[ Her peal of laughter is sudden and loud, and it echoes a little on the holodeck, bouncing off of the real walls and reminding everyone involved of what this actually is. ]
Boo lingerie?
[ Once the couch materializes, Claire chooses the option of sitting down rather than wandering around and bumping into walls as she tries to determine where reality beings and image ends. She has to test the give a little before sitting on it by discreetly pressing her palm into the arm to make sure that she's not going to fall through when she sits down but following that she's happy to indulge. ]
I'm never going to look at French bread the same way again. I'll never know if it's trying to scare me or seduce me.
[ She loosens her laces and kicks her boots off, since they're still packed with grass and dirt on the bottom, and draws her legs up to sit with her knees bent. ]
Perhaps it'd be both, [ he says, forcing the French through the nanite translation. His grasp on the language is conversational enough, but to a native ear he's still got quite an accent. ]
I'd be concerned if either were effective. Given it's bread. [ Severus sits down beside her, looking out into the fake distance. Sitting and staring, it almost does seem real. Certainly real enough to fool his eyes, which is impressive for a machine. ]
[ One word is probably easier to force out than a sentence, no matter how short. Even on that single word, her accent is atrocious and American, but she doesn't know French enough outside of very, very basic dialog that she's traded back and forth with René, to judge on pronunciation. ]
I know a guy from Haiti who sometimes would speak French at me. He never mentioned anything about sexy, scary bread, but I only ever managed to make it to ten and a few other general things. His French is beautiful. My grandmother speaks it, too.
[ If she turns her head away from the source, she thinks the light actually feels like sunshine. ]
I only speak a little. One of the schools mine liaises with is in France, we have people go back and forth. [ He reaches down to unlace his boots, taking a page out of her book. When he sits back Severus reaches out to poke at her ankle. Gimme yer foot, cheerleader. ] Mostly I can get through Slavic languages, since they're all so closely related and I speak Russian and Bulgarian.
[ Which is probably boring to the outside world, but the dark arts are very popular in eastern Europe. And Severus is kind of awful. ]
Do you have much communication with American schools?
[ She asks while tentatively unwinding her feet after the moment to takes to determine why he's poking at her. Her leg stretches out until she's able to reach her ankle across his knees. The other leg stays bent at an angle, tucked into her thigh. Admittedly the stretch feels good, no matter how relaxed. ]
I can barely speak Spanish. Nathan actually speaks pretty good Spanish, which shouldn't have been surprising but kind of was at the time.
[ Her tone is self-deprecating but gently so, with a smile of the same caliber to match. Not for the first time she wonders what the hell he actually sees in her. Despite having clear faith that she's smarter than she gives herself credit for, Claire sometimes catches herself wondering why he's bothering with some blonde college girl who's still lousy at math, including linear algebra, when one time she walked in on him examining the actual structure of a fucking spell. ]
[ Severus is trying to stave off feeling awkward; having Something To Do will help, even if that something is rubbing her foot, okay. That seems harmless and boyfriendy enough. ]
Not through the school, not really. I've had correspondence with Americans due to academic publishing, but it's rare. Most international cooperation involves sporting events.
[ Her feet probably smell or something. They've been crammed inside of boots for the last six hours or so. Also any who's having the arch of their foot messed with is going to squirm and try not to laugh. She's had pedicures before. She knows how this is going to go. ]
I thought I told you a while ago that you had to at least teach me swear words in sign language. [ Which is a yes, at any rate. ] What kind of sporting events?
[ Severus really, really doesn't care if her feet aren't foot fetish model sparkling. He has sickly skin and gross hair and bad nails and teeth stained from smoking. IT'S FINE. ]
You'll have to take lessons from Nill. [ Mild sass. Severus is busy, okay, and if she learns swear words she should learn real words too. ] Quidditch, mostly. Chess and gobstones have international leagues but only Quidditch has an avid following.
I briefly knew her caretaker before he vanished, he has a horrendous vocabulary. I'm sure she wouldn't be offended. [ Maybe Severus feels slightly bad for not doing more for Nill yet. But anyway-- ] Gobstones is like a marble game, but the marbles shoot foul-smelling liquid at you if you cock up a move.
[ Feet aren't weird but they are feet. Fortunately hers are covered with socks, even if they do have their own thin layer of dirt clouding the color. ]
To be fair, I do already know one swear word in sign language. [ She promptly flips him the bird. ] Might take the pressure off of teaching me all the rest instead of teaching me things like dog and hello my name is and murder ship.
