outfit

Pale pink fingertips ran over the frame stuck to the wall as fiercely as a bit of iron on a train track. Charlotte leaned forward, her lips moving silently as she ticked off each name, enjoying the way they felt on her tongue: all those famous has-beens and would-bes. She pursed her mouth when she reached a certain familiarity... in form of her sweet Adam's father. Adam... it had been too long, and Charlotte was in no state to pull ghosts from the depths of her mind. Particularly not the living patriarchs of ghosts.

Overrated, she thought. Anyone could do his job or make his contributions when they had his connections. But poor little Charlotte, she had worked hard to get to where she was, and no one took her seriously, still. The men in Adam's family had liked her well enough-- she was sweet and beautiful, if young-- but the women had always thought her a viper, and it was the women who won the men's obedience when Adam had died his tragic death. So now Charlotte had to dodge their whispers and smile in the face of their stinging looks. As if it were all her fault the man had gone and Floo'd himself straight into the grave! (Or her fault he'd left her all of his family's money.)

This time, her visit to the Ministry would prove to end on a happier note. Not least because she was with a man who respected her opinion, and whose family... she hadn't exactly met.

(She had been to their house, though... all over it... and they seemed like perfectly lovely people.)

Waiting for said man to appear in the Atrium for his midnight lunch break, Charlotte was dressed more for a sunlit picnic than a moonlit meal. She found herself lingering on the many Floo vents as she shifted away from the honorary photograph. She was glad she'd been staying up so late these past few months, or she might not have held out. But Felix's routine had become more and more her own as they began to co-habitate-- particularly since her fallout with Lia-- and it was all Charlotte could do to keep his mind occupied and his... everything else... satisfied. Lest he start talking about the other things that came co-habitation. Like marriage, children, and in-laws. She could only refuse him for so long.

The large clock in the middle of the planet room chimed midnight, and Felix pulled his eyes away from the star-dotted sky above him. He looked at the clock as though confirming that it was in fact midnight and his ears hadn't been playing a trick on him. He rubbed his right eye with the palm of his hand and let out a long, drawn out yawn. Half of his shift was over, only another six hours to go.

Midnight always signalled time for food. Whether Felix was hungry or not (and he had not yet hit midnight and not been hungry), he would wrap-up whatever he was doing, and take between half an our to an hour for a well-earned break. The length of his break usually depended upon how much work was left for him when he got back, and how appealing his food was.

Tonight wasn't a particularly busy night. The paperwork from the weekend had all been filed in the first half of the night, and the rest of the night would be research. Mondays were never as busy as the other days of the week. Once the week started to roll into Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the work from the beginning of the week would start rolling away. Then, come Friday, the Ministry would be winding down for the weekend and the work would diminish once again. The Ministry didn't completely shut-up-shop over the weekend, but the workforce and therefore the workload lessened considerably.

Felix grabbed his jacket from over the back of a chair and shrugged it over his shoulders. It was the same thing every week with Felix: Mondays, he would come in wearing a nicely pressed suit and shirt. Tuesdays, the jacket would have been abandoned. Wednesdays would see a shirt and trousers with no tie. Thursdays (his last working day of the week) he didn't care what he came to work wearing -- his weekend started there and then!

As it was, Monday meant it was suit day. The dark, lightly pinstriped trousers were offset with shiny black shoes, (minimal scuff-marks his mother would be pleased to know) and a lilac shirt with a dark purple tie. The whole image was pulled together with the matching suit-jacket. After straightening the collar of the jacket, Felix grabbed the satchel from the floor and began to make his way out to the elevators, but not before running his wand down the side of the door which turned off all of the lights except for a small orb in the centre of the room. On leaving the room, the large black door closed behind him and locked mechanically.

Whilst waiting for the elevator, Felix rummaged around in his satchel, his tongue protruding slightly from the corner of his mouth as he searched for something. His eyes widened greedily as he pulled out-- "Yuck!" He held up a sorry looking bag of soggy sandwiches in front of him between his thumb and forefinger. He had been so excited for food, and this was all he had? He sighed, scratching behind his ear in confusion with his free hand. Had he really made those himself? He held the bag up a little higher, trying to discern what the contents were. There was definitely bread there, amid the mass of congealed red gloop. "Strawberry jam," he muttered to himself as the realisation dawned on him. That was it - he had hunted through the cupboards that afternoon, only to find that he was left with some sorry looking bread that was going stale and a jar of jam that was questionable.

