by JD Ruskin
“Someone of my lineage?” Bertie scoffed while staring intently at his book. “Don’t be ridiculous. And I can read that scowl, Arthur. You are thinking that those are famous last words.”
“I was, actually.” Arthur’s face felt weird, as if he was smiling and not scowling. He tried to fix that and couldn’t seem to. His feet were so very warm.
“There are some gestures, Arthur, that will never be considered over the top, and this is one of them.” Bertie was still studying his book, idly flipping pages without reading anything.
Those words sounded familiar. Arthur tried to focus through the haze of heat and achy bones and his swimming thoughts, but he couldn’t quite place them.
“You drugged me,” he accused sleepily, and Bertie gave a small laugh.
“That’s hardly a secret.” He patted Arthur again, creating new kinds of shivers. “Just read, pet. Read and rest.” He seemed to notice Arthur’s tremors. “Are you cold?”
“With you on me? No.” It was Arthur’s turn to laugh. Bertie shot him a startled glance. “I read that Neruda.” Arthur’s tongue couldn’t quite keep up with him. “I think you used the wrong line for dragons. You should have said….” He concentrated. “As if you were on fire from within/the moon lives in the lining of your skin.” He met eyes like melting volcanic rock and thought he might burst into flames. “I would have said that. It… it made me think of you.”
Bertie’s lips were parted as he caught his breath, but he seemed to have no interest in any scents in the air. He was staring at Arthur and kept staring until Arthur’s stomach flipped and his heart pounded in that irregular, drugged rhythm. Arthur dropped his head back down to the arm of the couch.
“Chilean love poems seem an odd choice for someone interested in courtly love,” Bertie commented after a long pause, so long that Arthur had tried to read again and gave up when his eyelids could not seem to stay open.
“I thought so too,” Arthur whispered back, not sure how much time had passed since either of them had spoken, and exhaled when Bertie let him kick out and bury his feet deeper underneath him. Then he shut his eyes and kept them closed.
He was in a low mound of pillows, all of warm and soft velvet, and a hot voice was bidding him to wake up. Arthur wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or awake, or even where he really was, until he opened his eyes and saw Bertie leaning over him and realized he was still lying on the couch and that he must have fallen asleep.
He’d pushed the blanket off at some point, too, because Bertie dropped it back over him and pushed him gently down when he tried to sit up.
“I don’t think you’ll be riding anywhere today, Arthur, much less across town in the rain.” He put Arthur’s cell phone on the cushion next to his face and it took Arthur much too long to realize that it was so he could call his sister or anyone else he needed to in order to let them know where he was. He wished dizzily that he could remember Bertie’s hand in his pants, as it must have been to get his phone. Then he tried to sit up again but stopped, not at a push but at Bertie’s low, coaxing voice.
“Won’t you stay just a little longer?” he asked, rough and hungry, and Arthur shivered into the blanket and didn’t move.
IT WAS Bertie’s own fault that he got sick too. Two days after Arthur finally went home—driven home in the luxury car that, of course, Bertie owned—he came back into work drained from the bike ride over but feeling better, only to find Bertie on the couch in his study, snuffling into three blankets.
He must have needed them because the house was colder than it usually was. No fire was going, and Bertie must have forgotten to turn the heat up, if the heat could even be turned up. Arthur was starting to think the heat was coming directly from Bertie, not that he’d asked yet.
“I told you not to come in until you were well,” Bertie immediately barked at him and used the remote to turn off the TV as if Arthur hadn’t already seen him entranced by some kind of cheesy procedural show about the FBI.
Arthur’s nose was red and his throat was still scratchy, but the lack of smoke scent around Bertie was a worry, not a relief, so he didn’t say anything about his choice in shows.
“I’m not arguing with you,” Arthur told him. He didn’t feel up to arguing anyway. “Do you want me to get you some tea?”
