Chapter Text
The Young Prince of Dragonstone no more, Valarr Targaryen’s ascension to the throne took place a week after his namesake day.
The crown rested heavy atop his head, its weight unfamiliar but fitted true like an answer to a prayer.
The applause roared behind him as Valarr steadfastly climbed the steep and jagged step of the Iron Throne, seated himself on the peak where he could watch the rest of the room, the sea of people witnessing his coronation. Never once faltered.
His gaze swept across the hundreds of faces before narrowing into a single person near the front of the crowd.
Aerion was clad in a velvet black half-cloak, fastened by a golden ring. The fabric draped heavily on his slim frame, where underneath he wore a red silk embroidered with golden patterns resembling dragon scales.
Under the cold light of the morning, filtered in through the high windows of the throne chamber, his skin almost shimmered. The tan kissed onto him by Essos sunlight was starting to fade now that he spent more time in Westeros.
His beauty was almost molding back into its past self. Sharp and dangerous, enticing nevertheless. Ethereal in a way that was meant to be admired not touched lest you hurt yourself.
A signet gleamed on Aerion’s left ring finger. It appeared unremarkable from a distance, and a single glance would certainly pass it as the engraving of a traditional Targaryen ringlet, overlooking the small alteration it signified.
The different shades of the three-headed dragons; silver and black instead of its usual red on black.
Aerion’s signet was bearing the King’s personal colors.
Valarr eventually had to withdraw his lingering attention when a single voice boomed, “Long live the King!”
The rest of the room echoed. So loud it was thunderous, the mounting of swords sculpting the throne seemed to quake for a few roping seconds.
Valarr had long learned that reign was never meant for comfort.
Perhaps not conquest, but he could offer stability.
The very first decree Valarr enacted upon waking up the next day as the ruler of the realm was to wed Aerion.
His small Council had advised him to uphold a grand feast, a deference to the Andals’ passage of culture. A sign of unity. Valarr had refused without a second thought.
Instead, he summoned Maekar to stand witness and recited the blessing as he and Aerion bound themselves in the Valyrian way, the only fitting rite for those of dragon’s descent.
The sky vaulted above was glum as if echoing the Council’s sentiment.
Aerion and him donned matching ivory-colored robes of similar design, fastened with belts and threaded with an golden ornate trim. Targaryen’s fearsome, three-headed dragons embroidered on the back of the cloak that only Valarr wore. The heavy quality of the fabric made even the strongest gust of wind struggle, its lower part barely moving more than a few inches above the ground.
While Valarr stood crowned, a bridal headpiece adorned Aerion’s head.
Fire billowed nearby. The court where the ceremony took place lay empty except for the ebony and the persimmon trees, silent witness under the grey weather where the sun has not yet completely risen.
Maekar’s tone was steady as he declared the old marriage vow in High Valyrian. Yet then and now again, there was a glimpse of reassurance that resurfaced whenever his eyes drifted towards his son. Faith. Certainty.
Valarr’s gaze on Aerion was steel. “By blood and fire, I take you as my own,” he pledged.
His betrothed’s answer was a challenge twisted in a promise, “By blood and fire, I bind myself to you.”
“By blood and fire, I unite you as one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever,” Maekar’s final declaration rang between stone and flame. For the sealing, he drew forth a fine blade of dragonglass.
Palms slashed, lips cut. Blood met blood. The sting was brief.
Valarr’s firewood pheromone unfurled, reaching to wrap itself around Aerion’s cider, thickening the atmosphere like smoke winding through rich nectar. The smell of metallic tinge in the air was overtaken at once.
The billowing fire sparked as Valarr clutched Aerion’s hand in his and drew him closer.
Foreheads pressed against one another, their blood dripping like sacrifice upon the ground.
Maekar had left the court without another word—or if he did, Valarr was simply not aware. Nor did he particularly care about who witnessed as he closed the distance and sealed his lips with Aerion’s.
