2 Feb 2025, 11:53
Scents and Sensibilities
Freaking out with Stephen Schwartz, @AngelFyre McCubbin
Saturday 19 October 2024
"I don't know where I put my wand. Have you seen my wand? I should have left already but I don't have my wand," Miles said as he looked around the cabin, turning over books and moving aside items that rested on tabletops - for the third time.
"I could possibly consider going without my wand but this is Hogwarts. You've heard what goes on around Hogwarts. We've seen what goes on around Hogwarts. I need my wand. I absolutely cannot leave without my wand." A fourth time overturned. "I won't. I won't leave without it. I'll be stuck here in the cabins with all the other losers that aren't going...." and that's when he paused to rest his gaze on Stephen. "I mean, I didn't mean all not going to this particular ball are losers, I just mean those without dates..." He sighed, placing his hands on his hips and looked downward with a sigh. There was no walking out of this one as his best friend stood there nearby; his best friend that was not going to the dance.
Truly though, this friend didn't fall into that category. IF Stephen wanted to go to the ball he certainly would have a date - a beautiful blond haired blue eyed date and without hesitation because he had a built in date to any event he ever should attend in his girlfriend of Hogwarts own EmmaLee LaDames. How sickening.
Not EmmaLee herself..... but girlfriend.
It would be the same no matter who she was. It would be the same no matter who he, if it should be, was. The thing was Miles got paired with a male dancing partner the last dance and while he thought that would be something terribly awkward as it began it ended up the least awkward thing in his life. Miles had enjoyed it. He had enjoyed it and he often thought back upon it. To him, it had become an awakening that opened his eyes to why all his relationships prior had failed.
And it opened his eyes to how he would think of pursuing new relationships in the future.
Only, he didn't want any relationship. He wanted one.
One relationship with one boy.
The boy he had just called a loser.
Yes, from the time of that dance to now, Miles Thatcher had found himself smitten. He had always held his best friend in high regard but something changed after that night and Miles began to see him in a new light - and it was anything but a loser.
But Stephen had EmmaLee. Stephen had a girlfriend. Girl.
Miles would just have to accept that and do his best to push it aside, focusing on friendship as they always had. "You know I didn't really plan to go this evening. We had that truth or dare game with the Thunderbird Quidditch Team and I got roped into it." It was his way of trying to apologize and also state, as he had prior to this day, why he was abandoning his friend. "You just can't break those types of commitments."
So Miles was going to the dance with fellow teammate Amber Frost Hart. She'd be fine. She needed a date. He needed a date. It wasn't anything more than that. At least, not on his part.
Miles pulled up his trunk and placed it onto the bed, causing his wand to bounce onto the floor. He looked down at it, then over to Stephen with a side smile. "Well there's one positive to the evening." He picked it up, slipping it in his back pocket of his snazzy wizarding suit, and then took out a bottle of cologne from his trunk, spraying it lightly.
Last edited by Simon Kincaid on 22 Feb 2025, 04:27, edited 1 time in total.
Be kind to one another. (*iNPC is Miles Thatcher)
20 Feb 2025, 09:10
Scents and Sensibilities
Amused by Miles and His High-Strung Self, @Simon Kincaid
October 19 - Evening of the Mystery Gala
Blue eyes continued to do their best impression of a typewriter as they scanned from the left to the right side of the page, and then dropped down a line to repeat the process. Of course, they were only reading the marks on the page and not leaving them, but at this point, his brain had not comprehended anything he had read on that page. The page, not that Miles would have noticed, had not been turned in at least the last 5 minutes. That was fine. Stephen's mind needed a break anyway, and Miles was supplying one heck of an entertaining little melt down.
"I don't know where I put my wand. Have you seen my wand? I should have left already but I don't have my wand." Miles was practically frothing. Stephen just kept his eyes trained on his book, having learned long ago that when Miles had these episodes, all questions, even if they seemed to be directed at him, were really just rhetorical. When Miles looked away, Stephen's eyes darted over to his buddy's bunk. An amused smirk was accompanied by an almost imperceptible shaking of his head. He could see Miles' wand perfectly from here. Maybe the lighting, or a fold of the blanket, was blocking his view. Whatever was going on, the wand was right where he set it down after he came back from his shower.
Perspective really was everything.
He was enjoying this, but he had no intention of keeping Miles in the dark too much longer about his wand's whereabouts. Whatever was behind his friend's display of angst wasn't caused by his missing wand. There was something else going on, and it wasn't hard to figure out what. Miles could dress it up neatly with a bow and tell himself that he had to leave his friend because of a game of truth or dare, and that might be a part of it, but it was not nearly the crux.
No, the crux was trauma and worry. Nearly getting blown to smithereens in Hogsmeade a week earlier would set anyone on edge. Miles had been injured himself, but even so, he had gotten Stephen, who was even more injured and nearly died, to the Hospital Wing with the help of EmmaLee and another boy named Jack. Stephen had had to stay overnight in the medical wing and had the distinct displeasure of swilling down Skele-gro for his ribs. It was a tough call on what was worse - the pain or the taste. He lied. It was not a tough call.
It was the taste.
"Miles, buddy. It's fine. Don't worry. Have a great time with Amber like the winner you are," and Stephen put a theatrical emphasis on the word winner. "I will not be alone. EmmaLee and I are going to have a quiet night together away from all festivities, so this loser will be in good hands," and he emphasized the word loser and winked at Miles to show no hard feelings had been taken when he had been lumped in with the "Single Pringles" Miles deemed to be losers.
Call it angst. Trauma. Worry. Breeding. Whatever it was, it was nice to know that Miles was a man of his word. Besides, this was Amber. A fellow Quidditch teammate. Best not to stand her up. Grievances like that sometimes had a nasty way of coming out sideways on the field in the heat of battle, and that wouldn't be good.
But, now that the world's problems inside of the cabin had been dealt with, Stephen was just about to tell Miles where his wand was. Miles discovered it on his own when his trunk's sudden appearance on the mattress popped it right into the air like an air popped kernel of corn. He picked the once-lost-but-not-really-lost-now-found-again-wand up off the floor, and Stephen smile-nodded at him. Then he promptly turned his attention back to his Physics textbook, hoping to now be able to concentrate on the meaning of the equations as his eyes did their repetitive typewriter moves from left to right.
With his nose truly buried in the book, he did not see Miles removing a bottle of cologne from his trunk. He did not consciously register any of it while it was all going on. It was only after Miles applied it, and was leaving the cabin, that the familiarity of the scent still lingering in the cabin wafted in Stephen's direction. When he got his first breath of it, his eyes stopped their typing and closed involuntarily as he leaned his head back against his headboard.
"Sandalwood." It was one of his very favorite scents. Smelling it, however, took him back to an odd time last spring when he danced with a boy to attempt to sneak into the masquerade without being detected by the watchful gaze of EmmaLee. Funny. He hadn't thought about that dance until now really, but he definitely remembered a tall boy. One who could climb a tree monkey fast and monkey accurate. A very reserved fellow. Tall. And he wore a fox mask. And had he mentioned he was tall? He was a good dancer, too, but of course, he wasn't moving backwards like Stephen had had to do.
But most of all, what was lighting up the memory sensors of his brain was the heavy, masculine scent of Sandalwood. The curiosity center had been lit up, too, and Stephen shot up off the bed to look out the window. He watched as Miles walked up the path, headed towards his date, and the questions started flying fast and furious.
Could it be? Surely not. Others must use Sandalwood cologne for special occasions as well. If it had been Miles, how had he never picked up on that until now? How had Miles not?
Or had he?
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The magic is real.