Chapter Text
Oddly enough, as Carlos stared down in shock at the punctured mess of his lab coat's sleeve, his first thought was that he was glad they'd picked a sidewalk café in Old Town to meet for the interview. The hospital wasn't all that far, though that hadn't been a consideration when he'd set up the appointment.
"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry," gushed Hiram's coppery-red, middlemost head as the purple head bit his gold sibling hard on the muzzle. The gold head still looked a little dazed from the thumping Hiram's white head had given him, but he'd looked dazed to begin with, fierce yellow eyes glassy and strange. "It's, well, his time of the month," Hiram confided in a stage hiss, "and I didn't think you'd get so close--"
"My fault entirely," Carlos gasped between gritted teeth, right hand clutched tightly around his left bicep. The sleeve of his lab coat was staining red at a frightening rate, but the last thing he needed was to offend the dragon who'd just bitten him. Well, approximately one-fifth of Hiram had bitten him, and he suspected that was mostly involuntary. At any rate, it was probably time to cut this line of scientific inquiry short. "If, ah...if you'll excuse me, I should probably get this looked at...."
"Oh, goodness, of course," Hiram said, four pairs of blue and red and black and green eyes regarding him soulfully as the mayoral candidate's tail knotted and twined. The yellow pair regarded him with a savage satisfaction completely out of sync with their brothers. "I do hope you know it was nothing personal--I have nothing but respect for science's many benefits to our community--"
Carlos blinked and swayed. "Quite all right. I'll tell Cecil you were a perfect gentleman." Strange; he was feeling remarkably light-headed.
Four pairs of eyes narrowed; the golden head licked his bloody muzzle and crooned until one of the others thumped him silent again.
"Right," Hiram said briskly. "I'd better fly you to the hospital. Don't worry," he added, voice going hollow as things began to get hazy, "I've got Life Flight clearance for the roof."
***
When Carlos woke up in the Night Vale General Hospital, he was in a two-occupant room he currently had to himself. An IV of what appeared to be perfectly normal human blood was attached to one arm; the other was swathed in bandages from shoulder to elbow. He wasn't sure what he'd expected of the hospital, but the room was perfectly neat and cheery, the white plastic blinds opened to let a bright spill of sunshine into the room. There was no screaming that he could hear, and the nurse who knocked on his door was dressed in a clean set of powder-blue scrubs without a single bloodstain. He almost felt a little foolish for being so wary of the place before this. Almost.
"Oh, good, you're awake," the nurse greeted him with a smile. "Do you think you're up for a--"
"Carlos!" Cecil cried, all but diving into the room, only to pull up short and hover at Carlos' bedside. His hands twitched as if afraid to touch. "Are you all right? What happened? Old Woman Josie said she saw McDaniels making off with you over the city, then the hospital called to say he'd Life Flighted you in, and--"
"M'all right," Carlos broke in with a patient smile. The nurse rushed to help him as he struggled to sit up; he didn't even bother asking her when Cecil had become his next of kin. Truthfully he was glad Cecil was there. "I just had a dumb accident, and Hiram was kind enough to fly me in." That was his story, anyway, and he was sticking to it. The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for another Telly.
He'd meant it when he told Hiram it was his own fault. He really had gotten too close--he did understand the concept of a personal bubble, even if he occasionally forgot--distracted by the sheer wonder of interviewing a dragon. A five-headed one, at that. And he had noticed that the gold one had been behaving a little oddly, but he'd put it down to being under the weather. Hiram's other four heads had been intelligent, well-spoken and charismatic. He'd been an idiot to let that make him think he didn't need to respect Hiram's...dragonhood.
The nurse cleared her throat as she stepped away, smiling reassuringly at them both. "He's perfectly fine, Mr. Palmer. Because he did lose consciousness, we were going to keep him overnight for observation, but if someone would be home with him--"
"Yes!" Cecil agreed instantly, startling Carlos. "Yes, of course! I was the first in my troop to get my Trauma badge--"
"Cecil, the show--" Carlos protested, feeling heat lick along his cheeks and the back of his neck. Whatever the nurse thought, he and Cecil weren't actually living together, and having someone know that he was apparently about to have a house guest was inexplicably embarrassing. Not that the entire town didn't hear about it after one of them slept over at the other's place; it was the principle of the thing.
