The Unwritten King

21. Tip the Hand

Nicholas hadn't thought this through.

Well, he had. For several minutes. When all was said and done, and they had caught their breath, Rayan had coaxed Nicholas to stop slumping on his lap and instead slump against the pillows. Rayan stood without announcing where he was going, and Nicholas got his first full view of the room now that his tunnel vision had eased up. It tunneled all over again when he noticed the upright piano against the far wall, shiny mahogany with silver pedals.

He was already scheming when Rayan returned. The king's shirt was buttoned back up but still crumpled and half-untucked. Preoccupied as he was with his strategizing, Nicholas didn't react when Rayan offered him a damp cloth. Rayan had taken the brunt of the mess, anyway. He huffed and half-knelt on the bed to wipe at Nicholas' chin. Nicholas tempered his tone into something unconcerned, cucumber cool:

"Will you play something?"

Rayan followed his gaze. "I thought we were trying to be quick."

"And I read quicker with music. Just one song. It can play on a loop."

Apparently Nicholas had been calculating the wrong odds, because Rayan didn't put up much of a fight.

He should have been worrying about himself.

The figurine of the singing woman sat on the piano's lid. Nicholas watched from behind, against a corner wall to Rayan's right. Best seat in the house, objectively: he could see Rayan's knee bobbing with every pass over the pedals, and his shoulders rolling relative to the song's intensity, and his hands flying over the keys, and half of his face.

Subjectively, Rayan's legs were ridiculously long even bent ninety degrees, and his shoulders were already broad before he stretched for those high notes, and his fingers were long and thin and pale. Because of course he took the gloves off to play. Nicholas had not thought this through.

He fidgeted with his own gloves to keep his hands from doing anything stupid, like reaching out.

Like the songs that had come before, this one was gritty and blunt, grave in a galvanic way. Rayan alternated between opening and closing his eyes as he played. His mouth tightened as the song peaked, enough to show in his jaw. His expression didn't shift a whole lot otherwise; Nicholas could have predicted as much. But it would be wrong to call him an expressionless player. Nicholas watched Rayan's face least of all, engrossed with the way his fingers danced, arrogant, over the high notes, and leaned dramatically into the low. Rayan's back curled as the song grew violent, hands like crashing waves. The fever broke on his left side first; his right took longer on the come down. There was dissonance. It worked. Then it eased, and his chin tipped up, and his shoulders rolled with a slow tide. And then it was over.

Rayan spoke the charm to seal the recording, sino dakira. Nicholas approached from behind, feeling unsteady, so that Rayan had to tilt his head back to see his reaction. Rayan didn't get very long to look. Nicholas held his face and leaned down to kiss him. It was short-lived but far from shallow. Rayan made a noise of surprise that petered into something pleased.

"Upside down?" he asked. Nicholas straightened, finally grounded.

"I've always wanted to do that." He was very impressed with how he sounded. Like he hadn't spent all eight minutes of that song feeling like he was hanging upside down for real. "Like Spider-Man."

Rayan gave a deeply confused frown but didn't bother to ask. He turned around on the bench, replacing his gloves so swiftly that Nicholas didn't notice until those hands were on him, gliding up from his knees to his hips. Nicholas allowed himself to be guided between Rayan's legs; to be lured back in by a seeking, rather bossy raised eyebrow; to be kissed slow and dirty, dangerously close to the bed they'd just soiled.