btw guys i found my old stucky fic rec list i made for my girl back when we were teenagers and it took me like an hour to painstakingly put together complete with my own synopsis and thoughts for each fic and she ended up not reading even one, but do u guys want it
⁃ bucky sends a very ugly “i am sorry for shooting you” card to steve, who falls a bit more in love
⁃ bucky finds out that heroin is a great way to cope with literally everything else wrong in his body and decides that being a homeless vigilante foster father is a great career change from international assassin. steve just wants him to come home
⁃ nobody cares about steve rogers. he’s just captain america, the walking american flag. he is also the sad irish catholic refugee boy who is thrown into a new world, and he just wants bucky
⁃ bucky is MESSED UP and yet still an asshole. go figure
⁃ witty humour and heavy angst, bucky takes it all in stride
⁃ the oc kids are actually enjoyable and exit the story when then need to. this story is not about them
⁃ the winter soldier is captured by shield and taken in. his muzzle-mask is surgically sewn and wired into his face and can’t be easily removed. the blond man is kind
⁃ time travel: seargent barnes and the winter soldier switch places. the winter soldier, hiding his identity, meets one captain steven grant rogers and learns what it means to be human again
⁃ identity porn
⁃ i don’t remember this one very well since i read it a while ago
⁃ bucky barnes is dead, has been dead for 70 years, and yet his ghost still haunts the barnes-shaped thing that how inhabits his body. well whatever.
⁃ barnes-thing in question is fucking pissed and decides he will celebrate his newly acquired freedom by killing every hydra agent he can get his hands on. somewhere along the line he picks up a ufo, discovers he has terrible taste in music, and steals buchanan barnes’s man
⁃ steve goes in vacation
⁃ very witty humour, bordering on crack, when angst hits it HITS, insanely enjoyable read
⁃ steve meets bucky, gets a crush, and accidentally gets him dishonourably discharged from the military the same day
⁃ bucky is furious, he is livid, he appalled, he is not in love
⁃ (“Captain Fuck Off!” Barnes shouted over him. “Fight me!” Steve cleared his throat again. “I’ve been looking for you,” he told Barnes. “I hope you brought lube this time!” Barnes shouted.)
⁃ mostly humour. occasional angst
⁃ hangout with the avengers
⁃ the story gets WILD after a while. the author is just writing shit in there but i like it
⁃ apparently fucking with space and time has consequences and a bunch of multiverse steves start showing up
⁃ bucky thinks that steve is better off without him. he just has to leave quietly so that he won’t break his heart again. but it turns out that steve and bucky are meant to be no matter the dimension, and talking to these new steves offer some perspective
⁃ and it turns out that bucky’s steve is not dealing with bucky’s past deaths as well as he’d thought
⁃ some steves lost their bucky, so angst, but also fluff
⁃ a walk through of bucky’s time being zola’s test subject, his rescue, and steve and the howlies trying to understand their sarge who is half in his head and half somewhere else
⁃ steve turns up at tony’s door with the most tortured man he’s ever seen. these two old men deserve each other. still, in the ways that matter, they’re still just two traumatized kids and tony will be damned if they don’t get their happy ending
——
SERIES TO READ IN FULL
https://archiveofourown.org/series/222392
⁃ a multi-fic collection
⁃ 400k words all together
⁃ ever heard of meet-cute? this is meet-ugly
⁃ asshole new yorkers
⁃ fluff and humour
https://archiveofourown.org/series/979128
⁃ 2 part series
⁃ 50k words together
⁃ bucky isn’t ready to face steve yet, and wanders into a small foggy town with a backpack full of hydra cash and a head full of hydra trauma, trying to piece himself together
⁃ bucky begrudgingly becomes captain america after steve (who is totally dead and definitely not in hiding and riding out his retirement)
⁃ bucky accidentally becomes an instagram star, deals with the press with the enthusiasm of the old man that he is, and tries to sneak off to see steve
⁃ humour
https://archiveofourown.org/works/13928682
⁃ 4k words
⁃ bucky is low on cash and decides he might as well put 70 years of assassin training to use and sets up a “hire an assassin” ad that goes viral. steve is very confused, because there’s NO WAY.
