Chapter Text
The whispers started months ago—whispers of rebels, whispers of a coup: hanging over the Empire like a brewing storm.
The first real sign—the roll of thunder, the flash of lightning promising to shatter the peace—comes in the form of a silver dagger, pressed to the plane of Wilbur’s throat.
He gasps and tries not to breathe as he’s tugged back into his assailant’s hard chest, arms down and fingers splayed uselessly at his side even though all he wants to do is shove at the blade. Wilbur doesn’t, despite the fear slamming at his skull.
He’s dizzyingly aware of how easy it would be for the dagger to slip, to slash across his jugular and paint the floor red. It would be over before the scream could finish tearing out of his throat.
That knowledge is the only reason Wilbur is able to choke back the panic and remain still—up until the moment he doesn’t.
“For the revolution!” the man screams deafeningly in his ear, jerking Wilbur harder into his chest when he nearly flinches away from the noise. “Death to the Crown!”
He lifts his other arm, a red bandana clutched tightly between his fingertips. As he does, his grip slackens, just a bit, and the blade slips clumsily down to Wilbur’s collarbone.
It happens quickly, and Wilbur hardly thinks.
He ducks, twists, and drops to the floor, shoving the arm away from his neck as his knees strike the floor. It’s graceless, barely a coherent motion, but it works. The man whips around, outraged that he’s lost his leverage— but by the time he finishes turning, he is tackled to the ground.
Techno looks furious, flanked by two of the Guard in navy-and-silver uniforms. The rebel thrashes beneath him, but Techno is unwavering in pinning him to the marble floor: eyes glinting dangerously. Strands of hair escaped from his braid hang loosely around his face, framing a set jaw and lips pressed into a hard line.
Gasping for breath, Wilbur hardly reacts as he’s tugged up into another set of arms, because these arms are cloaked in emerald green, and these arms are his father’s.
Phil holds him in a vice grip as Wilbur watches half of the Guard, plus Techno, drag his would-be assassin across the ornate tile. The red bandana he’d been holding flutters limply to the floor, abandoned.
Wilbur turns away from it, nauseous. Fear clogs his throat, lingering, and panic strums in his veins, but shock numbs most of it, and his father’s soothing blend of hushed reassurances soften the rest.
“Wilbur,” he murmurs, tugging him gently away. Wilbur can feel his hands shaking where they grip his arm, and that just makes everything feel that much more real. “Come.”
Wilbur blinks, managing some semblance of clarity, and meets his father’s gaze.
Worry consumes most of the King’s expression, but Wilbur can see the intense contemplation circling his irises, the faint pull of his lips into a grimace, and knows that even if this attack was unsuccessful, it is just the beginning.
The brewing tempest has finally hit the shore.
— ♕ —
“I’m done,” Phil all but seethes, cloak whipping around his shoulder as he paces the study. Wilbur watches him with a tangled stomach, oddly light-headed. “I’m done waiting.”
“Dad—” Wilbur tries weakly, fingers digging into the polished armrests of his chair.
But Phil just whips around, chest heaving as he sucks in a heavy breath. His face is chiseled out of marble, features sharp with worry and harsh with something like contained rage.
“No, Wilbur,” he interjects, exhaling heavily. “The risk is too high, and the Guard is stretched too thin.” For his credit, he breaks out of his anger to allow a note of apology to slip into his voice. “You need a guard—a personal one. Someone who can be at your side, who can protect you when I can’t.”
Wilbur can’t help it—he knows this is childish, this is everything he, as the Crown Prince, has been trained not to feel, yet—
“I just want a few months,” he breathes imploringly. “My coronation is soon, and then you can assign me whoever you want, just—”
“I’m sorry,” Phil interrupts, attempting to soften the words with pity, and only succeeding in making them that much more abrasive. “But I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought you’d make it that far, Wil.”
Wilbur almost flinches, throat pulsing phantomly. He can still feel the scrape of the blade against his neck, and that is enough to drain most of his protest out of him. As much as he doesn’t want a ball and chain around his ankle in the form of a guard, he doesn’t want to die.
But his father must not realise that he’s on the cusp of giving up this futile fight, because he sighs again.
“I’ve been looking into the recruits,” Phil tells him, and Wilbur blinks. “Already, I’ve seen promising—”
“You have?” Wilbur asks, unable to help the edge of accusation from slipping into his words. He’d known he’d been running from this fate on borrowed time, but to hear Phil say it so overtly… stings. Bitterness pools on his tongue as he scoffs. “Oh, great. So this has been the plan all along, then. A guard—”
“Has been a possibility all along,” Phil amends. “Most kings—”
And Wilbur can’t help but spit, lungs squeezing, “I’m not a king yet!”
Phil stops, faces him.
Wilbur swallows as he’s fixed with another look. Sympathy drips off of his father’s face like thick syrup, and Wilbur feels sick. He thinks the abstract ball of panic, sloshing in his stomach, is what makes his emotions feel nauseatingly messy.
“I know,” Phil eventually murmurs, crossing the room to lay a steady hand on the back of his neck. Wilbur tenses, then sighs, as his shoulders are rubbed comfortingly. “And I wish that that mattered to the rebels, mate. But they don’t care whose blood they spill—as long as it’s royal.”
Wilbur wishes his father wasn’t making so much sense—the pure outpour of logic stomping his emotions into dust.
“Right,” he eventually mutters, swallowing down his distaste. “I get it.”
The distaste needs to be stifled, because there is no place for it here—not in the face of the rebel attacks. He should be lucky he’s made it this far with a shred of his privacy intact.
Phil seems to sense the jagged direction of his thoughts, because he frowns again, eyes painfully earnest. “Wilbur—”
“No, you’re right,” he sighs, trying not to let the defeat spill out of him. “It’s for my safety. I just…” A humorless laugh slips past his lips. “I just wish I had a little longer.”
Phil’s hand, still rubbing circles behind his neck, stills. “What do you mean?”
To be happy, Wilbur thinks. To write poetry, and not laws.
But he can’t say that, because it’s not Phil’s fault that a bunch of elitist pricks have got it in their heads to give the royal family hell. If anything, Phil has been graceful in humoring Wilbur’s requests this long.
(Wilbur just wishes he could get his heart to believe that as readily.)
“I want a say,” Wilbur answers instead, and Phil’s face goes back to marble. “On who it is.”
