The Tooth and Claw by Luvscharlie
Warnings: infidelity, hair pulling, biting, rough sex, violence, angst, spanking.
A/N: Originally written for scarletladyy at the 2011 charlieficathon on Live Journal who asked for mind fuck, mental anguish, infidelity, love-hate and dub con (I don't think the consent was very dubious here, but it did get to the point of rough sex). The name of the pub in which Charlie is working is stolen from Doctor Who. Thank you to starstruck1986 for the britpick and to aigooism and teenage_hustler for the beta work.
Finally it was done. Her spawn was off to Hogwarts. The only thing Astoria had found worthy enough to focus on in her dismal, dull life had gone away to start a life of his own. She had sent her boy off to Hogwarts a child, and Hogwarts would return him to her a man. Oh, there would be holidays and summers spent with him as he grew, but after today, he'd never truly be all hers again. Now she would have to share him with a world she didn't much like, and she'd never been keen on sharing.
Astoria parted ways with her token husband at the station after sending off his obligatory heir and headed for the nearest wizard pub—a new place called the Tooth and Claw that was giving the Leaky Cauldron a run for its Sickles in patrons, or so the rumours said.
It was a slow time for the pub when Astoria entered. Not many parents, she guessed, felt the need to leave King's Cross after sending off their beloved progeny and head straight for the nearest pub. It was the less-than-proper thing for a mother to do. But then, she was tired of being a proper lady, a perfect wife, a doting mother. She was little more than a name on a piece of parchment to most. She was tired of being Draco Malfoy's wife, Scorpius Malfoy's mother—and even Lucius Malfoy's daughter-in-law. She was simply a pureblood wife which had been required for the ever popular Draco Malfoy. Of course, the family name had taken a bit of a hit after the war, but that was many years past now, and Malfoys had an annoying way of bouncing back and persevering. She could count on one hand the number of people who addressed her as Astoria, and most of them lived under her roof. Even the house-elves addressed her as Mr Draco's wife.
She was lost deep in her thoughts of all the things she wanted to do now that she was free of round the clock parental duty—so deep, in fact, that she didn't hear the barman ask if she wanted a drink until he snapped his fingers in front of her face and asked, "Anybody at home in there?"
"How rude! You'd better not have just snapped your fingers at me!" Even those who didn't know her name, at least knew better than to get her attention with the snapping of fingers.
"Had to," the man said jovially, nonplussed by her tone and not even remotely contrite for his poor social etiquette. "Thought you might be in some kind of a trance, and then you might blame the pub, say I'd done something to you, and that would be bad for business. Can't have that now, can we?"
Astoria snorted. "Or, you just like to snap your fingers and see how quick someone will jump in response to your ludicrous demands."
"Well, there's that too." The man was totally unaffected by her comments. It was almost as if she didn't exist, and Astoria was tired of not existing. In fact, he seemed to expect her snideness, and it bounced off him without leaving a dent in his self-confidence. Dead annoying, he was.
Dead annoying and dead handsome. Astoria found it impossible to look away from the well-muscled man who was brightly coloured from his hair to his tattoos. He was stood before her cleaning a glass with a flannel that had seen better days. He winked at her before plunking the still-not-spotless glass down on the bar before her. "So what'll you have, beautiful?"
"Something strong. Without the side of flattery, if you please." She snorted. Surely this man didn't think she would be so easily won over as to succumb to his charm (or what he seemed to think was charming). She was better than that.
"Ah, but the flattery is a free service that we offer here at the Tooth and Claw. Charlie Weasley." The man introduced himself and held out a hand to her in greeting.
Astoria snorted again and ignored the proffered fingers. "I bet you have all of the women just eating out of that hand of yours."
Charlie looked at his still-dangling, unshook hand. "Mmm, typically. Well, not literally. Besides, I mean, I do wash it."
"First of all, that was sarcasm. And are you always so modest?" she retorted, with the sarcasm still dripping from her lips. Surely, not even someone as thick as him would miss it now that it had been pointed out.
