Moon's mercy. Rowena's compliments were proportional to the desperation of her avarice, and illustrious was worth a few hundred gil on its own. Qana'to's eyes dart between the faces he knows best. Rowena and Hancock wear the exact same tiny smile under their tiny glasses as they gesture to the tiny teacup left for him beside their tiny companion—though it was the wrong tiny companion this time. Qana'to furrows his eyebrows for just a moment at the sight of Krile where he would have expected Tataru. She was also watching him carefully, little cherubic cheeks pinched upwards in a smile that mostly spoke of sadness, and perhaps fear. He sighs through his nose. Her presence is unlikely the work of the traders' manipulation: Krile is strong-willed enough to resist their machinations, and if it were hard-nosed bargaining then a different Lalafell would be here instead. Somehow, that is even more concerning. His back creaks as he bows, in the stiff formal way of the East.

His nostrils twitch as he bends forward toward them. Hancock smells of danger, literally; that cologne he dons when he feels like taking risks wafts from him so thick as to be nearly visible. Best for now to deflect the compliment. "It is so sweet to hear how highly you speak of Hancock, Rowena." His smile is easy, born of practice rather than mirth, though it still feels somewhat unnatural to smile around here, where people were as disinclined to show teeth as they were skin. "I hope I am not interrupting anything," he chirps politely, though he sits without waiting for a response. In his own custom, he would introduce himself to the stranger in their midst before anything else. It is plain on the merchants' faces, though, that every minute of idle chitchat threatened to burst them like overripe fruit, Rowena especially. They would want to skip straight to the interesting proposition that might just appeal to a brave adventurer and then let their newest partner introduce themselves and explain a few details. This is not his land, nor even his table, so he obliges them.

"What brings you all the way out here? Surely you can compliment Hancock just as effectively in letters to him." He looks across each face for clues. Hancock always wore those irritating tinted lenses to keep his eyes from giving himself away, and Rowena's face says only deal, but Krile's spoke of mixed emotions, and strong ones at that.

Krile looks at him and shrugs slightly, but doesn't seem inclined to comment for the moment. She seems almost... anticipatory, in a way. She's not fidgeting, as she's never been one wont to outward displays of anxiety, but by that same token the small amounts of it she is displaying suggest, yeah, rather strong feelings.

Perhaps interestingly, the viera—quite a surprise to see one, really, especially a man—seems to be sharing very similar emotions to hers. And he, likewise, isn't inclined to speak, leaving the conversation to...

Hancock himself seems rather amused by Qana'to's reaction, and accepts his cue, pushing his spectacles up his nose and leaning forward in a way that makes them glint in the light. One might think he goes for that specifically, with much practice. One would, of course, be completely correct in this inference.

"I'll get to the point, then, and it will all become clear," he says in his usual friendly and predatory tone of voice. "Our tale begins with a vessel of the Company happening upon an island n the Glass Ocean. An isle that, it is important to note, was not recorded on any charts we could find, and had no business being there. Deserted, to boot." His smile matches his tone, and he's a practised speaker, with a cadence and intonation of someone telling an exciting story. "Suffice it to say, we were very pleasantly surprised; an unclaimed, undeveloped island smack dab in the middle of a maritime trading route like that would be great for our business in this corner of the world, if we could settle it."

"Kugane does not love trade," explains Rowena, "or if they do they sure ain't showin' it, bleedin' us dry with tariffs. Dependin' on the goods we're payin' more than ten times what we'd owe in Limsa and Ul'dah—and I already have a bone to pick with them."

"What my lovely Rowena means to say is that an additional port of call in this region—one perhaps more amenable to free trade—would be in the best interest of a great many parties."

Qana’to dresses his face in polite shock like an actor donning a Koh mask. “A desert isle on a major shipping lane? How extraordinarily convenient for my most enterprising associates. It certainly would make the journey a good deal easier to have an extra port of call on the way.”

 He shifts to glance at the silent parties. The longer the schemers waited to introduce them, the more uncomfortable Qana’to found it; it violates his sense of politeness, of course, but it also implies greater stakes if the need to set the scene outweighs their need to get to the bargaining.

And where had they gotten a male Viera, anyhow? It had taken him a moment to register it, under that sculptural Viera androgyny, but now the question grabbed him. Fran had said their men were eremitic and faintly hostile—a characterization he had bristled in recognition at. A favorite Gridanian calumny against his own people. The memory of how dismissively she said it makes his tail bristle, and he has to fight not to let it show on his face.

The urge to introduce himself grows as he thinks on it, a kind of reflexive yearning toward camaraderie with his fellow ill-reputed sylvan barbarian. Still, there’s no helping it, he sighs as he watches the impassive stranger across the table. At least he cuts a handsome figure, even if he is intent on remaining a table decoration. Maybe if he drilled hard enough with his eyes he could summon him to speak.

The viera's face softens and he offers Qana'to a wink, though whether it's in response to the obvious faked reaction or to the eye drilling he's being a target of is unclear.

Krile is somewhat less polite about it and actually giggles aloud.

"—were you not previously acquainted?" asks the hyur, interrupting himself when he notices the shift in attention. "I'm sorry, I assumed..."

"Well, we didn't have much time to clarify the situation before the two of you launched into telling your tale, did we?" the lalafell bluntly observes, sounding amused. "There was scarcely time to breathe after Qana'to kneeled down."

Thank you, Krile. "I'm afraid I have not had the pleasure. I am Qana'to of the Amariyo," he says warmly, leaving off the rest of the formula. His gaze remains fixed, and an ear twitches with curiosity, setting the earring in it dancing. "I gather that you are an acquaintance of Krile's—maybe the students in general? That's the only reason Hancock might assume we'd know each other that I can think of."

"Red Fir," he introduces himself, grinning and tilting his head in greeting, "and I used to be a Student of Baldesion myself, back then. 'Tis a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance; I had heard much and more of the fabled Warrior of Light but somehow had failed to hear that he was quite so dashing."

"Oh, let's please wait until after finishing our business before you do that?" she sighs and rolls her eyes with the kind of long-suffering of someone who has long acquaintance with someone's shenanigans. "This is, actually, important."

"I agree. It is of paramount importance," Qana'to replied. "We must immediately get to the bottom of why my reputation fails to account for my good looks." He laughs and shakes his head, setting his earrings jangling again. But for the urgency in Krile's voice, he was more inclined to chat up the Viera and let Rowena's schemes languish. It had been barely a week since Hien retook Doma. Why must they rush forward now, to find more problems to poke their gilded noses into?

He's probably only here because they know your predilection for boys like him. The thought itself rankled. With great reluctance, he broke gaze with the handsome stranger and looked to Krile. "I am surprised to see you here, though, Krile. Tête-à-tête with Eorzea's foremost mercantile concerns is usually Tataru's remit, is it not?" And how gratifying it would be to leave it to her, too.

If she were miqo'te herself this would be when her ears would droop and her tail would settle down. "Well, indeed, but... oh, it occurs to me that perhaps you didn't know? The place where the Students of Baldesion had been headquartered was..."

"An island, which disappeared under mysterious circumstances. And now an island suddenly appears elsewhere under mysterious circumstances." He, too, adopts a much more serious and somber tone when he says that, though perhaps not quite as somber as Krile's. His voice and his eyes are instead filled with steely determination, instead. He will investigate it, Warrior of Light or no. ...but he'd rather the Warrior of Light come with, too.

Qana'to's eyes flick back to Red Fir. "I'd heard it was an island, yes, but Sharlayan is itself on an island, so it seemed reasonable to assume that it was the same one." The Students are largely abstractions to him; nobody within the scions seemed inclined to talk much about them in any detail, not since Moenbryda's fateful visit to the Waking Sands. Nobody wanted to remind Urianger, nor Minfilia. "I guess this must have been the Isle of... Fall, instead?" One of these days they would have to deal with a catastrophe about which he knew more than rumors.

"Without being indelicate, or speaking beyond my expertise," he says slowly. "New islands are not that unusual, right? Volcanoes and such cause them. There's one such near here, in the Ruby Sea. Why would this island be related to the students' old headquarters?"

He starts counting on his fingers. "No volcanic activity in the area to speak of—it's on the Glass Ocean, not the Ruby Sea. It's the right shape and size, roughly, at least from afar. And it appeared fully formed with ruins and monsters and abandoned buildings included."

(Oh, Hancock's face says. Now he understands why the Scions were interested.)

"The lattermost of which is the crux of all your interests. Mystery buildings mean either answers or valuable historical artifacts." Qana'to's tail twitches under the table. "If only there were a team of people inclined to brave such wilderness without immediately getting themselves killed." He purses his lips to keep from sighing aloud. Could all the most urgent cyphers of the world maybe wait a week before crowding forward like Lominsan fishmongers? He'd barely had ten minutes to jack off since he boarded the ship for Kugane a year ago, much less study or relax or pray. When he admitted his loneliness to Gosetsu, the samurai had told him to find a girō—whatever that was; Yugiri had just blushed and avoided the question when he'd asked—and then promptly dragged him to the Azim Steppe. He hadn't had his head hit the same pillow for the next three months. And now, with all that out of the way, another desperate wilderness came clawing for him.

He sighs for real and plays with the teacup in front of him. Maybe Tataru had the right idea. A life of bickering over little metal disks with Hancock and Rowena at least involved a decent amount of sleep. Looking up again, he catches Rowena's hungry eyes. Yeah, maybe not, actually. "I fear you may have been misled, my dear Rowena. I have no army with me now, you know. They are busy in Doma, securing the countryside. And their loyalty was to Hien, anyway." He shrugged. "The rest of my companions mostly scattered within Kugane. It would be some time before I could round them up."

She smacks her lips together. "We don't need an army. Just a few experiences adventurers, the type you can't just hire anywhere."

"The East Aldenard Trading Company sent an expedition, large and well-fuinded, before we knew anything about the island," Hancock explains. "But only a handful returned, and the ones who did reported 'irregularities' with the island's aether, altering the beasts' properties from what we see anywhere else in Eorzea or Othard. This regrettable turn of events forced us to reevaluate our assessment of the island and put our plans on hold for a time. If development was to proceed, it would require a great deal more capital than originally anticipated..."

"So he came to me for a handout, and I obliged. Some of my regular customers were members o' that failed expedition, and they were the ones who told us about the untold riches and treasure and gods know what else. That would more than justify the expense."

"Kami help me, you were not joking," Red Fir says, looking at Krile.

She shrugs.

Red Fir sighs and looks up at Qana'to again. "So, these hawks are planning on sending a group again, and I at least am planning to go with, because I want to know what happened to the Isle of Val and—" And all of my friends. The words die in his throat, and he swallows dryly and wets his lips. Then he clears his throat and continues. "But they don't think that more sellswords will cut it, and I am inclined to agree. So whatever they have to say, the request I have to make of you, stranger though I may be, is to at least give this some thought. Having more experienced people helping us explore would make us that much more likely to succeed."