More than the wound that bound, he savored the vow. Aerion, now rightfully his by all mortal law that mattered, returned the kiss just as eagerly. His free hand sought Valarr’s nape with the intention to angle his head to his liking, ever the demanding.
Like a quiet reminder, Valarr responded by taking Aerion’s wrist and held it firmly in place.
They parted slowly. The mirth in Aerion’s smirk told Valarr he knew exactly what he was doing.
“I have always known it would be you,” Aerion suddenly confessed.
“Have you?”
“I couldn’t make sense of anyone else otherwise. You are simply … true. Like those prophecy dreams Daeron kept having.”
Aerion had that distant look on his face as he retraced memories Valarr could not see. It faded abruptly with a quiet huff, and then Aerion rested his head against Valarr’s chest, where a steady rumble beneath was quick to answer his content.
“Do you think I would willingly surrender had it been another man that my father chose?” he murmured.
The blurry images of lords and knights standing alongside Aerion was an unwelcome vision in Valarr’s mind’s eyes. He brushed them aside by grounding himself in the moment, of who he was currently holding in his arms.
Aerion’s body was warm beneath the wedding garment. Valarr released his wrist so he could lift Aerion’s face up instead, drinking in the sight. No man aside from Valarr would be able to withstand the bright flame that he was. His vicious, beautiful Aerion. The clever glint in his eyes, the small nick in the middle of his lips where Valarr had gently slashed it, the smear of blood everywhere else.
When Aerion licked them with a deliberate flick of tongue, Valarr did not resist the urge to reach out and pressed it down, feeling the plump flesh give in under the pressure.
“No,” he replied then, in a voice close to a growl. “You wouldn’t.”
Aerion closed his mouth around Valarr’s finger, grazing the skin with teeth and swirling his tongue around the digit.
Seven knew why the taste of blood on skin seemed to only encourage him more.
It’s the same thing that drove Valarr to kiss him again until their lungs were burning
“Aerion,” Valarr murmured against his mouth. “Dohaeras.”
The ceremonial flame from before had reduced to ambers. With its crackling sound now gone, the courtyard had never felt so quiet; vacated, like they were the only two souls in a pocket of realm far away and unreachable. Every word uttered seemed more meaningful than the last.
Despite the rising sun, Aerion shivered. “Take me.”
Valarr did not once release Aerion’s hand as they made their way through the long, winding corridors into their now shared quarters, to the King’s chamber.
It wasn’t the time for Valarr’s rut yet nor was it Aerion’s heat, yet the fact mattered little. Their combined scents flared and permeated the air all the same, heavy with desire so vehement it trailed after their wake.
Valarr had Aerion’s body against him before the doors could fully shut. He captured Aerion’s lips once more, greedy and still so helplessly insatiable.
Cloak and robes casted aside, he abandoned his crown and Aerion’s headdress on a nearby bench. Their garments shed in haste lay scattered on the floor.
Valarr pushed Aerion into the bed and stalked him down. He moved with all the gracefulness of a predator, fluid and confident, bracing Aerion with his arms and caging him under his shadow.
Serve. Be fierce.
It was a primal dance.
Valarr descended with the knowledge that his prey would not flee.
This was his act of mercy.
Aerion felt just as scalding inside. His entire body ran too warm, feverish, like he could burst into flame at any instance.
His cunt throbbed where Valarr palmed it.
Valarr’s ring and middle fingers plummeted knuckles-deep inside, rocking a slow pace that was meant to be unforgiving—appeased only with the frequent brush of his thumb against Aerion’s gradually swollen clit. Aerion withered, moans spilling with every broken exhale.
He tried to close his legs when Valarr took out his fingers. Just as a noise of protest was building from his throat, Valarr dived below and dropped a kiss on his cunt.
It was long and deep. To Valarr’s own pleasure just as much as it was for Aerion.
