mp | autodomesticated animal | sam

“Going to get a drink,” Hopefully for long enough that he didn’t have to listen to Graeme Beaker speak for a moment longer, he thought darkly to himself as his hand ran up Berenice’s arm to the side of her neck where he gave what he hoped might be a reassuring squeeze. The free hand tapped the rim of her champagne flute that was nearly empty— two birds with one stone, anyway. He knew better than to think she might leave in the middle of the speaker’s charade (even if it had gone on for far more than what was allotted), so the departure wasn’t framed as a question.

Once he was away from the table Harlan could feel his shoulders relax and his breath even out. The eyes on the room were forward. He skirted the outside of the ballroom to safety where could slip into something like obscurity. Sure, there were about a hundred staff ready to serve them whatever drinks their hearts desired, but they couldn’t provide the solace of the quiet bar that was tucked away from the commotion.

Harlan intentionally chose the one farthest away from the stage where he could hear himself think without the invasion of Graeme’s slurring about a lifetime ago, and the subsequent swell of the room. It was like everyone but his handlers thought he was doing a great job, rambling on about nothing. Harlan suspected that the rest of the seasoned players in the room had recognized what he had— or at least he hoped— they had been to enough of those sort of events to see a trainwreck before it hit that penultimate turn in the tracks.

“Neat, thanks,” He finished his order for a whiskey with every intention of staying there for as long as possible. He had about fifteen minutes, he figured, before his absence might be noticeable from the table. Another person snuck up to the bar, but he kept his eyes on the stage, rolling them briefly before drinking nearly half of his drink in a gulp. “Merlin, fuck…” He said under his breath, leaning an elbow casually with a shake of his head.

@Sam Lynch

Sam had come out of the lavatories and found, to his dismay, that Graeme Beaker had already taken the stage. Beaker was a good friend of his dad’s, but Sam didn’t like him much -- he had bad breath and a tendency to ramble. So, Sam had lingered in the doorway, peering over the shoulders of a few waitresses until he could ascertain that his date (his sister) was, indeed, trapped at their parents’ table until Beaker finished talking.

There was nothing that could be done to save her, so Sam abandoned Caitlin and skulked off to the bar.

He was not the only person to have this idea; as he was edging behind a group of the staff muttering amongst themselves, he spotted another man, probably intent on staying at the bar for as long as he could. Sam pulled up at the bar, drummed on it with his palms as quietly as he could, got a beer.

Merlin, fuck. Sam laughed under his breath. “Every time I talk to that bloke I think he’s got to have run out of things to say by now,” he said, quietly -- he’d been right once or twice, too, he’d heard the tale of the old bloodhound and the bludger about five times now. Sam slouched back against the bar, took a long sip of firewhiskey. He glanced sideways again -- oh, hell, this was Harlan Bellamy.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “Good season.”

Harlan recognized that someone had also joined him at the bar out of the corner of his eye, no doubt having the same idea, in search of something stronger to alleviate the headache that was Graeme with an audience. He knew the man personally as well as he did professionally and neither was he particularly fond of. The man had a penchant for overstepping his boundaries under the guise of fame. Even after all those years, that didn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

"Doubt that will ever happen..." Harlan spoke over the lip of his glass before taking a drink, unable to keep his stupid mouth closed. He knew he ought to be more careful in a professional setting. Graeme's behavior wasn't unlike that of many people in the industry, though, Harlan thought darkly to himself. And to think there had been a point when he idolized those people, too.

Good season, the stranger said, and Harlan glanced over his shoulder, shifting slightly against the bar. "Yeah, thanks mate," The man looked familiar—unsurprisingly given the event where he should have known everyone— but he couldn't quite place him. He didn't strike him as a player, unless he was new, of course, another kind fresh out of school. "Harlan," He offered his hand in greeting. Obviously he knew that already, but any excuse to figure out if he was the new competition for the season would do.

