Chapter Text
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
T.S Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
PART ONE
The day Charlie first sees him, there are butterflies in the garden. They flit about with sun-dappled wings around the lemon trees, like some mystical, iridescent shower of sparks. Not bees, as would be typical, but butterflies. As though someone had released them on purpose, like a symbol of good luck. A sign, a secret.
“Be ready,” his father tells him, adjusting the cuff of Jannik’s sleeve. “We’re going in soon.”
They have made him a fox mask, painted the sunny orange of tangerines complete with pointy ears sticking out the top, bright and absurd. Jannik puts it on, feeling foolish.
He steps over the terracotta tiles in the dying light. The ball is about to start.
The palace of Roland-Garros is built of clay and sandstone, coloured with warm, earthy tones, and it is everything Jannik feared it would be. He does his part, lingers by his family, shakes some hands and forces himself to smile politely. The conversation blurs. And then, as soon as the crowd melts away from him, he slips towards the exit of the ballroom and flees. Fragile like the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
Like a fox, maybe. Jannik never thought of foxes as sly. They just wanted what they wanted, and well, they would do well to get it.
He listens as the music grows softer behind him while the side doors he made his escape through slowly close. The evening silence meets him as he tries to remember how to breathe.
Jannik is adjusting his mask when a voice speaks up behind him. “Fox? I like it.”
Startled, he flinches. Turns around. And then freezes again, because there’s someone standing just past the columns, haloed in golden light, dressed for the occasion but wrong-footed in it, a button loose, tie slightly crooked. His mask is simple, matte gold, his smile lopsided, sheepish. Jannik’s mind is immediately filled with aesthetic adjectives.
“Sorry, I not mean to scare you.”
He stares, a bit too long. “No, uh- you didn’t. It's okay. I just didn’t think there was anyone here.”
The stranger smiles and steps closer, and something in Jannik’s chest twinges. “Well, you not supposed to be here, so…”
“Neither are you,” Jannik counters, more defensively than he means to. In a distant corner of his brain, a voice that sounds like his mother is chiding his manners. He ignores her, although he does not know what has come over him.
“You don’t know that.”
“What is that even supposed to mean?”
The stranger just smiles. Jannik crosses his arms and scowls. “You are not going to tell me who you are, are you?”
“You don’t know?”
“No,” he says flatly. “What, am I supposed to?”
The stranger looks at him for a moment, then shrugs. “Is good, I think. I like when people don't know.”
“How mysterious,” Jannik mutters. “Well, if it helps, I don’t care. Title or not. Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
That gets a reaction. The stranger tilts his head curiously.
“Ah,” he says. “And what do you think about people who do have titles?”
Jannik scoffs, the answer comes to him too easily. “I think most of them wouldn't last five minutes outside their palaces. No sense of the real world, no spine. The whole system’s ridiculous.” Growing up, he’d sit through some of his father’s meetings, listen to nobility make fools of themselves with their ignorant takes.
The stranger’s eyes widen.
There is a pause. Shit, should he not have said that? Why can't he just keep his mouth shut?
Then, the stranger laughs, loud and genuine. “Interesting.”
Jannik frowns. “What, do you disagree?”
“No, not really, I just– you're here attending this ball, no? Surely you must also be somebody.”
“Well, my father is a diplomat, which is why I am here. We aren’t aristocrats by blood.”
He pauses.
“My name is Jannik Sinner,” he offers reluctantly.
The stranger smiles again. “Charlie.”
“Just Charlie? Yeah, sure.”
Charlie only grins.
They stop at the edge of the garden. The light here is dimmer, the sound of the ball muted, distant, like they are underwater.
“So, what brings you out here, Jannik Sinner? Since… you know. Ball is in progress. Not over yet.”
Jannik shrugs. “Was too much pretending. Wanted to get away.” It has always been that simple, for him. Remove himself before it gets too much, steal moments alone in dark spaces, the in-betweens. Surprising how little he is missed. He prefers it that way.
“You don't like to pretend?”
“Does anyone? It's exhausting.”
Charlie nods fervently, eyes alight behind his mask. “Yes, I understand this.” He pauses. “Is so tiring, sometimes, to always pretend. You wear mask… but also another mask under that. You know? I get confused which one is me.”
They walk a few steps further. Then Charlie says, lightly, “You know… you are brave.”
Jannik startles. “What?”
“To say what you said. About royalty, people with titles.”
He shrugs again. “It's not brave if no one's listening.”
“Maybe someone is. You never know.”
They look towards the gardens at the last of the afterglow. The faint diffused light paints a masterpiece out of Charlie, casting blurred shadows across the planes of his face, making his lips look impossibly soft, pressed together. Jannik is enraptured.
Charlie leans close towards him suddenly, peering at something. “Ah, look– a butterfly. In your hair.”
