Charlie always knew he'd get a dragon when he was five. Everyone has a dragon. Nanny had a dragon. Mummy had a dragon. Daddy had a dragon. Even Tori, his big sister, had a dragon and all of them were so cool.

Nanny's dragon was pink and liked to play in her yarn basket. Mummy's dragon was a bright green one, that slinked around her shoulders and just watched everyone with an expression like she'd eaten one too many sour lollies. Daddy's dragon was a large red one that usually dug its claws onto his hair as it stood on the lookout for trouble. Tori's was a little purple one with big blue eyes that sometimes bit his toes in bed when he was sleeping and then hid in Tori's coats and skirts when he'd run after them.

Charlie waited all day and even almost all night on his birthday to get his dragon - but the dragon never came. Mummy said it might be his next birthday he would get one. Then the next. Then the next. Then when he turned 12 and officially become a preteen, way too long to not have a dragon, she just stopped talking about it altogether.

She tried not to show how disappointed she was with him, but Charlie could see, as when she looked away, her dragon didn't, hissing glowing steam in his direction. It was why she favourited Oliver over him (he woke up to some great mound of green flesh at this bed with wings the size of pelicans when he turned 5 that follows him around like a lost dog) and that already there and brewing resentment for her son not being perfect (as well as Tori being less than ideal as well in her mind) had not helped when he came out of course.

Now, now he was turning 15 (well, okay, not /now/, but later in the year) and there was still no dragon, to his utter embarrassment. It wasn't like people didn't notice there was something wrong with him, other than the whole gay thing. He can count the number of times on both hands that he's been attacked by other student's dragons and he can also count the number of times he's been shadowed and protected by Tao, Issac and Elle's dragons.

Even Tori's dragon has taken over "watching Charlie" duty here and there when she's not able to constantly monitor him from Higgs, but they are usually, obviously, with Tori, so he's learned to develop a rather thick skin. Except for last year of course, which was a literal, fire-breathing nightmare. For lack of better term.

Speaking of terms, he's quite disappointed when he arrives at the library to meet with Ben, his secret boyfriend of 7 months, on the first day back in the new year and he and his dragon (a spiky, huffy thing of brown and red) are a no show. Obviously of course when he reads Ben's texts, his disappointment is a little abated, but still there and present.

It's only when he enters his classroom does he find himself in a lot of trouble, as dragons are flying around the room at speeds that should be considered illegal, but the homeroom teacher has apparently assigned him the fate of sitting next to a rugby boy, just like the ones that bullied him into almost being committed, for the next year. Nicholas Nelson.

Hope his mother likes his shirt and blazer collars pressed down /and/ ashier than his skin.

Bracing himself for the worst, Charlie tries to confidently stride towards the seat and act like it doesn't bother him (it's the least he can do for the cesspool that is his mental health), but finds himself stopped in his tracks in awe at the face he's seeing.

A young, fit, quite handsome strawberry blonde, framed by sunlight. Or, actually /not/ sunlight, as on closer inspection, it's a bright yellow dragon that has literal golden scales, laid out across the boy's shoulders contently unlike then others of it's kind, watching with excited eyes and flickers of it's tail as well as embers coming from it's mouth here and there, but not seemingly needed to interact with anyone.

That all changes when Charlie stows his bag and sits down, as the dragon raises it's head along with it's owner to stare and he nods in their direction. "Hi."

"Hi." The boy, Nicholas, speaks back and his dragon seemingly sits up with it, remarkably keen to just stare at him before sniffing his shoulder and drawing back, clearly wanting to do something more by the wiggling in it's body, but holding back.

Honestly, Charlie doesn't know what to make of it (he wasn't exactly an expert in dragon behavior as he literally doesn't have one to go off of himself), but he considers that because the dragon isn't spitting fireballs at him or worse, he takes it as a good sign and nods again before he looks away, feeling eyes still on him.

Maybe this year might now be so bad after all.