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| Chasing Lightning | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 26 2014, 10:24 PM (134 Views) | |
| Georgette O'Callahan | May 26 2014, 10:24 PM Post #1 |
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The creak of the third wooden floorboard to the left of the door was always his tell. It wasn’t the swing of the door, slower and less even than usual, or the clumsy jangle of his keys. It wasn’t even the sharpened quality of his breathing, or the way his typically light footfalls fell heavy against the floor. It was whether or not he remembered to avoid the creaky floorboard. The moment she heard that pitchy groan of protest from the wooden floor of their old London apartment, she knew he was hurt. Badly, if the lack of retracted step was any indication. Her legs immediately swung over the side of the bed, one hand plunking down a mug of peppermint tea and the other tossing aside a pathophysiology journal—this idiot. This bloody idiot. She’d told him meeting up with Whit at 3 AM for ‘emotional support’ was a bad idea, particularly when he’d been half a firewhiskey bottle into teaching her poker, but no. Eleanor momentarily snaps to her senses, realizes her fiancé’s a sociopathic mountain troll, gets angry, and boom—Whit sucks in his friends like the needy virus that he is to pitch a melodramatic fit and get everyone nearly killed. “Reilly, if you need surgery again, I swear to God,” she snapped as she yanked a worn flannel over what little remained of her clothing (it was strip poker), anxiously gathering her hair into a clip that immediately disappeared into a mess of gold, “I’m not even going to use a numbing charm. I’m not even going to use magic—I’m going to use a scalpel and bleach and call it a night.” She shoved the bedroom door open in a hasty motion and was greeted by the dimly lit sight of his tall frame looming a few feet from the front door, back to her, jacket discarded along the frame of the couch his left hand was gripping in an attempt to better support his weight. His other hand, it appeared, was pressed against his lower abdomen, and when he glanced over his shoulder to shoot her a typically shit-eating smile, his face was pale. “No surgery. Just—” he drew in a tight hiss of a breath as he eased half-around, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust enough to see the alarmingly large bloom of blood spreading over his shirt, “—possibly a stitch or two.” “Carter,” she gasped, panic tightening her voice as she immediately surged toward him, arms wrapping around his waist just as he stumbled forward. “You moron, what did you do?” “I—it’s really not as bad as it looks, just a—” he stumbled again, likely dizzy from the winning combination of alcohol and blood loss, and she tightened her grip around him, “—papercut, really.” “You need to lie down,” she gritted out against his neck, moving a hand up to apply pressure to the sticky, wet fabric of his shirt, “like now—God, how much blood have you lost?” “Wasn’t really measuring,” he mumbled pleasantly, turning his head a bit to face her, and the movement brought his nose right up against hers in a warm, languid, friction-filled moment of contact that had his lips slowly lifting at the corners, eyes half-lidded in the faint light. “Hey, kid.” “Sod off,” came the charmed reply, followed by a swift yank that had him losing his balance and buckling. She eased him down as well as she could, struggling a bit with the force of his dead weight, and when he finally settled into an incapacitated sprawl on the ground, it was with a graceless thunk of head against wood. Perfect. Add concussion to the list of things to deal with. “Where else are you hurt?” she pressed in the clipped, no-nonsense resident voice that helped her keep her spiraling nerves under control, pulling his shirt open in a tight yank that had a number of buttons flying off. He lifted his head off the ground to raise an eyebrow. “Eaaaaasy, lady. Buy me dinner fir—rrrgh.” Her hand cut him off as she pushed his head back down to the ground, fingers splayed over his nose and mouth. “Don’t strain your abdomen.” He gave a breezy sigh as she let go. “Rude.” Rude. Fucking rude. Right. Because she was the idiot gallivanting off to do God knows what illegal and life-threatening nonsense with her mates in the middle of the night and coming back shit-faced and bleeding. She was the one making him tear through three medical journals and a Siberian Seahorse documentary just to keep his mind off what his heart might do if instead of her at the door, it was a knock and a sober-faced Ministry official. ‘Rude.’ She should bloody kill him herself. “Tell me what happened,” she managed through a clenched jaw as she took a preliminary glance at the wound, trying to get a sense of how deep it was. She needed more light—she could barely see anything in the faint glow washing in from their room. Better yet, she needed a freaking wand. “Funny story,” Carter began, lifting a whimsical hand that she immediately forced back down, “Whit was all teardrops on his guitar about his fight with Eleanor, so we were all ‘oh hot damn, this is so not our jam, how do we fix this’, and Artie was all ‘well, he likes bears’, and we were like ‘brilliant, let’s go find some bears’, so we broke into the London Zoo.” She stopped her inspection to stare at him for a moment, stock-still with disbelief. “You mean to tell me that this,” she nodded down at his bloody torso, “is from a bear?” “No,” he replied with another emphatically raised finger, and she moved forward to catch his wrist as he swung it outward in drunken importance, “it is from a lion.” She stilled once again, wrist newly caught in her hand, stare slowly filling with outrage as it dropped back down to his. His mouth took on a loopy little curl. “Plot twist.” “Carter.” “You know, lions raised in captivity aren’t as friendly as you’d think.” “Carter.” “I was expecting like Christian the Lion but it was definitely more like Satanist the Lion.” “Are you seriously sitting here with a bloody bite from a lion!?” “Scratch,” he corrected, curling the fingers of the hand she was gripping into talons and growling out a brief ‘rawr’. “No teeth. Just claws.” Sutures. Topical anesthetic. Deep-range disinfectant charm. Parasiticide. Rabies detector spell—Rabies, for God’s sake, she might have to give him a series of bloody Rabies shots, what even was this!? “I just want to make it clear,” she ground out through furiously gritted teeth, dropping his hand to hastily remove the flannel she’d donned not two minutes ago, “that I absolutely hate you right now, and if it weren’t for the Hippocratic Oath I took five years ago, I’d finish what this goddamn lion, who seems like a splendid judge of character, started—hold this.” She pressed the balled up shirt against the bleeding and brought his hand down against it while he, unsurprisingly, whined. “I liked that shirt.” “And I liked you,” she offered in acidic response, scrambling up to her feet to get what she needed to save his stupid life, but not before shooting him a corrosive glare. “Guess we’re both learning to move on today.” He seemed entirely unconcerned with this as his half-lidded stare slipped up the new view of her body, lingering over the bare expanses of skin around her cotton underwear and ratty old Warwick’s tank top. “Changed my mind. Hated that shirt.” “Hold it tight,” she snapped as she saw his grip slackening, pointing an exasperated finger down at the bunched flannel, and he half-heartedly tautened his fist, lips beginning to quirk into a sly smile. “I like yours, though. Is that one of the ones you fun-sized when you tried to use the dryer?” His hazy stare slowly slid back down the pale length of her torso, and she took this as her fist-clenching cue to whirl around and stalk off. “I love dryers,” trailed from behind her, and she rolled her eyes. Forget local anesthetics—she was Petrifying him. Stupefying and Petrifying. Which, in actuality, ended up being tantamount to what she actually did, which was force a half-ton of Durmentia Serum down his throat to knock him out for the entire messy ordeal. It wasn’t strictly speaking necessary, since blood-loss aside, he’d really only ended up needing a serious round of stitches and 26,000 antibiotics, but something about the splitting headache she knew he’d be waking up to made it seem that way. Durmentia Serum was funny like that. Go one little drop overboard and bam, migraine. Whoops. “Enjoy it while it lasts, you git,” she muttered in the quiet, faint light of their living room as, two hours and one severe bout of exhaustion later, she finished up wiping the last of the blood from the floor. He was stretched along the couch in a loose, stirless sprawl of limbs, deep into the kind of sleep that slowed dreams to a dead halt and pulses to a hum, and she angled a dark glare at him as she pushed herself up to her feet and tossed a bleach-drenched rag on the counter. Dawn was starting to break—the soft morning light was filtering through their bright red curtains, warming the cool, nighttime hue of the room and adding a wash of much-needed color to his cheeks. His hair took on a tawny glow in the tentative sunrise, torso covered in shadows that whiskered down his stomach like ribs, and her eyes descended the ridges of his abdomen like a staircase to the thick, bright white patch of gauze stretched over his side. It was harsh and sterile against the warm color of his skin. Unwelcome. Uninvited. A reminder of her profession, of a context where, despite all her brain-racking, desperation-fueled best efforts, people