Jannik tilts his head, eyes darting upwards before he remembers he can't possibly see it. “Really?”
“They must like you,” Charlie adds, “to land on you. You must smell good.”
There is a long silence. Jannik feels himself blush furiously.
“Dance with me?”
What. “Oh, no, it’s okay, I don’t dance.”
Charlie looks pleadingly at him. “Please? No one here except us, you know. Is not ballroom, where you must dance properly. You step on my toes, is okay. I won’t tell.” He grasps Jannik’s hands in his own, warm and calloused. Jannik forgets how to think. How to resist the forces of nature.
He relents, because Charlie doesn't. What is he doing, giving into any demands just because they come from some gorgeous masked stranger that he hasn’t even known for a day? Charlie’s hands are still holding his, bringing them closer together. He feels distinctly overgrown, limbs all over the place, less like a fox and more like a baby deer. Out of control.
It’s too hot, his clothes are too uncomfortable, itchy. Except it isn’t, it’s early summer and the clay is not yet cracked from the dry heat, the evening breeze is blowing in, and the only thing Jannik can think about is the body in front of him. It’s only this, him. The suffocating nearness. One, two, three. Step in, step out. He wants to whisper something into the air that he’ll regret later. Something he can’t take back. He wants to not regret. Their faces are so close to each other, he only needs to lean down and they’d–
Oh, who is he kidding? They are both still wearing masks, and he cannot afford to be reckless, cannot be carried away by the rushing tide, the force of nature, inevitable–
He turns away sharply. There are vines climbing up his throat. “Sorry, I–”
Charlie’s face falls. It reminds Jannik of blinds being drawn, blocking out the sun. He hates that he was the one to pull the string.
He doesn't look at Charlie. The air is thick and heavy, he regrets speaking. He regrets not speaking. Funny how he was so scared to regret, and yet it happened anyway.
Charlie takes a step back. Then another. The distance is established between them once more.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. When he does, his voice is soft, careful. Like Jannik could shatter. (Like a chandelier. Like a fox.)
“…I should go.”
“Oh.”
Charlie nods, slow. “They will be looking for me. Eventually.”
Jannik chances a glance at him. “Right. Of course.”
Charlie doesn’t move right away. He’s still looking at Jannik, as though memorising something. A detail. This moment.
Then, gently, reverently, he lifts Jannik’s hand. Presses his lips to the back of it, just for a breath.
His mouth lingers.
And then he’s gone.
Jannik doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring at the space where Charlie had been. The moment collapses, in between them.
Charlie wants to cherish him forever. Wants to hold on to this feeling, to never let it go, to cradle it to his chest, to keep it safe and precious and close. To remember.
-
-
-
-
PART TWO
“You cannot just call somebody an imperialist, let alone a well known minister. This is unacceptable. You represent the royal family. Act like it.”
“But it was the truth. Somebody had to say it.”
“And that somebody is not you. We cannot have any more of this unprofessional behaviour.”
Harriet pauses. “The council has decided you will have someone to help you manage your public opinions– and express them in a more… suitable manner.”
“You know, there is a post available for,” Jannik’s brother squints at the mail they just received. “Royal Communications Advisor?”
Jannik raises his eyebrows. “You're kidding.”
“Nope. Open application. Anyone in the country can apply. Position starts in June.”
“I wonder what PR disaster they need help fixing this time.”
“Yeah, no clue. You’d be good at it though. You should apply.”
“I’d rather die.”
The application stays on his desk anyways.
He sees it again as he is about to leave the house to buy some groceries. The thought strikes him. What if I applied?
Grabbing a pen, he fills out the form without much thought and leaves it on the desk when he goes out. Name, Jannik Sinner, age, 23, current place of residence, South Tyrol, et cetera, et cetera. He probably wouldn’t end up sending it in, but it was nice to know that he could.
When he comes back, the paper is gone.
“MARK,” he yells. “WHERE IS MY APPLICATION??”
“Oh,” Mark says absent-mindedly from the couch in the living room. “I sent it for you.”
“You what.”
“You filled all the details up.”
“Yes, but I didn’t send it, did I?”
“Well, I thought you wanted the job. You need employment anyways.”
Jannik sighs. At least he’s not likely to actually get it, considering that many people, who are probably all more qualified than him, would also have applied.
A month later, after Jannik has nearly forgotten about the whole fiasco, a manila envelope arrives, addressed to him. It is thick and weighted, official-looking, with a golden stamp. The royal emblem. There is no indication of the letter’s contents on the front or back.
Jannik tears it open with a growing sense of dread.
Inside is a neatly folded letter, printed on smooth cream paper, tasteful and expensive-looking.
Dear Mr Sinner,
Congratulations!
His stomach drops to the floor.
We delight to inform you that your application for the post of Royal Communications Advisor was successful, and you are expected to report to the palace on the date indicated below…
He got the job.
