Lies By Omission

Chapter 2: Non-Aromantic Blaise

I promised there'd be more chapters coming!! Thank you for your comments!! So much!! They make my day, it's amazing.

Neville

"Broke up with Goldstein," Blaise said over take-out pizza at his place.

Technically, it was his mother's place, but he had nearly half the house to himself– if it could be called a house. It seemed a bit grand to fall into the category of "house," even though Neville had grown up in Gran's large family house. This was a whole new level. Did Blaise think Neville's little cottage-y feeling home was too homey? He wondered about it a bit too much, maybe.

"You," said Neville, feeling out of sorts. "You what?"

Blaise didn't seem affected by it; he never reacted very dramatically to his breakups (or at all, really), but Neville never knew how to respond. Blaise didn't care about a lot of things– should Neville care? If Blaise didn't care, should Neville say sorry about it anyway, or should they both go on like nothing happened...?

"Broke up with him. Dumped him, I guess, although really it was a long time coming."

Blaise flicked his wand and muttered a Vanishing spell just in time– one of the house-elves, Nopkey, popped in with a platter of hot bread, tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella in balsamic vinegar, and some fancy-looking olive oil all balanced on a tray that looked unfairly large for such a small creature to carry. Blaise accepted the food as if he was hungry and hadn't just been eating take-away.

Neville always did apologize, though, to be safe. "I'm sorry." A long time coming? Last week, Blaise had been pretty eager over Goldstein– or, his arse, in any case.

Blaise wouldn't eat much– he was always watching his weight, somehow believing his worth was invested solely in his sex appeal. Neville always wanted to pile him up a plate, talk to him about the joys of eating, and tell him that his worth was in his flat-voiced jokes and his steady friendship, and his odd denial that he was steady in anything, and his careful carelessness and his large, bare rooms filled with nothing at all that Neville knew he wanted to fill, but hadn't found anything he cared about enough to fill rooms with just yet.

So Neville took the cheese, since it was the fattiest, and dipped his bread in oil, and Blaise took the tomatoes and shrugged fluidly.

"Spark faded, you know how it is."

Neville did not know how it was. He'd never really... well he'd had a little thing with Luna, for what felt like five seconds, and that could've been a spark fading out, but it was more just... looking at it through a different angle. They were still friends.

"You'll stay friends?"

Blaise looked at him, and stretched out languidly, like a cat, and then sat up, changing his mind. Neville had known Blaise long enough to know this meant he was uncomfortable, or something was bothering him, or both. "Didn't really know him enough to be friends."

The couch cushions were firm, the furniture new, unlike the antiques Blaise's mother kept. Blaise's rooms looked like modern interior-design magazines, devoid of character. Neville ran his finger along the hard seam of the arm of the couch as he worked up his nerve.

"Do you never date friends, then?"

Blaise didn't answer for a long time. Was that a bad question? Probably. Way to make it awkward, Neville thought, who's his best mate. Oh, right, you.

"Nah." Oh. "Reckon I'd break their heart, and then I'd be down to two friends."

Blaise liked to say he only had Neville, Draco, and Pansy, despite Hermione, Harry, and Ron practically adopting him into their circle. Possibly because Neville was just that obvious. He wasn't. Was he?