Work Text:
The first thing Nicolò thought about Yusuf al-Kaysani, when they shook hands in front of three cameras, eight crew, and two members of his father’s PR team, was that he had an impressive amount of self-control. Nicolò had let himself forget, in the years he’d been out of the royal spotlight, how people tended to act when introduced to a member of a royal family. Much less the Crown Prince. Even the most self-possessed ones got nervous. It was strangely similar to how they behaved with doctors, sometimes, except in emergency medicine patients usually didn’t have time to be nervous.
After three months back in Genoa Nicolò was already adapting to the ones who went nearly silent, and the ones who babbled, and worst of all the ones who looked at you like you were a lock they had to unpick to get what they wanted. al-Kaysani was none of those. He smiled and looked Nicolò in the eye, and his grip was firm but not too tight, warm but not sweaty. It was an astonishing degree of self-possession for someone who was here because he’d won a competition to paint a royal portrait.
Or, no; they’d probably picked him in part because of that; certainly they had to have picked him in part for his face, Nicolò thought, trying not to let it be cynical. He really didn’t doubt the man’s talent, but it seemed altogether too coincidental that he should be beautiful as well.
Nicolò was so busy thinking about this – he was, truly, very striking – that his mouth went on autopilot and the next thing he said was “So, what do you do, Mr al-Kaysani?”
al-Kaysani laughed out loud, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, then hastily ducked his head. “Ah, I’m sorry, your highness – they did tell you what this was about?”
Three cameras, eight crewmembers hovering, one of them the director – Nile Freeman, if Nicolò remembered her name right – and two PR flunkies with very pinched expressions; the only way out of this was through.
“You’re here to paint my portrait, yes,” Nicolò said, smiling a little to ease the sting. “Shall we try that again? I’m sure it would be appreciated.”
The producer, who was hovering just behind Ms Freeman, shut his mouth; he had been about to say something, probably just that.
“Of course,” al-Kaysani said at once, and held out his hand again. “Your highness, my name is Joe al-Kaysani; I’m so honoured to have the chance to paint you.”
“I’m grateful you’re lending your talents to this – to us,” Nicolò replied, meaning it; the file he’d been given had included a selection of al-Kaysani’s work, and it was very good. They shook hands again. This time al-Kaysani smiled at him, and Nicolò couldn’t help smiling back. He fought to keep it out of his eyes, and knew he was failing.
Three cameras, eight crew, two PR staff. There was no way on Earth that they could have selected this man intending him to be quite so precisely Nicolò’s type. That was something Nicolò was going to have to grit his teeth and ignore, for the three sittings that were scheduled to complete this painting.
Their hands parted. Having shaken twice in as many minutes, Nicolò had had ample time to feel that his fingers were as long and slender as they looked, making Nicolò feel like his hands were large and clumsy. All the better for holding brushes with, he supposed. Or –
No. He couldn’t afford that even in the privacy of his own head.
Ms Freeman coughed. “Alright, that’s great. We thought, your highness, if we could get some footage of the two of you looking at the western gallery, and then the conversation about your own portrait.” She glanced at the PR people; Nicolò sensed there had already been some disagreement there. “I know we’re on a tight schedule.”
“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time,” Nicolò told her. “Mr al-Kaysani, perhaps if you come with me, and we’ll let the crew move their equipment.”
“Uh – right, sure,” Freeman said, rolling with this apparently unexpected blow. “James, you’ve got the outline…”
The western gallery was where all the royal portraits were hung; well, not all of them, it was a curated and changing selection, but people tended to assume. Nicolò deliberately got al-Kaysani far enough ahead of the crew and their equipment that they weren’t quite in earshot, and was surprised when the first thing al-Kaysani said was “Where’s Godfrey II? That one’s my favourite.”
“We change them out,” Nicolò said, startled into speech. “By we, of course, I mean that the curator does. You did some research, it sounds like.”
Al-Kaysani shrugged, but his face said he was flattered. “This isn’t just someone’s portrait out of context; it’s in a tradition, there’s a history. I couldn’t do it at all if I didn’t know that. Ah, your highness.”
“What did make you want to do this?” Nicolò asked, engaged by the sincerity in his voice.
“My sister kept messaging me asking if I’d applied yet.” His eyes sparkled. “And it’s a lovely city, and why not? And then once I got through the auditions I thought – actually, I am good enough to do this. Did you watch the show? Wait, no, silly question.”
“I would rather jump off that balcony right out there than watch reality television,” Nicolò said, which was almost true and more importantly, timed precisely for Ms Freeman, her producer, and the PR people to hear it.
This whole circus, the documentary of the portrait and the painter having won a contest, hadn’t been Nicolò’s idea. It had been his father’s, a way to get over the awkward questions being asked about the succession and indeed the entire concept of the monarchy, now the role of Crown Prince had suddenly fallen on the current Prince’s youngest son. An introduction for the twenty-first century.