“And you’ll get one,” Phil obliges, withdrawing his hands to cross his arms. “But at the end of the day, I will do what’s best for your safety.”
And Wilbur, who decidedly does want to remain safe, can’t summon too much of an argument.
“Fine,” he concedes stiffly, fingernails easing out of the polished-wood armrests they’d begun to dig into.
“Fine,” Phil echoes, looking remarkably less like a king beneath the stress lines marring his face and more like Wilbur’s father. And as he turns, soft candlelight casting most of his features into harsh shadow, “Expect a guard by the end of the week.”
— ♕ —
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“I thought you were assigning me a guard.”
“...That is your guard.”
“Phil,” Wilbur says carefully, dark gaze locked unblinkingly ahead. “That is a child.”
Phil’s eyes, rich with amusement, swing between the pale-stone columns of the balcony, down to the courtyard, where the blonde boy is kneeling before Technoblade, navy uniform crisp on his lanky, young form.
“His name is Tommy,” Phil tells him, as Wilbur’s fingernails dig anxiously into the armrests of the seat—a bad habit, probably, but not one that he plans to kick at the moment. “He’s of age.”
Seventeen, Wilbur interprets, though the word stays sealed behind flat lips, pressed into a thin line.
“And he’s capable,” Phil continues, nodding slowly as a flicker of respect dances across his face, twitching the corner of his lips up. “He wouldn’t have made it this far if he wasn’t.”
Wilbur tries to swallow his doubt, as he watches Techno guide the boy—Tommy—onto his feet, but it’s hard. As if sensing his anxiety, Techno’s eyes flicker up to the balcony, where Wilbur is seated. Imperceptible pinpricks of reddish-brown glint beneath gentle sunlight, and even from this far, Wilbur thinks he can feel the faint look of reassurance that Techno is sending his way. So he averts his gaze, down to Tommy.
Tommy is looking at him—something which shouldn’t startle Wilbur, but does. He’s young, features softened by the watery spill of golden sunlight dappling the grass, but his posture is sharp and tense, like there’s energy there, buzzing to be released. It’s a form that Wilbur is familiar with—because it’s a perfect mirror of Techno’s. Lithe, relaxed, but poised. Prepared.
When Tommy catches his gaze, a faint smile ghosts his face. He dips his head respectfully, eyes flickering briefly to scan over Phil at Wilbur’s side, who he offers a deeper bow. Phil returns it with a kind smile, bowing his head in return, and the smile on Tommy’s face jumps into one that’s a little more opaque.
He looks back at Wilbur again, gaze lingering, before pulling it away. Wilbur looks away too, balefully staring down his own lap and only occasionally glancing up to mark Techno’s happenings.
“He’s made it through seven rounds of training,” Phil informs him over his shoulder, as Techno continues his talk with the boy—Wilbur’s knight. A solemn look overtakes Phil’s expression, and he offers it to Wilbur as he intones, voice ripe with something unidentifiable, “He hails from L’manburg.”
Ah, Wilbur thinks immediately, respect flooding him—only to be overpowered by a spike of melancholy that spears through his ribs. To think that Tommy lived in L’manburg, before the fall…
“He’s… young,” Wilbur finally gets out, as if Phil hasn’t already detected this concern of his.
But the faint tremor in his voice has Phil’s expression softening.
“He volunteered,” Phil offers, lingering sadness wrinkling the corners of his eyes. The fate of L’manburg casts a crimson shadow over the Empire’s recent history. “And he’s made it through the rounds, all but one, which means he’s qualified.”
“What else has he to do?” Wilbur asks, casting a doubtful gaze over the boy. “Before he’s appointed?”
Even despite the matter of the boy’s age being worryingly young, someone like Tommy should be more suited to the recruits, or perhaps even as a knight among the lower ranks of the Guard, not… here. Not protecting someone like Wilbur.
“There’s one last test,” Phil answers carefully after a moment, eyes flickering knowingly to the courtyard and—
Wilbur follows his gaze in time to see Tommy stop the dagger that Techno sends hurtling towards his face.
Wilbur’s breath catches, shock whipping through him, but Tommy doesn’t even flinch as he catches Techno’s wrist. Or wait, not quite. Wilbur squints as he sees silver glint beneath the sunlight, and realises that — somehow—Tommy had drawn a dagger of his own, to parry the blade.
Tension charges the air for a few more moments, as Techno grins sharply down at the kid, wind whipping loose strands of cherry blossom pink hair around his face. The blades hang, interlocked, between them. The kid tilts his chin up, and Wilbur thinks he’s grinning.
The moment ends, and Techno steps back, blade lowered. Tommy watches him before lowering his own. When Techno offers a hand, not without shooting a weighted look to the two of them, up on the balcony, Tommy shakes it.
Wilbur blinks.
“Well,” Phil finishes, an edge of breathless humor slipping into his voice. “...I think he just passed.”
Wilbur is still trying to catch his breath as Techno slips an easy arm behind Tommy’s shoulder, leading him to the columned walkways and out of sight.
Wilbur’s eyes linger where they vanish, as his thoughts churn in his skull. His mouth opens before he’s even aware of it.
“I don’t want him,” Wilbur informs Phil, breath still a little short. “Bring me someone else.”
Phil raises a curious eyebrow and rises to his feet. Wilbur swallows, settling back against his chair and keeping his gaze steadfast. But Phil shoves past his visible distaste with a gentle hand, extended from his green robes.
“Give him a chance,” is all Phil says. Then, slightly pointed, “At least meet him before you inform him that he’ll be sent back to the outer villages without reason.”
I have a reason, Wilbur almost protests, but he bites his tongue, even as more words threaten to bubble over it. He’s too young. How can I expect him to protect me?
(How can I ask him to?)
But he remains, perhaps petulantly, glued to his seat, and silent.
“Wilbur,” Phil urges, and Wilbur sighs.
It’s the last thing he wants to do—but even the Crown Prince must bend to the will of the King.
So Wilbur rises, shoves his anxieties into a neat pouch, tucks it away, and follows him.
— ♕ —
He doesn’t send Tommy away.
How can he? Once he sees him up close, his reservations seem frail, withering in his chest.
With a mess of golden-blonde hair, a smattering of faint freckles across his cheeks, and wide, sky-blue eyes, Tommy looks as young as he is—but he’s hardly shorter than Wilbur. He comes up a bit higher than his chin, and offers him a polite smile that Wilbur doesn’t return with more than a curt nod.
