by JD Ruskin
The trouble she got into had been bad, and it easily could have been so much worse. Arthur wasn’t in the best frame of mind then either, but he tried to keep it together for her, be what she needed. It wasn’t enough, not then, and she ran off to do some truly stupid things, and just thinking about it now made Arthur toss down the book he was wiping clean.
Bertie had better not be doing anything that dangerous. It was bad enough that he didn’t have the sense to lock his doors or set his alarm. Imagining what he might do out with the general public, with humans interested in selling pieces of him to the highest bidder, something Arthur knew more about than he should, made his stomach clench.
His frown at the fire in the fireplace got lost for a moment as he heard the front door open, and then came back with a vengeance when he heard a familiar sleepy note in Bertie’s voice as he gave someone else instructions to the downstairs bathroom.
“Just down the hall there.”
The instructions were followed by a deep, male voice with an accent Arthur had never heard before.
“Leave it to you to choose a house with stairs, Jones,” the voice said, and Arthur turned in time to see a tall, blue-scaled man—a tall, blue-scaled dragon—disappearing past the kitchen. He was wearing a loose shirt and tight pants and a hat, but Arthur caught the sapphire gleam of his scales before he turned back to get a look at Bertie.
Bertie met Arthur’s gaze, then his head went back almost defensively.
“Arthur!” he exclaimed brightly and made a vague, nervous gesture when Arthur only continued to stare at him. “Trust you to have the place blazing warm for me, you dar—you dear boy.”
Arthur felt frozen despite being close enough to the fire to singe the hair on his arms if he reached out, but he rolled his shoulders and then went back to wiping down books and stacking them.
He stopped again when he heard the bathroom door open and watched Bertie from the corner of his eye until the other dragon returned. Then he twisted to get a good look.
The new dragon was considerably taller than Bertie and thin like an athlete. He looked like a fencing foil wouldn’t be out of place in his hands, which, Arthur noticed, had fingernails as blue as the scales shining from beneath his skin. He was holding a cigar, a real cigar of tobacco and not herbs, that he must have lit in the bathroom. His hat was a fedora, which he pulled low. His eyes were azure blue. He had a small white mustache, as white as his hair, but he didn’t seem old at all.
He glanced at Arthur for a moment and then took a puff from his cigar.
“He’s a fierce one, isn’t he?” the new dragon drawled, and it took Arthur several shocked seconds to realize that the dragon meant him. Bertie’s mouth went soft, just enough for Arthur to see a hint of his tongue as he wet his lips.
“Zeru, this is Arthur. Arthur, this is Zeru, an old friend.”
“Hello.” Arthur felt that was all he had to say after such an introduction and went back to staring at the books. He was pretty sure his ears were red because he felt flushed, just like he was sure they could see it. It only made him tighten his jaw, and he continued stacking and restacking books whose titles he wasn’t even reading anymore. Bertie hadn’t even introduced him as his assistant. Not to his “old friend.”
Zeru, Arthur thought to himself. He’d bet it was a name that meant something powerful. This dragon was beautiful and exotic, and unlike Bertie, he had no problem conveying what he thought of humans, of Arthur. He wasn’t rude, but he clearly didn’t regard Arthur as anyone important. In fact, from the way Zeru was looking him over, Arthur felt a bit like Bertie’s dog. Like his pet.
“Hello,” Zeru greeted Arthur politely and then kept talking to Bertie. “Arthur,” he said significantly, as if his eyebrows were raised. “Even with that Being-bait right in front of me, I will never understand your taste.”
“You don’t have to as long as you recognize that it’s mine.” It hardly made sense, but then, these were two dragons talking to each other. Arthur probably wasn’t meant to understand. He shoved some of the less valuable books into a pile while he wondered if Zeru was from an ancient and noble family. He probably was; he certainly acted like it.
Arthur should be using this opportunity to ask him questions about dragon families and their different cultures, but his mouth stayed firmly shut as he listened to them bicker about something and then walk away as Bertie gave his old friend some of his hand-rolled herbal cigarettes to try and then went with him into the study. When they came back out a few minutes later, they were talking about something else. Art, Arthur assumed, though he didn’t comment or join in.
