AN: So, this thing shouldn't have been written at all, but Starkiller kinda dared me to, and the Weasleys wouldn't get out of my head, so plainly I had to write it. It isn't meant to be great, it isn't even meant to be good, I just had to get it out of my head and get some creative juices flowing. It's a roller-coaster of emotions most soap operas can't compare with, and there's most likely some out-of-characterness some places, but let's just flow with it now. It takes place after the 28th chapter of Twin Vice Paranormal Detectives and the situation is based of a lot of events there. Nox belongs to Starkiller, and the rest belongs to Rowling. (Maybe I'll add ANs to the rest of the chapters, which vary in length, sometimes later.) The title of the story is simply because a good deal of it seems to take place in the kitchen, so if someone got a better suggestion, please suggest!

Now, ladies and gentlemen, faster your seat belts, this is gonna be a wild ride!


George entered the kitchen of Weasley Manor, expecting to be left alone at such a late hour, only to find Nox sitting by the table, her elbows on the rough surface of it and cradling a tea cup between pale hands.

"Bit late, isn't it?" he tried carefully, since the smell of tea hadn't reached his nose, but rather the strong smell of whisky.

"Bit late," she repeated and sniffed. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose running slightly. "Bit old to be doing stupid things, too."

"Ah, never too old for that," he retorted half-cheerily, displaying the bottle of Firewhisky he had held hidden behind his thigh since discovering her. "Care to join me?"

"It'll be you joining me," she said flatly, not looking up from the cup. "But feel free." He quickly got a glass and pulled out a chair, in the process discovering where she had hidden her bottle. It was plainly not her first cup-full; he remembered the bottle having been opened, but definitively not half-empty. He sat down and decided he might as well help her empty the first bottle before opening the one he had brought.

"So what stupid things have you got up to lately?" he asked after they had sipped in silence for a few minutes and she had refilled the china cup. She hunched her shoulders at the question. "Anything to do with your Gran? You didn't behead her or anything, did you?"

"No," she answered, anger boiling just under the surface.

"Did Fred try to behead her, then? I know he's getting tired of being the only dead person around." He raised his glass to take another sip, then carefully set it down again as he saw the murderous look in her eyes. "So Fred did do something?"

"No!" Her hands tightened on the cup and he quickly swallowed what was left in his glass, if she was going to get violent he might as well get a bit of anaesthesia first. She'd got such a good head start he doubted it would impair his movement enough to make him an easy victim in a fight.

"So... he didn't do something and you're angry about it?" he ventured carefully, knowing he was on thin ice whatever the answer was.

"Yes!" she almost screamed and sat the cup hard down on the table.

"And he should've done it," he answered, in the hope that a statement would make him sound less clueless.

"No, he bloody shouldn't!" She got ready to hurl the cup at the wall, but he grabbed her wrist firmly before she could get close to completing the motion.

"You really shouldn't," he said firmly, brows lowered, and eyes firmly fixed on hers, as if she was a small child throwing a tantrum. She let him set the cup down again, aware his fingers were digging into her wrist, and not able to break the gaze he held her with, and that she must have looked like a scared child in those seconds before the china touched the wood again. Whatever reason for not throwing the cup, it was a good one, and after what she'd seen in the wizard world she wasn't about to question his judgement. "Now, what did my air-headed brother not do, that he shouldn't have done anyway?"

"Nothing." Her shoulders hunched up to her ears again.

"Nothing?" He raised his brows and leaned back. "Nothing, really?"

"Maybe he should have, but he didn't, and I shouldn't have either, in the first place," she said, hardly aware she said the words before they were out.

"Yes, well, that makes it all that much clearer." He ran a hand through his hair and filled both the glass and cup again, maybe some lubrication would make the whole tale come forward. Or it could make her even less coherent, but probably lead to some sort of stupor in the end, meaning he didn't have to deal with her sorrows while drowning his own.

"I kissed him!" she burst out at last and covered her face with her hands.

"Who, Fred?" George asked, quickly gaining interest. At least it was a very good distraction. Nox groaned miserably. "You mean, a quick peck on the cheek, or downright sno..." The way her body sagged together on the chair supplied the answer. "Good Merlin." She moaned.

