And then Ix stumbled, seemingly over nothing, and Eric swooped in, ducking himself under Ix’s arm the way and took the brunt of his weight with a grunt. “Stop walking around. There’s something seriously wrong with you, get back into bed.”
“I need to go see the mirror. See where I went wrong. Getting back into bed isn’t going to fix it,” said Ix.
He was right, but Eric didn’t have to like it. “Fine. Can you at least put clothes on? And walk slower, I can’t keep up with you like this.”
“All right, nurse,” said Ix with some amusement. Eric deposited him into an armchair and went to his wardrobe, refusing to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of clothing some poor servant had no doubt managed to fit into there and pulling out the first items he could find: shirt, breeches, waistcoat, there, that would do. No, wait, he needed an overcoat too given his abnormal swings in temperature right now, no doubt the healer mages would want him to stay warm. Eric turned around with his arms full of clothes to find that Ix had peeled off his nightshirt off, and froze.
Eric knew, immediately, that his reaction had given him away. No matter how much he managed to recover, walk forward and pass Ix the clothes while making a normal amount of eye contact, he couldn’t hide the instant bloom of red across his cheeks and neck. Blast his mother’s delicate skin.
Usually, Ix did him the honor of pretending not to notice but this time, he caught and held Eric’s gaze. Grinned and waggled his eyebrows. Eric turned away hastily, willing the heat to dissipate from his cheeks. It wasn’t as if he made a habit of watching men as they got dressed, but being in Ix’s bedroom where he never went made the silence hang so thickly in the air that he wanted to throw himself into the fireplace.
“Would you tie the laces?” asked Ix in what would have been a perfectly polite, neutral tone from anyone else, except Ix didn’t do polite or neutral. He brushed his long hair over one shoulder and waited with one eyebrow arched for Eric to come to him.
“Yeah, I – yeah,” said Eric. It was his own fault for plucking out a shirt that laced in the back, he hadn’t even taken any notice. Ix was taller than him, so he had to reach up to tighten the laces up to the nape of his neck. He moved some straystrands of hair out of the way without thinking, the side of his hand brushing the soft skin of Ix’s neck, and Ix hummed a sound that Eric’s mind helpfully described as a ‘seductive rumble’.
“Sorry,” said Eric.
“By all means, carry on,” Ixthan drawled.
Now Eric understood what Petra’s friends meant when they talked about just needing to lie down and fan themselves off for a moment. Even though Ix was the one who had just undergone some kind of magical trauma, somehow Eric was the one acting strange. He was all too aware he should stop reacting to Ix’s shenanigans, but he couldn’t seem to stop making a fool of himself.
Thankfully, there was only so long lacing up a shirt could take, and Eric exhaled as soon as he was done. “There.”
Ix let his hair fall, a curtain of it brushing against Eric’s hand when he was too slow to draw back. It was always well-kept and thick, the envy of half the ladies at court, but Eric hadn’t known it could feel so luxurious against his skin. And now he knew. He already craved the touch of it again. He bit his lip, hard, the burst of pain clearing his head. Ix was sick, he needed to get himself under control.
Eric took a steadying breath, and plastered a smile onto his face. Better.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TWO OFthem, Eric and Ixthan, made their way to the study with no further mishap – aside from Ix’s ungainly walk – mostly because Eric refused to open his mouth and let himself stick his foot in it again.
The healers had left, though Eric couldn’t tell if they’d taken anything with them. The room was a wreck from the magical whirlwind, with cushions and papers flung across the room, decorations spilled across the floor. Someone had righted the ink pot and tried to stem the spill but left the ink-smeared handkerchief on the desk. The rug where Ix had fallen over was still damp from the melted ice, squishing unpleasantly under Eric’s boots until he skirted it.
Ixthan didn’t seem much enamored by his human feet as he picked his way across the floor until he was in front of the mirror. Eric tensed. He had no idea what he could possibly do if something went wrong again, but he could at least be on the look out for it. But nothing happened, no flash of movement within the mirror or strange temperatures.
As Ix reached out to touch one of the symbols, he stopped before his fingers made contact. “Who meddled with it?”
“Could have been the healer mages. I left one of them in here.”
“You let them in my study?” Ix snapped at him.
The most bizarre thing happened. Eric felt it like a crack in his chest, realized what was about to happen mere seconds before it did and by then it was too late to stop himself: his eyes welled up and he started to cry. He didn’t even know why. And from the astonished look on Ix’s face, he didn’t know why either.
Eric wasn’t afraid of Ix, had never been even when Ix had been learning magic when they were children and kept exploding things. Ix hadn’t even shouted at him. But it was just everything, all at once. He hadn’t even had a chance to tell Ix about the execution, and he’d collapsed, and then Ix had changed; and of all days, Ix had chosen today to acknowledge Eric’s feelings, which he’d been doing so well in keeping under control and —
“Of course I let them in!” shouted Eric as the first tears leaked over, blurring his vision. “And if you had told someone too, they might have been able to do something when you collapsed! Maybe no one has told you this yet but when I found you, you were frozen. See this wet patch on the rug? You were exuding ice. I thought you were dead. Your father was at your bedside for hours! I had no idea if you were going to wake back up! If I’d known any information that was capable of healing you, I would have turned over your entire study to find it!”
It was like vomit. Once Eric had expelled it all from his body, he felt better. Still shaking, he turned to face the wall, because he didn’t want to look at Ix right now and he had no idea what his face was doing. He could feel the hot tears that had leaked down his face. Even if he was the prince’s oldest friend, there was no situation in which it was acceptable for him to shout at royalty. A stupid solution perhaps, but Eric didn’t have it in him to deal more maturely with this right now.
“Eric.”
Eric didn’t answer, couldn’t answer since his throat had closed up. He hadn’t cried at his father’s execution, why in the gods’ names was he crying now?
“Eric,” said Ixthan again, and this time it was from right next to him. An arm, heavy and insisting, wound around his shoulders and pulled him away from the wall. Eric refused to lift his face but Ix was stronger, wrestling him around and then yanking him forward so that Eric’s face was pressed against his shoulder. A hug, crushingly strong and just painful enough that it squeezed the air out from his lungs. “Eric, I’m sorry about your father.”
Exhaling everything in one great shaky breath, Eric let himself slump into Ix and cry it out. Ix’s arms wound tight around his back, his smell flooded Eric’s nose, and Eric clung back for dear life.
Sometime later, they ended up in Ix’s bed. It didn’t mean anything in particular, but somewhere between the uncontrollable sobbing that got more awkward the longer it went on and the way Ix had started swaying on his unfamiliar feet, Ix had hauled them both back to bed. There was plenty of space for the two grown men, they could have spread out easily, but they’d silently ended up pressed together in the center.