didn’t always make it. She lingered there for a long, silent beat, expression dark with a conflicting blend of old anger and bone-aching relief, before taking a few steps forward and dropping down beside him on the couch. Her head swiftly fell into her hands. God, she hated this. She hated it so much, how reckless he was with his life, how easily he got carried away in adventures and went along with things because he didn’t stop to think that maybe, just maybe, there was a possibility that things wouldn’t work out. He was unruffled and alive and in the moment, and she liked that—hell, she loved that, so goddamn much—but she also knew that them, their present, their kaleidoscopic past of stolen kisses in the Charms hallway and drunken trivia tournaments in a cleared-out Reilly’s, of surprise visits to Warwick’s where he’d stroll into her Biospells class and pretend to be a guest lecturer until the real professor showed up, of annual girlfriend-y attempts at baking cakes for his birthday that could only be classified as culinary terrorism, right down to this year, when the Food Standards Agency came knocking on their door based on a smell complaint from their neighbor—all of it, spiraling down to their bicker- and laughter-filled life together in this cozy little apartment, was kind of a miracle. Six years ago, she’d watched him die. Watched unruffled and alive and in the moment become dim-eyed and hollow-breathed and gone, right in her arms, right through her sobs, and willing it away and refusing to consider it possible didn’t stop it from happening. Olive’s resourcefulness and expert timing did. And she knew he’d had to live through losing her before. She knew that, which meant that he knew how suddenly things could be ripped away. But at the same time, they’d managed to cheat the odds twice, and part of her worried that he'd gotten used to that. Somehow, despite everything, here they were, and while she celebrated that more than anything in the world, she also knew the rules of probability. Lightning rarely struck twice. It never struck three times. And the thing was, she loved his friends. Dearly. Even, in her own way, the American Parasite that was Whit Jones. She just wished they would grow the fuck up at some point. Whit was getting married. Eleanor was his whole life. Artie was so in love with Mia he practically orbited her, a stray, smitten planet pulled in by the warmth of her Sun. Caleb glowed around Pen, he was so besotted with her. And yet, they risked that, constantly, for things like breaking into a zoo to ride a bear. It was funny until it wasn’t. “Stupid Gryffindor,” she mumbled, lifting her head a bit to look at him, chin propping atop her hands. Her stare softened as it took him in. His chest rose and fell in rhythm with the deep, slumbering pace of his heartbeat, features loose with ease, and entirely inevitably, her hand reached up to smooth back the hair on his forehead. She bit her lip as she watched him, the faint flutter of his lashes, the strong slope of his nose, the dark, severe eyebrows that only ever held delightfully ironic expressions. It was stupid, how much she loved him. Flat-out stupid. She’d once given herself a full suite of cardiac detection spells to make sure she didn’t have some sort of swell or defect because being around him made her chest feel too small for her heart—that was how crazy she was about this idiot. Begrudgingly, despite the fact that she’d had every intention of going back to their bed and closing the door and not even bothering with him until the morning, she found herself easing down and settling in beside him on the couch, instinctively curling her body around his. She reached for his arm and wrapped it around her like a shawl, holding onto his hand with both of hers as she burrowed her head into the crook of his neck. “When are you going to stop chasing around lightning?” she murmured in the fading darkness. It was a serious question—one she’d one day need to know the answer to—but for now, she was content to know that the forecast was momentarily clear. He was there, and so was she, and after a long, drowsy beat of silence, listening to nothing but the steady thrum of his pulse, a pulse that was unruffled and alive and in the moment, she drifted off to sleep. Edited by Georgette O'Callahan, Aug 17 2017, 09:16 PM.
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| Carter Reilly | Apr 3 2017, 10:42 PM Post #2 |
