Wined and Dined

[midnight_twelve]

Niall’s head rested pensive, chin on the knuckles of his left hand, watching the other dance. His right hand, cradling the pen in a gentle thumb-and-finger embrace, waltzed left-right, left-right, left-right across the page in neat, cursive movements, its dance partner leaving a fine blue-black line in their wake. Slowly, but ever surely, the words filled the page, flowing one into the next, as natural as if they’d always been there, before the ink even dried, as if the paper itself had been placed under them, as if there was no separating word from word nor word from page. Like a fortune told as fate, letters fell inevitably, inexorably into place, marching unto their-

With a sigh, Niall screwed the sheet of paper up, and tossed it in the wastepaper basket by his desk.

((NIALL HARRIS – PREGAME START))

Niall checked the clock. Ordinarily, he would be eating dinner at this hour, and hunger pangs were starting to set in. There was a comfort in routine, a comfort that didn’t like to be spurned in favour of new mistresses, however enticing, however exciting. And yet, Niall was excited. It was an emotion he didn’t allow himself often, but he’d been looking forward to tonight. Good food, good drink, a good friend, it was worth waiting for. There was of course bread downstairs, and fruit, and cans of soup; but there was not Finn, not yet, and so eating could wait. Why ruin an appetite that could be put to good use on better food? To settle for the mediocre now when one could await perfection was an empty way to live.

Anticipation did, however, make it difficult to concentrate on his writing, and a hunger left unsatisfied did no favours for those efforts. The basket was nearly full with balls of crumpled paper, and he’d emptied it only that morning. It was time to accept he would make no further progress tonight. Niall placed his trusty fountain pen down by an inkpot as a reminder to refill it later, and stood up from his chair, stretching. His muscles had grown tense over the course of the afternoon, spent as it was sat at his desk, almost motionless save for the back and forth of his writing hand and the occasional football-trained-throw of discarded work. Niall ran through a well-worn warm-up routine on the widest span of empty floor his bedroom had to offer. After he had worked each muscle from stiff to supple, he checked the clock again. Finn might arrive any moment. Niall plucked a shirt from his wardrobe and buttoned it up, smoothed it down, tucked it in. He was checking the mirror on the back of his door when he heard the doorbell ring.

[ViolentMedic]

((Finn Cooper continued from Death by Glamour.))

If Niall had been really straining his ears, he might have heard loud footsteps and ingredients clattering as Finn half-jogged towards the door with a bag of groceries that he’d needed to get last minute. Otherwise he ran the risk of Donal using the fancy cheese on the sandwiches he subsisted on the majority of the time.

He was running late. Guanciale had not been at his usual grocery store. According to the internet, he could make a decent carbonara with parmesan and bacon instead of parmigiano reggiano and guanciale. But he wanted to make a good dinner, and Niall was sophisticated. He’d probably taste the difference.

Also Marcy’s family would skin him if he made carbonara wrong.

He shuffled the bag into one hand and knocked on the door. Three clear knocks. He’d knocked on this door countless times since he was a kid, the house almost as familiar as his own and much more welcoming.

[midnight_twelve]

Niall picked his gramophone off one of his bookshelves and thumbed through the shelf above for a few records to play over dinner. You ate with your ears as much as your eyes, after all, and Niall didn’t like to do things by halves. Softly closing the bedroom door behind him, Niall carried the record player and vinyls downstairs, placing them on the kitchen counter and making his way to the front door. He'd kept his best friend waiting long enough.

Finn stood on the doorstep, clutching a bag of groceries. He looked slightly out of breath, as if he’d been in a rush, and strands of red-brown hair caught the setting sun and fell like errant flames where the Vegas wind had blown them out of place. Each freckle was an ember thrown against his cheeks. One glowing strand lay across a bright green eye like fire in a forest, threatening to catch, threatening to burn everything down. Niall wondered if Marcy ever noticed that, when she brushed his hair off his face. In just a split-second, the opening of a door, the time it took to talk, Niall could see worlds in Finn’s face. Did she ever see the same?

“You didn’t have to rush...”

Niall grinned, took the bag out of Finn’s hands, and clapped Finn on the back as he ushered him into his home.

“…but I appreciate the enthusiasm. Let’s go through to the kitchen.”

[ViolentMedic]

“Sure I did,” Finn said as he was gently pushed into the house.