He won't explicitly say that this also means that probably fewer people would die, out of the expeditionary group, the more experienced people are sent. If nothing else, that's exactly the extremely manipulative tactic Rowena and Hancock are trying to employ to pull on the Warrior of Light's heartstrings, and it leaves him with a bad taste in his mouth; he doesn't want to give them the power to compel Qana'to to help just by claiming that if he doesn't they'll send other people who will get killed in his stead. That'd be vile.

But, well. He is thinking it. In purely practical terms.

So, the Viera man they were dangling is going to be the sacrificial bait if he didn't accept. Confound it! I hate being right. At least this one seems to be aware of what awaits him. Qana'to closes his eyes for a long moment and sighs again. Check and mate. There is nothing left to discuss, except perhaps a polite inquiry into whichever gossip it was who leaked to Lolorito's stooges that he had a weakness for headstrong pretty-boys, so he could strangle him later. "Very well. I will think about it," he mutters venomously, draining the hot tea in one gulp and clunking the teacup indelicately on its saucer. He rises to feet and turns to stalk away, only remembering at the last second to bow. "I've heard enough. Give me a day or two to consider whom even I could bring on such a fool's errand without compromising our work here in Othard, alright? I'll take my leave now, if you don't mind; I have been looking forward to soaking my worries in the Kugane hot springs for some time now, and as it appears that may suddenly I have little time left to enjoy them, I would seize it."

Well that just happened. Once Qana'to is well and truly gone he looks at Krile to ask, "Do you think...?"

"Oh, I think it will do you good to live in suspense, actually!" she replies brightly, clapping her hands together and smiling a smile that is almost more unsettling for looking so genuine. "Not you, though," she adds, to Red Fir. "You, I think, would benefit from a soak in the hot springs, too."

"...ah?"

"I assume you must have worries, too? I'm sure everyone does. And I myself still have some matters to discuss with our friends, here, so I will not be joining you."

...he is really fond of this lalafell. "With your leave, then," he tells the other three, finishing his tea, standing up, and bowing, too. He doesn't miss the irony in doing this when he is actually the only one at this table who is from what Eorzeans call "the Far East" and he is most certainly not from these parts of the Far East, but it seemed appropriate.

Outside, the sun feels as oppressive as his obligations, and Qana'to cringes at the prickling of sweat on his brow. Where are the trees around here when you need them? He shakes his head in annoyance and marches toward the bridge, defying the sun's insistence that he slow down. By the time he makes it over the bridge, though, he is panting. They want me to lead an expedition to a tropical island, and I can barely take a summer day without shade. He laughed aloud, and a confused woman looked quizzically at him until he sobered himself and kept walking. What is a little sweat, in the end? That is the point of a hot springs, no?

Maybe for everyone else, it is. For Qana'to of the Amariyo, the point is to strip to the nude where nobody could complain about it, or call the Sekisegumi over it. He grinned to himself again. If he were leading an expedition on an island, no pants would be the very first rule. Let's see how Hancock's dumb mercenaries felt about that!

Stop it, Qana'to. You're almost getting excited over the idea.

The Kugane hot springs do indeed allow—or, even, encourage—nudity, and while it being the middle of the day means that there aren't that many people (they tend to show up in higher numbers in the morning and late afternoon) it is still not completely empty. There's a little area before the springs themselves where he can leave his affairs, and of course there's the direct connection to the Bokairo Inn, so he can undress there and soon enough he is able to enjoy the water.

It is all he could do not to strip directly in the reception area, but he trudges back to his room at the Bokairo first. It surprises him, in retrospect, that Hancock never brought the room up in his attempts to cajole him. Then again, he had not given him much of a chance. He slithers out of his sweaty clothes with audible groans of relief and deposits them where the maid service would find them. They really do think of everything here in Kugane. It has its charms.

Turning on his heel, he marches back out into the hall, not bothering with a towel or any such pretensions. Every step gets lighter and faster until, emerging into the spa area, he launches himself into the water, wading to the edge of the highest pool and sitting. He looks around; two or three other patrons are busily ignoring him, and he returns the favor, closing his eyes.

And then opening them. A pressure had built in his groin almost the moment he had relaxed. He looks down only reluctantly. Ah, moon's mercy. The tip of his cock is poking out of the water, and he shifts awkwardly to pull it back under. He fidgets again, trying to get both comfortable and discreet.

Screw it, he thinks, and starts to purr loudly enough to drown out everything else. They can move away if they don't like it. If I'm not touching it, I can hardly be blamed.

"Fancy seeing you here," says a recently-familiar voice, walking over to where Qana'to is.

And if Qana'to opens his eyes he might notice a few things about Red Fir that were not visible when he was clothed. One, his feet are not shaped like Qana'to's used to; rather, they look more like a rabbit's, tall and angled, three claws at the tip and a dew claw to the side (which might explain how Fran could wear those stiletto heels in a fight, actually). Two, he doesn't have balls, and from this angle Qana'to can easily see that the viera has a vagina instead—but despite the queerness neither penis nor vagina look underdeveloped or otherwise remarkable. Three, he has a pair of Archon marks, from Sharlayan, like the ones Thancred and Y'shtola have on their necks and Urianger has on his face, except his are tattooed along the diagonal lines of his hipbone and pointing down at his genitals like arrows that want to specifically draw the eye. Beyond that, he is fit—not very thickly built but having lean wiry muscle that suggests someone who is in fact very physically active—and completely hairless everywhere.

As for things Red Fir hadn't noticed until he got closer, well, you know. Now it's too late, he's already said hi, and walking away to leave Qana'to to his, ah, privacy, would be more awkward than studiously ignoring it.

Qana'to blinks lazily up at the man who so rudely intruded on his quiet time, and grins, despite himself, at the expression of mild surprise on Red Fir's face. Even without following the man's eyes, he can guess the cause readily enough. Somehow, after all the effort to respect the ways people here reacted to such displays, failing to conceal it feels like a relief. A respite. An oh well I tried, now I can stop worrying so much.

"Who would have thought, indeed," he replies drily, looking the bunny over as he talks. "Go ahead and sit, if you like, no need to stand—" he stutters at the end as his eyes alight on the man's hips and groin. Well, I guess I don't have a monopoly on surprises there, he thinks first; then, immediately after: Is that normal? I knew Viera men always had a touch of femininity about them, but—no, there's no way that's ordinary. His mouth caught up a moment later. "—unless you prefer to only have your feet wet." Perhaps mercifully, the shock causes his tip to wilt back under the water, though only barely. He nods up at Red Fir. "You and the others finished your tea, then?"

"I am not here to wet my feet," he says with an amused quirk to his lips as he lowers himself into the water. Qana'to's surprise does help center him a bit, again; he's a lot more sure of himself when he gets to be surprising. "But 'finished' is probably the wrong word, since they were still there when I left. I had not been planning to come here, you seemed to need your alone time, but Krile did that thing she does where she tells you what you should do without actually doing so and she told me I should also come here so I kind of assumed she knew something I didn't about how well you might take that. If she was just trying to vex one or both of us I'll be cross with her but honestly it's the price of admission to dealing with her at all, often." Oh he's babbling maybe he should stop that.

"Krile said that, did she?" She knows me better than I thought. "Well, I can't be sure the plan was not in fact to cause mischief," he adds, "but it does happen that I prefer socialization to solitude." He grins sardonically. "Hence my displeasure at being asked to explore another desert isle without any friends to keep me company at night." He smiles more easily this time, and slaps his tail on the water playfully. "So no need to be a stranger. The fangs are mostly decorative." He lifts his arms behind his head and leans back. "If you're as bent on this particular adventure as you say, maybe you'll have to play that part yourself. I was telling the truth when I said I don't have many people at my beck and call presently to go gallavanting off to a random sandbar. It's just as well you came by so we could get to know each other."

"To wit, you seem to know more about me than I about you—even if what you know is probably too flattering by half." He pauses and smirks. "Curiously un-fabled handsomeness aside, perhaps. Are all Viera men so inclined toward such disarming straightforwardness?" It's refreshing.

"Oh I assure you I am quite unique, or at least quite rare, and you shouldn't generalise anything you learn about me to other viera," he replies with a cocky grin. "For one, I left that thrice-damned jungle.

"I don't think there's much you can say about all viera males, though. There are not that many of us but enough to be different. I think I was... perhaps a bit too forward for my brethren." He shrugs. "I'm sure they were pretty relieved to be rid of me, and the feeling was mutual; sometimes I think the only reason they didn't kick me out themselves was because it was forbidden." A slight smirk. "Ironically the very reason I left, in a way."

"Yes, I suppose a cursory glance at you does reveal some unique attributes about you," he replies. He pauses just a moment before smiling and adding, "I doubt most Sharlayans have their archon tattoos tracing their hipbones, for instance. Certainly you're the first of those I've seen naked to put them there."

"I for my part am a perfectly unremarkable example of my people," he added with a dry grin. "Except that I'm a Keeper, I suppose; we are the more rarified half. Have you spent much time on the western mainland? I suppose you would have mostly been on Fall—Val?—the island."

Red Fir grins shamelessly at the comment about his Archon mark but doesn't respond to it. "I've had opportunity to see most of Eorzea, yeah. Before being a scholar I was a Sharlayan gleaner—something like an errand boy, going all over everywhere to fetch specimens for study or deal with strange phenomena. I even visited Garlemald once, but that was before they were an empire hellbent on conquering the rest of the world. But yeah, I've met my share of miqo'te."

"Well, you have me at a disadvantage, then," he replies with an airy chuckle. "I know very little of you, and am meeting you in a world very different from my own, besides. You are one of very few Viera I have met, though what little understanding I have suggests there are some surface similarities between your people and mine." With how the man had grinned earlier at his playful comments, and his own emotional exhaustion, he can't resist another little jibe. He drops his voice lower, to his purring register, so that nobody else hears it as he leans toward the Viera beside him. "Not so many similarities, though, to be unfazed at a hard-on. We don't consider them remarkable."

A stray impulse to get himself hard again just to viciously enjoy the Viera's awkward reaction once more flits across his consciousness, but he lets it go. That would definitely be a violation of local rules—at least if it happened again on purpose.

He rolls his eyes and widens his grin. "I was merely surprised and did not want to interrupt you," he says, similarly leaning closer to the miqo'te and switching to a lower register. "Though I would not be unfazed regardless; it feels like the sort of issue I could help with." And he's not trying to get hard but this conversation is having nonzero effect on him, though whether that's visible beneath the onsen's waters is another matter.

Then he pulls away again and drops the flirty tone. "But you really shouldn't make any inferences about what, ah, my people are like, based on me." He underscores the words "my people" with mild amusement. "I haven't been to the Golmore Jungle in nearly half a century and I spent the majority of the time since in Eorzea. I've gone native."

Qana’to laughs. “I promise I won’t hold you against them,” he says with a grin, “even if you did interrupt my afternoon of relaxation.” He shrugs and settles back into the water, closing his eyes once more. “Perhaps for the best, though. It is my understanding that the display is considered rude around here, and so you perhaps saved me from embarrassment had someone else walked up instead.” He opens one eye. “I personally cleave to the opinion that such sights are just part of getting to know someone, myself, but that seems to be an unusual attitude outside keeper lands.”

