|
Post by Kiki on Jan 3, 2006 12:51:28 GMT
Kiki would never ever get used to it. The snow over Christmas. She grew up with the heat of summer lingering favourably over Christmas, of cold meats and barbeque lunches held so late in the day that it was considered normal if you had a third helping of dessert for dinner. In England, the snow crunched underfoot instead of dry leaves and there were people wrapped in scarves and cloaks instead of singlets and shorts. It seemed that the spirit of Christmas seemed to linger through the softly snowing streets of Hogsmeade and Kiki swatted at the snowflakes that fell gently and twirlingly over the path she took.
She didn't honestly have any kind of destination in mind. Anywhere was fine. Kiki was seeking a sort of solace, somewhere to unwind. She wasn't sure where or why, but she let her feet walk her to wherever she was supposed to go and slowly her mind started to relax and let her into a blissful state of relaxation. As her mind relaxed her body slowed from a purposeful stride to a easy dawdle, and slowly she came to rest outside the pub, the Hog's Head.
Pausing, she wondered whether she should go in or not. It held some very strange memories and currently housed a particualr Vampire who Kiki hadn't really seen or spoken to in awhile. She wasn't sure if it was wise to go in there - she had since spoken to Ace's wife...or was it ex-wife? Kiki wasn't one hundred percent certain of where the relationship stood at this point in time. On the corner of the street stood Dervish and Banges, so Kiki decided to comprimise with herself. She trudged over to Dervish and Banges, bought a copy of the Daily Prophet, returned to a bench that sat out the front of the Hog's Head - reserved at night for the drunks who were kicked out of the pub and couldn't stumble home. She decided to flick through the Daily Prophet and wait for a sign that told her whether she should go inside or not.
|
|
Evence leigh
New Member
Hufflepuff Student
I can speak 1,000 lanaguages, to bad noone else can speak any of them.
Posts: 117
|
Post by Evence leigh on Jan 4, 2006 0:10:39 GMT
It wasn't that she was board, it was that her feet refused to let her stay seated in the common room or anywhere indoors for more than meal times that Evence found herself wandering the streets of Hogsmede once more. The streets were starting to imprint themselves on the insides of her brain, her feet began to travel from pub to shop almost autimatically, a feeling she had never had before. Stops in towns rarely lasted more than a week when she was back with her dads buisness. This was going to be a long year.
Evence listed off the shops as she neared the end of the town. The Hogs Head pub fell within the last few. She stared behind her at the rest of the cold winter streets, her mind deciding between entering the pub for a warm drink, or going back to The Three Broomsticks, she wasn't to fond of the look The Hogs Head after all. Pulling out her free spirited, social self she walked over to the one person sitting on the bench outside the pub and leaned againts the wall.
Trying not to be rude she waited until the girl began scanning the pages again before asking " Would you recomend entering this pub," Evence smiled at herself " or is its sheer awfulness to much to bare?"
|
|
Ace
Professor
Vampire
Passion rules us all
Posts: 495
|
Post by Ace on Jan 4, 2006 0:14:53 GMT
Ace stretched lazily on his bed, having just woken up from a most enjoyable sleep. He had been dreaming... he couldn't remember what of, but it had left him with a strangely comforted feeling that was not always so familiar to him.
He got off the rumpled bed and stretched once more, smiling sleepily as he crossed the room and opened the curtains to let in the glare of the reddy-orange streetlamps filling the dusky, snow-dusted streets of Hogsmeade. He let his eyes wander over the streets, watching the powdery snow drift towards the ground. His eyes fell upon a figure hunched on the bench that was typically known for being the bed of at least one drunkard a night. He kept his eyes upon her - surely she was too young to have been chucked out for drinking this early in the evening?
He rested a hand against the window, trying to see through its dirty panes. When he realised who it was, he let out a sigh that belonged to a gentle smile... and moved back out of the window's view to change out of his pyjama bottoms and into his usual attire of a clean, white shirt and jeans.
The green-eyed Vampire emerged from the ramshackle pub moments later, his hair still fairly tousled from his sleep, and his mouth slanted in a smile that was always reserved especially for this person. "Hiya, Ki," he said softly, and sat beside her on the bench, unaware of the stares he was getting from people for wearing so little as the snow fell and lay comfortably on his shoulders and in his messy hair.
|
|
|
Post by Kiki on Jan 6, 2006 8:26:43 GMT
Kiki glanced up sharply, blinking involuntarily as her eyes looked up into the street lamp behind the girl flared into her eyes. Once the bright lights behind her eyelids had subsided, she glanced over the girl and surmised she was a student at the school who must've slipped out after curfew. It was an increasingly frequent occurance nowadays and there seemed to be a million ways to sneak out of the castle to come down to the village. The girl had guts, Kiki was willing to give her that much, to have the courage to even consider walking into the Hog's Head at this time of night.