There were whispers that the boy was a rotten core wrapped in pretty skin. And yet, here as Valarr closed his eyes and lapped his tongue at the swirling heat of Aerion, sucking at the bud and swallowing the slick, the luscious taste simply made him drunk.
He withdrew with a wet chin and dilated pupils.
“Cousin,” Aerion breathed.
“Husband,” Valarr corrected without a flinch.
Aerion’s chuckle caught in his throat, clearly amused at both his own honest slip out and the natural indecency of its sentiment. Valarr offered a faint smile in return. The moral of the flesh and blood did not appeal to them, not really.
The lightness of the moment slipped away when Valarr once again stuffed two of his fingers inside Aerion. He crooked them, experimental but certain.
“Fuck, Val—” Aerion pressed his palm to his mouth in an attempt to muffle the sound.
Almost by instinct, Valarr pried his hand roughly and growled, “None of that.”
He quickened the thrust of his fingers, the slick easing his way to spread Aerion apart.
“I need you there.” Aerion’s tone was close to a whine now, his back arching. “Take me. Mazis, Valarr, please, dohaeras.”
Valarr’s length hung heavy as he nestled himself between Aerion’s legs, denying the pleasure for just a moment as he leaned to kiss Aerion’s eyelids.
Seconds seemed to stretch into eternity before finally, Valarr buried himself inside.
The force of their bodies adjoining might as well be a collision.
Valarr picked up his force along with the pace, hammering into the bundle of nerves where Aerion lay most vulnerable within; how every now and then, he deliberately let his shaft bumped against Aerion’s sensitive clit.
The following reaction caught him off guard, though it was something he had indeed anticipated.
Aerion began to thrash from under him, arms flailing to urge Valarr off his body like he was just coming upon a decision that this was, in fact, an attack.
The sudden movement managed to deck Valarr across the jaw. It dizzied him, stars swam momentarily in his vision.
Valarr took hold of both of Aerion’s wrists and locked them above his head. He struggled in an attempt to challenge Valarr’s strength, eyes wild, teeth bared. He almost bit Valarr’s face off.
A saner man would have seen the gesture as an obvious sign to retreat. To save himself before the dragon could set him ablaze.
Valarr, on the other hand, wished for nothing except to ignite his own flame.
A surge of possessive violence overtook him like it never had before. He crushed Aerion’s wrists within his grip and raised his hip.
No longer gentle, Valarr was completely intent to make it hurt.
Every thrust turned into a strike. Slam after slam ensuring a stinging mark on the swell of Aerion’s buttocks. And still, there was a pleasure to chase in its pain if his whines were anything to go by.
Valarr’s length slid roughly along Aerion’s pulsing walls as the omega cried out, half blissed, half intoxicated. Entirely visceral.
How he wanted this. The sick dragonling.
His slick rained onto the mattress, the wet heat blanketed over Valarr like boiling water. Aerion clenched tight around him despite the thrashing and the sensation was nothing short of an ecstasy.
“Fuck!” Aerion screamed, eyes fluttered shut.
“Zaldrīzoti,” Valarr murmured, a vivid contrast to the wicked rhythm he purposely set to break Aerion’s body limp. “Rybas.”
Obey.
Aerion kept attempting to throw Valarr off of him, to no avail. In the haze of Valarr’s mind on the other hand, every single of Aerion’s efforts to fight seemed like a pull. A beckoning.
Therefore he didn’t relent even when he could feel Aerion’s delicate bones grind under his grip. When Aerion’s whimper turned into sob and a tremor shuddered through his limbs.
Taking the distraction to his advantage, Valarr lowered his head and sunk his teeth into Aerion’s mating gland.
The flesh torn between his teeth.
And Aerion came with a spasm, thighs secured like wire around Valarr’s waist like he would be doomed to let go.
Valarr emptied himself inside Aerion three times before exhaustion toppled them both.
