"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
Pteron knows that his battered heart has returned to his chest only because of the way it clenches so tightly; a vise for the achingly long moment when it seems that Aegean does not respond. But then he does, and the vise shatters Pteron’s core into ten thousand violet butterflies that whirl about so dizzyingly that he nearly stumbles. Instead he presses closer, chest to chest, and when he hears that first soft moan he swears it vibrates down to the very core of his being.
”Aegean,” He whispers against him, mouthing his name like a prayer, ”Aegean”.
Kissing comes as easy as smiling for Pteron; he has long lost count of those he has given and taken, stolen and returned. Yet none of them have prepared him for this, for this roaring fire inside of him that is even brighter than the starlight that replaces the grey fog. He marvels that Aegean does not pull away from the heat of it, scorched, and that his own knees do not give beneath him. Some part of him is aware the the world around them changes color, but no part wants to know anything but Aegean.
Only when there is darkness around them, only when Aegean’s mouth leaves his own and trace his cheek, does he even open his eyes, and the ghost of the boy’s lips across his throat elicits a breathy sigh. The sigh becomes a whimper of pleasure when Aegean bites down, and Pteron is sure he is moments away from combustion.
This is more than he ever had let himself imagine he might have of Aegean. Pteron would have been content to simply watch him - even from a distance - to take pleasure in the mere sight of him. Yet as Aegean speaks again, calls him ‘the sun’, Pteron knows that just looking will never satisfy him again.
Though it still bleeds freely from the first blow, Pteron offers his heart up a second time. He bares it, much like he bares his throat (please, another kiss, one with teeth to match the need he feels), when he replies to Aegean’s words with his own.
”And you the moon,” he breathes, eyes cast toward the pitch-black heavens as though he pleads for their aid. ”The moon.” Pteron kisses the so-soft place behind his white ear. ”My moon.”
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean experiences so much of his life as if in a dream.
It is muted, muffled, soft. He feels the vibrancy of colors, but not in their full saturation. He feels the joy of life but not with its full volume. It’s the way he likes it—the way that he prefers it. That dreamy quality to his life, the detached feeling he can have, even when he feels such brilliant, vibrant emotions.
But this is not muted at all.
This is everything coming roaring to life in him and his head swims with the vibrancy of it.
His name sounds so different when Pteron says it, and he cherishes it, learns every syllable as though he can commit it to memory. His smile is parted and the breath that he does manage to catch such a shallow thing so that he feels nearly weightless, his body floating, his mind snapping with the reality of it.
He learns that his teeth can drive a whimper from Pteron and his heart races. His tongue touches his bottom lip to taste the salt and he is surprised to find that he can taste the other boy on it. He wonders if he will aways be able to taste him there, if he will carry this moment with him forever.
But he does not need to savor it for now—does not need to store it away.
Because they are still together and Pteron offers him his throat again. Aegean is greedy in his want, in his exploration that is at both slow, laborious and exhilarating. His teeth scrape down the other’s neck, pinching the flesh between his dull teeth, letting his tongue slowly salve the skin where he leaves.
Pteron kisses him and he smiles, his exhale catching on the edge of his tongue.
“I will gladly burn in your heavens for the night,” he says on a sigh.
For all nights, he thinks, but such things are implied. There is no need to say such truths.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
Pteron could believe this night is a dream: it is certainly like many he has before.
He has dreamt Aegean, panting and breathless, his amethyst eyes gone hazy with satisfaction. He has dreamt Aegean, curled around him and over him and beneath him. He dreams of Aegean, Aegean, Aegean. It is a wonder that each exhaled breath does not hold that name, for each indrawn one is saturated with the taste and smell and feel of him.
The stars overhead are winking at him, Pteron thinks, their dimming and brightening a reflection of the tide that he feels rising high with each touch. Each scrape of blunt teeth against his throat, the pinch and release, draws a shameless cry from his dark lips. The whole world has narrowed to the length of his neck and Aegean’s teeth, and Pteron can feel the other boy’s smile against his tender skin. In his dreams, Pteron had done the kissing, he had been the one to draw out the moans. That is how he knows this is real: it is so much better than anything he could have possibly imagined.
