When Odette whined for the third time the trolley was taking it's dear sweet time to come by, Luc soon been volunteered to correct the matter.  Why?  Well, as it turned out, reading was not nearly as important as the conversation she was loudly involved.  It was a much loved book, and he had the whole holiday to get through it.  His protests fell on deaf ears, and just when he started to escape, Odette offered to pay for his treats as well.  Free treats did change his outlook a bit.  That and the trio of girls outnumbered him so much that soon he had a list and a pocketful of coins.

"Right, then, I'll be back," Lucas waved to his cousin and her friends before heading off down the corridor.  As soon as he was out of sight, he tucked the sketchbook back into his bag.  It was a long train ride back from Hogwarts to London and he had a few stops to make anyway. 

The past two weeks gone by in a bit of a blur.  If Luc thought his brain melted studying for the O.W.L.s, actually sitting for them left nothing usable after the fact.  Did he feel well enough that he'd passed?  Yeah.  Could he have done better?  Probably. Did he have any desire to face them again?  Nope.  His memory banks been stretched, bent, broken, and taped back together again, it was likely he didn't have a working thought at all anymore.   At least, that was his defense for what happened the day before. 

It perhaps not been the best idea to go about kissing his ex girlfriend's mate.  It just kind of happened, and at the time it been right, but hindsight made him question the whole thing.  In theory a kiss could be a kiss, right?  He kissed loads of girls and only a few of them went anywhere past that.  But then that brought up the question about if he wanted it to go past that and if it was worth the potential issues involved.  All of that would have to wait, since he was coming up on one of his stops sooner then he anticipated.

"Hey," he spotted the familiar brunette coming out of a compartment.  "Can we talk?"

The compartment door went click and she turned around, a half-smile still lingering on her face. She should have known better than to think she would (could?) keep a whole compartment to herself; of course her friends wouldn’t let her-

“Hey. Can we talk?”

The smile quickly disappeared. Discomfitted, she rubbed her neck, equal parts wary and. . . anxious, an anxiety that could have passed for curiosity under a kinder light some other time, perhaps—because of his tone, she decided with a sort of resigned knowledge. It was serious—a reliable indicator that she was almost definitely going to dislike what he had to say. That alone made her wish he hadn’t seen her at all, albeit guiltily. They had been friends, once, and good ones at that.

Close ones, even.

Through haphazard bangs she eyed him. “I guess. . .” She couldn’t have sounded more reluctant, but she’d hear him out.

“Somewhere else, though,” she murmured quietly, gently brushing past him as she went further down the hall. “I’m guessing this isn’t an open matter.”

His cousin often teased him about sticking his head in the sand.  To the brass Gryffindor, it was cowardly, face your problems head on and damn the consequences.  Well, that sort of boldness what landed him in this mess to begin with.  Clearly, charging forward with no regard had not the right answer in this situation. Do or die had left him with a wall of aftermath to deal with and he'd much rather stick to how he normally did things.   If you simply ignored a problem long enough, it might go away, or else it give him time enough to think out a better solution.  Obviously if he'd just sat down to write a list, this whole Liviana thing could have been nipped in the bud.  Damn hormones.

"It's not," he agreed after a moment of hesitation.

 This talk been a deliberate choice and one he actually needed to see through.  Despite everything, Gracie was still important to him and he shouldn't have gotten so caught up in all of this.  Maybe Sophie was right, maybe he was hanging out with too many Slytherins.  Waiting turning out to be a mistake.  The longer they walked in silence, the more the words burned in his mouth and tangled in his head.  Just before Luc decided to clear out the next compartment, they happened upon an empty ladies bathroom.  He opened the door, his hand finding her back to guide her in.  The act been automatic and as soon as he realized, he dropped it with a, "Sorry."

The door clicked shut and he flicked the lock for good measure and words burst forward, despite their carefully crafted nature.  "I don't know what Liv's told you, but it just happened.  I was there, she was there, and then she was hitting me and we were shouting and I said some things I wouldn't have said if I had my head on right."

