Mid day
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The keys jingled before dropping with a thud on the table. Smirking towards Laney, George kept his back to the room, holding the door open with one hand and a bottle of affordable wine in the other. It was what he could get on such short notice.

Letting the door close behind them, George glanced her over. She looked good. How he remembered. Same Laney… “You gonna be my Valentine?” Biting his lower lip and smirking, he rolled his eyes and set the wine down, pulling a couple of the inn’s glasses towards him. “Want a glass?” His eyes took in her once again, analyzing how long it’d been, what she expected.

It was completely different, Waker to Laney. It was like comparing house elves and pumpkin juice. The thought of Waker made his stomach knot up and his smirk fall. Pulling out the small wine opener, he set his sudden irritation to the unsuspecting bottle. A short while later and he pulled the cork out, tossing the instrument onto the table. Two glasses later and he was offering one to Laney.

“How’s work?” Downing his glass, he set it down and started to undo his jacket. “Catching many snitches lately?” Tossing the jacket over a chair, George kicked his shoes off, finally refilling his glass and taking a seat on the edge of the worn comforter. 

outfit

"You see, sir, my brother and I-- we really need this room," Laney had whispered loudly, leaning into the counter, fishing for the keys before they'd even been offered. No rooms by the hour, her step-mum's bum. She might have recently flown into a bit of money (a lot of money, really), but Laney knew how to strike a deal, and she wasn't above it. It wasn't just a man's game. In fact, woman had invented it.

With George beside her, toting wine and offering like a good little gentleman to pay the bill, it was the least she could do. It was some stupid holiday, after all.

Her hand fell down behind the counter, wrist knocking into George's trousers, and she leaned against his shoulder, most sisterishly. She grinned at the man behind the dusty reception desk. "Three hours ought to be enough for him to nap before he continues Merlin's work at the Tibetan orphanage. Think of the children." Her hand clutched jewels, and she waited for George to echo in agreement.

---------

They both had to get it somewhere, didn't they? Why not a dependable friend?

It was less about guilt, more about pleasure for Laney. And, in the end, somehow she always ended up drinking and bitching and rolling around in sheets, or grass, or mud with George. Or under bleachers, in locker room showers, behind pub kitchens. Really, the only place they hadn't fooled around was the library, and that was because he'd refused her for that silly Prefect wench with a Voldemort-sized wand up her bum.

Not anymore. The wench had won the game first, and now Laney wasn't throwing a pity party for herself, but for George. (Well, perhaps a little for herself, too, considering her own Valentine's date had no plans to shag her.)

“You gonna be my Valentine?”

"Aren't I always?" She asked, raising a brow. In the end, it was kind of true. She flopped onto the bed, elbows hitting the dodgy comforter. She half-smiled, half-growled at the proffered glass, knowing it had been more places than Philomenes' mouth at a festival concert. She waited for him to down two glasses in one impressive go, and then sat up a little. "I'll drink it straight." She reached out for it, and when he was close enough, tapped her hand in the spot beside her.

She took a swig and handed the bottle back to him, so that he was he holding it along with his own glass (all the better for pouring). She shrugged, and her fingertips curled under the edge of her top, pulling it over her head as easily and carelessly as if she were about to change for practice. She laid back and looked up at the ceiling, considering his question more pensively. "Chasing full-grown boys on a broom and making millions to have your name sprawled in the tabloids isn't a bad way to live," she admitted, smirking, and finally catching his eye. She held her hand out again, but didn't to take the wine. "I catch plenty of snitches," she promised. "And then some."

Pulling him down next to her, she tilted her head to the side, looking straight at him, quite unabashedly. He was a best friend, and if they had a good romp now and then (less often than before, but still good), it didn't make things awkward for Laney. It only made her feel a little... grown-up. A little sad. A little too aware that she and George weren't made for each other, had never been made for each other, but used each other like two heated teenagers pretending they didn't have classes to attend and tests to pass. It was nostalgic. But never awkward.

"What about you? How's this seventh year?" She asked, as if he'd been there more than once. "How many times does this make?" She smiled.

The way in to the room had been an adventure, trouser knocking and all. And what kind of place didn’t expect to pay out by the hour on such an important ‘get laid’ holiday? Honestly, George was appalled that such a place could exist. If he owned a motel, he would charge by the hour no matter what. Then people would be quick to get up and out. This person behind the counter just wasn’t thinking.

