RP Log: Seamus and Astoria, EL AU Characters: Seamus Finnigan and Astoria Greengrass Universe: EL AU Setting: Seamus's flat, middle of the afternoon. Summary: Astoria comes in from a failed visit to her older brother in Azkaban, and it turns into a horrible and brutal argument and breakup. OUCH. Rating: Hard R for language and sexual references.
It was raining -- no, rain didn't quite properly describe the weather pattern over London at the moment. 'Pouring' might be a better description; 'a deluge' was even better. The street in front of Seamus's flat had all but emptied: everyone had run for shelter the moment the sky opened up, and here and there a misfortunate soul or two ran from building to building, their arms over their heads in a futile attempt to cover themselves. Rainwater sluiced off the sides of the gutters, too heavy to be properly contained. And in the middle of this, a thin blonde woman with her hair plastered over her face and a crumpled paper box that was quickly melting into nothingness buzzed Seamus Finnigan's flat.
A quick look told him who it was: Astoria, rather unexpectedly. Seamus gave the flick of his wand that would allow her in, wondering what she was doing out in the rain with a box and no coat or umbrella. He supposed he would find out soon enough, and went to get a towel so she could dry off when she came in.
Her teeth were chattering by the time she came in, but she didn't seem to notice that -- nor the water that she was dripping onto his foyer. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose was brilliantly scarlet in contrast to her pale face, but as usual, Astoria Greengrass managed to make that a fashion statement. "I didn't want to go home," she said, in response to his questioning look. Her voice cracked.
All right, now he was worried. "C'mon, let's get ye dried off," he said quietly, wrapping the towel around her shoulders. "What's the matter, love?" He didn't add "you look a complete mess", even though she did. Truth was, he'd never seen her like this. Astoria never left her house without every hair in place, so far as he could tell. And what could be so bad that she wouldn't want to go home? The water in the foyer could wait - right now, he just wanted to get her warmed up and find out why she was such a wreck.
She followed him like a lost little girl, still clutching onto the rapidly disintegrating box. Through the holes that had formed from exposure to the rain, brightly coloured icing peeked out. Some smeared onto her fingers; she didn't seem to notice. "It's Jonathan's birthday," she told him, as if that explained everything. "I ma--I bought him a cake."
Seamus led her back to his bedroom, trying to follow along as best he could. So far, he wasn't quite keeping up. He knew a bit about her brother -- that he had been a Death Eater, that he was in Azkaban -- but that was about it. As far as he knew, even evil bastards liked cake. And beyond that, this was simply not an Astoria he was familiar with. Usually she seemed so sure of herself, and now she looked as if she was simply following wherever her feet took her.
Carefully, Seamus reached out to take the cake from her. With the way she was holding it, though, he wasn't sure she'd let him. "Let's set it over here for a bit while ye change, eh?" he suggested.
She resisted him briefly when he tried to take the cake away from her, but released it before she had to use any great effort to keep it. "Yeah," she said dully. What he must think of her now, so lost and pathetic. But she'd been telling the truth when she said she hadn't wanted to go home. Even opening herself up to him like this was preferably to being around Daphne in her current state.
She was dressed in an outfit that was skimpy even for her: a low-cut neckline that left nothing to the imagination, and a hemline that would have gotten her arrested if she'd even bent over slightly. The rain had plastered it to her body, and now it squelched as she peeled herself out of it, shivering.
Seamus set the cake on the dresser as she got out of the soaking wet clothes. He had to wonder why she'd gone for that particular look on a visit to her brother. Not exactly usual, that. Those questions could wait a bit, though. He had other, more important ones.
"So...what happened?" Seamus asked. He went to the closet as he waited for her answer, and though he knew some of her things had taken up residence in his flat, he got one of his old flannel shirts for her. It was a warm and comfy sort of garment, and seemed like perhaps what she needed. (And he couldn't deny that her legs would look incredible in it.)
Only then did she notice that her hands were covered in wet icing, and she absently wiped them on her wet dress before patting herself dry and slipping into his offered shirt. It smelled like him; instantly, she felt some of her tension fade away. Curling up in it with the collar pulled up over her nose, she took a seat on the edge of the bed. "I went to visit him," she said, after a moment. The words were muffled through the flannel.
