Ambrose Spellman + Leanne Mao One character blows off work today and totally just goofs off! G | COMPLETE
Leanne did not feel like doing the work today. That was undeniable and unignorable, and ultimately she had told all her kids to just play some amicable sports while she put her feet up somewhere warm and read a book, browsed the network and ultimately got bored. She still didn’t feel like teaching, though, so while asking an assistant to watch the kids play footie Leanne got on her broom and decided to go bother the prettiest wizard in town by far.
Zooming around Intake, she finally located Ambrose through one of the windows and as she hovered on her broom, Leanne knocked. “Hello luv!”
The last thing Ambrose had expected was to see Leanne’s smiling face on the other side of the window, but it absolutely was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary day. Without Eileen, more work would eventually fall on his shoulders -- although, thankfully, they hadn’t been overwhelmed with arrivals (yet? Ambrose was sure that day would come). For the moment, he was just tired of staring at a wall. He’d gotten enough of that in Greendale with his aunt Zelda and the coven, locked away inside the Spellman house and the mortuary. Atlantis was a refuge, honestly. It meant freedom.
He pushed himself to his feet and wandered out into the hall. He eyed her broom, looking impressed with her balance. Levitation was nothing particularly noteworthy for him, but levitation while on a broom? Ambrose was fairly sure he wasn’t that sort of warlock. “This is a lovely surprise.”
“I’m glad it is, that was my intention!” Leanne replied, grinning from ear to ear. She did a few flight tricks around Ambrose before settling down gently, feet barely touching the ground. “I’d ask if you wanted to go for a ride but this only carries one, sadly. Fortunately I think we can combine powers and either get you another broom from the Quidditch supply closet or enchant something else!”
She leaned closer to Ambrose, her face going earnest and serious for a moment. “I’m trying to find my bliss in this place. And today it doesn’t involve making children run around a gymnasium.”
Ambrose tipped his head to the side a little, a mischievous glint flickering in his eyes. He held his hands out and murmured a quick incantation, and soon he was the one levitating in front of her. “I’m not as --” He waved a hand. “Athletic as you are, so I don’t know about all of that showing off.” The way Ambrose grinned at her, it should’ve been clear he was only teasing. “But I could enchant … a carpet. Or you could try to teach me what you do. I guarantee that me making an arse of myself will bring you bliss.”
Leanne was delighted by Ambrose levitating in front of her, laughing as he called her on the showing off. “Oh aye as if you won’t be graceful in any element you find yourself. Please.” It was something she had figured out quickly about Ambrose; he had a grace about him that she saw in few people. “So what’ll it be? I have to say, my muggle side is curious about a magic carpet ride...”
“Hmm…”
Ambrose glanced over his shoulder. He wasn’t due to leave work for another fifteen minutes … but it couldn’t hurt, could it? It would be worth it to indulge himself, just a little, right? He’d spent so many years in the service of his aunts and of the coven; if he couldn’t relax and take advantage of his freedom now, when could he?
When he looked back, he was grinning, and he reached out for Leanne’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Taking Ambrose’s hand, Leanne stepped gracefully into the room and lowered the broom to hold it in her other hand. “You know, Aladdin’s originally Chinese. The whole magic carpet ride reminded me. Not that I… Not that I expect us to be up there singing A Whole New World or anything. I cannae sing to save my life.” She looked around curiously, ponytail wagging behind her as she did. “Where are we going then?”
“Huh. I didn’t know that.” But then again, Ambrose didn’t pay much attention to what Disney got right or wrong when it came to anything magical. He preferred to let Aunt Zelda complain; he just tried to enjoy it for what it was.
He considered her question for a moment. They’d need to go to his and Sabrina’s house if she wanted a carpet, but she was the one who’d come to find him, so maybe she had ideas of her own. “To my house, unless you’d rather try to teach me to ride a broom. That’s merely a stereotype where I’m from.”
“Yeah people assume it’s set in the Middle East because it first came from One Thousand and One Nights but that story is Chinese. The Princess knew stories from all over.” Leanne explained with a smile. Then it was her turn to consider their possibilities for a moment. “We could do both? I’d need to grab you a muggle-ready broom since your magic doesn’t work like ours or you could enchant a broom and a carpet and… whatever you like!”
She held out one hand. “Accio muggle Quidditch broom!”
