Who: Pepper and Meg Where: Meg's house When: Monday night What: Pepper goes to visit Meg, to lay the manipulative groundwork to later shag her. Or something. Rating: PG-13 Status: AIM/Incomplete
Meg was very confused. She had thought it was harmless banter, and then it seemed like more than harmless banter, and then he had stopped replying, and now she had no idea where she stood. She knew Pepper distantly, as one she had shared school years with, but he had been older than her and in a different house. After school, they had maintained a few mutual friends, but only enough to say hello if she passed him at Diagon or if he came into work. Now he was offering to sleep with her? She must have hit her head on the way down or something, because she felt like she was going crazy.
She had rules about these kinds of things, anyway, at least while she still was in training. It was a distraction and weakened the body, which could use those excess hormones for other purposes. Then again, she had come very close to dying, and she was forbidden from practice for another week and a half, which was plenty of time to build up hormones…no, bad Meaghan. No cookie.
She slammed her journal shut and, for extra measure, slid it into a drawer and then slammed that shut, standing from her couch and beginning to prowl around her flat, suddenly restless. Her footsteps led her to her kitchen, a cozy little thing absolutely crammed with food to feed her constant and ravenous appetite. Opening a cabinet, she extracted a bag of crisps and began to eat them by the handful, stopping only to pull her hair up into a loose ponytail as she read the headlines on the Evening Prophet, idling wondering if there was any news on what had happened at Diagon.
Even given the social liberation of the seventies, Pepper was not actually expecting to get Meaghan into bed - though they knew each other, they were hardly close, and most girls did not exactly go in for the random sex with strangers. She did sound restless and frustrated though, so he collected Cleo from her brand new collection of interconnected terrariums in the spare bedroom and Apparated to near where Meg lived. Dusk was still coming fairly early and the sky was darkening, which made it hard to pick out her house, but he found it after a few minutes of back-and-forthing, hesitating before knocking on the door. The fact that he was carrying a lizard ought to at least give the suggestion that he wasn't completely here just for a shag, he thought.
She had just crammed a fistful of crisps into her mouth when the knock on the door made her jump nearly out of her skin. She quickly wiped her mouth and put the bag away, wiping her palms against her jeans as she rounded the corner to look at her front door. Did someone actually just knock? It couldn't be.
She knew she looked less than sexy in her worn jeans, her Wanderers jersey, and her messy hair, but there was no way it could be him. Fortunately, if it had been someone seeking to harm her she would have had a warning long before he knocked. Moving over to the peephole, she looked through and saw a mess of dark hair and...a lizard. "Bullocks." She said, before she could control it. He had actually shown up.
She opened the door, looking rather sheepish. "Uh...hello."
Pepper almost laughed at the expression on Meg's face; she clearly had not been expecting him to actually turn up. Instead his lips just quirked a bit into a half-smirk, his amusement playing across his face. "Don't worry, I'm not actually expecting you to put out. You sounded like you needed a distraction though." He probably could have phrased that better, but using polite euphemisms for sex always seemed fairly idiotic to him. There wasn't anything polite about it, it was messy and dirty and completely inappropriate, which was what made it fun. He shifted his arm absently as Cleo started climbing up it, moving his free hand to steady her as he glanced over Meg's at-home comfort clothes - hardly worse than some of the things he wore. "Can I come in? I don't bite... unless you ask nicely."
She was completely flabbergasted. It was a weird word but it fit how she felt more so than any possible synonym. His words stunned her further--two mentions of sex in less than thirty seconds! Dumbly, she stepped back, gesturing him in, her instinct to not lingering about in the hallway with the door wide open taking precedence. As she shut the door behind him, she leaned back upon it, palms pressed into the wood to try and steady herself. "You have a lizard." She observed, rather dumbly.
She was clearly knocked off-guard, and none too surprisingly, Pepper didn't mind at all. He rather liked leaving people with their heads spinning and no clue which way was up, to be honest. It was just too fun to mess with them. "I do," he agreed. "Bearded dragon, actually. This is Cleosthenes." At the sound of her name she poked her head out under his ear and he reached up to stroke her idly with a small smile. "When I was twelve I was obsessed with dinosaurs. Eventually I figured out that if I switched to reptiles I could actually have one. I found Cleo after I finished training."
"Dinosaurs?" She asked, wrinkling her brow in confusion. Meg had definately been too unpredictable with her magic as a child for Catriona to send her to a muggle school, so she wasn't particularly good at her natural history.
Being raised by a single parent - a single Muggleborn parent, at that - Pepper had spent quite a lot of his childhood with babysitters and books, possibly a bad combination for a young boy who had no love for authority figures but quite a lot of love for knowing things. Though he was utterly awful at modern Muggle culture, much to Aubrey's annoyance when they went out together, he did have a good grasp of many of the sciences. "Huge reptiles that lived millions of years ago," he supplied. "Before mammals took over most of the positions in the ecosystem. They're probably early ancestors of dragons, though most of them couldn't fly and as far as I'm aware none breathed fire."
