WHO: Donnie Abercrombie & Aidan O'Shea. WHEN: The evening of 29 December. Before that 9PM curfew. WHERE: A muggle pub. SUMMARY: Donnie goes digging for vigilante dirt and gets more than he bargained for. WARNINGS: Language. Donnie dramatics.
"My life is so BORING now," Donnie was saying, in between sips of his whiskey (he'd started drinking it neat, which he thought was saving him money - it wasn't). "I thought getting arrested would be like, cool, cos y'know it's a SHAM GOVERNMENT, but...not cool." He shook his head, sighed heavily, and looked at Aidan.
"Remember when YOU were the boring one? I miss those days. Tell me everything you did after 9 this week so I can live vicariously through you."
“After nine?” Aidan made a show of pretending to ponder the latest going on, scratching at the scuff on his chin. He decidedly ignored the pinprick of guilt he felt at lying to Donnie — right to his face, even — as he gave his friend a sheepish smile. “Sleeping, mostly. I’m still dead boring, to tell you the truth. Sometimes I’ve a late shift so I’m, you know, busy avoiding Diana Selwyn, noted Death Eater.”
He paused long enough to take a sip of his own whiskey. Oh, also I joined the Order… “I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy?” he offered.
"UGGGHHHH," Donnie groaned in frustration. "I've already finished the game twice!" He downed the rest of his drink and waved the bartender over.
"So, I just got out of PRISON and my twin sister was brutally murdered by death eaters a year ago, can we get a free round?" He beamed at bartender. After a few moments of haggling, he begrudgingly agreed to comp their next round of drinks.
"Anyway." His mission nagged at him - he so wasn't ready to get executed - so he attempted to shift the subject to vigilantes. "I guess now we have loads of time to plan, you know, THINGS." Donnie waggled his eyebrows suggestively, hoping Aidan got his point.
Aidan did get his point, but he couldn’t admit to most of his projects. He arched an eyebrow as he leveled an unimpressed look in Donnie’s direction. “Things?” he echoed, punctuating the word with a long sip of whiskey. “Save your come ons for Ronan.”
His face screwed up in horror. “Or don’t, actually.”
Donnie barked out a laugh. "Don't play coy with me, Domhnall! Though this reminds me, I think I accidentally sent him a nude the other day...OH well, not important. I meant," here he lowered his voice to his conspiratorial whisper, which he'd been working on in his spare time, "fascist-regime-busting things. I know Carlotta's…intensely mad, but don't forget she cut her own arm off! We need to get on that level!!!"
Tapping in his chin in thought, Aidan looked skeptical. “Do we really need to be on Carlotta’s level, though?” he asked, his voice low. “She’s a brilliant witch, yeah, but her organization skills leave something to be desired. The Fellowship is kind of…”
He trailed off, unable to find the right word. But his expression clearly telegraphed his thoughts: The Fellowship of the Occamy, unlike the Order of the Phoenix, was a mess.
Donnie leaned forward, his brow creasing in a frown. He took a gulp of his drink before beginning his interrogation. "The Fellowship is kind of what?"
“It lacks proper direction,” Aidan admitted, looking a bit sheepish. “Carlotta’s grand and all, but… you know, she could stand to take a page out of the Order’s book.”
"Oh, what book is THAT? The 'oooh look at us we're fancy vigilantes, we have whole websites dedicated to us, we're sooooo organised and Death Eaters make videos of our dead faces!' THAT book?" Yeah, so Donnie had spent a lot of the last few weeks obsessively poring over the Order fan forums. He was so tired of hearing about them - why hadn't he gotten into any long standing rivalries with a Death Eater? Why wasn't anyone clamoring for his death? The more he thought about it, the more annoyed he became. Too organised for his tastes, that's what he'd always told himself.
"If you love the Order sooooo much why don't you join them?!" It was a stupid retort and he knew it (people didn't just join vigilante groups out of nowhere), but the clock was running out on his time as a confidential informant. He was getting desperate.
Aidan fought to keep an even expression as he listened to Donnie rant, though his own brow had creased into a frown by the end of it. This was not how he wanted to tell his friend about his other vigilante group, but a prime opportunity had presented itself. There was a brief moment before he made his decision: he sucked in a deep breath, tapped his fingers on the bar’s countertop, and forced himself to smile.
