Work Text:
Riz hasn’t seen his best friend in person since four days after prom.
He’s not the only one, at least, but it’s hardly a comfort when he stops to think about why. Something had happened to Fabian during the battle with Kalvaxus (or before the battle, now that he thinks about it, he showed up with horns and scales and one less eye than before and there wasn’t time to ask what happened before they were all fighting again), a blast of dragonfire that should have severely injured him instead forcing him to sprout wings and a tail and horrible curving spines. It had been jarring to watch, sure, but Riz had mostly been preoccupied with his father’s murderer gloating in his face and Kristen somehow creating a new god while giving them all a chance to rest and getting to kill and eat Kalvaxus with his mom. He hadn’t really had the time to process any of it, you know?
The following days…well, those were a different beast entirely.
See, Aguefort might be a specialized high school for young adventurers, but it’s still a high school. Gossip travels fast, and a relatively popular half-elf jock morphing unexpectedly into a half-dragon creature makes for a good story. Add in the fact that a dragon had orchestrated the kidnapping of seven well-liked teenage girls and destroyed their prom, that miraculous transformation happening during a battle with said dragon, and the Seacaster family history of plunder and murder, and Fabian’s status as a potential “king of the school” shattered overnight. Upperclassmen who once high-fived him in the hall and congratulated his performance on the bloodrush team now gave him the cold shoulder and talked behind his back, peers who had their first school dance ruined by Kalvaxus steered clear and gave him suspicious looks, and even the teachers who wound up sucked into palimpsests ended up being wary and unfriendly. Gorthalax and Jawbone tried their best to provide a buffer and even Aguefort himself seemed displeased about the whole thing, but having the whole school turn against him so abruptly resulted in Fabian fleeing at the end of day four and not showing up at all the following morning.
The worst part about it is that everyone else seems totally cool with Riz now, and he and the others are regarded as heroes on top of it. It’s the kind of thing he would have given almost anything for as a tiny, friendless kid—he’s got five incredible friends who also make up his amazing adventuring party, the respect of his classmates and peers, and the knowledge that he solved a case, found Penny, and killed the dragon that ate his father. He’s done everything he could ever dream of accomplishing in his freshman year and so much more. It should feel like a dream come true, right? He should be excited.
Except he can’t be excited, because he’s gotten everything he wanted at the cost of his best friend’s identity and self-esteem, and all of those feelings of success and pride and accomplishment wither to dust the second he thinks about the look on Fabian’s face when the Seven Maidens leveled their weapons at him after the battle. Sure, they’d quickly been steered back in the direction of Kalvaxus, but there was something bone-chillingly awful about the way Fabian had curled in on himself and shied away from the hand Gorgug tried to place on his back. He’s not supposed to look like that, some part of Riz had said plaintively, all-too-aware of the fear written into every line of Fabian Aramais Seacaster’s scale-speckled face and hating himself for being unable to help. He’s not supposed to be this scared, this shaken. He’s supposed to be okay.
He was worse than scared, of course, and far worse than shaken. He was terrified, and Riz watched helplessly as that fear followed him throughout the next half-week; he and the others attempted to stick up for him, sure, but it didn’t do nearly enough to convince anyone that Fabian wasn’t a threat. He’s pretty sure some of them think he’s been brainwashed by a dragon in the shape of his friend (which is incredibly insulting considering that he’s not a fan of dragons as a whole and, y’know, that Fabian was friends with him way before any of these assholes bothered), and now—
Well, now Fabian is hiding in his stupidly gigantic walk-in closet instead of going to school, and no one else has actually managed to coax him back out.
It’s not for lack of trying, and Fabian at least hasn’t completely cut himself off from society. He’s active in the Bad Kids groupchat and texts Riz one-on-one frequently, though he hasn’t sent a single picture since before they wound up in jail. He joins their calls, but he never turns on the video and is always the first to leave, and his social media profiles have all been deactivated. He even lets them visit! He just…he won’t leave.