⁃ humour
https://archiveofourown.org/works/7275262
⁃ 5k words
⁃ modern office au
⁃ bucky is sick and delirious and very miserable that hot coworker steve is not attracted to his germy energy
⁃ when steve said that bucky is a selkie, sam did not know how to interpret it
⁃ as it turns out, being an asshole transfers over into blubber form and bucky is so delighted to be fed fish from a big blond hand all day that he decides he want a to stay a seal
⁃ bucky thinks that steve and the avengers are his new handlers. steve and the avengers don’t realize this
⁃ misunderstandings
https://archiveofourown.org/works/15588663
⁃ 13k words
⁃ told from the POV of bucky’s landlord in romania
⁃ steve only comes in at the end, this is very much a bucky fic
https://archiveofourown.org/works/13414524
⁃ 2k words
⁃ captain american steve and modern bucky
⁃ a very drunk bucky’s friends dare him to go ask the smoking hot blond beefcake on the other side of the bar to give him a piggyback ride. to their horror, the guy takes it in stride and carries bucky away. and the guy is also captain america.
⁃ pure, wonderful, kind steve absolutely cannot know about the contents of the folder. it’ll break the illusion that bucky is clean and deserving of love
⁃ in which steve “came back wrong” and it turns out being a traumatized war vet in 21st century new york after being in a coma for 70 years isn’t as easy as it sounds
https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960033
⁃ 2 part series
⁃ 34k words together
⁃ steve’s helpless not to love his ghosts
⁃ time travel
⁃ steve is very torn about it and is trying not to rebound with this new bucky because of ethics, and he’s really just coping with his pining for the older bucky who he thinks doesn’t want anything to do with him
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
aerion tragaryen returns defeated after the trial of seven
cw: pathetic!aerion x wife!reader, blood, vivid descriptions of wounds, physical violence, hurt/comfort, toxic relationship, threats of mutiliation
──── ♖ ────
the room smelled of sharp medical essences and overlapped with the metallic stink of blood. the curtains were draped, blocking the sun, so the only light in the dim room was a few lit candles scattered around the chambers. the door creaked slightly when you closed it, slowly turning the key in the lock with the effort of not making loud sounds. you sighed heavily and leaned against the heavy oak door. there he was, your husband, lying in bed, skin marked in all sorts of cuts and bruises. he was barely recognisable. it was almost impossible to believe that this hurt, tired man was the very same cruel dragon prince.
“go away, wife.” aerion’s raspy voice broke the heavy silence, he wasn’t even looking at you, head on the pillow with his eyes closed.
“how did you know it was me?” you asked quietly, not daring to step closer yet, gaze trailing over his weak, beaten body.
“your perfume reeks even from the hall,” he finally opened his eyes, but his gaze was fixed somewhere on the ceiling instead of you. “i said, get out.”
his anger made you smile faintly. you stepped closer, stopping on the edge of the bed. aerion’s head turned slowly, and he finally looked up at you. “came to gloat? i hope the sight pleases you,” he spat the words with all the venom he had strength for.
you sat on the bed beside him, ignoring his groans of protest. you frowned slightly when you saw the severity of his injuries, the deepness of the cuts, the red and purple of swollen flesh.
“does it hurt much?” you ask softly, your hand raised to his damp forehead, brushing it with a feather-like touch.
aerion closed his eyes and inhaled sharply, but didn’t shove your hand away. maybe because he didn't have the strength for it. “a little,” he mumbled with a sigh, then turned to look at you again, his violet eyes filled with usual hostility. “i don’t need your pity, woman.”
you pressed your fingers to his lips, shushing him lightly. “i’m not pitying you, aerion. i just wanted to check on you.”
"check??" he let out a bitter chuckle that made him wince and touch his side in pain. "since when are you checking on me, wife?" aerion closed his eyes once again. "haven't attended even one of my tourneys, making me look like a fool."
