Arro and Rangavar make a pact to learn the secrets of the mysterious research facility. Arro insists on helping him, although it might turn out that it's Arro who will need help, as he continues to eat and eat.

This chapter is very SFW

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Kill, Marry, Fuck
Chapter 11


The dragons were startled awake by a knock on the door. Arro lay in bed as Rangavar skipped down the stairs. “Do you need me to come down..?”
“Well, you signed over the housing to me last night, so presumably they’re looking for me.”
Rangavar opened the door to reveal the same lightly green-scaled dragon from the day before, with a stack of white paper this time rather than flyers. “Hello! I’m glad to see you got here okay.”
Rangavar rubbed the side of his face. “Yeah. Hey, I can’t thank you enough for giving us the key a day ahead without signing the forms.”
She smiled warmly. “Of course. Although, I did bring those right over for you!” She held out the pile of paper to him. He barely had time to put his arms out to catch them as she dumped the heavy stack. “Please give them back as soon as possible! You can bring them with you when you come in for your shift later.” She turned and hopped down the stairs.
“Oh, okay, great—”
She was already at the street.
“…thanks.”
The stairs screamed in pain behind him as a heavy weight settled on the top step. “Do you think there’s such a thing as being too chipper?” Arro rubbed his eyes, yawning as he made his way down.
Rangavar looked down at the papers in his arms. “Well… at least I can get started on these as soon as possible…”
“Well, we have the afternoon shift, so you have all morning.”
Rangavar frowned. “Wait, we have the same shift again?”
Arro stretched, making his way into the shower room. “That’s when Jethe said he’d be there…”
Right.
The Darkal looked down at the papers in his arms, then at Arro. He’d have to get him out of the house. It seemed like the other dragon was always around. “Oh, are you about to shower?”
The fat Faerian paused to look at him. “Yeah, of course.”
“Oh, okay.” Rangavar went to the island counter in the kitchen and carefully lowered the messy pile of papers. He tried not to let them spill out too much, keeping the pages carefully in order. Hopefully it would make them easier to decipher.
Arro looked at him curiously. “Do you need to use it?”
Rangavar pulled himself onto a stool that sat in front of the counter, shifting his weight a little to get comfortable. “No, I was just asking.” He looked down at the counter awkwardly. Yeah, it probably had been an out-of-place question.
With a tiny shrug, Arro turned back towards the shower room and disappeared.
The second he was out of sight, Rangavar snatched the papers closer like a racer taking off from the start line. He had his nose buried in the first page for a long while, trying to figure out what he had to do. There seemed to be a lot of lines where he was supposed to sign. But what if they weren’t all asking for signatures? If he just wrote his name on each one, they’d know he hadn’t actually read any of it.
The pressure of Arro potentially coming back out at any second also distracted him. It was a vicious cycle. The more trouble he had paying attention, the more anxious and pressured he felt, which gave him more trouble paying attention.
He leaned his chin on his paws and sighed. When did paperwork become so important? It made sense to sign a contract for a job, but for this? Or his ID, the other day? Several centuries ago, two dragons would talk, agree on something, and shake paws. Just as it had been for centuries and centuries before that. Who the fuck invented forms?
And he’d never had to scramble this much to hide his trouble reading. His abundant supply of excuses didn’t seem to be working as well as they had before: He could read that later, or someone else could go ahead, or oh no, he must have thrown that letter out by mistake.
He thought back on how hard he’d struggled in school—far harder than any of his classmates. And all for nothing. It had been too long ago for him to even remember most of what little progress he’d made. He could spell his name, and recognize letters printed on their own. Well, most letters... Okay, at least a few. It had been a really long time since he’d needed to and was out of practice.
He wondered how long he could keep this up around Arro. He already knew the Faerian thought poorly of him; that’s why he was here, of course. The instant hatred at his first impression; the instant suspicion of Rangavar’s bad intentions… Arro had stopped himself when he decided Jade might not want him dead, but otherwise, he was being nice out of obligation.
Rangavar didn’t want the Faerian to realize he was stupid on top of everything else.
