#cw: trauma mention; Trust Issues(TM); The Closest I Will Ever Come To Writing Good Christian Pornography

[eternalstrigoii]

Natural

Guess I’m gonna die captain of this ship, huh? Set during M:MoE / Your Own, whatever canon you prefer.

Conall x (reader!)Maleficent

            It was not the first time you’d slept against him.

Nodding off at his side while you sat before your peoples’ fire was different than being plucked, half-drowned, from the sea (though the memory of how he’d cradled your head, the warmth of his body against yours while your heat-thickened blood coated both of your skin, cropped up as soon as you woke – cold and soaked and wholly limp, as close to tucked against his body as he could get you).

It took you a moment to realize that you were in his bed. That you were wrapped in your own, separate furs, independent from his.

And yet, at some point in the night, whatever respectful distance you’d gone to bed with had evaporated between you. You did not need one another for warmth, but your bodies’ sought the other all the same. One of his broad, dark wings lay beneath you – curled, in part, around your hip. Your head rested on his arm, closer to his shoulder than you imagined you would get, and your hands…

You held his hand in both of yours. Only one of them, for the curl of his arm aided the down beneath his head, and it gave you a moment’s pause to behold the top half of him.

Conall was handsome, without question. You had only known him to be gentle, empathetic, and kind. The way his hand fit in yours wrung your insides like wet cloth; you fixated on the thought that he had very nice fingers even as you studied what must’ve been an old iron-cut on the back of his hand. You’d seen another stripe of shiny flesh on his bicep – the one you were curled against – when you stood together upon the Phoenix’s grounds.

You shouldn’t feel like this. You shouldn’t enjoy holding his hand like this. It shouldn’t be so pleasant to be pressed against him, even when neither of you made the active choice to be that way. (It was as though your instincts understood something you did not, and the prospect of it frightened you – because you could love him, if you stayed here, in the Nest, with them. You feared you were already starting to, though if you were honest with yourself, you did. Good men were a rare kind in the world beyond Paradise – for their exile was still your waking dream; you spent so long alone that this, lying there with him, fooled your heart into pretending that everything would be alright. Three days would pass like no time at all, and when the dust settled…you could take his hand again.)

You ran your fingers lightly up the inside of his forearm. He was well-decorated with tattoos; how fierce of a warrior had he been, once, only to give it up. Why would you give it up? How could you trust anyone with your life that way?

As easily as breathing, though you did not acknowledge that thought. Trust was a different concept when it was a matter of trusting him. He had no business marrying love and concern in his eyes the way he did when he looked at you. When he looked at you, he saw nothing of cruel, wild tales or your legacy of thorns – you did not want to fathom what he saw, even if it made you feel seen.

When you were tired the night before, he gathered you into his arms like you were already his wife. It should not have been so easy for you to wrap your arm around his neck, press your face into his shoulder. You shouldn’t have trusted him. The last time you lay near a man who was not also a bird (as though you could truly make that distinction)…

Your stomach tightened at the thought. At even the faintest flicker of memory. Drugged wine and iron knives, sagging, exhausted, against Stefan. You were asleep before he lay you down, asleep through the whole of the grueling process, asleep until the pain awoke you—

Conall’s fingers laced through yours. He gently squeezed your hand as he stirred, the sound of your racing pulse awakening him before he truly knew what had.

You should’ve taken more time to admire him while he slept. Trace the wonderful sharpness of his cheekbones without being caught. Understand the patterns on his chest. You should have done that instead of let your thoughts wander, instead of trying to half-remember how nice it was to be laid in a bed of down so familiarly like your own, bundled in furs for warmth by hands truly contentious of your wings. You were asleep, again, before he joined you, and the recoil of your thoughts hit you so hard it nearly made you flinch – have you learned nothing?

When he first opened his eyes, and the green of spring met yours, there was no concern in them. They were soft, tender, kind. You stepped pointedly around the phrase that popped into mind lest it make the tightness in your chest worse.

