#pea.scribbles

Your attempts to squirm out of his grip make his arms constrict around you further, a python's suffocating coil. Pounding fists against his hard chest til they ache. No response. Irate hisses rising into whisper-shouts met with tomblike silence. Nothing rouses him out of his sunbaked catatonia.

You have no choice but to use your final resort.

Stretching your arms forward, you grip the base of the horns which crown his head and stroke them, twisting your wrists in circular motions. Lavishing particular attention on the pinkish, tender area where horn and scalp meet, hidden in the silken nest of his hair. His most sensitive spot.

No other soul has touched me here, he told you through a shaky breath when you first reached for his horns. Tentative yet curious.

Thank the stars for that, you thought, seeing how he unravelled for you despite your inexperience, the most pliant he'd ever been. Your movements were clumsy, unused to handling the unusual growths, and still he sighed with profound satisfaction. Ravenous when he took you that night.

Since those early days, you've had plenty of time to refine your technique. You work your way up the length of them, and back down, slow caresses with fingers which have learned every cragged knob, whorl, and ridge along the protrusions.

He awakens with a gutteral and sonorous growl, nearly a snarl, which rattles your bones.

Freeing one arm from around you, the tips of a clawed hand rake up your back, your sensitised nerves pricking in response. They come to rest around your nape, grooves forming on the delicate skin there. You're not sure if it's a warning or a promise.

"Speak," he demands, voice and slit eyes like smouldering coals.

Satisfied now that you've got his attention, you stop stroking him, and he does let out a vicious snarl at that. Claws digging in, nudging his horns back into your hand. You correct this grievous error posthaste, and talk only when he seems appeased.

"Need you to let me up, beloved."

The vice of his remaining arm around your waist tightens contrary to your request.

You can't find it in you to be surprised. It's in his nature to be possessive in his efforts to guard prized treasures, stow them close at hand; an instinct that turns on you when you're within reach. If it wasn't for this particular sensitivity of his, the prospect of prying yourself away would be no more feasible than a thief escaping with even a single golden coin from his hoard.

"Why should I?" he asks in a low rumble, suppressed thunder.

"If you don't, I'll turn into smoked meat." You run your hands back down his horns, smiling when an involuntary, pleased trill escapes him. "Remember, us humans don't have tough skin like you, nor scales to protect themselves from the harsh sun. We can't withstand it for very long."

He squints disbelievingly at you. Using the leverage of his claws on your neck, he moves your head around, up and down, left and right, studying you with a serious expression.

"You seem fine to me."

"It's not my face, but the rest of me that's suffering the most damage." Once you reach the base of his horns again, you let go of them and slide your hands down to cup his face, tamping the protest that boils in him. Your steady gaze sinking into those molten pools of his.

"Trust me in this, my dragon. I know my body best." You follow the hard planes of his jaw up to scratch behind his ears, and he leans into your touch. An encouraging sign. One more push. "I'm not plotting to leave you. I only want to get out of the sun for a moment."

For a few beats, he simply keeps you affixed on top of him. Half lidded eyes regarding you with an intensity that stokes hot embers in your belly, licking up your spine.

He mulls the verity of your words, flexing and easing his grip on your neck, caught in indecision. Should he let the thief run away with his precious coin? Keep you bound to him, or release you?

You see his decision is made when his pupils distort into narrow slits, a triumphant upward slant to his lips.

"Neither of those will do," he murmurs.

His claws unfurl from your nape, undoubtedly leaving marks that will linger there. The unyielding arm around your waist stays. He doesn't set you free; instead, he rolls to his side, cushioning your head from the ground with the crook of his elbow. The rest of you lands onto the dirt.

This makeshift pillow is rigid. Rather than soft flesh, hard black scales cover his forearms. An ache in your neck looms in the near future. Still, you cannot budge. In this new position you're pulled even closer, face-first into his chest, staring at your bewildered reflection in the heart-gem embedded there.

You glance skyward in time to see a broad wing stretch out above you. Obscures the clouds, casting a great shadow. The strangest canopy.

"There. You're away from the sun. Needy mortal." He chuffs and clicks his tongue. Settles into a comfortable position. "Don't interrupt me again."

As quickly as he'd sprung back to life, he closes his eyes to bask again, returning to some other realm your human sensibilities can't reach.

His brusque manner sparks a flicker of irritation in you. You hadn't been given an opportunity to say a word. Determined to rouse him again, if only to have your grievances heard, you resume the delicate attack on his horns—but aside from a subtle twitch, you garner no response. A clear enough message: he won't be disturbed.

"Insufferable lizard," you mutter.

To your mild annoyance, this impromptu arrangement of his making succeeds in cooling your ailing body down, restoring your energy little by little. There's nothing to do but lie here, ensnared in his arms. Time slows into treacle.

In this quiet refuge, now that your scaleless, vulnerable body is no longer in peril, the sublime begins to unfurl, petal by petal.

