Til the Cows Come Home
AN: A ficlet relating to The Shotgun Bride. An early Draco/Pansy date. Characters not mine.
*
"What the hell is that?" Pansy demanded.
"What's what?" Draco asked, confused. He looked down at himself, and around him, but saw nothing amiss.
"That deathtrap!" Pansy snapped. "I know you didn't just pull up in it."
Draco looked back at the car he had arrived in. "I know you didn't just insult Darlene."
"Oh, yes, I did," Pansy said, eyeing the car distrustfully. "It looks like it wants to eat me."
"Well," Draco said with a smirk, looking Pansy up and down. "I can't blame her."
Pansy couldn't stop the giggle from bubbling out of her throat, and then crossed her arms over her skimpy white shirt. "I'm not riding in that."
"What's wrong with it?" Draco asked, patting the rust-colored primered hood. "This is a stout car."
"Stout is a word for it," Pansy replied. "It looks like it's been through a war. And it probably has, as old as it is."
"Pans," Draco said. "This is a beautiful, classic car. People wish that they had a car like this. Just wait til you hear it..."
"I'm not going to hear it. I'm not riding in that deathtrap," Pansy said. She turned to go back into her trailer, making sure to swish her hips as seductively as a girl wearing flipflops could swish.
"Wait," Draco said after getting enough of the view to make him happy. "It's perfectly safe."
Pansy turned towards him. "And what about you?"
Draco began to fumble for his wallet, when Pansy impatiently interrupted him. "Your driving, you dumbass."
"I'm a good driver," Draco insisted.
"Remember that time that you hit that mailbox? Twice?" Pansy asked.
"I was learning!" Draco said. "And besides, you weren't much better back then."
"But I never killed your cat!" Pansy snapped. She had loved Sparky like a child.
"I told you, I didn't run over that damn cat!" Draco said. He really hadn't. He had backed over the cursed thing. Accidentally, of course. "Do you want to go out or not?"
"What else am I gonna do?" Pansy wretched open the car door and plopped on the cracked vinyl inside.
Draco started his newly acquired Chevelle gleefully, gunning the engine happily as he turned to Pansy excitedly. "Isn't she the most beautiful thing ever? Listen to her purr!"
"Uh-huh," Pansy said. She thought that she should be the only female in Draco's life whose purring he appreciated. The car shifted into gear with a slight shudder, and they left.
Two hours later, both Pansy and Draco were pleasantly plastered. They had originally gone to see a movie, but the first fifteen minutes had been rather slow, so they had decided to entertain themselves. The ushers had thought that their behavior was inappropriate for the PG-13 movie they were watching, and had urged them to 'take it outside.'
After driving to their favorite spot out in the country, things began to heat up. They had been leaning up against Darlene, Pansy's earlier protests to the other woman in Draco's life forgotten as his hand crept underneath her short skirt and touched smooth skin. Something publically indecent might have happened had a horn not honked behind them.
"What?" growled Draco, whose fingers itched to return to warmer climates.
"What are you two up to?" Marcus Flint asked lecherously. Pansy decided she was glad the fool had honked, depriving himself of a free show.
"What does it look like?" snapped Pansy. Beside Marcus, Blaise Zabini cackled. Pansy disliked Blaise on grounds of pure jealousy and annoyance. However, since Pansy was the one with Draco Malfoy's hand up her skirt while Blaise was out on the town with buck-toothed Marcus Flint, she felt that she was the alpha female in the pack tonight.
Blaise had then shaken a bottle of... something in their direction, Pansy couldn't quite recall what the label had said, or even if she had read the label. And then here they were, all a drunken mess.
"You know," Blaise slurred, "I bet those cows are plum asleep."
They all looked at the cows and contemplated them seriously.
"We should tip them," Pansy said as a flash of inspiration struck her.
"That does sound fun," Marcus said. "They just topple over." He pretended his hand was a cow and demonstrated this.
Draco squinted across the field. "Let's go."
They climbed the wooden gate of the pasture that was conveniently near their parking spots. Draco helped Pansy over the gate, copping a good feel in the process. Blaise just looked jealous as she struggled across, Marcus staring intently at the cows as though they might charge at any moment.
They were traipsing across the pasture when Pansy suddenly yelped.
"What?" Draco asked.
"Shit!" Pansy exclaimed.
"What happened?" Draco asked again.
"I stepped in a damn cow pie!" Pansy said, bouncing on one foot as she jerked the soiled flipflop off her well fertilized foot.
"You should watch out for those," Blaise giggled.
Pansy scraped some of the manure off her foot, and flung it at Blaise. It hit her square on the mouth.
Marcus and Draco stared, at first aghast and then with dawning elation as Blaise sputtered, and then said, "You're going down, bitch."
She then launched herself at Pansy, who met her scratch for scratch, smack for smack, hair pull for hair pull.
Draco and Marcus did not break the two girls apart. All they could really think about was how
handy a mud pit, or hell, a jello pit would be right then.
Pansy shoved Blaise to the ground, and they heard a slight squelch as Blaise landed in another pile of cow pie goodness. There was rolling, and smacking, and a few punches, and then Pansy landed in a cow pie.
"Eeeyww," she shrieked as she fought to lay a fist on Blaise's unblemished face.
Draco was now realizing that he had to drive Pansy home, and that she smelled like shit. He thought of his precious, only-slightly-musty Darlene, and stepped forward with a sigh. He reached into the angry tangle of female bodies, and tried to pry Pansy away. He finally managed it, and started towards his car, not bothering to bid Marcus or Blaise farewell, or even checking on Blaise's health.
"Lemme at her," Pansy said, jerking weakly at his arm.
"No," Draco replied. "Do you see a waterhose or something?"
"At the barn," Pansy said, pointing. Draco lead her to the hose, and turned it on. He realized quickly that her shirt was not going to be allowed in his vehicle.
"Take that off," he said. Pansy obeyed, and he sprayed her off the best he could. He then stripped off his own t-shirt and offered it to her. She tugged it over her head, somewhat gratefully. "Thanks."
They headed back to the car, Draco draping an arm across Pansy's shoulders, only in part to keep her from attacking Blaise again.