4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
The pulsing heralded the onset of his aedis, something Rafi realized far later than he should have.
Then again, it was a realization that kept slipping from the forefront of his mind, so it might have occurred to him several times already.
That did not comfort him as he shivered and sweated, hot and cold in equal measures.
He meant to move. That had been his plan after an hour of turning on his bed, stupidly convinced at the time that he must have a fever. The wet seeping through his pants had finally prodded him into action. Healers, he had remembered. He was supposed to go to the healers.
He wasn’t sure how far through the academy he’d gotten before the scent of flowers had lured him to an orchard.
After that, he could not recall much with clarity, which worried him until he got distracted by discomfort.
He was tired. His legs ached stiffly, telling him he’d sat on his knees for too long.
He considered getting up, but heat swept through him with another internal pulse and he had nothing to hide his shame if he stood, obviously hard, obviously wet.
He hadn’t thought to bring a cloak. He hadn’t thought to bring anything.
He wasn’t certain he had even put his boots on to walk outside.
The pulses had grown stronger and more frequent.
Rafi bent forward, his forehead nearly against the ground as he panted and waited for the unfamiliar internal pressure to subside.
He was aware enough to think he must look like an animal, and then to not care because sliding onto his hands and knees helped.
The air was chilly and sweet. He shivered and made soft nex sounds at the ground and tried not to reach inside his pants. He hadn’t always succeeded; his fingers were wet.
He should get up now, defy his needy body and do what must be done while his thoughts were clear enough. He should crawl to his feet and find the healers. To… to make it to… where he was supposed to be.
To Viau.
Except he didn’t know where Viau’s room was and finally fell back to sit on his knees and tip his head up to the sky and close his eyes. The blossoms around him were all he could find in the wind. That and….
“Katoh?” Rafi asked in a rough voice, then turned to see her with Laure and one of the younger students who must have been assigned to work in the gardens.
“You weren’t at the midday meal,” Katoh explained, unusually hesitant at the edge of the path before rushing forward to kneel next to him.
Rafi focused on her as she put an arm around him to help him stand.
“Here,” he tried to explain to her without moving.
He nodded toward the dozens of trees and their countless blossoms, then frowned in befuddlement when she stopped trying to make him get up and instead pulled his head to her shoulder.
The hand she ran over his back was wonderful.
She said something to Laure, or Rafi assumed it was to Laure, because she shushed whoever it was when he tried to answer.
“Only a little longer,” she added, this time speaking to Rafi, sweet as she almost never was. “It’s strange at first, but it’ll get better.”
“In the rooms?” Rafi wondered, tongue thick, then gasped as another pulse rolled through him. “Sorry,” he panted when it subsided. “I must look….”
“You are exactly as you should be. Don’t think so much.” Katoh ran her fingers through his sweaty hair.
“Were you looking for me?” Rafi pressed anyway, raising his head. “I didn’t mean to….”
He trailed to silence as a new form came into view at the end of the path.
Viau.
Laure was there too at Viau’s elbow but Rafi’s attention did not stray from the tall miné dressed for travel in a long cloak and coat whose gaze was locked on Rafi.
Viau had been caught on his way elsewhere, Rafi worried to himself—or aloud; he couldn’t be sure which.
The wind lifted the end of Viau’s hair, dared to send a few strands into his face.
Viau brushed them aside carelessly as he came forward a few steps only to stop again.
He took a deep breath. His dark eyes did not leave Rafi.
Katoh practically jumped to her feet. Rafi shivered without her but wasn’t capable of tearing his attention from the miné watching him who smelled exactly right and who would not look away from Rafi whimpering on the ground.
Viau saw everything, Rafi was sure of that without a word being spoken, and for the first time in a while, wondered if he was controlling his aer, if it was visible, if Viau could see inside him to the need that kept taking his strength. If he would fix it.
No. Rafi shouldn’t ask for that. But he might have anyway, pleading like the softest, saddest nex with too many empty holes.
Another pulse prevented it. He shuddered and turned to hide his face against Katoh’s leg while waves of heat rolled through him.
Throb was perhaps a better word than pulse now.
A push, heavy and hot inside him, opening him up without a single touch.
He whined.
Katoh put a hand in his hair, then quickly withdrew it. “Sorry. Sorry.”