The Darkal was jolted back to the present by the sound of the shower room door opening. He hadn’t been able to focus on a single thing in front of him. He stifled his groan; that dragon’s super-hearing would have caught it. The last thing he needed was Arro finding out he was struggling.
He noticed the Faerian glance at him out the corner of his eye, but pretended to be intent on reading. To his dismay, the he began to head over. Why? Doesn’t he have better things to do?
Arro pulled out a stool on the other side of the counter. He frowned at it thoughtfully. “I can’t believe how small the furniture is.”
“You could go sit on the couch.”
The Faerian instead tried easing his massive behind onto the stool.
Rangavar rested his head into his paw as he finally looked up, watching uncertainly. “Isn’t that uncomfortable?”
“Just, hang on, I want to sit at the counter, too—” He was cut off by the stool suddenly toppling over as the amount of wriggling it was taking to adjust his ass on the seat made it lean too far to the side. He landed heavily on the floor, loudly, his rolls rippling with the force of how hard he fell.
Rangavar couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing.
Arro immediately began to turn red, but the Darkal could already feel he wasn’t in pain or anything. Rangavar leaned on the counter, shoulders shaking and both paws over his mouth. However hard he stifled the laughter, though, he couldn’t stop.
The Faerian looked up at him with an air of betrayal.
“I’m sorry,” the Darkal choked out between his paws, still unsuccessfully hiding his grin.
Arro slowly pushed himself off the floor. “It wasn’t THAT funny…”
“Oh, come on,” Rangavar said, putting his paws back on the counter. “I can feel you’re not hurt. And you have more than enough padding.”
“Oh? What’s that?” The Faerian scowled. “A fucking fat joke?”
Rangavar stopped laughing. That had been the last thing on his mind, but now realized it had probably come out that way. “What? That’s not what I—”
Arro swiped his paw across the counter, knocking all the papers onto the floor. “Oops, I guess my fat arm needs more space. I’ll just take my fat ass upstairs where it won’t bother you.”
Rangavar just stared at him with his brows drawn, his mouth slightly open. “Arro—”
Arro slammed his paws on the counter, making Rangavar flinch. It was the angriest he had felt him since… well, since he’d walked in on he and Jade in the living room.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Arro growled.
Rangavar put his pen on the table. Clutched in his paw, it had been the only thing to escape Arro’s wrath. “I don’t,” he conceded. “But—”
The Faerian kicked some papers out of the way and stomped over to the stairs. He paused in front of them, as if thinking, then turned and headed for the front door instead. “I’m going to go get some food, since that’s all I’m good for.”
Putting his face back in his paws, Rangavar could only groan as Arro slammed the door behind him. He had a brief flashback to Jade describing her new mate as ‘sensitive’. He was definitely more sensitive about some things than others.
He looked down at the counter, where the paperwork was supposed to be, which was empty now. With a heavy sigh, he got off his stool to collect it from the floor. It was due later today. No point in moping over it.


He pricked his ears as he heard Arro step through the front door behind him. He was hunched over the papers on the counter, hoping they were in the right order while he’d sat picking through them for the past hour. He pointedly ignored the big Faerian as he came into the kitchen and began putting down whatever food he’d gotten. Rangavar refused to look, but could tell it was a lot.
They ignored each other for a long time. It was finally Arro who gave in. “I shouldn’t have yelled earlier.”
The Darkal stayed staring at the papers on the table. “I shouldn’t have laughed.”
A pause dragged out.
“It had nothing to do with your body, you know.”
Arro sighed.
Another pause.
“Do you want a sandwich?” the Faerian rumbled.
“A what?”
Arro stopped what he was doing. “Before Glitara, did food even exist yet?”
Rangavar was self-consciously tapping the back of his pen on the counter, still refusing to look up.
The other dragon sighed. “Well, you’re going to love them.”


“Haven’t you been working on that for hours?” Arro had taken a seat across from him with his sandwich. He had been more careful with the stool this time, although his butt spilled quite far over the sides, devouring it. It was quite a sight. And it was quite a stool, too, able to hold up against the formidable pressure. “You’re running out of time before your shift.”
