Chapter 98: Thank you! (in the least verbal way possible)

Three weeks Later!

A game of Air Tag was being played through the lower and middle layers of the Elder Tree, and the whole settlement seemed noisier for it.

Kai cut between two root bridges with a cluster of half-fairy children on his heels, laughter spilling through the canopy in bright messy waves. Tag was the game he had introduced to them. The prefix "Air" had been added for the obvious reason that half the players never bothered touching the ground. The result was chaos in the best sense of the word.

Milo was "it," and he was devastatingly good at it.

He caught the children one after another with the efficiency of a man who knew every branch, every shortcut, and every panic turn they favored. A little nymph groaned as Milo tagged her shoulder in passing.

"Awww! Brother Milo, you always catch me first!"

Milo laughed and was already gone, angling sharply after a rather plump little dryad who had no idea she was being hunted because she had become spiritually one with a shiny red apple. She floated near a fruit cluster in pure contentment, cheeks full, eyes half-closed, completely lost in crunch.

"Gotta be quicker than that, Tia," Milo said, then paused, corrected himself with a grin, and tapped the dryad lightly. "Dria."

Dria paused mid-bite and looked around with pure innocent confusion.

"Have I been caught?"

Milo stopped in midair, stared at her, and sighed from the soul.

"Every time, Dria."

She blinked, still chewing.

"I told you every time to ignore the apples," Milo continued, circling her with exaggerated disappointment. "They always make you clueless about your environment." His mouth curved into a mischievous smirk. "And fat too."

"Hey!"

He was already laughing and flying off. One by one he caught the rest, and each capture produced the same offended chorus of "Hey!" and "Aww!" as the children accepted defeat with all the grace of people who fully intended to complain about it for the next hour. In no time the open air belonged to Milo again, and only one target remained.

Kai.

Milo turned in a slow circle, scanning bridges and leaf-shadow and the denser fruit layers higher up. He could have sworn he had seen Kai only moments earlier.

"Ohh Kaiii!"

No answer.

"Did any of you see Kai?" he asked the newly caught children.

They all made the same deeply unhelpful snarky faces, stuck out their tongues, and scattered in different directions laughing. Milo stared after them with mock betrayal and then flew past Dria again, who was still committed to her apple with religious intensity.

"Could you get me the yellow ones?" she said to no one in particular, pointing at a higher cluster. "They are much sweeter."

Milo smiled.

He knew that trick now.

He flew past the apple cluster as if uninterested, then cut back in a sharp reverse and lunged through the leaves. Kai burst out of the fruiting branchwork a half-second ahead of the tag, white hair flashing as he shot upward toward the crown of the tree.

"Caught you!"

"You wish!"

They broke into an open race through the upper layers, weaving around stems while the settlement blurred beneath them.

Milo’s residence sat near the crown in a living wooden house grown directly out of the tree’s higher body, all smooth curves and open archways and filtered light. That was where Kai headed, and Milo followed hard, grinning like the chase itself was the point.

Below, the children watched them disappear into the higher green and exchanged looks of deep collective wisdom.

"Anyone want an apple?" one asked.

"Yeah!"

They all veered toward the cluster in a noisy cloud. One smaller fairy leaned toward another while they flew.

"Brother Kai gives Brother Milo a difficult time, and that is why they take a lot of time when they go up."

The other nodded with solemn agreement.

"Brother Kai is my role model!"

It was an extremely pure interpretation of events.

It was also completely wrong, because by the time the children reached the apples Kai had already been caught.

**

Milo’s house near the crown was warm with canopy light and the faint sweetness of old sap.

The moment the door sealed behind them, the chase changed shape. Kai’s back hit the inner wall and Milo’s mouth found his with zero interest in pretending this had still been about tag.

The kiss was deep and hungry and immediately wet with heat, all tongue and breath and accumulated wanting.

Milo’s shirt came off under Kai’s hands and revealed a body that looked carved for both flight and ruin...he had ean muscles, more leaner than Lucien, a stomach cut into sharp perfect abs, pale-gold skin luminous where the light touched it. He was beautiful in a way that felt slightly unreal up close, handsome enough that the air around him still seemed to pay attention.

Kai kissed him harder.

Three weeks visiting the Elder Tree had changed the texture of his days.

He had not planned to blend into Miloria so easily, but the settlement had a way of absorbing people.

He knew the lower bridges now. He knew which branches yeilded better fruit. He knew the children by voice even before he saw their faces.

Air Tag had become a regular crime against peace and quiet, and somehow that ordinary noise had softened something in him.

His relationships with the others had also shifted into a strange temporary truce. He had made up with Lucien in the practical sense that they could speak without the air immediately turning into a wound.

He had stabilized enough around Elias and Ayan to share space without constant friction, even if full comfort still sat out of reach.

Elias remained shameless and still collected spontaneous flings like lesser men collected bad habits. Kai had accepted that this would not end simply because Kai found it irritating. Acceptance, however, did not mean he wanted the reports. He had made that boundary clear enough that even Elias only tested it every other day.

Rhydian had been gone for two weeks on some job that took him far outside Eldoria, and Kai still did not know whether he was coming back soon or at all. Aster had not returned since the balcony visit. The Chairman had edged him with presence and absence alike, then vanished into whatever larger board he was playing.

Through all of it, Kai had refused touch from the rest of them. Elias had even shamelessly offered a threesome with Ayan, as if that were a form of conflict resolution, and Kai had shut it down without blinking. The only person who had been getting his mouth, his time, and these increasingly dangerous private hours was Milo. For days it had been kissing, chasing, flying, talking, and more kissing. Today the accumulated hunger finally tipped past restraint.

