, but there’s precious little heat in it.  There’s no heat to speak of
where the boy stands, open to the elements, breath curling out of him as he
pants out an apology.
 
“I didn’t mean to wake you, but you said—“
 
“Aye, I remember what I said, boy.  But it’s late now, and the morn comes
sooner than we’d like.  We have to sleep while we can.”
There’s an awkward long pause then, when Dean considers what he’s said and
wonders if he can take back the “we” without hurting the boy’s feelings.
 
But Samuel is apparently a smarter boy than he looks, for he turns away without
another word, though his weariness makes him stumble.

Evyn curses in his sleep and rolls away, giving them his back and what little
privacy might be managed.
 
Dean sighs.  “Come here, boy.  You can’t wander about in the dark of the
night.”
 
Samuel turns back, that unexpected hope lighting his face, and drops to his
knees with surprising grace, perching upright on his heels, eyes on Dean’s.
 
“I only meant for sleep,” Dean says, low, hoping no one is awake to hear it. 
It’s not that the others would mind where he took his comfort.  It’s only that
he’d never live down the goading afterward.
 
Samuel nods convulsively, swallows audibly, and Dean sighs again, harsher this
time.  “In god’s name, boy, haven’t you ever—“  He leaves off, sure of nothing
else but that he doesn’t want the answer to that question.  “Just lie down and
be quiet.”  He offers the boy the edge of his cloak, knowing that it won’t
cover them both, that it’ll mean sleeping cold.
 
He suppresses a third sigh and closes his eyes, trying to ignore the shifting,
indistinct heat of the boy so close to his side.
 
*****
 
In the morning, Samuel is pressed up against him toe, shank, and chest, and
Dean realizes he’s cradling the boy to him with his drawing arm.  Before he can
extract himself, he hears a chuckle, which, when he opens his eyes to discover
its source, turns into a crowing sound.
 
Evyn and Cocker are about already, bright-eyed enough for all their cold
night’s sleep, eyes merry with humor at Dean’s expense.

“Not a word,” he growls, but that only incites them to further fits, and soon
enough the boy is stirring at Dean’s side and he’s having to distract himself
by thinking of troop strength and French prisons so that he doesn’t give his
friends yet more ammunition with which to pummel him.
 
The boy’s nose, cold and sharp, brushes his cheek as he shakes off sleep, and
though Dean can’t make out the words, he knows the boy has spoken for the burst
of damp heat against his jaw.  He can’t stop the shiver the sensation raises,
and Merl’s cackle joins the other two.
 
Soon enough, all four of his purported friends are moving about, building a
fire and preparing their meager breakfast, supplementing it with bawdy remarks
long on barnyard humor and short on tact.  When Dean sits up, he sees that
Samuel’s face is aflame, and he casts a nasty look at his friends, who are not
even a little cowed by Dean’s expression.
 
“Careful now, Edmund, the bull has horns,” Cocker warns with mock gravity.
 
“Aye, limp ones,” Edmund predictably responds.
 
“Are you needed back at your camp?” He asks Samuel quietly, trying to ignore
the way the boy’s blush makes him almost pretty in the weak dawn light.
“No.  I was granted boon to be here.”
 
“What did you tell your master?”
 
Samuel’s shrug suggests he doesn’t care to answer, and Dean lets it go, knowing
well enough the vagaries of power in a miserable march such as the one they’ve
been on for nigh on a fortnight.
 
“Well, then, after we eat, I’ll give you that lesson I promised you.”
 
“In truth?”  The hope in the boy’s voice is balanced by wariness, and Dean
finds himself happier to hear it, since it means perhaps Samuel isn’t as
innocent as he’d believed from their brief encounter of the day before.
 
“Aye, I’ve told you before a man keeps his word.”
 
Samuel says nothing, only ducking his head a little before rising.  Dean can’t
help but admire how supple the boy is, how he stands without effort or aid. 
His own attempt at grace is marred by cracking joints and sinews made stiff by
the cold, damp earth that’s been his bed for longer than he can remember, it
seems.  He feels far older beside the boy’s fresh beauty than he can ever
recall feeling before.
 
Still…
 
“He’s a pretty one,” Merl whispers, sotto voce, so that Samuel’s blush
strengthens.
 
“Leave off,” Dean commands, and there is something in his tone that brings his
friends round to a semblance of seriousness. 
 
“You’ll need the butts,” Evyn observes, moving from the thicket mound toward
the cart where their works are stored.
 
Dean watches his friends disappear one by one, each muttering some excuse or
other, and he can’t help but smile.  Subtle they are not, but they mean well,
and it warms him a little, chasing away the last of the night’s lingering
chill.
 
“Eat something, and then we’ll have your first lesson.”
 
Sam eats like he’s starving, and Dean supposes the boy might very well be. 
There’s little enough to go around, and the fighting men get the lion’s share. 
There can’t be much left for the boys.
 
“Do you like Sir Erpingham’s men?” Dean asks, mostly to prevent himself from
simply staring at the boy’s red lips as he eats the thin gruel that passes for
breakfast these days.
 
Another shrug, which Dean is already coming to recognize as the boy’s way of
avoiding an answer. 
 
“Is the old man hard on you, then?”
 
This time, Samuel shakes his head vigorously, struggling through a mouthful to
say, “He’s a good man.”
 
“Your master?”
 
This time, something about Samuel’s shoulders signals an end to the subject,
and Dean lets it go, uncertain he really wants to know what brings such tension
to the otherwise seemingly easy boy.
 
“Ready, then?” He asks, after they’ve scoured and stowed the bowls.  It’ll be
an hour or two yet until the march is under way, plenty of time for a little
practice.
 
Sam’s smile is eager and wide, and Dean is again caught unawares by it.  He has
to take in a breath and stare off toward the far horizon like he’s watching
something else. 
 
