Dragon Harem Quest - Or: Saying You Were Gay Wasn't The Conversation-Ender You Hoped For

You take off and retrace your flaps back to your spire, hoping to keep yourself occupied with another rousing rendition of One Hundred Bags Of Gold On The Wall. You're almost immediately sidetracked into thinking about what Makram must've said to the others about the map's true purpose. And wishing you'd asked Abzu to portal you back anyway but mostly that first one. How much worse can he honestly make it sound? He could sell it more overtly as some kind of sex thing? Or he could just explain it truthfully because honestly the way Abzu told it was enough to make you want to die all on its own.

You swoop down and snag somebody's cow straight out of the field, ignoring the tiny mortal's faint screams of terror as you moodily bite it in half and start crunching. It does nothing to improve your mood and you drop the other half uneaten. You think you hear a family scream. Why does everything have to be so difficult? It really is just a perfect storm, isn't it? If you hadn't gone into town for some retail therapy you wouldn't have found that damn map and if you hadn't found that damn map you wouldn't have found that damn djinn and if you hadn't found that damn djinn you wouldn't have been convinced that damn map led to some damn treasure instead of more damned boyfriends! Just imagine how much simpler it could've been if you'd just had to deal with Jun-ho and nobody else!

Okay so maybe Belial would've shown up eventually. And probably Issachar. And come to think of it with Makram's lamp already in your pile it was probably only a matter of time until you let him out but that's beside the point! It's all too much too fast and frankly you don't deserve it. But life isn't fair and you can't even stop over in Söfnun safely to buy things and loosen up because Mother's there now and also Makram made you blow up the heart of your wealth.

Flying back really was a mistake. Part of you just wants to drop out of the sky and curl up and sleep wherever you land.

...

... one hundred bags of gold on the wall one hundred bags of gold, you hoard them jealously, kill someone for theirs, one hundred and one bags of gold on the wall...

Several agonising hours later you reach more familiar territory, gliding along through the sadly fairly clear air. The storms have abated for a time and the lightning farmers are probably a mix of grateful for the break and anxious to get back to earning their livelihood again, but more importantly you're annoyed because you really could've used a nice fresh jolt right about now. While you're already looking down you spy one farm in particular, remote even compared to the others, just a single silver and copper spire in the backyard of a modest little house in an open rocky field. It's got to be Issachar's, it matches the description he gave. For just a moment you're tempted to set down and barge in on him, ask him for advice about how the fuck anyone should handle something like this, but in the end you press on. Right now you want to be home most of all, home with your gold where you can at least try to relax.

You swoop around the comfortingly familiar spire of rock that you call yours and squeeze through the cave mouth, scales scraping and raking over the slightly-too-tight ring of stone as you worm your way inside and drop down to ground level. You stretch out with a relieved sigh, cracking open your eyes to find Jun-ho awaiting you.

"Ah," you say, as if you didn't forget you had a guest for a second there, "there you are. All go well while I was away?"

"Mhm. More or less. You went off treasure-hunting right?"

"Engh. Yes. Intending to, at any rate." You wiggle your tail grumpily and flex your talons into the rough stone underfoot. "I take it Makram already filled you in?"

"He said something about your map actually pointing at boyfriends but honestly I assumed he was making a joke," Jun-ho replies. "Was that actually real?"

"Apparently! Yes!" you say, a little louder than you intended. "So that's... something I've been grappling with, past little while."

"Yeah I can imagine," Jun-ho says, strangely erring more to the comforting and understanding side than scandalised that according to a magic map he's not the only one for you. You mean, granted it was arranged and the sparks weren't exactly flying at first sight and also you have no idea how it's meant to work but he could stand to not be so nice all the time. It's getting suspicious. "Meet anyone wherever it is you went?"

"A wizard. Calls themselves Abzu." You pad over beside your treasure-pile and shake the bag wrapped around your talon free like a dead mouse. "Exceedingly friendly and energetic. You'd probably like them. They're only a teleport away so we'll likely be all seeing more of each other in the coming days."

The bag falls and tips over, the blobby familiar spilling free with a high-pitched 'whoop!'. It gathers itself up and bounces in place, scanning the lair in every direction with those big white eyes. Once it catches sight of Jun-ho it pauses, then jiggles in place with a jubilant greeting-noise.

"That's their familiar-"

Jun-ho gasps with the kind of force you'd expect prior to releasing some elemental breath and wiggles forward, coming to a stop flat on his stomach in front of the familiar with wide eyes. "It's the cutest thing I've ever seen!" he exclaims.

'Mee-ma-mo!' the familiar seems to agree.

