Seven Levels Below

XXXI

Mitch was surprised that he'd never been in the palace gardens before. They were gorgeous, and massive. All enclosed within the walls of the palace, but open to the sun, the garden was overflowing with basically any plant that Mitch could think of. There were trees dotted all around the park—because it was easily as big as any park Mitch could recall visiting during high school field trips—and paths cut through the boxes and soil plots and flowerbeds. Birds flew between the trees and chirped along to the song of a gentle afternoon breeze. Scott seemed especially fond of the flowerbeds, and kept pointing out all the different types of flowers and regailing Mitch with stories of a young Scott terrorizing his sisters' attempts to grow bouquets. Mitch made a mental note to look into flower tattoos sometime later and try to talk Scott into getting a matching one.

They passed Avi, watering some tomato plants growing in a boxed plot, with a wave. Mitch felt ridiculously giddy to be holding hands with Scott in front of someone else. Down in the under-city, all of Mitch's past relationships had been publicly acceptable, but now that he'd spent so much time in the palace worrying about Scott being safe and happy, he was just overjoyed that Scott was ready for the little display of affection. It was only Avi who could really see them, but still. Mitch was so proud.

Scott had sat them down on a bench as they watched the birds and Avi across the garden, still clutching Mitch's hand and rubbing his thumb over Mitch's fingers. He was halfway through a story about the time he, as a child, had discovered that bees could sting the grubby fingers of a curious little prince when he froze with his mouth hanging slightly open.

Mitch's first thought was that Scott had realized he was holding hands with Mitch in front of someone, but when he hesitantly went to move his hand away, Scott just gripped his hand tighter. Mitch trying to take his hand back seemed to remind Scott that he was there too, because he lifted his other hand to point across the garden.

"Is that..." Mitch's jaw dropped to match Scott's.

Avi seemed to notice the sudden silence and odd behavior of the two even from several plots down, and Mitch watched him turn to see what Scott was pointing at. "Oh, I call him Charles. He likes to pop in every now and then and chase some of the birds around."

Mitch turned his wide eyes to Avi. "He comes here often?"

Avi shrugged before returning to his plants. "He does what he wants. I tried to give him some milk once, but he turned into a grumpy little dude so I've pretty much left him alone since."

Mitch turned his eyes back to the cat licking its paw under the shade of an orange tree and started to laugh.

"I think I should be more surprised," Scott released his hand to pat on his lap and try to call Wyatt over. "But seriously? If any cat was gonna be able to casually rotate between chasing birds in a palace garden to chilling on the windowsill of an apartment seven levels below, it would be him."

Mitch reached down to run his hand down Wyatt's back as the cat twisted himself between Mitch's legs. The cat didn't seem very interested in them though, because after a brief relocation to Scott's lap, he jumped back down and strutted his way behind some bushes and out of sight.

Mitch wormed his hand back into Scott's as they sat in a stunned silence for a few moments. Scott turned his head to gaze down at Mitch, and slowly lifted their rejoined hands. Mitch felt a giddy bubble rise in his chest as Scott pressed the back of Mitch's hand to his lips. He knew his expression was about as gooey and starstruck as the one on Scott's face, but he couldn't really make himself care about how stupid and cheesy they looked. Mitch pressed his own kiss to the back of Scott's hand and watched as Scott's smile stretched even farther across his face.