RP: Dinner for Two

[tt_cecilia.insanejournal.com]

Date: 30. November, 2001
Characters: Cecilia Proudfoot and Sirius Black
Setting: Early evening, Sirius' house
Content: TBD
Status: Open: Private


The basket on the kitchen table had been packed even before Jamie had left to join the rest of his class for the astronomy camp-out. Some of the faster growing vegetables in her own garden were on the verge of being ready for harvesting; another short week or so, she estimated, but they weren't completely right for tonight. So, she had made a round of the market, adding to the things she already had in her cooler and cupboards as well as a good portion of what most of all resembled dark turkey meat. She forgot which animal it came from, but she recognized it as a favorite whenever it was available.

After her shower she had let her hair dry into the stubborn curls she had given up on trying to tame, though she did let it hang loose, rather than tying it up in the usual ponytail. The clothes took a bit more consideration. Dinner with Sirius called for something a bit less casual than her regular everyday clothes, but they would be cooking, which took out some of the formality. She eyed her tank tops and cargo shorts longingly, but those wouldn't even be considered casual; they were her work clothes. Finally she settled on her white tunic with the black lace decoration over her sand coloured denim skirt and comfortable sandals. There, relaxed without being too casual.

With a light jumper draped over the basket, she apparated to Sirius' house, taking a moment to run her fingers through her hair, before she knocked on the door.

Comments

[tt_cecilia.insanejournal.com]

Knocking on Sirius' door after she had left was beyond humiliating for her. A nagging voice in the back of her head kept insisting that she should just open the door and grab her sandals and let that be the end of it, but no matter how angry or disappointed he had made her, she couldn't betray the trust he had shown her when he had invited her to his home by invading his safety zone without permission. Another small voice kept telling her that she should just leave the sandals, but the reasonable part of her firmly pushed that voice down; these were good sandals and who knew when they would be able to get anything like that here again.

Ready to ask for her sandals back and then promise him that she wouldn't bother him anymore, Cecilia barely managed to open her mouth when the door was opened and Sirius pulled her close. She wanted to object, but instead her body overruled her mind when her arm wrapped around his neck and her lips parted under his, inviting him in. She moaned into the kiss, her fingers clenching around the fabric of his shirt, though only when it ended did she managed to draw the breath her body was calling for. The way he brushed her hair out of her face was so gentle and considerate, a stark contrast to the harsh words and the fierce kiss. Looking up at him, her breathing hard from the kiss, from the need he had spurred in her. Yes, he had told her that, but only after she had put her foot well and thoroughly in it. "And whatever possesses you to think I'm not?"

[tt_sirius.insanejournal.com]

She hadn't pulled away, no, in fact, her reaction had been something he could only have dreamed of, the curl of her fingers in his shirt, the soft moan against his mouth. Merlin, but the taste of her was better than whiskey. Sirius was drowning and he hated every second of ending the kiss though the chance to look down into her beautiful gaze was some consolation. "A great many things possess me, Cecilia," Sirius replied gravely, carding his fingers into her soft hair.

"Please," he asked quietly, pressing another kiss, soft and chaste this time, to her lips. "Please, come back inside - dinner... and we can talk. All right?" He drew back then, but kept his hand on her waist, slipping his other hand down, fingers caressing the curve of her jaw and neck. Her skin was so soft, so perfect. "I'll behave - as much as I can - I promise."

[tt_cecilia.insanejournal.com]

"And which one is making you think I'm not rubbish at this?" she whispered, repeating her question. Looking up at him, Cecilia felt as if she could easily lose herself trying to decipher the haunted look in his eyes. Eyes that she had only seen light up once or twice, but those few, rare occasions were ones she wanted to see again. Even before he had said so himself, she had known he had ghosts, or issues, or he was troubled or whichever wording people chose to use about someone with a traumatic past, such as Sirius. It didn't take a genius or even training in Mind Healing to figure out that a man who had been falsely sentenced to prison for murdering his friends and had spent more than a decade around Dementors and only recently had come back from what she could only compare to death would have a few issues with settling into a regular life. And yet, she felt drawn to him, attracted as she had told him, though to which degree she hadn't known until tonight, when his first, spontaneous kiss had made her see her attraction in a different light.

His fingers were so gentle, his voice soft and the chaste kiss more intimate than she could recall having been with any other man. Letting him draw her along as he stepped back inside the house, she closed the door behind them, though she didn't move away from him. "You shouldn't have to behave, Sirius," she whispered and swallowed down to calm herself and quiet the myriad of contradictory thoughts. "How can I possibly get to know you, if you behave? It shouldn't be an effort for you and if it is, then I'm not the one you... the one you should be... with." Her head was filled with thoughts, wants, needs, reasons she should leave and reasons she should stay and concern for the man who was holding her while looking at her in a way she didn't recognise from anywhere.

