This Moment is Borrowed

** this was written for my darling KT for her birthday. *squishes the birthday girl* she ships neville/seamus like whoah and wanted something sexy. so... this is maybe a little less sexy than i originally intended, but i assure you there is boysmexing.




They lay side-by-side in a hammock slung along the western wall of the Room of Requirement, alone in the weird gloom of war-by-candlelight, two soldiers in a trench who cannot see the sky.

The blood is gone, mostly; or, at least, the wet blood is gone.

Neville mopped it from Seamus’s face and closed the gashes with his wand; his own graceless homage to the healing magic they have learned from Luna-who-has-disappeared. Her name is on the wall behind them, written in Lavender Brown’s round script, under Missing.

Neville fell onto Seamus’s vandalized body, all blunt elbows and apologies, as he sat down beside him to repair his ribs. Seamus just sighed; he is too weary for a wince, for anything sharp. He sighed and wriggled sideways, and Neville was suddenly too heavy to move. A careful draw of his wrist knit the bones back together; Neville watched them shift beneath Seamus’s thin, scarred skin, and Seamus's forehead crossed with lines.

They lay here, now, swinging like the tongue of a clock.

Back and forth; forth and back, and Seamus thinks of the tire his father chained to the thick limb of a tree, and he tries to remember what it feels like to breathe without a knife in his armpit and blood in his mouth. It has been a long time.

Back and forth; forth and back, and Neville thinks of the Second-Year girl that Seamus carried in, clinging to his body, her wiry limbs wrapped around him like Devil’s Snare and her tears soaking his shirt. She had snapped her ankle dodging a Crucio in the corridor, and Neville had fixed it all wrong, sideways and buggered-up, but she had walked out, and that has to be good enough now. Neville thinks of Seamus’s whisper to her, its gentleness out of place in his rowdy mouth, Shhhh, a ghrá, shhhh.

Back and forth; forth and back, and they are pressed at the shoulder and hip and foot, and their chests rise and fall; fall and rise. The clock, the sea, the heart; the rhythmic writing on the wall.

“They’re not coming back,” Seamus says quietly, his split lips barely moving.

“They’re coming back,” Neville answers.

Seamus turns his head to find Neville’s brown eyes already there. They are earnest in the dimness. They are close. They remind him of Dean, whose name he wrote himself, the letters in block print. The argument cannot continue; it has drowned itself in them. Seamus shrugs, his bare shoulder sliding Neville’s shirt against his skin, and when he closes his eyes, Neville feels the air move.

The air moves, and they swing, and between their bodies, their thumbs hook together and the pulse there becomes a promise.

Seamus’s breath is sweet and coppery. Neville thinks of the kettle on his Gran’s stove, and he suddenly wants to take Seamus’s mouth in his and drink him down like tea, warm in his chest and belly and blood. The urge overtakes him like a curse. He only struggles for a moment – he cannot fight both darkness and self – before he closes the gap between their lips.

Seamus’s mouth opens in surprise. He sucks breath from Neville in a muffled gasp but does not pull away. There is nowhere to go. This is what exists. This is what is left, and he will hold onto it. Enough light will banish the dark, so he will rub their lips together to make fire; he will cup his hands around the flame and blow.

The kiss is slow. Seamus’s lips throb. Neville’s are dry. Breathing stops, stutters, starts. Their fingers curl around each other like a knot pulling tight.

They do not know where else to touch.

Their bodies have become familiar out of necessity. There is no modesty in war, and they can see each other’s scars spreading out like a roadmap every time they close their eyes. The intimacy of pain has become comfortable; the intimacy of pleasure is foreign. It is easier to say this is where I bleed than it is to say this is how I come.

It is Seamus whose hands venture first.

He has made a habit out of offering himself as a sacrifice. He has become the face of the D.A. since Neville has been forced into hiding, since Ginny and Luna have gone. Brutality finds him; or, rather, he flings himself wide for it, throws his body like a shield charm over those who have not yet disappeared. Oh, this bravery. This daring.

His hands are cool and steady. Neville lays as still as silence as Seamus slides his buttons apart, one at a time, with an uncharacteristic patience. They remind Seamus of rosary beads. He prays the Sorrowful Mysteries and hears his Da’s voice in his head: The Agony in the Garden. The Scourging at the Pillar. The Crowning with Thorns. The Carrying of the Cross. The Crucifixion. (We may imitate what they contain.)

The fabric sounds like a chorus of whispers as they try to pull it away. Neville shrugs and wriggles; Seamus tugs; no one speaks.

Their embrace is awkward; it is less gentle than it ought to be. Seamus holds out his arms, his eyes shy and somewhere over Neville’s shoulder, and Neville heaves himself into them unsteadily, the hammock swaying precariously underneath their bodies. It is clumsily comforting; it is skin against skin and no one is cringing. It is soft.