Then he blinked, and you supposed your posture and your face gave him good reason to be concerned. He sat up, only noticing, as you did, that you clung to his hand when he moved it to touch the covered bandages on your side. “Are you in pain?”

Yes. “No.” Not that manner of pain. You trusted Diaval and no one else and now you trusted him and the fear of betrayal consumed you.

He did not let go of your hand, but he also did not believe you. The one he’d slept on pressed, gently, to your side. It hurt – of course it hurt, it hadn’t been a whole three days since you were injured – but not badly. Their healers knew how to treat even the most severe of iron burns.

“May I?” the brightness of his eyes returned to yours.

You nodded, even though, for another moment, it was too much. This, lying there with him, touching him, being touched – being touched kindly.

He hesitated to release your hand, as though you might come untethered. He clasped it gently between his as he rose, as his fur blankets fell away and you breathed out in relief at the ever-so-familiar sight of his unfurled wings as they stretched. Wings like yours, restored to you. By Aurora, who had also betrayed you.

You shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t trust him, you shouldn’t still be surprised when it happened, and yet, it was hard for you to release him as well, though he resettled near you. Though his touch was gentle and you only flinched away from him a little.

“Maleficent.” His hand lifted to touch your face. “I will not cause you pain.”

You half-laughed under your breath – not a real one; there was no humor in the biting, passing thought of everyone does.

“You are safe here.” He followed your eyes when they refused to meet his until his movement in your periphery drew them back. “I promise.”

Promise. Even in the rhythm of his lovely, softened voice, you wanted to disbelieve that word. No one upholds their promises.

No one but men with wings, perhaps. Men who are also, in some ways, a bird.

You drew in a deep, slow breath. Held it until the nagging tug of fear began to release, and then sat back on your palms as though you’d ever been truly in conversation about the wound on your side.

It was enough a gesture of trust that you nearly forgot about the placement of his hand, or how nice it felt against your skin. Your eyelids lowered when his thumb brushed your cheekbone, and you reigned in your disappointment when his touch withdrew.

“Did you sleep well?” Conall was not Diaval, and would not force you to confront anything you were not prepared to. You were grateful for it; it eased the tension in your shoulders.

“I did. Though I’ll have to apologize,” you let the phrase linger until he met your eyes, and your lips quirked at his gentle confusion, “I believe I held on to you all night.”

There was a flicker of warmth in his gaze and in the quirk of his mouth that betrayed him just as much as you betrayed yourself. The thought was not unpleasant. Maybe even welcome. “You sleep best with company.”

Your feathers fluffed, and you quirked your head.

He checked your wound and re-wrapped your bandages; it must have been doing well. It also might have been an excuse not to hold your eyes, for a change. “You were soaked to the skin in the healer’s nest. At first, you were bruised as though you had fallen from a height.”

You had. You plunged into Ulstead’s river and ended up in the sea. If the bullet hadn’t killed you, if drowning hadn’t killed you, the falls should’ve. You were beginning to suspect your power was not tampered as much as it was diverted; you were lucky to be alive.

“You’ll have to forgive me in return.” His eyes lifted, and the depth of their warmth promised that there was nothing you would truly need to forgive. “I held you while you were shivering.”

Your instincts sought him for comfort for a reason, then. You almost smiled, though you did rest a hand over his. “Thank you.”

“Always.” You did not think his eyes could warm further, but they did. They were so bright you could plunge into them like the canopy, become wholly and truly lost.

Your instincts sought him for comfort, and when he held your eyes – when he kept holding your eyes the way he did, kept imbuing love into you freely – they also encouraged you to seek other things.

Foolish. Senseless. You don’t know him. (He’s made his intentions quite clear; however roundabout, it’s your happiness he seeks. He wants nothing from you but a clear head.) You tell yourself fairytales to justify your indecision. (He protested Borra’s advances. He protected you, and you were a stranger to him. You proved the point the other made, and his regard of you never changed.)

He waited to touch you until it was clear, to you, that he would. There was no good reason for him to cradle your face like he did, cradle your body against him. It’s because you are of Phoenix blood, that cold and cutting little voice pressed.

