2. Chapter Two #2
“Doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it.” Katoh clucked her tongue.
“You’re worrying, aren’t you? You’re not going to embarrass yourself.
Everyone is a sweaty, dripping, demanding mess during aedis, and you know what?
Miné are pathetic about it and practically trip all over themselves to please us.
Maybe even someone like Viau will be like that, even if it is…
well, you’ll be fine. Better than fine, probably. ”
“It probably is pity.” Rafi said it again, snuffing out any fantasies Katoh was going to spin because she thought it might make him feel better.
Under normal circumstances, Rafi and Viau would never encounter one another unless Rafi found a placement near the palace, which was hardly guaranteed.
Rafi was not one to dream. “He’s known for courtesy. ”
As swersoldi were supposed to be, at least according to lesson books. Rafi should be courteous in return and write back to tell Viau that there had been a misunderstanding, that he’d never expected someone like Viau to change his schedule to accommodate him.
Katoh merely resumed poking him. “You’re attractive. It’s not like he’s not getting anything out of it. Stop worrying, or I am going to get Laure to kick your ass in a practice ring.”
Rafi slipped the note under the table to hold it tightly in his fist, then looked over to his closest friend. “Laure has yet to manage that,” he remarked without a smile, pleased when it made Cambray snort a laugh.
But though Katoh frowned on Laure’s behalf—without arguing, because she couldn’t—she got the final word. She leaned in. “With that attitude, Viau is going to eat you up.”
Then, satisfied that the whispered remark had destroyed Rafi’s concentration for good, she closed his book for him and suggested they all go outside for a while.
Viau’s scent lingered on the note and on Rafi’s hands because he could not stop stroking the fine paper.
The smell of bread did nothing to him but traces of Viau’s scent stirred the embers of Rafi’s aedis until lascivious thoughts haunted Rafi’s nights and also his days.
He had not been so easily aroused since his younger years when he’d first started to get hard and wet.
He gave up on studies for the time being, exercising and training more instead.
Katoh was loudly and vocally concerned but also seemed to think the note from Viau meant the matter was settled and so was leaving him alone.
The matter was not settled. Not as she assumed it was.
Rafi had not sent Viau a reply. He had considered the matter on his narrow bed with Cambray asleep across the room, and realized that this dream was also impossible.
There was no way it would bring honor to Rafeli Tizzan to have demanded the services of the palace’s favorite.
If and when word got around the capital, it would not reflect well on him to have been that desperate.
He had held the folded note beneath his nose with his heart pounding and his loins throbbing but accepted the truth: an isolation room now would be far less trouble for his future career, even if it delayed it.
Rafi would suffer but survive, and from that determine how best to proceed.
He was used to managing. His parents found things easier with him out of the way and his future more or less arranged.
His siblings had their own education and relationships to worry over, and the younger ones would scarcely know Rafi now, since he hadn’t been home in five years.
Perhaps someday, he might not need to worry so much, but thinking about that was as useless as daydreaming about time spent in Viau’s bed.
Which, though useless, he couldn’t seem to stop doing.
He was hot with blushes all the time, sweaty at his hairline and under his arms. Spring rain descended upon them for several days, and Rafi, too warm to begin with and his mind full of fantasies of fucking, forgot his cloak in his room and got drenched.
At night, he waited until Cambray and most of the others in the rooms down the corridor of their dormitory fell asleep and then slipped down to the bathing rooms to touch himself and then wash in cool water, hoping he would finally sleep easier.
He did not. Which might have been why his dreams crept into his waking hours. He couldn’t even call them real fantasies, since his experiments with other students had not given him much to imagine when it came to proper congress in a proper bed, with an experienced miné no less.
He could of course go and find someone now and learn something of what would be expected of him.
But he didn’t want to. He’d never really wanted to.
The other students didn’t smell right. Not bad, but not compellingly good, either.