Also, Nicolò was sure somewhere deep down, as a punishment for Nicolò nearly managing to leave. He would have managed it, he was certain, if he’d had a family of his own to leave for. But there hadn’t been, and Marco had married against their father’s wishes and his sisters had been born women and – well, here they were.
One of the PR people coughed. Nicolò ignored him.
“Ms Freeman,” he said, turning to her. “You wanted us to look at the other portraits.”
“Please,” she said. “If – just walk up and down? Talk a bit. We’ll sort it out.”
Nicolò turned back to al-Kaysani. “So. Tell me what else you know about these portraits, since you have noticed old Godfrey is gone.”
Al-Kaysani launched amiably into a stream of trivia about the various portraits; most of it was news to Nicolò.
“You don’t have any of the early eighteenth century ones up,” he said at one point.
“Yes, well, we married one too many Hapsburgs, but fortunately a proportionate chin was reintroduced into the family at a later date.”
The cameras were rolling by this point, and the mikes were on. Nicolò kept an entirely straight face when he said this. He saw al-Kaysani work to swallow a laugh, the warm loud one he’d let loose earlier. He saw the PR people both get very pinch-lipped. There was a twenty-first century introduction, and then there was unacceptable informality.
Nicolò sometimes thought that that phrase was why he’d chosen emergency medicine; there was nothing so informal as someone throwing up on you, and he’d discovered that in some ways he minded it less. At least the throwing up could be cured, usually.
“So, ah,” al-Kaysani went on. “Your highness, you’ll see that Marco III here has been portrayed with his horse, because he was a famously good rider. Since you’re trained as a doctor –”
“No.” Nicolò cut him off short. He kept his face controlled. “No, I don’t think that would be appropriate.”
“Oh, well…we’ll think of something.” Al-Kaysani seemed confused. The cameras were rolling. The mikes were on. This stupid urge Nicolò had to explain would have to stay a stupid urge.
The first reason was of course that his father would absolutely not want it, and his father was still – for a few months more – the sovereign Prince. The second was that his medical training was his, something hard-won, something personal. Genoa couldn’t have it. It wasn’t going up in this gallery so someone two hundred years from now could look at it and think they knew him. They would know, of course, it was a matter of public record. But it didn’t have to be in the portrait. It didn’t belong to Prince Nicolò. It belonged to him.
“I’m sure you will,” he said, and hoped very hard that the director meant to use this footage with a voiceover.
*
The first proper sitting was in a large south-facing room with a beautiful parquet floor which was normally used for – actually Nicolò couldn’t remember what it was normally used for. Now it had been set up as a studio, in both senses of the word. Today they were doing – al-Kaysani was doing – sketches.
“Just sit however you want,” al-Kaysani said cheerfully, rolling up his sleeves. It seemed to be a habitual preparatory motion; he was using pencils. He had very nice forearms, wiry and lightly covered with hair. Nicolò wasn’t looking at them.
“That’s easy enough,” he said, and sat upright on the padded bench that had been brought into the middle of the room, knees together, hands clasped in front of him. He could hold this position for some time.
Al-Kaysani glanced up, shook his head, an abortive motion Nicolò thought he hadn’t meant to make, and said “Maybe more…just a bit more relaxed, your highness?”
“Well, put me how you want me, then.” Nicolò didn’t mean to be challenging, except that he had just said ‘however you want’, and Nicolò found it very tiresome when people said ‘whatever you want’ and didn’t mean it. He didn’t mind at all being told what it was they really needed.
“Okay,” al-Kaysani said, quirking an eyebrow, and got up and walked over and put his hand on Nicolò’s shoulder. At least five people audibly winced. The cameras were, of course, rolling. Al-Kaysani pressed down on Nicolò’s shoulders and said “Just, you’re very tense.” He worked his toe between Nicolò’s feet, nudging them apart. Nicolò let him.
“Better,” he said, stepping back. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Nicolò said.
There was silence for a few minutes, as al-Kaysani started to work. Nicolò was almost startled when he spoke, glancing at the director. “So…are we supposed to be talking?”
“I’d like it if someone did,” she said at once, then coughed. “But whatever you’re both comfortable with.”
“Oh, I can talk all day.”
“That sounds like a threat,” said Nicolò.
“It can be.” Al-Kaysani seemed to be looking very intently at his – neck? His jaw? Nicolò couldn’t tell. It was strangely impersonal even as it was entirely personal. “But not right now.” The corner of his eye twitched, like the shadow of a wink.
Nicolò saw the male PR person – he really should learn their names and was mutinously refusing to – discreetly pinch the bridge of his nose. It was, just a tiny bit, satisfying.
“I’ve never sat for a portrait before,” Nicolò offered. “So you’ll have to be patient with me.”
“Most people I paint have never sat for portraits before, you’re not alone.” Now he was looking at Nicolò’s…knee?
Nicolò wondered what this was going to look like on the footage. He was entirely aware that whatever was created out of this wasn’t going to be the reality of this room, the slight smell of furniture polish, the warmth of the sun streaming in the windows, the ten or fifteen people in the space. It was going to be as much of an illusion as the portrait. Both fitted to his father’s intentions.
