Ari carefully filed that advice away, in case he decided it was ever worth trying to con some more outgoing people into being friends with him. Even younger, more boisterous boys like this. Of course, if he could handle being brothers with Julian and Leonid combined, he supposed he would manage being friends with someone like this.
Until the boy took another thoughtless step and went stumbling down again almost as soon as he’d gotten back up - only this time he didn’t hit the ground, because he’d just slammed right into Ari instead. He let out a sharp intake of breath as the collision knocked the wind right from him - it must have done, for he could see no other reasonable excuse for holding his breath at this sudden contact. Bravely, he caught the other boy as best he could, trying to avoid his eyes - a deep forest green - as he propped him better upright and then, in spite of how much he (desperately) wanted to let go, tucked one of his own arms under the boy’s to steady him.
“To the nurse, now,” Ari instructed, the authority in his order dampened ever so slightly by the hateful twinge of breathlessness in his chest. “If you want to be a professional quidditch player someday,” - he was hazarding a guess here, if only from the daredevil evidence he had been presented with today - “you’ll thank me later.” (If he kept his tongue firmly in his cheek, it might almost pass for a reproach.)
Until the boy took another thoughtless step and went stumbling down again almost as soon as he’d gotten back up - only this time he didn’t hit the ground, because he’d just slammed right into Ari instead. He let out a sharp intake of breath as the collision knocked the wind right from him - it must have done, for he could see no other reasonable excuse for holding his breath at this sudden contact. Bravely, he caught the other boy as best he could, trying to avoid his eyes - a deep forest green - as he propped him better upright and then, in spite of how much he (desperately) wanted to let go, tucked one of his own arms under the boy’s to steady him.
“To the nurse, now,” Ari instructed, the authority in his order dampened ever so slightly by the hateful twinge of breathlessness in his chest. “If you want to be a professional quidditch player someday,” - he was hazarding a guess here, if only from the daredevil evidence he had been presented with today - “you’ll thank me later.” (If he kept his tongue firmly in his cheek, it might almost pass for a reproach.)