"Nah, usually I just can't resist being the centre of attention. I'm holding back today." Again, not a dent in the prat's self confidence. "What can I say? I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Wouldn't know what that's like, eh?"
"Waking up on the wrong side of the bed? Not the wrong side, per se. But any morning I wake up and my husband's on any side of my bed, it's wrong." Astoria bit down on her tongue. She had only just met this man and here she was spilling secrets that not even her dearest friends were privy to. Not that she had any real friends, but still. This man certainly wasn't a "friend" of any sort.
"Not to worry. It happens all the time," Charlie said, as if he could read her thoughts. "I must have that kind of face. People want to tell me things. But that wasn't really what I was referring to when I said you wouldn't know what it's like."
With her guard raised, Astoria asked her next question with caution. "To what, then, were you referring?"
"Being the centre of attention. Can't imagine you've had much experience in that arena."
Astoria gasped. He was right, of course, but she hated that her face was so easily readable to this man.
"Comes with the job," Charlie said, passing her a drink. "This one's on me." He went on. "It's part of the trade, I guess. The barman always knows."
She pulled together her haughtiest I'm-better-than-you voice even though her hands were shaking. "The barman is an obnoxious git."
Charlie's lip curled. "Blimey, have I ever heard that before. Twice a day even, sometimes. I really hate days like that."
"I don't doubt it." But she did. There was something about Charlie Weasley that was equal parts frustrating and intriguing. And with every snarky phrase and curled lip, Astoria was finding it harder and harder not to smile at him, to talk to him, to let herself give in to admitting that he was attractive, prat or no. Charlie was a stark contrast to her husband. Draco was all pale angles ending in sharp, thin points, whereas Charlie was warm-skinned with tattoos and scars that rounded out nicely into a body that was anything but skinny or pointy. It could only be described as delicious, desirous, fucking amazing… you know, if one was attracted to that sort of thing. Which she wasn't. At all.
"So," she said, "are you called the obnoxious git that you are often?"
"Depends," Charlie said.
"On what?"
"Whether the bird's trying to pull me by playing hard to get or not." The knowing smirk that settled around his luscious lips made Astoria want to kick him.
"I am not trying to—in any way— pull you!" she retorted.
"Never said you were. Seems you're feeling insulted, guilty even, about something though. Care to share?"
"No, what I care to do, you prick, is to leave." And with that Astoria drew her wand and spun on her heel. She barely caught Charlie's final words as she Disapparated away.
"Glad I didn't hit a sore spot or anything." And it was all the more annoying that he was chuckling with the knowledge that he had hit a sore spot. Indeed, a very sore spot.
Astoria spent the next day wandering her now quiet house. No childlike feet traipsing up and down stairs, no squawks from some desperate-to-escape peacock that Scorpius had managed to wrangle inside, not even any lingering fingerprints on the windows of her son's bedroom for her to wax nostalgic about. The house elves were far too thorough for that.
There was an occasional rustle of papers from Draco's office, and once a pot clattered loudly in the kitchen, but other than that, the Manor was so silent that she could hear herself breathing. And as happy as she'd been to now have time for herself just the day before, she found that she had no idea what to do with these added hours.
And despite her best intentions, Astoria couldn't stop her mind from wandering back to that infuriating ginger barman with skin that looked like a child's ridiculous colouring book. As if anyone could ever find that attractive. It wasn't. Not at all. She didn't have any desire to know what that dragon on his forearm would do if her tongue were to trace its outline ever so gently, and she certainly didn't want to know just how tattooed that freckled skin was beneath his clothes. She was a married woman after all. Happily or not was beside the point. There were certain lines that proper ladies didn't cross and… and she could tell herself that all day long, but she had no doubt when she closed her eyes that night, the man with the twinkling eyes, broad shoulders and big, fat, rotten mouth would be in her dreams.
So, she might just as well go and get him out of her system, hadn't she? One more look at him (and she could certainly use something stiff to drink; she had no one to be responsible for but herself after all), and she'd realise he wasn't nearly as handsome as she'd thought yesterday. Yesterday, it had simply been the alcohol talking. That was all. She chose to ignore the fact that she hadn't yet taken her first drink when thoughts of Charlie Weasley had begun to take up residence in her mind, and that one drink was hardly enough to make her even remotely pissed. Totally irrelevant facts, those. Totally.
