Unspoken (Ginny/Cho, PG-13)
Title: Unspoken
Pairing: Ginny/Cho
Rating: PG-13
Category: Post-war, angst, sort of. Cho POV.
A/N: I wrote this last January sometime, I suppose, but wasn't happy with it at the time. Now I kind of like it, so I thought I'd share. It's an interesting style, but not something I can keep up.
It’s a lonely road, this one you’re travelling down. It would be nice to say that it led you here to my bed - not because of love or fate, you know I’ve long abandoned those concepts too - but because it might be safer here. I know you’d laugh now if you were actually hearing this. My bed, safe, with its silk sheets, in the neat and tidy luxurious flat that anybody could track down. I know what you’re thinking. But the enemies that haunt you wouldn’t find you here, because I’d shake them out of your mind. That’s where they are, you know. In your mind. That’s all.
Sometimes I just want to tell you: stop being so melodramatic, stop running around from place to place (person to person) and give yourself a moment to grieve properly, Stop scowling as if everyone’s out to get you (even if it does make you look beautiful). Sometimes I want to ask you over more, but you’d never come here if you were invited. Sometimes I want to lock the door while you’re asleep, and keep you here forever.
I know you say a lot of things to me without thinking. You tell me that I couldn’t possibly have any idea how you feel (do you know that it’s written all over your face sometimes?), that I obviously didn’t lose anyone I cared about (I don’t remind you about Cedric, it seems so long ago now) or I wouldn’t have gone back to a normal life after the war. I don’t know if there are things you leave unsaid, when you’ve finished yelling and stamping your feet. I don’t know if, when you bite your lip afterwards, it’s because you want to call all your words back inside yourself again, or if it’s because there’s more words you’re afraid to spill.
I want to tell you - this is my life now. I’ve already done the crying and hiding and everything else. I lived a horrible life for long enough. I want to let the war stay over, I don’t want to turn it over and over in my mind. Because it is over, Ginny. There’s always going to be bad guys hanging around, but they can’t hurt you now. You can’t track them down by yourself. The war’s over, now, even if some of them are still out there, roaming free. That’s not our responsibility.
Yeah, I know. You’d say, ‘What would a Quidditch player know about war?’, all hissing and glaring. Hating me because I could’ve become something useful - an Auror if I’d studied hard enough, a Mediwitch, anything but a professional Quidditch player. I wouldn’t have been any good at those things, Ginny. I’m not tough like you. I cry over everything and anything. I fall apart too easily. I need something I can rely on, and Quidditch seems to be the answer.
I don’t know if I am the only one you do this to. I don’t know if you ever spend a night at your own home, if you’ve got one anymore. All I know is that you turn up every so often, crawling into bed with me in the middle of the night, or sometimes waiting on the doorstep when I get home. Scowling (did you know that you look just like your twin brothers sometimes? I never knew them very well, but I played Quidditch against them a few times), impatient. You wait for me to say hello before you say anything, and even then you say little. I think that most of what you tell me is written on your face, in your eyes. I don’t know if you know you do it. I don’t know if when you stare defiantly at me (legs wrapped around mine, hands cold and restless against my body) you know what your eyes are telling me.
Sometimes I think you kiss me so fiercely because it’s easier than telling me all those things you must have locked up somewhere inside of you. Boys don’t treat me as roughly as you do, they think because I cry so much I must be china-delicate, and sometimes I have to bite my lip to stop myself crying out “love me like Ginny does”, not least because you’d hate anybody to know where you sneak to some nights. I don’t complain when you climb in through the window, because I love the way it shows you at your best, graceful like a girl, yet strong like a boy. I love the way you stare wordlessly at me after your feet have hit the floor, waiting for me to say the first word. I shouldn’t use the word love, when neither of us truly believe it anymore, but somehow it feels like the only word left.
So this is what I think about on those days when I wake up with you beside me. I stare at you until you wake, thinking about all the things that maybe I should or shouldn’t tell you. (Did you know you frown when you’re asleep?) I think the same things every time, more or less. Maybe I’m reciting them by heart so that when I lose my temper with you next time I can tell you them properly without stumbling over them or bursting into tears. Or maybe I’m telling myself these things so that I won’t ever have to tell you.
Can you tell what I’m thinking? Is that why you’re opening your eyes, staring at me as though you’re trying to work out why you ever came here in the first place? Trying to work out how long it will take you to get out of here and forget you came? Maybe wishing you didn’t have to leave? You don’t have to, you know. We may argue and not tell each other half the thing we mean, we may not even know each other that well, but I would always let you stay.
You’re closing your eyes again. Trying to forget you’re here? Trying to put off making a decision? Or simply not ready to wake up yet?