[ And wow having your foot rubbed even when things don't necessarily hurt but definitely do still feel strained and stretched is kind of awesome. ]
You have the most ridiculous names for games. [ And things in general. Muggles is a dog's name, come on. Meanwhile she's just assuming - ] Flying like on a broom? Or flying like Nathan?
[ Severus raises two fingers. ] Dialect differences.
[ In his time, the American middle finger hasn't quite caught on; with wizards it may never, given the reason it spreads to Europe is popular films. ]
Gobstones is perfectly functional, not unlike 'football'. [ He pronounces the word like he finds it really silly and foreign. Which he does. ] Quidditch is on broomsticks, yes. Its name comes from mashing up the different sorts of balls it uses, quaffles bludgers and snitches.
[ Well that looks silly. Probably raising a single middle finger does, too. Curse words in sign language have to look better than that. Either way, Claire makes a face. ]
Okay, I don't make any excuses for the weird sports names and terms and vocabulary that we've got going on, true. I had spirit, yes, I did; however, scouts honor, at heart I was only ever really there for the cupcakes and bus rides. [ That was an embarrassing sentence, but there's no denying it, even if she is in Cheerleaders Anonymous these days. As for their sports terminology... ] But how are you going to defend a word like quaffle?
[ She isn't laughing but she wants to. It shows. ]
It's the one that gets fumbled and dropped the most. [ He makes a hand motion, miming losing a grip on something and letting it fall away. Quaffle. ] I posit, 'shuttlecock' is far more absurd, and entirely a non-magical invention.
[ Badminton: the sport of kings, or something. ] Honestly I'm not terribly invested in sport. I am obligated to care due to house teams, to the point of having a referee license, and it's such a waste of time.
I said I wasn't making any excuses for weird sports vocabulary! I think shuttlecock is hilarious, though.
[ Now, however, she is imagining him in one of those traditional referee uniforms, all black and white striped, and it's pretty hilarious, too. Quaffle still just sounds like waffle to her. ]
I can't imagine you refereeing something like that. [ Obviously that's a lie. ] What about this snitch character? Does it just fly around the stadium tattling on people?
The snitch is a small golden ball that's very difficult to see, much less catch, [ he explains. ] The game won't end until it's caught. It's worth a lot of points, but if a match has gone on long enough it may not mean a win. Quaffles get thrown through hoops for smaller amounts of points, and is the primary focus of the game. Bludgers exist to try and knock flyers off their brooms.
Bludgers and snitches sound like assholes. [ Still, the game sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than football. And a lot more dangerous. Sounds awesome. She laughs, a little. ] It's amazing you have something like that, and we have curling as an Olympic sport.
Well matches can last weeks, if neither team are any good at catching snitches. [ Spoken wryly. Don't get him started on students caring more about match extensions than homework. ] I don't know how many more sports we'd even have time for.
Weeks? [ Both of her eyebrows jump impressively. ] That sounds like my actual nightmare. You'd think after a week of playing everyone would have had enough and just go home.
[ Speaking of having enough, Claire straightens out her other leg and deposits her other foot across his legs for attention. Now that she's past the initial stage of thinking hey those are my feet, the other one is feeling left out. ]
[ Severus exhales a laugh and switches feet. At least she likes it; he worries about not knowing how to do any of these little things, not knowing what to think of or failing to do something he should. It's nice succeeding in tiny degrees. ]
People go home in between days if it gets on too long, but it's a pain setting enchantments so all the players and balls go back to where they were.
What sport did you cheer for? [ Look at that, remembering how these things work. ]
[ Claire flexes her newly unattended to foot and decides that while it hadn't strictly been necessary, her muscles and bones do feel less strained than they had before. She tries to stay relaxed, leaning one side against the back of the couch. ]
Football, mostly.
[ Her answer is automatic and bordering on a groan that has nothing to do with the associated mock shame she's commonly put out in proximity to her status as a cheerleader. It's all for the game itself. ]
I did some basketball when I was in middle school, but I only ever made the varsity co-captain when I was a junior. I probably would have done basketball but we had to move in November, before the season could start. [ That's putting it mildly. ] Football games don't last for weeks, but it really felt like it, sometimes. It's just a bunch of boys with overinflated egos running around in a lot of padding and helmets, trying to get the ball from one end of the field to the other so they can score and tackle each other a lot on the way.
