Work Text:
Many nations would call it their shame, to have a leper for a king. Jerusalem claims it as a jewel on their brow, for Baldwin has never been ashamed. After all, it is just a disease, which is for man. Baldwin has never claimed to be anything more than a man.
And men, even diseased men, know want. He will never know Balian’s touch, but that does not mean he will not crave it.
They play chess for hours, once Baldwin learns Balian is unfamiliar with the game. He watches Balian’s hands with rapt attention, as they tap against his jaw, as they linger over the pieces. Some would call it hesitation, but Baldwin sees it for what it is, as deliberation. Balian plays like they say he fights, which Baldwin, regrettably, has yet to see: unafraid of sacrifice, unless it is unnecessary sacrifice. Baldwin was taught about fear, but personally, he has never felt it; whether it is due to his illness or his soul, he doesn’t know. But he admires any man who knows its tang, and he hopes one day Balian might describe it to him, if he cannot taste it himself.
He smiles behind his mask, and wonders if Balian can see it in his eyes.
The chess is a pretense, and both men know it. On the extended visits Balian makes from Ibelin, they meet in the morning to play, but their conversations wax long into the evenings, once the pieces have frozen forgotten on their squares. Baldwin can’t remember the last time he has laughed like this, which is no insult to the life he leads, but a compliment to the company he has found himself graced with. He thought a king could only make new enemies this late in his reign, than new friends.
It’s not all chess, of course; they still talk politics and war and strategy frequently, though their conversations in the later hours veer more towards personal topics, such as their interests, and childhoods, and family. Balian adores stories about Godfrey; his eyes light up every time Baldwin mentions the man’s father, and Baldwin loves to share these memories with him. His own father had died when Baldwin was barely a teen, but Godfrey had been there to help guide his transition into kinghood in those vulnerable first months, and had stayed out of devoted friendship after that. Revisiting these stories is always a happy affair, and if it means he can help Balian know more about the man he lost so soon after he found him, then all the better.
But sometimes they talk about Sibylla, too, which is a trickier subject. Baldwin loves his sister fiercely, undoubtedly, but— well. In another life, he could see how perfectly Balian and Sibylla could fit together. But in this life, he’s found himself rather newly selfish.
He is not deaf to the rumors that drift through the halls of the castle. He knows what they say about him and his new “pet knight,” and the accusations of a deeper entanglement, too close and yet too far from the truth for Baldwin’s comfort. Because he knows he is selfish for something that is not his.
“My sister spoke of visiting you in Ibelin, soon. She has plans to see Cana.”
“Ibelin is not on the way to Cana.”
“No,” Baldwin agrees, with a wry twist of his mouth, “It isn’t.”
Balian is staring studiously at the board, and Baldwin takes the opportunity to watch the man as discreetly as he can, looking for any hint of a reaction to his words and their implication. He finds Balian impassive, though, and he’s not sure what it means. Is he schooling his expression so as not to give away his private designs? Or does he have no designs? Baldwin knows which answer he would prefer, but he doesn’t want that to bias his interpretation.
Balian moves his bishop, and Baldwin counters with a knight. Balian throws up his hands.
“I surrender,” he declares. Baldwin grins behind his mask, and grants him the deflection, secretly glad for it, too.
“You can’t surrender, you have to learn.”
“I already understand the metaphors,” Balian challenges. “Why do I have to master the game itself? Saladin isn’t going to produce a chessboard on the battlefield.”
Baldwin sits up straighter, the way he knows Sibylla hates, because it makes him look kingly— which I am, he reminds her, though really he only takes this pose when he wants to annoy her by acting as wise and imperious as possible. But Balian can see right through it, too, and his eyes narrow in suspicion, to Baldwin’s delight. “Yes, the strategy aspect is important, as are its lessons. But,” he says, taking one of Balian’s dark pawns for him and guiding it through a channel towards Baldwin’s queen. He watches Balian’s brow lift as the board opens itself. “They do call it a game for a reason .” He moves his own bishop, then Balian’s rook to knock that bishop from the board.
Balian grabs a piece before Baldwin can play another move for him, and the knight leans closer to the board, his interest renewed. “And games are supposed to be fun,” Baldwin concludes.
“Thus why they call it war, and not a game.”
“Precisely. Same players,” he says, gesturing to the board as he advances a pawn, “But a different field, with different consequences.”
“Ah-ha!” Balian crows as he takes Baldwin’s queen. Baldwin is suddenly grateful for the mask shielding his amusement. It’s probably far too fond.
But his personal victory is short-lived; Balian is skilled at reading a room, and he must sense the shift, because suddenly he dips his head, bashful. He sets Baldwin’s queen carefully to the table, and Baldwin’s stomach twists ever so slightly at the way Balian’s fingers linger on the piece’s crown. Balian’s own queen, lost early in the game, rests beside it.
“There are still a few things I don’t get,” Balian confesses. At Baldwin’s silence, he continues. “Like why the queen is the most powerful piece, yet she does not decide the game.”
Back to Sibylla, then. Baldwin tries not to sigh.
