Detained Chapter 9 -- Insinuation Part 1
Ow.
Katie had been worried about practicing with Marcus for a lot of reasons. She’d been worried about her psyche, afraid she’d fall back into the trap of pining for things she’d never have. She’d worried that whatever confidence she had would be ripped to shreds. In a totally irritating, little girl lost way that drove her up the wall, she had worried about her heart.
She hadn’t worried about her ribs, though.
She really should have worried about her ribs.
“Again, Bell,” Marcus said brusquely, waiting impatiently by her panting form. “We’ll have to do it again.”
“Until I get it right, huh?” Katie joked weakly, wincing.
“I start counting when you get it right, Bell,” he said coldly. “It only just begins there.”
“Good thing for me you can only count to about seven, then, isn’t it?” Katie smiled brightly, and took to the air again.
She flew around the pitch, alert for any slight sound or movement in the periphery of her vision. There he was, down and to the right. For all his ‘expect attack from anywhere at any time’ bombast, he wouldn’t be Marcus Flint if he approached in such a way that he couldn’t use his elbows.
He swerved, and Katie shot upwards avoiding him. On the first day, she’d paused to revel in her triumph for a second. She was smarter now. To the left, back down to the right, she evaded him again, and then again. A perfect throw and the quaffle sailed through the hoop. Finally.
WHAM.
“Pay attention, Bell,” he barked at her as she was wheezing from the impact. “Just because scoring is such a rarity for you doesn’t mean you should sit there goggling afterwards.”
“Seems like business as usual to me,” she shot back. “You’re a thug and I’m ahead.”
She’d shied away and had caught herself, determinedly moving back towards him before realizing that he wasn’t coming after her. He swerved around her, and had scooped up the quaffle before she could blink. He was halfway down the pitch before she could breathe, and she forgot to exhale when he hurled the quaffle, a powerful throw from only two thirds down the pitch, and it tumbled through the hoop without grazing the sides.
She’d never seen anyone throw that far. Katie doubted she could throw it half that distance. Could all the pros do that? She didn’t remember him being that fast either. She wasn’t that fast.
Well, maybe her mouth was.
But not at the moment, because when he circled back and snarled “Again, Bell,” at her, she merely nodded and reached for the quaffle. He shook his head.
“We’re just running the gauntlet. You won’t need it.”
‘Running the gauntlet.’ Straight from their History of Magic textbooks describing the Muggle practice of making suspected witches and wizards dash between two rows of Muggles armed with sticks - in hopes of tricking them into using magic to defend themselves, so the really creative punishments could begin. At first, Katie had found Marcus’ use of the term for making her fly the length of the pitch while he repeatedly tried to knock her off her broom amusing. Now she was beginning to see the appeal of the ducking stool or being burned at the stake.
Well, no pain, no intriguing scars to make up amusing anecdotes about.
He usually gave her a ten second head start. Maybe she should use it to fly straight up. Steep ascents would probably be harder for him given his large size.
WHAM. OK, maybe not.
She was getting better, she reminded herself, while gritting her teeth at the pain. The first night, she had been able to dodge him maybe twice. Now she could do it two out of three times. His methods worked obviously. She just needed to tough it out. WHAM. Blast.
After three rounds of this, each hit more jarring than the last, Katie had had enough.
“When are we done?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“When I say we are,” he said, bluntly. “Again, Bell.”
“No,” Katie said firmly, shaking her head. “I watched your practices when you were Captain, Flint. You never had people go through the motions. Everything was a lesson, everything had a goal. You kept them thinking.” Her eyes narrowed. “We’ve been doing the same thing for days. You’re not training me. You’re just using me for target practice.” She began to fly away, but he grabbed her arm.
“Make it from one end of the pitch to the other without me hitting you just once, Bell, and we’ll be done, alright?” His voice was casual, but he seemed to be watching her carefully.
She nodded, and her muscles groaned in protest. Too bad. They could shut the hell up.
Her body only complained louder after a few unsuccessful passes, even though he seemed to have eased up a bit. She braced herself for her fourth attempt. OK. She dodged him easily on his first two tries. Getting clumsy there, Flint. He reached out to grab her ankle, but she kicked his arm away - a glancing blow, but effective. He sped under her and came up to block. She avoided him but had to retreat a bit, losing hard-earned ground. Calmly, Katie. She faked him out to the left, he was a bit slow to that side, and went into a sharp descent. With his extra momentum, he needed to slow his broom sooner to avoid colliding with the ground, and she grinned as she pulled away from him. The hoops were just ahead of her…
She’d never know how he managed to catch up to her so quickly. She’d never know how all of a sudden she knew he was behind her. But she swerved to the right, his broom hurtled past, and she reached out to grab the ring. A fierce joy filled her. She had done it.
“We’re done,” she said coolly, as he flew back to her, breathing heavily.
He nodded. “We’re done.”
They didn’t speak as they flew back to where they had stashed their belongings.
“I didn’t know you watched my practices,” he muttered, as he pulled off his Quidditch gloves. He wasn’t looking at her, but Katie turned away to rummage through her knapsack for some water before answering.
”I watched everyone’s practices.” It was true. Not as ardently and secretly as you watched his, her mind whispered. Well. Her mind could join her body and shut it, Katie decided. Her…hair could run the show from now on. “When I could find a seat among the bosomy broom bunnies. That was harder at Davies’ practices than yours though. Then again, Dav-“
“Shut up about Davies, and I’ll buy you dinner.” Surprised, she turned to look at him but he was concentrating on removing his pads, face stern. “Just for those blessed moments of silence while you chew.”
“Hmm….while I understand that your companions probably go for the trollop trifecta - mouth, blouse and legs open - I don’t really think you should have to pay for dinner just for the novelty of a cleavage-free evening,” she replied, tartly. “You’re helping me. I’ll buy.” He had been spending a lot of time helping her, after all. Dinner would be a good opportunity to prove to herself, and to him, that she was over her stupid infatuation.
“You do know that it’s not required that you argue with every single thing I say?” Marcus inquired sourly. “Letting me buy you a curry is not an act of prostitution inside the British Commonwealth.”
“That goes both ways, Flint. Tell you what. You won’t even have to wear the fwooper boa I picked out if you feel that it takes us into a ‘gray area.’”
“I’m the guy, Bell. I pay,” he said, flatly. “Just because your little Gryff boys were too stupid or too cheap or weren’t aware that you were a girl…”
“Just because I don’t have Ang’s cleavage or Ali’s curves doesn’t mean that people can’t tell that I’m a girl.” Oh, good going, Bell. Way to sound indifferent to his opinion.
“Hey,” he reached out and grabbed her arm, dropping it when she glared at him. “I know that you’re a girl. Hence the paying.”
“You’re helping me,” Katie told him flatly. “There isn’t any reason for you to buy me dinner.”
“It’s dinner, Bell. I wasn’t aware I required an action plan.”
“Let’s go to plan B,” Katie said, keeping her voice light. “You go find a witch with a truly startling cup size/chatter ratio to spend your sickles on. I’ll go design a gender identification seminar for Gryff boys. ‘Shoe Shopping or Snot Spells: Observations from the Field.’” She paused for a second, becoming serious. “Thank you for your help, Marcus.”
He looked at her for a moment, stern, unreadable. “You’re welcome.” He shrugged. “I’ll…see you tomorrow then?” he asked casually.
“Absolutely,” she smiled brightly, and made her escape.
~*~
next day
Katie watched Marcus frown at the pastry box, and grinned. He looked conflicted…probably because he was struggling whether to say something derogatory about Muggles, the French, or try to combine them both into a meta-insult. Phyllo from Feckless Frogs? Mademoiselle Mudblood’s Madeleines?
“I’ve heard tell the Muggles call it ‘breakfast’,” Katie informed him. He shot her a dark look, and bit into the turnover he’d been eyeing suspiciously.
“This is pretty good,” he said, surprised, finishing it off in a gigantic bite and reaching for another. Katie grinned. This was starting off well. Marcus was in a good mood, she’d already had chocolate and they were finally going to do something other than evasion drills today. No more crushing blows. Bliss.
“What’s the plan for today?” Katie asked, sunnily.
”Gauntlet,” he said, shortly. He didn’t meet her eyes.
”What?” Katie laughed, sure that he was joking. He didn’t respond. She laughed again, forcibly, just in case he hadn’t yet realized that he had been joking.
“C’mon,” he said, grabbing his broom.
“No, we’re done with impact drills,” Katie said, bewildered. “You said so yesterday. If I could run the Gauntlet, we were finished.”
“And we were finished for that day,” he said, straddling his broom, looking out across the pitch. “Now, we start again.”
“No.”
“Come on, Katie.”
”No. There’s more to Quidditch than getting elbowed in the gut. I’m almost certain.”
“Fine,” he said, finally looking at her. “If you know so much, go ahead. Muck about with your friends. Pick Wood’s great Quidditch mind. Alternatively, hold your ear next to a Haggis and absorb its wisdom,” he said brusquely. “I thought you were serious about this.”
“I am!”
“There might be an easier way, Bell. I think this is important though.”
Clearly, that was all the explanation she was going to get. Did she trust him?
Well, no. Of course not.
She did trust him to know Quidditch though. And in a way she trusted him not to take anything about the game lightly.
“Fine,” she said, flatly, swinging her leg over her broom. “We start again.”