“You do not have to say anything you do not wish to,” though he did, consistently, seek your eyes and you knew how well eyes conveyed thoughts that you would not give voice to. “Will you tell me if there is anything you need?”

You did not need to go back in time and erase Stefan from your life, but you wished to. You wished that your people had known about your parents; that you had not grown alone. You wished that there was a version of your life where the child version of yourself and the child version of the people you knew now had fledged together, flown through the trees and the peaks and skimmed your fingers along the crisp water at the heart of the moors. You wished, in this alternate version of your life, that the young warrior Conall must’ve been when he was sixteen gave the girl that you were True Love’s Kiss.

You wished for it more than you understood. You wished that you could just feel things without having to fight yourself for why you should not.

You did not ask him to stay out loud, though he did. He moved into the nest with you as though if he moved too quickly, the tender wound on your side might start to bleed freely again. You hated that he saw weakness in you – you hated that he recognized when you felt fragile. You were so used to keeping that part of yourself covered, like your horns. (It was only natural that, there, with him, while your hair was loose and your horns uncovered for longer than they had been since Aurora was born, your feelings might be as well.)

“The last time I lay with a man, he stole my wings.”

It came out of you quickly, like tearing a blood-soaked bandage from skin. You did not mean for it to sound so harsh and so abrupt; you did not owe him that, or anything, but he had given to you so freely that you felt – aside from the part of you that jabbed the belly of your distrust – he deserved to know what opposed his kindness.

Your legs folded the way they had in the healer’s nest when his fingertips lightly brushed the down around their joints. He could feel the scars half-covered by feathers – scars like they had been hacked off and gouged out at once. You did not know how they were removed or how they’d been kept, only that they lived independently of you because of the magic in your blood.

But there was no talk of that. No mention of the Phoenix, or your bloodline, or what it could have meant for the whole of your people.

Conall engulfed you in one of his wings. You shifted – just to accommodate him at first, and then to press yourself into his side.

You did not allow yourself to be a creature in need of comfort. Yet, if it was offered to you freely, what use was there in shying away?

The unfurling of your body against his was gradual; you had to press yourself against him first, soak in the warmth of his skin for a moment. He did not continue to touch your scars, but embraced you with his hand upon your side. Your horns were nearly pressed against his. You wrapped your arms around him slowly, easing closer, your chin on his shoulder, his arms, both, around you, and the warmth of his wings around yours was all-encompassing.

You could stay like this. For three days, until you healed, indefinitely.

“Thank you for saving me,” you murmured near his ear, and his arms around you became a full embrace, so tight you could feel the rhythm of his heart.

“You have nothing to thank me for.” He cradled the back of your head again, and your thoughts – of course I do, you had no reason to risk your life for me; you could have abandoned me and justified it as protecting your people just as you justified saving me for the same – silenced with your breath.

You had barely looked at him when you flew through paradise at his side. You had not grasped the depth or the breadth of the warmth or the love in his eyes until you were hovering together like hummingbirds in the network of narrow caverns where your peoples’ fledglings practiced flight, and it had frightened you. Paradise, children, love, peace. You preferred direct confrontation to the peril of trust.

You did not have to do what you did. Your desire to do so was enough, for the moment, to silence the flame-flicker of your fear.

You pressed your fingers to his jaw. You shouldn’t have been surprised that his beard was down-soft despite being hair rather than feathers. It made your lips quirk before you pressed them to his jaw.

He was still against you for a moment, letting you do whatever it was you wished. When you withdrew, though it wasn’t far, he reclaimed your eyes.

You did not know that he meant to gently press foreheads with you, nudge his horns against your own. You presumed that one kiss was adequate permission, so when he shifted toward you, you did in return, and your lips pressed to his without provocation.

That wasn’t his intent. He could’ve kissed you, could’ve kept you close, but he withdrew nearly as quickly as you initiated to ensure it was yours. “Maleficent?”

