Chapter 75: We need to talk
Felix Sythias’ POV:
I watched as Alex dove into the water. To my surprise, Alex had taken his underwear off again. It was certainly a welcome surprise, but I really hadn’t expected it. He only really took it off yesterday because we had been absolutely soaked with blood. It was great to see he was getting more comfortable with this kind of stuff.
Alex darted through the water like a fish, swimming towards me. Despite only having swum a few times, he’d really taken to the water like a bird did to the air. It was awesome, since I also loved swimming. It was something fun we could do together. Too bad there weren’t that many places to swim back on the campus. Though, there was the massive pool-complex near the Arena… something to keep in mind for later. I imagined that would make for a great date.
Within moments, Alex had reached me. We then played in the water for a while, and I felt like a little kid again. Splashing and wrestling, racing to see who was fastest, and generally just having a good time.
After an hour of swimming and having fun, we got out of the water. It was cooling down, and we’d both gotten a bit tired. We laid down next to each other on the pebbly riverside, Alex lying on my wing, and stared up at the sky together. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but the sun was setting. It reminded me a lot of our first real date just a few days ago.
I glanced down at Alex, at my boyfriend. What a strange thing. To be able to call someone my boyfriend. It still felt a bit unreal. As if I could wake up any moment now to find out it was all a dream. It wasn’t, though.
Thinking about Alex being my boyfriend got me thinking about our relationship. We hadn’t really talked about it since that evening. We’d agreed to be boyfriends, but that was it. There was still a lot to talk about, though. Maybe now was a good moment? But how did I bring it up? If I went with ‘Hey Alex, we need to talk’, he’d think I was breaking up with him, or that it was something else serious. And while this was a serious topic, it wasn’t the kind of topic you started off with ‘hey, we need to talk’.
After a few moments of thinking, I settled on a question I thought would convey my intentions the best.
“Hey Alex?” I asked, and he looked up at me. His scales shone beautifully in the golden light of the sunset. “Who do you want to know about us? So far I’ve been treating it like a secret since I didn’t know what you wanted, but we should probably talk about it before I tell someone you didn’t want to know.”
He was silent for a moment. "Who do you want to know?" he finally asked.
I didn't need to think about my answer for long. I'd already spent time thinking about it over the past weeks. "My friends, family, and anyone who wants to know," I told him. "Eventually, anyway. If you want me to keep it to myself for now, that's alright. But I don't want it to be a secret forever."
He shook his head. "Neither do I. I don't want to keep hiding this—myself—my whole life. That feels like letting my parents win, and I don’t want to let them win. For now, I'd like to keep it to ourselves, though, but eventually, maybe in a few months' time, I'd like it to be a known thing about us. Something we can be proud of."
I smiled. "I like that. One thing, though, I will tell my father when he gets back. I really don't want to keep this a secret from him."
He hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "I'd like to say that I understood that, but my dad is probably the last person I'd tell. I'm glad you don't have that, though. Why don't we tell him together?"
My smile turned into a grin. "That's a great idea. We can have dinner together, maybe."
We sat in silence for a moment while we thought about that, until finally, I broke the silence. “Since we’re talking about our relationship anyway, what kind of relationship do you want? Do you want it to be open, poly, monogamous? Something else? Do you want it to be a short-term relationship, or a long-term one? Things like that.”
“I haven’t really thought too much about that, honestly. Can I think about it for a moment?”
I nodded, telling him to take all the time he needed, and we fell back into silence. I turned away and watched the clouds for a while as Alex thought my question over. As I watched the fluffy clouds, I wondered what kind of relationship he wanted. We hadn’t really talked about romance and relationships much. The topic hadn’t come up much in the time we knew each other. I hoped he also wanted something long-term.
