#i also am the one to buy the cards and organise the signing

[hear-my-circles-sing]

A dangoling pangolin

[queenshelby]

The Singer – Part Four

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Words: 2,483

Warning: Smut, Semi Public Sex

 ***The Interview***

It’s been three weeks since Kurt’s stunt and things between you and Cillian couldn’t have been better. Whilst you struggled with comments from the press and the public initially, calling you a home wrecker and making an issue out of the age gap between you, it brought you and Cillian closer together and he even defended your relationship in a recent interview.

Whilst you still hadn’t talked about what you were and where you were at, it was clear to you that you were officially dating. But no one really took you seriously. You were seen as Cillian’s midlife crisis.

Cillian cared very little about the press, ignoring the bad rumours and assuring you that none of this mattered.

He was right. It didn’t matter. People were still buying your new album which, under contract, was unfortunately being produced by Kurt. Under the same contract, you were also obliged to engage in interviews and promotional events.

Whilst you were very eager to simply break your contract, Cillian reasoned with you. He was sensible and you were impulsive.

He assured you that breaking the contract would simply mean more bad press and you engaged Cillian’s agent to help you with media engagements. He seemed to take a sensible approach and asked interviewers to not ask you any personal questions.

But this didn’t always work out, especially when you had an interview scheduled with a London based program whose interviewer just loved to get under your skin.  

This interviewer managed to ask you about your alleged affair by referring to some lyrics of one of your songs.

‘Look, my private life is private and I will not discuss my relationship on this show. But what I can assure you is that there was no affair. We both had separated from our partners when we got involved with each other. The song you are referring to was written over a year ago and doesn’t reflect any of my personal experiences. It was written for a movie and just like the movie, it’s fictional’ you explained in response of the interviewer’s intrusive question.

‘There are many other songs you’ve written which come to mind indicating that you do in fact prefer to be with men who are older than you. These songs were all well received but your relationship is not. How do you feel about this?’ the interviewer than asked, not giving up.

‘Again, the songs are fictional, but my private life is not. That might be the issue. It’s all good if it’s fictional but as soon as it’s not, people get curious. Perhaps there is a lack of understanding surrounding relationships that aren’t the norm. Maybe people’s perceptions will change over time. I certainly hope so. After all, there are so many relationships in the history of the world where people have large age gaps and I believe that every adult has the right to date whoever they want without being criticised about it’ you explained before taking a short pause. ‘Anyway, I would prefer if we could chat about my music now rather than my private life. That’s why I am here’ you said bluntly.

The interviewer finally backed off after your request and your agent had already called in, putting the producers of the show into their place.

Cillian had also listened to the interview and texted you, making sure that you were alright and telling you that he thought that your response was well placed.

Kurt, on the other hand, was once again annoyed with you and sent you a rude text message shortly after the interview and he couldn’t help but try to get under your and Cillian’s skin.

***The Function***

Later that day, the studio was hosting a release party to celebrate your new album which Kurt had organised at the theatre complex function rooms.

It was a beautiful venue but you knew that Kurt would be attending which could end up being a complete nightmare.

This was also the first official event which you were attending together with Cillian and you raised the question whether this meant that you are his girlfriend now.

‘I suppose….I don’t know…do you want me to be your boyfriend?’ Cillian chuckled as he buttoned up his shirt.

‘I would love you to be my boyfriend’ you giggled before giving him a kiss and asking him to zip up your dress.

‘Well, I suppose I am officially off the market again then’ Cillian chuckled before returning the kiss, which was also when you heard the taxi pull up in front of his house.

Your agent has taken the liberty to invite several producers to the party, much to the dislike of Kurt. Kurt was even more irritated when you finally arrived, together with Cillian who was holding your hand.

‘Y/N…Cillian’ Kurt said greeting you both, wanting to shake Cillian’s hand but all he got in return was Cillian raising his eyebrow.

‘Kurt’ you responded with an almost evil grin on your face and just before Kurt leaned in and kissed you on the cheek.

You didn’t stay to talk to him and it wasn’t long until you were inundated by other producers, wanting to talk to you.

‘I told you, she can be a real slut’ Kurt said to Cillian as Cillian gave you some space to mingle, unbothered by the attention you were receiving by several of the producers your agent had invited.

‘And you wonder why she left you?’ Cillian chuckled, thinking that Kurt is an absolute douche.

‘You know she sucked my cock just before I signed her’ Kurt said with a smug face and it was obvious to Cillian that he had been taking some coke again.

‘Nice talk’ Cillian laughed before walking away, getting himself a drink and talking to some of the other artists.

After about thirty minutes you sought out Cillian who was standing next to the buffet talking to two female artists and you decided to give him the same space he had given you. Jealousy wasn’t your thing and you knew there was no need for it.

Eventually, however, you received a text message from him which said nothing but ‘HELP’, making you giggle. He obviously didn’t enjoy himself talking to these women and was being polite, hanging out with them and engaging into some small talk.

Just as you were going to get Cillian away, Kurt approached you.

‘Found a new producer yet?’ he asked and you responded with a quick ‘maybe’.

‘You won’t get the same sweet deal you had with me Love…’ Kurt went on to say, causing you to laugh.

‘You remember that night in the record studio together?’ he asked sheepishly.

‘Yes, I do. You lasted a total of ten minutes which was quite something Kurt’ you chuckled.

‘And I bet these were the best ten minutes of your life’ Kurt said just as Cillian approached you, listening into the conversation and taking in a deep breath.

‘Would you please give us a minute’ Cillian asked somewhat angrily.

‘I will…because my date is here’ Kurt said sheepishly.

‘What, did you hire an escort?’ Cillian asked, looking over to the woman Kurt pointed at.

‘She’s a model’ Kurt explained, not realising that Cillian was being sarcastic.

‘Of course she is’ Cillian chuckled before saying bye to him and this is when you broke out laughing.

‘He’s got the IQ of an ape’ Cillian huffed as Kurt walked away, shaking his head in disbelieve.

‘You are being so polite sweetheart’ you giggled.

‘I am sorry, but he just makes me fucking angry. You know what he said earlier?’ Cillian said but, before he could tell you, you crashed his lips onto yours.

‘Are you angry?’ you asked as your lips drifted apart.

‘At Kurt? Yes’ Cillian said.

‘Good. Come with me’ you winked as you pulled him away from the function.

Without questions, Cillian followed you upstairs where the offices of the producers were located.

‘I saw you talking to these women earlier…tell me about them’ you said as you led Cillian towards the back of the office area.

‘Sorry Y/N, I don’t know much about them, they just…’ Cillian said but, before he could finish his sentence, you interrupted him with a passionate kiss in front of the door leading to Kurt’s office.

‘Don’t apologise, just tell me. I think there is nothing more sexy than seeing other women want what I have’ you smirked, your hand moving to his crotch.

‘Seriously?’ Cillian asked, causing you to nod and bite your lips suggestively.

‘Well, unlike you, I don’t like seeing other men want what is mine now, especially not this smug bastard’ Cillian said before pressing his lips back onto yours for an urgent kiss.

‘Please tell me this makes you angry’ you giggled as you pulled a white card out of your handbag.

‘Of course it makes me angry and, if I wouldn’t be so fucking complacent, I would punch him’ Cillian chuckled just as he watched you swipe the card through the black machine on Kurt’s office door before putting in the PIN on the security keyboard.

‘I’ve got a better idea’ you smirked as you pulled Cillian into Kurt’s office.

‘What are you doing?’ Cillian asked and all you did in response was looking over to Kurt’s study desk.

Cillian’s eyes lid up and, before you knew it, you felt your lower back pushed against the desk while Cillian lifted up your dress and pushed aside your panties.

‘You are so wet’ Cillian growled with excitement as, without warning, he pushed two of his fingers deep inside you, causing you to moan loudly. He was so aroused and rock hard, ready to take you, but he wanted to play with you first.

‘You do this to me Cillian’ you moaned, throwing your head back and taking in the sensation of his fingers deep inside your tight entrance.

Cillian continued to slide his fingers back and forth within your wet folds, hearing you moan and gasp at the sensation. He then slipped his middle finger inside you. You cried in pleasure. He loved pleasing you like this and started to thrust his fingers inside you faster and faster, watching your body pulsate with his movements.

He hit your g-spot over and over again and you knew what this meant. He was doing this on purpose, making sure to mark what is his and, in the process of it, possibly also mark the carpet in Kurt’s office if he kept going like this.

‘Oh god Cillian’ you cried, your eyes closed as he was manoeuvring his fingers tilted up to get the pleasure spot over and over again until your legs began to shake.

‘You like that?’ Cillian asked softly as he continued thrusting his finger into you and you barely managed to nod.

You fluttered your eyes open and looked at him as he confidently smiled at you. His unabashed confidence was turning you on even more. He knew that no one else ever made you cum like this.

As he continued to finger you, sending waves of pleasure over your body, you could feel yourself getting close to your orgasm and just as you were about to scream in pleasure, Cillian pushed his other hand over your mouth firmly as you came over his fingers, a wet puddle immediately forming on the office floor.

While your head was still spinning and without allowing you to come down from your high, Cillian spun you around and pushed you down against the cold oak table.

He certainly was angry and you loved every moment of it.

With one swift movement, he lifted up your dress again and pushed down your panties.

‘Spread your legs’ he instructed and you obliged, hearing his belt unbuckle and the zipper of his jeans opening.

‘That’s good’ he said as he was positioning his cock directly at your entrance, ready to push in.

Your heart started pounding with excitement and with one hard and powerful thrust and one loud groan Cillian buried himself deep inside you.

You shrieked at the sensation as he immediately and forcefully bottomed out inside of you. It took your breath away and he gave you no chance to adjust as he began to thrust in and out of you.

‘You are all mine’ Cillian moaned as he hit your cervix with the tip of his cock for what felt like the hundred’s time.

‘I am yours Cillian, oh god yes, fuck me hard’ you moaned.

Cillian grunted with each thrust, getting more aroused by the second as he was taking you over Kurt’s desk.

Each thrust was igniting a fire in you. It felt so good and you cried at the inexplicable pleasure consuming you, calling Cillian’s name multiple times.

Cillian was grabbing your thighs, prying them apart, and opening you up to him even more. He thrusted deeper and harder into you in this position.

You cried, your nails digging into the wood of Kurt’s desk while your pussy clapped against Cillian with each thrust.

‘I am coming Cillian, fuck’ you moaned and just, like that, another loud moan escaped you and your orgasm washed over you, your legs quivering and shaking as a result.

Cillian exhaled and groaned loudly, leaning in and filling you with his warm cum at the same time. You felt yourself fill up with his seed, exhaling at the sensation. He stayed inside you for a minute, then slowly pulled out. He watched his cum flow out of your opening ecstatically, running down your thighs.

You then turned around and grabbed one of the tissues from Kurt’s desk, wiping your legs clean before throwing the tissue into the bin.

His desk was covered with some of your sweat and juiced and Cillian looked at your flushed, glistening, beautiful face as you were still panting and kissed you softly on the lips.

‘Should we clean this up?’ Cillian chuckled as he closed up his belt.

‘Oh god no’ you smirked before collecting a good amount of Cillian’s cum that had pooled inside you and then licking your finger suggestively before pulling your panties back up.

‘Let’s get back to the party and say goodbye, shall we?’ you giggled.

Cillian followed you and the first person you chose to say goodbye to was Kurt, which surprised Cillian.

Giving Kurt a big kiss on his cheek, you wished him a pleasant evening and Cillian’s chin dropped immediately.

He couldn’t help it but laugh, shake Kurt’s hand, with the same hand that had pleasured you just minutes earlier, and wish him a pleasant night also.

‘You are so fucking bad, you know that?’ Cillian laughed later in the taxi on your way home.

‘He deserved it’ you giggled.

   Tag List (Cillian):

@lilymurphy03  @deefigs @theflamecrystal   @desperate-and-broken  @weepingstudentfishhorse   @livinginfantaxy  @rosey1981  @atomicsoulcollecto  @peakyboyslover  @nerdy4itall  @elenavampire21  @hanster1998  @mariapaiva13  @fairypitou  @harry-is-my-sunflower  @zozeebo  @lauren-raines-x @kasaikawa  @littlewierdalien  @sad-huffle-nerd  @theflamecrystal   @peakymalfoyscullymulder  @themissthang  @0ghostwriter0  @stylescanbeatmyback  @1-800-peakyblinders @datewithgianni  @momoneymolife  @ntmynouis @lilymurphy03  @mcntsee​@cloudofdisney​ @missymurphy1985​​ @peakymalfoyscullymulder  @otterly-fey janelongxox  @uchihacumdump

Cannot Tag (please check your settings):

@l0tsofpennies @margoo0 @trolleydolly @avonlady1985 @chrisevanshoeee  @daydreamingnymph  @fookingshelby   @chocolatehalo

[modernistestates]

A look back at 2021

Happy New Year! It's January the 8th, a wet and grey Saturday, the kind where you just want to stay in watching black and white films. I've no excuse but to update this old neglected blog. I've been bookmarking houses and flats for sale over the last few weeks, and if they're still for sale I'll make my way through them and list them here today.

First, a quick look back to 2021 at Modernist Estates HQ—ha! HQ! My poor flat has been subjected to boxes and boxes of books, Perambulations and 100s of envelopes of various sizes. Something I am determined to fix for 2022: an interesting studio or storage space is on the cards—watch this space.

2021 was a busy time Perambulations. I am now on Number 12 — a guide to Lambeth's modernist housing, which came out in December. What initially started as a side project to fill the quieter days during the Covid Lockdowns in 2020, has gone from strength to strength, and I am planning to keep them going as long as people are still interested. I’ve re-introduced a subscription: 6 guides a year for £30 including postage — a saving of £8.90 compared to buying them individually (this really helps with the upfront printing cost, so thanks to everyone who has signed up). Oh, also worth mentioning, since May I have been donating 50p from each guide sold to Shelter and to date we have raised over £1,400!

In August, sadly a rather grey Saturday, I organised a guided tour of Modernist housing in Shoreditch. It was great fun, and I'll aim to do a few more of them this year. Please subscribe to my mailing list if you are interested and I'll keep you updated.

2021 also saw the publication of two of my books. Modernist Escapes, published by Prestel, came out in March. It was postponed due to the pandemic. As it was released in the middle of a lockdown three years' work became a bit of an anti-climax. That being said, if I am allowed to have favourites, this is my favourite book I have written—probably because the research, not least the travelling, was great fun.

Last month saw the publication of my latest book: Golden Lane Estate—An Urban Village, published and commissioned by Batsford. The book features an intro essay by Elain Harwood, interviews by me with current residents, alongside portraits by Julian Ward, and architectural photography by Mary Gaudin. Much of the book was done during the pandemic, so I'm sure you can imagine the challenges, but I'm happy with the result, and most of all the residents seem to like it.

So, plans so for this year? Aside from finding a studio space to work from (or moving to Scotland, did I mention that?) is to create a series of photobooks. The first one will be on Berthold Lubetkins stairs… niche huh?

Right, that's enough from me, back to the property listings…

[acnelli]

A Favourite

My entry for Ron’s Chessboard Fest 2021.

Pairing: Ron/Hermione

Rating: T

Summary: Ron discovers a group chat that is discussing just how handsome he actually is.

Thanks to TheUltimateUndesirable for organising the Fest.

This prompt had been submitted by @accio-broom​ who also happened to be the beta for this story. Your help and suggestions are always so much appreciated!

@accio-broom​ got inspired by this post by @headcanonsandmore​. So, thank you for the lovely idea! I wanted to write this ever since I saw this post and prompt 39 fit the bill perfectly.

You can also read this story on AO3 & FFN.

“Where are you guys meeting tonight?” Hermione asked as she and Harry cleared the table while Ron and Ginny set up the cleaning charms. 

“George’s place this time,” Ron answered and swooped up some foam of the soapy dishwater to smear it across Hermione’s cheek. 

Sometime after the war, the Weasley siblings established the tradition to meet up once a month. Just the six of them going out for a pint or simply getting pissed at one of their places. This resulted in another kind of meet up, consisting of the Weasley siblings’ significant others. Tonight, they would play a French card game which Fleur insisted on being a lot of fun. The rest of them simply agreed because most of the time, they ended up just talking and drinking anyway. 

Playfully swatting Ron’s hand away, Hermione cleaned her face with a tea towel, placing it neatly back on the designated hook. Kreacher liked the kitchen to be spotless, and letting them cook for themselves every now and then at all had already been a huge compromise from Kreacher’s side. So, they always made sure to clean up after themselves; otherwise, Kreacher would immediately take over all kitchen duties again. 

Ginny sat down on Harry’s lap when all the plates and cutlery were taken care of and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. She lifted Harry’s left arm to check the time on the gold watch the Weasley’s gifted him years ago. 

“Ron, we should’ve left already.”

“Gin, you know every single Weasley is a notorious latecomer. Except for Percy, maybe. George will probably be not even out of the shower when we arrive,” Ron reasoned as he rummaged through the fridge for the sixpack of Muggle beer he bought to bring to George, “or taking a shite.”

While Ginny and Harry snickered, nodding their heads in agreement, Hermione just sighed and rolled her eyes. At some point, she gave up berating Ron about his foul mouth. It was a lost cause, and while she would never admit it out loud, she would definitely miss it if he suddenly stopped cursing. Mainly because over the years, Hermione gathered some exclusive knowledge about what to do for Ron to bring forth a particular choice of swear words.

Ron hardly censored himself, except when Teddy, Victoire and Molly were in the room. Not only would Mrs Weasley twist Ron’s ear off, Hermione definitely drew the line when children were present. She could’ve also lived without the image of George sitting on the toilet. 

They heard the fireplace roar to life, and a few moments later, Audrey came into the kitchen, dressed in grey tracksuit bottoms, white trainers and an oversized blue shirt that sure enough belonged to Percy. Her outfit clashed with the fancy bottle of wine she held in her left hand. 

Hermione looked at Ron, who she had to talk out of wearing his trackies tonight, and into a pair of nicely fitting jeans instead, along with one of his old Cannon shirts. He lifted an eyebrow at her when he saw Audrey’s casual clothes, but Hermione ignored it. 

Audrey sat down with a heavy sigh. “I knew I’m too early. Why am I dating someone so over-punctual?”

“You’re not because Gin and I are leaving now.” Ron laughed as he gave Audrey a quick hug before kissing Hermione and wishing them a fun night. “Don’t do what I wouldn’t do.”

“I think we’re fine then,” Harry commented from behind Ron, where Ginny gave him a peck on the cheek before heading out of the kitchen. 

As Ron turned around, Hermione pinched his arse, not ashamed to cop a feel as she gave him an innocent smile, and he rewarded her with his trademark lopsided grin. “Is this why you wanted me to wear these tight jeans? So, you could properly feel me up?” He asked as he leaned down to give Hermione another kiss.

“ROOON!” Ginny cried from the living room before he could properly snog his girlfriend again. He sighed and gave her a quick peck on the mouth instead.

“Actually, I wanted you to wear them so I can ogle you from behind.” She whispered before he went out of earshot. Ron didn’t turn around, but he gave his hips an extra swing before vanishing out of the kitchen. 

“God, that was gross,” Audrey commented but winked at Hermione anyway, “How can you stand that every day, Harry?” 

Harry was just about to give her an answer when they heard several people arriving via floo, and he settled for just rolling his eyes instead. 

Accompanied by a cloud of some very nice smelling perfume, Fleur glided into the kitchen and right behind her appeared a tall, blonde man Hermione and Harry never met before. This had to be Charlie’s new boyfriend. Ron and Ginny met him last Sunday over at the Burrow when both Harry and Hermione stayed at home since they still had been recovering from a rather nasty case of the flu. 

