A/N: A few days before I wrote this, I answered a question on tumblr explaining why I hadn't yet written Malora smut, but would be willing to for this series. This short is the resulting compromise. It is by no means traditional sex, but it is still a definite NC-17. I wanted to explore something... alternative, and there is even a subtle reference/tribute to Angelina's double mastectomy in what I hope is a positive light.
Prompts: Malora discuss the issue of an heir for the two kingdoms; Malora first time; Malora smut prompt.
Innate Human Curiosity
They had done it. Against all odds, Aurora and Phillip had managed to forge a new agreement between their two kingdoms. Though Phillip's father was clearly less than pleased with the inclusion of the Moors in their binding, hundred-year alliance, he knew his time on the throne was limited, and that a war would only eat up what little he had left. Though she felt bad for wishing it, Aurora couldn't help but feel hopeful for the day the king passed on, or at least passed over the crown. Phillip's new wife was a lovely, kind woman, and Aurora looked forward to the days when they could sit together at these formal occasions as queens.
As it was, her subjects were pleased to no longer be allied only with faerie creatures they still neither fully understood, nor fully accepted, and the air of appeased celebration which lingered in the streets around her glass castle finally offered Aurora the time she'd been longing for; time to return to the Moors.
—-
Aurora was surprised when only Maleficent met her at the edge of the forest. Though she wondered at the absence her other subjects, she didn't mind having a moment alone with the faerie she had missed the most, and Aurora didn't hesitate to run into those open arms, trusting Maleficent to catch her and laughing when she was lifted quickly into the air and spun around in a brisk flurry of wings. She was caught off guard when Maleficent kissed her, but she quickly melted into the familiar warmth, glad to let her laughter fade into this perfect end to their time too long apart.
"You missed my birthday this year," Aurora murmured when they parted.
Maleficent hadn't stopped smiling at her since she had arrived. "I know. Twenty. Practically an old maid. I hope you'll forgive me for the assumption, but I had a feeling you wouldn't mind a… belated celebration here instead."
As she spoke, the air around them suddenly exploded with life as all the fair folk she had known in her time as queen burst from the trees in a shower of leaves and wings and multi-hued magic; the faerie counterpart to a yell of "Surprise!"
Aurora couldn't imagine she would ever stop laughing and smiling.
Maleficent was right; she didn't mind a bit. Though she had often reveled in the playful attention of these faeries when she was still a girl, she had never been so thoroughly the center of their light and joy. They braided flowers into her hair and tugged her along to the sweetest, ripest berry bushes, pulling her over to the stream only when her lips were stained crimson with the juice. She had never thought she could feel so young again, so carefree, yet she couldn't imagine hesitating as the earthling fae ushered her into the stream. She couldn't care less for the fancy human dress she wore as it made friends with the current around her ankles… until it got in the way of the clear pool she wanted to dive into, and she left it behind. By the time she climbed back up to the banks where Maleficent had been watching with that cool, detached amusement she wore so well, Aurora had lost all of her outerwear and was down to nothing more than a corset, her slip, and not a little bit of mud and sand.
The revelry continued around them, but she allowed herself to curl up by Maleficent's side.
"Thank you for this. I couldn't have imagined a better celebration."
Maleficent smiled and tugged her closer, uncaring that Aurora's hair was dripping onto her clothes and wing. She carefully lifted a wooden cup from beside her, filled with something clear and shining and smelling impossibly sweet and heady. "Honeysuckle wine?" Maleficent offered.
Aurora didn't take the cup, bending her head instead to drink from where Maleficent still held it. The flavor burst across her tongue, honeyed and light with an undercurrent of something heated and biting. It was dark and delicious, and Aurora was tempted to draw comparisons between the drink and the woman holding it.
"Careful," Maleficent murmured. "It's stronger than you'd think."
As she took the cup and allowed herself a few smaller sips, she smiled up at the protector of this realm. "You spoil me, you know?"
