A/N: I really wanted to call this chapter 'Sleepy Morning'. I was so set on calling it that… it was kind of weird, actually. Sorry that I haven't been updating that frequently. Been busy as whoa. –shudder- Real life sucks. Thanks so much for reviews! I HAVE ONE HUNDRED NOW! WOO!
Disclaimer: It's not mine. I'm not the one with the castle in Scotland.
Fast-Forward
Chapter Nine: Sleepy Morning
His eyes, dark and flashing and at that moment so violently emotional that it would have left her breathless had she not already been robbed of any idea of breathing – focused on her, though fighting to concentrate, breathing so loud and laboured that it seemed painful. "You…" he struggled to get the words out, which probably wasn't helped by still having her pressed to his chest, her heart almost slamming out of her body and into his. "Are you… you… sure…"
Ginny stared straight into those eyes, and the only answer that she gave was a whisper, barely audible, "I love you".
For just a few seconds longer, he still stood frozen, his chest heaving with exertion – and then he smashed his mouth back into hers, both of them surrendering the battle of resisting each other, and he carried her through to the bedroom.
xxx
Sleepy morning came.
Ginny's eyes fluttered open slowly, and she found herself squinting at the glimpses of glaring sunshine that fought through the dark green curtains, sheets tangled around her waist.
Kneading her bleary eye sockets with her knuckles, she twisted and stretched, before giving out to a yawn. Then she thought to glance sideways, but found that the other side of the broad double-bed was unoccupied. She had blurry half-awake memories of someone slipping away, a cold hand curled around her waist withdrawing.
She rested her head back against one of the squashed pillows nearby, but lay still for only a few seconds before sitting up clumsily and kicking the sheets off. A glimpse of a clock showed that it was about twelve-thirty.
Jesus.
She yawned again, and then stood, grabbing some nearby clothes that she saw flung across a chair; she emerged from the bedroom a moment later, dressed.
Tom was visible through the wide doorway of the kitchen across the hall, probably making something, judging by his constant shifting in front of the kitchen counter. He was already dressed, though not fully – in plain black trousers and a plain grey shirt – but had as of yet failed to meticulously brush his hair as normal, and it was instead standing up in thick clumps and tufts all over his head.
Smiling slightly, Ginny leaned one shoulder against the kitchen doorframe, folding her arms across her stomach. "'Morning," she called.
Not seeming startled at all to have her suddenly appear behind him, Tom looked over his shoulder at him, also smiling. The cut under his left eye from the office explosion was magically healed, leaving only a faint pink line where the skin was still hot. "Good morning." His eyes then flickered from her face; his eyebrows rose slightly. "Oh."
A frown curved Ginny's brow. "What?"
"Well." He smirked, though it was an equally guilty expression as it was smug. "You are absolutely covered in purple marks."
Ginny narrowed her eyes playfully at him. "And whose fault is that?"
Tom moved towards her, abandoning a bowl of whatever it was that he was making on the counter. "Mine entirely." He pulled the neck of her shirt (one that she realised now was entirely unfamiliar) sideways, revealing even more purple marks than had previously been visible, and gently prodded one with his index finger.
"Ow," Ginny mumbled, watching as it paled from the touch and then swelled back violet.
"Sorry." He leaned down to lightly kiss the bite-mark that he'd just poked, and then kissed her on the lips. "And," he said, his quiet voice filled with a teasing tone, "I have to say that you look incredibly attractive dressed in my underwear."
Ginny looked down at the random attire she'd grabbed from his bedroom, and found that she was indeed wearing one of his black shirts and a pair of boxers.
Oops.
"Yeah… I woke up, and I was just thinking: 'Hm. Now, what clothes can I wear that would turn Tom on the most?' And I realised, aha! His underwear." She winked. "Pretty sexy, eh?"
"Mm." He ducked his head to kiss her again, this kiss longer and more lasting than the previous. A period of forgotten time later, he drew back, smiling against her mouth.
She gave him another quick peck on the lips before realising that her stomach was demanding priority. "Whatcha making?" she asked, peering around him to try and see what was in the bowl.
"Pancakes… I think." Tom stabbed at the brown mixture in the bowl with a wooden spoon. "I'm quite certain that they're pancakes."
"How can you not know?" Ginny asked.
"I am not a good cook. I make things, and whatever the food wants to be, then that is what it will probably turn out to be. What I try to do has little significance in the matter." Tom used the spoon to turn over some of the mixture.
"Cool. Can I help?"
"Alright."
He showed her how to stir it – something that, in theory, should have been extremely obvious, but wasn't to Ginny – and he was helping her to tip some of the mixture into the pan when the doorbell rang.