“This way,” he orders, more brusquely than he means, but Sam falls in behind
him like he’s used to taking orders.
 
Evyn, bless him, has set up the butts, two at the far end of a muddy field,
perhaps fifty yards from where they’ve emerged out of the thicket.  The rain is
steady but thin, blurring the edges of everything and gathering in slow drops
at the edge of Sam’s hair.  Dean watches one break free of a strand and trickle
its way down the boy’s cheek to his jaw and then down his neck.
 
He takes up his bow to move his mind away from the phantom sensation of his
tongue following the drop down.
 
“First, you have to string your bow.”  Dean demonstrates twice and then hands
it to Samuel.  He’s surprised by the ease of the boy’s effort, for the long
bow, as tall as Dean and taller than Samuel by half a head, takes strength to
string.
 
On his second try he gets it, turning shy, proud eyes on Dean, who can’t help
but smile encouragingly back.
 
“Aye, well, the drawing’s harder,” he gruffs, masking his pleasure in Sam’s
obvious delight.
 
This, too, Dean shows Samuel, and as he suspected, it takes the boy longer to
manage.  Dean finds himself standing snug up against Samuel’s damp back, left
hand wrapped around Sam’s fingers where they hug the grip, right hand on his
right wrist, steadying the draw.
 
The nocked arrow shivers against the limb, and Dean murmurs, “Steady,” his
attention split between the gentle tremors wracking the boy’s body and the way
Sam’s slender fingers look on the string.
 
“Let go,” he says, lost all at once in the way Sam’s body recoils back against
him when he releases the arrow.
 
He’s brought back to the moment by Sam’s quick hiss as the painful sting of a
fletch-burn catches up to him. 
 
He starts to apologize for not warning Sam about that common danger, but
Samuel’s eyes are glued to the butt, where the arrow still quivers in place
from the strike.
 
“’sblood,” Dean curses, forgetting himself, “You’ve struck the heart of it,
right enough.”
 
Sam has half turned toward Dean, and by virtue of the schooling position, it
brings the boy’s lips into near proximity.  Dean feels the wash of the boy’s
warm breath across his chin and takes a hasty step back, stumbles over a
furrow, flails his arms and goes down in a heap.
 
He hears a bark of laughter from behind them even as he sees Samuel’s eyes
widen, first in worry for Dean and then with something more sinister—terror.
 
The flash of it is there and then gone in the time it takes the stranger to
say, “I see he’s raining disaster on yet another poor fool.”
 
Dean objects to the term, but he hardly has room to argue, given his position. 
There’s no graceful way to his feet, but he makes it eventually, brushing away
the worst of the clodded mud before giving the stranger a cool stare.
 
“You’re wanted in camp, boy.”  Dean bridles at the tone and then harder at
Sam’s reaction.  Without looking at Dean, Samuel offers him the bow, bows his
head, mumbles what might pass as thanks, and is gone, fleet as a roe over the
sodden field.
 
“You’d be his master, I take it?” Ordinarily, he’s more careful with men whose
quality isn’t immediately apparent, but he finds loathing already occupies the
part of his brain that usually houses caution. 
 
“Who are you to ask, archer?”
 
Dean nods to himself, shoulders his bow and quiver, and makes as if to pass the
man, managing in the process to nudge him with his shoulder.
 
He expects a shove, at the very least, but instead he gets a chuckle.  The
sound is wrong enough to make Dean pause, turning his head over his shoulder to
take in the stranger’s face.
 
“You think you’re getting something for nothing, then?  You are a fool.  He’s
no good, that one.  He’ll ruin you.  That is, assuming you have anything worth
ruining.”
 
The sneer is evident and impolite, cause enough for a glove if Dean had one to
spare.  Instead, he turns full about to face the man.
 
“What I have is none of your concern, Sir—“
 
“I’m your better and that’s all you need to know.  Keep away from the boy,
archer, or I’ll see you hanged for buggery.”
 
He tries to hide the convulsive swallow the stranger’s words bring, but he’s
sure by the heat in his face that his flush is obvious, surer still when an
ugly smile warps the stranger’s face into something that makes Dean have to
clench his fists to keep them from his bow.  It’s no good in close combat,
anyway.
 
Threat delivered, the stranger turns on one muddied heel and strides away,
leaving Dean seething with indignation, a hollow core of cold fear making the
morning’s meager meal flip unpleasantly in his belly.
 
The call to march comes shortly thereafter, and with retrieving and stowing the
butts and gathering his gear, he’s well on the road before he can revisit the
morning’s events.  He has to force his mind away from the feel of Samuel
trembling against him, the slender wrist fragile but strong beneath his hand,
the lithe body…
 
He puffs out a hard breath and turns his thoughts to the stranger, considering
the man’s apparel again now that he’s not blinded by rage and fear.
 
No insignia to speak of, certainly nothing that suggested nobility.  A
gentleman, then, maybe a steward or franklin.  His mind recalls the man’s
threat.  “See you hanged,” he’d said, not “have you,” which is enough different
to make Dean breathe a little easier.

Buggery might not be legal, but it’s certainly common enough, particularly in
an army on the march as long as they’ve been.  Five miserable weeks at
Harfleur, watching the men sicken from maggoty bread and brackish water, the
moans of the dying drown out by the siege guns pounding futilely at the city’s
great walls.
 
Another week or more spent idle, waiting for the orders to march, forbidden
from so much as touching a single garden plot, no matter how fresh the last of
the cabbage looked from the vast distance of the forbidden gate.
 
And then a fortnight across the roughest terrain, fighting for passage at every
ford, fighting for their very lives once the rains came, men falling on their
faces and not rising, sinking deeper into the muck as the marching army sloshed
past.
 
They didn’t bother to bury the dead themselves.  Nature was doing it for them,
her grim visage glaring over their feeble ranks, pouring cold ire down on their
bowed heads.
 
