Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/7194023.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Original_Work
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-06-14 Words: 2403
****** Not Even In Your Dreams ******
by TalysAlankil
Summary
     Matthias experienced many firsts. But when it came to love and
     attraction, they all came to him in a turmoil.
Notes
     I liked writing about Cell in another short story, so I went on the
     hunt for more character prompts for another From The Earth Into The
     Sky character. Cobbled this together from a couple prompts about
     first times until I just decided to pick my own firsts.
The first time Matthias was attracted to someone, he had just turned fifteen
years old.
At that age, he knew what sex was, of course. He had felt sexual arousal as
most teenagers did, he had experienced with it as most teenagers did, he had
listened to others talk about it as most teenagers did. But he had never really
been attracted to someone until then. He had even accepted that maybe he could
not feel attraction—he knew he would not be alone in it.
So when it happened anyway, it hit him with that much more surprise. It came to
him as a string of problems.
Problem: the boy was one of his neighbors. Problem: he had dated girls already,
many times. Problem: he had clearly expressed, also many times, that he had no
interest in boys. Problem: he and Matthias were not on good terms. Problem:
Matthias could only seem to find interest in the boy's body, which did not help
motivate him to move past their enmity. Problem: the boy's brother had enlisted
in the Witch Hunters, and the boy was planning to follow him, and Matthias was
a magician.
Problem: the boy noticed Matthias's stares. Problem: Matthias could not stop
himself from staring anyway.
"What're you looking at?" he would call out with unabashed cruelty.
They hung out in the same sphere, in the streets of Carmae with other kids
their age. They were not really Matthias's friends, but they were all he had.
So it was hard to ignore the boy altogether. It was even harder, apparently, to
resist from bumping into him, or hovering close to him.
"Seriously, what do you want?"
What did Matthias want? His brain could conjure quite a few things; the rest of
his body had even more ideas. He did not voice them—but his body betrayed his
thoughts well enough on its own.
The boy crowded into Matthias's space, and froze when he brushed against
Matthias's body, his eyes falling to the hard line in Matthias's pants. He
stepped back, sneering. "Seriously? Get lost."
Matthias finally found his voice. "I just—" 
The boy cut him off. "You know what? Fine. Let's give you what you want."
Before Matthias could process his words, the boy grabbed the front of
Matthias's shirt, and pulled hard. He caught the back of Matthias's head with
his other hand, bringing their lips together. He was harsh, his grip hard
enough to bruise, his kiss a claim of dominance. It was nothing like Matthias
had expected or imagined, but through the shock and pain, his body reacted in
spite of itself. His arousal grew, his heart sped up, his body went pliant
under the boy's hands.
The boy smiled and chuckled against Matthias's lips, who thought for a moment
that he had gotten what he wanted, against all odds. Then he identified the
sourness in the sound, the acid mockery, just as the boy pried Matthias away.
"Not even in your dreams," the boy hissed. "I'd rather die."
He shoved Matthias back, hard enough to spin him around and make him fall face
first on the ground. A snicker reached Matthias through the haze of pain,
tears, and betrayal, and suddenly, the ground shook under them.
Matthias realized his own magics had caused that only a moment before some of
the other kids caught on as well. He scrambled to a crouch, scanning their
faces, finding shock and horror and—on the boy's face—revulsion. Something
else, too, something Matthias had never seen but that a primal part of him
recognized anyway.
The boy moved first, bringing his fist down at Matthias, but it never
connected. Matthias's spell caught him mid-swing, binding him. He noticed the
other kids' confusion, wove threads of Dream magic to ramp it up and slow them
down just for a bit—but his spell wavered and failed. Some were too strong-
minded, or he was too inexperienced, or he was dealing with too much at once.
He stepped back, relying on the form of magics he was strongest at, Water
Chemiamancy. The spell rolled in waves under his feet, covering the pavement in
thin ice—an easy task in the midst of winter. Then as he recoiled further, the
ice spread, coiling around the kids' boots and gripping them in place. It would
not last, but it was enough to give him time to run away.
