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

It's kind of telling that your first thought is 'no eavesdropping is a bad idea Issachar will just magically know like he always does', isn't it? He's been stringing you along at every turn, staying exactly as private as he likes, taking things at his pace and no quicker. But you did manage to catch him off-guard with something, didn't you? All this time and he didn't even know he was on the map, didn't know you were willing to take this further than your strange... fffrrriiieeennnddddship? You suppose you'd call it friendship, certainly more than a neighbour by this point.

You sigh, hanging your head and scratching the back of your scaly neck. No. You're angry and frustrated and you just want answers but that doesn't excuse it. Issachar invited you here to finally talk to you about things. He deserves the benefit of the doubt, even if it does feel like his last chance.

You knock. You can practically hear Issachar and his mysterious guest freeze inside. There's a pregnant pause in which you have no doubt in your mind the woman is vanishing into thin air just like Issachar would, before finally Issachar calls "It's unlocked!"

You turn the handle and step across the threshold. And double-take because the woman is still there.

"O-oh," you say. "Sorry I just- I expected Issachar to be home alone is all."

"It's no trouble," the woman replies. By her accent you assume she's speaking Elvish, the Sultanate dialect to be exact, but with the automatic translation it's a bit of a wild guess. "I was close by and Issachar was seeking my advice in certain matters."

"Oh?" You glance at Issachar. You catch him shooting the woman an ambiguous look before his gaze flits over to you. "A friend of yours?"

"Mm," he replies. "Friend, colleague, comrade, it's a little difficult to define. I mentioned I apprenticed to a priest at a library in my youth? Bashira is quite the academic herself. We did collaborate on some archaeological projects back in the day - dungeon-delving you might say, not as deep as the Beyond, just looking for the older stratum of the Sultanate jeopardised by the war."

"Ah. Nice to meet you," you say, trying to be polite for once, and extend your right hand to shake. Bashira extracts her left from the folds of her niqab instead. You blink once, awkwardly swap hands as quick as you can, and shake like nothing happened.

"You should sleep soundly, knowing that Issachar watches over you," Bashira remarks, an ambiguously playful lilt in her voice and gleam in her exposed eyes. "He's proven himself a reliable confidant in the past."

"Thank... you?" you reply, extracting your claw and letting it fall by your side. Issachar's chair scrapes as he shuffles it back and stands up, drawing your eye.

"Apologies, I meant to have dinner ready but you were a little quicker than I expected," he says, sidling over to the kitchenette. "You won't be too offended if I make something quick and easy?"

"No no not at all," you say with a wave of your hand.

"And Bashira-?" he asks.

You follow his gaze. Bashira is gone, not even the creak of the door swinging shut or a stray footfall to betray her passage. You give an idle thought to bursting outside, as if you'd catch her furtively sprinting away across the stormy moors, but you know full well it'd be a futile gesture.

"... so that's what that feels like," Issachar mutters to himself. He purses his lips into a harsh, thin line, before throwing up his hands with a sigh and turning back to the kitchenette. "Sorry about that. Take a seat, I shouldn't be too long."

You pull up a chair at the table and gingerly sit down, somewhat wary as you always are with mortal furniture in this form that it'll buckle under your superior draconic weight. Despite a few worrisome creaks it seems to hold. You wiggle your hips forward, chairlegs scraping back and forth across the floorboards, as you make room to slot your tail through that gap at the bottom of the seat-back. The sound seems downright deafening in the quiet. Once it's finally over you sit still, knees together, hands on your thighs. Over in the kitchenette you see Issachar flick on the stove - an electrical one, very fancy, but if anyone can get cheap power it's him.

Issachar goes rooting around in the icebox, cubes rattling and rustling against each other, and you let your gaze wander. The place is modest but rustically comfortable, a single rectangular structure shaped by amateur yet exceedingly methodical hands to have anything a man could need, what you assume to be the bedroom walled off from the rest of the room seemingly as an afterthought. An oil lamp sits on the table next to you - the light you saw through the window - and a soft couch lies against the narrow wall of the room opposite the bedroom door. The kitchenette is a nook carved out of the corner across and to your right, the polished wooden counter curving around like a curtain wall, and through the hanging veil of pots and pans and knives you see Issachar hard at work with a quiet intensity. Something bubbles and boils, something else sizzles and sears. The smell's almost enough to take your mind off what you came here for.

