Work Text:
The Raffle
It began with a letter on fancy stationery affixed to his dormitory room door, and from the start Jamil knew nothing good was to come of it.
In his experience, letters like this meant something good only on two occasions; he’d already received his acceptance letter to NRC, and it wasn’t his birthday, so it wasn’t either of those. And when he took it down, it was on Octavinelle stationery, making it much, much worse.
“You got a letter? Lemme go see if I got one!” Kalim tore off down the hallway without waiting for a reply. While he was gone Jamil read over the contents of the letter with increasing annoyance.
“I didn’t get anything!” Kalim had returned. “What’s yours say?”
“It’s a bunch of nonsense.”
“A bunch of nonsense?”
“It’s some ruse,” Jamil said sourly.
“It—does it say that?”
Jamil sighed. “Of course it doesn’t. That’s what it is, though – some stupid ruse.”
Kalim’s brow furrowed. “What’s it actually say?”
“It says,” Jamil told him, moving the paper out of Kalim’s reach, “that I apparently won a raffle.”
“Wow, you won a raffle? Hey! You won! What raffle did you enter?”
“I didn’t enter a raffle,” Jamil answered icily. “Obviously I did not enter a raffle.” He said the word raffle like a curse each time. A horrifying prospect crossed his mind. “Did you enter me into a raffle?”
“No,” Kalim said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure not. I don’t think I did. Are you sure you didn’t—"
“I didn’t enter any raffle,” Jamil hissed back. “I most certainly would not have entered a raffle for a free meal. And I most most certainly would not have entered a raffle for anything to do with Mostro Lounge, or any part of Octavinelle.”
“Raffle is kind of a funny word,” Kalim said, mostly to himself. “Raffle.” He chuckled.
“And so now I suppose—” Jamil opened the door to his room just long enough to change out one bag for another and pull a hooded sweatshirt over his head—“—I’m going to have to go there.”
“You’re going to go eat a meal at the Mostro Lounge?” Kalim was incredulous.
“I am obviously not,” Jamil snapped. “I am going to go down there and ask Azul Ashengrotto what exactly he’s up to and why he thought it would be a good idea to send me—this—this of all things in the first place.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Kalim.
“Now. Do you need anything before I go? Should I—”
“Everything’s great here.” If you didn’t know Kalim, from the way he smiled, you would have thought you could believe it.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Jamil left for the Mostro Lounge.
--
“Why, Jamil,” Azul said, by way of greeting. He sat alone at a table, making notes in a large book; it didn’t appear that anyone else was there, certainly no customers, which had to be one bad sign in a night overwhelmingly likely to be full of them. In front of each place setting were empty glasses for wine and water, and to Azul’s right on the bench seating was a large white bag.
“What a delight to see you here,” he continued grandly, “but I’m afraid that we are closed for regular business tonight. We’re hosting a—”
“Stop the bullshit, Ashengrotto,” Jamil snarled. “You know exactly why I’m here.”
Azul’s back arched against the padded bench.
“Jamil,” he said, drawing out the vowels slightly – he seemed to love saying Jamil’s name; he said it constantly – “I wouldn’t know—”
Jamil thrust the letter in his face. “Apparently, I won a raffle.”
“Oh, goodness, you’re the raffle winner! My, what a coincidence.”
Jamil’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you up to?”
“It’s just as it says – we had a—”
“No,” Jamil snarled. “I’m serious, get to the point. Whatever stupid bullshit this is, tell me what it is so I can put an end to it. I’ve got a bunch of crap to do.”
A studied, dramatic pause. “My, Jamil, have I really done anything to merit such an aggressive tone?”
“Let’s take your stupid premise as a given,” Jamil pushed forward impatiently, “So apparently I have won a raffle—” –he said the word no less hatefully than before—“A raffle I don’t remember entering, and actually, in point of fact, am completely positive I did not enter.”
Azul, smiling, swept his hand over the open ledger as if something written there just happened to prove it. “That’s what my books say.”
Jamil pressed his hand, hard, against his forehead, digging the fingertips in, right at the spot where headaches related to stupidity like this tended to start. “And what exactly did I win, in this supposed raffle?”
Azul’s smile grew wider. He waved his hand around the empty restaurant. “A special dinner here. Tonight. Entirely on the house, and made by me.”
Jamil knew that Azul heard his flat reply of simply no, but he kept on talking.
“An omakase situation. You can sit back and relax and I’ll bring out a series of—”
This time Jamil took care to be significantly louder: “I’m not interested.”
He could see the wheels turning in Azul’s head; what meticulously collected piece of information was he supposed to use? What words were most likely to stop Jamil from turning around and leaving? But abruptly Azul’s open mouth closed, and his eyes went wide with what Jamil could only call stark horror, and before Jamil could ask what it was he saw what it was exactly.
He’d been wrong, apparently, about the restaurant being empty; Jade and Floyd Leech had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, standing side by side at the table as if ready to take their orders.
“Hello, Jade, Floyd,” Azul said, a distinct edge to his voice. “It’s—interesting that the two of you are still here.”
