not the face! / JETHRO

[Xander Hawkley]

Xander was, to phrase it not too delicately, absolutely shitting himself. Trying to appear his usual confident self - somewhat belied by the fact that his hands were shaking and that he'd lost several pounds from a combination of the nerves and the stomach bug he'd contracted when he was hiding out in South America - he strolled into the Leaky Cauldron with a wave for a past conquest seated in a corner and a kiss blown to the pretty blond behind the bar. She always blushed so adorably. Sighing in regret - he knew she was taken by a fellow Quidditch player, the only type of relationship he considered untouchable - he cast his gaze nervously around the bar for his (ex?) best friend.

Spotting Jethro at a table, Xander straighted his shirt and beckoned a waitress to get the drinks coming, and quickly. Then, taking a deep breath, muttering, "Play it like a match," quietly to give himself courage, he squared his shoulders and marched over to where Jethro was sat. Plonking himself down into a chair, he somehow resisted the temptation of the attractive redhead a few tables back and instead focused entirely on his friend.

"Look, in my defence," he began, deciding to just launch straight into it, "I thought we were completely on the same page. I mean, I know she's your cousin and all, but I think she's a bit mad. Every other girl knows what's going on when they're with me. But it's like I just woke up one morning and suddenly she was going on about getting married? I mean, what? I was so surprised I couldn't say anything and then it was all 'Which church?' and so I panicked a bit. Come on, man, I can't be getting married! You know me, free agent and spirit and whatnot. Being married would have shot my reputation to pieces. Also, look corny as it sounds, I kind of want to be head over heels for whatever woman finally ties me down, you know? Fireworks and rainbows and stuff. And Muirin was great but... she wasn't that. Also the churches thing."

Finishing on a rush and then having to take a few deep breaths, Xander plucked up what remained of his courage and looked squarely at Jethro, ready to dodge a punch if he needed to.

[Jethro Hunter]

Jethro's feelings as he went to meet Xander were mixed, and had gone through several metamorphoses in the past weeks. When he had first heard about his friend and his cousin, he had simply been furious, and had wanted nothing more than to go and find Xander and smash his face in. That feeling - the crazy, out-of-control anger that made him want to hit people, and keep hitting until he felt things break - was one he was familiar with, although he hadn't felt it for a long time and had thought he had it under control. And in fact, as it turned out, h did have it under control, more or less at any rate. It had been Muirin herself who had calmed him down by turning on him with her own anger, claiming that Xander loved her. Jethro knew much better than to believe that, but somehow trying to calm Muirin down had calmed him down, and also reminded him of the years in which Xander had been his best friend, and rather than help track Xander down, he had headed Niall off. In fact, he thought, Xander ought to be bloody grateful to him, because if Niall Anglesey had got hold of him, he'd have had more than just a few broken ribs and a bloody nose.

Having had quite a long time to think about it, while Xander was off in hiding, Jethro still didn't quite know how he felt about it, but the blind fury had gone. He was still angry - Muirin was his cousin, and he and Xander had had a fucking agreement - but then other things had occurred to him. Muirin wasn't really quite the naive romantic girl she pretended to be - romantic yes, but not naive; she was Kaius Anglesey's daughter. Yes, Jethro would protect her, but only so far, and while she was his cousin, Xander was his best mate. He had warned Muirin about Xander, and she hadn't listened; was he going to throw away his friendship of years because Muirin had been stupid?

With a sigh, he found a table and waited. He didn't have to wait long - he'd half expected Xander not to turn up, but he did, almost on time, and was talking almost before Jethro had had time to register that he was there. Jethro simply turned his head slightly to watch Xander, listening blank faced as he talked. His anger crept back slightly as he heard his friend's string of lame excuses. He would still have liked to hit him, but not here; it would only get them thrown out. He controlled himself, his fingers gripping the edge of the table rather than forming a fist.

