Chapter Text
Most days, Tighnari is able to ignore the sounds of Sumeru City. Although the noise is always obnoxious, he’s grown used to them fading into a low thrum in the background of his mind. He still gets headaches frequently, but they’re dull and hardly worth his attention.
Focusing on them would indubitably make them worse.
Tighnari knows this from experience.
Yet, some days the city is too loud for Tighnari. Merchants call out the virtues of their wares over the loud clanging sound of steel on iron as eremites stomp loudly through their headquarters. Far below the Akademiya campus but not far away enough for Tighnari’s sensitive hearing, students spill out of Puspa Café bleary-eyed after spending sleepless nights pouring over their research. Nearby, eremites and other mercenaries as well as the occasional group of celebratory Akademiya students stumble out of Lambad’s drunkenly yelling and laughing and crying.
Tighnari hears it all and misses the natural sounds of the rainforest — gentle and soothing to his ears. When it all grows too much for him to deal with, Tighnari travels to Pardis Dhyai. Most of the time, he also has research or various side projects that he wants to check up on in the Amurta gardens.
Sometimes, it’s just to escape.
***
Everything about Sumeru City and the Akademiya exhausts Tighnari save his research projects, his thesis, and the raw pursuit of knowledge itself. The necessity of having to work with other researchers both within his Darshan and outside of it have enlightened Tighnari to the fact that many Akademiya students are the opposite — they are exhausted by the academic pressure but revel in the camaraderie of other students.
While Tighnari doesn’t agree with the system of the Akademiya — especially using knowledge as currency — learning suits him. By contrast, interacting with others drains him like nothing else. Even the high desert heat is less exhausting. The lone exception to this rule, outside of his family, is Cyno, who hilariously began studying him due to suspicion of academic fraud and simply never left once his investigation was complete.
The stone floor is cool against Tighnari’s back as he looks up at the stained-glass windows into the night sky. When he closes his eyes, he can feel the dampness of the air in the gardens and hear the shrill cries of nearby messenger birds. When he opens his eyes, the stars greet him, slightly warped through the glass but twinkling brightly above Pardis Dhyai and its lack of light pollution.
Although he appreciates their beauty and function — he uses stars frequently for navigation at night — Tighnari has never understood the practice of reading the stars. Everyone he has met from Rtawahist has either been purposefully and infuriatingly obtuse in their speech patterns or oddly masochistic due to their rigorous training methods while attempting to communicate with Irminsul.
Tighnari doesn’t need the stars to know that Sumeru’s Irminsul is sick.
A soft footfall interrupts his thoughts and Tighnari smiles. Worn sandals tap against the stone steps rhythmically, stumbling once and then picking up again with a slightly quicker pace. As they approach the doorway, Tighnari closes his eyes again, breathes deeply, and smiles.
“Hello General Mahamatra.”
Cyno laughs and it’s louder than usual. Tighnari blinks and Cyno’s face is hovering over his, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling. Cyno’s breath smells sickly-sweet, like Zaytun peach liqueur.
“Tighnari.”
Cyno says his name in a soft sigh and Tighnari swallows back the sudden wave of want that hits him. He feels Cyno’s rough hand and callused fingertips slip between his own as he pulls Tighnari up into a sitting position on the floor.
They’ve been dancing around something for the past few weeks, he and Cyno.
Tighnari despises the uncertainty of it all.
“I thought I’d find you here I was…at that party for Khajeh’s latest protégé.” Cyno wrinkles his nose with disgust and waves his arm in the air as he says this. Tighnari notes the half-empty liquor bottle in Cyno’s hand.
The party must have been spectacularly boring. Cyno rarely drinks at Akademiya functions despite how much he loathes the ostentatious nature of them, preferring to keep his thoughts as clear as possible. Tighnari was hardly Cyno’s first internal investigation — Cyno takes it upon himself to go as far as to ignore some of the sage’s projects in order to better serve as Judicator, interpreting and enforcing the Akademiya’s policies.
“It was loud,” Tighnari says simply.
Thinking about the truth of Cyno’s career also gives Tighnari a headache.
“Come outside with me,” Cyno says, his hand warm and rough between Tighnari’s fingers.
While Tighnari has no use for the stars, Cyno sees them as romantic — silly for someone of his stature and area of study but Tighnari can’t help but find it charming due to how at-odds it was with his projected appearance — and tugs Tighnari up of off the floor, babbling as he leads them outside.
They settle on a small patch of grass near the gardens and lay facing the sky. Without releasing Tighnari’s hand, Cyno passes him the bottle and Tighnari takes a large swig, wincing at the taste.
“I forgot that you can’t hold your alcohol well,” Cyno teases, pressing his index finger into Tighnari’s cheek.
“You’re one to talk,” Tighnari says darkly. He gives another sharp wince at the flavour while Cyno hiccups loudly and giggles.
The humid night air settles over them like a blanket. Cyno still hasn’t let go and has begun stroking the palm of Tighnari’s hand with his thumb. Tighnari shudders and desperately hopes his ears and tail aren’t twitching too much. He can already feel a drunken haze clouding his judgment and his cheeks flushing a brilliant red colour.
