When Viren woke, it was to a pounding head and little memory of the previous night's conversation - but he felt as something had… changed. Or perhaps he was just seeing things from a new perspective.
Aaravos's sly looks took on a new intensity - Viren could feel them burrowing under his skin with an unfamiliar heat. Even when he wasn't looking at the cecaelia, he could easily picture those spectral-purple eyes - or their usual yellow.
It was becoming something of a fixation.
The mer also felt more aware of all the non-touches the cecaelia graced him with - it didn't help that the "touches" he saw left a phantom sensation in their wake, likely a trick of his mind.
"Why do you keep doing that?' Viren sighed one day, a few weeks after his children's surprise visit.
"Doing what?" Aaravos asked innocently, looking up at the mer.
They were in the common room. Viren had been viewing memory crystals - Claudia hadn't brought solely his own collection of historical lectures, medical texts, and other such technical matters, but also some of mythology and other fantastic tales. Ballads, plays, and operettas, as well. While normally he found such memories trite, he now came to… appreciate them for their entertainment value.
"Touching my scar," the mer huffed, weakly thumping his tail against the mossy part of the bench he reclined on. Between viewings - and occasional interruptions - he'd watched the carnivore idly wander the room, often disappearing and reappearing. Whenever the other man passed him, a hand or tentacle seemed to phantom brush the scar he'd gotten taking down Thunder - like the cecaelia had his own fixation.
Aaravos chuckled, the hand that had just done said action moving to hover just above the old wound, "It is a mark of great accomplishment - is it wrong to pay my respects?"
Viren rolled his eyes, "The scar is not the one that killed Thunder."
"No, but it represents your victory," the cecaelia replied, "Rather prominently."
The mer had never considered the scar anything so fanciful - if anything, he'd considered it a reminder that he hadn't been careful enough. Still, the carnivore's praise - as ever - stoked the flicker of pride he tried to bury.
"If I were physically with you," Aaravos went on, spectral hand tracing the outline of the rough edges, "Would you let me touch your scar?"
"I… suppose it wouldn't cause any harm," Viren sighed, trying to go back to the operetta he'd been viewing - but his eyes couldn't help watching the cecaelia's wandering fingertips.
"Would you let me touch the rest of your tail as well?" the carnivore asked, two more hands ghosting down the sides of the mer's tail.
"Why would you want to?" said mer asked, feeling a strange… charge to the air, an undercurrent he couldn't quite catch as his torso tensed - still watching those hands. Feeling it was a bad idea to meet Aaravos's eyes at this moment.
"Mer scales are so different from scaled carnivores," the cecaelia mused, shifting to float above the other man, "So smooth, yet… soft," the carnivore's fingers tensed as he moved his phantom touch back up, "If I were not careful, I could easily tear them off."
"That is hardly reassuring," Viren replied, but it was… oddly strained as the false sensation made his skin tingle.
"I wouldn't," the cecaelia chuckled, smoothing his hands back down, "Not to you, in any case."
That was when Viren made the mistake of looking up.
Aaravos was watching his face intently, usual smirk now a small grin and eyes half-lidded and dark with hunger.
The mer shivered, knowing the cecaelia was every bit the monster Viren had always imagined him to be. Everything about the look - the way he so casually discussed descaling, in a way that left no doubt in the mer's mind that the carnivore had done it before - lit up every instinct with danger.
"You did not answer me, little fish," Aaravos said, his remaining free hand coming up to mime cupping the mer's cheek, "Would you let me touch your tail?"
Viren swallowed, fear that he'd made a terrible mistake coiling with… some other feeling in the pit of his stomach as he found himself paralyzed, caught in the spectral purple gaze, "I… would allow it."
The cecaelia chuckled, gaze slowly shifting to the side of the mer's face, following the path of his own hand as it slid down to the gills at Viren's neck. One finger traced the edge of the slit, and he asked, "And what of your gills? Would you allow me to touch them?"