“I think my father has sat for more than one,” Nicolò said. “But I never expected to need to sit for any. I wasn’t going to be the Prince.”
“I find that confusing. You’re a prince. You always have been.”
“Yes, but that is very different.” Nicolò closed his mouth on what he might have said to someone he liked, or trusted, or was speaking privately with; that his older brother’s unexpected death had brought them all here, that it had never seemed possibly, even, he would become the heir. That some mornings he still woke up and realised he was back in the palace and forgot, for a few groggy seconds, why. “Tell me. Are you drawing my feet? It looks like you’re drawing my feet.”
“I am drawing your feet,” al-Kaysani responded cheerfully. “Feet are the worst part of the body to get right. Ask anybody who paints or draws humans.”
“I wouldn’t know; I’ve never had any talent for art.”
“Talent is overrated. What counts is if you have fun doing it.” He drew a final, decisive line. “Could you stand up now, your highness?”
Nicolò stood, letting himself slouch the tiniest bit. He saw al-Kaysani think about standing himself, and then decide it was good enough. Freeman was sending one of the camera crew to the other side of the room, for a different kind of shot. He wished suddenly and intensely that it really was just the two of them alone in here. He couldn’t even say why, or what it was that he would do or say differently. He marshaled his response for the unblinking eye of the cameras.
“Then let us say, I don’t have fun doing it, and am not expected to regardless,” Nicolò said. “But fortunately, it seems that you do.”
“I try.” Al-Kaysani grinned, like he didn’t notice or care the cameras were there at all. “Slightly to the side, your highness?”
Nicolò turned.
*
For the second sitting, Nicolò had to wear the formal uniform he would be painted in. His mother brushed off the lapels and told him how good it looked. This time, al-Kaysani had his sleeves rolled up for a good reason, and the room smelt of oil paint. They talked about the history of the medium, and the colours he was using. It was genuinely fascinating to Nicky; they looked nothing like the palette he would have expected, but somehow the blues and greens and yellows blended together and turned into the shadows and highlights of his limbs, the glittering braid on his cuffs, the lines of his face.
Something about the shadows and lines of al-Kaysani’s own face was plaguing Nicolò, and he couldn’t say what it was. They’d spent maybe six or seven hours together, now; never alone, always watched. He couldn’t just ask the questions that were lingering on his tongue, at least, not if he wanted the answers to stay private. Was there any chance they’d met before? Where could it have been? Nicolò had never lived in the Netherlands. He supposed al-Kaysani could have been a patient at the hospital he’d been working at, passing through – but that didn’t seem likely. Patients tended to remember your face even when you didn’t remember theirs, if you’d seen them for more than a few moments. Surely he would have said something.
He caught the eye of one of the PR pair, as they were packing up after the sitting. Nicolò only hadn’t left the room yet because one of his legs was still all over pins and needles, after too long in one position, and he was discreetly waiting for the sensation to subside.
“Your highness?” she said.
“I’d like to host them for dinner,” Nicolò said. “Ms Freeman and Mr Copley, and Mr al-Kaysani. Can you organise that, please?” Belatedly he remembered he wasn’t really on his own time these days. “My assistant will have my schedule, of course.”
“Ah – certainly.” She had looked for a moment like she was about to ask why. Nicolò was glad she hadn’t.
“Hey, uh.” Nicolò turned to see al-Kaysani standing there. “Is your leg alright? Your highness.”
“It’s fine,” Nicolò said, standing, and very nearly fell over; the feeling wasn’t quite back in his lower leg. Al-Kaysani caught him by the elbow.
“Really,” he said insistently. “Tell me if you’re not comfortable, I don’t want to be responsible for your leg dropping off. Imagine what an ending that would be for the documentary.”
“Very sensible,” Nicolò said, giving in and rubbing his leg; he wasn’t fooling anybody, apparently. “We have a specific law against giving members of the royal family pins and needles. Passed in 1562, never repealed.”
Al-Kaysani bit his lip to hold back a laugh. “Okay, okay. Seriously, though. Please say something, next time. I don’t mind. My attention span’s a little more robust than that.”
“I will,” Nicolò promised. al-Kaysani’s hand fell away from his elbow; Nicolò had forgotten for a moment it was still there.
*
The dinner happened two nights later, in one of the palace’s smallest dining rooms. Nicolò’s mother commented in passing, when he mentioned it, that it was a shame he didn’t have anyone to host dinners for him.
He appreciated very much that she said anyone, and didn’t stumble over it. It wasn’t as if his sexuality was a secret. It just wasn’t a public thing, a thing that you could read on Wikipedia or in a magazine. A not-public thing that wasn’t going to be a problem, because he was going to be a doctor, and was a third son and fifth child, two brothers and their offspring standing between him and his father’s throne. His older sister Bernadetta had got away with it for years, at least in terms of nobody making a fuss, and never having to answer questions about why she had never married and instead lived with her friend Daniela. He was fairly sure she’d ended up on some media lists of ‘LGBT royals’, and didn’t mind. He’d wondered when that would happen for him, or if he was ever going to want to ‘come out’.