Felix heaved a sigh as the elevator zoomed up to his floor and the doors were thrown open violently. He shoved the sandwiches back in his bag and stomped into the elevator. He and Charlotte had bee practically living together lately, though he spent most of his time at her apartment. Her argument had been that she had so much to take to his when she stayed over, and it made more sense that he should stay at hers, since he only ever rocked up with a spare pair of undies and a toothbrush. He didn't use any of those lotions and potions girls swore by (much as though Jason liked to tell his parents that he did).

The elevator dropped down one level, and the doors opened once more. Felix stepped out into the atrium. It was empty - it usually was at this time of night - and his footsteps echoed in the hall as they hit against the marble floor. He was heading to his favourite seat - it was one that had a nice view of the statues and fountain in the centre, and the plaque that told the story of the artwork. It was a place he was able to escape work and the outside world for a while. He was able to think about absolutely nothing, blissful, unrelenting nothing.

Felix stopped. Some movement caught the corner of his eye and he turned immediately towards the floo gates. A young woman wearing a pretty dress, with her pretty legs on show, looked as though she was waiting for someone with- a hamper! "Lucky bloke." Once again Felix's eyes went down towards his satchel as he was reminded of his dinner worthy of gastronomique mention. He looked back up at the woman longingly (for her food, obviously). It was then that he caught the swish of her hair. It was familiar somehow. He squinted a little, trying to focus more on her. He recognised that coat. "Hold on a--" His eyes widened.

An angel had come to pay him a visit! His very own cherubic seraphine from the high heavens above. Immediately, the satchel was abandoned on the floor, and Felix strutted (why wouldn't he? His girl had just brought him food to work!) in her direction. Trying to keep his shoes as quiet as possible, he came up behind Charlotte and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her against him. He nuzzled his nose up against her neck and breathed in heavily. "I hope my girlfriend doesn't find out about this."

Charlotte switched the basket between hands, using her dominate one to grab hold of one of the arms that had snaked around her waist. Her face was an earnest grin, glowing with pleasure at being caught red-handed (or treat-handed, depending on one’s outlook) by her semi-live-in beau. Her palms, however, batted at Felix’s naughty hands, attempting to shoo them away from where they clearly didn’t belong: a stone’s throw from the bum of a ‘stranger.’

“I hope she doesn’t either,” she murmured, her voice drenched with warning and attraction. “We should hope even more my boyfriend doesn’t hear the rumors. He’s not like to listen to reason with a brass telescope in one hand and a wand in the other.” She clenched none-too-lightly into the back of Felix’s hand, enjoying the electric tickle of his face against her neck, his scent in her hair.

Turning in his grasp, and not bothering to hide her smile as she might have done on any other night, she stood on tippy-toe to plant a kiss on his cute nose. And then his cheek, jawline, the corner of his mouth... “A house-elf told me you don’t know how to feed yourself,” she whispered in a carrying voice, sounding as much of a mother as Charlotte St. James was ever like to sound. “You need to keep your stamina, my love, or this affair will have to end. I can’t be caught with a man who faints in the middle of our rendezvous. Finish the deed or get out of my bed. Isn’t that on our contract?”

Her smile turned teasing, and she returned his playful touch, caressing the back of his neck. “Show me your office. I bet it’s even bigger than the Minister’s.” She stepped away, but laced her fingers lightly through his before doing so, and tugged him toward the magical elevator.

Once inside, with the door closed, Charlotte proceeded to press all of the buttons, like a child who had just learned to reach them. “Oops,” she murmured, unapologetic, and leaned into the reflective bronze wall. “Looks like we’ll be here a while.”

Which, for Charlotte, was perfect.

“I suppose now’s a good time to bring it up... you’ve been nagging me for a while now,” she began, choosing her words carefully. And then: “Well, your shorts on my floor have. I think I should buy a new place. Or maybe just a holiday home-- an investment. My man at Gringotts says it’s a splendid idea, with real estate dipping so low. What do you think? Maybe you can help me decorate, so it isn’t so... me.” Ha.

Her voice was saturated with the melody of lust and the cadence of danger, like an aria daring to drag Felix under its hypnotic spell. Her deft fingers dug into the back of his hand, which only encouraged a more aggressive grip of the material around her waist. Her batting of his hands did little to impede his advances, and it only made him more wary of how close she was as his breath fluttered a wisp of her hair. He had to stop himself from commenting on the size of her boyfriend's brass telescope. Or indeed, the size of his wand. Felix had a dedicated ability to kill passion with comments like this, so abstaining from making comments about the size of wands and telescopes was difficult for him. Difficult, but in the current situation, more than worth it.