You are a pawn in a game that no side will win; he is kind to you for the same reason Borra hopes you will join him in war – you are the Phoenix. You are a weapon, a token, nothing more—

The softness of his fingers through your hair told you differently. The hot flush of shame that diverted your gaze soothed at his temperate touch. His horns were like yours, his wings like yours, his nest like yours, his eyes, brighter than yours but the essence is the same. He was closer to you than the smoldering bones in the cliffside – no fear conjured by your thoughts could change that.

“Are you certain?”

Of all the things you had not yet decided, all the conclusions you had not yet reached, your desire to kiss him was not up for question.

You nodded. Held his jaw in both of your hands. You were not a child anymore, you did not believe in true love – Diaval was to be the closest to it you ever knew. His beautiful eyes held yours; his arms around you only loosened to give you control.

If Conall, who asked for your permission, who cared for you without asking anything of you in return, not even peace if you were not prepared to embrace it, was not true love, then he was very, very close.

When you kissed him, it was soft and slow. Sweet and savoring. Your lips pressed to his and nothing more, at first; then you sought to feel their softness better. Their warmth. You never imagined someone could kiss patiently, but he did; you were in control. Whatever you chose to do was your decision alone – to kiss him, to press yourself closer, to part your lips against his so you might feel the light, exploratory brush of his tongue against yours.

Slowly, oh so slowly, did you encourage that kiss to deepen. You were intimately aware of every move the other made – he did not run his hands over your back until your arms encircled his neck. You kissed him like you had never kissed someone before – and, in many regards, it was almost true; it had been twenty-odd years since you had last, and you had never kissed another of your own.

“Is this alright?” you asked in a whisper when you inevitably settled astride his legs. Inevitably, as though you belonged there.

“Whatever you are comfortable with.” His eyes were half-lidded, and it gave you an unreasonable spark of pleasure to know that it was because you had kissed him.

“Will you tell me if you are uncomfortable?”

The smile that crossed his lips was like sunlight. He traced his thumb over a swath of your spine as he nodded. “Only if you do.”

You did not quiet your smile, then. You did not pause to consider how long it had been since you allowed another person to touch you like this – Aurora did not count. Aurora was a tactile child, a comfort-seeker by nature. Your utter repulsion toward touch ebbed with her head upon your shoulder, and it was almost comical that her actions, regardless of how direct or indirect they were, placed you in the arms of a man who you did not want to stop touching you.

You broke your second kiss to indulge your impulses. You ran your hands over his shoulders and down his strong arms. He had a warrior’s muscles even if he did not still train; you smiled entirely to yourself as you traced the patterns of the tattoos on his arm with your thumb.

Conall did not ask outright why you smiled, though it was infectious. He palmed your sides gently, careful of your still-healing wound. Your eyes darkened; your touch softened. You shifted the covering of his wrap to admire the patterns upon his chest. Traced them with your fingers, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Continue only when you wish to.” He caught your hand when it lingered on his chest and pressed a kiss to your palm. “If you wish to.”

“I wish to.” Though you still struggled to say it out loud, the notion of open and enthusiastic consent weakened the storm of your thoughts like a temperate wind. “I would like to continue as far as you are willing.”

You could only dance around words and phrases for so long; his bright eyes glinted as he stroked your fingers. “Whatever you wish.”

You wished for many things. The most attainable of them was parting the wrap he’d worn for a shirt overnight to trace the patterns on his chest in full.

“What do they mean?” You thumbed the one at the hollow of his throat.

“Different things.” His wings shifted when the tip of one of your talons caressed one’s curve in the wake of your fingertips. “They tell a story.”

“Yours?”

He nodded. Your fingers found a scar among them – small, well-hidden, but there all the same. He was a warrior just as fierce as the rest of them, once. You thought of the emotion in his voice when he spoke of transformation, of love in the midst of pain, and you bent to kiss it.

It was not the time to contemplate how this story would end. Your lips lingered as you traced his tattoos, traced your own patterns over them. You kissed his chest, his collarbone, his throat. His hand rested upon the back of your head as though he longed to keep you close.

You kissed him again in place of explicit permission. You did not think you would ever tire of kissing him.