“We’re right on the threshold of going,” Jade replied politely. He nodded at Jamil; his brother wagged his head vaguely in the same direction.
“They’ll be leaving immediately,” Azul emphasized toward Jamil, giving himself more credit than he deserved for hiding his annoyance.
“We will be leaving immediately,” Jade echoed, smiling with his eyes either closed or so close to it Jamil couldn’t tell the difference. “Just a few final checks, and once we’re satisfied everything is set up correctly, we’ll be gone.”
“I’ve checked everything myself.”
Now that Jamil had resigned himself to an interminable evening of wasted time, even he could see the humor in watching Azul struggling, almost literally squirming, trying to readjust his equilibrium and keep up his composure against his dormmates.
Azul’s one hand gripped the other desperately. He turned toward the brothers, more toward Jade than Floyd.
“Really,” he said, “you can go now. Feel free to go.”
“That’s the plan, I assure you,” Jade replied. “Just the final final checks. And then, of course, we’ll be on our way.”
“You won’t even notice we’re here,” Floyd leered.
“I’ve checked everything multiple times. There’s nothing else to—please consider everything checked off the list. One hundred percent finished.” Azul was no longer trying to hide his annoyance.
“Excellent,” Jade said smoothly. “So all we’ll have to do is our own set of checks, and then we’ll be leaving. Immediately, of course.”
Neither Jade nor Floyd moved from where they stood; Azul quit strangling his one hand with the other and moved one of them between his eyes, rubbing just above the bridge of his glasses. Apparently, Jamil noted, Azul got a headache when annoyed as well.
“Thank you.” Azul had given up. “Just--thank you so much, Jade, Floyd.” He bore his gaze through Jade, turned to Floyd for a moment, and then settled back on Jade. Everyone was smiling, save Jamil of course -- Jade’s eyes still closed, Floyd’s mouth mostly open, Azul's face contorting subtly like he was trying to politely work his way through a mouthful of something sour. Finally Azul shut his ledger, just this short of a slam, and pushed it into Jade’s hands, saying:
“Take this back to the office and lock it up for me on your way out.”
“Very well. We’ll be gone before you know it.” Jade made a small step backward but still did not leave.
Azul started to say something else, but swallowed his words with great difficulty. “I’ll leave you two to it, then,” he compromised, beseeching, behind clenched teeth.
Eventually the Leech brothers left, though in Jamil’s experience they never really went away in any real sense; they just receded to the shadows until they found something new to do.
--
“Fine,” Azul said. Both of them knew he didn’t mean it, but he said it. “Fine. You don’t have to eat anything. Will you drink a glass of wine with me, at least?”
Jamil snorted. “Definitely not.”
“Why?”
“I thought you knew everything about my whole life,” Jamil said. “If you did, you’d know I prefer to make my own food. I’ve always been that way. I’ve had some bad experiences with things being put into my food, or getting into my…” He trailed off. Why give Ashengrotto, of all people, information he didn’t already have? “I just prefer to make it myself.”
“What’s that got to do with a glass of wine?” Azul asked.
“It goes for that too,” Jamil replied, exasperated at several different things, most of all himself for still being there.
“I’d cork it in front of you,” Azul said primly. “In case that means anything.”
Jamil had to restrain the urge to roll his eyes. He’d had wine a few times; it was not a particular taboo in his household, and if he’d have wanted it enough there was always some in the kitchen used in recipes. He’d never been much of a fan of it.
There’d been exactly one time he’d ever had wine he liked, sneaked after a party many years ago. He’d been so surprised he still remembered what the label looked like, so exceptional it had been to him after a lifetime of hating how wine tasted – so it was especially ridiculous for Azul to think he was going to convince him of anything with some glass of wine.
But Jamil’s surprise back then was nothing in comparison to his response when Azul reached into the bag sitting next to him. Even before he showed him what it was Jamil knew what it would be – its dusky color, the squatness of the bottom of the brushed-glass bottle – somehow he knew with absolute certainty. But that knowledge did not lessen the jolt he felt when Azul turned it over with a flourish and thrust it in front of him.
“What—how—” He was beside himself. “I was fourteen years old!”
Azul clearly hadn't been expecting that response. “What?”
“I was fourteen years old,” Jamil said again, his voice sharper and louder than he meant it to be, “when I tried that wine. The one type of wine I ever liked.”
Azul spread his hands. “Oh that,” he said, feigning a casual tone and failing at it miserably. “I had an opportunity to acquire a small collection of Scalding Sands wine and liquors a while back. I remembered you saying you liked that particular one.”
Jamil’s eyes were wide. In a much lower voice he said, insistently, “I certainly did not tell you that.”
Azul put a hand up to hide the hugeness of his smile. It was a genuine triumph for him, and Jamil could see every iota of his enjoyment of it. “Oh,” he cooed, “you must have. Sometime when we were chatting.”
He made a big show of corking the bottle, demonstrating its unadulterated nature, then held it over Jamil’s glass delicately, so as not to stain his gloves. “One glass?” Jamil was still so stunned he couldn’t think of anything to say, and with Azul silence was assent.
