Scotty is an Anglican Spaceman (funkwick) wrote in blurred_war, @ 2010-02-19 20:40:00 |
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Kissing Friday had never had much meaning to Scotty. He supposed it meant something, in the long line of chivalrous acts necessary to win a girl, but he'd never considered it as a holiday where he should participate. It was different, however, this year. After his date with Agatha, Scotty had been more preoccupied with girls than usual. He did not understand girls, nor did he understand the male role in regards to girls. But he thought that somehow the experiment deserved his full attention, that the experiment should mean something other than pearls and patriotic duty. Yet, what it required was a girl, and Agatha had not seemed keen when he had expressed his confusion. Nor had she brought up her patriotic Valentine in everyday conversation. Besides, the upcoming Quidditch match made it rather difficult for Scotty to just walk up to Agatha and kiss her on the cheek. She might think it a violation of Gwen's rule, or she might think it a declaration of his love. Scotty didn't know quite whether he loved Agatha or not. But either option seemed detrimental to the team, and he certainly didn't want to have to leave the Quidditch team in a state of confusion days before the match. So it was that Scotty found himself walking down to the pitch on that Friday evening, not yet having accomplished his goal of kissing a girl. A girl! Such a wonderful and curious object that he had never yet considered! Certainly a bit of practise was in order to distract him from this awful phenomenon, a bit of rocket ships and shooting stars. Unfortunately when Scotty arrived at the Pitch, he found it already occupied, though he could not tell by whom. Aoife had managed to find a bit of time on Friday to slip away and practise her flying. She did not know for certain if she would have the opportunity to play in the match, but she was not going to fail the team if she did end up with that opportunity and that meant spending every free moment in something Quidditch related, eggs be bloody well damned. And so the egg was away at the side of the pitch, possibly screaming its head off - well, not head precisely - but Aoife wasn't paying it any attention. Nor, honestly was she giving any attention to Scotty's approach. She swooped into a classic dive and pulled up only just when she knew any longer would probably end her up on the ground. In truth, she thought as she pulled to a halt several yards above the grass, she probably could have gone lower. Donagh would have gone lower, but she wasn't quite there yet. She turned her broom around, thinking that she ought to check on her egg, and that was when she noticed Scotty standing there. She blinked. He'd been spying on her? She wasn't even one of the real players and she might not even have the chance to play and he'd been watching her fly? Aoife had not realised it was kissing day, having been preoccupied with first Quidditch and second make-belief Egg Children, and so kissing was rather the furthest thing from her mind as she flew over and dismounted her broom. "What are you doing here?" Scotty might have been about to ask the same question - except he knew what she was doing there. She was practising. Scotty held his broom awkwardly at arm's length, and it occurred to him - slowly - that Aoife was a girl. "Did you know it's Kissing Friday?" He had completely side-stepped her question and his thoughts about practise only to return to his previous preoccupation with kissing and girls. He shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to walk further onto the pitch towards her and also not wanting to retreat. He did, after all, have the right to be there. "I never thought about it before. Girls, kissing, Fridays - but... Oh -" It seemed as if her question had finally returned to the forefront of his mind, and he shook his head. He felt a bit foolish and still every bit awkward. "I just thought with the match tomorrow I'd put in a bit of practice for the -" Shooting stars were not words that were supposed to be uttered outside of practise. Seeking strategy was supposed to be top secret, or some other rot, and so he hesitated. "- the match tomorrow." It sounded redundant, but the words were there and they could not be taken back. "Yeah?" He wanted to offer that they share the pitch, but they were on opposing teams and a day before the match -- well, that didn't seem quite right. Even if they were friends, classmates, whichever. He'd never been on specific terms with those outside of Gryffindor, always being a bit odd except amongst the chosen few. Aoife realised in retrospect that asking him what he was doing was probably rather silly. He was on the Gryffindor Quidditch team and clearly they were going to be practising, weren't they? So she didn't reiterate her question, and as she stepped towards him, she was startled by his question anyway. Did she know it was kissing Friday? Well, of course it was, and people had been talking about it in the journal, but she'd not paid it much mind having only the game on her mind. "Right, it's good to have practise" she said, and she gave him a curious look. He'd sent her a Valentine, and it had been sweet, but she didn't know what that was supposed to mean. And now he was asking her about Kissing Friday - did he... did he like her? Oddly enough that hadn't been a possibility that had occurred to her when she had received the Valentine, and now she picked up her broom and looked at the other boy hesitant to say anything mostly because she had no idea what to say. For lack of anything else, she simply agreed: "So uh, yeah, it is Kissing Friday. People have been saying that." Scotty took a step closer to Aoife, not really thinking about it as he did so. He remembered the conversation that he had earlier in the month with Malcolm. It had focused on the appropriate time and place to kiss a girl, not the appropriate girl to kiss (it had never occurred to Scotty that he would not be kissing Agatha or someone else in Gryffindor). "Practise is important," he agreed. His eyes searched the pitch, and then they returned to her. Scotty had never really looked at Aoife before but, now that he thought about it, it was really quite stupid that he had never seen her as a girl before. She was in most of his classes, and she played Quidditch and - a girl, most definitely. "So, yeah, Kissing Friday," he repeated after her as he took yet another step closer. He wasn't quite focused on the words, and he wasn't quite focused on her (for even now, he couldn't quite say whether or not he liked her and he wouldn't have been able to respond if she asked). Swallowing his nerves, he leaned in a bit closer and kissed her on the cheek. "Good luck at the match, Aoife." It was a quick kiss, almost like a bird, and he was standing two steps away from her again before his brain had registered what had happened. It wasn't that Aoife didn't notice him stepping closer. She did, but it was rather more that she was