"Is that how it goes? I confess I don't actually know that much about Keepers, either, most of the miqo'te I've met were Seekers and they're a lot less secretive than you are, or so it seems to me. —sorry I realise I may be coming off as trying to distract from the symmetrical line of questioning but it's mostly that I can actually not tell you that much about what the typical male viera is like, I've spent longer away from them than with them. I can tell you what I remember of it? And why I left? It's not really a secret."

He waves a hand perfunctorily. "No, no, your explanation gave me enough, I think, to understand. You left because you didn't like the lot assigned to you by your tribe. That is something I can understand well enough." His interlocutor is clearly uncomfortable discussing his place of origin, and the tattoos made it clear that Sharlayan was as much his homeland as anywhere. Ultimately he only asked out of habit, to know how not to offend: it is a paramount part of his role as the liaison to so many foreign interests with the scions. Being himself a Miqo'te, unaffiliated in most people's minds with any large nation-state, has made it easier to pass himself off as a neutral arbiter, especially here, in the East. In this case, however, the interrogation seems as likely to cause offense as prevent it, so he would simply have to operate as though the man before him were a Sharlayan.

Perhaps honesty is best here. "I just wanted to understand your culture well enough to be polite within it. Each has its own standards of courtesy, as I'm sure you're well aware by now. There is no need to discuss something so uncomfortable. You'll just have to afford me some grace is I behave unexpectedly." He flicks his ears and smiles: a friendly gesture. "Or I suppose—since you're here to ask me a favor—I have the upper hand for the moment, and can make you operate according to mine instead." He chuckles and grins again, to be clear that he is joking.

"Your questions are no bother, friend. Certainly it would be hypocritical for me to mind them," he says, then, after a moment, sighs despite himself. "To be honest, you're among the first to even inquire, even in my several years floating between the cities. Gridanians don't want to know, and nobody else can differentiate us from our rivals." He shakes his head at the admission. "It doesn't matter, of course. I'm not here representing the shapah, really." He smiles again, weakly. "If anyone, I've been mostly representing Doma, lately."

"It's not that uncomfortable; it's been half a century, like I said, those wounds have mostly healed," he says with a shrug. "I just still think they're doing something tremendously wasteful and wrong and never want to go back." Despite his words he speaks lightly, like someone who's examining something somewhat distasteful, from a distance, which is not, ultimately, any of his business.

"And as for politeness: we've been flirting in the nude in an onsen, I feel like politeness norms are sort of..." He waves a hand in vague lazy circles next to his shoulder. "Not that pertinent. Certainly not as pertinent as what you've brought up regarding the cultural appropriateness of interaction with other people's erections. If Keeper culture has interesting things to say about that I'd certainly hear them."

Qana'to giggles with mild exasperation, "See, that's the thing!" He waves his hand between the two of them. "Around here—something like this—it's already so far outside of acceptable discourse that we're basically already being tremendously rude just by broaching the subject." He holds up one finger, pointing at himself . "Where I come from, it's not! You'd just say, essentially, 'nice dick,' and I'd smile and glance away from you, and that would be a normal start to a conversation." He can barely finish the sentence before feeling compelled to explain. "We spend most of our time like this—nude, I mean—so seeing an erection is just," in his excitement, he had steadily gotten louder and more agitated, and at the word erection he suddenly gets quieter as he realizes it. "It's just a normal thing. They aren't weird, any more than seeing someone sneeze. You all have ways to respond to people sneezing, right? For us, there's no difference."

He sits back into the water and looks down thoughtfully into it. "Well, okay, it is different, in that it's sexual, I guess. It's a different way of relating to people," he concedes. "I guess it's that, for us, this isn't some strange way to relate. People get hard sometimes, and if you want to relate to someone through those means, well—" he shrugs emphatically, "good! That's a good thing. Especially in a situation like this, where we're supposed to be getting to know each other. Is that not a part of me? You can get to know me through that."

With that off his chest, the full weight of his aggressiveness suddenly hits him, and he smirks in embarrassment and looks away. "Forgive me, that was unprofessional. I meant no offense by my forthright description." Too many months of carefully dancing around others' sensibilities during delicate negotiations had left him anxious and reticent to speak his mind. That he could be so easily goaded to share feels like a liability. "I suppose I got a little carried away there."

He watches this outburst with amused bemusement, or perhaps bemused amusement, but once Qana'to settles down he turns a bit more thoughtful. "That is not too dissimilar from how it was for us at the Golmore," he says. "We only saw the women once every seven years. We—I don't know how much of this you know, but we look the same until puberty, and then some of us, about a fifth, suddenly and rapidly grow dicks." He smirks. "The process occasionally doesn't work perfectly, as you may have seen. But most of the time it does." Another shrug. "And then the men show up, have a go at siring the next generation, and abscond with those of us who turned out male, and then we don't come back until seven years later. 

"Relevantly this means that you have a cohort of fourteen-year-olds who just got a shiny new toy that's begging to be used and they have no one else to use it with than each other. We didn't particularly have very strong modesty norms, either."

"Seven years? That's a—like, everyone at once?" Qana'to blinks in befuddlement before collecting himself. "We also send men out to wander, but it's expected that they will just wander from village to village, without necessarily being out on their own for all that long." Half a year at the very most. If a woman selects you to sire children, that's just a personal choice. There's no big ambush of men all at once where everyone competes. Rather than say any of that, he nods after a moment. "Ah, but the relevant bit remains, as you said. A bunch of young men out in the woods, instructed to make nice right as the second growth is hitting." He chuckles and gets a faraway look. "Yeah, in short, in our culture, guys getting aroused by each other rather than getting aggressive with each other is considered the better outcome. We actually tell boys they should react with interest if others are aroused near them. Not necessarily to do anything further, if they don't want do, but a guy being hard near you is usually treated as an invitation to relax and socialize." He grins. "Rather than 'respect his private time.'"

"So you mean that my first thought of 'I want him inside me' was the one I should've acted on instead?"

“Well, maybe chat first. But yes,” he says with a smirk. “If this were the Black Shroud, you would have said, aenoh gworjaa horai, which is the usual way to start that conversation.”

"...what does that mean?" he asks, suddenly delighted.

“Like I said earlier: ‘he has a beautiful dick.’” He shrugs. “It’s a standard friendly compliment, flirtatious but not aggressive. Then I’d glance away, which is like, ‘oh, I’m flattered.’ And then I’d probably ask you a question or invite you to sit with me if I wanted to engage.”

"That's a very specific social script," he observes. "But what language is that?"

“No more specific than, ‘Hello, sir, how are you? Good, you? Good, thank you.’ It’s just a flirtier version because we want to have an easy segue to sex, I guess.” He laughs.

“The language is my language. It doesn’t have a name. We usually just call it ‘our language,’ among ourselves, or to outsiders we call it kiipahgo, which is literally just Hingan for Keeper language. That’s a product of trade.”

"キーパー語, Hingan I can speak," he says with a smile.

He laughs. “Yep, that’s it! We didn’t have our own special name for it, so we just took their term.” He tilts his head. “I think at one point, maybe, we called it piinoh suu? Flowery tongue?” His tail flicks as the thinks. “The term comes up in some of our old legends. But it’s usually used to mean talking poetically during courtship, not just the language in general. And these days we’d prefer piina’to suu, anyway.” 

"I hope you realise that you have just given me the mission to learn your language. Do you guys teach it to outsiders or am I going to need to go native or is it a secret? The language of the Golmore is a secret but I have no respect for their traditions and will teach anyone who asks. ...no one has, but still."

“Yes, it’s a terrible secret and you will have to pry it out of me with all the powers of seduction available to you.” He shakes his head slowly, “we definitely do not have a long history of teaching it to Seekers we took prisoner during war in the hope that they join us. And certainly we never let them believe they were seducing that information out of us to learn our secrets.”

He giggles to himself. “I hated the Chronicles of the Four Wars as a child. It wasn’t until I was older that the whole he took the prisoner by the spear and struck it until he cried out and wet the ground thing started to read less literally.”

That startles a positively undignified chortle out of him which he blocks his lips and nose to cover, but then he lowers his hands and grins again. "I see seduction features heavily, maybe I should practise."

He closes his eyes and raises his eyebrows in a parody of high-minded oration. “We split from the Seekers because they used men fighting to solve all their problems. It would be hypocritical if we didn’t try something other than combat to resolve our differences with them.” He purses his lips like he is suppressing a smile. “If you really want to understand the language, then I think you’ll need to understand the customs that inform it, yes. I’m happy to help.”

"わかった、がんばる！That's probably a long term project, though, without full immersion I'd need to spend a lot of time studying. You know, when I first left, I had a very strong accent in Hingan, because I only had other viera who had similarly never left the jungle to teach me, and I didn't speak any other languages. But nothing like being thrown in the middle of a place where no one speaks your native tongue to get you to learn really quickly."

“I can always bring you back to the Shroud with me, whenever I finally return.” A cloud of despair passes briefly over his face, but he waves it away. “But failing that, I suppose you’ll have to pry my secrets from me directly. If immersion isn’t possible, it seems like I’m the best means of intensive instruction.” The prospect once again has his dick bobbing just under the water, not quite fully hard but close, and he shifts his posture so that it breaches the surface briefly before submerging again. Red Fir seemed interested in his cultures attitudes about this sort of thing, so why not indulge in his native style of flirting?

“You seem likely to be at a disadvantage out here in a public bath, though.”

"If you have a suggestion for somewhere else we could be, I'm all ears." He wiggles his head a bit so that his floppy ears do the same.

He is fully erect now, though, so that is definitely going to, uh. Look like something. To any onlookers. He is trying to not let his Sharlayan "upbringing" tie him down, but he is very aware of it right now.

"And why would I concede an advantage unnecessarily?" he asks, rising from his lounging position to crawl toward Red with a look of malicious delight. "I am quite content to be casually out in public while fully hard—mark of pride to my people," he continues as he sits on his knees so his cock, which had true to form fully risen at the delectable scent on embarrassment rising off Red Fir, is totally above water, though strategically angled so that none of the other few patrons could see it. "If that doesn't suit you, it is surely incumbent on you to convince me to head back to my suite. Otherwise I am perfectly content to watch you stare like a jealous teenager, little Sharlayan boy."

"I am not embarrassed, merely aware of social judgment," he insists. And since he has permission to look, he will look everywhere. Starting with the cock which he didn't get that good a look at earlier. "If it were up to just me," and he lowers his voice for that, "I'd pin you to the ground and ride you until you were seeing stars. But I don't want to be banned from the Kugane onsen so instead what I'll say is aenoh gworjaa horai." His pronunciation isn't perfect, he only heard it once, but it very nearly is.

"Ooh, a quick learner," he coos. "Maybe just for that bucahr'wo daebi poro onniso," he said, slipping into kiipahgo. Sure, he was mostly showing off, but also it really was easier to express in his tongue. Good luck making "playing wolfess" sound sexy in Eorzean or Hingan. He practically lost his bone just thinking it. "Tell you what, I want to pop back to my rooms for a moment to grab something, and if you can follow me the whole way without dying of shame or shriveling like a vine in a drought, maybe I'll let you hang out in there with me." He stood up without awaiting a response, deliberately letting his cock bob just barely an ilm from the viera's face, and stretched ostentatiously. "Otherwise, I'll be back in a moment." He trots off, cock bobbing and tail swishing to wildly different rhythms.