Maleficent shook her head. "Says the queen who lives in a castle of glass."
Aurora laughed, butting her playfully with her shoulder. "Yes, well, what can I say; you've given me a taste for the finer things in life."
It was Maleficent's turn to chuckle. "If I can make you happy with flowers, berries, and a stream, I think I might need to worry about you straying. Nature herself could tempt you away from me."
"Nature doesn't kiss nearly as well," Aurora quipped. "But I think you'd best remind me… just in case."
—-
The revelry lasted well into the night, though Aurora spent most of the last few hours dozing beneath Maleficent's wing, exhausted from her journey. Waking the next morning up in their shared hammock at the heights where the treetops met the sky, she smiled to herself, knowing Maleficent must have flown her up here without her even noticing. She pressed herself more closely into the warmth at her back, tugging the arm that rested about her midsection and coaxing it to hold her tighter.
"Good morning." Maleficent's voice rumbled at her back, low and deep with the passage of night.
"It is, isn't it?" Aurora remarked, unable to stop smiling. "Of all the things I've missed, waking up with you is the most precious to me."
There was a new stillness to the form behind her, and Aurora knew why. No matter how well she masked her intentions with a compliment, this was a conversation they had had on her every return, far too often for Maleficent to be fooled.
"I know, you have obligations here, but I do so wish I could coax you away with me more often," Aurora said, knowing better than to pressure her.
Maleficent sighed and pressed lightly against Aurora's shoulder, the subtle signal enough to let the young queen know to turn around. Lying face to face, Aurora was surprised to find one of Maleficent's hands lit up with her magic.
"It's time… for a few more secrets. I hope you will forgive me for keeping them this long, but there are some things about this realm that are hardly mine to tell."
Aurora shook her head. "You know I'd never ask you to; why now?"
"Next year you will be twenty-one; Queen of the Moors for five too-long years. You have more than earned another taste of its many secrets and… in choosing this one, I am going to be selfish again, because there is something else I desperately want you to understand."
Aurora said nothing, wanting Maleficent to continue on her own terms and in her own time. She smiled when Maleficent rewarded her patience with a quick touch of magic, feeding just a tantalizing spark of that sun-hewn power into the skin at her wrist. Then, she spoke.
"Just as much as the faeries are part of the Moors… the Moors are part of us as well."
"What do you mean?" Aurora asked when those cryptic words were allowed to hang too long in the silence.
"I mean this," Maleficent replied, gesturing at the flecks of gold still dancing between her fingers. "This is my power, my lifeblood, and half of it is sunlight. I say that quite literally. This is how I can heal plants – coax a broken branch back to health, strengthen an ailing sapling – but not humans. My magic is, by nature, bound to, well… nature. That is why I am my strongest here. These ancient moorlands hold more life than you or I could ever comprehend. They feed us pure energy and ensure our longevity, and we protect them in turn. I know many of your human subjects believe us some sort of human-animal creature, but perhaps you could startle them one day by saying they would be better off comparing us to the foliage."
"Why have I never heard any of this before?" Aurora asked, fascinated.
"While the Moors are our greatest strength, our connection to them is also our best-kept secret," Maleficent replied. "Because that connection is also our weakness. I know of very few faeries who have lived long beyond these marshlands. The longer we are away, the quicker our power wanes… and I am more vulnerable than most."
So many small curiosities Aurora had noticed were beginning to come together in a larger picture; Maleficent's unwillingness to stay long in her kingdom, the way she seemed so much more alive beneath these trees, the faerie lights that often sparked unattended in the meadows at night…
"How? Why you?"