No matter, Laney’s smooth talking and George’s best innocent face (which his mum had come to regard as the ‘what had he done now’ look) had secured a room.

“Aren’t I always?”

George paused, considered it, and then smirked and nodded his head as if it just dawned on him. She was always there when he needed her… and the other way around, come to think of it. What did Waker really have on that sort of commitment? Some part of him knew that what they had was where it was left. They were good (best?) mates who had fun now and again, but it was at a standstill. And he’d been avoiding it for a couple years.

Handing her the bottle after giving her a look, he took her glass and finished it off with a quick gulp. Inside his jacket was another bottle—it was amazing how he could stuff big things into unsuspecting areas.

Watching her take her shirt off was so familiar. It was how things were supposed to be. Uncomplicated and easy. That summed up Laney (and why he loved her). Mirroring her smirk, he could only imagine how the Quidditch life was. He tried to hold on to the possibility of a post-Hogwarts career of broom riding and picture taking, but the less his team won, and the closer it got to graduation, it seemed less likely than he would voice.

“You were always good at catching what you went after.” A laugh escaped him as she pulled him back, tipping the wine so it wouldn’t spill its precious cargo onto his clothes (or worse, the comforter). Grunting slightly as he turned himself on to his side, he rested the side of his head in the palm of his hand, watching her. His fingers held the wine sitting on the bed between them.

Groaning at her and giving her a nudge with his knee, he laughed and took a swig from the bottle before offering it to her. “If I had to repeat seventh year, I’d tell Snark to stuff a pygmy puff.” His grin fell slightly as he considered what had happened, glancing down between them. “I can’t wait to be done.” Finally. "I mean-" Glancing up at her, he gave her a half grin. "-I do have important work for the Tibetan orphanage. Merlin bless them."

“What are you keeping there, the whole Hogwarts kitchen?” She eyed his jacket suspiciously, but grinned, helping herself to more alcohol. Hey, if he was offering...

She laid there, topless, sipping wine, her eyes darting lazily from George to the ceiling and back again, as if they were catching invisible snitches in the dimly-lit overhead. When she’d finally pulled him down beside her, she had the chance to study him more soberly; she remembered the first time she’d done this, in the grass behind the bleachers, and how different he’d looked then.

“You were always good at catching what you went after.”

“And I’ve only gotten better,” she bragged. She had failed to mention that her newest target wasn’t putting out. George needed help, that was why Laney was here. Ever the charitable soul. Her mother would be so proud...

She kneed him back, grinning at the ring of his laughter. That, unlike so many other things, was exactly the same.

“Stuff it where?” She asked, sitting up a little, pressing her palms into the mattress to catch her balance. Lithely, she turned and forced him onto his back, pinning him there. George had seemed to take her invitation to chat a little too seriously. She tapped a non-existence watch on her wrist. “Why don’t you show me? You’ll need the practice before you go parent those poor sods...” She kept up the ruse easily, imaging him trek off to an orphanage as naturally as he might have... waltzed into the Ministry or signed up to write Op Eds for the Prophet. (Well, maybe a little  more naturally than that. George had a big heart, after all.)

She took the bottle from him, swigging, and looked down. She bit her tongue so as not to ask how Little Miss Perfect had finally done his head in. That was a mood-killer. Laney, more skilled than She Who Must Not Be Named, was smart enough to know it. "Let's bring you to attention," she announced, holding the wine at arms length, so that he'd have to wrestle her for it.

He glanced down at his jacket, opening it, looking in, closing it, patting around. “They should make extension charms in them…” Then it would be heavy. So then there would need to be some sort of weightless charm… George put the jacket aside so he wouldn’t keep thinking about it. He had more important things to think about.

His eyes glanced down over her, imagining what she could have been up to to sharpen her skills. A half smirk came up as he raised an eyebrow, finally nodding. “Practice makes perfect.” Or close enough. She could try, but the best tool instrument to practice with was in the room with her.

Her response to his threat made him pause, breath inhaled as he frowned. Now that was a good question. Because, clearly, he needed to know where he’d tell Snark to stuff it if it came down to it. Always be prepared, wasn’t that what his parents had told him again and again? Perhaps not for that sort of situation, but it was better to be safe than not have the upper hand in a smart ass remark. “I don’t know. It might not fit up her arse, as tight of one as she seems.” Smirking, he shrugged, easily going with the pinning.

