lo dunstan's booking flights to hawaii (ohlaurd) wrote in dissentwo, @ 2013-08-10 14:17:00 |
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To say that Lo was nervous would have been an understatement somewhere along the lines of ‘Amelie is creative’ or ‘Voldemort has issues.’ It had been hard enough convincing Ioan that for reasons she really couldn’t tell him, he had to leave the flat for the night. Then there had been the matter of talking Ewart into coming over at all. Then, of course, there had been the frantic cleaning, double-checking the wards, changing outfits several times, trying to figure out what on earth she could even say, trying not to imagine exactly how many people she was putting in danger just by instigating this conversation, and deciding whether to wear her hair curly or straight. (The answer was straight. It was all very sweet that Ewart liked her natural curls, but if she was going to have this conversation, she wasn’t going to have it with an unmanageable mass of hair when she could be having it with sleek, shiny hair instead.) Now that there was nothing much left to do but wait, Lo had decided to pace around the flat. Perhaps ‘decided’ was the wrong word; pacing around the flat and compulsively re-straightening things was not a decision Lo would have made, as it made her look, she thought, a bit like a crazy person. But the idea of standing still -- sitting on the couch, perhaps? -- was one wholly beyond her abilities, under the present circumstances, so pace she did, arms crossed as she went from room to room, worrying. When Lo had told him that he could just apparate in, his initial instinct had been to blush. There wasn't anything inherently embarrassing about apparating of course. It was a core magical skill that anyone with the funds to take the course could learn when they were still in school. It was an extremely handy skill that allowed you to move quickly from one place to another. But. It was her house. It was where she lived and slept and.... did other things. It felt awfully intimate to be invited to just apparate right in without so much as having to knock on the door. Not that he should read much into it. It was sweet of her to take his concerns seriously, and to accommodate them. So once he'd successfully convinced himself not to be bright red, he apparated with a pop over to her place. It was something of a miracle that Lo had even been in the right room when he apparated in, though it did have the unfortunate side effect of nearly giving her a heart attack (or so it felt). Commonplace magic or not, many people find it unnerving to have another person suddenly materialize in front of them, and Lo was one of those many people. It was something of a relief, at least, that when he did apparate he was facing away from her, which made the way one of her hands had gone from its place on her opposite elbow to her neck and the way she stopped in her tracks, eyes wide, marginally less embarrassing. If nothing else, she had a moment to relax her posture and her expression before saying, quietly, “Hi.” He turned after he got his bearings. "Hi," he said a bit shyly in return. So, this was awkward. Not that their interactions had ever been much devoid of some level of awkwardness, whether he was acting as Ewart or her letter-writer, but after so many years, it was hard not to feel like their first time face-to-face, post-penmanship revelation, was... well, a little monumental for ‘hi’s. Lo’s hand returned to her elbow as she stood there looking up at him, trying to discern exactly what the protocol was for this sort of situation. “Do you, um. Do you want a drink or something? Or. Tea.” "Tea is good," Ewart said with all the eloquence of a Goyle. After an awkward pause, he moved to take a seat at the table. "If you don't mind." Truthfully, part of Lo did mind, since if Ewart was having tea that meant she would, too, and it felt like this entire situation would be so much more navigable if they weren’t quite sober for it. Of course he would insist on having this conversation with comparatively clear heads. Still, she got the kettle out with a wave of her wand, filling it with water and setting it on the stove automatically before she took a seat, not quite next to and not quite across from him, meeting his eyes again for the first time since he’d asked for the tea. “So,” she said. "So." His hands were folded nervously on the table, his fingers sliding back and forth. "This is your place. It's nice. The kitchen is, at least." Despite the considerable list of oddities in their situation, there was something about this -- his fidgeting, the awkward compliment -- that made it much easier to focus on the fact that this was, at heart, a boy who had fancied her for a very long time, who she fancied back, at her place for the first time. A part of her errantly wondered how much funnier this would have been if this had happened a few years earlier, if he’d had to make small talk with her father. A pang of sympathy overwhelming the worry she’d been sitting on for days, Lo got up from her seat, moving carefully to rest a hand on his cheek, bending to kiss him gently. “Sorry,” she said after. “Had to.” For a moment, he didn't move. He couldn't, really, not with the softness of her lips sliding across his, the way he'd imagined.... probably more times than was entirely reasonable. But he'd fancied her for a long time, giving him literally thousands of opportunities to imagine it. It was nice. Better than nice, really, but he'd already known it would be. "It's alright," he told her, though his ears burned a bit red. "I don't mind, really." “Good,” Lo said, grinning at the look on his face. After a moment, still bent slightly, her fingers still resting near his jaw, her grin grew as she added, “You’re really, really cute when you’re nervous, for the record.” "I'm sure I'm not, but it's nice of you to lie anyway," he grinned. “I don’t give compliments I don’t mean.” Lo stood straight then, going to the kettle just as it started to sound, returning to the table with two cups of tea a moment later. “Do you take anything in it?” she asked, vaguely amused by the banality of the question. "Vodka?," he laughed, wondering if it would take the nerves away. "A bit of milk please, thanks." “We only have Fiendfyre here, boy,” Lo said with a slight laugh. Well, they got a better deal on Fiendfyre than anything else, thanks to Judith. It was basic economics! When she returned with the milk, she set two glasses of firewhisky on the table, too, just in case. “So the question I want to ask and also really don’t want to ask, right now,” she started, hand resting on her mug of tea, “is how much difference it makes right now, safety-wise, what happens from here, at least as far as Leglimenses and slips of the tongue go. I assume the level of danger stays pretty similar, for Leglimency, if we... care about each other and you’re worried someone’s going to hurt me, whether we act on it or not. And I guess there’s a