The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter Forty Seven

[A/N] I realise I haven't explained the paint on his face so well. It's not like clown makeup, it's not very pigmented. The outsiders are known for having a darkness around their eyes, not like bags... a little like someone Indian. And for having an olive skin tone (really only noticeable in the face [which as mentioned a couple times in the stories changes depending on season]) and the paint is really more like a white shade of foundation. It looks strange but it's not bright white.

[Edit: gah, gotta love updating things a day early for a week because you never remember what day it is.]

It was the soft brushing sound from somewhere in the far off distance that woke me up in the morning. The room was dark, the curtains fully drawn, the oil lamps put to rest. There was a thin stream of light leaking through the gap in the curtains that dripped onto the dark brown hardwood floor and made its way across the elegant, meticulously crafted carpet.

It was an unassuming artwork, slightly worn in places, but I knew them well. While my family was well off in terms of outsiders I was no stranger to bloody finger carpets.

'Bloody fingers' being the term my folk used to describe the kind of carpet that took years of working with ink that permanently stained your skin, usually red, and with string so strong and thin that it all too often cut your fingers. We were often the purveyors of such goods, we being those who lived in the slums outside the kingdom walls... within the kingdom they had rules about that sort of thing... but I wasn't sure what they were.

I didn't really know all that much about the place that I was in. I had always though of the inside of the kingdom as the same land that I lived on, the fact that my people were immigrants was no matter to me at all. I had grown up a neighbour to this land, literally skipping into their garden on occasion... and yet when I snuck into the house I became wildly aware of how foreign it was to me.

I turned to my side. The room was chilly but the bed was warm. The covers were ever so soft. It reminded me of a warm bath, the main source of heat being right beside me I felt the urge to come closer, but I didn't.

I lay down on the bed and observed the patterns on the ceiling. I observed them to be depicting commonly told bedtime stories. A strange thing for a king to have in his bed, I wondered if that was there by request?

I followed the pictures slowly and pieced together the stories, remembering Hathor telling me those stories for the first time, and I heard his narration in my head.

When I came back too I couldn't help but notice the gold gilding, the colourful tapestries and silver flasks and china trinkets. I felt a sense of displacement, I was in another land and yet not so far from home that it would take me more than a week to return.

I watched him as he slept, somehow still intimidating, yet so peaceful watching his chest rise and fall made me feel sleepy and calm.

I was glad to have woken up before him... but the nervous tingling in my belly warned me that he may wake soon.

The silk sheets barely covered him, tangling about his upper thigh and making no effort to cover him any more. He was completely on view for me, all of him revealed. Even sleeping as he was he made for a surprisingly powerful figure. I was intrigued. I had seen him naked before, of course, but it is so hard to look at a man as much as you wish to when he has you pinned down to his bed, doing unspeakable things to you, watching you with those eagles eyes.

Now, in my private moment of peace, he was available for me to see and admire.

Because truly, what he lacked for in heart he made up for in handsomeness. By far the most attractive man I have ever seen.