WHO: Alex Smith and Billie Trimble
WHAT: Catching up since Hogwarts
WHERE: Some dive bar
WHEN: Tonight
STATUS: Finishing in comments
Alcohol was a marvelous invention in more than one way. In fact, to one Alexandrakis Joseph Smith, alcohol had been marvelous in a wide variety of ways--specifically the ones which included forgetting the things that most needed forgetting. Things like image of the tears in his son's eyes mid-tantrum, demanding to know why his daddy couldn't stay there at mummy's, why one of them always had to go away, why his life was always in a constant state of picking-up and dropping-off and his parents were so different from all his friends'.
With a frustrated grunt, Alex shifted the glass to disturb Zac's imagined reflection in the dark liquid, just before throwing back the last of it. It had been a rough one, this time. Things weren't always this way, but it seemed like the older the kid got, the more aware he became, the more his questions demanded proper answers and the more frequently the constant parent shuffle was weighing on him.
Zac was too young to even understand that none of it was his fault. That was the guilt reserved solely for his father to carry upon his shoulders. On days like this, that guilt could be a lot.
Perhaps this was becoming a nasty habit for him; not that Alex was sure that he'd know a habit if he saw one. When you'd lived half your life overusing and leaning on various substances, it was sometimes difficult to draw the line between denial and reality. All he knew was that he didn't mope around this joint half as much as he popped the cap on the pill bottle on his nightstand, so he must have still been afloat--at least in that aspect of his self-control.
Maybe he'd have just one more, though, before calling it a night. He might be able to skip the pills tonight, if the rum could just put him well enough to bed on its own...
A series of popping sounds could barely be heard over the music that was playing throughout the bar, but they couldn't be ignored by the Quidditch player who had produced them with a few rolls of her neck. Her entire body felt stiff after a vigorous day of training, though while the rest of her team was packing up to go home, she had stayed a few more hours, finding that she wasn't quite ready to go back to her flat just yet. She knew she would wind up doing what she did almost every other night - she would go home, take a shower to try and relax her sore muscles, change into something more comfortable, and then sit around with her dog for a while before it became clear to her that she wasn't going to be able to sleep, despite her physical exhaustion. It was like clockwork lately, so she couldn't even be surprised when she found herself atop her usual bar stool, a glass of bourbon on the rocks placed in front of her.
She combed back some of her still damp hair from her face before she went back to rotating the glass, watching as the melting ice shifted, taking another sip before the drink got too watered down. Her other arm was busy being propped up on the bar, her hand cradling her head. She was only on her first glass, but she knew that it would take at least one more before she would be able to crawl into her bed and get some rest without tossing and turning the whole night. The first glass usually just helped her muscles relax, her shoulders not as stiff as they had been when she had first stepped into the bar that night. It was hard to tell, since she was wearing a baggy t-shirt and a pair of jeans that did little to compliment the athletic shape of her body; but she liked it that way - it meant there was less of a chance for people to recognize her as a player for the Arrows.
She didn't come to the bar for company, she came there because for some reason it felt less depressing than drinking by herself at her flat with no one but her dog, Echo, as company.
When her next drink came, she stared at it for a second before her brows furrowed together. There was no ice in the glass, and she lifted the drink to her nose, trying to identify what it was - sure as hell wasn't bourbon. Smelled more like rum, actually.
"'Scuse me." She called out to the tender, leaning forward a bit to get his attention. When he looked over, he looked perturbed - he was new.
"I think you gave me someone else's drink."
“That’d be mine.”
Shooting the liquid in his glass a foul glare, he set the mistaken drink back down on the countertop, wishing that he had had the forethought to smell it before he had taken a potent sip. It wasn’t as if any kind of liquor could really shock Alex’s system--in fact, he rather enjoyed all of it--but a shot was a shot, and without warning could at least trail a little unexpected fire down one’s throat.
