Chapter Text
Horatio is sweating and grunting dancing about the minor dinner hall's black and marble tiles. His bare feet slap the cold stone in swift succession, dodging the prince's shrewd maneuver with the rapier. In any other company, his feet may have appeared nimble and practiced. But the dancing lightness and mortal precision of the prince's footwork render Horatio rather scurrying to keep up than present any real challenge to his opposer. Then, an opening.
"Ho!" he cries, striking out at the prince's plastroned left flank.
Hamlet grins madly, frolicking daintily out of the blunted edge's way.
"Ho ho Horatio!" he shouts in mock, "Thou hast better put your mettle in speed than in coachman's song!"
Horatio laughs and puts his mettle in movement of speed rather than speed of reply. But Hamlet dances around him easily, swiveling across his hall as though the floor tiles themselves knew and winged their master's feet. His next thrust lands true on Horatio's hip.
Hamlet exclaims in joy.
"An admirable blow, my lord," Horatio smiles gracefully.
Hamlet laughs like a boy and skips towards his friend to embrace him, thumping his back.
"What a flight!" he cries, glossing over his friend's servile remark with learned ignorance, "A flight of a fight! I felt I were a bird looking down upon Denmark from his heavenly trajectory."
He separates from Horatio, still smiling hysterically.
"You looked a bird, my prince. Barefooted and loose-hosed, white of skin and skin's jealous covers. A snow's heron."
Hamlet at once feels, quite counter to his disposition, lacking answering words. What does his friend mean, skin's jealous covers?
"You're as a pelican then," he says, unnerved by the way sweat beads delicately on Horatio's forehead and unaccountably aware of the nearness of their heaving breasts. When has he become this tense around his most intimate courtier and friend?
"Faith, swallow my food in wholes I will this afternoon, having exhausted my reserves," Horatio jokes.
The joke restores a lightness in Hamlet's temper and he goes on smiling easily.
"Fifteen to four," he says as he chucks the rapier back into its stand, "We shall make a fighting man of you yet. You must practice with me every afternoon henceforth."
"Prithee, my lord, I could not! I could not so squander your Lordship's time on my barren art with the foils."
"I entreat you, practice with me every afternoon," Hamlet says. He watches as Horatio undoes his white fencing jacket, going goggle-eyed at Horatio's glistening chest barely revealed between the first buttons of his shirt undone. A bead of perspiration outlines the swell of his friend's pectoral muscle and vanishes suggestively between the buttons of his white shirt.
Has Horatio always looked thus? he wonders. He cannot. I should have taken note were it so.
Hamlet swallows. He does not seem master of his own eyes as they linger while Horatio steps close.
"You need not entreat when you may command me," he says as he raises his hands to Hamlet's collar to undo his jacket. "I should obey whatever your desire."
Hamlet's eyes raise to Horatio's face at last. Horatio's eyes are fixed on his hands' work. The prince's thoughts, usually sharp as a dagger's point and seemingly springing to his mind with arrangement and ornament beggaring that of sheet music, defy any such art and order now. What is the meaning of this wellspring of stupefying sensation? He gives voice to the only thought he can grasp.
"I do not wish to command you. You are my friend, Horatio. Is that not so? If it is so, will you not do it out of love for me?"
"It is so, my lord," Horatio reassures, quietly smiling at how wounded his prince can sound twixt a toy quibble of words.
"We shall practice in such garments as these," Hamlet goes on, "They lend swiftness and air to the foils. I am minded to campaign it a fashion. I could not suffer the smothering duel masks and trappings. A fish must have invented these, one who is insensible, sloshing nether at the ground o'the sea and does not breathe air. These garments make the bearer a bird. Bare feet are what man is meant to fight upon. One should feel the weed flutter against bare calves as one moves and one should behold the body of the opposer, mark his strength, learn his twistings as an artist would. Yea, an artist, for the foils are as much of beauty as of craft."
His eyes sparkle as they rake up Horatio's body eagerly. They get hopelessly caught on his friend's glistening chest again.
"Belike we shall dispense the jacket withal. It wants the grace of the unenclosed body."
Horatio expels air through his nose with an amused sort of expression.
"Mock not!" Hamlet squawks, not rightly knowing what precisely is at object anymore. Nevertheless, he feels his ears redden in a way most unbecoming of a prince. "Or art thou affrighted I would maim thee?"
"Nay, my lord. My life in thy smart hands I lay freely. Thou wouldst not sever a hair upon my head but by thy own device methinks. But to return such trust to my humble likes is to tempt death."
"Thou art affrighted," Hamlet cries with mirth.
"I would thou wouldst not show such a predilection to seduce an untimely end at every turn."
Hamlet sobers abruptly.
"You speak sadly and touch my soul. Do you love me?"
"As the wind loves the swallow and the swallow loves the wind."
Something blooms in the prince's chest and he grabs his friend's collar with emotion. He feels a thronging urge, an animal hunger as though there was something more to be had, something more to be done, he knows not what.
"You rouse the most wonderful feelings of kindred love in me," he says in awe. "If I had a brother, I wish it had been you."
Horatio places a gentle hand on Hamlet's side, feeling the shirt hot and damp with perspiration.
"My sweet lord, you give me great pleasure but you profess too much."
"No more than that which my heart does warrant."
Even the hot hand on his flank sends tendrils of sensation roiling in the prince's bosom. His sensations forge themselves into intelligence even as they break forth in multitudes.
"It must be a heightened conscience did apprehend me in the foils. The whetting of sensibility, the feint of mortal breath consumed. It washes clean the spirit in exerting the temple and cries out its pleasure tenfold. Indeed it must be so for you appeared tenfold a man, tenfold warm to my touch, tenfold dear, tenfold beauteous in the arch of lash and arc of Cupid's bow. Your form laughs at those of Achilles and Herkules when in their prime of nature their glories were made. 'Tis fit to model marble, nay marble could not catch your graces for marble has neither color nor sweat to shine his skin."
"My lord, are these the throes of ecstasy? Art thou playing tricks, as 'twere, putting an antic disposition on?"
"Nay, dear friend. I barely judge 'tis nighness to God. Too rueful is it that it must wane anon, as it has waxed. By heaven, I must use it twixt now and such time! I pray you, be my company to walk a time in the evening sun ere Diana, his rival, steals his light this night."
"Now?"
"Without delay. Leave your gear, you may gather it upon our return. We need not carry aught but ourselves and our wits to entertain us. And these garments will serve; if any knave does holler, so he shall, and lament the prince's mind o'erthrown."
Horatio laughs, marveling at Hamlet's mercurial industry.
"I will follow thee, sweet prince."