Once his glass was full, Jamil swore not to touch it, but his fingers itched toward the wine if with nothing but tortuous curiosity. “Nobody knows that story,” he said, partially to Azul, partially to distract himself from the temptation to drink.
“Perhaps you told Kalim,” Azul offered kindly. He himself drank from his glass frequently. “You’re missing out on something quite exquisite. It’s rare to see wine that pairs such delicate sweetness with such a brief residence on the palate. It truly is a study in—"
“Kalim would not know exactly which wine it was,” Jamil mumbled over him, talking mostly to himself. “He would not have remembered enough to tell you what the bottle looked like.”
“Jamil,” Azul said grandly, “a fundamental concept of business is that all information is available; it’s just a matter of whether its cost-to-benefit ratio merits the expenditure.”
“It’s impossible you knew that,” Jamil said again.
“High-priced is not unavailable,” Azul lectured. He was already pouring himself another glass. “Goodness. I usually avoid wine, such empty calories without nutritional benefit, but this is just divine. Are you sure you won’t at least try it?”
“It’s creepy.” Jamil couldn’t stop himself.
Azul took it in stride, chuckling. “Your creepy is my top-tier information brokerage, I’m afraid.”
Watching him pour the wine wore down Jamil more than he already was. With each sip Azul took the temptation grew until it was almost unbearable and Jamil finally gave in, internally cursing himself; he picked up his glass and sipped once, carefully.
He wanted it to have been a matter of a stupid memory, distorted and aggrandized by time and now utterly laughable. It would have been great if the stuff had tasted terrible to his current, more experienced palate. If Jamil had hated the wine, laughed at himself for wanting it, insulted it and belittled Azul's considerable trouble to acquire such a foolish thing and left on that note, it would have knocked Azul off his game entirely. He probably would have left him alone for a few days, and certainly Jamil could have gotten back to the dorm faster, allowed to take advantage of the precious few hours each day he got to call his own.
But of course – Jamil’s luck, every time – it was not. The wine was everything he had remembered and more. Azul had described it well – most sweet wines he’d had were thick and dry, but this was just the opposite, the sweetness more honey than sugar, just a tickle of it on his tongue, then gone and leaving you yearning for more. He might, himself, have even called it exquisite. It tasted, sweetly and strangely, like home.
He didn’t have to tell Azul how it made him feel; he could tell by how pleased Azul looked with himself.
“Top tier information brokerage,” Azul went on, boasting, “to give you something I think you’re enjoying very much.” Azul’s eyelashes, Jamil noticed, were almost ridiculously long; he wondered if he wore mascara. Jamil commanded himself to think less and, if necessary, drink more wine – in sips, of course, with frequent breaks.
“To me, that’s something quite marvelous.” Azul was still smiling, as if he’d been the one to win some fabulous prize. Jamil allowed himself another sip.
“Now,” Azul said, leaning forward. “Would you let me cook you something for dinner?”
Everything was going wrong, Jamil despaired. He wasn’t supposed to be thirsty already for another glass of wine; every time he told himself it was his last his resolve disappeared the minute the feeling of the previous drink faded from his tongue. When he saw how low his cup was it seemed literally impossible he could have drunk that much. Azul, seeming to sense this, offered the bottle again, and Jamil – feeling fully his defeat – could do nothing but thank him.
“I’m sensitive about your food situation,” Azul said in an ostensibly reassuring tone. “But everything will be made by me to the highest standard. And watching me cook was always part of the plan – I’d be delighted if you kept me company in the kitchen.”
“It’s not that I literally think you’re going to try to kill me with it. I’m drinking your wine, aren’t I?”
“Please let me cook for you.”
The wine filled Jamil’s belly with warmth, but that was all; it reminded him that he was hungry. He was only slightly more floored by Azul’s insistence than he was by the fact that he seemed to be starting to consider it.
His thoughts kept jerking back to the wine – on the one hand, the puzzle of how Ashengrotto had managed to get that information was something that would keep him up at night, but on the other hand, stupid as it may be, it had been something unique and wonderful. Who knew if he would have ever tasted it again if not for Azul's preposterous efforts? And who else, in this world or any other, would have gone to such lengths, simply to make him happy?
“Of all the things,” he muttered, barely realizing he said it rather than thought it, “to lure me over here—"
“Lure you over here?” Azul chuckled. “That’s ridiculous, Jamil.”
“It is ridiculous. This whole thing is ridiculous.”
“Well,” Azul replied, “as we talked about before, there are different ways of looking at things.”
“All of these ruses you do are ridiculous.”
“All of these ruses?” Azul echoed theatrically. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
He absolutely did. Azul was more than capable of mentally running probability tables to maximize his chances of being paired up with Jamil for drills or a project, or seated next to him for a lecture, or put on the same team for a competition or event, or a million other things, and he often and obviously did so. Whatever ruse it took to get close to Jamil, he pursued it -- Jamil knew it, and Azul knew he knew it, and Jamil knew—Jamil shook his head; now he was confusing himself.
