RP Log: Seamus and Tracey Who: Seamus Finnigan and Tracey Davis
What: A really nasty fight
When: Monday night
Where: Seamus's flat, Galway, Ireland
Warnings: Sex, though not really explicit. And obviously bad language. Rated R, I'd say.
Twenty-four hours had passed, and Seamus was still a mess. Every time he tried to sleep, he saw those children again. A dozen of them at least ripped apart by the werewolf, torn and bleeding, their lifeless eyes forever fixed on the ceiling. It had been all he could do not to walk over and close them, but he knew the Aurors would need the scene left just as it was. He touched nothing, and instead he and Katie had gone to look for survivors. There were few, terrified and hiding in the basement; they'd carefully Apparated them out so they wouldn't see their friends, knowing that they'd be Obliviated eventually anyway.
And up in the sky, the Dark Mark - strangely different from how it had always appeared before. There was no doubt now: the Death Eaters were back in action, and they were more dangerous and brutal than ever. The idea left Seamus shaken, smoking cigarettes in his kitchen and waiting for word from Lilith on when they were meeting and what they were going to do. There had to be something to do. He hated waiting worse than anything, and the nervous energy made him chainsmoke and tap his fingers and pace. All attempts at reading or playing is guitar to distract himself had failed. Now he simply leaned on the countertop and brooded.
The past twenty four hours had been awful for Tracey in an entirely different way. She'd been on pins and needles ever since Walden Macnair had cornered her in the park, but as the hours had passed on the night of the 20th and Tracey sat alone in her flat as instructed, she'd gotten more edgy and more fearful. Whatever she'd been expecting, though, it hadn't been to have Macnair bring a fully transformed werewolf into her flat, its jaws still bloody and dripping from the victims it'd taken that night. She hadn't asked who had been attacked, but she'd been told anyway, no doubt as a clear warning that the very same could happen to her if she stepped out of line.
The night had been a long and terrifying one, and in the morning she'd had to rip up two of her very favourite robes in order to stitch them together to cover the re-humaned Greyback. And then came the task of cleaning up the blood and gore that had been left by the werewolf the night before. Tracey had never had to clean up before, not even after herself, but she couldn't very well ask anyone to help her now -- not even the house elf, which she'd sent away the night before. By the time the evening rolled around, Tracey was still shaking and utterly furious, having had her own home violated. The worst part of it had been the helplessness, the knowledge that she was powerless to do anything to help herself, and that there was no help coming. She needed a distraction. She needed a way to release this pent up fury. And she knew exactly how she was going to do it.
Once she'd pulled herself together enough to be sure that she wasn't going to splinch herself, she Apparated straight to Finnigan's flat. No more using doors; she couldn't risk anyone seeing where she was going anymore.
As soon as he heard the loud crack of Apparation into his flat, Seamus whipped out his wand and had it trained in the direction of the intrusion. It took him a moment to realize it was Tracey. When he recognized her, he breathed a silent sigh of relief and lowered the wand. "Sorry," he immediately apologized. "I wasn' expectin' anyone, and..." He didn't really know how to explain any further, so he just let his words hang. "It's good to see ye," he finally said.
Tracey had her own wand out within two seconds of seeing his, and only after he lowered it did she remember to breathe again. She was so wound up that she didn't even hear his apology or what he said afterwards. It was the tone that came through, and with a small cry, she flew to him and started tearing at his clothes. It wasn't anything close to seduction; it was more like a desperate assault. All the fear, anger and frustration she'd felt over the past three days were channeled into this now: something that she could actually do; something she actually had some measure of control over.
Seamus had just as much of all three emotions and no objection to trying to burn them off. When Tracey started pulling his shirt over his head, he cooperated and didn't mind the slight rip at the shoulder seam. Tracey was alive, incredibly and intensely so, and having her there in his arms made it impossible to feel numb anymore. He needed this as much as she did, and he gave as good as he got. They undressed quickly, stumbling their way back to his bedroom as they went, sparing no time or breath for words. Words could wait. Later he would ask her why she'd lied about dinner with her sister; later he would tell her about what he'd seen at the orphanage; later he would thank her for showing up just when he was about to truly go mad. Now there was only touch and taste and incoherent whispers and attempts to stave off the monsters at the gate.
