Life Support (Love For The Lonely)
A/N: This was written for the Matchmaker Challenge at St. Margaret's Livejournal (link). Kate is an OC, obviously.
But I try to open up to what I don't know,
because reason says I should have died
three years ago.
-Life Support, from Rent
It was upsetting, sure, but nevertheless Kate had to admit to herself that the highlight of her day had been the forty-second exchange of pleasantries with Matt, the blonde, beefcakey boy that manned the reception desk at the Coney Island Magical Appartments, her current home away from home.
Very much away from home, she thought sadly, dropping on her bed with a sigh, listening to the loud humming of her twenty fans inside and the noise from the Muggle Beach on the outside as she unbuttoned her work-blouse and closed her eyes. Even with the fans, it was terribly hot in here, hot and humid and she felt her blouse sticking to her body. She was too tired, too hot and too…gloomy to even summon the energy to cast a Cooling Charm. New York was irksome. Coney Island, Magical Coney Island, with its sailors and whores, drunks and rich snobs, magical ships on the horizon and the constant, constant noise of the Muggle beach pounding against the magical barriers like the bass of a teenager's stereo, was irksome. Her job, tracking diamond ray swimming patterns for a big-name potioneering enterprise that would use her research to catch and kill the rays she had monitored, was irksome.
In short, her life had reached a degree of irksomeness that was, in itself… irksome.
She blamed the heat for her recently restricted vocabulary. At home, in green Seattle on the beach where on clear days you could see the orcas, where the rain pattered against the roof of her room like a constant lullaby, they would sit at the dinner table playing the Thesaurus Game, her father's idea of family fun, for hours on end. Once upon a time, that had earned her perfect scores on her SAT verbal, which in turn had allowed her to leave the small, overcrowded Inn on the bay. Not counting Christmas and Thanksgiving, she'd only been back three times in five years, and until now, she hadn't wanted to.
But now, things were different. She was stuck in a hot, overcrowded magical port of full of loud strangers, far from her family, far from her friends. She was, she realized with horror, lonely.
"I don't do lonely," she said, aloud. But then, she didn't do talking to herself either, did she?
Annoyed, she realized she'd forgotten to get her mail while she was downstairs. Oh, well. A trip to the reception desk and Matt's sculpted shoulders and baby blue eyes certainly couldn't hurt. She peeled herself out of the blouse and pencil-skirt she had worn to work and instead fished a clean-looking white sundress out of her laundry-pile. Right. I'm disgusting. I need to clean up. And doing some laundry wouldn't hurt. She pulled out her wand and condensed the pile of dirty clothes into a basketball-sized blob, which she shoved into a paper bag. She'd get that in a second, flirting would be easier without worrying about her shoddy Condensation Charms and her dirty underwear sticking out of the bag at inopportune moments. Pulling her dark hair back into a perky sort of ponytail, she stepped out of the small room, down the vaguely smelling hall and into a whirring elevator.
Downstairs, she strolled through the lobby, as always appreciating the cool marble and strong Cooling Charms, though not as much as she appreciated the blonde man behind the counter. "Back again?" He grinned at her. She felt her stomach tingle, and hated herself for being so ridiculous.
"Forgot my mail," she said, going for non-chalantness, and probably missing spectacularly.
"Yeah, let me check." He bent down behind her to go through the stacks of envelopes on the floor behind him. Kate leaned forward over the counter; enjoying the view of his broad back and perfectly round buttocks in those cute Hawaiian-print shorts. He resurfaced, handing her an envelope. "You're in luck."
"Thanks." She took the envelope, addressed to her in her little sister's handwriting, and then noticed a stack of forms lying on the counter. "What are these?"
"Oh," he said, blushing. "It's this new agency thing a buddy of mine's setting up. Like a matchmaking thing? You, like, fill out a form and stuff. It's kinda cool."
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Have you filled out a form?"
He shrugged, looking a little sheepish. "Yeah, 'cause it might be funny, right? You know, like, when one window closes and- I don't know, I just thought it'd be kinda funny. You want one?"
He's cuter when he doesn't talk. "Well," Kate smiled at him, "only if I get to be matchmade with you."
He laughed. He could probably do toothpaste ads with that laughed, it made you feel like you'd just been crowned Miss America. "Yeah, that'd be, like, really cool."
"It would."
"We should, like, hang out or something some time."
Why, you've swept me off my feet. "I'd like that."
"Okay, yeah." The phone rang behind the counter, and he grinned at her as he answered, mouthing, "See you around" as he did.
Feeling a mixture of elation and annoyance, she walked back to the elevator. She stepped inside, smiling unsurely at the blonde young man who was already inside. "You going up?" She asked.
