Challenge: Communication
Title: Sex Ed
Fandom: Adventure World
Rating: Teen
Characters: Merlyn Callais, Vedran Callais
Word count: 2035
Summary: A teenaged Vedran gets some sex advice from his more experienced cousin.
Notes: Pre-canon/backstory snippet. This is part of a muuuuuuuch longer piece I'm still working on, but I think this section stands okay on its own and works pretty well for this challenge :)

Sex-ed

Merlyn was not by nature an early riser, but his duties as temple attendant needed him to be up in the mornings, and he was usually able to force himself awake in time to take care of the basics before anyone came through. Occasionally, he solved the issue of getting out of bed by staying up all night instead, visiting friends and lovers until the small hours of the morning and making sure the temple was presentable, even if he wasn’t. Mornings like these, with no sleep and a heavy head were the ones where he felt lucky to be on rotation at the temple. Though he'd normally prefer to be travelling, there was something to say for comfortable beds and the ability to shut out the sun while you tried to trace half-heartedly until your head was clear enough to let you rest. Out on the road, he'd have come back to a cot at best and likely need to press on, rest or no rest.

Debating whether the sanctuary really needed to be swept this morning or if it could be left for a day when he hadn't been up all night, he made his way to the little closet where the votive supplies were kept. It was open, and there was rustling coming from inside.

"Hello?" He thought he'd give whoever it was the benefit of the doubt – the church didn't really have anything to steal that he wouldn't have given away anyway, but not everyone knew or believed that.

The response to his greeting was a surprised yelp accompanied by the sound of something –some things in fact—clattering to the floor.

"Vedran?" He swung the door open the rest of the way to find the young half-elf wrestling a crate of prayer candles back on the shelf. "What are you doing?"

"Um," he answered with a look that was half guilty and half hopeful. "Looking for the lamp oil?"

Merlyn shook his head, coming over to help him pick up the candles. "It's the crack of dawn, Ved."

"I know…. I didn't think you'd be up yet."

He gave his cousin a long look. When Vedran had first arrived, between adjusting to the time difference this far east and generally lying about and feeling sorry for himself, it had been rare to see him up and about before noon. Once he began to shake off the cloud of teenage melodrama hanging over his head, he'd followed Merlyn's example of staying up into the small hours of the morning with parties and new friends. It wasn't until he'd started hanging around the tieflings from the market more that he'd ever been up early enough to join him for breakfast, let alone morning prayers. "Right." He let the word sit for a moment, then shook his head. "Come on. Let's get some coffee, and since you decided to grace the world with your presence so early, you can help me with some chores before prayers."

The temple of Avandra in Yeshual was the largest in Ahkas, but as it was only one of two, this wasn't saying too much. It did at least have a proper sanctuary along with a dormitory that served as a central information hub and home base for the more mobile clergy. Members of the priesthood volunteered to care for and run the place, usually for a season or two at a time, and rarely for upwards of a year. It was an informal rotation, but most were happy enough to have a chance to catch their breaths now and then. The presence of the church in the city where the peace had been signed ten years before was mostly symbolic. Merlyn still felt that this reminder of the role of pacifistic Nerathi groups in promoting the cessation of hostilities was as important as any other role the church served, and was glad enough, for the most part, to serve his term. He was finding, too, that staying in the city and helping his cousin adjust to life in Ahkas were bringing him a fresh perspective. It was a little easier to be grateful, however, once he was seated in the dorm's kitchen with a tumbler of thick, steaming coffee. He took a sip.

"Not bad, Ved. Either you’re getting the hang of this, or my night out was a lot rougher than I realized."

"Well, Tas has been teaching me the tricks they use for it, but we can't actually drink it the way they do because it's too hot, and once it cools it gets all grainy and gross. So this is kind of my improvisation."

"You'll have to show me sometime." The strong drink was helping him feel a little more alert already, and he swallowed another mouthful. "So, tell me about the lamp oil?"

Vedran's blush was not a good sign. "Well, um, I guess it didn’t have to be lamp oil, I just thought it would, um, work, and you probably wouldn't miss it..."

"Work for what?" He took another sip of the thick coffee. "Is this for sex? Please tell me it's not for sex."

The look on Vedran's face was answer enough. To his credit, he didn't bother with any denials or try to cover it up. "Why not?" He asked instead, wary.

"Yeah...." Merlyn leaned back against the wall, swinging his legs up to lounge on the low bench. "You should thank Fortune that I caught you. Just think of it this way – what does lamp oil do?"

It only took him a moment to work that one out, evidenced by his grimace and telltale squirming. Merlyn could almost see new questions trying to take shape.

"My general rule of thumb," he added helpfully, "is that if you wouldn’t put in your mouth, don't put it in your ass. Is this with Agizul?"

