February Breath
Disclaimer: The queen of laziness strikes again…owning nothing, nothing, nothing, except my OC's and plot.
A/N: Well, now that I'm officially addicted to the book (!!) I had to make some minor, really subtle references to Diana Wynne Jones' story. There's some pretty funny Howl-Sophie stuff going on here—just wait til almost the end of the chapter… Hilarious to write, I don't know how good to read so review please! :)
Chapter 8School was nothing short of a blur of hilarity, some very quick saves of potentially awkward situations, and fair near-disasters.
The first challenge came in the form of Sophie herself and her appearance. She got more than one badly concealed stare even before classes started.
Howl nearly gave her a heart attack in her first period class when she thought she was going crazy hearing voices that no one else did. Actually, one voice in particular. Howl had to calm her down, inside her head, while sitting right next to her, invisible to the rest of the world. That was a bit of a blunt way to demonstrate that they could communicate nonverbally, didn't he think so? Sophie would have glared at him for effect but would have looked like she was becoming ticked off at thin air.
"See? I told you you look fantastic," he told her smugly when she asked him about the looks she had gotten. "Anyone naturally notices you for your beauty anyway; you just choose to ignore the looks and stay quiet so that you blend in. You shouldn't try to hide who you are," he pointed out. Her only response was a few mental huffs and some mental face-making, which was harder to do than it sounded.
A few times, Sophie's friends caught her spacing out and accused her of being in love, the reason for her distraction. She was visited by the urge to beat Howl about the head when he smirked knowingly, and vowed to get back at him later. (Besides, it wasn't like it was true! Who did he think he was, knowing everything?) Then she had had to make up some lame-sounding but completely believable excuses for her absentmindedness. She most certainly was not in love with Howl! Later as the girls were discussing guys, she made some harmless-sounding comments about guys in general that she knew needled Howl to no extent. It was her turn to smirk.
Another issue presented itself in the fact that Sophie's gigantic 2,000-student high school's hallways were unbelievably packed in between periods, posing a problem for Howl's navigation from one place to another. He had ended up having to put a spell on himself to make himself literally ghostlike—anyone and anything could pass right through him with no idea except for a hint of an air current that carried the smell of hyacinth. This creeped Sophie out hugely but the wizard didn't seem to mind it.
As she had predicted, the increasingly bewildered look on Howl's face as she whizzed through math class was priceless. "Sophie? Is he speaking English?" he asked more than once about the teacher. He gave up on making sad attempts to actually get something out of it and took to walking around, asking Sophie questions in her mind about people he noticed and about some modern technology. It was hell trying to explain cell phones to him.
Later, in the cafeteria, Sophie noticed Howl, ah, observing, shall we say, some of her friends. He was practically drooling over Clara, a Russian girl with skin like porcelain that contrasted strikingly with her near-black curls, and was taking an interest in Maria as well. She sent a few threatening thoughts his way, but they seemed to have zero effect whatsoever. Frustrated, she racked her brains with how to hit him with something without a) having an object bounce off thin air, and b) not looking like a complete and total mental case doing it. She finally succeeded. As she got up to throw a wrapper away, she deliberately set off in Howl's direction, who was conveniently standing next to their table as well as in the opposite direction of where the trash was. Luckily, her prediction of her friends' reactions turned out to be correct.
Liza laughed suddenly, breaking off her previous sentence. "Wrong way, Soph! Turn around."
Sophie had a reputation among her friends of being extremely klutzy and occasionally a little prone to missing the obvious and overanalyzing things. They teased her that her clumsiness factor had a multiple personality disorder, because they had all seen how graceful and sure of herself she became when she danced—the total opposite of her usual demeanor.
Now she stopped, right behind a still-oblivious Howl as planned, and spun around 180 degrees. On the way she bent and raised one arm slightly, laughing at her own silliness. With it she gave Howl a good whack on his lower back, along with the equivalent of a bucket of cold water on his head through a mental signal. He hacked and lurched forward, making quite the indignant-and-in-pain face. Thankfully the noise was covered by Sophie's bell-chime laugh. She walked by the table in the other direction, grinning and telling her friends to can it when they started mocking her playfully. Upon her return, she saw her giggling friends and behind them, a thoroughly pissed-off Howl. She projected the image of a sweet smile into his head, at which his own scowl deepened. "You're so going to catch it later," he threatened.
