So I already posted this on Tumblr last week, but I figured I'd post it here for good measure as well. As I said before, because the Raffin/Bann fandom is horrendously underfed, and there will never be enough fics for this pairing. Enjoy.

Never in his life could Raffin pinpoint something he could not explain through research and logic.

Whether it was the blue tint to the sky or the crisp taste of a fresh apple, if it did not make sense in his head, he found he could usually discover its secrets through science. Even if the experiments were entirely impractical, even if Katsa complained incessantly about the uselessness of his research, he would eventually reach a solid conclusion. And faithfully by his side every time was his best friend and confidant, Bann.

So when, on the first day of autumn, Raffin found that he had a rather inexplicable urge to kiss the friend he'd been working peacefully alongside for years, he figured that it could be explained away with research.

The day had started out quite simply. The two of them had been continuing their efforts to discover a cure for smelly feet, a project that they had been working on for weeks. On that particular morning, they were attempting to identify the key ingredient that was missing in the ointment they had made.

He and Bann were talking very little, both perusing through various papers on perfumes and floral scents. After about an hour of this, Bann threw the parchment he had been reading down and practically leapt out of his seat. Raffin rose as well, under the mistaken impression that something had gone horribly wrong. However when he looked at his friend's face, he found he was grinning.

"I've found it, Raff! This is a paper from the royal healer during King Yorl's reign. He discovered that perfumes alone only had the power to mask smell, not remove it. We've been going about this all wrong! We shouldn't be looking for pleasant smells to add to our ointment, we should be looking for odorless substances that will have the capability of removing a stench."

Bann's excitement was like a disease, and Raffin could not stop himself from throwing his arms around his friend in joy. Bann hugged him back tightly, the happiness from his discovery coming off him in waves.

It suddenly occurred to Raffin that he had seen a book in the palace library a few weeks ago about various odorless substances found in the Seven Kingdoms. He pulled his head away from Bann's shoulder to inform him of this book, but found that the words caught in his throat when the proximity of his companion's face dawned on him.

In an instant, millions of thoughts flooded his brain. Bann's eyes were a mesmerizing shade of green. There was a slight spattering of freckles on his nose that he had never noticed. One of Bann's eyebrows was still slightly misshapen from when he had accidentally burned part of one off. But, among all these observations, one made itself clear above the rest.

Bann's lips were utterly delectable, and if Raffin didn't start kissing them soon he was entirely certain it would cause him physical pain.

Without giving himself time to think, Raffin clumsily pushed himself away from Bann. How long had he stayed frozen, inches away from his best friend's face, staring dumbfounded at what he found? It had seemed like a lifetime, but was it possible that it had only been a few seconds?

"Rocks, Raff. What's gotten into you?" Bann asked, and Raffin thought he could just barely hear a hint of unease in his voice.

"I—it's nothing. I just remembered that I saw a copy of the Handbook to Scentless Materials in the library the other day and—and I realized that I have to retrieve it immediately. Good work, Bann." Raffin sputtered, rushing out the wooden door of the workshop before Bann had a chance to reply.

He flattened himself against the outside of the door, closing his eyes and gathering his thoughts. So you suddenly have the desire to kiss your best friend senseless. So what? You've also had urges to punch him in the face, but you've never acted on those. You can't keep standing here and panicking. What if someone passes by? What if Bann wonders what's gotten into you and finds you here?

After what seemed like hours, Raffin forced his feet to move down the corridor and in the general direction of the library.

So he'd had one urge to kiss Bann. One intense, magnetic, catastrophic urge, no less, but still only an urge. Wanting to sock Bann in the face didn't mean he hated him, so logically wanting to kiss him wasn't a definite sign that he was in love with him either. In his own defense, that was the first time he had ever been that close to a person's face, not just Bann's.

At this thought, Raffin felt strangely relieved. Maybe it wasn't Bann specifically that he wanted to kiss, but just that he yearned for a romantic partner. As he entered the library, he felt his panic attack subside. With a clear breath, Raffin glanced out the window at the courtyard and acknowledged two truths.

First, regardless of its origins, the desire to kiss Bann must be investigated.

Second, for the first time in his life, he was going to have to hide his research entirely from his best friend.

The first stage of Raffin's research had little to do with Bann himself. Raffin had clung to the thought he'd had the other day at the library: that he'd never been that close to anyone, and it was simply that proximity that prompted the feelings.

At first, Raffin didn't know how to go about investigating this. Was he to just invade the personal space of various court members and see if he had the desire to kiss them? Or should he attempt to be more subtle, using some sort of an excuse?

