We Could Be Heroes （or Cousins）
Posted as part of a charity event in 2023
Set sometime after His Mossy Boy
Summary: Zarrin reaching for Ian with his grasping (loving) hands. Gen.
Ian had only just arrived home after work when he turned to face north and frowned. Martin would have said something about his “Spider sense,”
a reference Ian understood enough to roll his eyes at but not enough to argue over. Martin was trying to get him into comics, insisting that if Ian was going to have a secret identity, he should learn the lore.
Although then Martin had stared into the distance for a moment before mumbling something about how he’d end up “fridged”
if Ian became a hero from a comic. Which was a reference Ian didn’t get even a little. When he’d tried dropping it into conversation, Schmitty had grimaced, so Ian resolved to look it up whenever he had the chance, which basically meant when he remembered and Martin wasn’t around.
Martin wasn’t around at the moment, but Ian was currently more interested in the presence in his territory.
All of the land around Everlasting, including the Preserve was Ian’s territory, in a sense. But Ian was concerned with the land in his name on all legal documents, land that butted up next to the state park, which meant lost or nosy hikers crossed over into it all the time.
This was different. Not ‘Martin Dyer passed out beneath his tree, ready to propose marriage’ different, but remarkable enough to have Ian leaving the house without doing much more than removing his badge and gun and dropping them in the kitchen. Martin would make a face if he found them there later, but hopefully Ian wouldn’t be out long.
He moved toward the disturbance in a straight line, growing as large as he could in his clothes without ruining them, wanting to cover the distance quickly.
The trees were not alarmed. No fleeing deer crossed his path. But the birds sang and the wind whispered of… something . Not in words. Never in words. Hints and teases, excitement without the smug pleasure that had heralded Martin’s arrival into Ian’s world. Not He’s here .
Something new.
It’s time .
Ian didn’t hear as wolves did. It wasn’t a heartbeat that made him stop, it was the awareness of how close he was to the state park and then Zarrin’s gentle, husky voice addressing one of the trees.
“My, aren’t you handsome?”
Ian waited until he was his usual size and form before he continued forward.
Zarrin Xu stood several yards ahead, one hand resting lightly—not lightly—on a redwood only a few hundred years old. A baby, in redwood terms. Zarrin leaned in, lips moving in a whisper that Ian couldn’t hear but he knew what was said anyway. Mine.
Zarrin wasn’t wrong. He just also wasn’t entirely right. Though the tree didn’t mind, either way.
“There you are,”
Zarrin called out as Ian drew closer, as if they didn’t see each other nearly every day, even if only in passing.
“Zarrin,”
Ian answered carefully, then realized Zarrin was keeping to that side of the redwood because he was staying on the state park side of the border separating it from Ian’s property. He must have entered Ian’s territory just a step or two to get Ian’s attention and then returned to that spot to wait.
He’d knocked. Joe had probably told him to do that.
Ian crossed his arms. “Bit far from the mansion, aren’t you?”
Zarrin rolled one wrist in a vague gesture. “I like a walk sometimes. Especially now. Is this why you walk so much?”
“Who says I walk?”
Ian asked it but knew the answer: Martin. Azar would have kept it to herself, more because that was her habit with things that she thought her parents would dislike. Martin would have spoken of it because he was Martin, open and soft and warm.
Zarrin gave Ian a knowing, surprisingly sharp, glance. “They don’t speak, but I can hear them,”
he said instead of bringing Martin into the moment. “Do they speak to you?”
Ian shrugged. “Not in words.”
Zarrin straightened, impossibly tiny next to that redwood and barely reaching Ian’s shoulder. “Are they talking about me? Are they… happy?”
The insecurity in his voice was starkly evident. Ian heaved a sigh and tried looking away, but even if the trees didn’t chide him, Joe or Martin would have. “ Happy is not an emotion for trees. But they aren’t un happy.”
Zarrin blinked his wide eyes at him, looking pleading and youthful until that look suddenly hardened. His chin came up. “I can’t help you care for them if you don’t tell me how, Ian Forrester.”
“You’re not the boss of me,”
Ian responded childishly, but uncrossed his arms. “Is that why you came here?”
“You won’t speak in the coffee shop.”
Zarrin paused, then tucked his hands into his coat pockets. “Perhaps understandably, with humans near. And you avoid the mansion. You don’t invite me here.”
Briefly, Zarrin stuck out his lower lip in a pout. “Only Zazzie.”
“Azar needs space away from the mansion.”
And her stubborn treasure . Ian pressed on when he could see Zarrin forming an objection. “You don’t need my permission to be here, or an invitation for that matter. I couldn’t stop you.”
“Couldn’t you?”
Zarrin asked shrewdly. “I wonder.”
