#gold star for cathy parr for putting up with Antics

[averlym]

can we have some parrelyn fluff ✨

"something is burning" "making breakfast for my beautiful wife"

bonus gc shenanigans:

[lailaliquorice]

all the kingdom lights shine

The fifth of the seven anon prompts: “Are we on a date right now?” with parrlyn.

alternate title: local useless gay cathy parr is a local useless gay. but here’s 2k words of pure unadulterated fluff with these two soft babies. they both love each other so hard and it gives me feelings. aragon and kat are the best wingwomen and i love jane’s mum spidey senses so much. and much love to the folks on the discord for the moral support while i finish this thing up at 3am!!

Anne Boleyn was many things, but organised was certainly not one of them. She liked to tell Aragon and Jane that she lived in a state of semi-ordered chaos; everything she owned was all over the place, she hardly ever wrote any plans down, but somehow she always made it to every engagement with one minute to spare. As much as the mum-friends despaired over her, she liked her ability to live life without structure and still manage to be a semi-functioning adult.

But when it came to planning her and Cathy’s first date, Anne knew that she wanted it to be perfect.

The first hurdle was that she had no idea what people did on dates in the twenty first century, so she took to the internet to find some local events that they might both be interested. For a long while it looked like a book fair at Cathy’s favourite bookstore was the best bet, until she saw an advert for a fairground in one of London’s parks that caught her eye immediately. She knew it was a cliché from the teenage romance novels she’d developed a taste for since her reincarnation, but she was too excited by the idea not to use it.

Telling Cathy not to make any plans for their next free day was the easy part, since Cathy seemed happy enough to let Anne keep her idea a secret. What was slightly harder was making sure that Cathy was dressed for the occasion without letting on what said occasion was. After failing to come up with an idea herself she decided to enlist Aragon’s help, who then dragged Kat in too since she would cause the least suspicion. Kat was sent off to guide Cathy’s clothing choices that morning while Aragon tore through Anne’s wardrobe like a hurricane, and after much criticism of Anne’s very conflicting dress sense she handed her a pair of cropped jeans and a black crop top.

After checking she knew the Underground directions at least five times and re-doing her hair twice, Anne gave herself a nervous grin in the mirror before she headed downstairs. Cathy was waiting for her by the front door, and Anne almost missed a step when she saw how pretty she looked. Kat had picked out a mustard yellow vest top tucked into pair of blue patterned culottes, and her hair was down but secured behind a yellow bandanna.

Cathy looked up abruptly at the sound of Anne almost falling down the stairs, and Anne just shot her a grin from where she was desperately clinging onto the bannister. “I’m fine!” she yelled down before Cathy had a chance to say anything, hoping that her cheeks weren’t blushing scarlet as she approached of her girlfriend. In the back of her mind she made a mental note to buy Kat something pink and fluffy from the fairground as a token of thanks.

“As long as you’re sure,” Cathy laughed at Anne’s antics, opening the front door as she asked “Are you ready to go?”

Anne nodded, shouting her customary goodbye to the rest of the queens that probably made the foundations shake before she and Cathy left.

Anne’s heart was racing as they walked down the road towards the nearest Underground station, both due to nervousness that the day might not go perfectly and the fact that Cathy was holding her hand. She didn’t realise just how much she was stressing until they had to change trains halfway through the journey, and Cathy pulled her into a quiet corner of the station from where she’d been about to shove through the crowd towards the platform.

“Hey, just stop and breathe for a second,” she said before Anne could protest. “Is everything ok? You seem really nervous and I can’t work out why.”

Ducking her head a little out of embarrassment, Anne just shrugged for a moment before she could find her words. “I just want it to be a good day, that’s all!” she said, trying to come across as breezy as she could. “I’ve been excited about this for ages.”

Cathy smiled, and Anne sighed internally with relief that she wasn’t suspicious. “I can tell,” she replied with a note of laughter in her voice, letting Anne lead her back in the direction they needed to go.

The secret was impossible to keep hidden any longer when they stepped foot into the park, where the colours of the fairground were glowing brightly under the midday sun. “A fairground!” Cathy gasped aloud, looking around with a look of childish wonderment on her face that Anne didn’t think she’d ever seen before. “Now I can see why you were excited! Come on, let’s go!”

They both took off running then, too eager to enjoy the fair to care that they were meant to be the adults in a place full of children with their families. As Anne paid for a few ride tokens, Cathy said “I remember once my mother took me to a fair back in the 1520s. I wasn’t allowed to play much but it was still nice to be there and enjoy the atmosphere.”

“We didn’t have anything like this at the French court. There were banquets and entertainment but nothing as makeshift as this,” Anne said, smiling as Cathy recounted a tale from her youth. It always made a nice change whenever one of them told a pleasant story from their old lives since everything from their marriages onwards tended to be much more solemn.

Cathy shrugged. “I suppose you wouldn’t. I think that’s what I like so much about it though, there’s no expectations to behave like you have to in court so you can just have fun.”

Anne hummed in agreement, looking around and spotting a merry-go-round in the distance. “Come on then, let’s go have that fun!”