Sam snickered, grateful to have had his petty opinion mirrored back at him. Coming to these events was as much a chore as it was good fun. He almost wished his sister was here for this conversation -- she’d been swapping bored compliments with one of the other women at their table all night, and could probably use a bit of bitching.

“Sam,” he said, shaking Harlan’s hand. Chances were, if Harlan knew his father, he didn’t like him -- that’d been Sam’s experience, for most of his life, with mentioning his dad to Quidditch fans. John Lynch had a brutalist view of the game and not much interest in calling fouls. He gave his fallback excuse for being here: “Came here with my cousins, I have a couple on the Kestrels.”

He leaned against the bar with one elbow and Graeme Beaker started an anecdotal apologue to the cushioning charm. Bloody hell. Sam had another slug of his drink.

He and Harlan Bellamy had one mutual friend (if it could be described that way) and she was Harlan’s sister, whom Sam had known way back, back when he’d been newly twenty and newly famous. He didn’t want to bring it up, he thought, given how he’d known Audrey, so he said instead, “Bloody hell. You reckon he’ll stop on his own, or you think the gala planners will break first?” Sam had always found something uniquely comradelike in ill-natured muttering.

Family members on the same team weren't unheard of in professional quidditch, but it was certainly rare. And the Kestrels only had the two that he knew of— the Lynch's. At the thought of Simon, or Audrey for that matter, playing on the same team sent a cold chill up his spine and he practically shivered. "Lynch, then?" Harlan ventured, giving the man a once over, trying to figure out why the hell he looked so familiar apart from what he imagined was a resemblance he had prophesized.

Harlan pulled his hand back to himself and wrapped it over his torso, holding the other just at the elbow so that the hand with his drink in it was never too far from his mouth. At Sam's question he let out an laugh. It had been loud enough apparently to garner the attention of a few people at the tables near the back of the hall (one man, in particular, seemed to be the most offended and Harlan had to wonder if maybe he was related to old Bleak).

He slapped a hand over his mouth but the gesture was too late to have made any difference. "Mate, are you kidding, he'll never stop on his own..." He tried his luck with a whisper but nudged Sam so that they weren't so near to the front of the bar and in the eye of the crowd. "Think you need something stronger than that—" He gestured to the beer in the other man's hand and got the attention of the bartender as quietly as he could manage. "Shot?" He offered. Surely he wasn't alone in that particular need.

“Yeah,” said Sam; Harlan was getting the look of a man politely trying to remember another man’s face, but he hadn’t asked yet, so Sam didn’t clue him in. Instead he glanced back at the front of the room and pulled a long face -- he was struggling to remember why he’d come.

The answer was right in front of him; he had a long sip of his (free) beer.

Harlan laughed too loudly -- some heads turned their way. Sam grinned; despite the guilt he felt for having drawn attention to the way he and Harlan Bellamy were camping at the bar, waiting out this sermon, he was glad to have an ally in this. They sidled along the bar, further out of eyeshot -- from around the pillars, Sam wondered hopefully if distance would make it harder to hear. (It didn’t.) “Shots,” he agreed; the bartender, evidently understanding their desire for quiet, set the glasses gently down between them.

Sam knocked it back and gave his head a little shake, like a racehorse, before sipping his beer again. “The organisers, though?” He had a low opinion of the cowards running this year’s gala. They’d gotten downright dull since 1999, possibly as a result of firing Ruddy Ralph Oxley. Oxley, Sam thought wistfully, would have had Beaker away from that podium about five minutes ago. “They’re a lot of drips,” he said, “They’re probably picking straws for what sacrificial lamb has to go up and interrupt.”

He scratched the back of his head, screwing up his hair. “My brother invited him to his wedding,” he said, voice conspiratorially low, though it shook with amusement. “He made a toast.”

Harlan bit down over his lip in a wince as the warm feeling spiraled down his chest, the fire of the shot making its way into his bloodstream. "Whew," He sighed, then attempted to set the glass down as carefully as possible as to not upset his new friends any further. Though, really, he would have loved nothing more.