Men didn’t talk about the quick, hot fumbling behind the privy hedge.  It
happened or it didn’t, and that was that.  Still, there was always a chance
someone might see, someone less…understanding than Evyn and Merl and the rest.
 
Someone like Samuel’s master.
 
And like that, the breadth of his vision is filled with Sam’s pale face bent
earthward, unable to look Dean in the eye as he hurried away, the fear there
and how small it made his laughing, lithe boy.
 
Here, now.  When did Samuel become ‘his’?
 
Laughing a little grimly at his own foolishness, Dean tries to shake off a
growing sense of unease, tries to focus on putting miles under his throbbing
feet.
 
Watching the ground only reminds him of how he met Samuel—
 
God, was it only just yesterday?
 
Dean casts a bitter grimace up at the weeping sky and grits his teeth.  He’s
got to be stronger than this, anyway.  They’re about to—
 
A trumpet sounds the halt, and he stumbles, thrown off his pace by the
unexpected pealing.
 
Murmurs start far ahead, only a distant expectation of sound, and then roll
back toward him like a crushing wave until the ginger-haired yeoman in front of
him turns to say, “We’ve arrived!”
 
He can hardly believe it, but he passes the word along, his mind numb to the
possibility that the marching might at last be done.
 
Of course that means a battle is nearly nigh.  He tries to focus on what he’ll
need to do to ready himself, but all he can manage is to blink away the
distraction of Samuel’s pale face as he disappeared that morning.  He wonders
where Samuel will be, how he’ll find him tonight.
 
It turns out to be easier than he’d expected.  Their numbers, sorely depleted
by disease at Harfleur and the ravages of fourteen days on the road, half of
them in the rain, makes the camp smaller than one might expect—or hope, given
the circumstance. 
 
From a slight rise behind their encampment, he takes in a view of the scant
pennants flying here and there, gathering what weak gloaming the sinking sun
offers to guide him to Sir Erpingham’s camp. 
 
He tries not to look at the strength of France spread thick on the ground,
watchfires blooming like alarums and reaching to the towers of distant
Agincourt, dwarfed now by storm clouds amassing to the west.
 
*****
 
Long after full dark has cloaked them all in inky night, Dean leaves his bow in
the care of Merl, who gives him a worried look before saying, “Be careful.”
 
He nods, wondering what his friend thinks he knows about Dean’s destination,
and moves off through the nearly silent camp.  It’s quiet enough between
wracking wet coughs and grumbled sleep talk for him to hear the French armorers
busy at their clanging across the rain-drenched field that will be wetter for
blood by this time tomorrow.
 
He decides not to think too long on that, since besides the long bow he has
only a knife sheathed at his waist to defend himself should their own line of
men at arms fail.

It’s a short enough walk to Erpingham’s, past the knights’ horses picketed and
restless, hay-damp breath and shifting feet like a single huge beast shuffling
in place out of the dark; past the English armorer, his forge an angry red eye,
bellows roaring like another beast entirely.
 
Old Sir Thomas’ camp is a few sagging tents, filth obscuring their original
telling colors, and a long row of men wrapped in their cloaks against the damp
that he can feel up to his knees, even, a miasma of discomfort rising from the
seeping earth.
 
There’s a fire here and there, and it’s beside one that he spies Samuel, bent
almost double, using the fire’s uncertain light to repair a girth.  Across the
flames, narrowed eyes watching the boy with blatant avarice bordering on
perversity, is the stranger, who glances up just as Dean steps back into the
shadow of a tent before pivoting hastily to walk away.
 
He’s looking over his shoulder to discover if he’s been seen when he runs
headlong into a cloaked figure, whose solid weight and breadth of chest drives
the air from Dean and pushes him back several stumbling steps before he catches
himself.
 
“I’m sorry, sir,” he starts automatically before he can take in the quality of
the cloak and its coat of arms.
 
“Good Sir Erpingham,” he stutters, dropping into a waist-deep bow.  “My
apologies for not watching my step.”
 
An amused voice, deep and quiet, carries nevertheless the few feet between
them.  “What were you watching, I wonder?”
 
The man’s face is shadowed by the deep hood, but by the glint of his eyes, Dean
discerns that he’s in good humor.  He’s also looking toward the spot from which
Dean was fleeing.
 
With almost physical dread, Dean turns his head far enough to notice that
Samuel is still there, still at work on the broken girth, though now he’s
upright, his hands raised into the light, face lit by the fire he’s using to
see by.
 
“A handsome lad, that,” Erpingham notes.
 
“One of yours,” Dean says before he thinks.  It’s not his place to—
 
“Aye, and a good lad, too, though a bit wild.”  The chuckle is warm, and it
warms Dean, too, so that he finds himself smiling fondly without having meant
to.
 
“Did you come to look after him, archer?” Erpingham inquires.
 
“Aye, he’s a…”  Friend, Dean had been going to say, but he reconsiders.  The
boy’s master works for the lord, and though Dean’s never heard a hard word
after the master of the manor, perhaps there’s something Erpingham hides that
Dean had best not discover now.
 
“A friend?” The lord asks, voice deliberately light.
 
“Aye,” Dean answers, a little curtly, perhaps, for he’s made uncomfortable by
the old man’s teasing tone.  It seems…
 
“What stops you from your visit, then, I wonder?”
 
…to know more than Dean has indicated.  He gives the man a hard look, eyes
trying to make out his expression in the feeble light.
 
Finally tired, though, of subterfuge, feeling what precious time’s left to them
trickling away fast and faster again, Dean blurts, “The boy’s master is a hard
man and has forbidden our…friendship.”
 
He curses himself inwardly for stumbling over the last word, but Erpingham only
chuckles, a warm, open laugh that makes Dean simultaneously less and more
uncomfortable.  The man certainly doesn’t sound like an elderly, reticent old
man, as Dean has heard him described for weeks now around campfires at night or
privy hedges in the early morn.
 
