Sweet Beginnings (1/4)
Title: Sweet Beginnings (1/4)
Author: chococoffeekiss
Rating & Warnings: Rated T/PG for language and a little bit of innuendo, Non-Magical American Modern AU OMGWTF. XD
Prompt(s): hot chocolate
Format & Word Count: Chaptered, 1,986/approx 7500
Summary: Love's labors pay minimum wage; Tonks is a barista by day, ninja by night. Remus writes, or tries to. Sirius levels up. Feat. other HP characters doing even stranger things.
Author’s Notes: Bahahahah. I’ve always wanted to do this. Pays homage to my husband’s talent for making Star Trek references at wildly inappropriate moments. The martial arts stuff was looked over by a RL friend who does Jujitsu, so it should be mostly accurate.
It was certainly interesting to try and think of ways to make these two crazy kids end up together without magic and try to still keep it…well, magical. Title is from the All-American Rejects song, 'Swing, Swing.' This dumb little fic has made me more nervous about posting than I think anything else ever has. I did my best to keep everyone in-character. XD
Here goes nothin'.
Early winter was her least favorite time of year - that seemingly endless, colorless stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the sky was a continual shade of smoggy gray, spitting down snow in random bursts.
Nymphadora Tonks (known mainly as Tonks for painfully obvious reasons) was walking fast, the collar of her coat hitched up around her chin and her head down, staring at an iPod clutched in her un-mittened hand.
Her cousin had sent it as payment for sweet-talking her boss into catering his company’s Christmas party, and bless him, it was already stocked with decent tunes. And it was pink.
Thus musically equipped as she was leaving her morning shift at the coffeeshop, it was really Sirius’s fault she bumped into a man and made him drop his newspaper. The shock of the sudden stop jolted through her and she swore aloud as her feet hit a patch of ice, her boots flew forward and the meeting between her ass and the cold concrete became imminent.
Falling was an utterly unsettling feeling- like missing a step going down a staircase - and lasted even after Newspaper Guy grabbed her arm and hauled her back onto the safe, crunchy snow.
“Sorry,” they both said at once and she laughed breathlessly.
“Are you alright?” he asked, concerned creases forming over a pair of black-rimmed glasses that made her think of a history professor she’d once had, or maybe David Tennant as Dr. Who. The image was reinforced by a dark trench coat and a computer case over one shoulder.
Tonks nodded. Her headphones were down around her neck, a Daft Punk song blaring out of the speakers. Her Cookie Monster hat had slipped over one eye. “Sorry.”
“No problem.” He straightened her hat, seemingly unbothered by the loss of his paper (it was blowing down the street). “There you go, good as new.”
A bus squealed to an air-brake halt at the sign, exhaust pouring out in smoky clouds behind it. He grinned and disappeared into the little crowd of people trying to board. She turned and walked home, feeling a little warmer.
Next morning, she found herself watching out the front window of the shop, distracted as she wiped down tables before her shift ended. The third or fourth time she looked, the guy with the newspaper was standing at the bus stop, reading the comics. Her stomach did a little backflip, as if she was falling all over again.
Molly never missed much. She walked over and peered through the foggy glass, hands full of empty mugs. “You know him?”
“No, but I’d like to.”
Her boss laughed and disappeared behind the front counter. “Here,” she said after a moment, and Tonks turned around. Molly held up a paper cup and nodded toward the door, winking. “I’ll take it out of your check. See you tomorrow.”
Tonks threw on her coat and bolted out the door with the drink, slowing to a casual walk as it slammed shut behind her. At the bus stop she bumped into him again, gently. When he looked up, she pushed the cup into his hand. Steam curled up from the holes in the plastic lid.
“Thanks,” he said with a smile so bright she didn’t trust herself to say anything that wouldn’t sound completely idiotic, so she just smiled and floated home.
This happened every day for almost a week - she took out a cup of hot chocolate when her shift was over, just before he caught the bus to wherever guys in trench coats go. They never talked - just a quick, shy ‘hello,’ and Molly never once deducted the price of the drinks from her paycheck.
On Friday she found herself hurrying to work in the pre-dawn light. Tonks had always enjoyed waking early and helping open the shop. She liked the smells of fresh brewing coffee and baking pastries and the sounds of happy customers. A good-looking man who spent a few minutes outside in full view of the cash register (and might eventually come in out of the cold, she hoped) only added to the appeal.
