Chapter 179 - 177: Chase You Down.

Chapter 179: Chapter 177: Chase You Down.

Rogard is immediately, excruciatingly jealous.

​"Goodnight Drogger~" Ynoro sings brightly, merrily leaning his full weight into his two wards.

Cert and Fricha take it with practised ease, and Drogger sends them off with a clap to Ynoro’s back.

​" –Get some sleep, Ynoro," he chuckles back, and lifts a hand to bid them goodnight as he turns to head back towards the city streets.

It feels an appropriate distance now, so Rogard raises a hand in their direction to hail them.

Ynoro and his many keepers see him and mirror the greeting.

​Drogger sees him. Rogard knows he sees him.

​And then he looks away.

​Now, Rogard is a master of blanking people. And because he is effortlessly good at it, he knows exactly what it looks like.

​And sure as anything, he just got blanked.

​By Drogger.

​Unbelievable.

​Rogard blanks other people, not the other way around. And it stings a whole lot more than he thought it would.

Smile faltering slightly, he suddenly feels a brush of sympathy for all the souls unfortunate enough to be ignored by him, and wishes he could undo the last few seconds of his life.

​Maybe even the last few days. Weeks.

​But Fricha is calling out to them by name, so he’s already committed.

​"Evening," the older soldier hollers, and while he’s by no means as pleasantly buzzed as Ynoro, it’s obvious that he hasn’t escaped the night with his sobriety intact.

"I see you’ve had a good night." It’s like looking in a very strange and discoloured mirror; himself and Cert with Ynoro between them, reflected against Mural and Khobi dragging Montrel between them.

​" –A very good night, sir." Mural, the least intoxicated of their party, thankfully answers for all of them.

Montrel promptly hiccups, and it makes Fricha chuckle in a way he probably wouldn’t if they were in uniform.

​"Best sober up before morning," he advises evenly, the ’or you’ll be running laps until you puke’ unspoken but loud and clear all the same.

Montrel, drunk as he is, must hear it too, because he groans like he’s already accepted his fate.

​" –Did I see the Captain with you?" Rogard inquires, and it must come out as casually as he’d intended because no one thinks anything of it.

​"Oh yeah, he’s on his way home now," Fricha tells him easily, tipping his chin in the direction Drogger had headed off in, as if Rogard didn’t already know.

"If you’re lucky, you should be able to catch him."

​Rogard’s not sure if he’d meant to imply he was after him, so to speak, but having his heart smashed into a thousand pieces just narrowly beats carting Montrel up a million flights of stairs to his room, so he nods in what he hopes Fricha takes as thanks and changes directions.

​"Oi, Rogard!" Khobi hollers at him, and makes a big show of almost dropping Montrel.

Rogard knows how strong he is; he knows he’s faking. "What are you –oi! Can’t it wait til morning??"

​"Nope~"

It’s a bad idea, chasing him. It would have been so much easier to just bump into him down on the plains; maybe offer to buy him a drink, and then twist his arm when he inevitably declined.

He could’ve stolen looks across the fireside instead of coolly deflecting them all night, and if Drogger offered to walk him home again, Rogard could’ve pretended to be drunker than he was so he would hold him close to keep him from falling.

And maybe if he was feeling brave, he could bring up what happened the other night; ask him if he’d liked it, or what it meant that he’d kissed him back.

​And if the answer was bad, Rogard could’ve forever just played at being too drunk to remember what was said, and pretend the conversation never happened.

​But that’s not how the night had played out.

​Instead of getting the chance to explain or excuse or defend himself and his actions, Drogger had turned away.

​Now Rogard understands a little of how all the people he’s turned away from felt. Why –to his annoyance –they hadn’t been able to let up and always chased him afterwards.

How the confusion, and the unexpected sting at the strange interaction makes the need to know that much stronger.

​In the stillness of the night, Drogger must hear his footsteps, because he turns before he even catches up to him.

​The expression he’s wearing when he recognises him is not one that Rogard is familiar with, and he’s not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

​"Oh, Rogard," he states blandly, "Hey."

​For some reason the easy, casual greeting makes Rogard bristle.

​"Oh hi, master~"

Rogard’s super glad he did something as lame as chase him down just to be even more lame.

​"I didn’t know you were out tonight~" It comes out a little breathless, and it seems a bad decision altogether to use his falsest tone on the one person who seems to consistently see through it.

​"It wasn’t my idea, believe me," Drogger mutters, not needing to specify whose idea it was.

It doesn’t escape Rogard’s notice that he’s not looking directly at him. In fact, he seems to be taking pains to look anywhere but him, and doing a really bad job at hiding it.

​His tongue decides that now, of all times, is the time to fail him.

​It’s not fair. He’s usually so good at these things.

​Well, that’s not exactly true. He can’t remember the last time he was on this side of the conversation.

It doesn’t feel very nice. He’d been so sure the other night –up until this very moment even –of Drogger’s feelings, and his own.

So confident, mostly, or at least he’d been able to pretend to be.

Suddenly, he doesn’t feel quite so sure that he’s read things right, and the light feeling in his stomach takes a hard turn towards nausea.

​This too, is uncharted territory, and he feels lost.

​Unbeknownst to Rogard, so is Drogger.

​And Drogger knew this was coming.

It was unavoidable, he knows that; has been preparing himself every time he leaves his home and steeling himself at every intersecting hallway just in case Rogard was around the corner.

​Now that he’s in front of him, he’s still hopelessly unprepared.

​Maybe he should’ve let Ynoro buy him a couple more drinks. Maybe that would’ve made this easier.