Maleficent stretched her wings out as she spoke. "I am the guardian, the protector, and that holds more weight than you know. I accepted a closer bond with this realm, and though for a time I abused it, using my strength to act as ruler of these lands, I am intended to serve the Moors, not rule them. I can feel the pulse of the Moors within me at every moment. I feel it as it thrives, as the trees grow skyward and the faeries tend to the land… but I feel every danger as well. There are always growing pains… the cliffs are being eaten away by the wetlands, and all old growth must someday die to make room for the new. But sometimes I imagine the pain of a thousand men and their iron marching through and burning out the underbrush and cutting down the trees to build fortresses and weapons out of a life far older than you or I… and that is my vulnerability. If this sanctuary begins to fall, if the Moors die… I die with it."
Aurora could see things so much more clearly now. She remembered the cast of darkness that lived beneath the trees when the Moors were locked away behind the wall of thorns, and she remembered well the day everything bloomed back to life again. The day she brought Maleficent home. Part of her wanted to ask far more, to question the boundaries of Maleficent's bond with this realm, to seek out limitations and dangers and anything that might someday threaten the fragile peace she had created, but seeing the haunted darkness on Maleficent's face gave her pause. The burden of keeping these lands safe must have weighed heavy on their protector during the years of her father's rule. In handing over some small part of her power to Aurora, she was handing over her world into hands that also held the greatest danger to it, and that was no small trust.
"Then you shall never die," Aurora whispered, "Because I will protect the Moors with my life, and you have already sworn no harm will ever come to me."
Her carefully chosen words had their intended effect, bringing that rare and haunted smile to Maleficent's face. "That I have, Beastie. Perhaps you are right."
—-
And so Aurora unlocked another secret of the kingdom she ruled. In the following months, she began to see Maleficent's words at work, watching in awe as the interplay between the faeries and their world worked in a complicated symbiosis of giving and taking back. As a faerie child cried over a dropped acorn top, flowers bloomed to life just above the little thing's head, offering a distraction and casual cheer that lasted until the parents returned. Berries and wild greens never failed to grow overnight and every mushroom was both edible and delicious. The Moors lived and breathed to shelter and provide for the faeries, and the faeries did their part as well, curing blight and helping each tree find its path to the sun.
And then there was Maleficent. If the Moors lived and breathed for the faeries, it laughed and cried for its Protector. Every time Aurora made her smile, little patches of periwinkle and buttercup sprouted nearby, and the grass grew greener when they passed hand-in-hand. Yet the darker days were never far from her mind; she pictured the heaviness of the air and the shadow of decay hiding just beneath the wonders she had reveled in that first childhood summer. When Maleficent was in pain, the Moors had suffered greatly, yet they had never stopped trying to make her whole. In her mind, Aurora swore to herself that, just as Maleficent was determined to keep her from harm, she would do all in her power to bring her nothing buy joy, and the Moors would never be touched by human greed in all the days of her rule.
—-
The weeks passed in peace and contentment, but a single morning found her waking in surprise. She had never woken in the hammock alone, and for a moment she was worried, but as she sat up, Aurora could see the outline of a distinct pair of wings kneeling by the creek just below the next tree. As stealthily as she could, she clambered down and crept up behind her, but Maleficent froze long before she got too close, clearly aware of her presence.
She went forward anyway, startled to find the faerie undressed and realizing she had actually caught her just about to get in the water.
"So you do wash! How come I've never caught you bathing before?"
Aurora couldn't seem to resist tracing her fingertips up the column of Maleficent's spine. Though her clothing always had openings for her wings, this was the first time she had seen this much skin at once, and she was fascinated by the impossibly defined muscles in her shoulders and back, as well as the bones to either side of her spine which were visibly more pointed and protruding than that of a human.
"Because you usually sleep later than this," Maleficent replied, voice low but not discernibly angry.
"Is this alright?" Aurora asked as she gently traced one of the lower outcroppings of bone. Maleficent visibly shivered but nodded, allowing Aurora's exploration to continue.
"No wonder you can carry me," Aurora mused as she smoothed her palms over the coiled power in Maleficent's upper back, delighting in the feeling of those muscles twitching and shuddering at her touch. She already knew how sensitive the skin was where it began to stretch across the bones of her wings, but she had never had so much access to that particularly delightful vulnerability, and she took full advantage, allowing her fingers to drift across the place where pristine skin faded into a darkening grey soon overtaken by the deep brown of her feathers.