higher danger of slips of the tongue, to an extent, but that can be policed. And as for anyone seeing us...” she pulled her legs up, moving so she could sit cross-legged on the chair. “You can apparate right in. So.” "And is that the sort of thing you'd want," he asked a bit wearily. "Always having to sneak around?" “Well, I think I want you, and it’s a little hard for me to figure that one out if we don’t try,” Lo said carefully. “You have to forgive the ‘I think’ since I’ve only really known you’re... you, for a couple weeks. A week. You know.” She fidgeted with the handle of the mug, biting the inside of her cheek before adding, “But if you’re asking whether I’d rather sneak around with you or keep openly dating blokes who never quite measure up because there’s you, the answer’s yes, I’d like to have to sneak around, if that’s what it takes.” "Why?" Lo looked at him for a long moment before leaning back and asking, “Why do you keep torturing yourself with a girl you’re scared to date when there are so many eligible purist ladies kicking about?” "Because I like you." Lo continued to watch him, somewhere between exasperated, amused, and nauseous. Finally, she asked, “You really don’t have any idea how easy you are to like, do you?” "My last name doesn't tend to make people all that inclined to think me 'likable,'" he said a little bit ruefully. “Didn’t you just say a few weeks ago that what your family does doesn’t have anything to do with you?” "I did," he admitted. "But just because it doesn't have anything to do with who I am doesn't mean that people don't see me as being colored by that association." “Well, I don’t,” Lo said. “Not now that I... know, anyway.” She smiled slightly. “I’ll admit, I judged a bit when you were going out with Narcissa and after you didn’t speak to me in Potions, but only because I was trying to figure out if you were... you, and because she was kind of rude.” "She can be," Ewart admitted. "She can also be extremely sweet. Narcissa's very sheltered. And a lot of it is because she elects to only spend her time around a very small number of people. Especially since her sister Andromeda left the family. She's never really gotten over that." “Yeah, I noticed,” Lo said, though her tone was more sympathetic than sarcastic. She bit the inside of her cheek again, thinking. “Look, if you want a laundry list of the reasons I fancy you, I can do that. Easily. Might stammer in the process but that’s fine. Or ramble, also fine.” She smiled, slightly rueful. “Frankly I wouldn’t mind my own laundry list since it’s a little baffling, everything you’ve... done. But if you’re anything like you seem, from your letters and talking to you, I do fancy you. And I don’t think you’re anything like people might think you are. You’re funny. And thoughtful. And responsible. And very intelligent. And there are the shallow reasons, too. And since you’ve sort of been... around, in a sense, for years, no one else has really... measured up to you. And I don’t know how much of that has to do with not having known who you were, which made it sort of easy to fill in the blanks the way I wanted them. But I’m glad it’s you. There’s not really anything about you I don’t like, aside from the imminent danger.” More quietly, hesitant, “I’ve sort of wanted you since before I had... any sort of idea what it meant to want someone. And I get that you wouldn’t know that since you only heard back from me a few weeks ago. But it’s still a little unbelievable to me that you wouldn’t understand why someone would want to take a few chances for you.” He didn't really know what to say when she was done talking. Or, perhaps that wasn't exactly true. There were several things he could think of to say, none of which seemed to adequately explain the way hearing her say those words made him feel, both in terms of pleasure and terror. Not terror that she should feel that way, of course, but terror at what the two of them both feeling so strongly about each other meant. After all, his brothers might not care if he casually dated random girls that they could tell he didn't really care about anyway, but if they had one whiff that he cared about someone the way he cared about Lo... ...well. He remembered the way Adrian had looked at him after Ewart had punished him for what he did to Joanna. And his brother had been given an entire year to work on his talents since. He'd barely touched his tea, though his hands stayed cupped lightly around the cup. "There's a list for you too," he admitted. "I've probably written it in my head a thousand times." His mouth turned up in a crooked smile. "How long do you have?" "Technically until 3 pm tomorrow," Lo admitted, focusing on her tea to avoid any looks that may have crossed his face. "Do I get to hear the list?" she added coyly. "Maybe." “What do I have to do to convince you?” And, if Ewart thought the smile Lo smiled at that moment was not a smile any purist girl besides a Selwyn or close relative would ever make, he would not have been entirely wrong. Sadly for our poor pureblood, Ewart hadn't gotten as much experience in flirting as a lot of men his age. Something about repression. "...ask nicely?" Lo smirked. “I’d say you’re easy but that seems inaccurate just now.” Sliding his glass of firewhisky closer to his teacup, she picked hers up, lifting it in cheers before taking a sip. "No, if anything I'm frightfully difficult," he said. After a moment, he reached for the firewhisky. "Cheers." “Should I be worried?” Lo asked, after the cheers. "Definitely." “You never seemed that difficult,” Lo said reflectively after her second swallow of firewhisky, feeling the liquid warm her from the inside out (or, just possibly, that might have been the flirting). “Difficult situation, not so much a difficult boy. Though you’re way too accomplished to be fancying me, to be honest. Your poor taste, not mine.” "Academic and career accomplishments aren't the measure of a person, though," he pointed out. "If they were, Septimus Malfoy would be a shining example of humanity. As it is, he's sort of a git." “Planning to stage a coup?” Lo teased. "I'm not one for politics, unfortunately," he smiled. "Can you imagine me as a candidate for Minister?" “You’re far too polite for the job,” Lo admitted. “Ioan claimed he was going to run, once, but he was extremely intoxicated at the time.” That didn't really surprise Ewart, given what he remembered about Ioan, but he wasn't going to say that to his best friend. "I probably am. Though Malfoys have mastered the art of being polite bastards." “There’s a difference between polite and smarmy.” "Point," he admitted. "Not that Malfoys seem to know that." “That’s why they’re Malfoys,” Lo said amiably. “Takes all kinds.” She paused, studying him and taking a sip of her tea before it got too cold. “Isn’t it weird, growing up around that? Sorry. That was backwards. Presumably the kitchen and firewhisky’s weird.” "I'm not sure weird is the word for it," he said, frowning slightly as he