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Olruggio was not a Knight. He would like that established before anything else happened.
His friend Utowin was a Knight, a proper one, too. He owned a sword, wore the royal crest, meanwhile, Olruggio had tools, clients and commission to finish. But then, one of the Knights in Utowin's company heard what the king's orders actually were: Kill the dragon. Save the princess. The man took one look at the road ahead, dropped his sword, and ran.
Utowin told Olruggio about it that evening casually over drinks. "Don't worry about it. There's no dragon, the king's been jumping at shadows for years. I just need a body to fill the roster."
And that was how Olruggio became a Knight.
Now, several days later, Olruggio was standing alone in the middle of the Therista Forest, wondering where exactly his friend had gone. To his left, a moss-covered boulder that looked vaguely familiar. To his right, another moss-covered boulder that looked exactly the same. Olruggio stared at them. "Utowin?"
No answer, of course. He sighed. They had entered the forest that morning, following an old trail toward what the king claimed was the dragon's habitat. There had been ten knights, one doctor, four horses, and Olruggio. Naturally, Olruggio had to walk, because he was the newest "Knight," and Utowin was sharing a horse with his captain– his crush–no, his captain. And he had shooed Olruggio away like a stray cat.
As someone whose only experience with running was meeting deadlines, Olruggio got exhausted easily, he'd sat on the stone for two minutes, telling himself he would caught up with them later, but then he had slept for a day. So here he was.
Olruggio sighed again, this time, a scrape against stone answered him. He reached for his sword. "Utowin," he whispered, "if this is your idea of a joke–"
A shadow passed over the forest floor. Slowly, very slowly, he turned around.
From the shadows of the far passage, a figure stepped out. He was tall and lean, his pale hair falling in a long sweep over one side of his face. One eye was clear and sharp; the other was gone, a long-healed wound that drew a faint line down toward his cheek. That was normal enough, at least he was a human.
But then, his horns were mismatched. On the right side, only a jagged base remained, broken off cleanly, the fracture surface rough and silver-white. The left horn was intact, it rose from his temple and split like a young tree, silver-pale. No, not a human at all.
His tail sweeping slowly behind him as he approached. His gaze remained fixed on Olruggio. Olruggio's hand drifted toward his sword. He couldn't help it. Every instinct he had was firing at once. This was the dragon they'd been sent to kill, it had to be. How many dragons could one forest have?
He pointed the sword, his hands shaking. He didn't want to kill it. He didn't even know how. But he also didn't want to die. "W-who are you? D-don't come here. I-I'll hurt you–"
The dragon's gaze lingered on Olruggio a moment longer, seeing his shaking hand on the sword, then something like pity crossed his expression. That wounded Olruggio's pride deeply.
Then the dragon said, in perfectly clear human speech. "I've never saw you before."
Olruggio could only stare. The dragon could talk. The dragon could talk.
Seeing no answer, the tail swept in impatience. He tilted his head. "Strange. I thought my accent was passable."
"It–" Olruggio's voice hoarse. He swallowed and tried again. "It is. It is passable."
The dragon nodded. They stood there for a moment, before the dragon bared his teeth, "You're lost."
"I' not lost. I'm–" Olruggio looked at the two identical boulders. "I' temporarily uncertain of my direction."
"I see." The dragon's gaze dropped to the sword, still raised between them, the tip trembling. He did not seem concerned by it. "You came with the others? The ones with the horses?"
Olruggio's stomach dropped. This dragon didn't kill them all, did he? "You saw 'em?"
"I watched them enter the forest this morning. They took the eastern trail. But that was two days ago."
Two days. Olruggio had slept for two days. On a rock, no less. Utowin was going to be insufferable about this.
"They'll come back for me," Olruggio said, though he was not at all sure of this.
The dragon studied him with that single clear eye. It was an odd color: pale, almost silver. After a long moment, the dragon seemed to arrive at some conclusion.
"You should come with me."
"Absolutely not."
"The forest is not safe at night. The lower trails flood after dark, and there are other creatures here less inclined to conversation." The dragon turned and began walking back the way he had come, his tail tracing a smooth arc through the moss. He moved quietly for something his size. "I have water. Food, if you eat cooked meat."
"If I–" Olruggio sputtered. "O' course I eat cooked meat. What kind of question is that?"
"A polite one. Some humans have preferences. I try to remember." The dragon glanced back over his shoulder. "Are you coming?"
Olruggio stood there, sword still raised, pointing at nothing now. The forest was getting darker. He sheathed the sword. "I'm not followin' you because I trust you," he said, falling into step several paces behind. "I'm followin' you because the alternatives are worse. And I need to save the princess."
"Naturally," the dragon said, and kept walking.
The den was not what Olruggio had expected. He wasn't sure what he had expected, maybe bones, blood and corpses or the stench of something dead. What he found instead was a wide, shallow cave set into the hillside, its entrance partially hidden by a curtain of hanging moss and ivy. Inside, the stone floor had been swept clean. A fire pit sat near the center, the coals still warm, and beside it a clay pot and several neatly stacked wooden bowls. Against the far wall, a low shelf carved directly into the rock held what appeared to be–Olruggio squinted–books.
The dragon crouched by the fire pit and coaxed the coals back to life with a breath. A thin stream of flame left his mouth and the fire caught. He set the clay pot over it.
"Sit wherever you like," he said without looking up.
Olruggio did not sit. He took off the heavy amour, leaving only the short skirt and the tunic. He stood near the entrance, arms crossed, and catalogued the space. There was no princess chained to a wall or pile of stolen gold. All he saw was the books, the bowls, a folded blanket, and in the far corner, tucked into a shallow depression lined with dried grass and what looked like shredded wool–
Eggs.
Four of them. Each one the size of a melon, their shells has different colors: light green, pink, blue, purple. They were nestled together carefully, surrounded on all sides by insulating material. Someone had taken great care with them.
Olruggio stared at the eggs. "Those are–"
"Yes."
Olruggio looked around. "Where's the princess?"
The dragon looked up from the pot. His expression was slightly amused, "There is no princess." He ladled something into one of the wooden bowls–should be broth, by the smell of it–and held it out toward Olruggio. "Sit down. Eat. You look terrible."
Olruggio sat down across the fire from the dragon and took the bowl, because his hands and empty stomach were already reaching for it before his dignity could intervene.
"So," Olruggio said, after a silence that had stretched long enough to become uncomfortable only for him, because the dragon seemed perfectly content to sit and say nothing. "There is no princess."
"No."
"Then what does the king think you took?"
The dragon's gaze drifted to the corner to the eggs. Olruggio followed his eyes, before he looked back at the dragon and his gaze fell on the mismatched horns, the missing eye and the old scars that ran along his arms beneath the scales. He didn't look like a creature who had stolen anything.
"You took his eggs?"
"It's not his." The dragon was getting defensive, "Left alone, those eggs do not hatch. They grow cold. The development stops. And I happened to be nearby."
Olruggio processed the information. So this dragon, he appeared kinder than some human.
"I should tell you," Olruggio said slowly, "that the men I came with were sent to kill you."
"I know."
"You know?"
"This is not the first time." The dragon took a sip from his bowl. "Knights arrive every few years, I lead them away by the sound of animal. They search the eastern trails, find nothing, and go home." He glanced at Olruggio. "You are the first one to wander far enough west to actually find me, because you slept on the rock and miss all the lures."
Olruggio decided he did not like this dragon. He drank more broth to avoid having to articulate this.
"You still haven't told me your name," Olruggio said, after a while.
The dragon set down his bowl. He seemed to consider the question more carefully than it warranted. "Qifrey," he said finally.
"Qifrey, 'tis a strange name," Olruggio repeated. It didn't sound like a dragon's name. It didn't sound like anything, really. "I'm Olruggio."
"It's a name I was given by a human who used to take care of me."
"Oh?"
The dragon didn't take that as a cure to elaborate. "Olruggio," he said, and the way he said it made Olruggio's skin prickle for reasons he refused to examine. "How did you end up here? Truly."
"I told you. I fell asleep."
"No, here." Qifrey gestured vaguely at Olruggio's borrowed sword and his too-clean armor on the ground. "You're not a Knight."
Olruggio bristled. "What gave it away?"
"Your grip. I've held a sword once by accident with my tail. I was better at it."
Olruggio said stiffly. "My friend needed numbers. Someone left. I filled in. That's the entire story."
"Hm." Qifrey looked at him with that single pale eye, and Olruggio had the unpleasant sensation of being read like one of the books on the shelf. "And now you are here, in a dragon's den, eating a dragon's food, and your friend is somewhere on the eastern trail, looking for a princess who does not exist."
"That about covers it."
"What will you do?"
It was a simple question. Olruggio had no answer for it. He could leave in the morning, find the eastern trail, rejoin the company. Tell them he'd found nothing. That was the sensible thing. That was what a person with tools, clients, and a commission to finish would do.
He looked at the eggs in the corner and at the careful nest. "I'll figure it out in the mornin'," Olruggio said.
"Of course," Qifrey said, and handed him the blanket.
.
.
Olruggio found, to his annoyance, that this life was strangely peaceful, despite he was just lived in it for four hours at most. There was no charges to calculate, no clients sending messages at unreasonable hours and commission deadlines crawling toward him. The cave was warm, the broth was good.
When the fire had burned low and the last of the broth was gone, Qifrey had stood, brushed off his hands, and said, very casually, "I'm going to change now. Try not to panic."
"Why would I–"
Qifrey changed shape immediately, one moment there was a man and the next moment there was a dragon. A large, actual dragon, filling the back half of the cave. His scales were silver-white, the intact horn now rose from his skull like a young oak. His single eye, enormous now, blinked once, slowly, and fixed on Olruggio.
Olruggio's vision went white at the edges.
He did not faint. He wanted that on the record. He simply sat down very quickly on the ground. And stayed there for a while, breathing carefully through his nose, while the cave stopped spinning.
Qifrey made a low sound. It might have been concern, or amusement.
"I'm fine," Olruggio said to the floor.
The dragon laid down, its massive body curled inward, tail wrapping around the nest of eggs protectively, and the great head lowered to the ground. The single eye watched Olruggio a moment longer, then half-closed.
Olruggio sat against the cave wall, arms crossed, absolutely intending to stay awake all night. He was in a cave with a dragon, sleep was out of the question. He would keep watch, stay alert, and in the morning–
He lasted eleven minutes. To his credit, it was Qifrey who used his tail to poke at him and point him to the blanket. So Olruggio shifted and his back pressed flat against the dragon's side, cool silver scales against the thin fabric of his tunic, and coolness warmth curling around him from every other direction, and it was the best he had felt in months. Years, possibly. He would rather die than admit this.
Olruggio slept soundly that night, having not worrying about the deadline. When he wake, the cave was filled with pale morning light, and Qifrey had changed back.