Fleur took Finn –as he introduced himself in a thick Swedish accent– directly with her from the Burrow where she put Victoire to bed and where Molly and Arthur happily watched over their first grandchild. Harry was secretly happy to finally have another guy in their round again. Not that he minded the company of Hermione, Fleur, Angelina and Audrey. Actually, he always enjoyed their monthly gatherings, but it was nice to not be the only rooster in the yard.

“I’m here, I’m here! I just wanted to stop by the store to grab some more Butterbeer.” Angelina said and put the bottles on the kitchen table. As always, they had a good variety of booze to choose from; Angelina’s Butterbeer, wine from both Fleur and Audrey, the Firewhiskey Harry bought yesterday, and some Cider Hermione picked up from her way home from work. It was way too much already, of course, but that didn’t stop Kreacher from making so much elf wine that they’ll probably never had to buy alcohol ever again. 

As Hermione and Harry added some glasses and snacks, Audrey observed the table with a huge smile on her face. She clapped her hands in childish glee, grabbed a bottle of wine and started to fill Hermione’s wine glass. 

“Fleur, explain that card game to us.”

 *****

Ron was annoyed. 

Because his dear brother was utter rubbish at calculating what would be the appropriate amount of booze for six people, they ran out of beer and whiskey after not even two hours. Due to his bad luck at rock paper scissors, he ended up going back to Grimmauld Place to get them some more beer and one or two bottles of Kreacher’s wine.

The moment he walked through the fireplace, loud shrieks and booming laughter sounded over from the kitchen. Ron planned to just quickly walk into the kitchen, taking what they needed out of the fridge and go back to George’s place. He stopped in his tracks as the conversation filtered through to the living room because he didn’t want his presence to be known just yet.  

“…okay, okay, Hermione. Don’t look at me like that. I complimented your choice in men. Ron is a stilig karl.” Finn said, his booming voice carrying easily over to the living room. Ron didn’t know what stilig karl meant, but from what context he was able to overhear, Finn might’ve just said something nice about him. 

As silently as possible, he stepped out into the hallway where he could hear the conversation better but would remain undetected by the occupants of the kitchen. 

“I personally like his jawline, especially when he lets it go stubbly. It’s…,” Audrey snipped her fingers, “very tempting to touch sometimes. Remember Sunday afternoon after lunch? I kind of had to restrict myself from starring at his jaw when he listened to the Cannons game on the radio. Such determination.”

Ron was sure he was glowing in the dark as he felt the blush creeping up his neck, his face no doubt looking like a tomato. He expected many things, but he certainly didn’t expect to run into this kind of conversation. 

“What does Percy have to say about you lusting over his brother?” Hermione asked, and Ron had to stop himself from bursting out into a laugh because he could practically see her narrowing her eyes. 

“Oh, Hermione, don’t be such a prude. There is nothing wrong with admiring somebody else than your own partner. It eez only natural.”

Ron could not hear Hermione clear enough, but he thought he could hear her muttering something like ‘I’m not a prude.’ 

“Does somebody else has a favourite part of Ron they want to elaborate on? Or can we finally start the next round of cards?” Again, the red-head tried his hardest not to laugh when everyone just ignored Hermione’s sarcasm and, indeed, continued elaborating on the topic.

“His arse!” Angelina offered. From the way she was dragging the ‘s’ a little, he could tell she was already slightly tipsy. “Ron has a very nice bum. Do you guys train your arses in these weekly training sessions at work, Harry?”

Of course, this brought forth another wave of hysterical laughter, which only intensified when Finn told Harry to keep him in mind for these arse workouts. “Maybe I’ll learn something.”

When Angelina recovered from her giggling fit, she declared to Harry she too wants to sign up for that training then added, “But Ron had a nice arse before Auror training anyway.”

“And when did you notice that may I ask?”

“Hermione, it’s almost impossible to play Quidditch and not have a nice arse. Sitting on a broom for hours is no picnic for those muscles,” Angelina answered, unfazed by Hermione’s haughty undertone while Audrey let out something between a snort and laugh, resulting in a rather violent coughing fit. 

“Don’t you agree, Hermione?” Angie asked innocently as she clapped the still coughing Audrey on the back. 

All the ruckus must have summoned Crooshanks because the ginger cat ran towards Ron. He quickly picked him up and started to scratch him behind the ear, successfully stopping him from running inside the kitchen and surely disrupting the conversation inside. And a shame this would be, considering Ron really wanted to hear his girlfriend’s answer.

“I certainly agree,” Hermione said calmly, “Ron hated his hand-me-down jeans, but I always had been very fond of them. Especially, their tendency to hug him in all the right places.”

So much for these new tight jeans, she talked him into buying, Ron thought, not being able to stop the huge grin splitting his face. Running into this conversation certainly was a pleasant coincidence. 

Apparently, the others didn’t expect Hermione to answer so smoothly because a chorus of approving whistles startled Crookshanks, and Ron almost dropped him when the cat clawed at his arm. 

“So, you guys are mostly fond of his arse,” Finn mused, taking a quick swig of his beer, “which is understandable but did you ever notice his shoulders? Ron has the best kind of build; slim waist and broad shoulders without looking burly. Please don’t tell Charlie I said that.”

“Tall and handsome, just like my Bill,” Fleur agreed, Hermione giving an annoyed groan that did nothing to stop the French witch from elaborating, “but I say, Ron’s arms and hands are ze best thing about him. Of course, I hate he got zis scars in ze first place, but I think zey accentuate his arms and big hands rather nicely.”

“Well, Fleur. That surprises no one, I think.” Harry said, joining the conversation for the first time since Ron listened in. 

“Don’t even encourage this, Harry,” Hermione whined, “How could find it not weird we lust over your best friend?” 

Ron knew full well that Harry would tease Hermione, and probably him too, forever about this, so Harry’s next words weren’t too surprising. 

“Well, actually…if I would play for the other team,” Harry obviously made a point to make a meaningful pause here, and Ron really, really wished he could see Hermione’s face right now, “…I mean, if we approach this in a logical manner…I have a thing for red-heads after all.”

The next outburst of laughter, surely about Hermione’s expression, sent Crookshanks in a frenzy for real now, and the bloody cat let out a loud wail and wriggled out of Ron’s arms, scratching the side of Ron’s neck before jumping down over his shoulder. 

If not for Crookshanks loud entrance into the kitchen (why he would bolt towards the noise that scared him was beyond Ron’s understanding), Ron’s colourful cursing tipped off the others about his presence. 

Well aware he had been caught, Ron followed Hermione’s cat into the kitchen, red-eared and shyly waving at everyone. “Hello…”

Before he could offer some kind of explanation, a furiously blushing Hermione jumped up from her seat, bolted towards Ron and without another word, took his hand and dragged him off towards the stairs. “Make sure to take good care of this new scratch on his neck, Hermione!” Audrey shouted after them, accompanied by the other’s laughter. 

With a loud bang, their bedroom door shut, and Hermione immediately pressed Ron against it, showering him with kisses and roaming hands. Slightly puzzled but equally enthusiastic, Ron took Hermione’s face into his hands, deepening the kiss and enjoying the feeling of her body pressed up against his. As they finally came up for air, Hermione nudged him towards their bed, but Ron didn’t move from his place by the door. 

“Hermione, you know they just said that to take the mickey, right?” Ron grinned at her and gave her a wink, “Riling you up is apparently not just my favourite past time.”

“You think they only said that to rile me up?” Hermione raised a questioning eyebrow as she took his hand and resumed her mission to get him into the direction of the bed. “

This time he complied, Hermione lying down onto the soft mattress and tugging on Ron’s belt, making him fall right on top of her. “Of course, you would think that,” Hermione whispered. 

“Think what?”

“That the others just said that to rile me up.” Hermione answered, her hands slowly roaming up and down Ron’s back, “I don’t get possessive over nothing, you know.”

“If…you…say…so,” Ron murmured between the kisses he placed on her neck. He paused his trail towards that special place behind Hermione’s ear to look at her with an awfully smug smile. “I did not plan to wear them again, but I’ll gladly dig those old jeans out of the wardrobe. You know, for the sake of making you happy…and also probably Angelina.”

“Shut up and charm the door!” she said as Hermione let her hands wander over his jeans-clad arse, silently marvelling about its firmness. 

As her hands and mouth wandered over his shoulders, his arms and his scars, and as his hands cupped her face and his blue eyes looked down at her with an expression that always spoke directly to her heart, she decided that every part of Ron was her favourite part.  

[ladyknightleyisundercover]

A Baker’s Dozen

some saccharine sweetness because quarantine means time to write again and all i wanted to produce was hinny fluff :) read on AO3

“Something smells good,” Harry calls, on arriving home. He follows his nose to the kitchen, where Ginny is eyeing a cake she has clearly just pulled out of the oven. “Oh, yum. Is that dinner?”

She pulls a face, and swats him away when he tries to reach for it, so he settles for wrapping his arms around her waist, and they stand there, pressed against each other, surveying it. “It’s for Helen’s birthday,” she explains. “Which is tomorrow, and I don’t have time to bake another, so no touching.”

“I didn’t realise you and Helen were that close?” says Harry. Helen was one of three Healers the Harpies employed to ensure their team were at the peak of their physical fitness. As far as he could remember, though, she mostly worked with their reserve squad, so Ginny, who was always in the starting seven, didn’t have that much contact with her.

“It’s this new thing we’re trialling at work this year,” she explains. “We were just getting absolutely inundated with cake—whenever it was someone’s birthday, everyone would bake a cake and bring it in. Gwynog was starting to worry about our nutritional intake. So this year, she made us pull names out of a hat, and whosever name you got, you and you alone were responsible for baking their birthday cake. Everyone went in, all the players and coaches and Healers, and I got Helen.”

“Well if it tastes as good as it smells, she should count herself lucky,” Harry declares.

“It does,” say Ginny with confidence. “There was some stuck to the bottom of the tin that I helped myself to. And no,” she adds, “there is no more.”

“That’s terrible,” he teases, “I’m cake-deprived. You’re a terrible girlfriend.”

She rolls her eyes, grinning. “Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Honestly, though, I’m more worried about how it looks. Last month, Jen brought this amazing cake done out in the Harpies colours for Miriam’s birthday, and when we cut it open, a load of confetti and fireworks burst out of it. This might taste okay, but it doesn’t look great, and I’m not exactly skilled on the icing front...”

For all the tempting smells, Harry has to admit it is very misshapen. Ginny isn’t going to win any marks for presentation, that’s for sure. “I’d never want to eat a green cake, though,” he says loyally.

Ginny smiles, and extracts herself from his arms. “Even though you’re cake-deprived?”

“Even though I’m cake-deprived,” he confirms. She’s digging around inside the cupboard now, and pulls out a jar of buttercream and some candles, each of which are shaped into the letters of ‘happy birthday’.

“I’ve got this—shop-bought, but don’t tell anyone—and some edible glitter,” she says. “If I pile it on, it should hide any lumps, and then I’ll stick the candles on. It won’t win any awards, but it should do, right?”

Harry nods. “Don’t overthink this,” he assures her. “If it tastes good, no one will care what it looks like. I just think it’s nice that everyone at the club will get an additional birthday cake on their birthday. A family-and-friends cake and a work cake. That’s great! When I was a kid, I’d have killed for just one cake. I mean, it’s not like the Dursleys ever...” He trails off, aware that Ginny is looking at him in that way she does sometimes.

Well, ‘sometimes’.

She only ever looks that way—shocked, even appalled for a moment, then quietly, utterly furious—when he mentions one thing: the Dursleys. She opens her mouth, closes it for a long moment, then, when she speaks again, her tone is very, very carefully controlled. “You never had a birthday cake, growing up?” she asks.

“I guess my parents must have, my first year...” he says. “I don’t know, there aren’t any pictures. But then I didn’t have one again until my eleventh, you know, when Hagrid turned up.” He’s trying to make light of it, to move the conversation on, but he can’t be doing a very good job because Ginny continues to look absolutely furious. “You know, on the scale of all the things the Dursleys did, not giving me a birthday cake is not that big of a deal—”

Ginny makes one of her angry cat noises. “When we were kids...well, you know how poor we were,” she says, a moment later. “Some years, our birthday presents were just hand-me-down clothes wrapped up in old newspaper because Mum and Dad literally couldn’t afford to get us anything else. Not even proper wrapping paper. But we always, always had a birthday cake. And Mum never skimped, either. It was always whatever flavour we wanted, nothing too much trouble, decorated however we chose!”

“Your Mum is really good at baking,” Harry jumps in, trying to head her off as her voice rises in agitation. “I mean, that Snitch cake she did for my seventeenth? Made up for all the ones I didn’t get!”

“And it’s not like Mum and Dad were doing anything unusual there. Every kid gets birthday cake. That’s your job as an adult,” Ginny carries on regardless, and Harry realises he hasn’t done a great job in calming her down. “Even if you go to the shop and buy it because you’re crap at baking. Even if you’re dentists like Hermione’s parents and don’t believe in sugar, you still get a cake. And maybe it’s not that big of a deal compared to the other stuff those people did, but it is just another example of how they are absolute, complete—”

“Alright,” Harry says hastily. “It’s okay, Gin, honestly it is. I’m over it. They’re the past, now, and I survived, and—”

“They are terrible people,” she says, shaking her head. “What you said earlier about being cake-deprived—”

“That was just a dumb joke,” he says. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Honestly I’m not traumatised by it, I was just kidding.”

“I know, I know,” she says. She sighs, and puts down the tub of buttercream she’s been holding onto, waving it around in agitation as she speaks. “I know it was just a joke, but it is true. You were cake-deprived. And yes, like you say, on the scale of all the things they did to you, it’s not that big of a deal. But it’s just so representative of what despicable humans they are. You had eleven birthdays without a single cake—and I assume no cards or presents, too?”

“No cards or presents, yes, but not eleven birthdays—Hagrid came through for me, remember? So just ten. Well, nine, I guess, because my parents must have done one when I was one, like I said. It’s fine, I swear.” She gives him a look. “I guess next birthday, rather than a present, you can just bake me nine cakes, plus one for this year, so a nice round ten, and I’ll be all caught up, yeah?” he says.

Ginny still looks troubled, so he tries to make more of a joke of it by going back to the cake she made for her colleague, which is still on the worktop. “Actually, I could start by eating this one, and...” He flicks his wand at it, so it starts levitating, and he pretends to take a bite.

She pulls a face again. “Damage my cake, Potter, and I’ll make you pay,” she says, but her heart isn’t in the teasing like it usually is.

“Ooh, sounds fun,” he tries, but carefully lowers it back down nonetheless. Then he walks over to her and wraps his arms around her again, and she rests her head on his chest. “Honestly, don’t spare them any thought,” he says. “They are terrible people. I know this. The no-birthday-cake thing was an awful thing to do to a kid, and I used to get upset about it. But now, I’m over it. Really.”

She gives him a look—not disbelieving, as such, but still not completely convinced that he’s not just saying these things to make her feel okay. She thinks its subtle, but he, of course, understands. “Look,” he says, “I have you, and Ron and Hermione, and everything and everyone else, and I am happy. And they are sad, sad individuals living their sad, sad lives and they will be until the end. Who wins, really?”

“Well,” she says, “when you put it like that...”

“It’s obvious,” he agrees. Then he grins. “This summer, we’ll do a cake-tasting, or something. Like wine-tasting, but with cake. Much better.”

She laughs. “Cake-tasting! I am on board.”

“See, it’s almost like they did me a favour!” he says.

Ginny wrinkles her nose. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far…”

*

Her cake for Helen, while not one that sets the world on fire, goes down just fine at work. Harry, meanwhile, is normal. Happy. Busy with work, sure, but he shows no signs of lasting trauma after their conversation. Not that Ginny expects it: even after all these years, she’s still not used to the casualness with which he will announce something totally shocking about his past. Not being given a birthday cake is clearly not on a par with having bars put on his bedroom window, or being forced to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs.

But it still shocks her to her core.

And she can’t shake it. She has half a mind to organise the cake-tasting he’d been joking about, but truthfully, baking has never been her strong suit, and she doesn’t want to let anyone else know, for Harry’s sake. She knows he mentions things about his upbringing to Ron and Hermione sometimes, but she also knows she has to let him drive these conversations. Her mentioning this latest revelation to them would only upset him. So she keeps quiet, until, one day in early June, nearly a month later, it comes to her.

“When do you come off nights, again?” she asks him, over breakfast-for-dinner.

“Wednesday, why?” he asks. “You want to do something?”

“I’m feeling a party coming on,” she replies. “Friday sound good?”

“Sure,” Harry says, “but what’s the occasion?”

“Well, we had our housewarming back in February,” she says, referring to the party they had when they had officially moved in to Grimmauld Place together. “But we never had a garden warming.”

“Well, no,” Harry says, “because the garden’s tiny. Not much to warm.”

“It’s big enough for our lot,” she replies. This is hard to argue with: ‘our lot’ can anything from the two of them, Ron and Hermione, to everyone. At their housewarming, ‘our lot’ meant assorted Weasleys (a houseful on their own); other ex-DA and Order members; some of Ginny’s fellow Harpies; a few colleagues of Harry and Ron’s from the Auror Department; anyone who’s ever been employed at Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes; and a fluctuating number of plus ones as all of the above get into, and sometimes out of, relationships. Harry somehow senses, by the gleam in Ginny’s eye, that this time she’s means everyone.

“The forecast’s good,” she adds. “The garden is pretty big, plus we’ve got the kitchen—and the rest of the house if it comes to it. BYOB, we’ll get a few snacks in, get Lee to play for us... It’ll be fun!”

It would be fun, Harry had to admit. The parties the two of them threw were not usually anything special, really—they didn’t spend lots of money on entertainment, just invited people round, asked them to bring drinks, and left it at that—but this was what made them special. Their housewarming had been ace: why not a garden warming?

“If you insist,” he says, rolling his eyes like she’s asked him for a kidney, and she laughs.

“That’s settled, then,” she says, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll let everyone know: party here on Friday. Get your dancing shoes out, Potter!”

*

Come Friday, Ron and Hermione are the first to arrive.

Harry’s in the garden, magicing up some extra chairs when they apparate in, and he waves them over, giving Hermione a hug while Ron carefully arranges a cake on the centre of the table Ginny’s set up. This takes longer than it should, and both Harry and Hermione watch, amused. “Behold,” he says, when it’s placed precisely how he wants it. “Pumpkin pie and custard cake.” He waits for a flourish which doesn’t come.

“Er…?” says Harry.

“I told you it sounded revolting,” Hermione says, rolling her eyes affectionately.

Ron looks mortally wounded. “How dare you!” he says. “I have spent hours concocting the precise recipe for a cake-pie hybrid, and this—”

“Oh please, not the cake-pie speech again!” she cuts in, throwing her hands up in front of her face in horror. “I swear, ever since he took up baking he’s become absolutely unbearable,” she adds to Harry and Ginny, who has just appeared from inside the house.

“You just can’t deal with the fact that I’m better at something than you,” Ron says smugly.

“Oh...whatever,” she replies, trying—unsuccessfully—to hide her smile. “Anyway, Ginny, how are you?”

Before she can answer, they are interrupted by Dean and Seamus, who have just arrived. Harry knew Ginny had invited them, so their presence is not exactly unexpected. What is unexpected is what is in the box they are holding, and the shriek Hermione lets out on seeing it. “Is that a Colin the Caterpillar cake?!” she squeals.

“Sure is,” grins Dean. Seamus gives an I-don’t-know-either shrug in the direction of the two Weasleys, but Hermione is all but clawing it out of Dean’s hands.

