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He finds Neil curled up under the willow by the fairy circle, all but dead to the world. He’s almost impossible to pick out at a distance, his freckled, downy fur camouflaging him perfectly against the tree trunk. His antlers curve elegantly up and out like branches, velvet and heather-soft. Andrew reaches out to flick one of Neil’s ears, which twitches back and forth like butterfly wings as he is roused from sleep. His fae-blue eyes crinkle into a smile as he sees Andrew standing over him.
“Happy winter solstice.”
Andrew responds by dropping Neil’s outfit for the evening in his lap. “Festivities start at sundown.”
Neil stretches, the thin layer of fur on his arms ruffling as he cracks his back. “Wha’as this?” he asks, voice still muddy from sleep.
Andrew forgets, as much as he can forget anything, that Neil is new to the fae world, to their court.
“Tradition,” Andrew replies, vesting just enough of a downward slant in his tone that Neil can hear his disdain. Neil hooks a finger through one of the straps and lets the outfit – although outfit is a generous term – tumble out in a jangle of buckles and strips of leather.
“Where’s yours?”
“I’m not a fawn-kind. The changelings have a different dress code.”
“Which is?”
“Just put it on.”
Neil tugs at one of the straps, nose wrinkling when it elicits a faint jingle. The frost-tipped grass crunches as he moves. “I don’t know how.”
Andrew stops himself from rolling his eyes, barely. “Start by losing the human clothes.”
Neil is one of the few of their court who still bothers with the relics of his human life. The worn, faded fabrics hanging from his shoulders and hips carry a faint odour of cheapness and fear that Andrew wants to strip away almost as badly as he does the garments themselves. Andrew is more than familiar with the life Neil was fleeing when he found asylum in their court, and as far as he’s concerned the souvenirs of that pitiful existence should have burned along with Neil’s mortal name. Besides which, they’re horrendously outwith fae fashion norms; most of the fae either don’t need clothes, don’t want them, or couldn’t fit into human wares anymore even if they wanted to. It sends a bad message to the other courts, that Neil doesn’t belong, that Neil isn’t theirs.
Fortunately, tonight would go a long way towards rectifying that image.
Andrew watches with an interest that is mostly clinical as Neil strips, exposing larger swathes of soft pale brown. The scars of his human body were mostly lost when he turned fae, knitted over by enchantment and downy fluff, but Neil twitches under Andrew’s gaze as though still sensitive to their exposure. Andrew drags his gaze to the unobtrusive bark of the tree and pins it there until Neil is done.
Neil clears his throat and holds the harness out to him. “Well?”
Andrew starts with the collar, which in theory should be the easiest part, except for the movement of Neil’s jugular as he swallows around Andrew’s fingers, the way his eyelids flutter just a hair’s breadth from Andrew’s face. The fawn, Andrew knows, likes to be touched, at least by him, particularly loves the slide of his hands against the grain of his thighs. Neil’s lingering human desires – for the drag of flesh against fur, for flushed skin and muffled gasps falling in tandem - will wear off in time, Andrew thinks. Until they do, Andrew will indulge them. But tonight, the night of the winter solstice, is not the time to give into human tendencies – not with the veil between worlds as thin as it is.
Andrew clicks the collar into place. The bell at the front jingles. He hooks a finger under and runs it along, checks Neil has enough room to breathe until moving onto the wrist and ankles, more studded collars that hook tightly around Neil’s limbs like weighted bracelets. Neil studies the additions, cheeks darkening as he fingers the metal clasps. The next section hangs from the neck collar, wide enough to loop around Neil’s chest. This part, Andrew pulls a little tighter, watching for the stutter of Neil’s breath as he adjusts the straps.
“What the fuck is this?” Neil says, far too breathy to really pull off the tone. “Am I one of Santa’s reindeer or something?”
The name rings a faint bell in Andrew’s mind, neglected memories of childhood promises unfulfilled. “We have no interest in tawdry human deities.”
“Thought you’d say that,” Neil mutters. Andrew tugs on the strap sharply, but with no more room to give Neil stumbles forward instead. His ears flick in surprise, one after the other, and Andrew resists the urge to pinch them.
