The tiny, delicate microphone fell from his fingers and was squashed under his foot as he high-tailed it for the door. Otis would kill him, as microphones were expensive, but all Somer could think was big, angry dragon. When Otis had told him to radio mic the co-lead of Dragon Lord IV: Pendant of Fire, Somer thought he would simply clip a microphone onto a shirt collar and then go back to his coffee. But Otis hadn’t informed him that the co-lead of the movie was a dragon. A very real, fire-spouting, pissed off dragon.

“OTIS!” He dashed from the warehouse.

He skidded to a halt by the sound cart, where Otis sat with his earphones squashed against his head.

“Dragon,” he wheezed, “big dragon.”

Otis glared at him from where he was doing sound reports.

“There’s a dragon in the warehouse. And it breathes fire.”

The sound mixer blinked and his tiny dime-sized glasses slid down his nose an inch.

“I’m not lying,” Somer said defensively.

Otis raised one grey eyebrow before standing up and stretching. He had a permanent hunch in his back, probably because he spent most of his life bent over a sound cart. Otis was old and was the best sound mixer in the business. He was, however, mute, and therefore communicated with his hands.

Otis rifled through the sound cart and produced another little microphone. Somer looked at him, aghast.

“But – Otis! I don’t know how to radio mic a dragon.”

The sound mixer rolled his eyes and sat back down in his little plastic chair. He was about to snap his headphones back on when a curdling scream made them both look up. A grip ran out of the warehouse, arms flailing fanatically as he weaved about the set.

“Dragon!” the grip shouted, “Draaaaagon!”

He then proceeded to run into a crane and in the next second he was on his back, passed out cold.

“See, I wasn’t lying,” Somer said.

~*~

Somer hadn’t planned on miking a dragon over the summer, but fate had intervened when he ended up kissing the producer of Dragon Lord IV: Pendant of Fire on the lips. Somer had saved Mr. Gourmand’s life by performing a session of spit-swapping CPR on a nondescript Los Angeles street corner, and now he was a boom-op on Dragon Lord, a series that really should have ended with the first film.

The only bonus was the paycheck. It certainly beat out bagging groceries, which was all that Somer had planned to do in-between semesters at community college. That, and surfing. California was good for surfing.

So Somer had prepared for a hot summer on set, making a nice paycheck while standing in uncomfortable positions for hours, and staring at the chiseled abs of the lead actor.

He really hadn’t seen the dragon coming.

Apparently, nobody else had either. The First AD, Jerik J. Hays, was a man who was never on the ball: he was always ahead of it. Apparently, the ball had caught up to him this time and flattened him, because Jerik J. Hays was just as surprised as the rest of them.

“This should have been cascaded down to me,” he said, “I’m going to the Director.”

“Brave man,” the assembled crew commiserated.

The Director spent most of his time in his trailer. Guard dogs were stationed at the entrance and the only one who could figure out how to get past them was Jerik J. Hays. Everyone else just got chased away (or bitten, or eaten, but officially that didn't happen. Somer definitely thinks it has happened). Even Elan Everhart, the lead actor and poster child for rippling abs and tight thighs, never made it past the dogs. Instead, he’s been given all his acting direction via badly spelled texts which were probably not from the Director at all, but from a frightened and hapless minion of his.

“The dragon should have a handler, right? All animals on set do,” the Director of Photography said.

“Someone should go check,” the now-revived grip suggested.

For some reason, everyone turned to look at him. Somer sputtered.

“Why me?”

“You faced it down before.”

“I ran away! Why doesn’t Elan check? He’s going to be the one riding the damn thing anyway.”

“I’m not, I can’t,” Elan squeaked, shaking (even his delicious abs trembled), “I’m afraid of heights. This wasn’t in my contract. I can’t ride a real dragon - I’m going to be killed!”

The DP ignored Elan and said to Somer, “Kid, I’ll give you a bonus. Well, I’ll talk to the producer about giving you a bonus.”

And that was how Somer ended up back in the company of a dragon, mic in hand, ready to scout the warehouse for a dragon handler. Only, he needn’t have bothered, because the dragon was its own handler.

“I’m not a celebrity, I don’t need a handler,” the dragon laughed when Somer entered calling out ‘Dragon handler! Looking for a dragon handler!’ with his eyes squeezed shut in dread.

“You can talk,” Somer said, feeling just a bit like passing out in fear.

“Of course I can. How do you think I negotiated my contract?”

“Otis knew!” Somer suddenly shouted with the lack of grace and overabundant force of the wronged, “He knew you could talk, that’s why he wanted me to mic you! Bastard couldn’t just explain that, oh no, he shooed me off like my terror was completely unjustified.”

“Your terror is completely justified,” the dragon reassured him lazily.

He peed his pants. But just a bit.

“Oh dear,” the dragon said, “I can tell this is going to be very difficult. Very well, here’s what we will do: you’ll be my handler and make all the other humans feel safe; in return, I won’t eat you.”

“I don’t want to handle you!”

The dragon paused and looked a bit thoughtful, “I suppose in this form it’s a bit much to expect a human to handle me.”

And then the dragon shifted into a man-shaped form with horns on his head and scales by his eyes, with tight thighs and rippling abs and not a single stitch of clothing on.

“You may mic me now, handler,” the dragon declared imperiously.

Which is how Somer spent his summer as the personal assistant of a dragon-sometimes-human who needed to be handled in all sorts of very interesting ways.