He was curled on his side near the nest, human-shaped again, his tail loosely wrapped around the eggs. His face was slack with sleep, the guarded composure entirely gone. Without it, he looked younger, softer. The scar across his missing eye was a thin silver line, and his hair had fallen across his face made him look like someone who had simply fallen asleep reading, not a dragon who could fill half a cave.
Olruggio sat up. His back ached from the stone floor so he stretched, cracked his neck, and looked at Qifrey again.
The horns were right there. In human form, they were smaller, but no less striking. Olruggio was a craftsman, he noticed structure and the way the horn branched, the texture of it, smooth where it met the scalp and then roughening as it rose, the grain of it like polished bone or very old wood. All of this was remarkable.
He didn't think about it. If he had thought about it, he wouldn't have done it.
He reached out and touched the branch. It was warm and feverish. Warmer than he'd expected, and the texture under his fingertips was exactly what he'd imagined: smooth, and... alive? With a faint pulse beneath the surface that might have been blood flow or might have been–
Qifrey's eye flew open. In less than a second, Olruggio saw Qifrey's pupil blew wide, the lips parted, and a flush swept up from his neck to his cheekbones at concerning speed. Qifrey's expression cracked open into something alike anger, embarrassed, unguarded, almost stricken–
Then the tail hit Olruggio in the chest. It was a full-force whip crack of muscle and scale that launched Olruggio backward off the ground and sent him skidding across the cave floor until his back struck the opposite wall with a thud that rattled his teeth.
Olruggio sat in a heap against the wall, winded, stunned, staring across the cave at Qifrey, who had scrambled upright and was pressed back against the nest wall, one hand clamped over his horn, his face the color of a sunset. His tail was coiled tight around himself, the tip flicking erratically. His single eye was wide. He looked mortified.
"What," Olruggio said from the floor, "were that?"
"Don't–" Qifrey's voice came out strangled. He cleared his throat, tried again, and it was barely more composed. "Don't touch those."
"You threw me across a cave!"
"You touched my–" Qifrey stopped. The flush, which had been receding, came back full force. He looked away. "You shouldn't touch those."
"I'm sorry. I was just–" Olruggio gestured, still on the floor, outraged and aching. "I were lookin' at the grain structure! It branches like heartwood, it's beautiful, and the density gradient is–"
"Stop talking about them."
The sharpness in Qifrey's voice shut Olruggio up. Qifrey still wasn't looking at him. His hand was still on the horn. His tail had stopped flicking, but it remained coiled tight, protective. After a long moment, Qifrey exhaled. "The horns are not something that is touched casually."
"What's that mean?"
Qifrey paused. "Among dragons, the horns are..." He seemed to be searching for a word that would be clinical enough to survive saying out loud. "...intimate."
Olruggio stared at him. "Intimate," he repeated. "How? Intimate as in–"
"As in only a mate touches them." Qifrey said this to the far wall and anything that was not Olruggio. "It is not done otherwise."
Olruggio looked at his hand. The hand that had, not two minutes ago, casually stroked a dragon's horn while said dragon was sleeping. He felt the blood drain from his face before rushing back, even his blood was unable to decide between mortification and horror.
"I didn't know," Olruggio said.
"I'm aware."
"I am–" Olruggio swallowed. "I didn't mean to – that were–"
"I know." Qifrey finally looked at him. The flush had faded to a faint pink across his cheekbones, "You didn't know. It's fine."
"I'm goin' to go outside," Olruggio said, standing up. "For... air."
"Yes," Qifrey said, still not quite meeting his eye. "That seems wise."
Olruggio walked outside, pacing the forest before he panted like a dog and came back inside again. Qifrey was cleaning his eggs, he caressed them and covered them with the blanket. Then he turned and began to heat the food.
"I owe you an apology," Olruggio said, approaching him. "I touched something I shouldn't 'ave. I didn't know what it meant, but that don't excuse it. I'm sorry."
Qifrey nodded. "Apology accepted. But I overreacted as well. You're a human."
Olruggio squinted. "What?"
"You're a human," Qifrey repeated, patient as ever as he poured the hot water into two cups. "Not someone who would be considered as a dragon's mate. It's the equivalent would be a bird landing on the horn. It happens occasionally. Small creatures that don't know any better."
Qifrey was giving him an out, any reasonable person would have taken it and moved on and never spoken of this again. Instead, what Olruggio felt was a sudden, irrational sting, like someone had pressed a thumb into a bruise he hadn't known he had.
"A bird," Olruggio said flatly.
Qifrey held out a cup. His tone carried absolutely no malice, he genuinely meant this as comfort. "It's the closest analogy. The horn is sensitive to any contact, regardless of intent or source. Your touch was unexpected. But it carried no significance beyond the physical sensation. There is no obligation."
"No obligation," Olruggio echoed.
"None whatsoever."
Olruggio took the cup. He stared into it. The water was slightly herbal, something Qifrey had added from a dried bundle on the shelf, and it smelled pleasant and Olruggio wanted to pour it on the ground. "So what you're telling me is that it doesn't matter."
And it shouldn't. He knew that. They had slept near each other for one night. Near, not even with; and it had been entirely innocent, and Olruggio didn't even like him. So no. It didn't matter. Obviously.
Qifrey looked at him and said: "I'm telling you that you don't need to feel guilty."
"Okay." Olruggio said.
They felt into silence again. Qifrey drank his water and stared thoughtfully at his eggs. Olruggio drank his and thought very hard about anything that wasn't horns.
"What 'appens," Olruggio said, because he was a fool who could not leave well enough alone, "if two dragons touch like that?"
Qifrey looked at him like he'd expected the question. "We mate."
"Huh." That was surprising fast for something important as mating. "But you're a male dragon. I'm a male human. Shouldn't it be nothing?"
"For dragons, gender is irrelevant, who carries depends entirely on dominance during mating. We're hermaphroditic. So we fight, and the one who loses submits and bears." He paused, checking whether Olruggio was still breathing. He was, but only technically. "But dragons are a solitary species. We don't usually stay to raise our offspring. After mating, we part ways."
Olruggio winced. "That seems harsh."
"Isn't it?" Qifrey agreed. "Which is why I stay away from my kind. I lost one eye. That doesn't help in a fight. And I would rather not, you know."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to, because Olruggio's traitorous brain even supplied the image: Qifrey losing, pinned beneath another dragon, the victor pressing down against him–
No. No.
Olruggio drank his water. It burned going down.
"So t' eggs," he said, after a moment. He cleared his throat. "The ones in the nest. They're not yours."
"No. Found. All four of them." Qifrey glanced toward the corner where the eggs sat, dark and quiet in their careful bed. "One was abandoned when its mother died. One was stolen by humans. One couldn't be raised by its mother and was given to me. And one came from a dragon who mated and didn't want the result, so they simply... left. The eggs grow cold if no one comes, so I took them here."
"And you just walk around findin' abandoned eggs."
"I travel. Eggs are not difficult to find, if you know where to look. And they weren't the first ones I took in. I used to have others, but they hatched and left when they came of age."
Olruggio muttered. "You could have just said ''tis complicated,'"
Qifrey didn't seem bothered. If anything, he looked pleased that Olruggio had asked at all. "You were curious. That's not a flaw. I think encouraging curiosity is an important thing in guiding the young ones."
Olruggio wasn't young, but he said nothing. He finished his water. "I'll leave after the eggs hatch," he said.
Qifrey's tail, which had been idly sweeping, stopped. "That could take weeks or month. You said you wanted to go home."
"I do want to go 'ome." Olruggio crossed his arms. "But you're alone here, you've got four eggs about to hatch, and you can't exactly fight off a company of Knights with one eye and–" He gestured at Qifrey's general situation. "I'll stay until they hatch. Then I'll go. That's it."
Qifrey looked at him, he smiled warmly before he said, "You're weak. I don't think you could help anything."
Olruggio stared at him. He was going to kill him. But he would wait for the eggs to hatch, because he was a decent person, and then he would kill him.
After a moment, he asked, because he was only curious, nothing more, "Have any dragons mate with humans?"
Qifrey gave him a very weird look. "I heard some cased, but very rare. If it helps at all, those mating isn't for reproductive purpose, since dragon can't impregnate a human. Nor can a human impregnate dragon. Cross-species reproduction isn't viable."
"Oh." Olruggio was strangely invested in this. "If–"
Understanding dawned across Qifrey's face. "You meant to ask what happen if we mated?"
"No! Why would I-"
"I would still produce eggs, of course, as that's a natural cycle regardless of mating, but they would be unfertilized. Essentially inert."
"You can't just tell me about your egg cycle."
"But you seemed curious."
"I were not– I wasn't asking about–" Olruggio pressed both hands over his face. His ears were burning. "Why would you just say that?"
"Say what?"
"Any of it! The fertilization, the–" He made a vague, strangled gesture. "We've known each other for twelve 'ours."
Qifrey regarded him over the rim of his cup. "I don't understand the issue. Is this some human moral issue?"
"It's a privacy issue. Humans don't usually tell strangers this information."
"We're not stranger. And you're the one who touched my horn." And he did.
Olruggio removed his hands from his face so that Qifrey could see clearly and without obstruction exactly how much he regretted every single decision that had led him to this cave.
Qifrey saw it. His mouth twitched, he offered: "More water?"
"I want to go 'ome," Olruggio said, and did not move from where he was sitting.
The next day, Qifrey did not leave the cave. Olruggio woke to find him draped over the nest. He thought his eyes was falling him when seeing Qifrey didn't curled around it, as he had been in dragon form, but over it, belly-down, arms spread wide, his body pressed flat against the eggs like a man trying to become a blanket.
His tail was wrapped around the base of the nest for stability, and his cheek was pressed against the dried grass lining with an expression of intense concentration.
He looked ridiculous.
"What," Olruggio said, "are you doin'?"
Qifrey didn't lift his head. "Warming them. The shells are thinning. They need consistent direct heat for the final stage."
Olruggio leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "So change into the dragon. You could cover all four wi'out this."
"I've never tried hatching in that form."
"Why not?"
"I'm... large, in that form. If I misjudge the weight, even slightly–" He shifted, adjusting his position over the nest carefully. "I could crush them. The shells are already thinning. I won't risk it."
Olruggio looked at the eggs beneath Qifrey's awkward sprawl. Then at Qifrey, whose dignity had clearly been sacrificed some time ago.
"You can't cover all four like that," he said.
"No." Qifrey lifted his head just enough to look at him. The single eye was steady. "I can reach two. The other two, I've been rotating, but there are gaps. If the temperature drops for too long, the development stalls."
"So–"
"I need help." He said it simply as though it hadn't occurred to him that Olruggio - a human he barely knew - might not be the person to ask.
"No."
"Olruggio."
"I', not lyin' on a pile of straw and sittin' on an egg."
"You wouldn't be sitting. You'd be lying across it. The way I am."
"I can see t' way you are. That's why I'm refusin'."
Qifrey put his cheek back down on the grass. He was quiet for a long time and Olruggio thought the conversation was over. I was a relief, because he could simply go outside and–
"If the temperature gap is too long, the eggs die." Qifrey said to the nest.