The wrap around his shoulders came off in full with the shifting of his wings. Yours perked in response, unfurled in pleasure at the soft, questioning touch he gave the neck-fasten of your borrowed dress.

It was your turn to nod. You sat back a bit, pretended not to notice what you learned from shifting your weight against him (his legs were, in fact, as strong as his arms, and your softness, your lingering, was not unpleasant to him at all).

He met your eyes again. This time, you smiled more broadly than you had in an age, “Would you prefer I tell you out loud?”

“That would be helpful,” he teased. The humor in his tone robbed nothing of the kindness from his eyes, and it warmed you in ways you did not think making love – or the preparation leading up to it – was supposed to.

“I enjoy being touched by you.” You were clear and deliberate with your words, as usual.

His smile grew, though he shook his head fondly. “And I enjoy being touched by you, but that is not consent.” He did not even kiss you while he toyed with your hair, though his forehead did rest against yours once more. “I will not be with you if you’re not ready.”

“I am,” you pressed, trying to end the conversation before it ventured into dark and stormy places.

“Permission is not the same as pleasure.” His thumb stroked the back of your neck. “Making love to you is not the same as being permitted to take pleasure from you. I want to make love to you, Maleficent.”

It should have frightened you how easily you knew you wanted to be made love to. You should have had to fight the reminders of pleasure taken long ago. Even in the warmth and the safety of his arms, acknowledgement of your place in relation to love had always been too much. Being with him should not have been so different.

You pressed foreheads with him gently. Your eyelids did not lower, your gaze did not fall. “I want you to make love to me, Conall.”

You trusted him to.

His touch was gentle. He untied the knot of your borrowed dress at the back of your neck and eased the fabric lower. Not off, not yet – at first, only low enough to return the kisses you’d pressed to his collarbone and his throat. The brush of his beard against your bare skin felt lovely, and your fingers linked through his hair to encourage him to stay there. You were still learning what he needed from you, and a little sound of pleasure when your dress began to slip and his fingers brushed your ribs still made you blush when he withdrew to ensure that the sound was, in fact, pleasure.

“Why do you quiet yourself?” he asked.

For the same reason you did not want to see the glimmer of sadness in his eyes as though he knew before he asked. You did not give your feelings freely. It was as much a part of why you covered your horns as why you kept your pleasure to yourself and pretended you did not see the love in Diaval’s eyes.

“You are the third person I’ve trusted in a very long time.” That was not an answer, though you wanted to leave it at that. You just wanted him to kiss you, kiss you and let you lose your thoughts and your sense in him. “This…telling you how I feel, even when it should be simple…” It is vulnerable, and you are not vulnerable to anyone anymore. Not even the people you love.

“Will you try to?” You could see in his eyes that he could not believe you were not only giving permission if you did not.

You nodded. And then, just to prove that you would, you murmured, “I already am.”

You did not think someone could want you when he looked at you the way he did. He had seen the wall of thorns around your heart and thought the ascent worthwhile, but you were a daunting undertaking for a reason – you were not meant to be loved.

But that was all you saw in his eyes. Concern, sadness, kindness, warmth, love. Why would he do this to himself? Why would he let you believe that anyone could love you as you were?

He pressed his lips over your heart, and the whole of you nearly came apart at the seams. He did it once, let his lips linger, and did it again. He should not love you, but he did. And you folded your arms around him, held him against you, savored in the warmth of his breath against your skin until you were both ready to continue.

You explored him bit by bit, falling in love with his shoulders and his chest and his arms and his hands. His angles were softer than yours – all of theirs were, though you did not linger on the thought. He traced a map of your body with his hands as though he needed to be shown how quickly gooseflesh would rise in his wake. You stifled a giggle when his talons brushed your ribs, and the suddenness of your hand going over your mouth, your little sound and the widening of your eyes gave him pause again.

Oh, you blushed like a fledgling. “That tickled.”

“I’m sorry,” he said just as gravely as if you’d said you hadn’t liked it.