Whatever reply the old knight makes is drown out just then by the louder roar
of the armorer’s bellows and a leaping flare of light, by which Dean catches a
look full on of the man’s hooded face.
 
Breath catching in his throat, Dean can feel his eyes widen even as his mouth
attempts obeisance and he begins by reflex to drop into the deepest of bows.
 
Some minor gesture by the man in Erpingham’s cloak stops him, however, perhaps
the slightest shaking of his head or a hand held out in denial.  Whatever it
is, it stops Dean and he nods, still a little breathless to discover who it is
to whom he really speaks.
 
“Sire—“
 
“There’s a tent not far from here that I happen to know is unoccupied and will
be for some time to come.  A man wanting peace and privacy might find it a good
place to retire for…meditation and prayer, I should think.”
 
Before Dean can scarce understand what he’s being offered, the great man holds
out a badge.  “Show this to the guards at the door.  Tell them you have our
permission to rest within.  Your young friend will join you ere long.”
 
“I—“
 
“Night waits for no man, good archer.  Get thee hence and abide awhile.  I’ll
look after his coming.”
 
“Thank you,” Dean whispers, fearing anything louder would reveal the way his
voice wants to break with the welling of his heart in his throat.
 
Without another word, the king slips into shadows and is gone.  Shaking a
little from the encounter—and, truth be told, though never to another man would
he confess it, Dean is afraid.  Samuel is beautiful and slender and fragile and
young, and Dean is half sure the boy’s nothing more than an elvish creature
come to strike his heart in twain and then abandon him to pine brokenhearted
and forever.
 
Shaking off the ridiculous images that idea evokes, Dean moves hastily in the
direction of the king’s camp, still uncertain if what’s just transpired has
really happened.  The damp badge in his hand suggests the king’s offer was real
enough, but he’s like a courier just come into camp, chest heaving with spent
breath, when he finally arrives at the enormous red and gilt tent that towers
over the others in its orbit.
 
The guards stand glowering, backs straight as arrows, eyes ahead, and it takes
all of Dean’s considerable courage to walk up to them and present the badge.

“His royal highness the king bade me enter.”
 
One guard and then the other scrutinizes the badge in the light of twin torches
that burn merrily to either side of the tent’s tasseled door.  Then the one on
the left nods.
 
“Go on,” he says, voice entirely neutral.  It leads Dean to wonder who else has
been invited to borrow the king’s tent thus.

Probably best not to speculate on the habits of great men.
 
The inside of the tent is far more modest than its glittering exterior.  A
large brazier glows in the center of the vaulted roof, casting a mellow umber
glow over a simple, wide camp bed, a table spread over with maps, a closed
chest, an armorer’s dummy, and the various, expected accoutrements of a man of
war.  The only concession to the king’s position is a heavy velvet blanket
spread over the bed, a golden lion, rampant, crowding the scarlet field to its
edges.
 
Still, it’s a handsome space, dry and warm, and Dean closes his eyes for a long
moment to take in the sensation of being out of the rain at long last.
 
He’s swaying a little in place, listening to the muffled drops striking the
canvas far above his head, when he hears the guards offer a challenge at the
tent’s doubled flaps.
 
Then, Samuel is slipping inside, eyes wide, taking in first the room and then
its only other occupant, widening, if possible, even further to realize exactly
where they are.
 
“I did not believe it,” Samuel whispers, taking hesitant steps toward where
Dean stands warming his backside near the brazier.
 
“Nor I, until I saw it,” Dean answers, smiling.  He holds out a hand he’s proud
to see is steady.  “Come here, where it’s warm.  You look damp.”
 
The boy raises a hand to push his wet bangs from his eyes, and Dean captures
the hand, pressing a kiss against his icy palm.
 
He hears the boy’s breath stutter in his throat.  This is the first time they
have touched with intimate purpose.
 
Dean’s heart, too, races, but he ignores it in favor of running his tongue up
the boy’s palm toward the pulse that he can feel leaping beneath his lips. 
This he gives ample attention, too, casting his eyes upward from their work to
take in Samuel’s flushed cheeks and glittering eyes.
 
The boy’s tongue darts out to slip across his red, red mouth, and Dean cannot
help but chase it, hands cupping Samuel’s face, tongue sliding between his
pliant lips, tasting at last the boy’s flavor.
 
Dean groans then, and is at once mortified, pulling back from the boy to take
in his face, afraid he’ll find terror there like what he’d witnessed only that
morning. 
 
Instead, he finds Samuel’s eyes closed, dark lashes fluttering on his pale
cheeks, lips roughened by Dean’s assault on them and parted slightly to release
panting breaths.
 
As he watches, the boy’s eyes open lazily and those sinful lips curl into a
wanton smile.  “Why did you stop?” He asks, but the tone is almost teasing, as
though the boy is well aware of the effect he has on Dean.
 
“Are you sure this is what you want, Samuel?  I will not take what is not yours
to offer freely.”
 
“Who else but I would own my body?”
 
Dean lets his hands drop away from the boy’s face, takes a step away, putting
an arm’s length between them to consider Samuel’s words.
 
“Haven’t you a master?”  He does not mean it to sound like a trick question,
but god help him, Dean is thrown, as though something in the boy’s lips—some
occult potion, perhaps—makes him other than himself, strange-headed.
 
“None but he who stands before me.”

Dean narrows his eyes dangerously.  “Do not play me for a fool, boy, or you’ll
live to regret it.”
 
“Not long past the morrow, I wager.”
 
Ah, but the boy’s quick of tongue.
 
“Tell me fair, young Samuel.  Have there been others here before me?”
 
“I would not hazard to guess on the habits of great men.”
 
It takes Dean a moment’s thought to realize both that the boy is playing words
with him and that Samuel’s echoed Dean’s own thoughts of only moments before.
 