With a roll of his eyes, Red Fir gets up and follows immediately, not giving Qana'to any time to get out of earshot or even polite conversation shot. "I told you I'm not embarrassed," he says, catching up easily. "My concern is for practical consequences, not propriety."

Qana'to doesn't respond except to toss a towel to Red Fir and then quickly pats himself dry with another one, making sure the rub his hard-on just enough to keep it fully fledged before tossing the towel away and tromping down the hallway towards his room. The receptionists muted reaction of surprise and embarrassment causes his closer ear to flick toward the sound, but otherwise he resolutely avoids noticing. Instead he pads to the room and pulls the door open, leaving it that way for Red Fir to follow.

Red Fir really should not rub himself very much because in addition to hard he is, uh. Dripping. So it's only when he's stepped into Qana'to's room that he starts actually trying to dry himself, fully aware that between his legs that'll be a lost cause.

(And that's making his mind go places, he's so wet, it wouldn't be hard at all for Qana'to to...)

"I don't want to press too hard on the matter," Qana'to says, having moved immediately to the small table and picked up a slim book, "but if you really want total immersion and aren't afraid of taking on big challenges all at once, I do have this...." He hefts the book and turns back toward his guest, holding the little booklet out. "It's actually the maritime laws governing the Kugane port's relations to outsiders. They have—very bad—translations into Eorzean, but I thought, well, it might be nice if Keepers could use it, right? We're prone to wandering and trade, so it would be best if I could grease the process of entry, leave it easier than it was when I did it." To what degree is the tone of his language deliberate? Even he doesn't know. "The Eastern and the Keeper tongues are side-by-side so it is easy to follow along as they play out." Dang it, another one. "Um, would like to take it?" Oh, heck.

...Red Fir is nearly speechless, but even in the depths of his confusion he has enough presence of mind to say, "I would love to take it." He is being deliberate, regardless of whether Qana'to is, and the way his eyes are wandering is not leaving much to subtext at all.

"By all means, then! That's what it's for!" he says with evident joy. "I've had some trouble finishing lately, but I think it will be a satisfying challenge as it is. The last few pages are all things about sumptuary laws and the like, so hardly relevant material to learn." He steps back toward Red Fir, still holding out the book, but now he his genuine pedagogical joy has calmed enough for his cock to have a say again. "As for the other things you might want to learn, well, you'll have to drink straight from the source for those," he says with a smirk. "As for you, though, you handled that little walk better than I was expecting, I'll be honest. Still hard enough to hang the laundry on." He smirks and nods downward. "I hope it isn't rude to you to say the rest looks inviting as well."

He accepts the book and lifts an eyebrow. "I'm not sure where you expect me to put this right this second," he observes, gesturing expansively down at himself. "I didn't bring a bag, and I'm hoping my hands are about to get busy with something else."

(And despite the apparent calm of his words his cock twitches as he says that, and now in addition to wet he's also leaking a bit from his tip. It's taking him every ounce of self-control to not whine.)

Moon's mercy, which one am I supposed to be moving towards when they both are reacting? "You're supposed to be reading, no? Wasn't that the reason you are here? To pry my secrets from me?" He steps in close and lets one hand ghost down from the Viera's navel, where a happy trail might have been on another. "You mean to tell me a student of Baldesion is so easily swayed from his studies by a little bodily excitement? Tsk, I was sure you'd have more self-discipline than that." Uh, eeny meeny miney mo... "Maybe you can't be entrusted with my language after all, if you're so distractible." Well, a good Keeper man supports the women of the forest. He lets his fingers drift around the bobbing cock and traces the wet lips beneath it, waiting to press them inside until Red Fir has a chance to indicate pleasure. "Go on, then, Sharlayan. Read your books. If you can focus."

Red Fir shivers at the touch. It's so slight he's half-convinced he imagined it and it nevertheless makes him twitch again. "The reason I am here," he says, still keeping his composure, plus or minus a slight wobble, "was to get to know you in the way your people get to know each other. Immersion, remember? I am not a Seeker captive you need to string along." He's still holding the book with one hand, but the other he hooks behind the small of Qana'to's back to pull him so that their torsos are flush against each other, their cocks pressed between their bodies. "So go on, then, Keeper. Show me what it would be like if I lived in the Shroud with you."

The shiver was enough to be sure. Qana'to wordlessly shoves two fingers as deep as they will go, then curls them upward once they are well within their new home. He pulses them in and out a few times, rubbing his thumb against the underside of the cock—that part would take some getting used to. He really had only every done this on a proper clit. After a few seconds, he speaks. "Nhivna'sae varraimi poro kiipahgo'wo dolthi pi dolthi'a." Without bothering to translate, he grins and pulls Red Fir closer by the hip with his spare hand, nuzzling and then nipping his neck. "Daebis pi qoulrethia? Daebi pi reonnis." He purrs and bites Red's neck again. He'll play the student or he'll flounder; either way would be fun.

"Ah," he gasps, and he's not entirely sure which part of all of that caused it. It was almost certainly the part where he's being fingered but the foreign language and the biting are doing something. He doesn't even know if that's talking dirty or just saying things, from what little he knows of this man it could go either way, but it's still hot.

The result is that he's starting to melt into Qana'to's arms, regardless. "What does that mean?" he breathes, running his fingernails against the skin of Qana'to's back. He wishes he knew what to do with the book, he doesn't want to drop it because it's not his but he really wants both hands.

He giggles victoriously and presses upwards with a faster rhythm. "You wanted to see what it would be like if you lived in the Shroud with me, no?" he murmurs, his voice arpeggiating up and down playfully. "Do you think I speak Hingan or something when I'm fucking my friends under the cypresses?" He nips Red Fir's neck again and pulls him forward, guiding him toward a sturdy beam to lean against as he was being fingerfucked. He purred again. "You said to go straight for the immersion and not to 'string you along,' so unless you want to study you new workbook while I work, I guess you'll just have to get used to being a poor, lost bunny in the big, scary forest." He pulls his head back and smiles threateningly, fangs aglitter. "Pray a coeurl doesn't eat you."

He lets himself be led along easily enough, but when he's there he hooks one leg around one of Qana'to's. "Or pray that something else does," he murmurs, wrapping both arms around Qana'to's neck and leaning his chin against Qana'to's shoulder so that he can open the book and try to quickly scan it for the sentence structure so that he can guess—

The first verb in the random page Red Fir opened to is kuuji “surrender,” in a list of taxable animal goods and parts:

虎は耳と尻尾と歯と舌と睾丸と陰茎を引き渡す。輸入関税は三十五率です。

Regarding the tiger, surrender ears, tail, teeth, tongue, testicles and penis. The duty assessed is 35 percent.

Joa moui’zo pentoa’ir: isiqah, rijaa, orh, suu, cajah gworjaa’zo kuuji. Horai’a douti listan’ra xote’ir.

Arguably not the sexiest of topics, but Red Fir would have to work with what he had.

Good enough.

"I've got a gworjaa too, you know," he says in the same low murmur.

Guessed wrong, then, it seems. How did I find the most anatomically confusing Viera available? At least he’s cute. “Oh, is that the part craving attention? You should have specified.” He says it playfully, though his mystification glitters briefly in his eyes. Well, I am certainly getting to know him. “Underneath it is so delightfully wet, though—I can’t stand the thought of leaving that poor hole empty….” Nevertheless, he slides his fingers out traces them up the shaft, his own cock pressed at an angle between his hood and Red Fir’s thigh thanks to how the viera was wrapped around him. He feels a drip along his thigh as his fingers left their burrow, and he smiles in satisfaction. “Or was the greedy bunny needy for both?” Please say no: I have no idea how I’ll manage that. “Go on. There are no points for modesty Keeper lands.”

He whines when the fingers leave him and nods desperately into Qana'to's shoulder at that last. "Yes. Both. Please," he begs, since he's getting the impression that the miqo'te really wants to be the one taking charge today.

Why on Hydaelyn am I in charge right now? He smiles bravely and shrugs the leg holding him off so he can kneel. “Qoulthia’wo rethis.” The urge to revert to his own language was already strongest in intimate moments, and the added anxiety of the unfamiliar makes it even more tempting. He holds the shaft upright and kisses the lips beneath it before running his tongue around the perimeter.

Oh. Oh,Viera taste good! He opens his mouth wider and lets his tongue work into the slit. He indulges himself for a few seconds before snapping to. Right, the cock, too. Need to—why is this so complicated? “You learn any other neat phrases up there, little student?” he jibes to cover his difficulty with multitasking as he starts pumping the shaft above his head. “Or are you content only knowing how to beg for a cock? I’ll grant you that that’s probably the most important thing for a bunny to know.”

Oh heavens this feels good, even with the way Qana'to seems nervous and unsure about what to do. Qana'to doing a great job of covering it with bravado, and Red Fir doesn't want to embarrass him by bringing any attention to it, even if it's tempting to turn the tables. Plus, he is very cute.

That's too many thoughts to be having, though, so he turns his attention back to the sensation between his legs to immerse himself in it, which gets him to lean his head back against the wall and shut his eyes and place a hand on Qana'to's head, running his fingers through the miqo'te's hair. "Distracted," he breathes, once he's made that be true. "Learning is. Difficult. Ah, yes, do that again—"

“Distracted? Poor boy needs me to stop and let him focus, huh?” he says before diving in deeper with his tongue. The hand on his head is reassuring, a connection, and his shoulders drop as he relaxes into his task. He closes his eyes and lets his spare hand wander between his own legs. Neglect had let him wilt a bit, but his hand, wet from Red’s arousal, rectifies that easily.

He still can’t get over the taste. Less sour, more salty. For once the best word is Hingan instead. “美味しい” he exclaims.

That startles a laugh out of Red Fir, and the tension in his core from the laugh makes him squirm. "Don't want to focus," he replies. "Just want—you—"

Qana’to’s tail flicks predatorily against the ground at the feeling of Red Fir’s squirms, and he purrs and squeezes the bunny’s cocktip. The comment registers dimly in the hunting haze, delayed as his brain works through the second-language barrier while so preoccupied with touch and taste.

Aww. Cute bunny.

Nonetheless, he has found a weakness and he must pounce. The hand on his head had slackened, suggesting it was the banter rather than the physical touches that had done it. Moon’s grace, it’s the cutesy broken Hingan that does it? Well, maybe that was fair: he had leaked at Red Fir trying out the Keeper flirtation, and he was usually fairly dry. He withdraws his tongue from within his new lover and licks his lips, rehearsingly mentally before chirping:

この間食がすきだよ

From the way Red Fir grips Qana'to's hair while he giggles, he might be onto something there. But probably the better inference will be made from him saying, "Get up, I want your cock in me—" Ah wait is that being too bossy. "Um. Please?" There, that's better. It helps that the whine in his voice at the end is 100% genuine.

