Dav kissed my hand.
It's all I can think about.
I don't want to sit out the back of Beanevolence for our break. I need to be in public or I won't be able to trust myself.
"Let's go out," I suggest, as Dav dons his shirt and waistcoat, attention laser-focused on his buttons. He's suddenly bashful. For being caught in just his under-shirt? (How cute, he still wears an under-shirt.) Or being overheard by every customer? Or being shouted at by Hadi? Or kissing my hand? "How about the board game café at the top of the street?"
"As you like," he agrees softly.
I'd like you to mean this. Please, don't let me misunderstand. Please don't let me fuck this up.
Dav said he didn't want my love confession to be a joke. Then he'd kissed my hand.
My stomach fizzes as we head out, avoiding the gazes of the dwindling crowd.
Dav kissed my hand.
I float the whole block to the resto. The owner, a woman with bright red corkscrew curls and an infectious smile, offers up some free craft beer when she finds out we're part of the café crew, and begs us to let her know when we'll be selling packets of our new roast so she can start slinging it here.
When she's dropped off our lunches, Dav twirls his spoon through his chili and, like he's ripping off a band aid, blurts out: "I have nothing else to do."
I look up from my burger, caramelized onion dripping out the corner of my mouth. Oh, yeah, real attractive. But Dav kissed my hand, so he doesn't care.
"Sorry?" I dive for a napkin, because I'm still replaying that kiss like a looped GIF in my mind, and this isn't where I thought this conversation would start.
He sinks back into the banquette, the closest thing to a slouch I've seen from him. "You've asked me, repeatedly, why I came to the café every day."
"Okay." I give him the space to elaborate, instead of making a joke about how it's obviously because he thinks I'm cute. You don't kiss the hand of people you think are not-cute.
Dav stabs his chili. His spoon stands straight up. "I have nothing else to do." For the first time since the kitchen, he meets my eyes. His face is unshuttered again, that's something, but he looks deeply unhappy. I want to kiss the worry away, but I don't know if we're there, yet. I don't know if that's actually what he wants.
I decide to focus on the conversation he clearly wants to have, instead of the one Hadi interrupted and I'm dying to get back to. Who knew I'd be all communicate-y. I've never been the one who likes to talk it out in a relationship before. Dr. Chen would be proud.
Relationship, I think, biting down the goofy grin that's threatening. Dav kissed my hand.
"That can't be true," I press. "Everyone knows dragons work in government, or head charities, or, or wealth management portfolios, whatever those are, or all the important shit for maintaining an estate."
One corner of Dav's mouth curls into a self-depreciating smirk.
"Odious letters of business," he says, paraphrasing Pride & Prejudice, in the bit where Caroline is pestering the dragon Darcy as he tries to attend to his correspondence. Dav remembers that I like Jane Austen. It makes me giddy. Maybe we can read them together.
He kissed my hand.
"Yeah, like that."
Dav shakes his head. "Not me."
I open my mouth to ask But really?, and stop when I realize he is genuinely miserable about this. "I don't understand," I say gently, instead. "You can explain if you want, or I'll shut up."
"Don't shut up," Dav says immediately. "But, please, you must understand, it's terribly... mortifying. For a dragon to have no purpose..."
I snort. "Your purpose is to stare at me like a thirsty creep. But don't worry, I don't mind it, now."
He makes a distressed whining noise that's entirely inhuman. "Please forgive me. I didn't intend... I simply enjoy watching you serve."
"Okay, explain that." I wave a fry in his direction before popping it in my mouth.
"There is a deep-rooted instinct in the homo daconis," he begins softly. He splays his hand against his chest as if to keep his heart from thudding right through his ribs. "A desire to ah, to use the crude pop culture vernacular, to hoard."
"Yeah," I say, nodding along, because this isn't news to anyone. "Land, wealth, titles. I know."
Dav looks stricken. "You understand, then, that in the colonies, European dragons claimed for themselves overlarge swathes of territories, as if they were utterly unoccupied. And when they were seen to be occupied, but not the way we would do it, it was called 'underutilized' and therefore free for the rescuing from those Indigenous dragons doing it wrong." He makes that hiss-spit noise, and I'm reminded that there must be some interesting architecture in the back of his throat.
Maybe I'll find it with my tongue when I finally get to kiss him properly.
"So, colonizers," I say carefully, wondering if my opinion on this is going to put us at odds. "I'm following so far."
"Thieves," he sneers in agreement, and yeah, whew, okay. We're still on the same page. "Save for what the Empirical dragons so graciously allowed the Indigenous Peoples to retain. Pah." He catches himself, eyes darting around, and he hunches down again.
Interesting. Probably not a topic he's supposed to be having opinions about in public. Not as the beneficiary of those 'thieves'.
"So, what," I say slowly. "You don't, uh, have any place?"
He's going to give himself whiplash, the way he keeps snapping his head up at me. "I most certainly do maintain territory!" he hisses with indignation that, in a human, might have suggested I had said something nasty about his ability to get it up.
"Sorry," I say, hands up, don't shoot. "I'm just trying to understand."
Dav does something I've never seen him do—he looks actively upset, like he's going to cry. His nose scrunches up and his eyes go squidgy. He blinks a few times and his lashes spike.
He's beautiful, I think, watching him struggle. He kissed my hand. I want to return the favor, kiss each digit one by one.
I also don't want to move too fast. He's clearly got some notions of how things are supposed to go. I don't know what they all are, but I can damn well respect the lines he's already drawn.
"I know, and I appreciate that," he says. He heaves another sigh. "You needn't worry. I have both territory and nesting grounds—a small estate—out in Canborough."
Not sure why he thinks I'd be worried he doesn't have territory. Or nesting grounds.
But good for him, I guess?
I wrack my brains and realize his 'estate' is a twenty minute drive from Beanevolence, in the middle of vineyard country. I assumed he lived within walking distance. Why else would he even know Beanevolence exists? But I've never seen a car.
Maybe he flies in. I imagine Dav with big leathery wings protruding from his back, soaring in the mist above Niagara Falls, dancing in and out of the mist plumes. He's being serious with me right now, though, so I cover my grin by taking another big bite of my burger. Half the topping squirts out the bottom.
"Of course, because I manage an estate, it is only right that I have a housekeeper for the house, a manager for the farm, a head vintner for the grapes, and a winemaker for my cellars," Dav goes on softly. "It's all very proper. And so even at home, I have nothing to do."
"And you're not involved in, like, I dunno, local government or BIAs? I thought there's always a dragon on committees and stuff."
"No." He's actually squirming..
"So what does this have to do with you liking how I serve?"
Dav puffs out a breath. He stares out at the street, watching the passersby. He's not avoiding my question, he's trying to figure out how to answer it, so I let him be as I try to shove the pickles back in my bun with mustardy fingers.
Why did Dav ever kiss my hand?
"I am—" he stops, voice crackling, the rims of his eyes red, his face splotchy. "I am unnecessary."
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