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“Do you remember how to get there?”
“I’m not that old, you stupid lizard,” Katsuki grumbles, his ever-petulant scowl weakened by the same comfortable fondness that warms his words. A chilled spring breeze ruffles his blond hair, pulling the scent of him along with it to the following red beast of lore.
Eijirou rumbles low in his chest, clawed feet pressing marks in the new moss of the forest floor. It’s spring again, and he can feel the itch of the season spark like fire in his veins.
...No, not that itch.
Just-
Winter is so long and cold and dark. The silence of the end season clings to his bones and teases never-ending blizzards. The worst of it, though, isn’t the chill. It’s the way his dearest Katsuki shivers at night- the way he stares at their fire like he wants to crawl inside the flickering heat. Katsuki burrows in furs they’ve plundered and stashed over the summer, and each night feels like the last before everything finally freezes over. Eijirou is a beast of a dragon, scales red and gut hot with crackling flame, but even his teeth clack in the frozen winter air.
The snow is white but the world is black. The world pulls away from them, and it feels like punishment.
But spring comes, as always, with the tentative singing of hopeful birds and the brush of unfurling leaves against scales. Katsuki strides through the fresh greenery with his favorite warm cloak loose around his neck and Eijirou follows along, glad to finally feel alive again and ready to cause an entirely new year of chaos.
Their water spring lies some ways ahead of them yet, but they will finally reach it today. The water will be warmed by the sun and Eijirou’s bulk will warm it further still, enough so that Katsuki only complains about the temperature a little bit. If Eijirou paused to look above the treeline, he knows he’d see pink blooming in the distance.
“Hurry up, fat dragon,” Katsuki calls, and Eijirou laughs deep in his throat, remembering the first time they’d found it.
“Hurry up, Eijirou,” Katsuki shouted, already running through the bushes with little regard for sharp branches. The sound of water trickled ahead of them, and Eijirou gave up trying to save his pants from tearing and tore himself free of the trees to chase after him.
The two of them were filthy and warm, new well-earned treasures buried deep in the ground nearby. Katsuki’s laugh rang high and shrill, scaring birds from the trees, and Eijirou heard the splash of his best friend falling into the water just before he finally reached the clearing.
Beautiful.
The cherry blossom trees and shining clear water, yeah, but really, it was Katsuki that drew the dragon’s eye, shirtless and wet and exuberant- the very absolute definition of what life was meant to be like.
It was a life they’d lived together. Katsuki walks a little slower now, his gait a bit off if you watch too closely. It hurts him to wield his sword for too long, and his back aches after a day under a heavy bag of stolen (earned) prizes. Humans don’t age well, Eijirou thinks sometimes, listening to Katsuki groan during cold evenings when his bones start to crack.
They still have time, though. Katsuki still laughs like he’s 15, can knock heads around like he’s 20, and when it’s dark and quiet, he kisses like he’s 30 and they’ve just rediscovered what it means to be in love.
They draw closer to the cherry pool, and it feels like their steps grow lighter, quicker- like it doesn’t hurt Katsuki to step over thick branches on the ground- like they’re young again.
Eijirou watches the sun peek through the treetops and flicker light over Katsuki’s too-long hair, and he remembers.
Katsuki stood high above the falling water, hands on his hips. A poorly healed gash peeked beneath his trousers, curling down his leg, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He crowed glee towards the sky as Eijirou watched from below, the dragon boy’s feet kicking in the water where he sat in the moss.
“I’m claiming this spot!” Katsuki shouted.
Whatever he declared would always be real, Eijirou thought. Blossoms fell in slow circles over his shoulders, but he was too content to brush them away. Let him be buried in pink and stay here forever, he begged, just him and Katsuki and their perfect hidden pool.
“Ours until all my scales fall away!” Eijirou promised.
Katsuki laughed.
They push through the trees and finally, there it is. Perfect water falls from rocky heights into an easy pond below and the sun shines so brightly here that light glitters off of every spilling drop.
A weight seems to fall from Katsuki’s shoulders and he lets a long breath spill from his lungs. “We’re here.” He unties his cloak from his neck and steps forward before laying it carefully on a dry spot. Eijirou helps pile their meager belongings on top and together they roll it safely into a cocoon of red fur.
“Nobody has tried to take it over yet,” Eijirou remarks, kicking at a stone and watching it skip over the mirrored surface.
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “I’d never let anybody take this damn place from us.”
He means it. Eijirou knows without doubt that he means it.
“I love you,” Eijirou tells him.
“Ugh.” Katsuki ducks his head away, cheeks growing as pink as the trees around them. “Get into the water and warm it up, my dumb useless lizard.”
