by R. Cooper
Edgar swallowed. “I never do anything, you know that.”
“So, no other dragons have been to see you?” Justin wasn’t smiling. “No one leading you out to any rose bushes?”
“A few.” Edgar shrugged. “My mother will not give up.” Well, she would have if Edgar honestly hadn’t felt the need to find fall in love or find a playmate, but that obviously wasn’t the case. She just wouldn’t recognize the impossibility of what he wanted. Edgar had no treasure. He might as well have been human. “She wants me taken care of, and happy. She doesn’t understand what I want, but she means well. Anyway, I am not much good with first impressions, am I?”
“I barely remember a time when I didn’t know you.” Justin flicked his gaze to one of the high windows. “But I feel as though I’ve met you many times.”
He meant the stories. He had to mean the stories. Edgar’s heart kicked against his ribs in panic. Edgar had gotten careless in the telling if Justin had finally noticed what each of them had become. As children, Edgar had given him adventures about pirates in space and a samurai Robin Hood. That had changed with age. But Justin had never uttered a single word about Robin Hood in love with Marian, blind to the devotion of Will Scarlet, or the bold space captain who fascinated his helpless captive.
“How boring for you,” Edgar said tightly. He was grateful he was a weak dragon, or the room would have been shaking.
“I’ve never met a version of you I didn’t like.” Justin was too kind with him. He had so much to give in response to Edgar’s need that Edgar was almost ashamed. Justin kept his attention on the stained-glass window depicting a rampant red dragon. “If you tell me other dragons didn’t also find you charming, you’ll be lying, Ras, and you know it. You’ve had a potential suitor or two up here recently, or so I’ve heard.” Edgar didn’t know where he could have heard that from except Aiden, which meant Aiden was a double-agent. Which… of course, he was. That was entirely in character for him if he felt it was just. Though why Aiden would report details of Edgar’s boring life back to Justin made little sense. But Edgar did not get a chance to ask. “So—” Justin finally tore his gaze from red glass “—there’s really no one?”
Now, Edgar had to turn away. “Never,” he admitted, and for a moment, the world was silent. He hurried on. “Why should there be? I scare some of them. I’m picky, and soft, and… and I have no treasure.”
Justin’s gaze was intent on Edgar before he shook himself and gestured eloquently around Edgar’s lair. “You have your stories, Ras. You always have. Tell me another one? Or finish the last one properly. Tell it the way you’d normally tell it.”
That was impossible now. Edgar fought the urge to hide his face. “You didn’t really drive an hour just to hear my silly stories, Justin.”
“They aren’t silly.” Justin ground out the words, his tone almost furious. “Even the ones you told as a child were never silly. There is too much in them for that. They are only silly in the sense that human fairy tales seem outlandish if you don’t recognize the truth in them. Every version you spin out is something real and possible, because you have seen it in all your greatness. You see people, even fictional people, and you understand them enough that you can change the details and still know what path they will take.”
“Stop,” Edgar begged quietly without a trace of pride. As an oracle, he was formidable. As a dragon, he was lacking. “I’m a collector of stories.”
“Are you kidding?” Justin paused, probably to scent the air. “You’re not!” His voice was getting truly rough. “Edgar Erasmus, how can you see everything but not this?”
“Shush.” Edgar gave in and put his hands to his cheeks. “Since adulthood, each time you see me you ask for another story as if we were children again. I do not mind, you know that.” He loved it. “But you don’t have to do it to amuse me.” In fact, now it would only make Edgar desire him more, but he left that unsaid.
The silence made him finally look back. Justin regarded him steadily, pointedly.
Because Justin didn’t have to do anything. If he asked, it must please him to do it.
Edgar licked cocoa from his lips and detected hints of Justin’s smoky impatience. “You find the stories relaxing?” he guessed, far too timidly. He did not close his eyes. He hadn’t once ever allowed himself to dream of why Justin indulged him in this particular way. Possible futures always included the one that would be, and Edgar wasn’t bold enough to look at that.