Cecil waved him off impatiently. "I can prerecord the necessary bits. Your health is far more important!"
Since there was nothing for it but to give in, Carlos tried to manage it gracefully. While he filled out insurance forms and waited for the bag of new blood to empty, Cecil rushed to the station to make a breathless announcement and record whatever he needed to. Listening with half an ear to the ubiquitous radio parked on the nightstand to his right, Carlos found himself unaccountably lulled the instant Cecil's sonorous voice came echoing through the room, deeper and richer than anything deserved to sound through such cheap speakers. God, he loved Cecil's voice. He wanted to curl up around it until Cecil's words hummed through his own chest, wanted to press his mouth to that soft, fragile throat and lick the words right out of his--
A discordant buzzing snapped him out of his daydream, and he whipped his head around with a snarl, lips peeling back from his teeth to glare at the radio. Regular programming had resumed, he realized belatedly, and instead of Cecil's voice, the Night Vale Hornet Orchestra was performing Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits.
His hand shook as he reached to turn the radio off, but he managed not to dash it to the floor the way every instinct was telling him to. Which was...odd. Very odd. The headache from his abrupt loss of blood must have been affecting him more strongly than he'd realized.
"Sorry," he said the instant Cecil dove back into the room an hour later, "I think I'm a little grumpy right now, so, uh, if I start acting like too much of a--"
"Oh, I'm sure that isn't so," Cecil protested with an amused little grin. "Though it's sweet of you to worry. Are you ready to go?"
"Sure," Carlos said, swinging his legs out of bed and rising without thinking. "Let me just get my--"
"Carlos!" Cecil yelped, lunging for his side and slipping a steadying arm around him. "You--you're not supposed to be up--you've lost blood!"
"But I feel fine." He did, actually. Healthy as a horse, in fact.
Cecil wouldn't hear it. Before Carlos could work up a convincing argument, he found himself trapped in a wheelchair, pushed along by a grinning nurse as Cecil waxed poetic over the quality of care he was prepared to give.
"I...really don't think a sponge bath is going to be necessary," Carlos sputtered as the nurse wheeled him into the early afternoon sun. Cecil's car was parked right out front in the ambulance zone, but when Carlos opened his mouth to chide him for it, he found the words dying on his tongue.
Ghostly against the blue sky overhead hung a waxing gibbous moon, staring down at him like the pale, almond eye of a blind serpent. He shuddered, throat closing, hands clenching hard on the wheelchair's padded arms. His spine itched, skin feeling abruptly too tight, but before he could lurch to his feet, Cecil's hand settled warm and solid on his shoulder.
"Carlos? Are you all right?"
"Fine," he said shortly, voice rough and deep. Cecil's hand twitched on his shoulder but didn't pull away; Carlos felt like an asshole anyway. "Sorry," he said again, reaching up to lay his own hand over Cecil's. "I'm fine. Really."
Cecil beamed, but his eyes--pale, God, pale as the moon--were worried. "Of course."
Carlos closed his eyes as soon as he settled into the passenger seat of Cecil's car, dropping his head into the curve of a faintly-trembling hand as he braced his elbow on the edge of the door. His head was really doing a number on him, only it didn't hurt, exactly. He just felt restless, like he wanted to claw his way out of his skin, and bite, the need to be up and free and moving a pounding throb in his skull. What he didn't want was to take out his bad temper on Cecil, who was only trying to help, and who smelled so fucking good it was all Carlos could do not to lean over and bury his face in Cecil's neck. He didn't think Cecil would mind, but he also didn't think causing a wreck would be a very wise start to his recovery. They might even make him go back to the hospital.
He kept it together on the long ride home by counting his slow, deep breaths. Cecil's scent had permeated the car's interior, and Carlos could almost taste him: warm skin and freshly-washed hair, the sweetness of his breath and the faint hint of copper and iron. Feeling his throat tighten again, he sucked a lungful of air against the cough sure to follow, but what sighed out of him was a low, rumbling growl.