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He woke wincing. Which wasn’t a first, exactly, although the last time he’d felt pain this acute Olive had plied them all with her own personal brand of definitely-illegal, five trillionth-proof moonshine, and they’d made a point of banning her from ever making the stuff again (for humanity’s sake. And their bathtub’s. Whoever rented their flat next was going to be convinced they’d dissolved bodies in there.) Could probably rule that out. He took a breath – winced again when all it did was accentuate the already excruciating throbbing going on in his skull – and tried to take stock of himself. It wasn’t just his head, he realized, face constricting in an even deeper grimace. It was everywhere. Ten-rounds-with-the-Hulk kinda pain. He was one big ow. What the hell did I do, Accio a car? Perhaps even more troublingly, he was also groggy in a distinctly familiar, non-alcohol-related way that didn’t bode well for reasons he was nowhere near awake enough to pin down at the moment – but after a few galvanizing seconds of gathering up enough courage to cautiously open an eye, the pieces of the mystery began to slowly – and very, very painfully – come together. Ceiling. He noticed that first. Blurry, but conspicuously absent of the usual little cracks and stubbornly squeaky fan that resisted all attempts, magic or otherwise, at being charmed into silence. He wasn’t in bed. And just when he was thinking he really must have done something bad to be banished to Couchlandia, a third and final realization hit him. Settled over him, really. Slowly. A press of warmth against his side so familiar it was hardly a wonder he noted it last. She was wrapped around him like the fabric of some complicated knot: legs tangling, arms flung lazily around chests, hips, her hand a slender splay of fingers above his heart. Her breathing was soft and slow and even in his ear—the only sound to be heard in the otherwise quiet space of their tiny living room, where a nearby window filtered in the sunlight that slid down the rucked pattern of their fading, crimson couch like a broad streak of honey. Her hair glinted in it. It caught the light – and his stare – like that was what it had been made for: the rioting mass of loose, beckoning curls gleaming Galleon-gold in the glow. Georgie-gold, he thought, and his mouth tugged a little, the sight balming enough to momentarily ease the throbbing at his temples, replace the wince around his eyes with something softer. This wasn’t a first, either. Mornings slow-pulsed and close, waking up to the drowsy haze of each other on the couch where they’d stay up late watching I Love Lucy and Bewitched marathons and nature specials, which Georgie found fascinating and Carter ruined with his (truly impressive) David Attenbourough impressions—meaning nine times out of ten they only got through half of one before all the shoving and pillow smacking turned into laughter and loss of clothing. It was theirs. This space. The uneven floorboards that were warm beneath their bare feet in the summer and creaked in all the right, reliable places when they’d put a record on the old Victrola they’d kept from their Casa days and dance. The cabinet so fit to bursting with Georgie’s books it looked as though they were trying to escape from it, all of them stacked up and packed in with little rhyme or reason: the titles ranging from medical journals to Herbology dictionaries to biographies of famous Healers. The windowsills crowded with potted plants, healthy leaves curling towards the sunlight. Laughing photographs. A thousand memories. Everywhere an amalgamation of them – crimsons and navies and golds merging in such a quiet, natural way it was as though they’d been one all along. They’d carved out a life here. In the space and scent and grain of it, the home that had slowly found itself peppered in fits and bursts of them, revelry and battle scars and more love than he’d ever thought possible – love crashing in heavy and strong like the sea, a horizon he could never find the edge of. He kept falling in it. Right then, as he watched her sleep. Other times, too. In the grocery store. At one of her mother’s parties. In a Gryffindor dorm room before they’d even figured it out, he wakes up and sees her there and forgets there was ever a before or after – ever a time that was anything but this. Forgets about pain, too, until his wandering gaze snagged on one lightspun, flyaway curl long enough to stupidly compel him to try and reach for it like the not even remotely subtle moth to her flame he was. The second his arm moved, however, a lancing arc of fire struck like lightning across his ribs, forcing an uneven hiss of breath through his teeth and doing more than a fair bit of reminding – although the origin point was new. He shot a wincing glance down at his torso, for the first time taking note of the white bandage taped snugly to it. Confusion drew his brows together in a deep, furrowed V. “Seventeen,” a sleep-scratchy voice informed him from his side, the words edging their way toward irony. “Congratulations, it’s a new record.” He grimaced. Shit. Number of stitches usually coincided with how much trouble he was