| Details for Watch Your Step |
| Summary: | After the club room, Julian and Eibhlin try to talk. It goes from bad to worse… |
| Date: | January 1st, 1938 |
| Location: | Corridor Near the Club Room |
| Related: | Heartache, Hubris, and Hormones, Cautious Advice for the New Year, And So It Goes, Discord in the Club Room |
| Characters |
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Things couldn't be much more awkward. Having left the Club Room in such a manner, Julian had pretty much, once again, set himself up for something bad to probably happen. Could he take that two nights in a row?
He's about to find out.
As the two walk along the corridor, Julian toys with his music folio a little bit. For a time, he is otherwise silent. His eyes remain looking forward… though his mind races. He dares not to look at her… right?
Wrong.
Every so often, his eyes cut toward her, and he opens his mouth as if to say something. But nothing comes out. Instead, it closes again.
"If you want…"
The rest is left unsaid for a moment. They reach a flight of stairs and the words fall flat as Eibhlin works on climbing them. It gives her time to think.
"If you want," she continues finally, on the next landing, "I can… give you the bracelet back. I know I don't deserve it."
Silence. As they climb the flight of stairs and it actually begins to shift… as they are prone to do… he grabs the railing. As it does so and they are stuck standing there together, he looks forward.
"I don't want it back."
The words are spoken quietly, but concisely. "If you don't want to keep it, then maybe you can pawn it in the village."
The logical thing to do with unwanted jewelry, right? As he continues to walk along with her after the staircase ceases to move, he just shrugs his shoulders a little bit.
"You only give a gift like that once, I daresay, in a blue moon. Even if you gave it back, it would just sit there until I decided to do something stupid with it, like throw it away."
"I would never pawn it," Eibhlin says, sounding mildly offended at the suggestion. She places a hand on the railing to brace herself and avoid that possible fall off the edge. Not that it's happened. There's just the fear that it might.
"I just… feel as if it should have gone to someone more important. More… I dunno." A sigh. "Deserving. Someone who can be what you need them to be."
"In my opinion, it did."
As the next staircase twists, and Julian braces himself, his hand brushes against her's briefly. Not that he meant for it to. But it does. And he moves it, quickly.
"What you choose to do with it, however, is out of my control. But I want to be clear… I don't want it back. It's yours to do with as you please."
Click. The staircase stops moving, and he begins to move along again.
Which means more nights of clutching the silver links and staring at the galaxy pendant feeling miserable. Eibhlin's shoulders slump a bit as she moves along also, getting out of the way before the stairs shift once more.
Her body language is obvious. Julian closes his eyes for a moment, sighing a little bit and just shaking his head a little.
"I don't get you, Evie. You say you want to give it back… but I don't want it back. There's other ways to get rid of it. Like I said, it's not going to matter to me one bit what you do with it."
The pages of the music folio are continually fiddled with as he walks along. It's a nervous twitch. Evie'd recognize it from years past as they'd leave exams together.
"If it makes you that miserable, just destroy it."
There's a pause in Jules stride as he says those words… and he closes his eyes. Did he -really- just mean that? The words say yes. The body language… may tell a different story as he opens his eyes and looks down.
"It'd make me feel like the scum of the earth if I destroyed a gift you gave me," Eibhlin says, voice barely over a whisper.
That said, she tries to quicken her pace up the stairs.
And there was Jules, cemented to the floor. He couldn't move. The weight of his own lie had just crushed him. And…
The girl who he cherished was also crushed by it. But in an entirely different, much more painful way.
"Evie!" Making himself move again, he begins to take off up the stairs. "Wait! I'm sorry!"
CLICK.
Just as Julian tops the flight of stairs right behind Evie, it begins to move. And Julian… Well. Even if he were a decent Quidditch player and decent in his reactionary skills, there's no way he has the time to stop himself from going over the edge, simply because he was trying to move too fast to catch up with her. An attempt to grasp at the other flight as he goes plummetting over the edge is in vain, as well… and his music folio goes flying as he flails, trying to grab onto something.
"AUGH!" He flails, unable to really stop himself for all the flailing he does.
And when Jules finally reaches the ground, some ten to fifteen feet below… it's not like the cartoons on the muggle movie reels depict characters falling from awkwardly high distances. The fact that he also doesn't begin to move is also a bit of a concern. The comical part of it?
Sheet music -does- fall and kind of just land on him. It's probably the only thing remotely comical to the situation.
"Julian!"
If the daft fool planned this just to get attention from Eibhlin, well… it worked. The redhead nearly topples over herself in a failed attempt to catch him before he falls. She's left on a landing with no staircase attached, but a hurridly stated spell and wandwork allow her to — unsteadily — levitate to where he fell. It's the closest she comes to being airborne generally. A small bubble of magic enabling short distance movement.
When her feet touch down, Evie skids to his side, tearing her tights in the process. Something she's not like to notice. Hands shake a bit as she begins to check him over, to see if he's well enough to help to the hospital wing or if she'll need to call upon someone to get him there.
This train wreck? No way. This was completely unscripted. The injuries Eibhlin is apt to find are telling that if he planned this, he -is- a fool… but the severity is likely telling that it's not. Because he's hurt. He just fell almost twice his height, if not more. There's an obvious deformity in the boy's left arm and leg - both of which he seems to have landed awkwardly on. He's also kind of breathing funny… but the biggest problem is that he is unconscious. And seems to be hard to rouse. Inspecting the head will find that there is blood in his hair on the left side… so it's likely he did hit his head. Which would explain the altered level of consciousness.
"Nnngh…"
Any attempt to try and manipulate the arm or the leg will be met with screams. Yep. Injured.
A string of swears exit Eibhlin as she finds these injuries. Tears blur her vision, forestalling her from finding anything more in-depth. She's not a healer, by any means. She just knows the things most basic to look for.
"Julian… Julian, wake up. Can… oh Merlin's beard, your leg. I… I have to go get help. Please… please try…"
And then she's up, scurrying off and yelling for assistance, trying to find a professor or the nurse.
Soon Eibhlin returns, with Professor Mopsus and Nurse Spleen in tow, taking a background role in getting the Ravenclaw lad to the hospital wing.