"My… my gills?" the mer asked, the appendages themselves fluttering open and closed in sudden alarm.
Aaravos nodded, other astral hands coming up to trace at the gills on the other side of Viren's neck and the ones on either side of his torso. His tentacles slowly wrapped around the mer's tail as he went on, "It can be a rather pleasant experience, if done correctly - gently, carefully…"
Viren struggled to form words. Part of his brain was still repeating a mantra of DANGER DANGER DANGER, making his gills flutter worse as his heart rate kicked up. This was a carnivore asking to put claws near the most delicate part of him - no, not near, in the most delicate part of him. After mentioning descaling.
But another part of him recognized the intent in the hungry way Aaravos watched his own hands on the mer's body, curled around the promise of a pleasant experience, coiled low and dark in his gut and fought against the warning his brain was trying to get across.
"I…" Viren forced himself into strained composure, "Am not sure I would… find the experience as enjoyable as you claim."
The cecaelia looked back up, meeting the mer's eyes. There was something… reassuringly steady in his eyes as he said, "If you were to grant me permission, and found the experience painful or simply uncomfortable, I would stop. Though I would still like to try - if you would allow?"
The question soothed the alarm signs in his brain - which only fueled the coil of heat in his core, "Then… I suppose…" he struggled with himself, trying to find a way to hide the effect the carnivore was having on him before finally sighing and saying "Yes."
Aarvos's grin returned, and he asked, "And what about here?"
Viren frowned in confusion for a moment before glancing down -and swallowing again as he saw a spectral hand trailing down his stomach to hover just above his gential slit. And suddenly recognized the feeling coiled in his gut - arousal. He'd wanted to deny it, deny that a carnivore - especially this carnivore - could make him feel… like this.
"Viren," the cecaelia shifted, practically reclining against the mer's side, astral form wrapped up around the other man, "Would you let me touch you here?"
The mer shivered, mouth working before he could stop it, "Yes."
"You could be my hands for me," Aaravos suggested lowly, voice curling against the shell of the mer's ear.
Hesitantly - letting the all but forgotten memory crystal slip from his grasp - one of Viren's hands slid down his own torso.
Panting and feeling particularly boneless as he settled onto the mossy bench a short time later, the mer tried to… assess what had just happened.
It felt somehow sudden and inevitable - unexpected and a matter of course.
"... I may be gone for a while," Aaravos said, cutting into the mer's brief reverie.
"Gone?" Viren blinked a few times, then his tail thumped as he realized how it sounded, "Very well."
The cecaelia snorted - seeing right through the act, "Do not get lonely without me, little fish - I will return here."
"Do what you want," the mer continued stubbornly, even as he felt heat on his cheeks. He reached down to retrieve the abandoned memory crystal, "It has nothing to do with me."
"If you say so," Aaravos mused, seeming content to remain where he was for the moment - astral form wrapped around the other man.
Viren snorted, and did his best to pretend he wasn't… content with the arrangement as he went back to viewing the operetta to ignore… other feelings.
The cecaelia chuckled, but did not comment.
Viren didn't see the cecaelia for a week.
The mer didn't think much of it. He had more to occupy his time, and the cecaelia had said he would be absent. He didn't even see the other man in the mirror, though they'd only used it to interact sparingly after astral projection entered the picture.
When one week turned into two, the change was… noticeable.
Still, it was hardly something he couldn't handle. Though he did wonder what exactly the cecaelia had to do that would take so long. The man himself admitted he was a lone exile and relatively banished from Xadia. It wasn't as if Viren had a reason to care.
When two weeks bled into three, the mer started to feel restless.
He couldn't get their last… encounter out of his head. Viren couldn't decide how he felt about it. He'd been carefully avoiding even thinking about it. There was… a tangled knot of something about the situation he didn't want to examine too closely. So he kept ignoring it, letting the knot get tighter.
When a month had passed, he was forced to confront his own emotions. At least in part.
