Title: There Goes the Groom
Prompt: Arthur/Tonks locked in a room together for
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,015
Disclaimer: If I owned any of these characters, I would be able to pay my friends to like me. Seriously. I don't think there are any real warnings, except maybe sexual fantasy?

I'm not sure, I'm bad at these.

“She’s going to kill me…”

Arthur Weasley paced. His chest was constricting with each fevered step he took around his cramped confinement, nearly spinning a circle for the space that continued to clutch at the frayed hems of his robes.

A cool, thin sweat broke out across a high forehead and he dabbed at it nervously and all the while, his lips continued to move, entirely unaware of the sound pouring nonsensically into the room. Each step, each pounding beat of his heart in his chest seemed to scream the same message. March 18th, March 18th…here comes the bride…there goes the groom.

Sweaty palms, shallow breath, eyes meet eyes, from this moment on, I love you, I love you, for better or wor-

“Really, she’s going to kill me,” he choked out nervously, chocolate eyes breaking contact with dark, dusty wooden floors to glance at a shadow on the wall, lost among books and parchment, nearly melted in the grime. “She’ll going to find out I’m here and I’m finished. She’ll rip my throat out and feed it to my sons in a meatloaf and they’ll say ‘My, Mummy, this is a fantastic meatloaf!

’ And do you know what she’ll say? She’ll say, ‘Yes, dears, it is a fantastic Daddyloaf,’ and Fred and George will laugh and she won’t understand the innuendo and will probably kill them t-”

“Arthur!” It was a rare occasion that Nymphadora Tonks referred to him by his first name.

Almost unsettling was the normally fretting wisp of a girl standing perfectly still beside him. It made him feel immature, irrational…and more afraid of his lover’s wrath all the same. “I’m sorry, I really am…” There it was, the first traces of doubt creeping into her voice, forcing it uncomfortably higher until it rest behind her eyes, buzzing and humming.

He winced. “It’s an old door and I know…it’s just the box…it was heavy and I thought you were in the other bedroom and the door just closed and I’m just…I just…” A quick exhale forced that same voice into a whimper, frantic and desperate for approval.

“No.

It’s…it’s fine.” Her panic was almost soothing; as she wrung her hands before tangling spindly fingers into bubblegum pink hair, he knew he was the adult. In that room, they were an unspoken balancing act, chaos and order, and chaos in the dank and the dark and the dust in six by five would tear the world apart.

“I suppose it won’t do us any good to panic. You’ve tried the knob, I’ve probably dislocated my shoulder trying to break it down, and I’m not sure my allergies can handle another attempt at a charm.”

Tonks bit her thin lower lip and nodded, mimicking his deep, calming breath.

“…So…what do we do, then?”

He took a moment to respond, finally tucking the handkerchief that had been a near-permanent fixture to his brow into his pocket and sinking to discolored yellow carpet. An ironic smile pulled at his freckled face and he let out a short, punctuated laugh, mirthless.

“The only thing we can do,” he answered, legs curling into his body as he gestured to the floor beside him. “…We wait.”

(She can’t force herself to be angry anymore as she paces across their cluttered living room.

At first, she forgave him. Ten minutes, fifteen, Arthur, darling, the reservations were for six-thirty… Plump fingers worry over the neckline in her dress, deep green fabric plummeting in a smooth arc over a pale, freckled chest. The spotted canvas broken only by the silver pendant he had given her the year before, the modest ruby hanging beneath it marking six weeks’ pay and undying devotion.

“He’ll be here,” she says, but the obnoxious rolling in the pit of her stomach becomes a more convincing argument with every moment that ticks away. She can’t afford to worry, can’t afford to be disappointed. He’s coming and she knows it.

So many years and she’s never doubted him. She can’t afford to start now. So she waits… )

“…It’s our anniversary today,” Arthur sighed again, almost as though each deep breath would enter his lungs less stale, less rank, less something than the last.

Absently, he toyed with the lint fixed firmly to his trouser leg, rolling it between his fingers. “Twenty-seven years.”

A pained groan slipped out his companion’s throat and she pitched forward, miserably burying her face between her knees.

“If I haven’t said it recently,” she muttered, “I’m so sorry.”

But after immeasurable hours of confinement, he seemed to have tuned her out, only staring at the bookshelf on the opposite wall with distant, dreamy eyes. “We had to elope.

The Prewetts were less than pleased when they found out we’d been seeing one another at all, and she’d nearly begun to show, what with Bill being due in Nov-”

A snort of laughter held in check snapped him from that same day nearly three decades prior and he glanced over at her. Dark eyes had gone wide and he could see a jack-o-lantern smile spreading across her angular face. “You mean to tell me that Bill wasn’t…” When Arthur didn’t answer, only awkwardly shifted as well as some three inches of personal space would allow, she giggled again, hiding her face in her hands.

“Blimey, that’s priceless. I mean…” A beat, whether for composure or for actual thought, he couldn’t be sure. “…What a way to start a life together…”

( I’ll kill him, she thinks as two fists pound her thighs, compelling her to stand and step away from the sofa, smoothing the folds of her dress.

By the third hour, irrational suspicion has set in. She doesn’t believe an instant of it, and yet-

“I bet he’s with Hestia…” she grumbles into the silence, and immediately she can see it. Black hair falls messily around her shoulders, pale fingers tangling in it as he forces her over a stack of boxes.