Once again his eyes were drawn to her bare skin below the neck, enjoying the familiar landscape. His fingers moved from her denim clad legs up to her waist. “Maybe I will.” Laney had always had an air of attempted maturity in the way she said and did things. Usually. She seemed to come off as all knowing—something George had always found annoyingly sexy.

When she stole the wine bottle, it forced his eyes (and mind) off of her distracting parts. Glancing up, blinking, his mouth formed a small ‘o’ before he shook his head, chuckling. Saluting her, he made a serious face. “Yes ma’am.” Sitting up suddenly, he wrapped an arm around her back, pressing her against his chest. His other hand moved out to try and get the bottle back. Laughter and twisted limbs ended up with him on top, on his side, nearly falling off the bed, and finally back on top, stretching for the bottle.

He paused mid stretch, leaning down and pressing his lips to hers, helping her out as he started to tug his own shirt off. Pulling back from her somewhat sloppy lips, he grinned and tried to focus. Too much wine at once, clearly. Or less than clearly. “Giving in so easily?”

Laney offered a breathy, half-snort of laughter. "Couldn't you just cast one yourself?" She raised a brow, but her grin was wicked, the single dimple in her right cheek so pronounced that its sugary daintiness looked wrong with the rest of her whetted features. But it also made her charming: the sharp face, the killer smile, the unkempt boyish hair, and that babyish birthmark dotting her cheek whenever she offered a real smile. It was the king of betrayers. She couldn't hide her feelings when it came out of hiding.

She grabbed a pillow from nowhere-- a Seeker's feat, to be sure-- and smashed it straight into his face, laughing all the while. "You would know," she growled. "How many teachers have you tried to grope since I've been gone?" She pressed the pillow more firmly into the target of her affections. George Carter, aged 19, died by suffocation en route to Tibet, where he hoped to build new homes for the ill and the orphaned. Nope. That lead wouldn't do...

Laney dropped the pillow.

She noticed his eyes on her, and didn't mind one bit. In fact, she was quite chuffed, but wouldn't say so. She was too used to the feeling. It was comforting, but also the sort of thing one didn't get... well... worked up about. If they'd lived in an ideal world, they'd be in separate rooms-- George back in his dormitory, bringing out the lion in his docile little Prefect, and Laney sweeping into a much swankier hotel with a certain book hunter chain-smoking in her wake. As it were, they only had each other. Which, for now, was plenty, and sort of sweet in a sad way.

The struggle for wine, for pillows, for muscles not soared before their prime came to a wonderful peak. His surprise attack ended up with Laney opened-mouthed and losing the first round of tonsil quidditch. She weakly dropped the bottle in forfeit and doubled her efforts to be the dominant one. Her arms snaked around his back, feeling the warmth of his flesh beneath the material of shirt. In that last tricky bit-- the neck of his shirt-- she trapped him for a moment, snagging his lush bottom lip with her teeth and grinning. "You wish. I just found a better target." He could have the wine. Laney wanted some action.

Her arms trailed upward and ended in a lanky tangle around his neck, chaining him to her, his shirt abandoned somewhere near the mattress's edge. "Your trousers first, or mine? We could flip a sickle, but that's hardly romantic," she sighed, mocking the holiday.

Even beneath his weight, her hands were deft. Moreover, she'd known this particular pair of trousers. She made for the button, and then the zip, and then the shorts beneath them. She paused, suddenly, and drew her hands back, folding them in an easy pretzel behind her head. "Actually, I think I should get the first perks. I did get you a major discount from that bloke downstairs..."

“I could… but then I’d have to worry about getting it right.” Though he practiced an extension charm often enough, it wasn’t on… his clothes. “You’re pretty skilled at making things bigger, though.”

He wasn’t quite expecting pillow therapy. A muffled laugh escaped against the pillowcase, and his hands groped for her, to push her away. “How many…” His palms moved from her abdomen up her chest, his air supply shortened as she pressed down. Moving his head side to side, he laughed/choked and pushed against her shoulders. Then suddenly he could see (and breathe) again. Taking in a few deep breaths, he focused on Laney and smirked at her. “We have a pretty hot potion teacher now. You’re missing out.”

