Judal surveys what could loosely be termed his work. It's an ingenious plan about forty minutes in the making, give or take a few, and the majority of the time was spent waiting for the Eighth Imperial Princess to take off her clothes.
It's half court expectation and half her own foolish insistence on modest femininity, he's sure, but sometimes it seems like she wears enough fabric to swaddle a bear and enough trinkets to fill a dungeon hall. And now…
And now she is wearing very little.
She says nothing, but there's no need for words to sense all that discomfort. Girl's never shown an elbow, he's pretty sure, let alone her slender little tummy. When she shifts from foot to foot, the gold beads on her jingle, and he sees the very second she realizes she's dressed like a harem girl—she stiffens up something fierce. Kougyoku does not quite think things through.
Belly dancing had probably sounded like splendid fun at the time, just that well-loved kind of fun she can't have when Ka Kobun is hovering around. Judal took care of that earlier; her convoy is too easy to bait and trick, and Kougyoku pretends to believe it when he tells her Ka Kobun is taking the day off.
He decides he's had enough time to enjoy that awkwardness when she opens her mouth to speak—he jerks a thumb at the door behind him, wearing that best behavior smile that everyone always eats up. "Relax, it's closed, locked. It's just me, geez. Didn't you say you wanted to learn?" He watches her as she shuffles towards a mirror, eyes wide—he can see her butt, not bad—as she examines herself, holding her hands to her face out of habit. There aren't any big cumbersome sleeves there now, just bangles filched from the far-off lands of his travels. He's too amused to be impatient with her ensuing silence, amused and strangely, distracted—
"Well… yes, but I didn't think I'd have to dress like a common harlot," she grinds out, and Judal vaguely remembers something about Kougyoku and harlots, something, something, so he quickly responds.
"You don't look like a harlot, idiot, you look like a dancer. You're seriously embarrassed?" He takes a step forward as she swerves on her heel, glowering right at him, leaning up in his very airspace.
"It's shameful!" There's that fierceness, some fire; yes, to raise her voice like that at him, she really could take on a dungeon. If she could get angry about more things than her bullshit modesty complex, he thinks sourly.
"Aah, so you really are a haggish woman," he says, tone edged with disappointment. "You said it looked fun."
"Not for a princess." Now she's pouting, pouting and crossing her arms over herself, and he stifles some laughter but self-control has never been his strong suit. She is even redder, red like peaches, apples, fruits she's never seen yet, things he thought to bring back once or twice before discarding the idea.
"Kougyoku, since when have you ever let that stop you? Quit kidding. You know what else you said?"
She shrinks in a bit on herself, redder, redder still, knowing full well-
"You said," he clears his throat, and launches into a piss poor Kougyoku imitation—all clasped hands and high-pitched wittering, a faux-dreamy sigh. "'Oh my, if I could entertain my husband like that…'" He bats his eyelashes at her—spots a clenched fist throbbing at her side.
"Judal…!"
He rubs at his eyes when he laughs again, and she crosses her arms, turning one beautiful hip to him as she pointedly looks at a wall. "My husband would have no such vulgar expectations of me," she says, indignant—he can see red on her ears too, oh, she must know that saying something like that is beyond stupidity. Her naïveté makes him sick to his stomach sometimes, but now he's in too good a mood to tear at her romanticism.
"If not of you, he'll go to some whore," he snorts, because it's still just easy banter, and (un)surprisingly, it is that prospect that makes her reconsider. Her shoulders slump, she settles her palm on the heat of her cheek and sighs that same sigh he tried to imitate moments ago. No one does it better than Kougyoku.
"Then… yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes!" Her arms are still folded across her chest, but at least she's facing him again—still embarrassed and fed up with the game. "Show me, then!"
"How imperious," he drawls, flashes teasing tongue at her while she fumes, then straightens up with his hands firm on his hips. "It is really easy, though, you'll like it." He smiles at her sidelong, and she does everything but return the gesture. She just stares at him hard, as he cracks his fingers and raises his hands up into place, beaming in spite of her disapproval.
"For a brute, you're very graceful," she observes in a more neutral tone of voice, finally, and Judal can feel her eyes on him as she slowly eases into the idea of looseness. Court is all restrictions and rules, and it takes Kougyoku longer than he'd like to forget them, sometimes. But now he's got her attention. And usually, that's all it takes.
Hands held still and curled above his head, he begins to circle his hips—that's easy enough. Kougyoku's rapt on it, fascinated by the idea of a boy dancing like a whore, no doubt. And perhaps by the fact that Judal looks good swaying so lewdly.
"You can manage that much, can't you?" he asks her after a few moments, and again he sees her freeze up.
Beats tick by, and, "Where did you learn to do that?" is the thing that Kougyoku chooses to say, with genuine curiosity by the looks of it. She's still flushed in the face.
"Whores, where else," he says flippantly, and she covers her face at this point, head lowered as she cries out at him.
