The Great Grey

[CONTINUED FROM HERE]

"Thank Christ," Gust murmured against the lip of the glass. After a tick, his mind caught up to the potential insult in the declaration, and he slid a sidelong glance to De la Cruz. "Not because of you," he croaked, voice flat, and paused to take another sip. "Would've been pointless to not remember."

Just as he did not remember precisely what he'd said the night before. Under the fog of his memory sat a smeared recollection of emphatic gestures and the announcement that he liked the idea of cocks.

"Good on you," he added belatedly, of De la Cruz's resistance to what little charms Gust may have retained the night before. He reached a heavy hand out to pat cordially atop the other man's knee.

"Coffee," he repeated, voice fractionally less coarse than before. "Toast. Just... Just toast." He might even manage a bit of butter, but the thought of choking down eggs did not appeal. From over his glass, he watched De la Cruz exit and then return, all quiet concern on his Spanish face.

"Thank you," Gust allowed, and at last set the water glass back onto the table so that he could press the cool cloth to his forehead and the back of his neck. "It's all right," he swore as his eyes fell closed again. He drew a slow breath through his nose. "We didn't fuck."

Rafael was not entirely certain he believed the reassurance. Certainly, Augustus had not seemed overly interested in him the night before. It would be a lie to say that Rafael was not a vain man. He was, in fact, very vain – although he also readily admitted as much. It stung a bit, to have the drunken honesty of a newly minted invert, that Rafael was not to Gust's tastes.

But it was also unimportant, in the grander scheme of things. Gust had been too drunk the night before, and now he was too hungover. Perhaps it was a blessing, if in disguise.

"We did not," Rafael reaffirmed dryly, twitching his suit to sit a bit more to his liking – a completely unnecessary adjustment, but something to keep his hands occupied and away from the suffering young man. "Perhaps it was the wine, but I did not feel as though it was a particularly productive conversation. I had thought that we might resume it with you sober, though now I think it might serve best to delay until you have better recovered."

Sympathy was evident in Rafael's voice; not for the confusion over being interested in cocks, but just for the hangover the lord had inflicted himself with. Nothing but time would truly treat it, and while Rafael did not have any other appointments planned for the day, neither did he anticipate spending all his time at the viscount's sickbed, so to speak.

A noncommittal hum sounded low in Gust's throat, and he sat back against the chaise and laid the towel against the triangle of chest visible through the unbuttoned top of his shirt. "I'll be all right," he insisted, knowing well enough that he didn't look as much. "This is not my first morning after." Not of drink nor debauchery, although they both of them were acutely aware that he'd never had a morning after with a man.

Would he ever, Gust wondered as he stared bleary-eyed across the room. Perhaps all of this was mere madness brought on by a couple of happenstance encounters. A double strike of lightning.

And yet —

With care, he rolled his head enough to stare at De la Cruz's profile. "If you provided any sage-like advice, I do not remember it." Were he feeling any less as though he'd been trampled by a herd of horses, Gust might have suggested they go ahead and engage in that which they'd passed on the night prior — Learn by doing, wasn't that the phrase? But as his brain presently felt as though it were staging a violent revolt against his skull, the instruction would need some other means.

It hardly mattered whether this was his first night after or his thirtieth; he was Rafael's guest, and he would be treated accordingly. There may not have been any magical cure for a hangover – not for lack of trying, and many years of experimentation – but water, coffee, and breakfast of some kind usually seemed to provide relief.

But it was less the state of Gust's head that he seemed worried by, and far more the topic of conversation held over from the night before.

"I would not go so far as to say that, no." It was difficult to offer sage wisdom when he still had not quite found the nature of the lord's problem. Tapping a finger gently against the cushion of the chaise, he mused, "I still do not understand the nature of your problem. Pardon my bluntness, but if you are curious why not simply hire a prostitute? He would hardly care about your lack of experience, and no one would know." Or he could simply enjoy the company of those soft bodies that had awoken him so.

Rafael knew that for him, it had been easy; he had always known that his eyes (and cock) did not discriminate. He'd had a kind and gentle friend to experiment with, and had then had years to experience the delights of bodies across all of Europe. Augustus might well be a prodigal fuck when it came to women, but by his own admission he had no experience with this kind of thing. Thus, to Rafael's mind at least, the simplest answer was to gain that experience, in whatever manner he found most comfortable.

A scoff sprung from Gust's throat, and he blinked rapidly down at the little table as De la Cruz's man appeared and began laying out his modest breakfast. "I, ah—" he began, squinting, and laid the cloth aside in favor of taking up the cup of coffee. "I hadn't given it that much thought before last night," he said, and it tasted like a lie despite the words technically being the truth. That his shift in proclivities was weighing upon him was obvious, whether he allowed himself to consider it or not.