Now he was going to be the Prince of Genoa, and, well. He was trying not to think too hard about how that part of it was going to go. It was going to be awkward whichever way. Survivable, but awkward. There would be questions. But right now there was nothing to prompt them.
The documentary team arrived for dinner in what were clearly their best suits. Freeman was wearing hers a little like a challenge, so Nicolò made sure to compliment her on it.
“Thank you,” she said, sounding surprised and pleased, and then “Thanks, Joe,” when al-Kaysani pulled out her chair for her.
“You go by Joe?” Nicolò asked him, surprised.
“Now I’m sure you didn’t watch the show,” al-Kaysani – Joe said. “Yeah, that’s what most people call me. And please do.”
“Joe,” Nicolò repeated, and it was almost there, whatever it was that was nagging at him; the name was part of it.
He made the kind of small talk he’d had to learn to make as a teenager, asking them about themselves. That never failed. He found out that James Copley had been born in Boston but grown up in England, and Nile Freeman was from the South Side of Chicago and had almost joined the Marines – “But I got this scholarship for college, and I thought, I can always sign up after college. And then I got the film-making bug instead.” Yusuf al-Kaysani, Joe, had come to the Netherlands from Tunisia with his parents as a very small child.
“Have you been back often?” Nicolò asked over the third course. Joe had identified it, with an air of pleasure, as very similar to a family dish.
“Not much since my grandparents died,” Joe said. “The closest I’ve got in the last five years is Malta.”
“Malta’s lovely,” Copley said, and Freeman said “That’s near Spain, right? Wait – no – Sicily.”
Something went down Nicolò’s spine. Not a chill. A sense of knowing. “Malta? Yes, it is lovely. Can I ask what you were doing there?”
“Just on holiday. I was about to start a job. Then it turned out I hated the job and I decided to give myself a year to see if I could do something with my art – I was lucky enough to be able to do that, I should say – and here I am instead.”
“What was the job? I know you’ve told me this,” Freeman said.
“Working for an auction house. Telling rich people how much their stuff was worth.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste, and then seemed to remember where he was.
Nicolò didn’t react because he was too busy being mentally teleported back four years ago to another dinner, in a tiny restaurant in Valletta, where the extremely handsome Dutch man he’d met that afternoon had said “I’ve got a job I’m starting soon with an auction house.” Nicolò hadn’t been paying that much attention, because he’d been thinking more about where they were going to end up after the restaurant. He’d retained just enough of a sense of self-preservation to not stay the night, no matter how charming or good in bed the man had been.
Joe had been.
In the present, his one-night stand from four years ago was saying “Ah, no offence, your highness,” and Nicolò needed to say something but nothing was coming out because – it was the beard, it had to be. The beard changed his face dramatically. And of course Nicolò, four years ago, had been possessed of a truly terrible moustache. The facial-hair-enabled of his medical school cohort had all grown them on a dare, and made a pact to not shave them off until they graduated. The fact that he’d been trying to stay under the radar had convinced him to join in.
“Your highness?” Joe said, now sounding alarmed. Nicolò pulled himself together.
“I’m sorry, I was trying to imagine what the palace might look like if we got rid of some of the more valuable and less tasteful items. Probably a great improvement.”
Everybody laughed, and Freeman said “No comment.” The faintest crease remained on Joe’s brow, though.
Nicolò spent the rest of the dinner trying to figure out if Joe knew, and concluded that either he didn’t or he was an incredibly good actor. Now he was cursing himself for inviting all three of them to this dinner, but of course he couldn’t have invited Joe alone.
The evening wound through dinner and into post-dinner coffee, and Nicolò didn’t find the right words. Joe relaxed as the evening went on – all of his guests did. He was, as Nicolò now remembered, terribly charming, much more so when he wasn’t being filmed. He made every anecdote vivid, and was as interested in his conversational partner’s responses as in telling his own stories.
"– and my mother said ‘Yusuf, did you think I wasn’t expecting this?’” he said, ending his story about exactly how he’d quit his auction house job.
Copley was grinning, and shaking his head. “Parents.”
“So your family still call you Yusuf,” Nicolò said, seeing his moment.
“Well, parents.” Joe shrugged. He didn’t sound entirely pleased; it was, Nicolò knew, a slightly invasive comment. “What about yours?”
“Oh, it will always be Nicolò for them. But when I was at medical school, one of the German students started calling me Nicky, and for that group it stuck. It’s how I recognise anybody I met then, even if I don’t recognise them, you understand.”
Freeman was nodding. “Oh, yeah, that’s like the military. My dad’s squad all had these nicknames for each other – made no sense, half of them.”
“Nicky,” Joe repeated, like there was something on the tip of his tongue too, and Nicolò had another fierce sense-memory of that afternoon and evening in Malta, of him saying “Can I buy you dinner, Nicky?” and Nicolò saying yes.