The Darkal pressed his lips together. “Yeah, I’ve just been taking it slow. Making sure I don’t miss something.” He realized he’d been staring at the same page for a while. He felt pressured under Arro’s casual gaze. He moved the paper over and stared at the next one.
In the past, he’d found that staring at a page for a while and then flipping to the next, was fairly convincing. As his eyes scanned the next page though, he noticed Arro continuing to watch. Rangavar felt warmth rising to his cheeks under the Faerian’s scrutiny.
He finally looked up. “Can you stop staring? I can’t focus when you do that.”
Arro looked incredibly amused. He gently reached over towards the stack of papers, pulling the one that Rangavar had been ‘reading’ from the pile. He slid it towards himself on the counter, spun it around, and then slid it back. “Can you concentrate better when it’s not upside-down?”
Rangavar froze, mortified.
Arro leaned back. “You can’t actually read them, can you.”
After another moment, Rangavar pushed out his stool and rose from the counter. There wasn’t any possible way he could play this off. No excuses. He cleared his throat. “I… I need a break.”
He went to quickly walk by Arro on his way to the bedroom, where he fully intended to hide forever, but the Faerian reached out and grabbed his arm. He was strong enough to pull him back, Rangavar unable to break the grip. He noted through his haze of humiliation that the giant dragon had gotten better at not crushing his arm. That was nice of him.
“Hey,” said Arro. “I could help with those.” He looked at Rangavar with concern. “That’s why you didn’t fill out the ID paperwork, either, isn’t it.”
Unable to escape, Rangavar felt himself grow flustered. None of Arro’s questions were actually questions, but the Faerian was staring at him expectantly.
What could he say?
When he didn’t answer, Arro sighed, stood, and pulled Rangavar back around the counter to the paperwork. The Darkal just let it happen, feeling defeated.
“Look.” Arro pressed the pen back into Rangavar’s paw. “I’ll read, and you sign, yeah? Or… uh, can—”
“I know how to sign,” he affirmed, his voice barely above a whisper. He cast a glance back towards the stairs. Signing anything was the last thing he wanted to do right now. His eyes shifted from the stairs to the front door behind him.
He could tell Arro noticed. The massive Faerian casually shifted his body to stand behind Rangavar’s right side, between him and the door, one thick arm planted on the counter. “We’re staying here until this is finished.”
The Darkal scowled up at him. “Why are you doing this?”
Arro leaned past his shoulder as he reached to grab some of the papers and pull them closer. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?”
Rangavar looked away. He noted that on his left side, he could just move around the other side of the counter. Arro’s gene mutation made him far faster than he looked, and he might try to grab him if he bolted, but leaving still seemed like the best thing to do. Rangavar needed to get away and think. Or disappear forever and start a new life. Whichever.
Arro followed his eyes. He planted his left arm on the counter too, on Rangavar’s other side, using his bulk to block and essentially encircle the smaller dragon. “I said, nobody’s leaving this room until these are done.” He was standing close enough that Rangavar’s wings accidentally pressed against the protruding belly behind him, but Arro didn’t seem to care. “You need to have these done today to stay here, and you already wasted enough time this morning chewing on your pen and staring at them.”
Rangavar groaned. He knew he couldn’t fight the larger dragon. “What do you care?”
Arro blinked. “Why shouldn’t I care? You clearly need the help.” When he leaned over to look at the disheveled stack of paperwork, his head was close enough that Rangavar could feel his breath behind his ear. The smaller dragon stiffened at the feeling, but the much larger dragon wasn’t giving him enough space to move away.
Arro shuffled the papers. “Now. Let’s find page one…”


They left the office together. The large Faerian had insisted on going in with him, in case Rangavar needed to write anything else by surprise. Arro wasn’t sure what it would have meant for Rangavar’s job, if their higher-ups found out about his illiteracy, but fortunately it hadn’t come up at all. And there certainly wasn’t a reason not to keep it that way.
