Today's line: "Stop it! Merlin, you're irritating! No! Stop!"
Oliver Wood paced his hotel room for three hours before wandering as casually as he could manage down to the Phoenix and asking for Aidan Lynch.
The receptionist sends him up to the room, where he finds the door open and the WWN at a comfortably overwhelming volume spreading through the doorway. Inside, Aidan is sitting at the tiny table with a cup of tea in one hand and his head in the other, nose buried in a paperback novel. Oliver takes a moment to admire the way his black singlet shows off the corded muscles in his back as he puts down the mug and turns a page.
Then he clears his throat. "Morning," he says gently.
Aidan puts down the book and turns to face him, smiling. Oliver doesn't miss the appreciative flick of blue-grey eyes down his body and feels his heartbeat speed up, as though eager to please. Jenny picked out the outfit for him and he knows he looks good in the light jeans and loose white t-shirt. "Morning," Aidan returns wryly.
Oliver takes that as invitation and moves forward until he's behind the Seeker, peering down at him. "What's the book?"
Aidan flips it over so that Oliver can see the cover; a hand lying across cobblestones, a wand abandoned an inch away under the bold yellow title, Disarming.
He's about to comment when an eagle owl swoops through the open window and drops a letter on top of the book before landing on Aidan's shoulder. The blond murmurs a thank-you to it and an excuse to Oliver before picking up the letter.
Oliver makes as if to stroke the owl, but Aidan's hand shoots out with a Seeker's precision to catch his wrist. "I wouldn't," he says gently. "She's nuts."
"Okay," Oliver says, not making to move his hand out of the other man's grip.
As though affronted by the gesture, the owl ruffles her feathers and inches closer to the Seeker's head; while he's engrossed in the letter, she buries her beak in his blond hair as though preening him.
Aidan yelps, "Stop it!" and flaps a hand at her until she pulls away, but he's giggling too and it's the most adorable sound Oliver has ever heard. As soon as the hand has gone she starts again, scraping her beak against his scalp and hooting in something that sounds like amusement as Aidan shakes his head in vain. "Merlin, you're annoying," escapes through the giggles. "No! Stop! Enough!"
One of his wild swipes connects with her leg and the owl flutters off to the window again.
Oliver tries to pretend he wasn't laughing in amused delight at the situation, but he has a feeling the older man isn't convinced when the letter flies out and smacks him in the arm. "You shut up," Aidan grumbles, but he's still grinning.
"I could murder an icecream," the Seeker says lightly, throwing the letter down on the table and standing up.
"Please don't," Oliver quips back, pushing off where he was leaning on the table. "What did the icecream ever do to you?"
They leave the hotel room chuckling, Aidan shooting a last stern look at his overly-fond owl on the windowsill.