Pushing the glass away, he nodded to the bartender. “Get the lady another one, on me,” he sighed. “I don’t think she wants to trade for the one I’ve already been tasting.”
As the bartender went for the bottle with an annoyed grunt, Alex crossed his arms over his chest and attempted to look as closed off as possible. It wasn’t that he was particularly anti-social, but tonight was really not the night for some girl to be getting ideas that he wanted company. If he could just settle the score with the woman on her own drink, down his second rum, and sneak out of there to drag himself into bed, he’d be content.
Well, even if she was the chatty type, the only things on his mind tonight were probably enough to send her running anyway, Alex thought with an empty smile. Girls in bars usually didn’t want to talk about the trials and tribulations of one’s relations with their ex-wife and small child.
Maybe she would just let it be, though. Maybe.
When Billie heard the voice speak up to claim the drink in front of her, those hazel eyes of hers shifted over from the bartender to the man the voice belonged to. A brow lifted when he ordered her another drink, to make up for the one he had already started sipping at. She looked back down at the rum that had been placed in front of her before she let out a sigh of her own and hopped off her bar stool, drink in hand. It was more than obvious that he didn't want company, based on his body language alone, and Billie could certainly appreciate that - she was usually found sitting with a fairly similar posture when she was at the bar, in order to keep blokes away, not wanting to give them the impression that she was just some lonely girl going to a bar to have someone buy her a drink as though it was a ticket into her bed.
It would have been a lie to say that there had been some nights where it had worked - nights when she had a bit too much to drink, and she needed a release for energy that couldn't be expelled on a quidditch field. Her one night stands weren't something she was proud of, but she didn't have a good track record for actual relationships. Actually, she couldn't think of one that had lasted longer than what she had with Thomas, and even that wasn't something that could fairly be classified as a relationship. They had an arrangement that had worked for the both of them until he had found someone he did want to date. She didn't think she'd care as much as she did, though she'd be damned if he ever found out she had developed feelings for him.
If being alone was depressing, being the only one out of two people who actually cared was worse. Having to see them every day wasn't something that made it easier.
She stepped past the few stools that separated them, placing the untouched glass of rum down on the counter before she slid it over so that it was in front of him. She was about to walk away again when she found herself studying his profile for a moment. He looked so damn familiar, though she couldn't place her finger on why. Maybe Hogwarts, though her years at school had kind of been a blur after everything that happened with her family.
"...do I know you?"
Once the question was out of her mouth she found herself immediately regretting it. She knew how fucking annoying it was to be approached in bars having people tell her how familiar she looked, though that was because they usually saw her face on a poster around town, promoting the Arrows. She always told them no, just to avoid being trapped in a conversation she wanted no part of. She rubbed at her forehead before giving him an apologetic smirk. "Never mind, forget I said anything. Enjoy your drink."
Well, there went that wish, Alex thought with disdain as he picked up on the sound of a woman’s footsteps approaching and finally stopping behind the stool next to him. He made it a point to keep his head down looking at his fresh rum and his right hand shoved into his pocket, the other clutched around the glass. Giving off an audible sigh in hopes that it would help get his unwillingness to converse across just a touch more, he actually realized he had managed to avoid acknowledging the lady was there at all for an admirable amount of time, considering that she was standing right next to him. That was, until she decided that she just had to talk to him--
He grunted a response, half derisive laugh and half annoyance, at her question. She wasn’t a very creative one, was she? If he had a sickle for every time he’d heard that line from a girl in a dark bar...
Alex finally looked up, about to let the alcohol do his talking and tell her to bugger off, when the words suddenly tumbled off the tip of his tongue and into oblivion. Because he did know her--or at least he thought he did, from somewhere that he couldn’t immediately put his finger on, and--feck, what was it?
In the midst of his wracking his brain, however, he noticed that she was already turning to walk away, having said something--probably an apology--that he had been too preoccupied to hear.
“Wait a minute!” Like lightbulb going off in his head, he suddenly knew. “Billie? Gryffindor, ‘77?”
