HP -- Indisputable
Title: Indisputable
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus/Tonks
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,262
Prompt: "Frailty, thy name is woman!" (Hamlet, I.ii.146) and "charm"
Warnings: many references to the monologue, which you can find here, and friends letting friends write weird
Summary: An ordinary afternoon in Grimmauld Place gives way to an extremely odd stakeout for a certain witch and werewolf duo.
Author's Note: I had to do it for a metamorfic_moon contest. The prompts were so good that I made myself use them, even though it entailed rushing and some crackiness. I kind of love it anyway; Kingsley rocks my socks. XD Thanks as always to eltea for a last-minute beta. :)
INDISPUTABLE
That it melted was indisputable; the question was subtler but more substantial. To be or not to be? No, that was easy-to be, every time. The lightless tunnel of a life over true oblivion. No, the real conundrum was in the discrepancy: was it “solid” or “sullied”?
Sullied, at the moment, though becoming progressively less so.
Remus had just worked the shampoo up to a lather when it happened. The stream of slightly-questionable water pounding at the area of his collarbones faltered momentarily, then suddenly went from hot-enough-to-steam to cold-enough-to-kill.
By some feat of humanity-or lycanthropy, really, if you wanted to be dreadfully specific-Remus managed to refrain from screaming at the top of his lungs.
It took a similar wealth of self-control, when he stormed into the kitchen ten minutes later wet, freezing, and more than miffed, to keep from slaughtering Sirius Black on the spot.
Especially when Sirius looked him up and down and snickered.
Remus stopped where he was and pointed his finger at Sirius’s forehead, distantly wishing that said finger was a shotgun barrel. “If you use up all the hot water one more time,” he hissed, “I will wipe you off the Map.”
Sirius ran a hand through his voluminous black hair and then tossed it over his shoulder. Water droplets sprayed everywhere. Warm water droplets, Remus was willing to bet. “Don’t be jealous of my luscious, shining raven locks, Moony,” he advised. “Envy doesn’t become you.”
Remus took a few menacing steps forward. “And gory death wouldn’t become you, so you’d be dreadfully wise to start hurrying it up in there.”
“I don’t know,” Sirius remarked innocently. “I think I’d make gory death look quite dashing.”
“Getting hung from a showerhead with your own intestines isn’t going to be dashing, Mr Black,” Remus replied, disdainfully at best.
There was a faint, distinctly un-glamorous sound that encapsulated the worst parts of a snort and a giggle, and it came from Remus’s left. The hairs on the back of his neck would probably have prickled ominously if they hadn’t been cold, damp, and miserable, like the rest of him. He turned to look.
Predictably, it was Tonks, who was sitting on the floor, pressed as inconspicuously as possible up against the cabinets, with two knuckles stuffed into her mouth, her cheeks red, her eyes welling, her shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. She had finally cracked.
Remus introduced the heel of his hand to his forehead. He was willing to bet that they’d be firm friends.
Unlike Remus himself and a certain Sirius Black.
With the introductions done, Remus folded his arms across his chest and cocked an eyebrow, wishing that it, too, was a firearm. “You do know,” he remarked to the prospective homicide victim before him, “that you are in mortal danger.”
Sirius put his feet up on the table and laughed heartily and histrionically. “Fool!” he intoned. “Blacks can’t die!”
Remus cracked his knuckles, scowling. “I may just have to test that theory, sir.”
Sirius scoffed. “You may just have to concede that fact, sir.”
The front door opened and shut, and Kingsley strolled into the kitchen, looking quite unfazed by the incinerating glare contest taking place across the table. A thick silver ring glinted as Kingsley tossed a manila envelope onto the tabletop.
“Stakeout tonight,” he announced. “Remus and Tonks-”
“What about me?” Sirius cried.
“You’re ugly,” Kingsley replied calmly.
There was a moment of flabbergasted silence.
“Wh-what?” Sirius managed to choke out.
A deep, low, resonating sound was coming from the area of Kingsley’s chest. It took Remus a moment to realize that it was an impossibly rich chuckle.
“You’re housebound, Black,” Kingsley amended. “As tends to be the case for convicted murderers missing and presumed dead.”
“So-so I’m not-not-you know?”