"An' then...?" he asked gently. Apparently getting the whole story out of her was going to require a bit of coaxing. Seamus sat beside her. Ordinarily, the way she was hiding in the shirt would make him laugh. Now, he stayed quite serious. She was too upset to cause any mirth at the moment.
Ordinarily, she would have also been talking up a storm. Astoria had never been one to hide what she was feeling -- she liked to share it with the world whether the world liked it or not. This, however, was different. The emotions were too raw; they made her feel too vulnerable. And what she'd done to get to Azkaban wasn't anything she wanted Seamus to find out about. He was waiting, though, so gentle and patient that she felt fresh tears prick at the back of her eyes. Bloody hell, she had to get herself together.
She stood up abruptly on unsteady legs and let the collar fall into place. Already she felt a sense of loss just from that. "I need a drink. I finished up your gin."
"'s all right," he said. "I only keep it for visitors, anyway. Can't stand the shite, m'self. Whiskey, then?" he asked, standing along with her. As he saw her instability, Seamus put an arm around her shoulders. He wished she would just stay put - he'd gladly get her a drink, but he didn't really want to see her take a spill onto her nose.
The curiosity was beginning to kill him. What on earth could have happened to upset her this badly? Was it simply that they wouldn't let her back to see him? Had her brother lashed out at her? And what was he going to have to do to get her to calm down and talk?
She wrapped her arms tightly around him. Ther that was better. Later she was going to worry about how this might all look to him (and since when did she worry about what any man thought of her?) but for now, simply having him close helped. "Whiskey. Whatever." As long as she could get drunk from it, that would be fine.
She said no more as he led her out to the kitchen, and once she had that glass of whiskey in hand, she downed of it in one go. It didn't help.
She slammed the glass down on the counter. Whiskey splashed over her hand, and she lifted it to suck it off -- then started to scrub her mouth with the back of her hand, as if trying to scrape something off.
"I didn't even get to see him," she said abruptly. "I went all that way...I was planning it for so long. And I didn't even get to see him. I got there, and I got so scared I had to leave. I made him a cake, and he never got to see it. It's his birthday!"
Seamus had been her bartender before he was her boyfriend (or whatever he was to her), and he knew well enough to keep 'em coming. He wasn't one to tell anybody not to drink away her problems. There was a point at which he'd cut her off, but for the time being he'd let her drown her sorrows if that was what she wanted. He filled her glass again: straight whiskey, neat.
He was getting some idea of what had happened. Not much of one, but some. Went to see brother, couldn't get in, but... "Got scared?" Seamus asked.
Astoria took another drink, simply for something to do. "The Dementors," she said, her voice barely audible. "They...there were so many of them." She shivered again, this time in no due part to cold. "They just filled my head. I..." ...remembered the pain and betrayal of being sent away; felt the regrets of having lost her mother without having seen her one last time; thought about her brother, alone and tormented day after day in the prison of his own mind; thought about how much Daphne hated her for everything she'd done; imagined the woman who was going to replace her one day in Seamus's life. "I haven't seen Jonathan in four years. I was going to see him today."
Now it all made sense to Seamus. Dementors were something he'd learned more about than he ever would have liked during the war. Just coming within a few feet of one was a brutal experience.
Not knowing any other way to offer comfort, Seamus reached out to touch her. He brushed a wet strand of hair back from her face, and then followed to step closer and let his arm go around her shoulders. "I'm sorry, darlin'," he said softly. Sorry that she'd been scared, sorry that it didn't work out...sorry for all of it.
She set aside her drink then, and turned to bury her face against his chest. Oh Merlin, she hadn't felt this cherished, so protected, in so long. How was it that he could open up his halfblood mouth and speak in his Potato accent and make her feel like everything was going to be all right? How was it that he could make her, with one touch, with one look, feel like she could stay in his arms forever and actually be happy there?
It was all a lie, though. That they had even lasted this long was nothing short of a miracle, but she knew that it couldn't last much longer. She'd seen the looks his friends had given him when they'd first met her, looks of intermingled pity and horror. And why wouldn't they? They knew it as well as she did that she wasn't right for him. She drank too much and slagged around too much, wore inappropriate clothing, didn't care about other people, and hated the world. He was likely going to fall in love with someone else one day, a girl who laughed as much as he did, whose brother wasn't in Azkaban, who loved and was loved by her family, who rescued puppies (instead of kicked them, as Astoria did), who knew exactly what to do and say when he woke up from his nightmares, who would be happy to pop out millions of babies with golden hair and smiles that lit up the dreariest day. She hated this unknown witch already.
