After living with Gwaine for four years and knowing him for nearly all of their lives, Arthur really should have known better than to underestimate his ability to be both sweet and frustrating at the same time. It was something the man excelled at, after all. At this exact moment, though, Arthur was well and truly speechless. It was their flatmate, Leon, who managed to cobble together a few sentences.
"Do I even want to know where you bought a tiny dragon? Are there even markets for those?" Leon stared at the little white reptile sleeping peacefully in the cat bed Gwaine had placed in the corner near the fireplace.
Gwaine grinned at the two men. "Obviously, how else would I have gotten it?" He gently stroked its tiny head, the dragon making a charming little rumble in its sleep.
"Gwaine," Arthur found his voice, "dare I ask why you got a dragon, of all things? I know we talked about getting a pet, but I thought we were looking at a cat. Will we even be allowed to keep a dragon here? What about caring for it?"
"Okay, yes, we were talking about a cat, but when I saw the listing for this little cutie on the specialty breeders page, I knew it was meant to be. Seriously, Merlin is going to lose his shit when he sees it."
Leon, the traitor, had knelt down as Gwaine was talking and ran a gentle finger over the little beast's small wings, smiling in wonder at the soft, pebbly feel of its skin. "It's certainly cute. And Merlin will definitely lose his mind." He looked at Gwaine, who grinned because he knew he'd won Leon over, and shook his head before he glanced at Arthur and shrugged. "We were going to get a pet."
"A cat, Leon! Something cute and fuzzy. The worst we'd have to think about would be hairballs, not fireballs." Arthur crossed his arms in over his chest, trying to ward off the intoxicating adorableness of the sleeping dragonet. "I can't believe you, Leon. Gwaine, sure, I've given up on, but you?"
Leon just shrugged again; a goner, and not afraid to admit it, before he asked Gwaine, "So, what is its name? Is it a girl or a boy?"
"It's apparently very difficult to sex very young dragons, miniature or regular sized, but the breeder said he thinks it's a girl from the shape of the snout or something. It has a name from the breeder that's even more pretentious than all the titles the three of us have put together, so I figured we could just let Merlin name it after he manages to pick himself up off the floor from his heart attack."
Arthur shook his head at that and decided he needed a stiff drink to deal with his idiot roommates and their new pet.
Gwaine had predicted Merlin's reaction perfectly. He almost passed out from seeing the ridiculously adorable reptile the first time. He'd immediately gathered it up and nuzzled it, proclaiming it a 'she' and naming her Aithusa.
The little dragonet quickly made herself at home in the flat, poking into each corner and figuring out that each of the men would let her get away with different things. Except for Arthur. He resolved to remain unswayed by the chirps and rumbles that Aithusa used to communicate. He even kept his bedroom door closed tight against the dragonet's gentle scratches and cheeps when he was in it.
When he sat on the couch, she would look at him from her perch on one of his flatmate's laps and send him pleading glances. When he'd respond to her begging with a firm 'no', she'd sigh and lay down with her head on her sheathed claws, looking as despondent as she could until one of the others gave in and cuddled her. Aithusa acted much like a cat in that she would rub against him and the others as she walked by, her wings held up as she passed. It was getting harder and harder each day for Arthur to resist the impulse to stroke her skin.
The battle of wills came to a head the day Arthur stayed home to work on a contract for one of his family's oldest clients while his flatmates were all at work themselves. Contract law wasn't his specialty, but his father had handed the task to him specifically, and he was determined not to let his father down. Arthur may have been hired because he was the putative heir to the company throne, but he had to work his way up to and beyond junior partner, just like all the other solicitors in the firm.
The four men had discovered that they could leave Aithusa alone with a decent number of toys and come home to find her usually sleeping on the windowsill, soaking up whatever rays of sunshine foggy London would allow. There had only been a few destroyed possessions in the last two months. Arthur refused to admit it out loud but he still thought the time he watched Gwaine chase Aithusa around the flat with his favorite brush in her mouth was one of the funniest things he'd ever seen in his life. Not even an adorable dragonet was permitted to come between Gwaine and his first love: his hair.