Well. [ That answer is automatic, but she spends a moment thinking about it before answering. ] I don't know. I don't think any girl ever tried out for our football team, and there's never been a guy on the cheer squad. In general there aren't very many girls who play football. It is considered more of a sport for boys. There are probably more guys who do cheerleading, on the whole. None at my school, though.
[ Because Odessa is in Texas and that would probably still be frowned upon in some way. ]
[ H..uh. Quidditch can be segregated due to people deciding the rough and tumble nature of it is 'unladylike' (something the Slytherin team tends to fall prey to, thanks to old fashioned pureblood mindsets), but it's usually not. There are all female teams that restrict recruitment to all women due to that cultural issue of ladylike nonsense, but there are no teams that restrict recruitment to men only.
It just is what it is. [ Claire shrugs, because this isn't Hayden Panettiere's part in Remember the Titans. ] I've never had any real desire to play football either way, so I guess it never bothered me before. And being a cheerleader was never even really about supporting it. I mean, I wanted it, but not for the reasons I said I did.
[ It was the bus rides and the bake sales and the popularity that came with it, trying to be Jackie and being something that she wasn't in an attempt to cater to the kind of person she thought that she wanted to be. She could make an argument that all of it was what got Jackie killed but it would be a shitty and cruel argument, considering the only thing that got Jackie killed was Claire. ]
When you're younger, I think they make more of an effort to put boys and girls on the same team, and maybe in gym class. But that's not the same thing. It's kind of weird. All this emphasis at a young age and then you grow up and you aren't going to see any of the Dallas Cowboys' cheerleaders suiting up to kick a field goal. [ Blah blah blah. ] Football is odd. Sports are odd. It's all weird.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Boo lingerie?
[ Once the couch materializes, Claire chooses the option of sitting down rather than wandering around and bumping into walls as she tries to determine where reality beings and image ends. She has to test the give a little before sitting on it by discreetly pressing her palm into the arm to make sure that she's not going to fall through when she sits down but following that she's happy to indulge. ]
I'm never going to look at French bread the same way again. I'll never know if it's trying to scare me or seduce me.
[ She loosens her laces and kicks her boots off, since they're still packed with grass and dirt on the bottom, and draws her legs up to sit with her knees bent. ]
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I'd be concerned if either were effective. Given it's bread. [ Severus sits down beside her, looking out into the fake distance. Sitting and staring, it almost does seem real. Certainly real enough to fool his eyes, which is impressive for a machine. ]
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[ One word is probably easier to force out than a sentence, no matter how short. Even on that single word, her accent is atrocious and American, but she doesn't know French enough outside of very, very basic dialog that she's traded back and forth with René, to judge on pronunciation. ]
I know a guy from Haiti who sometimes would speak French at me. He never mentioned anything about sexy, scary bread, but I only ever managed to make it to ten and a few other general things. His French is beautiful. My grandmother speaks it, too.
[ If she turns her head away from the source, she thinks the light actually feels like sunshine. ]
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[ Which is probably boring to the outside world, but the dark arts are very popular in eastern Europe. And Severus is kind of awful. ]
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[ She asks while tentatively unwinding her feet after the moment to takes to determine why he's poking at her. Her leg stretches out until she's able to reach her ankle across his knees. The other leg stays bent at an angle, tucked into her thigh. Admittedly the stretch feels good, no matter how relaxed. ]
I can barely speak Spanish. Nathan actually speaks pretty good Spanish, which shouldn't have been surprising but kind of was at the time.
[ Her tone is self-deprecating but gently so, with a smile of the same caliber to match. Not for the first time she wonders what the hell he actually sees in her. Despite having clear faith that she's smarter than she gives herself credit for, Claire sometimes catches herself wondering why he's bothering with some blonde college girl who's still lousy at math, including linear algebra, when one time she walked in on him examining the actual structure of a fucking spell. ]
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Not through the school, not really. I've had correspondence with Americans due to academic publishing, but it's rare. Most international cooperation involves sporting events.
Would you like to learn sign language?
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I thought I told you a while ago that you had to at least teach me swear words in sign language. [ Which is a yes, at any rate. ] What kind of sporting events?
