Welcome to Gaia! ::

Up, up. Get up.

“You wouldn’t have this problem if you paced yourself.”

Naarhiji shot the older man a glare, lips puckering out into a pout as he turned to glower toward the sound of the older Oblivionite’s voice. While Naar lay flat on his back, nude, with fingers laced across his stomach and legs crossed at the ankles, his current business partner was already redressed, fiddling idly with the buttons at his cuffs.

“I have every right to lay in my bed as much as I like,” Naar retorted, lashes dipping closed as he settled back in.

“You can barely keep your eyes open,” Sian had an awful way of sneering, despite the amused tone to his voice.

“It’s late.”

A scoff. “Hardly.” When a tail looped its way around his ankle, Naar cracked open an eye. When the tail pulled, dragging his legs apart, Naar yelped and shoved himself into a sit, only to be stalled by fingers braced to his chest and an accompanying smirk. “Don’t get up, pet. I don’t want you to strain yourself.”

“I wasn’t gonna.” Not that he had much choice now. One could not simply tell Naarhiji Vivere not to do something and expect him to obey. He rose, trailing after Sian to the door like a dependent animal. The older man opened the door.

There was a pause. Too long and too silent and too still to be anything pleasant. Naar shifted at the older Oblivionite’s back, fingers just hesitantly perched between Sian’s shoulder blades as he maneuvered to peer past him. “Is something wrong…?” And then his gaze fell to the other man, standing just outside.

Oh.

Heat invaded his cheeks, and a dreadful, unwarranted and unexplainable sense of guilt permeated its way into him. Not that it had any reason to do so, outside of leaving open the possibility of this happening at all. And even then, it wasn’t as if he had any sort of control over it to begin with. Naarhiji shrank back, tucking his way more firmly into the safety of his room. It occurred to him that he should say something, particularly if the two of them were just going to stand there glaring at each other as they were: tense, bristling, unwavering, wary.

The decision was taken from his hands. The tip of Sian’s tail flicked out, dusting against Naar’s abdomen in what the younger man expected was goodbye. Or apology at his predicament. Or thanks. Or good luck. Regardless, he shifted out from Naarhiji’s entryway and departed without saying anything else.

Was it bad to feel a particularly strong notion of relief as soon as the older Oblivionite was removed from the immediate vicinity? No. Well, probably. At first glance, Naar feared a much poorer situation. He craned his head to peer around his doorframe, down the hall, and at his client’s retreating back, then swiveled to focus narrowed lids on Malikai. “We would’ve had problems if you looked at me like that,” he informed the other man. To be fair, it had to be how Malik looked at most Oblivionites. Or at least most of those he didn’t meet here. That didn’t make it anymore welcome.

Because Naar imagined that if he was just a touch older, old enough to be sporting a spindly, wavering, flicking appendage, he probably wouldn’t have been spared from such a look. He shrugged the thought away and focused back on the now.

“No. Nonono-” Naarhii reached, catching his fingers in the other man’s sleeve and tugging in persistently as Malik blushed and stammered something about a bad time and waiting elsewhere. “If you haven’t caught me at a bad time yet, I fail to see why you’d think this time would be any different. It’s hardly- It- Ahh…” Was awkward, but not worth as much of it as Malikai was investing? He freed his hold from Malik’s garments and crossed his arms with a huff. “It could’ve been worse, you know. So stop looking so…” His brow quirked, amused. “Well, admittedly, this isn’t exactly an unusual look for you to begin with.”

Naar smiled, leaned into Malik’s chest, perched up, and kissed his chin. “If it bothers you so, you can give me a moment or two to straighten myself out properly. Oh! I know-” The tugging resumed. “You can tell me what sort of outfit you prefer, and I can dress up just for you, and you can pretend you didn’t feel so dreadfully awkward at seeing another man in my room.”

And the whole escapade would give him several minutes to reboot. He really would deeply prefer to be in his bed.