"Um, Carlos?" Cecil touched his arm lightly, distracting him from the sound of the motor falling silent, the jingle of keys being pulled from the ignition. "We're here."
When he lifted his head from the shading clutch of his palm, he glanced out the window first and frowned. This wasn't his house or even the lab. Cecil had brought him back to his place, and that...he wasn't sure how he felt about that. But Cecil looked so concerned when he glanced over that he swallowed his growl, managed a strained smile, and let himself out of the car.
The moon was staring at him again when he stepped into the light, but he ignored it with gritted teeth. Cecil melted into his side before he made it two steps, sliding under his unbandaged arm to offer support he didn't need, laughing a little as Carlos nosed contentedly through his hair. It was odd how the rage that kept prickling over his skin seemed to dissipate whenever Cecil touched him, but he wasn't going to question it. He just needed to sleep this off, and he'd be good as new.
"So," Cecil said as he let them both in, steering Carlos into the living room. "How are you feeling? Do you want the bed, the couch? Are you hungry? I washed the clothes you left here--not that they needed it! I was just, you know, being polite, and I've got a spare toothbrush you can have, although if you wanted to leave something like that here as well, just for, uh, just in case, then--"
"Couch," Carlos said, not thinking of Cecil wearing his clothes, or doing other things to his clothes, and not blushing, damn it. "Please."
Cecil lowered him down gently, fluffing the cushions around him in worried distraction and laying the inside of his wrist against Carlos' forehead. One very tiny part of him wanted to hiss at all the fussing, but the greater part of his irritation was soothed by the touch. Cecil's skin was so soft.
"Let me get you something to drink," Cecil murmured. "I have orange milk, or--"
"Just water, please," Carlos said without opening his eyes, nose twitching at the thought of strange smells. Orange milk. Ugh.
He nearly growled and dragged Cecil back when the heat Cecil radiated eased away, but he dug his fingers into the couch cushions and breathed through the urge. There was something strange going on, something...very much not-right, but it was just so hard to think. The itch under his skin was a constant buzz, and nothing smelled right--the place didn't smell like him, and he bolted up off the couch with a low growl to pace the narrow confines of the room. It reeked of another male, the musk of his body and the more acrid tang of his sweat, here and there the faintest trace of sex tickling his nose and sliding down past his lungs to coil warm and hungry around the base of his cock. His mate's scent, familiar and beloved, but this didn't smell like shared territory. His own scent was almost completely missing.
"Carlos?"
He whipped around, finding his mate watching him warily from the edge of the room, brows crumpled in concern, bare toes curling nervously into the carpet. A faint whiff of fear spiked the air between them, but his mate--Cecil, God, he needed to remember--edged cautiously closer. One step. Two. Four.
Cecil's breath caught sharply as Carlos bore him to the floor, crouching over him with both hands locked around Cecil's wrists. Though they filled his palms, they seemed terribly thin and delicate. His mate was so small.
"W-wait--"
He growled, but it didn't sound right: a hatchling's growl, thin and weak. Moon-pale eyes widened regardless, his mate's head tipping up and away as Carlos leaned down. He'd been staring at Cecil's mouth, the defenseless, blunt teeth hooked in the soft meat of Cecil's lower lip, but this was much better.
His mate flinched as he lowered himself down, setting over the strange tension of Cecil's lean body, fitting their chests together until he could feel each hitching gasp though his own breastbone, his closed mouth pressed to Cecil's throat. Breathing deep, he let himself go boneless, arms stretching and claws flexing wide to knead contentedly against Cecil's balled fists.
"Carlos--"
"Mmm." There it was, the comforting vibration of the voice he craved, rumbling right into his bones.
"Oh, Masters of us all," Cecil groaned, wriggling uncertainly under him. "That's...this really isn't like you, and while I'm not complaining...anymore, it really would help me to know if you've been possessed or drugged or--they didn't give you the wrong blood, did they? Because I couldn't help but notice, and red is such a common color, and--"
The fear scent was back, but Cecil's hands had unclenched and wound tightly through his, that wonderfully deep voice gone thready with unease. He jerked his head up, glaring around the room, but nothing moved; even the old woman he could smell but not see had crept quietly away.
