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Pansy Parkinson is thirty-two years old, and her favourite sound is Dudley’s laugh.
Not so much the laugh itself, honestly, but where it starts, like it’s been trapped somewhere in the vicinity of his naval, and it’s finally finding a path out of him. It’s guttural and gritty and often coloured with a question mark, almost as though he’s forgotten how to make the sound and even as he’s allowing it free he has to question if he’s doing it right.
He always is.
Even when he’s laughing in the middle of an argument.
Especially when he laughs in the middle of an argument.
It’s funny, really, how those things tend to happen when you fall in love.
Dudley eyes her over the counter, one eyebrow cocked in disbelief. “You can’t honestly tell me that you don’t see how ridiculous you’re being.”
Pansy harrumphs. “This is the hill I’m willing to die on.”
It’s not, really, but Dudley is nothing if not gullible.
“Pans,” Dudley sighs, shoving a hand through his hair. “It’s a toilet roll . It functions just the same regardless of whether it goes over or under.”
“So then it stands to reason”—she plucks her toothbrush from the cup on the sink, brandishing it to punctuate her point—“that we could flip it over the way it’s supposed to go, and it won’t make a difference.”
Pansy’s serious façade very nearly cracks at Dudley’s world-weary sigh, so she quickly ducks her gaze from his face, spreads a generous glob of toothpaste on her toothbrush and shoves it in her mouth. Almost immediately, she regrets it.
Dudley slips behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “You’re a right menace, you know?”
“Hmm?”
Dudley chuckles, the sound of it so warm and loving that Pansy melts into him, forgetting her feigned anger. “You don’t care about the toilet roll.” He presses a kiss to the juncture of her shoulder and neck, the delicate little spot that he knows she loves, and she tilts her neck to give him more access to the spot.
In the mirror, his gaze flicks up to hers, and she lifts her brow at him.
“You were the one that replaced it last. So”—his deep voice rumbles through her as he continues pressing kisses along the column of her neck, tracing the sharp line of her jaw—“if you did, then you would have placed it the other way.” His teeth latch onto the lobe of her ear; she nearly swallows the mouthful of toothpaste.
Lest she actually suffer the indignity of it, she squirms from his grasp and spits on the toothpaste; a distant part of her chastises her for the waste, but a more pressing part of her wants to continue exploring the opportunities his mouth provides.
She makes a show of pushing herself back against him as she rinses her mouth, and, if the groan he elicits is any indication, she thinks she’s won the argument.
When she turns in his hold, she’s pleased to note the twin spots of colour high on his cheeks. “Noticed that, did you? I was hoping you didn’t.”
He lets out a half-hearted sigh of indignation as his eyes roll to the ceiling. “We’ve been married for how many years—”
“Six,” she supplies.
“—and yet you still find ways to drive me insane.” His voice is laced with the humour and love he saves solely for her, and she hops up on to the countertop then wraps her legs around his hips.
She brushes featherlight kisses on the underside of his jaw, over the stubble that drives her mad. “Sometimes I just want to have a little tantrum,” Pansy mutters, tucking herself into the soft warmth of him.
“Sometimes?” Another laugh rumbles through him, and she flexes her legs to pull him closer. He obliges, threading his fingers through her hair and tipping her lips to hers.
“You’re a menace, witch.”
“And that’s why you love me, Muggle.”
Dudley smiles against her lips, his fond exasperation sending a bolt of happiness through her. All those years ago she’d thought…
Well, she never thought that she’d find something like this, and least of all with who she’d found it.
Because there were a lot of things people had called her—a traitorous, hateful witch; selfish; cruel—but Dudley had seen right through them.
Hurt people hurt people , he’d said, like he’d known from experience. She hadn’t believed him then, this giant of a man with hands and a heart so gentle she thought she might crack from the care in them, but he’d shown her. Time and time again, he’d been the glimpse of light she’d needed after so long in the dark.
He’d shown her all the things she was not and loved her through and for the ones she was—even if she pushed his buttons for the fun of it.
His careful, reverent hands trace over her curves, moulding her to him, and Pansy falls into him, not for the first or last time, as he carries her to their bed and drives him insane for an entirely different reason altogether, allowing his laughter to wash over her like music to her ears.