And she was going to hate it when he left, because she was so used to him now. She didn't wake up in strange beds anymore: she knew exactly where she was and where the lumps in the mattress were. She knew when he was going to be home and when he was going to be at work. She knew all the tics he took on (and vehemently denied) whenever a particularly bad singer got up on karaoke night. She could tell the difference between all his laughs, and she could forget all about a bad day just hearing him laugh. She was getting much too used to him, and this wouldn't do. She had to stop it before it got any worse.
She loosened her hold on him slightly and turned her head away so that her cheek was resting lightly on his chest. "Aren't you going to ask me how I managed to get myself a visit to Azkaban?"
Seamus had never had call to visit Azkaban. His friends all came down on the other side of the battle lines. He had no idea that there was anything special involved with visiting the prison. Somehow he'd imagined it was something to do with paperwork or waiting periods or at worst a strip-search. None of those seemed to be what she referred to, though.
"What d'ye mean?" he asked, his brow furrowing.
Yeah, and one day he was going to find a girl who didn't have to find below board ways of visiting Azkaban. She'd probably have a career putting people there. "You don't just waltz into the wizarding world's most protected prison, you know."
"I didn' figure," Seamus said, striving for patience in spite of his annoyance at her implication that he was an idiot. "So what'd ye do, then? Obviously ye feel like sharin'. So go on."
Probably some brilliant political move, he thought. Or she found the money to buy someone off. Or she was pleased with herself for outwitting somebody. If it would make her happier, Seamus would allow her to relate her triumph. He wouldn't even roll his eyes this time.
She pulled back, releasing her hold on him. Then, looking him straight in the eye, she said, "I found a guard. I took him to the back of the office, and I blew him."
And then, Seamus was silent.
A furious stream of thoughts flew through his mind. Shock, anger, jealousy, hurt...all of them swirled about and washed over him while he hunted for the response that made sense. But there wasn't a response that made sense, was there? He had let her into his life, and whether he admitted it or not into his heart. He had argued with her, shagged her senseless, and spent nights with his arms wrapped around her. He had let her smiles make him happy, and this very night, when she had come in looking like a drowned rat, he had been the picture of concern. He had wanted to make her feel better. So then she had told him this, apparently with no purpose but to hurt him.
His expression turned to stone as he stared at her, and the color drained from his face. "What'n the fuck's wrong wi' ye, Astoria?" he growled at her.
The look on his face, and the knowledge that it was she who had put it there, was almost enough to make her throw herself at his feet and beg his forgiveness. But Astoria Greengrass didn't beg. Astoria Greengrass was a colossal fuckup, and it was about time he faced that fact. "What, did you think that this whole 'nobody but you, nobody but me' business was going to last?" Her laugh was nothing like his, all wild and bitter. "You always knew I was just a cheap slag, Potato Man. That's why you brought me home in the first place, wasn't it? That's why you kept bringing me home and why you kept me around. Why are you so surprised?"
"'Cause that's not why I kept bringin' ye home!" he snapped back furiously. "I got to where I actually cared about ye! An' to be even more of a damned fool about it, I kidded meself ye felt the same. But clearly I was wrong - ye're not just a slut, ye're a fuckin' sadist." Seamus laughed again then, but it wasn't at all like the usual one. This laugh was bitter, a short bark without a trace of humour in it. "Jaysus, ye must've been havin' a fine time laughin' at me, huh? Did ye tell all yer friends how ye had this Mudblood Mick bartender pantin' after ye an' thinkin' ye actually gave a damn? Daphne enjoyed the hell out o' that, I'm sure; we never did get along in school. Or did ye take it more as the "I bagged a War Hero Gryffindor who's prob'ly hatin' himself for wantin' a spoiled lil' Slytherin" thing? I can see the fun for ye in either one. Which way were ye goin', sweetheart? I'm curious."
Nothing had stung like this in years. Seamus hadn't felt so profoundly hurt and disappointed since he was fourteen and discovered that his father wasn't misunderstood but in fact just a drunken waste of space. He had been careful about who he put his faith in since then...but apparently not quite careful enough, because here he was with his heart breaking all over again. That wasn't an emotion Astoria should have been able to raise in him, but like it or not she had. He'd made the extremely foolish mistake of caring.
