Archive of Our Own ^beta

Elihal made his way up the back stairs with his arms so full of velvet he could barely see the step in front of him. He was alert for the hazards of such an endeavor, and so managed not to trip over the drunk dh’oine boy hunched in the landing at the end of one of the hallways, but he wasn’t going to be able to get past him easily without putting down the bundle of fabric.

There were always drunks about. While this hadn’t been a brothel for over a year now, assignations still sometimes happened here, so possibly the boy was a prostitute? But he wasn’t dressed as a prostitute, or an actor.

He’d noticed Elihal’s slow approach and looked up, slightly slow to respond-- either alcohol or pipeweed, Elihal judged, with an experienced eye. Certainly not fisstech, or he’d be in a much different state than this bleary lassitude.

“Ah,” he said, “excuse me,” and folded up his long legs, scrambling to his feet. He was in his shirtsleeves, and those rolled up, and as he stood Elihal could see that the skin just above and inside the elbow on one side was all reddened. He put that together with the gesture he hadn’t been able to parse as he approached, and realized the boy had been engaged in pinching himself, quite viciously, in a spot where it would hurt but wouldn’t show.

“I say,” Elihal said, “pretty little dh’oine boy, why are you hurting yourself?”

The boy’s eyes were very blue and his expression startled. “Oh,” he said, “I’m all right. May I help you with your burden?”

Elihal had spoken in Common, but the boy answered him in very good Hen Llinge. Impressed, Elihal raised a brow. “It’s not so heavy,” he said, but the boy had his hands out and was gathering up the loose ends of it, and, well. Fine. He let the boy take the other end of the longer garments. “All right, all right. We’re just going up one more floor, these are theatre costumes and we’ll be doing the fittings up in the blue suite tomorrow.”

“Very fine work,” the boy said admiringly, taking most of the weight. “Who made these?”

“I did, child,” Elihal said, amused. “I’m the best tailor in Novigrad. It’s the only reason I survived the purges.”

The boy gave him a thoughtful look; he’d taken the position to go backward up the stairs, which was daring given his state, but upon reflection he probably wasn’t drunk after all. His pupils were a little wide; he likely had smoked some of the terrible pipeweed Jaskier kept lying around-- yes, a faint hint of that distinctive scent wafted off the boy as he moved, but he was steady enough.

“I might have heard of you,” he said.

“Many have,” Elihal said. “Ah, down this hall.”

The boy helped him get the armload of clothing into the blue room, and laid it out on the bed with the other costumes already there. “Thank you for the help,” Elihal said, sizing the boy up now that he was standing, not obscured by the bulk of the fabric. He was young, with a youthful rawboned quality to him that suggested he’d fill out with maturity. As he was clad only in a shirt, on top, and riding trousers below, with riding boots, it was easy enough to make out the breadth of his shoulders, the well-muscled heft of his legs and backside. He was quite lovely, and very obviously spent most of his life horseback. His legs were even a little bowed, attractively but undeniably so. He had a long, oval face and a strong nose that was balanced by a proportional chin and high cheekbones, and a few delicate moles decorated a face that would look a great deal better with the Nilfgaardian-fashion eyeliner it probably normally bore.

“Of course, of course,” the boy said. “Sorry for blocking the way!”

His accent in Hen Llinge was very, very good, with a touch of the coast; he’d been taught by other dh’oine but he’d practiced with someone old. Elihal had a suspicion, but needed more information. “Will you be in town long enough to see the show open?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” the boy said, and then something in his vague glance sharpened. “I’m not local,” he said, but with an air that suggested he knew why Elihal had directed the conversation this direction.

“I thought not,” Elihal said softly, raising an eyebrow. “Now, with your coloring, you should avoid wearing black, but I have a suspicion you normally wear a lot of it.”

“Astute,” the boy said.

“You’re not absent without leave, are you?” Elihal said. He picked up the topmost of the garments and shook it out, then refolded it and laid it out on the bed.

The boy gave him an appraising look. “You think I’m military?”

“I know you are,” Elihal said, smiling faintly. “Firstly everyone young of your people who comes up here is, secondly no one who isn’t cavalry would walk like you.”

The boy made a wry face. “It’s that distinctive, is it,” he said. He stepped in and started to help Elihal arrange the garments, doing a surprisingly good job of folding them the same way he was.

“Yes,” Elihal said. “Now, are they going to come in here making a fuss looking for you, or are you meant to be undercover?”

“The city is rotten with our spies,” the boy said, “I’d be an idiot to come here without leave. No, I’m here legitimately, but it’s good I wasn’t trying to be a spy or you’d have turned me in.”

“To whom,” Elihal laughed. “Whom would I ever tell? Do I look like I have anything at all to do with the city watch?”