He knows, as Tommy straightens from his bow, that Phil is right—Wilbur doesn’t want to be the one to send Tommy away without warning, so he says nothing.
Phil seems to deliberately avoid the pleading looks Wilbur shoots him, silently begging him to send Tommy away on his behalf.
Well, until he catches one of Wilbur’s imploring looks and returns it with a pointed glance, jutting his chin towards Tommy. Wilbur swallows his glare and tries not to sigh too heavily.
“Have you seen the castle?” Wilbur asks flatly, and Tommy seems to straighten even more beneath the acknowledgement.
“I have, your Highness,” Tommy answers, clumsily slipping over the title in a way that almost gets Wilbur to snort.
Wilbur is fine, he might say to anyone else, but he doesn’t tell that to Tommy—not this time. Instead, he takes a step back, purposely ignorant of Phil’s disapproving gaze burning into the side of his face.
“Good,” he replies. “Then I’ll be in my room.”
“Wilbur—” Phil hisses, instantly exasperated, but Wilbur doesn’t listen.
He turns on his heel, pretending not to feel the guilty skip of his heart as Tommy shrinks beneath the unprovoked coldness—and then hurries to follow him.
— ♕ —
Before Tommy was assigned to him, the room connected to Wilbur’s was a study, piled with books and scrolls, journals and scraps of poetry. But with Tommy now constantly competing with his shadow as he follows him around the castle, it has been converted into a small bedroom.
Phil tells him to leave the door slightly ajar when possible, should someone assault him in his bedroom, but the first thing Wilbur does when he reaches his room—and watches Tommy silently slink into his own—is slam the connecting door in his face.
The hinges rattle, and Wilbur thinks that’s why his heart does—but he doesn’t want a shadow. And just because he’s tolerating a guard for his own safety doesn’t mean he has to like it. It will be better for the both of them if Tommy knows that early on.
Wilbur is determined to pretend he doesn’t exist. It’s slightly more difficult considering that they share a suite, but Wilbur makes it work.
Over the next few days, he doesn’t say a word to his new guard.
Tommy accompanies him to his lessons—somehow, always awake and ready before Wilbur. He accompanies him to his meals, sitting on Wilbur’s right even if it’s just Wilbur, Phil, and Techno in the dining hall. He accompanies him to the courtyard, and doesn’t falter when Wilbur reads for hours and hours, until the sun touches down on the horizon.
In short, Tommy accompanies him everywhere except his bedroom.
To his credit, he keeps his distance: always close enough to intervene should something happen, especially during small events with other people, but far enough away that Wilbur is almost lulled into a sense of privacy. The blonde blur hovering in his peripheral is too noticeable to offer him any sort of real peace though.
Especially since Tommy fidgets, a lot. He’s always moving, when he thinks Wilbur can’t see him: anxious shifting weight from foot to foot, fiddling with the grass when they’re out, biting the inside of his cheeks like he’s resisting breaking into chatter.
Wilbur leaves him to it: hardly offering more than occasional looks, and sometimes half-smiles when Phil is around.
Eventually, Tommy gets the hint. He stops shooting Wilbur hopeful looks, and seems to resign himself to being shut out of Wilbur’s life… which is good. It’s what Wilbur wanted.
(So why does the disappointment curling in Tommy’s shoulders cut him up from the inside?
He doesn’t know. But he does know that it’s getting harder to ignore.
Not that he’s giving up.)
And then, of course, everything breaks.
Ironically, it’s Techno who lectures him—in a rare moment when Tommy is somewhere else, and Wilbur has been somewhat left to his own devices because he’s with Techno.
(He finds that being with Techno isn’t that much different than being with Tommy, actually, because Techno enjoys listening—perpetually steady at his side, like an anchor, but not much more talkative than one. Just like Wilbur has sort of made Tommy be.)
“You don’t have to ice him out,” Techno informs him flatly, as they walk through the gardens.
Wilbur stills. “What?”
“Tommy,” Techno answers, turning his face to admire an unfurling rose. When Wilbur remains silent, Techno looks back over, raising an eyebrow. There’s something like disbelief etched onto his face. “Please tell me you at least learned his name.”
Wilbur doesn’t know why the edge of accusation makes him flush. “I know his name.”
At Techno’s silence, charged with doubt, Wilbur flushes deeper.
“I know his name,” he insists. “Tommy.”
“Good guess,” Techno jokes, and Wilbur scowls, jabbing his side with his elbow.
Techno grins, lips curling, and it’s equally as humorous as it is bladed. “I was just makin’ sure!” Then, taking on that edge of accusation again, “It’s not like I’ve seen you talk to him.”
Because I haven’t, Wilbur almost drawls. Because I don’t want to. He’s not sure his actual answer is any better than that though.
The faint burst of embarrassment that had surged through Wilbur doubles as he lifts his chin. He shoves it down, letting it harden like magmatic rock so that he can’t feel it.
“What’s there to talk about? He’s my guard.”
Techno stares at him, features utterly flat. “He’s a person.”
Wilbur almost winces, something jabbing at his chest, but Techno continues before it can augment into something bigger. Something that might rise through Wilbur’s shroud of stubbornness. Something that Wilbur might be forced to confront.
“And it’s not his fault that he’s here,” Techno emphasizes. “The least you can do is not treat him like a suit of armor.”
“I don’t treat him like that,” Wilbur says quickly, heart skipping. He makes himself busy with admiring a bush of flowers so he doesn’t have to meet Techno’s eyes. “I don’t— you don’t get it.”
From the corner of his eyes, he sees Techno tense, and Wilbur hunches his shoulders—in a way that any one of his tutors would abhor, not that he particularly cares.
“Maybe not,” Techno responds. “That doesn’t mean I’m not right.”
Wilbur says nothing.
Silence crawls over them, and despite the fact that they’re outside, Wilbur begins to feel suffocated.
“You don’t have to be happy about it, you know,” Techno adds, intent on continuing this pointless conversation despite the fact that all Wilbur wants to do is escape it. “Nobody’s askin’ you to.”
Wilbur stays quiet again, because if he knows Techno, and he does, then he knows he won’t pry. He’ll let Wilbur wallow if that’s what he wants to do, and if it backfires, he’ll help put him back together. That’s how they work.
Everyday except today, apparently.
“I can’t make you,” Techno eventually sighs.
You can’t, Wilbur agrees silently.
“But all I’m sayin’ is… there’s no point in making him, or yourself, miserable.”