She wanted to clap her hands over her ears and shut out the hurt and anger in his voice. It was nothing like that, what he'd accused her off. She'd never told any of her friends about him, least of all Daphne. At first it was because she'd been ashamed of him, but then she'd rather gotten to like the idea that he was solely hers and that she didn't have to share him with anyone. Not that she could tell him any of this. Besides, she reasoned to herself as her natural instinct to find some justification for her behaviour kicked in, it was just like a Gryffindor to get all self-righteously angry and take the moral high ground. Whatever he said -- whatever he made himself believe -- he didn't care. How could he, when there was nothing to care about?
She hurled the refilled glass of whiskey at him. "Don't lie!" she screeched. "The only thing you care about is whether you have a willing hole for the night. Is that what you tell your friends? I saw the way they looked at me. They must have thought you were crazy to be with me. What did you tell them? 'Yeah, she's trash but get her on her knees behind the bar and she gives fantastic head'?" That was precisely why she always made plans whenever he planned to have friends over. It'd been bad enough to be under the scrutiny of that black bloke and the blonde, who'd clearly thought her unworthy when they were the ones who were socially unacceptable.
"No, I fucking didn't!" he snarled, stomping toward her in spite of her throwing the whiskey at him. He seemed oblivious to the fact that his shirt was soaked in it. The blue heat of anger had taken over entirely. "I never thought o' ye that way! I never thought o' ANY woman that way! No," and there was that shaky, miserable laugh again, "I was enough of an idiot to actually defend ye. I told them that if they just gave ye a chance, they'd see ye were better'n what they thought. I said ye weren't like the others, that ye were smart an' funny an' that it might be fucked up but ye made me happy, an' that they were just gonna have to get used to the idea. But I reckon I was wrong, wasn' I? Lavender'll have a great I Told Ye So for this one!'
By now the tears had spilt over; they streaked their way down Astoria's face, but she paid them no heed other than to impatiently swipe them out of her eyes. As much as it hurt her, she wanted to look at him as long as she could, because the way things were going now, she may never have a chance to again. Merlin, he was glorious in his rage. Most men would have backed down by now, either cowered or sent her off, but he was giving as good as he got, and she knew that however empty and awful she was feeling now, it was only going to get worse when she didn't even have his hurt and disappointed fury towering over her.
"Yeah, maybe you were wrong!" she shouted. She got to her feet now, her hands balled up at her sides. "Maybe you can tell Lavender that you were stupid and wrong, and she'll say I Told You So and then properly comfort you! She's more your type, isn't she? I bet you don't have to defend her to your friends! I bet she fought right by your side during the war! I bet she knows exactly what to do when you've got a nightmare! Why don't you go to her, then, and you'll never have to make excuses for me again!"
Another step, and then he really was towering over her, standing in her space close enough to kiss her. "Ye really think it's that easy?" Seamus asked. His voice had gone painfully quiet, a low growl. "Maybe it's that simple for somebody'll that'll blow a prison guard in the back of an office, but I don' get to walk away without a care. See, I made the mistake ye were too smart for - I let ye matter to me. So go on then, an' add me to yer wall o' trophies. Ye won."
How had he been so completely wrong about her? Christ, she put on a good act. All those pretty smiles and demands, the way she'd gone charging at Katie in perfect imitation of a jealous rage...she should have gone into the theater, with the ability to give a performance like that. And all for what? Just to show up with her sad looks and make him actually feel a twinge of pity for her with her Death Eater brother, so then she could yank the rug out from under him? The idea of such deliberate callousness was beyond anything he could fathom, even after seeing precisely how soulless people could be. It was a more intimate kind of cruelty than a simple Cruciatus...and to his mind, it hurt more.
She could have withstood his continued anger. If he'd kept yelling, she could have yelled right back and thrown things at him and hit him and kick him, and maybe he'd given her a good smack too -- even he'd never raised his hand in anger against her despite all her abuse of him -- and they could have kept fighting and she could have stormed out of his flat, and everything would have been so civil.
