After the movie, he seized the opportunity to ask the stranger out for a drink.
"I'm Fabian," he simpered, and he was even bashfully swivelling a foot on the ground. "What's your name?"
"Tony," the stranger grunted.
"Ah, Tony," Fabian said, feeling like the mere mention of his name on his lips was enough to sweep him heavenward in bliss.
"We could go to a pub and have a pint if you like," Fabian said, trying to sound all heterosexual and manly, only to realise that the only pubs he knew in the area were all...well...they were all for a bent clientele.
"Pint is good," the stranger replied gruffly, pulling out yet another cigarette to chain-smoke.
"Wow, that's..." Fabian began weakly. "How many do you do a day? I've been trying to cut down for the longest time, it's not good and my brother and sister don't like me to do it much."
"We all have vices," the stranger said gravely, and Fabian felt so insipid he could speak no more.
They went to a pub off the road that was decidedly not in the queer area, because oh god, Fabian would die if this mysterious stranger reacted in horror or worse, decided to beat him up on realising he was a giant fluffy poofter, as poofy as they come.
They settled down for a pint each, and a second, and soon the draught was flowing freely from the keg into their glasses and down their gullets, as they simultaneously ran through pack after pack of cigarettes all while Fabian babbled endlessly about the movie.
Tony offered brief quips to fill in the gaps at times, one of them being "I love Princess Leia", to which Fabian's intestines folded into such a quick knot he nearly fell off the chair. He steadied himself and then thought about how he was being such a fool. What had he hoped to achieve here? At most he could hope to bask in the radiant beauty of this stranger for a couple of hours or so and then go home and never see him again for the rest of his life. It was foolish for him to expect there should be anything more, not when Tony had shown absolutely zero interest in him. And the dark truth of it all was that Fabian was actually seeing someone at the moment, Bob from the magical creatures department.
But the only magical creature in this night was perched in front of him. Tony, perfectly formed Tony, otherwise nameless Tony, Tony who smoked a lot of cigarettes, Marlboro reds.
They were, in fact, getting increasingly inebriated to the point of intoxication. At some point, Tony said he had to leave, but upon seeing Fabian's drunken pleading face, asked if he wanted to stay the night. Fabian could hardly believe his ears and ascribed it to the alcohol and nicotine. Beautiful Tony, angelic Tony was asking him to go home with him?
Like an eager puppy dog he followed Tony home, down the stairs and into the Underground. Tony very kindly bought tickets for him, which was a relief, as this was, in actual fact, Fabian's first time on the Tube. Fabian regarded the whole construction with wide-eyed wonder, and in his inebriation he was vaguely aware that he kept repeating "the tube, the tuuube" in a reverent voice. They wound through the station onto the train and they got off the train and onto another train. Standing in the middle of the car, swaying side to side, smiling at him through the handlebars as the train wobbled its way through the city, they finally arrived at Tony's stop, Liverpool Street Station.
"This looks oddly familiar," Fabian drawled unthinkingly.
"Shut up," Tony hissed at him. Fabian had been dimly aware of all the other passengers making the effort to avoid his swaying babbling mass back in the train car. He hoped he had not seemed too much of nuisance.
"Ohh," Fabian slurred after a while. "I know this place! I work here!"
Tony grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and gave him a hard jolt. "Shut up," he said again.
Tony practically dragged him home as Fabian insisted on cheerfully waving to every person on the street. The streets were getting narrower and darker, and the place was looking increasingly dangerous. In the corners lurked members of skinhead gangs, and hurrying home at great speed, hunched over and fearful, were the street's Asian residents coming home late from work.
Tony dragged him to a small building with fabric wholesalers on the ground floor, and asked him not to make a sound. The thought occurred to Fabian that if someone wanted to kill him at this moment he was almost completely defenceless because he was finding everything so unbelievably hilarious, and he had this mental image of a Death Eater apparating right this instant and he would simply double up in laughter, forgetting all command of magic.
Tony pushed him up a flight of stairs, all while beseeching him to stop giggling. In turn he accused Tony of tickling him, and Fabian seemed to enjoy having Tony push at him here and there with a rough hand at all parts of his body, and began to push back teasingly. They reached a door, where Tony asked him to take off his shoes, to which he complied, bemused. What a meticulous and clean person Tony must be, he thought.
They found themselves in a tiny bedroom, occupied mostly by a single bed to the right and a desk to the left. The long end of the desk was up against the wall and the short end was next to a window, where light from passing cars shone in intermittently and the blare of sirens could be heard. Fabian sat down in one great plop on the bed, which turned out to have a rather thin mattress and an extremely springy support.
Fabian broke into a wide smile at Tony, who was staring very intently at him in the dark. He was aware of the fact that Tony was removing the layers upon layers of woollen jumpers that swathed him, so he eagerly began stripping himself of his clothes as well.
When he was nude, he spread himself out on the bed and gave his best impression of an alluring look in Tony's general direction. Tony had been obsessed with folding all his clothes into neat squares, which he stacked on the chair by his desk, and this delayed his rate of clothing removal. He finally ceased altogether when he still had two layers of sweaters on and his trousers were fully untouched. When he saw Fabian au naturel on his bed he had a look of surprise on his face.
Fabian was slightly bewildered. Were they not here to do the down and dirty? He looked at Tony's surprised face, understood, and said reassuringly, "It's okay if you don't want to do anything. I will just get up and leave."
Fabian sat up again and fumbled around for his clothes. It was at this point that Tony grabbed him by the arm to stop him.
"You don't have to leave," Tony whispered into his ear, hot breath trickling down his neck unsettlingly close. Fabian raised his head to look him in the eye but in doing so found Tony's lips pressed against his face, his fingers digging firmly into his arm, and his other hand slipping down his torso and my god, my god, my god.
"Stop! Halt! Cease! Stop stop stop stop!" Ron exclaimed, fading into a whimper, hands pressed firmly against his ears. "I don't need to hear about that."
Dolohov looked at him smugly. "I thought you insisted on knowing every detail."
"Not that," Ron wailed, as Harry squirmed around uneasily in his seat. "Just skip the...bonking bits next time."
Hermione found herself leaning perhaps a little too far front and pulled herself back into her chair. She looked down at the floor with shifty eyes, and then cleared her throat. "Yes, we do recommend you skip the physical segments and concentrate on describing the factors at play."
"What factors at play?" Dolohov scoffed. "Look, the truth is all we ever did was shag each other. Repeatedly. Time and again. Many times over. But nothing else, okay?"
Harry had to stifle a snort. "Is this just like Romeo and Juliet, but the porno version?" he asked pruriently.
"Thus from my cock, by thine, my sin is purged," Hermione added, with much amusement.
Ron looked like he wanted to burrow into the ground and never come up again.