"What does it look like?" she murmured from the seat next to him.
"Like a road, obviously," he said irritably.
-x-
"So," she'd asked him two days after his last year ended, a suspiciously bright glimmer in her eyes, "When's the party?"
"What party?" he muttered, tipping back his chair and cocking an eyebrow at her.
"You mean Lorcan Scamander, party king of Hogwarts, is not going to stun us all with an 'I'm an Official Wizard and I'm Never Going Back to School Again' bash?"
Her smile was teasing, and so was her voice as she leaned her elbows on the back of his chair, pushing their faces closer together.
Lorcan flapped a hand at her to get her out of his territory, and hunched moodily over the chair again.
"What's there to celebrate?" he grumbled, then swatted at Victoire again when she ruffled his hair.
"For a new graduate of our esteemed institution, you're quite the sourpuss," Victoire told him, sticking out her tongue.
"I prefer esteemed graduate to sourpuss," he muttered, trying to set his hair back in place.
"I said esteemed institution. You're probably the laziest graduate, though," she added, turning towards the mirror to play with her own hair.
He scowled at her.
"Wouldn't that honor go to Teddy?" he asked, feeling spiteful, and was rewarded by the sight of Victoire's spine ratcheting straight.
"I wouldn't know. We're not in touch," she said, shortly, then spun to face him again. "Anyway, I have a proposition for you."
"A proposition? Ooh, V, I think you're trying to take advantage of my chastity and my innocence."
Victoire let out a snort - which, quite unfairly, didn't diminish her 'this is serious business' face at all. "I'm sorry? And when did you ever any chastity to take advantage of?"
Lorcan rolled his eyes and waved his wand, setting his chair spinning in lazy circles.
"Didn't you have a proposition for me?" he prompted.
"I've changed my mind - Maybe I'll just leave you out of it."
"V!" he exclaimed, bolting upright, "You caaan't!"
"Oh, stop, I didn't mean it," she told him.
"Good," he placed a hand on his heart in exaggerated relief. "I worry. Now you'd best tell me what's going on before I die of anticipation."
"I was - no, you know what, it's stupid." She shook her head, and picked at her nails – chipped again, Lorcan noted.
"Veeeeee," he wheedled, "You know that the possibility of you saying something stupid someday makes my whole world brighter, now come on, out with it."
She flung something off the dresser in his direction, and then let out a sigh.
"Well," she said, a secret grin creeping onto her face, "It's possible that I have officially… squirreled away enough funds to afford a trip to any foreign destination of my choice, and. Well," she finished, meeting his eyes.
Lorcan sat up attentively. "Are you inviting me on a road trip with you?"
"A what? You have been spending way too much time with Tillie."
"I know, I know," Lorcan said, dismissively, "Now how much will I need?"
Victoire looked puzzled for a second, "Money? Lorcan-"
"Stop. You're only a year older than me and still an apprentice and I've got eighteen birthdays worth of money to spend."
Victoire raised an eyebrow. "Eighteen birthdays? Haven't you used any? Not even for that awful cologne you were always wearing-"
"No," he said, in an airy voice, "I tend to trade in sexual favours for daily expenses," and was rewarded with Victoire's laugh.
His parents were gone again, and Ly took the news as easily as he took everything else. The real shock was probably Fleur's easy acquiescence to Victoire's sudden desire to vanish into parts unknown, for time unknown, for reasons also unknown. Lorcan had a nasty suspicion he could trace more collateral damage than he'd realized back to Teddy.
The point was, there was a surprising lack of trouble on the first leg of their journey - aside from a Portkey mix up and one incident which required three rabbits and a bottle of madeira to smooth over (never to be spoken of, oaths sworn and sealed, etc.) while they were obtaining their fashionable and also sporty transport – but overall V's steady practicality managed to win out.
