It's Been a While

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael laughed, he hadn't thought about it, it had just felt like a natural turn of conversation. "Yeah," he said, nodding. "We're just good like that." He grinned and pulled Dare's hand up to lightly kiss the back of it. "So now that we have that out of the way," he said, grinning, "What other potentially awkward conversations could we knock out?"

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare chuckled, his gaze slipping down to his hand, the back of which was warmer than it had been moments before. "I don't know," he said, then lifted his gaze to Michael's again. His smile faded just a bit as he thought of his drawing Emilian; that was an awkward subject, but one that probably shouldn't be broached, at least, not by him. If Michael showed any interest, he'd talk about it, but no sooner. Dare averted his gaze and looked out over the grass. "You got anything?" he asked.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"Not that I can think of," Michael said, watching Dare. He wondered at the circumstances that had brought them together. If Anna hadn't been so busy then it never would have happened, he would still be with her, would he have still been happy? Or would they have fallen apart? He decided he was content with how everything had worked out, though that could change if he saw Anna again. For the moment, it seemed right.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare looked back at Michael. "So, we're cool, then," he said. He flicked a glance at Michael's abandoned sketchbook. "Draw anything good lately?" He could see there was a landscape laid out, but he wondered what else Michael had been working on. He wondered if Michael would show him, since he hadn't seen any of his work yet.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael stretched forward and picked up the book, handing it over to him, "You can flip through it, I think you'll recognize some of them." He grinned, the couple back from the landscape were Dare, one full length and one from his chest up, the ones he had done in the common room a few days before. Closer to the front were a few of Anna, he could see the change in his thoughts, from Anna to Dare, then the landscape was proof that he was sorting things out. He did landscapes when he didn't have a person to be worried about.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare glanced up at Michael, took the book with his free hand, then retrieved his other to turn pages. His eyes glittered as they absorbed every line, equating every stroke's depth and length for the pressure and emotion behind it. "This is good," he said of the landscape. It was peaceful, joyful even. He flipped back one, and his lips curved. He threw a laughing glance at Michael, then looked down at the picture, knowing it was from Michael's mind, and absorbing the way Michael saw him. Dare had to remind himself that Michael didn't usually share his work, so he took Michael's suggestion and flipped through from there, pausing now and then at a particularly expressive work.

When he finally handed Michael his book back, his eyes shone with his passion for art, his artistic respect, and that same connection that had been growing between them from the first. "Working from memory's really a strength for you. It's amazing how detailed you can get without your subject there."

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"Thank you," Michael said, taking his book and laying it in his lap, running his fingers absently over the cover. "I've always had a good memory, for this kind of stuff, anyway. I'd be at the balls , memorizing people so I could draw them later. Of course, those didn't turn out as good, when I'd only seen the person the once." He wasn't allowed to pull out his book and draw in the middle of social functions, so he had to deal with his memory.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

"It's too bad you couldn't like, sneak a camera in. Of course, wizard cameras are huge, and if you got spotted with a Muggle camera it would've all been over, so I guess it's just as well. Oh! Hold on..." Dare reached for his own sketchbook and flipped straight through the pages to the inside of the back cover. "I got this from Silver and stuck it in so I wouldn't forget. If you still want to see..."

Dare offered Michael his book; on the inside of the back cover, a photograph had been affixed with a light sticking charm. In it, a slightly skinnier, ganglier Dare stood, just-past-shoulder-length hair dyed black with burgundy stripes at the temples, and tied back at the nape of his neck. He was dressed to the hilt in a Muggle tuxedo complete with black bowtie and a wine-colored brocaded waistcoat. The Dare in the picture had a crooked smile on his face and a laughing gleam in his mossy green eyes, which stood out all the more because of the reddish highlights to his ensemble and a smoky ring of eyeliner.

At his side stood a girl, the top of whose head only just reached past his shoulders. Her hair was dyed jet black, and the lights shone with blue highlights on the pile of artful curls arranged on top of her head. Her eyes were vivid blue, ringed with far more eyeliner than Dare's and edged into cat's eyes. Her lips were painted the same wine as Dare's waistcoat, the same wine that made up the majority of her ruffled and flounced dress, a relic of Muggle 1980's fashion that had, in its time, attempted to harken back to the Victorian era. Her nails were long, painted that same wine, and an orchid corsage encircled her wrist.

