This was a birthday fic for provocative-envy, whose stories I adore. I tried to write it in her style, but it's not really my style, so excuse the stiffness of it please.
It all begins at the Dragon's Breath on a Tuesday—
Well, that's not quite right. It all begins during sixth year in a train compartment on the way to Hogwarts.
Blaise should have known that somehow word of him calling Ginny a blood traitor would have reached her. At the time, Ginny's opinion of him hadn't seemed pertinent.
Not that anything's changed present day.
It begins in a train compartment on the way to Hogwarts, but it doesn't really start until the Dragon's Breath on a Tuesday.
It's a pretty average Tuesday afternoon at the Dragon's Breath, which means that there's a scattering of rough-looking men drinking alone and two thirty-something women, a little bit too old to still be hanging around the Dragon's Breath, in the corner giggling over butterbeers, casting glances that Blaise is pretty sure they intend to be furtive.
They're not. One of them looks vaguely familiar in a way that probably means Blaise has fucked her before. Or not. He doesn't exactly quite keep a body count, but he gets this sort of feeling somewhere in his gut when he sees one of them.
His gut is telling him to stay the fuck out. He doesn't do seconds, doesn't do romance or emotional intimacy or really emotions, which is definitely what this woman wants.
His Gringotts overdraft notice is cataloging the delicate chantilly lace edging her robes, the muted green raw silk scarf tied around her neck, and the determined look in her eye.
Bottles of 1952 Chateau Margauxs don't pay for themselves, and things like moral objections and walking a very blurry line between prostitution and, well, not-prostitution, have never really bothered him anyways.
The strange similarity between his mother's methods and his—well. Some things don't have to be thought about.
He tosses away the dirty rag he'd been using to clean a glass and is about to saunter over when the door creaks open. Curiously, he turns his head. Most of the regulars are already drinking their way into a stupor, and more women could fuck up his plans.
Ginny fucking Weasley is standing by the bar.
He doesn't even remember the soccer moms in the corner table until the next morning.
He doesn't want to think about the last time something—or someone—has so fully captured his attention.
Ginny Weasley, it turns out, had a mutual breakup with Harry fucking Potter and is now at the Dragon's Breath to drown her sorrows.
Blaise pours three fingers of Firewhiskey into a tumbler. Ginny narrows her eyes at him. "More."
He pulls out the bottle again. "If you wanted to get drunk, you could have gone to any single pub," he says casually. Why the fuck would you come to the Dragon's Breath is left unsaid.
She shrugs. "Won't get recognized here," she says, throwing back the drink without a grimace. Even Blaise is surprised.
Blaise considers her. Her statement could be true. As the Chosen One's girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend—she would get a lot of attention, especially right after a breakup. But it doesn't ring exactly true.
He's a fucking bartender. He knows, understands the seediness of the Dragon's Breath, how easily conversation flows and the convenience of a motel right next door that rents rooms out by the hour. And he considers the fact that Ginny Weasley, of all people, is trolling at the Dragon's Breath for sex, and, well—
He had always thought she was too hot for Potter.
The thing is, Blaise is competitive. He knows how to win, how to purse his lips in a way that make his cheekbones look sharp enough to cut glass, how to say the right things and the right moment to smirk, knows, inherently, that he is beautiful and charming and knows exactly how to use that in his favor.
He's used to being wanted. To being adored. He's used to being the one that leaves in the morning, that wants less, that pulls away.
Ginny Weasley is nobody. She's poor. She wears worn, plain black robes. Doesn't do her makeup or hair, doesn't know the right people or the right things to say. The fact that Blaise even wants her is a goddammned blessing upon her. He should have been the one to leave.
When Blaise wakes up in the morning, fists curled in the sheets and a case of morning wood that he suspects has more to do with the memory of Ginny than just biological regularities, Ginny Weasley is gone. No note on the bed table begging him to call her, no panties left in the corner with a cheeky request to "remember her." And that is just—unacceptable.
He owls her again, fucks her again because God knows he's always loved a challenge and he's determined to make her like him more than he likes her.
