It was finally fucking cold. Oh, the sun was still out – the leaves were still mostly green, turning ruddy in places, full branches getting a bit sticky, tall bushes getting a bit leggy – but it wasn’t winning against the wind. On the one hand, this meant that it was actually comfortable to wear their uniforms like they were supposed to; on the other, Cole was very typically enjoying himself when he wasn’t wearing his uniform outside.
Ah, well – equally satisfactory to be driven to activity to keep warm.
Not that he’d had any activity lately.
He was... anxious. Normally the solution to that was more activity, but instead Cole had found himself retiring early yesterday, and now, having begged off Groups (the ollamh was sleeping under a tree; his ‘group’ knew that he knew the forms and would rather not be bothered with losing to him repeatedly), taking a nice walk.
Cole craved these solitary walks – wanderings, with nowhere in particular to go – but he did wonder whether he liked taking them solitary or satisfied more. It was so difficult to disentangle oneself from a partner post-satisfaction. One could rarely just put on one’s coat and leave; there was awkward lovers’ talk to get through, feeling out whether this would be the sort of thing they would have to acknowledge or if they could both just go back to whatever social schedule they had been maintaining before. He hated the goggle-eyed uncertainty of a one- or a-few-times-lover trying to catch his eye across a field or a class in search of reassurance.
Then again, he delighted in started his day with someone amicable enough to have another go-round as a morning wake-me-up. Delighted in the hollow way it left him hungry for breakfast. Delighted in breakfast.
That’s what he liked about Hal, who, he had resolved, he was wandering towards seeing.
Cold as it was, the sun shone bright in a cloudless blue sky. Seeming to hang low, it was the sort of sky that looked like it would shatter for a fist thrown high enough.
He might ought to be studying for Tactics – every cadet studied for Tactics – but his feeling was it was worth a lost date or precise reference to wander the ground a bit. He wasn’t exactly thinking, so much as letting his mind wander, too. Sure, he was thinking about Cogadh, making plans, but the truth was he knew too little about the Midraeic and his team to actively plan anything. Confident as Cole was in his own team, he knew confidence and foolhardiness were too close in kinship for comfort.
He knew the smartest plan to begin with, but it wouldn’t do to show up to one of Hal’s little ‘extra practices’ like he wanted anything from it. Personally, Cole didn’t see the threat in a few of the lower-ranked cadets trying to pick up skills that they were incapable of effectively implementing, so attending had never interested in him. It would only hurt his image of carelessness.
But this time, there was a trade off. He knew Hal knew the Midraeic. He knew he could lure Hal away from the practice to talk about him. And he also knew he could use Hal’s company – or at least wouldn’t mind rewarding him for his sharing. So despite that critical timing threatening a blow to his image, he could justify slowly ambling to the hidden little grove where these practices were held.
He wasn’t going to rush, though. It was really a last-resort option. There might be a lucky break out there for him to take advantage of. It would be much better to catch the Midraeic’s practice group, or stumble onto his Cogadh team, or even spot someone on his Cogadh team, perhaps a friend...?
But most of an hour into wandering, it was clear that lucky breaks were going to be difficult game to catch, and Cole had quickly made himself unhappy ruminating on friends. He wasn’t sure the Midraeic had any (did he have any?); he did sit alone at meals quite frequently (well, but he also didn’t tarry at eating, and wouldn’t Cole kill to sit alone at a meal or two?); most of the people Cole talked to spoke rarely, or with hostility of the Midraeic (but was he really going to accept the opinion of Brahn Innrachtig or any of the other ‘noble’ cadets on anything? He might have to, as it was all he had – everyone of any other social standing was either afraid of expressing too much of anything to him, or eager to say whatever they thought he wanted to hear).
Walking about the edges of practice groups, he had passed some jokes with those standing by the sidelines, watched a couple of bouts, and found precisely nothing. There actually weren’t that many to wander through. Any cadet that thought he had anything to gain (and, socially, nothing to lose) and had been lucky enough to be told about it, would be at Hal’s little gathering. The social gauntlet awaited.