[tt_sirius.insanejournal.com]

Unintelligible whispers chased around the edges of his thoughts, conflicting arguments rising and falling over and over again, the same caution of distance swelling loudly even as he struggled to ignore them. He believed he was endangering her, even now, just by being around him - his life was cursed and anyone how had been close to him had been consumed by that curse. 'Is it worth it? Sacrificing her life for a brief moment of happiness' Remus' voice rose up from the chaotic jumble and Sirius jaw tightened. 'I can protect her.' he thought as his fingers smoothed over her skin, silently mapping the smallest curves. "None of them do," he admitted softly. He didn't know her relationship history but he couldn't imagine to be worse than his.

The door closing only reinforced what she was saying but she couldn't possibly understand what that meant to him. He was raised with a certain degree of civility that he couldn't shake, no matter what. Even in Azkaban, those thoughts had strengthened him. "You don't know what you're asking, Cecilia," Sirius cautioned, taking a step away, his hand moving to rest on her shoulder for a moment before dropping away. "That last... involvement I had was just after Hogwarts. I can't - being a gentleman is part of who I am. I can't just step out of that."

[tt_cecilia.insanejournal.com]

His soft admission made a smile tug at the seam of her lips. Slowly she nodded; she didn't have a whole lot of experience in the relationship department of her life, and the few instances she could actually refer to as relationships hadn't ended prettily.

Cecilia had to draw in a deep breath to hide her disappointment in Sirius' cautioning. This was it, she figured, preparing herself to hear how everything she had learned about him during the limited time she had spent with him had all been a charade. Her eyes narrowed slightly in confusion when he began talking about his last involvement. Okay, so that had been years ago, but so had hers. Granted not nearly as many years as his, but still, it wasn't anything recent. And then came the big issue, the part that had her give a small yelp of relief, before she clamped her hand solidly over her mouth to keep from bursting into laughter. This wasn't a laughing matter, this was a matter based on a misunderstanding that she clearly needed to correct.

"Oh my gods, Sirius," she muttered behind her hand before she shook her head, and closed her eyes for a moment. Letting her hand come down from her mouth to take his hand, she looked at him. "In my world behaving and being a gentleman are two very different things. Being a gentleman is something you are, something that comes naturally to you, while behaving is something you do. Behaving is what you tell a naughty child to do to keep from being judged by people around you." Giving his hand a gentle squeeze, she hoped she hadn't ruined everything with their misunderstanding. "The very last thing I want to do, is have you be someone you're not in your own home."

[tt_sirius.insanejournal.com]

Her reaction was confusing and Sirius couldn't fathom what her expression could mean, nor was he going to make any assumptions. He'd assumed her rejection and that had turned out to be the exact opposite of what she had felt. The best thing to do now was to listen to her and try to filter out the thoughts that were pounding in his head.

There was a momentary surge of relief when he realized that there had been a basic misunderstanding between them and she wasn't objecting to him. The internal struggle was still there - he wanted her and yet, he believed that being a part of his life would endanger her. Cecilia squeezed his hand and that drew a focus to his thoughts. "I would point out my limited experience with children, now," Sirius joked wryly.

"Why don't we get the food cooking and then you can ask me anything you want," he suggested, nodding toward the kitchen. Sirius hoped she would agree, that they could start this over again on better ground and the evening wouldn't be a total loss.

[tt_cecilia.insanejournal.com]

Cecilia's lips twitched and her eyebrow arched in amusement at Sirius' joke; his humour was improving, or maybe he was just beginning to relax. At least the misunderstanding had been corrected, despite his supposedly limited exposure to children, and that made Cecilia begin to relax again.

At his suggestion, she paused for a moment. She wanted to stay, wanted to get to know him better, figure out where her attraction to him came from, but it was just minutes ago that a failed attempt at teasing from her side had touched on some insecurity in Sirius, and she didn't want that to happen again. On the other hand, he had just invited her to ask him about anything he wanted to know, and she took that as a sign that he was prepared – at least to some degree – to deal with her potentially crossing the line again. Looking from the kitchen and back to him, she nodded, accepting his offer with a gentle smile. "You can ask, too," she let him know as she kept a hold on his hand and followed him back to the kitchen.

"What was it like?" she asked him as she picked up the roots she had left on the counter when she had left, moving them to the chopping board and began to cut them into small dices. "Coming back, I mean. What was it like coming back?"

[tt_sirius.insanejournal.com]

He let out his held breath when Cecilia moved back into the kitchen with him, letting him lead the way as he focused past their misunderstanding. They were from different worlds - there were bound to be misunderstandings but that one had been a serious point for him and it was a relief that she hadn't left. If she had, he would have understood but he would have missed her companionship.

It was a measure of her trust that she had agreed to finish the evening and he was going to do his best to make her not regret that decision. While she attended the vegetables, Sirius brought out the fresh butter from the cooler and opened a cupboard, taking down several jars of herbs that the Longbottom boy had given him. Her question, however expected, made him pause, his back to her as he looked out the window to the foliage blocked terrace beyond.