Riz half-wishes he could claim that he didn’t understand why, but he does. He does. The annoying logical-conclusions part of his brain puts the pieces together of the abrupt transformation and the uncanny timing and can see why people are suspicious, and then looks at the way they’ve reacted to Fabian and knows exactly why he thinks he’s a monster now. He doesn’t like any of it, but he can see why, and the worst part is that none of them are actually innocent of the whole “convincing him he’s monstrous now” thing. It’s not intentional, of course, but Adaine went to drop off notes for one of their final exams and wound up having a panic attack due to the whole dragon-fear-aura thing, and and then Kristen kept bringing him books on teenage dragonborn and Gorgug kept rubbing his scars from the prom fight and none of them are actually getting through to him or convincing him it’s alright.
It should be alright. Riz wants to be able to tell him it’s alright. That’s the whole point of visiting his best friend in his stupid closet-blanket-burrow. He’s supposed to walk in there and tell him that he’s not a monster, that he’s loved and that his friends and family care about him and that the people at school are just bullies and assholes who haven’t faced even a fraction of what he’s been through. He has to act like things are normal and like nothing important has changed. He should be able to do that. He can do that, he swears he can.
All he has to do is knock on the door.
Riz grits his teeth, rocking back on his heels as he stares down the only barrier between him and Fabian. The door to the closet isn’t even particularly imposing, some wooden sliding thing that’s solid but fairly maneuverable. The only thing he has to do is push it open, right? Cathilda already let him into the house and is expecting him to talk to Fabian. He wants to talk to Fabian. He should be able to do this. There’s absolutely no reason for him to balk now, not when he’s so close and his friend is hurting and scared and alone. There’s no damn reason for him to hesitate.
He looks like the monster killed your father now, a voice whispers in the back of his mind, snide and cruel. Riz tells the voice to shut up none-too-politely, his tail snapping furiously across the floor as he curls his claws into his palms. It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? His brain keeps dragging itself back toward that one stupid, blatantly untrue thought and ruining everything, even though Fabian isn’t even really the same species as Kalvaxus. He’s still mostly humanoid, just with a tail and fangs and scales and wings. His scales aren’t even the same damn color! They’re gold and green and so far from that dull, harsh red. He doesn’t look like Kalvaxus.
That doesn’t stop his brain from seeing fangs and spikes and dragon claws and thinking MURDERER, apparently, but it’s the truth. Fabian isn’t Kalvaxus, and there’s no actual reason for Riz’s brain to tie itself into knots every time he tries to go see his best friend. There’s no reason for him to be standing right outside of his closet, close enough that he could hear him if he decided to speak, and have to fight against some horrible instinct insisting that he’s a threat instead of comforting him.
Fabian isn’t Kalvaxus. Fabian is Riz’s best friend in the whole world, one of the best people he knows in general, and he doesn’t deserve to feel alone and awful and scared of himself, damnit. Riz isn’t going to let something like this stop him from being there for his friend.
“Fabian?” he calls, knocking on the door warily and pricking his ears up; there’s no sound of rustling blankets or tapping claws, and his tail taps on the ground. “You know I’m not gonna let you wallow in there, right? If you don’t answer I’m still coming in.”
There’s no verbal answer, but he finally hears something move, an unfamiliar weight slithering across the ground as adrenaline jolts up his spine like a crossbow bolt. Riz takes a step back before he can process the sound, that guilt curling tighter in his stomach when the noise stops immediately. Right. Enhanced senses. He definitely heard that. “I’m still here, man.” His voice doesn’t waver, and he steps closer, closer, closer until his hands are braced against the door. “I’m not leaving. I’m gonna open the door now, and I brought comics and a laptop DVD-player instead of homework. It’s gonna be awesome.”