Without much consideration for what the broom might have knocked into on its way here, Leanne caught it with the hand that had been in Ambrose’s until recently, then held it out to him. “Your ride, m’lord.”
“Satan save me,” he muttered under his breath, his eyes taking in the broom as he pulled it from Leanne’s hand. Ambrose had never been the most athletic person around. There was no need, not when he had magic to do all sorts of things for him. He’d been more into art and philosophy than anything else, anyway.
But he could make himself fly, at least. Whether he could do it in tandem with a broom was another story. “How… do you stay on?”
“With incredible thigh power.” Leanne replied with a wink. “But they’re spelled to allow the balance to be easier to maintain. And it’s not exactly like sitting on a stick, so you’ll do great. Oh also, you have a professional Quidditch player to catch you if you go into a tailspin.”
That wouldn’t happen. Probably. Leanne maintained the grin anyway. “Shall we fly to yours for the carpet? That way we get the best of both worlds and maybe after some tea and biscuits?”
As hard as he tried to look confident and sure of himself, Ambrose could feel himself wilting a little in terror. He used to be up for anything, he recalled. The more dangerous, the better. All of those years inside of Spellman manor made him soft. He’d been free long enough; it was time to stop holding himself back.
He swung his leg over the broom and settled in, surprised at how easy it felt once he was on. He wobbled a little and held his breath until he evened out. “Right then. Yes -- yes, I think we shall. Lead the way, m’lady.”
Leanne watched dutifully, never doubting for a second that Ambrose had this in the bag from the start. She patted him on the back softly, a proud smile on her face. “See? You have this! Not a problem.”
With a laugh at being called m’lady, Leanne took off towards the housing area, slower than usual and ever looking behind herself to see how Ambrose was doing. It wouldn’t do to skip work and cause someone to have a very bad accident on the same day.
“Which is your house?” She yelled to him as they flew over the complex.
Ambrose was concentrating on what he was doing -- holding on, trying to stay upright, making sure he wasn’t going to fall -- that he nearly missed her question. Eyes narrowed, he scanned the neighbourhood. It wasn’t easy to spot from above. He kept expecting it to look like Spellman manor, shrouded in fog and surrounded by a forest and a cemetery. Instead, it was much more mundane.
Carefully, he inclined his head. “How do you make this go down?”
“You pitch it downward, carefully, then even out when you’re closer to the ground. Don’t steer it too fast or you’ll crash right onto the ground. You command it with voice, tell it to stop.”
She moved around him to better position herself to land near the house and not on its roof, but looked to Ambrose first and smiled. “Watch me, yeah? Follow behind so you don’t lose sight.”
With that, she leaned forward to fly downward, slow and steady, until she was closer to the house. To stop, she rounded the house and landed outside its front porch. Then, she watched Ambrose, once again ready to help if he needed.
“Oh, I’m in trouble,” Ambrose muttered. Leanne made it look so easy. She was a professional, of course, so she should be excellent, but it made the thought of following in her stead very, very daunting.
“Right then.” Ambrose narrowed his eyes. “You’re a Spellman, Ambrose. You can do anything.” The pep talk wasn’t giving him a lot of confidence, but it helped a little, and that was all he needed to start pushing his broom so it pointed towards the ground, slowly like she’d told him. It was going well up until he got closer to the ground. There, he struggled to control his momentum and when he shouted stop, the broom stopped -- but he tumbled head over heels into the grass.
“Oh, bollocks!” Leanne hopped off her broom, which fell motionless on the ground, and ran over to Ambrose immediately. She knelt down beside him, feeling at once worried and guilty.
She looked him over, turning his hands this way and that, then looking over his face, the works. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? I’m sorry I insisted, I’m so sorry, it should be easier, the muggles can do it with these enchanted brooms, I thought you’d have no problem you’re less a muggle than half the Quidditch teams-”
Ambrose shook his head. He was a bit dazed, but he could tell that was more from the surprise of it all than because he was actually hurt. “I never was a very athletic child,” he admitted with a sheepish smile, “and decades of house arrest don’t quite encourage an active lifestyle.” It was dreadfully embarrassing, in truth, to not even be able to manage something as simple as riding a broomstick.
He put a hand over one of Leanne’s in an attempt to reassure her. “I’m fine. My ego’s bruised,” he laughed lightly, “but it’ll heal.”