“That’s right,” Nicolò said, and changed the topic. Cups of coffee were finished, and Freeman said “Well, we really should be getting back.” Everybody stood. Nicolò thanked them for their company, and they thanked him again for the invitation.
“Nicky, huh,” Joe said again, as he was about to leave the room. They were going in different directions; the route out of the palace lay one way, and the route to Nicolò’s personal apartment another.
“Just not on camera, please,” Nicolò said, wanting more than anything to say yes, yes, do you remember – but Freeman and Copley were right there, and a staffer with their coats, and he couldn’t.
“Of course,” Joe said, sounding dryly puzzled, as if offended at Nicolò thinking he wouldn’t know that – and then, finally, his eyes widened.
“Good night,” Nicolò said, like a coward, and fled the scene.
*
The next morning he had coffee with his father. Really it was a working meeting, but Nicolò preferred to think of it as coffee, because that implied that maybe they were spending time together because they liked each other.
That wasn’t – entirely – fair. Nicolò’s father had never done wrong by any of his children, precisely, although the jury was still out in Nicolò’s view on disinheriting his next-oldest brother Marco, and that only because he suspected Marco was going to be happier that way. But Nicolò hadn’t chosen to go to medical school and retire from royal life as much as possible because he wanted to maximize the time he spent with his father. They had very different views on what needed doing in the world; that was the whole of it, really, and yet what a whole it was. Now that Nicolò was the heir, and his father had finalized his plans to abdicate next year, it had grown more urgent. His father wanted an heir who would follow in his footsteps. It was a very wearying business being so firmly a second – a third – choice.
They talked about events one or the other of them was attending, and bills that were moving through Parliament, and Nicolò thought he’d got away with it until almost at the end of the hour his father said “And how is the filming for the documentary going? Your portrait?”
“One more sitting,” Nicolò said, taking his time aligning the folder of papers they’d been looking at. “And then I understand they have another week of filming various things around the palace, but nothing I’m needed for.”
“Hmmm,” said his father, and “Just stop flirting with the painter in front of the cameras, would you?”
“I – what?” Nicolò said.
“Your personal life is your business, I suppose, although we must talk about the succession at some point,” his father said, which was the kindest thing he had ever said to Nicolò about his choice of partners; it would have been a watershed moment, in any other context. “But I understand it’s not very subtle. They are making a documentary. A lot of people have worked very hard to set this up, and I don’t want to have to scrap the whole thing because you can’t behave yourself.”
“Of course I’m behaving myself,” Nicolò replied testily, and tuned out everything else his father had to say on the subject; it was very predictable. And all of it unnecessary, because he wasn’t flirting, and never had been. He wondered for a cold second if his father knew about Malta, but – he hadn’t known about Malta, until last night.
He wished he’d known before last night. He would have said – something.
The third sitting was the following Monday. Al-Kaysani – Joe – was doing a lot of work from photographs, which was why Nicolò had been needed so little, for his own portrait. It was, to Nicolò’s eyes, almost complete, although he understood that it wouldn’t really be finished for a little while longer.
Nicolò did and didn’t recognise himself in it. Joe had captured his face and more than that; some indefinable quality about the way he held himself, that he had seen in the mirror once or twice. He hadn’t been too kind to Nicolò’s nose, or the dark circles under his eyes that no amount of concealer (the once or twice Nicolò had accepted it, for a public event) could get rid of. But he hadn’t emphasised them either. It looked like – him, Nicolò felt. Him personally.
And yet it didn’t; it was very clearly an official portrait, a piece meant to be viewed by history, not the man it portrayed. It was a portrait of Prince Nicolò, who was going very soon to be the fifteenth sovereign Prince of Genoa in the direct line since the Congress of Vienna.
Before the sitting – and the filming – had started, when Joe had been setting up (and not looking in Nicolò’s direction), Nicolò asked Nile Freeman why exactly it was she’d chosen to do this project. Nothing he’d learned about her at dinner the week before had suggested that this kind of project was personally important to her.
“Oh, hmmm,” she said, folding her arms. “It’s about – it’s about how we look at things. How we create them. How we treat history as inevitable, something like this -” she gestured at the room around them “- as inevitable, but human being make decisions that create it. From the large scale to the small. And portraits, well. They’re part of that. But they’re also art. The documentary will be part of that, and be art. It’s a bit meta, but – it'll come together in editing.”
“I know my father thinks this documentary is a way to humanise the family,” Nicolò said, “but I’m not sure he imagined it going quite that far.”
“Well, then they shouldn’t have hired me,” she said, confidently. “Because you’re getting what you’re getting. Your highness.”
“I am,” Nicolò said, “very truly fascinated to see how it turns out,” and then Joe said “Your highness, whenever you’re ready,” and if his voice was uncertain at all it was gone from his face when Nicolò turned around.
“Okay, I’m going to be working on your face for a bit,” he said right away, “so if you could not talk, that would be very helpful.”