The city was huge, ancient mosques and towers and dusty streets, and they proceeded quite happily to doing terrible, touristy things that would have made any number of Lorcan's relatives cringe with embarrassment. Victoire had a certain steely look that ensured they didn't get too terribly fleeced, and Lorcan was too involved in convincing passersby to snap ridiculous posed pictures with their new camera to really care if they were. At least, until they hit the shopping district in the Old City.
"No," Lorcan told her, "Not on your life." To his irritation, Victoire was already three stalls ahead of him.
"Yes," she yelled back cheerfully. "On whomsoever's life you choose."
Lorcan rolled his eyes and grumbled under his breath.
"Who says whomsoever? Ever?"
All he said for the next two hours, though, was "Bookworm," in increasingly disdainful tones, as Victoire hovered around increasingly seedy book stalls. Not that he made any attempt to actually stop her – he was sure that, there it was: she looked satisfyingly rueful once she noticed how much she'd spent.
Victoire let out a breath. "Er, hmm – maybe we could skip the hotel tonight?" she ventured.
"What?" he yelped, "V! Where would we sleep?"
Of course, Lorcan had had to get used to naps in bizarre places while he was living with his mum and Rolf, but seven years at Hogwarts had thoroughly spoiled him. Also the extra two feet he'd grown, probably.
"The car, maybe?"
"The-? There are two of us, and we are both tall – how are you going to cram us into a car?"
"Magic?" V said, clearly becoming irritable, "I mean it'd still be a tight fit, but it's possible."
Lorcan sighed and shook his head. "I'm going to avoid the obvious opening for an innuendo there - Ow! Don't hit me! - and just say that if we sleep in the car, I'll suffocate and then probably haunt you. Or the car."
It was a close thing, but Lorcan knew he'd won when Victoire began peeking at the large discount-for-one-night-only signs that decorated the road, even as she halfheartedly attempted to keep up her side of the argument. He was in the middle of insisting that it was completely unfair to make him pay for her literary indiscretions, or whatever, when she took a sharp turn which nearly rolled him out of the open window.
"Sorry, sorry," she muttered, "But there's a really good deal-"
Which turned out to be for families only, and after vainly trying to convince the owner that they were siblings, Lorcan resigned himself to failure and made fun of Victoire for not reading all the terms and conditions instead. The phrase bad Bookworm was belted out in a great deal of tacky eighties-era Celestina Warbeck-ish glory, but Victoire's disgusted suggestion that maybe they ought to leave and try the car shut him up immediately.
The hotel (so-called) may have been small and cramped and clearly comfortable with servicing some very shady customers, but anything beat huddling in the tiny convertible with his knees by his ears, and he was careful to tell this to her in between snippets of outrageous flattery in regards to her excellent driving, brilliant reading skills and wonderful ability to choose hotels.
She shot him a long, measured look that lasted just long enough to make him almost - almost - squirm, and then stalked up to the proprietor and demanded their cheapest rooms.
The proprietor began detailing the benefits (so-called, once again - the man was so good at spinning things in his favour that Lorcan was nearly jealous) of a little rathole on the third floor, and Lorcan was so amused by his ability to spontaneously spew reams of complete, utter bullshit that it took him nearly a minute to realize the owner was only discussing one room for both of them.
"What? No, wait, we need two rooms," Lorcan said, just as Victoire muttered, "Yes, that's fine," in a distracted tone.
They faced one another.
"Why would we take one room? I don't –" Lorcan cleared his throat. "I just - we should get two," he insisted, leaning over to dig out the rest of the money from her knapsack, "I mean, I do appreciate the gesture," he added, attempting to sound insouciant, "But if I really wanted a girl in my bed -"
She slapped him in the arm and went for the money, "No, you – don't be stupid – of course we're not taking two rooms, Lor, we haven't got enough –"
"Well, we'll make some more," he said, turning to hold it out of her reach, "Pawn our things, sing on the streets, something –"
"Lorcan," she hissed under her breath, clearly trying to get at the bills without lowering her dignity too much, "My voice is like a dying cat, I can't sing, now just - will you - give it -"
Lorcan persisted in his attempts to keep it out of her reach, "- We'll start English lessons, then, or I'll sell my ears to a black market potioneer – see? That even rhymes -"
This last made Victoire pull back, quite obviously, Lorcan was gratified to see, fighting a smile. "You're going to - what does rhyming have to do with anything? And what sort of potion needs ears?"
