Chapter 50: An Itch and a Wish
The sea was in a teaching mood, and it was a bastard about it.
Dan stood thigh-deep in the churn, his feet braced on slick, moss-covered stone. His arms were outstretched, palms facing the incoming wall of grey-green water. It wasn’t about brute force. He’d learned that the hard way, with a bruised tailbone and a mouthful of salt. It was about feeling the water’s intention, the gathering push of it, and introducing a new idea at the precise moment before it decided to crash.
“Part,” he grunted, a thread of will lacing the word.
The water hesitated. A seam appeared down the middle, a wavering corridor of air. For a glorious second, it held. Then the will of the sea, vast and mindless, reasserted itself. The two halves of the wave collapsed inward, meeting directly over Dan’s head with a thunderous clap.
He emerged, sputtering, hair plastered to his skull, every stitch of clothing soaked. Again.
From his perch on a flat, sun-warmed rock high above the tide line, Dargo watched. A faint smirk touched his lips. The human’s tenacity was a constant, low-grade marvel. He’d been at this for two hours, a cycle of intense concentration and sudden, icy failure.
A nudge at his elbow. Dargo looked down. Kael butted his head against him, a low whine vibrating in his throat. The young dragon was the about the size of a large elk or moose now, his scales a mix deep and cerulean blues that glimmered like the ocean before them in the sun.
“What?” Dargo’s voice was a low rumble.
Itch, Kael projected, the mental word saturated with misery. He twisted his neck, trying to rub his shoulder blade against the rock. Here. It burns.
Dargo sighed, a sound like shifting gravel. “Sand under a scale. From your digging yesterday.” He remembered the sensation well—the maddening, granular irritation that could drive a youngling to scrape himself raw against a mountainside.
“Hold still.”
Kael immediately went rigid, a statue of scaled complaint. Dargo stood and walked to where Dan’s pack lay against a smaller rock. He rummaged, moving aside a spare tunic and a pouch of dried fruit. His fingers closed around the familiar wooden handle. Dan’s brush, the one with the soft, thick bristles. He carried it back.
Kael’s eyes, wide and liquid, followed the brush. For me?
“Temporarily.” Dargo knelt on the rock. He took the young dragon’s head in his hands, tilting it to examine the offending spot. A single grain of black sand was wedged at the edge of a scale, the skin beneath inflamed. “This will hurt for a moment. Then it will stop.”
Okay.
The trust was absolute. Dargo’s touch, for all his size and strength, became precise. He used the very tip of the brush’s handle, a tool not meant for this, and worked with the delicacy of a lockpick. A quick, sharp scrape. Kael flinched, but held.
The black grain popped free, flicking away into the wind.
A shudder of pure relief went through the young dragon. He slumped, a boneless heap of gratitude against Dargo’s leg. Thank you.
Dargo didn’t answer. He began to brush the area with the soft bristles, smoothing the scale back into place, soothing the redness. The motion was ancient, muscle memory from a thousand years before. He’d done this for Kieran, for others whose names were now dust on forgotten wind. The rhythm of it—inspect, clear, smooth—was a quiet liturgy.
As he worked, his eyes drifted back to the sea.
Down below, Dan had regained his footing. He was shaking the water from his hands like a dog, saying something to the ocean that was probably rude. He took his stance again, shoulders squaring. Dargo could see the concentration settle over him, a visible calm. The next wave built, a larger one, rising with a crest of froth.
Dan’s hands came up. Not a push. An invitation to part.
The wave approached, a wall of noise and force.
It hesitated. The seam appeared, cleaner this time, wider. Dan held his breath, his entire body a line of focused tension. For three long heartbeats, he held a corridor open through the heart of the sea. Dargo’s brushing slowed, his own breath pausing.
Then the wave’s top, uncontrolled, curled and broke. The collapsing water wasn’t a direct smash, but a massive, drenching slap that engulfed Dan from the shoulders down. It knocked him back a step, but he didn’t go under. He stood in the receding foam, dripping, and let out a loud, frustrated laugh that carried up the rocks.
“Almost!” he shouted, though whether to himself, the sea, or Dargo, it wasn’t clear.
Kael, lulled by the brushing, made a contented sound. Dargo’s hand moved automatically, stroking the broad, warm head. The simple weight of the youngling against him, the trust in the slumped posture, pulled at something deep and old in his chest.
He watched Dan. The human wiped salt from his eyes, pushed his ruined hair back, and immediately set his stance again, scanning for the next incoming surge. There was no despair in him. Only the relentless, dogged pursuit of a skill that had no guarantee of ever being mastered. The failure was routine, the attempt unwavering.
The rhythm of it settled around Dargo. The scrape of bristle on scale. The crash and hiss of the tide. Dan’s silent concentration, then the inevitable, booming drenching, then the laugh, then the reset.