“And of all of those ruses,” he continued, since talking seemed to shake off his confusion, if only for a little bit, “this one is the stupidest, I mean the most ridiculous, of them all.”
Azul cocked an eyebrow. “Well, that’s the thing about generating multiple strategies. Some are bound to be of better quality than others.”
“So you admit it!” Jamil banged his knee on the underside of the table in his vehemence.
“Mmhhm,” Azul demurred. “I’m merely talking strategy here, just two clever students talking theoretically. No one’s confessing to any ruses.”
Jamil let out his breath in a long, audible sigh. “Ashengrotto, you’re such a weird person.” He drained the rest of his wine, finishing, irritably: “Seriously.”
Azul adjusted his glasses. “Well, that seems a little—”
Jamil cut him off. “Do you ever say a single thing that’s not just—bizarre and completely fake? Something actually sincere?”
It took Azul off his guard. Jamil could see him running through his strategies, carefully selecting one, and starting to speak, and but all he got out was: “There are—” before Jamil interrupted him.
“No,” he barked. “Stop right there. If the next thing you’re going to say is more of your pretentious bullshit, just stop and don’t say it.”
The next time Azul tried to speak, Jamil didn’t even let him start the first word. “I mean it.”
Azul looked back at him with eyes shiny with—surprise, maybe, but also something distinctly positive, something like fascination. He always looked at Jamil that way, a little bit, and far too much, but there was a different feeling this time, a gentle and happy bemusement, like he’d found something new and pleasing. Nonetheless, he still didn’t say anything.
“So do you?” Jamil pressed. He was unsure if he was starting a fight, or what exactly was happening. He had an excited feeling, almost like before a fight began, but there was something different, like it lacked something vital or had something extra attached to it. Mostly, he was frustrated with himself – there had been myriad opportunities to end the evening, none of which he had taken for reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom himself. It was possible, Jamil thought, that Ashengrotto was not the only idiot sitting at this table.
“No,” he concluded. “I don’t think you ever do.”
He let the silence between them grow more and more uncomfortable, unwilling to do Azul the favor of breaking it as the tension mounted. Azul Ashengrotto, Jamil thought, and had thought before, was like a child wearing an ill-fitting Halloween costume. He thought it had transformed him into something else, something much stronger and better and just generally more than the nervous, naive kid inside, but it the thing did a terrible job of covering him. Much too much of his anxious, eager-to-please weak self showed through as plainly as could be, and it made all of his affectations far too transparent, his sophistication far too much of a show. Jamil had no idea how Azul managed to outdeal anyone in business or anything else. Surely he was as obvious to everyone else as he was to Jamil.
“Really,” he sneered. “Then do. Say one thing that’s sincere and I’ll eat—I’ll go to the kitchen and make myself dinner and eat it, I’m not going to have you cook for me. If you can manage one sincere sentence, I swear I will.”
And still Azul did not say a single thing.
“You can’t,” Jamil said incredulously.
Azul was utterly flustered. “I—everything I’ve said up until now has been entirely—”
“Shut up,” Jamil stopped him. “Just stop it. All I’m asking for is one thing that hasn’t gone through the usual Ashengrotto bullshit filter. One thing that’s like how a person actually thinks and talks.”
Azul’s eyes darted left, right, trying to figure out what Jamil wanted him to say.
“I’m going,” Jamil threatened, his hand on his bag, even if he didn’t mean it as much as he had when he said it before.
“Please don’t go,” Azul said, nearly inaudibly.
“What was that?” Jamil asked.
“I just want to—please.” Jamil moved his hand back to the table while Azul was still talking. “Because it’s—”
“It’s what.”
Azul brought up a hand to cover his face, a common affectation he probably thought made him look mysterious or intimidating but was far too obviously just a makeshift hiding place when he needed to buy himself time. From behind it he said: “It’s—humiliating—it’s--”
That hadn’t been exactly what Jamil had expected. “What’s humiliating?”
He spoke so quietly Jamil had to lean toward him. “It you leave – you just walk out right away—” Azul gulped in a breath and said the last part as fast as he could: “You know those two are probably still here somewhere. Doing their final tasks.” He said the last word no less hatefully than Jamil said raffle. It pleased Jamil on some level.
“If you leave and don’t even eat it would be—” Azul drew himself upward in his seat. “Jamil,” he began again. “I’m afraid it would come off as terribly—”
All Jamil had to do was give an exasperated flick of his eyes and the act was dropped. Azul recalibrated.
“It would just be humiliating,” he summed up desperately. Behind his gloved hand Jamil could see Azul’s eyes moving constantly up and to the right, like he was trying to look anywhere else but Jamil, or even trying not to cry.
And so, worn down, Jamil relented, saying only, “Well.”
Azul dropped his hand. His cheeks were pink, Jamil noted; it had been that hard for him to say a single sincere thing. But he had.
“Well?” Azul echoed, still very softly.
“I’ll give you credit. That did sound sincere.”
