Jump Then Fall
For Melody
i've had time to think it All over
and alL i can say is coMe clOSer
take a deep breaTh and jUmp then fall into me.
(every time you Smile, i smile)
"I'm ashamed to know you."
Katie rolled her eyes. "You're being dramatic."
"You're being insane."
"Nah, Katie's right," called Angelina from her room around the corner. Their flat had two bedrooms—three, if they counted Alicia's standing claim on the couch in the living room—but it was still small enough that there was never any hope of privacy. "You're overreacting, Oliver."
Oliver scowled. "Have you ever seen one?"
"A Tarantino film?" Angelina poked her head out of her room, clutching a towel around her torso. Her post-practice shower had left her hair hanging in wet curls that dripped on the carpeting as she looked at Oliver and Katie. "I watched Kill Bill once to prepare for assimilation to Muggle life. Definitely not realistic at all. Since I've been at this university, I haven't killed anyone. I'm a bit unimpressed."
Oliver's jaw went slack. "Unimpressed?" he repeated. "I've lost all respect for you, Johnson."
Angelina snorted. "I've never had any respect for you, Wood, so I s'pose we're on even footing now."
Oliver took a step down the hallway toward Angelina's room. "I can't believe—"
"Okay." Katie stepped around Oliver and held out her hands to stop him. "Okay. Calm down. If I watch a Tarantino film, will you stop shouting at Angelina?"
Angelina quirked one eyebrow and gave Oliver a smirk.
"I—sure," he said, looking away from Angelina and down at the girl in front of him. At five-foot-three, the top of Katie's head barely cleared his shoulders, but the determination on her face made her seem taller and more imposing.
"Good." Katie raked a hand through her hair, which was tangled from the autumn wind she'd endured on her walk from the coffee shop to the apartment. "Your place?"
"Why my place? We're already at your place."
"I don't have any Tarantino films." Katie opened the door to her bedroom—right next to Angelina's, with walls so thin they could hear each other snoring (Katie) or sleep-talking (Angelina) at night—and picked up the hairbrush from her vanity. "Or a DVD player."
"Or a roommate who wants to listen to you two watch a stupid Muggle movie by a stupid Muggle director," Angelina said, knocking lightly on the shared wall.
"Or that." Katie smirked as she ran the brush through her hair. "So, your place?"
Oliver shrugged. "I don't care."
"You'll drive me?" Katie swiped cherry Chapstick across her lips.
"We could Apparate."
"You know we aren't supposed to do that."
Oliver sighed. Living like a Muggle was impossibly inconvenient. In the eight years since Voldemort's defeat, however, the Ministry of Magic—or, more accurately, Hermione Granger, who had risen to power frightfully quickly within the government—had insisted that every pureblood get some experience living like Muggles. "At least one year," she had said. "It's time everyone learns how the non-magical half lives." And so here they all were, halfway through their first semester of Muggle university, living in cramped quarters with their wands under constant watch by the Ministry.
"You can't take the Muggle bus?" Oliver asked.
"I don't like the Muggle bus. And since I'm only doing this because you asked me to do this, I think it's only fair that you provide the transportation."
"You hate riding my motorcycle. Even when we were allowed to use it to fly back at Hogwarts, you hated it."
"I hate the bus more."
Oliver rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. But don't complain about how I drive."
Katie plucked her leather jacket from its place on the bedpost and shimmied into it. "Don't drive recklessly, and I won't have to."
"Be safe," Angelina called through the wall as Katie and Oliver stepped back out into the hallway and moved into the entryway.
"I'll make her wear a whaddaya-call-it—a helmet," Oliver said. Katie grabbed her wallet and key from the side table next to the door.
Angelina giggled. "That's not what I meant."
Katie rolled her eyes and opened the front door. "See you later, Angelina."
"I meant, don't get her preg—"
Katie cut her off with a slam of the door.
"So," Oliver said twenty minutes later as he unlocked the door to his own apartment. Oliver's roommates were never around; Charlie worked downtown most nights, and George was usually at some sporting event or other. Lee Jordan had moved out last month—he and Alicia were in an apartment of their own now that they were officially engaged. Instead of renting out Lee's spot to someone new, Oliver and the Weasleys had turned the fourth bedroom into a home theater. "Tarantino?"
Katie, looking dizzy and windswept from the motorcycle ride ("Hold on tight," Oliver had said, and she'd wrapped her arms around his abdomen slightly more tightly than necessary), nodded. Oliver led her to Lee's old room. This apartment was much nicer than hers, though neither of them ever mentioned that. It was bigger, and newer, and it featured hardwood flooring, and a bathroom with a tub that was an entity completely separate from the shower, and the heater didn't make ghostly noises, and the fridge light wasn't out, and all the doorknobs turned without squeaking.
The home theater was around the corner, between the bathroom and the kitchen. It was bigger than the other three bedrooms, though not by much, and it had a seventy-two-inch flatscreen TV mounted on the wall with subwoofers that had the downstairs neighbors complaining every few days. The Muggle technology confused the hell out of most of them, but Charlie had picked up on the basics quickly ("Years of living with a father obsessed with electricity," he'd explained). The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling formed astronomically accurate constellations (George was studying astronomy at the university), and the cabinet under the TV was wide enough to fit all their gaming systems, as well as about a dozen games and twice as many DVDs. The brown leather couch could recline into a queen-sized bed upon which Katie had fallen asleep more than once.
Katie had never asked to move into the fourth bedroom, but she wouldn't have turned down an invitation.