in. Seventeen trouble was bad. “Did you sell my kidney?” he wondered through the dry rust of his throat. She didn’t even crack an eye. “You should see the black market prices these days.” A beat. “How’s your head?” “Voldemort’s pretty upset.” “Wow. And here I was thinking he and I would never have anything in common.” The words were dry and a little harder at the center than usual, which drew his gaze to her face, but already she was untangling herself from him, rolling to her feet and heading off toward their kitchen with a sharp, “Don’t get up,” tossed over the tense line of her shoulders. It was imbued with enough Prefect dictator steel to have him actually complying, for the moment, but his stare on her lingered until she was out of sight. His eyes fell to the bandage again. And then swiveled to their coffee table, where his phone sat. It must have gotten tossed there at some point. Gingerly, flinching the whole time, he hauled himself up to a seated position and reached for it, unsurprised when the unlocked device brought with it a deluge of messages, including, but not limited to: a picture of them all with an alpaca wearing a poncho who’d apparently been christened Quinoa (he checked and—yep it’d definitely gone on Instagram), some fun, near-unintelligible sexts from Artie he assumed had been meant for Mia (his ‘manleey loev wand’ got an impressive three whole mentions (and would be getting an even more impressive 80-100 more the next time Carter saw him)), a selfie of Olive in the LHC tunnel (probably needed to be addressed later), a group text in which CALEB-BAE (peach emoji) had tried (and failed) to be their usual voice of ‘hoe don’t do it’… Whit: how many crimes are you allowed to commit in manchester. is it… eight Carter: six Caleb: NO …and then just more arguing, which culminated in Whit spamming the chat with as many eggplant emojis as possible. There was definitely a picture of him and Artie with a lion. And a video that looked like it had been produced by the makers of Blair Witch, only scarier, because it was just a shaky Whit running from the zoo police screaming ‘FOR NARNIAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!’ and ‘KISS MY USA ASS,’ after which it cut out abruptly with a noise that sounded suspiciously taser-y in nature (there was a reason he’d become a very minor celebrity on Youtube.) All of it… explained a lot. It also meant seventeen trouble was probably a severe, severe understatement. His phone buzzed. It was Caleb. you alive? Somehow, the you idiot went implied. It was one of Caleb’s many talents. Carter flicked a glance toward the kitchen before replying. let you know in ten minutes A hand came up to scrub at his face, rasping over the shadow of stubble lining his jaw as the other tossed the phone back against the couch cushions – still warm from the press of their bodies. The same couldn’t be said for the room itself, which felt colder in Georgie’s absence, somehow, like a shadow had passed in front of the sun—and that, more than anything, had him rising to his feet to pad stiffly after her, off toward their small kitchen despite his banishment from it on pain of pain. He figured he already had the market cornered on that, anyway. And history had proven he’d never been very good when it came to keeping away from certain Ravenclaws of the blonde persuasion. One certain Ravenclaw. One very specific, exclusive blonde, who wasn’t facing him. Whose attentions were, in fact, just as exclusively fixed on the bowl she was busy mixing something in, her shoulders a rigid line that hadn’t eased a fraction since her stony exit. Even without a glimpse of her features, he could sense the air of tension that surrounded her, stiffening each movement, closing her off – but that had never really stopped him, either, and he proved it with his slow approach, the arm he slid around her waist, the hand he used to brush her hair away from the back of her neck so he could plant soft, devoted kisses along her spine. “Carter,” she sighed, a low note of reproach gusting through the slight breathlessness of her voice. He hummed against her skin, hold tightening when she shuddered. “Do I have to explain to you what ‘don’t get up’ means?” she asked in the tone of someone being tested for the exact breadth and height of their patience. “It’s more interesting in here,” he replied to the sensitive spot just below her ear, sleep-rough and low. Her spine went tense again. “Yeah, I bet the zoo was plenty interesting, too, before an 800-pound wild animal basically de-intestined you, and look how that turned out.” Jerking out of his hold, she moved to the opposite end of the counter to retrieve the coffee she’d finished brewing. It was easier to see her face from this angle, to take note of the tight pinch of her mouth, the circles under her eyes, soft as