on the side of the faint-hearted
Time: Post Order Meeting, 30th of March
Place: House of Bones
Status: Closed, for @a-glasshalfempty
Edgar sank down into the couch, still awake just enough -- thanks to the usual adrenaline which most Order meetings conjured -- to find the strength to reach for a teacup from the table. Though not awake enough to also reach for the teapot and fill the cup up. Holding the empty cup defeatedly, he lulled his head over to look at Fabian, waiting for him to join him. Join him as he always did on such afternoons. Join him with an arm around Edgar’s shoulder, or join him with a leg thrown over Edgar’s. Join him for an easy conversation, or join him for a back-and-forth of jokes.
It was a simple routine they had -- without intending to but also without fighting it -- fallen into over the last last few weeks, a routine where they spent the hours after Order meetings together, catching up. Between Fabian moving out of Strongarm Cottage and Edgar finding himself busy (and thus mentally distracted), those afternoons had become the only times they really found the time to talk. They wrote letters, of course, back and forth between Hastings and Hogsmeade, but this was different. Hearing Fabian’s voice. Seeing his smile. Feeling his warmth...
Edgar enjoyed those afternoons; the peace they brought into his mind and the distraction Fabian’s stories posed, caused little ripples of calm to spread through him until the night, sometimes even until the next morning. It felt good to see his friend doing better, doing well. And even if Edgar would always feel guilty that he hadn’t been the help he should’ve been, as well as fear that it might all go bad again soon, he allowed himself -- forced himself -- to take those afternoons for how they were. To trust the unknown between the familiar and his carefully crafted plans.
But today, instead of joining him on the couch, Fabian was hovering. Hesitating, it seemed, or perhaps just distracted as well. “Cariño?” he called, softly, curious more than worried. “Is something the matter?” A brief pause. “You know the bathrooms here aren’t really haunted by malicious ghosts, yes? That’s just a rumor Amelia started.” A joke, but said in this very genuine, serious tone of his.
