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In the days that followed, more and more frequently Horatio would return to his room to find two silk scarves, colored the blood-red of Denmark, neatly folded on his pillow. The first time they had appeared, he had gone a little breathless over to them, tentatively sliding his hands underneath them, lifting them, and running his palms over the smooth silk, careful not to disturb the folds, cradling them like fragile red birds that might fly away if he handled them too irreverently, wondering if it meant what his mind dared hope it meant.
But repeated demonstration over time had shown him exactly what it meant, and by now, the moment his eyes would light on the two squares gleaming like gems on his pillow, habit would direct his feet straight to his dresser and he would change into clothes for the morrow. It was easier that way. He would wash his hands and face at the basin, and comb his hair. Then he would delicately take up the scarves, tuck them with care into the pockets in his vest, and leave his room.
When he reached the door to the prince’s closet, he would knock quietly, but would enter without waiting for a response. He would shut the door and lock it behind him, and turn to face the room where Hamlet would be waiting with a cue in his eyes or in his posture or his movements. Hamlet might meet him at the door and lean into his arms with an open, needy kiss that would tell Horatio to seduce him slowly, softly, with tender petal-like kisses along his face and neck and gentle, caressing hands to divest him. Hamlet might clutch urgently at his shirt, pressing himself into him with a fervent, desperate kiss to tell Horatio to grab him by the hips and push him up against the door, and pull open his clothes to attack his chest with teeth and tongue.
Sometimes Hamlet would pin Horatio to the door, drop to his knees, and take him slowly, blindly into the infernos of sweet oblivion until Hamlet could drink of his pleasure.
Hamlet might be waiting for him on the bed, gloriously naked and prostrate on the sheets with the covers already pulled back, wanting Horatio to bear down on him and tease his bare skin with the textures and folds of his clothes. He might be coiled, ready to prowl across the bed and pull Horatio down among the sheets, strip him bare, push his knees apart and claim him. Or Hamlet might be reclining, still clothed but perhaps with his shirt enticingly undone, so Horatio could decide how he wanted to have his prince.
But no matter how they started, at some point the scarves would appear. Sometimes Hamlet would preempt Horatio and pluck the scarves from his pockets, one in each hand, and let them unfurl in crimson streamers out of Horatio’s vest. He would straddle Horatio to the bed, tie one end of each scarf to each of his wrists and the other end to each bedpost above his head. Then Hamlet would slowly, meticulously undress him with delicate, whispering touches, like the fluttering of feathers across Horatio’s skin. When he was bare and burning, arching into every promise of Hamlet’s touch, with his shirt open and bunched around his elbows like half-spread wings, Hamlet would straddle him and hover above him, quivering like a hummingbird, and, at torturous length, sink down upon Horatio’s shaft, inch by agonizing inch, consuming him into his molten fires.
Most times, though, Hamlet wanted Horatio to take control. He wanted Horatio to tie him up, tie him down, bind him, blindfold him, gag him, to pin him to the bed with his knees and tease his defenseless skin mercilessly with the silk strips, to take him, take his body, his pleasure, his pain, his control, his dignity, his delirium, his decisions, his words, his actions, his inactions, his agency—his ability to do anything except shiver helpless beneath him while Horatio took him. Took him in his arms and covered him with his body, and hid him from the unblinking eyes of the world that stared him into the corner where the fine lines of dignity and humiliation crossed each other. Took off his masks, his decorum, his decorations, his dispositions, his fraying seems, his half-truths and laden words, and laid him bare upon the cool clean sheets. Powerless, prostrate, Hamlet would watch Horatio’s eyes as Horatio moved over him, onto him, into him, and sometimes a shimmering tear would streak across his cheek like a star, not because it hurt, but because it didn’t.
There would be no words. Hamlet had had too much of words, empty words, pregnant words, hurt words, hurting words, hiding words, hidden words, deceit, flattery, dissembling, treachery, lies, lies, smiling lies, crying lies, honest lies, dishonest truths. Horatio had no more use for words, words which can only seem and never be, which can only express and never emote, which shatter uselessly against the solid weight of feeling, and blow away like autumn dust on an expelled breath, vanishing like they never existed, like mere fantasy.
There would be only the whispered gasping of each’s name on the other’s lips, the only place Horatio dared to speak the prince’s name undressed, and only because Hamlet refused to be clothed before him when they were alone. Here, they could be naked before each other, and see each other naked, and by the other’s eyes lighting on their nakedness know that, underneath the trappings of prince and scholar and philosopher and servant, they existed. Here, they were Hamlet and Horatio, and they touched each other and were touched, held and beheld each other, and in these vibrant, shared moments together they could be real.
And then, for a moment of searing ecstasy, there would be nothing. Nothing but a blinding white light behind closed eyes, and a bodiless, soundless soaring. Hamlet would think nothing, feel nothing, dream nothing, and for a moment he would be stilled, and there would be silence.
Gradually, the sound of their harsh breathing would wash into his awareness like the tides coming in. Then the pounding of their hearts, sometimes in sync, sometimes in syncopation, and the tactile heat and press of their bodies against each other, slick with sweat and sticky with their exertions. Hamlet would keep his eyes closed, holding time still in darkness as long as he could, within the warm, intimate embrace of Horatio still inside him, or himself still inside Horatio, the two of them entwined together, drifting in and out of each other. Eventually the scarves would be undone, and fall about them in slippery streams.
It was only here, nestled into Horatio, floating into the dark to the stable steady sound of his breathing and the beat of his heart, that Hamlet could sleep, unbounded by dreams, in silence.