"I wouldn't worry," she mused whilst sitting back down. "I don't know about me, but you sure aren't catching anything. Or should I say anyone?" He just looked more offended and grumbled for the rest of the day, which consisted of two periods.
But the oddest thing that had happened all day—and that was saying something, with Howl around—was that everyone seemed to be taking to staring at Sophie as she passed them in the halls, and sending badly concealed glances her way in class. Before the cafeteria incident, she had consulted Howl on the matter. "Why are they all looking at me! Am I just going insane?"
"I believe, my dear, that you are being noticed by people. Answer that question yourself, though. Try to notice what they're thinking."
What? Oh. He meant read them with my magic. Um…okay, she didn't need to pay attention; the spacey teacher had put up the homework answers and was behind her desk shuffling papers. What did teachers do at times like these, anyway? So with that thought she attempted to probe into the mind of her Spanish teacher.
In a matter of seconds, just as she could feel her brain begin to strain itself, she was rewarded for her efforts.
Test to correct, have to watch Kathy's dog for the weekend, ugh. What's Rob bringing home for dinner? He told me he'd go to the store after work today but I should call him just in case. It's like that time at his mother's house, always with the excuses! It's always this that or something else… And she continued to rant silently about her husband's problems with procrastination.
A little lightheaded from the effort, Sophie breathed deeply, oxygenating her blood. "So? How do you like that?" Howl's excited thought drifted into her head.
In her mind, she simply beamed. She wanted to try again! It crossed her mind that she was crossing personal barriers, and promised herself that she would only scratch the surface of someone's consciousness. Infiltrating the thoughts of a boy near her named Ryan whose eyes were roving over the room, occasionally flicking towards her, was easier due to the fact that it was her second time doing it.
"…the same person? How weird. It's like she just kinda let go. Don't think I even realized she was in this class. Does she try to blend in? Stand out in a crowd easily if she wanted but usually wicked quiet. Really pretty…"
There was no other way to describe it other than Sophie was shocked out of Ryan's mind. Pretty? She delved back in, deeper this time, and discerned that he really was thinking about her.
"See? Now do you believe me?" Howl asked softly.
"…Maybe. This is much a weird feeling, getting into other people's thoughts. I feel like I'm intruding."
"Then only focus on the thoughts they're having at the moment. You don't have to, like, mind-stalk them."
She almost giggled out loud. "Is that even possible?"
"Anything's possible. Not even the sky's the limit, in our, ah, line of work." After a few seconds of pensive silence, he gave her a suggestion. "Try manipulating your hearing to get selective noises that are too far away to hear normally. Like…those girls over there. The two brunettes and the really hot—"
"Alright, I'll do it if you stop ogling everything in a skirt. Figuratively," she amended.
At this he promptly shut up and sighed, leaning against the front wall. "You're so difficult. Can't I have any fun?"
"Of course, just keep it to your own mind and don't feel any compulsion to mysteriously disappear from my view and go walking around visible. You could easily pick up a million girls an hour just in that way and we certainly don't want that."
He wrinkled his nose, trying to find a loophole, before noticing the left-handed compliment she had (probably subconsciously) given him. Wisely, though, he chose not to say anything about it. "Just listen to the conversation already."
Sophie sighed and worked her magic again, trying to block out other noise and imagine she could hear the three girls whispering, at the same time trying to read their lips.
"…new here?"
"No, silly, that's Sophie Hatter, she's lived here for years."
"Wait—Hatter? As in Martha and Lettie's older sister?"
"The one and only."
Sophie refrained from making a face. Of course, she was known as the quiet big sister of the ever-popular cheerleader, Lettie, and Martha the spunky little brainiac. The girls kept talking, though. One of them looked a little, well, troubled.
