let’s be wildflowers
It is not lost on him, the way the other man leans out of his way and grits his teeth before speaking his name, and Ipomoea silently checks himself. He wonders if it would have been this way before - if he hadn’t left, if he hadn’t become king, if things had been different. A part of him hates the way Andras turns his ears back and tightens his jaw, and the other part hates the way he notices it.
So he leans away, resisting the urge to look over the shorter man’s shoulder. But he does not leave, not yet. Ever the optimistic, Ipomoea is prepared to set his jaw and remind himself that this is fine, nothing’s changed, not really, only everything.
The response is as scholarly an answer as he’s ever heard, and he can’t help but wonder if this stranger is from Delumine. It wouldn’t surprise him if he was - the stack of books, the glasses, his searching for an answer without first knowing the question - it all fit in perfectly within the Court. But there were very few young adults who had been born and raised within Delumine who would be caught reading A History of Delumine for fun.
“Fair enough,” he says lightly, nodding his head along as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
And in a way, it is. The dark pegasus isn’t treating him like he’s a Sovereign, and for the moment it makes it easy to forget that he is.
He’s busy admiring the engravings on one of the book’s covers, a fine, elegant script that carves golden flowers into each of the four corners, when the next question is asked. Ipomoea’s eyes flick upwards again to meet Andras’ gaze, and for a moment it catches him by surprise. For a moment he feels almost embarrassed, afraid to admit that he was bored and a little restless, that in a library full of books he had nothing better to do than wander around and bother strangers.
His mouth opens, as if to say Nothing. Just looking around, before he thinks better and closes it.
“I’m not sure,” he admits, with a smile that is caught between apologetic and forced. “I’m looking for something too, I suppose. But it feels like I’ve already read everything I came here for.” It’s the opposite of a scholarly response - a scholar never stops searching for answers, that’s what his tutors would always tell him - but the words are out of his mouth before he has a chance to regret them.
A heartbeat passes between them, the silence stretching and then -
“I can leave,” he says, perhaps a little too quickly, “if I’m disturbing your studying?”
@
