seems electric ; never coming down { JR }

"Yeh, you're too scrawny for a beater," he said automatically before he glanced at her and realized it wasn't exactly the nicest way to put it. It was true, but still. He wasn't sure how to fix it so he just stuck his tongue out at her and leaned back in his chair so he could bring his foot up to nudge her knee. She could still do more pushups than him probably, but no way was he going to admit that. She'd probably try to challenge him every day just to see if it was true. He had been trying to do more pushups every morning before the rest of the boys woke up. Not like that had helped him in games though, he thought darkly.

JR swallowed a bit as she shifted forward, her feet on the chair beside him, his left leg jiggling a bit as her words hit a chord within him, but he tried not to show it. He and Tomie were friends and they hung out all the time, but they weren't really this 'sharey.' And it felt weird. Like all of his insides were being scooped out and put on display and he just wanted to shove them back in his chest where they could fester by themselves quietly.

But every word she said felt so true and he wasn't quite sure how she had put it into words so easily. He had been wrestling with these feelings since the second game and still he wasn't quite sure what to do with them. How did she have it all figured out. It just keep revving him up and he nodded and then nodded again, feeling seen as she glanced at him and the words just spilled out without permission. "Yeah and how no matter how hard you try, no matter how much extra practice you do, it doesn't matter because everyone else has had years on you and there's no hope of being better than them. And it just sucks because it's like you can't win." His gaze skittered away towards the end and the tops of his ears felt like they were burning.

Shoot. He had said too much.

Too scrawny for a beater?? Well he didn’t have to say it like that. She rolled her eyes as he nudged her, smacking his foot away with her quill-hand, getting a little ink on them both. She put her quill down with her Valentine’s day notes, wiping her hand absentmindedly on her track pants.

Tomie felt a cringing sort of feeling in her chest when he started speaking, but it was immediately extremely clear to her that there was a mutual kind of understanding here. She squished her face lower into her hands, still frowning. She nodded once when he finished, but she wasn’t sure he’d seen it; he was looking away now. Hiding her thoughts wasn’t exactly Tomie’s forte, and it was only a moment before she was speaking again. The flying high had evaporated, but the conversational turn had her all worked up. Her heart beat a little faster in her chest.

“Like, I don’t wish I hadn’t aced my try-outs, because I freakin’ killed it—“ she felt a very brief flash of triumph remembering how incredibly well she’d done that day; so much better than everyone else, from her perspective, “—But sometimes I feel like I, I dunno, tricked my way onto the team…” She sighed again, “…and now I’m just this massive let down.”

"Aw, come on," JR groaned in complaint and then frowned deeply at her as he saw the ink on his new, very white trainers. He tried to wipe at it, but it made it worse and he immediately grabbed his wand, wanting to fix it. But then he paused. "Know the ink removal charm?" he muttered then watched with disdained shock as she wiped her hand on her pants. On second thought, she probably didn't know it. Or didn't care to.

As she started in on her try outs, he tried to sit back and remind himself that he could clean his sneakers later, but he couldn't help glancing down once or twice as she spoke. One side of his mouth quirked upwards as he remembered her performance at tryouts. It had been easy to see why she made the team, even if they were only second years. "Yeah, but," he interjected, "At least you don't have to live up to the Great Wyatt Hawkins," complaining again as he crossed his arms in front of him. "Do you know how many owls he's sent just in this past week alone. I'm starting to dread the morning mail drop."

Tomie’s brown eyes flicked to his shoes as he asked her about cleaning charms. Oops. “Um, nah, but just ask a prefect — I get Killian Buckley to do mine all the time.” All the time was a bit of an overstatement, but she definitely had asked Ki to fix a couple of things for her from time to time. Ink stains on her white shirts. Grass stains on her white shirts. Dirt stains — well, she got the picture across, anyway. He’d tried to teach her the best charm for ink removal after she’d asked him a few times to do it for her, but it had gone in one ear and out the other. After she’d managed to swap Phillip out for Mavis, she’d done her best to seem cool around Mavis’ friends. Killian was a prefect, though; she wanted to be liked, but seeming cool didn’t feel as pertinent.

“Really?” Tomie said, glancing at him, a frown appearing. “About your game?” She searched his expression a little, but then remembered that JR didn’t like talking about his feelings so directly and glanced down at the Valentine’s day cards instead. She pulled out a new one, wrote To Trudy at the top absentmindedly. “I hadn’t really thought about that,” she admitted, “must be a lot of pressure.”

"Buckley? Is he the nerdy one?" JR asked, his 'no thanks' silently tacked on to the end of his sentence as he shook his head. He'd look up the spell himself. It should be simple enough, right? He frowned at the ink stain as if he could glare it away.

