Page 10 of The Scent of the Ideal

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.

So like a nex, neither one nor the other. But a light entered Viau’s eyes.