Charlie's arm gripped a stinging burn on his arm as he stared up at the Norwegian Ridgeback who had administered it. Preparing the dragons for the Triwizard Tournament was stressful and not something Charlie particularly approved of. Dragons were not something to be under estimated. Years of experience had taught him that students would be incapable of handling them. It concerned Charlie even more when he discovered in a letter from his brother Ron that Harry Potter would be competing, Ron and Harry were only fourteen, much too young to be anywhere near dragons, let alone battling them.
Still, Charlie could not deny that had he been given a chance to see a dragon at age fourteen, he would have been giddy with excitement. From a young age, Charlie knew his heart belonged with the dragons. He started his magical creature classes when he was thirteen, and from the moment he read about the dragons he knew that he would be moving to Romania. He spent his days studying to become a dragon keeper and found out how to apply for a job there.
His only doubts about his career came when he was fifteen. His new feelings came as a shock to him. He had made out girls before. He had even liked it. Only a year before he had a steady girlfriend. There was no denying it though. Charlie, over the course of months, decided that he was most definitely gay.
It wasn't his sexuality itself that scared him. His family had always been pretty open about changes, no matter how much the boys teased each other. His discovery had caused uneasy thoughts to enter his mind. It was expected for an openly gay man to enter a career in dragon training and research. Charlie doubted there would be anyone else like him in the dragon habitats of Romania. He feared that he would live a lonely life, or that people would isolate him.
For a while, Charlie dabbled in areas to see if he had talents elsewhere. In every class, his mind wandered back to dragons. He came out to his family, and though it took a while, his family understood. Ron and Ginny were too young to fully understand, and Fred and George just barely grasped the idea, but Bill found that it was a reason to become closer to Charlie. In his last year of school, Bill protected and cared for Charlie as if it was his soul duty. Not that Charlie needed the protecting. Hardly anyone knew his secret, and he was popular for being on the quiditch team.
Even after Bill had left Hogwarts, they wrote to each other on a daily basis. Charlie never sat at the Gryffindor breakfast table without a letter to read. It was Bill who convinced Charlie to live his dream even if it was unusual. Bill promised that, in the end, people would just have to accept him or ignore him. Charlie would just need to stay strong until that day.
Within the first days of living in Romania, Charlie felt at home. It was true that there weren't any other gay men that he knew of working there, but there was something different about each employee. No one judged one another because, in the end, they were all a bit on the strange side. They had chosen a different kind of life, and therefore accepted anyone else's choice of life.
It took a month for Charlie to meet him. It took another month for Charlie to know about his sexuality, but Charlie still took to Stephen the second they made eye contact. Stephen was friendly, vivacious, and a teaser. It had mastered the difficult skill of making fun of people but keeping their feelings in mind. Before Charlie knew that he was the only other gay man on the preserve.
Charlie wanted nothing more than to be an official couple with Stephen, but he knew for a fact that it wasn't Stephen's style. Stephen spoke of on and off boy friends that he stayed connected with through owls. Randomly one of these many lovers would visit for a week or so, and leave just as abruptly as they came. While Charlie liked Stephen, he didn't want a relationship like that. He wanted something reliable and concrete. Stephen wasn't willing to offer that. Things stayed flirtatious but never anything more than that.
Charlie shoved the dragon back once more with a shielding spell, as other employees closed down the doors to its cage. Staring back down at his arm, Charlie assessed the damage. It was red and sore to the touch, and if it had been received from normal fire, Charlie would have ignored it. He knew that dragon fire was to be dealt with carefully though. He turned on his heal and headed straight to the infirmary tent, where he knew Stephen was working.
Things in the infirmary were slow that morning. There were some days where it seemed that all the employees were crowded inside the tent desperately trying to receive medical attention. Then there were the days when the medics sat idly around, trying to amuse themselves until they had their shift in the field. This was one of those days.
