#Lookit Steve's squishy face!!

[platypanthewriter]

The Dragon’s Prince

Chapter One: Humans Aren't Furniture

Steve knew he was in the right spot when the first villager to see him--a man with a huge bruise on his forehead--yelped and ran, clutching at what looked to be a solid-gold chamberpot. 

“I heard there’s a dragon here,” Steve called out, standing in his stirrups.  His horse sighed. “I don’t want any trouble--I definitely don’t want your chamberpots--”

“Who the hell are you?”  A young woman poked her face over the fence near his elbow.  “What’s that sword for, then?”

It was both convenient and annoying, Steve thought, to be travelling without his entourage and ceremonial armor.  “This sword wouldn’t hurt him.” He grabbed the hilt and pulled a few inches of blade to show plain steel, not the slick, greenish sheen of an anti-magic enchantment.  

“Mmmm,” she hummed, squinting.

“His privateer license expired, is all--” Steve shrugged.

“Go away!  You’re here because he ate our sheep!” a kid yelled, and Steve sat back down in the saddle, brushing snow off his arms.

“Is that what happened?”

“He just strolled into town and asked whose sheep he’d eaten,” said another villager, hanging out a window.  “Been up on north field. Hucked treasure at everyone.” More of them were venturing forth, one of them holding a golden harp.  

“Broke my front tooth,” said the kid, yanking her lip back to show a gap, “--he was naked.”  Steve stared between his horse’s ears, and the kid smacked his boot.  “You gonna take all the stuff he gave us? It was too much, but he gave it to us.”

“No,” Steve grimaced at the guy hiding in plain sight “behind” a tiny shrub, “--no, keep your...chamberpots, I understand a trade caravan will be coming through, if you want to sell some…” he trailed off as a villager waved and pointed him to a ceramic vase larger than she was.  “Uh, some of his...gifts. They usually keep track of where he’s been.” A cheer went up around him, and he sighed. Definitely the right place, he thought.  Now I just have to convince him to listen to me.  And risk his life. If anything, he felt more tired, and he rolled his shoulders, hiding his wince as it strained the bandages under his jacket.  While I’m doing those two impossible tasks, maybe I can convince him to put on pants.

After some negotiation--and a stern refusal to accept harps or encyclopedias in payment--Steve stood at the base of a fall of boulders, and began to climb.  He started scrambling faster as the sun set, and the boulders shifted, and caught his boot. He froze, taking a shaky breath, and clung to the rock face, remembering the expression on General Hopper’s face after Steve received his orders.  

“Why not a dragon that responds to summons,” Hopper had gritted out.

“We need a fire dragon,” Steve had echoed his father’s words in his own voice, and tried to sound certain.  “He--he doesn’t kill anyone outside his license. I just--I don’t know what I can offer him. He could be in danger from them too, and they didn’t give me any--I can’t go to a dragon, even that dragon, and say “Please fight our battles, we’ll definitely figure out something to pay you with later--”

“There was that bandit.”  Hopper had shaken his head, and stomped away.  

Steve had imagined himself seared black, and speared on a tree like a butcherbird’s breakfast, and wondered semi-hysterically which had happened first.

“E-except that,” he’d agreed.  “I’m--I’m sure there was some--”

“He is a dragon,” Hopper muttered.

Steve yanked on his leg, yelling at the flash of pain, and the boulders shifted again, sending an avalanche of rocks and dirt down slamming into his shoulders, and the back of his head.

When he awoke, he was warm, and clean, and everything was bright through his eyelids.  “...oh shit,” he whispered, curling tighter, “--I’m dead, and now everyone else will be dead--”

“Whoa there,” breathed a voice next to his ear, “--pretty boy.”

Steve stilled, opening his eyes on gold, and golden scales, because the voice of a dragon was unmistakable.  It rumbled all around him and blew across the skin of his back like bellows over hot coals. He swallowed, closing his eyes again.  Of course I’m naked.

“I know, touching me feels like heaven,” the dragon continued, “--but I have to ask.  What drives a prince...to climb a landslide...to knock on my door?”

Steve tried to stand, and found his right foot was a sea of pain.  His vision went starry.  

“Whoa, whoa,” the rumble said, and smooth scales curled around him.  Steve allowed himself to be propped up, then lifted, grabbing at the talons around his butt and ribs, and blinked into the face of the gold dragon.  He’s young, he thought distractedly, his head’s barely the size of a pony.  

“My--I’ve been sent--”

“Are you a present?” asked the dragon, ignoring him.  “I took your giftwrap off, it was a bit--” it waved a claw, “--torn, after I dug you out.  I think you’d look great on this rock here,” it held him up to a slanted boulder the size of Steve’s bed, and tugged some furs from a pile to toss over it.  “I think your ass would really bring the room together.”  