“I have never wanted something for my birthday as much as I wanted one of these,” she sighs almost dreamily. “But my parents were absolutely horrified by the sugar content and wouldn’t let me have one. Plus, they said it was rampant consumerism when a perfectly good, unbranded plain sponge cake would do just fine. Which probably wasn’t too far wrong. But...oh, goodness, you must let me have a piece.”

Dean laughs. “Of course! We always got one every year for our birthdays when we were kids.”

“Dudley used to love ’em,” Harry says. “One year, he had three. One just for him, and the other two to be split between the rest of the kids at the party. But he still ate the face from both of them.”

“What are they?” asks Ron, looking slightly displeased at the excitement Hermione is showing for a shop-bought cake in a box, especially after she was less than enthused about his own creation.

“Chocolate swiss roll smothered in chocolate, with a white chocolate face and feet, and smarties for decoration,” Dean says promptly.

“That sounds—” Ron begins.

“Incredible,” Ginny nods, and everyone laughs. Harry briefly wonders why the two of them have brought a muggle children’s cake to the party, but then Seamus starts ribbing Ron about the Cannons’ last game, Hermione disappears inside with Ginny in search of more plates, and Katie Bell arrives, distracting him.

“Hi, Katie,” he says, waving her over. She’s apparated into the yard like the others had, and she, too, is carefully carrying a cake on a plate.

“Hi, Harry!” she says. “Thank you so much for having us over, it’s great to see you again. Can I put this on the table?”

“Uh...sure,” he says. He eyes the cake with some confusion, which she sees, but misinterprets.

“It’s pineapple upside-down cake,” she explains. “Only,” she adds, sounding slightly worried. “I’ve never made it before. So I’m not sure if it’s actually pineapple right-side-up cake.”

“As long as it tastes good, right?” he asks, deciding to roll with it.

“That’s the spirit,” Katie says, laughing. “Anyway, how are you?” They chat about inconsequential things for a few moments, and it never seems to him quite the right time to ask why she’s brought a home-made, slightly wonky looking pineapple upside down cake to a garden party. But when Bill and Fleur, and then Susan Bones and her partner arrive almost simultaneously, both couples carrying cakes as well, he starts to suspect something is up.

Susan has brought a very neat Victoria sponge cake, dusted with icing sugar and layered with strawberry jam and cream. It is, Harry thinks, a very Susan cake. Bill and Fleur have bought Victoire (who is to go down a storm: later, they’ll say they’re only going to stay for a half an hour, but will end up staying nearly three, mostly because they get to nap whilst the baby is passed around and cooed over) and a galette des rois.

“Of course, traditionally, one only eats this at the New Year,” Fleur explains. “But Ginny said—” unfortunately, Ron, Dean and Katie Bell all burst out laughing at something Seamus has said at this exact moment, and Harry doesn’t hear exactly what Ginny said, though he’s starting to suspect, “—and so I could not not introduce you all to French culture.” She makes her you’re welcome face, but fortunately Victoire starts squawking and her attention is diverted before Harry has to come up with a response.

A few more people arrive: Oliver Wood, looking very sheepish with two muffins he confesses he stole from the Puddlemere staff canteen at the last moment, having forgotten Ginny’s request; Parvarti and Lavender, carrying a honey cake. George and Angelina arrive with a delicious-looking chocolate cake which everyone eyes with intense suspicion until Angelina rolls her eyes and loudly says that she made it at which point everyone relaxes. (When the first person to take a bite from it turns into a large cockatoo for a moment, a la the Canary Creams, she rolls her eyes again and says that she said she made it, not that she wasn’t also capable of creating a Wheeze. Fortunately, the cake itself so delicious that nobody actually minds turning into a parrot).

While this is all going on, Ginny remains in the kitchen, or else when she comes outside, she’s always deep in conversation with someone. At first, it seems natural—she’s always been sociable, but after a while, Harry starts to think she’s avoiding him. Glancing in through the window, he sees her talking in the kitchen with a couple of girls from the Harpies’ squad who have just arrived, with, it appears, a large cake apiece.  

Everyone wants to say hello to Harry when they get there, so he ends up taking up residence by the table on the yard for a while, welcoming everyone and watching the cakes pile up. He starts to feel like he’s ended up at the village show by mistake and will be asked to judge everyone’s offerings. Alicia Spinnett turns up with what is essentially a giant, handmade cauldron cake, and Percy brings something covered in buttercream with rows of sweet cherries on the top that are so neatly arranged Harry suspects he used a set square.

Lee Jordan brings his decks and an incredibly boozy trifle; Harry makes a mental note to not let anyone who has a helping also have any of Hannah Abbott’s Firewhiskey fruitcake. “Half the bottle’s in there, I swear,” Neville says, when they place it down among the growing collection. Hannah elbows him and makes a comment that the other half would’ve been in there, too, had he not helped himself to it, and they walk off, laughing.

The party already has a good vibe to it and it’s hardly begun—the weather’s turning into summer, and so the yard is warm, but not stifling and Ginny’s placed flobberworms in jars around the place which give the yard a magical luminosity. Lee sets up his music, everyone’s talking and laughing, drinks in hand, and Harry’s just about to go over to where Ron and Neville appear to be having a very animated conversation when someone places a plate down on the now bulging table. While Harry logically knows it must be a cake, if only because literally everyone else has bought one, it bares a startling resemblance to burnt toast.

“I’m sorry,” says Dennis Creevey, by way of a greeting. “It’s a travesty, I know. I wouldn’t have bought it, but I was too scared of Ginny to turn up empty handed.” He tips Harry a wink, and Harry grins back.

“You realise you could’ve stopped off at the corner shop and picked up something readymade?” he says.

Dennis makes a show of slapping himself on the forehead, like he forgot something really obvious. “See, mate, this is why you’re the Auror and I’m not. Can’t think on my feet, me,” he says. “No, seriously, that did occur to me. But I wasn’t sure what the rules were with non-homemade things.”

“The rules?” Harry asks.

“Yes, you know, after Ginny’s frankly terrifying invitation.”

“I seem to have misplaced mine,” Harry says, “remind me again what she said?”

“We bumped into each other last week in Diagon Alley,” Dennis replies. “And she’s all, oh, we’re having this party next Friday, are you free? And I said yes, and she said we’ll that’s great, we’ll see you around seven, oh and on pain of death, bring a cake. So I asked what kind of cake, and she said that any would do. But she said she was concocting a special punishment for anyone who turned up empty-handed. I mean, she sounded like she was joking. But d’you remember the fancy dress party, last winter? And what happened to Percy, when he didn’t turn up in costume?”

“I do,” Harry says, matching his grave tone. “Well, we can’t have a repeat of that.”

“Anyway, I asked: why cake? I mean, fancy dress at least makes sense, right?” Harry nods, and Dennis carries on, oblivious to his sudden focus. “And she just said, and I quote, ‘I just love cake, and so does anyone with a brain, so why not have a party where all there is to eat is cake?’”

“Why not indeed,” Harry says. It’s such a Ginny thing to do: make up something that sounds like a silly game, a quirk, a touch of whimsy. Let everyone think it’s just because that’s how she is, but actually, make it a secret present to him.

Truth be told, he’d forgotten about their conversation a couple of weeks ago, when his joke about being cake-deprived had accidentally become A Thing. But clearly she hadn’t, and not only has she now done all this for him, she’s done it in such a way that no one will ever know. She’s squared it so that no one will ever know about the Dursleys and their treatment of him, but he gets all the cakes he missed out on anyway. It’s the silliest thing—it’s just cake!—but at the same time, it’s the best thing.

“...think it’ll be okay?”

Harry blinks. “Sorry, what was that?”

“My cake,” Dennis says. “I know it’s a disaster, but do you think it’ll count?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll vouch for your monstrosity,” he says cheerfully. “Besides—and I never thought I’d say this—I think if anything we might have too much cake.”

“Nah,” says Dennis. “No such thing.” Harry laughs, and then Dennis is summoned over by George, leaving Harry free to do what he wants to most right now: find Ginny.

What he gets, instead, is Luna.

Despite the fact that she’s pretty much the last person to arrive, and so the table by which he’s still standing is now absolutely covered with cakes of all description, she still manages to look incredibly vague as she places one down next to all the others. It looks like a fairly basic sponge, except that it’s a rich purple colour and covered with a bright orange frosting. “Oh, hello Harry,” she says, looking slightly surprised to see him at his own house party. “Fancy seeing you here. Would you like a piece of my cake?”

Harry thinks he would rather eat a slice of Dennis’s burnt monstrosity—would rather eat the whole thing—but gamely agrees, then, with an overly-dramatic slap on the forehead, exclaims that he doesn’t have a knife to cut a piece. “Not to worry!” Ron and Hermione have appeared, both carrying several knives and forks, and a pile of plates. “Ginny sent us out with these.”

Harry looks over, and finds her now talking to Bill and Fleur, baby Victoire balanced on her hip. As he watches, she carefully hands Victoire over to her parents, then slides over to where Susan Bones and her partner are talking, saying something which makes them both laugh, then drops in to say hi to Lavender and Parvati, getting briefly drawn into whatever good-natured debate they’re having. She flits in between everyone’s conversations, and maybe it’s just him projecting, but it feels like everyone lights up when she joins them.

She catches him staring at her when she’s midway through a chat with Neville and Hannah, and even though they’ve been together for years now, it still makes him blush. She winks at him, and smirks, and he deliberately looks away, making a conscious effort to refocus on the conversation at hand. Luna is going into great detail about her cake, which appears to be made of Dirigible Plums, chocolate, and Gillywater essence, which both sounds revolting and, according to Hermione, is not technically legal.

“...should let her know that distilled Gillywater is a class-three non-tradeable—”

“What was that, sorry?” Luna says, and Hermione opens her mouth again, looking vexed.

“Hermione was just saying how delicious your cake looks,” Ron says smoothly, and Luna looks flattered.

“You should give Ron the recipe,” Ginny adds, coming over to join them. “He’s a fantastic baker, and he’d love to try it.”

“You must have the first slice!” beams Luna. Ron looks panic-stricken. “Is there a knife? And some plates?”

“Oh, look at that, we’re out of plates,” Ron says, quickly sliding a stack behind Alicia Spinnet’s giant cauldron cake.

Harry catches Ginny’s eye, then they both have to look away for fear of laughing.

Fortunately, Neville comes over and start asking Luna about some new species of Murtlap which has been bred by a team of Magizoologists in Argentina, and the conversation turns away. Hermione starts magically slicing the cakes, and Ron goes rooting around in the kitchen for all the cutlery he can find, whilst Ginny walks around the different groups, inviting people to dig in.

And dig in they do: everyone, it turns out, thinks a cake party is an excellent idea (“But then it would be, wouldn’t it?” Ginny says when Lavender says this to her, “I thought of it!”). The music is turned up, darkness falls, and the drinks flow, and it’s certainly well into the early hours before the last stragglers have left. Ron and Hermione offer to stay to help with the clearing up, but Harry and Ginny both wave them away. “We’ll do it in the morning,” Ginny says, yawning. “The proper morning,” she adds, glancing at Gideon Prewett’s battered old watch on Harry’s wrist. And, after a final round of goodbyes, it’s suddenly just the two of them in the yard.

Well, the two of them and the remains of upwards of twenty cakes.

Ginny lets out a huge, long yawn which leads into a full body stretch and Harry seizes the moment to reach out and pull her close, dropping a kiss down on her head. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

“...mmm?” she responds, snuggling in.

He could brush it off, pretend he’s said nothing—or at least nothing of any importance—and lead her off to bed, but somehow that doesn’t seem right. “Thank you,” he says again, more clearly. She’s been burrowing into his chest, but she stops for a moment, not pulling away, exactly, but certainly not going any further.

“Harry,” she says, very very softly—and it’s clear that, as usual, she know exactly what is is he is saying, even when he’s not saying anything at all.

“Thank you,” he says, for a third time, and more firmly still. “Thank you for tonight, and for the cakes, and for...for everything. It means a lot.”

She pulls back far enough that she can see his face, and her own has never looked so loving. She gives him a smile so small as to be almost shy. “I’m glad,” she says, and he thinks, then, that it is impossible for anyone to have ever understood another person as much as she understands him, and that he must be the luckiest person living. She gives his arm the gentlest squeeze. “It was a good night,” she says, and he nods in agreement.

“There’s just one thing...” she says hesitantly. She seems to be pausing, collecting her words, and Harry turns his head ever so slightly to one side.

“What is it?” he asks after a moment, as she hesitates. He wonders if she’s leading up to a question about the Dursleys, something sensitive and delicate which leaves her reaching carefully for the right words.

“Oh...” she says. “Just...” It happens so fast that he can hardly credit it—but, he supposes, she is an international Quidditch star, known for her almost inhuman reflexes. Still, it crosses his mind that his boss, Gawain Robards, might be less than enamoured to know that the leading light of his Auror department can be caught out by a five foot one menace, shouting “Gotcha!” and shoving the remains of Percy’s buttercream sponge in his face.

He blinks for a moment, pulling his glasses off to wipe them on his shirt even as he can feel the rest of the icing sliding down his face. Ginny’s musical laughter comes from somewhere over to his right, as she’s sensibly stepped out of retaliation’s way, and he freezes in place for a few seconds. The laughter trails away, until: “...Harry?”

And then he moves, lunging towards Luna’s Dirigible Plum cake, grabbing a handful, and lobbing it in her direction. Her shriek lets him know he hasn’t missed his target, even shooting (practically) blind. He takes the moment to wipe his glasses clean, placing them back on his face just in time to see her eyes narrow.

“Oh, Potter,” she says, grinning in delight. “It is on.”

My thanks to Emily, for the encouragement, and everyone who’s ever re-written *that* HBP movie mince pie scene, for the inspo x

[can-i-stay-awake]

Flower Bouquet: Moonflowers (Seonghwa x Reader) Part 1

Warnings: Insomnia? We’re not far into that boat yet, my angels

Genre: Fluff, Romance, Slow burn

Word Count: 2k

Series Masterlist

Spring’s warm breeze caresses your cheeks as you make your way to your school. You adjust the short sleeves of your summer uniform. You quite liked it. Crisp white school blouse with the very end of the sleeves lines with the same red tartan as your skirt and black tie. Though many of the female students chose to wear white knee highs, you couldn’t be bothered to shave this week so you wore black tights. To be honest, no one actually cared whether you shaved them or not but to you, it’s a matter of confidence. For such a rich school with rich or smart students gifted with scholarships, the people there aren’t as bad as you thought they would be. Of course there are the populars and whatnot but if ignored they ignore you. It’s really not your forte, speaking with people. You can’t say you’re introverted, but there’s no one who really connects to you.

It hasn’t been long since you’ve transferred here. Being a scholarship student is hard when all people care about it your money and looks… Or so you thought. After standing up for yourself to many various people and even publicly humiliating one of the most feared bullies in school, Kang Yeosang, you are neither glorified nor bullied. Though your classmates in English particularly enjoy your company to the point where you think you should just rename yourself, “Hey, what did you get for question six?”. You’ve only made friends with Yuna, a cute little (extremely tall) bespectacled girl whose potty mouth could possibly give sailors a run for their money.

“Y/n! Do you know what happened last weekend?” Yuna’s blonde hair dances in the light summer breeze. Her loud voice snaps you out of your thoughts.

“What happened, Yuna? Did a goat break through your garden fence?” You reply sarcastically, linking your arms together. Her warmth gives you a little comfort.

“No, I wish. I want a pet goat. My brother’s getting married!” Yuna’s gorgeous amber eyes have drops of sunlight swimming in them and you can’t help but smile.

“Oh? Tell him I said congratulations”

“Will do. I’ll also ask if he wants a goat” She flashes a cheeky grin.

“I don’t think he wants anymore goats in the house. You’re good enough” You snicker, squeezing her arm tighter after she punches you in the arm playfully. Your feet clatter against the pavement and you two cross the polished school entrance.

For you, school is more of a place to learn rather than a place to socialise. Unlike others, who use this school as a place for their popularity to thrive, you are among those who keep their heads down and only have a select few to mingle with. You met the bubbly blonde on your first day as she showed you the way to biology, her sassy sweet dual personality humoured you and you two immediately clicked. Sadly, Yuna is more of an artistic person and you only have English together. So instead of sticking together, you are forced to part.

The low hum of the biology teacher’s voice just barely reaches you, your hands scribble at your paper like you’re trying to win a war as you frantically note everything he says down. The scent of oranges fills the classroom. In a way, it’s how you feel at home in biology. Today the teacher is going especially fast with her notes. Pain ebbs at your wrists and you let your eyes wander around the classroom. They travel to the windows, the glass pane reflecting the light of the sun, then they travel to the colourful diagrams made by other classes and they finally fell on the neat, colour coded notes of your desk mate, Park Seonghwa.

His handwriting isn’t very special, but the way the letters are spaced out makes it look mature and refined. The dark haired boy even has a blue colour scheme: azure, cobalt and cyan dotted across the page framed by drawn on silver stars.

Truth be told, both you and Seonghwa are quite shy so the only conversation you’ve actually shared this week was when he didn’t have a pencil because he let Hongjoong borrow his. But you two know each other well and even have a few inside jokes. You two tried to hold a conversation about you two signing up to tutor struggling students but Wooyoung burst in screeching about god knows what. It’s not like you to blurt random things out but before you can stop yourself, you whisper in awe.

“Wow, your notes are super neat. You could put that on study gram…”

Seonghwa’s face visibly brightens from the praise, a smile briefly on his face before returning to his textbook. You never notice the faint rings under his eyes once his stops smiling. “Oh, thanks Y/n”

You were always a little curious about Park Seonghwa, but you never realised how intriguing he is. Little things like the way he acts all cute with Hongjoong to get his attention, and how he has nearly a motherly impact on even the outcasts like Kang Yeosang by letting him keep the black raincoat he was forced to borrow when you can see from the dark haired boy’s shoes that they are a little beaten up. Of course, since he’s so organised, no one even notices the way he secretly calculates his lunch money instead of just pressing his card on the scanner. You too, are practically broke but you can afford decent shoes without worrying about the price. These little things that tend to slip other’s minds are tattooed into your eyesight, highlighted in fluorescent colours.

A few days later, once again in biology, his complexion looks seedy and tired. His skin is dull and the charismatic glow in his voice is jaded. Throughout the week, he becomes progressively more scatterbrained. Like that time in computing science when he dropped his earphones and bashed his head on the upside of his computing desk while trying to retrieve it, and the time he literally forgot his pencil case. The teachers look concerned and it’s quite evident they’ve already checked up on him only to be faced with a half assed reassuring smile.

“Jesus, Seonghwa looks like a mess… I feel bad for the poor guy.” Yuna exclaims, “He’s running for student council president but if he’s like this, he’ll faint dead away. Should I check up on him?” You two watch him practically sleepwalking to his form room, his footsteps dragging and hands rubbing at his eyes. Yuna has an eye for these things too, perhaps she’s not as attentive as you, but definitely more than most.

“Yeah, I’m thinking of doing just that. He’s a zombie.”

Two days pass and Seonghwa looks a little better after Hongjoong practically forced him to sleep, threatening to throw confetti at him which he had brought from the art room. You’ve been trying to find the right time since you can’t just go, “Oh hi, you look like shit. Are you good?” And biology seems too far away for you to communicate, but you decide to wait until then. But somehow, it’s like the gods placed the keys right in your hands and shoved you towards him when you meet him in the supermarket. You buy two packets of strawberries, one for yourself and another for Seonghwa. He smiles at you but his face is now painted over with thick coats of fatigue and the concern probably shows on your face because he stifles a yawn.

“Hey” You greet him, queuing behind him in the long ass line you wish would just move already.

“Hi, Y/n. How have you been doing?”

“Good, you?”