When he ended up steering her to the loo—the girls’ loo, no less—Gracie couldn’t help raising her brows at his choice. Of all the places to pick. . .

Still, it wasn’t likely that they’d happen upon an empty compartment any time soon, and it was much better than, say, a broom closet. But it was still very much a small, enclosed space. In such close proximity Luc tended to take up a lot of it. And his hand-

She hadn’t even realized she’d tensed until his hand dropped away. She tensed even further at that sudden onslaught of words. After a moment that seemed to last a heartbeat too long, she finally found her voice. “I think, Lucas,” came out calmly and very, very quietly, “you had better start from the beginning and tell me exactly what you think Liv told me.”

They'd been here before.  Well, maybe not specifically here, doing this,  but Luc and Gracie had spent a good deal of their relationship behind close doors. Granted,  the last time they'd rendezvoused in such a spot, he'd not been so concerned about how much space was considered polite.  Not that there was too much to spare at the moment, unless one of them wanted to sit on the loo while they had it out.  As it were, Luc didn't feel all that much like sitting.

He'd been playing this conversation in his head since last night, that it didn't occur to him that Livi might not have told Gracie anything.  It was only after his mouth gotten away from him that he considered the possibility, but by then, there wasn't any way to stop himself.  His disjointed confession hung in the air for a small while as if the words gotten stuck in the mounting tension.  It felt about as thick as peanut butter, and just as he opened his mouth to try again, Gracie finally spoke.  Her voice was calm, much to calm for his liking.  Shouting he could deal with, he'd been dealing with that enough.  No, it was almost scarier when girls were calm.  It was never, ever that easy, a backlash always followed.

At first he started to go for his usual tactic, twist the conversation.  What did Livi say to Gracie?  But, something about her face told him that his usual tactics wouldn't really fly and he best come up with a damn good tale.  Did she actually mean from the beginning?  As in he had to tell his ex girlfriend the entire sordid tale?  He was use to people telling him to fill in the blanks, his head could sometimes work too fast for others keep up with, but he'd just assumed Gracie knew what he was talking about about.  Maybe she did, maybe this was building up to whatever punishment she and Livi had agreed on for infringing on their sisterly bond. 

"Right. So, Livi and I were in the courtyard, yeah?  I went to find her so we could do the yearlie exchange thing.  We were chatting and..."  That's where he got tongue tied all over again.  Best to suck it up Norwood. "See... the thing about it is... I kissed her."

His hesitance—telling in and of itself—had said as much, and it didn’t take too long for her to guess; his fumbling had said more than enough. But even knowing that much—having that guess confirmed aloud. . .

Ouch.

Because once upon a time, he had been hers. And she knew just as well as he did that their breakup had been just as much her fault as it had been his; he had proved to be a right possessive arse, sure, but she hadn’t helped things much, either. Even when the kisses had gotten heavier and it seemed like less had needed to be said, she had changed little in her own routine. Still she made a throat go dry here, caused a tie to be loosened there, made sure a particular Hufflebutt got his customary grope, and. . .

And then there was Huck.

(–And Deus, too, of course, but compared to the blonde the boy was less physical—less touchy, instead seeming to prefer a round of hands-off straight chicken. But Huck, on the other hand. . .)

Yes, she remembered Luc getting angry about him quite clearly. More than once, in fact, especially when he had caught Huck saying things that hadn’t been pervy, but. . . sweet.

Suddenly the loo was just too, too small and she had to glance away. Suddenly there was too much in her head, and yet nothing at all. She. . . she needed to think. Sort through that mess in her head she didn’t even know where to begin with. The corner by the window, the one with a bit of shade and across the loo itself—all of a sudden it seemed like a good place to start. Anything to put even a tiny bit of space between Luc and herself, really-

Gracie spent a moment simply looking past the glass, out to the landscape flying by in a blur of blue and green. Her voice was still curiously even when she spoke again. Unfortunately, though, a bit of acid escaped into her tone anyway. “How does chatting lead to up to that?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the pane. As far she knew (–or, had known, apparently she was wrong now) the two had barely even spoken to each other. How long had this been going on?

