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leigh_adams
Feb. 26th, 2010 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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rarepair_shortsAuthor: captainpookey
Recipient:leigh_adams
Title: Snapshots
Pairing: Katie Bell/Stewart Ackerly
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1,670
Summary: In and out of the spotlight, Katie Bell struggles with her feelings for Stewart.
Author's Notes: Never written this pairing before, so I hope you enjoy it! I had fun borrowing them for a bit though. :) I couldn’t get this to go full angst, so you’ve got a bit of angst, a dash of humor, and of course some sprinkles of romance. I used Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” as my inspiration as per your suggestion, and tried to sneak in a few other prompts as well.
The first time they were photographed together, Stewart had just been appointed the new Keeper for the Tornadoes and the news had leaked. Katie had intended to announce it the next day at the press conference, but nobody could seem to wait that long. Katie caught wind of the leak from Lee, who liked to warn her of these things ahead of time.
“Ackerly,” she called after their first practice as he dismounted his broom below.
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to be a shit-show outside the pitch when you leave. Word got out that you’re on the team and they’re going to want some pictures.” Her feet touched the ground and she swung herself off her own broom.
“Great!”
“Not really. One wrong blink and they’ll be speculating about how you don’t have the hand-eye coordination to be a good keeper.”
Stewart leaned against his broom and adjusted his windswept brown hair carefully across his sweaty forehead. “Oh, they’re not that bad. And how is it possible to blink wrong?”
“Trust me, it’s possible.” There had been a period of weeks where the tabloids had been convinced Katie was trying to cover up some mysteriously severed fingers all because she’d forgotten to take her gloves off after a few practices. She did so now. “Here’s the plan.”
“The plan? You have a plan for the paparazzi?” He laughed a large, unconfined laugh that had Katie pursing her lips as if she could restrain it herself. He threw his broom over his shoulder and began walking toward the exit. “I can handle them.”
“Ackerly!”
“Don’t sweat it, Bell, I’ve got this covered.”
“You don’t understand—get back here.”
“Cameras have always loved me.”
“I’ll bench you.”
“You won’t,” he called over his shoulder, only hastening his stride. Katie heaved her broom over her shoulder and jogged after him.
“As your captain, I’m telling you to stop. You don’t know how this game is played.” She reached out for his arm, but he windmilled it out of her grasp and kept a steady pace.
“I can play any game you throw at me, sweetie.” He winked and before she could even grasp the fact that they’d reached the exit he’d shouldered his way through the door and out the pitch.
He had a smile in place, his hand raised in a wave already. Flashbulbs cracked and the rabble-rabble noise of the press assaulted Katie’s ears. She didn’t skip a beat in following him outside and throwing an arm around his shoulders congenially. “Ladies and gentlemen—meet Stewart Ackerly, our new Keeper!—”
They both smiled, Stewart’s wide and loose and full of teeth, Katie’s calculated and practiced and just the right amount of lip.
“—Cocky bastard and newest benchwarmer,” she added through her teeth when the crowd pushed them closer together.
In the photo that made page eight of the Prophet the next day, Stewart was laughing.
- - - - -
Katie began to learn that Stewart always had a way of doing that—of looking so natural and at ease when he was photographed. For Katie it had been a painstaking process. She wasn’t an unappealing woman, in fact, she was more than confident enough to say she was quite a catch, but the beginning of her climb to quidditch fame had been an unfortunate series of awkward, nervous photographs where she looked dopey and hunched over, or her long hair was inconveniently tucked into her shirt, or her smile was too big, lopsided, showing too many teeth and turning her eyes into too-small dark squints. Her manager had actually made her practice acting for photos.
Stewart, a near-nobody before he’d joined up with Katie as one of the youngest Keepers in the league—he was different. He kept his cool, kept his style. Through wins, losses, stuffy galas thrown by the league or drunken pub nights with the team—he looked good through all of it. Katie couldn’t make sense of it.
“Teach me,” Katie demanded one night after her third Firewhiskey when the team had gathered for a traditional post-game drink at the Bubbly Warlock. She pulled a chair up behind Stewart’s and sat herself down next to him.
“What? Poker?” Stewart asked over his hand of cards.
“No, no, I know poker.” She waved him off. “Lost too much money to these boys to bother anymore. No, teach me how you always manage to look so good in pictures.”
“Baby, something like that you just cannot teach,” He quipped with a grin.
