heartbeats

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

Emilia was often referred to as a cold person by her classmates. The people she allowed in her circle were an exclusive few, but she wasn’t heartless. In fact, the red carnation on her bedside table had to be a testament to that, surely. The dorm was dark at this point and Emilia could hear the soft breaths of her dorm mates as they dozed off into their own dreamlands. She sat still and quiet in her bed as she waited with baited breath for her roommates to finally be asleep. Her hand reached over to grab hold of the flower and then rested her head back on her pillow. Em’s index finger daintily touched the red petal and she studied the flower for a good minute. She could still back out from going tonight.

Emilia had spent the last weeks distancing herself from Fox Bishop. The two of them had spent a weird, drunken night together during a party. Emilia and Fox had been in their own little world while the rest of the school danced the night away. They had agreed that it was a one time deal and they wouldn’t talk about it ever again. Except that was really hard to do when they shared so many classes together. In the past, Emilia had not even realized how close the two sat throughout the day. It also didn’t help that, even though the two of them had agreed to forget about that night, there were whispers in the halls from people who had witnessed it at the party. She scrambled to separate herself from Fox and even gave up her favorite seat in Potions class. She was forced to sit far away from her friends without being able to tell them why she made the switch with Gooby who was more than happy to sit near his friends.

It was very dumb idea, but come on she was a sixteen year old. All her efforts were in vain because she eventually found herself sneaking around with Fox. Sometimes it was during lunch; when everyone else was happily eating in the Great Hall, Em and Fox would be sharing fast kisses in a secluded place near the courtyard. Some nights it was the Astronomy Tower but Emilia didn’t like it very much, she ran into Gooby one evening and was stuck listening to him explain why there was a specific shadow cast on the moon. Then there were days where she would ignore Fox outright. The truth was that she was trying to either fight the urge or sort out her feelings. He was obnoxious and stupidly confident, the complete opposite of what she wanted in a boyfriend. If he got too close to her during one class, she’d be pissed at him for blowing their cover. If he didn’t ask to meet her that same night, she’d be upset. There was no winning. This was the sort of behavior she had despised.

Back in her dorm, she finally made up her mind and quietly got out of bed. She’d gone to bed in a sweater and pants to not draw suspicion from anyone. In the darkness she tried her hardest to look her best but it was hard to see her reflection. Emilia ended up tying her hair up in a loose bun because she reminded herself that she didn’t have to impress anyone. Either Fox liked her or not and she couldn’t imagine him possibly thinking she looked bad.

She had a lot of time to think as she made her trek to the Quidditch pitch. Tonight was going to be a different experience for Fox and Emilia. They weren’t meeting for a snog for once. This was a kind of date and it made her nervous. That was ridiculous. Emilia was the one who made boys nervous, not the other way around. She was dumb. It was obvious she liked Fox. Recently, she forced Gubler to give her back her seat in Potions just so she could sit next to him again. Instead of focusing on her school work, she found herself subtly flirting with him in class.

The Quidditch pitch was empty late at night and the breeze was cool against her skin. She could feel that anxiety creeping up from her stomach to her chest. She absolutely hated the feeling, but it also brought a small smile to her lips. In the darkness of the night, she finally allowed her shoulders to relax and she allowed herself to be honest about her feelings. Yes, Fox was annoying, but he also made her feel excitement. He let Emilia be uninhibited around him. Emilia wanted the rest of the school to see her as this perfect being, but she didn't have to pretend with him. He wasn't easily impressed though and that drove her crazy. She'd never had to work hard with any other boy in the past. That really sucked

Fox Bishop

[Fox Bishop]

Everywhere Fox looked, he saw a challenge. And no challenge had excited him quite as much as Emilia Montes. He liked how, at first, after a drunken night of dancing and snogging, Emilia wanted nothing to do with him. This was fine, of course. Of course he thought that she was drop dead gorgeous, but Fox knew that if a woman said no that should be the end of it. But Emilia kept popping up. First it was the odd glance in class. The kind of glance where he’d catch her eyes fixed on him, and she would quickly snap her head back, and Fox knew that he had wandered into something unexpectedly intimate. A message to him that Emilia never meant to write. And of course he had his own moments like that, where his eyes would wander. But when Emilia caught his glance, she didn’t look at him with the same sensitivity. These eyes were more like Carrie at homecoming. A message that Fox was definitely supposed to read.