It began again, just like it had on all the other days. Well, with two differences. 1. All the hits she’d taken over the past week were slowing her down. After days of getting better at avoiding him, she was getting worse. 2. He was beginning to hit harder.
There was a third difference. She was beginning to feel a little afraid.
“You OK?” He hovered next to her.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Katie replied coolly. “Let’s continue.” He looked…strange. Katie ran through the known Marcus Flint Emotional Spectrum-rage, fury, bitter amusement, homicidal rage…nope, this was a new one. He almost looked afraid.
This time, Marcus didn’t attack immediately. He flew alongside her for so long that Katie was beginning to wonder if this was some new kind of psychological torture the Falcons were thinking about using. After all, they’d exhausted all the avenues for more plebian physical violence.
He slowed, falling behind her a bit. She began to turn around to ask him what was up, and saw him moving up fast behind her. Too late to do anything about it, unfortunately.
His broom handle speared into her back. Katie felt herself fall forward from the impact, air pushed from her lungs, leaving pain in it’s wake. She struggled to keep her balance long enough to get her broom onto the ground. Gods, it hurt so badly.
She was still wheezing as she heard Marcus land next to her. He said something but she was too busy fighting down her nausea to process it. She turned her head towards him. Repartee was out of the question, but possibly her stomach contents could add something to the conversation.
They stood there for minutes, neither speaking. The pain was still there, but the nausea was subsiding and she could see clearly again. Marcus was staring at her, looking as gray as she felt. He was sweating. Katie moved away from him a bit. If one of them got to vomit on the other, it should be her.
“You OK?” he asked, voice strained.
Was that his point? Showing her she wasn’t tough enough for the big leagues? She drew in a shuddering breath. Surprise, Flint.
“Let’s go again,” Katie said, coldly.
“Kat-“ his words broke off when she glared at him, and he nodded.
Even though the pain still radiated through her, she was flying better than she had been, her anger giving her an edge. He came up fast on her right side, and she got ready to swerve. She dodged him once, but when he moved in fast and hard toward her back, her courage failed her. She couldn’t take another hit like that last one. She pivoted, driving her elbow hard into his face, wincing at the cracking sound. Her broom handle knocked him sideways…and for a second she kept pushing him off his broom.
Horrified, she backed off, reaching out and steadying him. She flew beside him until he was safely on the ground and watched helplessly as he tumbled off his broom, swearing.
He had been helping her. She’d hit him so hard…she just hadn’t wanted to be hit again. She was such a coward. Why hadn’t she just elbowed him enough to knock him away but not hard enough to injure? Why had she kept this going? He had been helping her and she intentionally had tried to hurt him. Now she really did think she was going to throw up. He stared up at her, nose swollen, and blood streaming down his face.
“Fucking finally,” he gritted out.
“Uh…what?” she stammered.
“Only took you six days, Bell,” he wheezed. “Six fucking days to figure out what to do when some asshole comes after you.”
Stunned, she dropped cross-legged to the ground beside him. “This was all some kind of test?”
“It was a lesson, Bell.”
“In what? Using bruising as body art? I’ve got a really good one on my thigh that looks like a purple and green hippogriff. Or Trelawney and Snape dancing the tango. I can’t decide.”
“Oh, you learned a lot, Bell,” Marcus growled, ticking his reasons off on his fingers, one by one. “1. Hits slow you down, 2. Taking a lot of hits makes it harder to score, both because you’re looking around for the next attack and because of loss of confidence. 3. Hits do cumulative damage. Each one you take weakens you a bit. You walk off the pitch a lesser player than you were when you stepped onto it. 4. No one, and I mean, no one can avoid all of them. You need to make people so afraid of you, and you’ll be amazed at how many hits you don’t have to take. 5. There are assholes who’ll hit you just to watch you bleed.” He paused, and looked at her coolly. He spoke his next words slowly and deliberately. “6. After enough of them, you’ll do anything to avoid the next one. Stuff you didn’t even think you were capable of.”
“Couldn’t you have just told me that and saved a lot of effort, and cleansing potions to get my bloodstains out of your robes?”
“Oh, if I said, ‘Hey, Bell, when someone swoops down on you, why don’t you spear them in their stomach, break their nose and knock them off their broom?’ You really expect me to believe you’d have done it?”
Katie flushed. “Well, come on, this was an extreme case. It’s not like you’re supposed to do that whenever someone tries to hit you!”
“Yes, Katie,” he said intently, staring at her. “That is exactly what you’re supposed to do. Gods,” he laughed darkly, “you’re already getting it wrong.”
“Look, I’ve handled rough stuff on the pitch before,” Katie snapped, stung. “Your lovely teammates certainly weren’t angels, and I managed to get through it with only the occasional stint in Azkaban for manslaughter.”
“It’s not like Hogwarts, Katie,” he said softly. “It’s not like club Quidditch. Do you know how many people want to play pro Quidditch? Do you know how short the average career is? They don’t have to worry about getting detention, or kicked out of school. They don’t even care if it makes them look bad. All they care about is staying on the team for as long as possible. Any player that lets themselves get injured or won’t fight back or doesn’t want it bad enough is a player that won’t be taking their roster spot.”
“I’m not a coward, Marcus,” she said angrily, pushing her hair behind her ears. “I’ve never let anyone bully me or my fellow chasers. I’ll stand up for the team.”
“They won’t stand up for you,” Marcus told her calmly. “If opposing players are harassing you, that’s more room on the pitch for your fellow chasers, more scoring chances. If you’re the weak link on the team, not them, they’ll be less likely to get demoted or traded. Beaters spend more time protecting the high-scoring chasers. Let your scoring average drop, and good luck ever getting it back up with a bludger hitting you every three seconds. Your teammates might feel bad, but mostly they’ll just be so fucking grateful that they’re not you.”
She trusted Marcus to know Quidditch. She knew he was telling the truth, and fought back the tears she felt trying to well up. They both sat there silently, gazing out over the pitch.
“Why would it bother you so much to spear someone or knock them off their broom?” He sounded curious, but also like he was casting about for a solution.
What could she say? That she could just envision that one in a thousand chance that an appendix would rupture, that the security team wouldn’t manage to slow someone’s fall? That the impact would twist someone’s head just the wrong way, and they’d never fly again? That there was nothing more horrifying to her?
“It’s…against the rules,” she said weakly.
“No, it’s not,” he scoffed.
“Yes, it actually is,” she said snidely, glad to be on firmer emotional ground again. “I know you’re not really a student of the etiquette of the game, but the rules are what the ref is shouting at you about just before he throws you off the pitch. Again. ‘Flint: Inappropriate Broom Insertion, Flint: Unauthorized Use of Chizpurfles, Flint: Mutilation of Opposing Team’s Mascot.’ Ringing any bells?”
He snickered. “I elbow someone in the face, I get a slap on the wrist. I knock someone off their broom, I’m off the pitch for maybe, maybe, one game. Stooging? I’m fined one one-thousandth of my salary. If they wanted to get this stuff out of the game they could: mandatory expulsions, twenty game suspensions, truly hefty fines. But they don’t. They just want enough punishment to keep the truly expensive injuries down and government attention at bay, enough violence to keep people in the stands, and enough freedom for the players to get a little bit creative. A complex arithmancical equation designed to maximize profits. It works. Except for the Gry-, the poor stupid bastards who actually think the rules are anything but a road map for the most effective ways to cheat.”
“You don’t think this will ever change?” Katie asked, quietly. He looked at her, startled.
“Gods, I hope not,” he said grinning. “It’s fucking brilliant the way it is. All these completely unrelated things: market forces, public relations, and psychology mutating the game. Opposing players and teammates both against you. Jinxes, wind shear, occasional broom going haywire. Velocity, trajectory-an infinite amount of different ways to move at, with an infinite range of speeds. All overlaid with a thin layer of complete and total chaos.” He shook his head, laughing and sounding amazed. “It’s just you and this series of moments, a million decisions you make - all to try to figure out just the right way to slide through this chaos and do what you set out to do.”
Fierce joy was in his voice and eyes, and Katie could feel an answering echo in the way she felt when she was on a broom, or doing something people wouldn’t expect of her, or on the few occasions she’d felt lips moving ov-. She shook herself.
“You’re insane, you know this, right?” she asked, unable to stop herself from grinning back at him.
“Says the girl who filled all of Hogwarts Yule crackers with tiny enchanted replicas of Snape, dancing a merry jig?” Huh. Katie smiled back at him. She hadn’t known that anyone had known about that. His grin widened.
“Let me look at your nose,” Katie said, breaking the silence. She knelt in front of him, bringing her wand up and preparing to do a minor healing spell.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Marcus asked dubiously, eyeing her wand.
“It’ll all be fine,” Katie chided him. “Shut it and let me concentrate.”
“That’s what the guy said who repaired my busted lip when I was six,” Marcus muttered.
“Your lips look fine,” Katie said, looking at him. “Obviously he didn’t screw up too badly.”
”Yeah, but take a look at my teeth.”
“That’s how…” her eyes shot to his teeth and then back to meet his gaze. Maybe he had some weird reaction to healing spells. Thank Merlin he told her before she’d gone ahead…Her gratified musings were interrupted by Marcus hooting with laughter.
“Gullible, Bell.” He smirked.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s not wise to irritate a witch who has a 9 inch wand in such close proximity to so many of your beloved orifices?”