"No shit...?" He turned to Sam, clearly surprised, before gesturing to the bartender to fill them up again. Why anyone in their right mind might think inviting that man to a wedding to speak was a good idea, he would never know. But then again, how would he know? There were no signs of any sacrificial lambs making their way to the stage anytime soon, anyway, and he was not about to endure it sober-adjacent, so he swfitly took the second shot.

The instant adrenaline plus what he'd drank over dinner had gone to his head before he knew what to think. "Was it like this?" He leaned toward Sam as to not speak as loudly before glancing over his shoulder to the stage. The man was still droning on. Chances were, yes, but Harlan hated to think it.

As he studied the man in front of him, like puzzle pieces the bits of information came together. Lynch. Sam. With family in the industry. "You know my sister..." Harlan said it with assurance, leaning an elbow on the bar smugly. Audrey had spilled her guts about a tryst with the younger man prior to getting married one night that she and Harlan had broken into their mother's top-shelf vodka collection while staying at the family home for a holiday weekend.

"Audrey," He clarified, not mentioning her married last name. He figured Sam wouldn't need that, anyway.

For a moment neither of them spoke; both Sam and Harlan were occupied with the business of a t least appearing like they hadn’t been sitting here, rudely discussing the goings-on. Harlan set his glass down with exaggerated care and Sam couldn’t hold back a snicker; he quickly took another drink. Over at her table, his sister was giving him a scimitar of a glare; he returned it mockingly.

Had the wedding speech been quite as bad as this? It had been several years ago; Sam tilted his head in consideration. He was quite sure that Beaker’s loquaciousness was worsening every year. But --

“Er, worse,” said Sam, after a moment; “Not as long, but personal anecdotes, you know. You haven’t known pain ‘til you heard him tell a hundred people a story from when you were fourteen.” Out of kindness to Ryan, he opted not to repeat the tale, instead taking another sip of his beer.

He became aware latently that Harlan was giving him possibly too close a look; he glanced uneasily to the side and, a moment later, his fears were realised: Harlan recognised him. “Yeah,” he admitted, “I know your sister. How’s she doing?”

"Fuck, I don't envy you..." Harlan's face pulled up into something of a pained expression to dial up the fact. It was bad enough to have to deal with the guy in a professional sense, though neither Harlan nor the Bellamy's would ever dream of entertaining him on a personal level. It dawned on him that perhaps the Lynch's were closer to Bleaker than he imagined, and he reigned himself back in before making too rude of a comment at his expense.

Sam didn't seem to phased by the recognition, but Harlan found himself studying him more closely all the same. He had good taste, and apparently shared a lot of the same hates, but the wizard could not have been further from Audrey's husband. In fact, they were complete opposites.

"She's doing well—" He hazarded a glance to the room again, the procession showing no real sign of slowing. He figured he ought to get back to his table, to Nice, at some stage, but he was having far too much fun figuring out more about the one-off outlier in Audrey's dating history. Dating history being a phrase used loosely. "Married now, little one, the whole fucking thing..." He half-rolled his eyes despite the spot of sentimentality that hit him at the thought of his niece, Val.

For whatever reason, he wanted to make it clear that Audrey was off-limits. He knew sister well enough to know that she surely had done that all on her own, but better safe.

“Don’t worry,” Sam reassured his companion. “Wasn’t my wedding.” He’d been mentioned a few times in the story, of course, but at least it’d been in a comparatively dignified role. The worldly older brother Sam rather than the bumbling groom Ryan. He leaned into the bar and grinned at the memory -- Beaker wasn’t much fun, and worse when he drank, but he’d been a regular enough fixture at Lynch events that Sam couldn’t deny being a little fond of him, in much the same way he’d started to like Professor Snape after he’d stopped taking Potions.

Having pinned down their other mutual acquaintanceship, Harlan was giving Sam a frankly unnerving look; Sam had another drink of beer and did his best not to act bothered. It was fair, he supposed -- he’d have done the same if he’d found out that Harlan had ever had something going with his sister.