That is not to say he does not want some of what he has pictured though, and he pulls back. His breath comes in pants, his mouth half-open in a what he knows is a futile effort to regulate his breathing. He doesn’t even want to, he realizes, not when each breathe adds a little more of Aegean to his mouth and throat and lungs. There can never be enough, he knows, wonder in his olive eyes as he gazes at Aegean. Wonder and awe and unabashed devotion carried on that rising tide.
I love you. He mouths the words, knowing they will be lost in his panting. They feel so right though, so true, and he starts to say them, “I…” only to bite them off in a grunt when Aegean sighs an answer to Pteron’s claim.
For the night, he says, the night.
Just like the moon, Aegean rips away the cresting tide. A sob fills the space where it had been building, a sob that Pteron buries against the flawless skin of Aegean’s throat before it can betray him.
For this one night.
He won’t let the other boy see him cry. He can’t. Instead he takes the heart that Aegean crushes beneath his hooves and buries it deep inside him. He buries it so deep that he can forget it is even there, and then it is just the two of them again instead of the two of them and his foolish heart. The two of them, with Aegean opening beneath his touch like a night-blooming cereus, precious and delicate and truly a king of the night. At first Pteron’s teeth are less delicate than Aegean’s had been, greedy and desperate to bury the sourness of the cry he has stifled. But he cannot bear the thought of damaging him, and he kisses each bruise with the tenderest of lips, each brush of them an apology.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he confesses, and if the words are choked, that is surely to be expected. “But I will do anything.” Pteron’s voice cracks at the last word, the truth crawling out of the grave he’s dug for it within his chest. “Anything,” he repeats, flattening his heart for Aegean to trample across just for the joy of having been touched, and knowing he will do so until the moon falls from the sky.
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Something is wrong.
Aegean doesn’t have the word for it—can’t put a name to it—but he knows that something is amiss. There is something about the way that the boy is wrapping around him, the air shifting. It keeps that same electrical current, the same buzz underneath it all, but there’s something sadder, something darker, and it twinges at Aegean’s poet heart—leaves him confused and aching and wishing for some kind of answer.
He does not stop the way that he curls around Pteron.
Does not stop the way that he kisses him, the way that he exposes his throat so that the other’s greedy kisses can reach him, biting and nipping. It is rougher than he expected, but he does not cringe away from the touch. The edge of that violence feels right, somehow strikes at the flint of his heart.
But when Pteron speaks again, when his voice cracks on the word, Aegean cannot deny the anchor that has tied around him. That feeling that curls in his stomach like smoke, promising him that something is wrong, that something is broken, that he has somehow managed to fracture this beautiful thing.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, his voice smooth and calm and detached from whatever turbulence he may feel inside. “I don’t know either,” he smiles, pressing his head into Pteron’s neck and breathing deeply, letting that feel of spice and pine fill him and remind him, imprint on him so that he may always remember it.
The fog around them lightens just slightly, turning grey instead of the midnight black, but it remains opaque. It continues to hide them both away, pushes away the rest of the world. Gently, Aegean begins to fill the sky with stars, bringing them down low to them, twinkling and bright around them both.
They swim in it, the heavens manifesting in the air around and between them.
“We can go slow,” he closes his eyes and then presses his cheek to Pteron’s neck before pushing his chest against his and resting on the broad curve of his back. “We do not need to burn to ash tonight.”
I will wait eons for you, he thinks, holding him quietly. I will wait forever to burn.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
The soft whisper of reassurance is a cool cloth on Pteron’s burning head, and he shudders against the other boy, hiding his face in the silken strands of his white hair. That Aegean can soothe him is no marvel – Pteron is quite certain that the boy could tie him in a knot and then untwist him without leaving a single kink. Not one visible to the naked eye, anyway, and Pteron would bury them away with his other hurts. Aegean does not need to see those, not when they might hurt him in turn. The thought of hurting him is unfathomable; the dun knows guilt all to well, and guilt over Aegean would surely swallow him whole.
