Caoimhe Sullivan has had better days. (pronouncedkeeva) wrote in find_horcruxes, @ 2010-02-06 04:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | caoimhe sullivan, sturgis podmore |
RP Log: Caoimhe and Sturgis
Who: Caoimhe Sullivan and Sturgis Podmore
What: Talking shop, drinking wine, and a backrub.
When: BACKDATED to Friday night, after a nice round of intellectual tomfoolery.
Where: His flat.
Warnings: Language, liquor, and sexual references.
It was a cold night, the sort that made you think that spring was just a dream. Sturgis had lit a fire after Caoimhe had come over, not expecting anyone to just floo over unannounced and figuring that if they did, they probably deserved to burn. The quiet between them wasn't uncomfortable, but it wasn't particularly cheery, either. He'd dived into work as a way to avoid thinking about Benjy Fenwick, and he suspected she was operating under much the same motivation. While Sturgis did paperwork for a homicide case that he probably could've pawned off on his trainee, Caoimhe was buried in a mound of books. They both sipped hot drinks, Sturgis's coffee rather more Irish than not.
He idly rubbed at his shoulder, wincing a bit. Sturgis had been using Melanie as an excuse to go to the training room; while he wasn't really in the habit of doing New Years resolutions, it certainly wasn't a bad idea to get into tighter shape than he had been, what with the world going to hell around them and all. His arms were sore and heavy, and that said nothing about the state of his neck. Damn.
"Warm up?" he asked briefly, having reached the bottom of his cup.
Caoimhe looked up, distracted from the seemingly endless volume entitled First Families of the Wizarding World. It was possibly the dullest thing she had ever laid eyes on, and she had read some painfully dull things in her time. This had both the worst parts of the 19th century and of genealogy, and it was giving her a headache. It had some valuable information on ancestral homes and their fancy ancient security features, though, and that was what she needed.
"Glass of wine?" she requested. Her neck was knotting up again, and the alcohol was the best thing for loosening it up without being able to take a hot bath and go to sleep. Coffee was just going to make it worse, and she felt sufficiently awake already.
"Glass of wine," Sturgis confirmed, and got up to rummage around the kitchen, wincing all the while. Damn, getting older sucked. After a few moments he produced a bottle of wine; it had been a favourite of Lydia's once upon a time and although wine wasn't really his thing, he still kept a bottle here and there from when she'd visited as a sort of peace offering. Popping the cork, he poured two glasses and returned to her side, placing a kiss on the knot of her spine barely visible above the collar of her shirt. Below that collar, he knew, there were still-angry scars. It was nice, this quasi-domesticity, in a way that he wasn't really going to think about, just like he wasn't going to think about Benjy Fenwick's death, or Lacey, far and away at school.
Caoimhe was also busy not thinking about Benjy Fenwick's death. When she had first heard, she had focused on organizing the troops and getting everything taken care of to make sure nobody got to the horcrux before they did. Then she'd been spending the rest of the evening worried about everyone else who was still out in the midst of the werewolf attacks. She hadn't gotten her chance to cry for the man she'd once been in love with until the next morning, and once she had done it she was through. Since then, she had stayed quiet on the topic. Talking About Things had never been her way; she wouldn't have even known how to start if she had wanted to. There hadn't been anything from her except the usual condolences given at Ben's wake.
"Thanks," she said, and took a sip. "Been bent over this book for too long, but not quite long enough for tequila. Yet." Another few notes taken on the topic, and she might be ready for the hard stuff.
"Later, maybe," Sturgis agreed, his big fingers awkward on the stem of the wine glass. He didn't ask if she'd found anything useful; she would've said as much already. Figuring that the tone of intense study had been broken already, he took a sip of his wine and winced - coffee and wine didn't go together - and remarked evenly: "Ed tells me that we're getting close to hauling in Snape. Looks likely he's gonna recant. You willing to play dumb at the library? Don't think we're gonna involve you and Lupin at this juncture, but that might change depending."
"Oh, I'm grand at playin' dumb," she said, and for a moment her accent sounded just as low-class almost-Belfast as her brother's did. It was gone as quickly as it had come, along with the wry flash of a smile that had accompanied it. "I'll do whatever's needed. Dumb or not."
Caoimhe had gotten good at playing roles, as long as they were quiet ones. The Order required it fairly frequently - all the time, really, if one counted all the parts she had to play with parents and friends and others. At least she had it easy on the boyfriend front. In a lot of ways, really, she had it easy on the boyfriend front. She just tried not to think about it too much, since she was pretty sure she'd end up jinxing it if she did.
"That's my girl," Sturgis answered, his lips curving into a slight smirk at her accent. He couldn't argue too much; his own accent verged from harsh to obnoxious. Brick Lane did one no favours, no matter how many years one had lived in Oxford after. "With any luck, we'll get him working for us. I know you like the kid." He figured it could be an early birthday gift for her - finding out that her snake-y little assistant wasn't necessarily pure unadulterated evil.
"He's clever," she said, setting the book aside on the coffee table in front of her. Caoimhe felt as if she and Severus had a few things in common: brains, poverty, and poor social skills, mostly. It made her glad that he apparently wasn't all bad, in spite of some obviously extremely poor choices. "He'd be good help. God knows I could use the extra hands on hunting information."