absolutely stuck to the ground as if she'd been placed there with a permanent sticking charm. She couldn't have moved her legs if she'd wanted to as Scotty stepped forward and then kissed her on her cheek. The lack of ability to move her legs did not seem to equate to a lack of ability to blush, however, and her cheeks were suddenly quite hot and very pink. Aoife Kelly was very rarely shy about anything, but she suddenly felt quite shy. "I - uh-" she'd never been kissed by a boy and now she wondered if she shouldn't have thought more of the Valentine that Scotty had sent her. "Um, thank you Scotty. Um, you too?" And then she realised that she shouldn't leave that as a question, not when he'd been so very sweet to her. "I mean, luck, I mean, good luck at the match, er, with it." This response was hardly very elegant, she thought to herself. Scotty felt suddenly quite brave and cheerful. He nodded as he listened to her words. "Thanks, Aoife. It'll be a good match no matter who wins. Don't you think?" He was purposefully oblivious to her sudden shyness and stumbling over words. It was quite liberating to have kissed a girl and, although he couldn't yet evaluate the experiment objectively, he thought he might have a new appreciation for this holiday. "I've written to the Martians and Clark Gable, but I don't know if they'll show." He had slipped into his usual incessant chattering about strange things, smiling and waving his hands for emphasis where necessary. "It will be brilliant if the Martians dropped off their spaceships right over head and... you know, we could go to Hogsmeade sometime if you wanted, or just for a walk. Hogsmeade might not be safe since the war." This last bit was said quite quickly, almost as if he had lost his nerves at the last minute. But she was quite endearing, and perhaps adventures with those on the opposing team were not quite as bad as those with girls on the same time. "I once had an adventure on the opposite side of the lake. I fought off the evil machine men, and then dashed away just in time in my spaceship." He hesitated, and then added, "Imaginary ship, of course. I've not built the real one yet." Luckily for Scotty, the fact that he had mentioned Martians at all had made some of Aoife's shyness drop away. Not that she had any particular idea what he was speaking about, but it was just so completely odd that she couldn't help but be intrigued as she thought that, for better or worse, she'd never spent much time paying any attention whatsoever to Scotty. She wasn't certain she should be spending that much time paying him attention right now, as it was just before the game, and he might be simply trying to distract her so that she wouldn't do very well, but then she thought, no, because Scotty didn't seem that devious. "Oh, well, I, um," he was asking her to Hogsmeade? It was the one part of what he'd said that actually made a bit of sense. Not that it made a lot of sense or anything, but it made more sense than evil machine men, and so forth. "Perhaps, Hogsmeade - if it doesn't seem as dangerous next time a Hogsmeade weekend arrives." And she supposed if she had to end up in a shelter - for better or worse - there would be worse people to end up in a shelter with. And then, because she couldn't quite let every odd thing that he'd said go by without comment: "What machine men?" "Yeah, machine men..." He'd been about to describe the machine men, which were more overturned metal buckets than "men," when he realised she'd agreed to Hogsmeade. "Really?" He hadn't meant to sound quite so excited. Fortunately, Scotty was not one to be put off by excitement. "And if there are bombs, I can protect you. It's very important to have protection during times of war, you know." He did not have much experience in protecting others, but he'd been able to protect Agatha and - well - he doubted it would be much harder to protect Aoife. "Especially with machine men, bombs, and the like... Just think of what would happen if the machine men formed an alliance with the Nazis! We'd be annihilated for sure!" This thought was certainly not pleasant, and he had not meant to bring it up in the presence of someone who was supposed to be delicate. That is, at least, how he thought girls were supposed to be. "Honestly though, I doubt that will happen. It's far too absurd." He smiled briefly as if to shrug off the frightening idea of a machine men and Nazi alliance. He realised as did so that he still had ahold of his broomstick, and that they were standing on the Quidditch Pitch and that, if he were completely honest, he still didn't know Aoife that well. "I should probably let you practise?" "I'm sure you could," Aoife said encouragingly. She supposed she wasn't sure of any such thing entirely, after all it did not seem that anything but a shelter was likely to be a protection from a magical bomb and possibly not that if it was hit right (not a very pleasant thought at all) but the gesture was nice, and rather chivalrous and despite the fact that Aoife had read only one or two romances in most of her life, she appreciated the gentlemanly gesture. The problem now was that she wasn't certain if he were joking or serious and so she decided to assume that he was perhaps seriously joking - since she wasn't even certain what the machine men were and he'd mentioned Martians earlier and it seemed unlikely he'd been completely serious about that - he was a bit odd, wasn't he? But she'd never had anyone kiss her, or offer to protect her and so, she supposed both things ought to be encouraged. "I'm certain it won't happen. I can't imagine that the machine men would want to be involved in our war, they likely have their own, er, thins to deal with. But - um, I'm done, actually, with practise. So I suppose it really is I who ought to let you get on with practising." She gestured to the broom in his hand. Scotty glanced at the broom in his hand. She was right, of course. He had come here to practise and to avoid girls, not invite them on Martian adventures and kiss them. "Erm - right, well, I'll see you at the match, yeah?" He knew the answer to that was an affirmative, since she was on the Hufflepuff team, but he didn't really have much else to say now. He had exhausted his usual nervous repertoire of space junk. "Good luck." Scotty hesitated and then, after a final nod to his current opponent and future date, he took off into the air. This time though he felt much more attached to the earth and to reality than he usually did, something that he might need to explore further. After the match, that is. Aoife watched Scotty go and considered everything that had just happened. she'd just been kissed - and asked out on a date. That was not something that happened every day and if she'd been more of a paranoid person she might have suspected the Gryffindor team of putting him up to it to distract her, but as it was, she merely smiled slightly. She wouldn't focus on this, but it had been rather nice. She gathered up her broom and made her way off the pitch and back towards the castle. |