"So they're like dragons but no' cool or interesting?" She asked, quirking an eyebrow. Since he didn't seem intent on ravishing her, she relaxed a bit. She reached up to twirl her ponytail for a moment, then pulled the tie and let it fall loose. Even if he wasn't here to ravish her, she could at least make an effort to look presentable.
"Oh please, there is everything cool about a lizard the size of a house with a three metre long neck." Pepper rolled his eyes and, well, alright, maybe he still had a bit of a thing for dinosaurs, but then some of his favourite moments over the summers at home had been hiding in his room with a book about the Cretaceous period. He still had to replace most of his dinosaur books; they weren't easy to find in magical bookstores, and he hadn't ventured into the Muggle world for quite a while.
She pushed off from the door, curious about the lizard. Meg was not the type of girl to get hung up about 'icky' animals, and she actually had a kind of regalness to her. "Are you hungry, or, uh, thirsty?" She asked, still feeling awkward. Having never had a real conversation with him, it was very strange for her that he was there.
"A drink would be good." She still seemed a bit awkward and he tried to knock a bit of the haughtiness out of his demeanor, aware that he often came across as a bit stand-offish. For a moment he considered asking about her injuries, but having spent quite some hours going over the reports from the Diagon incident (he might not have been an Auror himself, but it was perfectly easy to get hold of those things anyway) he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know. Likely it would just piss him off. He wished they knew something more. "Going back to training soon?" he asked instead. "I've been paying woefully little attention to the Quidditch."
"I have another week and a half off. It's misery." She took his request as a cue for action (always a good thing) and gestured toward the kitchen, indicating that he should follow her. She opened up the icebox and took a look inside, hooking her left foot around the opposite calf as she did. "I have beverages both sacred and profane. What suits your fancy?" She asked, looking up at him.
A perfectly brilliant way to describe the choices. "Profane, always profane," he replied with a grin. "It's a wonder I'm still functional with the level of alcoholism I've managed to attain, really, but then the Ministry does that to you." It wasn't a coincidence, in his opinion, that the DMLE seemed to attract some of the most ridiculous excuses for normality he'd ever seen, even if most of them were dirty Hufflepuffs.
She extracted a bottle of ale and a bottle of cider, holding one up in each hand for him to choose from. She'd offer whiskey but that seemed like an invitation. "Alcoholism isn't a concept we have in Scotland. It's only English sots who worry about that."
He nodded towards the ale; he hadn't drunk cider since his teens, as far as he could recall. "I wouldn't say we worry about it," he replied a bit cheekily. "More acknowledge it and move on. I'm not sure how Mill would react if we actually drank at work, but she's certainly made it a weekly tradition to go down the pub on a Friday. I'm sure I've behaved incredibly appallingly one too many times."
She offered him the chosen bottle and kept the cider for herself, a favorite she had picked up from the pubs she frequented after their games in Ireland. "I think the Wigton Wanderers keep the hops industry afloat singlehandedly. I can't decide if we get more pissed after a win or a loss."
"To law enforcement and professional sports, long may we drink ourselves to death," Pepper toasted, only half-jokingly. "It probably says something about the world that we've discovered so many different ways to get out of our heads, really." He twisted the top of the bottle off, relishing the faint hiss of carbonation escaping before taking a drink. The chill was refreshing and welcome.
"Amen to that." She clinked her bottle with his, following suit with her own drink and tossing the cap onto the counter. The first sip relaxed her, as it usually did, and she leaned her hip against the counter, eyes considering him. "So why'd you come here, Pepper?"
Ever the Slytherin, he considered and discarded several possible responses in the first second or two after she asked the question. "I was bored." He let the reply out like an admission, a rueful smile touching his lips. Social manipulation was an unconscious behaviour for him by now, a tendency only cemented by seven years living with born and raised masters of the art, and most of the time he was honestly unaware he was doing it. "And you sounded worse. I don't know how long I should stay, considering all that's been happening, but you get awfully sick of pulling eighteen hour shifts and coming home just to get a bit of sleep."
She nodded, taking another, longer swig from her bottle. Meg was too trusting, too honest, to ever realize that she was being manipulated, whether or not it was subtle. It was endearing and frightening at the same time. "Oh, and I seemed like a good way to pass the time?" She asked, of course agitated by his off-handed comment.
Pepper raised an eyebrow at the hint of ire in her tone, resisting the urge to call her feisty. It was probably true, but he doubted it would soothe her. "You seem like... a good person that I've never had the time to have a proper conversation with. Which is a pity. But people who know each other well tend to have expectations, and right now, I don't feel like playing up to them." He itched for a cigarette and flattened his free hand against his thigh, putting off the craving. There was a crumpled packet of them in his pocket but he wasn't about to light up in a mere acquaintance's kitchen.
