Early 1880ish — The Hawthorn House

They were going to be married in a few days. Marion and Ned. It felt like a countdown to doomsday, except Nick had already been drowning since the engagement had been announced. He had intended to studiously avoid them both since then, but when Ned had finally confronted him, Nick had had no choice but to make his position clear. He loved Marion. And surely Marion had always known that, because she had always – he believed – loved him back.

But somehow all this had taken place, grotesquely, right before his eyes without his ever seeing the danger of it, the signs that the future was being warped away from what it should be. So, obviously – he had spent the length of their engagement avoiding the bookshop, taking out his bitterness on Ned when they both had to be there, and hardly being able to bear seeing Marion at all.

Had she noticed his distance, his absences? Had she even cared? Perhaps Ned had confessed to her the cause of their rift, and Nick’s brooding mood; perhaps he hadn’t. Maybe he had been afraid to bring it up, Nick considered, in case doing so prompted Marion to change her mind, after all.

(Nick had decided he would take her back, if she changed her mind now. He cared enough for her to grant her that – to forgive her one gross, unforgivable mistake. She just had to say the word.)

He wasn’t sure what he was doing here at dusk, exactly, but he’d had a drink to drown his sorrows after his day working at the bookshop (no Ned today, thank Merlin). If he had meant to apparate home after that, he had ended up on her doorstep instead. He had rung the bell – the housekeeper had said she wasn’t in. Wedding preparations, probably. Fortunately Nick had brought the rest of bottle with him, and he had nowhere else to be tonight. He loitered a ways along the street until he saw the carriage trundling towards their gates. No doubt the bride-to-be was one of the people returning – he stowed the bottle on a low brick wall and caught them as they were coming in. “Marion?” he called, just loud enough to catch her attention. “Marion.”

---

Marion Flourish

  

---

The final preparations for her wedding had both been both exhilarating and - to put it plainly - annoying. There was no other word for it. In all the books that Marion had read throughout her (admittedly young) life, there was no other horribly accurate word to describe planning her wedding with her future mother-in-law other than annoying. The flowers were the wrong type of flower, the linens she chose were the wrong color, she’d chosen music that reminded her future mother-in-law of the music played at her late-future-grandmother-in-law’s funeral oh and by the by, regarding the appliqués on her veil that she’d had chosen, was she sure she wanted those flowers?

By the end of the afternoon, her head was ready to absolutely explode and she was nursing a throbbing headache. She needed a Drought of Peace or at the very least something to quell urges to throttle the elder Mrs. Flourish with her heaviest encyclopedia. The rattling of the carriage on the way home did little to help, and Marion stayed silent all the way home while her maid read her book. (Quinnie hadn’t even been permitted to read while Marion was trying on her dresses, so Marion was all too happy to let her do so in peace).

She was nodding off, succumbing to the invisible person taking a hammer to the back of her head, when she heard a voice calling her name. A familiar voice. She jerked her head up, her gaze immediately landing on a familiar figure to match to the familiar voice.

“Nikesh!” She blurted out, and immediately called for the carriage to stop. Perhaps it was the fact that she was overtired and completely caught off guard by the appearance of her old friend but Marion threw open the carriage door and only realized when she stumbled to the ground that it had barely stopped moving before she’d flung herself from it. It was no matter, though. She ran to her old friend, eyes blazing.

“Nick, it really is you!” She exclaimed, flinging her arms around him in a hug. “Where on Earth have you been?” She demanded before pulling back.

  

He almost wished he hadn’t put down the bottle, as if it might have shielded him from Marion’s embrace, all her painful enthusiasm as she sprang from the carriage. Whether desperate or unwilling, he tucked his arms around her as she clung on for a moment. Was she so glad to see him just because they were old friends? Was that really all she felt?

“Oh?” he asked roughly, as though he were surprised at the question, that she had even noticed he had been absent in all the whirlwind of her engagement, her wedding preparations. (Had Ned not mentioned his encounter with Nick, what Nick had confessed to him? Of course not – Ned was probably as afraid of Marion changing her mind as Nick was hopeful that she might.) He gazed at her, half-belligerent, half-imploring. “Does that mean you missed me?”

---

  

---

He was…more gruff than she’d last remembered. Merlin, had it really been that long? There was something about the air around him that seemed to solidify and vibrate at the same time, and it set Marion a step back as she looked at him. “Of - of course I've missed you!” She replied, eyes scanning over him and finally landing on the bottle he’d set on the pavement.

