Work Text:
Scott wasn’t sure what to have anticipated when he found out Nom wasn’t a demon of sorts, but a dragon. The wings were extremely well concealed by his cape, and to be entirely transparent, he thought that the wings were another layer to the cape. Like two capes? A cloak and a cape, maybe?
It didn’t make sense, but Scott hadn’t dared to question anyone in Blue kingdom since the first day he showed up and saw Owain in his strangely intricate and perhaps impractical helm, or a sentient blue slime; or when he visited the other kingdom and found there was a humanoid frog that he almost expected to be friends with 4c until he leaned how reclusive 4c was around anyone but Nom and Katie, and how abrasive Frogue was to Blue.
Thinking Nom was a demon didn’t come from nowhere, though. He had the horns, and the tail, and the slightly too-sharp canine teeth. It was really just the wings he missed.
The dragon concept made sense, though. Especially through his mannerisms. Nom grumbled a lot. Spent time in a forge in full armor that must have been too hot. Scott couldn’t stand to be anywhere near it purely based on the heat alone. He could only imagine how suffocating it would be in full armor as well. Of course, all dragons must have a horde.
Scott was careful when he entered Nom’s ‘home’ next to the blacksmith because of it. He could see how tense Nom got whenever Owain entered uninvited, only to disregard it with a chuckle and a comment about that damn lion.
Nom wasn’t there.
So Scott went to the well. Scott had only been there once, a brief glance. It was pretty. Gorgeous, even. The moss wasn’t completely even, but it was natural. Patches of little weeds poked out, including dandelions, but Scott could never bring himself to be mad at them for growing where they didn’t belong.
Deeper in the cave he noticed two flowers side by side. Red and blue. The ones that Scott gave him.
Heavy footsteps, then a short sigh. “Scott?”
Scott glanced up, then back down at the flowers, then back up at Nom. “You alright?” He asked quickly. Nom hesitated, his brows furrowed but not quite sad. Tired, perhaps.
“I’m fine,” Nom muttered, his voice so muffled that his words slurred together with something between exhaustion and distress. He didn’t move, lingering in the dark of the cave. Scott tilted his head slightly. Nom’s wings were slouched enough that Scott could see them properly, and his tail was dragging on the ground.
“You’re not fine.” Scott said with a certainty that made Nom wilt. “Rest? Food? Water?”
Nom shook his head. Scott didn’t know if he was denying all of them, or simply denying Scott’s help.
“Do you want me to leave you be?”
Nom quickly shook his head, glancing up quickly. “No,” Nom muttered.
He didn’t move when Scott stepped towards him. Didn’t flinch when Scott’s hands cupped his face like Scott imagined he would. “You’re warm.”
“I’m always warm..” He grumbled, hooking his arms around Scott, slouching further. Scott decided that was enough to stop asking if Nom was sick. Of course he was always warm, that went completely over his head.
Scott nodded softly, pressing a kiss to Nom’s forehead. Nom gave another grumble, shoulders slumping further. “Do you need anything?” Scott asked in a voice even softer.
Nom shook his head, corralling Scott towards the moss before kneeling down and pulling Scott with him by the waist. Scott stumbled for just a moment, trying not to fall on Nom, but Scott imagined that Nom neither cared nor particularly protested the idea, but it wasn’t like Scott was a small guy.
“If you want to talk, I’m always willing to listen,” Scott assured softly, capitulating to the pressure of Nom’s shoulders against his, laying on the moss. That’s why he compulsed Scott towards his yard. “But,” Scott added quickly, “You don’t have to.”
Another grumble, and Nom grumbled slightly louder as he took off his helmet.
Scott couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips, musing at the discontent on Nom’s face as he began to shed the armor.
There were a lot of pieces to it, Scott realized. Layered plates that certainly weighed a lot more, but the smaller each one was, the more movement it allowed for. And Scott knew based on watching Nom that he had a larger range of motion than Owain did, though never as much as Gracie.
He briefly wondered how much stronger Nom was without the armor. Then he wondered how much each piece weighed, and cumulatively. “You’re staring,” Nom muttered.
Scott blinked. “I- Just.. Your armor.”
Nom looked from Scott to his discarded armor pieces. “Spaulder,” Nom said, pointing to the parts that covered his shoulder, articulated plates with a latch that crossed his chest and went under his arms. That was where his cape was attached, he noted, stealing the smallest of glances at Nom’s wings.
He nodded briefly.
Nom pointed to the bit around his neck, clearly different from his breastplate. “Technically a gorget, but usually they’d come up way higher or attach to a bevor– the bottom part of a two-piece helmet. I don’t need it in Bannerfall, though. No one aims for the neck.”
Scott would keep note of that. He watched Nom take off the gloves. “Gauntlets, right? Armored gloves?”
“Yea,” Nom nodded, glancing at Scott and looking proud. He took off the junction over his elbow, muttering “Courter.”
As he took off the one on the other side, Scott noticed that beneath the shoulder, elbow, and hand coverings was something that almost looked flexible. A rough, dark material that Scott confirmed as a fabric when Nom bent his arm again and it moved with him. A sleeve.