“Good” It’s hard to continue a conversation like this, but you stubbornly press on. Seonghwa looks tired but he’s not facing away from you either and you’ve got his full attention. “Really? You’ve been looking rough nowadays. You should take care of your health. Don’t you always nag Wooyoung, Hongjoong and Jongho about the exact same thing?”

“Oh, how do you know that?” He fakes surprise, trying to steer the topic away from him. You can’t pressure him to say he’s not fine, but you sigh.

“Yuna and Hongjoong are friends. You did hear what I said, right? Take care of your health” You nag and he pouts.

“I am, Y/n. It’s just the election is stressing me out a little.” His eyes swerve to the bottom left, an obvious lie.

“Alright, but I can help you with it. Okay? You’re a literal zombie nowadays. Even our English teacher realised that you’re not in good spirits, and she’s more oblivious and air headed than a four year old”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry for worrying you, I’ll take care of myself” He giggles, you can see the colour rising in his cheeks after a light hearted conversation. You’re not really that good with words, but if it makes him feel better, you’ll gladly do so.

The line progresses, and he lets you go first. Scanning the two boxes of strawberries and placing one in your schoolbag. You wait outside for the boy to scan various groceries and sweets and as he approaches the doorway you stop him.

“Seonghwa”

He turns around, the orange light of the evening sun blazing in his eyes. His dark hair dances in the wind.

“Take this” You hand him the box of strawberries and he’s lost for words, blushing and stammering.

It’s cute.

Very cute.

“Y/n, I r-really can’t take this! It’s yours!” He tries to hand it back to you but you firmly press the transparent container to his chest.

“Yeah, well I accidentally took two. This one’s for Yuna” You shake the bag you’re holding in your right hand. “I don’t like strawberries anyway”

His gaze is skeptical but he smiles sweetly and thanks you profusely. “Sure… Thank you so much Y/n! I’ll pay you back somehow, kay?”

“Park Seonghwa, you pay me back I break your back” You bark, but you let out a small laugh and he does too.

“Gosh, I ought to hire bodyguards” The light that Seonghwa’s eyes hold is so vibrant not even the milky way could hold a candle to the sparkles swimming in his warm gaze. “Thank you again, Y/n” He yells as he walks away from you.

“No problem, have a nice day and make sure to get some sleep” You holler back. As you make your way back home, your heart bubbles and fizzes like the drinks you see Mingi consume on a daily basis.

That night, you sleep well. No emptiness, no gaping void, no nightmares.

Just the comfort of your bed in the sea of your blankets.

It’s too bright this morning, too pretty with the flowers decorating the school entrance, too ethereal with the honey glow of the sun kissing your skin. Though it’s a little too hot, you keep a mini fan in your school bag and sunscreen to prevent anyone from dying.

“Hey, Yuna! I gave Seonghwa a box of strawberries after I met him in the grocery shop!”

“And good morning to you too” Yuna raises a brow, her eyes no longer framed by glasses but the faint outline of her contact lenses over her irises. She grins as you hand her a box. “For me?”

“For you” You smile as you two walk to school together.

“Hey! He looks better today!” You nudge her excitedly as you see the tall, handsome boy massaging red headed Hongjoong’s shoulders, exclaiming about how stiff he is. Though his energy isn’t up to 100%, you’re happy that he’s improving.

Or so you think.

“Seonghwa! Your votes are nearly taking the lead!” Yunho exclaims as they check the little website Wooyoung composed for the student council election.

“Oh? That’s nice” Yunho furrows his brow at Seonghwa’s nonchalant attitude.

“Are you okay? You look like you’re about to faint…” Yunho steadies the smaller of the two in his chair. Seonghwa giggles.

“You don’t need to worry about me, Yunho. I’ll go to the nurse’s if I’m not feeling great” He smiles, exhausted.

The brunet narrows his eyes, “Sure… I’m getting someone to check up on you, I have a meeting in the art club. Don’t move” Yunho rushes out the doorway only to meet you, on your phone checking your emails.

“Y/n, Seonghwa looks like he’s going to pass out. Could you keep an eye on him, please?”

“You don’t need to do that! I’m fine!” Seonghwa yells from the classroom but his voice is groggy, “and you definitely don’t need to do anything!” You look at Yunho, nodding and entering the classroom.

“Enjoy art club Yun-”

Thump.

You and Yunho pause to see an unconscious Seonghwa sliding sideways off of his chair and onto the floor. His hair flying to one side and his eyes fluttering shut. 

“Shit!” You dash to Seonghwa side and Yunho calls out his name. “We should get him to the nurses!”

Yunho nods and you raise his legs into Yunho’s arms until the brown haired boy stabilises his grip on Seonghwa, still knocked out. You open the doors for Yunho as he dashes to the nurses, you feel agony shoot through your heart like an arrow when you see the elder’s head lolling in Yunho’s embrace. The students around you clear a pathway, murmurs filling your ears and looks of concern covering your vision. 

The nurse, who everyone calls Minnie, puts Seonghwa in a comfortable position on entering, you realise Hongjoong already there gasping for breath. He probably caught wind of Seonghwa fainting and dashed to the office. 

“Sorry kids, only one of you can stay. It’s better not to startle Mr. Park.” Minnie’s soft voice soothes everyone’s panic. Even Hongjoong’s posture is slightly more relaxed, you've never seen him without his overly perfect stance and you're reminded that perhaps the redhead isn't as studious as he comes across. Yunho nods, rushing off to the art club, Hongjoong looks longingly over his shoulder as he leaves. 

”I’ll stay.” You announce. Nurse Minnie nods and pulls over a chair for you adjacent to Seonghwa’s freshly made bed. After opening a window and letting the breeze sway the curtains, you settle in and sit beside Seonghwa. His curls are splayed out on his pillow in such a disorganised but perfect way.

”Y/n..?” A voice deep with fatigue calls out to you and you have to restrain yourself from jumping up to the call. 

”Seonghwa...” Is all you can say as he groans and shuffles his pillows. You give him a glass of water and colour bleeds back into his face.

”Hey.” He smiles, rubbing at his eyes. 

”Is that all you can say when you've practically overworked yourself to the point of fainting?” You manage to keep your voice soft but you know he can hear the pout in your voice. ”Hwa...” Gently cupping one hand around his wrist, you see concealer on the finger he used to rub his eye with. You look back up at his face and a hint of dark circles are more evident on his porcelain face.

”I should get better concealer... Don't look at me like that, your expression looks like a cat eating a lemon, down to a cinch.” He chuckles but the smile doesn't reach his eyes. The aroma of citrus (with a hint of candy) fills the room. It reminds you of biology class and you realise the scent is coming from him. 

��What do you even do? And why does it get in the way of your sleep? Is it insomnia?” You try to coax an answer from him, but you know you can only go far. “You don’t need to tell me, but it might help to tell someone” Seonghwa grins, sinking further into his covers.

“You don’t need to worry about me” He whispers, and you see his legs adapt the fetal position.

“But I do, because you’re my friend.” 

“Am I?” Seonghwa’s dark eyes are once again all a-glimmer, his eyebrows are raised in surprise. It’s as if you’ve offered him a lifetimes supply of strawberries.

You stop yourself from doubling over and giggling, perhaps you understand why girls and boys alike look at Seonghwa the way they do. His calm and cool demeanour is alluring but those rare times where he opens up is what pulls you in. “Of course” You smile, and perhaps the blush dusted on Seonghwa cheeks isn’t a hallucination. 

“If you really want to know, I’m busy looking after my younger cousins, Jihyo and Daehyun. My siblings and parents are barely home.” 

“Seonghwa...” Concern once again bleeds into your face but the latter interjects before it settles. 

“They’re super adorable though! And well behaved! It’s nothing to worry about” But one look at the dark patches under his eyes tell you otherwise. 

“If you’re fainting due to exhaustion, it is a big deal” 

“It was super hot today though, it could have been because of that” His long fingers run through his hair and it falls perfectly back into place. You’re tempted to ask what shampoo he uses but you snap out of it. “Seonghwa. Do you want me to help?”

“Help? It’s not a big deal!” 

“If I bought Hongjoong here-“ You could see in his expression that he was awaiting Hongjoong’s nagging ever since you told him that Hongjoong and Yunho brought him here.

“No! Fine... He’ll nag my ear off” Red lips form a pout, his head drops. “He talks for so long that he ends up repeating everything he says and if you try and argue he starts all over again”

“I know. Remember when Jongho sprained his ankle playing basketball?” Hongjoong’s normally quiet and composed voice thundered throughout the hallways so loudly even the teachers dared not to intervene. 

“Exactly, I’ll die. You don’t want me to die, do you y/n?” Seonghwa looks up at you and uses the type of gaze you give teachers when you want to skip PE. He pouts even harder and when you grumble, he giggles. 

“I’m still coming over. If you’re not well rested by the time I’m finished playing with your cousin I’m moving in” Though these are jokes you usually pull with closer friends, something about your relationship with Seonghwa connects. You feel your presence calming him down and his soothing the creases on your brow. 

“I got it” He giggles and covers his mouth with his hand. ”When are you free? I'm free all week, including today”  

”Hmm, I have to help out Hongjoong with student council shit today... Is it alright if I come tomorrow?” 

”Sure! I'm positive Jihyo will enjoy some company. Daehyun is a little older and introverted, but she's tired looking after her younger sister too. We can look after them together” That’s not your plan, but you nod and smile. 

After school that next day, you wait for Seonghwa outside the gates. Unlike the cute, laid back persona he adapted in the nurse’s office the other day, his posture is perfect and his movements as elegant as a swan. It’s a facade, but a natural one that doesn’t stem from bad pasts. It’s just Seonghwa. 

You like ‘just Seonghwa’. 

”Y/n!” He waves and you wave back as his feet pick up the pace. ”Hey” He looks a little brazen, and you wonder if Hongjoong’s nagged him for returning to school beforehand.

”Hey Seonghwa! Did you stay in the nurse’s office or did you go to class yesterday? I didn’t see you leave”

”I had French. What do you think?” Seonghwa loathes his French teacher, who always makes loud noises and is way too animated and not focused enough on teaching. Seonghwa says that he seems like a nice person but he's not good enough of a teacher. You've yet to meet this man but you'd rather not if he ”has an attention span of a seven-year-old on a sugar high”. You two have some small talk until you reach his neighbourhood. ”Y/n, we need to be super careful. This isn't a good area.” He looks embarrassed and you try to wipe the anxious look on his face.

”I live pretty nearby, don’t worry. No fear! I have a death stare stronger than... I don’t know, who has really good death stare game?” 

“Medusa?” He chuckles.

“Medusa!” You giggle and you spot the tips of his ears flush. 

“I don’t have that much of an intimidating stare-“ Seonghwa is interrupted by a loud cat call in your direction, something about how your cute uniform would look cuter on the floor. “Fuck off!” He yells and the man is about to square up until you both shoot him a warning glare. You clutch the hockey stick in your hand you carry for PE and he leaves.

“I’ve never heard you curse before...” The Seonghwa you know is always poised and perfect, a gentle aura follows his wake as an ethereal glow does with an angel. He’s the one that whacks Wooyoung and San over the head with a rolled up chemistry booklet whenever they let a few foul words pass so you’d never imagine that kind of language. It was yet another side of Park Seonghwa you’ve just discovered.

“I’ve never seen you with such a face before...” You two both start laughing. He pulls out his phone and types frantically at his keyboard. Something motherly and caring lingers on his face as he picks up the phone and loving asks whom you presume is Daehyun, to be careful on the bus home.

 “Aww, what a caring brother”

Seonghwa flashes a painful smile your way. It’s one of the cutest things about him, you think. “She’s a scatterbrain. I can’t let her out of my sight! Little sisters are a handful I swear” 

You laugh at the overly exaggerated pout and huff that graces his features. 

“Oh, how’s the student council election going?” Seonghwa brushes his hair back with one hand and nervously chuckles. 

“I’m second place, but Hongjoong is pretty far ahead. I don’t actually mind very much. I just thought it would look good on my resume. Hongjoong is more the leader type, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think he wants to be elected” His eyes met yours and you admire the emotional intellect he holds to see past Hongjoong’s quiet and distant mask. He’s very extroverted when people come up to him, but whenever he’s alone you think that there’s a different world he sees through those starry eyes.

“Oh? Why so?” 

Seonghwa’s walking pace slows a little, “It’s a guess, but Hongjoong’s parents seem to pressure him a lot. His grades, to be exact. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe he has super nice parents. But I don’t think that’s likely” His gaze is downcast and pity pangs at your heart.

“Oh no...” You look at your black polished shoes and the flutter of your skirt as the grey pavement moves along with your footfalls. 

“All families have at least something to deal with. Some problems bigger than others” The two of you exit the dark alleyway into a block of Tennant flats and he fumbles for his keys as you cross the third one. “Where are you going, Y/n?” He chuckles as you accidentally pass the red door to his house. 

“Ah! Whoops! I went to the direction of my house by mistake!” You chuckle and wait patiently for him to unlock the door. A pastel yellow chick key charm swings as the silver of his keys shine in the streetlights. ”Cute charm” 

Seonghwa blushes. ”Oh, Daehyun got matching ones for us at a school festival. It's totally unlike her too, she's kind of well... See for yourself, she's probably home by now” 

The creak of the doorway makes you want to oil it right away but you stay put. Seonghwa takes his somehow unscratched and polished shoes on the mat and you do. “Sorry, I tried to clean but it’s a bit messy” 

Pearly white sofas blessed your vision, not a single hair nor stain defacing it, the oak floor gleamed like water in the sunlight. The marble dining table sparkled, an equally clean vase where a single (artificial) pink rose sat. In baskets suspended by chains by the windows, there lay a few moonflowers nearly in bloom. The furniture isn’t very expensive, perhaps a little more than outside your budget, but the pristine perfect polishing made the place look like a palace. 

“Messy? What’s clean to you?” You gasp in astonishment as he leads you to the living room where a blonde girl and a dark haired toddler sat. 

“Hey, Daehyun. Hiya, Jihyo! How was school?” Seonghwa’s loving tone changes to a cooing, sweet one when addressing Jihyo. Jihyo runs into Seonghwa’s arms and he lifts her up, giggling. She replies with something about finger painting. 

Daehyun’s blank gaze turns to you, a hint of curiosity in her eye. She waves at you calmly and you return it. “Hey, Daehyun, isn’t it?”

“Yep. Hi, Y/n. Can I call you that?”

“You can call me anything unless it’s “lady hand me down”, I’ve heard that so many times I’m ready to go on a killing spree” You joke, and Daehyun smiles slightly. 

“Jihyo, this is Y/n. We can all play together!” Seonghwa giggles in his sing-song-y drawl. He puts her down and her brown eyes shift to you, assessing you in a little kid way before giggling. 

“Hiya! I’m Jihyo~” She lisps, her words slightly broken but adorable all the same. You coo and crouch down to give her a high five. 

“How was school, Dae?” Seonghwa turns to the middle child, who huffs in annoyance.

“They never serve the good food. If I die of food poisoning, I’m suing them. They ruined salmon for me” You expect Seonghwa to chuckle, but he looks dead serious as he rolls his white sleeves up.

“That’s abuse. Shouldn’t they give you good food so that you can learn better? What non edible junk do they give you? How bad does it taste that it ruined salmon for you?” Daehyun replies with a gagging noise and they chuckle. You stare at her for a little, Daehyun is a lot like Seonghwa. Cold exterior, warm interior. Perhaps even colder than him, but easy to thaw. 

Jihyo waddles up to you after retrieving something from her vibrant pink toy box in the corner. “Blocks?” 

“You wanna play with them, Jihyo?” Seonghwa asks, his lips are upturned in a huge dorky grin and you feel your heart melt at the sight. 

“Seonghwa, you are to rest” You order in what you hope is an authoritative tone. 

It isn’t. 

“Seonghwa, you are to rest” He mocks your high pitches tone and pinches your nose. “Heard this from Hongjoong, not from you, please!” He pouts but you, though it takes a lot of willpower, don’t give in. 

“Nope, go to bed” 

“Y/n, will I have to go to bed!?” Jihyo pouts, and you wonder if it runs in the family. 

“Not you, angel” You smile softly. 

Daehyun looks up from her chemistry textbook and sighs, “Go. To. Sleep. Seonghwa. Or. I’ll-” 

Seonghwa jolts and rushes across the room, the action reminding you of the Angry Birds slingshot animation and covers her mouth, face red and fuming. ”Daehyun, you better not blab” He squeaks and Daehyun blinks, his hand still over her mouth.

“Then sleep, dumbass. Take some rest, or else I’ll knock you out” Her muffled voice makes you laugh a little.

“Isn’t that normal sibling stuff? You know, dumb threats?”

Seonghwa’s eyes widen in seriousness, “No, I swear, she actually means it sometimes. She once put a sleeping pill in my milk, the snake” 

“I did” Daehyun’s comically monotone voice back him up, her eyes not once leaving her book.

“I should have you arrested” He jokes and she smirks, “But I shouldn’t leave a guest here alone. It’s bad manners”

“I came here so you could rest, Hwa. Please take some rest.” You tell him. Seonghwa looks troubled and he sighs. 

“I’ll still be in this room to check up on you guys. But thanks” His looks a little stressed but after you make Jihyo laugh. Perhaps it’s the wave of relief the he feels, but the atmosphere in the room brightens, the orange hue of the evening sunshine painting streaks across your faces.  

Jihyo is extremely energetic, but when she sees you try to stifle a yawn, she lets out a concerned squeak. “Are you tired? Do you want to take a nap?” She asks, and you find it amazing how such a young child can read your emotions so well. 

“I’m alright, Jihyo, angel”

“Why do you call me that?” She stutters in her cute drawl. 

“Yeah, have you seen the Biblical versions of them?” Daehyun jokes, somehow managing to hear you from her electric blue headphones.

“Well, angels are very cute. And they bring happiness to people!”

“My mommy says all I bring her is-“ Seonghwa, who you thought was asleep, suddenly sits up from the couch and coughs. Jihyo is silenced immediately. 

“Please, excuse us” The dark haired boy picks up his young cousin and leads her to the side room to your left. His expression isn’t angry, but worried. 

You have a gut feeling that perhaps Jihyo had no choice but to observe the emotions of the people surrounding her.

Daehyun’s growls under her breath. 

“Is everything alright? Y-you don’t need to tell me, I don’t mean to meddle-“

“No, it’s fine. It’s just that our Auntie isn’t very nice. Me and Seonghwa just have busy parents, but Jihyo’s mum isn’t... Fit to be a parent” Her voice his still expressionless, not a hint of pity. She sounded as if she were giving a presentation. But her fists are clenched by he side. “Poor kid. She doesn’t know that her mum’s an asshole. She just thinks it’s how people show love. She’s only been here for a month or so, so Seonghwa and I are trying to help her out”

“Family is... A sensitive subject, huh? Is there even such thing as a perfect family like in the movies?” You didn’t mean to say it out loud, but Daehyun nods.

“Nope, don’t think so”

You feel the happy, cheerful morale drop into the pit of the earth as Seonghwa and Jihyo exit the room. Seonghwa looks more shaken than the surprisingly cheerful girl holding his hand.

“Dae, you don’t mind watching her for a little bit right? Call me if you need anything” He suddenly pulls you up and takes an umbrella out of the store cupboard by the shoe rack of his doorway.

“Kay, go” Daehyun hops off of the couch to watch TV with Jihyo on the couch, cuddling her as if she were a glass ornament rather than a four year old girl.

The choir of raindrops hitting the pavement of Seonghwa’s street resonates with your footsteps. He coughs awkwardly to break the silence.

“It was weird for you, right? I’m sorry” He mutters. Green cloth shoots into the sky and spreads its wings like a butterfly. He holds the strongly viridescent coloured umbrella above your heads, inching closer in order to share.