His back stung where the skin had broken, the jagged paths carved by Aerion’s clawing nails, merciless in the act of laying a claim like he would render an enemy apart. There was a fleck of blood on the pillow, too, from where Aerion had elbowed his mouth until it split.
The perpetrator didn’t so much as stir as he clung onto his victim. Valarr had a distant thought he ought to be frightened, but such a feeling never probed his heart, leaving space big enough for pride and wonder to creep in as he admired his own mark of cruelty.
A bruise darkened to a purple had already begun to mar the curve of Aerion’s wrists.
“I am,” Aerion said, stealing Valarr’s attention. His words was slurred from exhaustion and Valarr had to wait before he tried again, “I am very … fucking grateful. That it is you.”
Valarr pecked Aerion’s temple and let his lips linger there. “It couldn’t be anyone else, as you have said.”
“Ñuha zaldrīzes,” Aerion kept rambling in spite of his eyelids dropping. “My fierce dragon. Husband … my Valarr.”
It was easy to imagine him a creature extending its claws as he raked his nails across Valarr’s chest. Admiring his treasure.
The sound of Aerion’s purring soothed the last remaining adrenaline in Valarr’s nerves, calming his body, loosening all the tension in his muscles. His jaw was throbbing still, but the pain was lucid, almost phantom-like as if it belonged in another timeline.
This closeness could as well burn. Valarr did not budge as he basked in the pooling warmth.
It was nearing midday when Valarr awoke to the anxious shift on the bed. He didn’t crack his eyes open, relying solely on the sensation of skin against skin to realize what was happening: Aerion, wet and needy, grinding his cunt against Valarr’s front.
His noise caught up at once with the smell emanating from Aerion’s glands. The sex had triggered his heat.
There was a slight distress and panic burning at the edges of Aerion’s pheromone. He hasn’t awakened yet, embraced by the fever dreams that were clouding his thoughts.
Valarr turned to position themselves better. Aerion was trembling, beads of sweat rolling over to the furrow of his brows.
“Come here,” Valarr said, voice rasp, as he grabbed Aerion from behind his knee and lifted his leg over his own hip.
The elevation made it easy for Valarr to slide himself back inside Aerion. He rocked forward lazily, a few occasional shallow thrusts that drew an obscenely squelching sound in the silence. His knot unfolded and caught once again.
Head lolling to Valarr’s shoulder, Aerion’s disquietude visibly vanished as he rolled his hip back to welcome his alpha. His walls pulsated where they enclosed Valarr from all sides.
“Alright?” Valarr asked in a murmur.
Aerion answered by nosing his face deeper into Valarr’s neck, finding comfort in the scent while it lulled him back to slumber.
Valarr woke for the second time that day to the knock on the doors, announcing the presence of the servants.
Quietly disentangling himself from Aerion, he then rose from the bed, drawing on his breeches and shrugged into a modest robe without bothering to tie it. Sunlight filtered through the small gap in the curtain.
“Enter,” he ordered.
The three servants entered bearing trays of food, careful not to trip over the mess of discarded garments on the floor. Valarr allowed them to prepare it on the table, hoping that he didn’t appear too bleary with his curt nod and few too little speeches. He recognized one among them as the head attendant of the Red Keep.
“Your Grace, we have brought you luncheon. If there is any ….” Her sentence trailed into a gasp when she noticed the state of Valarr’s face.
“Thank you.” Valarr winced.
“Your Grace.” A look of terrified concern dawned on the servant’s face. “The bruise doesn’t look well, you must require aid.”
Valarr touched the tender skin on his jaw and grimaced. “Does it?”
“Would you allow me to look at it, Your Grace? Afterwards, I shall summon the Maester to—” Once again her speech was cut off. The concern disappeared at once from her face, replaced by genuine fear.
The shift of scent in the atmosphere told Valarr what was occurring before he heard Aerion’s menacing voice.
