LXXX
Alex pushed the food around his plate, his ear numb to the masses of chatter in the canteen. Thomas was silent opposite, his cheek creased against his propped-up hand, zoning out at the table beside them.
?The numbers dwindled as the evening progressed, the men slowly swarming to the bar in the next hall along, a few remained, sparsely spread. Thomas and Alex were two of the such remaining.
?"What are you going to do?" Thomas asked.
?Alex regarded him tiredly. It had been the first word spoken by either of them since the inquest's close.
?Alex hadn't let himself think too hard about the future, the outcome wasn't yet certain enough for him to abandon his anxiety. There was still time for things to wrong. Except...
?"I want to get the duchess away from him."
?Thomas nodded in thought before grimacing. "I'm sure it's justified. I don't know what he's done but if it's anything like how he treats you... Well, I'm sure you're justified. That's all."
?It felt nice to be trusted.
?Alex sighed, running a hand down his face. "I want to save the slaves, too," he admitted. "If they get killed because of my actions I'd feel awful."
?"That would be the duke's actions, not yours."
?"Aye, well, I'm not convinced. If I could've prevented it but did nothing then I'd be responsible too."
?Alex could no longer wait in slight hope that Colby would change his mind and take over the duchy now that his brother's body was permanently damaged. That slight chance had dwindled into an impossibility.
?"I wonder if Fletcher has woken up yet," Thomas mumbled, looking off to the side.
?Despite himself, Alex smiled slightly. "He's probably ranting his mouth off to any nurse that'll hear him right now. He wanted to be here so badly."
?"He's too soft. I think he would've been disappointed..."
?"Mm, probably," Alex allowed. Fletcher was particularly sympathetic to others' plights.
?A silence lulling between them, Alex's gaze fell to his food once again. Almost untouched, the grey slab of anaemic pork had long gone cold and the beige bread stiff. It was no more appetising than the plate it sat on. Alex was still for a moment in thought, then, he stood.
?"Off to bed?" Thomas asked.
?"Off to see James," Alex replied, taking the plate with him.
?Thomas gave a lazy wave. "Don't die."
?Alex frowned as he walked away but Thomas' parting remark wasn't unwarranted.
James was behaving erratically and Alex wasn't very good at skirting away from danger; he never had been.
His attraction was evidence of his broken survival instincts— like an animal interested in a blatantly poisonous bright-red butterfly.
?Alex had slowly come to realise why he'd chosen James, in spite of this. Pure-hearted love didn't suit the two of them because they'd be too weak for each other. The success of their affair and affection was entirely dependent on their detached mercilessness.
?James was an awful person. His disregard for the sanctity of life was the same attitude that enabled the likes of Prince Maurice and James' affection for others came from a place of self-gratification.
?But no one else was suitable for Alex. He couldn't bear having a weak partner.
If Alex ever tried to kill James, he could be relieved knowing that James would stand victorious.
The sad reality was that they were compatible because neither of them would be able to stomach being treated with warmth and love from anyone.
?If James were to snap at him again then so be it. Alex was strong enough to cope with that.
?In the corridor, Alex was surprised to see Ino coming from the direction of James' room.
?"Lord Alexander," she greeted, bowing slightly.
?"What are you doing here?"
?"I was going to check on James. I caught sight of his hands earlier and looked better than I had expected, but—" she glanced over her shoulder.
"Well, I'll come back later. Fletcher had been sending me updates on his condition until now.
I thought he was still travelling with you lot. Where is he?"
?"He was injured."
?Ino seemed genuinely upset by this. "The poor thing. Is it painful?"
?Alex winced and that was all the answer Ino needed. "He'll live, though."
?Ino nodded, her eyes narrowing on the plate in Alex's hands. Alex was careful not to stiffen under the scrutiny.
?"I am gobsmacked, actually," Ino said. "I was so convinced that James was going to leg it that I can't comprehend any of this." She looked him in the eye. "What the Hell did you do to him?"
?A cold thump of his heart cooled Alex's body and expression, the emotion freezing under the surface and far away from his face. The animosity Ino was directing at him was sudden and confusing but he would give nothing away.
?"It was his decision."
?Ino continued to bore into him, unblinking, but Alex was stubborn. It wasn't any of Ino's business and her ability to immortalise information was threatening. Only Moira knew what she would write.
?Eventually, she huffed, smiling wryly. "You're one scary man, Lord Alexander. Enjoy putting yourself in the crosshairs. That face won't save you forever."
?"I'll be safer than the little girl who picks fights with people who could snap her in half."
?She smiled, her teeth bared. "Yet, I'm not scared to die. You, on the other hand? I've heard it hurts."
?Alex strolled past her, muttering a low: "You can let me know."
?She scoffed in unamused laughter behind him. "Moira would like you a lot."
?It didn't dignify a response, he continued onward, but the remark was puzzling. It sounded too particular to be a simple prophesising of death. No, the religious believed Moira was undiscriminatory of His dead. There was something personal about it.