It wasn't until Katsa had burst into his bedroom in the middle of the night, going on about some insulting thing Giddon had done, that he found he would have a chance to test this theory.

He was sitting up in his bed, and Katsa was seated a few feet to his left at a table he occasionally worked at when ideas struck him in the middle of the night. She was telling him a very long tale, the plot of which he was already vaguely familiar with. His father had sent them on a mission and Giddon had treated her like a delicate flower, which Katsa perceived as a personal attack on her being.

"Are you alright, Raffin? You haven't listened to a single word I've said." Katsa glowered. Raffin sighed, and set his gaze on his cousin.

"I'm sorry, Katsa. I'm preoccupied by a project I'm working on," he hesitated before continuing on. "Actually, cousin, it's something you could possible help me with?"

Katsa lifted one eyebrow in the sort of way that told him she was suspicious of him, but eventually gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Fully aware that approaching his cousin within inches of her face would result in a broken nose, Raffin searched his brain for an excuse.

"You see, I'm conducting research on the nature of Graceling eyes. I want to examine just how many shades of color there are, and if they have a wider range than that of the Ungraced." Raffin lied, hoping that her disturbing skills wouldn't detect his lies.

"Why do I get the feeling that there is an unpleasant aspect to this?" Katsa snapped, obviously disliking the idea of being a form of test subject. Raffin took a hesitant step towards his cousin.

"Well, you see, it just requires me to get extremely close to your face. So I can see your eyes." He explained. Katsa sighed, but didn't object, so he assumed that she was giving him permission.

Cautiously, Raffin approached her. When he reached her chair, he knelt down so that they were at eye level. He closed his eyes for a moment. Whatever happens, Raffin, you cannot, under any circumstances, kiss Katsa. She will rip your lips to shreds with her bare hands.

Raffin opened one eye first, then the other. Katsa's face was impatient and annoyed, he could only guess because of his slowness. Holding his breath, he forced himself to look at his cousin with the same air that he had looked at Bann.

Without a doubt, Katsa's blue and green eyes were extremely captivating. However, they were not the part of her face that he really had to worry about. He knew she would not miss it if he glanced down at her lips, but he had to risk the consequences. With a bit of reluctance, he looked down at her mouth.

Katsa's lips were in a hard line, and though they were both rather full, he felt absolutely no desire to touch them with his own. In fact, the very thought of it seemed to disgust him. He backed up away from his cousin, both relief and panic forcing themselves into his head. His brain ached at the duality.

"Are we done here?" Katsa asked uncomfortably, and Raffin realized that he had yet to say anything.

"Oh, um, yes. Your eyes are quite the interesting shade. Your blue is much different than that of the palace's Graced baker." Raffin lied, not the slightest bit sure if the baker had a blue eye or a fuchsia one.

Katsa was gone from his room before he could say anything else, whether because she saw he needed to be alone or she herself needed isolation, he did not know. Regardless, he was glad for the emptiness of the room. He quickly pulled a parchment and quill from his bedside table and set to writing.

Proximity to another's face does not produce the same effects. Must gather more evidence to conclude whether the reaction is strictly because of the subject. No conclusions to be made until substantial evidence is gathered.

Raffin sighed, refusing to jump to the conclusion that he had wanted to kiss Bann for reasons he was not yet prepared to face. He would find a scientific explanation, no matter what it took.

A week later, Raffin had successfully invaded the space of thirteen other people, both male and female, and had yet to feel the same effects that Bann's face had prompted.

Though the next step in his scientific process would suggest recreating the situation with Bann to see if it produced the same effects, Raffin decided it was unnecessary. He told himself that it was because Bann would surely be suspicious, but deep down he was nearly positive that he would not be able to stop himself from kissing his friend a second time.

With that disturbing realization in mind, Raffin set his focus on a different aspect of his research.

Homosexuality, though rare, was something that existed in the Seven Kingdoms.

Some kings were more accepting of it than others, some directly opposed it, and some, like Raffin's father, simply pretended it did not exist. Raffin had only heard his father mention it once in passing, when he stated that he had removed two court members from office because they had been caught kissing in a deserted corridor.

Raffin remembered asking if it was because they were both men, and that his father rather unconvincingly assured him that the same treatment would have been given if it had been a man and a woman. He also remembered a month later, when that very scenario occurred and the man and woman involved maintained their positions in the palace. He didn't dare bring it up to his father, but from that moment on he seemed to understand that as long as Randa ruled the Middluns, homosexuals would not be given equal treatment.

