Time ain’t on my side

TAG: @dominickjr | OUTFIT

Elliot wasn’t particularly fond of Quidditch. His father, Miles, had always been interested in the sport and hoped that his children would be as well, but Elliot had always been more inclined to books and reading than he was to flying around like a lunatic on a broom. Being a healer, he had seen his fair share of Quidditch injuries, too. Enough that he wasn’t overly fond of the sport on principle. Not that he had anything against those who decided that they wanted to play for a living. He was sure that they were perfectly sane. Just as sane as a dragonologist who stood in front of fire-breathing beasts every day of their lives. He finished putting a few signatures on the chart in front of him, releasing a patient from yesterday, and checked his watch. A quarter past noon.

Ella had thought it would be a good idea for him to meet with Nick Wentzell — one of her dearest friends — so he had set up a lunch for them this afternoon, provided Nick could tear himself away from his own rigorous Quidditch practicing. Maybe she was worried about having kids, he wondered as he dropped off the form at the nurses’ station and continued towards the lift out of Mungo’s. Perhaps she thought that Elliot was pushing too hard and Nick would be able to talk him down off the ledge.

Then again, he trusted his wife to come to him with those sort of concerns…and so far, she had been more that alright with the idea of having kids.

Even thinking about it made Elliot’s cheeks sting. He ducked his head as he entered the elevator full of his peers, hoping that no one would notice the bright red tinge that was spreading from his face down his neck thinking about making children.

He was thankful when the doors opened and he could escape the tight confines of the elevator. Elliot was even more thankful when he emerged onto the street and took a deep breath of the fresh air. The sun was high in the sky, the weather was near perfect for a summer’s day.

The walk to the Clearwater Joint wasn’t exactly pleasant. Elliot limped down the sidewalk, trying to ignore the feeling of his disks rubbing together every time he took a step. One day, he swore he was going to figure out what to do about his back. Maybe they would develop some sort of magical back brace that would put him out of his misery. But until then, he was too proud to use his cane every day…especially in public. As he made it to a table outside, overlooking the Thames, Elliot felt like he could finally relax. He pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes and enjoyed the view, waiting for his wife’s best friend to make an appearance.

I'm living for giving
the devil his due

❧

Ella had asked him to get lunch with Elliot. Or, more like, Ella had told him that he was getting lunch with Elliot. It wasn’t like Nick had any problem with his cousin’s husband. Not really anyway. He just hadn’t exactly made up his mind on the man just yet. He hadn’t given him a reason to hate him--but he hadn’t given him a reason to like him either, and he thought that was saying something. As Ella’s cousins and as one of her best friends, Nick considered himself to be a person to impress. The person to impress, really, other than Anicka, but as of this point he was not impressed. In fact, he’d go so far as to say that he was unimpressed. There was plenty about the man that Nick either didn’t know or didn’t like. Of course, the judgments for the things that he didn’t like were mostly based on assumptions, not facts, but he just thought that was absolutely beside the point.

His first problem with the man came from the fact that they had gotten married so quickly. Nick felt like he had blinked and then they had just… been married. And then, obviously, there was the reasoning behind the marriage. They hadn’t even been dating. They hadn’t even ever had any romantic feelings toward each other (as far as he knew anyway), because they had just been friends. Elliot had just been getting nagged by his father, apparently, and Ella had offered to marry him as a way to stop the nagging. That, in his opinion, was not a reason to marry someone. Nick knew that Ella was much like him when it came to just… not necessarily believing that true love and happy endings really existed. His lack of belief in that came from watching his mum’s failed relationships and hers stemmed from her own reasons. So, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that she ended up getting married in the most unromantic way possible.

He just supposed that he’d hoped that she would find more than that. It felt like she had just settled, like she had just gotten married to help her friend and now she was just going to be stuck with that for the rest of her life--because she was definitely too nice to divorce him if she wasn’t happy. And that was his second concern. He was worried that she wasn’t happy. They had… not spoken for a little while during the summer. Nick just didn’t agree with how she was treating his dad and Issadora about everything that had happened. It had seemed a little harsh, and she had been being more than a little petty, so for a while he had kept his distance. But once they had made up, he had just gotten the sinking suspicion that she wasn’t happy. She didn’t seem happy, anyway. He knew that Ella was good at putting on a good face, but he was good at looking past those and realizing when something was going on with her. And he thought that something was definitely going on with her.

