“Are you this cold to everyone who visits you?”

Annoyed at the insistence of his guest, Blaine finally looked up to find someone he recognized readily standing in the doorway. Even if he hadn’t tended to the young man on more than one occasion, only an idiot would fail to recognize one of the princes. Blaine continued to glare from beneath his hood despite the realization and spared the lithe young man only a second’s attention. “You hardly look ill.” If he was honest, the prince looked lovely as always. Despite seeming largely useless, Kurt certainly maintained a position as one of the more pleasant members of the court to watch.

“Thank you,” came the ready response, “but I haven’t come for treatment.”

Despite himself, Blaine looked up to take the prince’s measure again. He saw precisely the sort of haughty pride he’d expected, but there was a distinct thread of vulnerability in the prince’s expression that gave him pause. Curiosity got the better of the man, and he inquired, “Then what did bring you here, my lord?”

The young man hesitated and then drew himself up to full height as if to gain some additional strength from stature alone. “I would like to request an apprenticeship.”

Blaine only barely kept himself from laughing. The very idea of a prince volunteering to dig through the dirt in search of herbs and tend to the sick alongside him was ludicrous. Obviously the prince had been persuaded to finally make some productive use of his time. “I see the king has decided it’s time for his oldest to-”

“His Majesty has nothing to do with this,” came the immediate reply. Sharp blue eyes narrowed slightly at the dig. “I wish to learn if you think you have the skill to teach me.” Seeming more agitated with each passing moment, the prince finally demanded, “And take that stupid hood off. It’s impossible to have a civil conversation when I can’t even see you.”

“I hadn’t realized this passed for civil in royal circles,” Blaine returned smoothly, though he did push the hood back as ordered. “Better, my lord?”

He read the surprise etched on the prince’s face. It was the reason he kept himself hidden so much of the time. Lords and ladies trusted a court employee they could not see, but they hesitated to put their lives in the hands of someone who looked young enough to be one of their own children. Blaine had studied with his father since he was first able to walk, but for many of his patients, even that was not reassurance enough when they saw his youth. “Y-yes. Forgive me, I assumed-”

“That I would be your father’s age, not your own. Of course, my lord,” Blaine answered, though his tone had gone deadly cold once more. It was frustrating to be judged entirely based on his age. After all, he had healed the young man standing in front of him before, tended him in illness, and still Kurt looked at him as if he were an oddity. He looked back down to his book, effectively dismissing the conversation. “I assume that you no longer wish-”

“I will decide what I wish.” The prince stepped in closer. “I wish to be trained. I wish to learn. If you are not capable of teaching me, then perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me whose skill might be worthy of the task? I prefer to begin at once.”

Blaine blinked and looked up again to find the prince leaning over the table in front of him. Apparently he was a bit more determined than Blaine had assumed. “My skill is not at all in question. It is-”

“Then you will train me?” The corners of the prince’s lips were already turning upward, pleased at his impending victory.

Frustrated at having been backed into a corner, Blaine scowled and closed the book. “And why would I want to try and train a spoiled little royal who probably has no idea what hard work really is?” He thrilled silently at the rage that sparked in the young man’s eyes but didn’t let it show.

“Because at least I have the desire to learn a useful skill. Because I want to know.” Kurt crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared down at the physician. “I may be a ‘spoiled little royal’, but at least I have manners!”

“That remains to be seen,” Blaine answered calmly, but he finally rose from the wooden bench and put the book away, filing on a shelf with a dozen others that looked almost identical. “Fine.” He plucked another volume from the shelf and handed it over to the prince as politely as possible. “Learn this.”

To his credit the prince hesitated for only a beat before venturing, “Which part of-”

“All of it. The whole book. It covers the basics of herb gathering, common types of plants found in this area, what their uses are. Without this, you won’t be of much use to me.” He held a hand up when Kurt opened his mouth again. “Tomorrow you will come with me to gather herbs. I expect you to have at least begun reading this. We’ll see if you can be a real apprentice, highness.”

Kurt’s eyes narrowed, but he took the book and held it to his chest. “I’ll be here first thing in the morning,” he announced before turning on his heel and walking resolutely from the room.

As soon as the young man left, Blaine finally let himself smile. The very idea of the king’s son coming to him for anything was laughable, and yet there had been something in Kurt’s eyes, something that told him it might not be a lark at all. Maybe they could help one another.

*******

“Alright, you’ve done well.” After three hours of roaming the forest during which Kurt had only misidentified a half dozen species, Blaine had to admit that he had done his homework. He watched as Kurt knelt in the mud without protest and carefully pried plant after plant from the ground. He had long fingers, lithe and well-suited to gently handling each precious herb. “I still don’t understand,” he murmured half to himself.