“My--what,” Steve tried to turn, and the dragon leaned its head within view, teeth bared in what Steve suspected was an annoying dragon grin.  “My--I am not--I am his Royal Highness Prince Steven of Hawkins, Duke of Harringtown and Knight of the Realm, and I have been--”

The dragon sniffed him, and he resisted jerking away, swallowing.  “Why send you out without your guard? You were wounded before you came here,” it informed him, and he stared back into enormous, bluey-gold eyes.

“I know that.”  Steve gritted his teeth.  

The dragon’s grin widened.  “Entirely-gold hoards are out this year.  I think a prince’s smooth skin would really make it pop.”  

“I thought you didn’t eat people.”

The dragon blinked, then huffed.  “I’m just saying you’d look nice lounging--”

“I need your help,” Steve hissed.

The dragon momentarily stopped trying to angle him different ways in the light.  “What are you offering?” he asked, the flames flickering in his throat.

Steve rolled his eyes.  “I don’t know what you want.  You must have enough money,” he waved at the piles of treasure, “--this isn’t even your main horde.  And you aren’t paying taxes, like you agreed to do when you applied for your privateer license--”

“...you.”  The dragon went still, running a knuckle down Steve’s face, and then met his eyes again and laughed.  “As--as decor, naturally--”

“In a cave where you put me?” Steve asked, to clarify.  It was better than being roasted, he figured, or dropped onto a spike.  “I’ll need to ask you to defer my payment until--”

“One night, with you,” the dragon interrupted, turning its face away.  “I mean, if you can’t tear yourself away after--”

“One night?” Steve squinted at him, and then grabbed for the dragon’s talons again, kicking for balance as he was suddenly lowered to the floor of the cave.  The mountainous gold coils and wings folded and curled inward, packing themselves impossibly tiny until they resolved into a human-ish shape covered in shining scales, and sporting dragon horns.  

He crouched, frowning at Steve’s swollen foot, then smirked up.  “One night...with me.”

“Oh!” Steve almost clapped in realization, but caught himself, blushing, as the dragon-man leaned his face into his scaly hand and cackled.  “Just…” he trailed off, rephrasing his objections, until he remembered the amount of people at risk, and the whole reason he was there.  Maybe he enjoys sex where the human survives, he told himself, and held out his hand.  

The dragon took it in both of his, edging much too close for a handshake, and held it, grinning, as though he was delighted Steve had offered it, and didn’t intend to give it back.  

He leaned closer, his clawed thumb rubbing gently at the skin between Steve’s knuckles, and licked his lips, his gaze dropping to Steve’s mouth, and Steve barely had time for a startled inhale before he had warm lips pressed to his.  Up close, the dragon looked a bit like a very expensive costume, Steve thought, like someone at a masquerade ball, when he would wonder whether the person pressing him into the wall knew who he was kissing. He wondered, now, whether the dragon had ever attended.

 The gold was digging into his butt, and his foot throbbed, but the dragon’s warm bulk was surprisingly cozy.  He had unreasonably long lashes, and soft lips, and Steve let himself relax into the kiss, licking curiously into a dragon’s mouth.  He found it nearly steaming hot, and thankfully clean of singed bandit. The pile of treasure he was lying on shifted.  

He winced as something jabbed into his side, and the dragon reached over--still licking gently into Steve’s mouth--and bent the metal arm of it back with a grating creak.  The reminder that a dragon could have crushed his skull with one hand, and instead was running soft fingertips along his jaw--and shifting scaly knees so as not to jostle his sore foot--made him feel a bit like jelly inside, and he laughed into the kisses, panting.  He pushed himself up on his elbows, into the kiss.  

The dragon hummed, grinning against his mouth, and dropped alongside him.  His hands were pleasantly hot, running up and down Steve’s ribs. “You should see what I’ve got, before you agree to anything.”

“What?” Steve murmured back, tossing a leg over the dragon’s waist.  

“We can--we can make sure this is fine--after I’ve saved your humans.” 

“What--what do I call you,” Steve whispered into the kisses, and the dragon pulled back to grin at him, then leaned in for another kiss, and another.  

“You don’t--you don’t know my name?”  He kissed Steve’s lips again. The skin was starting to feel tender.  

“You’re designated by color, ability, and area,” Steve rambled, accepting kisses when he paused.  “--it’s--mm. It’s a mess--the way you keep flying around--I thought your name must be some--some Dragonish growly noise that--that they didn’t know how to spell, which, rude--” he panted into another kiss, losing his train of thought.

“...Billy,” he snickered into Steve’s ear.  “You always let strangers do this?”

Steve remembered with a jolt that he’d been sent to bring a dragon back, whether it required his oath or his life, and he shook his head.  “It’s dangerous, what I--what I need from--”

Billy bit, oh-so-gently, up the side of Steve’s neck, and he groaned, losing track of his words as his eyes fluttered shut.  “You finally came without your guards.”

