Only What You Need (1/4)
Title: Only What You Need (1/4)
Author: chococoffeekiss
Rating & Warnings: PG for drinking, language, innuendo and abuse of prescription medication.
Prompt: Angst/Humour and Dragon (sort-of, I tried!)
Format & Word Count: chaptered fic, 1201/approx. 4000
Summary: After the loss of a friend, the Order's two token shapeshifting freaks find comfort in the bottom of several bottles (and in each other).
Author’s Notes: So that dragon prompt really threw me for a loop. I didn't manage to use it the way I wanted to, but I gave it my best shot. Angsty Black humour ahoy! More to follow.
But I thought this wouldn’t hurt a lot
I guess not.
-‘Kids,’ MGMT
Remus Lupin was sitting at a bar next to a lovely young woman who had bought him several pints (of his favorite brand) and some food (which he had barely touched), and he was turning the beer mat over and over in his fingers, trying to work out exactly how he'd gotten here.
He must have assented to being Apparated off, probably after the makeshift memorial service at the Weasleys' (a firewhiskey toast). She’d put an arm around his shoulders, though what she'd been saying as she led him away, he couldn't recall.
There was a lit sign on the wall opposite him, a neon green dragon wrapped around an old-fashioned beer keg. It blew 'smoke' out its nostrils every hour. The thought of a drunk dragon was (to be perfectly honest) terrifying, but the only reason he was considering it was because he was pretty far gone himself.
Five nights ago, they had been sitting in Grimmauld Place doing much the same when they were summoned to the Ministry. There had been more laughter, though. And in the span of ten minutes his whole life had been flipped upside down.
Again.
Little memories of that kept surfacing like broken pieces of ice, swamping him like rough seas. He fought it, shaking his head-it wouldn’t do any good to be dragged under now.
Remus cast a sidelong glance at the woman next to him. There was an ill flame of colour on her cheek, no doubt results of a painkiller for that spell and fall she took. She might have been literal when she said she ‘escaped’ the hospital. He knew better than to put it past her - that woman was capable of anything.
She was, in that respect, a lot like her cousin.
Nymphadora Tonks was svelte and daunting with her crimson dreadlocks, kohl-rimmed eyes and silver piercings. Like a thorned rose, he thought; look, don’t touch. The scowl on her face was something he couldn’t get around - she wasn’t broody by nature but she seemed to be managing it well enough now.
It was like sharing a basket of chips with a bad faerie. His own personal bean sidhe.
Wasn't that a Weird Sisters' song?
"Stop that, it's driving me insane." She batted the beer mat out his hands and put it under her own drink. The girl ordered another round of peppermint schnapps and in the manner of two people versed in drowning sorrows they touched glasses and downed the shots.
"Sorry."
"It's fine." Tonks winced - the argent fire of the drink was winding down through her like slow poison. It hurt to cough, but it was those other aching pains that were worse, the ones that didn’t fade out into numbness when she took a potion or a pill. Or both. She had been injured on missions before, but never so severely. The Healers never knew just what to do with her. Their treatments were always touch-and-go, trial and error, educated guesses.
She’d only got out of St. Mungo’s that morning and then spent the rest of the day bouncing between her parents’ house and the Ministry in a drugged haze, answering questions and worrying. Mostly about Remus. Three broken ribs, a broken arm, a bruised kidney and a punctured lung weren’t so bad compared to how she felt when she looked at him.
The usually unshakeable man next to her had his elbows on the bar and his chin in his hands, hair askew, dark shadows under eyes staring at something she couldn’t see. She had the urge to slap him, maybe kiss him or tackle him onto the floor amongst the peanut shells, screaming ‘feel better so that I can feel better.’
It was a sad and sober thought; there wasn't really a word for what he was feeling, was there?
Aggrieved didn't quite cut it.
She had brought him to the pub some of her friends liked to frequent. There was a Wizarding inn of the same name, The Green Dragon, but she hadn’t wanted to seem forward (it was a meet-your-mistress-on-your-lunch-hour kind of place). Now she was certain he wouldn't have noticed. Tonight was some sort of live music night and a man in the corner was currently butchering 'Ain't No Sunshine.'