He guides Neil’s legs into the appropriate straps before spinning him around to fasten him up at the back. The stubby tail turns out to be a problem, and Andrew spends several minutes trying to work out how to adjust the straps around it. They haven’t had a Fawn in their court in all the time he has been there, the breed of fae being all but extinct. Faint memories of Fawns from other courts have guided him this far, but now his disinterest in anyone outside his ring is letting his knowledge of their attire down.
Neil’s tail flicks upwards, taunting him. Lost in thought, Andrew runs a feather-light digit from the base to the tip. The bunch of nerves at the base of Neil’s spine twitch and the tail flicks under his touch as Neil glances curiously over his shoulder, looking for the source of the hold-up. Andrew has to turn his head to avoid being clipped by an antler.
“What?”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re stuck.”
Andrew doesn’t bother arguing. He presses his palm to Neil’s lower back, seeing if he can smooth his tail flat against his spine and out of the way. Neil wriggles against the pressure. “Um.”
Andrew lets his hand slide down, following the curve of the strap as it juts out across Neil’s ass until he finds what he’s looking for. The loop slips around Neil’s tail and settles at the base, red and gold nuzzling against brown and white. Andrew runs a hand along the length of it to straighten the fur out, just once, and Neil makes a strange breathy noise.
“Are you going to be like this all night?” says Andrew, bored.
“Are you?” Neil whines.
Andrew answers by looping a finger through one of the belt hooks and spinning Neil roughly back to face him. There’s still a wide belt to add around Neil’s waist – providing the faintest hint of what the humans would refer to as “modesty” – but it will do nothing to hide what appears to be a painful erection.
“You can’t go to the solstice like this.”
“You put me in a harness!”
Andrew stares blankly. “Has the purpose of the harness changed in the last few centuries of human civilisation?”
“I’ll give you three guesses.”
“Of course.” Andrew runs a hand over the chest strap. His hand brushes one of Neil’s nipples, pebbly and sensitive to the touch. “Everything comes back to sex.”
Neil snorts, or that’s probably what it’s supposed to be. “And what am I wearing this for, if not sex?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Fawn?” Andrew’s hand slides up until it is wrapped around Neil’s throat, resting just below the line of the collar. The bell rolls against his index finger.
Neil’s response rumbles against Andrew’s hand, not that Andrew is paying much attention to it. He hooks two fingers through the collar and yanks, pulling Neil’s face down alongside his. Neil’s ear twitches as Andrew’s breath brushes over it.
“It’s so that everyone knows that you are ours.”
Neil stops breathing altogether.
Andrew steps back, casts a dismissive look over him. “Deal with that. Sun is almost down.”
“What will you be wearing?” Neil calls after him as he turns to leave.
Andrew almost smirks. Almost. “Patience, Fawn. Patience.”
Neil arrives late to the festivities, hair ruffled and the thin layer of his fur failing to hide a flush, but at least vaguely decent. Then he catches sight of Andrew, and what little composure he had dredged together appears to desert him entirely.
Andrew doesn’t take his true form often, preferring to take advantage of all the shifting abilities offered to him as a changeling, but when he does, it certainly draws attention. His teeth, razor-sharp, feel too large for his mouth, digging into his lower lip as he surveys the glen. His skin tingles as it shifts and shimmers to adapt to the shades of the forest around him, drawing energy from the moonlight. The thin, bat-like translucent wings jutting from his shoulder-blades flutter beyond his control, fanning a light breeze through his curls. Neil stares, and then Andrew does smirk, and then they have to look away from each other before they really make a scene.
As the night wears on they don’t avoid each other, not exactly, but neither do they seek each other out. Nonetheless, Andrew’s eyes are drawn to the constant flicker of movement in his periphery, something burning through his gut akin to the thrill of the hunt. He turns Neil’s explanation of his arousal over in his mind, examines it from several angles, and decides that he can see the appeal. He doesn’t like to associate sex with ownership, but there is no denying that Neil looks good, and being able to pull one’s partner around with the yank of a rein has a certain appeal too. Neil enjoys being manhandled, all but melts when Andrew grips the base of his antlers and uses it to direct him where he pleases. Perhaps there was something to be said for human ingenuity, after all.
