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nevillelongsbottom · 7 years

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@hptriadsnet: get to know the members event othar - charlie x neville x rolf x luna

Neville’s never seen a sight before like the Gulf: it’s huge, swallowing up the vast nothingness of the cracking desert that surrounds it, full of lush green cactuses with man-sized spikes and groaning beasts with scaled skin that he can barely see through the occasional wallowing cloud; and even though it’s nothing, really, just plain ground that goes on for miles and miles, he’s hypnotised by it – it’s beautiful in that foreign way, the way that it’s so incredibly new.

“First time seeing the Gulf, huh?” Charlie grins, resting his elbows on the side of the ship, his flyaway hairs wild in the wind that rushes by them. “I love it here. Rolf thinks it’s too barren to be much fun, but I grew up on dragons and wyverns, and one of these days, I wonder if I’ll see one out here. But mostly it’s just the old one-eyed fliers that come too close, so watch yourself.”

“I am trained,” Neville objects – though he doesn’t feel like it, not anymore; his Academy robes are too heavy for the warmth of this part of the world, and he’s been wearing a half-unbuttoned thin cotton shirt and shorts since he realised that, magic student or stowaway or captain or hearty chef, everybody’s equal on Charlie’s airship.

“And I could fend off pirates one-handed in my sleep, but those fliers are still buggers and they bite hard,” Charlie says, reaching over to ruffle Neville’s dark hair. “Just trying to look out for you. Give me a shout if one of the eagles tries to snatch you away.”

“Hey,” Neville says, a look of sheer terror flashing for a moment in his eyes; Charlie sighs softly, his hand falling from Neville’s hair to the back of his neck, reassuring. “They – they won’t, will they?”

“No,” he says, laughing. “They’re far too small for that. I’m just joking. Sorry.”

Neville’s been on the ship too long to feel offended by anybody trying to scare him – it’s their idea of fun, of bonding, of inducting him as a new member, and so he just resists the urge to roll his eyes, resting his head on Charlie’s shoulder; Charlie, despite the muscles and the beard and the rough laugh and the knuckledusters, is a man for tenderness, for hugs and knees bumping and people sleeping in his lap. “Is the rest of the world like this?” Neville asks, his eyes twinkling; he’s never left his hometown, never mind the country – never seen the beauty of the singing lights in the Ascorian skies, the majesty of the neverending cities in Chie-Skua, never had coffee in the depths of a forest in a town made of wooden platforms. “This beautiful. It... it just makes me want to not to finish learning. I want to... I want to see it all.”

“Othor’s pretty, too, you know,” Charlie shrugs, the pads of his fingers dusting the collar of Neville’s shirt. “I’ve been there plenty times, and I still haven’t seen a damn thing in that city. It’s practically the size of the countries over where you live.”

Neville is quiet, watching the sky, a curtain of blue.

“You can do what you want,” says Charlie, “but you’ve always got the time to see the world.”

The ship ports for a day at the aerodrome in Catoosa, and Rolf invites Neville and Luna to join him on one of his many wanderings: this time, to see a friend. On the ship he’s always dressed in a way that makes Neville’s throat catch, in a half-unbuttoned cotton shirt and trousers held up with suspenders, his messy brown hair mussed in the breeze – but when they’re in town, he wears huge overalls and heeled boots, his pockets tucked with various weapons, bells, and foodstuffs and his straps affixed with various badges proclaiming him to be members of countless organisations from across the world.

He catches Neville’s stare, and grins.

“Where are we going?” Luna asks – seemingly ignoring the blistering heat of the Western sun, she’s wearing her Academy robes, the last relics of their significantly colder home, and she sticks out like a sore thumb in the city: her hair is pulled up and pinned to her head in a variety of braids, whereas the local girls let their hair hang loose round their shoulders. Neville doesn’t know whether or not he really does aesthetically prefer Luna’s braids or just likes them from familiarity.

