another one bites the dust [mary]

december 2003

This was the lamest party Sam had been to in a long time -- he wasn’t one for lame parties, nor were most of the Lynches, nor were most of his industry, nor were most of the people he knew, and so it was a while since he’d attended one. He tried to remember what it had been; credit where credit was due, it hadn’t been one of Charlie’s French mate’s. Probably his niece’s third birthday -- her mother hadn’t wanted any heavy drinking, so Sam and a lot of his cousins had left early to go to a pub, and Ryan hadn’t spoken to Sam in a week.

Anyway -- this was lamer than that. They had all arrived, not egregiously late -- he thought, actually, that his sister’s roommate who’d planned this whole shindig had told them all an hour earlier than the actual time, to be safe, which had probably been the wisest choice possible. They had made small talk. They had crouched behind furniture. And then they had waited… and waited… and waited.

By now, almost nobody was still crouching behind furniture. Sam had had about six conversations about the upcoming tournament, and about two conversations about the band or his bandmates and about ten conversations about where the fuck was his sister. He had made passes at the food table, set up in the kitchen and watched over diligently by his sister’s roommate, about every ten minutes.

It was that time again -- he was running out of people to make small talk with; four hours into the waiting, it was down to him and his brother and a couple of Cait’s work friends and Mary. Even Ryan hadn’t held out more than a couple hours.

He made another pass at the food table, this time a less ambitious one: “How about just a beer?”

@Mary Hunt

Mary picked up a party popper, just to have something to do, and the string broke as she tugged on it.

Well, if that wasn’t indicative of this whole evening. Had it been an hour or so earlier, Mary might have burst into angry tears from the stress, but she was past that now -- she had resigned herself to her fate. Things were not going to plan -- couldn’t possibly be further from the plan, really. She sighed and dropped the popper back to the table with a quiet clatter, flicking the little bit of string clinging to her fingers away.

Of all the nights for Caitlin to work late, she had to pick this one. Mary glanced at the clock on the wall and sighed, again. But then, most of Cait's close colleagues were here--or had been, before they'd one-by-one made excuses to leave--so where on Earth was she?

Caitlin's brother Sam approached the table and Mary had to give him credit, he wasn’t easily dissuaded -- he had tried this multiple times already, started small, then the more ridiculous request to have a whole plate of sandwiches to himself. Of anyone here, Sam was who she was most likely to pander to, but she had remained resolute: the food was for when the party started. Mary straightened up a little (definitely less than she would have done earlier in the evening).

She sighed, met his gaze, flicked her attention to the clock again, then waved dismissively at the drinks; "Sure." She almost grabbed one for herself, but she wasn’t that depressed. She reached for the gin and poured into a proper glass this time (she had been sneaking sips whenever she'd been left alone long enough to not be caught). He looked surprised--she presumed at the fact she had given in, not at the gin--and she shrugged, turning to rest her back against the counter. "Just a beer," she told him, the corner of her lips tugging up.

The food is for when the party starts, Mary had been telling him -- but finally she seemed to be acknowledging what Sam and her other five guests had worked out an hour ago: the party was never going to start. (And Sam had thought, like a fool, that this would be a good time. His sister wasn’t much fun most of the time, but when she wanted a party she could be a riot -- what a shame that she apparently didn’t want a party today.)

He tried for his best puppy-dog look, and was rewarded with what was either pity or amusement on Mary’s part: he dropped the woeful act with relief and got a beer out of the ice bucket (now mostly melted); he wiped the can dry on his shirt and popped it open. “Well, maybe two beers,” he said, “This party’s dead in the water.” He gestured vaguely toward his brother now playing wizard’s chess with one of Cait’s friends -- perhaps the clearest example of how dull this party had gotten.

Belatedly he remembered that this was Mary’s party, in a sense. He added -- “Obviously, not your fault. Where the fuck is Cait, and all.”

