March 17th, 1890 - Chudley Cannons Pitch

Cash Lestrange could be difficult to work with at the best of times. He usually made up for being moody by being really fucking good, but even that had been difficult today - his turns had been slow, his dives clumsy, his catches of the snitch a second later than they ought to be. It had been an uncomfortable practice for everyone - pouring rain, among other things, had no one in the mood. But even Cash had to admit that calling his second-string seeker fucking incompetent had been a bridge too far.

The practice had ended about thirty minutes after that, and Cash was chain smoking muggle cigarettes up in the bowels of the pitch rather than deal with his team. His broom was tucked next to him as he sat on one of rafters. Unfortunately, he had used this hiding spot once or twice before after bad games - that is to say, he could be found.

So he supposed that he ought not to have been surprised by the sight of his sponsor - and former teammate - twenty feet beneath him.

"I suppose you want me to come down," Cash called, blowing a smoke ring.

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Theodore Gallivan

  

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MJ made this!

One terrible practice did not a terrible team make. That said, this Cannons practice had been downright disastrous, the sort that - even pretending he didn’t care - sincerely hurt Theo to watch.

And he knew, from extensive personal experience, when someone stomped off to go sulk.

“I think a couple of people might rather you didn’t,” Theo shot up with a shrug, that practice not much inclining him to tread carefully around people’s egos or hurt feelings. He clambered up another set of rickety wooden stairs of the internal structure to get closer to his perch. The seeker had been especially awful - not just at seeking, but at letting his fuse fizzle out in front of everyone, sparks flashing up even in the mad rain they’d had for hours. And actually, Lestrange had been awful increasingly more often than Theo could really remember him being, in former years. Was Lestrange getting distinctly worse? Or was that just the fault of Theo’s own mood swings, rubbing off on what he saw?

In any case, it didn’t stop him from correcting his last remark with an extra sting of sardonicism. “Or - about half the team.”

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Cash took another drag of his cigarette. "I suppose that's fair," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. It was odd to think of Theodore Gallivan as his boss. Nathaniel Gallivan had plucked Cash directly from Ravenclaw and onto first string - kickstarting his entire career. He was used to working under Nathaniel Gallivan, was comfortable with it, had trusted his decisions. Perhaps it was unfair to hold Theodore's age against him, or the fact that Cash had once been his captain. Theodore knew Quidditch, and had a right to inherit the team - but it was still weird.

If Gallivan had just come up here to shoot snarky comments back and forth, that was - well, that was fine. Cash bounced his left leg, with the foot up on the rafter, up and down.

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MJ made this!

Theodore wasn’t sure why Lestrange’s indifference, or this - the perching up here smoking cigarettes - was aggravating him so intensely, but it was. He wouldn’t care if Cassius Lestrange did this on his own time, on his family’s own grounds - obviously, Theo wouldn’t have any business to - but leaving the practice to fizzle out on the sour note it had, skulking off here by himself now was his problem, because it was the Cannons’ problem. And the last thing he needed was for the Cannons to implode before his eyes.

Not that Theo had ever asked to have these problems, but.

He sniffed and leant against a wooden beam with the seeker in view. “So what’s your problem?” He asked more fairly, with less bite. “Is there something or just -” he shrugged his shoulders and threw a hand up in an abstract wave, “- bad day?”

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Cash considered Gallivan below him. He considered blowing him off, for a moment - that would have been easy. He ought to do things that way.

His cigarette was nearly burned out, now, but stubbing it out on the rafter was a level of dismissal that might, actually get him fired. So instead he just held the low-burning stub between two fingers.

"Do you ever just feel as if there's no point?" Cash said, "Not to the Quidditch, but to -" he gestured widely, as if to indicate any of this. He could catch the snitch and play nice with his teammates and Eli would still be dead and Cash would still want to join him; it didn't matter.

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The following 1 user Likes Cassius Lestrange's post:1 user Likes Cassius Lestrange's post
   Cecily Gallivan

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MJ made this!

He’d have predicted a rant about the second-string seeker’s uselessness right about now, about someone else getting on Lestrange’s nerves, about - well, something petty, probably.

Whatever he’d been expecting Lestrange to say, it... wasn’t that. Theodore blinked up at him, seeing something new in the seeker he hadn’t seen before.

He knew what the best answer to that would be. No. No, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Lestrange. Go home and get some sleep and come back when you’ve got your head screwed on again. Instead, a laugh - a stupid, honest laugh - tore its way out of him before Theo could help himself. “Yeah, actually,” he said, with a shake of his head, sure he shouldn’t be agreeing to something that made him sound like a useless sponsor, and a useless person to boot. He leaned further back onto the wooden beam. “All the time.”