The next time he catches Neil’s eye, he gives him a look, the look, and Neil all but breaks out smiling.
They will definitely be missed, and Kevin will bitch at them both for it tomorrow, but such concerns are far from Andrew’s mind as Neil’s tongue licks into his mouth. He feels over-exposed in his true body, his skin humming with moonlight. The places where Neil’s skin meets his tingle like static, Andrew’s green and blue hues darkening to midnight-sky in the wake of Neil’s hands. Neil presses his lips to Andrew’s neck, and his collarbone blossoms into speckles of comet-amber beneath his mouth. His wings whir at his back, and although they have never been able to lift Andrew from the ground he reaches for something to steady himself all the same.
He finds the nape of Neil’s neck, where tawny brown flows into bright auburn, and as he tugs his hands through Neil’s hair his fingers catch on the base of Neil’s antlers. Neil groans into Andrew’s skin in response. Andrew uses the leverage to pull Neil’s head back, and the bell at his neck rings loud in the quiet glen. Andrew flicks the bell before cupping his hand around the leather, pressure insistently light even as Neil pushes into the touch. Studying Neil’s reaction with the attention of a scholar, Andrew squeezes, and charts every twitch that Neil’s body gives in response. His ears are, as always, his biggest give-away. Andrew resists the urge to pull one of the tips between his teeth and tug, even though his brain is all too ready to supply him with all the noises Neil might make as a result.
“Do you like it?” Andrew hums, and then realises that his question requires some specificity. “Belonging?” He flexes his hand around Neil’s throat again, briefly, and feels the Fawn squirm.
“Fuck you,” Neil responds, and a moment later their mouths are crashing back together like waves in a stormy sea. His anger is a challenge that Andrew accepts without hesitation, recognising it all too easily as an admission given the only way Neil knows how. Neil’s Fae form may seem soft, but in their cores, they’re made of the same Unseelie steel. They were too wrong for the human world, too broken. It was easy to pull themselves apart to become what the Court needed them to be, but that doesn’t mean submission comes easily to either of them. They are not servants; they are survivors.
Andrew lets Neil bite his acceptance into his lips until they’re numb from it. Then, he hooks a hand through the split of Neil’s antlers and shoves him without ceremony to his knees. The harness rattles. Neil doesn’t seem to notice, seemingly transfixed by tracing the lines of Andrew’s hips down to his groin, first with eyes and then with fingers, lacquered nails leaving light amber trails behind them. The straps around his wrists catch the light briefly as he strokes his hands down Andrew’s thighs.
“Why have I never seen you like this before?” he murmurs. He thumbs across Andrew’s inner thigh, watching as the skin changes colour.
“A changeling’s true form is not handed over lightly.”
“You handed it to everyone at the solstice.”
Andrew quirks an eyebrow, waits for Neil to get it.
Neil’s eyes widen. “Nobody else sees you like this?”
“They see what they expect to see,” Andrew replies simply. He never asked how the others interpreted his true form; the glamour adapted to each individual’s expectations, and he got all the answers he needed from the fear in their eyes. That Neil could cut through that haze to Andrew’s core should concern Andrew more than it does, but it’s hard to focus on such trivialities when Andrew can feel the huff of Neil’s breath, lips tantalisingly close.
“More fool them,” Neil says reverently, and takes Andrew into his mouth.
It’s all Andrew can do to hold himself together; as the pleasure spirals through his body it almost overwhelms him, and for a moment his world shimmers as his true form struggles to cope with the onslaught of sensation. Neil’s hands and mouth are his anchor, and Andrew fists a hand in Neil’s hair as the slide of Neil’s lips takes him apart. He takes a moment to curse the day the gormless human stumbled into their circle with his too-bright eyes and his smile as fearsome as it was fearful.
Andrew isn’t sure if it’s the effects of the solstice or of Neil; all he knows is that every sensation feels doubled, tripled, quadrupled, the faintest brushes of contact striking through him like lightning. His blood thrums too close to the surface of his skin as though torn from his veins by the moonlight. Andrew lets his sharpened teeth dig into his bottom lip before he loses himself entirely and doesn’t relent even when he feels the molten silver of his blood on his tongue.