considered his own upbringing. "Mostly you just don't know any better." “Oh, I don’t mean like that. Not, you know, judgment. I just... don’t know any Ministers, personally.” "I met him briefly once, but I don't really know him," he admitted. "I think I'd say Malfoys are all the same, but I suppose it wouldn't be fair, given how I dislike being coloured by my family." “Look at you, being the bigger person.” Lo grinned. “Very Hufflepuff. I approve.” "The hat considered it," he admitted. "Ravenclaw too." “So what pushed you into Slytherin?” "I am ambitious," he admitted. "Only I'm ambitious in the sense that I really want to make the best of my talents and not waste them. I want to do well. I want to succeed. Ambition in and of itself is a positive trait, when used well, but frequently the climate in Slytherin.... doesn't nurture those better instincts. And when they're not reinforced at home by the major families, it's an even bigger problem." Lo tilted her head. “You have a lot of insight into the presumed villains of our times, don’t you? Emphasis on presumed.” "You have no idea." It wasn't even a joke. “Well.” Lo took another sip of her firewhisky and stood up, abandoning her tea as she approached his chair. There was a part of her that was sure he was about to bolt at any second, but, well, Lo had never been exactly shy when she fancied a boy, and the conversation had been altogether too serious for altogether too long. Besides, she figured, they’d wanted to do this, on some level or another, for over eight years. That was more than enough time spent waiting. So, when she settled one leg on either side of his lap -- deciding at the last moment not to stick her legs into the holes the armrests left, lest he completely panic (lower thighs were safe to straddle, right?) -- she smiled down at him, hoping that the crooked smile he’d given earlier, and his reaction to the kiss, meant that he wouldn’t be completely opposed to the change in position. Her drink remained in one hand as her other rested on his shoulder. “We have a night,” she pointed out. “And before you have a panic attack, I’m definitely not shagging you tonight, but there are probably better things we could be talking about than Malfoys. Assuming I’ve convinced you an in-house date is worth a shot.” She paused. “Not that I typically do this on dates. ...especially first dates. You know.” ….and then she was straddling him. Or not exactly straddling him, but very near it, and he wasn't sure exactly what had provoked this, or whether he should be terrified or grateful. At the moment, it was both. At the moment, it was difficult to focus on what she was saying because superhuman purist restraint or not, there was only so much that years of repression and self-control could do in face of the girl you'd fancied for as long as you'd fancied girls standing over you and talking about how you had 'a night.' He didn't know what 'a night' meant, except that in this case it allegedly didn't mean shagging. And it probably didn't - he took her at her word and would certainly never have pressed for it - but there was no denying that the... position she was in certainly put the idea in his head. Merlin, he was so glad she wasn't sitting on his lap. But he did really, really wish she wasn't in full view of what was going on in his lap right now. "Uh." “Am I scarring you for life right now?” Lo asked, somewhere between concerned and deeply amused. Fortunately for Ewart, she hadn’t looked down yet, though judging by the look on his face, she assumed he wasn’t completely opposed to her latest actions. "This is definitely being burned into my memory, I'm just not sure if it's scarring or not yet." “There are salves for that though, right?” "I hope not. I don't think I'll mind the memory, even if it scars." “Good.” And, after twisting to set her firewhisky on the table, Lo moved one leg at a time into the circles of the armrests, sliding closer (though not quite so close that she was resting on anything that would make Ewart’s ears go red again). Her arms slid around his neck as she grinned down at him, trying not to get utterly distracted by the sense that every nerve in her body was on high alert -- much more so, she suspected, than they’d been with anyone else. “Because if you don’t touch me in the near future I’m probably going to go mad.” He was pretty sure he'd already gone mad, but he didn't argue. His hands found her hips, splaying along the curve of them, even as he didn't move them quite yet. "Better?" “Definitely getting there,” Lo said, moving to kiss him again, still gentle, but decidedly more confident than before, her mouth opening slightly against his as she tried to ignore the way her thighs wanted to tense against his. When her mouth pressed against his, his hands, so carefully resting on her hips, pulled her closer, sliding up her back until they were in her hair. This was still a terrible idea, he thought, as his tongue sought hers, and he never should have admitted to the letters, but it was hard to remind himself of all the reasons why being with her was only going to get them both hurt when she was there beneath his hands, against his mouth, on his lap. If Ewart was still taken up with the more pressing matters of the evening, Lo, predictably, had promptly pushed them to the back of her mind. It wasn’t as if she’d never enjoyed herself with a bloke before. She had, after all, dated Jove. And Marcus. And Hal who, even if he’d been 16 at the time, had been quite a catch, as 16-year-olds went. But there was a vast difference between snogging a boy you fancied and snogging a boy who’d been on your mind for close to a decade, and particularly after the rather dramatic circumstances of the past weeks -- being able to reply to him finally, to ask him the questions she wanted, the insanity of King’s Cross, the ensuing confirmation of who he was -- her emotions ran on high as she ran her tongue against his, sucking it slightly (and trying not to let her mind jump ahead too far to other... sucking... things), her hips finally coming to stop directly against his. (And, yes, she realized what was going on in his lap and, yes, she was all too similarly distracted to think much on the fact.) Too taken up in the act to stop her hips from pressing down against his, she drew his lower lip between her teeth, still fairly gentle but far less cautious than she’d been before. Technically they had until 3 PM. Her words kept running through his head. There were plenty of ways to fill up this time with her without actually having sex. Right now was one such example, though he certainly hadn't foreseen the night involving her straddling him on a kitchen chair when he'd first agreed to come over. He hadn't foreseen a lot of things about her, though. Oh sweet Merlin, she was using teeth on him. Now he really couldn't decide if he ought to be panicking and finding a way out of here or pressing himself into her. He slid his hand up across her shirt, not quite comfortable cupping