InsaneJournal

RP log: Madog & Gawain
Who: Gawain Robards and Madog MacDougal
When: 23 November, 1979
Where: Muggle pub somewhere in some Muggle place
What: Gawain and Madog meet, have a drink, talk, and basically conclude that the talking part's really not working out. Gawain has a nice tie, as well. That's a bit irrelevant.
Rating: F-bombs ahoy!
Status: Complete.

In the interests of avoiding any swooning witches (and/or the panties they may or may not throw at the sight of him), Gawain had selected a Muggle pub for his inaugeral drink with the Quidditch star Madog MacDougal. And truly, Quidditch Star was a description much preferable than Younger man my younger girlfriend is faux-shagging for the press, because truly (again), the Auror was just as happy to put that entire situation out of mind. Far out of mind. It was proving difficult to do so, however, given that the whole reason for their meeting was Nora -- in a way -- and he found himself preemptively irritated over the mere prospect of the subject coming up. Of course it would though, because that was the whole purpose of this meeting (and also the reason behind his present irritation -- with himself and his own damned curiousity). Gawain tapped the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray supplied by the bartender, ordered a scotch, and waited. The establishment was rather quiet all told, with only a few tables occupied and even then by mostly murmuring, half drunken sorts already. The lighting was dim, though not unpleasant. He had told MacDougal when he'd written him that he would be easily identifiable, and the man was mildly pleased to find he'd been correct -- he was the only one in the place wearing a tie and vest (his jacket was abandoned over the back of the chair next to him), and also the only one who looked like he combed his hair on a regular basis. It was a smart choice about picking a Muggle pub -- not that Madog had any doubts of the cognitive abilities of those whose employment was promised to the D. M. L. E. as some might, but Gawain seemed to have that brains-y-ness about him. It might have been the concise nature of the man's replies that one night when such an idea as having a round (or two, or a few more) with the Auror first picked up any speed in Madog's mind. Something about saying less than necessary, maybe. It was the mark of a smart man in the end. ...Of course, that only made Madog want to nudge the metaphorical elbow into the nonplussed's side some more. He had to get his entertainment somewhere, and that somewhere appeared to be up at the bar -- because of all the half-to-fully saturated sorts lurking around the interior, it was the bloke in the fancy threads that seemed to project the air of an Auror. Perhaps one that would have preferred to be elsewhere, but Madog tried not to judge anyone at first sight. Even if he felt he was often right. Because he usually was, as a matter of fact. There wasn't any sneaking up to be done because nothing was quite so ridiculous as someone of Madog's size trying to tip-toe around the chairs and tables, and so he merely walked up with a confident step that barely ever took a holiday, grabbed the seat beside Gawain, and immediately held out a hand to the man. "Detective --" Spoken with a mind for the Muggle quality of the setting. "-- Gawain Robards, I presume?" Yeah, the phrasing was an utter put-on, but he couldn't resist. Well. He was taller than anticipated. Grand. "Madog," Gawain replied in turn, emphasizing the name with a dry turn of his lips. After all, he'd been reminded enough the other night to go the informal first name route, might as well indulge it now. One hand replaced the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, while another obliged the offered handshake. As he gave it (firm, but brief), he wondered precisely just how much this MacDougal was like the one he was more familiar with. Somehow he felt Morgan's particular temperament would be less flattering on a man. Mind you, Madog had said five words and not one of them was 'fuck', so maybe he wasn't much like his sister at all. "Any trouble finding the place?" And the funny part was that with Morgan as a common link, Madog could swear once, somewhere in the past, he had met Auror Robards. Although, searching his memory banks turned up nothing at all to show for it. Huh. Maybe it was because the man was unmemorable? He did seem pretty drab (even despite the polish of a vest and tie), and had it been any sort of meeting in a public setting, odds were against the Auror the moment a decidedly more-pleasant-to-look-at bird strolled past. Morgan made a habit of punching him in the shoulder for