Chapter Text
The first time Katsuki’s dragon had licked him, he’d been in his full form.
Half the time Eijirou acted like one of the dogs Katsuki’s mother kept at the barbarian encampment, and while he’d been rightly disgusted, he hadn’t seen fit to berate the shifter more than he usually would for doing strange shit. Dragons were odd, ethereal creatures, and their shifter-kin no functionally different.
The second time, however, he probably should have put a stop to the behaviour; for the sake of his sanity, if not cleanliness.
Katsuki had just finished dispatching a couple of rogues that clearly hadn’t stopped long enough to recognise him before trying to kill and loot his body, hacking the pair to pieces with the war cry of his clan and emerging from the massacre splattered with blood and viscera.
Overboard, mayhaps, but no barbarian worth their salt allowed others to think of them as weak.
He’d dragged the corpses back to the dirt road through a forest further north, and left a carved ‘tooth’ from his necklace as proof of his victory, lest anyone forget what Katsuki of the Bakugou clan was capable of.
Eijirou –the Kirishima family shifter he’d bested six months prior in battle– had snatched him to a halt a little further along the path and growled, low and long, in a pitch Katsuki wasn’t sure he’d heard before that day.
And then Eijirou had lifted Katsuki’s arm and licked the blood from his skin, eyes slipping closed in obvious enjoyment. Katsuki stared for far too long in confusion before yanking his arm away, ready to shout as he normally would have.
The shifter snapped his teeth at Katsuki and pulled his arm back out to continue, a low hum of approval rumbling from his throat as he wrapped an arm of his own around his…meal…to secure it. Katsuki hadn’t really had a choice but to wait out the ‘bathing’ of the appendage, nose wrinkled in distaste as Eijirou slurped and licked at sticky red, replacing it with saliva.
Katsuki should have put his foot down right then and there but he…hadn’t.
He still wasn’t sure what had stopped him that day, left him standing there mute as a human-shaped dragon licked the murder from his skin, but he shouldn’t have listened to it.
Because Eijirou had taken that allowance as a permanent one, and Katsuki, well, Katsuki ended up covered in blood more often than most.
It was inconvenient, more than anything, to have a dragon shifter over twice your weight pin you to the ground to clean the blood of your enemies away, when those enemies weren’t necessarily dead yet. The fool had nearly been decapitated from behind once, because he’d been so busy rubbing blood from Katsuki’s neck all over his own face.
Katsuki didn’t usually allow Eijirou to join in petty fights or easier battles, because it would ruin all his fun to have a shifter obliterate his opponents too quickly by transforming, or cooking them where they stood.
Which is exactly what Eijirou had done that day; turning to spew sticky, flaming dragon bile all over the man sneaking to chop his head off, when Katsuki shouted a warning and tried to get up. Dried leaves caught fire as the man flailed and screamed, and smoke began to curl and plume from the forest floor as Eijirou simply turned back to lick at Katsuki’s neck as though never disturbed.
Katsuki had recoiled in pain immediately, acrid dragon bile blistering the skin of his neck until he headbutted the idiot and demanded he go deal with the fire, and screeching not-quite-corpse.
He laid on his back, unimpressed, in dirt and forest debri as the fire grew and grew, only bracing himself by gripping winding roots when Eijirou’s full form flapped crimson and black wings to choke the flames, felling several trees in the process.
It wasn’t the first time Eijirou had started a forest fire, not by a long shot, but at least when Katsuki was there he took care of it, and didn’t simply leave the area to burn to ashes as other dragon-folk would.
Katsuki had been so tired of his shit that day.
Without the burning bile dragons spat to ignite their enemies, Eijirou’s saliva actually had healing properties though.
Well, apparently.
Katsuki wasn’t entirely sure he believed the not-so-little dragon-shit when he’d first brought it up, because he could see the hunger in slitted red eyes as Eijirou watched blood bead and drip down Katsuki’s chest, from a particularly nasty run in with a living thorn bush.
Katsuki’s torso was covered in puncture wounds and scratches, and he hadn’t been particularly in the mood to entertain the shifter that had simply watched him fight the feral plant, instead of helping.
“But you told me not to help when it’s an easy fight. I don't want to overstep.” Tch, yeah suuure. Katsuki had heard the gods-damned ass chuckling at him from up on that cliff! He hadn’t been able to see, obviously, because his whole top-half had been stuck in the bush at the time, but he’d definitely heard laughter.