"Are we keeping it? Tell me we're keeping it!"

"Y-yes we're keeping it," you answer haltingly, taken rather off-guard. "Like I said it's Abzu's familiar, they can see and hear through it so we can communicate if the need arises."

You wait for follow-up questions. You receive none. Jun-ho is altogether absorbed by the blob, experimentally prodding the jiggling surface and grinning like an idiot at its weird, mumbling giggles. Clearly he has enough stimulus to occupy himself for the rest of the day so you decide to leave him to it, taking wing with a mumbled half-hearted excuse about needing to update Belial on the situation too. You leave the disgustingly twee noises of dragon and blob playing together behind and do another quick circuit of the spire's immediate surroundings, scanning for the splash of scarlet and black among all the pale greens and greys. You find it quickly.

Perhaps picking this one to talk to out of everyone else is a bit ill-advised, but then again you kind of owe him a bit of one-on-one time at this point. He might start getting all jealous and thingy about it soon. And if anyone can give you advice regarding this dumb stupid boyfriend map it's probably the sexdemon. So you glide down and alight, gently as you can, behind the incubus sitting on the edge of the cliff.

He looks up and over his shoulder, sketching a wave as he notices you. You shuffle forward and settle down in the grass, your massive bulk absolutely dwarfing him by comparison. This is good. This is nice. It's hard to feel intimidated by someone in any capacity when you could pick them up and eat them like an apple.

"Hey," says Belial. "What's up?"

"Not a lot," you reply. "Got back from a wizard tower. Confused and annoyed. Did Makram speak to you?"

"Yeah he showed up this morning but I told him to fuck off so he did." Belial rests his hands in his lap and cranes his neck to meet your eye. "Why, was he s'posed to tell me something important?"

"No no no, quite the opposite," you say. "He was doing his best to be a pain in the ass so I thank you for turning him away."

"Hah, anytime." Belial fiddles with his bangs in the short silence, trying to hang the raven-black strands in such a way as to keep the wind from blowing them in his eyes too much. " 'ey, I know it's kind of a big ask considering you weren't expecting to entertain company so it's kind of a long shot, but I got to talking to Jun-ho about it while you were gone so I kinda gotta ask. Could you look into getting us a place to live at some point?"

You blink, craning your long scaly neck around to get a better look at him. "Where's all this coming from?" you ask. "You freeload quite happily in my dreams and Jun-ho is a dragon, bare rock is quite fine for him."

He shoots you a wry look. "Look I get it, you've lived alone for what, fifty years? It's easy to lose track of that stuff. But I got literally nothing to do all day every day right now and Jun-ho might be a dragon but his type isn't really s'posed to curl up on some rocks in the corner while you get all the comfy gold. You follow? And I bet it's not helping Makram's mood he has to float everywhere 'cause shit's all stone and cliffs and everything."

You narrow your eyes. "You expect me to turn my lair into some kind of... 'halfway house'?" you sniff.

He shrugs. "You wanna kick us all out?"

You do a double-take, blinking as if struck on the nose. You- but- that's an unfair way to phrase it! You said nothing of the sort! Really, the nerve of some people, to speak so confrontationally. You should give him a piece of your mind. "N-no," you reply eventually. You think he gets the gist of the rebuke.

"Then you should probably start dropping some lines for contractors," Belial says, running his talons through his hair with a soft sigh. Lacing them together behind his neck and stretching with a soft grunt. "Jun-ho says that was one of the things your mother was rambling about yeah? You kinda gotta do it sooner or later so, y'know."

"Yeah yeah," you grumble. Silence falls for a moment, broken only by the crash of waves on the rocks below and the distant cries of gulls. You drum your boardinghook-sized talons on the thin grass. "You really aren't curious what he was going to tell you?"

"Why, is it important?"

"You seem very... disconnected, for an incubus that's supposedly contracted to seduce me," you say with a dubious look.

"M'not- look it's not that I don't care," he says, letting his hands drop again, softly slapping on his bare thighs. He glances up at you. "It's that obviously I showed up at an overwhelming time and it's still overwhelming so I'm backing off. No sense in crowding, y'know?"

He looks back out to see, his lips quirking up into a subtle half-smile.

"It's kinda nice to be out and about in this plane anyway. Something about the air. Fresher, y'know?"

"I wouldn't really," you admit. You follow his gaze and look out to see in kind, down to just one massive talon tap-tap-tapping away at the stone beneath the stubborn grass. "I... found out what the map really points to. Did I ever tell you about the-? Doesn't matter, I have to tell it again anyway. I have a map that I thought pointed to treasure but the wizard I met did proper analysis on it and said it points to..."