Kingsley took the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “No, Sirius. You are a perfectly attractive individual. Probably more attractive than average.”
Predictably, Sirius recovered quickly. “Why, Mr Shacklebolt!” he chirped, flipping his hair expertly over his shoulder. “I didn’t know you felt that way!”
Kingsley raised an eyebrow at Sirius’s lustrous locks. “Do you practise that in the mirror?” he inquired.
Sirius flashed a coy grin. “That’s for you to find out, Kingsie Bingsie,” he purred.
Unsettlingly, given the man’s equable composition-and yet unsurprisingly, given Sirius-Kingsley looked vaguely ill.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The stakeout ended up being something more of a layabout, as Remus and Tonks were stationed in a criminally neglected garden ringed by a dilapidated iron fence, the structure of which looked to be held together largely by rust and ivy. It sprawled contentedly and heedlessly in equal measure, lying across the cobblestone street from a pub that was purportedly becoming a Death Eater stronghold-headquarters. This, as far as Remus could tell, meant that the Death Eaters in question kept a strong hold on their drinks, messed up their heads, and then stumbled back to their quarters when all was said and done-or when all were sloshed and drunk.
As the task began, with late afternoon sunlight striking sparks in the motes of dust that twirled lazily through the redolent air, Remus and Tonks (whose hair was an inconspicuous and strikingly flattering dark brown and fell to her shoulders) were meticulously attentive, wandering the premises and making a great show of admiring all the enterprising weeds, watching the pub peripherally all the while. The unimpressive spectacle of the once-garden was vindicated first by a few struggling flowers blooming a stunning magenta, and then by the fact that Remus’s murmur of “Charming” upon discovering a stash of empty bottles earned him a good giggle from his companion. And she had quite the giggle.
Forty-five minutes later, however, the two of them were lounging idly against the rickety fence, rust flaking off and dotting their shoulders like dandruff. Boredom was a potent thing indeed.
“Do you have a favourite colour?” Remus inquired, tugging absently at a dandelion. “Or is it more… all of them?”
Tonks wrapped a section of hair slowly around one finger, intent on the utterly unnecessary operation. “Mm… I don’t think there are any colours that don’t deserve to be loved. Just like I don’t think there are any people who don’t. I’m partial to the bright ones, though.” She threw a grin at him. “Which I’m sure comes as a tremendous surprise.”
“By far the greatest shock of my life,” Remus replied, grinning as well. “More groundbreaking even than discovering that Sirius is a reckless womanizer.”
“Or would be,” Tonks noted airily, “if he could get a girl to save his life.”
“Sirius’s type is rather hard to come by these days,” Remus explained, “seeing as how they must be absurdly attractive, but either single or willing to exchange their current men for him; and seeing as how they must be intelligent enough to hold up a conversation about Quidditch and hippogriffs, often at once, but must also be mad enough to like Sirius in the first place.”
He thought it was quite a speech. Then again… was it too forced? Too mean-spirited? Did it slip into the bottomless chasm between hilariously amusing and simply stupid?
One thing was for sure: it lent itself quite well to over-analysation.
It was all in Tonks’s hands. Or maybe in her diaphragm, since she laughed heartily, the sound like a bell and a balm and a breath of exquisitely pure air.
Remus relaxed, which scraped a few more fragments of rust free and sent them spiraling down onto his coat. He brushed at them, but it was a losing battle. Most battles were.
“Well, then, what’s your type, Mr Lupin?” Tonks inquired, a teasing lilt to her voice.
Remus folded his hands behind his head and grinned. “They tend to be models,” he answered, “and actresses, and imaginary.”
“Aww,” Tonks said, making a sympathetic grimace-smile. “If it makes you feel any better, my men are about the same.”
“They hurt you less,” Remus remarked. “The imaginary ones.”
Tonks nodded slowly. “But they’re never quite enough.”
Remus looked at her. It was strange that someone would understand.
Or perhaps it wasn’t strange at all, and that scared him more.
There was a very long pause, then, but it, like winning streaks and thunderstorms, like all things indiscriminately, came to an end.
“What’s your favourite color, Mr Lupin?” Tonks inquired.
