seek and ye shall find [sam]

thursday 6th may 2004

Mary let out a deep sigh through her nose as the needle of the record player lifted and returned to its rest, signalling the end of the album. She lifted the glass in her hand to her lips and drained what was left, then spent a good moment attempting to stand with the duvet still wrapped around her person before giving up and extricating herself just long enough to get to her feet — then promptly surrounded herself in it once again. She shuffled to the record player first, turning the vinyl over to listen to Ella Sings Gerwshin again.

The auror hitched her duvet-cape up higher and strode to the kitchen next, frilly socks poking out, and picked up the bottle of gin before making her way back to the sofa and slumping down onto it. Mary topped herself up (she hadn’t resorted to drinking straight from the bottle yet), and picked up the box of takeaway chow mein from the low coffee table—

There was a knock at the door. Mary let out another overly dramatic sigh and got to her feet with a little more ease than her last attempt, setting her food and drink back on the table. She opened the door without checking the peephole and immediately regretted not having done so — it was Sam. Cait’s brother Sam. Sam that had been amusing her with stupid owls behind his sister’s back for the past month (his latest was in her room, she hadn’t had the wherewithal to come up with a suitable witty and charming reply yet). 

“Hi,” she greeted him quietly, staring. She stood aside to let him in—had to shuffle a bit more because of the duvet padding—and winced at her own stupidity as she closed the door behind him, belatedly remembering his sister was out and she could have told him that without letting him in but— well, she was distracted thinking about what an absolute state she must look; her hair was in a messy bun (but the actually messy kind, not the cool messy kind), she was wearing day-old pyjamas — and, of course, she was still wrapped in a duvet.

“Um, Cait’s… not in.“


@Sam Lynch

It was Donny’s birthday in two weeks and, last time their brother had had a birthday, Sam and Caitlin had both gotten him dartboards, and though fortunately that was the sort of thing one could never have too many of, it was one too many instances of Sam and Caitlin having the exact same ideas for Donny’s birthday gifts (to add to the year they’d both gotten him bathrobes, and the year they’d both gotten him cameras, and the year they’d both gotten him tabletop grills) to be comfortable with rolling the dice another year. He’d been very sure that the tabletop grill would be safe.

This year he wanted to get Donovan a keg (as a joke, mostly) and, more than that, he wanted to make sure that Caitlin was not getting Donovan a keg. He also wanted to see Caitlin, because she was possibly the only person he could rely on not to laugh about his new glasses, which he was sure made him look sort of elderly. He sure felt pretty elderly in them.

Unfortunately he felt even more elderly putting them in his shirt pocket or on the top of his head, and was thus stuck actually wearing them, the way his mother had told him to do so he would get used to them. The Healer had suggested those Muggle contact lenses things and he had been even more appalled at the idea of touching his own eyes. This was hard enough to get used to.

He was a musician – he was a rockstar – he was pretty sure no rockstar in the history of the world had worn glasses. How was he supposed to do anything? How was he supposed to rock? He was not putting his glasses on a band just so he could headbang without their flying half across the stage like little eye projectiles. He’d said so to his mother, who hadn’t been nearly as accepting of this complaint as he was hoping Caitlin would be.

Caitlin didn’t open the door; her roommate Mary did, and let him in just to tell him that Caitlin wasn’t even there. The weirdness of that didn’t register at first, since he was paying all his attention to the weirdness of everything else – takeout Chinese on the table, Ella Fitzgerald, Mary’s blanket cape. “I could leave a message,” he said, and stared down at Mary for as long as it took to realise he was being rude. “Er,” he said, “How’s it going?”

Mary’s eyes darted to her takeaway container, and to the bottle of gin on the coffee table, to the record player, then back to Sam. She gripped her blanket around her tighter, ashamed; she knew why she took a week off at the beginning of May every year—so did Caitlin—but she never made a big song and dance of it in the office in the days leading up to it, like she might if she was going somewhere exotic for a proper holiday. For this she preferred to just slink out of sight, have nobody notice until it was time for a cup of tea on Monday morning and she wasn’t there to put her hand up to claim one.

Now Sam was here, intruding on her designated wallowing week. But the idea of shooing him away without some sort of explanation (true or not) was almost as abhorrent as the idea of him seeing her like this — and it was a bit late now, he had eyes—

(He could leave a message, indeed.)

It was only after the initial horror of the situation had subsided (and he stared at her — and she stared back, lightly buzzed from the gin) that she noticed what was different. “Are you wearing glasses?” she asked unnecessarily over his enquiry — he was quite clearly wearing glasses. She almost reached up to take them off him, but that was a bit familiar. “Sorry. I— Yes, fine.” Her attention flicked to the bottle of alcohol again, but this time to acknowledge that this wasn’t your typical cold remedy, and she grimaced softly (guiltily) as she glanced back at him.

