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@rowanprotectionsquad’s get to know the members event
Rowan is 10 years old when one day, something just... doesn't feel right.
He's playing video games with a few of his friends and he can't help but wish he... wasn't.
Even so, he ignores it. It's nothing, he tells himself. It's nothing.
A week later, the same thing happens. He's playing football with his father and he finds himself screaming in his head to find something else to do.
So he does. He heads inside to where his mother is cooking. He's intrigued. 'What're you doing?' he asked her. 'Making dinner,' she replies. 'Wanna help?'
Rowan takes his chance.
That night, he lays in bed and thinks about how he'd felt that week.
Why is he feeling like this? Why can't he just be... normal? Why doesn't he want to be like the other boys? Why isn't he like the other boys?
Why does he cringe when the word 'he' crosses his mind in reference to himself? Why?
He doesn't know what to do about this feeling. And so he doesn't think about it again.
It happens a second time a few days later. He's getting in the shower and suddenly a wave of panic washes over him. He looks down at himself. Wrong. This is so wrong. It’s his dick that's wrong. He doesn't know why but it's wrong. It's not supposed to be there.
He tries to ignore the feeling as best he can. It doesn't work and he ends up crying in the bathtub.
His mother finds him in her room, her wardrobe open. She asks him what he's doing and he tells her that he's looking for something.
And that something just happens to be a dress. His mother smiles at him, saying nothing, and helps him try it on. He looks amazing and a sense of peace flows through him.
From then on, Rowan's mother tries to help him subtly. It's like she knows what's wrong with him. He doesn't have the courage to ask just yet.
They do a lot of things together that summer. Rowan watches her do her makeup every day before she leaves for work.
She teaches him how to apply it himself and he takes this on with pride. He can do this.
It makes him feel a lot better. With his mom’s support the feeling of wrong is manageable.
Until it isn't. One day it just. Isn't. He doesn't know what's wrong. He's been doing things the way he usually does them.
He's with his mom when the feeling is at its strongest. He goes to pick up a brush from his mom’s dressing table and suddenly something makes him stop.
He tells his mom that he doesn't feel like using makeup today.
’That's okay, honey, you can just watch if you want to,’ she says with a smile. ‘You don't have to do this.’
And so he just watches.
It takes a while for him to stop and think maybe I’m normal. Maybe what happened before is gone now. Maybe he's okay again.
And then. It comes back. The feeling of wrong when he showers and when he goes to school and when he's at home and he doesn't know what to do.
This feeling goes on for weeks. He doesn't know how to describe it but every time his friends come calling, and they call him ‘mate’ and ‘boy’, he feels something close to discomfort and annoyance.
But some days, it doesn't bother him as much. The feeling of wrong is still there but it isn't as prominent. He doesn't feel as uncomfortable in his own skin on these days.
It's at home one day that he snaps. He helps his brother with the washing up and his brother says, ‘Good boy,’ and suddenly Rowan Khanna has had enough.
’I’m not a boy!’ he yells as loud as he can.
Joseph doesn't say anything for a second, but then he turns around and pulls out a chair at the kitchen table. ‘Sit down, kid,’ he says, and Rowan sits.
Joseph asks him what he meant by his statement.
’I’m a person,’ says Rowan. ‘Not a boy.’
’Right. And what makes you say that?’
And so Rowan tells his brother everything. About how some days he feels so wrong that he wants to get out of his own skin. How being called a boy shakes him to his core and he absolutely hates it.
There's silence coming from his brother, and Rowan wants to scream. ‘Rowan,’ says Joseph. ‘Have you ever heard of the term ‘genderfluid’?’ Rowan shakes his head, intrigued.
’It means that your gender can change. It can change every day, once a week, whenever. You say that sometimes you like doing Mom things and sometimes you like doing Dad things right?’
‘Yeah,’ comes Rowan’s muttered reply.
Joseph smiles. ‘Hey it's okay. There's nothing wrong with you, Rowan.’
’There isn't?’
’Nope,’ says Joseph. ‘Not at all. You're just figuring yourself out and that's okay.’ Rowan ponders this before his brother speaks again. ‘Do you feel like genderfluid fits you?’ Genderfluid. Rowan has to admit he likes it. He’s genderfluid.