She turned in his arms with the grace of a ballerina and the determination of a lion. Felix grinned stupidly as her lips began to play dot-to-dot with the contours of his face, and he felt his knees growing increasingly weak. He nodded, agreeing that he had absolutely no idea how to feed himself. If this was going to happen more often, he would admit to anything.

Charlotte's voice tinkled before him like bells. Finish the deed or get out of my bed. The words echoed in his brain, and he cracked a knowing smile. He'd never had that problem. The Marren men did not suffer with problems like that! Except Jason. But even his problem had been that the deed had been finished too quickly.

Before his groggily derlious mind knew what it was doing, he was being led (or following blindly) into the elevator. "Mine's not quite as big..." - his office, of course. The doors closed behind them, and Charlotte draped herself down the buttons so that each of them lit up like fairy lights, her eyes alight with joy as she stated they would be there a while. Felix eyed her hungrily, ravenous for something infinitely more tasty than jam sandwiches, or indeed anything that Charlotte may have had stored in her hamper basket. His eyes started to glaze over like a werewolf that hasn't been fed for months. He was about to move in for fresh blood when she started talking.

Felix paused momentarily as she mentioned buying a new place. Then she carried on, explaining about a holiday home idea, and the astronomer resumed his advances upon her as she looked delectable leaning against the bronze which complimented her skin tone so deliciously. "I wouldn't want it to be anything but you." He grinned as his hands performed their wandering magic and one found the back of her thigh, playing with the material at the edge of her dress-hem. "But that sounds like a great idea." He was at the point where - once more - he was willing to agree with anything. The smell of her skin was overwhelming, and his eyes were starting to close as he nuzzled just below her ear lobe.

"Mine's not quite as big..."

Charlotte raised a brow, pursing her lips amusedly. His office might not have been huge-- she had no way of knowing-- but neither the train lavatory of heated memories past nor this elevator happened to be either. And as for Felix... well, Charlotte was as pleased as ever where his bodily real estate was concerned.

She hadn’t come here to demand he compare sizes, though. Really, she’d only come to surprise him with dinner. But it was another type of real estate that concerned little Lotte, a seemingly seamless permanency to their cohabitation without letting Felix get carried away or, worse, think it was his idea. It was a power struggle of late: she knew she’d cast doubt in his mind when refusing a proposal he wasn’t quite sure he’d even made. Now Felix was doing everything he could, as charmingly as he could, to talk her out of her knickers and, if Charlotte wasn’t mistaken, into a diamond ring. Or so she liked to think. Loathe as she was to admit out loud, it was an easy unease which boosted Charlotte’s ego and kept their game dangerous.

"I wouldn't want it to be anything but you."

Charlotte narrowed her eyes. She wanted him to miss the point, but not this blindly. She batted at the hand crawling over her thigh like a puppy’s eager nose. “Felix-”

"But that sounds like a great idea."

“What sounds like a great idea?” She asked, tilting her head, pouting, demanding he recite her words and interpret them. Maybe that would bring him out of his chance. “I knew I should have worn a turtleneck,” she murmured darkly.

Her hands around his neck and her back approaching the lit buttons of the elevator, she sighed, and turned her face so that she could press a kiss to his forehead. The rest of him was occupied with the sensitive skin below her ear. She smiled, and tried not to laugh. Or... make any other satisfied reaction that might let him know he was winning. He could always get her with that. Charlotte had to be careful, or she might forget what they were discussing.

“Remember when I was twelve and you pretended you hated me, and I pretended you weren’t as pretty as all your pervy little friends because you wouldn't let me smoke or sit in your train compartment?” She asked suddenly, wondering if that might catch his attention. “Hold that thought for a minute.”

And then: “I’m not buying us a house unless you’re going to help me choose it.”

She pushed him back gently but authoritatively to study his eyes, but she sort of wished she hadn't. Charlotte wasn't one for blushing or eating her words, but... she looked down, biting her lip, and back up again, her eyes a little wider than usual as she waited for him to process what she was proposing. No, not proposing. Saying.

Her arms were still around his neck, and she felt her heart skip a beat. She felt like that same little girl again. If you'd told her to double her age and think about what she'd be doing in that far-off, fantastical future, she'd have hexed herself before suggesting she might be standing in a Ministry elevetor with Felix Marren, pressing all the buttons so she could kiss him longer.