"I'll - think of something?" he ventured, and Victoire rolled her eyes, finally letting out her laugh and shaking her head before she walked away. Only for a few minutes, though.
"Veeeeeeee."
Lorcan saw her head shoot up, and swivel rather ominously in his direction. She stalked over to him warily and he held out his handful of cash looking shamefaced.
"…We haven't got enough," she started, crossing her arms.
"We haven't got enough," he echoed, pressing the bills into her hand. "It's, uh, just a, um, teensy little bit not enough money, I think."
"I thought those little squiggles were nines, not ones!" he added after a pause, attempting to ignore Victoire's badly suppressed smirk, "I mean, they've got the little loops and everything, so here I was -"
"Thinking we were in a country which had five, nine, fifty, ninety and then nine hundred bills? Logical, that."
"Bookworm," he muttered, jostling her shoulder while she counted out another small section of bills.
"Idiot," she muttered back, ignoring his "Irrelevant!" to turn to the proprietor.
"Could we have an extra cot in our room?" she tried, before turning back to Lorcan. "And weren't you supposed to start pawning your luggage before you came crawling back into my single room?"
"I'm not crawling," he protested indignantly, "And all I have to sell is my clothing. I mean, I suppose I could have gotten something for the car –"
Happily, he actually managed to duck her hand before it reached him.
"Ah, shit, V, where's your wand?"
Victoire stuck her head out of the bathroom, making a face, "Car, maybe? D'you want it to cast Scourgify or something in here, it smells –" she shook her head, "It smells."
Lorcan raised his eyebrow and said, "All right, thank you for that disgusting information, but how are we going to sleep here without a wand? I mean, I can appreciate living dangerously, but if someone tries to rob us or something, getting killed in our sleep would make it harder to, you know, live."
Victoire gave a noncommittal hum of acknowledgement. "Why do you want my wand, anyway? Where's yours?" she asked, leaning an arm up against the door.
Lorcan shrugged. "Car?" he said.
"Useful, that," Victoire said, finally strolling out of the restroom.
"Shut up, thank you, no one asked for your opinion." Lorcan told her smartly.
"Fair enough," V said, and rubbed a finger along her neck. "D'you have a pen?" she said, "I've got an idea."
"I…" Lorcan spun around on the bed, and grabbed his satchel, "Miiiight," he finished, triumphantly holding one out, "A mark of our royal pleasure," he added loftily, dropping it into Victoire's outstretched hand.
She cocked an eyebrow. "Should I curtsy?"
"We absolve our subject of the – ow, stop that!" He rubbed his head and glared at her, which turned out to be disappointingly ineffective at burning her alive.
"Stop being pretentious," She said, then added, "And stop glaring like that, you're not McGonagall, and I'm not dying of shame."
"Eh, McG's all bark anyway."
Victoire shrugged, scribbling on her palm, "Still looks impressive."
"Eh," Lorcan said, eyes following the pen. "What exactly are you doing with that?" he asked.
"Hang on," Victoire said, and then: "Ha! Okay." She put her palm flat against the door, and made a great production of turning all the way around so Lorcan couldn't see before she muttered a few words.
"Did you really just do that so I wouldn't see?" Lorcan asked, and then scoffed at Victoire's smug grin.
"It's not a proper ward," Victoire told him, relenting after a second and dropping onto the bed next to him, "And it's not actually wandless – I've done the spell before so it's just turning it back on sort of. It's just a sort of alarm so I could feel it if someone tried to open the door – so don't try to run out for food at midnight."
Lorcan rolled his eyes, and smacked her on the leg. He submitted to her return smack and then snatched up her palm for a closer look at the interlocked symbols she'd sketched on it.