But then he had to get all close and quiet...and defeated, and all of a sudden Astoria was filled with an emotion that she'd never had much cause to feel before: remorse. If she'd wanted to get out of this arrangement, if she'd wanted to protect herself from future hurt, she hadn't had to go about it the way she did. Yes, at first she wanted to hurt him too, to make him share the pain that she went through when the Dementors had filled her head with visions of him and some other faceless witch frolicking around flower fields with puppies and babies dancing around their feet, but now that she'd drawn it out of him more successfully than she thought she would, she was hit with the realisation that she didn't want him to be hurt -- not by anyone or anything, and certainly not by her. It was a completely foreign feeling and all the more frightening for it, but standing there watching his entire body slump in defeat, seeing the pain in his eyes, hurt her more than even the thought of losing him did.
She unballed her hands, and all of a sudden her anger left her; she couldn't even use that to keep her going anymore. "It was never like that, Seamus," she whispered brokenly. "You were never a trophy."
"Then what the fuck was I?" Seamus asked. He was angry again, but it was a quieter, restrained kind of fury. "A decent lay? Stress relief? Somebody new to use for a fuck or pissin' off yer sister? A bit o' variety to break up the string of Appropriate fellas ye shagged? What was the fuckin' point?"
He didn't know why he felt compelled to keep torturing himself by asking questions. Perhaps he thought if he got all the pain out now, when she finally did walk out the door it wouldn't be as bad. He at least wouldn't have anything left to burn himself with. It would all be settled, and there had to be some comfort in that.
Or maybe it was that the sudden change in her demeanor attracted his attention. Apparently she was capable of guilt or something like it, and he wanted to make sure she felt as much of it as possible. If she could do this to him, then she could damn well know exactly what she'd done. Seamus knew he was going to be up at night thinking on it, and he wanted her to be too.
She flinched at each option he put forth, as if each were a physical blow. It was true - he'd been a good lay (fantastic, really), stress relief, a novelty, a tool to piss off her sister, a bit of variety from the usual men she picked up. He was all of that. But somewhere along the way, it'd become more: she'd started to care too, and that was what the problem was.
"Yes, of course you were all that." She wanted to snap at him, wanted to match his renewed fury, but she couldn't manage to dredge up anything. This was worse than being told that she had to go to Beauxbatons, because then she knew that her brother and her mother would at least visit. There would be no visits between her and Seamus anymore.
She wiped the fresh sheen of tears from her face again. "You were--" You were my friend, possibly my best friend. "Well, that's it, isn't it? There is no point. This isn't going anywhere. How could it? We were just wasting time, having fun, when you could be off finding the girl of your dreams or something so you can a future with her."
"Oh, don't ye dare go n' turn this around like it's my fault!" Seamus snapped, refusing to let himself be moved by her tears. She'd gotten him with that one already today, and he wouldn't let himself be fooled by it twice. "What're ye tryin' to say? Ye had to fuck around on me with a stranger, then come back here an' cry on me shoulder before ye told me about it, 'cause I should be off findin' somebody else? Is that what ye were thinkin' when ye had his cock in yer mouth, Tori? That this was for my own good? That's the most fucked up, twisted, nonsensical logic I've ever heard in me whole damn life."
Being angry was easier than being hurt, so Seamus tried to hold on to it. He had to be as awful to her as he could manage, even if it made him feel even worse about himself. Otherwise he'd think of how he'd considered that maybe they did have a future, and then he'd be forced to remember what an idiot he was for thinking so. After all, when it came down to it she was still society princess Astoria Greengrass, and he was still dirt poor bartender Seamus Finnigan. He should have known better than to think he was anything more than a convenience to her...so why was she acting like it was the other way around? It wasn't fair, trying to make him feel guilty for what she'd done.
"No! It's not-- Seamus, I didn't want to." The guard had been rough and smelly, and she'd never felt so cheap in her life, but even she knew that at this point it was best to leave that out of things. "It's just that I wanted to see Jonathan so badly. I kept thinking of him all alone and scared in his cell, and I never even had a chance to say goodbye, and I just thought that if he could see me, that might be enough to keep him sane for just a little longer if he hasn't already been driven mad. I couldn't think of anything else I could do to get them to let me see him. Daphne's already tried politics and bribes, and I...I'm not good at anything else. I'm so sorry." The words were flying out her so quickly now that she didn't realise that she'd actually apologised for once and actually meant it. "I shouldn't have told you, but you know what? I am a fuck up, and I am twisted, and this is never going to work out, and we might as well just...just..."