No wait. It's not right somehow. Something’s wrong. ‘I don't like the word ‘he’,’ says Rowan, screwing up his nose in disgust.
‘That's okay. Do you like ‘she’?’
Rowan shakes his head. ‘That's not right either.’
‘They?’
They. The word doesn’t bring him pain. He likes it. They like it.
'Yeah,’ they say. ‘They sounds good. I like it.’
Joseph smiles, ruffling their hair. ‘I'm proud of you, kid.’ Rowan smiles.
They realise something. They've always been normal. This is their normal.
Rowan and MC's friendship is so cute, I'm dying. My version of MC, Leland (yep, it's she but... mage's names, you know?) is from Ravenclaw. So is Rowan. My first aesthetics about them is in blue tones, but probably there will be more to come with other faculties' colours
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soul no. 5
pairing: rowan khanna x george weasley
word count: 5,068
for the @rowanprotectionsquad july au event (american high school au)
i.
Rowan’s first high school party is very likely Ilvermorny High’s first proper high school party; the school’s social life has kept itself to students getting drunk in parking lots and terrorising Walmarts and skater kids smoking blunts round the back of Wendy’s, neither of which Rowan has been involved in - in fact, he almost ignores George’s constant pestering of him to come, but is eventually persuaded by the tag-team of Penny and Tonks, who even come over to help him dress.
“I don’t need help dressing,” he says. “I do it every day.”
“And it’s tragic every day,” Penny reminds him; Rowan would quibble, but she’s right. He’s never much had an eye for fashion, always looking to this friend or that for some kind of helpful advice and never really moving beyond denim shirts and chinos. “Dude, buy some jeans or something. Chinos are not the answer. And don’t you have any black T-shirts? Do you know what a fashion essential is?”
“Penny, I don’t even know what a fashion no-no is, never mind a fashion essential. There’s a black T-shirt in next to the black trousers there.”
“I respect the colour coding of your wardrobe, Rowan, but trying to find anything in this black section is a fucking nightmare.” Penny grunts, feigning rolling up her sleeves (she’s wearing a very pretty sequined sleeveless dress that Tonks can’t keep her eyes off) as she plunges back into Rowan’s wardrobe, which hasn’t seen a clean since he started high school aged eleven and is still home to an alarming amount of T-shirts so small they would now function as crop tops. “God, you need a personal shopper or something.”
But between her and Tonks, they make up an outfit for Rowan: a black T-shirt, some dark red chinos, a pair of black Converse (Rowan thinks Vans are too skater). He doesn’t own any necklaces, so Tonks sacrifices hers, tucking away the charm on it so that it’s just a chain round his neck, and she spins the ball of Rowan’s nose piercing so it sits on the outside, not the inside.
“There we go,” she says.
“People might not laugh at you in that,” Penny adds. “Don’t know if you’ll get any, though.”
“I wasn’t too worried about that,” Rowan says. “Nobody’s kissed me since him, and he moved to England after middle school, and I’m not sure I’ve met anybody I’ve wanted to kiss since then.”
“Don’t be picky!” Tonks laughs, elbowing him. “You never know who you could find. If I had been picky and dismissed princess here based on the fact that her hair is nowhere near as cool as mine, now where would I be?”
“At this party but alone,” Rowan answers, and Tonks huffs in the truth of the statement, rattling the chains looped through the belt holes of her red parachute trousers. They’ve walked instead of taking Tonks’s bright yellow car that she drives with far too much abandon so that they can all drink and smoke, and they still have a few blocks before they reach the Jordan household. It’s summer, but it’s rained during the day and the ground is slick, meaning Penny is walking carefully in her heels and even Tonks looks a little unsteady on her platforms.
Rowan’s not sure who Lee Jordan is; he knows that Lee hosts a podcast which is very popular among the students of Ilvermorny, but he’s never listened to it himself, and only really recognises Lee from seeing his trademark dip-dyed electric blue dreadlocks in the corridors. All he knows is that Lee is friends with Fred and George Weasley, who have been making Rowan’s life as hall monitor an absolute nightmare, and that Fred and George and their older brother Charlie had egged Lee to throw a party while his parents were away. He wonders how big Lee’s house is - almost the whole school seems to have been invited, from what Rowan has heard.