"What do you think's with the change all of a sudden?"
"Beats me. Just coming out of her shell, maybe? Growing up and all that?"
"Hey, what color are her eyes?" The ditzy fake-blonde had just glanced over at Sophie, whose eyes were roving over the front of the room absently.
"I dunno, brown probably?"
At this Sophie deliberately tossed her hair over the shoulder closer to them and shifted in their direction slightly, maintaining the faraway look in said eyes. It was funny, but now she felt like she wanted people to know things about her, to notice her. She kept listening in.
"Oh, wow, are they blue?"
"I think they're gray."
"Are you sure it isn't just the fluorescent lights?"
"Dammit, now I hafta know! Look after class."
"Deal. She's actually really pretty, though, I don't know why she didn't use what she has before, I mean, she's even talking in class now. That was part of her problem, she never said anything before. The only time I ever heard her talk was with her friends, I'm sure…"
There was that word again. Pretty. "When are you going to accept that you're beautiful?" Sophie remembered Howl's words. Hmph. Whatever.
When she finally got home after some near-misses when Howl had distracted her by trying to convince her to let him drive, she remembered that she had a few hours to herself in the house. Lettie would be going straight from after-school cheerleading practice to work at the local bakery (which, rumor had it, had been getting a lot more young male customers now that Lettie had taken up a job there) and Martha was at some school club event or another. Neither of them would be home before six, and both Mom and Dad worked full-time, especially since Sophie would be going to college in the fall (she still didn't know where, and it scared her that the odds of her even living through the month were looking a little too slim for her liking.)
Of course, Howl's first request was that he take a bath upstairs. Sophie rolled her eyes and complied, a little in awe of his vanity. H would likely take five times as long as a normal human being and obsess over his hair afterwards. Well, she could hardly blame him. Maybe she would end up vain too, if she possessed that degree of beauty… She shook herself. Come on, Sophie, don't be silly. You know you can't trust him anyhow.
Just over an hour later, she was in her room changing out of her school clothes when a yell came from the bathroom. Her eyes grew wide and she half stabilized herself to throw some kind of spell at whatever might come through the door, and a little ADD part of her wondered what could make Howl freak like that. She didn't think she'd ever heard him cry out. Well, okay, maybe sometime, considering the implications of the word "ever" for them. Whatever made him do it was most likely not good, and she gritted her teeth for half a second before the door banged open.
It was Howl who came flying out. "Sophie! You—you sabotaged me!" What the hell? He came running at her, getting in her face. "Look! Look what happened to my hair!!" Wow. 'Look' was right. Howl was now a flaming ginger. Something in the water, maybe? That was a bit of a long shot. Huh. How weird.
"Erm…what a pretty color," Sophie didn't quite know what to make of this, especially considering all he was wearing was a pair of black jeans he had conjured up. She forced herself not to look at his lean, muscular upper body (although later she denied she'd ever do such a thing.)
"It's hideous!!" Okay, so the picture of a distressed Howl with messed-up, bright orange hair was pretty funny.
She bit back a giggle. "Um…something in the water maybe? Don't blame me."
"The water? Water here does this? How can I live like this?!" he groaned, looking more distraught and helpless by the second.
It was too much for Sophie by this point and she doubled over laughing, collapsing against her bed. Howl simply blinked, unable to grasp that she was laughing at him for a minute. "Heyyy!" he protested childishly, giving her a light whack on the shoulder. When his fingers met her skin, Sophie remembered through her haze of laughter that she had been halfway through changing and was now wearing her jeans and a sports bra.
Her mind abruptly switched gears. Howl noticed this warily, his own crisis temporarily pushed a little to the side. "Howl Pendragon, you get back in that bathroom this instant, you senseless idiot!"
"…Wha?"
"You will give me fair warning before you come charging into my bedroom, and you be thankful it wasn't worse because I definitely get the feeling that if that had been the case there would now be a mysterious Howl-shaped hole in the wall by now and you, sir, would be nowhere to be seen!" She began pushing him back in the direction of the bathroom.
