What's in a name?

[Dragon]

The realm between hell and Earth--a temporary resting place for those that the Master summoned forth--was a gray, vast, empty space. All that Dragon could see was emptiness and nothingness. Others like him dotted the landscape, all waiting and biding their time until they were called upon to perform their respective duties.

A portal stood like a silent sentinel in the distance. It was black now, and inactive, although occasionally Dragon caught glimmers of activity within its gates closer to the full moon. Once or twice he attempted to cross the barrier into the living world but he never strayed too far. The Master would be displeased, surely, if he emerged too soon.

It wasn't yet time for Dragon to serve out his purpose.

That didn't mean that he wasn't curious, though. He had a channel into the world through the tarot card that part of his soul had been fused with, and through it he saw interesting things. There was also a human, the one who possessed his card. Dragon's name came from the human and he was maybe a little over-proud of that fact. Others had no names; they simply existed to serve.

But Dragon was special.

He didn't know how many others of his kind there were, but he imagined that even if they existed, they wouldn't be nearly as special as he was. Names were important things. There was power in a name, in having one and knowing one. The human's name, he knew, was Kinley. And Kinley called him Dragon. This formed a bond between them and through that bond, Dragon was able to aid his human and to communicate with him through the humans' language, as long as there was a convenient scrap of paper about for him to draw on.

Dragon liked Kinley. He knew he liked him because Kinley expressed the sentiment first, and Dragon agreed; therefore, it was mutual. Kinley thought he was beautiful. Dragon didn't know what that word meant but he felt the spike of admiration through their connection and it resonated positively with him.

One day, he thought, he might brave the portal just so that he could see Kinley in person. Not in his original form, of course; he wasn't that foolish. The humans would panic and the Master would banish him back to hell. That would never do. Dragon had a job to do, and the thought of not seeing Kinley again made him feel...

Well, he didn't know the word for it, but it wasn't a positive feeling like 'beautiful.'

Maybe the opposite, whatever that word was.

[Kinley Sima]

For a while, Kinley didn't say anything about it.

The card he found. There it was after dance class one night. It was lying under the bus bench, half hidden by the shadows of the bench itself. Kinley remembered being curious, thinking somebody left behind their ID. But when he drew closer, he realized it was larger. It was the size of a tarot card and when he picked it up, he could see the image of a pretty dragon imprinted on it. Or painted on it? When he drew it closer, he could swear it rippled like it was made of water. Pulling it back, he saw nothing out of the ordinary, just an ink drawing of a really beautiful dragon.

"Beautiful," he said, before realizing he said it aloud. Looking around, nobody was close enough to hear him. If it was somebody's, he felt... like he didn't want to find the owner. So he tucked it away into the pocket of his denim jacket.

He told nobody that he had it. But he looked at it a lot when he was alone. He remembered lying in bed the night he found it. Staring at it, shifting it so that he could see it from different angles. He could have sworn it moved, that it had changed position since he last looked at it. And... something about it made him admire it. It made him want to create something just as beautiful with his own hands. Kinley had never been good at drawing. He wanted to be; he tried to be. But he wasn't. He sucked at it; everything he created with his own hands was terrible and he knew it. Art was not in his blood.

But when he held the card... it was.

After he told Kero, he felt a little silly. He sort of wished he could take it back but he already admitted to it. And now... Just now, he told Tim, too. After he sent the message, he instantly regretted it. He looked up from the phone to check out the window where he was. Earlier, he claimed to be at the school but he was mistaken; he was still another stop away from it. Whoops. Well, he'd still help Kero get out of class sooner than if he didn't show up!

He still had his backpack on. He took it to dance class to change into sweats. Eyeing it where it sat next to him on the seat, he had to know. Opening the front pocket's zipper, he reached in for the card. As he suspected, it changed again. Kinley tilted his head and narrowed his eyes slightly as he stared it over.

"How are you doing that?" he asked it in a hushed tone. It really was magic.

[Dragon]

"How are you doing that?"

Kinley's voice broke through the monotonous silence. Dragon shifted; his head snapped up like a dog that had suddenly caught sight of a cat or a bird. If he focused hard enough with his eyes closed, he could see Kinley through the card's surface. It was like a tiny window into the other world, and currently Kinley's face was hovering above it, looking serious in concentration.