They pass the bottle between them until it’s empty and trade stories from the Akademiya, their childhoods, everything.
Tighnari thinks he could talk to Cyno for days and never be bored.
“And because of this, one time I asked my father to take me to the desert during one of his expeditions,” Tighnari says. “Sadly I did not inherit my ancestors’ tolerance for hot weather.”
Cyno laughs and, to Tighnari’s annoyance, pokes his ears.
The dampness of the grass soaks through Tighnari’s Akademiya standard robes. He idly remembers that he had taken off his gardening gloves earlier and hopes that someone doesn’t take them, although Pardis Dhyai is hardly populated. The only people who came to the gardens were Amurta students and now Cyno.
He feels another blush rising in his cheeks and squirms a bit as Cyno’s thumb is hot against his palm and Cyno’s other hand is still stroking his ears.
“You’re a desert dog, but you’re also human,” Cyno whispers like it’s a secret truth of the universe.
Cyno uses this tone of voice when he’s leading up to a particularly terrible joke and Tighnari braces himself despite being warm and flushed with pleasure, nearly panting embarrassingly under Cyno’s ministrations.
“In a manner of speaking,” Tighnari says slowly. “My ancestors are biologically-adjacent to the ancient canine race called the Valuka Shuna. They served the Scarlet King.”
“Would that make you…a paradog?”
Cyno’s hand stills in Tighari’s hair as he bursts out laughing at his own joke.
“You know like paradox, paradog. Because you’re a desert dog but also human—”
Tighnari lazily reaches over with his foot — it’s difficult because he’s surely drunk at this point and they’re both still lying on the ground — and kicks at Cyno’s shins, interrupting his friend’s slurred rambling. He blinks and Cyno’s face swims into view above him, blocking out the starry sky with a bright smile.
The jackal cape that Cyno almost always wears is somewhere in the grass — probably covered in dirt and dew at this point — and without it, Cyno looks boyish and free. Sometimes Tighnari forgets that they’re close in age due to Cyno’s position, even if he is himself ahead in his presumed graduating class.
Cyno is beautiful like this, Tighnari thinks and nearly says aloud.
“You’re blocking my view of the stars,” is what Tighnari ends up blurting out instead. His ears and tail are twitching and he knows that Cyno can see how his eyes dropped to Cyno’s lips before looking back into the general’s glowing orange eyes.
“May I?” Cyno asks, licking his lips. He’s hardly subtle, but then again neither is Tighnari himself, he thinks with all the clarity of one who has drank nearly half a bottle of liquor with very little tolerance for it.
Tighnari somehow feels the wetness of Cyno’s lips on his before he registers what is happening. A soft sigh that both sounds exactly like Cyno and wholly unlike Cyno hangs in the air between them and all of the blood that isn’t in Tighnari’s cheeks rushes to his stiffening cock.
Biologically he knows this is impossible but that’s what it feels like anyway.
“Hunh.” Tighnari runs his tongue over his teeth when Cyno pulls away. They’re gasping into each other’s mouths, the sweetness of Zaytun peaches and sourness of alcohol on their breaths. “That was surprisingly pleasurable.”
Cyno hiccups again and collapses on top of Tighnari, giggling and rutting against him. Tighnari wraps his arms firmly around Cyno’s back and presses their foreheads together. Cyno’s white hair is in his eyes, stuck to his skin with sweat.
Tighnari can’t help but shudder against him, experimentally moving his thigh between Cyno’s legs. He feels Cyno’s cock, hard and twitching against him, and groans quietly, quickly closing his mouth as if he can swallow back the sound as it echoes in the night air.
“Is that really all you have to say?” Cyno asks, still grinding against Tighnari and panting. Tighnari notes that his voice is hoarse, as if he’s trying to affect some semblance of dominance. Instead it comes out desperate and wanting, ringing in Tighnari’s ears.
“I think…it requires more rigorous testing.” Leaning upward, Tighnari nips at Cyno’s lower lip and flushes when Cyno moans loudly.
“You like that,” Tighnari says slowly as if he’s cataloguing Cyno’s responses — perhaps he is — and Cyno nods almost instantly, cracking his head painfully against Tighnari’s.
They separate with simultaneous cries of pain and Tighnari kicks at Cyno’s shins again.
“What would the sages think if they saw you right now?”
Cyno snorts. “You think they don’t get up to shit with whoever they want? They’re the worst, ‘Nari. The worst.”
Tighnari frowns and reaches again for Cyno, placing a more gentle, open-mouthed kiss at the corner of his mouth. Something shifts in Cyno’s eyes and they crinkle softly at the edges.
“I don’t think I want to say at the Akademiya,” Tighnari whispers. He knows that Cyno has suspected this for a while, but a rush of relief still fills his ears as he speaks.
“I want apply my research practically, as a Forest Watcher.”
Cyno smiles and pulls him into a tight hug.
They lay there until their breaths slow and grow more rhythmic in sleep.