Moments ago he was slightly soft; now he throbs painfully at the quaver in the Viera’s voice. He giggles and wipes his mouth with the back of his arm before rising slowly to his feet. His lips twitch as he debates: should he keep with the immersion thing? Was Red Fir just flattering him and he should drop it before it grates? He bumps his nose gently against the Viera’s and purrs as he steals a quick kiss.

The taste of lips chases such considerations out of his head. “If this is the Shroud,” he murmurs, “then only the guy on top has to be gentle about speaking. Though your little ‘please’ was very cute.”

With one hand he pulls his cock downwards until he feels warmth against the tip. He fights the urge to press in immediately, though, and first gently takes the book back from Red Fir and motions as if to toss it. “Unless you want to study while I work, after all,” he says with a mischievous crackle in his tone.

Red Fir leans forward for a moment, chasing after the kiss, then makes a sad puppy face that's only not a pout because he's not sticking his bottom lip out.

His mouth opens to reply to the first part of that but when Qana'to mentions studying he says, in a single breath, "Are you kidding me I've seen your cock if I'm stuffed with that I'll have no attention left for anything."

Qana'to laughs in surprise as the book clatters to the ground, the tilt in his eyebrows betraying the heady embarrassment of flattery. "I won't distract you anymore, then." He leans back into a kiss, this time with his whole body so that he sinks deeper inside as he presses his lips to Red Fir's again. He moans in the back of his throat as warmth and wetness overtake his senses.

He was slightly exaggerating when he said that being filled with cock would be too distracting but Qana'to's cock is actually kind of unreasonable so it's not that hard for him to make up the difference and lean into the sensation. Red Fir isn't one to moan, usually, but he does gasp at the feeling and pull Qana'to closer, digging his nails into the miqo'te's skin and returning the kiss in earnest.

"Oh, that won't do at all," Qana'to murmurs between kisses. "My clan founder would die of shame if that's the loudest I got out of a girl I was breeding." He grabs the cock crushed between them and massages the head as he pulls back and starts the thrust harder. "Let's try that again, bunny, and see if I can get a real noise out of you. More force, maybe? Or do we just need to play with this toy in my hand more?"

He chokes out a half-giggle, half-gasp. "Am I a, ah, girl you're breeding?" he asks, aiming for arch and missing slightly due to the unavoidable quiver in his voice. But it wouldn't do to bruise his new lover's ego. "Use me. Do it harder, make me, fuck, make me have trouble, ah, make me have trouble walking. Rail me."

"I considered saying 'a pussy I was breeding,' but that seemed likely to invite confusion," he says with a giggle as he adjusts his position to allow for better thrusts. Ah, Moon's grace, I'm purring, aren't I? "You'll have to crawl if you want to leave this room before the week is out, bunnyboy," he says with fiery glee.

He gasps again with the harder trusts and digs his nails in more. "Fuck," he says, clinging to Qana'to like a lifeboat. And unfortunately he does start getting too distracted, he's always had some trouble multitasking while getting fucked, at least if they're doing it right, and Qana'to is doing it so, so right. "Ah, please, Qana'to—!"

"See? That's more like it," he replies under his breath, nudging Red Fir's face to the side to access his cheek and neck. "You just be a good little bunny and relax for me, and I'll take care of everything." His whole abdomen is smeared with pre now from the Viera's cock, and in the back of his mind some healer's impulse rouses even as the rest of him was focused on bonding with his new lover. He is going to be so thirsty if he's getting this wet. Does he need water? A different instinct drives his mouth, however. "And I thought you were wet when it was just my tongue," he says, voice thick with admiration and pleasure. "Amazing. You are just made to get fucked, you know that?"

...Menphina, please let that be a compliment in this language, too.

This man has some kind of knack for saying things that are simultaneously very funny and kind of hot. "Am I?" he says, burying his face in Qana'to's neck yet again to hide his laugh/moan. "I am, ah fuck, happy to service." He's moving with Qana'to, now—or slightly out of sync, actually, so that his cock can get the stimulation of friction between their bodies at the same time as he's getting fucked. He's always considered himself very lucky for having both a dick and a pussy, because it's two entire places "made to get fucked", as Qana'to says, and they're both being stimulated and driving him crazy.

Happy to service. The words clattered across his mind like a dropped plate at a formal banquet, and his thrusts faltered for a moment as he searched Red Fir's eyes for explanation. Happy to service? That was... backwards. He was the one on top, so it would be him in the position of service, unless—

This wasn't just to get him to go to that island, was it? 

No, no, don't be stupid: this isn't the Shroud, where describing a top as a dominant party—at least aloud, at least at first—was a strong taboo. It's normal around here. Probably normal where Red Fir comes from. It didn't imply—he watched Red Fir's chest rise and fall. It was handsome, a pragmatic body, the kind that was in shape for utility instead of vanity. It felt right, warm and receptive—and wet, where it mattered. But now he couldn't shake the thought. He put on his best playful murmur to disguise the sincerity of the question. "Happy to service, are you? Just a hot, wet hole for me to use as I please? One of the amenities on my luxury trip to that desert island?" Despite himself, he felt a thrill lance up his stomach as he said it, and the corner of his mouth jerked into a conflicted smirk. He didn't mind the idea so much, now that it was out of his mouth, though something in the back of his mind murmured that he'd want to shower that out of himself later.

Red Fir opens his eyes, then, with an amused grin taking over his lips. "Not sure we'll, ah, have the time, there. Who knows what dangers await us." He squeezes Qana'to close and in. "Better make use of me while you still can, hmm?"

That doesn't resolve anything! he shouts internally before the feeling of being pulled deeper into his lover's body makes the thoughts swim and blur and dance out of reach. Nothing in Red Fir's expression had betrayed any reluctance, so at least it was genuine interest in addition to some sort of Rowena-originated plot. He wasn't even sure that Red Fir had processed the comment as anything but banter. And he felt so good. Surely—

No, that's not how it works! This is... is... really nice. He leans back in and kisses the first lips he'd had to kiss since he arrived in Kugane over a year ago. Let Rowena and her stupid island rot for an evening. If this Viera was going to volunteer to be pulped for an evening, why shouldn't he? The man literally asked. So—

"You'll have all the time in the world for it," he replied with a growl. "There won't be much else for you to do when you can't even walk straight after I'm done."

"Ah, fuck, that hit the spot," he says, shuddering against Qana'to's body. "I'm going to investigate it even if I'm in a wheelchair but it would be so hot to be in a wheelchair because of you." He buries his fingers in Qana'to's hair to pull him in for another kiss, again, and the feeling of the fangs turns him on even more. He's so hard, so wet, leaking so much, and he's on the cusp of coming, and everything about this situation is amazing.

Qana’to scoffs gently. “Yaen’ya qoul nelhi,” he mutters as Red draws him into another kiss. He feels lips on his teeth and bites down, mind mercifully blank as the sensations on his cock sweep the cobwebs of doubt away. Red Fir seemed totally swept up in the pleasure now, and against that tide the concerns about some merchants in a tea house seem trifling, a petty distraction from his higher cause—

of leaving this bunny hobbled for life.

“Gworjaa’ra ousthi arissi,” he commands, grabbing the bunny by the dick between kisses and shifting to more powerful, violent thrusts. This deep in pussy he wouldn’t remember the Hingan slang for cum even if he knew it. The tone would have to be enough. “Now. I want to feel it.”

Kami help him, it really doesn't take much longer at all. He's reduced to a whimpering mess of "fuck"s and "please"s and "Qana'to"s and he gives himself entirely to the moment, to the scene, to the situation. He's getting fucked raw and hard against a wall by the Warrior of Light on the same day they met, there's really very little that could be hotter than this and then he's coming, coming, coming, splattering both of their chests and spasming and squeezing Qana'to closer and into him. His mind goes completely blank, and it's all he can do to stay upright clinging to this incredibly attractive man.

Qana’to clings to the sounds and feelings as desperately as Red Fir clings to him. This is real. Everything else might be a setup, but this moment is genuine at least. The warm splash on his lower chest is proof enough for him. He sighs happily and thrusts again, wrapping one hand around the cock jammed between them and squeezing the head to encourage an even bigger mess.

His mind is still cloudy with arousal when he gives Red Fir another kiss and pulls out, his cock still throbbing with denied release. It takes significant effort not to chase his own release, but he was a good son of the Shroud. The first climax was supposed to be hers alone. Cumming inside was a privilege men earned in later rounds of lovemaking. “That felt powerful,” he purrs. “I’ll be reminiscing about that one for a while.”

He holds one hand out to offer Red Fir help to the bed. “Someone should rest before their legs totally seize up,” he jibes with a smug smile.

He doesn't immediately follow. For one, he's still actually a bit weak at the knees and resting his weight against the wall, but for two, "I can't get pregnant. You know. If you were worried." It doesn't actually come out as collected as that sentence implies, because he's covered in sweat and panting heavily, but close enough.

It takes a long several seconds for that apparent non-sequitur to resolve into a sensible response in Qana'to's addled head. "No, no," he says, gingerly tugging at Red Fir's arm to get the Viera to lean on him for support. He laughs quietly. "It's just—you're not supposed to finish in, uh, there the first time." Is pussy offensive to use for a guy? Kiipahgo has a separate word for them, but none in Eorzean come to mind. "At least that's how it is in the Shroud. You're supposed to wait until your partner has finished and you're invited back in. And in the meantime—" he purrs, "I'm supposed to make sure you recover enough for that, should you desire it~"

Alright, he's happy to be led along. "Invited back in," he echoes, faintly bemused. "Well I do kind of need to recover, I haven't come this hard in—at least a year. Holy fuck."

Qana'to guides Red Fir to the bed and helps him down, purring comfortingly the whole way. "Even if you are just an amenity," he coos, "I ought to take care if I want you to stay in good working order, no?"

"'Just an amenity'," he echoes again, with a half-smile. "I like to think I'm a lot more than that, dirty talk notwithstanding."

"Having gotten to know you a bit," he says, helping Red Fir onto the bed, "I would say so." He stands over the bunny and appraises for injury on reflex, before gently lowering himself to sit on the edge of the bed. "Well, think you'll be able to walk after all?"

"Yeah." He reaches over to pull Qana'to to him, though, so both of them can lie on the bed. "I'm a snugglebug, what do you think you're doing just sitting there, come on."

He makes a melodramatic noise of protest before flipping to wrap his arms around the Viera and nuzzle into his neck. "I'm not done with you yet, then," he murmurs. "Don't get comfortable."

"I'm definitely getting comfortable, watch if I don't," he says, petulantly, while he pets Qana'to softly.

(Aaahhh he's having sex with the Warrior of Light ahhhhh this is so cool ahhhhhh)

"Ter redaebinna," he says, running a hand down Red Fir's hips and then gently grabbing the man by the cock. "Did you not just say you needed to recover? You should wait to goad me until you are less vulnerable."

He twitches involuntarily at the touch. After just coming he's still kind of sensitive. ...it's not bad, though.

"Yes, that's why I'm getting comfortable. Is that goading?"