“What? No! Never! It’s totally fine! These things happen, Seonghwa. They shouldn’t, but they do. I just hope she’s okay”

A trace of anger seeps into his deep brown pupils. “I try to tell her. To re-teach here that she’s not responsible for her mother’s behaviour, but she doesn’t get it. She think Auntie loves her”

“Oh dear” 

“Please... Don’t mention this to any-“

“No, no! I would never! But Seonghwa, you shouldn’t have the burden of unravelling Jihyo’s tangled threads. You’re tired already. You and Daehyun shouldn’t be the ones to do that”

Grief and pity washes upon him, and it trickles into his words like water from a slightly cracked glass bottle. “Dae shouldn’t, I agree. But if I don’t, who will?”

“Can’t you speak to your parents?” 

“They’re stressed and busy-“

“They’re family, Seonghwa. Their occupation doesn’t hold a candle to their own family, let alone children” Your stern voice makes him sigh, and you hold the oak handle of the umbrella with him.

“Not all families are like that, Y/n... But I can’t say my family is one of them. But should I stress them out? They don’t know my Aunt is like this. At all.” His warm hands slightly overlap with yours as he re-adjusts his grip on his umbrella. You feel heat creeping up your cheeks, and out of the corner of your eye, you see Seonghwa turn away but not fast enough to cover his pink dusted cheeks.

“Don’t you think it would be better for Jihyo if a therapist helped her out?” You feel his breath causing a ripple of movement in your hair. The sun bleeds through the cracks left by the grey clouds, but they are barely enough to let the city bask in its glory. 

“You’re right. I didn’t think about it that way. How idiotic am I?”

“You’re not” You stare him dead in the eye, the sincerity of your tone even taking you aback.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. We’re not supposed to know everything, you know? She’s only been here for a month, according to Daehyun, so it’s a lot to take in” Seonghwa’s pinky brushes against the back of palm, before positioning his hand over your own. He squeezes it.

“Thank you, Y/n. I think I really needed to hear that” 

You two go back inside. 

The choir of the rain is mixed with your footsteps and the thump of your heartbeat.

And as Seonghwa edges nearer to take his shoes off, you hear his own rapid thumps.

“Jihyo loves me so much, don’t you, cupcake?” Seonghwa cooes as she crawls onto Seonghwa lap. 

“D-Dae” She squeals, pushing Seonghwa’s head down so she can crawl over his head to get to Daehyun, who is sitting behind him. He looks betrayed and flashes a painful smile at you.

“Nah, you’re just a stepping stone to him. Isn’t he, Jihyo?” Jihyo giggles and snuggles up to Daehyun, who puts her phone aside and taps her nose.

“She’s a baby” You coo, pinching her cheeks.

“Yeah, a baby. I love babies... But this one thinks I’m a stepping stone” Seonghwa pouts playfully.  

“You both have a pouting tendency. Watch a bee doesn’t sting you on the lip” You tease and Seonghwa rolls his eyes.

“A bee would be honoured to die kissing my lips” He flips his hair in a nonchalant manner but then proceeds to cringe. “I’ve been hanging around San and Mingi for too long” 

Daehyun gags. “Never flirt with your crush like that, they’ll get so shook they’ll migrate planets” Jihyo chuckles along with everyone. “Oh, the results of the election are coming out next month, no?”

“Yeah, I kind of don’t want to win though. Too much trouble” Seonghwa ruffles Jihyo’s hair. 

“Y/n, why didn’t you run? You’re a model student, you could have won!”

Poor Seonghwa must be oblivious to the fangirls surrounding him and Hongjoong left and right. You wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Uhh, yeah no. Not my thing. I like receiving orders, not giving them. I’m not the leader type”

Seonghwa pulls a face, “Me neither. Hongjoong is though. Maybe if he stopped daydreaming once in a while, he’d realise that. Though if he doesn’t want to be a part of the Student Council, he can be leader of the Art club. The person currently running is leaving”

“Art club?” Hongjoong had never seemed like the artistic type to you. But then again, you didn’t go to the same classes as him except Maths.

“Yeah, Hongjoong is really good at art. He can do all these weird things with glass. He made that bird for me over there!” Seonghwa points to the display case beside the television, there sat a cerulean glass blue bird. It looks very well done, with the feathers etched in and the beak perfectly shaped. 

“Don’t pull my leg, really?” It looked good enough to sell for quite a lot on a website. Hongjoong could start a business. 

“Yes, really!” He laughs his signature laugh, airy and gentle, and you nearly burst. If you didn’t realise you liked Seonghwa, you sure did now. “Do you want anything to drink?” 

“Oh, no. It’s alright!” You say, but a hiccup follows. Seonghwa chuckles and gets up.

“Water it is then” He waddles into the kitchen, with Jihyo clinging to his leg. “Anything you want, Angel?” He struggles to deal with her weight. 

“C-cookies, Hwa” Seonghwa winces at the puppy eyes before him.

“Not now, angel. You need to have room for dinner” Jihyo grumbles but then points at a bunch of grapes. 

“Wow! What species of toddler is she?” You joke as she hugs a plastic bowl filled with green grapes and goes up on her tiptoes to place it on the marble table. You’ve never met such a pliant kid before and it shocks you to the core.

“An angel, aren’t you, Jihyo?” The taller of the two picks her up so she can push it further into the centre of the table. 

“Yay! Angel!” She giggles.

“Daehyun? Are you hungry?” Seonghwa turns to the blonde, she nods a simple no. 

“Should we watch a movie?” Daehyun asks. “We got that DVD set last week, didn’t we?”

“Oh, yeah! Your call, Y/n” Seonghwa flashes a charming smile at you and you fumble for words.

“S-sure! Jihyo can choose” Jihyo giggles in delight and hops to the box set as Daehyun sets it out. 

“Why is this so deep?” Seonghwa whines, trying to bat away the tears forming in his eyes. You feel your heart shattering even though he isn’t actually that affected by Piggy being killed by the rock.

“Oh no! Don’t cry, we’ll all start crying” You plead, fanning them away. You wonder why Jihyo chose something as morbid as “Lord of the Flies” but she seems rather content with the gore. 

“I won’t cry. I’ll laugh” Daehyun nudges Seonghwa playfully and Seonghwa gets up to chase her. 

“Brat!”

“Oh, boo hoo. Go cry about it”

The entire evening is spent giggling and joking. You think it’s been the best evening in your life. 

“Ah, Y/n!” 

It’s been a few weeks since Seonghwa hung out with you. Ever since then, you two have been talking to each other more often like during breaks and after school activities. Along with Hongjoong and Yunho, you two have been carrying out duties and solving problems together. 

“No, I didn’t get three for question five” You sigh and turn around, to Seonghwa, who pokes you in the cheek with the back of his pen. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t think you said that”

“I’ve been asked that too. I got 37”

“Me too!” That gave you the reassurance that you got the question right. 

“Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to have some bubble tea out in the city for lunch? Just a little thank you for looking after Jihyo again this weekend” He goes a little pink but on his face is a flirty smirk you’ve never seen before. It makes you want to sink under the table and squeal. 

“Sure, but I think I should thank you for intruding” 

“No, I should thank you for helping me out again this week” You reply. The sunlight bursting through the window paints Seonghwa’s complexion, making him look even more devilishly handsome, his dark hair threaded with locks of gold. 

“We’ll be here all day. Just say yes” He flicks at your forehead gently and you smack his shoulder. “Don’t skip PE, Y/n. Jihyo is stronger than you and she failed.” 

“Fine. And do you want me to show you real strength, Park Seonghwa?” You both laugh, and the teacher gives you two a warning glare. 

“No, I swear! Pigeons are FBI robots!” You exclaim, and Seonghwa sniggers.

“So you’re saying if I kill one pigeon’s friends and family it won’t die of depression?” Another shit eating grin forms on his face. It’s so hot you wonder why the ice in your drink hasn’t melted yet, let alone Antarctica thawing. 

“You monster” You playfully pout. A few friends have told you you’ve been hanging out with him too much because you’ve picked up his habits. 

Seonghwa bats his eyelashes, “Moi? I’m an angel”

“Sure...” Seonghwa’s eyes suddenly light up, pulsating with mischievous intent.

“Hongjoong managed to fall asleep in the changing room. Look, I took a picture” Seonghwa wheezes as he unlocks his phone and shows you a picture of the dark haired boy with his eyes fluttered shut and mouth slightly parted. 

“Jesus, no one should be allowed to look that pretty while sleeping” You blurt out in awe. The boy in front of you scoffs. 

“He was drooling, idiot. Anyhow, I’m way more charming than Hongjoong” Seonghwa tries to play it cool, raising his eyebrows and winking but you can sense the jealousy bubbling up within him.

“Jealous?” You snicker, taking a spoonful of the strawberry decorated cake. The sweetness melts in your mouth, along with the fruity tang of the strawberries. 

“No!” He laughs, a little too loudly that the cafe barista looks at him, her pretty doe eyes widened in shock. The boy then clears his throat and proceeds to continue his conversation. “I’m not jealous- Oh, hold on” Seonghwa moves in a little closer to brush off the whipped cream on the corner of you lips. The rough pads of his fingers gliding across the skin of your lips. He smoothly licks it off of his fingers and you both go red after the realisation of what he did. 

“Ah, thanks”

“No problem” He coughs awkwardly. You check the time and tell him that it’s probably a good idea that you two head back to classes. Seonghwa nods, and as you two walk down the road he gently pulls you in by the waist as a car goes by.

“Are you okay? Ugh, drivers” Seonghwa scoffs, and squeezes your waist and then releases you. 

“Hwa!” You dare say that he’s getting bolder nowadays as both of you have realised your feelings for each other. But instead of blowing the candle out directly, you’re both gently waving at the flickering flame. 

“Sorry” He giggles, and you know he doesn’t mean it. “Come to this side” He swaps places with you so that he is on the side of the road closer to cars zooming past.

“Thanks, Seonghwa”

“No problem. Oh goodness the election results are coming out in a few days and I really regret running for it now! I’m so nervous”

You squeeze his upper arm, “Relax. I’m sure you’ll do a great job even if you win. I’ll be here to help out and I’m sure Yunho and the others will be glad to as well”  Seonghwa’s eyes return to their normal, bright and sparkly sheen. 

“Really?” His voice holds the innocence of a four year old, despite his deep and elegant drawl.

“Really” 

That night, you can feel Seonghwa’s restlessness from blocks away. The silence of the night drives you up the wall and you pull out your phone. Is it the election? 

You: You awake?

You don’t expect an answer, you shouldn’t. But your face lights up at the sudden green bubble indicating that he’s online popping up immediately.

Hwa: No, I’m asleep ;p

You: Alright, well when you wake up remember that I’m cheering for you! <3

Hwa: shdufyyfipiueouriguu

You: ?

Hwa: Sorry my fongers were beingg dimb

Hwa: *Fingers

Hwa: *Being

Hwa: *Dumb

You: Lmao, go to sleep you nonce.

Hwa: Nonce? Meanie :(

You: I don’t trust people who use those weird keyboard emojis. Use your phone ones like a normal person lmao

Hwa: Hello, Childline? I would like to report a case of child abuse. This individual has called me a “nonce” and is now choosing to insult my emojis! Harry Potter and the Audacity of this Cutie 

Hwa: JHsudhsdyduyfisuyfuyfuyfuyufisu

You: Aww, thanks 😊 

Your heart accelerates. Of course, after you and Seonghwa started hanging out more, he was more flirty and bold but you’ve never seen him become flustered before. He’s called you a baby and addresses you very endearingly. But is this sleep deprived Seonghwa embarrassed? It’s adorably funny to you. 

Hwa: soodjjSOFFOJJFIJNFJJFI

Hwa: Damn it.

Hwa: I’m way too sleep deprived to play it cool

You: Should I send you an ASMR video? It helps me sleep sometimes

Hwa: Really? That would be great

Hwa: Excuse me, wait a second. Why are you awake?

You: Insomnia, ran out of pills.

Hwa: Poor thing :(

Hwa: Do you have a 24 hour pharmacy near you? I’m sure there’s one down the road and we don’t live far apart.

You: DKM STOP USING THOSE CURSED EMOJIS

You: And idk, it’s dangerous for me to walk at night. Even with my hockey stick lolol

Hwa: Where do you live? I’m coming

You: Seonghwa! No! It’s alright! I can stay awake

Hwa: Then I’ll stay awake with you <3

You: You don’t need to. 

Hwa: I would have forced you to sleep, but Joong has insomnia and I kinda get that it’s hard

Hwa: So if you can’t sleep, ping me~

You: “Ping me” lmao

You: Thank you though.

You: You do so much for me. You know that? Like, whenever I feel like shit, you’re there. 

You: Do you read my mind, Seonghwa?

Hwa: I’m glad I’m able to be here for you. At first I felt like I was had to so I could pay you back. But now it comes naturally. I don’t really click with people, but I can with you. 

Hwa: Don’t get me wrong, I’m only here because I want to be. I like taking care of you and I’m thankful you do the same. 

Hwa: Just seeing you makes me happy 

You: I feel the exact same way, Hwa.

You: You make everything so warm and happy. It’s your presence and I get along with you so well! 

You: I know you said it already, but please don’t feel indebted to take care of me, Seonghwa. I too, do it because I sincerely care about you. 

You: I love yo| 

Your fingers dash across the screen, but another sky blue text bubble makes your heart drop, the adrenaline building up in you blowing out in a sad puff. 

Hwa: I’m sorry, I’ll be right back. Getting a call.

“Seonghwa... I don’t want to do this anymore” The latter’s stomach and heart hurl up and down at the chocked voice, probably crying through the phone.

“Hongjoong? Talk to me” Seonghwa tries to keep his voice steady and attempts to clear his mind and analyse the rise and fall of his voice and the tone. He wants to see Hongjoong face to face. That’s the best way he can read people, with their expressions. But he knows that Hongjoong doesn’t dare show his face while he’s crying, a rarity.

“The... The election... It was my parents who made me do it. Seonghwa... Seonghwa I can’t do this anymore” Hongjoong sobs, his clear voice murky with sleep and sadness. Seonghwa feels his own eyes fill up but he swipes them away.

“Focus on Hongjoong” He hisses to himself mentally. 

“Hongjoong, your parents can’t dictate what you do or not. If you feel pressured and they don’t listen, you have to do something”

“I know! But what? Who’s going to help me? What if I get kicked out? My parents might still love me if I rebel, but I don’t want to take that gamble. Seonghwa... What do I do?” 

Seonghwa bites his nail. For once, Seonghwa doesn’t know what to do. It makes him feel helpless that someone is hurting, especially if that someone is a friend. Hongjoong isn’t the type of person to be very in touch with his emotions, and seeing his glass mask shatter breaks him apart too. 

“Hongjoong, you do what you think is right. And if you don’t know what is, then ask someone who knows. I’m sorry, Hongjoong, but I don’t know what to do. But you can always talk to me. I’ll always be here for you, Hongjoong” 

“Really?”

“Yeah. If they kick you out, I’ll find you a place to stay” 

Seonghwa hears Hongjoong crumpling down, “I don’t want to be abandoned” It feels like a spear through the chest hearing his torn voice. 

“I know, sweetheart. No one does. But if you feel like that’s what you have to do, you have to remember that there are people who will always accept you. I will, Yunho will, Y/n will, Wooyoung will. Forever” 

“But they’re my parents. They’re supposed to be here for me!”

“Joong...”

“Can’t I ever please them?”

“I’m sorry, Hongjoong, I don’t think I can answer that�� Seonghwa whimpers quietly, trying to reply tactfully. 

“Seonghwa, I need to go. I hear footsteps-“

“Hongjoong!” Seonghwa groans as the jingle of the phone cut sound effect goes off. Blinking back his tears, he opens the chatroom you two share, now blurred lines of black and white and blue bubbles. 

Hwa: Sorry.

You: It’s okay.

Something feels off in the discreet way that he types. Seonghwa is quiet but he’s not a man of few words when opened up to. 

You: Are you okay?

Hwa: Yeah.

Hwa: Why?

You: Are you sure? Instinct.

Hwa: Lol that’s sharp

You: Do you want to talk about it?

Hwa: There’s nothing wrong, dove. I’m just tired.

You: Try get a glass of warm milk.

You: You can talk to me if you feel crappy, okay? Whenever you need it.

Hwa: Thank you, Y/n. But I think that I can only take you up on that offer when it’s my issue to talk about, I don’t think I can tell you this time. 

Hwa: We started giving Jihyo therapy, by the way. 

Hwa: So thank you, for everything you’ve done.

You: Alright, I understand. But if you need help with anything, you don’t have to tell me who it is, but maybe I can help.

Hwa: Thanks, but I’ll try to figure this one out on my own <3 

Hwa: Hey, I think I should try and sleep. 

Hwa: Goodnight, cutie

You: Goodnight, Hwa 

“Congratulations, Hongjoong! You won!!!” Yunho claps the smaller man on the back, who then flinches. Seonghwa looks concerned and pulls Hongjoong into his chest for a brief moment, quickly enough to allow a window of time to brush tears away.

“Thanks, guys!” He giggles, and a dazzling smile blinds everyone in the room. “I’ll do my best to impress all of you, so don’t abandon me!” He laughs at his little joke and so does everyone else. But Seonghwa is not laughing. 

“Tough luck, Hwa! It was so close!” You pat his shoulder, and he grins at you. 

“I’m free from burden, what’s this about?” He chuckles, his baritone voice a sweet melody. The sunlight is dim and the shades of the afternoon haze are bright and pastel blues. 

“Really?”  The smile on his lips seems forced, not reaching his eyes as per usual. Heat from the atmosphere scorches you and the rising tension in the room doesn’t cool it down either.

“Yeah”

You leave it at that. 

As you’re about to ask him if Jihyo needs babysitting, Hongjoong clasps onto the dark haired boy’s sleeve. “Can we talk?” You hear the short man’s voice and how it dangerously wobbles. 

“Sure” Seonghwa turns away and you don’t fail to notice the comforting hand around Hongjoong’s shoulder. 

“Hwa?” You’re surprised by two hands suddenly picking you up and lifting you to the air, an uncharacteristic squeal emerging from a pair of cherry red lips. “Are you okay?” You giggle, warm at the small laughs from the other. 

“Yeah! More than okay!” Seonghwa sighs and puts you down. “Sorry, I got too excited. It’s just that... I’m happy for a friend” Seonghwa would normally blush and lifting you up and perhaps even apologise for doing so but there’s something occupying his brain that makes him steer away from even you. 

“That’s great! I’m so proud of Hongjoong” You smile sweetly, the golden-orange hues of sunlight framing your face, Seonghwa looks a little taken aback. 

“You- you knew?” 

“I knew who it was, not what was going on” You correct him and Seonghwa looks admiringly at you.

“Are you psychic? You know everything about other people...” The gleaming stars in his eyes become more dim and melt into the sea of his eyes like cubes of sugar.

“Well... I’m observant?” 

Seonghwa nods. Like him, you’re in a world of your own but so alive and free in the real world too. It’s too beautiful too block out, so you walk along the fine line of the little flower filled bubble with Seonghwa and the world of the classrooms with the scent of vanilla and sunshine. 

“Hmm, Y/n...”

“Yeah?”

“Are you free this Saturday?” He hums, fiddling with a lock of black silky hair that keeps falling in his face.

“Yeah...” You reach up and pin back his hair with a pretty hairpin, decorated with a tiny plastic moonflower. The way Seonghwa’s cheeks become pink remind you of the purple hue of potassium permanganate bleeding into the water in the biology demonstration the teacher showed you.

With Seonghwa.

