new bohemians

Emma Goldstein didn’t consider herself fond of public displays of affection. In fact, it teetered more towards hatred. She often yelled at couples snogging in public and scoffed at even a simple holding of hands. Yet here she stood, lips pressed against James’s, on full display at a very public boutique. It felt like fire blazing through her veins, and she wanted more. God, did she want more. 

But instead, laughs erupted from her lips at the mention of shopping further. Were all men this way? Not that Emma would know, given this was her first serious relationship (a term she hated, naturally). She dipped into a memory forcibly stowed away but never quite repressed. Emma’s father with a painfully uncomfortable expression on his face, explaining that all men always wanted one thing from women, and they do anything to reach that goal—lie and manipulate her, even. If only he knew that years later his second-born daughter would find a man who desired quidditch shopping over sex.

“Fucking hell.”

James smirked down on Emma, gently tugging her hand. “It’s not like it’ll take long. They’ll probably be sold out of half of it by now anyway.”

Niamh gripped the folder in her own hand with James’ approval, pulling it towards her, figuring out perhaps the approval wasn’t there 100% yet. “Well, if I know you,” A pair of eyes adverted to the ground, pretending to fixate on a crack in the pavement, as if to lessen the significance of her statement, “settling for an alright shouldn’t be enough. I hope it gets better.”

James relinquished the file without raising his eyes to meet Niamh’s face just yet. “It’s not bad,” he said. “Just different. Y’know, the swap---switching loyalties was never really my thing.”

Emma’s blood boiled a heat so warm it felt icy. She wanted to scream, call him every bad name ever fathomed, and throw every pair of sunglasses at James. Like hell did it matter the scene it would create. Emma yearned for pure and unadulterated rage. She breathed hot air through flared nostrils and fixed her gaze straight at his annoying, condescending, asinine face.

As quickly as the sensation overtook her, it transcended to passion. Without thinking and merely following bodily desires, Emma strode her way to James. She pressed him harshly against the wall, pinning him to it as her lips feverishly found his. The public spectacle slipped away, and Emma felt nothing but her and James swirling in a sea of chaos, lust, and rage. 

Though it was an unexpected shock, to have Emma all but on top of him in a matter of seconds, James didn’t hesitate to respond. With his hands at the lower end of her spine, inching to the back pockets of her jeans, he pulled away from Emma just long enough to ask a question.

“No. Not yet.”

Andi scoffed as she rolled over, though she smiled, hypocritically exercising the allegation she was about to make herself. “Tease.”

“Is that right?” Niamh offered out a hand, “Your Bangers sound more exciting than the ones I’ll have to prepare for their dinner tonight. Is it? More exciting, I mean. I can take that in for you, by the way.”

James looked at Niamh’s hand hesitantly, his fingers itching as his eyes honed in on the lines of her palm. He swallowed hard and grasped the folder in his hands even tighter. “Uh--- Yeah.” He looked up into Niamh’s face and smiled, but still didn’t relinquish his hold of the file. “Yeah, if you want.” There was a moment’s pause as he studied Niamh’s face with a blank expression on his own, trying to recall what else she had said, and what the appropriate response would be. “It’s alright, I guess.”

“You’re babysitting these days, too?”

“Nope.” James chuckled shyly. “Still just a quidditch bitch. You know how it goes.” How did it go? Running into your ex in the middle of work, when the last time you’d seen her had ended in the both of you crying? Apparently that was how it went.

“Did you hear me? Babysitting.”

“Do you know the couple that live here?”

“My coworker. Boss, actually. I just stopped by to drop something off.”

“I was told to be here half past three to babysit. Here I am. But they sound awfully busy themselves, don’t they?”

“Well,” Ace looked out at Andi from underneath the blanket. “I know something that could pass the time.”

“Maybe I need a fourth time.”

James huffed, the air flowing hot and high-pitched from his nose as his fists balled into the back of his scalp.

“Okay, here’s what’s up.” He pushed himself out of his chair and vaulted over to Emma in only two and a half large, heavy steps. “You obviously know what you’re looking for, and it’s not here. Or,” he emphasized as he plucked the pair of sunglasses from Emma’s hand and clumsily plopped them back onto the display rack, “you have no idea and need someone to point you in the right direction. So---” James’ tongue fell out of his mouth as he considered the wide array of tinted lenses and their cheaply decorated frames. He sucked in his tongue and clucked it against the roof of his mouth just as he picked a pair at random and held them up for Emma to see.

“These. Either you love them and you want them, or you hate them and know exactly what you do want, or you know what it is isn’t here. Either way---” James shoved the pastel patterned frames into Emma’s hands and took a step backwards, pointing behind him with a hitchhiker’s thumb. “You don’t need me here anyway, so I’m just gonna get a head start on the new iHowl display at the other end.”

“Because I don’t want to settle without considering everything, Jamie.”

“And you’ve considered everything how many times now? Three?”

“No,” Ace lay back, pulling the blanket over his face. Moments later, his hand snaked out, reaching for his own iHowl to double check. “I don’t.”

“Bummer,” Andi lamented, patting Ace’s thigh through the blanket a little roughly. “I mean, that we’re up early now.” She stretched her limbs out like a cat, yawn and all, and then curled back into an even tighter ball. “And Merlin knows long it’ll be before we fall back asleep.”

“And what if they are?”

James forced a smile. Keeping the peace was not his strong suit, not in the same way that blurting the first thought that came to his mind was. It was difficult to make the two work together.

With a rather dramatic hit to the alarm clock, Ace fell back onto the bed, shooting an unimpressed glance in Andi’s direction. “No where. Why was that fucking thing on?”

“Well it’s not for me.” Andi had triple checked the planner in her iHowl the night before to ensure that the coming day was as free as she had thought it was not simply too good to be true. Her nose wrinkled itself back into her face as she curled up in a ball of covers confidently to make her point---and a little bit to mask her disappointment. She “You don’t have any, like, interviews or whatever going on today?”

“So… What about these?”

“I’m up, I’m up.”

“I’m not,” Andi groaned as she recovered from the startling. She pulled herself up slowly and propped her head against the pillows. “As if the fucking alarm wasn’t enough without you busting your skull on the ceiling.” But her irritation fell away quickly as the image of Ace jumping out of bed played itself over in her head.

“If someone else asked about it, would they get the same answer, or is busting my balls a side benefit?” 

Frances sniffed condescendingly at the crass phrase. “That’s more energy than it was ever worth. What do you take me for, a teenager?”