ramsdenreeve:
“Oh, it’s just here? I hadn’t noticed,” Ramsden quips, feeling slightly more at ease in his isolation with Vas. He glances down at the king’s hand as it extends to his muscular arm, every touch by the other man leading Ramsden to want more of them. He wondered if Vas was doing this on purpose now — if he was flirting with his knight. It was probably nothing of the sort… unless it wasn’t.
Ramsden notes Vas’ sincerity in his words; he never knew the king to be a liar. “I cannot speak for the public, my liege —Vas— but from where I stand, your desire to be seen as a benevolent ruler hasn’t done unnoticed. Certainly not from me.” Vas was certainly right in his assessment, that it was just them in the forge, accompanied by little less than the gentle fire of torches illuminating Vas’ handsome face in golden light, as if reflecting his noble nature to Ramsden’s admiring eyes.
There it is. Tension starting to bleed from shoulders, but perhaps not entirely. The more Ramsden would appear to relax, the wider and warmer Vas’ grin would get. He lived for this, the gradual shift in a man from seeing the king as something intangible, something untouchable, to just another man in Valtolia.
Perhaps a man with more responsibility and great if not comparable combat skill, but still.
Vas clapped the knight’s arms, clearly glad for the vote of confidence. It’s the same smile one might see when the king wakes at dawn, or steps bare out onto the balcony to watch the sunrise achieve its apex. Full of light, of promise. “And I won’t call you Ramsy.” Then the grin twists, holding back a laugh, and he reaches to lightly pat the man’s cheek. “Unless you ask me to, of course.”
