28th December, 1892 — Cash & Adrienne’s house

This was fine, Theo tried to tell himself, even though he was already convinced it was stupid. It was something Greengrass had written the other day about clean starts, though. It sounded good; and necessary; but he wasn’t sure if it was something he could manage yet, not when it felt like he was stuck and going nowhere and there was so much left... unresolved.

So he waited outside the Wellingtonshire house – Hogsmeade wasn’t big; it hadn’t been difficult to find the right address – and, when the door opened, offered his name and card before he could think better of it. It was some time after dinner, and dark out; the streets already quiet, the ground icy and the lamps lit; a late forgotten evening in the midst of the holiday season. One brief pause for breath between Christmas and the next wave of festivities for the new year.

He was let in by one of their staff, shown into a room – he had intended to look around better while he waited, but he hadn’t worked up the nerve even to pay any real attention to the decor or the furnishings, too preoccupied already by bracing himself for what exactly he would say if Cash and his wife came in together.

But in the end it was just Cash, so Theo set the wrapped parcel down against the floor, propped up a little more loosely under his hand – presents, or a pretence; Cee probably thought he’d passed these on months ago, though clearly he hadn’t – and looked at him instead.

(He didn’t know why he’d expected to see some change. His life was different, maybe, but of course Cash was the same.)

Maybe he shouldn’t have come. “Hi,” he said eventually, somehow more at a loss not facing the prospect of forced-friendly introductions and small talk with Mrs. Lestrange. Now he was just embarrassed at being here – and slightly wary, too, of how Cash would react.

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Cassius Lestrange

  

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December was best for condition flying; if you could catch a snitch in Scotland in the winter, ideally when it was snowing and you felt your fingers going numb, then you were ready for games in the pouring rain in the bulk of the season. Cash thought about this all day at work, while he processed permit requests from Holyhead for updating the muggle-deflecting spells on their stadium and while he spent far too much time looking at gobstones league schedules. December was best for condition flying, but there was no reason for Cash to fly anymore, and he couldn't get himself to bring out his broomstick without a reason.

He'd gone to the club for dinner, because Adrienne was almost certainly at her twin's, and walked out of the entrance to Black's and down until he reached the Wellingtonshire house. Cash sighed when he opened the door, and hadn't expected to talk to anyone when he got back until the butler handed him a card and said someone's here for you.

Cash glanced at it and felt a tightening in his chest. He only took the time to hand his overcoat to the butler before he stepped into the parlor, trudging some slush in with him.

Was he supposed to call him Theo or Gallivan now? After they'd ended things, when Cash was still with the Cannons, he'd avoided addressing the sponsor by name at all. Now he didn't know what to say. "Hi," he said, instead, staring at Theo in the hopes of parsing out anything from his expression.

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MJ made this!

“Hi,” Theo said automatically, and, with a wince, realised he’d said that already. That blank look had thrown him off. He should say something else. And there was so much he wanted to, so he opened his mouth to let it all tumble out, but his vocal chords felt constricted and his throat jammed up, so all that came out was, “Um.”

There was some weird fight or flight instinct ratcheting around in his chest, which didn’t make sense, because no one had forced him to come. He’d wanted to. Needed to. As if seeing him could have lent him some clarity.

There wasn’t any. He couldn’t tell how Cash felt. Are you angry with me? he wanted to ask. Am I still angry with you? He thought back to the wedding, when the feeling had been closer to despair – and that settling since into something more hollow, a slow blunt ache. I miss you, he could say. I hate you. I love you. I’m sorry.

But he – he couldn’t even tell how Cash was from here, looking from the outside. So even how are you? felt like an impossible start. There was no point asking, was there? He could only imagine Cash listing facts instead. Well, I’m married. I work at the Ministry. It’s terrible. Hogsmeade’s fine.

Theo glanced at the ceiling briefly, cleared his throat. “I just came to – give you these,” he offered lamely, shifting the package onto the nearest chair. Late retirement gifts – late Christmas gifts, at this point. It didn’t really matter; regardless, they were only depressing now. The larger frame contained a rare vintage Cannons poster, not unlike the ones hanging in the hallways and the sponsor’s office. The smaller pair were photographs of the whole team, one from Cash’s first season, right out of school; the other his last, with him in the Captain’s spot. He grimaced slightly. “You don’t have to keep them.”