And from the sounds of it, the rumours were true - long before they even make the turn onto Lee’s avenue, Rowan can hear the vague pounding of music and the shouting of hundreds of unruly teenagers and thinks he should’ve insisted on staying home. This is not his style. He likes books, and reading, and studying. He doesn’t really do drinking, and has never smoked a joint in his life - he hasn’t even smoked a straight cigarette.
As if sensing his nerves, Penny reaches over and loops her arm with his. “Don’t worry. Just find a niche, and stay there unless you’re feeling adventurous. Don’t take any pills. Don’t drink too much, because I’m not carrying you home. Don’t kiss anybody without checking they swing your way or you might start a fight.”
“Why, has that happened before?”
“Tonks went to a party in another state and the fight was so bad the cops got called.”
Rowan’s legs almost go from beneath him. “Oh, fuck.”
“Best case scenario, keep your lips to yourself.”
“You’ll be fine,” Tonks assures him, and that’s when they push through the crowd in the garden and through the front door, right into the heart of the chaos. Rowan almost immediately loses his companions just in the act of trying to find something to drink that isn’t beer - it’s a battle he thinks he isn’t going to win until he discovers the kitchen, where someone is showing off their skills in making Bloody Marys, and he swipes one off the table as he passes through into the living room.
It’s a little quieter than any other room he’s so far caught eyes on, all of which are packed wall to wall with gyrating students all holding red solo cups (Rowan has a glass, which simultaneously sparks a joyful individuality and a fear of standing out). It’s a little mellower, the music slightly less deafening and a few people dancing and a few more stretched out on sofas. Someone is smoking a joint, but Rowan doesn’t recognise them, and is a little too afraid to just ask.
George Weasley bustles past him, straight to the boy with the joint, and asks if he can have a smoke. The boy laughs and hands it over, and George takes the opportunity of a few puffs before turning back and noticing Rowan. His eyes light up, and Rowan feels the need to leave the room before George decides to cause him more trouble.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” he cheers, immediately settling in next to Rowan. “Didn’t think it was your type of thing.”
“It’s not,” says Rowan, whose throat burns.
“Have some beer and it’ll be your type of thing soon,” George assures him, forcing Rowan to take a few disgusting sips before his screwed-up eyes give George the indication that a Bloody Mary is as good a drink as Rowan is going to procure. “You’ll have fun. Promise. If you stop hanging out in here and go dance.”
“I can’t really dance,” Rowan winces. “And my drink-”
“Chug it or put it down and run the risk.”
Rowan has to chug it in sections, and it takes him what feels like a stupidly long time, but George seems to take no heed of this: he eggs Rowan on tirelessly, clapping his hands and singing some drinking song over and over, trying to get Rowan to finish on a countdown, with little luck, and so eventually shifts to the tactic of whooping and applause.
Rowan slams the glass down on a small coffee table, coughing a few times, feeling like he’s been drinking heat packs. “I think I’m a wine man,” he wheezes.
“I think you’re a wine uncle,” George agrees, slinging an arm around Rowan’s shoulder and grinning at him; Rowan’s not sure if it’s the fact he’s still a little dizzy-feeling from having chugged that much liquid at once, but he swears that stomach does a little dip. He hopes he’s not going to be sick on George; but then again, it would be perfect revenge for all the chaos George has caused in school.
Still. George is standing here, speaking to him, so he’s not too much of a terror.
“This is your first party, isn’t it?” George says, leading Rowan into a room that’s busier: some people are dancing, or what seems to qualify more as jumping around in time to the thumping bass going through the floorboards, and quite a few are gathered around a table of cups, drinking away and gossiping loudly about everything from how often Mr Snape washes his hair to whether or not Fred and Lee were caught kissing on the bleachers after basketball. Rowan nods in answer. “Then I shall be your party tutor in the ways of having a good time. Rule one is drink a lot. Rule two is don’t drink too much, because if this night goes well for you, I’m sure you’ll want to remember it. Rule three is don’t overthink things.”
“How can I avoid overthinking things when both you and my friends have given me a long list of rules and dos and don’ts? You’re being contradictory!”
“Rule number four,” George says, poking Rowan’s nose. “Don’t use the word contradictory at a party, or you will never pick up a girl.”
“Boy,” Rowan corrects, so automatically that he flushes when he realises what he’s said. “Which makes it harder, I guess.”
“You’re overthinking. Come dance.”