And afterwards, as Tracey waited for her heart rate to come down from reasons that finally had nothing to do with dread or fear, she tightly clutched his arms, which were wrapped around her waist. She needed something solid to hang onto; something that wasn't a betrayal of her childhood memories; something that didn't make her feel so lost. She could feel every breath he took, and felt her own breathing adjust to match it. She didn't know what had prompted him to respond so frantically to her; she recognised a desperation in him that matched her own. She didn't want to ask. She was just glad that he was there with her, so that she didn't feel so alone anymore.
His face was buried in the curve of her neck, inhaling the smell of her hair as his breathing slowed. "Y'alright?" he murmured. Seamus knew he hadn't exactly been careful with her - not that he usually was, but this had been rough even for them. He wondered what had put her in the mood to leap on him that way, as it was the last thing he had expected. He wouldn't complain, not at all, but he did wonder. He wondered where she'd been the night before, as well; he knew very well now that there had been no dinner with Charlotte.
"Yeah," she breathed, and actually meant it. Yes, there were going to be bruises, and she was going to be sore, but she was almost looking forward to them. As long as she could focus on those, she didn't have to thin about what had happened the previous night. "You?" She'd inflicted some damage of her own, after all, most notably when she'd clawed her way up his back at one point.
"'m fine." He could feel the sting on his back, but he didn't mind it. Physical pain was so far from his mind that her nails hardly registered. If anything, he'd enjoyed it. A long pause, and he kissed her bare shoulder. He let it linger there, and finally he asked the first of a lot of questions. "Ye didn' have dinner with yer sister," he said quietly, and it wasn't a question. He knew, because he'd overheard Charlotte Davis in the bookshop. The question was implied - why did she lie about it?
She froze. How did he know? She'd chosen her sister as an excuse because she knew that there couldn't be any way that their paths would cross. She thought quickly. Normally she was a very good liar, but her emotions were still raw and her defenses were down. The answer came a beat too late. "I didn't feel well so I cancelled." And then, to direct the questions away from her, she asked, "How'd you know?"
"Saw yer sister in the bookshop," he replied. Seamus wanted to believe her. He wasn't sure if he did or not, but he wanted to. So much else was wrong - did that have to be wrong too? Something was off, though - and it might have had something to do with why she'd walked in and jumped him. "What had ye so wound up t'night?" he asked.
Bookshop. Yes, Charlotte did have an unfortunate affection for reading. Scarcely had Tracey finished cursing her sister for that, though, did Seamus pose his next question. It was a legitimate question. A reasonable question. Anyone would have asked the same; after all, she wondered why he was so on edge as well. But since it came so quickly after his revelation that he'd caught her out in a lie, Tracey was starting to feel like she was being interrogated. "Haven't seen you in days," she said, and there was an edge to her tone. "Of course I was wound up. Why were you?"
"A friend called last night," he quietly answered. Seamus tried to keep his tone neutral, but he was obviously troubled. He had never been good at hiding his emotions. "Her aunt ran the orphanage that got attacked. I hardly knew what was goin' on, but I got there fast as I could...so we were the first ones on the scene. Saw the Dark Mark go up in the sky...an' then we went inside, an' those kids..." And that was where it got harder to talk. Seamus held his breath for a moment, because he had to pause or he'd never be able to continue. Slowly, he released it. "It's all I've been thinkin' of since. 'S got me all off-kilter, an' I reckon this did better than pacing."
Shite. He'd been at the orphanage. He'd seen the Dark Mark. He'd seen the bodies of the children that her unwanted house guests had ripped apart: children that Tracey didn't know, but whose blood stained her carpet. She felt ill. And, after she tore out of his arms and raced to the loo, she was.