“Shit. Fuck. What have I done. What have you done, Mark. Fuck you. Fuck this.” What if everyone there is insufferable? He’d never survive. This has to be a joke. A cruel, practical joke orchestrated by the universe, who seems to have it out for him. Maybe he is the joke. He curses again.
The coach pulls up to the front of the palace, wheels kicking up small clouds of red smoke. Roland-Garros is still as intimidating as it was all those years ago. Terracotta tiles, sandstone columns. Jannik clears security in a daze. It still doesn’t feel quite real, like this is some surreal dream he’s having, and he’ll wake up in his bed in the mountains with one hell of a story to tell.
The grounds are quiet. His footsteps feel too loud for the occasion. A frazzled-looking woman greets him, friendly but rushed. She is wearing a nametag pinned so crookedly on her blazer that it is almost vertical, reading Harriet, Head of Administration. “Mr Sinner?”
He nods.
She hands him a folder. “Your schedule is inside. You’ll be working directly with Prince Carlos. He’s widely beloved, but can be a little… unpredictable, sometimes. You can check the folder for more details on what you need to do. His office is several floors up from here, please report there.”
He gives her a blank stare and doesn’t move. She looks expectantly at him before clapping her hand to her forehead. “Oh right, you’re new. You don’t know where anything is. Sorry, I’ll take you there now.”
He follows her down the corridor, up a staircase, and through another hallway. She is surprisingly brisk, and Jannik has to struggle to keep up even with his longer legs. They stop in front of a door, nondescript, unmarked. “Here we are,” she says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have places to be…”
Her heels click against the floor as she hurries away. Jannik is left alone, staring at the door in front of him. The folder in his hands contains his schedule, like she said, as well as some other papers. A draft of a speech, perhaps? He takes a deep breath and opens the door.
The prince is seated by the window, backlit by the pale cream of the morning light suffusing through the glass, flipping through some papers. He looks up when Jannik enters.
Their eyes meet.
The breath is knocked out of Jannik’s lungs, forceful. He goes rigid with shock.
It’s him.
It’s Charlie.
The flashbacks play in his mind, the tape rewinds unbidden. Chandeliers. A fox. A butterfly in his hair, golden masks, open smiles. And the things he said.
Oh fuck, the things he said.
“I think most of them wouldn't last five minutes outside their palaces. No sense of the real world, no spine. The whole system’s ridiculous.”
Charlie is older now. He’s sharper, a little sadder, maybe, like time stole away some of the unapologetic joy he used to carry so freely, but he is still that charismatic, beautiful person that Jannik met here years ago. There is still that same gravitational pull, that strange weight in the centre of the room. He’s still breathtaking. Still dangerous. Only now, Charlie is Prince Carlos, and he is the second in line to the throne, and he’s always been Prince Carlos, second in line to the throne, and Jannik has really, really fucked up.
But what could he possibly say, now that he’s realized the boy he danced with –the one that called him brave, watched a butterfly land in his hair, listened to him call the monarchy a circus– is the prince? A part of the royal family he’d scorned (and straight to his face, too), and therefore his employer?
Nothing at all, really. Jannik keeps his mouth shut.
The prince blinks and smiles at him hopefully, tentative. Jannik does not smile back. His heart is thundering in his chest.
He sits down, stone-faced, opens his folder, and starts talking. “Alright, Your Highness, I apologize if this is overly curt of me, but let’s get to work. I’ve skimmed through your,” he peers down at the paper beneath him, “latest draft. We should probably talk about word choice.”
The prince tilts his head at Jannik curiously. “Have we met?”
Jannik’s pen stills in his hand.
Doesn’t he remember?
Maybe this meant more to Jannik than it meant to him. “No,” he lies, the word catching sharp in his throat. “I don’t think so, Your Highness, I would’ve remembered if we did.” He shoves the garden, the laughter, the dance of their first meeting in some room far away in his mind and locks the door. If Charlie won’t acknowledge it, Jannik won’t either.
The prince says nothing, just nods slowly. The moment teeters, tips off-balance.
Jannik feels sick.
Then—
“It’s Carlos.”
“Huh?”
“Please don’t call me ‘Your Highness.’ It sounds so stifling. Carlos is fine.”
Jannik is deeply uncomfortable with this notion. “No, I don’t think so, Your Highness.”
The prince—Carlos—laughs, familiar, loud and unguarded like that night now locked away in the recesses of Jannik’s mind, and Jannik stares down at his folder and thinks once more, I’m so fucked.
As it turns out, Carlos is a disaster.
“Write the speech,” Jannik says, voice dull with exhaustion, glasses crooked from rubbing at his face too many times today. One week in, and he is already at his wit’s end. “We need to go over what you’re going to say. Please. Just write something.”