“You pearl,” Bertie said, which Arthur took to mean yes, please and nodded before heading slowly to the kitchen. He looked through the fridge while the water was boiling, but Bertie hadn’t had any more groceries delivered recently. So he sighed and looked through take-out menus until he found a place that made soup. He placed an order for later and then dug around until he found the tray Bertie had used for him and put the tea and teacups together in a way he thought looked right.
He’d never served tea before, but right or wrong, no explanation or apology was necessary. Bertie’s eyes just turned to him with a grateful sort of hope, and he exhaled noisily over his tea as he drank, not seeming to notice its scalding temperature. Arthur thought about his notes on dragons again, but didn’t feel like going for his laptop just yet. He studied Bertie instead.
He wouldn’t have said Bertie was sick, not just from looking at him, though the gleaming beneath his skin seemed more obvious, as if his skin was getting lighter, and his eyes didn’t exactly focus on Arthur the way they usually did.
“I told you not to come in until you were completely well.” Focused or not, Bertie apparently could see that Arthur was still weak.
“Lucky for you I did.” Arthur tossed his head. “I ordered you some soup for later.”
“Oh, Arthur.” Bertie beamed at him for a moment, as if he couldn’t imagine anything better than Arthur spending more of his money without waiting for permission first, and then abruptly turned an alarming shade of white, his black hair and nails standing out starkly. “Soup?” His tone said he might throw up.
Arthur hurried forward, but Bertie dropped back to the couch without vomiting, leaving his cup and saucer on the floor.
“Is it worse for dragons?” Arthur hadn’t thought of that, but an immune system not used to getting hit by every malevolent virus out there might not react well to the ones that finally got past its defenses.
He reached out carefully, so carefully, to run his fingertips over Bertie’s forehead. Fine, fine hair tickled his fingertips, feeling almost like feathers, as Arthur had imagined. But he stopped and pulled his hand back when Bertie grinned.
“Oh,” Arthur realized out loud. “You’re just being a baby.”
“Baby?” Bertie pouted. “I’ve been working, I’ll have you know.”
Arthur spared a moment to look pointedly at the blank TV screen. Bertie pouted for a bit longer and then lifted his chin as he dug around the pile of blankets to produce his laptop. He held it up like a banner advertising his diligence and then moved, not quite sitting up, but no longer laying down. He put it on his lap and opened it up.
“I got cold,” he explained with some dignity, and Arthur leaned against an end table to consider that.
“Do you want me to turn up the heat?” He regretted it as he asked. Bertie gave him a pitying look that seemed to confirm Arthur’s suspicion that there was no heat to turn up, that the house was heated by Bertie himself after all, or at least that any man-made heating system wouldn’t compare to his own internal fires.
Arthur considered those, the flames that must rage in Bertie’s belly, the heat that must run under his skin, and wasn’t as scared as he probably should have been. He did look away, but only to catch his breath without Bertie’s eyes on him.
“Don’t be cruel, Arthur.” It wasn’t until Bertie spoke again that Arthur noticed the warm, wavy silence between them and how long it had gone on. He looked back and shifted from foot to foot.
“Is there anything you want me to do? To help you?” He had to offer. He could blame his slow responses and wild thoughts on his own lingering illness. “Do you need to shower or…?”
The look Bertie gave him was probably m
eant to be sexy. Fortunately for Arthur and his stupid imagination that had made him say those words, it was more pitiful than anything else.
“A cigarette?” he amended his own sentence, and Bertie let out a breath. His wrinkled nose said a smoke was not currently appealing to him, but he didn’t remark on Arthur’s offer to help him shower, so Arthur stepped closer. “More tea then?”
“Yes, dear. I will need my strength to get this section done.” If he hadn’t been so pale, Arthur would have said Bertie was faking it for attention, but up close the unhealthy lack of color in his skin was even more startling. His eyes were too bright.
“You’re going to work?” Arthur blinked in disbelief. “You try to wiggle out of working to hover around me at every opportunity and now you want to? You’re sick. You told me that I wouldn’t get better if I insisted on pushing myself too hard.”