Remus considered. He thought of Gryffindor red and the tuft of pitch-black fur under Sirius’s dog chin, which was softer than down feathers. He thought of the violent, almost unnatural green of the apples that dangled precariously from the tree in the Lupins’ neighbors’ yard, the sheen of their smooth skin drawing a young Remus to the fence to stare up and will the sweet-sour trespassers to fall in a little boy’s favor. He thought of the silver corona about a milky gibbous moon and the midnight blue that swarmed around it, broken by pinpricks bleeding starlight. He thought of the pink that Tonks’s hair had been when they left, vibrant and affecting, but just pale enough to hold a hint of frailty, and of the warm chocolate brown that it was now.
“It’s hard to pick just one,” he decided.
Tonks smiled. “So you see my dilemma.”
“Poignantly,” Remus confirmed.
A burst of laughter and a creak of hinges snapped their attention back to the pub, though both were well enough versed in this field to know to mask the gesture.
Severus Snape emerged, closely trailed by an unfamiliar young man, who was clean-shaven and far gone. Severus looked as though he had recently been informed that he had contracted a truly abhorrent terminal illness and would, as a result, soon be dripping internal fluids from a variety of orifices. When the other man stumbled and grabbed Severus’s arm, the terminal illness took an unexpected turn for the worse, clipped another six months off of an already limited lifespan, and markedly exacerbated the pinched expression that had staged a familiar coup of its owner’s face. Meticulously Snape pried the young man’s fingers from his sleeve, one by one, with little or no regard for the health and general well-being of his assailant’s joints.
“Sev,” the young man announced dreamily, “you’re an inspiration, Sev. Can I call you Sev? It has such a ring to it. So peppy. Sev. Not like-” He wrinkled his nose, swayed, and groped for Severus’s arm for support. Snape stepped deftly out of the way. “-Andrew Filbert. That doesn’t have any pep.”
Severus was gritting his teeth, presumably grinding them on a venomous and veritable “I would like nothing more than to kill you at this moment, preferably messily.”
Andrew Filbert, while lacking in pep, was admirably coordinated even when intoxicated. He dove for Severus’s arm again and latched on, his fingers curling securely in the fabric of the battleground sleeve.
“Sev,” he gasped, revelation widening his eyes, “you-you have to teach me. You have to take me as your apprentice, and instruct me in the ways of the pep, and induct me into the world of pep and circumstance-”
It looked like Mr Filbert’s drunk vocabulary was on a par with his drunk dexterity.
“I would rather,” Severus gritted out, “conduct you to a compost pile, and if you don’t release my arm within the next three seconds, my wish may become a pleasant reality.”
Filbert howled with laughter and pounded Severus on the back. Remus was partway to reaching out and shouting to him before the poor fool got his face hexed off.
Fortunately, Severus had the situation under control. In a Severus sort of way, that was.
The Severus Solution was to take Filbert’s lapels in either hand, jerk the man forward, and sneer menacingly. Filbert giggled, not nearly so appealingly as had Tonks.
“Look,” Snape snarled. “Get people to start calling you Drew instead of Andrew. Then start spelling it Dru, D-R-U, and eliminate your last name, and you will be the peppiest thing this side of pep. Understood?”
Andrew Filbert stared up at his unexpected mentor. “Sev…” he whispered. “You’re a genius!”
Severus seethed visibly for a moment, and then he turned on his heel and strode off faster than was strictly necessary, robes billowing dramatically behind him. He was muttering, and Remus caught something about carotid arteries and kitchen knives.
“Wait!” the man formerly known as Andrew Filbert called, giving chase. “You haven’t told me how I should dress, and talk, and part my hair, and announce my new name…!”
Remus lasted pretty well, all things considered, until Severus and Dru were out of earshot. It was then that he made the mistake of meeting Tonks’s eyes.
He was soon laughing too hard to notice the bits and pieces of gravel upon which he had collapsed, let alone the insidious little brambles that he would later find in places brambles ought not venture.
After a minute or so, at which point Remus had managed to reduce himself to panting where he was sprawled out on the ground, Tonks sat up, also breathing with some difficulty.
“Ow,” she gasped out. “My ribs. Frailty, thy name is calcium deficiency.”
Tonks did seem like a soda pop kind of person. Life was fizzier and more colorful that way.
Then again, life was fizzier and more colorful with Tonks around and, frailties aside, Remus liked it. He liked it a great deal.