bruises, the low simmer of frustration just beneath the surface that wasn’t quite anger, but had the promise of turning into it. Something told him ‘sorry for party rocking’ wasn’t going to quite cut it this time. Especially when his eyes fell on the bowl and saw the Dittany wraps inside it. Which kinda killed him. So much he dared to sidle a little closer, lean back against the countertop, drag a finger through the sugar they’d spilled there (pre-poker, in search of glasses) until a “C <3 G” emerged amidst the whiteness. She flicked a glance to it mid-pour, trying to clench her jaw around the way it made one corner of her mouth quiver—with a smile or vexation, he wasn’t sure. Maybe both. Probably both. The tone she took definitely leaned toward the latter. “We’re going to get ants.” It didn’t deter him in the slightest. “Good. Maybe they’ll read it and spread the word around to the rest of the animal kingdom. No more de-intestining. It upsets G, and C hearts her.” She flattened a gaze at him. “You’re an idiot.” “You’re in love with me.” “I’m an idiot.” The edge of his lips hitched up fondly, prompting hers to almost match it, like a reflection. But something stopped the gesture before it could quite mirror his completely – something that started as an infinitesimal hitch – the smallest tremor. Anyone else probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all, but an invisible current ran between them, always had, and years of overcoming unimaginable trials and impossible odds and even the simple everyday, ordinary toils and wonders of life had long since cemented their emotional connection – the intangible, inarguable bond that had defied all attempts made to sever it. His soul was tangled around hers. So he noticed. He saw when the fissures began: the finespun tension beneath her calm veneer, the small twitch of something vulnerable in the twist of her mouth, the way it made her whole face begin to look younger, pained, almost afraid. Which meant even before it all trembled and fell away completely, sliding away like rain beading down glass, he was moving. He was there to catch her when it crumbled, making a soft sound, breath and teeth, as he drew her tightly into his arms, locked her in against him, with him. She only resisted a moment before leaning in like she was trying to absorb the touch, her body sagging as if the ire she’d been clinging to had been the only thing keeping her upright. Gently, he rested his jaw against her temple, his thumb stroking the silky verge of her hairline as he murmured hushed little endearments until the tremors wracking her body settled to tiny shivers. She still clung to him like something was going to tear her away any second. So close he could feel her throat move as she swallowed against its sharp constriction, the tremble of her breath as her voice emerged hoarse and tight. “You walked in, and I saw all that blood, and for a second it was like I was back in that corridor, and you were—you—” His eyes slipped shut. God, he was an asshole. And she was shaking again. “Hey, hey, hey, shhh, it’s okay,” he shushed, somehow finding a way to pull her even closer, wrapping her tight in the reassurance of his body, the warm, breathing strength of him. “I’m fine, Georgie. I’m fine. We’re fine.” His hand moved over her back in soothing strokes, trying to ease the rigidity of her spine, up and down and back again. “Zigged when I should have zagged, that’s all,” he said, soft but light. An attempt at levity. The heaviness lingered anyway, stubborn, and a thread of pain coursed through the words she breathed against the joint of muscle at his shoulder, snaking around the consonants and vowels. “Not everything’s a joke, Carter.” He knew she was right. Knew exactly what she was feeling, even – that spectral pang he got sometimes just by looking at her, the one that brought the past hurtling back with a blunt force roar that reminded him of how close he’d come to not having this at all, of the days he’d spent terrified he’d lost her, the sleepless nights, the wasteland his life became without her in it. A void that caused unbidden lacing of fingers, touches, kisses that every now and then took on an edge a little too desperate—tiny reassurances of the present, the need for which still hadn’t lessened, even six years later. He’d almost lost her. This Georgie, here, in his hold. Almost never had the chance to know her, to see her become this magnificent woman. Of course she felt it, too. Of course it would never matter how much time had passed: this was, and always would be, their phantom limb that still felt pain. Reminding them that they were not forever, that they were so utterly dependent on these fragile bodies and breakable minds. That they were, essentially, the most vulnerable things in the world. Perhaps that was what it