her breast in full yet, but coming close enough that his thumb grazed the beginning of the swell of them. Thankfully, Lo was unaware that Ewart was still considering the escape routes -- she’d taken his previous words, regarding potential psychological scarring, to heart, and not looked back since -- had she been aware, she would likely have had an epic attack of Hufflepuff conscience, and returned to her previous seat diagonal to him. As it was, she pressed on, a hand traveling from his shoulder down his arm, mapping the feel of him. He was slighter than a lot of the boys she’d dated, but not necessarily in a bad way -- suddenly realizing the full range of the possibilities now open to her, she drew her head back, reaching to run a hand through the hair at the back of his head and studying the bags under his eyes before, slightly embarrassed, she laughed. “Sorry.” His conflicting emotions remained when she pulled back, even while he didn't make any attempt to extricate himself from her. "Why?" he asked curiously. “I don’t know, I coerce you into coming over, feed you firewhiskey, and clamber on top of you,” Lo said, amused despite the real hint of embarrassment in her tone. “And now I’m staring at you like an idiot.” "True, but I've been writing you anonymous letters for years and was too petrified to sign my own name," he pointed out. "I can't really judge. And I don't really mind you clambering on top of me." “Thank god. Imminent danger I can more or less handle. Lack of clambering, much harder.” She ran a finger across the ridge of his cheekbone, feeling uncharacteristically giddy at the permission to stay put. “Besides, the anonymous letters were good. The stuff of epic romance, really.” She cocked an eyebrow at him, smirking again. “Do I still get them, even if I know who you are now?” "Yes," he assured her, "Though I don't know how interesting you'll find them, now that you know who I am and can ask me questions anytime. It used to be I would save up a year's worth of things to fill three letters with. Now they'll probably be musings on the cracks in the ceiling of my bathroom." “I’m sure I’ll keep finding you interesting for at least six months. Maybe even eight or nine, since we have a history,” Lo teased. “I’d say you could write them in French to keep things fresh, but I wouldn’t be able to read them.” A pause. “Can you really speak French?” "Oui," he said, and he could, though his accent was terrible. “Yeah, you’re going to have to do that more often,” said Lo, who really didn’t know enough to gauge the quality of his accent either way (and, truth be told, was still far too high on the nearness of him and the sound of his voice to care much about precisely how it sounded). She pressed her lips together, eyes darting from his to his mouth, before she asked, “Are you okay with this?” He wasn't quite sure how to answer her question. "With which part?" he asked gently, his hands rubbing lightly against her body. “Whatever part or parts seem most in need of addressing?” Lo suggested, fingertips moving to graze against the skin of his neck, stretching to glide along the underside of his jaw. "Now I'm confused," he said, grinning slightly to let her know he was teasing. "If you mean okay with us doing this secret thing, I still have concerns. If you mean okay with you this close to me, with touching you, then yes. I'm fine with that. As little sense as it makes, that's how I feel about both parts." “I have concerns, too,” she assured him. “But I think either it’s worth it, or it isn’t, and the only way we’re going to find out is if we give it a try, and if we don’t it’s just going to be... I don’t know how you feel about it but I don’t like settling when there’s a nagging thought of something... better in my head,” her fingers continued to trace over his neck as she spoke. “And I think we both deserve knowing if it turns out we don’t actually get on. Although, so far we seem to be getting on,” she pointed out, flashing a grin as she bent to press her lips briefly against his, pulling back only slightly, her forehead resting against his. “As for the other part...” she kissed him again, hand sliding down his back as she pressed closer to him. “I’m glad.” The problem, that he almost pointed out, was that if things went well, there was only so long they'd be able to hide it. What sort of relationship, after all, had to be kept in the shadows? But selfishly, he didn't want to bring that up right now. Selfish, he thought a little bitterly, was a good description of how he'd been with her this whole time, first with writing her unsigned letters that, in her own words, had made it impossible for her to have any real relationship with anyone else without feeling like she was settling. And now, putting her in a situation where he would have to keep her secret. Maybe she was willing to try. He took her at her word there. But how long before she wished he'd never written her a letter to begin with. Still, there were plenty of other nights to bring this up, other nights where her forehead wasn't pressed against his, her hands touching him in actuality rather than fantasy. "Maybe we can talk about all the reasons why not another night," he conceded, squeezing her shoulder lightly. Lo smiled, thankfully unaware of the bulk of his thoughts at the moment when more pressing matters -- his hands on her, and the exciting other places they could go -- were at hand. “Thank you.” And, reassured that she wasn’t secretly scarring him for life with her harloty fullblood ways, she moved herself that little bit closer, ankles looping against the legs of the chair to anchor her hips against his as she kissed him again. What? Just because she wasn’t going to shag on the first date didn’t mean everything else was out of the question. Even if he hadn't already promised to leave all the reasons why for another night, when her hips pressed against his, the subsequent loss of blood to his brain - and, thus, the loss of his mind's ability to control his thoughts - definitely chased it out of the way. He kissed her back hungrily, partly a reaction to the closeness of her, partly because he'd wanted to for so damn long. Lo had not had as much time and impetus to imagine how Ewart might kiss as he’d had to wonder about her; it had taken her a while to even suspect him, and years more after that to develop a particular interest in it being him. Still, on those occasions she’d wondered -- particularly in the last week -- she hadn’t really expected this part to be as easy as it was. Ewart was, after all, vastly better behaved than any other boy she’d snogged -- even Rupert, for all of his bookishness and bowties, still lived at Fort Freedom -- and she hadn’t anticipated the hunger in his kisses, even if it made perfect sense that it was there. There was, of course, the fact that the hunger went both ways -- Lo had been wondering what it would be like to snog her Letters for a long time, and had spent more than enough time in the past several months