There's an awkward, all-too-audible pause before you force out a semi-acceptable phrasing of it. "... to what I want."

"Mm?" He glances at you out of the corner of his eye, paying attention without quite grasping your meaning. Not yet.

"And... it must be faulty because instead of pointing at gold like it should it's pointing at... people," you say haltingly. "A certain type of people. Like the wizard in question. And Makram. And Jun-ho. And some guy I met while cleaning up my cave. And you."

It takes him a second. You see the instant it connects, the incubus double-taking quick enough his hair whips free and dances in the wind once more. His ponytail slips off his shoulder and hangs low, more resistant to the coastal breeze - looks like it'd be waist-length if he let it all down. It really does look like a relic of the past, of a youth when it was more of an appropriate 'look' that he's never found the heart to get rid of. There's a certain look in his eyes as he meets your gaze, a half-squinting look that seems almost... suspicious that you're making it up. Trying to trick him for whatever reason. What's got him so jumpy? This is all about you, after all.

"So it's pointing at people you wanna date?" Belial asks after a too-long pause. "How's it know about guys you've never even met yet?"

"Abzu says it's about compatibility," you reply, lifting one foreclaw to wave vaguely. "Not that that mattered to Makram and now four of the five people on the map who I've met know and there's still five more to meet which is oddly quantifiable as far as potential romantic interests go and I'm feeling very..."

You trail off, constantly searching for a suitable word and finding none.

"Confused?" Belial prompts. "Overwhelmed?"

You sigh and sink down low, resting your jaw on your crossed forelegs. "Close enough." Your nostrils flare in a huff. "It might not have been so bad had that stupid wizard not been so... so forward. Now you, you're one thing, you've been considerate and kept to yourself on the whole which is nice, but Abzu took appearing on the map as carte blanche to start talking about going on- on dates and acting all flirty."

"Why'd talking about dates and getting flirty make you uncomfortable?" Belial asks.

You look at him like he's grown another head. "Because... because I barely know them!"

"You still stayed the night. Y'get up to anything?"

You sputter. "That- I- of course not! To even- the implication! I did no such thing and- and- and furthermore I will not have you speak to me in such a frank manner ever again! Are we clear?"

Belial just looks at you for a minute, easily holding eye contact with you even in your massive true form. Then he looks away, shuffles over about a foot, and pats the cliffside beside himself. "C'mon, sit up here."

You look at him like he's grown yet another head and now guards the sexy underworld.

"S'not like I'll bite." He pats the cliffside again. "This is the relationship advice part I mentioned before, so take it or leave it."

You eye him dubiously. This is all very irregular and you'd have half a mind to take off and go sulk on your gold if it weren't for Jun-ho playing with Abzu's dumb little familiar in your lair and sundry. So, as grumpily as possible, you shift down to your bipedal form and shuffle over, sitting down on the cold stone cliffside beside the incubus with a heavy thump. Even with a generous bit of distance between your hips it's easy to see how he can be out in the cold and the wind with so little on, he's radiating heat like a fire. Probably runs as hot as Makram, if not more. In any case he keeps his hands in his lap and his eyes above the shoulder.

"First I'm gonna ask you something," he says. "And I want you to just answer me honestly, no stumbling around and avoiding the question and trying to sidetrack things. It's really not helpful to either of us. Alright?"

"I suppose," you say begrudgingly.

"Are you a virgin?"

You clamp your jaw shut like a steel trap, scaly lips curled into what must be a ridiculous frown of offence as your eyes go as wide as dinnerplates. You clasp your hands together in your lap so hard you can feel all the muscles in your arms bulging. For a minute it's like an entire committee's stood up in your head and all started trying to talk over each other in various strains of 'how dare you' and 'irrelevant to the case' and comebacks like 'are you' that run the gamut between unhelpful to just plain stupid. It goes on for quite a while and yet, through it all, Belial doesn't prompt you again. He just looks at you, his head cocked slightly, and waits patiently.

"... (yes)," you say at last.

His lips quirk up into a half-smile again, a soft snort of amusement escaping his nose.

"It's not funny!" you snap practically the moment he makes a noise.

"I'm not laughing at you," he says, relaxed as can be. "It's just the situation that's kinda funny. Gay and bi virgins were kind of my speciality back in the day so like, trust me. I've seen every single variant of it."

You narrow your eyes at him. "Is this the part where you brag about the amount of virgins you've deflowered in the pursuit of whatever dark purpose a demon is sent to this plane to accomplish?"

He shrugs. He's so sanguine about everything it's bordering on annoying. At least with Makram you can't feel bad about it because he instigates or hits back. Now you just feel all guilty. You fall silent and wait for the incubus to say something.

