11-20-2019, 12:07 PM
----------------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.
@[Aegean]
-- pteron --