HOLA!

Okay you guys, THIS is a yet another action packed chapter. And for once that's not sarcastic!! YAY!

Alright, this is dedicated to my cousin who was bucked off her horse and is now suffering a badly bruise hip. Oh and XxStephXx, who finally got back on her proverbial horse and published a cute one shot! Neither of them will probably ever see this, but they deserve to have something dedicated them!

Oh and I want to turn on any Taylor Swift fans who may not be aware of her new video hit, "Our Song," to said song. It's quite awesome if I do say so myself. So yeah. Woot for Taylor Swift for winning the Horizon award at the CMA's.

Happy Reading.

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Chapter 11:

Dating III: All Sorted

"Hi, welcome to Milk and Honey, my name is Elena and I'll be your—" Elle started off before looking up from her pen and paper to who was seated at the table, "server. Well that introduction was entirely unnecessary," she added, chuckling. "What can I get the two of you to drink?"

"A bottle of Pinot Grigio for the table, please," Cass requested.

"Alright, I'll return with that in just a minute," Elle said with a smile.

"Grigio?" Teddy asked incredulously, chuckling a bit. "For the girl who can down five shots of whiskey and fly a broom without killing herself or someone else?"

"Hey, I can be a right dignified broad when I want to!" Cass laughed. "You underestimate me, Ted Lupin."

Teddy laughed.

And an instant later, he regretted letting them lapse into a silence that was awkward enough to make him yearn for the sexcapades talk with Ginny.

This had been how it ever since they got to the restaurant. One witty comment or two tossed back and forth and then, silence. That's how it had been when they were waiting to be seated, that's how it'd been while they were waiting for Elle to come and ask their drink order and that's how it was now.

How was that things were so awkward? Just over twenty four hours ago, they had ripped each other's clothes off without any inhibitions or second thoughts and had wild—not to mention really loud—sex on a hay loft. Teddy had thought that would make them more comfortable—after all, the awkward 'getting to know you' stage was far behind them—but it had only seemed to make things more complicated. It seemed that their minds could not adjust to the fact that they were… some weird something. Somewhere in between friends and more. And neither knew how to behave in the middle ground.

"One bottle of Pinot Grigio," Elle said cheerily, setting the glasses down in front of each of them with a offhanded grace. "You two ready to order?"

"Erm, I think we need a couple more minutes," Cass said, looking up from her menu.

"Alright, just flag me down when you're ready," Elle responded with a nod.

As soon as Elle had rounded the corner into the kitchen, Cass quickly downed her entire glass in a single draft.

"Nervous, are we?" Teddy asked, eyeing her bone dry glass.

"A bit," she croaked, still in the middle of choking down the wine. "But don't act like you aren't too."

"I'm not denying it," he chuckled. "I just don't know how to fix it."

"Well, first let's decide what we're gonna order, I'm starving," Cass said, glancing back down at the menu. "And you know that everything seems worse when you're hungry. What looks good to you?"

"Erm…" Teddy said, scanning the menu for something he liked. There was an awful lot of fish on this bloody menu, he thought to himself. Teddy hated fish. Beef, pork, chicken, that was all fine, but there was something about fish.

He looked at up Cass, who looked like an angel in the candlelight. The low golden flicker of the flame lit up her skin as if it had been dusted with gold flecks. He traced the line of her neck with his eyes, following the gold necklace that complemented her radiant skin so nicely and the pedant that dipped so deliciously low on her bodice…

"Anything catch your eye?" she asked, taking a more modest sip of wine.

"Er…" he responded, trying to focus back on the menu. "I think I'll have the cleavage."

Cass nearly spit her wine out as shock and mortification slapped Teddy across the face. He couldn't believe what had just come out of his mouth. Never in his life—not even during Ginny's sex talks—had he ever done anything even remotely like this.

Cass simply stared at him in humorous incredulity.

"That," she said, "is not on the menu."

"Cass, I am so sorry," Teddy said, wishing he could evaporate on the spot. "I just—"

"—was rather intrigued by my chest," Cass finished for him, laughing.

"Cass—"

"Oh Ted, calm down," she said dismissively. "You've seen my breasts already, they're old news."

As Teddy was about to respond when a woman in his peripheral caught his eye. Doing an immediate double take, he watched the woman make her way over to the bathroom area, her jet black curls tumbling down her back, her impeccable legs seemingly going on forever.

"Ted?" Cass asked, noticing his reverie. "You alright?"

"Er, yeah, great," Teddy answered quickly, his eyes still locked on that woman. He set his napkin on the table, adding, "I'll be right back."

He stood and followed her in hot pursuit, carefully dodging waiters and servers all the while. She was just about to enter the bathroom when Teddy caught her.