"Ooh, I see," he said, tracing the symbols out with a finger, "And of course you'd feel it even if you were asleep. That's clever."
"Yeah," Victoire said, watching him, "It's –" she stopped, and flexed her hand.
"It's what?" Lorcan said.
"Teddy showed me." Victoire said.
"Oh," Lorcan said, in a different voice, "And here I was, feeling inadequate because you came up with this yourself."
Victoire pursed her lips and finally looked away. "Just stop, okay?"
"Stop what?"
"Whatever this thing is, that you do whenever – "
"Whenever I talk about how you were kind of the best thing that ever happened to each other, and then he fucked it up?" Lorcan asked, idly, "I don't think -"
"Shut up, Lorcan," she said viciously, whirling on him, "Nobody is the best thing that ever happened to – I'm fucking great, thank you very much, I do not need someone else to be happy, and I don't need you trying– whatever you're doing."
It was the swearing that threw him off.
His "Sorry, V," after a second was almost unwilling, and then, because he was Lorcan and an ass at his very best, he said, "I do feel the need to mention the irony in you insisting you don't need company to be happy while you're actually with me –"
"You aren't making me happy," she bit out, and his mouth snapped shut.
-x-
They spent the next day with Lorcan trying entirely too hard to act indifferent, and Victoire actually being very indifferent throughout their entire jaunt in the trail of some tour company's tour group.
By the time it was time for dinner, the patch of distance in between them had frozen into an icy silence. Lorcan labored through it for about an hour, before he burst out with "We should go back to that hotel for tonight."
"What?" Victoire said.
Lorcan shrugged in her general direction. "Do you want to spend all night in the car?"
"No, no, I don't," Victoire muttered, and then let out a breath. "And… this thing we're doing right now, this is really stupid."
"The thing where we both ignore each other and waste a whole day of our trip being miserable?" Lorcan asked, rubbing his chin against his shoulder.
"Yeah," Victoire said, making a face. She turned to him. "It's really stupid."
"I know," Lorcan said, matching her expression, and felt unreasonably relieved.
They did return to the hotel eventually, after Lorcan pestered Victoire into letting him score them free dinner by convincing the tour group's leader that they had been part of the group all along and lost their dinner passes.
After Victoire threw him out so she could change, he wandered back to the entrance. Hukum, the proprietor (who Lorcan was growing very fond of) probably did know if Lorcan could find a good post owl for cheap somewhere, but insisted that there was no beast in the entire city as fine or as swift as his own personal paragon of owlishness. Lorcan could tell he'd made a terrible, terrible bargain even before Hukum brought out a bedraggled, cockeyed beast which didn't look like it could fly through a clear spring day, but he was impressed enough with Hukum's sales prowess to feel almost satisfied as he paid up.
He could think of a lot of things he wanted to write to Ted, but since most were pretty much unprintable, he settled for the obvious You're being a moron. Just write her a letter.
And Ted did, apparently. The next morning on his way to the bathroom, Lorcan caught Victoire turning it around in her hands, looking bemused.
"From your mom?" he asked, carefully casual.
"No, it's –" she looked up at him. "Go take your shower, weirdo," she told him, and waved him away.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid," he muttered to his face in the mirror once he was inside. He made a little song of it, up and down a little scale, and tried to figure out why he felt so terrible. He hadn't expected Ted to do it, was what it came down to. Waffle about it for a few days, maybe send out feelers to Fleur first. He certainly didn't think he'd have to deal with whatever happened.
By the time he was toweling off, he'd gone through half a dozen increasingly appalling scenarios of what would happen once Victoire read the letter, and decided that if any of the ones where Victoire cried really happened, he would have to go kill Ted, if only for the emotional embarrassment Lorcan would have suffered through.
Of course, the one scenario he didn't agonize over was the one he ended up in the middle of. The second he walked back into the room, a shoe came hurtling at his head.
