Elder '04: His Due

"Rufus?" Ezra smiled. He stood at the table and waited.

"Mr. Dragon, if you prefer." The man seated there was tall, long and dark; dark eyes, dark hair and a strange, unsettled notion of just darkness hovered around him.

He motioned to a chair across the table.

Ezra let it glide into his hand and he slid into it easily. "Rufus serves the purpose, certainly," he answered, holding back a fuller smile at the romantic dash of narcissism that was today's chosen name.

Hot tea was waiting for him, a small service complete with raw sugar and cream. He bypassed the sweet but made the tea very light and cloudy with a healthy measure of the thickened milk.

"Almost the conclusion of another year, Ezra."

He took a long drink of the tea, savoring the warmth, the faint bitterness and the offsetting balance of the cream.

"Indeed," he sighed out after another swallow. Ezra leaned back in his chair and held the cup in both hands, letting it rest against his sternum. "Which is, of course, the reason for our meeting."

Rufus nodded. "You are doing well." He paused. "Very well."

Ezra's lips tipped up. "Hmm, yes, of course," he said, almost blandly.

Dark eyes narrowed; they flashed with a tolerance that neared humor.

"A deserved compliment," Rufus allowed, "but do not let it distract you. There is still much to be done."

Ezra had another drink of his tea. "Of course," he repeated simply, eyes meeting Rufus' powerful gaze unflinchingly.

Rufus nodded in acknowledgement. Nothing more was said or warned.

"This year's service," Rufus began again after their comfortable silence. His jaw tightened with distaste. "This year's seasonal service - it is to be held once more in an unfinished sanctuary?"

Ezra nodded.

Rufus smiled. It rippled coldly through the air. "Excellent." He tsk'd slowly, shaking his head as his finger played in the short puddle of whiskey at the bottom of his glass. "A damn shame something always takes precedence or cannot be made available to Josiah, preventing that beautiful - structure - from ever finding completion."

Ezra lifted his mug in salute.

"Josiah - was he as easy as we'd predicted?" Rufus lazed backwards and steepled his fingers, elbows coming to rest against his hipbones.

"He remembered quite easily the unsheltered path and how to walk it comfortably."

Rufus' eyes crinkled when he smiled; it was an expression that looked almost kind.

Ezra would have continued but Rufus became momentarily distracted by the barmaid. She'd come close to refill their drinks; more hot tea for Ezra, whiskey straight for Rufus. He looked up at her with a particular gleam and a curl bending his lips. She licked at her own, staring baldly, eyes lost in hazy thrall.

After another flutter of his lashes Rufus turned away. "Thank you, my dear," he cooed brazenly, as if they'd just rolled over in bed, her in his arms and he in her.

She flushed scarlet at the roots of her dirty-blonde hair, the blush likely chasing down to fill her, spreading at the other thatch of curls adorning her body, dark eyes drooping, tongue playing in her mouth.

She stood and continued to stare, helpless to do otherwise, watching intently while Rufus ignored her. Ezra interceded - for her sake and to get this business swiftly concluded.

"That will be all," he directed, voice a trifle cooled.

The mantle lifted and she shook herself, shoulders twitching visibly as her fingers drew into fists. "Of course, sirs," she stammered. She bit her lip in discomfort and uncertainty.

Ezra nodded and smiled and allowed her to skitter away. She broke from them, brows coming together as she studied them over her retreating shoulder in fleeting glances.

Rufus merely downed the second of the third measures she'd left for him, merry grin breaking his handsome features.

"You do spoil all the fun, Ezra."

Ezra was unperturbed. "I am here for work, not your play. Besides, I am expected back soon. I have no cause to linger."

A long glace was given to Ezra then, studying him, setting him briefly aflame, seeing beneath his clothes to his skin and the delicacies his body presented.

"Pity," Rufus said, pouting prettily. His shoulders sagged and his dark eyes accused petulantly. "You do so spoil all the fun," he sulked.

Ezra shook his head. Another time, our pleasure, he whispered between them, with a raise of his fingers, the lift of his lip to separate them into an open vault and the faintest tilt of his head.

Rufus' pout disappeared, eyes glittering in answer to the invitation. He nodded, mollified. Another time it would be.

"The others? They are coming along as well?"

Ezra straightened his shoulders and then his head, diminishing the sudden charge that had alerted their fellow luncheoners to murmur with disquieted unrest at its lurid, supple sweetness.

"Steady and true in their descent," Ezra said. "As is always the path of the righteous when they lead, full of their own certainty, instead of being led," he added with a grin.

"Ah Ezra my sweet, you do love this, don't you?"

Ezra shrugged, smile still on his face, gold tooth twinkling with just a hint of the sinister. "It is good to be good at what you do - and enjoy it besides," he said smoothly.

Rufus chortled, belly-deep; the sound was full and black and fathomless. The people around them in the saloon shifted nervously as it echoed about.

"The willing siren you coyly seduced to share your bed certainly doesn't dampen your enthusiasm, I expect." Rufus' eyes glinted smugly.

Ezra laughed lightly, smiled lightly. "Vin? Why," his teeth showed themselves when his light smile turned feral, "he was the easiest of them all." He contemplated his empty mug. "Those with the most good in them usually are," he said.

The ideas and sensations that came to him thinking on the added incentive that was Vin's company during their long nights and some long days together twisted over his form with shuddering, fiery pleasure.

He looked back up, met Rufus' now heated gaze.

"It dampens nothing," Ezra breathed out, the words skidding over his lips to rush between them and tease across Rufus' skin.

Rufus swallowed then cleared his throat. "I was right in sending you," he said, tone mostly composed, the arrogant words just barely roughened; a demarcation of Ezra's growing stature, in so many ways. "You are my best."

Such a thing should be too lavish for Rufus to have said. Because it was Rufus who said it, there was no such thing as too lavish.

Ezra knew the truth of the words and he knew a swell of his pride. Rufus was right; he was the very best.

They stared at each other for a long silence, green and black dancing slowly in the thick midday slants of shadow and light.

"We are done here, Ezra," Rufus said eventually after all roughness was gone. He waved his hand across the tabletop. The leftover cream from Ezra's tea curdled in its small cruet. Neither man noticed.

"Get yourself on back to your little burg and your little men and all those little minutiae you so delight in." Rufus' eyes perked, changing momentarily from their dark near black into seething, burnt-red and blue embers.

Ezra stood effortlessly and straightened his clothes. He looked up from where his chin was tucked against his chest as he righted his pocket fob and vest.

"Well, you do know what they say," he offered casually.

Rufus raised a brow.

"The details," Ezra inclined his head. "That is where you are." He spun his hat up onto his head with elegant flourish. "So naturally it is where I follow."

He tapped his heels and gave a small bow then turned away without another word. Rufus' laugh trailed out behind him, wraithing through the hot air and the dust, falling down after his footsteps, shivering the skin of this place as it settled into the pores of the earth.