wl_mods (wl_mods) wrote in wizard_love, @ 2008-03-02 20:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | *fic, katie, marcus |
Special delivery for blondesimone
title: Odd Bedfellows
author:sappholococcus
recipient: blondesimone
rating: R
pairing: Marcus Flint/Katie Bell
word count: 2992
summary: Crippled by a Quidditch injury, Marcus Flint finds himself in St. Mungo's with an unexpected roommate - and it is their companionship, not their medicine, which brings them both back to life.
warnings: het, minor D/s, hospital wall sex, minor hurt/comfort, erm... what might be considered exhibitionism, though they aren't seen.
author's note: thanks to D (♥♥♥) for her cheerleading when I had so much on my mind that I could barely concentrate, and to J (♥♥♥♥) for the beta! (Also, this is in no way based off of the movie Odd Bedfellows - I just liked the name.) I really hope you like it, blondesimone!
When Marcus regained consciousness, the first thing that hurt was his head. This surprised him; he was fairly certain that it had been his legs that had taken the brunt of the impact, but it was probably the light. Why would they make it so bright in his room?
"You're awake," someone said, too cheerfully. Marcus growled in the back of his throat.
"How do you feel?" the voice continued; whoever it was, they were not deterred by his (admittedly lame) attempts at trying to get them to go away.
Marcus gave a noncommittal grunt. He heard a small tinkle of laughter, and then something cool -- it felt like glass -- was pressing against his lips. "For the pain," the voice explained when he hesitated.
Marcus didn't like it, didn't like painkillers in general. They seemed unnatural, designed for people who were too weak to cope with even the smallest discomfort, and Marcus was not one of those people. He could only think of a few things that were worth doing that didn't cause pain.
The person tending to him did not seem to like it very much when he shook his head. Marcus didn't particularly like it either; his neck was far too stiff for that kind of movement. Perhaps something had happened to his upper body, or at least to his spine.
"Mr. Flint," the voice began again -- and Marcus, as much to his surprise as the stranger's, started to laugh. There was a pause, and then the voice sounded slightly cooler. "Marcus. I really think you will be much more comfortable if you drink this."
The vial pressed more insistently against his mouth, but Marcus was stubborn. He tightened his mouth into a thin line, and was rewarded by a sigh and the soft sound of footsteps as the stranger left.
Marcus tried to open his eyes again when he was fairly sure they were gone. The room was still bright, but his eyes had adjusted enough for him to make out the door. He turned his head as far as it would go in the other direction, wincing at the stiffness of his neck, and saw what looked like a bed. There was someone lying in it, too; someone with blonde hair that contrasted with the whiteness of the walls and bedclothes.
"Huh," Marcus said to himself. He tried to settle more comfortably into his own bed, closing his eyes again.
Just before he drifted off to sleep, he caught a whiff of cleaning solution and grimaced. Bloody hospitals.
He dreamed of Quidditch. The dreams were always the same: they began with him taking off, the broom granting him a weightlessness that someone his size could never achieve otherwise. On a broom, Marcus was nearly invincible; he had his muscle and the maneuverability that his large limbs usually prevented. Marcus thought of his broom as a fifth limb, one that made him graceful instead of unwieldy.
In his dreams, he was back on the Slytherin team. There was a familiarity in the dreams that Quidditch since Hogwarts had never provided him; he was a good player, but he was simply not cut out for professional Quidditch. Professional Beaters were held to the awful double standard of being polite and comfortable in the spotlight as well as vicious on the field -- or at least, those were the conditions that Marcus was supposed to meet.
He was large and frightening - he even scared the Quidditch coaches. He had no charisma, he didn't attract fans' worshipful envy.
But in his dreams, no one cared about charisma. They were children still, obsessed with winning. No one sent cursed Bludgers at him like the professional competition did; such underhanded tactics were reserved for Gryffindor victims. Back at Hogwarts, he had never bothered with the hospital wing.
Marcus had never been very good at staying still for long periods of time, but being able to sleep helped some. He was exhausted; he hadn't even really realised how tired he was until he'd been forced to rest.
He almost envied the girl in the bed beside him, when she was still and quiet. She didn't have to be awake to watch a curse take its toll on her body.
But then, sometimes she made sounds in her sleep - frightened, distressed sounds - and he didn't envy her any longer.
At school, at least in his house, Marcus' temper had been legendary. No one here would have guessed that, though; he wasn't one to complain, nor did he really like speaking to the Healers at all, so they thought him a strong, silent type. Most of them regarded him with a little bit of fear, but that was more for the sheer strength his size conveyed -- the amount of strength he would have when he was healed completely.
So it came as a surprise to them when he first really opened his mouth.
"Why am I not getting better?" he demanded furiously, when his impatience had become too much to bear. "What's wrong?"
