A Bug's Life.

[Castor Green]

2nd of Ash, 124th Year of Age of Steel

When he was a child, and his twin was still alive, Castor’s father had loved to lecture on nature’s order. The ants picked the food. The sun grows the food, the ants pick the food, the grasshoppers eat the food, and on and on. There was a beauty to pattern, Castor’s father liked to say, and that was predictability.

This was the story of Castor and Aurin: Aurin appeared once a year, they fucked (a lot), and then Aurin left.

It was fun.

It was easy.

It was a lot of other things, too, but Castor was careful to focus on the fun and easy. Aurin always came with gifts and interesting stories. They’d stay in some or other fancy house that Castor never asked about. Usually, there was food, and sometimes drugs, and all in all it felt like a well-earned vacation from the rest of the world. For a few days each year, he was his, and Castor (expertly) pretended like everything was perfect.

---

Castor sprawled out on the balcony of his parent’s apartment. It wasn’t like they were using it, his mother kept to the house in the country and his father dead. This is where Castor and Aurin met usually, and Castor had brought his part: wine and fruit. Small snacks. All he had to do now was wait.

[Aurin]

There had been ample time in summer to visit, but he had told himself he wasn't going to Silfanore while Sivan and his prick neighbor were showing Torin and Destyn around. He could have been in and out of Silfanore—and Castor's bed—without any of them knowing, but Aurin was quietly neurotic and whatever; he was here now.

The elves were fucking controlling, so he had to got to a border, cross the wards, deal with customs, and only then vault himself to Silfanore proper and, because he was a tricksy bastard, into Castor's bedroom. The half-elf wasn't there, but he could sense him. Of course, Castor could sense him too, suddenly in his home, in his room, in his space. Aurin did like to keep him on his toes—and several other positions, of course—and he was finally ready to initiate his little protégé in Traversion, so it seemed appropriate to enter into the scene with it.

"Honey, I'm home!" he called, tromping through the apartment like he owned it, homing in on Castor's location easily. He left his rucksack in Castor's room, carrying only a box of his favorite confections from Kalzasi.

"There you are."

He poked his head into the room, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face, and then the rest of his body followed. He mock-frowned.

"What the fuck? No food on the table? No naked Castor? Am I not wanted? Should I go?" He glanced over his shoulder. "I'm going to go."

It was a stupid game, Aurin walking back toward Castor's room, but he was often stupid around Castor, who seemed to always be amused and played with him in kind. He wasn't starving and while he would have been down to get down immediately, he knew Castor would be excited for the magic.

So, of course, he would have to draw it out and tease him. Everything could be foreplay if one did it correctly.

[Castor Green]

Castor felt paper tearing. A leaf falls into a pond and sends ripples to the edges, and that’s what Castor felt. No, butterfly wings. Castor saw them, fluttering in his mind’s eye, breaking into dust and scattering to the winds. No, it was -

Traversion. Yes, but more importantly, Aurin.

Finally.

“Oh, boo, you,” Castor said, walk-running to Aurin, catching the man in his arms. “Between us, you’re the one with the honest job,” he smiled into the back of Aurin’s neck, knowing full well there neither of them had ever worked an honest day in their lives. “Oh, Mr. Entrepreneur, shouldn’t you be the one bringing gifts to your impoverished lover?”

He kissed him from behind, once, twice, and then -.

“You know you won’t get a third of anything for free,” he whispered into his ear, catching Aurin’s hand in his, dragging him to a daybed his mother had set in the living room.

“I’ve had a time of it lately,” he pouted, pretending everything was worse than it was. This was his piece of their performance. Poor little Castor, trapped in his provincial life, spending all his days waiting for Aurin to come rescue him with stories of outside Sol’Valen. “Yesterday was the festival. You should’ve timed your arrival for then,” he said, wrapping himself around Aurin, once he settled on the daybed - straddling the man as easily as one would a bicycle.

There were just some things you never forgot.

“There were races, which I lost to some princeling,” he rolled his eyes and scrunched up his face. Castor wasn’t sure if it was jealousy (probably) or true philosophical disregard for the monarchy (less likely), but he found all the pomp and circumstance ridiculous. Or, so he said, anyway. “...but there was free food. And some interesting people. Too many eyes to steal much of anything. The king was there, though, not that he’s a sight worth traveling for.”

He smiled then, and leaned down to kiss Aurin - a third time. They were both liars, and neither of them pretended otherwise. “Only because you’re so pretty,” he teased, his left hand combing through Aurin’s bright red hair.