Naar’s fingers trailed tiny circular paths against Malikai’s chest, fiddling absently with the buttons that happened to pop up in their wake and keeping his gaze low, ignoring the pointed shift of Malik’s attention away from the things that perturbed him. It wasn’t really so bad, was it? Or at very least, it shouldn’t have been as unexpected as the Orderite man made it out to be. He hadn’t even seen anything. Just… the appearance of another person. It wasn’t something Naar had any particular amount of control over, and he didn’t feel expressly bad about it per se, considering it was his job… However, it was also not his job nor intention to make one person so solidly uncomfortable that they couldn’t look at him straight.

He felt the need to absolve himself of the blame, nonetheless.

“Don’t.” He held a hand up, touching three fingers to Malikai’s lips to quiet him. “Hush. Stop. Do not apologize to me again when you haven’t done anything worth a ‘sorry’ in the first place.” He huffed, a quiet, dragging sound and dusted his fingers from Malik’s lips over his cheek, carding up into his hair. “I’m sorry you caught me at an inopportune time, alright? I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do to change it, and I can’t promise it won’t happen again, so you might as well not bother feeling… upset over it.” Embarrassed? He was doing a great deal of blushing. Not that that was particularly unusual, in itself.

Disgusted? That one. That one Naar couldn’t really blame him for. So if he wanted to ‘go for a walk’ and ‘breathe air’ and whatever else, it was still more preferable than him leaving outright. Naar dipped his head in a tiny nod, leaning to kiss the center of the other man’s chest. “Of course, Malikai. Whatever you’d like.”

He flicked the other man’s ear, smiled deceptively pleasantly, and moved away from him, toward his vanity and the assorted vials and bottles and mists and scented creams that he usually applied after bedding someone. The most important came first: a citrus hard candy plucked from his drawer and popped in his mouth. “You know, if it makes you feel any better-” And it might not. It seemed more reasonable that it shouldn’t, but he was already this far in. “-I don’t just…” The more he thought about it, the less it seemed like this needed to be pointed out. He shifted his candy to his cheek. “I don’t hop from one to the next, so you’ve never…” There was no upside. Naarhiji shook his head. “Nevermind.”

“Anyway, if you expect me to get fully dressed again, you might as well wait in the foyer.” He tipped his head sideways in Malikai’s direction and quirked him a brow. “You don’t strike me as the type to want to watch while I clean myself.”

In Naarhiji’s experience, there were very few fumbling, blushing, stammering, large, and awkward birds meandering about Tukyere. He tucked a smile toward the floor and flicked his fingers at Malikai’s retreat. Shoo, shoo. He supposed if there were more of them, it would make Malik less of a novelty, less interesting, less… Well, there wouldn’t be much reason to be around him at all, would there?

The door clicked shut, and Naar sighed loudly, deflating back against his bed with a grunt. Going for a walk seemed like an awful lot of effort, though. Particularly outside in the cold and sand and desert winds. Much more effort- Much more effort than sprawling in his sheets and threading his arms around his doofus bird’s neck and doing the things they usually did. Naar cast a quick glance toward his door. He’d been told to take as long as he needed. So if he needed a few extra minutes to relax… Lashes drooped down to dust across his cheeks. Five minutes. That was surely acceptable. And no one needed to know it was an extra five that didn’t go into making himself presentable. Fine. Five was fine.

It was probably closer to twenty.

And by the time that rolled around, Naar had lost all sense of knowing how long he’d actually had his eyes closed for. Five minutes? Thirty? Three hours? The alarm of not knowing how long he’d kept some poor sap waiting for him scooted the whole tidying process along at a much more efficient clip.

He wiped away sweat and smells and any other lingering fluids with a damp towel, wetted his hair (and afterwards belatedly decided he didn’t have the time or energy to do it up properly, so left it down in short, creeping waves over his shoulders), spritzed a cloud of lavender-and-honey- scented fragrance to spin through, and-

Then came the matter of clothes.

His thoughts wandered again to the turbulent and unwelcome atmosphere of outside, and he considered, for a quick second, if maybe it was really such a bad thing to keep Malikai waiting so long that he’d leave… The notion was dismissed as quickly as it’d come. Not only did it seem grossly rude to someone who’d never been as such to him, but it deprived Naar of the unexpectedly suitable company Malik had proved capable of providing.