“Actually, Donnie,” he began, half-careful, half-forced cheer, “I’m already in the Order. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot smoother than Carlotta’s operation. And now that we’re working w—”
"What the FUCK?!" Donnie nearly did a spit take. Instead he slammed his glass down on the bar and stared at Aidan incredulously.
"Do you think that’s FUNNY? Don't make jokes like that. You're not in the Order. You're just not! You're not. I would KNOW."
Aidan’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, and he tried to stamp down on the urge to laugh. He was only partly successful. “It’s not a joke. Remember those interruptions on the Selwyn Report? That was me trying to get their attention. And,” Aidan’s mouth curved into a proud smile, “it worked.”
Anger welled up inside of him and he clamped his teeth down on his bottom lip to prevent another outburst (he'd been kicked out of way too many bars lately). Once that has subsided, the anger was quickly followed by - embarrassingly enough - the pinprick of tears.
"You… You fucking fuck!" Donnie didn't want to admit that the Selwyn Dispatch interruptions were brilliant. He didn't want to admit that Carlotta was completely mad and mostly treated him as a glorified personal assistant. "Well, the Order's stupid anyway. Whatever. I don't care. Have fun with all your… Your fucking stupid idiot dumb vigilantes. HAVE FUN."
He swiped at his eyes - no he wasn't crying, it was just so dusty in that stupid old bar - and clumsily stood to his feet, daring Aidan to respond.
The other man responded immediately, his eyes widened in shock. (But then, part of him should’ve anticipated a reaction like this. Donnie did love his dramatics.) Aidan reached out to grab hold of Donnie’s arm as he slid off his own barstool. There was only a touch of exasperation in his voice as he said, “Hold on, hold on, you can’t just rush off…”
What to say? What to do? Would Octavius know what to do? Aidan pushed the thoughts aside and tried to handle the situation as delicately as possible. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to do it with you, you know we’ve always made a great team. It’s not that you’re not…” He caught Donnie’s gaze and held it. “It’s not that you’re not good enough for the Order. You’re just as brilliant as the rest of them, you know that.”
"Oh, sure. SURE you were going to tell me. When, before or after I got arrested?? Don't answer that." Donnie was whining now and he knew it. Suddenly it occurred to him - he had it. His information. Under normal circumstances, he'd never consider selling out a friend, but at the moment he was livid. This would show him.
He whipped out his phone (was it bad form to send 'DOMHNALL AIDAN O'SHEA IS IN THE ORDER' as a hext, or was he just supposed to wait to tell Yaxley in person?) and began to scroll through his contacts when it started buzzing loudly. "Oh, shit shit SHIT," he yelled. The fucking curfew. He yanked his arm out of Aidan's grasp and shoved his phone back into his pocket - the news would have to wait until he got home.
"I have to leave now," Donnie said, trying to sound as dignified as possible. "But just remember that I'm pretty sure I hate you now."
“Wait, hold on—” Aidan’s words dissolved into a frustrated sigh. What could he say to make Donnie not hate him? “Are you really just going to leave? Right now? Because we’re kind of in the middle of something, and I’d really like it if you didn’t hate me.”
Donnie didn't actually know what would happen to him if he bucked his curfew, but he generally assumed it would be something like 'slow and painful death by asphyxiation.' And really, deep down inside, he didn't hate Aidan. He was just extremely upset. Life was unfair. The holidays were the fucking worst. Et cetera.
He made a big show of pretending to think about it, when suddenly something else occurred to him. "Tell me what your next thing is and then I won't hate you."
Aidan’s mouth pressed into a tight line. “That I can't do. I would if I could, but…” He shrugged a shoulder, looking genuinely apologetic before his gaze dropped to his half-empty drink. “It's not that I don't trust you.”
Except, on some level, he didn't. Donnie could always tell Carlotta. And Aidan knew he didn't trust her.
Donnie's eyes narrowed briefly before he adjusted his expression to one of passive indifference. "Fine then. GoodBYE, Domhnall." He thought about taking a swipe at Aidan's drink, and even reached out a hand to do it - but then at the last second, switched tactics and grabbed the drink off the bar instead. He downed it in one gulp, smacked his lips audibly, then shoved the glass into Aidan's hands before leaving.
Aidan stared at the door for a moment, drained his drink, then slunk back onto his barstool. He needed at least three more.