Sam leaned against the table and pushed it a few inches -- quickly he switched to lean against the wall instead, and had a long drink of beer. As though she’d been given permission to do so by his bad behaviour, Mary’d gotten a drink too -- gin, fortunately, not beer, though (he eyed the ice buckets) it wouldn’t have mattered either way, since the party had clearly been planned for far more than seven people. The likelihood that they’d run out of beer at this point had to be, like, zero.

He scratched the top of his head and said, “So how’s it going?”

Mary watched Sam wipe his chosen can of beer on his shirt and felt the corner of her lips tug up. For all his money and fame, he was such a boy.

Her eyes flicked up to meet his, and it was her turn to look crestfallen at his (rather astute) assessment of the situation. She followed his focus to Donny and Michelle--playing chess--and sighed in resignation. Mary glanced back to Sam. “Well, it’s certainly taught me never to throw a surprise party ever again,” she smiled wryly, then had a sip of her gin.

The table screeched against the floor as Sam nudged it backwards and Mary bit on her bottom lip in an attempt to contain a giggle -- and lasted all of five seconds. She pressed her lips together and swallowed it down, casting her eyes at the floor.

Mary had honestly expected Sam to collect his beer and return to the living room, so she was surprised that he not only lingered but appeared to be initiating a conversation that didn’t center around the party food. She blinked up at him, and her line of sight tellingly drifted to the riveting game of chess taking place -- she supposed she could be marginally more interesting than that, at least.

”So-so,” she answered him honestly with another small smile. She wasn’t deluded enough to believe Sam knew anything about the downward spiral her life seemed to be taking in recent months. “Work’s work,” she offered, which was less embarrassing than the truth. “And you? How was your tour?” Mary looked apologetic as soon as she’d asked, as if that was the kind of question he must field all the time. “Cait and I were at the London show,” she said quickly in an attempt to recover, and had a larger gulp of her drink.

“Just don’t throw ‘em for workaholics,” he advised sagely, “Bet the rest of the population would’ve done this right and shown up on time.” He, of course, hadn’t shown up on time to this shindig -- but that was neither here nor there. Typically Sam had to throw his own parties -- not because Liam and Charlie wouldn’t have done it for him, but because he wouldn’t have liked the parties Liam and Charlie invented for him -- or, memorably, ask his mum to arrange them. (He’d learned that lesson at nineteen.)

He did his best to ignore the horrible skid of the table on the floor, but it’d cheered Mary up already: he shrugged and grinned. “Oh well, oh well,” he said -- so-so, work’s work, she’d brought it on herself. “Tour was alright, me and the boys --” were all fresh out of a breakup -- “kept pretty busy, I reckon. Had a bit more fun than I did on the earlier ones.” He opted not to sound too happy about this; he wasn’t sure yet if he was too happy about this.

Not that Sam thought he was getting too old for this, at only twenty-seven, but it wasn’t a particular comfort that he’d felt so out of his depth at the kinds of parties he’d once enjoyed. He wondered now whether having an excuse to sulk at the outskirts of a party getting drunk had been most of the fun. He opted not to say that, either.

“Oh, were you!” he said, a little surprised -- it wasn’t unlike Cait to show up and see him and then not let him know she had, though it drove him insane (he could have gotten her in free.) He tried to remember anything particular about the London show and said, “That the one where someone threw a shirt at Liam and it messed up ‘Put ‘em on Hold’?”

He laughed (Donny, now glaring at his chess game, shot him an annoyed look) and stuck one hand in the pocket of his jeans; he shot another look sideways at the table. “Come on,” he said, as if he hadn’t made a come on, just one request two minutes ago. “Just one finger sandwich?”

A wide grin stretched across Mary’s thin lips; she dropped her chin and tucked her hair behind her ear to try and hide the flush of her cheeks. When she brought her attention back up to Sam she was trying to temper the expression -- not really doing so convincingly. She was glad he moved the conversation on, she wasn’t quite sure how she’d recover from that. “Oh?” she inquired, curious that he had deemed it fun and yet said it in a manner that implied it was anything but.