The mockery rankled, and Katsuki bared his teeth in displeasure when Eijirou approached to draw a fingertip over a bleeding laceration, hissing like an angry snake when the digit disappeared into the shifter’s mouth to be sucked clean. Eijirou twitched very slightly at the show of anger he understood over any amount of yelling, but it didn’t stop him licking along his top lip with that forked tongue of his and pushing Katsuki against a tree at the edge of the forest they’d finally reached.
Katsuki was pretty used to annoying dragon mannerisms and Eijirou’s penchant for human blood at that point, but nothing could have prepared him for that particular…cleaning. He wasn’t usually bleeding his own blood all over the place when Eijirou licked at him, and he wondered if maybe his tasted different than others’, because the shifter acted differently about it.
Katsuki wasn’t a virgin by any means. His people’s rite of passage for young men was a night with four beautiful women, and if they failed to please them all, they carried the shame of being a bad lover until they could finally rebuild their reputation. He’d been so determined not to fail that night that he’d only finished once himself -accidentally at that- and he’d realised by dawn that maybe the pleasures of the flesh weren’t for him after all.
So his surprise was genuine when Eijirou groaned against one of his pecs and gripped at his hips to keep him in place, eyes snapping wide to stare at the mutilated remains of the thorn bush that had put him in that position. Because he liked it.
“Gods, you taste so good, Katsuki…”
That rumbling praise had haunted him ever since, and he still didn’t know how Eijirou hadn’t noticed the bulge grow at his crotch as he lapped at every cut and puncture on stomach and chest. Katsuki hadn’t known men even did anything for him until that day, but when Eijirou pushed him to the ground and stretched over to lick his back, Katsuki’s face could have caught fire without the need for dragon’s breath.
He’d frozen, face buried in his forearms in the dirt, as his companion shifted to an even bigger size and gripped his hips so tight he’d had fingertip-shaped bruises the next day. He’d been so hard he wasn’t sure if he was going to mess his underwear or not, and Eijirou had taken his sweet gods-damned time about the whole thing.
He’d even paused, caging Katsuki against the ground with his bulk, to open his mouth against the back of his neck. Teeth pressed and dug in until Katsuki grunted his displeasure, and sharp points backed off a little. Eijirou had stayed there though, breathing hotly against the back of Katsuki’s neck for several minutes, as the one hand still on his hip shook and claws dug into the tough material of trousers until the points could be felt.
Katsuki didn’t have a fucking clue what kind of strange dragon-nonsense that had been, but he’d waited it out with a leaking cock and burning cheeks, assuming it was some kind of dominance-check. Because while he was certainly the one in charge, he wasn’t stupid enough to try and assert dominance over a dragon shifter hopped up on human blood, that had him pinned to the ground with teeth a breath away from his spine.
And so Katsuki had discovered something about himself that didn’t really change anything for him, but certainly made the moments when Eijirou got handsy or mouthy with him just that much more difficult. He found himself staring every so often, wondering whether it would be morally corrupt of him to murder someone in cold blood, just to torture himself with hot licks and hungry growls again.
He didn’t hunt or kill anyone to fulfill this new secret vice, but he’d debated it enough that he…might not be as honorable as he’d always thought. Eijirou probably had enough of a sense of justice that he’d at least frown at Katsuki for just up-and-killing some random traveler, so his hands were tied regardless, really.
They didn’t end up in any more battles for a stretch of time, and Katsuki eventually concluded that he didn’t need to be licked; that the few times he’d flustered after that odd moment near the thorn bush had simply been him overthinking.
The pleasures of the flesh still didn’t particularly interest him, and life would continue as it always had.
“Only two rabbits?” Eijirou grumbled, visibly sulking as Katsuki strung the creatures up over a pan and slit them to bleed them out for dinner, “but I’m hungrier than two rabbits.” He kicked a stone and it flew away from their camp for the night, thudding down somewhere through the bracken.
“Yeah, an’ you’re only having one of them. Greedy fuck,” Katsuki informed gruffly, and Eijirou hissed. He turned and raised an unimpressed brow. “Hiss at me again and see what you get,” he warned, and Eijirou screwed up his nose and mouth as though he wanted to argue, before he huffed a breath and simply walked away.
