Chapter 272 - 270: Can You Climb?

Chapter 272: Chapter 270: Can You Climb?

They said they’d be heading into the city just after nightfall, and the sun has just started to set.

​Unfortunately, Loac’s still nowhere to be seen.

​Khobi would be pissed , if he wasn’t already preoccupied.

​"... Wear something nice ," he mutters, bare-chested and annoyed as he fishes through his chest of clothes for damn near the third time in search of something that both fits Rogard’s description, yet won’t make him look like an absolute idiot.

​The options are slim.

Everything he owns is either bloodstained, slightly ripped, or way too fancy for him to be caught dead in.

The soldiers had scoffed at Rogard’s polite suggestion and told him not to worry about that sort of thing –the tavern they’ve planned to meet at sees all sorts of men in all sorts of states so it’s not like there’s a dress code or anything, but Khobi figures it couldn’t hurt to...put in a little effort, for a change.

Gandy has made more than one comment about how pretty the barmaids there are, with the odd offhanded remark about how he’s sure the men there are just as easy on the eyes thrown in for good measure.

​And Khobi can take a hint.

​Distantly, he hears the bedroom door open as he throws another shirt into the pile of ones that are in desperate need of patching and sighs, distractedly running a hand through his hair to try and get it to sit a little neater as he catches his reflection in the mirror.

​"You lookin’ to impress someone, huh?" Loac’s voice makes him jump, and he immediately drops his hands away from his hair like they’ve been slapped away.

​"None of your business." It comes out sounding far too defensive.

​And so what if he is?

​Why shouldn’t he some fun every once in a while?

​The thought makes his gut clench, and Khobi has to chide himself and tamp back the anticipation before it starts warming his blood.

He’s going out to celebrate with his friends, not to get laid.

​(Although surely there’s no reason he can’t do both.)

​Khobi doesn’t realise quite how long or how melancholically he’s been staring down into his sorry excuse for a wardrobe until a shirt flies out of nowhere and hits him in the face.

​Well, not out of nowhere.

​It’s obvious that Loac’s thrown it at him.

​"What’d you do that for?" Khobi whines, and throws it back at him out of reflex.

Loac catches it out of the air, expression unimpressed.

​"You’re taking too long," he tells him, and tosses the shirt back at him.

Puzzled, Khobi catches it with his hands this time instead of his face, and after it becomes clear that he’s about three seconds away from just throwing it back at him Loac graciously gestures at Khobi’s shirtless body. "Hurry up."

​Oh.

​Right. Mutely, Khobi starts to comply, when a thought suddenly occurs to him.

It looks a lot like the white one Loac’s currently wearing, except in black.

​"Is this yours ?" Khobi inquires suspiciously, because it’s certainly not his.

The colour’s right, but that’s where the resemblance to anything he owns ends.

This fabric is much nicer than the ones he owns, and it has shiny buttons all the way. It also doesn’t have any holes in it.

​Loac gives him an impatient look.

​"Just put it on."

Khobi wants to refuse just on principal, but the shirt’s clean and very inoffensive, and that’s more than can be said for the rest of the clothes he owns.

It also fits him irritatingly well, and when he peers into the mirror he has to admit that it kind of suits him.

​Scratch that, it actually looks really fucking good on him.

​Not to be ungrateful for the immense amount of gold that Rogard spent on him, but why couldn’t he have picked stuff like this?

​"...You done checkin’ yourself out, or what?" Loac drawls from over by the window.

​Khobi ignores him, shoving the sleeves up past his elbows and then fossicking around through his discarded clothes to find where on earth his warmest furs have gotten to.

​" –Ditch the furs," Loac tells him, as if reading his mind, "They’ll just make it harder."

​"Are you joking?" Khobi scoffs, giving him an incredulous look. "It’s fucking freezing out there."

​Concerningly, Loac does not appear to be joking.

Even more concerningly, he opens the shutters on the windows.

Cold night air immediately pours into the room, and Khobi has to grit his teeth and tuck his hands up under his armpits so they don’t immediately cramp up.

​"You’ll warm up," Loac shrugs, and promptly clambers up onto the ledge, where he perches for a moment, long limbs framed by the grey, moonlight sky.

It makes him look...kind of wild. "You can climb, right?"

​"... Yeah ," Khobi huffs, shaking away the stray thought before it can form roots. "I can climb."

​"Good." Loac jerks his head for him to follow, and promptly disappears up and out the window. "Close the shutters behind you."

​After a beat, Khobi follows.

​It takes a bit of creativity to get the shutters closed again from the outside given how small the ledge is, but he gets there in the end; overly conscious of the pair of eyes staring down at him from the wall some couple of metres above.

But Loac just waits until he’s gotten his footing, himself just casually dangling off the wall with only one hand and one foot on the rock to hold him there, and when Khobi gives him a silent nod to let him know he’s good to go, he starts picking his way higher.

And he does so with practised ease; scaling up walls and over ledges and leaping from roof to roof like it’s something he’s been doing his whole life.

​It’s by no means effortless; it’s gruelling work, and after the third time of having to drag his entire weight up onto a roof Khobi quickly sees why Loac told him to ditch the furs, but he honestly makes it look so easy.