"Shards and fuck," K'rkat swore as he raced up the long winding stairs, "I'm going to -- teach you to fly -- right from your weyr -- without a fucking dragon!"
He would have gotten there faster if he didn't speak at all, but he wasn't concentrating on making words as well as putting one foot before another he would have stopped and curled up on the step he happened to be long ago.
Why did Jade have to live so high up. Why did K'rkat's own Kulirath have to be busy elsewhere just when he needed her, the Thread take her up the tail hole --
Finally. He burst into Sievereth's weyr, the bronze stretched out lazy and well-fed, oh Faranth's egg no.
"Jade!" he screamed, startling the dragon. "Get out! And you, big lump, get up! Up and flying! Why are you still here?!"
Jade came out of her corridor, rubbing her eyes. No doubt she'd spent all night bowed over her work table again and hadn't even eaten.
"Oh, why are you yelling," she said around a yawn, "it's... not even mid-day yet!"
"Yeah, by minutes!" Argh. No. No time. "Jade -- Bowith is bleeding her prey, and so is Kulirath."
By the way she froze in mid-step, he could see she had caught on to the full horror of the situation. Sievereth's head jerked up, his eyes flashing with alarm -- Oh craaap! Both of them, Bowith will kill me. I'm coming!!! -- and then he was eeling around his nest and diving out of his weyr, leaving K'rkat and Jade stranded up here.
Well, it would only be a problem if Sievereth chose to cover Bowith instead of Kulirath.
The thing was, no matter how much that big lump of bull dragon liked the both of them, no bronze worth his name would choose to cover a green over a queen.
"You should climb down to D'vid's weyr," he said, and tried not to let his shoulders slump too much, or to avoid her eyes too visibly. "I'll just... I guess Kulirath was triggered by Bowith, so... there won't be a shortage of bronzes and browns once Bowith's done choosing, if I can get Kuli to wait that long to rise."
When he looked up Jade was right in his face, eyes narrowed in wrath and determination.
"Nope," she said, and grabbed him by the elbow. K'rkat stumbled when she yanked him around and stalked back to the stairs. "We're both going to D'vid."
"What?!" he yelled, but she was already running down the stairs and he had to run after her or trip and be dragged until he fell overboard. He'd never hated the lack of guardrail more, the people of the Benden Weyr were crazy. Why had he even moved -- oh, right. "Just because -- hff, hff -- just because our dragons are inverts -- and like ameliorated cuddling too much --"
"Shut up and run, K'rkat! If we're late and you ruin my plan I will jump you to a mountain stream!"
"--It doesn't mean either of them stop being female or, or Sievereth can cover them both and -- a plan?"
She threw him a grin over her shoulder, not slowing down, and then they were barging in through the crowd massed around D'vid's weyr, elbowing bronze and brownriders aside. Shit, if whatever plan Jade had didn't pan out, K'rkat wouldn't have to look far for his fuck. The issue would be how to avoid a gangbang, when half the men in the room would be wound up from a failed Queen's flight and he would be... well. Still flying with Kulirath.
D'vid was propped up against a wall, arms crossed negligently, ignoring all the ambivalent looks he was getting -- a man, yes, but a male queenrider. He might not be the senior Weyrwoman, far from it -- there were another two senior queens to go before fucking him crowned anyone Weyrleader -- but the reputation was still important to a lot of people. His blond head jerked when Jade pushed through, and K'rkat could have sworn he'd seen him smile, look relieved.
"Oh thank fuck. Was starting to think you'd miss the big day."
K'rkat spluttered, stared from him to her. "This is starting to sound like a conspiracy!" he yelled as quietly as he could. (Probably half the people in the queen's weyr could hear him, but they were all more or less used to his histrionics.)
"It wasn't! But honestly once I had both their cycles mapped out it wasn't hard to predict a double event."
"What are you saying," D'vid retorted, "it was totally a conspiracy."
K'rkat was opening his mouth to ask what the fuck when Kulirath's heat went from a simmer in his guts to a flame punch. He folded over, groaning, bit into his lip.
Would there be any harm in letting her eat her kill and weight herself down, a part of his mind thought. He'd get a brown, probably, as the bronze riders fought to restrain their dragons to wait for the queen; brown riders tended to a lower asshole quotient, all things said, Jade excepted.
No, Kulirath was thinking to herself, trying to resist her own need, I -- Bowith needs, Bowith needs --
K'rkat! Sievereth yelled to him. Hold her back! Please, she must not!