Mary’s grin returned in full force--rosy cheeks and all--at his reaction. “Yeah,” she said, unnecessarily (she’d already told him she was there). “Yeah,” she said again, laughing a little more nervously at the mention of Liam--she had always wondered how much Sam knew about her and Liam, and if that had been the real reason he had never pursued her himself (she could fantasize if she wanted to)--but hoped she could pass it off as laughing at the memory of the show being momentarily put on hold. Merlin, that was an awful pun, thank goodness she hadn’t said it aloud. Instead, she said: “Could have been worse, I imagine.”

“It was a good show,” she said, sounding rather more like she was talking about A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Hamlet.

Her eyes followed the movement of his hand into his pocket, then she realised how that must look--her staring in the region of his crotch--and quickly brought her gaze back up to meet his. She had a gulp of gin. Her eyebrows rose before she narrowed her eyes at him. “Was this your plan?” she asked, folding one arm over her chest, the other still holding her drink aloft. “Lull me into a false sense of security so you can have a sandwich?”

“Yeah, you know me,” he said, grinning, though Mary probably only knew what his sister said about him. “I like the high-flying life, me.” With a little shrug he lifted his bottle up and had a sip. “All three of us, straight out of a breakup,” he said in explanation -- he wasn’t entirely sure how much of Charlie’s or Liam’s breakups had been public knowledge, but if that was all he said, she wouldn’t know the specifics, and he was well within his rights to say this.

He’d remembered the show right, which was a relief: he grinned more broadly at her assessment-- could have been worse. There was ringing praise. “There’s one for the books,” he said, and sighed wistfully (mockingly.) “Could have been worse.” He didn’t want to sound like he was fishing for compliments, though -- he’d once had a lot of fun with that, but now that he was famous he thought it came off a little obnoxious. He added, “Next time I’ll put the shirt on.” He’d looked at it after the show and, though the shoulders had clearly been sized for an adult woman, it’d been in length not much longer than his three-year-old niece’s torso.

Mila, of course, was long gone, though she’d been running around for the first hour of this not-really-a-party. If Mila had asked for food, of course, she’d probably have gotten it. Sometimes Sam thought he’d wasted his childhood.

He extended his index finger in a point, keeping the other four wrapped around his beer: “Come on, now,” he said, “You make me sound so premeditated. If I was going to lull you into a sense of security I’d aim higher than a sandwich.”

Sam said he liked the high-flying life and Mary looked pointedly at his t-shirt. Her lips curled at one corner; “I can tell.”

But all three of them were straight out of a breakup apparently. Mary tried not to visibly boggle -- she had never known Liam as the type to date (obviously, once upon a time she had thought he was dating her, and it wasn’t bitterness that led her to believe he had never dated anyone, ever). And Charlie Baker hardly had relationships so much as humped anything with a pulse (she still wasn’t sure what that American had been thinking -- the money, probably). Merlin, why on earth did Sam hang around with either of them anyway? Mary wasn’t blindly making Sam out to be entirely innocent--he was a rockstar, for heaven’s sake--but next to his bandmates he was practically owed a sainthood.

Belatedly, Mary recalled that Sam’s breakup had been with Quinn Regan. “Is that why you broke up?” she asked before she could stop herself. “Going on tour,” she added, having another sip of gin, hoping Sam didn’t think she seemed too interested in the demise of his relationship.

Merlin, why had she said that? “I meant—” the shirt. Sam seemed to know this, however, and Mary blushed upon realising he was toying with her -- and at the thought of Sam stripping off mid-show to change his shirt. “Well, that would be one for the books,” she said, feeling a little more bold.

Sam was pointing his finger at her--what she wouldn’t do--and Mary had to force herself to look him in the eye. He’d aim higher, apparently. Mary grinned. “Well, I don’t know, maybe you really like sandwiches.” That was awful, she was an idiot. She drank a large swallow of gin.

At first Sam sort of thought Mary was checking him out, but a glance down at himself presented a slightly less appealing theory -- she was making fun of his clothes. “Hey,” he said, “This thing would go for a pile of gold at auction.”