Charlotte made a feeble attempt at slapping his hand away, one that – far from deterring him – encouraged the precise wandering of his deft fingers. He was getting lost in the moment, the smell of her skin making his own hairs prick up and his heart-rate increase dramatically.

“What sounds like a great idea?”

“Hm?” His lips buzzed against the skin just below her ear, the sound reverberating to verify Felix’s lack of concentration in the words that were leaving Charlotte’s perfect lips. Catching her murmured self-rebuke, Felix made a noise that was an amalgamation of a sigh and a chuckle. That just wouldn’t do – the day Charlotte St.James wore a turtleneck would be the day that Azkaban became a children’s day-care centre. He grinned as she pressed a kiss tenderly against his forehead; to Felix, this was Charlotte’s approval of his roving hands and nomadic lips.

“Remember when I was twelve and you pretended you hated me, and I pretended you weren’t as pretty as all your pervy little friends because you wouldn't let me smoke or sit in your train compartment?”

Felix pulled away slightly, verging on momentary confusion but settling quite comfortably back into his favourite pastime. “I didn’t pretend to hate you,” he reasoned, his left hand on the small of her back pulling her towards him and the other moving expertly down her right arm, his fingers teasing the skin all the way from her shoulder to her fingertips and back. “You were just awkward, and you needed a figure of authority to point you in the right direction.” His lips dabbed gently at the tip of her nose. “I think I did a pretty good job-”

“I’m not buying us a house unless you’re going to help me choose it.”

Felix was cut off mid-sentence and winded mid-breath. His lungs suddenly seemed incapable of inhalation as his slow, food-deprived, sleep-wanting, lust-fuelled mind considered what she had just said. As quickly as they had seemed to stop working, his lungs regained their ability to perform their normal task, and Felix exhaled heavily. Us? Us a house? Her exact words were I’m not buying us a house.

Felix swallowed, his throat drying up considerably and his usual confidence failing him spectacularly.

Then it dawned on him; they were virtual live-in partners anyway. He had half (a whole half!) of a wardrobe at her house, his toothbrush sat proudly next to the basin in the plush bathroom, and his socks and underwear were skilfully strewn across the bedroom floor. It was almost as though it was his house.

Watching her for a moment that felt like an eternity, he was surprised to see something that resembled embarrassment, nervousness, a timid question in those beautiful eyes.

“You’re not buying us anything,” He started, one hand resting above the other at her back and pulling her a little closer. “But I’d like to help choose a house for us to buy.” If they were going to do this, Felix wanted it done properly. He wanted equality, and he wanted Charlotte to know that he was able to looking after her; it didn’t always have to be the young witch that spent her galleons. Felix was prepared to pay his way, and he wanted to take care of her, even though he knew she was more than capable of taking care of herself. He’d learned over time that sometimes, although a woman might seem strong and independent on the outside, she might want someone to treat her as though she is his world.   

His hands were intent, his mind distracted; hers were similarly engaged, but Charlotte was determined to make a point before she caved. Felix couldn’t win, or he’d think all he ever had to do was brush his skilled fingertips across her skin, and that would that. It was becoming frightfully true. Not a chance.

Still, she’d caved just a little.

It was a nice middle ground before she plunged into the thick of it.

“I didn’t pretend to hate you”

Oh, so he’d really hated her? She raised a brow. He was trying to hypnotize, the sneaky little vampire and his roaming hands.

“You were just awkward, and you needed a figure of authority to point you in the right direction.”

Charlotte laughed. It burst forth from her lips, heady and hopeless and lost, a sincere laugh as she’d ever given him.

She bumped her forehead to his, the spot she’d only just kissed, and smiled some half inch from his lips. “You’re joking,” she announced, a loud murmur. “I was always the one to boss you around,” she insisted, an expert lie. Perhaps it were true now-- Charlotte liked to think so-- but then, Felix had been obviously older, commanded more power than a girl like Charlotte could have hoped, and had only the time of day to stop little Lotte from finding herself in a broomload of trouble.

“I think I did a pretty good job-”

“Dream on, love.” She spoke as if she meant to break his heart. She didn’t. She meant the exact opposite, to steal it. Which required a certain level of viciousness. Other women just didn’t understand. “You always did have a splendidly big head when you were that age. Your Prefect’s badge was so tiny it was almost invisible,” she teased. She kissed him again. And again.

And finally, she’d caught him. If not by rippling the Pensieve pool’s silvery memories, than certainly by blurting out that she planned to by them a house.