However, at the moment Raffin was still not entirely sure that he did have a preference for men. The only man he had ever been attracted to was Bann, and he was currently in the process of explaining that away to mean nothing.

As he sat in his bedroom pondering this, he once more took out his parchment and began to write.

In order to conclude if the feelings are general or specific to one person, it must be determined if attraction is present for all members of a gender.

The next day, as he walked the corridors of the palace, Raffin attempted to look at the men he passed romantically. The one he recognized as the blacksmith's assistant, and was sure that his name was either Lug or Lag. As he passed by him, he found himself thinking that he rather liked his shoulders. He was almost cheered on by this until he realized that the man had the same exact build as Bann.

He liked the tall member of his guard's eyes, but then realized that they were a similar green to Bann's. He had decided that he wanted to run his hands through the librarian's hair, but then noted it was the exact shade and style as his best friend's. After recognizing similarities in at least twenty men to Bann, he realized that his attempts were useless.

He had found the men attractive, but he only liked the things that they had in common with his friend. Even then, he hadn't been able to stop himself from comparing them. Not a single one came even remotely close to Bann. As he walked back to his room to report his progress (or lack, thereof), a thought occurred to him. Instead of writing the details of his research, he wrote that single thought in his notes.

Is it possible to be Bann-sexual?

It was about two weeks into his secret research that Raffin noticed Bann was getting suspicious.

Though they were wrapping up their work on the foot ointment, the progress had been exceeding slow due to his constant attempts to remain at least ten feet away from Bann. They had not touched each other a significant much before, but Raffin had now made it painfully clear that even the slightest brush of the hand was not to be allowed.

Raffin hated it, keeping distance from Bann. Even from across the room, just the sight of him made him want to tackle him to the ground and press his lips to every part of Bann's body he could reach. And above that, he simply missed his friend.

He also hated the look that crossed Bann's face when he retreated from his touch. He looked as if he had been slapped. Raffin wanted so badly to erase the hurt from his friend's eyes, but found that the only way he could think of doing this would end with he himself being slapped.

Even if Bann didn't know the nature of the research, Raffin was sure that he knew that there was a secret project that Raffin was keeping from him. How did it look to Bann? His best friend avoids him for two straight weeks, shrivels away from his touch, and, for the first time in his entire life, has excluded him from his work. Raffin couldn't help but feel exceedingly guilty.

It didn't matter if the results were positive or negative, Raffin could not continue to hurt his friend in this way.

It was exactly seventeen days into his research that Raffin was forced to come to the conclusion that he had been hiding from the entire time. He had tried hypothesis after hypothesis, read more books on the human condition than he cared to admit, and agitated far too many people.

He was holed up in his bedroom, even though it was the middle of the day. Bann was probably in the workshop, wondering if Raffin had finally broken and given up on him. Raffin pushed this thought out of his head, and instead forced himself to write his conclusion on paper.

After much research, it can be concluded that the feelings are neither due to the proximity of a face nor an attraction to his gender. It has taken seventeen days, three hours, and twenty seven minutes to reach this conclusion, and now I must regretfully admit what I have been scared of all along. I, Prince Raffin of the Middluns, am in love with my best friend, Bann.

Raffin let out a sigh he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Now that it was down on paper, he felt that he could finally accept his great secret. He was in love with Bann. That was the logical explanation he had been searching for, and it happened to be the most illogical emotion known to man.

He felt himself laugh at the irony, and then laugh again simply at the relief he felt at admitting it. He loved Bann, a love that he could feel deep inside of him, a love that shook him to his very core and rattled his bones.

Even if he would never be able to tell a soul, he at least was aware of this private emotion. Even if Bann never knew, Raffin could tell him secretly in gestures, in glances, in the occasional hug at a scientific discovery. His heart ached at the thought of that being all there would ever be, but his brain assured him that it was the best he could get.

And he would take as much as he could.

It was at this precise moment, feeling the clarity of his emotions and the sad realization that they would never be revealed, when Bann himself burst into the room. His hair was rather disheveled, he was out of breath, and he was beautiful.

"What in the Middluns has gotten into you, Raff?" Bann demanded, roughly shutting the door behind him. "Ever since I made that discovery, you have been avoiding me so severely that I can barely get you to look me in the eye."

It hadn't occurred to Raffin that Bann would be angry. He knew his friend would be hurt, but he hadn't anticipated the furiousness that seemed to come with it. It was because of this surprise, on top of the simple shock of Bann being there at that very moment, that Raffin was left speechless.

