May 10th, 1891 - Black's

They were fifteen days from Cash’s twenty-fifth birthday, which meant that they were fifteen days from the fourth anniversary of Eli’s death. Cash knew it was approaching because of course he did, and he knew that the closer they got the worse he would feel — right now he was just full of trepidation, and the sense that something was coming, but he had not done anything about it yet. Also, a question: should he warn Greengrass now, or just wait and see and maybe this time he would be fine?

There was also the conversation they’d had just three days ago. Cash wasn’t sure how much Ford remembered it, which was a problem because — he’d told Cash he wouldn’t mind him as a brother in law, and then he’d told Cash his family had no money, and then they had sort of hung out while touching each other in the bottom of a rowboat for a while. And it was very possible that Ford didn’t remember it at all.

He’d come to Black’s anyways, and they were doing what they usually did, at least on the surface. But there were exceptions, here: Cash was smoking a cigarette, although absently, and Greengrass seemed — angry. Not at Cash, or if it was at Cash then he was hiding it well, but definitely angry at something. If Cash had to pick a word, it would have been sulky.

So he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask, but he did: ”...Anything weird at work today?”

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Reuben Crouch Fortitude Greengrass

  

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MJ made this!

It was so damn patronizing, was the worst thing. Ford had been thinking about this almost endlessly since he'd first seen the news in the paper on Saturday so he'd had ample time to determine which part was the worst part, though admittedly he'd changed his opinion several times. On Saturday the worst part had seemed to be that Macnair had invited him in the first place, because he had to have already been at least planning on proposing to someone — it didn't happen overnight, deciding to get married. He certainly shouldn't have told Ford to stay afterwards, or to come back Wednesday evening to do the same thing. What was the point of fucking cuddling and kissing afterwards if he was actually interested in someone else? Why nibble Ford's lower lip and whisper mine? So that was the worst part of it: setting it up like that, giving Ford all of these false starts, when he knew it was destined to end so abruptly.

By Sunday Ford had convinced himself that it wasn't really Macnair's fault for setting him up with expectations, but his own fault for having them. Obviously Macnair didn't like him, couldn't like him. Asking him to stay the night afterwards was just a pretense, maybe politeness; maybe he'd been hoping Ford would turn him down and it was only Ford's own inexperience that had seen him staying through to the morning, because he couldn't take a hint and leave when he was supposed to. Maybe it was just getting off, to Macnair, and it had been stupid for Ford to ever think otherwise. At that point the worst thing shifted — it wasn't anything Macnair had done when they'd been together, but rather what he hadn't done since. They'd had plans to see each other on Monday, and after the news broke it seemed like the very least Macnair could have done to cancel them himself, rather than just ignoring everything and hoping Ford was smart enough to pick up on the hint this time.

That was why he'd sent the letter, right before dinner; Ford felt wronged and he wanted Macnair to feel a little guilty about it, even if he didn't care about Ford or his feelings or his expectations at all. It had never once occurred to Ford, until Macnair's return letter, that their meeting might not have been canceled. And that, of course, immediately became the worst thing. Why would he want to see Macnair, after that? Why would he want to talk to him about what had just happened? He didn't need someone to let him down gently (or rather, it might have been nice but it was a week too late). He didn't need an explanation of how little Macnair cared about anything they'd done last week or how fucking in love he was with this girl Ford barely remembered from school. He certainly didn't want to hear a word about how great she was, or about Macnair's plans, or any stupid shit like that. But he'd agreed to go, after much deliberation. He'd agreed mostly because of the sheer audacity of it. If Macnair was going to be so utterly unashamed about all of this, part of Ford wanted to show up and tell him exactly what a fucking ass he was, although of course he knew that wasn't what was going to happen when he went. Macnair was going to pull some patronizing, stupid lines and Ford was going to sit there and nod and say yeah, sure, I get it, good luck to you and your fiancée and then go home feeling like shit about it.

So needless to say he was in a bad mood, and he supposed it must have been obvious, because Lestrange was asking about work as though he expected Ford to tell him the Ministry had collapsed today. "No," he admitted, shifting in his chair and flicking his thumb angrily against the stem of his wine glass. "It's not a work thing. Sorry." He considered leaving it there, but there was still a vague question in the air, so he added dourly, "I'm supposed to meet someone after this and I don't really want to."

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Set by Lady!

Cash fidgeted with the cigarette in his fingers, feeling awkward for having asked. After all, the things Greengrass did with his free time weren’t really any of his business — they were friends, or something like it, but most of their emotional intimacy came from Cash having generated a dementor, not from some choice on Greengrass’ part. And the alcohol the other night, for whatever that was worth.

”Oh,” Cash said, not sure what to do with this once it was revealed. He also wasn’t sure he related to this problem &mdash, with the exception of people he was related to, Cash could usually very easily avoid anyone he didn’t want to deal with, because he was aloof and because he did not particularly care if people knew it.