When Wilbur’s mouth remains clamped shut, teeth digging into the inside of his cheek, Techno exhales, stepping away from the rosebush as he prepares to leave—which means that any second now, Tommy will be taking over watching him. The thought alone has frustration flaring between Wilbur’s lungs, heightened as Techno pulls away.
“Just think about it, Wilbur.”
He hands Wilbur a clipped rose as he passes, and Wilbur takes it between unfeeling fingers. He turns it, watches the petals shift, and the thorns spin. Then Techno’s gone, his last words ringing repeatedly through Wilbur’s head—as if it wasn’t enough that Wilbur had to listen to the sorry lecture in the first place.
Just think about it.
Wilbur doesn’t.
— ♕ —
Wilbur does.
He thinks, and thinks, and Techno’s words fester, pestiferous, inside of his skull—like the rose he handed Wilbur, thorns weaving in and out of his brain, stealing all of his focus—until eventually, before he’s even conscious of it, Wilbur breaks.
He doesn’t expect the library to be the place where he gives up the act, but somehow, the tall bookshelves, empty air, and the dark, polished tables seem to magnify his guilt. Or maybe that’s just the quiet, pressing in on him, until his mind’s guilty whispers echo into obtrusive screams.
The guilt gnaws at his chest as he writes, attempting to turn the mess that his head has become into a song. But all throughout the week, his lyrics have been stilted and choppy and broken—if he’d managed to get anything lyrical onto paper at all. Now is no different, and frustration bubbles relentlessly in his chest as he dips his quill into the inkpot, black ink splattering up against his pinky.
That’s when he notices Tommy, silent across the table, observing him curiously.
Wilbur glances at him, and his eyes widen, an apology written over his face as he ducks his head, curiosity vanished.
Somehow, that’s enough to extinguish Wilbur’s frustration. He sags in his chair, shoulders dipping, because Tommy’s barely-there frown is a javelin, spearing him through. Wilbur swallows.
“Are you… alright?”
He cringes at how clumsily the words fall off his tongue, more a croak than any sort of casual greeting. But he’s always relied on his words—or lack thereof—to get what he needed. And now… he supposes he needs to soothe the panging of his chest.
Tommy startles, eyes flying back up again, narrowed as he scans the room before looking at Wilbur—like someone else had wandered in, and that’s who Wilbur was talking to. Wilbur’s heart squeezes, despite itself.
He half-expects for Tommy to say nothing at all—it would be justified, surely—or to nod mutely, but Tommy surprises him. And Wilbur’s not sure if he likes how he does it.
“You don’t have to talk to me,” Tommy informs him bluntly, a fake-looking smile etched on his face. “I’m used to it.”
And damn if that doesn’t punch the air out of Wilbur’s chest.
He almost gapes before composing himself. “I— I want to.”
Tommy blinks at him, and Wilbur may be the Crown Prince, but under Tommy’s dubious expression, he could writhe in embarrassment.
“You do?” Tommy intones, too flat to be a proper question.
Wilbur runs his tongue over his teeth. “Yes.”
Then, Tommy’s lips twitch. Wilbur swears he almost scoffs before remembering himself.
“All of a sudden?” Tommy asks, the faintest glimmer of mischief contained in sky-blue irises.
Wilbur takes a second to make sure that he’s not imagining Tommy’s amusement before he sets his quill down, leaning forward with a raised eyebrow—and perhaps some amusement of his own.
“Challenging royalty?” he questions, words light and almost… playful. Wilbur has never been the type to flaunt his title—his crown does that for him. “That’s brave.”
Tommy’s mild smile never wavers, perfectly innocent. “I don’t know what you mean, your Highness.”
“Hm,” Wilbur hums, pleasantly surprised by the faintest whisper of banter. He scans him over again, before leaning back against his chair, quill and journal discarded. “Tell me about yourself. I want to know about you.”
“Is that an official command?” Tommy questions.
Wilbur tilts his head. “If it was?”
Tommy holds his gaze searchingly before answering.
“Then I’d say my name is Tommy. I’m seventeen, and I hail from L’manburg.”
A faint wrinkle creases Wilbur’s brow.
“I already know that,” Wilbur tells him, almost eager now. “Something else. Do you have any family?”
He hadn’t expected it to be a tender topic, but Tommy’s smile falters anyways before he scoops it back up.
“Not anymore,” Tommy answers plainly, eyes flickering down to the tabletop.
Oh, Wilbur thinks, with a distant pang of his heart. Then, finding that he wants to keep talking, before the air becomes too awkward to sustain a conversation, he fumbles to ask another question.
“What made you want to become a guard?”
The far-off look on Tommy’s face is traded for genuine contemplation. Wilbur doesn’t know why that makes him relax.
“I’m a knight, technically, you know,” Tommy remarks, chewing on his lip as he thinks: each thought passing openly across his face.
It’s almost fascinating—Wilbur had expected him to be more closed off.
Expected him to be? a curling voice prods at his head. Or gave him no choice but to be?
He shoves it down—it’s easier once Tommy continues talking.
“I wanted a purpose,” Tommy finally says, and Wilbur is surprised by how honest he seems. His shoulders have gone lax, losing the ever-present rigidity. “I wanted to help people. So I started training, as soon as I could pick up a sword.”
He sighs, drawing invisible circles on the polished tabletop with his fingertips. Wilbur watches, waiting. He’s always been a talker—it is almost required of a king, to be charismatic in some regard. But something about Tommy, who he’d spent days ignoring, makes him want to listen.
“L’manburg had a military outpost,” Tommy continues, storm clouds beginning to creep over his eyes. “But you know that.” Wilbur nods; Tommy keeps going. “Some of the soldiers there took me in, when my parents died. And things just sort of fell into place.” The storm completely consumes his face. “They’re, uh— they’re all gone now too.”
Wilbur is intimately familiar with tragedy. His kingdom was born from it, and had suffered it even afterwards. It suffers from it even now. L’manburg, especially, is a tragedy that Tommy doesn’t need to explain—because Wilbur knows. Everyone knows of the portside city that had become a gaping crater.
But something about the way Tommy speaks teaches Wilbur tragedy all over again. His heart aches, like there’s an iron hook tugging at it, and he wants to let it pull him forward. Anything to ease fractures arcing across Tommy’s face.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, throat dryer than he expects it to be.