I don’t know either, he says, and Pteron wipes away his tears on Aegean’s mane, grateful for this nearness that lets him hide. He breathes deeply, the stillness between them only a bank to the fire. It still burns, something separate from his shattered heart, and he understands with a sudden sharp ache exactly what the nereid had meant. It is not love, but it will do. It is better than nothing, and Pteron knows that that he will never again be able to bear nothing between himself and the glowing creature beside him. Anything, he had said, and anything he means. It’s enough to just stand here, his head resting on the soft plane of Aegean’s back, breathing in the cold mountain air and watching the world turn from black to grey, a cocoon with only the two of them and the stars.
This quiet moment is the most perfect his has ever had.
If he closes his eyes, he can imagine that the way Aegean nestles against him is a habit. He can pretend that this is how they always stand, observers of these wonders that the antlered stallion spins for them. He opens his eyes again, just to look at the stars, and the way that the back beneath his chin glows like the most perfect moon. The soft rise and fall of Aegean’s breath is soothing, and the illusion that Pteron weaves within his own mind elicits a warm glow where he’d thought there might always be damage. Pretending is better than nothing.
We can go slow, Aegean tells him, and Pteron smiles against his spine, pressing a blue kiss to the spot. Slow, he thinks, yes. He will savor this night that the other boy has spun between them, will prolong each moment so that he might remember it forever. They need not burn to ash, Aegean says, as though Pteron’s is not already a charred mess inside.
“Whatever you want,” Pteron promises, and the breath he takes to speak is flavored with the snow and violets of Aegean’s soft skin. It is a marvel, and Pteron kisses the spot again, and then the spot beside it. Slow, he reminds himself, but slow becomes more difficult as the trail of his tender kisses travel toward the point of his hip, and then along the softer skin of Aegean’s thight. His dull teeth tease at the tender skin there, and then drag along the curve of his rump with as much delicacy as he can manage. Slow, Pteron tells himself, even as his breathing grows ragged with the labor of restraint.
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean’s heart rate slows into syrup as they come to rest one another.
He closes his eyes and lets the moment sink into his bones, engrave itself upon the marrow. He does not try to study it or pick it apart or lose himself in the details of it. Instead, he floats up to the clouds and enjoys it in whole. He feels himself swallow the heavens until the embers of the star fire burns his belly and until the enormity of it sinks into him, becomes part of him, swells in him like life itself.
Pteron presses against his neck, presses the warmth of kisses down his spine.
He shudders beneath the touch, letting the sensation rattle down each and every vertebrae but continues to let the fog permeate his mind. He won’t let this take the same turn it had before—where his teeth and his lips had turned it sour. Where something beneath the beauty of the moment had curled until it felt wrong and broken—until he could practically feel the unnamed grief as an undercurrent to their embrace.
So keeps his heart slow, his breathing even.
He smiles when Pteron kisses his back, when he travels down his spine. He feels the heat of those heavens flare for moment within him, threaten his sleepy hold on his control. Another shiver that races down his back as he feels teeth against the delicate flesh of his leg and then a soft moan from his throat as he feels the fog twist into something more dangerous, the control beginning to slip away from him.
But he remembers the confusion he had felt, the sorrow, the ache that something was wrong.
So he pulls back, reaches over to brush his impossibly white lips against the other boys hip before he curls toward him, ducking his antlered head so that he can press a gentle kiss to Pteron’s mouth. He lets it linger for a moment, tasting the honeysuckle, before he breathes, “I want slow.” There is no reprimand in his voice or shyness or anything but his sweet, innocent request as he presses another kiss before resting his head against Pteron’s and exhaling slowly. “I want to know what it is to sleep curled next to you.”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
There is nothing in the world more important than the two of them surrounded by the stars and the cold winter wind. There is nothing else in the world at all for Pteron, who smiles into the quiver that his touch elicits in the white expanse of Aegean’s thigh, who drinks in the distant moan with a shiver of his own. The desire that curls below his belly is warm and heavy, but slow feels simpler than it had a moment ago, before he had known that slow would elicit such glorious reactions from the boy beside him. He reaches out for another taste, determined, only to feel a featherlight touch against his own side, and look up to see Aegean watching him.
