Chapter Text
Zayn’s chambers are dark when Louis slips in. If he wasn’t the best thief in the kingdom, that might have proved a problem, but he isn’t at the top of the king’s most wanted list for nothing. Sometimes, it feels like he sees in darkness as well as he does in the light. So he’s still silent as a cat as he navigates the room, no more than a shadow among shadows. The bed’s empty as well, which Louis more than half-expected. For all that he’s the thief, it seems like the king keeps Zayn out for longer hours even than Louis’s. Zayn certainly seems to think so, when he tells Louis about it.
Louis doesn’t really understand why, because Zayn’s bed is more comfortable than anything he’s ever slept in. His sheets are softer than anything Louis’s ever seen in the market, and he has books on the table at his bedstand, and the candlesticks on his table are, to Louis’s expert eye, gold. And worth a pretty penny, he thinks, though harder to get out when he has to climb down the walls than the silver cutlery on the plate his servants left, or the gold pendant carelessly strewn over the books.
He shakes his head. It does him no good to catalog the many luxuries Zayn has here, the many ways their lives are different. Instead he falls back onto the bed, lights the candle, and picks a book up off the bedstand, and peers at the letters. Zayn’s been teaching him, when they get a chance, and he’s been practicing, but he wants to amaze Zayn the next time they try.
He snuffs out the candle when he hears the noises down the hall that mean someone is coming, sets the books back where it was, and draws back into the shadows of the bedclothes. Once, he hid like this for a full hour in a lord’s room as he bumbled about, then got out his window with an emerald pendant without the man ever being the wiser.
Zayn’s talking to someone as he opens the door, the young knight who’s often by him when he leaves the castle for official business, who bids him goodnight with a bow and a grin from Zayn. Once he leaves, Zayn pauses. He’s backlit by the light of the hall, gilded by it like his crown, for the moment before he deliberately turns and closes the door behind him. Then he starts to move around the room, light the candles.
“You can come out, Louis,” he calls, as he reaches the candle near the wardrobe, right next to his jewelry box. “Know you’re there.”
Louis heaves a sigh, and uncurls himself so he’s splayed out on the bed instead. “How?” he demands. He had barely even been breathing.
Zayn shrugs, and yanks off his tunic, the gold thread catching the candlelight. “Just knew.” He tosses the tunic carelessly onto a chair, and tugs at the lacings of his shirt so they’re loosened. It billows like the finest linen it probably is, brushing white against his darker skin. “What brings you here?”
It’s Louis’s turn to shrug. “Don’t know.” He lies as easily as he breathes, but not to Zayn. He doesn’t know why. Doesn’t know why he keeps coming back here, to this room that is everything he hates and wants, to this man who should be everything he hates but is actually everything he wants. “Where were you?”
“Ball.” Zayn shakes his head with a shudder as he starts stripping off his rings, ruby and emerald and the heavy gold of his signet. Louis watches the jewels drip off of his elegant fingers onto the table.
“That bad?”
“Worse.” When Zayn turns back to Louis, to the bed, he could almost be one of the boys Louis sees at the tavern, in his breeches and free-flowing shirt, the collar open enough that his collarbones peak through. There’s some other quality to him, a bit, in the tilt of his head and the way he moves, confidence rather than the bravado of the thugs in the tavern, but that could be explained as arrogance instead of years of majesty bred in. “They’re all such snakes.”
“Poor Prince Zayn,” Louis drawls, spreads himself out more on the bed so he can smirk up at Zayn, knowing he’s displayed to his best advantage. “Surrounded by his admirers.”
Zayn grins down at him, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. “That insolence?” he asks, “Could have you executed for that.”
“If you were going to execute me, you would have done it a long time ago,” Louis tosses back at him, arching his back to stretch while keeping his eyes locked on Zayn’s with a confidence he doesn’t entirely feel. They joke, but Louis would be executed if he were found here. Found anywhere in the castle, really, which is why he slipped into the chamber that first time, bleeding from a guard’s arrow. He hadn’t known the boy who had looked up unphased from his book and laughed at Louis’s threats had been the prince, not then, and when he had found out it had only made it better. It’s been years since then, but the thrill is still the same, the rush he gets lying in the prince’s bed.