They were quiet as they walked down the hall towards their lockers to get ready for shift.
Arro noticed Rangavar rubbing his face. The scales on his cheeks were a darker shade of gray than usual. He kept seeing that happen. “You know sometimes, your scales change color? Like, more gray than they already are.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” the Darkal grumbled. “I’m Edacan.”
Arro thought back on previous conversations. “I remember you telling me that, but uh, in this context, that doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Rangavar finally glanced up at him, brow furrowed. “I have black blood. My scales get dark. Who cares.”
“Ohhh…” Arro put a paw on his chin. “I thought the black-blood thing was a myth.”
“Well, it’s not.”
“Wait, so…” He peered down at the smaller dragon. “Does that mean when your face gets darker, you’re blushing?” he teased.
“What?? No.” The gray dragon scowled up to him. His cheeks were definitely a darker color.
“Oh, okay.” Arro didn’t want to push the issue. He still felt a bit bad about what happened earlier, anyway. He hadn’t meant to be so forceful about completing the housing paperwork, but as it was, they’d almost been late due to the sheer amount of it. He still didn’t understand why the Darkal didn’t just ask for help instead of wasting all that time. Sometimes, it was actually more frustrating.
Arro absentmindedly pushed his index fingers together. “I feel like there’s a ton about you that I should know, but don’t. Like, you never talk about anything, so I keep finding out new things on accident.”
Rangavar growled, “What, like that I’m stupid?”
“What? No. Why would you think that?” said Arro quickly. “You mean because—” He paused before saying it. Rangavar was glaring at him. “—uh, earlier?”
Rangavar looked away. “If you’re hanging around to pity me, don’t.”
Arro shook his head. “Actually, it’s kind of admirable that you, uh, have been able to still do stuff, even without certain, um, ‘skills’, or any—”
The Darkal released a frustrated sigh. “Never mind. Can we go back to pity? I didn’t realize patronizing would be worse.”
Arro stifled a groan. “Rangavar, wait—”
The gray dragon dipped around the doorway into the maintenance room. Arro was right behind him, but Rangavar just strode directly up to his locker and began fishing out his uniform.
Instead of making things worse, Arro shut his mouth and went to take out his own. It wasn’t until he unfolded his pants that he remembered the button. “Shit,” he whispered.
Rangavar glanced over. “Are you going to ask Jethe to put your clothes on you again?”
Arro inspected the button flap in dismay. “I forgot I accidentally ruined these already.”
“Well, I don’t think Jethe would have anyway.”
The fat Faerian shot Rangavar a look. Then he sighed. “It’s missing the button. It… came off.” He shook them out and held them up. “I guess they were just, uh, poorly made.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it.” It was really polite of him not to point out the obvious, even if he were still mad at him. “Once you wrap the belt through the belt loops, won’t it just hold the pants up anyway?”
“I mean, presumably, but the flaps underneath will still be wide apart.”
Rangavar put his paw on his chin. “Are there other options?”
Arro looked back to the pants. “If I didn’t wear them, or they needed to be taken away for repairs, do you think they’d still let me stay for my shift?”
“Jethe seemed pretty adamant about even just zipping your jacket before,” the smaller Darkal pointed out.
Opening the pants, Arro sighed again. “I guess I’ll just hope he doesn’t notice. Or at least doesn’t say anything.”
He leaned down to put his legs through the holes. He wriggled a little as he scooted them up his thick thighs. He frowned. They were tight. Like, really tight. He hauled them hard to get them over his rear once his tail was through, but they halted when he tried pulling them up any farther. Even with the flaps wide apart, they weren’t sliding over his hips or the bottom of his round gut.
He looked down in confusion, forgetting for a second that he wouldn’t actually see them past his belly. The other day, Jethe had helped him with the jacket, but he’d been able to get the pants up just fine.
He tried to stifle his grunting and straining. Out the corner of his eye, he could see Rangavar finish buckling his utility belt while specifically not paying him any mind.