"you know well i don't like violence—"
"i am this very violence you are trying so hard to avoid, wife," aerion's hand caught and gripped yours painfully, he spat the word wife as if it were the most humiliating curseword. "you are married to the dragon, not the fucking sheep." he let go of your hand with open disdain.
you watched his face with the calmness that he was lacking. "married to the dragon," you repeated after him thoughtfully, slowly turning to face him. "i thought the dragon ought never lose. or if it’s the hedge knight, it doesn’t count?”
aerion’s eyes widened with unfathomable anger, that held in itself mix of shock and shame, with all the strength he had in his body, he sat upwards in a flash, right hand shot up to grip your throat. “you fucking bitch, i will—”
the words died and turned into mewls in his throat, as your hand found the pulsing wound on his stomach and pressed your fingers against it. he didn’t withdraw his hand fully but it released your neck and gripped your shoulder slightly instead, trying to cope with the agonising pain.
“you will what?” you asked gently putting away white hair from his forhead. “it seemed you were saying something, my prince?”
aerion inhaled sharply, coughing and breathing hard, but eyes still bright with fresh fury. “whore, i will personally carve out your filthy tongue for this.” he hissed, gripping your wrist in weak attempt to pull away your hand from his wounded abdomen.
your left hand that was caressing his face a second ago, gripped his hair harshly, forcing him to tilt his head up, as your fingers found the wet sticky opening of his injury, just shy of pressing right in.
“you are forgetting yourself, prince.” you murmured into his ear. aerion’s loud whimper echoed against the stone walls as your fingers applied pressure. he dropped his forehead against your shoulder, sobbing into the crook of your neck. “it is no way of talking with your wife, is it?”
aerion shook his head weakly and you withdrew your hands completely. “i don’t want to fight you, aerion, im not your enemy.” you said, stroking his head, that was still pressed to your neck. “but i will not let you treat me like some common wench you occasionally fuck.”
you stood up, letting him plop back against the pillows. “get well soon, husband.” you crossed the room in calm steps, adjusting the wrinkled dress skirts.
“wait.” he called quietly. you stopped with your hand on the door handle, your gaze dropped down, noticing that your fingers were smudged in his blood. “don’t go yet.” aerion’s low voice was barely recognisable without its usual arrogance and cruelty.
“why?” you asked without looking back, hand gripping the doorknob hard.
“please.”
your breath hitched at the weak plea. never in your life have you heard something similar from your husband. you turned around and came closer to the bed carefully, trying to understand what he wanted.
aerion’s face held so much pain and vulnerability, it made your heart ache. it was hard to feel something more than hatred and contempt for someone like him but it was also hard not to be sorry for this weak abandoned creature.
you sat on the edge of the mattress once again, carefully looking into him, analysing his unusual behaviour. in an instant he hugged your waist with his arms, laying his head in your lap. the motion was so fast and unexpected it made you gasp.
“i am so alone, wife.” aerion mumbled against your stomach. “they all hate me.”
it took you a moment to realise he was sobbing. you carefully hugged him back, petting his head gently.
“they just—”
“they do. everyone knows it.” his hands gripped your waist harder. “i wanted to show them. i wanted to show them all that the dragon should never be challenged, should never be laughed at. and now i disgust even myself.”
his voice held so much pain, that it was impossible not to pity him, even in his own evil mistakes.
“you don’t disgust me.” you replied.
aerion stilled and sat up slowly, his violet eyes meeting yours, so close you could see them being clouded with barely visible tears.
“you are lying.” he whispered, searching in your face some sign of you mocking him.
you just shook your head slightly, slowly taking his hands in yours. “i am not.”
aerion turned away as if ashamed of his own face, though his hand gripped yours in response. “stay some more. with me.”
“alright.”
he laid his head down on your lap again, so you couldn’t see his face. “im sorry” he mumbled.
you leaned in, pressing light lingering kiss to his hair. one tear dropped down from your cheek. “im sorry too.”