"And he didn't return it. He did not return it." She came out from behind her hands to take a new gulp of whisky.

"Well, why wou–" George quickly converted what he was about to say to a cough, but didn't escape her icy glare. "I'm sure he was just surprised."

"Surprised, my arse! He didn't return it because he didn't want to return it. And while on the subject, what are you doing down here?" She was getting louder and louder, and George fleetingly wondered how much either of them had drunk if they were on the subject of him.

"Ironically, I thought I was miserable without a woman in my life, but when seeing you..." He didn't finish the statement and didn't look at her out of a certain fear of being turned to stone on the spot.

"Luna's engaged, you know."

"Who said anything about Luna? What if I'm just suffering a general attack of unsatisfied lust?"

"Yeah, what if." She snorted and poured herself another drink, spilling quite a lot on the table. "The way you said 'a woman'. You meant a specific one, not just any old hag. And she's defene... difini... absolutely the one you've been spending most time with lately." She gave him a triumphant look and he glared back.

"As you said, she's engaged." He filled up his own glass and finished it off in two swallows, not sacrificing a single thought to the hangover he would have come morning.

"And not to you."

"Not to me, quite correctly."

"And–"

"Merlin's beard, Nox, do you have to rub any more salt in the wound now?" He was almost on the edge of getting angry and felt something burn behind his eyelids. She nodded mutely and emptied her cup. "At least I didn't do something as harebrained as kiss her!"

"Well, it wasn't completely unprovoked," she defended herself with.

George let out a bark of a laugh and said, "After all this time I thought you were pretty immune to his charms."

"Charms? Is that what you call being a complete idiot?"

"What on earth did he do?"

"He... well, he just... mmphmm." She drowned the rest of the sentence in more whisky.

"Of course he did," George retorted sarcastically. "After all, all woman go balooba after a bit of mmphmm."

"For once he didn't act like such a complete idiot!" Nox burst out, and reminded herself in the nick of time she shouldn't throw the cup, for whatever reason.

"So when he's not acting like himself, you suddenly need to snog him, but when he is, you'd kill him if he wasn't already dead?" George lifted his eyebrows challenging at her.

"Did you just admit your brother is a complete idiot?" A smile was slowly growing on her lips.

"Maybe not complete, but at times..." He mirrored the smile. "If he hadn't had me to keep him on a leash he'd never reached puberty. And then you wouldn't have the hots for him, would you?"

"Hopefully not," she agreed and laughed briefly, but it disappeared fast. "How... how is it, to have a ghost as a twin?"

"Not too bad," he said first, then the thought abruptly sobered him up a good deal. "Unnerving at times. It's been five years, but still..." He shook his head, dismissing the thought and stared down in his glass.

"What?" she asked softly, seeing she had discovered a weak point.

"It's just... silly," he said, even softer.

"Tell me," she urged carefully.

"It's just... me and Fred shared a bed up 'til we were teenagers, almost, and the shop, it came with a double bed and we never got around to replacing it. Never saw the reason to, I guess." His voice was hardly audible and she laid a hand on his wrist. "And now... he's just thin air. Cold air. Loud air, at times, but not something to cuddle up to at night. I know that sounds–"

"No, it's understandable." She had got used to Fred's ghostly state and icy touch, but then again, she'd never known him as anything else.

"Maybe that's part of why I want to... with Luna. Just have something to cuddle up to at night." He was almost certain he had had too much to drink, but finished the glass nonetheless and filled it up again, as well as the cup.

"No, I don't think so," she stated after a bit of thinking. "You love Fred, but you love Luna in a different way. If it was just a body to cuddle up to you wanted, you could've had me." It was said in a matter-of-factly way, as if the idea of George getting physical with her was as mental as getting physical with a Hungarian Horntail.

They went back to sipping quietly for a few minutes, the last of the conversation having silenced them both. Then George said, "What if I did have you?" She looked back at him with the quiet sort of contemplation that comes with too much drink, where consequences seem non-existent and only the moment matters. Her hand was still resting on his wrist when he leaned in for the kiss.