“When I’m around a witch, I’m usually more concerned about my wand,” he mock-leered at her.
“Oh! Nice micro-entendre!” Katie scoffed. She murmured a quick healing spell, and then peered at Marcus’ nose. “Uh…”
“What?” he asked sharply.
“Nothing…you can hardly see it,” Katie reassured him. “Does your flat have a lot of mirrors in it? I’m just curious.” She smiled brightly. “Really! Makes you look distinguished.
He reached for his wand, probably planning on doing a reflection spell. He froze when he heard Katie’s peal of laughter.
“Gullible, Flint.”
~*~
The rest of the day passed quickly and reasonably pleasantly. Precision flying drills-this Katie could do. High speed, tight turns, no one trying to behead you…bliss.
She was ready to call it a day however when Marcus finally called a halt. Her back was still throbbing painfully from the hit she’d taken earlier, and she was sore all over. She surreptiously rubbed her back and winced, before she saw Marcus watching her from the corner of his eye.
“Come here,” Marcus said gruffly.
Puzzled, Katie walked towards him, limping slightly.
“Turn around.”
“Why?” Katie asked, suspiciously. He reached out, grasping her hips and turned her around bodily.
“Step forward a bit.”
“If this has anything to do with the Hokey Pokey, you are in for a world of hurt, Flint.” Katie said firmly.
There was a slight pause. Probably he was debating between asking her what the Hokey Pokey was, asking how she could possibly hurt him, or his all-purpose fallback of asking how she could ramble on like an idiot while her quaffle grip/passing stance/broom positioning was such a disaster.
What she was not prepared for was Flint yanking the back of her shirt up, pulling it loose from her pants. She stepped forward abruptly, pulling her shirt from his grasp.
“What are you doing?” she cried out, spinning around.
“I need to look at your bruise. That was a really nasty hit you took today. We can’t have it slowing you down.”
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Don’t worry about it.”
“The muscles start spasming in your back, you’ll probably be off your broom for at least a day.” He stared down at her coolly, eyes flat and arms crossed. “Anything got torn or broken, and you’ll probably be off for a few days unless we treat it immediately. We can’t have you off your broom now, Katie. We can’t even have you be sub-optimal.” He stepped forward, looming over her. She hated it when he did that. “We don’t have enough time for this, Katie.”
Did she want to be a Harpy or not? Hadn’t Marcus shown her that he knew what he was doing over the past week? Stop being such a little girl, she firmly lectured herself. She turned back around, this time holding her shirt up herself, and baring her lower back.
He didn’t touch her, and Katie felt herself start to relax. He was just looking. It wasn’t that big of a deal. He’d seen backs before, she told herself dryly. It wasn’t like all hell would break loose because it was her spinal cord he was looking at. A crunch of gravel behind her puzzled her, until she felt warm breath above the waistband of her sweatpants. He was kneeling.
She’d flown next to him all week; thighs colliding, his arm reaching around hers to try to pull her off her broom, his hand just grazing her ankle as she flew crosswise to him, darting in and stripping the quaffle while leaving just enough room to escape. The proportions of their bodies were as indelibly etched in her psyche as Ang’s and Ali’s birthdays were. She really wished they weren’t. She really wished she wasn’t able to calculate exactly where his gaze was resting or how close her arse was to rubbing against his chest, or exactly how much of her back his hand would cover if he chose to place it there. She would give a lot to be unaware.
Katie tried to tuck her hips under, and slouch a bit. That was better. She could focus on the dull ache in her back, and the increased tension in her thighs. At least until she felt Marcus’ right hand come up and lightly trace the edge of her bruise.
“Gods,” he swore.
“How bad is it?” Katie asked, casually.
“Bad enough,” he said, shortly. They remained silent for a moment, his warm hand resting on her back. “I can’t believe how long you were willing to take those hits, Bell.”
Katie smiled, a warm glow suffusing her with his words. He thought she was tough.
“Bloody stupid,” he muttered. Ah. It figured.
“Are you done?” Katie asked, icily. “If I leave now, I can probably make it to Rent-A-Whiner before they close and get you a pupil more to your liking. Will she require anything other than kneepads and a lollipop?”
Marcus’ short bark of laughter reached her ears at the same time the warm air he exhaled moved over her skin. “That’s cruel, Bell. Going to make me spend my days teaching Quidditch to a bint who giggles and stares longingly at my pelvis every time I say the word ‘broomstick’? I’m afraid I’ll have to insist you stick around.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls…vertebrae.” Katie stepped forward, looking back over her shoulder at Marcus. “What are you doing anyway?”
He reached out and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her abruptly back toward him. Katie stumbled a bit and when she’d regained her footing she was standing even closer to him than before. She would have loved to put some distance between them, but his arm still wrapped about her tightly, holding her in place.
Katie could feel two fingers trace up and down her back, from just under her bra to the waistband of her pants. Without warning, Marcus pressed firmly. Katie yelped in surprise.
“How does that feel?” he asked gruffly.
“It’s a little sore,” Katie admitted. “What are you doing?”
“I’m seeing how bad the injury is, Bell. What the hell did you think I was doing?”
“I don’t know. Playing pat-a-cake? Seems about your speed.” He pressed on a different part of her bruise. “Ow.”
“Sore there as well? How about here?”
”It hurts.”
“What happens when I press here?”
”It hurts.”
“And over here?”
”I am suffused with giddiness and the faint odor of parsnips.”
”What?” Marcus asked, surprised. Katie rolled her eyes.
“It hurts, Flint. That’s what happens when you press on a bruise. Not to discourage your scientific curiosity, but it’s also what’s going to happen the next fifty times you pre-“ A bolt of pain shot through Katie, and her knees would have buckled if Marcus hadn’t been holding her up.
“There, Katie?” She flinched as he probed it again, albeit more carefully.
“Yeah.” She gritted her teeth as he massaged the spot, lightly.
“Some salve will help the swelling,” he said gruffly. “Hold still.”
The icy tingling of the healing salve was a shocking contrast to the heat of Marcus’ fingers, and Katie tensed. Starting from the most tender area, Marcus worked slowly outward until most of her back was covered. His touch was so light that at times Katie could only tell where he was working by the coolness that followed in his wake. She hadn’t realized how much she had been hurting until it stopped. She hadn’t realized he had finished until he cleared his throat.
“Thanks, it’s much better now,” she muttered, cheeks flaming. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” He didn’t release her waist.
“I’ve taken care of the worst damage but the muscles will tighten up if I just leave them,” Marcus replied, in a matter-of-fact voice.
“I’ll just do a relaxer spell when I….oh.” All thoughts of stopping him fled her mind as he began to knead the muscles of her lower back. At first, just the feeling of oxygen flowing back to the areas that had been tight and sore was just too good to give up. Then, as his fingers delved deeper, she realized he was working loose knots that she’d had for years. Her blood seemed to flow easier in her veins and she began to feel a little light-headed.
“Tell me where you need me,” Marcus said huskily. Katie wanted to feel those big hands on her shoulders, but didn’t dare open her mouth for fear of moaning. She bit down on her lower lip hard in an effort to remain silent, but the pain didn’t clear her head.
She didn’t speak but he seemed to know what she wanted anyways. At first, she didn’t even realize she was giving him clues…thought he must be a legilimens and was vaguely flattered that he would bother using it with her. Slowly, she discovered that she was guiding him. He ran his hands over her back, moving on if she tensed and stopping at the places that made her lean into his hands. He could read her signals so easily...Feeling him so focused on her alone made her thighs shake a bit, and she had to fight to steady herself.
Katie slouched a bit, bending her knees just slightly, and he moved his hands upward. Something nagged at her but by the time she realized what it was, his hand had already slid under the back of her bra and was running his fingertips across her back. He would move tantalizingly close to her sides before moving again to the center of her back.
A cool breeze skating across her stomach brought Katie out of her reverie. She realized that he had both his hands on her shoulders, which pulled her shirt up in front, exposing her entire midriff. She hurriedly tugged it back down.
His hands were kneading her shoulders, and it was one of the best things Katie had ever felt. Just the feel of his big hand grasping her muscles, and his strength effortlessly kneading out every single bit of tightness she had. Not the endlessly repeating, gradually loosening massages she’d had before. His hands were so strong that knots just collapsed immediately under the slow, inexorable pressure, her muscles obeying his absolutely. She thought she did moan then.
He stood up, body sliding against hers while his arm pulled her back against him. Too busy trying to remain silent, she was only dimly aware of what was happening until she felt his breath in her ear. She leaned back against him to steady herself.
“How does that feel, Katie?” his voice was low, reverberating down her spine.
It felt…divine. But he knew that. She shook her head, trying to get the fog to dissipate. His voice was confident, and knowing, dark amusement underlying ever word. She’d heard him sound like that before. It’s OK to tell me, Katie. I already know. Is this what you want, Katie?
No. That wasn’t what she wanted any more. That was over.
“I need to go,” she managed to force through her lips.
“You can stay,” he murmured. “You want to stay.”
“Stop it,” she said weakly, pushing at his arm that was wrapped around her waist.
“Stop what?” Still sending chills down her spine. Still so damn amused.
“Stop it!” Katie pushed herself out of his arms, and spun around to face him. She could hear herself breathing.
“Damn, Katie. What?” he snarled at her, pushing his hands through his hair.
