“Not straight, but it follows the easiest path,” Lars said, once again demonstrating his quick grasp on the situation. “Most of the streets in town were cow paths once, and cows always take the easiest route as well.”
“You know a lot about cows, don’t you?”
Lars flushed even pinker and ducked his head. “Cows make sense. And they’re nice to me.”
Calarian blinked. He had no idea how to even begin to unpack that; he just felt a swelling of low-boiling anger at the implication that some people hadn’t been nice to Lars in the past. He sort of wanted to get a list of their names and then spend years tracking them down in revenge, and possibly strangling them with their own intestines. The fantasy of a bloodthirsty revenge spree was an oddly over-the-top response to Lars’s throwaway comment. Maybe Benji had rubbed off on him. Well, Benji had definitely rubbed off on him, but maybe not just physically. Calarian had only met Lars a few hours ago. And while it was perfectly normal to want to fuck someone a few hours after meeting them—in elven circles, a few hours was incredibly restrained—Calarian wasn’t sure what to do with these strange accompanying protective feelings that were piggybacking on his lust.
“I guess cows are okay,” he said at last, tentatively, and Lars flashed him a smile that brightened the world like a burst of sunshine through the clouds. Calarian’s heart skipped a beat, which was weird. He hadn’t felt this excited since he’d got his first twenty-sided dice.
Lars’s smile dimmed, but his bright gaze didn’t. His perfectly white teeth bit into his lower lip, and then he ducked his head and looked away, and Calarian felt a sudden pang of loss that he was sure could be fixed if he just swept Lars’s feet out from underneath him, followed him down onto the dirt, straddled him, and rode his dick like a knight on horseback. The dead mountain troll might ruin the atmosphere just a tad—it probably hadn’t smelled nice even when it was alive—but Calarian was fairly sure he could ignore it. Hell, he’d banged Benji on a charcoal bed in the Swamp of Death and it hadn’t slowed him down any.
Speaking of Benji, Calarian looked over to see him scowling and dragging his toe through the trail of troll dirt, hands stuffed into his pockets. Calarian really didn’t know what his problem was. It wasn’t like he’d care if Calarian found Lars fuckable—theirs was a strictly Elves With Benefits arrangement, Benji had said so himself often enough. Maybe he was jealous of Lars’s good looks and muscles, Calarian mused. Whatever it was, a good fuck would probably fix it. It usually did, with Benji.
Calarian put away thoughts of fucking the salt out of Benji to one side for now though, because they had a dead troll to deal with, and Lars probably needed his help. And even if he didn’t, Calarian had a sudden weird desire to show Lars his strategic skills, among other things. Calarian hadn't ever felt the need to impress anyone before, but he was certain it couldn’t be that difficult—he was an elf, after all, and therefore naturally impressive.
He dug desperately through his brain for a way to carry on the conversation, and more importantly, to make Lars smile at him again. “I’m a vegetarian,” he said. “I don’t believe in eating cows.”
It was the right thing to say.
“Me too!” Lars exclaimed, and that sunrise smile was back, impossibly bright. Calarian felt an absurd burst of pride at having caused it. “I don’t believe in animal cruelty. I tan my own leather from the hides of animals who have died of natural causes,” Lars added, running a hand down the leg of his shorts where the leather was stretched taut over his muscled thigh in a most distracting manner. All Calarian could think of for a moment was peeling Lars out of said shorts. He wondered if Lars’s dick was proportional. It was a fascinating thought.
He let his gaze linger, just because Lars was so very nice to look at, and he would have quite happily stood there taking in the view except Gunther, who Calarian decided he definitely disliked, said loudly, “Who cares about cows? The problem is the trolls!” Calarian managed to drag his attention back to the matter at hand— namely, dead trolls and crumbling city walls. Strategy, not dick, he reminded himself, even though he knew which one he enjoyed more. He filed away thoughts of Lars, his shorts, and what was in them for later consideration.
He didn’t even know if Lars liked men, let alone elves. He suspected he did though—had seen him staring at Benji’s arse more than once—and why, exactly, did that make Calarian’s gut twist in such a queer way? It’s not like he cared who Benji slept with—as long as it wasn’t Lars, and wasn’t that weird?
Calarian had always taken the collectivist approach to sex—share and share alike—but the very idea of Lars and Benji together made him want to clench his fists, or perhaps stamp his feet, and proclaim mine loudly and repeatedly, and the really disturbing part about it was that he wasn’t even sure which one of them he wanted to claim. Lars was sunshine and happiness and all things good and Calarian wanted to fuck him but also string daisy chains through his golden hair, whereas Benji was an angry little shit, but apparently somewhere along the line Calarian had come to think of Benji as his angry little shit, and he wasn’t quite prepared to give him up, even though he’d never cared before. It was all very confusing.
Houses and Humans was never this difficult to figure out.
Gunther cleared his throat and tapped his foot like a prissy schoolmarm, demanding Calarian’s attention.
Calarian sighed and said, “I think Duke Lars makes an excellent point about the trolls not attacking, and we should definitely clear a path for them. I don’t know where they’re heading, but as long as it's not here that means it’s not our problem, right?” He was rewarded with a grateful look from Lars.
Gunther frowned. “But the Duke doesn’t know that they’ll pass through,” he argued. “He doesn’t understand the finer points of interspecies politics. For all he knows, this might all be a cunning plan to gain access to Tournel.”
Calarian pinched the bridge of his nose before arching an impressive eyebrow and staring Gunther down. “A cunning plan? Carried out by a troll who’s wearing his helmet on his elbow?”
Gunther wilted under his glare, his expression curdling even more than usual, which was saying something. “It still might be a plot,” he muttered.
Lars bit his lip. “I know it’s my first day, but I agree with my advisors.”
Calarian felt a weird thrill at being called Lars’s anything, and promptly ignored it.
“I don’t think this is a plot,” Lars continued. “It’s more of a... series of unfortunate events. Ending in a wall. And if we remove the wall, we remove the problem.”
“People will get trampled,” Gunther warned.
“Not if we mark the path,” Calarian said, eager to support Lars and complete their quest, since Benji seemed to be too busy sulking. His teachers had been right about him. He really didn’t play well with others, and he was currently showing his displeasure by drawing dicks in the dust with a stick, still scowling and muttering to himself. Maybe this was going to be one of those times where getting Benji out of his foul mood was a two-blowjob-job. Not that Calarian really minded—Benji normally gave as good as he got, and then some.