"What ye should've told me was that ye wanted to see yer brother!" Seamus informed her, cutting her off with sharp exasperation. "For Christ's sake, d'ye people never remember that our side won? If ye wanted to get into Azkaban to see somebody, Harry Potter or Ron Weasley's name'll get ye in damn near anyplace ye wanna go! Either one of 'em still owes me a favor or two. I would've helped." He was quieting again, the anger beginning to fall to sadness once more. "There was no need to do what ye did, no more'n there was any need for ye to tell me about it, unless ye just deliberately wanted to make my heart break a bit."
Part of him registered her claim that she wasn't good at anything else. That part wanted to hold her and tell her it wasn't true, that she was good for so much more. It wanted to tell her she was sweet in her own way, and she was funny, and she was damn smart too, and that anyone who said otherwise was a liar or a fool. But she'd given the part that was lulled to sleep by the sound of her breathing such a good kick that it was too frightened to get up again. It stayed quiet, buried under the pain and furor.
"Maybe I did." The admission was flat. She sat back down on the chair again, wishing that she hadn't thrown her whiskey at him because she could have done with a really strong drink right about now. His solution to her problem, too, completely threw her. It made so much sense now that he put it out there like that. Of course she could have asked him. He threw Potter and Weasley's names around casually, not in the name-dropping way that so many of her acquaintances would have, but simply as a matter of fact. Of course he could have just asked them and all this would have been unnecessary, and she could have gone on pretending a bit longer, but it hadn't even occurred to her. Yes, she wasn't above seducing someone to get them to do what she wanted -- and hadn't she done just that today? -- but even with his nightmares, she didn't think of Seamus as a war hero whose side won a war that her family had lost. She hadn't thought about what he could do for her in a long time now. He was just her Potato Man, and for months that had been enough. Besides, she'd been so used to fending for herself for so long now that it hadn't even occurred to her to share her problem with someone else and work through it together. "I didn't even think of asking you."
""Fuck, Astoria...ye used me for everything else. Why not this?" he replied bitterly. "I know. Why would ye? It's so much more dramatic this way, after all!" He answered his own question as cruelly as possible. She'd never had a moment's respect for him, had she? Seamus realized then, perhaps more than before, that he really hadn't meant anything to her. Jesus, she'd never known him at all. She'd never bothered to.
That stubborn part of him cried out again, shouting from deep inside that she just hadn't understood. She was scared too, and maybe she had even more walls that he did. She'd never had people who really loved her, so how could she know how to love anybody else? He silenced it firmly, and kept his stony expression. Letting her in again would be the worst mistake he could possibly make, and he'd obviously made enough of those with her already.
"What?!" Now that was totally unfair. She'd used him at first, yes, but not any more than he'd used her! What else had she used him for? Rebellion? Well, all right, fine, but only at the beginning! Free drinks? Hell yes, but she could've gotten that from anywhere! Company? Sure, but there was nothing wrong with that! It was a totally unfair accusation, and she surged out of her chair again.
Right, fine. If he wanted to play it that way, so could she. In fact, she preferred it that way. It was much easier to deal with. A small voice of common sense pointed out to her that this probably was exactly what he was trying to do too, but as usual, she ignored it. "Well, it's not like I'm getting proper excitement anywhere else, am I?" she snarled.
Seamus snorted with disbelief. "Don' even try that one, girly," he scoffed. "Ye might've been fakin' everything else, but I know damn well ye weren't fakin' that, an' so d'you. Oh, no..." He was going to prove it to her, too. He took the few steps necessary to close the distance between them, his hand going to the back of her neck while the other grabbed her waist to pull her to him. "Ye might've just pretended to care about me," he murmured in her ear, "but wantin' me was real every single time. Ye were dripping wet every time I touched ye. The way ye begged an' pleaded an' kissed me like ye were starving, wrapped your legs around me an' screamed loud enough to wake the neighbors? I'm gonna remember that the rest o' me life, 'cause nobody's ever wanted me like that."
She wanted to simply stand there, stiff and unresponsive, because that would be a brilliant way to prove him wrong. But he wasn't, damn him. Already she was sinking into him, trying to get closer to him. All he had to do was touch her, and she'd be ready to go. Her hands drifted down to the waist of his jeans, slipping just under them and sliding along their edge. No, he was right: she did want him, with a hungry, violent passion that both scared and exhilirated her, and she never made any attempts to hide that. But just because he knew that didn't mean that he knew she was only like that for him.