Why keep Niall waiting? His patience seemed endless, but Finn figured he’d been tapping into it since elementary school and it had to run out one day. Even if it didn’t, it’d be rude. Finn saved rudeness for those who deserved it.

Finn let himself be pushed along until they entered the kitchen, at which point he took a step out of Niall’s reach to start rummaging through the cabinets, zoning in on where each pan, bowl and utensil he needed was.

“Anything new?” he asked as he located the proper knife, and reached out to the bag in Niall’s hands to find the guanciale. While waiting for a response, Finn started unwrapping the meat so he could slice it into batons.

He didn’t really know what Niall got up to as well as he should. Different crowds, and Niall wasn’t the sort to join him at the races or meet up with his crew if they were hanging out at the park. Too sophisicated. Respectable. Not a bad thing. At least not when it was Niall.

[midnight_twelve]

No sooner had they entered the kitchen than Finn got to work assembling a small armoury of pots and pans and knives and bowls. Niall smiled behind his back. His mother had always said this was as much Finn’s house as theirs, that he was always welcome, and watching his best friend rummage through his cupboards like it was his own kitchen brought back all the memories of the times they’d spent together here. Niall reminisced for a moment. Each memory was clear and separate; he could probably have put an exact date to some of them. But then Finn asked “anything new?”, and Niall was reminded of just how long it had been since they’d properly caught up.

“Only the year,” Niall said in response. “I went to Stella’s, in the end. It was… nice. You’d have hated it.”

That had been almost half a month ago now. Time had moved quickly, and they were both busy. Niall had schoolwork and parties and books to read and poems to write; Finn had a girlfriend. They just didn’t spend as much time together as they once did. Niall’s smile had faded by the time he stepped back into Finn’s field of view, filling two glasses from the tap and sliding one over the countertop to tide over any thirst until dinner was served and the wine could be poured.

“How did Marcy’s birthday go, anyway?”

[ViolentMedic]

“All parties are good parties,” Finn said.

At least, they were better than being at home. In the same way that having your shirt set on fire was better than your face being dowsed in acid.

Niall slid him a glass of water, and Finn took it with a faint smile – though barely recognisable as such – and nod before pausing in his work to gulp it down. Running around all afternoon looking for ingredients had made him thirsty.

“Good. But she was bummed about not being able to buy alcohol. ...And that no-one wanted to jump the Mexican border to drink.”

They’d gotten alcohol eventually – it wasn’t as if none of them had fake IDs, and half the time Finn didn’t get carded regardless. But Marcy had gone off about how they couldn’t drink, but could get married or join the military, and how that was bullshit. Which… yeah.

“We’re not master criminals like you.” Finn gestured at his ear vaguely before picking up the knife and slicing the meat into thin slivers, then cutting the other way to make those slivers shorter. “Tell me about the wine.”

He wouldn’t really understand it. Niall would always say wine tasted like specific fruits or flavours. Finn’s extent of understanding was that red had more ‘tannins’ or something in it and that made it taste… how it did. But Niall liked to talk about it and Finn liked to listen to it, even if he didn’t get it.

[midnight_twelve]

Niall pursed his lips as Finn recounted Marcy’s birthday. Niall would always ask about Marcy, ask about their relationship, but he never really enjoyed the answer. He did his best to feign interest, regardless, or at least to disguise disinterest. Niall wanted Finn to be happy, and he wanted Finn to think, if nothing else, that he wanted him to be happy with Marcy. But it wasn't until the topic turned to wine that Niall could muster some happiness of his own.

“I put a couple of bottles in the fridge. There’s two ways we can play this.”

There was a photograph stuck to the refrigerator door of Finn and Niall, aged ten or eleven, clad in football gear and beaming after a win. Their smiles still etched an echoed smile onto Niall’s face each time he saw it, even after all those years. Opening the door onto the cold harsh light inside, Niall let his smile settle. He took both bottles from the shelf they lay on, and turned back around, expression neutral once more.

“Something buttery, like this chardonnay…” Niall flipped the bottle in his left hand, caught it expertly, “…would complement the creaminess of the sauce. Enhance the flavours.”

“Or we could go for something lighter and crisper, something like this pinot grigio…” another flip, up, over, and catch, “…something that would cut through some of the richness. Something a bit more refreshing.”

Complement or contrast. The classic debate in wine pairing. Did opposites truly attract? People said you could tell a lot about a man by his choice in drink. Niall held both bottles out to Finn.

“It depends on what you want the wine to bring to the dish. Chef’s choice.”