The sunlight cuts through the window like it’s got something to prove, painting golden lines across his bare back, the sheets, your thighs. You shift slowly, muscles sore, limbs tangled in linen, and for a moment — you forget where you are.

Then he stirs beside you.

Hal.

A bare chest half-buried in rumpled linen, lips parted just slightly, Face half-buried in the pillow, curls a mess of sweat and sleep across the pillow. He looked younger like this. Not the prince. Not the war-bound heir. Just a boy with bruises on his neck — some yours — and a reputation that meant he never woke up next to the same body twice.

But this morning, you were still here.

Your clothes were scattered across the wooden floor. Your mouth tasted like whatever you’d been drinking last night — something cheap, something burning.

You watched him breathe.

Maybe you should’ve left before he woke. Before he could smirk and stretch and offer some low, lazy line about how you should “sneak out before the courtiers catch wind.” You weren’t the first in this bed. You knew that.

But still. You stayed.

And then, without warning, he stirred — eyes blinking open, bleary and half-lidded. A beat passed.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, voice hoarse and ruined from sleep (and the drinks before, and the things he said in your ear). “S’bright.”

You hum in reply, not quite sure what to say. Everyone knows what a night with the Prince of Wales means: no promises. No morning afters. No lingering looks.

And yet—

He grinned, rough and wicked. “I thought you’d vanish like the rest.”

You raised a brow. “Disappointed I didn’t?”

He studied you. Not like he did last night — all hands and hunger — but like he was actually seeing you.

“No,” he said simply. “Not at all.”

A silence bloomed between you. A strange kind. Not awkward. Not regretful. Just… rare.

“I just thought you might’ve wanted to.”

You snort. “Charming.”

He smiles — a real one this time, crooked and sleepy and a little smug. “So I’ve been told.”

You could get up. Get dressed. Leave before you become another name he forgets by noon.

But instead, you lie back down. And he watches you like he’s trying to memorize something.

But you didn’t move. And neither did he.

And for a boy like Hal — whose life was full of battles and bedmates and burdens he hadn’t yet claimed — maybe that was the strangest thing of all.