“If I were going to execute you, it would be for more than insolence,” Zayn retorts, and leans down. For a second, Louis thinks he’s going to finally give in, finally take Louis up on the offer he’s silently been making for months, and his breath almost catches—but instead he pulls the pendant out from under Louis’s shirt. “Really?”
Louis grins back as he sits up to take the pendant off and put it back on the table. “A boy’s got to make a living.”
“A boy could be doing honest work.”
“But then you wouldn’t find me half as fascinating,” Louis shoots back, and Zayn chuckles.
“Probably,” He agrees, and sinks down onto the bed next to Louis, his back against the headboard. Louis scoots around so he can sit next to him, their shoulders pressed together. Zayn tips his head back so it thumps against the wood.
“What’s wrong?” Louis nudges Zayn with his hip.
Zayn shakes his head again, then rests it on Louis’s shoulder. “Just tired.” It’s a trusting gesture, in a way no one’s ever really trusted Louis, except for his family. He can’t afford trust, any more than Zayn can; anyone could turn him in. Yet here Zayn is, offering him something much more than what Louis’s been offering Zayn. If Louis had honor, it would honor him. As it is, he just wants to grab at it, at every bit of Zayn he can steal, whether it’s these nights or the days Louis sneaks him out of the palace to run wild and unencumbered by his work. “Tired of everyone here. ‘s just to much, you know?”
Louis looks down at Zayn, at how Zayn’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks, how he’s got bags under his eyes, and slides a bold hand around his shoulders.
“We’ll run away,” he announces, suddenly. Zayn picks his head up, raises his eyebrows at him, but it’s a great idea, really. “We’ll go, just the two of us, for good. Somewhere different, somewhere no one knows us.”
“Louis.”
“No, we should!” He’s already half-got their lives planned out, how Louis will steal to keep Zayn in the finer things in life, and he’ll train Zayn into as good a thief as him (well, almost), so they’ll be partners in all things. “It’d just be us, away from all these people, and—”
“Louis.”
He rolls over, so he’s straddling Zayn, so he can look him right in the eye. He’s not pleading, not begging, but suddenly he wants this more than anything. “We could stop dealing with…” he waves a hand behind him, at the gilded room and the people beyond it, at the contentious thieves in the town below who glare at Louis with lidded eyes, “All of this. Just be us.”
Zayn’s brow is furrowed, and he looks kind, which is the worst thing he could look. “Louis,” he says a third time, and Louis doesn’t need the shake of his head to know what it means. “Louis, I can’t.”
“You could,” Louis retorts, sitting back on his heels. Zayn’s stretched out beneath him, his muscles tight, his heart in his eyes. He wants this, Louis knows he does. Wants out of this place, wants to run with Louis in the night, fly over rooftops and feel the thrill of outwitting the guard. They’ve gone out enough time for him to know that, running wild around the city, the fair, even the castle. “I could get you out, no one would ever know. We’d—”
“I can’t,” Zayn repeats, his voice pained but firm, and it’s final, Louis can hear it. Zayn’s the one person he’s ever met who doesn’t eventually dance to his tune, and usually it’s amazing, but suddenly Louis hates it. Hates him. Hates this stupid room with all its expensive hangings.
“Of course not,” he mutters. Of course Zayn wouldn’t want to leave this place, with his luxuries and power and flattery. Of course all his talk about how tired he was, how he hated everyone here, was just talk. He wouldn’t actually choose Louis, above all of this.
But when he moves to climb off Zayn, to get away, Zayn grabs his wrist, keeps him in place. “Oh, Louis.” Zayn sighs. “It’s not—I can’t. It’s…duty,” he finishes at last, slowly, like he’s tasting the word on his tongue. “Yeah, duty.”
“Fuck duty,” Louis mutters. Zayn’s body is warm under his, and he looks like gold. “Come with me.”
“Stop.”
Louis leans forward, keeping his eyes intent on Zayn. “Come with me,” he repeats. “Please.”