Her followup questions made his face feel hot and he glanced away so he didn't have to see the expression on her face. Was it pity? It was probably pity. Shoot, he had said too much. Should've just kept quiet about it. He swallowed thickly and shrugged. "Yeah, but it's not a big deal," he said changing his tune from complaint to what he hoped was nonchalance.

He wasn't even sure how to talk about the pressure of being the son of a quiditch great. Maybe in a few years, he could hope to beat some of his dad's records from when he was at school or maybe when he made it into the league itself. But right now? He just felt like he was going up against an ocean of competition with no way to win. "It sucks," he admitted lowly before he slid his gaze to her, unable to resist the glance to see what she might be thinking.

But he felt too idle so he grabbed one of the Valentine's Day cards himself and one of the extra quills that was on the table and played with the feather end as he debated on whether he would write one to someone. He didn't want to talk about his problems anymore though. It felt too raw, too open, too uncomfortable. "How's your practices been going though?" he asked, trying to steer the conversation back to her.

“Yeah,” Tomie said, one side of her lips quirking in an affectionate smile. Mavis — her SNAIL buddy — was nerdy too, sort of, but not the same way Killian was. There was Mavis, Killian, Josie and Nola (JR’s sister! At this point Tomie just saw her as one of Mavis’ friends), who were all Gryffindors, and then there was sometimes Jae Kim (who she and Shelby had discussed at one point), and Billie-something who was Wendy’s SNAIL person and quite pretty —  at least Tomie thought so. There were more, probably, but she’d only hung out with Mavis at lunch a couple of times and she’d tried not to seem like she was trying too hard to remember everyone’s names.

Not a big deal. Sure. Looking after her friends came naturally to Tomie, and while she was certainly compelled to be more direct and just ask him outright what was going on with his dad, she went with her gut and focused on her Valentine’s day cards instead; she knew, instinctively, that he’d respond better if their conversation wasn’t under the spotlight. So her thoughts shifted from meandering around fifth-year social groups to JR, but she kept her eyes on the little notes in front of her. She just nodded when he said it sucked, trying not to frown too much.

“Practice has been pretty good,” Tomie mused out loud, her quill hovering over her paper momentarily. “I’ll probably screw it up in the game, though,” she said, a little quieter but loud enough for him to hear. Her quill touched parchment — You’re the best! She wrote, even if you are WAY too into Vera and Mikky as a couple (EW. OLD NEWS.) She finished the note with a big smiley face, then signed it.

A lot of the time, she thought, when she shared, he shared back. Here goes, she thought. “JR...” She glanced at him, frowning again. “Have I told you I didn’t tell my parents I got onto the team? They're really...” She pressed her lips together, glancing up and to the right, trying to think of the word. "Really sort of, old school?"

JR nodded. He vaguely knew Buckley as one of Nola's friends, but more so as one of the Gryff prefects to avoid. Besides all of Nola's friends were so loud and he wasn't interested in knowing any of them more than he had to. He eyed the smile on Tomie's face and looked at her incredulously. He was guessing she liked them, but he couldn't really sort out why.

"I'm sure you won't," JR countered her. "We can practice extra if you want," he even offered. Sure, they were some of the youngest players on the pitch, but JR  had seen her raw talent and skill ever time she flew. He wondered if she enjoyed it more since her parents probably weren't on her case the way that Wyatt Sr was on his. The Slytherin sketched inky, dark abstract lines on a card as writing a message to anyone wasn't something that he really wanted to do. The card filled with more and more ink as he jiggled his leg under the table.

"What?" he automatically replied as he kept scratching ink on to the card. As she paused, he glanced up at her, his brows pulling together at her frown. "What?" he asked again, tuning in a little more this time, sitting up a little straighter. "No?" JR said immediately, then thought back real quick. Had she told him and he was just so self-absorbed he hadn't remembered. He tried to wrack his brain for any memory of it. Nope, nothing. "I don't think you did. Told me, I mean. But.. why wouldn't you? They wouldn't.. approve of it?" he asked looking at her even as she gazed at something to the side.

He countered her immediately and she had to resist the urge to either roll her eyes or tease back. He was being supportive, which was nice! She had just been punishing herself since November, so the voice in her head was pretty loud by now. “That’d be cool,” Tomie said, trying not to seem weird about it or anything. “Today was fun,” she added, glancing at him with a quick smile before looking back down at her notes. Wendy’s was done, she thought, folding it in half and putting it to the side. She grabbed another, paused, then wrote TO THE ONE AND ONLY at the top in all caps.

“Yeaaahh,” she said, grimacing. She met his eye for a beat, then went back to writing Benny’s Valentine’s day note. She felt awkward talking about it — she only ever really talked about it with Benny, and he lived downstairs from her, back home; he already knew.