“Don’t do that,” Katie said, furious when she heard her voice quiver. Marcus stared at her, looking surprised, frustrated and jaded, in rapid succession.
“Do what?” he asked coolly. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You said you wouldn’t do that,” Katie managed to say. “You promised.”
He looked away, and laughed, a little nervously, Katie thought.
“Look, Bell,” he told her, with a shrug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think you must have misconstrued something. I was just being a good guy. Anything else must have been coming from you, so why you don’t you just calm down.”
Yeah, it was never him. It was just little Katie walking a tightrope, trying to understand and always getting it wrong. Building castles in the air. He was just being kind.
“Flint,” Katie began, taking a deep breath. “Thank you very much for your coaching. I’ve learned a lot, but I think I can take it on my own now. Whatever you thought you might have owed me, for whatever reason, we’re even now.” She was going to tell him good luck, or to take care of himself, but she wanted out of there before she started crying like a little baby.
“What?” Now he looked shocked. “Don’t be ridiculous. You still need me. You’re not ready.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Katie replied calmly. “Thanks for everything.”
“Bell…nothing happened. It’s over. We move on, preferably to correcting that horrible sidearm throw of yours.”
He had further arguments, but Katie didn’t hear them. She had disapparated.
~*~
"It's so wee!"
Alicia Spinnet's delighted voice echoed off the walls of the small flat. Angelina, far more sedate, rolled her eyes. Katie grinned. The flat was small. The entire thing was about the size of one of Alicia's closets, but it was hers. Well, it would be soon, at any rate.
She loved it.
Crooked bookshelves, floors that creaked, a balcony about the size of a horklump, and cheery yellow walls. She hadn’t even moved her things in yet, and it certainly didn’t look empty. With all her stuff, the flat would be crowded…no, cozy, and just the perfect size for one Katie Bell.
“It’s going to be so great having you in the city proper, Katie!” Ali chirped. “We never get to see you as it is.”
“They must be serious slave drivers at St. Mungo’s,” Ang commented. “You’re never around.”
“Yeah…well, y’know how it goes. For every hour I spend working, I spend another hour listening to people tell me that Dad is A) a genius, B) a great and selfless man working for the greater good of wizardkind, or C) wearing mismatched shoes again.”
It wasn’t a lie, Katie assured herself. She had been working at St. Mungo’s some. Plus, her father had seemed to be having a lot of difficulty with equations like cinnamon dress shoe does not equal chartreuse mukluk recently.
Besides, she wouldn’t be training with Flint any more so why even bring it up? It would be rude to make Ang and Ali waste all that time crafting an essay on “What on Earth Could Bad Boy Marcus Flint Possibly Want From Katie Bell, Our Little Miss: Her Complete and Utter Humiliation or Just Her Lunch Money?” Friends didn’t let friends waste their pontificating on things that were over and done with, after all.
“How many hours are you work-“ Ang began, only to be interrupted by a squeal from Ali.
“What does this do, Katie?” Ali asked. She was staring in wonder at the microwave. Ah, purebloods. Katie shared a grin with Ang, and explained the more important details to Ali.
“Exploding potatoes?” Ali asked, eyes wide. “Can we do that when we help you move in next month?”
“I will lay in a wide variety of root vegetables,” Katie assured her grinning. Leaving Ali to play happily in her kitchen, Katie went over to Ang who was frowning at the door leading out to the balcony.
“What’s wrong?”
“You should have protection spells on this door,” Ang told her seriously. “It’s too easy to get into the apartment this way. Alicia Spinnet, take your head out of the oven. Get some stronger locks as well,” Ang continued. “Might as well cover all the bases.”
“In case someone desperately wants to get their hands on some Harpies posters and a toaster?” Katie asked, laughing.
“You’re a tad over-protective of Katie, Ang,” Ali chided, as she joined them.
“I am not!”
"Oh, you can get out on the roof from here," Alicia crowed, peering out onto the balcony. She gave Ang a sidelong sly glance. "Katie, you could have sex underneath the stars."
"Are you insane?" Ang yelped. "Katie certainly isn't going to be rutting on her roof. That would be very dangerous."
"Yeah," Katie, chimed in. "Besides I could get shingles." Heh.
Alicia stared at her blankly. Well, no surprise, she didn't probably know what either kind of shingles were. Katie thought Ang would have gotten it though, but she was staring at Katie, unsmiling.
"Uh…shingles," Katie explained. "It's a disease…a skin rash."
"I understood the joke," Ang snapped. "Don't have sex on the roof."
“Good thing she’s not over-protective,” Ali snickered quietly, winking at Katie. Thankfully, Ang wasn’t listening.
“You know what you should do?” Ang asked, looking over the flat appraisingly. “Replace the double bed with a single. That would let you move a lot more freely.”
“You know what you should do?” Ali mocked. “Purchase a chastity belt. The extra weight around your hips will drag you down and make the ceiling look taller.”
“She doesn’t have a lot of room here, Ali,” Ang said, annoyed. “Besides you’re the only one who needs enough room to do a handspring in their bed. The rest of us are somewhat less…exuberant.”
“Well…why don’t we go whole hog and get her a coffin to sleep in,” Ali shot back. “That way when she dies from boredom from the milquetoast boys you think she should be with, she’ll be all ready to go to the gravesite. No muss. No fuss.”
“Morbid, Spinnet. See what being a perv does to you, Katie?”
“How do you know Katie’s not a bigger perv than I am?” Ali asked sweetly. “Who knows what tales her bed could tell?”
Katie felt her stomach lurch. Tangled in boring cotton sheets. Half dreaming of warm breath in her ear and hands moving underneath her shirt. Waking to a strange sound only to realize it was her own breathing, before drifting off again.
“Whips, chains, rutabagas…” Alicia continued blithely.
“I can’t hear you,” Ang said, trying not to laugh, hands pressed over her ears.
”You can stay. You want to stay.” Her body leaning back against a wall of solid muscle, like warm stone. Reaching up to twine her arms around his neck and pulling his lips closer to her ear. “You want more then, Bell?” A deep rumbling laugh.
“Katie Bell: Human Pretzel,” Alicia laughed.
“Hysterical deafness is my friend,” Ang said, hands still pressed to the sides of her head.
The pitch awash in sunlight as he pulled her tighter to his body. Sweat beading on her skin in her dark bedroom. “Gods, Katie.” A guttural moan. Her fingers tangling in his hair.
“I hear Katie can train puffskeins to do the most remarkable things.”
“Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,” Ang sang.
Kicking off the blankets. “Beg me, pretty girl.” Her hand snaking down between her thighs. His hardness pressing against her arse. Euphoric. “So wet for me.” Back arching off her bed, biting back a gasp. “I want you, Katie.”
“Order of Merlin, Second Class, for serving as an erotic inspiration to the wizarding world,” Ali intoned.
“And the little girls, Katie and Ang, ran away from the big scary witch Alicia, and had cocoa with lots of marshmallows. And so did their ponies”
Waking. Not knowing what was real. Memories of him behind her on the pitch. Foggy. Shaking. Wanting her? Probably just a dream.
“Has sexually enslaved several members of the Wizenga-“ Alicia broke off. “Katie, are you OK?”
“What? Yeah, I’m fine,” Katie said weakly. “Why?”
“You don’t look fine,” Ang said bluntly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Katie protested.
“She’s probably nauseous because of your grotesque imagery,” Ang grinned over at Alicia. Alicia didn’t grin back.
”Seriously, Katie, you look upset. What were you thinking about?”
Katie swallowed and pushed the images to the back of her mind, before smiling at her friends. “Nothing that matters.”
~*~
It had been four days. It was starting to move from ‘taking a break to reassess her priorities’ to ‘arse surgically attached to couch.’ She needed to get back on her broom.
Flying drills weren’t a problem. She and Marcus had been over enough of them that she could keep that up. Strength training she could probably handle with some help from Ang; Marcus had already designed a regimen for her. Strategy, insider information, new techniques-those were probably a lost cause, now.
No, she told herself firmly. Not a lost cause. The price was just too high. It was a decision, not some high tragedy.
Scrimmaging however was an absolute necessity. She couldn’t show up at Harpies’ tryouts and expect to wow them with her ability to evade casual bystanders and birds in order to score. She needed actual competition.
There were several clubs and drop-in play at various pitches. She’d figure out a schedule to get to the most demanding ones each day. She should also see if she could rent some pitch time, and get Oliver and Ang together for some critiques. Pitch time was usually fairly hard to get, but Hawthorn Pitch might be available. It’s where she and Marcus had been meeting most days, and he was probably doing most of his training in Diana Bletchley’s bed these days. Or on her trapeze.
Not that it was any of her business what he was doing. It was between him and his playmates, and if he persisted with the trapeze, possibly the Falcons’ chiropractic staff.
Hawthorn it was. Even if there wasn’t open pitch time, she could stick around and help with the Tiny Terrors session, for children eight and under. They were always looking for adult to help corral, er, assist with the kids. Besides with all the expert coaching and broom time she’d had recently, she would probably be quite good.
At knocking the little tykes off their brooms, considering whom her coach had been.
Gathering her broom, wand, and determination, Katie apparated to Hawthorn Pitch. To be more precise, she apparated almost directly on top of someone. The large figure was leaning against a tree, swigging a butterbeer and staring out over the pitch.