“Out,” he hissed. The omega’s scent sharpened at once, far less sweet and more embers. “All of you, out!”
The servants were already skimpering before the threat could completely settle, doors shut behind them without another word.
“They were just making sure we’re not starving, Aerion.”
“She wanted to heal you,” Aerion replied scathingly like it was the most offensive thing in the world.
For his part, Valarr didn’t think it would be so awful to have someone tending the wound Aerion had so lovingly inflicted. He didn’t voice it, though. Knew well enough what Aerion had meant, that healing him right now would equal to removing the mark. Discarding the claim.
And that, more than the bruise itself, would upset him greatly.
“It doesn’t even look that bad,” Aerion continued with a scowl, and Valarr instantly found himself wanting to believe him.
“Well, I should hope so. Wouldn’t be a good omen for the king to look mauled after just one day of sitting on the throne.”
“I did not maul you.” Aerion reached for Valarr’s face and tilted it aside, measuring the degree of the injury without remorse. If anything, his expression was delightful. “I actually rather like it.”
“Of course you do.”
“You are very handsome.” Aerion tapped Valarr’s cheek gently. “Like this, more rugged. It suits you.”
“Would you still think so if you weren’t the one decking my face?”
Aerion pretended to consider it before shrugging, granting Valarr no real answer besides trying to pull him back into the bed with him. Valarr had a hard time resisting.
“Meals first, Aerion. You haven’t eaten anything.” And probably would not in a couple of next hours considering his heat already taking place.
“I’m not really hungry.”
Valarr didn’t buy it. He ceased the debate and instead took Aerion’s hand, mindful to avoid the bruised wrist as he guided him toward the settee, all in his naked glory.
As though he’d been waiting for the chance, Aerion pushed Valarr down first before clambering onto his lap, sitting sideways with one leg over the other, one arm hooked loosely behind Valarr’s shoulders.
“You’re such a menace.” Valarr shook his head.
Nevertheless, he didn’t pass the opportunity to nose at Aerion’s freshly claimed mating gland, biting his earlobe in passing because both of them deserved it.
Aerion had not yet grown fully into his tenth nameday, nor Valarr his eleventh, when they crossed each other’s path in one wind-bitten morning in Dragonstone.
It was not their first meeting, far from it. Aerion recalled the quiet boy with the odd, silver streaked hair from his unfleeting visit to the Red Keep, and later more from Baelor’s longer stays in Summerhall where he would bring his firstborn along.
However, Aerion remembered it was the first time when their encounter had started to truly matter.
Aerion was practicing, smashing ruthlessly into the training puppet with his favorite wooden sword. The one which hilt was carved with dragon wings. As exquisite as it looked dangerous.
He was catching his breath when Valarr entered the ground, his own wooden sword gripped tight in a fist.
Aerion frowned. While he was aware that Valarr and entire his family lived in Dragonstone, this was Aerion’s chosen spot.
So, he couldn’t help demanding, “How did you find me here?”
The boy had a solemn expression that was undeniably his father’s. “I followed a scent.”
“What?”
Valarr cleared his throat, suddenly looking awkward. A little guilty. “Something sweet. Like apples and honey.”
Aerion straightened his spine and tilted his chin up. What little bashfulness he might have felt upon hearing Valarr describing his scent was quickly dissolving, crushed under his pride. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” said Valarr evenly, “it’s a nice scent.”
Aerion secretly took a deep inhale and was slightly overwhelmed by the firewood scent surrounding them. Like a hearth’s kindling, warm and comforting. He wanted to get closer.
Naturally, he started with a challenge: “Fight me.”
Valarr answered by raising his sword in an acceptance.
“Valarr almost bested me in our swordfight today.”
Maekar barely nodded along. “Did he?”
“I brought him down in the end.” There was no need to include the detail of Aerion having to rely on dirty tricks to manage it. Instead, he said, “He’s taller than me.”
“Baelor trained his son well.”
