FIC: Awkward (Emma Watson/Bonnie Wright, PG-13)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Emma Watson/Bonnie Wright
Date: September 2003
Author's Note: Written ages ago, this is for nest_freemark, because it was definitely her fault. And paranoidkitten, because - well, because things are usually her fault. :)
Awkward
They tell her it's part of show business. And she knows it's true. It's especially part of Harry Potter show business, with all the owls and magic and religious rants and strange essays that crop up on the Internet about how characters in Harry Potter apparently never take a bath, and in the grand scheme of things an accusation that Bonnie Wright might be making out with Emma Watson should be the least of their worries.
But she's still a little upset the first time she sees the article, in a red box in the bottom left-hand corner of one of those trashy magazines. It's even more upsetting that it's not a truly trashy magazine - the National Enquirer, or the Star, or the Globe. It's one of those in-between trashy magazines, Teen Us or Young People or something. It would be so much better - and a lot more amusing - if it were something really despicable.
The others all know what's bothering her, but they wait for her to bring it up first. Which she does, awkwardly so, but loudly and irritably nonetheless. She starts by systematically inventorying them about whether they've ever been accused of making out with anyone off the set.
Dan shrugs, unconcerned, trying to get his hair to stick up a little more. His makeup artist has been getting too many complaints about, of all things, Harry's hair not being as unruly as J. K. Rowling describes it in the books. As a result, he gets locked in his wardrobe trailer for half an hour before every shoot with a bottle of gel and strict instructions on how to achieve the tastefully windblown look. "Well, everyone knows Draco and I hate each other, so I can't imagine why anyone would say that."
She forgives the fact that he knows, and everyone knows, that Tom's name is really Tom. Sometimes Dan gets a little too into character.
Rupert makes a face. He's in his own wardrobe trailer, looking like he was just having a private grousing session with himself about Ron's clothing. Rupert would rather wear something just this side of glam and almost-glittery, and Ron Weasley is of the handmade-jumpers type. "Ugh, I know what you mean, Bonnie. Just because J. K. says something's going on in the books between Ron and Hermione, right, everyone thinks I'm dating Emma? Not that I don't like Emma," he adds hastily, glancing around as if some of the grips might run off and start their very own on-set trashy magazine. "But really. You should see those newsgroups sometimes."
David looks delighted, and he rubs the streaks of ash colouring that they've put into his hair to make him look like J. K. Rowling's description of Lupin. "Oh, I do wish someone would say that about Gary and me! Come, now, Bonnie, don't you think he looks like a right attractive chap? Er, when he's not sporting the 'shaggy convict' look for the day, that is."
She even gets up the courage to ask Maggie Smith, whose movies she has grown up on, and the older woman smiles kindly, very unlike Minerva McGonagall. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, Bonnie. Those journalists, they'll forget everything within a week or seven days, whichever comes first. They'll find a new subject, and before you know it, the gossip will stop."
She manages an awkward smile and heads back to her own trailer before she has to be at Amanda Knight's trailer, for makeup. She leaves the magazine in the cupboard under the sink.
But she doesn't throw it out just yet.
* * *
She's sitting at the small table in the back corner of the trailer, making a pinch-pot out of some deep red clay she found in the mud puddle next to the trailer wheel. She misses her pottery wheel and kiln and the glazes and special brushes, but they're all at home, she wouldn't have any room for them now. Her thumbs are just starting to dig into the curve of the neck - this might be a vase, she decides? - when she hears the annoying buzz of the doorbell. Bonnie has to shove the fallen strands of red hair out of her eyes with her upper arm because her hands are covered with clay. "Who is it?"
"Emma."
She wipes her hands on her old jeans, the ones that her mother and her wardrobe mistress don't let her wear in public anymore, and checks through the peephole anyway. When you're getting threats about corrupting the minds of America's children, you can't be too careful.
It is Emma, though, and she looks cold, wearing just pants and a dark gray tank top in the cool evening. Bonnie opens the door and some dark red clay sticks to the knob. "Hi. Come in. What's up?"
"Erm, nothing. Where's Emily?"
"She's studying with Leilah and Danielle. Some project about earthquake epicenters." Emily Dale is Bonnie's roommate. Trailermate, really, but roommate sounds so much less trashy. She and Leilah Sutherland and Danielle Taylor spend a lot of time together. They joke about Chasers having to stick together in real life as well.