meant to grow up. Maybe that was what adulthood was, carrying around that knowledge, that fear with you all the time, and not going completely mad. Well. Madder. She sighed like she’d traced his train of thought, pulling away enough to send a frown down at the white bandage covering his torso, her thumb gently smoothing down a corner. “I know you and the rest of the Spice Girls are stupid, and you’re going to be stupid until you’re having jetfueled wheelchair derby races in some care home I already feel bad for, but can you just… maybe be a little less stupid?” Her lashes fluttered, hiding the wet sheen of her eyes, but when she looked up at him, everything was there – every unspoken fear and worry and hard truth, legible as printing. As clear as the ache coming through the worn places in the quiet plea she finished with. “So you can at least get there?” For a moment, he just looked at her – at all the anxiety and single-minded purpose in her stare, the slight curl of her shoulders – and suddenly she was the Georgie he’d met first, hunched over her textbooks in the Great Hall, in the library late at night, a musty dungeon room, trying to be the best. The Georgie he didn’t know he was falling for—too wrapped up in his own cavalier, ridiculous existence. The one who was vulnerable as well as bold, who had depths he’d spend the rest of his life willing to uncover. There was never an end to her. A limit to the things he wanted, the things he would give just to have her glances, the slightest touches, her smallest crumbs. He’d died for it, once. Came back for it, too, he thought, knowing it, now. He’d come back for this. To be worthy of it. To live every day, reaching for it. To know its value – every moment a bonus, a freebie – a gift from a fickle universe. A second set with purchase. Still a miracle. There wasn’t a second he wasn’t grateful for. Except, maybe, this one. He had to get that look off her face. If he didn’t, the terrorists win. “Which one am I?” he asked, slow and gentle as he brushed a golden tress of hair from her shoulder, skimming the nerves there before his hand trailed down to find the one still fitfully smoothing her bandaged handiwork – and as anxious and angry and hurt as she might have been, her fingers still tangled with his automatically: going still in their warmth, the comfort of lifelines curved together. It didn’t stop her from looking like an eyeroll was imminent, but she humored him anyway. “Ginger.” Instant mock-affront. “How dare you. I’m obviously Baby.” When it levered the smallest, rueful smile out of her (of the how-did-I-get-stuck-with-you variety), he counted it a partial victory. But the wrinkle that lingered between her brows told him that she needed to know he’d taken her words to heart, wherever it lived: with him, in the cozy confines of their flat, the life they’d made together (or the true place, cupped in her hands.) So he leaned down to smooth it away with the soft press of his lips and a whispered, “I will be less stupid.” Meaning it. As much as he could. There were things they’d never be able to predict, of course, an ever-present reality when that reality was framed by a group of friends whose coming together would forever make them pieces of a spectacular novel of potential calamity, but that was part of what made it what it was – the patchwork Gryffinclaw quilt that should have been ugly and frightening with all its strange parts and colors and stitching, but was the favorite everyone fought over instead. They were the only inmates in the vast asylum of London crazy enough for each other. And maybe the boys would always be a little too impulsive – running off to go earn Darwin awards and drive their girlfriends mad (“Is that the Imperial State Crown? Like… the one they keep in the Tower of London? On our coffee table?”) But the easy truth – the Veritaserum fact, the core certitude, bright as Phoenix-feather – was that there wasn’t a single shred of adrenaline-fueled chaos on the planet that could touch just standing in this kitchen with her. Just being here, where so many mornings had been spent wrapped around each other, flipping pancakes with her clinging laughingly to his back, coaxed away from sleep with kisses and coffee, creating adventures all their own (Polentapalooza ’18 was especially memorable). Just this. Just her. The thread’s unraveled end that hooked him like the string of a kite in a storm. It had never been about the lightning. He could find that anywhere. It was Georgie tugging him back to the center. Pulling him home. Anchoring him solidly to this point, this feeling. A hold even death couldn’t break. “Can’t get rid of me that easy, O’Callahan,” he told her with an almost playful squeeze of the hand he still held lightly captive, his smile soft. Its edges trimmed with sly knowledge. “That Scythe