Gideon was standing in the corridor outside of Vince Sinclair’s flat, clutching a takeaway coffee with both hands. The time had come to knock on the door and he’d been considering the task for upward of a minute now, staring with bloodshot eyes and trying to make his brain - which felt like sludge, but only in between the pangs of his headache - work out how to make it happen. 

He took a deep breath. Considered dropping one of his hands away from the coffee cup. Considered the fact that it was impossible. 

Giving up, Gideon kicked the door instead. 

Not too hard, but the pounding sound still sent shockwaves through his skull. He winced, closing his eyes uselessly against the sensation, and weighed the heavy, heavy proposition of whether he’d have to do it again if nobody came to his rescue and answered soon. 

“Before you say anything,” he rasped, as the door finally opened. On a normal day, he might have been worried about someone other than Vince answering, which seemed a worse case scenario than nobody answering at all. But this was not a normal day, what with his brain about to cave in, and he’d take any lifeline offered to him at this point. “I’m dead. Also? I am dying.”  

— @vince-whoisleft​

The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix was quiet tonight -- which was exactly how Gideon did not like it. 

There might have been some relief, after weeks of jockeying around Molly’s loud house overfilled with loud children and loud babies and loud kettles whistling and a loud radio blaring atop a loud, rattling radiator. 

But the contrast here tonight just made it more apparent to Gideon how much he preferred the alternative. 

As his peers filtered out after the meeting, disappearing about the same time as the late-setting summer sun, Gideon felt like the life was filtering out of the house alongside them. He was on duty tonight, technically -- it was not the fun kind of duty, where he could feel the wind on his face and adrenaline in his veins, so it seemed near moot. 

His company for the evening was a pile of folders, thick with paper and photographs and highly sensitive personal information that he knew had been acquired under less-than-shiny means. None of them were brave -- or stupid -- enough to write the word recruitment on the box that housed the files, the dossiers on students the Order badly wanted to collect. Instead, someone had taken a messy hand and thick marker to the cardboard and wrote: Kitchen Supplies (Fragile). 

Hard to say whether it was a clever code, or if Moody had just found a way to re-purpose boxes from his last move. Judging by the state of the house, that last move would have been approximately five centuries ago.

Gideon had been unable to get comfortable on the couch, so he’d pulled all the cushions down to the floor to make a nest of pillows and throw blankets that smelled of mothballs. His research partner for the evening was one very stiff vodka rocks, and he told himself he was being responsible about it -- by drinking slowly, and by adding extra ice whenever he remembered the growing pool of condensation at the base of the glass. 

He sat up straight, for the first time in two hours (his back ached as proof of it) when he heard footsteps out in the hall. They weren’t Moody’s shuffle or the patter of one of the girls’ high heels. Gideon couldn’t remember who was on duty tonight, but he knew enough about who wasn’t -- to make a guess, but also to put his familiarity to use. 

“Vince?” he called out. If he didn’t get an answer, it didn’t mean he was wrong in his guessing game; just that Vince might still be ignoring Gideon after his temper tantrum following the Hogsmeade attack. So many fun possibilities. “Are you busy?”  — @vince-whoisleft​

AU: In which Gideon Prewett survives the ambush that killed him in canon; Fabian is not so lucky and leaves him behind, adrift.

Gideon Prewett spent most of the day looking down into an open casket, staring at his own face.

Not his face exactly. Some of the freckles formed different constellations, the nose was a little bigger, the eyebrows slightly better kept. But what had always separated the twins was the different expressions they made, the different ways they moved. And Fabian, who was dead, would never move again. That much was clear on his pale, stagnant face.

He couldn’t remember their faces. The Death Eaters who’d ambushed him and Fabian…they had worn masks, of course, but that didn’t move the needle of Gideon’s guilt. Vince had managed to pull of a Death Eater’s mask once in the middle of an attempted kidnapping, on heroism and gut instinct alone.

And here was Gideon: unable to remember even the markings of the masks that covered up the faces of the people who’d murdered his brother.

The wake had been unbearable, and Gideon had managed to make it through the three hours and packed room without speaking to a single person. Order members, family friends, even virtual strangers had all turned up to pay their respects. The soldier within Gideon wanted to insist on something more private, with better security. In case someone felt like being disrespectful or, as a lesser concern, finishing the job and offing Gideon, too. 

But Fabian deserved something better. He was free now from the paranoid shelter of war. People should be allowed to mourn him the way he wasn’t ever allowed to live – openly, without fear.