You know I’ll still be here when you want to wake up.
Pairing: Ginny/Cho
Rating: PG-13
Category: Post-war, angst, sort of. Cho POV.
A/N: I wrote this last January sometime, I suppose, but wasn't happy with it at the time. Now I kind of like it, so I thought I'd share. It's an interesting style, but not something I can keep up.
It’s a lonely road, this one you’re travelling down. It would be nice to say that it led you here to my bed - not because of love or fate, you know I’ve long abandoned those concepts too - but because it might be safer here. I know you’d laugh now if you were actually hearing this. My bed, safe, with its silk sheets, in the neat and tidy luxurious flat that anybody could track down. I know what you’re thinking. But the enemies that haunt you wouldn’t find you here, because I’d shake them out of your mind. That’s where they are, you know. In your mind. That’s all.
Sometimes I just want to tell you: stop being so melodramatic, stop running around from place to place (person to person) and give yourself a moment to grieve properly, Stop scowling as if everyone’s out to get you (even if it does make you look beautiful). Sometimes I want to ask you over more, but you’d never come here if you were invited. Sometimes I want to lock the door while you’re asleep, and keep you here forever.
I know you say a lot of things to me without thinking. You tell me that I couldn’t possibly have any idea how you feel (do you know that it’s written all over your face sometimes?), that I obviously didn’t lose anyone I cared about (I don’t remind you about Cedric, it seems so long ago now) or I wouldn’t have gone back to a normal life after the war. I don’t know if there are things you leave unsaid, when you’ve finished yelling and stamping your feet. I don’t know if, when you bite your lip afterwards, it’s because you want to call all your words back inside yourself again, or if it’s because there’s more words you’re afraid to spill.
I want to tell you - this is my life now. I’ve already done the crying and hiding and everything else. I lived a horrible life for long enough. I want to let the war stay over, I don’t want to turn it over and over in my mind. Because it is over, Ginny. There’s always going to be bad guys hanging around, but they can’t hurt you now. You can’t track them down by yourself. The war’s over, now, even if some of them are still out there, roaming free. That’s not our responsibility.
Yeah, I know. You’d say, ‘What would a Quidditch player know about war?’, all hissing and glaring. Hating me because I could’ve become something useful - an Auror if I’d studied hard enough, a Mediwitch, anything but a professional Quidditch player. I wouldn’t have been any good at those things, Ginny. I’m not tough like you. I cry over everything and anything. I fall apart too easily. I need something I can rely on, and Quidditch seems to be the answer.
I don’t know if I am the only one you do this to. I don’t know if you ever spend a night at your own home, if you’ve got one anymore. All I know is that you turn up every so often, crawling into bed with me in the middle of the night, or sometimes waiting on the doorstep when I get home. Scowling (did you know that you look just like your twin brothers sometimes? I never knew them very well, but I played Quidditch against them a few times), impatient. You wait for me to say hello before you say anything, and even then you say little. I think that most of what you tell me is written on your face, in your eyes. I don’t know if you know you do it. I don’t know if when you stare defiantly at me (legs wrapped around mine, hands cold and restless against my body) you know what your eyes are telling me.
Sometimes I think you kiss me so fiercely because it’s easier than telling me all those things you must have locked up somewhere inside of you. Boys don’t treat me as roughly as you do, they think because I cry so much I must be china-delicate, and sometimes I have to bite my lip to stop myself crying out “love me like Ginny does”, not least because you’d hate anybody to know where you sneak to some nights. I don’t complain when you climb in through the window, because I love the way it shows you at your best, graceful like a girl, yet strong like a boy. I love the way you stare wordlessly at me after your feet have hit the floor, waiting for me to say the first word. I shouldn’t use the word love, when neither of us truly believe it anymore, but somehow it feels like the only word left.
So this is what I think about on those days when I wake up with you beside me. I stare at you until you wake, thinking about all the things that maybe I should or shouldn’t tell you. (Did you know you frown when you’re asleep?) I think the same things every time, more or less. Maybe I’m reciting them by heart so that when I lose my temper with you next time I can tell you them properly without stumbling over them or bursting into tears. Or maybe I’m telling myself these things so that I won’t ever have to tell you.
Can you tell what I’m thinking? Is that why you’re opening your eyes, staring at me as though you’re trying to work out why you ever came here in the first place? Trying to work out how long it will take you to get out of here and forget you came? Maybe wishing you didn’t have to leave? You don’t have to, you know. We may argue and not tell each other half the thing we mean, we may not even know each other that well, but I would always let you stay.
You’re closing your eyes again. Trying to forget you’re here? Trying to put off making a decision? Or simply not ready to wake up yet?
You know I’ll still be here when you want to wake up.