"You are fucking lucky," he said slowly, his voice full of cold anger, when Xander stopped talking at last, "If Niall had found you, you'd have ended up in St Mungo's, and if my uncle knew..." he let this sentence trail off, thinking that Xander's imagination could probably fill it in, "So just be glad I didn't bring them along tonight..." he narrowed his eyes as he looked at Xander, "We had fucking rules, Hawkley, and you decided to screw them all. My cousin. Who's next?," his voice took on a dangerously light edge, "Letty? She's just about legal. And she's young - I bet she has loads of romantic dreams. Why not smash them too...?"

[Xander Hawkley]

Xander began to relax, just slightly, as he realised that Jethro was probably not going to hit him. Daring to reach for his drink, he took a large fortifying gulp, which he proceeded to almost cough up in disgust at Jethro's final jab.

"Dude," he said in a remarkably horrified tone considering it was rasping dreadfully, "I would never. She's like twelve! Oh my God. Seriously." Somehow oblivious to how inappropriate it was, he donned an incredibly affronted expression, mostly just offended that Jethro would consider him capable of going after an underage girl. God, that was just wrong. Registering Jethro's expression, however, Xander's affront faded and he, for the first time, actually had the grace to look incredibly miserable and ashamed of himself.

"I know. For what it's worth - probably not much - I really am sorry. Look, I know she probably told you everything, but will you at least listen to my side of events?" Risking another peek at Jethro's face, Xander ploughed straight on hurriedly, without giving Jethro a chance to deny him, "Like, I know I'm hopelessly selfish and everything, everyone always tells me that. And I swear, I really properly swear, I never meant to have anything to do with her. But we were at some night club together, to celebrate after successfully planning your surprise birthday party, by the way, and we just kept drinking and, I know I shouldn't have, but she's just really hot. And I have this inability to resist hot girls and my brain wasn't functioning and so we just sort of ended up - well, yeah," he finished lamely, aware Jethro probably - no, definitely - wouldn't want any more detail than that. "And, look, I figured it would be a one-time thing, like with pretty much every other girl on the planet. She'd wake up in the morning and sneak out, I probably wouldn't remember much, we'd pretend it never happened. I know I sleep with a lot of girls," he added, looking surprisingly forlorn, one finger tracing a knot on the table to avoid looking at his friend, "But there aren't many of them that ever want to admit to it the next day. Especially the ones I like, the smart ones. But," he continued, suddenly more animated, "Muirin, your cousin, I don't know, she just like lives in the past? Like, she just decided that because we'd, yeah, we were dating? And you don't have to believe it, but I really didn't want to hurt her feelings, which is why it went on for so long. I would have tossed her out straight away," he finished a trifle defiantly, folding his arms, "But I thought you'd be even more furious if I broke her heart straight off rather than trying to be diplomatic about it. Obviously it didn't work, but then I'm not very good at diplomacy."

[Jethro Hunter]

Jethro didn't bother to correct Xander's estimation of Letty's age. She was seventeen and therefore not underage, but for some reason, he didn't particularly feel like pointing that out to his friend. The point was that Xander couldn't be trusted around Jethro's female relatives, and no amount of blustering excuses or false moralising on Xander's part would change that. In fact, it wasn't only that Muirin was Jethro's cousin, although there was that as well, it was the way that Xander treated women in general. Yes, this time it had been Muirin Anglesey, which was less than acceptable, but on other occasions it had been other girls, and in the future no doubt it would be more, and Jethro found it infuriating that his friend apparently saw nothing wrong with that. His face remained unremittingly grim throughout Xander's 'explanation, although he rolled his eyes exasperatedly at the end.

"You thought I'd be even more furious if you broke her heart straight off?" he repeated, with something almost like disbelief, "Seriously, Xander, do I have to tell you how much is wrong with that? First of all, you hurt my cousin, and you hurt her more by leading her on, so how am I supposed to be happier about that? Plus, you think this whole thing is about me? I mean, is there any part of you that feels bad for seriously hurting a girl, or is the only reason you even give a shit because I found out and now I'm angry with you?" he shook his head in disgust, "The point isn't that you slept with my cousin - well it is, but if that was all you'd done I'd just be mildly pissed off that you'd ignored the rules. The point is, you treated her like absolute shit, because that's what you do with girls. You fuck with their feelings and then run away, and when people call you out on it, you say you never meant to hurt them, and they should have known better than to believe your bullshit, like that's some excuse and it's really their fault. You can't fucking treat people like that, my cousin or anyone else. And," he leaned forwards, his voice icy with fury, "you are definitely not going to blame her for misinterpreting the situation. You're a little shit, and you do have the ability to resist hot girls because you're not a fucking teenage boy - it's just easier to pretend you don't and carry on having fun like nobody can blame you... Well, here's some news for you. I don't blame Muirin, I blame you."