Tommy looks up, blinking hard as he snaps back into himself. Then his face changes. There’s a twisting wryness to his expression, undercut with a faint layer of amusement.
“But that’s all there is to me, really,” he finishes, quiet—even as his voice echoes across the walls. He tilts his head. “Is that what you wanted to hear, your Highness?”
Wilbur, his mind urges—and it almost slips off his tongue before he catches it. Instead, he traces Tommy’s expression and finds that this is infinitely better than the silence that Wilbur had tried to wrap himself in.
“No,” Wilbur answers, lips twitching. “Though I think I’d like to hear more about you, if you are fine with that.”
Hesitantly, Tommy offers him a grin.
Wilbur smiles back.
— ♕ —
Things get easier after that.
Suddenly, moments that he’d fought to keep silent and detached become filled with banter and conversation and Wilbur… doesn’t mind it.
In fact, he enjoys it—enjoys Tommy trailing behind him, like a shadow. He’d expected for a guard to feel suffocating—a ball and chain—but it is almost the opposite. Even drafting proposals, something which he usually has to force himself through, becomes more tolerable when there is someone at his side to exchange jokes and complaints with.
And likewise, Tommy rapidly becomes more comfortable around him.
Now that he’d been given the chance, he seems to blossom, unfurling like a flower in the spring. He beams like it’s all he knows how to do, and laughs until his chest threatens to give out, and prods Wilbur like a little brother in a way that is verging on unseemly.
(Wilbur should demand him—sharply and swiftly—not to flick his arm when Wilbur is writing, or kick his leg when they’re eating, or slings insults at him when he’s trying to focus, but he can’t bring himself to. It’s refreshing, almost, to be regarded as less than a Crown Prince. And more than that: it’s fun.)
“You’re boring,” Tommy groans one day, when they’re in one of Wilbur’s favorite studies—the one with the large, green-stained windows—and Wilbur is flipping through a book of poetry.
Despite his relaxed posture, Wilbur doesn’t miss the way he scans the room, tracking and searching for who-knows-what. Risks to Wilbur’s life, probably. Possible entrances, even. He positions himself a little too perfectly between Wilbur and the door—angled in a way that would allow him to see both Wilbur and a potential intruder.
(Wilbur doesn’t know why that makes his skin crawl.)
Wilbur huffs a laugh, eying Tommy over the top of his book. “And why is that?”
Tommy props himself up on a clumsy elbow, eying him right back. “You have this whole castle, and all you do is read, and write, and study, and take walks. Doesn’t that ever get old?”
He looks like he’s trying to seem, well, annoying—for lack of a better word—but there is genuine curiosity there, nestled in his eyes.
But as Wilbur considers the question, the soft pages of his book suddenly feel rough beneath Wilbur’s fingertips. He frowns, mind whirling.
“In a few months, I’ll be the king, Tommy,” he reminds him lightly (though it almost feels like he’s reminding himself.) “I don’t really have time for… other things.”
And of course, there’s the issue of the rebel attacks.
Unconsciously, Wilbur’s hand creeps up to brush across his own neck as he thinks of the galas and the speeches that Phil had delayed or cancelled for the sake of safety. Days which had been packed full now stretch like laffy.
Tommy frowns, and Wilbur distantly wonders why sadness always seems so potent when it’s on Tommy’s face. Over the last few days, he’s seen glimpses of it, mixing with Tommy’s generally cheery demeanor on occasion, and now that he’s getting to know him, it tends to make his stomach flip.
“Aren’t you, like, twenty?” Tommy asks, frown unmoving. “There’s plenty you can do.” He half-laughs. “You’re barely older than me, I think. You could be my older brother.”
Wilbur huffs a laugh, ignoring the way his heart tries to latch onto that.
“And what hideous crime would I have committed to deserve that?”
Tommy’s mouth drops open, eyes flashing. “Oy! That’s—” He chokes on what doubtlessly would have been a swear of some sort and coughs out instead, “—not nice, pal.”
Wilbur laughs, and it slips easier past his ribs. “My humblest of apologies.”
Tommy’s face screws up, not appreciating his refined courtesy. “You’re the princiest prince I’ve ever met.”
“That’s not a word,” Wilbur points out, if only for the victorious grin that he knows it will provoke—and sure enough, Tommy’s lips stretch.
“Fine,” Wilbur concedes, before Tommy can offer a retort. “What would you do, then, if you lived here? If you were king?”
Tommy grins, and if the sunlight wasn’t spilling in from the large green window, Wilbur might think that his smile is what is lighting the room up.
“Well,” he begins, eyes still combing over Wilbur’s face, like he’s trying to dissect it, to pull out the shreds of stress and cauterize them with a grin. “Have you seen the banisters in this place?”
Wilbur blinks, closing his book. Somehow, this steals his attention more forcefully than the poetry.
“...The banisters?”
Tommy nods earnestly, fluffy hair bouncing. “The banisters, man. You ever slid down a banister?”
Wilbur hasn’t.
But he finds himself grinning when Tommy does—and then wondering why he’d ever tried to stifle this in the first place.
— ♕ —
Tommy is a knight.
Before anything—before a friend, before a companion—Tommy is a knight.
Tommy is his knight; his guard. But Wilbur seems to have forgotten that, over these last few days, because the first time he sees Tommy in action, it almost stops his heart.
Meetings with foreign dignitaries have never been pleasant. They tended to be a verbal war: hours and hours of ambassadors grappling for leverage over the Empire or favor from the Crown while pretending not to be. It’s easy to maneuver them, but not entertaining in the least.
Even Tommy, seated at his side, is quiet—shoulders straight, form impeccable. Though, whenever he is before the king, Tommy does seem to remember the proper decorum, so perhaps that is not out of place. Wilbur has just grown too used to banter shared behind shining eyes and quick grins.
Tommy seems to follow the conversation with some amount of ease, despite the snake pit that the room quickly devolves to, and the only time he seems distracted is when the doors at the far end of the room shove open with a violent bang.
To be fair, at that point, everyone is.
The conversation halts as a butler rushes in, gasping for breath.
“Emergency, your Majesty,” the man wheezes, almost doubled over. “The General requests your presence.”
Phil frowns, instantly standing. Wilbur straightens, instantly alert at the mention of Techno, but Phil catches his questioning gaze and shakes his head. Wilbur hesitates before sinking back into his chair.
Phil offers a tight smile to the dignitaries rounding the table, all staring curiously—and some, even dangerously, like they’re soaking in the potential advantage unfolding in front of them.
