Chapter 2
"Lupin! Get your head out of your arse and into this game! What in Salazar's name is the matter with you?!"
Teddy grimaced down at his coach, swiping the rain from his goggles and trying to yank his broom around against the wind. Thank Merlin this was only a training match, he cursed internally, because he was playing like absolute shite.
He'd yet to hit a single bludger on target that morning, had twice gotten in the way of his own team's seeker as she was about to land on the snitch and had spent a good deal of the match so far simply staring at the blur that was Patrick Finnigan, who was currently running scoring drills at the other end of the pitch. With only two weeks before the opening game of the season this really wasn't the time to start choking in practice but try as he might, Teddy couldn't seem to focus on the task at hand.
In fact, this seemed to be becoming something of a concerning habit. Ever since last Friday (and his meeting with Victoire), Teddy had been walking around like a man under the Imperious curse. He'd somehow managed to lose his wallet, favourite jumper and two of his reserve brooms (which he'd left somewhere in the training grounds never to be seen again). He'd missed a meeting with his agent on Monday to do a final once-over of his new contract, forgotten to get Ginny a birthday present on Tuesday and on Wednesday managed to royally piss-off James when he met him for a pint in The Three Broomsticks by being - and he could quote - "the most useless wingman in the entire sodding world".
Even his grandmother, whom he saw every Thursday night for dinner and board game of her choice, had been so concerned by his out of character behaviour that she'd tried to let him win at exploding snap, to no avail. His reflexes were totally shot at, something he was now painfully aware of as the blur of a bludger shot passed his left side, only for Teddy to swing out a second too late and accidentally catch one of his Chasers in the back of the head with his bat.
"That's it, Lupin! You're done for the day! Hit the showers!"
Teddy swore loudly in protest but landed his broom and stomped towards the changing rooms. Merlin, he was going to murder Victoire – if he ever plucked up the courage to see her again, that was. Oh, he was under absolutely no illusion why he was being such a useless prat out on the field today, not to mention all week. He hadn't been able to get her – or her request – out of his head for more than a minute ever since she'd opened that pretty little mouth of hers and asked him to shag her.
"As friends, obviously."
OBVIOUSLY. Because that makes the whole situation totally normal, he thought angrily, wrenching off his sweaty jersey and throwing it into his locker. What on Earth had she been thinking?
The truth was, it wasn't totally unusual for Teddy to spend a large amount of his time thinking about Victoire. She was his best mate, so it was acceptable for her to occupy some of his thoughts, but there were also frequent moments – like when he would hear her laugh echoing from somewhere in the Burrow or when she would come round to his flat just to read and lay stretched out across his couch – that he would catch his thoughts roaming into forbidden territory and have to pull them (and himself) back from the edge.
He couldn't remember exactly when it was that he first started thinking of her in that way. It certainly hadn't been a conscious decision, that was for sure. And he tried to do it as little as humanly possible because he wasn't an idiot – he understood the repercussions of letting his mind run away with him all too well.
It might have started when she'd made him agree to take her as his date to a teammates party, back when he was still playing in the amateur leagues, and she'd worn this ridiculous little blue dress with white flowers which crept a little too high on her leg as she'd danced. Incidentally, that was the same night she'd first met Finnigan, he remembered ruefully.
Or, he conceded, it might have been even earlier than that, when the pair were still at Hogwarts and she'd started dating Zabini. Teddy had given her the cold shoulder for the best part of three weeks, even though he hadn't been able to put his finger on quite why he was so cross with her. She'd eventually won him round with a packet-full of chocolate frogs and a note asking him if she'd done something to upset him. Of course, he'd told her that she hadn't and they ate the sweets together in their usual corner of the library, hiding the wrappers from Madame Pince and laughing at the latest misdemeanours of her cousins.
Whatever his reasons, after that he'd started opting to share a tent with Fred and James rather than her on the annual Weasley-Potter camping trip. If she'd even noticed the change or been offended by it he'd never really asked, preferring to carry on as if nothing was any different. They were still best friends and nothing had changed. But maybe on some subconscious level it had, for him at least.
And now - Victoire herself, of all people – had officially opened the floodgates. Bringing up she and him and sex in the same sentence. And suddenly he was struggling to keep all of his thoughts and his weird, confused feelings in check.