That swishing sound happens again, now sounding more like a tail dragging across the ground than anything threatening, and Riz exhales roughly before pushing the door to the side. It rolls smoothly, soundlessly, faint light from the room seeping into the dark closet. There’s not much in there, which is a little unsettling since there’s so much space (unsurprising, though, Fabian’s room has always been weirdly minimalist), but the tangle of blankets and pillows in the middle of it all gives a pretty good indication as to where Fabian’s been sleeping. His back aches in sympathy at the lack of any visible mattress, resolutely ignoring the deep gouges he’d spotted in the actual bedframe where his claws tore through cloth and wood like butter.
Could be worse, though, right? He turns in a slow circle, furrowing his brow at the sudden lack of clothes in Fabian’s closet. Sure, it’s not like there was ever much variety to begin with, but there was certainly plenty of athleisure-wear from what he remembers. Now it’s just…empty, except for the duvets and throw blankets and cushions. He could be dying, or his parents could have kicked him out, or he could have run away and we’d never find him again. Comparatively, this is okay, even if there’s a lot of loose hangers and he’s sleeping on the floor.
He’s okay and he’s safe. He’s just different. You can deal with that.
“They don’t fit anymore.”
Riz doesn’t jolt at the sudden voice, though it goes against every too-sharp, too-jumpy instinct not to. He glances over his shoulder instead, following the sound to a particularly colorful collection of blankets as six sharp, curving horns emerge and Fabian lifts his head slowly. His remaining eye is a deep, vicious gold without any indication of the silvery iris or white sclera from before all this, his pupil a deadly slit just a little too reminiscent of his enemy’s, but Riz shoves the thought aside as his friend blinks at him in exhaustion. A spiny, gleaming green tail snakes slowly across the ground, claws that sliced through dragon scales and dragon flesh like they were little more than paper curling oh-so carefully into the blankets—and despite all the stupid fear in Riz’s chest, there’s a sharp pang of envy at the sight of the giant, powerful wings splayed across the floor.
He could fly if he wanted, he thinks, even as Fabian tilts his head, shoulders hunched and his eye dark and distant in a distinctly un-Fabian-ish way. He could see the world from an entirely different perspective, something most people never get a chance to do. Hell, I’m an adventurer and I might never get to do that. He can, though. He could.
Guess that’s a pretty cool thing, even if it comes with being a dragon. “What do you mean?”
Fabian does roll his eye at that, his pupil dilating slightly as he draws his wings closer to his back. The green-gold patterns of scales on his face seem to almost swirl when he does, the faint glow making even the mottled ones entangled with scar tissue glitter. “Well, it’s not like anything was built for these, was it?” There’s a caustic tone to his voice, smoke rasping across his words as he gestures bitterly at his tail and wings and the ridges running down his spine. “Cathilda’s altered some of them so I have things to wear, but Mama insisted on removing the rest. She said I ought to get used to this before I start buying things to cover it up.”
Riz blinks, watching as Fabian’s ears pin back and his tail curl slightly—a fear response. And wait, shit, did he just say that his mom wouldn’t let him buy new clothes after throwing out all of his old ones? “Get used to what?” he demands, dropping his briefcase on the floor and picking his way over the scattered cushions to join him. He hesitates a little at the sight of those claws, wicked and curved and threaded through with gold, before plopping down beside him with a scowl. Not afraid. I’m not afraid. “Not having clothes that fit anymore?”
Fabian scoffs, low and bitter. “Used to these.” He taps his horns, his claws scraping lightly over the two larger ones before poking at the auxiliary spikes. “And these,” he adds, curling his claws in until they scratch at scale-covered palms. “And the new limbs, and the way they move and react before I can stop them, and the spikes on my back that mean I can’t lie down anymore and the senses that make the world too bright and clear and painful to look at. She thinks I should be done being upset about it already.” His eye is fever-bright, practically molten. “She thinks this is a miracle.”
“Doesn’t seem super miraculous,” he says, and suppresses a wince when Fabian draws his knees to his chest with another low scoff. “I mean, there’s a known cause, right? This isn’t the act of a random deity, it’s the effect of a curse that she knew about and didn’t warn you of. That’s pretty far from a miracle.”
