A Kiss at Midnight (a Thorn x Stonemover ficlet)

New Year's Eve

As the moons rose to the highest point in the sky, small cracks and pops echoed in the streets, along with the yelling of a neighbor who almost blew off their thumb. Thorn rolled her eyes, and shut the door behind her, her vision slowly adjusting to the darkness inside her home.

In the corner, humming a lullaby to their dragonet, was Stonemover. He looked up, and the corners of his mouth tugged into a tired smile.

"You're back early." Thorn lit a candle. While the other members of her family could see just fine in the dark, she couldn't. Stubbing her toe, or running into her boyfriend who became a neat silhouette in the dark was one thing she wanted to avoid that night. She pulled him down for a brief kiss. "Not that I mind."

"I wanted to spend the night with you and Sunny," he said, before turning his attention to their daughter.

The sleeping dragonet muttered, and kicked her blankets off at the mention of her name. Thorn tucked the blankets back up to her chin, and rested a talon on Sunny, who settled back down.

But, a series of pops and cracks broke the peace, as if some idiot set off a string of firecrackers underneath their window. Sunny startled awake, and Thorn cursed out the camel-chewing knucklehead who just had to have firecrackers under her breath. Stonemover's wings slumped, and he picked up Sunny, cradling the grumpy dragonet in his arms.

Didn't some dragons have the decency to keep the peace for once? Especially when there was a sleeping baby? As if answering her question, a group of dragons ran down the street, loud, and probably inebriated based off of their dull reflexes. Thorn's jaw clenched, and she was half tempted to go outside and dish out some common sense and decency. With her fists.

Stonemover sighed, breaking Thorn out of her thoughts. He started rocking Sunny back and forth. The flickering candle cast light over the heaviness under Stonemover's eyes, and he shivered. She rested her wing over his shoulders.

"It's cold. Let me hold her." Thorn held out her arms, and Sunny nestled closer to her warm scales. She hummed a tune, while watching green-gray eyes close for longer and longer periods of time, until they were shut to the world. Soon, the dragonet's chest was rising and falling evenly, and Thorn waited until she slipped into a deeper sleep before setting her down. Tucking a patched blanket over his daughter, Stonemover yawned. Then, his eyes widened as something dawned on him, before the edges of his mouth twitched into a smile.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" she asked.

"It's the first New Year's eve I've spent with a family of my own," he said. "Last year, I never– I thought something like that could only be a dream."

Thorn took a moment to dwell on her memories. When she decided to strike up a conversation with a NightWing with scales like the desert sky at night all those months ago, she hadn't exactly planned on falling for him and everything that had happened after that either.

She reached up and pulled him down to her. Their eyes met for a moment before she closed the distance between them. Stonemover's lips were as gentle as ever, and he closed his eyes before deepening the kiss.

There was a saying in the Scorpion Den that the person you were with on New Year's was the person you'd spend the rest of the year with. Thorn never put much stock in sayings like those. But, she held him as if it was true. As if they could stay in that moment in their small corner of the Scorpion Den forever.

If only she knew.

***

A/N: I'm pretty sure it's still New Year's Eve somewhere in the world? Happy New Year, everyone!