"You've been writing to him? You wrote to him about this?" Victoire wasn't angry often, and it was quite a sight when she was - red crackling on her cheeks, in the ice-blue shards of her eyes as she waved a scrap of paper aloft. He found himself half admiring the unexpected development as he readied his denial, but she shot him a glare before he could get a word out.
"And don't start lying, not with me – you're the only one who could have given him this address-" she shoved the paper under his nose long enough for him to see, yes, their hotel and room number scrawled on the delivery tag, that stupid twit.
"I - well, I thought it was what you wanted?" he stammered out, still attempting to process the fact that his scheme had, for whatever reason, infuriated Victoire. "I mean," he scoffed, trying to regain equilibrium, "Any idiot could see you're still mad about each other."
"What?" Victoire looked completely taken aback.
"Oh, come on," Lorcan muttered, feeling unreasonably bitter, "Don't do that with me, at least - whatever he's gone and done, I'm sure -"
"What he's gone and - what makes you think he did something?"
"Wh- Well, it's Ted," Lorcan found himself scoffing, off-balance, again, "I suppose he went off with someone, and didn't realize it was wrong - you know how he gets," he added with a chalky laugh, realizing belatedly that he hadn't called Ted 'Ted' to her face in over a year. Only Teddy, because that was what Victoire had always called him.
What surprised him wasn't that she laughed, because she should - because he was trying to be funny without trying to be funny, and it worked, always, with her - but because it was so flat, so – so not like her.
"Lorcan," she said, still on the fading edge of that false laugh, "You think that he – ? It wasn't him. I – Well," she said, "Well."
Somehow everything about that sounded wrong. "It was – you did?"
He didn't believe it, not a second. Some sort of mistake, because she was too fucking – not clingy – but she didn't know how to leave people.
"No, I didn't – I," she took a short huff of air, trying to change her tone, he could tell - be reasonable, he could almost see her telling herself. "I'm just saying it wasn't Teddy's fault, all right? He doesn't have to forgive me. I don't even want him – I do want him back, but not that way. I just don't want him to be … be, you know, upset anymore."
The reasonable tone had faded - she threw her hands out helplessly and Lorcan thought that if it had been anyone else it would be hilarious - all of them blaming Ted, so sure he'd fucked it up, and all along, he'd been the one who'd been – been left behind.
But it was Victoire. It wasn't hilarious.
"Who was it?" he heard himself saying, instead of whatever it was he'd meant to tell her, something to force that helpless anger away.
There was a sharp, venomous pause.
"Are you stupid?" she asked him, at last, "Who do you think? Who do you think I'd ruin it for? The one person I cared about more than – to make me this – this silly, to chase away my best friend? Who do you think it was?" She stabbed him in the chest with her finger, as desperately frayed as he'd ever seen her.
"I thought I was your best friend," he said vaguely, knowing what he was saying even as he was saying it, knowing it was wrong, too, hating himself for doing it to her.
But instead of any of the numerous responses this should have drawn out of her - that he knew he deserved, that she deserved to give him for this, after everything - she opened her mouth and didn't say anything for a second, stared at him with a look that was almost pleading. She leaned close, shut her eyes, opened them, lifted her hand, and didn't touch his cheek.
He covered it with his own, leaned into it, not realizing what he was doing, and then realizing – realizing he didn't want to move it, even if she asked, even if she insisted.
Realizing that at that moment he was not hiding from her sight, not at all.
"So-" he said at last, swimming, floundering, and if his voice was hoarse, he was not acknowledging it, "Now what?"
When Victoire still didn't answer – her hand still under his, a dubious wrinkle between her eyes – he continued, "What would you tell me if I were asking about another girl – any other girl?" He took another breath, and then, in a rush: "You know I… need you to tell me. You're the only one who ever – I mean, the only one I can – V, come on. What – what do I do?"
And the tinny edge of desperation was like an echo, bouncing back and forth between their mouths.
"Kiss her –" she whispered, sharply, "– of course, kiss her, you pillock."
And he didn't fight her - not with her, not on this.