Page 30 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Bohdi notices anyway. He always notices. He unclasps his cloak and drapes it over Morgan's shoulders without asking.

"It's ridiculous," Morgan says. "It isn't even cold here in the south. Not the way it is in Valen."

"You're shivering, your highness. Regally, but shivering nonetheless."

Morgan pulls the cloak tighter around himself, which undermines his argument considerably, and does not thank him, which is its own kind of thanks and they both know it. The cloak smells of Bohdi and Morgan wraps himself in it and hates how safe it makes him feel.

"Your brother used to train in the rain on purpose," Bohdi says, leaning back against the stable wall and stretching his legs out, boots crossed at the ankle. "Dragged his men out of the barracks in the worst weather Valen could produce. Told them an enemy who attacks in sunshine is an enemy being polite, and enemies are not polite."

"I remember the sound of it from my bedroom window," Morgan says. "The clash of steel in the rain. Eskil's voice cutting through the downpour."

"He was like that as a boy, too," Bohdi says. "Before he was king. When he was just the heir with too much energy and no patience for lessons."

"I don't remember him before the crown." It is something Morgan has said before, to other people, and it usually comes out neutral — a fact, nothing more. Today it comes out quieter than he expects. "I remember pieces from before our parents died. But even then, he was still quite grown by the time I could say his name."

"He was a menace," Bohdi says, and grins. "Twelve years old and already convinced he could take any man in the yard. He challenged your father's master-at-arms to a bout when he was thirteen and got flattened in two exchanges and got up and went at him again." The grin widens. "Three times. The man had to physically sit on him to get him to stop."

Morgan laughs. The image is so perfectly, completely Eskil — the stubbornness, the refusal to stay down, the absolute conviction that willpower could substitute for skill — that it aches. He wants to have been there. He wants to remember a version of his brother that existed before grief and duty and the weight of a kingdom compressed him into the man he became.

"Your father used to bring you to the yard," Bohdi says, and his voice has gone quieter now. Less performing. "You were tiny. You'd sit on the fence and watch us train with your legs dangling. And Eskil would look over at you every few minutes to make sure you hadn't fallen off."

"I don't remember that."

"You were three. Maybe four. You had this way of clapping when someone landed a good hit. Both hands, very serious, like you were keeping score."

Morgan smiles. The smile sits strangely on his face — too soft, too open, wrong for the setting and the circumstances and the man he is supposed to be. He lets it stay.

They talk about his mother, whom Bohdi knew and Morgan mostly doesn't. "She had the same hair," Bohdi says. "The same white-blond she gave you and Eskil. And she was sharp-tongued. Quick-witted. Once told your father, in front of the entire court, that his footwork was sloppy." He pauses. "You take after her more than you probably realize."

Morgan's throat tightens and he looks at the rain and says nothing, and Bohdi lets the silence hold.

"She was the one who convinced your father to take me in," Bohdi says after a moment. "After my father was killed and my mother⁠—"

He pauses, and Morgan knows the words are hard for him. They've never talked about this, but he's always known Bohdi's situation.

"I guess I don't remember her much," Bohdi says. "I was five. Old enough to remember a face and young enough that it took me years to understand she wasn't coming back." He is quiet for a beat. "Your parents raised me after that. Same roof, same table, same yard as Eskil. I was ten when you were born. By fifteen I had my first tattoos and I was fighting beside your brother." Another pause, longer. "I've been Eskil's since I was five years old. It's the only life I know. And I have never once taken it for granted, because I know what it's worth to be chosen by someone who didn't have to choose you."

Morgan listens. He doesn't interrupt. He doesn't ask a single follow-up question. He doesn't reach for Bohdi's hand or touch his arm or do any of the things his body is telling him to do, because he understands exactly what he is being handed and how rarely Bohdi hands it to anyone. This is not a story. This is not banter or performance or charming anecdote. This is the seam — the one Bohdi covers with his grin and his charm and his ruthless competence — and Morgan can see it, and he holds it as carefully as he has ever held anything.

Bohdi is quiet for a moment after. The rain fills the gap.

"Do you remember when I fell in the fjord?" Morgan asks, after a long time. He asks it gently, steering them both toward warmer water. "After the midsummer festival?"

Bohdi laughs. The sound is startled and loose, a laugh that has just set something heavy down and been offered a hand with it. "Yeah, you were drunk and trying to impress a boy. Not unusual."

Morgan smiles at it, because it has been long enough that it doesn't embarrass him anymore. "I was seventeen and stupid and I almost drowned. Except that you came in after me, fully clothed and just as stupid, so I wouldn't feel like an idiot."

"Well, prince charming wasn't going in after you. Someone's got to pick up the slack." Bohdi glances at him, one eyebrow raised, grin settling into something wry and fond. "Maybe you should have better taste in men."

Morgan bites his lip. The words are right there — sitting on the tip of his tongue, warm and dangerous, my taste in men is fine, my taste in men has been the same for years, my taste in men is sitting beside me in a stable in the rain and telling me to want someone else. He says nothing. He bites his lip and says nothing, and the nothing is so loud between them that the rain can't cover it.

Morgan turns his head.

Bohdi is right there. His gaze drops to Morgan's mouth. It is fast — a flicker, barely there, the kind of glance that could be imagined, could be explained away, could be filed under rain in my eyes or checking for injury. Morgan has cataloged a hundred such excuses over the last two years to explain why Bohdi sometimes looks at him with naked hunger and then looks away before the wanting can be witnessed.

This time he doesn't look away.

This time they are alone in a warm dark space and the world has shut itself out and Bohdi's eyes come back up from Morgan's mouth and meet his eyes and stay. The expression in them is so raw and so unguarded that Morgan feels his chest crack open.