(un)tabitha (not)bagnold (sparklemotion) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-04-11 15:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1980-04] april, elsie prod (née belby), ioan macfusty, tabitha macfusty (née bagnold) |
Who: Tabitha MacFusty, Ioan MacFusty and Elsie Prod
When: 11 April 1980
Where: MacFusty home, London
What: Dinner and suspiciousness
Rating: PG
Status: In Progress.
Elsie Prod was in the kitchen once again. It wasn't her kitchen anymore - she definitely did not want to be in her own kitchen, but she was glad to be in a kitchen. It was comforting, the spice rack and the shelves with the flour and sugar and the eggs and vegetables that were standard in any kitchen, and making food was soothing for Elsie. It made her feel useful. She had stopped at the grocer's right after she left work and didn't even stop in the room she was using before she started dinner. Both Tibby and Ioan had insisted that she was no bother and they were glad to have her in their home, but Elsie still felt like she was intruding. They were, after all, newlyweds and should have that time together for just themselves. She didn't argue with them, since she really didn't have anyplace better to go and at least this arrangement made it so she didn't have to think too hard about the mess that was her life now. Her house was still sitting there in Glasgow, she was still making monthly payments on it, but she knew she couldn't ever live there again. She needed to do something with it, but she couldn't bring herself to do it yet. So instead she stood in the MacFusty kitchen, dicing potatoes as a pile of already-cut-and-cooked leeks sat next to her in a bowl. The tomatoes were next, and the water was already boiling on the stove with all the spiced she'd need sitting next to the pot, waiting to go in with the broth. Her mother had taught her the family secret to seasoning leek, tomato and potato soup, and she hoped that Tibby and Ioan would like it. Tabitha had had a rather gruelling day at the theatre, if she didn't say so herself. With Ioan's 'promotion' into the Ministry of Magic, the director of her current play had seen fit to lift her from understudy to actress, making her the fourth lead in A Flying Carpet Named Desire. She was thrilled, of course, but it involved so much more running about and practising and clothing changes that she almost missed being the understudy-cum-make-up-artist. So when she came home and spied Elsie making dinner, she gave a little shriek of delight and dropped all of her things by the front door, progressively shedding her shoes and hat and jacket onto the floor as she crossed the threshold and into the kitchen. Wrapping her arms around her friend, she gave Elsie a kiss on the cheek and then moved to gather up some fruit to slice for dessert. "That smells amazing, Elsie! Ioan will be so pleased because you know that I can't cook half as well as you can." Elsie grinned and turned around to greet Tibby, setting down the knife and picking up her wand to magically continue the dicing of the potatoes. "Rubbish," she exclaimed. "You can cook at least three quarters as well as I can." Elsie let out a laugh at her own silliness, then picked up a small notecard, one of those little ones that said 'From the kitchen of _____' on it, and handed it to Tibby. "I wrote down the recipe for you. Family secret, it is. Or, at least the spices are." She flicked her wand to begin chopping the tomatoes and lowered her voice. "Oh, an' before I forget - could you have a look at this fake ID I'm making for Remus? Just can't seem to get the background pattern right and all." Tabitha laughed and carried her fruit back past Elsie, whom she pinched in the middle before dumping her ill-gotten goods on the island counter behind her friend. "So generous!" she chirped, accioing a barstool so she could sit while she chopped. With a quick glance at the clock to make sure Ioan wouldn't be walking in on their illicit activities, she nodded and wiped her hands on her pants. "Let me see it." She pulled her own out of her back pocket so she could compare the two. The background did seem pretty intricate. Elsie reached into her robes and pulled out the fake she was working on, handing it over. It was largely like the fake she had made for Marlene except that she was trying to duplicate the background pattern and she managed to fix the seal so that it matched nearly perfectly. She turned to quickly scoop all the tomatoes, leeks and potatoes into the boiling pot of stock, reduced the fire and put the lid on the pot. There, now she had about twenty minutes or so before she needed to add the spices. "I know it's not perfect, but the background's the most obvious thing." Ioan missed the days in which he smelled of smoke and clean, wild air. Now, in the bowels of the Ministry, he imagined himself growing soft and fallow with desk jockeying. Of course he understood the importance of having his place within the adder's nest (he knew who his wife's mother was, after all), but it didn't mean he had to be happy about it. But as he made it through the door, caught a whiff of whatever was cooking and espied the shed outer-clothes on the floor, he grinned. It didn't have to be all doom and gloom, did it? Tabitha and Elsie, bent over something - "What background?" he asked, before catching a glimpse of the boiling pot that was about to boil over. "Uh ..." "Nothin'" Elsie replied, though her reply may have been lost by the sound of the lid on the stockpot rattling. "Oh!" she shouted, jumping and turning around. She quickly took off the lid and reduced the flame, grabbing a ladle to stir the soup a bit. It was supposed to simmer, not continue boiling, but now was as good of a time as any to add the spices. She grabbed a few of the jars and measured pinches of rosemary and parsley into the soup, then added a few bay leaves, hoping that Tibby would hide the fake ID. She knew Ioan wasn't exactly Ministry-friendly, despite working there, but that didn't mean she wanted to give away the Order. "There," she finally said, increasing the flame slightly but leaving the lid off this time. She turned back around. "That should do it." Tabitha felt her heart jump into her throat as Ioan spoke (how could she not have noticed her own husband coming home??) and took advantage of the distraction by the boiling pot to slip the card between her thighs beneath the counter. Immediately reaching for a knife with which to slice her apples, pears and strawberries, she turned her chin up at Ioan, demanding "where are my kisses!?" If he pressed for information, she'd come up with a lie, hopefully, but she was praying he had been sufficiently distracted. It wasn't exactly in her nature to mislead the people she cared about, especially family. There was something of the slightly bashful among his ladies; like they had just been caught filling the neighbor's flowerpots with frogs (nothing he'd know about, certainly) or some equally naughty pasttime. With a smirk, he slid behind Tabitha and pressed two kisses to each temple. "Here they are, little cockaleekie." "No I want better ones!" Tabitha insisted, turning her chin up for a kiss on the lips. Her hand slid across her thighs in what she hoped was a natural fashion, and pushed the ID a little further down her thighs. She resisted the urge to hand it off to Elsie, because, well, Ioan wasn't stupid and would obviously notice if she did anything quite so blatant. "Are you going to take a shower before supper, smelly man of my life?" |