RP: How do we do this?
Date: 3 February 2006
Characters: Rita Skeeter, Kingsley Shacklebolt
Location: Roma, mostly
Status: Semi-private (ping if your character feels like ambushing them with awkward conversation?)
Summary: Rita and Kingsley have a date. In public. Isn't this a bit... normal?
Completion: Complete
( Shagging is much easier )
Characters: Rita Skeeter, Kingsley Shacklebolt
Location: Roma, mostly
Status: Semi-private (ping if your character feels like ambushing them with awkward conversation?)
Summary: Rita and Kingsley have a date. In public. Isn't this a bit... normal?
Completion: Complete
( Shagging is much easier )
Rita chuckled, lifting her chin a little to expose her throat. "I think we've been playing that one for years."
Oh, she could see the heat in his eyes - tempered with something else, but certainly smouldering there, biding its time. She'd let him have her however he liked tonight, she thought - but then she supposed she would have to wait and see. It wasn't unheard of for her to change her mind.
"Were you good at it?" Rita asked. "Pretending, I mean. Or picking the guilty one?" She shook her head when he asked about other friends. "There were a few, probably - other local families, and such, but we were taught at home, and we weren't really allowed to play with the muggle children, just because of those magical outbursts kids sometimes have. I still did, sometimes, but I don't think you could call it friendship. I was the oddity - the one who didn't go to school with the rest of them - so it was a strange sort of interaction. Mum and Dad could always tell, too, because when I came back I were always talkin' like t'proper little Yorksher gel, runnin' five-mile dahn hill and lekin' withem locals." She chuckled again, watching the waitress approach with their bottle of wine. "I think I still slip into it sometimes, as well. When I'm drunk, mostly."
She glanced at the waitress once as the wine was being poured, and thanked her, then looked back at Kingsley, lifting the glass. "Did you miss those friends, when you went to Hogwarts?"
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He thought back, "Yeah. At the picking the party bit. I think it was some of the first magic I ever did. I could just look them each in the eye and know. I was so good at that the muggles used to claim Mum taught me voodoo. Little did they know..." Kingsley tapped his ear, "Think I might've heard a wee bit of that during another type of unguarded moment."
Kingsley shook his head. "I don't think I could really call them friends. It was a helluva rough neighborhood. The most you could count on was an alliance. You watched someone's back to have your back watched in turn. It was the kind of neighborhood where if you had milk money, you hid it well or it'd be knicked or you'd be jumped for it. Once I started Hogwarts, it was even harder. They all thought I had some kind of fancy scholarship... which isn't really too far from the truth considering Mum had help paying for some of me school things. It was rough. It was a huge adjustment each year coming and going. But miss them? No. I didn't miss any of them."
"What about you? Anyone you miss from your childhood or Hogwarts? Are you thinking about moving back to Diagon Alley once it re-opens?" He'd been half afraid to ask. Kingsley really didn't think either of them were suited to living with anyone but he liked having her so close. He liked being reassured she was still there. He wouldn't mind sleeping with her most nights, but the idea that they could peacefully coexist for long periods seemed pretty unlikely. But then again, only a few months ago he would have thought her staying until morning was almost impossible.
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Rita smiled. "The latter. What kind of femme fatale would I be if I stopped enjoying the sight of men on their knees?"
Typical that he had been able to tell. He was always observing and drawing conclusions - sometimes the wrong ones, or sometimes the ones that were the most real and painful and didn't bear thinking about - but nonetheless always watching. Always thinking. How he'd ever been able to convince himself he could be happy being a farmer, Rita had no idea. She didn't say it, though, because she didn't want to bring the farm, and by implication its owner, into the conversation.
She was surprised when he mentioned having heard the accent come out before. Rita felt one brow go up and the other down. "Merlin, really? That's a bit embarrassing. I had no idea. It's hardly... well." She snorted, fell silent and listened.
"At least you learned what the real world was like at a young age, hm?" She took a sip of the wine and hovered over it for a moment before laying the glass down. "I don't know. I've generally kept in contact with most of the people I wanted to over the years, so not really. I miss Bella, sometimes, or rather the person she might have become if she'd decided to think for herself. I never could bring myself to hate her, even after she went to Azkaban. That probably sounds strange, but unless you had a friend who went that way... you didn't, did you?"