Should you make conversation? Is it more polite to just wait for dinner? Would it be rude to pry while he's trying to work? Or does he think you're giving him the cold shoulder by staying silent!? Augh this is intol- wait, cooking! Start with something light!

"How was the cooking class today?" you ask, acting casual. "Jun-ho certainly seemed happy."

Issachar chuckles. "Yeah, he and Abzu are certainly... that way." He sets a lid on the pot for a moment, the glass clouding with steam. "Belial was no stranger to it either. I think he used to be pretty good at it, whenever it was he practised more. It was starting to come back but, well. You know Belial, so I'm sure you can picture how he was about it."

"Mm."

Shit that didn't last long. Something else hisses in the pan - you think Issachar's pouring in a simmer-sauce - and a few more silent moments pass as he pushes the pieces of meat around with a wooden spoon. You shift awkwardly in your seat, the chair seeming to creak extra-loud treacherously. He tips the meat into the pot, chops some vegetables, and tips those right in after it. Tap-tap-tap go your toe-talons on the floor, and clearly you're not the only one starting to feel the atmosphere.

"Look..." Issachar sets the lid back on the pot and turns down the heat, leaning over the kitchen counter with his hands spread wide. "This isn't going to get any easier so I'll just start from the beginning. You remember when we first met?"

"When you helped me clean up all my gold, yes. Why?"

He sighs, turning his head to at least catch you out of the corner of his eye. "I was lying, Eldingar. I didn't receive a 'vision' of your great 'destiny'. When I told you I was there just to try and be nice to you as a neighbour, that was the truth. But you wouldn't take that for an answer and I came up with something on the spot."

"But... why that?" you ask. "Of all the lies you could've told why go as big as 'destiny'?"

"You accepted it immediately with literally zero follow-up questions," he points out.

"Okay so maybe you hit a winner," you say begrudgingly. "But still, why wouldn't I have been suspicious? What kind of person tries to be charitable and neighbourly to a dragon out of the blue?"

"Well, me for starters," he replies with a wry smile. "But the truth is I've been peeking over the fence, figuratively speaking, for a while now. I knew you lived in that spire, and I knew you flew out to Söfnun every so often, but never any visitors to your home. Other dragons, an ifrit and an incubus all converging in the span of twenty-four hours was pretty noticeable so I finally swung by to see if I could help. I saw you all alone in that musty cave picking up gold one coin at a time like it was the only thing in the world you had left and... I don't know. I started to wonder."

He straightens up, half-turning towards you. "Were you really happy? Living like that, before everything with the map and the others."

You furrow your brow. "Of- of course I was," you reply haltingly. "Why do you ask?"

He smiles slightly, sadly. "Because I live like that too, really," he says, gesturing at his modest abode. "The trappings are different, sure, but you have your comfort and I have mine. Concealed caves and wealth, a soft place to sit and and read, and solitude most of all. But it comes with a certain... unease, doesn't it? This feeling that maybe you've been deceiving yourself all this time. This creeping doubt that you aren't as happy as you think you are, or that it could all be upended by one unexpected caller. Which- well I suppose that's exactly what happened to you, many times over."

He sees your expression and waves his hand reassuringly. "I don't need you to speak up and confirm or deny any of this. I'm only thinking out loud. Trying to straighten it out in my head." He leans back, hip resting against the counter. "I was just so certain that it would stay like this. Me right here in my own little lair, with my own wealth, near but far away. The idea of joining what you're trying to have with the others just seemed so... antithetical, it shocked me."

"You said something about 'unique circumstances' or something too?" you ask. "Something you didn't feel comfortable talking about in public?"