They never had, and even the pretty ones had never made him want to court them or call them sweetheart.
Maybe that had something to do with his delayed aedis, although the healer hadn’t seem too concerned about that, telling him that some bodies were simply picky, or that problems of the mind could affect the body but everything would right itself eventually.
A vexing bit of information, even if it had been intended to make Rafi feel better.
His problems with his control were possibly affecting his development, that’s what he’d understood from all that.
Or his body had decided that only one person in the entire world would do.
It was definitely not that because it couldn’t be. It was most probably connected to the reason he could not maintain control of his aer all the time as he should, and Viau was simply exceptional enough that even Rafi’s body had taken notice. Everyone mooned over Viau.
Viau might be confused at Rafi’s lack of a response, but he was surely clever and tactful enough to interpret it as a polite refusal.
He was known for his courtly manners. Viau was not likely to be bothered one way or the other, but if events did lead to the onset of Rafi’s aedis while Viau was near, well, Rafi would be out of his mind by then and could hardly be blamed.
Afterward, he could then politely insist he had no need of further assistance—expressing his gratitude first, of course.
Katoh and every nex and miná Rafi had met said aedis was like being more drunk than they had ever been in their lives, or like being delirious with fever while also having dreams to make a bedworker blush.
Out of control. Out of their minds. If Viau took one look at Rafi while Rafi was lost to aedis, Rafi might see disinterest, but at least wouldn’t have to feel anything about that for several days.
Rafi’s only real crime was being mildly discourteous to Viau by not responding to his note, but he could send a letter to thank Viau for the offer when he emerged from the isolation room.
Viau would forget all about the student who’d rudely asked for his assistance, and Rafi would find a better solution before his next aedis.
The issue was mapped out and settled, and yet, Rafi was up at night with detailed dreams of fingers and a cock that belonged to someone who looked a lot like the palace’s most beloved swersoldi.
So when he walked into the Arms room, overheated and damp in his patched shirt despite the chill in the morning air, and saw Viau chatting with Instructor Feurne, he had not a single thought about what he ought to do.
…Not a single thought that wasn’t a fiery, needy impulse to open his mouth and call for Viau to come closer so Rafi might press himself to Viau’s body and breathe his breath and touch his skin.
Ideas that left his head spinning even before he was hit by the smell of blossoms and sun-warmed earth.
The Arms Room was full of students and instructors training hard, day in and day out.
Where the room didn’t smell of straw, it reeked of sweat and leather from their protective gear.
But the breeze from the open doorway was soft petal strokes against his skin and it carried cherries and honey with it.
He must have stopped because Laure’s tall, broad form bumped him forward as Laure pushed into the room—into the small crowd gathering to listen to Feurne but taking the opportunity to stare at Viau.
Rafi had seen Viau before. This was nothing to get flustered over. Viau wouldn’t even know who Rafi was to find him in the crowd.
“Viau is here?” Laure noted in confusion as he stopped at Rafi’s side.
He was wearing a shirt that had been dyed a lovely green because his family traded cloth, and he smelled vaguely of apples and spices in a way that Rafi found more noticeable of late.
But though Rafi liked the scent, it didn’t leave him flushed.
Laure was handsome, with warm eyes and dark hair.
He might have done for Rafi’s aedis but Rafi was grateful he would not have to find out, then guilty over it, for Laure was a good friend who meant well.
Rafi sought to make his voice sound normal and unaffected. “He’s probably here for a demonstration.”
But Laure gave him a glance, then another, longer stare.
Katoh might not have told him about the note from Viau but Rafi doubted it.
Laure was more tactful than his sweetheart, but now Viau was right there in front of them; Viau lived on academy grounds but rarely assisted in classes except occasional demonstrations for those in their final year.
Rafi turned away from Laure’s thousand silent questions but that only sent his attention back to Viau.
Katoh claimed miné were always distracting. Rafi had never especially thought so, but there were exceptions.