a/n: This is the oneshot that helped me out of my pit of non-writing despair back when I had still only completed Victoire's piece, so I really do love this one, regardless of how good it's turned out.
Molly, with the song Halo by Beyonce, which again isn't referred to specifically but which I have used for inspiration at some points.
"'I think maybe everybody falls,' I say. 'I think maybe we all do. And I don't think that's the asking.' I pull on her arms gently to make sure that she's listening. 'I think the asking is whether we get back up.'" – (Todd Hewitt to Viola Eade, from The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness)
there must be
MollyLorcan
i just saw Haley's Comet, she waved,
said "why you always running in place?"
- Second Chance, Shinedown
What do you say when the boy you think you've always known suddenly turns out to be a man?
Well that's the question, isn't it? The thing that's going to keep her up at night worrying and wondering and considering. Because he's always been there, always been ready to be her shoulder to cry on, her rock and her confidante. No matter that he's three years older than her, because ages are just numbers and in the end we all die anyway, so who really cares?
And now he's in love with her sister (and her sister is in love with him) and it's like the whole world has just crashed down around her ears, bangsmackcrash, and all she can do is sit and watch as he wraps his arms around Lucy's waist and whispers something into her ear. All she can do is stare.
"It kind of hurts, doesn't it?" a voice murmurs into her ear, rough fingers brushing her hair aside as if it's tickling the nose of the owner of the voice, and she whirls to find her best friend's twin brother standing beside her, towering over her, his eyes fixed on his brother and her sister, something like the end of the world in his expression.
"More than I thought it would," Molly replies with a shrug, noticing simultaneously that his fingers are still resting against her skull as though he's forgotten that he moved them there, and that his eyes are far bluer than his twin's. And that's weird, because she'd always thought them identical.
"I'm sorry," he ventures eventually, finally turning back to look down at her, moving his hand and shoving it self-consciously into a pocket of his jeans, his hair falling in an unruly blonde mess into his eyes.
"Why?" she replies, looking up at him steadily, one pale finger moving upwards absently to wind into a short red curl, a habit that she's been trying to kick since forever, "Why are you sorry? You haven't done anything."
"I just," he begins, and now he's grinning a little uncomfortably and pushing his hair out of his eyes and squinting slightly as he looks down at her, "I just guess I know how it feels. And if I knew somebody else was feeling like me, I'd want to know that so I didn't feel quite so by myself."
"Oh," she says, rather lamely, and suddenly she's feeling her youth, feeling every inch of it, as she feels a flood of tenderness rise all the way up through her sixteen-year-old body to gather into her heart, the whole of her aching with pity for herself and this nineteen-year-old boy, not anywhere near the man his twin's just become. "Then I'm sorry too."
"You're looking at me funny," he announces, and there's something different in his voice now, something a little bit less like desperation. "Do I have something in my teeth?"
"No, no," Molly reassures him hastily, tilting her head and feeling her short curls shift about her neck, the pair on the other side of the room suddenly blurring out of focus, "You just… I don't know. You seem different."
"Cheers," he says, and now he's fully smiling, his mouth stretched out big and broad and he looks so sunny she can't help but crack a smile of her own, all pearly teeth and innocence and forgetting.
"Fancy a walk?" she inquires once they're done with just standing there smiling at each other, and he shrugs and (with a look back over his shoulder, shut up) they move together out through the front door, into the back garden and then with a brief, undignified scramble over the stone wall, they head out out into the woods beyond the house.
"So how's Hogwarts?" he inquires as they wander along together, breaking the silence that had been stretching somewhat uncomfortably between them, the guitar slung over his back bumping gently against him as he strides out with his long legs.
"Dull," she replies honestly, pushing her hair back behind her ears and tugging the sleeves of her cardigan further down over her hands, "I can't wait to finish, get out into the real world, you know?"
He looks at her askance then, eyebrows raised in surprise.
"What?" she demands, giving him a challenging look, shoving her hands into the pockets of her shorts, the sunlight falling through the overhead leaves in dappled patterns of green.
"Nobody wants to leave Hogwarts," he informs her finally, blinking against a sudden bright patch of pure sunshine, "Not even people who are always in trouble."
"Yeah?" she replies sceptically, her pace quickening slightly as if she can deny him merely by outpacing him, "Well I do. Sorry if that goes against your belief systems and all."
"But…why?" he inquires, and she pauses then, because there is honest confusion and curiosity in his voice and when she looks at him he's got one hand outstretched as if to halt her, his face utterly intrigued. "Why do you want to leave?"
She sighs and keeps walking, talking more to the trees than to him, as if he's only an incidental listener.
"Because it's boring, and because all I am there is absolutely second-hand."
"What do you mean, second-hand?" he asks, striding more quickly to catch up with her until they suddenly break out of the woods and next to a stream, sunlight flooding right the way through them until they feel they might start glowing.
"I mean," she replies tightly, flopping down into the long grass and stretching out, her vest and cardigan riding up to show off a strip of pale midriff, her curls a messy halo around her frowning face, "I don't have anything original. My name is my grandmother's, Lucy was prefect and Head Girl, my Mum has the same sense of humour as me, I have the same colour hair as just about every other member of my family, and to cap it all I even have a second-hand best friend, who's ditched me the second he finally hooked up with my big sister."
He's silent as he considers this, sitting down in the grass and pulling his guitar around to rest in his lap, his fingers plucking absently at the strings and creating a pleasant melody to float over the sounds of the gurgling stream. Molly shuts her eyes, the sunlight burning her eyelids pink, and lets the peace of the afternoon run through her until the anger and disappointment is seeping from her limbs and leaving her pleasantly exhausted.
"I don't think you're second-hand," Lorcan ventures at last, and Molly cracks one hazel eye open to gaze up at him, one hand going up to block out the sun.
"What?"
"I think you're pretty cool, actually," he says nonchalantly, strumming a quick run of chords, as though it isn't any big deal that he's telling her this even though they've had, oh, twelve conversations before today in all the sixteen years they've known each other. "Don't worry about becoming original. You already mostly are."
"Mostly?" she replies when she finds she can still speak, that his declaration hasn't knocked her for six and left her feeling like a small child being complimented by their hero. A small smile spreads across her face, and she's repeating, "Only mostly?"
"Well, you still kind of sound like Rose when you're pissed," he tells her, and Molly would like to flare up at this but in all honesty he's given her probably the nicest compliment she's ever had, and it's so nice to finally be noticed after being overlooked for so long, the youngest-but-for-last-minute-Louis member of the family, after being pushed constantly into the shadows by her big sister, that she just blinks at him and lets her smile grow.
"Thank you," she says, and feels terribly fond as heat floods through his cheeks, as though he's suddenly embarrassed by his own words, "I think you're pretty hot stuff yourself."
He smiles slightly, down at the floor, and then he glances up and meets her eyes and there's something in his face that sets her pulse racing and her cheeks warming, so she shuts her eyes and feels the day and just listens as his fingers stretch for chords, the music soothing and pretty and really saying everything she would say if she had the words.
It says things like, maybe tomorrow, and something had to go right like this eventually, and it was always him that looked like you and never the other way around. And maybe this last is the biggest realisation of all, because it makes her eyes snap open and search for his, blueblueblue, and when their gazes meet, this time neither of them looks away.
a/n: if you liked this enough to favourite/alert, I'm begging you not to do so without reviewing!