It wasn't quite 100% true - he did blame Muirin a little bit too. But family solidarity stopped him from saying that...

[Xander Hawkley]

Xander felt his chest swelling, ready to defend himself to the ends of the Earth. It wasn't his fault, Muirin had just misinterpreted the situation - he couldn't understand what he'd done wrong. He understood how angry Jethro was - the fact that he was still this angry after so long said a lot - and Xander was halfway to interrupting him when Jethro's tone changed, his whole arguing changed, and Xander felt the breath rush out of him as suddenly as if he'd been dealt a swift punch to the gut.

His head drooped like a kicked puppy as Jethro gave him the most thorough telling-off he'd ever received in his life. I mean, Xander was forever being called out by magazines and strangers who came up to him in the street for his behaviour but that sort of thing rolled off him like water off a duck's back. None of those people knew him, so their opinion didn't matter in the slightest. But for Jethro to be sitting there saying these things to him... it cut him more deeply than anybody could possibly know. Neither was Xander the sort of person who would lash out when somebody close to him called him out like this. Instead of getting angry or defensive, he just sat there, his hands in his lap, staring mutely at the pint on the table in front of him.

Finally, after what felt like a very long silence, he raised his head and, drawing circles in a patch of spilled beer on the table, he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't - I'm sorry. I know that I..." trailing off lamely, still not meeting Jethro's eyes, he took a deep breath and finally raised his gaze to look Jethro squarely in the eye.

"I'm sorry," he said firmly, his face deadly serious, "I am. I - I'm going to say it to her, too. Right now," he added, suddenly leaping into action, rising from his chair so suddenly he knocked it backwards and had to turn around to put it back on its feet, attracting the attention of most of the pub with the clatter, especially when he almost sent a waitress with a tray of drinks flying.

[Jethro Hunter]

When Jethro finished his rant, he paused to get his breath back. He hadn't actually realised how annoyed he still was with Xander until he started; he wouldn't call it angry, because angry for Jethro meant something else, and usually involved quite a lot of physical violence, which he'd restrained himself from. He was annoyed, but not to the point of ruining their friendship completely, if his telling off hadn't done that anyway...

At least Xander had listened, he thought, watching his friend carefully as there was a long pause. Would anything he had said have gone in at all? Xander was his best friend, but in some ways, he was a kid. He never thought about anything... Instead of saying any more, though, Jethro simply waited, waited for some sort of reaction that would tell him whether he'd actually got anywhere... Xander's very silence suggested that maybe - unbelievable though it seemed - he had. It took quite a bit to silence Xander's chatter...

When he finally spoke, his attitude almost - almost being key - made Jethro feel guilty for being quite so heavy. But it had been deserved, he reminded himself firmly. Xander had needed to hear a few truths about himself. Jethro met his gaze and was reassured and actually immensely relieved to see the seriousness in his friend's eyes. He didn't want to think that Xander was actually as careless about people's feelings as he acted, or that he didn't have a conscience.

"Good," he returned, and was about to add that he wasn't the one Xander should be apologising to, when this thought appeared to occur to Xander too, and his friend leapt up with a loud clatter. "For Merlin's sake!" he exclaimed in exasperation, although something almost approaching amusement had entered his eyes, "Calm down!" He leaned over and grabbed Xander's shirt, hauling the other man back into his seat, "Good," he repeated, "That's good. But she's at work, and she's not going to thank you for bursting in on her there. Actually, she's quite likely to hex your balls off wherever you find her, but her work definitely isn't the best place. People might be traumatised." He looked carefully at Xander. "You're going to say sorry. Are you going to mean it?"