She frowned. “Nick, have you been drinking?” She squinted at him, suddenly being able to place that odd energy around him and something stirred in her gut.

  

Well spotted, Nick thought acidly, as she either saw the bottle he’d brought or caught the whiff of alcohol on him.

As if she had missed him. If she hadn’t wanted to miss him, perhaps she ought not to have agreed to marry his best fucking friend behind his back, then. “Could have fooled me,” he said, his eyes not leaving her face even as she took that cowardly step back. He let out a short, bitter laugh, and stepped closer to her to erase any progress away from him she had made. He put a sarcastic finger to his cheek to ask: “And what could have possibly driven me to drink, Marion, do you think?”

Plenty of things in life could have sent him spiralling for a day or two, maybe – but nothing else in the world could have wounded him like this.

---

  

---

His dark eyes bored into her, and Marion blinked, her gaze shifting to over his shoulder then back again as she fiddled with her shawl. He clearly wanted something from her, but with all the racing that her mind was doing, she couldn’t fathom what his motives were. “What are you talking about Nikesh?” She forced out, feeling nervous from the intensity radiating off him in waves.

There was something he obviously wanted to tell her - something that he wanted her to say to him. “Why would I know what could have driven you to drink?” Possibly, being the operative word here, and Marion still felt tense as she threw his question back at him.

  

She was playing dumb, like Ned had – but how could Marion do the same, and pretend there had never been anything between them, all these years? She had done nothing but encourage him, and Nick had supposed they had all the time in the world to carry on as they were, until he was a few years older, had saved up enough to buy her house, but – he had never had the chance, because she had already somehow, absurdly, settled for Ned! (Never mind that he liked Ned, and that until their engagement he would have said Ned was the best man in the world.)

He wanted to rage. He wanted to cry. To throw up his hands in despair – or just to throw up, generally. To start tearing out chunks of his hair as she looked at him that way, like he was a stranger, like she was nervous to be around him. “I’m talking about us. You and me, Marion. What happened to us?” He cried – the drunkenness was making him louder than he meant to be. “It’s not too late!” he said, grasping her upper arm suddenly as the plan sparked in his mind, that she could still throw out her plans with Ned. It would be better for everyone in the long run, wouldn’t it? “Marry me instead.”

---

  

---

He was getting close. Too close. And he smelled of liquor, sharp and cloying, and it was making her nauseous but she hadn’t been able to put any distance between them just yet. Marion stared at him, her mouth open in a small ‘o’. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders, her eyes flitting over his shoulders. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks as his expression seemed to grow more and more agitated.

And then he’d seized her arm (she recoiled from this, feeling something tighten in her chest as she stared at his desperate, handsome face) he’d anchored her into place and she couldn’t move and — dear Merlin was he mad?!

Marion’s jaw nearly dropped completely at his proposition. No, his demand. “W-what?!” Gaze flitting from his hand on her arm to the fire in his expression, Marion tried to jerk away from him, struggling with her shawl that had dropped onto the pavement. “Nick you aren’t making one bit of sense…” She stammered out, her hand descending on his, her fingers working desperately at his own to remove his grip from her arm.

  

This was – like a bad joke. Both of them were pretending they had been blind to him all along, like they had no idea how the universe ought to have unfolded: with him and Marion, sweethearts from school, marrying in another year or so, settling down happily. How many women were there in the world? How many men? And out of everyone on earth the two people he loved best in the world had both agreed to betray him.

So no amount of alcohol could drown out the bitter taste of gall in his mouth, just from looking at her, at the way she had just recoiled from him, flinching away as if she couldn’t wait to get away from him. She was prising him off her, and he didn’t dare grip her any more tightly, but her shawl had just dropped to the floor so he put a foot on the corner of it, as if she wouldn’t leave without it, as if that would be enough to keep her here to listen to reason. “I’m not making sense?” Nick echoed, letting go of her in sheer frustration as her pretence of obliviousness and letting out a scathing, scornful laugh. “Why him, then? Explain it to me. What does he have that I don’t? Tell me you don’t love me, Marion,” he challenged, still gazing at her, fierce and uncomprehending. “Because I swear we – I know you do.” Didn’t they have all the history? Back since they had met in school, hadn’t they been inseparable? Hadn’t he made it very clear he didn’t want to be without her? Didn’t she care that he loved her more than anyone else could?

Would she even dare admit it now, or was she just going to be cruel enough to lie to his face?

---

  

---