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"Cliopher," came Conju's voice through the open door of the kitchen balcony, "a word, if you've a moment?"
Cliopher, who had just finished spreading strawberry jam on his toast, took his toast in one hand and coffee in the other and followed the voice out to the balcony. He found Conju seated at the wrought-iron table overlooking the courtyard. He had a full Shaian-style place-setting on the table before him. The plates held only crumbs, but he appeared to still be working through a small pot of tea and a bowl of sliced papaya. He gave Cliopher's toast a skeptical look, set down his fork, and slid the bowl of papaya across the table.
"Help yourself, please. I apologize for ambushing you before breakfast, but I wanted to speak to you before He wakes up. I've noticed it's difficult to catch either of you alone, when you're both awake." Conju raised an eyebrow as though to emphasize a secondary, implicit meaning to his words. Cliopher sipped his coffee and didn't comment. He couldn't argue with the surface meaning; he and Fitzroy did indeed spend most of their spare time together. He wondered idly whether Conju would choose to elaborate on the secondary meaning, or let it pass. Cliopher hadn't had enough coffee yet to parse it himself.
"You looked especially cozy two nights ago," Conju went on, sipping his tea not-quite-casually.
Two nights ago there'd been a bonfire on the beach, in honor of the Grand Duchess of Damara's visit. She and her household had left the next morning for Navikiani, Melissa having declared her intent to experience for herself the magical vacation spot that had changed the trajectory of her brother's life. But they'd spent two days in Gorjo City first, and there had been a bonfire. Fitzroy had performed for a while, favoring Old Damaran pieces Cliopher had never heard, shooting furtive glances at Melissa now and then, until Cliopher had persuaded him to put down the harp and go talk to her. They hadn't talked long, but Fitzroy had come back smiling, a subtle tension in his posture eased. Then he'd lowered himself onto the sand and stretched his legs across Cliopher's lap, and nestled his head against Cliopher's shoulder, and they'd sat together until the fire had burned to embers and nearly all the neighbors had drifted away home. Cliopher hadn't realized Conju was watching them.
He didn't care if Conju was watching them, he amended firmly. He had nothing to be embarrassed about.
Conju had arrived barely a week before Melissa did. Of the five of them now living in Saya Dorne's house, Conju had lingered longest in Solaara after the Jubilee, citing a need to carefully pack all the perfuming equipment and supplies he planned to take with him into retirement, and find properly appreciative homes for the rest. So Conju was the least familiar with how Fitzroy draped himself over Cliopher when he wanted reassurance, or when he was feeling affectionate, or for no reason at all. Cliopher reminded himself that for Conju, Fitzroy had remained his Radiancy up till the moment he'd relinquished the title of Lord Magus. Still, he should be at least partially adjusted by now, surely.
"It was a good night," Cliopher said mildly.
Conju gave a delicate snort. "I daresay. If I hadn't spent the past fortnight becoming intimately familiar with your living situation, I would have been extremely tempted to draw certain conclusions. Conclusions which, as I am familiar with such, I instead know to be incorrect."
"What are you getting at, Conju?" Cliopher asked warily. He didn't mind Conju speaking circumspectly at times—lifelong habits were hard to break, as he himself could attest—but if Conju disapproved of his and Fitzroy's conduct at the bonfire, which it sounded as though he might, he could very well say it directly.
"Cliopher, my dear, do not think for a moment that I doubt your devotion to—our mutual friend. I'm fully aware that should he express so much as a passing admiration for the stars in the sky, you'd find a way to fetch them down for him. Rumors around town have it that you've already done precisely that, and I shall be delighted to hear the details of that story at a later time. But there comes a point when I must insist you stop stringing the poor man along."
Cliopher set his coffee mug on the table, with more force than strictly required. A hard knot had formed in his stomach, and the breeze from the bay had gone suddenly chilly.
"Stringing along," he repeated.
"Naturally you never meant it as such. But you know him. You know there are things he'll never ask for, however much he wants them. It's incumbent on us to notice those things, and I myself will admit to having egregiously failed to notice several such cues over the centuries. But I do pride myself on observation overall, and I have been observing closely since I came to Gorjo City, so I say to you with utmost confidence, Cliopher: he wants you. Whatever slow-motion courtship you're engaged in, I'm sure it was nice at the start and I'm sure he enjoyed it for what it was. But there's taking things slowly, and then there's stalling. He's made abundantly clear that he wants you. To use the more polite of the applicable colloquialisms: it's time to fish, cut bait, or get off the boat."
