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Killakeeth had risen, and Nasath, like so many others, had given chase. It was not at all how A’iel had planned to start his morning. He’d had plenty of work to do, but with his bronze’s lust and energy zinging through his veins, it would have been hard to focus even if the Weyr wouldn’t have effectively shut down because of the flight. It was a waste of a day, and not even an enjoyable one, really. The young man—for all that he had been at the Weyr some turns now—still hadn’t felt close enough to the gold’s rider to dare seeking her out. The last time he’d tried, he’d ended up in wet socks and in his superior’s bed, with his dragon’s head stuck in a doorway with an equally-stuck brown.

No, much better if he just stayed holed up. It’d mean a raging headache, of course; Nasath’s lust was always strong and consuming, and impossibly hard to ignore without straining himself. The thunder of trumpeting males overhead pierced even through the pillow he'd clutched over his head, and for a moment he was there, aloft, swirling and tumbling through the sky; reaching out, grasping...

A'iel lurched upright in bed, throwing the pillow across the room and stamping to his feet. He couldn't sit still, he was going out of his mind and out of his skin. With a little growl of frustration (he loved Nasath, he did, but would that his bronze had been more mellow and less intense!) he hurried to dress, tugged his boots on—no wet socks this time—and made for the door. He would walk off the buzz under his flesh, jog or run around the bowl if he had to. Down into the halls he went, quick but wary, ducking past anyone he happened upon who looked even a little caught up in the flight, even if part of him was still tangled with the bronze overhead, full of yearning and desire.

Down down down, down to the bowl, he repeated over and over to himself like a mantra. He just had to get out, out of the stone hallways where all the people were, to where the cool morning air could help temper him and chill away the burning need Nasath had let loose. Of course, he firmly chose to ignore that the bronze knew full well where the gold's rider and her suitors had begun to gather near the feeding pens, and very likely wanted his rider to join them in an effort to buoy his own chances of winning—he'd make for the beach, he decided, and skip the lot of it. The trouble that came with these sorts of things, that he still wasn't used to after the better part of a decade of it. Nasath hadn't caught a gold yet, not for lack of trying, and it was really starting to tell on his attitude; the bronze was lustier than ever, and not just because his dreaded rival brown was also aloft.

It seemed like half the weyr doors had been left open, their inhabitants scuttling off to find comfort with each other or to watch the affair in the sky, and it was a dance of a sort to dodge the frankly... celebratory riders already making use of every convenient nook they came across. You should be among them, A'iel! Killakeeth is lovely, and she will be mine soon... why not catch one of your own at the same time? Share with me, A'iel...! The bronze's words throbbed in his head, and he grit his teeth, eyes pinched shut against the suggestion... and sending him BAM! Crashing blindly right into someone as he hit a landing. His arms flew up to both steady himself and catch hold of whomever it was—to keep them from falling, he insisted at the curl of pleasure from Nasath at the half-shared sensation of contact—and keep them half an arm's length from himself...

"...Tai?" He blinked several times, recognition coloring his tone from slightly frantic mild irritation to surprise, and even warmth. Of all the people about the Weyr today, he'd not expected to bump, literally, into her. Her poor blue was still quite down and out, and with all the excitement he'd imagined she'd be wrapped up in keeping a hold on the temperamental creature... Well, that was a bit of a lie. He hadn't really imagined her or where she'd be at all. That way lay certain doom on the morning of a flight, though now that she was here, in front of him, her shoulders warm through her tunic beneath his hands... His jaw flexed as he shoved the rising interest back again, and overhead he heard one male or other bellow in anger as they too were thwarted.

"Is everything alright? Is Khan...?" No, that was silly. The blue wouldn't be up and about so quick, and through Nasath's eyes he could see there were nothing but browns and bronzes in the chase...

For a long muted moment, a moment where the world went all fuzzy and soft and almost painfully intimate, he could only focus on how he could almost feel the direct touch of her fingers as they coiled in his shirt. There was no way she couldn't feel his heart hammering just inches beneath the surface, couldn't tell what a frantic, frazzled mess he was. The hall seemed to shrink, to feel too close, too tight for an instant, like it was pressing them together...

It took him a beat to realize he was leaning towards her, half-looming from the higher stair, and he lurched backwards as much as he could without tripping back over the stone lip of the step above. He was buzzing with the energy flowing from his bronze, and the focus of holding their shared urges away grew sharply heavier by the moment. He... he shouldn't be near Tai, not right now. She wasn't part of the flight, Khandijth wasn't, couldn't be chasing. A breath later she confirmed it, though the words that flitted by his ears were only half-caught, his focus wavering at the scream of dragons overhead and the (mesmerizing, why hadn't he ever noticed how entrancing she was? They'd talked before any number of times and he'd never...) sound of her voice. "It's a shame he's so stubborn. Nasath too, he's always pushing me..." he mumbled, brows furrowing as he tried his damnedest to focus for just a moment.

Above, his bronze ducked and eddied closer to the gold he sought, and the swooping momentum seemed to hook just behind his navel, leaving his stomach feeling like it as rising into his chest, almost like he was falling. He wanted to lean closer again... Her question washed over him as if from a distance, and his brows furrowed deeper. She was frowning. Why was she frowning? And why would he be looking for...? The thought trailed off, his attention still fixed on the down-turned bow of her lips. Overhead, Nasath trumpeted his delight at something the gold had said to him and all but threw himself at Killakeeth. For just an instant it was a gold dragon hovering before A'iel, not Tai...

He shook his head. Pushed the flight away again. The flight... but not the woman. "No. Not Vosin..."

Her slight lean towards him was all it took. Too deep in Nasath’s driven need to chase and catch, her motion too like a gold offering her neck to take. Later he would be embarrassed, ashamed even at his own lack of control. Now, however, he simply shook his head, a brief ‘no’, and then he was leaning forward too, his lips pressing urgently to hers in a kiss that was half a bid to capture, half a plea to be chosen by her.

Overhead Nasath screamed—his own target slipping out of his grasp. The despair and fury at being left wanting was muted somewhat by the jolt of victorious delight from his rider, and the bronze latched onto that, fed into it in an effort to share the thrill of ‘winning’.

Blindly A’iel groped across the wall of the cavern—a door, he knew there was... His hand found the door frame, and then it was all motion. Pulling, being pulled, who was leading? He didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. The feel of favbric and leather shifting, sliding, and a brief flare of cool air across his skin before the soft embrace of piled furs rushed up to smother the chill and herald the loss of all his senses for a short—or not so short—time.

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By the time clear thought and sight and sound returned, the pale sunrise-light from the ledge had deepend to the full glare of mid-afternoon. A'iel lay on his stomach, face half-buried in plush gray furs... feline, maybe, which his dulled mind found interesting. His weyr was only furnished with thinner blankets of herdbeast hide, worked to near-velvet; Western still often seemed too warm to him for such thick furs as these...