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a3thernet · 3 months ago

Text

aflame

Pairing: F!Reader x Simon Riley

CW: eventually a lil dubcon

Wordcount: ~2k

Summary: This is a Dragonriders of Pern/COD AU. I have Ammeh on AO3 and her AU of a Fire Emblem game to thank for this brainworm. I’ve taken some liberties with the source material and this obviously won’t be canon compliant to the book lore but all you really need to know is that there is sex pollen adjacent content here eventually.

The waves crash against the stone shores, roughly depositing cloudy sea foam across the rocks in layers. A fine mist breezes up from the water and brushes the skin of your face with salted fingers.

Eparth tells me J’nor is angry with you, Kirileth hums, her soft voice seeping into your mind like syrup. You feel yourself grow irritated with the message but never the messenger, not when your eyes meet the glittering prisms of the young queen and she tilts the wide wedge of her head towards the thick oyster colored clouds.

“Let him be,” you huff in reply, and she senses you reach for her, tilting towards you to allow you to run your fingers along the ridge of her eye and along the curl of her horns. “Tell him we eagerly await the arrival of your suitors.”

A puff of warm hot breath against your neck as Kirileth pushes at your shoulder with the wide breadth of her snout. The junior queen isn’t displeased with the idea of her duty here to replenish the long abandoned Weyr, but it’s obvious she is curious of who exactly might be in contention.

“Bronze riders from several of the Weyrs, what few they could spare - if that doddering old fool is to be believed.”

Kirileth is amused by your snark, though she notes there is a twinge of fondness in the grousing towards the old rider. A roar cuts through the air over the clash of sea and stone as a Wing blinks into existence overhead, emerging from between.

The bronze at the head trumpets its arrival in a fierce bellow, behind it are two browns, three greens and a blue. Two more wings appear in a blink, seven and eight strong respectively. You see at least four bronzes in total. Beside you Kirileth rumbles curiously, watching as they slowly circle their descent.

They've been arriving in waves, winking into existence from thin air. Like magic.

“Come then,” you muse at last, rousing from your seat against the rocks and climbing upon her slender neck, “Let us greet the newest members of the Weyr.”

The caves are bustling with activity, the Weyr easily fifty strong, now bolstered by the myriad of Wings sent from across the continent. Taisa has prepared a welcome feast, dried meats and mugs of klah and she greets you down her nose with a frown. She’s chastised you a number of times on your willful nature, a nature your mentor, Lessa has fostered - one she told you reminded her quite a bit of herself in her youth.

You meet the new riders in a flurry, their dragons crowded around perches high in the cave. They chitter, roar and thrum, forming new bonds and establishing the new order. The bronze riders come by your seat in turns, Gilnar, from the Southern weyr. Roenef, of Telgar. Tilikem of Ista. There are two more whose names you don’t recall and Simon. A name so dissimilar from the others it’s obvious he is not of your time.

He is tall and broad, standing easily a head or two above the tallest. His face is covered in a half helm, and only his nose and above are visible. He won’t meet your gaze though it’s obvious you seek his attention and he instead wanders to hand along the edges of the vast room, eyes raking the crowd as if seeking a threat.

“Simon,” you start by way of greeting and his eyes drift lazily to yours. Pools of darkened chestnut and lazy lids rimmed with starlight colored lashes. A silvered scar splits one of his furrowed brows.

You get the sense he is assessing you, and you straighten your shoulders, attempting to hold yourself as the Weyrwoman you are meant to be. He doesn’t ask your name.

“You are young.” He says in a gruff, low tone. His words form around an accent that is unfamiliar to you, strange but.. Interesting.

“Twenty and seven turns. Twenty and two when I was found in a Search.”

“Raised outside a Weyr,” a scoff and you bristle, “Interesting.”

“Long enough to impress upon a queen.” You snap defensively, your hands resting upon your hips.

“Luck.” That gruff tone, massive arms folded across a broad chest.

“And what is it that you believed impressed your bronze?” Your eyes flick up to catch the curious face of his mount, larger than most yet still smaller than your Kirileth. His head is framed with a crown of wide, sharp, horns. He thrums low and deep in his chest.

“Training. Ability-” a glance around the room before landing upon you again, his voice a low growl. “Blood.”

You scowl at the implication.

“You believe your blood drew your favor?”

“In my time only Weyrborn claimed dragons, and now they let commonfolk from across the Holds impress queens.”

Common. Your blood is aflame.

“Then why are you here, Simon?”

“I was told there was a need for bronzes and their riders here, a queen would rise to mate soon.” He looks positively bored of your company. “I have a duty to my people.”

It’s your turn to scoff.

“There are more than enough bronzes here that should the quality of our blood disgust you so, I’m certain there are other duties you can see to.”

He doesn’t deem it necessary to reply to you, as though his intent was only to incense you with his mouth. You turn on your heel and storm off, but you note that Simon doesn’t move from his position the rest of the evening.

You see little of Simon outside of watching him train younger fliers from along the cliffside, watching as the riders wink from existence to between. You note he acts as though he is already Weyrleader, though he’s no claim to the title.

Laisa attends tasks given to him by the mysterious rider who seems to exist only as some sort of phantom. Vanishing around corners before you can catch him, as though he can go between without even Raroth. It is as though the Headwoman respects his authority more than even your own.