“Another metaphor, I think,” he says. “A king can be felled by one as seemingly insignificant as a pawn. But he is nothing without the company he keeps, many of whom can act far beyond what he can.” Baldwin deliberately moves his last remaining knight to inch closer to Balian’s king, and Balian’s smart— he looks up to meet Baldwin’s gaze, searching, but it’s Baldwin’s turn to duck his head.
It is Balian who spares him, this time. “So the rest serve as the king’s eyes, and hands,” he observes, with the slightest tremble to his voice. He moves a pawn the wrong way.
“And the king is very grateful,” Baldwin agrees, and Balian gives a half-smile, until Baldwin moves his knight again and folds his hands beneath his chin. “Check mate.”
Balian’s face plummets, and this time, Baldwin can’t help his laugh as the man flicks over his king and slumps back in his chair in faux exasperation.
“One of these days,” Balian mutters.
Baldwin nods solemnly as he begins to reset the board. “One of these days.”
Baldwin doesn’t leave his chambers often, and his courtyard even less, until one day Balian invites him to dinner.
“We have dinner here each night,” Baldwin notes.
“No, I have dinner, and you watch me eat,” Balian corrects with a roll of his eyes. No one but Sibylla has ever dared roll their eyes at King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, and it makes Baldwin grin. “No matter how many times I have told you I would not mind if you wanted to remove your mask.”
“You may not mind, but it would put you off your supper.” Baldwin tries to keep his voice light. Balian continues speaking as if he hadn’t said a word.
“Dine with me. My house is just down the road.”
“You would not have me come to Ibelin?” Baldwin teases, to avoid an answer, but also because he’s curious. He heard of Sibylla’s visit; uneventful, she told him meaningfully, her dark eyes uncomfortably perceptive, but still the jaws of jealousy gnawed at his stomach. She could share meals with Balian. She could know Balian’s love, should he choose to give it.
“I would have you—" Balian’s words, too quick on his tongue, stumble over themselves, making a flush rise to his cheeks, and Baldwin’s smile softens enough to make himself pause. He’s not unused to wanting, but he is unused to... what waits beyond wanting. “Ibelin would be happy to host you, my lord, whenever you wish. But it is a bit far for an evening stroll.”
A stroll. Baldwin can’t remember the last time he strolled . He doesn’t tell this to Balian; he has a feeling the man already knows. Maybe that’s what his offer is, since the knight knows dinner will be refused, or at least left uneaten on the table between them, Baldwin’s mask left firmly in place. He knows the source of Balian’s concern extends beyond hunger, has seen for himself in the mirror the welts the metal face leaves along his jaw, when he confronts his bare reflection in the privacy of his chambers. He cannot feel them, but that does not mean they are not causing harm.
But what is one more welt to a lost cause?
He looks to the terrace beside them. Night always falls gently in Jerusalem, as if it knows what pious creatures rest in its walls, and it doesn’t want to crush them. The sky is a deep blue, its stars a better lamp than the torches that illuminate the city’s streets.
“They’ll see me,” Baldwin says quietly, halfway through the words before he realizes he’s voiced them out loud. But he can see it in his head: the glint of flames across his silver face, like a signal, coaxing the eyes to the windows, the doorways.
Balian doesn’t wound his pride by asking if that’s such a bad thing, or shouldn’t a city like to see her king, because— because Baldwin isn’t ashamed, he isn’t, but he still— he still—
He’s not ashamed, but Balian’s presence has brought an unexpected side-effect to wanting: wishing.
If he could walk unseen through these streets side-by-side with Balian, if he— if he could be so bold as to brush their fingers together as they strolled—
“I know a less-traveled path,” Balian tells him. Then the corner of his mouth twitches. “Allow me to return the courtesy you’ve shown me. Please, my lord.”
Baldwin gives the man his best dirty look. Baldwin may have defeated a thousand armies, including the great Saladin, and he may win each game of chess— but Balian has the kicked-puppy eyes in his weaponry, and he knows how to wield them when he wants to.
“Fine,” Baldwin relents, almost surprising himself, and Balian’s careful smile broadens to a grin to match Baldwin’s own. Baldwin calls for his guard to fetch a cloak, because he’ll still allow himself his insecurities, but Balian’s delight has already sparked a warmth that is quickly spreading through Balian’s chest. Or, at least, what he imagines is warmth.
It’s a good feeling.
“You better not be letting me win,” Balian warns one match, after he’s cornered Baldwin into check twice, which has never happened in one of their games before.
Baldwin hums innocently. In truth, he’s not losing on purpose: he’s just been more distracted than usual this evening. Balian had ridden in from Ibelin that afternoon, after a fortnight away from Jerusalem tending to his duties as baron, and despite his quick bath and change of clothes, he still smells faintly of the dust of the desert, and there’s a streak of dirt he missed beside his ear, that Baldwin has found himself unreasonably fixated on.
He has tried valiantly over the years to not even allow himself to imagine touching another person; he knew since he was a boy that touch was a sense he must sever himself from. But he can’t help it— right now, he imagines calling for a bowl of water, and a cloth, and carefully wiping the dirt from Balian’s temple, and he imagines the soft exhale tumbling from Balian’s lips and colliding against Baldwin’s cheek, skin—
“I mean it,” Balian says, and Baldwin tears his eyes from the mark to find the other man watching him intently.