"You want Inglourious Basterds?" Oliver asked, pulling a DVD from the cabinet. "Or Pulp Fiction?"
Katie shrugged as she settled into the couch. "Up to you. I trust your judgement."
"We could go with Kill Bill, since that's the one Angelina saw." Oliver began to shuffle through his collection.
"You know what else Angelina just saw? That film Legally Blonde."
"Legally Blonde?"
Katie nodded. "It was cute. What's her name—Reese Witherspoon is great in it."
Oliver set down his copy of Pulp Fiction. "Reese Witherspoon is pretty hot. Looks a bit like Celestina Warbeck."
"It's on Netflix. We could watch it."
Oliver looked down at the DVD cabinet. "And then Tarantino?"
"Of course."
Oliver turned on the TV. "Works for me."
"It," Katie announced as the credits rolled, "is six o'clock in the morning."
Legally Blonde had quickly turned into a viewing of Legally Blonde the Musical on YouTube, which had had Oliver yelling at the screen about plot deviations and unintelligible lyrics for two and a half hours. Then they'd flipped to regular television and watched a Comedy Central special (Katie had nearly made herself sick from laughing), a marathon of Law & Order ("Just use magic!" Oliver had said every episode), and a showing of Back to the Future, which neither of them had ever seen but both found wildly entertaining.
The Tarantinos stayed on the shelf.
"We've been here for nine hours." Katie's eyes were glued to the screen. "I can't feel my face."
Oliver smirked. "You want to crash here for the night?"
She nodded. "I'm not in the mood for a motorcycle ride back to the apartment."
"Charlie came home a few hours ago. He could take you in his car."
Katie shrugged. "I'll just crash here." She glanced down at her phone. "Angelina sent me twelve texts."
"Yeah?" Oliver looked over her shoulder as she unlocked her phone. "What does she want?"
Katie flicked through the messages. "Just nonsense about not getting pregnant. She's convinced you and I are, you know, together. I've told her a million times we're just friends." She sighed and shook her head. "People are ridiculous."
"Yeah." Oliver shifted slightly on the couch. "You want to stand up so I can turn the couch into a bed, or…?"
"I don't want to move." Katie leaned back until she was reclining against Oliver. "We never watched a Tarantino."
"I know."
"Sorry."
"Don't be. We'll get to it someday."
"Tomorrow night?"
Oliver laughed and adjusted himself so his arm was around her shoulder. "Sure."
"I didn't mean to monopolize the home theater."
"I don't mind."
"But I made you watch chick flicks."
"Just Legally Blonde. I liked it."
"And Legally Blonde the Musical."
"Didn't like that one as much." He slid his arms around Katie's waist and pulled her a little tighter against him. "If we're not moving, then you're going to be my blanket tonight."
"I just said I'm not moving." She squirmed a little, but didn't pull away. "You can get up and get your own blanket."
"Not if you're on top of me like this, I can't!"
"Fine."
Oliver waited, but she didn't move. "Are you going to let me up, or…?"
"No. I'm just going to be your blanket."
He laughed and let his head fall back against the arm of the couch. "Fine. Whatever you want."
There was silence between them for a few minutes. "Oliver?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you awake?"
"No, Katie, I'm talking to you while unconscious."
She snorted. "I keep thinking about what Angelina said, about us being—you know, together."
He didn't answer.
"It's just that, we spend all our time together. I'm always over here, or you're always at my place, and with Lee and Alicia getting married, and George always making eyes at Angelina, I thought maybe—well, I haven't had a boyfriend in years, and you haven't had a girlfriend ever, and I—"
"You're babbling."
"I know." Katie laughed quietly. "Okay. Let me try again. We're about halfway through our year as Muggles, and I don't know about you, but even though I hated it at first, I think I've come to like it."
"I'm a fan of television," Oliver said. "And video games. Why don't we have any of those things at home?"
"There are, erm, some other things that I've spent time with lately that I've come to like."
"Like what?"
Katie shrugged against his side. "Not so much a thing as a person."
"Oh? Who is it?"
She sat up and turned around to face him. "Oliver. Are you really this thick?"
He smirked. "No. I just want to hear you say it."
She bit her lip. "Do you want to know why we didn't watch any Tarantino films tonight?"
"Because we got distracted?"
Katie shook her head. "Because I wanted an excuse to see you again tomorrow."
Oliver smirked. "You could just ask to see me again tomorrow," he whispered, sitting up and leaning forward to slip a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered against her cheek.
"Can I see you again tomorrow?" she asked as his fingers curled under her chin.
He nodded, letting his gaze fall to her lips. "I'd like that."
She swallowed. "Me, too."
He looked into her eyes for a moment, and then dropped her chin and pulled away. "What d'you say to breakfast?" he asked, getting up off the couch and stretching his arms over his head. "I could go for some Muggle cereal—we've got Lucky Charms, if that's okay with you?"
"Oliver Wood!"
"What?"
"All that, and you aren't going to kiss me?"
He smirked. "Just wanted to hear you ask for it."
"I—"
He cut her off with a deep kiss.
On the couch beside them, Katie's phone buzzed with her thirteenth text from Angelina—R u even coming home, or have you run away with him?—but neither of them heard.
Quidditch League Finals, Round 1: Pairing Diversity
Holyhead Harpies, Seeker
Prompt: Oliver Wood/Katie Bell
Word Count: 1,986
I know some of the dates don't quiiiiiite work out with film/technology releases, but we can pretend, right? :)
[Restricted Collection Challenge: No reference to a Hogwarts House]
[2015 New Years Resolution Competition: MuggleUniversity!AU]
