Cherry Blossom Baby | narcissa & benjy
cissab:
Benjy presses her for the information that Narcissa doesn’t feel too keen on sharing. It’s nothing personal; she’s a private person going through an emotionally turbulent time. She’s exhausted with the secret keeping, sure, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to start blurring the lines of personal and professional. Narcissa has always prided herself on keeping who she is at her core out of her business. Sure, her values and her beliefs are a part of what makes her firm so successful, as is she, but none of her clients are exactly people she would consider to be friends – not because she doesn’t like them or because she wouldn’t want to be, simply because she has intentionally excluded them from knowing her.
So when Benjy presses and looks for her rings, she nudges some papers over and turns her chair toward her computer, working on pulling up his file. If he’s going to stay, they’re going to work. Maybe, just maybe, she will feel emotionally exhausted enough by the end to cave into the drink Benjy will inevitably offer. She could use it and, at the end of the day, she does like his company.
“We’ve been separated for a year, but only recently decided to inform our families.” This is as much as she wants to get into this right now. The complications of why they got married in the first place and why they’re only physically separating now are lengthy, and discussion of them absolutely crosses Narcissa’s invisible boundaries.
It’s Benjy’s offer to leave that finally manages to snag Narcissa’s attention. She sighs softly and rolls her shoulders before leaning back slightly in her chair. “If you’re here to work you can stay, but I’m not exactly in the mood to talk about my marriage with my client right now.” She’s blunt, but her tone has lost the vicious edge from earlier.
“I forgive you, Benjy. Stopped wearing that kicked puppy look; it doesn’t suit you.” It does suit him. He’s very good at it, and it’s pathetic enough to make Narcissa feel a bit guilty for her snappy outburst earlier.
“I’m not wearing anything.” Benjy pouts, crossing his arms over his chest and settling in the chair across from her desk.
“I’ll drop it after this, but uh, my mum left my dad you know, and uh-they’re both much better for it. So-”
He smiles softly before shurgging, leaving his sentence unfinished. He hands over the Witch Weekly issue with his grinning face on it, an older photo from last year’s press tour. The magazine is crumpled and creased from being in his fidgeting hands.
“Did they reach out to you about this before publishing it? I’d like to do an interview or something, get newer pictures and push the team a bit more-hate for MacGurdy to accuse me of being self centered again, despite how true it is.”
“Or they could even, I dunno, come do it during a practice? Take some pictures of me actually flying and doing my thing instead of just talking about my hair products-they got it wrong by the way, if that matters. But that’s what I was thinking about on the way over, cause you’re always on about how we have to shift focus away from my er, personal life-”
He catches her eye and almost flinches-the intensity of Narcissa’s full attention is something that Benjy still isn’t used to. He wonders then if Narcissa’s aggressive approach of presenting Benjy as more professional had anything to do with what she’s going through. Probably not. But it doesn’t take a genius to recongize personal affairs are important to her.
Something sinks deep inside him, a mix of dread and excitment and sadness, as he realizes Narcissa is single now. She’d never go for him-even if he wasn’t her client. Lucius Malfoy was everything Benjy wasn’t, save for wealth, and even then Benjy had aquirred his in a way that most men of Narcissa’s caliber would look down their nose at. Excitment because his dick thinks faster than his brain, and both of them are stupidly confident. Sadness wove between the two, realizing how much pain she must be in, remembering how sad his mum was despite how happy she ultimately was with the choice to leave Benjy’s father. He’d lied to her a moment ago; the divorce had made his dad much worse, Benjy hadn’t seen him in years. He had enough tact to keep that to himself, at least.
There’s something else there, something dangerous and stupid, a thrill like Benjy has never known. The possibilty of her, actually tangible, however fleeting, does something to Benjy’s heart that he can’t look at too closely. He was supposed to be done fighting losing battles-though he’d always been quite shit at doing what he was supposed to do, particularly when it came to chasing a thrill.
Benjy knows Narcissa would be far more than a pasisng thrill, and perhaps that scares him and excites him the most. He loudly clears his throat, looking away and willing himself not to do something truly stupid, like blush.
“I dunno though, you’re the expert, reckon that’s why you’re on my payroll. What do you think?”