Maleficent's wings spread wide at her touch, and she could hear the faerie's breath catch. "Now you play with fire, Beastie."
Aurora smiled to herself but allowed her fingers to drift into safer territory, stroking gently along the wings as she had done many times before. She knew just how to relax the dark faerie, and she laughed lightly as she realized she was quite literally smoothing ruffled feathers.
Still, as the wings lifted just a big higher, like a cat arching its spine into the hand that offered to pet it, Aurora caught sight of something she had never seen before.
A curl of something gold and gleaming was nestled into the dip just below each of Maleficent's wings. It was perhaps as wide as two of Aurora's fingers, and as she followed the curve with her eyes, she realized it continued out from beneath the shadow of the wing, arching across her side along the line of her waist and continuing onto the front of Maleficent's body, somewhere Aurora couldn't see.
Resting one hand just beneath it, careful not to touch, she nearly tipped over backwards as the gold flared brighter, as though reacting to her proximity. "What is that?" Aurora whispered.
In a flash, Maleficent's wings snapped closed against her back, forcing away Aurora's hands.
"I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean to—"
"—No, no, don't apologize." Maleficent interrupted her stammered response. "That… is something we are going to need to talk about." She sighed. "After all, I have a feeling you know how long you've been here."
Though it felt odd to hold any sort of conversation with Maleficent's naked back to her, Aurora was quick to reply. "Two and a half months tomorrow. And I've been incredibly good, have I not? I haven't mentioned it once!"
Maleficent's shoulders shook in silent laughter at her reply. "That you have. But… it isn't quite that simple."
Slowly, Maleficent rose and turned to face her.
Aurora's first response was a quick draw of breath and a whispered, "You're beautiful," but the words that followed were, "But… you don't look like me."
It was true. Though there was a slight raise to the pale, flawless skin of Maleficent's upper chest, there was little else to distinguish it from the rest of her torso. Where Aurora knew her own breasts were full and capped with a pale pink nipple each, the illusion of shape given to Maleficent's chest came not from the flesh itself, but from the gold band of light that curled up along her ribcage and rose in two gleaming arches, one circling the skin around her heart, the other forming its perfect mirror, each bending inward and growing slimmer as it ended right where Aurora would have expected to find a trace of darker pink. Now she knew where those two paths beneath her wings led, and she was fascinated as she realized these gleaming inlays were alive and sparkling with the same light she had seen dancing about Maleficent's fingers each time she worked magic.
After allowing Aurora a moment to study this new wonder, Maleficent folded her wings over herself and sat once again. "No, Aurora, I don't look like you. I look like a faerie." Aurora was surprised by the heaviness to Maleficent's voice, but her next words offered new understanding. "I told you once that our connection to the Moors is our greatest secret, but perhaps this is one even more closely guarded. We… we are not sexual in the way that humans are. You share intimacies of the flesh… we share in our magic. And just as your human males are vulnerable to… what do they call it? A kick in the balls? … So I am vulnerable where my power lines run closest to the air."
"So, when I touched the skin near your wings…"
Maleficent nodded slowly. "It was a more intimate allowance than you knew."
Aurora stepped closer, looking intently into eyes she had lost herself in so many times before. "How does it work then, for faeries?" she asked. "Could… could I share that with you?"
She was more than curious; she was fascinated. In all the chatter about sex she had overheard between the maids who worked in her castle, it had all sounded a bit frightening, to be honest. A lot of thrusting and sweating and grunting and none of that seemed to explain what all the fuss was about. This, on the other hand, Maleficent's magic, was something she had experienced small pieces of before… and she had loved every second of it.
Maleficent looked astonished. "You… you would want that?"
"Of course," Aurora started, confused by Maleficent's surprise, but quickly added, "If you would want to, that is."