Phil notices, of course he does, but he keeps his words light and lofty, betraying nothing. “One moment, if you will.”
And because they are in a foreign kingdom, speaking with a foreign king, the dignitaries cannot do anything but obey. Phil hurries out of the room—followed by Sam, standing guard at the door—and Wilbur doesn’t have a second to breathe before the doors click shut, and then hell breaks loose.
The man across the table from him—some noble from Snowchester, or so he’d thought—rises to his feet.
The only warning that Wilbur gets that he’s in danger is a wicked grin before the man is lunging across the table. It’s not enough for him to do anything but gasp as a silver dagger comes flying at him—but it is more than enough for Tommy.
His knight is out of his chair before the man can finish drawing his weapon, and Wilbur chokes on a gasp as Tommy lunges upward, collides into his side with a fierce grimace, and sends them both crashing to the ground.
Wilbur pushes back his chair, staggering onto his feet as shouts ring out—only for something, or someone, to slam into him. Fear streaks through him, colorful and messy, as he’s tugged to face another “noble.”
Wilbur only notices the red handkerchief poking out from his tunic pocket when it’s too late to do anything but brace and throws his arms up as the man raises a dagger of his own.
Wilbur only catches a fleeting glimpse of his sweat-dampened face, carved out of potent vitriol, before Tommy is leaping up, throwing himself between Wilbur and the rebel, and—
And slicing his blade across his throat.
Tommy hardly blinks as he draws a crimson ribbon across the rebel’s jugular—not even as blood splatters over him, not even as the man’s eyes glaze over with fear, then death. He spills blood as if he’s been spilling it all his life, and then he’s tugging at Wilbur’s arm and pulling him away before the body can finish falling.
Horror squeezes tightly around his throat. His steps are uneven, the floor swaying beneath him as his mind is savaged by a nasty combination of shock and fear, but Tommy doesn’t give him the chance to stumble.
When Wilbur catches a glimpse of his face, marred by a splatter of crimson, it is totally blank—not an ounce of the sunshine, or gold, or the light that Wilbur has come to know. All that betrays his facade is the harsh grit of his jaw, but even that Wilbur can hardly see as he’s led behind a wall-length, supposedly-decorative curtain covering the far wall.
He doesn’t see what Tommy does until a hidden panel in the wall is giving away, and then they are in a cramped hallway—still running.
“This way,” Tommy breathes emotionlessly, instructing Wilbur as if he has any control over his rapidly numbing body.
Time blurs, his mind flashing with images of dead eyes rolled up like marbles, and bile stings his tongue. Tommy doesn’t let him stop—not until they’re breaking out of the service hallways and into another room, with a heavy iron door that clicks as it shuts behind them.
Tommy leads Wilbur over to a wall, easing him down against it.
Wilbur lets him, still trying not to throw up. He recognizes, distantly, that Tommy has brought him into one of the many secret safe rooms scattered across the castle—there are two cots pressed against the opposite wall, and a shelf full of jars of sealed and pickled food—and that he’d done that because someone had tried to kill him.
But then Tommy had killed them.
Wilbur feels like letting out a delirious curse, and he would if his throat would allow air to escape it.
“Are you alright, your Highness?” Tommy asks, voice filtering over Wilbur’s eardrums low and worried.
When Wilbur blinks, his vision focuses. Tommy is crouching in front of him, and Wilbur sucks in a deep breath.
It takes a minute for him to be able to reconcile the image of Tommy—bright-gold Tommy—with this Tommy: this Tommy who crouches protectively in front of him even in a sealed room, eyes two scraps of blue steel, face stony, and blood stained into his uniform.
Clarity breaks through the shroud of horror and confusion and shock enveloping him.
Now that the world is still again, Wilbur is acutely aware of the rapid pounding of his heart, the strum of panic in his veins.
Oh, he realises belatedly, I almost died.
But he hadn’t. Because Tommy had saved him.
“I’m fine,” Wilbur grits out, surprised he’d managed to emit a sound at all. “I— thank you.”
Tommy doesn’t smile, doesn’t seem to hear him. “The Guard will be here soon, okay? Just stay calm.”
Wilbur thinks he is pretty calm, even if his breaths are coming short and fast, but somehow the pressure around his lungs eases as Tommy lowers himself down to sit beside him. He doesn’t say anything, but he does reach for Wilbur’s hand, squeezing it.
It seems to shock some life back into his veins, because Wilbur actually feels it through the weird numbness crawling over him. Tommy smiles, dull and faint.
Wilbur’s lips only twitch as he tries to return it.
When the Guard finds them, Tommy has hardly spoken besides reaffirming that Wilbur is alright, and Wilbur hasn’t spoken at all. They sit, silently, shoulder to shoulder against the wall, until knocks sound against the safe room door, followed by Techno’s voice, followed by things getting very, very blurry—save for one thing that Wilbur’s mind is able to consciously grasp:
This time, when Phil pulls him into his arms, and then insists he be taken to the medical wing to be looked over, Tommy doesn’t follow him.
— ♕ —
“Where’s Tommy?” Wilbur asks, anywhere from thirty minutes to six hours later.
His mind is still split into directionless pieces.
At some point, Phil brings him to his room, and only after Wilbur has bathed and changed clothes does the panic finally start to subside. In its place, worry begins to blossom, mounting as more and more of Wilbur’s mind begins to awaken.
Phil, hands cupped around a mug of tea, offers him a gentle smile that doesn’t do much to erase the tightness straining the corner of his eyes.
“With Techno, in his study,” he answers. Then, lifting his mug, “Having tea.”
Wilbur blinks. Tommy and Techno? He hadn’t been aware that they’d gotten close. If anything, Tommy should be here, shouldn’t he? Having tea with them. The King and the Crown Prince and the crown prince’s royal bodyguard.
Phil catches his confusion and soothes it easily, with simple grace, like Wilbur is a kid with wrinkled clothing that Phil needs to smoothen.
“Tommy has a good heart,” Phil says, as if that answers Wilbur’s unspoken questions at all. He already knows that—or at least, he thinks he does. But Phil continues as Wilbur sips at his tea. “He’s qualified, but he’s still young.”
“He is,” Wilbur agrees, unsure where he’s going with this.
Phil sighs. “I could tell, when we got to you today, that both of you were a little out of it.” Wilbur nods, throat threatening to close over at the reminder. He sips tea that he can’t taste, just to stop it. “The Guard informed me of what he’d had to do to protect you.”