Nicolò, who had been wondering if he remembered, was immediately certain that he did. There was something direct in the way he was looking at Nicolò that said so.
Three cameras, eight crew, only one PR person this time. Nicolò realised that perhaps he should have thought about this; perhaps he should have tried to speak to Joe before the sitting; that now he was entirely at the mercy of what he did or did not choose to say.
He inclined his head, graciously, because what else was he going to do?
“Thank you, your highness,” Joe said, with a tiny victorious smile, and picked up his paintbrush.
He painted in silence for the first five or ten minutes, and then said, like it was a casual afterthought, “I’ve been thinking about how this is going to look alongside all the others. I assume it’s going in the western gallery.”
“I don’t actually know,” Nicolò said. “I will have to ask.”
“You don’t get to decide?”
“It doesn’t belong to me. It isn’t about me – I merely appear in it.”
“Except in the way that this is your palace.”
“Not yet, Mr al-Kaysani. But one day.”
Joe nodded, and then said “I’m sorry; I asked you not to speak and then I started it.”
Nicolò gave him a speaking look, but, as requested, said nothing.
Another few minutes passed. Joe changed brushes. Nicolò wasn’t sure what the impetus was.
“Alright, I think we’re safe. What I meant to say earlier was, most of the twentieth-century portraits of your family have facial hair, and you don’t. You’ll stand out.”
“This is a twenty-first-century portrait, so perhaps that makes sense.”
“You’re a twenty-first-century prince, true.” Joe caught his eye directly for a second, and Nicolò held his breath. Not because he thought that Joe was going to – but because they knew, they both did. Three cameras, eight crew, one PR person; what was being recorded on their faces? What was anybody outside of the two of them seeing? Nicolò thought it might be nothing other than what they should be seeing. He wasn’t sure if that was what he wanted or not. To be seen, or not to be.
“Have you ever grown a beard, can I ask?” Joe went on. “I’m trying to imagine what that portrait would look like.
“I had a very bad moustache, when I was at medical school. Unfortunately, somewhere there will be photos.”
Joe sucked in the tiniest of breaths. So he hadn’t been quite sure. “True of all of us, when we make bad hair choices, I think.”
What Nicolò wanted to say was “I don’t think you could make a bad hair choice,” and what he said was “Yes, but I presume yours are slightly less likely to be dissected on the internet. Or memorialised for history.”
“Absolutely true.” Joe grinned, lightning quick, but the tension still hadn’t broken.
He wanted to ask him a million questions, but: three cameras, nine other people in the room. They were going to have to wait.
It was worst right at the end, when Joe declared the sitting was finished and they filmed Nicolò looking at the portrait; it was the last time he was going to see it before it was finished. It meant he was standing next to Joe, and he wanted to – he felt as if, if they touched, he might know what the right thing to say was.
He kept his hands in his pockets.
*
Nicolò had thought very seriously about how he might talk to Joe and realised the only way that he could be sure of was to just find him while he was painting; as far as he knew, the work had only a week or a little less left to go in the palace. He found an empty spot in his schedule, and changed his clothes three times, bitterly resenting the fact that he couldn’t just walk around in cargo pants and an old t-shirt anymore, at least not if he planned to leave his apartment. He’d been wearing something entirely nondescript that first time he’d met Joe, he was sure.
He managed to duck down back ways, out of the public areas, right to the door of the studio; it occurred to him, as he lifted his hand to open it, that probably Joe wouldn’t even be in there.
He was, and Nicolò’s heart skipped a beat. But so was Nile Freeman. They had their heads bowed together over a tablet.
“I see,” Joe was saying, rubbing his chin. “That’s – yeah.”
“Yeah,” Freeman said, very meaningfully, and then they both looked up as Nicolò took a step forward, his shoe heel clacking on the parquet floor. Joe visibly started, and Nicolò’s heart sank. Freeman’s face went very still, and then she said “Excellent, just the person I was looking for!”
“I’m glad to be of service,” Nicolò said, halting at conversation distance; he deliberately positioned himself so he wasn’t looking at the painting. “But I was under the impression you didn’t need me any further?”
“We’re going to need to re-film you meeting Joe, before we’re done,” she said. “There was an audio issue.”
“There were at least five microphones, I counted,” Nicolò said a little incredulously. “But you know your own work, of course –”
“Just show it to him,” Joe said, sighing.
Freeman gave him a tight-lipped grimace which said very clearly you sold me out, how dare you, but tapped on the tablet. “You know, okay, fine. I was trying – fine. Could you watch this, your highness? I’m sure you’ll see the problem.”
Nicolò tried to catch Joe’s eye but he was very deliberately looking down. Nothing about this made sense. He came closer, and bent his head to look.
Freeman played the footage without sound.
“Was the problem that there was no sound?” Nicolò asked.
“No,” Joe said, very dryly, which made Freeman’s initial statement a blatant lie, which seemed inexplicable. Why would she lie about that? And then film-Nicolò and film-Joe shook hands and smiled at each other – the second take, if Nicolò recalled correctly – and he saw the problem. He didn’t know – he hadn’t known he’d been smiling like that. He looked up at real Joe, and saw the knowledge written on his face too.