Maleficent stepped closer, allowing her wings to part just enough that a hint of gold flashed between them. She reached out and cupped Aurora's chin, lifting it to meet her searching gaze. "You are nothing like the rest of them," Maleficent murmured. "I shouldn't be surprised by it anymore but… every time I offer you some glimpse of the unknown, you answer me with open arms where others would have long since run in fear."
Part of Aurora wanted to protest, to insist that Maleficent might be surprised by the innate curiosity of humans not raised in fear of the other, but that part of her fell silent under the intensity of the purpose in Maleficent's gaze.
"Give me your hand," the dark faerie instructed.
Aurora obeyed. As she watched, Maleficent carefully brought their joined hands towards her chest, pressing Aurora's palm between the two swathes of gold. The moment their skin touched, the soft glow flared to life, lighting the air between them with a power almost too bright to look into with human eyes. Even distracted by the light, Aurora noticed immediately with the magic began to move. From the central bands of gold, cracks began to appear, branching out through Maleficent's skin in an impossibly intricate spider web of shimmering lightning. When it reached Aurora's hand, it didn't stop.
The magic crept over her fingers, feeling for a moment like nothing more than the charged air before a summer thunderstorm, but then something changed, the light began sinking into her skin, and Aurora gasped aloud.
Heat. So much more intense than anything Maleficent's magic had given her before. It seared through her veins pure and wild and unstoppable as a forest fire. By the time the magic crept its way to her wrist, Aurora's knees gave out, but Maleficent was there to catch her and pull her into waiting arms. Arms which were now gleaming with a golden latticework ready to devour every new inch of Aurora's skin it could find. She cried out as the light crept from her neck up along her hairline, finding and laying claim to an impossibly vulnerable place behind her ear that left her boneless and gasping. Maleficent swallowed the sounds escaping from her with a kiss and oh, there was magic there too, hot and heady and dripping off her lips more potent and dangerous than any liquor and just as delicious as Aurora had imagined.
She managed to open her eyes for just a moment, staring in awe at the gleaming being of power and light staring down at her through a mask of golden fire. Even at her most lighthearted, Maleficent still appeared dark to Aurora simply by her very nature, and seeing her like this, lit from within, was both startling and wonderful. The pattern reminded Aurora vaguely of dragon scales, but her true awe was not for the magic, but for the look of pure exhilaration and desire displayed so nakedly on Maleficent's face, knowing that this was the woman – the faerie – she loved, and feeling her unspoken words fed back to her a thousand times over through the very essence which bound them together.
And then Maleficent's hands slipped beneath the hem of her tunic, and all coherent thought fled. The heat dove gleefully inside of her from where the faerie's touch wandered up along her spine, tracing her skin with a delicate warmth to stand as sharp contrast to the pool of fire now gathering low in her abdomen. She nearly cried out with loss when the contact between them was abruptly broken, but before she could protest, Maleficent had traced a single finger along one of the seams in Aurora's top and every bit of cloth on her body fell to the earth, the heavy linen sprouting roots and leaves and becoming the flax and sisal plants it must once have been made from.
Aurora would have laughed at Maleficent's impatient use of her magic, but it had served its purpose, and that light, now able to make its way across her skin unhindered, left her entirely without breath. In a whirl of now molten-gold wings, Maleficent pulled her into her arms and took to the air, landing them gracelessly in their usual sleeping hammock with a gasp of, "Privacy."
And then there was nothing but magic and Maleficent's touch.
After tasting it on her lips, Aurora felt no fear of allowing her mouth to wander the pathways of auric amber, beginning at the tip of a finger and ending where it had all started, at the end of the delicate curve just over Maleficent's heart, now nearly lost amid the spread of her power. It was all she could do to press kisses to every inch of skin and flame she could reach as Maleficent's searing fingertips sought out the most susceptible places to feed her magic; slipping into her mouth, tracing down the column of her throat, bathing two desperately taut nipples in heat and light. Her eyes had finally adjusted, and even as lost as she was in power and desire, Aurora met Maleficent's gaze as often as she could, needing to see that the faerie was as desperate for this connection as she was.