He flinched, as though she had yelled at him. "Oh," he said, frowning at her. "Yes, I am." The first thing she noticed was his British accent; the second was that, despite the heat, he was wearing high-necked black wizard's robes that made him look like vicar. She giggled to herself.
"Something funny?" He asked, coolly.
"Aren't you boiling in those?" She asked, despite herself. "I mean, I go to work in the thinnest blouse I can find, it's practically see-through, and I want to skinny-dip in the Arctic after, like, five minutes. How do you wear that stuff?"
He raised his eyebrows at her. "Cooling Charms. An old trick of my mother's. I don't think she'd appreciate my swimming in the arctic."
Despite herself, Kate found herself blushing. "Okay," she said quickly, "but wouldn't you rather wear something more normal?"
His sneer became a little more pronounced. She was starting to be irritated. "This is normal. I'm shocked to see how many wizards walk around in Muggle clothing in this place." His eyes traveled over the sundress, lingering on a coffee stain on her midriff she hadn't seen before and coming to a full stop around the dress's neckline. "It's rather improper."
She crossed her arms over her chest, fully annoyed now. "I happen to think it's improper to stare at a girl's cleavage like she's a cow on the market, but that seems to be a cultural thing. And anyway, I think if you take a good look in the mirror you're going to find that only one of us looks ridiculous, and it's not me." The elevator clanged to a halt, and she made to get off, squeezing past a gaggle of young witches speaking rapid Mandarin.
"This is the seventh floor!" The other snapped, annoyed. "You pressed ten!"
"And what does that tell you?" She paused for effect. "I'd rather walk up three flights of stairs in this overheated bunker than stay with you on this elevator a minute longer. Think about that, would you?"
The doors closed, but suddenly, a pale hand shot out and held them open. "What's your name?"
"Kate Fisher," she said coldly. "But you probably had figured that out on your own, right?" She turned, fuming, and stalked off to the staircase, which was indeed, even hotter then the rest of the building. She hesitated for a second before pulling out her wand and casting a cooling charm on her dress.
The crowd outside seemed to part as the pale young man in high-necked robes made his way through them, a derisive sneer on his face, his eyes darting through the mass of oddly assembled faces that populated Magical Coney Island. He came to a halt before a large brownstone in much better shape than the surrounding houses, with a wrought-iron fence and gate and a lavishly decorated stoop. The stone peacocks flanking each side of the red door gave him a pang that was somewhere between annoyance and regret.
He walked through the door, through the marble hall of the Maudlin's house, past his Uncle's office, past the downstairs drawing room with its large windows opening on a lavish view of the port and the ocean, and into the kitchen.
"Hello, dear. Are you hungry?" His Aunt Catalina looked up from what she had been reading and gave him a motherly smile. Although motherly was perhaps not the right word, because his Aunt, with her broad face and rotund figure, was nothing at all like his mother.
"No," he said, sinking down on a chair. "I'm supposed to walk down to the down to the docks with Benoit later, I'm simply a little early." His uncle, Benoit, ran the family-owned Magical Steamboat business. Technically, his father was supposed to take care of British business, of course, but really, he let Benoit do the work and used the money his brother-in-law earned to push through his laws.
"There's an owl from your mother for you here," his aunt said, conversationally. "She flood in this morning, but you weren't there. She and Lucius send their love." Draco's hand flew to his temple, and he rubbed them unconsciously, feeling the usual throb that accompanied thoughts of his parents, especially his father, these days.
"Draco, I know you don't want to hear this, but don't you think it's time-" He looked up at her, and she fell silent at once. "Suit yourself. But at least read the letter, would you?"
He nodded curtly, reaching out for the familiar thick, expensive envelope addressed in his mother's neat handwriting. As a child, he had begged her to allow him to use this paper for drawing. Sometimes she let him, and she'd join him, and they'd sit together, wordlessly passing colored pencils. The letter was heavy in his hands, and he thought he smelled a whiff of her perfume. Feeling empty, he pocketed the letter. "I'll read it," he sighed as his aunt opened her mouth again, knowing he wouldn't read it, that it would join the pile of unopened letters of his mother's plea for understanding in his room. "I promise I will, but not now, all right?"
"All right." He reached for the Coney Island Times and started scanning the headlines, while his Aunt went back to whatever she was writing. She broke the silence again after a few moments: "Draco, what would you say your idea of a perfect date would be?"
He stared at her. "Why would you want to know that?" He asked her suspiciously.
"Just curious," she answered, not meeting his eye.
