Elf Defence (Adventures in Aguillon #2) - Lisa Henry Page 0,43
The cheering and the songs and the celebration? It was the icing on the cake.
There was none of that in Tournel. While everyone seemed happy to know that mountain trolls wouldn’t be flattening the town again any time soon, they just smiled and went about their business, and fed Calarian lots of gingerbread that Benji invariably pickpocketed from him anyway. But the oddest thing was, Calarian didn’t miss the fuss. At all. He was far too busy helping Lars learn how to rule to worry about nonsense like that. Also, he doubted there was a parade in the world that could compete with sharing a bed with Lars and Benji every night. And as many times during the day as they could get away with without startling the servants.
Calarian felt that he’d discovered something even better than acclaim: the L-word. And, strangely, he didn’t mean lederhosen. It was a new and cautious feeling, and Calarian wasn’t entirely sure how to process it let alone express it, but he thought he saw it reflected in Lars’s open smiles and Benji’s trepidation.
Maybe the real quest was the friends he made along the way?
No, that actually sounded like the sort of bullshit he’d expect from one of Scott’s plays. (He was quietly glad that funding for the Callier Travelling Players’ Company that Scott had started and now toured with hadn’t extended as far as sending them to Tournel—he could only imagine the teasing they’d get from Gretchen if she ever saw that particular theatrical disaster.)
Whatever the case, Calarian savoured the next few days of contemplation, good food, and vigorous dicking. He also liked spending time wandering the narrow streets of Tournel, meeting people and discovering that Tournel was, weirdly, almost perfect. All of Duke Klaus’s social welfare programs might have been borne out of his lifetime of irresponsibly siring bastard children, but it worked.
“Paternalism,” Benji muttered one afternoon as they wandered the streets. He had a gingerbread horse in one hand and a pretzel in the other. “Benevolent dictators.” His expression darkened. “Colonialism.”
“Stop looking for things to hate and eat your pretzel,” Calarian said.
“Aha!” Benji exclaimed. “Gluten intolerance!”
“You’re not gluten intolerant though,” Calarian said. “You’re just generally intolerant. And you’re on your fourth pretzel this morning.”
Benji rubbed his stomach sadly. “I know. And now I’m too full for the rest of this gingerbread.”
“Good. You can share.” Calarian leaned over and bit off the horse’s head.
Benji snatched the horse away. “There are limits to sharing!” he gasped, outraged.
“Isn’t your whole manifesto about the redistribution of society’s resources to all and sundry without favour?” Calarian asked, enjoying getting to tease Benji enormously.
“Yes,” Benji said. “But this gingerbread is mine!”
Calarian rolled his eyes, but there was no rancour behind it. “That’s the exact opposite of sharing.”
Benji shrugged, and tossed his hair over his shoulder. “We’re already sharing Lars. The least you can do is get your own fucking gingerbread.”
“Fair. I’ll go see Hannah later. She’s working on a new recipe.”
“Oooh.” But Benji seemed distracted. He chewed his lower lip for a moment. “Is it weird that we’re sharing Lars and that he’s sharing us? Like, we share. That’s what elves do. Food, clothes, beds, everything. But what’s going on with Lars, well, that’s not what elves do, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” Calarian agreed cautiously. Because yes, they were sharing, but there was nothing casual about it. Nothing light and friendly. Not when every time Benji and Lars kissed, Calarian wanted to be kissing them both too. It was a strange, heavy feeling. It wasn’t jealousy, but Calarian suspected it came from the same place: his heart. Benji and Lars mattered, in ways that nobody had mattered to him before. Calarian loved them, and not in the happy, friendly way that elves were supposed to love their friends. He loved them like a secret he wanted to keep. He held Benji’s gaze. “What’s going on with the two of us isn’t what elves do either, right?”
Benji chewed his lip again. “It’s not, no. But I like it.”
“I like it too,” Calarian said.
Benji smiled, ducking his head, and reached out to brush the backs of their hands together. Their knuckles bumped. Then he grinned and said, brightly, “Well, social constructs are all bullshit anyway, aren’t they? For humans and elves.”
“We should burn them all down,” Calarian agreed, his heart beating faster at Benji’s unaccustomed display of bashfulness. It was new, and he liked it a lot.
Benji’s smile broadened, and he snapped his gingerbread horse in two and passed