#Allan; holding up food: h. how about. strawberry¿

[sagesolsticewrites]

hi pookie!!!! can I please have "blackboard" for Jules x Brady, "strawberries" for Vika x Benny? 🥰💕💝

hi honey!! sorry this is so late 😅 I had soooo much fun with these though, thank you so much for the request! 💕✨🫶

(from this prompt list)

blurbs under the cut to save space! 🫶 (sincere apologies to @blakelysco-pilot and by extension Val for any mistakes with the Italian fhskfh 🤭)

Brady x Jules, blackboard

Juliet jumps as her classroom door opens, the t in Heart turning into a messy chalk squiggle on the blackboard.

“Johnny, you startled me!”

He gives her a sheepish smile, the chatter of students heading to lunch fading as he closes the door behind him.

“Sorry,” he says, holding up a brown paper bag in offering, “I noticed you weren’t heading to the teacher’s lounge for lunch and, well… Ma always sends me off with something extra, just in case, so I thought I’d drop in and see if you’d like it.”

Her heart rate slowly returns to normal as she takes in his words and smiles. “That’s very sweet of her— and you. I’d love that.”

She gestures for him to sit, and they settle at her desk. Juliet makes room as quickly as she can, pushing the scattered books and papers into a somewhat neat stack and accepting the wax paper wrapped sandwich he offers her with a grateful smile. She’d been in such a tizzy about her Halloween lesson plans— Edgar Allan Poe, a nice break from The Picture of Dorian Gray for her students, she thought— that she’d been out of the house and halfway to school before she remembered her lunch, still on the kitchen counter back home. Hopefully she’d be better about that as the years went on, but that had happened more often than she cared to admit in this her first semester of teaching.

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” John hums, eyes landing on the neat cursive covering part of the board behind her, “Sounds more Valentine’s Day than Halloween. What’s that one about again?“

Juliet’s lips twitch up into a smile.

“Well, it opens with the narrator— we don’t get their name, or really anything about them— trying to defend his sanity while also confessing to a murder…”

As she speaks, John Brady pretends that spending his lunch hour listening to his girl ramble on about a story wasn’t exactly what he’d had planned all along.

Benny x Vika, strawberries

“Try it again—”

“Benny, I don’t think—”

“Nope, I don’t wanna hear it. Just one more time, please?”

With a sigh, Vika relents.

“Mi piace il pompelmo.”

She stumbles over the words a bit as she points to a sad-looking grapefruit set amongst a variety of other food on Benny’s kitchen table.

She grimaces slightly, even as Benny beams at her improved pronunciation.

“Hey, that was great! What’s with the face?”

“I don’t like grapefruit.”

“… You know this is just for the vocabulary, right?”

Her cheeks flush, and Vika stammers defensively, “I know! I just…” She searches for the words for a moment, eventually settling uncertainly on: “It’s the… principle of the thing, I don’t know.”

Benny does his best to bite back a teasing smile even as his eyes dance with fond amusement.

“Okay, well… what do you like?”

“In general or in terms of what we have right now?” Vika can’t help but tease as she nods towards the table.

“Of the things we have right now on the table, Vika.” Benny replies with a good-natured roll of his eyes, “Vocabulary, remember?”

She hums an idle little tune, eyes scanning over the contents as she attempts to hide her smile. She won’t deny it’s fun to poke at him just a little bit, the way her cousins do to her sometimes.

“Strawberries.”

She turns, and Benny blinks after a moment, seemingly lost in thought while she scanned over the meager contents of his fridge.

“Straw— oh! Alright. Okay. Well, you already know how it starts.”

“Mi piace—”

“Oh, wait, sorry,” he interrupts, “Actually, it’s plural— strawberries instead of strawberry— so it’s mi piacciono.”

He repeats it slowly, and Vika’s rewarded with a bright smile when she attempts it.

“Well done,” he nods, and Vika tries to keep her smile from widening too much at the praise, “Strawberry would be la fragola, but remember, plural, so strawberries would be le fragole.”

“Mi piacciono,” she says slowly, fumbling over the unfamiliar sounds, “le fragole?”

Benny bursts into applause, startling a laugh out of her.

“That was perfect.”

It definitely wasn’t, Vika thinks, but he’s sweet to encourage her.

“I’d say we’ve earned a few of these.” Benny pulls the small basket of strawberries towards them, presenting one to her with a flourish. “M’lady.”

“Why thank you,” she giggles, giving a shy attempt at a curtsy while sitting down and then stopping abruptly, suddenly very aware of how silly she looks.

Benny just grins, taking a bite out of his own berry. There’s a moment of companionable silence before he speaks again.

“So why don’t you like grapefruit?”

“Too sour, for me at least. And I don’t understand the appeal of eating something that I’ll have to cover in sugar so it tastes good. Why wouldn’t I just eat something that tastes good on its own?” She waves the strawberry in her hand for emphasis.

Benny’s silent for a moment, and then something dawns on her.

“Wait, do you like grapefruit?”

“I mean… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it—”

So, that’s a yes.

“How?” She exclaims, eyes wide at this revelation, “I thought you had a sweet tooth to rival Jules’s!”

“I do!” Benny frowns, mock-offended, “I can like multiple things. I’m a complex person. Also, you can douse it in sugar, so I’m frankly not sure how that goes against the sweet-tooth logic.”

“I just can’t believe it,” Vika says, biting her lip to hide her laughter as she shakes her head in mock disappointment, “I may have to revoke your samosa privileges for this.”

Benny’s eyes go comically wide, still playing along.

“Anything but that. Please.”

Vika taps a chipped red nail against her chin, pretending to think before finally relenting.

“Fine, I guess I’ll keep bringing samosas. You owe me a bonus Italian word, though.”

Benny smiles, thinking for a moment.

His voice is soft, almost fond when he finally speaks.

“Tesoro.”

“That’s pretty,” she smiles, “What does it mean?”

At that, his playful grin is back.

“You only said I owed you a word.”

“Benny—!”

“I promise I’ll tell you someday!”

[euclydya]

anytime i say something violent or hinting towards wanting to do violence whoever's up front just flicks me on the nose and i gotta say. very effective y'all