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Damis blinked at the tap and glanced. “I was,” he answered without hesitance. “Though I took well to it then, it has been some time since I was taking any serious instruction, and as you say, even that was…not quite so practical as what you’ve dealt with here. I would like to remedy that. Since I originally thought myself equipped to head out on my own it seems that at the very least I ought to take the opportunity of actually traveling to work towards that capacity.”

What if they’d killed me.

Damis did not want to examine messy lurch and twist in his gut and chest at the thought. Though it had occurred to him — specifically as the possibility had become all too real in those first moments of Xilarn’s appearance in the alkidike camp — the concept inspired almost as much anxiety now as it had then, minus the overriding panic of potential impending doom for both of them. It was terrifying, and for reasons deeper than the prospect of being left alone in the woods. He shook his head.

“If they had killed you I would have died,” he said finally. “Even if they hadn’t actually been intent on eating me I am sure your arrival and loss of some of their own would have resulted in whoever remained slitting my throat before I caused trouble as well. If you hadn’t arrived…I suppose my first instinct is always to attempt to talk my way out of it. I was only just coming conscious after whatever they used to knock me out to begin with, and they hadn’t been listening to me yet, but I have quite a mouth on me and at the very least could have bought myself some time. I was bound, so I’d want to find some way out of that first. They’re not a race known for their wit. Perhaps I could have convinced them that my being bound up would ‘bruise my meat’ and make my muscles stiff and unpleasant. Or perhaps they’d be entertained by war stories of imaginary relatives of mine being split open by fierce alk warriors. What exactly would or wouldn’t have worked in that situation is impossible to know now…but I would have tried. Going forward, I’ll make special effort not to be rendered completely useless before an opportunity to fend for myself even arises.”

He paused, and very briefly his eyes narrowed in a loose squint. “And I’m not afraid of water.” It was a belated defense, but still felt appropriate to note. “I just don’t know how to swim. I go into it. You saw…” Well, among other things he’d definitely seen. “And I would like to learn to swim. The opportunity just…never arose.”

“Cute,” Damissan repeated. It wasn’t exactly the word he might have hoped for, but under the circumstances it still felt surprisingly acceptable, if not ideal. “I am still optimistic,” he said. “I think things are going rather well, all things considered. We made it all the way through Oba, Jatine, Tivrod, through much of Jauhar, Neued and Ast…we’ve met with your cousin, engaged the locals, appreciated their native festivals. I haven’t managed to inspire any followers yet, but…” Damissan eyed Gadot’s ears, and found himself smiling again. “I’ve made other gains along the way, I think. We’re both alive, and…”

There was a very definitive difference between ‘cute’ accompanied by bumps of the head, and a promise of opportunities to hone his obedience tucked with hot breath near to his ear, and in the span of seconds, heat was crawling up in the wake of it. My lord, indeed. “You have my attention,” Damissan said, followed immediately after by, “I mean you will have my attention, I will be…paying attention. I’ll appreciate your efforts at, ah…keeping it engaging.”

Xilarn’s shift in body language was unmistakable, and for an instant, it was Damissan’s instinct to reach and layer his hands over the other man’s, because they were tense and it seemed apt. But he didn’t want to discourage whatever forward steps they’d made by being overly forward or familiar. So he settled, instead, for relaxing his posture and settling it into Xilarn’s hold when he gripped.

“I don’t think that we have, no,” he answered. “But it’s a very good idea, I think…it would have been useful for dealing with the binds in the event I had any opportunity to make it away undetected, and in the future I can’t imagine a situation where it would do more harm than good to have, regardless. I’ve never needed to before, but…here the circumstances are different.”

He gave an interested hum at the closing thought. “I’ve never seen anything like either, and they do sound inviting. If you haven’t lost complete patience with my natural talent for annoyance after my lessons in dirty fighting and obedience, perhaps you can help me not drown, too. If nothing else I’ll be getting in—assuming the crystal waters aren’t secretly poisonous also.”

It seemed unlikely. But, given his track record with luck and environmental unknowns, the thought didn’t seem completely preposterous either.

If there was any situation where acknowledgement of the circumstance was sure to make it worse, a blush was most definitely among them. The situation was unusual to Damis on any number of fronts, not least of which being that he didn’t blush often, and beyond that couldn’t recall a single time he’d ever been called on one. His skin was dark enough that it didn’t show nominally, and now—he supposed the only way Xilarn could tell was due to being right there.

And pressing his lips to his neck.

Damis meant to swallow the sound it incited entirely. The man was clearly playing games — unexpected games, given most of their prior history, but not so much anymore in the context of this evening — and if he didn’t intend to follow through anywhere, which Damis strongly suspected was the case, then he didn’t deserve such blatant acknowledgement of the effects he was inspiring in the form of—

—a moan? A grunt. Some very short, very strangled and regrettable sound that Damis bit back the next instant, and immediately followed with a snorted huff. “I don’t,” he quipped.