“You could always read something,” he suggested a moment later, only to despair when Justin, naturally, reached for the yaoi manga on the top of the stack on the arm of the touch. He flipped it open, then raised his eyebrows. “They’re in love!” Edgar’s voice was high.
Justin turned another page. “Is this what had you excited when I got here?” he wondered without looking up. He darted out his tongue to wet his bottom lip—or to remind Edgar of whatever Justin had smelled when Justin had walked into his lair.
“No.” Edgar could lie. He wasn’t a fairy. He wasn’t forbidden to by some rule of being a seer. But his untouched state was hardly a secret. “I was writing. Not one of mine. Fanfiction,” he muttered that word. “I know it’s ridiculous, especially coming from me. What do I know of love scenes?”
The yaoi manga was closed and placed back atop its pile.
Justin turned toward Edgar. It put Justin even closer, although he was still on the middle cushion.
Edgar’s hands were no longer hiding his blush, if they ever had. He tried a quick smile, as if it was all amusing. “No other dragons for me.”
Justin did not smile in return. “You always say that.” He swept a long, slow look over Edgar, while the space between them grew hot enough to make Edgar’s skin prickle. “So,” Justin was nearly growling, “you could find a human, then. A dragon’s boy, as you suggested.”
“I don’t want a boy!” Edgar told him honestly. “If anything—” He stopped himself there, but Justin wasn’t the sort of dragon to let that go.
“If anything—what?” Justin pressed. “What is it you want, Ras? Tell me.”
Edgar trusted him, but held back. Then, against his will, his eyes dipped closed, just for a moment, and he knew that Justin would never tease him for this, not in any version of their story. He looked over. “Justin, do you… do you ever think how it would feel to be treasured like that?”
Justin was utterly still. “What do you mean?” he asked slowly. “You’ve always said you didn’t want a dragon. That life with another dragon was not in your future. You have said that very firmly since you were sixteen and I was eighteen, and your parents began to talk about eventually introducing you to dragons your age.” Justin’s dark eyes flared with golden embers. “You insisted, Edgar. You said you didn’t want another dragon. Since then you have not chosen one, not once, apparently not even as a playmate.”
“You...” Edgar trailed off to silence at the realization that Justin was angry with him.
“Edgar.” Justin was strong enough to rattle the house, but too controlled to ever risk it. Instead, the temperature rose and the air hung heavy with tension. “You said those very words to my face. Trust me, I remember it clearly. You didn’t want a dragon. Now, you are telling me you do.” It wasn’t quite a question, although Justin’s voice softened at last.
“Not… not in that sense.” Edgar nearly stuttered.
“Not in what sense, Ras? Please.” The word please from Justin, who should not ever beg from Edgar, had Edgar uncurling his legs so he could lean to the side. He took Justin’s hand by the wrist, then released it, shocked at himself.
He looked away and sighed. “What my parents have is rare among dragons, a love between equals. A marriage as the humans would call it.”
“It’s nice.” Justin spoke quietly. “More than nice.” Justin’s parents were far more typical of dragons. They were partners for the sake of their hatchlings, but they sought love elsewhere.
“Yes, it is,” Edgar agreed softly,
whispering in both delight and shame. “But… have you ever seen a dragon with a human? They are equals, but there is a different give and take—please let’s talk of something else. A story. You wanted a story.”
“You mean like a dragon’s boy.” Justin realized out loud, and Edgar had been wrong. Justin’s surprise rocked through the room, sending books and comics spilling to the floor. “A dragon’s boy? You want another dragon to keep you?” he asked with what had to be shock, but then he placed his hand over Edgar’s on the couch and Edgar’s gaze flew from their hands to Justin’s face. Justin’s low, fiery voice was devastating. “Edgar, I would keep you.”