"I wouldn't recommend it. Not for this time of night anyway," Kiki flashed the girl a smile. "I'd suggest getting back to the school. The Prefects, Head Boy and Girl will be doing their rounds and if you're lucky you won't get caught out after curfew. lf you run fast you might be able to get back inside before anyone notices." Kiki's eyes had drifted back to her newspaper before a gentle footfall made her smile. She wasn't sure where the Hufflepuff had disappeared to but she somehow instinctively knew that the footstep belonged to Ace. Her violet eyes moved to watch him easily sit on the bench beside her. lt had definitely been awhile since Kiki had seen Ace and there was a mix of the rush of butterflies in her stomach and a feeling of casual comfort. She missed Ace. She missed the closeness they had, as best friends and the times when their relationship became more intimate.
"Hey, love, how're you?" Kiki gave him a wry smile as she took him his attire and compared it to the thick cloak she was wearing. She folded the newspaper up and put it on the gap beside her, then wrapped her arms around his neck in greeting. Ace always gave good hugs. Even though he was never warm, there was a warmth behind them that Kiki loved. She kissed his cheek in greeting, unsure of whether or not one placed on his lips would be as welcome. She reached up and tugged at his collar with her fingers, letting him go to speak to him.
"Looking wonderfully handsome tonight," Kiki gave him a small smile because by now she thought he would've figured out that she always thought he was handsome. She glanced to the sky and caught a snowflake in her hand, it melting slowly in the centre of her palm. She touched the half melted ice with her finger and then folded her hand into a fist.
"Still not used to the snow," she murmured quietly, leaning back onto the bench.
|
|
Evence leigh
New Member
Hufflepuff Student
I can speak 1,000 lanaguages, to bad noone else can speak any of them.
Posts: 117
|
Post by Evence leigh on Jan 7, 2006 2:20:07 GMT
ooc: darn it is night, I gotta start reading better
bic: Evence sighed at the girls words she had hoped she could get away with being out of the castle all night, apparently not. She had no intention of going back there, but it was probably safer anyways. Note to self: People in Hogsmede at night do infact have connections in the school. P.S. don't enter the hogs head after night. Evence trusted the girl who had toled her this and planned to keep to her word of advice. As she headed back to the school she could almost make out the footsteps of another person but it didn't quite matter.
|
|
Ace
Professor
Vampire
Passion rules us all
Posts: 495
|
Post by Ace on Jan 7, 2006 10:38:57 GMT
Ace let Kiki play with the collar of his shirt and drape her arms around his neck in greeting, making no move to return the gesture but enjoying it all the same. He had missed this. He hadn't realised he had missed it, being so busy lately, but the ease at which he and Kiki settled back into each other's company made him realise he needed her, a little. At least for now.
"My little Aussie," chuckled Ace at Ki's comment about the snow. He saw her wonderingly catch a few drops in her palm, and shook his head with a smile, sending snow drops flying from the tips of his hair.
"I have been well, mostly," said Ace slowly, thinking over the past month or so. The holidays hadn't exactly been easy for him, especially with the reappearance of... Well, perhaps he'd better keep that gem to himself. For some reason, discussing Rose wasn't on the top of Ace's list of things to do with Kiki.
But then, what is? thought Ace, and almost laughed out loud to himself. Flashing another grin at Ki, he leaned back and looked up to the open heavens, catching some snowflakes on his tongue before speaking again. "I don't know where all the time went, you know... one minute I'm marking papers and enjoying my teaching and the next minute it's Christmas, then New Year..." He glanced at Kiki. "Got any New Year's resolutions, love?"
|
|
|
Post by Kiki on Jan 9, 2006 10:36:05 GMT
There was a slight jab of annoyance that there was no return hug, but Kiki ignored it. At the very least he hadn't refused to accept her hug at all, had he? And there was still the teasing affection there, the affection that she had become so used to over the past years she'd gotten to know Ace well. It hadn't disappeared into oblivion and she decided to be thankful for that much. She squealed a little and brought her hands up to cover her face in a reflex action as Ace shook the snow from his hair and it flew off to try to collide with Kiki's face. She dropped her arms and nodded silently as Ace described his dissatisfaction with the way that time moved.
"Time is very fickle in that way. When you want it to slow down so you can savour a moment, it travels faster than it should. Likewise, when you want time to speed up so you can move on and do other things, it almost deliberately slows itself down." She looked up into the snow again and sighed. "But in the end, it all goes too quickly. Before you know it, everything has changed," Kiki stopped there, not wanting to ruin the meeting between the two of them by leaping into a philosophical debate about the nature of time.
"New Year's Resolutions?" She said instead, trying to think back to decide whether she'd made any. She never did, for it seemed that most people's New Year's Resolutions were based around material things and nothing that had any true substance to it.