Olruggio stood there, then he looked at the other two egg, slightly apart from the two Qifrey was covering. One of them was the smallest of the three, its shell had a faint iridescence that shifted green-blue in the firelight. It sat in its little hollow of dried grass, perfectly still, and Olruggio had no way of knowing if it was warm enough or not, and the fact that he couldn't tell made his chest full of worrying.
"How long," he said through his teeth.
"A few days. Perhaps a week."
"A week."
"The development stage is unpredictable."
Olruggio closed his eyes before he walked over to the nest, lowered himself to the ground and laying down on his stomach. Qifrey's tail made a brief, involuntary curl toward Olruggio's side. He straightened it immediately.
They lay in silence. Side by side, pressed to the ground, each covering their share of the nest like two idiots who had lost a bet. Olruggio could feel the egg warming slowly beneath him, could feel his own body heat being absorbed into the shell, and next to him, Qifrey's coolness radiated outward.
Twenty minutes passed. Olruggio said: "This is boring," He met with silence, so he spoke again: "You're just going to lie here in silence for a week?"
"I usually do, yes."
"How."
"I think."
"About what?"
"Many things." Qifrey's eye was half-closed, sleepy and content like a cat in a sunbeam. Being on the eggs seemed to do something to him. He hadn't looked this unguarded since Olruggio had met him. "The forest. The seasons. What the children will be like when they hatch."
"That can't possibly fill a week."
"You'd be surprised."
Another silence. Olruggio lasted forty seconds. "Say something."
Qifrey opened his eye. "What would you like me to say?"
"Anythin'. Talk. I don't care about what. I'll lose my mind lying 'ere starin' at a rock in silence."
Qifrey seemed to consider this as if it were a genuinely novel request – as if no one had ever asked him to simply talk before. Maybe they hadn't. Solitary species, Olruggio remembered.
"All right," Qifrey said. He thought for a moment. "Where did you learn your trade?"
"Market district. South end. I apprenticed under a man named Richard when I was fourteen."
"Fourteen. That's young."
"That's normal."
Qifrey's tail made a slow, thoughtful sweep across the ground. "I see. How old are you now?"
"Thirdty-three."
"And you've been working since fourteen. Twelve years."
"Ninetine years." He corrected.
Qifrey ignored this. "Do you enjoy it? The work."
"It pays."
"That's not what I asked."
Olruggio exhaled through his nose. "Yes. I enjoy it. When clients aren't bein' impossible and deadlines aren't actively tryin' to kill me. Which is never. So no, I don't enjoy it, but it helps people. So I'd like to do it."
Qifrey's tail sweep again, before he asked, "Do you have a family?"
"A mother. She lives in the capital."
"Do you visit her?"
"When I can. It isn't often enough. She tells me this regularly."
"I see." Another tail sweep. "And a mate? A– what is the human word. Wife? Husband?"
Olruggio turned his head to look at him, now he seemed to caught the pattern of the talk. "Are you interviewing me?"
"I'm making conversation, as you asked me to."
But he wasn't. Olruggio had been around enough people to know the difference between small talk and someone who actually wanted to know the answers, he said: "I asked you to talk. Not to interrogate my personal life like a market aunty checking whether I'm marriage material."
"I don't know what a market aunty is."
"Yes you do. You're doing a perfect impression of one."
The tail flicked in a pleased motion before Qifrey could stop it. "I might have picked it up during my travel. But I'm genuinely curious. Dragons don't form long-term bonds. The concept is... interesting to me. Humans choose someone and then simply stay?"
"Ideally."
"And you've chosen no one?"
"I've been busy."
"So you're like me." Qifrey was pleased, his tail swept again, pointing at the eggs. "I'll let you name one of them."
Olruggio had the feeling that he had just been offered something significant, by both dragon standards and human standards.
"No thanks."
The peace last for two days. On the third, something was wrong with Qifrey.
He was flushed and shivered constantly for hours. His breathing came uneven, and his tail, usually so controlled, kept coiling and uncoiling in restless, involuntary spasms. Twice he lost his train of thought mid-sentence, trailing off into nothing, his eye going glassy before he blinked himself back. By the afternoon, he couldn't stop shaking.
Olruggio watched this with growing concern. The dragon was intolerant, yes. But watching him die seemed unnecessary. And Olruggio had no intention of raising four dragon eggs by himself.
"You're sick," Olruggio said.
"I'm fine." Qifrey lowered himself onto the nest with visible effort, his arms trembling as he draped himself over the eggs. A bead of sweat ran down his temple. "This is normal."
"You look like you're about to die."
"I assure you I'm not."
Qifrey said nothing more. His jaw was clenched, and the flush had spread down his neck and across his collarbones, disappearing beneath his clothing. His tail wrapped around the base of the nest and stayed there, rigid, the tip trembling.
Olruggio frowned, getting impatient now. "Qifrey. Tell me what's happenin'."
"It's not–" Qifrey pressed his forehead against the nest. His eye was shut. "It's not something I want to discuss."
"I don't care what you want to discuss. We're in charged of the eggs now. If somethin' is wrong with you, I need to know."
Qifrey was quiet for a long moment. His breathing was shallow and quick. Then, without opening his eye: "It's a side effect of the hatching."
Olruggio waited.
Qifrey swallowed. The flush darkened. "My body– My body is in contact with the eggs. The warmth, the proximity, the shells thinning, it mimics the end of a laying cycle. So it recognizes the pattern and believes I've just... delivered. Finished carrying. And when a dragon finishes carrying..." He trailed off.
"What?"
"The body releases certain... signals. Internally. To encourage another cycle."
Olruggio stared at him. "Another cycle of what?" Qifrey opened his eye looked at Olruggio. And Olruggio watched him back.
"Mating," Qifrey said. "Another cycle of mating."
Olruggio could only stare and repeat it again. "So your body, thinks you just laid eggs."
"Yes."
"Because it thinks you should–"
"Yes, Olruggio."
Olruggio sat back on his heels to process this. Then the first and most important question arrived: "Would it happen to me?"
Qifrey blinked. Even through the fever and the flush, the look he gave Olruggio was the flattest, most exhausted expression of are you serious that a face could produce: "No. You're human."
"You're sure."
"Yes. You don't have the receptors and hormonal pathway. You could lie on a dragon egg for a year and the only side effect would be back pain."
Olruggio exhaled. "Right. Good. So no effect at all. I already had back pain."
Qifrey put his face back down on the nest. His pointed, slightly elongated, edged with fine silvery scales ears were red to the tips. He looked miserable.
"So," Olruggio said, sitting back down beside the nest and resuming his position over the two eggs. He wasn't about to let it go cold because the conversation had taken a horrifying turn, "in simple terms, your body is tryin' to make you mate with another dragon."
Qifrey made a sound into the grass that might have been a groan. "Yes. It will last several days."
They lay in silence afterward. Olruggio stared at the cave ceiling and thought that Qifrey must be the unluckiest dragon alive. He was in heat, and the only other living creature in a mile radius was an unemployed craftsman.
"Is there anythin' that helps?" Olruggio asked, despite every instinct telling him not to.
Qifrey frowned and turned to him, "What?"
"You're obviously sufferin'. Is there somethin' that– I don't know. Cold water. A specific herb. Something that makes it less–"
"No." Qifrey's voice came out clipped and sharp, then he softened it deliberately, "No. Thank you. It simply has to... run its course."
He didn't look at Olruggio when he said it, but his tail – the part he couldn't fully control – drifted toward Olruggio's side of the nest. Olruggio looked at the tip, unsure what to say, so he chose the safest one: "You've done this before. Alone."
Qifrey didn't answer immediately. When he did, his voice wavered: "The eggs need to be warm. That doesn't stop because I'm– inconvenienced."
Olruggio looked at Qifrey's hands, they were clenched white-knuckled in the grass, and he reached over and put his hand on Qifrey's wrist. Qifrey flinched like he'd been burned. His eye flew open, wide and startled, his whole body went taut before he could catch it.
Olruggio held on. "It's okay. I'll help you."
Qifrey stared at him. The flush deepened further. His mouth opened, then closed. His tail uncurled from the nest base and curled again, the tip making one slow, uncertain loop before draped his tail over Olruggio too. Qifrey said very quietly, "You are a strange human."
"Yeah. I guess. But we're friends now, so I'll help you."
Qifrey exhaled and after a long moment, the tension in his wrist eased under Olruggio's grip. "Thank you," he said to the grass. "I'll tell you when it become unbearable."
Olruggio nodded and let go of his wrist, lay back down over his egg, and stared at the cave wall. He knew perfectly well he shouldn't offer this. His mother would be furious if he came home after intimating with a dragon, no matter how beautiful that dragon was.
Despite how much Olruggio wanted to, the fever hadn't broken. If anything, it had deepened, the heat turned Qifrey's skin damp and his movements sluggish. He only ate when Olruggio put food in front of him and drank when Olruggio held the cup, and the rest of the time he lay on the eggs with his eye half-closed and his tail wrapped tight around himself, trembling.
He had also stopped maintaining distance. The first night, his tail drifted toward Olruggio and curled loosely around his ankle. Olruggio woke with the weight of it and said nothing. The second night, he woke enclosed. Qifrey had shifted into his dragon form sometime in the night and curled his entire body around the nest. His tail was wrapped around the eggs and Olruggio both.
By the following night, Qifrey listed sideways during their shared watch and ended up with his head against Olruggio's shoulder. He stayed there for an hour before jerking awake and pulling away with a murmured apology that sounded unrepentant.
Olruggio grunted. So they lay in the dark, side by side on the nest, the eggs between and beneath them. Qifrey's breathing was ragged. His tail was coiled behind him, the tip twitching in erratic, restless flicks.
"Olruggio."
"Huh."
Qifrey gave him a long pause. Olruggio could feel the heat radiating off Qifrey's body from a foot away. It had intensified, like standing too close to a forge.
Qifrey whispered: "Could you– My tail."
Olruggio turned his head. In the dim glow of the scales, Qifrey's face was flushed dark, his eye fixed on the cave ceiling. He looked like a man bracing for a blow.
"What about it?"
The request stripped down to its barest components because Qifrey didn't have the resources left to dress it up. "Could you touch it. The base. Where it meets the spine. There's a pressure point. It helps."
"Helps with what?"
Qifrey closed his eye. His throat worked. "The cycle. It... eases the– Please."
Olruggio had never heard Qifrey say please before. He sat up, looking at the rigid line of Qifrey's body and the white-knuckled fists, he was holding himself so carefully still that it looked like it cost him everything.
Olruggio gulped, he managed: "You're not– You're not makin' me your mate, are you?"
Qifrey froze. But he didn't pull away, he said it into his arms: "Are you objected to that?" He said
Olruggio couldn't see his face. He could see the back of Qifrey's neck, where the pale hair met the skin, and the flush that had crept up from beneath his collar and spread across the nape, visible even in the half-light. He could see Qifrey's fingers, curled into the grass bedding, the tendons standing out white across the backs of his hands.
