one day Thomas sitting on the grass, looking at a brown haired boy giving the ball to a blond, tall boy. but the mother of the brown-haired boy calls him to eat, and the ball rolls towards Thomas's feet. the blond boy goes for the ball, but Thomas takes it first and stares at the boy for a short time. He bends his head and smiles.
- "Sorry."- He says as he hands him the ball. the blond boy still looks at him confused and Thomas explains to him.
- It's just that ... you remind me of someone.- The blond boy smiles.
-It's bloody incredible.- but he keeps the doubt and asks him.- Who? .- Thomas smiles more.
- Someone that I ...- Sonya calls her son, and the boy turns.-
-I have to go! Goodbye Thomas.- Thomas smiles.
-Goodbye.- He sits on the grass while thinking about Newt. and think.- to someone who I loved very much.
Thomas fights the urge to flee when the Queen dismisses him with the wave of a hand and too much cheer for Thomas’ anguish. Anxiety sinks its claws deep into Thomas’ stomach as leaves the castle for his next appointment. The usual excitement that accompanied him on his way to secret meetings with the prince is swallowed up the gloominess of the news just disposed upon him.
“Your Royal Highness,” Thomas greets with a laugh at the sight before him.
The sight of Newt dirtying his princely attire in the grass was enough to make him forget the despair pooling deep in his gut from his previous engagement with the Queen. Newt looks three years younger laying there in the sun. He looks nothing like the emotionless prince he was forced to be at high noon tea. His insouciant temperament made it harder to breach the the topic of marriage with the young prince.
“Tommy, I am so glad you decided to join me. I had begun to worry that mother had sought to engage you in her quest to find me a perfect match in this whole betrothal mess,” The smile Newt shot him still made his heart flutter like the first time the prince smiled at him.
Newt patted at the ground beside him.Tomas followed bolstered Newt’s head onto his lap, loosened the prince’s braid, and began to shift his fingers through the soft hair that pillowed against his trousers.
“You are correct in your worry. I’ve been tasked with finding you a wife.” Thomas said quietly.
“Your heart is clearly loyal to the wrong person.”
“Clearly.” Thomas’ heart was only ever loyal to Newt and the handful of knights sworn to protect the him. The prince had held Thomas’ heart in his hand from a young age and held the power to destroy it irrevocably.
“Her majesty has finally made her choice.”
“Oh?” Newt replies with a wicked smile. His pale hand reaching out to pull Thomas into a kiss. Thomas’s heavy heart prevents him from being in the mood for such scandalous activities.
Newt was manipulative to a fault. Three years of their secret rendezvous under this tree had trained Thomas to be watchful of Newt’s devious nature and see his cunning plans for what they were: a distraction.
Thomas was in no mood to be so easily manipulated today. Not when he was feeling so betrayed so he turns from the kiss and resigns the truth, “she is beautiful. Smart. She’ll make you a good wife and companion. A good queen for the kingdom. She is the daughter of the Baron Janson. Teresa Agnes is her name.”
Newt frowns. “I don’t want to think about this during our time together.”
This time when Newt brings him down for a kiss Thomas doesn’t resist. Thomas sighs into Newt’s mouth and loses himself in the pressure of soft lips sucking and nibbling on his own. Savors the pleasure of their tongues touching for the barest of seconds. Pushes thought of his heart breaking out of his mind and let’s the need in Newt’s skillful hands distract him.
--
Thomas sends word to Brenda, his beloved sister, in the colonies about his hopes of settling in the colonies. Her husband has been unwell and she often confided her fears of his ailing health affecting their families livelihood during her correspondences. Her kids were taking their father’s illness hard and the family has debt collectors at their doors. He reasons cabbage farming cannot be to hard to learn and he does miss his sister dearly. Honestly, if he is honest with himself, he is desperate to escape this hell he had manage to find himself in.
Thomas entertains the idea of sneaking Newt away to America with him in the dark of night when he lay awake in Newt’s arms. Dreaming they would fight together, side by side with the colonist, against the Queen. They would desert in the middle of battle and make for the West where they could live each other in peace.