The sound of combat reached him before he could actually see anything through the thick cover of branches. Far more than the usual chatter for a practice group, and much more of the gaming calls, cheers, and taunts when the grunting noise of combat commenced. As he wended his way through the narrow path through the underbrush that would allow him in, he puzzled over the lightness of all the voices he could here – perhaps that was Hal’s influence, as he had an easiness that lent itself to making others comfortable.
The size of the crowd surprised him – they were in danger of outgrowing their little clearing – but that made the absence of a tell-tale sparrow in the flock even more disappointing. Still, as he was trying to be inconspicuous so his vantage wasn’t the best; mostly he saw the backs of heads as he stuck to the rim of the clearing.
Naturally, this was also where Hal was. Cole waved to catch his eye, and Hal smiled, pulling his shoulder away from the tree he was leaning on to touch a brow in acknowledgement, a faint rustle in the bushes beside him.
“I thought you had Tactics later,” Hal said. “Even you study for Tactics.” He offered a slim flask, undoubtedly full of brandy, and at Cole’s shake of the head slipped it neatly back into its hiding place in his jacket. “What brings you to the humble crowd’s practice?”
The brandy was another nice touch in keeping Hal’s company. Cole was going to have to find out how he always managed to have some.
They both turned to watch the bout, the crowd in front of Hal having obligingly arrayed themselves with a mind to his sightline. As their attention shifted, so, too, did that of the cadet-audience. Cole nodded to a few sitting on the ground, too slowed by uncertainty to look away from him in time. He could watch the ripple spread out as a few of those at the edge of the sitters stood and alerted those standing next to them that one of the top ten had arrived.
It wasn’t that Cole didn’t appreciate causing a stir – it was really just due, a logical reaction – but it did make it hard to hold his relaxed smile. A little heat threatened to melt it, but he could endure.
And, well, there was precisely why he shouldn’t totally bask in the deference. A little group that he thought he recognized from hanging around Padan noticeably clustered up with hostility and disapproval. (No use pointing out it was Padan’s own fault – one could be very nice company and still not be worth missing lunch to make time to see).
And, even worse – there was Piet, and Piet was now, with the encouragement of his friends, walking over, a look of concern on his face.
Cole hadn’t answered Hal, but he didn’t need to. He saw Cole’s softly apologetic expression and snorted, and chuckling at Cole’s discomfort, politely looked away into the leaves as Piet approached.
“I just wanted to get out for a bit of walk,” Cole said, ostensibly in belated response to Hal, but mostly so that he could pretend to have an active conversation going while Piet arrived.
“Hey,” Piet said, some of his concern easing, but not enough of it that the wideness of his eyes under that curly hair didn’t make him look a little more sheep-like than usual.
But they were pretty eyes, and that curly hair turned quickly into flattering little ringlets when doused with sweat. Add to that the way those blue eyes so easily conveyed admiration, spiced with envy, and topped by hearty servings of lust, and there wasn’t much chance Cole was going to let Piet be. He also had nice shoulders, which was currently a point of rumination for Cole. With Hal it had been backsides, and given how Hal looked lately, it might yet migrate back that way.
“Hey,” Cole said, in that same, insipidly stoked with casual meaning way that Piet had said it. Hal, taking a swig from his flask, nearly choked. Keeping his body hunched, as if uncertain, leaning almost shoulder-to-shoulder against the same tree Hal had been leaning on earlier.
(Well – Lin was an asshole, but Lin might have a point when he said Cole spent too much time with his head in the bedroom. Then again, what was ‘too much’?)
Cole had rather dropped Piet after their last session. So he let his body reveal a little gangliness, long limbs held awkwardly, turning his face down as if hiding embarrassment (not a hint of red touched his cheeks – it was all in the gesture). He ran fingers under his chin as if scratching an itch, or fixing up his appearance, and cast his most casual-yet-not-casual glance up from the ground to Piet, letting a crease enter his brow.
