continued from here for @motivationdiabolic
declan felt the moment the words found somewhere to land in wren. he didn't really know how long fae lived; he knew some that were thousands of years old, as old as the stories they told children late at night, but some never made it that far. either way, it wouldn't be long enough.
i'm yours.
a hundred thousand years wouldn't have been long enough. declan's breath caught, something bright and aching blooming beneath his ribs, taking root, and declan's magic warmed helplessly around the soft purr from wren's chest. this was the sort of thing fae were supposed to be clever enough to avoid and proud enough to deny.
it wasn't blood, not in the way declan understood it. too dark, too cold. it tasted like buried roots and black soil after rain, a door sealed for thousands of years finally cracking open.
wren's hand pressed to his cheek, smearing dark across his skin, and declan leaned into it, too dazed to place a word on how he felt about wren in the moment. magic stirred inside of him, warmth mixing with something darker, old and cold. declan made a quiet sound against wren's mouth, chasing the taste before he could think better of it. he should have been afraid of the thing that had just been exchanged. some distant, sensible part of him must have remembered the stories of terrible intimacy that he had been told his whole life about vampires.
it didn't matter.
hishishishishis.
wren's fingers tugged him closer by his hair and declan went eagerly, mouth open fully. he wasn't sure that he would ever feel close enough to wren again. his own fingers clawed desperately at wren's skin, leaving red marks dragging down his arms. wren tasted like vitae and want, something forbidden made warm enough to swallow, and declan had never been good at refusing warmth.
his magic shivered again. gold flickered beneath his skin, dimmer than before, candlelit around the edges. softer and stranger, threaded through with the darkness wren had pressed into him. the plants nearest to them stirred by an invisible draft, the leaves turning towards wren. declan barely had time to realize the gravity before wren was pulling back, beautiful and inhuman, and a wounded noise escaped out of declan's throat. he felt it before he saw it; the impossible speed, the shift in the air before wren's mouth was at his throat.
he shouldn't have tilted his head, but it dropped to the side, baring his neck for the fangs pressing into his skin. "wren," it came out like prayer with the bite, pain sparking bright and clean before it opened into something else entirely. warmth spilled down his throat, and declan's fingers tightened hard in wren's shirt.
the room answered with him. flowers opened and vines curled along the floorboards, slow and searching. declan had heard stories, like most things fae believed, they were all just stories. declan hadn't believed most of them; almost everything he had been told ended up being some twisted version of the truth. the stories of how dangerous it was for a fae's magic to reach towards something monstrous had littered his childhood and been brushed off as a way to keep him secluded as he got older.
he was sure now. nothing bad could come from this. he was so sure about it that when wren pulled away, declan followed. his throat ached where the bite had been. wren's tongue soothed over the wound and a shiver ran through declan so hard it made him feel boneless. his hand raised on instinct, sliding into wren's hair. for once, declan didn't fill the silence. he didn't have anything that felt important enough to ruin the golden air in the room.
i love you.
declan pulled back only enough to see him, hand sliding to wren's jaw. black stained, fangs still visible against his lips, pupils thin and inhuman and beautiful. "look at me." he hadn't meant for it to be so whiny. why did he sound like that? "wrennn, look at me." he whined again even though he didn't mean to. as soon as wren's head was out of his neck, declan found his eyes. "i love you."
it might have felt anticlimactic had the words not torn right through him on the way out, too ordinary for the way they made the room tremble around them. "i love you." he said again, because the first time hadn't been enough. "i love you." gold flickered beneath his skin, grabbing desperately at his shoulders until declan was able to pull himself on top of wren, head tilted, letting all the warmth he could muster spill over wren's skin.
it wasn't sunlight, not really. not the kind that punished creatures like wren. his magic was softer, shaped by delcan without knowing he was shaping it. warmth with nowhere to go but the dead thing beneath him. declan's hands framed wren's face, thumbs dragging over the black at his mouth trying to memorize the stain by touch. there was so much of wren on him now. vitae on his tongue. venom in his blood. dark smears across his cheek and matted in his hair. it should have felt like corruption. instead it felt like proof.