You realise you do a lot of things with Seonghwa.

You ate with him many many times (With Hongjoong and Yunho tagging along at times. You went to concert with Daehyun, Jihyo and him last month. The tickets decorate your wall, covered in doodles of little flowers. You helped him with his speeches for his election, often staying after school to fan him off and correct his grammar as his mental health spiralled downwards. 

It makes you feel all warm and butterflies gather, spreading their wings and flying about your body in a flurry of heartfelt affection. You look at him again, his eyes no longer tainted with dark circles and replaced with a rosy blush. 

You can’t beat around the bush anymore, or else it will grow into a forest. A forest where Seonghwa may no longer roam in.

“It’s going to be Saturday” You tell yourself as you thread baby blue ribbons into your hair, matching the light blue frock and pale yellowish white oversized cardigan. Blue butterflies adorn your ears as they hang down on silver earrings.

“It’s going to be today”

You’re surprised you haven’t passed away yet from the sheer beauty of Park Seonghwa. His blue silk blue blouse hangs down to reveal a little bit of his slightly bronze chest and you want to target the mole on it with a kiss attack. He gasps softly and pings your hanging earring. “We’re matching” 

The silk of his shirt and the blue of your dress are very similar in hue, and you make a sound of realisation. “Woah we are” Seonghwa chuckles and taps your nose. 

“On Saturdays, we wear blue” And he yelps as you gently smack him on the shoulder.

“Don’t clown Gretchen like that, she’s my baby” You nag him as you practically inhale the piece of cake no longer on your plate. You tried to by dainty at first but you thought of future dates and thought it would be alright if you loosened up before tightening them. 

Seonghwa chuckles shyly. “I really like this cafe, you know. It’s pretty” His eyes wander the cafe, scanning the blue walls and little artificial moonflowers in baskets. 

“Yeah! And the cake is amazing. Doesn’t Yunho work here?” You laugh. 

“Mhmm, he loves the aesthetic of it too. It’s partially why he wears so many of those clips” His lips suddenly part into an “o” shape. “Oh! I forgot to give you the clip!” Seonghwa pulls out the pretty moonflower hairpin, looking even smaller in his large hand. As you’re about to reach out for it he swipes it out of your reach, a little grin playing on his face. “Hold still, Y/n” And you feel his fingers swipe through your hair along with the metal of the clip. “You look better in it than I do. Daehyun bullied me about it all night” He pulls a face and you chuckle. 

As you two walk out of the cafe and into the park behind it, you see the hues of sunset bleeding into the horizon. You sift through your phone as you wait for Seonghwa to come back from the bathroom. 

“Boo!” 

“SWEET JESUS” You yelp and you’re about to smack him in the chest but you see the pink wrapping of the florist beside the cafe. He gently places them in your hands. White moonflowers pop out and the calming husky scent makes you sigh.

“Hehe, scared you” He ruffles your hair and you look into his eyes. You expect the mischievous glint in his eyes but they are replaced with a warm loving stare. The light of the sun flickers in his eyes and the breeze kisses your skin. 

“Hwa?”

“Y/n, hear me out” He goes a little pink, playing with a strand of his hair.

“I really like you. A lot. I mean, I love you. It’s- I don’t know why. It’s not because you’re just so beautiful and adorable- which you are! I’m not denying it! But you’re so... Thoughtful and sincere. And I was thinking that maybe you could be my girlfriend?” His voice is deeper but laced with awkward tension. You look at his face, growing redder at the second and you smile. 

“Me too”

“Pardon?!”

“I love you too” 

“R-really? You’re not just saying that-“ Seonghwa excitedly grasps your hands in his. 

“Yes, really. Hwa, I really respect how you’re so caring and kind. With Jihyo, Daehyun and Hongjoong. You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met”

Seonghwa’s eyes shine, perhaps with happy tears or the light of shimmering sky.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yep” 

Seonghwa tries to lean in and pinches your cheeks, “Pucker up”

“I can’t stop smiling”

The dark haired boy doubles down with laughter before squishing your cheeks, “Better?”

“Better” You say, but it comes out muffled. 

His lips gently brush against yours, his hand doesn’t leave your face and you gently lace your fingers through his dark locks and he sighs into the kiss, leaning further into you and supporting your figure against the wall behind you. 

“You know why I gave you moonflowers?”

“Why?”

“The clip, it was really pretty” He taps it, re-adjusting it and planting a kiss on your forehead. “But moonflowers are my favourite too, so I thought they would look prettier with you holding them” He giggles a little bit at the cheesy words. “I love you”

“I love you too, Seonghwa” You capture his lips in another kiss. 

[lululawrence]

lululawrence’s Fics Posted in 2019

Master Fic Masterpost / Buy me a Coffee?

2019 was a bit crazy, but I’m so proud of the fics that I’ve been able to write and publish this year! There were quite a few of them, so here they are in order of when they were published. I hope you enjoy!

Hey Look, Ma (9k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

“I’m so sorry,” a deep voice said.

Louis made sure he’d only dropped his hat, reached down to pick it up, and was dusting it off when he finally looked up.

“It’s alright...mate…” Louis had seen this man before. He was gorgeous. He lived somewhere in the area, because Louis would often pass him on the street heading home from the tube or the nearest bus stop.

And now, here he was. Standing in all his fluffy, curly haired glory in front of Louis, apologising for nearly bowling him over.

“I really am sorry, though. Let me get you a coffee to make up for it?”

Or the one where Louis is a hybrid who agrees to go on a blind date with his neighbour's colleague's son the same night he literally runs into his dream man. Surely this isn't going to end well... or is it?

Charisma (5k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Harry was smiling, and maybe blushing a little as well, as he accepted the phone back. “Thank you,” he glanced down at his phone and then said, “Louis.”

Smiling happily at the way Harry had said his name, Louis watched him leave the room. The further away he got, the more confused Louis was. Yes, Harry was gorgeous, but how the hell had he forgotten that Harry was also the man who had caused him to almost have a major accident earlier because of his haphazard driving? How had he allowed Harry to distract him with his charm to the extent that instead of giving the man a lecture, Louis accepted the offer of a date?

Well. Whatever the reason was, Louis wouldn’t forget when Harry called. Louis would give him a piece of his mind then and see if Harry still wanted to go out with him at that point. Because yeah, Louis was not mad enough about his overreaction to Harry, both on the road and at the event tonight, to turn that opportunity for a date down. He wasn’t stupid.

Or the one where Harry feeds on awesomeness (possibly literally). Louis is awesome and also angry. They’re probably going to fall in love.

Drabbles for Harry's Birthday Drive 2019 (25k) - Various Pairings

Each chapter is a different drabble dedicated to a person who donated to Harry's birthday drive! The prompt requested as well as the pairing are in the author’s note for each chapter as well. There are multiple pairings due to various pairings being requested by the donors, so please pay attention to that information in each chapter! Pairings include Harry/Louis, Zayn/Liam,, Grimmy/Louis, Greg/Louis,  Zayn/Louis, and Niall/Shawn.

It’s the Climb (25k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Louis stretched out his back and turned around, startled to see the most beautiful man he’d ever encountered in his life riding towards him on a horse.

He had to still be asleep. This was one of those super weird dreams people had where the knight in shining armor (or in this case, red sleeveless flannel) literally rode up to them calling their name.

The Hannah Montana AU where Louis is a world famous punk rock singer with a stage name of William and Jay drags him back to Tennessee for the summer. In her attempt for Louis to get back to his roots, he just so happens to reconnect with Harry, and things never go quite as Louis expects them to.

It Was Only a Kiss (16k) - Various Pairings

I participated in a kiss prompt drabble challenge on Tumblr, and ended up writing thirty-three drabbles! Because of the amount all for one challenge, I decided to post them on AO3 to save them. Each prompt exists on its own without relation to others, so pick and choose as you like.

If You Want To Be Loved (0.5k) - Greg James/Louis Tomlinson

Greg can't sleep. For once, he doesn't really mind.

(Something’s Been) Hiding In My Heart (26k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

“My eyes must be deceiving me,” Harry said in his slow drawl. His voice was deeper than Louis remembered. Maybe some things had changed after all.

“They aren’t deceiving you. I’m here because I need you to finally sign these papers,” Louis said before he dropped the stack of paper on the hood of the car and held out a pen to Harry. “Just do it, Harry. Get it over with and then I’ll be out of your life forever, alright?”

Face blank of all emotion outside of a sneer Harry said, “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

“God,” Louis groaned. Harry just couldn’t let this be easy. His pride wouldn’t allow it. “You know, I never really understood that phrase, but no. I am not ‘shitting’ you. Just sign the damn papers.”

“Ya know, I don’t think I will,” Harry said before turning back to the front door.

When the screen door slammed behind him, Louis realized Harry didn’t have anything else to say.

Or a Sweet Home Alabama AU where Louis comes home to finally get his divorce from Harry finalized so he can move on with his life. Alderford holds its own set of challenges when he returns, but by facing his past maybe he can find the healing he so desperately needs.

You Try To Be Everything (I Need) (36k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Wars, and rumours of wars, were nothing new for the world in the twenty-fourth century. The fighting had evolved over the years, and rarely did it involve traditional weapons. A group most widely known as the Southern Powers gained strength amongst portions of the western European continent and spread quickly.

There was a fight the Southern Powers didn’t expect coming from the north of England, though. Resistance came in the form of an organised underground; a group comprised of people with the Touch that did the best they could to enforce a line that would not be crossed. Slowly, that line was moved from the Channel to boundaries further and further north. It seemed only a matter of time before the Southern Powers took over everywhere.

Until that time, people did the best they could to live their lives in some semblance of normality. For Louis Tomlinson, that sense of normality was about to change when his best friend, Harry Styles, goes missing.

Louis embarks on the journey of a lifetime where he uses his newly developed abilities to search for his friend, even when it takes him to places he never thought he would see while surmounting trials he never could have imagined.

You Turned Up (Like a Friend of Mine) (10k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Louis padded downstairs, feeling incredibly thirsty. He filled up a glass of water and was about to take a drink when a loud knock sounded at the door accompanied by some yelling and ringing of the doorbell.

“What the hell?” Louis muttered, setting his glass on the counter and rushing towards the door.

As he got closer to the door, though, his mind stopped whirling because the voice was one that was etched forever in his mind, but one that he never thought he would ever hear again.

“Why’s the door locked? Did you seriously go without me? And who’s car is in the driveway? Lou, I knew you’d be late to get me. We’re going to miss-”

Louis whipped the door open, sure that he was just imagining things. There was no way…

Except there was. Standing on the front step was the curly haired, boy-faced Harry Louis had last seen ten years ago today.

Or the one where Harry disappears on graduation day only to show up on Louis' door looking exactly the same ten years later. Through a series of strange events, maybe they can finally figure out that they're destined to be together, no matter what.

Stealing Flowers (4k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

When Louis finally arrived, he walked in and grabbed an apron. Without even saying hello, he immediately approached Jesy and said, “Sexy Stranger steals flowers.”

She kept pouring the Tanqueray shots she had lined up in front of her, but her face screwed up in confusion. “I’m sorry, he what? Did you finally talk to him and that was what you learned?”

He nodded to another couple of tourists and welcomed them to the Way Station as they eagerly made their way to the Tardis restroom.

“No, I didn’t actually talk to him, but—”

“Then how do you know he steals flowers?”

She was wiping down the bar and stacking the empty glasses to take back to the dishwasher when Louis realized maybe he should help too. After all, he was there to work, not just talk to her about his maybe crush.

“I saw a poster.”

Or the one where Louis pines after the Sexy Stranger on the Subway and almost asks him out. That's when the strange posters start showing up around Brooklyn.

Yellow, Is It Me You’re Looking For? (3k) - Greg James/Louis Tomlinson

Standing in the mess Greg’s shift had left behind, Louis decided he would start small. He’d organise the paint colour cards that displayed the names and then get started on the sample tins. It wasn’t until he started opening the boxes of colour cards that Louis started to wonder whether Nick had been the one to name the paint after all.

Yellow, Is It Me You’re Looking For? was along the top left corner of a mustard yellow card. Nick was as big a fan of puns and music as anyone, so while it was unorthodox, Louis didn’t think too much of it. Part of the appeal of Annie’s Hardware was that they didn’t take things too seriously while always maintaining professionalism.

The names that followed did leave Louis to wonder if Annie knew exactly what the chosen paint names were, though. The Colour Of My Tears When ‘FRIENDS’ Ended for a soft white, Barneys Blood for a pale purple, and Blond. James Blond. for a sand tone had Louis convinced that it was a different co-worker who had renamed the colours.

Or the one where Louis has pined after Greg for what seems like ages, but when Greg renames the company's paint colors, something might finally be ready to give.

Like a Lighthouse On The Coast (I Need You) (19k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Louis placed his order with the server and was about to type up some possible lyrics when he heard the music being piped in go silent and a throat was cleared into a mic.

Oh God no. If Louis had known there was going to be live music, he would have chosen somewhere else. Why did they have to ruin what was truly the perfect ambiance for Louis with some sub-par wannabe singer-songwriter?

“Hello, I’m going to sing some songs for you tonight. I hope you like them.”

The voice was deep and smooth, slower than Louis had expected. It made him want to look up at the singer rather than cower into the corner of his booth.

So he did. The man didn’t look nervous at all, but he didn’t look like the cocky asshole Louis had been expecting either. Louis continued to brace himself as he took in the simple Ramones shirt and jeans the man was wearing, when something Louis hadn’t been expecting happened.

The man began to play his guitar, and he was good.

And then, the man began to sing.

Or the one where Louis has all the pressure of his sophomore album and none of the inspiration, but maybe all he needs is someone like Harry Styles to turn all that around.

Oh Honey, Honey (4k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Louis hated honey. He didn’t like the flavour, he didn’t understand why some liked it in their tea, he hated when it was put on sandwiches or cake or anything really. But, standing stock still in front of a rather large display of honey in that 24-hour Tesco, Louis found himself grabbing the largest jar of “100% pure London-local honey” and adding it to his trolley, simply because he knew it would make Harry smile.

Louis always wanted to make Harry smile.

Or the one where Louis pines after Harry, Harry is passionate about helping save the bees, and a late night shopping trip gone wrong doesn't end quite as horribly as Louis imagines.

You Don’t Care About Me (One More Night) (60k) - Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson

“Nick. You’re into guys. What should I do?”

Nick snorted. “You think just ‘cause I’m gay, I know what you should do?”

Louis blinked at him and Nick admired his eyelashes against his will. “Well. Kind of, yeah.”

“That is not how this works,” Nick said. “Besides, it’s not like you can just go and suck someone’s dick to be sure you like it the way I did. You’re too famous to try it my way.”

Louis’ expression changed to one of awe. “That’s how you figured it out? You sucked some random’s dick?”

Nick shrugged. “Yeah. Basically. I mean, I knew for pretty damn sure before that, mind you, but that did solidify the matter for me.”

“I need to suck a dick,” Louis said, turning to look at the wall of Nick’s room.

“You could suck mine, if it would help,” Nick offered before he could stop himself.

Or the one where Louis pines for Harry and Nick helps ease his way into figuring himself out through a friends with benefits sort of arrangement. Things quickly turn complicated.

A Taste of Honey (3k) - Greg James/Louis Tomlinson

Louis opened the door expecting someone with Deliveroo. Instead his gaze lifted so he could look at a very frazzled, incredibly fluffy haired Greg James who was inexplicably holding out a very large jar of honey.

“Hello, Gregory,” Louis said slowly.

Shifting around, Greg stepped forward and held the honey out towards Louis again. “This is for you.”

“Erm, alright,” Louis said before carefully taking the heavy jar from him. “Thank you?”

Greg flashed a wide grin, nodded, and then without another word walked back out the front door of the building.

Or the one where Louis has been pining after Greg ever since he started his job. Greg randomly showing up at his flat with a jar of honey might be just the push Louis needs to finally talk to the man.

Just Like Honey (3k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Louis opened the door and he looked so soft and beautiful. He was in a ratty pair of grey joggers and that was it. Harry had never seen him look so good.

When Harry finally raised his eyes from Louis’ chest, he realised Louis had likely said something.

“Uh,” Harry said, clearing his throat. “Sorry, what did you say?”

Smirking a little, Louis crossed his arms and popped his hip. “I said, ‘Hello, Harry. What brings you here so late on a Saturday?’”

Then his brain kicked in.

“Right, fuck. Hi, Louis. I just wanted to give you this.”

Louis’ brows creased as Harry held the honey out to him. Taking the jar from Harry, he said, “Honey?”

Nodding, Harry said, “Yep. Hope you have a great night!”

Fisting his hands at his sides in frustration, Harry left the building as quickly as he could.

Honey, Honey, How You Thrill Me (3k) - Greg James/Harry Styles

Harry knocked once more before coming to the conclusion that knocking for longer than that was rude.

He’d just decided to leave when the door opened.

“Fuck, you were asleep, weren’t you?”

“Well, it’s past 8, so yeah, basically,” Greg said with a yawn.

God, he’d been asleep for over an hour. Harry was the worst.

“I’m so sorry. Here. Take this and get back to sleep. I’m so incredibly sorry for waking you up,” Harry babbled, shoving the jar of honey into Greg’s hands.

Greg looked at the jar then back up at Harry, still not saying anything. Probably because his brain was still asleep just like his body would’ve been if Harry hadn’t been a fucking idiot.

“Sorry again!” Harry said before giving a lame wave and rushing off to the nearest tube station.

Or the one where Harry pines after fellow Radio 1 DJ Greg James but doesn't know how to start a conversation with him...until he gets the needed inspiration.

Our Love is Timeless (6k) - Niall Horan/Shawn Mendes

He rinsed out his shampoo and began to scrub at his body. Turning around to rinse his back and wash his front, Shawn was not prepared to be met with a cursing blond Irishman.

Letting out a rather loud, high pitched scream and covering himself as best he could, Shawn backed up into the wall behind him, which also turned off the shower.

“Thanks, mate. Was hoping not to get my clothes entirely soaked,” the man said as he began stepping out of the shower stall. “Say, what year is it?”

“I...what?” Shawn sputtered. “You just show up, fully clothed, in a stranger’s shower and your first question is what year it is? How the fuck did you get in here? Why my shower? Who are you?”

“Well, yeah. I guess so. I’ve not quite got a handle of the whole time traveling thing yet.”

Or the one where Shawn falls for Niall, who just happens to be a time traveler. The course of true love never did run smooth.

Like Honey to the Bee (3k) - Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson

Nick didn’t even remember knocking, but suddenly the door he also didn’t realise he was leaning on opened and he started falling inside Louis and Harry’s flat.

“Fuck,” Nick blurted as he tried to right himself. He was caught by Louis, which was great because he was exactly who he wanted to see and he didn’t really fancy dropping a massive jar of honey on his doorstep.

“Nicholas?” Louis asked.

Nick couldn’t help it. Hearing Louis call him by his full name made him shiver. He usually hated it, but there was something magical about Louis Tomlinson that made the usual negative association suddenly become an incredibly positive one.

“I brought you honey,” Nick blurted as he handed Louis the jar.

“I can see that,” Louis said, sounding confused. “Thanks?”

“Of course! It’s what friends do, yeah?”

Or the one where Nick has been trying to find a way to get past the banter stage with Louis for ages, and honey might be just what he needs to finally do so.

Rings and Things (2k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Niall: I know you’re a lesbian and all, but this is fast even for you

Or the one where Harry wakes up after a night of drinking to find her bed isn't empty and there's a ring she's never seen before on a very important finger.

The Only Thing That Keeps Me Grounded (28k) - Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

“Shit, I definitely missed the last train.”

“Oh no,” Louis lamented. “I’d offer a ride, but I’m part of a carpool and we’re full already. I’m so sorry.”