that, but it didn't work as well as it used to -- oh say, some half a foot ago, height-wise. "Well," Madog began, as he attended to the important business of waving the bartender over, "Ye know us sports types. We've never been much for posh things like reading, but I matched up the loopy things on the owl ye sent with the loopy things on the sign." Actually, he'd found the place all right, but a bit of feigning lost with a local brunette turned out to be a smart move. No one could say a thing about infidelity to a false girlfriend on the Muggle side of the country. "Nice tie," Madog added. Really, just because he could. "Is that silk?" At the same time Gawain was undergoing a similar process -- where it was that he might have met Madog MacDougal before? Certainly there was a familiar air to the man, enough for the Auror to devote a good few seconds' thought to the subject. Then it clicked. Oh right. He had met MacDougal before. Multiple times. The fellow was every swaggering Quidditch player he'd endured the taunts of during school, the ones whose name always punctuated the sentence I'm sorry, Gawain, but I'm already going with.... The ones who a teenage Gawain Robards willingly let have the girls, the athletic prowess, and the popularity -- who needed such things when one had a vague sense of superiority and a subscription to Boy's Life? However it was supremely irksome to feel irked, and Gawain resented his own reaction immediately. Good God, he was a grown man. How could he so swiftly be reduced to feeling like the awkward boy he'd once been? Still, the question asked was pointedly ignored. "So, Madog," he began, pausing to take a short drag off his cigarette. "It occurs that while I know both your sisters, I can't confess the same familiarity with you. Seeing as how we both know one can't believe everything one reads in the papers," a humourless uptick of one corner of his mouth, "Tell me a little about yourself." Maybe Gawain had asked the first question, but that hardly meant that scrutiny of character wasn't being returned. Madog narrowed his eyes, taking brief notes on the conversation as it had gone up until this point: there was not a single laugh. There was not even a rise out of the Auror for the slight crack on his attire -- and if that was meant to be a smile, it was downright pitiful. Right, Madog concluded, holds fast to being an adult, will not compromise, dresses like a corpse at a wake... smells a bit like one. "Ye read those papers, then?" Follows gossip columns, Madog added to the mental list. A quick question mark was scrawled beside it after a furthered thought. "Well, to each his own..." A wave of dismissal supplied the rest of the unfinished sentence. Or, rather, it didn't so much as it signalled the end of that topic by Writ of Madog MacDougal. "And they don't get it all wrong, anyhow. I play for the Magpies, youngest of four -- ye know Morgan, don't ye?" Although, somehow, after properly having met Gawain, the idea of this man's friendship with his sister suddenly lacked all logic. 'What the fuck?' neatly surmised the situation. He subdued the urge to point out that he had a vested interest in those papers, but happily got on top of it before he made a fool of himself. This would be much easier if it was a proper interrogation, Gawain reckoned. In those sorts of situations there was very little a suspect could say that would get his goat (though knock on wood there), but here, though Madog was a relative stranger, he found himself feeling a shade too much on the defensive. It was a idiotic thing he knew, because the Magpies' Beater and he weren't rivals, but it was enough of an unwanted response that Gawain felt a trifle disappointed in himself -- as he did whenever that primal, caveman mind of his threatened to surface (it was rare). Though that said, the younger man's most recent question managed to solicit a genuine, albeit brief, half-smile. Gawain gave the ash another helpful tap. "I do," he confirmed. His perked eyebrows punctuated his most recent exhale of smoke. "She's a charming girl." Oh, WHOA. Smile. That was a smile. Merlin, so the Auror wasn't facially paralysed. Madog resisted saying so much out loud, and smartly so, at that. It would probably send the other half of the smile into retreat for the winter like a squirrel into... wherever it was a squirrel went in the winter. Honestly, Madog hadn't even cared much for rodents ever since he could remember, and who did, really? Tangential point. Anyway. "Charming?" One brow crept upward at the choice of wording. "Come on, mate!" An enthusiastic thump on the back was absolutely necessary at that point, and Madog was only