It was a quiet, steady rhythm. A heartbeat of simple, striving life.
And it made the old dragon long for something he knew wasn’t a physical possibility.
It wasn’t about offspring. He had done that, long ago. That path was closed, its joys and griefs fully known. This was different. This was watching the careful, stubborn man down there—who had brushed his scars and oiled his wings—and feeling a want that had no shape. A future that wasn’t just his own endless, solitary turn of seasons, but this. This continuous, messy, teaching and learning and failing and trying again. Not for a century, or a millennium, but for the span of a single, brilliant, frustratingly short human life. To have that rhythm as his own until the very end of it.
He could not have it. Time was a river, and they stood on opposite banks. Dan would age, wither, become memory. Dargo would remain, the rock against which new waves broke. The knowledge was a cold, smooth stone in his gut. A fact. It did not stop the longing. It just made it ache.
Kael nudged him. More brush?
Dargo looked down. The youngling’s eyes were hopeful. “No,” he said, his voice softer than he intended. “The itch is gone.” He gave one final, firm stroke from head to neck ridge. “Go. Hunt crabs. Let me brood in dramatic silence.”
Kael chirped, sprang up, and launched himself in a clumsy, joyful glide toward the tide pools.
Below, Dan finally staggered out of the surf, water streaming from him. He climbed the rocks, breathless and grinning. He collapsed onto the sun-warmed stone beside Dargo, lying on his back with a solid thump. “I think the sea’s laughing at me,” he wheezed.
“It is,” Dargo confirmed, gazing at the horizon. “It has a very dark sense of humor.”
Dan turned his head, green eyes studying Dargo’s profile. The smile faded into something quieter, more observant. “You okay?”
Dargo felt the weight of the question. The human saw too much. He could offer the easy lie, the grunt of dismissal. Instead, he let the truth sit between them, unspoken but palpable. He reached out and flicked a piece of seaweed from Dan’s shoulder. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m soaked. It’s your job to be the living furnace.” Dan sat up, wringing out the hem of his tunic. He nodded toward the brush lying between them. “I see you’ve repurposed my grooming supplies.”
“A temporary requisition. The youngling was suffering.”
Dan’s smile returned, warmer now. “Look at you. A big softy.”
Dargo met his gaze, the longing a live wire in his chest, perfectly, painfully impossible. He let none of it show on his face. Only a raised eyebrow. “Say that again,” he murmured, “and I will throw you back in.”
Dan laughed, the sound bright against the ocean’s rumble. He believed the threat was empty. Dargo, holding the echo of that steady, yearning rhythm inside him, knew that he would sooner set the sea itself ablaze.
Dargo, holding the echo of that steady, yearning rhythm inside him, knew that he would sooner set the sea itself ablaze.
Dan studied him, the amusement draining from his face. He’d seen that distant, heavy look before, in the quiet after the grotto. It wasn’t just brooding. It was grief for something that hadn’t even happened yet. Dan felt the shape of it, a sharp and terrible understanding settling in his own gut. He looked away, at the endless, indifferent ocean.
He couldn’t outrun time. But maybe he could outsmart it.
“Your hoard,” Dan said, the words cutting the salt air. He kept his voice casual, like he was suggesting they check the fishing lines. “The one from the first cave. Where you took me after… everything.”
Dargo’s gaze snapped to him, sharp and questioning. “What of it?”
“Is it still there? Just sitting in that hole?” Dan plucked a piece of drying seaweed from his arm, fiddling with it. “Seems a waste. All that… history. Locked away in the dark.”
“It is safe. That is its purpose.” Dargo’s tone was flat, a door pushed shut.
“Safety’s one thing.” Dan tossed the seaweed aside. “But a hoard should be lived with, shouldn’t it? Seen. It’s a story.” He took a breath, steering his idea into the open. “We could move it. Start bringing it here. There’s that higher cave up the cliff-face, the one with the southern exposure. It’s dry. It’s defensible. We could start a new one there, together. Or just relocate the old.”
Silence hung between them, filled by the shush of retreating waves. Dargo stared at him, gold eyes unblinking. The suggestion was staggering in its intimacy. A hoard was the heart’s inventory. It wasn’t furniture.
“Why?” The single word was rough.
Dan met his stare, green eyes earnest and utterly serious. “Because I need the books, Dargo. The old ones. The ones humans weren’t meant to have.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping, urgency threading through it. “There has to be a record of something, some way that isn’t just… waiting for an end. I’m not just going to accept a timer I didn’t set.”
The confession laid bare between them, raw and desperate. He wasn’t talking about treasure. He was talking about research, about a fight. He needed the dragon’s history, the forbidden knowledge, to find a loophole in reality.