Matthias ran home, where he could not dare to tell his parents what had
happened. Instead he went to their immediate neighbor, Simon, the man who had
taught Matthias to use magics in the first place.
In the end, when the Witch Hunters came the next day, it was all Simon could do
to die and allow Matthias to escape. Matthias's parents were taken as well,
executed for sheltering a magician.
Matthias got out, ridden with guilt and anger. Swearing to never let his guard
down again.
===============================================================================
The first time Matthias had sex with someone was less than a year later, but he
felt like a different man altogether. He had met a sorceress, Gaia, who ran a
network of magicians all throughout Anemos. He had joined her, proven his
abilities to her, and made himself a place among her ranks.
Being with other magicians was exhilarating, but he always felt a disconnect
from the sorcerers, those who were born with the ability to use magics. They
had had no choice in being here—and more importantly, they had rarely worked as
hard as Matthias had had to to control their magics.
So he naturally drifted towards other magicians like him, taught and not born.
One of them was Cesare, a boy Matthias's age from the Lias clan of the Eoguan
desert, taught by the Entar clan before he had left to Anemos to shake up the
system that kept magicians fearing for their lives across the world. 
Matthias's home city of Carmae was not very cosmopolitan; he had never met
someone like Cesare, let alone gotten to know them. The boy's bronzed skin,
clashing against the bleached blond of his hair, gave him a vibrant warmth
unlike anything Matthias had seen—or perhaps that was his smile and green eyes.
Sometimes it was hard to tell.
They were staying at the capital, Aquila, at the time; there was plenty of
places for the two of them to go alone when they wanted to. Cesare showed
Matthias around the taverns of the city, told him about his home in the desert,
taught him bits of his language. In exchange Matthias told him how he had
started to study magics on his own from a book he had pilfered from the Witch
Hunters themselves; how he had found a mentor in his neighbor; how a boy—and
Matthias's foolishness and temper—had ended up being the reason Matthias's
family and mentor had died where he had lived. Cesare grieved with him, told
him about his aunt who had met the same fate, and they had moved on. It had
been the first time Matthias could tell the story without feeling hollow
afterwards.
Other magicians teased Matthias and Cesare, and Matthias wondered what he felt.
If this was love, it was highly overhyped—Matthias liked Cesare, was
comfortable around him, but it did not feel like more than friendship. A
friendship with attraction laced within it. Was that love? He doubted it.
He decided not to care. People would talk; he would have his best friend. A
best friend who did not hesitate to tell Matthias that he was questioning his
own identity, that Matthias had made him wonder if he, too, liked boys. A best
friend Matthias did not hesitate to kiss, first as experimentation, then again
with more hunger on both their ends.
Taverns in Anemos were often built with a separate area, made of alcoves for
couples to find privacy in, and that evening found them heading to one. All
that separated them from the tavern and from other couples were thick
curtains—enough to hide them from sight and dull the ambient noises, but little
else. Matthias did not care, because Cesare's lips were on his, curious and
enthusiastic. He dimly recalled another pair of lips, but it was hard to think
about the cruel boy from Carmae when Cesare's touch was all warm and tender.
"I've never done this before," Matthias confessed when Cesare's hands slid
under his shirt.
"Me neither, obviously," Cesare said, grinning, but he stopped moving. "Do you
want to stop?"
"Not even in your dreams," Matthias retorted, tearing off his own shirt in a
swift motion.
Caresses turned to fumbling as they worked to remove clothing. Hunger turned to
wonder as they got to see each other's bodies, then to desire when Matthias
dared to touch Cesare. Curiosity turned to heat as they pressed against each
other, finding the right position on the padded cot in their alcove.
Their enthusiasm got the best of them, bringing their efforts to a climax too
soon, but they laughed it off. They rested on the cot together, sitting with
their backs against a curtain, legs tangled together.
Cesare pressed a kiss to Matthias's jaw. "I loved this. Thanks for helping me
figure it out."
Matthias leaned into the touch. "But?"
