Pepper is the sword-arm of crazy (pickledpepper) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-08-24 12:07:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ! [1979-08] august, ! npc, octavius pepper |
Who: Pepper, (NPC) Aubrey, (NPC) Tinworth resident
Where: Tinworth streets / Ministry
When: Saturday evening
What: Pepper and Aubrey find a nail and Pepper breaks out a sledgehammer and kind of swings it around at random. Stuff breaks. It pretty much sucks.
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete
With over a week of patrols through Tinworth under his belt, Pepper was starting to feel like he knew the town better than his own neighbourhood. This was less than ideal. Currently they'd been there for just over three hours - broken up a couple of fights, located new vandalism, arrested some looters, told Aubrey to shut the hell up with his whining at least thirteen times. The last few, admittedly, had been getting steadily sharper, possibly due to his growing headache, or the fact that lack of sleep was leaving him very much not immune to prattling about things that couldn't be changed.
He was also quite certain that they'd rounded this particular corner far, far too many times in the last week. It was on the recommended route, though, partly due to the house two yards down where a Muggleborn still lived-- a house around which someone was suspiciously skulking. For fuck's sake, didn't these people have anything better to do?
The best thing Aubrey had to do at the moment was nibble sulkily on his thumbnail and trail along behind Pepper, looking more upset rather than properly annoyed or angry -- as was, apparently, the appropriate response to rapidly climbing stress levels in the DMLE. Not that Aubrey wasn't stressed. Sure, he wasn't out doing whatever special projects they saved for the experienced, more capable Hitwizards (read: not Aubrey not Aubrey for the love of Merlin not Aubrey), but the fact that he was officially no longer staying in one hotel for more than a week and paranoia kept him from telling strangers his name or even frequenting the same piss-serving pubs for too long had made him... flighty. Whiny, perhaps, but he couldn't talk about the bloody weather without Pepper moaning like he was gouging his eye out with a toothpick or something, so, you know. Nail-nibbling, trailing behind, not bloody well saying anything lest Princess Pepper have another fit.
"Ooh-er," he mumbled around his thumb, pulling his hand away to inspect the now-ragged edge of his nail and then to gesture vaguely at said suspicious skulker. "Don't suppose he's the gardener?"
Gardeners, in Pepper's experience, did not skulk around the side of a house peering at windows with a wand in their hand, particularly when the front garden looked a bit like the start of a warzone and the side of the house seemed to consist mostly of a concrete path. His left hand twitched a little at Aubrey's completely inane comment and he took a breath, letting it out slowly so that he wouldn't snap at him again. There was only so many times he should be allowed - or required - to do that in one shift.
Instead he tightened his grip on his wand, shooting Aubrey a Look because that couldn't get out of hand with the insults and nasty tone of voice, and started forward at a pace somewhat faster than the meandering dawdle they generally patrolled with. "Hey;" he announced their presence just as they came up to the property, smirking tightly when they startled the intruder into jumping. "Lost the front door key?"
Aubrey let out a little "tch" at Pepper's deep-breathing exercises, counting down from ten with his partner in his head. Wasn't his fault Pepper couldn't take a joke. Or, for that matter, stand much in the way of chat at all. Mentally, he planned out his next office day -- gluing things to Pepper's desk, perhaps, putting four sugars in his coffee -- and by the time he was being shot with a Look (again), he was pleased enough to respond not with his regular cringe and sulk but instead with a sort of self-pleased grin; one he kept even as he shoved his hands in his pockets and jogged a bit to catch up with Pepper.
"Happens all the time," Aubrey added with a lazy grin that didn't serve to make him look any less dangerous; quite the opposite, rather, considering the fact that he looked on general principle like a suspicious skulker himself. The man laughed nervously, all short and flighty and accompanied with a quick glance around that made Aubrey draw his wand and fold his arms over his chest. "You gonna step away from the door, then, mate?"
Quietly, very very quietly, it was situations like this that almost made Pepper appreciate Aubrey, or at least they did when he was in a better mood. Given that his dark moods barely served to even dent Aubrey's incredible barrier of unreasonable cheerfulness, though, even if it was a more twitchy cheerfulness lately, he didn't feel particularly awful about hiding it. Besides, if he did actually give something almost like a compliment, the kid would probably have a coronary, and they really couldn't afford to lose even the most incompetent of cannon fodder at this point.
For a moment after Aubrey's question the man stood in place, then the situation apparently made itself realised. Pepper saw the change in his stance just as he started to move, making to run around them. Well, now, they couldn't have that. He moved sideways to intercept, grabbing the intruder roughly by one arm and shoving him into the side of the house, hard. "I'd advise you to stay home," he growled.