That much, at least, was indisputable.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Remus/Tonks
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,262
Prompt: "Frailty, thy name is woman!" (Hamlet, I.ii.146) and "charm"
Warnings: many references to the monologue, which you can find here, and friends letting friends write weird
Summary: An ordinary afternoon in Grimmauld Place gives way to an extremely odd stakeout for a certain witch and werewolf duo.
Author's Note: I had to do it for a metamorfic_moon contest. The prompts were so good that I made myself use them, even though it entailed rushing and some crackiness. I kind of love it anyway; Kingsley rocks my socks. XD Thanks as always to eltea for a last-minute beta. :)
INDISPUTABLE
That it melted was indisputable; the question was subtler but more substantial. To be or not to be? No, that was easy-to be, every time. The lightless tunnel of a life over true oblivion. No, the real conundrum was in the discrepancy: was it “solid” or “sullied”?
Sullied, at the moment, though becoming progressively less so.
Remus had just worked the shampoo up to a lather when it happened. The stream of slightly-questionable water pounding at the area of his collarbones faltered momentarily, then suddenly went from hot-enough-to-steam to cold-enough-to-kill.
By some feat of humanity-or lycanthropy, really, if you wanted to be dreadfully specific-Remus managed to refrain from screaming at the top of his lungs.
It took a similar wealth of self-control, when he stormed into the kitchen ten minutes later wet, freezing, and more than miffed, to keep from slaughtering Sirius Black on the spot.
Especially when Sirius looked him up and down and snickered.
Remus stopped where he was and pointed his finger at Sirius’s forehead, distantly wishing that said finger was a shotgun barrel. “If you use up all the hot water one more time,” he hissed, “I will wipe you off the Map.”
Sirius ran a hand through his voluminous black hair and then tossed it over his shoulder. Water droplets sprayed everywhere. Warm water droplets, Remus was willing to bet. “Don’t be jealous of my luscious, shining raven locks, Moony,” he advised. “Envy doesn’t become you.”
Remus took a few menacing steps forward. “And gory death wouldn’t become you, so you’d be dreadfully wise to start hurrying it up in there.”
“I don’t know,” Sirius remarked innocently. “I think I’d make gory death look quite dashing.”
“Getting hung from a showerhead with your own intestines isn’t going to be dashing, Mr Black,” Remus replied, disdainfully at best.
There was a faint, distinctly un-glamorous sound that encapsulated the worst parts of a snort and a giggle, and it came from Remus’s left. The hairs on the back of his neck would probably have prickled ominously if they hadn’t been cold, damp, and miserable, like the rest of him. He turned to look.
Predictably, it was Tonks, who was sitting on the floor, pressed as inconspicuously as possible up against the cabinets, with two knuckles stuffed into her mouth, her cheeks red, her eyes welling, her shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. She had finally cracked.
Remus introduced the heel of his hand to his forehead. He was willing to bet that they’d be firm friends.
Unlike Remus himself and a certain Sirius Black.
With the introductions done, Remus folded his arms across his chest and cocked an eyebrow, wishing that it, too, was a firearm. “You do know,” he remarked to the prospective homicide victim before him, “that you are in mortal danger.”
Sirius put his feet up on the table and laughed heartily and histrionically. “Fool!” he intoned. “Blacks can’t die!”
Remus cracked his knuckles, scowling. “I may just have to test that theory, sir.”
Sirius scoffed. “You may just have to concede that fact, sir.”
The front door opened and shut, and Kingsley strolled into the kitchen, looking quite unfazed by the incinerating glare contest taking place across the table. A thick silver ring glinted as Kingsley tossed a manila envelope onto the tabletop.
“Stakeout tonight,” he announced. “Remus and Tonks-”
“What about me?” Sirius cried.
“You’re ugly,” Kingsley replied calmly.
There was a moment of flabbergasted silence.
“Wh-what?” Sirius managed to choke out.
A deep, low, resonating sound was coming from the area of Kingsley’s chest. It took Remus a moment to realize that it was an impossibly rich chuckle.
“You’re housebound, Black,” Kingsley amended. “As tends to be the case for convicted murderers missing and presumed dead.”
“So-so I’m not-not-you know?”
Kingsley took the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “No, Sirius. You are a perfectly attractive individual. Probably more attractive than average.”