“That’s not who I’d worry about, were I here undercover,” the boy said. “The Watch has a perfectly reasonable arrangement with the Black Ones. It’s the Redanian Intelligence I’d be afraid of.”

“It’s even less love I’d have for Redania than for your kind,” Elihal said. He narrowed his eyes. “You know too much not to be a spy.”

“I’m off-duty,” the boy said, “and, genuinely, am not a spy. As you said, I’m clearly a cavalryman.”

“You certainly are off-duty,” Elihal said, eyeing the boy’s loose sleeves. “Did Buttercup give you some of that terrible pipeweed he keeps around here, or did you bring some of your own?” He used the Hen Llinge name for the flower Jaskier used as his alias, and the boy looked blank for a moment.

“Oh,” he said, “only a little, but. Yes. I’ve left half my clothing behind. And my friends. I should get back.”

“Why were you pinching yourself in the hallway?” Elihal asked, moving with him toward the door now that the costumes were arranged neatly enough not to get wrinkled overnight.

The boy blushed a little, though he didn’t cringe or flinch-- only his complexion gave him away. “I wasn’t--” he said, but broke off. “It’s not-- sometimes one finds oneself in a situation from which one must excuse oneself for a moment and then do whatever it takes to compose oneself.”

“Compose,” Elihal said. There was something so fragile in the boy’s expression. “Did someone hurt you?” The boy wasn’t dressed like a sex worker, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t one, even if he was also in the Nilfgaardian cavalry. People found their way into that profession in all sorts of ways.

“No,” the boy said, quickly, shaking his head. “No, I was just-- rather too worked-up.”

Elihal paused. They were most of the way back to the stairs, and the boy stopped, looking back at him, as he came to a stop in the hallway. He really was a terribly beautiful boy, in an undergrown kind of way, all potential and… there was an old Gnomish art, of repairing broken things and appreciating the art form of their imperfection, that this boy’s damaged vulnerable courage brought to mind, so foreign to the Aen Seidhe aesthetic but something Elihal had learned to appreciate over the years, in passing. Elihal stepped slowly a little closer, and lowered his voice. “If you’re in a situation you can’t endure,” he murmured, “there are people who can help.”

The boy blinked at him, truly baffled. Likely, then, he wasn’t doing sex work; that wasn’t a subtle sort of offer. “No, I’m off-duty,” he said, perplexity warring with something softer in his face. “That’s-- truly kind of you to offer, though I’m not entirely sure I understand. I think the intention behind it is clear, though.”

“It’s almost a year since this place was officially a brothel,” Elihal said frankly, “but it sees a bit of use for that sort of thing still anyway. There are certain risks that go along with that sort of occupation. You’re a lovely young thing and you helped me, I’d hate to see you hurt.”

The boy stared at him, eyes gone a bit round. He was quite stoned, Elihal could tell, but he bore up under it startlingly well, for all that this was taking him a moment. He really, really was quite pretty. Elihal didn’t fuck men, not human ones, but he could see, briefly, from this angle, why people did.

“Thank you for your concern,” the boy said, sounding genuinely moved. “That is-- oh, no, that is really lovely of you. No, I’m-- it was-- a conversation with friends, I really am off-duty.” He laughed, a little confusedly. “Though I must-- to go from being identified as a cavalryman to being identified as a prostitute within a minute of conversation-- are there a lot of cavalrymen you meet, who occupy their free time supplementing their income this way?”

Elihal considered that. “Historically, not uncommon,” he said, “though I admit I have not specifically noted a large number of Nilfgaardian cavalrymen moonlighting in the brothels. It’s just, you know, when you look like you look, there’s the opportunity to earn a little on the side for something that’s fun anyway.” He tilted his head. “And then sometimes suddenly it’s not so fun, and there’s no safe way to extricate oneself. This is the sort of situation I’ve had to involve myself in before.”

The boy stared at him for a very long moment, visibly moved. “That’s,” he said, then he laughed bitterly. “There isn’t anyone who could help me, were that truly the case, but my problem is awkwardly the opposite of that.”

Elihal laughed, his huff of amusement more surprised and less bitter than the boy’s. “I cannot begin to imagine what on earth would be the opposite of sex work.”

The boy’s face went through a distinct series of expressions, as he reacted to that, began to consider how to explain himself, and then very transparently remembered he was talking to a stranger.

“It’s all right,” Elihal said kindly. He walked a little farther, then sat down on the edge of the landing. “I’m not really a stranger. I’m the auntie of all the not-whores in this not-brothel. And maybe that’s not officially the work you’re doing here, but you found something you could relate to in that. Tell me, and I’ll never tell anyone. You helped me, you get a kind ear for free, this once.”