Ian’s heart began to pound. He crossed his arms again. “What is that supposed to mean? Don’t tell me you’ve decided I’m a superhero the way Martin has.”
The smooth question was a mistake.
Zarrin perked up to give Ian a sly grin. “Martin might have more reasons to think admiringly of you than I do, it’s true.”
Ian sighed loudly with annoyance as though he couldn’t feel the shiver in the wind. It’s time , it said again. A thorn in his heel and a voice in the dark. A longing to make Ian uncomfortable as nothing else could.
Zarrin might have felt it too. He studied Ian for a moment, his grin falling, then said, “I looked up more about you, you know. Or, creatures that might be like you. And had our antiques restorer stay out of Alfie’s things, so I could go through them.”
The shiver touched Ian’s skin. He never felt the cold, but he did now. “And?”
he asked as evenly as he could.
“You are not dragon, Ian Forrester. But, like the trees that speak but don’t use words, that are not happy but also not un happy, you are also not not a dragon. Alfie was given an egg, wasn’t he? An egg with a child that he raised. Dìzhèn wanted Everlasting protected and was most thorough about seeing it done. And…”
Zarrin briefly looked uncomfortable “an egg is often a gift of a great love, not always possible between a dragon and someone other. Even for the powerful.”
Ian let his heart pound and didn’t try to calm it.
“You don’t want to speak of those things,”
Zarrin continued after a while, in a mournful voice he had no call to use. “Joe said you might not.”
“Joe knows.”
Ian said it flatly. Of course, Joe knew. If Zarrin did, Joe did. “Look, we… I was raised not to speak with others.”
“But I’m not others.”
Zarrin was still mournful. “I’m… perhaps a cousin, and we’re supposed to work together.”
“I know,”
Ian spoke through gritted teeth, then forced a breath in and out. “I know that,”
he said, marginally calmer. “I just… am not used to it. But, like I said, I can’t stop you.”
Zarrin leaned toward Ian as though Ian was a redwood who needed whispering to. “Dragonfire did not slow you much, Ian Forrester. There is enough of us in your blood to make you a threat. It’s no wonder the rest of the family chose to pretend Alfie had only been a secretary. They couldn’t ignore his presence entirely, not with this, not with her still so strong, but they could do their best to cloud the truth. Your magic,”
he gentled his voice when Ian tensed again, “hid you even from Bernard’s senses. Could I stop you? Perhaps, now that all this has responded to me. But am I meant to? I don’t think so. And would I want to?”
Hurt entered Zarrin’s liquid eyes. “No. I thought us friends, and if not friends, cousins.”
“Cousins?”
Ian’s brain finally caught up with that word, bringing him back a step. “I don’t have…. I’ve never….”
“I’ve met injured wolves less skittish than you,”
Zarrin observed, no pleasure in the statement.
“It’s not your job to take care of me,”
Ian insisted, feeling his chest tighten. That was how Martin described anxiety attacks. That wasn’t good. It couldn’t be.
“Oh, Ian.”
Zarrin shook his head. “I don’t know how to do this, either. It’s scary, isn’t it? Bernard says…. Well, he would say many things, but he’s just as scared as we are right now. You don’t… you don’t look well.”
His hands emerged from the pockets, grasping the air nervously. “Can I come in? Please? I can take you home or call Martin for you.”
Ian was distantly embarrassed by the longing to hear Martin’s voice that went through him when Zarrin said the name. He could hardly say he didn’t need help now. Zarrin, with whatever it was dragons felt, knew how much Ian wanted Martin. Martin found it hard to believe, but his presence was calming. At least, it was to Ian.
“Martin is allowed here,”
Ian said finally, breathing hard. “They welcomed him here.”
Zarrin nodded to accept that. “And me?”
The ground would rise up to meet him if it could. Zarrin might know that. Or might feel it but not understand what the feeling was. He was new to this and had no one to teach him anything.
A neat trick they’d pulled off, Dìzhèn and Alfie.
Ian put his head down and thought of Martin, and his comics, and all his excited talk of crossover events and unexpected team-ups. He thought of Marie, the injured wolf Zarrin had found, and her graphic novels.
Ian wasn’t a superhero, but he could read more than the creaking of tree branches and the sighs of the wind.
“They want you here,”
Ian admitted. But that wasn’t really what Zarrin was asking. “I don’t want you here,”
he answered honestly and hated that Zarrin flinched. “But I could. Maybe. I just….” Did superheroes feel fear? Martin would say they did. Martin would say that’s why he admired them. Ian braced himself. “It won’t be easy for me.”
He took another breath, closing his eyes to listen to the land for another moment before opening them again to meet Zarrin’s intent stare. “Martin will be home soon. He’s making potato soup, if you’d like some.”
Zarrin practically wriggled with excitement as he stepped over a line only the two of them could feel.
The End