"From Azkaban or the Veil?" Sirius asked, his voice gruff as he summoned a glass cooking dish, silently sending a prayer of thanks to whatever deity made the builders stock the houses well. "The Veil was... when I woke up, I was laying on the rock in front of it. I recall hearing Hermione's voice in the distance, like an echo, just seeing the shimmering grey of the opening as it mutated into a deep blue. I... I didn't know where I was. Hermione - she was there when I was hexed into the Veil, you see."

[tt_cecilia.insanejournal.com]

"The veil," Cecilia said softly, scooping a handful of diced vegetables into a bowl. She let Sirius take the time he needed, sensing that he might need it. Perhaps it had been an unfairly hard question to ask him, but asking him what his favourite colour was, she thought, would have been making a mockery of his offer of complete honesty. Besides, she doubted he'd believe it was something she actually wanted to know, after all, a quick glance around the house would reveal a fondness for the colour green.

His answer made sense, in a way, because there was no way she could possibly understand what it was like, but it had affected him greatly, of that she had no doubt, and that was why she had asked the question; to get a better understanding of him. "Hermione..." she muttered, at first not certain who this woman was, when it struck her and she felt a bit silly for not having realised it immediately. "Oh, Hermione Granger, right?" That had to be her, otherwise she doubted he would have named her as casually as he had.

Bringing the bowl of vegetables over to where he had summoned the herbs, she put it down next to him in case he wanted to add some of them to it. "I guess I was more curious if you'd registered anything while you were... behind the veil," she looked up at him. "Like, the time you were there, was it an eternity or the five or six years you were there, or more like a blink of an eye?" Either way, his return was bound to have messed with his mind, though she was certain it would have been different all depending on how long it had seemed. Then again, this was solely for her own curiosity's sake and for her ability to understand him, to some extent, but it wasn't imperative that she knew. "You don't have to answer that, if you don't want to," she assured him with a gentle smile, placing his hand on top of his. "I can ask easier questions, too, if you prefer."

[tt_sirius.insanejournal.com]

"Yes, Hermione Granger. Brilliant witch. I'm indebted to her twice over now. She saved my life after I escaped Azkaban and I feel she saved it again to bring me out of the Veil," he replied somberly. There was little doubt in Sirius' mind that even though Hermione claimed the Veil accident had been simply that - an accident - that she had somehow affected the doorway to death enough to extract him from it's grasp.

Sirius glanced down at the bowl, making the assumption that Cecilia thought the vegetables would benefit from the herbs so he sprinkled a couple of fingerfuls onto them. Putting a spoon in the bowl, he tapped it and it began slowly turning the vegetables to mix them with the herbs. "I did say I would answer your questions," Sirius pointed out after a moment, grateful for her understanding but also knowing that she was extending him a trust that he hadn't yet earned.

"It might as well have been an eternity. The only friend I had in this... that world died while I was trapped there," he clarified, his tone taking on a small, but temporary hard edge. "I remember being hit with Bella's hex and feeling the push backward - the cold slip of the Veil as it touched my back. And then I don't remember anything specific. Whispers. Dark... dark whispers that came and went, speaking of vile, foul things." Sirius paused, his body giving a tiny shudder as he drew on those memories. He swallowed and looked down at her, his gaze grave. "I had no sensation of time passing. Just an engulfing sense of evil."

[tt_cecilia.insanejournal.com]

Satisfied with the amount of herbs Sirius added to the bowl, Cecilia looked back up at him when he set the spoon to mix it. "You did," she acknowledged and summoned a few more of the leaves she had used to Transfigure before she had left. It wasn't only for her curiosity's sake that she was starting out with the hard questions. By asking the hard questions first, the ones she figured a lot of people were dying to know, Sirius would – hopefully – know that if she was staying around, it wasn't to get the answers from him. Hopefully.

One by one, she transfigured the leaves into sheets of baking paper, that she stacked neatly next to the bowl while she listened to him talk. "I'm sorry for your loss," she said quietly, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. For him to first be forced to be in what he himself had just described as an evil place, only to return and find that his only friend had died while he was gone was just more unfairness than a single person deserved in several lifetimes.

"And now that you're out from behind the veil," she started carefully, reaching for the fish and placing a suitable amount in the middle of the sheet on top. "Knowing what you know or remember from how it was there, what does that make you think about the place we've landed in? Is it really the paradise it looks to be, or is that all-encompassing evil still lurking all around?" If what was behind the veil was as evil as Sirius had described it, and she had no reason not to believe him on that one, then where would a time disruption through that very same veil have brought them? Removing the spoon from the bowl, she scooped a small handful of vegetables up, placing them on top of the fish before she meticulously began folding up the sides of the paper until it would hold liquid without it spilling over the edges. "Add a bit of butter and a touch of white wine, I'll close it up and seal in all the flavours while it bakes."