"I'll get it," Tom said. "Don't let the pancake burn. Flip it over after a short time." Still giving instructions over his shoulder, he opened the door-
"WHAT SORT OF ABOMINABLE AND X-RATED THINGS HAVE YOU BEEN GETTING UP TO WITH MY FRIEND?"
Ginny's eyes widened. Grace. Oh. Crap.
Ginny peered around the edge of the door as Grace exclaimed, "Hi, Romeo!" Ginny kicked her. "Tom, even," the brunette corrected. "What time can I expect my friend back?" She was prone to worrying.
He glanced at his watch. "Eleven o'clock at the latest, probably."
…Oops.
"What-?" Tom said, looking alarmed. "I-"
"ELEVEN O'CLOCK, MY ARSE!" Grace yelled. "WHERE IS SHE?"
Deciding that now was her cue to save her fiancé before Grace started trying to strangle the answer out of him, Ginny poked her head through the doorway of the kitchen so that she was visible, and held up the pan.
"Hi, Grace," she chirped. "Pancakes?"
In response, Grace just stared. It became apparent that she, too, had noticed the vast quantity of purple marks dotting Ginny's throat.
Ginny sighed. "Grace. Outside. Now." She passed the pan over to Tom, and marched through the front door, dragging her friend behind her, and then closed the door over. She then reluctantly turned. "Okay, get it over with."
Grace sucked in a huge gasp, and then she started. "OHMIGOD!" she shrieked. "Ohmigod! You – and – you – and him – and – Ohmigod!" She clapped her hands together. "Did you really-"
"…I stayed the night, I'm covered in bite-marks, I'm making breakfast at twelve-thirty, and I'm wearing his freakin' underwear, Grace," said Ginny wearily. "Answer that for yourself."
The brunette squealed with delight.
"So what happened?" she demanded, her expression suddenly deadly serious but her eyes still gleaming with mischief. "Was it all romanceville, or was he just kind of like, 'Ginny, get your arse over here and make a man of me!' or what?"
"And that, Grace," Ginny said firmly, "is something that you are never going to hear about."
Grace's face fell. "Oh, please?"
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
"Oh, fine. Just… tell me – thumbs-up, thumbs-down?"
Ginny bit her lip to stop from beaming like a retard, but found herself grinning anyway, and held both hands out to her friend in a thumbs-up gesture; Grace squealed loudly, bouncing up and down.
"Anyway," Ginny added, "for my birthday present, he asked me to move in with him, so technically I wasn't doing anything wrong…"
"Oh, you're moving in together! It's so cute and perfect." Grace clasped her hands together. "I swear, if you were any cuter, you'd be pink and fluffy."
"For God's sake, you're acting like Pippa. I thought it was her job to coo over how adorable everything is."
"Well, Pippa's not here, is she?"
"Whatever." Ginny couldn't be bothered with pointless arguments – she never won them, as Grace had a strange, confusing way of twisting everything that she said so that Ginny's own words seemed stupid. "I'll see you later, for lunch, maybe."
"Okay." Grace gave a big, exaggerated wink. "Have fun." Then she Disapparated.
She's so insane it's almost ridiculous.
Ginny pushed open the door to Tom's (and mine, she thought gleefully) apartment, and moved through to the kitchen. "Argh," she grumbled, sinking into a nearby chair. "She's so pestering-y."
"Remind me, what exactly was all of that about?" Tom asked, shuffling a pancake onto a plate and holding it out to Ginny.
She took the plate and gratefully started to munch on her pancake, not caring to get cutlery, or anything to put on top of it. "Oh, just Grace being… Grace." She rolled her eyes. "And you have no right to look so innocent, by the way, Mr. We'll-Be-Back-By-Eleven-At-The-Latest. She worries like you would not believe. She probably thought that you'd kidnapped me or something."
Tom considered this. "In a way, I did kidnap you," he said thoughtfully. "Anyway, I said that we would back by eleven because at the time, I thought that we would." He served his own pancake and sat down beside her. "You staying here was… spontaneous, to say the least."
"I have to say that her shouting at you was funny, though," Ginny chuckled. "I don't think you've ever looked so scared of a single person in your life."
"I wasn't scared of her," he scoffed. "I was slightly alarmed though, at demands of knowing what we had been doing…" He raised one eyebrow. "Well, alright," he said, mocking what he could have said, "if you really want to know – I started off by removing her clothes and eating as much of her throat as I could reach-"
"Shut up," Ginny scowled, hitting him on the arm, but then moved to stand in front of where he was sitting and kiss him. And it was just cruel irony that three years ago she'd never have thought she could be so happy.
xxx
"Are these in the throwing-out pile?" Philippa Decrow demanded incredulously, holding up a pair of high-heeled boots.
