RP: Can't stand it any more
Date: 13 December 2005
Characters: Rita Skeeter, Kinsgley Shacklebolt
Location: Kingsley's place on Albus
Status: Private
Summary: Rita can't stand this any longer.
Completion: Complete
( Oh, you silly stupid pastime of mine )
Characters: Rita Skeeter, Kinsgley Shacklebolt
Location: Kingsley's place on Albus
Status: Private
Summary: Rita can't stand this any longer.
Completion: Complete
( Oh, you silly stupid pastime of mine )
Fuck.
Maybe it wasn't Rita and he'd been so sure it was one of the Tonks or Remus that he'd opened the door without his wand at hand. How bloody stupid was he? Really put that whole idea of his regarding his being qualified to train Aurors in perspective, didn't it.
Then there was a flicker of something in her eyes. He'd never figured out what that meant, but it was so... Rita. But not. A look he'd only seen a time or two but one he was sure few people ever got close enough to see at all. It was her.
He relaxed. Until he realized it was her. Then he tensed up all over again, only different.
"Little cold to be standing here half-dressed with the door open, so yeah. Come in." He moved aside and held the door open for her. After she was in, he looked her over while she was still turned away, "Shall I take your cloak?" What the fuck was that? He sounded like Lucius Bloody Malfoy. Shall I take your cloak? Might as well have asked if he could hold her pinkie up whilst they sipped tea and compared Gringotts balances.
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Shall he take her... What? What on earth was that? Gods, had he been having lessons from Caradoc? If he had, he'd learned them badly. He sounded ridiculous. Any other time, any other person and she might have laughed at him for that, mocked the tone in his voice. as it was, she simply slipped the coat from her shoulders. The same one, she realised now, that she'd spotted in the window on the day she'd met him in Exeter. Ironic. She didn't hand it to him immediately.
"I..." No, no she couldn't jump straight in. That was the reporter's way, but he wasn't a subject. She didn't think.
"How have you been? I saw you at the Halloween ball."
There. Let that hang. See what his reaction was. Force down the bitter taste in her throat when she said it.
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Small talk? Bloody hell. Is this what they'd become? Polite strangers? He felt his pulse quicken in opposition to that thought.
Halloween.
Was that what this was about? Rita seeing him with Susan? He reached out and took the coat from her hand and hung it by the door before he turned and asked, "Why are you here, Rita?"
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He took her coat and turned away to hang it on the door and she didn't get to see what was in his eyes. When he turned back, he got straight to the point, and somehow she suddenly didn't know what to say.
Seeing him standing there with all that dark intensity in his eyes, shirtless and clad in jeans that weren't tight but nonetheless hid nothing, the idea was painful. What if she lost him? What if he sent her away in five minutes?
Did she have him now, though? She didn't think she could say she did. That stupid girl had him, for whatever reason - he'd given himself to her and Rita knew how stubborn he could be. How well he could lie to himself. Would she ever know if she didn't do this?
"I want my letter back," she said, eventually. "If you're not going to read it. If you've got no reason to want it anymore. If..." She stopped. she could feel her heart pounding in her chest and her breath coming more shallow than normal. She couldn't say any more. Not this second. If she did. her voice might crack, and she did not want his guilt or his sympathy. Or for him to know what kind of ammunition he had.
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No. He was not going to think about that because that was the fucking turn off to the road to hell. So instead of thinking about it -- not that not thinking about it was even possible for Ravenclaw but he had to try -- he stood there focused on her face and thinking about not clenching his jaw instead while he waited her out.
"Letter?" he asked confused for a moment. Unless it went to the farm after he left this evening he hadn't received any post from her since... oh, letter. And then she continued talking and he could see the blood pumping faster and a little flush coming over her and damn she looked amazing like that. He couldn't stop looking. He was only half hearing. He couldn't listen and look at the same time. Not when he hadn't seen her all colored up like that for so long. Hadn't heard that sound in her voice for even longer.
What the fuck?
Rita never sounded like that. At least not while she was capable of standing on her own two feet. She only sounded like that when she'd been fucked beyond the point of caring what she sounded like. To see her standing there, flushed but still fully clothed, completely unwrinkled, perfectly coiffed and sounding like that disarmed him.
He had no idea what to say.
So, instead of keeping his bloody mouth shut, he ran it. "I thought it was my letter, seeing as you gave it to me. But I still have it. Thought I might... might save it."
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She dropped her eyes while she spoke, focussing the corner of his right shoulder, but when he replied her eyes snapped back to meet his. Heat in her fingers, and was this anger now?
Merlin. She forced a deep breath. If she wasn't careful, all of it would explode into hysteria, and she'd never recover from that.
Her voice came out all to small, all to sharp, all too soft at the same time. Nothing like she'd intended to sound. "For what? For when? So you can read it when you're in the mood and then go and do all those things with your Hufflepuff?"
She wished he hadn't taken her coat. It had at least given her something to grip. She linked her hands behind her back and dug her nails into her palms.