Given Peppers apparent concern for Aubrey's health, it was a bit odd for him to start doing things that would likely give Aubrey a heart attack. Roughing up petty suspects, for one, not that it should have been particularly surprising that Pepper was not, in fact, feeling forgiving. "Easy, love," he blurted, without really meaning to, and in a very brisk pretend-I-hadn't-said-that sort of tone he continued "he's not going to be staying anywhere but here with you knocking him about."
This was, of course, the sort of comment that was usually accompanied with some sort of physical mediation, but Aubrey didn't fancy being shoved into a wall himself (well -- that's not the point), simply punctuating by loosening his arms, jerking his head in a vague, Aubreyish type motion and adding "Ease up, then." As it were, he was feeling inclined towards being at least decent to the bloke, trespasser or not (three hours is a long time, for fucks sake). Unfortunately, the bloke wasn't in much of an appreciative move; as if Aubrey's comments has meant "you're free to go" in some sort of strange skulker dialect, he tried to scurry off once more, this time being caught around the chest by one of Aubrey's deceptively skinny arms. Aubrey pushed him gently but firmly (in the sort of way that says "my job and your night will be so much easier if you dont do that again" rather than "now your life is forfeit") back in Pepper's direction,
putting him effectively between the Hitwizards -- in case he planned any more daring escapes.
It was possibly unfortunate for Aubrey that Pepper did not miss the "love", though at the very least it was a rather disadvantageous time for him to react to it. He did very neatly file it aside to deal with later, though, because. Well. It was not the sort of thing that Pepper let slide. He might, however, have let slide the comments about him knocking the guy around, if the guy hadn't then taken the opportunity to try and escape again. He growled, low, in the back of his throat as Aubrey nudged the guy back in his direction, grabbing him again and yanking his arms behind his back so he could get off a decent incarcerous.
Apparently it hurt, as the man swore and struggled against him, managing to get one arm away enough that the spell was fairly much useless, but he couldn't help but feel anything but a vindictive sort of pleasure at the opportunity along with his growing anger. God only knew what he'd been planning to do if they hadn't found him, but he highly suspected it did not involve baskets of biscuits and invitations down the pub. Still holding one wrist, he pulled it further up the guy's back and deftly tripped him so that momentarily almost his entire weight was supported by that one hold, making the man cry out in pain. "Do not run from me," Pepper informed him coldly. "You want to play like the werewolves, you should be prepared to deal with the consequences." Another swift kick to the ankle, combined with shoving his wand into the man's side and casting a wordless flagrante that caused him to whimper and squirm in his tight grip.
It wasn't Aubrey's fault, really, for not immediately realizing exactly what was going on; Pepper had growled, for fuck's sake, and then proceeded to act rather like a Muggle action film antihero. He was quite good and impossibly sexy at what he did, something Aubrey had (with weeks of practice) managed to tune out for all but Peppers growlier moments. As it stood, the very questionable bending of DMLE protocol was not noticed until well after the fact, once poor teenaged hormonal Aubrey had gained his bearings and control over his knees. Not that poor teenaged hormonal Aubrey had much to say.
Well, not much here being a relative term (it was Aubrey, after all) meaning "not much beyond the usual bemused expletives"; after making a very brief and very tellingly serious face at the werewolves comment, Aubrey sucked a breath in through his teeth and hissed "what in the fresh hell d'you think you're doing, then?" He couldn't tell for sure what Pepper had stuck the man with, other than "something painful and probably against policy," and in between bouts of grimacing at the squirming man Aubrey scowled at Pepper, the expression only making him look moderately ridiculous. "He hasn't fucking raised his wand and you're fucking bullying him," he added, under his breath despite the fact that the subject in question was, in point of fact, closer to him than Pepper was. He still didn't intervene, for all his talk. Repeat: not interested in Angry Pepper (well, not angry at him -- well -- nevermind).
Perhaps Aubrey should have stepped in, as as it was Pepper still didn't have much inclination to drop the guy, even if he did at least pause to glare at his partner over the man's head. Teeth clenched, he grabbed the guy's free arm again and cast the incarcerous again, this time getting it done right, and tight. Oh, wait, there was the inclination to drop him. He groaned as he hit the ground and Pepper looked back to Aubrey coldly. "Happy?"
The guy's wand had been dropped at some point during the struggle and he bent to pick it up, resisting the urge to kick him in the ribs and instead just pulling him roughly to his feet again, not caring how tightly he gripped the man's arm. "Apparate to the cells for processing," he told Aubrey tersely, then to the prisoner, "Resisting arrest will not go well for you." Then the familiar squeeze of Apparation, black and cold, before he popped back into the world at the Apparation point near the DMLE cells.
