Hansel: The Note

*I’ve had three glasses of wine. I’ll probably burn this note when I’m done with it.*

*I still think of you in the morning—warm and heavy beside me, your arms around my hips and your soft breathing in my ear. I miss the way you’d grab me, grumbling, when I tried to slip out of bed. Like I wasn’t allowed to leave yet.*

*I remember the way you looked at me the first time you saw me with the mask off. The way your fingers felt on my bare face, all callused. How you bent to kiss me. Up in the crow’s nest where anyone might see us.*

*Hans, come home. Once I sober up I’m sure I’ll burn this note out of sheer embarrassment. I keep fantasizing about giving it to you. Maybe you’d change your mind. Probably not, though.*

*Yours, but probably not for much longer,*

*Mishka*

Hansel crumpled the letter at first, then opened his fist to look down at it, wrinkled, ruined. But not quite ruined. That was the worst part—it was still legible, it still made sense.

Mishka kept leaving them in stupid places, where they’d catch him off guard, but this one had been on his pillow. Where they’d always been at first, when they were all sweet and cajoling, left with flowers and chocolates. He liked the vicious ones better.

He hated that he could picture Mishka cracking into his room at the inn in a shower of sparkles—or maybe too out of it to pull off the theatrics (probably not)—still tipsy, laying it there delicately after folding it to not quite the usual precise edge. Maybe looking around for a moment at the moldering wood around the windowsill and the crevasses in the floorboards before cracking back to his luxurious manor.

*Come home.* That wasn’t fair. He’d fucking sold their home.

Hansel sighed hard and rested his head in his other hand, elbow propped on his knee as he sat on his scratchy bed, looking down at the crunched up paper. He glanced over at the mandolin between his bed and tiny dresser, where he hid the letters—a couple of the nice ones, a fistful of the mean ones. He couldn’t play it anyway. He might as well put more things into it that hurt him.

When the door banged open his hand clenched closed automatically, but it didn’t hide every corner of the paper, and he knew Jonn had sharp eyes. It’d only be more suspicious to try to jam it under his pillow or something, though, at this point.

“Hey, Pops.” Jonn was bright-eyed and flushed—he was coming back from either a job or spending time with Flynn. Hansel could never be sure without asking him, and it really wasn’t something he wanted to hear about from his son.

But as expected, his eyes dropped to Hansel’s fist almost immediately, and narrowed in annoyance. He knew the drill. He started over, trying to swipe the note away as soon as he could.

“What’s he fuckin’ said now?”

Hansel jerked it away. “Stop.”

“You know he’s full of shit—.” He kept trying to pry Hansel’s fingers apart.

“*Stop*.” He snatched it away more forcefully. “It’s not—.” His voice softened. “Stop it.”

Jonn realized he was serious and gave in, pausing to give him a concerned look and then sinking to his knees in front of him, settling back on his haunches after a moment. He studied Hansel’s face, and Hansel refused to meet his eyes because he was too damn good at figuring shit out just from looking. Damn kid. Wouldn’t just leave him alone.

“If he’s being nice again,” Jonn said slowly, “I stand by what I said about him being full of shit.”

Hansel relaxed, bringing the note back down where he could see it, squeezed under his white knuckles. The blood steadily returned to them as he watched.

“He sold you out,” Jonn reminded him.

“We were pirates.”

“Yeah, *together*.”

He thought he understood because he was a thief too. Hansel had tried to tell him it was different—pirates mutinied, pirates signed onto different ships, they stole from each other and killed each other all the time. There was no honor among them. Jonn had given him a knowing look. Yeah, all right. It wasn’t what he meant when he said *together*. Hansel realized that, he just … didn’t want to address it.

Jonn’s hand crept towards his again. “Look, if you let me see it, I promise I can call bullshit on everything that fucker has to say.”

Hansel pulled it back, but not as dramatically this time. Jonn had done that for him before—when Hansel couldn’t, when it made too much sense, when everything in his chest ached to see Mishka again, to touch him, to pull him back into bed and he hated himself for it—but not this one. Not for a few reasons.

“I know.”

Jonn didn’t pursue it. “You’re gonna burn it, though, right?” When Hansel didn’t respond immediately, he quietly pushed, “Dad?”

“I’m gonna burn it,” Hansel lied. “Just give a minute, all right. I’ll be downstairs in a bit.”

Jonn looked at him for a moment more. He was good, but not always good enough. He thought Hansel had more fucking common sense when it came to Mishka than he actually did; he didn’t know about the mandolin. He didn’t know anything about the mandolin.

“Okay,” he said finally, and stood up. “I’ll see you down there. Drinks on me, yeah?” He paused. “Not all of them. I’m not *that* rich.”

Hansel made himself scoff out a laugh and nodded.

Once the kid was gone, he opened his hand and smoothed the letter out. The ink was a little smudged, but still readable. He found the original crease under the damage he’d done and ran his thumbnails along it, reinforcing it, folding it back the way Mishka had left it. Worse for wear, now. Much worse for wear. He had a tendency to break things.

The room had a desk and it was usually cluttered up with weapons and armor and bags, because neither he nor Jonn were especially tidy people, but he sat down and scraped them aside to clear a space and opened up a drawer to pull out a notebook and a pen. They were Jonn’s—for taking notes on marks—but he wouldn’t mind. Probably wouldn’t even notice the torn-out page. He tapped at the corner of it, leaving inky dots behind. Those *would* be noticed.

*Mishka,*

*I*

he wrote. Then nothing. He thought about how Mishka had taught him elvish and they’d used it as code so that if anyone found those notes, they wouldn’t see such personal information. Mishka would stand on the upper deck and toss paper kites down at him, flying them right into his shoulder as he was running the sailors through combat drills under the blazing sun. He’d look up and see Mishka with his too-perfect lovely face propped in his delicate, deadly hands, gazing down at him with a soft smile, waiting to see his reaction when he read the note.

He’d scowl and act like it annoyed him. It didn’t. Mishka knew.

*Mishka,*

*I still*

He crushed the letter. It was stupid. This was stupid—like he would have the words to—like he should have the words to—

His went in the garbage. Mishka’s went between the strings of the mandolin, inside it to fall gently onto the pile of others.