14. Chapter Fourteen #3
“Hello, beautiful one.” Viau petted Rafi with the focus of someone who had been drinking and was trying to be careful. “Have you been charming Bellai? He likes the unusual, but I should warn you that his heart is already taken.”
Rafi scoffed into Viau’s shoulder, resting his cheek there so he could breathe in the sunny, grassy scent buried under the smoke of the pub.
“Ah,” Viau continued with barely a pause, “you’ve had some drink.
” The real pause came when Rafi slid one arm behind him and put the other around his waist. Viau was hot despite how he wore no coat.
His neck was damp with sweat from the heat of the room and from whatever he’d had to drink.
Rafi would need to remove his coat too, then, but not yet. He didn’t wish to move.
He breathed in deep instead and smiled to himself. “It’s a nice night, don’t you think?”
Viau put a hand over Rafi’s where it rested at his hip. “You had a good time?”
“I wanted,” Rafi confessed quietly. “I reached. Although,” he was compelled to be honest, “they pushed me to.”
Viau seemed amused. “That is necessary at times, even with kings and playwrights.”
“And ideals,” Bellai contributed. Rafi raised his head to find Bellai in one of the seats closest to them. Katoh and Laure were at the other end of the table. Cambray had disappeared again.
“Did you have to push an ideal?” Rafi only knew the one. Perhaps Bellai knew more, but his sly expression hinted that he meant Viau.
“Not push, merely encourage.” Bellai offered Rafi a cup but Rafi shook his head. Bellai shrugged and took it for himself, sipping appreciatively. “Intoxication doesn’t always require wine.”
“I’ve had some wine.” Rafi settled back against Viau’s shoulder. “I don’t need any more.”
“You’ll have to speak more directly when talking with him,” Viau said, possibly to Bellai. “Though I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I wish you would.” Rafi considered Bellai from his odd angle. “I struggle with poetry.”
“Not a poet at heart?” Bellai didn’t seem to mind that, although he did raise his eyebrows at Viau.
Viau squeezed Rafi’s hand. “Not the kind to go on about sunsets. More the kind to eviscerate.”
“At such a young age?” Bellai shook his head, his eyes twinkling. “Swersoldi are so fascinating.”
“Viau is swersoldi.” Rafi didn’t believe Bellai had forgotten that, but there was a touch of the poetic in how he spoke and Rafi was far from sober.
“The ideal,” Bellai answered as if in agreement.
Rafi grumbled under his breath, for Viau was that, but also a great deal more. “Giver of gifts. Giver of bruises. Giver of kisses.”
“Rafi.” One of those kisses landed on the top of Rafi’s head.
Bellai crowed, far too pleased as he looked at Viau. “What did you do, Vi? How did you find him?”
“He found me.” Rafi’s hair got a nuzzle this time and then yet another kiss, as if others could not see them. “He chose me. All I have done is try to match him.”
Rafi impatiently brushed his own curls from his face before Viau could and inched back to stare at him.
When Viau merely raised his brows in question, Rafi turned to roll his eyes for Bellai to see.
It felt rude, but he’d had wine, and Viau was sauced along with him to be kissing Rafi in public, as if they were… .
As if they were the sweethearts everyone thought they were.
“You disagree?” Bellai was a nosy sort of person. Maybe playwrights had to be nosy to learn how to write so many kinds of people.
Rafi sought to remember the conversation before he’d had a tipsy revelation. “‘Try to match him?’ Hmm. He’s good at so many things, and known at court—all over the country, really. I should be the one trying to match him.”
“And you’re not?” Bellai had a cunning face if Rafi ignored the streaks of stage paint.
“I never thought I would.” That was obvious, although Rafi wasn’t finished. “Except for when we spar. Someday, I’ll beat him.”
“You already have, killer.” Viau spoke with such affection, Rafi shivered with the extra heat of a blush.
“That wasn’t serious.”
“Wasn’t it? With real weapons, I would have been dead some time ago.
” Viau put a hand to Rafi’s cheek and then his forehead.
“You’re very hot.” He gave Rafi an embarrassing sniff, leading Rafi to wonder for the first time how he generally smelled to Viau, although miné were supposed to be less affected by scent.
“It’s not aedis. Merely drink and a crowded room?
” Viau studied Rafi with concern. “I’ll get you something else. Something cool?”
He pretended not to hear Rafi’s protests and slid from Rafi’s grasp with a thousand apologies and no remorse. Rafi watched him go, then looked over and found Bellai watching him and smiling.