“Fabric?”
Nom shrugged slightly. “Dragonscale.”
“Oh.”
He tugged at the fabric, brows furrowing slightly as it. Tiny scales. Extremely small. Scott shifted up slightly, enough to see better instead of craning his neck to the side, briefly casting a glance to Nom’s tail and wings, then up to his horns.
“Your scales?” Scott observed, and Nom nodded. It was framed as a question, but Scott was pretty sure it’d be hard to obtain that much dragonscale if not Nom’s own. “That’s amazing.”
Nom gave a small, almost shy smile. Like he was proud of it. He probably was. “It generally doubles as a vambrace–” He gestured to his forearm “–and a rerebrace.” He gestured to his bicep. He assumed that those parts were usually metal on other suits of armor.
Scott glanced at the increasingly growing pile of bits of armor, suddenly noting why so many displayed it on an armor stand. That was both cleaner and more convenient.
“The breastplate only comes down to the bottom of my ribs,” Nom said, “Some people call it a cuirass. I don’t.”
Below the breastplate was where the band of gold-trimmed crimson riveted plates laid evenly. They flexed relatively evenly, and the articulation was extremely smooth, Scott noted. Every other set of armor he’d seen in his life had been entirely uniform, guards rather than knights. Seeing personalized armor was.. Fascinating, and the amount of care that Nom put into understanding his armor was spellbinding.
“The red articulated plates could be called a plackart,” Nom said, taking them off, too. “Below that is the fauld. Below that, the little skirt but, is the tasses. If it was a solid piece it’d be called a tasset.”
Those parts took longer to get off single handedly. “Do your wings make it harder?”
Nom nodded, finally out of armor from the waist up, and he laid in the moss curled up under Scott’s arm. His shirt of dragonscale wasn’t as uncomfortable against his side as Scott would have imagined, but his clothes in comparison were rather thick and he couldn’t feel much of it. “The whole reason I had to have my armor made and personalized.”
Scott hesitated, his hand resting on Nom’s back. He could feel tension between his shoulder blades, especially as Nom wrapped his arm around Scott, pulling him closer.
Further down his spine, between his wings, he could feel Nom twitch slightly with a grumble. He couldn’t tell if it was a noise of contentment or protest, because Nom didn’t move to stop him. He felt a tail wrap around his leg, and was certain that if Nom was more familiar with moving and using his wings, one of them would be flopped over the both of them like a really warm blanket.
“You feel better?” Scott asked, running his fingers through Nom’s hair where he could, the horns making it remarkably difficult at this angle.
Nom gave a grumble that was closer to a sound a cat would make, this time. Deeper in his chest, a sound that he could feel just as much as he could hear.
“Good,” Scott mused. “Do you wanna talk about it at all, or no?”
“No,” He huffed.
“Do you want me to shut up so you can rest?”
Nom glanced up at him, looking offended that Scott dared to even propose the idea of shutting up. “No.”
Scott mused slightly, a smile tugging at his lips.
So he talked about flowers. The thing he knew best. His greenhouse, especially, wondering if he talked about his greenhouse the way that Nom talked about his armor.
He talked about his fertilization, past using his magic. His magic felt like the best option, a catch-all, but Scott never wanted to lose the ability to fertilize and care for his plants without depending on his magic. Mostly because he worried that he might lose it one day, or might need to pass on that sort of knowledge. Magic was a tool, not an alternative method.
He talked about positioning taller plants behind shorter ones, and the angles of the sun at different times of the year and how he needed to account for it. How he considered planting carrots outside because the tops actually looked like nice, small shrubs. How he considered planting berries and potatoes and tomatoes, but the fields around the well and Eloise’s house seemed to have enough crops.
Scott talked about everything he could. The difference between the shrubs here and back home. The way he wished he took more azaleas with him, because he noticed that the azalea in Barrowhill and the azalea in Blue Kingdom had different pollen cycles. Scott found that part fascinating, and had no clue how that worked. They weren’t even very different geographically. He supposed it was something to do with the mountain range that separated the two regions, and he would look at a larger map to track wind and topography of the two areas to figure out why.
Nom looked at him the entire time, chin resting on Scott’s chest. Like a big panther. Or maybe a dragon, if true dragons could be domesticated and resemble something sweet. Scott made himself smile with that, comparing Nom to something sweet.
“Something wrong?” Scott finally asked.
Nom gave a slow, tired blink. “Yea.. Your eyes are pretty.”
Scott felt his face heat up slightly, blinking. He wasn’t expecting that.
“Like peridot.. More yellow than emerald.”
“And dragons like shiny things?” Scott muttered, trying to recover.
“I don’t like your eyes because they’re shiny. I like your eyes because they’re yours.”
Scott blinked and tugged his cape over his face that was almost certainly a shade of spinel by now. “I’m taking a nap.”
Nom made another sound, this one was certainly, without a doubt a purr as he settled in the crook of Scott’s arm.