"I don't want to go to a whore," he allowed, and then held up one cup-warmed hand. "I've nothing against whores, I've — I've friends who are whores. Expensive whores." Ladies, nearly aged out of the perpetual grind of such a bleak life, who doted on him because they knew there would be some sort of payment whether he deigned to fuck them or not. Ladies who, perhaps, hoped his penchant for older women might translate to keeping one into her dotage. He could ask any of them, and they would titter or smile knowingly and point him to someone clean and reputable. He knew that. What he didn't know was why the idea should make his face and neck burn with shame.

"I don't need a whore, I have you," he declared with a sweeping motion to De la Cruz and a belated realization of how that phrasing sounded. "For instruction."

If this entire exchange could go worse, Gust could not fathom how.

Sighing, cup yet in hand, he settled back against the chaise once more. "How do you know?" he asked, and shifted his gaze from the steaming liquid back to the other man. "How can you tell? If another man is..." He cleared his throat. "Interested."

Augustus Kinkade was a little puzzle, and Rafael was generally not the type to spend overmuch time on brainteasers. That wasn't to say Gust was a poor sport, or not worth the time. There was also plenty that Rafael already knew about him: He was a patron of the arts, a seemingly kind enough soul, and for all the many verbal missteps, he didn't seem to be a usually poor-spoken man. If anything, he had made efforts to remain polite even in his drunkenness, and that alone spoke to his favor. But whatever it was – and privately, Rafael thought it was likely far more to do with an unspoken who than a what – that made him so hesitant and confused fully eluded the playwright.

The defense of his desires again caused an eyebrow to be raised, but Rafael allowed him to explain. It left the playwright quite amused. Something of a picture was beginning to form itself; not just of who this young man was, in truth, but perhaps at least part of the cause of his hesitations and his inability to voice them.

"Then I shall be your whore professor," he teased, obviously taking no offense to anything the lord had said so far. The matter of flirtation among men, though, did put a slight crease between Rafael's brows as he considered. "It can be difficult, and dangerous." There was no grandiosity to his voice; no theatricality, merely the statement of fact. A rarity, whether or not Gust would be aware of it. "Imagine that you wished to flirt with the most well-guarded and jealously protected debutantes of the ton. Not only must you fool the eyes of her family and chaperones, but you must try to ascertain if her words are a double entendre, or earnest. Such is the nature of gauging another man's interest, at least when it is a stranger."

It was easier for Rafael, in many ways; he was already considered eccentric by many, could couch his sodomite proclivities in the theatrics and acceptable hedonism he already partook in. For a proper English lord, there was likewise some protection to be offered by his good name and income, at least. "A look may linger over-long, or he might smile at you warmly, or perhaps he touches you often." Again the good nature returned, along with his grin. "Perhaps you have seen such signs in the past and never thought twice of them, hm?"

The coffee was good; better even than what Gust's staff brewed in his own home, after he'd insisted upon their leaning properly. His eyes fell closed as he listened, the cup held against his bottom lip when he wasn't sipping so that he could bask in the dark, nutty scent of the curling steam.

"I know how to flirt," he allowed, and slowly opened his eyes again to stare at De la Cruz through the haze wafting up from his coffee. "I've flirted with men. I only meant—" He sighed, his brow pinching as his headache made itself more sharply known. "I suppose it was too much to hope that there be some code, or signal."

Lowering the cup, Gust rubbed between his eyes with the pad of his thumb. "Truthfully, I've no idea what I mean about any of it. I'll either partake or I won't." One only had to look back at his track record, unspooling over too many years, to know he likely would. It was simply a matter of how long the timeline might span.

With a drop of his hand, Gust steadied the cup against the top of his thigh and let his head loll against the back of the chaise again as he watched the older man. "You've the patience of a saint, mate."

The revelation drew Rafael's eyebrows up once again. Once more Gust had proven that the issue really was not what he asked about; nor what he hesitated about; nor this that or another reasonable thing to be concerned about. There was no moral quandary here, no pontification about right and wrong and whether God found sex particularly reprehensible when it was between men. There hadn't even been a question of the anatomical mechanics of it.

Whatever it was that had the lord caught up – and now Rafael was more certain than ever it was a who that had Gust all tangled about himself – it was clearly something that could only be undone by the man himself.

"My lord, if you've flirted with men and had your flirtations returned, clearly you do not need some code or signal." The words were a bit too pointed, and the playwright was quick to shrug and continue, smooth it over with a smile. "Just so." Besides, the man was nobility. The rules were not the same for him, and pointing that much out had always been a risky proposition, as far as Rafael's experience had taught him.

Likewise with the commendation of his patience. On one hand, yes; the playwright was compassionate for those he considered his friends. On the other hand, what else did the man expect? He was a viscount, playing guest to an orphan sodomite. Rafael could not eject him or treat him too harshly, even if that had been his inclination. But he smiled, waved the compliment off. "It is the least I can do, my lord." There was little else that needed to be said, though, and so he continued, "If there is nothing else I can help you with today, I would be pleased to arrange for your discreet return home. After you've finished your breakfast, of course."