After a few minutes, Alex spoke up again. “I think,” he said, “that at least for now, I want us to be monogamous. I’m not sure how to even feel about the other options yet. Besides, I want to explore our relationship first before I even want to consider others. We can come back to this later, if you want. In a year maybe?” He chuckled. “Which brings me to your second question. I like you Felix, I really, really like you. I know it’s only been a few days, but things have worked out well so far, and if possible, I’d like to see where our relationship takes us. So, a long-term relationship, I guess.”
I smiled and also chuckled, while a wave of relief flowed through me. “Personally, I think I’d prefer some kind of poly or open relationship eventually, but that’s all theoretical. Either way, I would’ve suggested we take some time, a few years maybe, where it's just us, so it seems that we’re on the same page.”
Alex smiled up at me. “That’s good.”
I nodded in agreement. It really was good. If one of those hadn’t lined up quite right, it might have been the end of our relationship right there and then. Though, we might have been able to talk our differences through and get to a compromise. I was glad it didn’t get to that, however.
“Was there anything you wanted to talk about?” I asked.
He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, there is. But not now. I want a little more time to think it through and figure out exactly what’s bothering me.”
I cocked my head at him. “Do you mean… more than kissing?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m uncomfortable with the idea of sex, not with the word, Felix. And yeah.”
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I nodded. “Well, I’m here to talk about it whenever you want. Just let me know. And please don’t feel rushed. While I do want to do stuff with you eventually, it can wait—I can wait.”
He scooched a little closer to me and gave me a hug. “Thank you. Really, I mean it; thank you. I want to do stuff with you, too,” he said and let go, scratching the scales behind his ears and averting his eyes. “I want to do it very much, actually. But… it’s hard.”
I nudged him. “Well, you’re hugging me naked. I think that’s good progress, don’t you?”
His eyes darted down at his own crotch, as if he only just now remembered he wasn’t wearing anything. He shook his head, smiling. “Yeah,” he said.
“Want to do some more cuddling?” I asked.
His smile turned to a grin. “Yeah.”
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Tiki returned after a while, and by that time Alex was wearing clothes again. Making out with him while he was completely naked had been awesome. It was basically the same as before, but it was just different mentally. Knowing he wasn’t wearing anything, that his bare body was pressed against mine with nothing in between… it was just that much hotter.
We had to stop when it went a bit too far and he’d accidentally grinded against me, though. He apologized a few times, but I’d told him it was fine. And it was. I was just happy to see he was getting more comfortable. So even if I did feel a bit disappointed we had to stop—him grinding against me had been incredibly arousing, so really, who wouldn’t be—it was okay. There’d be more chances later.
I only hoped I could get him to stop apologizing for it so much. It really wasn’t necessary.
We were playing board games now, and I was losing badly. I’d gotten a bad set of cards at the start of the game and had never really recovered from that. Alex was doing a lot better, but Tiki was the one currently winning.
“I’ll trade three stone cards, two metal cards, and one mana crystal card for one teleporter please,” she said to Alex, who handled the box of miniatures. With great reluctance, he handed her the small metal teleporter. This was her fifth, while Alex and I only had two each. She placed it on the board, connecting one of her ‘cities’ to the rest with teleporters and allowing her to move her ‘armies’ even faster between them. She then grinned at me. “Now I can finally crush your capital!”
I sighed. It seemed I would be out of the game once it was her turn again. And sure enough, when it was her turn, she moved her armies to one city—the one bordering my capital—and knocked me out of the game.
I turned to Alex. “You must avenge me, my mate!” I said with the most over the top, dramatic, theatrical voice I could muster. “Crush our foes and make them tremble before your might!”
Both of them were silent for a moment, before bursting out laughing.
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The next day was much the same as the one before. We woke up and ate some breakfast, after which we washed up before gathering by the entrance to the dungeon caves again. We once again got chosen as one of the first groups to go down again.
Down in that mushroom infested cavern, we fought with monsters and this time, we really focused on practicing our skill and Skills. Tiki improved her ability to switch quickly between melee and ranged combat quite a bit while Alex got better at mixing his magic into his fighting style. There were a lot more crushed and roasted lizards today.