“Really, it’s fine.” Then, what Louis said sank in. “Wait, I thought you were here alone?”

“Oh, I am. I’m the only one dancing here tonight. The others were working. In fact, here’s Nick now.”

It felt like slow motion as a tall, lanky man with incredible hair came walking over towards Louis. He smiled before pulling Louis into him and giving him a quick kiss.

“Nick, this is my new friend Harry. He just moved to the area and he’s amazing at swing. Harry, this is my husband, Nick.”

Fuck.

Or the one where Harry moves to Washington DC to be a nanny and never expects that his past struggles with love will be brought to a head. He definitely never expects the solution to it all will be the man of his dreams that just so happens to be married to the other man of his dreams.

A Halloween M(ass)hap (1k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Harry was never going to forgive Niall. He’d been so distracted by his roommate’s cleaning and fussing while he had been looking for the perfect trousers for Liam’s annual Halloween fancy dress party that he’d not realised the black leather trousers he’d chosen to complete his vampire look were arseless.

Of course there was a no return policy, so he’d done the only thing he could do in order to not waste the money he’d already forked out online for the damn things: he added a cape.

Surely, nothing could go wrong.

I Wanna Love (Like You Made Me Feel) (28k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

By the time Harry and Louis are eighteen years old, they've known each other all four years of high school. Through those years, they never have a real chance to spend time together just the two of them. The summer after graduation gives them that chance, and it changes just about everything.

Ten years later, Louis returns home feeling like a failure after losing his job and not knowing where to go next. He never expects to run into Harry again, much less rekindle their friendship. Could this finally be their chance to finish what they started all those years ago, or did they really miss their chance at love?

Swipe Right for a Clean Flat (3k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Harry was done. He was over this shit. He literally only asked his flatmate to do one chore, and that was the washing up. He couldn’t even handle a few plates and cups. Harry obviously overestimated him.

Louis wasn’t that bad. It was just that he only did the washing if he was going out to pull and wanted to bring someone home. If the dishes were put away, that was how Harry knew to vacate the premises. There was no way he was going to listen to yet another girl moan Louis’ name while Harry laid in bed and wondered what it might be like if only Louis liked men.

Glaring at the full sink and debating washing up himself - again - Harry finally turned and stalked to his room.

“Dire circumstances,” Harry muttered as he picked up his phone and unlocked it.

Or the one where Harry and Louis are flatmates and Harry is tired of Louis not doing the washing up. He figures signing up on Tinder as a hot girl might be just the fix for this issue.

You’re a Nightmare, I’m a Disaster (7k) - Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson

As Nick scanned the shelves, his eyes caught on a bright blue binding. Snooki, it read, A Shore Thing.

“Oh my God,” Nick mumbled, trying not to laugh as he picked it up. He’d watched bits and pieces of Jersey Shore way back in the day.

Without bothering to look any further around the store, he headed up to the counter where Blue eyes was watching him. Nick cleared his throat nervously and set the book on the counter and the man immediately flashed him a look of disdain.

“Seriously? Out of everything we have available, you chose the book we special ordered for a customer?”

“Well, it can’t be that bad if someone specifically requested it, right?” Nick said, trying to keep a teasing tone.

“Why do you think we still have it if it was a special order?” the man asked with a scoff. “They returned it after reading something like three pages.”

Nick frowned at the book. “Well that doesn’t seem very fair.”

Or the one where Nick is a writer, Louis works in a bookshop, and things don't exactly start off on the right foot, but they might just end on it.

The Goat Guy of Bethlehem (26k) - Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

“What a pretty little thing!” a voice cried, catching Harry's attention.

Harry looked up, assuming it was a merchant talking to Gemma or some other “citizen” of Bethlehem, but when he did, he found a woman with bright eyes and long dark hair walking over to him.

“Me?” He wasn’t sure what to expect from any of this since she wasn’t a merchant he had met before.

“Yes, you! I think you’d make a very good husband for my son. Are these your parents?”

“Uh, yes?” Harry said, almost like a question. Robin and his mom just watched on with amusement, much to his chagrin.

Turning to Anne and Robin, the merchant woman said, “I’ll give you six goats for the marriage of your son to mine.”

Or every year, Harry and his family attend a church festival called Bethlehem. Harry's freshman year of high school Bethlehem expands, bringing in new vendors, including one that just might change everything for Harry. But first, he has to see if Anne and Robin are willing to part with him for the price of a few goats.

[allie1804-fan]

Please Assist Me

So this is a new fic. I’ve not fully worked out where it’s taking me so watch this space. I’ve written quite a bit so let’s see how anyone likes the first little bit!

Chapter 1

He said

She was the third person we’d seen that morning. Cheryl was with me. I knew I could rely on her instincts to sniff out anyone the agency had sent who was likely to spell trouble. Of course, the agency promised to screen people so you didn’t get a nutter or an under-cover journo applying but Cheryl didn’t have total faith in their skills.

The first two had basically proved her right, being far more interested in looking round my house, asking who I might have visiting or unsubtly trying to see what freebies there might be than in finding out what the job really entailed. I was about to embark on my second directing project and I had an acting part too, so knew I was going to be all in as usual. That dedication to work would mean taking care of daily life would fall by the wayside.  I’d need someone to take care of travel arrangements if I was needed out of town, there would be some bills to pay, grocery shopping and all the other day to day crap like being around for deliveries or letting a plumber in or making sure birthday cards were sent. I didn’t say so but basically I was after an old style wife but without the relationship! I also needed to keep a certain amount of control, a small chink of ‘real’ if you will. So, if it was my sister’s birthday, I’d choose the gift and write the card but maybe I could use some help finding options to choose from given how busy I would be on set.

Sophia was the first of the interviewees who seemed to grasp the importance of this aspect to me and she asked good questions about the practicalities of me being involved where necessary. She was also the only one who seemed like she knew her way around a kitchen and one of my needs was going to be a little food preparation every now and again especially as I needed to watch my diet to keep in shape for the demands of the role.

After 2 more, frankly useless candidates were seen and ruled out, we both agreed that Sophia was the one. She wouldn’t be able to travel with me on shoots or promotional tours as she had 2 small children, but my main needs were going to be at home for the foreseeable future and things like buying a gift or a card for someone could be managed at a distance with modern technology and planning. A week after the interview, Sophia came over again for an induction session.

It took me a moment to invite her in – I was kind of stunned as I looked at her – I don’t think I’d really taken in how attractive she was at the interview,  being focussed on the interviewing task and making sure I was asking each interviewee exactly the same questions in order to be fair. That morning she was like a sunflower, clad in a bright yellow, sleeveless sundress. Her long brown hair was up in a practical ponytail and the dress contrasted beautifully with her tanned arms and legs, highlighting her Latin American heritage.

She followed me down the hallway to the kitchen, clutching a notebook which she’d brought to make notes on the tasks. By the end of our session, I felt in safe hands and she left with everything she needed to be my personal assistant starting with a one month trial period.

She said

My first real life encounter with Keanu was when I had an interview for the role of personal assistant. I hadn’t ever done a role like this having only recently signed on with a job agency after my divorce from Javier. Before that I had been a housewife and mum to our 2 kids Eva, who is 7 and Miguel who is 5.  Back before the kids were born, I had done a little modelling and in between jobs had done some “runner” jobs working on sets with A list actors. That experience, and my general organisational skills and domestic experience had identified me as someone suited to this role.

Of course, I’d seen Keanu on the silver screen like anybody else in all those big roles which made it all the more surreal to be heading up into the Birds streets for the interview with him and his PR lady Cheryl at his house no less.

Cheryl was charming but also quite formidable, giving me the impression that she’d kick the ass of anyone who messed with her client! Keanu himself was all charm but kind of shy and bumbling as he tried to explain the slightly unusual mix of mundane and personal tasks he was going to want help with.

The mundane were things like making sure his Koi carp were fed, that the pool guy, cleaner and gardener were  let in on the right days, getting his dry cleaning and some grocery shopping done. The personal was basically, as I saw it, the things a wife or partner would help a man like him do If he had one  - he wanted to make sure birthday cards and gifts were bought for his close friends and family but he would play a role in choosing them. He just needed someone to narrow down the options, make the actual purchase and wrap the gift. If he could, he’d deliver it in person but if he couldn’t do that, at the very least he’d write out a personal message himself.  

There would be some advanced planning to make sure all that happened on time as he’d soon be on set for long days on his next project. I suggested that I’d need to come over on a Saturday sometimes to  make sure he could add those personal touches.  

The job was basically perfect for me as I would be able to get everything done while the kids were in school and kindergarten. He didn’t expect me to travel when he did  - he could use hotel services when away and declared himself not so pampered or busy that he couldn’t organise some basic stuff for himself while he was away. He also had a place in New York so, if he had to go there , he had a home base. His main concern was that his LA home kept running well and I could handle all of that.

I was thrilled when I got the call that the job was mine and it was with excitement that I made my way back to his home a week later to get a more detailed briefing and start my month’s probation.  

I stood on the doorstep for what felt like a long minute after he opened the door. I had a moment of fear that he’s somehow changed his mind or forgotten our appointment but he eventually shook his head like he was jolting himself out of a day dream and invited me in.

“sorry, sorry, what am I like leaving you standing there! Come, come in!”

I followed him into the house and we headed down the long corridor and into the bright kitchen where we sat at the island and he took me through his diary and my tasks for the month. He gave me an iPad to use with an e mail already set up as KCR_assistant@outlook.com and a credit card I could use for the purchases he needed me to make on his behalf.

He was  starting on set the following week and his sister Kim’s birthday was a couple of weeks away. Since she lived in Italy this would be one of the more challenging gifts to organise. He shared a little about her and took me to his office to proudly show me her picture which was on a wall filled with family portraits.

“This is a test right?” I remember asking.

“nah, nah don’t see it like that ….” He stuttered

“But it’s really important to you right?”  I countered and he nodded, smiling slightly

“yeah, yeah Kim, she ……… she’s very  important to me”

“As she should be” I said. “I promise to get you some great ideas along the lines you want in a day or two so you can pick and we can get it to her on time.”

“Thanks”

I hoped I’d do Kim justice – I really needed to keep this job.

On my first day, I headed up to Keanu’s house after dropping the kids at school and shopping for groceries that had been on the list Keanu had e mailed the night before.

Laundry wasn’t in my remit, but I spotted as I went in through the garage that there was a load in the tumble dryer due to finish soon. Keanu must have forgotten it. I made a note to pop back and fetch it after I’d done some other jobs.

In the kitchen, I put away the supplies and got on with making the elements of a Caesar salad with chicken that Keanu could quickly throw together after work.

Then it was time to start gift hunting for Kim. Keanu was interested in getting her a vintage Italian coffee set and we’d agreed it made sense to source it from Italy. Being a native Spanish speaker, I could muddle my way through Italian websites and I narrowed the choices down to 3 which I            e-mailed to him as well as dropping him a text in case he didn’t check his e mails. He’d said he would have some down time during the day but he wouldn’t be expecting me to share ideas for a day or two.

By then it was 2pm and I needed to head off soon to fetch the kids. I grabbed the laundry and left a pile of t shirts (all Arch branded) and boxers neatly folded on his bed. I hoped he’d appreciate that I’d not left them to grow damp again in the dryer and that he wouldn’t feel weird that I’d touched his undies! If I’m honest it did feel a bit surreal to me to be in his home, dropping him e mails and texts, doing his shopping and folding his undies but I reminded myself that he was just a guy and, really, so far he’d been pretty down to earth in my dealings with him – well apart from the $1000 budget I had for Kim’s gift that is!

 @fortheloveoffanfic @kindainlovewithkeanu @omg-imagine @iworshipkeanureeves @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @keanureevesisbae @penwieldingdreamer @witty-wallflower @paperplanesandwallflowers @bitchyslut99 @ladyreapermc @toomanystoriessolittletime @fanficsrusz @keanuficfiles

[astroismypassion]

hi! i just saw you were having difficulties with your messages, so i am totally okay with going through the ask box! I was born on May 14, 1997 at 6:36pm (18:36) in Pascagoula, Mississippi, USA. Thank you, again, for your time!! :)

Thank you for answering me! <3

Hi!

Thank you for buying me this delicious hot beverage. I drank black coffee with rice milk while writing your interpretation. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I did writing! And I was listening to Michael Kiwanuka - One More Night while writing. ;)

Your dominant planets are: 1. Venus, 2. Sun and 3. Moon. Your dominant signs are: 1. Aquarius, 2. Taurus and 3. Gemini. Your main mode is Fixed. You are Air dominant.

FAMILY, SIBLINGS, EARLY LIFE

If you have any siblings, they are Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. You might have not liked the traditional schooling system, because you found it too rigid. You have Aquarius IC. You had an unconventional upbringing. You have Aquarius and Pisces in the 4th house. This means someone in your family might have had an escapistic problem (drug/alcohol issue, emotional problem, depression or even overslept). A parental figure might have had a religious upbringing, background. There were many superstitions in your family growing up. Or you believed some untraditional, “strange” things. You might have had an escape in your life, be it music or just your room or somewhere where you felt safe and comfortable. You liked to play in your own world. You daydreamt often. You might have escaped into art, fashion, creating your own fantasy or reality. You also have Jupiter in the 4th house. You might have moved around often or changed residence, even school. You might have many siblings or you have an extended family. You could have relatives or other family members living abroad or they have different religious, cultural backgrounds or even different social status. You have Sun square Moon. Your parents might have not agreed on your parenting style. They were not in sync. They might have been two very different figures. Your mother and your father had very different personality traits and character. You have Mercury square Neptune. You might often have deja vu moments. Or you find it hard to really remember whether a thing happened or that it has never happened. You might lose focus easily and just wonder away in your thoughts. You might have been really good in literature, languages or certain abstract topics and drawing, creative writing. But maybe not so much in sciences, such as math. You might have found it harder to comprehend it. You have Mercury square Uranus. This indicates an astrologer’s mind. You might be really good at astrology! You have unique ideas and visionary thoughts. Some might think you are not being serious. You can have a foot in the mouth syndrome and say something too quickly, before really thinking it through. You might often surprise people. You have Taurus Sun in the 7th house. Your father seemed to have had a passive role in your upbringing. He might have not performed all his parental duties. He was probably a bit lazy as well, but people liked him. He is quite stubborn and opinionated. He is proud of his relationships with others, be it business, platonic or romantic. You have Leo Moon in the 10th house. Your mother is well respected and maybe even well known. Or she works in administration, politics or public sector. She might have been the main breadwinner in your family. She is proud, generous, ambitious, hard working, strong, reliable, responsible and caring.

PARTNERSHIPS AND FRIENDSHIPS

You have Aries, Capricorn, Pisces, Libra, Virgo or Scorpio friends. In your romantic relationships you attract Capricorn, Aries, Pisces, Taurus, Leo, Gemini and Cancer, even Libra is possible. You have Virgo mars in the 11th house. This shows how you approach your crush, how you act and how you take action. You like hard working people, who are social and have loyal friend groups. You might like platonic friendships more than romantic partnerships. You like cleanliness, organization and order. You might often clean yourself, your room, environment or somehow constantly beautify it. Self care means a lot to you. Either way you value mental connections over anything. You need compatibility in the mind. You need to be attracted to someone intellectual first. But you also notice their physical appearance, in terms whether they are healthy, clean and nice, elegantly put together. You have Gemini Venus in the 7th house. You are quite a flirt. You like flirting, word play and a bit of mind games. You like people that grow with you. You might like the idea of a date, where you learn something together or learn a skill together. Or perhaps taking a cooking class together. You like puzzles, quizzes and questionnaires. You like to “sample” many people. You have a fear of commitment and settling down. You desire it, but fear it at the same time. You have Venus trine Uranus. You might be attracted to odd, unique, quirky people that stand out. You have Venus trine Neptune. This means you idealize others or put them on the pedestal often. Others might do that to you as well. You might put people under pressure “to perform” to your ideal love fairytale. You have Venus opposite Pluto. Beware of this placement! You might attract quite a few obsessive people. Or people seem to stalk you even years after you’ve broken up. You might be quite possessive of your friends and loved one. You can be even a bit jealous or envious over them.

CAREER, PROFESSIONAL LIFE, PUBLIC IMAGE

You have Virgo North Node in the 11th house. This might indicate that you may lead a bit of a “loner” life. But you need it, since you get easily overwhelmed and need plenty of alone time to recharge. In this lifetime you are asked to organise, establish a routine, live more in the present moment and be of service to others. You might have to learn how to help your friends, community, society in general. You’ll learn humility as well. You will need to take care of your health, yourself in your day-to-day life and how to have a daily routine. But you’ll probably find this easier after 30. You might benefit greatly from owning a pet. You could be an excellent advisor, counsellor or consultant. You might have a knack for social media, marketing, publishing and communication fields. Even journalism, publishing, news anchoring, writing. You could work in non government fields. Or you could be an activist for a cause at least at some point in your life. You might like to own the newest gadgets and modern electronics in your home as well. But also spiritual items, even tarot cards and all the items from your travels. You have Taurus Mercury in the 6th house. You like to stimulate your mind daily. You might often think about your health, pets, if you have any, food and drink, material possessions and items, your friends, even your daily routine, how to organize yourself better. You could think about your daily tasks, your day-to-day life, duties, responsibilities. You are extremely detail oriented and you have a keen eye! You observe EVERYTHING. Facial expressions, gestures, small birthmarks. You notice how someone is dressed, how they speak and present themselves.

ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS

You have Libra Chiron in the 12th house. There is a certain wound or a past hurt in regards to your one on one relationships, be it platonic, romantic or business. You might have been hurt, disappointed or rejected in the past. You didn’t have an example of a healthy relationship, so you might sometimes think relationships all together aren’t for you. You might have experienced your parents' separation or divorce or their relationships have affected your views on them. You might make a mistake aggression for love at times. Or passion and lust for love. You have Gemini Juno in the 8th house. This indicates your ideal partner, your ideal soulmate. It can be a friend or a lover. They would have to be versatile, always keeping you on your toes, changing and able to keep up with your transformations as well. But also loyal, secure and that you share a deep bonded trust with them. You have Pisces Ceres in the 4th house. This presents how you wish to be nurtured and how you often nurtured others. You give your unconditional love and support and be like a family to others. You provide a safe space for them. You may need artistic escape or an artistic outlet for your emotions and that you can cope with reality so you like to daydream and pursue artistic endeavours. It’s crucial for your mental and emotional wellness. You have Virgo Lilith in the 10th house. You are very helpful, but you expect the help in return when you need it. You might be quite possessive of people’s belongings and what they have. You are quite persuasive and can easily get what you desire. You can show more of the “negative” Virgo traits in the area of the 10th house, such as being over critical, nagging and complaining.You have Aquarius Part of Fortune in the 4th house. This is where you find natural luck and good fortune. You might find it when you make peace with your unconventional upbringing, family background and history. When you learn how to detach from your family members and still have friendly relationships with them.