“So you’ll stay?” Azul kept a careful leash on it, but his enthusiasm threatened to bubble over.
“I’m a man of my word. I’ll make dinner—for both of us. I told you I would.”
Azul was already on his feet. “That’s—ah, yes, that’s excellent. The kitchen’s right here. We can get started right away.”
Jamil remained seated. “But I’m doing the majority of the work,” he clarified. “The vast majority. You can basically help me when I need it. Grabbing things. Cutting things.”
“That sounds delightful. Ah, Jamil, I can assure you—”
This time Jamil didn’t even have to say anything; a hand with one finger held up sufficed to shut Azul up. There was something about that little interaction, that situation of cause and effect, he the cause and Azul’s behavior the effect, that gave him a nice feeling in his stomach, right next to the wine.
“I doubt you even have most of the spices I need,” Jamil sighed, standing up.
Azul was already steps ahead of him. Though Jamil was facing his back, he could hear from his voice that Azul was just this side of beaming. “Well, Jamil. You may be surprised.”
--
There were several pleasant surprises, Jamil noted – the especially well-stocked kitchen, the perfect cleanliness of the surfaces around them, the hugeness and freshness of the Lounge’s spice reserves, as little as he wanted to admit that.
And it was surprising, too, how well they cooked together. Azul talked nonstop, of course, but it was easy to let that fade into the background and lose himself in food, and Azul took his commands cheerfully and executed them perfectly, even when Jamil pushed him for harder cuts or more demanding specifics, taking pleasure in working him a little hard, even when he really didn’t need to. It wasn’t bad, actually, Jamil thought, not having to do the prep. It made the cooking more like choreography or even magic, orchestrating flavors into a complete picture that came only from his own mind.
It was close quarters in the kitchen, but Azul was careful not to brush against him as they passed – more careful than he often was in the classroom, or in other scenarios, at other times. It seemed to Jamil a sign of respect. When Azul talked, he could choose to respond or not to respond, and either direction pointed Azul obediently headed.
These were the things Jamil was thinking about, watching the sauce thicken, quiet for so long that when he did speak, he could see Azul jump. “Azul.”
Azul, who had been rinsing off a pan, turned around slowly. “Yes?”
“If I ask you a question, are you going to give me a sincere answer?”
Azul shook his head up and down dutifully.
“Why did you go to all this trouble for me?”
“Why do I—trouble?”
“You know what I mean.” Jamil was unrelenting. “Showing up where I am, knowing things about me you can’t possibly know, doing everything you can to get near me—”
“You’re my--cherished classmate,” Azul replied.
“So we’re back to bullshit answers?”
Nothing about Azul moved, save his mouth, which lingered open uncharacteristically long. Finally he pivoted, talking more to the sink than Jamil. “Is it bullshit to say I simply like you?”
“You like me.” Jamil said doubtfully.
“Yes,” Azul emphasized, “I do. Very much.”
“That much,” Jamil pushed. “To lure me here. To come up with the most ridiculous, stupid—your—a stupid raffle caper—”
“Well, now, a caper isn’t what I’d—”
Jamil felt tired and itchy with impulse at the same time, even if he wasn’t sure what the impulse was. “Just—stop,” he said. “It’s delusional.”
“What’s delusional?”
“Whatever you think is worth liking in me that much,” Jamil said darkly. Azul fairly snorted. “I’m telling you it’s not actually me. Nothing you’re that enamored with is anything like me. I can assure you of that."
Azul turned, looking truly insulted. “Stop,” he said sharply. “I’ll maintain a certain level of courtesy in most situations, but if you’re going to say something so stupid—” –he paused for dramatic effect; Jamil scoffed—“I’ll tell you things quite plainly. Your magic is outstanding, and you’re tremendously intelligent. I’ve always been aware of your real standing in class.”
“Of course you have. You know everything,” Jamil snapped. “You know what kind of wine I tried one time years ago.”
Azul turned back to the sink but kept speaking unabated. “Your voice, speaking and singing, is splendid. You’re highly athletic as well; I think you’ve excelled in every sport you’ve ever tried.” He cleared his throat subtly before continuing. “And of course you dance beautifully.”
Jamil watched Azul’s back as he finished rinsing, took a cloth, and began wiping the pan. He didn’t turn around, or in fact stop wiping the thing far past the point where it had to have been dry, and Jamil just watched, trying to figure out exactly what was happening.
It was funny, Jamil thought, but he’d never considered what somewhat else would think of his dancing except in very limited circumstances. He’d been glad to be seen as good enough to solo at the SDC, and he was desperate at home to have no one see him at all, but he’d never thought of someone watching him dance and admiring it as a reflection of him.
“Azul,” he said, wearily.
Azul must have thought he meant him to keep listing things, and the next several came out so quickly Jamil knew this was not the first time he had thought of them. “You’re a capable leader, and the sheer capacity of your magical power is amazing, I’ve never seen anything like—you during the—the incident—” He saw from Jamil’s face that it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about and, struggling to change angles, instead came out with:
“And you’re just—you’re a beautiful person. And I love beautiful things.”