Kurt looked up sharply at the words. He reacted to praise with as much skepticism as he did to a reprimand, perhaps more. “Understand what?” After the abuse he had suffered the previous day in attempting to get a moment of Blaine’s time, he had been closed off and careful with his words despite his performance seeming otherwise unhindered.

Cursing himself for having spoken, Blaine decided to go ahead and be honest. He tended toward disclosure in a rather blunt form with the few people he had ever been close to. If Kurt truly wanted to work with him, he would need a thick skin. “I don’t understand why you’ve chosen this for yourself. There’s really no need for you to work this way. You are the prince-”

“A prince,” Kurt corrected carefully, “and not the crown prince. My duty is to be here in case both my father and brother fall. I am at best a substitute and at worst a placeholder.” He gazed quietly at Blaine for a moment. “Is it so strange that I might want something of my own?”

“But this?” Blaine pressed. He could hear the echo of something else behind the young man’s words and knew that whatever it was, that was the real reason. He didn’t let himself stop to ponder why he cared so much to begin with or why it mattered so much to sharpen the mistrust in the prince’s gaze.

“You know, of course, that I am not truly the king’s son.” He caught a flicker of something on Blaine’s face and took it as acceptance. Kurt’s adoption into the royal family was common knowledge despite being rarely spoken of. “He claimed me as such since before my birth, but my father died in battle, leaving my mother alone and pregnant. My father - my birth father - was a knight. Very brave, they say, and a friend to the king. And so the king took my mother as his queen. He was guilty for taking my father to fight, guilty at her being left alone.” Kurt sank onto a nearby log and sighed. The ‘what ifs’ of his life sometimes weighed heavily on the young man’s shoulders. He knew that he owed the king a debt of gratitude for all the man had done for him and for being a father when he might have had no family at all otherwise. Still he wished sometimes that he could know what a life free of obligation to the royal lineage might be like. “After I was born... I don’t know... no one will say... she... something happened. My mother was ejected from the kingdom. She got sick not long after. She died. The King had me returned to court, insisted that I was to be recognized as his son, but... but his new wife was pregnant by then, and...”

“And now your brother is the crown prince and you are left picking herbs with me.” The king had done his adopted son wrong, but Blaine understood why. It had more to do with circumstance and inclination than with birth. Everyone at court knew that Finn was brave and strong, always ready to ride or hunt and making his father constantly proud. Kurt, on the other hand, was petulant, flighty and, he had heard it whispered, utterly uninterested in the lovely young ladies his father had tried to foist on him through the years. They were all reasons that Finn made the perfect choice to rule and Kurt was continually pushed deeper into the shadows. “It hardly seems fair.”

“It isn’t, but life is never fair. It gives and takes without worry for you who are or what you may be capable of,” Kurt answered wistfully before standing and brushing his pants off. The shadow of doubt flickered and faded away in a mask of disinterest. “Now, you are supposed to be teaching me, not interrogating me. As you said when we met, I am a spoiled royal for all may have happened when I was younger. I... would like to remedy that as much as I may.”

Blaine nodded slowly and began to lead the way back to the castle. It seemed that he had been wrong about the boy, or at least only partly right, and he found himself growing more and more intrigued by finding what truly made the prince tick.

*******

“You have excellent penmanship.” Blaine couldn’t help but smile faintly as Kurt’s hand jerked, smearing the ink and earning him a dark scowl. He drifted away again to his own side of the table and set down a pile of herbs just waiting to be ground and bottled. “Better than mine.”

“Of course. Yours is chicken scratch,” Kurt answered as he blotted away the smear carefully. “I’m surprised that even you can read half the labels on these.” He gestured absently to the shelves of bottles and canisters all labeled in Blaine’s less-than-careful scrawl. “I should redo the lot.”

Blaine found himself watching the flickering of the quill in Kurt’s hands. He carried it with an easy sort of grace, the feathers flickering through the air with each jerk and push until Kurt lifted it to reload the ink once more. A sudden pause in the motion drew Blaine’s gaze upward, and he caught the prince gazing straight back at him.

After a long silence in which neither of them ventured anything more than a long, uncomfortable stare, Kurt finally rolled his eyes, “Was there something you needed?”

The stalemate broken, the physician averted his gaze and gave a slight shake of his head. “Nothing. Thinking. I have work to do,” he assured, disappearing from the table with his herbs as if he’d intended that all alone. In truth Blaine simply didn’t want to explain the blush on his cheeks and the fact that he didn’t want anything at all except to keep watching.