Consequences

Writers: Iluva, Sia
Date Posted: 14th October 2026

Characters: A'garyn, K'valas
Description: K'valas and A'garyn talk afterwards
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 5, day 22 of Turn 13
Notes: Mentioned: M'thos, M'sar
cursing Follows "DFW: What Isn't Yours" and "DFW: The Lost"

A'garyn

K'valas

That day's lessons and the one after dragged on forever. K'valas sat through them in a half daze, appearing halfway through the day and refusing to meet M'thos' gaze nor engage in whatever stupid face M'sar was making. The only solace in the day was that the brat hadn't won.

Sazikoth hadn't spent much time basking in the glow of her win; she'd bullied the brown off her ledge in short order, the rage at the audacity of him boiling up in K'valas chest before he really recognized what it was.

The winner was a stranger. Not A'garyn (of course not) and thankfully nobody from the weyrlings. A face vaguely familiar from passing in the halls or seated across the dining cavern. K'valas hadn't stayed to make introductions. He'd pulled his clothes back on and left the moment he was himself again, 'etiquette' be scored. Scrubbed himself raw in the bath and threw them both hard into 'drills.

He'd expected that to be the end of it. Instead, it had followed him into the next day. A deep ache in his chest that he couldn't place.

Sazikoth had no patience for it, and she was her usual unhelpful self. What's done was done. They'd gotten rid of them quickly, and what did it matter, when all they needed was each other?

Except that was untrue.

}: Stop it.:{ She told him.

**I'm fine.**

}: You've been 'fine' for two days.:{

K'valas rubbed both hands over his face. "I don't know what you want me to say."

}: I want you to stop it. :{

An unhumorous laugh escaped him. **Just like that?**

}: Yes. :{

K'valas pushed himself upright and went to the ledge, needing the cold air. Sazikoth watched him go but didn't follow. She didn't need to. Her presence was a steady weight in the back of his mind, reassuring in the way only she could be.

A soft sound just inside the weyr.

Zolta landed on the table first and then traced his path out to the ledge, wings fluttering delicately as she alighted on K'valas’ shoulder. She pressed in close to his neck and for a few moments her cheek stroked his.

The door shut with a faint click behind him. There had been every instinct to come to this weyr, knock on this door, throw open this door, the previous day. Instead, A’garyn sat on his bed for what eventually fell into hours in the failing light. His fists pressed to his forehead, hands in his hair, face in his hands. No peace to be pulled out of the dark.

A faint, raw searing bobbed in his chest as he released the door handle and cleared his throat and stood loose and bladed against the woodgrain. A'garyn wanted the guilt, every bit of it. Wanted it, but more than anything he deserved it.

}:You don't,:{ Talarcheth told him, irritated. But he would not be bringing him to any ledges. Especially not that one.

Even after everything, there was the endless devotion of his dragon. A'garyn looked out to the green on her couch, the man on the ledge. He couldn't take his eyes off him. “Hungry?”

Sazikoth's low growl began at the sight of Zolta, though quieted as K'valas unflinchingly kept her gaze. She shuffled away in an awkward, low hop, keeping her belly close to the ground and one yellow eye at the intruder, like he was going to do anything but stand amongst the mess of K'valas' weyr.

K’valas kept his eyes on Sazikoth until the green settled, then finally looked toward the door. A’garyn stood there like he belonged and didn’t at the same time, shoulders set too carefully, voice still hanging in the air with that single, careful question.

The ache in K’valas’ chest twisted harder. He reached up and stroked Zolta’s neck once, grounding himself in the small, familiar weight, and stepped back into the warmth of the weyr. "No. I'm not hungry." His tone was flat. Final, the same way he had spoken to everyone else for the last two days. "Do you want to explain what stunt you were trying to pull?"

A bag landed on the counter at that answer, joining the mesmerizing clutter that often induced a headache when A'garyn came to visit. It didn't register at all now. The wood was hard and unyielding against his back and he was still watching K'valas like he might the sun after a long night in the cold, staring even though it hurt. Such tension there. It had wound itself deep into him, sank into them both like iron.

As he moved away from the door, his gaze broke just long enough to run a hand down his face. The wrecked knuckles smarted.

He’d fucked up.