"Not really. I never decide what I want to improve upon in the next twelve months, because everything is always different," Kiki sighed involuntarily and wondered whether she should ask him about Rose. And then before she realised it, she was already talking.
"You'll never guess who I bumped into the other day," Kiki said, a false bubbly quality to her voice. Within the next two words, the superficiality had disappeared and they were spoken in an uncertain murmur.
"Rose Murphy." She glanced at Ace quickly, trying to gauge a reaction. She wondered if he knew that this was the reason she wasn't as flirty and touchy feely as she usually was. Kiki knew it was going to be a sensitive issue and she didn't even know if Ace had spoken with Rose already or not. Her violet eyes had moved themselves to the snow on the ground, but now she moved her body to sit cross-legged on the bench, one leg propped up against the wooden back and her fingers linking themselves together, trying to prepare for his reaction.
|
|
Ace
Professor
Vampire
Passion rules us all
Posts: 495
|
Post by Ace on Jan 9, 2006 11:22:21 GMT
Ace was smiling at Kiki's sudden rant about the inconsistencies of time, and her indecision to commit to any New Year's Resolutions, when she mentioned it. The subject he was keen to avoid.
He froze, and the easy grin melted from his face. His piercing gaze stared, just like Kiki's, into the snow, lost in another place, somewhere far away from here, far away from this conversation. Why was it that the ghosts of his past loved to haunt him so? Had he not sacrificed enough, paid enough penance... No, he thought with a twinge of guilt. Never enough.
"Rose." Ace spoke the word through lips that now seemed numb. What was Kiki expecting him to say? How much did she know of the Vampire's relationship with her? What was he supposed to do, now? "She... I..." Ace cleared his throat. This wasn't going well. "I know, I saw her too."
He made no move to elaborate. He wouldn't give away any more than was necessary.
|
|
|
Post by Kiki on Jan 9, 2006 11:38:04 GMT
Kiki's heart fell into the pits of her stomach as she saw that Ace's reaction was almost as though she had punched him in the stomach. She swallowed awkwardly and wished she'd never mentioned anything about Rose. The easy casualness was gone and Ace had moved to sit on the almost defensive side of the fence. Kiki toyed with her fingers as she spoke, considering she figured that Ace wasn't going to say anything more.
"I was there," She concentrated on her hands now, refusing to look at Ace. She was talking about the wedding, of course, but she didn't want to specify in case Ace really didn't want to delve into the relationship between the two Vampires. "I forgot about her, to be honest. I can't believe I did, but I forgot about her. Neither of us ever mentioned her and I simply assumed that she wasn't going to come back," Kiki moved unconciously, one of her hands moving to link her unsettled fingers through the hand of Ace's that was closest to hers and her thumb began to stroke the back of his hand gently. She laughed hollowly at the nature of her words.
"I should've known, really. No-one ever leaves MH for good."
|
|
Ace
Professor
Vampire
Passion rules us all
Posts: 495
|
Post by Ace on Jan 9, 2006 12:19:22 GMT
Ace nodded. "Yeah, well... we both know that, and yet somehow I didn't expect it either."
He fell into silence again, hating that almost every time he and Kiki spoke, there was always a subject of difficulty that needed to be approached, something that made him feel awkward and misplaced, like a jigsaw piece that everybody tried so hard to fit into their puzzle, but he never fit. Where did he fit?
His hand closed around Kiki's fingers as they intertwined with his, the small gesture of her support giving him some source of strength. He slowly began to smile, and then turned to Kiki, a playful sort of light dancing in his eyes. "Can you believe this, Ki? I'm married! And my wife is in town!" He began to chuckle uncontrollably, suddenly struck by the strange hilarity of the unusual situation.
After he had done laughing, he wiped a tear from his eye. "I can't believe it," he said slowly, thoughtfully, still with a trace of a smile on his face.
|
|
|
Post by Kiki on Jan 10, 2006 1:43:13 GMT
Kiki was unsure how to react. She let him laugh, aware that the nature of what was happening around him was beginning to dance closely along the line of what Ace could comprehend and that the sharp laughter that was falling from his mouth was simply another way of expressing his confusion and frustration.
'I'm married! And my wife is in town!'
The words sounded so strange coming from Ace. Hell, they would've sounded strange coming from most of Kiki's friends. But Ace moreso than anyone. Kiki never really pictured him as 'married'. He was simply Ace, a source of strength and support that she had come to rely on when she needed it. Whether the fact that their relationship had moved slightly further past 'friends', whether that made her 'the other woman', it didn't matter. Ace needed her for the moment to be a friend and she shouldn't let her feelings get in the way for the moment. She could try to deal with them later.