Sometimes he leads himself down an even more dangerous path by envisioning a world where they were happy. They would get a boat and sail the world under the guise of whalers. They could openly love each other without the guards or the priest and international laws being able to touch them. Newt would like the freedom of the open sea after being constrained within the castle’s walls all his life.
At night when they curled up underneath Newt’s sheets Thomas wishes they would acknowledge Newt’s recent engagement to the High Duchess and where it would leave Thomas in the grand scheme of things.
Thomas knows he loves him. He sees the harsh truth clearly in the morning light. Newt loves him. Yes, Newt had loved him, and probably always will. The problem was he loved his mother and his country more. He would never abandon them to follow a passing fancy, a mere curiosity, around the world. He would stay, marry Teresa, and together they would birth an heir to rule the continent. Thomas was bound to become used and discarded in the chaos that accompanied ruling an Empire and maintaining a healthy marriage. He could never live like that.
Run away with me, he whispers against his sleeping lover’s skin. He slips out of bed, the cold hard stone a familiar comfort against his feet, unbeknownst to his lover.
--
Misery seeps slowly into all facets of his life the moment they announce the prince’s engagement to the court. Newt’s apparent apathy to Thomas’ concerns about the future of their relationship coupled with his own commitment to organizing his own lover’s wedding ceremony left him exhausted and feeling wholly abandoned.
Sulking around the the gardens with Knight Minho became his favorite past time. That he decides that his bed chambers were the most fascinating place in the castle and would not leave It takes a lot of coercing from Minho for Thomas to even brave the world outside his bed.
Thomas takes to the solidarity of the library on the days he ventures out of his room. He finds that books offer him an escape from the hellish reality he had found himself in and he throws himself into the knowledge they offer him. He had been fortunate to find a volume on the process of cabbage farming.
Newt startles him by sidling into the chair beside him and knicking the book he had become engrossed in. “Why are you reading about farming, Tommy?”
“Cabbage farming is a highly valuable trade.”
Newt’s laugh would once have been infectious but now it only makes him want to hurly with the ugly feelings swarming his chest. Thomas hates this ugly, bitter jealous person he has turned into after the betrothal of his lover. All hope he had the having a blissful last week with his lover had gone the night Thomas had renounced his childhood naivety. There was nothing more damaging to the soul then to watch one’s love show the love the held for to another you had picked for them.
“I wish you would tell me what troubles you so,” Newt says and takes Thomas’ hand in his own.
Thomas pulls his hand away abruptly like he had been burned. “I am less okay with you marrying someone else than I hoped to be.”
“I know but it doesn’t change the way I feel, Newt. I only wished I could make our last few weeks together like this ones to remember.”
Tense silence settles around them. Newt’s eyes are begging and he wishes with all his being he had enough courage to ask those three words, run away with, but they die on his lips and instead he whispers. “I wouldn’t wish my spread my illness to you before your big day. Please leave.”
--
“Will you see me to the altar, old friend,” Newt’s eyes glint mischievously in the candlelight of the corridor.
“I will only accompany you this far.”
Newt smile falters at the harshness in Thomas’ tone, but he couldn’t help feeling vindictive and hurt.
“A kiss for luck then?”
The kiss is far too chaste for what he wanted their last kiss to be. It’s a barely there affair but his fear of notices how thoroughly he had ravished the prince kept him from letting lose any of his more primal urges.
“You are to be married in a few short minutes. This is not the type of behavior a betrothed man should engage in.”
Newt nods and asks “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Run away with me, he wills those stubborn words he so deeply wishes to express away and then squashes the hope that is slowly spreading from his heart. He reminds himself that this is the only way he could have a chance of happiness again and that it is all worth it.
“I love you.” He says, instead, with a smile.
Newt nods forlornly like he had final realized this might be the end. “I loved too, you must know that.”
“Go. You will be late to your own wedding. We wouldn’t want to cause a war for a simple kiss.”
He watches the Newt walk away one last time.
He finally allows himself to mourn the love lost when the door closes and any trace of Newt is gone. He collapses against the wall, eyes welling with unwanted tears, before he pulls himself together. He has a boat to catch afterall.
