Part One #8
“What has that got to do with it?” Westin demanded in return.
“Speaking with friends is enough for me.” He had no idea what Sun’s muttered growls were about, but he gestured around him again, to the lovers who were not there.
“I’ve no expectations to hand-fast with anyone.
” That was obvious, or should have been.
Sun drew in a long breath, and as he let it out, it was as if his temper went with it. In its place was Sun smiling with teeth, leaning back to observe Westin with cool interest.
“Who is it you’ve got your eye on? Someone here?
One of the other outguards closer to your age?
Maybe you can retire together and become sworn guards to some noble who won’t give two shits about how caring you are.
You wouldn’t be a palace guard, not you.
You never even linger at the barracks, even when you need the rest.”
That was true. Westin only went into the palace proper when business demanded it.
“I am going to return home.” Westin knew better than to snap back at the brat when he was like this, and yet he was doing it anyway, probably shocking Hely all over again.
“I am not planning on marrying,” he added through gritted teeth because what would have been a calm statement of fact only a few days before was now painful to say. “I don’t even have a regular lover.”
Sun’s eyebrows went high. His smile grew meaner. “You don’t? How young and foolish of me to think you did. It’s all casual lovers then? Friends?” He nearly spat the word.
“What are you talking about?” Westin would have grabbed him and dragged him over the table if it would have made Sun make sense and not only crow triumphantly about prodding Westin into rash action.
“If one of us at this table has a plethora of lovers, it’s you, not me.
Whoever gave you those, for example.” He started to jab a finger at the ear cuffs but then realized what he was doing.
Sun’s eyes were wide and shining. Vulnerable, Westin might have said. As soft as Sun’s suddenly trembling lips.
“Lovers,” Sun said quietly. “But not friends. Not like you, West.”
Westin was breathing hard and regretted it. “I didn’t mean to snarl at you.” He shook his head to banish the strange, stinging jealously that he didn’t like and had no right to have. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to ever treat you like that.”
“You don’t?” Sun asked before his expression went blank and his gaze was suddenly elsewhere.
Westin wasn’t used to so many feelings hitting him at once. Only Sun could do that to him, but that wasn’t Sun’s fault. Westin sighed and brought his voice back to his normal low register. “I want you to know more kindness than anger. I’m sure you’ve had enough of that.”
Without looking at him, Sun still managed to glare at him. “Did I ask for that from you?”
Westin tried to pause, to consider that the brat had once been the wolfling for a reason, but, well, “Yes.”
Sun turned toward him, mouth open.
Westin sought to be better but his answer remained the same. After a tup, or when lying side by side near a fire, or seated together in inns not nearly as nice as this one, Sun looked at him and asked for Westin to take care of him. “Yes, you do, lark.”
Sun blinked rapidly, maybe for the name only heard in private moments.
Then he was sweet, overly so, leaning forward and biting his lip prettily.
“I don’t want pity from you, Westin, with your gentle upbringing and your kindly ways.
” Scorn hit harder from someone lovely. “The one everyone asks for favors, but who never asks for anything for himself. Until tonight, it seems. All it takes is Solace House. No one else could ever manage it, could they?”
“Your bath will be ready momentarily—oh no.” Hely was at their table, glancing from Westin to Sun and then back to Westin with his eyebrows raised high. “If there’s going to be trouble, perhaps I ought to call an outguard.”
Sun laughed at the joke, then seemed mad about it.
Westin sighed as he held up his hands. “There’s no trouble.” Though there might be a problem. “Sun, I was going to tell you. Please believe me.”
“What does it matter if I do or don’t?” Sun wondered, still trying to sound distant.
“I don’t like you angry with me. I never have.” Westin would get mocked forever by Hely for being so biddable for someone half his age, but that was the truth of it. “Upsetting you upsets me.”
“But you’ll leave just fine.”