"Oh." Emma twists the drawstring of her pants around her right index finger. "I guess you saw the article."
"Sure." Bonnie feels shy, realizing that she'd asked just about everyone on the set except for Emma. She hopes that Emma isn't insulted. "I have it somewhere, if you want to - "
"No, I don't want to see it," Emma interrupts, sounding cranky. "What did you think?"
She shrugs uncomfortably, wondering what kind of answer Emma is looking for. She's been trying not to think about it, to wait for the week or seven days to be over. "I don't know. It just seemed silly, mostly. I was upset at first, but it's sort of ridiculous that they don't have anything else to write about."
"Maybe." Emma nibbles on her bottom lip, and Bonnie watches her, caught between fascination and amusement. Her teeth are small and even. Fortunately, no one has started complaining yet that they're not making Hermione's teeth as large as J. K. Rowling makes them out to be. Of course, Emma's pretty, and Hermione's not supposed to be pretty either, not yet, but she doubts that half the adolescent males in every audience are going to complain about that.
Bonnie brushes what's left of her ponytail off her cheek and clears her throat. "Well, what did you think?"
"I thought - I don't know. I guess I thought it was silly too." Emma's hair is much straighter when it hasn't been put in careful curls for the set, when it's the end of a long day of takes and retakes. It looks soft, like spiderwebs. "It did, you know, bother me a little. Because it wasn't true."
"Right," Bonnie agrees, thinking about touching Emma's hair, then realizes she'd better not because there's still clay under her long nails and in the bitten cracks in the skin on her firngertips. "Because it wasn't true."
And then Emma's mouth is on hers and Bonnie's ponytail is falling down into Emma's fingers, her tongue meeting Emma's lip, and then her teeth, sharp edges and soft skin of her mouth. Emma tastes like cherry hard candy and cold cream, where she must have been trying to get the lipstick off her mouth, and her hands are cool and her cheeks are flushed and her mouth is sweet like she's been eating Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, which of course she hasn't because they refuse to eat any of that stuff off the set. The inner skin of her cheek is bitten with nervousness and her lips are slick from wearing lipstick twelve hours a day, her tongue mashes softly against Bonnie's and Bonnie has to remind herself not to raise her hands and run them along Emma's cheeks because she'll get clay all over her.
It's awkward when they stop kissing, even more awkward than reading that stupid article for the first time. Bonnie looks at the ground and pats her cheeks, getting flakes of dried red clay on them. She's sure her hair and her skin and the clay must be the same colour. Emma clears her throat and starts tugging at the drawstring on her pants again. She loosens them a little, and they slide down onto her hips, making her look very short and young.
"Well - " Bonnie starts to say.
"Uhm." That's Emma's finger on her mouth. She fights the urge to kiss it. "I just thought, you know. If it was going to be in print …" Is she smiling, or is Bonnie imagining it? She looks up quickly. The grin on those familiar lips is small and embarrassed. "Well, I thought it might as well be something that's true."
"Uh huh," Bonnie says, trying to remember how to nod, and hoping that whatever way her head is moving, it passes for a convincing nod.
"But I should go now, shouldn't I?" It's an awkward question, and Bonnie doesn't know how to answer it. "Yeah, I should." She starts for the door, hand on the clay-dabbed knob, and then stops. "By the way, is your door tapped?"
"My - door? My door what?"
"Tapped. Mine is. Dan's too, and Rupert's. Because of the threats, you know." Emma grins again, and this one is genuine, Bonnie is relieved to see. "Cameras on the inside and the outside of the door."
Bonnie's own lips quirk into a smile. "Then I guess it's a good idea I didn't come over to your trailer to talk about this tonight."
"No, you would have been safe there. The cameras only watch the door."
She goes out, light brown hair streaming in not-quite-waves, and Bonnie's trailer door bangs with a surprisingly loud slam.
She watches the door for a minute, and then she gets control of her senses and goes to get a wet rag so she can clean off the doorknob. All she needs is to get clay all over herself tomorrow morning right before she goes on set, and then explain that to the AD.