“Azul,” Jamil repeated, not as irritable as he sounded. “Turn around.”
Azul was still talking: “Your eyes, your hair, the definition of your—”
“Okay. I get it. You can stop now."
Azul’s face, slightly pink; the way he tended to match Jamil’s movements; his cautious expression -- Jamil took each of these in one by one, individually, unsure what he was supposed to do with them. He had never been called beautiful before. A few girls he had known had said he was cute, and at least one had called him handsome, but not beautiful. It was something else he had no idea what to do with, something to turn over carefully later.
“So—you’re gay?” Jamil could not fathom why that was what he said next, but it was.
If Jamil was shocked, Azul seemed much more so. His body went rigid.
After a beat he said: “Ha.” Azul didn’t laugh; he said the word ha. “Well. My mother certainly thinks I am.” Another pause. “My grandmother too, I'm sure."
“Huh,” Jamil said. It seemed as good a reply as any. He knew there was a good chance Azul would ask him the same question next, and he wanted to postpone it if he possibly could. And so he blurted out:
“You know what I think, Azul?”
“What do you think,” Azul repeated. He kept starting to turn back around, remembering that Jamil had said to face him, and then busying himself with little things here and there, around the kitchen, even picking off an invisible bit of lint from his suit.
“I think you did this whole ruse to seduce me.” Azul laughed. “Am I wrong?”
“Oh, Jamil. Of course I didn’t sit down and make a plan to—”
“Say it without your bullshit,” Jamil demanded. They were almost exactly the same height; he hadn’t noticed that before. Azul’s eyes were different than Jamil remembered too, more grey and silver and darker than the lighter blue you'd see at first glance. The two of them were so close that the tips of their shoes could have touched. Jamil was profoundly aware that either of them could have chosen to step away and give themselves more space, and also that neither did.
“I mean, there may have been some small—”
“No. Just--shut up.”
Azul twitched as Jamil held his eye contact hard. Locking his gaze with Azul’s gave Jamil a memory, less in his mind than in his body, of the moment right before he’d pushed his magic to its utmost limits, puppeting his dormmates, aggrandized by a chaos that was singularly his. Usually those memories horrified him, but this time they were pleasant, a warming energy tingling in his core and his arms and hands.
“I think, honestly,” Jamil said slowly, as if he were coming up by the words one by one, but of course he had known it for a long time, "you were wanting me to seduce you.”
Azul said something that sounded like “ah,” but when Jamil took his chin in his hand Azul’s mouth closed with a little snap. The kiss, hard and dry, Jamil pushed onto his mouth shut him up completely. The kiss was abrupt, and rougher than Jamil meant it to be, the corners of his mouth turned downwards over Azul’s, who stood completely still, his hands at his sides, one hundred percent unmoving until Jamil released him.
Then he nearly tottered against the edge of the sink, wetting the back of his coat, and whirled back around in embarrassment, rummaging for something new to occupy his hands with. Jamil came closer – right behind him.
“Am I correct?” He put a hand on Azul’s shoulder, spinning him around, revealing Azul’s very red face. It flattered him somehow, Jamil thought, darkening not just his cheeks but also his pale lips, as if Jamil had been wearing lipstick when he kissed him.
When he kissed Azul again, Jamil stepped forward more forcefully than he’d meant to, so that he ended up with his hip pressed painfully against the prep table and Azul was pushed backward, step by step, as the kiss deepened. Where they stopped, Azul’s back was up against the door of the walk-in cooler. Jamil put his hand flat on the door next to Azul’s head. This time Jamil made him open his mouth bit by bit, gentle with his tongue even if he hadn’t been with his hands.
It was surprisingly pleasant. Azul’s mouth was still slightly sweet from the wine, and he let Jamil lead at every turn, never pushing even one step forward without permission. The feeling of pushing and pulling, leading and following, made it hard to end the kiss even when Jamil figured that he should.
When he did, there seemed to be nothing else to say for some time. They finished cooking and began plating the food. Azul scooped up generous portions of rice for each of them, careful not to look at Jamil until everything was done, and then he said only:
“Well. We should probably eat before it gets cold, shouldn’t we?”
Jamil nodded; he was already stacking plates carefully, separated by his fingers. Azul picked up the bowls.
They went back to the dining area, Jamil leading and Azul following.
--
Azul ate very carefully. He was careful to moderate his praise of the food to avoid being called insincere; he was careful to use only the most graceful table manners and to keep Jamil’s glass of wine always just this side of spilling over; he was careful even in the act of eating itself. He matched Jamil’s mouthfuls bite for bite, and only when Jamil’s rice was gone did he return to the kitchen to refill both bowls.
They didn’t talk much as they ate, and at first it was awkward, and then all just small talk, how good it was and how this or that spice enhanced this or that element of the food, and a couple of anecdotes from Jamil he remembered from the last culinary elective. They talked and laughed, limited to these minor subjects, though Jamil was distracted the whole time, thinking about the things he’d felt in the kitchen, thinking about power.