“That,” Freeman said, “is not the story I’m trying to tell. So, if it’s possible, could we have you again and re-film it? It’ll take an hour at most, excluding set up.”
“We’ll make it happen,” Nicolò assured her, trying to recall his schedule for the rest of the week and coming up absolutely blank.
“Nile, could we, uh…” Joe said. Freeman gave him a dry look, but closed the cover of the tablet and left, with a polite “Thank you, your highness, we’ll be in touch,” to Nicolò.
“I’m not going to – you don’t need to be worried,” Joe said as soon as the door closed behind her, taking a step back, and then another, putting a clear metre of space between them. “I didn’t – I had no idea, until dinner.” The words came out faster and faster. “Genuinely, no idea at all. How would I have guess that? But it’s not – I’m not going to say anything.”
“That’s not what I came here for,” Nicolò said, feeling like he’d done exactly the wrong thing and not sure why or how. “I didn’t want to – I didn’t realise either. Until that dinner. Your beard is, uh, you look very different.”
Joe laughed a little at that. “Oh, yeah, that’s true. My father says I look like a completely different person.”
“It suits you either way.”
“Thank you, thank you.” He ducked his head. “It’s – you look a lot better without the moustache, if I’m being honest.”
“Oh, I know. It was for a dare.” Nicolò grinned at him, remembering the feeling of that long-ago afternoon; the immediate connection he’d felt; the sweet wild feeling of flirting and going to dinner and bed with someone who had no idea who he was. Of being able to be whoever he wanted to be.
Joe laughed again, and in that second the only thing Nicolò wanted to do was find all the ways in the world there were to make him laugh like that. Then he sobered, and said “But, seriously. I’m glad I met you again, even if I wasn’t expecting it to be all of this.” He gestured at the painting, and around them. “But it stays between us.”
“I’m not in the closet,” Nicolò said, having finally picked up what Joe was trying to say. “I’m just not – there’s nothing about what happened that needs to be a secret. That is, I will not lie, it would be hurtful if you decided to do…all the things you could do with it. But not because of that.”
“Right,” Joe said. “Okay. Yes, I understand that.” They looked at each other. The moment stretched out. “What – what did you come to talk about, then?”
“I wanted…” Nicolò marshalled his words. Not very well. “To see if you…well, you do remember. Of course. I thought – but I wasn’t exactly sure.”
“I remember,” Joe said, very quietly.
“I wanted to say thank you,” Nicolò said. “For making this, the portrait, an enjoyable thing to do. For creating something beautiful out of it. I am – very much looking forward to seeing the completed work.”
“Good.” Joe sounded fierce, for a second, and proud, and Nicolò liked that on him too. He was beginning to be crushingly aware that he just liked everything about Joe.
“Thank you,” Nicolò said, and then “I must let you get back to your work.”
It was fifteen steps back to the door; he counted them, waiting on every one for Joe to call him back. He didn’t.
*
The last step in filming was actually more than a month later; Nicolò wasn’t getting to see the portrait in private. It was being revealed at a gala, with all the great of Genoa there to see it. And, of course, the portrait’s creator.
Nicolò had thought a great deal over the intervening time about how he could talk to Joe again and come to the conclusion that all of them were impositions on his privacy. If Joe had wanted to talk to him again, he could have; after they’d re-filmed their ‘first meeting’, for example. But he hadn’t. And there was every logical reason he might not want to. He might not attach as much importance to the memory of that one night in Malta as Nicolò did. He wasn’t from Genoa and was likely not planning to stay here past the end of this project. He might simply not be interested in the consequences that came with any sort of relationship with royalty, much less a soon-to-be head of state. Nicolò’s oldest brother had ended up separating from his wife because she hadn’t liked her role as a princess. Well, possibly that she hadn’t liked her role as a princess when her prince was Nicolò’s oldest brother, but he was (still inexplicably, still bewilderingly) dead now and it was a moot point.
Nicolò wasn’t looking forward to the gala. Not for any of the normal reasons he might not, he found social occasions easy to navigate, but because he was going to see Joe once again in the most public way. He would rather not see him at all than have to shake his hand and smile for a camera and not let anything he was feeling leak out onto his face.
He didn’t see Joe immediately. The first person who engaged him in a conversation longer than hello-and-how-are-you was Andy, the current Prime Minister. He had started meeting with her when he’d become the heir; they were working towards his father’s abdication next year. He liked Andy very much, and hoped that she might retain her role for some elections to come. The fact that she had a fiancée didn’t hurt.
“I’m looking forward to seeing this,” she said to him. “Are you happy with it?”
“Yes, I think so,” Nicolò said. “Though I haven’t seen the finished piece.”
“Well, someone’s happy,” Andy said, and it was obvious it wasn’t her.