With her cool hands on his back, a gasp escaped his mouth, his lips parted against hers. In response to her target practice, he pressed a leg down between hers, then the other, chuckling against her lips before he worked to push them apart more. “You know I like the chase.”

With his shirt off, he pressed his chest down against hers, rocking against her before finding a good spot for his arm, sitting up slightly. “You probably have a double head sickle anyway.” Was any of what they were doing particularly romantic? It was a step up from behind the bleachers, sure, or a broom cupboard… but he hadn’t wined and dined her. Just wined… and wrestled. When her hands went to work, he glanced down at her, his eyes finally settling on her face.

Grinning, he moved down and started to kiss her lips again, moving down to her neck, pulling and sucking at her surprisingly soft skin. When her hands moved away from the area he really wanted her attention, he frowned and pulled back, a question on his face.

“Actually, I think I should get the first perks. I did get you a major discount from that bloke downstairs…”

Scowling at her, he pushed himself up on his palms, staring down at her. “You call that a discount?” Then he grinned and sat back on his heels, pushing his knees out slightly, forcing her legs to go with him. “And I am the perk.” Still… George moved his fingers to the edge of her jeans, undoing the button. Leaning down, his lips kissed the top of her chest, moving down to the edge of her bra, unzipping her pants, and finally tugging on the sides.

Sitting up suddenly, he lifted her leg and swung it over him to meet her other leg. Grinning, he started to tug the pants with a little more luck. Now George felt like the big bad wolf… he could huff and puff and blow her pants down. He was quite skilled at that.

Laney's dimple appeared when George stupidly, adorably admitted that he may not be able to cast the right charm. But she could engorge and extend things? Wasn't he a dazzler... She ticked her head, brushing a strand of chocolate from her eyes as her fingers continued on their path to war. The soldiers were preparing themselves... or she too for granted.

"Really? I always thought that small one with the weird name had a hidden kinky side. Did you see how excited he got whenever he talked about lab safety? It was the like the knives were calling to him..." Whereas the pillows and tangle of sheets had made themselves at home in Laney's grasp. When finally the struggle for dominance ended, she found herself mirroring George's long inhales. As she studied him, there  was almost a sad glean in her eye, there and then gone. "I've plenty of non-teachers to sexually harass, don't you worry."

He did, indeed, like the chase.

Laney, ever the tease, waited with seeming patience for her to oblige him; when they were both without their zipper and buttons, she allowed herself to be conquered, her jeans melting off her legs and George looming over her. She trailed a finger down the center of her own chest, a ghost of where his lips had been. Her eyes fluttered between wakefulness and nostalgia. And pleasure. She felt the blotchy, chill-and-fever wooziness of someone about to take a plunge and test the limits of the human heartbeat.

But something was... missing. Her arms linked lazily around George's warm shoulders, gathering heat from his toned body. She pulled herself up a bit, and breathed near his lips, staring at him, eye to eye, like a mirror of opposites. "It's been ages since our last reunion, but I do recall George Jr. being such a big little boy for his age. Or hasn't he heard I've come round to play?" It was a whisper, a sweet murmur, a snake's hiss. Her slim waist bent in chastisement, slightly wider hips forcing themselves upward enticingly to meet George's trouserless nether-region. She grabbed one of his hands and guided it between their skin, already sticky with youthful anticipation, if still dry and hot. They just seemed to get stuck together, George and Laney. When his fingers were forced to where she wanted them-- the repayment she'd demanded for the sweet deal on the shabby room-- she doubled her efforts, widened her eyes a little, and quirked a brow. Her lips parted in a soundless admonishment, as if George had become illiterate in the dark arts of the bed.

(Funnily enough, this was one of the rare times they'd actually been in a bed together.)

Talk of professors and knives weren’t the most bed worthy conversations, in George’s opinion. Well, not male professors, at least. “Worry about you? Wouldn’t dream of it, love.” Licking his lips, his eyes took her in. Some part of him (part that he would never admit to her, at least not without a lot of protective equipment between them) wished she had… more. Waker had something to hold on to besides lanky tangled legs and long entrapping arms. Laney was all edges, which a younger and clearly more adventurous George had found appealing.