Shaking his head, smirking at the boy’s quickness and his own ridiculous
jealousy—for truly, hasn’t he just met the boy?  And from whence all this folly
about witchcraft?
 
Once again closing the space between them, it takes all of Dean’s unraveling
strength not to grip the boy’s shoulders and haul him in for a brutal,
possessive kiss.  Instead, he stares down at the boy, eyes steady on Samuel’s,
and for the space of several long breaths, he says nothing, neither blinks nor
winks, and waits.
 
“Will you love me?” The boy asks finally, swaying suddenly in place as though
he’ll fall into Dean’s arms.
 
“Aye, and more,” Dean answers, voice rough with unspoken things. 
 
Still, they do not touch.
 
“Have you real flesh under that kit, or are you an elvish thing come to taunt
me?” Dean wonders aloud, beyond embarrassment now, beyond unwillingness to show
his wonder.  He’s moments from discovery he’d scarce dreamt of only two nights
since.
 
“I’m only a boy,” Samuel avers, voice quiet as he reaches up to unbutton his
tunic and shrug it off.
 
Soon enough there’s proof of the boy’s words, all his pale skin, lean muscle,
long bones exposed to Dean’s hungry sight.
 
He cannot quite take a deep breath for want, then, because never in all his
days has he seen such a beautiful creature.  Slender, yes, but strong, sinews
and joints knitted nicely in clean lines, unbroken skin glowing ruddy in the
brazier’s warm light.
 
They do not do this, men and men, not of his quality.  They do not meet beneath
the arching canopy of a dry tent, do not strip away the layers that define
their station, leaving them equal and naked to the need that leaps between
them. 
 
Hedge fumblings and quick tumblings in hay ricks or against a hidden gate have
nothing on this feast of beauty here before him now.
 
Dean shakes away his wonder when Sam laughs, a self-conscious sound that brings
Dean’s gaze upward from the boy’s hard, red shaft to his eyes, at the edges of
which blossoms a satisfying whiteness of fear.

It’s not that Dean wants Sam to be afraid of him, especially not now as they
come together thus.  It’s only that such fear means a caution born of
inexperience, and Dean does not want to think of anyone else having seen what
he himself cannot take his eyes away from.
 
“Must I be the only one naked?” Samuel asks, eyes merry, though fear still
lingers there, too.
 
With a  quiet laugh, Dean unfastens his cloak and lets it fall, makes quick
work of his tunic and shift, unlaces his breeches and kicks free of his boots
and tattered hose, until the packed earth is cold against his bare feet and the
heat of the brazier raises bumps along the backs of his thighs.
 
Samuel’s eyes are not shy, for all that they still show uncertainty.  They rake
along Dean’s body, avid with hunger, and Dean can wait no longer when he sees
the boy’s tongue slip slyly along his bottom lip even as his eyes drop to the
evidence of Dean’s desire.
 
“Tell me,” he breathes once, and then more strongly again:  “Tell me.”
 
And though he has not said what it is he means by his order, Samuel obeys, a
glorious fall of filthy words leaving the boy’s bitten lips as Dean manhandles
him back toward the bed, pushing him with one hand on his shoulder, one on his
lean waist, crowding into him so that Sam’s shaft leaves a thin trail of wet in
the hair that arrows down to Dean’s aching cock.
 
He’s not gentle in throwing Samuel backward onto the bed, where the boy lands
in an abandoned heap, limbs splayed, eyes alight, mouth panting out the words
still.
 
Dean does not fall at once upon the boy, no matter how much he aches to feel
all that tender flesh stretched out beneath him, pinned down and helpless with
his weight.
 
Instead, he stops long enough to wonder at the way the scarlet and gold of the
blanket contrasts with Sam’s pale skin, how the boy manages to invite every
wicked desire even while appearing utterly unaware of his own ample charms.
 
“Are you real?” he whispers, almost inaudible over the now thundering rain that
thrashes against the tent’s walls, storm wind making the tent lines whine and
sing outside.
 
In answer, Samuel reaches up a hand.  “I have another lesson coming,” he says,
as if he is for all the world speaking of archery only.
 
“I’m not sure I have anything left to teach you,” Dean answers, smiling but
wary still, unable to entirely believe that this boy is his, willing and
waiting for him in the king’s own bed.
 
For an instant, Dean sees himself from outside, as if the decision he’s about
to make, curling his fingers in Sam’s inviting hand, will change everything
forevermore.  He, the hard archer, whose best affections before now were
reserved for hostlers’ boys and tavern help, for the willing mouths that could
be plied with wine, the willing hands made cold with coin.
“There’s nary a thing I’ve learned before now but you would teach it to me
better.”
 
An expression crosses the boy’s face then, one that Dean wishes with all his
mighty, desperately beating heart that he could unmake from Samuel’s face:  a
sadness, a knowing, a momentary recognition that he cannot give to Dean what
has already been taken.
 
“I’ll kill him,” Dean promises, and Sam smiles, a ferocious grin that answers
Dean’s pledge with one of his own.

“I’ll watch.”
 
Samuel spreads his thighs to make room for Dean, who kneels in the vee there
and looks down his own wanting body at Sam’s weeping length.  He spreads his
drawing hand wide between the boy’s breasts, letting his little finger just
brush the nipple, which pills and jumps in answer to his touch.
 
“Please,” the boy begs.  “Please,” again and then again, until Dean traces his
hand down the soft trail of hair to the boy’s cock, which curls up hard and
long against his belly.
 
Eyes locked on Sam’s, he wraps his hand around the base of it and squeezes a
warning.  “Do not come, boy, until I am inside of you.”
 
In answer, the boy bites his lip and drops his head back against the pillow,
arching his neck and offering up that tenderest apple up.  Dean cannot resist
nipping there once, hard enough to put a hitch in the boy’s breathing.  When he
pulls his mouth away, Sam whines.
 
