banner. (hulk) wrote in triumphic, @ 2014-04-06 20:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | !backstory, 1990 : 11, prewett fabian, prewett gideon |
BACKSTORY LOG: FABIAN PREWETT, GIDEON PREWETT
WHO: Fabian & Gideon Prewett
WHERE: The Burrow
WHEN: November 15th, 1990
WHAT: One of many awkward encounters (this is how the twins deal with each other now).
The floorboards in the hallway of Molly Weasley’s ramshackle home saw a near constant stream of feet: trainers and boots and work shoes and school shoes and thick socks and bare soles and -- very occasionally -- slippers. Guests came and went, enveloped into the winter warmth and summer cool of the house, the gaps between teenage occupations of the large kitchen regular enough to time a meal by. But there were loved who would never be able to enter the house again -- Arthur Weasley first and foremost among them, the biggest void and the reason it was primarily the older of Molly’s two brothers and only rarely her sons who ventured into the garage, still full of tools and muggle contraptions.
Fabian Prewett did not fall into that category of people who could never enter the house, but his presence there was no common thing; easier to spend time with the boys out of doors, to help his sister hold her family together at one remove (and he did do that, quietly, bills reduced to less than half before she even saw them, reserves steadily topped up before they could run dry, what material things the boys needed making their way to them through one roundabout way or another). And easier to avoid dinner when he worked every evening bar high days and holidays.
But one Sunday afternoon at half past four saw him slip into the hallway after a couple of knocks at the side door, toeing out of well-worn shoes before carrying a couple of heavy boxes through to the kitchen table.
The striking of a clock coincided with the click of the door as it swung shut; as the hand engraved with Fabian’s name struck home and none of the deeply ingrained wards planted around the house was set off, Gideon remained in no real rush to step out and greet his brother. Supper wouldn’t cook itself and laundry wouldn’t suddenly diminish without a person’s -- his -- input; with a roast in the oven and a small mountain of socks to get through spread across the generous kitchen table, Gideon remained where he was, planted on a stool, sorting by size, then by colour as he waited for Fabian’s footsteps to either fade or grow louder on his approach.
It was tempting to sing out don’t you have a show to prep for?, but he stifled it with a mouthful of lager, and continued with his sorting.
He’d never been a fan of such clocks, not the one upon his parents’ wall, and not the one on Molly’s, however useful they could sometimes be. Harmless enough day to day, but sometimes (in dangerous times and mundane ones) less than benign. Now though he merely suppressed a sigh as he pushed open the door to the kitchen and found himself pre-announced, his brother sitting at the table, applying himself to the tasks which quickly mounted in such a busy house; there was never, with Gideon the fixture which kept the home moving, a good time. And there was rarely a time, came a thought unbidden and unkind, that a bottle was absent from that brother’s hand.
The boxes were hefted onto the counter, a blunt thumbnail running under the tape holding the first closed and beginning, unbidden, to unpack the smaller boxes and packets within.
“Cheese.”
A brief upward glance allowed Gideon to make a quick assessment of his brother -- still in one piece, very good -- and once satisfied that Fabian Prewett was not circling the drain, he returned his attention -- seemingly -- to the task at hand. A pair of matching socks were rolled together, balled up, set aside.
It was an unspoken agreement between them, their assistance and support of Molly and her brood of red-headed children.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
The cheeses and what came out of that box with them were carried over, carefully enough, to the cool cupboard where such things were kept before the young man of the house found and devoured them, Fabian stacking them neatly before returning to the next box, and beginning the process without his announcement of content. Tall glass bottles came next, with heavy clinks: lemonade, orange juice, cordial.
The silence was stifling, not comfortable (there was nothing comfortable between them now; even mutually acknowledged truths were hard-edged, uneasily shared).
By the time Fabian had completed the unloading and the sorting, Gideon had sorted over half of the socks into discrete piles and was now moving with his uneven step toward the oven. The roast was given a once-over and, once satisfied that the meat was cooking as it ought, he straightened, putting the edge of the counter at his hip as he folded his arms across his chest and blinked across at the other man.
“That it?”
The gaze, the posture (the limp) was blandly observed, accepted. Fabian shook his head, though his words followed on too quickly from an alternate meaning to be taken from the gesture.
“I left more on the step.”
If Gideon chose to see his departure from the kitchen as a retreat that was his prerogative; three minutes saw Fabian back with the last batch of boxes, this time letting them fall on a newly-cleared spot on the table and briskly going about the task of distributing the contents appropriately without so much as a glance at his brother.
All the socks were cleared from the table while Fabian completed his sorting, Gideon keeping him in the periphery of his sight (if not his attention -- there, Fabian was always its focus) as he transferred socks to basket, basket to floor. The bottle of beer, now empty, was placed within the rubbish bin, with another retrieved from the Muggle-style fridge and cracked open just as Fabian shut the cupboard he had been rooting around in.
"If you're staying for dinner, let me know now."
If the retrieval of the beer bottle caused a grimace Fabian made no effort whatsoever to conceal -- though he did remain silent: that wasn’t his to comment on, not this afternoon in the kitchen of their sister’s house -- Gideon’s statement brought his expression to full incredulity.
“Thanks, no. I don--” Half a beat. “‘m not staying for dinner.”
Gideon’s gaze, perhaps, narrowed by a barely perceptible degree, as though weighing up how best to challenge this. Got somewhere better to be? very nearly made it past his lips -- but he didn’t want to hear any variation of answer such a demand would invite. Instead, after a considering first sip, he gently swung the bottle from hand to hand. “Molly will be upset.”
True, and that was a weight Fabian carried, the disappointment and unhappiness he undoubtedly caused Molly when their sister had had more than enough of such things for two lifetimes. But his response, dryly contemplative, was also true:
“Molly’s dinner will be much nicer as is.”
Gideon laughed, the sound of his non-humour short and rough. “I wasn’t going to stay, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”
The shake of Fabian’s head was small, as though he was trying to dislodge a particularly difficult thought. “Wasn’t that. But now you can stay -- great.”
“Isn’t it.” The laughter had faded into a tight little smile, a line of muscle tensing as he clenched his jaw. These non-conversations were nothing new, had been the norm between the twins for quite some time now; but they never got any easier, and were, in ways, worse than the fights they used to have, back when the dust was settling and Dumbledore was rebuilding everything from the ground up, the angles all wrong but the country too tired to see it.
“Well, if you’re not staying, and I’m not going…” A shrug. “We’re just about done here.”
“Absolutely. Have an evening, Gideon.”
It was easy to feel faced down, in this kitchen which was his brother’s home as much as his sister’s, a place he had been a bad fit for a long time now (even when Gideon was still in the Order, even when Arthur was still alive and they all spent evenings here putting the world to rights -- even then his angle had been different, though not so different as the man this new world had made of him). And still part of him wanted to stick it out, to have it out again. But that would do little good, and if the ground beneath Gideon was unstable, what was beneath him was decidedly rockier.
”Don’t bother telling Molly, I’ll catch her next week.”