Power was something Jamil thought about a lot; it was interwoven into his culture and his family life in a fundamental way, and after his overblot he’d talked about it with the senior mages. Power was a fact of life; there were things people had and things people wanted, and no matter how Jamil had tried to grow as a person since his overblot there was still a part of him, at his core, something terrible and insatiable that wanted it even more now than before.
If you had a little taste of power, Jamil thought, how much more you felt its lack when it was gone. Maybe that was why Azul was so obsessed with money; to him, it was power.
Money was part of power, of course, and power went along with magic hand in hand, but there were other types as well. When he and Azul had to pass near each other when cooking, reaching for something or working on burners side by side, Jamil had felt little tendrils of a different type of power licking at him like fire magic. The power of being wanted, of having something to give that someone wanted so much -- it was more potent than he had realized, and like the wine, he was helpless to prevent himself from liking it.
It made Jamil bold. When their eating had slowed, he cut off the small talk, saying: “So you brought me here to—ah, for me to seduce you.”
The story Azul had been telling, a secondhand anecdote from Jade about something Lilia had done during the last Culinary Crucible, shut down instantly.
Jamil felt magnanimous. With just a word, with no magic required, he thought, he could get Azul to do just about anything for him. Sing and dance; delight him with gifts; he had already brought him sumptuous wine, and Jamil with a full stomach was always kinder than Jamil without one. And so he said, with what he hoped sounded like good humor:
“Do you feel seduced, then?”
Azul spread his hands. “Why, I’d say it’s—”
“Azul.” To Jamil’s ears he sounded like Crewel barking orders at his students. But Azul caught on immediately and answered, all in a rush:
“It’s going better than I had even hoped it would.” He watched to see what Jamil would do, and when Jamil laughed, Azul did too, a little.
--
Things had relaxed after that, and they returned to small talk as they kept on eating. At some point Jamil noticed Azul had his gloves back on and wondered how he hadn’t seen him replace them; he’d taken them off, of course, in the kitchen, but sometime he’d apparently put them back on. In the kitchen his fingers had been long, the index fingers a little crooked, shockingly pale, impeccably manicured, talented and deft.
It was those hands Jamil was looking at when he said, all at once, so he couldn’t chicken out of it again:
“There’s probably something I should say. Just so you know.”
Azul leaned forward with interest.
“I’m not gay.”
Azul’s expression remained exactly the same, save for one eyebrow that arched upward slightly. “Well,” he murmured, “I might slightly disagree that you could be, just a little bit. Perhaps."
“Not really. Not at all.”
A little smile played at Azul’s lips. “Gay enough,” he countered, cautiously, “to kiss me in the kitchen, though.”
“Mm.”
“Twice,” Azul pushed, a little bolder, but still careful. “So not entirely not.”
“I’ll give you that,” Jamil replied. “Not not, but definitely on the side of not.”
“Two kisses away from that side,” Azul assented, seemingly, though he looked too pleased for Jamil to think he believed it.
“Yeah.” Even to Jamil it sounded stupid. “Not, minus two kisses.”
“Exactly two?” Azul clearly couldn’t help himself.
“A very small number. At most.” Azul nodded slowly.
There had been a bite of food, the same bite of food, on his fork for some time now; every now and then he’d bring it to his lips, as if he were going to eat, and then one of the two of them would say something and it would freeze before he could get to it. Now Azul set the fork down on his plate as if to begin speaking, although he didn’t.
“Is that enough for you?” Jamil asked.
The smile Azul had been trying to moderate now stretched over his face. “It’s more than enough.”
“Good. Finish your dinner.”
Azul picked up his fork with utmost obedience, and this time Jamil was the one who poured them what remained of the wine.
--
Jamil had already picked up his bag several times, but one way or the other he kept putting it down and picking it back up again. He clearly was not, he noted to himself strictly for future purposes, a person who should drink a lot of wine.
For some reason he stayed and stayed, despite noting times he could have taken his things and gone, despite Azul now having talked for several minutes about where the plates on the table came from and the meticulous process he used to find the same dishes as other restaurants whose atmosphere – or at least profits – he admired. Finally, though, he broke in.
“Nice,” he said, as punctuation on the last topic; it had become a default response as Azul had showed off the proceeds, one by one, of his conspicuous consumption habits over the last half hour or so, but it seemed to make Azul happy enough.
He slung his bag over his shoulder with a sense of finality. When he took out his phone, the time startled him. “Oh, damn. Look, I need to—"
“Of course.” Azul stood. “Myself as well.”
Jamil was acutely aware that there were things he should say to Azul. He should express gratitude for what really had been a good meal, and strange as it may be, a good time cooking it together; he should acknowledge the fact that the two of them had grown closer—ugh—it all sounded terrible and impossible to Jamil, as full and as foggy as he was. So what he said instead was:
“Next time, try a ruse that makes a little more sense. A fucking raffle. Ridiculous.”
Azul nodded, his sincerity, as always, questionable.