covertly watching Ewart working at the hospital, the careful movements of his hands and the way he spoke to patients -- but the small hum of pleasure she let out against his mouth, the muscles of her thighs tight against his as her fingers curled into his hair, hips angling harder against his, was also a reaction to the realization of precisely how much he wanted her, a truly Hufflepuffian surge of pleasure at, after 8.5 years of wooing, having found some small way to return the favour. There was only so much he could move, pinned between her body and the chair, but his hands found ways, exploring and memorizing the shape of her body, matching how the shape of her kisses felt compared to the imagined ones, and wondering what the skin of her body would feel like when - if - they ever reached that point, tonight or another night. He kept his hands carefully above her clothing, since years of pining or not, he was still basically a polite if someone repressed gentleman. After some time, when surfacing for air seemed like the rational thing to do, Lo pulled back slightly, reaching to push her hair back out of her face. His politeness had not gone unnoticed -- even Rupert, Lo thought, would have copped a proper feel by now — and if it was slightly frustrating in some ways (ways such as the way she wanted his lips on her breasts, or the way the pressure of him hard beneath her really did make her want to feel him inside her, even if she had meant it about not shagging), it was also incredibly endearing in others. She flashed him a smile, hands moving from her hair down to his hands and, carefully, guiding them underneath the fabric of her shirt to rest on her bare hips. This done, she moved to undo the top buttons of his shirt, eyes moving from his to the skin she was uncovering. To be honest, for the first few moments that her hands placed his on her bare skin, he couldn't even move. His stillness was only reinforced when she slowly began working at the buttons of his shirt. For a few moments, he drank in her face, the quiet concentration on her face as she examined the slowly exposing flesh. Finally, his fingers began to rub slow circles on her sides. “So, is this a good first date?” Lo asked, the playfulness in her grin mitigated by the lower, slightly breathless tone of her voice and the look she gave him before ducking her head to kiss his neck, hips moving away from his as she kissed her way towards the exposed skin at the top of his chest. "Yes, I'd say so," he murmured back as his hands slid up her back, tracing the length of her spine. Almost involuntarily, the healer in him mentally counted off each vertebrae - L2, L1... - before he was able to chase that away. He shook his head slightly, smiling faintly at the workings of his own strange mind. Though Lo liked her kitchen chairs, inasmuch as she cared much at all about kitchen chairs, they really weren’t the best venue in the flat for this sort of thing, and as she kissed her way back up from the hollow of his neck, meeting his mouth again, she decided it was likely high time to relocate. “I was thinking you should probably see my room,” she said, voice a little shy but decidedly amused. "Won't your parents be home soon?" he asked politely. “Sorry, you’re not allowed to be that cheeky until you’re more naked,” Lo said archly, laughing despite herself. “You have to work for the right to lip off here. Hufflepuff rules.” He shook his head, mind already wild with possibility at the words 'more naked'. "Hufflepuffs have strange rules." “Your nepotism’s no good here, boy.” Carefully, Lo slid her legs back out of the armrests, standing and reaching for his hands. “Do you think you can keep up with Hufflepuff rules? I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.” He gave her a look. "Lo. Are you trying to tell me that Hufflepuff rules aren't written to make sure that absolutely everyone and their kid brother can follow along?" Lo cocked an eyebrow at him before leaning over, bending at the waist as her fingers trailed up his arms, hands coming to rest on his shoulders. “Ewart Dominick Mulciber. You only know about the Hufflepuffs who made it out alive. We obliviated the other houses so they never had to remember the ones who didn’t. Never underestimate Hufflepuff.” He laughed and slowly started to stand. "You Hufflepuffs are a menace. Dumbledore should have warned us what we were up against. Will I even survive if I go to your room with you, or do you Hufflepuffs also take out poor Slytherin boys that get caught up in your web?" “You will absolutely survive,” Lo assured him, reaching up to lace her arms behind his neck. “We’re very nice to poor Slytherin boys. We like them too much not to be.” He wrapped his arms around her waist. "We as in the general we or we as in you?" he teased, burying his face in her neck. “It bloody well better just be me,” Lo said, still amused. “I’ll fight them for you.” "Don't worry, I'm reasonably certain you're the only Hufflepuff with an eye for me." “You also still seemed a little bit in shock that I had an eye for you at all,” Lo pointed out, pulling back to look up at him. “For all you know, every Hufflepuff that has ever lived fancies you.” She thought for a moment. “Which might mean you want to steer clear of Fort Freedom; Rhys expresses his affection in mysterious ways.” "Understood." He stood up straight. "So, about this room of yours." Lo smiled again, taking him by the hand and leading him out the kitchen, towards her room. “That’s the livingroom,” she noted, pointing. “It’s not important right now. In there is Ioan’s room,” she pointed at a closed door, “nothing anyone in their right mind wants to see. There’s the loo,” she pointed again before reaching for the nearest doorknob, “and this is me.” She flipped on the light as she led him in, feeling self-conscious all over again; at some point during the conversation the kitchen had become a known quantity, nothing to stress over, but this — the place that was most completely hers, complete with a small darkroom concealed in the closet (bigger, of course, on the inside), photos of her friends and family, a painting, his letters and other keepsakes hidden beneath her bed, and, of course, the small toy bird he’d sent her for her last birthday, on her desk — felt considerably more intimate. ...which was, in some ways, the point, but she’d sort of forgotten in her rush to get somewhere more comfortable that along with the increased opportunity for physical intimacy would come the increased emotional intimacy — vulnerability — of letting him in. He walked over to the desk, carefully picking up the bird and turning it over in his hands. "I remember this," he said, grinning slightly when he realized she'd been serious about it being on her desk. "I gave this to you." Though Lo was not, as a rule, much of a blusher, she suspected she might have blushed then, if she had been. “Yeah, you did.” "And you kept it," he said as though that much weren't clearly obvious. “You still