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Waiting. Even when they were moving, making forward progress, and actually heading in the direction Xilarn would’ve gone if he hadn’t opted to babysit a noble bratling, it still felt like waiting. As if there was something more he should be doing. Something elsewhere- And there was. But it wasn’t of import at this moment. It wouldn’t be for several more days, at least. So he reminded himself that he wasn’t in a hurry. There was no need to go anywhere quickly. What would happen, would happen. He couldn’t rush anything along.

But the ‘waiting’ left him anxious and restless.

He didn’t know how many times he’d thought it during the duration of their travels, ’A month, a month, a month. We won’t be gone longer than a month. He won’t make it through Jauhar. We’ll turn back before Tale.’ No child of Oban-born nobility wanted to travel through the savage rainforests of Tendaji. They just didn’t. It wasn’t sensible. So, cynic he may be, but Xilarn had felt reasonably confident in that particular train of thoughts. Had. Less so now and dropping farther with every passing day and step.

Xil spent most of the previous night (and several prior) looking up. Not that there was much of interest visible in Jauhar’s canopy, but the same could be said for anywhere in the depths of the forest. But it was dark, quiet, and full of blackened emptiness that really helped the mind wander. And, whether he was fully prepared to admit it or not, Xil was getting to the point where he started to seriously question how obligated he actually felt to stick with Damissan. Enough to get him through Jauhar? Enough to take him all the way back home if he did decide to bow out? Enough to just suck it up and do what he said he’d do-

Mm, that one didn’t seem incredibly likely. And he’d been told ‘a month,’ so as long as he met that goal, he basically already fulfilled any obligations he had. Presumably.

He scrubbed a hand down his face and flopped limply back against the night’s ‘bedding.’ Gadot huffed and slapped his mud-slicked tail agreeably against his master’s side in about as cheery a ‘good morning’ as Xilarn could stand. He picked his head up as Damis slipped from camp and probably would’ve liked to follow, if not for the slightly less agreeable man resting the entirety of his weight back against him. Next time. He dropped his chin back to the mud.

It did occur to Xilarn in those few shadowy seconds where he could actually see the younger man to advise him against leaving camp. On the other hand, Damis probably knew better and if Xil could savor just a few extra minutes of peace…

He decided against it, and instead used the time to stock the breakfast fire and fill the space with an only slightly less eerie glow. By the time Damissan returned, the questionable meat-substance that would serve as the day’s first meal was well on its way to being slightly more edible than it originally was. Xilarn tossed a quick over-the-shoulder glance at his traveling companion and scoffed derisively. “You can’t possibly think you’ll come out of that water cleaner than when you go in.”

“I mean exactly what it sounds like,” Xilarn quipped as he leaned back and propped himself up on his arms. The ground here was so spongy and moist, you couldn’t even so much as sit without being covered in mud. And since they had a long day of trekking through it ahead of them, bathing in questionable ponds seemed especially pointless. “These puddles are lined in mud, covered in algae, and filled with you don’t even want to know what.” And probably more than anyone actually cared to name. “But I suppose as long as you don’t swallow any and aren’t terribly afraid of snake nests and don’t mind being as drenched in mud when you come out as when you went in, you’ll probably be fine. At least the water should be warm.”

With a disenchanted grunt, Xil dropped his weight back against Gadot once more. The oversized mutt was steadily edging his snout toward their smoky breakfast morsels, but the added contact gave him pause, and he dropped his head to his paws.

Meanwhile, the shift in position allowed Xil to keep half-an-eye on Damis as he stepped farther away from the bank. It felt inconspicuous enough to be harmless, so long as he wasn’t openly staring. And he wasn’t, but there really could be something dangerous in that water. Watching for danger. That was his job. That’s what he was doing.

He really did have nice legs, though, Xilarn very begrudgingly had to admit as his gaze casually slipped up the back of Damis’ calves. From the jogging, probably. Though Xil wasn’t about to try and understand why anyone would start the morning with a run when the whole day would be spent walking, anyway. A soft hum slipped from him, and despite any conscious decision to the contrary, his eye wandered. Up Damis’ thighs, over the curve of his arse- A strip of yellow against the back of his legs was some shadow and firelight trick.

A splodge of green was not. Xilarn sat up.