"Hey," Teddy said.

"Excuse me," the woman said, clearly annoyed as she turned around.

Teddy's heart fell. Being so close to her, he could clearly see that this woman was not the one he thought he'd seen: she was too short, her eyes were blue, not brown, and her face was entirely different.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were an old friend," Teddy apologized, offering a conciliatory grin as he backed away, back to the table.

"Sorry bout that," Teddy said, giving Cass a peck on the cheek as he returned to the table.

"What was it?" Cass asked cautiously.

"I thought I saw Is—" Teddy responded before he could check himself. But it was too late.

The look in Cass's eyes was unmistakable. A white hot embers smoldered behind her eyes, and all it would take is one more stupid comment to turn it into a full-blown, blazing inferno. Teddy'd seen this look a million times, and it never meant anything good, especially not for him.

"Cass…" he said in a low, careful tone. "I didn't…" He stopped himself, knowing that would end up being a stupid comment. "It wasn't…" Again, stupidity.

"Oh, I know exactly what it was," she responded in a sickeningly sweet voice, dabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin. "You thought that woman was Isabella and all of a sudden I was on the backburner again."

"Merlin, Cass, I haven't seen her in two years!" Teddy shot back, losing patience with her. "Is it so awful that I wanted to see her? Or do you really hate her that much?"

"Bloody hell Ted, it's not about her!" she responded, her tone harsh but her volume low. "It's about you! When you were with Isabella, I was always an afterthought! And sure, Isabella didn't help things, but you made it so! And now you're letting it happen again!"

"Would you stop being so bloody dramatic and let us get back to the date!"

And then came the inferno.

Cass rose from her chair as quick as lightning, the chair making an ominous screech sound as she pushed it back from the table. In another instant, she had grabbed his wine glass and thrust its contents into his face.

"How's that for dramatic?"

With a look that could melt titanium, Cass slammed the glass down on the table with a clatter and stalked off towards the bathroom.

As Teddy grabbed his napkin and wiped the wine off this face, he became acutely aware of the fact that there were about forty pairs of eyes glued on him, watching him contemplate his next move. Deciding that diving into the unknown and tampering with the forces of nature was better than being a carnival slideshow and sitting there like a bump on a log, he rose from his seat and went after Cass, catching her just as she was about to enter the bathroom.

"What's the matter with you tonight?" Teddy asked incredulously. "First you won't talk, then when you finally have something to say, you scream at me till your blue in the face!"

"What's the matter with me?" she asked, marveling at the idiocy of that comment. "Oh nothing, I just thought that I'd be going on a date where the guy actually paid attention to me instead of a woman who somewhat resembles his ex girlfriend, silly me!"

"Oh come off it, Cass!" Teddy shot back, sick and tired of Cass nagging him about Isabella.

"You come off it!" she spat. "Are you really that inept, or does your Neanderthal-sized brain really not grasp this concept? I never hated Isabella, Ted! In fact, she told me that she was interested in you before you two started dating and I encouraged her to go for it! What I hated was the fact that you made her the center of the universe and expected everyone to just bloody accept it! I was—I am—your best friend! I don't expect you to come out with the Cass-centric universe anytime soon, but dammit, I expect to be able to have a decent time without Isabella dominating everything!" She let out an indignant snort. "You know what, just leave me alone. Go fuck something."

She pushed on the bathroom door and left Teddy standing in the hallway, who again decided that braving Cass's world-renowned temper was better than standing there and doing nothing, and entered the bathroom after her.

She was standing at the sink, sighing at her reflection in the mirror—her heels already ditched off to the side of the bathroom, their position on the ground indicating that they had probably been thrown against the wall prior to falling back down to earth—when she was alerted to his presence by the click of the door closing behind Teddy.

"I told you to go—"

She barely got the words out before he kissed her.

Teddy could taste the sweet remnants of wine and her lip gloss—the very small, only partially functioning portion of Teddy's brain thought it tasted something like cherry—on her lips.

With a slight thud, Cass's back hit the bathroom wall, and she emitted a giggle.

"What's so funny?" he asked, nibbling on her ear.

"You know…" she said, taking in short breathy gasps, "when I said that you should go fuck something… the implication was that it would be something other than me."

"Oh, well," Teddy said, smiling as her captured her lips in another intoxicating kiss. "I couldn't really grasp the concept. Neanderthal-sized brain, and all—"

"Oh shut up already," she responded.

--

"Well, that certainly was fun," Teddy breathed, his hair—yet again changing back to brown from bright scarlet—standing on end in several awkward directions.

He and Cass were leaning against that same wall—Cass sandwiched between the wall and Teddy—barely able to hold themselves up as they caught their breath.