Westin would have reached for Sun’s hand, but Sun didn’t seem ready to offer one. He wrapped his arms around himself and scowled at the table. The posture made him seem a young noble used to being indulged who had been told no for the first time.
For all his occasional brattiness, Sun was not actually all that indulged.
An outguard’s life was hard and generally lonely, and the years before Sun had joined had likely been worse than Westin ever wanted to imagine.
Sun’s mood now might only be that Sun was not used to having close friends, and therefore not used to losing them.
Westin wanted to haul him across the table more than ever. A mad impulse that he doubted Sun would enjoy.
“No one can do this forever,” he explained again, gently, to Sun and to the listening Hely. “Aging comes for us all, but it comes faster for those without much time to rest.”
“And the winters scare you now,” Sun said, almost miserable.
“And winter bothers me more now, yes.” Westin pulled his hands to his lap to curl them into fists.
“I don’t think… I don’t think I can do a winter on the road anymore.
Not even in the south.” Where the winters were more wet than cold.
“And I wouldn’t take assignments from anyone in the south anyway.
They’ve earned them.” He ignored how Sun muttered that of course he wouldn’t.
“You’re younger,” Westin tried again. “You just haven’t considered all of this yet. ”
“You keep saying that.” Sun brought his gaze up to pin Westin to his seat. “I have been left to fend for myself since I learned to walk and you think I don’t know how hard life can be?”
Westin shook his head. “I never thought that, though I am sorry that you’re so young and already have known such difficulties.
But that’s why I want you to know more comforts.
Why I didn’t want to upset you. If it….” Westin frowned at the ache in his wrist, worsened by how tightly clenched his hands were.
“If it pains you to think of me gone, maybe I can stay on a few more years.”
“Don’t say that!” Sun glared for that too. “You think I’d ask that of you?” He sucked in a breath, then his voice fell to a trembling whisper. “Could I ask that of you?”
He asked it as if he had no idea what he could persuade Westin to do. Westin didn’t think it wise to inform him.
“I don’t like you unhappy,” he reiterated, “even at your brattiest.”
“That’s because you’re soft.” Sun was quiet. “It’s no surprise that you’re leaving, except to me. Stupid, young me.”
Hely made a small sound, an objection very likely.
“Sun,” Westin tried.
Sun didn’t let him get out more than that. “Will you tell me where you’re going when you decide? That’s why you came here, right? To worry over how to do it?”
“Clever boy,” Hely murmured.
Westin refused to be judged for that at least. “It’s not easy, leaving.”
Sun shrugged. “Seems to be for most people.”
Westin was not someone who growled or snapped or snarled. But his tone was sharp. “If it was easy, lark, would I need to seek peace now? Would we be fighting like this if I could just walk away?”
Hely caught his breath.
Sun stared at Westin with wide, wide eyes before abruptly turning to Hely.
He lifted one hand as if to ask for something, but then curled his fingers into his palm and stood up.
“My bath is ready? That’s what you came to tell us?
Thank you.” His manners were perfect even as his gaze skittered away from Westin’s.
“Westin came here to find peace, so I should leave him to it. He won’t get that with me around, will he? ”
“That’s not why,” Westin began, but Hely’s glance told him to tread lightly, so he switched subjects. “If you want to leave your things somewhere, my room is at the end of the hall on the second level. Use whatever soaps or oils you like. I’ll pay for them.”
“It’s just down that way,” Hely directed, guiding Sun once Sun had picked up his belongings. Sun walked off without turning back. Westin watched him disappear, then reached for the wine Sun had gotten for him and drank about half of it.
He noticed several glances sent his way and wondered with distracted alarm if he’d been loud.
He didn’t think so, but Sun could get Westin to do things he never ordinarily would.
He imagined himself shouting at Sun and nearly rose out of his seat to go apologize.
He only didn’t because he wasn’t entirely sure he’d raised his voice, but if he had, Sun would probably have found it funny.
More proof of how Sun had Westin wrapped around his finger, to rile up or calm down as he saw fit.