Predictably, Sirius recovered quickly. “Why, Mr Shacklebolt!” he chirped, flipping his hair expertly over his shoulder. “I didn’t know you felt that way!”
Kingsley raised an eyebrow at Sirius’s lustrous locks. “Do you practise that in the mirror?” he inquired.
Sirius flashed a coy grin. “That’s for you to find out, Kingsie Bingsie,” he purred.
Unsettlingly, given the man’s equable composition-and yet unsurprisingly, given Sirius-Kingsley looked vaguely ill.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The stakeout ended up being something more of a layabout, as Remus and Tonks were stationed in a criminally neglected garden ringed by a dilapidated iron fence, the structure of which looked to be held together largely by rust and ivy. It sprawled contentedly and heedlessly in equal measure, lying across the cobblestone street from a pub that was purportedly becoming a Death Eater stronghold-headquarters. This, as far as Remus could tell, meant that the Death Eaters in question kept a strong hold on their drinks, messed up their heads, and then stumbled back to their quarters when all was said and done-or when all were sloshed and drunk.
As the task began, with late afternoon sunlight striking sparks in the motes of dust that twirled lazily through the redolent air, Remus and Tonks (whose hair was an inconspicuous and strikingly flattering dark brown and fell to her shoulders) were meticulously attentive, wandering the premises and making a great show of admiring all the enterprising weeds, watching the pub peripherally all the while. The unimpressive spectacle of the once-garden was vindicated first by a few struggling flowers blooming a stunning magenta, and then by the fact that Remus’s murmur of “Charming” upon discovering a stash of empty bottles earned him a good giggle from his companion. And she had quite the giggle.
Forty-five minutes later, however, the two of them were lounging idly against the rickety fence, rust flaking off and dotting their shoulders like dandruff. Boredom was a potent thing indeed.
“Do you have a favourite colour?” Remus inquired, tugging absently at a dandelion. “Or is it more… all of them?”
Tonks wrapped a section of hair slowly around one finger, intent on the utterly unnecessary operation. “Mm… I don’t think there are any colours that don’t deserve to be loved. Just like I don’t think there are any people who don’t. I’m partial to the bright ones, though.” She threw a grin at him. “Which I’m sure comes as a tremendous surprise.”
“By far the greatest shock of my life,” Remus replied, grinning as well. “More groundbreaking even than discovering that Sirius is a reckless womanizer.”
“Or would be,” Tonks noted airily, “if he could get a girl to save his life.”
“Sirius’s type is rather hard to come by these days,” Remus explained, “seeing as how they must be absurdly attractive, but either single or willing to exchange their current men for him; and seeing as how they must be intelligent enough to hold up a conversation about Quidditch and hippogriffs, often at once, but must also be mad enough to like Sirius in the first place.”
He thought it was quite a speech. Then again… was it too forced? Too mean-spirited? Did it slip into the bottomless chasm between hilariously amusing and simply stupid?
One thing was for sure: it lent itself quite well to over-analysation.
It was all in Tonks’s hands. Or maybe in her diaphragm, since she laughed heartily, the sound like a bell and a balm and a breath of exquisitely pure air.
Remus relaxed, which scraped a few more fragments of rust free and sent them spiraling down onto his coat. He brushed at them, but it was a losing battle. Most battles were.
“Well, then, what’s your type, Mr Lupin?” Tonks inquired, a teasing lilt to her voice.
Remus folded his hands behind his head and grinned. “They tend to be models,” he answered, “and actresses, and imaginary.”
“Aww,” Tonks said, making a sympathetic grimace-smile. “If it makes you feel any better, my men are about the same.”
“They hurt you less,” Remus remarked. “The imaginary ones.”
Tonks nodded slowly. “But they’re never quite enough.”
Remus looked at her. It was strange that someone would understand.
Or perhaps it wasn’t strange at all, and that scared him more.
There was a very long pause, then, but it, like winning streaks and thunderstorms, like all things indiscriminately, came to an end.
“What’s your favourite color, Mr Lupin?” Tonks inquired.