Seamus was surprised by her abrupt departure. He got out of bed, pulled his shorts on, and winced when he heard her throw up. That was his fault, he figured; a dozen dead children weren't exactly standard pillow-talk. He waited, giving her a moment before saying anything to her. "'M sorry, Tracey - I shouldn've said all that."
No, he shouldn't have, because she'd come here to forget, not have it made even more real in her mind. He couldn't have known that, of course, and she could hardly tell him, but she couldn't help but resent him for it. He was supposed be her escape from all that, and now she didn't even have that. It figured, too, that while he'd been off rescuing orphaned children, she'd been harbouring their killers. It just threw into sharp relief how different their worlds were, and how right she'd been not to tell him the truth behind why she'd been unable to see him last night. He never would have understood.
She slowly pushed herself up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I'm going to go."
Seamus sighed, pushing his fingers back through his hair. "Look, Tracey...I'm sorry," he said. "I just..." Christ. Now that he'd had a taste of company, he didn't really want to be left to his own thoughts again. The distraction had been pleasant, and he felt bad for upsetting her too. "I won' mention it again."
"Will you just...stop saying you're sorry?" Tracey snapped. Because really, he had nothing to be sorry for, did he? He was off playing hero all night. And if he was going to keep being all noble and kind about hurting her feelings or whatever it was he thought he was apologizing for, she may have to hit him.
She quickly ran her hands under the tap, refusing to look at him. "Look, talk about it all you want. I don't care. I just have to go."
Seamus was getting turned all topsy-turvy, with no idea just what the hell was going on. She wasn't reacting like she was upset by what he was talking about - if anything she just seemed generally pissed off at him. "What the fuck, Tracey?" he asked, his frayed nerves getting more and more ground down. "I mention this, ye go throw up, I tried to apologize, an' then ye get mad at me for apologizing? What the fuck is it I'm s'posed to do?"
"Stop talking about it!" she burst out. She rinsed out her mouth with more vigour than necessary, then stalked past him to return to the bedroom, where she went in search of her robes. "Stop talking about dead children. Stop apologizing for talking about dead children. Stop asking me why I'm mad at you for apologizing for talking about dead children. I don't want to hear about dead children, all right? I don't want to hear about them being dead. I don't want to hear about the werewolves that made them dead. Just stop it."
"Fine!" he snapped back. "I said I wouldn'! Just--"
Seamus stopped, and he looked at her with a steady suspicion. He hadn't processed it all at once, but there it was, at the very end of her tirade. That part finally caught up, and it was giving him a whole new set of reasons why she might be so upset. "I didn' say anything about werewolves," he said evenly. "How'd ye know that?"
Oh. Fucking. Shit. Tracey froze in the middle of putting her robes back on. Then, with slow deliberation, she carefully finished the job. Where was her wand? It'd been flung off somewhere in the kitchen. Shit. "Newspaper," she said in a low voice, and carefully edged her way toward the kitchen, because she hadn't actually read the paper and had no idea if the attack had been covered at all.
"Which paper?" he asked furiously.
"The Prophet!" she snapped back.
He stepped directly in front of her, blocking her way through the door. "It wasn' in the Prophet," he corrected her through a clenched jaw. "They claimed it was an unregistered animagus. Now how in the fuck d'ye know about any o' that?"
Shitshitshit. She was trapped, and she couldn't get out of there without a wand, and there was no way she was going to be able to get around him without outright attacking him, and even then she'd have to take him by surprise if she was going to be able to overcome his strength. She really didn't want it to come to that, so she thought quickly. "Death Eaters love to use werewolves, don't they?"
"I didn' say anything that'd make ye think werewolves." He wasn't believing a word of it now, and he didn't think she'd called off dinner with her sister because she wasn't feeling well. Judging by the way she'd thrown up as soon as he mentioned the attack, he didn't think she was part of it...but she knew something. Before or after, she knew something. Seamus stayed there between her and the door - she wasn't going anywhere until he had some answers. "There's no reason ye'd go to that unless ye had word from somewhere. So who the fuck've ye been talkin' to, an' when?"