Katie smacked his arm. “I’m your captain, not your baby. And that’s not what I mean. How do you always know exactly what they want when you get out into the cameras?”
“Hold on.” He pushed a handful of sickles across the table and rearranged his hand. Katie took a sip of her drink, but when Stewart remained silent, brow furrowed at his cards, she quickly grew bored.
“He’s got a pair of fours,” she announced.
“Hey—!”
“Sorry, didn’t want to wait around while you tried to bluff that up.” She took the cards from him and tossed them onto the table where his teammates were quickly snatching up his money. “Now teach me.”
Stewart leaned back in his chair and examined her over the lip of his drink. “Smile.”
She did.
“That’s not a smile,” he said simply. “That’s a face. If it was a smile, it would reach here,” he touched the corner of her left eye, “Here,” her right now, “Here and here,” both corners of her lips. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever met who’s turned smiling and waving into a science. This isn’t like your play charts; you don’t map out your moves depending on what the opponent’s doing. There is no opponent, just an audience.”
“Thanks, Confucius, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You asked.”
“So that’s your winning advice, ‘smile’?”
“Just act natural, that’s all I’m saying.”
Katie tried, that night, when they all left the pub. She told herself to ignore the paparazzi, to pretend like they weren’t there. She hooked arms with Stewart as they left, like she wanted to if they were drunk with friends. Her hips bumped his as they walked, and when she almost tripped over the curb she giggled up at him and tightened her warm hold on his arm. Natural.
But when the first camera flashed and someone bellowed, “Give us a kiss, lovebirds!” her smile stopped reaching the places Stewart had touched with his finger. She laughed it off, a cool liquid metallic laugh she’d stored in her playbook for exactly this kind of counter. Strategy had her linking arms with her Beater, Cary, in addition to Stewart, and “Strategy!” is what her manager shouted at her the following morning when the photo of Katie hanging around on Stewart’s young bicep and laughing like a leprechaun broke on page four of Wizard Life.
- - - - -
There were no photos for a while. Unless it was an action-shot or a team picture, there were none, not for Katie and Stewart. Sure, there were a few where one or the other of them lurked in the background of a photo, and there was even one where they shared the frame, each smiling and waving out toward some fans in opposite directions, but neither was really there with the other. Interaction was sparse.
Katie said it had nothing to do with Her, with the photos of Stewart and his young blonde friend that Katie kept seeing whenever she opened a magazine—holding hands, kissing, tossing a quaffle in the park as if it were cute (quaffles were business to Katie, not cute, never cute).
But Katie knew it did.
There was, however, one picture—snapped during a play-off match against the Arrows, an intense game if Katie’s ever seen one.
The last minute of the match had culminated in a razor-thin victory where the Arrows’ seeker caught the Snitch seconds after Stewart had taken a quaffle to the gut from their Chaser and heaved it with a roaring war-cry in a final frenzied move across the pitch to Katie, dislocating his shoulder in the process. Katie caught it in the tip of her glove after a dive that peeled skin and flipped it up and into the goal just in time to secure the last few points they needed to make null the Seeker’s capture of the Snitch.
Katie rounded the opponents’ goal hoops and raced across the field to tackle Stewart in a whopping hug that practically dislocated his other shoulder. Even in the photo it’s impossible to tell if she’s on her broom or his, if he’s grimacing or laughing as they bounce through the center goal hoop and out the other end.
She’d wanted to kiss him then, her head buried in the musk of his neck and their legs half-tangled together in the middle of the clear, blue sky, where nothing could touch them and even the flashbulbs of post-victory enthusiasm were kilometers away, out of mind and out of sight.
He was laughing loud and bright, shaking his whole broom with the force of it. It made her smile the kind of smile she could only manage up here with him. They were both babbling, it didn’t matter what, neither could hear the other over the roar of the crowd.
“I love you,” she said, knowing full-well the words would be lost to the snapping wind and the thundering fans below before her tongue could even shape them fully. She didn’t know what prompted it, or even if it was entirely true, but it didn’t much matter.
He smiled dumbly at her.
When they reached the ground she was washed over in flashing lights. Stewart’s girl pushed her way through the crowd toward him and they kissed for the cameras.