She was a sprightly little brunette, which was why Marcus had chosen to speak to her; some of the healers were the kind of steely-eyed, grey-haired women that would merely cluck their tongues in the face of his anger, and others - he suspected these of being former Slytherins - seemed like the type to 'accidentally' slip something into the potions they were constantly giving him. This one quivered, like a blade of grass.
"You are," she tried to assure him. "You get better every day."
For her efforts, she only received the full intensity of his glare. It was diminished marginally by his bedridden state, but he saw her flinch.
"So," he said slowly, measuring each word as if speaking to someone very stupid, "When will I be out, then?"
She attempted to smile at him, but the look in her eyes was an interesting mixture of annoyance and fear. Composing herself, she finished replacing the dressings on his legs, and turned to leave the room.
"Don't worry," she called over her shoulder, "It won't be long."
But Marcus wondered if there was something they weren't telling him. Why else would he be in the same room as her, the girl that never spoke? Still sulking, he glanced over at her - and made a loud, startled noise that he was sure could have been heard out in the hallway, but no one entered the room.
Her eyes were open, staring straight at him.
"Katie," was the first thing she said. Her voice was hoarse; Marcus had to strain to hear it.
"What?"
"Katie. My name is Katie."
Marcus cleared his throat. "Right," he said, tone dripping with disdain. "Nice to --"
"You don't remember me?" she asked, and this time she sounded almost amused - but there was a faint twinge of sadness to it, too. "Katie. Katie Bell. Gryffindor."
She sounded more like she was talking to herself, as if she needed the reminder of her identity, but her eyes were fixed on him again. It was disconcerting the way she kept doing that, staring at him when no one else was in the room; it made Marcus uncomfortable. He decided not to say anything.
"You have to remember me," she said.
"'Course I do," said Marcus, crossing his arms -- those, at least, were functional. "The Chaser we kept mistaking for the Quaffle."
He expected her to be insulted or annoyed by this, maybe even curse at him. Not literally, of course, as neither of them had their wands, but he remembered the Gryffindor Chasers as little female balls of fire, and now that she was awake --
-- but she was laughing. Laughing. Marcus glared.
"Better than being completely invisible," she noted, almost hysterical. "I remember you too, you know."
Marcus huffed and looked away, refusing to answer.
Katie wasn't always so light-hearted. She still made noises in her sleep, though they were softer. She had woken up from the real nightmare, but she still relived it in her dreams.
Despite himself, Marcus tried to listen to what she was saying -- it wasn't as if he had anything better to do. He caught the word ghost on multiple occasions, and her name. "Katie," she repeated over and over, identifying herself to whatever she was dreaming about. "Katie. Remember me?"
And when she was awake, she pestered him with questions. Her voice grew stronger as the day passed, starting rusty with disuse in the mornings and coming alive with interaction. Marcus was not sure why he answered, except that she only got more annoying when he didn't.
"Why were you so angry?" she asked first. "You were yelling. It woke me up."
It had been almost a week since she had first opened her eyes, so Marcus could not immediately figure out exactly what she meant. When he merely blinked, she continued.
"Nobody ever dared to be angry around me," she said. "They were quiet. They acted like I was already gone."
Marcus shrugged. "I guess I didn't really care whether you could hear me or not. And I wasn't talking about you, anyway."
She looked at him with bright eyes. "No, you weren't."
Why this was so especially important, Marcus had no idea. He didn't particularly want to pursue that train of thought in detail, either. Luckily, it seemed to satisfy her; she nodded to herself and went back to twisting designs in the sheet with her fingertips.
It surprised Marcus when the healer first told him that he could get out of bed. Katie had been such a constant nuisance that he had forgotten to be worried that there might be something seriously wrong with him, and the time had flown by.
He refused the healer's help when he attempted to stand, though his legs were unsteady. They had weakened significantly from neglect, which scared him -- what use could he be if he was too weak to stand? -- but with the healers' reassurances that he would regain his old strength in time, he tried walking around the room every day. He felt pathetic being worn out by such simple exercise, and so intent on getting his quick, sure pace back that he barely noticed Katie's eyes following him around the room.
He did notice the way her eyes brightened when he walked by her bed, though. Her expression darkened again when he turned in the direction of the door, as if she thought he was going to leave, but Marcus had no plans to do so.
At the beginning, he had been worried that he would never leave, now he was worried that he would be allowed to leave too soon. What if, by some stroke of luck, one of the teams he'd tried out for suddenly decided to enlist him, and he was too weak to play? He would never survive the embarrassment.
"You're faking," Katie accused once. The healer had just left after watching Marcus hobble around the room, and it was true that he might have played the injured card a bit too much. Up until Katie spoke, he'd thought he'd gotten away with it, but the girl was too perceptive for her own good.
He glared, but that look had long since failed to faze her. "Am not."