Neil breathes through his nose, swirls his tongue around Andrew in a way that would certainly never have been possible with human anatomy, and pulls slowly off. A trail of spit follows him until Neil’s tongue darts out, licking his lips clean. He finishes by pressing a kiss to the jut of Andrew’s hip, feather-soft, and Andrew resists the urge to murder him there and then.
The cuff around one of Neil’s wrists jingles faintly, and Andrew’s eyes zero in on the sound. Neil’s hand works steadily across his crotch, pushing friction against himself as he strains against the straps and crimson leather.
Andrew clicks his tongue. “Problem?”
“You buckled it too tight on purpose, you jackass, of course there’s a problem-” Neil stops when Andrew hooks a finger through the wrist cuff, using it to jerk Neil’s hand away. He studies the way Neil’s eyelids flutter like he would a moth under a magnifying glass, all but deaf to his irritated whine.
“Do you like this?”
Neil whines again. His other hand is still free, but he makes no move to give himself any relief, body limp as though the touch of Andrew’s hand around his wrist were a paralytic agent. “Like what?” Neil says faintly once he has gathered himself enough for speech.
Andrew adjusts his grip on Neil’s wrist, squeezes. He watches the way the rise and fall of Neil’s chest stalls. He knows now that Neil loves belonging, but this is something different, something darker. “Being owned.”
“By you?” Neil tilts his head back to meet Andrew’s gaze. He flexes his hand in Andrew’s hold, studying the limb as though it doesn’t belong to him. “Yes.”
Andrew stares for a beat, lets his lack of comprehension be felt without any change in his expression. There were many things Andrew had forgotten about humanity, many more he had never truly understood in the first place, and the same could be said for Neil. He worries for Neil’s stability, wonders if it is normal for him to find his domination appealing. Then again, what qualifies as “normal” is hardly of concern to either of them.
The question that follows throws Andrew off-balance with the efficiency of enchanted iron. “Do you like owning me?”
Andrew drops Neil’s arm like it burns. “I don’t own you.”
“The court does. Of which you are a member.”
Andrew sniffs. The court had always been a means to an end for him. A battered but effective shield against those who wished to prey upon his people. Out of stupidity or naivety, Neil insists on seeing it as something more. Something like family. “Irrelevant.”
“So this means nothing to you?” Neil taps the faint gold mark just below Andrew’s clavicle, invisible to all but their own court. They all received it upon joining the court, and any attempt to remove it would be as certain a death as a knife through the chest. Only Kevin had ever succeeded in breaking a court binding, and the effort had nearly destroyed him.
“You’re being more of a nuisance than usual tonight.” Andrew catches the tip of one of Neil’s antlers and tugs, just to see Neil’s reaction. “Did one of the other courts say something?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Neil’s lips twitch into a sharp smile. Andrew makes a mental note to find out who has been causing trouble and deal with them appropriately. Assuming, of course, Neil left anything of them to deal with. “But it reminded me how lucky I am it was one of your circles I walked into.”
Andrew hums. He remembers the night with picture-perfect precision, the way Neil thrashed and snarled as the weeds curled around his limbs and held him prone, a mess of bloodied cuts and angular bones and the stench of sweat and desperation that would have put every fae in the forest on his trail. He was lucky it was only Andrew who had caught him.
Then, against all odds, he decided to stay. To give himself to the fae, to their court, to Andrew. To shed his humanity like an old coat and become the creature now kneeling before him.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Neil says, interrupting the flow of Andrew’s thoughts.
“Which was?” Andrew asks. He knows, of course, but he never gives Neil anything without making him work for it.
Neil pushes himself back to his feet. The full moon clears a line of cloud cover, and all of a sudden their clearing is painted silver. Neil stands, three inches on Andrew but more if they count the antlers, his features lined in stark black and white by the moonlight. Inhuman.
“Do you like this?”