“How’s practice been?”
Hal looked like he was going to throw up. Cole was going to have to walk further away from him, at this rate.
“Oh, fine,” Piet said, turning his own face away, eyes barely masking relief. “You know. All right.”
Cole let a sloppy grin flash across his face, as if his heart soared with the mumbled ‘all right’ astride its back like bird’s wings.
“That’s good,” he said, an easier smile passing over his features. He reached out, hand kept low, directing Piet to stand beside him (he was blocking the view of the ring), and let it brush Piet’s side, just gently glide past his ass as Piet took up position.
Hal continued to look disgusted, so Cole shot him a glance, his other hand, hidden from Piet’s gaze by his body, coming up from below to touch the crease of his ass where it met his leg, conveying in no uncertain terms that he knew the tricks the Hal, too (and if they were slightly more visceral, they were no less effective).
Hal threw a fist under his chin as if excited by the decidedly mediocre fighting in the ring.
But now Cole had to stop leaning, standing with arms folded, Hal on one side and Piet on the other, regretting his choices. Luckily, Piet had accepted from the start Cole’s admonition that they could not be too public with any kind of affection, or even conversation (Piet’s conversation was also decidedly mediocre, but that wasn’t what Cole wanted from him). It was just too delicate, with Cole in constant battle in the top ranks, and Piet knew how those Prep cadets could be.
Terrible people, every last one of them.
“Is this a bigger group than usual?” Cole asked Piet, if only to keep himself from thinking about how nice it would be to take Hal out into the bushes and fuck the breath out of him.
Piet nodded. “I think word must have gotten around.”
“More people are getting better at the Third Year moves,” Hal added.
“Yeah, your insight has been really helpful,” Piet said, sincerely, which meant that when he looked back at the match Hal frowned at Cole disapprovingly.
Cole felt that heat in his chest again. He wondered if anyone knew who had given Hal those ‘insights’ to begin with. Hal was smart enough, but he had to have gotten the patterns for the joint-locks from somewhere. The idea that he had the time – or the capability – to spy on a Third Class for long enough to get any useful information was outlandish. Bartering for favours with the upper classes wasn’t always restricted to casual liaisons – and it was risky to do it on a solely tit-for-tat basis as it opened up the cadet from higher classes to accusations of exploitation likely to get them instantly expelled – but what else did Hal have to offer? What else did any of them have to offer?
But had Hal gone truly cross-class? Maybe that’s why he had asked for more space. A whole new species of serpentine jealousy and anger arose in Cole’s chest when he thought about this; frankly Cole felt he could know and satisfy the body of a lover well enough that outside intervention was neither necessary nor worth considering.
Then again, then again, then again... utility, protection, practicality, advantage – there were a lot of reasons to open oneself up to unwise liaisons.
Cole felt a little sick. Hal wasn’t so desirable that going cross-class would explain it. Making himself ill contemplating the possibilities also wasn’t getting anywhere.
“Who’s on that team that just beat Aspen? Isn’t the leader... O-something?”
“Orga?” Piet asked, incredulously. “Even if he was, he wouldn’t be welcome.”
Well, that was something. There were rumors circulating even amongst these low-ranked cadets – rumors he hadn’t heard.
“I thought these extra practices might have been what gave him the advantage over Aspen.” Cole said, as if it didn’t matter to him all.
“Please.” Piet grunted (Cole caught Hal closing his mouth, cut off before he could say anything). Low-ranked as Piet was, however, he was still out of Orga’s league. “He would have needed more than a few Third-Year joint locks.”
That wasn’t quite true: a well-executed move, unexpected, well above their level, and especially one as effective as a joint lock, could easily be a round winner if executed at the right time and in the right place.