Diagon. She'd thought about it a few times - going back there, making her life in that place again. She was glad they were rebuilding it, but she'd come to love the way Stoatshead Hill had become the centre of the world, and knowing that the Ministry planned to up and leave (and take a good number of the jobs in this town with them) annoyed her a little. She shook her head. "No, I'm not. Not in the near future, anyway. I can't uproot the Prophet when it's just back on its feet, and I like this place. If people start drifting away, back to London and such, eventually I might think about it - I like being in the thick of things, after all. But I'll stay here for now, and see how things pan out. What about you? Will you stay or go if the Auror Office moves with the Ministry?"
Somehow - despite things only being an apparition away - the idea of him leaving was a strange one.
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Their food arrived, "This smells marvelous." He waited for the server to leave before he shook his head, "You sometimes whisper in French too, Rita. I like it when you're all lost like that. It happens so rarely but you're so beautiful when... It makes me feel..." loved... trusted... strong... important... "It feels good to see you let go, sweetheart."
He nodded, "It's a lesson I think most kids could do nicely without." He listened to her as she mentioned missing Bellatrix Lestrange or rather the promise of her. The later was much easier to support, even though he himself had discovered that not everything happened exactly the way he'd been taught with the Death Eaters either. "Not a close one, but one of my dorm mates got wrapped up believing the whole pureblood supremacy thing. He worked at the Ministry and eventually took the Dark Mark during the second rise. Then there's," Severus... "others who had Dark Marks but weren't exactly what they seemed. Julian Avery's cousin Seti Vector is probably my closest surviving friend from Hogwarts. I don't think I've seen her more than a handful times since coming to Stoats."
Kingsley watched her face as she considered Diagon Alley. "I kind of like it here too. I'm a city boy and aside from my time at Hogwarts, I've always lived in the city. I kind of like my little scrap of yard and odd house, though. I don't think I'd want to go back to muggle London. I wouldn't mind trying Diagon Alley or even Hogsmeade. It might be nice to live in a purely magical place but I plan to stay." He met her eyes with his own, "Will you... would you tell me if you change your mind and decide to go?"
He wasn't sure what, if anything, he could offer her to stay that she would accept, but the idea of losing her again wasn't something he wanted to consider.
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"Mmm," Rita replied in response to the comment about the food. She'd ordered prawn and asparagus risotto, and it looked (and smelled) delicious. She didn't know what to say to his next comment. Words died in her throat, and thoughts in her mind. It occurred to her that this was possibly a situation in which she was usually be uncomfortable - talking about feelings - wasn't that the point at which she was supposed to laugh, in case the person was only baiting her?
But he wasn't laughing. He wouldn't, and she knew it. She felt hot in the cheeks, but it wasn't embarrassment - not quite. Not in the way she understood the word. Just... personal. Intensely so. Talking about sex was easy; teasing and sly little jokes were second nature to her. She'd never been shy with her body, never been modest or embarrassed by nakedness. Never felt inadequate in that way - not when she was years older than the person she was sharing it with, nor when she was years younger. Her mind, however, had always been closely guarded (and her heart even more so - even thinking about 'her heart' in poetic terms made her uncomfortable). He'd seen her bare - not just body but mind, in ways she wasn't even aware of, and it was a strange, beautiful realisation.
"I like...that I can be that way with you." Her voice came out strangely dry. She took another sip of wine to rid herself of the feeling.
Merlin, she was bad at this. Wasn't it the 'feelings' part that was supposed to be easy?
Rita took a bite of her food and smiled. "For a city boy, you certainly picked a place on the far edge of town. I suppose it appealed after the... what do the muggles call it? The rat race of living in the city?"
The question, like so many other things tonight, surprised her - or rather the look in his eyes when he asked did. She took a breath. "Of course I will. I'm not stupid enough to say that I've never made the same mistake twice, but I certainly don't plan to do it in this case."
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Kingsley regarded her closely. He wanted that to be true. Needed that to be true. He couldn't really explain why. He only knew it was important to him. He used the same skills he used as an Auror, even the same skills he used playing Queenie as a kid, to determine whether she believed what she said.
He thought she did and it brought a smile to his face.
"The house was a bit like me. Getting older, settling, removed from things, in need of care, slightly barren... want more? It was also on Albus Avenue, a major plus for Dumbledore's man." He laughed at himself. It felt good to laugh at himself in that way.
'Of course I will.'
