Fic for leigh_adams
Author: captainpookey
Recipient: leigh_adams
Title: Lungs
Pairing: Fleur/Bill
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1953
Summary: 13 moments that weave together a picture of Bill and Fleur’s rocky relationship.
Author's Notes: These drabbles are based on all 13 songs of the Florence + the Machine’s album “Lungs”, with lyrical excerpts heading off each drabble. Thanks to the mods for putting up with me, and thanks leigh_adams for the good prompts, wish I could have worked in more of them, but regardless I hope you enjoy!
1. She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
“I just might love you,” Bill declared after work, his shoulder against hers in the dark pub, firewhiskey glazing his eyes.
“I think I love you,” he breathed against her lips on their fourth date.
“I love you,” he whispered into her neck the night they made love against the cold wall of her London flat.
“I love you! Don’t you get it?” He shouted angrily through her door the week she avoided him. She put her hand on the wood and whispered, “Mais oui, and zat is the problem.”
2. Here I am, a rabbit hearted girl, frozen in the headlights
When Bill proposed, Fleur didn’t immediately answer. “Bill, stop being so silly,” she’d brushed with a laugh. They’d been eating breakfast in his apartment, and he’d been strangely quiet all morning. She was leaving back to France in three weeks, and neither of them wanted her to go.
“Get off ze ground, it is filthy, Bill. Allons-y.”
He was still on his knee in his pajama flannels. “I know I don’t have a ring. I can get one. We’ll go get one today, any ring you want. Marry me?”
“I will think about eet. Your pancakes are getting cold.” She smiled at him, laughing a laugh that was all nonchalance and innocent flirtation to cover up for the fact that her heart was beating a million miles an hour. And when he smiled back, she knew she’d say yes no matter what.
3. I’m not calling you a liar, just don’t lie to me
“’Ow did you sleep last night?” Fleur asked.
“Great,” Bill said, kissing her softly on the lips and rolling out of bed.
Fleur’s arm spread across the still warm mattress after him, remembering how cold it had felt when she’d woken up earlier that night, the moon high and bright, Bill nowhere to be found. There was once a time when Fleur would have gotten out of bed, made tea, and paced the living room. Instead Fleur had hitched the covers up around her shoulders and curled into herself.
“Great,” she echoed.
4. A man who’s pure of heart and says his prayers by night may still become a wolf when the autumn moon is bright
Bill blames Fenrir. Not for his face, but for all of him, what he’s become. He blames Fenrir, and Karkaroff, and Dolohov, and all of this world’s Lestranges and Malfoys, and most of all, though he denies it, a part of Bill blames himself.
“What is ze problem?” Fleur asks Bill every once in a while, soft hands massaging into his shoulders. “You can tell me.”
“Just work,” he’ll say. Because he can’t say that he’s never going to understand why the world is so unjust, why so many people had to die, why his face was made to look like this, why Fred was taken away. Why he, Bill, couldn’t just do more. He hates his desk job, and he hates how slowly the Ministry works, how little the Order can actually accomplish. He can’t say it because it eats him alive and he can’t let it eat her alive too. So he says nothing.
5. A kiss with a fist is better than none
Bill never raised his voice when they fought. He was always calm and distant. Fleur fought like a wildcat-all passion and fury and flying limbs. She slapped, she kicked-she cursed and spat. She once broke an entire set of plates. Bill dodged them all.
She hated the way he would catch her off guard the moment she paused red-faced and incensed to catch her breath. He would wrap his big arms around her and he wouldn’t let go until she’d thrashed the anger out of herself. Until she’d bruised his ribs and shins and yelled herself hoarse over something she could hardly remember.
And she’d slump against his chest with tears in her eyes and wish that once, just once, he would get angry back.
6. Well her pretty little face stopped me in my tracks but now she sleeps with one eye open
When Bill staggered into bed eventually most nights, smelling like cigarettes and alcohol, sweat and dust, he always put his arm around her. He liked it best when she would nestle into his chest, sighing little whispers of sleep. But lately she rolled away, stretched out from under his fingers in muted silence.
He saw the lines on her face becoming more prominent these days. The perfect hollow of her eyes had crinkled, darkened, and her lips were tight and shallow. She would change the muddy sheets in silence, wash his grimy clothing and ignore the whiskey on his breath, but he could see the toll of it all in the creases of her forehead. And instead of keeping him home, it drove him back out night and again because he didn’t know what else to do.
7. There’s a drumming noise inside my head that starts when you’re around
It was his smile that did it. His smile held more enthusiasm and more freedom than any smile she’d ever seen before. She could tell back then, in the middle of the Tournament chaos and from dozens of meters away, and she never forgot it.
She made accounting errors over that smile. She was girly and giggly and had foolish dreams all wrapped up in that smile. She was scared of how much that smile affected her.