Maybe it wouldn’t be a long walk.

He dressed as warmly as he could manage. Stockings, laced thigh-high boots, and a short ruff of skirt that was completely enveloped from the length of his button-up coat. It was likely the most skin he’d had covered since moving to Tukyere six years ago, and it would have to do. He checked himself over in his mirror; twisted to stare at his backside, flicked his hair, straightened the fabric of his coat, and moved out.

He peered out into the foyer, not wanting to expect so see Malikai there when it ought to have been just as likely that he’d gone home. But upon spotting the other man, Naar beamed and strode toward him. “I didn’t keep you waiting too long?” He questioned with an amused and hopefully-I-don’t-look-too-happy-to-see-you smile.

Relief trickled in to settle in a warm flush of his face at seeing Malikai still there, despite the wait, and not looking terribly displeased with him at that. Though, to be fair, Naarhiji couldn’t precisely pinpoint a time when Malik looked ‘terribly displeased’ about anything, and he knew, without a doubt that he’d feared such a thing at least once or twice before and on instances Naar felt he would’ve been rightfully upset himself. Regardless, it had hardly been intentional this time, and he smiled in spite of himself as he leaned into Malikai’s touch, settling close at his side.

“I might’ve taken longer,” he hummed with feigned disinterest. “But since I had so little detail to work with, I figured I ought not spend copious minutes preparing for goddess knows what.”

In fact, it was something he regretted when they stepped outside. Despite his time on Eowyn, Naar found that he was never quite prepared for what the outside would bring. Too hot, too cold, too windy, too sandy. No matter how often he ventured out, the first step always caught him off guard, being far worse than he’d anticipated. With quiet, muted grumbling, he tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and nestled close at Malikai’s side, shooting the older man a questioning look to his inquiry about flowers.

“No,” Naar admitted hesitantly, “I don’t suppose I am.” Though that seemed a peculiar thing to ask. His eyes narrowed, lips puckering out slightly. Both of his questions seemed to have peculiar timing to be fair, particularly given the unwelcome cold and the brisk wind and the shifting crunch of sand beneath the short heels of his leather boots. Very, very unwelcome. Walking away from the warmth and safety of his brothel was equally as strange, and not quite as once-around-the-block as Naar had expected.

He should say something about this, right? Maybe something like, ’Hey, I like you alright, but I’m not so sure about wandering away too far away from my home in the cold and dark without someone I’m just a wee bit closer to… And maybe someone not hindered by the effects of drink.”

Naar’s lashes flicked up, warily scrutinizing the taller, larger Orderite man before deciding that he could likely get home from anywhere if Malikai passed out or got lost of left him or whatever else he might do. So instead, he rolled his shoulders, leaned his cheek against Malik’s side, and murmured, “I like… romantic fantasies. Something with a little excitement and a little danger and knights and heroes. The kind of books that have happy endings with strong, determined, likeable characters and worlds where impossible things happen. So...” He squinted up in Malik’s direction.

“Nothing you’d like, I’m sure. Though… I wouldn’t really expect you to like poetry, either. I guess I can understand history. Something about the past and the future being the same and learning your enemy and learning from mistakes or something, right?” He was less certain of liking it. He figured it’d be something soldiers had to learn, and such a thing was surely instantly unlikable.

Naar shot the man an indignant look. Malikai looked far too amused for what Naarhiji considered polite, and it made an unhappy well of embarrassment bubble up in his chest. “People write books about anything,” he grumbled, twitching his gaze to the ground and crimping his fingers against the inner lining of his pockets. “Travel experience, cooking recipes, long monologues, complaints- a whole novel filled with bitching about the state of some forest somewhere no one has ever heard of. So of course someone would write about the crap from their imagination.” Of course they would, and if someone was going to write it, surely someone else liked it enough to read it.

Like immature teenage boys.

“And they aren’t all about fair and radiantly beautiful princesses, either. Sometimes they’re about really normal people. Sometimes the lady saves the knight and doesn’t put up with all this ‘getting swept off her feet’ business.” Sytherina liked that kind quite a bit.