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Welcome to the AKOTSK fandom, where the blorbo options include the human personification of a livestock guardian dog, a single mom of six awful children, your hot college professor, drunk girlfriend (middle aged man), Kassandra but more pathetic, The Freak, that guy who shows up for a minute total, the bald ten year old, the most beautiful women, and the apple boy.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Stop. Think about taking your exhausted knight to bed after a hard day and sucking on his fresh bruises until he's whimpering and tearing up a little and melting into the sheets in a twitching heap of muscles. You may scroll now
I gave him bruises bc I like him being a little bit scrappy, but dw he's perfectly okay. The sweatshirt is borrowed tho, I'll let you decide from who <3
I love drawing shoes so much atp I'm just finding excuses to practice more lmao
Don't hesitate if you have drawing suggestions btw, my inbox is open!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself write Aerion ABO verse (which is to say: i've never written abo in my life so if this sucks live, love, laugh xoxo), not proofread because we die or whatever. 18+. nsfw.
the biological reality of it breaks him before anything else does. aerion brightflame, the bright prince, the dragon, who has spent his entire life constructing himself as a force of nature (beautiful, volatile, above the ordinary rules of lesser men) presents omega and he doesn't speak about it for two years. not to daeron, not to maekar, not to anyone. the shame of it is a cold thing he carries beneath his ribs like a second skeleton.
you, meanwhile, present alpha young, unusually so (wolf-blood runs thick in this one) and find it deeply boring. northern wolves have always run differently from court customs anyway. the old way doesn't make much of the distinction. you're alpha the way the wind is cold.
you come to court for a marriage proposal, which means you arrive in the full formal weight of your name: barthogan stark's only daughter, the North's last card on the southern table. you wear grey and fur. you don't smile at anyone who hasn't earned it. the court takes one look at you and decides, collectively, that you are cold, which is the most southern possible misreading of contained. you're not cold, simply measuring.
aerion notices you in the first thirty seconds. he's across the throne room and he clocks you anyway, the way a hunting dog does something that moved wrong in the treeline. there's no decision in it, only pure reflex. your scent hits him a full minute later when the hall shifts and the air moves, and he goes profoundly, dangerously still in the middle of a sentence to daeron.
an alpha. northern. old blood, old bone, something in your scent that's not like the southern alphas he's grown up around. those are showy, performative, all challenge and display. yours is quieter, colder, feral, far more unsettling. like winter. like inevitability. like something that's been waiting a very long time and is in no particular hurry because it already knows how this hunt ends.
he resumes his sentence. he doesn't look at you again for the rest of the evening.
this costs him more than anything he's spent in years.
the circling takes weeks. aerion is incapable of patience but this, specifically, becomes a perverse point of pride. he will not be the first to move, not with you, not when moving first would mean admitting that he smelled you and felt the floor shift. so he watches from a careful, furious distance. he knows exactly where you are in any room. he's known exactly where you are in any room since day three.
you're aware of him from approximately hour one, which you resent. omega scents are not always obvious. aerion's is. there's nothing docile about it, nothing of the softness court poetry attributes to omegas. his smells like hot metal and pine resin, dangerous, like the moment before lightning. it's not a scent that asks you to be gentle. it's a scent that dares you to try. claim.
you find this deeply inconvenient. you're here for a marriage negotiation. you've been raised to carry the North on your back without staggering. there's approximately no patience for your own instincts deciding that aerion brightflame, of all the available catastrophes, is the thing worth wanting.
he makes it worse by being cruel about it. not to you (never directly, not yet, he's watching too carefully for that) but in court, in the way he handles other people, in the way he occupies a room.
aerion has the particular talent of making everyone around him feel slightly less, and watching him do it is horrifying because part of you, the part that doesn't answer to reason, finds it compelling in the same way a fire is compelling. it will hurt you. you know this. it's still beautiful.
the first time he speaks directly to you is at a feast.
he takes the seat next to yours without invitation, without asking, without any acknowledgement that the seat belonged to anyone else. you turn and look at him. he meets your gaze and his eyes say, flatly: yes. and? your jaw tightens. a lord to your left is watching the exchange with visible anxiety. you say, rather pleasantly: i don't believe we've been introduced, my lord.