Guy had no idea who he was messing with.” Her wry stare met his. “A stupid Gryffindor?” He chucked her gently under the chin. “A stubborn ‘Claw.” She smiled, a little watery, and he did, too, before bringing his forehead down to rest against hers, his stare never wavering once. “You and me, kid,” he said softly. She closed her eyes, and he felt the tension roll out of her like an ebbing tide. “You and me,” she whispered back. A promise they could sink into, long enough to let it hold them, keep them – three words that felt like catching a glimpse of the future and finding it secure. The hand around her waist tucked her in a little closer – possessing – his voice still light even as he touched his nose to hers and his thumb slipped beneath the hem of her shirt in a slow, gliding motion. “You know I have at least eight more lives left anyway, right?” She didn’t look like any of his diversionary tactics were going to work, at the moment. In fact, all they earned him was a deployed eyebrow. “Oh? So, is that why one of your brethren tried to eviscerate you?” “No.” A pause. “That was because we threw a pokè ball at it.” She actually pulled back so she could stare at him blankly. “You’re joking.” “No, he really hated it.” More blank staring. “Technically, it wasn’t supposed to bounce off his head like that, but—“ “I take back literally every nice thing I’ve ever said about you.” He hissed in a light breath as if in apologetic sympathy. “Ooh, sorry. Can’t. That’s one of the stipulations here in Hell, remember? You’ve still got a couple thousand millennia to go.” His light gaze turned a little indulgent. “Plus, you like me.” “I tolerate you.” “I’m character building.” “Will destroying.” “I’ve got great hair.” “Mine’s better.” “Come onnnn,” he said, coaxing, trying to tug her back again. “You’re the Ricky to my Lucy. Who else is gonna keep me in line? Sort my head out?” She snorted. “Sorting your head out would take a lifetime.” “Promise?” The rejoinder was so swiftly and easily issued it seemed to still her for a second, her eyes lifting to meet his. A gaze he met earnestly, even as his own still glinted in that way he could never quite quell completely. Her mouth twitched with the reluctant pull of a smile. “Smooth.” “I’ve got moves you haven’t even seen yet.” “Wow, moves, where the hell have those been hiding? Are they under the zoo smell? Is that part of it? Because it’s really working for me, gotta say. Feeling super romanced right now.” He hummed as he let his dark-eyed gaze lower to her lips. “You can join me in the shower and find out…” he offered as his tone turned cajoling, curling around her, inviting her in. She reached back to put a stop to his wandering hand before it got any more ideas. “Not happening, Mr. Gotta-Catch-‘Em-All.” “Maybe happening.” “I’m still mad at you.” “I’m apologizing.” “This might shock you, but that could be done without the use of your hands.” “Sounds fake.” “Totally possible.” “Definitely made it up,” he countered, and the mischievous light that began to kindle in his eyes put her on immediate alert. “Carter, no,” she said warningly, edging backward with the look of someone who knew she’d done something to make that smirk of his reappear and now she was trapped in a room with it. “What?” he asked innocently, following. A tone completely at odds with the frank, shameless intrigue that had taken over his study of her. It roamed the planes of her face and lines of her body with a sort of speculative consideration, as though trying to decide which area to start on first – where to kiss, where to bite… It made a blush go wild over her cheeks even as she kept up her slow retreat. "Don't you even." “Floor it?” “CARTER.” She shrieked as he stooped and flung her over his shoulder. “Oh my God, if you tear those stitches, I am not putting them back in, I swear to—wait, my coffee!” He didn’t slow his exit towards the hallway leading to their bathroom even a little. “In five minutes, you’re not going to remember what coffee is.” Her scoff was scathingly incredulous. “Okay, sure, and maybe fish live in trees now and Elvis just got elected Minister of Magic, and—“ “Now I’m going to make it two.” She shut up instantly. Not making another peep until he swung the door closed behind him with a light kick, after which followed the muffled sounds of running water, a playful growl, a burst of laughter—the noise echoing through their sun-warmed flat as the world began to waken outside its windows, the day beginning. On the couch, his phone buzzed, forgotten. Soon, the laughs shivered to sighs. To bliss. To happiness. The kind they'd learned a long time ago not to be stingy with. And the rest of their lives begins, too. |
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3:34 PM Jul 11
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3:34 PM Jul 11