5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
“Sorry, but you left?” Katoh demanded. Rafi imagined her hands on her hips while she loomed over him on the bed, but he didn’t twitch the blanket down to check if he was correct.
Cambray had just had to run to Katoh to inform her that Rafi had returned earlier than expected and was now lying exhausted on his small bed with a blanket over his face. “Was it that bad?”
“Perfect. You’re perfect,” Viau panted against the back of Rafi’s neck before shoving his head down to thrust into him hard, with Rafi begging him to.
“No,” was all Rafi said in answer, his throat rasping and raw in a way that no amount of water could soothe, though he had guzzled the water a blushing Cambray had fetched for him and then downed the water Katoh had also given him.
He felt not unlike the morning after a night’s drinking, though without any nausea. A consequence of coming so many times and of all the lubrication he’d spent all over Viau’s bed.
And in his mouth and on his fingers.
Rafi swallowed. “No,” he said again.
The reluctant admission must have done something to appease Katoh, because she laughed shortly and backed off. Cambray’s bed creaked as she sat on it. “Told you that you’d have a good time. I bet he’s good at everything.”
Rafi didn’t have much basis for comparison, but judging from the heaviness in his bones, the pull of nearly every muscle, and low throb all through his blood when he thought about what he remembered, he would have to agree.
Exactly what he also would have expected, if he’d allowed himself to think about it beforehand and also had intimate knowledge of how Viau treated his lovers.
Yet he didn’t want to emerge from his blanket, or move from his bed, and the weight in his bones had spread to his chest.
He pushed out a long, tired breath.
“That’s why you’re supposed to stay,” Katoh chided him.
“Well, one of the reasons. Your partner or partners are supposed to take care of you so this doesn’t happen.
You know miné love the chance to pet and spoil afterward.
Most of them, anyway. There are probably some true assholes out there, like with anything.
But you are supposed to laze around and let them bring you water and food and get too excited about helping you clean up.
Laure once….” She stopped abruptly. Rafi wondered if she’d actually gotten embarrassed for the first time in her life.
She cleared her throat. “Like, one, you’re tired, too tired to care for yourself properly and they are slightly less tired.
But equally important, you asked them for a lot when you weren’t in your right mind.
They want to make sure you’re all right, and you give them that, and then you both feel better. ”
“I wasn’t going to inconvenience him further.” Rafi had explained that to Cambray too. Cambray hadn’t snorted and laughed at him.
“What did he say about that?” Katoh demanded. “Oh shit,” she went on with Rafi didn’t answer. “You snuck out?”
“He was sleeping,” Rafi defended himself, scratchy-voiced and burning hot beneath the blanket.
Flat on his back on the side of his bed that got some afternoon sun from one of his room’s three big windows, Viau hadn’t seemed real.
Even the shadow along his jaw, the dark beneath his eyes, and the fall of his curls, tangled from Rafi’s hands, had only made him more beautiful.
He hadn’t had a stitch on except for a strip of a sheet covering him.
But ogling while in aedis was not at all the same thing as ogling while in his right mind, so Rafi had turned away.
Viau’s room wasn’t huge but it was larger than any students’ shared rooms. The second floor of an older building now housed instructors and those like Viau, who were granted privacy that students weren’t.
Signs of Viau’s comparative wealth showed in the size of his bed, the curtains for it, the amount of bedding he had shoved carelessly to the floor.
That made Rafi cringe too, thinking of Viau waking up and having to deal with practicalities like laundry.
The curtains were likely needed in a room with three large windows. Even with wooden shutters closed, the room would be cold in the winter… if Viau ever closed the shutters. Each window ledge had held a variety of potted plants to soak up the sun.
The greenery was a splash of color against the white walls, the stone floor, the undyed linen bedding. The only other color had been the dark wood of a desk and chair, a chest, and a wardrobe. But Rafi had stared at all the green, his weary mind caught on the idea of Viau gently tending to plants.
It was hardly a kitchen garden. Rafi couldn’t imagine why Viau had them except for personal pleasure, and then had felt like a prying interloper and hurried to find his clothing.
