Fire, meet Fire

The roar whipped up around him and Elijah grinned as a surge of satisfaction coursed through him. The woman nearest him through her arms around his neck and muscled in for a sloppy kiss that, once Elijah responded to it, he did not find that unpleasant. She pulled away and beamed, sagging languidly against him. He thanked his lucky stars that he wasn’t stood upright because, like his partner in the drinking challenge, he doubted he would have been able to keep his feet. The said man was currently, no doubt, being hauled off to St. Mungo’s to get him looked at. Elijah was the last one standing and the prestigious winner of a pewter cup bearing the misspelt engravings that proclaimed him the victor. Wasn’t he lucky?

With his arm loose around the silly witch’s waist, he re-joined the conversation he had been stolen from when the brash man had decided that he would win a drinking contest against the deputy minister. Elijah had wanted so desperately to scoff at him and refuse but his mild humour had led him to indulge the man. It had certainly paid off for one of them. As Elijah slid off the barstool and onto his feet, which he wasn’t sure he could feel properly anymore, he knew that it wasn’t his near-comatose friend.

“Do you want to get out of here?” The witch asked, sneaking a kiss to the patch of skin just beneath the shell of his ear.

“Maybe not, sweetheart,” he replied, releasing her with a blithe smile.

Elijah disappeared amongst the crowd, allowing himself to be taken on the wave of music. He had lost Millie, Baldric, and Peter, whom he had arrived with earlier that night. He suspected that Baldric had lost his stamina and returned home, decidedly soberer than the rest of them, to recount the adventure to Ben. Millie and Peter were Merlin only knew where. Contrastingly, the Hogs Head landlord was drunker than he should have been and the witch was entirely ruined. The pair would get home one way or another.

And Elijah? Well, he was on the right side of ruin. If there was such a thing.

He didn’t think there was. Not a chance.

And then of course, he spotted her. He couldn’t tell you how even if he wanted to. It was an accident. A break in the crowd. He just happened to look round after taking another shot and, well, there she was. And there was someone with her who had entirely no right to what he was helping himself to.

Elijah didn’t know why he did it. He supposed it was some sort of misplaced loyalty to James. Perhaps the drink had made him brave. Perhaps it was the fact that the drop was climbing ever closer. Maybe it was just what felt natural. No, it was definitely what felt natural. Drunk or otherwise, he still had some respect left. He wasn’t a teenager anymore.

So, hauling the disgrace of a wizard off of her, he threw him to the floor in a show of strength that wasn’t at all surprising given the width of the Bulgarian man’s frame. The wizard crumpled near to pieces when he hit the floor and he looked up, eyes as wide as that of a deer’s caught in headlights – Elijah couldn’t claim to fully understand the proverb. This was as close as he got.

Leaning down, Elijah hauled him back up by the front of his shirt. The man was quivering like nothing he had ever experienced before. It almost gave Elijah pause. Almost. Then he remembered.

“Touch anyone like that again and I’ll cut off your hands.”

Pulling back his arms, Elijah thrust out suddenly, throwing the man from him. He watched impassively as he stumbled, tumbling over dancers in his effort to gather his feet and scamper away. Elijah hoped that, for his own sake, the man was a quick learner.

“Lily are you alright?”

Lily went out. Because she was tired of being a shut in. She stayed at home. She went to work. She worked on her after-work paperwork. She cooked. She checked in with Teddy and showed him that she was still on the straight and narrow. And then it all happened again. It would have made her laugh if she had enough emotion to summon such an expression. Teddy was mad at her for numbing pain with drugs and alcohol. But he was okay with her numbing all the good feelings with the adult life.

Dom had almost been suspicious when Lily asked for the black dress, but Lily’s blank I-won’t-give-you-a-straight-answer-anyway-why-even-bother look was enough to get Dom’s shoulders to sag and a fake smile to brighten her eyes before she pulled the dress out of her closet and handed it over. Lily left without much of a thanks.

Her dealer had missed her so much he gave her a bottle of her favorite vodka as a welcome back. She started with some Sugar before getting ready, swigging the Vodka as she stepped into her dress, rolled the high socks up her thin legs, slipped into the boots. She brushed through her hair, but a good amount of the vodka was gone and her eyes were sizzling blue from the drugs, so she could not be bothered to do much then let the naturally wavy locks hang around her.

The beat pounded around her, bodies throbbed. She was probably the only one here on her own. Everyone else either had their gal pals, their bros, or their dates on their arms, but she was able to slip through the cracks of the crowd and move as she felt, uninhibited. Drinks came her way at a steady pace and she didn’t refuse a single one, pausing her voluntary water-boarding only to step into the bathroom, take an anti-nausea potion and consume more of the drugs she had carted in, pinned in her bra. She was quickly becoming the most intoxicated person in the bar. But she wasn’t one of the girls climbing onto the bar. She wasn’t one of the girls forcing her tongue into the first mouth that got near it.

She was getting number and number.

People touched her. She felt a kiss against her throat, a brush against her thighs, but they were all dragged off eventually by friends who wanted a more conscious companion for their friend.

But that wasn’t stopping this guy. He was around thirty. Probably a bit younger. He had dead eyes. And he smelled like sweat and gin. But that was all she could tell. He hadn’t brought her face near him. He was basically against the wall, his hands on her hips, pulling her close. His teeth raked her neck and his fingers dug into her wrist, keeping her from escaping – as if that was all that was keeping her from making a smarter decision. She could feel him adding bruises to the permanent bruises Roxi had inflicted on her wrists.

Her mouth crawled to her ear, his hand finally slipping under her dress, into her tights.

“And no one around us will ever know-“

The irony of someone intervening there was lost on her numbed mind. The man was torn from her and she stumbled, but she managed to spin around. The man made eye contact with her before tearing away, and she blinked, trying to focus. All she could remember now was the time in her life when a man walking away meant losing her meal ticket.

She blinked rapidly and suddenly the face of Elijah Krum swirled before her. She felt her lips dipping into a frown, just upset at the loss she had suffered. “No right… No right… You had… I can handle me. Thanks.”