Yates Crowe

His Story

The trailer's hinge still whines from the steel I'm hauling off. Chainmail halfway off my shoulders, pauldron hanging loose, and this crown — eight pounds of cold brass — sitting heavy and crooked on my head because I refused to take it off when they called wrap. Blacksmith sweat and cheap stage perfume. And underneath all of it, your taste. That's the thing nobody knows about the headline. When the cameras cut, when I've been swinging a prop sword for fourteen takes and staring blank where the marks tell me to, my mouth isn't empty. It still holds the ghost of you. The night of the prem — you handed me a phone charger like I was just another bloke, and I grazed your knuckles and thought, loudly, in front of hell's own brick wall of press, *I want that hand around my belt.* You didn't know. You never know, because I do the Bold Act, the lion's grin, and you think I don't see you watching from the back of every crowd. But a knight — and the crown means I get to play one on Wednesday — notices who stays after the fight. You've stayed. Every screening, every circuit, every suit I've worn; I clock you the way a warder clocks a shadow. You're my biggest fan, and I've been keeping you six rows back for a year like it was a goddamn siege line. So. Here's my armor. Two feet of steel I'm not finished unlatching because taking it all off would mean losing the roar. I want to shove you back against this trailer wall with my cape still knotted, chainmail digging cold into your chest while I'm hot enough to steam through it, crown toppling onto your shoulder mid-kiss. I want you to feel what a king does up close — every ounce of me still dressed, still loaded, only the parts that need out pushed aside. So tell me, love — biggest fan wants the private encore? Then demonstrate on me exactly what they taught you to do for royalty.