For a minute she was sure he was dying, sure he was going to keel over on her right there in the elevator, and she would be down not one, but two important lovers in her life-- this one more so, because Charlotte was a woman and knew what she wanted. Even if she absolutely did not want to be trapped in that birdcage of knowing.

When she was sure he wasn’t going to die, she shuddered. Felix would have none of it.

“You’re not buying us anything. But I’d like to help choose a house for us to buy.”

A tiny blush came to her cheeks. His words were sweet, unexpected-- but not to the point that she couldn’t believe them. He was Felix, after all, and in the months they’d spent sharing a bed and keeping each other company for dinner, confiding things that Charlotte would not ordinarily confide, and being... well, normal... she’d come to know him much better than she had. She had not imagined there was so much more to know after years of teasing one another, baiting the trap and blocking the path and throwing sultry, dirty looks and insults alike. But Charlotte St. James had either not known Felix Marren half as well as she’d thought, or the bit of her that had always yearned to defeat him and learn all his secrets had been thoroughly overwhelmed by how much there was to learn.

Relief, fear, reality.

She brushed a cupped hand against his cheek, smiling softly-- smiling her gratitude. “Alright, but we’re framing your Prefect’s badge and putting it on a wall.” Charlotte suspected his mother had it somewhere (if Felix wasn't harboring it with sentimental pride), the same badge she had just been insulting. She would have to part with it. Mrs. Marren and Charlotte both couldn't have her son the token. She leaned against a wall, this one free of buttons, encouraging his hands on her backside, and kissed him again. She would still keep her penthouse, though she did not see a reason in adding as much to the conversation. She was loathe to part with it completely, but she was ready to move into a place with more room... and more of Felix than his body and his pants. She could see it now, a handsome study full of telescopes for the man with the wandering hands, and a new closet for herself. And a much, much bigger washroom.

Charlotte's feeble attempts at taunting Felix simply made him laugh, shaking his head as he used to do as a young prefect chastising a little girl with a cigarette perched practice-perfect gently in her lips. "You'll have to try harder than that, ma petit ingénu." He kissed the tip of her nose softly. "Your insults do nothing to me now, though they crushed me as a growing boy." He grinned at the thought of his teenage-self being crushed at anything Charlotte had ever said to him. He hadn't so much as looked at her with interest until they had both left school and she was engaged to a very rich man.

“Alright, but we’re framing your Prefect’s badge and putting it on a wall.”

Her hand came up and brushed against the gentle stubble of his cheek and he gave a slight sigh. "Fine," he started as she began kissing him again, moving away from the brightly lit buttons of the elevator and guiding his hands down to her oh-so-inviting derrière. Pulling away from the kiss reluctantly, he grinned down at her. "Then we're framing your first cigarette. Don't think I didn't keep it."

"You'll have to try harder than that, ma petit ingénu. Your insults do nothing to me now, though they crushed me as a growing boy."

She wanted to bat at him, at his kisses, as surely as her younger self had wanted to hit him in the stomach-- Charlotte’s mean, pale hands would have been no match for his abs, unless she turned a smack into a punch, and even then, he had his wand, but... Apparently her words had been enough. She couldn’t help it, she stood there, half-pouting, half-pleased, as if to say, Ha! Did they really?. “What a sensitive little boy you were.” She poked his chest, still biting her lip in a smile, still obviously pleased with this little pronouncement. Little boy was not quite accurate. Charlotte had always been the embittered child looking up at an annoyingly older, more mature Felix. Superiority complex, she had thought when she was young, stealing the phrase from adults who whispered about each other at holiday parties.

"Fine. Then we're framing your first cigarette. Don't think I didn't keep it."

Charlotte made a murmur of protest mid-kiss, wrangling free-- but not really-- to let Felix and his busy hands know her scandalized outrage. “But I don’t even smoke anymore,” she protested. And he had been a Prefect for over a decade, really. But that wasn’t the issue. “Only socially.” Didn’t count. “That was a phase--” She hated to admit it; her lips pursed as if daring him to dwell on that bit.

Finally, her brows rose, her eyes widened a bit, her lips parted: her face seemed to relax, to reach a point of compromised enlightenment. “You’re a liar,” she said, as if her uncertainty were the most solid of truths. “And how about you let me look at it-- your badge-- and then we won’t frame either.” And if the cigarette existed, which Charlotte couldn’t believe it did, he could never prove it was hers.

“This is really the most dreadfully slow elevator I’ve ever been in,” she announced, finally. The buttons? That had been a team of invisible elves. She faked a scoff-of-sorts, her hands moving back around Felix to stake her claim on her very own Ministry man.