Cheers Peggles~

A couple of days in the barracks, training, was enough to tire even someone very fit, like Kylar. He had went home first, see if Toukan was around. It was ritual, if he'd been gone for a couple of days doing something, he always would go and find Toukan as the first thing that he did - unless something else was majorly important. In this case, it had been sleep. He'd fallen asleep after sitting down, which he hadn't meant to do, since he had meant to only sit a moment before heading up to the place where his portal into the forest was to go and track Toukan down in the forest, since that was usually where he was when he wasn't at home, but there was no point on dwelling on that thought, now. He had travelled to the forest immediately upon waking up since Toukan was still not at home - not that it bothered Kylar. He found it a good thing that they were all co-dependant all the time, it made the time together sweeter and more intense.

The air in the forest had warmed recently. It was strange that despite the fact that the weather didn't change often - and days could last for weeks, it still got warmer and colder as summer and winter came and went. It was as if the seasons were beyond the control of whomever controlled the weather - The Twin Gods, in the case of the forest. Kylar had never met one as he could recall, but he could remember that Toukan had mentioned seeing them sometimes. They appeared in the forest, seemingly whenever they felt like it, whenever they had a whim to do so. He travelled through the forest without particular haste, Toukan could usually be found around the trees that were their other home, and if he wasn't there, well usually Kylar could just follow....he wasn't sure what it was. It was an instinct that lead him around. Sort of like by smell, but that wasn't just it, there was something else. He just was never sure what it was.

He approached the trees, Toukan was elsewhere, but if his instinct was right, he wasn't far. Kylar set out to find him...

--

Sorry for the late response, got really busy yesterday. We did some cleaning and then watched Eurovision and I didn't want to go on the internet so as to avoid spoilers.

Kylar followed the trail of the smell and the instinct, although the smell was becoming weaker since he was approaching the mint plants. Kylar smirked, he should have known immediately that Toukan would be here in the mint. He really liked the mint, to a degree that Kylar remembered Toukan telling him that Kylar himself was the only thing that he liked more than mint. The smirk morphed at the memory into a full grin as he kept walking, feeling instinctually that he was close, so close in fact, that upon turning his head, he saw his lover amongst some of the plants. He changed direction. Sometimes the instinct wasn't totally accurate, it lead him only to the general area, upon a certain distance he had to try and navigate by eye and smell. The mint had made that more difficult. His smile was bright as he got closer.

"Hey there," Kylar said as he drew into easy earshot, voice as usual, like liquid silk pouring forth from his mouth, lightly accented giving away his Scottish origin. Since he was a little excited to have found Toukan, the accent was a little stronger than normal, changing the sound of the words to a more distinctly Scottish lilt. It was an accent that he hadn't heard from anyone else in the forest, so he had seen some of the residents give him funny looks whenever they overheard it. He wasn't ever sure if that was a good thing.

Kylar returned the nuzzle with equal warmth, it was a good greeting style. The smell of mint was rather strong when he touched the other stag, and he noted with amusement that there were mint leaves stuck to his boyfriend's fur, and a few were now stuck to him. He pulled back from the nuzzle, the smile not having left his face. Where usually, such a bright smile would fade from him after a few moments because of the amusement, his smile simply wouldn't leave his face. He let out a soft contented sigh at having been reunited with Toukan.
"Sorry I was away longer than I expected," Kylar said, "We kinda screwed up the training, so they made us do it again. I did call a couple times, but ya must of been here." His tone was purposefully light, he held no annoyance, no irritation that Toukan wasn't there to pick up his call. Much of his boyfriend's life was in the forest or at the Dojo that his sister owned and he couldn't and didn't expect Toukan to simply wait around for him to be around or to call.

Hopefully, Toukan would be similarly unannoyed by the fact that he had been away longer than he had expected.

He considered the question a moment.
"It's not that it was hard as such," He began his explanation honestly, "It was more that...well, it was stealth training. We're a bunch of big guys haha, we haven't mastered the art of hiding ourselves." He laughed at the memory of it. A few of them, Kylar included were a good bit over six feet. Their appearance wasn't subtle and even with the camoflague it hadn't been hard for the other teams to find them, the first time. When they had gone back and done it again, they had adapted. They had learned quickly, so the second time had been a lot quicker for them. The exercise had been to hide from the other groups, and the groups scored points based on how long they avoided detection and those below a certain number had to do it over and over until they were sucessful. Kylar explained this to Toukan.