too glad to seize the opportunity. All things told, Gawain probably would see it coming, but that didn't dour the grin on Madog's face one bit as he regarded the other man. "No need to fucking put me on. If Morgan's 'charming', I can only imagine what ye've got to say about Nora." Not only did Gawain see the slap on the back coming, but he instinctively braced for the moment of impact -- and still he'd be lying if he said he'd been wholly prepared for the weight of it. Fortunately that was not the subject at hand, for Madog had moved onto a topic that the Auror had hoped he would broach first. Nora. Again he tilted his head, as if considering that Madog might indeed have a point, though ultimately appeared to opt for diplomacy rather than outright agreement. "They are both independently minded, nothing wrong with that." The scotch in front of him was lifted, but before he took a sip Gawain added: "Granted, I've never had the pair of them pass embarrassing photos of me 'round the dinner table." "Ye're missing out, then," Madog simply supplied. It was an easy statement, ended with a swig from his own drink, as if those childhood photographs hadn't been the bane of his existence for a night. Although they were. Really, it was as if the lot of them had hand-picked the most humbling photos in the collection -- and Madog trusted that was the case. He'd have done the same. Bloody family. "So, ye put everything ye say through filters to pick out the most inoffensive way of phrasing things, or..." Madog waved a hand around. "What? ...Is that what won Nora over?" A smirk followed. No, Madog wasn't ready to leave the topic of Nora alone. It was worth wringing that one until there was nothing left entertainment-wise left in it. The smirk sparked a raised eyebrow, but for several moments Gawain remained silent -- perhaps to prove the point that yes, he did indeed think before he spoke. Whether or not that was the cause for Nora's attraction for him he didn't know, and really, the less that was questioned the better. Who knew what the girl saw in him? Certainly Gawain didn't. At this point it was enough to know that she was not only willing to tolerate his company, she outright wanted it. "I can't say," Gawain shrugged lightly, glancing away once again. "Though I doubt it. Attraction's a strange animal, typically comprised of a number of parts." Good Lord, why was he indulging this? The intricacies (or vagaries) of his personal relationship was, at the end of the day, no one's business by his own. And possibly Nora's. The Auror looked back at Madog. "I admit, I'm curious as to your motivations in asking." Madog narrowed his eyes. The way this was sounding to his ears, he could swear that -- at any moment, now -- the good Auror would turn to a diagram, and begin dissecting this 'Attraction' animal into all its anatomy. Really, who spoke about it like that? Besides one Gawain Robards, that is. "Ye look like a man that's made to take the piss out of," Madog answered. He took a drink from his glass, looked thoughtfully at it, then added, "Sorry, mate." Although if he sounded any bit apologetic, that was random happenstance. That provoked a grim bit of laughter before his next sip of scotch. The cigarette between his fingers was given one final drag, then extinguished in the nearby ashtray as Gawain exhaled the last dregs of smoke. Once more his half grin appeared, colouring his words with their own modest share of humour. "No apology necessary," he assured. "I'm well aware." And a lifetime of teasing had rather steeled him against it (despite the fact that Madog -- handsome, large Madog -- was more well equipped than most to get under his skin, given his pseudo-intimacy with Nora) and Gawain very much doubted he would have survived this long if he allowed every barb slung his way to hit home. So, when he lifted his drink again, he gestured between the two of them and added, "This is on me, by the way." For a moment, Madog debated the merits of arguing that insistence; having enough money to toss around usually made up his side of the argument, but a look to Gawain seemed to suggest that he ought to leave it be. The other man seemed smart enough to conclude that a Quidditch star would have more than enough on him to cover a few rounds, and if that other man still wanted to offer to pick up the tab, there had to be some reason. "Cheers," Madog returned, lifting his glass. "Anyway, guessing that Nora's told ye the full lot about how we're calling the act off in the near future." He watched Gawain for an affirmative reaction. Truth was Gawain merely anticipated having more than one drink, and while he would have graciously