I’d mostly focused on making the enemy trip, and left the actual killing of the monsters to the rest. It wasn’t like I got any experience, anyway, while they still did. I’m not sure it helped much, though. They barely got a single level out of the entire three hours that we were down there, and now that we knew how these monsters fought, we’d killed a lot of them. Alex was now level thirteen, while Tiki was level twelve.
Still, a level was a level. When we went deeper tomorrow, to the second ‘floor’, they’d be just slightly more prepared for the dangers down there. The enemies would be of a higher level, while also being overall bigger. Though, considering our experience so far, I wasn’t sure if even the second floor would challenge us. I guess we’d find out tomorrow.
Sadly, just like yesterday, my armband neither lit up red nor vibrated. It was becoming increasingly clear that killing creatures wouldn’t be the key to expanding my mana pool.
Back on the surface, we took a small hour long break and once again ate the cooking student’s food, before we went to train. Tiki went off to practice her bow, and Alex and I practiced his mana manipulation—though he didn’t gain a level this time—and skill with the mana reflectors.
It still shocked me just how fast Alex was improving. I’d expected him to take weeks to unlock the Skill, just like he’d done with [Draconic lightning magic], but at this rate, he’d have it by the end of the week, if not before that. Part of me felt proud of myself for teaching him that well, but the truth was that he simply was that good at mana manipulation.
Sure, his control and shaping were still crude, but he was improving fast.
After Alex’s mana-pool ran dry, he decided he wanted to learn more about survival in the forest since he knew very little about that. He could manage himself in a desert or other dry environment really well, but had only really experienced being in a forest maybe a little over a dozen times in the last month. And we never strayed too far from the path, on top of that.
I didn’t mind him leaving, though. Well, no, that wasn’t true. I did want him to stay, or maybe go with him instead, but I needed to practice my own magic, too. And it was a lot easier to focus without him around, constantly distracting me with his good looks. How could anyone concentrate when his scales looked that pretty?
Jokes aside, the real reason was that I didn’t mind having some time to myself, and practicing my lightning magic would require a lot of sitting still and looking inwards. Incredibly boring if he couldn’t see what I saw, which he couldn’t. So he might as well go do something fun.
And some time apart doing our own things certainly wouldn’t be bad for us either.
So, I wandered through the forest until I found a nice mossy spot between some tall trees and sat down. The moss felt soft and fluffy beneath my talons, almost like green clouds—which was probably where the name came from: cloudmoss. After a moment of settling in, I let out a contented sigh and closed my eyes.
A few breathing exercises later, I was looking deep inside myself using my mana sense. The power coursed through my veins, going to and from my mana pool organ. I could even feel a faint amount of mana suffusing my muscles and bones. That was new. Or was it? Maybe it had always been there, and I’d simply never seen it before? I made sure to note it down in my notebook anyway. I’d ask Elena later.
Now feeling comfortable in my body, I paid close attention to my mana pool organ and especially the weird growth jotting out of it. The growth had only… grown wasn’t the right word. It had changed since I last inspected it a few days ago. It had gotten slightly bigger, but the biggest change was the shape. It had grown slight protrusions, which connected to my veins and nerves. For some reason, I knew it wasn’t quite finished, however. I had no idea where that knowledge came from, though, which was a little unsettling.
Shaking my head and bringing my focus back to the bigger picture, I grabbed the lightning cube and channeled some mana into it. After the usual small delay, the lightning aspected mana shot back into me and I guided it carefully through my veins and back to my mana pool.
I watched carefully as the mana shot towards it and was about to turn away to try again—it would get fuzzy near my pool anyway—when I noticed something odd. The mana, which had time and time again made it impossible to watch what was going on by making the whole area fuzzy and opaque to my senses, didn’t do that.
Instead, I watched as the mana flowed through the final stretches of veins and right into the unfinished growth, where the mana turned neutral before flowing right into my mana pool.
“Now, that’s interesting,” I muttered.