And then, because that still sounded distinctly flustered and not what he was aiming for, Damis drew a breath, straightening his back a fraction and tipping his head very slightly to the side, further baring the stretch of neck that Xilarn seemed intent on pretending he was doing nothing out of the ordinary with.

“I don’t imagine they’re visible. I’ve certainly never had anyone comment before. But if you would like to run an experiment we could switch positions, and I could hold you fitted between my legs with your arse pressed against my crotch, and while we ride I’ll brush my lips up your throat and speak against your ear and run my fingers under your shirt to your stomach—just to be sure you aren’t injured there, of course—and it’s possible you’d find yourself prone to blushing as well, despite the innocuous nature of the circumstances.”

“It was not bothersome to me.” Damissan meant to say it neutrally—a calm, collected statement of fact—but despite his intentions, the words came too quick for him to wipe clean the snap in them. Because Xilarn knew, he had to know that that wasn’t the root of the issue, it wasn’t remotely the issue. And even if his second-guessing was motivated by the best intentions, regardless of Xilarn’s intentions altogether, the withdrawal felt personal and deeply unpleasant, some hybrid between a douse of cold water and bald-faced rejection. It left a cool, unsatisfied knot in Damis’ gut.

When Xilarn pulled back further, edging away from him and apologizing, and in the process wedging both real and metaphorical space between them to the greatest extent he could manage in that moment, Damissan’s posture bristled. His grip on Gadot subtly tightened, and his jaw locked, lips pursed. The suggestion that they make camp was so expected by that point that Damissan was moving all but before the sentence finished, leg sweeping up and over and weight dropping to the earth off of Gadot’s side.

“And you weren’t making me uncomfortable,” he said. “You know exactly what you were ‘making’ me, I’m not an infant.”

It wasn’t the best place to make camp.

Damis noted this fact belatedly as he strode over to where Nazakai was being lead along. In fact, given the happenstance of it all, it was a fairly terrible place. The ground was especially uneven — a consistent trait of Jauhar, but particularly poor here — with incredibly clustered and interwoven roots all wrestling for dominance of the muck. He fiddled with the straps keeping their camping materials fastened to his quhar, debating the relative cost-benefit of pointing out, after making a scene of strutting angrily off of his guard’s beast, that perhaps they ought best move just a bit further forward.

His tongue didn’t feel up to cooperating.

Damis couldn’t have said what exactly he was expecting. He hadn’t expected much of anything that evening to go as it had, beginning with their dinner conversation and leading all the way up to the present moment: not Xilarn’s encouragement of his endeavors or subsequent match-quick defensive anger and dismissal, not the alks, not Xilarn’s reappearance and handling of them, not anything that had just occurred on Gadot’s back and not—not this, either. He had thought, he supposed, that at the very least, even though his guard’s approaches had been unanticipated, once they turned into a rebuff and denial, it would stay that way.

That Xilarn would stay on his mount and have the decency to be consistent at the minimum from that point forward with his stubborn attitude that nothing at all had gone on. Perhaps a quiet, disgruntled insistence that they continue because the setting wasn’t actually appropriate after all, or another small jab to reinforce how much he Wasn’t Interested, or something. Something other than this.

But that wasn’t the case.

Instead, Xilarn very much was pursuing after him despite moments before clearly wanting to be out of contact despite moments before that clearly wanting to be in contact, and Damis’ hands weren’t doing anything of note on Nazakai’s straps anyway. “I didn’t want or need or ask for an apology,” he said. “I didn’t want you to stop at all, though I expected it, I am just disappointed to be right, and I don’t appreciate you acting as though—”

When Xilarn yanked, Damis cooperated, dropping what nothing he was doing and letting himself be spun to face his company.

What would you have me do, to make you feel better?

The sheer number of times Xilarn could catch him off-guard in a single night was rapidly amounting to be a baffling figure, and Damissan’s eyebrows arched, any other traces of periphery emotions dissipating and smoothing out in light of his surprise. The set of his shoulders relaxed, his arm — previously stiff with his own upset even after letting Xilarn turn him — loosened and sank, and he tipped his head. His lashes flit, lowering as his gaze traced Xilarn’s face, to his mouth, and back up again to meet his stare.

“What would I have you do?” he repeated, and he stepped, advancing the half-foot it took to crowd Xilarn’s space and stand over him, spare hand hooking at Xilarn’s hip and tugging just enough to fit it in against his own, as though drawing in a dancing partner. “I would have you finish what you started,” he said. “Or let me finish what I started, I don’t care to argue specifics. Perhaps not here…” His gaze skimmed, unimpressed, over their instant location. “It looks particularly prone to being infested with snakes under every branch and uncomfortable to spend any time on, but if we exercised just a touch more patience than I usually do and traveled further along I am sure we could find some place suitable.”