Back at the sink, she retrieves the magazine from the bottom cupboard and stares at it a minute before pitching it toward the trash can with an awkward layup-like jump. She certainly doesn't need some uneducated American reporter telling her what it feels like to kiss Emma Watson.
finis
Pairing: Emma Watson/Bonnie Wright
Date: September 2003
Author's Note: Written ages ago, this is for nest_freemark, because it was definitely her fault. And paranoidkitten, because - well, because things are usually her fault. :)
Awkward
They tell her it's part of show business. And she knows it's true. It's especially part of Harry Potter show business, with all the owls and magic and religious rants and strange essays that crop up on the Internet about how characters in Harry Potter apparently never take a bath, and in the grand scheme of things an accusation that Bonnie Wright might be making out with Emma Watson should be the least of their worries.
But she's still a little upset the first time she sees the article, in a red box in the bottom left-hand corner of one of those trashy magazines. It's even more upsetting that it's not a truly trashy magazine - the National Enquirer, or the Star, or the Globe. It's one of those in-between trashy magazines, Teen Us or Young People or something. It would be so much better - and a lot more amusing - if it were something really despicable.
The others all know what's bothering her, but they wait for her to bring it up first. Which she does, awkwardly so, but loudly and irritably nonetheless. She starts by systematically inventorying them about whether they've ever been accused of making out with anyone off the set.
Dan shrugs, unconcerned, trying to get his hair to stick up a little more. His makeup artist has been getting too many complaints about, of all things, Harry's hair not being as unruly as J. K. Rowling describes it in the books. As a result, he gets locked in his wardrobe trailer for half an hour before every shoot with a bottle of gel and strict instructions on how to achieve the tastefully windblown look. "Well, everyone knows Draco and I hate each other, so I can't imagine why anyone would say that."
She forgives the fact that he knows, and everyone knows, that Tom's name is really Tom. Sometimes Dan gets a little too into character.
Rupert makes a face. He's in his own wardrobe trailer, looking like he was just having a private grousing session with himself about Ron's clothing. Rupert would rather wear something just this side of glam and almost-glittery, and Ron Weasley is of the handmade-jumpers type. "Ugh, I know what you mean, Bonnie. Just because J. K. says something's going on in the books between Ron and Hermione, right, everyone thinks I'm dating Emma? Not that I don't like Emma," he adds hastily, glancing around as if some of the grips might run off and start their very own on-set trashy magazine. "But really. You should see those newsgroups sometimes."
David looks delighted, and he rubs the streaks of ash colouring that they've put into his hair to make him look like J. K. Rowling's description of Lupin. "Oh, I do wish someone would say that about Gary and me! Come, now, Bonnie, don't you think he looks like a right attractive chap? Er, when he's not sporting the 'shaggy convict' look for the day, that is."
She even gets up the courage to ask Maggie Smith, whose movies she has grown up on, and the older woman smiles kindly, very unlike Minerva McGonagall. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, Bonnie. Those journalists, they'll forget everything within a week or seven days, whichever comes first. They'll find a new subject, and before you know it, the gossip will stop."
She manages an awkward smile and heads back to her own trailer before she has to be at Amanda Knight's trailer, for makeup. She leaves the magazine in the cupboard under the sink.
But she doesn't throw it out just yet.
* * *
She's sitting at the small table in the back corner of the trailer, making a pinch-pot out of some deep red clay she found in the mud puddle next to the trailer wheel. She misses her pottery wheel and kiln and the glazes and special brushes, but they're all at home, she wouldn't have any room for them now. Her thumbs are just starting to dig into the curve of the neck - this might be a vase, she decides? - when she hears the annoying buzz of the doorbell. Bonnie has to shove the fallen strands of red hair out of her eyes with her upper arm because her hands are covered with clay. "Who is it?"
"Emma."
She wipes her hands on her old jeans, the ones that her mother and her wardrobe mistress don't let her wear in public anymore, and checks through the peephole anyway. When you're getting threats about corrupting the minds of America's children, you can't be too careful.
It is Emma, though, and she looks cold, wearing just pants and a dark gray tank top in the cool evening. Bonnie opens the door and some dark red clay sticks to the knob. "Hi. Come in. What's up?"
"Erm, nothing. Where's Emily?"
"She's studying with Leilah and Danielle. Some project about earthquake epicenters." Emily Dale is Bonnie's roommate. Trailermate, really, but roommate sounds so much less trashy. She and Leilah Sutherland and Danielle Taylor spend a lot of time together. They joke about Chasers having to stick together in real life as well.