Flint.
Katie had been worried about practicing with Marcus for a lot of reasons. She’d been worried about her psyche, afraid she’d fall back into the trap of pining for things she’d never have. She’d worried that whatever confidence she had would be ripped to shreds. In a totally irritating, little girl lost way that drove her up the wall, she had worried about her heart.
She hadn’t worried about her ribs, though.
She really should have worried about her ribs.
“Again, Bell,” Marcus said brusquely, waiting impatiently by her panting form. “We’ll have to do it again.”
“Until I get it right, huh?” Katie joked weakly, wincing.
“I start counting when you get it right, Bell,” he said coldly. “It only just begins there.”
“Good thing for me you can only count to about seven, then, isn’t it?” Katie smiled brightly, and took to the air again.
She flew around the pitch, alert for any slight sound or movement in the periphery of her vision. There he was, down and to the right. For all his ‘expect attack from anywhere at any time’ bombast, he wouldn’t be Marcus Flint if he approached in such a way that he couldn’t use his elbows.
He swerved, and Katie shot upwards avoiding him. On the first day, she’d paused to revel in her triumph for a second. She was smarter now. To the left, back down to the right, she evaded him again, and then again. A perfect throw and the quaffle sailed through the hoop. Finally.
WHAM.
“Pay attention, Bell,” he barked at her as she was wheezing from the impact. “Just because scoring is such a rarity for you doesn’t mean you should sit there goggling afterwards.”
“Seems like business as usual to me,” she shot back. “You’re a thug and I’m ahead.”
She’d shied away and had caught herself, determinedly moving back towards him before realizing that he wasn’t coming after her. He swerved around her, and had scooped up the quaffle before she could blink. He was halfway down the pitch before she could breathe, and she forgot to exhale when he hurled the quaffle, a powerful throw from only two thirds down the pitch, and it tumbled through the hoop without grazing the sides.
She’d never seen anyone throw that far. Katie doubted she could throw it half that distance. Could all the pros do that? She didn’t remember him being that fast either. She wasn’t that fast.
Well, maybe her mouth was.
But not at the moment, because when he circled back and snarled “Again, Bell,” at her, she merely nodded and reached for the quaffle. He shook his head.
“We’re just running the gauntlet. You won’t need it.”
‘Running the gauntlet.’ Straight from their History of Magic textbooks describing the Muggle practice of making suspected witches and wizards dash between two rows of Muggles armed with sticks - in hopes of tricking them into using magic to defend themselves, so the really creative punishments could begin. At first, Katie had found Marcus’ use of the term for making her fly the length of the pitch while he repeatedly tried to knock her off her broom amusing. Now she was beginning to see the appeal of the ducking stool or being burned at the stake.
Well, no pain, no intriguing scars to make up amusing anecdotes about.
He usually gave her a ten second head start. Maybe she should use it to fly straight up. Steep ascents would probably be harder for him given his large size.
WHAM. OK, maybe not.
She was getting better, she reminded herself, while gritting her teeth at the pain. The first night, she had been able to dodge him maybe twice. Now she could do it two out of three times. His methods worked obviously. She just needed to tough it out. WHAM. Blast.
After three rounds of this, each hit more jarring than the last, Katie had had enough.
“When are we done?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“When I say we are,” he said, bluntly. “Again, Bell.”
“No,” Katie said firmly, shaking her head. “I watched your practices when you were Captain, Flint. You never had people go through the motions. Everything was a lesson, everything had a goal. You kept them thinking.” Her eyes narrowed. “We’ve been doing the same thing for days. You’re not training me. You’re just using me for target practice.” She began to fly away, but he grabbed her arm.
“Make it from one end of the pitch to the other without me hitting you just once, Bell, and we’ll be done, alright?” His voice was casual, but he seemed to be watching her carefully.
She nodded, and her muscles groaned in protest. Too bad. They could shut the hell up.
Her body only complained louder after a few unsuccessful passes, even though he seemed to have eased up a bit. She braced herself for her fourth attempt. OK. She dodged him easily on his first two tries. Getting clumsy there, Flint. He reached out to grab her ankle, but she kicked his arm away - a glancing blow, but effective. He sped under her and came up to block. She avoided him but had to retreat a bit, losing hard-earned ground. Calmly, Katie. She faked him out to the left, he was a bit slow to that side, and went into a sharp descent. With his extra momentum, he needed to slow his broom sooner to avoid colliding with the ground, and she grinned as she pulled away from him. The hoops were just ahead of her…
She’d never know how he managed to catch up to her so quickly. She’d never know how all of a sudden she knew he was behind her. But she swerved to the right, his broom hurtled past, and she reached out to grab the ring. A fierce joy filled her. She had done it.
“We’re done,” she said coolly, as he flew back to her, breathing heavily.
He nodded. “We’re done.”
They didn’t speak as they flew back to where they had stashed their belongings.
“I didn’t know you watched my practices,” he muttered, as he pulled off his Quidditch gloves. He wasn’t looking at her, but Katie turned away to rummage through her knapsack for some water before answering.
”I watched everyone’s practices.” It was true. Not as ardently and secretly as you watched his, her mind whispered. Well. Her mind could join her body and shut it, Katie decided. Her…hair could run the show from now on. “When I could find a seat among the bosomy broom bunnies. That was harder at Davies’ practices than yours though. Then again, Dav-“
“Shut up about Davies, and I’ll buy you dinner.” Surprised, she turned to look at him but he was concentrating on removing his pads, face stern. “Just for those blessed moments of silence while you chew.”
“Hmm….while I understand that your companions probably go for the trollop trifecta - mouth, blouse and legs open - I don’t really think you should have to pay for dinner just for the novelty of a cleavage-free evening,” she replied, tartly. “You’re helping me. I’ll buy.” He had been spending a lot of time helping her, after all. Dinner would be a good opportunity to prove to herself, and to him, that she was over her stupid infatuation.
“You do know that it’s not required that you argue with every single thing I say?” Marcus inquired sourly. “Letting me buy you a curry is not an act of prostitution inside the British Commonwealth.”
“That goes both ways, Flint. Tell you what. You won’t even have to wear the fwooper boa I picked out if you feel that it takes us into a ‘gray area.’”
“I’m the guy, Bell. I pay,” he said, flatly. “Just because your little Gryff boys were too stupid or too cheap or weren’t aware that you were a girl…”
“Just because I don’t have Ang’s cleavage or Ali’s curves doesn’t mean that people can’t tell that I’m a girl.” Oh, good going, Bell. Way to sound indifferent to his opinion.
“Hey,” he reached out and grabbed her arm, dropping it when she glared at him. “I know that you’re a girl. Hence the paying.”
“You’re helping me,” Katie told him flatly. “There isn’t any reason for you to buy me dinner.”
“It’s dinner, Bell. I wasn’t aware I required an action plan.”
“Let’s go to plan B,” Katie said, keeping her voice light. “You go find a witch with a truly startling cup size/chatter ratio to spend your sickles on. I’ll go design a gender identification seminar for Gryff boys. ‘Shoe Shopping or Snot Spells: Observations from the Field.’” She paused for a second, becoming serious. “Thank you for your help, Marcus.”
He looked at her for a moment, stern, unreadable. “You’re welcome.” He shrugged. “I’ll…see you tomorrow then?” he asked casually.
“Absolutely,” she smiled brightly, and made her escape.
~*~
next day
Katie watched Marcus frown at the pastry box, and grinned. He looked conflicted…probably because he was struggling whether to say something derogatory about Muggles, the French, or try to combine them both into a meta-insult. Phyllo from Feckless Frogs? Mademoiselle Mudblood’s Madeleines?
“I’ve heard tell the Muggles call it ‘breakfast’,” Katie informed him. He shot her a dark look, and bit into the turnover he’d been eyeing suspiciously.
“This is pretty good,” he said, surprised, finishing it off in a gigantic bite and reaching for another. Katie grinned. This was starting off well. Marcus was in a good mood, she’d already had chocolate and they were finally going to do something other than evasion drills today. No more crushing blows. Bliss.
“What’s the plan for today?” Katie asked, sunnily.
”Gauntlet,” he said, shortly. He didn’t meet her eyes.
”What?” Katie laughed, sure that he was joking. He didn’t respond. She laughed again, forcibly, just in case he hadn’t yet realized that he had been joking.
“C’mon,” he said, grabbing his broom.
“No, we’re done with impact drills,” Katie said, bewildered. “You said so yesterday. If I could run the Gauntlet, we were finished.”
“And we were finished for that day,” he said, straddling his broom, looking out across the pitch. “Now, we start again.”
“No.”
“Come on, Katie.”
”No. There’s more to Quidditch than getting elbowed in the gut. I’m almost certain.”
“Fine,” he said, finally looking at her. “If you know so much, go ahead. Muck about with your friends. Pick Wood’s great Quidditch mind. Alternatively, hold your ear next to a Haggis and absorb its wisdom,” he said brusquely. “I thought you were serious about this.”
“I am!”
“There might be an easier way, Bell. I think this is important though.”
Clearly, that was all the explanation she was going to get. Did she trust him?
Well, no. Of course not.
She did trust him to know Quidditch though. And in a way she trusted him not to take anything about the game lightly.
“Fine,” she said, flatly, swinging her leg over her broom. “We start again.”