“You seek to cheat fate,” Dargo murmured, not a judgment, but a realization.
“I’m seeking information,” Dan corrected, a stubborn set to his jaw. “Maybe there’s nothing. But I have to look. I can’t just be the guest who wears out his welcome with time.” He gestured vaguely toward the mountain. “Let me build you a proper home for your story. And let me read it.”
Dargo looked from Dan’s determined face to the distant cliff, then back. The longing in his chest, that cold stone of certainty, cracked. Not with hope—that was too fragile—but with a fierce, overwhelming regard. This man, having learned the depth of the chasm, was not mourning its inevitable edge. He was surveying the walls for handholds, calculating the weight of ropes, demanding to see every map.
He was going to war with time itself. For him.
A slow, deep breath expanded Dargo’s chest. The practicalities began to align in his mind, a tactical response to an emotional siege. “The original cave is half a day’s flight south west. The books… there are journals. Treatises on elemental convergence. Histories of binding pacts.” He paused, his voice dropping. “Some are in tongues no human mouth can speak.”
Dan’s eyes lit, not with triumph, but with the keen focus of a solver presented with a puzzle. “Then you’ll translate. First project.” He stood, energy buzzing off his damp form. “We’ll start with the books. Bring them here, set up a space. Then the rest, piece by piece.”
“It will take many trips,” Dargo said, rising to stand beside him. The idea was taking root, becoming a plan. A shared, tangible future measured in journeys, not just years.
“Good,” Dan said, a grin finally breaking through. He nudged Dargo’s shoulder with his own. “I like flying with you. And I’ve always wanted a library.” He looked up at the cliff, already plotting the path. “We’ll need shelves. And a better lighting solution than glow-moss for reading.”
Dargo followed his gaze, seeing the high cave not as a hollow, but as a vessel waiting to be filled. Not with gold, but with a fight. His hand found the back of Dan’s neck, a firm, grounding pressure. “We begin at dawn.”
The sea continued to crash below, but its rhythm now felt like a drum marking time, not wasting it. They had a heist to plan.
They had a heist to plan.
The practical talk lasted through the afternoon, a welcome anchor against the day’s earlier emotional riptide. They plotted routes, debated load capacities, and Dan sketched crude shelf designs in the wet sand with a stick. The impending project was a tangible thread to follow out of the labyrinth of dread.
By the time the sun began to bleed orange over the water, the strategy was set. A temporary, functional peace settled between them, but the underlying current—the desperate hunger born of acknowledged finitude—had not receded. It had simply changed shape, becoming a live, crackling thing in the space separating their bodies as they walked back to the main cavern.
Once inside, with the fire built high, the planning gave way to a thick, anticipatory silence. Dan stoked the flames, his back to Dargo. He could feel the dragon’s gaze on him, a physical weight. The longing from the beach was now a shared, unspoken accord.
“All that talk of work,” Dan said, his voice deliberately light, “and I’m still freezing from the sea.” He turned, leaning against the warm stone of the hearth. “You’re slacking on your furnace duties.”
Dargo didn’t smile. He rose from his seat, a slow uncoiling of lethal grace that made the air seem thinner. He crossed the space until he stood directly before Dan, the firelight casting his shadow over him. “A complaint?” he asked, his voice a low vibration.
“An observation.” Dan tilted his head up, meeting those burning gold eyes. The playful challenge was a thin veneer. His heart hammered against his ribs.
Dargo’s hand came up, calloused fingers tracing the line of Dan’s jaw, then drifting down the column of his throat. “Then I shall rectify it.”
He kissed him. It was not gentle. It was a claiming, a convergence, a silent roar against the dying of the light. Dan groaned into it, his hands flying up to fist in Dargo’s long hair, pulling the braid loose. The kiss was salt and heat and a furious, unspoken promise. When Dargo finally broke it, both of them were breathing raggedly.
“Clothes,” Dargo growled, the word a command. “Off. Now.”
They didn’t make it to the moss bed. Dan’s tunic was ripped over his head, not torn, but the intent was clear. Dargo’s own garments followed, discarded with less violence but equal urgency. The fire’s heat bloomed against their bare skin, but it was nothing compared to the heat they generated.
Dargo pushed him back against the warm stone of the hearth ledge, his mouth descending on Dan’s neck, sucking a dark mark into the skin above his collarbone. Dan cried out, his head thudding back against the rock. His hands scrabbled over Dargo’s back, over the scars he’d worshipped, now just landmarks under his seeking palms.
“You,” Dargo muttered against his skin, biting a path down his chest. “With your plans and your books and your defiance.” He took a nipple into his mouth, grazing it with his teeth, and Dan arched off the stone with a sharp gasp. “You think you can outrun the sun.”