”Well — do you have to?”

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MJ made this!

Ford let out a little huff and looked down at his wine glass, lower lip pushed out just slightly in a frown. The answer was no, of course — just as he hadn’t had to go to Macnair’s empty house in London last week in the first place — but it wasn’t exactly that simple, either. What was he supposed to do, just go back home after this and keep being bitter about it in his room all night? That was the only thing he’d be doing if he didn’t go. And — he sort of wanted to know what Macnair was going to say for himself, even if he was already sure he wouldn’t like it, and that knowing wouldn’t help him feel less angry about this anytime soon. He still wanted to know.

“I guess not,” Ford admitted, in a dull, defeated tone that left very little doubt he would still be going.

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Set by Lady!

Cash took a drag of his cigarette before he could respond, and had half an impulse to blow a smoke ring at Ford — he stifled it, if only because he didn’t want Ford to think that Cash was poking fun at him when he was already so clearly in some kind of mood.

The mood was unlike him, too — Cash should have brought something else up, to distract him. Ghosts, probably.

”Maybe it’ll go well,” he tried instead. Cash was already filing this interaction under things that were a little weird about Greengrass, and maybe he would figure it out eventually. He would like to figure it out.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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MJ made this!

Ford sighed rather hopelessly at that. “It’s not that kind of meeting,” he said, swirling his wine in his glass listlessly. He hadn’t had much to drink, yet; it was more of a prop at this point. His stomach still hadn’t entirely recovered from Friday night yet — or, it probably had, but Ford didn’t feel like it had and the idea of drinking too much on a nearly empty stomach made him preemptively queasy. He’d hardly had anything to eat at dinner, because he’d been distracted by the whole thing with Macnair and his letter and whether or not he would write back. Not an ideal night for drinking, really, but people didn’t come to the club and just sit around with nothing in their hands. Ford would rather have had a glass of wine he was barely touching than one of Lestrange’s cigarettes, at any rate.

“I already know how it ends,” he continued, tone tense. “So it’s a pointless meeting, is what it is. Just so someone can tell me what I already know.”

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Set by Lady!

Cash didn’t know what to do with this; he had never been very good at offering advice, especially not in the last few years, especially not to people who were by all accounts nice and normal. He was worried about saying the wrong thing, or more specifically — saying something that might make Greengrass like him less. And it wasn’t like Greengrass had asked for advice. This weird conversation felt like the exact opposite of being stuck in the bottom of the boat on Friday night, and it was Cash’s fault, because he’d asked about it.

”Oh,” he said, unable to keep a vague layer of concern out of his voice. ”Well — I’m sorry.” There, maybe that was the right thing to say, no advice, just sympathy. He could manage this.

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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MJ made this!

Ford’s shoulders sagged just the tiniest bit at the unexpected apology, not enough that anyone outside of this conversation would have noticed it. Obviously none of this was Cash’s fault, but there was something vaguely reassuring in having someone say something sympathetic all the same, even if Cash had no idea what Ford was even talking about. It took a little bit of the anger out of him (just the tiniest bit) to have someone acknowledge that this sucked, even in vague terms.

“I’ve got no one to blame but myself, really,” he said in a rather pitiful tone, before he could think better of it. It was stupid to go see Macnair in the first place. Stupid to agree to spend the night afterwards. Stupid to do it a second time or to make plans for a third. Stupid to think that he could just do that and expect anything good to come of it. It was probably for the best that it was ending so abruptly, come to think of it, because as angry as he was now he expected he would have been even more crushed if he’d been seeing Macnair for weeks or months before he was blindsided by an announcement like this. And it was inevitable, he supposed, because Macnair hadn’t cared about cuddling through the night with him and he wanted to marry and — and this was a match much desired by his mother, which, like, what the fuck?

“Witch Weekly thinks there’s some magical curse in your family,” he told Cash rather bluntly. “And that’s why so many of your cousins are getting married to each other.”

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   Cassius Lestrange

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Set by Lady!

A weird meeting he didn’t want to go to, and he knew how it was going to go, and it was his own fault. Cash again had an impulse to ask more about this, but he didn’t know what to do about it — because he’d pried more than he meant to alread, and he didn’t want to make Ford talk about anything he didn’t want to talk about.

He was so startled by the question about his family, in the rest of all of this, that he ground his cigarette out in the ashtray. Cash steadied his gaze so that he was looking at Greengrass — he was stifling his first instinct, which was to look and see if any of his male relatives were here, or nearby, or listening.

It was a shame that Ford was asking about this in Black’s as opposed to anywhere else, because Cash had some great lines about being weird and inbred, but he wasn’t going to say anything about that here.

