#read more bc these eat up dash space and im self-conscious

[baladric]

We've had Beshelar being forced to relax but can we get the opposite? Cala being made to do physical exercise and trying not to die in the process

this is exceedingly silly and i thank you for the excuse to write it <3

Cala would not call himself dramatic—how could anyone carry that descriptor when Deret Beshelar was sucking all the air out of any given room with the palpable force of his indignation—but he would admit to the occasional urge to, shall we say, overstate.

In this vein: The world was ending and Cala Athmaza was at its center, red as a ripe tomato and absolutely sodden with sweat.

"This is," he gasped, hands on his knees and lungs making a bid for freedom through his esophagus, "the worst thing thou hast ever done to me."

And oh, he could hear Deret's exasperation. It was a certain exhale he had, too studied to be anything but a mask for the sigh he would rather have given.

"Thou'rt fine," Deret said. "'Tis the mildest possible calisthenics. A six year-old could do them."

"Goo-goo," Cala panted, "Ga-ga."

Deret paused. An it were possible to express the abstract concept of a question mark, his silence would have done just that.

"What?"

"Babytalk," Cala said, glancing up at his partner through the fogged frame of his glasses. "If a six year-old can do this, then clearly I am in sooth a literal infant—for I cannot do this, and thy insistence that I do is a wanton cruelty I would not anticipate from a First Nohecharis to His Imperial Serenity Edrehasi—"

Deret made a noise of utter disgust, and Cala thought he might do well to be embarrassed of the way it brightened his mood. But then it was hardly his fault that his better half was so desperately fun to rile.

"Buffoon," Deret said, and though he studiously avoided Cala's smile, the pink in his ears said he knew Cala was going to needle him post-haste, and that they were both going to enjoy it.

"I do so love it when thou trial a new eke-name," Cala said. "Give me another then."

"Cala Athmaza," Deret said, and ah! There! The arms folded across his sturdy chest, the tantalizing flex of his biceps, his shoulders. Perhaps he would accept some... hrm, cooperative grappling as a form of exercise.

For that was what this was about: The so-named dav of the Alcethmeret had taken it into their collective, nosy little minds that Cala needed to exercise. All because he had been a little out of breath when he topped the stairs to Edrehasivar's chambers! Honestly!

"We're not saying thou needst run marathons," Nazhiris had said, his doe eyes gone all limpid with concern; Kiru, at his side, simply looked unimpressed with the lot of them. "But thou shouldst take better care of thyself. Thy down time can't all be reading and—"

He did not complete the sentence, for it behooved the lot of them not to verbally acknowledge what they all knew to be the truth of the First Nohecharei's relationship. Still, the point was understood.

Cala had been prepared to countermand this statement, or at least to deflect it, when Deret had cleared his throat, and in that quiet way he had of speaking important things, said, "Wouldst consign thy Emperor to an untempered blade, that it might break when he needs it most?"

"Der—"

"His sword and his staff," Deret said, his eyes fixed upon Cala's. Cala recalled the first time he had seen Deret in the proper light of the sun, when he had realized the flat gray of his eyes was, in sooth, a pale, winsome jade.

Cala sighed, and replied with the words of their mutual oath—safe to utter only in the hearing of nohecharei.

"His stone and his shade."

And so, he had agreed—to exercise. Cstheio save him from this blight.

"Alright, alright," he said, straightening at last from his trembling hunch. His heart throbbed a worrying tattoo in his chest, its beat so heavy and visceral that it made him really entirely too aware that he was actually a beast made of a lot of wet things. "What's next, my dearest despot?"

And wonder of wonders, Deret smiled, just a little.

"Sit-ups," he said.

Smugness was a terrible (read: excellent) look on him