"What makes you think I want to hear about that!"
"You asked? Hey, hey, calm down, granny."
"I'm fourteen, you pig-headed jerk!"
Fists again. He decides to defuse the situation, drifting over to her and clapping a hand on her bare shoulder. She flinches. Oddly, not out of fear or annoyance.
She has literally never had a man touch her bare shoulder before.
The thought makes him want to start laughing. This whole thing is stupid. Judal learned to dance like a harem girl when they brought him some at thirteen- their theoretical purpose got way boring way fast, he thinks. But he liked the way they moved. And he liked the way they dressed. And his sense of shame has been decidedly defunct since he was born. Its absence is what allows him to take his hands down, down, down to rest peaceably on her waist—skin so soft.
"If you are, you really shouldn't have trouble dancing. Lots of girls do it. I do it. It's fun, Kougyoku," he says enthusiastically, "Show me, come on."
"Your hands are cold," she grumbles, but he can feel some tension slipping, and finally, movement, however small at first. She's no dancer—she's a fighter, and not everyone can be both. Her motion's halting. It comes out in uncertain jerks and only worsens with her frustration. He can't see her face from behind, but knows she must be all bothered for embarrassment, and that's hilarious.
"Are you seriously trying?" he asks incredulously and squeezes at her belly. It was meant to be something of a playful gesture, but his hands remain, fingers splayed over her stomach. So small, really small, not just soft but slim too.
"Is that really necessary?" She asks hotly, unable to jerk away with just the force of visceral aversion when he's holding her like that—he's holding her more firmly than he meant to, he supposes, but he doesn't let up. Can't now.
"Mmn." Is what he says. "I'm helping."
She's halfway through an incensed no when he claps his hands at the very top of her hips, over the strings of colorful beads and the nigh-transparent pink fabric constituting her skirt. And with a gentleness he wasn't aware he had, he guides her hip: left, right, left, working up a steady rhythm.
He has an excuse, but these are not quite hollow touches.
"It's that easy?" Kougyoku says, turning her head up, moving with him. She seems pleased, on the cusp of delight. And not at all caught up in whatever is shaking at the peripherals of Judal's head.
"It's that easy. He'll really like that," he says, and it comes out sharper than he intended it to.
"Who?"
"Your fantasy husband, idiot." He swallows thickly. "…Maybe a little faster, most music in the west is much faster." But he quickens in gradual steps, until the beads on her skirt are rustling and jumping, and her sweet sashaying is almost as natural as the way her dainty little fingers pick up a blade. She puts more energy into it, too, well-encouraged and hardly tentative any longer. He gives variety when variety is called for, back and forth and side to side, in varying tempos and in circles and in lines.
Then Judal's doing nothing but holding his hands over her body as if they're fixed there, but she's too occupied to notice that in the midst of her first dance. She must like the way the beads rustle and ring now, he thinks. He eyes the back of her pale neck, the necklace shifting there, and he lets his sights trail south—down the line of her spine, and her scandalous shoulders, pronounced shoulder blades for one so well-fed, to the small of her back, and down and down to the sway of her waist, to the subtle curve of her hips. To hold them is a prelude to melting. To watch them makes his thoughts haze even further.
He doesn't like it. But to look away would be some severe degree of worse.
He hasn't felt this way about a woman—can Kougyoku even be called that?—since—since—
It happens. He feels it shift in his pants. It's hard, annoying, it sets in a stark panic with that swell of warmth, as if someone let heat magic loose in his groin and to burn holes in the pit of his gut. He rips away from her, eyes wide for a second—it's not shameful, but to let her know would be more than unwise and frankly, a little terrifying, whatever it means. He's not of the opinion that such a physical response warrants any emotion other than want, but want itself is a novel issue. Judal wants for nothing.
Moreover, it's annoying, so annoying, these stupid things—Kougyoku looks at him for a moment, and Judal is almost angry except that it was his idea but how the hell was he supposed to know—
"Wh—"
"Things to do!" he shouts, not looking at her, looking like an idiot; walking's out of the question so he calls to the rukh (it's pink, some of it's pink, and it's his, and the shrill of alarm shuffles his headstuffs again.) Gravity magic is close to second nature now—he floats to the one window, ripping the curtain aside in a frantic rush of speed only comparable to times when he's giving chase, not running away.
"Wait, Judal—what about my clothes—Judal? Judal! You moron!"
-0-0-0-
Later she brings him a peach when he settles in a tree. He looks at it, it takes a second to realize it's a peace offering. As if she did something wrong. As if she values this one patchwork friendship enough to swallow her pride like that. As if she thinks she can wheedle companionship out of him like that.
She doesn't apologize, but she says, "We're friends, right?"
He bites deep into the peach, chews, and spits—makes a retching noise. "As if I'm friends with someone like you."
It's rather convincing, he thinks.