Entry tags:

*fic, 2011, lavender, seamus

Special delivery for idea_of_sarcasm
Title: Crystal Animals
Author/Artist:
Recipient's LJ name: idea_of_sarcasm
Pairing(s): Seamus/Lavender
Rating: R
Summary Seamus needs a place to stay.
Word Count: ~1500
Warnings/Content: Language, sexual content
Disclaimer: These are not my characters.



I run a shop now. Baskets full of colored shawls. Carved picture frames I bought from a Muggle school (the students made them; do you believe it? It was some kind of fine arts school). Shelves of little knick knacks I’ve found in second-hand shops (Those shops are dirty usually, but always worth it). All kinds of Divination books. Behind the register, I keep the edibles, my most popular items. Swirling dried pasta, colored orange and purple and cerulean. Little clear boxes stuffed with sparkling pink candies. And tea, lots of it, and teapots too, all hand-painted.

I’m looking at one of those teapots now. They’re almost alive; they move like little animals. I run my fingers over the smooth surface and it stretches it neck and coos. The bell above the front door jingles and I turn coolly around to greet the customer, my hand still resting on the teapot. When I see that it’s Seamus, I smile and then turn to rest my elbows on the counter in front of me. “You again?” I tease.

His face is wet with melted snow and his cheeks are pink and he’s breathing a little harder than usual but he’s smiling, that smile that spreads over everything. He drags his scarf off and wraps it around his wrist lazily, then walks up to me leans against the counter. His face turns serious, but only a little. “Look, I need some help.”

***

“Just a few days until my mum gets back from holiday and I can stay with her… Look, I can pay for all my food.” He folds his egg in half taco-style and the yolk breaks and seeps out. “And yours, if you want me too.” We’re at a diner two doors down from my shop. They sell the most brilliant hot chocolate I’ve ever had. I’ve been trying to replicate it, figure out exactly what makes it so brilliant, but I so far no luck.

“You don’t have to do that,” I say as I watch him use his toast to sponge up all of the runaway egg-goo. “I mean, you don’t have to pay for my food. Yours? You’re definitely paying for that.” He nods.

“Sorry about Dean.”

“No need to be sorry.”

“No. I know you’ll miss him.”

He shrugs and throws some water down his throat like he’s taking a shot. I know he’s lonely; he’s been that way ever since we left Hogwarts. He’s still smiling all the time, still has that little ever-present smirk, but there’s something else there as well and it’s tearing at his eyebrows and lowering his eyelids and glazing his teeth. I can see it.

***

I live right above my shop in one big room sectioned off with curtains. I show Seamus up the stairs even though he already knows his way; he skips ahead of me and takes a fall right into my bed.

“Get off! That’s silk and you’re still wearing your boots! And your mucky clothes!” I try to shove him off, but I’m no match for him. He stares at me lazily, amused. I cross my arms, but I’m smiling, and I sit down in my round chair. “You’re a total bloody imp, that’s what you are,” I say as I lean back and look up at the ceiling.

He sits up, folding his legs and looking genuinely offended. I try now to grab at his boots but he slides them off before I can, shaking his head at me. “Imp?”

“Yes,” I say, “with your impish little grin.”

“Well if I’m an imp, you’re a… What are you?” He leans back onto his elbows and studies me. His shirt is half unbuttoned. After a few moments, he decides: “River troll.”

“Well fuck you.”

“Fuck me? You called me an imp, you little niffler!” He wipes his nose. “Also, watch your language,” he adds.

***

“You’re sleeping in the chair or on the floor; you don’t get the bed,” I had told him, but somehow he had persuaded me to take the floor while he spread out into my bed. He falls asleep first, and I hear him snore a little. When I get up to get a glass of water, he’s moved the pillow out from beneath his head and he’s hugging it to his chest. I smile a little and turn off the last light.

***

I’m in the shower and I keep hearing these yelps. I turn off the water and strain my ears. “Seamus?” After wringing my hair out, I creep out from behind the curtain, grab a towel, and wrap it around me. Small yelp. I brush back the bathroom curtain and I see Seamus, stark naked and pink and perched up on top of my bed.

“Oh Jesus,” I say, covering my mouth in an attempt not to laugh, but it comes fountaining out. That cat, the little panther-like cat that lives somewhere in the attics of my building, is clawing at the bedskirt, eyes fixed on Seamus. Seamus is holding his left arm in his right arm, alternating between eying the long scratch on his forearm and the cat beneath him.

I bend down and gather the cat up into my arms, cooing at it and rubbing its forehead.

“But you don’t have a cat!”

“No I don’t. Why haven’t you got any clothes on?”

Seamus quickly folds in upon himself, turning even pinker. He looks up at me. “I was changing!” And indeed he does have two piles of clothes around him.

“You don’t change them one by one? Top off, new top on. Pants off, undergarments off, new—“

“Not everybody does it that way!”

I sit next to him, still holding the cat. “He lives up there,” I say, nodding up towards the ceiling. “He might be a pet of one of my neighbours and he just travels through the attics, but I think he’s homeless.”

“You think he’s happy being that way?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” The cat bounces out of my arms and heads for the stairs. We both watch him leave.

Seamus tugs at my towel. “Give me some cover; I’m freezing here.”

“Hey, just put on your clothes!” I say, dragging a shirt of his up off of the floor and throwing it at his chest. But he pulls me on top of him, holding my face in his hands.

“I’m cold, Lav.” He smiles at me, looking all… well, looking quite like himself, and I kiss him once and then twice and then we both start laughing and I try to pull my towel back around me but he unwinds me and throws it onto the floor with all the rest.

I giggle, grabbing his cock and saying, “Your stiffy’s getting in the way.”

“Don’t you know how this works, Miss Brown?” he says. “It’s supposed to ‘get in the way’.” I arrange myself so that I’m right over him. I hover for a little while, propping myself up by planting a palm on either side of his head. And I just look at him and bite my lip. He smiles.

He smiles, he smiles, he smiles, and I say, “I like your cock.” We both laugh and then he’s inside of me and I’m kissing his face as he thrusts. Our laughter turns to little breaths and grunts until we’re both gasping. He pulls me closer, pushing my breasts into his chest and holding his cheek against my cheek. He’s whispering something but I can’t concentrate properly; my whole focus is on my shaking body.

People say that sex changes everything, but this doesn’t feel like a change to me. More like an elevation. We’re not being changed. We’d be changed if he were acting all serious and passionate, but now we’re laying side by side and he keeps kissing my ear and I keep joking about how I always thought he’d be worse.

***

There’s something called the “morning after talk”, but it’s not the morning after. It’s noon. Seamus is upstairs and I’m watching the shop. There are two small girls in and they keep on trying on shawl after shawl. Their mother is trying to get them to hurry up, but I laugh and say, “It’s no worry! Let them play.”

Seamus walks up, saying he’ll take the register and I smile and stand next to him as I help him figure it out.

There are these little crystal animals lining one of the shelves. There are at least a dozen and they’re all different. I feel like one of them is in my mouth. Let me explain. I feel like whatever I say, my teeth will come crashing down into that crystal animal and break it. Nothing I can say will keep it beautiful and whole.

Talk crowds things, and so do formalities, routine “talks”, so I don’t say anything. I kiss him on the cheek. We haven’t changed. We can be whatever we want to be.