Cliopher swallowed with an effort, and tried to steady his voice. He felt he should be angry; what right had Conju to pronounce such confident judgment about a relationship he wasn't involved in? But any anger he felt was buried under a layer of reflexive mortification. Cliopher's family and friends had accepted his declaration of fanoaship with Fitzroy with an ease that still surprised him, but he'd known—he'd known—there would be those who wouldn't understand, who would pass judgment. He'd nearly ruined everything because of it, the day they'd arrived on the vaha; only Fitzroy's furious insistence on being acknowledged had saved them from Cliopher's own cowardly instinct to hide what they were, indefinitely, rather than risk that judgment.
He had expected it from his family; he'd kept his guard up, and been pleasantly surprised when it wasn't needed. He hadn't guarded against Conju, though in retrospect he should have. There's iconclasm and then there's fucking the icon—
"That's not what we are," he managed. "That's not what fanoa means." Except when it's exactly what it means, he did not add, because bringing up Auri and El would not help his case.
Conju nodded. "You used that word in your letter, I remember. I remember thinking it must be something like fayna, and I'll have you know I put considerable effort into reconciling that idea with… His past comportment as the Glorious One." Conju waved a hand vaguely. "I was determined to take in stride such inevitable stumbling blocks as—unexpectedly locked doors, or poorly concealed love-bites—oh, my dear, won't you sit down? I've never seen you blush like that, it looks uncomfortable."
Cliopher did not sit down.
After a moment, Conju continued. "As I was saying, imagine my confusion when I arrived to find the two of you still circling each other like Zunidh's most innocent pair of nuns. Now, I know you're familiar with the mechanics, Cliopher, and he has a reputation—" Conju scowled in a way that Cliopher was learning to associate with reminders that their Fitzroy was, in fact, the Fitzroy Angursell and not someone who simply happened to share his name—"so that only leaves the question of why. Of course he will never ask, which leaves it to you to be the instigator, but I've seen you embrace the role of instigator in too many different arenas to fathom why you'd hesitate in this one. Is it cold feet? Surely you aren't doubting him?"
"No," said Cliopher, because he didn't have cold feet, and he wasn't doubting Fitzroy either. They'd talked it through, and it had taken multiple conversations but they had ended up on the same page… hadn't they? Only... Conju was highly perceptive about these things, usually. And Cliopher and Fitzroy had converged on their understanding not unlike two children playing mermaid-on-the-rocks—stumbling blindly forward, calling and responding, course-correcting toward the sound of the other's voice, reaching out and missing and calling and course-correcting again. Had he the hubris to think the game had ended?
"What—" Cliopher began, and paused to phrase the question more carefully. "What makes you think he wants more than we already have?"
"Aside from how he looks at you? Aside from the way he attaches himself to you physically any time you're in close proximity?'
Cliopher wanted to say shortly, Yes, aside from that! He wanted to say, Friends can be physically affectionate without wanting sex, and I'm sorry if you've never experienced a friendship where that was even conceivable. He did not say these things, because he valued Conju's good opinion, and Conju was telling what he perceived to be the truth, and… what if Conju was right? He said instead, "Is there anything else you've noticed?"
Conju frowned. "Very well, aside from all the rest of his behavior—you have noticed how long he spends in the bath, these days?"
"He likes bathing."
"Always has. But he's hardly swimming laps in our little bathhouse, is he? I know how long he likes to soak, and under what circumstances—this was my job for nine hundred years, Cliopher. And you may take my word for it, bathing is not the only thing he's been doing in there. Need I spell it out further?"
No, Conju did not need to spell it out further. Cliopher had thought his face couldn't get any hotter, but apparently he'd been wrong. He considered protesting that even if Fitzroy was… taking care of physical urges, by himself in the bathhouse… that didn't necessarily have anything to do with Cliopher. But the excuse sounded weak even to his ears. Fitzroy had expressed interest in him, sexually, on the vaha in Sky Ocean. He'd gone on to happily accept being fanoa once Cliopher had explained the concept, and the matter hadn't come up since… but of course it hadn't. Of course Fitzroy wouldn't raise the subject himself. Cliopher should have followed up on this possibility sooner, much as it made his stomach twist uncomfortably.