If Meg was anything, it was feisty. She began to drum her fingers idly on the countertop, expressing her nervous energy. They seemed to both be feeling antsy, in one way or another. "Well, you seem like a good person as well. You at least know how to get a lady worked up." She teased, her voice brimming with laughter.
'Good' was such a subjective term, and one that was rarely used to describe Pepper. He didn't protest the word choice though, covering his amusement by taking another drink. Displeased with so much movement, Cleo started clucking into his ear, demanding to be let down, and he reached up to unwind her from his neck with a soft chuckle. "I've heard that before. Probably something to do with growing up the only male in a house with three women."
She pulled a face, a long drink to cover a barely-suppressed giggle. "Spent a lot of time gettin' the ladies of your family worked up?" She asked, her eyebrow quirked again. That was...interesting.
Alright, that did sound a little bit seedy, come to think of it. Pepper cracked a smile, setting his bottle down a moment to playfully roll Cleo onto her back across his forearm, making her hiss in indignation and puff her throat up. "Yes, well, you know us Slytherins. Horrible deviants every last one."
"That is what they told us in the Gryffindor common room every night during indoctrination." She said with a roll of her eyes. House rivalries were bullocks, unless they were based on Quidditch. Then, of course, they became serious business.
"It's all true." He nodded seriously, trying to remember the ludicrous rumours that went around about his former House. It was surprisingly hard. "We even had a sex-mentorship system, the seventh years would teach fourth years everything they knew to make sure no one ever gave the House a bad reputation in the art of love." It was hard not to laugh while saying that, making it up as he went, but somehow he managed it, poker face gamely in place through the whole speech.
She nodded seriously, squinting her eyes as if this was the most fascinating revelation she ahd ever heard. "That's very efficient. In Gryffindor, we had a rule-breaking incentive program. Every time you broke a rule and got away with it, you got to beat up a Hufflepuff."
"I'd be screwed, I think half the House ended up in the DMLE. I suspect they only hired me because they have a centuries-old contract that there needs to be at least one staffmember from each House and I was the only Slytherin who actually applied. At least Crouch doesn't pay close attention to us or I probably would have been fired years ago." He wouldn't have been surprised, actually, if some of his stunts never quite made it into the reports that the head of department read. They certainly seemed to be overlooked rather more than he'd expect.
"Gryffindor's are more suited to gaelic football than law enforcement. I kid, but there is a certain expected amount of rule breaking." She grinned, reminiscing. She used to sneak out her fifth year to meet this sixth year Ravenclaw who had the bluest eyes...okay, it was best not to think abou that in mixed company.
"I remember some of it," he said sourly. It seemed there was an Official Gryffindor Prankster in every generation, and though he'd managed to be under the radar he'd definitely seen the aftermath of some of the things done, both by those older and younger than him, particularly as Slytherins were often the favoured target. "I think I prefer the quiet, personal rule breaking to those who think themselves great wits."
"Mostly, I used my rule breaking for illicit snogging, like all the smartest Gryffindors." She said, pushing her hair back from her eyes. Ah, teenage snogging. What a wonderful invention.
Pepper smirked. "The best kind of rule breaking. There was actually surprisingly little of it in Slytherin, it had a very strange social structure." He shook his head to dismiss the subject; considering how many of his former classmates now traversed journals with rampant classist insults and how many were or had been suspected of dark activity, it probably wasn't a good topic. "I find being out of school far better."
"Oh, yes, I'm sure the halls of the Ministry are just brimming with dark alcoves perfect for illicit love!" Meg joked. She finished her cider and set the bottle on the counter, reaching up into the cabinet to withdraw the bag of crisps she had been munching earlier. No one had ever taught her that women should be ashamed of eating. "Hungry?"
"Not very." Many food outlets delivered to the Ministry, not to mention the cafe onsite, and he tended to graze throughout the day as well as having a proper dinner in the evening, so come nighttime he'd well met his calorie intake for the day. "I should probably sleep soon, really. It's... a bad idea to be half-asleep on duty."
She nodded, eating a few crisps before setting the bag aside. She didn't want to go crazy with her ridiculous appetite while he didn't eat. That felt...odd for her. She was used to men who ate as much as she did. "Sleep, then? How boring."
"I'm a terrible drag," he admitted with a mock-sigh. "I'm becoming old before my time. It's a dreadful tragedy." Not the time to make tasteless comments about his superiors. "Though the day I become truly boring, they will probably throw a party in the office."
"You'll finally fit right in." She said, winking. "If you need to let loose, I think I'm having a belated birthday celebration tomorrow night. Maybe I'll get drunk and flirt shamelessly with you."