Happy December, a_shadow_there!
Title: The Faithful Watch
Pairing: Neville/Seamus (sort of)
Rating: PG
Prompt: whitewash
Warnings: Angstiness? As if I could write these two any other way.
Notes: It's short and not at all what I'd intended when I sat down to write - as is usually the case, haha - but I hope that you like it, sweet a_shadow_there! My Seamus seems to be perpetually broken; I apologize in advance for the mess!
A war ends, but it's never finished.
It becomes its own ghost, as expansive as a Scottish fog, and wraps its chilly arms around you, or seeps in between your ears and into your dreams, or pops up from behind the weird, Muggle microwave Seamus insists on keeping in the kitchen like it's some sort of talisman, like he thinks its obvious nonmagical bulk is going to keep the memories out.
Neville knows better. You can't whitewash a bloody wall and pretend you don't know what's underneath. He's been waiting for Seamus to figure that out for almost a year now, but he's beginning to wonder if it will ever sink in. Seamus is hardheaded and lion-hearted, and whatever he manages to convince himself of, it's backed by Fiendfyre.
That's how he survived. That's why he's here. Neville also knows this, which is why he says nothing. Why he presses the button on the microwave too many times and explodes his potato and cleans it up without a word. Why he tucks the blankets around Seamus's bare, scarred feet when he passes out on the sofa after stumbling drunk and battered through the door, home from a night of picking fights with blokes three times his size.
Why he sits in the chair with a cup of tea and rocks and breathes and rocks and breathes and keeps the faithful watch, making sure Seamus doesn't choke to death on his own vomit in the middle of the night,a far-flung casualty of a war he refuses to acknowledge.
Pairing: Neville/Seamus (sort of)
Rating: PG
Prompt: whitewash
Warnings: Angstiness? As if I could write these two any other way.
Notes: It's short and not at all what I'd intended when I sat down to write - as is usually the case, haha - but I hope that you like it, sweet a_shadow_there! My Seamus seems to be perpetually broken; I apologize in advance for the mess!
A war ends, but it's never finished.
It becomes its own ghost, as expansive as a Scottish fog, and wraps its chilly arms around you, or seeps in between your ears and into your dreams, or pops up from behind the weird, Muggle microwave Seamus insists on keeping in the kitchen like it's some sort of talisman, like he thinks its obvious nonmagical bulk is going to keep the memories out.
Neville knows better. You can't whitewash a bloody wall and pretend you don't know what's underneath. He's been waiting for Seamus to figure that out for almost a year now, but he's beginning to wonder if it will ever sink in. Seamus is hardheaded and lion-hearted, and whatever he manages to convince himself of, it's backed by Fiendfyre.
That's how he survived. That's why he's here. Neville also knows this, which is why he says nothing. Why he presses the button on the microwave too many times and explodes his potato and cleans it up without a word. Why he tucks the blankets around Seamus's bare, scarred feet when he passes out on the sofa after stumbling drunk and battered through the door, home from a night of picking fights with blokes three times his size.
Why he sits in the chair with a cup of tea and rocks and breathes and rocks and breathes and keeps the faithful watch, making sure Seamus doesn't choke to death on his own vomit in the middle of the night,a far-flung casualty of a war he refuses to acknowledge.