Arthur had set up his papers on the dining room table to make it easier to spread everything out and find what he needed without having to dig in piles when he heard the little tap tap of Aithusa's claws on the floor behind him. She could be silent when she wanted, but she'd learned it was usually better to let Arthur know she was around. Aithusa jumped into the seat of the chair that Merlin usually occupied on the rare occasions the men actually sat down to have a civilized meal together and poked her head over the table. She just watched him as he scratched notes on the pad in front of him, her little head resting on her forelimbs on the table.
As he flipped one of the pages he saw her eyes follow it. Arthur snorted and ripped off a clean sheet of paper; crumpled it up into a ball and tossed it away from the table. None of the others were there to see him laugh as she scrambled off the chair and pounced on the paper ball, batting it between her claws and watching it ricochet off the wall, only to pounce on it again. "You're a silly dragon, you know that?"
Aithusa perked up at his laugh and left the paper for a moment to dart to his chair and nudge his knee with her snout. Arthur shook his head and reached down to give her a tiny scritch behind her ears. She rested her head on his knee and he just kept scratching for a minute or two until the baby dragon pulled away and started batting the paper around again.
He found it surprisingly easy to ignore the sound the paper made as it skittered across the floor followed by the small dragon. Every so often, she'd get bored with the game and he'd find her head resting on his knee waiting for another scratch.
After a few hours of steady work on the contract, he stretched and realized he hadn't heard her for a little while. Arthur stood, his back protesting the length of time he'd been leaning over the table. It was time for a pee break and lunch. He looked over at the windowsill they usually found the dragonet when they came home and saw her curled up in the small cat bed Merlin and Gwaine had installed. Her body looked like one of the popular drawings of a dragon swallowing its tail, her head tucked under one of her wings.
Arthur poured himself a new cup of coffee and made a simple ham and cheese sandwich. As a nod to eating healthy, he grabbed an apple out of the bowl. When he looked up from cutting his sandwich in half, he looked right into Aithusa's eyes. She'd woken from her nap and had managed to quietly perch herself on the corner of the kitchen counter. Arthur chuckled. "Alright. You've been pretty good, letting me get my work done." He grabbed a knife and chopped up half of his apple into smaller, bite-sized chunks as a treat for her, laying them in her food bowl.
The two ate their food in peace, with Arthur looking down at the dragonet every so often and smiling. He'd never admit it to the other three, but she had definitely grown on him. Arthur cleaned up after himself and sat back down at his chair. Before he could pick up his pen again, Aithusa took her chance and jumped up onto his lap. "Seriously?"
She looked up at him coyly, curling into her smallest ball possible, one eye just poking out from under her wing. Arthur sighed. "Fine. Just behave." He picked up his pen and started on his notes again. By the time he was deeply into his work, he barely heard the little rumbles of the dragonet snoring while she slept. If his fingers found themselves stroking her pebbly skin from time to time, he didn't let himself acknowledge it.
An hour later, he was still in his chair working on the contract, so involved he didn't hear the front door open. After a minute his mind registered movement to the side and he looked over to see Leon lowering his phone. "Leon, you're home early."
Leon grinned. "School was only a half-day today. I thought I told you." The ginger-haired man pointed at Arthur's lap. "Thought you didn't like her?"
Arthur looked down and let out a breathy groan. Leon had managed to catch Arthur at one of the moments he was petting Aithusa as she slept. "You took a picture, didn't you?"
"Took a picture. Sent it to the group chat." He cocked his ear as his phone dinged. "You want to place a bet on that being Gwaine or Merlin?"
"Fuck." Arthur shook his head. "Morgana."
Leon looked at the phone and snorted. "How the hell did you know that?"
"She's the only one of us that has her phone on her at all times and never waits to look at it until a more opportune moment presents itself."
The two men weren't bothering to speak in other than their normal voices. Aithusa finally stirred and stood on Arthur's lap, stretching her snout until it met Arthur's chin before she leapt off and walked over to Leon, brushing along his leg on her way to the windowsill and her sunbeam, her work in winning over the last of the flatmates done.
Merlin belongs to Shine and the BBC.