Astoria probably should have told her husband she was leaving, but it wasn't as if he'd notice her absence anyway. He never did. Their marriage had lost what little spark it ever had long ago. They remained together because of the contract they had entered into. If she were to ever leave, she'd lose her son and be left Knutless in the streets.
To Draco's credit (and she didn't often afford him much), he had saved her when the world and everyone in it had turned its back. Her father had been killed in a suspect accident during his transfer to Azkaban to await trial for his part in the Dark Lord's rise to power not long after the war's end. After that, her mother had spent all her time fretting about their lack of coins, and Astoria and her sister were left to fend for themselves. Daphne was strong… far stronger than Astoria. She'd taken a job in a foreign country where the dislike of witches and wizards who supported He Who Shall Not Be Named was less intense. However, Daphne hadn't taken her baby sister with her, and Astoria had never heard from her again. It was rather depressing to know there was a part of yourself somewhere in the world, and you didn't even know whether they were alive or dead. Daphne might be a mother herself now, and Daphne had no idea that she was an aunt… and dredging up all of that wasn't going to do anyone a bit of good. They'd all chosen their paths to walk, and it saddened Astoria that the ones she and her sister had taken weren't ever likely to cross again. But that was all water under the proverbial bridge.
Astoria had been left with a year to go at Hogwarts and no one to care for her except a mother who was far too interested in caring for herself… then Draco came along and, for all intents and purposes, he had been her saving grace. Since marrying him, she'd wanted for little. Monetarily, that was. He'd provided her with the things money could buy, and even a warm bed for a short period of time. She'd thought that maybe he'd even find a way to love her… eventually.
Apparently, Draco had obligations to fulfil as well. As her stomach grew with the Malfoy heir, her bed grew cold. Her husband came to bed later and later in the evenings, slipping beneath the bed covers, careful not to disturb her, and when she reached for him, her affections were brushed aside, until she simply stopped trying.
She convinced herself it would get better after their child was born. Perhaps, she'd thought, it was her expanding waistline that Draco found so distasteful and that was why the space between them in the bed had grown wider. But Scorpius came along, and still her husband kept his distance. They shared a room (because appearances were everything in the Malfoy house), but the short space that had once separated them in the bed grew to a chasm so large that she actually welcomed the nights Scorpius had nightmares and would crawl between them. Her son's warm chin pressed into her skin at least assured her that she was loved by someone. Someone needed her to comfort them.
Or they had, before he had gone away to grow up and not need her anymore.
She stood outside the Tooth and Claw with a million reasons why she shouldn't enter running through her head, the least of which being that it wasn't even half-one yet. She'd gone to Madam Malkin's to pick up Slytherin patches to Owl to her son, after receiving an owl earlier that morning that only said in large excited letters, "I'm in Slytherin, Mum and Dad! Merlin, did you know my room is underwater? How cool is that?"
She'd done her parental duty, and it had felt nice to be needed, even if only for robe patches. Some bit of confirmation that her son hadn't grown up in the span of a day at Hogwarts. Not that she'd really believed he would, but it was nice to have that confirmed by his boyish scrawl across a scrap of parchment where someone had played noughts and crosses in the corner. Paying attention during lessons already, eh? she'd thought at the sight of that.
She was a married woman. That should be reason enough to make her turn away from the pub and the man inside it, and she was spinning on her heel, nodding her head, confident in her resolve to do so, when she heard a loud clatter from inside the pub. She rushed into the empty establishment before better sense took hold and stopped her. The place was empty except for some moaning and groaning from the back. "Fucking hell," were the words that reached her ears in a voice that had haunted her all morning.
She rushed to the storeroom, where there was a pile of boxes and a groaning barman beneath them. "Are you hurt?" she asked.
"The groaning and moaning and shrieks of pain clue you in, did they? I think I cracked my bloody skull."