An open casket was very nearly not a possibility. The funeral director had formed Gideon, somewhere between black humor and genuine gratefulness that they’d have had no hope of reconstructing Fabian’s face into something that looked anything like he had while alive, if not for Gideon’s features to serve as a template.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men...

The funeral had been something worse than bearable. Gideon hardly remembered it. Somewhere lurked a half-memory of Molly falling into the grass to cry and their father trying to hug him when the first shovel of dirt was scattered over the coffin. Logically, too, Gideon knew that he had spoken. He’d given the eulogy, in a detached steady voice to a large group of people who’d watched him to see when he would break. But he didn’t remember doing it, didn’t remember how it had felt, didn’t remember what he’d said.

The vodka was contributing to that helpful lack of memory. Gideon was not drunk – could not get drunk, because he was afraid of what he’d let loose if he lost control, emotionally or otherwise – but he’d been suspended in a constant state of moody tipsiness since he’d been released from St. Mungo’s. Alone.

Along he was now, too. Sitting on the back garden stoop of Molly’s house, his knees bent high in front of him and the vodka bottle keeping him welcome company. The house was more than full, serving plate upon plate of dinner to the mourners and friends that’d overflowed here after leaving the cementary. 

Hospitality was the one thing keeping Molly and his parents sane, and the kids were too young to grasp the permanency of what had happened. What was the one thing keeping Gideon sane? It was not this alcohol; it had always been Fabian. And now it was nothing.

“I’m not hungry,” he said, when the door opened behind him. It was nighttime outside, the sky navy and dotted with stars. From within the warmth of The Burrow, light spilled yellow-gold out onto the steps and covered Gideon from behind. He kept his back turned to the light, to the warmth, to what he was sure was Molly or Arthur, intruding to ask the same question they’d asked at fifteen minute intervals since everyone arrived. 

Gideon nearly tripped on his way up the stairs to his flat, but it had little to do with the handful of drinks sitting pleasantly in his belly. It had everything to do, instead, with the company behind him. The stairs in his building were narrow and the twins had made their nest all the way up on the third floor. That was far too much time to go without talking – especially with a refreshing buzz of alcohol coursing through his veins – and so Gideon was liable to twist over his shoulder with reckless abandon, laughing loudly at Vince’s stories and sharing some of his own.

And where was the harm? They had a lot to celebrate, the two of them, after the successful mission they’d just pulled off and neither was on patrol that night.

There was a nagging sensation at the back of his mind that he should feel more guilty for downing so many drinks, or for indulging Vince in his insistence that he walk Gideon sagely to his door. But he didn’t feel guilty about any of it…even, especially, about that second bit, given how much – incredibly appealing, incredibly liable to go badly – live ammo he was playing with.

Getting happily drunk was good enough reason to ignore the warm buzz that accompanied certain winks or stylish boots kicked playfully against shins. But it made it really, really easy to fixate on them to. Or to do something about it.

In the corridor, Gideon took pains to be as loud as possible. Not that he usually took precautions against it. If it turned out that Fabian was home – and on nights off from the Order it was very rare he wasn’t – Gideon wanted him to have plenty of warning. Whether that was warning to get the door and invite Vince in for another round so that Gideon wouldn’t have to do it (implications, and all that, however true they were) or to clear out, Gideon did not know. He refused to ask himself for an answer.

“Wait, how old were you?” Gideon was laughing – head tossed back, the whole bit – when they finally, slightly out of breath from the stairs and the joking. He pulled his keys from his pocket easily, shoved them noisily into the lock. They had a tricky door even on the best days, the Prewett Twins, and though it had more to do with their cheap apartment than any cool enchantments, he was usually happy to let people believe otherwise. “Lucky you didn’t get caught, they’d wonder if, hang on—”

The door finally swung open, and Gideon stepped inside with a customary: “Oi, Fabs! I’m home, you can stop worrying about—"

The apartment was empty. It was immediately apparent – all the lights off, an overflowing pile of recent mail on the table, an abandoned dish on the counter. No shoes by the door, and both bedroom doors were open. Fabian was gone, for Merlin knew how long, and Gideon had lost his polite ‘out.’ And he was thrilled about it, no point refusing to admit why anymore.

“Place to myself,” he said, taking care to lick his lips before he turned around to face Vince, backlit by the contrasting light in the corridor. “I hate that.” 

There was a pause, and a smile, and Gideon reached a hand back to scratch at the back of his neck. 