"I've never thought about it," he answered, quite honestly. He hadn't been on a date, not even an imperfect one, since the summer before his sixth year at Hogwarts. When he'd left England two years later, traveling through the Southeastern Europe and the Near East before coming to America a few months ago, he had had plenty of experiences with women, not all of them pleasant, but none of them of the, well, niveau that you could honestly call them dates.
His aunt sighed resignedly and went back to her writing once more. Draco stared out of the kitchen window, taking in the evening sun in the backyard, the looming skyline of the Muggle City in the distance, the cries of the seagulls and the noise of the street.
As usual, he felt absolutely nothing. He had not felt much of anything since the Dark Lord's defeat, neither loss nor relief, and since then, nothing. In a dingy Inn in Beirut, he had cut his hand on a rusty nail sticking out of the wall, and not noticed it for several minutes. He had visited the Black's property in Belarus, Syria and Gaza, had seen dirty, snot-nosed children dressed in little more than rags, and he had felt neither disgust, nor pity. He felt unbelievably separate from the world around them, from the people who laughed and cried, slapped their palms on the table to make a point, opened their arms in an embrace. He just stood there, silent and still as a marble statue.
Sometimes, he wished he had died in that last battle.
A week later, Kate, having received a heart-shaped letter that had informed her to meet her Match, found for her by Love for the Lonely's foolproof matchmaking system, at nine PM sharp on the Muggle boardwalk of Coney Island; was getting impatient. It was now ten past nine and yet the sculpted arms and maddening swagger of Matt were nowhere to be found. The only familiar face in the crowd was that rude young man from the elevator last week, who was arguing with a round woman who she assumed, was his mother. The letter had said they would reveal themselves to the other through the use of magic, but Kate was fairly convinced she wouldn't need something as mundane as magic to spot Matt. Absent-mindedly, she watched elevator-guy take out his wand and conjure a bouquet of flowers, which he handed to his mother with a frown on his face. The mother shoved the flowers back in his hands, caught her eye, and suddenly disappeared. Kate suddenly had a horrible thought.
"'Scuse me?" She walked over to him, staring at the bouquet of flowers. "Hi. I'm sorry, but what are you doing with those flowers?"
"I don't see how that's any of your business," he replied, coolly.
She sighed. "I think it might be. Are you here for," she lowered her voice, feeling herself blush, "a blind date?"
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
He opened his mouth, a sneer firmly in place, but then his eyes traveled from the flowers in his hands to the spot where the older woman had just vanished. "I…" he stared at her. "Yes," he said, slowly. "Yes, I suppose I am. Are you…?"
"Yes," she said, slowly. "I mean, this wasn't… there's been… never mind." He was still staring at her, apparently transfixed and unable to speak. "You want to get some food or something?"
He was still irritated beyond belief at Catalina's meddlesome behavior, but he had to admit that this was a far more enjoyable way to spend your time than sitting in the Maudlin's drawing room with his tight-lipped, stoical uncle and a bottle of Firewhiskey. On closer inspection, the girl –Kate- was pretty, in a spirited sort of way that reminded him of trees and things that grew, with a self-conscious giggle and bright, blue eyes. She was constantly talking –he thought she might be overplaying her nerves- and showing him around the Muggle Coney Island, which he had never set foot upon. She made him taste a Hot Dog, and something quite delicious called Cotton Candy as they watched the Muggles enjoying those strange contraptions.
He realized after five minutes that she had to be Muggle-born, knowing her way around the crowd so easily, but another two minutes made him realize that he didn't really care. She was so happy, somehow, so lively, that he hardly dared open his mouth, lest he say something foolish or rude, like he had the first time they had met. She didn't ask him any questions, just talked and talked about her job and her family and a million other mundane things, and still, it seemed to fill him up, like a good strong drink of butterbeer at the end of a cold day.
Fifteen minutes later, she garbled something about getting up for work early the next morning and hastily excused herself. As he slowly walked back to Aunt Catalina's, he realized he probably should have seemed more interested in her, should have been more attentive. He had probably annoyed her. He felt rusty, as though he was riding a broom for the first time in ages, and the first few rounds where agony. But he had never exactly been good at this.
Not actually wanting to be around his bustling Aunt and her questions, he turned on the spot and walked, past the docks, to the tiny bit of beach Magical Coney Island called it's own. He stepped into the sand, still warm from the day, felt the strong, salty breeze on his face; he felt it. With a strange grimace that might have been a smile, he walked back to the apartment building, rode the elevator without a single interruption, and sat down on his bed with a role of parchment.
Dear Mother and Father,
I hope you both are well. I don't have much news, but I met a girl today…