She turned her head to whisper into his ear in turn, her words breathed hotly into his ear. "And no one ever will again. You know why? Because no one's as good as I am. I've had plenty of practice, you see. What makes you think you're the only one who makes me wet?"
The only sign of how badly her words scraped at him was the tightening of his grip on her neck and her waist. His fingertips dug in, turning white as he held her for what would certainly be the last time. "Then ye can find somebody else to do it for ye," Seamus replied, all soft and uncaring. "Obviously there's no shortage o' candidates for the position. See if any of 'em like bein' made a fool of better'n I did. 'cause I'm done, darlin'."
Why was it so hard to let her go? Seamus practically had to force himself to take his hands from her and step back. Even now he wanted her, wanted to show her that no, nobody else was ever going to make her feel like he did. He wanted to rail at her for her stupidity, to demand her apology and let her spend the rest of her life making it up to him. But that was a fool's game, and whatever Astoria thought, he was nobody's fool. He turned his back on her and fully expected that she'd saunter out without a care.
She closed her eyes briefly at the mockery of an endearment and almost cried out when he released her. As long as he'd been holding onto her, there had been a small, tiny, stupid little chance that she could still bring him around, that she could kiss him and make him think that he didn't need his stupid laughing bimbo who was going to give him millions of babies. A stupid chance, she knew, and not one she was willing to take (was she?) but a chance nonetheless. But there was none of that now: he'd let her go and even turned his back on her. The dismissal was clear.
Of course, Astoria had never been good at taking dismissals.
She flew at him and smacked the back of his head. "Don't turn your back on me, Potato Man!" she screeched. She thumped his back, kicked at the back of his foot, did anything she could to make him turn around to look at her again. "I'm not finished! Next time you stick your dick in a girl remember how good it felt to be with me. Remember how you'd get so hard you can't even manage two strokes before you come. Remember how you begged me to let you touch me. Remember how you almost cried that once. Remember how you're never going to forget me, because even when you're old and bald and surrounded by your stupid fat babies, you never will."
It took only the first touch to have him whirling around to shout back at her. The whole business was beginning to feel like a rollercoaster of sorrow and fury. Up and down, over and over, and they'd forgotten where the brakes were. The truth was, Seamus was no good at dismissals, either. He had always preferred to shout things out to a conclusion. The trouble was that no amount of shouting was going to bring the conclusion he wanted here.
"Who ever said that was the life I wanted?" Seamus barked at her. "Did ye ever fuckin' ask me? Quit fuckin' acting like I'm the one who wrecked this business. I was perfectly happy wakin' up next to a crazy harpy of a woman every day! I've never wanted kids an' picket fences! All I've ever wanted was to drink my whiskey, smoke my cigarettes, an' stay up all night to write whenever I fuckin' well felt like it. Ye fit into that just fine, up until the point where ye decided ye'd cheat on me an' come home to tell the whole story just to get a fuckin' rise out o' me!"
"How long would that have been just fine?" Astoria spat. "Until you want more than just whiskey and writing and cigarettes? Until you wake up one day and realise you have a wrinkly old hag beside you? Until you get tired of making excuses for me to your friends?" It was utterly cruel of him to put those images in her mind, of waking up next to each other every day, smoking and drinking whenever they wanted, him writing in his workroom while she brought him coffee, and seasons passing with them comfortably ensconsed in their own world. Hell, it was cruel of him to make her even want a future with him in the first place, because she'd never wanted that with anyone before. She knew that her beauty was going to fade and no one was going to want her then, not even bartending halfbloods who claimed to be perfectly happy with her now. Now. She wanted more from him than that, and it was all his fault.
"I don't know!" he roared back. "But ye never gave me a chance to find out!" Seamus stopped and shook his head, the volume dropping out from under his tone. "Everybody gets old, Tori. You, me, an' this mythical dream-girl ye've concocted, too. Everybody. Ye can't..."
He searched for the words, and it was one of the few times that he couldn't find the right ones. That was always what happened when it was really important. Words were even less trustworthy than people. Unlike with people, though, he could force the words to make do even when they weren't quite up to the task. "Ye can't live yer life based on someday. An' ye damn sure can't just fuck people over as spectacularly as possible just to make sure they never get the chance to do it to you. It's not fair an' it's not right. Fuck, if ye were that scared ye could've just dumped me. Ye didn' have to do it like this. It's just fuckin' sadistic."