He blinks in surprise at the nonchalant reaction to his jest. Curse his comforting healer’s bearing undercutting him. I bet none of the rogues or lancers struggle with being playfully threatening.

On the other hand, the viera hasn’t moved away despite the flinch of sensitivity when he grabbed him by the dick. The reaction had made Qana’to throb a little, actually. Cautiously, he rubbed the cockhead in his hand, testing the waters. Maybe Red Fir wanted him to react even more aggressively? Every social instinct from his days in the forest arrays itself against it—not with someone so new to him, not with someone he’d just been inside—but just about every rule has been inverted with this new lover so far….

Maybe he should just ask? Wait, teeth! He flashes a fanged smile. People outside the Nhivna always seemed entranced by them. He was usually careful not to show them too cavalierly lest he alarm people, but maybe the strategic ambiguity would buy him some more information. “I’m just saying: Awfully brave of you, making yourself at home in a lion’s den while your legs are still soft and he’s still not sated. Especially if you get sensitive after you finish.”

Having his cockhead rubbed makes him flinch again, shivering, and let out a startled "Ah!" that is at least 40% a moan. Yes, he is sensitive, and it is, kind of painful, but Red Fir isn't not into some pain, here and there. Or maybe more than some; he is also a healer, and he's probably had longer to get into trouble than Qana'to's been alive for.

And yet he still doesn't move away. "A l-lion's den?" he taunts petulantly. "All I see is a kitten trying to roar." A kitten with awfully sharp teeth. He hopes he can get Qana'to to bite.

(He also hopes he hasn't actually offended Qana'to, here. It's probably fine? He gets that he's doing things in a way Qana'to is unaccustomed to, but despite Qana'to's unease he seems to be responding alright? Worst case he'll apologise; social faux pas are fixable.)

This smile is more genuine, the sort of glee that comes with solving a puzzle. He shifts to fuller, longer strokes, watching Red Fir’s shivers get steadily stronger—am I drooling?

”You have a twitch in your eye,” he purrs. “Are you feeling alright? You certainly don’t feel quite so eager down there anymore—I thought you could get harder than this. Maybe the pastimes of the Shroud are too much for you, after all.”

The stronger strokes elicit stronger shivers, but they also do cause him to start getting hard again. Also wet, or wetter. "It's just—ah fuck—a matter of time. But you don't need to wait for me to get hard again. Where's the lion?"

“Playing with his food,” he replies, using a knee to push Red’s legs apart as he rises to kneeling. He pulls his hand off of Red’s cock in order to grab his own and press it to the entry beneath.

“Are you always this fantastically wet, or should I be flattered?” he asks as the warmth starts to envelop his tip. He closes his eyes and exhales slowly, his head tipping backward in ecstasy, banter momentarily forgotten. “Qogou reiqoh,” he sighs to himself, heedless of whether Red Fir would understand. The tone of adulation would be enough context, probably, and if not, well—he’d enjoyed explaining before.

"Be flattered," he responds immediately. "And what does that mean?"

Qana’to smirks and presses in instead of answering right away, relishing both the physical sensation and getting to play teacher again. “I thought you couldn’t focus while getting fucked,” he drawls before looking down and starting to buck with a delirious sigh.

“It feels great,” he says. “It means, ‘it feels great.’ Qogou is an intensifier like very and reiqoh is either happy or pleasant depending on context.” He smiles again, eyes half-lidded and mouth open in a trance. “So it could also mean ‘I am very happy.’ I could specify by saying couras qogou reiqoh, if I wanted it to be clearer.”

Halfway into that he does, actually, lose focus, his eyes flickering shut, and he's full mast again. He tries to remind himself that Qana'to likes hearing noises but all that he manages this time is grunting and a tiny whine. "Kami help me," he breathes once Qana'to's all the way in.

Well, phoo, that was too much, wasn’t it? Back to teasing. “Aww, what’s the matter, my brave and foolish little lover? Don’t tell me it’s too much for you! You were so cavalier—” he grabs the bunny cock and pumps it again, once, twice, just enough to elicit that cute twitch. “—about getting mounted again so soon.”

Suddenly he tilts his head like a curious kitten and pumps the cock again, experimentally. “Huh. You tighten on my shaft when I pump your cock while it is sensitive like this.” He grins viciously. “It feels really good.”

"Ah fuck—! If I didn't want too much I wouldn't have asked for it, would I?" But he is starting to lose the post-orgasm sensitivity, more's the pity, so now all he has is being filled with catboy cock and jerked off at the same time, ye gods he hasn't felt this much pleasure in a while.

“Aw, look! You’re rock-hard again,” he coos, bucking faster in obvious excitement at this development. “Maybe you didn’t need that break after all. I could just keep on fucking you right through your cum and enjoy how tight and sensitive you are after all the fight is drained out of you.”

"That," he says, in between panting and grunting and gasping for air, "would have been so hot."

Qana’to leans down, slowing his thrusts and focusing on the dick. “Would have been?” he asks before kissing the man’s shoulder. “Will be. Let’s see if you’re even tighter after two rounds.” He kisses the shoulder again and then nips the man’s neck. “If you think you’ll survive it.”

"Fuck," he whines after the nip. He's not sure he can do a third round, actually, this is taking its toll on his body, but oh kami he can barely think right now. "I," he wets his lips, "I suppose we'll see."

“That’s the spirit,” he says as he bucks a little faster. His own dick is almost sore from having avoided release earlier, but he thrusts harder and sinks his teeth into Red Fir’s shoulder to ignore it. “Just tell me where to focus and I’ll have you limp and lifeless in no time.”

He yelps when he's bit and digs his nails into Qana'to's back again, arching is back and pressing his body against Qana'to's. "I-if you fuck me a-and jerk me off, ah, it's very. A lot. Much. Fuck."

Qana'to just giggles and props himself on his forearm to get a better angle for deep thrusts. "Sounds like someone's further along than I had dreamt," he taunts, though he has to adjust his speed to keep the Red Fir's moaning from sending him over the edge, too. Watching the collected and sardonic viera melt down over this is more delightful than he expected. Perhaps honesty is the best policy again. "Keep that up and I may not last long enough to enjoy your afterglow," he whispers between panting. He presses a thumb to the underside of Red's cockhead and rubs in back and forth for maximal friction. "It is taking all my discipline not to fill you here and now."

He wraps his legs around Qana'to's body to pull him in closer. "Do it, you won't," he taints, holding onto coherence just long enough to do so before melting again.

But his legs are locked in place.

Trapped, Qana'to leans forward and bites, hard, on Red's shoulder where it met his neck. Oh, no, you aren't getting me that easily. The legs locked in place, blessedly, slightly impede his ability to thrust, and he shifts upward to keep the sensitive underside of his shaft from being too euphorically stimulated for him to resist cumming. Red's cock, however, experiences no such mercy. Qana'to switches hands to let his left arm rest, and pumps as quickly as he can with his right. "Come on, bunny, I know you want it."

"Ah, of course I want it, I've," he clenches his hands, "been literally telling you."

But also, actually Qana'to does not have all the power here. What if he tries to push Qana'to around so that he's on top instead? In his experience this doesn't usually go smoothly when he tries it but it doesn't need to go smoothly, it just needs to go, and he knows how to power bottom.

(Also, he's already come once, so, you know, Qana'to is working at a disadvantage here. He can hold out.)

Through the haze of sensation, Qana'to feels Red Fir shift under him, no longer fully given over to passive enjoyment. Drat, no, no, I meant you wanted to cum again! Not— Qana'to whines deep in his chest and a shudder rips through him, as his grip on his own pleasure wavers. He sucks in a deep, labored breath. "Cum for me?" he says, voice pitching upward despite his attempts to sound collected. The pressure building in his balls made it hard to plan or think, or do anything other then rut. "It will feel so good when you do...." He shuddered and felt his cock pulse inside his lover. He couldn't resist anymore, so his only hope was pushing Red Fir off the cliff first. He bit the shoulder in front of him again, hard, and shifted his hand toward Red Fir's cockhead.

Oh yes okay he can in fact—well, he can't come literally on command like that but he can get himself into the right frame of mind so that focusing on the bite and on his cock and on Qana's cock and on his beautiful, adorable pleading and he's coming, coming, coming, he just came and it somehow feels stronger than before. Perhaps because he's still sensitive, or just because having someone ask like that pushes so many of his buttons, but whatever the case, he's lost again.

Just as he starts to lose control, Qana'to feels Red Fir's body tense and his pussy flex and the Miqo'te is seeing stars for a moment. "Yes! Yes!" he practically shouts, urgent and plaintive. "Please! Cum for me, Red Fir—just like that! Ah, good boy, good—" he loses the thought, though, as the pressure within Red's pussy and the relief of getting the man off causes him to relax—too much. "Fiwjah, it's too—oh, nooooo," he whines, bucking feverishly as his voice scoops into falsetto. His whole body sings as it unleashes, finally, joyously, perhaps slightly viciously. He shudders as the pent-up energy from their previous bout rips through him, and he latches onto Red's neck with his fangs and screams his ecstasy into the flesh.

After half a minute, he sighs and collapses atop his lover, utterly still but for the faint sound of purring.

Help?????????

The Warrior of Light is incredibly cute????????????????????

Red Fir is not sure that's, like. Allowed. Surely there must be some rule being broken here. Not that he's complaining, mind, he's having a geat time petting this adorable catboy and the purring is very endearing. But by the kami that was cute.

Also hot. Very, very hot. He, ah, still has cock inside him, it seems? He's not complaining about the cock inside him right this second but it's a thing.

The attentive reader might have noticed that his mind is kind of scattered.

Nine million years later, Qana'to's mind returns to his body. The sensation of breathing, first; then the fuzz in his head, the warmth of a body under him, the—

"By the moon, how are you so tight?" he murmurs, slurring slightly. "I know you came twice but—" he cuts off as his movements trigger sensation in his cock, still mostly hard from the pressure bearing down on it.

"I'm not taking the blame for that one," he replies primly. "You're the one who came so hard you passed out inside me. Which is flattering and all but it's entirely on you." That said, his limbs are starting to fall asleep so he does actually start gently trying to disentangle from the miqo'te.

"Blame?" he says, still not fully cogent. "That was a compliment." Eventually he notices that Red Fir is maneuvering him off, and he grumbles and hugs him tighter instead, kissing his neck twice before relenting and sliding to the side. "Goddess, I'm still hard from it," he sighs, shifting to hug the Viera from the side and bury his face back in the man's neck. "That vice grip of yours is too powerful for my poor cock. It is helpless."

He rolls his eyes fondly. "You're just saying that," he replies with a small grin. "Though I'm glad to have been up to your standards. You were also pretty adequate."

Prediction: that's going to rile him up.

As a person, he would be gravely upset to have disappointed. As a Keeper, though, that is just how women usually talked with newer male lovers in his culture—a little curt, flirtatious but dismissive—so it doesn't even occur to him that the script was optional. "Wasn't somebody complaining earlier that they get sensitive after cumming?" he hisses through his teeth, reaching down and grabbing the Viera by the cock again. "I would suggest more effusive compliments if you want to ever recover."