Olruggio's mouth suddenly very dry, he said: "No. I'm not objected."
He moved, shifted onto his knees behind Qifrey. The tail's base emerged from Qifrey's lower back where the human skin gave way to scales, a gradient of pale flesh to silver plate, the transition rougher than he'd expected. It was a scatter, scales thinning and softening where they bordered skin, like frost.
Carefully, he put his hands on the base of the tail, watching Qifrey's entire body jerked.
"Yes." Qifrey was face-down in the nest, his voice half-muffled by his arms. "Just hold it. The contact helps. Another body's temperature against the scales, it... regulates."
It sounded clinical enough. Olruggio could do clinical. He wrapped his hand loosely around it and waited. Qifrey exhaled. It was just a breath. Nothing about it should have made the hair on Olruggio's arms stand up. But it did.
"Okay?" he asked.
"Yes."
Olruggio lay there, holding the tail, staring at the cave ceiling. This was fine. This was simple. A man holding a tail in the dark for medical purposes. Nothing to–
"Could you..." Qifrey's voice again, but smaller this time. "Move your hand, just along the scales. Slowly."
Olruggio's throat clicked when he swallowed. "Which direction?"
"Down. Toward the tip."
He slid his hand down the tail. One long, slow stroke, his palm flat against the scales. They were cool on the surface and warm beneath, and they lay in overlapping rows that had a direction to them, like grain, and when his hand followed that grain, they smoothed flat under his touch.
Qifrey's breath stuttered. Olruggio stroked back up unintentionally, against the grain this time, and the scales caught and lifted under his fingers like hackles rising. Qifrey made a hum trapped behind closed lips, vibrating in his chest. His fingers curled into the grass.
"Sorry," Olruggio said, reversing direction. "Wrong way."
Qifrey's voice had dropped lower, roughened at the edges: "No. Both ways are fine."
Olruggio paused. Then he drew his hand back up, deliberately against the grain, and felt every scale catch and lift beneath his palm. Qifrey's hips shifted against the nest, the muscles in his lower back tense and release. The groan came this time and Qifrey pressed his face deeper into his arms.
This was still fine. This was still clinical.
Olruggio stroked down again, smooth grain, up again, rough grain, down, up, a rhythm that slow and even; and with every pass Qifrey's body unwound by another degree, his breathing deepening, and the rigid line of his shoulders loosening.
"More," Qifrey said.
Olruggio's hand stopped. "More how?"
Qifrey turned his head so that Olruggio could see his cheekbone had flushed dark. Qifrey's lips parted before he spoke, and there was a second where he was just breathing through his open mouth with his eye shut; Olruggio watched, could not look away.
Qifrey said: "Your fingers. Instead of your palm. Along the, between the scales. The gaps."
The gaps between the scales. Where the skin would be thinnest. Where the nerves would be closest to the surface. Now this was no longer clinical.
Olruggio traced his fingertips along the tail. Found the first gap, it was a narrow seam between two overlapping plates, and drew his finger along it.
Qifrey's back arched off the nest. "There," Qifrey breathed. "Yes. There."
Olruggio ran his fingertip along the next seam. Then the next. Qifrey's tail curled around his arm. Olruggio could feel the pulse in the tail hammering against his own pulse.
"More," Qifrey said again, almost like a whimper.
Olruggio stopped. Not because he wanted to. He wanted that very much. He wouldn't lie he wasn't hard now. He stopped because if he didn't stop now, he wasn't going to be able to pretend this was anything other than what it was.
"Qifrey."
"Yes." Barely voiced, Qifrey's eye was still closed. The flush had spread down his neck and beneath the collar of his tunic, and a fine sheen of sweat covered the exposed skin of his nape. His body was still curved in that arch, his weight resting on his chest and his hips, while his tail was still wrapped around Olruggio's arm, its grip tightening and loosening in a rhythm that matched his breathing.
"You said this was just temperature regulation."
"I lied," Qifrey said simply with no remorse.
Olruggio stared at him. Qifrey held his gaze, the shying image from before was all gone now. The tail hugged tighter around his forearm. And that single eye held Olruggio's with an expression that bordered on predatory.
Olruggio's voice faltered: "W-what are we doin' now?"
"Mating."
"B-but we only knew each other for hours."
"It didn't matter. We already are. From the moment you touched my horn, you were a candidate. From the moment you touched my tail, and I asked for more, and you gave it–" His throat moved. "We mated. This is mating. You've been mating with me for the last hour."
Olruggio felt lightheaded at the admission, "I thought–" His voice trembled. He swallowed. "I thought matin' involved a fight. Dominance. Submission. You said–"
Qifrey's mouth curved. "I said that was how dragons do it. You're not a dragon."
"What should I do now?"
"Keeping touching my tail."
"Only that?"
"Actually, there is more I want to show you. But I fear you wouldn't appreciate it."
"Fuck." Olruggio groaned. He couldn't breathe, he pressed his free hand over his face. "Fuck."
"Told you."
"No." Olruggio dropped his hand to look at Qifrey. "Show me."
Qifrey looked at him, searching his face before he unwound his tail from Olruggio's arm. Slowly, the scales dragging across his skin as he turned onto his back and laid into the nest with his spine against the grass, staying away from the eggs. His chest rising and falling with each unsteady breath and his clothes had ridden up, exposing a strip of stomach where the skin was flushed and damp and the faintest scatter of silver scales caught the ember-light.
His tail lay between his legs, the tip curling and uncurling in restless loops. He looked up at Olruggio, then he parted his legs. Olruggio could see he was damp there. Oh stars. His clothes was soaked.
Qifrey then lifted the hem of his tunic and pulled it over his head, then hooked his thumbs into his pants and pushed them down. Olruggio looked. He couldn't not look. His eyes traveled down from the chest, the scattered scales catching ember-light, the stomach still damp with sweat, and then lower, and–
Qifrey's cock lay heavy against his hip. It was large. Longer than a human's, slightly tapered, with a faint ridge of fine scales running along the underside that caught the light like chainmail. The head was darker, flushed, slick at the tip.
And beneath it–
Olruggio felt lightheaded. His vision narrowed and then expanded, and he gripped the edge of the nest because the floor had being spinning in his head. So he didn't lie about having both. The folds were flushed dark, swollen, glistening with the same slick fluid that coated his thighs. They framed a slit and the image was obscene.
Qifrey's hand drifted down his own body unhurried, tracing the path of Olruggio's gaze as if following it and his fingers came to rest on his folds. "You've could touch me there."
Olruggio leaned closer, not yet touching, "Yeah?"
QIfrey nodded. His fingers parted his folds, showing Olruggio, and the slick between them caught the lamplight nearby, and Olruggio could see the entrance and the swollen nub above it. Worse, he could see the tremor running through Qifrey's thighs despite the calm expression on his face.
"My cunt," Qifrey said.
Olruggio choked, "You shouldn't say like that."
Qifrey propped himself up on his elbows. He leaned closer to study Olruggio with open curiosity, as if Olruggio were a species he hadn't encountered before. Which he was, in fairness.
"You're embarrassed," Qifrey said, marveling at this.
"Of course I'm embarrassed!"
"But you said to show you."
"I meant– I thought–" Olruggio didn't know what he'd thought. He certainly hadn't thought this. He'd had some poorly constructed expectation involving like tail touching and not Qifrey lying naked on a nest saying that word with his legs open while Olruggio combusted.
"Humans have this too," Qifrey offered.
"Not– not both at t' same time–"
"How inconvenient."
"It is. But that's not the point–"
"What is the point?" Qifrey was looking at him with earnest interest, his legs still open, body still slick and on full display.
"The point," Olruggio said, very slowly, through his teeth, gathering strength "is that in human society, you don't just spread your legs and say that word–"
"I see. What would you say in this case?"
"You wouldn't– you don't just say it–" Olruggio staggered. Because in truth his entire frame of reference for this consisted of overheard Knight barracks talk and one unhelpful pamphlet he'd found in Utowin's saddlebag. He was not experienced by any measure. He was simply experienced enough to know that this was not how it was supposed to go.
He cleared his throat and said: "Y-you have to kiss first. You don't just jump straight to the point. There's a sequence."
Qifrey looked skeptical, "Show me."
So Olruggio showed him: he kissed the scar first, then the corner of Qifrey's mouth. As his hand moved down along the line of Qifrey's throat, he felt the swallow beneath his palm, where the scales began in scattered points like the first stars of evening. Then he touch down the chest, where the flush had spread so deep the skin was hot to the touch.
Qifrey asked: "What's this for? Is it help with the mating?"
"Uh- they said, it's 'elp relaxed, and it felt intimate."
"So it's useless."
"It's t' human way!" Olruggio said, offended on behalf of his entire species, every awkward first kiss and fumbled courtship that had ever occurred in the history of human romance, all of it dismissed in two words by a dragon who had never been on a date.
And then, because spite was a more reliable engine than arousal had ever been, Olruggio lowered his head and attached his mouth to Qifrey's nipple. He closed his lips around the nub, dragged his tongue flat across it then ground down with his teeth. It should've hurt, but Qifrey's back arched off the nest.
His hand flew to Olruggio's head, he made a sharp, startled gasp as his ribcage hitching beneath Olruggio's mouth. So Olruggio increased the forcing, watching in fascination when Qifrey's thighs pressed together and his tail slapped hard on the ground.
"...That's clever," Qifrey said, after a moment. His voice had dropped half an octave. "I can feel my – the – it's clenching? From this." He sounded genuinely impressed. "Humans are remarkable."
"We 'ave our moments," Olruggio muttered against Qifrey's chest and bit the other nipple.
"Ah–"
Olruggio moved lower to kiss down the belly, then the soft skin below the navel, down to where the skin was slick and fever-hot and Qifrey's thighs were trembling. He let his fingers trail along the crease where thigh met hip slowly, and and Qifrey's head tipped back, a sound catching behind his teeth.
"Touch me," Qifrey said. He was impatient, his hand found Olruggio's wrist, and his fingers were shaking. "Please."
"See?" Olruggio said smugly, "That's t' human way. Build to it. Make you want it. Make you ask."
Qifrey made a sound that might have been a protest and might have been a whimper, and his thighs fell wider apart, and Olruggio took a deep breath and let his fingers find Qifrey's folds.
It was slick, swollen, radiating heat; the moment their skin met, Qifrey's whole body arched off the nest and a sound punched out of him, "Nngh–! Ol–" It was high, thin, startled, as if he hadn't expected it to feel like this despite asking for exactly this.
"Too much?"
"Don't stop." Qifrey's hands shot up and gripped Olruggio's forearm, digging his fingers in.
Olruggio didn't stop. He explored carefully, this was the first time he had ever touched anything like this, but as always, he was a quick study. His fingers learned the map by response: a slow stroke along the length of the slit made Qifrey's breath catch; and a circling pressure against the swollen nub at the top while storking his cock made his hips jerk; and resting a single fingertip just barely inside the entrance made Qifrey go completely silent that was more obscene than any sound.