Apparently satisfied that Merlyn wasn't going to lecture him on his attempted theft, or make a big deal out of the rest of it, he nodded, grinning just a little. "Yeah. I guess he was okay taking things the right way."

"Heh. He's a pretty big guy." It was a bit of an understatement – he was easily the tallest tiefling Merlyn had ever seen, even discounting the dark horns that curved up away from his face and back around. "And I'm guessing neither of you has done this before?"

There was a look Vedran got on his face when he was trying to follow someone's train of thought, and he was wearing it now. Instead of asking, though, he shook his head. "Not yet, but I really want to."

"Well, if his cock's as big as the rest of him –" he grinned back at Vedran's gloating chuckle. "Yeah, well, you're going to need to work up to that. Fingers, and then maybe some kind of toy. You can improvise some, but don't use anything you're not sure you can get back out again. Something with a wide base or a handle."

"What about his tail?" He sounded fairly nonchalant, but Merlyn could tell it was not a purely hypothetical question. That was interesting enough – most tieflings he'd met didn't have very fine control over their tails, but Agizul may have become more reliant on his.

"That could work, but go carefully. I mean, tails drag on the ground - I’d say follow the ‘would I put it in my mouth’ rule there too." He waited until Vedran nodded again before continuing. "You are going to need something for lubrication, so you had the right idea. There's lots of stuff you can improvise with that's pretty safe – olive oil's not bad – but you can buy stuff that's actually meant for sex, too, and it's usually better."

Vedran perked up, his eyes going a little wider. “You can? I mean, I thought you said that guys who fuck guys isn’t a super accepted thing here.”

"Did I say that?" He frowned, because it didn't sound like something he would have said, but he wasn't feeling on the top of his game at the moment either and couldn't remember talking about it with his cousin at all. The concentrated coffee was doing its work, though, and he felt more alert than he had when they'd first sat down. “Well, it depends. Some people are okay with it, some aren’t, just like in Nerath. Sometimes it’s a race thing – the devas, if you ever meet one, aren't concerned about bodies at all, for the most part. And the shardminds don't even have men and women, really. But really I think the divide is bigger between the cities and the nomads."

"Oh." He frowned, and Merlyn could see him putting all the pieces together. "Is that what you meant before, then, about Agi? To be careful how he’d take things?"

"Yes." He'd finished his drink now, and spun the little tumbler on the table. The thought of toasted bread and eggs danced through the back of his mind, but his stomach quickly vetoed the idea, and instead he reached out and appropriated Vedran's as-yet untouched coffee. "A lot of the nomadic groups rely really heavily on families and family ties for survival, and they're not comfortable with people who aren't contributing to that dynamic. Some men can get away with having affairs with other men, if they're married with children – and some women, for that matter, if they prefer sex with other women – but if you really aren't interested at all in the opposite sex, it can be hard. People like that tend to get pushed to the outside."

"And Agi already has trouble because of his leg." Vedran looked up after a quiet moment. "He calls me his farjhan. He said it means he'll take care of me. I don't think it is just about the sex stuff, but I don't know what he really thinks."

They'd come a long way from talking about lube, and it was Merlyn's turn to frown. "That's a word for a kind of slave that some men kept, during the war. Boys they'd captured."
"And fucked?"

He nodded this time, but it wasn't something he knew a whole lot about.

"The first time he said it, he said that's what I should say to Lunja. Tinhinan said she didn't like me because it meant Agi had put the war behind him better than she had, but maybe that's not true, or not all true. She's, Lunja I mean, is always saying how useless I am at things. But he doesn’t act like he owns me. I don't think he really thinks that."

"Well, if you're not sure what he thinks, maybe you should ask him?" Merlyn shrugged when his cousin shook his head. "Ultimately, Ved, it's just between the two of you. It you're both happy, that's what's important, and the rest can sort itself out."

Despite his words, Merlyn was a little worried about his cousin. This was a relationship without much future, and his cousin had enough on his plate without adding any heartbreak. Summer wasn't far off, and it was an active time for most of the nomadic groups, either taking advantage of the passes through the mountains, striking out to seek somewhat stable pasture for their herds, or even just raiding on everyone else. He'd been planning on heading south, and he'd guessed the tieflings would have completed any business keeping them in the city by then as well. Vedran, he hoped, would still be coming with him.

"So," Vedran said, interrupting his train of thought. "You can buy oils for gay sex? In Yeshual?"

Merlyn laughed in return. "You can have anal sex with girls too, you know. Lots of people do it that way, because there's less chance of the girl getting knocked up and it's just fun. But I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you where you can go, and what the best kinds are, but you have to sweep the sanctuary while I go see if anyone else has turned up for morning prayers."

His cousin was already getting to his feet, a grin on his face, any morose thoughts banished for the moment. "Deal!"