"I'll talk to him about it," he managed, picking up his coffee and cold toast.
Conju sat back in his chair. "Good man. That's all I ask. Have some papaya," he said, but Cliopher had already retreated into the kitchen.
~*~
Conju had one thing indisputably correct: time alone did not feature anywhere in Cliopher's current routine. After gulping down his coffee and most of the toast, he went out to the square to meet a neighbor who'd requested an appointment with the tanà. By the time he returned, Fitzroy was lounging in one of the sitting-room armchairs with a book, which he set down immediately to ask Cliopher if he'd given any thought yet to their plans for the day.
From the opposite armchair, Conju gave Cliopher a pointed look.
Cliopher didn't panic, he—all right, fine, the way his mind froze up at the prospect of having this conversation right now could perhaps be classified as slightly panicky. He stammered a vague excuse about needing the morning to catch up on correspondence, which must have sounded passably convincing, and then—when Fitzroy seemed inclined to follow him into his study, book in hand—improvised that his correspondent had requested the tanà's advice on an especially tricky situation, the details of which were of a private nature. It was perhaps out of a desire to minimize the distance between this claim and the actual truth, that inspired him to try a novel approach to his own problem—to consider what Conju had told him as a tanà might, as though it were someone else's problem, and he an impartial observer offering advice.
By lunchtime, he had the rough outline of a plan. This was fortunate, as Fitzroy announced over their sweet potato soup that he'd discovered a new favorite view of the bay while exploring in crow form, and nothing would do but that he shared it with Cliopher as soon as possible. So it was that afternoon found the two of them hiking the north slope of Mama Ituri's Son.
Cliopher waited until they'd reached the spot, which indeed offered a splendid vista of lush greenery spread out below them, the rooftops and piers of Gorjo City as though in miniature, and the Bay of Waters beyond, its turquoise expanse broken by the white of breakers against the surrounding islands. Fitzroy plunked himself down in the long grass, then tugged on their joined hands until Cliopher sat beside him.
"We should have brought a picnic," Fitzroy said, leaning back on his elbows and crossing one ankle over the opposite knee. "Kip, why didn't you warn me that we were headed straight into ideal picnicking conditions? You know I rely on you for the planning ahead."
Cliopher smiled and tried not to let his nerves entirely wreck the moment. "Might there be something in your bag?" he suggested.
"If it were the old bag, maybe." Fitzroy opened his bag and gave it a desultory inspection. "This one's just got the water we packed—here." He thrust a canteen into Cliopher's hands and went back to rummaging. "Oh, and after-dinner mints from that Ystharian fusion diner, might as well." A small white twist of paper landed in Cliopher's lap. Cliopher set down the canteen, untwisted the paper, and studied the hard lump of candy inside.
"...passed some rambutan trees on our way up, so if we come back when the fruit's come in we can… Kip? Is something wrong?"
Behaving oddly enough that Fitzroy noticed hadn't been how he planned to broach the topic, but it got the job done, anyway.
"May I ask you something?"
"Of course, beloved. Anything." Fitzroy spoke casually, leaning back on his elbows again, tipping his face to the sky. His hand wandered over to Cliopher's and caught it, fingers interlacing. His grip was far too tight to be casual.
"It's nothing to worry about," Cliopher hastened to assure him. "In fact, if this conversation goes at all poorly I'll be more than happy to pretend it never happened. Just say the word."
Fitzroy huffed in amusement and shifted to meet Cliopher's eyes. He held Cliopher's hand tightly still, concern in his gaze, but it was a solicitous concern, not an anxious one. "What's on your mind?" he asked quietly.
"I wanted to… check in, I suppose. Make sure you're happy. Entirely happy, I mean. That life here is more or less what you expected when you signed up for it."
"Kip." Fitzroy pressed a kiss to his knuckles. "Kip. Fanoa. You think I'm always dragging you around to scenic overlooks and markets and concerts because I don't like this place, or don't enjoy your company? Of course I'm happy."
"Entirely happy, though? Or is there room for improvement?"
Fitzroy made another noise that was part amusement, part dismissal. "What a question! I wonder how possible it is for a life to have no room for improvement. For example, I must admit, I would be happier were we not sharing our home with an overgrown magical reptile."