Only moments ago Qifrey had insisted foreplay was useless. Now his hand kept finding Olruggio's wrist, trying to guide him, to force a faster pace, chasing friction that Olruggio deliberately withheld. Every time Qifrey's grip tightened, Olruggio slowed down. Every time Qifrey's hips canted forward, seeking more, Olruggio pulled back to make him chase it. Like he said: the human way. Build to it. Make them want it.
Qifrey was starting to want it. His fingers dug into Olruggio's wrist. "Ol– Stop teasing–"
"I thought this was useless."
"I've revised–"
The sitence broke when Olruggio pressed one finger in slowly, watching Qifrey's face the entire time. He watched the eye go wide, then the mouth fall open around a sound that Olruggio would remember for the rest of his life.
"Olru–!"
Before they could go any further, Olruggio stopped. Qifrey looked at him as though he'd just stolen all his eggs.
Olruggio frowned. "Wait. There is something... it feels different inside."
The outrage on Qifrey's face shifted. He blinked, came back to himself. "Ah. The internal structure might differ from what you're used to."
Olruggio closed his eyes. "How useful of you to mention that only now."
"I don't know the specifics of human anatomy–"
"Clearly."
"–but dragons have a canal that is longer and the walls are muscled differently. They contract actively." Qifrey paused, choosing his words. His hips shifted as he described it and he stilled them deliberately. "In a human, I believe the muscles are passive, they respond. In a dragon, they move on their own. They pull."
"They pull?"
"Rhythmically. Once something is inside, the muscles engage to draw it deeper. It's an involuntary reproductive response, the body trying to maximize contact for fertilization." Qifrey delivered this without a trace of embarrassment, it would have been more convincing if his thighs weren't trembling around Olruggio's hand and his nub wasn't visibly swollen. "I can't control it. Once you're inside me, my body will... take over, to some degree."
Olruggio's mouth was dry while his heart was hammering. His finger was still resting at the entrance, and he could feel what Qifrey was describing. "What does that feel like? For– for the other one."
"I don't know. I've never done this."
"You've never–"
"I told you. I stayed away from my species. There hasn't been anyone. You would be the first."
The first. Not the first human. The first anything. The weight of that was almost physical.
Olruggio dwelled on it. Then Qifrey spoke again: "If we're not counting self-administration."
The weight shattered. "Your what?"
"I've been through this before. The urgency. When I was alone, I relieved it myself."
"Oh." Olruggio's brain was shutting down in stages, lights going out floor by floor, whole departments of rational thought locking their doors and going home. "How did you do that?"
"With my tail."
The image arrived in Olruggio's mind fully formed, uninvited: Qifrey was alone in this cave, with his back arched and his tail curving between his own thighs, the tapered tip pressing inside himself–
Olruggio's vision flickered. He breathed in through his nose. Held it. Let it out.
"O-okay," he managed. "Can I continue?"
"Do everything you must."
With the permission, Olruggio pressed in. His finger deeper, reading the strange terrain Qifrey had just described. And the walls did exactly what Qifrey had described: they moved in a slow, rolling contraction gripped his finger and pulled deeper, drawing it inward, and the sensation was so alien, so unlike anything he'd touched before, that he froze.
"That's–"
"Normal. Keep going."
Olruggio kept going. He added a second finger, easing in gently, stretching. That was how this worked, we prepared someone, took care and made sure they were ready.
"You don't need to stretch me."
Olruggio paused. "What?"
Qifrey propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at where Olruggio's fingers disappeared into him. "The muscles are self-lubricating and the canal dilates on its own during heat. The stretching isn't necessary. I appreciate the thought, but–"
"I'm tryin' to be careful–"
"I know. And it's kind. But I'm not fragile there. You could be firmer."
Olruggio's jaw tightened. He curled his fingers, pressing against the inner wall, searching for the spot. He didn't know what it would look like. But there was always a spot.
Qifrey watched him search. His head tilted, patient, waiting. After a moment, his hand came down and wrapped around Olruggio's wrist. "Higher. And forward."
He guided Olruggio's hand, repositioned the angle, pressed Olruggio's fingers toward the front wall, and then pushed his hand deeper, past the point Olruggio had been tentatively exploring, until his fingertips brushed something different: a ridge of thickened tissue, textured, that swelled under contact.
Qifrey's breath caught as he closed his eyes savored it, "There."
"You– you already knew where it was."
Qifrey didn't deny it. And Olruggio, replaying every shy glance and trembling hand and carefully buried face, began to suspect he'd been led here.
"I told you. My self-moments." Qifrey said this as though it were obvious. "The ridge runs along the upper wall, roughly two knuckles deep. And there's a second cluster, deeper, but that one is..." He paused, a flush creeping back up his neck. "That one is intense. I would recommend building to it."
Olruggio stared at him. His fingers were still inside Qifrey. Qifrey was still holding his wrist. "You've– how many times have you–"
"Many. The heat comes cyclically regardless of mating. I had to manage it somehow. Over time, I learned what worked." He adjusted Olruggio's angle again. "Your fingers are shorter than my tail, so the depth is different, but the principles are the same."
"So me fingers are worse than your tail," Olruggio said bitterly.
"Your fingers are warmer. I prefer them."
Olruggio closed his eyes at the confession. Then he pressed at the spot harder and Qifrey's head threw back behind.
"Press there," Qifrey said. "Try circular."
Olruggio pressed. Circled, as he'd been told, and Qifrey's head fell back as his hips rolled up into Olruggio's hand. The sound he made was raw and open, startled out of him, maybe knowing it was coming and feeling it were two entirely different things when someone else's fingers were the ones doing it. Olruggio was not going to be outmaneuvered by a dragon who had learned sex from his own tail.
"There," Qifrey gasped. "Yes. Like that– don't stop–"
"I thought you said circular–"
"I changed my mind– harder–"
Seeing Qifrey like this enormously boosted Olruggio's confidence. He leaned closer, pressed his forehead against Qifrey's temple. "Tell me more."
"W-what?"
"You said there's a second cluster. Tell me where."
Qifrey's eye widened. His mouth opened, but what came out wasn't instructions, it was a small, wrecked sound, because Olruggio had found his own rhythm now, and his fingers were moving without Qifrey's instruction. Qifrey must understood that knowing the map was not at all the same thing as having someone else walk the territory.
"D-deeper," Qifrey managed. "A-another inch, the wall changes texture... it's smoother– and then there's a–"
Olruggio found it.
His fingertips brushed the narrow threshold; it was a ring of muscle, tighter than the canal walls, guarding somewhere deeper and hotter. The muscles there clenched around his fingers so violently that his hand was nearly forced out. Qifrey's back arched off the nest as Olruggio found it. He cried out, then tried to bite it off, teeth closing on his lower lip, but it escaped anyway, slipping through the gap between his clenched jaw.
Olruggio smiled against Qifrey's temple. It was a small, private, entirely too-satisfied smile.
"So," Olruggio murmured, circling the entrance to the inner chamber with a feather-light touch that made Qifrey's spine bow off the nest, "circular, you said?"
"I will bite you–" he said as he bared his teeth. The canines slightly longer than before, the dragon leaking through the human, and his eye was wild and furious and desperate. It was the most beautiful threat Olruggio had ever received.
Olruggio didn't flinch. He pressed harder against the entrance. Held Qifrey's gaze. "Couldn't reach this angle with your tail, could you?"
Qifrey made a sound that was not a word in any language. His head fell back, rocking forward onto Olruggio's hand in a tight, involuntary grind that he couldn't have stopped if he'd tried.
"Couldn't do this–" Olruggio twisted his fingers, a slow corkscrew, pressing the ridge from a direction Qifrey's own body could never have approached.
"Ol – Olruggio – please–"
Seeing Olruggio still contented with teasing, Qifrey grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him hard. It was messy, their teeth clacking, and Qifrey said against his mouth, breathless and furious: "Inside me. Now."
"Oh," Olruggio said, pulling back to look at him, who was now flushed, panting, wrecked, glaring at him with a single eye that was simultaneously murderous and desperate. "Useless, you said."
Qifrey's tail whipped against his thigh hard that it stung. Olruggio laughed and kissed him back, and then, because he was a man who followed instructions, even from the most difficult clients: he gave Qifrey what he asked for.
Before Olruggio could do something, Qifrey's hand was on his chest, pressing him back. "Wait."
"You just said now–"
"I want to see you first."
Olruggio blinked. Qifrey's gaze had dropped. His hand slid down from Olruggio's chest, slid over his ribs, across his stomach and his fingers found the waistband of Olruggio's trousers.
"Can I?"
Olruggio's mouth opened. No sound came out. He nodded.
Qifrey undressed him fast, no fumbling, no hesitation, until Olruggio was bare from the waist down and Qifrey was looking at him with the focused, evaluative expression. He wrapped his hand around Olruggio's cock.
Olruggio hissed through his teeth. Qifrey didn't seem to notice. He was studying, his thumb running along the shaft, tracing the length, mapping the surface with the same careful attention he'd used to describe his own anatomy moments ago. Then he frowned. "It's smooth."
"What?"
"The skin. It's entirely smooth." He turned it slightly–turned it, like examining a piece of fruit at a market–and his frown deepened. "No texture at all. No ridges or scales."
"It's – it's not supposed to have scales–"
"Dragon cocks have a scaled texture along the shaft. Small, fine scales. They create friction during mating, it stimulates the inner walls and helps trigger the fertilization response." Qifrey ran his thumb over the head, thoughtful. "This is just... skin."
"Yes. It's skin. That's what human bodies are made of. Skin."
"Interesting."
Olruggio stood there while a dragon frowned at his cock for being insufficiently textured. He stared at the wall and wondered if there was a star of humiliation, and if so, whether that star was accepting prayers.
Then Qifrey's hand shifted. His fingers wrapped fully around the shaft and he measured with his thumb and forefinger spanning the base, then walking up the length in careful increments.
"Qifrey."
"Yes? His eye narrowed in concentration.
"What are you doing?"
"Estimating." One more span. Then Qifrey sat back, and his expression changed from concentration to approval. He nodded once, satisfied.
"This could work," Qifrey said.
"This could work?"
"The length is... ambitious, even for a human. You're a shorter man, but you seem to have your centimeters elsewhere."
Olruggio opened his mouth. He did not know whether he had just been insulted or complimented. Both, possibly.
"Thank you?" he said. "I think?"
"You're welcome." Qifrey released him and settled back into the nest, spreading his legs again. "Now. There's something I want to try."
"What again?"
"Did I mention the double chamber system? The outer canal and the inner one."
"No."
Qifrey paused. His eye brightened in a way that Olruggio was beginning to recognize as dangerous enthusiasm. "The inner chamber was the the one where the eggs are stored; and it has a separate, narrower entrance. Deeper inside. Past the first chamber entirely."