He is ignored. Carlos is swiveling around lazily in his chair, his left foot dragging along the floor in an arc. “I was thinking I could wing it.”
“Oh my god.” Jannik closes his eyes. “No.”
“Why not? I have good instincts.”
“I would like to remind you that you once called someone’s agricultural policies ‘ridiculous and a shame to anyone who gives a shit about the planet’ on live broadcast. Clearly, it must've been bad if Harriet deemed it worthy of my notice to point it out.”
The chair squeaks as Carlos sits upright. “I was right, though.”
“You were,” he admits reluctantly, “but that’s not the point.”
Carlos stops mid-spin. “You agree with me?”
“That’s also not the point,” Jannik mutters. “God. Sit still.”
Carlos pouts. He distantly reminds Jannik of a kitten trying to be scary. “Why are you so mean to me?”
“I am not. You are not letting me do my job and now we are both suffering.”
“I’m helping you build strength of character.”
Jannik sighs and leans forward. He feels a headache incoming. “Speech,” he says again. “Bullet points. Anything.” And just because he knows Carlos doesn’t like it, he adds, “Your Highness.”
He hears a huff from the opposite side of the desk. The prince leans way back in his chair, neck bent over the top of the backrest, and stares at the ceiling. Jannik is scared the poor piece of furniture is going to tip over. “It’s just that— ugh. I don’t like writing them, okay? It feels so fake. I’m writing something they want me to say, and then they wear my face to say it.”
Carlos starts spinning again, still looking at the ceiling. “People listen to me like it means something. I’m not sure it does, though. Or that I want it to.”
The room fills with an awkward kind of quiet, the kind that makes Jannik feel like speaking up just to break the silence.
“Sorry,” Carlos says, more to the ceiling than to Jannik. “I probably shouldn’t have said all that. You’re just here to do your job, and I— I’m not helping.”
“You know, nobody is forcing you to pretend. You don’t have to be fake if you don’t want to, you just have to get better at being real. You can say what you want while being diplomatic and concise.”
Carlos looks over. “Did Harriet say that? Because that was really cheesy.”
“Shut up. No, surprisingly.”
A grin, hopeful, the blooming of flowers at the crux of spring. It fills Jannik with a slow, syrupy warmth, honeyed dread. Or hope. “Okay, okay. We write the speech. Maybe. Hmm.”
Mom and Dad:
How’s everything back in Sexten? I can't believe it's already been a month away from you all. Work is… good. Busy. I’m settling in well, learning a lot. Trying not to lose my job. The prince is a force to be reckoned with, I think you would like him. You know I still miss home, maybe more than I thought I would. I miss the quiet, the snow, your cooking.
Maybe I can come visit sometime soon.
Love,
Jannik
Jannik folds the paper in thirds and sharpens the creases with his thumbnail. Carlos is reclining on the couch, one elbow on the armrest propping himself up, half an orange in his hand. He looks a little bit like he’s posing for a painting. Early spring, Victorian era, a palette of soft pastels, carefully detailed. Afterwards, his image would be hung in a gallery or museum to lounge for a century. Although knowing him, Jannik figures he would go mad being subjected to gilded idleness, framed and forced to be still for the admiration of others. “Did you write about me?”
Jannik pauses.
“Only where it was relevant,” he says finally. He looks around the desk for an envelope. The table is awfully messy. Jannik wonders not for the first time how Carlos finds anything on it, as he rummages pointlessly through a pile of scattered documents. There are no envelopes in sight. He feels like a fool.
“So yes, then.”
He chokes slightly on nothing. “I didn’t say that, you’re imagining things.”
Carlos smiles around the orange, like it’s proof of something, teeth sunk into the fruit’s flesh, a drop of juice dripping down his chin. Something private, to be hidden away, a painting hung in a personal study. He wipes it away with the back of his fingers. The whole gesture is so stupidly casual, so effortless, careless in a way Jannik envies. Like being wanted, being known, isn’t terrifying. Just something to let happen.
Carlos doesn’t stop looking at him. “There are envelopes in the second drawer to your left.”
Jannik reluctantly pulls the drawer in question open.
Of course there are envelopes. A neat stack, even. Bastard.
He grabs one without looking at Carlos, mutters something unintelligible in thanks, and slides the letter inside. If that something sounds suspiciously like goddamnit, that is for only him to know.
Somewhere behind him, Carlos takes another bite of his orange.
“I was thinking I might go to Rome next weekend,” Jannik says, mostly to himself. The schedule in his hands says he has nothing on for those two days.
Carlos glances up from where he’s sitting. “Why?” he asks lightly, unreadable. “Tired of me already?”
“Well, it was mainly because I was tired of the palace, but now that you mention it…” he replies teasingly.
Carlos huffs. “Rude. Go, then. You can leave anytime. No one’s keeping you.”