It wasn’t like he had immediately expected the worst, or anything. If he had, if he had thought that Elliot had turned out to be violent or a drunk or something awful, then he would have no problem beating his face in if he had to. But he didn’t think that was what was going on. He just wasn’t sure what was. He didn’t know what was going on in his cousin’s mind, and he didn’t know whether she was happy or not. Obviously, he couldn’t have any kind of positive opinion about his cousin’s husband if he thought that she was unhappy, which was why he hadn’t been thrilled by the declaration that he was going to lunch with Elliot. He would do it, obviously but that didn’t mean that he was going to be happy about it. He would play nice--again, it wasn’t as if he disliked Elliot at all. He just didn’t trust him yet, and he didn’t have any reason to like him. He was protective of his family and Ella was more than just family, she was his best friend too.

He’d had an early morning training with the Tornados, but he had the rest of the day free afterwards so he’d had plenty of time to go home after practice. He’d gotten to shower and eat an actual breakfast since he’d gotten up so early that food hadn’t even sounded good. Since it was a nice enough day out, he’d decided against apparently directly to Clearwater Joint. The restaurant was a Muggle place, so he would have had to apparate down an alley or something to avoid anyone seeing him, and he just thought he might as well walk instead. It was quite the distance from his apartment, but he’d had plenty of time and sometimes he enjoyed just getting some fresh air. He was tempted to start running there just to get some more exercise in, but he since he hadn’t exactly dressed for that, he decided against it. It would probably get back to Ella anyway, if he showed up to lunch with her husband all sweaty. Eventually, he did make it to Clearwater Joint and a glance at his watch led him to realize that he was very nearly late at this point. But whatever. He didn’t even have to walk inside, because as he approached it became obvious that the man sitting outside was the one he was looking for. “Elliot.” He said, with a nod, before dropping down into the chair across from him.

@ elliot | Outfit

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time ain't
on my side

❧

There was still a few minutes to spare, Elliot thought as he looked around. Was he…anxious? It wasn’t like there was anything to be anxious about, was there? This was just lunch with another member of Ella’s family. He’d been on tons of those over the past couple months. It wasn’t like this one was any different. Except, he couldn’t help but feel that it was slightly different. He wasn’t sure what it was about Elliot, but he got the feeling that he didn’t exactly trust him.

In fact, Elliot wasn’t sure what he had been expecting when Ella had suggested he go to lunch with Nick. Yes, Elliot had seen Nick before, but they’d never exactly…struck up a conversation like old friends. They weren’t old friends, after all. For as much as Elliot valued Ella as one of his dearest friends from his Hogwarts days, he knew that her friendship with Nick went deeper than that. He was just as much her best friend as he was her cousin, which meant that Elliot needed to impress him. Right? Elliot knew that he had already married the girl of his dreams, but it had been under such strange circumstances that there were moments when Elliot wondered if the Mountbattens and Wentzells even liked him…or if they just put up with him because he was married to Ella.

That was the reason he had agreed.

He wanted them to like him because Elliot knew that he loved Ella. He knew that he would do anything for his wife, even though they were married out of what seemed like “necessity.” Things were different now. Now, Elliot wanted to start a family with the woman he loved (that was Ella). He wanted to start a family with her. He wanted to move into MacGuffin Hall and start their life together. Their real life — not just this silly little “mandate” his father had made nearly two years ago. At least, that was the way that things felt for Elliot.

Sometimes he wondered what was going through Ella’s head. She was difficult to read — especially about matters of the heart. She kept a tight lock on those things. So Elliot had taken to asking her sisters. Sometimes Thea, sometimes Temperance. Just…gentle probing about how she felt or if she’d said anything. Maybe that was the second reason he had been so okay with grabbing lunch. He could ask Nick, too. Though he somehow imagined that his questions might make it right back to Ella if he wasn’t careful. “Nick,” Elliot moved to stand up, but Nick was quick — after all, he was a Quidditch player. An awkward shift in his chair and Elliot offered him a smile. “Glad you could make it.” He struggled with something else to say. It wasn’t like they had anything in common…Elliot worked at St. Mungo’s and Nick was…well, a Quidditch player. They were two worlds apart. “Nice day, yeah?”