A part of his conscious really, really wished it was Waker smothering him with a pillow. Wanted it to be Waker who laughed at his stupid remarks and reprimanded him sweetly for inappropriate thoughts… but it wasn’t going to happen, and he felt some odd… lack of something in him. Laney was like an old keeper glove, though. She always fit, always worked with him. Or tried to, at the very least.

And now she was talking about George Jr. as if he wasn’t there. Frowning slightly, his eyes shifting away from hers and glancing accusingly downwards, he shook his head, slightly in disbelief. “Of course not.” His voice was tense and he snapped quicker than he should have. He closed his eyes tightly and tried to focus, once again gazing at her body. Feeling her against him made him want to react, but another part of him was refusing to respond.

His free hand gripped the sheets under her, thinking perhaps if he focused more, it would work. George allowed his hand to be led, dutifully slipping into the familiar places. Her excitement was palpable… though she seemed less thrilled with him. Her fingers were familiar and yet foreign. He didn’t want her. But he did! The conflict was something new, and he didn’t like it. Glancing down and grunting, he shook his head and pushed against her, closing his eyes tight and giving in to her more, his own hand working faster.

George’s body pressed down against hers, and he attempted to think up Waker’s body, thinking of her sweet thighs and those freckles and the innocent excitement she gave. Finally he responded, and he let out a groan of a thought—finally. Opening his eyes, grinning in triumph, he stared down at Laney, and what was, became no more. Suddenly angry, he pulled his hand away from her, attempting to do what he thought she clearly wasn’t doing well enough. If she was, he’d have no problem, right?

Nothing was lasting. This was ridiculous! Her voice grated on his ears and he grit his teeth. “Stop talking.” His hand came up to her mouth, covering it in an attempt to stop her, closing his eyes again and attempting to think of Waker. The image, however, kept slipping away, and the harder he tried to keep it there, the less of her he could remember. Finally his voice whispered out a fatal acknowledgment (he knew it would be unwise). “You’re not Waker.” He said it so softly, he wasn’t sure if she heard.

Resting his head on her shoulder, his eyes closed as he dealt with the shame he was feeling. The disbelief that Waker had had such a hold on him, the guilt that he wasn’t able to put her aside and do his normal male duties, and the overwhelming relief (which brought its own feeling of remorse) that he wouldn’t (couldn't?) betray what he had had with Waker, at least not here. Which was just stupid. She hadn’t cared about it when she’d… betrayed him.

Then it clicked. “We… We could role play!” That could work! Grinning suddenly, he lifted his head up and stared down at her, trying not to notice her expression. “I mean, you could be the head—the smart girl who wants a ride on my broom, yeah?” His hand slipped back down to where she’d put it, attempting to entice her.

Quick to defend his fortitude, but sluggish to prove it, George seemed to become a different person before Laney's eyes. It was like seeing a kid you hadn't seen in ages, only to discover the child had become an adult. A boring, tame, unsure-of-himself adult who needed to close his eyes to get the task done.

Laney, her brows, and her claws narrowed hawkishly beneath him.

But George was in a world all of his own.

A small part of her found the cookie crumbs of doubt in her own heart: the same beads of self-scrutiny that tumbled around inside her whenever Frank managed to escape her ambitious advances. George and Frank were not the same men. Laney Irving was only one woman-- and suddenly feeling very much like the little girl she'd not been too terribly long ago.

“Stop talking.”

Her heart beat faster, and his hands felt like a cage. "What did you say?" She asked smally, disbelieving. Her darkened brow was the least of it now. Her mouth opened, closed again, opened. She looked less like a bird of prey and more like a floundering fish. She couldn't manage a single sylalble, she was so taken aback. This was George. It had been a rare moment in school when they hadn't been all over each other, fists or tongues or groping hands or muddy quidditch boots. Quarreling from across a corridor or making up just around the corner, George had always seemed heatedly engaged. Now he seemed clammy and distant, even atop her. And Laney could do nothing to turn him on or push him off. She was jelly with a temper.

“You’re not Waker.”