Or he could be totally wrong and have just looked like an idiot.
Billie stopped in her tracks when he told her to wait, though she didn't turn around again until he spoke her name. Even when she did it was a slow turn to acknowledge him over her shoulder, her hair falling into her face as she gave a nod to let him know that he was correct, lifting a hand to tuck some of it behind her ear. He had remembered her name, and even her house, so now when she was looking at him she was trying to imagine him in red and gold cloaks. When it finally clicked, she turned to face him again.
"...Alex, right?"
She spoke cautiously, afraid that she might have been completely off with her guess. She hadn't many friends when she was in school, and hadn't spoken with too many people. She always assumed she was 'that girl' to a lot of her schoolmates, since she was far from a social butterfly. To be fair, most people didn't really know how to approach her - a lot of the girls she shared a dorm with were privy to the fact that she had terrible dreams that woke her up in the middle of the night, or that she was prone to getting crippling headaches that sometimes meant having to stay in the medical ward instead of attending class - that was her legacy at Hogwarts, so she had to wonder if he remembered any of that when he remembered her name. At least he didn't recognize her from the posters - that would have made it much more difficult for her to try and place his name.
"I would have felt like an idiot if I had just approached some stranger in a dark bar, thinking I once knew them."
She admitted with a sheepish smirk, once again tucking her hair behind her ear. Saying that she knew Alex was a little stretch of the truth, but they had gone to school together, and had taken classes together - that had to count for something, right?
Alex nodded silently in response. Now that he had gone and opened this can of worms, he realized that he had no idea what to say to her. What he remembered of Billie--which, given that she wasn’t one of the many female classmates he’d screwed, wasn’t much--was laying just out of reach in the recesses of his mind. Like most of his recollection of his Hogwarts days, it was little more than a far-off memory now. He hadn’t even been out of school for a full ten years yet, but with everything he had gone through--everything the world had gone through--his carefree days spent inside the protection of the Hogwarts halls seemed like centuries ago.
He offhandedly hoped that she remembered as little of it as he did. But then again, she was actually speaking to him, so she must have at least forgotten some of his worse traits from back then.
Not that he was much better now, he reminded himself. If he were, he wouldn’t have been hanging around this joint in the first place.
Then he remembered something... something, but not from Hogwarts, somehow. Something more recent... like he had heard her name somewhere in the past few years...
“Waaait,” he began, drawing out the word as he thought, mid-sentence. If he was wrong, he was going to sound like an idiot. “Aren’t you a Quidditch player these days? Or--something like that, right?” She didn’t look exactly like a filthy rich athlete at the moment, and he doubted anyone like that would be hanging around in this place, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was famous for something or another.
So sue him if he’d been a little too preoccupied the past few years cheating on his wife and trying to raise a toddler to pay much attention to the Wireless.
One of her brows lifted at the word that seemed to go on for a little to long, though once he finally got to what he was trying to say she hesitated a moment before she nodded her head. As much as she didn't want to be recognized for her profession in the bar, she was still damn proud of the fact that she had made it onto a professional league. Quidditch was her passion, so she couldn't help the small smile that crept onto her lips as she answered. "Yeah, something like that." Her attention was torn away from him as the bartender set her drink down on the counter where she was standing, next to Alex. She reached for the glass, not even sniffing it to make sure it was hers this time. At this point she really didn't care, and she didn't want to argue with the surly tender.
Her attention was back on Alex, making it a point not to sit next to him since she wasn't even sure if he wanted the company. He hadn't said as much, but she was familiar with his body language - the hunched shoulders, avoiding eye contact with everyone around you. He hadn't wanted to be bothered, so she wouldn't intrude on his personal space for very long, God forbid she needed to get back up and walk over to the other side within a couple of seconds anyway. That would have been far more awkward.
"Are you a fan of Quidditch?"
It was her attempt at adding to the conversation, wondering if she had only seen her face on posters or if he actually followed the sport.