His issues drifted farther away from the forefront of his mind and he grinned impishly, really noticing her clothing or lack thereof for the first time. "And why would that be?" He spun away from her, backing up in another direction as she chased after him.
"God, you're so difficult."
"Didn't I recently tell you the same thing?" He sidestepped away around a chair.
"You're worse." Her hand grabbed at empty air.
"Is that so?"
As they bantered, Sophie noticed that Howl's hair, the cause of this whole scene, was rapidly turning purple instead of orange. Then the purple darkened and settled into black, the same ravenlike color it became when he had his wings. To change the topic, she informed him that his hair had now turned an even better color. In a panic, he tried to rush for the bathroom, but Sophie decided to torment him by standing in the way. She could deal with the clothing issue in a minute. "I thought you wanted me out!" he complained desperately.
"Oh, I just like being obnoxious."
His smile widened as he deliberately moved closer to her. "I can be obnoxious too, you know."
"No. You?" she said sarcastically, attempting to keep her heart rate down. Dammit, why did her heart always act so silly when she knew that in the end he'd try to kill her or something? He narrowed his eyes slyly and she felt something probing at her mind, like someone was scraping its surface. She threw up a wall to shield her thoughts, but not before he caught what she was seeing.
"Black? It's black again?" He made an exasperated noise.
"Peacock…" she muttered darkly.
"No fair with the name calling!" His dilemma resolved, sort of, he took notice of the fact that her face wasn't the only beautiful thing about her. There was something about her standing there glaring at him, hands on hips, with no proper shirt on that made him smile. So he did the natural thing that any man would do and he picked her up around the waist, pulling her to him to capture her mouth with his. Sadly, he only enjoyed a few seconds of his victory.
Sophie was stunned into immobility before her annoyance bubbled back to the surface again.
Something gave Howl's thoughts a slight twinge. Was it just him, or did Sophie have a fever or something? He reluctantly broke away to meet her fierce gray eyes practically shooting sparks. Frowning slightly, he set her back down gently and laid a cool hand on her forehead. He could feel the heat emanating from her from inches away—OW! He yanked his hand back too late, to realize that Sophie was actually glowing faintly orange. Although he wouldn't admit it, she was slightly terrifying. He had to back up a foot or two, grimacing, before the heat rapidly receded and Sophie smirked.
"Was that really necessary?" he grumbled, off the natural high he got from kissing Sophie.
"Hello. Witch," she said triumphantly.
"There's a reason it rhymes with something else," he continued to fume, stomping by into the bathroom to pull his white shirt on over his head. Jeez, she hadn't even known about magic for three days and already she was catching him off his guard. Too bad she was no longer defenseless. He sighed. Oh, well. Back to the same old song.
Sophie began to hum aimlessly, drifting about her room putting the clean laundry away. If she had been paying attention, she would have noticed the irony of the song that popped into her head. "You take the breath right out of me…"
Howl slowly took a half step out of the bathroom and watched her, his brow furrowing. He concentrated on the melody she was humming. "What song is that?" he asked.
"Hm? Oh. Uh," Sophie blinked and had to collect her thoughts to figure out what it had been. "Oh! "Breath." I doubt you know it."
"…Right…"
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"You're a terrible liar and you know it."
"I just thought I'd heard it before."
"Excuses…"
"Don't you have homework to be doing? What about that massive pre-calc assignment?"
"Slitherer-outer…"
"Because you know, if you don't keep up with your school work—"
"You also know I'll just keep bugging you until—"
"You'll fail miserably and end up wandering around New York City like a crazy person muttering to yourself for the rest of your days—"
"Curse your hair to turn a different color every five minutes and cut up all your clothes into tiny little triangles one by one to teach you—"
"All right, all right! Jeez. Pushy little thing, aren't you. Just listen to the lyrics. Think about the words." He suddenly sobered and his sea-colored gaze intensified, penetrating straight into Sophie like a flame burning a hole through ice.