Instead of letting Rowan dance in that crowd, George takes Rowan into the chaotic front room, pushing him into the throng; Rowan’s instinct is to panic and he tries to reach out to George like he’s falling, but is quickly swallowed up by the crowd, people jamming into the empty spaces between the two, leaving Rowan to fend for himself in a hyper mosh pit of teens. For several moments, he has to get over the absolute sensory overload: people are pushing at him, crushing against him, skin against his from every side; he can barely hear anything but the beastly yawn of a bass drop; the floor under him pulsates with the beat, a heartbeat against his feet.
There is only one way to survive this.
Rowan dances. It’s not true that he can’t dance - he did ballet as a kid, ballroom in his early teens - but he can’t dance in a way that’s cool, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because nobody is watching and everybody is doing their own thing. There isn’t a dance, except perhaps the common theme of jumping, and so Rowan lets himself be taken by the flow, sucked up by the vortex of flannel shirts, swinging his hips to the rhythm that he feels and letting his body take him, surrendering into the crowd, unselfconscious of the way he bashes into others, no longer over-observant of how differently he dances compared to everyone else, keener to follow the music than to bounce until he pools with sweat.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been when George finds him and they bundle out of the room in search of more alcohol, but Rowan feels amazing: he feels fresh, loose, awake, alive. He grins at George.
“I think I might like parties,” he says.
“Yeah?” George squeezes his arm; Rowan feels his stomach go funny, again. Maybe drinking and immediately dancing isn’t so good for the digestion. “Right then, party animal. Time for our real measure of your talents: beer pong.” Rowan shudders; he can barely play table tennis when he’s sober, never mind when he’s had a Blood Mary down him with the looming threat of more alcohol, but he’s got a little bit of a buzz to him now, and nods enthusiastically, following George through to some other room in the maze where a whole ping pong table has been set up, each side being set up with a triangle of cups of beer.
Rowan starts shabbily: he’s never been the best with coordination, even less so the more beer he forces down. But he starts to get a feel for it, and George is a natural: soon, they can almost hold their own against Harry (soccer captain) and Lee (basketball), but the jock pair are doing a startlingly good job at getting Rowan quite significantly drunk. He ate before he left - Rowan loves a hearty dinner, he can’t focus when he’s hungry - but the alcohol is beginning to hit him like a sledgehammer, and he’s torn somewhere at the end of the game between dive-bombing back into dancing or leaning against the wall and groaning.
So he dances, because he doesn’t much like the idea of groaning around. He loses himself for a while among the people, letting the irresponsibility flow over him: he has no worries, no fears, no regrets, nothing to weigh him down.
Until he starts feeling sick, and wanders to the kitchen for a cup of water. There are no Bloody Marys left, which he guesses is all the better as he fills a glass from the tap, taking tentative sips before letting loose and gulping it thirstily down, letting water drip down his face and wash over his top.
As he’s setting the glass down, he notices from the corner of his eye a flash of packaging. It’s a little plastic box, the flimsy kind that brownies and hordes of gingerbread men come in; he spins round and rescues a box of twenty brownie bites from the floor.
When George walks in, Rowan is shovelling brownie bites.
“This is where you went?”
“Brownies are good.”
“So they are.” George helps himself to a piece, and grins, taking a seat on the dinner table next to Rowan. Rowan can tell it’s George because there’s a calmness to his aura; Fred is manic, but George is mellower, quicker to sly wits than to loud performances. And more empathetic, Rowan thinks. “There’s vodka lemonades going, if you want one.”
“God yes,” Rowan says emphatically, but doesn’t move: his gaze has become transfixed on George’s mouth, on his lips, on the sharp little curve of his Cupid’s bow. It’s not subtle. He practically can’t keep his eyes away.
“Do you want to make out?” George asks, quirking his eyebrows.
“More than I want vodka lemonade,” says Rowan.
George kisses him.
ii.
It’s George’s full intention to beat Rowan off in the kitchen, but when it gets busier with people looking for water and staying for brownie bites and the view, Rowan demands privacy and George concedes.
“Rowan,” George says as they tramp up the stairs, trying every room and encountering half a dozen other couples enjoying privacy. Rowan is tripping over his own feet and giggling manically each time he does, but George still seems unreasonably sober for the time of night, his face half-serious in the light. “How drunk are you?”