The Faerian shimmied and pulled, the flaps open as wide as possible but still stuck on his hips. He gritted his teeth, starting to get mad.
“You’re probably just a little bloated from the couple of sandwiches you ate before coming.” Great, the Darkal had taken notice. “I’m sure they’ll fit looser again later.”
Arro paused to catch his breath. ‘A couple’ was a very kind estimate for the incredible number of sandwiches he’d stuffed down his throat. “It doesn’t matter if they’ll be looser later. I need them to fit right now, for my shift.”
Rangavar was observing him thoughtfully. “What if you tried… lying down, so your stomach is flatter. I know that probably sounds weird.”
The bloated Faerian glanced down. “At this point, I’ll do whatever I have to, I guess.” He gingerly lowered himself to the floor, the legs of the pants still gripping his calves and thighs. The floor felt gritty beneath his paws, but he tried not to think about it as he tucked in his wings and lowered himself onto his back.
Wrapping his fingers around the waistband, Arro tackled the pants again, pulling hard. He felt his stomach squish upwards, resisting. He gave a few hard tugs, and finally felt the pants inch upwards. They came to a grinding halt again just before they got to his waist so he could buckle them. He squirmed on the ground.
The Darkal had turned back to his locker, looking inside, one arm leaning against the outside. It was the closest thing to giving him privacy in the small room. Never mind feeling embarrassed, though; Arro was turning red from sheer exertion.
Rangavar’s tentative voice interrupted him. “Hey… Arro…?” He shifted his feet. “Do you need some, uh, help?”
Okay, now he was red from embarrassment. “It’s okay. I don’t really know how you even would.”
The Darkal turned around, his brows drawn. “What if I just sort of pull, while you suck in?”
“I’m already doing both of those things.”
“You could, uh, hold your belly out of the way.” Rangavar was intently inspecting the ground beneath his paws. Arro didn’t have to be telepathic to know he was uncomfortable. “Can you even actually see the waistband at the top of your pants?”
“Yeah, of course.” He remembered Darkals could hear lies. “Well, maybe not really…”
Rangavar sighed and came over. Arro felt weird lying on the ground seeing the Darkal above him. Usually, he was the one looking down to see others.
The gray dragon leaned over to grab one side of the waistband. There wasn’t any way to maneuver in which he could pull on both sides at once. He wasn’t long enough to lean across Arro’s width, nor his arms broad enough. “Okay. Suck in and move your, well, stomach out of the way, and I’ll pull.”
Arro stared up at him for a long moment. “I’m sorry about this.”
The Darkal grabbed the waistband and grit his teeth. “Well, if we’re already building a list of things that never happened …”
Arro gulped, his cheeks hot and flushed.
“Okay, hold your belly aside, and squeeze it in!”
He awkwardly grabbed his gut and sucked in hard as he felt the much smaller paws jerk sharply against the protruding lovehandles spilling around him. To his surprise, the pants actually did slide up little by little. Rangavar was stronger than he looked.
The other side went up in similar fashion. Arro was catching his breath as Rangavar passed him his utility belt. “…Thanks…”
The big Faerian could feel that the flaps of the pants were strained wide apart. He groped with the belt, noticing with his fingers that the belt wouldn’t quite cover the obvious gap. Oh well. It wasn’t like there was another option. He tugged the belt so that the buckle sat over it, just hoping to hide as much of the open triangle as possible. He noticed the buckle didn’t slide into the same hole as before, going up not by one, but by two.
He rested for a moment on the floor. “Rangavar,” he finally said. He’d been thinking long and hard about asking this question over the past ten minutes. “Do you think I’ve gotten fatter since just yesterday?”
Rangavar didn’t meet his eyes. “In one day? No.”
“You know, sometimes dragons don’t need special powers to tell when others are lying.”
Rubbing the back of his head, Rangavar looked away guiltily.
Arro strained to sit up. “I guess it’s time to go find Jethe.”
The Darkal pricked his ears. “What? I thought now it’s time to put on your jacket.”
Fuck. Arro had forgotten.
With a defeated groan, he flopped backwards on the floor.