When Charlie walked in he found Stephen passed asleep in a wooden chair. A slight red light was cast upon him from the early morning sun shining through the canvas of the tent. Charlie crept up on him, wanting to awake him, but not being able to ignore how peaceful he looked while he slept. His hand was just reaching out to wake him up, when Charlie heard a voice behind him.
"Hey," someone whispered. It was Vanessa. She was two years younger than Charlie and a new recruit, so to speak. She had been working the desk at St. Mungo's before, but she disliked her job because she never actually got the chance to administer to patients. She heard of the busy work at the dragon preserves and practically disapparated without a word to her previous employers. Charlie knew that she was being trained by Stephen.
"Don't wake him up," she continued. "He barely had any sleep last night. This Triwizard Tournament is difficult for everyone."
"Were there any serious injuries last night?" Charlie asked. He hadn't heard of anything drastic, but that never meant that someone hadn't been.
"Nothing too bad," Vanessa assured him. "He's more just anxious about the tournament itself. He wakes up in the middle of the night to pack another vial or more gauze. He's going as the head medic for the first challenge."
Charlie nodded. He knew how Stephen was feeling. Charlie himself would be going to Hogwarts again to oversee the challenge. God forbid anything went wrong, Charlie was needed to help bring the dragons back under control.
"Anyway," Vanessa sighed. "I'll get you some ointment for that burn." She gestured to Charlie's arm, and he nodded again. Vanessa disappeared behind a tent flap to get the ointment and whatever else she needed.
Charlie relaxed in another wooden chair opposite Stephen's. He surveyed the room around him. The tent looked miniscule from the outside, but it was like an entire building inside (enlarged by magic of course). The tiny tents allowed for thousands to fit in a smaller amount of space. The room Charlie was sitting in had a shabby looking cot, a desk, and two wooden chairs in it. There were other rooms for patients who needed to stay the night, but most dragon keepers were content being administered to in this room. None of the dragon keepers were particularly squeamish or neat.
A grunt from the other chair caused Charlie to turn around abruptly. Stephen had woken up. He gave Charlie a sleepy smile and stretched out his arms with a yawn.
"Do you like watching me sleep, Weasley?" he asked tiredly. Charlie held up his burnt arm to show Stephen. Stephen woke up a bit more at the sight of an injury. "Why didn't you wake me up?" he demanded. "It could be infected." He jumped up to take a closer look. He gently grabbed Charlie's arm and ran a finger down it.
"Stephen, it's okay," Charlie laughed. "Vanessa is already getting some ointment. I could see that you were tired out so I let you be." Stephen dropped the arm and turned to walk through the flap that Vanessa had exited through.
"Vanessa!" he called. "Throw me the ointment! I can take care of this one." After catching the tossed ointment from Vanessa, Stephen re-entered the room. He brought his chair closer to Charlie's and lifted up his arm. He opened to jar of ointment and put two fingers in. He smoothed the cold jell onto Charlie's arm. Charlie jumped a little from the sting but relaxed as the ointment cooled and healed his burn.
"Thanks, Stephen," he breathed. He hadn't even noticed how much the burn hurt until the pain had diminished.
"No problem, babe," Stephen looked up to see Charlie's reaction to the pet name. Charlie was used to these tests. He looked down at his arm, pretending not to have heard the name. In all honesty, he was afraid of Stephen. He was afraid of his own feelings. He knew that once he got attached to Stephen, he wouldn't be able to let go, even after Stephen was done with him.
Charlie stood up to leave and grunted out another thank you, but he felt a strong hand on his shoulder. He was pushed back down into his seat as another hand cupped under his chin. He was forced to look up at Stephen's piercing blue eyes. Charlie gulped as Stephen brought his mouth closer to his own. As their lips touched, Charlie knew that he would be able to hold himself back. He returned the kiss full on, and their mouths fit together as if they were made for each other.