8. I pray to God this breath will last as it pushes past my lips, as I…
He doesn’t remember getting knocked down, or the curse that does it. All he remembers is Fenrir’s weight on his chest and the shooting agony in his face. He’s not sure if he screams; he knows he tries. He knows he thrashes and gurgles through fur and blood. He’s not struggling for his life though, or his future, but for hers. He thinks about how he’s not ready to leave her, how if he’s gone, then who will be left to protect her? He’s never been sure that he can do that (or that she needs him to, she certainly doesn’t want him to) but he’s reconciled himself with the fact that he’s going to die trying.
9. The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out, you left me in the dark
Fleur told him she loved him too for the first time, quietly, the night it snowed and she let him sleep on her couch. It was after their first break up, in the awkward limbo of his love and her denial. She couldn’t sleep so she padded softly into the kitchen. He was snoring on the couch and before she understood what she was doing she found herself sitting on the edge of the coffee table looking down at him, a tangle of limbs and hair and old moth-eaten blankets. “Je t’aime aussi,” she whispered in the safety of the storm.
There was something about saying it in her native language, to him, that scared her and made her feel vulnerable. When he opened his eye, silent and knowingly awake, she kissed him full on the mouth and neither of them had any more to say.
10. My boy builds coffins for better or worse
After the miscarriage Bill simply held her. She didn’t say anything and she didn’t need to. He had seen it written all over her face the moment he came through the door at Shell Cottage. She sobbed into his shirt and he bit his own lip to stop from doing the same. “It was the Battle, wasn’t it?” he muttered, “the stress?”
She nodded into his constricting chest. They decided not to tell anybody about it-nobody knew anyway.
A year later Victoire really does feel like a victory when Bill finally gets to hold her in his arms. He tries to forget that she could have been a second child, but that particular ghost, like so many others, never stops haunting them.
11. And you can’t save me now, I’m in the grip of a hurricane
Bill isn’t good at hate. Loathing, yes, guilt, doubly yes, but pure hate he reserves for very, very sparse occasions.
He thinks he hates the man that comes up and puts his hand on Fleur’s neck the day they meet to see Louis off to school.
“Hi mum!” Louis pipes, worming out from under Bill’s big palm on his head.
“Bonjour, mon petit,” Fleur trills.
“Mum, don’t call me that.”
The train gives a loud hoot, and Bill looks at his clock. “Hurry up, Loo, you’ll be late.”
“Bye dad,” Louis hugs his legs. Bill ruffles his hair with a smile.
“Au revoir, mum.” Louis kisses his mother once on each cheek and The Man-with his hand around Fleur’s waist now-bends down and asks, “one for me?”
“Louis,” Bill warns, watching the smoke pour out of the train. Louis kisses The Man too before flouncing off toward the train happily. “If you ever need anything, don’t be afraid to ask your sisters!” Bill hollers out after him, but his words are lost. He turns to Fleur, to say goodbye, maybe, or how are you-it doesn’t matter-but all he catches sight of is the back her head as she makes her way down the platform, hand in hand with a man Bill most definitely hates.
12. No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love
Fleur wasn’t sure when she finally realized she couldn’t do it any longer. It had been a niggling suspicion eating at her conscious for some time, and one morning she just woke up, squared her shoulders, and began to pack her things.
“What are you doing, mum?” Dominique asked.
“I am going on a short vacation, zat is all, ma cherie,” Fleur said.
“Is Louis going to?”
Fleur hoisted Louis further up her hip. “Just for a few days.”
“What about daddy?”
Fleur did not answer. She didn’t want to think about that.
13. Sometimes it seems that the going is just too rough
“You look lovely,” Bill said. It surprised her. Out by the cliff and away from the wedding guests, Fleur had thought she was alone. But Bill snuck up beside her, his bowtie all undone and his hands in his pockets. “Enchanter,” he added badly, facing the ocean, and she couldn’t be sure if he meant her or the mysterious, wide Atlantic.
“You as well,” she said.
Fleur liked the sound the waves made crashing against the limestone, she always had. And aside from the waves and the gentle hissing of the summer grass, all was silent. No matter how much changed, those sounds remained the same through the years.
“Victoire turned out so well because of you, you know,” Bill interrupted the quiet.
Fleur looked sideways out at him. The faded scars on his face were illuminated in the moonlight, and his smile was the melancholic one she only rarely saw-because he only rarely let it slip through his emotional blockade. “You ‘ave never given yourself enough credite, Bill. You were a good papa.” He bobbed his head in ascent.
Fleur wasn’t sure what made her do it, but she reached out for Bill’s hand and threaded her fingers through his. He squeezed her hand tightly and she blinked back the salt in her eyes.
“I love you,” Bill sighed. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. She turned to face him, running her hand over his thin cheek and the corner of his lips.
“Oui,” she muttered. “But it was not enough, it seems.”