“Charlie is doing some business deals, so I thought I’d visit an old friend,” Rolf says, cheerily, the flare of his three-quarter trousers blowing in the breeze. “He used to be a mercenary – good, too good, retired early with enough money to keep himself afloat, and now he lives out here with one of his friends. He’s seen a lot of the world, too – Charlie said you were thinking about travelling, so I thought he might be able to help you. And he keeps Kneazles.”

“Does he live nearby? There are lots of Nargles here,” Luna remarks; she sounds like wind chimes to Neville, which confuses him a lot.

“Nargles, huh? Never heard of them. You’ll have to point them out to me sometime. This way.” He veers on a sharp left, pausing for a moment to reach out instinctively for Neville – his hand stops in the air before floating back down to his side. “You okay, Neville?”

Neville is not okay, actually. He thinks Rolf is attractive, and he likes the way Rolf smiles, and he would gladly give up his next two years at the Academy just to keep travelling with Rolf. The worst part is – he doesn’t even know why.

“Uh-huh,” he nods. Rolf looks at him through floppy hair, and a moment passes this way.

It’s not Viktor’s job to convince Neville to stay at the Academy; and thus, he fails.

Rolf does it better.

He’s waiting when Neville knocks on the door, one of the straps of his overalls undone from where he’d had it safety pinned shut for good measure, and his eyes twinkle a little. “What’s up?” he asks, stepping aside to let Neville in to his little menagerie before squeezing the door shut behind them.

“I feel homesick,” Neville says softly, and when he leans forward and rests his head on Rolf’s shoulder, Rolf’s arms reach up to catch him; they can feel each other’s breath warm on their skin, and it’s like nothing Neville has felt before: this closeness, tenderness, an intermingling of their senses and experiences. Nothing this far away ever feels like home, the frigid cold of Gidi, but Rolf is the closest thing he’s felt to it: Rolf feels the way that people from home do – caring, soft, the type of man to stop at a corner and look back to make sure Neville is still with him and not stuck a half-block back.

But his accent is all Othor, and it makes Neville wonder–

For the briefest of moments before Rolf kisses him, of course, hands knotted tightly at the back of Neville’s head; Rolf kisses like someone who’s kissed before, all slow and then fast, but his hands fumble for purchase on Neville’s arms as he digs deeper, kissing like he’d die without it.

Breaking free with his breath coming out in desperate gasps, Rolf turns to his bed, pausing as he remembers it’s simply a comfortable hammock; he turns his gaze to the floor, squeezing Neville’s hand, but the floor is littered with cages and cats and rats and Kneazles, and a non-negotiable no-go zone.

“Your room?” he asks breathlessly, letting Neville shyly tuck some of his wild hair behind his ear.

“I share it with Luna,” Neville says softly; Rolf frowns.

“Lock her out?” he suggests, but Neville shakes his head emphatically.

“We can’t do that!”

“No, I’m sorry, of course we can’t,” Rolf says, appalled at himself for a moment; he frantically looks around until his eyes finally settle back on the hammock. He sighs, and slowly begins to undo the safety pins on his second strap, revelling in the slow widening of Neville’s eyes and the hitching of his breath.

He undoes the button and lets the overalls drop; hypnotised, Neville follows him wordlessly across the room, forgetting the entire rest of the world in the map of freckles on Rolf’s back.

“WE GOT PIRATES!”

Neville bursts out of his cabin and into sheer chaos: the deck is full of people, many wielding cutlasses sharper than the swords of Gidi’s home guard, and he careens towards Luna – Rolf and Charlie are unapproachable, Rolf surrounded by a swarm of sharp-talon eagles and Charlie smashing in the face of a bearded man built like a dragon with his bronze knuckledusters, grinning manically with the adrenaline that courses through his veins.

He starts as a hand grabs at Luna’s collar, and without a second thought, fire comes spiralling up through him and then out, spinning out and curling around Luna’s attacker, squeezing tight with third-degree burns. He’s never really used magic for anything but convenience before, but it comes so naturally to him now and when the fire regroups and spills on the pirate, a wave of heat, it takes his consciousness to pull it back, staring wide-eyed at the scorched burns he’s left behind.

The pirate stumbles back, and the ship’s second mate kicks him over the side. “Nice one, mate,” he grins at Neville.

