Written for Pairing Diversity Boot Camp at HPFC. Prompt was "casualties".
The French called an orgasm la petite mort, or the little death. And so it was, at three in the morning, that Neville lay awake wondering exactly who the casualties of this affair were, and what had led to their own little deaths.
Was Hannah a casualty? In his moments of guilt, he pictured her that way, broken and emotionally battered and confused. But when Neville really thought about it, he knew that Hannah was as far removed from being hurt by this dalliance as someone completely uninvolved was. She hadn't loved him for years, and if it hadn't been for their own senses of loyalty and desire and passion to make things work, then they would have been separated ages ago.
Was Victoire a casualty? She slept in his arms now, her white-blonde hair a halo and her golden eyelashes resting on her dewy cheeks, the picture of innocent contentment. But she was eighteen and fresh and perfect. Did she need to be bogged down by this? Did she need to love a man old enough to be her father, a man tied down to a wife and a life that he had created for himself decades ago? Would he suck the joy out of her and throw her out of his life just as someone before him had?
Was Teddy a casualty? A boy didn't travel to another continent if he did not love his ex-girlfriend still. He didn't act as if he was a giant waste of space if he had broken a heart that was inconsequential to him. And yet that is what he did, that was how he had behaved. No one had heard from Teddy for months now. Would he be pained when he heard of this night, of this relationship? Or would he waltz away with a sneer and not a single battle scar?
Perhaps Neville himself was the casualty, laying here in his guilt, clothed in nothing except for Victoire, draped across him like some expensive blanket or trusting child or malnourished whore. It wasn't a broken heart that would kill Hannah or an old man that would slay Victoire or green jealousy that would murder Teddy. Guilt was the killer, guilt was the cause of this little death, and Neville was the casualty.