Tracey started pacing now, like a caged animal trying to find some sort of an escape. It was clear that Finnigan wasn't going to be satisfied unless she told him something he could believe, but she was running out of lies, and she couldn't very well tell him the truth. To do so would be to admit her guilt as an accomplice, and once she did that he was liable to whisk her off to the authorities. The only thing she could think of now was to tell him just enough truth to make it sound real, and make him angry enough that he didn't think too much about it.
"There's a lot of talk about these things, all right?" she said finally. "You know, among the right people. They have a lot of interest in what's going on, and I hear things -- at parties, at Knockturn, from friends. Everyone knows there were werewolves involved."
"Oh, well that is just fuckin' brilliant!" He snapped back at her. "The Right People. The ones who sit an' listen wi' lots o' polite interest to a polite discussion o' killin' a dozen or so kids. An' for what? 'cause they had the misfortune to be born Muggles? The fuck did those kids ever do to anybody, Tracey?"
Tracey didn't want to fight about this. She didn't want to think about dead kids or the way she had to scrub their blood off her walls. But Finnigan was in it for a fight, and she was going to give it to him if it meant that it would keep her out of Azkaban. Even if it also meant the end of them. "Well, I'm really sorry about the kids," she sneered in a way that quite clearly said that she wasn't. "But sometimes that sort of thing has to happen. Ask your precious Aurors how many people they've killed over the course of their duty."
Seamus was looking at her as though she'd just turned into a werewolf before his very eyes, like she'd become a creature he didn't even recognize. "If ye think killin' people who're breakin' the law - which happens damn rarely - an' mutilating an orphanage are the same thing, ye're out o' yer fuckin' mind!" he shouted. He'd come directly to her now, and in his fury he grabbed her shoulders, because he wasn't letting her out until he'd said his piece. The shout was gone now, replace with a low, dangerous whisper. "Children, Tracey. Children who never hurt anybody, who didn' even know what a wizard was, who thought werewolves were imaginary. They weren't anywhere in this fight, but yer friends took 'em in the middle o' playin' games an' doin' whatever kids do, an' they tore 'em to pieces, Tracey. Arms thrown to one side o' the room an' legs to the other. Throats ripped out. Bodies ripped in half. Blood everywhere, an' bones an' muscles an' bits o' skin an' cold, dead eyes starin' at me from every corner. That's what I saw yesterday night. An' ye're gonna tell me that was somebody's duty? That wasn' a battle, it was a massacre. Of children. There's nothin' in the world excuses that."
Tracey tried to knock his hands away and when that didn't work, she tried to squirm out of his grasp. She didn't want to listen to what he was saying; she couldn't stand to. It had been bad enough the first time around, when Walden had described in loving detail how Greyback and the others had ripped apart the children, while Greyback himself eyed her as if he'd like one more go at it. It wasn't any better this time around, and this time no one was expecting her to simply nod and smile. As brutally difficult as she'd found that, coming up with a response as Finnigan seemed to want was even harder.
"Stop it, just stop it," she hissed. When she couldn't manage to free herself, she struck out at him. "I don't want to hear it."
"Yeah, well I didn' wanna see it!" Seamus snarled. He didn't let her go yet, in spite of her fight. If anything, it just made him hold on tighter. He wanted her to feel it, to know how they'd suffered. He wanted to hurt her, and he wanted her to change her mind because he didn't want to have been sleeping with a monster. He could live with a spoiled, ignorant girl who'd never had to consider such things. He couldn't live with someone who'd considered it and just didn't care. "Think about that next time ye're at one o' yer fancy parties an' hear somebody havin' a nice chat about how they're dealin' wi' those horrible Muggles that had the gall to be born on the same earth as them. Think about a room full o' blood an' body parts from torn-apart children, an' decide if ye still think those're The Right People. An' if ye do, an' ye still think so, then don' bother comin' back here."