Not everyone thought that her situation as ideal as she did. Her mother still contended she should do something more with her life but tolerated it with motherly affection. Her father, out of the pure contrariness she had inherited from him, encouraged her to do what she pleased.
Tonks didn’t understand how anyone wouldn’t be perfectly happy in her situation. She didn’t need much to be satisfied with life, but admittedly, there was one thing missing (not to mention she was a tad weary of Molly trying to play matchmaker, her efforts usually featuring one of her own sons).
On Friday, Newspaper Guy (as she’d nicknamed him) didn’t show up. She had to work late, broke a mug and burned her fingers on a hotplate.
“It’ll be fine, dear,” Molly said soothingly, patting her on the shoulder as she ran cold water over blistered skin. “He’ll be back if he knows what’s good for him.”
Lacking an articulate reply, Tonks jammed her hat down over her ears and stomped home through the snow, swearing under her breath - frustrated at herself for getting so worked-up over some nameless stranger.
---
Sirius Black flopped down on the sofa, a can of Coke in one hand, Xbox controller in the other.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked, cheerfully, prodding the man next to him with a sharp elbow.
Remus was drawing on a notepad and occasionally jotting down a sentence or two. He gave Sirius a sideways stare that read ‘tread lightly’ or possibly ‘shut up now and your death will be quick and relatively painless,’ but Sirius had never been one to take advice to heart.
“Oh, I know that look. It’s a woman, isn’t it?”
Remus, vainly trying to avoid this conversation, kept silent still and continued doodling on the yellow legal pad. Maybe if he pretended he hadn’t heard him-
“Hah! It is!” Sirius leaned over and tapped a finger on a hastily-sketched female figure. “So, she’s hot? This woman? More importantly, is she real?”
-Of course not. Ignoring Sirius almost never worked - he was persistent.
He was worse than persistent; he was a full-size shoulder devil without an angelic counterpart.
“Yes, she’s real,” Remus relented after a moment, giving his oldest friend a hurt look.
“Specifications? You know,” Sirius drew the curvy figure of a woman in the air with both hands, still holding the controller. “Dimensions?”
“Three, at least,” he said matter-of-factly, and got a glare for that one.
“Details, Lupin. Give me details. I need to know if she passes inspection.”
“Inspection?”
“She has to have the Sirius Black Seal of Approval.”
“Last time you tried to approve a date of mine, she ended up going home with you.”
“I promise I’ll leave this one alone.”
“Well,” he said with audible skepticism, “She’s a little shorter than me, maybe an inch or two. Dark hair, I think. Dark eyes. Brown, maybe. I don’t know much else, I’ve only seen her in a coat and hat. She has a nice smile-” he winced. “She’s younger than me.”
“What kind of younger?”
“Twenty-five, maybe?”
“You cradle-robber, you.” Sirius rolled his eyes. “That’s not so bad. Where did you meet this mysterious coat-wearing girl?”
“The bus stop. She brought me hot chocolate every day this week. With marshmallows. See, public transportation is a force for good.”
“Psh. The ladies prefer the bike.”
“Insane ones, maybe.”
“The best kind of insane. You should try it sometime. So are you gonna ask her out or what?”
Remus shook his head.
“Why not? Wait, I’ve got it; you’re too old to be pining after some girl and too busy to go out, amirite?”
He twirled the pen in his fingers. “I’d like to do all of that. Going out. Pining, or whatever. But I am too busy, and no girl that age would date anyone my age …and then there’s the chance of a relapse and I wouldn’t want to put anyone through that.”
“Excuses,” Sirius huffed. “Girls that age love older guys. You’ll see, we’ll ask one.” He pulled a phone out of his pocket and hit a button. It rang for a few seconds, then a faint female voice answered.
“Hey, Dora. Quick question. If you had to choose to go on a date with either a guy my age who has a respectable career and a nice apartment or a guy your age who spends his weekends smoking pot and lives out of his ‘87 Camaro, which would you pick?”
There was a moment of silence, then he laughed. “I’m thirty six-ish. Really. Really. Why? I’m collecting data for a poll.” He paused. “Okay. We’ll I’m glad you liked it. Alrighty. See you then. Bye.” He hung up. “Survey says she’d rather date you.”
“Who did you call?”
“My cousin’s daughter. The one who took me skydiving, remember? You wouldn’t go. That’s a shame, Dora’s a riot. You two would get along great.”
“But should her opinion count? She’s related to you, so naturally, she’s crazy.”
Sirius grinned and held up his fingers about an inch apart. “Yeah, just a little.”
“Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but the confirmed bachelor thing seems to be going pretty well so far.”
“Whatever. Not all women-“ he started, then stopped and cast a sideways glance at his friend.
Sirius had been there when they were thirteen and Remus’s mother had run off with a vacuum cleaner salesman. He’d made plenty of jokes about it (still did), but he’d been there to listen. Sirius had been the first to pry the truth out of him when he was diagnosed with leukemia at seventeen, and along with their friend James, had helped his dad sell their house and move their stuff into an apartment closer to the hospital. He’d been there through all the ex-girlfriends and a few chemotherapy treatments and a short-lived grunge phase, up until the accident.
That’s the kind of friend he was, which only made Remus feel guiltier about the years he had spent angry at him for screwing up their lives, when it hadn’t been Sirius’s fault at all.
“Not all women are creepy stalkers. I think you should ask her out.”
“Your cousin?”
“No,” he frowned. “That girl you met.”
“I don’t know…”
“Psh. You writers are too romantically-minded. Every woman you see is a muse. I’m not talking marriage and chubby-cheeked babies, you idiot. I’m just saying, I hear getting laid helps with writer’s block.”
Remus rolled his eyes (even though Sirius was probably right). There were three kinds of women in his life at the moment - at each end of the spectrum were the rare-but-scary fangirls who found him at book signings and the majority of women who just didn’t see him. And then there was the girl from the coffeeshop, who noticed him but whom he didn’t need a restraining order against.
…Yet.
“I do not have writer’s block.”
Black looked pointedly at the sketches on the notepad and nodded, unconvinced. “Just sayin’,” he held up a placating hand. “The goddess of bus stops and cocoa, huh? Does she have a name?”
“I’m sure she does,” Remus said flatly, indicating that he had no idea what the woman’s name was, despite all attempts.
“You’re pathetic.”
“I know. You tell me all the time.”
“How’s that new story coming along?”
“Slowly. I need to do some research.” He looked at the page of scratched-out notes and half-assed sketches for a moment, in silence. “You really think I should ask her out?”
“Yeah, you should. You deserve a nice girl who might eventually get naked while you’re in the same room.”
He grinned. “I’d settle for dinner and conversation with another intelligent being.”
It took Sirius a minute to get that one.
---
Author: chococoffeekiss
Rating & Warnings: Rated T/PG for language and a little bit of innuendo, Non-Magical American Modern AU OMGWTF. XD
Prompt(s): hot chocolate
Format & Word Count: Chaptered, 1,986/approx 7500
Summary: Love's labors pay minimum wage; Tonks is a barista by day, ninja by night. Remus writes, or tries to. Sirius levels up. Feat. other HP characters doing even stranger things.
Author’s Notes: Bahahahah. I’ve always wanted to do this. Pays homage to my husband’s talent for making Star Trek references at wildly inappropriate moments. The martial arts stuff was looked over by a RL friend who does Jujitsu, so it should be mostly accurate.
It was certainly interesting to try and think of ways to make these two crazy kids end up together without magic and try to still keep it…well, magical. Title is from the All-American Rejects song, 'Swing, Swing.' This dumb little fic has made me more nervous about posting than I think anything else ever has. I did my best to keep everyone in-character. XD
Here goes nothin'.
Early winter was her least favorite time of year - that seemingly endless, colorless stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the sky was a continual shade of smoggy gray, spitting down snow in random bursts.
Nymphadora Tonks (known mainly as Tonks for painfully obvious reasons) was walking fast, the collar of her coat hitched up around her chin and her head down, staring at an iPod clutched in her un-mittened hand.
Her cousin had sent it as payment for sweet-talking her boss into catering his company’s Christmas party, and bless him, it was already stocked with decent tunes. And it was pink.
Thus musically equipped as she was leaving her morning shift at the coffeeshop, it was really Sirius’s fault she bumped into a man and made him drop his newspaper. The shock of the sudden stop jolted through her and she swore aloud as her feet hit a patch of ice, her boots flew forward and the meeting between her ass and the cold concrete became imminent.
Falling was an utterly unsettling feeling- like missing a step going down a staircase - and lasted even after Newspaper Guy grabbed her arm and hauled her back onto the safe, crunchy snow.
“Sorry,” they both said at once and she laughed breathlessly.
“Are you alright?” he asked, concerned creases forming over a pair of black-rimmed glasses that made her think of a history professor she’d once had, or maybe David Tennant as Dr. Who. The image was reinforced by a dark trench coat and a computer case over one shoulder.
