Disclaimer: You know the drill. None of the cool stuff is mine, just the dodginess and the crap writing.
Further disclaimer: I know it's badly OOC. You don't need to tell me.
Rating: PG-13 for snogging and bad language.
A/N: Don't worry. Despite what this looks like, it is not a K/N fic. Or a K/C fic. It is SLASH!!!!!! Two boys having hot, sweaty fun together! All PG, of course. ;) Don't read if you expect to be offended.
* * *
Neal sat on his narrow bed, feeling decidedly peculiar. The oddest
sort of tingly, hollow feeling kept coming over him whenever he looked
at his friend Kel these days. His friend Kel. Neal mentally
cuffed himself around the head. It didn't do to start having Feelings
for your friends. It only led to trouble. Look at Joren and
Garvey. Besides, he never saw Kel but that she was arm-in-arm with
Cleon. Huh - why couldn't they follow the axiom to keep friendship
out of the bedroom… or was that beds out of friendship? Neal's thoughts
snarled, tripping up his train of thought. He rubbed his head.
Tangled metaphors, confused sayings, these weird new emotions - he must
be collecting some mental bruises the equal of any he'd got sparring today.
What was this feeling anyway, this inexplicable feeling? - Hey, that's a good line! - Neal scribbled something in his poetry scroll-book. Could he call it - love?
But he'd thought he'd been in love with Daine, with Uline, with Christabel, with Amalie, with Thalia, with… Anyway, the point was that what he felt for Kel was nothing like what he'd felt for those girls, goddesses all -
Here he broke off in a pleasant fog of imagination composed of silky dark hair, peachy skin, big limpid eyes, soft lips, gorgeously rounded….
Stop it! This is no way to introspect!
Oh, but the girls, their…
No! Introspection now, lust later!
Maybe that was the point. He'd never lusted after Kel, never looked at her that way - she was his friend, his fellow page and squire - but maybe he was in love with her.
* * *
"Cleon, no! I will NOT get engaged to you!"
"Kel, pearl, I just want to be sure of you before you graduate. You'll be out of the capital even more next year - so will I - we won't see each other as much - I just don't want to lose you. We don't have to get married yet, if you're worrying, not yet anyway…" He trailed off at the look on his sometime lover's face.
"What part of 'no' do you not understand? I don't want to get engaged. Engaged is serious. Not that I don't like you, I do, just…" Kel spread her hands helplessly.
"Yeah. I know. You're not ready, seventeen's too young to think about getting engaged, etcetera. I'm going to the mess hall." Cleon scowled and strode off.
Kel winced, but really, what could she do? Cleon was so convinced he was in love with her. The flowery compliments and sweet nothings in her ear late at night were coming thick and fast, he wanted to talk to their parents about arranging a marriage…He seemed to have some idea of them as the perfect couple out of some romantic ballad. Maybe he'd been spending too much time with Neal. But the perfect couple, whatever else, were at least meant to be in love, and Cleon might be in love, or he might not, but Kel definitely wasn't. Cleon was nice, yeah, and fun, and sweet, and all the proper things for a hopeful swain to be, and Kel had no complaints with the bed part of their friendship, none whatsoever, but love?!?! Not with him, not yet, maybe not ever. Kel plomped down on the edge of her bed and rubbed her temples.
There was a knock on the door.
Kel yanked it open. "Cleon, what - "
She blinked. Not Cleon, but Neal was standing there, brandishing a bunch of flowers like a shield and sporting an expression that managed to be equal parts hopeful, expectant of martyrdom, and idiotic.
Dammit! I thought he'd get round to me eventually - after working through all the girls in the palace, Kel thought with a carefully concealed wry grin, but why did it have to be now? Come to think of it, why couldn't he have decided he fancied me four years ago, when it would have made my week?
"Um…I've just come to say…Kel, I know you love Cleon, but I'm in love with you! Do you think you could ever return my feelings?" The second half came out in a rush as Neal blushed furiously.
Twenty-two. One would think, would one not, that Neal should have acquired some skill at talking to women by now?
"Neal, dear. Sit down." Kel kept her voice gentle. Boys who thought they were in love, like older sisters, had to be treated carefully. "You're not in love with me. You just think you are." She held up a hand as he tried to speak. "We're friends, but we'd never make a couple. You need a girl who can share your..err…delicacy of emotion," - was there a tactful way to say sentimental idiocy? - "not a clod like me."
"You're not a clod!" Neal burst out, determinedly. Kel let it pass.
"Besides, if you're in love with me, why are you only wearing your second-best hose? I know your wardrobe, remember?"