“It’s not,” the boy said, pained, but he sat down on the next step, knees tipping in self-consciously. He really did have bowed legs, like he’d spent too long in the saddle too young. He was so tall, so well-built, he’d obviously been well-fed, it wasn’t rickets. It was just horsemanship. Probably the bones in his shoulders were warped from weapons training too. Born and bred for war, like a lot of upper-caste Nilfgaardians of his generation. “It’s not like that. I don’t need-- help.”

“Also,” Elihal said, “I admit that now I’m fascinated by the concept of inverse sex work. Your job depends on chastity?”

“It really does,” the boy said, a little wonderingly.

“I cannot begin to guess,” Elihal said.

“It’s fairly simple,” the boy said. He sighed. “I should know better, but I am under the influence and still rather too worked-up to be sensible, so I’ll explain.” He hunched in even more miserably, hooking an arm over his knee to then gesture. “Ooh where to start.” He held up one finger, and gestured at it with his other hand. “I am a person who… occupies a position where I… know a lot of things. There is an important lady,” and he held up one finger on his other hand, then gestured to it. “She is also in an important position. She has to choose a husband. I am on the possible list, there, but if I am not chosen, I will have to vacate my position, and--” He tilted his head, smiling bitterly. “I know too much. I can’t go. So if she,” and he moved the hand he’d used to represent the lady, “chooses someone else, I,” and he moved the first hand, “have to die. So it’s literally my survival that’s at stake.”

“That’s-- all right, that’s high-stakes sex work,” Elihal said, “that’s not the opposite of sex work.”

“Ah!” the boy said, gesturing with the himself hand. “One more complication. This powerful lady,” and he gestured with the lady hand, “has tentatively reached an arrangement with me,” and he gestured with the himself hand again. “Because she,” lady hand, “is of a certain… proclivity, and she has a particular also-lady friend, with whom she wants to spend her time.”

“Oh,” Elihal said. “Well, then, but, you just don’t fuck her, how hard is that?”

The boy gestured. “Well, and that’s the crowning hilarity of the whole thing,” he said. “I have-- for various reasons, I had come to believe that I was not a person who experienced sexual desire at all. This is-- it was hard for me to come to terms with that but I did manage to find some relevant writings, and I learned that this is-- not unknown. Some people just don’t… incline that way, or any way really, and that’s fine. It’s a perfectly healthy way to be.”

“That’s true,” Elihal said, impressed; dh’oine, in his experience, didn’t tend to be clever about this sort of thing. “It’s called being asexual, it’s quite common among Aen Seidhe.”

The boy’s Hen Llinge was beautifully fluent, but he clearly had never heard the word before, which he would have if he’d really learned the language from Aen Seidhe. No, he’d been taught by dh’oine. Fluent ones, but dh’oine. The boy tilted his head, eyebrows pinching together, as he considered that. “Well,” he said. “It seemed perfectly convenient, yes? She has no need of me, therefore my lack of interest is no obstacle?”

“It does seem convenient,” Elihal conceded. “So what’s gone wrong?”

“Well,” the boy said. He sighed, twisting his hands together. “They’re-- that’s who I was with. The two of them, the lady and her companion. I like them both, genuinely. And they were— well they were also smoking, with me, and I think it made them a bit… ahh… uninhibited. So they were…uh.”

He went so red that he didn’t have to find the words for it for Elihal to know what they had been doing. “Oh,” he said, sympathetic. “So, you’re jealous.”

“No,” the boy said, mild, frowning. “No, it’s not that at all. I had worried I might be, actually, but I haven’t-- that’s never been it. I liked it when they were together, it made me feel safe, at first. You know? I’ve been frightened for years of how I was ever going to-- there aren’t a lot of choices, for men of my station, how to be in life, and if you can’t get a wife, or keep one once you have her, then your choices grow much smaller.” He pulled his shoulders in even narrower, feet turned in childishly.

“There are ways out,” Elihal said delicately. “Other ways to live, to be.”

“I know too much,” the boy said, quiet and sad, eyes downcast. He glanced up. His eyelashes were pale, but long and full. He’d be a stunner in eye makeup, Elihal thought as he looked away. “There’s nowhere I could vanish to.” He gestured with one hand. “Nor would I want to. It was perfect, I was happy.”

“But…” Elihal said. “I’m stumped, I can’t guess the punchline.”

“The more I know them, the more I like them,” the boy said. “The more I like them-- well.”

“Oh,” Elihal said, realizing it suddenly. “Demisexual.”

The boy frowned, and shook his head slightly.

“Same root word,” Elihal said. “A-sexual, means not-sexual. Demi-sexual, means somewhat-sexual. Sexual inclination is often a kind of… cycle, for Aen Seidhe, changing over our lifetimes, fluctuating back and forth. Some of us never stray far, some of us change a lot. But it’s called demisexual when you don’t feel desire except for people you’re… already intimate with.”