aerion smiles, nothing warm in it, and says: I know who you are. a beat. wolf's daughter. I could smell you from the door. the lord to your left makes a small, involuntary sound. you hold aerion's gaze and say, even more pleasantly, almost venomous now: what a coincidence. so could I. the smile cracks, just slightly. you turn back to your food. aerion doesn't speak again for twenty minutes but he stays in the seat for the entire meal.
you discover, over the following fortnight, that he's only honest when he's being most difficult. aerion layers himself in performance. the cruelty, the arrogance, the magnificent terrible beauty of him deployed like armour. but underneath it, visible to anyone paying close enough attention, is something that wants with such violence it's never once known what to do with itself.
you're paying close attention. you cannot seem to stop.
he begins finding reasons to be wherever you are. not following (aerion would rather be skinned) but coincidentally present.
you're in the library; he needs a particular book, hadn't planned to stay, finds himself staying. you're in the yard watching the practice; he had intended to leave an hour ago, keeps practicing so your eyes are on him. you're in a gallery at a function and he's somehow, inexplicably, at the other end of it, and when you glance over he looks away with the deliberate boredom of a man who's been watching you for ten minutes. you say nothing. you don't smile. but something has shifted in your chest and you both know it.
the moment it becomes undeniable it's three in the morning, a cold night, and you're awake because something woke you.
a sound, the wind, nothing. you open your door and aerion is in the corridor. he's not walking past. he's standing there, slightly too still, no guards in sight, and the expression on his face when he sees you open is one he's never going to forgive you for witnessing. raw. undone. like a man who went somewhere in his sleep and couldn't find his way back.
he says: I wasn't— and stops.
you study him for a moment. then you open the door wider and stand aside. he doesn't move for three full seconds, and you watch him fight it. watch the pride work against the wanting, watch him try to find a cutting thing to say that'll let him walk away from this with himself intact. he can't. he's never been able to walk away from you and you're both just now understanding how long that's been true.
he comes inside. he sits on the window seat, three feet of careful distance between you. you don't touch him and you don't ask what happened.
you just... stay. present. alpha-still, the kind of quiet that's not absence but weight, and you watch his breathing even out over the course of an hour and you understand, with something that isn't quite satisfaction and isn't quite sadness, that his body has already decided you're safe. that some animal part of him has been reading you as safe since before either of you had a name for it.
he leaves before dawn. he doesn't thank you. the next morning at court he's vicious and bright-eyed and says something cutting about northerners in your earshot, loud enough to carry. you let it land. you watch him watch you let it land, and his jaw tightens because you understood it perfectly.
that the cruelty is the apology, the performance is the panic, and your understanding of that is worse to him than any retaliation would have been.
this happens again. and again. not always the corridor. sometimes it's a heat of temper rather than a literal night-panic after a nightmare, sometimes it's him finding you in some quiet corner of the keep and simply standing there, radiating misery and fury in equal parts, until you say something grounding and he snaps at you for it and then doesn't leave.
you let him snap. you don't yield and you don't soften and this, perversely, is the thing that keeps him coming back. that you hold him to a shape, that you don't rearrange yourself around the edges of his moods. that you're constant in a way nothing else in his life has managed to be.
he tells you, once, that he hates you. unprompted, in the middle of nothing, with his back against the same wall and his shoulder three inches from yours.
I hate you, he says, like a confession. you say: I know. the silence afterwards is enormous. then, quieter: I hate that I can't be something you'd choose on purpose. you turn your head and look at him for a long moment. you say, carefully: you were always going to be the thing I couldn't choose. he closes his eyes. he doesn't speak. but his shoulder shifts until it touches yours and stays there for a long time.
the claiming doesn't happen neatly. nothing between you ever happens neatly.
he goes into a heat. badly, suddenly, in a way that tells you he's been suppressing it with whatever he has available, because aerion brightflame would rather quietly destroy himself than admit to biological need in this court with these people watching. by the time you know it's happening it's already dire.
the heat has been burning him for hours before you arrive. the scent hits you when you open the door and it's nothing like what you expected.