"See? Maybe you'll have another minion, before too long," Sturgis suggested tiredly, rubbing his hands over the bridge of his nose and tossing his quill to the side, stretching out with yet another wince at the damn twinge in his stomach muscles. "Merlin knows we need the help. I tried to get a damn bead on him while you were in the hospital; kid's damn scared of the DMLE. Little wonder why. Or maybe he's just scared of me. Whatever the case, you've got a better chance coming at him with this redemptive crap than I do, at this point."
Caoimhe took note of the awkward stretch, and shifted over toward him. She couldn't do much, but she could give a decent backrub. "Scoot," she said, giving him a nudge forward as she moved behind him, assuming he would do as directed. Her hands went to his shoulders as she continued on the topic of their possible new recruit. "I can give it a shot. People skills aren't my strong point, though."
For once Sturgis did as he was told, scooting as she directed and leaning over into her. It was a backrub; he had no problem dissolving his dignity. "That's why you'd be good at this. Your lack of people skills, I mean," he said, and he didn't mean it as an insult. He figured she wouldn't take it as one, at any rate. "Snape's too clever not to hear smooth-talking if it comes to it. As guarded as you are, you don't come across as tricky. That'll come in handy."
Her hands moved surely over his shoulders, firm and steady on the first set of knots. Unsurprisingly, Sturgis had rather a lot of them. "Let me know if I'm supposed to talk to him, then," Caoimhe replied. As predicted, she wasn't bothered by his agreement on her people skills. Facts seldom got under her skin. "'til then, I'm queen of the idiots."
"Mmmmmfffff," came the rather unintelligable reply as her thumbs worked on a knot in his shoulder. Sturgis was one of those people who tended to shut down rational language when being massaged, although his mind was still working. "Mmff. Queen of the idiots. Not at all. Queen of Brilliant Fingers. I'll keep you in the loop. Lupin too, I know he's been chatting with him off and on. Poor Snape," he managed with a short laugh. "He's gonna find out that everyone he knows is in some big vigilante conspiracy."
"Being involved in a big death-eating conspiracy himself, I don't think he's much room to complain," Caoimhe pointed out. Which wasn't to say that she didn't have sympathy for him. In fact, she really did feel bad for the kid. All these secrets got hard to juggle - and soon enough he'd have even more of them. She didn't envy him that.
As she thought, her hands moved down the side of his spine, digging into the muscles between the shoulderblades and wincing at the knots. "Merlin. Thought I'd hit bone there. I think you need to drink more." Deadpan, of course, and her idea of a joke.
"I've been tossing the trainee at the ropes all day," Sturgis said, wincing himself as she worked diligently on his back. "Dueling, hand-to-hand, and then a little bit of running for the hell of it. We've both recovered from the full moon, so..." he shrugged. "No time to waste slacking, and-- FUCK!" She'd hit something that felt both terrible and good, and he made a face. "...I mighta worked myself too hard."
"It's a possibility," she agreed. Given that she'd had to use her elbow for that last one because the thumbs weren't doing it, Caoimhe would call it a very strong possibility. She wasn't one to lecture, though, so she left it at that and kept working on down his back. "How's Mary Sunshine doing?" She didn't mean the phrase insultingly at all - she thought Sturgis's new shadow was really quite sweet. She seemed so upon their brief meeting, anyway.
"Talks all the bloody time. Cheerful. Stuck on ABBA. Sadly not incompetent, so I can't fire her," Sturgis sighed, giving up having a spine altogether and just falling forward. "She held up right well during the full moon, and didn't complain once about the schedule, so really - gotta hand it to her. She's got potential. But damn if I don't want to kill her half the time."
He didn't mind Melanie, all things considered. Sturgis could put up with a lot of shit if the person committing said shit was a good worker, and Melanie certainly was that. Still, he'd had 'The Winner Takes It All' stuck in his head for the majority of the past week, so really, he figured he'd be forgiven having something of a sour attitude about it all. "Fuck, you're too good to me," he moaned, back to nonsensical as some of the tension eased out of his back. "What did I do to deserve such a woman? Must've been awesome."
Caoimhe laughed softly, and leaned forward to place a light kiss at the back of his neck. "Must've been in a past life," she said dryly, teasing. "Can't recall anything that spectacular lately." Really, she figured he'd more than earned a backrub, given how many of the knots in his back she was probably indirectly responsible for. "So is ABBA considered an improvement from the Bob Dylan, or a step lower?"
"Less whinging. More cheery. Breaks even," he answered, turning his face and nipping a kiss onto her lips. "And fuck you; I am a one-man spectacular these days. I balance a professional career with saving the planet in a tireless vigilante organisation, and I manage to get on with my ex-wife and darling kid and crazy knocked up sister and her righteous knight of a boyfriend. Oh, and I'm ace in the sack." A grin. "That last one I can prove."
"Study break?" Caoimhe suggested, slowly starting to smile back at him. They'd been at work a good long while now, and they were surely due for a little time off from it at this point. "I would very much like to see proof of this. You know how I love evidence." Only a second's pause, and then: "And so help me god if you say hard evidence, I will hit you."
"Just kill all my fun, why don't you," Sturgis objected, having already mustered up the juvenile pun in his head and somewhat saddened by the fact that he wasn't going to get to use it. "Here comes Caoimhe Sullivan, the Anti-Fun Hitwitch." He placed a kiss on the side of her throat, giving her a cocky sideways smirk. "Gonna have to do something about that. C'mere." And in short order, he'd picked her up off the couch.