Ginny glanced over her shoulder at the offending items. "Yeah." She turned to look back the numerous boxes where she had stashed her stuff while she lived in Grace's house, sorting through what was and wasn't necessary.
Philippa and Grace were both pitching in to help Ginny pack for moving in with Tom, and the latter two had both insisted on using their together-time to attack the subject of her wedding – and to steal the stuff that she was getting rid.
"Ooh, can I have them?" Philippa asked, raising her voice over both the sound of Ginny's new Kids In Glass Cauldrons record playing their hit single, and the sound of Grace loudly rambling about the cat that she was getting. "They're really nice."
"Okay – but I'll warn you, they hurt." Ginny groaned, looking into a large tub of broken colour eyeliners. "More of my beautiful babies to die." She threw them at the getting-rid-of heap.
"Thanks!" the ex-Ravenclaw exclaimed, hugging the shoes to her, and adding them to the growing mound of Ginny's possessions that she was pilfering. "I have a dress that would set them off really nicely – I know! I could wear it to your wedding!"
"OH!" Grace emerged from underneath her bed, where she was trying to find the remainder of Ginny's things, thoughts of cats forgotten. Her hair was wild, and tangled with bits of dead dust-bunnies. "I call dibs on organising your wedding dress! And I called first dibs, so you can't argue! HAH!"
"Aw, no fair!" Philippa complained. "I wanted to!"
"Well, you can't, because I am-"
"No-"
"Yeah-"
"SHUT UP!" Ginny yelled, leaping to her feet. She scowled at her two best friends. "Have you ever considered that I might want to organise my own wedding dress?"
"No," both of the two other girls immediately began to protest.
Ginny heaved a sigh. "Merlin, you're like toddlers. Fine. Grace, you can do the dress because you called first dibs – sorry, Pip – hey, shut up, I'm not finished – and Pippa, you can organise the bridesmaid dresses." She glowered at them. "Happy now?"
Philippa and Grace were silent for a moment. And then:
"Can I do the flowers?"
"ARGH!" the redhead bride-to-be grabbed her skull, jumping up and down in frustration. "Stop it! Both of you, sort it out amongst yourselves, I don't really care! If you really care that much about my wedding, then you can both be the planners of it, okay?"
"Do I get any say in this?" asked Tom bemusedly, from where he had been quietly sitting in the nearby armchair, watching the whole scene unfold.
"NO!" all three girls simultaneously shouted at him.
Exasperated, Ginny sank to sit on the floor, gripping a nearby box for support, but it was only made of cardboard, and it ripped, spilling its contents all over the already-messy floor.
"Oh, screw it," she groaned, keeling over and burying her face in her arm, while Grace and Philippa squabbled over who was going to cater.
"Who's invited, then?" Grace asked, having been defeated for the catering. She came over to sit in front of Ginny and helped to tidy up the numerous small items that had escaped the broken cardboard box.
Ginny sat up, pushing her hair out of her face. "Er. Me. Tom."
"No kidding."
"You and Pippa… your family… Alden, and his family – including Dominic, if he's better by then. Antonia Durrell… Luke… Heather… maybe Ramira Xue and Jack Swithin from school… maybe Flora as well, but she was kind of a bitch to me last year… my friends Beth and Louise from work…" Ginny was ticking off her fingers, but struggling to think of any more, repeatedly bouncing the same finger as she tried to come up with a name to put on it. It wasn't helped by the fact that neither Ginny nor Tom had any family. "Who else?"
"No offence, but it's going to be a freakin' tiny ceremony," Philippa pointed out.
"Thanks for that in-put." Ginny huffed, resting her chin on her palm. She looked up at Tom wearily for help. "Anyone you want to invite?"
Her fiancé considered this. After quite some time, he said slowly, "Fionn."
"Oh yeah!" Ginny beamed. "Good idea." She winked at Tom. "I'll especially tell her that it's an invitation from you."
"Yes, you do that," Tom muttered. "I hope you have fun setting me up for agonising torture."
"Believe me, I will." She smirked.
"I know who you could invite!" Philippa exclaimed. "You could invite Sco-"
Ginny flinched slightly, knowing that they were going to say Scott – a friend who she hadn't been as close to as some others, such as Alden, Grace and Philippa, for example, but she had still been close to… and she hadn't heard of him since the end of school, when he had quite bluntly told her that he wanted nothing to do with her.
"Shut up," Grace abruptly hissed, aiming a swift kick at the other girl, who was well-known for not being able to keep her mouth shut.
