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Tweak says, "He vas my BOYFRIEND."

Bryony Capper (goodlight) wrote in finnigans_rpg,
@ 2015-08-06 23:29:00

Entry tags:

character: bryony capper, character: marcus flint

The Inevitable
Who: Bryony and Marcus
What: Grief, alcohol
Where: Marcus's flat
When: Thursday 6th August, evening
Rating: SFW but sad.

When Bryony settled at her desk after dinner to catch up on her journal, Marcus's entry was the first thing she saw. She didn't reply, or even look to see if anyone else had, she just grabbed her wand and apparated straight into his flat. The cheerful chiming her entrance always caused seemed incongruous with the leaden weight in her stomach. "Marcus?" She hadn't brought anything with her but herself, not even her journal which she'd left open on the desk. The hall and living room were empty. Bryony was about to veer off course and check the bedroom when she heard the clunk of glass on tile.

She stepped into the kitchen and saw Marcus. She was on her knees beside him in an instant, one hand reaching out to touch his bicep and try to draw his attention. He looked so far away that she almost doubted he'd be able to hear her. "Marcus?" Her voice caught in her throat. She felt no grief for Philipa; the storm of emotions that she locked down was centred entirely on Marcus. The bottle of firewhisky at his side was half empty. Bryony had rarely seen Marcus drinking, not since the war, and never anything stronger than beer.

She shifted, settling herself so she was no longer on her knees, but still facing him. She didn't ask any of the questions a stranger might have asked. No 'are you okay?' or 'what can I do?' or 'have you eaten?'. She knew the answers to those, or knew he couldn't give them right now. "Do you want to sit somewhere more comfortable?" she asked instead. This small thing, at least, she might be able to have positive influence over.

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marcedflint
2015-08-07 01:32 am UTC (link)

The day been a whirlwind, and for all of it, Marcus had been able to keep himself calm and collected, rationally handling all the details of things at St. Mungo's and the Ministry and Gringotts and the funeral home. Every conversation had worn through his emotional defenses a little more, and by the time he'd gotten home, he'd had just enough sense left to write the journal entry before pulling out the bottle of Firewhiskey from the back of one of the kitchen cabinets. It had seemed fitting, since Firewhiskey had always been his mother's drink of choice, though he had never caught her drinking it straight from the bottle as he was.

Ignoring the dullness of his thoughts that normally indicated he should slow his pace to maintain some semblance of normalcy, Marcus found himself sitting on the floor in a corner of the kitchen of his flat, with absolutely no desire to move. The prospect of having to spend yet more extended time back at the manor was not something he was looking forward to, wasn't something he would want or choose to do, except that circumstances being what they were, everything would just be easier that way. And of course, that brought him right back to the realization that his mother was gone, never coming back. She was never going to shock him with more revelations about her history or their shared past, and he had to take another swig at that thought.

He had no idea how long he had been sitting there when he distantly registered the warms chiming at him, but the sound was the one that indicated Bryony, so he didn't immediately tense up at the thought of company the way he might have with anyone else. Vaguely, he was aware of her moving around in the flat, but since she wasn't - never had been - anything even remotely resembling a threat, he didn't feel the need to track her every step either. Carefully, he set down the bottle on the floor next to him, not trusting himself to keep a hold on it for much longer, though he was sure that it was still within reach. As it was, it took him a few moments to realize that she had found him, and he tried to drag himself out of his own head long enough to acknowledge her presence. Marcus blinked twice, Bryony's familiar face finally coming into focus, though he wasn't able to make her words fully make sense, since he hadn't really been paying attention.

It took him another minute to find his voice, and when he did, the first thing he said was, "I chose hydrangeas to match what she picked for my sister in the garden."