“Actually,” he added, the word too sudden and too eager all at once. Thankfully, not so different from his usual heel-turn exclamations. “We have coffee. Come in for a cuppa, sober up a little before trying to apparate home?” — @vince-whoisleft

Boom. Crash. Bang!

There was little Gideon Prewett did that was quiet. Even in his moments of stillness, on the rare (and getting rarer) occasions that he settled in to be devoured by a good book, his leg still jingled and the pages still turned loudly under his curious hands and he gasped aloud to himself at the most interesting parts.

It was little surprise that he did not enter Headquarters quietly tonight. On the heels of the worst date of all time, Gideon had less fear than ever of Moody’s imploring expression. If anything, he reasoned, the old codger should be glad to see him. He’d begged a night off after the compulsory plans were made on his behalf; it felt only right that he should make a beeline here as soon as he was through ‘discussing’ things with Gretchen.

Worst case scenario, there would be nothing for Gideon to do but he’d sleep easier with the knowledge that he’d been on call. Best case scenario, some action would fall into his lap and remind him how small, in the grand scheme of things, one disastrous blind date was.

Gideon’s feet fell loudly beneath him as he made his way into the sitting room. There were a lot of rooms in Alastor Moody’s house; any of them could contain the old proprietor, but he could not remember the last time he showed up and found only Moody tucked away into the home’s dusty corners.

It would take too long to check all of them.

Gideon was a dab hand at summoning spells, but he decided to try a different kind of summoning tonight. The apple of his eye was an old radio, pushed against a cloudy window and used, mainly, for listening with a plummeting stomach to bad news or good Quidditch. He switched it on and fiddled with the resistant dial until something resembling good music came on – then reached for the volume, and turned that up to its maximum. From the other far end of the room, he collected a few crystal glasses, taking care to bump them against one another to create a tinkling symphony of ‘somebody is about to have a drink.’ If the music didn’t bring fellow Order members out of hiding, the hypothetical offer of a drink surely would.

There was precious little to do then but wait – and though it was something Gideon was terrible at, he leaned a bony elbow against a bar cart that only supported his weight thanks to magical reinforcement, and gave it a shot.

It might have been alarming to hear Vince lay into Alastor Moody so harshly, if Vince hadn’t been already saying what was on Gideon’s mind. 

As one of the earlier Order recruits, Gideon had taken it easily upon himself to be a spokesperson for those younger, newer or quieter. It was the same role he’d played in his family for years. When Fabian was having trouble speaking up, Gideon shot his mouth off instead - and sometimes overcorrected the balance. He never hesitated to say what he was thinking when it felt like it mattered. 

He stayed silent now, because he could fully tell that it did not matter. If there was anyone who least needed Gideon to speak up for them, it was Vince Sinclair, going nose-to-nose with an extraordinarily pissed off Alastor Moody. And so Gideon found himself falling into the background, not opening his mouth for once and certainly not stepping between the two. It was strange from this side of the weighted scales, but he didn’t dare interject and make things worse. 

Gideon had never been in a fight with Moody, personally. His efforts were always aimed at deescalation and diffusion - he considered it more of his duty to unleash a calmer Moody onto his fellow associates, rather than one wound up tightly because Gideon ‘needed’ to make a point.

Still, there was no denying that Vince was right. The group of vigilantees had been underprepared; Moody’s intelligence had gaps in it; it was no use raking them over the coals for ‘sloppy work’ when someone had ‘almost died’ and was lucky not to have.

Gideon startled at the sound of chair legs scraping the floor. He blinked up through his surprise; Moody looked too furious to have kicked Vince out, but evidently the younger man was in the process of storming out. Which left Gideon in the process of having to decide what to do about it. 

Perhaps it was the time of year – the anniversary of the Elks funeral was coming up – or perhaps it was just the fact that Gideon wasn’t used to commanding his limbs when he wasn’t the leader in a room.

He rose to follow Vince out into the corridor. Before he left, he rapped his knuckles three times on the table and mumbled something to Moody about writing him in the morning. He doubted the old man was listening at this point. In his haste, Gideon forgot his coat on the back of the chair but soldiered on without it; better chilly than deal with the awkward energy of charging back into that room after such a scene.

“At least wait up,” Gideon huffed as he stumbled out into the hall. He made a purposeful show of pulling the meeting room door shut behind him. They weren’t far from the front door, so he counted his small blessings that Vince hadn’t apparated out into the night. “It’s just the same bullshit as ever, he’ll have dropped it by tomorrow.” 