He bites again where Sam’s collarbone draws a tight line beneath his skin,
strokes his hand upward as he sucks blood to the surface of the boy’s tender
skin.
 
Sam keens.
 
Dean leans further to whisper invective into the boy’s ear, warning him what
will happen if he comes before Dean can enter him.  The boy’s body bucks
beneath him and Dean tightens his grip.
 
A long fingered hand is suddenly brushing his shaft, and Dean stills, afraid at
once that he will come before he can do what he’s promised.
 
“Hands off,” he orders, and Sam lays both palms flat to the bed.  But he says,
“I want to touch you,” in a small, begging voice that makes Dean wish at once
that he was younger himself, innocent again, at least enough to deserve such
trust.
 
“Touch me, then, Sammy, anywhere but there, for I cannot keep my promise if you
touch me like that.”
 
“And a man always keeps his promises,” Sam echoes with mock solemnity, grazing
his lips across Dean’s nipple before fastening sharp little teeth there.  At
the same time, one hand is roaming down Dean’s back, numbering his ribs,
flattening over the knob of his spine and then dipping between his cheeks.
 
Dean drops his head, huffing a breath against Sam’s neck, and reconsiders his
permission to let the boy touch him.  God but his hands are wicked.
 
As much as he wants their mutual exploration to continue, Dean knows that time
is drawing short.  For one thing, dawn is never as far off as one might wish,
especially on the eve of battle.
 
For another, he supposes the king might want his tent back ere long.
 
He removes his hand, then, and lowers himself until he’s pinning the boy in
place from foot to belly.  Between them, he can feel the boy’s cock twitch, and
Samuel’s eyes are pressed tight closed when Dean lets himself look again at
that sweat-damp face ringed in wild hair.
 
He rocks his hips, frotting, the slick early signs of their need making it an
easy motion, until Sam is saying, “Please, please, please,” leaning up to beg
wetly against Dean’s throat.
 
Dean stoppers the pleading with his fingers, thrusting them into the boy’s
mouth, pressing on his lapping tongue until they are spit slick.  Without
taking his eyes off Sam’s now open ones, Dean reaches between them to seek that
secret place, sliding one finger in without ceremony, Sam’s breath shuddering
at the intrusion, Dean easing him like a startled horse through the initial
resistance.
 
A second finger brings nonsense and promises.
 
A third wrings pleas from Sam, not to stop but for more and more, and soon
enough Dean’s balanced above the boy, who has his knees bent, thighs tight
against Dean’s hips, body spread wide and waiting for Dean, who hardly
hesitates, only slicking himself with a spit-wet palm before sliding inside.
 
The ring of muscles resists, but Dean pushes on, Sam beneath him hissing,
“Aye,” babbling blasphemy and Dean’s name in a constant litany as Dean works
his way into the furnace of the boy’s body.
 
When he’s seated, he stops, gazing down into the boy’s face, proud to see him
slack-jawed and undone, hair wreathing his face in wet tendrils, cheeks hot
with flushing, mouth open and panting over such filth that Dean cannot stop
himself from thrusting upward into the boy, watching as that wet pink mouth
opens wider, as the eyes squeeze shut and the muscles contort, as the boy
screams his release, spurting hot between them, coating his own belly and
chest.
 
Dean lets go of the last of his frayed control, driving the boy up the bed in
ungentle, rutting thrusts, until he spends himself with a gutting shout that he
feels to the very soles of his feet.
 
He cannot catch his breath after, not because he’s come so hard, though
certainly he’s not accustomed to such release, but because the writhing wreck
of a boy beneath him is saying his name in broken syllables and smiling between
sobbing breaths.
 
“God, can it be I love you?” 
 
The boy must be fey.  There’s no other explanation for the completion he feels
as he slips from Samuel’s body and shifts to one side so that he can bundle the
boy against him and let him sprawl across his heaving chest.
 
With long, sure strokes down the boy’s trembling back, Dean gentles him until
he’s quiet, his breath sleep-steady against Dean’s neck.
 
“We cannot stay here,” he says eventually, sorrier than he’s ever been to break
a silence.
 
Sam murmurs something and then sits up, gazing down at Dean in momentary
wonder, as though he’d thought perhaps it had all been a wondrous dream.
 
“I love you,” the boy says, forthright, like it’s not at all a surprise to
either of them, they who have known each other for scarcely two whole days.
 
“You do not even know me,” Dean objects, some semblance of his reasonable self
reasserting control.
 
“I know enough,” Samuel answers, and it’s with a child’s certainty born of
unwavering faith.

Dean has to swallow around a thickness in his throat.
 
“We have to go.  They’ll be calling us to arms ere long.”
 
Samuel nods, rises, starts to gather Dean’s clothes.

“Leave them. You needn’t wait on me.  You’re not my servant.  You’re my—“
 
Samuel stops, waiting for Dean to finish.  His face is carefully
expressionless.
 
“My love,” Dean finishes, softly.  He’s embarrassed, sure enough—a man like he
does not make such declarations—but also terrified.  He’s never possessed
anything half so precious as the light of love that flames then in Samuel’s
unshuttered eyes.
 
“That I am,” the boy declares as though it’s always been thus.
 
They dress without another word, though with many brushing touches that are as
deliberate as they are bittersweet.

When they’re clothed once more, standing an arm’s length apart before the
waning heat of the banked brazier, Dean says, “You’ll stay to the rear today,
and take care to keep safe, won’t you?”
 
Samuel’s chin comes up an instant before he shakes his head.  “I want to
fight.”
 
“No.”  It’s an order, of just the sort Dean had promised they were finished
with, given his impromptu declaration of only minutes before.
 
“I’m strong enough to draw a bow, and you yourself said I can strike a target. 
We’re undermanned and the enemy is strong.  Every archer is needed.”
 
“You’ve had one morning’s practice.  That hardly makes you an archer!” Dean
protests, his fear getting the better of his good sense.
 