Katsuki let him go without yelling any obscenities after him; he’d learned long ago that there was no arguing with a hungry dragon-shifter. He’d either find them more food, or sulk until they hit the next town and empty Katsuki’s coin purse, filling his belly to the point of making himself sick.
Which was childish, and not an efficient use of his coin, but he wouldn’t begrudge a dragon a gorge. He’d have probably gone insane traveling alone long ago, so Eijirou’s company was worth the minor annoyance, at the very least.
Katsuki debated the best way to stretch the meat out and avoid a pissy dragon getting territorial over it, flopping back on his bedroll to wait for the rabbits to drain. A stew? They didn’t have many more supplies, but he’d spotted some edible plants around the area that he could bulk things out with. He was sure he’d seen some wild burdock earlier too– he should have dug some of the roots out when they passed it.
Tch, hindsight.
He closed his eyes, the steady drip of rabbit blood into their cooking pan rhythmic and almost soothing as he fought against the sudden tiredness pulling at him. The nights were getting cooler again, would Eijirou insist on sleeping beside him tonight? That was always helpful on cold nights, if not a little annoying.
The dragon was a twitcher, and he growled in his sleep. He even occasionally tried to bite his neck or shoulders, which was not allowed.
Katsuki blinked awake when a soft thud sounded nearby, surprised that he’d fallen asleep without realising. He sat up, rubbing the heel of his hand into one of his eyes briefly. He couldn’t have been out for long.
“More dinner,” Eijirou grunted, his expression still decidedly sour as he pointed to the ground beside the as-yet unlit fire they’d built earlier, “I think the big game in this area can sense me. They don’t wanna play.” He grumbled and Katsuki snorted, stifling a yawn as he rose.
“We’re in troll territory, the animals are probably extra cautious here. What kind of bird is that?” He asked with a nod to the oddly shiny plumage he hadn’t encountered before, and Eijirou shrugged uncaringly.
“Dumb one. It got caught.”
“You gonna be short with me all day, or only ‘til you’ve eaten?” Katsuki folded his arms over his chest and raised a brow.
Eijirou followed the action with his eyes, staring at where his arms rested across his body. His top lip twitched and a slow exhale sounded from flared nostrils, before his gaze finally lifted.
“…sorry.”
“That looked like it genuinely hurt.”
“Well, you never apologise either!” Eijirou was suddenly indignant, and it pulled a cackle from Katsuki’s throat before he could tame it.
“I never have anything to apologise for,” he retorted flippantly, and Eijirou scoffed at him, but moved out of his way so he could prep the bird too.
The dragon drank the rabbit blood in several gulps without even asking for it, but it’s not like Katsuki could really get any nutrients from it raw without getting sick, so he didn’t say anything. It seemed to perk Eijirou up a little, at least.
The bird wasn’t the meatiest thing, but he prepped and skewered it, before trudging to wash his hands in the small stream a couple of minutes walk away. They couldn’t camp right beside the water source in troll country, lest they wake up on skewers of their very own.
Not that any troll could get the better of them together.
Katsuki stared into the stream for a few seconds, but huffed a defeated sigh when no fish were even remotely visible. Typical.
There was enough food for two humans to be fed comfortably, but Eijirou was nowhere near human, even if he looked like one most of the time. There’d been a bit of oversight on Katsuki’s part as they’d passed through the last town, when he’d opted to travel light so they could get through this area faster, assuming there would still be enough animals to hunt.
His reward was a grumpy companion for the last few days.
He foraged on his way back to their temporary camp and hunkered down by the now-lit fire, acknowledging Eijirou’s contribution with a wordless nod. The dragon lounged on Katsuki’s bedroll, boots discarded to the side with the shirt he’d clearly pulled off too.
Fucker ran so warm. Must be nice not to feel the cold.
He constructed the largest stew he could with the supplies they had left, knowing how close they were to the next town. If a full belly made Eijirou less grumpy, it would be worth it.
“Argh, son of a whore!” Katsuki hissed in a sharp breath, dropping the knife in his hand as he snatched his other up and away, pain blooming across two of his fingers. Red seeped instantly from the cuts, beading and welling until it dripped down onto the potato he’d been slicing straight in his hand, now on the ground.