"I'll say," Cass said, smiling softly. "Who knew you could have sex like that against a bathroom wall?"

"Not me," he chuckled, planting a kiss on her forehead.

"So anyway," Cass said, leaving the wall and Teddy's embrace, still very naked as she walked over to where her dress lay on the floor, "we should probably get out of here."

"Right," Teddy said, glancing around in search of his underwear, locating them on the sink and pulling them on. "So," he said, walking towards Cass, "do you want to go back to my place?"

"With Harry and Ginny listening at your door and Lily, James and Al sleeping down the hall?" Cass suggested incredulously, laughing as she zipped up her dress. "I don't think so."

"I meant the apartment in London," Teddy said, throwing his shirt back on and buttoning it up. "I put the down payment on it today."

"I still don't think so," she said reluctantly, stepping into her heels.

"Right, and why not?" he asked, a little put out by her distant attitude as he pulled on his pants.

"Because, I think we should just be friends," Cass told him frankly, looking him in the eye. "And don't take it the wrong way, this is as much for you as it is for me."

"And how do you figure that?"

"Because aside from the sex, this was the weirdest night of my life," Cass said. "Between your comment about my rack, and me dumping Pinot Grigio in your face over Isabella, I doubt I've ever been on or heard of a worse date in my life. I mean, don't you agree?"

Teddy thought about it for a moment. On one hand, there was the sex, which was unromantic yet utterly perfect in every respect. There was Cass and her glowing skin that was silkier than satin and tasted sweeter than honey.

On the other hand… there was absolutely nothing more than a physical attraction between the two of them. When the pretense was friendship, their conversations were legendary. When it wasn't, all there was were their bumbling inability to formulate a cogent sentence, and there was enough tension to strangle a bull elephant. There was no sweet swooning feeling or butterflies. Just a really intense physical attraction. And the question wasn't which was the better option: staying together for the sex, or stopping it because of the awkwardness.

It was whether or not a relationship could be founded solely on that physical attraction.

"Think about it, Ted," Cass implored him. "Is there any spark for you? Do you feel excited when you know you're going to see me? More than before all this, I mean?"

Teddy thought about it one final time.

"No," he responded, shaking his head.

"Then why are we wasting our time?" she asked. "Your mind is elsewhere. I know I'm still your friend, but you don't see me like that. And frankly I don't see you like that either. And contrary to my rant earlier, your mind isn't on Isabella."

"Who are you talking about?" Teddy asked, laughing now that the pressure had been taken off.

"Mademoiselle Twiggy," Cass responded, a teasing grin on her face. "You said you would talk to her when you got everything sorted. Now they're sorted."

"What if it doesn't pan out?" Teddy asked uncertainly.

"Oh come on!" she responded in her special brand of Cass-impatience. "You're Teddy Lupin! You have legions of girls clamoring for you! Women want you and men want to be you!"

"But she's… what if she doesn't want me?"

Cass calmed a bit, noting the sincerity of his concern, and her face softened.

"Then I'll be here," she said softly. "I'll always be here. I'll be your plan B."

Teddy felt wave after soothing wave of relief wash over him.

Everything was sorted.

"Thanks, Cassie," Teddy said, hugging her quickly before running to the door, knowing exactly where he was going. Before he was completely out the door, he doubled back real quick. "Are you okay to get home?"

"What am I, five?" she joked sternly. "Go get her, Casanova!"

--

"I got it!" Teddy heard someone—a beautiful, wonderful someone—call from inside. Footsteps grew louder and closer, until he heard the door click unlocked and it swung open before him, Vic standing in the doorway in a t-shirt and a pair of sweats and her hair pulled back and looking like an angel.

"Teddy," she said, tucking a strand of her ice blonde hair behind her ear. She acted distantly surprised and confused, reacting to him as if he were an illusion, not quite real. "What… what are you doing here?"

"Everything's sorted," he said breathlessly, offering a small but genuinely happy smile. "I'm all sorted."

A gentle, beautiful smile bloomed on her face as does a rose, opening slowly but worth the wait.

"I'm glad, Teddy."

He took a shaky step toward her, feeling the heady, swooning feeling and butterflies take full effect. He brushed a stray tendril from her face, his fingertips barely brushing her exquisite porcelain skin. Her eyes were so wide and gorgeous and they were as bright as the stars that littered the sky that night.

And when he kissed Victoire, he felt the spark.

All was sorted.


And so ends Part 1 of "The Fine Line." :D

Don't worry it won't be another story, I just have it because the next chapter will be following a jump into the future.

Oh, this is also dedicated to Teddy/Victoire shippers. I couldn't say that at the beginning without giving it away lol.

Anyway, REVIEW!

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