His skin was on fire.
Stretching again, he rose up into a low crouch, lifting his paws gently out of his mate's desperate grip as cloth shredded to ribbons around him. The couch and one low table were shoved aside, an overstuffed chair crashing backwards as his tail unspooled in a snaking coil, but he pulled in on himself before he could cause too much damage. He had a proper growl again at least, and he demonstrated it proudly as his mate gaped up at him, preening a little at how impressive he sounded. He was in fact an impressive article in every way, and though he knew nothing would dare approach what was his, he obligingly paced a tightening circle around his mate, curling Cecil up into an easily-guarded ball nestled in the curve of his belly plates. He draped a sheltering golden wing over Cecil just in case.
That was much better...at least until Cecil sat bolt-upright like a startled hatchling.
"You've been bitten!" his mate yelped, pushing out from under his wing and scrambling over him to examine his foreleg with shaking hands. Carlos sniffed a little at the scars that marred his magnificence, but he was sure they didn't look as bad as all that. "I don't believe it--he must've...but what was McDaniels doing giving interviews in such a delicate condition? And how could you not notice?"
Carlos snorted, monumentally unimpressed. The dragon who'd bitten him hadn't even been a quarter gold, whereas he was the apex of perfection. Wasn't his mate always saying so?
"This...this isn't my fault," Cecil asked hesitantly, "is it? I mean--I know I said he was handsome, and...and you may have gotten the impression that I--"
Carlos narrowed his eyes. Cecil thought another dragon was handsome?
His mate flailed erratically as Carlos coiled him up again, tighter than before, all but drowning Cecil in his scent. Just let a challenger come along. Carlos would feast on their entrails.
And then likely regurgitate them. Feasting on entrails sounded horrible. But studying what was left would be tempting. Some other day perhaps, when his horns didn't itch like fury from the buzzing song of the three-quarters moon.
He relaxed his stiff curl after a while as his mate slowly calmed, his tiny, soft human melting at last against his scales. That didn't mean he was ready to forgive; when a hand reached out to skim hesitantly along the curve of his neck, he kept his eyes firmly shut, his face turned away. The soft, distressed sound Cecil made mollified him more than he wanted to admit, but he could be stubborn. It was the principle of the thing.
Resting a long moment against the stout muscles of his shoulder, Cecil's hand eventually drifted down his foreleg, fingers tracing the pale ridges of his scars. A shaky sigh made him crack open an eye, but Cecil pulled his hand away before Carlos could voice the croon building in his throat. Taking a deep breath, Cecil hovered a hand over the paw Carlos had looped around Cecil's hip, and Carlos wondered with a flicker of anxiety whether he'd been too rough. He didn't smell any blood, but--
Cecil's hand trembled as it settled on Carlos' paw, sliding back to trace the five wicked claws that pricked delicately at his spine, the curve of his ass. Breath speeding, Cecil shifted restlessly in Carlos' grasp, leg sliding along the armored leanness of Carlos' stomach as if he wanted to squirm closer. A muffled groan of frustration made Carlos lift his head, nostrils flaring as he sniffed curiously at the warm human he cradled.
In the very next instant, he reared his head back, pupils blown wide, swamped by the scent of his mate's arousal.
Peering up at him with shoulders slowly hunching inward, Cecil flushed a desperate red. "It's...it's not...I mean I...."
Carlos blinked. What Cecil wanted was impossible. He might not be as large as that...that jerk Hiram McDaniels, but he was much bigger than Cecil, who was very soft and breakable. And lovely. And also very small. The thought that if Cecil wanted to mate, they should have done so while Carlos was appropriately-sized teased him dimly, but it was hard to think with Cecil's misery souring the air around them. It wasn't a good scent for Cecil at all.
Giving in to the urge to croon, Carlos poked his nose into the abject curl Cecil had made of himself, forked tongue flicking comfortingly over the thin skin of Cecil's throat.
