Page 11 of A Suitable Brat
“You don’t?”Sun asked before his expression went blank and his gaze was suddenly elsewhere.
Westin wasn’t used to so many feelings hitting him at once.Only Sun could do that to him, but that wasn’t Sun’s fault.Westin sighed and brought his voice back to his normal low register.“I want you to know more kindness than anger.I’m sure you’ve had enough of that.”
Without looking at him, Sun still managed to glare at him.“Did I ask for that from you?”
Westin tried to pause, to consider that the brat had once been the wolfling for a reason, but, well, “Yes.”
Sun turned toward him, mouth open.
Westin sought to be better but his answer remained the same.After a tup, or when lying side by side near a fire, or seated together in inns not nearly as nice as this one, Sun looked at him and asked for Westin to take care of him.“Yes, you do, lark.”
Sun blinked rapidly, maybe for the name only heard in private moments.Then he was sweet, overly so, leaning forward and biting his lip prettily.“I don’t want pity from you, Westin, with your gentle upbringing and your kindly ways.”Scorn hit harder from someone lovely.“The one everyone asks for favors, but who never asks for anything for himself.Until tonight, it seems.All it takes is Solace House.No one else could ever manage it, could they?”
“Your bath will be ready momentarily—oh no.”Hely was at their table, glancing from Westin to Sun and then back to Westin with his eyebrows raised high.“If there’s going to be trouble, perhaps I ought to call an outguard.”
Sun laughed at the joke, then seemed mad about it.
Westin sighed as he held up his hands.“There’s no trouble.”Though there might be a problem.“Sun, I was going to tell you.Please believe me.”
“What does it matter if I do or don’t?”Sun wondered, still trying to sound distant.
“I don’t like you angry with me.I never have.”Westin would get mocked forever by Hely for being so biddable for someone half his age, but that was the truth of it.“Upsetting you upsets me.”
“But you’ll leave just fine.”
Westin would have reached for Sun’s hand, but Sun didn’t seem ready to offer one.He wrapped his arms around himself and scowled at the table.The posture made him seem a young noble used to being indulged who had been told no for the first time.
For all his occasional brattiness, Sun was not actually all that indulged.An outguard’s life was hard and generally lonely, and the years before Sun had joined had likely been worse than Westin ever wanted to imagine.Sun’s mood now might only be that Sun was not used to having close friends, and therefore not used to losing them.
Westin wanted to haul him across the table more than ever.A mad impulse that he doubted Sun would enjoy.
“No one can do this forever,” he explained again, gently, to Sun and to the listening Hely.“Aging comes for us all, but it comes faster for those without much time to rest.”
“And the winters scare you now,” Sun said, almost miserable.
“And winter bothers me more now, yes.”Westin pulled his hands to his lap to curl them into fists.“I don’t think… I don’t think I can do a winter on the road anymore.Not even in the south.”Where the winters were more wet than cold.“And I wouldn’t take assignments from anyone in the south anyway.They’ve earned them.”He ignored how Sun muttered thatof course he wouldn’t.“You’re younger,” Westin tried again.“You just haven’t considered all of this yet.”
“You keep saying that.”Sun brought his gaze up to pin Westin to his seat.“I have been left to fend for myself since I learned to walk and you think I don’t know how hard life can be?”
Westin shook his head.“I never thought that, though Iamsorry that you’re so young and already have known such difficulties.But that’s why I want you to know more comforts.Why I didn’t want to upset you.If it….”Westin frowned at the ache in his wrist, worsened by how tightly clenched his hands were.“If it pains you to think of me gone, maybe I can stay on a few more years.”
“Don’t say that!”Sun glared for that too.“You think I’d ask that of you?”He sucked in a breath, then his voice fell to a trembling whisper.“CouldI ask that of you?”
He asked it as if he had no idea what he could persuade Westin to do.Westin didn’t think it wise to inform him.
“I don’t like you unhappy,” he reiterated, “even at your brattiest.”
“That’s because you’re soft.”Sun was quiet.“It’s no surprise that you’re leaving, except to me.Stupid,youngme.”
Hely made a small sound, an objection very likely.
“Sun,” Westin tried.
Sun didn’t let him get out more than that.“Will you tell me where you’re going when you decide?That’s why you came here, right?To worry over how to do it?”
“Clever boy,” Hely murmured.
Westin refused to be judged for that at least.“It’s not easy, leaving.”