There they were kissing. It was Charlie's first kiss with another man, and it was better than anything he ever could have imagined. It was ten times better than any kiss with a girl could ever have been. Stephen's tongue slowly slid into Charlie's while Charlie let his hand slide into Stephen's golden curls. Then it ended.
"Stephen!" Charlie and Stephen heard Vanessa call, and they quickly broke apart, both red in the face. "There's a scratch that I want your opinion on!" she yelled from another room.
"I'll be right there!" Stephen called back, but when he turned back around to talk to Charlie, he was gone. The entrance to the tent was wide open. Stephen sighed and went to find Vanessa.
Charlie was running. He couldn't remember ever running faster. He flew by people calling his name. He ignored his duties and just ran until he found a completely deserted place. Charlie was completely sure where in the preserve he was. It didn't matter to him. Not sure when he had sat down, Charlie found himself on a boulder with his head in his hands. Tears rolled down his face.
He hadn't cried since the day he convinced himself that he couldn't study dragons if he was gay. Then, it was tears of sadness and desperation. Now his tears came due to the fact that his body was showing all the emotions at once. His fists were clenched revealing his own rage at himself. The crying was his sadness at knowing that Stephen couldn't actually love him back. Yet at the exact same time, there was a smile on his face.
At age twenty-two, Charlie had received his first kiss from someone he really wanted a kiss from. His heart pounded, and his face was as red as his hair. The crying soon turned to laughter as he realized that, even though he and Stephen probably wouldn't last forever, that kiss always would. These were his thoughts when the tail hit him.
Charlie was hit forcefully into the ground, and he felt a welt start to from on his forehead. He sprang up, pulling his wand out from his back pocket. Charlie stood face to face with a Chinese Fireball. These dragons were vicious, but Charlie was grateful that it at least wasn't a Hungarian Horntail. He would be a dead man if it had been. He glanced down at the tag on the dragon's ankle. Charlie happened to know the dragon by name. He also knew that she was nesting.
"Shit," he whispered. "Amelinda," he called in a louder voice. "Baby, I'm not going to hurt your eggs. They'll be fine. See I'm going away now." Charlie slowly started backing up when he heard a loud crunch under his foot. He looked down to see the yoke of a broken dragon egg. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" he yelled.
Amelinda breathed out an intense burst of flame from her nostrils. It was the kind of flame that would kill Charlie if a shield charm hadn't been put up around him. Charlie's head snapped around to see Stephen hiding behind a boulder, pointing his wand at Charlie. Protecting Charlie. Just as a smile crept onto Charlie's face, several more wizards and witches ran onto the scene and forced Amelinda back.
When Stephen let his shield down, Charlie ran floppy legged over to him. He collapsed into his arms, tired out from crying and the rush of adrenaline he had received. Stephen held him up and leaned in for what would be the second kiss of the day.
They both found themselves laughing as Stephen practically dragged Charlie to Charlie's own tent. Charlie couldn't even remember why he had been crying before. Stephen did love him. This is what love felt like. The willingness to laugh at things that weren't funny. The feeling of security. The unexpected kisses in between words and chuckles. They were all just right.
Stephen and Charlie stumbled through tent flap and onto the cot. Stephen started fumbled with the straps on Charlie's leather protection, when everything that had just felt right, suddenly felt his doubts returning.
"No!" he said jumping up. Stephen looked taken aback.
"Charlie," Stephen laughed. "I know you're a virgin, but you can trust me." Charlie sat up in his cot.
"It's not that. I don't want this to be another one night stand for you," Charlie said. He stared down at the floor of his tent, terrified that he had ruined everything.
"That's fine," Charlie was surprised to hear. He jerked his head up to see Stephen looking at him in a way no one had before. "We will wait as long as you want. I will never force you to do anything. I will never do anything to hurt you. I will never let anyone break your heart, and that includes me."
Stephen stood up and leaned down to give Charlie a goodbye kiss. He lingered only a moment. Then, he walked out of the tent flap into the night. Charlie took a deep breath and went to sleep with his clothes still on.