"Treasured" [patrickxpeter ficathon]
You didn’t know Pete was a dragon? You did, too…you didn’t?
So. You’re not going to talk to him anymore because of that? How ignorant can you get? He’s not going to eat you. Dragons stopped eating humans years ago. I guess we weren't too good for the fifth stomach after all.
They can be just as awful to us, okay, I know that. We could have wiped each other out a long time ago. But they didn’t and we didn't and that must say something, right? And there are like, discrimination laws against this, you do realise.
Fine. Be like that. We don’t need friends like you hanging around the band, anyway. And you don't need to go on booking our shows either, we can find someone else to do it.
And if you make trouble for us, I will personally ask Pete to turn you into charcoal.
**
Alright.
Dragons 101. Dragons in Human Form. Hey...wake up. Pay attention.
Nearly all shape-shifting dragons in human form have dark hair and dark eyes. That’s what Pete told me, and dragons can’t lie. I don’t quite know why they can’t lie, either, but that’s the way it is. Ok, fine. So I do know, sort of, but I really hate to go into all of it. It has to do with some saint. Saint Paul? St. John. Yeah, St. John sounds right.
Okay, so one of them played some nasty prank on poor old St. John, (he was called the Manuscript Dragon, I think, and he was actually Pete's great-great-and-all-that-grand-uncle, something like that) and St. John prayed that none of them can ever tell a lie. On his knees and all, begged it all out; so that’s how it is. If you ask Pete a question, something funny or weird, maybe, like if he was the one who threw that bucket of goo on Sonny, or if he likes making out with guys (re: usually me, go figure), he might laugh his way through it, but it’s the truth he’s telling. All the time.
It’s no surprise that they’re one of the luckiest symbols in the Chinese zodiac. Pete isn’t from that sexy Chinese clan, of course, he’s a Eudraco magnificus occidentalis. Don’t get confused by all the fancy names, now. That simply means he’s a Great Western. All his family is, although his mother might have some Eastern blood.
Yeah, so back to the lucky part.
Dragons can make you lucky too, just by being near them. Very mystical.
Once I had Pete stand right next to me in some hotel casino when the tour we were rolling in stopped in Vegas. I was finally old enough to play the tables and wowee, I won every hand of blackjack. I didn’t even know what I was doing and it was amazing. The dealer kept shooting me dirty looks, and people were cheering drunkenly around us.
"Look. Patrick," Andy had murmured as I staggered around with an armful of chips. "Maybe, okay, you shouldn't do that again. I don't even think that he's even allowed in here. You know. If they knew and all."
I gave him a puzzled stare, because come on, Andy. That shit had been fun. And then Andy sort of rolled his eyes towards Pete, who was trailing his hand along the edges of the abandoned slot-machines as we walked by, his gaze lowered, and I realised a little too late that I had actually made Pete feel uncomfortable.
"Hey," I said as soon as we were back up in our room, Pete closing the door softly. Which wasn't the Pete way of closing doors. Not at all. I held onto the sleeve of his black hoodie. "Hey. Dude, I'm sorry."
"Whatever. No, you know what? Not whatever. It gets a little old being a rabbit's foot, you know?" Pete had snapped, pulling away his arm and sauntering towards the bathroom and I nearly rolled my damned eyes out of my head in exasperation. Jesus. I followed Pete into the bathroom, feeling a little pissed off myself, because weren't all dragons cocky bastards? They love being the center of attention, in human form or not. Pete was just being a fucking big baby, because I had stolen his limelight...and used him to do it.
"I said I was sorry," I forced out between my teeth, taking a seat on the closed toilet cover as Pete filled the large bath-tub with water. Pete began to strip, and I glanced away quickly, trying to blot the tanned skin from my memory. Yeah. Didn't work.
"Fine, fine. Just. Shut up, man." Pete stood naked beside the tub, and I rested my elbows on my knees, chin rested against the folded knuckles of my hands. I watched from under my eyelashes as his back moved, breathing in. Exhaling out over the cold water. Wisps of steam rose from the surface as his breath heated it up, and ok, I grinned a little in spite of myself. Yeah, what a showoff. He could have just turned on the hot-water tap.
Pete grinned back at me as he settled in, obviously getting over the whole you're-just-using-me-for-a-lucky-charm thing and tilted his head a little at me.
"Come on. Jump in." Dark laughing eyes. Low sultry voice.
I practically had my shirt off before I remembered just how charismatic dragons were. They were always trying to charm the fucking clothes off a body. Well. As far as my experience was? Pete was always trying to charm the clothes off me, and I was never really quite sure when he was serious or not. Flirt.
