Page 47 of The Scent of the Ideal

Rafi was off the throne in the blink of an eye. He turned to consider the room, now full of five or six actors and Bellai, as well as Katoh and Laure, with Cambray peeking in behind them.

“I was the quest? Really?” Viau asked from behind Rafi. He had no right to ask it so softly when Rafi couldn’t clear his head. “Did you need something from me?” Now, Viau was concerned as well as soft. “Something urgent, but not so urgent it couldn’t be put off for a cup or two? I was going to see you in the morning, Rafi. Even if my head hurts from my foolish choices tonight, I was going to.”

Rafi didn’t meet a single eye in the room as he turned around. “I’m not angry. I only wanted….” Lots of things. But the specifics weren’t important. “I wanted,” he said again, just for Viau, and dropped down with he hoped slightly more grace to press himself to Viau’s side.

“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.