Edgar opened his mouth and was hit with a wave of need, longing and lust combining into desire on his tongue. “I’m not human. I’m not Other. I’m dragon. You are dragon—the dragon, Justin. You should…”
“Edgar.” Justin watched him, too much flickering through his expression for Edgar to catch it all; hunger and satisfaction, impatience and determination. “These moments between us are good, but I could give you so much more. I knew you needed this, the way I need this, but you could have told me. I can give you that. I will—”
Edgar thought his heart might burst out of his chest if Justin said another word. “I don’t have a treasure, Justin, only my stories.”
“Stories you share with me.” Justin’s possessive tone seared him. “That makes them mine.”
Edgar trembled, then jumped when his mug fell from the table and landed on the rug with a dull thud.
He’d never shaken anything before.
“I share them with others, too,” he argued, faintly, but shuddered at the lie. Two more books fell to the floor. He tried to breathe evenly, although he could not look away from Justin’s eyes. “But not… but not the ones I tell to you. Those aren’t for others. They are mine.” And because he loved Justin, they were Justin’s as well.
Justin had known that. All this time, he had known the extent of what Edgar had felt for him.
Edgar was a little dizzy. “But when they brought other dragons to meet me, it was never you.”
“I already knew you.” Justin’s gaze made Edgar as weak as a human, so Edgar closed his eyes. It did not stop Justin from speaking the words that must have burned even a dragon of his strength. “And you didn’t want a dragon.”
There were no possible futures in front of Edgar, no stories he could focus on when he could taste Justin’s pain.
“I did,” Edgar admitted, and bent his head. “I did want a dragon—do want a dragon.” Justin had known that, too. How Edgar must have confused him. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, quivering at the strength enveloping him. Justin’s fingers gently urged his chin up, but Edgar kept his eyes closed. “You were so much better at being dragon than me, always bold and strong, and when you were eighteen, and it came time for you to be introduced to other dragons….” Justin had found many playmates. Edgar knew of them even when he locked himself away in his library. “I was only two years younger, but I knew before then that you were mine. You were—but that didn’t mean I was yours, and what I wanted—you did not even want me as a playmate when my time came. But it… it seems you did.”
“Treasure.” The word, more than the rumble of Justin’s voice, made Edgar part his lips. “Shall I tell you a story?” Justin’s hands settled at Edgar’s ribs. Edgar could feel Justin’s thigh pressed against him and nodded eagerly. Justin’s mouth seemed to be directly over his. “Once, there was a dreamy-eyed, emerald dragon storyteller, who lived in a bright, warm lair of books and colored glass. Other dragons came to see him, but they were turned away, because the storyteller told them he didn’t want another dragon. This was a lie. Which was—excuse me, Edgar—very silly. And obvious, when the air around him was like lightning for one of these dragons, when he smiled to see him as he smiled for no one else, when his need for this one could bring that dragon to him over any distance.”
Edgar let out a shaky breath.
Justin’s hold tightened, although he gentled his tone. “This other dragon knew treasure when he saw it. He decided that if he were lucky enough to be chosen by the storyteller, he wouldn’t mind if his emerald beauty stayed in his lair of stories and stained glass, as long as he was happy. As long as this dragon got to keep him happy, and come to see him, and listen to his stories, then he could be content with a fraction of what could be. The dragon tried to tell the storyteller that, but since his storyteller didn’t want another dragon, the only thing the dragon could have, that he was allowed to keep for his own, were tales told in moments like this one. Tales that called to him, distracted him from his studies, made him burn so hot that nothing could cool him.”
He spoke the words against Edgar’s lips.
Edgar felt as if he was panting. “I can’t be wise about you, Justin. I’ve never been able to. There is too much of what I want that I cannot see what will be.”
Justin raised a hand to stroke Edgar’s neck. “Now you know what I want, so you can see the truth. Does the dragon get a happy ending?”
Edgar gasped for the kiss that wouldn’t come. Sparks flew through his vision, what could have been, what should have been, what would be. This dragon was meant to conquer but he had waited all this time for Edgar. “You’re asking me?”
Justin curved a hand to Edgar’s jaw. “A dragon’s boy runs his home,” he declared, in rough, growling satisfaction. “You know that. The fiercest dragon will do whatever his treasure demands of him.”
