Men and Their Dragons

Darien snorted out a laugh at the story that Antonia was telling her as she checked on the incubators of the nursery to make sure the eggs were at the correct temperatures, and that Tonia hadn’t exactly gotten distracted by something and turn the dial wrong.

“I swear, Dare! He couldn’t win a single game at that stupid little booth, but when I tried it, I got it on the first try,” the American sweetheart drawled as she wrote down numbers on the packet of papers held by a clipboard and waited for her co-worker and friend to finish up whatever she was doing.

“Well, Tonia. That comes with dating a muggle and not going after a certain pure-blood wizard who has been begging to have children with you,” Darien winked with her reply and nodded to the man that was watching from the window with a look of pure awe. Was that a bit of drool she saw?

The brunette scolded her and launched her pen at the frizzy haired woman. “O’ shut up, you lil’ hypocrite!” she hissed with her southern drawl. “You have nowhere to talk!”

Darien only rolled her eyes at this and chunked the pen back at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Antonia raised her brow high onto her forehead and placed both hands on her hips after she placed the clipboard she had been writing on, down. Darien turned around after checking the last incubator and raised a brow. Tonia gave a “you-are-joking-right?” look.

“What?” Darien asked, furrowing her brows and going over to grab her jacket and bag from the rack opposite of where the eggs were.

“Dun’ tell me ya haven’t noticed the way Mr. Weasley looks at you, Dare.”

Darien snorted, again, trying to keep back her laughter. “Why would Arthur need to look at me when he has a wife and seven children?”

Tonia’s expression turned back to a scowl. “You know who I’m talking about, Darien Towers! Stop making stupid excuses!”

The native-born Portuguese woman gave a smug grin. “Or do I?” she mused and exited the room for the last time that day. Darien looked over at the still-gawking boy and rolled her eyes. “Go get her, tigre pequeno.”

Luke looked up to only catch a wink from the woman before she disappeared into the halls of the Romanian Dragon Reserve. That was the perfect amount of encouragement that he needed.

Darien could just smell the courage now radiating through the halls as she turned corner after corner to reach the barracks and then her room; left, right, left, walk outside, enter the building, up the stairs, second floor, right, left, third door on the right. She could only roll her eyes at the single peach-orange rose that sat under her door and beneath the rose was today’s copy of The Daily Prophet; she could only read what was cut off of the headline with something ending in “-Missing”. Picking up the magically-induced newspaper that spread rumors worse than a group of teenage girls and the rose, Darien stuck the key to her room in the doorknob and entered.

It was a messy room, but that could be fixed with a bit of elbow grease. Darien was just too lazy to use any elbow grease. She dropped the paper and the flower onto her bed and dropped her bag and coat to the floor beside the bed. She still had an hour or so until the mess hall would be opened for dinner. That gave her the perfect amount of time to take a shower.

Darien dug through a dresser drawer and pulled out one of the half-dozen fluffy yellow towels and bag of toiletries that she would need. Why couldn’t they all have their own bathroom? Why did they all have to share the showers that were located on the third floor? The least the Board could do was split the baths for the males and females, but NO, they had to make it to where they shared. And the showers were opened, too, meaning anyone could walk in and see anything.

She had been quite lucky the past two years she had worked here about not getting caught. Either Darien would get up before anyone else, or go in after everyone was asleep, but tonight she wanted to get lots of rest since tomorrow she had to go out of the reserve’s main building and into the unknown (literally) to find anymore eggs before the usual harsh winter winds came in. So, a short shower before dinner wouldn’t hurt, right?

Sad thing was, Darien forgot to knock on wood.

The woman grabbed a pair of sleeping shorts and a matching short-sleeve shirt before leaving her room and heading to the stairs and to the showers. Her thoughts wondered quickly in the few minutes that it took to get from her room to up the stairs and through the door of the showers.

Darien was pulled from her thoughts at the sound of a tune being whistled, and she looked up. The thought of dragon eggs quickly disappeared into the deepest, darkest back corner of her mind to have the thought of a tight, well chiseled (and cutely freckled) ass flash in her mind as she stared at one only ten feet away from her. Darien stood, awestruck at what she was seeing and didn’t notice that she had dropped her things. Her green eyes fought to stay on the surprisingly tan skin, but lost and traveled up the rest of the body. A dark green dragon tattoo eyed her from its place where it was inked on the back of the person with the nice ass. Darien only knew one person who had a tattoo of a Romanian Longhorn on his back . . .

“Mãe doce de Merlin . . .”

Charlie stopped his subconscious whistling and turned around to look at who he had heard. “Darien . . . ?”

Said woman quickly covered her eyes with her hands, but it was too late to hide the large blush crawling up her neck.

“Inferno sangrento, I'm so sorry Charlie! I didn't know it was-- I swear I didn't see any-- I'll just go now and-- See you at dinner!” Darien rambled off into her native tongue, forgetting she was the only one here to understand it, before disappearing out of the showers. Her things were still sprawled out on the wet tiled floor. Charlie had just now noticed that Darien, the Squib-science-genius coworker and the only human being that could possibly keep him sane here, had just seen him while he was taking a shower . . .

And she was blushing?

Charlie was dressed not five minutes later and running to see if he could catch up with her. He had no such luck.

When the he had made it down to the mess hall, and finding it already filling up with the others at the Reserve, Charlie looked around to see if there would be any luck here to see if Darien had actually made it down yet. He turned to Antonia, the girl that he knew worked with Darien, to ask if she’d seen her.

“Sorry Charlie, but I haven’t seen her since she left after her shift in the nursery,” Antonia said, elbowing the happy-go-lucky looking Luke that was hanging onto her waist.

“Eh, it’s fine. She’ll probably come down later,” Charlie mused, sitting down beside her and began filling his plate. He missed the slightly worried look on Tonia’s face before she went back to her conversation with one of the other girls from the nursery.

Over the next hour and half that the mess hall was opened to the workers of the Reserve, Charlie sat and waited, glancing around ever few minutes to see if Darien was trying to sneak in or anything. He knew if she was embarrassed by anything, she always tried to sneak around and not be seen for awhile. She never came down.

Charlie would have been the snoopy little person he was, but decided against it and told himself he would talk to Darien in the morning. After all, he was going to be with her tomorrow when Antonia and she went out of the main building and into the habitat of the dragons. Collecting dragon eggs was much easier said than done, especially with very protective mother dragons. And that is where Charlie, and the few other Dragon Keepers Gabe and Vian, came in at.

Charlie fell asleep with ease, the thoughts of his friend and fellow co-worker no longer in his head.

----

Darien wasn’t as lucky.