Page 79 of Heart of Winter
Birger shrugged shoulders that were still strong and sturdy, despite the gray of his hair and beard. “Then you’ll have to prove them wrong, I suppose.”
“But – why? Why does it matter at all what they think of me?”
Birger’s gaze was unreadable – and Magnus and Lars, when he glanced at them in turn, looked almost…encouraging. Magnus grinned.
Erik resurfaced with a deep exhale, and the surface of the pool rippled in expanding rings as he pushed his now-wet hair off his face, wiped his eyes, and reached for the bottle. He poured a generous dollop of white cream into his palm, worked his hands together until he had a good lather, and then set to washing his hair. It left his arms bunching wonderfully, and his chest on full display, something as mundane as bathing causing his muscles to dance and play.
“Well?” he asked, fingers scrubbing along his scalp, blue gaze trained on Oliver.
“I…” Oliver’s hands knotted together beneath the water, wanting to reach out, to touch. “I’ll attend if you want me to. If you think it’s wise.”
Erik nodded, seeming satisfied, and worked the lather all the way to the very ends of his long hair.
Something hit the water with a sharpplunkin front of Oliver’s face; a cake of soap, he realized, as it landed in his lap.
“Don’t be stingy with that, now,” Magnus said, cheerfully. “Revna did say to get properly clean.”
Erik chuckled, the sound low and rumbling as it echoed off the stone, and then dipped under the water again.
Oliver rolled his eyes, blushing unhelpfully, and set to washing. The others did the same.
~*~
Erik shared his countrymen’s unselfconscious disregard for nudity. Like Birger, Magnus, and Lars, he stood to soap himself all over, and, once he was sitting, lifted his feet up out of the water to soap between his toes. It was terribly cute.
But, unlike Birger, Magnus, and Lars, watching Erik do any of this left Oliver’s face overheated. He studiously avoided looking at the king as he washed himself – without standing up out of the water, because he wasn’t at all ready to flaunt his much-slimmer physique – nor risk giving away how interested he was in Erik’s.
“Gods,” Magnus finally groaned, head falling back against the lip of the pool. “Are we having a soak, or is the council meeting in fact happening right now?”
Birger, in the midst of listing off the gossip that had arrived with the palace’s visitors, cut of mid-sentence and sent Magnus an unimpressed look. “Bit cheeky for a guard, aren’t we?”
“I’m off duty,” Magnus said, chuckling, and flicked water droplets off his fingertips at the advisor. “You might try it sometime, Birger. Maybe your hair wouldn’t have gone gray so early if you’d learned to have a little fun now and then.”
Oliver gaped at him. In Drakewell, other guards would have already been hauling him out of the pool and clapping him in irons.
But here, Birger harrumphed.
A wet cloth splatted against the side of Magnus’s face, and as he came up spluttering – Lars laughing at him – Oliver saw that it was Erik who’d thrown it. He was grinning.
“You shit,” Erik said, laughing. “Get it out of your system now, before tomorrow morning.” He turned his head, noted Oliver’s no-doubt stunned look, and said, “These two idiots are on duty with me tomorrow.”
“All day,” Magnus said, sitting up and peeling the wet cloth from his face. He threw it back at Erik.
Who caught it without looking, and tossed it over his shoulder to land on the stone with a splat, gaze fastened on Oliver’s the whole time. “As you can see, I’m regretting the rota.”
“Magnus,” Birger said, “this is the sort of thing that makes Southerners call us barbarians.”
“Actually,” Oliver said, finally tearing his gaze from Erik’s, “I was just thinking that it’s – that it’s nice that things aren’t so formal here. That there’s not just duty, but…friendship, too.”
“Aye.” Magnus jerked a thumb in Erik’s direction. “We go way back with this one.”
“Magnus never could sit still during lessons,” Erik said, fondly. “Our tutor used to get the switch after him.”
“And I’ve got the scar to prove it. Look!” He stood to show them, and got booed and splashed by all of them. “He maimed me! He really did!”
Oliver laughed – laughed until his sides ached, and his throat burned, and he was – he washappy. In a way he’d never expected, and in a way he didn’t think he’d ever been. No one in this pool was more important than the man next to him. King, advisor, guardsmen, bastard – it felt instead like friends sitting around and harassing one another.
He’d never been a part of anything like that.