Her heart came to a sudden halt, so abrupt that it almost flung itself straight from her chest before it crashed back down into the mattress and lay dead. The words were a ghost, faint as anything, but they hurt her ears. If George meant for them to go unheard, he was sorely mistaken; if he assumed he'd only said it in his head, Laney silently told him otherwise. Laney's skin flushed, her whole body, and not for want of oldest and dearest and most voyeuristic friend. Her heart stopped, yes, but her floppy limbs regained their strength and doubled it. She was rock beneath him, tense and dangerous. "No. I'm the one who's come to show you the light," she snapped, balling her fists and pressing one into his side as a warning. "And thank Merlin there aren't two of your virgin bride or you'd be castrated and shrink-wrapped in addition to being limp." She was past her tipping point. She wanted to laugh and cry and punch walls, and so she lay there, griping on about his little harlot. If George wanted her to shut up, she vowed to never close her mouth. "Or is that the problem? Has she cut off your balls since your dick failed its O.W.L.s?"

“We… We could role play!”

 She scrunched up and slipped away as nimbly as a weight-lifting ballerina, pulling her knees into her chest and guarding them with sharp elbows and crossed arms. She stared at him.

So enraged and humiliated was she that she felt entirely sober. She stared at him madly, then indecipherable, then... she smiled. Soft, wicked, fatal. "Yeah," she agreed amiably, letting her hands fall, letting her knees spread into a pliable pretzel. Her fingers crept slowly, enticingly toward him. "Let's role play..."

A pull and a twist, and Laney let go as quickly as she'd grabbed him. Then she was pummeling into him, pinning him to the mattress, hitting him with a pillow again but much harder and less playfully than she had last time. "You. Giant. Prat." She seethed in place of breathing. She spoke one word for each stroke of the feathered axe. "I wouldn't. Ride. Your. Bloody. Little. TINY. Broom. If you. Paid. Full. Price. For this. Shoddy. Hotel."

She flung the pillow at the window, and a painful ray of sunlight leaked in past the disturbed curtains. It disappeared again, leaving her eyes aching. George became a shadow briefly, and Laney took the chance to retreat, climbing to her skinny legs, rubbing her goose-fleshed arms up and down, and heading for the shabby chair in the corner. She hovered over it, looking down, and wanted to scream. Instead, naked as her name day, she found a pack of cigarettes where she'd left them and lit one, taking a deep drag. She exhaled slowly. "When did I become so unshaggable?" She asked, her back to him. Her voice was more hurt than she'd meant to let it be. What she'd lacked in conventional beauty, she'd always made up for with a disquieting gamine charm. Was it gone? Was she doomed? Was it her new status and income? Or were those soon to be pulled from under her, too?

Her voice was muffled, but he knew that maybe he shouldn’t have spoken so quickly. Still, how else was he to get across he needed silence? With her mouth opening and closing, his fingers moved out of biting range, hovering still as he attempted to focus. This was a new problem that he didn’t want to experience again. How could he figure out what was wrong if she kept interrupting his thinking process?

His mouth was doing quick work for an early grave it would seem. George wanted to take the words back, feeling her go tense under him. Then again, it shouldn’t be unexpected. It would have been like Waker saying he wasn’t Devlin or something. Hell, he’d nearly flipped a gnome when Waker had merely said she had loved him before. He winced as he realized she heard him, closing his eyes and attempting to think of a proper response.

Talk of castration wasn’t exactly helping his situation, and he sighed in exasperation. Sitting up slightly over her, he rolled his eyes and looked down at her, frowning. “My dick soared through O.W.L.s, I’m sure you remember.” Now he was getting testy.

George was everything if persistent. That smile should have been a warning, and part of him was shooting off shouts in his head, telling him to heed cautiously and protect himself. But she agreed, and he was hoping to put this all behind them and get back to where he had expected them to be. The sheets weren’t yet tangled up enough, after all. His eyes devoured her once more, attempting to find what used to make his blood boil.

And then there was pain. A howl escaped him, and that little voice in the back of his head was saying I told you so. His hands worked as shields, doubling over slightly in that sudden pain. She was used to seeking out a specific target, after all, and his wasn’t exactly hard to find. He only had long enough to realize he was going to be a bit sore before she knocked him over. Now he didn’t know where to defend, shouting a “HEY!” and “Come-” unable to get out much of a protest as the pillow beat him relentlessly. One hand stayed over as a shield while the other sought to stop the attack on his head, blindly reaching out to try and stop it.

No one could say she wasn’t passionate. When the assault had stopped, George was caught with his hips turned to the side, one hand covering while the other held up above him, wincing for another reminder of things not to say in front of Laney Irving. But then her body left his, and he quickly looked around for the next point of her swoop.