“D’you want another?" she asked over the noise, watching Remus as he turned the empty glass in circles on the bar. He hadn't breathed a word but 'sorry' since they had arrived. That armor he wore was wearing thin and something mortally wounded was showing through. He nodded without looking at her. She waved the bartender over, motioning for two more pints.
Guitar Man was now making an attempt at 'Everybody Hurts.' This was the final straw for Tonks, who had suffered through enough musical whinging for one evening. She smacked her half-empty glass down, twisting around.
“Don’t you know any happy songs, you pillock?”
The guitarist swore into the microphone, loud and anatomically specific. A few of the patrons laughed.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” she snarled, turning back to her drink. The dragon sign had sputtered out in a rogue burst of magic Remus felt hit him like a hot breeze - it silenced the room.
“I’m not.” He’d tried to stand up but was holding fast to the bar to keep the room from spinning.
“Thanks and all, but you couldn’t fight a pixie right now.”
With effort she hauled him back onto the stool next to her. He was finding it increasingly difficult to separate the cheerful, awkward girl he knew from the Valkyrie he’d seen in the Ministry of Magic.
Maybe she was, too.
The music started up again, the chattering of the patrons drowning out the ringing in his ears. The bartender was trying to fix the sign to no avail, plugging and unplugging it, staring at the outlet. Tonks had a pained look on her face, trying to keep her hair from going Proceed With Caution Orange (the name had been Sirius’s idea).
“You play a bit of guitar, don’t you, Nymphadora?” Remus asked, interrupting her as she muttered darkly, looking like she was scrying for dark portents in her rum and Coke.
His throat felt as if he’d spent three hours screaming at top volume. Had he? The day had passed in a blur of sleeping and having bowls of food thrust at him by people with red hair.
“Some, yeah.”
“How much do the strings cost?”
She bit her lip, running a finger around the rim of her glass. Her eyelashes looked wet. “I dunno, five pounds a set or so. Why?”
Remus shrugged and all six strings on the guitar snapped as one during the second verse of a bad cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’
He shot her the briefest of smiles. “Just curious.”
Tonks pushed her drink away, the corner of her mouth quirked up in appreciation.
“I think I need some fresh air.”
***
Author: chococoffeekiss
Rating & Warnings: PG for drinking, language, innuendo and abuse of prescription medication.
Prompt: Angst/Humour and Dragon (sort-of, I tried!)
Format & Word Count: chaptered fic, 1201/approx. 4000
Summary: After the loss of a friend, the Order's two token shapeshifting freaks find comfort in the bottom of several bottles (and in each other).
Author’s Notes: So that dragon prompt really threw me for a loop. I didn't manage to use it the way I wanted to, but I gave it my best shot. Angsty Black humour ahoy! More to follow.
But I thought this wouldn’t hurt a lot
I guess not.
-‘Kids,’ MGMT
Remus Lupin was sitting at a bar next to a lovely young woman who had bought him several pints (of his favorite brand) and some food (which he had barely touched), and he was turning the beer mat over and over in his fingers, trying to work out exactly how he'd gotten here.
He must have assented to being Apparated off, probably after the makeshift memorial service at the Weasleys' (a firewhiskey toast). She’d put an arm around his shoulders, though what she'd been saying as she led him away, he couldn't recall.
There was a lit sign on the wall opposite him, a neon green dragon wrapped around an old-fashioned beer keg. It blew 'smoke' out its nostrils every hour. The thought of a drunk dragon was (to be perfectly honest) terrifying, but the only reason he was considering it was because he was pretty far gone himself.
Five nights ago, they had been sitting in Grimmauld Place doing much the same when they were summoned to the Ministry. There had been more laughter, though. And in the span of ten minutes his whole life had been flipped upside down.
Again.
Little memories of that kept surfacing like broken pieces of ice, swamping him like rough seas. He fought it, shaking his head-it wouldn’t do any good to be dragged under now.
Remus cast a sidelong glance at the woman next to him. There was an ill flame of colour on her cheek, no doubt results of a painkiller for that spell and fall she took. She might have been literal when she said she ‘escaped’ the hospital. He knew better than to put it past her - that woman was capable of anything.
She was, in that respect, a lot like her cousin.
