"Sounds fun!"

"It is!" And he sets it up.

Cor has never played this game before but he likes it a lot.

It is Maitimo's favorite game. He can be horrifyingly ruthless without anyone worrying he might be like that in real life, too.

Oooh.

He's having so much fun!

Cor can do fictional ruthlessness too!

Otherwise it would be no fun!

Indeed not.

Maitimo's city is scoured of its livestock by a plague and he retaliates by conquering a nearby township and handing its citizens over to his mages to use as needed in place of their lost sheep and a series of political shenanigans unravel with thirty people dead and he is having so much fun.

Suiciding mages can do a lot of things; the memetic convention of "your own blood still in your own body" is for historical reasons incredibly dramatic and destructive!

Maitimo finds this very dramatically satisfying and resists giggling and reroutes supplies around some gaping craters in the landscape and eventually regretfully observes to Cor that he's kept him up too late.

"Ah, sorry. Yeah I should sleep too."

"It's been lovely. I will keep a better eye on the clock next time."

"Later," Cor agrees.

He goes up to his room. He tells his boyfriend to be waiting for him there. His boyfriend is, of course.

He's so clever!

Yep. It sounds like irritating him would be a catastrophically bad idea.

You've made your point.

He stands up and crosses the room and kisses him. Don't be stupid, Maitimo. We can't afford for you to be stupid.

It's just a game.

Lean. Kiss. We're almost there. The war's almost over. After that you can do whatever you want.

And if someone else gets him first then he's gone. 

Just be careful.

He kisses him. He nearly beat me at the game, it was really hot.

Sympathetic murmur. Not worth risking the war, not worth risking the war...