"No, I can't believe it, either," Kiki covered Ace's hand with her other free hand and traced circles and patterns onto the back of it, trying to organise her thoughts into an adequate order so that she might be able to distance herself from her feelings for a moment.
"Have any idea what you're going to do now?" She asked, suppressing the urge to add her usual nickname of 'love' onto the end of the sentence. Kiki chose to pull back a little while Ace could collect himself, but was still inwardly pleased that his hand had closed over hers.
|
|
Ace
Professor
Vampire
Passion rules us all
Posts: 495
|
Post by Ace on Jan 11, 2006 19:33:17 GMT
Ace glanced sideways at Kiki, wondering if her words matched her thoughts. He suspected she was suppressing a lot. Though they had never even approached the subject of their brief yet passionate fling whilst Kiki had been possessed, something of it still lingered between them, a spark that was nowhere to be seen on this snowy evening.
"What do you mean?" asked Ace, his gaze still trying to read into her face. "Concerning Rose? I... have no idea. Technically speaking, she's still my wife. And always will be. The only reason we could get married in the eyes of the law was because one of us was human - but now we're both on the other side of death, divorce can't be an option. We're... stuck. But to be honest, I don't know if she's even going to be around too long. She seemed kind of hesitant to tell me her business here, or how long she'd be. Which suggests she's going to get up and take off at any time."
Just like before.
Ace sighed, watching Kiki's finger go round and round on the back of his hand. Funny, how complicated things got when you weren't paying attention. "So what I'm going to do is... exactly what I did before. She... she changes nothing."
|
|
|
Post by Kiki on Jan 12, 2006 7:16:51 GMT
"She changes nothing," Kiki repeated slowly, allowing the words to roll around her tongue. Kiki didn't wholly agree with that statement, she felt that Rose changed a lot more than Ace realised. But then, it was highly possible that Ace and Kiki perceived the entire situation differently. They were stuck? Then it did make Kiki the 'other woman', although the entire scenario was definately so much more complicated than that. She still didn't remember all of it as she had been possessed or something to that effect during most of it and that which she did remember was in the dark of the Vampire's Lair and she had been so disorientated after being knocked unconcious that she wasn't one hundred percent sure of what had happened.
It was an unspoken rule that they didn't really talk about it. Well, neither of them had really brought it up. Kiki thought it a little strange that Rose had not told Ace why she was here and that Ace was under the impression that Rose was only here for a fleeting visit. Judging from her past appearances at MH, Kiki could see how Ace easily drew that conclusion about Rose, although if she was planning to leave at her earliest convenience, then why was she looking for a job at the Ministry?
Kiki realised that she hadn't spoken since she'd blankly repeated his words that Rose's reappearance. Moving her head up suddenley to look at Ace, she was filled with the sudden desire to just throw caution to the winds and kiss him. A sudden surge of emotion ran through her body and Kiki wasn't entirely sure what it meant. Whether it was longing and desire for Ace or a wave of relief, affection...Kiki had no idea. It caught her off guard, however, and she decided against acting impulsively this time and instead shifted backward a little - not too much so that she was sitting in a fresh drift of snow but enough that it was more of a distance to lean forward to kiss Ace.
She realised that there could be some tell tale emotion in her eyes and she ducked her head quickly, hiding behind a curtain of hair that often served her well for exactly that purpose. The movement of throwing her body forward caused her to unbalance and with a shriek she toppled off the bench and landed on the ground on her back, tried to get up and gave up, letting her head fall back to rest on the ground. She began to laugh madly, almost on the verge of hysterical laughter, simply because the awkward air she hated had been vanquished in one comical movement.
|
|
Ace
Professor
Vampire
Passion rules us all
Posts: 495
|
Post by Ace on Jan 13, 2006 0:39:04 GMT
Ace glanced sideways at Kiki and saw her violet eyes gazing into him. He smiled, softly... and there it was again. That spark, that undeniable attraction that was both curse and blessing. It was pulling him towards her, irrisistably. He almost leaned in...
But Kiki broke away, suddenly landing in a pile of snow. She burst out into laughter and Ace, catching the sudden hilarity of the moment, began to chuckle. He got up and walked over the small snowdrift, and offered a hand to pull her up.
"Nice trip, love?" he asked, chuckling, his green eyes twinkling at the no-longer-dignified Ministeress.
|
|
|
Post by Kiki on Jan 13, 2006 1:14:11 GMT
Kiki gasped for breath as she grinned madly through her laughter and took Ace's offered hand in hers. A twinkle of mischieviousness sparkled brightly in her eyes, inspired by Ace's teasing words. She braced herself for the tug that would bring her up and shook her hair out of her eyes and put her other hand up to link with Ace's.
"Such a nice trip that I think you should come too!" She declared and with a strong pull of Ace's arms, Kiki aimed that Ace overbalance and fall onto the snow next to her.
|
|