"Mm. I'm starting to feel a little melodramatic, so bear with me," he replies with a self-effacing smile. He falls silent for a moment, trying to puzzle out what he should say next. His eyes alight on the bubbling pot, and that seems to inspire him.

"Take food," he says, slipping the lid back off the pot far enough to let a puff of steam escape. "You crave it on a fundamental level. You can sometimes not be hungry, sometimes voluntarily try to suppress your hunger, but the urge will still be there because the need is an intrinsic part of you. You're with me so far?"

You nod, completely confused by where he could be going with this but hey, you've come this far.

"Now, let's take Lyrros at his word," he goes on. He slips the wooden spoon down into the pot and gingerly scoops out a lump of tenderly-cooked meat, sitting in its own little puddle of spiced sauce in the shallow bowl of the spoon's curve. He raises it to his lips, the steam curling up from the piping hot morsel and into his nose. "He can eat. He can enjoy the aroma, the presentation, the texture, the flavours whether simple or complex-" he tips the meat and sauce into his mouth, closing his eyes to do just what he described, jaw working as he chews and swallows.

"But he doesn't need to," he finishes, gesturing with the empty spoon for emphasis. "He doesn't experience that same fundamental drive to eat that you do. He can have a single pastry at a party to be polite and then go without so much as a flake for a year if he desires."

"Okay?" you say, hoping it'll become clear soon.

"That is how I feel about sex."

You could hear a pin drop in the silence that falls. You can certainly hear the stew bubbling away in the background.

"... oh," you say at last.

"Mm."

"Ohhhh."

"Indeed."

You look every which way, brow furrowed as you parse through it one more time just to make sure you've got it.

"No wonder you were leery of talking about it in front of everyone," you say. "Growing up around everyone eating their three meals a day and pestering you about how natural it is to be hungry must have grown pretty tiresome I'd imagine."

He smiles slightly. "Hey, you caught on quick. Good. I'd been rehearsing that metaphor all evening."

You try to smile in kind. "It shows."

Issachar turns back to his cooking, shifting the lid fully back on the pot and rinsing off the spoon in the sink. "So yes. I have had sex before," he says. "Twice, both with men. I enjoyed it, and so did they, but... well, it's been a long time since, and despite all I've heard growing up I haven't yet been overcome by a slavering mating-frenzy." He chuckles halfheartedly at his own joke. "I feel romantic attraction just fine. But the sexual side is... I usually don't bother trying. But with the way things have turned out between us, I didn't want any false pretences. That's all."

Tap-tap-tap goes the spoon on the side of the sink to dry. He turns the heat down on the stove even more. He seems to be done for the moment, and if the smell is any indicator dinner's almost ready. There's certainly plenty to chew over, and you're moderately relieved you let him go home and have the time off to get his thoughts together because honestly you'd like some of that yourself. But you get the feeling that right now, being timely is more important. Issachar finally let you see more. Something most don't get to. You can't just meet that with silence.

[ ] Tell Issachar, as gently as you can, that you're not sure if it would work out with him romantically. The sexual side is definitely important, and if it became some constant pressure or chore for him that sounds awful for everyone involved.
[ ] Tell Issachar, politely yet frankly, that his lack of sex drive really isn't the most pressing issue. He's still hiding things, between his ambiguous mortality and his mysterious past and mysterious associates and mysterious powers. Ask him to please just explain, once and for all.
[ ] Offer to let Issachar think over what he wants for as long as he'd like. He seems to do well with time to think, and you're in no rush to try and intrude or pressure him. And fuck if you know how to help untangle this.
[ ] Tell Issachar it's kind of dumb that he thought this would ruin the chances of things working between you. One of the many benefits of polyamory is that he wouldn't need to feel that pressure for sex. There'd be enough willing partners to go around, leaving him free to focus on the romantic side.
[ ] Suggest a romantic gesture, something to see if there's a spark without crossing his boundaries. Saunter up to him, say something very suave and confident and charming, then give him a kiss. Kisses should be safe for him, right? Probably. You'll ask to be safe.