Who: Oliver & Eddie When: evening, 1 December Where: the Leaky Cauldron Rating: PG? I don't know, wizard violence! What: burgeoning friendships are best served with a bar fight
The gaze of the grey, asphalt soaked rain held in Oliver's bones and slowed his halting walk to a near shuffle. Collar up, he held neither umbrella nor stood beneath any overhanging that could have provided him shelter. Oh, no. As the rain infiltrated his woolen coat and trickled down the back of his neck, he welcomed the cleansing chill. The Leaky Cauldron (and outside, Muggle London) loomed before him and slightly farther down the imposing pillars of Gringotts Bank. He paused to contemplate his options. A drink before dealing with his leave-pension from Puddlemere? Perhaps his nerves needed the extra fuzz.
Despite the rain, or, perhaps, in a state too far gone to properly percieve it, Eddie stumbled from the Leaky Cauldron, shouting something unintelligible and almost certainly rude to a witch or wizard still within. He slipped on the cobbles and, unable to regain his balance, slumped awkwardly to the street.
Blinking just in time to see a dark shape twisted in the street, he made his way to it and prodded what might have been a shoulder with the end of his cane. "Oy, it's awfully wet down there!"
Face lifting from a tangle of robes and hair, Eddie peered bleary eyed at the figure above him. "Observant, aren't you?" He found his legs and rose slowly from the ground, soaked thoroughly and grouchy with drink. "You don't seem too concerned about the rain." He noted the cane, thinking it an odd adornment for such a young man.
"I've my reasons -- sober, too. Can you stand to go back in and down a coffee?" His brow twisted as he tried to make out the face between the precipitation and the muck of his hair.
Eddie grinned widely, pushing dripping hair from his face. "I don't think they'll let me in a second time tonight."
"Well, I'm going in. And you can either be staying out here, drinking out of the gutter or going in with me. I'll vouch for you -- though I think you're a little shady." Pause. "And a little familiar."
Ill concerned with etiquette, Eddie took a step forward, close, scrutinizing the face of the man before him. Realization muddied his features, impaired, slightly, with drink. "That explains it." He jerked his head towards the pub. "I imagine they'll let me be with a celebrity for company."
He gave Eddie a mild sneer. "You'd better hope they're not Cannons' fans, then." As he took to the kerb and made the last few steps into the pub, not a soul turned his way. There was a sigh of relief and he sank deep into a booth.
"I'm not much of a Quidditch fan." Eddie collapsed in the seat opposite, eyes lazy as he placed chin in hand, studying Oliver. "But I think that cane might be served better by a sound whack in the skull of the bloke what did this to you."
Oliver had signalled for two cups of coffee before returning his attention to Eddie and grinning with some remnant of lopsided, boyish charm. "Flint's an old enemy. Just let him get near me."
Glaring pointedly at a figure across the pub before returning his attentions to Oliver, Eddie grinned. "Send him a formal invite. Some fine stationary, the seal of some daft pureblooded line... and then crack his skull proper."
Oliver's eyes cut toward the direction in which Eddie positively glared. "That bloke'd be dead if you could kill with your eyes ... I like your mind. Who are you, anyway?"
A hand gritty from the street was extended, reconsidered with a brush against his robes, and proferred once more. "Eddie Carmichael." He grinned before confusion shaped his features. "Something Wood? You can tell me your name, though I'm like to muddle it in memory."
He accepted it immediately, liking the young man's strong grip and pleasant expression. "It's Oliver, actually. What were you, about three years behind me?"
"Probably." Eddie sipped the coffee gratefully when it arrived, the sharpness of the world returning slowly, though not entirely, as he continued to drink. "Seems three years ago I left the school, though it's not yet been one."
A blank expression crawled over his features and dissapeared soon after its fruition. He turned back to Eddie with upturned lips and eyes full of understanding. " ... imagine my consternation. What is it that's been keeping your time, making it seem double as it is?"
Eyes darting once more to the opposite corner of the pub, Eddie seemed to stiffen, and he mouthed something behind the raised coffee cup. "Nothing so fine as professional sportsmanship, that I can say." Face turned to Oliver once more, his grin was indulgent, if his attentions wandered. "Scheming for revenge? Where's this Flint live?"
"I'd say the same to you," he replied between the sips of his coffee. A thin smile laced his eyes with metal. "He's close. Hell, he could be here tonight with that friend of yours."
Leaning away from the table, and moving the now empty coffee cup to a remote corner, Eddie smirked. "That him?" The man who had been at the recieving end of Eddie's insults that evening, and, by the cut of him, quite deserving, moved across the pub with a large, dark haired fellow at his right shoulder.
"You see that foul, brown mouth and those ratty little eyes? That's him and ... " with narrowed eyes, he gazed at the man who strode so purposefully next to Flint. "Your friend?"
"You could call him that. Or dickface. I'm fond of the latter." Eddie stood, a lanky figure, rivalling the height of both the men who approached. If he'd been moving, just then, it would've been a swagger.
Oliver damned his injuries and bit his lip as he watched his newly acquired friend stand before their drunken adversaries. He rose, though, as Flint came ever nearer with a feral light in his eyes. Cane gripped in his hand as if it were a Beater's bat, he smacks one end in his free palm and whistles. "Look here, Flint. I've been thinking for a time that it'd be a service rendered were I to knock out those infested strips of sickness you call teeth."
Eddie laughed appreciatively at the insult, but the laugh was cut short by a fist colliding with his mouth. He buckled and fell, but wits were gathered within seconds and he lunged forward, toppling the brute nearest. The pub was roaring, shouts garbled by the blood that pounded in his ears.
The fist, Oliver's cane, Eddie's lunge. These were all a carefully improvised dance. As the length of wood struck Flint across the cheek and threatened to crack, he smiled briefly and broke it across the man's back. Revenge was sweet. Until he felt his nose break under the weight of Flint's fist.
Wrestling the larger man to the ground, Eddie landed a sound blow to his head and leapt to his feet, emboldened by the fight. A boot connected with a fragile wrist, and Eddie turned his attentions to the other man. A grin, and he threw his weight entire at Flint, all angles.
Oliver added a swift kick to the other man for good measure and grunted, feeling the sting in his joints as he flexed and extended. He'd care later. But for now ... there had to be a bottle somewhere. Ah. Reaching behind him to the neighboring booth, he grasped the neck of a green glass bottle and broke it over Flint's thick head.
Eddie dodged the shattering glass, and was near to engaging again the idiot attempting to rise from the floor when his arms were pinned behind his back, the grip of the barkeep near familiar. He laughed. "Am I to be thrown out again?" His eyes flitted to Oliver, amused, though his grin was likely lost in the blood from the hits he'd taken.
Oliver and Flint stared at each other for a moment longer, unsatisfied and unspent in their anger. It was the barkeep, however, that broke that homocidal flare that welled up within him and he shook his head at Eddie. "Gently this time, alright? I'm going to lean on him, Tom ..."
"A damned good evening to you all!" Eddie shouted as he and Oliver were escorted to the exit of the Leaky Cauldron. "My love to the missus, dickface, dog though she is!"
Through the expression of Eddie's vitriol, he merely let his steel eyes float back to Flint and say everything that a few words would not. Besides, he didn't want their names in the papers again. Once outside, though, he was thankful to note the way the rain had slackened to a miserable drizzle. "Eddie," he said merrily, silently repairing his cane, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."