Amaranth stops for a moment outside the tent, his unfocused gaze on the red hide of the entrance. If he's honest with himself, he's a little winded. It's his seventh year of Mating Festival. He's twenty-three now, not old by any means, but he just doesn't have the stamina he had when he was a teenager, despite the intoxicating incense burning in the tents.
He takes a moment to look around, his gaze roving over the dozens of lit red tents glowing like lanterns in the foggy evening, each with a willing female inside, pillowed luxuriously in the midst of a large, feathery bed. Seven years isn't a long time, he thinks to himself, and certainly no one looks funny at you for not settling down yet. Most people don't start getting weird looks until around their fifteenth year. But sometimes... well, sometimes he admits to being a little envious of those who find their True Mate early on, who spend the festival together in their own tents, rather than roving through the ranks of those still single.
Amaranth takes off his betrothal necklace and ties it to a thong by the tent flap to signal that this tent is now occupied. As he's about to enter, however, he sees a shadow out of the corner of his eye.
Amaranth whirls, but sees nothing. The dark gloom of the forest lurks in front of him, oddly blue in comparison to the warm red lights of the women's tents. The forest is silent, heavy, as though watching him.
Cautious, Amaranth turns back and enters the tent. This is Moriana's tent, a woman whom he's always made a point to visit on Mating Festival. Sometimes he almost sees himself with her, but there's something sharp and calculating about her demeanor that always stops him from giving her his necklace and making it official.
He beds her anyway, of course. The heady incense filling the tent makes him rise again more quickly than he expected, despite her being the fifth such woman he's taken tonight. She welcomes him with open arms and a warm, supple body. These tents are always so warm compared to the evening air outside. As he falls into bed with her, he thinks of the warm softness of the pillows, and the echoing softness of her, and feels less than he expects to.
When he is finished and Moriana is lying sated and limp in the midst of the voluminous bed, Amaranth exits the glowing red warmth of the tent and stands for a moment in the bracing air outside, letting the comparative cold slowly ease into him and clear his head.
He unties the betrothal necklace from the door and slips it back over his neck. As he does so, he once again sees the shadow from the corner of his eye, and whirls to try and catch it.
This time he sees something; a small piece of cloth disappearing behind the trunk of a tree. Someone watching him? Scowling, Amaranth puts a hand on the hilt of the knife he always wears and stalks into the trees.
His abrupt arrival catches his target by surprise. A slight young man looks at him with wide, startled eyes, and then backs away as though afraid. Durial. Amaranth knows him—although not well. He's seem him around the village, just another face, roughly his own age; he's never paid much attention.
But the expression on Durial's face makes him pay attention now. There's something frighteningly vulnerable about it, as though Durial might bolt at any moment. He's like a frightened deer, paralyzed, about to leap away the second the moment is broken.
Amaranth grabs his arm, to prevent him from running. Durial looks panicked, glancing from Amaranth's face to the hold on his arm and back again. He tries to back up, and Amaranth follows, maintaining his grip. Durial's back meets the tree trunk behind him, and he's caught against it.
"Why were you watching me?" asks Amaranth, his voice low and gruff. He doesn't actually care so much about the question specifically; he's more curious as to why Durial seems so frightened that he's been caught.
Durial doesn't answer him. Instead he looks down at the ground, away from Amaranth's gaze. His face heats with apparent embarrassment. Amaranth gives him a little shake for emphasis, pressing him harder against the tree trunk.
As he does so, he feels the source of Durial's embarrassment for himself; the other man is hard. Amaranth lets go of Durial's wrist abruptly and takes a step back, astonished.
"I'm sorry," Durial whispers. "I hadn't meant for you to see me. Please, don't allow me to interrupt your Mating Festival. I had meant to blend into the trees and not cause trouble."
"What about you?" Amaranth asks, although he feels certain he already knows the answer. "Will you not enjoy the Mating Festival as well?"
Durial smiles, a bitter expression. "There is nothing in those red tents for me. I'm afraid I'm not made for the soft bodies of women."
"Oh?" Amaranth feels as though his own eyes are coals, burning him as he tries to see. He's gazing at the simple tunic Durial wears, similar to the shifts worn by the women in the red tents. "What are you made for, then?"
Durial meets his eyes, then, an evaluative look. Then his gaze drops deliberately downward, coming to rest on Amaranth's member which, to Amaranth's substantial surprise, stirs in response.
Durial looks back up at him, a question in his eyes. Amaranth says nothing. Durial looks back at Amaranth's member and falls to his knees. The expression Amaranth expected on him was triumph, but instead Durial looks destroyed, as though his world has just caved in on itself, as though he's helpless to do anything but what he is doing.