Katie drifted into the back of the pictures, smiling and waving as she went. This was the game she played. The rules didn’t change, even if she wanted them to. A cruel flash of a camera spotting her eyes, but when they cleared, the world did too.
captainpookeyRecipient:
leigh_adamsTitle: Snapshots
Pairing: Katie Bell/Stewart Ackerly
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1,670
Summary: In and out of the spotlight, Katie Bell struggles with her feelings for Stewart.
Author's Notes: Never written this pairing before, so I hope you enjoy it! I had fun borrowing them for a bit though. :) I couldn’t get this to go full angst, so you’ve got a bit of angst, a dash of humor, and of course some sprinkles of romance. I used Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” as my inspiration as per your suggestion, and tried to sneak in a few other prompts as well.
The first time they were photographed together, Stewart had just been appointed the new Keeper for the Tornadoes and the news had leaked. Katie had intended to announce it the next day at the press conference, but nobody could seem to wait that long. Katie caught wind of the leak from Lee, who liked to warn her of these things ahead of time.
“Ackerly,” she called after their first practice as he dismounted his broom below.
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to be a shit-show outside the pitch when you leave. Word got out that you’re on the team and they’re going to want some pictures.” Her feet touched the ground and she swung herself off her own broom.
“Great!”
“Not really. One wrong blink and they’ll be speculating about how you don’t have the hand-eye coordination to be a good keeper.”
Stewart leaned against his broom and adjusted his windswept brown hair carefully across his sweaty forehead. “Oh, they’re not that bad. And how is it possible to blink wrong?”
“Trust me, it’s possible.” There had been a period of weeks where the tabloids had been convinced Katie was trying to cover up some mysteriously severed fingers all because she’d forgotten to take her gloves off after a few practices. She did so now. “Here’s the plan.”
“The plan? You have a plan for the paparazzi?” He laughed a large, unconfined laugh that had Katie pursing her lips as if she could restrain it herself. He threw his broom over his shoulder and began walking toward the exit. “I can handle them.”
“Ackerly!”
“Don’t sweat it, Bell, I’ve got this covered.”
“You don’t understand—get back here.”
“Cameras have always loved me.”
“I’ll bench you.”
“You won’t,” he called over his shoulder, only hastening his stride. Katie heaved her broom over her shoulder and jogged after him.
“As your captain, I’m telling you to stop. You don’t know how this game is played.” She reached out for his arm, but he windmilled it out of her grasp and kept a steady pace.
“I can play any game you throw at me, sweetie.” He winked and before she could even grasp the fact that they’d reached the exit he’d shouldered his way through the door and out the pitch.
He had a smile in place, his hand raised in a wave already. Flashbulbs cracked and the rabble-rabble noise of the press assaulted Katie’s ears. She didn’t skip a beat in following him outside and throwing an arm around his shoulders congenially. “Ladies and gentlemen—meet Stewart Ackerly, our new Keeper!—”
They both smiled, Stewart’s wide and loose and full of teeth, Katie’s calculated and practiced and just the right amount of lip.
“—Cocky bastard and newest benchwarmer,” she added through her teeth when the crowd pushed them closer together.
In the photo that made page eight of the Prophet the next day, Stewart was laughing.
Katie began to learn that Stewart always had a way of doing that—of looking so natural and at ease when he was photographed. For Katie it had been a painstaking process. She wasn’t an unappealing woman, in fact, she was more than confident enough to say she was quite a catch, but the beginning of her climb to quidditch fame had been an unfortunate series of awkward, nervous photographs where she looked dopey and hunched over, or her long hair was inconveniently tucked into her shirt, or her smile was too big, lopsided, showing too many teeth and turning her eyes into too-small dark squints. Her manager had actually made her practice acting for photos.
Stewart, a near-nobody before he’d joined up with Katie as one of the youngest Keepers in the league—he was different. He kept his cool, kept his style. Through wins, losses, stuffy galas thrown by the league or drunken pub nights with the team—he looked good through all of it. Katie couldn’t make sense of it.
“Teach me,” Katie demanded one night after her third Firewhiskey when the team had gathered for a traditional post-game drink at the Bubbly Warlock. She pulled a chair up behind Stewart’s and sat herself down next to him.
“What? Poker?” Stewart asked over his hand of cards.
“No, no, I know poker.” She waved him off. “Lost too much money to these boys to bother anymore. No, teach me how you always manage to look so good in pictures.”
“Baby, something like that you just cannot teach,” He quipped with a grin.