You examine the membrane of his wing shielding you, a living canvas hung over the sturdy frame of his bones. Once dark as his polished obsidian scales, the expanse of skin is translucent, incandescent in the sun, unveiling an intricate web of blood vessels beneath it. As if you're sitting inside an exquisite tapestry, diffused with muted sunset.

It takes an hour to trace every branching vein in his wing to its end.

His face is the next muse for your wandering eyes. You turn to face him. Other than enduring warmth, there are no signs of life next to you. He might as well be a marble statue—a magnum opus, to be sure, sculpted by a master's hands. A study in stillness. Peace looks breathtaking on him. The space between his brows unmarred. Fine, silverspun lashes fanning over his cheek. Sunlight kissing his features with the reverence of an old lover.

You want to kiss him too. But you won't, not until he's with you again.

While you wait, you take in lungfuls of the air he isn't using. His scent fills you. He smells of the earth. Not fresh soil, yet to be tilled, but of broken land; blood-drenched, soaked in rusting blades. You burrow your nose against his neck to take in more of it. Closer now, hidden undertones, of the first dew-sweet sprout that pushes through the gaps in cobblestones, of wild weeds that snake over crumbling spires. Life baptised in fire.

His heart begins to stir underneath your palm. Listen close. Feel how it beats for you. Know that this is what it means to love an untamed creature such as him, a being made for sun and wind and cloying heat.

Your body smeared with dirt. Suspended in amber glow. Heaven, in the shade of a dragon's wing.

Could've wiped him out in half a second. "What could I do? I was a bit distracted. We were outnumbered, if you don't remember." He leans back on the pockmarked couch, arms resting on the back of it, not the least bit concerned with his injury.

His devil-may-care attitude fuels your ire further, and what a delight it is, to see you all wound up because of him. 

"You're the one who said I should stay on my toes at all times!"

Yeah, saw him coming from over ten meters away.  "I don't have eyes on the back of my head, kitten." He shrugs, hands raised in mock surrender. "Never said I was perfect."

Your work phone buzzes with an incoming call when you open your mouth to retort. "Hold on, I'll take this real quick. Try not to bleed out on me." 

His expression is one of carefully maintained neutrality as he watches you debrief your supervisor—it's crucial that Sylus doesn't betray how thrilled he is with the prospect of your aid. 

Or that this is part of a farce he's kept up for a few weeks now. 

He happened to be in the area, incidentally, during your mission today, and it devolved into a protracted fight. One of the assailants had approached him with a knife in hand, and while he dealt with the pest swiftly, it wasn't before, ah, incidentally getting slashed in the side as well. A rather impressive injury this time, a long and deep gash that coiled around his side, under his ribs, around to his front. 

Even paid with his blood, it was a trivial price if it meant he could feel your hands on him once more, to bear witness to the steady, unflinching manner in which you tend to his wounds. 

Despite the reservations you undoubtedly still held about him, despite knowing exactly who he is, you’ve never hesitated to help when he’s been hurt—as he’d discovered in that cramped old motel room not too long ago—and Sylus can’t get enough of it. It thrums in his veins, warm and tempestuous, this reckless desire to forgo his Evol's instantaneous healing in favour of the profound remedies of your touch.

Yes, every so often, Sylus allows himself to bleed the way mortal men do, in the hopes you'll come to patch him up.

You haven't noticed it yet, but if the truth did ever come to light, he does have a few defenses prepared in advance:

First of all—no harm, no foul; he's never sustained a grievous injury, to avoid causing you undue distress. Just enough to require minor medical attention. From you specifically. 

And, he elaborates in his head, if he was instead one of your colleagues accompanying you for a mission, it wasn't as if they could wave away their wounds with their Evols. This arrangement was valuable first aid experience, if anything. You could even become the Association's foremost expert in emergency suturing & bandage application—and wouldn't that be a nice addition to your resume? 

Sylus suspects these arguments will result in greater retribution on him rather than assuage your wrath, but until that fateful day comes, this remains as his secret to cherish, a private joy understood by no other being.

Your call ends. Turning back, you come to stand in front of him, retrieving the medical supplies, nudging his knee with your own.

"Scoot. Let me in." A withering glare from you stops him from arching a brow. "Don't say a word," you warn, tone deadly serious.

With an amused huff, Sylus follows both of your orders, parting his legs so you have enough space to kneel in front of him. You settle in, the kit placed next to him on the couch.

This position seems to give you no pause. You're far more interested in continuing to harangue him. 

"How many times has it been now? I could swear you weren't like this before. Did you get hit on the head or something?" you mutter, the questions intonated more as complaints than anything, as you uncap a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and soak a swab in it. "Lift your shirt."

It's well and truly soaked now, and he has to peel it away from his skin, rucking it up to expose the cut. 