you've scented omegas in distress before: the court has them, your father's keep had them, you know the particular sweetness of it. aerion's is not sweet. aerion's heat smells like the inside of a struck flint, like resin burning, like something feral that has been caged too long and is now trashing. it's aggressively, almost offensively him. it hits the back of your throat and stays there and your body responds before your mind can weigh in, a low clench of want that you breathe through carefully, pressing your palm flat to the door behind you, grounding yourself in the cold wood. you need your wits. with aerion, you always need your wits.
aerion is at the window, forearms braced on the stone, forehead nearly touching it. his shirt is clinging. his feet are bare. his hair is loose and damp against his neck and the nape of it—that pale, unguarded line—is the most vulnerable thing you've ever seen on him. more than any expression, more than any word said in the dark. you stand and look at it and note the wanting that moves through youy. later.
he registers you. his whole body knows before he turns. you see the change move through him, a ripple from the shoulders down, something that's not quite a flinch but not relief. when he turns his pupils are blown nearly full black and the flush sits high on his cheekbones, his lip split where he's bitten it through, dried blood at the corner. he looks at you with that expression that cycles too fast to catch (relief, fury, the rawness underneath both) and settles on the fury because that's the one he knows how to use best.
get out, he snaps. no, you say. you're already crossing the room and he watches you come the way a man watches something inevitable. like something he's been simultaneously dreading and wanting for so long the two have become indistinguishable.
you stop an arm's length from him and look at him properly, which he hates, which he can't stop.
you look terrible, you say. it surprises a sound out of him, not quite a laugh but in that neighbourhood, too pained for real humour but reaching for it anyway.
you're not supposed to be here, he manages. you're here for the—
I'm here, you say, because I have been trying not to be here since the morning I arrived and I am tired of it. silence. he stares at you.
how long, he asks carefully. since the first week, you tell him. a ripple moves through his face that he can't conceal and doesn't try to.
you lift your hand and put it flat on his chest, over his heart, the way you would steady a horse that's worked itself into a lather. nothing condescending, not tentative, just present.
his heart under your palm is a frantic thing. the shaking that he's been managing is worse up close, fine and continuous, the kind that takes real effort to suppress.
I'm going to take care of you, you say. I want you to let me. the word let does a great deal of work and you both know it. you're not asking permission. rather, you're offering him the dignity of not fighting it.
his throat works. you'll regret this, he says spitefully. probably, you agree pleasantly. the breath that comes out of him is nearly a laugh and then his legs take him back to the bed and you follow.
clothing is its own ordeal. aerion has always weaponised his beauty. deployed it with full awareness, used it to control how rooms look at him. but being undressed carefully is something entirely different from any of that.
when your fingers find the laces of his shirt he says don't and you look up at him and hold his gaze and say nothing and he falls silent. you ease it over his head. you look at him without performing indifference or hunger, just looking, and he watches your face the way he watches everything (intensely, waiting for the angle, the tell, the thing he can use) and finds nothing to use because you're simply present with him and he has no framework for that.
you put your hands on him and learn him slowly. the old burn at his collarbone. the fine symmetry of his ribs. the way his breath catches when you find the inside of his wrist, the hollow of his throat, the thin skin at his hip.
you catalogue every place that makes his control slip and you return to each of them with patience, and he makes a sharp frustrated sound when you pause somewhere deliberate, his hips pushing up involuntarily. you're doing this on purpose, he grits. yes, you hum. stop, he snaps. you don't. his hands fist in the sheets.