really haven’t processed the fancying you back part, have you?” Lo prompted, some of her self-consciousness being pushed back by her amusement. "I'd say it's about 54% processed," he said. "I'm no Ravenclaw, so I can't be entirely sure of the percentages, helpful though it would probably be." He set the bird back on her desk and turned back to look at her. “I won’t show you where the letters are, then.” Her nerves flared up again slightly when he looked at her, and she took a seat on the edge of the bed, loosely crossing her arms as she looked back at him. He tipped his head, trying to figure out the meaning of her words. "Why?" he asked curiously. "I did write them, so I know what's in them. Unless... are you keeping them some sort of odd place?" Unconsciously, his eyes swept the room, trying to figure out what sort of secret hiding places it held. “So missing the point, Nic.” She gave him a small smile. “Are you going to come here, or have we switched to interrogation for the night?” "Right." Instead of remaining there awkwardly, he moved awkwardly to the bed, taking a seat beside her but not really touching her as of yet. A part of him was still processing that this was a first date. Dates, in his experience, tended to involve dinner, perhaps flowers - Merlin, he should have brought flowers - and the entire evening, thus far, had mostly consisted of a few sips of tea and her straddling him. He wasn't complaining, exactly, but he was sort of baffled and lost, and it showed. He kept his hands folded slightly in his lap, marveling at the absurdity of the situation. Stress, he could handle. Busy hospital rooms? Fine. But apparently no amount of damaged, bleeding, broken bodies could throw him off quite as much as a pretty girl inviting him into her bedroom. He'd been in bedrooms before, of course. He wasn't a virgin, for all the pining he'd done for Lo over the years. And they weren't having sex tonight - something he kept reminding himself of, especially whenever she gave him a certain sort of look - but he was still anxious, terrified he was going to mess things up, and utterly afraid of what might happen to them both if things did go well. Though in many ways Ewart’s obvious nerves were endearing, they also amplified Lo’s own — for the most part, she’d dated men who weren’t at all shy, and she couldn’t help but feel she was preying on him or something, that some part of him was probably repeatedly reciting some purist nursery rhyme for remembering one’s manners while it tried not to process her morally decrepit fullblood ways. Lo had long been more comfortable than most girls with sex — she liked it, liked having it on a regular basis, both intercourse itself and all the many alternatives — but she had always been fairly big on consent and no matter what he said about being fine with it, she really wasn’t convinced he was. Which was sort of infuriating, really. You’d think after a bloke spent 8 and a half years fancying you, he’d be up for a bit of foreplay, but there it was. More than anything, it was a little baffling feeling like a boy who’d fancied you for years seemed to want you less than most of the boys you’d run into in pubs. ...still, even if she couldn’t quite shake the feeling she was scarring him for life, there were always alternative routes to figuring out if that was the case, ones that didn’t involve asking questions he’d answer politely, or shaking off the vague sense that she was violating him and continuing to undo his shirt. So, after he’d sat there a moment, she moved to stand in front of him, bending to kiss him again (kissing, at least, he’d done pretty well with so far) and then, after a moment’s hesitation, straightening to take off her own shirt. If the boy couldn’t take a cue from that, they were probably doomed. It would have been an utterly accurate description of his face to say that at the moment she took her shirt off, his jaw dropped. And not in the 'What is this scarlet woman doing in front of me?' sort of way, but in the sort of way that one might look at a particularly dazzling landscape or work of art. Without even thinking about it, he was standing, stepping closer towards her, and hands reaching out towards her to barely graze her skin without quite grasping at her. "You look..." But there weren't really words for it, at least none that he could come up with at the moment. Smile returning in full force, Lo reached to continue unbuttoning his shirt, watching his face. “Yeah, you too.” He doubted that, since in his experience, women tended to look tremendous when without their clothing, while men just looked awkward, especially with all their dangling bits. But he accepted the compliment for what it was, a verbal acknowledgement that she was at least as attracted to him as he was to her. When she reached the last button, he slid the shirt off his arms and, stepping away for a moment, carefully folded it over the chair by her desk. Aroused male or not, he was still a little bit obsessive compulsive about his things. He let his hands return to her body. They slid slowly along her, tracing her collarbone, her shoulders, the line of her bra over her breasts. "I remember the way you always looked in class, like you were really paying attention. The way the sun would hit your skin when you would sit in the quidditch stands, screaming for Hufflepuff. The way you never ran around showing everyone the letters I sent you. I kept waiting to see you in a corner somewhere, giggling over them, but you weren't. You just read them, and you kept my secrets, even though you didn't have any reason to." He wasn't sure why he'd started reciting his own list, but there he was, hands moving over her, and the words coming out before he could stop them. For a moment, all Lo could do was let the conflicting impulses to snog his face off or try to reciprocate in some way -- offer up some words to meet his own -- war against each other, in large part because, even if she suspected the latter was the better thing to do she was, for the time being, utterly incapable of thinking of anything to say. It wasn’t as if he’d never overwhelmed her before, but there was a vast chasm between feeling overwhelmed by something an anonymous author wrote to you and feeling overwhelmed by someone whose hands were running over you. “Of course I wouldn’t show everyone,” she said softly. Mind, she’d told Ioan about them, but she hadn’t shown them to him, and having that conversation with Ewart just then wasn’t something she particularly wanted to do. She reached to graze her fingers across the angle of his jaw and down his neck, still slightly drunk on the opportunity to openly study his features. “I might need you to kiss me now.” He did just that. One hand stayed on her warm skin, his other cupping her jaw and drawing her into him. He could feel her breasts - covered by her bra, but still - pressing against his bare chest. His lips moved to trace her jaw. "Because of the way the curls of your hair blew just slightly in