"I'll just wait til you're finished," I said with what I hoped was a grave dignity, tugging back down my t-shirt; I could hear him giggling behind me as I stalked out the bathroom.
**
Dragons are so very energetic. When Pete says he’s an insomniac, he doesn’t mean he can’t get enough sleep. He means he doesn’t need that much sleep. It’s a little annoying for the rest of us to keep up, especially Joe, who runs on ninety-octane snooze, but it's usually me that has to bite my lip and give it the old college-try. Really, I just doesn’t want him to be lonely, because they tend to get depressed easily, and continue to fuck up everyone else's day with unneccessary bellowing. How to cheer up a dragon? Flatter the hell out of them...just don't be obvious about it. That shit is harder than it sounds. I know.
("Yeah, of course that colour is nice on you. Very flattering to...your ass. And such."
"Dude, since when have you been watching my ass? And if you really were watching, you'd notice I have none."
"To your eyes, then."
"Oh fuck, where's my eyeliner? Shit.")
They’re opportunists, too. Always need to be earning, building some fucking empire, or something. And they all believe they're natural-born leaders, so they can get pretty high and mighty if you let them; but the trick is to stand your ground. Don’t budge on what you want, whether it’s a chord in a song, or what order a set-list should be in, or if you're going to eat at McDonalds or Subway, whatever.
And yeah, they do eat like how humans would eat when they're in that form, so no-one who fucking matters worries about that. I always feel my stomach tighten in anger when people get nervous around Pete; when they find out what he is. But hey. There are some mothers that still actually tell their little kids that if they don’t go to bed now, they’ll make the dragons eat them.
**
Sometimes though, Pete gets extremely grumpy at being in his human form. It's usually bad right after a show, when he's just bristling with energy, kicking around the equipment boxes and basically getting on everyone's nerves. This is the point where I take him aside and says, "Go on, man. Go fly, or something."
And Pete does.
It's pretty sweet to watch too. It's like watching a plane do tricks, only more organically exciting. If we're near a city, we'd have to go through all sorts of shitty paperwork (five copies for Air Clearance, we keep the blue copy), but if we're in the countryside, then all he has to do is keep a sharp eye out.
He does all these tight barrel-rolls, so high up, and if he wants to scare me shitless (which is nearly all the time, what an asshole) he does this thing where he folds his wings and just plummets towards the earth, in a straight nose-dive, pulling up only at the last minute and skimming just inches over the ground in a whoosh of air, then passing right over my head and tumbling off my hat. Bitch.
Once he offered to take me up.
I just laughed, wheezing weakly as Pete stared at me, with this bemused look on his face.
"Me," I choked. "Do that shit? Get real."
**
There are still a lot of people who would just freak out if they knew he what he looked like in dragon form.The very first time Pete showed me, I was just simply amazed at his appearance. We had been sitting out in the edge of some abandoned field, taking a break from the cramped van and just admiring the light brush of the stars across the sky when he leaned over and asked, in a low worried tone, “Hey. Patrick. Do you want to see? I mean. What I really look like?”
I had been dying to see of course, since Joe had told me what Pete was, but I just nodded and Pete stood up and stripped. Yep, stripped ‘til he was naked, exhibitionist-style. He was smiling a little as he did so, knowing that I was blushing and observing the grass too intently, and then he sort of twisted his head to the side, like he had a kink in his neck, and there was a low snap. Lo. Behold. There was this massive dragon was lying in front of me, on its belly. I couldn’t really see what colour he was at that moment, but I found out another time that Pete was many strange tones of copper. Joe would comment that he was almost the same shade as my hair, but I begged to differ. He turned that long head slowly towards me, and his eyes, long and slitted, were smoldering mutely with a low gold light, like the coals in a dying fire.
“Wow,” I said in awe, standing up, and Pete's eyes brightened a little, as if he had expected me to just bolt. “Can I...can I touch?”
There was a long pause, and then he nodded. I stepped forward and put my hands gently on Pete's side, right next to where the wing joined the body, and each one of the scales there was at least twice as big as both of my hands together. They were smooth and made soft tapping noises against each other as Pete shifted slightly; he let out a huff of breath, and all the scales rose up slowly, the same way a bird might ruffle up their feathers, and I could make out the pale skin below, almost luminescent in the dark.
