Your dragon partner is the light of your life.
The actual sun is long gone now, though. You barely got the tent sent up before it was too dark to see.
They, of course, spent the entire afternoon basking. They need to absorb sunlight when they can to restore their mana stores, so you're not surprised you were setting up camp alone. Not that they would've ended up helping anyway- Drakes tend to be allergic to doing menial labor they view as beneath them, and as they have so succinctly put it before, chores happen to be outside the scope of your work contract as written.
"It's not exactly a hotel, but there's not a whole lot of options this far out of the city," You start to explain as you crawl into the cramped tent. It's been a while since you roughed it on route to another hunting job, seeing as you now have an employee with high standards, like sleeping in an actual bed and not eating days-old stale gas station food. "But it beats laying directly on the ground."
He, unsurprisingly, looks unimpressed.
"It will do." They state, clearly too exhausted from a long day of laying in the sun to gripe too much.
As soon as you've laid down, half of their weight is on you as they're on you in a death grip of a cuddle.
"Sure, lay anywhere. Make yourself comfortable." You say in a withering voice.
"I will." They reply, purposefully not addressing your sarcasm.
You don't quite know how being the sentient pillow for a dragon ended up being your lot in life, but you can't complain about your role.
It's a rare chance to get to see their softer side- you might be the only person alive that's ever seen them with their guard down.
But as cute as it is, unfortunately for you, the position of your body is growing exponentially more uncomfortable the longer you lay like this. (You're not unfamiliar with this scenario, having grown up with a pet cat.)
You resign yourself to waking up in the morning with an incredibly dead arm and attempt to force yourself into sleep anyway. You've slept in worst places than being slightly smothered by your lover.
And to your credit, it almost works- but just when you nearly blocked out the beginning prickles of your arm starting to fall asleep when something feels a bit different.
Another familiar sensation, this one easily recognizable from the many, many times you neglected to wear any sunscreen on hot summer days as a kid.
In the morning, you wake up alone, the drake probably already outside taking in some sunlight.
You're lucky, your arm lacking any of the pins and needles from last night. But the same can't be said about the small area of burning sensation on your chest, which has only grown more intense.
You press your fingers against your skin- it's hot to the touch and tender enough to make you wince at the sensation.
You rifle through your backpack, pulling out the small mirror you keep for completely normal travel reasons and not explicitly to detect vampires, angling it down to inspect your upper chest.
Inspecting it more closely, you can see the faint outline of angry little diamonds- which after a split second of confusion, you identify as the imprint of dragon scales.
Specifically, it looks identical to the smattering of golden scales that dot the skin on the drake's left cheekbone.
They were basking all day… so perhaps the accumulated energy was strong enough to give you a… contact sunburn?
Your rustling seems to have piqued their attention, a clawed hand parting the tent flap and peering in at you.
You lock eye contact and motion emphatically with an open palm to the makeshift brand of part of their face on your bare chest.
"Good pillows don't get sunburnt." They quip, then narrow their eyes and bitingly add; "Skill issue."
You knew you'd regret teaching them that phrase.
theartofmadeline
gracieabrams
vaporwave
2087
romaincrisis