The boy stared at him in dismay. “That’s,” he said. His expression was tragic. “That’s a-- that’s a thing?”

Elihal was suddenly flooded with sympathy, the poor child looked so upset. He reached over and touched the boy’s knee, patting it gently. “Don’t be afraid of it,” he said. “It’s natural, and sometimes it can come and go, and sometimes it’s just how you are forever, it’s really just a part of being alive.”

“I was hoping it was a fluke,” the boy said. “Maybe it is a fluke. Maybe it’s just the stupid pipeweed. I don’t normally…react, like that, to much of anything, or anyone.”

Elihal let his breath out slowly. “Maybe it is,” he said gently, knowing it would be clear he was only saying that to be polite. He tightened his thumb and forefinger at the top of the boy’s knee, just below the thigh, and shook his leg gently. “And what’s the harm in it.”

“Well I can’t--” the boy said, growing slightly agitated, but then he stopped, and let his breath out, sagging back into himself. “It’s-- I have to break off the arrangement. I made it under false pretenses. I said I wasn’t-- didn’t--” He gestured, a small helpless motion of one hand. “That was the deal!”

Elihal let go of the boy’s knee, then patted it with his open hand. “It doesn’t have to change anything,” he said. “You don’t have to act on it. You just have to be honest about it.”

The boy looked miserable, pulling his knees up and leaning on them, rubbing at his face in evident despair. “I do, I have to be honest immediately,” he said. “They’ll think I was lying to them, to lure them in--” He put his arms down on his knees and his head down on his arms. “I have to break things off. I can’t-- I couldn’t bear it if she thought I’d lied to her.”

“You just said it’s your life at stake,” Elihal said mildly, revising his estimate of the poor child’s age downward slightly.

“It is,” the boy said, muffled. “Fuck. I’d rather die than hurt either of them but we’ve been over that.”

Elihal thought back to his own last demi phase-- for him, it did move in phases, long cycles, he thought. He was still too young himself to know for sure, and it was hard to separate from life events, but he was starting to see the pattern to it, never the same way twice but sometimes rhyming with a previous state of being. For a while there he’d had to be pretty deeply invested in someone before he could even remotely find them attractive; he’d really thought it was an entirely asexual phase and it well might have been, but for that one dear friend. “Dear sweet child,” he said, “if they don’t like you at all, why do you like them so much?”

The boy tipped his head just enough to regard him with one eye. “You’d like them too, if you knew them,” he said hollowly. “It’s impossible not to.”

“Not if they were cruel to you,” Elihal said. “Assuming you were lying about something this difficult to understand would be cruel of them.”

“They’re not cruel,” the boy protested. He dragged himself upright. “Ugh, I must sound like a whining little child to you.”

“These problems are easier to understand, with experience, but they don’t ever go away,” Elihal said.

There was a footstep on the stair, and in a moment a girl leaned around the curve of the stairwell, peering up at them. “Morvran?” She was light-haired, and pretty, long-limbed and willowy, and had clearly dressed in a hurry, missing several layers of clothing and the ones she had on not entirely fastened.

The boy stared at her, his gaze immediately going starry-eyed. Oh, this was absolutely the lady he was in love with, there was no question. “Ciri,” he said, as if she’d done something incredible beyond just belatedly coming to look for him in a stairwell.

“Where’d you go?” she asked. “We thought you’d be right back and then you were gone for ages!”

“I got distracted,” the boy said. “I was talking. I’m sorry!” In Common he did have a discernible Nilfgaardian accent.

“No, no,” the girl said, “as long as you’re all right! I was only worried, that’s all.” She craned her neck a little farther, catching sight of Elihal. “Oh, hello! Well, I’ll leave you to it, I just-- you left so suddenly, and then you were gone, but if you’re all right I won’t worry.”

“You should get back to your friends,” Elihal said in Hen Llinge, amused. “I think it’ll turn out fine.”

From the way the girl looked from him to the boy, she also spoke the language, or understood it. He was glad he hadn’t said anything more revealing, but then, he’d half-expected this. Though the girl didn’t sound Nilfgaardian.

There were the edges of a great story here, but he had seen enough edges of enough stories that he didn’t feel the need to pry any further. The boy got up, gave him a polite southern courtesy and farewell, and hopped down the stairs after the girl. The girl waited, and reached out to take his hand as he reached the last step, her eyes moving appreciatively across him and her smile soft. No, she was not at all going to be disappointed by this lovely young man confessing he did desire her sexually after all, not for a moment.

“Va fail,” the girl called up the stairwell cheerfully, as she tugged the boy out of sight down the hallway.