Cautiously George sat up on the bed, wincing as he let his feet settle on the ground, leaning over on to his knees. Making a face, he shook his head and closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment or two of recovery.

Finally he looked up at her, staring at her back. “Always thinking it’s about you.” Then again, with her most recent trick, it did leave her unavailable, and every other girl he could have tried with. At least for a recovery period. The smell of cigarette smoke bothered his nose, but it was a familiar irritation with Laney. 

“Always thinking it’s about you.”

Laney took another drag, and glanced at George's shadow in the window pane, where light seeped in through the closed curtains. "Well isn't it?" She murmured, only loud enough for her own ears. She took another drag, and then another. The ash fell in methodical flicks to the ground, missing her toes just barely each time. She lifted her feet sporadically in place, pacing without actually changing her position. Fidgeting.

"If you hadn't been laid by the same guy you've been chasing for months, you might feel a little offended when an ex can't get it up without pretending you're some naughty school girl with a fetish for big red quaffles." She turned, finally, and lifted a brow at him as smoke faded behind her messy, shaggy hair. She might as well be honest. She was naked and enjoying a post-sex cigarette, even if there had been no sex of which to speak. "It's not like you're my first choice, either, Georgie. But I thought you were dependable. What's she done to your head, this one? Did a girl finally break you...?" A girl who wasn't Laney. But she'd known it all along. They both had. Which was why these moments with her dearest male friend were always so sad, so bittersweet. A ghost in the afternoon.

“What?” He was feeling annoyed now. She was whispering comebacks that he couldn’t hear. Keeping a hand over his important bits, he rested on the edge of the bed, shaking his head as he glanced down at the floor.

“Not my usual problem, love.” Sarcasm was, as a general rule with them, a first language. “But truly, you can’t get your new guy to lay you?” A small laugh escaped him before he covered his mouth with his free hand. “I can get it up! It just… won’t stay.” Accusing frowns made their point to his protected area before glancing back at her. “And it’s not that simple.”

Then she said he wasn’t her first choice, and he tried to feel angry about it. Somehow it just made him sad. They had never been each others’ first choices, but it had always been fun. Rolling his eyes, he squished his toes into the cheap carpet, letting his head hang comfortably. “I don’t know… I loved her, Laney.” He felt weak saying that. “And she screwed some other git. So I guess… Yeah some girl finally did.” Lifting his head up, he frowned in her direction.

“How long is ‘months’ for you? A couple weeks? Who is he?”

Sighing smoke through deftly parted lips, Laney finally moved from her dark corner. She sat down on the edge of the bed beside him, feeling defeated but also as if they'd come to some mutual understanding. Something in their machinery just wasn't synching anymore, and it wasn't a part that could be replaced. It was vintage, ancient, over.

"I know it isn't," she murmured, trying to sound annoyed, to sound as if she hated admitting such things as George's virility. She seemed to twitch at his laugh. "I think..." She was projecting. Enough said. She shrugged like a two-year-old, bringing her knees up to her chest, resting her chin there while she let smoke drift most lazily from the still-lit fag. "He's trying to be respectful." The word tasted sour, as if she should have spit it out like a hissing cat. Mature was another choice adjective, but she skipped over that one, let it sink into her heart, where George couldn't find it. Implying Frank was mature meant Laney was... the opposite. Laney was not immature. "And I think you're just trying to get your rocks off with the first person you can find," she added, pursing her lips into what might have been a smirk.

Love was a strange word, a strong word, a word not in Laney's vocabulary unless it was used in conjunction with snitches, sex, or cigarettes. She loved sleeping in, and sleeping next to strangers; she didn't love people. Not many of them, anyway. She supposed she loved her family. Most of her family. Clinton, at least, and their dead mother, and Emmanuelle, the matriarch. She thought maybe she loved George, too, in that weird sibling-with-benefits way. But it wasn't the same thing. It wasn't the way George seemed to feel, or to have felt. She was surprised to hear he'd loved a girl, and she couldn't decide whether it was because it was George, or because it wasn't she he loved.

But weren't the past the surprise? Wasn't that why she hadn't lit the bed on fire?

She felt a strange sting in her lungs, and it wasn't from the cigarettes.