“For what?” Your heart was light; you held his hand there in gratitude.

“Even that should have your consent.”

Your heart was so light, and you shook your head as though your hair wouldn’t fall over your shoulders in cascades. No man is like this. No man could ever be like this. “It does now.”

He gathered you gently into his arms, kissed you from your ribs to your waist. Your wings fluffed in pleasure, half-folded in on themselves when your skirt finally puddled away.

That exploration was slow and gentle, too, and it required no reminder that he preferred outward, readily-offered, and enthusiastic consent.

Gods both mortal and ancestral, the combination of his fingers and his tongue gave you more pleasure than you’d ever hoped for. You most assuredly were not his first, though it certainly felt like he was yours. He knew to kiss and stroke places that you imagined only you would know about – and then another you hadn’t known was there. You were trembling, your knees pressed into the down, and your talons were embedded in your tightly-woven bed.

“Wait,” you whispered, and you anticipated saying it a few more times – you were so close it was as though you were in a haze.

He stopped, and, after a moment, withdrew to resettle you in his arms where you belonged. He, too, breathed hard, and you kissed the heel of his palm when he cupped your cheek.

“I’m fine.” You rested your hand over his for good measure. “I would like it to happen when you and I are together, not…” Not like that, even though it was incredible.

His eyes glinted, though he kissed you all the same. “You are encouraged to finish as often as you want.”

“Oh.” It was supposed to be a little, half-hearted joke, but he still recognized it for what it was.

He pressed his lips to yours again. “Would you still like to?”

The throb of your pulse returned where he’d been stroking. “Yes,” You said against his mouth, “very much.”

His fingers returned to that sweet place inside of you that only he could find, and his thumb resettled at your bundled nerves. Your hips moved with his touch, your breath against his lips was rough, and you shivered when you saw the unabashed love in his face as he watched yours.

Your eyes locked with his, and you came so hard you couldn’t even make a sound. It felt like your muscles locked – you were plunging into the warmth of a different sea, the certainty of your wings swept right out from under you. They unfurled sharply, fanned out on either side of you as though in defense.

“Oh, Conall,” you whispered in a tone you never imagined you possessed.

“Easy,” he murmured, his lips at your throat. “Take your time.”

You were well and thoroughly boneless; there would be no arguing with him on that.

He brought you to settle astride him once more, deliberately placing your weight over his thighs rather than over where the union of your bodies might follow. His fingers withdrew slowly, giving you time to breathe first, to make peace with their retreat.

You had to rest your hands on his chest for support. Your nerves tingled all throughout the whole of your body, even in your wings, which were embarrassingly close to sagging.

“May I still have you?” you murmured, though you felt selfish asking. You had the clarity of mind to imagine you’d feel selfish no matter what you asked, so you might as well.

“When you’re ready.” He pressed yet another gentle kiss to the spot on your forehead where you met when you were bunting horns. You tried to make a mental note to ask about what significance that had, later, but you knew you wouldn’t remember.

You did not even protest. He most certainly was ready, and so you gave yourself time to emerge from your afterglow – for the warmth of love to pool low in your belly once again at his soft, wandering touch. You placed kisses to his shoulders and traced the patterns on his chest, the valleys of his muscles and stroked the downy curls of his beard. You did not need to work up any courage about letting your touch wander, though you did meet his eyes first as he so often did with you.

He nodded.

Your lips quirked, and you couldn’t keep yourself from being horribly childish. “Is that consent, or permission?”

He did not even try to soften his smile. It brightened his whole face, as though you needed yet another aspect of him to fall in love with. “Consent. You have my consent to continue, if you desire to.”

“I desire to,” you repeated, laying your head on his shoulder and fitting your body against his side. “Very much so.”

You took him in your palm. At first, you marveled at him, at his weight, his warmth. You flushed with pleasure at the nest of soft down between his thighs and how lovely its darkness complimented his skin. You ran your thumb over the length of him, caressed him open-handed, and the small, strangled sound that left him gave you the urge to be childish again.