?It didn't matter. What would a woman know?
?At the door, Alex rapped his knuckle against the wood, awaiting a response. He received nothing, not an invitation, nor a rejection. A second attempt yielded nothing also.
?Was James not in his room?
?The knob was unlocked when Alex tried it, the hinges groaning as it slowly opened, something grating under the sill. Alex was frozen, unmoving, assaulted by the sight.
?Broken glass ladened the ground, the shards sweeping across it in aggressively scratching strokes.
Debris from his windows, mirrors, and lamps and overturned splintered furniture hazarded the surroundings, fortifying a barrier around James, as if warding any intruders away.
James was sitting on the edge of his bed, shoulders bowed, in an undertunic, his regal garments strewn across the floor. He didn't look up when Alex entered.
?Alex swallowed down the lump in his throat, his brows threatening to knit with the ache of his heart. He couldn't. Alex couldn't break down now, not after everything.
?He didn't smile, but he employed a facade. He would pretend that his sandals weren't crunching over James' emotional outburst as he approached, that the room hadn't been torn up so savagely and desperately. He shoved his personal feelings down and kept them in the pit of his stomach.
?"I brought you some tea," Alex said, standing in front of him.
?James didn't move. He was so still that Alex wasn't sure he was breathing.
?James was deceptively neutral, like a wound-up animal trap sitting in a forest that would snap the moment it was touched. Alex was on the fringes of severe danger, with a single trigger, James may twist his neck before Alex knew what was happening.
?After all, James thought Alex was responsible for this.
?Delicate and vulnerable, able to break with only the slightest of touches, Alex never would've dreamed of describing James as such. James wasn't like this defeated slump before him, he was meant to be stronger and taller than the palace walls. He wasn't supposed to collapse into a ruined pile.
?James' gaze remained stuck to the floor, unseeing, and Alex patiently waited to see if something would happen. Moments passed, the silence deafening, before James took a sudden breath and deflated further, burying his face in his hands, and stilling once again.
?Erring on the side of caution, Alex didn't dare push the invisible boundary. He retreated with a slow step backwards and, after a beat of hesitation, placed the plate on James' bedside table.
?Alex couldn't leave James alone like this.
?Surveying the carnage again, Alex left James to his space and began to clean up.
He moved all the larger remnants of destruction, broken chairs and furniture, to one corner of the room and lost himself in the task.
He got on his knees, delicately collecting all the debris into a blanket by hand, careful not to cut himself on any sharp edges.
?At some point, Alex became aware that James had begun to watch him but he didn't acknowledge this.
As time wordlessly passed Alex continued onward, dragging a different blanket across the floor with his feet to sweep up any smaller shards that could get lodged in someone's feet. He wouldn't want James to hurt himself.
?He hoped that by cleaning out James' chamber, perhaps it might also hold a chance of cleaning out James' mind. They had to keep moving forward. Dwelling in their own misery would only drown them.
?"You could've got a maid to do it," James said.
?Alex held his breath, laggardly turning to finally acknowledge him, inwardly pleading that, this time, he'd recognise the man he was looking at.
?He tried his voice. "I didn't think you'd want a stranger in this room."
?Blank. James' face was perfectly blank.
Whilst it was so typical of him, it was different.
It was normally edged with boredom, a perfectly constructed face aired with disdain.
But this? This face was blank with the final resignation of utter defeat.
After all this time, James had finally been defeated.
?James' eyelashes fluttered as he averted his gaze. It wasn't his deliberate reptile-like blinks.
?What Alex was witnessing was something raw; everything else that had been scraped away down to the bone. James was disarmed of his shields and protection; over a decade's worth of defences had been ruined.
?"A stranger," James echoed. "Yet, here you are."
?Alex was careful not to flinch.
?He was at a loss, so severely clueless in how to navigate this situation. How did James view him right then? Just what did he want from him? How was Alex supposed to remedy this?
?"I don't consider myself a stranger," Alex replied, honestly.
?With no alternative, all Alex could do was fall upon his true thoughts and feelings and hope those were enough.
?Alex waited for James' verdict, the other man silent. He didn't think he'd felt this scared of James since the day they'd first met. It was paralysing. His heart pattered in his chest like a fear-frozen stag waiting to witness its fate, stunned in the sights of danger.
?"Who do you see right now, Alex?"
?Alex bit the inside of his cheek.
?The person Alex saw was his lover unrecognisable in despair.
He had dark muddied eyes with a soul pushed so far down that the body was almost an empty husk.
But, it was still in there. It still existed within the depths and it was hiding like a child fearfully seeking refuge under the shadow of its bed, more scared of the world than the monsters it sat with.
?The fact that Alex had understood the question, understood the war raging in James' head, was evidence he wasn't a stranger. James' identity had finally split and the wound it left was gaping and bleeding.
?But, such a question was impossible to answer.