Tonks nodded. Her headphones were down around her neck, a Daft Punk song blaring out of the speakers. Her Cookie Monster hat had slipped over one eye. “Sorry.”
“No problem.” He straightened her hat, seemingly unbothered by the loss of his paper (it was blowing down the street). “There you go, good as new.”
A bus squealed to an air-brake halt at the sign, exhaust pouring out in smoky clouds behind it. He grinned and disappeared into the little crowd of people trying to board. She turned and walked home, feeling a little warmer.
Next morning, she found herself watching out the front window of the shop, distracted as she wiped down tables before her shift ended. The third or fourth time she looked, the guy with the newspaper was standing at the bus stop, reading the comics. Her stomach did a little backflip, as if she was falling all over again.
Molly never missed much. She walked over and peered through the foggy glass, hands full of empty mugs. “You know him?”
“No, but I’d like to.”
Her boss laughed and disappeared behind the front counter. “Here,” she said after a moment, and Tonks turned around. Molly held up a paper cup and nodded toward the door, winking. “I’ll take it out of your check. See you tomorrow.”
Tonks threw on her coat and bolted out the door with the drink, slowing to a casual walk as it slammed shut behind her. At the bus stop she bumped into him again, gently. When he looked up, she pushed the cup into his hand. Steam curled up from the holes in the plastic lid.
“Thanks,” he said with a smile so bright she didn’t trust herself to say anything that wouldn’t sound completely idiotic, so she just smiled and floated home.
This happened every day for almost a week - she took out a cup of hot chocolate when her shift was over, just before he caught the bus to wherever guys in trench coats go. They never talked - just a quick, shy ‘hello,’ and Molly never once deducted the price of the drinks from her paycheck.
On Friday she found herself hurrying to work in the pre-dawn light. Tonks had always enjoyed waking early and helping open the shop. She liked the smells of fresh brewing coffee and baking pastries and the sounds of happy customers. A good-looking man who spent a few minutes outside in full view of the cash register (and might eventually come in out of the cold, she hoped) only added to the appeal.
Not everyone thought that her situation as ideal as she did. Her mother still contended she should do something more with her life but tolerated it with motherly affection. Her father, out of the pure contrariness she had inherited from him, encouraged her to do what she pleased.
Tonks didn’t understand how anyone wouldn’t be perfectly happy in her situation. She didn’t need much to be satisfied with life, but admittedly, there was one thing missing (not to mention she was a tad weary of Molly trying to play matchmaker, her efforts usually featuring one of her own sons).
On Friday, Newspaper Guy (as she’d nicknamed him) didn’t show up. She had to work late, broke a mug and burned her fingers on a hotplate.
“It’ll be fine, dear,” Molly said soothingly, patting her on the shoulder as she ran cold water over blistered skin. “He’ll be back if he knows what’s good for him.”
Lacking an articulate reply, Tonks jammed her hat down over her ears and stomped home through the snow, swearing under her breath - frustrated at herself for getting so worked-up over some nameless stranger.
---
Sirius Black flopped down on the sofa, a can of Coke in one hand, Xbox controller in the other.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked, cheerfully, prodding the man next to him with a sharp elbow.
Remus was drawing on a notepad and occasionally jotting down a sentence or two. He gave Sirius a sideways stare that read ‘tread lightly’ or possibly ‘shut up now and your death will be quick and relatively painless,’ but Sirius had never been one to take advice to heart.
“Oh, I know that look. It’s a woman, isn’t it?”
Remus, vainly trying to avoid this conversation, kept silent still and continued doodling on the yellow legal pad. Maybe if he pretended he hadn’t heard him-
“Hah! It is!” Sirius leaned over and tapped a finger on a hastily-sketched female figure. “So, she’s hot? This woman? More importantly, is she real?”
-Of course not. Ignoring Sirius almost never worked - he was persistent.
He was worse than persistent; he was a full-size shoulder devil without an angelic counterpart.
“Yes, she’s real,” Remus relented after a moment, giving his oldest friend a hurt look.
“Specifications? You know,” Sirius drew the curvy figure of a woman in the air with both hands, still holding the controller. “Dimensions?”
“Three, at least,” he said matter-of-factly, and got a glare for that one.
“Details, Lupin. Give me details. I need to know if she passes inspection.”
“Inspection?”
“She has to have the Sirius Black Seal of Approval.”