Olruggio stared at him. "You're tellin' me there's a second door."
"More of a passage. It's tight, significantly tighter than the outer canal. You'd touched that before with your fingers. In dragon mating, only the tip typically passes through, just enough to deposit-" He waved a hand. "The relevant material. But with your length–" Another glance down and another nod. "We could go further. Properly inside the inner chamber."
"You want me to–" Olruggio's voice climbed. "You want me to penetrate both–"
"I want to know what it feels like. The inner chamber is where the reproductive nerves are densest. I've never been able to stimulate it directly. Not fully." Qifrey's voice had taken on that bright, eager edge.
"You sound very enthusiastic for someone who said they'd never done this."
Qifrey said this matter-of-factly. "I've thought about it sometimes. But my tail was too large."
Olruggio was caught, once again, in the impossible space between insult and compliment. His cock was being praised for its ability to access a passage that Qifrey's own tail–which was by implication larger–could not fit through. He was, apparently, the perfect size: big enough to reach, small enough to fit. The Goldilocks of dragon penetration.
"So, to summarize: my cock is– what. Conveniently sized?"
"Ideally sized," Qifrey corrected, with genuine warmth. "For this specific purpose, you are perfect."
"Just for accessin' your inner egg chamber."
"Well." Qifrey tilted his head. The tail swept once. "I wouldn't say just."
Olruggio covered his face with both hands. This was the worst compliment he'd ever heard. His cock was, traitorously, harder than it had ever been in his life. He said: "You know, in human courtship, compliments usually sound more like: 'you have nice eyes.' Or 'I like your smile.' Not 'your genitals are dimensionally compatible with my internal architecture.'"
"You do have nice eyes."
"That's– thank you. But that's not the–"
"And you're kind even when you're angry. And you stayed when you had no reason to." Qifrey's voice had softened. "And I want you inside every part of me, including the part no one has ever been, because I trust you not to hurt me. Is that a better compliment?"
Olruggio's throat closed, he said, after a moment. "Yes. That's a better compliment."
"All right, I'm glad. Now will you please fuck me before I get impatient."
The shift was so fast that Olruggio's emotional whiplash manifested as a laugh. He leaned down. to kiss Qifrey, who kissed him back, one hand rising to cradle the side of Olruggio's face.
Then Olruggio's hand slid down between them, his thumb found and parted the folds, spreading them, feeling the heat bloom against his skin and the clenching beneath his fingertip. He withdrew the finger almost immediately and positioned himself with the head of his cock resting against the entrance. Then he pushed inside.
The first thing Olruggio registered was the heat. A warmth that engulfed him the moment he pressed past the entrance and sank into the outer canal. It wrapped around every inch of him in wet, muscled heat.
Then the pulling started. Qifrey had warned him. He had described it and Olruggio'd experienced with his fingers. But none of that had prepared Olruggio for the reality of a rhythmic contraction that gripped him and drew, wave after wave rolling inward along the canal walls. Each one pulling him deeper without any effort on his part. His hips stuttered forward involuntarily, following the rhythm his body had no say in setting.
"Oh–" Olruggio's arms shook. He caught himself on his elbows, his face inches from Qifrey's. "Oh."
Beneath him, Qifrey's back had arched off the nest. His eye was wide, his lips parted, his hands gripping Olruggio's shoulders, holding him close. "Move," Qifrey said, and his voice was a wreck.
Olruggio thrusted, then pulling back against the grip of those impossible muscles, feeling them resist, reluctant to release him, and then pressing forward again. Qifrey's hips rose to meet him, accepting him deeper and held there.
He found a rhythm as the muscles guided him, each contraction a suggestion, a direction, deeper, more, here. And Qifrey moved beneath him in long, fluid rolls of his hips, his body was designed for this, built for endurance, made to sustain.
And that was the problem. Because Olruggio was not designed for this. Olruggio was a human being with a human body and human limits, and ten minutes in, with Qifrey showing no signs of flagging: his muscles contracting with the same relentless rhythm, his body taking everything Olruggio gave and pulling for more. And Olruggio realized with dread: he was going to finish first.
Soon. Very soon.
He clenched his jaw. Slowed his pace. Thought about tax calculations, commission deadlines and the process of filing quarterly accounts for three different clients, each with their own–
Qifrey rolled his hips, and the inner muscles squeezed, and Olruggio's careful mental accounting went up in flames.
Think. Think. He was not going to last. Not at this pace and not with this heat, and absolutely not with the pulling and the squeezing and Qifrey beneath him making those sounds. Qifrey could do this for hours and fully intended to. If Olruggio finished now, it would be over for him, and Qifrey would still be– Qifrey would–
He'd be the one who couldn't keep up. The short human with the smooth cock who lasted five minutes while the dragon was just getting started.
No. He carried the whole species' pride. Olruggio gritted his teeth and changed tactics. His right hand left the ground beside Qifrey's head and traveled down between them, over Qifrey's heaving chest, across the damp, scale-scattered skin of his stomach and found Qifrey's cock, which was pressed hard against his belly, untouched until now. He wrapped his fingers around it.
Qifrey's spine snapped into an arch, a gasp punching out of him and his rhythm broke.
"What are you–"
Olruggio stroked. A firm, slow pull, base to tip, while his hips kept moving in a slower thrust now, deliberately angled toward the ridge on the upper wall that Qifrey had showed him earlier. The sensation hit Qifrey hard that his head slammed back into the nest, his mouth falling open on a sound that was higher, sharper, less controlled than anything Olruggio had heard from him yet.
"You– ah – that's not – hnhgg– I didn't tell you to–"
"I'm improvising. What's the matter?" Olruggio looked down at him. "Can't keep track?"
It was exactly the right thing to say, because Qifrey too, was a creature who could not tolerate being outperformed. His eye snapped into focus. "I can perfectly well–"
Olruggio's left hand moved. Found the nub at the top of Qifrey's slit, it was swollen and neglected until now, he pressed his thumb against it and rubbed in a slow, firm circle.
Three things at once. And Qifrey screamed. His hands flew to Olruggio's back and his claws came out.
His claws were sharp, erupting from the nail beds, and they dug into Olruggio's back through his tunic and sank in. Olruggio felt the pain immediately. Still, he didn't stop or slow down. He kept thrusting and stroking and circling. At some point, Qifrey's teeth bared again. The canines extending past the lip line and his pupil had blown so wide the iris was gone, a single disk of black ringed in the thinnest line of silver, and the look in that eye was... feral. Hungry. A predator's focus narrowed to a single point: Olruggio.
"More," Qifrey snarled. The word came from deep in his chest, vibrating through his ribcage, like a growl. His claws dragged down Olruggio's back and his legs locked around Olruggio's hips and pulled, forcing him deeper with a strength that was not human, obviously.
Olruggio felt the narrow threshold of the inner chamber press against the tip of his cock before the muscles there clenched and released and clenched, fluttering, demanding.
"Give me more."
"I'm giving you everything I–"
Qifrey's hand shot up and gripped the back of Olruggio's neck. The claws pricked the skin there and Qifrey pulled him down until their faces were an inch apart. "Deeper," he said as a command, delivered from the back of the throat with teeth and Olruggio realized that this was what Qifrey looked like when every civilized layer was stripped away.
This was the creature beneath the measured voice and the gentle hands and the patient composure. This was what had been waiting under the surface the whole time.
Olruggio thrust deeper, he pressed past the threshold, into the inner chamber, and the heat there was–Qifrey hadn't exaggerated–blistering, tight, the muscles contracting in rapid, desperate flutters around him. Qifrey's entire body seized. And then, a sudden, hard gush of hot fluid flooded around Olruggio’s cock, soaking his hips, the nest, everything between them in a messy, rhythmic pulse that matched every clench of Qifrey’s cunt. It kept coming in strong, uncontrollable spurts as the orgasm ripped through him.
Qifrey came apart with his claws in Olruggio's back and his body clenching around Olruggio so tight it edged past pleasure into something that lived next door to pain.
Qifrey's teeth found Olruggio's shoulder. He bit down hard as the each wave of his orgasm hit him, it made Olruggio's vision went white and his hips snapped forward one last time and he followed Qifrey over the edge with a groan that he muffled against his hair.
"I'm goin' to die."
He meant it. He was going to die here and they will never find his body and Utowin will think the dragon ate him and he will be technically correct–
"Don't die," Qifrey murmured into his hair. "I just found you."
They stayed locked together. Claws in his back, teeth in his shoulder, legs around his hips, the inner chamber still pulsing in slow, diminishing waves around him. Olruggio couldn't move. He lay draped over Qifrey, shaking, breathing in harsh, ragged pulls, and felt the claws retract slowly, one by one; and the teeth released his shoulder as Qifrey's tongue licked once across the bite mark, a gesture that was either apology or claim. Olruggio didn't know which.
Qifrey's hands - now with blunt nails and human fingers again - came up and cradled the back of Olruggio's head. The tail wound around his waist. The dragon lay beneath him, trembling in the aftershocks, his breathing shattered, his face pressed against Olruggio's neck, and Olruggio felt dampness against his skin.
"Are you cryin'?" Olruggio murmured.
"I don't know." Wet. Absolutely crying.
Olruggio kissed his temple. The scar. The broken horn's base. Pressed his lips to each damage point on this dragon's face and felt Qifrey's arms tighten around him with each one.
Qifrey whispered. His fingers had found the claw marks, now tracing them lightly, following the raised welts, "I hurt your back. The claws... I couldn't–"
"I know."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Olruggio shifted, settled more of his weight onto Qifrey, let himself be held. His back stung with four lines of fire on each side, shallow but bleeding, he could feel the warmth trickling. "Battle scars. The Knight needs battle scars."
Qifrey made a sound that was both a laugh and a sob; his tail tightened as he pressed his face deeper into Olruggio's neck and breathed him in and held on. He stayed like that for a long time, then he said: "I didn't know it could be like that."
"Like what?"
Qifrey's tail pulsed once around his waist. "Like wanting to devour someone and protect them from your teeth. Those things should cancel each other out. They don't. I don't understand why they don't."
"Yeah." Olruggio's hand found the back of Qifrey's head, between the horns sand stayed there. "That's how it's supposed to work."
"Humans know this?"
The corner of his mouth twitched. "Only the good ones figure it out."
Qifrey pulled back just to look at him, he said softly: "You should rest."
"Why? I thought we're done."
Qifrey looked at him with fond and pity eye.
Four hours later, Olruggio understood why the pity. For the first few rounds, Qifrey had been reactive, overwhelmed by sensation, grateful for contact, content to let Olruggio set the pace. That Qifrey, the trembling, gasping, thank-you-for-touching-me Qifrey, had been manageable. Devastating, but manageable.
Now, that Qifrey was gone.
"Wait," Qifrey said, pressing his hand flat against Olruggio's chest, stopping him mid-thrust. "Go slower."
"I– what?"
"Slower. Like before, when you–" Qifrey shifted his hips, adjusting the angle. "There. Now. Slowly."
