10. Chapter Ten #3
He was gently pulled onto a mound of pillows before Viau slipped off the bed.
He returned in a blink, a cup in his hand.
He didn’t even attempt to get Rafi to hold it.
He merely said, “Lean back, please. Open your mouth. There you go.” As if Rafi were a recovering patient too weak to do more than swallow.
The water was fresh and cold so Rafi didn’t say anything about that. Anyway, his arms were trembling.
When he’d had enough, Viau put the cup somewhere, then kneeled on the bed at Rafi’s side to begin petting him again.
Rafi tried to ask what he was doing, but now that he’d had something to drink, his eyelids were heavy, and the touches left him warm and happy. He turned to press his face to Viau, inching in as Viau slid down beside him, and then let his breathing slow.
When he opened his eyes again, he was alone on Viau’s bed, blankets and pillows around him, in a shirt that was not his own which covered him to his thighs.
The room smelled of mint and clean air from the open windows, and Rafi was immediately aware of pulled muscles in nearly every part of his body.
He twitched, sliding his legs together as he tried to push himself up to sit, and realized he’d been wiped down, possibly even scrubbed clean, and something soothing and soft like the creams the expensive courtesans were said to use had been rubbed into his skin.
Viau was at his desk, in only a shirt once again, but his hair tied back neatly as peered at a potted plant on his desk and then jotted something into a bound book.
Rafi pulled his gaze from Viau’s bare skin, and the parted knees Rafi would fit precisely between, and the length of Viau’s perfect hair, to the darkening bruise at Viau’s throat. A mark from a mouth some might have named it and then looked knowingly at Rafi.
Rafi looked away, then found himself staring at Viau’s hand, fascinated with the way he held the pencil and the shape of his knuckles, and not sure why until he was hit with a burst of memory.
He snapped his thighs together, shivering.
Coming like that, his entire body flexing around Viau’s hand, had been overwhelming.
He’d begged for it repeatedly anyway, and then, too hot, leaking all over Viau’s bed despite not being fully in aedis yet, had done exactly as Viau had said and mouthed Viau’s cock until they were both….
Rafi shuddered once, hard, and then accepted that he had been frenzied and Viau desperate, and the only steady thing between them had been Viau’s aer, heavy and perfect over Rafi’s. That blanket was gone now.
He cleared his throat, intending it to be a polite call for attention but then realizing his rough, raw throat needed to be cleared for him to even try to speak.
“Should I go?”
Viau instantly turned toward him. “I am doing my best not to be offended or hurt by the things you sometimes say, Rafi, fourth child and a nex, although I’m afraid I am. But don’t add that to your worries. You stayed this long, and that does much to heal wounds.”
Rafi frowned without meaning to. Even that took effort. “’M too tired for flowers.”
That brought a smile to Viau’s face. “Plain speech, then? You should go if you feel like going and if you are capable of walking out the door and to your room. Which I do not think you are.” He was smug, not wounded. “If you’d rather, you can stay here and sleep some more, or eat, if you’re ready.”
He gestured to the foot of the bed, where a tray with a covered plate on it waited.
Rafi hadn’t noticed that at all. He rubbed his eyes, tossed his head, then tried again.
“Bothers you when I go?” He felt that was mostly a sentence.
Hopefully, Viau understood his meaning. “Miné like it? The….” He didn’t know what word to use when pampering was the first that came to mind. “The care?”
Viau rolled his shoulders. “I do. Or, at least, I have so far. Although I have been trying not to push.” As if that had reminded him, he put down his pencil to ask seriously, “Are you sore? Pained? Do you need anything?”
Viau’s bed was more comfortable than any Rafi had ever slept in, save for a soft patch of grass back home he’d once spent a day and night in until hunger had finally driven him to the house.
Katoh had been embarrassingly clear about this subject, but that didn’t mean Rafi wasn’t going to blush.
“Very good. Thank you. You… you made me feel good.”