He was an assistant, that was all. He’d speak when spoken to and that was it. He looked up only once it was clear that Zeru was on his way out the door. Zeru, who was beautiful and noble and dragon.
“We must do this again, and soon, if your boy won’t mind.” Zeru adjusted his hat and Bertie opened the door with a loud sigh. Arthur couldn’t tell if it was exaggerated or not.
“I’m afraid that what Arthur says, goes,” Bertie told him, though he couldn’t be serious because he added a “Call me” before he closed the door on his friend.
Arthur’s shoulders were stiff with expectation, but there had been no long farewells or kisses. There hadn’t even been an exchange of nicknames, and he thought faintly, distantly, that he was glad he took “Dragons use nicknames” off his list—unless it was only that they used nicknames on humans.
As if humans really were their pets. He coughed out the smell of cigar smoke and glared at the fragile collections of books before him.
He still wasn’t seeing the titles, but Bertie was hardly going to notice. He stared at Arthur for a minute before jumping into sudden, excited motion. He seemed oblivious to Arthur’s mood as he went into the kitchen and then came back out. He was babbling.
“As I was saying before—” He coughed too, as if he also had cigar smoke stuck in his throat. “—it’s quite chilly suddenly, isn’t it? I mean the weather of course, darling.”
Arthur did not glance over. Bertie continued talking, his words picking up speed.
“Don’t know how you ride in it. We really should get you a car, pet—er, Arthur. I thought of you all the way home, wondering what you’d been up to in my absence.”
“Working.” Arthur kept it short and was pleased by how calm he thought he sounded.
Calm or not, the single word made Bertie stop short, and Arthur glanced to the side to watch Bertie untangle himself from a long red scarf and peel off a wool jacket. He looked tired and somewhat pale, and there were wrinkles in the dress shirt he was wearing. As Arthur didn’t see any luggage, he assumed that Bertie was wearing the same clothes he wore out yesterday.
He pushed out a tight, startled breath. Bertie made a fretful noise.
“Dear. I know you’re going to think I was shirking my responsibilities, Arthur, but I can assure you I wasn’t. In fact….”
“You’re only my boss. You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Arthur told him, finally noticing that he was creating a pile that included Mark Twain, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Constant Gardener, and a book on the Underground Railroad but not correcting his mistakes. Bertie was wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday. So much for Arthur’s nightmares about his body being hacked to pieces for black market magic sales and poor, helpless Bertie in the hands of someone heartless. Whoever’s hands he’d been in had apparently been enough to make him completely forget about Arthur. Arthur was an idiot, mostly because now when he imagined Bertie in the hands of someone heartless, he was picturing blue hands, holding a cigar.
“Only your boss?” Bertie’s confused exhalation made Arthur’s stomach flutter in a way that made him wish he’d stopped to eat something before he sat down. There was a long pause where Arthur didn’t comment and then the soft sound of Bertie stepping onto the rug. He stopped before Arthur would have had to look up at him.
“Arthur, is something wrong? You aren’t sick again? You
ate while I was gone, didn’t you?”
Arthur almost shut his eyes at the concern. If he was flushed, it could be blamed on the fire, but if he gave a little sigh, Bertie would definitely notice. It had been so stupid, expecting all that attention for himself, especially under the circumstances, but he couldn’t help how nice it felt. That wasn’t Bertie’s fault, and he shouldn’t be taking it out on him.
“I’m fine,” he said at last with a small shrug to let Bertie know it was fine even though Arthur’s twisting stomach kept insisting it wasn’t. “I ate yesterday. I’ve been busy this morning.” He shut his mouth, then wet his lips and heard himself saying more. “I suppose you were busy too, too busy to let me know you were all right.”
Arthur really was stupid. He winced and risked a look up, but the sight of those eyes fixed on him, round and dark and intent, made him swing his gaze back to the fireplace. He wasn’t ready to beard the dragon in his den, not yet. He felt bad enough as it was. There was Bertie, a hot, rumpled presence, safe and sound and looking only in need of a nap, and here was Arthur, sitting on the floor, red-faced and dusty and irritable from worrying about nothing.