He missed having someone to talk to, even if most of their conversations ended in arguments. He missed seeing the spectral figure in their same spaces - or even seeing the cecaelia's smug face in the mirror. He missed having something other than memory crystals to occupy his time.
But missing companionship did not mean he missed Aaravos.
Of course he missed company - he'd already learned this when he first came to the abandoned Sanctum. Even he, proud high sorcerer of Katolis - albeit disgraced - was subject to the needs of being a mer. And of course, when he had only one source of company, he would feel its absence sooner and more keenly.
Certainly, the carnivore would finish whatever errand he'd undertaken soon. And just as certainly, Viren's feelings of loss would lessen if the cecaelia took much longer.
He was able to fool himself for another week.
Viren dreamed - dreamed of claws pricking at his scales, carefully ticking them up without tearing. Of tentacles wrapping around him in their wake, of ghostly touches and golden eyes, of promises whispered lowly against his ear, of-
He woke up aroused and alone, and forced to admit he missed Aaravos, specifically.
Once he admitted it to himself, he was also forced to confront his other feelings.
He liked the cecaelia, damn the carnivore. He'd never had someone who not only matched but challenged his intellect - someone who praised his pragmatism and accomplishments. Someone who terrified and awed him with veiled threats and promises, who shared knowledge freely but not patronizingly. Someone who encouraged him to go further, seek more - not in service to others, but for his own curiosity.
Someone who didn't try to change him.
It didn't hurt that the cecaelia was the most gorgeous being the mer had ever seen. The only thing that could inspire more beauty in Viren's mind was the actual night sky - though the sky did not move and sway with fluid grace, or smile knowingly with dangerous golden eyes.
Another week.
Viren stayed in Aaravos's room in the Sanctum, plagued by dreams of promised pleasure - and the frustration of waking to the carnivore still being absent. If the cecaelia was going to be gone for this long, he should have been less vague than 'a while'. He should have disappeared before making it impossible for Viren to get Aaravos out of his head.
It was embarrassing, to moon over someone like a love-struck teenager at his age. To ache almost as much as when his mate had left him for a man that had likely only toyed with him for his own amusement.
Was he really so pitiful?
Yet another week, and he realized he was, indeed, so pitiful.
Maybe it was simply too to lose anything else - Aaravos had been a lifeline after he had lost everything else. While the mer had thought of their bond as tenuous, he could see now how much he had come to rely on it.
But then, perhaps this was what he deserved. Aaravos not wanting to change him was not necessarily a good thing - he was not necessarily a good man. Being rejected by a worse monster - maybe that was the real punishment he had earned for being unyielding and refusing to believe he was wrong.
At two months, shame and self-doubt gave way to something else - anger.
How dare he? How dare Aaravos do this to him? Manipulate him into caring - that had to be what happened. Of course he hadn't fallen for a carnivore - Aaravos had tricked him somehow. Played him like a harp. Laughed at the pathetic mer too attached to people that didn't care to break the rules.
Viren glared at the mirror - if only he had never touched the damnable thing. If only he had never met the cecaelia - had moved on to somewhere less tempting and dangerous. He never should have started speaking to the man - he should have listened to his instincts and left well enough alone. Ignored Aaravos and all his dark charisma.
In a fit of pique, he grabbed a rock and smashed it against the start of all his current problems. The mirror cracked, and the mer felt a surge of satisfaction - like he'd been able to strike a blow against the smug cecaelia himself. So he did it again, and again - until the mirror was shattered completely.
See if the damned carnivore contacted him now.
Chest heaving from the exertion, Viren's brief elation shriveled up and died. He dropped the rock, only then noticing his hand was cut and bleeding. He stared at it, and cursed his own stupidity - he'd let his temper get the better of him. He'd thrown a tantrum like a child, accomplishing nothing.
Aaravos didn't even need the mirror to contact him. All Viren had done was given himself away - and he had no doubt the carnivore would easily see through any lie the mer could try to spin when he returned. If he returned.
Suddenly tired, Viren left to patch up his hand and retire early.
He would simply have to wait.