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She thought he was done with her.
God what he wouldn't have given to have heard even a hint of what he heard in her voice a year ago after he got to town or five years ago when she just up and disappeared making him think... That's right remember that? Remember how that felt? That part of him that could be beyond resentful wanted to take delight in her discomfort. Only he couldn't. It was one thing to break her with his cock. It was another thing all together to break her with silence. He knew how that felt. She'd done it to him after all. Repaying the favor would only be fair.
Thing was their relationship had never been about what was fair.
So instead of looking for the chink in her armor Kingsley did what he wanted to do in the first place. He took three steps forward and wrapped his arms around her tight and told her the truth. "Because it was the only thing I had of you."
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Before she knew what was happening, he'd moved forward and her arms were around her so tight she could barely move, barely breathe, only catch one hand around him to keep herself on her feet. His skin was hot under her hand and against her through the flimsy satin of her blouse, and he was so big - fuck, she'd almost forgotten - and hard against her, and she never wanted him to let go. And then he said that, and she squeezed her eyes shut tight, but not even that could stop the burn behind them.
Nononononono, Rita hadn't cried in front of anyone for twenty years, but her eyes were wet, and she was shaking. She pressed her forehead against his chest, bit her lip hard.
But what did it mean? Her mind wouldn't be silent. That stupid little girl he was so happy with didn't just disappear from the equation, and she didn't even know what she wanted. She'd refused to think past the asking for the letter because she didn't know if she could cope with either outcome.
"I'm sorry I ever went away," she whispered. "I hate what I've made myself."
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His left hand slid up and he gently swept the back of his fingers across her neck and the side of her cheek. "I'm sorry too. Sorry you left. Sorry I wasn't enough." Sorry I couldn't forgive. Maybe he hated what he'd made of himself too. No. There was no maybe about that.
Kingsley made no move to tilt her head back so he could see her. He liked the feeling of her whispered breath against his chest. He could almost imagine she was speaking directly to his heart where it lay directly under her lips. "Do you have to have it back?" He wasn't ready to let go of her.
He didn't want to let go of her.
But if she needed him to let go of her so that she could be with Ollivander or someone else who could give her what she needed, what he so obviously failed to provide, he'd try. He was never more sure that he loved her than now when he might be holding her for the last time.
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Sorry I wasn't enough. Rita let out a desperate little laugh that sounded more like a sob. Merlin, is that what he thought that had been? She curled her hand tighter around him.
"God, Kingsley," she murmured, "It was never that. I've spent my life running from things the minute they get too much. I've never been afraid of not enough."
It was easier to say these things with her eyes closed, when she wasn't looking at him. It didn't feel complicated when she didn't look at him. She didn't see Susan Bones when her eyes were closed. Ollivander existed, but it was somewhere else in a part of her that wasn't this, right here. She knew he wouldn't judge her for whatever happened here.
But when he asked, she finally looked up at him again. Light caught in the damp on her eyelashes, making little stars of her vision. She blinked them away.
"I don't want you to give it back, but I can't deal with just being tucked away in a drawer and forgotten." Ripped apart, maybe, even burned, but not folded neatly and slipped between the pages of Farming Quarterly.
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"I thought..." What did he think? Did it even matter? Not now. Not while she was here and open and tucked in where he could hold her. Not when he could feel her clutching him back and it had nothing to do with sex but everything to do with them.
Then she looked up at him and felt his heart clench. "I never said anything about forgetting it. It is in a drawer but..." it was the only thing in that drawer. He kept in there, warded shut, with nothing else that might wrinkle it or damage it. Not even the French-English Dictionary he bought, which sat on top, because the letter might tear if he kept the two things in the drawer together. He had considered putting it in a frame at one point so he could sit it up, but then he wouldn't be able to touch it. So in the end he left it as it was.
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But. For three letters, it was an enormous word. There were so many 'buts' here she could barely navigate them.
Why was he holding her like this? Was it because she'd given away her upset and he just wanted to comfort her, or was it more? She didn't want to be comforted. But then what did she want?
She wanted him to be uncomplicated again, or at least complicated in a way she understood. She wanted Susan bones to vanish - god, with every little bit of her she wanted that - but for what? So they could go back to breaking each other apart and she could rip him to pieces again?
But they were ripping each other apart now, only in a different way. Holding on and pulling back at the same time.
"Why don't you want to know what it says?"
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"What makes you think I don't want to know what it says?"
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Now he was confusing her more than ever. What did she want from this visit? An answer, in one way or another, whatever that meant. A faint glimmer or irritation flickered through her.
"You've had it since February, and you haven't read it. What am I supposed to think?"
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The idea was so simple that she laughed. Couldn't help herself. That was what he had been waiting for for all these months? Merlin's balls. she'd thought of that when she first encountered him in Exeter.
But that would change the mood in here entirely. Whatever they were using it as a metaphor for, it wasn't about love, or about what the hell this was between them. Or maybe it was. She didn't know.
But she'd come here for answers.
"All right. Where is it, then?"
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