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A neck hooked around her shoulder and neck, pulling her slightly sideways. Dorcas looked up to see James Potter with fire and life in his eyes looking between her and Marlene McKinnon.
Oh, good Lord.
“You ladies ready to play some quidditch out there? Meadowes? Huh, McKinnon?” His eyes sparkled in excitement. You could tell James he would die tomorrow, but as long as he got to play quidditch today, he would die a happy man.
And as long as Lily was somewhere nearby. Fucking lovebirds. Disgusting.
Dorcas cast a look at Marlene and rolled her eyes. She smirked back.
“Hell yeah, Potter,” she said sarcastically.
Marlene actually loved the sport. Like James, it was like it was in her blood. Dorcas liked the game once she was actually playing. Until then, she remained a nervous wreck. She played because she was good and she liked doing it. And maybe one other reason. She did not play because she had a death wish. Most successful quidditch players needed one of those.
But, nevertheless, she stood looking at the pitch, adorning the Gryffindor uniform, broom in hand.
James took his arms away, pushing Dorcas and Marlene together, to go bother some poor third-year and find Sirius. Dorcas looked back at Marlene.
“Nervous?” Marlene’s eyebrow was raised. It was a redundant question and delivered as so.
“I don’t see how you aren’t.”
“Eh. I just play like Madam Pomfrey misses me.”
“You’re insane.” Dorcas shook her head.
“And you love it.”
The two of them joked like this all the time, but it still made Dorcas’ cheeks go a bit pink.
“You wish.”
James walked to the front of them now, Sirius behind him with his hand on his shoulder, hyping him up.
“Alright, Gryffindor. Everyone showed exemplary work at practice this week, I saw vigor and skill in all of you and I expect to see it out on this pitch today. This is one of the best teams Gryffindor has ever seen and we are sure as hell going to play like it. Every single one of you has more talent and work ethic than every one of those Slytherins, and I am so pumped to see us win this game today. Because we are going to win this game today, aren’t we?”
The team cheered.
“Hell yeah! Come on, Gryffindor on three. One, two, three–”
“GRYFFINDOR!”
“That’s what I like to hear! Now let’s go out there and kick ass!”
He was insanely cheesy. Every speech he gave was spent exchanging glances with Marlene. It was so James though, you could not be angry.
Dorcas tightened her grip on her broom, mounted it, and soared onto the pitch, settling into the starting formation. She was aware the announcer was saying something, but actively tuned out the words. Her heart pounded in her chest. She could throw up. She could cry. She would not, but she could. Theoretically.
The box clicked open, and the game stirred awake. Dorcas turned her broom quickly, making her way to the goal to guard it. She continuously looked over her shoulder for bludgers, she knew she had a minute before she had to guard the goal. James and Marlene were incredible chasers and had caught the quaffle first. As she righted herself, a bludger came at her and she ducked, feeling the wind of it blow past her. She saw flashes of pale and black as Sirius moved behind her to hit it back. The attempted blow was poorly timed, too soon in the game, and James scored. It was typical to try to get the keeper out as soon as possible, but Gryffindor had a new fourth-year keeper who was pretty good if Dorcas got taken out, so she thought maybe they should focus on the game at hand more than her demise.
In response to the goal, Slytherin had the quaffle again and made their way toward her, ducking out of the way of Sirius’s bludger. The boy ducked and jived in an attempt to throw her off, but he was pretty predictable. He passed the quaffle to his teammate, who immediately attempted to score. Dorcas’ hand made contact with it, pulling her and her broom only slightly, and she redirected back to Marlene.
“FUCK YEAH, BABY!” Marlene yelled, quaffle in hand.
“Just for you, McKinnon!” She yelled back.
The first boy turned around quickly, and a beater threw her entire force at Marlene to throw her off. Marlene let her broom drop, and the girl tumbled over her. Marlene continued forward, as though nothing had happened. You could see the adrenaline pouring out of her.
Sometimes, Dorcas wondered how much either of them was joking when they flirted like that. Every day, Dorcas felt like she was joking less.
This was problematic, so she ignored it most of the time. Having a crush on your roommate was unideal and, apparently, unoriginal amongst the people in her year. So she tried to keep her head pretty quiet about it. Maybe Marlene was just undeniably hot, and it had nothing to do with Dorcas at all.
The game continued like it always did on a good day, and James was right, they were having a good season. Everyone got pushed and shoved and Dorcas could not block two goals but it did not matter because James had made six alone and Sirius had roughed up the poor people who had made the goals.
Finally, when the sweat dripping down her forehead was really starting to get to her, Gryffindor’s seeker caught the snitch.
Game over.
The Gryffindors did a victory lap and dismounted their brooms. Dorcas looked out among the maroon sea to find a speck of platinum blonde hair. She made her way toward it, finding her two other roommates, Lily and Mary, as well as Remus and Peter, by her.
Marlene caught her eye, jumped, and ran in her direction. Her eyes shone and her hair was drenched in sweat, and she collided into her, arms around her neck and cheek pressed to her cheek. Dorcas wrapped her arms around Marlene, and they were, for a moment, enveloped in one another. Then Dorcas leaned her head back, placed a kiss on Marlene’s cheekbone, as was typical, and pulled away.
No, Dorcas could not explain to you why that was typical, and she did not intend on ruminating on it. That was a 2 a.m. activity. Midnight, if she had an early morning.