She nosed a little; Sam raised his eyebrows in surprise but said, “Yeah -- she flies pro, too, so she was plenty busy too -- just bad timing on both ends.” Rather amusing to claim the tour as both the consequence and the cause of a breakup, he thought drily, but he had started to accept that this was how it worked for him and both his bandmates. Success and failure came hand in hand like that weird tattoo his brother gotten after a month in China.

He glanced back at Donovan playing chess in the sitting room, hunching over the board looking rather statuesque, yin-yang tattoo poking out of his shirtsleeve. Don had been fresh out of a breakup at that trip too, and here they both were, back at home. It made one wonder what they were doing wrong. Donny had to be wondering the same -- it looked like he was losing badly.

That would be one for the books -- he sighed wistfully. “She’d have to have a hell of an arm to get it back to me,” he remarked, him being the drummer and all.

He did really like sandwiches, but he rolled his eyes. “Macaron, then?” he said. “The --” he glanced back at the party -- “seven of us aren’t going to eat all of this.” As though he’d willed it into action, one of the few remaining guests turned up, dangling into the doorway, to make his excuse. Sam raised his eyebrows again once the man was gone -- “The six of us aren’t going to eat all of this,” he corrected.

Mary laughed. “Well, the fame clearly hasn’t gone to your head,” she teased with a soft roll of her eyes and a grin behind her glass.

Sam didn’t immediately tell her to mind her own business, but Mary almost wished he had. It took every ounce of willpower not to send her eyes into the back of her head and instead try to look sympathetic. “Bad timing, right,” she agreed quietly, having another large drink. Sam turned his attention to the rest of the party and Mary took advantage of this to be able to look at him properly, still sipping on her gin, tilting her glass higher with her eyes on him.

She lowered her glass and grinned, tried to tone it down a little. “Sounds like a challenge,” she smirked, shifting her weight onto her other leg.

Mary pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, trying to stifle another grin. “A what?” she asked, just wanting to hear him say it again— Her expression fell as another of Cait’s colleagues--Colin? Connor?--announced his intent to depart, and she waved at him half-heartedly. Merlin, she was sure there had been closer to thirty of them squeezed in at the beginning, and now they were down to— Six of us. Mary attempted to frown sincerely at Sam, telling him haughtily “You are not having a macaron before your sister gets here.” They were Cait’s favourites, Mary had ordered them specially, arranged them in a tower in place of a cake—

She caught Sam’s eye and softened, nudging the bowl of cocktail sausages towards him. “So,” she began, straightening up -- and unsure what she was going to say to keep the conversation going until she’d already started talking, “Any tour gossip?” She picked up a toothpick with a pickled onion and a cube of cheese on it, and plucked the onion between her teeth to draw it off -- not in an attempt to be sexy, and it was only after she started chewing she realised pickled onion was one of the worst things she could be eating in front of Sam, for heaven’s sake. She had another large gulp of gin to try and wash it down before it could contaminate her breath. “That— The Witch Weekly article— Did Liam really snog Oliver Rigby?”

Mary had to be joking, but Sam fixed her with a dead-serious look -- “You have no idea,” he said. Presumably she’d never been to any of the hotshot parties Liam dragged them around sometimes -- those people had let fame get to them. At least Sam was still getting his t-shirts the way normal people did, at a store, rather than paying somebody to buy all his shit. He’d never quite gotten the appeal of paying other people to do easy things.

A what? He gave her a puzzled look -- she was the woman, she should have known this -- “Y’know. One of those little Frog biscuits.” He’d have pointed them out, or made a grab for one, if he hadn’t suspected she was waiting to smack his hand down -- she’d been an Auror once, so he didn’t like his chances.

“Mate, at this rate, it’ll be you, me, Cait, and about fifty macarons each,” he said. “May as well accept that.” He supposed he wasn’t opposed to it, at any rate -- but macarons weren’t something to eat in a marathon, were they?