“Yes, well, I have a deadline after all, Arthur.” Bertie’s gaze swung away and he straightened wearily. Arthur saw the bottle of orange syrup fall out from behind a pillow and hit the floor. He didn’t see a spoon. The image of Bertie gulping flu medicine straight from the bottle made him put a hand to his stomach.
“Bertie.” Arthur crossed his arms and ignored the stunned stare in his direction, though he was aware that he’d avoided saying that name directly ever since he’d pictured himself saying it against Bertie’s skin. “You are sick.”
Bertie shook himself, then wet lips that for once actually seemed to need it.
“If you can work while unwell, Arthur, so can I.”
Arthur remembered waking up later on the day he’d been sick to a blazing fire and the blanket tucked around him. Bertie had been nowhere to be seen, but he left his chapters on the table, along with crackers, and Arthur had munched a few while he did his best to read and gather his thoughts. At least it had been a mild flu, only lasting about a few days. With some rest, Bertie would feel better in no time at all.
“You don’t need to prove you’re stronger than a human, you know.” Arthur kept his voice stern, because it really didn’t need saying. Obviously, he couldn’t measure up to someone like Bertie.
Bertie frowned back at him.
“No, just that I’m at least as strong as you, my Arthur,” Bertie huffed, his tone so haughty that Arthur almost missed the content of his words. He stared and leaned harder against the end table while he thought about that, and only once he had filed that idea away to contemplate later did he come forward.
He knew he was flushed but couldn’t look over while he picked up the cup and saucer and the bottle of medicine and the scattered bits of paper that had probably been on the floor for days. He scooped them into his arms and then rushed out of the room to deal with them and give his face a chance to cool.
He came back in with his laptop and sat down on the couch as nonchalantly as he could, which wasn’t much. It was so low, he mostly fell into it, not that Bertie objected. He did open his mouth when Arthur took his laptop away from him and set it aside but said nothing as Arthur opened up his own and stopped with his fingers poised over the keyboard.
“Okay, go ahead. Work.” He kept his eyes down until Bertie rumbled and purred.
“Thank you, treasure.” He spoke softly and then moved. Arthur stiffened as Bertie slid against his side and exhaled down his neck.
He swallowed. Bertie’s breath smelled like artificial orange flavor and black tea and smoke, and yet it was still hot for him to be this close.
“You’re going to get me sick again,” he warned unsteadily, but Bertie must have been high from too much medicine because he whined into Arthur’s shoulder and didn’t move. Arthur had fallen asleep under the influence of that syrup. It was strong stuff. That was all it was, he told himself, just the drugs. “Okay, just don’t breathe on me, then,” he added to save himself all the wet, warm breath on his neck, only to yelp when Bertie nodded and moved again.
“Yes, Arthur,” he agreed as he slid his head down to Arthur’s thigh. Arthur moved the laptop without thinking, and Bertie took that as permission to settle in. He pushed his legs out and then curled up, dragging the blankets back over him as if he really was freezing. There was no way he should have fit on the couch with Arthur there too, but if parts of him were on the floor, the blankets hid them. Once he was comfortable, he let out a long, long, tired breath. There was no sign in his easy breathing that he’d noticed Arthur’s tension.
Arthur finally looked down, although he couldn’t see much but the vague outline of a curled-up body. He put his hands back on the keyboard and pulled up the notes for Bertie’s book, not that his mind was on it.
“So, dragons,” he began in a voice a little bit too high. “This house wasn’t built for them, though this couch obviously was.” Or had been altered for one.
His thigh was burning up, a lot like the rest of him. He wanted to put a hand down and didn’t dare.
“No, the house was built by humans, for humans.” Bertie’s rumble was making its way through Arthur’s body, up and then back down his spine. Arthur shut his eyes, although it wasn’t as if listening to Bertie’s smoky voice had ever calmed him down. “I work with humans, so a human house in a human town makes that easier, and they have yet to build a keyboard suitable for claws, so I have to be a man if I want to get my work done faster.”
Arthur had suspected that much, but it was good to hear that he’d been right.