Wilbur shivers, eyes fluttering closed on their own as he remembers, and that’s when Phil reaches out, worry creasing his expression. Wilbur shakes his head, not wanting Phil to stop talking.
Hesitantly, he withdraws his hand and keeps going—painfully carefully, in the way that only a father, and not a king, should be.
“I think what he did today weighed on him more than he let on,” Phil finishes lightly. “So I told him to take tea with Techno for a few hours.”
Wilbur frowns at that, and it’s strange how his concern is the only clear emotion that he’s felt over the last few hours. “Is he okay?”
Phil appraises him, eyes glinting. “Are you worried?”
“...He’s my guard.”
“One that you never wanted,” Phil remarks, and Wilbur whips his head up sharply.
“Does that matter?”
It’s only after Phil raises his eyebrows at the unprecedented hostility that he realises Phil is not being cruel, but curious. Despite that, the sudden rush of defensiveness blooming in Wilbur’s chest is hardly assuaged.
“No,” Phil answers, and there’s a strange twitch to his lips and lightness to his voice, like he’s keeping a secret.
“What?” Wilbur bites out, gripping his cup so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if the china shattered in his hands.
“Nothing,” Phil says easily, in a way that implies that there is in fact something—and Wilbur could probably work it out if he wasn’t such a mess. “I’m just glad you’re warming up to him.”
Why do you care? Wilbur wants to ask, to satiate the twisting feeling in his chest, latching onto Phil’s words and weird expression with a fury.
But it’s easier to say nothing, to melt into the warmth of the room and the comfort of his father—when he’s not being peculiar—and to try to let the events of the day slip into the background of his abstract thoughts.
— ♕ —
Wilbur retires before the fire in the hearth has gnawed through the last log, and Phil lets him go.
When he gets to his room, sleep tugs at his heavy limbs, but rather than indulge it, Wilbur trods over to the door connecting his room to Tommy’s and lightly taps his knuckles against the wood. He holds his breath, listening, but there’s not an answer, which means Tommy’s not back yet.
It must be nearing midnight, as the sky looks like black velvet, and hardly any moonlight spills through the window, but he knows that if Tommy was in his room, he would’ve heard Wilbur—he’s a light sleeper, per his job.
So Wilbur changes into proper sleep clothes and drags himself onto his bed, ignoring the concerned jabbing at his chest. But even as he closes his eyes, his mind remains awake. Wilbur stares vacantly at the shadows draped across his room until, what must be at least an hour later, he hears his door knob twist.
If he’d accumulated any drowsiness, it’s gone as he sits up, blankets falling around his lap.
Tommy startles as he eases the door open to check on him, only to see him awake.
Wilbur waves lamely in the darkness.
“W— your Highness?” Tommy croaks, straightening a bit.
Tommy doesn’t cross over into his room, leaning heavily against the door, and Wilbur frowns, squinting into the abyssal shadow shrouding him.
“Come in,” Wilbur tells him.
When Tommy doesn’t move, Wilbur fumbles to light the candle on his nightstand, reaching blindly until he is able to conjure a dim orange flame. It flickers, burning away the darkness in some places and casting it down harsher in others.
“Please,” Wilbur whispers, and Tommy blinks owlishly at him from the shadowed doorway before nodding.
He ambles in, and the first thing Wilbur notices—as he steps into the flickering light—is the bandage wrapped around his lower arm. Wilbur’s heart jumps and he reaches forward as Tommy gets close.
“Were you hurt?” he asks instantly, frowning to keep his composure as worry swells in between his heart and his lungs.
It doesn’t work.
Tommy stops in front of the bed to glance down at his arm, as if he hadn’t seen the bandage yet.
When he looks up, he just shrugs with one shoulder. “Just a scratch.”
That doesn’t do anything to sate the worry gnawing at him, so Wilbur reaches out again, offering Tommy his hand. Tommy blinks at it, confusion furrowing his brow.
“Come sit,” Wilbur demands gently, then, hesitating, “You don’t have to, but—”
“It’s okay,” Tommy interjects, before he takes Wilbur’s extended hand.
He probably doesn’t need Wilbur’s help to get on a bed of all things, but he humors him, allowing Wilbur to hoist him up. Wilbur shuffles to the side, letting Tommy sit up against the headboard beside him, like he is.
“Are you okay?” Tommy asks, before Wilbur can get a word out.
As if Wilbur is the one who had gotten hurt.
“Are you?” he counters, and Tommy looks at him, confused. “Your arm.”
“My arm is fine,” Tommy tells him slowly. “It was just a scratch.” When Wilbur’s worry doesn’t ease, Tommy clears his throat. “I, uh, couldn’t get out of the way of the knife in time.”
And if that doesn’t make Wilbur’s chest seize, eyes flashing with images of the rebel, lunging across the table. Images of Tommy slamming into him before he could make it halfway. Them both hitting the ground. The dagger, glinting. Wilbur hadn’t seen any blood, but he can’t remember Tommy ever having treated his arm in the safe room, which means he’s either telling the truth about the injury being negligible, or he had hidden it for Wilbur’s sake.
Wilbur can’t decipher which one—it’s late, and he has yet to get acquainted with the guard side of Tommy. So he switches directions, indulging this shapeless worry another way.
“You were gone,” Wilbur points out. In the near-dark, it’s hard to see Tommy’s face, but Wilbur sees the way he swallows, face flickering with something panicked, and he feels him tense against his shoulder. “My father says you asked to go see Techno.”
“I didn’t ask,” Tommy corrects deliberately, eyes down towards the bed. “I told him I was fine but he insisted.”
“Because you weren’t fine?”
Tommy appraises him for a moment. “I am fine, your Highness.” He smiles humorlessly, and it’s hardly visible. “What happened today is… nothing I haven’t done before.”
It takes a moment for those words to settle in Wilbur’s brain, and when they do, a shock runs through him. He glances at Tommy, who won’t meet his eyes, and is fiddling with Wilbur’s blanket, and tries not to let his thoughts bury him.
He can’t help it. He’d known Tommy is capable—in theory. He’d known Tommy is young—in theory. He could’ve known that Tommy had killed, if he’d taken the time to think about it, but even then, he thinks it would still startle him to hear that Tommy, seventeen, has blood on his hands.
