Cappie finally sidled into an empty space at the bar, squeezing between the shoulders of the people to either side of him in the press of bodies. Singles’ Night seemed to have proved very popular and the club was heaving. Money clasped in his hand, Cappie tried his best to make eye contact with the barman, hoping it wouldn’t take him too much longer to get served. He’d left whatsername over on the dance floor.
What was her name? He couldn’t quite remember. He’d danced and flirted with so many people that evening that it was all beginning to blur. He was sure the three beers and two tequila shots were adding to the haziness too…
Still, a couple more drinks wouldn’t do any harm. He wasn’t nearly ready to go home yet. For one thing, he hadn’t found someone to go home with and that was, of course, the ultimate aim of tonight. Ever since Casey had left him, he’d tried to minimise the time he spent in bed alone. What was that saying? The best way to get over someone was to get under someone else. That was a mantra Cappie very much believed in. Whether it did him any good or not was a different matter but that was a question to ponder another night, probably when he wasn’t quite so drunk.
Delilah had made several rounds through the crowd by the time she spotted Cappie over at the bar. He’d been friendly to her when she first re-arrived, but having learned the story from Emilia, she was no longer quite sure what to think of him. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Delilah was a romantic after all, and Witch Weekly’s resident advice columnist (for whatever that was worth). So she’d offered her own theories to Emilia about why Cappie was the way he was.
Perhaps she’d wait to share her theories with the man himself until they became better acquainted. But in the meantime, that wasn’t going to stop her from going up and making a proper introduction. Arming herself with a friendly, innocent smile, Delilah moved over to stand next to Cappie at the bar, leaning against it as she drew his attention.
“You wanna get this pretty lady one of whatever it is you’re having?” she asked in a playful tone.
Cappie had just ordered and paid for two beers and two shots of tequila when he heard someone beside him. He looked down - she was quite small - and grinned. It was Delilah Moon; he’d been speaking to her when she’d first arrived.
“Oh hello,” he remarked, a tone of genuine, if slightly drink-enhanced, pleasure in his voice at seeing her.
“Here,” he added, pushing one of the shots and a beer bottle towards her when the barman placed them in front of him. They hadn’t technically been for her but he was sure it wouldn’t take too long for his other friend to find someone else to buy her drinks.
“Ready?” He questioned, taking hold of his own shot glass and holding it, poised in front of his lips. “On the count of three. One… Two…”
Delilah wasn’t expecting such a quick and generous response, but she took the offered drinks with little hesitation. She lifted the smaller glass, giving it a quick sniff, and making a face. Tequila wouldn’t have been her first choice, but she was already here, so she nodded at his question, and tried to mentally brace herself.
“Three!” she concluded along with him, downing the shot with as much grace as she could muster. She quickly chased the flavor away with a generous sip of the beer she’d been given. While it also wouldn’t have been her first choice, Delilah was grateful for anything to wash away the first swallow. She blinked back a few tears, made a soft exhale and did a little shimmy with as she adjusted to the rush of alcohol.
Oh yeah, she could already feel the effects of the liquor behind her eyes. “Whew,” she said as she looked back over at Cappie with a gamine grin. “You really know how to start a party.”
Cappie shouted, “Three!” along with Delilah before throwing back the shot. He pulled a face as he felt the tequila burn down the back of his throat but it certainly wasn’t his first rodeo and he took it like a pro, laughing as he watched Delilah do her little tequila dance.
“Yes I do,” he agreed smugly, as he lifted his beer bottle to his lips and took a sip.
The people behind them were already jostling them for a space at the bar so, grabbing both his beer and Delilah’s hand, he pulled her out of the melee and into the relative calm of the main club. There were a few high tables dotted around the edge of the dance floor and, letting go of Delilah’s hand, Cappie crossed to the nearest one, resting his elbow on the top.
“How are you enjoying Atlantis so far?” He asked loudly, over the noise of the music. “Better now you’ve met me, huh?”
Oh yes, he was very charming indeed. And if she hadn’t firmly entrenched him in her mind as Emilia’s man, the blush that threatened to come forth over his comment might have actually succeeded. She settled herself into the seat closest to him at the table, she took another sip of the beer before speaking.
“I love it!” Delilah answered sincerely with regard to his question about Atlantis. But to his latter comment, she smirked, gesturing at him with her bottle before adding, “You… You might be a bit of trouble though.”
Cappie slid himself on the seat opposite her, resting his arms on the table with his hands wrapped around his beer bottle.
“Me?” Cappie said, trying to sound taken aback, although smiling as he spoke. “Trouble? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
There was an element of truth in his words - he really didn’t know what he was talking about although, considering that she was from the Wizarding World, he thought he could have a pretty good guess. Still, if she wanted him to play ball, she was out of luck. Instead, he blinked innocent-looking eyes at her and raised his eyebrows in question.
“Oh please,” Delilah replied, waving her hand at him cheekily. “Some of my favorite people in the world are bigger flirts than you are. I know what trouble looks like when I see it.”
Perhaps it was the tequila, or perhaps it was the fact that she and Emilia had recently talked about him during their catch-up brunch, but whatever the reason, Delilah couldn’t help adding, “It wasn’t very nice of you to break my friend’s heart, you know… No matter how cute your dimples are.”
Unusually for him, Cappie actually was caught a little off-guard by Delilah’s comment. He’d been having such fun, teasing and being teased, that he hadn’t expected the sudden mention of Em. A small frown creased his forehead momentarily until he adjusted his expression and rolled his eyes.