If Baldwin could blush, he’s sure he would. “I am a man of honor,” he swears. “And I would never do us both the dishonor of a fallacious victory.”
It doesn’t earn him Balian’s smile. Instead, the other man shifts, leaning back stiffly in his chair, and Baldwin feels the space between them like a chasm. Baldwin would fidget, too, only kings don’t fidget.
He lets Balian study him for a moment longer than he’s comfortable with before he speaks. “What is it?”
“How long has it been since someone has touched you?”
Baldwin starts, kingliness be damned. He almost asks Balian if he can read minds, but catches himself the next moment, knowing it would give him away.
“Pardon?”
Balian’s cheeks are red, too, at least, and he looks more than a little mortified. But he’s also a determined little perfect knight, and he sticks to his question, rather than backing away, though considerably more embarrassedly.
“I— I mean,” he clears his throat nervously, “When did you start wearing the mask?”
Baldwin looks down at the abandoned chess pieces. The dark knight and the alabaster king, near translucent in the glow of the nearby candles. “I was fifteen.”
“Did you ever—” Balian bites off the word, and Baldwin somehow knows what he was going to ask, so he looks up.
“Speak,” he commands.
Balian blinks at him a moment before complying. “Did you ever… kiss someone, before you wore it?”
It’s not unreasonable that Baldwin might have; other children had their first kisses at far younger ages, stolen on the schoolyard or in games of chase, but Baldwin was never like other children, even before he was a leper. “The opportunity never arose,” he admits, the words too loud to his ears in the quiet of the room.
He feels Balian move before he sees it; the tile beneath their feet seems to tilt, and gravity tugs Balian around the little table to kneel before Baldwin’s feet, and Baldwin’s breath catches in his throat. He knows, distantly, that it’s a silly thought, because your lungs never really need to think about working, but sometimes he’s wondered if he’ll ever somehow forget to breathe, and he won’t be able to feel the burn in his chest to remind him to suck in air, and he’ll suffocate, needlessly, behind his metal face. With Balian crouched in front of him, it doesn’t seem so silly now.
Balian’s still nervous, clearly, his jaw ticking as he swallows, but again he doesn’t move away. Instead his hand reaches to the leg of Baldwin’s chair to steady himself, and he lifts his eyes to fix determinedly on Baldwin’s.
“My lord,” the man whispers, and Baldwin shakes his head.
“If you’re going to be brave, knight, be brave absolutely,” he says, not quite a command but not not a command, and a shadow of a smile ghosts Balian’s mouth.
“Baldwin,” the knight corrects himself, and Baldwin has never heard his name spoken like a prayer. He’s just a man. He’s never claimed to be anything more, no matter what his city says.
But— and maybe it’s blasphemous— he quite likes the way reverence sounds on Balian’s tongue.
“May—”
“If you ask my permission, Balian, I will deny it,” Baldwin warns, and he sees the flash in Balian’s eyes as the man understands what he’s saying. No one has ever taken anything from Baldwin before, but this man in front of him has walked right into his most private world and stolen his very heart, and as far as Baldwin is concerned, that makes everything else rightfully his, too. There is nothing he could give Balian that the man does not already have.
And so he does not flinch when Balian rises slowly from the tile, his hand moving from the leg of the chair to the arm, centimeters from Baldwin’s sleeve, his face closing the distance and filling up Baldwin’s vision and Baldwin’s lungs and heart like all the air he could ever hope to breathe. And even though Baldwin cannot feel it, not truly, he knows the moment Balian’s lips press to the unyielding lips of the mask, and he can see Balian’s eyes, as wide open as his own, and he lets himself fall into them.
It is a blissful eternity. It is what he imagines heaven will be like, when it comes to collect him.
Finally, Balian pulls away, and Baldwin exhales. For once in his life, he is remarkably speechless.
There’s a difference between wanting and having. With wanting, you can just want, and turn a blind eye to the consequences that await you in reality. But when you have that something you’ve wanted so dearly finally within your reach, and when you know you cannot keep it…
But, disease or no, Baldwin is still the boy who led an army to battle at sixteen, and he knows how to be brave, too. He lifts a cautious hand, making his intentions clear so Balian can step away if he wants to, his gaze promising he won’t be offended, but when Balian stays still, he places his bandaged fingers to the knight’s cheek. He trails them along the knight’s marked temple and watches the sand come away across the snow-white gauze, the fringes of hair rustling at the contact, and yet even with such devoted care it still catches him off guard when Balian lays a hand over his.
It is solid contact, trapping Baldwin’s hand there, and Baldwin can feel the shift beneath his palm as Balian smiles. He feels his own face threaten to break with the force of his matching grin.
“Jerusalem's perfect knight,” Baldwin murmurs.
But Balian turns his head enough that Baldwin can feel the movement of his mouth against his hand, and his heart soars. “I am not Jerusalem’s knight,” he answers. “I am yours.”
Balian moves his pawn and blinks, wide-eyed, at the board.
“Check mate,” Balian says, his voice thick with his own disbelief, and Baldwin laughs.