“I’ll give you a heads up if somebody breaks out the chocolate.”

"You're the best."

He was up somewhat late last night and it's possible he is just going to fall asleep under Z's warm blanket.

…yeah, this isn’t the first time.

When he wakes up, later, he’s been deposited in Z’s bed once more.

It's comfortingly familiar. Well, this particular bed isn't terribly familiar, but waking up in Z's bed is a pretty regular experience. Valentine always knows where to find him if he's not home at bedtime.

Camillo takes a minute to poke curiously at his healing leg (gnarly and scabbed, but not infected; whoever took care of it did a respectable job), and then departs to wander the town in search of interesting things to do or people to poison.

The town is busy in the golden light of the late afternoon (oops). Some civilians are heating water over a fire to do non-insane laundry that doesn’t require flinging yourself into a river — others are sitting close to the fire spinning. One bounces a baby on her knee.

Two men are hauling a deer into town, strung up by its ankles. A young girl is practicing with a short but still very real bow, sticking arrows into a tree. Intermittent shouting from a nearby tent suggests some sort of gambling operation.

Everything here is so wholesome and lovely.

Camillo finagles a turn holding the baby, and applauds the shooting, and helps pour hot water into tubs. He shoos geese back towards the preschooler attempting to herd them, and hulls an enormous number of peas (and eats a few), and makes out with a particularly cute long-haired warrior behind the mess tent (oops). When questioned, he admits to knowing how to butcher a deer (thank you Valentine), and that keeps him busy until dinnertime.

He gets to reap some of the rewards of his butchery at dinner, along with another pile of bread and hard cheese and some huge onions, shared amongst the crowd, that have been roasted almost to a jam. It’s delicious.

Dorothy doesn’t drink tonight (and she’s very busy in any case engaged in conversation with two riveted girls, who never leave her seat).

By contrast, as soon as that fact becomes clear, Anatole (who has joined them for this particular dinner) starts drinking a lot.

It’s clearly not for the taste. He’s refilling his small horn and knocking the whole thing back mechanically, then returning to his food, then repeating.

This is pretty worrying!! Probably neither Anatole nor Z would be thrilled about him intervening publicly, though.

Camillo compromises on elbowing Z and making concerned eyebrow-gestures in Anatole's direction.

Z glances at Anatole, then back, then shrugs.

As the alcohol kicks in, his body slowly un-tenses. He stops picking at his food and starts to actually eat. Someone makes a joke, and he laughs.

That seems ... good, except for how it's really super concerning.

Camillo keeps one eye on Dorothy and one on Anatole. It's honestly a good thing he doesn't drink and so it's not conspicuous that he's keeping his wits about him.

Dorothy leaves the table (with the girls watching her departure longingly) around the end of the meal,

And Anatole comes to him a few moments after, puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Come — come — sleep in my bed tonight. My blood is too cool, I’ll freeze.”

"Uh."

...probably this is a plotting thing? That would make way more sense than Anatole suddenly being a cuddles kind of guy.

On the other hand, Z is going to be so unimpressed if he goes along with this. And frankly the horse thing was pretty freaky.

On the gripping hand: the freezing thing actually sounds alarmingly plausible, given the amount of alcohol involved.

"...yeah. I'm, uh. I'm down."

Z sighs a long-suffering best friend sort of sigh.

He can’t be that mad about this one, though. Dude does look kind of in peril.

Anatole pulls him along out of the hall and towards his little house.

He is succeeding at walking in a straight line remarkably well, all things considered.

Camillo allows himself to be pulled, providing a supportive arm along the way.

"So .... good night? Really bad night?"

“Very good night.”

He closes the door after them, drops some wood on the smoldering fire at the center of the room, and immediately starts to undress.

"That's not going to help with the cold, you know."

He will, nevertheless, assist with the undressing. He's only human.

“I think it might.”

Camillo is no longer allowed a shirt. Or pants. He’ll fix that for him.

"I feel like this demonstrates some fundamental confusion about thermodynamics on your part."

Camillo will allow himself to be stripped so long as it doesn't interfere too much with the product of groping Anatole.

Anatole is going to ignore whatever that was, take the two swaying steps over to his bed and sprawl out on the furs.

He’s completely failing to conceal anything between his spread legs.

Um.

Okay. Okay.

So he's really really hard, and he's trying his best not to think entirely with his dick.

Anatole is incredibly hot; Anatole is incredibly drunk. Anatole obviously wants this; Anatole wouldn't normally want this.

Camillo doesn't have a condom.

Anatole isn't real.

He's so hard it hurts. He wraps his hand around his own cock, trying to soothe it and buy himself a moment of clear thought, which predictably has exactly the opposite effect.

"Um."

"Are you ... sure...."