“He’s an alpha,” Aerion said, the tone insisting.
“I’m aware.”
Aerion, so young and had already consumed so much the history of their family dynasty unsupervised, was getting impatient. How could his father not immediately understand what he’s hinting at? It should’ve been obvious. “Will you mate us?”
Maekar turned his head slowly, as if he had misheard.
Aerion had not yet understood, then, how their generation of Targaryens was slowly drifting apart from the older ways. Trying to reshape themselves to better fit into the society who already regarded them as something inhuman.
To them, the notion of a Targaryen being closer to a god than a man was dwindling into a myth, fading with the absence of their fire-breathing beasts.
“The dragon's blood is supposed to be kept pure,” Aerion reasoned stubbornly. “That makes Valarr the only worthy alpha for me.”
He took Maekar’s silence as a permission to carry on.
“I know Valarr is formidable. I can bear him strong pups as well, I know I can. What do you think, Father? Since we’re both Targaryens, we can uphold the traditional—”
“Enough of that, boy. Finish your supper.”
Aerion’s face crumpled in petulance at the clipped rebuke.
After a few heartbeats though, Maekar thinned his lips and exhaled through his nose. “I’ll consider it.”
It sounded like an acquiesce.
Memories were a dream-like thing, slipping away from one’s fingers.
Aerion had only woken up that evening.
Despite expecting it, he couldn’t help feeling sullen upon realizing that Valarr had left. His long absence was evidenced by the cold empty sheet beside him. Fortunately for everyone that he was at least feeling refreshed, utterly fucked out and blissed out of his mind, just a little dehydrated.
And a fucking lot sore, seven hells.
He took a long swig of the water perched on the table and redressed into a sleeping robe.
When Aerion opened the doors, torches had been lit along the corridor. It was apparently much later than he’d previously presumed.
He tried to ignore the slight quaking in his legs as he stumbled to the hall. Without a particular destination in mind, Aerion was simply queasy after staying so long in the chamber, especially without Valarr there to pin him down and stuff him full.
The shape of him imprinted itself within Aerion’s flesh like a fond remembrance.
By the time he reached the turn at the end of the hall, Aerion cursed himself for having left the bed in the first place. A dull ache coursed through his legs, drawing a tremor that forced him to brace his weight against the wall, his footing weakened.
He had half the mind to curse Valarr as well.
“Your Grace.”
Aerion momentarily froze, recognizing a beat too late the familiarity of the voice before it calmed him. It didn’t quell his irritation of being found in such a pathetic state, nonetheless, but his own vanguard was hardly the last person he’d rather see.
He put on his most neutral expression as Ser Duncan approached.
“It’s scarcely the time to wander about, Your Grace. Would you like me to escort you back?” The knight asked, hesitant and somewhat nervous. “Or if you’re trying to get somewhere else … Your Grace, are you able to stand?”
“Am I not standing right now?” Aerion rolled his eyes, but he’s really just setting himself up at this point.
Ser Duncan didn’t answer, but he wasn’t leaving either, hovering instead in that dim end of the corridor watching Aerion. The twitch of his nose abruptly reminded Aerion that his heat wasn’t quite finished.
So much for wandering.
“Where’s Valarr?” Aerion belatedly realized he should’ve addressed him with his proper title, but alas.
“His Grace hosted an audience earlier, and he’s supposed to be meeting with the Council as of now from what I’ve known.”
“Okay.” Aerion nodded. “You may escort me back.”
He took one step, faltered, and shot a daring glance at Ser Duncan. The vanguard barely gave any reaction.
There was no way this was happening in any other circumstance. As it stood, Aerion had to force himself to indulge in it. “And you may do so by helping me walk,” he added coolly.
Vague though the order might be, the knight understood. Ser Duncan bowed in quiet acknowledgement before he lifted Aerion.
