A Boy and His Dragon (24 page)

“Should I not trust you?” Bertie rumbled softly just above his ear. Arthur wondered distantly if that old, wise dragon look was in his eyes, if he could see everything Arthur didn’t want him to know.

He had to feel Arthur’s shivers.

If he did, there was no point in denying it. Arthur should tell him everything, about his stray thoughts of possibly finding an old scale someday and using the money to pay off the last of Kate’s legal bills from her teenage DUIs and to get back into school. He hadn’t thought it would hurt him at the time, and he’d never go through with it now.

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But he had already taken so much from Bertie, who had enough faith in Arthur to show him his treasure. What if he confessed to everything and Bertie demanded that he leave?

He loved this job and this house, and he’d never met anyone like Bertie. The thought of being without them made him shut his eyes and fight to breathe.

“Arthur?” The prompt came in a rasp, like a reminder that Arthur ought to move, as if even Bertie couldn’t believe that Arthur would shut his eyes to all that glory in front of him.

He opened his eyes and let out a wounded sound to see Bertie’s gaze shining at him.

“I don’t want to leave,” he gave in enough to whisper and felt the earth shake at his back as Bertie shuddered. The world seemed to steady as he inhaled.

“Then don’t.”

It came out so simply that Arthur froze, not sure he heard it right, but Bertie released him and stepped back and turned away from their reflection all in the same moment. He was breathing hard, just as hard as Arthur was, but he didn’t look over when Arthur stepped after him.

“The sofa, a guest room, even this bed, Arthur.” He gestured at the room. “Whatever you need, you have only to ask. You can borrow the car if you like, and drive to your apartment.” It was a strange thing for him to be uncertain about, and Arthur thought of Kate trying to remind him that Beings were different.

They weren’t that different, not where it counted. Some of them were better than any human Arthur had ever met.

“You’ll worry?” The question slipped out but Arthur knew the answer before Bertie nodded.

There was a room full of treasure behind them, a room full of treasure in a house probably filled with treasure, and Bertie was worried about Arthur riding his bike in the dark and the rain. And Arthur was… Arthur was tense to think of Bertie worrying. He didn’t want him to worry, not ever.

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He licked his lips and then nodded.

“Okay,” he agreed. “When it’s late and the roads are wet, I’ll stay.” It made no sense when he’d be out riding his bike in the same weather every weekend evening, but Bertie went still. A moment later he was smiling widely.

He probably meant it to be victorious, or maybe like a leer, but it looked so
relieved
that Arthur smiled back until he realized that they were both standing and staring and smiling at each other.

He didn’t want to think about how dumb he must look and made himself glance down to the stacks of books and dishes that he still had to attend to. He coughed as he bent down to pick up a stack and didn’t look at Bertie as he headed downstairs. Bertie’s heat stayed close behind him, but Arthur didn’t comment, not about that, not with his face and body on fire.

“I wouldn’t need a bed.” He stumbled over the words, only realizing how they might sound after he said them. He left the books on the table and risked a look at Bertie as he turned. “I mean, the couch will do,” he added. Bertie huffed a soft laugh and winked at him as if he knew what Arthur had really meant and was just fine with it.

He took another second to eat Arthur up with his eyes and then grinned.

“Whatever you wish, pet, as long as you stay,” he was still there, grinning, when Arthur came back from the kitchen with tea.

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IT DIDN’T rain for almost a week after that. Arthur was disappointed in ways he knew he shouldn’t think about, not that it stopped him from imagining what it would be like to wake up and see Bertie smiling at him or to feel the warmth of his presence even before he opened his eyes.

Not that he didn’t love Kate and spending time with her at home, but the first night, it had been difficult to look at her and not tell her about what Bertie had shown him. She guessed something, he could tell from how she looked at him, but it wasn’t what she was probably thinking.

He still couldn’t believe Bertie had shown him that room, but Arthur wasn’t going to shatter his trust now by telling everyone about it. He wanted to—the world needed to know about it, what Bertie had given him—but he’d never risk hurting Bertie now.

He turned his phone off after Dante sent him another text and only turned it on to call Kate. She always acted surprised to hear from him, as if Arthur hadn’t been around, when in fact he worked hard to be there for her. She was starting to do the same thing when Arthur walked in the door at night, feigning shock to see him spending a night at home.

He hadn’t told her anything, but he had a feeling there were lights still reflected in his eyes. If Kate could see them, then so could Bertie, but so far Bertie hadn’t said anything, not about that. Not unless Arthur counted the invitations to stay and watch TV with him R. Cooper

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at the end of each day, which were blatant attempts to get Arthur to stay longer.

The FBI show was apparently one of Bertie’s favorites. He also liked channels about cooking and telenovelas and reality shows about New Jersey.

He didn’t mind talking during TV shows either, or any questions Arthur might suddenly be compelled to ask in the middle of the news, like why he and the one other dragon Arthur had met both smoked, which turned out to be a self-conscious habit most dragons had about the smell of their breath due to how early humans had perceived their heat and dangerous, smoky auras. There
had
been quite a few references in many early stories to a dragon’s foul breath, but Arthur found that he didn’t mind the smoke scent. He was used to it, so Bertie didn’t need to continue smoking around him if he didn’t want to, but Arthur hadn’t worked up the courage to say that yet, so instead he’d asked more questions.

“Have you been to all those places you write about?” It seemed strange when Bertie had everything delivered so he wouldn’t have to leave his house. But Bertie nodded and patted his knee without looking over.