And this was not the pep-talk he’d envisioned. “Is the smoking s’posed to help?” He said, squinting at the cigarette stub with a frown.

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The following 2 users Like Theodore Gallivan's post:2 users Like Theodore Gallivan's post
   Cassius Lestrange, Cecily Gallivan

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Cash had been almost disinterested in the conversation until now, but it was that empty laugh - the sound of it, and the words that followed, that caught his attention. Oh. His eyes were fully caught on his sponsor now, as if considering something new - the possibility that someone else felt like this, all the time.

"Doesn't hurt," Cash said, still holding the waste of it between his fingers."Doesn't really help, either. It - gives me something to do with my hands."

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MJ made this!

See, Lestrange wasn’t laughing, which meant he knew too well what this hollowness felt like. In the burst of a moment, he had to wonder why, but although they’d been teammates once at school, he couldn’t pretend to know him well enough to tell. He was a Lestrange, after all: Theo couldn’t fathom what kind of problems a family like that might have. Not that Cassius seemed like the worst of them... he couldn’t be, if Nathaniel Gallivan had always liked him.

(Not that there needed to be an easy reason for the pointlessness. And how could he ask, if that might also mean explaining why he felt this way?)

“Hm,” Theo hummed instead, considering the cigarette. It didn’t sound promising, really - but what was he expecting? “Maybe I’ll try sometime.” His gaze flickered upwards from the cigarette stub to the seeker’s eyes, a glacial, unreadable blue. “And the quidditch?” Theo asked, feeling a little desperation fraying at the edges at this thought. “The playing doesn’t help either?” Surely seeking professionally was still some kind of direction, some focus? It had to be a better distraction from the emptiness than just watching people play quidditch.

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"It's a distraction," Cash said with a shrug of his shoulders, "Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn't." Sometimes he was just numb, and nothing would punctuate it - the Quidditch gave him something to do, but it wouldn't fix it. This couldn't just be how things were, forever.

That Gallivan felt this way, too, was - surprising. Cash had found things to be inherently lonely, the past few years, and trying to describe what was wrong with him had always been an impossible, Gordian knot of an issue.

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MJ made this!

“Well, there goes my don’t you want to win line,” Theo murmured wryly, because if neither of them felt like quidditch really mattered, then winning was just as pointless as the rest of it. There was the league to think about, and national tryouts, and his responsibility as a sponsor but distraction was right: all it served to do was waste some time.

He looked away from Lestrange, gnawing on the inside of his cheek. “But you... haven’t always felt this way, right?” He couldn’t imagine how exhausting that would have been. But he hadn’t noticed it in the other Ravenclaw back at school, and Lestrange had been too good a seeker to have never cared.

He knew he hadn’t, but - he didn’t know how to find the way back. If there was one. If anything helped.

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The following 1 user Likes Theodore Gallivan's post:1 user Likes Theodore Gallivan's post
   Meta Lestrange

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"No," Cash said, "I haven't."

Something in him had broken and he did not know how to fix it; and there was a part of him that worried that if he did, it was a betrayal. Beyond that - did he want to fix it, and open himself up to feeling again? There might be nothing but hurt.

It had to be better than this, though.

He just didn't know if there was anything to be done.

Cash sighed and pulled his broom out of the nook; he slid onto it and landed on the ground with no flourish at all.

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The following 1 user Likes Cassius Lestrange's post:1 user Likes Cassius Lestrange's post
   Marcus Lytton

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MJ made this!

In one startlingly fluid motion - without anything prompting it - Lestrange was down from the rafters. Theo wasn’t sure why this disconcerted him so.

Maybe because he had brought the conversation down with him; maybe because now that Theo knew it was something that couldn’t be ignored. Was that a thing? That honesty was easier at a distance?

“Well,” Theodore said, with an unwilling degree of hesitance - the last thing he’d expected to find himself saying, when he’d come looking for the seeker - “let me know if there’s something I can do.” Something, anything - he almost had to scoff at what he’d just offered. As if there would be anything Theo could do to fix things for Lestrange, when he couldn’t even help himself.

But maybe something would change, eventually. Something had to.

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Cash didn't respond verbally to Gallivan's offer, which they both knew was relatively meaningless. He made a wry expression, instead - it was better to let some things lie, and this was one of those things.

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MJ made this!