He did it easily, with measured care—and it was much less intimate than Aerion anticipated. There was a deliberate distance in the way the knight refused to draw him close to his chest, denying any embrace. His arms were steady but held far.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, an unkind and vain feeling nagged at him, recalling that afternoon in Summerhall when Valarr had been visiting. Aerion would never forget his expression upon finding him with Ser Duncan alone in the inner courtyard.
It was such a feeble thing, though on Valarr’s handsome face, the flicker of emotion was telling enough as it was.
Aerion hid his smirk. It was always good to be desired.
When Ser Duncan eventually set him down, they had reached the front doors of his chamber. But Aerion didn’t dismiss him right away.
He nudged past the doors, by all manners innocent, leaving a gap wide enough for the combined smell of his scent and Valarr’s to slip into the corridor. A trace of his heat, and sex, lingering like forbidden garden.
Ser Duncan refused to meet him in the eyes. “Your Grace, if there is nothing further, I—”
“Hold on.” Aerion tilted his head, prolonging the seconds. A cat toying with its prey. “Fetch the attendants. I would have my bath drawn.”
Seizing an opening for a reprieve, Ser Duncan bowed and stepped back. “Right away, Your Grace.”
The stars had long since come out by the time Valarr returned to their chamber.
Under the warm glow of the torches, he found Aerion sleeping soundly amidst the hoard of blankets and pillows piled on their bed; a hastily made nest. The remnants of a bath sat abandoned in the corner, the water within the tub had gone tepid from hours ago.
Even unconscious, Aerion had taken Valarr’s side on the bed and curled into himself.
Valarr quietly undressed before joining his mate. Aerion stirred the instant the bed dipped, seeking touch, violet eyes bright as they blinked open to stare at Valarr.
“You’ve been away too long,” he accused.
“You shall have me until dawn.”
The next string of complaints died in Aerion’s throat once Valarr captured his mouth. He moaned softly, quick to melt, his irk forgotten.
Valarr stroked his length into hardness and rubbed it against the folds of Aerion’s cunt, wetting the shaft before tucking himself at the rim.
The scent unfolded around them. Aerion was already leaking, open from his own preparation, and he arched his back when Valarr breached into him without preamble.
“Have I ever told you how hot your body is?” Repeating the position from earlier that morning, he hooked one of Aerion’s legs over his hip. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’re running a fever.”
“Is that so,” Aerion sighed. “Gods, Valarr. How I wish I had a single fuck to spare about the goddamn temperature of my body when—ah.”
Valarr jammed forward, angling to that one spot he had come to learn would undo Aerion like no other, harsh the way he would want to.
They lied in the aftermath clinging onto one another. Aerion’s body was a grounding weight on top of Valarr’s chest, his nails tracing Valarr’s uninjured jaw and the shadow of stubble that began to sprout.
As always, Aerion’s exhaustion was quick to run its mouth. “Who knows you could be such a beast.”
“Say you.”
“It’s expected of me. You, on the other hand, are supposed to be the gentle one.”
Valarr felt the slight clench before Aerion shifted to a more comfortable position. He was still in Aerion after all, waiting for the knot to loosen as it kept his spend inside. Aerion rolled his hips as if to make a point.
“The good one,” he pointed out.
It didn’t sound like a protest though, so Valarr didn’t argue, simply held Aerion by the waist as he rocked back. “Mayhaps,” was all he could muster to reply.
Rest came much later than Valarr would’ve appreciated. He’s terribly exhausted, spent and boneless, and Aerion had been as insatiable as he was irresistible. To the point that sleep itself felt like a hard-won victory.
Even so, Valarr found himself breathing easier with Aerion’s unnatural warmth enveloping him.
The first light broke across the horizon, dawn creeping over.
Valarr allowed himself the comfort of the illusion that everything stood in its rightful place. The beast wrapped in the fairest human skin he had ever seen lay quiet in his embrace.
In the hush of the morning, this was his treasure.