Everything became that much more farcical once they boarded the plane. Being in first class, Ian and Matthieu were two of the first to board, especially as Ian was still having difficulty walking. They strode down a strange enclosed corridor, then encountered the door of the plane. An employee of the airline took Lucian’s carrier.
“Can you take him out, Matthieu? He should be fairly docile by this point.”
Which is how Matthieu found himself carrying a peacock onto an airplane and settling him into two first-class seats, which were necessary to accommodate his long tail. The bird honked a few times, blinked sleepily, and ended up slumped on the seats in an inelegant peacock sprawl. Matthieu buckled the bird into a safety harness with the help of a very unflappable flight steward.
Ian clucked his tongue and drank his second whiskey. “Poor boy. I hate to sedate him, but it’s the only way.”
Matthieu took his seat and buckled in. “You could, oh, I don’t know… perhaps not travel with a large, noisy blue bird.”
Ian looked shocked at the suggestion, so Matthieu let it drop.
After his third whiskey, Ian asked, “Are you having second thoughts, Matthieu?”
Matthieu sipped his own ginger drink, poured not into a glass, but into a champagne flute. More absurdity. He looked out the window and at the mountains below them. “It’s a bit late now. I didn’t bring my parachute.”
“Not what I meant,” Ian said with a grimace. “You. Me. Geoffrey. Have you changed your mind?”
That brought Geoffrey to mind, and with the thought was a strange sort of tug, as if the plane was not flying merely to Aurora, but right to the dragon himself. It was a curious sensation. Matthieu thought of being made to bed only Ian and found he didn’t care for the idea. All he could think of was Geoffrey sitting in a large, dark house, alone. He could see it all so clearly, from the Victorian lines of the rooms with its dark woods and lushly embroidered fabrics, to the intricately handwoven rugs. By a dark and cold fireplace sat Geoffrey, his exterior marble-still as servants came and went in the dimly lit room, and his heart crumbling slowly into dust within his chest.
“Non,” Matthieu gasped out. He started to tremble violently, like he was beset with a sudden fever. “Non.We can’t… we can’t…”
Ian turned and grabbed Matthieu’s shaking shoulders. It made Matthieu feel better, but it didn’t entirely still his distress. “We can’t what?”
Tears prickled Matthieu’s eyes. One grew heavy and fell down his cheek.
“Matthieu, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“We can’t leave him alone,” Matthieu moaned. “Nous ne pouvons pas. We can’t.”
Ian gathered him close and stroked Matthieu’s hair. Matthieu wished he could be stronger, but he didn’t understand why he felt so sad, let alone know how to remedy the feeling. All he knew was that he needed Geoffrey, and both of them needed Ian.
“I don’t want to be alone,” Matthieu whispered.
Not anymore. Maybe not ever again.
“Shh.” Ian stroked his hair and it was nice, but not enough. There was something missing.Monsieur dragon grincheux.
As Matthieu cried his unaccountable tears for a dragon he barely knew on a dragon he’d just met, Lucian lifted his head and honked disconsolately until the airplane steward came and fed him a granola bar.
A wave of homesickness flooded Matthieu, making him long for something he scarcely remembered.
Home. I want to go home.
He just wasn’t sure where that was.
10
Geoffrey
“Let me start a fire for you, sir.”
Geoffrey sat in a straight wingback chair beside the cold hearth and stared at a slight discoloration that marred the ivory silk fabric covering the walls above the cherry wood paneling. He wondered what had caused the stain, how long it had been there, and if the shape was more like a tear or an egg.
An egg.
His heart, the treacherous thing that it was, clenched, and he looked away. A distant sensation of longing panged deep within him, like what he was missing was a thousand miles away. Geoffrey had felt like this before, but the last time he had, it had been because Ian had been forced to return to California, separating them for a month. Even then, he hadn’t felt so utterly miserable.
Between the ache in his heart, the strange, shooting pain in his calf, and his scattered, foggy thoughts, Geoffrey had never been in such sorry shape. It was like he’d been cursed with egg brain.