Neville can’t unsee the fire, and goes still as he watches the fight.

The airship’s medical bay is surprisingly large, full of small beds and boxes full of this and that pilfered from various cities; Luna, white mage to the core, loves pottering around in it, even though she doesn’t really need any of the equipment: just her own magic, cool against the pain of the lacerations on Charlie’s arms. He doesn’t mind being patched up, regarding Neville with wary eyes.

“Are you okay, Nev?” he asks, trying to ignore the distraction of the white light in Luna’s hands.

“We just – I just – burned him!” Rolf reaches over to squeeze Neville’s arm; he’s patching up the wing of one of the many eagles he summoned, apparently with a small bell he keeps in his pocket (Neville’s almost hesitant to believe it, despite the fact that, of course, he just summoned fire from nowhere). “And then – Blaise threw him off...”

“They were here to kill us, Neville,” Charlie replies, voice steady and cool. “I wouldn’t have the reputation I did if I let my would-be assassins return to the skies, would I?” He sighs. “It’s hard at first, I get it, but it’s our lives or theirs. This is what it’s like out here.”

He lets Luna finish healing him before standing up and walking over to Neville, tangling his fingers in Neville’s dark hair; his hands are still warm, and Neville resists the urge to allow himself to buck his head into Charlie’s hand. “I think you ought to go to Othor. It’s harsh here in the skies. I’m sorry you had to see it in person.”

“I’ll go get you some soup,” Rolf says. “You want to go back to your room?”

“I prefer yours,” Neville says, flushing. “For the animals.”

Rolf raises an eyebrow, but can’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. “Okay, sure, me too. Come on. Soup.” He reaches out his hand and Neville takes it gracefully, following him along the corridor; Charlie snorts, taking a seat where Neville had been, crossing one leg over the other.

“God, he’s cute,” he says, leaning his chin on his hand. Luna giggles.

“He is. So is Rolf.” She pauses for a moment, glancing over. “You too.”

They stop for fuel in Coracre, known to the ship’s crew as comfort food central, and so Charlie decides to take Rolf and his little Academy stowaways out for pie; Neville seems to be recovering with surprising certainty, and they’ve avoided further attack likely from the news of the first’s failure and the news that they have a black mage on board, so when they return to the ship, Charlie decides to make his proposal –

In Neville and Luna’s room, of course, because they have the biggest of their little quartet.

“So,” he says – they’re all seated in a little circle, and he loves it, because he can speak to everybody’s bright-eyed faces and can see the broiling excitement in Rolf’s eyes. “Rolf and I were talking, and I think we’ve had an idea.” Charlie traces a circle on his thigh, grinning. “We all like each other – so, instead of ignoring it, why don’t we all go out?”

Neville frowns. “What do you mean, all go out?”

“I think he means that, instead of a couple, we’re all a quad,” Luna says dreamily. “There’s four of us in this relationship, not two.”

“Will that work?” Neville asks, looking around – it’s true, he really does like them all and probably has a few too many feelings than he can really deal with sometimes for them all, but the idea of trying to wrangle spending enough time with all three of them makes his head hurt. He wants to be idealistic, but he’s just too much of a thinking mess.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Charlie replies. Neville looks at him, for a moment in slow-motion, and then lurches forward, hands clapping to Charlie’s cheeks, and kisses him.

“Is this your first time dating?” Charlie asks – the four of them are all sitting out on the deck and bathing in the Western sun; he’s lying sprawled on his back while Neville is sitting cross-legged, flicking through some of his new coursework now that they’re getting ever closer to Othor.

“It isn’t,” he says, flushing, “but it’s my first time – dating – a man. Two men.” He shifts, shutting the book and wiping a layer of dust from the hard cover. “Why – do you like me?”

“Too many reasons to count,” Charlie replies, shifting his arm from where it’s covering his eyes to sit up and drape an arm around Neville’s shoulders. “But really, the reason I noticed you in the first place is because it takes someone very ballsy to sneak onto my ship – and two of you? Academy students, no less. The kind of person who would put their education and lives in jeopardy just to cross the country and finish said education is the kind of person I’d like to know better.” He laughs, softly, earnestly. “And then I got to know you. And you’re not the kind of ballsy kid I was expecting – but you’re sweet, the pair of you.”