"Oh." Emma twists the drawstring of her pants around her right index finger. "I guess you saw the article."
"Sure." Bonnie feels shy, realizing that she'd asked just about everyone on the set except for Emma. She hopes that Emma isn't insulted. "I have it somewhere, if you want to - "
"No, I don't want to see it," Emma interrupts, sounding cranky. "What did you think?"
She shrugs uncomfortably, wondering what kind of answer Emma is looking for. She's been trying not to think about it, to wait for the week or seven days to be over. "I don't know. It just seemed silly, mostly. I was upset at first, but it's sort of ridiculous that they don't have anything else to write about."
"Maybe." Emma nibbles on her bottom lip, and Bonnie watches her, caught between fascination and amusement. Her teeth are small and even. Fortunately, no one has started complaining yet that they're not making Hermione's teeth as large as J. K. Rowling makes them out to be. Of course, Emma's pretty, and Hermione's not supposed to be pretty either, not yet, but she doubts that half the adolescent males in every audience are going to complain about that.
Bonnie brushes what's left of her ponytail off her cheek and clears her throat. "Well, what did you think?"
"I thought - I don't know. I guess I thought it was silly too." Emma's hair is much straighter when it hasn't been put in careful curls for the set, when it's the end of a long day of takes and retakes. It looks soft, like spiderwebs. "It did, you know, bother me a little. Because it wasn't true."
"Right," Bonnie agrees, thinking about touching Emma's hair, then realizes she'd better not because there's still clay under her long nails and in the bitten cracks in the skin on her firngertips. "Because it wasn't true."
And then Emma's mouth is on hers and Bonnie's ponytail is falling down into Emma's fingers, her tongue meeting Emma's lip, and then her teeth, sharp edges and soft skin of her mouth. Emma tastes like cherry hard candy and cold cream, where she must have been trying to get the lipstick off her mouth, and her hands are cool and her cheeks are flushed and her mouth is sweet like she's been eating Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, which of course she hasn't because they refuse to eat any of that stuff off the set. The inner skin of her cheek is bitten with nervousness and her lips are slick from wearing lipstick twelve hours a day, her tongue mashes softly against Bonnie's and Bonnie has to remind herself not to raise her hands and run them along Emma's cheeks because she'll get clay all over her.
It's awkward when they stop kissing, even more awkward than reading that stupid article for the first time. Bonnie looks at the ground and pats her cheeks, getting flakes of dried red clay on them. She's sure her hair and her skin and the clay must be the same colour. Emma clears her throat and starts tugging at the drawstring on her pants again. She loosens them a little, and they slide down onto her hips, making her look very short and young.
"Well - " Bonnie starts to say.
"Uhm." That's Emma's finger on her mouth. She fights the urge to kiss it. "I just thought, you know. If it was going to be in print …" Is she smiling, or is Bonnie imagining it? She looks up quickly. The grin on those familiar lips is small and embarrassed. "Well, I thought it might as well be something that's true."
"Uh huh," Bonnie says, trying to remember how to nod, and hoping that whatever way her head is moving, it passes for a convincing nod.
"But I should go now, shouldn't I?" It's an awkward question, and Bonnie doesn't know how to answer it. "Yeah, I should." She starts for the door, hand on the clay-dabbed knob, and then stops. "By the way, is your door tapped?"
"My - door? My door what?"
"Tapped. Mine is. Dan's too, and Rupert's. Because of the threats, you know." Emma grins again, and this one is genuine, Bonnie is relieved to see. "Cameras on the inside and the outside of the door."
Bonnie's own lips quirk into a smile. "Then I guess it's a good idea I didn't come over to your trailer to talk about this tonight."
"No, you would have been safe there. The cameras only watch the door."
She goes out, light brown hair streaming in not-quite-waves, and Bonnie's trailer door bangs with a surprisingly loud slam.
She watches the door for a minute, and then she gets control of her senses and goes to get a wet rag so she can clean off the doorknob. All she needs is to get clay all over herself tomorrow morning right before she goes on set, and then explain that to the AD.
Back at the sink, she retrieves the magazine from the bottom cupboard and stares at it a minute before pitching it toward the trash can with an awkward layup-like jump. She certainly doesn't need some uneducated American reporter telling her what it feels like to kiss Emma Watson.
finis