“Oh, I remember getting the wedding announcement,” he said, nodding -- “She’s got a kid now? How old?” Ryan had a toddler; Sam suspected he was only this fond of his niece because he didn’t live with her. Both Ryan and his wife had developed permanent under-eye circles. Even though Audrey had been older than him, at the time he’d known her, it was jarring to imagine her as a mother. Things were happening so fast.

Audrey Bellamy, in his mind, would make a class mum; even at the time he’d known her, years ago, before she’d been Audrey Bellamy -- was it still Bellamy? -- she’d had the attitude of a woman in charge. Doubtless it was only stronger now.

"Ahh," Harlan hummed a thought, it wasn't Sam's wedding. Audrey might be pleased to know that, he figured.

He glanced halfway over his shoulder to assess the severity of the situation; Beaker was still on stage and while it wasn't clear for how much longer, it was evident that there was a growing sense of unease stirring in the crowd. A few people looked around at each other, the question on their faces. One man, Harlan thought, might have actually fallen asleep.

There was a subtle air of tension between him and Sam on the topic of his sister and the two of their shared history. It wasn't that Harlan was the overly protective type— Audrey could, and did, very well look after herself— and as far as she divulged their tryst had been shortlived, but it still wasn't the most comfortable topic of conversation. Harlan found himself relaxing his shoulders, trying to physically manifest a sense of nonchalance.

Sam seemed nice enough, and he wasn't in the business of intimidating an ex of his sister from a lifetime prior.

That was more of an Audrey move, anyway.

"Val," Harlan softened as the conversation turned to his niece. "—Valerie," He corrected with her full name— the nickname stuck despite his best efforts otherwise. "Just shy of a year," He refused to speak about infants age in weeks, or months on-premise. He also didn't care to think about how fast time was moving since she came into the world.

Valerie. The name was certainly classy enough to suit Audrey, Sam thought, but it was still strange to think about. What had Sam done in the years since he’d known her? He was making music, not life. “Cute,” he said. “My brother’s got a daughter, just about three. Mila. Cute little buggers.”

Beaker took a deep breath, from the podium, and then barrelled onward.

Sam pushed off the bar, craning his neck -- his sister was making cut-throat gestures at him now, and it looked like the banquet organisers had finally selected somebody to go up and halt the toast. With a little tip of his head, Sam tried to signal to Harlan to watch -- this would be about the only entertaining part of the whole thing. The event planner was speaking quietly, but Beaker still had a Sonorus charm on -- everybody heard him boom, Out of time? My mistake. You know, funnily enough, something like this happened to me just a few months ago...

“Bloody hell,” said Sam; he put his empty glass on the bar and redirected his attention to his companion -- “I’d better get back to my table,” he said -- he’d have said my date if his date hadn’t been his sister -- “I’ll let you get back to yours, too. Good meeting you.” He brandished a hand to shake again, but if he dawdled any further his sister would have salted his beer by the time he got back and he couldn’t be sure she hadn’t already.

[out]

Cute, proclaimed Sam, and Harlan found himself inexplicably and immediately nodding in agreement. His lip twitched into a faint smile. "For now, anyway..." He trailed off good-naturedly, not wanting to linger in the sentimentality of it all with an otherwise perfect stranger (bar their common denominator that was Audrey).

"Oh, this will be good," Harlan said nearly to himself as Sam gestured the quiet commotion on the stage. For an untrained eye or someone who hadn't been at a function with Beaker before, it would have appeared business as usual. But both he and Sam knew better.  "Poor bloke," He meant the sacrificial lamb sent to cut the man off and peel him out from him under the limelight.

Back to his table. He suddenly wished he hadn't drained what was left of his drink in such haste because his mouth had gone dry. He'd been so distracted with getting as drunk as possible that he forgot he had a table to return to. And Berenice was there. "You too, mate," He nodded as politely as possible despite the sinking feeling in his chest. The bartender seemed to take note and was nudging a full drink across the marble-top.

fin