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You'll have to take lessons from Nill. [ Mild sass. Severus is busy, okay, and if she learns swear words she should learn real words too. ] Quidditch, mostly. Chess and gobstones have international leagues but only Quidditch has an avid following.
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I can't ask Nill to teach me how to say shit in sign language.
[ Maybe she can learn real words from Nill and Severus can teach her all the crass ones. Compromise is good in relationships. Meanwhile - ]
What the hell is Quidditch? And gobstones?
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I briefly knew her caretaker before he vanished, he has a horrendous vocabulary. I'm sure she wouldn't be offended. [ Maybe Severus feels slightly bad for not doing more for Nill yet. But anyway-- ] Gobstones is like a marble game, but the marbles shoot foul-smelling liquid at you if you cock up a move.
Quidditch involves flying.
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To be fair, I do already know one swear word in sign language. [ She promptly flips him the bird. ] Might take the pressure off of teaching me all the rest instead of teaching me things like dog and hello my name is and murder ship.
[ And wow having your foot rubbed even when things don't necessarily hurt but definitely do still feel strained and stretched is kind of awesome. ]
You have the most ridiculous names for games. [ And things in general. Muggles is a dog's name, come on. Meanwhile she's just assuming - ] Flying like on a broom? Or flying like Nathan?
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[ In his time, the American middle finger hasn't quite caught on; with wizards it may never, given the reason it spreads to Europe is popular films. ]
Gobstones is perfectly functional, not unlike 'football'. [ He pronounces the word like he finds it really silly and foreign. Which he does. ] Quidditch is on broomsticks, yes. Its name comes from mashing up the different sorts of balls it uses, quaffles bludgers and snitches.
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Okay, I don't make any excuses for the weird sports names and terms and vocabulary that we've got going on, true. I had spirit, yes, I did; however, scouts honor, at heart I was only ever really there for the cupcakes and bus rides. [ That was an embarrassing sentence, but there's no denying it, even if she is in Cheerleaders Anonymous these days. As for their sports terminology... ] But how are you going to defend a word like quaffle?
[ She isn't laughing but she wants to. It shows. ]
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[ Badminton: the sport of kings, or something. ] Honestly I'm not terribly invested in sport. I am obligated to care due to house teams, to the point of having a referee license, and it's such a waste of time.
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[ Now, however, she is imagining him in one of those traditional referee uniforms, all black and white striped, and it's pretty hilarious, too. Quaffle still just sounds like waffle to her. ]
I can't imagine you refereeing something like that. [ Obviously that's a lie. ] What about this snitch character? Does it just fly around the stadium tattling on people?
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[ Wizards. ]
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[ Speaking of having enough, Claire straightens out her other leg and deposits her other foot across his legs for attention. Now that she's past the initial stage of thinking hey those are my feet, the other one is feeling left out. ]
Now look what you started.
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People go home in between days if it gets on too long, but it's a pain setting enchantments so all the players and balls go back to where they were.
What sport did you cheer for? [ Look at that, remembering how these things work. ]
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Football, mostly.
[ Her answer is automatic and bordering on a groan that has nothing to do with the associated mock shame she's commonly put out in proximity to her status as a cheerleader. It's all for the game itself. ]
I did some basketball when I was in middle school, but I only ever made the varsity co-captain when I was a junior. I probably would have done basketball but we had to move in November, before the season could start. [ That's putting it mildly. ] Football games don't last for weeks, but it really felt like it, sometimes. It's just a bunch of boys with overinflated egos running around in a lot of padding and helmets, trying to get the ball from one end of the field to the other so they can score and tackle each other a lot on the way.
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It's gender segregated? Sports and cheerleading?
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[ Because Odessa is in Texas and that would probably still be frowned upon in some way. ]
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So: ]
That's very odd.
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[ It was the bus rides and the bake sales and the popularity that came with it, trying to be Jackie and being something that she wasn't in an attempt to cater to the kind of person she thought that she wanted to be. She could make an argument that all of it was what got Jackie killed but it would be a shitty and cruel argument, considering the only thing that got Jackie killed was Claire. ]
When you're younger, I think they make more of an effort to put boys and girls on the same team, and maybe in gym class. But that's not the same thing. It's kind of weird. All this emphasis at a young age and then you grow up and you aren't going to see any of the Dallas Cowboys' cheerleaders suiting up to kick a field goal. [ Blah blah blah. ] Football is odd. Sports are odd. It's all weird.
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