Until your eyes lifted to his face, and the sight of him with his lips parted, his eyes half-lowered as though your hands were the most pleasurable act he’d ever known, made the places his fingers discovered quake.

“Conall?” you asked without an ounce of self-restraint.

“If you’re ready,” he repeated, breathless. He still met your eyes when you climbed over him, when you asked with your own if this position would be uncomfortable for his wings.

You eased yourself into union with him in increments. There was a reason you had wanted to wait rather than indulge yourself on his tongue and his fingers – you felt as though you might see stars just from lowering yourself astride him. You had to rest both of your hands on his chest to keep yourself up, and he placed his over yours.

You could feel the steady tempo of his heart. It made yours clench so hard it physically skipped a beat. Of course being with him would be intimate, there was no other way you could ever be intimate again, but the depth and the severity of your feelings for him still hit you like an unanticipated branch to the face.

You loved him. You were in love with him, and not because he felt so good inside of you that you couldn’t have resisted moaning aloud even if you wanted to. This was right, being with him – being joined with him, being held by him, kissing him, loving him – it was as though everything in all the fabric of the universe and the tangled threads of time interwove just so to land you there, with him, as naked as you’d ever been. Emotionally and otherwise.

“Stop.” He sat up quickly, took your face in his hands. “Maleficent-?”

You pressed your face into his hands. Your heart was full, full to bursting, and you held him there as you eased the rest of the way down. The tears that leaked from your eyes had nothing to do with pain, though you’d been completely ignoring the wound on your side. Your heart beat so hard it strangled your breath, and his thumbs brushed the dampness from your cheeks. “Stop. Look at me.”

You did. You held his hands to your cheeks and practically begged him with your eyes to stay there – just stay right there.

“Are you alright?”

You nodded.

“Do you mean that? Truly? I will not be upset if it’s not the right time.”

You kissed his palms. His wrists. “Stay,” you whispered, and it was all you could manage. No give me a moment, no let me feel, you could manage one word in place of three others.

He did, though it was more intimate than you anticipated. He did not just let you keep yourself where you were, he brought you closer, folded you in his arms and his wings so that nearly the whole of your body was covered with his. Your wings folded neatly behind his, your body fit perfectly in his arms, perfectly in his grasp, as though you were meant to be there with him.

“Please, stay with me,” you whispered with a wholly different meaning.

You were not alone. There was no fear in the thought anymore – you were not alone, you were with him, in Paradise; his arms were safety and you wanted them to be your home.

He pressed you against him as though you weren’t already united, as though you could get any closer to one another than you already were. You clung to his shoulders, buried your fingers in his hair and your cheek against his jaw. “There is nowhere you could go where I cannot follow.”

You held on to him until the weight of your love was not so crushing. He brushed his thumb over your cheek, rubbing away the dampness that remained, and, slowly, you shifted. Your forehead pressed with his, you bunted with him gently, and you guided him to settle on top of you. Your talons caught the tightly-woven wall of his nest-bed, and slipped free once you’d settled comfortably on your fanned-out wings. “I trust you.”

He still studied your face until he was certain that you were, and that your tears had not come from the dull ache in your side or your union with him. Your heart’s even tempo and the softness of your lowered guard expressed consent rather than permission.

As soon as his lips parted to remind you, you touched them lightly with your finger. “I will tell you if I want you to stop.”

He kissed your palm as you had kissed his, then rested his weight in the gaps between your body and your wings. It made your eyes flutter and hips adjust – you wanted to be as close to him as your bodies would allow.

The slow roll of his hips was deliberate. He eased into union with you, giving you time to adjust as much as he savored the warmth of your body in return – the caress of your hands, the soft, breathless sound you made when you felt him move inside you. “Oh.”

He made a low half-purr of agreement. His marvelous hips moved like the current; every retreat was to be followed momentarily by the reunion of the shore with the waves. You guided his palm away from bracing your side, and the pleasure of his caress over the plains of your stomach, his hand fit to your curves, made your spread wings twitch in pleasure.