Dorcas could not help but grin through soaring back to the castle, listening to another one of James’ speeches and his debrief, and her shower. As much as she did not love the moments before a match, she loved the moments afterward, especially if they won. The energy was contagious, everyone buzzed with happiness and endorphins. It was something she could soak in forever.
She let the soap roll off of her body, her smile still on her face, and let the steam take over the room. She eventually made herself turn the water off and grab her towel, letting that warmth wrap her, too, finally changing into loose clothes. When she pulled the curtain away, Marlene stood there, her hair soaking and her makeup a bit messy. A tee shirt hung on her shoulders, slightly too large for her, and exposed her left collarbone. Dorcas lifted her gaze up to her eyes.
“The Slytherin fucker did a number on my shoulder.” She laughed, lifting her sleeve a bit. A large bruise was starting to form, taking up a good portion of her upper arm. It was ghastly.
“Good God, Marls,” Dorcas breathed.
She took two steps forward and closed the space between them, moving her sleeve and brushing her fingertips lightly just underneath the bruise. Marlene’s breath caught, but she let her do it. Dorcas took her gaze away from the bruise to look back at her eyes. They were blinding and bright and trained on her.
Then, as if that had not happened, as if Dorcas couldn’t feel her breath, she shrugged and said, “If you think that one’s bad, you should see the one on my hip.”
She lifted the hem of her shirt to up her waist and barely pulled the band of her shorts down to show a section of skin, as promised, bruised worse than her arm.
“Hm,” Dorcas hummed quietly. “Might need Madam Pomfrey to check that out.”
“Yeah,” she replied warily. “I said she misses me.”
Dorcas let out a small laugh at this. No matter what you did to her skin, Marlene’s ego was never bruised.
There was a slight moment of awkwardness, now. They were too close, but Dorcas did not want to move, and Marlene did not either. Dorcas was typically more disciplined than this. She looked down.
“Cas,” Marlene muttered. Dorcas raised her head to meet her.
When she did, before she could register it happening, Marlene was kissing her. Lightly. Kindly. It was so uncharacteristic of her, the softness. And as quickly as it came, it was gone.
Fear shone in Marlene’s eyes. It was a rare sight that Dorcas may have appreciated more if her head was not spinning. She struggled to speak.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have–oh my God,” Marlene stammered, turning away.
Oh.
Dorcas gently took her wrist.
“No, no. I want to–I just–” She looked for the words and leveled her gaze. “If we do this we can’t go back.”
Marlene’s features melted and a smile crept across her face.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
And Marlene pulled her back in, and they were kissing again. She felt the moisture on her skin, felt the softness of the fabric of her tee shirt. She reached to hold the side of her neck, letting her nails brush her skin as she did it. She shivered slightly beneath her touch and pulled back slightly.
“Fuck you, Meadowes.”
And Marlene’s hands grabbed her jaw and pulled her back in and Dorcas could not keep herself from smiling because this was real. The girl in front of her was real and she had not been delusional or crazy or daft for slowly falling in love with her and letting herself believe part of Marlene loved her back. She shook her head.
“This whole time you were flirting with me for real?”
Marlene laughed. “Oh, yeah I was. Figured I had enough plausible deniability to pull it off.”
“You sure as hell did.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Hm. I think I’ll forgive you.”
“Don’t enable me.”
She felt her eyelashes on her cheek and her lips against her own. She smelled like her. The smell she took in during potions that had made her stomach drop. She basked in it now. She basked in her.
She lifted the hem of Marlene’s shirt (on the side that was not bruised), and wrapped her fingers around her waist, pulling her body slightly closer, making her crane her neck higher. She felt drunk. She forgot where they were for a second, and had to pool together energy to remember. Like waking from a disorienting dream. Not a bad one, though.
She stepped forward again so Marlene’s back rested on the wall behind her. Their legs slotted together, and Dorcas smiled again. She pulled back and kissed her once more as lightly as Marlene had kissed her first, then looked down at her, pushing a strand of hair out of her face. She was beautiful. Dorcas had seen plenty of very pretty people before, none of them held a candle to the girl she held in her hands. She could hold her like this forever, as close as physically possible.
Dorcas let the realization settle in that she really loved her. It had been a secret she had been trying to keep from herself for months, years. Long enough she stopped keeping track ages ago. It did not matter what she looked like. She was impossibly head over heels for whoever Marlene McKinnon was. In every universe. In every timeline. It was almost sickening to think about.
It was exactly what she clowned Lily and James and Mary and Sirius and Remus and everyone else for. That soul-wrenching, all-consuming feeling that made you so stupid you could not stop yourself.
So she could not stop herself from asking the question: “Why?”
Marlene smiled. “I’ve had a crush on you for years.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t contain myself anymore, I guess.”
That was an interesting development. Dorcas had assumed, up until this point, that Marlene had only liked her recently, if at all. For years.
God, they were stupid.
“Well, I’m glad. Because I have probably liked you longer.”
Marlene raised an eyebrow. “Third year?”
Dorcas’ smile grew. “Third year.”
Marlene shook her head. “We are unbelievably dumb. You’re supposed to be smarter than this.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“I have no idea what I am doing at any given time.”
Marlene hummed. “It’s why we get along so well.” She took Dorcas’ hand in hers.
Dorcas ran her thumb over her hand.
“Come on,” she said finally. “Let’s go give Lily and Mary a heart attack.”
“Let’s.”