Both subjects were silently laughing at the camera, occasionally shifting casually aside to jostle the other or give an unobtrusive poke to the ribs. The girl tried to look serious, but continuously broke into a smile at the continued subtle antics.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael laughed lightly as he took the book and caught his first glimpse of the picture, "Of course I still want to see." He took his time taking it in, not spending nearly as long on the girl as he did on Dare. He surely didn't look like he was miserable in the tux, though Michael could see where it could be uncomfortable. "Looks like you had fun," he said, glancing up at Dare, "Muggles really wear this stuff?" It looked so much more uptight than the regular dress robes, though not more so than the ones he had had to wear.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

"Apparently so," Dare said. "The tux I rented from some Muggle men's warehouse or something. Brin got the dress from a secondhand store, got her hair and nails done at some Muggle hairdresser. We did this picture first thing at the beginning of the night before we got all worked up." Dare pointed at the girl. "That's Brindle. She was one of my friends' kid sister, and the dance was for 5th year and up, so she couldn't go unless she went with someone older. I said I'd take her if she'd go along, and she was all for it."

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"Bribery," Michael said, grinning. "So you two didn't look as good at the end, or did you cheat and use magic?" He personally didn't see anything wrong with using magic to keep up appearances, but if they were going as muggles, who knew what they had done. He watched Dare for a second more before turning to the picture, etching it into his memory.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

Dare grinned. "Nah, we didn't bother. In an hour that jacket was in a pile with her purse and heels. We figured if we were gonna do it, we were gonna do it right, sore feet and everything. Her hair? It's stuck up with this stuff called hair spray the Muggles have, I think she said they used like ten cans of it, but she could've been exaggerating. It didn't move the whole night, it was as good as a sticking charm, it was wild." The Dare in the picture casually lifted a hand and slipped a finger between his tie and his neck to tug. "Oh yeah, the bow tie! I kept it on, it didn't feel like a tux without it, but God, it chafed. The second I got home it was off."

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

Michael tried to imagine everything Dare was saying, but couldn't quite picture it all. "So what was the worst part?" In his opinion that tie thing was the oddest looking part of the ensemble, but he didn't know all of the other parts that could have been horrible to wear. From what Dare had said the shoes were pretty bad, too. He gave it one last look and handed the book back to Dare, silently beginning to flip through his own book.

[Dare Blackwood-Hardt]

"The tie, hands down," Dare said. He gave the picture one last look, then closed his book on it. "It was worth the misery for the infamy, though," Dare said with a grin. "People told me I was crazy, but enough of them were smiling when they said it that it was worth the rest." He'd seriously considered wearing a tux to the masquerade, but had ended up opting for creative freedom over social statement, and he'd enjoyed the result. "What are you up to?" he asked Michael.

[Michael Blackwood-Hardt]

"You were forever known as the crazy mudblood," Michael teased, not looking up as he flipped pages. "Here it is...." he said, pulling out a photograph of his own and handing it over. "It took me forever to find it, it was underneath all of my old stuff." It was the promised photograph of him and Emilian from a couple of years before at one of the balls.

Their clothes were very similar, Emilian in black and Michael in deep green. They were wearing a sort of dress robes which included pants and heeled boots strapped up past their ankles, though it wasn't visible as long as they didn't move. The robe part was loosely chained from the chest to the waist, then flared out around their legs. The sides didn't meet in the middle, but were open a few inches and revealed tight, fitted shirts underneath. Michael's hair was pulled back in a low pony-tail, the shorter wisps falling out around his face, and Emilian's was loose.

In the picture Michael looked bored and annoyed, but only on the surface, beneath the face he looked like he had been having fun, and Emilian was attempting to put on a civilized face for the picture. Soon, though, they would have a short bout of rough-housing, which had always been much frowned-upon by both of their parents, before straightening up again with grins etched on their faces.