Work Text:
"You can fly? All this time you've been messing around with harnesses and pulleys — hell, you pushed me off a building — and now you tell us you can fly?" Technically it wasn't the flight itself that had Alec so agog, but considering he was currently riding away from a slightly exploded building on the back of his girlfriend who apparently could transform into a dragon, he thought he was allowed a little tunnel vision.
<Well we're not exactly supposed to exist, Hardison. I can't just turn into a dragon every time I need to get down from up high> Parker — said? projected? how was she doing that?
"How am I hearing you right now, babe?" Alec asked, since that was currently at the top of the very long list of questions he had. "Are you in my mind?" Can you hear what I'm thinking???
<I don't really know how it works, but I can make you hear me. I can't hear you unless you talk out loud.> She still sounded exactly like Parker. Not that Alec had spent a lot of time imagining Parker as a dragon (though dragons were rapidly moving up his list of 'Sexiest Sci-Fi and Fantasy Creatures' now that he knew he'd been dating one for several years), but if you'd asked him an hour ago, he would've expected her to sound... rumblier. A giggle worked its way out of his throat entirely without his permission.
A familiar hand gave the back of his neck a rough squeeze. "You doing okay there, Hardison?" Eliot asked. "You kinda sound like you're wigging out."
"Oh yeah, no, why would I possibly be wigging out? We're just a couple hundred feet in the air, in the dark, with no seatbelts, riding on the back of our girlfriend, who has apparently been a mythological megafauna this whole time, but nah, I'm fine."
<Surely it'd be more weird if I did have seatbelts.> He could picture the exact nose scrunch that went with that tone, which was really just kind of breaking his brain considering he was pretty sure Parker had a snout right now. Did she have fangs? Could she breathe fire?
"Can you breathe fire?" Alec asked.
<Remember how I told you I blew up my worst foster home?>
Ah. Well then. Alec pressed his face further into the space between Parker's shoulder blades, which was currently much larger and scalier than usual but still made something inside him relax, and took a deep breath. "Okay. So, thank you for saving us from that explosion. I'm just gonna not look down and work on recompiling my entire understanding of reality." He, Alec Hardison, could totally be cool about the existence of dragons. He was a geek! He'd spent his whole life thinking about things like dragons! He was ready for this!
<I don't know why you're so freaked out,> Parker said. <It's not that big a deal. Eliot's an alien, you're a wizard, I'm a dragon.>
He was not ready for this. "Eliot's a what? I'm a WHAT?"
"Hey, I was born right here on earth," Eliot said, like that was the pertinent part of that statement.
"I mean, Oklahoma though," Alec said on autopilot, earning a terrifying shove from Eliot beside him, then, "wait, but what?"
<Huh, what do you call an alien that's born on earth?> Parker asked. <Alien-American? Alien-Earthian?>
"Well, there's more than one species of extraterrestrial, Parker," Eliot said. "You gotta be more specific."
"Hold up," Alec begged, "go back to the part where you think I'm a wizard." He risked turning his head enough to see Eliot, sprawled out on his belly next to him between the shadowy expanse of Parker's massive wings, staring back at him.
"You really didn't know," Eliot said. "Have you just been doing technomancy on instinct this whole time? Is the orange soda not part of the spellwork?"
Had he? Apparently nothing worked the way Alec thought it did.
Parker did an excited shimmy that had Alec clutching for Eliot's hand. <Ooh> she said, <wait'll he finds out about Sophie!>