The fire in his face was worth it when Viau perked up. “I was going to ask someone to bring up some tea in a little while. Would you like some? I’ve already eaten. That food is for you. I could—” He closed his mouth, though Rafi knew what he’d been about to offer.
Rafi’s face flamed hotter.
“I’m not interrupting you? Your work?” He raised a hand, after real struggle, to point to the desk and the plant. He wasn’t quite sure whatever Viau was doing was work, but it looked like work, like what the healers did at a patient’s bedside to monitor symptoms, though perhaps for a fern.
“Oh, this?” Viau turned to consider the plant. “This is simply a small area of interest of mine. Don’t worry.”
The “small area of interest” included the greenery along all his windowsills and, now that Rafi was looking, some plants in pots along the far wall in the shade of the wardrobe.
“You do visit the gardens,” he realized out loud. Viau had mentioned that, but Rafi had assumed it was to meditate. “For the plants?”
He got a noisy sigh that sounded like something a flustered Cambray would have done, and then Viau was shifting in his seat.
“Yes,” Viau admitted, the way first-years admitted to getting into fights in the capital—reluctantly. But a moment later, he was facing Rafi and he had lights in his eyes. “I have an interest there. They’re worthy of study. We get food and medicine from plants.”
“And flowers.”
“And flowers.” Viau gave a forceful nod of agreement. “Why wouldn’t we study them? It’s not strange.”
Rafi hadn’t said it was. But someone else might have. It was not an interest that people associated with swersoldi. Particularly not the ideal.
Rafi shook his head to agree.
“Anyway,” Viau had ruffled feathers on the subject, even if he was trying to hide them, “the healers let me use their garden, which is fantastically organized. The best I can do in the ornamental gardens is keep watch on certain shrubs whenever I have time.” He twitched his lips and gave Rafi another look.
“I’m sure this isn’t interesting to you.
Why don’t you eat? Or would you rather sleep some more?
No one expects you back yet, if you’re fretting about that, storm cloud. ”
Storm cloud was usually for during aedis. But perhaps this moment still counted.
“I’m tired,” Rafi admitted, though his stomach squelched with a reminder that he’d need to eat soon. Eating seemed like a lot of effort. That was probably why so many ended up being handfed by their heat partners afterward.
“Then stay.” Viau looked at Rafi for a while, as if Rafi was worth staring at even when not naked and all he was doing was lying around like a wrung-out, exhausted nex who had been…
who had been pleasured and fucked for at least a day, probably longer, by the miné staring at him.
Who might want to keep staring at him. And fuss and preen, and, if he could, handfeed Rafi whatever was on that plate.
“I’m tired,” Rafi said again, thinking it over with as much clarity as he could with his stomach making noises and Katoh in his head telling him to coo and whine to bring Viau to him.
He didn’t think he’d have to do that to bring Viau to him, actually.
Viau wasn’t in bed with him at that moment because Rafi had run last time.
It might just be Viau’s miné impulses, but he wanted Rafi there in his room and his bed—and to feed him.
He clearly wanted that too. “But I’m also hungry,” Rafi added, voice falling. It wasn’t a coo, but it was soft.
He held still, wondering if he had assumed incorrectly, then Viau was up from the chair and coming across the room with excitement in his every motion.
“Do you need help?” he asked as if Rafi had moved even a fraction from his pillows, as if he could. He didn’t wait for any answer other than Rafi staring at him, pushing the tray farther up onto the bed before sitting at Rafi’s side.
Really? Rafi nearly asked, but Katoh would have swatted his shoulder. He suspected even Cambray would have chided him.
Viau revealed a plate full of bread, sausage, boiled eggs, and early summer berries.
He watched Rafi peer down at the selection and must have taken Rafi’s silence for the confusion and exhaustion that it was, because he plucked a single berry from the plate.
It was halfway to Rafi’s mouth before Viau caught himself.
“Really?” Viau wondered, almost breathless, then brought the berry to Rafi’s lips and watched with shiver-inducing pleasure as Rafi ate it.