For a few moments, they are just a tangle of limbs and flesh, freckles and scars, too-long hair and tattered clothes. Then they are a tangle of lips. Seamus smiles around Neville’s mouth, his uncertain tongue. Neville’s tongue is second only to his wand in their battles; it is fierce and unrelenting. Now it is tentative and deferential, and Seamus cannot hide the small laugh that rises like incense smoke between them. He pulls back and asks, “Are you scared?”

“A bit,” Neville answers truthfully. He can feel his cheeks colouring and is glad for the dark. His admission feels silly after all that he has done.

Seamus brings their mouths close again. “Don’t be,” he whispers. “This is the easy part, yeah? Nobody dies.”

The vibration of his breath – or maybe it’s his words – makes Neville shiver, and he moves closer, opens wider, kisses harder. Against his chest, Seamus’s fingers clutch a yes, better into his skin, and then there are teeth – Seamus’s teeth, small and sharp – holding onto his lip, and nothing hurts at all.

Nothing hurts at all. The kiss is like a salve, or like a potion carried through their blood. It warms, and it soothes, and it demands nothing. It lasts for hours or minutes or days. They fall into it like their own beds, with relief, and it is as close to home as this Room has ever felt.

They have not locked the Room; they cannot – will not – deny sanctuary if it becomes necessary, but it is a quiet night. Seamus’s injuries are the first ones they have seen in three days. He sensed Amycus Carrow itching for a fight, and so he started one to protect the others, twisting his Fiendfyre into a decidedly phallic shape and pointing it at Carrow’s ear. It had earned him two black eyes, but it bought a brief peace, and it bought some laughter, which Seamus wields as a weapon.

But now, it is quiet. Now, they have laid their weapons down. Now, they are burning like the candles on the wall, slow and safe, sweating into one another’s skin, throwing light.

Neville has his fingers in Seamus’s hair, his thumb at his neck. He can feel Seamus’s blood moving – hard, fast, steady, alive – in the shadowy curve below his jaw, and he wants to swallow that sound, but he is afraid to move his lips, afraid that Seamus, too, might disappear.

Seamus has Neville by the belt loops, scraped-up knuckles curled under the waistband of his trousers. He is holding on far too tightly, heart-stoppingly aware of how close his fingers are to what is underneath, that hard line pressing against his thigh. He can feel Neville shifting slightly, angling his hips sideways as though he is worried it might scare Seamus away, but Seamus follows him, pushing harder, and makes a noise against Neville’s lips that he hopes even Neville cannot misinterpret. Seamus shrugs his own hips forward – he is good at solidarity – and lets Neville feel how hard he is, how good this is, how loudly he can say me, too.

It works. Neville makes a noise of his own back, something startled and awestruck and affirmative, and they move together like cold things trying to get warm, huddling close, thighs between legs, scrambling for sensation.

Suddenly bold, Neville moves his hands over Seamus’s skin, sliding across the patterns there: constellations of freckles on his chest that fade down into white; the almost-imperceptible Braille of mended bone across his ribs; the hard sinew of his arms, surprising on his skinny frame. Beneath his fingers, he can feel Seamus’s muscles jump, can feel his body grow tight and anticipatory. Skimming his thumb over Seamus’s navel, he stops and splays his hands. “Can I…?” he asks, shy again, plucking nervously at the button on Seamus’s trousers, flicking a nail back and forth across the metal, swallowing hard.

“If you don’t, I’ll save that loony geebag some trouble and kill you meself,” Seamus mutters, his breath hot against Neville’s cheek, his smile audible. He laughs a bit as Neville fumbles with his fly and tries to remember the last time he heard Neville ask permission for anything. He is so far from the boy he was – they all are, now – but there are shadows of him here as he peels the front of Seamus’s trousers apart, working delicately, and tugs his clothing past his hips.

Seamus wriggles a bit and helps with one hand, reaching up to grab Neville’s shoulder as everything tangles around his knees. He can feel the scratchy fabric of Neville’s trousers against his cock now, and he sucks a breath through his teeth. Neville still has a hold on his clothes, his hand wrapped through the inside-out pocket, still unsure of what he is allowed to do.

Seamus waits, his body a knot of nerves. He can hear Neville’s breath, shaking and heavy, and he nudges himself forward. Neville’s hand creeps up his thigh, ghosting across his bare skin, trailing across his hip, and Seamus bites his lip to hold down the sounds of happy frustration that are threatening to escape.

Neville’s fingers brush across his erection, and somehow, everything inside of him simultaneously inhales and exhales, making his head fuzzy and warm and pounding with blood. Seamus presses his forehead down into Neville’s shoulder, and his toes curl up as Neville’s fingertips trace the shape of him. He starts at the base and follows the veins up, like he is drawing a map to someplace secret, then takes the same lines back down, stopping to brush his thumb lightly across the head. It is ridiculous and maddening and gorgeous, and Seamus is not sure whether Neville is doing this purposefully, or whether he is just being daft. He decides that it hardly matters.

Seamus closes his eyes and holds on, his breathing unsteady and staccato, and Neville responds with just a little more pressure, just enough to make Seamus grit his teeth and feel a pull through his back like little lightning strikes, one after another down his spine.