“You try arguing semantics with someone who’s been locked in a humanoid body for centuries and drunk for fifteen,” Fabian grumbles, sounding irritated. His gaze is fixed somewhere beyond Riz, his pupil contracting back to a feline slit. “She thinks I should be excited. Thrilled. She’s…she’s not happy that I’m not.” A shudder runs through his body from the tip of his tail to those twisting horns.
Riz furrows his brow, drawing a pillow into his lap and resting his arms on it for a moment. He doesn’t know much about Hallariel Seacaster, if he’s being honest; Fabian doesn’t talk about her half as much as his father, and she seemed awfully drunk the one time he actually saw her. He can’t imagine the woman he saw drifting throughout Seacaster Manor like a ghost being much of an active parent, but Fabian knows way, way more about her behavior than he ever possibly could.
Shit. Shit. He came here to commiserate with his friend and face his fears, and instead he’s heard at least two things that would make his mom start checking for signs of domestic violence. And there’s a stupid adrenaline rush surging with every sudden movement while he’s at it! “What, not happy that you didn’t instantly accept growing horns and scales?” he huffs, trying to keep his voice as light as possible. “I doubt she’d be a big fan of Fig, then.”
Fabian’s gaze flicks toward him, sharp and fierce and suddenly, horrifyingly familiar. He doesn’t mean to look away, but his eyes dart toward the ground before he can stop himself, cold fear and grief digging sharp teeth into his ribs. “She’s not happy that I ran away from it. She thinks I should be able to take the—the whispers, and the stares, and the assumptions. That it doesn’t matter that I send one of my best friends into a panic attack every time we’re in the same vicinity because she’s susceptible to that horrible fear aura, or that the others don’t know how to talk to me, or that I can’t hold a sword properly or that I look like the thing that kidnapped seven people and killed my best friend’s father—”
Riz’s blood freezes in his veins, his lungs drawing in a breath so sudden and clear that it hurts. The corner of Fabian’s mouth twists up into a mirthless grin, revealing a line of white, razor-sharp fangs. “You don’t have to pretend it isn’t affecting you, The Ball.” He shrugs, a languid movement that seems both familiar and entirely inhuman (and maybe that’s where that ethereal, mesmerizing grace came from, maybe it was never elven, maybe it was always something beautiful and dangerous and terrible). “You killed Kalvaxus to avenge your father, and now I look like the same thing that ruined your life. You’re afraid. Not like Adaine is, but I can hear it in your heartbeat.” His tail beats out a staccato rhythm, the spiked tip tapping in an eerie imitation of Riz’s racing pulse. “I can hear those now. They’re so loud. They get so much faster when people are afraid. People are always afraid.”
“I’m not.” It’s not a lie, not really. He isn’t afraid of Fabian. It’s not Fabian’s fault that he’s half-dragon, that his eyes are the same as those of Pok Gukgak’s murderer. He’s not afraid of Fabian, but he looks at him and he just—forgets, a little bit, in the worst possible way before it comes back together. “Not of you.”
“Aren’t you?” Fabian’s gaze is painfully steady, resolute in his exhaustion and defeat, and Riz watches worriedly as his wings fan out and he digs his claws into the wooden floors and stares at him, weary and waiting for vitriol. “What do you see, then?”
What do I see?
His mind takes off at the question, racing to catalog all of the threats in the room—all the dangerous parts of the only threat in the room, really. The horns, the claws, the scales and spikes and fangs all scream enemy, every instinct registering the signs of a dragon and seething with old rage and the urge to run. It would be so, so easy to listen to them, so easy to let himself see Kalvaxus in that molten yellow eye or the curve of his tail or the spines running in deadly ridges down his back. If he tried, he could.