Aubrey looked at the space Pepper had formerly occupied, his expression a curious blend of confused and offended. "No! No, I am not bloody well happy, you great bullying oaf," he muttered at the air, still huffing childishly when he popped into place by Pepper's side, giving the prisoner a look somewhere between pity and annoyance. Stress on annoyance. Princess Pepper was officially pissed and Aubrey highly suspected he'd be footing the bill for it. For at least the next week and a half. Stupid fucking skulkers.
"I'm not fucking doing papers on this one. That gets to be your job. You get to explain the bruises and whatever else you did to him." Aubrey folded his arms tightly across his chest, in part because he was feeling like a proper sulk and in part because the holding cells were abysmally cold, in his rather vocal opinion. "I said, I said 'Pepper, no,' I said, 'maybe you ought to be civil with the bloke,' and you were all..." He continued in that vein, not citing the completely irrational fear that Pepper would be discharged over the event as a source of his frustration. For one thing, no one was being discharged for anything, not with understaffing like it was, and Pepper was one of the best, and it wasn't like he'd torn the blokes arm off and the worst that could happen was a month of desk work but still. Pettigrew probably wasn't impossibly sexy when he growled and didnt take Aubrey to decent pubs out of some shred of amused pity and his compliments were not earth shatteringly, the-apocalypse-is-fucking-nigh rare enough for Aubrey to work for them or preen for a month or four once he'd finally gotten one. In short, Pettigrew was not his partner, and Pepper was, and some stupid fucking would-be thief should not be allowed to change that. "...and I'm not fucking defending you, you soulless bastard, I'm fucking telling you," Aubrey said, almost sounding like he was finished before taking a deep breath and preparing to start again.
Pepper waved a hand at Aubrey impatiently and dismissively, dragging the suspect down the hall behind him. "Yappy yappy," he muttered to himself, then added louder for both of the others' benefits, "I wasn't the one resisting arrest." He nodded at the wizards manning the processing desks, vaguely aware that Aubrey was still rambling, before pushing the man at someone ready to take him to a cell, tugging his wand out of his pocket and handing that over as well. "Attempted breaking and entering, a Muggleborn's home, resisted arrest-- twice. I'll send the report down."
The necessary chore down he turned back to Aubrey, folding his arms over his chest. The brief scuffle with the guy hadn't been enough to get much out of his system, dammit, he needed-- a proper spar, or a really good shag, or something that he undoubtably didn't have time for unless he wanted to cut into the three hours sleep he was managing to scrape together a night. "Something you wanted to say to me, then? In private, maybe, instead of in front of a criminal?"
Being ignored during his longer monologues was something Aubrey was very used to (he'd have to be, at this point), but being interrupted with something other than "shut up" or "I'm leaving" or "you're drooling on the bar" was a new one. "Yes," Aubrey replied defiantly, not really sure of what they were actually, in fact, talking about --
Oh. Ohhh. Right. The whole... "love" business. Fuck, and he'd almost believed he'd gotten off with it, but leave it to Pepper to take an off-handed remark and turn it into a huge bloody thing. "I don't know what you're talking about?" he offered, which would have been more convincing had he not accompanied the statement with a faint grimace.
It was, in fact, not in the least convincing. It hadn't been necessarily what Pepper was going for, actually, but that or the whole reaming him out in front of a suspect, either of the two were equally fine with him as topics of debate. He put a hand to Aubrey's chest to push him firmly backwards, heading for one of the interrogation cells - not, perhaps sadly, the one in which he'd had his play with Selwyn. "I have no idea what kind of pre-teen fantasies you come up with on your off-time," he bit, disregarding completely the fact that he, well, perhaps ought to occasionally join Aubrey in the inappropriate workplace fantasies corner, but he didn't talk or sometimes even think about that, "but I am not now, nor will I ever be your love. You're eighteen years old, you're my trainee, and more importantly, as much as it hasn't seemed like it lately, I have a girlfriend. So get your delusions out of the office and get with the program because this is not the time."
Even as he spoke there was a niggling feeling somewhere in the back of his head and the pit of his stomach that said he was going to regret this later, something maybe a little like guilt, something that stopped him from making the outright lie that Aubrey wouldn't anyway be good for anything more than a drunken shag as much as the words sounded good and satisfying on the tip of his tongue. God, he hated that something. He'd been listening to it for far too long now, keeping everything under tight lock-down and control and now he just fucking wanted it out, everything that tasted poisonous and bitter and angry and helpless and scared. He didn't care-- no, he wanted to see Aubrey hurting because then at least it wouldn't be him, at least he might just get one moment where he didn't want to scratch and tear at the world and bring it all down around him.
