The Ice Skating Virgin

For Melody

He tells her he wants to take her ice skating.

"Why not, right?" he says with a shrug. "The Black Lake is frozen over. Could be fun."

She raises her eyebrows and smirks. "Have you ever been ice skating, Wood?"

"Never." He winks. "You'll be my first time."

She laughs. "I've been skating loads of times," she warns, and to the boy called Wood it sounds like a challenge. "Sure you can handle being second-best at something?"

"Can't be that hard," he retorts. "You manage it every single day on the Quidditch pitch."

She gasps and smacks his arm, but she's smiling (he lives for that smile) and laughing and God he wants to kiss her.

"I'm not second-best to anyone," she says in a voice that is lofty and pretentious and not hers at all.

"No," he agrees with an eye-roll. "Of course you aren't."

(He wonders whether she knows he means it.)

"It's freezing," he says when he finally gets her out on the ice.

"Baby," she teases. "Should have brought a scarf."

He rolls his eyes and reaches out to tweak the long woolen garment around her neck. "I did bring one," he says.

"Oh?" She's grinning. "Shame you misplaced it."

"Shame you stole it, you mean."

She yanks the edge of the scarf out of his hands and tosses it over her shoulder. "Oliver Wood, I did not steal anything," she says, and she's all wide-eyed innocence that he knows better than to believe. "I asked you if I could borrow your scarf. You could have said no."

"I did say no," he reminds her. The wind is picking up. "You unwound it when I wasn't paying attention."

She waves her mittened hand in the air as if the details are unimportant. "Are we going to skate?" she asks. "Or are you going to continue stalling?"

He sighs and takes a careful step onto the ice. She doesn't know about the balancing charm he cast on his skates - he needs all the help he can get out here - and she praises him for staying upright.

"Impressive," she tells him when ten seconds have passed. "Considering you're an ice skating virgin."

He quirks one eyebrow. "That means a lot, coming from an ice skating whore."

She throws back her head and laughs; it echoes against the distant castle walls and bounces back, and it makes the boy called Wood shiver as he realizes how utterly alone they are out here.

"So come on, brilliant skater," he says. "Teach me how to stunts."

"What kind of stunts?"

"Surprise me."

She looks up at him with clear blue eyes. "It's easy," she says. "Feels like flying, but with your feet on the ground."

"So show me."

She stares at him for a moment longer, and then she pushes off with one foot and glides to the center of the lake. "Ready?" she calls.

"Ready."

She takes a visibly deep breath and then begins to run.

She's swerving all over the ice, doing little twirls and leaps, and they aren't particularly graceful but he can see the grin on her face even from here, and that's how he knows she's a beautiful skater.

"I could do that," he scoffs when she comes back to him at the edge of the lake, cheeks pink, eyes bright. "Easy."

She's slightly out of breath, but she manages a laugh. "If you can make it one lap around this lake without falling," she says, "I will give you. . . . "

"Give me what?" he asks, because he loves a challenge and he loves prizes.

(And he loves her.)

"I dunno. What do you want?"

His face softens. "You know what I want, Katie."

She sighs. "It's not the right time," she says. She won't meet his eye.

"Why not?"

"I'm not ready."

"The big ice skating whore won't give up one little kiss?" he teases, and she smirks, but the joke falls flat.

"I told you," she says. "Kisses are a big deal to me."

Something in him sinks. "And I'm not important enough for you to waste one on, is that it?" he asks, and the bitterness in his voice is not there intentionally, but it is there all the same, and it makes her eyes snap to his.

"That's not it at all," she says.

"Then why not?"

"Why not?" she repeats, pulling off her mittens so she can list the reasons on her fingers. "We're on the same Quidditch team, for one. We're in the same house. We sit together in most of our classes."

"So what?"

"So, if things don't work out, I have no way to avoid you!" She's pulling his scarf off her neck. "No way to get over you, no way to heal - "

"Who says things aren't going to work out?" he ask quietly.

She hands him the scarf. "They never do, Ollie."

He stares at the wool in his hand for a moment. "Just because they haven't before doesn't mean they won't with me."

She sighs as she tugs her mitten back over her hand. "What makes you think you're any different?"

He looks at her thoughtfully. "Well, speaking as a virgin - an ice skating virgin," he clarifies, "I have a different perspective from those other blokes you've dated."

"Bloke," she says. "Just one bloke."

"Right, bloke. Now, if you don't mind my asking, does this bloke play Quidditch?"

She nods.

"And if I remember correctly, when this bloke broke up with you, he said it was because you two didn't have time for each other?"

Another nod. "If I wasn't at practice, then he was at practice."

"Well, that won't be a problem for us," says the boy called Wood. "Because we play on the same team. Our practice time is together. Our non-practice time is together. Perfect match."

She sighs, but there's the hint of a smile on her face, and he feels a spark of hope.

"And this other bloke found a new girl ten days later, didn't he?"

She nods. She's shivering.

"So obviously kisses aren't a big deal to him. But that's idiotic." He hands her back the scarf, and she doesn't protest. "Kisses are important. You think so. I think so. I don't take these things lightly."

She pauses halfway through winding the scarf around her neck. "You don't?"

"I don't."

A glint appears in her eye. "Then why d'you want to kiss me?" she asks.

(They both know she already knows the answer.)

He humors her and says the words anyway: "Because you are important to me."

She licks her lips. "How important?"

"Well, now you're just being greedy," he says with a half-smile.

"How important, Oliver?"

"Dating important. Girlfriend important."

She swallows. "If you can make it one lap around the lake without falling," she says after a moment, "then I will let you kiss me."

He grins. "Challenge accepted," he says, and he's off.

"Remember," she calls after him. "If you fall, you get nothing!"

But he doesn't fall, and when he makes it back to her he's grinning like a fool.

"I believe it's time for that kiss," he says. "Now that you've taken my ice skating virginity."

She smirks. "A kiss is not the same as a relationship, Wood," she says sternly. "This is just a prize. It doesn't mean anything."

"I think it means something," he says as he glides up to her and snakes his arms around her waist. "You made such a fuss about it, it must mean something."

"Don't look so smug about it," she says, but that glint in her eye is still there, and he has a feeling this kiss means a lot more than she's willing to let on.

"Smug?" he breathes. He has never been this close to her. "I just won a kiss from a beautiful woman. I think I get to be smug if I want to."

Her gaze drop from his eyes to his lips. "Ollie?" she whispers as she leans in.

He pulls her in a little more tightly. "Hm?"

She winds her arms around his neck. "I want to ask you something."

His heart jumps. "Ask away."

"Oliver Wood," she whispers.

He should know better than to hope, but he's hoping anyway. "Yes?"

"Did you really think you'd get away with cheating?"

He stops. "What?"

"I know," she says, and she's grinning, "that you put a balancing charm on your skates so you wouldn't fall."

He groans. "How did you - " he begins, pulling away.

But he doesn't get very far, because the girl called Katie tugs him back down and kisses him with frozen lips that make his entire body warm.

[Disney Character Competition: Faline - write the pairing of your choosing]

[Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge: Achilles - write about complicated feelings]

[2015 New Years Resolution Challenge: Trio Era]