"Bloody woman," he muttered to himself, slinging a towel over his shoulder as he headed for the showers.
He was just starting to feel his shoulder muscles loosen, his frustration ebbing under the hot stream of water as the rest of his teammates came barrelling into the changing rooms. There was the usual guffawing, the locker room insults about someone's piss-poor play that morning, and then Teddy heard something that made his head swivel.
"You smashed it out there, today, Finnigan! Ten shots on goal in under ten minutes! I guess someone finally got their end away, ey?"
There was a smattering of hoots and hollers from the rest of the group before someone else asked: "Tell us what happened then, Paddy? Did she finally put out or what?"
Teddy froze where he stood, turquoise hair full of shampoo, and waited for what seemed like an eternity for his teammate's response.
"'Course she bloody did," came the Irishman's answer, "No one can resist this forever!"
Another chorus of cheers and loud back-slapping erupted and before Teddy knew what he was doing he was out of the shower, across the changing room floor and had Patrick Finnigan up against the lockers, hands gripping onto his robes.
"Say that again, Finnigan," he snarled. "Like you believe it."
The other man's eyes went wide at the sight of Teddy bearing over him – stark naked and dripping wet, golden eyes darkening ferociously as the tips of his hair began to turn a fiery red.
"I-, I don't know what you mean, Ted," he spluttered.
"Oh, I really think you do," Teddy glared down his nose, pointedly. The rest of their teammates looked on in bewilderment. "Tell them what really happened, or I will."
Finnigan seemed to grapple with this decision for a second too long. Teddy tightened his grip on his collar. "Fine! Fine! I didn't sleep with Weasley! She turned me down, again."
Teddy nodded sternly and allowed Patrick's feet to drop to the floor. He was halfway back to the shower, apparently unabashed by his lack of clothing, when Finnigan decided to open his foolish mouth again.
"You know what, Lupin? You're welcome to her!" he spat, angrily, yanking off his Quidditch gloves. "She's bloody frigid anyway!"
It took Teddy less than a second to decide what to do next.
O
Victoire set down her copy of the next morning's Daily Prophet with a frown. She didn't normally bother to buy a copy of her own – there was always one floating around the break room at work – but the headline on the sports pages had rather grabbed her attention.
'Tornados' Two Star Players Mysteriously Relegated to Bench for First Match of the Season'
Beneath it were two photographs: one of Teddy looking sullen, slinging his kit bag over his shoulder and holding up an arm to block his face from the cameras. The other was of Patrick, her now ex-boyfriend, who looked as if he'd gone ten rounds against an angry hippogriff. He very clearly had a nasty looking black eye, a split lip and what looked like the remnants of a powerful Bat-Bogey Hex hanging out of the end of his nose.
Really, Victoire thought wryly, there was absolutely no mystery to be solved at all. There had quite clearly been a locker-room brawl and no coach in the world was going to allow in-fighting amongst his players. The exact reason for these two particular players to come to blows was the only real question and Victoire had more than a sneaking suspicion that she herself might be a part of the answer.
She quickly hid the paper under the desk as her boss popped his head round her office door.
"'Morning, Victoire. Where are we with the case review on the Albanian cauldron shipment?"
"Already on your desk, Uncle Percy," she smiled, widely. "Same time for lunch today?"
"Absolutely! My turn to choose though. I don't think my stomach can handle anymore of these trendy muggle hotspots you keep dragging me to," Percy grimaced, an unsteady hand settling subconsciously on his stomach.
Victoire held up her hands and stifled a laugh, "No more sushi, I promise. See you at twelve!"
What had started out as a temporary job after graduation – and after that dream-shattering rejection letter from the St Mungo's Healer's programme – had actually turned out to be a rather perfect fit for Victoire. Her Uncle Percy, as a favour to her dad (and an example of nepotism at it's finest, she was somewhat ashamed to admit), had suggested she filled in for his junior secretary whilst they took a few months maternity leave. Victoire, it seemed, had more of a flair for the actual case work than taking minutes and making coffee and it wasn't long before her uncle had given her a trial run of her own case load.
She didn't suppose that working for the Ministry Department for Trade Standards was really anyone's lifelong dream (except maybe her Uncle Percy's), but she was good at it and she genuinely enjoyed the day-to-day work.