What the actual fu-

His attention darted with confused immediacy up to the sound of the younger man’s voice. Xil’s eyes narrowed and flicked back down. Was that a flower? “Not in stagnant water, no,” he admitted after probably too-long a pause. “I suppose if I ever felt an especially strong need to bathe, I’d just wait for it to rain. It’s not exactly infrequent here…”

He sat straighter and physically turned to be facing his clearly stupid companion. “Damissan. Come here a moment.”

There were times when Xilarn just wanted to slap that cocky smile right of of Damis’ face. This was one of those times. Yes, he’d been accidentally inspecting the younger man’s backside, and maybe he hadn’t been intrinsically disappointed in what he’d seen, but this little s**t did not have to look like he knew anything that was happening in Xil’s thoughts. He scoffed softly, made it a point to deliberately keep his gaze trained on Damissan’s face, and prayed that he looked suitably disenchanted. “You can hardly help yourself, so I strongly suspect you’re not in much of a position to be offering anything to anyone else. Turn.”

The command was accented with a not-wholly-open-for-disagreement catch and twist at Damis’ forearm to spin him about, his back to Xilarn’s face. Or, more accurately, the curve of his arse to Xilarn’s face, still sitting on the ground as he was. On principle, Xil should’ve known better than that. It had been bad enough casually, unobtrusively eyeing a man half his age from the bank’s edge, but this was just blatantly obscene.

But at least he hadn’t been hallucinating the strange colors snaking across this boy’s rear.

If he hadn’t been disappointed in anything he’d seen before, such was not the case now. Obviously Damis was not the king of good decision making, but this was the most bizarre and senseless tattoo he’d ever seen. It was certainly an artistic array of things permanently etched across what would have otherwise been perfectly beautiful, smooth, dark skin. Flowers, knives, and snakes. Damissan didn’t even like snakes. What earthly reason could anyone have for putting anything this absurd and large all across their skin? Xilarn hummed disapprovingly and gave a short shake of his head.

Before he thought better of it, he reached and skated the pad of a finger down a coil of snake and across the back of Damis’ thighs. And once he had thought better of it, it was already too late to take it back. “So does all this mess mean something or is there some story behind it, or… No, wait, I know.” He snapped his fingers and delivered a none too gentle pinch to the back of Damis’ leg. “It makes you a memorable lay, right?”

A hybrid sound between a derisive scoff and an amused snort slipped from Xilarn’s throat. This boy clearly had an ego to last for miles, though that shouldn’t have been especially surprising by this point. And here Xil thought it didn’t need saying that there was probably very little about drunken teenagers that constituted being worthy of ‘memorable’ for anything other than comedy, at best. Or so he assumed. Not that he could say for certain. But his personal expectations in that vein were mostly, ’sloppy, unimpressive, uncoordinated, selfish…’ That probably didn’t need saying, either.

And why was Damis looking to start conversations after showing people great swathes of his backside? Not that he’d ever pegged the younger man for completely all there, but surely he didn’t ‘start conversations’ by pulling up his shirt and parading about. Hopefully. He hadn’t done that in Xilarn’s presence, as far as the older man could recall. He squinted at a blooming flower across Damis’s arse.

But did he like it? Not that Xilarn supposed it was his place to care enough to like or dislike it one way or the other, but since he’d been specifically asked- “No,” Xil decided after only the briefest of pauses. “It’s unnecessarily ostentatious. You already have a very loud personality to lure in whatever attention you think you need, without adding a carnival attraction on what would have otherwise been very acceptable-”

His lips pinched shut, brows arching fractionally wider, and grip tightening just ever-so-slightly on the arm he held captive because he’d been fine and well and reasonably disengaged-

And then he wasn’t.

He couldn’t not watch the slip of Damis’ fingers over his skin, despite knowing on some rational level that no good could come of it. For all the ink and flamboyance permanently etched there, Damissan did have nice legs. And a nice a**. And Xilarn’s gaze trailed with absent minded appreciation after the brush of the younger man’s hands.

When he did manage with some substantially less degree of mental fortitude to peel his attention from Damissan’s rear and direct his gaze back upward, it was to see that gods damned, s**t-eating, mother fuc- If he hadn’t liked this brat’s stupid grins before, he may as well have hated them now. Xil scowled, and a less agreeable snarl ripped from him. He pulled down on Damis’ arm, dragging him closer to eye level and hissed, “Finishing your primping, My Lord, and get ready to leave.” When he released the his companion’s captured limb, it was like dropping something exceptionally unsavory.

