Steve’s got elfin blood. It’s boring. He’s good with plants and animals like him, but even ordinary humans can do that. His bloods not even thick enough to journey to the fae realm without getting a major skin burn from passing through the barrier. He always figured he’d end up with another elfling or maybe a human witch like his mom. In his wilder dreams he thought maybe some kind of nymph. Elves and nymphs get along well together and there’s a long history of cooperation between their clans. He never thought he’d end up with a shifter, and even if he had he’d never have thought even in his wildest dreams that it would be a dragon shifter.
Billy Hargrove is a dragon, and dragons are… they’re a lot. All of those stories about dragons razing cities, horeding treasure, and abducting helpless victims to stash them away in towers, they come from a place. Dragons are extremely powerful and when they go bad it’s bad for everybody. Even the good ones get away with shit just because there’s no easy way to stop something bigger than a house with impenetrable scales. Before Billy came to the academy Steve had never even met a dragon because they’re so preoccupied with accumulating power that they rarely leave the fae realm. Steve was crossing the quad headed for the astrology tower with Tommy when the sky above them darkened, a large shadow passing over the sun. One by one the heads of students and professors had looked up towards the sky to watch as the dragon had descended from the clouds and circled the castle mound, its huge wings churning up a furious wind with every stroke.
It had been difficult to tell with the sun in his eyes, but the dragon was blueish with scales that shimmered with hints of green and gold like the bottom of a stream in summertime. He’s gorgeous, Billy, in both shapes. It’s like he looked into the sun that afternoon and never got it out of his eye.
Based on one of the zany scenarios @imyourbratzdoll and I came up with, where Steve and Ransom get high on chocolate and bond over the carpet (read it here!)
PLOT TWIST: they aren’t even sitting on a carpet, just kneeling on the hardwood floor lmao 😵💫😵💫😵💫
I wrote a little in the tags on the OG post but I am still thinking about this so...
The way Billy arrived at the academy, swooping over the castle and roaring loud enough to shake the walls before he flew up towards the Grandmaster’s tower and disappeared into the clouds, there’s no way for anyone not to know who he is and what he is.
Steve’s very used to the way the student body can latch onto a person and OBSESS. You’d think, with their powers and their lineages that the students wouldn’t be effected by things like fan mania, but no, they’re just as impressed by pretty faces and showboating as ordinary humans are. Steve can’t go anywhere without his classmates stuffing the poems and ballads they’ve composed - praising his pale elfin good looks and comparing him to snowdrops, stars, and moonlight - under his pillow or in his satchel when he isn’t looking. And at least once a week someone actually gets up the courage to stand in the courtyard and sing. He’s been crowned King of Midsummer every year that he’s been old enough to attend the end of term festival reserved for the higher level students.
But from the minute Billy Hargrove saunters out of the Grandmaster’s quarters he’s all anyone can talk about. It’s so fucking annoying. His golden skin and sun streaked hair, his glittering blue eyes and the flames that (apparently) dance in them when he’s wielding magic (Steve wouldn’t know because he can’t stand the prick and the less time spent in his company the better) and the inked markings that decorate his back and shoulders that glow gold just before he shifts his shape.
Steve knows Billy’s markings intimately because he sees them three times a week during Champions practice, usually right after Hargrove strips naked and dives from the banks of Emerald Lake, changing shape in a burst of golden magic just so he can knock Steve and the rest of his teammates off their feet with a ten foot wave. And Billy does that shit on purpose, because he doesn’t have to be big as a house when he shifts.
Billy has a demi form, effectively no bigger than a kitten. Steve can hold most of his bendy lizard like body in the palm of his hand while Billy’s long serpentine tail coils around his wrist, warm despite the cool scales that line his body. No one knew dragons could go small like this. Well, correction, Steve supposes it makes a lot of sense now why humans call so many lizards dragons. Wingless, one scaly lizard thing scuttling around looks like another, and it turns out Dragons have been coming to the human world far more often than people think.
Steve discovers that Billy can go small after Flight Studies one day, which he’s endlessly thankful is not one of the classes he has to share with Hargrove. While some elves have strong enough magic and a sturdy enough connection to the fae realm that they can achieve winged flight, Steve remains as grounded and talentless in this area as they come. It’s enough of a sore spot as it is because his dad and all of his cousins fly. The last thing he wants to put up with is Hargrove giving him shit about it.
Steve comes back from class still wingless, but sweaty from all that straining to connect with Gia, and immediately heads to the room he shares with Tommy in the Blue Hall to change before supper. He doesn’t expect to find anything but shirts and tunics in his drawer, so he nearly shrieks the house down when he opens it to find a big lizard thing coiled up in a nest of his shirts.
Patrick, one of the selkies who shares the room next door, comes running in to see what the commotion is about just as the scaly creature raises its long neck, blue green scales glinting in the late afternoon sunlight and yellow eyes fixed on Steve as it opens its mouth and hisses. It has a small row of very sharp looking teeth and a very pink tongue.
Steve slams the drawer shut.
“Whoa! What was that?!“ Patrick demands, drawing closer, only to scurry back along with Steve as the drawer with the creature inside rattles violently.
“I have no idea. Probably another one of Munson’s freaky little pets.” Steve seethes, speaking of the boy from Black Hall who is infamous for his love of dark magical creatures, the more dangerous the better. The drawer rattles hard before suddenly popping open, and one very pissed lizard crawls its way out onto the top of the dresser. it twists its upper body until its head faces the two gaping boys. For a moment Steve admires the elegance of its long body and the dramatic spiny fins that raise from its back as it elongates itself, thinking that the strangely human expression of absolute grump that it wears on a decidedly lizard like face is unexpectedly funny... and then the creature opens its mouth and Steve and Patrick bolt with a yelp, scrambling for the door as a stream of electric blue flame erupts from the creature’s mouth.
The House Head thinks they are pulling a prank when they bring him back to deal with the beast, only to find the room completely creature free and no sign of anything burning. But Steve knows what he saw, and Patrick isn’t known for being a prankster so the Head promises to go over to Black Hall and have a talk with Munson. He advises the boys to keep their windows shut going forward, so nothing has an opportunity to crawl in.
It doesn’t work, because Steve doesn’t know it but the creature was actually a dragon shifter who also happens to live in Blue Hall, just one floor below. Steve doesn’t notice either that first time that one of his shirts is missing.
Long before Billy was ready to admit he liked Steve as a person, he liked the smell of his soap and his magic. Dragons are creatures of indulgence, so the things they like they take to horde. Steve never gets that shirt back or any of the other things Billy ends up claiming from Steve’s room. Not until Steve starts sleeping in his bed. But anything he brings back with him from Billy’s room, Billy just replaces with something else.
It’s expensive dating a dragon, is what he’s saying. The only solution is to cohabbitate.