“House arrest? My you are a bad boy aren’t ye.” Leanne joked, helping Ambrose sit upright as she paid absolutely no mind to how athletic he was or whether or not fumbling a landing was embarrassing. If it was your first, it was only natural. Difference was, if he had gone to Hogwarts the humiliation would have occurred much earlier, possibly felt much worse. Early teens… what a mess.
“Well if it helps, everybody fumbles their first. Landing, I mean. Though I suppose other firsts too. It’s only natural, learning curves, learning loops...you know. You did fine! You did land in the end.” She stood up and offered Ambrose a hand. “Right, now you show me yours, yeah?”
“You’ve no idea,” Ambrose mumbled. He’d been trying to keep their coven’s secrets close to his chest in Atlantis, out of fear of how people would react. He knew how mortals felt about their worshipping of Satan, after all, and he knew how they felt about his attempt at blowing up the Vatican.
Then again, the powers-that-were didn’t seem to have an opinion one way or another about the Church of Night, given his and Sabrina’s freedoms here. Perhaps they knew something that the regular mortals in Greendale didn’t.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours... I hadn’t realised it was that sort of proposition,” he teased her, his brow arched as he tipped his head towards the front door. The rug in the middle of their living room would be suitable, he thought. “Where do you want to go, once we’re set?”
Leanne narrowed her eyes at that response, smirking. She was curious, but she’d ask later perhaps. Perhaps they should know each other much better before she should. And then Ambrose had gone all cheeky again (he did that, she noticed) and Leanne shook her head. “I meant the flying apparatuses, didn’t realize you’d left your head in the gutter when you feel off your broom there.”
She did say it with a laugh, though. “Oh, I dunno. Somewhere far, somewhere high up, somewhere pretty. Otherwise what’s the point?”
Ambrose flashed a smirk at her and shrugged his shoulders, all casual and coy and playfully sheepish. Sometimes it came easily to him, his easy-going charm. Within the coven, it’d been easier. Everyone knew who he was, and everyone had similar expectations. Atlantis was … a challenge, to say the least.
“What’s the point indeed,” he remarked. He could give her somewhere far and high up. Pretty, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know the layout of the island very well, but he knew there were beaches somewhere, and a jungle.
He held out his hands and muttered an incantation to make the rug lift off the ground. A few more made the rug fly around their heads in the living room. He tested it first, stepping on to make sure it could carry his weight, and then he leaned towards her and held out a hand. “Do you trust me?” Ambrose’s smile was just barely contained at the cleverness of his quote. “I’ve had a lot of time to kill over the years,” he explained. “And not a lot of friends.” But everything had changed -- everything was changing, and he found himself looking up for the first time in a long while. Even if the flying carpet didn’t work that well, he was sure they’d make some memories, and that was better than he could’ve hoped for.
The unexpected callback to Aladdin made Leanne sputter out a laugh before taking Ambrose’s hand, still shaking her head at the joke. She climbed onto the enchanted carpet confidently; it wasn’t like this was a completely new thing to her, plenty of things were enchanted to fly where she came from. It didn’t shock her to stand firm on something that by all rules of the natural world of muggles shouldn’t fly let alone be firm under her weight.
“The house arrest thing? I can’t help but be curious now you’ve mentioned it a good amount.” Leanne replied as she sat down on the carpet. Still, it was sad to imagine a lonely Ambrose stuck between four walls for what he’d said were decades. “Well here we are now, wind in our hair and a whole new world to fly over. If you want to make up for lost time, I’m happy to help. I had a bit of a shite childhood myself.”
“Yeah?” Ambrose’s expression was sympathetic. He knew all about shite childhoods -- and shite adulthoods, really. As he navigated the carpet through the house to the front door, he considered how much he wanted to share.
Or, no, that wasn’t quite right. He wanted to share it with someone other than Sabrina. What he was afraid of was people thinking poorly of him, just when he’d begun to feel free again.
“It’s a long story,” he confessed finally. “But I think we’ll have a long trip, so - it all started when I was a boy, really.” Because she’d have to understand what led up to his decisions in the first place, and she’d have to understand the coven. His heart hammered in his chest. It was one thing to talk about it with Luke, and quite another to open up the door with someone outside of the coven, but what did he have to lose here? As far as he could tell, he only had something to gain.