I hate you, he hisses, at some point, not the performance version, the real one. low and scrubbed raw and addressed to the ceiling. I know, you say.
you push the hair back from his face. he lets you. you watch him let you and watch what it costs him and do it again, slower now, your thumb tracing his temple. aerion closes his eyes because if he can't see it he can pretend he didn't allow it. I hate that you're here, he says. I know. I hate that it— he stops. swallows. helps. you say nothing. you keep your hand where it is.
the begging arrives in pieces.
the first please is bitten off almost before it exists, barely audible, and he seems to hear himself say it and goes rigid with humiliation. you put your hand on his jaw and turn his face back to yours. don't, you say quietly. let me hear you. his expression is a man handing over something he can't afford to lose. he does it anyway.
the second please is clearer. by the third it has your name attached and by then he's stopped managing his expression at all and what you're looking at is the real face. younger, beautiful, rawer, the want stripped of all its poison. you lower your head to his shoulder and say against his fevered skin: I have you. he shudders from his crown to his feet. his hands pull you closer with painful force.
when you finally move between his thighs and against him the sound aerion makes tears out of somewhere deep within and involuntary. then his legs wrap around you and pull you in and he swears, low and broken, because his own body has betrayed him and he can't claim otherwise and you have felt all of it and know.
I know, you whisper. it's alright. you hold still and look at his face and his face is pure fury and naked relief in proportions so close they're the same thing. you don't have to— you begin. don't stop, he says immediately, and the please that follows it is the quietest thing he's ever said to you. you won't tell him you heard it. he already knows.
you set a pace that's deliberately, mercilessly patient and he wants faster. you feel it in his hands and his trebling thighs and in the breathy sounds aerion makes when you move a certain way.
you don't, because this is yours, because watching him take it is extraordinary, because every time he tries to force the pace with his grip or his hips you press him down. gentle, absolute, with a soft growl against his throat. your full weight a simple reminder of who is holding who here. he drops back with a sharp exhale and something in him clenches with wanting, his eyes going briefly, beautifully unfocused.
at some point aerion stops rebuilding the wall. you feel the moment. the quality of his breathing changes. the grip of his hands shifts from desperate to something that's simply holding, and he turns his face into your neck and breathes, just breathes you in, your scent, and the frantic grinding tension that runs him like an engine has gone almost still.
you put your mouth to his hair. you feel him come apart quietly against you, without sound, just a long shudder and the slow unclenching of everything he has been holding.
the claiming is the thing you hesitate on. not from lack of want. you have thought about this. you've thought about where and how because it matters and he matters and you're not going to mark him carelessly.
you put your mouth to the curve of his throat and aerion goes completely arrested. just stopped, everything in him suddenly paying absolute attention. his hands grip harder. his pulse under your lips is very fast. yes, he breathes, barely above a breath, but with absolute burning greed. it's not permission. acknowledgement. like confirming something to himself that he's known for a long time. yes.
you bite him carefully. the mark is deliberate because you're always deliberate, and because part of you knows he will feel this for days, will find his own fingers pressing to it in private, will feel the particular combination of rage and longing that's his relationship with everything you make him feel.
for a moment, nothing. just his breath and yours and the sting of the mark and the two of you suspended in the aftermath of it.
then it begins.
warmth. starting at the mark and moving through him slowly, not heat exactly, not pain. something that has no word, like something thawing that's been frozen for a long time. his brow furrows. aerion makes a sound of confusion before any other sound, low and bewildered, because this is unlike anything he's felt and he genuinely doesn't have language for it. you stay still and let it move through him.
his heat (which has been frantic and furious, almost angry for hours, throwing sparks in every direction, a fire with no proper direction) begins to settle. not stop. settle. something finding its right shape at last.
the desperate edge of it smooths into something deeper, something that's still warmth and wanting but without the suffering underneath. he doesn't know what to do with wanting-without-suffering. he's never had it before.
his hands open. the grip releases. his shoulders drop a full inch, the set of them changing completely, all the braced-against-the-world tension draining out at once.
his breathing changes. slower, deeper, the controlled careful breathing he's been doing since you walked in replaced by something that's simply breathing. aerion looks at you with an expression that's... lost. genuinely lost, like something he's been bracing against his entire life has simply stepped aside and left him standing in the open where it used to be.
what is that, he asks. not alarmed, almost flat. asking.
that's the bond, you reply. that's what happens when your body knows.
knows what, he demands.
you look at him for a long moment. that you're not alone anymore, you say.
he closes his eyes.