It wounds your pride.

It’s the morning after a storm that you peek from the cavernous window of your quarter to find the massive bronze steeply descending the cliffside, his wings tucked closely to his side opening to catch the updraft and soar along the waves. The membranes along the bronzes' back are buffeted by the wind when a swift wingbeat starts his ascent.

“Where do they go?” you ask musingly, though you feel the stirrings of your bond.

Raroth says they intend to hunt near the lake further south.

“Hunt?” you frown, “Are they displeased with the tithes we’ve received from the Holds?”

Kirileth is fully awake now, and when you catch her prismatic gaze you feel that soothing surge of comfort in the bond shared between you.

It is their way.

You find yourself irritated in spite of yourself, there is something about this Simon that irks you and stirs the swellings of your curiosity. He is a marvel, and oddity, the only oldtimer sent to your Weyr in consideration for Kirileths' first mating flight and easily the most experienced flier. Lessa handpicked the bronze riders she’d sent to help populate the Weyr, did she know how much this one would vex you?

The long tendrils of the sun have barely begun their ascendence when you too, take wing. Kirileth leaping from the precipice to swoop low, the long curling fans off the end of her tail grazing the salt and sea below before her wings beat with mighty gusts to rise into the sky and into the cool mist of clouds swarming overhead.

It is glorious when you are in the air together, she is glorious, you think, stroking a hand along the gleaming scales between your thighs. You have at least an hour and a half before Taisa notices you are gone, perhaps half that before J’nor wakes and Eparth tells him you’ve gone. Kirileth vibrates with pleasure beneath you.

Together, we are glorious.

You cannot disagree.

It’s with distinct pleasure you note that Raroth and Simon have not gone between choosing instead to soar above the lush canopy enveloping the land extending from the mount the Weyr is housed within. You follow from on high, far enough back that Kirileth cannot yet be spotted, weaving between silvered clouds, her gilded sales not yet caught by an errant sunbeam. You soar past the lake where it appears Raroth has snagged a buck near the shoreline. Kirileth lets out a melodious little trill on approach and Raroth turns his spiny head skyward watching in admiration as she slowly descends, massive wings stirring dust and silt from it’s nest along the shore.

The young queen dwarfs the bronze, but not by near as large a margin as many of the other bronzes Lessa brought forth from between nearly ten Turns ago. Simon stands at the water's edge, not sparing so much as a glance your direction and you bristle with annoyance at the slight.

“You left early.” You say by way of greeting, sliding from Kirileth’s neck and to the ground, the soft earth shifting beneath your boots. Raroth inclines his head towards the queen first, then you and rumbling in pleasure when you scratch at the ridges round his eye - just the way Lessa had shown you so long ago. The bronze dragon's eyes slide shut and you swear that Simon glares at you from over a massive shoulder. The distance between you feels cold and stark on your approach.

Behind you, Kirileth and Raroth share his kill and the queen is producing a low hum while the bronze at her side continues to rumble low in his throat.

“They get on well.” You muse, watching the mist rise from the surface of the dark lake and curl phantom fingers into the cool morning air.

Simon only grunts in reply.

“He intends to fly her.” He finally says after a pregnant pause.

Why does the thought excite you?

Lessa has instructed you in the intricacies of mating flights, to an extent - you glance over at the mountain of a man at your side. The broad of his chest and the silvered stripes of scarred flesh peeking from beneath the hide of his riding gear. The lower half of his face is still hidden behind the dark cloth covering his nose down to his neck. You cannot help but ponder the shape of his mouth, what it might feel like pressed to your own.

Would that Raroth could catch me, Kirileth haughtily snorts from over your shoulder, though you sense a gnawing curiosity in her as well.

“Does that frighten you?”

Simon is closer than you expected, dark eyes boring into your own and his tone one of disinterest. A lock of flaxen hair falls into his vision and you suddenly want to brush it from his face. Your heart hammers a furious rhythm in your ears. You are not unfamiliar with the pleasures found in flesh, certainly, a tumble or two with the farm boys of the Hold that was your home before the Search that plucked you from everything you’d ever known. But a mating flight of your bonded dragon was.. Instinct - raw, uncontrollable - like a wildfire. Again, if Lessa was to be believed, but you’ve little reason to doubt your mentor.

“N-no.” You reply more quickly than you’d like to have and you swear you hear his mouth curve into a smirk beneath his mask.

“I was told queens of your time do not fly other than to mate.”

“Not before Lessa,” You retort, again detecting a slight woven into his tone about the intelligence and capability of your people and therefore yourself.

“Things have changed,” He mutters, finally unpinning you from beneath his hardened gaze and it is as though you can breathe again. “Curious. Let us see what happens then, when your queen rises.”

It’s clear from the posture the senior rider assumes that the conversation is finished and you take the opportunity to take your leave. You cannot help but notice that he’s turned to watch you and Kirileth climb into the sky - soaring back towards the Weyr. A glittering comet trailing across the horizon, her scales caught in the morning sun.

A/N: There will be at least a part two for this. If there’s interest maybe I’ll write some for the other guys. Maybe a Ghoap x reader addition? Idk.

#simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #call of duty #cod x reader #a3thernet finally writes #aflame #dragon rider au

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