When Maleficent's thigh slid between hers, slick and pulsing with the same heartbeat of power that had wakened the rest of her skin, Aurora went still, entirely without the strength to do anything but let Maleficent fill her with light. The more the power surged through her, the less she was able to feel the line where her body ended and Maleficent's began, and for a breathless moment, she could feel her lips pressed to her own skin, even though she knew they rested against Maleficent's shoulder. She could feel the energy coiling inside her, growing closer and tighter and threatening to shatter her from within. Even as joy and power flooded through her, she watched in awe as Maleficent threw back her head and laughed, her eyes glazing over with the purest white-gold as the sound of it sent the sky overhead streaming through Aurora's blood, bright and hot as desert sands racing the barren winds. Sunlight and power and Maleficent, Maleficent, Maleficent filled her to bursting until she arched her spine and overflowed.
And the flowers that bloomed in the late-summer earth below them put spring to shame.
—-
Neither woman had the strength or inclination to pull themselves from each other's arms and away from the beautiful day, so the afternoon passed in blissful languor. Just as the first of the nocturnal fae began to brave the twilight air, Aurora nuzzled into Maleficent's neck and asked a question which had been pestering her for some time. "If this works, if you really do make me immortal, or at least give me a longer life than expected… what happens when I don't want to rule anymore?" She spoke her next words with teasing lightness, but she was serious in asking. "What if I want to run away with you, just like you promised when I was sixteen? Who rules in my stead?"
Maleficent was toying idly with a lock of Aurora's hair, and she seemed to be only half-listening to the queen's words. "Well, we could always have a child," she remarked, entirely offhand.
"What?" Aurora spluttered, sitting upright and setting the hammock rocking.
Maleficent looked surprised. "Did I forget that part?"
"Evidently so," Aurora answered dryly. "As up until this moment I was under the impression that we are both lacking a few necessary parts for making children."
Maleficent nodded. "At the moment, that is true. But… this is purely hypothetical, you understand? This all depends on how successfully you take to my magic. Faerie reproduction does not depend on sex, not exactly. I mentioned our connection to the Moors and the plant-like design of our magic, yes?"
Aurora nodded.
"Like the flowers which need only pollen from another plant to go to seed, every faerie's magic contains everything needed to… make offspring. Except another faerie. So if it does happen that you stop aging, I don't see any reason why we couldn't have children as well."
Aurora's head was spinning. "You're serious about this?"
"Quite."
"We could… you and I…?"
"We could."
Aurora was quiet for another long moment. "And if I didn't want our child raised as royalty? If I didn't want to choose my heir that way?"
Maleficent offered a quick kiss. "Then we won't. Your throne will always be your decision, and that includes giving it up however and whenever and to whomever you choose."
Aurora pulled her closer for a deeper kiss, only parting to whisper, "Thank you; I love you."
The tracks of golden magic on Maleficent's chest – now as small and unassuming as they had been when Aurora first discovered them – pulsed brightly at her words and Aurora laughed. "Is that faerie for 'you too'?"
"No," Maleficent replied, shaking her head. Slowly, she leaned in to press a kiss to Aurora's forehead, letting just enough magic slip from her lips to make Aurora shiver. "That was faerie for 'you too.'"
In that moment, Aurora knew it wouldn't matter how she managed to find the rest of the answers. It wouldn't matter if she lived another seventy years or another seven hundred. It wouldn't matter if she abdicated tomorrow or ruled until she was old, grey, and tyrannical. It wouldn't matter if the next battle would be against war, famine, or human prejudice. While these questions could only be answered by time, Aurora was loved by the most powerful being these lands had ever known, by perhaps the kindest heart as well, and Maleficent had answered all the questions that mattered with just that one kiss. Destiny take the rest.