Okay, this was his answer. There was a conspiracy and everyone was in on it, even his own dragon. He was angry enough to grab for her mind and haul her back from the carcass from sheer will alone.
It was a mess after that. He thought -- he was on his knees? No, he was curling his wings around his kill and licking at the hot blood spurting in his mouth, delicious and perfect. Just one sheep, and then he was done. He killed a second -- Bowith needed it, Bowith was bigger and needed two beasts, needed to drink so she could fly far and high, and Kulirath needed to remember... Needed...
She took flight and Bowith took flight and they rose together green and gold and a flight of dragons took off after them. Which wanted which they did not know; it didn't matter, Kulirath and Bowith were flying together, higher and higher until Kulirath strained to follow, wings too small to carry her so well, until she could flip around and dive back and bite at too-enterprising bronzes, no, go away, neither one of us wants you. Another bronze flipped around to chase Kulirath instead because she was in reach and Bowith wasn't, and Bowith let herself fall like a stone through their formation, and then Kulirath was landing on her back and clinging as they dove like birds of prey, like stones, and --
and again -- and again... getting in the other's suitor's way until it burned inside and they started wanting to slow down, to be caught and--
Higher, Sievereth-Jade said, we're coming.
--
Later that night when everyone was lying awake and sore in D'vid's bed (or tangled in a ball in Bowith's weyr) K'rkat found himself staring at the ceiling in sheer disbelief. The ceiling was fairly ordinary, for a thing carved out of rock, if one ignored the instructional dialogue D'vid had written up there (things about beef truncheons and crotch shipfish, amongst other things.) It was just...
Dragons didn't plan like that. And sure, he could recognize Jade's hand in the details -- she'd make Wing leader pretty soon with that grasp of aerial maneuvers -- and he could recognize Bowith's odd obsession for having both Kulirath and Sievereth by her always as the starting point, but.
The plan had been implemented by dragons.
Dragons in mating heat.
My apologies, Kulirath told him sleepily. I did my best not to scratch either of them up while I waited for my turn -- Bowith is so needy, she said, all threaded through with affection. But someone should probably check her back. I, um, might have bitten down.
K'rkat groaned and hid his face in his hands.
Like he needed a reminder that his sweet, tiny dragon had been the filling of a bronze-gold sandwich.
They're right to call the greens greedy, he sent back, and you're the fucking greenest of them all.
His dragon laughed in his head. You haven't seen greedy yet, she purred.
Oh?
My eggs will be blank, won't they?
Uh. Yeah. He felt a little chagrined. Sorry.
It's fine. Bowith said I could brood hers.
Oh, Thread eat me from the asshole up. Like this mating flight wasn't going to be talked about enough.
He hoped very, very strongly that by the time she laid her eggs Bowith's dormant -- very fucking deeply dormant, no wonder she'd chosen D'vid -- queen instincts would have awakened and she would have changed her mind, or forgotten. But.
But. This was Kulirath he was talking about. His dragon was the smartest fucking green ever, and the most gently, patiently stubborn -- she out-stubborned him two times out of three, that said everything right fucking there.
Don't you think this is a bit too much? he complained, defeated already.
Hm. No. She chuckled at him though their bond. Rest up well. Tonight you will need strength to move your things to Bowith's weyr.
K'rkat almost spluttered himself off the bed. "What?! What makes you think D'vid and I--"
You're so turdfucking stupid, Bowith -- Bowith told him, startling him into silence. You wanna fuck all the time -- whoops, no more stairs, we don't have to ferry you around all the time AND I get to keep my cuddlebitches in cuddle reach!
... You are so D'vid's dragon, wow. Uh -- your cuddlebitches, plural?
"Well I'm moving in too," Jade told him muzzily, "D'vid has the best light in his drawing room and he doesn't do anything with it," and flopped around so her sweaty breasts were pressed up to his armpit (ew) and her head was hanging off his shoulder (ow) and her hand was on his face. "Now stop quivering, you're keeping everyone awake."
K'rkat blinked a powerless help request at D'vid, who watched the two of them with lazy ... lazy something. Mockery? Detachment? Disdain? (Surely not anything more... uh... gentler? Like... like. Affection?)
"If my dick weren't about to fall off I would so frick the frack out of you two."
Groaning, K'rkat punched his new weyrmate in the thigh. Outside Jade's Sievereth was purring fit to crumble the weyr on the six of them.