Recipient: leigh_adams
Title: Lungs
Pairing: Fleur/Bill
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1953
Summary: 13 moments that weave together a picture of Bill and Fleur’s rocky relationship.
Author's Notes: These drabbles are based on all 13 songs of the Florence + the Machine’s album “Lungs”, with lyrical excerpts heading off each drabble. Thanks to the mods for putting up with me, and thanks leigh_adams for the good prompts, wish I could have worked in more of them, but regardless I hope you enjoy!
1. She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
“I just might love you,” Bill declared after work, his shoulder against hers in the dark pub, firewhiskey glazing his eyes.
“I think I love you,” he breathed against her lips on their fourth date.
“I love you,” he whispered into her neck the night they made love against the cold wall of her London flat.
“I love you! Don’t you get it?” He shouted angrily through her door the week she avoided him. She put her hand on the wood and whispered, “Mais oui, and zat is the problem.”
2. Here I am, a rabbit hearted girl, frozen in the headlights
When Bill proposed, Fleur didn’t immediately answer. “Bill, stop being so silly,” she’d brushed with a laugh. They’d been eating breakfast in his apartment, and he’d been strangely quiet all morning. She was leaving back to France in three weeks, and neither of them wanted her to go.
“Get off ze ground, it is filthy, Bill. Allons-y.”
He was still on his knee in his pajama flannels. “I know I don’t have a ring. I can get one. We’ll go get one today, any ring you want. Marry me?”
“I will think about eet. Your pancakes are getting cold.” She smiled at him, laughing a laugh that was all nonchalance and innocent flirtation to cover up for the fact that her heart was beating a million miles an hour. And when he smiled back, she knew she’d say yes no matter what.
3. I’m not calling you a liar, just don’t lie to me
“’Ow did you sleep last night?” Fleur asked.
“Great,” Bill said, kissing her softly on the lips and rolling out of bed.
Fleur’s arm spread across the still warm mattress after him, remembering how cold it had felt when she’d woken up earlier that night, the moon high and bright, Bill nowhere to be found. There was once a time when Fleur would have gotten out of bed, made tea, and paced the living room. Instead Fleur had hitched the covers up around her shoulders and curled into herself.
“Great,” she echoed.
4. A man who’s pure of heart and says his prayers by night may still become a wolf when the autumn moon is bright
Bill blames Fenrir. Not for his face, but for all of him, what he’s become. He blames Fenrir, and Karkaroff, and Dolohov, and all of this world’s Lestranges and Malfoys, and most of all, though he denies it, a part of Bill blames himself.
“What is ze problem?” Fleur asks Bill every once in a while, soft hands massaging into his shoulders. “You can tell me.”
“Just work,” he’ll say. Because he can’t say that he’s never going to understand why the world is so unjust, why so many people had to die, why his face was made to look like this, why Fred was taken away. Why he, Bill, couldn’t just do more. He hates his desk job, and he hates how slowly the Ministry works, how little the Order can actually accomplish. He can’t say it because it eats him alive and he can’t let it eat her alive too. So he says nothing.
5. A kiss with a fist is better than none
Bill never raised his voice when they fought. He was always calm and distant. Fleur fought like a wildcat-all passion and fury and flying limbs. She slapped, she kicked-she cursed and spat. She once broke an entire set of plates. Bill dodged them all.
She hated the way he would catch her off guard the moment she paused red-faced and incensed to catch her breath. He would wrap his big arms around her and he wouldn’t let go until she’d thrashed the anger out of herself. Until she’d bruised his ribs and shins and yelled herself hoarse over something she could hardly remember.
And she’d slump against his chest with tears in her eyes and wish that once, just once, he would get angry back.
6. Well her pretty little face stopped me in my tracks but now she sleeps with one eye open
When Bill staggered into bed eventually most nights, smelling like cigarettes and alcohol, sweat and dust, he always put his arm around her. He liked it best when she would nestle into his chest, sighing little whispers of sleep. But lately she rolled away, stretched out from under his fingers in muted silence.
He saw the lines on her face becoming more prominent these days. The perfect hollow of her eyes had crinkled, darkened, and her lips were tight and shallow. She would change the muddy sheets in silence, wash his grimy clothing and ignore the whiskey on his breath, but he could see the toll of it all in the creases of her forehead. And instead of keeping him home, it drove him back out night and again because he didn’t know what else to do.
7. There’s a drumming noise inside my head that starts when you’re around
It was his smile that did it. His smile held more enthusiasm and more freedom than any smile she’d ever seen before. She could tell back then, in the middle of the Tournament chaos and from dozens of meters away, and she never forgot it.
She made accounting errors over that smile. She was girly and giggly and had foolish dreams all wrapped up in that smile. She was scared of how much that smile affected her.
