That move--removing glasses, wiping them clean--was such a tactical way to disengage from continued eye contact that Aurus couldn't help but wonder what it was that Hank was keeping hidden. For the moment though, his attention was not on excavating that particular mystery.

Instead he took the time to think about what Hank was (and wasn't) saying and to measure how he wanted to answer him. In truth though, he was missing a fairly crucial piece of information which would shape just how he took Hank's advice.

Which meant that Hank was about to experience some of that bluntness Aurus had spoken of. Not sylvari bluntness per se; this was purely Aurus's particular version of it:

"You needn't worry for your students--I'm really not that indelicate. But I need to ask you, Hank, were you and Charles ever lovers?"

This time it wasn't merely a question for shock value. Aurus felt that he needed to know for sure, because if Hank and Charles had once been lovers sometime before Charles' injury--if they'd once been lovers and Hank had sat by and let this kind of isolation take hold in Charles' life for a whole decade since--that, to Aurus, would be a kind of abandonment from which he could accept no counsel.