Glancing down at the newspaper in her lap, she reached for her quill and inkwell but stopped short. She had already almost sent Teddy a dozen owls this past week – sometimes not even managing to put quill to parchment, sometimes losing all courage and tossing the letter straight onto the fire. On one occasion she had actually gotten so far as to attach a note to the poor postal owl, which she then had to chase around her flat for the best part of an hour to stop it from delivering the bloody thing.
This was the longest they had ever gone without speaking as far as she could remember. The problem was she had absolutely no idea what to say. How do you follow up after 'I need you to have sex with me'?
Sweet Helga, she groaned and pressed her forehead against the desk. What had she been thinking? If Teddy so much as spoke to her again, she'd be lucky. He must have thought she was a mad woman, or a desperate one, or both. Probably both, she conceded, feeling the colour rising to her cheeks for what must be the hundredth time this week. She'd been building up to that very conversation for what had felt like months, and as soon as the words had left her mouth she wanted to swallow them all back up again.
Gods, the look on his face! It was such a mixture of emotion she hadn't been able to tell what he was feeling. Shock, obviously, that was to be expected. Fear? Horror? Disgust at the thought of seeing her naked, perhaps?
She caught site of her reflection in the brass desk lamp and stuck her tongue out at herself, she really could be her own harshest critic. She wasn't an idiot, she knew she was pretty – she had veela lineage for Merlin's sake, not to mention the amount of times she'd been asked out on dates seemed a little higher than the average (or, at least, that's what her other female friends told her). But that just made her current predicament seem even more ridiculous! Poor little Victoire with her knickers all in a twist.
And not that this was about keeping score – because it really, truly wasn't – but she knew for a fact she was falling behind compared to her cousins. She was the oldest, she was meant to be the trailblazer, the one who got the very first bite at the cherry. She knew for a fact that Roxanne (the next closest to Vic in age and also her flatmate) enjoyed a very regular and acrobatic sex-life with her girlfriend owing to the lack of soundproofing between their adjacent bedroom walls. James and Fred – if you could stand to listen to half of their bullshit and bravado – would have her believe they took home a new woman almost every weekend (although James swore he would give it all up for half a chance with the barmaid at The Three Broomsticks).
Even Rose, freshly graduated from school and almost six years Victoire's junior, was currently shagging her way across Europe with her 'good friend' Scorpius Malfoy. Those two weren't fooling anyone when it came to their relationship - except maybe their respective fathers, who were either too stubborn or too stupid to notice that they'd been straight into each other's pants the day they turned seventeen.
It was exactly this line of thinking that had led her to proposition Teddy in the first place. Her brain liked logic – she had a problem and she needed a solution. Teddy was the obvious choice. She trusted him, she cared for him deeply and he knew her better than she knew herself. She couldn't think of a better person to lose one's overdue virginity to, on paper.
If she allowed herself to think about it for more than a moment – the idea of her and Teddy together in that way – well, that also did something a little funny to her insides and made her heart beat a little faster. She was quite sure that was probably just nervousness, though. After all, she was risking the Earth by putting her friendship with Teddy on the line here. Even so much as the thought of this ruining their special bond, destroying the 'Best Friend Pact' of 2005, (written in green crayon on the back of a portkey timetable that Victoire still kept as a bookmark in her favourite edition of Hogwarts: A History, Volume II), was enough to break her heart.
She found herself reaching for her quill again – she could just check in on him, make sure that he was okay and that his hand didn't hurt too much after it's abrupt introduction to Finnigan's face?
No. She let a long slow breath out through her nose and dropped her quill back into the inkwell with a small splash. She'd promised him time to think about what she'd asked of him. Besides, she didn't want to give him the chance to simply gloss over it, pretend as if she'd never asked – no matter how much she felt like doing exactly that herself.
She'd be seeing him in person the very next day, anyway, she bargained with herself. The hordes were gathering to celebrate her Aunt Ginny's birthday earlier in the week and she knew for a fact that Teddy's life wouldn't be worth living if he bailed on that woman's party.
Victoire glanced at the morning's newspaper and Teddy's picture one last time before she sent it sailing into the rubbish bin with a flick of her wand. She just needed a distraction – and she happened to know that there was a shipment of sub-standard owl cages from Switzerland that had just come in, with her name all over them.
O