It didn't mean anything and I don't want to talk about it flashed in his head, and were just as immediately squashed.  It did mean something, even though at this exact moment, Lucas couldn't quite remember what.  Suddenly all the things about Livi he did like didn't stack up quite the same way, but maybe that had more to present company then he'd like to admit.  He might not want to be with Gracie anymore, but feelings wanted to confuse the whole thing in a way he'd not really anticipated.  Why had he gone about inviting this conversation again?  There'd been a reasoning, a very good one at that.  Now all the logic gotten jumbled up, along with his story and now Luc wasn't even sure which way was up, much less why this been the best idea. 

Feelings were going to get him in trouble.  It didn't help that Livi's words went whirling through his head, about how he'd been perfectly awful to Gracie even though she'd sacrificed so much and nothing she did satisfied him.  Livi had to put Gracie back together again.  Well... who put Luc back together again?  As he'd told Livi, Gracie not been the only one hurt.  Why did he have to be the bad guy in this?  He wasn't perfect, he never claimed to be.  Mistakes happened, people broke up and it sucked, but eventually everyone had to move on.  Instead, everyone else got to move on and Luc had to continue to atone for his mistakes.  Leftover sadness found a bit of bitterness hanging on as Gracie's accusatory tone hit his chest. 

"You tell me.  You were always better at that game," he fired back, even though he'd only meant to think it.  It wasn't supposed to be a competition, they weren't supposed to be trying to out hurt the other.  Things been awkward and they'd let each other be since they'd broken up, but Luc didn't want her for an enemy.  "It just happened, Gracie.  She's smart, she's funny and I like her, so I kissed her.  That's the whole story.  I thought you knew, so I thought we should talk about it."

When Luc’s words hit the open air, green eyes darted back to him, once cool and dispassionate and now. . . weren’t.  For a brief, brief moment, when green flew up to meet blue, they were anything but.
 
Aaand double ouch, they told him. Way to go, Lucas—

Then she blinked—took a slow, steadying breath—and the look was gone.

“But as it turns out, I hadn’t,” said Gracie quietly to her feet, and that, she slowly realized, was what stung most of all. Whether or not she herself actually shared her best friend’s views on ‘second-hands’ and ‘cast-offs’ was irrelevant; as far as the soon-to-be sixth year was concerned, if a boy’s ex-girlfriend no longer gave two hoots about him nor a damn, then he was fair game and everyone else could go choke themselves on a Bludger. No, it was because the other girl—her best friend—had lied.

To her.

Biting her lip, Gracie stared at him, really looked at him. Nothing entered her expression until, finally, she came to a decision. “She hadn’t said a thing,” she sighed, rubbing at the back of her neck. For now the tension had left her shoulders, but instead of feeling relaxed she felt tired. Drained. “Not a damn word,” not even when she had asked her, “so I really don’t know what there is to talk about.”

Green met blue and for a moment, Luc was sucked back into the moment he and Gracie ended things.  As if no time had passed between then and now and all of it felt fresh and hot and painful.  I didn't mean it he wanted to say, but all he could do was open and close his mouth.  There weren't really words to cover this situation, he couldn't spin it in his favor anymore that he could take the whole thing back. 

Gracie stood up then, and time trickled back into the bathroom to surround them.  Different time, different situation, different reaction needed. The fact of the matter was, they had broken up and a while ago at that.  He didn't really need her permission or her blessing to do anything anymore, did he?  All of this been out of courtesy, right?  Obviously he'd gone out of his way for no reason at all.

Maybe people did need to lie  every now and again.  Some people did it to save others, some people did it save themselves. If someone lied to themselves though, who were they really saving?

"I guess there's not," Luc said, his voice a bit cracked as if from disuse.  Without another word he unlocked the door and let himself out of the loo.  A second year looked up at him with confused eyes, but he could barely give her a shrug and a half a smile before he needed to move on.  At least he had something to keep his mind occupied for a little while, he still needed to find the trolley and collect his list of sweets.