The fact that Aubrey did not look away from his own shoes or make a sound any louder than a forced exhale for at least a full minute damned him for eternity to never being able to say that this hadn't affected him. He couldn't say he was fine, or that what he'd said had been an honest mistake and therefore this entire conversation meant absolutely nothing and he was not, in fact, of that persuasion thank you kindly for asking -- he couldn't even claim it had just stung, because stung didnt render a man (yes, a man, as easy as it was to forget) speechless or motionless or goddamned near breathless.
"It's a -- fucking term of endearment," he muttered, looking away from his shoes but not precisely at Pepper. "I say it -- all the fucking time -- you berk. To people I don't even -- youre my fucking partner, I thought --" Aubrey inhaled deeply. "Whatever. It was an honest mistake. I don't know what you're on about but I'm not a fucking -- shirtlifter." The look Aubrey gave him when he finally looked at something above shoulder level was the kind reserved for killers and thugs and fucking fuckers, the kind that actually made Aubrey upset when they were dragged in, the sort of people that make you change hotels every two weeks and use fake names with strangers. "I'm fine."
Oh god.
Pepper had expected he'd probably regret it. He'd expected it in a vague, sometime in the future way, maybe when he woke up the next morning, or something like that, but he hadn't anticipated that-- that the silence, or how long it took Aubrey to look at him, or his expression when he did - that those things would hit him like, no, worse than a punch in the stomach, because that at least he'd suffered many times in the past, he'd been trained for, he could deal with.
But the way Aubrey was looking at him... not even at him, really... and he didn't know what to say, or even if he could get anything out without his throat closing up in some kind of emotion he couldn't even name, because he knew, on some level, what things were like between them, and the things he'd said were just-- unforgivable. Even the part he hadn't said, the fact that he'd considered it. He wasn't supposed to be that guy. Not to his friends. Not to Aubrey. "I-- fuck, I didn't... mean that. That's not--" and shit he wasn't even good at apologies over stupid shit, let alone actual douchery like this, and really he just wanted to shoulder past him out of the room and out of this fucking place that he was so sick of and go home and crawl under the covers and get very, very drunk but god he could not do that and he stifled the urge, tightening his arms around himself like a shield "--That's not how I think of you." Don't hate me.
Aubrey knew that this was some kind of stupid Pepper apology, could recognize that even through the haze of get the fuck out get the fuck out punch him in the face or get the fuck out, but -- "You said it. You fucking said it and it's fucking out there and that's fine." He cleared his throat, flexing his fingers and willing away the vague sense of something like nausea overwhelming him. "That kind of -- insubordination won't happen again. Sir."
Because, fundamentally, Pepper was right. Aubrey was eighteen, and there had to eventually be some kind of punishment for lusting over a senior coworker so fucking blatantly, and even if Pepper was just being a fuckup it was true and some part of him meant what he said and Aubrey was stupid, anyways. "I should go home."
And this was the wrong time for him to become incapable of speech, it really, really was. It was the 'sir' that did it, turning Pepper's throat into a briar patch, a mess of thistles and rose thorns and though he opened his mouth to say-- something, he couldn't make the words come. What would he say anyway? He couldn't take it back because it was true, there was no way anything could happen between them, not when he had Jo and when she meant so, so much to him, not when the world was this fucked up and Aubrey was two years underage and he had no doubt that Crouch would fire him in an instant, half an instant, if he got even a whiff of it.
There was a small part of Aubrey, the stupid, petulant, eighteen-year-old part, that sincerely believed that there was a shred of hope, that at this very moment Pepper would open his mouth and say something fantastic and wonderful that would fix everything, or something that would let them go home and forget this had happened in the morning -- at the very least say something, even if it wasn't entirely true, that would let aforementioned small, stupid part of Aubrey keep believing in its small, stupid shred of hope. Maybe that in and of itself proved Pepper's point. Fuck. "Right, then," Aubrey said, breaking the terrible, terrible silence. He turned on his heel, barely keeping himself from actually running for the door and biting hard on his tongue to keep himself from saying anything else stupid.
And just like that, Aubrey was walking away from him - the one person he'd always figured would be there when he turned around, usually a little too close for comfort, but always there. There was an empty water tumbler on the table and he reached for it, launching it at the wall just to watch it shatter... except, of course, it was made of something hardier than glass, so all it did was bounce off and clatter to the floor, and god what the fuck was wrong with him? He'd just driven away one of the few constants in his life, and still all he wanted to do was fight. Suddenly he couldn't even stand the sight of this place. He had to write his report still, but-- but after that, that was it. He needed a fucking break.