--- @vince-whoisleft

Gideon did not know how late it was; only that it was late, and that he was stuck staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. 

The closest thing to a pocketwatch available to him – at least in this light – was the fading, blunted stomp of Alastor Moody’s bad leg as it echoed through the otherwise-silent farmhouse.  Bed checks typically happened at three on the nose; whether Moody didn’t care about catching folks by surprise, wanted to give them some wiggle room to plan their mischief, or was just sufficiently convinced that he was scary enough to respect without bursting unannounced through the door, Gideon did not know. 

What he did know was that bed check tonight had passed either hours or minutes or seconds ago, which meant it was the deep middle of the night. All Moody would have found was a body in each bed; Vince asleep in one, and Gideon pretending to be asleep in his own. But as soon as the door closed and the footsteps faded away, it was back to staring at the bleak ceiling and the shadows that stained it. 

“Vince?” Gideon whispered it, quiet but so suddenly that it sounded louder than it ought to, hissing through the air like a teapot about to declare itself ready. It might have been a plausible thing, an ‘oh, were you awake?’ or ‘odd, I thought you were missing!’. But all of those required a mental commitment to untruths that Gideon didn’t have even on his better days, when the sun was up and he’d gotten some real sleep. 

So he spoke again - “Vince?” - in a mid-afternoon voice, sitting up while he said it, the sheets rustling away from him in protest. Assuming it best to go all in now that he was on the path, Gideon tossed his pillow through the air, across the empty space between the beds, and waited for the telltale thump of gravity dropping it upon Vince’s once-peacefully-breathing head. 

“What are the chances that you happen to be awake right now?” — @vince-whoisleft​

Gideon, for his height and lankiness and general...well, loudness, was surprisingly good at stealth and tracking training. 

(Stealth and tracking was once called “S&T” affectionately by the Order recruits of his day; until they decided it was a nickname better worn by Sin & Tonic, a specialty, sloppy Barns cocktail invented the following weekend.) 

For one, Gideon was good at stealth and tracking because he took it seriously – not that that uncommon in the Order of the Phoenix, especially during the annual training sprint. But he also enjoyed it, which seemed to be the trick one needed to actually get a gold star in sneaking about and looking invisible – or at least casual – while doing so. 

This skillset did not translate successfully into Gideon’s personal life. 

They’d been at the Barns for just over fifty hours now, and Gideon was proving great at keeping himself busy. Late to bed, early to rise, volunteering for every meal preparation...he was making a big show of getting involved. It wasn’t so different from the way he overloaded himself with patrol shifts during the year. Though driven by very different – very different – factors, they still had one in common: reluctance to go home, to be still, to be his unvarnished self in the room that he rented or that had been assigned to him. 

Normally, this wouldn’t bother Gideon one lick – except for Vince. 

Vince, and the fact that he seemed to be catching on to the fact that he and Gideon hadn’t yet overlapped in being both in the shared room and conscious for longer than ten minutes. Vince, and the way that Gideon had a feeling he’d think of himself as the problem; and the ways it wasn’t true, and the ways in which it was, but not in the way he was bound to think. 

Vince, who Gideon didn’t hear crossing the lawn and didn’t hear approaching and didn’t see at all, until it was too late. They were right next to each other: Gideon making a big mess of trying to fill a bucket from a water pump, muggle style; Vince managing to look even less like he belonged on a farm, even though he had a deeply comforting way of looking like he belonged anywhere. 

“Hi!” said Gideon brightly, standing up. He tried to wipe a smudge of dirt off the thigh of his trousers, and only succeeded in smearing a new layer around. It was slightly easier to be normal here, out in the open even if they were alone (and even with Gideon bursting to say four hundred things at once). At the very least, it was more convincing that night one, when he disappeared to take the supposed second of back-to-back showers, despite the Barns having less of a ‘water heating system’ and more of a ‘buckets like the one Gideon was currently filling with cold well water’ system. 

Standoffish was a bad color on Gideon, but he donned it and took a step back, trying to invent some new step in his work that could steal his attention. Still, the words had started and it was a losing game to try and keep them back, with so much else already on the line and on his mind. So Gideon chatted away, gamely avoiding eye contact and striking a strange, neutral tone. 

“Glad to see you’re in one piece. Although Gerard won’t be. I think he was plotting to steal your dinner away if you were late. Or – not yours, anyone’s really.” — @vince-whoisleft​