WHO: Patty Stimpson and Roger Davis WHERE: Patty's apartment WHEN: January 12, evening after the ice cream party WHAT: Patty and Roger need to talk WARNINGS: Feelings.
The parlour had been out of salted caramel.
Apart from all that Roger Davies, reserve Quidditch player and possible future Order™ ally, hadn’t been able to fully enjoy the evening. It had been just a tad too weird and as oblivious as his sisters claimed he could be, he wasn’t completely blind. So when he walked Patty back to the front door of her apartment, he was scant on his usual chit-chat and his hands were shoved into the pockets of his jeans. “So,” he said eventually, “this is you.”
Patty wished it didn’t feel so awkward. It was awkward right and she wasn’t just imagining it was awkward? She wished she had someone around to tell her. She didn’t think Roger would be that oblivious to think it was just them being drunk and silly. Patty wished they hadn’t said anything and more importantly she wished she kept her feelings to herself. This night had been a lot less enjoyable than she thought it would be.
“Yup, this is me.” Patty said with her hands in the pocket of sweater. She pulled out a hand with her keys and dropped them on the ground. Perfect. She bent over to pick them up as she mentally told herself to stop being so awkward.
“I’ve got them.” Roger accioed the keys into his hand and then passed over to his friend. Their palms brushed. The sense of awkwardness intensified. Still, he didn’t believe in avoiding things, and the persistency of their Gryffindor friends (fucking Gryffindors) meant that they couldn’t exactly ignore… whatever this was, and hope it would all go away.
“People were, you know, saying stuff over the network beforehand,” he added eventually. “And I was just wondering if you had anything to tell me?” Even though—unless he was absolutely as clueless as Clarissa claimed—he had an idea of what that might be, he kept his eyes steadily on her face. He owed her that much.
Nope she didn’t want to have this conversation. Nope, not at all. She just sort of nodded her head and started fiddling with her keys between both hands. Could she get her door unlocked and run in quickly? No, probably not and then she would just be leaving Roger on the other side of the door thinking she was crazy.
“No,” she squeaked out in answer to his question. But with his focus on her she couldn’t look away because that would be rude. “Okay maybe,” she said slowly after words a lot of time between those two words or at least it felt like ages to Patty.
“I likeyoumorethanafriend,” she spewed out as if it was one word. “Not a big deal it is cool. I know this is one sided and like that is totally cool because I told them that and like this is fine and we are friends and that is what matters cause you are such a good friend and it is fine and yeah we don’t ever need to talk about it again.” Patty spoke quickly and not really pausing and definitely not letting him get a chance to say anything. “Sorry.” She finished with.
“No. Don’t apologise. You haven’t done anything wrong, I mean.” Even though this was along the lines of what he had expected—not because he thought of himself as being some kind of irresistible casanova figure, but because the Gryffindors had been about as subtle as a hammer to to the head—Roger still struggled to think of what to say. It was kind of… nice, he guessed, to know that someone liked him, and someone as nice and cute as Patty at that.
But he couldn’t say definitely that he was interested back, and so the decent thing to do, the way you should treat a friend, was to say nothing about that at all.
“I’m really sorry that they put you on the spot like that, for what it’s worth,” he added eventually. “Gryffindors, well. You’re kind of the exception.”
“Yeah, I’m not very typically Gryffindor,” Patty said with a shrug and looked down at her keys. She wasn’t sure what to do now? He didn’t say anything really other than not to apologise and that was nice but now she was wondering if he was interested at all or liked that she was interested. Patty wasn’t about to ask though.
“Uh yeah, they can be rather heavy handed though,” she tried to address what their friends had done earlier while not really looking at him. Patty took a noticeably deep breath trying to keep calm she hadn’t planned to ever tell Roger how she felt. “So, I apologise for them,” she said with an awkward laugh as she looked back up at him.
“You don’t need to,” he said. “I mean, I’m friends with them too. I know that I’m definitely not responsible for their behaviour.” A brief chuckle that faded out almost as quickly as it arrived. “I guess that they… I guess they meant well, or something.” He was tempted to add that he was not exactly a typical Ravenclaw either, but then he’d be a dick who was pointlessly rambling and that was not what Patty wanted to hear at this moment, at all.
The one thing that she probably did want to hear? He didn’t think he could tell her.
“Look. If it’s weird for you to hang out with me for the next while, I’ll understand, yeah?”
Patty nodded her head, yeah of course Roger was friends with the same crazy group. “Yeah, meant well,” she agreed that they had meant well but she wished they hadn’t done anything because they were the ones that caused this very awkward feeling.
“Oh,” Patty said looking at Roger. Did he not want to hang out with her? Was he just trying to be nice and making it seem like he was trying to make her comfortable? No, he was too nice for that. Though maybe this was too weird for him and she would get that. Willy was right nobody wanted someone like her showing interest. “Yeah, that might be good,” she almost made it through the sentence with her voice catching. She turned towards her door and fumbled with her keys. Why couldn’t she just walk through walls? Patty finally got her key in the lock. “Thanks for escorting me home.”
“Anytime,” he said, feeling really lame and like a completely insensitive douche. He wanted to tell her that any bloke would be lucky to have her. That hey, if he saw her at a pub, he would definitely want to chat her up and invite her home afterwards, but that she wasn’t just some random and she was his friend and that her friendship was worth way more to him than one night (or several) of fun. As true as that might be though, it was an arsehole thing to say to someone who wanted more from you.
So he grew silent, and waited until she was safely indoors with the lock clicked in place between them before he Apparated back to his own flat. And Rosalind the dog.
Patty closed the door behind her locking it. She leaned against the door and slide down to sit with her back against the door. Charles the cat came over crawling up into her lap. Not going to cry I’m not going to cry, Patty thought to herself, but she had no such luck.