"I know everybody gets old!" Astoria shouted back. "But not everyone--" gets unwanted. She snapped her mouth shut and crossed her arms over her chest. Over his warm flannel shirt. Her fingers dug in and entwined themselves into the material. When she spoke again, her voice had gone flat. "Anyway, I am sadistic. I thought you knew that."
A short, quiet laugh, and he pushed his fingers through his hair. It was a familiar gesture, the one that came out when he was worried or simply thinking too much. "Guess I never thought ye'd turn it on me quite like this," he said. Seamus forced a smile with his jaw clenched tight. "Ye give a really convincing performance - I especially liked the way ye balanced the brutal confidence with a touch o' vulnerability, disdain wi' jealousy...ye're an actress o' the first order. Either that, or I'm just as much an idiot as me Da used to tell me."
At the moment, he wasn't sure which it might be. Seamus had never thought himself stupid, but now he was beginning to wonder. Manufacturing a casual analysis of it all made him feel a little less so, though. He ought to take notes; it would be brilliant irony if this turned into a story that sold.
"Your father is a moron," Astoria said shortly. She didn't know the man beyond the little Seamus had told her, but that'd been enough. Besides, the thought of someone putting down Seamus like that made her all indignant. Only she was allowed to call her Potato Man an idiot.
Well. He wasn't going to be her Potato Man anymore, not after what she'd done. She supposed she couldn't blame him: if she'd found out someone had blown him in an office or anywhere, really, there would have been blood by now.
He was right, though: there was no need for her to have done it in the first place, and certainly no need for her to have told him, especially not like that -- no need except for her own instinctive desire to lash out. She supposed that was just another bit of proof that they wouldn't have lasted anyway, not when she turned his laughs bitter and strained.
There was nothing left to say now. She had no more anger left, and apparently neither did he. She slowly got to her feet and pushed the chair back into place, more to keep herself steady than to clean up after herself. "And you're not an idiot."
"Yeah...yeah, I am," he replied quietly. He looked down at the floor, as if he'd run out of energy for keeping his head up. "Otherwise, we wouldn' be here now. This would've stayed nothin' but sex, an' I wouldn' feel like killin' a man."
Seamus hadn't wanted to do violence in anger in a long time. He'd killed men in the war, but that was different. It was war. It was self-defense. But if that prison guard had been within his reach then, he would have calmly choked the life out of the man for touching her.
Dammit, he wasn't supposed to look so crushed. And she wasn't supposed to care that he looked so crushed. Astoria had never had to clean up after her own messes before. She'd created chaos and then she'd swanned off, and everyone else had to pick up the pieces. She should go now -- that would be easiest for both of them. He'd heal, eventually, and she...well, she'd get through. That's what she did. But for the life of her, she couldn't make herself leave. She just wanted to go to him and wrap her arms around him if he'd let her. "How could it be anything but sex?" she whispered. "We've never had anything else."
"Maybe ye didn'," he softly said, "but I did."
And that, Seamus knew, was all he could really say. She was so much more than she realized, but what did it matter? In all that, she still didn't care for him. Whether he wanted to or not, he was going to have to let her go. Then maybe he could try to put the pieces of his heart and life back together.
His head was still bent; maybe he wouldn't see her approach. Astoria moved carefully towards him anyway. The smart thing to do at the moment was just to leave. There was nothing she could do now to make it better for him, and she could only make things worse from here. Still, if this was going to be the end, she couldn't go without just one more touch.
Hesitantly, as if she were approaching a wild beast that might turn its teeth on her, she brushed her fingers across his shoulder.
Seamus looked up at the feeling of her touch, his head turning sharply to look at her. He didn't meet her gaze with anger, though; all that had drained out of him. All that was left now was a simple, honest anguish. "Goodbye, Tori," he said softly. And that, he supposed, was it. Now was the part where he forced himself to watch her walk away.
Altruism wasn't a trait that anyone would associate with any former Slytherin, least of all Astoria Greengrass, but as she dropped her hand, she could only acknowledge that her leaving at this point was better for him than for her. She wanted to stay; she wanted to kiss him fiercely and remind him how much he wanted her until he begged her to stay. But that wouldn't solve anything -- it really would just make it worse for him. So, taking one step and then another, she backed up until she was back in his room. Taking one last look around, she picked up her discarded dress and her discarded wand, and Apparated out of the flat.
His flannel shirt fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.