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   Cassius Lestrange

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Cash's eyes flicked over to the gifts. "You didn't have to do that," he said, although he visibly cringed once the words left his mouth. Theo didn't owe him anything. Cash should have gotten Theo gifts, lots of them — but what could any object do to make up for everything?

"But of course I'll keep them," he looked back over at Theo. He felt regret like it was physical; an itch in his chest. "Did, um — did they tell you she's not home?" What he meant to say was we can actually talk, but he didn't know if Theo wanted that — what Cash wanted was to close the distance between them. He took a step into the parlor. Maybe they would actually be able to talk?

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MJ made this!

“I, uh, kind of did,” he pointed out, almost rueful about it. Because – if they were nothing else – there was still quidditch, all the same: he had been Cash’s sponsor and Cash had played for the Cannons. And, professionally, it was better they still seemed friendly; certainly neither of them needed rumours of there being some unexplained rancour in his retirement.

(On the other hand, it probably wasn’t necessary to have come in person to achieve that – he could have dropped them off without staying, or better yet, have owled – but Theo didn’t know how to explain why he had in a way that made sense beyond I just needed to see you.)

But apparently the pretty, French elephant in the room wasn’t home. “Your wife?” Theo said, if they were going to speak plainly – although he instantly regretted his tone, because he hadn’t meant to sound so stung about it still. He bit his tongue instead and glanced at the parlour door, torn between wanting to close it and wanting to get out of here. Cash was in the way, though, so Theo – not wanting to be mistaken, and undecided anyway – uncomfortably held his ground where he stood.

When he spoke again, he made sure he had softened his tone, sounded collected, neutral. (He almost wished he could pick a fight: then at least it might feel like there was something to fight about, and not just that everything was impossibly and irreversibly out of their control.) “How is she?” With a swallow, he realised how desperate he was for even some small glimpse into how Cash was coping, and added, “– how are you?”

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Cash stifled a flinch when Theo said wife, and the suppressed motion manifested instead as a tremor in his hand.

He swallowed when Theo spoke again. Cash didn't think he could answer honestly with the parlor door open, so he took a step back to close it, the latch clicking behind him. He stepped back into his previous place, but didn't get any closer. Maintaining the same amount of physical distance seemed like the only way to get through this.

"Her twin moved in next door," Cash answered, "She's — over there a lot." They didn't spend much time together, except at night, and over dinner, but Cash wasn't sure how often they actually talked. He let his shoulders slump. "And I'm — well, I miss Quidditch."

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MJ made this!

He’d closed the door, and they were alone, and for a moment it felt like it had.

Cash hadn’t quite answered the question directly, but that was Cash all over. It was a strange self-preservation: carefully dancing along the periphery, or throwing out some casual misdirection, a wry shrug or deft change of subject or a beat too long of silence, whatever it took to survive. If there was an art to avoidance, Cash had perfected it; never admitting to anything, as if not admitting to things could make them any less true.

And it was too easy, today, to string together the rest of the truth from what he’d said and what he hadn’t. She had found some window of escape, then, some small way to cope with her confinement. And Cash didn’t have quidditch as his escape anymore, and she was out tonight and he was here alone, so – maybe he hadn’t. The slump of his shoulders said enough.

“The Ministry’s not for you?” Theo tried wryly. (He might have chosen the Ministry over quidditch once, himself – and never mind how well that had gone – but he couldn’t picture Cash there.) He’d meant it maybe as a joke, to cover up the pang in his chest underneath; but suddenly it didn’t feel like nearly enough and he couldn’t pretend that it was.

Involuntarily, Theo found himself crossing the room instead, with a wild, guilty urge to fold Cash into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said, falling to a halt just in front of him with a frown, his arms slightly open but too nervous to actually close the distance. But all the hurt and anger had dissipated now, replaced by a terrible wrench of pity for him and how overwhelmingly lonely his life looked. And none of it could have been helped, but still – Theo hadn’t made things any easier either, had he? He never did. “I’m really sorry.”

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"Nothing to be sorry for," Cash said, and meant it. "I did it to myself, didn't I?" He'd made the Vow, sealing off any real escape options he'd ever had — and now he'd lost Quidditch, and nothing else had ever managed to matter as much whether he was seventeen or twenty-six. In the years since he'd found things to supplement, other things to fill him, but — he was alone now.

Cash leaned towards Theo like a plant towards the sun, not quite touching, but he felt the need for it thrum through him. He missed Theo, and with Theo right in front of him the absence rose in his chest like a wild thing.