Durial leans forward, resting his forehead against Amaranth's cloth-covered inner thigh. He remains there a moment, breathing heavily, then turns slightly, pressing his lips to the bulge in Amaranth's leggings with a sweet kiss. Amaranth shudders.
Durial kisses him intimately again, and moves to pull down Amaranth's leggings, but Amaranth stops him, grabbing his shoulders and dragging him back up to eye level. Rough with uncertainty, Amaranth spins Durial around and presses him hard against the bark of the tree. With one hand he rips down Durial's own leggings and grabs at his flesh. The soft, round buttock yields under his hand, but also reveals a surprise.
Eyes wide, Amaranth moves his hand over slightly and allows two of his fingers to slip inside Durial's passage. Durial gasps; the passage is wet and loose, obviously well-prepared.
"Optimistic, were we?" asks Amaranth roughly. He can't seem to tell his own mind at the moment. A haze of mist behind his eyes seems to obscure all that he thinks and feels.
"Never," Durial admits. "But one must always be prepared for one's wildest hopes to come to light."
Amaranth does not respond, but sticks a third finger inside Durial's passage, still somewhat incredulous. Durial gasps and moans softly, thrusting his hips backwards in an involuntary spasm.
Without ceremony, Amaranth removes himself from his pants and slides into Durial. Durial's passage is warm and much tighter than he expected, and the young man lets out a breathy, high-pitched moan as Amaranth enters. Durial's hands are braced against the tree trunk, and Amaranth presses his own hands over Durial's, wanting to imprint the texture of that bark on Durial's palms.
He shudders as Durial's body engulfs his member, drawing him in with its warmth and velvet softness the way no woman's body has. Unable to help himself, he places a palm against Durial's hip and thrusts, plundering the slight body, claiming it with a possessiveness so strong it frightens him.
Over Durial's shoulder he can see the lights from the tents, glittering through the tree trunks like stars. They are warm, luminescent; out here it is cold, and dark. But out here he feels alive as he never has in the village. Out here, thrusting with bruising force into Durial's welcoming passage, he feels as though something makes sense that hasn't before.
Durial calls out, a needy, pleading sound. Amaranth drills harder with his hips, forcing Durial up against the tree trunk, and Durial cries bliss into the still evening air.
In the village there are men waiting their turn, passing from tent to tent, recovering in the village center with warm mulled cider. Out here there is the rough scrape of bark, the rough scrape of Amaranth's teeth on the back of Durial's neck. Out here there are no soft pillows to dissolve oneself into, but there is the dizzying, disorienting pull of Durial's body drawing him in jealously, wantonly swallowing his member as Durial gasps out Amaranth's name.
Out there are the starry lights of the women's tents, glittering in the distance. Here there are the stars behind Amaranth's eyelids as he comes helplessly inside Durial, staining him, claiming him.
Durial's palms are bleeding slightly when Amaranth turns him around, and he wipes the wounds clean with guilt, pressing his lips to the small cuts in a delicate kiss. As Durial turns, Amaranth can see the pale splatter of his cum against the tree bark. Amaranth finds it unbelievable that pleasure could possibly have come in the midst of such discomfort.
But Durial looks at him as though anything in the world is possible, as though Amaranth has acquired the glow of the Other World, as though he is a god come down for the sole purpose of granting Durial his heart's desire.
And Amaranth can't help himself. He's heard it described this way, when the Coupled talk about the Mating Festival. They speak of it as an intuition, or an inevitability—the true purpose of the Mating Festival, the finding of one's True Mate, their destined one, the one they cannot be without.
Amaranth kisses him, because Durial's lips require him to. There is nothing else he can do. They are connected, physically and fundamentally in other ways as well. As their kiss continues, Amaranth slips the betrothal necklace up from his neck, over his head, and then down Durial's own neck. Only when the necklace settles into place does Durial seem to notice what has happened.
He breaks the kiss to look down incredulously at the pendant, then back up at Amaranth. Suddenly Amaranth finds himself enveloped in the most exuberant hug ever to sweep him up, and his lips are kissed over and over as Durial showers him with gratitude.
With pleasure but still some hesitance, Durial removes his own necklace and gives it to Amaranth. Amaranth smiles and puts it on, kissing his lover once more.
Durial's kisses are becoming passionate, needful once more, and Amaranth recalls that there are still several hours of the Mating Festival left. He had intended to visit a number of other tents during the time, but instead he lays Durial down on the soft moss of the forest floor and proceeds to take him once again, the first of many couplings that will stretch to the very end of their days.