He cast a quick, scrutinizing glance up to Malikai’s face, then away again. Naar distinctly remembered hearing him say he didn’t like being a soldier, but to be frank, Malikai didn’t seem to enjoy anything about the situation. Naarhiji fidgeted. “You don’t… even think what you’re doing is ‘right?’” There were surely other points of view on that, but a soldier in the army- Naar grunted out a low note. “I always assumed… Even if it’s not the kind of adventure you wanted, and I highly doubt it feels all that grand, but you’re still doing the ‘right’ thing by your people’s standards. And I’m sure you’re someone’s hero. Even if they don’t know your name, some little girl you’ve never met in some village you’ve never heard of is grateful and sleeping soundly because she feels like you’re keeping her safe.”

The corner of his lip quirked up, and he tugged free of Malikai’s hold, stepping a few paces ahead of him before turning to face him. “Although, maybe she doesn’t imagine you, hm?” He asked teasingly. “Maybe she imagines a proper soldier. Someone who doesn’t complain about his job so much and write frilly poetry and bed Oblivionite whores in his spare time.”

With a short laugh, he fell back into place at Malikai’s side, fished for his hand, and threaded their fingers together, shooting a quick, toothy smile up at him before continuing on their path.

Naar felt compelled to inform that other man, “I don’t dislike reading about ‘real’ things and ‘real’ people. And their hopes and dreams and accomplishments. It just seems like, more often than not, they don’t… actually achieve those hopes and dreams. ‘Real’ doesn’t always end the way I’d like it to- they way plenty of people would like it to. And I don’t want to spend my time reading something that’ll just make me sad.”

“And it seems like reading the same story would get boring after a while, regardless of who wrote it or how good or bad or whatever else the people were. The ending is still basically the same. You know what happens. It’s just someone else saying it.”

‘Nothing changes.’

Naar sighed, swinging his hand clasped with Malikai’s out into the air before them and letting it drop back. It did seem to be an exaggeratedly lengthy conflict, generating a lot of needless stress and ill content, and surely their very plane of existence couldn’t handle too much more of that. But to Naar, it felt like a distant problem; nothing he could do about it personally, so not much reason to concern himself with it. Perhaps it would resolve itself when he was older. He shrugged. “Ah, well. Don’t worry about it a great deal, I guess. Just let things happen as they will, and if it fixes itself, excellent. If not, at least you had good intentions.”

He broke into a smile, shifted in and butted his hip playfully against the side of Malik’s leg. “Though most heroes do, I suppose.” Not that Malikai exactly fit the bill in much of any regard besides that. But he’d said as much before. “Unfortunately, I don’t know of a very many heroic Orderite soldiers outside of you, so I guess any time I need to imagine one, it’ll be birdnest hair and alcohol stink and… girth.” Naarhiji tipped his head down, casting a pointed gaze to Malik’s trousers before settling back up to his face.

But poetry. “You make it sound frilly when you talk about it like that, and I think most of it is, besides. All ‘clear, rippling ocean water’ and ‘rainbow-haze sunbeams’ and ‘glinting, shimmering gossamer silks.’ It seems like a lot of effort to produce such a small, stylized result. Maybe women do like it, though. So if the goal is to just make some sweet sap of a girl feel better about herself, maybe that’s not so bad of a reason.” Though he doubted anyone having poetry written about them needed help with their ego. “And perhaps your efforts at peacemaking would be better spent not trying to woo people who already have no interest in fighting? Just a suggestion, if your aim really is ‘peacemaking.’” SIlly, ridiculous man.

He looked up toward the entrance archway and tipped his head in silent curiosity. Why had his companion even seen fit to bring them here? It wasn’t grossly out of the way, and clearly the Orderite man just had piles of time to kill, but still… And yes, Malik had looked a little rattled by Sian’s presence, but Naar hadn’t expected it to merit a trip to glowbug, sticky-sweet scented date garden to get him back in the mood. ‘Frilly’ was perhaps the perfect word for Malikai, after all. Naar snuck a glance at him from beneath his lashes. Crazy, that’s what he was.