Everything was absurd. Just literally everything. From the too-spiked irritation to the whole of why and how he'd gotten here in the first place, and especially to the uncomfortable swell of heat prickling just beneath his skin. Xil decided to label it 'embarrassment' and leave it at that. If he'd known how absolutely ridiculous this whole trip would be at the outset- But he should've. There were signs. Between Damissan's reasons for the adventure and the very lackadaisical approach his parents had to the idea, Xilarn should've known better than to even contemplate getting mixed up in all that. All this, as it were. He didn't have the patience to deal with stupid teenaged boys on a daily basis, regardless of how often he tried, and he should've known that too, since he had been trying for over a decade now...

Not that scolding blond boys for staying out too late felt anywhere near whatever was happening here, and he found he preferred the former. Xil groaned softly, pressed the pads of his fingers to his eyes, and dragged his hands down his face. If he died in these woods, it would be a blessing. Truly.

Until then, it was probably best to simply not pay his idiotic young companion any mind again, ever. It wouldn't even be that much longer. They were almost done with this. They had to be. And then he would go home, and this mess in it's entirety would be behind him. At some point before he gained the wherewithal to stand, his hands found their way into his hair, bunched it, tied it, untied it, and retied it in a ceaseless fidget because what else was he supposed to do with his hands?

Nothing. A whole lot of nothing.

Some short span of moments later, Xilarn pushed from the ground, dusted himself (inasmuch as he could given their surroundings), and proceeded to handle camp cleanup while pointedly not looking in Damissan's direction. Not talking to him, not thinking about him. He might as well not even be there. Fine. It was fine. Everything was fine.

With each passing day that ticked away, the incessant nagging in the back of Xilarn's mind just continued to amplify. 'Leave him, leave him, leave him.' He convinced himself it was due to an increased desperation for home, where he should be already, and nothing to do with Damissan personally. Rational thought reminded him that he couldn't abandon any barely-trained teenager out alone in the deadly forests of Jauhar and expect to ever feel good about himself again. But it was a quiet voice and one that was drowning disturbingly quickly. Besides, the worst had past.

Now out of Ast and moving away from the Alkidike and deep woods, surely the level of danger was also dipping. They'd been traveling for more weeks than Xilarn had bargained for, and that lent itself to his younger charge probably having an adequate idea of how to handle himself without a need for aid? Xilarn stared hard at the fizzle of smoke born of Damis' attempts at a fire and scowled.

That aside, so long as he didn't go out of his way to incite the rage of any locals- This, too, seemed like something stupidly impossible to hope for, if Xil's own unfairly increasing irritation at everything Damissan did was any indication.

He grit his teeth, willed himself not to openly scowl, and plucked at the meager reserves of his magic. A flick of his fingers, and a small flame leapt from his hand to light the pile of tinder Damis was attempting to work with. "Your continued failure grows tiresome," he muttered in a low, deeply unimpressed drawl.

Xilarn told himself he wasn't intentionally looking for confrontation. Such a thing wouldn't do either of them any good, and it would likely come on its own without specifically wanting for it. But gods, he hoped Damis argued back. Or said anything that would give him a legitimate reason to be annoyed beyond the unfair thought that it was the younger man's fault they were out here at all. Still out here. Just the two of them. Which Xil figured he wouldn't mind. He rarely wanted for any degree of company and was reasonably accustomed to living with one boy. But somehow it was infinitely worse with just Damissan around, and he'd been bloody stupid for ever thinking this was a good plan. Glancing down at his less-than-eager companion, Xilarn rolled his shoulders and uttered an unapologetic,"Try harder."

With an unimpressed grunt, Xil stepped around the younger man, taking up a post on the other side of the blossoming fire and depositing the night's carapaced catch to the ground as he did. Now that the sandy deserts were well behind them, and they'd long since passed through the settlement hubs that consisted widely of mixed populations, the sources for familiar food were also few and far between. Ast hadn't been especially helpful in that regard, and any reserves they'd had from earlier in the trip were quite depleted.

Not that Xilarn minded hunting, nor was he especially unskilled at it, but at this point in their weeks long journey, he thought he had a pretty accurate idea of what Damis would and would not put in his mouth.

Unfortunately, most of what could be hunted in Jauhar neither looked nor smelled especially appetizing to begin with. Never mind 'appetizing,' it hardly looked edible at all. And he was under the impression that this evening's particular selection of scaly six-legged specimens wouldn't be well-received. And this, Xil couldn't actually blame anyone for not being enthused about.