Jannik raises his eyebrows slightly, not expecting it to sting. “Oh, wow, I didn’t know I was so dispensable.” Is that how Carlos really sees him? As someone to not miss? He thought they were more than that.
At this, Carlos laughs, sharp. “You won’t be missed. It’s not like we’re betrothed or anything.”
There is a shocked silence. The words hang in the air for too long, their echo too loud, too genuine to be a joke.
The room goes very quiet. Jannik stares at him blankly for a few seconds.
Carlos seems to register what he’d just said. He is tan, but the blood now drains visibly from his face. He looks slightly horrified, face pinched, tight. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like— fuck. Sorry.”
His voice falters, trails off. His brows are furrowed. Jannik kind of wants to reach out and smooth the creases away. His fingers twitch slightly in his lap.
He tells himself he’s only annoyed, that Carlos was just being dramatic. That it wasn’t a weird thing to say, just a misstep, saying too much, a nothing sentence that hit a little too hard.
But he can’t quite shake the image: Carlos watching him leave dispassionately, all flippant apathy. As if all they ever were to each other was a prince and an assistant, impersonal, empty. Like they never met, not once, not twice, not ever. Like Carlos was disinterested, and Jannik was nobody.
He thinks, apropos of nothing, what it might look like if they got married. Betrothed. If that night didn’t end in Jannik pulling away, Carlos leaving. Maybe things would be different. But there is no use dwelling on what has already happened, and now this is the only capacity in which Jannik will ever get to have Carlos.
The room feels airless, suddenly. Like they have been put in a vacuum chamber with all the windows shut mid sentence.
Jannik clears his throat. “I haven’t even booked the train tickets yet,” he says. His voice sounds paper-thin, weak to even his own ears. Too late.
Carlos doesn’t reply, upset, embarrassed, eyes filled with humiliated tears. He turns his face sharply away, and bolts from the room.
It takes three days. Carlos doesn’t bring it up in that time, and Jannik doesn’t either. They proceed on as normal, but Carlos is– stilted. Subdued, almost. He fidgets with his pen, eyes darting nervously around the room.
“Okay,” Jannik says, clearing his throat. “Let’s go over the delivery one more time, from the top.”
Carlos does not start speaking. He stares intensely at Jannik for a few seconds, hesitant.
“I didn’t mean what I said the other day,” he blurts out.
Jannik looks up from the notes Harriet gave him that he’d been reading through. His stomach tenses. Of course Carlos was going to bring it up. Of course he wasn’t going to let it go. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“When I told you you could leave anytime, that no one was keeping you. All of it.” Carlos exhales shakily. “It was supposed to be a joke, and it just– came out wrong. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
Jannik watches him silently. Something panicky flickers in Carlos’ eyes. He shifts in his seat, looking as if he is one misstep from fleeing the room entirely.
“I was afraid,” Carlos says, quieter. “That you’d leave. So I said it first. But you’re not dispensable. You’re the opposite of that. I notice when you’re not in the room.” I’d miss you.
He’s not smiling, eyes glassy, a melancholic set to his shoulders. Jannik’s throat feels tight.
“It’s true, what I said, though. You have every right to leave, if you feel uncomfortable. If you— if you don’t want to see me anymore.”
Jannik says, very calmly, “You’re an idiot.”
Carlos grimaces. “I know.”
With more feeling: “Of course I want to stay. Why would you– why else would I still be here?”
For a moment, Carlos just stares at him. Then, abruptly, the relief breaks over his face like light spreading across the sky at sunrise. His face opens in a smile. “So… are you still going to Rome?”
“Well, maybe not next weekend. I didn’t tell my friends yet before we… you know. I can always go another time, it’s not like I’m leaving for good.”
“You could still send them a postcard.”
“What, you want me to write about you again?”
The room feels lighter now, sunlight all floaty and soft. Carlos’ grin is crooked, a little uneven, stupidly endearing. Disarming in the way all his worst ideas tend to be. “Only where relevant.”
They’ve just gone over the last bullet point for the evening. Jannik stands and begins to gather his things.
“You don’t have to leave just yet,” Carlos tells him.
Jannik blinks. “But we’re done.”
“So? Stay,” is the response, too quick. “Unless you have places to be.”
Jannik doesn’t, actually. But he hesitates. He’d planned on holing up alone in his room, perhaps enjoying some fruit, that is, if he can wheedle some out of the palace chef.
Carlos avoids eye contact with him, careful, like he’s not sure what answer he’ll get. “We can just talk. Or not talk. I have some pears here, we can eat them.” But the hope bleeds into his voice, bashful, earnest, and Jannik caves.
“Okay,” he says, sitting back down. He was never very good at saying no to the prince. And Carlos is surprisingly easy to talk to, the room filling with soft laughter as they both eat their pears, juice dripping down their wrists. They lick it off their fingers, uncaring. The pears are sweet, but he thinks, in a desperately cliche thought, the moment is sweeter.