“I’m going to try,” Dan panted, his fingers twisting in the black fall of Dargo’s hair. “Fuck, right there—”
Dargo dropped to his knees. The sight was obscenely powerful, the centuries-old dragon on his knees before a mortal. He nuzzled the coarse hair at the base of Dan’s cock, breathing him in. Then he took him in, all at once, deep into his throat.
Dan shouted, a raw, broken sound. The wet heat was absolute, the suction devastating. Dargo’s tongue worked him, flat and demanding along the underside, and his hands gripped Dan’s ass, pulling him deeper into that impossible mouth. Dan could only hold on, his hips stuttering, his knuckles white where they clutched at Dargo’s shoulders.
“I’m not—I can’t—” Dan choked out, hurtling toward the edge too fast.
Dargo pulled off with a wet pop, leaving Dan throbbing and desperate. “You can,” he said, his voice wrecked. He stood, his own cock a heavy, weeping weight against Dan’s stomach. “And you will. Again and again.” He turned Dan around, bending him over the broad hearth ledge. “Tonight, you don’t get to come until I say.”
The first press of him, blunt and huge, stole Dan’s breath. There was preparation, swift and efficient with oil from a nearby shelf, but no gentleness. It was a claiming. Dargo pushed in, a slow, relentless invasion that stretched Dan open with a burn that bordered on pain. Dan pushed back against it, a filthy, choked noise escaping him as he was filled completely.
“Fuck,” Dan breathed, his forehead pressed to the stone. “Gods, Dargo—”
Dargo began to move. He set a brutal, perfect pace, each thrust punching the air from Dan’s lungs. The sound of skin slapping against skin echoed off the cave walls, a primal counter-rhythm to the crackling fire. Dan met every drive, his own cock trapped and aching between his stomach and the stone. It was overwhelming, a raw dismantling of every thought except more.
“Mine,” Dargo snarled, his breath hot on Dan’s neck, his fingers digging bruises into his hips. “For every second I have you. Mine.”
“Yours,” Dan sobbed, the admission torn from him. It wasn’t submission. It was defiance. A claiming in return. “Always. Fuck, right there, don’t stop—”
Dargo’s rhythm fractured. He hammered into him, his control shattering. The orgasm that took him was a silent, seismic event, a full-body convulsion as he buried himself to the hilt, pulsing deep inside. Dan felt it, the hot, liquid claim, and it pushed him over his own edge. He came untouched, his release painting the stone beneath him in ragged stripes, his vision whiting out.
They slumped together, a mess of sweat and spend, still joined. Dargo’s weight was crushing, perfect. His lips moved against the sweaty nape of Dan’s neck. “Again,” he murmured, a raw promise.
They moved to the moss bed much later. The frenzy had banked into a smoldering, relentless hunger. Now, Dan took his turn. He pushed Dargo onto his back, his mouth everywhere. He used his magic, a subtle, thrilling heat that bloomed under his palms and lips as he licked and sucked his way down Dargo’s torso. He took his time, worshipping every scar with his tongue, until Dargo was trembling, his cock lying thick and ready on his stomach.
“Your turn to learn patience,” Dan whispered, before swallowing him down.
He used every trick, every flicker of heated tongue and suctioning pressure he could conjure. He worked Dargo with his mouth until the dragon was shuddering, his fingers once again tangled in Dan’s hair, his hips lifting off the moss. Dan pulled off, stroking him with a slick, precome-smeared hand. “Not yet.”
He shifted, straddling Dargo’s hips. He guided the broad head to his entrance, still loose and slick from their first joining, and sank down. It was a different kind of fullness, a deep, aching possession he controlled. He rode him with a slow, grinding intensity, his own heated hands braced on Dargo’s chest.
Dargo watched him, gold eyes black with want, his hands on Dan’s thighs. “You beautiful, stubborn bastard,” he rasped.
They moved together in the glowing dark, a seamless, sweating entity. Position shifted. Dargo lifted Dan’s legs over his shoulders, driving up into him with a depth that made Dan scream. Later, Dan fucked himself back on Dargo’s fingers, three of them, while he took his own cock in a fist, begging for permission.
“Come,” Dargo finally snarled, after hours, when Dan was a sobbing, oversensitized wreck beneath him. Dan obeyed instantly, his second climax a ragged, dry heave of sensation that left him blind. Dargo followed, his own release a hot flood that left Dan feeling marked, owned, and utterly complete.
They collapsed, a tangle of exhausted limbs. Dargo pulled a fur over them. The cave’s glow was their only light. Dan lay with his head on Dargo’s chest, listening to the slowing thunder of his heart. Outside the cave mouth, the last streaks of violet bled from the sky, surrendering to a deep, endless blue.
No words were needed. The plan was still there. The heist awaited dawn. But for now, in the quiet dark, they had stolen this. And it was enough.