“It’s not that Luna is ballsy,” Neville admits, looking over to her – she’s talking to Rolf, the two of them admiring one of his intricately patterned summoning bells, “she just... doesn’t seem to understand that she’s being that way. Or maybe she just doesn’t care – we’ve been roommates since we started, but she’s still a mystery to me.” He leans in, resting his head against Charlie’s chest and feeling the rhythm of his heartbeat. “What about you and Rolf?”

“He’s just as much of a stowaway as you two,” Charlie muses. “When I first got this ship – stole it, actually, from a couple of sky pirates – he was waiting there, and asked me if he could come with. I’m pretty sure he’s from Othor, since he has the heaviest accent I’ve ever heard, but I don’t know much about him – just that he seems to have been anywhere and everywhere.” He reaches over a hand, and shouts. “Oi! Rolf! Luna! C’mover here. We’re going downstairs.”

Neville stills. “Downstairs?”

Charlie quirks his brows. “Downstairs – you don’t want to?”

Neville goes redder than the magma Charlie has seen flowing from volcanoes. “I’ve just... never... gone the whole way.”

“We can go slow.”

Rolf interjects. “We don’t have to do this at all.”

“No,” Neville says slowly. “I want to. Before we have to leave.” His voice drops. “I’m going to miss you. I want to spend time with you. Everything just feels so – surreal, and new, and a little bit scary.” He winds his fingers with Luna’s; hers are always cool with her magic, but his hand is clammy with sweat. “And then it’ll all be normal again, like none of this ever happened.”

“Except it won’t be,” says Rolf, “because nothing’s ever the same once you’ve flown over the world.”

It’s true, but not necessarily – because nothing is the same after they trail downstairs, all four of them, hand-in-hand, and Neville feels what it’s like to be a part of something – of someone; the feeling is more beautiful than the cracks in the Gulf, the spires of Giri, the festival streets of Catoosa, the sunset in the West where the yellow sun bleeds into the ground.

It’s more than home: it’s new.

Othor is never far away, and within a month, they’ve arrived: Neville and Luna hang over the deck, staring wide-eyed at the tall limestone buildings, culminating in the city’s tour de force – the Academy. It’s huge, so high in the sky at its pinnacle that it’s almost height with the airship, and Charlie is careful as he steers to avoid it, leaving just Rolf with their two stowaways.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he says with a grin; Neville can’t even respond, so awed by it all: it’s a beautiful day in Othor, with blazing sunshine and cobbled streets and a huge river running through the city, and he can see the Academy students in their lighter robes wandering around, and he can’t believe he ever thought of bailing on it. “I’ve been everywhere with Charlie, but I always miss it here.”

Luna buries her head in his chest for a moment. “It won’t be the same without you and Charlie.”

“We’ll miss you, too,” Rolf says earnestly, watching as the ship finally docks. “But, I suppose it’s time to part ways.”

Charlie is waiting for them outside, leaning against the hull of the ship; the rest of the crew have gathered too to say their farewells, from their matron Hannah to second mate Blaise, but Neville is desperate to get back to Charlie, who hugs both him and Luna so tightly he squeezes the breath out of them, smothering them with warm kisses.

“So, you’ll be studying for another two years, right?” he says, tucking some of Neville’s hair behind his ear; Luna nods. “Great. We’ll be back for you in two years – that is, of course, unless some business brings us back here first...” He has a twinkle in his eye that just suggests, and Rolf grins, too, pressing a kiss to the back of Luna’s neck.

“And we’ll travel?” Neville asks.

“Oh, yes,” Charlie says, rubbing his hands together. “Trust me, dear, you haven’t even seen the half of it yet.”

#hp #fanfic #i write shit #quad ship #rarepair #charlie weasley #rolf scamander #luna lovegood #neville longbottom #charlie x rolf x neville x luna #hp rarepair

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