Olruggio moved slowly, and Qifrey's eye fluttered shut, his head tipped back, then his internal muscles did something new: a rolling squeeze that started deep in the inner chamber and rippled outward in a wave so controlled so intentional that Olruggio realized with dawning horror that Qifrey was learning to use them on purpose.
"You're– you said you couldn't control those–"
"I couldn't." Qifrey opened his eye. The flush was still there, but the desperation was gone. "I'm learning. Do that again."
"Do what again?"
"The thing with your hips. The angle. It was different just now."
"I don't know what I did with my hips–"
"Then try until you find it again."
This was how Olruggio's misery began.
Qifrey found that he liked being on top. This was a problem for Olruggio, because Qifrey on top meant Qifrey setting the pace, and Qifrey's pace was torturing. He rolled his hips in long, deep movements, his hands braced on Olruggio's chest, his tail wrapped around Olruggio's thigh, and he watched Olruggio's face, reading every reaction, adjusting, experimenting, finding what made Olruggio groan and then doing it again and again and again until Olruggio was gripping the nest with both hands and his vision was a white blur.
He also found that he liked sounds, not his own, but Olruggio's. He discovered that if he clenched his inner walls at the peak of a thrust, Olruggio would make a choked, guttural noise that Olruggio was deeply ashamed of. And once Qifrey identified this, he pursued it with a single-minded determination.
By hour eight, Olruggio had finished more times than he could count. His body had passed through exhaustion into a place where his muscles moved on reflex and his brain had stopped filing coherent thoughts. His hands were shaking. His thighs were shaking. Everything was shaking.
Qifrey was still going. Between rounds, he pressed water to Olruggio's lips, smoothed the sweat-damp hair from his forehead, ran the cool underside of his tail along Olruggio's overheated skin. He murmured things. Those were soft, half-audible things in what might have been dragon language, low and rhythmic, like singing; and his hands were gentle on Olruggio's body, mapping him.
Then he would tend to the eggs for half an hour, long enough for Olruggio to believe it was over.
Then the tail would start moving again.
"Qifrey." Olruggio's voice was hoarse. Scraped down to nothing. "I can't."
"Can't?"
"I can't. I'm–" He gestured weakly at himself and his own cock: "It's not– nothing is... I can't get hard again. It's over. I've got nothing left."
To his absolute humiliation, he was close to tears from exhaustion that his emotions had lost their walls, and everything was leaking out unfiltered. His eyes were burning, and his voice was cracking. And if Qifrey touched him again he was going to actually cry.
"Please," Olruggio said, he heard the word come out broken, wet at the edges. "I need to sleep. Please."
Qifrey paused, he looked at Olruggio and all the hunger pulled back, and what remained was concern. As thought he'd been so absorbed in discovery that he'd forgotten the instrument he was playing was a person.
"Oh." Qifrey said softly. His tail unwound from Olruggio's leg. His hand came up and touched Olruggio's cheek lightly, carefully, the pad of his thumb brushing beneath Olruggio's eye where the skin was damp. "You're crying."
"I'm not."
"You are. I've hurt you."
"You haven't hurt me, I'm just–" Olruggio's breath hitched. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I'm tired, Qifrey. Humans can't– we're not built for this. I need to stop."
"Then we stop."
Qifrey pulled back, settled beside him, and the tail–which two minutes ago had been climbing his thigh–draped across his waist in a gentle weight. "Sleep. I'll be here."
Olruggio almost sobbed with relief. He turned onto his side, curled in on himself, and closed his eyes, and he was asleep in seconds.
He didn't know how long he slept. It could have been an hour. It could have been five minutes. What woke him was sound of Qifrey's breathing. Each exhale carrying a thin, barely audible tremor, held behind closed lips, carefully muffled.
He didn't need to turn around to know Qifrey was taking care of it himself.
The realization should have been neutral and blissful: Qifrey had a biological need, Olruggio couldn't meet it, and Qifrey was handling it independently, sparing them both. This was considerate and kind. And Olruggio felt like failure.
He listened. Qifrey was trying to be quiet, his voice was smaller than it had been with him. He was trying no to disturb, not to wake the human who'd begged him to stop. Olruggio heard all of it, and each sound carved another line into the growing architecture of his inadequacy. He stared at the cave wall. His heart ached but his body had nothing left. He'd given everything he had.
What good was a mate who couldn't even–
Another sound of frustration this time. Then a quiet, defeated exhale, and the movement of the tail slowed, Olruggio heard Qifrey's forehead press against the grass, this wasn't arousal at all. Qifrey was giving up.
Olruggio's throat closed. He pressed his face into the grass and thought: get up. Your body is done but your hands still work. Your mouth still works. You have fingers and a tongue and you are not going to lie here and listen to him give up.
Everything hurt. His back hurt from the claw marks stinging with every movement. His thighs, his arms, his jaw, his cock, his pride. His heart. Everything.
He turned over and Qifrey froze. In the dim glow of the scales, Olruggio saw him curled on his side, facing away, his tail curved between his own legs, the tip slick and still. His shoulders were tight. His breathing had stopped entirely. Qifrey didn't move. "Go back to sleep."
"I'm a light sleeper." Olruggio sat up. His muscles screamed while his vision greyed at the edges and came back. "Come here."
Qifrey's tail withdrew from between his legs in a quick, ashamed motion, tucking itself away and he turned his head enough to look at Olruggio over his shoulder. His face was flushed while his eye was bright and wet. He looked embarrassed. "Your body needs rest–"
"My body is not the only part of me that's useful."
Qifrey blinked as his gaze dropped to Olruggio's mouth, then back up, and the flush deepened.
"Come here," Olruggio said, for the second time, and this time it was low and brooking absolutely no argument, Qifrey came.
He moved to Olruggio on his hands and knees, slow, uncertain, his tail trailing behind him instead of its usual confident sweep. He stopped in front of Olruggio and sat back on his heels, and his hands were in his lap, and he wouldn't meet Olruggio's eye. "I'm sorry. You must think our kind insatiable."
"I don't know about your kind. But you're certainly insatiable."
The corner of Qifrey's mouth twitched, but it didn't hold. "That's because my body has identified you as viable."
Olruggio squinted: "Viable for what?"
"Compatible for reproduction." Qifrey's jaw worked, "Dragon heats shorten when the body recognizes there's no compatible mate nearby. When the body identifies a viable partner the cycle extends. But then, since you aren't dragons, the heat kept..."
Olruggio looked at him. So this was what Qifrey had been trying to say, the long way around: I'm not usually like this. It's because of you. My body won't stop because it wants you.
"I know. Come lie back."
"You're exhausted."
"I'm your mate." Olruggio slipped and didn't want to take it back, he watched Qifrey's eye widen and then fill.
A tear tracked sideways from the corner of Qifrey's eye, and Olruggio caught it with his thumb, because he had learned over the course of their nights that the most devastating thing he could do to this dragon was be kind to him when he expected to be alone.
"Lie back," Olruggio said.
Qifrey lay back. Olruggio's cock was sore, deeply sore from hours of use. But he still had other assets.
"You don't–" Qifrey started, propping himself up on his elbows, his voice thin with disbelief.
"Shut up."
The flush that had been fading, came roaring back. "But it's– Olruggio, my tail was just– It's not – I'm not clean there, I just–"
"I said shut up."
Qifrey's voice was genuine shock. "Humans do this? With their mouths? On the–"
Olruggio looked up at him from between his thighs. "Qifrey. I have spent the last hours with my fingers inside you, my cock inside you, and approximately half of your bodily fluids on my skin. We're not having a conversation about clean. Now lie back and shut up."
Qifrey lay back. His mouth was still open in bewilderment and his tail had curled protectively between his legs, shielding the relevant area from this apparently insane human who wanted to put his mouth on it.
"Move the tail," Olruggio said.
"I– it's–"
"Move. The. Tail."
The tail uncurled slowly, reluctantly, against its better judgment. Olruggio pressed his mouth to the inside of Qifrey's thigh. The muscle jumped beneath his lips. He heard the sharp inhale above him, felt the thigh tremble against his cheek. He kissed higher. Found the junction of hip and leg, the skin there salt-damp and fever-hot, and Qifrey's hand came down and hovered over his hair, shaking. He wanted to touch. Olruggio could see the want in the tremor of those fingers, they drifted closer and then retreated, closer and retreated, as if Qifrey couldn't decide whether he was allowed.
This was the dragon who had grabbed Olruggio's face with both hands and kissed him. Who had bared teeth and claws and demanded more as an apex predator. Who had, not two hours ago, thrown Olruggio onto his back and ridden him with the single-minded determination of a creature who had never learned the word restraint.
Olruggio rolled his eyes as he took Qifrey's hand and put it on his head to press it down until the fingers sank into his hair. Then he put his mouth where Qifrey needed it.
The first touch of his tongue against Qifrey's folds drew a sound out of Qifrey that Olruggio would carry for the rest of his life. It was a high, trembling note that started in Qifrey's throat and broke before it reached its peak, dissolving into a sob that he caught behind his teeth, his head falling back, his hand clenching in Olruggio's hair while his entire body curving toward Olruggio's mouth.
"Oh–" Qifrey's voice was wrecked. His hips lifted once, seeking more contact, and then he caught himself and held still, trembling with the effort of not moving. Because this was the human way, and he was trying to let it be slow. "Oh, that's– I didn't–"
"Didn't what?"
"Didn't know a mouth could–" A gasp. Olruggio worked, he found the nub with his tongue, circling it, pressing flat and dragging slow, varying the pressure. "–could feel different from – ah – from fingers–"
"Warmer," Olruggio said against him, and felt Qifrey's entire body shudder at the vibration of the word against his most sensitive skin.
"Warmer," Qifrey repeated. "And – nnh – softer – and the – the texture is–" He lost the sentence. His hips rolled again, a longer movement this time.
Qifrey was shaking, and the hand in his hair was so gentle despite its grip, and the taste was strange and mineral and not unpleasant, and Olruggio thought he could deal with his inconvenience biology for the rest of his life.
He slid his fingers back inside the canal because his mouth alone wasn't going to be enough. Qifrey's body responded instantly, the inner muscles gripping his fingers with desperate, rhythmic pulls, and Qifrey was saying his name, over and over, broken into syllables, "Ol – rug – gio," each fragment separated by a gasp, his hips rolling against Olruggio's mouth in tight, involuntary movements.
It didn't take long. Not this time. Qifrey had been on the edge alone, and Olruggio's mouth and hands together pushed him over in a fraction when Olruggio curled his fingers against the ridge and sucked gently on the nub at the same time. Qifrey came with his fingers tangled in Olruggio's hair as his tail locked around his shoulders.
The fluid that gushed- no- flooded Olruggio's mouth was a lot. No human should've produced this much slick. Then he remembered, belatedly, that Qifrey was not human. He was a creature six times Olruggio's size. It was hot and faintly sweet, it kept coming, pulse after pulse in time with the contractions around his fingers, and Olruggio made a graceless, sputtering choke.