“Yes,” you whispered, “Just like that…”

He kissed you in soft, sweet punctuations. You could not get enough of him nor he, of you. He had to shift to press his hand to your lower back to support you as you arched off the down, and the other lifted above you to grip the side of his nest-bed as you had. His eyes were so bright you could dive into them like the canopy from the clouds.

“Like this?” he stoked that sweet place inside of you and you did not resist slotting your thighs over his hips to get closer. Your lower belly quivered.

“Conall,” you breathed. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

The sound of his name and the warmth of your half-lowered gaze gave him chills. All of him was beautiful, even his groan. It made you dig your heels into the down and try to press closer, as if you could. As if you could accomplish anything but lightly bucking your hips.

His steady rhythm faltered.

You moved against him in return, letting your hips guide the ease of your natural pace. He moved closer to you, flexed his fingers in the twigs in place of grasping you. You felt your calves tightening, tension gather against his hand on your back. You curled your toes and let your instincts guide you.

He said your name in place of a proper warning. The tight circles you’d started to draw with your hips started to dissolve. You clung to him with your knees, begging him to stay right where he was.

He did. And the half-wild sound he made as he gripped your hips caused something in the fabric of your very essence to snap.

Spring-green fire surged from you like a collision’s epicenter. The whole of the forest blossomed with new life; the felled branches that made up Conall’s nest as well as others’ grew flush and heady again with flowing sap and new-budded leaves. A carpet of moss crept over the unturned stones, and the flowers – those precious, native few that thrived despite few pollinators – bloomed.

They even felt you in the other biomes. A trickle of rain fell from the high peaks into the desert; the sun brightened over the jungle and dimmed in the tundra so their self-made borealis shone more readily.

Conall, buried to the hilt within you, did not notice. Then again, neither did you.

His lips traced the leaf of your ear, hand lingered at your wounded side. “You’re in no pain?”

“None whatsoever.” Your breath was still heavy, but there was no tension in your body to encourage pain. You’d passed boneless. Had you not been under him, you would’ve been as limp in his arms as you were the night he found you.

He moved to withdraw, and you clung to him stubbornly. You were not ready to let go of him, not ready to give up even if the thought of rolling over and going right back to sleep was no longer out of the question.

He settled over you, instead, resting his forearms against the nest to keep his weight from pinning down your wings. You brought him close, curled your arms around his, and lightly thumbed the down at their joints. The whole of your body thrummed with pleasure.

“We can stop now,” you muttered, just to make good on your promises.

He chuckled, but resisted teasing far better than you did. He propped his weight on one arm to draw some of his furs over you both, and you snuggled into his chest. Snuggled. You.

“May I tell you something entirely unreasonable?” you murmured because you were tired enough, in your afterglow, to have the resolve.

“It may not be as unreasonable as you think,” he replied. He did not have to search your eyes. He did not even have to wait long to gather you into his arms and shift so it was him lying under you with his wings curled loosely around you as though the blankets were insufficient on their own.

“I’m rather in love with you.” You did not leave it at that; you did not even want to. “Quite in love with you, actually.”

His talons carded gently through your hair, then dipped along the rise of your hollow wing-bone. “Hardly unreasonable.”

Your lips quirked.

“You truly are magnificent, Maleficent. And I am rather in love with you as well.” He did not leave it at that, either, though you supposed he should’ve. Could’ve. Whatever. “Quite in love with you, actually.”

You play-pushed his shoulder.

He caught your hand, laced his fingers through yours, and held it there. “These marks,” below where your joined hands rested, “are the entirety of my story. One day soon, they will include you.”

“What will they say?” you murmured, though your eyes were heavy. The rhythm of his heart against yours was a beautiful sound against your shallow, sleep-seeking breath.

His thumb brushed your knuckles. You were so close that your breath fanned his chest, and he would’ve done anything you’d asked to keep you there. “Whatever you wish.”

                                         ---------------------------

Tag List: @deathonyourtongue, @swim-reaper, @thetempleofthemasaigoddess, @mor-ranr, @blacksirenswolf, @spiritaed-kth, @faro-en-la-distancia