Useless, he says. Eijirou snorts and steps into the water. It’s cold against his scales, beautiful like rubies under the surface. He slips into the pond seamlessly and lets his wings spread wide just under the water. Cold, chilly- but his bulk fills the spring and makes it warm, fire boiling ever-present within his belly. His own scales crunch under his feet.
He twists his neck to look at his mate, and Katsuki isn’t quick enough to hide his brilliant grin.
“It’s plenty warm enough,” Eijirou announced, his clawed feet carving tracks in the mud bottom of the pond. He doggy-paddled circles in the water and watched Katsuki as he sat up on a rock, feet dangling in the water.
“I can feel it myself, dumbass,” Katsuki grumbled, leaning back. He kicked a foot out to splash, but the water didn’t go far enough to reach.
Eijirou spun back around towards him and inched close. It was so tempting to splash him back or snatch one trouser leg to pull him right into the water, but there was something peaceful that held him back.
It was late in the spring, day birds gone quiet and night birds starting to spill low hoots into the air. Even the water seemed to quiet, slowing its pace as it cascaded down the ancient rocks. As Katsuki rested on stone, the last bits of sunset twisted golden colors around his hair and warmed his blushed cheeks.
Eijirou drew near, scales falling away as he allowed himself to shift shapes. Red scales littered the floor of their pool, joining an ever-growing pile deep below the waters. They slid underneath his feet until his form was too small to reach the bottom: human again and naked, Eijirou pulled himself up to sit next to Katsuki.
Water pooled down Eijirou’s muscled chest, dotted with tiny glittering scales like sun-blessed freckles. Katsuki idly dragged fingers through the droplets across Eijirou’s arm and flicked them at him.
It was so quiet.
Eijirou knew Katsuki was thinking the same thoughts he was.
As the sun went down, Eijirou rolled to kiss him.
“Next season,” Katsuki speaks, his body dangling loose in the warm spring as he wraps his scarred arms around a damp rock, “let’s travel eastward, towards the sun.” His eyes blink slowly and he turns his head to watch as Eijirou slithers up on the rock in front of him and settles comfortably with his tail drifting in the edge of the clean waters.
“Eastward?” Eijirou rumbles, crossing his forelegs to rest his head against them. It brings his draconic face closer to his Katsuki and he breathes a puff of warmed air across his lover’s face.
Katsuki ignores the way his hair ruffles in the dragon’s breath. “I want to see where the sun comes from,” he says.
“It comes from the mother dragon,” Eijirou tells him. “She hatches it each night and kisses it goodbye.”
“Naw.” Katsuki waves a hand at him, dismissing the story. “Hag says the sun is a phoenix who visits each day to see what bad shit we’ve all been up to, always deciding whether to burn the world to ashes or let it rest another day.”
Eijirou’s lips tug backwards over his sharp teeth and he laughs. “It would have set us alight years ago, if that were the case.”
Katsuki turns to look up at him fondly, cheek resting on his arm. “Hells yeah, it would’ve.”
The spring was as pink below as it was above. Blood swirled whirlpools of color to match the ruby scales that filled the bottom, tinting the water pink.
Katsuki plunged himself in again, rising from the water with rowdy peals of laughter. “I love when they think they can win!” he called, slapping the surface with a bandaged hand.
“When they don’t realize I could eat them in a second!” Eijirou agreed readily. He ducked towards Katsuki and grabbed him by an arm, pulling him close in the water as their legs kicked together. “And they don’t know your sword is more dangerous than my teeth!”
Katsuki dragged himself forward and crushed their faces together. The messy kiss dripped more pink into their private pool, but neither of them seemed bothered as they twisted together in the water. “I want to live every damn day like this!” Katsuki declared.
“I want to live every day like this one,” Eijirou says. The sun lights upon his back, warm and mysterious as it would always remain to them. It will stay as yet another of Katsuki’s unreachable goals- as yet another reason for Eijirou to love him always.
Katsuki stretches his arms and hauls himself up onto the rock where the dragon lays. His knees crack loud as he drops himself against the beast's folded arms. “I don’t,” he says. “I want it to be hot fuckin’ summer again, when the bees make so much honey we can drown in it.”
“Or autumn when the crunchy leaves drive us right to our prey.”
“Just not winter,” Katsuki says.
“Definitely not winter,” Eijirou agrees. He dips his head to rest against Katsuki’s arm and lets his vigilant eyes close as Katsuki starts to rub the tiny, perfect scales that pattern his nose.
They both know that every season will not last forever, just as they both know that Katsuki is running out of seasons altogether. It is an inevitability not worth putting words to, however. Not yet. Katsuki hates wasting time with useless speech.
Right now it is a brilliant and new spring, a start to another year of time together. Right now, they have each other in their own little private pool of water filled with memory.
Right now is good, and right now will last.
Eijirou rumbles and Katsuki’s rough voice laughs in an agreement that doesn’t need words.