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goodlight
2015-08-08 08:30 am UTC (link)

Sitting there on the kitchen floor, it seemed to take forever before Marcus finally spoke. Bryony had seen him through a lot of ups and downs - more downs than ups, really, but that didn't mean she knew any better what to do. If she could have taken all his pain and confusion away, she would have in a heartbeat, even though she didn't know if she would be strong enough to bear it. When he mentioned his sister, she moved closer, resting her head against his shoulder. "I think that's a beautiful choice," she said, fighting to keep her voice calm and even. Marcus didn't need her emotions right now. He needed a rock to hold to, and she would give her all to be that for him.

Without really thinking, her hand moved down to his forearm, her fingers brushing across his skin where the Dark Mark was presumably still there under his tattoo. She had done this once before, to show that although the Death Eaters frightened her, he never would. "You don't need to do any more planning now," she said. "It can all wait until tomorrow. And I'll be here to help with anything I can."

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marcedflint
2015-08-09 04:42 am UTC (link)

Marcus turned his head to put his face in Bryony's hair, a motion born of years of habit and an almost instinctual way of drawing comfort from her presence. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and took a few moments to just breath, reminding himself that no matter what, he would at least have her, the way she had always had him for support. It may have felt like the sky was falling in on him - different than the slamming of his cell door locking him in, a quieter kind of monumental change, but his best friend was still at his side. The thought occurred to him, as it sometimes did, how incredibly lucky he had gotten by having Bryony in his life.

Watching her fingers as if from far away, at the spot where he knew the Dark Mark was still embedded in his skin, hidden as it was, he nodded in understanding at her words. "Thank you," he said quietly, but those small words didn't seem to be quite enough to express his gratitude for everything. In the minute of silence, he took another pull from the bottle next to him, using the arm that wasn't holding onto her, and then he commented, "I am sorry. That I couldn't love you the way I was supposed to. The way you deserve to be." Both of their lives might have been a little easier if that had been the case. Logically, he knew that his father probably would have still found a way to threaten him into doing his and the Dark Lord's bidding, but there were plenty of other things that could have been better.

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goodlight
2015-08-09 07:53 am UTC (link)

Bryony allowed Marcus's arm around her to draw her closer, tucking herself against his side in a way that was far too intimate to be proper, not that she registered that fact. With his face so close to hers she could smell the firewhisky on his breath, but didn't mention it. If he needed this to get through this news, she wouldn't take it away from him.

His words were almost shocking, and Bryony was silent for a long moment. She'd never needed an apology for that - had never expected or believed that she deserved to be loved that way, so it had hardly seemed something he was at fault for. Sometimes, years ago, she had wished... If Marcus couldn't love her that way, who could? But she knew he wouldn't be happy, and neither of them wanted him to pretend. Besides, it had been so long now that the idea of them being together romantically was as strange as if he were her brother. "You love me more than anyone else has," she said, without the slightest doubt. Her father loved her, she thought, but in a vague, distant sort of way. The rest of her family barely tolerated her. "Why would you apologise for that?"

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marcedflint
2015-08-10 12:02 am UTC (link)

Shrugging as much as was possible in his current position, which wasn't much, Marcus was quiet for a moment, considering the fact that he'd always loved Bryony the most of anyone he knew, no matter what form that feeling took, before answering, "It's just that, how much easier would it have been if I could have?" He let that thought linger in the air between them and then said, "I found out that she's always known. The one thing my father held over my head all those years, and she had it figured out before he ever knew."

In his drunken mind it had been a logical transition, but since he had never given Bryony the specifics of why he'd taken the Mark, it was possible that his rambling was making no sense. He wouldn't be able bring himself to explain if prompted - even after all these years, he'd never spoken about Tristan and what there had been between them to anyone. The thought of that past relationship led him down the path to thinking of his current one, and he winced slightly at the thought of Roger seeing him in this state. "I told Roger I wasn't going to be around for a while," he said, not truly aware of exactly what he was saying. "So he doesn't think I disappeared on him again. And because I'm going to have to start clearing out the manor."