"It's only happened two or three times before, kitten." He chooses to ignore that second question. "Are you this heartless when administering first aid to your coworkers as well?"

You dab the swab around the wound. "No, but they're them, and you're… you. It's different." 

"We might share more similarities than you think."

"Right, the Association's most wanted criminal and my colleagues would have so much in common." You lean in closer, tilting your head to see where the cut wraps around his side. At this close proximity he can smell your body scent through the layers of blood and grime on you, intermingling to create a heady cocktail. Intoxicating as the finest wine.

Seeing the way his abdomen tenses up, you frown and peer at him.

"Does it hurt? Need me to stop for a bit?"

The sting of the alcohol barely registers through the inadvertent head high you’ve given him. "No. You can keep going," he says, and he thanks his lucky stars that his voice manages to come out more composed than he feels right now. 

The next few minutes pass in relative silence. You're too preoccupied with cleaning his cut to talk, shifting ever closer to reach the far side of it, and Sylus elects not to speak for the moment. He isn't sure he can trust his voice anymore, with you so near and smelling so good.

His wayward imagination overtakes his rational mind—and for an instant it shows him how he could take your hands in his, pull you close, hold you in his arms, and deliver the promise, the oath, that’s weighed heavy on his tongue from the second he laid eyes on you—I will give you everything I have to offer and everything that I am in this life, because all of it is for you, has only ever been for you—

—but all he does is take a deep, steadying, somewhat long-suffering breath. He can't do any of that. Not yet. Those fraught first days with you were a harsh enough lesson. If this was to go anywhere, it would be on your terms. The one exception to this rule he permits himself – this harmless pretense of injury, a temporary salve for the growing hunger in his heart that he must keep at bay.

Once the area is sterilised, you prepare to stitch his wound, retrieving the equipment you need from the medkit: a curved needle, suture thread, scissors, and needle holder. 

“This kit doesn’t have any forceps to help angle the needle properly, so I guess I’ll…” you trail off and frown at the gash as if it’ll give you the answers. Adorable. “I guess I can just use my hand to hold it. It’s far from ideal, but we don’t really have other options. Why did these guys have to choose such a remote location for their base?” you sigh. 

Sylus can’t help but tease you. “I’m trusting you with my life here, Doctor.” 

“And I’m about to stab you about a dozen times with this needle. Be quiet and don’t move,” you warn, wagging the needle holder in front of him threateningly.

“Alright, alright,” he laughs, “point taken.” 

As you make the first suture on the front end of his wound, your fingers press firm on the surrounding skin to elevate its edges, and Sylus's eyes unwittingly trace the shallow indents that your fingertips create on him—and he rues the way they fade whenever you move your hand. He finds himself wishing he was made of clay so the divots would remain behind long after you let go.

Sylus speaks again when you finish tying the knot on the first stitch. "You're quite good at this, you know." 

"Used to patch up my favourite plushie all the time." You glance up at him with a lopsided grin, and his traitorous heart stutters and skips a beat. "Guess it ended up being a transferable skill."

Calm down. Distract. Deflect. "Are you comparing me to your childhood toy right now?" 

"You can interpret it however you want," you reply with a light hum, "but shush, and let me finish the rest of these." 

He obliges without complaint, for this is the chance he’s been waiting to seize, observing you in earnest as you work your way across the cut, one stitch at a time. 

Greedily he drinks in the vision of you in focus, no detail unnoticed under his rapt gaze: the curve of your neck and back when you hunch down to examine the cut, brows drawn together in concentration, your pupils contracted to pinpoints, zeroed in on your task. It's electrifying, your singular, undivided attention on him—well, to be precise, on his wound—but still, him.

No distractions, no conflicts of interest, no primeval whispers echoing from the distant past. Nothing else exists right now except this moment. Just your eyes on him, your hands on his body, and him, hypnotised as he watches your deliberate, precise ministrations.

A subtle shiver works its way down his spine. Of all his misadventures leading up to this point, the daring heists, planetary takeovers, spacetime prison escapes—was there ever a thrill quite like this? 

Your voice is the only thing that snaps him out of the haze he slips into, dedicated as he is to engraving you into his memory.  

"All done. This one's a bit deep, and even though the stitches are clean," you remark, nodding approvingly at your handiwork, "it's still probably going to scar. Sorry."

Good. Let it stay, he decides. Let the marks of your care live on this skin of mine forever.

"I don't mind." He tugs his shirt down, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. "Thanks for the help."

"Just doing my job." You pat his knee, once, twice, and get up, returning a small but genuine and unguarded smile at him, for him, and Sylus is reminded of those rare stormy days where the sun breaks through darkened clouds, little shards of heaven illuminating the grey world underneath.

He's never seen anything more beautiful.

As he stands, Sylus mentally pencils in the next time he plans to run into a bullet or a knife. Next week? No, too soon.

A week and a half, then.