It began again, just like it had on all the other days. Well, with two differences. 1. All the hits she’d taken over the past week were slowing her down. After days of getting better at avoiding him, she was getting worse. 2. He was beginning to hit harder.
There was a third difference. She was beginning to feel a little afraid.
“You OK?” He hovered next to her.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Katie replied coolly. “Let’s continue.” He looked…strange. Katie ran through the known Marcus Flint Emotional Spectrum-rage, fury, bitter amusement, homicidal rage…nope, this was a new one. He almost looked afraid.
This time, Marcus didn’t attack immediately. He flew alongside her for so long that Katie was beginning to wonder if this was some new kind of psychological torture the Falcons were thinking about using. After all, they’d exhausted all the avenues for more plebian physical violence.
He slowed, falling behind her a bit. She began to turn around to ask him what was up, and saw him moving up fast behind her. Too late to do anything about it, unfortunately.
His broom handle speared into her back. Katie felt herself fall forward from the impact, air pushed from her lungs, leaving pain in it’s wake. She struggled to keep her balance long enough to get her broom onto the ground. Gods, it hurt so badly.
She was still wheezing as she heard Marcus land next to her. He said something but she was too busy fighting down her nausea to process it. She turned her head towards him. Repartee was out of the question, but possibly her stomach contents could add something to the conversation.
They stood there for minutes, neither speaking. The pain was still there, but the nausea was subsiding and she could see clearly again. Marcus was staring at her, looking as gray as she felt. He was sweating. Katie moved away from him a bit. If one of them got to vomit on the other, it should be her.
“You OK?” he asked, voice strained.
Was that his point? Showing her she wasn’t tough enough for the big leagues? She drew in a shuddering breath. Surprise, Flint.
“Let’s go again,” Katie said, coldly.
“Kat-“ his words broke off when she glared at him, and he nodded.
Even though the pain still radiated through her, she was flying better than she had been, her anger giving her an edge. He came up fast on her right side, and she got ready to swerve. She dodged him once, but when he moved in fast and hard toward her back, her courage failed her. She couldn’t take another hit like that last one. She pivoted, driving her elbow hard into his face, wincing at the cracking sound. Her broom handle knocked him sideways…and for a second she kept pushing him off his broom.
Horrified, she backed off, reaching out and steadying him. She flew beside him until he was safely on the ground and watched helplessly as he tumbled off his broom, swearing.
He had been helping her. She’d hit him so hard…she just hadn’t wanted to be hit again. She was such a coward. Why hadn’t she just elbowed him enough to knock him away but not hard enough to injure? Why had she kept this going? He had been helping her and she intentionally had tried to hurt him. Now she really did think she was going to throw up. He stared up at her, nose swollen, and blood streaming down his face.
“Fucking finally,” he gritted out.
“Uh…what?” she stammered.
“Only took you six days, Bell,” he wheezed. “Six fucking days to figure out what to do when some asshole comes after you.”
Stunned, she dropped cross-legged to the ground beside him. “This was all some kind of test?”
“It was a lesson, Bell.”
“In what? Using bruising as body art? I’ve got a really good one on my thigh that looks like a purple and green hippogriff. Or Trelawney and Snape dancing the tango. I can’t decide.”
“Oh, you learned a lot, Bell,” Marcus growled, ticking his reasons off on his fingers, one by one. “1. Hits slow you down, 2. Taking a lot of hits makes it harder to score, both because you’re looking around for the next attack and because of loss of confidence. 3. Hits do cumulative damage. Each one you take weakens you a bit. You walk off the pitch a lesser player than you were when you stepped onto it. 4. No one, and I mean, no one can avoid all of them. You need to make people so afraid of you, and you’ll be amazed at how many hits you don’t have to take. 5. There are assholes who’ll hit you just to watch you bleed.” He paused, and looked at her coolly. He spoke his next words slowly and deliberately. “6. After enough of them, you’ll do anything to avoid the next one. Stuff you didn’t even think you were capable of.”
“Couldn’t you have just told me that and saved a lot of effort, and cleansing potions to get my bloodstains out of your robes?”
“Oh, if I said, ‘Hey, Bell, when someone swoops down on you, why don’t you spear them in their stomach, break their nose and knock them off their broom?’ You really expect me to believe you’d have done it?”
Katie flushed. “Well, come on, this was an extreme case. It’s not like you’re supposed to do that whenever someone tries to hit you!”
“Yes, Katie,” he said intently, staring at her. “That is exactly what you’re supposed to do. Gods,” he laughed darkly, “you’re already getting it wrong.”
“Look, I’ve handled rough stuff on the pitch before,” Katie snapped, stung. “Your lovely teammates certainly weren’t angels, and I managed to get through it with only the occasional stint in Azkaban for manslaughter.”
“It’s not like Hogwarts, Katie,” he said softly. “It’s not like club Quidditch. Do you know how many people want to play pro Quidditch? Do you know how short the average career is? They don’t have to worry about getting detention, or kicked out of school. They don’t even care if it makes them look bad. All they care about is staying on the team for as long as possible. Any player that lets themselves get injured or won’t fight back or doesn’t want it bad enough is a player that won’t be taking their roster spot.”
“I’m not a coward, Marcus,” she said angrily, pushing her hair behind her ears. “I’ve never let anyone bully me or my fellow chasers. I’ll stand up for the team.”
“They won’t stand up for you,” Marcus told her calmly. “If opposing players are harassing you, that’s more room on the pitch for your fellow chasers, more scoring chances. If you’re the weak link on the team, not them, they’ll be less likely to get demoted or traded. Beaters spend more time protecting the high-scoring chasers. Let your scoring average drop, and good luck ever getting it back up with a bludger hitting you every three seconds. Your teammates might feel bad, but mostly they’ll just be so fucking grateful that they’re not you.”
She trusted Marcus to know Quidditch. She knew he was telling the truth, and fought back the tears she felt trying to well up. They both sat there silently, gazing out over the pitch.
“Why would it bother you so much to spear someone or knock them off their broom?” He sounded curious, but also like he was casting about for a solution.
What could she say? That she could just envision that one in a thousand chance that an appendix would rupture, that the security team wouldn’t manage to slow someone’s fall? That the impact would twist someone’s head just the wrong way, and they’d never fly again? That there was nothing more horrifying to her?
“It’s…against the rules,” she said weakly.
“No, it’s not,” he scoffed.
“Yes, it actually is,” she said snidely, glad to be on firmer emotional ground again. “I know you’re not really a student of the etiquette of the game, but the rules are what the ref is shouting at you about just before he throws you off the pitch. Again. ‘Flint: Inappropriate Broom Insertion, Flint: Unauthorized Use of Chizpurfles, Flint: Mutilation of Opposing Team’s Mascot.’ Ringing any bells?”
He snickered. “I elbow someone in the face, I get a slap on the wrist. I knock someone off their broom, I’m off the pitch for maybe, maybe, one game. Stooging? I’m fined one one-thousandth of my salary. If they wanted to get this stuff out of the game they could: mandatory expulsions, twenty game suspensions, truly hefty fines. But they don’t. They just want enough punishment to keep the truly expensive injuries down and government attention at bay, enough violence to keep people in the stands, and enough freedom for the players to get a little bit creative. A complex arithmancical equation designed to maximize profits. It works. Except for the Gry-, the poor stupid bastards who actually think the rules are anything but a road map for the most effective ways to cheat.”
“You don’t think this will ever change?” Katie asked, quietly. He looked at her, startled.
“Gods, I hope not,” he said grinning. “It’s fucking brilliant the way it is. All these completely unrelated things: market forces, public relations, and psychology mutating the game. Opposing players and teammates both against you. Jinxes, wind shear, occasional broom going haywire. Velocity, trajectory-an infinite amount of different ways to move at, with an infinite range of speeds. All overlaid with a thin layer of complete and total chaos.” He shook his head, laughing and sounding amazed. “It’s just you and this series of moments, a million decisions you make - all to try to figure out just the right way to slide through this chaos and do what you set out to do.”
Fierce joy was in his voice and eyes, and Katie could feel an answering echo in the way she felt when she was on a broom, or doing something people wouldn’t expect of her, or on the few occasions she’d felt lips moving ov-. She shook herself.
“You’re insane, you know this, right?” she asked, unable to stop herself from grinning back at him.
“Says the girl who filled all of Hogwarts Yule crackers with tiny enchanted replicas of Snape, dancing a merry jig?” Huh. Katie smiled back at him. She hadn’t known that anyone had known about that. His grin widened.
“Let me look at your nose,” Katie said, breaking the silence. She knelt in front of him, bringing her wand up and preparing to do a minor healing spell.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Marcus asked dubiously, eyeing her wand.
“It’ll all be fine,” Katie chided him. “Shut it and let me concentrate.”
“That’s what the guy said who repaired my busted lip when I was six,” Marcus muttered.
“Your lips look fine,” Katie said, looking at him. “Obviously he didn’t screw up too badly.”
”Yeah, but take a look at my teeth.”
“That’s how…” her eyes shot to his teeth and then back to meet his gaze. Maybe he had some weird reaction to healing spells. Thank Merlin he told her before she’d gone ahead…Her gratified musings were interrupted by Marcus hooting with laughter.
“Gullible, Bell.” He smirked.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s not wise to irritate a witch who has a 9 inch wand in such close proximity to so many of your beloved orifices?”