Jamil let out a soft groan. “I haven’t even started Potions. And I’m sure nobody made sure Kalim got fed—”
“Ah,” Azul offered. “Could we wrap up the leftovers from dinner? Would that suffice?”
“No,” Jamil replied, his regret genuine; it would have been nice to have saved the time. “He doesn’t like curry. Definitely not the kind we made tonight. My way."
“We’ve got rice,” Azul said thoughtfully, his hand at his chin, “and I think there’s enough of the cooked meat that didn’t go into the sauce. We have plenty we can supplement it with.” He was already heading toward the kitchen.
Behind him Jamil was disagreeing, the usual politeness, but also he was acutely aware of the inadvisability of being indebted to Azul for two meals. He wasn’t as averse to obligation as Azul was, as if anyone in the world could be, but still. It didn’t sit right with him. And on top of the meals, there was the bottle of wine, which alone—
“Are you coming?” Azul asked. His voice firmly communicated that declining the offer would not be accepted. And so Jamil, pondering the exchange rate between two kisses and two meals and a bottle of wine and hating himself for it, followed.
There was enough, surprisingly; Azul told him another story Jamil barely listened to about his mother’s success being attributable entirely to her economical use of high quality ingredients as he worked, but he worked quickly. He took a box and a bag from a little stack at the far end of the kitchen and wrapped everything up with a flourish, handing it over.
All Jamil could do was thank him. The warmth from the food seeped through the bottom of the restaurant’s to-go container so that it felt like he was holding a little fire. “Really, you did me a solid, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it all done tonight.”
Another, seemingly random thought came to him – had he ever actually smiled at Azul? From Azul’s reaction to it, as they were walking through the kitchen doors, he figured he probably never had. But Azul had been different then. Or he had been. Or something.
“I was thinking we could,” Azul began. Some sound in the kitchen, something settling, took his attention for a moment, and when he started speaking again he turned toward Jamil more fully. “Would you like—could we perhaps do this again? Or something else. At some point. I know we’re both very busy. I’m just saying if you’d like we could—”
“Stop.” Here Jamil realized had two choices; he could give some indifferent answer, or he could give him a little gift by way of parting. Azul would take either from him, and gratefully. But Jamil took pleasure from Azul’s pleasure when he told him: “Yes. We’ll do it again. Sometime.”
What followed was a little moment of mutually satisfied silence. Azul’s eyes scanned over him, pocket to bag to pocket, in a gesture that reminded Jamil of his mother making sure he had what he needed before leaving the house. “Do you have everything?”
Jamil patted down his jacket. “My phone. Did I leave it in the kitchen?”
“Let’s see—you may have just now—”
Right as they opened the kitchen doors the walk-in cooler opened too, but more violently, seemingly blowing apart with the door creaking on his hinges as Floyd Leech burst out of it, screaming about not being able to breathe. Then, more graceful than you’d think from flying lessons, his brother also emerged, standing before the cooler with his heels clicked together, as formal as he would be in any other situation, as if his brother were not on the floor audibly gulping down air and clutching his throat, sounding for all the world like someone who’d come right up to the verge of drowning.
The irony of all that would have been more amusing to Jamil if he hadn’t been thinking about how that particular walk-in cooler was the one directly in between the sink and the prep table they had been using. It was the same cooler, he noted with a muted sense of despair, that he’d pressed Azul up against the second time they had kissed.
Azul simply stood there, motionless, his mouth slightly open but not saying a single thing. His expression gave nothing away, even to Jamil.
Jade nodded twice, not so much at Azul or Jamil in particular but just in a sort of general way. He said, smiling as ever, “You’ll be pleased to know everything’s in order back there as well.”
In the silence that followed Jamil spotted his cell phone and grabbed it, preparing to flee. He got his chance when, after a moment of eerie calm, Azul exploded in a near-palpable torrent of words and curses that started with “Jade, Floyd, I asked you just for once—"
After that it was only noise, and Jamil rushed out of the Mostro Lounge with the fastest steps he could manage without running.
As he walked back to the Hall, Jamil was vaguely aware that there were any number of things he should be furious at Azul for this evening—the stalking-level spying that somehow gotten him to that bottle of wine, the fact that Jade and Floyd Leech had probably seen and heard everything that had transpired and now had any number of new avenues of blackmail to explore with either or both of them, the stupid, ridiculous, utterly unbelievable and desperate device of the raffle.
He could kind of see what Kalim meant now, he thought, raffle being kind of a funny word, though when he noticed it was making him smile at nothing like an idiot Jamil quickly forced the corners of his mouth down.
He thought he would probably never let himself drink alcohol again in his life.
Nonetheless, his stomach was full and he was warm and less sleepy than he would have thought; in fact, he was downright energized. The lethargy lingering in him since the overblot seemed lighter than usual. Maybe, Jamil thought wryly, this was what it felt like to relax; he doubted that he would know.
And so, telling himself that a good night of sleep would clarify what exactly had transpired that evening and put a definitive stop to repeating thoughts on stupid subjects, Jamil went back to Scarabia and resumed his duties.