February 8th, 1891 — The Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade

Spryly walked into The Three Broomsticks, stood in the doorway for barely twenty seconds, and immediately turned around and left again. How was he supposed to drink away his problems after work like a responsible adult when he hadn't been paid yet and he was employed at the more affordable drinking establishment? He should've stayed in London, now he was trapped here because he couldn't apparate and while he finally had chimney access he'd been told he had to buy his own damn floo powder. He could get drunk at the Hog's Head, sure, but he didn't trust his mouth not to get him fired. As it was he was on borrowed time, he had no idea how to cook and someone was bound to notice sooner or later.

As the door closed behind him, he clocked someone walking directly towards him - or rather the door. He kept his eyes cast down and started walking very slowly towards them. Fuck it, he'd made it a strict policy not to shit where he ate but he needed a damn drink and he didn't have the energy to be charismatic enough to compensate for his shabby appearance and charm his way into a free drink.

His hand was already halfway into the man's pocket when recognition tugged at his periphery. He looked up and after a double take, was horrified to find that his hand was in the pocket of Cassius Lestrange. Shit. Shit. Fuck. Shit. "'Lo," he squeaked. Painfully aware that his hand had frozen in place and was actively incriminating him. "Long... time no..." He sheepishly started to retract his hand. Would it be better or worse if he made a run for it?

---

Cash didn't really like The Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade sometimes made him feel itchy, but he'd ended up here with a teammate after practice and it felt rude to leave right away. So: The Three Broomsticks, and he was nursing a whiskey neat, because even though he didn't really drink whiskey anymore he was not going to order red wine at The Three Broomsticks. He was done with his drink and had started to execute his escape route home when he felt the sensation of a hand in his trouser pocket looked into the face of an attempted criminal.

If he was surprised to see Spryly, his expression didn't show it - (he was surprised to see Spryly, though perhaps not as surprised as he should have been that Spryly was trying to rob him.) His eyebrows were furrowed, though, in an expression of confused concern.

"Wrong pocket for my wallet, I'm afraid," Cash said.

---

"Oh, what's that doin' there?!" he said with exaggerated surprise. The pretense was the only way he could handle his embarrassment short of running away. He laughed uncomfortably and brandished his guilty hand. "I think it's cursed y'know, it's like it 'as a mind of its own!" He doubted he was actually convincing him but forced laughter was as close as he could get to yelling into the void.

"S-sorry, 'bout that!" Spryly chuckled again and sounded a little deranged. "How's... Things?" Distract, distract, distract.

---

"You're going to get yourself in trouble some day," Cash admonished; if Spryly was going to commit petty crimes, then he ought to be better at it. Certainly he needed to sound less unhinged when he was caught.

"I'm fine," Cash added, almost as an afterthought, because answering questions was the polite thing to do. "And yourself?" He slipped his hands into their respective coat pockets, and held onto his wallet, just in case. He liked Spryly well enough, but he wasn't going to let him rob him because of it.

---

He slid his hands sheepishly into his own pockets where they'd stay until he forgot his embarrassment or had to use them for something that wasn't theft. "As y'say, trouble!" He chuckled but it still didn't sound right, he didn't sound crazed anymore at least but it was hollow and strained. He'd meant it jokingly, twisting his own words to suggest that he'd been up to mischief rather than being in actual serious trouble although the latter was closer to the truth.

"I 'eard you made it to the World Cup?" Spryly still wasn't completely over that missed opportunity and it hurt every time he thought about the World Cup that summer but he was numb to it enough by now that it was preferable to the gnawing embarrassment still churning in the pit of his stomach.

---

This was a weird time and place to be making small talk, but Cash couldn't decide: did he want to leave, or did he want to continue trying to get a measure of the chaotic little blond man in front of him? (It was lost on Cash that he and Spryly were the same height; Spryly was smaller if only in spirit.)

"Yeah," he said, "I did." Cash considered. "I'll buy you a drink if you promise not to try to rob me?"