“When I’m around a witch, I’m usually more concerned about my wand,” he mock-leered at her.
“Oh! Nice micro-entendre!” Katie scoffed. She murmured a quick healing spell, and then peered at Marcus’ nose. “Uh…”
“What?” he asked sharply.
“Nothing…you can hardly see it,” Katie reassured him. “Does your flat have a lot of mirrors in it? I’m just curious.” She smiled brightly. “Really! Makes you look distinguished.
He reached for his wand, probably planning on doing a reflection spell. He froze when he heard Katie’s peal of laughter.
“Gullible, Flint.”
~*~
The rest of the day passed quickly and reasonably pleasantly. Precision flying drills-this Katie could do. High speed, tight turns, no one trying to behead you…bliss.
She was ready to call it a day however when Marcus finally called a halt. Her back was still throbbing painfully from the hit she’d taken earlier, and she was sore all over. She surreptiously rubbed her back and winced, before she saw Marcus watching her from the corner of his eye.
“Come here,” Marcus said gruffly.
Puzzled, Katie walked towards him, limping slightly.
“Turn around.”
“Why?” Katie asked, suspiciously. He reached out, grasping her hips and turned her around bodily.
“Step forward a bit.”
“If this has anything to do with the Hokey Pokey, you are in for a world of hurt, Flint.” Katie said firmly.
There was a slight pause. Probably he was debating between asking her what the Hokey Pokey was, asking how she could possibly hurt him, or his all-purpose fallback of asking how she could ramble on like an idiot while her quaffle grip/passing stance/broom positioning was such a disaster.
What she was not prepared for was Flint yanking the back of her shirt up, pulling it loose from her pants. She stepped forward abruptly, pulling her shirt from his grasp.
“What are you doing?” she cried out, spinning around.
“I need to look at your bruise. That was a really nasty hit you took today. We can’t have it slowing you down.”
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Don’t worry about it.”
“The muscles start spasming in your back, you’ll probably be off your broom for at least a day.” He stared down at her coolly, eyes flat and arms crossed. “Anything got torn or broken, and you’ll probably be off for a few days unless we treat it immediately. We can’t have you off your broom now, Katie. We can’t even have you be sub-optimal.” He stepped forward, looming over her. She hated it when he did that. “We don’t have enough time for this, Katie.”
Did she want to be a Harpy or not? Hadn’t Marcus shown her that he knew what he was doing over the past week? Stop being such a little girl, she firmly lectured herself. She turned back around, this time holding her shirt up herself, and baring her lower back.
He didn’t touch her, and Katie felt herself start to relax. He was just looking. It wasn’t that big of a deal. He’d seen backs before, she told herself dryly. It wasn’t like all hell would break loose because it was her spinal cord he was looking at. A crunch of gravel behind her puzzled her, until she felt warm breath above the waistband of her sweatpants. He was kneeling.
She’d flown next to him all week; thighs colliding, his arm reaching around hers to try to pull her off her broom, his hand just grazing her ankle as she flew crosswise to him, darting in and stripping the quaffle while leaving just enough room to escape. The proportions of their bodies were as indelibly etched in her psyche as Ang’s and Ali’s birthdays were. She really wished they weren’t. She really wished she wasn’t able to calculate exactly where his gaze was resting or how close her arse was to rubbing against his chest, or exactly how much of her back his hand would cover if he chose to place it there. She would give a lot to be unaware.
Katie tried to tuck her hips under, and slouch a bit. That was better. She could focus on the dull ache in her back, and the increased tension in her thighs. At least until she felt Marcus’ right hand come up and lightly trace the edge of her bruise.
“Gods,” he swore.
“How bad is it?” Katie asked, casually.
“Bad enough,” he said, shortly. They remained silent for a moment, his warm hand resting on her back. “I can’t believe how long you were willing to take those hits, Bell.”
Katie smiled, a warm glow suffusing her with his words. He thought she was tough.
“Bloody stupid,” he muttered. Ah. It figured.
“Are you done?” Katie asked, icily. “If I leave now, I can probably make it to Rent-A-Whiner before they close and get you a pupil more to your liking. Will she require anything other than kneepads and a lollipop?”
Marcus’ short bark of laughter reached her ears at the same time the warm air he exhaled moved over her skin. “That’s cruel, Bell. Going to make me spend my days teaching Quidditch to a bint who giggles and stares longingly at my pelvis every time I say the word ‘broomstick’? I’m afraid I’ll have to insist you stick around.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls…vertebrae.” Katie stepped forward, looking back over her shoulder at Marcus. “What are you doing anyway?”
He reached out and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her abruptly back toward him. Katie stumbled a bit and when she’d regained her footing she was standing even closer to him than before. She would have loved to put some distance between them, but his arm still wrapped about her tightly, holding her in place.
Katie could feel two fingers trace up and down her back, from just under her bra to the waistband of her pants. Without warning, Marcus pressed firmly. Katie yelped in surprise.
“How does that feel?” he asked gruffly.
“It’s a little sore,” Katie admitted. “What are you doing?”
“I’m seeing how bad the injury is, Bell. What the hell did you think I was doing?”
“I don’t know. Playing pat-a-cake? Seems about your speed.” He pressed on a different part of her bruise. “Ow.”
“Sore there as well? How about here?”
”It hurts.”
“What happens when I press here?”
”It hurts.”
“And over here?”
”I am suffused with giddiness and the faint odor of parsnips.”
”What?” Marcus asked, surprised. Katie rolled her eyes.
“It hurts, Flint. That’s what happens when you press on a bruise. Not to discourage your scientific curiosity, but it’s also what’s going to happen the next fifty times you pre-“ A bolt of pain shot through Katie, and her knees would have buckled if Marcus hadn’t been holding her up.
“There, Katie?” She flinched as he probed it again, albeit more carefully.
“Yeah.” She gritted her teeth as he massaged the spot, lightly.
“Some salve will help the swelling,” he said gruffly. “Hold still.”
The icy tingling of the healing salve was a shocking contrast to the heat of Marcus’ fingers, and Katie tensed. Starting from the most tender area, Marcus worked slowly outward until most of her back was covered. His touch was so light that at times Katie could only tell where he was working by the coolness that followed in his wake. She hadn’t realized how much she had been hurting until it stopped. She hadn’t realized he had finished until he cleared his throat.
“Thanks, it’s much better now,” she muttered, cheeks flaming. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” He didn’t release her waist.
“I’ve taken care of the worst damage but the muscles will tighten up if I just leave them,” Marcus replied, in a matter-of-fact voice.
“I’ll just do a relaxer spell when I….oh.” All thoughts of stopping him fled her mind as he began to knead the muscles of her lower back. At first, just the feeling of oxygen flowing back to the areas that had been tight and sore was just too good to give up. Then, as his fingers delved deeper, she realized he was working loose knots that she’d had for years. Her blood seemed to flow easier in her veins and she began to feel a little light-headed.
“Tell me where you need me,” Marcus said huskily. Katie wanted to feel those big hands on her shoulders, but didn’t dare open her mouth for fear of moaning. She bit down on her lower lip hard in an effort to remain silent, but the pain didn’t clear her head.
She didn’t speak but he seemed to know what she wanted anyways. At first, she didn’t even realize she was giving him clues…thought he must be a legilimens and was vaguely flattered that he would bother using it with her. Slowly, she discovered that she was guiding him. He ran his hands over her back, moving on if she tensed and stopping at the places that made her lean into his hands. He could read her signals so easily...Feeling him so focused on her alone made her thighs shake a bit, and she had to fight to steady herself.
Katie slouched a bit, bending her knees just slightly, and he moved his hands upward. Something nagged at her but by the time she realized what it was, his hand had already slid under the back of her bra and was running his fingertips across her back. He would move tantalizingly close to her sides before moving again to the center of her back.
A cool breeze skating across her stomach brought Katie out of her reverie. She realized that he had both his hands on her shoulders, which pulled her shirt up in front, exposing her entire midriff. She hurriedly tugged it back down.
His hands were kneading her shoulders, and it was one of the best things Katie had ever felt. Just the feel of his big hand grasping her muscles, and his strength effortlessly kneading out every single bit of tightness she had. Not the endlessly repeating, gradually loosening massages she’d had before. His hands were so strong that knots just collapsed immediately under the slow, inexorable pressure, her muscles obeying his absolutely. She thought she did moan then.
He stood up, body sliding against hers while his arm pulled her back against him. Too busy trying to remain silent, she was only dimly aware of what was happening until she felt his breath in her ear. She leaned back against him to steady herself.
“How does that feel, Katie?” his voice was low, reverberating down her spine.
It felt…divine. But he knew that. She shook her head, trying to get the fog to dissipate. His voice was confident, and knowing, dark amusement underlying ever word. She’d heard him sound like that before. It’s OK to tell me, Katie. I already know. Is this what you want, Katie?
No. That wasn’t what she wanted any more. That was over.
“I need to go,” she managed to force through her lips.
“You can stay,” he murmured. “You want to stay.”
“Stop it,” she said weakly, pushing at his arm that was wrapped around her waist.
“Stop what?” Still sending chills down her spine. Still so damn amused.
“Stop it!” Katie pushed herself out of his arms, and spun around to face him. She could hear herself breathing.
“Damn, Katie. What?” he snarled at her, pushing his hands through his hair.