They’re something like friends now, Jannik muses. The thought unfurls quietly in his chest, curling around something tender. He thinks he likes it.
Carlos makes for a very determined friend, dragging Jannik out of the office, out of his own head, more often than Jannik would ever expect. One afternoon, he spontaneously decides to take Jannik on a tour of the rest of the palace. It is horrendously, cheerily sunny, and Jannik is once again struck by a longing for his home, where the sunlight was thinner.
They are walking among the citrus grove while Jannik pretends he has not stood here before, side by side, the memory pressed against the back of his neck like a shadow. It is really quite beautiful, rows and rows of trees with fruit ripe for the picking. He follows a few paces behind as Carlos winds between the trees, pointing things out with the ease of someone who belongs everywhere. “We grow lots of fruits here, actually,” he says, running his fingers along a low branch, tone lively, animated. “Now you see only the citrus trees, lemon, orange. Round the back we grow olives and grapes too. Later, I will show you. But of course I am lucky to try many other fruits from other places too. We don’t grow pears, peaches here. The weather cannot supplement everything, unfortunately.”
“You do have to draw the line somewhere before it turns into a plantation.”
Carlos turns back to face him and grins. “Mangosteen, though. That’s one of my favourites, I wish it could grow here. I tried it last year, a dignitary brought some. I nearly cried. It was so… I don’t know. Sweet. Honest. Like it had never known anything bad. I envy it. Maybe we have some another time, I let you try. But first, I want to pick some lemons. Make lemonade later.” He stops by a tree, tiptoes and tugs a branch downward by its tip. “Help me?”
Jannik stands under the tree and helps hold the branch in place for Carlos to take the ripe lemons.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” he says, half in awe, half jokingly. “Two months ago I was wondering how on earth this position even opened and now I’m, what, picking lemons with you?”
Carlos snorts. “Well, if you’re asking about the job vacancy, it was because of a trade summit. I don’t know why they made me be there, but Geert Wilders was also there, and he said something stupid again about the old colonies, so I called him an imperialist.” He laughs dryly. “Needless to say, the council was not very happy with me.”
Jannik’s eyes widen. “Straight to his face?”
“In those exact words. And worse, probably. I don’t even remember half of what I said, except that it was bad.”
“Well. That explains a lot.”
Carlos frowns at him. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t justified.”
“Hey, I wasn’t going to. He probably deserved worse. All I’m saying is, that’s why I have this job now? You couldn’t behave?”
“Unfortunately,” Carlos says. He turns back towards the trees, eyes bright, a lemon still in his hand.
Jannik exhales, watches the prince across from him. “Thanks for misbehaving, then.”
It brought me you.
The foreign dignitaries are younger than expected, close to Jannik’s age, maybe a few years older. They’re a little chaotic, exceptionally charming.
“Prince Lando of England,” Harriet had muttered beforehand, flipping through the guest list. “And Oscar Piastri. They’re absolutely inseparable, from what I’ve heard.”
That was all the warning Jannik received before they were ushered in, one grinning in designer sunglasses, the top three buttons of his shirt undone, the other in a formal suit, looking faintly apologetic.
Prince Lando is a vision of controlled mischief. Oscar, polite and put-together, the only mess on his person his wavy brown hair, is quieter, but looks like he’s trying not to laugh at Lando constantly. They’re both ridiculously handsome, Jannik thinks bitterly, and very in love. He watches Oscar gently slide Lando’s sunglasses to the top of his head, all fond exasperation.
They’re also very observant.
“So,” Lando says, squinting at Carlos and Jannik with great theatricality, “are you two together, too?”
The room pauses. The question hangs in the air, uncertain as to what to do with itself.
Carlos blinks. “No… why?”
There’s no malice in it, just honest confusion, surprise, like it’s something he’d never considered. Jannik flushes, cursing his cheeks which probably clash horrendously with his hair right now.
Oscar winces and gives him a look, sympathetic, and then turns to Lando, chiding. “Lan, you don’t just say that to people you’ve just met.”
Carlos laughs it off, and moves on. The conversation resumes. Jannik stands at the side while they discuss wine pairings and foreign trade treatises. It’s fine. It’s all perfectly peachy.
Except he can’t stop thinking about it.
It sits with him all afternoon, follows him into the hallway, up the stairs, into the quiet of his room when he finally excuses himself.
He sits on the edge of the bed, trying to catch his breath.
It wasn’t a big deal, just a lighthearted question. A joke. And anyway, Carlos doesn’t even remember the night in the garden. Doesn’t know about the words they exchanged, the moment they shared, the way Jannik almost—
Carlos doesn’t remember.