“Of course. You know, you really ought to get your passport in order.” He’d taken a moment to register Arthur’s silence and then finally glanced over. “Well, you are my assistant. You didn’t think it was just for the one book, did you?”

Bertie probably didn’t mind because he had his own questions.

He would sit down next to Arthur while Arthur was typing and then reach out, letting his fingertips graze Arthur’s shoulder to get his attention, as if Arthur wasn’t very aware of whenever Bertie entered the room, and then sigh questions about lunch or dinner that would somehow evolve into conversations about Arthur’s favorite foods and what his mother had used to make him.

He was very interested in Arthur’s parents, or didn’t mind when Arthur began talking about them, but Arthur didn’t think Bertie would fake interest if he didn’t have any. He sat and listened and occasionally smiled and would only get up when Arthur finally A Boy and His Dragon

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remembered that they had work to do or the doorbell rang with a food delivery.

Sometime around five every day was when Bertie would stop and come out to cook or reheat something, or make scones for the morning if the mood struck him, and if Arthur didn’t watch out, he’d end up talking over dinner or watching television until close to eight. He could tell Bertie was waiting for him to say something, to protest or frown or get mad, but Arthur couldn’t. It was too nice.

It was better than nice, if Arthur was being honest. It was almost perfect, and it was getting harder and harder to leave every night. He wasn’t even sure why he was still making his way across town. There was no reason he couldn’t stay. He knew that. Kate even knew it. Bertie had told him he only had to ask. Arthur ought to ask. He knew what the answer would be.

But today there was no Bertie to ask in any case. Arthur came in to find a cool house and a note stuck to a flash drive on the table for him. The note simply read,
Good morning, Arthur
. The drive had several files in it, the first being titled “Wouldn’t some rain be exquisite?” and which turned out to be another note detailing how Bertie had been asked to replace a guest lecturer at the college a few towns over and had needed to leave early to get there; otherwise, as he was at pains to explain, he would have brought Arthur along with him. He was also going to visit their antiquities collections and didn’t expect to be back in time for dinner.

I don’t like to think of you eating all alone, but at least you will
eat, won’t you, pet?
the note ended, after another wistful remark about how coming home to a house without Arthur was markedly unappealing.

If he could have, Arthur would have printed it out and maybe folded it and tucked it into his pocket. As it was, he read it twice and felt stupid and then got up to work off his disappointment at not seeing Bertie by lighting a fire, bringing in more wood, and then turning up the heat.

He made a sandwich for lunch with the bread Bertie made over the weekend, which was only a little stale, and thought about Bertie R. Cooper

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eating with a bunch of professors and eager students while he brought down books from upstairs.

Of course Bertie was going to be popular: he was sexy and brilliant and exotic. Arthur wasn’t surprised by that. It didn’t matter anyway, not if he really did want nothing more than to come home to Arthur. Just the idea had Arthur restless.

By the afternoon, he decided he was going to take all the books out of the main room and put in more shelves in the other rooms, rooms without fireplaces, with air vents that could be controlled to regulate the temperature, but he dropped down on the couch before he could actually consider moving them all yet and opened up his laptop to go into the new files Bertie had left him.

Getting new shelves in the other rooms was asking a lot, but he had a feeling Bertie would agree to it if Arthur explained how it would be better for the books. He could even have cases put in to display some of Bertie’s relics and protect them from the elements.

It would make Bertie happy. Maybe not ecstatically happy, not like Arthur agreeing to stay the night, but it should make him smile, and Arthur wanted that.

He opened the new files, which turned out to be several chapters, and immediately dove into the first one, reading more than editing because the story was so compelling.

Bertie told it backward, starting with the English conquest of Wales and then going back over the Roman and Germanic tribes’

conquests in less detail. It was entirely different from the chapter he spent describing the culture and literature of the region. It was violent and bloody and full of treachery and scheming, and if Bertie had wanted to show exactly what the people and the dragons had been facing, or what had driven them together, he succeeded.

Arthur went back over the chapter a few times to add in his notes and leave questions he, and probably Bertie’s future audience, would have, and then he settled back on the couch to read the next chapter.

The difference in tone was startling. First, the quote to start the chapter, another Neruda quote but not the one Bertie had thought he A Boy and His Dragon

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would use:
To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that
feeds our life.

And then the writing itself, which began like a fairy tale, the old kind of fairy tale, the kind kids used to hear before the world knew fairies were real.

“Once upon a time,” Bertie had written, and Arthur could hear him as if he was reading it out loud from the seat next to him. “If you wil al ow for so trite a beginning, once upon a time there was a vil age where the people were frightened because the mountains above them trembled every night. No one in this vil age could rest because they knew that the shaking of the earth was the rage of a dragon.

“They did not know why the dragon that lived in their mountains was angry; the ways of dragons were strange to them, and no one dared to approach such a creature to ask. Dragons lived among the gold and gems in the darkest caves of the mountains, and it was an unlucky human who dared interrupt their solitude.

“But the shaking would not stop until it seemed the mountains themselves might tumble down, so the villagers asked their lord and his bravest warriors to confront the beast and find the source of its anger, but the lord and his warriors refused. So the vil agers searched for the loveliest maiden to offer up to appease the monster’s hunger, because dragons coveted beautiful things, or so they had heard.

“The maiden wept to know her fate, until her brother stepped forward and offered to take her place.