a few years into your study at the akademiya, you find yourself in need of a new roommate - your own is graduating (finally), and sumeru rents are subsidised for students but are still more than you, a poor farmer’s child from liyue, can afford alone.
your roommate is not the only one graduating - you’ve heard rumours that tighnari, the amurta student with a focus on botany with the big fox ears and soft fluffy tail, needs to find himself a new roommate too. he’s terribly popular; very smart and very dedicated, as well as being nice to look at and kind-hearted and willing to lend a hand whenever someone has genuine need. you’re sure he must be inundated with offers. you’ve only spoken to him a few times - the two of you are in different darshans - but … well. you’d be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t like him, and didn’t find him handsome, and wouldn’t like to get to know him better–
you’re very surprised when he approaches you - but he words it very simply. you’re quiet, and he needs someone quiet to room with. you’re hard-working, and he appreciates that about you. you have never treated him like he’s some mascot to be photographed and paraded about. you’re both the same age - early twenties, perhaps - and he’s heard rumours that you’re very good at what you do, so you might even graduate together … will you be his roommate?
(and perhaps, a little part of him doesn’t understand why he’s chosen you, but does understand that you smell good and you look pretty and you make his thoughts turn to mush when he thinks of you too hard, make his cheeks heat and his tail begin to swish).
it goes very well. the two of you are suited for this roommate agreement; both of you do your shares of the cleaning, your shares of cooking (he’s a better cook than you, but you’re less likely to lock yourself in your room for hours on end when you get too into a project). you talk to one another and crack jokes and smile and share research - it’s going extremely well!
until one night you let yourself back in after a gruelling day - a practical exam, and you’re feeling fit to drop and aware you’re sweating, your hair plastered to your head, your clothes all messed up. you want to shower and then go straight to bed - but as you walk through the common area, you hear a high pitched whining. a whimpering noise - tighnari, and it sounds like he’s in pain. all other thoughts go out the window as you rush for his room, open the door, calling his name in concern–
he’s in the centre of his bed clad in a too-large tank top and a pair of boxer shorts. his blankets and pillows and everything else soft in the room has been piled all around him, almost as if he’s nesting - and he’s cuddling his tail, whimpering, whining, his eyes blown wide and his mouth open to reveal sharp fangs and panting. when he’d heard you approach, though, his head had snapped up - and you meet eyes that are almost glowing in the dim dusklight of the window, as tighnari grits out (cheeks red, choking on his words);
“you should close the door. you shouldn’t … be here …”
his ears are flicking from side to side, and it’s hard for him to get out his words - they sound thick on his tongue. he breathes in deeply, and you’re horribly aware that you can’t smell pleasant, but tighnari just lets out a whine that sounds almost needy. you desperately try not to look at his bare shoulders, the toned thighs - but if you did, perhaps you’d notice how hard his cock is pressing against the front of the (flower patterned, cute–) boxers.
you protest. you say you’re worried about him, is he running a fever, you can get someone - you make the mistake of closing the door behind you. you make the mistake of approaching him, so that your scent wraps around him and envelopes every one of his senses (smells good, smells like you, wants to rub himself all over you until you smell like him … you smell fertile. you’re a good candidate for his mate, so sweet so soft so nice so compatible–).
tighnari mumbles apologies even as he pounces on you, and even as you’re being dragged back to the nest he’s made on his bed. in between pawing at you he’s mumbling things; you smell so good, he needs you so badly, he never thought that it would be this bad …
something from one of your voluntary classes in the amurta comes back to you. something about the habits of wild animals, their breeding cycles - and about how male desert foxes go into rut states where they simply need to be inside of something and breed something. you hesitantly reach up, running a hand over tighnari’s silky soft ears in a way that makes him growl-moan-purr in his throat. you spread your legs in an open invitation.
later on, when his senses have returned to him, tighnari thanks you for helping him through his first rut as he noses at your shoulder and sighs, cheek rubbing against your bare skin so his scent marks you. fennec foxes, he tells you, mate for life.
… that wouldn’t be so bad.
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
jbbartram-illu
dededos
annaxmalina
