#raiwalk

Tong had been in just after dawn with a pot of tea laced with healing herbs, which had dulled the pain enough for Anduin to doze for a few more hours. Tong must have said something to Wrathion as well because the notoriously inquisitive dragon had not once knocked on his door demanding audience.

It was…nice, Anduin supposed. The quiet. His guards brought him lunch just after midday and he ate alone for the first time in weeks, the only thing filling the silence the muted click of chopsticks on wood.

After, he means to read, goes so far as to open a book in his lap, before dozing again. There had been more healing tea with lunch and with the painkillers came the familiar cotton-headedness.

He is just on the edge of sleep when there is a clatter at his window, a thud on the ground, and there, in all his glory, is Wrathion in whelp form sprawled awkwardly on Anduin’s floor.

There is a sharp knock on his door. “Anduin?” his guard calls out. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Anduin replies, mind whirring as he tried to come up with an excuse through the brain fog. “Just, um, dropped my book.”

After a pause to make sure the excuse worked, Anduin sets the aforementioned book aside and glances back at Wrathion.

“I wanted to check in,” Wrathion says primly, sounding quite diplomatic for a dragon that had just crash-landed into Anduin’s bedroom.

“And you couldn’t use the door?” Anduin replies with a faint grin. The grin fades when his gaze settles on the awkward angle of Wrathion’s left wing. “Did you hurt yourself?” he asks, instinctively feeling out for injury with the Light, before being sharply reminded of how much energy he had been using to keep his own pain at bay. More cautiously, he reaches out with a sliver of Light, just enough to feel the impression of any wounds.

“I,” Wrathion says, lifting his chin defiantly, “may have, hypothetically, accidentally…gotten some burrs stuck on my wings. That I took care of!” he adds hastily, “…with my teeth.”

“What…actually, never mind,” Anduin says, rolling his eyes. He knows better than to ask at this point. “C’mere,” he says, beckoning Wrathion over.

“What?”

“You came here for me to heal you, right? Well, I’m not getting out of bed, so. Come here.”

With a huff, Wrathion pads over. The mattress groans when the dragon jumps onto it. He might have been the size of a particularly large, winged, house cat, but he was certainly more dense than one.

Taking great care to avoid trodding on Anduin’s legs, Wrathion comes to a halt just beside his hip and extends his offending wing.

The scratches are minor, more from the burrs than from Wrathion’s attempt to remove them, and Anduin brushes a gentle hand across the skin of the joint where Wrathion’s wing meets his shoulder, palm infusing with Light as he heals the worst of the damage. Anduin doesn’t think he imagines that Wrathion leans into him.

“One of my champions was telling me about a cave on the northern shore of the Jade Forest,” Wrathion says airily. “Apparently there’s a special type of bioluminescent algae that grow nowhere else in the world but there.”

Anduin smiles, smoothing his hand down the velvety skin of Wrathion’s wing for longer than was strictly necessary. It is fascinating how something so small can be so complex, so powerful. The exhaustion is once again setting in, made stronger by his expenditure of power, but Wrathion’s very Wrathion way of checking in was nonetheless endearing.

“Is that so?” Anduin asks, stifling a yawn.

Wrathion stiffens beside him, folding his wing back in. Anduin hadn’t realized just how heavily Wrathion had been leaning on him until he is gone.

“You should rest. I’ll—“

“No, wait,” Anduin interjects. He hesitates. He doesn’t want Wrathion to go—Anduin has missed his company, though he’d never outright tell him that. “Tell me about the cave,” he murmurs after a heartbeat.

Wrathion tilts his head and narrows his eyes. Apparently he finds whatever he’s looking for because then he huffs and makes a big show out of making himself a comfortable space to settle. Wrathion lets his wings unfold a bit and absently Anduin brings one hand down to stroke the exposed velvety skin.

“Well,” Wrathion starts. “I had sent a pair of champions on a mission—“

Before he knows it, the combination of herbal tea, afternoon sun, and Wrathion’s familiar voice has lulled Anduin away from his aching body and into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

///

Knight-Lieutenant Maren Bristol is not surprised that Anduin doesn’t answer his door when she knocks with his dinner. She is surprised at what she sees when she enters.

Anduin is young, so young, but somehow he looks even younger asleep when the worries of the world don’t line his face. He’s on his side, curled around and with one arm thrown over the sleeping dragon beside him. They are both washed in the golden light of the setting sun.