Samuel’s already proven himself more stubborn than even Dean, who Edmund is
fond of saying is as hard-headed as a goat and twice as difficult to lead.
 
“If there’s a bow to spare, I’ll be in the lines,” Samuel rejoins, jaw set.
 
“No, you won’t.  You’ll stay with the boys and guard the stores.  That’s work
enough for you should the French break our lines.”
“I’ll go where I’m best needed.”

“You’ll go where I tell you to go!”  Dean’s bark is hard and sharp,
uncompromising, the kind of voice he uses to keep order in the ranks when all
else but anger seems to fail him.
 
Samuel doesn’t answer, but he drops his head and lets out a harsh breath.
 
“The good archer wants only your safety,” a quiet voice asserts from the tent
door.
 
Dean looks up, eyes widening at the sight of the king and then flying to the
bed, which is a red and gold ruin, damp and unkempt behind them.
 
The twinkle in the king’s eye when Dean once again looks to his liege is enough
to tell him that the man understands.
 
“My sovereign lord, I beg of you, allow me the honor of joining your ranks of
archers this day.”
 
Dean clenches his jaw to keep from shouting the boy down, watching with wary
eyes the king, who is all gravity and thought now, not so much as a glimmer of
his former humor to be seen.
 
“What kind of king would I be to let a tender youth like you risk his life,
untried as you are in archery, against the fresh, unsullied army of the
French?”
 
It’s a dangerous question, the kind that most noblemen would avoid answering. 
The boy, however, possesses no apparent sense of propriety, for he answers
readily enough.

“The sort of king who wishes his men to win.”
 
Henry’s laugh is a full, bright thing, filling the tent to its high peak with
rich joy.
 
“I concede that you do not lack for courage, young Samuel, but I’m afraid your
heart might outrun your strength, at least in this one case.  Let me make you
this bargain, then.  You keep to the rear today, unless dire circumstance
requires a breach of promise, and I will see to it that you are well-trained
and armed with the finest bow for our next engagement, will it be with the
French or with some other, heretofore unimagined, foe.  Like you this?”
 
Samuel’s stubborn jaw loosens a little, and he offers a careful smile.

“Aye, my lord.  And thank you.”
 
“Good.  Now get thee from my tent.  I have a battle to win,” he declares,
standing aside from the door and gesturing them out.
 
Samuel goes first, Dean following, pausing only for a moment to bow his head in
obeisance and say, “Thank you.”
 
The king’s hand cups his shoulder, squeezes, says, “Would that I could offer
such comfort to all our brothers here this night.”
 
Dean nods, eyes catching the king’s, seeing there a sorrow he’s happy to be
free of.  It cannot be an easy thing to lead men to their certain deaths.
 
“God be with you,” the king offers as Dean lets the tent door fall to behind
him.
 
He wonders if even faith can save them this time.  He guesses they’ll know soon
enough.
 
He leaves Samuel in front of the armorer’s, loathe to let him go but knowing
that it’s better should the boy’s master not see them together.
 
“Will you be safe?” He asks, and he cannot help the way his voice breaks a
little.  He wants to keep Samuel always at his side.
 
“Aye,” Samuel answers, catching Dean’s eye.  “And will you?”
 
Dean nods.  “I’ll find you after the battle.  And mayhaps the French will
decide your master’s fate before I can.”
 
“Either way, we’ll be together,” Samuel answers.  It’s a promise they both mean
to keep.
 
Dean turns away before he can touch Samuel, before that touch leads to lips and
tongue, leads to panted words and sure discovery.
 
“I love you,” Samuel says, the words ghosting over the growing distance between
them.  Dean stops, looks over his shoulder, wanting to say the words back, but
the boy is gone, disappeared into the indifferent light of another rainy dawn.
 
*****
 
They’re too far away to hear the king’s speech, but from the rowdy cheering in
response, Dean guesses it was a good one.  Merl and Cocker each give him
knowing grins, and from further down the line, Edmund leans out around his
neighbors’ blocking bows to raise an eyebrow and run his tongue lewdly across
his bottom lip.
 
“Enough,” Dean growls, but there’s no heat in it.  While he was abed, they were
about, helping to tighten the picket line, their only defense in case of a
cavalry charge.
 
“I hear the French have two thousand knights at arms,” Evyn offers from two men
down on Dean’s drawing side.
 
“I hear three thousand, and an even dozen men at arms,” another archer offers
from the line to their rear.
 
“God keep us, but there are at least five of them for every one of us,” another
adds.
 
“Aye,” Dean asserts, voice steady and carrying.  “But have they the advantage
of these?”  He raises his two drawing fingers, thick with calluses.
 
A laugh from somewhere in the line ahead, and then a suggestion about what the
French might do with their fingers if they could use them.
 
The clarion call of trumpets silences their nervous banter.
 
Thunder rumbles over distant Agincourt.
 
It grows louder and then louder still, until it is almost drowning out the
pounding of Dean’s blood in his ears.
 
Cavalry, he thinks, eyes widening.  By the sound of charging hooves on the wet
earth, the English line will be overrun in the time it will take the gentlemen
in charge to call, “Ready.  Fire!”
 
The sound of five thousand arrows loosed in unison is like wind unquiet in the
eaves on a winter’s night.
 
“Ready.  Fire!”
 
A second volley, the sound broken by the clashing tumult of metal on metal and
the scream of panicked horses from the vanguard far ahead.
 
“Ready.  Fire!”
 
He spares no thought for anything but the trajectory of his arrows, flying true
from the bow to arc and plummet, perfect death to whatever flesh awaits them on
the other side.
 
“Ready.  Fire!”
 
His arrow is scarce loosed when there’s a bustling to his right, and he can
just make out King Henry’s pennant, the man himself lost in a thicket of pikes
and mounted lancers.
 
“Ready.  Fire!”
 
