Chapter Text
The Fairy Prince does not like roses.
He likes the half-withered orchids growing in the wine cellar, where the servants have not yet looked. He likes the hyacinths and marigolds that take root in the stagnant pond in the forest, 472 paces away from the palace. He likes the fairy cup lichen growing on the south side of the tree with initials carved into it.
And yet roses are what The Fairy Prince has, buried in his chest cavity and already seeming to take root. His corpse is mangled from battles fought and lost, already beginning to smell, though none at the procession comment. There are silver tears on his beautiful cheeks, tears that are not his own. They belong to The Fairy Princess, who has kissed him 9 times.
She is disappointed with the results. The storybooks lied, she realizes. True love’s kiss cannot wake the dead, and true love’s kiss cannot bring The Fairy Prince back. She cups his beautiful jaw, turning his head toward herself, as if she is what he wants to see.
What she does not know is that The Fairy Prince is afraid of coffins. He does not want to be in this crystal coffin, and laid beneath the ground, all by himself. He is afraid of being abandoned and forgotten, left beneath the ground. He is afraid of the coffin breaking, of damp soil spilling into his wounds, onto his face, into his mouth. He is afraid of his throat being clogged, so that even in death he may never say what he means.
The Fairy Princess’ brother, a boy younger than she is, stands behind her, looking over her shoulder. He does not matter, he is not significant. Just a poet, and a bad one at that. The words he really wants to say are treason, so he spouts gibberish instead, silly rhymes and sonnets and verses about women and their parts. At least The Fairy Prince found his words funny.
No one noticed the poet’s softness. His soft lips, even softer golden hair. His soft brown eyes, soft dusting of freckles across his nose. No one alive, anyway. Always in the shadow of his sister, who would one day be The Fairy Queen. She shall find another Fairy Prince.
But her brother does not want another, only this one, whom he cannot have.
Let me try, he wants to say. Let me try waking him.
I love him, too.
Instead, The Fairy Prince’s crystal coffin is hefted into a hole in the ground. A deep, dark hole, where the sun or breeze or rain or snow or moonlight will never caress his face again. Where the poet will never caress his face again.
“Let me try,” He whispers, voice so soft like his lips hair eyes freckles. No one hears him. This poet’s words are forbidden, are treason, are bad luck. This poet’s words are cursed, and will send him to hell, where a loving god will watch him burn from heaven, for the sin of loving someone.
So The Fairy Prince, the poet’s Fairy Prince, is lowered beneath the ground. Alone. In the dark. With no one to hold his hand and kiss his forehead and tell him it will be alright. No one to smooth back his ebony hair and rub his back the way he likes, with a small squeeze at the top of his shoulders. In other words, he is buried dead without the treasonous poet.
The dirt is already clogging his throat, the dried soil filling his eyes ears nose. He can’t breathe, and he can’t speak, and he’s horribly, painfully, completely alone.
The Fairy Prince’s lips are rotten and someone in the crowd still wants to kiss them. Someone in the crowd already knows what they felt like warm and alive and laughing and tugging him out of sight. No one in the crowd says another word.
The Fairy Prince is beneath the ground.
***
The Poet ties a noose that evening, and he hangs it from his balcony, slipping his neck through the knot. But he will not throw himself off the ledge. He feels closer to The Fairy Prince this way, on the verge of death. The poet can almost hear the prince’s breath, and feel his warm hands, and see his caved in chest. He can almost smell The Fairy Prince’s rot.
He tightens the noose a bit, just enough to get a little dizzy, a little delirious. Now he can see The Fairy Prince. He can see all the way to the hill, where The Fairy Prince is buried with two hearts, not just his own. The poet blacks out from lack of air.
When he wakes, the moon is higher than it had been before, and his throat is bruised. He squeezes it, relishing in the sharp spike of pain. The poet unties the noose, getting off the floor.
He will be harder to see, now. He will be nearly invisible when he pulls on his cloak, steals a shovel from the servants’ shed, and digs up his heart.
And so he goes, sneaking out of his room, his cloak fluttering behind him. And so he goes down to the kitchens, and out the palace’s back entrance, and to the servants’ shed. And so he steals a shovel, just as he thought he would, and he goes to the grave of the boy he loves.
He goes to the grave of the boy he was 8 years old and playing soldiers with in the courtyard. He goes to the grave of the boy he was 12 years old and questioning what he had been told over. He goes to the grave of his best friend, whom he kissed in the forest on the ground by the stagnant pond, 472 paces away from the palace.
And the poet starts digging for his heart. The deeper he gets, the more confidently he swears he can hear them both beating down there. Both hearts too big and full of love to be confined by the crystal coffin, both hearts too strong willed for society’s standards. Both hearts that will burn in hell one day, while a loving god will watch them burn from heaven for the sin of being in love.
And the shovel hits the coffin, and the poet doesn’t want to hurt The Fairy Prince, and he’s dropping to his knees, and silver tears are running down his soft cheeks. And he rakes his fingers through the dirt, pushing it off of the coffin and letting the prince breathe. He’s unclogging the prince’s throat, opening his eyes, and his lungs are beating again.
But through the coffin’s crystal lid, The Fairy Prince does not stare up at him. The Fairy Prince’s face is covered in roses, and they’re growing out of his nose, his mouth, his ears. The Fairy Prince is trapped, and clogged, and he is afraid, so very very afraid, but he is no longer alone.
The poet yanks open the coffin, falling onto His Fairy Prince, and he tries to be gentle, but his knees land on his prince’s hips, and there’s a bad sound. His Fairy Prince Smells awful, and he’s stinking and rotten, but His Poet still finds him beautiful.
His Poet pulls the roses and thorns away from his face, but leaves the flowers in the prince’s chest cavity, along with both their hearts.
His Poet leans down to kiss His Fairy Prince, and his lips squelch beneath the other’s. Living meets dead, and it mixes in the middle, and suddenly the breath is knocked out of His Poet, and into His Fairy Prince.
And His Fairy Prince is alive, and gasping in air, and pulling His Poet down against his completely average chest, and treason is falling from his lips.
“I love you, I love you, I love you.”
He’s coughing dirt, and sitting up, and kissing His Poet like the soft boy’s breath is the only air he will ever need.
His Poet is sobbing, and their kiss is becoming wetter and wetter, and His Fairy Prince’s tongue tastes like dirt and blood, but all of the sudden the combination isn’t so bad.