Even more frustrating, though, to be told the Midraeic’s team leader wasn’t here. Unlikely the team would be here without its leader. This had been an enormous waste of time, and he had had to mollify Piet, who he hadn’t been all that eager to rejoin with anyway. And now, if he was really being properly social, he would have to go through the crowd keeping up relations with a half-dozen lovers, a few more one-time lovers, and more than a few embittered ex-lovers, just to hide the fact he had been hoping to smoke out the Midraeic or his some of his teammates. Jumping each social hurdle would eat his entire afternoon, and by the end he probably wouldn’t even want to roll about with somebody before retiring for the evening.
“How does this work, anyway?” Cole asked, a grin flashing across his face.
“What?” said Piet.
“The matches?” Hal asked.
Cole nodded.
“Well, you just go up to the judge and put your name in...”
But Cole strode towards the ring before Hal could finish, barely taking the time to strip off his coat and shirt and throw them to (at? Perhaps ‘on’) Hal as he wove through the audience.
Unlike Aspen, Cole was not really physically intimidating. He looked healthy, without the late-adolescent stretch some of his classmates still carried, and the food available at Academy had bulked him out. But he was ‘big’ – not particularly tall, not particularly broad shouldered (though he liked his shoulders), not particularly powerful in the legs.
Some of his proportions were awkward, still. His limbs were a little over-long for his torso. His neck was apt to look a little spindly (though the shearing of the First Years he thought had improved his looks, as his head was a little too big to carry so much wavy hair as when he let it grow out). Extraordinarily luckily, his face had also cleared over the summer, and he was less prone to blemishes and redness, though part of him blamed living in the thick of city air for that.
But when he moved through the crowd, they parted around him. And when he stood at the edge of ring, a gap formed. And the judge and the cadets waiting in line, apparent by their shirtlessness, they stopped watching the match and looked uneasily at him.
So despite being unlike Aspen and Lin, who had put on muscle like young nobles did makeup, Cole had physical presence enough to intimidate.
The trick was knowing his gracelessness as well as his grace. Balancing one against the other. And confidence. A clumsy falter and a fetching turn could look the same to different eyes, or be carried off or an utter failure under different presentations. It wasn’t just that he always had his head on the bedroom, it was that he would put to use the hard-earned knowledge of what about his body was useful, handsome, well-turned – how to judge dispassionately the attractive and strong from the ugly and unrefined. What a waste to let such knowledge go to waste; he practiced physicality in every arena allowed.
And yes, he could have gone cross-class, legitimately (as opposed to the unsavoury offers of pathetic Second Years), but while he might stand being wanted, he was and would be no one’s beloved.
The ongoing match, grown half-hearted as even the fighters’ attention diverted, juddered to a halt.
“Uh,” said the judge, making a vague gesture of closing to the cadets in the ring, “did you want to... join?”
“Sure,” Cole said with a friendly smile, as if pleased with the so very spontaneous offer. “Who is at the end of the line?”
The judge looked over the lined-up cadets, some of whom were already putting their jackets back on. The two next in line both put their hands up, stepping back into the crowd. Truly, Cole had been ready to wait his turn, but then, the whole motive behind this vague whim was validated in their deferral.
“Do you... do you want to see any demonstrations first?” the judge asked.
“Oh, no,” Cole said, stretching out his shoulders, pulling an arm across his chest and stepping out into the ring. “I’m already interrupting, I wouldn’t want to delay things any further. Besides, wouldn’t it be interested to see what it’s like to be surprised?”
This caused an excited chatter to break out.
“Do you have a partner?”
“No,” Cole said, cracking and stretching his neck. “That might be a nice surprise, too.”
He tried hard not to smile, bending over to stretch his legs, loosening up his trousers, when he heard a commotion start off at the edge of the crowd. Well, truly, at the edge of the clearing.
Not a moment after the news of a challenge match could reach the very edges of the group of cadets, Cole was facing down the Midraeic across the mat.