And Jannik has no business wanting anything more than this.
It’s fine, he reasons. They’re fine. He can still function. Carlos simply does not want the same things he does, so it will have to be okay.
They’re friends. At best.
He breathes in deep, and goes to shut the door.
Sometimes, he still dreams of that night.
The weight of the mask over his eyes, the citrusy scent in the air, the way Carlos had laughed, open and unafraid. Like no one ever told him to be smaller, told him he was too much.
Jannik remembers how his hands felt in Carlos’, the feeling of them fitting together. Puzzle pieces. The quiet under the trees, the heat blooming beneath the surface of his skin, feverish in the cool summer night.
And in the dream, it doesn’t end in distance and hollow disappointment. In the dream, he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t get scared.
He leans in, and their lips meet, and it is soft, devastatingly certain. Dream-Carlos is gentle with him, holds on to his waist and pulls him in closer, and they kiss some more, unseen, and Jannik makes a noise, cups dream-Carlos’ face, and they kiss some more, and—
Jannik wakes up with guilt gnawing at his frame, and the taste in his mouth bittersweet, gone.
Carlos has a very endearing habit of beginning all his addresses that take place after sundown with “good night everyone.” Jannik thinks it is adorable. Harriet does not. She had put a note in his folder that morning reading please try and get him to stop saying good night at the start. Alas, as much as Jannik does not want to, a job is a job. That, to answer the question of why they were even having this conversation.
“Why can’t I start my speeches with ‘good night’!” Carlos is pouting, full kicked-puppy expression, eyes wide and pleading, bottom lip stuck out.
Jannik sighs. “No, you say ‘good evening’ at the start. We’ve been over this. ‘Good night’ is for when you’re about to sleep.”
“...But what if I’m very tired?”
“Carlos.”
“What?”
“Please. Don’t make Harriet fire me.”
“Okay, fine. Change it in the script.”
Jannik narrows his eyes. “You’re not actually going to stick to it, are you.”
Carlos only smirks at him.
It’s a lost cause, he writes back to Harriet.
A throwback– They are sitting in Carlos’ office, Jannik on the rotating chair, Carlos on the floor with his back against the wall, knees up, nibbling at segments of an orange, the other half left on the table. The windows are open, it’s dark outside. Jannik is telling the story of how he sent in his application.
“And then my brother sent it.”
“No way,” Carlos says. His mouth is open slightly, fingers wet with juice.
“Yes way.” He leans back, stretching his arms behind him. “All that to say, I probably wouldn’t have ended up applying for this position if not for that. I nearly got a heart attack when they mailed me saying I got the job, you have no idea.”
Carlos’ face does something weird then, his eyes darting away, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. It’s gone before Jannik can comment on it. “Well,” he says, voice lower, softer. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here.”
Jannik glances over. The warmth in his chest rises again– unwelcome but, he thinks resentfully, not unfamiliar. He swallows.
Carlos shifts, eats another orange slice, rests his head against the wall. “Tell me about your home.”
Jannik hums, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. “I’m from Sexten. You know this.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
He exhales. “Alright. It’s up in the mountains near Austria, so I can also speak German in addition to Italian. And English, obviously. It’s very snowy. Cold. I used to ski a lot when I was younger.”
Carlos scrunches up his nose, makes a face. “I don’t understand how you can like the cold.” He shudders. “I wish it was warm all the time.”
“Hah, well, you’ll have to bundle up if you ever visit.”
“You’ll show me around?”
“If you survive the cold,” he teases. He’s smiling before he can stop himself.
The mirth lingers for a moment, then fades into quiet. Carlos looks out the window. “Do you ever miss it?”
Jannik’s hands still. He’d nearly picked the loose thread free. He nods, once, stares at the forgotten half of the orange still on the plate. Thinks of cold, sharp air, powdered snow, pure and clean and blindingly white under the sun. “Yeah, of course. Roland Garros still intimidates me,” he confesses. He very carefully doesn’t say you do, too. “I like my home much more.”
Carlos doesn’t reply immediately. On nights like these, soft and sacred, Jannik isn’t so sure where they stand anymore.
Rather predictably, when it all comes to a head, it happens on one of those unassuming nights.
“Listen, wait, tengo una broma. What’s the difference between Álvaro and a frisbee?”
He doesn’t have high hopes for the punchline, but waits expectantly anyways.
“One is heir to the throne–” Carlos is giggling already, “and the other is thrown in the air.”
It is objectively not funny. It’s bad. It’s so bad. But Carlos says it like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard, and Jannik can hardly keep a straight face.
He presses his face into the sofa cushions, trying to stifle his laughter, but he’s already gone, shaking quietly with giggles. Carlos is watching him, glowing, almost, with the unstoppability of the sun. Jannik turns to him, sees that bright smile, and his breath hitches.