accepted the offer of one from Madog, it alleviated his guilt to foot the bill if he were going to have another. Besides, if nothing else, the man beside him seemed to understand the need to have a stiff drink -- or two. "Not... specifically," the Auror confessed, his expression finally faltering as his brow knit. He glanced towards MacDougal curiously after his next (long) sip. "Is there a plan in place then? Nora seemed to think it would simply be a matter of saying it was over." "That's about it, yeah," Madog confessed, rolling a shrug off his shoulders. "Tell the paper one thing, they'd skew it anyway, so there's no point in the end. One day we were --" He gestured quotation marks with his fingers. "-- together, and now there's a day when we won't be. And fuck if that isn't something I've been waiting for." He raised a hand to Gawain, tilting his head just slightly with an apologetic sort of angle. "Not that I'm saying anything about yer girl, but the whole thing's been driving me fucking cagey as hell. Not my favourite role to play, ye understand." Which is when it occurred to Gawain that, for as awkward and trying as this whole publicity ordeal had been for Nora, it was arguably worse for her partner in crime. Madog was the bigger celebrity after all (by far) and more than that this entire scheme ran counter to the persona the man generally seemed to cultivate -- though admittedly that was an impression Gawain gained from the media, and as they'd just been discussing, it couldn't always be trusted. "I can imagine," Gawain replied thoughtfully, furrowing his brow. He glanced away only to earn the bartender's attention as he lifted his near empty glass. "That is, I can imagine it's put quite a hitch into your own social life." "Torment," Madog replied. All the women he had to turn away. All the women that turned away when they saw Nora. All. Of. Them. It stung. It plucked at the heartstrings. It deflated, and it was about as close to a metaphorical kick in the crotch as anything. There appeared to a brick wall in the wall of that direction of conversation now, and Madog flipped a few mental pages. Eventually, it was something at random that he choose to ask about because, really, he had no idea about the man next to him beyond a few facts (likes -- loves? -- Nora, loves fancy clothing, smells like someone's old granddad). "So... how's work as an Auror?" Oh, yeah. It wasn't a question that came after careful thinking, and it certainly didn't sound it, either. Fuck all if Madog had anything better in mind, though. "People try to kill ye often, or...?" Rather than find himself heartened by the other man's (less than genuine, but at least polite) interest in his work, Gawain decided he was rapidly running out of patience when it came to Madog MacDougal. Not that he necessarily disliked the man -- he seemed all right, all things considered, for a bloke of his sort -- but he couldn't imagine either of them were much invested in making small talk with one another, least of all on the subject of their respective careers. So, while he had been in the midst of raising his refilled glass to take a sip, the motion was neatly transformed into a swift downing of the whole thing entirely. With a definitive clunk the glass met the countertop once again, and Gawain was shifting his gaze towards his broad shouldered bar mate. "More frequently than I'd like, yes. In short however -- it's busy," He replied, reaching into his inside pocket for his billfold. "You'll forgive me if I have to cut our drink short?" Yeah, that was about right. Two seconds longer of this, and Madog knew a similar knit of words would've been his own. It was a round that had been promised, and that round had since been drunk up. "Mate, I absolve thee entirely." His own empty glass was placed up on the counter top as he gathered his footing on the floor. A hand was once more extended to conclude the business. "Until a possible, but probably-not-going-to-happen next time, then?" A touch of genuine humour crept into Gawain's face, and while it was by no means overwhelming, it was at least enough to pull the corner of his mouth into a brief, close lipped smile. His coat pulled on while Madog was getting to his feet, the Auror finally turned to face him fully and meet that extended hand with his own. A single shake. That seemed about right. "I swear not to count the minutes if you don't," he replied wryly, and gave his cuffs a short adjustment tug before favouring the Quidditch player with a nod and final, fleeting smile. And while Nora probably wouldn't want him to wish it, Gawain lifted his eyebrows as he turned to leave, adding, "Good luck on the pitch."