There was so much Neal wanted to say - I am too in love with you, my best hose are in the wash - but before he knew it he was propelled, kindly but firmly, out the door, which shut after him with a click that somehow exuded finality.
* * *
Kel waited until she heard Neal's dejected footsteps turn the corner,
then slipped out of her room. The trouble with your own room was
that people knew where to find you. She trod swiftly down the corridors
to the kitched, snagged a couple of apples, and trotted over to the stables.
Neal and Cleon wouldn't looke for her here - Neal was still wary of Peachblossom
after the catankerous horse had taken a mouthful of Neal's breeches, then
threatened, perfectly clear even without Daine or Stefan to translate,
to take something more, let's say, valuable to Neal. Cleon,
for his part, had heard the story. Kel snickered.
Peachblossom seemed to divine what she was thinking. Just because you lot are too stupid to speak horse, his ears and stance said, doesn't mean I'm too stupid to make myself understood. Now give me that apple. Kel complied.
"Yes, your horseship."
"Didn't know you talked to horses," came a voice from the hayloft. Owen was sprawled there, reading a book and munching his way through his own store of fruit.
"Heh. I don't have wild magic or anything, you know that, but Peachblossom - he just has a way of making things clear."
"Don't we know that." Owen, too, had heard the story.
Peachblossom snorted, pointedly.
"Oh, of course. My apologies. I was being selfish." Owen tossed down an apple, which Kel caught deftly and offered to the horse. "So, you've nothing to do this fine afternoon either?"
"My honoured knight-master is getting riotously drunk with his old friends. I have today free, to do the same if I wish. Seems like there's too much leisure around here, actually." Kel muttered darkly.
"Oh?"
"Cleon wants to marry me, and Neal turned up on my doorstep vowing undying love. Don't they have anything useful to do?"
"Sounds jolly!" Owen laughed outright. He had lost none of his sense of fun in the six years Kel had known him.
"Thanks. No, I know what you mean. I don't mind a bit of fun, but why people have to get all serious about it is beyond me. And Neal's just an idiot. It's funnier when it's some other girl."
"Fun's good." Owen murmured.
"You're not propositioning me now, are you? You'd better not, because - " Still, Kel thought, Owen wasn't the sort to spoil a good thing by smothering it with plans and good intentions. He was easy-going. Nice. Good company. Interesting. Fun, in a word. Today is really turning my life upside down and shaking! "You know, you're bored, I'm bored and harassed - we should get out of the palace. Take a camping trip. Our knight-masters won't want us, and we can tell everyone we're looking for spidrens or something."
"Are you propositioning me, my lady Mindelan?"
"I might be."
* * *
Neal didn't want to answer his door.
"Go away, whoever you are."
The door opened, anyway, and Cleon came in, with a bottle of wine and a lugubrious expression.
"Oh. It's you."
"Kel and I had a fight. I think she's finished with me."
"Fights happen. Not necessarily anything final," Neal put in laconically.
"But now she's gone spidren-hunting with Owen."
"So?"
"We'd been sent spidren-hunting when we got together. Found a couple, killed them…spent the next couple of days doing what we liked…"
"Oh."
"So I thought you could watch me get drunk."
"Enough for two? I made an idiot of myself before, telling Kel how I felt - sorry, I know you two are, were, whatever, but I couldn't keep my fool mouth shut."
"Did she yell?"
"Worse. She was oh-so gentle and reasonable." Neal shuddered delicately. "Pass the bottle." He spluttered. "What is this stuff!"
"Maple mead from home. You get used to it." But Neal was already eagerly taking another swig.
Most of a bottle later…
"You know Kel?"
Cleon nodded carefully.
"She doesh- " Neal tried again. "She doesn't desh- desh- desh- " He gave up. "Desherve you. She doeshn't know a good thing when, when, when - "
"When she sees it?" Cleon offered.
"Yeah, that. Coz I know ev'ryone likesh her, but you're real sexy and ev'rything."
"Thank you." Cleon acknowledged solemnly. Trying to bow, he fell off the chair. Neal hauled him up to sit beside him on the bed. "You're real sexy too. She should like you."
"No, she should like you!"
Neither quite knew how it happened, but the next moment they were kissing. A little later, they broke apart.
"I like girls, you know." But Neal didn't take his hand from the laces of Cleon's shirt.
"So do I. But I like you too." Cleon's hands twined in Neal's hair.
Kissing Cleon had a remarkably sobering effect, Neal reflected - or at least it replaced one kind of intoxication with another.
"And people shouldn't sleep with their friends. It only leads to trouble," he protested half-heartedly.
"Mmmm. But isn't it nice?"
FINIS