Too late, Balfour
Title: Too late, Balfour
Author: sweetjerry
Rating: PG-13
Parinings: Ivory/Raphael, Balfour/Adamo
Note: Well, what do you know. Another one. A weird little sort of follow-up, just because I can. Hooray!
***
Because Ivory honestly had no grasp on the concept of being nice to people, Raphael was the one who mostly tried to make friends with Balfour. However, Ivory thought as he watched the two of them talking, the problem with having Raphael being nice to you was that… well, was that you had to put up with Raphael being nice to you. It wasn’t easy. He loved the man dearly, of course, but he also knew him, and he had no illusions about the fact that he was a very silly man, and possibly the nosiest shit in all of Volstov. And knowing what he did about Balfour, Raphael appeared incapable of the basic courtesy that would have made him skirt tactfully around the subject of Adamo, and instead possessed with the meddlesome compulsion to bring him up at any chance he got; possibly in some kind of backward attempt to get Balfour to admit his attraction, or possibly just to see the kid squirm. Which he did. A lot. Coupled with blushing and a way of fiddling with his gloves that looked like it would soon become a habit.
However, Raphael seemed to truly enjoy Balfour’s company, and the kid was so starved for kindness that he probably would have put up with a lot worse than Raphael’s prying and teasing. Ivory decided to let it be. It wasn’t as if he could stop Raphael even if he’d wanted to.
“Uh, if you don’t mind me asking,” Balfour said, regarding Raphael cautiously, “there was this one thing that I… uhm… wondered…”
“Go on then,” Raphael said with a grin, toying with his new lace cuffs. He hadn’t been sure that he would like this new fashion, but he had to admit that it certainly looked dramatic. “I promise I won’t bite you.”
“Well, they… I mean the others… they keep calling you a cindy all the time but… but you don’t really seem to mind?” He ducked his head a bit, staring at his hands a bit. “I wouldn’t mind it so much myself, I suppose, if they didn’t say it like… well, like that. I mean, I’m not saying it’s right, I just mean that I don’t think it’s that much of an insult, really, if you think about…”
“Balfour, you’re babbling,” Raphael pointed out.
“Sorry,” Balfour muttered, blushing.
“No problem. And the reason I don’t mind is because I am a cindy. It would be pretty absurd to be insulted by the truth, no?”
Balfour stared. “What? You… What?”
Raphael rolled his eyes. “They didn’t tell you? So typical of them. They probably though it was funny that you didn’t have a clue, which quite frankly says more about their sense of humor than any sane person would ever care to know.” Seeing Balfour’s crushed look, he sighed. “We’re trying to be discreet, so it’s not that strange that you didn’t notice, okay? We don’t like tempting fate, and shoving your pillow-biting habits into Rook’s face certainly qualifies as not only tempting it, but also kicking it in the balls and calling its mother a ha’penny whore.” He fell silent, frowning. “I think I might’ve let that allegory run away with me a bit. Not that I wouldn’t like to do that. Not to fate, I mean. To Rook.”
“Uhm… we?” Balfour ventured.
“Oh, yes,” Raphael said, grinning. “Can you guess who?” Balfour silently shook his head. “Oh, come on,” Raphael urged, flinging out his hands expressively. “Who else gets called a cindy a lot, apart from you and me?”
“I… well, Ivory, but that’s…” He fell silent, silenced by Raphael’s smug look. “Really?”
“Really,” Raphael confirmed, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head. “Bugs the fuck out of the others, of course, but they can’t do anything about it. Adamo made it rather clear that he’d string their asses up if they tried.”
“He… he did?” Balfour said, and though he tried hard to hide it, Raphael saw a small spark of hope come to light in his eyes. The kid was sort of adorable.
“Sure did,” he replied. “He doesn’t mind us at all, as long as we have sense enough not to provoke the others. Which, considering the beating I took when it first was found out, none of us are that interested in anyway.”
“Oh,” Balfour said, his face softening in compassion. “That’s horrible.”
Raphael shrugged. “No worse than I’d expected. At least Ghislain managed to hold Ivory back.”
“Ah. You’re glad he wasn’t hurt.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad he didn’t kill Rook, because that would have looked rather bad, don’t you think?”
Balfour laughed a bit hesitantly. “I… I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but it is a bit strange to imagine Ivory…”
Raphael waved his hand lazily. “I don’t mind. It’s almost so I can’t imagine it sometimes, and I’ve been his lover for years.”
“And you’re very much in love with him,” Balfour said softly and, if one listened closely, a bit wistfully. And Raphael was listening.
“Yes. I am. Sometimes I barely know why, and I’m not sure that he will ever figure out why he loves me, but still…” He smiled, and Balfour smiled back. “And you know what? When I first fell for him, I was sure it was absolutely impossible. I mean, Ivory, a cindy? No way. So I wrote tons of poetry” - Balfour blushed involuntarily - “and was miserable about it. And then it turned out that it wasn’t that impossible at all.” This was too easy! Balfour’s eyes - suddenly much softer and warmer, the edge of nervousness gone for a moment - immediately went to the other end of the room, where Adamo was thoroughly beating Niall at chess. “So who’s to say the impossible won’t happen again?” Raphael said gently.
“I- what?” Balfour demanded, guiltily tearing his gaze away.
“Too late, Balfour,” Raphael informed him, turning the young man’s head back so that he was once more looking at Adamo. “All in all, you could have made a much worse choice. And if I know anything, it’s that he cares about you. He’s also not a madman with a knife, which is to prefer, even though I wouldn’t trade mine for the world.”
Balfour turned a deep red and started fiddling with his gloves. “How did you… I mean… Am I really that obvious?”
“Only to another cindy,” Raphael said, winking. “So Ivory knows, too, but I don’t think you’re that worried that he’ll tell someone, are you?”
“Well, uhm…”
“Thought so. And don’t worry, my lips are sealed. It’s not like the lot of them need another reason to be vile to you, right? Besides,” he grinned wickedly, “I’d really like you to succeed. Just imagine the look on their faces! And you’d be good for each other.”
“You… you really think so?” Balfour said shyly. “But we… I mean, he is so different from me…”
“Yes, because me and Ivory are so alike,” Raphael said, rolling his eyes. “Remind me again, when was the last time he cracked a smile? And when was the last time I was quiet for more than two minutes in a row?” He shook his head, still smiling. “You don’t have to be alike to be made for each other. You just have to care enough to overlook your differences.”
“And you… you really think he could care like that for… for me?” Balfour looked like he strongly doubted it.
Raphael thought about Adamo’s voice when he asked if they were going to break into Balfour’s room, and the boiling fury in his gaze when he found out that Rook had stolen that book Amery had given his little brother, and the way he kept taking the same shifts just so he could watch over him. “It’s not impossible,” he said, grinning, and Balfour laughed quietly.