"Is it because you're jealous? Because Almighty High Prince Raffin of the Middluns didn't make a discovery, but instead his uninteresting friend did? You're jealous, aren't you? I know you've been working on something on the side. We always work together, Raff. Is this your way of proving that you're better than me?" Bann demanded. Raffin felt the shock leave his system, instead allowing his blood to boil at the accusation.

"Me? Jealous? Of course I'm not jealous, Bann. You've known me since we were children. You should know that I'm not the jealous type, that I'm nothing but happy that you made the discovery. But did it ever occur to you that maybe what I'm doing doesn't involve you?" Raffin asked. Of course, what he was doing very much involved Bann, involved him more than he cared to admit at the moment.

"When did it ever involve me? Did the healing qualities of purple dye involve me? What about the chemical composition of apple juice? Great seas, even this cure for retched feet. None of them involve me, but I'm always included. Am I not good enough for you anymore?" Bann asked, and now a great deal of hurt had worked its way into his voice.

"Bann," Raffin said brokenly, attempting to get his friend to look him in the eyes. But his eyes were focused beyond Raffin, at the table that sat three yards behind him. The table which was still full of the notes that he had not yet had the chance to put away, since Bann had burst in while he was still working on them.

"Is that it, then? Is that the project I'm not good enough to see?" Bann asked. Raffin tried to stop him, but Bann was much bigger and pushed past him to the table. Raffin felt panic set in as his friend picked up the notes.

"No, Bann, listen. Please don't read those, those are private. Those are my private thoughts. No one is supposed to read them. Please, Bann." Raffin begged, but it was already too late. Bann was reading them, all of them, and would hate him forever.

Raffin felt his world slipping. He felt so isolated in the Middluns, he had so few allies. Katsa was a great comfort, but she was often out of court on Randa's missions. She would be gone for days, sometimes even weeks at a time. He could not handle the long stretches without a friend, without Bann by his side.

And yet he was about to lose that friendship. The friendship that kept him rooted in the ground, the one that kept him sane, the one that he had absolutely no business mucking up. With a great dread in the pit of his stomach, he forced himself to look up.

Bann no longer looked angry.

He was holding the notes, reading them with an expression that was both confused and understanding at the same time. If Raffin wasn't mistaken, he seemed to be cradling them. Raffin looked at the particular parchment in his hand, and realized that he had come to the notes Raffin had taken just ten minutes before.

He expected to be hit. He expected to be shouted at, to be rejected in the worst of ways. So when Bann read his words with a sort of awe, his eyes widening towards the end, Raffin had entirely no idea of what to expect. There was no scientific process that could tell him what was in Bann's brain.

Bann looked up from the notes to him, startling Raffin with the intensity of his gaze.

"Raffin," he breathed, and in two strides was in front on him.

The next thing he knew, he was kissing Bann. He couldn't remember who had started it; neither could he recall the pitiable explanation for the notes he had prepared in his head. All he was sure of was that if Bann kept kissing him the way he was, Raffin would forget his own name.

He gripped at Bann desperately, unsure of what to do with his arms. From what he had seen, usually the man wrapped his arms around the woman. But they were both men, and Bann already had a tight grip around Raffin's torso. After a millisecond of thought, he decided on tangling his hands in Bann's hair. This seemed to be a good decision, as Bann let out a moan that made Raffin's hair stand up on end.

Kissing Bann was unlike anything Raffin had ever experienced. His head was empty; there was nothing there but Bann and the perfection that was his lips. Raffin felt that he could kiss Bann forever, and found himself wanting to do little else. He knew that Bann felt the same way, because when he broke off to catch his breath, he kept pressing small kisses to Raffin's lips.

"So I take it—" Raffin started, but was cut off when Bann caught his lips once more and the question died in his throat.

"I love you, too." Bann stated in between kisses, and the surety in his voice made Raffin push him backwards until he hit the wall, viciously attacking his mouth with a new fervor. He pressed himself against him, desperate for as much of them to be touching as possible. The moan that this elicited only made him press forward even more.

They stayed like that for a while, until they moved only slightly and Bann's leg moved between Raffin's. They paused for a moment, realizing the equal state they were both in, and the mood shifted once more.

At some point in the middle of it all, Raffin's brain was resurrected enough to note that Bann's mouth and hands had quite the curious effect on him, and that they would have to investigate this at some point to find a logical explanation. However, no sooner did Raffin think this than Bann's hands quickly drove all logic from his mind, instead giving him a form of bliss that made him absolutely idiotic with pleasure.

Oh yes, they'd have to investigate this one a lot more.