?Instead, Alex had to think beyond simple names and simple constructions of a person. James had lived many lives and donned many handles. Alex just happened to be introduced to the name 'James' on a whim, by chance, when James could've tossed him any number of words to call him by.
?'James' had never been a real person to begin with.
?Alex's chest twisted inside, the words burning as he strained to get them out. "You," he declared. "Right now, just as before, I have always been, and still am, looking at 'you'. My friend, my partner, my lover."
?It was the cutting truth. But, Alex didn't know if honesty was truly what James needed. A lie might've been kinder.
?"I'm nothing like that," James decided, his brows chiselled low.
?Alex attempted a small but unsuccessful smile. "The man I've always known was inconsistent like that. To me, you're exactly him."
?James deliberated this, his thoughts glazing over his eyes.
Alex had to hold for James' ruling, like he was on the stand, awaiting his sentence.
He'd been confident in his answer but unconfident it was what James wished to hear.
The decision could fall either way and Alex's palms were clammy with sweat.
?Finally, James' eyes moved, focusing, narrowing. He'd come back.
?He leaned back on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows and rubbed the mattress beside him. "Here."
?Alex took a second to gather courage, hesitant. Slowly, he crept up to the bed, stuttering on a step as he passed that invisible boundary he hadn't before. He stopped short, not sitting down like James had asked of him.
?At this delay, James hooked his leg around and kicked the back of Alex's knees, pulling him down by his neck as they gave out. He caught himself with his forearms.
?"James?"
?"Why are you panicking?"
?Alex calmed his expression, taking a steadying breath. "You startled me."
?"I'm not going to hurt you."
?Alex didn't quite believe him enough to fully relax. But, James' senses were keen. Alex would have to force himself to trust James' sincerity or James would be able to read the tension in Alex's frame and discredit his answer.
?James wasn't going to hurt him; but if Alex didn't believe that then James would.
?"Take your clothes off," James said.
?"I don't want t—"
?"Not like that," James seriously interjected. "I want you to get comfortable."
?Alex nodded and twisted round to sit up and shed his ceremonial garments off himself, the layers heavy and stifling in the heat. James watched him as he did so, until Alex was only at his airy base layer.
?"You should eat something," Alex said, regaining his confidence. The plate looked pathetic untouched.
?"Are you my mother?"
?"I care about you," Alex reasoned. "Eating will make me feel assured that you're healthy."
?James didn't have a bitter retort for that, his tongue held. He glanced at his supper, his face softening, and said: "I'll eat breakfast when it comes."
?Alex nodded. That was as much as he could ask for.
?After Alex had finished removing his shoes, James was quick to press him into the mattress on his back, holding him by his throat.
Alex allowed it to happen, remaining stoic.
Even if James did this, even though Alex knew James could go back on his word and decide to kill him here— without James, he'd be dead anyway.
?James evaluated him, straddling his hips and adding his second hand to Alex's neck, steadily squeezing.
Despite the disadvantage, and his earlier fear, Alex felt oddly relaxed.
At that moment, his life was in the hands of someone else.
In a weird way, it wasn't his responsibility anymore so he didn't have to worry about it.
?"You're not scared," James murmured, eyes widening, as if surprised.
?Alex chuckled. What kind of person was he to feel so careless in this position? Even though there was a real chance James would snap his neck, why did Alex feel peaceful? Perhaps he was just as twisted as the man who was playing with him between his fingers like clay.
?"If I tried to kill you here, would you fight back?" James asked with genuine curiosity.
?What the Hell was Alex doing right now?
?He smiled wryly. "No idea."
?"Your self-preservation instincts worry me."
?"I don't have those."
?James didn't laugh.
?Alex huffed, holding onto James' wrists but not prying them away. "Where did that sense of humour go? Being so serious doesn't suit you."
?"I thought you found it annoying."
?"And why is that reason enough to stop? You enjoy it."
?"Because I can't let you leave me."
?That brought Alex up short, his mind stumbling in shock.
Before he could evaluate James' expression, James had removed his hands and had curled over on Alex's chest, burying his face into his neck.
The heavy and warm pressure of James' weight felt nice.
And, believing he was given permission, Alex wrapped his arms around him, embracing him firmly. He stared up at the ceiling.
?Alex had never considered the possibility that he wasn't the only one who felt insecure about their relationship's longevity. Whilst Alex had worried James would suddenly lose interest one day, James had been worrying Alex would lose patience with him.
?What pathetic fools they were.
?"I know who you are," Alex mumbled, his fingers rubbing the material on James' back. "You're too confident for such worries. Khearia would burn before you'd allow that to happen."
?James murmured something unintelligible.
?"I'm not leaving," Alex said. Not that he had any choice.
?He moved his hand up to delve it into the back of James' scalp, massaging it. James' body was unusually languid and it took Alex a good few moments to realise that James' breathing had slowed.
?Just like that, James had fallen asleep.
A/N - Current word count -239,514