"But, overall, I'm fine," Kylar said, "How've you been?" He didn't want to hog the conversation topics, he was genuinely interested in how his lover was getting on.

"Come on, something interesting has to have happened," Kylar pried, decidedly nosily. Although an idea formed in his mind at that moment twisting the look of curiousity into something much more mischevous, a playful smirk - a dangerously playful smirk - appearing on his mouth, "Unless you've just been sleeping the whole time, knowing you, milove. You could have slept from the minute I left until I found you here. Would explain the leaves." His tone switching to something much more teasing. He enjoyed teasing Toukan, much as Toukan could enjoy teasing others as Kylar had observed during their time with Oura. It was all in the name of fun after all.

[Sorry, meant to reply sooner]

"Interesting fashion statement then, love," Kylar said, the smirk could be heard in his voice with his amusement over the idea, "Not many could pull off such an interesting fashion idea, but on you they work. Goes well with your rather minty scent." As he reached the end of his sentence, his ability to hold back laughter reached its end and with a rather loud inhale as if he couldn't breathe, he burst into very loud and very amused laughter.

"They aren't right?" He asked through the laughter.

Kylar's laugh was interrupted by a rather loud snort at the comment about Toukan starting a new trend before swiftly going onto his haunches, which prompted yet more laughter from the blonde deer. He looked around them for anyone else - he expected at least someone giving them sort of skeptical or disapproving look, but yet there was no one around which was a little odd. Usually some unknown fawn or another came to Toukan at least once every five minutes especially when he was being adorable. Kylar knew that was an exaggeration, but that was what it felt like around his silver furred lover; fawns seemed to love to come to him. It both amused and annoyed Kylar - amused him for the idea that Toukan was a fawn magnet, and also because the fawns were usually terrified of Kylar himself, he had sent a few running with a simple glare before, but it was annoying because they usually picked romantic moments in which to turn up and that distracted them from the romance. Kylar was not fond of the mood being interrupted, especially by children. He had no desire to have his own.

His thoughts returned to the moment as his laughter finally paused when he realised that he was going to need to take a breath.

"Need help, love?" Kylar asked noticing a few leaves still stuck to the reindeer despite his attempts at removing them. The mint clung to Toukan - there was a joke in there somewhere, but if the heavier breathing that he was experiencing to catch up from not breathing whilst laughing was telling him anything, it was that finding a joke now, and laughing again would be a tad too soon for his lungs, they would protest with pain and black spots in his vision and from his experiences in training, that was a feeling to be avoided. Endurance testing left you like that, with your body begging for mercy whilst you had to remain as stoic as possible. Conditions were rough out in the battles in Afghanistan, and whilst there was no word of deployment, such an order was never far from the minds of the soon-to-be soldiers in his company.

He kicked those thoughts out, those were unhappy thoughts that took him away from his time with his boyfriend, so they had to remain in the drawer for now. They were thoughts to be used to distract during training.

Kylar let out a light chuckle at the reindeer chewing on the mint leaf that he had just plucked from his fur before going to work. He gently nudged at his lover's fur with the tips of his antlers to dislodge other leaves from him, making a little pile of discarded leaves at their feet.
"More clung to you than I thought," Kylar commented.

Just going to track this. c:

Toukan blinked. That caught him off-guard. If he didn't know any better, he would've believed it. Instead, he raised a brow and replied with an equally flat expression, "Well, I would hope not." He tried not to laugh.

Either something was very wrong here, or Kylar would make a really good spy with acting skills like that. Either way, Toukan couldn't help starting to feel worried.

Relief instantly flooded him. And now he felt a little silly for starting to worry like that. He returned the gesture with a nuzzle. "You'd probably be a pretty good actor with skills like that."

Toukan was suddenly hit with a mischievous thought, feeling a smirk appear on his face as he spoke. "You can just make it up to me later with a...different kind of performance."

(Who are you, and what have you done with Toukan.)

Toukan lifted a brow, setting his expression into one of disinterest. "Well...if you don't think you can live up to your acting skills, then nevermind." He completed the statement by turning his head away, facing off to the side somewhere.

He tried not to shudder, but couldn't stop the little rush of breath the other's words caused. Followed by the flush of color visible through his fur.

So much for the look of disinterest.

He snorted in amusement at having been caught. "Always interested," he replied honestly. No point in continuing to act uninterested when his act had failed already.