"Ngh," Cecil whimpered, both hands coming up jerkily to clutch at Carlos' head. His tense fingers anchored themselves at Carlos' brow ridges, just behind his eyes, trembling as Carlos licked him again. "C-Carlos, ah...while I appreciate the...the thought, I wouldn't want you to do anything you're not--comfortable, oh gods--with...."
Interesting. His mate appeared to have a grooming kink. He couldn't imagine how he'd managed to miss that before.
Testing the hypothesis, he uncurled himself a bit, tucking his wings neatly to his back. When Cecil tried to edge gingerly away, he flexed his claws, feeling the pop of fabric splitting beneath their points. Cecil's breath caught, but the jerk of his hips didn't look like pain, and when Carlos dragged his tongue slowly and deliberately along the adorably short line of his throat, Cecil relaxed with a shuddery moan.
Hm. Hypothesis confirmed.
His teeth were entirely too large to manage the tiny buttons on Cecil's shirt, but a few nips in that direction had Cecil's hands scrambling to take the hint. The skin bared was untouched by the sun, a delicious--hnn--very delicious contrast to the pale gold of his face and forearms. Croon deepening to a satisfied growl, he watched with lazily-slitted eyes as Cecil arched up into the sliding caress of his tongue, gasping strangled curses and encouragement. The bow of his spine pulled stomach muscles taut, and Carlos purred as a slithering lick made Cecil writhe.
"Carlos, you--oh gods, that's--"
The texture of his mate's skin was fascinating: unbelievably soft along his sides, ticklishly furred in the center of his chest and in a line that trailed down past his stomach. Sliding the curious tips of his tongue under the waist of Cecil's pants, he rode out the buck of hips that followed, dragging his tongue over soft knuckles as Cecil's hands flew to yank at his belt. Cecil was all but babbling, shoving his pants down and kicking them impatiently off as Carlos nuzzled in.
Cecil's cock was an odd bit of cognitive dissonance, both utterly familiar and intriguingly strange. There was no protective ventral slit, just a jutting column whose flushed skin looked the same as all the rest. Delicate to be sure, but not as vulnerable as Carlos had feared. When he ghosted the very tips of his tongue along its length, Cecil groaned pleadingly and thrust up for more, one hand clamping on the bridge of Carlos' muzzle to hold him in place.
"Please," Cecil blurted as Carlos tasted him again. "Oh, fuck, just--more. Harder. Anything."
Narrow as it was, his tongue was nearly as broad as Cecil's palm. He couldn't curl very much of it around Cecil's cock, but Cecil didn't seem to mind. Jolting up into the slick loops he made, Cecil sucked in a startled breath that hung inside his chest, hips stuttering helplessly. "Gods," Cecil breathed out explosively, both hands splayed along the sides of Carlos' muzzle, "oh, fuck, Carlos, that's perfect, perfect--fuck, you can...tighter--"
As Carlos' smug growl bottomed out in a subterranean thrum, Cecil's moon-pale eyes rolled back in his head, breath coming in desperate sobs. "Fuck," he gasped, "Carlos. Gods, I wish you could fuck me."
The long, low note of his growl growing teeth, Carlos surged to his feet and rolled his mate to all fours with a mindful paw, the first swipe of his tongue tipping Cecil forward as hands made panicked fists against the carpet. Rasping a reassuring croon--Carlos didn't need to glance at his own freed cock to know it would never work--Carlos curled his tongue and licked again, chortling a little to himself as Cecil's flush spread until it mottled his shoulders. Now his mate had the idea, and soon there were hesitant fingers reaching back, tangling with the tips of Carlos' tongue as he opened Cecil up slowly and licked into him until he came with a shout.
Well-satisfied with himself, Carlos curled up again and nestled Cecil close, shifting a hind leg to hide his own erection until it retracted. Much as he adored everything about his frail-but-surprising mate, the idea of dry human skin on his hypersensitive flesh sounded frankly torturous. He'd much rather coil together where they were, throw a wing across them both--he could apologize for that vase later--and settle in for a well-deserved nap.
"Carlos?"
Crooning back to Cecil's sleepy hum, Carlos tucked his head under his wing and into the warm, soft curl of his mate and went to sleep.