“Gin?”

Perhaps he should have owled; in fact, he clearly should have owled, if only to schedule a time to burst in on Cait with his new eyewear and moan about it, if only the bursting hadn’t been fundamentally unplanned in nature. Mary was clearly not prepared for company – was she sick? should he back away a bit? surely she wouldn’t have let him in if she was contagious – and he felt somewhat intrusive. The way she was frowning him (like he had a wart on his nose) wasn’t helping, at least until he realised the frown was because he did have an eyesore on his nose.

“Yes!” said Sam, just relieved to have anything to say that wasn’t ‘Are you sick?’. “They are new, and I hate them.” Of course she was finally answering his query as he did so (Yes, fine, so probably not sick) and they both cut themselves off at the same moment, leaving a frankly awkward silence.

She broke it: Gin? and he said again, “Yes – thanks,” and came further into the apartment, trying to avoid the temptation to glance around curiously (he didn’t spend much time at Cait’s apartment, as it was usually too tasteful and clean for her to be comfortable with his mucking about.) “Can I sit?” he added, and checked behind himself hastily to make sure he wouldn’t sit on the cat before he did so. He took the gin, and had a sip.

Sam, honestly, didn’t like gin – too sour – but it seemed only polite to join Mary, now he’d walked in on her having a depression, or whatever was going on. (Again he wondered where was Cait – of course, to his knowledge, Cait didn’t have Gershwin and gin-fueled depressions like this, but intense rage-fueled binges.) He asked anyway: “Is she working, or something?”

Mary went from looking somewhere between sorry for herself and confused, to smiling smally, amused by his (over)reaction to his new accessory. Then they cut over one another and she was back to staring straight ahead (slightly angled towards Sam) awkwardly.

He accepted her offer for gin and Mary got straight to it, glad for an excuse to step back — she was conscious now that she should have had a shower and changed her pyjamas this morning, as if she should have known Sam could show up at any minute (it had happened before, so there was precedent at least) and as if she would have put clean pyjamas on to receive him in (preposterous).

“Yes, make yourself comfortable,” Mary told him, pulling a clean glass from the cupboard in the kitchen and coming back over to the living area. She rolled her lips inwards and realised she would need to shed her blanket-cape to pour his drink, and tried to do so in a blasé sort of manner which somehow ended up seeming quite dramatic as the duvet fell to the floor with a soft thunk. At least she had chosen nice pyjamas.

Mary poured Sam’s gin and handed it over to him, sitting down beside him delicately before leaning forward to tug her blanket closer and drape it over her lap. Sam asked if she was working and it took Mary a hot second to click who she was — his sister, her best friend, obviously. “Oh, yes. She said she’d be late today.” Mary picked up her own glass and paused shy of having a sip; “I’m not sure if she’s actually working late or just—” avoiding coming home, “—gone out for a drink.”

Mary peered at Sam out of the corner of her eye, not turning her head in his direction. The last time they’d been alone—or sort of alone, off to the side—she had gotten rather drunk (as had he), but she didn’t think she’d completely embarrassed herself. She had a sip of her gin. “So, new glasses?” she prompted politely.

Mary told him to make himself comfortable; as though to illustrate the point, she dropped the blanket from her shoulders, not without flair. Sam nodded as politely as he could, as though he were not staring (she was wearing pyjamas, come on) and said, “Alright.” He picked up on the pause between ‘working late’ and what he assumed was Mary’s euphemism for what Cait was probably up to (he hoped to God that sandalled berk was at least taking good care of her tonight) and nodded, and said, “Alright,” again.

She was not facing him, so after a moment, Sam turned to stare straight ahead at Mary’s Chinese takeaway carton, and wondered what was wrong. Breakup, maybe, or some trouble at work? He remembered Cait saying there had been a lot of upset a year ago when they’d had an Auror turn out to be a Death Eater; he didn’t remember now whether she’d mentioned Mary, and obviously wasn’t about to ask Mary herself about it.

Fortunately, before he could put his foot in his mouth, Mary broke the silence. “Yes,” he declared again, grateful to have something to sat, “New glasses. I’m a bit nearsighted, it turns out. My mam’s not giving me any sympathy – says maybe it’s the lighting effects at our concerts – but Charlie isn't going fecking blind, is he?” His amused tone had gotten a hint indignant at the end of that, so he took a sip of gin, anxious to seem less oblivious and self-centred. But… she’d asked, hadn’t she, so he felt like he was obligated to complain at least a little. (He suspected she just wanted something to talk about.)

Anyway, his main complaint was – “I just don’t think musicians can be nearsighted. It isn’t done. I’ll try to rock out at our next concert and these –” he gestured with contempt towards his own face – “will go flying off the stage.”