“So? Tell me everything,” he said, sitting back up, “How’s Kalzasi and those impressive winged men of theirs. How are the ruins of what was once Zaichaer? How’s the world, Aurin? Tell me, because I’ve been so bored here.”

He looked around the room for Aurin’s knapsack.

“- and what did you bring me?”

[Aurin]

Aurin caught Castor, then let him slither around him, kissing and holding from behind and the like. Castor was excellent at love-bombing; he had learned from Aurin, after all. For his part, the ginger just preened under it as if it were his due.

"Impresario," he corrected with a mocking sneer. He didn't know the word in Mythrasi, but it sounded fancy enough in Common. "And entrepreneur, I suppose. Knower-of-things, deflowerer-of-virgins. All of the above." He caught Castor for the briefest of intense embraces, then let those clever fingers entwine with his and pull him to his bower. Of course, the flash of honest care wasn't commented upon. It was easier to play the game and pretend like there was nothing real echoing in their laughter and their moans.

"Oh, poor Castor, my prince of the alienage!" he declaimed like one of the actors back at the Golden Peacock. "I could've helped, but then they would have beheaded my human self and then where would you be? Alone in this daybed." He tumbled beside Castor, kicking off his boots and rather expertly removing some outer layers of his clothes so he could relax and Castor could slip those clever fingers under his clothes. Slut skills.

"Do I wear the red hair better than the Dream King?" He paused. "Don't answer that. How could a mere human be as beautiful as an elf? After all, you are so godsdamned beautiful, aren't you?" He caressed Castor's cheek, still as fair as the day they had met. He grinned up at the half-elven scamp straddling him. If he found it arousing, well, Castor would soon know.

He tucked his hands behind his head, smirking up at his sometimes lover, hips making little motions underneath him.

"Karnor is recovering from the Eclipse, slowly but surely. In Solunarium, they ignored it thanks to some timely help from their twin godlings. I went there for a wedding, but didn't manage to bang the holy twins, alas." Somehow, he got the feeling they would want to do things to him that would drive him literally mad, and not in a fun way. "Bored nobles in the Gelerian Imperium are fomenting a little rebellion, but mostly just evading taxes and laundering money. The Avialae continue to be huge and fling themselves at whatever creeps out of the Warrens. Ah..."

He trailed off. If Castor had specific questions, he could give specific answers, but as he was already asking after gifts, Aurin gave a bit harder of a rock and roll of his hips.

"I brought your favorite foreign import: my fucking cock. If you take good care of it, I think I have time to give you the gift of travel, make sure it doesn't break your brain, and teach you enough so you don't accidentally slam yourself into a brick wall or yank your cock off while masturbating. What do you say?"

[Castor Green]

“You don’t think they would’ve left me your body?” Castor smirked, looking as smug as the cat that caught the mouse. “It isn’t your head I’m after, usually.”

And, at the remark of elvish beauty, Castor laughed. “You know, I don’t think beauty is the providence of elves,” he said, his hands combing through Aurin’s hair. “Not that it belongs to humans, ethers. Or gods. Tell me, oh wise impresario, your thoughts on that particular puzzle. We live in a world with dragons and gods and worse, and none of them can lay claim to beauty. Why's that?”

What Castor didn’t say: It’s mine, your beauty. Here, I hold your face in my hands. There’s nothing more beautiful in this world. This was the game they played, and the trick was to stay completely present. To never say anything that could hint to them being more than they were, day to day. Castor couldn’t let himself wander too far into the future; no, he already knew the answers. Aurin couldn’t - wouldn’t - stay, not forever, and Castor knew better than to ask. They enjoyed each other on the edge of something greater than either of themselves, dancing on a knife’s edge.

Suddenly, Castor stumbled, losing his train of thought, and laughed again, his smile widening as Aurin bucked under him.

“Is it my favorite import?” Castor’s fingers, quick and clever, found their way under Aurin’s shirt. He traced the shape of his chest, his stomach, not quite going south of his pants - not yet, anyway. “I’m not sure. I really enjoyed those - what did you call them? Those powdered sugar things, with the jammy center. Kalzasi delight, I think.”

Another bow, another kiss, along the jaw, along the neck. This was fun.

“Teach me your magic, witch, is what I say. Open the world to me.”

What Castor didn’t say: And then you can take me with you. You can take me with you, for laughs, for luck, for the unknown.