“I’m having a great time,” Rowan says enthusiastically, and that’s when George turns round, kisses him again, and tells him that they’ll do this another time, when they’re sober, if they want to. Rowan blinks back at him, offense in his eyes, betrayed by George leaving him hanging; but he falls forward into George for a tight hug, and is sick a little on his shoulder.
George helps him find Penny and Tonks, and they walk Rowan home. He lies in bed, wishing he’d had more fun but feeling warm with the flush of dancing, his mind stupidly abuzz. He can’t stop thinking about George, about the feeling of his hand against Rowan’s bare skin; he also craves more of the brownie bites, sad that he didn’t hold them down for long.
At some point, he falls asleep.
“George Weasley was going to give me a handjob in the middle of the kitchen!” Rowan exclaims, knocking back another quarter of his coffee, groaning slightly as his eyes catch the fluorescence of the overhead lights. “He had his hand down my pants, I swear.”
“At my first party, I fell before I hurled and cracked my head off the toilet seat,” Tonks laughs. “You’re killing it, dude! What a good start. And George is pretty good-looking.”
“He’s not a troglodyte, you mean,” Penny scoffs, sipping at her iced coffee; she looks up at Rowan, flashing him a grin that’s so predatory he thinks he might run before she even manages the question. “So, do you want to kiss him when you’re sober?”
“Well…” Rowan smiles shyly, and Tonks laughs; in the distance, Penny catches sight of Ben coming in, and ushers him over. “I thought he was an asshole before, but he was really nice to me at that party. Maybe he’s not so bad. Ben, do you want some of this muffin? I don’t feel very well.”
“Um, maybe,” Ben says hesitantly, taking a seat and slinging his tote bag over his chair. “But if you don’t feel well, then-”
“He’s hungover,” Tonks fills in. “He’s not caught anything, don’t worry.”
Rowan smiles and pushes the plate over in front of Ben, who still looks rather hesitant at the thought that he’s about to come into contact with Rowan’s germs; even when Rowan assures him he’s been eating the muffin with a knife and fork like the oddball he is, Ben doesn’t look convinced, and heads up to the counter to get himself a coffee. Rowan smiles after him - Ben verges on being neurotic, but that’s what makes him Ben.
“Who else is coming?” Rowan asks.
Penny checks her phone. “Barnaby’s coming. Andre’s working, so he’ll be a bit later than everyone else, and Tulip hasn’t even read any of the messages, so I’d count her out.”
“Do we have to tell all of them what happened?”
“Not unless you want to.”
“Are you embarrassed?”
“It just- it feels really wrong to have to admit that, after so many years of being straight-laced, I went to a party, had far too much to drink, and got a little close to someone I’m supposed to hate.” Rowan twiddles his thumbs. “I’d rather wait and see what happens before I say anything.”
“Nobody here’s going to judge you,” Tonks offers. “Hell, we’re just glad you got the chance to have some fun. And make out with a boy, who was respectable enough not to have it off with you once he realised you were completely wasted.”
“I feel like what I did was stupid,” Rowan says, scratching at the back of his neck; Ben chooses that moment to return to the table having forgotten to take his wallet up, and looks at Rowan, eyes gentle and wary but brimming with curiosity.
“What did you do?” he asks, and before he knows what’s happened, Rowan has told his entire friend group in excruciating detail, Penny and Tonks interjecting to throw in juicy extras everywhere from seeing Rowan declare Lady Gaga to be a “pop goddess” to having to strip him to his underwear for bed because he had ruined his only normal clothes.
Barnaby, who arrived in the middle of the story and joined in listening like he’d never been away at all, loudly sips at his drink. “You should ask him to finish the job.”
Rowan chokes on his water.
“Okay, don’t do that,” Penny butts in, “but you should at least try and talk to him at school. From what you said, he seems like a nice guy under all the pranks, so I’m sure he’ll hear you out.”
“But what do I even to say to him?” Rowan asks, fidgeting with a button on his sleeve. “Oh, hi, George, I really enjoyed spending time with you at that party and I want to go out with you while we’re both sober. Also, can you actually masturbate me this time?”
“Cut out the last bit,” Barnaby advises. Rowan sighs.
“I can’t believe you made out with the hall monitor,” says Lee.