“Tell me what it is you want me to do for you,” Nicolò said, bypassing the back and forth that might otherwise go on for several sentences, “and then we can both go and talk to other people, not that I do not enjoy your company.”
“When I bring the marriage bill forward again in six months,” she said, “and you’re the one signing things into law, don’t ask me if it’s really a priority.”
“Of course not. I might like to get married one day, after all.”
Andy was a practiced politician; her eyes widened only a fraction. “I see.”
“It’s not really a secret,” Nicolò said. “Excuse me.”
He nodded to Freeman, who was talking to her cameraman, and went to find Joe. He was supposed to be there, when the portrait was revealed.
“Hello again, your highness,” Joe said, and held his hand out without hesitation. Nicolò knew his smile wasn’t what it should be, and didn’t care; they couldn’t possibly be asked to re-film this, and it would, after all, be the end of the story. Not the beginning.
There were speeches – Nicolò had to make one of them – and then a ceremonial pulling back of curtains. Nicolò had never felt quite as silly as he did standing next to a portrait of himself. He couldn’t help wondering, seeing a camera out of the corner of his eye, how Nile Freeman was going to frame this. Subject and artwork and artist, all in one shot.
The thing that Nicolò hadn’t seen, that was new since his last sitting, wasn’t really in the portrayal of him. That hadn’t changed at all, that he could tell, though probably to an artist’s eye it had. It was in the background, the foliage that Joe had worked into the border. Willow and poppy and foxglove, cinconcha flowers, much more obscure, and still others Nicolò didn’t recognise. He supposed bread mould wouldn’t quite convey the right message.
It wasn't what he'd asked for, and yet - he wasn't sorry at all they were there. He was realising that he couldn't save the things that were most precious to him by trying to hide them from this new life. If they were hidden, they might as well not exist at all. And that was the last thing he wanted.
“I like the flowers,” he said to Joe. “Those are new, no?”
“I had to save something for the big reveal,” Joe said. Cameras, still, and dozens of people tonight, not just the eight or nine it had been before. “I’m glad you like them, your highness.”
“Come this way,” Nicolò said. He took Joe around the room, introduced him to his parents, to Andy, to his niece Giulia who was here, to half a dozen other people. By the time they’d been moving for twenty minutes, nobody was expecting them to stop in one place for long; nobody noticed, not even the cameras, when Nicolò ducked out a side door and glanced behind him to see that Joe had, indeed, followed.
They emerged into the western gallery. The lights were dimmed, and it was deserted. Nicolò’s ancestors looked down on them, variously stern and sardonic and carefully noble.
“What I was trying to say the other day was –” Nicolò began, and never finished, because Joe kissed him.
It wasn’t as abrupt as all that; Joe put his hand on Nicolò’s cheek, and Nicolò had time to lean away if he’d wanted to. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t, really, compare it to four years ago. His memories were hazier than that. But he knew for certain, in this moment, that he wanted to kiss Joe again and again until he never forgot what it felt like. Wanted to never have to remember, because he would always have the chance to do it again.
“I just wanted to do that again once,” Joe said, when they finally pulled apart. “I’ve been wanting to do that again once for weeks, now.”
“You’re leaving the city very soon, I suppose.”
“No.” Joe still had his hand resting on Nicolò’s shoulder, thumb on the curve of his neck; Nicolò was holding Joe by his waist. He’d let go in a moment. “No, actually, I rented somewhere here for a year. When this all came together – I thought, what’s the point in moving to another country for two months, I might as well do it properly. Like a residence, I guess. So, no, I’m not leaving. But we…aren’t going to have any reason to see each other again.” He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Ships passing in the night twice, now."
“I think that’s up to us.” Nicolò made himself let go. “Isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Joe was looking at him hopefully, wildly. His hand was still on Nicolò’s shoulder. “Is that how it works?”
“You know, I don’t know,” Nicolò said. “I don’t know how it works. I don’t think anybody does, because nobody unmarried has inherited the throne since – bah, I can’t remember, one of these grumpy men with beards.” He waved at the gallery and its silent audience. “But I do know that I gave up a thing I wanted for this throne already, and I don’t want to give up anything else I don’t have to.” He looked down. “Also, I may have told the Prime Minister that she should prioritize the marriage equality bill she’s trying to get through Parliament. Once – oh, you won’t know this, I suppose. My father is stepping down next year. You should probably know that, if you…if.”
“Not to burst a bubble, but everybody in this palace knows that; we heard it half a dozen times,” Joe said. “Another thing that’s not a secret, exactly.”
“I’m not asking you to be a secret.”
“What are you asking, then?”
“Help me figure out how this works, Joe,” Nicolò said, and kissed him again under the painted eyes of his noble ancestors, in the room where Joe’s work would hang one day as well, with its leaves and flowers saying that Nicolò had been a doctor before he'd been Genoa's Prince.
“I don't know either, but - yes. I’d like to try,” Joe said, his eyes crinkling at the corners, serious and fond, and Nicolò knew, as sure as anything, they weren’t going to try; they were going to succeed.