Dragon shifted again and with it, his image on the card did so too. Not far off in the distance, he felt the air changing. Briefly he cracked open one eye. The portal was activating. But strangely, the others didn't seem to have noticed it--or if they did, they ignored it. Dragon knew that he should ignore it too. It wasn't his time. But it was growing closer to the appointed time...

Was there any harm in taking a small peek? Just... a tiny one?

He wiggled in a paroxysm of indecisive anguish. Dragon wanted to be in the same world as Kinley. He wanted to reach out to touch his hair and his face, to explore his physical form. (Not in any obscenely biological way, but... just to know how he felt. How a human felt, compared to a demon like Dragon or like the other demons that inhabited the realm.)

The image changed, too, shifting more quickly with Dragon's restlessness. The inky dragon swam in and out of the frame as his eyes opened and closed, and as he eyed the portal that was opening wider and wider. The others didn't even look at the portal and by now, with how much it thrummed and buzzed and crackled, they had to have noticed. That meant that only Dragon could see it.

It meant that the portal was opening only for him.

Slowly he inched toward portal. The dragon on the card began to glow and pulse.

[Kinley Sima]

"Wh-whoa!"

This was... this was strange. Kinley stared at the card as it pulsed and glowed. Swallowing hard, he looked around the bus and realized that the light was emanating so brightly that the girl in the aisle across from him was staring. Kinley quickly reached up and grabbed onto the stop line before shooting up to his feet and rushing for the front of the bus. He held his bag against his body and the card against his chest. For some reason... it felt warm. And if he weren't trying to get off the bus without showing off the card to every occupant, he might have even dropped it.

The bus came to a gasping halt and Kinley practically bounced off the bottom step of the bus to the pavement before making a beeline for a small line of trees. The school was within sight--the trees were a part of the exterior. But as far as he could tell, there were no students in the area. Dropping his bag down against his leg, he pulled the card away from his chest.

"Where--?"

[Dragon]

Dragon actually didn't mean to enter the portal.

He had changed his mind at the last second, had turned away from it out of fear of his master--the creator of the realm, of the portal, of them. Dragon wasn't terribly brave. He feared the wrath of his master and he didn't want to make waves or be banished back to hell. Even though he was a minor demon--more of an imp, really--he still did have a part to play in the master's plans.

But he had gotten too close to it; it sucked him in and with a surprised cry, he felt himself entering through the swirling morass of dark energy. The world dissolved before his eyes, and then reformed. Dragon shot out of the card and tumbled on top of somebody in a jumble of arms and legs, in a brilliant burst of blinding white light.

The sound that he let out was a mix between a shout and a cry. He fumbled for something to hold on to and felt something... soft and silky sliding between his claws. Or... rather... fingers? He flexed them against the soft and silky mass, not realizing that he was tugging on hair. "Hhhn?" Dragon hadn't learned the fine art of human speech yet; he could only confusedly mutter as he flexed his fingers again, fascinated by the substance that he held in them as he laid on top of something soft and warm and squishy.

[Kinley Sima]

He tried not to stumble but he couldn't help it. One moment, there was nothing but a crazy white flash and the next, there was the weight of an entire human person on him all at once. So of course he fell back. He intended to bounce right back up but that was impeded by the fact that the human body's weight went with him, effectively thwarting that idea.

"What? Who?"

He only had questions that he couldn't even fully form because he wasn't even sure what he was trying to ask. Actually, who were the questions aimed at in the first place? Because there was a person now, lying on top of him and grabbing onto his hair. None of this was normal, as far as he was concerned. So he talked magic with his brother and his friend but he didn't really expect anything super magical to happen. There was the whole card helping him with drawing, that was sort of a magic. This was... he didn't know what it was.

Did he just not see the person? In his haste to get off the bus?

He raised his hand up to try and move the hands away from his head, tried to half sit up, glimpsing the dark head of somebody as he did so. Also, bare shoulders. When he blinked away the stars in his eyes from smacking his head on the cement, he saw um. A lot of that. Skin color. All the way down. Immediately, he tried to extricate himself.