“I also like to cook, as I’ve told you. Dragons, like weres, will eat their food raw or roasted, though anything high in sulfur will do, but I have found I also enjoy the rituals of cooking. A human kitchen is more suited to that activity as well.”
“Activity?” Arthur didn’t mean to repeat it, he really didn’t. “How about your bedroom?”
He hadn’t meant to ask that either.
Bertie let out another pleased, fiery sound, a soft roar or a big purr, as if he were just a big cat after all.
“Asking to see my bed, Arthur?” But the hand he pulled from the blanket waved weakly in the air, as if he wanted to flirt and couldn’t really manage it. Arthur nearly swallowed his tongue when Bertie dropped that hand to his knee. His pulse was racing. He didn’t see how Bertie could be missing it, even if he was stoned.
“My bed is also low to the ground. I am mostly… myself… when I’m upstairs. Those stairs were not built for shorter legs. It’s ungainly to see me walk down them as myself and I refuse to let you.”
“You’re worried about how I see you?” Arthur tightened his mouth to keep anything else stupid from coming out. Bertie’s fingers curled around his knee, nervously maybe, or perhaps just flexing, Arthur couldn’t tell but changed the subject instead of asking. “Is it painful for you, shifting? They say for werewolves it isn’t a comfortable experience.”
“No, no, it’s not painful. Though you’d think it would be.” Bertie seemed thoughtful, taking long pauses before speaking. “It does make me dizzy, however, as if I’ve stood up too fast. I suppose it helps that I’m small for a dragon.”
“Really?” Arthur wasn’t typing anything and didn’t think he could have at the moment anyway. “You seemed big to me.”
It was another perfect opportunity for Bertie to flirt with him, but he simply sighed and patted him. “Thank you, Arthur.” When he didn’t add anything else, Arthur opened his eyes. Bertie’s hand didn’t pull away.
“Was there anything else you wished to know about my body?” Bertie finally got back to flirting in a low, wicked voice that Arthur distantly recognized as meaning he must be feeling better. Not that it mattered, with Arthur wanting to squirm and being unable to. His jeans felt tight, and he was getting totally, embarrassingly hard under his laptop. There was nothing he could do about it, and if Bertie smelled that in the air right now, Arthur was in serious trouble.
“Uh….” He couldn’t think of any words.
“I mean, about dragons’ bodies,” Bertie corrected himself and sounded so sincere that Arthur had a strange urge to apologize. As i
f this was his fault somehow and not the sexy man-dragon’s who was trying to sprawl across his lap and kept whispering suggestive remarks against his thigh.
He continued thinking that Bertie might be attracted to him, but he couldn’t be nearly as attracted as Arthur was to him. If he was, he wouldn’t be doing this to drive them both crazy, and there was no way he would have sat so close to Arthur on the other couch when Arthur had been sick without feeling what Arthur was feeling now.
Arthur raised a hand to rub at his forehead and then dropped it to Bertie’s back without thinking. Bertie twisted into it, letting out a moan that had to be deliberate.
“Be a dear, Arthur,” he begged, as if Arthur was going to rub his back now after everything he was putting him through.
“This is….” Inappropriate didn’t begin to cover it, but it was far too late to protest about that now. Bertie had the flu. He probably ached all over, that was all it was. Arthur already had his hand spread out at the thought so he could absorb that heat while he pushed the heel of his thumb into the tense muscle over Bertie’s shoulder blades.
There were too many blankets and probably clothes separating him from Bertie’s skin, but he imagined it anyway, what it might feel like, what it had looked like, nearly stopping as those shining scales popped into his mind.
“Now I feel like a personal assistant,” he murmured instead, because a murmur was as loud as he could get at the moment. Bertie let out one gentle laugh but didn’t move.
“Am I that spoiled?” he mused. Arthur couldn’t tell if he meant it or not. He dragged his fingers up to Bertie’s neck for a light scratch and shook his head. “I didn’t think I was,” Bertie went on as if he’d seen Arthur do it. “I don’t feel spoiled. I feel….”