Cavalier

Chapter Eight

On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, David is woken up by Jonathan jumping onto his bed. David startles awake so hard that he falls out of bed, tangled up in his covers to the point where he worries for his life, and Jonathan laughs and does not help him at all as David sits on the floor and rubs his head.

"You're a jerk," David says as he tries to make his limbs cooperate with fabric. "I take it back. I don't want to be your friend."

"Too late," Jonathan retorts, offering a hand to help David up once he reigns the laughter in. "Your word is a binding contract. We're stuck together."

"Mhm."

"Forever."

David stretches when he's standing, shoves Jonathan in the process. "Oh, shut up." 

They meander down to the kitchen where they find breakfast already put out when they arrive—eggs, bacon, pancakes, juice. The cooking staff are smiling more than David's ever seen them in his four years of being served food by them, relaxed and joking and the head chef even goes as far as slapping Jonathan's hand when Jonathan reaches for the food first.

"It's David's birthday," she says as Jonathan rubs at the stinging skin and pouts. David laughs as he grabs a plate.

"Very mature," he says.

"You're not getting your birthday present," Jonathan replies. 

"You didn't get me a present."

Jonathan smirks.

"Did you?" They've only known each other for, like, a month, David wasn't expecting anything—

"Well, you'll never find out now—" Another smack sounds as the head chef lands another slap on Jonathan's hand. "Ouch! Frick, I don't mean it—"

"Good to hear," she replies.

Jonathan takes his sweet time with it, though. The subject isn't brought up again at breakfast, or when they go out to the mall and spend the money David's parents had sent him in the mail, or when they stop that that super fancy place a block away from the Mansion that's booked up a month in advance for lunch. They split up when they get back to the Mansion, Jonathan being whisked away for official son of the President duties, but not before he promises a few rounds of gaming later.

Saul has the decency not to have an attack on David's birthday, which is kind of him, but it means that David is at a loss as to what to do for the afternoon. So, he defaults to what he usually does when he has nothing else to do; he grabs his guitar, goes out to the garden, rediscovers the secluded place off the beaten path and just..breathes. Lets his fingers dance up and down the strings without much second thought as he sings under his breath, relaxing into the grass as the music soothes him.

He prays whenever the lyrics run out. Talks to God about anything and everything—how Goliath still haunts him every now and then, Jonathan's friendship, Saul's illness, Ethan, the sunshine and the fresh air, how lucky he is. He doesn't realize that he's fallen asleep until the ringtone of his phone jolts him awake, and he struggles in the grapple with his pocket for it and answers on the last possible ring. "Yeah?"

"Where are you, man?" Jonathan asks. "I'm in your room, but—"

David rubs at his eyes. It's cooler now than it was in the heat of the afternoon sun. "What time's it?"

"Six. Supper's soon. I wanted to give you your present before, though—"

"I'll be right there," David promises and hangs up. The sun is setting to his left, and the Mansion is to his right, and sometimes David just feels—trapped. Sometimes he would rather run towards the sun for as long as he can instead of towards the Mansion. He's eighteen today and like usual he feels older than what he is thanks to all of the responsibility on his shoulders, but, for once, he wants to feel his age, something that hasn't been possible for him since he was ten and Eliab went out to the fields with him to find a stick.