She nodded. "I'm sure you did," she answered, her voice intoned with something like bitter sincerity. "Or you thought you did..." She turned her head, so that her cheek met her knees, and looked at him. She took a drag, and let it escape in the inches between them. "Do you want me to break his arm? Or I could just break hers..." It would serve her right. "That would clear up your problem, if she couldn't use her hands. Although we'd still have to take care of her--" She paused. "The rest of her." The 'smart girl' who apparently liked going for rides on Gryffindors' brooms. "She can't be all that smart if she ruined what she had with you," Laney admitted, throwing her arm around George's neck, ringing up in with the edge a cigarette-baring hand. "Tell anyone I said that, and you're a dead man. Fancy a smoke?"

The topic floated back to Frank, and Laney took a moment to analyze her options. Finally, she spoke. "Months means months, but I didn't get straight T's on my O.W.L.s, so I can read calendar." And for every date on the calendar, poor Laney Irving had been left to her own devices. There were only so many ways to get one's self off, even if one happened to be as thoroughly amazing as she. (That's what she'd told herself... and perhaps it would also sum up George's predicament. There was simply nothing left for them to do!) "He's..." Oh, the irony. She eyed him suspiciously, as if it say laugh and I'll castrate you. "He's a book hunter. And a writer." And adorable, kind of fuzzy, with a boyish smile and a leather jacket and a cute blush. He'd been the politest, most sincere person Laney had ever dated (or Not Dated, depending on Frank's definition), but she was still puzzled. Was he not into girls? Was that it, maybe? Maybe he was afraid of Laney. She'd been told once or twice she was too aggressive, but that had been from gits like the old Hogwarts nurse, the lower rung coaches, and her step-mum. Or... "He went to school before the war, so I've had to teach him a few things. But he's still driving me mad, that sort of bloke who's disgustingly sexy without knowing it. Why can't he just take his damn trousers off and get it done, George?"

When she came near him, he quickly (total reflex) put his hand as a protective barrier. He did not flinch. George raised an eyebrow at the thought of respectful guys. They seemed few and far between these days… His free hand scratched the back of his head. Laney’s mystery guy was holding off, and she was here with him.

Rolling his eyes, George wrinkled his nose at the cigarette smoke and shifted slightly on the bed, his toes digging into the carpet. “Probably.” Wouldn’t it make him feel better? To do what Waker had done? And at least with Laney, it was something he understood. They got on well enough. Usually. The fact he couldn’t seem to ‘get his rocks off’ was a bigger insult. Waker had left a bigger disaster than he’d expected. It bothered him…

A noisy breath escaped him as he grit his teeth. “I haven’t felt like that for someone…” Since when did they turn into a couple of third years? Laughing at the absurdity, and still wanting to tell her more, he merely hung his head and took another breath. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. It hurt too much. Staring at his hand in his lap, he turned it over, closing it into a fist. If he could get hold of the guy… George thought he’d feel a bit better.

A soft laugh escaped him, a puff of a chuckle. “I want to break his arm.” George shook his head. Blinking at her admission, he glanced out of the corner of his eyes at her arm around him and then at her face, a half smirk slipping on to his face. “Cross my heart, hope to die, Avada Kedavra me if I lie.” Making a face, he nudged her. “Bloody hell no.” A smoke after a shag wasn’t half bad, he could agree with that. But he hadn’t done the shag, so…

It would just twist his bullocks a little more. And that was a very post-Laney reaction. Having a smoke… memories started to pop up. And they would stay memories.

He could tell how much the months seemed to bother her, or he might have taken the piss. The look she gave him made it that much harder, too. It must be really good for her to care about his reaction.

A writer? His face lit up and his mouth opened before he remembered the look she’d given him. And he quickly shut his mouth. George couldn’t keep the mirth out of his voice, however. “A writer. Is bookhunting a very dangerous job? Do the books carry wands?” Maybe there were more sarcastic questions asked than he was allowed. What did Laney expect, though?

And he was old?! “Before the first war?” He was grinning now. As a precaution, his hand was staying between open air and his sore lap. George shrugged in response to her question, thinking about it for a moment. “Maybe it’s—” No, he valued his life. He wouldn’t compare the guy to what happened to them just a few moments before on the bed. “I mean everyone is different… I waited a while for W-Waker.” He winced. “But like you, we could—we used to just jump at it. Maybe it means more to him.”

Did that mean it meant more to George, now?! If so, he needed a time turner.