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goodlight
2015-08-10 08:29 am UTC (link)

A life where Marcus loved her differently wasn't something Bryony had ever really let herself consider. Because, honestly, it would be so much easier - but only for her. Instead of perpetual self-doubt and a choice between being alone and letting her mother arrange a loveless marriage, she would have had Marcus by her side. If they had truly loved one another that way, would they have let her father forbid it? Bryony didn't think so. And she was relatively certain, as certain as she could be when she had no actual experience of romance or physical love, that she could have come to love Marcus that way, if he'd ever shown the least flicker of it being a possibility. Of course, she would never admit such thoughts to anyone, and she pushed them aside now for cool logic. "There's no guarantee it would have been easier," she said. "Even if you could feel that way towards women, there's no reason you should feel it towards me." Certainly no one else ever had, and they had the age difference to contend with as well. "And there would still have been the war."

The rest of what he said wasn't particularly clear to her, but she gave his arm a squeeze anyway. Whatever it was, he didn't sound happy about it. She wished she knew what to say, but no words seemed right. The best she could do was let him talk, even if she didn't follow all that he said. "That's good," she said, when he mentioned Roger. "I'm sure he'll understand." She hoped he would. Surely no one could blame a person for 'disappearing' when their mother had just died? Though part of her wondered what Marcus would do with the manor, she was level-headed enough not to ask right then. He might not even know, and making a decision about it now would be foolish. "I can help with that," she said. "And I'm sure mother could spare Tilly."

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marcedflint
2015-08-10 09:40 pm UTC (link)

Marcus sighed lightly at her response, knowing she was right. "Stupid war," he muttered, a brief thought crossing his mind that there were a lot of things he would tell his younger self to do differently if given the chance. His choices had been his own, and at the time they had all looked like the best or only way of going about things, and knowing better now didn't help that almost a decade ago he'd made some truly awful decisions.

Nodding his head, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was agreeing with, Marcus considered the manor as a whole, because really, even starting to think about the individual pieces of what needed to be done was overwhelming. He did figure he would probably get Greg to help, at the very least with the portraits, since they'd always reacted better to the younger man anyway. "It'll just be time-consuming," he commented, knowing that once he started, that task was going to be even more work than he was already anticipating.

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goodlight
2015-08-11 11:00 am UTC (link)

"Yes," Bryony agreed. Her mind flashed back to her conversation with Dean not so long ago, about how the war - and the fact that Harry Potter had won it - had actually turned things around for some people. She didn't think now was the time for such thoughts, but she did privately wonder if without a war, Marcus would have been under his father's thumb for far longer. "But things are better now, aren't they?" she asked, hoping she could prompt him to remember. "For both of us."

She nodded. "I'm sure it will," she agreed. "But you don't really have a deadline. You don't have to do it all right now." If the Manor stood empty for a while, it wouldn't be the end of the world. She would help, and she would make sure Marcus took breaks as well, rather than working himself to exhaustion.

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marcedflint
2015-08-15 09:05 pm UTC (link)

He was silent for a few heartbeats, seriously considering her question. "Not tonight," he admitted, and he regretted it slightly when he realized that the alcohol might have hit him harder than expected if he couldn't control what came out of his mouth. Needing to remedy that, because she was trying to help and he didn't want her to think that she wasn't, Marcus added, "But on the whole, yes."

His head was heavy as he nodded, and it took far more effort after he blinked to reopen his than it should have. He'd lost the thread of the conversation somewhat, but he latched onto the last thing Bryony had said. "I don't think I can do much of anything right now," he said truthfully, because at the moment he had no desire or motivation to do anything than continue sitting where he was.

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goodlight
2015-08-17 08:58 pm UTC (link)

"No," Bryony agreed at once. "Not tonight." She pressed her tongue against her teeth. She hadn't meant to make Marcus feel like he shouldn't be sad tonight - or for some time to come. She laid both her hands on Marcus's forearm, turning her head to kiss his cheek. It was small comfort she felt she could offer, but it was all she knew how to do.

Her fingers touched the extremities of his tattoo. "You don't have to do anything tonight," she assured him. "Except go to bed. You'll be more comfortable, and I'll stay with you."

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