He hadn't been thinking. Only heeded the savage beat of his heart and then nearly had it torn out.
Hadn’t it been, all the same?

It had only been a few breaths of looking at each other -- of feeling everything ignite again -- and now it was bleeding up to the surface, into his voice as he said, “No, I don't.”

He tried to offer calm reassurance along his link with Talarcheth, and as they refocused, A'garyn's dark eyes narrowed slightly to allay the burn. He wore a thin, humorless smile. “Did you think I was just going to sit and watch?”

A pang of guilt flared hot and unwanted under his ribs at the box of food sitting amidst the mess. "You never thought of minding your own business?" K'valas asked flatly, "You wouldn't have had to watch if you'd left well enough alone. You thought Talarcheth would just fly past all the fully grown dragons when he'd been flying for what, a month?"

Zolta landed on the table again, eyes awhirl.

“I didn't think he'd catch her.” A'garyn ground out. And what made it worse was that it was almost a lie. Did that fragile, frenzied hope that Talarcheth might catch Sazikoth make it a lie? “I had to try. I couldn't just--"

It was not a justification, because there was none. He'd known that yesterday, just like he knew it now. He needed to be calmer. Still, A'garyn's pupils dilated. And he was still advancing across the room. Long, slow, intent steps. “So, what, if things were reversed, you'd just be completely fine with someone else on top of me?”

K'valas crossed his arms. "_When_ things are reversed," He reiterated with a scowl, voice low, "Because that's what's going to happen, isn't it? Talarcheth's going to chase whatever green he wants. You want me to get mad about it? Flightmoth outside just in case you lose? Sulk whenever he wins?" He shook his head, the ache in his chest twisting tighter. " I _hate_ the idea, Aeg, but we should have thought about that before we accepted Search."

He held A'garyn's gaze a moment longer, refusing to look away. "Do you think _I_ was completely fine with it?" He asked, "That I really wanted some stranger like that? That I wanted you to see me like that?"

“No.” A’garyn glared. “But I wasn't… thinking. At all.” Everything about it made him hot with shame. “I'm sorry, Kav. I know it made it harder. I never wanted that for you. I’d’ve been watching from the ledge regardless, but… I should have…" Minded his own business. Somehow that still sent undiluted rage crackling under his skin. “I know it's going to happen, to me, to you. I knew she was starting to shine, but I just… I lost my mind when I saw her up there. Just fucking panicked. And he's so strong, Kav. I _hoped_ he might, but--”

But nothing. It didn’t matter. He grit the rest of the words back into oblivion. Everything that had been inflamed with such urgency yesterday was just dust in the wind now. He’d hurt Talarcheth, had done him wrong every step of the way. He’d actually frightened him. He’d frightened himself. And Kav. Kav had been in an impossible position from the start and A’garyn had known that someone else would fall against him in the end. It had been more than he knew what to do with. Still was.

A'garyn rested a hand on K'valas’ forearm, loosely gripping. Heedless of his bronze’s disdain, the other slid to cup his jaw, lay fingers on the back of his neck, absorbing every bit of tension caught there. “How did--" He couldn't get those words out yet. “Fuck, Kav.” His voice was so low it was almost a whisper, “Come here.”

K’valas stayed still under the touch, breath shallow. The weight of A’garyn’s hand on his arm and the fingers at the back of his neck felt wrong in a way that had nothing to do with the man himself and everything to do with the last two days. The stranger’s hands. The stranger’s weight. The way his body had answered without his permission-- he swallowed against the nausea and finally lifted his own hand, not to push A’garyn away, but to close around the wrist at his jaw. "I'll be fine." he said quietly, "Just stay away from the flightroom. For a while. Please. I can't handle the both of you right now."

A'garyn's eyes trailed over his face, uneasy. He didn't want to say anything. Yesterday something had shifted underfoot that he couldn't name, like the ground had stopped being solid. It scared the shit out of him. Even holdlessness hadn't been able to touch that part. The ability to choose each other. But he nodded once, stiffly. “I'm not going to come near you like that again,” he assured him. “I know you were scared. I…” He felt K'valas’ neck muscles beneath his fingertips -- so tight, the lingering imprint of someone else. Yet another thing that could not be put back. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

His touch on K'valas’ jaw didn't shift as much as it eased into something feather-light, caressing him like smoke. “Kav, I know you're not okay.” There was a long silence and A'garyn's voice had gone rough and raw-edged when it finally broke. “Listen to me. Whatever happens there, it doesn't change what's here--” His free hand raised to where his heart was still going crazy inside, as if it were something small and flightless at the edge of a void. “Not for me. Alright? You're mine.”