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   Theodore Gallivan

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MJ made this!

Wrong, and wrong. “No, you didn’t,” Theo objected, about the latter. It had been easy to blame Cash for it, but he’d dwelled on it enough since to think differently in the wake of his anger. He couldn’t have rationalised it then.

But the vow hadn’t been Cash’s idea – Cash had presumably picked what he supposed was the least bad option – and if Theo couldn’t fathom anyone’s father suggesting such a thing, he couldn’t imagine what Cash’s whole upbringing must have looked like. Quidditch, the wedding, a father who knew too much. So, vow or not: there never would have been an escape for him, would there? He would have always ended up – somewhere like here. Theo should at least try and forgive him for it.

He was so close now, well within reach. Theo gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “We’re – pretty screwed without you, though,” he added, with a smile-grimace that was more than a joke and a sense that he was admitting more than he’d said, too. Not that he could say even that much candidly to anyone else, but. Their new seeker was fine, but the team didn’t have the same dynamic as before, and it showed in their play. They weren’t winning matches like they’d used to.

Still, if Cash’s absence had left things a mess for the team, Theo at least had more hope for its recovery than for his. He lifted a hand slightly, thinking of pressing his arm or his wrist, but in the end he raised his eyeline away from Cash’s hand to meet his gaze instead. “But you... are you okay?” Theo asked carefully. In spite of missing quidditch. In spite of everything.

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"I'm —" Cash started. His eyebrows drew together in a concerned knot. Angie asked him this, when he saw her — sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. He always told her yes. Sometimes she might even believe him. He sighed, and tried again. "The days are fine."

The days were fine. He went to the Ministry and time passed and then he came home and he talked with Adrienne, and when they were talking that was good. The intercourse was perfunctory, but that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was — the isolation, maybe. Everything stretching before him, no Quidditch seasons to strive for, just paperwork and the Ministry and their shared social calendar.

The nights were long. They were longer without Quidditch to wear him out. He hadn't realized how much it helped him sleep, and he was smoking more again.

"There's things I miss."

Theo, for one.

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MJ made this!

The days are fine. Theo wasn’t stupid – he knew what that meant. The days, sure, but the nights weren’t. If he was counting by days, it meant he was barely scraping through, just dragging himself along – Theo had been there before, and understood that well enough. In fact, without Cash there, around, in his life at all, the days had gotten long again, too.

“Yeah,” Theo echoed. “Me too.”

He didn’t know if it was for Cash’s sake or his own, but he surrendered this time. He pressed his hand to Cash’s and clasped it for a moment, just holding on. The door was closed; it couldn’t be seen at once if anyone walked in; it was subtle and small and meant nothing, really. But it felt good, and he didn’t want to let go.

“I,” he began, cautiously. “You know I’m still here. If you need me.”

He hadn’t been, in the last few months – and he didn’t know why Cash would need him, or what for, but – he didn’t like the thought of him alone.

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The touch to his hand felt like something deeper than that, because Theo shouldn't be here and touching him at all, but here he was. And Cash desperately wanted him to stay. Which meant that he shouldn't ask Theo for anything and yet.

And yet.

"I need —" Cash broke off. "There's no one who knows me who will still talk to me." Angie counted, but Angie was complicated. He looked at the carpet. "I just want you to talk to me. If you're willing."

He wanted more than that, of course — but he couldn't ask for that.

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MJ made this!

This already felt like a mistake. Coming here had been a mistake, when he had stubbornly resolved to stay away. Holding his hand had definitely been a mistake, because now he missed him worse than ever. Promising to talk to him would almost certainly be a mistake.

Theo chewed on the inside of his cheek, considering. Because we were so good at that before, Theo thought – but Cash had been easy to be around before, had been painlessly natural to confide in once. Theo was still aggrieved about being kept in the dark about important things, things Cash had known all along, and he was tempted to bite out something about that – something like oh, so does that mean you’ll start actually telling me things before you have to? – but he held his tongue, because the brunt of that anger had gone.

He let go of his hand. “Yeah,” Theo said finally, in spite of himself. “I can talk.”

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Relief washed over him. Cash didn't think he deserved this, but he had never deserved Theo — and he wasn't strong enough to refrain from asking him. His hand felt warm where Theo held it. "Thank you," Cash said, and meant it.

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MJ made this!