“I can’t believe you got the hall monitor to dance,” adds Harry.
“I can’t believe the hall monitor scored any points in beer pong,” Fred says thoughtfully. “While drunk.” He turns round and fetches two slices of toast from the toaster, proceeding to slather them both in more-than-generous amounts of butter before placing them on a plate and handing them over to Lee. None of them have yet found a hangover cure that works better than just eating breakfast, and so until they find anything better, this is their antidote to too much drinking. “So, o brother of mine, any plans for romantic dates with our favourite obsessive hall monitor?”
“You had your hand in his pants. You can’t leave him hanging,” Harry says. George groans. Rowan isn’t so bad when he’s out of his school responsibilities, sure, but with a bit more sobriety about him, George has no idea what he was thinking; he’s just got himself stuck, now, in a situation he’s not sure how to fix. There’s everybody’s favourite solution of trying to date Rowan. There’s ghosting him, which George isn’t prepared to do. And there’s trying to let him down gently, which doesn’t sound particularly great either. “You should go out with him, at least once. He’s in English with me. He’s nice. He’s helped me with a few essays before.”
“And if you date him, he might stop being such an asshole about me going to the toilet without a pass,” Lee adds.
“It’s because he knows you’re just going to the toilets to smoke,” Harry rebuffs, and Lee pouts, loading the toaster with some wholemeal for the more demanding and healthy Harry (who will ruin the health benefits of the wholemeal by spreading peanut butter on his toast). “And he’d only believe that you had some kind of pissing disorder if you called it the same thing every time.”
“I don’t know,” George sighs, opening the microwave as it pings. As much as he wants a cup of coffee, it never aids his hangovers, and so he’s opted for hot chocolate instead. “I’m not sure if he’s my type while sober.”
“Do you even have a type? You keep turning everyone down. That’s not how you get a boyfriend, George,” Lee laughs, tilting Harry’s face for a kiss. “Harry’s certainly not my type, but here we are. Maybe he’s better.”
“Lee, you could date anybody and you’d be a cute fucking couple.”
“Because I’m not picky, George.”
“You could do a lot better than Rowan,” Fred points out, jabbing George in the back. “And, because some of us weren’t totally hammered by the time you two were, some of us got to see the looks of love you two were flashing at each other. You kept watching him dancing like you were in a gay film and waiting for someone to pull to a close-up of your face. You like that kid.”
“Freddie, dear, why are you encouraging me to date the hall monitor?”
“Oh, you know, Georgie. Might be helpful for troublemaking purposes. And because I’m a romantic.”
“A romantic who’s never had a girlfriend.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” Fred grins. George wants to say that neither is he, but the image of Rowan’s half-lidded eyes as he sank into George’s kiss makes him stop, and curse taking the party novice under his wing at all.
iii.
George tries really, really hard not to kiss Rowan.
He’d thought it would be easy. Rowan is Rowan, after all; a tad gawky, studious, takes his job as hall monitor a little too seriously, carries a huge book under his arm. He couldn’t put an outfit together that wasn’t a shirt and chinos if his life depended on it. He trips over his own feet when he’s not paying enough attention. He fanboys about Dickens novels. When George asks him to the movies, Rowan suggests the most arthouse film showing. He eats a sandwich at the back of the theater. He shushes George when he tries to speak during the previews; his knees keep knocking George’s; George sits with his hand on the armrest, and Rowan takes five minutes to raise his hand from his own knee to lay on top of George’s.
And George should like none of these things, in theory.
But when Rowan does them, he does.
“Thanks for coming out with me,” Rowan says, walking surprisingly jauntily down the road, ice cream in hand. George has not opened himself up to opportunity, and bought them both tubs instead of cones. “I know I’m not… I know you don’t really want to be with me. Or see me. But thanks for doing this anyway. I appreciate it.”
“Who said I didn’t want to do this? I could’ve said no.”
“You were drunk when you kissed me, and now you’re sober, and you just look… disappointed. Which is okay. I know I’m not the kind of person you’d want to be with.”
George sighs, pausing in the street and turning to Rowan; they duck towards the shelter of a shopfront to avoid blocking the sidewalk, staring at each under the shade. George is trying to formulate a speech in his head. Rowan is looking expectantly at him, clearly waiting for this speech. He looks like he’s waiting to be let down, and let down hard.