"Doubtful, it being as thick as it is. Good thing you landed on your head. Nothing in there that can be damaged."
"You're a laugh a minute," Charlie replied, shoving boxes away from him and tossing them so that one struck her in the knees and landed her on her bum. "Good thing you landed on your arse. No risk of breaking something with all that padding."
"Why you—" Astoria stood up, grabbed the box that had downed her and flung it. It was heavier than she'd thought, and apparently rage made a person a little stronger than normal, because it clocked him right upside the head and knocked him out cold.
Charlie was finally beginning to groan and come around, when Astoria splashed him with water in the face, and he came up spluttering. "Oh, good. You're not dead."
"No thanks to you!" Charlie grabbed his head where a large lump was rapidly forming.
Astoria squatted down beside him and began to towel off his face, but apparently she wasn't being as gentle as he'd have liked and Charlie yanked the towel from her hand. "Give me that. I don't trust you not to suffocate me with it." Charlie scooted back against the wall, legs stretched out before him, a bit slump-shouldered, and began to dry his face.
"Lack of oxygen might at least shut you up."
"You're just all hearts and sympathy, aren't you? Try to kill me and then annoy the fuck out of me. Frankly, I'm not sure which is worse."
Astoria was so accustomed to being numb that these were all new emotions running through her. Foreign feelings that made her blood boil when she was around this man. Before she could even fully process what she was about to do, she'd drawn back her hand and readied it to strike him. And strike him, she did. A good one right across that pretty, freckled face of his. And it felt good. So very good, to be angry, livid and damn well alive. She drew back her hand again, just to see if she might prolong this feeling of violent elation.
Charlie caught her wrist in mid slap and twisted her arm. And she felt that too, and moaned, not from the pain, but from the pleasure of not only his touch, but also from the pain radiating up her arm.
"You're fucking mental, you know that, right?" Charlie said, bending her arm so that she was forced into his lap.
Astoria knew exactly how crazy this all was, and just what a nutter she was for finding deep pleasure in it. She was almost ashamed enough to leave, and then Charlie grabbed a handful of her hair and tugged her head down roughly, kissing her hard. His lips were like bringing fire to a hearth that's ashes had long ago grown cold, and her pulse beat in time to the dancing of the flames sparked by that one touch of his lips to hers, heating up her body and ridding her mind of all else except here and now and Charlie. Her fists closed around his shirt front, clutching hands-full of the material. She tugged hard and heard the fabric rip and buttons skitter across the floor as she kissed Charlie back hard and desperate. Her tongue snaked over his even white teeth, exploring. She bit at his lips and it only turned her on more when she heard him curse as she drew blood. She scraped her fingernails across his bared chest and she shoved what remained of the tattered material down his arms.
"I don't usually fuck in the back rooms of pubs."
"I don't usually fuck at all," Astoria replied. "We can stop if you want." Astoria said the words in ragged gasps, nipping at his face all the time, but she thought she might die if Charlie pushed her away.
"Yeah… no. Good here. Really. Carry on. I'll just stop talking now."
"Good. You're far more likeable when you're not talking." She moved from his lap to straddle his legs. Charlie's hands spanned her waist and then moved down to slip beneath her skirt and tug her knickers down to her thighs. She felt a calloused finger slide against her clit and she groaned, arching her back. Charlie bit her nipple through the fabric of her blouse and bra as his finger began to stroke back and forth across her sensitive nub.
She was dying to have him, longing to remember what it was like to join bodies with someone else, and already imagining the difference between the hot-blooded man beneath her and the cold aloofness of her husband; the only man she'd ever known with such intimacy. She reached for the buckle of Charlie's belt and struggled to pull it free. Charlie shoved her hands away and unfastened it himself. She rose up on her knees enough to allow him to shove his denims down to his thighs, and when his cock sprang free from its confines, Astoria ripped apart the flimsy material that held her knickers together and sank down upon him.
"Fuck! Warn a person, yeah?" Charlie shouted. "And fuck that feels amazing."