"But I don't think I love you." Too quickly, he added, "You're my friend, and
you're gorgeous, and I wouldn't mind doing this again, but—I don't see us being
more."
A chuckle escaped Matthias before he could hold it back.
"What'd I say? This isn't funny; I'm being serious!"
Matthias turned to look Cesare in the eye. "I believe you," he said, kissing
his forehead. "I felt the same way, really." Cesare closed his eyes, letting
out a deep sigh, and Matthias chuckled again. "That's good, right?"
"It is," Cesare said, nodding. "Now, about what I said about doing this again…"
Matthias grinned. "I thought you'd never ask."
"Well, there's a lot more I wanted to try." Cesare reached for the small table,
where a container of oil lay in wait. Matthias tensed up when he saw it, but
Cesare held it up to him. "Do you think you could—help me try this out too?"
He could. And he did.
===============================================================================
The first time Matthias was confronted to love, was a first in other ways. It
was the first time he had a student assigned to him by Gaia. It was also the
first time he slept with one of his students. Perhaps there was something to be
criticized about that—Cesare certainly did not bother refraining from
teasing—but Gaia had known what she was doing when she made Matthias, still a
few months shy of seventeen years old and already known by then for his ways as
a serial charmer, into one of her lieutenants.
His student was named Yori. She was his age, she was from Pratoria, and she had
Matthias call her 'she' even though she was not a girl, or a boy, but a yosei.
Matthias was not entirely sure what it meant—she had told him the pronouns in
Airsa just could not match the ones she used in her native language. What he
did know was that her slender build, her chocolate eyes, the way she retorted
to Matthias's teases without missing a beat, was bound to make him attracted to
her.
Maybe it was the experience he had accumulated in a few months of sleeping
around—with or without Cesare, with or without magicians, with or without
strangers, but always with boys around his age—but it took surprisingly little
effort to charm Yori. He caught her staring at him during their lessons, saw
the smiles she hid when he was flirting with her. When he told her she did not
need his training anymore, she argued that she would rather stay his student
anyway, and kissed Matthias.
He knew it was crossing a line. He also knew that, Pratorian genders aside, the
feeling of Yori pressed against him was deeply familiar, that her body was
familiar. It was all he could do to cast the necessary wards to make sure no
one would overhear them or come waltzing in, before his attention was called
away.
Matthias did not feel any regret afterwards, and maybe he should have. Yori did
not express any regret afterwards, and maybe she should have. But Matthias
caught Yori's gaze, and saw the light in her eyes—the one he had never felt for
anyone.
He did not find the courage to tell her what Cesare had told him after their
first time. Perhaps because he knew what her answer would be. He never
pretended to love her, either, but when he moved on from her, he knew he had
broken her heart. And yet Yori remained his student, against his
recommendations.
===============================================================================
The first time Matthias fell in love was in the midst of tragedy, as he just
turned twenty-two. Gaia's network had just been found out, their home lost,
many of them dead. Matthias himself had held Cesare in his arms as he died,
arriving too late to save him but just on time to avenge him.
They settled in Iuliae, and suddenly, Gaia was sending a new student his way,
one of her own students. A boy of seventeen named Adam, with Aarder dark skin
but light brown hair, and black eyes with a mystifying, piercing intensity.
Adam was just another student Matthias would flirt with, maybe sleep with, he
thought at first. A sorcerer who had had it easy with magics. But Adam, it
turned out, shared Matthias's dream, his passion for analyzing magics to their
most fundamental level. Adam, it turned out, could grow comfortable with
Matthias's banter—never enough to initiate anything like Yori had, but enough
to make their exchanges leave Matthias pleasantly giddy and lightheaded. Adam,
it turned out, was unafraid to be challenged, willing to prove his worth.
Before he knew it, Matthias had opened up to Adam in return. Before he knew it,
he cared for Adam, for his happiness and wellbeing, with a passion he had never
felt before.
Before he knew it, he was told to give Adam a mission that would test his
loyalty. A mission that would tear his heart out. A mission that left Matthias
with only bad choices.
But that is another story.
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