He felt Eijirou’s gaze on him in the form of prickling neck hair and automatically met it across the small clearing, where the dragon shoved to his feet and marched over.
Katsuki’s gut twisted in anticipation of what he knew came next, as Eijirou dropped heavily to his knees beside him and grabbed his wrist. He stared when slitted red eyes dropped to half mast and forked tongue flicked out, licking the blood from his palm as it pooled there.
Eijirou’s quiet groan of appreciation made Katsuki’s stomach flip, and he considered telling the shifter off, but…it had been a while since anything like this had happened, and he found himself simply smoothing his features into what he hoped was a blank mask as hot tongue swept along his palm again.
He didn’t want to seem like he was encouraging it, but he didn’t want it to stop either.
Eijirou’s grip on his wrist tightened a little, pulling the appendage up to meet his open mouth. Parted lips slid down Katsuki’s fingers slowly, so godsdamned slowly that it dropped his jaw slack. Eijirou’s mouth was hot inside, and the drag of eager tongue over the wound had Katsuki fighting a gulp. The way the dragon sucked then was greedy, a hungry draw to steal life from his body.
“Hnggh…” the groan broke from Katsuki without him even knowing it was coming; a single involuntary exhalation at the feel of foreign heat around his fingers. His spine tingled with it and his abs clenched – he’d never had his fingers sucked before.
Red eyes snapped up at the sound, locking with Katsuki’s for a long, drawn out moment. Eijirou swallowed, the sound in the eerily silent forest around them loud and obscene. He pulled back, just until the tips of fingers almost slipped out, before sinking his head forward again.
Neither of them looked away, and a low growl rumbled from Eijirou’s chest when Katsuki didn’t pull his hand back or hiss. Lips puckered around his knuckles and he felt the root of Eijirou’s tongue, then that small flap of flesh beyond that dictated breath or food. It moved with the next swallow, and the sensation on the tips of Katsuki’s fingers was titillating.
How many people knew what that felt like?
Eijirou didn’t retch, he didn’t even seem fazed by how close Katsuki’s fingertips were to touching the back of his throat. He simply suckled as slitted pupils grew big and round, and he stared with them until Katsuki found himself wondering if he was about to become the meal instead.
He should probably pull his fingers away, before he lost them.
He started to, testing, but Eijirou’s top lip curled up and a growl vibrated right around wounded digits and into the air between them. The grip on Katsuki’s wrist tightened to biting in and of itself, but his fingers remained attached as Eijirou pushed him back with a hand to the collarbone.
Dragon-claws grew sharp and black, and Katsuki thumped into dirt and forest debri, decidedly annoyed that he wasn’t wearing his cape when twigs and stones scratched at him. He curled his own top lip back, prepared to argue in growls and hisses as they sometimes did nowadays.
The warning hiss died in Katsuki’s throat when Eijirou crowded over him, nudging thighs apart to brace himself on that clawed hand beside his head, the other still wrapped firmly around his prize. Katsuki blinked. Looked down between them. Blinked again.
Eijirou was practically between his legs.
A hard suck around his fingers pulled the thoughts from his brain and the air from his lungs, and he dropped his head into leaves and broken twigs, back rounding as another groan echoed out into the forest from his own, traitorous mouth.
“Oh, fuck–”
Maybe murdering that hypothetical traveler was a good idea for next time– if he could get their blood on his neck to be licked there too. A noble death, really, they should be honoured to be consumed by Eijirou.
“Mmmm,” Eijirou hummed, smoke curling up from his nose as the wet heat around Katsuki’s fingers grew even hotter. His eyes were closed, lost behind his eyelids as he lost himself to the taste of the human blood he favoured so much.
Katsuki was the meal now, he felt, providing some kind of sustenance that animal, that rabbits, couldn’t. The thought did something strange behind his navel; caused it to pull and twist inside as Eijirou’s mouth dropped open and forked tongue pushed between wet fingers, sliding up in a wet curl to lap.
Katsuki couldn’t look away, trapped like one might become by staring into a magic mirror, jaw hanging loose around the breaths that hitched from him, shallow and uneven. He could feel the throbbing of his cock in his trousers, the pulse of his heart in it’s length, and the scrunch of his balls upward as his hips twitched involuntarily, a single half-roll that he stuttered to stop quickly.