"You're naked!"

[Dragon]

"Hmm?"

Dragon's throat wouldn't work properly. It was a human throat; it didn't respond the way his dragon throat did and when he was partly dislodged with the movement of the thing underneath him, he realized that it was a human. But not just any human!

"Kiney!"

His eyes lit up as he eased back to get a proper look at Kinley, who had struggled to get away from him. Dragon had been trying hard--oh, so hard--to speak to him. He learned words like yes and no. He tried saying Kinley's name too but the L always stumped him. (Then again, Kinley wouldn't have been able to pronounce Dragon's true name either.)

But why did Kinley sound so scandalized? Dragon looked down at his fleshy human body. It was covered in a layer of pinkish-pale skn. No scales. His tail was gone too and his ears stuck out at the side of his head instead of being on top of it. Dragon frowned. There were some dangly things between his legs that he was unfamiliar with. He looked up at Kinley, whose body was covered in cloth, and frowned harder.

Slowly, Dragon got to his feet, wobbling. "Ugh." He felt ungainly and immediately tilted to the left, and reached out to hug a nearby tree before he fell over. His back itched and he shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. The inky tip of a dragon's tail slid across his shoulder briefly, then disappeared; the dragon on the card was on his back now, moving just the way it did on the card.

[Kinley Sima]

Did he just try and say my name? Kinley stared at the naked guy. It actually sounded kinda... cute. Not that he was going to admit it, especially since it was a weird naked guy calling him that. The thing was, though--the more disturbing part--was that naked guy knew his name. At least, he knew it enough to get it partially correct. Who the heck was he? He looked similar in age to Kinley, so he could have been a classmate but there were only like 120 kids in his senior class. Maybe younger? Maybe he was one of his brother's classmates?

He seemed older than that though. A new senior? Junior? Kinley half frowned. Then the guy was standing and... uh... his parts were too close to his line of vision. Quickly, Kinley also got to his feet, trying to busy himself with dusting himself even as he felt his face heating up. Then he looked up as the naked guy unsteadily fell over. Moving to his side, Kinley started to try and catch him--out of habit--but the naked guy grasped onto the nearby tree to steady himself. And when he did, Kinley's gaze fell onto the naked guy's back.

What he saw there made him stare. His mouth even fell slightly open, a million unasked questions forming and dying before they could make their way out. Not only was it there--the dragon from the card--but it had moved for a few seconds before stilling. Before he knew what he was doing, Kinley touched it--the dragon marking, and the naked guy's back. If he was expecting the smooth material of the card, that was not what he got. If he expected ink, that was also not what he felt. It felt... warm and smooth and solid. It felt like he was touching a person's back.

He moved his hand back like it was on fire.

"Sorry!" He apologized because it was what he'd normally do... except this was some naked guy who might have been a magic ink dragon like two minutes ago. There was nothing normal about any of this! Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the teachers in the quad looking over at them. She looked as scandalized as Kinley felt when he realized a naked person was on top of him.

Kinley quickly tore his backpack off and shoved a pair of sweats at the naked guy. "Put this on!" he hissed, because the teacher was now approaching them, looking highly displeased.

[Dragon]

"Hmmmm..." The noise that Dragon wanted to make was one of pleasurable contentment as a hand pressed warmly against his back. It came out slightly contemplative--not what he meant to do, but this throat with its human voice was throwing him for a definite loop! He arched into the touch like a pleased cat, but all too quickly, it was gone and Dragon's head whipped around to see what the problem was.

Kinley seemed horrified (was that horror? Oh, these human faces were so different from the ones that Dragon knew!). Dragon didn't see anything to be horrified about--or embarrassed?--but he didn't know much about human conventions. However, even he knew the look of wrath on the face of a female of the species marching in their direction.

Mystified by the cloth that Kinley thrust at him, Dragon contemplated it. It had the approximate shape of his new body but... how did it go on him? Kinley said something in an urgent tone so Dragon knew that it was important, whatever was in his hand. Slowly, in a daze from the portal travel and confused by everything happening at once, Dragon sank down to crouch. He placed the cloth over his head, like it could hide him, and tried to make a small target of himself in case the female was on the offense. Perhaps this cloth was a shield, meant to absorb attacks.