“Not you as well,” he sighed with overly dramatic exasperation. “Seriously, a guy tries to do the right thing and this is the thanks he gets.” He paused before fixing Delilah with a stern look - well, as stern as drunk Cappie could manage, which still somehow managed to look somewhat comical. “I swear to God, Delilah Moon, if you start calling me Crappie too, I’m taking the beer back.”
Delilah looked horrified, both at the nickname and the accusation that she would use it. “Who would go and call you something like--” She cut herself off abruptly. “Leo,” she said, answering her own unfinished question. She had no idea if her guess was correct, but she knew her flatmate had been here previously, and wouldn’t put it past him to adopt that sort of affectation, especially toward someone who may have mistreated his little sister.
Holding her hands up, she nodded toward her glass as she added, “I promise I will never call you anything like that, and you can even have the beer back if you don’t believe me.”
Cappie hadn’t expected her to take him so seriously. Although he didn’t like the nickname, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world they could do to him. Plus, he tended to give people his own nicknames in return. Rococo was his favourite at the moment.
“Actually, I think it was a joint Spinnet effort,” he said, waving away her offer to return the beer. “Well, three of them, anyhow.” He didn’t think Em would’ve had anything to do with it, except perhaps smiling along with her siblings’ joke. She was many, many things, that woman, but she absolutely was not mean.
“Anyway, I think it’s a bit harsh to say I broke her heart,” Cappie continued, after taking a big gulp of his beer. “I might have said the words and set the time scale but we both knew it was going to end eventually. Why wait for it to get messier?”
The advice columnist in Delilah wanted to immediately object. There were so many things wrong with his reasoning that she didn’t know where to start. She opened her mouth and closed it a few times while trying to decide how to respond, eventually taking a drink from her own beer before proceeding.
“Life is messy,” she began, taking a on a reasonable tone. “If it weren’t, it would be boring. And possibly filled with robots.” Although the comment made her chuckle, she quickly shook off the thought before she headed down a tangential rabbit-hole. “Besides, what about Bianca?” Surely the existence of a child between himself and Emilia had to mean something, even if he was unwilling to acknowledge that.
Life was messy and didn’t Cappie just know it?! He was in Atlantis while the love of his life was getting on with her ‘future’ back in Cyprus Rhodes or Washington or wherever the hell she was by now. The other girl he’d let himself have feelings for now was barely speaking to him, except when decency or custom called for it. And, on top of all that, he seemed to have inadvertently developed a weird crush on the girl… woman... he’d accidentally cheated on the former with. Saying that his life was messy was an understatement. Right now, boring sounded incredibly attractive. Still, he understood what Delilah was getting at. It was the very philosophy he lived for, after all. Fun, adventure, excitement, spontaneity, etcetera, etcetera.
Her question about Bianca sobered him a little however and a frown darkened his face. Bianca’s very existence had given Cappie a lot to think about. By his math, she was supposed to have been conceived sometime around April or May this year and, with all the crazy Atlantis shit that had been going on lately, that may well have really happened in this timeline if he hadn’t done something to make sure it didn’t. It wasn’t that he didn’t like or care about Bianca - he did, she was amazing and he still found it incredible that she was directly related to him - but there was no way he was ready to become a dad right now and he hands down refused to be the father that she’d experienced - the guy who stuck around just long enough to raise everyone’s expectations of him before leaving them all hanging when he fucked off before she was born. He was 90% sure that he never would have left her and Em if he’d had a choice in the matter but, as long as there was that 10% of doubt in his mind, he knew he’d done the right thing by breaking up with Em and making sure that the three of them weren’t set on that course.
“Have you spoken to Bee?” he asked, his eyes narrowed slightly, a challenge written on his features. “About what kind of a dad I was to her? I think using her as a method of championing mine and Em’s relationship is probably a mistake.” Despite the noise of the club and the fact that he and Delilah didn’t know each other that well, anyone would have been able to pick up on the fact that this wasn’t the happy-go-lucky Cappie she was talking to any more. If she’d thought that he’d taken the break up lightly, she’d been wrong. More than one heart had been severely bruised in the process.
“Anyway, are we done here?” he added, taking a sip of his beer. “I was having a good night.”
Delilah was not oblivious to the change in his demeanor, and she felt a little guilty for having caused it, although she did not regret her questions. There were more things she wished she had said first, but she resigned herself to ending the conversation before making things worse. Inclining her head, she raised her hands slightly in surrender to his defensive tone, and picked up her beer before stepping back. “Sorry for upsetting you. I’ll leave you to it, and hope your evening gets better.” Raising the glass, she added, “Thanks again for the drinks.”
As Delilah moved away from the table, she thought about how she could approach a conversation with him in the future. Perhaps next time there would be less alcohol. It certainly had a way of amplifying people’s moods-- for better or worse.
Cappie watched her go, a slightly pained look on his face as he cradled his beer bottle between his hands. He’d been rude to Delilah, he knew, and he regretted that even now, right afterwards, but it had had the desired effect. He didn’t want to talk any more about Em or Bee or Octavia or Casey. This was Singles’ Night and, whatever the reason, he was single now. He was damn well going to enjoy himself.
Lifting his beer bottle to his lips, he swallowed down what was left of the liquid before placing the empty down on the table and stalking away, back into the crowd on the dance floor.