Chapter 177 - 175: Intterupting Something.

Chapter 177: Chapter 175: Intterupting Something.

Mid performance, the foreign Captain wipes a streak of sweat off his chin with the hem of his shirt, and from the way his gleaming eyes turn their way as the lines of his bared body catch the red fire light, Khobi would be an idiot to think it was anything other than deliberate.

​He wets his lips, throat dry.

​He’s just eaten, but he suddenly feels hungry.

​"I need another drink."

​Montrel looks at the tankard in front of Khobi, still three-quarters full.

​"Do you, now?" he teases, and Khobi sets his jaw and downs the entire thing.

A few drops drip down his chin and he wipes it away with the back of his hand.

​"Yeah," he states plainly, getting to his feet. The world wobbles a little bit more than he was expecting, and it takes him a moment to steady himself.

"I do." A couple of the other soldiers let out low whistles.

​"At least let him buy you a drink first!"

Rogard chirps, although it’s a little less spirited than it might usually have been.

Khobi doesn’t notice. He does, however, shoulder him for the implication.

Some of his drink sloshes up and over the side of his mug and down his front.

Not much, but enough to make him squawk, "Khobi, this shirt was expensive!"

​It’s a lot harder than he thought it would be, extracting himself from their table.

Even if his body wasn’t feeling sluggish from the ale, they’re big men, the bunch of them, and the benches are packed tight.

He elbows Montrel twice on his way out, and not even completely intentionally. He’s almost there, when his boot gets caught on something and his table erupts in cackles as he goes tumbling face first into the grass.

​Thankfully, the rest of the crowd is big enough and loud enough, and enough people are already making fools of themselves that it goes largely unnoticed.

​"Nnggghhh," Khobi groans, head spinning as he rolls over onto his back.

It takes a second for his vision to straighten up again, but when it does, he’s treated to the night sky at full brilliance, clear and cloudless and flecked with stars.

Stray embers glint on threads of smoke as they trail off into the night, bright little pulses of red against midnight blue.

​It’s dumb, but he laughs. Without really knowing why, it just claws its way out of his belly.

Maybe because the others are laughing and it feels so right to join in, or maybe just because he’s drunk and he’s fallen and he knows innately that he looked so, so dumb.

​It makes the other soldiers roar even louder.

​A shadow appears over him, and hand extends to him from just beyond the firelight. Instinctively, Khobi reaches for it, and the grip that takes his hand is strong, and warm, and has no problem hauling him back to his feet.

Turned right way up all too suddenly, he lurches precariously straight into the body in front of him as his brain tries to catch up.

​"Hey, thanks," he begins to say, grin lopsided, expecting to come face to face with one of his drinking companions.

Maybe even someone else, if he was lucky. But then his vision snaps into place, and the grin falters.

​The eyes he locks with are familiar, and blue.

​And far too close.

​So close he can see the black pupils in them shrink, and before his eyes they blow open, all but swallowing up the blue.

​Khobi’s breath catches in his throat.

​Off balance and caught off guard, the tip of his nose brushes against warm, dark skin.

Those blue eyes dip --smouldering --towards his mouth, and the thick heat that’s been building in Khobi’s gut –fuelled by ale and coy looks through the smoke –sends out a low pulse within him that sparks an intense, hot wave of something heady and primal.

​His breath shouldn’t hitch in his throat the way it does, but in that instant it’s beyond his control.

​The fingers clasping his hand shift, ghosting up the length of his bare forearm, touch so light it’s barely even there, and yet somehow so tantalising that it’s a goddamn miracle he doesn’t fucking moan.

​The laughter behind him abruptly dies, and Khobi snaps back to his senses like he’s been doused in freezing water.

​A beat too slow, he snatches his hand back, the ice cold realisation of just who the fuck this is forcibly extinguishing whatever dangerous heat had begun to boil over.

Despite the permeating heat of the fires, he somehow feels colder the instant he turns his back.

​Loac doesn’t seem to take offence. In fact, he seems completely unaffected, which makes Khobi wonder –pray –that the last few seconds have been all in his head.

​If only he couldn’t still feel the paths his fingertips traced up his arm.

Maybe it’s just been too long since someone touched him like that, because as much as tries to deny it, it felt good.

Too good, for how little it was, even.

So good that he can’t help but wonder, in a flash of madness, just what it might feel like to feel those same fingertips on chest or on his lips.

​Mortified, he immediately pushes the thought down, as far as it will go, and when he snaps back to reality, the atmosphere in their little part of the night has turned decidedly frosty.

The soldiers aren’t smiling anymore, and while most of them aren’t armed, they certainly look on edge.

​Loac just blinks at them, like he has only just realised he’s interrupted something.

​"Don’t stop on my account," he drawls idly, heavy gaze swinging from soldier to soldier.

It looks like it gets Montrel’s hackles up just a bit more than usual. "Just passing through."

​" –Whatever you say, Loac," Montrel grinds out, tensing as Loac takes a step closer, hooking an arm around Khobi’s shoulder as he reaches for the drink sitting in front of Montrel.

​"Y’know Khobi, I had a good time the other night," Loac tells him, more to the crook of his neck than his ear as the sudden weight makes him stagger, and in the thick vibration of his voice, Khobi can almost feel him smirking. "...We should do it again sometime."

​He can feel those blue eyes boring into the side of his face, but suddenly doesn’t trust himself to look, not tonight, even if he’s regained his senses and managed to wrest back control from his burgeoning libido.