Kingsley let out the breath he'd been holding as he awaited her reply. He dipped his head toward his plate and kept his eyes on his dinner. "Thank Merlin. I don't think I could go through that again." Kingsley started to take a bite of his food, but changed his mind. He raised his eyes up to hers, "Rita? I love you, you know."
Fuck.
His eyes were locked on hers. He couldn't look away. Fuck... just... fuck.
What in hell possessed him? Kingsley Shacklebolt, overthinking Ravenclaw, had just gone and turned himself into a bloody buggering Gryffindor and fell on his own sword. He was fairly sure she already knew he loved her. Why did he have to say it aloud? He wasn't even a Gryffindor, he'd gone and turned himself into a shiny, sparkly Hufflepuff.
Fuck. Well, at least she liked shiny.
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He was studying her in that Auror-like way he had - assessing, deciphering. It unnerved her a little to be under scrutiny like that. A bug in a jar, perhaps? But then he smiled, and she thought that must mean she'd passed whatever test he was putting her through in his mind.
She was surprised by how much it mattered to her that she had.
When he drew out the analogy about the house, she laughed with him. "You've certainly given that a lot of thought. I just picked mine because it was in the centre of town, though I'm sure you could find other conclusions to draw if you tried."
He looked down at his food and his breath was heavy and she felt another stab of guilt at ever having hurt him like that.
And then...
I love you.
How could three little words stop the world? She was sure they could. Sure they did, for a moment - an eternity that stretched out between them. She didn't move, but inside everything flung out and spun in contradictory directions. How did she respond?
I love you too sounded hollow in her head - a reply, an afterthought, a way of responding that didn't mean much. Did she love him back?
Yes. The answer, hardly searched for, came at her and scared the hell out of her. How did she know that? What if she said it back now and there was something missing from it and he saw it with those Auror-eyes?
The words wouldn't come. Her voice had failed. She hoped he'd understand, that he'd realise that she threw words around so often that she was sometimes afraid to use them when she really meant something.
God, why was there a table between them? She wanted to kiss him, to wrap herself around him and say yes, yes, I know, and it's here, too, in me - feel it but she couldn't.
Instead, she reached for his hand across the table and squeezed it, lifted it. A kiss on each knuckle, spelling out the word she couldn't say, holding onto him like a lifeline.
And then it came, tumbling in her head but softly out of her mouth; barely a breath. "Love you too. So much it scares me."
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The first thing he noticed was that she didn't laugh him off.
That was... unexpected... only... not. No, the more he thought about it, the more he realized he would have expected that to be Rita's response a year ago, not now. She only laughed at him when he did something stupid these days... the kind of stupid he laughed at himself about too. She laughed with him more now. He always had loved her appreciation for irony and her sense of humor. At least he had when it hadn't been directed at him. Right now, the only thing she had directed at him was her attention.
The second thing he noticed was that he'd spooked her.
Not the kind of spooked you got when you received bad news. The kind of spooked you got when you were afraid you'd bollocks something up. The kind of spooked he'd just been after the words 'I love you' came tumbling out of his mouth.
The third thing he noticed was that she was bloody well taking her... Oh... Baby... You... Fuck, Rita... The third thing he really noticed wasn't how long it took her to reply but the way he knew that she'd decided she loved him too.
Rita Skeeter loved him.
And Kingsley Shacklebolt was there the moment she realized it. Even if she never told him, he was convinced of it. It was right there in her eyes. He was pretty sure she hadn't know before. Or maybe she had and he hadn't noticed but it sure looked like this was news to her.
He'd been concentrating on noticing what was going on in her eyes that the fourth thing Kingsley noticed was that he'd hadn't noticed her reaching across the table until the moment he felt her take his hand.
Kingsley let the slow smile that had been threatening to escape out as she brought his hand to lips and kissed his knuckles. He'd started to tell her he understood and she didn't have to say anything when she finally spoke...
"Love you too. So much it scares me."
So soft that if Kingsley hadn't had all his attention riveted on her at that moment, he would have missed it. He nodded and squeezed her hand as she had done his. "Good thing we're in this together then. Might make it a little less scary," he said softly and smiled at her. A smile that not only reached his eyes, but shined on his whole face. He was hopeless. He'd told himself he wouldn't let her get to him again. Not after the last time. But when she'd shown up at his door asking for her letter back -- a letter that he'd thought she'd forget all about like she seemed to forget all about him for huge chucks of time -- he was hopelessly lost again. Utterly and completely lost to anyone but her... only this time he liked it.
No, he loved it.
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