Eijirou’s eyelids lifted briefly, just enough for Katsuki to see a slice of crossed eyes as red lashes fluttered, before the dragon snapped into motion, one hand suddenly pinning his neck to the ground, pushing against his windpipe to hold him still. And then Eijirou was between Katsuki’s thighs like a husband would take his wife, teeth bared as he finally let Katsuki’s fingers slip from his mouth, trailing bloodied saliva down his chin to thud against the ground to their side.
Katsuki jolted, taken wholly off guard by the bullish way Eijirou kneed his thighs wider and dropped down over him, staring as the underside of his chin darkened like when he was posturing over food or perceived territory.
If he pushed his hips any closer he would feel exactly what this bloody obsession of his had done to Katsuki. His breath hissed in sharply at the possibility and Eijirou’s eyes snapped open, lizard-like and otherworldly.
They stared at one another, predator and would-be prey, for a long moment, smoke forming to curl up from Eijirou’s parted lips until his gaze settled on Katsuki’s mouth. His throat bobbed in a thick swallow of blood, spit, and dragon-bile as his chest rose and fell, until the grip around Katsuki’s throat slowly slackened.
Eijirou lifted his chin, jutting it forward as the skin and scales there darkened further. He bobbed his head once and bared his teeth, a low, genuinely disconcerting growl echoing out into the forest.
Katsuki didn’t move, once again in a position where he wasn’t sure what to do. Eijirou was a dragon, a hungry dragon, with blood on his tongue and a hand still hovering less than a breath away from Katsuki’s throat. That hand began to shake, as though Katsuki had just taken the last dose of a poppy elixir, and Eijirou was an addict chasing a fix, debating ripping out his throat to drink from it just to achieve that high.
Katsuki swallowed, heart racing in his chest as he tried to determine the correct course of action. He could fight, kick, bite and spit just as good as Eijirou could give, but the look on his face, the shaking–
Eijirou’s jaw slackened for a moment as he stared down, a line of pink saliva drooling down his chin to splatter between Katsuki’s pecs, and that’s what finally had Katsuki turning his head to the side, baring his neck as he’d seen the shifter do when he was being shouted at sometimes; a sign of submission he’d never himself used before.
There was a strong possibility that he’d never been closer to death than he was right then, and the idea worried him as much as it…thrilled him?
“Oh, Katsuki,” Eijirou whispered, low and reverent as that shaking hand set down beside them. He leaned in, down, and over, caging Katsuki against the ground like he was food-guarding, dipping his head as his mouth dropped open.
A breath washed over Katsuki’s neck and he shivered, face heating at the intimacy of what he expected to be a bonding lick, but he tensed when sharp teeth dug suddenly into his neck with purpose.
“N-no biting!” He grunted, a breathless admonishment that held little threat when his voice cracked like a twig.
Eijirou growled in clear annoyance but stopped anyway, teeth letting up before he’d managed to pierce skin.
“You– say what you mean with words, I don’t understand,” he instructed gruffly, and Katsuki took a shuddering breath in, steeling himself against the heady confusion of the past few minutes.
“What part of ‘no biting’ do you not understand?” He challenged with more annoyance in his tone than he actually felt this time, and Eijirou growled his displeasure again.
“…right. No biting.” Eijirou sat back, shifting to his haunches to stare down, pupils contracting back into slits as the blood-flush in his cheeks and the darkened skin beneath his jaw faded away. Katsuki sat up too, but a clawed hand in the back of his hair yanked his head to the side before he could move to stand, baring the column of his neck forcibly.
“OW?!” He snapped, but swallowed past an odd lump in his throat when Eijirou simply stared for several unnerving moments, a thick swallow sounding before he dropped his grip and rose to stalk away without another word.
Katsuki flopped back to the ground as dead weight, chest rising and falling in an off-kilter rhythm as he glared up, cheeks still hot and guts still squirming in the aftermath of his latest ‘cleaning’. His cock was still half-hard because of the stimuli, but he ignored it as he usually would and tilted his head to the side, lifting his hand a little to examine the already semi-healed cuts across his spit slicked fingers.
Dragon saliva really did have healing properties, but he should…probably try to avoid bleeding his own blood anywhere near Eijirou for a while.
That had been…a lot.