That thought wasn’t entirely fair. Westin had wrapped himself around Sun’s finger.
He could’ve stopped at any time. Traveled by different roads to be found less easily.
Not given in to Sun’s whining. Talked with Sun when they ran into each other but not let Sun lead him around by the cock like the aging sapwit he was.
If Sun had even done that. Friends, he had called them, but implied more.
Westin had the rest of the wine and noted that his hand shook as he set the empty cup down.
So he closed his eyes and took a deep breath to hold and then let out.
The thunder seemed to be moving away but the rain continued to pound onto the roof.
There’d be no travel for anyone who could avoid it tonight.
Solace House would get no more customers unless someone was very determined.
A customer at a table somewhere behind him had been served dinner, offering tantalizing hints of gravy and a roast and a heady, lush dark wine.
Sun was in a bath room, in a tub of hot water, debating which soaps or scents to wash himself with.
He might choose something floral; he’d noticed the roses and violets enough to differentiate between the two.
He had fine tastes that ought to be indulged more, by someone who understood that Sun at his most charming was Sun trying to get people to like him so they would want to keep him around, or maybe so he could control them and feel safe.
As long as that was understood, all would be well.
A charming Sun was a Sun hiding, and was so far from the Sun who snapped for Westin to stay in bed and drink his broth like a sick man ought to that he might as well have been a different person.
Or, a side of the same person, but one Westin was glad to never deal with. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if he had first met the smiling, flirtatious Sunlark of South Burrow. Probably flushed and gone as witless as everyone else.
He’d done that anyway, hadn’t he? And for the side of Sun who barked at him and demanded Westin’s cock as if it belonged to him. That said something. Westin had no idea what, but something.
Friends. That’s what it said. Sun considered Westin enough of a friend to be rude, even when feeling lusty, and Westin had wounded him greatly by not telling him sooner that he planned to leave.
The shortening days had been on Westin’s mind during their last encounter, but Sun had been in such a lively mood, and Westin had known that would be their only visit until their quick meetup at the barracks before winter weather would keep them apart, so he had let Sun fill the silence with stories of his adventures over the past weeks and said not a word of his plans.
When Westin had allowed himself to acknowledge the ache in his chest, it had only been to remind himself to savor the time left and to ensure Sun was happy.
That felt like cowardice now.
He should have at least told Sun how much he would miss him. Westin already counted the days they were apart and started looking around for Sun to appear if the weeks turned to months. Leaving the Outguard meant Westin would lose that even if he could convince Sun to come visit him.
Which… he likely couldn’t, now. That was what hesitation had cost him.
Or maybe that always would have been the outcome.
It was Westin’s family’s habit not to reach for things, to be content with what they had.
If Sun had a family habit or motto, it was undoubtedly more along the lines of rely on only yourself, or don’t trust easily, and Westin had failed him there.
Even that day at the river and the night at the inn that followed, Westin hadn’t said a word.
He had let Sun head out in the morning, only mentioning something about their meeting in the capital, and Sun had huffed and muttered against Westin’s chest before setting off, walking alongside his horse because he had insisted on taking Westin’s cock twice and Westin had no sense where Sun was concerned.
Sun knew better than to ride cock in the dark of their room and then demand it again at sunrise. Yet he’d done it anyway. Reckless.
Westin felt himself frowning.
But Sun wasn’t reckless, except for those fights in his younger days. Sun was a clever, calculating, thorough outguard who, as he often pointedly said, was smart enough to be selfish when it came to taking care of himself.
Sun did what he wanted. The Outguard was a means for a better life for him, and he reveled in the work.
But he was not reckless. In fact, if Westin had been the one to do something like that while knowing it would leave him too sore to comfortably ride a horse, Sun would have chastised him for it, and probably more harshly than Hely with a far too flirtatious new worker.
A presence at his elbow made Westin clear his frown. Then he raised his head to meet Hely’s questioning stare.