Down to the Ash
Title: Down to the Ash
Pairing: Seamus/Pansy
Rating: PG13
Warnings: language, mild sexuality?
Notes: I wrote this for sortinghatdrabs this week, where the characters were Pansy & any Gryffindor, and the prompt was a picture you'll have to go over there to see ;) Go! Look! Read the drabbles! They're awesome.
They fight. A lot.
He throws shit, his Irish temper flaring up like his bad knee - one does often lead to the other, he'll sometimes admit later in a moment of introspective repentance - and she draws her wand, threatening to hex him with something straight out of Amycus Carrow's wet dreams, and they break dishes and tear photographs to shreds and he swears and she screams and the door slams and the apartment rattles like a bag of bones, the hollow skeleton of whatever piss-poorly designed thing they've been trying to build.
They fight.
When Seamus leaves - and it's always him, oddly enough; his stand-and-fight crumbled like the castle walls after The War - he Apparates to a Muggle pub down the street from his childhood home (he knows Pansy wouldn't be caught there, dead or alive) and stands outside, burning a pack of cigarettes down to their filters and stubbing the ash out on the brick. This ritual of destruction - their home, their relationship, himself - is calming. It loosens the knots that climb his spine and make his muscles ache. It focuses the rage that leaks out from his scars like blood.
It gets old, though, and stale, and the fire burns down to the ash of regret. He imagines Pansy's small body in spasms of sobs -- her vulnerability is as fierce as her fury -- and all of the knots pull tight again. Tighter than before. So tight they cut off his air, and he leans his forehead against the side of the building, squeezes his eyes shut, and tries not to choke.
By the time he Apparates back, she's Reparo'd most of the damage, and her tears have frozen into icy silence. She sits at the window and doesn't look up when he comes in, just stares into nothing with her jaw set firm, the mechanisms of resentment churning behind her carefully-blank expression.
He slinks off to bed like he's the snake, retreats into the darkness, and takes a heavy swig of his Draught of Dreamless Sleep.
When he wakes - heavy, groggy from the potion, but blissfully numb - she's there with him, her body woven through his in a complicated tangle.
Seamus sighs. He rubs circles into the pale expanse of her naked back, traces the angle of her cheekbone, kisses the top of her head. "Morning, love," he whispers, his voice rough with the hour. Pansy presses herself against him. She moans, the sound riding the edge of sex and despair, and hides her face from the light against his ribs.
Pairing: Seamus/Pansy
Rating: PG13
Warnings: language, mild sexuality?
Notes: I wrote this for sortinghatdrabs this week, where the characters were Pansy & any Gryffindor, and the prompt was a picture you'll have to go over there to see ;) Go! Look! Read the drabbles! They're awesome.
They fight. A lot.
He throws shit, his Irish temper flaring up like his bad knee - one does often lead to the other, he'll sometimes admit later in a moment of introspective repentance - and she draws her wand, threatening to hex him with something straight out of Amycus Carrow's wet dreams, and they break dishes and tear photographs to shreds and he swears and she screams and the door slams and the apartment rattles like a bag of bones, the hollow skeleton of whatever piss-poorly designed thing they've been trying to build.
They fight.
When Seamus leaves - and it's always him, oddly enough; his stand-and-fight crumbled like the castle walls after The War - he Apparates to a Muggle pub down the street from his childhood home (he knows Pansy wouldn't be caught there, dead or alive) and stands outside, burning a pack of cigarettes down to their filters and stubbing the ash out on the brick. This ritual of destruction - their home, their relationship, himself - is calming. It loosens the knots that climb his spine and make his muscles ache. It focuses the rage that leaks out from his scars like blood.
It gets old, though, and stale, and the fire burns down to the ash of regret. He imagines Pansy's small body in spasms of sobs -- her vulnerability is as fierce as her fury -- and all of the knots pull tight again. Tighter than before. So tight they cut off his air, and he leans his forehead against the side of the building, squeezes his eyes shut, and tries not to choke.
By the time he Apparates back, she's Reparo'd most of the damage, and her tears have frozen into icy silence. She sits at the window and doesn't look up when he comes in, just stares into nothing with her jaw set firm, the mechanisms of resentment churning behind her carefully-blank expression.
He slinks off to bed like he's the snake, retreats into the darkness, and takes a heavy swig of his Draught of Dreamless Sleep.
When he wakes - heavy, groggy from the potion, but blissfully numb - she's there with him, her body woven through his in a complicated tangle.
Seamus sighs. He rubs circles into the pale expanse of her naked back, traces the angle of her cheekbone, kisses the top of her head. "Morning, love," he whispers, his voice rough with the hour. Pansy presses herself against him. She moans, the sound riding the edge of sex and despair, and hides her face from the light against his ribs.