"Are you lodging a complaint?" Astoria asked, beginning to pivot her hips as she rose up on her knees and then sinking back down on him until he was buried to the hilt. She reached behind her and cupped his balls, rolling them in her hand.
"Gentle with those," Charlie said, closing his eyes and hitting his head against the wall as he groaned in ecstasy.
"Scared?" Astoria taunted.
"Of you? Fuck, yes." His hand slid between them and a finger joined his cock inside her, stroking against the wall of her sex as his thumb pressed against her clit, circling in slow tight motions.
Astoria began to ride him in earnest, as another finger joined the first and she braced her hands on his shoulders and leaned in and kissed his throat, sliding her tongue up the thick column of tanned freckles that covered his Adam's apple, and then nipping with her teeth, as she felt him swallow hard beneath her mouth.
Charlie yanked up her skirt and slapped her hard on the bum. "No biting," he scolded.
The sharp pain of Charlie's hand connecting with her bum was too much. Astoria's orgasm hit her hard, muscles spasming as waves of pleasure washed over her and she bounced up and down on Charlie's cock, riding it out, until he was breathless and moaning beneath her, his cock beginning to soften.
"Guess you—um—you know?" she asked. It only seemed polite.
"Couldn't stop myself from coming, too. Not after watching you. Fuck, you're gorgeous when you arch your back and let go like that."
"This is—um—"
"Awkward?" Charlie provided.
"Yeah, that."
They rearranged their clothes in silence, Astoria stuffing her ruined knickers into her handbag as they both stood. She was gathering up the robe patches she'd tossed aside in her earlier haste to find the injured Charlie. It seemed impossible that it was only minutes ago. Minutes ago she'd been cold and lifeless. Now she felt alive—awkward, yes, but warm and alive with a thrumming running through her that felt foreign and wonderful and— "Do you usually put up stock on Tuesdays?" she asked.
"Erm—okay, odd break-the-ice question, but I never thought you were normal. But, we'll go with that, so, um, yes. Tuesdays, I—Are we going somewhere with this?" Charlie scratched his head looking perplexed.
"It's just, well—" Astoria stammered. "I think it's dangerous to allow someone as clumsy as you to stock shelves on their own. What's your boss thinking?"
"Thank you for that vote of confidence."
"Well, I was just—I mean, you know, I'd hate to see you hurt yourself, and I mean, it would make me feel—I don't know—God, could this be more awkward?"
"I'm thinking not," Charlie agreed, shoving his hands in the pockets of his denims.
"It's just now that Scorpius is off at school, I don't do anything on Tuesdays and—"
"Hmm." Charlie leaned against a shelf with a smirk, crossing his arms over his chest, as his now buttonless shirt hung open. He knew she wanted him, and Astoria considered punching him in the gut and throwing him down on the floor and fucking him senseless all at once.
She was mortified that she'd thought this might happen again. This was a dirty one-off in a back room with a man she couldn't stand when he was actually wearing clothes. She gathered the patches for Scorpius's robes and started for the door.
"Typical stock days are Tuesdays, but this week I was thinking of maybe adding in Thursday—and, I mean, you know, if you're not doing anything else and—"
Not a one-off then? "Yeah, maybe," she said, desperate to leave the awkwardness behind and maintain at least a modicum of dignity. She bolted for the door.
"Astoria," Charlie said, forcing her to stop with his tone, and she was surprised he knew her name. Her real name. He hadn't called her Mrs Malfoy like she was always referred to in the papers. "Try not to launch any boxes at my head on Thursday, 'kay? I'm far better at this—you know, stocking thing—" he winked and her face felt as if it were on fire from her blush— "if all my parts are in working order."
"No promises," she said. "Not unless you promise to hold your tongue."
"Can't do that. You'd miss out on all the charming and witty things I say." Charlie shrugged and grinned.
Astoria left the pub counting the hours until Thursday, when she'd once again be simply Astoria. Not Draco Malfoy's wife, not Scorpius Malfoy's mother—not a Malfoy at all—just Astoria. And with enough days of "stocking shelves," she might even come to discover just who Astoria Greengrass really was.