That’s the scary part, he realizes distantly, staring into Fabian’s eye as his pupil contracts slowly. It’s not that he’s a monster, that he’s a dragon, that he’s different and intimidating and struggling to adjust and is so clearly as scared of himself as everyone else is. It’s that it would be so devastatingly simple to look at him and let Kalvaxus win. It would be. It’s horrible, but it would be. If he let the voice whispering about his father’s death and the dangers of dragons win, he could so easily assume that his best friend died somewhere in this house and woke up the kind of monster that kills Solesian agents. He looks the part, at least to Riz’s brain, and that feels awful.
Most of the time he’s fighting to prove that his instincts were right, that his brain is working faster and harder and picking up on more than most adults believe he is. And that sucks, it does, but it’s an entirely different kind of horrible to sit here and know that letting his gut instinct win is to hurt his friend in a way he can’t take back. It’s trauma, sure, that’s what Jawbone would call it, but that doesn’t change anything. They’re all traumatized. Fabian is traumatized.
Riz just has to sit here and not let his win, that’s all.
What do I see? he repeats to himself, watching as Fabian’s eye glazes over with a kind of impossible agony; he knows he’s waited too long to respond, that Fabian thinks he can’t refute his claim, but he’s wrong. What do you see?
He sees someone kind. He sees someone smarter than he lets on, smarter than he even believes himself to be. He sees someone who would rather hide in his own closet than frighten the people around him, even those who chased him out of school with whispers and rumors and assumptions. Someone who got him and all of their other friends personalized, thoughtful, touching gifts and didn’t even reveal that he was the one responsible, who turned a nickname that would otherwise have been humiliating into something that represents their friendship.
He sees someone who would go down swinging for any one of them, who took a blast of dragonfire head-on and felt wings rip through his back and still threw himself into the fight without hesitation.
He sees his best friend. He sees—
Smoke—from his mouth—green, venomous gas, he sees—he sees sparks—dragonfire—
Kalvaxus laughing, snarling, mocking him—
Fire, dragonfire, burning his father to ashes, he didn’t see it he didn’t but he knows it happened he knows it he hates him—
A dragon—about to burn him—about to—
There’s a sharp, wounded yelp, and Riz jolts back into himself with a gasp, his head and heart pounding as he registers a shift in position. He’s on his feet and a few steps back, a distance between himself and Fabian that wasn’t there before. His arms are stretched out in front of him, his hands wrapped around the hilt of a familiar object as shadows wreath his body—oh, gods, a familiar weapon. Oh, no. Oh no.
Fabian stares up at him from where he’s pressed to the wall, wide-eyed and betrayed and shaking, and Riz’s heart sinks right through the floor and all the way down to hell. “You do think I’m a monster,” he rasps, and there’s something damning about the words. He drops the Sword of Shadows like it’s burned him, the phantom sensation of pulling the trigger ringing sickeningly in his hands, but Fabian’s tail is tucked between his legs in the clearest sign of fear he’s seen from a tailed creature in years. “You think I’m like him.”
Riz stares at the sword he slew a dragon with, and then at his friend, and he knows “like him” doesn’t refer to Bill Seacaster. “No,” he protests weakly. It’s the truth, but it doesn’t sound like it. “No, Fabian, I don’t—”
“Yes, you do.” There’s no vitriol in Fabian’s voice, low and sonorous with a soft edge of smoke, but he won’t meet his eyes. “S’okay. I…your father died. I look like your enemy. I get it. You don’t have to lie.” Unfalteringly kind, even if it means setting himself up to lose his best friend. Riz wants to scream, or grab Aguefort’s watch and reset the world to about two minutes ago, even if it destroys some timeline or something. “You can go home, The Ball. It’s alright.”