"WHAT are you DOING?" She demanded of them, while Dragon shifted ever so slightly so that most of the tree hid him from her angry eyes.

[Kinley Sima]

"I-I'm," Kinley stammered, moving slightly to the left as if that would somehow conceal the naked guy from her sight. The guy was already crouched behind a tree but he wasn't slipping the sweatpants on to cover his... er... naughty parts. Instead, he was sticking it on his head. Kinley only noticed this when he followed the stern line of the woman's sight and turned his head to see it for himself. His eyes widened slightly and he tried to signal for the guy to put the pants on but the naked guy didn't seem to understand his weird facial expressions.

"We were..."

There was no way around it. Kinley knew what she was thinking because any adult with half a brain--heck, half the students here--would quickly jump to the obvious: that they were getting some nookie out by the side of the school. They were both fairly young too, so they could have been students. The school was a small one, though and the teacher--Mrs. Briggs--knew who they were by sight. Or at least... she knew Kinley and her gaze bore holes straight through him. Kinley leaned oh-so-casually against the tree and lightly crossed his arms. What was she going to do to him, anyway? She couldn't do anything; Kinley wasn't in high school anymore.

"We were having sex," he said with a confidence he didn't actually have but it paid off in the shock that crossed Mrs. Briggs' face... at least, right before she went bright red and glowered at him.

"On school property?" she practically screeched. And just when he thought things couldn't be worse than they were, he saw an all too familiar face leaving the school.

"Oh no," he groaned, dropping his head against his hand.

[Dragon]

Dragon didn't know what was going on, or what the words coming out of Kinley's mouth meant, but he could tell that the female wasn't impressed by those words. Which... was a little bit of a shame because Dragon thought that each word Kinley spoke sounded nice in his voice, even if the meaning might not be placating angry females.

He tried to shift one of the pieces of the shield over his face to hide it, but by then it was pretty much understood that he had been noticed. In his normal form, he would have gone invisible--or eaten her. In his current form, he felt exposed and fleshy and vulnerable to attack and he Did Not Like It.

"KIN!" A voice rang out clearly in the distance as more males approached. "ARE YOU OKAY??" They were young; Dragon sensed no overwhelming power from them, unlike from the female. He peeked out to see two figures running towards them, uttered a frightened sound and bolted upright, making for the thickets and trees that surrounded the building.

But he didn't go alone.

No, he flung out an arm and grabbed Kinley too, dragging him along deeper into the woods. "No!" Dragon shouted one of the two words he knew. Yes was too... affirmative. He wanted to stress the danger of the situation, and how he wanted them to get away before the female and the two young males attacked them.

[Kinley Sima]

All he could remember was what Tim said about his brother wanting to imitate everything Kinley ever did and now this was going to be a thing! He hoped the old lady didn't tell them what they were doing. Or what Kinley claimed they were doing. He didn't even know why he did it--mostly for the shock factor--but really, it was just going to land him in more hot water with his mom if it got back to her. And it would, because Mrs. Briggs and his mom got along scarily well. Damn, damn, damn. Why was he so dumb sometimes?!

There was hardly any time to think back on all of his past mistakes and regrets because as soon as the naked guy caught sight of Kero and his little dope of a friend coming at them, he seemed to view it as a terrorist attack. Kinley didn't see it coming--one second he was shaking his head against his hand and wishing he could drop into the earth, never to be seen again and the next second he was grabbed bodily by the arm and pulled backward. In his effort to stay on his feet, he was forced to basically run along with the naked guy, all the while trying to extricate himself from his grasp.

"Do you not see how insane you look?" Kinley asked, staring at the naked guy with a pair of sweats on his head. He looked even more ridiculous as they ran because the legs of the sweats streamed off behind him like black bunny ears.

[Dragon]

"No!"

He had no idea what Kinley gasped at him as they ran but it sounded ominous. It sounded like the kind of thing people being pursued by dangerous attackers would say, so Dragon kept on running and running and running, zig-zagging through the trees and taking Kinley along with him despite Kinley's attempts to free himself. Only when Dragon ran out of steam--and breath--did he stop to collapse against another tree, hugging it with his cheek pressed up against the rough, hard bark and panting like a dog.

