WHO: Marissa MacFusty and Iwan Quigley!
WHAT: Preciousness!
WHERE: Tornadoes Stadium!
WHEN: RIGHT after their match!
She’d realized just after leaving the party without Iwan that she’d made a huge mistake. He’d told her that he
loved her, not that he was secretly a
Death Eater or something ridiculous like that -- and yet that was how she’d reacted, with fear and terror and the same stupid,
stupid crippling sense of dread that her life was going to change forever and she wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it.
By the time she’d gotten home, a shaky apparated mess, she’d realized that it didn’t
matter if her life was going to change forever. That was going to happen anyway, it continued to happen whether she wanted it to or not -- so maybe she should’ve just said yes from the beginning. The thing about being stubborn, though, and increasingly paranoid, is that she hadn’t been able to convince herself that she could just go straight back to Iwan and expect him to take her apology seriously. She wasn’t the flighty teenager she’d been a decade ago, and she needed to stop acting like one.
It
hurt to be away from him for this long, but what she needed was a grand, sweeping gesture.
She hauled the magically-expanded trunk behind her, trekking past the security guards who protested with a muttered excuse and a flash of her ministry badge. It at least got them to leave her alone -- fortunately, none of them had taken a look at the fact that the badge was for the Experimental Charms department. Huffing, she listened for the announcer in the distance.
And the Tornadoes Win! ...well, that was her cue. Taking in a deep breath to quell her nerves, she stepped foot out onto the Quidditch pitch and shouted, at the top of her lungs,
“I love you, Iwan Quigley!” … and the loud, booming voice that came out of her mouth signaled to her that the amplification charm that she’d whipped up late last night had most certainly worked.
Iwan had just finished his victory lap, snitch tightly grasped in his hand when the voice shook the stadium. He nearly fell off his broom, and the crowd began to roar louder which just made things so bloody confusing! What was---
strange things seemed to happen on the Tornadoes’ pitch! Iwan stared down at the pitch, and he let out a choked laugh at the unmistakeable fiery red hair of Marissa MacFusty.
His heart thudded nearly out of his chest as he quickly descended to the ground, ignoring the hollering from his teammates and the stadium announcers detailing his every move.
“
And Quigley makes it down to the pitch at record speeds, looks like he’s shooting after the snitch once more, eh Larry?"
“
Looks like it, Bob,”
He grinned; no, no, this was much better than catching a golden snitch.
Iwan jumped to the ground a few feet before his broomstick landed, the momentum nearly throwing him to the ground. He managed to stop himself before crashing into her, breathless at the mere sight of Marissa after so long. He had feared that maybe he wouldn’t feel the same when he finally saw her, but his heart immediately started pounding.
“Do you, now?” he said, smiling from ear to ear.
He hadn’t started flying in the other direction, as she’d so feared that he would. That would’ve been a punch to the gut, wouldn’t it? Make a grand, sweeping gesture only to be publicly rebuffed? It would’ve been no less than she deserved, though, and that was why she’d made herself go through with this. He was rushing toward her, and she felt her cheeks heat with excitement at the same moment that he came to a stop in front of her.
She dropped her trunk with an audible thud, barely having the presence of mind to shut off the vocalization charm and make sure that the rest of the stadium didn’t hear the very obvious collision of her lips against his. She didn’t pull back until she was sure she’d given him a thorough snog, arms tight around his shoulders. It didn’t matter that he was a sweaty mess, and it didn’t matter that there were probably hundreds of people taking a photo of her conspicuously shiny golden hand right now. This -- this wasn’t about them.
Marissa took a moment to catch her breath (again) before she spoke, still clutching tightly at his quidditch robes as if afraid that he was going to somehow fly away again.
“...yeah. Especially for putting up with my bloody stupid self.” Merlin knew she had her flaws, but that hadn’t seemed to bother Iwan. And sometimes, when she was with him, she felt like they didn’t bother her so much, either. That was as good a sign as any, wasn’t it?
He’d always had such
worries about being in public, about people watching him and judging, but the past year had changed Iwan so much. The Tornadoes were the best thing to ever happen to him, he’d grown confidence because he had good people around him, and his feelings for Marissa gave him a strength he’d never thought he’d have. Iwan kissed her fully, arms wrapped tightly around her because he felt like he never wanted to be away from her again.
With a slight shake of his head, Iwan kissed her quickly again before pulling back. She wasn’t stupid, there was nothing stupid about her. “I love you, Marissa MacFusty,” Iwan said with a sense of purpose.
There was a strange tingling in his hand and Iwan had to force himself to loosen his grip on her as he brought his fist up in between them. He let out a laugh and opened his fist, allowing the snitch in his hand to zip around their heads and then disappear into the bright lights of the stadium. Only then did Iwan realize that the
entire stadium had their eyes on the pair (literally, they were on the big screen nearly a hundred feet tall).
“Er----” Iwan flushed deeply, and the crowd reacted with oohs and ahhhs. He dropped his head back to Marissa’s, “Should we find a more private place for this?”
Nobody in the stadium could doubt her sincerity in that moment, as far as she was concerned. People were never going to let her live this down, and she was sure that she would not have it any other way. This was permanent and lasting, and everyone here knew it now. She let out an abrupt laugh as the snitch flitted off, her own cheeks still bright red with the wind and her own emotion nipping at them.
“--yeah, that might be wise. I mean, I guess this is probably
great publicity…” At least this had worked out, so now she was confident that the security wasn’t going to just be dragging her back out of the stadium in chains. She hooked one arm around his waist, deciding that now might be the time to start taking a little bit of the initiative, and started to walk them back toward the player’s entrance to the stadium. She leaned her head in near to him to whisper, “Just don’t take too long getting us there.”