After all, it was an iron rule of jahl'to shapah, the idealized social pact of his people: Keeper bottoms get what Keeper bottoms want.

Red Fir spasms like he's been electrocuted. "You were incredible! I'm going to be sore for days! I came harder than I had in months!"

"Ah, but you see," he says, calmly, languidly, pedagogically: "I had no reason to believe you were lying earlier, but I do have reason to believe that you're lying now. So that means that I should disregard these new protestations of my prowess in favor of your previous assertions of my mediocrity." He nuzzles Red Fir's shoulder and pumps the cock in his hand. He wraps his legs around the man's thigh, forcing the viera's hips open so he cannot worm away. "Until I have confirmation otherwise, I will have to act under the assumption that you are not, in fact, satisfied, and that only a more robust abuse of your body's sensitive areas will be sufficient to placate you."

"No, no, time out, time out, I actually do need a break now," he says, tapping Qana'to's hand as he says that. "Too much, too much."

He pouts and withdraws his hand. "I trust that that's not a mistake you will make again, Red Fir," he says rubbing his face of the man's shoulder and closing his eyes. "Or do the two parts have differing sensitivities, and I should have availed myself of the gash underneath your cock instead if I wanted to bring you back into line?"

He pets Qana'to and hums to tightl thoughtfully. "My cock is more sensitive," he admits, "but I actually need some water and to stretch my legs and all that. But, good gods, just how much energy do you have?" he laughs.

"None at all," he says. "It was a bluff." He cackles and pushes his way out of the bed. "I'll go find you some water, then." He walks away, bouncing slightly and tail twitching, pausing to pick up the kiipahgo translation that he had dropped on the floor earlier and returning it to the desk where it had been originally. "I'll be right back!"

"I shall be waiting," Red Fir replies, lips quirking with amusement while he watches the Keeper's hips and tail sway. The thought comes unbidden that he really wants to eat Qana'to out sometime, and he has to marvel at himself; usually at this point he'd really be too spent to be contemplating further ideas for what to do with/to his lover. Feels almost like he's twenty-five again.

Coincidentally, Qana'to's tail flicks upward for balance as he leans down to set the book in its resting place, inadvertently advertising to the Viera. Qana'to himself, having no idea what thoughts transpire in his lover's head, simply bounds away without looking back. When he returns, he is carrying a big porcelain jug and a smirk. "You know, I was having so much fun that I forgot that I'm not supposed to walk around naked except when going directly to the onsen," he says with a chuckle as he pours water into a cup and hands it over to Red Fir. "But they are so loath to stop me after everything lately, that instead of correct me, they just tried to get me back in here as quickly as they could." He puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. "I wonder if I can get away with that more often."

When Qana'to's back, Red Fir has cleaned himself up a bit—toweled the cum and sweat off, some—and is going through a sequence of stretches next to the bed. "There isn't really anything anyone can do about it, you know," he observes, conversationally. "They might stop inviting you to parties but you are who you are. I've personally always found these people's insistence on wearing clothes at all times—and so many of them!—a bit baffling."

"And I could do with a few fewer parties," he says to himself, before brightening up again. "It's stifling, isn't it? I feel like I crush myself every couple of minutes." He stretches out on the bed, lying on his back and watching the Viera. "I try to stick to robes that I can wear without pants beneath them, but it's still too much usually." He purrs rolls onto his stomach. "Here it is rude to show off, but for my people its rude to hide. Implies that you think the other person will try to hit you there. I prefer our way with it, I must say." He cocks his head. "What about your people? Is it more usual to clothe yourself when you're around others?"

"Clothes are meant to be functional, for us," he says, moving to a position where he's looking at Qana'to upside down between his legs. "Shoes are for preventing you from hurting your feet, when that's necessary. Coats are for warmth. We did have any amount of using clothes as decoration, but not this much, we all looked drab and samey compared to how much sheer variety there is in what people wear outside our villages. I appreciate the decoration, I admit, but the mandatory aspect of it all, and the, the, the expectation that certain parts are meant to be hidden more than others is just." He shakes his head and moves on to another stretch. "Silly."

“It’s sort of the opposite for us,” Qana’to opines. “Decoration is most of what we use clothes for around others—in the Shroud, I’d be likelier to wear a warm coat while traveling on my own than in a village. Most people would look at me oddly if I wore a full covering around the bonfire.” He looked over toward the Viera again. “It is nice to be around someone who understands that. Jokes and flirtation in the onsen aside, I thank you for listening.”

"Well, around a bonfire you would not need full covering, would you? The fire is warm enough." He hops to his feet and whirls around to grin at Qana'to. "And you are quite welcome. I did not particularly envision my day going quite like this, today, but I can't say I have any complaints."

“The feeling is very mutual,” Qana’to replies with a sigh. “Sex was the furthest thing from my mind when I woke this morning.” He grinned and nodded at the table. “I was working on that translation, actually, and thought to spend the whole day on it. This was far more enjoyable.”

"'More enjoyable than translating a book on trade', I'm going to wear that title with pride."

“Don’t be too upset. You could be merely ‘adequate,’” he shoots back with a grin.

"I'm not upset, are you kidding me, you don't get to fuck your hero every day."

Qana'to freezes. Moon's mercy. "Well, I'm... flattered," he says, looking away briefly before returning to his playful tone. "It must be terribly disappointing to meet him and find him merely adequate in bed."

"...I hit a nerve there. Uh, sorry?"

"No, no, nothing like that. It just caught me off-guard." He sits up, hands in his lap, and then suddenly starts to talk quickly. "I fear reality is more ordinary than all that. People seem to think the Warrior of Light moves mountains on his own, but that's a strategic myth. Normally I just silently let people believe whatever because it works to the scions' advantage, but," he shrugs, "that seems wrong under the circumstances. What you detected was me debating whether to play the part in front of you or tell you that I'm really just a frontline medic. I have decent facility with a spear or black magic when the occasion requires, too, I guess." He shifts uncomfortably on the bed. Talking like this is new to him, after so long playing a part. "They chose to make me the face of the enterprise largely because I have little fear of kings and the like. I can talk under pressure." And I don't run my mouth like Alphinaud. "The fighting is secondary."

"Well, ah," that's a lot of emotional vulnerability right there huh. He sits next to Qana'to and wraps one arm around the miqo'te. "I don't think I thought you could move mountains on your own but admittedly my mental image of you was probably somewhat exaggerated by the narrative. Sorry for the pedestal, I realise it must be uncomfortable." He squeezes Qana'to against him a bit and turns his face to rest his forehead on Qana'to's shoulder.

"It's nothing you did!" he says with a sardonic laugh. "If anyone owes me an apology for it—well, that's not important," he coughs into his hand awkwardly. "Point is, I just didn't expect the comment, and wasn't sure which, uh, version of me you were really looking to meet. The "dutiful hero" persona or the naked, horny catboy who would rather be fucking than out installing rulers in foreign countries." He scoffs gently. "I guess I sort of made that choice for you, now, huh?"

"Well, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting to really meet any version of you, at least not in so many words. I imagined we might talk shop when Krile said I should come with, and I was—curious—and then you seemed to really resent that conversation, which, fair enough, really, with those two snakes leading it—well. My point is I wasn't really looking to meet anyone in particular and now I'm meeting you and you're just you."

"Yes, sorry for my attitude back there," he says. "I have not been feeling very myself lately, after everything here—" he gestures vaguely. "I was looking forward to catching my breath and not being out in public, strangled by clothes and demands, and so when I came to that meeting I was already prepared to be offended."

"I wasn't fishing for an apology, I meant it. ...though now I wonder if Krile was hoping I'd—no, I don't want to think too ill of her, she means well, after a fashion. But regardless I don't want—this—to be taken as some kind of, of bribery. I meant everything I said, that I'm going to Eureka regardless and that I hope you will too but this here was all extracurricular." Oh how it's his turn to babble, it seems. He'll just keep nuzzling a catboy, how's that. That's comfortable.

He giggles. "The possibility occurred to me, I admit. It probably would have been prudent of me to be more cautious around you." He grins. "I guess some part of me knew that hiding out alone in my inn room was never going to work out, though. I accepted that invitation, after all, when I could have just ignored it." He shuffles awkwardly, trying to adjust without pushing the Viera off his shoulder. "You would think that I would relish being away from the war effort more than I do, but alone in a room is not all that different from alone in a tent, I guess."

Red Fir lifts his head up to plant a kiss on Qana'to's cheek and offer him a slight grin. "Well, I don't know about you, I guess, but I'm very easily bored and chasing new things to do all the time. I'll probably get fed up of this life eventually but it hasn't happened yet."

“What is it you do? You said at one point you were a gatherer—” that wasn’t the word, oh well, “for Sharlayan, but no longer?”

With the shift in topic, he relaxes visibly, stretching and flexing his fingers and toes before lying down on his side again, one arm lifted in case Red Fir wished to lie under it. “Seeing as you said that seducing Miqo’te is an extracurricular rather than part of your formal duties.”

"Gleaner," he corrects with a smile and, sure, he'll follow Qana'to back down onto the bed. "They go places and find things Sharlayan needs and do errands for the scholars. But I got my own Archon marks a decade ago," he says, giving the spot down by his hips where they've been tattooed a glance before looking back up at Qana'to, "and I've been with the Students of Baldesion since, though I've been the out-and-about type rather than the sit-and-study type. Like, ah—" He cuts himself off and shakes his head. "Never mind."

“I’m really surprised they put them there for you,” Qana’to says, debating whether to gloss over the hitch. Eh, he called me on it. His turn. “I’m sorry to pry. I didn’t mean to bring up anything uncomfortable.”

Red Fir purses his lips and looks away. "I was thinking of Raha and Moenbryda," he says, keeping his voice steady. "I know you'd met them, I wanted to not dig them up for you either."

"Oh, that idiot," Qana'to says with a bereaved sigh and a shake of his head. "I should have grabbed him by the tail and dragged him out of there. Moenbryda at least was reacting fast in the moment, but he had—"

A long pause, then a fist gently thumps on Red Fir's shoulder. "If you pull any stunts like that while you're dragging me around that stupid island of yours, you are going to wish you had a tail to be pulled by instead. I've had quite enough of those heroics."

"I'm not planning to," he says, softly. "I just meant that like them I'm not wont to stay locked up in a musty library." And then, more softly still, "You and Raha got close?"

He barks a short, quick ha! "Did someone tell you?" he asks. "I guess if I wasn't easy to read, he was."

"Just from the way you talk. I never really got to see him after he went to Mor Dhona on his mission. I just... heard, later on, about what happened. And now he's gone." He tries to keep his voice level, he really does, but—Raha is just one of so many people Red Fir's lost, he didn't go with the island but he's gone nonetheless.

“Ah, we had a common interest, then,” he replies quietly. “I did not know him long—we got close as you say, but it was still only weeks, even so—but certainly I found his cocky playfulness endearing.” He giggles and squeezes Red Fir gently. “It seems like another thing that you gleaners have in common.”