Which had been folded on Viau’s desk. Rafi didn’t know if Viau had managed to sneak away to request someone launder Rafi’s clothes but assumed so, perhaps during one of the times Rafi had slipped into sleep.
More that Rafi had to thank him for. And he fully intended to once he was rested and had bathed. That would surely be enough.
“Sleeping?” Katoh was disbelieving. “Yeah, and then he’d have woken up to you gone. Raf….”
Rafi finally lowered the blanket to look at her and was grateful that the curtains were closed so the light was dim and that Cambray wasn’t there. Katoh had probably told him to get out. Miné certainly loved to do what Katoh said. It must be her sure manner.
“Laure cares for you. Loves you.” He fought the rasp to ensure his words were clear. “Vi… Viau will not be so invested in my wellbeing. And will certainly recover faster without having to bother with me, and then he can resume his duties elsewhere.”
Katoh studied him, probably noting the stubble burn over his mouth and jaw and neck even in the dim light. Rafi didn’t remember being kissed though he obviously had been. But even lovers of only a few hours did that.
“And you’re embarrassed,” she summed up. “Over aedis in general, or because it was him?”
Rafi considered pulling the blanket back over his head. “I asked for too much,” he whispered. “I exhausted him. He didn’t even wake when I tripped over my own boots and fell.”
Katoh snorted another laugh, then slapped her hand over her mouth. She tried to be serious. “Well, I hardly think he’ll mind that. He’ll probably jump at the chance to do it again… if you bolting without a word doesn’t change his mind.”
“I’ll write him a note,” Rafi insisted, but could no longer look her in the eye as he thought of all the things he must have asked for. He cringed back against his pillow.
“This is just post-aedis moodiness.” Which Katoh thought he should have handled by staying with Viau, but she didn’t say it.
“You had a high—a lot of highs, from the sound of it—and now you’re too worn out for any more, so everything feels flat and sad.
Rest will fix it, and then you should talk to him.
In person. I….” She suddenly grew delicate.
“I don’t think he’ll mind. Really. Not with you before him again.
He cannot take his eyes from you. You didn’t see…
. Well. It was something, you two together. ”
“A note,” Rafi said again. “So he won’t have to bother himself more than he already has. The whole incident will be forgotten.”
Katoh sighed and got to her feet. She stood over his bed and Rafi thought she was going to touch him but she didn’t.
“You need a bath.” She condemned him with a small sniff. “Next time, let him do that.”
“Bathe me?” Rafi made a garbled sound. He’d been washing himself since he was small. “Katoh….”
She bent down to better look him in the eye. “You would be giving that to him, Rafi. Not asking him for it. Now sleep so our sensible Rafi can return.”
Rafi was being sensible. But he was also tired, so he nodded and pulled his blanket back up and slept.
After two days of resting in bed, Rafi forced himself up, filled his stomach to bursting, then did little else.
The fourth day, feeling better, he composed a note in shaky flower-letters to thank Viau for being so kind.
He then spent the next few weeks training with his friends, determined to sense aer in a fight the way Viau did and making sure the soreness in his body was from hitting training dummies or from Laure, who hit back.
He’d left the note under Viau’s door because Viau was gone.
Recalled to the palace, it was said. Which made sense; Rafi’s aedis was over and would not return for months.
If Rafi needed him again, it wouldn’t be in the near future.
Viau was an important figure in the capital.
He’d probably rushed back to the palace, where he’d remember Rafi only to hope that Rafi learned control or found someone else to help him.
Laure watched Rafi attack a training dummy until his limbs were useless.
Katoh dragged Rafi to his favorite meditation garden, the one of stone, with less ambient aer to accidentally reach for than in a living garden.
Cambray brought him some food he hadn’t asked for, flushing a bit and then blaming his miné nature.
They had all surprised him by not mentioning Viau, not even Katoh, not after that first day, although she clearly had opinions.
Rafi was the one to say his name first, after a painful landing in the Arms Room.