“Last time you tried to approve a date of mine, she ended up going home with you.”
“I promise I’ll leave this one alone.”
“Well,” he said with audible skepticism, “She’s a little shorter than me, maybe an inch or two. Dark hair, I think. Dark eyes. Brown, maybe. I don’t know much else, I’ve only seen her in a coat and hat. She has a nice smile-” he winced. “She’s younger than me.”
“What kind of younger?”
“Twenty-five, maybe?”
“You cradle-robber, you.” Sirius rolled his eyes. “That’s not so bad. Where did you meet this mysterious coat-wearing girl?”
“The bus stop. She brought me hot chocolate every day this week. With marshmallows. See, public transportation is a force for good.”
“Psh. The ladies prefer the bike.”
“Insane ones, maybe.”
“The best kind of insane. You should try it sometime. So are you gonna ask her out or what?”
Remus shook his head.
“Why not? Wait, I’ve got it; you’re too old to be pining after some girl and too busy to go out, amirite?”
He twirled the pen in his fingers. “I’d like to do all of that. Going out. Pining, or whatever. But I am too busy, and no girl that age would date anyone my age …and then there’s the chance of a relapse and I wouldn’t want to put anyone through that.”
“Excuses,” Sirius huffed. “Girls that age love older guys. You’ll see, we’ll ask one.” He pulled a phone out of his pocket and hit a button. It rang for a few seconds, then a faint female voice answered.
“Hey, Dora. Quick question. If you had to choose to go on a date with either a guy my age who has a respectable career and a nice apartment or a guy your age who spends his weekends smoking pot and lives out of his ‘87 Camaro, which would you pick?”
There was a moment of silence, then he laughed. “I’m thirty six-ish. Really. Really. Why? I’m collecting data for a poll.” He paused. “Okay. We’ll I’m glad you liked it. Alrighty. See you then. Bye.” He hung up. “Survey says she’d rather date you.”
“Who did you call?”
“My cousin’s daughter. The one who took me skydiving, remember? You wouldn’t go. That’s a shame, Dora’s a riot. You two would get along great.”
“But should her opinion count? She’s related to you, so naturally, she’s crazy.”
Sirius grinned and held up his fingers about an inch apart. “Yeah, just a little.”
“Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but the confirmed bachelor thing seems to be going pretty well so far.”
“Whatever. Not all women-“ he started, then stopped and cast a sideways glance at his friend.
Sirius had been there when they were thirteen and Remus’s mother had run off with a vacuum cleaner salesman. He’d made plenty of jokes about it (still did), but he’d been there to listen. Sirius had been the first to pry the truth out of him when he was diagnosed with leukemia at seventeen, and along with their friend James, had helped his dad sell their house and move their stuff into an apartment closer to the hospital. He’d been there through all the ex-girlfriends and a few chemotherapy treatments and a short-lived grunge phase, up until the accident.
That’s the kind of friend he was, which only made Remus feel guiltier about the years he had spent angry at him for screwing up their lives, when it hadn’t been Sirius’s fault at all.
“Not all women are creepy stalkers. I think you should ask her out.”
“Your cousin?”
“No,” he frowned. “That girl you met.”
“I don’t know…”
“Psh. You writers are too romantically-minded. Every woman you see is a muse. I’m not talking marriage and chubby-cheeked babies, you idiot. I’m just saying, I hear getting laid helps with writer’s block.”
Remus rolled his eyes (even though Sirius was probably right). There were three kinds of women in his life at the moment - at each end of the spectrum were the rare-but-scary fangirls who found him at book signings and the majority of women who just didn’t see him. And then there was the girl from the coffeeshop, who noticed him but whom he didn’t need a restraining order against.
…Yet.
“I do not have writer’s block.”
Black looked pointedly at the sketches on the notepad and nodded, unconvinced. “Just sayin’,” he held up a placating hand. “The goddess of bus stops and cocoa, huh? Does she have a name?”
“I’m sure she does,” Remus said flatly, indicating that he had no idea what the woman’s name was, despite all attempts.
“You’re pathetic.”
“I know. You tell me all the time.”
“How’s that new story coming along?”
“Slowly. I need to do some research.” He looked at the page of scratched-out notes and half-assed sketches for a moment, in silence. “You really think I should ask her out?”
“Yeah, you should. You deserve a nice girl who might eventually get naked while you’re in the same room.”
He grinned. “I’d settle for dinner and conversation with another intelligent being.”
It took Sirius a minute to get that one.
---