"I am pretty sure he was never a gleaner," he replies, trying to return to the cocky playfulness, himself. "But cocky, that I'll grant you, ever since he was a fresh-eyed green boy just joining us and excited about everything. ...though perhaps that too was just how he was, I don't think he ever ceased being excited by everything."

“He was certainly easy to excite. I rather liked that about him.” He gazes at the ceiling. “He was the only other person who asked about my culture in any detail since I left Nhivnah, actually.”

"'Nhivnah'?"

He shakes his head. "I mean, the Black Shroud." He pauses for a second. "You know, they borrowed that name from us. Nhivnah is "Black Grove" originally. The color signifies warmth and safety to us, thanks to our time living in the snows of Ilsabard."

"Which part of that is the 'black' and which is the 'grove'?"

Qana’to thinks for a minute. “The name is several thousand years old. It predates the migration to Eorzea, even. The ‘grove’ bit is usually bhenah, so that’s the second part, and as for black: nowadays it is moui but the old word started with an N, I think.” He shrugs. “At least a lot of names in the old poems start with an N but mean ‘black.’ I should really see if there are any records outside the oral history sometime. Though I suppose if anyone did collect such things, it would be someone in Sharlayan.”

"Ha, I guess it would, wouldn't it. Maybe I'll look it up. Are there any tomes you'd like? I'm attuned to their aetheryte and can reach there from here about once a day so I could fetch some for you, I'm sure."

The offer catches him off-guard. “Oh, that’s very kind,” he says with a slight stutter of surprise. “To be honest, I’ve never even heard of any such tomes dealing with my own language, so I would not know where to start. I suppose anything about early Seeker culture would be good. From before we split.”

"No promises, I've no more idea than you whether they'll even have such tomes, but it sounds interesting and I'm sure it's been the pet project of some scholar or other, at some point."

“Well, if not, I guess I’ll have to be that scholar.” He laughs softly. “Or maybe it should be you, since you’re working so hard to understand our social habits.”

"I'm not sure I'll find the time within the next decade, there's far too much that still needs to be done. These projects tend to be led by people who can dedicate all of their time to it, or at least ones as hard as collecting information from over a thousand years ago about a people who was not by and large very literate."

That was just flirtation, silly. “No writing system until we came to Eorzea, yeah. Everything lives in the oral tradition, though the oldest songs do have a lot of weird fossil pronunciations to maintain the meter and the like.” He looks over at the desk. “Hence my personal project to record some of it. But I’m sure you’ve heard enough about that.” He gives the man a hug and then turns onto his back. “Thank you for indulging me.”

"I have not heard enough about that, are you kidding me, I'm not indulging you I like languages!"

“Well, I do enjoy getting to pull it out again after so long. It’s like comfort food. Just tasting it again feels like home.” He giggles. “Granted, the effect is rather enhanced by getting to fight with the swords of peace for a change. Maybe the afterglow is addling me.”

"'Fight with the swords of peace'," he repeats with some amusement.

“… that’s not an idiom in Eorzean, is it? Not Hingan, either?”

"Nnnope," he says, popping the 'p'*. "It's very endearing, though."

* While it is unclear whether Eorzean has a 'p' in their equivalent of the word "nope", the translation convention used in this medium is such that the reader should assume that Red Fir is the kind of person who would have popped their 'p' in that "nope", and this will be reflected in other equivalent situations that would not be properly translated.

"But I could have sworn I've heard at least one Lominsan call it his sword, though. And the Ul'dahn gladiators constantly joke about their enemies being poorly equipped." He grumbles gently at the use of the word "endearing" and jams him forehead into Red Fir's shoulder, but doesn't comment directly on it.

"Calling it a sword is pretty universal. At least it's present in every language I speak. Of peace is new, though. Other languages treat it as war, and the receptive partner as the defeated party." He looks down between his legs then back up with a smirk. "Can't say I'm feeling very defeated right now."

Qana'to wrinkles his nose and chuckles. "See, this is why we split from the Seekers," he says, only half-joking. "There are a lot of sagas that describe sex after a fight, but its not like—actually," he pauses. "It's sort of the opposite in Ruhn Epocan's saga. She got a daughter by J'benha Tia after defeating him because he was the best male warrior she'd encountered."

"Maybe we should fight next time and the winner gets to decide who does what."

Qana'to regards him in silence for a moment. "So much for that intimidating Warrior-of-Light persona," he mutters with a smile. "Maybe we should. Get our names added to the wrestlers' epics."

"It's very hard to continue to believe some mythical invincible persona when I saw you begging for me to come for you within the last hour."

"Invincible warrior powers don't extend to sex, right? Just beating people up or whatever."

On the table, a linkshell warbles it's irritating ping, making the wooden surface buzz unpleasantly. Qana'to looks over at it dubiously. "We are already on our way out to the hot spring to rinse off, right? I'm not in the room to get that."

"We totally are. We didn't hear it ring, we were already out of them room when it did."

Hyup to his feet, then.

He rolls out after the Viera and stretches momentarily before jogging out of the room, as though fearful the device could call their bluff if they lingered. In the hall another patron regards them strangely as they pass—for their nudity or the novelty of non-Hingan guests, it was impossible to guess, but it made Qana’to smirk and glance back at Red Fir nonetheless as they made it out to the spring. “Should we go downwards, toward the bottom area this time? Better views but more crowds. I personally tend to stay near the top for the peace and ease of conversing.”

"I'll follow your lead, I don't have a particular preference."

Qana’to strides to his where Red had found him earlier and settles into the steaming waters, closing his eyes and huffing gently. “I should really get a sponge,” he says idly to himself as he scoops water over his chest. “But then, I fully intend to work up another sweat in a bit here, so maybe I’ll wait on that.”

"Do you now?" he asks with a raised eyebrow as he lowers himself into the waters.

“You didn’t think I was finished with you yet, did you? I’ve been stuck alone in a tent for months. The Prince of Doma was handsome enough in his own way but I don’t know if he’s had a boner in the last year, frankly. No energy there—which I guess is understandable with the empire and all. But I’ve wasted enough love on the Steppe grasses for a lifetime.”

"What, did you not have fun with any of the au ra who insist on walking around the Steppe in the buff?"

Qana’to’s ears lower and he glances at Red Fir, chastened by having his bluff called. “Well, one, actually, now that you mention it,” he says. “After everything calmed down there and we’d established the alliance. It took them a bit to muster, after all.” He giggles with nostalgia. “Yeah, I had been complaining about—” He starts to describe it in more detail, but cuts himself off with a shrug and a hesitant smile. “Well, the point is that I guess you got me. But in my defense it was a really long dry spell before and after.”

"No, no, now I want to know, what had you been complaining about?"

He laughs, “Clothes, of course!”

“We were going to hunt together—because that’s what the Xaela do to pass time—and I was sweating in my travel gear. That led to a discussion of nudism and ended with us both stripping.”

"Genuinely surprised they were wearing anything at all, last time I visited they mostly didn't, at least the clans I ran into. Admittedly that was a few decades ago."

“It was fairly little, since it was summer. Definitely a lot of exposed breasts. Bottoms were less common—although plenty of guys were careful to show themselves off whenever our group was around. They seemed to relish how it would offend or intimidate the Domans.” He chuckled. “Whenever we split up, I’d offer to handle those guys and then strip as soon as I was by myself. Hien wondered why I didn’t struggle to get them to take me seriously like he did.”

"So the secret to the good graces of Steppe au ra is showing them your cock? I thought it was prowess in battle."

“It definitely is. I think I was just demonstrating that I wasn’t as easily pushed off-balance as the Domans by a little skin. Felt good, though, showing off; I can’t lie.”

"You'd have expected that being raised without a nudity taboo you wouldn't get an exhibitionism kink."

“A what?” Qana’to gapes for a moment, reaching for words without finding them. “I don’t—uh… what is that?” His voice lilts upward slightly.

"...a kink is a form of sexual preference that goes beyond, ah, normal things like gender, so to speak, and exhibitionism in particular is one of those for wanting to show yourself off to others."

That was remarkably scientific. “I didn’t say I was turned on by it. Just that it was fun to call their bluffs.”

Under the water, he was starting to stir just from the memory of it. “And since when is it abnormal to enjoy being looked at?” He shifted to try to keep his swelling cock far enough under water to be invisible.

"It's not exactly abnormal per se, though it's, in my experience, less widespread than you'd think? Some people are just bashful. But my point is more that, if nudity is unmarked, I imagine it would be rare to find it particularly sexual." (His own dick is starting to stir, though more slowly than Qana'to's for having come multiple times already.) "My village, I think, had a sufficiently high clothes-to-nudity ratio that I managed to get an exhibitionism kink myself but it sounded like yours was even more relaxed than that?"

“I mean, there’s a difference between just being nude and being displayed,” he protests, chest burning.

“It’s normal to be nude when it is warm or when there’s a fire going, yeah, but that’s just sitting around, not meeting people and playing—ah, we call it ‘playing stag.’ It means like posturing and showing off and all. That’s much more pointedly focused.” He grimaces, the water suddenly too warm on his thighs and balls, and murmurs to himself, “It feels hotter in here than it was earlier today, doesn’t it?”

"No, it doesn't," he says with a cheeky grin. "But I understand what you mean. I certainly don't mind looking."

Qana’to’s chest is tight as he smiles. “Well, by all means,” he says with a slightly ragged breath. “Least I can offer in exchange for a learning a new word.”

"You're acting cute for someone who was bossing me around not an hour ago. Making me want to make you squirm."

“Hey, now. It’s not my fault you cum harder to being used like a dishcloth.” Arguably my fault for enjoying it, but— “Get a hold of yourself before you come after me, bunny.”

"It's a matter of frame of mind, see. And I can inhabit many. Sometimes I like to be used. Other times..." They're far enough away from other people that hopefully he won't be scandalising anyone who isn't looking to be scandalised by directly reaching under the water's surface for Qana'to's balls. "I like to use."

Qana'to inhales sharply when he feels the hand grab him, then hums wordlessly and looks away, toward the lower, more populated pools. "Fiwjah," he murmurs with a weak smile, gathering the scattered strands of his frayed focus after the sensation of the hand and the revelation of the word kink had dispersed them. "Seems unfair, handling me by a weak spot you don't have, doesn't it?" Despite the protest, he obediently pulls his thighs further apart, lifting his hip off the ground slightly to make himself easier to grab hold of. No sense making it more painful to grab if he's already got them in hand. Also no sense pretending he minded when his tip was poking out of the water, anyway.

He uses the tip of his index and middle fingers to gently poke Qana'to's taint before moving his hand farther up to wrap it around Qana'to's base. "Still unfair now?" he says, giving it a squeeze and starting to stroke.

“N—no, no, it seems like a fairer game, now,” he replied. Men’ra, he was bucking now, into the hand. He licked his lips in embarrassment and looked away. “You’re… you know, it does feel a little different, doing this here. Now that you mention it.”

Red Fir strokes almost lazily, without stopping or letting up but not very urgently. "Which part does it, for you?" he wonders idly.

“The… people nearby,” he murmured reluctantly. “I can’t stop you without making a fuss about it….” Strictly untrue, of course: he could probably push the hand away if he wanted. But that would require that he wanted.