And George has tried hard not to kiss Rowan, but this is the moment he realises it’s what he’s been waiting for.
Rowan doesn’t kiss so well when he’s sober, and overthinking things. But George can feel him smiling, and taste the ice cream on his breath, and when Rowan’s free hand gently clutches at George’s shirt, that doesn’t really matter at all.
“And did you finish what you started at the party?” Lee asks when Rowan and his friends are out of earshot; Lee is out on the porch, smoking, far away from the rest of his rather minimal party guests except George. He decided to have a smaller party to save himself hiring any more external cleaners, and he thinks he prefers it, if only because he gets to bother each guest individually.
“Like I’m going to tell you and have you bother me about it for all eternity,” George scoffs. “Did I, didn’t I, what does it matter? We’re dating. Isn’t that good enough for you?”
“No. It’s precisely because you’re dating that I need relationship status updates, including every time you get to a new base. I practically update you every time Harry farts in his sleep.”
“And I don’t want to hear about Harry’s farts, thanks. But Rowan’s a bit hesitant about all this, so this is for his sake, not because I’m not desperate to brag to you about how much action I’m getting with him.” George grins, plucking Lee’s cigarette from his hands for a drag, though George isn’t the kind of boy to smoke full-time. He just steals a few. “Don’t be an asshole. He’s a sweetie.”
“I know; I told you,” Lee laughs. “And you were gonna just dump him.”
“Thank God for chivalry, and being handsy at parties.”
Rowan is being asked exactly the same question, but by Harry, and also trying to dodge the question by drinking and trying to propose any number of games for them to play which Harry always tries to route back to Truth or Dare, leading Rowan to give up and just try and detach himself and go find George, who he eventually tracks down to the kitchen, where he and Lee are bringing out the snacks.
“Brownies?” George suggests, holding up a box and grinning. “Though, you know, I’ve got a couple weed brownies with me. They’re not nostalgic, but they’re very fun.”
Rowan decides that he’ll be experimental, and takes one through with him to Lee’s sitting room, where they’re all gathered around in what’s essentially a glorified circle. Lee has been kinder with alcohol, having less guests to serve: Rowan has a whole bottle of rosé to himself, which makes him feel slightly more sophisticated than beer in a cup (though Lee’s promised to mix him up a Bloody Mary again later), which he sips at elegantly with his brownie. George sits at his side, with a gin and tonic, and occasionally rests his hand on Rowan’s knee, which makes Rowan blush, still.
They, thankfully, don’t really play any party games - nor do they do many party activities at all, except dance and sing along to a few classics. Mostly, they talk; they’ve kept to their own friend groups in school, and this is the first time that George’s and Rowan’s have mingled like this, so freely. They bat questions back and forth: why Tonks dyes her hair so often, how did Lee get so good at saxophone, why is Rowan such an uptight hall monitor, how did Harry and Lee get together. The occasion is sweet, giggly as they all descend into varying states of being drunk and high, and the best part-
they can all stay overnight at Lee’s.
Before bed, they play board games: Scrabble, Cluedo, Monopoly, Connect 4. Rowan is an unexpected beast, dominating most of these games; Fred snatches up Cluedo at the last minute, though, and after successfully bankrupting both Tonks and Barnaby on Mayfair, Harry is declared victor of Monopoly. Connect 4 is always anybody’s game.
That’s when an unofficial bedtime breaks out: Tonks and Penny leave, having various family affairs to attend to the next day, and Rowan and George go to get their pick of a bedroom. There’s not enough bed space to avoid having people sleep on floors, but nobody wants to ruin the privacy of their favourite new power couple.
“George,” says Rowan softly, on their way up the stairs. “Do you want to finish what we started at the party last time?”
George pauses, and turns round. “Yeah,” he grins. “If you want. And if you’re not drunk.”
“I think I’m high,” Rowan says quizzically. “Should we not do it because I’m high? Because it might be better now that I’m high.”
“We can give it a try. So long as you promise we don’t tell anyone, and leave them hanging.”
Rowan giggles. “Promise,” he says, jutting his pinkie out and wrapping it round George’s, sinking into George for a kiss as they back blindly for the door.
Rowan’s glad he tried parties.
George is glad he didn’t listen to himself, and kissed the stupid hall monitor.