Her hand had felt good. Rafi didn’t know why she was apologizing or who she’d apologized to, but then no longer cared. Warmth and sunny grasses were close now.
Viau kneeled before him, soiling his clothes in the damp earth.
Rafi intended to plea for Viau to not bother, but all that emerged from his mouth was the kind of noise that miná and nex made when distressed or too happy to bother with words.
Miné made those noises too, but not as often, usually growling and rumbling instead.
Rafi had rumbled once in his life that he could remember, cuddling with his brother a long, long time ago.
He did not coo and mewl and moan. He never had until this.
“Rafeli?” Viau was quiet. Katoh might hear him but the others wouldn’t. “Are you well?”
His eyes were the darkest brown. Rafi stared into them as the tightness in his chest eased and the pulse mellowed into a slow, though insistent, flutter.
Viau had the start of stubble on his jaw and some shadow beneath his eyes as if he was tired.
But his aer—this close, Rafi could feel it, if not see it, was alive and stirring just out of reach.
Rafi lifted a hand, then caught himself and pulled it back to his lap, where his straining cock and the warm wet all over his pants made him flush.
“Aedis is natural,” he defended himself in a scratchy, unfamiliar voice, each word a struggle. “Did Laure pull you from something important? I’m sorry.”
Viau blinked several times, then arched one brow while his mouth softly curved up.
“More important than this?” he asked, feather-light.
He glanced up to whoever else was with them, but his attention returned to Rafi almost immediately.
“Are you in pain?” His smiled gentled even further when Rafi stared at him, blank.
“They say some are in the early stages. Perhaps intense discomfort would be a term you prefer?”
Rafi’s quiet, puffed laugh surprised even him.
“Discomfort,” he echoed, pleased when Viau smiled back.
Then the flutter became a twinge, followed by a spill of wet he could feel even if others could not see.
He shut his eyes. “I was trying to… I was trying to get somewhere. Didn’t mean to be a bother. ”
The silence for that made him open his eyes.
Viau’s expression was not one Rafi could interpret. It was almost pleased, but that was probably Rafi’s aedis affecting his thinking.
“A bother?” Viau was so careful. “Were you trying to find me?”
Seeking him out like a panting, desperate, aedis-stricken beast. Yes. Rafi supposed he had been. He had found the orchard instead. It smelled of spring too.
“Your aer,” he asked or complained, breathing hard.
“How do you…?” The question was not fully out when he realized he had reached for Viau’s aer and found it, though it was separated from his touch as if by glass.
The loss of control—and in front of Viau—sent Rafi flinching back, extending wisps of his power toward the trees and the dirt and Katoh and Laure and the nameless other student as if he’d find strength enough to control himself there.
Before he could call it back, a weightless presence settled around him and pushed down, and, like that, Rafi’s aer was inside him and could not escape to draw on more.
He looked at Viau with wide eyes. Viau showed no sign of strain or even of any effort.
The corners of his eyes crinkled as if this was a joke they shared between them. “That’s enough of that for now, don’t you think? You can relax if you like.”
Viau’s aer was crackling and sure. His voice was firm. He still smelled so good, sharp and dirty and alive. Rafi pushed against his aer on reflex, testing more than fighting it, and when it held, exhaled so deeply that his shoulders dropped.
“Relax?” he wondered anyway.
“Aedis is meant to be enjoyed, or so they say,” he was told gently. “Rolls of thunder and warm summer rain for a waiting mouth, a thousand lightning strikes to kill and wake and kill again.”
His jaw was rough against Rafi’s palm. His breath hot at Rafi’s fingertips. He turned his smile into Rafi’s hand.
Katoh’s voice was far away. “He was trying to go to an isolation room?” Whoever she was talking to, whatever she was talking about, she was upset and very disapproving.
A line formed between Viau’s eyes. Rafi put the pad of a fingertip to the spot and imagined around it, behind it, inside Viau to where his spirit sparkled and burned, and for a moment, was touched by something blissful and hot.
“Viau,” Rafi exhaled as the unfamiliar aer was taken from him in almost the same moment that he felt it, “I wasn’t going to force you. ”
Viau startled back an inch. His aer had vanished but his face and body remained alive and strong beneath Rafi’s hands. Rafi was enough for him. He must be. “Please.” Rafi wasn’t sure any sound left him but a rumble.