”I hadn’t heard that,” Cash said after a beat, which was true — he tended to remain slightly out of the loop on the regular news, so never mind Witch Weekly. ”But it really doesn’t have to do anything with a curse.” As far as he was aware, at least — actually, Cash could say that with confidence, because if there was a curse then Ellory would have slipped and told him by now.

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MJ made this!

At no point had Ford ever seriously believed that it would have anything to do with a curse. He knew Witch Weekly was unreliable on their best of days, and this didn’t even seem like one of their better efforts. Weird old-money pureblood families might have strange customs, but cursing their own children? It didn’t make any sense, and even if it was true it wouldn’t have explained why Macnair hadn’t just fucking told him. Unless this was some sort of curse-within-a-curse that prevented anyone from talking about it, but even then, Macnair had clearly told someone that he was engaged, because it was printed in plain black and white in the bloody Prophet.

“No, of course it doesn’t,” he said, with more bitterness in his tone than he had any reasonable explanation for. Ford was aware that he was causing a minor scene, at this point, and he was lucky that it was only Cash Lestrange he was talking to, but he still needed to get a handle on himself — he couldn’t afford to be notably pissed off at the Lestrange family for no explicable reason.

“Sorry,” he said to Lestrange, rather genuinely — Cash of all people did not deserve to be on the receiving end of his impotent frustration at Macnair. “I should’ve canceled tonight. I thought I’d be better at — not thinking about it,” he admitted. He usually was very good at compartmentalizing, but this had gotten under his skin in a way that very little had been able to do.

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Set by Lady!

Cash bit down on the inside of his cheek. He didn’t think he could safely sit here if Ford was irritated at the Lestranges, which it seemed like — he might be? And Cash could understand that well enough, but he couldn’t handle it here, in a club where nearly all his male relatives were members, and where he got a weird miserable lunch with Lucius once a week. Not when his birthday was in two weeks, when it was taking this much focus to school his expression into something neutral, and Ford hadn’t managed to say anything that provocative at all.

(Was this what he would always be like, when people brought up the family? It was lucky that no one had said anything to him about Ellory when she was in the magazine, Cash thought — he’d only found out later.)

The apology at least interrupted his nerves. Cash tried for a smile, the polite wry thing he pulled out when he was about to try to be charming but his mind was turning over somewhere else. ”Don’t be sorry,” he said, ”And if you ever have to cancel, that’s fine.”

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MJ made this!

Ford sighed lightly at Cash’s response. “No, it’s not,” he responded, shaking his head and settling back in his chair as though he were suddenly weary. If these were the sorts of conversations Ford thought could be canceled on a whim, he wouldn’t have taken such care to schedule them in the first place. If Lestrange had just been another friend, they could have met up in the club or not and seen each other thrice a week or once a month depending on how things shook out, and that wouldn’t have been a big deal, but this was different. Ford had an obligation to Cash in a way that he didn’t have an obligation to his other friends. This was a good reminder of all of the reasons why it had been a mistake to see Macnair in the first place, honestly — Ford had known in the back of his mind that he didn’t really have time or extra energy to spend fooling around with someone, but now he felt tangibly how this whole sorry mess had impacted the rest of his life, and he didn’t like it.

“You deserve better than that. I was distracted last week and I’m all — wound up this week, and — I’m sorry.”

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Set by Lady!

The further they got from talking about the Lestranges the more comfortable Cash ought to be, but Ford was being so earnest about this that he still didn’t feel fully comfortable. He shifted in his seat like that would settle him. Among everything else he wanted to ask about, another question had occurred to him: What’s your deal with my family? Because if Greengrass had a problem with the Lestranges, that was — not great. He knew too much about Cash. And Cash had sworn an Unbreakable Vow, so a word to the wrong person would very literally get him killed. It was certainly — almost certainly — nothing nearly so dire, but it was something, and Cash reached one hand into the pocket of his trousers to thumb at the surface of his pocketwatch.

But Ford was being earnest and Ford was apologizing, and there wasn’t any real danger here, just Cash’s fight or flight that activated when he thought too hard about his family. ”You’re alright,” he said, ”Really. Don’t worry about it.”

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MJ made this!

Ford didn’t really feel he had apologized adequately, because these conversations were supposed to be different from just any old conversation — they were supposed to be like anchors, things that were enjoyable even if nothing else was, things that were real even if nothing else was, things that didn’t hurt even if everything else did. And maybe that was a bit ambitious, to think that he could provide that sort of support for Cash, but he’d decided to try, back when he’d been sitting across the table from Cash while they both picked at bowls of curry Ford had insisted they buy. And whether he was up for the task in general or not, he certainly knew he couldn’t be doing a very good job of it if he was showing up in a mood like this.

So he didn’t think the apology had really covered it all, but he also didn’t know what else to say. “Alright,” he settled on eventually, taking a small sip of his wine. “Let’s talk about something else, then.”

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   Cassius Lestrange

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Set by Lady!