Laure panted down at him, more confused than triumphant. “Are you still distracted? I’ve knocked you down twice this morning.” He furrowed his brow. “It’s uncomfortable to win against you. I don’t believe it. Are you falling on purpose?”
Rafi frowned back at him without even attempting to get up. “‘Still distracted?’” He didn’t like the sound of that. “I’ve been trying to… I’ve been trying to fight the way Viau does.”
Laure raised his eyebrows, but bent over to help pull Rafi to his feet since Rafi hadn’t moved. “What do you mean? If you mean you’re trying to fight better… you’ve been fighting worse.”
Rafi made an unhappy face, which Laure seemed to think was funny. He found Rafi’s recent behavior puzzling and amusing in equal measure.
Rafi had been fighting worse.
“I think Viau can easily sense aer in other people,” he revealed, “and I think he watches that to predict their movements. But I can’t—” Rafi made a noise of frustration, a growl.
It wasn’t his only growl in the past few days.
“When I try to focus on others, my control of my aer drops. At least, while fighting. I manage it better in moments of rest.”
Laure stared at him for a long time, finally shaking his head, only to then stare some more. “You noticed that? When did you watch him fight?”
“The day I….” Rafi shut his mouth, and took a moment to tie his hair back once again, sighing for the immediate escape of several curls. “It’s a theory. I don’t know that he does.”
“But you want to do that too.” Laure said it slowly, probably thinking it over. “You can sense my aer even while we’re sparring?”
“Yes.” Rafi dusted himself off because it was that or be stared at some more. “But not enough to predict you, so it’s not very useful.”
“Rafi.” Laure cleared his throat. “Most here cannot consciously sense it without focusing, and certainly not in a fight. You could ask him about it whenever you speak to him next.”
That was a comment likely made on Katoh’s behalf.
“Sure,” Rafi agreed easily. “Or we could figure it out on our own.”
“If it’s even possible,” Laure reminded him. “I’m in my last year and no one has mentioned it as something to try. Maybe you need to be a strong as Viau to attempt it so they don’t bother teaching it. Most of us are lucky to use aer to knock something over.”
A valid point. “He is strong, isn’t he?” Rafi was warm around his face and neck and so grateful Katoh wasn’t there. “Maybe it would be better to learn how to hide our aer instead. To control it as tightly…”
“As Viau does?” Laure finished for him. He again gave Rafi a long study.
“It’s not what you think,” Rafi insisted quietly, with a glance around for any eavesdroppers. “I don’t have fancies. I know better. He’s simply Viau. Anyone might feel—might be—wrongfooted and admiring.”
“True,” Laure agreed carefully. “But you want to be as good as he is.”
Rafi didn’t hesitate. “We should all try to be as good as he is. That has nothing to do with anything else. I told you as I told your sweetheart; I don’t have foolish dreams about shared aer and romance and mirrored souls.
I intend to practice my control until I master it, and in the meantime, I should start looking for someone else to help me through aedis, in the capital if not here.
Then I need not bother him again and even Katoh can be sensible about it. ”
Laure narrowed his eyes. “Hey.”
“She has hopes for me.” Rafi explained and apologized together. “Because she’s kind and because she isn’t the extra nex child of a noble house, so she doesn’t understand.”
“That’s not kindness. She just has eyes.
” Laure might have still been offended on Katoh’s behalf but he kept that to himself as he looked away.
“You might learn sense—real sense—and real kindness, better, if you weren’t an unwanted child from a noble house.
Because you aren’t. You’re a swersoldi now, or nearly one, and you’re skilled enough to notice what Viau does in a fight.
Do you think many others here are doing that?
” He looked back at Rafi, stern. “You should get some fancies, I think. So should I, for that matter.” He paused, then cocked his head.
“You think we could lock down our aer so well it can’t be seen?
At least, not in a distracting situation like a fight? ”
“I saw him do it.” Rafi had, and grown so hot that it had triggered his aedis.
His face and neck were even warmer now.
Laure didn’t call him on it. He nodded and said, “Then let’s go,” and got into position again.