"Yes, I'm still working on that. The zoology department here is out of ideas, but I've written three universities on Alinor and two in… wait. That's not the point."
"Isn't it?" Fitzroy's golden eyes narrowed in something akin to suspicion. "You'd better tell me what the point is, then."
"Are you still attracted to me physically?"
Fitzroy went so still and expressionless that Cliopher, who hadn't felt any such urge in months, stiffened against a fleeting impulse to throw himself into obeisance. Fitzroy let go of his hand and stood up, paced five steps to the left, spun on his heel and paced back.
"I can only assume," he declared, passing Cliopher and continuing in the other direction, "given our previous discussion of this exact topic, that you believe yourself in possession of new information that casts doubt on conclusions already reached. Because otherwise, I'm sure I made clear what I do and don't want from you."
Cliopher had hoped to have this conversation without anyone getting agitated, but his hopes hadn't been particularly high. "You did," he confirmed, determined to remain calm himself. "You made clear you weren't interested in taking any action unless I was enthusiastic about it. You also said that when Auri and El told you what they meant by fanoa, when you thought it was what I wanted, that you wanted it too. I'm asking if that's still the case. I haven't offered anything."
He had considered offering. He'd thought about it, tried to muster up a spark of the sort that he'd felt for Ghilly once upon a time, and then for Suzen. Then he'd considered other approaches he might take, workarounds for if he wasn't able to perform—but no. Offering any of that really would mean disregarding Fitzroy's express wishes, and it sounded as though Fitzroy still adamantly stood by those wishes. Cliopher tried not to feel too pathetically grateful.
Who's gotten in your head about it?" Fitzroy demanded.
"I-I beg your pardon?"
"This wasn't bothering you yesterday. Someone said or did something that's got you tied up in knots. I doubt it was your mother, she's kind to me for your sake but she's not that invested in how you keep me. Was it Pali? I wouldn't expect this line of attack from her, but she surprises me sometimes. I asked her to knock it off where you're concerned—"
Cliopher rather felt he was losing control of this conversation. "I haven't spoken to Pali since the Jubilee."
"Hmm." Fitzroy slowed his pacing. "That may be her version of knocking it off. Who was it, then? Not my sister, surely?"
"Conju," Cliopher admitted. "He said he can tell by the way you look at me."
"I will be having words with Conju—"
"Please don't. He's only trying to help. He wants what's best for you."
"He should know better than to pursue my well-being at your expense!"
Cliopher winced. "He believes I'm treating you unfairly. Were that the case, I would absolutely deserve to be taken to task for it. He knows nothing about fanoa, but if he's seen something I missed… you understand I had to ask."
"I understand my household still confers on how best to please me—No. I'm sorry." Fitzroy stopped pacing and pressed both hands over his eyes, and took a slow, deep breath. Then he turned into a crow and fled.
Cliopher sighed heavily. That could have gone better.
~*~
He only had to wait a few minutes before a familiar small, black-feathered form hopped into view, beak clutching a bedraggled tui flower in a clear invocation of Fanoa Protocol Two: Apology After Losing Composure. Cliopher accepted the flower and tucked it behind his ear, and with his other hand he offered Fitzroy the shiny metal cap from the water canteen. Fitzroy pecked at the cap, ascertained it to be too large to fit comfortably in his beak, and signaled his acceptance by rolling it out of Cliopher's palm and onto the ground. Then he was slouched beside Cliopher in human form, fiddling with the cap in one hand. Cliopher offered him the rest of the canteen. He took a long drink, and then they both sat looking out over the mountainside and the rooftops and the bay.
"Conju is wrong, for the record," Fitzroy said after a period of silence. "About the way I look at you."
"Is he?" Cliopher kept his voice mild, kept this information at arm's length until he could learn enough to ascertain what it meant.
"Mm, fishing for compliments, are we? Very well: Do you cut a fine figure in that grass skirt of yours, and do I admire the view sometimes? Yes. Are you the only one whose figure I sometimes admire? I'm sorry, but hardly. We live in a house full of unfairly attractive people, as you may or may not have noticed. I don't hear Conju drawing untoward conclusions regarding the way I look at him, or at Ludvic or Rhodin or Pali. Of course, it isn't the same, because I look at you like I'm in love with you."
Cliopher stole a glance sideways. Fitzroys lion eyes were fixed on him now, shining with overwhelming sincerity.