Perhaps out of pity, Mary pushed a plate of sausages toward him. Sam picked one off the end -- they may as well try to hide the evidence -- and stuck it in his mouth, glancing around for a wastebin before just flicking the toothpick into the sink for somebody to deal with later. “Tour gossip?” he repeated blankly. Surely she didn’t want to know that. He tried to think of the most inoffensive yet hilarious thing he’d done (or, he supposed, any of the others had done) and came up empty, but fortunately she moved onto what wasn’t really tour gossip, but the next best thing: Liam gossip.

“Literally fucking did,” he said, lowering his voice -- “I wasn’t at that party, mind, I found out because Alan wrote me.” He took another sausage out of the bowl, and it was halfway to his mouth when he added, suddenly, “I didn’t get that out of Witch Weekly, mind -- I didn’t know it were in there until Cait sent me the clipping.”

“Frog biscuits?” Mary repeated, clearly amused but also just a little bit shocked (he had had a French girlfriend once -- and she knew this because of Caitlin, not through being a stalker of her own volition). “Comment oses-tu,” Mary scolded Sam in French--complete with accent--but followed it up with a grin she couldn’t quite fight off.

Then he called her mate, in that way boys did, and while in some way it was nice (she was sure it was meant to be, anyway), it was also a reminder that Mary was and always would be Caitlin’s friend to Sam. She forced a smile -- none of that was his fault. Nor was it his fault that people kept leaving.

He accepted her compromise of a cocktail sausage and she smirked as he flicked the toothpick into the sink, feeling a fraction more upbeat than she’d felt a moment ago for that simple action (had it been literally anyone else, she would have told them to use the bin). Mary leant over the table--subtly, in case anyone from the lounge spotted them--to pluck the gin bottle from the lineup and top herself up. She fumbled over putting the cork back in, too busy paying attention to the way Sam had suddenly come alive at her Liam-and-Oliver Rigby question.

It had been talked about in the cafeteria at the Ministry--and she’d joined the elevator mid-discussion about this development in the lives of the rich and famous at least once, too-but anyone with half a brain took Witch Weekly articles with a grain of salt— But to hear Sam confirm it… She was sort of gaping at him wide-eyed, not even noticing as he helped himself to another sausage. “Really?” she asked unnecessarily, then added as an afterthought: “Who’s Alan?” wondering if this was another of Liam’s secret gay conquests—

And if Liam was gay now (or bisexuality  was still an option she supposed), did that mean he always had been? What did that make her? Why was her gaydar so awful? “Are they, like, a thing now?” she inquired delicately with an unintended wrinkle of her nose.

Mary raised her eyebrows, but her rebuke -- Comment oses-tu -- sounded more amused than offended, so Sam grinned and propped his arm against the wall by his head, looking wistfully off at the cabinet on the other wall -- “Just one,” he wheedled. “Or -- how many’d you order? If you need me to get, like, a multiple of five to make it less obvious….”

He took a long drink of beer, finishing it off, and helped himself to another without asking. (Surely they were past pretending he was here for just the one drink.) She was having another drink herself, anyway; rather satisfied with himself at having gotten her to loosen down a little, Sam raised his eyebrows over his bottle and winked, gesturing with his cocktail sausage as though he were a lecturer. He was about to go on about Liam, but she asked first about Alan -- “Oh, Alan’s our new manager,” he said. “We got him a bit after the divorce, I think.”

The divorce, he was calling it, as though they’d all divorced Kate. More damningly, as though anybody would know exactly to what he was referring without his having to be specific. (His siblings poked a lot of fun at him for his big head, talking as though the entire world was informed on his bandmates’ personal lives, but -- in his defense -- that was often the case.)

“I have no idea,” he said, “I never knew Liam to have, like, things.” Not lasting things, anyway -- though the nose wrinkling seemed a touch unfair even when it came to Liam. “Reckon whatever makes him happy, though, eh? This Ollie bloke seems alright to me too. Bit...” he flapped one hand vaguely. Wide-eyed and young and romantic wasn’t a bad thing -- Sam had been like that in his early twenties too -- but for whatever reason it seemed more fragile on Oliver Rigby’s bony shoulders than it had felt for Sam. Made him hope to God that Liam was watching out for him.