This goes on and on, and Neville can feel Seamus grow harder and harder under his hand, and he can feel himself, heavy and hard and insistent, beneath his own fly. He wraps his hand around in earnest, then, and thinks about squeezing tighter, moving faster, but he cannot displace the images of Seamus’s brave and battered body, and he wants to be tender, slow; he wants to show respect; he cannot bear the thought of pain here.

Seamus arches into Neville’s hand, and his breath feels like a candle glowing against Neville’s skin. There is sweat sticking them together now, sticking Neville’s trousers to his body, sticking Seamus’s hair to his temple. Seamus moves faster, but Neville keeps his same light and careful attention, and he sticks his tongue through his lips to lick at Seamus’s shoulder.

“Jaysus, Mary and Joseph,” Seamus says, panting now against him, his voice taut. “Put some muscle into it; I’m not your feckin’ mimbulous mimbletonia.” He throws his hips up in emphasis and swallows a hard breath.

Neville’s lips are at Seamus’s neck now, close to his ear, and he whispers, “Don’t want to break you.” His voice catches a little, and it gives Seamus a second of pause through the ache in his bollocks. His body stills, and the air stills, and everything is quiet.

Finally, Seamus speaks, his own voice off-kilter and strange. “’S all right; everything’s broken.”

Neville’s fist grows tighter now, and it makes Seamus shiver. He strokes down hard, sliding his thumb in a swift circle that makes Seamus arch his neck and groan. “We’re not broken,” Neville says, gruff and fierce, like something has switched on inside of him, and he does not wait for Seamus to answer. His hand moves fast, his grip firm, his eyes wide open.

The noises that Seamus makes now will stay with Neville for a very, very long time. They are low and plaintive and come straight from his guts. They are full of heat. They are the sounds of Seamus coming undone, coming apart, coming to life, and Neville feels larger and stronger and more powerful in this than anything has ever made him before.

His clumsy healing of wounds; his wand drawn on Bellatrix Lestrange in the Department of Mysteries; shooting off his mouth at Alecto Carrow – they are pale, inconsequential. The magic that is born through reaction to the dark can never, he realizes now, be as powerful as the magic that is born through willful creation of light. Later, when there are bodies slung over his shoulders and the agonizing noise of war all around him, he will slip a key into the lock of his memory and remember these sounds, and they are what will save him from madness. He will remember what life sounds like, and he will put one foot in front of the other until he is free.

Seamus squeezes his eyes shut, but Neville nudges their noses together. “Look at me,” he whispers, then, his shy voice juxtaposed with his now-confident hands, “I want to see.”

Seamus’s eyes flutter open. Neville can feel his long lashes brush his own. He pulls back a little and stares baldly into Seamus’s face: his wide, hazel eyes and round pupils; his fine, drawn-together brows; his flushed cheeks and parted, red lips; the shadow along his jaw that lends him some age; the bruises everywhere, reminders of the world outside. He looks, suddenly, small; he reminds Neville of a little bird, all open wide with a frantic pulse and delicate bones.

Neville cannot tear himself away. He stares, his hands moving easily now, wet with pre-come and sliding fast, and Seamus cannot keep his eyes open. They blink rapidly like wings against his cheeks, then suddenly go wide, then close tight, and the sound is like a sob, but beautiful, not anguished, and everything is wet and warm and slippery: Neville’s hands, their naked bellies, the front of Neville’s trousers.

Seamus comes and comes and comes, his body shuddering, the world shattering into a thousand fragments of mirror, a thousand beams of light, and Neville catches his mouth and lets the sound echo through his body, then back into Seamus’s like a song.

On impulse, Neville brings his hand to his mouth, and Seamus’s eyes open again in time to see him slip a finger between his lips and taste.

Seamus grins, sleepy-eyed and lovely, and says, his voice a sated growl, “Longbottom, you kinky bastard. Who knew?”

Neville smiles and blushes, but says nothing. Seamus works Neville’s trousers apart and slides a hand over his own belly, slicking himself up with come. Three quick strokes, and Neville has his face buried in Seamus’s shoulder, his voice surprised and high and making happy little ohs, and Seamus smiles a slow, lazy smile and slides down Neville’s body – no easy feat; the hammock catches and pulls – to press his tongue to the head of Neville’s cock.

Neville’s body jerks, and Seamus just licks and licks and licks, circles and lines and swirls, his lips wet and his mouth open, and he just wants to tease at first, just wants to play, but it is over in less than three minutes. Neville’s hands become frantic in Seamus’s hair, and he cannot form the words he needs, but Seamus pushes his mouth hard to his cock so Neville can feel him smile and whispers, “Give me.” He swallows everything.

They breathe against each other in the flickering light, their bodies calm. They know that this moment is borrowed; that the bill will come due, with interest, before they are ready. It hardly matters.

The world is heavy, but for now, they are light.

They are too tired, too spent, too appreciated to hurt much, and they are two brave boys – two valiant, struggling men –who shoulder the messy work of war; who shoulder the messy work of being alive.




** a ghrá is Celtic; it translates to my love