After two turns on the merry-go-round and a few runs on some faster rides where Anne ended up clinging to Cathy’s hand out of terror, they opted to try their luck on the many claw machines filled with various stuffed toys. Cathy’s attempts involved a lot of over-analysing which always ended in failure, whereas Anne somehow managed a lot better and came out with two prizes to Cathy’s amazement. One of them was a little dog which fit the ‘pink and fluffy’ requirement to be Kat’s thank you gift; the other was a smiley star which she held out to her girlfriend and asked “Gold star for Cathy Parr?”

Cathy’s laughter made Anne’s sheepish smile turn into a beaming grin, and despite her little exasperated sigh she took the star and tucked him safely into her rucksack. “Very good, very good. What’s next?” she asked.

“Food?” Anne suggested. When Cathy nodded, Anne lead her towards over to the food area and then made a sudden diversion when a sweet stall caught her eye. “Yes, this food,” she said, already picturing the disapproving look on Jane’s face at her choice in lunch.

A few minutes later they were sat down at a free table, Cathy munching through a bag of popcorn while Anne brandished a very large cloud of candyfloss. “I think that definitely exceeds your sugar allowance for the day,” Cathy pointed out with a laugh.

Anne pulled a face. “Whatever, everyone’s just gonna have to put up with me later,” she said, giving Cathy a wink. After Cathy laughed again, her expression sobered a little as she asked nervously “Was this alright? Did I do ok?”

“With what?” Cathy asked, head tilted in confusion.

Gesturing around her, Anne added “With this, y’know, was it what you were imagining?”

Cathy paused suddenly with a handful of popcorn halfway to her mouth. “Wait, wait a second. Are we on a date right now?”

Anne could only drop her head to rest on the tabletop and groan. With all the preparation and stress she’d put into making sure the day was perfect, she’d only gone and forgotten to tell Cathy that they were actually going on a date.

She heard the sound of movement around her just as Cathy sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” she said, a mixture of guilt and amusement in her voice. “Of course, that’s why you were nervous earlier! I thought you just wanted to show me the funfair. But it’s a perfect first date, I couldn’t have hoped for anything more.”

“Really?” Anne asked hopefully, lifting her head to look at her girlfriend.

“Of course,” Cathy said, leaning over to kiss her deeply. “I can literally taste the sugar on your lips,” she murmured as they broke apart, giving her one more quick kiss before she sat back. “So, what were you planning on doing after you finish all that candyfloss?”

Anne hummed thoughtfully for a moment, looking around the fair for inspiration. “Well,” she started almost shyly. “I kinda wanted to ride the ferris wheel at sunset. Other than that I’m not sure.”

“We could always ride it twice?”

Her eyes lit up at Cathy’s suggestion, holding tight to the stick of her candy floss with one hand and grabbing Cathy’s hand with the other.

The line for the ferris wheel was fairly long, being one of the more popular rides at the fair, so both the candyfloss and the popcorn were gone by the time Anne and Cathy sat down in their seat. Anne took Cathy’s hand and laced their fingers together as the ferris wheel started to turn, lifting them high above London where they immediately set about trying to find where their theatre was.

Anne’s romantic side had been planning on kissing Cathy when they were on the ferris wheel as sunset, but her girlfriend’s voice in her head reminded her that there was nothing from stopping her doing it twice. As Cathy rambled about the landmarks they could see from their vantage point, Anne gently tugged on Cathy’s hand to make her look around at her. Cathy fell silent as she did so, and Anne took the opportunity to place a gentle hand on Cathy’s jaw as she leaned to kiss her.

Just as the skies opened above them.

~~~

An hour or so later, Jane would say that she’d known the exact moment that the two were suddenly drowning at the top of a ferris wheel. She’d been sat in the living room with the other queens, everyone quiet as they occupied themselves, when she sat up abruptly and dislodged Kat who had been snuggled into her side.

“What?” asked Aragon, looking concerned.

Anna jumped in before Jane could respond. “I know that look, her mum senses are going off,” she said with a slight snigger. “Come on, what trouble have the lovebirds just found themselves in!”

Jane didn’t reply immediately, just glanced over at the window and the light summer drizzle outside. It didn’t take ‘mum senses’ or anything of that sort to guess what was happening across London at that moment. So with a great deal of effort she rallied the others and was ready with several blankets and hot water bottles when Anne and Cathy stumbled through the door looking very worse for wear.

Immediately Jane sent them upstairs to change out of their sodden clothes, then bundled them onto the sofa together as Anna and Kat attempted to dry their hair. Aragon arrived in the living room with two mugs of steaming hot chocolate topped with marshmallows which they took eagerly, glad to be in the warm and dry as the rainstorm raged outside.

“I shall expect both of you to come down with colds within the next 48 hours then,” Jane said brightly as they sipped on their warm drinks, but then her expression softened as she sat down on the other sofa beside Aragon. “Did you both have a good time though?”

Cathy just about managed to glance sideways at Anne while Anna worked on towelling her curls dry. Somehow, even with her hair hanging in sodden rattails and her face pale with cold, when she smiled at Cathy it was still the sweetest sight she’d ever seen. “It was perfect,” she said, her hand burrowing through the blankets until she found Anne’s cold fingers and gave them a reassuring squeeze.

Later on, when they were both curled up together in Anne’s bed trying to chase away the chill that still lingered in their bones, Cathy held Anne close as she whispered “I meant what I said, it was still perfect even with the rain. It was a first date I’ll always remember.”

She could just about see Anne smile through the darkness. “Love you,” she murmured sleepily, and Cathy kissed her cheek before giving herself into exhaustion.