His eyes watering, his throat working and pulled back just enough to breathe, and the rest of it spilled across his chin and his hand and the grass beneath them. He coughed, wiped his mouth, blinked the tears from his eyes and stayed through the aftershocks. Until Qifrey's body wasn't shaking again and his hand loosened in Olruggio's hair, his breathing finally slowed.
Olruggio pulled back. He crawled up Qifrey's body with his hands and knees, graceless, every joint protesting and collapsed beside him. Qifrey immediately curled into him, face against his chest, tail around his waist, hands gripping the front of his shirt.
"I don't deserve you," Qifrey whispered into the fabric.
"Probably not."
A wet, exhausted laugh. "You're supposed to disagree."
"I'm too tired to lie." Olruggio settled his arm around Qifrey's shoulders. "How's your heat."
"Quieter. For now."
"For now." Olruggio closed his eyes. "When it comes back–"
"I'll go outside."
"When it comes back," Olruggio said, more firmly, "you will stay here. Wake me up, if you please. You have a mate now."
And that was how Olruggio signed a contract with the devil.
Because over the following days, whenever the heat returned, Qifrey woke him. And when Qifrey couldn't wake him, Qifrey used him anyway. Olruggio would come to drenched in slick, Qifrey's mouth on his soft cock, making a sound of quiet frustration when it wouldn't cooperate.
For goodness' sake. Once, he woke up to find Qifrey'd taken Olruggio's entirely soft cock inside himself and was using his internal muscles – those rolling, deliberate contractions he'd spent the last few days perfecting – to make it hard again from the inside. He had tried several times, based on the evidence. He had succeeded. Olruggio lay on his back, staring at the cave ceiling. It was objectively genius. No human had ever thought to use a cock like that. Olruggio wanted to applaud and also to die.
Qifrey often went outside to gather herbs when he wasn't tending the eggs. Healing, he claimed, that help promotes blood circulation, accelerates muscle recovery and restores stamina. And it works, because Olruggio's cock was hard again, even when his mind was a puddle of mud. A mud that said: I want to go home.
He hadn't realized he'd said this out loud until Qifrey leaned down, pressed his lips to Olruggio's forehead gently and murmured, "You are home."
Olruggio tried to escape once.
It was around the third day- or the forth? Time had stopped meaning anything. Qifrey had finally, mercifully, climbed off him and gone to check the eggs again, and Olruggio had seen his chance. He rolled sideways, crawled to his knees, he made it about four feet toward the cave entrance before the tail caught his ankle.
It wrapped around him and held, and Olruggio found himself on his hands and knees, staring at the moss curtain and freedom beyond it, tethered by a dragon's tail. "Where are you going?" Qifrey asked from the nest.
"Outside. Air. I need– air."
"You had air an hour ago. The eggs need warmth. Come back to the nest."
"T' eggs don't need me–"
"I need you." Three words. And Olruggio's arms gave out. He sank to the cave floor, cheek against the stone. "Come back to the nest," Qifrey said again, softer.
Olruggio crawled back to the nest.
But at last, the heat subsided.
It took another full day. By the time Qifrey's fever broke and his breathing returned to normal and his tail stopped its restless seeking, Olruggio had lost count of how many times he'd been woken, how many times his hands and mouth had been pressed into service.
When he finally crawled out of the cave and stood upright in the open air, the sunlight hit his face like a benediction. He squinted at the sky and breathed in, and the air tasted like freedom and moss and the absence of dragon musk.
He had thought he would die in there.
He hadn't died. But he was fairly certain the old Olruggio had, and whatever had crawled out of that cave was a different man entirely: one with claw marks on his back, a bite mark on his shoulder, a permanent ache in his jaw and fingers.
The first egg hatched that afternoon while they were eating.
Qifrey got there first. The thing was impossibly small, barely larger than a kitten, curled in a tight spiral with its tail wrapped around its own nose. Its scales were pale purple, shimmering with a violet iridescence in the afternoon light. It blinked with two enormous, dark eyes, and opened its mouth and made a sound like a damp sneeze.
Olruggio stared at it. Something in his chest softened and squeezed.
Qifrey lifted the hatchling with one hand beneath the belly, the other supporting the tail and let it rest against his chest, where it nuzzled into the warmth of his neck with a series of small, clicking sounds. He produced a strip of raw meat from somewhere, softened it between his fingers, and offered it to the tiny mouth, and the hatchling latched on.
Then he looked up at Olruggio: "You should name her."
Olruggio blinked. "Me?"
"Yes. You know more names than I do."
Olruggio looked down at the hatchling. She had finished the meat and was now attempting to climb Qifrey's collar with her tiny claws, her purple tail lashing for balance. Her horn was barely nubs, no larger than a fingertip, one of them was slightly longer than the other.
"Agott," Olruggio said.
The name came without thought. He didn't know where it came from. It simply fit.
Qifrey nodded, accepting it right away. "Agott," he repeated, and the hatchling sneezed again, and Olruggio's chest squeezed the second time.
Qifrey spoke again, while adjusting Agott against his shoulder: "The egg hatched today. The others will follow soon. Tomorrow, perhaps the day after." He paused to scratch Agott behind the horn nub with one finger. "By then, will you go back to the city?"
Olruggio frowned. He replayed the sentence. Then replayed it again, because surely he'd misheard. "Why would I go back?"
"Your family and friends are there. Your work. Your commissions." Qifrey's gaze remained fixed on the hatchling. "I know how humans work, Ol."
Olruggio did not remember permitting Qifrey to call him Ol. He also did not hate it, though.
"So– what. You want me to just leave?" The words tasted bitter in his mouth, like something spoiled. "The eggs hatch, the job's done, and I walk back to the city? Like none o' this 'appened?"
Dragons are solitary. After mating, we part ways. Qifrey had told him that. Days ago, calmly over broth. Olruggio hadn't cared then. He cared now, and the difference was enormous and terrible.
Qifrey looked at him, "Then what do you want to do?"
"I want– I don't know. I want–" Olruggio ran his hands through his hair. "We're mates. And by human rules, once you've mated, you stay together. For life. You raise the children together. That's how it works."
Every word of this was bullshit. Human marriage had terms, conditions, exceptions and divorce. Olruggio was describing a fantasy and hoping Qifrey had never read a legal document.
Qifrey smiled, clearly thought of that. "Then I'll come with you."
Olruggio's hands stopped in his hair. "What?" He'd expected to stay in the cave. Not this.
"To the city. I'll come with you. Naturally."
"You– what?"
"I can take human form. The children can be concealed and have their dragon features hidden, with some discomfort, but it's manageable for short–"
"You can't just– I can't just–" Olruggio sputtered, his hands making frantic, shapeless gestures. "Can we just stay 'ere? I disappeared for weeks. I can't just walk back into the city with a mate and four possibly dragon children!"
"Only one have hatched."
"That's not t' point–"
"The horns and tails can be hidden. Scales too, though it itches terribly. The ears are the hardest, but with the right–"
"I still can't come back with a spouse and three children, Qifrey! People will 'ave questions!"
Qifrey tilted his head, Agott now asleep against his shoulder despite the noise. "Such as?"
"Such as: where did they come from? And whose are they? And why does your wife 'ave one eye and your daughter keeps sneezin' sparks?"
Qifrey simply said: "I'm your mate, not your wife. And you know more about human relationships than I do, you'll figure out the details. You're resourceful."
"I–" Olruggio opened his mouth.
Qifrey waited, patient, serene, holding a sleeping dragon hatchling on his shoulder, and Olruggio realized: this was happening. He was going back to the city with a dragon and four dragon children, and he was going to have to explain this to his mother, and to Utowin, and then to his clients.
Olruggio sat down on the ground. Put his face in his hands and breathed. He groaned: "My mother is goin' to kill me."
"I look forward to meeting her."
"You shouldn't."
Qifrey chuckled, then held out his hand. "Here. For you."
Olruggio looked up. In Qifrey's palm sat an egg. It was small, far smaller than the ones in the nest, no bigger than a goose's egg, its shell a plain, matte white without the iridescence of the hatchling eggs.
"What is that?"
Qifrey said easily. "My egg. Unfertilized. The body releases one regardless of whether mating was successful. It's perfectly edible. We could have it for lunch."
The cave was very quiet.
"What," Olruggio said, "the fuck, Qifrey."
"It's nutritious. High in protein, iron, several minerals. And you need it. You look like you're dying."
"And whose fault was that?"
"That's why I offer." Qifrey still didn't take his egg back, "I've eaten many before. They're quite good with herbs."
Olruggio looked at the egg. "This is–" He searched for the word. "This is a lot, Qifrey."
"Is it? It's the same principle as a chicken egg. Humans eat those."
"I am never goin' to eat a chicken egg again."
"That seems like an overreaction."
"My entire life since I met you has been an overreaction." Olruggio stood up. Took the egg, because Qifrey was still holding it out, and refusing it seemed worse than taking it, somehow. He held it in his palm. It was warm. "If I eat this, we never speak of it."
"Agreed."
"And you never tell anyone where it came from."
"Who would I tell?"
"The children, Qifrey. When they're old enough to ask questions."
"Ah." Qifrey considered this. "Fair."
And just like that, they ate breakfast, packed nothing because they owned nothing, and left the forest with four hatchlings as their luggage. Back to the city.
From that day on, the official record stated that the brave Knight had slain the dragon and rescued the princess, and the kingdom rejoiced and celebrated.
Everyone lived happily ever after.
...
...
...
"Olruggio, what kind of story is that? You expect me to believe this nonsense?"
"Mom– wait– I'm tellin' the truth–"
"You disappear for weeks. Weeks. No letter. No message. Nothing. I thought you were dead, I prayed to the stars. Every night, Olruggio. And now you are with– with– that person!"
"'is name is Qifrey."
"And four children? You're mated with the dragon?"
"Can we not use that word–"
"–and now you're married to a dragon. With four children. And no job."
"I can get my clients back–"
"When? You've been gone for weeks. Your clients asked me if you'd died and I had to say I didn't know or they'll ask for a refund and I have to sell my house to pay it."
"Mom, I can explain."
"And where are your dragon and your children?"
"I left 'em at my house, of course!"
"Are you thinking I'm three years old, Olruggio of the Torch?"
"I'm not lying."
"Good. Then I'll pack my things."
"No, you're not. You'll scare them."
"I know where your house is. I'll come by myself."
"Actually... we moved."
"What do you mean, you moved?"
"He said he wanted somewhere with more space. Somewhere under t' sky. So he and the girls could fly. They like watchin' the stars."
"Where.Is.It?"
"Oh– it's gettin' late. I should prob'ly go back."
"Olruggio."
"I'll visit again."
"Olruggio. You came back here!"
Olruggio broke into a run. Behind him, his mother's voice followed all the way down the street.
"YOU STILL OWE ME AN EXPLANATION!"