She thought. You take the breath right out of me…and left a hole where my heart should be. Alright, so it's a heartbroken guy. Big deal. You gotta fight just to make it through. Ooh, shock. That was a phrase used commonly enough in music; it could have so many meanings. Cause I will be the death of you.
Sophie…Oh my. Of all the—great. Just great. So he was saying I stole his heart and he was going to kill me? What? Thinking about it, I remembered Calcifer making some offhanded comments about how heartless Howl was. Had he been trying to give me a hint?
He was going to kill me. Marvelous.
"So you're a heartless murderer," I said dryly, attempting to quell a thrill of what might have been fear in the pit of my stomach. It bore an eerie resemblance to my first death. (I still couldn't get over the weirdness of thinking that.)
Howl looked like he wanted to say something, but rephrased it. "I…didn't inte—" he suddenly blanched and looked like he was choking. Creepy song lyrics aside, I ran to his side where he was leaning against the doorframe, looking slightly pained.
"You didn't intend to…?" But he just shook his head mutely when I prompted him. "Oh. You can't talk about it?"
He took a rattling breath, coughing. "Not directly. Not in any kind of detail either. I can only make very vague, indirect statements."
I huffed. "Now that's not cool at all."
He chuckled and sounded more like himself again. "That's one way to put it. You try feeling like you're being strangled. I hate curses."
- - - Several hours later - - -
"Howl, I told you that you shouldn't—"
"Look a' tha' light! It's so pretty…it's like you, Sophie," the wizard slurred.
"Oh, jeez." Sophie was half carrying him up to her room. She had given in a little and let him come with her as she drove around town, his excuse being that he hadn't been in this world for a while and wanted to familiarize himself with modern society. He had a point in that if the Witch was going to attack, she needed him with her and he needed to "know the playing field" as he put it. That had involved dropping in on the one bar in the town where Sophie had stubbornly refused to join him and driven off to run an errand for her mother, returning later to find the wizard hardly able to stand on his own two feet. A girl of about twenty was eyeing him with interest as well and was slowly edging closer from the end of the bar: just another reason to get the dumb womanizer out of there. Oddly enough, the girl subtly backed down when Sophie showed up. She must have a witchy presence of something, because she certainly couldn't be seen as any kind of competition! Was what Sophie had stubbornly thought.
"Forget tipsy," she muttered. "You're downright drunk."
"Now, now, Sophie. Tha's quite the accusation. I 's only enjoying myself, you could've come, y' know…" He wagged a lazy finger at her.
"Yeah, and right now we'd be stuck in the car with half our bones broken, wrapped around the most convenient tree. No thanks." And with a final heave, she and Howl crashed to the floor at the top of her stairs. Again she was thankful for the silencing charm. Sophie rolled to stand up but found herself being yanked down by something. Howl had caught her ankle.
"Don't leave me, Sophie… Don' go 'way…" he got anxious in his drunken state.
"I'm right here, Howl, I'm just trying to make life easier for you."
He smiled sluggishly. "I love it when you say my name." His words took her a little off guard and she was thankfully spared from responding by Howl going on. "I think I love you, Sophie… Will you stay with me?"
She inhaled sharply. That was certainly unexpected. He said something like that so plainly! He must really be loosened up. She didn't know what her own specific feelings were on this subject—no! She had no feelings on this subject!—but no matter. He was drunk. "I'll stay here, Howl. But come on, we have to get you up."
After several minutes, Howl was safely asleep in his magicked chair and Sophie, equally exhausted although definitely not for the same reasons, took a brief shower and succumbed to unconsciousness soon after, Howl's last disturbing words echoing around in her head.
A/N: Awww don't you kinda love Howl's statements as he's drunk? Fluff yet not… Sophie's still in denial! Ahhh! I just had to include the hair thing. I was loling as I was writing it just picturing him tearing out of the bathroom…no matter how many times I see the movie, read the book, write about the same scene—I all but die laughing! Please review, et cetera, all that happy stuff. Any thoughts on what the Witch is up to? Where is she, and why hasn't she come after them yet? And what was Howl trying to say before the liplock curse kicked in? I hope you're enjoying the story :)