“I’m not lying.” His insistence comes out sharper, loud enough that he practically hears Fabian’s jaw click shut, and he steps over his weapon to sit in front of him, tail twitching in agitation. “I’m not. You’re not a monster and you’re not like Kalvaxus and you didn’t do anything wrong. I just—you’re right, a little bit, because my dad did die and Kalvaxus was at fault and he almost killed all of us and I think my brain is messed up from all of that, alright? Like yours, and like everyone else’s, but a little extra because of the—the history. You’re right about that, but it doesn’t mean that I think you’re Kalvaxus.” Believe me, you have to believe me, you’re my friend and I’m sorry and I can’t lose you, please.
Fabian’s tail thumps against the ground and Riz’s moves to match it, the two noises differing in volume but still almost the same. “So I set you off by existing,” he mutters, the fear and shock bleeding into a vicious annoyance. “I’m still not quite grasping why that means you’re insistent on staying here, given that looking at you frightened you enough to get a sword pointed at me. I mean, I can handle it, but I’m frankly not a fan.”
You and me both, he thinks with a grimace. “The fire. It was the sparks.” There’s a flicker of recognition in Fabian’s eye when he says that and Riz nearly exhales with relief, instead pressing his forehead firmly against his. “I thought of the battle, and then my dad, and not you. It wasn’t about you.”
“It wasn’t about me,” Fabian repeats roughly, disbelievingly, before closing his eyes with a shaky exhale. “You didn’t answer when I said you were scared of me.”
Riz huffs despite himself, almost amused. Is he in shock? Is this something he can be in shock for? Maybe they both are, honestly. “I hate dragons and they freak me out. Instinctively and stuff. Dunno if it’s because of Dad, but some stupid part of me kicks up a fight when I see anything draconic and the rest of me sees my friend. Y’know, the one who put Dayne Blade in his place and has kickass claws and horns that Fig is itching to give him polish for and is better with a sword than anyone I know. I think you know him.”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, dude, you totally know him.” Riz pokes him in the neck until he draws away, regarding him through a wary-but-amused golden eye. He’s calming down. He’s calming down and he’s not blaming himself, at least not out loud. Progress. That’s progress . “Super annoying? Calls me The Ball? Can do about thirty flips in two minutes—”
“Exaggeration.” The corner of Fabian’s mouth quirks up, revealing sharp fangs, but Riz doesn’t balk this time. He has fangs. His mom has fangs. Sure, these are dragon-fangs, but he knows that they don’t mean danger. He does. “I am only moderately annoying, and besides, Fig is worse than I am.”
“So you admit that it’s you!”
Fabian snorts again, shaking out his wings and back-spines as something almost like confidence settles back over him. It’s far from his previous unflappable pride and unshakable faith in himself, but the discomfort crawling beneath his skin seems to have settled a little bit. “Who else can pull off that many perfect handsprings in a hundred and twenty seconds or less?”
Riz rolls his eyes, doing his best to hide the aching relief flooding through his heart. I didn’t ruin this. I didn’t hurt him. He’s not gonna hurt me. We’re gonna be okay. “Okay, that was an exaggeration—”
“I could totally do it, though!” Fabian’s tail wags eagerly, waving back and forth before he pins it under a scale-freckled hand, his face flushing a little with embarrassment. “I barely ever get dizzy, you know, and I’m precise. Sharp as a sword-strike. Ooh, are we talking just handsprings or do aerial somersaults count, because I can get more rotations out of those—”
“Shut up,” Riz says, and he can tell that affection is practically dripping from his voice, but he doesn’t try to hide it as he drags his backpack over. It doesn’t take him very long to set up the DVD player, pointing the mini-projector he borrowed from Gorgug at a blank wall (there’s a lot of those in Seacaster Manor, weirdly enough) and leaning against his best friend’s side. His tail thumps idly on the ground before draping loosely over Fabian’s; they’re too different to really twine together, one narrow and tufted and the other scaley and sinewed, so it’s the closest approximation he can get to the goblin gesture for family. He’s doesn't really need to, though. Fabian knows. “We’re gonna watch Tidal’s Twelve.”
And we’re all gonna be okay.
No matter what happens or what we’ve gotta work through, we’re gonna be okay.