He draws and looses, draws and looses, until his quiver is empty and another is
brought by a boy whose narrow face startles him into momentary remembrance of
the night before.  Another call to draw and fire brings him back into the
fight, and his tired arm reaches back for an arrow, his cramped hands fitting
around the fletching to nock it, his aching shoulders drawing, and then the
blessed relief of release.
 
Again and again, he lets loose the rain of death, until he can hear nothing but
the artificial wind of flying arrows, can taste nothing but the wet and heavy
air on his tongue, can feel nothing but the creeping agony that every movement
brings.
 
His feet sink in the mire, his hood slides low on his forehead, the rain
relentless once more, and still he draws and fires, draws and fires.
 
Dean’s lost track of any sense of time, unsure by the weak light if it’s
morning or midday or an hour before dusk, the day controlled only by the
constant motion of hands and bow, when suddenly there’s a commotion near to his
back over his drawing shoulder.  He breathes out, releases his arrow, and rests
the bow on the earth long enough to take in what he’s seeing.
 
Is that blue and gold behind him?  The French have snuck behind the lines!
 
Spinning on his heel, he starts to call a warning to the others when he sees
Sir Elgar waving wildly with his sword at the space behind the English lines,
where the carts and stores are guarded by the army’s unofficial contingent of
boys.
 
At once his breath is short in his chest, his eyes riveted to the knight’s
face, which shows even through the gore of battle a decided look of horror.
 
Without a word—for he is, indeed, unable to draw breath enough to speak, let
alone cry out the anguished certainty trying to claw its way out of his
chest—he drops his bow, abandons his post, and tries to find footing in the
mire of the trampled field.
 
Straining against the slippery mud, cursing aloud the rain that makes it hard
to see, Dean runs toward the rear of the lines, through the pickets and
archers, past startled pale faces wet with rain, until at last he’s through the
final barrier and into the open where the carts and the boys are kept for
safety during battle.
 
He tries to stop when he sees what greets him, tries and fails, his forward
momentum carrying him in a sliding path until his boots catch on the corpse of
a child and he pitches forward, catching himself with two hands, those slipping
treacherously, too, until he’s nearly face to face with the wide-open, unseeing
eyes of a tow-headed lad no more than nine whose skull has been split asunder
by the axe still buried in it.
 
Dean barely manages to clear the boy’s body before he’s retching out the thin
brown bile of his breakfast.  Only the immediacy of his need brings him once
more to his feet, and he stumbles, nearly blind with sick tears and rain,
searching out a familiar figure, cursing and praying to the same god even as
hope fades from his heart and is replaced by a cold, hard certainty.
 
He looks up only when the pounding of hooves intrudes on his grim search.
 
Looks up to meet the king’s anguished eyes.  It is not his imagination when
Henry nods to him, tight-lipped and white-faced, as he dismounts.
 
“’Tis certain there’s not a boy left alive,” someone observes, but Dean refuses
to believe him, moving to the next body, turning it over, never mind that it’s
too heavy to be Samuel’s.
 
On to the next, slighter by half a stone than his lover.
 
The next, clad in finer wool than Samuel could ever have afforded.

And another, blonde hair spilling out from beneath his bloodied hood.
 
A hand at his shoulder stills his fumbling over a fifth boy’s broken body, and
Dean looks up to find the king beside him.
 
“I was not angry since I came to France ‘til now,” the king observes, his voice
low, like the final warning growl before the fatal lunge.
 
Dean nods, but he’s distracted—so many bodies yet to search.  He has to find
Samuel.  Why won’t the man just let him go?
 
“Good archer,” the king begins, “We will—“
 
“Dean!”
 
There’s not a king in England or France nor an army anywhere that can keep Dean
still when he looks up to see Samuel loping toward him large as life.  Over the
boy’s head, the upper limb of a long bow bobs with every jogging motion, and
Dean is never in his life happier to know that he’s been disobeyed than in that
moment.
 
Caring not that the king is still speaking to him, ignoring utterly the
exchange of astonished looks from lords and knights alike, Dean meets Samuel
between two upended carts, the wheel nearest them still spinning, and wraps his
living boy in his exhausted but still-strong arms.
 
His sobs are muffled against Sam’s neck, Sam who is alive and well, murmuring
soothing words into Dean’s unhearing ear.
 
Around them, men move, searching for survivors or naming the dead, but Dean is
unaware of it all until another drumbeat of frantic hooves breaks the lovers
apart enough to see the French herald approaching King Henry.
 
*****
 
“What were you thinking, joining the first picket like that?” Dean chides for
the fifth time in as many hours.
 
Samuel answers as he has been all along.  “My master ordered me into battle,
Dean, and I took that to be reason enough to breach my promise to the king.”
 
“And what of your promise to me?” Dean asks, another repetition in their litany
of love.
 
“A man keeps his promises,” Samuel answers, dropping a wet, sucking kiss into
the place between Dean’s breasts, sliding lower as he continues, “And I said
we’d be together.”
 
As Samuel sets out to prove once more that he is still alive, that he and Dean
are together, Dean shuts out the sight of the King’s canvas rippling overhead
with the warm night winds that have ushered in, at long last, a clear, star-
spattered sky.
 
There’ll be time enough come the morrow to remember their duty and to teach
Samuel a few more lessons about obeisance.  Tonight is about victory. 
 
Never mind that the combined best forces of France could not defeat the happy
few of English brothers.
 
Never mind even that of the scant English losses, Samuel’s former master is
numbered among them.
 
These things mean nothing with Samuel’s hot mouth making its way toward the
root of his want.  Hand wrapped in his boy’s wild hair, boy’s breath tickling
his belly, Dean breathes out a long, contented sigh, sending up a silent prayer
of thanks to whatever god keeps charge of fools, for surely never a greater
fool managed to stumble over love than he, Dean, archer, of Winchester.
 
 
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!