Stay With Me || Garreth Weasley

A Lost Soul

A/N: Stay With Me is one year old today! I'm so, so chuffed that you're all still reading. This fic has truly been a labour of love and I wouldn't be writing still without your enthusiasm and support, so thank you so much. <3

Feel I should mention I wrote the dance scene almost entirely to At All Costs (Demo) from Wish if you want to get into the mood.

Otherwise... enjoy...

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Garreth descends Ravenclaw Tower back to his common room by rote, heart a frantic staccato.

Not to brag, but morally, he's a pretty friendly guy. Not perfect, no one is – except Lance – but, you know, he's fairly generous with other people. And not only is he good at making friends, but he's also good at keeping them. So to be told by the girl of his dreams that not only do you not like him the way he likes you, but also you don't care about him at all, that your friendship was a mistake...

Well, it hurts.

It bloody hurts.

The worst part is, you're lying. He knows you're lying. He said so and you didn't deny it! Yet it still makes his entire chest cave in and all the air taste sour. After everything you've been through together, and that's how you treat him? Resentment flutters awake, a little tickle of it, like an itch at the back of his throat. Part of him wants to say, stuff it, if you want to be alone, fine. But because it's deliberate, because he knows you have an ulterior motive, a selfless one, he can't let you go – in true Gryffindor spirit, all he aches to do is help.

And Merlin's beard, that kiss. That kiss. It's going to live in his head forever. It's going to replay on loop like a broken gramophone. It's glued to him like a sticky parchment, but instead of it saying Kick Me it just says Prim snogged me and I liked it a lot. The taste of your lips burns his tongue, and he drags a hand through his hair, trying to squash the rush that explodes in his chest. He'll admit he's fantasised a few times about doing way more than kissing you, so even the hint of it in reality makes him crave you like a man starved of bread and water, where the slightest offering turns him wild.

It's stupid. He shouldn't want you after what you said, but he does.

His fingers are still a bit sticky from the cake, which he left at Ravenclaw, and he licks the frosting off as he enters Gryffindor common room. He spots Natsai, Cressida and Leander cloistered by the window on the left, whispering and giggling and pretending to do homework. Talking to them is the last thing he wants to do. We kissed, and then she told me she hated me. He's not really processed it yet – and it's not exactly a stellar recommendation for his kissing skills (which are excellent, thank you very much). He speeds up and manages to avoid getting caught before he makes it to his dorm, and flops onto his bed.

What the hell do I do now?

For a boy who likes to help people, he hates not being able to help.

He watches you at breakfast that next morning, heart aching as you slip unassuming into your usual place on the Ravenclaw table, listen to the announcements with your head down and spoon cereal into your mouth without uttering a word. How, when a letter drops into your lap with the owl post, you don't bother to read it before you vanish the parchment angrily. Every day for the rest of the week it's the same. Sit, listen, eat. The tension rolls off you in waves, and he'd bet a fat sack of Galleons that if you didn't have to, you wouldn't be here at all.