With the moon tugging at the nape of his neck and the solstice burning like coal in his chest, Andrew cannot lie, not even to himself. He always pretended it was an indulgence, a game he played because Neil enjoyed it and Andrew was curious. A passing interest that would grow old to the pair of them as Neil became one with the Court and time sanded their desires away.
But if tonight had proven anything, it was that Neil belongs to them well and truly. Whatever this is between them, it isn’t going anywhere.
Andrew places his hand back around Neil’s throat, adding pressure until he feels Neil’s reflexive swallow. “Yes,” Andrew says. He presses a scorching kiss into Neil’s open mouth, swallowing the noise that slips from his chest.
Somehow, they end up in the grass, meltwater slicking their skin as the frost nips them red. Andrew’s fairy circle ripples around them, setting the air abuzz with energy as worlds and bodies collide. Neil hooks his legs around Andrew’s waist and grinds up against him, and for a moment Andrew is struck breathless by the effortless clench of his thighs. Andrew knows what they’re capable of, has seen how fast Neil can run when he puts his mind to it, but having that power turned on him is another thing entirely. Andrew grips a thigh with one hand and braces the other by Neil’s head, finding enough purchase to drag their bodies together. Neil’s down pulls against his skin, and they moan in tandem.
“Goddamn it, Andrew. This bloody harness-!” Neil fumbles down, but Andrew slaps his hands away from the buckles.
“Are you going to behave?”
“Ye-” Neil tries to lie, but the solstice weaves its magic through his vocal cords, and to his evident surprise, the words that come out instead are, “Absolutely fucking not.”
Andrew quirks an eyebrow and bites an admonishing bruise into the dip of Neil’s neck. He has to remember that he’s in his true form, working with limbs stronger and sharper than he’s used to wielding, but the ever-present worry that he could cause injury is more than made up for by the star-struck way Neil looks up at him.
Neil mutters something incoherent, shakes his head, tries again. “Tie me down. I want you to.”
Neil can’t lie tonight, as he has just proven, but still Andrew seeks confirmation. “You want me to-”
“Tie me down, tie me up, tie me sideways, anything, I want to feel-” the words spill from Neil as though drawn out by magic, but this close Andrew can tell that this is no enchanted compulsion, this is all Neil, Neil, Neil. “I want to feel owned.”
Andrew tries to hesitate, but his magic won’t let him. The forest responds at once, vines springing from the earth to hook into Neil’s cuffs, pulling his arms up, his legs down, holding him in place. Like the night Andrew caught him, and yet so, so different.
“You are,” Andrew whispers, words like thunder in the night air. “Owned.”
Andrew catches Neil by the hair and pulls him into another bruising kiss, swallowing Neil’s deep-throated moan. Neil twitches reflexively, tugging at his new restraints, and swears into Andrew’s mouth as he feels how tightly he is bound.
In a small act of kindness, Andrew’s hands trail down, tugging and unbuckling until at last Neil’s erection is free to the night’s mercy. Neil shivers, flexes his arms and legs, lets his eyes slide shut. Andrew spends the next few minutes toying with Neil, running light fingers up and down his length without rhythm or rhyme, watching as Neil’s hips twitch in a fruitless search for a pattern to Andrew’s movements. Andrew waits until Neil’s head is leaking steadily before he takes it into his mouth, tonguing at the slit before pushing it to the back of his throat.
Andrew loses track of all the languages Neil is cursing him out in, wonders how Neil would react to a binding across his mouth in addition to the rest, decides such a line of enquiry is best left for another night. Andrew enjoys the babbling, enjoys listening to Neil losing himself to helpless honesty, the garbled, “so good, yes, more, Andrew-!” that reaches straight to Andrew’s core. He continues until Neil’s body draws tight, and then abruptly pulls back, watching as the shock of Andrew’s sudden absence shakes through him. It takes a long time for Neil to open his eyes again. “I was close,” he says balefully.
“I know,” Andrew says, “but I want to fuck you.”
It’s so much easier to be sure of himself with the solstice sucking the doubt from his chest. The ring of blue in Neil’s eyes grows thin as his pupils dilate, and for a moment Andrew loses himself in them. Then Neil’s patience wears through, bell jingling as he wriggles for purchase, toes curling and flexing in time with the twitch of his ears. “Andrew. Andrew, yes.”