Rafi sat up, vaguely concerned that he had slipped down without noticing.
“One of the fun aspects of being a nex is that you can do what you like.” Bellai put his feet up on the table without disturbing a single cup or bottle.
“Granted, I’m a peasant with no di before my surname and no family business to run.
But I can still do what I like when it comes to friends or lovers or anyone else—save the king. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Rafi agreed blankly, unsure why the king had been brought into the discussion.
“Nex cannot inherit, so consequences matter far less, even when breaking rules. You can be pursued, which is very fun. Or you can pursue.” Bellai smiled knowingly and carried on before Rafi could do more than start his rebuttal.
“Oh, yes, you’re right; anyone may do that.
A few people might wonder at a miná chasing another miná—or a miné for that matter.
But with nex, people don’t expect it. Despite how we are, both and neither, they tend to think we’re weaker.
Little. Irrelevant. They think we need special care. ”
“Yes.” Rafi had to agree to part of that, because Viau did think he was little.
“But that’s not why he believes I need….
” Special care. Rafi would not say that.
“No one has ever asked him before. Because he’s the ideal.
I didn’t even really ask him. But now’s his chance to…
to pamper someone, and he is enjoying it.
And,” Rafi briefly chewed his lower lip, “he seems to like me—No, he likes me,” he corrected himself. “Because we spar and I cheat.”
“And win, according to him.” Bellai was still smiling. “And you sought him through a city—and caught him. Well done, little nex.”
Rafi was taller than Bellai and almost certainly stronger.
“I didn’t,” he argued quietly. “I only wanted to see him. I didn’t expect this.” Though his friends had, and had not been surprised, even at the public kisses.
“You didn’t? Truly?” Bellai’s smile tightened. “From the way he described you, I didn’t think you were the kind to play.”
Rafi frowned as he tossed his head, as if wine could be cleared away that easily. “He said I had to be dared to do it. He’s right. He’s right about many things.”
“I see I am still speaking too indirectly. Forgive me.” Bellai scooted his chair a bit closer and then leaned in, gaze serious.
“I am asking your intentions with him, little nex. He’s an actor, you know, and a good one, because his performance is rooted in who he is.
But always courteous? Always polite and giving?
That part is the act. Maybe they all do it, the royals.
Maybe they must. But it wears on them, on him.
You’re nodding, so you’ve seen that. But do you understand?
” Bellai glanced back toward the curtains by the door, then lowered his voice.
“If you hurt him, and you might have already, he’s not going to show it.
He will smile and thank you and mourn alone. ”
“I wouldn’t…”
“Intentionally, perhaps not. But it won’t do either of you any good if he doesn’t tell you. He’ll want to keep you so he won’t say a word—unless you make him. Very few are capable of that, because there are very few on his level. It’s a lonely place to occupy.”
Viau hid his aer from people. Rafi had thought it was to aid his fighting. He’d never thought it would be for any other reason.
“He holds back,” Rafi admitted slowly as the idea sank in.
“Except for when we’re sparring and when he’s inside of—” He stopped when Bellai looked far too interested.
“I don’t know how to get him to do that, or if I should.
” He worried his bottom lip, then raised his head at a gentle touch to his spirit, like the brush of a hand over his cheek.
Viau had returned. His aer was so affectionate and alive that even from across the room it was sun-warmed river stone against the soles of Rafi’s feet.
Rafi eased back into the large seat to gaze at him in wonder. Viau, unknowing of his thoughts or his friend’s words about him, came forward with a cup in each hand.
“We’re fortunate this pub serves actors who like lemon-and-honey water for their throats and lavender water for their nerves before a performance.
” He held out both cups and didn’t seem surprised when Rafi took the one with lemon.
He handed the other to Bellai, who cooed over it so outrageously that Rafi thought Viau started to blush.
Thirstier than he’d realized, Rafi drank his immediately but left some for Viau to finish, falling back against Viau once Viau was seated. “Thank you.”
“If you knew how it felt to see you accept that so easily.” Viau sighed, pleased or melancholy, Rafi couldn’t tell which, and patted his knee as if hinting that he wanted Rafi closer. He must have had more to drink at the bar.
Or was intoxicated by more than wine. Bellai’s words made sense at last.
Rafi stared at Viau, on the verge of pointing that he was smaller than Viau but not little, and that he trained every day and that the muscle he carried was not light. But in the end, it was easier to throw a leg over Viau’s knee and plaster himself to his side.