the wind when you were running across the yard. Because the photographs you publish have the most beautiful composition - I've got a whole folder full of them that I cut out to keep." His lips moved to her neck. "Because you volunteer at Mungo's, even though you're busy, even though you could be out doing a thousand other things with your time." It was extremely rare for Lo to feel overwhelmed by a boy. Her years of friendship with Ioan alone could be testament to that. Still, as he went on, between the movement of his lips and the words coming out of them, she found herself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. After listening to her mind race between possible responses -- all unsatisfactory -- for a few moments, she grinned slightly, her fingers still resting against his neck as the other hand ran over his shoulderblade, mapping the shape of his back. “You have a folder of my photos?” "I do." “Your letters are under my bed,” Lo admitted. “But you don’t get to see the box.” "Why not?" he asked, his mouth smiling faintly. “Because it’s embarrassing,” Lo said, turning to press her lips to his cheek and grinning again. “Obviously. You have to wear me down first.” "If you show me the box, I'll show you the folder when you come to my place," he offered. Lo eyed him for a second. Truth be told, she was fairly certain any folder couldn’t possibly be as embarrassing as an ornate heart-shaped box was, but all considered, she doubted he was about to laugh his way out of the place if she showed him. Besides, it was, in a way, a sort of response to everything he’d said. “Since you’ve just basically promised I get to come to your place,” she said finally, “you have a deal.” She didn’t particularly want to extricate herself from his arms, but she did, taking out her wand and getting down to the floor to take down the wards that concealed the box and, with a slight wince out of his sight that she had been daft enough to buy the thing in the first place, pulling it out from under the bed and placing it on top of the sheets. She remained on her knees by the bed, hands in lap, waiting to see if the aforementioned laugh-out-of-the-flat scenario was about to take place. He didn't laugh as he sat on the floor beside her, reaching over to run his fingers across the box before opening it. Inside were the letters - he recognized his handwriting, naturally - written out on yellow parchment and tucked neatly inside. "Do you ever reread them?" “Yes.” "Was I as terrible and melodramatic of a writer as a teenager as I think I was?" Lo grinned, shaking her head as she moved to press a kiss to his cheek. “No. You were very sweet. And very sad.” "I suppose the sad part hasn't changed much," he said a bit ruefully. “Neither has the sweet part,” Lo pointed out, resting her head on his shoulder. He wrapped one arm around her, moving the hand up to her hair. "I'm alright," he said, twisting his fingers gently through her locks. “You’re a lot better than alright.” She slid her arm around his waist, pressing a kiss to his shoulder before she rested her chin on it, smiling slightly. “I have very high standards. You wouldn’t get to see the box if you were only alright.” He turned his face, tipping it up to kiss her nose. "Then I guess I'm still sweet." “You are,” Lo assured him. She sat there, for a moment, before standing, carefully replacing the lid on the box and sliding it back under the bed -- she’d replace the wards later -- and taking his hand to guide him to sit on the edge of the bed again, looking down at him. “Now, let’s see if we can help the sad part,” she said, hands moving to undo the fly of her shorts and pushing them down and off her hips. And once again he was back to stupified silence as more clothing came off. It was difficult to not press her back against her mattress immediately. He certainly wanted to, and he got the feeling that she might have been coaxing him that way, but for the moment, he was a bit preoccupied with taking in the sight of her, his eyes traveling the dark expanse of her skin before he let his hands move to slide along her leg. Lo tensed as he touched her, utterly focused on the feel of his hands against her and his eyes over her. This was, in so many ways, different from being with any boy she’d been with before, even if the motions were more or less the same. It felt, for starters, much less like play, and not only because of the considerable danger to the both of them if anyone knew what they were doing (or, perhaps, not so much what they were doing as why they were doing it). It wasn’t as though Ewart were much more skilled in the art of touching a girl’s leg than Marcus or Jove had been, but between how much she knew it meant to him, and the ways in which how much it meant to her informed her reactions -- his hands, after all, were healer’s hands, and she’d spent more than a little time thinking about them traveling over her body -- made even the smallest act infinitely more intoxicating than it had been in any other circumstances. She stepped closer to him, hands going to rest on his shoulders, thumbs ducking into the hollows there as she watched him, the depth of her breath and the angle of her hips hinting at the wetness between her thighs. It was fortunate for Ewart's mental capacity at the moment that he wasn't thinking too heavily on what was between her thighs - though he'd be utterly lying if he'd said a few thoughts hadn't crossed his mind. His hand slid up to her hip and he scooted a bit closer to her on the bed. "I... I'm not really sure what's appropriate right now," he admitted. “Can I get some clarification there?” Lo asked, grinning again. “Because if you were about to bust out a lively polka, I’d agree, that’s not appropriate right now, but...” He laughed. "No, I mean... I know we're not having sex, but I'm not really sure how far you wanted to go. You're, um." He blinked. "Half naked. I don't know if you noticed. Not that I'm complaining, but." “Jesus,” Lo said, looking down at herself. “When did that happen.” Looking back to him, she smiled again, moving closer. “Sorry if I’ve been unclear.” She settled one knee on both sides of his leg, her fingers grazing down his torso, nails ghosting over a nipple on their way down to his trousers, where she reached to squeeze, gently. “No sex.” She nodded. “Not tonight. But anything else?” She loosened her grip, thumb grazing against him through his trousers. “Frankly, if we haven’t both come twice before we go to sleep, I’m going to be disappointed in the both of us. Clearer?” "I..." He certainly wanted to, as any man in his position would want to. "It's just..." Merlin, she looked incredible right now. "You don't think it's a bit fast to be... well, I only just admitted who I was a few days ago. Not that I don't want to," he said quickly. "I just... I don't want to move things too fast and let them burn out quickly." “Sorry,” Lo said, moving back slightly. Her hand had withdrawn as soon as ‘It’s just’ had come out, and despite