8. I pray to God this breath will last as it pushes past my lips, as I…
He doesn’t remember getting knocked down, or the curse that does it. All he remembers is Fenrir’s weight on his chest and the shooting agony in his face. He’s not sure if he screams; he knows he tries. He knows he thrashes and gurgles through fur and blood. He’s not struggling for his life though, or his future, but for hers. He thinks about how he’s not ready to leave her, how if he’s gone, then who will be left to protect her? He’s never been sure that he can do that (or that she needs him to, she certainly doesn’t want him to) but he’s reconciled himself with the fact that he’s going to die trying.
9. The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out, you left me in the dark
Fleur told him she loved him too for the first time, quietly, the night it snowed and she let him sleep on her couch. It was after their first break up, in the awkward limbo of his love and her denial. She couldn’t sleep so she padded softly into the kitchen. He was snoring on the couch and before she understood what she was doing she found herself sitting on the edge of the coffee table looking down at him, a tangle of limbs and hair and old moth-eaten blankets. “Je t’aime aussi,” she whispered in the safety of the storm.
There was something about saying it in her native language, to him, that scared her and made her feel vulnerable. When he opened his eye, silent and knowingly awake, she kissed him full on the mouth and neither of them had any more to say.
10. My boy builds coffins for better or worse
After the miscarriage Bill simply held her. She didn’t say anything and she didn’t need to. He had seen it written all over her face the moment he came through the door at Shell Cottage. She sobbed into his shirt and he bit his own lip to stop from doing the same. “It was the Battle, wasn’t it?” he muttered, “the stress?”
She nodded into his constricting chest. They decided not to tell anybody about it-nobody knew anyway.
A year later Victoire really does feel like a victory when Bill finally gets to hold her in his arms. He tries to forget that she could have been a second child, but that particular ghost, like so many others, never stops haunting them.
11. And you can’t save me now, I’m in the grip of a hurricane
Bill isn’t good at hate. Loathing, yes, guilt, doubly yes, but pure hate he reserves for very, very sparse occasions.
He thinks he hates the man that comes up and puts his hand on Fleur’s neck the day they meet to see Louis off to school.
“Hi mum!” Louis pipes, worming out from under Bill’s big palm on his head.
“Bonjour, mon petit,” Fleur trills.
“Mum, don’t call me that.”
The train gives a loud hoot, and Bill looks at his clock. “Hurry up, Loo, you’ll be late.”
“Bye dad,” Louis hugs his legs. Bill ruffles his hair with a smile.
“Au revoir, mum.” Louis kisses his mother once on each cheek and The Man-with his hand around Fleur’s waist now-bends down and asks, “one for me?”
“Louis,” Bill warns, watching the smoke pour out of the train. Louis kisses The Man too before flouncing off toward the train happily. “If you ever need anything, don’t be afraid to ask your sisters!” Bill hollers out after him, but his words are lost. He turns to Fleur, to say goodbye, maybe, or how are you-it doesn’t matter-but all he catches sight of is the back her head as she makes her way down the platform, hand in hand with a man Bill most definitely hates.
12. No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love
Fleur wasn’t sure when she finally realized she couldn’t do it any longer. It had been a niggling suspicion eating at her conscious for some time, and one morning she just woke up, squared her shoulders, and began to pack her things.
“What are you doing, mum?” Dominique asked.
“I am going on a short vacation, zat is all, ma cherie,” Fleur said.
“Is Louis going to?”
Fleur hoisted Louis further up her hip. “Just for a few days.”
“What about daddy?”
Fleur did not answer. She didn’t want to think about that.
13. Sometimes it seems that the going is just too rough
“You look lovely,” Bill said. It surprised her. Out by the cliff and away from the wedding guests, Fleur had thought she was alone. But Bill snuck up beside her, his bowtie all undone and his hands in his pockets. “Enchanter,” he added badly, facing the ocean, and she couldn’t be sure if he meant her or the mysterious, wide Atlantic.
“You as well,” she said.
Fleur liked the sound the waves made crashing against the limestone, she always had. And aside from the waves and the gentle hissing of the summer grass, all was silent. No matter how much changed, those sounds remained the same through the years.
“Victoire turned out so well because of you, you know,” Bill interrupted the quiet.
Fleur looked sideways out at him. The faded scars on his face were illuminated in the moonlight, and his smile was the melancholic one she only rarely saw-because he only rarely let it slip through his emotional blockade. “You ‘ave never given yourself enough credite, Bill. You were a good papa.” He bobbed his head in ascent.
Fleur wasn’t sure what made her do it, but she reached out for Bill’s hand and threaded her fingers through his. He squeezed her hand tightly and she blinked back the salt in her eyes.
“I love you,” Bill sighed. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. She turned to face him, running her hand over his thin cheek and the corner of his lips.
“Oui,” she muttered. “But it was not enough, it seems.”