I don’t think you did. “Prob’ly not,” Tomie said, not looking at him, knowing full well that she’d done her best to never ever talk about her parents with anyone at school. She chewed her lower lip for a minute, then stopped writing. She sighed. “They have this… Idea,” she admitted, “of what I’m supposed to be like.” Tomie looked at him then, the frown still on her face. She didn’t want him to tell anyone about it, but having strict parents couldn’t be worse than having MatMav and Hazel convincing everyone she was, well — “It’s just. Pressure. You know?” She thought he did. She exhaled a frustrated sigh. “I’m supposed to just… Keep my head down and get good grades and be a doctor or a wife or whatever.”

"Yeah, it was," he agreed shortly, echoing her smile for a brief moment. Too bad regular games weren't as fun. Why couldn't they be as fun? He wondered if it would be different if Tomie was on his team rather than an opposing one. Was that the difference? He frowned as he looked back down at the card he was drawing on.

JR wasn't used to Tomie being this hesitant. It was weird. Maybe that meant it was serious. He glanced up at her again, watching her bite her lip as he ran his fingertips across the silky smooth feathers of his quill for a moment before he decided that giving her time might be easier. He put his head down to focus more on his abstract lines, giving up on the idea entirely of writing a Valentine's Day card (because really what would he write? "You don't suck that much" to Benny?).

He slowly brought his gaze back to her though. They have this idea of what I’m supposed to be like. His chest felt tight in ways he didn't like at all, but his dark eyes were narrowed. Was she.. making fun of him? How would she know what's how he felt? She didn't know that he w-- wait. He analyzed the look on her face and her tone and backtracked. Maybe, he wasn't sure how, he had a friend who knew how he felt. And he hadn't even realized. "Like they have your whole life planned out already and you want to make them happy but it's bloody hard to live up to the perfect life they have mapped out for you?" he asked, for once not guarding his words, his eyes meeting hers, instinctively understanding what she was saying even if their situations were vastly different.

Maybe that's why today had been so fun. Because, up in the air, they could be whatever they wanted.

Tomie frowned when he started talking, her chest hurting a bit. There had been so many things to feel shitty about recently that she’d forgotten to feel bad about the fact that she felt like her parents didn’t know her at all, that she was constantly on the brink of disappointing them. She thought about Shelby and the whole kiss thing from this perspective. She wanted to curl up.

She wasn’t entirely focused on herself, though. JR wasn’t joking around, and he wasn’t even scowling or playing it off like some inevitable thing out of his control that he didn’t really care about. He was being open for once, and that was cool. She felt a little rush of something. “Yeah,” she breathed. It was different, she thought; she didn’t have her dad on her back for how badly she’d played, so in some ways she was a lot freer than him. But having what felt like a secret life going on where she couldn’t be herself was bad in a different way, too. (She did her best to banish Shelby from her mind, here).

Regardless, there was common ground; she felt close to him.

“Like, of course you love them,” she said, wanting to stress this point as she slipped into second-person perspective too, “but you’re always so close to messing it up. Or maybe—“ Tomie put her things down and slid off of the tabletop and into the seat beside him. She rested an elbow on the table, her cheek in her palm. “Maybe you already have, and you’re just waiting for them to realise it.” She shook her head. "I feel so stupid sometimes," she added quietly.

Yeah. One word made something in his chest unravel a little. It wasn't what she said really, but how she said it. He had always been drawn to Tomie in some ways or another, a flicker of a memory of the dance at camp shot through his mind, but he hadn't expected her to ever understand what he was going through. Not when her family and status was so different than his. Not that that was a bad thing, really. Just different.

But here she was saying some of the exact feelings that he had and he wasn't quite sure how to deal with the subtle change. JR swallowed thickly as she moved closer into the chair next to him, his dark eyes still tracking her. He didn't think she was playing him and she sounded genuine, but there was still a glimmer of doubt lingering even as he nodded. "Yeah and it's not like you can try any harder than you already are, but they want so much from you and you're not sure what to do first," he added to the little narrative they were connecting over.

He had to sit back in his seat as she uttered the last few words, needing that distance from something that felt too claustrophobic all of a sudden. He wanted to grab his broom and maybe grab her hand if he was brave enough and shoot back into the air. He didn't want to think of all of this even though he knew it would be on his mind for the rest of the day, if not the week. He didn't want her to feel stupid. So he just said, "You're not," and left it simply at that.

Tomie watched JR, spinning all these words around in her head like a record. They want so much from you, he said and she had to nod again, her gaze skipping down to the table. She didn’t want to think that she couldn’t do it — couldn’t be who her parents wanted her to be. She was still dedicated, at the heart of it, to making them and the rest of her family proud. They’d never been disappointed with Matthias, it didn’t look like Kembara would ever do anything to let them down; it couldn’t be her that did, it just couldn’t. But.