***
Waking in Cecil's bed wasn't particularly strange, though seeing the reds and oranges of sunset creeping through the window was. He batted sleepily at the tendrils of light as they flowed up onto the bed, and they retreated good-naturedly, polite as most of the things in Cecil's house tended to be.
Rubbing at his eyes as he rolled over onto his back, he wondered blearily how he'd come to be napping in Cecil's bed at that time of day and froze. That...had been the strangest dream.
But when he glanced at his arm, the parallel lines of white, healed scars, front and back, twisted his stomach around a cold spike of dread.
"Carlos?" Cecil called from the hall, peering into the room with a nervous grimace. "The Faceless Old Woman said you were awake."
Pushing himself up to sit back against the headboard, Carlos opened his mouth and closed it again, then reminded himself firmly that this was Night Vale. Cecil might think he was silly, but he'd never wonder for a moment whether Carlos was crazy. "Cecil. Uh...I seem to remember...turning into a dragon."
"A gold one," Cecil agreed with a touch of fond reverence, "which...well, I know why, but I still have to say I'm not surprised in the least. Of course you'd be as perfect as a dragon as you are as a--"
"Wait." Carlos rubbed at his forehead, but the gesture was mostly habit. He'd seen enough things in the past two years to realize he'd probably gotten off lucky. He could have grown a second head--most likely a reptilian one. "How exactly did I turn into a dragon?" He suspected he knew; he just wanted to hear his theory confirmed.
"Oh, I could just murder that McDaniels," Cecil groaned, though the high spots of color on his cheeks took most of the teeth from his threat. "He shouldn't have been out in public at all when one of his heads was having its monthly...well, you know. And I understand it must be difficult with five heads--wolves have it easy, I don't care what they say--but still, it was just terribly irresponsible. To think that...that my perfect Carlos...."
Jerking in startlement, Carlos stared at Cecil wide-eyed. Fuck, he could smell that: the spike of Cecil's arousal was pepper-sharp, warm and musky and just slightly bitter with nervousness.
"Uh...side-effects?" he managed.
Cecil liked this.
"Well," Cecil began, taking a hesitant step closer. "You'll probably change shape every month when the moon is three-quarters full. You might even learn to do it the rest of the month with a little more control." Another surge of pheromones; Carlos didn't dare drop his eyes, but he suspected Cecil was growing hard at the thought. "You, uh...might find your senses are sharper now or develop weird cravings. Usually it's virgins or treasure, but gold dragons tend to crave books. Luckily librarians are your only natural enemies, so that should work out fine."
Carlos nodded absently, but that wasn't what he was thinking about. He was remembering Cecil braced under him, knees spread and ass in the air, sobbing breathless curses and pleas. "And you're fine with this."
Cecil's face promptly crumpled in guilty desperation. "Carlos," he said shakily, "you have to know--I never minded that you were human. Never. You've always been perfect just the way you are."
It was surprisingly easy to smile, and when he held out his hand, Cecil crossed the room without hesitation to latch on tight. He didn't struggle at all when Carlos pulled him down to sit facing him on the bed. "I know," he said, unexpected fondness welling in his chest. Anywhere else, what had happened to Carlos would never be believed, much less tolerated; in Night Vale it only made a healthy relationship stronger. "But now you really don't mind that I'm not exactly human. Anymore. Am I?" he asked, confused. Other than the amazing sensitivity of his nose, he didn't feel particularly different.
Cecil smiled and shook his head, but it wasn't entirely a no. "You're Carlos," he said, as if that were enough. Perhaps it was.
Tugging Cecil down to curl against his side, he slid a hand into Cecil's hair and rested his chin on top of Cecil's head. An arm and a leg were immediately thrown across him, Cecil's tendency to cling like an octopus a comforting constant. He suspected he ought to be more disturbed by what had happened, but to be brutally honest, he'd chosen to interview Hiram McDaniels on the strength of a belief unchanged since he was six years old.
Dragons were cool.
"Huh," he muttered half to himself as his hand slipped down to knead the ever-tense muscles of Cecil's neck. "I wonder if this means I can fly."
If the sudden gasp and rolling press of a stiff length against his hip was any indication, Cecil would enjoy watching him try either way.