February 3, 2021 – 7:59 PM
Cassius Lestrange — Played by Beanie
February 20th, 1891 - Chudley Cannons Pitch
They had an hour until the match. The stands were starting to fill up and Cash had been playing catch with a snitch all morning, thumbing over the small wings and thinking about the Hogsmeade Howlers. Without Mitch Quiddel's sponsorship, and with Pettigrew's wife's miscarriage, they could be a mess - or their new sponsor might have reworked them entirely into a functional team. Cash wasn't sure. He was still thinking about it, had been thinking about it all morning, and didn't know how he felt about playing with an audience again.
The audience always made him feel more grounded, more aware of his body - but there were risks, weren't there? A woman had died. And he wasn't sure how much he trusted the wards.
They had an hour until the match and Cash wasn't in the locker room, although he was ready. Instead he was in Gallivan's empty office, sitting on his desk, with the door closed, catching the snitch and releasing it and catching it again with practiced, absent-minded motions of his wrist. He could hear the sounds of attendee shoes somewhere overhead when Gallivan opened the door to his own office and stepped inside.
"I think we should try something new this year," Cash said; it was probably obvious enough that he had picked the lock to come in.
Theodore Gallivan Elias Grimstone
MJ made this!
February 7, 2021 – 10:08 PM
For the first time in a while, Theodore had a vague sense of nausea in his stomach. Nerves, maybe: after so long since the world cup, of being entirely uncaring about everything in his life including the Cannons' chances, this was the first day there had been an audience to it in quite some time. And frankly, if something else was going to go wrong (with quidditch or with his life, probably), it felt like just his kind of luck to have it happen here.
But he would have to go socialise up in the boxes as the match unfolded, and, while the rest of the team were in the locker room and the stadium not yet full, Theo had wandered back to the office, wondering whether an early drink would take the edge off this tension. He was half in his own head as he swung the door open - had he left it unlocked? - and found Lestrange perched on his desk.
“Jesus,” Theo swore, nearly jumping a second time as the door slammed closed behind him. He’d opened his mouth to ask what?, or something to that effect (although ought he be surprised, really? Lestrange seemed quite familiar with every nook and cranny in the Cannons stadium, and apparently his office had not been overlooked), when he digested what had just been said.
“Well, I’m not going on as seeker,” Theo deadpanned, in case his seeker wanted to take up the sponsor’s mantle. All the same, he raised his eyebrows with the barest inclination of curiosity.
February 9, 2021 – 5:38 PM
Cassius Lestrange — Played by Beanie
Cash smirked at Gallivan's reaction; it wasn't that he didn't think breaking into someone's office was a weird thing to do, it was that he didn't care, and felt privately as if they had moved past such pleasantries at some point, like when Gallivan found him sitting perched in the rafters.
"No, that's not what I had in mind," Cash said easily; he caught the practice snitch once more and deactivated it with a flick of his thumb, setting it down on Gallivan's desk. He remained perched, though, one knee up, and set his chin on his knee. It was an awkward position, and Cash wasn't sure how much it was for dramatic affect.
"I think we should actually care," Cash said. He held up his right hand, index finger and thumb an inch or so apart. "At least a little. And -" he paused "- I think you should make me captain."
This was, after all and privately, likely to be his last season - he owed the Cannons a little bit more of himself, in the meantime. He could give them that. Maybe Gallivan could, too.
February 12, 2021 – 12:46 AM
Theo was halfway to grinning when Lestrange explained his idea, and his face got stuck somewhere in the region of bafflement. He was just guessing, but this... was probably not how any of his players would have raised the idea with Nathaniel Gallivan, was it? But Cassius and his father had probably not been - friends, or whatever this was: the thing where they hung around at the stadium when everyone was gone, the thing where they could just admit to not caring. And Theo wasn’t sure he was as offended as he should be.
Because he merely took another pace or two into the room as if to give it thought. Really he’d thought about flopping into the chair behind his desk, but if Lestrange wasn’t going to move off it he wasn’t going to make it weird by being the normal one. Instead, not entirely consciously, he leant over and picked up the snitch that had just been quieted - didn’t wake it up, just turned the tiny gold ball round and round in his hand as he considered the proposition.
He was skeptical, he thought. And yet - maybe there was a faint twinge of guilt in his chest at the fact that he didn’t care. Cee cared more than he did. The rest of the team certainly did. Lots of people cared about the Cannons more than he did, actually, and if it had been decided only by caring, Theodore would not have been the one with the sponsor’s job.
Why should I make you captain? was what Theo had instructed himself to say, if he was going to properly play sponsor. “You sure that’s a good idea?” he said instead. Being captain did involve yet more outward commitment to the team, and - well, until now, Lestrange hadn’t seemed so interested in that either.