I turned my head slowly, and I could see that he had turned his head on that long solid neck, looking back at me from one of those large glowing eyes, and he nodded again, the movement rippling up his neck. I slipped my hand carefully in between two of the upraised scales and pressed my hand flat against the skin; it was surprisingly soft and very pleasantly warm, not outright hot as I was expecting. I pulled out my hand and pointed to the wing closest to me, and Pete unfurled it quickly, snapping it like a sail in a stiff breeze, and held it up in the air. It was much longer than his whole body was, and I realised that I found it just as gorgeous. I also noticed it was just like a human arm, with a huge forearm, elbow and wrist, only the “fingers” were as long as the rest of the appendage put together, splayed out widely, each ending in a sharp pointed claw. The whole thing was covered with a sort of leathery skin.
I walked up to his head, and touched the side of that powerful jaw, marvelling at how small my hand looked against it. I could feel the muscle beneath clenching rapidly.
I looked into the widening eye. “You’re-you're amazing, dude.”
Pete shook his head, his tail flashing out of the corner of my eye, and there was that snap again. My hand fell away as Pete went back into his human state, pulling on his jeans rapidly and then trying to walk away as he hauled on his shirt. I trotted after him, grabbed onto his hand and pulled him back.
“Pete. Believe me. I think you’re incredible.”
He looked at me, a little unsteadily, and then flicked his gaze away, staring at the long whispering grass in the lonely field.
“So. You don’t think I’m a monster?”
“What?” I exclaimed, snatching onto his other hand in earnest. “No way. No way, man, not a chance. Why would you say something like that? You know none of us think that way.”
“We just had to hide it a lot over the years, that’s all,” Pete replied slowly, looking back into my face with dubious eyes. “I still can’t believe you’re not freaking out.”
“I still can’t believe you don’t understand that I think you’re pretty awesome,” I stated with great awkwardness, stumbling over all my words because you know, I meant them, and Pete pulled me forward and kissed me.
Okay, I thought. Okay, making out with a dragon in human-form? Really nice. A lot of enthusiasm about the whole procedure. He was running his tongue against my teeth, putting one hand on my shoulder and another at my hip, his thumb pressing into the hip-bone and rubbing lazily. I was trying to figure out what I should do with my hands. I finally decided to put them around Pete's neck, to which Pete made a small eager sound and pulled me in closer, molding our bodies together.
I felt the insides of my mouth growing too warm and pulled away quickly.
"Sorry, sorry," Pete muttered, turning his head away and blowing a little smoke. "I just lost concentration. Sorry."
"Dude," I snapped, pushing him away and pressing my fingers to my bruised mouth. Alright, so the bruising was mostly Pete kissing me hard, but I just wanted to make an issue about it. "What happens when you want to give me, like, a blowjob, or something? You castrate me?"
And that bastard Pete looked like he was thinking way too hard about that; he had this little secretive smile on his face as I tried to use my hand to shield my swollen mouth in the van, avoiding Andy's curious gaze.
**
Oh, and one last thing about dragons. They have to be protective of something, some form of treasure, something they consider precious to them. I read about it in Emerson’s "Walk of the Dragon", where the olden types were always hoarding piles of gold and precious stones, and just generally assaulting anyone who would try to take it away; but I could never figure out what Pete’s treasure was. I thought about it so hard I nearly made myself sick, until one day I just gave up and asked Pete when we were loading out after a show.
“What?” Pete laughed a little, not looking at me as he carefully packed Andy’s cymbals in the trailer.
“What’s your treasure? Tell me, man, or it’s going to drive me up the wall.”
“You’re really not supposed to ask me that,” Pete said, a little shortly as he strode back to the van and opened the side door, hopping in and going to the very back seat. I followed him inside, sliding right beside him as everyone else piled in and Andy started up the engine. I managed to wait until we were on some highway, and every other passenger was more or less asleep, but he was staring out the window, trying to ignore my presence; I poked him in the ribs with a sharp elbow and endured Pete's glower.
“Tell me,” I hissed. He obviously didn’t remember how annoying I could get. But he rolled his eyes, and then leaned closer.
“Fine. You are.”
“Well, if you’re not going to…huh?”
He laughed low, those brown eyes flashing at me in the low dusk.
“I have to have a treasure, right? Something I will fight for. It’s you. You’re my treasure.”
I leaned back in the seat, trying not to feel too smug as Pete turned, threw a leg and arm over me and hogged up my personal space by tucking his face into my neck, and breathing noisily against my skin.
So there. I'm a dragon’s treasure.
Top that.
Summary of laws of equality adapted from here
Dragon species name and physiology taken from here