The ease with which things transitioned back to calm was welcome as a breath of fresh air amidst the murk and humidity. Again, not entirely expected, but so in line with what Damissan wanted that his expectations — which he had worked so hard to keep in check thanks to Xilarn’s pessimism and vacillating mood — could be damned. This was what he wanted. A relax in the tension. Xilarn leaning in instead of away. Contact. And communication.

And it was so easy to be at ease with Xilarn resting against him that he didn’t bother second-guessing it. His hand slipped, looping and curving to fit in the small of the other man’s back instead of his hip, and there was nothing wrong with anything Xilarn said. It had been a long and tumultuous day.

When Xilarn’s spare hand climbed his chest and circled behind his neck, locking and tugging, perhaps it ought to have felt more odd. But it didn’t. It was, again, so in keeping with what he had already nearly initiated himself but refrained from acting on by sheer virtue of the fact that he couldn’t tell what Xilarn wanted, that it felt like the snipping of a ribbon, or the breaking of a floodgate.

Or just permission. Much and eagerly anticipated permission.

His lashes fell shut, and he barely needed the pull to encourage him down. It was more like gravity and every instinct within him uniting to draw him sinking into the kiss. Xilarn’s lips were welcome and warm, and a muted, breathy sound of interest and appreciation escaped him on contact. The hand not holding Xilarn fast to him lifted, fingertips skimming the pulse in the other man’s throat and the pad of his thumb tracing the man’s jawline on the way in before he carded his fingers back, lacing into the long dreads at Xilarn’s nape.

If he was supposed to be minding anything else in that moment, the duty was lost on him. His fingers could bunch in the filthy cloth of Xilarn’s shirt at his back and then slip and skirt underneath to press along skin because if Xilarn could do it then surely so could he, and his lips could part, not too much, but enough to set the invitation and to catch at Xilarn’s as though he might not get the opportunity again. And in that moment, these privileges were more than sufficient to capture Damissan’s undivided attention.

Rare as it was already, Damis decided in the moment he experienced it that his favorite place for Xilarn’s smile was against his lips, and in the span of an instant, he felt his own respond in kind, curving up at the edges and making itself part of the experience. Xilarn’s mouth was a new but all-too-welcome flavor, and when the man’s hand slid down over the curve of his arse and pinched, it elicited no more ‘objection’ than a grunt into the kiss and a half-startled forward twitch of his hips. It seemed, after all, more of a compliment than anything else.

And he had known of course that Xilarn would eventually withdraw, but that didn’t make the moment any less disappointing—a disappointment fortunately remedied moments later by the fact that apparently, verbal taunting was just as on the table as physical.

Damissan may have stared. It was certainly at least possible that his ears were more intent in that moment on the words leaving Xilarn’s mouth than they had ever been on any others in the full course of his nineteen year lifespan. Even if it wasn’t, it was surely close, and like the fire Xilarn could call forth with apparent ease from his fingertips, heat crawled through Damissan in a licking spiral and he wanted. But—

It isn’t.

For a moment, Damissan was sure he’d never been quite so potently and immediately offended by two small words, and the kiss to the forehead felt distressingly like a dismissive consolation prize. The words, ‘But I want you to f—ck me…’ came so close to the tip of his tongue that he could have tasted them if they had flavor. But in the last instant, he bit them back. Because it felt like a whine even before he voiced it. Because it wasn’t something he’d ever said to anyone.

And because if he had learned anything about Xilarn thus far, amidst all the ups and downs and ins and outs of his apparently constantly rotating wants and moods, it was that I wants… tended to be ignored or reprimanded and if nothing else were unlikely to actually get him what he wanted anytime sooner—and might well impede the process.

You’re selfish, Damissan.

You’re spoiled, Damissan.

Stop whining, Damissan.

You’re annoying, Damissan.

In the end, too, it wasn’t as though he had lost anything. Quite the opposite, the evening—for all its dips and turns—had wound up going worlds better than he could have possibly anticipated. So, when the instruction came, smile, it looks good on you, Damissan found that it wasn’t difficult to oblige, and after the smile began, it stretched, skirting upwards and broadening until it was a bright, all-encompassing grin, his eyes alight again with good humor.

“If you say so,” he said, and he reached, taking up Nazakai’s reins again and clicking his tongue with a light tug that was enough to encourage the lumbering beast to recommence his trek forward. It occurred to him to point out the obvious: that Xilarn was clearly out of his mind and anything that they mutually agreed upon wanting was absolutely reasonable and plausible in every sense that mattered. But it didn’t seem like a winning argument for the time being, and Damis did like to win arguments if he started them, so he let that rest, too, and settled for a pleased, tuneless hum and a moment to savor the warmth in his gut and chest—and other areas that he could attend to later. “Your arse is also quite nice, you know,” he said offhandedly as he moved. “If you ever change your mind, I would like to see it one day.”