“You’re laughing,” Carlos breathes, incredulous, radiant. “I told you a joke and you’re laughing. I love you.”
He loves him. He loves him. God, he feels dizzy with it, all reckless abandon and joy and hope. Carlos is a breath away. It is just the two of them in the entire world. Jannik is going to die. He is going to die, and when they recover his body, they will see this moment burned onto his retinas.
The ache overwhelms him. It bursts free from where it had been growing in his heart, rupturing his blood vessels, entering his bloodstream, until it is all of him. Metastasis. It threatens to reach a flashpoint. He wants Carlos so badly that it threatens to consume him in one large tidal wave of desire.
In a moment of carelessness, he leans all the way in and brings their lips together.
Carlos freezes, at first, and Jannik thinks oh shit, but then he is kissing him back (kissing him back!), and it is slightly off-center, desperate, but Carlos is kissing him back, and Jannik can hardly think about anything else. Their noses bump, and their teeth click, but then Carlos bites down on Jannik’s lower lip, and Jannik is helpless to the way he whimpers, muffled into their mouths. It feels a bit like being struck by lightning. A one in fifteen thousand chance. He’s so lucky. He’s so fucking lucky.
Jannik doesn’t know how to survive this. Carlos’ hands are buried in his hair, they are pressed together hands to head to lips to chest to waist to hip. Only falling into and through one another, melting like the sand, becoming one and the same, Jannik figures, could get them any closer. He feels something collapsing within him, like a star folding in on itself. They are two cores dragging toward each other, a binary merger. They couldn’t have a stable orbit, and now they’ve crashed, and it’s irreversible, inevitable, a supernova. He wants their atoms to dissolve into each other.
He wants their atoms to forget which one of them is which.
He doesn’t know how he could ever function, live life, eat breakfast, do work again, knowing that he could be kissing Carlos instead.
Wait. Do work.
Work.
He works for Carlos, for the throne. He sees Carlos every day to edit his speeches, guide him through public appearances. This isn’t a masquerade ball forever ago. They can’t do this. Something snaps, a thread pulled too tight, the end of the road. It registers.
Shit, what is he doing?
He is literally an employee, and Carlos is of royal descent, and– and they would never fucking work. The two of them are so young, and there is so much they don’t know, and there’s a time wherein he’ll probably never see Carlos like this again, close, messy, personal, his. Why aren’t they afraid? Are they crazy?
Jannik puts his hands on Carlos’ shoulders, and pushes.
They separate. Embarrassingly, a string of spit trails between them.
Carlos makes an aborted motion, as if to reach for Jannik. He looks stunned. He looks like his whole life has been pulled out from under him like a well-timed yank to the carpet, leaving him disoriented, stars spinning around his head.
Jannik says nothing, just stares at the floor. The silence stretches and swells uncomfortably to fill the space in between them. It claws its way under Jannik’s skin, creeps under his ribcage, settles in his bones. It feels like another thing destroyed.
But he couldn’t say that to Carlos, because he was the one who tore it apart.
Dad and Mom:
No words could save me, in the end. I think I will go back home soon. I’m sorry. I miss you all.
Love,
Jannik
The next day, Jannik goes through the motions, unfeeling. He briefs Carlos on his upcoming address– This is the tone we are going for, okay, and I think the phrasing here can be improved, maybe change this part a little bit. He doesn’t make eye contact. When it is over, he stands up quickly, already halfway to the door, and tries to flee. A day ago, he would’ve stayed, chatting with Carlos about nothing at all, enjoying his company. A day later, he’s gone and ruined it all.
Carlos catches his wrist. He looks confused, hurt, younger than ever. Jannik is about to shatter. Like a chandelier, caught in limbo. Like a fox, trapped in a snare. “Did I do something?”
Something in Jannik’s chest twists. “You?” He feels like the worst person in the world. “Never.”
But they both know it’s over. The thing about tragedies, you see, is that you are never surprised by the ending.
“I quit,” Jannik says. His voice is quiet. Charlie’s ears are filled with static. His world is ending. “I can’t do this anymore, not when we’re—”
When we’re what, he wants to scream. Irrational, impossible, and still, hopelessly, horribly, in love? Tell me, he wants to scream.
Jannik cuts himself off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sorry. You know it is hard.”
No, Charlie does not know. He does not know why they are so impossible, why Jannik wants to run before they even happen. Doesn’t know why Jannik thinks they would never work. Doesn't know why Jannik doesn’t even want to try.
He is filled with an anger so sudden and immense he wants to stand up and punch Jannik until his nose is bloody. Why doesn’t he want to try? Are they not worth it?
“Get out,” he manages. He thinks if he looks at Jannik’s stupid, infuriating face for any longer he will die of rage. “Get the fuck out.”
Jannik looks for a halting moment as if he might protest, before he is gone.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-