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Tweak says, "puff, puff, pass idiot!"

Ron Weasley (lastronstanding) wrote in flippedrpg,
@ 2012-11-16 22:09:00

Entry tags:

ch: mercy: ron weasley, ch: regen: hermione granger, p: giles, p: kit

Who: Ron Weasley ^Mercy, Hermione Granger ^regen
What: Cold roast and bad choices?
Where: The kitchen of the “Jones” residence
When: late Friday night
Warnings: it’s Pleasantville, everything will be pleasant.
Status: Incomplete

The roast was cold now. Had been for some time now. Ron didn’t care, but Mr. Jones did, and Ron was really not in the mood for dealing with Mr. Jones’ problems. Especially since so many of them were wrapped up in an apparent dread about whether or not he was a good enough husband, father, housekeeper, and the secret terror that he’d made a mistake dropping out of college to marry his sweetie instead of staying on at Vassar one more year to finish his fine arts degree […] Ron groaned and thumped his head against the (freshly cleaned) kitchen table, still unsure how he was supposed to think straight with an entire person’s worth of new memories stuck into his head. Not to mention the gosh darn filter that seemed to keep him from picking his own words, or the fact that this entire world didn't even seem to have colour in it. Or maybe they'd just been rendered blind.

At least he had some bad Scotch to drink, and a book to read. It was interesting reading, this gender-changed version of Flaubert. Monsieur Bovary.

He wondered if Granger would turn up soon. He wondered why he wanted her to.

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innumerably
2012-11-17 05:25 am UTC (link)

This new Ron made Hermione nervous. She couldn't really pinpoint why other than the fact that Rons in general seemed to get under her skin, or at least hers always had. Pair that with how he looked like her Ron, but subtly different and how he could quote Shakespeare on the drop of a dime and the fact that they somehow managed to get along and ... well, there were lots of reasons why he made her nervous.

Hermione had spent a while with Ted, trying to steel herself for her first night pretending to be married to a Ron again and, by the time she'd left him to come back to the house, she was pretty sure she could handle it. No, she would handle it. She was Hermione ~~Weasley~~ Granger, after all, and there were only two problems in her entire life that she hadn't been able to solve: her marriage and her immortality. She wasn't trying to salvage a marriage here and it seemed pointless to solve her immortality here if she couldn't permanently die here, anyway, so obviously that meant she was already ahead of the game in handling this particular situation in which she'd found herself.

Well, that was until she'd come home and found Ron sitting there at the kitchen table with the bottle of scotch already open. Golly gee whiz. With a sigh of concession—she'd started learning how to notice when she was about to make bad choices that she'd confess to Sirius afterward—she pulled a chair out and took a seat, reaching for the bottle as she wordlessly tilted it back and took a drink, the amber liquid burning the back of her throat. It was easy to remember why she hated alcohol and easy to drink it right now, anyway.

Setting down the bottle and sliding it back toward Ron, she said, voice rough from the burning, "Honey, I'm home."

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lastronstanding
2012-11-17 05:33 am UTC (link)

"Hello, dear, how was work?" Ron replied, absentmindedly, not yet looking up from his well-thumbed paperback (he'd never really cared for Flaubert, himself, but the French novelist was apparently a great favorite of Mr. Jones'). "The boys are in bed or have run off with a roving gang of greaser girls on motorcycles and there's cold roast or warm Scotch."

Then he burst out laughing, because there was nothing about this situation that wasn't ridiculous. Or possibly because he'd already had more or less half a glass' worth of bad liquor. "I'd recommend the Scotch, personally, but I see you're ahead of me there."

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innumerably
2012-11-18 02:37 am UTC (link)

"It was swell," Hermione—or, rather, Cynthia—replied without thought and she winced inwardly as she did so. This whole feeling compelled to speak like someone other than herself thing was a right nuisance. She refrained, however, from allowing Cynthia to comment on the biker gang, instead allowing a pause for the non-existent canned laughter and then let her mind move on.

Letting her arms fall slack to her sides, Hermione lowered her head toward the table, hitting the wood surface with a significant bump. "And here I was intent on not touching the scotch tonight," she said, voice muffled by the table. Sitting up again, she leaned forward and said, "Do you drink often?" It wasn't accusatory, just curiosity.

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lastronstanding
2012-11-18 02:48 am UTC (link)

Ron shook his head. "Not often. 'course, Most of what's available in my world is moonshine anyway, which is always dicey. I can tell this isn't good, but at least it's not liable to make you blind or insane. Right away."