"You are too. I bet you could waltz right out of here."
Marcus frowned. Was it just his imagination, or did she sound wistful?
"Before you leave, will you do me a favour?" Her voice was hopeful now, eager. He must have been imagining the wistfulness.
"No," he said firmly. "I don't do favours."
Katie smiled at him, too widely. "It won't cost you anything, I promise. I just want you to touch me."
Marcus had decided to simply ignore her request, though it wasn't easy. The simple words grated at him for some reason, and he sat in a stoic silence as he tried to figure out why she would ask that of him.
Him, of all people. He wasn't kind, gentle, or even caring; usually when he touched people, it was to hurt them. But the way she said it implied compassion, maybe even pity.
When he hadn't replied, Katie rolled her eyes and slumped back against the bed. "It's really annoying the way you do that, you know."
"It's annoying the way you keep talking to me," Marcus grumbled, and she had laughed again, much to his... well, annoyance.
She threw up her hands. At times like this, Marcus wondered why she was still here; she was so energetic that it seemed to him she ought to be out, back at school again. But whenever she went quiet he remembered that she had never been imprisoned by the limitations of her body, only by her mind. Marcus thought his condition was much worse.
"Just your fingertips?" she'd asked the next day. "C'mon, please."
Thrown by the plea, Marcus turned to look at her. "Why?"
In an instant, Katie was on her knees again, hands pressed flat against her mattress as if she were ready to spring. "Because," she explained. "Because you're solid and strong, and you don't care that I've been in a coma for months." She said this so frankly that Marcus nearly laughed.
He sat up, watching her warily. He knew that her parents held her hands and stroked her hair when they visited, and none of the healers seemed to be afraid of touching her, but part of him wondered if this was a trick. Hesitantly, he stretched out his hand, his arm bridging the gap between their beds.
He was expecting a shock, a current of magic that would send him into a coma -- though he wasn't scared, of course. But when it didn't happen, he was surprised that the touch didn't feel anticlimactic. No one had ever smiled at him with such genuine happiness before.
"Hurry," she whispered to him, her fingers closing over his in a grip that Marcus had never imagined she would be capable of. "Hurry, before someone comes in..."
Marcus followed doubtfully, unused to being told what to do. She kissed him, and he finally reacted -- pushing her back against the wall, more of a reflex than disgust, though he felt as though he really should find this situation weird, at the very least. She wasn't deterred by this, though; in a moment, her hands had fisted in his hospital robe and pulled her against him. Not for the first time, Marcus was amazed by her physical strength.
He pinned her with a soft growl when she moved against him, not appreciating the way she was playing his body to get what she wanted. The position only made her eyes darken more, and she nipped at his neck, egging him on.
"Make me feel alive," she whispered. Her breath was hot against his throat.
Marcus kissed her, mainly because he didn't see any reason not to. He was surprised by how much better it felt when he wasn't resisting, and soon neither of them were paying any attention to whether they would be discovered. Katie even seemed to enjoy the danger of it: she moaned louder than Marcus thought was strictly necessary, and he had to keep kissing her to keep her quiet.
It was a delight to support her weight as he moved inside her, relishing the strength of his body and the adrenaline of the moment that surged between them. She never stopped moving, muscles tensing and then relaxing again, her fingernails clawing at his back as she came, all vibrant energy and ecstatic pleasure. Marcus was overwhelmed, but it was when her soft lips formed his name that he gave in, shuddering so hard that he was surprised to find himself still standing when the waves of his climax subsided.
Katie wrapped herself around him with a soft laugh, though it felt more like a purr against his skin. They stayed leaning against the wall until Marcus caught his breath enough to carry her back to her bed, where he very nearly fell in beside her. He stopped himself only because he knew it would be very awkward to be found like that, and reluctantly went back to his own bed.
They were both discharged the next morning. Katie had had no nightmares during the night, but slept as peacefully as a child; for his part, Marcus felt much stronger and sure of himself again.
He was informed that his father would not be coming to pick him up, which was not a surprise. Marcus' father would be far too busy and unwilling to show his face in as neutral a place as the hospital without his Death Eater mask, and that did not bother Marcus at all. He was simply grateful that he was not required to be part of the fighting.
Katie, on the other hand, seemed eager to jump right back into her old life. Marcus didn't have to ask to know that she would be on the Potter boy's side, and she didn't bring up the subject, either.
Minutes before her parents arrived, she stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. When he looked at her in surprise she simply smiled, as if she had done nothing out of the ordinary, and fiddled with the hem of her shirt.
"Hey," she said finally, "Do you think -- maybe after I graduate -- will I see you again?"
For some reason, that made Marcus smile. He touched her arm briefly, then turned towards the door.
"Look for me on the Quidditch pitch," he said, looking over his shoulder to watch her smile brighten. "I promise not to mistake you for a Quaffle."