---

Going "home" was incredibly tempting, it'd probably make the embarrassment go away faster but he couldn't intoxicate himself unless he did it on Lestrange's coin. It probably wouldn't go down well if he took advantage of the man's generosity but at least if he was drunk he'd forget to have a sense of shame until later. "You 'ave my word." He smiled uneasily before adding, "If it means anythin'."

---

"We can pretend it does," Cash said, gesturing for Spryly to follow him into a booth. He slid in across from the younger man and double-checked for his wallet again. "What do you want to drink?" he asked.

---

Spryly might have been more hung up on 'we can pretend it does' if the welcoming embrace of the booth was like heaven itself cupping his ass cheeks. Merlin's beard he needed this. "I'd happily drink cats piss right now," he gushed without really thinking. He realized he was grinning like an elated idiot and Lestrange would probably think he'd lost his senses completely.

He wiped the silly look off his face. "Anythin' with a good kick is fine." The quicker he was drunk the better. "And uh, thanks."

---

Cash eyed Spryly with a vague note of concern and ordered him a whiskey - as an afterthought, he ordered a second, even though there was something about whiskey that usually had him feeling headachey the morning after. "You're welcome," Cash said, more on automatic than out of a real sense of politeness.

"Are you, uh, all right?"

---

The question took him aback for a moment, the surprise unfortunately plain as day on his face. No one had asked him that in a long time and he hadn't wanted to stop and think about the answer in almost as long. After a delay that felt longer to Spryly than it had actually been he forced a weak smile onto his face. "Course I am. Never been better. Got a new job 'n everything'." No amount of wishful thinking could let him unhear how hollow his words sounded. It sounded so false he felt as though he was actively insulting Lestrange's intelligence. He slid his face into his hands and kneaded his brow line with his fingertips. He sighed. "Pretend I didn' just tell you the biggest fuck off lie, will ya?" If he stopped lying to himself it'd all catch up with him and he wasn't ready to stop running from it all yet. Of course he never would be because the longer he ran the bigger the monster chasing him grew and the less equipped he was to confront it. What good would it do anyway?

Spryly lowered his hands and forced another smile that didn't reach his eyes. "How was the world cup then, eh?" Goddamn why was that the first thing on his mind, he didn't want to hear about the missed opportunity of a lifetime that he was still beating himself up over. At least if he'd turned up to try outs he could've known decisively whether or not it was meant to be. Now he'd never know for sure.

---

"All right," Cash said simply, because if he understood anything, he understood the need to let people have their fuck off lies and be left alone about it. The next question Spryly asked was easier for him to handle, even though he was sure it was also sort of loaded, given that Spryly hadn't shown up to the tryouts: "It was good, I guess? Sort of odd."

---

"Odd?" He was grinning and half chuckled but there was a barely detectable undercurrent of bitterness. He shouldn't have asked, he really didn't want to think about it, but it had also been the first thing, the easiest thing that came to mind. It was like so sick part of him wanted to be tortured.

---

This wasn't something he wanted to talk about with Spryly, under the circumstances, but Cash couldn't think of a way to change the subject other than the shortness he'd used already. At least the waiter had come back with their whiskeys. "I mean, someone did die," he offered, as an answer; the dead woman was an easier explanation than the answer that Cash had a hard time keeping himself on and focused for that long.

---

Spryly had been so mired in his regret over the QWC that in the moment he'd completely forgotten that a woman had died. That said he wouldn't have thought 'odd' would be the word to describe it but then he hadn't been there, had he? "S'pose that'd do it," he replied, hoping to quickly draw a line under the quidditch talk before he went and drowned himself in a keg of beer a little too literally. "Heard you played well though?"

---

Cash shrugged. "Well, we lost the final," he said with a shrug, "But other than that, sure." He didn't think that Spryly wanted to talk about this but there were not exactly any other safe conversation areas when the other man's life was so clearly garbage and also he had tried to rob him fifteen minutes ago. "Are you working?"

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