Milo broke the kiss just enough to speak against his mouth.

"Do you...?"

Kai thought about it seriously for one full second. With Milo it still felt strangely sudden even though it was not sudden at all. Three weeks of proximity, laughter, flight, and heat had been building here in plain sight. More than that, it had been three full weeks since Kai had gotten anything more than frustration and interrupted almosts. He needed to be touched. He needed it badly enough that the answer came easier than pride wanted to admit.

He nodded.

Milo’s smile turned soft and wickedly pleased at the same time.

What followed was different from the others.

Milo did not drag him straight into intensity. He stripped Kai with patience and kissed down the center of his chest like the point was to learn him rather than simply take him. His mouth was warm and thorough, moving over collarbone, stomach, hip, the sensitive insides of thighs, and the hard line of Kai’s cock until Kai was restless against the sheets and gripping whatever part of Milo he could reach. By the time Milo finally pressed inside him, Kai was already open and aching for it. The size surprised him. For a fairy, Milo was thick enough and long enough to force a broken sound from Kai’s throat on the first real push, a stretch that burned sweet and deep.

The first rhythm stayed slow. Milo fucked him in controlled rolls of his hips, kissing him through it, one hand under Kai’s back and the other braced by his head. It felt romantic in all the ways that mattered, intimate enough that Kai could not pretend this was only appetite. Then something shifted. Milo’s breath went sharper against his neck, the elegance in his movement cracked, and the elf blood under the fairy softness surged through. The pace changed hard. He drove deeper, steadier, then rougher, turning the slow joining into a relentless claiming that made the wooden walls feel too thin ....

Kai’s voice come apart in short helpless sounds. Every thrust landed like Milo had stopped asking and started taking everything Kai had already agreed to give.

By the end Kai was shuddering on the sheets, legs weak, stomach streaked, body still clenching around the aftershocks. Milo stayed over him for a moment, flushed and luminous with heat, looking unbearably satisfied.

"God, you are so good," Milo murmured.

He pulled out carefully, cleaned himself, and stretched out beside Kai with one arm loosely curved toward him. For a while there was only cooling sweat and the soft distance of Miloria below them.

Then Milo, still half-lazy with afterglow, spoke into the quiet as if the thought had simply drifted up through the pleasure.

"People always act like first loves are supposed to stay preserved under glass. I think that is nonsense. First loves are for teaching you the shape of wanting. They are not always the place you are meant to remain."

Kai turned his head on the pillow. Milo had a way of sending someone into deep thoughts with his random statements..he was a speak before think kind of guy. It was these same random statements that made him make up with the others.

The words should have passed as ordinary conversation. Instead they landed in a deeper room in his mind and brushed against a name he had been circling for weeks without letting it fully form.

Caelum.

The capital. The knight. The clean force of first major attachment in this world before everything else piled on top of it and made his life look like a crowded ledger of dangerous men and unfinished consequences.

Somewhere beyond Eldoria’s floating beauty and Miloria’s secret canopy life, that thread still existed. Red Ledger or not. Auditor or not. He had stayed here long enough for the softer days to make him forget the larger board. Milo’s offhand remark cracked that comfort open.

Kai stared at the ceiling of living wood and felt the decision arrive with startling clarity.

He had to leave Eldoria.

Milo shifted beside him.

"You went quiet. Was the philosophy too much after sex? I can insult your flying instead if that helps."

Kai looked at him, really looked at him, and felt a complicated rush of gratitude that had nothing to do with romance alone. Milo had given him three weeks of air, laughter, chase, and touch. He had also, without meaning to, handed him the reminder Kai needed.

"Thank you," Kai said.

Milo blinked.

"For the sex? You are welcome. I was excellent."

Kai huffed out a short breath, rolled over, and kissed him again with clear intent. Milo made a surprised sound into his mouth and then answered it as Kai pushed him onto his back and swung a leg over his hips.

"Wait," Milo said against his lips, half-laughing, already hardening again under the contact. "What kind of thank you is this?"

"The efficient kind."

Milo still looked confused when Kai guided him back in, but confusion did not stop him from gripping Kai’s waist and thrusting up to meet the sudden second round. This one was quicker, rougher, less embroidered with romance and more driven by the bright restless energy of a decision that needed burning into the body before it became action. Kai rode him until the pleasure broke sharp and clean through both of them again, left his palms braced on Milo’s stomach, and finally exhaled like something in his chest had clicked into place.

Milo stared up at him, thoroughly used and thoroughly baffled.

"I feel like I won and lost something at the same time."

Kai leaned down, kissed the corner of his mouth once, and pulled away to gather his clothes.

"I have to tell the others something."

"Now?"

"Now."

Kai dressed fast, stepped out onto the upper platform, and called Hover back into his limbs with a practiced internal turn. The lightness answered.

Below him, Miloria continued in soft motion, children somewhere still arguing about apples and unfair tags.

He looked at it one probable last time with real fondness and no intention of pretending the past three weeks had not mattered.

Then he flew.

He cut down through the canopy toward the palace side of Eldoria with the decision already firm in his mouth. It was time to leave the floating city. Time to stop hiding in beauty. Time to face the capital again, Red Ledger and all, and the first name that had just risen back through the noise of every other entanglement.

Behind him, Milo remained in the doorway of the crown-house, bare-chested and confused and still flushed from being thanked in the least verbal way possible.