Remus considered. He thought of Gryffindor red and the tuft of pitch-black fur under Sirius’s dog chin, which was softer than down feathers. He thought of the violent, almost unnatural green of the apples that dangled precariously from the tree in the Lupins’ neighbors’ yard, the sheen of their smooth skin drawing a young Remus to the fence to stare up and will the sweet-sour trespassers to fall in a little boy’s favor. He thought of the silver corona about a milky gibbous moon and the midnight blue that swarmed around it, broken by pinpricks bleeding starlight. He thought of the pink that Tonks’s hair had been when they left, vibrant and affecting, but just pale enough to hold a hint of frailty, and of the warm chocolate brown that it was now.
“It’s hard to pick just one,” he decided.
Tonks smiled. “So you see my dilemma.”
“Poignantly,” Remus confirmed.
A burst of laughter and a creak of hinges snapped their attention back to the pub, though both were well enough versed in this field to know to mask the gesture.
Severus Snape emerged, closely trailed by an unfamiliar young man, who was clean-shaven and far gone. Severus looked as though he had recently been informed that he had contracted a truly abhorrent terminal illness and would, as a result, soon be dripping internal fluids from a variety of orifices. When the other man stumbled and grabbed Severus’s arm, the terminal illness took an unexpected turn for the worse, clipped another six months off of an already limited lifespan, and markedly exacerbated the pinched expression that had staged a familiar coup of its owner’s face. Meticulously Snape pried the young man’s fingers from his sleeve, one by one, with little or no regard for the health and general well-being of his assailant’s joints.
“Sev,” the young man announced dreamily, “you’re an inspiration, Sev. Can I call you Sev? It has such a ring to it. So peppy. Sev. Not like-” He wrinkled his nose, swayed, and groped for Severus’s arm for support. Snape stepped deftly out of the way. “-Andrew Filbert. That doesn’t have any pep.”
Severus was gritting his teeth, presumably grinding them on a venomous and veritable “I would like nothing more than to kill you at this moment, preferably messily.”
Andrew Filbert, while lacking in pep, was admirably coordinated even when intoxicated. He dove for Severus’s arm again and latched on, his fingers curling securely in the fabric of the battleground sleeve.
“Sev,” he gasped, revelation widening his eyes, “you-you have to teach me. You have to take me as your apprentice, and instruct me in the ways of the pep, and induct me into the world of pep and circumstance-”
It looked like Mr Filbert’s drunk vocabulary was on a par with his drunk dexterity.
“I would rather,” Severus gritted out, “conduct you to a compost pile, and if you don’t release my arm within the next three seconds, my wish may become a pleasant reality.”
Filbert howled with laughter and pounded Severus on the back. Remus was partway to reaching out and shouting to him before the poor fool got his face hexed off.
Fortunately, Severus had the situation under control. In a Severus sort of way, that was.
The Severus Solution was to take Filbert’s lapels in either hand, jerk the man forward, and sneer menacingly. Filbert giggled, not nearly so appealingly as had Tonks.
“Look,” Snape snarled. “Get people to start calling you Drew instead of Andrew. Then start spelling it Dru, D-R-U, and eliminate your last name, and you will be the peppiest thing this side of pep. Understood?”
Andrew Filbert stared up at his unexpected mentor. “Sev…” he whispered. “You’re a genius!”
Severus seethed visibly for a moment, and then he turned on his heel and strode off faster than was strictly necessary, robes billowing dramatically behind him. He was muttering, and Remus caught something about carotid arteries and kitchen knives.
“Wait!” the man formerly known as Andrew Filbert called, giving chase. “You haven’t told me how I should dress, and talk, and part my hair, and announce my new name…!”
Remus lasted pretty well, all things considered, until Severus and Dru were out of earshot. It was then that he made the mistake of meeting Tonks’s eyes.
He was soon laughing too hard to notice the bits and pieces of gravel upon which he had collapsed, let alone the insidious little brambles that he would later find in places brambles ought not venture.
After a minute or so, at which point Remus had managed to reduce himself to panting where he was sprawled out on the ground, Tonks sat up, also breathing with some difficulty.
“Ow,” she gasped out. “My ribs. Frailty, thy name is calcium deficiency.”
Tonks did seem like a soda pop kind of person. Life was fizzier and more colorful that way.
Then again, life was fizzier and more colorful with Tonks around and, frailties aside, Remus liked it. He liked it a great deal.
That much, at least, was indisputable.