February 13, 2021 – 2:01 AM
Cassius Lestrange — Played by Beanie
Cash dropped his knee and leaned towards Gallivan with his snitch. He didn't make any move to get off the desk, though, just closed some of the distance between them, because this conversation was so weird already that he might as well make it more weird by invading some of Gallivan's personal space.
"No, I'm not sure," Cash said, with a wry grin at Gallivan. "Except that I'm good, and I think you are too, and we may as well do something about it."
MJ made this!
February 20, 2021 – 1:25 AM
If Lestrange was fucking with him, then... it was working, really working. I’m good, and I think you are too - at least one of them did, but also what? This whole scene had some strange glimmer of unreality to it, like it was a bizarre stress-induced dream and Theodore would wake up in five minutes only to find out he’d overslept the match entirely.
“Fine,” Theo said boldly, “I’ll make you captain.” Maybe he’d said it to call Lestrange’s bluff, maybe just to test the dream-theory, or maybe because if he didn’t care then it didn’t matter if it were a good or a bad idea, because everything was going to hell around him anyway and he was sleepwalking through it either way.
And maybe he wanted to keep sleepwalking through it, he wasn’t sure. Things were not great now, but they might not get any better even if he did put in the effort. “But I don’t see why I should start caring just because you do.”
February 21, 2021 – 9:06 PM
Cassius Lestrange — Played by Beanie
"Neat," Cash said; his grin turned crooked. He hadn't actually expected Theodore Gallivan to say yes - or, rather, to say fine - and thus hadn't planned for this conversation beyond that. He had a few more minutes, besides, and he wasn't captain yet, so he didn't have to go back to the locker room to spend time with his teammates. (He had perhaps overlooked this when planning his request, to the extent that he'd planned it - it was more that he'd woken up a few weeks ago with an inclination that he could be captain, and then acted on it.)
"We can talk about my contract later. And -" still grinning "- you should think about caring because I'll be dragging you along with me, and it's much more enjoyable for the both of us if you don't fight me too much."
MJ made this!
February 26, 2021 – 12:47 PM
If a part of his brain was berating him for being really bloody stupid in agreeing to this, too late, Theodore was not listening to it. Besides, it was fine, and when he thought about it properly later and tried to reason it out, he could tell himself that Lestrange was still a solid seeker even in his non-caring state, that the cigarettes and after-hours loitering at the pitch were not really bad employee behaviour, that either one of them could be good at rallying the team if they actually tried it. That he was the sponsor, so he could pull shit like this on a whim if he wanted. That maybe this was just ridiculous enough to work.
Lestrange was grinning now - Theo didn’t know if he’d seen him grin like this before - and although he was trying to be skeptical there was something almost contagious to it, and a corner of his mouth had tugged upwards before he could stop himself. “Yeah, I’m getting that impression,” he remarked, reaching out to loosely deposit the practice snitch back onto the desk before he let his eyes flicker back to Lestrange’s face. He scoffed aloud, tongue firmly in his cheek as he fought the grin again. “Not even two seconds as captain and you’re already twice as annoying.”
February 27, 2021 – 4:09 AM
Cassius Lestrange — Played by Beanie
Gallivan was trying not to smile, and Cash could tell, and that made him want to charm him into it. This was a weird feeling, for him - he did not often find himself trying to get a specific reaction from people. It struck him like the realization that he wanted Greengrass to be his friend, or like the realization that he wanted to provoke Antigone. He did not really know what to do with it, this vague desire to make Gallivan grin at him, and held it in his chest instead, like a secret.
He reached to touch the practice snitch and spun it on the desk, neither activating it nor picking it up, and leaned a fraction of an inch closer to Gallivan. Cash let his expression drop into faux-hurt. "Annoying, really? You wound me," he said, "I haven't even had the chance to try to be annoying."
MJ made this!
March 10, 2021 – 12:28 AM
They might be in something together, but it wasn’t quite this; no one silently fielding a crisis could sound that nonchalant. And then he - he -
An automatic reflex, Theo reached up to take over - fix his collar for himself, if it looked that noticeably bad - but all he succeeded in doing by that was touching Lestrange’s hand, and that was not what he’d meant by wanting something to hold onto. Colour was rising in his face now - he could feel it, was embarrassed at his own self-consciousness - but he had the simultaneous feeling that Lestrange was enjoying this, as if he could almost hear Theodore’s heart racing just by looking at him.
“I should go,” Theo blurted out, before he had even thought the idea through enough to remember this was his office in the first place, and he wasn’t the one supposed to be with the rest of the team getting ready to go out on the pitch... “- or you should,” he added, trying lamely to string the phrase together as if he had enough self-possession right now to have meant it as a joke.
But Lestrange had to go soon: the longer he sat there the longer Theodore would be stuck standing here, visibly and unexpectedly and fervently unravelling.