Kissing him in the middle of an industry party -- that seemed reckless and not very wise -- Sam had said as much to Alan, though not to Liam. He glanced sidelong at Mary and opted not to say as much to her, either. “Nothing wrong with it,” he said, though not comfortably.

Mary’s dark eyes drifted from Sam’s face to his bicep, now conveniently located directly to the side of his head, and ogled for a moment, even as she tried to remember how many macarons did she order? She forced herself to look Sam in the eye and had the decency to look a little aghast (at herself, for staring, more than at Sam, for his persistence -- but if the shoe fit...). But— “A multiple of five?” she asked, unable to keep the grin from her lips. “Just one,” she mimicked him (poorly), “or five, or fifteen -- it’ll be grand.”

He picked up another beer and Mary glanced at the remaining congregation in the living room -- they were so engrossed in the chess game they appeared not to notice the clinking of glass. Mary looked back at Sam in time to catch his wink and immediately grinned down at their feet.

Alan was their new manager. “Ohh, right.” She nodded. The divorce. The corners of Mary’s mouth stretched out sympathetically. She could care less about Charlie Baker and his divorce--she had yet to hear one good thing about him (or, one good thing that she was certain wasn’t being exaggerated in his favour)--but the fact he’d dragged his friends into it all by hiring the woman--girl--he’d been bewitched by was possibly the most ill-thought-out and, frankly, idiotic thing he could have done.

But more importantly: Sam had never known Liam to have things. Mary took an unintentionally large sip of her gin, swallowing quickly at Sam’s expression. “Oh, yes,” she nodded, a little more enthusiastically. “I don’t know him,” she said, “either of them, really,” she added as she stared into the middle-distance (Sam’s bicep, again); it was mostly true, she hadn’t known Liam in a long time -- and she obviously didn’t know him, if he was potentially having a thing with Oliver Rigby.

“Absolutely not,” Mary agreed readily. “My best friend in school was a lesbian,” she announced, as if it was relevant and meant something (to her, it was and did). “Not Caitlin, obviously,” she added, as an afterthought, then sighed, remembering that they were waiting on his sister to arrive. Her eyes flicked to Sam as she weighed up whether commenting on this (again) was likely to hasten his departure. She elected to slink back to gossiping, recalling how alive he had come at just the tiniest opportunity to dish some dirt on one of his bandmates (and, honestly, she couldn’t resist wanting to know more). “How was the rest of the show? The awards. Wasn’t Charlie’s ex and her family there?” Mary grimaced again, and had another drink of gin.

“Look, I can do it subtly,” he said, grinning at her horrified expression. “I can put three in my mouth at once.” Surely, at least. They weren’t that big. And it would be grand.

She didn’t know Liam well – that was to be expected, though. Sam didn’t think many people knew Liam well, though his friend had certainly made himself recognisable. He shrugged, not sure how much he was willing to gossip about Liam’s homosexuality. He could hardly make himself do it with Charlie, and Charlie was exactly as weird about it as Sam was, if not more so. Mary, on the other hand, had apparently been best friends with a lesbian in school.

“Oh, right,” he said – he’d kind of forgotten the third member of his sister’s schoolgirl trio, five years on. He had made a point of not particularly caring what Caitlin was up to, when he was a teenager, though he’d regretted it later. He couldn’t help thinking that, as close as he was to Ryan and Donovan now, he might have had better luck asking his sister for advice on certain topics.

And that other girl had died, so he wasn’t sure at all how he was meant to move the conversation along now. He took a long swig of beer, unintentionally mirroring the gulp Mary had taken just a little ago.

Where the fuck was Caitlin?

“Oh my god,” he said – this was something he could gossip about easily. “Mate, Charlie’s ex and her father are literally everyfuckingwhere. I’m of half a mind to just stop going to parties. Was alright otherwise, though. We didn’t win anything.” Just in case it made her feel bad enough to let him at the macarons, he heaved a sigh.