He probably looked terrible. Not exotic or beautiful or anything even close to it.
“It’s okay,” Arthur walked back his words, then scowled at the fire. “But I wasn’t sure if I should worry.” If only he could stop talking, or at least keep that hum of tension out of his voice. “It’s nothing.” He shook his head and wiped a hand through the air. “Never mind.”
That never worked on his sister and it wasn’t working on Bertie.
“Were you worried?” Bertie took a step forward with such energy and delight that Arthur was surprised into looking up again. The open throat of Bertie’s white shirt did as much to scramble Arthur’s brain as Bertie’s wet, full lips did, until Bertie inhaled sharply and forced Arthur’s eyes higher. His slight frown was troubled, like something had pulled all his earlier delight right out of him.
“My apologies, Arthur. I’m so sorry.” He knelt down, and Arthur wasn’t sure if he was kneeling or if he was going to sit down with him; he was just suddenly, overwhelmingly hot. Bertie’s breath on him, unusually minty, didn’t cool him down any. “You see, yesterday Zeru popped into town, and I don’t see him nearly often enough, so I offered to show him around. Breakfast became lunch, lunch became dinner, and the whole visit ended up in a bar by the campus, and then I couldn’t very well drive back in the condition I was in. He followed me back here this morning so I could give him a copy of one of my books he’d expressed interest in and then, well….”
Dragons could get drunk, Arthur noted absently, though the information wasn’t surprising. Not nearly as surprising as learning that they could spend all day with a “friend” and forget how to use a phone.
Bertie leaned in closer and raised his voice when Arthur didn’t respond to his explanation. His gaze was so intense that Arthur finally stared back at him. He knew he was frowning, but he didn’t feel like suppressing it.
Bertie cleared his throat but continued on with an eager light in his eyes. “Anyway, he’d been to the Asturias region in Spain, and he had a tapestry I had to see. You should see it, too, Arthur. It has a xana and a dragon.”
“A tapestry,” Arthur repeated, nodding for the sake of agreeing. He didn’t ask what a xana was, or even how it was spelled, and Bertie developed a line between his eyes that Arthur couldn’t look at without feeling terrible. He pushed back and stood up, almost losing his balance as he stepped onto the fireplace stones. “Well then I shouldn’t have worried.”
He wiped his hands on his jeans and hurried away, going for the kitchen mostly because eating gave him an excuse to leave. “I should eat something.”
The kitchen doors swung open behind him as Bertie followed. “Arthur, I didn’t expect I’d be so long coming back, but he insisted on buying me breakfast this morning and….”
“I don’t need to hear this,” Arthur snapped and opened the fridge too late to hide his expression. He ducked behind it anyway. “I mean…” He sucked in a shaky breath and hoped Bertie wasn’t smelling any of the jealousy that he was definitely feeling now. The anger about worrying all night was still there, but right now all he was thinking was that Bertie had sat down to breakfast with someone else, some old friend dragon with tapestries, and Arthur couldn’t compete with that no matter how many books he cleaned. “You… you don’t need to explain it to me.”
But when he turned, shutting the fridge door too hard behind him, Bertie was staring at him with his mouth open and his tongue sliding, moist and pink, along his bottom lip.
“Shit,” Arthur said out loud and really, really wished he could blame it on being sick or malnourished again. Shiny black pupils swallowed up everything but thin rings of pale brown as Bertie regarded him, and then his posture changed, shifting into something smart and compelling and so powerful that Arthur’s knees went weak.
“Arthur, pet.” Bertie was almost purring as he spoke, and Arthur tried his best not to shiver, but hearing himself called “pet” again burned him up inside in ways the fire never could. He should hate it. He didn’t at all. Thinking about it, even now, made him half-hard. “Arthur.” Despite the pleasure coming through loud and clear in his tone, Bertie was speaking slowly, carefully. “Arthur, are you jealous?”
It knocked the anger right out of him. Arthur might have been a potential thief, he knew that, but he wasn’t any good at lying. There was no way he could answer that question.