the stillness that follows is entirely his own. no mechanism, no lock, no biology forcing him horizontal. just aerion brightflame (the most relentlessly unquiet person you've ever known, a man who's run on rage and want since before you can remember) lying still, because something in him has finally been answered, and the answer is you, and he's too undone to decide yet whether that's salvation or catastrophe. so he holds both, quietly, with his eyes closed and the mark cooling at his throat.
you watch him. the real face. the one underneath everything. he looks, for the first and perhaps only time you have seen it, like something that's laid a weight down. laid it down, with intention, because something has finally made him feel safe enough to. it'll be back in the morning. you're a realist and you know aerion and you know the weight. but right now it's gone.
his hand finds your wrist. the familiar reflex, always the wrist. always for you, you think, the old words arriving without warning. his fingers curl around it loosely, not gripping, just resting. holding. you turn your hand over and let him. you feel the bond humming through the mark, new and warm, near molten, the particular frequency of him. volatile and bright and even now not fully quiet, always at some low simmer, because aerion at peace is still more alive than most people at full pitch.
you put your mouth to the mark very gently. a breath, barely pressure. he makes a small unconscious sound and turns toward you, his brow smoothing, and his hand tightens once on your wrist and releases into rest.
you stay. you watch him. you think: this is what he is when nothing is watching.
you think: I would burn a great deal down to keep him.
he doesn'tt speak to you for two days. you allow this. on the third day he finds you in the library, and he stands in the doorway for a long moment before he says: you don't get to feel smug about this. you look up. you say: I don't feel smug.
then what do you feel, he demands, and his voice is scraped raw in a way that the two days of silence clearly haven't fixed. you consider. you say: responsible. the word hits him somewhere undefended and he looks away, jaw working, and says nothing for a full minute. then: that's worse. yes, you say. I know.
the claim mark changes things physically in ways neither of you were entirely prepared for. he can feel where you are in the keep now. not exact, but directionally, a pull in his chest like a compass needle, which he discovers on day four when he tries to be somewhere you aren't and finds himself rerouting without deciding to. he stands in a corridor staring at the wall for a moment, furious, understanding exactly what his body is doing, and goes to find you rather than fight it because fighting it is worse.
you're in the great hall. you look up when he enters and your expression tells him you felt it too—the tether, the tug, the new and inconvenient awareness. you hold his gaze. he sits down at the bench across from you without a word and accepts the cup of wine a servant pours him and you both pretend this is unremarkable.
touching you now is different for him in ways he can't fully articulate and certainly won't try to. he's always wanted to touch you. wanted it in the way he wants everything, with his whole fist, urgently, with no patience for limits.
now there's something underneath the want that's almost unbearable in its simplicity: when he has his hand on you, the particular grinding darkness that runs his engines goes quiet. not gone. never gone, that's not how aerion works. but quieter than he has known it to be in memory.
he discovers this the second time you're alone together when he reaches for your wrist (the familiar grab, the reflex) and doesn't feel the ground-level hum of tension that usually underlies every moment of his waking life. he stares at where his hand circles your wrist. you let him hold it. you don't comment. he stays like that for three minutes and then releases you and walks away. you understand that you're going to be careful with this, with him, because he's handed you something fragile without knowing he was doing it and you're not sure he can afford to lose it.
he's awful to everyone else. worse than before, if measurable. daeron gets it worst; egg, who finds it privately hilarious and says only dry remarks, gets it second worst.
the court gives aerion a wider berth in these weeks and puts it down to temper because they have no framework for what is actually happening. which is that a man who's never successfully shared a room with his own feelings is now bonded to someone he can't manipulate, can't frighten, and can't make love him safely from a distance.
you're not unmarked by it either. the claiming runs both directions. you feel him now, and the feeling is not comfortable. it's demanding, it's constant, and it's specifically his. which means it's volatile and bright, occasionally alarming and always, always too much.
you hold your northern composure around it because that's what you have and what you are, but there are moments, quiet moments alone, where you feel the full weight of what your instincts have gotten you into and you breathe through it slowly and think: you knew. you always knew what he was. you bit him anyway.
you did. you would again. that's the part you haven't told him yet. you think he knows.