Andrew snaps his fingers and the vines drop away, allowing Andrew to haul Neil upright by his collar. Neil takes the opportunity to kiss the taste of himself from Andrew’s lips, fingering the sensitive point of Andrew’s ear with one hand as his other finds the knot of nerves where his wings meet his shoulder blades. Andrew’s wings flutter at the brush of pressure, as though unwound by Neil’s fingers. His hand keeps sliding downwards, exploring the strange, irregular jut of Andrew’s spine, until finally Andrew catches Neil’s hand, pressing a kiss into his palm before telling him to turn over.
When he unhooks the metal ring from Neil’s tail, it springs upright as though freed from an impossible weight. Andrew curls a hand around it, letting it flick against his palm as Neil makes a breathy noise into the crook of his elbow. Then Andrew squeezes, enjoying the twitch of nerves in his fist as his other hand trails downwards.
The twitching grows more violent as Andrew works Neil open, and soon every hair on Neil’s body is standing on end. His fingers are longer in his true form, more supple, letting him work through Neil at an impossible angle that sends wracking shudders through Neil’s frame. He waits until Neil’s chest is jerking with a familiar kind of breathlessness until he withdraws. Neil curses, curling in on himself before turning baleful doe-eyes back upon him.
“What do you want, Neil?” Andrew shuffles forward, teases Neil with the softest nudge against his hole. “Tell me what you want.”
Neil makes a noise that is not human, not fae, nothing Andrew could ever put a name to. “Take me.”
Andrew, finally, obliges.
The harness, it turns out, is wonderful leverage, and as Andrew pushes in he takes a strap in one hand and pulls, pulls, pulls, until Neil is flush against him. He can feel the soft down of Neil’s legs against his thighs, feel the quiver of his muscles as Neil struggles to hold himself in place, still and careful and so, so good for him. Neil has one hand fisted in the grass, the other clenched around the base of his antler as though it’s the only thing holding him together, his ears perked up as though they’ve been electrocuted. Maybe they have; anything can happen on the solstice, after all.
Andrew hooks a finger through the neck collar and pulls, listening as Neil’s breath breaks apart in his throat.
“Tighter.”
“It’ll leave a mark.”
“Good,” Neil says, and gasps again as Andrew obliges. Hands wrapped in the harness and Neil’s tail flicking against his stomach, Andrew finally gives in and starts to thrust.
The pressure is sharp, hot, perfect, all-consuming, flooding Andrew’s body with molten heat which rises to his skin in shades of gold and amber. The bell around Neil’s neck chimes like the strokes of a clock tower with every movement.
Time works strangely in the world of the fae; days for one court can be weeks for another, a second in one world turning into millennia in the next. Perhaps they are there minutes, perhaps hours, perhaps forever. Any sense of time Andrew has is lost in the slide of Neil’s body against his own.
After an amount of time that could have been an hour as easily as an eternity, Neil reaches back, catches Andrew’s wrist, whispers, “now.”
Andrew catches his cock in time to strip Neil through his orgasm. Neil clenches, twitches, his grip iron-tight as he spurs Andrew on, and soon Andrew is following, spilling and spilling until it feels like there’s nothing left of him to give.
They curl up on top of each other, damp from the grass and their sweat and each other, watching as the glow fades from the fairy circle and the clearing falls back into night. Neil draws patterns into Andrew’s chest, entranced by way the colours shift under his touch, until Andrew bats his hand away with a flat look.
“Do you think we missed the end of the party?”
Andrew catches Neil by the antler, turns his head back to face him. “You want to go back?”
Neil shrugs. “It’s my first solstice.”
Andrew nudges at Neil’s collar, examining the red lines and ruffled fur it leaves in its wake. “Everyone will know.”
The corner of Neil’s mouth twitches upwards. He leans forward, presses a kiss to the gold court-mark below Andrew’s clavicle. The skin around it flushes silver. “Good. I want everyone to see that you’re mine.”
Belonging, Andrew thinks. Maybe he can see the appeal of it after all.