Nymphadora Tonks was svelte and daunting with her crimson dreadlocks, kohl-rimmed eyes and silver piercings. Like a thorned rose, he thought; look, don’t touch. The scowl on her face was something he couldn’t get around - she wasn’t broody by nature but she seemed to be managing it well enough now.
It was like sharing a basket of chips with a bad faerie. His own personal bean sidhe.
Wasn't that a Weird Sisters' song?
"Stop that, it's driving me insane." She batted the beer mat out his hands and put it under her own drink. The girl ordered another round of peppermint schnapps and in the manner of two people versed in drowning sorrows they touched glasses and downed the shots.
"Sorry."
"It's fine." Tonks winced - the argent fire of the drink was winding down through her like slow poison. It hurt to cough, but it was those other aching pains that were worse, the ones that didn’t fade out into numbness when she took a potion or a pill. Or both. She had been injured on missions before, but never so severely. The Healers never knew just what to do with her. Their treatments were always touch-and-go, trial and error, educated guesses.
She’d only got out of St. Mungo’s that morning and then spent the rest of the day bouncing between her parents’ house and the Ministry in a drugged haze, answering questions and worrying. Mostly about Remus. Three broken ribs, a broken arm, a bruised kidney and a punctured lung weren’t so bad compared to how she felt when she looked at him.
The usually unshakeable man next to her had his elbows on the bar and his chin in his hands, hair askew, dark shadows under eyes staring at something she couldn’t see. She had the urge to slap him, maybe kiss him or tackle him onto the floor amongst the peanut shells, screaming ‘feel better so that I can feel better.’
It was a sad and sober thought; there wasn't really a word for what he was feeling, was there?
Aggrieved didn't quite cut it.
She had brought him to the pub some of her friends liked to frequent. There was a Wizarding inn of the same name, The Green Dragon, but she hadn’t wanted to seem forward (it was a meet-your-mistress-on-your-lunch-hour kind of place). Now she was certain he wouldn't have noticed. Tonight was some sort of live music night and a man in the corner was currently butchering 'Ain't No Sunshine.'
“D’you want another?" she asked over the noise, watching Remus as he turned the empty glass in circles on the bar. He hadn't breathed a word but 'sorry' since they had arrived. That armor he wore was wearing thin and something mortally wounded was showing through. He nodded without looking at her. She waved the bartender over, motioning for two more pints.
Guitar Man was now making an attempt at 'Everybody Hurts.' This was the final straw for Tonks, who had suffered through enough musical whinging for one evening. She smacked her half-empty glass down, twisting around.
“Don’t you know any happy songs, you pillock?”
The guitarist swore into the microphone, loud and anatomically specific. A few of the patrons laughed.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” she snarled, turning back to her drink. The dragon sign had sputtered out in a rogue burst of magic Remus felt hit him like a hot breeze - it silenced the room.
“I’m not.” He’d tried to stand up but was holding fast to the bar to keep the room from spinning.
“Thanks and all, but you couldn’t fight a pixie right now.”
With effort she hauled him back onto the stool next to her. He was finding it increasingly difficult to separate the cheerful, awkward girl he knew from the Valkyrie he’d seen in the Ministry of Magic.
Maybe she was, too.
The music started up again, the chattering of the patrons drowning out the ringing in his ears. The bartender was trying to fix the sign to no avail, plugging and unplugging it, staring at the outlet. Tonks had a pained look on her face, trying to keep her hair from going Proceed With Caution Orange (the name had been Sirius’s idea).
“You play a bit of guitar, don’t you, Nymphadora?” Remus asked, interrupting her as she muttered darkly, looking like she was scrying for dark portents in her rum and Coke.
His throat felt as if he’d spent three hours screaming at top volume. Had he? The day had passed in a blur of sleeping and having bowls of food thrust at him by people with red hair.
“Some, yeah.”
“How much do the strings cost?”
She bit her lip, running a finger around the rim of her glass. Her eyelashes looked wet. “I dunno, five pounds a set or so. Why?”
Remus shrugged and all six strings on the guitar snapped as one during the second verse of a bad cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’
He shot her the briefest of smiles. “Just curious.”
Tonks pushed her drink away, the corner of her mouth quirked up in appreciation.
“I think I need some fresh air.”
***