And finally, he let her go, taking his hands off her as suddenly as if her skin had burned him. He stopped just short of shoving her, carefully reining in the anger that had turned his face pale white because he was not his father, and he would never hurt a woman who wasn't trying to kill him. He wouldn't let himself become that, no matter how furious he was.
She'd cried out when his hands tightened painfully on her shoulders and, for the first time, she was a little afraid of him. She never had been, not even when he'd been in a towering rage and shouting at her for all that he was worth; not even when he'd knocked over Andrew with little provocation. But having just passed several days when fear was her main companion, and all that rage was directed at her as if she'd been the one who'd ripped apart those kids, she was struck by the realisation that she'd just tapped into a part of him that she never knew existed.
When he released her, she stumbled back a step, but she didn't lift her hands to rub at her sore shoulders. She didn't want to let him know that it'd hurt. At this point, she just wanted to hurt him for making her feel scared again, if only for a moment. "Well, I wasn't planning on it anyway. All that lovey-dovey let-me-introduce-you-to-my-friends sentimental rubbish was getting boring."
It stung more than he wanted to admit. Yes, he'd wanted to introduce her to his friends. He'd liked her. He'd cared about her. And now it turned out that she was exactly what he'd always thought she was in school: a spoiled bitch like all the others.
"Yeah, what the fuck was I thinkin'?" There was a short bark of a laugh, containing no humor at all. "That I might be somethin' besides a cheap fuck to ye? That ye might give a damn about anything in the world that doesn' directly an' immediately affect ye? Obviously I was havin' a moment o' temporary insanity, prob'ly brought on by the fact that the sex was undeniably great. D'yer friends have that much pent-up energy, too? Now that I know ye pretty princess types would actually rather be treated like objects than human beings, I'd know better than to get attached. I should see what Daphne's doin' this week."
For all the anger Tracey had directed at him, she hadn't lost any of her desire for him. Even now, she wanted to push him back onto the bed and finish the fight in a whole other way. But when he brought up her friends, when he brought up the idea of going to Daphne, she launched herself at him with fingers curled into claws that she aimed for his eyes. "Touch Daphne and I'll rip you apart," she snarled. "Touch another girl and I'll kill you both."
Seamus caught her wrists and ducked, and the bastard laughed at her. "Bored, hm?" He gave her a knowing smirk, despite all the ire behind it. He snorted and released her arms sharply as he stepped back. "Ye're not bored, ye just can't handle the fact that anybody might not want ye."
There he went, laughing at her again. It was infuriating, and she was glad, because at least she could do something about this. "Plenty of men want me," she snapped. "Your best friend Thomas spent most of Potions looking down the front of my robes. Maybe I'll give him a go while I'm in the mood for slumming. Find out if what the girls say about him is true."
"Try it if ye like," Seamus replied with an indifference he didn't feel. The idea of her with Dean (or with anybody else for that matter) made him feel positively ill, no matter what had passed between them this night. He still wanted her, and he hated himself for it. It was only the firm knowledge that his best friend would never cross that line that enabled him to feign a lack of caring. "Dean'd never go there. Neither'd any o' the rest o' my friends, once they knew ye were someone who'd sit back an' not give a fuck about an orphanage full of children being murdered. I'm afraid ye already found the only one of us who was fool enough to give ye the benefit o' the doubt."
"Won't he?" Tracey's eyes glittered with active malice. "I'm sure they would have thought the same about you, too. Maybe he'll take me to your next performance." And that would have been the perfect exit line. She was dressed, he was out of her way; all she had to do was push past him, grab her wand from wherever she'd tossed it when she'd jumped on him, and Apparate out. But that would be the last time she'd ever set foot in this flat, and as much as she hated its tiny size, mismatched furniture, and awful drapes, she'd been getting comfortable here. She'd actually started to feel safe here, because Salazar knew her own flat wasn't safe anymore. And it was going to be the last time she talked to Finnigan. Even shouting at each other as they were now, she wasn't quite ready to leave just yet. So while she did push past him, she didn't look for her wand with as much speed as she could have.