"I look at you," Fitzroy went on, "like my world was a cold and friendless place before you came along and filled it with light and warmth and laughter, because that is what happened. I look at you like I'm hanging on your every word, because I find your every word worthwhile and often delightfully funny. I do not look at you like I'm fantasizing about what's hidden beneath your skirt, or whatever Conju believes. Those are not my thoughts."
Cliopher felt as though a weight were being lifted off him, allowing him to breathe almost freely. "In fairness to Conju," he murmured, "this may be the first time he's been steered wrong by assuming the former implied the latter."
Fitzroy made a noise that indicated he considered Cliopher's assessment more generous than fair, but wasn't inclined to dwell on it.
There was one final point to be clarified, then, before they could retreat to lighter topics. "I'm given to understand," Cliopher said carefully, "that for many people—that is, people with what we may term ordinary appetites, as it were—"
Fitzroy was watching him sharply.
"—that there may be a, a feeling of lacking, of something overall missing, if they never have an opportunity to indulge those appetites."
"But that's not your business," Fitzroy said. An instant later he must have realized how it sounded, because his hands flew up in a gesture of negation before Cliopher could feel anything worse than surprise. "Kip, I mean that in a literal sense! It's not your business, it's not your responsibility. Did we not agree we'd be fanoa but not lovers? Whyever should you worry yourself about the one thing specifically excluded from your purview?"
"Because I care about you and want you to be happy," Cliopher replied. "If you lack for anything, I'd like it to be my business, even if I'm not best qualified to provide a remedy."
"I might wish neither you nor Conju considered my sex life enough your business to hold conference about it." Fitzroy scrunched up his face in something that seemed half embarrassment, half exasperation. "Especially if he's going to lay the responsibility solely on you. In fact, isn't that a double standard on his part? Conju is also my friend; my very dear friend, I would say on days when I have less reason to feel uncharitably towards him. If Conju has such great concerns about whether I'm being satisfied carnally, he could well volunteer to address the matter himself. Since by his own logic, this is a problem a friend should feel responsible for solving."
"Conju?" Cliopher asked, momentarily thrown. "Is that something you'd like?"
He had planned to remind Fitzroy that one could have both a fanoa and a sexual partner, even a spouse, without cheapening either relationship, provided all involved were content with their respective roles. Vou'a had married his Buru Tovo without becoming any less Ani's fanoa, and even Aurelius Magnus had had a consort. Fitzroy knew all this, of course, but it was one thing to know a set of facts and another to fully inhabit them as truth. Cliopher had planned, if it transpired that Fitzroy was suppressing feelings of frustration, to propose other paramours as a possible solution. The idea of Conju as one of those paramours had caught him off guard… but then again, who better?
The expression Fitzroy's face froze into at the suggestion, as though he'd reached for his serenity but fallen several ells short, told Cliopher the question had struck home.
"You would like that." Cliopher tamped down a rising bubble of amusement; he shouldn't laugh, not yet at any rate. "You're attracted to Conju."
"I did say, didn't I," Fitzroy almost whined. "I said we live in a house full of unfairly attractive people."
"You did." Cliopher was trying not to smile, but he could feel that it was a losing battle. "And Conju looks quite dapper when he's trying out whatever fashion trend he's decided will be all the rage next year, doesn't he?"
"So you have noticed," Fitzroy said weakly.
"Not in the same way you've noticed, presumably, but yes. Well, this changes things, doesn't it? Would you like me to proposition him on your behalf?"
Fitzroy gave a yelp like a small dog whose tail had been stepped on. "You wouldn't! You can't think he'd say yes!"
"Oh, he would assuredly say no at first. He'd be horrified. Scandalized by the very idea." Cliopher allowed himself to grin, finally, imagining Conju's reaction with a certain vindictive satisfaction. "But then he'd think about it, and if asked a second time I think you might find his answer changes."
"Let me think about it first. I don't…" Fitzroy trailed off.
"Of course, beloved. Just let me know what you need from me." Cliopher paused. "After all, we've established that it's none of my business."
Fitzroy shoved him, an ineffectual gesture given that they both were on the ground already. Cliopher elbowed him in retaliation. Then Fitzroy shifted closer and leaned into Cliopher's side, and they turned their attention to admiring the view of the bay.