As if sensing the downward spiral of his thoughts, Tommy clears his throat. “Do you remember when the rebels attacked an outpost full of recruits? In L’manburg?”
Wilbur frowns. He doesn’t. There have been a lot of attacks, rebels pushing boundaries and leading crusades against the Kingdom’s most vulnerable. There’s too many for him to—
“The general was there,” Tommy adds.
“Techno?” Wilbur asks, frown deepening.
Tommy nods. “I remember he was visiting that week. I think he was going to assist in training us.”
“Us?” Wilbur echoes, and Tommy nods again.
“That was where I trained,” he explains. Then, eyes taking on a faroff glaze, “The rebels tried to seize it.”
“Right,” Wilbur confirms, ash coating his tongue.
Now that he’s thinking about it, he thinks he knows which direction this story is headed, can distantly recall the graveness of Techno’s face when he’d returned home to recount what had happened.
(And weeks later, that same look had returned to Techno’s face, but darker—once they’d learned that the attack had only ended up being practice: bloody practice for the cataclysm that had followed weeks later. The cataclysm that L’manburg didn’t survive.)
The thought makes him want to reach out and squeeze Tommy’s hand, but he doesn’t.
“I remember I was on my way back to the dormitories, when I was cornered. It was only one man, but he was bigger than me, and we had only just begun our training.”
He’s the only other one in the room, but Tommy’s words hold him and everything captive anyways, like even the air and the walls and the shadows have stopped to listen to his voice shake as he recounts the anecdote.
“I had a dagger in my hand,” Tommy recalls, utterly hollow. “I don’t remember lifting it. But it ended up killing him anyway, when he lunged at me.” Fingers clenching into small fists, “To this day, I don’t know if it’s my fault that it ended up buried in his ribcage.”
Wilbur freezes. He isn’t sure how to approach this, and his mind splinters with secondhand grief for the look on Tommy’s face. He’s only able to grasp onto one thought.
“It’s not,” Wilbur says immediately, an invisible hand wrapping around his throat and squeezing. “Tommy—”
“It doesn’t matter if it is,” Tommy injects, and Wilbur’s mouth snaps shut, even though Tommy hadn’t been harsh. “I don’t regret it.” A shaky exhale that has Wilbur holding his breath, “Because do you know how the general found me?”
Wilbur shakes his head—Techno hadn’t told him anything about this.
“It was after following the trail of six recruits— dead recruits. Kids like me, who hadn’t gotten so lucky.”
He says the words bluntly, and it’s almost enough to disguise the pain edging the words. Finally, he sighs, leaning heavily against the headboard. He tilts his head, eyes locking with Wilbur’s. Not even the darkness can mask the exhaustion radiating off of him.
“Do you get what I’m saying?”
Wilbur shakes his head. Tommy bumps his shoulder, lips twitching faintly.
“I’m saying that you don’t have to worry about me, your Highness. Anything I do here is for your safety. That’s all that matters.”
He sighs, fiddling with a fold in Wilbur’s blanket, before, speaking—impossibly quietly—
“I knew before I got here that I would need to do it again.” He laughs humorlessly. “I think that’s part of the reason why they chose me. If you want to serve the prince, you need to be willing to kill for the prince. And I’d already done that, for less.”
Wilbur… isn’t a sheltered prince. His best friend is a general, and his father has commanded armies. He knows bloodshed. But again: Tommy has a way of painting devastation like he’s never known it. It makes his heart ache, begging to soothe wounds he knows he can’t—knows that Tommy probably wouldn’t want him to anyway.
So he does the only thing he can—accepts, and then, distracts. Luckily, there is one thing that’s been on his mind, with every minute that they’d grown closer.
“Wilbur,” he murmurs.
Beside him, Tommy stills. “What?”
“Call me, Wilbur. That’s my name.”
Tommy blinks at him, and Wilbur almost manages a grin at the perplexion consuming his face. “Your Highness?”
Wilbur snorts, bumping his shoulder. “No, Wilbur. I think we’re passed the titles.”
Tommy just stares at him before, as stiff as can be, saying, “Okay.”
“Okay…?”
Tommy’s face scrunches, like he’s eaten a lemon. “Okay… Wilbur.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard,” Wilbur remarks lightly, unable to resist the urge to lift his hand and ruffle Tommy’s hair.
Tommy bats his hand away. “It was hard. That was weird.”
“Why?” Wilbur asks, smiling. “I call you Tommy.”
Tommy huffs a quiet laugh. “That’s different.”
“How?”
“I’m not a prince,” Tommy informs him. “I’m just… Tommy.”
Just? Wilbur thinks, brain instantly revolting before he’s aware of it. No such thing as just Tommy.
“Maybe Tommy deserves a title too.”
Tommy grins, leaning close as candlelight dances over his face. “You can call me Big Man, if you want.”
Wilbur shoves him back, infinitely gently. “I think Tommy’s fine.”
“Then so is Wilbur,” Tommy agrees, and Wilbur finds that, in this moment, he feels warmer than he has all day.
“Good.”
It grows quiet, but it’s peaceful. Wilbur could fall asleep like this, wrapped in banter that he’s hardly ever had a chance to engage in since he’d grown older, but it’s broken far too soon.
“I should be going,” Tommy says quietly. “It’s late, and I’m sure you need beauty sleep.”
Wilbur glares dully at him, unable to deny the exhaustion finally rising in his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tommy smiles. “Nothing at all, your— uh.” He stops, tries again. “Wilbur.”
Wilbur huffs, but his eyelids are drooping, so he only hums, drowsy and noncommittal. “Goodnight, Tommy.”
Tommy slides off of the bed. “Goodnight, Wilbur.” He hesitates at the end of the bed, hand brushing over the fabric of Wilbur’s bed set, before he remarks, “These sheets are so much nicer than mine.”
That’s enough to get Wilbur to crack his eyes open, a laugh slipping out of his lips. “Go to bed, child.”
He feels more than sees Tommy’s faint scowl. “Die.”
Wilbur’s eyes flutter closed again. “As if you would let that happen.”
“...You’re right,” Tommy agrees. Then, remembering his act, “I hate you.”
“Goodnight.”
“‘night Wilbur.”
And everything is simple again.
— ♕ —
(The first thing he does the next morning, after he leads Tommy down to the dining hall for breakfast, is make a note to send for better sheets, the same as his own, for Tommy’s bed.
When they are delivered later that day, the surprised smile on Tommy’s face basks everything in light.)