"Guy's gotta eat," he says at last. "And virginity's a bullshit societal fabrication anyway, but that doesn't matter when it feels so real and how it feels matters more than anything else in my experience." He glances at you. "It's so easy to bite down the urge every time, isn't it? When you get that thought in your head that a guy's cute, or when you want to say he has a nice laugh, or when you just want to picture it all in your head. You tell yourself it doesn't matter because the first ten, twenty, thirty times it really doesn't feel like it does. But it sticks around, and it piles up, and it starts sticking together into one big ball of sour feelings that gets harder and harder to stomach but even harder to do anything about."

You look away. The incubus is being utterly ridiculous, of course. Plenty of dragons take same-sex mates. It's allowed. It's accepted, even. And in the mortal world, in your own little playground of Söfnun, you're important. You're powerful. You're a dragon no matter what guise you take, acting like anything at all could stop you pursuing something you want is patently absurd.

"You've been all jumpy and erratic 'cause some guys you know found out you might be attracted to them," Belial goes on, his voice deep and worn at the edges by age but soft and gentle all the same. "Doesn't that seem kinda silly?"

"Yeah. Well. When you put it like that," you say half-heartedly.

"The whole thing's kinda silly," he says, as if in agreement. "Sex is- heh, well it's a pretty big topic and I'm a bit of a biased viewpoint here so hey take this however you will, but... If you can tell yourself, honestly, that the reason you're a virgin is 'cause you wanna work it out with the person you know you wanna be serious with and you just haven't found 'em yet, then hey. That's your right and that's got its own beauty."

You notice movement out of the corner of your eye. You think he's brushing his hair back behind his ear. He doesn't go on. The second half of that particular speech is hanging there in the air, as real as an apple dangling from the boughs of a tree, but he doesn't pick it. At best he's tugging at the base of the branch, bringing it down just far enough that you can reach if you try. A seagull lands beside him, scrutinising him haughtily with pale yellow eyes as if huffily demanding he relinquish the food he's so clearly hiding. He chuckles softly, gingerly shooing it away until it finally takes the hint and flaps off with a disgruntled squawk.

"And if not?" you ask. "... hypothetically."

"Hypothetically." He folds his hands in his lap and lets his head tip back, staring blankly up at the grey clouds above. You think it's starting to drizzle a bit. "With the guys I've seen in the past, it varies. Hah, sometimes all they wanted was a date, y'know? Just to have dinner or go see some sights and hold hands, maybe a kiss at the end. Romance and desire works for us just as much as lust and sex so, y'know, I was easy. Nothing cuter than a guy's smile when you gave him the first real date of his life and you know he's ready to go looking for more." He trails off for a moment, smiling to himself as he allows his mind to wander in memory. He seems to grow a little more sombre as he drags himself back to the present. "And there's the 'deflowering' as you put it, yeah. Sometimes that's the barrier to break. Sometimes that's what you need to realise that part of yourself you've been feeding scraps and keeping caged for so long doesn't have to be so scary, y'know? You can have some fun, get dressed in the morning, and still be the same person you were the night before. Maybe just a lil' wiser about how to do it without it hurting, hah."

Another gull-cry, followed by another, higher-pitched squeak. The seagull is back and brought its child, a scraggly little grey ball of fluff and puff.

"(oi, your ugly child won't make food magically appear, fuck off,)" he grumbles under his breath, flicking his talons at the pair. The parent nips him in retaliation. "(ow!)"

You're not sure if it's just the release of tension or if you're just that easy to please, but you snort loud enough that even Belial seems a little startled. The seagull hops in place, as if only just now realising there's a dragon on this same cliffside, before scooping up its child in its beak and flapping away double-time. Now it's Belial's turn to join in, shoulders shaking slightly as he chuckles. You immediately look away again, remembering yourself all at once. Belial just squints up at the clouds again.

"... you're not unlovable, y'know," he says at last. "It's a rare guy that is. I've seen 'em, and you aren't. You're just..."

Lonely.

Belial scritches just below his jaw, maybe scrubbing at some invisible stubble. "But s'all just my opinion. If you've got stuff that needs doing I'm good to chill here a while longer."

But you don't. At the very least, not until tomorrow at minimum. And... and he's given you a lot to think about. You've been sitting so still on this cliffside so long you're starting to cramp up, it's terrible and you hate it but it's hard to even imagine getting up and leaving. Instead you open your mouth in a burst of impulsive energy and ask

[ ] If he'd like to... show you how it's done.
[ ] If he'd like to go on a date.