But she was the only one who pushed the edges of their expectations. The only one, it seemed, who felt compelled to.

He leaned back and she looked at him again, not wanting him to draw back from the conversation like he was physically doing. “Oh,” she said, when he responded, her face a little warm from the way he was looking at her. She was quiet for a beat, recovering from the weight of their conversation. The heaviest she’d had for who knew how long.

“Uh, thanks,” she said eventually, her lip quirking on one side, a touch of tease in her smile belied by warmth in her gaze. “You’re not stupid either.” Another pause. Tomie took a deep breath, then exhaled, her shoulders relaxing as she straightened up in her seat, too. She looked away, needing a tension-free second to gather herself. “Wow,” she said, her smile halfway between teasing and self-aware embarrassment. “Didn’t mean to uh…” She trailed off, then shrugged, shook her head.

“I don’t really talk about that stuff,” she said. It was half a confession and half a prompt for reassurance; she didn’t want other people to know how lame her parents were, and she especially didn’t want them to know how much she cared about it all.

"Er, thanks?" he said, a brow quirked, his tone hinting at sarcasm since he hadn't exactly called himself stupid, but the thought was appreciated. He let out a breath with her and glanced down at the annoying ink on his shoe, letting himself be distracted by it for a temporary reprieve before he glanced back at her. He smirked in reaction to her smile and rolled his eyes. Yeah, the whole sharing thing wasn't really his forte. Obviously.

"Oh really, didn't know that," he said, the sarcasm heavy this time as he shook his head. It was another thing they had in common and he was surprised that he had felt comfortable enough to say anything at all to her. Why was it always Tomie? His cheeks felt warm and his hands felt weirdly clammy so he cracked his knuckles with satisfying little popping sounds as he shrugged again. "Just know I'll wallop you on the pitch if you tell anyone," he said with a cheery tone, forcing what he hoped was a joking tone, but there was a sliver of doubt and uncertainty there in his gaze too as he flicked his gaze back to her.

An errant thought flickered through his mind. "Speaking of walloping someone, did you hear the crap Maverick was saying about you?" It wasn't exactly a secret by now, not that JR believed a word of it. His housemate seemed to have it out for Tomie ever since she punched him in the face at camp last summer. "Seems like he's looking for another broken nose. Want me to help?" he asked with a cherubic smile that showed off his dimples.

Tomie gave a small smile when he rolled his eyes, glad for the shift back to something more like normalcy, even if it had felt nice to get all of that out of her brain. She nudged his leg with her knee, half complaining and half affectionate. “Yeah good luck with that,” she scoffed. She caught the doubt in his eyes, thought, and made sure her teasing was on the warmer side, to reassure him.

Her smile froze on her face when he said his name. For a beat, she felt panicked, but then she felt a sudden rush of relief; JR was definitely on her side. “I know, right,” Tomie said, giving a laugh that was only shaky right at the start. “You kiss one girl on a dare and suddenly you’re a “lesbian”.” She did the air quotes, then laughed again, feeling a little high as they came out of the Very Serious part of their conversation and into their usual playful space. No way in hell would she ever have thought she’d feel comfortable and even relieved to be talking about this of all things. She felt a lot less vulnerable than before.

“Maybe we can get him back somehow,” she said, raising her eyebrows playfully. “Guess he didn’t learn his lesson at camp.” She was glad they could joke about that. It had become mythologised, sort of, in a way that was far cooler than her thinking about it by herself and having weird feelings.

"I could, if I wanted to," he assured her, his usual confidence and swagger returning to him. She was quicker but he had more endurance. Not that he would actually do it, but the challenge would be fun. He pushed his leg back against her knee, returning the nudge briefly even though the movement felt like a dare all on its own.

"Oh, so it's true?" he asked, leaning forward to grab his quill and return to the abstract lines he had been doing, the card half filled by now. He had heard the rumors about the kiss, but it was truth or dare and it's not like he would trust a single word that came from Matt or Hazel. Not when it came to the seemingly archaic Slytherin/Gryffindor feud they had going with Tomie at times. He couldn't help but think why he hadn't been invited to the game, but then again, he had been so focused on quidditch lately.. but still.

"I'll help," JR volunteered with a grin. "Heard he doesn't like snakes. Funny since he's a Slytherin and all, right?" he said, giving her ammunition that he hoped she could use. He wasn't exactly the chivalrous type, that felt much too Gryffindorish to him, and besides Tomie could fight her own battles, but JR wouldn't mind shutting Maverick up. He was annoying and it made him wonder how he had gotten so unlucky to be stuck in a dorm with him for the next five years. Made him wish his mum could request a private, single room or something.. why wasn't that an option. He missed having his own room.