But it mattered little. He was already here. He’d walked through the cold and dust and grit, following some dumb bird’s steps. Might as well let it play out. “You know, I’ve never been here at night,” Naar ventured. Not that he did much of any sightseeing at night. “But with the lights… It’s almost like you’re supposed to come after sundown, just to see-”

He blinked, several quick lash-flutters in rapid succession as Malikai held his flask out to him. “Ah, I don’t…” Drink. Or want to. Or want it to look like I do. After several still seconds of staring, Naar reached, taking the container from his companion and squinting warily at it. There was no telling what Malik expected him to do with it. Walk around carrying it? Drink it? He probably should just tuck it in a coat pocket and forget about it. That would be the most sensible course of action.

But if it was so mind-consuming that it had to be passed off to someone else for the sole purpose of restraint, it must not taste as bad as it smelled. Naarhiji gave the flask a light shake, sloshing the contents about briefly. He twisted the cap off, and cast a fleeting glance to Malikai.

“One taste, for the sake of adventure.” Or some such to that effect.

In retrospect, it probably would’ve been wiser to dab his tongue to the top of the flask instead of gulping. And burning. And choking. And spitting. And cursing. And surely there was no good reason for swallowing rubbing alcohol mixed with the charred remains of a stirring toothpick. In the aftermath of spewing a mouthful of poison at his and Malikai’s feet, it was mandatory that he vocalize his complaints in a succinct, yet openly charismatic fashion.

“Godde- <********>- You- You- What’s wrong with you?! Idiot! Poison! Just- poison.” His grievances were accompanied by another round of spitting, a harsh glare and a simmering mutter of, “Trying to kill me…” He huffed, coughed to clear his throat of lingering burn- or tried to, at least. Scowling, Naar upended the flask, splashing unwanted liquid acid across the ground before shoving the empty container back into Malik’s grasp. He sent the man an openly challenging glower. “You’re welcome.”

Naarhiji grunted, scrubbing the back of his hand across his lips and wiping at any remaining flecks of spit and booze that lingered around his mouth. Unfortunately, there was no recalling the mouthful that managed to sear its way down his throat. And frankly, outside of a very mild fear of not knowing what havoc it could wreak on his insides, he didn’t want it back. Only the Dark Goddess knew what it tasted like coming back up. And it made him immediately question the sanity of anyone who could possibly drink enough of it to induce vomiting. And why on Magesc they would want to.

Malikai was far too amused for Naarhiji’s liking. He cocked his head back to fix a narrow-eyed glare on the taller man. “‘A bit rough?’” He repeated, brow furrowing and voice catching on the ‘r.’ He righted himself enough to prod a finger to a brass button over Malikai’s chest. “‘Rough’ to me is that feeling of your palms hitting the stone steps leading into the Sanctuary because maybe you were in a hurry and took a trip. Or that last walk down the hallway, because goddess, you’ve had an exhausting night and your bed really should just come to you. Or the treebark that’s jagged enough to tear up your stockings because you heard something in the woods, and you really shouldn’t stay on the ground. Your face-” He raised his hand from Malik’s chest, up to his cheek, to splay his fingers against the scratchy, unshaven hairs that grew there. “-is ‘rough.’”

“What you gave to me are the ashy remains of an arvathi fang, charred to a blackened crisp and dumped in a barrel of an extremely rancid perfume, brought to a quick boil and then pissed in, because even though you won’t be able to taste that bit, someone else will get a good jolly out of knowing that you sank low enough to drink it down.”

He glared, huffed, crossed his arms, and straightened into the most dignified stance he could manage.

“That’s. What ‘adventure.’ Tastes like.”

Naar let out a soft, “Hrmph!” as he turned away from the putrid puddle on the ground and strode along the stone path leading deeper into the gardens. At least everything else was relatively pleasant. Quiet night, rustling shrubbery, floral aromas. If not for this extremely unfortunate mishap, it might well have been a fine night. And as much as he knew it was unfair to blame Malikai for it, he did all the same. What good did it do the man to carry that stuff around all the time, anyway? If not for the sole purpose of laughing at people with a much more refined palate. It was the only sensible thing to do, in any case.