All of these moments existed in their own spaces of time, in seconds between a professor’s cough or a bottle of ink tipping over. It was as if they would find any excuse to steal a glimpse. For Fox, it was like Emilia was a puzzle, and every time he looked at her, he felt like he could solve her. Sometimes you just had to look at something from another angle to really understand it. Every time Fox did this, he fell a bit more.

If you blinked, you missed it. Emilia’s Carrie eyes softened, Fox’s smirk faded. And soon they were at it again as if the alcohol had never left their system. Any day you could have caught them kissing in the owlery, or on the covered bridge, or in the greenhouses. But nobody ever seemed to notice. At least, that’s the impression Fox got. The truth was most of his Gryffindor classmates were too involved with their own teenage dramas to take notice. Even if he wanted to share the news of his fling with Emilia with his friends, he had always been cagey about his feelings. Romance, in Fox’s experience, was a weapon that could be used against him, and he wanted to keep Emilia as his special thing for as long as he could.

Once Emilia made it clear that she was definitely into him, Fox accepted the challenge. He loved how, at first, she kept him at a distance, rewarding him with those stolen kisses when he managed to impress her. After that, he loved how difficult she could be. She insisted that he was jeopardizing her reputation, but when Fox actively tried finding ways to throw her classmates off their trail, that made her angry too. He knew that he hadn’t totally solved the puzzle, and that was what made it so damn fun. Butterflies where everywhere: in his stomach, in his head, they seemed to circle around Emilia like a goddamn Disney movie every time he looked at her.

But it wasn’t until Fox was scouring the Hogwarts library for information about Spain’s national flower that he knew he was totally fucked.

It was getting harder and harder to call this thing with Emilia a fling, and maybe that was why they’d agreed to a date. It probably wasn’t your idea of a traditional date. Most kids met in the owlery for dinner and debauchery, for some reason. No, after rumors about Fox and Gus started circling, Fox was forced to admit to Emilia that he didn’t know how to fly. Absolutely terrified of it. Instead of laughing him out of existence, Emilia simply gave him an “aww puppy dog” expression and an offer to teach him lessons herself.

That was the night Fox had offered her the red carnation, and like, a blade made of Toledo steel or something.

He really liked Emilia. He couldn’t get her out of his head, and the only thing he wanted more than her was to know just how much space he’d taken up in hers. They kissed, and Fox knew that everything was about to change.

The following night, Fox picked his best pair of shoes and set out to see Emilia. He made a quick stop at the Quidditch pitch where he broke into the equipment room and took his pick of brooms. Most of Hogwarts’ training brooms were yesterday’s models. There was one with chipped, silver letters reading T H E  D E S T R O Y E R on its handle which Fox quickly noped in favor of a trustworthy Cleensweep Ten. Someone had etched in this broom’s handle, “RaNdy’S Raaaaad RacEr.”

Fox spotted Emolia the moment he stepped onto the pitch. He felt foolish trudging through the cold dress with the broom in his hand. A lot like first year flying class. But when Fox reached Emilia in the middle of the pitch, his fear faded away and it was just them now, sharing a moment in the night.

“Hi,” he smiled nervously, though not because of the flying. He would confront that in time. “I have a broom,” he held it up for her to see as if she was his drill instructor inspecting his uniform. “It’s not mine, actually. I think it belongs to a fellow named Randy. It’s really nice to see you.”

He was smiling again like an idiot. Fox had always practiced an uncomfortable honesty with people, but one way you protect yourself when you’re completely honest is never getting close enough to people to have to share those really vulnerable feelings. He felt like Emilia was breaking him. He felt it in his heart, and he wanted more.

    Emilia Montes-Bishop

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

It seemed like she had waited forever for Fox to arrive and her stomach hurt every single second of it. Emilia wasn't sure what was going on with her lately. Each morning, she would wake up earlier and earlier but would just lie in bed. In the silence of her room, the first thought in her mind would be Fox related. She would remember a dumb joke he had said to her and she'd had to turn on her stomach to stifle her laugh and bury it into her pillow. Or she would remember the warmth of his lips on hers, then her fingers would subconsciously trace where Fox had kissed her the night before. Emilia would stay in bed until she would hear her roommates moving around and then she knew it was time to leave her fantasies behind.