“Don’t do that,” Katie said, furious when she heard her voice quiver. Marcus stared at her, looking surprised, frustrated and jaded, in rapid succession.
“Do what?” he asked coolly. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You said you wouldn’t do that,” Katie managed to say. “You promised.”
He looked away, and laughed, a little nervously, Katie thought.
“Look, Bell,” he told her, with a shrug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think you must have misconstrued something. I was just being a good guy. Anything else must have been coming from you, so why you don’t you just calm down.”
Yeah, it was never him. It was just little Katie walking a tightrope, trying to understand and always getting it wrong. Building castles in the air. He was just being kind.
“Flint,” Katie began, taking a deep breath. “Thank you very much for your coaching. I’ve learned a lot, but I think I can take it on my own now. Whatever you thought you might have owed me, for whatever reason, we’re even now.” She was going to tell him good luck, or to take care of himself, but she wanted out of there before she started crying like a little baby.
“What?” Now he looked shocked. “Don’t be ridiculous. You still need me. You’re not ready.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Katie replied calmly. “Thanks for everything.”
“Bell…nothing happened. It’s over. We move on, preferably to correcting that horrible sidearm throw of yours.”
He had further arguments, but Katie didn’t hear them. She had disapparated.
~*~
"It's so wee!"
Alicia Spinnet's delighted voice echoed off the walls of the small flat. Angelina, far more sedate, rolled her eyes. Katie grinned. The flat was small. The entire thing was about the size of one of Alicia's closets, but it was hers. Well, it would be soon, at any rate.
She loved it.
Crooked bookshelves, floors that creaked, a balcony about the size of a horklump, and cheery yellow walls. She hadn’t even moved her things in yet, and it certainly didn’t look empty. With all her stuff, the flat would be crowded…no, cozy, and just the perfect size for one Katie Bell.
“It’s going to be so great having you in the city proper, Katie!” Ali chirped. “We never get to see you as it is.”
“They must be serious slave drivers at St. Mungo’s,” Ang commented. “You’re never around.”
“Yeah…well, y’know how it goes. For every hour I spend working, I spend another hour listening to people tell me that Dad is A) a genius, B) a great and selfless man working for the greater good of wizardkind, or C) wearing mismatched shoes again.”
It wasn’t a lie, Katie assured herself. She had been working at St. Mungo’s some. Plus, her father had seemed to be having a lot of difficulty with equations like cinnamon dress shoe does not equal chartreuse mukluk recently.
Besides, she wouldn’t be training with Flint any more so why even bring it up? It would be rude to make Ang and Ali waste all that time crafting an essay on “What on Earth Could Bad Boy Marcus Flint Possibly Want From Katie Bell, Our Little Miss: Her Complete and Utter Humiliation or Just Her Lunch Money?” Friends didn’t let friends waste their pontificating on things that were over and done with, after all.
“How many hours are you work-“ Ang began, only to be interrupted by a squeal from Ali.
“What does this do, Katie?” Ali asked. She was staring in wonder at the microwave. Ah, purebloods. Katie shared a grin with Ang, and explained the more important details to Ali.
“Exploding potatoes?” Ali asked, eyes wide. “Can we do that when we help you move in next month?”
“I will lay in a wide variety of root vegetables,” Katie assured her grinning. Leaving Ali to play happily in her kitchen, Katie went over to Ang who was frowning at the door leading out to the balcony.
“What’s wrong?”
“You should have protection spells on this door,” Ang told her seriously. “It’s too easy to get into the apartment this way. Alicia Spinnet, take your head out of the oven. Get some stronger locks as well,” Ang continued. “Might as well cover all the bases.”
“In case someone desperately wants to get their hands on some Harpies posters and a toaster?” Katie asked, laughing.
“You’re a tad over-protective of Katie, Ang,” Ali chided, as she joined them.
“I am not!”
"Oh, you can get out on the roof from here," Alicia crowed, peering out onto the balcony. She gave Ang a sidelong sly glance. "Katie, you could have sex underneath the stars."
"Are you insane?" Ang yelped. "Katie certainly isn't going to be rutting on her roof. That would be very dangerous."
"Yeah," Katie, chimed in. "Besides I could get shingles." Heh.
Alicia stared at her blankly. Well, no surprise, she didn't probably know what either kind of shingles were. Katie thought Ang would have gotten it though, but she was staring at Katie, unsmiling.
"Uh…shingles," Katie explained. "It's a disease…a skin rash."
"I understood the joke," Ang snapped. "Don't have sex on the roof."
“Good thing she’s not over-protective,” Ali snickered quietly, winking at Katie. Thankfully, Ang wasn’t listening.
“You know what you should do?” Ang asked, looking over the flat appraisingly. “Replace the double bed with a single. That would let you move a lot more freely.”
“You know what you should do?” Ali mocked. “Purchase a chastity belt. The extra weight around your hips will drag you down and make the ceiling look taller.”
“She doesn’t have a lot of room here, Ali,” Ang said, annoyed. “Besides you’re the only one who needs enough room to do a handspring in their bed. The rest of us are somewhat less…exuberant.”
“Well…why don’t we go whole hog and get her a coffin to sleep in,” Ali shot back. “That way when she dies from boredom from the milquetoast boys you think she should be with, she’ll be all ready to go to the gravesite. No muss. No fuss.”
“Morbid, Spinnet. See what being a perv does to you, Katie?”
“How do you know Katie’s not a bigger perv than I am?” Ali asked sweetly. “Who knows what tales her bed could tell?”
Katie felt her stomach lurch. Tangled in boring cotton sheets. Half dreaming of warm breath in her ear and hands moving underneath her shirt. Waking to a strange sound only to realize it was her own breathing, before drifting off again.
“Whips, chains, rutabagas…” Alicia continued blithely.
“I can’t hear you,” Ang said, trying not to laugh, hands pressed over her ears.
”You can stay. You want to stay.” Her body leaning back against a wall of solid muscle, like warm stone. Reaching up to twine her arms around his neck and pulling his lips closer to her ear. “You want more then, Bell?” A deep rumbling laugh.
“Katie Bell: Human Pretzel,” Alicia laughed.
“Hysterical deafness is my friend,” Ang said, hands still pressed to the sides of her head.
The pitch awash in sunlight as he pulled her tighter to his body. Sweat beading on her skin in her dark bedroom. “Gods, Katie.” A guttural moan. Her fingers tangling in his hair.
“I hear Katie can train puffskeins to do the most remarkable things.”
“Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,” Ang sang.
Kicking off the blankets. “Beg me, pretty girl.” Her hand snaking down between her thighs. His hardness pressing against her arse. Euphoric. “So wet for me.” Back arching off her bed, biting back a gasp. “I want you, Katie.”
“Order of Merlin, Second Class, for serving as an erotic inspiration to the wizarding world,” Ali intoned.
“And the little girls, Katie and Ang, ran away from the big scary witch Alicia, and had cocoa with lots of marshmallows. And so did their ponies”
Waking. Not knowing what was real. Memories of him behind her on the pitch. Foggy. Shaking. Wanting her? Probably just a dream.
“Has sexually enslaved several members of the Wizenga-“ Alicia broke off. “Katie, are you OK?”
“What? Yeah, I’m fine,” Katie said weakly. “Why?”
“You don’t look fine,” Ang said bluntly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Katie protested.
“She’s probably nauseous because of your grotesque imagery,” Ang grinned over at Alicia. Alicia didn’t grin back.
”Seriously, Katie, you look upset. What were you thinking about?”
Katie swallowed and pushed the images to the back of her mind, before smiling at her friends. “Nothing that matters.”
~*~
It had been four days. It was starting to move from ‘taking a break to reassess her priorities’ to ‘arse surgically attached to couch.’ She needed to get back on her broom.
Flying drills weren’t a problem. She and Marcus had been over enough of them that she could keep that up. Strength training she could probably handle with some help from Ang; Marcus had already designed a regimen for her. Strategy, insider information, new techniques-those were probably a lost cause, now.
No, she told herself firmly. Not a lost cause. The price was just too high. It was a decision, not some high tragedy.
Scrimmaging however was an absolute necessity. She couldn’t show up at Harpies’ tryouts and expect to wow them with her ability to evade casual bystanders and birds in order to score. She needed actual competition.
There were several clubs and drop-in play at various pitches. She’d figure out a schedule to get to the most demanding ones each day. She should also see if she could rent some pitch time, and get Oliver and Ang together for some critiques. Pitch time was usually fairly hard to get, but Hawthorn Pitch might be available. It’s where she and Marcus had been meeting most days, and he was probably doing most of his training in Diana Bletchley’s bed these days. Or on her trapeze.
Not that it was any of her business what he was doing. It was between him and his playmates, and if he persisted with the trapeze, possibly the Falcons’ chiropractic staff.
Hawthorn it was. Even if there wasn’t open pitch time, she could stick around and help with the Tiny Terrors session, for children eight and under. They were always looking for adult to help corral, er, assist with the kids. Besides with all the expert coaching and broom time she’d had recently, she would probably be quite good.
At knocking the little tykes off their brooms, considering whom her coach had been.
Gathering her broom, wand, and determination, Katie apparated to Hawthorn Pitch. To be more precise, she apparated almost directly on top of someone. The large figure was leaning against a tree, swigging a butterbeer and staring out over the pitch.
Flint.