“Stop, Louis—”
“Come with me,” Louis says a third time, like it’s a charm.
“I can’t,” Zayn echoes. “Please, I can’t, everything I love is here—”
“I love you,” Louis interrupts. It’s not what he had meant to say, but it’s true. He loves this entitled prince who doesn’t fall for any of his tricks, who he wants to run away with him, far away from all the things that lie between them. “And you want me too, I know, you can’t lie to me, we could—”
“N—”
Louis lunges forward to cut him off with a kiss, his lips crashing against Zayn’s like a storm, desperate as he pushes against him, pushing all the things he wanted from him, for him, in that messy kiss. He’ll keep kissing Zayn forever if it means he can never hear him say no, never hear him say Louis’s not good enough for him.
Zayn exhales sharply into his mouth, and then he presses back, as desperate, and it’s as good as any theft, the thrill curling as richly in Louis’s gut.
Louis pulls back as soon as he’s caught him, though, because he knows the tricks. Zayn’s eyes are dark, his lips pink, and his face is open and soft. “Please,” Louis mutters, “Please, Zayn.”
There’s a second, one glorious second, where Louis knows Zayn is going to say yes, knows it deep in his bones, knows how brilliant they’ll be together.
Then something changes in Zayn. His chin tilts up, his shoulders tighten, his face closes. He still looks kind, but it’s remote. It’s not the boy who ran with him in the fair. He’s a prince, now. He’s the prince, and Louis knows he’s lost him. “Louis,” he says, gently, reaching up a hand to stroke down Louis’s cheek. “I cannot forsake my duty, or my people.”
“You—” Louis starts, hopelessly, but Zayn shakes his head.
“I cannot,” he repeats, and moves Louis off of him, still horribly gentle. “I’m sorry.”
“Right.” Louis can’t stay here, not now. Not now that he’s put so much of himself there, and it’s been thrown back. Clearly all of Zayn’s offers, the trust, the gentleness, were lies. Prince’s lies, bones for his dog, for the poor thief who climbed in his window to amuse him from time to time. He’s off the bed in a second, ignoring Zayn’s wide-eyed face. “Sorry for bothering you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Business in the lower city, afraid I do.” Louis’s not sure what he’s saying, he just has to leave. Has to leave for good. How long has he had this hope? He’s not even sure, but now that it’s gone, he can’t be here. How could he have been so stupid? “Actually, business far away, probably. Very far.”
“No, Louis—”
“You made your choice!” Louis spits back at him, “You chose, and I’m going. You could have come with me.” Because he’s pathetic, he adds, “You still could.”
“I can’t!” Zayn’s sitting on the edge of the bed now, his knuckles white where he grabs at the covers. “You don’t understand, it’s my—”
“Oh, I’m sorry, is this something a thief can’t understand?” Louis whirls a foot away from the window. “I understand loyalty, Zayn.”
“I know, I didn’t mean…”
Louis can’t listen to this anymore. Can’t—just can’t, can’t think about this place anymore. “Goodbye, Zayn. I hope you’re happy here.” He slings a leg over the windowsill.
“Louis.” Something in Zayn’s voice makes him turn back. Zayn’s standing now, and how had Louis ever thought he looked like a lad in a tavern? He’s royalty down to his bones, like a diamond, that would be a diamond no matter the roughness of it’s setting. He could never have come with Louis. His face is expressionless, a mask like Louis’s never seen on his face before, not even when he snuck into the throne room to watch him listening to his father at court.
“What?”
“Give it back.”
Of course, even now, he calls all of Louis’s tricks. Louis lets the pendant drop from between his fingers, catching the light and shining as gold as Zayn’s eyes. “No,” he says. It’s the first time he’s said that to Zayn, probably. “I’m keeping it. Think of it as a consolation prize.”
He’s out the window before Zayn can object. It’s not like he’ll miss it, among all his other jewelry. And anyway, Louis thinks, biting down on his lips so the tears gathering in his eyes don’t fall and give him away, he has a trip to plan. Someone else would just have slowed him down.