@ nick

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[attr="class","ctopline"]Burn out the day

[attr="class","cscriptquidd"]burn out the night

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[attr="class","clyrics"]I'm not the one to tell you what's wrong or what's right[break]
I've seen signs of what freezing their eyes went through

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[attr="class","cbody"]Nick hadn’t been so sure about this, really. He didn’t have any problem with Elliot. He had no reason to have a problem. Or at least, he hadn’t. He’d had no issues with him at school when he had just been friends with Ella. He had seemed like a decent enough bloke. But the past year had him changing his tune. Nick didn’t know what he thought about the man now that he had gotten Ella to marry him, just to get him out of an arranged marriage.
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Seriously? Who actually agreed to something like that?
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That was the sort of thing that he should have said no to. He should have told her that he appreciated the offer, but he could never actually let her go through with something like that. He should have told her that he wanted her to have a chance to marry someone that she actually loved. Instead, he’d agreed to this ridiculous situation and Nick could accept that. It only made sense that he was a little skeptical of the man. He wasn’t just going to approve of something like that.
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It wasn’t like he was rude to him when he saw him or anything like that. He was nice enough. Generally, he just tried not to see him all that often. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. It was much better to just not see him at all and disapprove from a distance. He and Ella had no spoken for several months just because of their differences in opinions and he didn’t want to fight with her again.
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So, when she wanted them to get lunch together, then that was what he was going to do. He wasn’t going to argue with his best friend about that. He could tolerate a lunch and maybe he would decide the bloke wasn’t as bad as he thought. Maybe he’d get past this ridiculous arrangement and stop judging it. He just wanted the best for her and he wasn’t sure that this was it. There was a chance that time would change his mind, but it hadn’t yet.
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Walking to the restaurant seemed like the best way to clear his head before dealing with Elliot. He didn’t want to start this off on the wrong foot and that was the best way that he could think of to avoid that. “Nice enough, I guess,” he said, with a shrug. What was he supposed to talk to him about? Dragons? He didn’t know anything about dragons, for Godric’s sake. There was perhaps a beat too long of silence before he asked the first question he could think of. “So, how’s your family?” He had… a sister, Nick remembered that much, though admittedly there could be other siblings that he was forgetting about.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]468 ● @ elliot ● outfit

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burn out the day

[attr="class","reasonsmall2"]Time is the essence Time is the season Time ain't no reason Got no time to slow

[attr="class","reasonbod2"]“They’re good,” Elliot said as he nodded and tried to regain his footing. “My sister is actually studying Dragonology. And Healing. And…well a little bit of everything, really.” Lou liked to stretch herself thin, Elliot knew. But that seemed to be a consistent thread running between their generation of the MacGuffin family line.

“Yours?” Or was it ours? Elliot wasn’t sure. It felt like he was treading water here and quickly losing steam. Then again, maybe he was just imagining it. After all, Nick was one of Ella’s best friends. He couldn’t be all that bad, could he? No, the point was, there was nothing wrong with Nick at all. He was just skeptical that his best friend had decided to enter into an arranged marriage. Elliot could understand that. He’d been just as protective over Lucy when his father had brought up this whole ordeal. He wanted the best for his younger sister and Elliot assumed that was the way that Nick felt about Ella, too.

But things with Ella were different now. It had been an arranged marriage to start with, but over the past few months, it had turned into so much more than that. They had a relationship that was built on their friendship and while Nick might find it strange, it actually made for a better home life than Elliot had ever expected. He felt comfortable with his wife and he liked to think that she felt the same way about him.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. There was nothing to worry about – nothing at all.

“How’s Orion?” There were delicate topics in the Wentzell family, certain things you didn’t bring up. Elliot knew better than to ask after Nick’s family in general. It opened up the possibility of discussing Aurora, which, Ella had warned him, was often a sore subject. So, he decided to play it safe and talk about the man’s younger brother. How strange Elliot thought it must be to have a younger brother that was quite so young. Though, he supposed, he had a few years on Nick. Perhaps he didn’t think it that strange at all.

It was a bit of a topic change, but Elliot thought that offering Nick the chance to talk more was better for both of them. If Elliot filled the space with whatever he was thinking, he was sure to make a fool of himself. “And Quidditch?” There, he knew that was a safe topic. Everyone loved talking about Quidditch. Perhaps he could find some common ground with Nick, there. Though, Elliot had to admit he wasn’t overly fond of the sport. He had difficulty understanding the rules and often found himself struggling to keep up with the fast-paced nature of the game. But, he knew that Nick was a part of two different teams…it was an important part of his life.

[attr="class","reasontag2"]@ nick | 483 | OUTFIT

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