Plus-sized robes are hiked around full hips as he thrusts into her from behind, an unnatural, wicked smile on his face. Her cheeks flush and she moans the same way she speaks, low, husky, as though each sound could melt instantly into a full-bodied laugh.

“Oh, Arthur,” the sound comes again, ringing between Molly’s ears, “Here’s to hoping your wife never finds out about our secret affair on your twenty-seventh anniversary!

” And to that, he throws back his head, a near-parody of mechanically working hips unfazed as he lets out cruel laughter.

“What Mollywobbles doesn’t know won’t hurt her…”

One hand flies to her chest, round face blanching as she plops unceremoniously onto the kitchen table, strands of flyaway red hair coming free as she fans herself. “No, that’s ridiculous.

” A beat, just time enough for a new thought to formulate. “More likely it’s that wretched bitch Julianne…the accountant from the Ministry…”

In an instant, the darkness of an unnamed storage closet is lit in festive red and green, the Ministry’s first and only Christmas party clamoring around her on all sides. In the center of the chatter, in a simple swiveling chair, sit her husband and his lover, stark naked and voyeuristically aware of everyone around them.

Pale legs are splayed at odd angles and square, calloused hands hold fake orange hips. She’s young, blonde and flirtatious as she rocks into him, the breasts she remembers straining against a tight pink cardigan the day they met rubbing against his chest with each labored breath.

“Oh, Arthur!

” she giggles, biting a red painted lip as bounced into him again and again, “I just love a man in power.”

Again, heartless, haunting laughter cuts through her fantasies, a smile twisting at his face. “And I love a woman with a tight-”

“No!

” Molly shudders, warm eyes gone cold as she clenches them tightly shut. “No, that can’t be right…he would never. He could never.

He-” Another pause and eyes open again, jaw falling slack. “…He’s with Tonks.” )

“Got any threes?

” A game of Go Fish by wandlight with cards that used to be rat droppings, Arthur mused, Precisely the way I wanted to spend my evening.

“Damn.” The young girl’s face fell into a pout and she handed over a slightly dingy red playing card.

“You’re good at this.”

He offered her another mirthless laugh, rolling his eyes. “Years of practice.

How about sixes?”

“Go Fish.”

( She can almost feel her heart slamming to a halt as her body slides liquidly into a worn down kitchen chair, one hand pressed to a girlish cheek.

In the scenario that unfolds now, she can see the young girl, thin body draped languidly across an unmade twin-sized bed. The wickedness is gone from his face, if not from his smile, as he crawls up her elongated torso, rocking back on his heels before sliding inside of her.

An explosion of motion and a frenzy of noise rip through the relative comfort of her silent movie.

Long legs are spread almost comically wide as long, thin fingers clutched to the landscape of a freckled back. She kicks in a fit of lust and the bedside lamp crashes to the floor, plunging the room into darkness. Still, she can see candy floss hair melting through each color of the rainbow, red with lust, icy blue with deceit, his own wet midnight fantasy of a woman.

“Oh Arthur.” One final time. )

“Got any sevens?

”

( “You’re everything I could ever want.” )

“Damn it. .

”

( “Harder. Faster. Happy Anniversary, darling.

” )

“Got any Queens?”

( March 18th, March 18th…here comes the bride…there goes the groom. Sweaty palms, shallow breath, eyes meet eyes, from this moment on, I love you, I love you, for better or worse.

)

“Just one, but I doubt she’ll be the one to come and rescue me.”

“Cute.”

( “Oh Gods, Arthur, I’m com-”

“I can’t take it anymore!

” And in her own fever of motion she is out the door. )

“You know, we’re probably going to die in here,” Tonks stated flatly, glancing strategically at the two remaining cards in her hands and doing her best to pretend he didn’t know what they already were.

“I know,” he answered glumly, the first bored sigh in what felt like hours disturbing the dust that floated blissfully in front of his nose.

“Got any tw-”

“ARTHUR WEASLEY, UNLOCK THIS DOOR!” A split second, and the door burst open, flooding the pair in white hot light. They squinted up at the silhouette in the frame, both dropping their dismal playing cards and recoiling immediately to the opposite side of the tiny room.

Arthur rose on legs stiff with disuse, hearing them crack and groan beneath him to gaze upon his frazzled wife of twenty-seven long years. Red hair was in complete disarray, the silver pendant on her chest thrown off to the side as her chest heaved with fury and exertion.

Immediately, Nymphadora Tonks leapt to her feet, inundating the woman with a flood of “I’m sorry’s,” “It wasn’t his fault’s” and a jumbled, frantic, single-sentence retelling of her own clumsiness.

Through it all, he only glanced sheepishly at her, and when Tonks had been dismissed, he allowed timid eyes to rise to hers.

“We missed our reservation.”

And with that, she couldn’t seem to bear the flimsy façade of anger any longer.

One hand reached up to stroke his dirty cheek, a warm smile crossing her face. “Not to worry, dear,” she assured him, “I’m sure we’ll find something.”

They began to start toward the door and he took her hand, fingers lacing perfectly, comfortably together.

“…I tried to get out.”

A pregnant pause and his love merely nodded. “I know, Arthur love, I never doubted you for an instant.

”

And in the dark and the moonlight, one hand grabs the small of her back, turning to arch their backs, pitching forward as he kept her from falling. Lips met for the first time, the ten thousandth time, and she breathes a dreamy sigh.