It's just sex. Neither of them even like each other. He doesn't tell his friends about her. She doesn't bring him to meet her parents. It's not a relationship. Her toothbrush is in his bathroom because it's just more convenient, and God of course he's not going to kiss her before she brushes her teeth, her fucking morning breath is insane. And the fact that her ratty T-shirts have begun fighting for closet space with his carefully color-coded cashmere sweaters—well, he's not going to give her his shirts to wear when she leaves, that's a cliche and she'd just ruin them (he's pretty sure she would spontaneously combust if anything other than polyester or cotton touched her skin).
And the worming, sinking feeling in his gut—his gut feeling's been pretty fucking spot-on for most of the time he's known her—that he's way over his head, well. Nobody ever accused Blaise of being honest with himself.
It's just sex, until it's not.
Their first fight happens three months in. Well, technically, they fight over everything. Who should make another pot of coffee, which brand of yogurt to buy, which TV channel to watch. (Blaise is pretty sure that it's a form of fucked up foreplay for Ginny, which makes him wonder about Potter.) But they've never really fought.
Then he gets a letter from his mother.
"What do you mean, you don't want to meet my mother? She's my fucking mother," Blaise sputters over dinner.
Ginny stabs her fork into a piece of prosciutto (what the fuck is prosciutto, Blaise, it's literally just ham but 5 galleons more expensive, why would we buy prosciutto, was her stance in the grocery market. She had lost the argument). "Exactly," she snaps. "She's your mother. That's not—that's not what we do. Why the fuck does your mother know about—have you been writing your mother about me?"
Blaise is momentarily thankful for his dark skin as his face heats. "I talk to my mother about my life, it's pretty hard to escape the fact that I'm fucking you half the time," he bites out. "She's curious, she wants to meet you, can't you just get it fucking together for an hour and meet her?"
Ginny slams her fork down. "What happened to boundaries? I am fucking you, Blaise. I don't—we are not in the type of relationship where I meet your mother. I can't meet your mother. We're fuck buddies. It's—temporary."
He doesn't hear how her voice hesitates, cracks before temporary. He's too zeroed in on the word itself, and it sounds more like failure to him. Because he's kept himself safe his entire life by wanting less and he didn't want to admit it but he wants more, he wants Ginny like he's never wanted before, and he doesn't know if it's like or if it's love, or maybe neither, he just knows that he wants.
And the fact that she doesn't. Well. It stings. More than stings, if he's being honest.
His gut is rolling when he says, "I don't think my mother would approve of a blood traitor like you, anyways."
He hears himself echoing those sixth-year words, and he's vaguely surprised once again by his capability for cruelty. He's not surprised when he hears the door slam behind him.
When he goes to her, he doesn't apologize. Doesn't bring flowers or a big teddy bear or a guitar. He's not even sure that he's sorry, only that there is something that clicks when Ginny's around and seeing her stupid probiotic yogurt in his fridge go uneaten makes him. Well. it makes him—unhappy.
When she opens the door she doesn't expect him to be standing there. He knows that because there's a light in her eyes that dims when she sees him, and he doesn't think about how that feels like a stab in the gut. Doesn't think about the fact that it's been two months, she might be dating someone else, that that someone else might be the one she was waiting for.
Instead, he opens his mouth and the words come out in a rush. "It is—conflicting. Or was conflicting. Being with you. Because." He swallows before this. "I like…you. A lot, and I'm not used to liking people, my mother didn't exactly provide me with a model for a healthy relationship, and. I realize now that I've been repeating what I've seen. Which was fine, until it wasn't fine, because I met you and I didn't. Want. To move on from you. Because I could have moved on, maybe, and been fine, but that's not what I wanted. And I want you." He stops. She looks at him, unimpressed by the equivalent of practically a fucking declaration of love from him. So he swallows and continues. "And you being a Weasley—your family—is confusing. Because I've been raised to know the right families. Malfoy. Greengrass. Parkinson. To see them as better. But I don't want Daphne or Pansy or Draco. I want you, and coming to terms with your family, and its, uh, way of life. I see now that it's not. Bad. In a way. Just different. And maybe, uh, better. Or something."
The words at this point are coming out so stiltedly that when he finally trails off he's not sure if any more are going to come out or not. She studies him for a minute, maybe two.
"That was the worst apology of all time," she finally says after what constitutes as the longest silence in the world, probably. "You didn't even apologize."
He opens his mouth to say something, defend himself, but she beats him to it. "We'll work on it, though."
It begins in a train compartment. Starts at the Dragon's Breath.
Where it ends, though—
Blaise hopes to God it doesn't.