A/N: This is essentially meta, in the form of a little one-shot, based on the Theo/Neville pairing from Colubrina's amazing story Rebuilding. If you haven't read that, this may or may not make sense. I've never written fiction before (fan or original or anything, really), but this particular pairing just would not leave my brain until I'd gotten all of this out. This has not been beta'd - any/all mistakes are my own.
A huge, heart-felt thank you to the lovely Colubrina for not turning her nose up at my request to write this.
Neville Longbottom is pretty sure he made a mistake.
This in and of itself isn't unusual. Even post-Battle, post-Horcrux slaying, Neville has never really been the guy who gets things right the first time; he's comfortable enough with himself at this point that it doesn't often get under his skin. He doesn't need to be brilliant or The Hero to know what he's good at (plants, mostly) and what he's not (almost everything else). But he knows some mistakes are bigger and less easily reconciled than others, and the knowledge that he's done something he may never make up for sits as easily as a stone in the pit of his stomach as he stares at Theodore Nott across the Malfoy family ballroom.
Theo, in his impeccable dress robes, is leading little Astoria Greengrass around the dance floor and manages several times to break through her terminally bored disinterest and make her smirk and giggle by turns. Neville thinks she can hardly be blamed for succumbing to Theo's charms. He knows exactly what it feels like to be the focus of that cut-glass gaze and sly humor. That Theo is entirely unaware of his own beauty and charm only makes him more appealing.
He doesn't want to recognize this about Theo. He remembers a time when the natural, effortless beauty of another man would not have captured his attention at all, let alone with the kind of single-minded focus he finds himself devoting to his friend. If you were to ask when Neville first noticed Theo - really noticed, noticed in the way that makes his head hurt and his heart ache - he would tell you it was that first Recovery Group when everyone was either traumatized and caustic or traumatized and crying. How does one not notice a man so brazenly honest as to call a weeping orphan's remaining relatives arseholes? Neville remembers being shocked, at first, that someone could be so tactless; but then, Susan stopped crying and people started talking and it's not like it was perfect, not at all, but for a few minutes it stopped feeling like a stiff wind would blow the whole thing down.
It didn't last, of course - not that day, anyway - but it was a better start than any of them had ever dared to hope for.
For Neville, it was the start of an interest that crept up on him slowly at first and then all at once. He remembers the next time he saw the man: Theo sauntered past him at their next meeting and Neville was overwhelmed by the smells of Firewhiskey, cedar, and something else he couldn't place but which made his cock twitch. He spent the entire hour attempting to breathe through his mouth and holding a bowl of Hannah's ridiculous crisps in his lap; that night, he came in his fist imagining long, aristocratic fingers wrapped around him bringing him off.
The next day, every time he caught a glimpse of the man, he noticed something new and infinitely appealing: Theo's hair was thick and glossy, all carefully tousled Mahogany waves that fell just short of large, expressive eyes framed by perfectly arched browns and the longest, thickest eyelashes he'd ever seen on another man. He wondered what color those eyes were, exactly: from a distance they looked clear and blue as the open ocean on a sunny day, but then sometimes they were darker, more like glittering sapphires, especially when he was propped against the wall, hip jutting, snarky and defensive and so carefully held together.
Neville dreamed about forcing those walls down, brick by brick, with his tongue and his teeth and his bare hands grasping.
The first time they kissed, Neville could not spare a thought for anything besides how good Theo smelled while trying desperately not to come in his pants. After, his lips chapped and swollen and the skin around his mouth pink and chafed, he wondered if kissing another man made him gay; if kissing another man and breathing in his beautiful cedar and clean skin smell and rubbing against the hardness in his pants made him gay. For weeks, he couldn't stop thinking about Theo, couldn't stop imagining all the things he could do with an erection that wasn't his own, couldn't stop plumbing the depths of an imagination previously uninspired. The first time he came in Theo's mouth, flushed and panting beneath the dark ocean gaze of his beautiful lover, he bit nearly all the way through his lip as he stared at the ceiling and contemplated all the ways a man might be fucked.
He wanted to do it again. He wanted to do it again, except next time he wanted it to be him who got down on his knees and took the weight of Theo's cock in his mouth until all he could taste was salt and earth and pleasure. He wanted to spread Theo out and hold his beautiful face between rough, dirty palms and kiss that filthy pink mouth and fuck him until neither of them could walk. He wanted Theo to bend him over his mattress and sink inside his body and fill him up until nothing else fit.
Theo made him want, but it was madness to even think it because Neville wasn't gay. Before Theo, he'd never looked at another man in the same way he'd looked at girls. He still looked, if he were honest; he was 18 years old and nobody was trying to torture him between classes or murder his friends and family, and sometimes he thought he would go mad with all of the looking. Before Theo, it was only women; now, it was women and Theo. But he knew it wasn't fair, because it wasn't like that for Theo. Theodore Nott was gay - unambiguously, unquestioningly - and Neville wasn't, and how could that possibly end well for either of them?
Neville knew better than most the depths of Theo's insecurities and the price they exacted from his friend. Every genuine, pleasure-filled smile Neville put on Theo's face felt like a victory, and for a while it was enough. He took what he could from their time together: slow kisses; warm, cautious hands; hot mouths and wet tongues and sticky pleasure everywhere, covering everything.
When he saw the thing in Theo's eyes that he refused to name but was forced to acknowledge, he knew he had to do the right thing. He was a Gryffindor. He could be brave and unselfish. Even if it cut deeper than he'd ever imagined, it was better than the alternative.
And Hannah – beautiful Hannah, sweet and soft and effortlessly warm – was uncomplicated and accepting and took it all in stride: his fear, his insecurity, his misery and confusion, none of it was too much for her. She listened and acknowledged and held none of it against him. She never once spoke disparagingly of Theo or their relationship. If kissing her felt different than it ever had with Theo, well, that was to be expected.
It wasn't like different was bad. He just needed time to adjust.
And he was happy. Mostly happy – as happy as any of them could be after growing up terrorized by mad men and war. A little dissatisfaction every now and then was to be expected, wasn't it? He continued to watch Theo across the dance floor while holding Hannah close, and if every so often he found himself aching at the sweet scent of her vanilla perfume – so different from the sharp cedar and musk of the beautiful man he'd had to let go – it didn't have to mean anything more. An ache, a sense of regret; it was all to be expected. Just because something felt wrong didn't mean it was actually wrong. Hearts were fickle things and couldn't always be trusted.
Neville spared one last glance for Theo, swallowed past the lump in his throat, and slowly turned with the music towards the rest of the crowd.