Pteron blinks away the haze of his single-minded focus to find Aegean curling against him, pressing a sweet kiss to his mouth. The tobiano reacts slowly, the stupor of his desire difficult to shake away. He does though, when Aegean repeats that he wants slow, and when he does he is reminded of the other things that the kissing has let him forget. Before his heart can fall again, Aegean catches it with the words that follow his second kiss, and Pteron knows even before he speaks that he will to rip his chest open a third time in the the hopes that perhaps this time, Aegean might finally accept what he offers.
This time though, he uses words.
With their heads pressed together, he tastes the hardy grass and the cold mountain water Aegean has drank, and lets himself imagine for one close-eyed moment that perhaps what he wants might come true. “I will give you slow, because you want it and I cannot imagine a night better spent than giving you everything you want, even if that is just to fall sleep here in your stars. But…” Here his voice catches, because he wants more than that, and is terrified that saying it aloud with end with another sweet deflection by the boy beside him. Pteron knows that there will be no hiding his reaction to a third rejection, and so he takes a breath and a plunge.
“But I want more, too. I want to watch the sun rise with you in the morning, and the next morning, and every morning after that.” He takes a breath now, because that is the easy part, the part that does not make him flush at the courage it takes to say the words out loud. “I love you, and I want you to love me back.” Pteron is reluctant to pull away from the sweet warmth of Aeagan’s neck, but he needs to see this, needs to avoid the easy road of hiding his face in the curtain of sweet-smelling hair.
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean’s heart has never been a faithful thing, even to himself. For all of his own introverted nature, the way that he lives in his own head more than in the world around him, his heart is a wild thing. It has always loved too deeply, too freely. It has felt too much and felt it too quickly—and he has never been one to think that he should put a stop to it. He has never thought that perhaps it was too much, that he was too much. It was easier to just live without boundaries, without concerns for the consequences.
But even now, he knows that there is a difference.
The way that he feels for Pteron is not what he feels so easily for others. It is not the fleeting attraction or the mutual buzz of kindness. It is not anything shallow or quick. It is a seed that has been planted within him from the very first moment they met and he is still surprised by how it has blossomed. He is still so surprised to feel the roots that dig deep within him, that rise up and encircle his pale throat.
Pteron slows, pressing his head against his own, and he gives a sleepy smile when he tells him that he will give him slow—that he will give him this night. His eyes open though when his voice catches, when he continues with his words falling over one another like a waterfall. There is a brief moment of confusion, the expression flashing across his face, before his purple eyes go soft. He reaches over to brush his lips against Pteron’s forehead and smile, breathing him in before sighing. “I have loved you from the first.”
He pulls back so that he can hold the other’s gaze.
“I would take every sunrise and every sunset with you—every one that you would give me.”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
finger trips across my cheek---------------- ----------------kiss me until i can't speak
The world slows, even the twinkling of the stars around them abates, time turned thick and heavy as he waits for an answer. His heart is a thunderous thing in his ears – only his ragged breath is louder – and he thinks they might both implode before Aegean reaches forward with a gentle kiss and the very words that set his world to rights at last.
“All of them,” Pteron promises breathlessly, “Every single one.”
He means to be gentle, he really does, and yet he cannot help but feel as though every little bit of his heart that Aegean has shattered has suddenly begun to burn. A thousand fires, an inferno even brighter than if they had caught flame as a whole. Can Aegean feel it, he wonders, does his skin burn where Pteron kisses it? It feels cool still, cool like the night and the stars and the snow, and Pteron pulls back. Pulls back just to look at him, the brightest star among the thousands he has summoned.
Those violet eyes, where Pteron can almost see his own besotted reflection, those glorious antlers, the sharp edge of his jaw where it fades into the soft curve of his throat. He reaches forward to kiss that spot, marveling anew in the knowledge that he can – and that he can forever. He’s only shown him once before (has only ever shown him before), but it feels right to share this happiness. “This is how you make me feel,” Pteron whispers against his cheek, “Every moment. Every time I look at you. I do not think I will ever get enough of you.”