Maybe he didn’t need to, he thought faintly with an edge of hysteria, one more inhale and swipe of Bertie’s tongue and he was done for anyway.
Arthur’s stomach felt cold with nerves. He moved back instinctively, only processing why the moment his back bumped into the center island and Bertie stepped directly in front of him. He was still talking, blowing soft words at Arthur as if he had to be careful not to stoke any embers back into a raging fire. Arthur opened his mouth to defend himself without knowing what he would say, but then what Bertie was murmuring sank in.
“He’s truly just an old friend, pet, and not my type even if I were his—which is female, I’ll have you know.”
“You don’t need to explain.” Arthur pushed up, looking up once quickly while he had the strength and then down to preserve what he could of his pride. His heart was racing, and his skin was still so hot that it felt tight. His entire body felt tight. Shaky. Restless.
He could hear the grin in Bertie’s voice.
“But I want to.” He was either inching closer or Arthur was. “I want to.” Bertie’s breathing was heavy, deep, and fast, like he couldn’t get enough air, or enough air with the scent of Arthur in it. The sound was drowning out Arthur’s heart, his own breath. It was like Bertie was lapping up the oxygen around him, consuming it. Arthur thought of fire again but couldn’t move to run for cover. “Arthur,” he was called back, as if his thoughts were all over his face. Arthur raised his eyes and thought that he must be dreaming again because now Bertie looked like he was dizzy and feverish too. “Even if that hadn’t been the case, Arthur, I wouldn’t have touched him.”
Arthur pushed back against the island, but only to stay on his feet. When that didn’t work he raised a hand and put it on Bertie’s shoulder without thinking. Bertie’s dress shirt was thin. Arthur unfurled his hand and felt the heat of skin just out of reach and thought of flesh that looked like ink and the scales that meant more magic than he could ever comprehend.
Maybe this was magic. He’d have no way of knowing, though he didn’t think Bertie would ever stoop to this kind of spell. He wouldn’t have to. He might be a dragon, but Arthur was here of his own free will. Arthur, who wasn’t powerful and who wasn’t magic and who definitely wasn’t another dragon who was both of those things.
He frowned at the thought, because what Bertie had said didn’t make any sense.
“Why not?” He blinked and raised his chin to aim his frown at Bertie, only to stop at the complete
surprise in Bertie’s expression. His eyes were wide and unfocused a second before they focused again, narrowing on Arthur as if he’d never laid eyes on him before.
Bertie stared at him, looking the most serious that Arthur had ever seen him, and then quirked a small smile.
“Because….” He was still breathing heavily as he seemed to grow so hot that he burned to the touch. Arthur nearly flinched when he raised his hand, gasping instead when Bertie seemed to change his mind about whatever he had been going to do and only let his palm graze Arthur’s jaw. “Because I wouldn’t hurt you for worlds.” He sighed it, some epiphany lighting his eyes before he flashed another deliberate grin and took several steps back.
He coughed and moved toward the fridge, too, not looking back to see Arthur’s lost shudder.
“Don’t look so frightened, Arthur. You’d think I was going to devour you.” It didn’t have his usual flair, but Arthur scowled anyway out of habit because Bertie knew statements like that were alarming to humans and said them to be funny.
“I’m not scared.” His chin was still up, but Bertie pulled out cream for tea he must be planning on making himself and didn’t turn back to him. It was better that he didn’t. Arthur was shaking weakly, cold without Bertie so close to him.
Whether or not he could smell it, Bertie didn’t call him on the lie as he got out some tea.
“Perhaps I am, Arthur.” Which didn’t make sense either, because Bertie had nothing to fear from Arthur. Arthur was pretty sure Bertie only had to say his name and he would come running no matter how furious or jealous he might be. He certainly wasn’t any sort of physical threat. Bertie couldn’t think that.
But he moved when Arthur did, glancing over with too much warmth in his eyes for someone who was just making tea.
“I wasn’t expecting it to be like this. I feel quite disgustingly weak. Grovelly—you will have to check to see if that word is correct, Arthur. I want… things… but I can’t move without thinking, would Arthur approve, would he smile?”