his assurance that he wanted to, she still felt a bit like throwing her clothes back on (perhaps a few extra clothes, for good measure) and possibly retreating into a cocoon of blankets and self-pity for a week or two. All of a sudden, being there, crouched above him in her underwear, felt utterly stupid. Christ why had she shown him the box. “I don’t think I’m in any danger of burning out,” she said carefully, voice level. “But I don’t. Want to do anything you don’t want to.” She brushed her hair out of her face, forcing another, more nervous smile. “Sorry, should I go grab my shirt or something?” "Only if you want to," he told her, worried that he'd said something wrong. "And it's not that I don't want to. That's just it. I want to. Very badly. More than, really. But I've.... I mean, I've been with women before, but never anyone I felt this way about. I just don't want to make things go wrong." Lo considered this for a moment, a finger tracing absently against his shoulder. She pressed her lips together before, the room feeling quite a bit colder than it had a few moments before, she moved to go under the covers, guiding him under with her and, when she felt somewhat less exposed, moving up against him to rest her head on his chest. He, of course, had already heard her heartbeat at the hospital, and seeking out his, her ear against his bare skin, was a welcome distraction as she replied, watching her own fingertips running circles on the skin of his chest. “I haven’t felt this way either,” she admitted slowly. “And to be honest I’m still a little bit in shock that I managed to convince you to come over in the first place, let alone...” She sucked the inside of her lip between her teeth, thinking. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because I want you. More than I’ve wanted... anyone else, easily. But I can’t shake the feeling that when the sun comes up you’re going to come to your senses and you won’t be back. Or that something else will happen and it’ll f-... bollocks everything up.” She moved to rest her chin on his chest, looking up at him. “I want to take what I can get while I have the chance, Ewart. And honest to god, I haven’t ever wanted anyone to touch me half as badly as I want you to. It’s a little difficult to keep my hands off of you now I’ve got permission to put them on.” Realizing how utterly ridiculous -- or crude, at least -- that sentence sounded, and remembering that she’d just dragged them both half-naked under her sheets after groping him, she ducked her forehead down against his skin, hiding her face again. “Obviously.” He wrapped his arms around her under the covers, drawing her closer to him as he listened to her talk. When she was done, he was quiet for a moment. "Lauren, I've been yours since long before you even wanted me to be. I'm not coming to my senses tomorrow. Not ever." “I know,” Lo said, moving to look at him again. More than most anything else they’d done tonight -- save, perhaps, the way he’d kissed her on the chair, and how it had felt with his hands and lips traveling over her as he’d delivered his list -- this, even with the touchiness of the conversation, felt heavenly, just being close and quiet with him. She wondered how different both their lives would have been, if he’d been bold enough to tell her who he was years ago, at Hogwarts. “But it’s not easy to believe, when you get something... like this, that you’re going to get to keep it.” Which, of course, was yet another reminder of the several (quite solid) reasons why he’d been against their pursuing this in the first place, but that was a conversation for another time. He brushed her hair over her shoulder. "That's true of a lot of things though," he said. "I don't.... I don't have any real way of predicting what will or won't happen," he admitted. "But I can tell you that even if I'm worried, even if a very strong part of me thinks that I'm going to get us both hurt by being with you, I'm not sure I could leave you." Lo considered this for a moment, eyes drifting to his Adam’s apple, which she reached to graze with an index finger. “Do you think I’m going to leave you?” she asked finally. "You'd probably be wise to," he admitted. “I know you probably think I’m daft for it, but I wouldn’t have asked for this if I hadn’t thought about it, okay?” she said quietly. And she had, extensively -- between what was going on with his father, what his younger brother had been accused of, and her own exposure to the war, she had no doubt he hadn’t been exaggerating the danger. Even if she was probably less worried for her own well-being than she likely should have been, she was petrified of what her own stubborn desire might lead to for her family, or Ioan, or anyone else, but that didn’t make the idea of leaving Ewart to the wolves any more acceptable to her. She moved up from his chest, pressing her lips against his. “We’re going to figure this out, okay? And I meant it. I might not like the situation, but there’s nothing about you I’m not slightly mad for.” She kissed him again. “Okay?” "Okay." He paused. "I don't think you're daft," he clarified. "I think I'm horribly selfish for having put you in this position in the first place." “I’m not sure selfish is the right word.” Though love, certainly, did seem to make quite a lot of people selfish, and she, certainly, was more than a little selfish for putting her entire family at risk for the sake of whatever this was. She had no desire, just then, to bring any of that up, since mentioning either love or her family -- giving him some extra impetus to worry -- wasn’t going to do either of them any good just then. “I think you were horribly lonely. And I’m glad I got to help, sort of -- get to help properly now.” She gave him a small smile, running her fingers through his hair from the temple. “I’m glad I got to have you.” "I was lonely. Still am," he admitted. "And you do help, more than you know, and more than I could ever possibly explain." “So let me help,” Lo prompted, resting her hand by his neck. "How?" “You’re probably in a better position to tell me than I am to tell you,” Lo pointed out, grinning slightly as she moved to rest her chin on his chest again. He grinned, brushing her hair out of her face. "Yes, but that supposes that I either know what I want or what I need." “A bloke as smart as you has no idea what he wants or needs?” Lo repeated, cocking an eyebrow. “With all the reading you do? Really?” "Academic intelligence doesn't always correspond with emotional intelligence." “I know that.” She let one of her fingers trace the curve of his earlobe, brow furrowed slightly, before asking, “So what do you want to do now?” His head tipped in response to the movements of her finger. "I kind of like hanging out just like this, to be honest. This is nice." “Okay.” She moved one hand to rest beneath her chin, a barrier between the bone of her jaw and those of his ribs, still cradling his ear lightly. “We can do this.” "Okay," he said, voice soft and low. |