Burn // Charlie Weasley

23. Vulnerable

"Sit," Gabi pointed to the couch in her cabin, but Charlie had already stated he wasn't going to take orders from her. Especially not after what he had just witnessed.

Charlie couldn't explain what happened.

But he knew that dragons understood each other. Unless they felt threatened, they didn't fight. They didn't attack and they certainly never used their fire against their own kind, not like it would do much anyway. Their scales offered protection from the flames.

It seemed as though the Hebridean Black saw Gabi as more than just a wizard. She saw that Gabi wasn't affected by fire, similar to how a dragon wouldn't have been injured either, and she backed down.

For whatever reason, she trusted Gabi. She let her defenses down.

She was still slightly on edge and anxious, but Charlie and Gabi were able to put a sleeping charm on the creature to calm her until a team could come back to harness and relocate her.

Gabi looked at the couch again, "Sit down, Charlie."

"No, you sit," he argued back as he tossed his wand onto the bed next to him. "I need you to tell me what the fuck just happened."

"We sedated the dragon," she said, arm flailing to her side before she grabbed the medical bag that was stashed in her kitchen and wet a cloth that had been hanging up. She had packed one for herself after walking in on Charlie trying to tend to his own wounds, figuring it would be good to have one around.

"Not about the dragon," he laughed, but it had a bitter undertone. "The fucking fire, Gabriela. How are you alive?"

"How are you alive is the better question," she said, eyes dropping to the cut on his side. The charm he had cast on it was giving up and it had started bleeding again and it wasn't like he had a shirt on to cover it. She nodded her head towards the couch, urging him to sit.

"I'm not letting you touch me, are you kidding?" Charlie scoffed. "Whatever happened, whatever you did, that was some dark magic."

"It wasn't-" she let out an exasperated breath and held her hand out towards the couch. Dark magic, he called it. Already he was jumping to his own conclusions. Following Charlie might not have saved her job, only made her more of a threat to him.

"If you still want to fire me tomorrow, fine, but I'm not letting you pass out from blood loss in the meantime. Now can you please just sit."

"No way," he started to back up but Gabi stopped him from going anywhere.

"You're getting blood on my floor."

She blocked him from heading for the door, instead putting her hand on his chest and pushing him in the direction of the couch. Charlie tried to get her hand off of him and reached for her wrist, but Gabi dodged his grasp and kept forcing him backwards.

He pushed her hand off of him as he took a step back, but Gabi was persistent and used her other hand, pressing it to his chest to strengthen her force and physically push him towards the couch.

Only, she pushed a little too hard. Charlie lost his balance and fell backwards onto it. He reached out for her wrist to try and steady himself, but he ended up taking Gabi down with him. She landed on top of his body and he grunted, tensing up in pain as her hand slipped and directly hit the open wound at the bottom of his ribcage.

His grip went to her hips to pull her back slightly, but he didn't lift her off of him like she expected him too. The intensity in the breaths matched as Gabi rested her hand on his chest, pushing herself up to make this straddling position as comfortable as she could.