He snorted with disbelief. "It'd be a cold day in Hell before Dean'd go after a spoiled, selfish harpy like ye," Seamus scoffed. "He's never had the likin' for the really mad ones like I did. An' even if he did, there're these concepts called honor an' friendship that he respects. They involve carin' about people besides yerself, though, so obviously not yer kind o' thing."
He stood with his arms crossed, watching her search for her wand. He knew what she was looking for, and he even remembered seeing her let it fly in the living room on her way to meet him in the kitchen. But if he was fighting with her, he didn't have to quite let go of her yet - so he didn't tell her, and he kept up the argument no matter how much her suggestions wounded.
"Then it's his loss, isn't it?" But for once, Tracey wasn't upset at the idea that a man - any man - might not want her. She was scared and hurt and furious at so many things at the moment that she simply didn't have room for anything else. Where was her wand? She hadn't wanted to find it quickly, but now she was starting to think she wasn't going to find it at all. She supposed that she could always storm out the door if she really wanted to leave; she could get another wand if she really wanted to. But after realising that Walden had found out where she'd lived probably by following her, she didn't want to be seen going in and out of anywhere. As furious as she was with Finnigan at the moment, she didn't want a werewolf showing up here. Which was a clear indication that she did think about other people besides herself, but she wasn't about to admit that to him right now. Probably not ever. Because they would probably not talk again, ever.
She'd best get it all out of her system now, then. "You liked it when I act like a harpy."
The woman just didn't make any damn sense, Seamus was concluding. She had the obvious physical reaction of being sick when he barely mentioned what happened at the orphanage, and she couldn't stand to hear him describe it, but she tried to rationalize it as a reasonable act of war. She told him she was bored with him, but the slightest notion of him with someone else sent her into one of her usual jealous rages. Was she actually evil, or was she merely mentally unbalanced? He couldn't even tell anymore. For all he knew, she was both.
"Yeah, I did," he agreed. "I liked how ye'd argue with me, an' tear up my back wi' yer nails, an' make demands, an' act like a mad banshee when the jealousy got to ye. An' if not for the fact that ye just finished tryin' to justify the murder of a bunch of orphans, I'd prob'ly take yer harpy self back an' like it some more. But a man's got to draw a line somewhere, an' there's mine."
And there it was. Because even after he'd called her a harpy and a mad banshee and made her feel for a split second that he might actually hurt her, she wanted him to take her back. Whatever she'd thought when she first went into this relationship, however short she thought it was going to be, she wasn't finished with it, and she was getting the feeling that it would have been a long, long time before she was. But whether she was finished or not didn't matter now: it was finished, and that was that. Because if he drew the line at trying to justify the murder of orphans, what would he think about harbouring the people who had killed them?
She could see her wand now, lying by the leg of the couch where he'd serenaded her after she'd returned from Italy. His words had drained the anger and fury from her, and now she just felt numb. She went over to pick up her wand, and as she straightened, she distantly said the words that she was sure would put the death knell on any future they could ever have together, and a sure guarantee that he would never ask her any more questions ever again. "They're just muggles."
His eyes closed, as if she'd said something so horrible that he couldn't even stand to look at her anymore. The hot, spitting anger had been kicked out from under him, leaving nothing but an empty horror and disappointment. A cold, queasy feeling was left in his stomach, as he finally and truly realized that he'd been halfway in love with a true monster as bad as the ones who'd ruled Hogwarts in his seventh year. It didn't matter that she hadn't done it; condoning it was enough.
Seamus's voice came out quiet and chilled, and still he didn't look at her.
"Get the fuck out. An' don't come back."
Tracey had no blistering retort. She had no parting shot, no words to defend herself, no last insult to give. She just took one long, last look at him, and Apparated out. That was how she remembered him, hours/days later, in the midst of a perpetual alcoholic fog: tired; drained; empty; with eyes squeezed shut so he wouldn't have to look at her.