It was, honestly, exhausting. Emilia was barely eating these days. She just couldn't keep her food down, she was already basically bursting with elation and it seemed like her body couldn't take anything more. It was this exact feeling that shot through her as she saw Fox walking toward her in the night. She took a deep breath as he greeted her and gave her a smile. Before she could stop herself, Emilia felt her lips pull into a smile to match his. She closed the space between them but instead of throwing her arms around him, like she wanted to, she leaned in close and watched him in silence. He was so nervous, she had to stop herself from laughing. Her eyes scanned him from the top of his hair, to his eyes, then down to the broom he was holding out to show her.

"Hi," she finally greeted him. It was very nice to see him, too. Should she tell him? She decided against it. Truth be told, she was terrified of how comfortable she was around him. Emilia thought back to the party and how fast everything had progressed from there. That night, she was out of her mind, having tried Pixie Dust for the first time. It was an accident when she pulled him in to dance with her and as they swayed surrounded by their peers, she could feel the heat of his body on hers. Somehow, they had ended up in the dark clocktower. Her hands ran through Fox's hair as she pulled him closer to her until their lips had finally met. It was like an electric jolt and she felt herself wanting more and more of it.

And, wizard god, she felt that same nauseating feeling just thinking about it now.

Emilia took a step back from Fox and let out a long sigh. They were here for one thing only, right? Her eyes looked down at the broom again but she had no interest in really teaching him how to fly. She just grabbed on to any excuse to meet Fox. It was pathetic.

"You seem awfully cheery for someone who's absolutely terrified of flying. I'm beginning to think you lied just to get me out here in the dark."

Fox Bishop

[Fox Bishop]

Fox’s heart was racing faster than Emilia’s on pixie dust. His fear of flying was in full effect, but it was more than just the phobia. It was the way Emilia looked in the moonlight, bathed in a pale glow that made her skin seem to shine. Fox had stolen kisses with Emilia in the darkness before, but it wasn’t until now that he really felt like he was seeing her. She offered him a vulnerable smile, and he wanted to smile back, so he did.

“Hi,” Emilia said in an accent that made Fox’s knees weak. Then she joked, “You seem awfully cheery for someone who's absolutely terrified of flying. I'm beginning to think you lied just to get me out here in the dark.”

Fox’s eyes were shining as he looked into Emilia’s. It took incredible restraint to simply not drop the broom and pull her into a kiss right there. He at least wanted to maintain some kind of pretense that this date was educational. Instead, he simply laughed and admitted, “I’m scared as hell, Em.”

Fox’s fear of flying went back as far as the first time he’d ever touched a broom. Fox the first year had a reputation for throwing himself into every new magical experience that he could. He studied spells that were well above his age group and read just about any book he could find on the history of the magical world. By the time he was ready to attend his first flight class, Fox had read Quidditch Through the Ages and could name all of the top brooms on the market. In theory, Fox was a perfect flyer, but the practice of flying was a bit more humbling. His classmates had gotten a kick out of seeing the high energy know it all slam face-first in the ground that day. Recovering in the hospital wing, Fox reasoned that humans were never meant to fly and vowed never to get on a broom again.

Until Liv said that he would never make the Gryffindor Quidditch team, of course. Fox had started this little project with Gus to prove her wrong, but Emilia had become a better motivation than some random challenge ever could be. He didn’t just want to sneak out to the grounds to make out with her, he wanted to impress her. Trying to keep his mind from lingering too much on the memory of his first flight, he nervously added, “But I know you wouldn’t let me hurt myself.”

What Fox meant to say was that he trusted Emilia, even if he didn’t have much reason to at this point. He just had a feeling that if she could make him feel this way, that she must be feeling that way too. She had a reputation for breaking men, sure, but Fox figured if she planned on breaking him she would have done it already.

“Well, okay,” Fox said, steadying himself over the broom. “Let me show you what Gus and I have worked on.”

Fox closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding it in for eight seconds, exhaled, and repeated. He cleared his mind of negative thoughts and tried to embrace the nature of flight. I’m floating, he thought. I’m floating on a safe, predictable cloud. My broom is a means of conveyance, not an instrument of death. You are Fox Bishop and you are so fucking cool.

When Fox opened his eyes he was indeed floating. Six inches off the ground. The broom began to wobble and Fox let out a sharp yelp before gripping the hand hard and landing softly back on solid ground.

His brow was beaded with sweat, his heart was racing, and Emilia was standing there and…he couldn’t have felt prouder of himself. “Did you see that?” he asked. “And it only took six weeks of training.”

He really hoped it was worth a kiss.

    Emilia Montes-Bishop