"Kin...ey... no..." Dragon hadn't let go of him. He had a death grip on Kinley and nobody was going to make him relinquish his hold unless they had a crowbar. Furtively he looked behind them. It didn't sound like anyone was in hot pursuit behind them. The woods were quiet, save for the occasional rustle of a branch as an animal darted around through the bushes. The two younger males did give chase at the beginning but Dragon thought that they had lost them now.

Slowly, Dragon turned to face Kinley. With his free hand, he removed the shield and let it hang over his shoulder, for lack of a better place to put it. "Kiney?" Dragon squeezed his wrist in an attempt to ask if Kinley was all right, but something probably got lost in translation.

[Kinley Sima]

No? He didn't realize? Kinley tried to look back once during their escapades in the woods but it only made him nearly trip. Apparently, he was just along for this ride with... naked guy, for lack of a better name. The whole thing was insanely strange and his head couldn't quite hang onto the truths that seemed obvious. Like... magic. He was only just coming to terms with magic. And then it exploded into his face like those prank glitter greeting cards. (Or a naked guy bursting out of a tarot card!) That was his only explanation but he didn't understand magic nearly enough to put into words what happened.

HOW does he know my name! He was going to ask but he was kind of breathless after their mad dash through the woods. He had no idea where they even were at this point, just that they were definitely lost because all he saw were trees, trees, and more trees--along with all the red, yellow, and brown leaves that were just starting to fall with the seasonal changes.

Shifting his body uncomfortably away from the rough bark of the tree--how did the naked guy do it?--Kinley looked back the way they'd come. Half of him hoped to see somebody familiar, even if it was Mrs. Briggs. It was quiet this far into the woods, though. All he could hear were the sounds of some birds calling to one another and the occasional rustle of small animals in the brush.

Resting a hand against his chest, he breathed inward, then started to let his head fall back against the tree trunk when he noticed that his wrist had been taken in the naked guy's hand. Kinley looked down at it. His hand around his wrist. He said his name incorrectly again. For, what, the third time now?

"How do you know my name?" It didn't seem like anything he said made a whole lot of sense to this guy. His gaze slid over his shoulder, definitely trying to keep his eyes up and not anywhere down below. How did he know his name, indeed. He'd know it if he saw it and heard it all this time, if the card he'd been carrying around all this time and murmuring questions to had been an actual creature. Kinley still couldn't fully wrap his mind around all that. It was... insane. It was magic.  Lifting his free hand to the naked guy's shoulder, he tried to urge him to turn around, to get a better look at the tattoo or mark or whatever it was on his back.

"What's this?" he asked. "Are you the dragon?"

[Dragon]

Damn it, this difference in language was rapidly becoming irritating. Dragon wished that he knew how to speak human. For sure, Kinley wouldn't be able to pronounce a fraction of the words in the demonic language that was used down in hell. He let out a purely aggravated sigh and shook his head to indicate that he wasn't understanding what Kinley was saying at all.

Gestures, however, Dragon could interpret and he knew when Kinley's hand exerted pressure at his shoulder that Kinley wanted to steer him to turn around. While he didn't know if he liked the thought of exposing his vulnerable back to anyone, Dragon did as he was bidden anyway. He trusted that Kinley wouldn't blast him in the back or plunge a dagger into him.

The dragon ran the length of his back, from the nape of his neck down to his tailbone. It curled languidly, shifting into a near-spiral shape. Dragon couldn't feel it moving but he knew what it was doing; it was, after all, an extension of himself. It was him, in fact--his real self, commanding this human body like a puppet. And at the same time, he inhabited this human body's consciousness. The whole thing was very complicated but Dragon was glad that he was confined to a form that didn't make the humans nervous or panic.

Upon hearing 'dragon,' however, he let out a low shout. "Dragon!" Dragon whirled around, pointing to his own chest. His smile was bright and happy, like someone who had just had an Eureka! moment. He prodded his own chest again. "Dragon!" Then he prodded Kinley's chest. "Kiney." Names. These were their names.