Kami answered the door, and his eyes went wide when he saw Mercury. “Oh. Hey, Mercury. Hi.”
“Hi. Can I come in?” He thrust the half dozen cupcakes at Kami, no fish flavors in the mix, and waited.
“Um. Sure. Of course. Come in.” Kami peered at the cupcakes. “Are these for us to share? Reno isn’t here, so…”
“Yes. There are red velvet and yellow cake with chocolate icing. They told me in the canteen they were your favorites.”
One of Kami’s eyebrows rose. “Well, thank you, but why are you bringing me cupcakes?”
Mercury shrugged. “I wanted to apologize for?—”
“Uh-uh.” Kami shook his head. “No, no, that’s not how this is going to work. You didn’t do anything wrong, Mercury.”
Mercury blinked, and now he was really confused. He thought he was supposed to be being nice, and the temptation to throw these cupcakes at Kami was huge. Thank the goddess he didn’t still have them in hand.
“I guess I suck at this friendship thing, I thought?—”
Kami shook his head. “Listen, I’m the one who screwed up. If anybody’s a shitty friend, it’s probably me. But as terrible as I am at it, I’m super-duper good at loving the people that are my family and friends. I just wanted to see what would happen, if you would tell me no for him.”
“But you could have just asked. You didn’t have to be mean!” That had hurt him, and he hadn’t wanted to be harsh to Kami.
“I sort of didn’t know how to do it otherwise. Trust me, Talon has explained lots about how I should have done things. And I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.” Kami put the cupcakes aside and took one of his hands. “I’m not sorry that I did it though because you were amazing. And now I’m super confident that if something awful happened, you would just rip someone’s throat out just to defend Talon. I love that for him, but I am sorry it hurt your feelings, and I do think that we’re both probably weird as fuck friends. But that’s okay because we can be weird as fuck friends together.”
Mercury was pretty sure that he was just going to be confused forever. He would complain about it, but he’d been confused for a really long time, so why stop now?
Kami chuckled, leading him to sit on the couch, and then grabbing the cupcakes. “Do you know how hard it was when we settled down here? For me and Talon both? We were loners. Not used to people thinking about us at all, let alone wanting in on our lives. It’s tough to adjust.”
He nodded. “That’s why I was trying to be friends.”
“Yes, and I’m sorry. Honestly, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. This is new to me too, fair? We can—Talon and I are best friends, but we have been together through so many hard things that it’s difficult to remember how not to be fierce about everything.”
How sad was that? Seriously, how honestly sad was it that Kami didn’t know a better way to be friends?
Still, Talon had explained all of this, and that was why he was here. He wanted to be Kami’s friend. And more than that, Talon needed him to be able to get along with Kami.
Hell, he was fairly sure they were all going to be working together. So this was a thing.
“Oh, and I’m new at this. I’m trying to learn how to be friends with other dragons.”
Kami chuckled. “I think you’re doing a fabulous job. Seriously. You’ve got this. I mean, you brought cupcakes. Would you like tea?”
Kami’s mind moved so fast it made him dizzy. “Please?”
“Cool. I know you take it with lemon and sugar, right? No milk?”
“Exactly.”
He could almost hear Talon in his head saying, “See? Not a bad friend. Just an odd friend.”
He shook his head at himself. He just needed to learn, and so did Kami. They both needed to learn what their rules were, together.
His big rule was don’t mess with Talon.
He sort of thought that was one of Kami’s big rules too. And no one messed with Reno. And Kami believed in heartstones for all. Not just for some.
Mercury could get behind all of that.
Kami brought over two cups of tea. “If this one doesn’t work for you, let me know. I know how sometimes things can all get twitchy.”