“Were you waiting to get me alone?” Steve snorted.  “If you weren’t giving pornographic statues to children, you wouldn’t rile everyone up so much--” 

Billy snickered.  “It was heavy! I didn’t wanna carry that thing!  Fun though it was.”

“She was eleven--”

“Oh, she kept cows, she’d seen worse.  You probably bought it from her.”

“We couldn’t very well--”

“So she’s better off, now.  Several times the price of a couple cows.”  Billy’s teeth shone sharp in his grin, and he leaned in to run his knuckles up Steve’s side.  “I’ve got some treasures I’ve been saving for you…actually, here--” he leaned off the edge of the rock, then held up a vial of sparkling silvery fluid.

“It’s--it’s just my ankle,” Steve stared at it.  “We can stop by a healer on the way back, there’s no need for--”

“You’re hurt,” Billy uncorked it with his teeth, “--that’s what it’s for.  If I’m not paying attention, and you get hurt again, it’ll use it up later, maybe.  Maybe your tears will start healing the sick.”

“How would I even find out that was happening,” Steve asked, frowning at the vial.  “You should sell that stuff to some kingdom with a dying queen, or something.”

“Or maybe,” Billy whispered, “--you’ll live as long as a dragon.  Try for that one.”  

“How am I supposed to try for something--”

Billy grinned, sticking it in Steve’s mouth, and Steve drank it, staring at him over a potion worth as much as...a prince’s ransom, he wondered.  A king’s castle?  

“Why didn’t you drink it yourself?” he asked, as Billy frowned at, tapped it, and tipped the last drop onto Steve’s extended tongue.  “You could--”

“I’m a dragon,” Billy licked his lips, watching Steve’s mouth, “--you think I’m going to get hurt?  You’re fragile.  If something happens--”

“Why do you care about me?”  Steve asked, lowering his eyes to flex his suddenly-painless foot.  He reached down to tug at the loosened bandages. They were stuck together with blood.  “I mean--”

“You--you’re the prince,” the dragon laughed, tossing the empty vial against the far wall, and Steve nodded, biting his lips.

“Right.”

“No, I mean--” Billy crouched in front of him, cocking his head to catch Steve’s eye, “--everyone knows what you’re like.  We know what you do, because you’re the prince. You’re on coins--”

“I’m valuable.”  Steve nodded, keeping his shoulders relaxed, and giving his best public ‘welcome’ smile.  

“No,” Billy pushed him back, climbing over him again, and kissed his nose, “--no, I mean--I know you, I read every copy of the Imperial Gazette--”

Steve snorted, bursting into cackles of laughter.  “You think you know me through that?!”

“...no,” Billy muttered, his gold scales pinkening.

“What’s my favorite color?”  Steve grinned up at him, and Billy leaned in for another kiss.

“Gold,” he whispered.  “The best color.”

“...I do like yellow a lot,” Steve whispered into the kiss, and Billy squeezed him.

“I know enough about you,” he mouthed along Steve’s ear, “--to know I want to know everything about you.”  

Steve’s heart pounded, and he took a shaky breath, then cleared his throat.  “...what kind of name for a dragon is ‘Billy’,” he mumbled, his head muzzy with warm hands and bright smiles.  “Shouldn’t you be. The Slayer. Something about fire. Smog.”

“Rude,” the dragon whispered against his mouth.  “Billy the Slayer?”

One more question, Steve thought, before he burns them all away, kissing me.  “Wha--Billy.”  he cleared his throat, leaning into the hand on his head.  “Wait. Why did you burn that man?” 

Billy punched his shoulder.  “You saw his crimes!”

“I didn’t,” Steve raised his eyebrows, tugging a fur over himself, and lying back against the boulder with a sigh, “--because you didn’t send in your paperwork, like usual--my lungs are full of bandit flesh now--you couldn’t just break his legs and drop him at a guard station--”

“I--I definitely sent--” he paused, thinking.  “I didn’t.” The dragon scrambled away, sliding down the mound of treasure in his tiny human form.  “Ah, here they are--”

“How do you fill them out?” Steve asked.  “Do you use your claws? With your eyes shut?  Because that would explain--”

The cavern brightened with a poof of flame.  “I use a quill--look--” he clambered back up the shifting mounds of treasure, waving a handful of papers, “--see, look, he stuck his cock in places it wasn’t wanted, so I stuck a tree through it.  And set him on fire.”

Steve grimaced, finally relaxing.  “Oh. Well. That’s fair.”

“And then I threw his golden chamberpot at the first person I--”

“Who has a golden chamberpot,” Steve started snickering, and couldn’t stop, curled against his warm dragon.  Eventually the days travelling wounded caught up to him, and he mumbled his replies, then snored, with the vague impression of gentle claws combing through his hair.

@neonlaynes​ @tracy7307​