The thrill of those words sent books cascading loudly to the floor. Somewhere, in the distance, Edgar’s mother was probably over the moon—but wise enough not to interrupt them.
The story was clear. Edgar would be his.
“Kiss me,” Edgar demanded, and fire—Justin—met him, hands and mouth and body. They belonged to Edgar as much as Justin’s heart and Edgar claimed them by gasping for the first touch of Justin’s lips to his throat, and shivering for the slide of flannel as it fell from his chest, and lying back to revel in the fluid strength above him.
If they had been kissing for hours or minutes, he could not tell. But he had never felt anything like Justin’s hands. He wondered if Justin was trying to be gentle and slow and could not, or if Justin had imagined this so many times that he had been prepared to get Edgar’s shirt off so quickly.
But he did not try to see which.
Edgar opened his eyes before tangling his hands in Justin’s thick, dark hair. He had to reach to do it; Justin was intent upon removing Edgar’s pants as well. Edgar approved. They had both waited long enough.
He looked down at himself, flushed and aroused and vaguely embarrassed at being so, and then at Justin, fully dressed but distracted, pausing to bite and kiss Edgar in different soft places while snarling at Edgar’s pajama pants.
“From now on, I will only wear the ones you’ve bought me,” Edgar informed him dreamily, but pulled ever so slightly at Justin’s beautiful hair to remind him to hurry up and take him.
He was Justin’s boy. It was his right to make demands.
Justin’s satisfaction rumbled through the room.
“Mine,” Justin growled, breath soft against Edgar’s thigh, the muscles of his shoulders hard under Edgar’s palms. He was weak with need for Edgar.
It was unthinkable.
And wonderful.
Edgar closed his eyes again and sighed in happiness for the present, and for their future, and for all their futures that could be.
There is also the eternal question of who might be considered a seer, since seers rarely identify themselves. Plenty of figures throughout history seemed to have anticipated events that would occur long after their time. Is that a deep understanding of what beings and humanity are capable of, or is it magical ability? Is there any difference? Is a storyteller who knows what wretchedness exists in the hearts of human-and-beingkind and warns us with fantastic tales of doomed revolutions the same as Cassandra on the walls of Troy?
This question comes up again an
d again, particularly with the creatives, perhaps a consequence of looking at themselves—and the world—too closely. A humorous but telling story from interwar Paris suggests the intellectuals of the 1930s were only too aware of what artists and authors were capable of.
One of these intellectuals, at a party and considerably inebriated, denounced artists who refused to put their vision in their work, who focused instead on ego or repressed desires. Between pulls from a bottle of American whiskey, this critic went so far as to call one artist’s work in particular “Spunk on canvas, masturbatory and cowardly,” because the unnamed artist was unwilling to face themselves, much less the world around them. The rest of the diatribe was related in at least two separate later accounts: “To hide from it is allowed—should be allowed, if the world were fair and just. But it isn’t a fair world, and it’s often not a kind one, and they know, they know which future is coming. They know what we are. They could hide and I would not judge them. Instead, they parade their selfishness in front of us and call it art.”
It was believed the critic was referring to Picasso, though of course the details are lost to time.
From Know Thyself: Fortune-tellers, Prophets, Sibyls, and Seers
by Eo-jin Moreau, PhD
Tales Before Bedtime, Retold
“YOU HAVE ALL these books, mishka, but you want to hear a new story?”
Rennet glanced around the bedroom, currently decorated in pinks and whites, although the last time he had been here, one wall had been done in a The Hobbit-style mural, with a very friendly looking Smaug-like fellow in one corner. Another wall held a built-in bookcase, stuffed with both paperbacks and antique books, organized, no doubt, in a way that would have pleased the staff of the Library of Congress.
He gestured to the books, which were part of the personal collection of la princesse, and not to be confused with the others in the nursery, which were for all of the children, both presently adopted or in the process of being so.