Oddly, focusing on his own world seemed to make blocking out Mark easier. Or perhaps that too was just an effect of the drink, he wasn't sure. "What about you?" He added. There was nothing accusatory in his tone either, although he could hear Mr. Jones tut-tutting in his brain which, given that they were drinking his secret Scotch seemed especially hypocritical of the man. This led to a mental argument about how alcohol was a legitimate part of some recipes and, anyway, it was medicinal. Ron groaned. "Golly jeeze on toast, I really hate this Flip. Think if we ask they'll send us back to the jungle? Tropical storms and man eating tigers and dehydration, those I could have dealt with."

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innumerably
2012-11-18 03:54 am UTC (link)

Merlin, moonshine. Hermione had tried that once and vowed never to try it again. Curling her nose, she agreed, "No, not good at all. The aftertaste alone is enough to keep these people sober more often than naught."

It was probably an effect of the drink. It didn't allow for exceptional focus and, in her experience, her true identity was stronger than Cynthia's. She hoped so anyway. If she had more of this awful drink—she reached for the bottle and took another—she didn't want to turn into a pissed fifties journalist in a poodle skirt. Shaking her head as she swallowed it down, she pushed the bottle back toward him and said, "Never. Relatively. Maybe once every decade if you don't count butterbeer." She liked having control of her own mind, please and thank you.

Raising an eyebrow, she asked, "Which part is less bearable than the desserted island? This situation or the compulsion paired with these ridiculous alternate identities trying to store second lives in our heads?"

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lastronstanding
2012-11-18 04:13 am UTC (link)

Ron took another swig from the bottle when Hermione pushed it back, mostly because it seemed like the thing Mr. Jones wouldn't do. A small and stupid rebellion that wouldn't accomplish much more than get him plastered, most likely.

"All of it. I don't like having this other life crammed inside my head. Or this situation we've been stuck in. I mean, sure, yeah, being married to you isn't actually as bad as starving to death on a desert island . . ." Ron frowned, thumped his head against the table, and added, ". . . and I'm honest to gosh trying to think of a different way of putting that but, no, there pretty much isn't one that isn't just as bad because this entire situation is just jolly well gosh darn awkward as heck and uncomfortable and complicated as apple fritters. I don't even know what a fritter is and yet I'm pretty sure that I can fix one and it'd be delicious too!"

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innumerably
2012-11-18 04:29 am UTC (link)

It was a tribute to how out of sorts Hermione currently felt that she didn't even slightly pick up on the small act of defiance of Ron's 'character' matching her drink from the bottle. At this rate, she probably ought to have just stayed out with Ted, whatever the world consequences.

Hermione matched his frown and shrugged a shoulder as a hand resting on the table rapped its fingers against the hard surface. "Well, at least now you're starting to sound almost exactly like my late husband." She grimaced. Damnit, she had more control than that. She wasn't uncomfortable because of this Ron but rather her Ron. It was hardly fair for her to take that out on him. "I think it's impossible to have an apple fritter that isn't delicious."

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lastronstanding
2012-11-18 05:00 am UTC (link)

"I'll try fixing some tomorrow, maybe." He'd struck a nerve, he could tell, and it was . . . strange, to be reminded of the fact that this other Hermione had had a whole lifetime of history with her world's version of him, and even more history without him. And while she'd managed to avoid telling him much about it, just the nature of her immortality and the occasional comments she'd let slip about her Ron were enough for him to guess things hadn't turned out well for them . . . he'd more or less made peace with the Granger he'd known, to the point where he could admit to himself that what had made him so angry all of these years wasn't that she'd gotten the drop on him, but the fact that if she'd just asked him for the books, he'd have given them to her. And how much of a fool did that make him? Or how broken was their sorry excuse for a world, where surviving took so much that you could barely call it living? But was it really any better, to live in a world where you had that chance, and had it thrown in your face regardless? He wasn't sure.

"It's not losing people that's the worst, is it? Happens often enough, well, the wound never leaves but at least it heals over after awhile. But when they just leave, when they're gone one day and you don't even know why, when it's not just the loss but that anger that just won't stop festering and you're honestly not sure what you'd say to them if you found them alive and well after all, until you honestly wish you'd never known them to begin with . . . that's when it hurts. That's what hollows you out until you just cling to the little that's left without even remembering why you want to anymore, because sooner or later that'll turn to dust in your fingers too."

He took another swig, because that seemed like a good sentiment to drink to. Or a bad one, whichever. "O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world! Maybe that's just me. Don't know."

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