Katie smacked his arm. “I’m your captain, not your baby. And that’s not what I mean. How do you always know exactly what they want when you get out into the cameras?”
“Hold on.” He pushed a handful of sickles across the table and rearranged his hand. Katie took a sip of her drink, but when Stewart remained silent, brow furrowed at his cards, she quickly grew bored.
“He’s got a pair of fours,” she announced.
“Hey—!”
“Sorry, didn’t want to wait around while you tried to bluff that up.” She took the cards from him and tossed them onto the table where his teammates were quickly snatching up his money. “Now teach me.”
Stewart leaned back in his chair and examined her over the lip of his drink. “Smile.”
She did.
“That’s not a smile,” he said simply. “That’s a face. If it was a smile, it would reach here,” he touched the corner of her left eye, “Here,” her right now, “Here and here,” both corners of her lips. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever met who’s turned smiling and waving into a science. This isn’t like your play charts; you don’t map out your moves depending on what the opponent’s doing. There is no opponent, just an audience.”
“Thanks, Confucius, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You asked.”
“So that’s your winning advice, ‘smile’?”
“Just act natural, that’s all I’m saying.”
Katie tried, that night, when they all left the pub. She told herself to ignore the paparazzi, to pretend like they weren’t there. She hooked arms with Stewart as they left, like she wanted to if they were drunk with friends. Her hips bumped his as they walked, and when she almost tripped over the curb she giggled up at him and tightened her warm hold on his arm. Natural.
But when the first camera flashed and someone bellowed, “Give us a kiss, lovebirds!” her smile stopped reaching the places Stewart had touched with his finger. She laughed it off, a cool liquid metallic laugh she’d stored in her playbook for exactly this kind of counter. Strategy had her linking arms with her Beater, Cary, in addition to Stewart, and “Strategy!” is what her manager shouted at her the following morning when the photo of Katie hanging around on Stewart’s young bicep and laughing like a leprechaun broke on page four of Wizard Life.
There were no photos for a while. Unless it was an action-shot or a team picture, there were none, not for Katie and Stewart. Sure, there were a few where one or the other of them lurked in the background of a photo, and there was even one where they shared the frame, each smiling and waving out toward some fans in opposite directions, but neither was really there with the other. Interaction was sparse.
Katie said it had nothing to do with Her, with the photos of Stewart and his young blonde friend that Katie kept seeing whenever she opened a magazine—holding hands, kissing, tossing a quaffle in the park as if it were cute (quaffles were business to Katie, not cute, never cute).
But Katie knew it did.
There was, however, one picture—snapped during a play-off match against the Arrows, an intense game if Katie’s ever seen one.
The last minute of the match had culminated in a razor-thin victory where the Arrows’ seeker caught the Snitch seconds after Stewart had taken a quaffle to the gut from their Chaser and heaved it with a roaring war-cry in a final frenzied move across the pitch to Katie, dislocating his shoulder in the process. Katie caught it in the tip of her glove after a dive that peeled skin and flipped it up and into the goal just in time to secure the last few points they needed to make null the Seeker’s capture of the Snitch.
Katie rounded the opponents’ goal hoops and raced across the field to tackle Stewart in a whopping hug that practically dislocated his other shoulder. Even in the photo it’s impossible to tell if she’s on her broom or his, if he’s grimacing or laughing as they bounce through the center goal hoop and out the other end.
She’d wanted to kiss him then, her head buried in the musk of his neck and their legs half-tangled together in the middle of the clear, blue sky, where nothing could touch them and even the flashbulbs of post-victory enthusiasm were kilometers away, out of mind and out of sight.
He was laughing loud and bright, shaking his whole broom with the force of it. It made her smile the kind of smile she could only manage up here with him. They were both babbling, it didn’t matter what, neither could hear the other over the roar of the crowd.
“I love you,” she said, knowing full-well the words would be lost to the snapping wind and the thundering fans below before her tongue could even shape them fully. She didn’t know what prompted it, or even if it was entirely true, but it didn’t much matter.
He smiled dumbly at her.
When they reached the ground she was washed over in flashing lights. Stewart’s girl pushed her way through the crowd toward him and they kissed for the cameras.
Katie drifted into the back of the pictures, smiling and waving as she went. This was the game she played. The rules didn’t change, even if she wanted them to. A cruel flash of a camera spotting her eyes, but when they cleared, the world did too.