"I'm fine." K'valas insisted, flat and automatic, just like he'd been repeating to Sazikoth over the last two days. His grip on A'garyn's wrist tightened, thumb moving in a small, deliberate stroke as if he could prove the words true by force. The intimacy felt wrong and necessary all at once; he'd never known touch that wasn't this, never known hands that weren't A'garyn's, and he hated the uneasiness it caused in him now.

"I'll be fine." He said again. "And I know. I don't want flights to change us. Nothing to do now but live with it, whether it's my green rising or your bronze chasing or both. I just…need to get through it first."

“Mm.” A'garyn's thumb gently reciprocated in a cool brush along his cheek. He studied him, the grip on his arm tight, his chest going tighter at yet another ‘fine’, all of it unhurried. “Yeah, you will. I know it. You're too stubborn not to.”

The regularity of a green's cycle might prove to be a small, bizarre blessing or its own specific dread, but either way it was coming now, on a schedule neither of them controlled. The space between them was softly real, at least, sustained by their breath-- that was a certainty, even if who his dragon would chase, or how often, was not.

He couldn't go there right now.

A'garyn exhaled, long and harsh, and tried to let each thought go. “Fuck,” he muttered, “we're in some real shit now.” His free hand came up again, forehead briefly pressing into the palm, but really only feeling K’valas' grip on his other wrist. Only that. Then he straightened, eyes refocusing. “Do you want to sit?” He asked quietly. “I can make you tea, if you like. Or get you water. Whatever you need. Let me take care of you, please.”

K'valas bit back another insistence that he was fine. He didn't _want_ to be fussed over, and it felt foolish to think about. They had everything they needed already, and the thought of A'garyn hovering over some misplaced guilt or overprotectiveness made it all worse. The alternative-- sending him away-- was much worse.

He only shifted his grip on A'garyn's wrist, thumb still moving in that small, stubborn stroke, and tilted his head toward the couch. "Sit," he said, “Just… stay. Talk about something else. Anything else. I don’t care what.”

“Fine.” A'garyn conceded. “Come on.”

The next offer to leave and give K'valas some space still sat in the back of his mind, almost on his tongue. Ready as he was to do what K’valas wanted, he swallowed hard against it and clenched his teeth.

He led him over and kicked the clutter out of the way to reach the couch, stepping over what he couldn't, and shoved even more junk from the cushions to the floor. Scampering along the back, Zolta was already curled against a pair of mismatched gloves, settling into her usual spot. A'garyn stretched a leg out with a sigh. His fingers slid back to take hold of K'valas’ and he stared at the mess, at nothing.

If they only sat in silence, that was fine with him. It wasn't the same silence of his weyr. It was nothing like it. “You want to know something?” There was the barest hint of a smile there, the knotted weight of the last two days trying to loosen. “M'thos has those slippers. In pink.”

K’valas let himself be guided down onto the couch, the cushions dipping under their combined weight. A’garyn’s fingers stayed laced with his, warm and slightly rough, and K’valas didn’t pull away. The contact still sat strangely against his skin, too familiar and not familiar enough, but it was better than the alternative. Better than the empty space that had been gnawing at him for two days.

The sudden topic was absurd enough for a small smile to tug at his features. "Of course he does." He said dryly. "Thinking of getting a pair for yourself, are you?"

“Maybe.” A'garyn felt himself relax just a fraction more. “The last time I remember having slippers was when Zolta hatched.” Another lifetime ago, and pink was not a viable option for a boy then. It probably still wasn't, in a Hold.

All that felt so small now compared to what came after. To this. He let his fingers curl a little more firmly against K’valas’, a silent affirmation as much as a promise. What lay ahead of them was wider than any life he'd imagined, or dreaded.

He pressed his head back into the cushion, gently smushing a happy Zolta, and wiggled the toe of his boot, tilting his grin at K'valas. “Think I could pull them off?”

Last updated on the October 28th 2026

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Consequences