"Oops." Philippa flushed red. "Forgot."
"What?" Ginny frowned. "I'm not stupid, you know. I know that you were going to say Scott. And I miss him, yeah, but I'm not going to go into hysterics if you mention him. You don't need to panic."
"I know," said Grace, smiling blandly. "Sorry. I just – I dunno."
However, Philippa was twisting from side to side awkwardly, biting her lower lip and avoiding looking at Ginny, quite determinedly keeping her mouth shut. She was such a bad liar that it was almost funny.
Ginny's suspicious hazel eyes flickered from one lying young woman to the other. "What's going on? What about Scott?"
Grace's broad smile slipped from her lips. "Oh, now you've done it," she said darkly, casting a glare at Philippa, who cowered and mumbled repeated apologies.
"Why - what's happened to Scott?" Ginny asked, a feeling of dread overcoming her from Grace's unusually sombre expression, and Philippa's evident guilt. "What the hell is going on?"
With a heavy sigh, Grace pushed a hand backwards through her hair. "Don't you read the Prophet?"
"I work there – I don't have to."
"Well, you should," Grace said quietly, her voice low with sympathy. "He's been missing since August."
Stunned, Ginny stared. "Missing?"
Philippa snorted with bitter humour. "They only say that because they couldn't find the body-"
"Pippa!" Grace snarled, furious.
Oh my God.
Ginny's mouth fell open, eyes wide. "He's dead."
"Missing," Grace corrected brightly, trying to be cheerful to make her friend feel better. "Nothing's been confirmed as of yet."
"Scott Reeve, my friend, has been missing since August, almost certainly dead, and yet neither of you thought to tell me?!" Ginny stood, her voice slowly rising in volume until she was almost shouting. "And that includes you!" she accused, turning to Tom. "I had lunch with you about three weeks in your apartment, and spent at least two minutes talking about Scott, and you never thought to mention that he's dead?"
"We thought you knew!" exclaimed Grace and Philippa.
Ginny turned on Tom. "What's your excuse?" she ranted. "You read the newspaper all the time, telling me what's happening – and you just skip over the news on Scott's case, do you?"
"I didn't want to tell you until it had been confirmed that he was alive or dead," Tom said quietly. "I didn't want you to have false hopes that he might be alright."
"I'm not an idiot! I know that being 'missing' for four months means dead!"
"I'm sorry."
Upset, Ginny folded her arms across her chest, fighting the urge to pout like a small child would when throwing a tantrum. "You know I hate people not telling me things," she said unhappily.
Her friends mumbled apologies, but her mind was already away with Scott.
"You know as well as I do that you can't be friends with someone you're in love with. You discovered that with Riddle. I discovered that with you. There comes a time when you have to decide." Scott tore his eyes away and stared darkly at the floor. "You made your decision before I even knew you were deciding."
Her heart hurt. If she had known that it would be the last thing she ever heard of him, then she would have acted differently. She didn't know what she would have done, but she would have done something.
Anything was better than a fragile hope that they might still be friends, unknowing of his death.
xxx
A/N: YAY! The plot is finally starting. –roll eyes- Sorry that it took so long to get to this point. Nine chapters before it gets to the important stuff. Geez. Well, the plot starts now – albeit a random, slightly predictable and messed-up plot.
I went with my GCSE Drama class into West End to watch The Woman In Black and it is actually the scariest thing I have ever seen. I spent the majority of it curled in my friend's lap, hyperventilating, screaming, and having uncontrollable leg spasms. It's amazing – I was so twitchy for twenty-four hours afterwards! Seriously, my brother turned on the hot water and I screamed; in RE, the teacher dropped the textbooks onto my desk and I nearly jumped into my friend's lap. And then, to top it off, I had a sleepover straight afterwards watching The Ring and stuff. ARGH! SHE COMES OUT OF A WELL!! :O Well, I'm happy.
REEEVVIEWWW.
Oh, I had this really weird mental video last night. You know how Tom asked if she was sure before… -cough-?
Tom: Are… are you sure?
Ginny: Well. Actually, now that you mention it… I think we should wait a little. I mean, we aren't even married yet or anything. I think we should wait.
Tom: -silently staring at her-
Ginny: -self conscious- What?
Tom: …Are you freakin' KIDDING ME?
Ginny: I just think we should at least wait until the honeymoon, you know. So… can you put me down now?
Tom: -drops her on the floor- …Bitch.
LOL. Sorry. It was really vividly in my head. Haha. Can you just imagine if she'd said no? They'd be all hot and rumpled and turned-on… and just sitting in their apartment, like: "…So." Teehee. Anyway, please review!