CHART RULER

You have Pluto as your chart ruler. The chart ruler of the 1st house is in the 1st house. This means you’re in charge of your own destiny in this lifetime. You might be very self reliant. And you’ll have plenty of personal experiences to back you up when you’re sharing your knowledge with others. You could just use you as an example. Your personality, ego, characters, traist, self esteem, self worth might develop through your personal experiences, interactions with others. Here’s an additional video on this topic by an excellent fellow astrologer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HnMdFJeXR0

HOUSE RULERS

The ruler of the 1st house is in the 1st house. You express yourself through the way you look. You express yourself through clothing and makeup. The image you project affects your ability to navigate through life. The ruler of the 2nd house is in the 4th house. You impose your personal values on your family members. Personal money goes to family. You are possessive of family members. Your values manifest in family life. You are concerned with the financial security of your family. The ruler of the 3rd house is in the 5th house. Daily conversation revolves around children, hobbies, creativity, theater or the arts. Your communication style is creative and entertaining. Experiences of early education affect your ability to be creative. You have a child-like and playful communication style. The ruler of the 4th house is in the 3rd house. Home is a place to have lively conversations. Cultural upbringing has a strong bearing on your thoughts. Feeling included or rejected by your family influences your day to day interactions.  Home is a place where people come and go. You bring your private inner self with you when you write, keep a journal or blog. The ruler of the 5th house is in the 3rd house. You communicate in a playful and lighthearted way. Romance and fun express themselves through a love of reading and writing. Fun is found through gossiping. Relaxation comes through conversation and writing. The ruler of the 6th house is in the 11th house. You specialize in working with large groups of people. Your working environment is social. You work with friends on a daily basis. The ruler of the 7th house is in the 7th house. The partner needs to be willing negotiate and cooperate with you. Marriage partners are business partners, business partners are marriage partners. You want to be with someone who is cooperative. You want a partner who is a good negotiator. The ruler of the 8th house is in the 6th house. You have obsessive or intense everyday habits. You use your capacity for research and investigation in health and fitness fields. Work is emotionally turbulent. You have complex emotions surrounding health and diet. The ruler of the 9th house is in the 10th house. You expand your horizons through your choice of vocation. Traveling helps you become more widely known. You find meaning through your choice of vocation. You travel because it makes you seem important. Journalism builds your reputation. Your education level builds your reputation. You apply your wisdom to gaining status and social standing. You receive awards and recognition for your academic achievements. The ruler of the 10th house is in the 7th house. Partners should have the same ambitions and goals in mind. You gain recognition and social status through your partner. Ideally the partners should have equal status and equal standing. Partners should have balanced careers. The ruler of the 11th house is in the 6th house. You meet like-minded people through your interest in diet and exercise. The groups you join involve a certain amount of specialization. You bring your interest in social causes to your work environment. You want to reform attitudes to diet, health and exercise. You like working with friends. You have long term goals and wishes relating to diet and exercise. The ruler of the 12th house is in the 7th house. Your partner desires to escape from reality as much as you do. You lose your boundaries when it comes to significant relationships. Your grief and sorrow affect your relationships. The desire to escape reality affects your ability to maintain a serious relationship.

[pessimisticlatte]

Glass Roses - Chapter 8

Marichat ~ Adrienette ~ Chlobrina ~ Alya x Nino ~ Nathalie x Emilie ~ Lukagami ~ Platonic Marigami ~Eventual reveal~

I hope this is fluffy enough!!!

~~~~~~~~~

Something was different about Adrien, Nathalie could sense it. She’d raised him all by herself for so long that his changes in emotion, however subtle, were easier to read than a children’s picture book. When she’d woken him up, he’d been curled on top of his covers with his phone held to his chest, a faint smile graced his lips as he moved slightly in his sleep and sighed. Adrien had hugged her too. He hadn’t hugged her since he was a toddler and she’d be lying if she said that she didn’t miss giving the boy reassurance through the physical contact his father denied him.

He was taller than her too, the top of Nathalie’s head brushed his jaw as he pulled his father’s assistant and the woman who had nurtured him for so long into a crushing hug. With her glasses askew, Nathalie awkwardly rubbed the teenagers back, hugging him now was so different to how it had been when he’d been a bawling child not understanding why his mother only appeared in photos and never to hold him. Adrien pulled away and placed his hands on Nathalie’s shoulders, a broad, serene smile plastered on his slightly stubble framed mouth.

“Thank you, Nathalie,” Adrien’s green eyes were infused with the same smile on his lips. 

“Thank me for what, exactly, Adrien?” Nathalie furrowed her brows and pushed her glasses up with her index finger, Adrien’s hands still braced on her biceps.

“I never thanked you for raising me,” The dimples in Adrien’s cheeks grew deeper as his mouth formed the words. “I thought that I didn’t have a mother, but I was wrong because I have you. My blood-mother is gone and you chose to love me because she couldn’t; I know that you loved my Maman, Nathalie, and I love you enough for both her and I. Like a mother of course,” Adrien gave an awkward but sincere laugh. “I love you like a mother. I don’t think anyone would have done as good a job as you considering our circumstances, thank you so much for loving me like I’m your own.”

Nathalie didn’t understand where this was coming from, but after the words she’d heard Gabriel say a few days ago and the reopened wound of Emilie’s state, his words meant more to her than he would ever know. Gabriel had said that Adrien needed his mother, needed Emilie, but Gabriel had never stopped to see that Adrien already had a mother. Maybe not in name or blood but in deed, Nathalie had been the one that read Adrien’s report cards and congratulated him on his outstanding marks when Gabriel had barely glanced at them; she’d been the one to sign him up for fencing and cheer him on as he won his first competition; Nathalie had been the one to kiss scraped and bruised knees, to attend assemblies, to buy birthday and christmas presents. Emilie, her beautiful Emilie, gave her the swiftly growing man before her and Nathalie had loved him when her own husband could not find the time to.

“W-where is this coming from, Adrien?” Nathalie’s eyes were slowly filling with tears. So many emotions whirled in her chest that she couldn’t decipher if a single one had called them forth or if it was all of them.

“During the holidays, one of my friends told me that Dad would be proud of me, Maman too,” Adrien ran a hand through his sleep tousled hair and gave Nathalie a half-smile. “She also said that you’d be proud of me. I didn’t think much of it at the time but the more I thought about what you do for me, the more I realised that you being proud of me was worth more than anything in this entire world. I spoke to her last night,” Adrien didn’t mention that Marinette had actually sent him a message on the first day back at school, over a month ago, saying that she hoped he’d do Nathalie proud this year and that she may not be the mother he’d spent years pining over but she was the one that had raised him when it wasn’t her burden to bear, he’d saved the message in the notes section of his phone and read it almost daily. The thought of Nathalie being proud of who he was was so much more important to him than the entire trip he’d spent by his father’s side in New York. “And she reminded me to be thankful for what I have.”

“Your friend seems like a very smart young lady,” Nathalie’s lips broke into a watery smile as Adrien’s words became tattooed on her heart, her soul. “Would she be the type of girl you’d bring home to meet your father?”

“Meet Dad?” Adrien feigned confusion. “Nah, but meet my mum? I think she’d love her.”

“M-mum?” The word was not unfamiliar to Nathalie, Adrien and Gabriel had used the words ‘maman’ and ‘mother’ many times but only when referring to Emilie. Nathalie hadn’t had time to have a family of her own, the Agreste’s had become that for her. She’d stood beside Emilie on the day she married Gabriel, she’d held Emilie’s hand as Adrien was born, she’d cried over Emilie’s comatose body after the combining of the broken Peacock miraculous and Butterfly miraculous had suspended her soul in purgatory; then she’d stayed with her beloved’s family, falling for her husband and raising her son. The Agreste’s were her family, or Adrien was at least.

“Would you prefer something else? Mama?” Adrien’s eyes were huge and innocent, sending Nathalie back to the day she’d told baby Adrien that Emilie was gone. His question was sincere though, his eyes searching for validation from the one person who had never left his side.

“Mum is fine, Adrien,” Nathalie choked a sob and pushed her slipping glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “I-I’m...I’m...so happy that you think of me as your mother.”

“I’m happy that I have you,” Adrien pulled Nathalie into another hug, careful not to knock her glasses sideways this time. “I’m sorry that I never thanked you before for loving me, taking care of me.”

“It’s alright, I never expected that you’d see me as anything more than your father’s assistant,” The awkwardness had faded away, replaced with a giddy happiness. Nathalie hugged Adrien back, her arms wrapped around the thin waist of the teen as her smile grew wider.

“You’ve raised me more than he has and it wasn’t even your job to do it. I know you get paid to be his assistant and everything but you never had to accept the task of looking after me. You did accept the task though, and because of you, I’ve had at least one solid person in my life,” Nathalie hiccuped. “You’d love her, Mum, and I’m sure she’d love you too.”

Adrien pulled away with his own tear drenched smile and met Nathalie’s eyes through her tear fogged classes. “To know that I’m making you proud, that I’m becoming half the person you are, is worth more than any priceless possession or trivial compliment anyone could give me,” Nathalie brushed her fringe out of her eyes, the dark locks had tangled with her lashes and were now damp with salt-water tears.

“I am proud of you, Adrien, so proud of you,” She placed her hand on his cheek and thought of Emilie. Emilie had seemed even more perfect with baby Adrien in her arms, sitting on the chair beside her, Nathalie had imagined that they were hers, that the tiny dozing bundle in Emilie’s arms would grow up with the most loving mothers the world could bless him with. At that frozen moment in time, Gabriel had disappeared to a conference on winter fashions in Los Angeles and had missed the first moments of his wife and child. He’d appeared for several minutes after the birth to discover the sex of his offspring, he’d given Nathalie congratulations to pass on to Emilie and then walked down the hall with a ramrom straight back. “Emilie is proud of you too, I can feel it. You’re such a wonderful boy and you’re growing into an incredible man, we’re so proud of you.”

Adrien pressed a kiss to Nathalie’s cheek and said that he needed to get ready for school, with an overwhelmed smile Nathalie had left him to prepare as she organised his breakfast. They ate together, something neither of them had really done before, Nathalie generally stood at Adrien’s side and watched him eat in complete silence after Gabriel had made another excuse not to spend time with his son but now she sat with him as he told her a story about one of his friends at school forgetting to tie their shoelaces up and face-planting in the middle of physical education.

She savoured this moment, the first moment she’d really been a mother. Emilie had been a mother as soon as Adrien had left her body in a rush of pain and screaming but Nathalie had become one as soon as Adrien had hugged her and thanked her for loving him. He was more animated than she’d ever seen him, his eyes sparkling with happiness as he spoke and grinned at the laughs she gave in response to his awful jokes. This is how he should have been, this is the life Adrien had deserved the minute he began growing inside Emilie, and Nathalie knew that Emilie would want him to be happy, even if it meant she wouldn’t get to see it.

After she’d walked Adrien out the door and waved goodbye to him, Nathalie walked to her office and locked the door behind her. With a half sob-half laugh, she picked up a picture frame on her desk and looked at the glossy photo encased in the glass. Emilie holding toddler Adrien with Nathalie’s arm wrapped around her in the shining green of a park, they looked like a family, like the family he should have had. Looking at Emilie’s radiant face, Nathalie came to the realisation that she’d never actually loved Gabriel how she thought she had but that she’d loved the constant state of agony he’d left her in after he’d told her of his plan to raise Emilie. He’d made her a promise and she’d fallen in love with his honeyed, poisoned words, thinking him to be a replacement for Emilie when he wasn’t even a shadow of the solar eclipse she had been. Putting the frame gently down on her desk as she rounded it, Nathalie angled toward the top drawer of her desk.

Opening the drawer, Nathalie removed the false bottom and pressed her thumb to the fingerprint scanner beneath, the metal beneath the scanner clicked and allowed Nathalie to remove that too. Inside the drawer was a miraculous box, holding the brooch that housed Duusuu, the Peacock Kwami. With careful fingers, Nathalie pulled the box from the drawer and flipped it open, calling the Kwami to materialise in front of her.

“Nathalie!” The Kwami dragged out the last vowel of her name as she embraced Nathalie’s face. “You’re all better now! Gabriel said that you might not get better, you look better, are you better?”

“Yes, Duusuu, I’m better,” The Kwami fiercely hugged Nathalie’s cheek and let out a happy, keening squeal. “But there’s been a change of plans.”

“A change of plans?” Duusuu released Nathalie’s face and floated in front of her, the creature’s fin-like arms crossed over her smooth lilac chest. “What does a change of plans mean?”

“We have to get Nooroo and the Butterfly miraculous away from Gabriel,” Nathalie pushed her glasses up and cut a serious gaze to the large eyes of the Kwami.

“B-but why? Don’t you want to help him wake up Emilie anymore? I’m all better and you’re all better so we should be able to get Tikki and Plagg’s miraculouses now with no trouble and wake her up!” Duusuu did a flip in the air in an attempt to remind Nathalie why they’d been bonded.

“I can’t let him wake her up, Duusuu, it would ruin everything,” Duusuu stopped her aerial acrobatics and furrowed her tiny, hairless brow. “Emilie wouldn’t forgive him for what he did to wake her up, she wouldn’t forgive him for neglecting Adrien, and Adrien,” Nathalie sighed heavily. “Adrien hasn’t seen his mother since he was a toddler and while he didn’t say that she was dead, he wouldn’t know how to act if he saw her again. It would tear him apart.”

“You loved Emilie, didn’t you?” Duusuu sat on the edge of Nathalie’s desk and arranged the strange feathers of her tail prettily around her.

“I still love her, and I know that she wouldn’t want this,” Nathalie’s voice turned sombre but she knew, she KNEW, that this was the right thing. Nooroo was too dangerous in Gabriel’s hands and if Gabriel succeeded in his foolish mission to bring Emilie back, he would ruin things more than he already had when he forced her to combine them. The claims he made about doing it for Adrien were utter bullshit, if he wanted anything to do with his son he would’ve spent the past decade and a half raising him. Gabriel was selfish and only wanted the woman who made sunshine seem as dark as a void to exist for him and him alone. He may have loved her, in a twisted way, but he didn’t love Emilie like Nathalie did. “Adrien is my son, I raised him, and Gabriel no longer gets a say in what would be best for the child that he neglected.”

“You know that I would never argue with you, Nathalie, but if I did, I know I would’ve lost this one,” Duusuu blinked slowly and gave a small, toothless grin. “Are we going to give Nooroo to Ladybug and Chat Noir when we get him?”

“Yes, they’re the only ones who can keep him as far away from Gabriel as possible. They’re the only ones who stand a chance of saving Adrien,” Nathalie’s voice was hard, determined. She’d lost the love of her life, her best friend, to a selfish monster of a man but she would not lose her son and she would do whatever it took, even at the price of her own life, to protect him. “I need to speak to one of them, Ladybug or Chat Noir.”

“How’re you going to do that? They’ve seen you with Hawkmoth and I really don’t think they trust you very much,” Pursing her lips, Nathalie leaned back in the soft leather of her desk chair and pressed her hand to her lips.

“They might trust you,”

“T-trust me? They’ve never met me, I mean, Tikki and Plagg have but Ladybug and Chat Noir or whoever they are normally haven’t,” Duusuu flew up to Nathalie’s face and hovered anxiously, her huge eyes like full moons.

“Kwamis have the ability to find other Kwamis, right?” 

“Um...to a certain degree, yes,”

“To a certain degree?”

“Well, sometimes Kwamis bond, creating life-pairs. The bonded Kwamis can find each other very, very easily and tend to have emotional bonds, Tikki and Plagg are bonded. She’s still not very happy about it but they are, so it would be easy for either of them to find each other,”

“What’s that got to do with you finding one of them, Duusuu?” Nathalie was growing impatient. She’d been so patient for so long and now that she’d decided to stop Gabriel, she knew that it had to happen quickly.

“It means that I’m only going to be able to follow a vague trail to where one of them is, nothing super precise but I can find the general vicinity,” Nathalie raised an eyebrow. “Magical beings, like Kwamis, can sense each other to a certain degree if they aren’t bonded but if two Kwami’s bond, both of their auras become weaker to other Kwamis.”

“But could you find Tikki or Plagg?”

“Yes, but it may take me a while and it means, possibly, stressing Nooroo out,”

“Wait, wait, wait, you looking for Tikki or Plagg will stress Nooroo out? You’re not going to tell him what’s happening, he’s a powerful Kwami but his mental health is fragile and he would be counterproductive to what we’re doing if he knew what was happening before he’s safely with Ladybug and Chat Noir,”

“He and I are bonded,” Duusuu’s voice was quiet, she fiddled with her fins in front of her. “If my emotional aura is too far away from him, he could worry and send him into an anxiety attack. Nooroo and I bonded after Emilie fell into her coma and we were both freed from our miraculouses. He needed a shoulder to cry on, he was absolutely destroyed by what had happened to Emilie, and I was fading away, my grief tearing me apart, so we bonded so I wouldn’t go wherever Kwamis go when we die and he would know that he was never, ever alone.”

“Okay,” Nathalie raised her hand to the Kwami who sat down on it softly. Pressing a kiss to the creature’s head, she offered her thumb to Duusuu to hold. “I’ll make sure that he doesn’t stress while you’re gone.”

“How’re you going to do that? It it’s that easy to get to him why don’t we get him now and I’ll take him and his miraculous with me to find Tikki and Plagg,” Duusuu’s voice sounded frantic.

“Nooroo can sense emotions and read brainwaves, right?”

“Again, to a certain degree,”

“Next time Gabriel frees Nooroo, I’ll tell him not to worry about you and that you’ll be home soon and that I’m going to be here to provide a calming aura for him until you return,”

“Thank you so much, Nathalie,” Duusuu flew forward and hugged Nathalie’s face again, her voice sounding as teary as possible for a magical peacock creature. “I’ll go find Tikki and Plagg now, please take care of him. I’m going to be back as soon as I can and we’re going to stop Gabriel.”

Duusuu saluted Nathalie with her tiny fin and flew straight through the window into the broad daylight of inner Paris. Spinning in her chair, Nathalie pressed her hand to the glass and watched the Kwami activate her invisibility power, Duusuu disappeared into the cloud dotted horizon.

“Be safe, Duusuu,” Nathalie whispered her request to herself, her thundering heart beating a tattoo against her ribcage. She wasn’t nervous, not anymore. Emilie would do this for her, Adrien would do this for her, so she would do it for them. Gabriel was a selfish, horrible man who didn’t deserve the love Emilie gave him and the son she bore, Nathalie would not feel an ounce of regret as she saved him and his son from himself.

~~~~~~~~~~

Lila prowled out of the classroom, annoyance and anger rolling off her in thick, poisoned waves. Adrien had convinced Madame Bustier to reconfigure the desk arrangement, saying that Max would be much more suited to helping Lila catch up with schoolwork and that he didn’t feel that he would be able to provide accurate help as he was busy quite a lot of the time. Madame Bustier had eaten the excuse up and moved the desks around; the dark skinned boy with his smart green shirt and square glasses now in the place of the sunshiny one who she had fought tooth and nail to sit with. Due to this one small alteration, Madame Bustier had felt the need to move everyone around.

The teacher said that Alya and Marinette spent so much time giggling and gossiping at the back of the classroom that she was wondering if they’d actually picked anything up in the last few weeks. With a jokingly teary goodbye, Alya had moved down the front of the room and taken her new seat beside Rose as Marinette remained at the back of the room. Juleka had been moved from Rose’s side to Nathaniel’s, the two didn’t look too unhappy at the change and took this as a chance to get to know each other better. Nathaniel was an artist after all and Juleka was a talented musician and part time model; their artistic temperaments were sure to click beautifully. Chloe was placed next to Mylene, Sabrina next to Nino, Alix beside Kim. Glancing around the room, Madame Bustier realised that Adrien and Marinette were at desks by themselves, there wasn’t enough space to keep both of them with desks completely to themselves so she moved Adrien up beside Mari and slotted Ivan and Nino into the now vacant desk.

Lila wanted Adrien to pay attention to her, to love her. She would never get her revenge if the golden boy kept getting further and further away. A light, melodic laugh floated up from the courtyard below Lila, sending her to the rails to look over the edge.

Marinette was sitting on the ground in front of Alya, on a bench, who was braiding her hair while she played a game of snap with Kagami, who had donned her blue kimono coat again. Nino had his laptop open and was fiddling around with some random program as Luka looked over his shoulder and pointed at things, giving him advice. Adrien was walking toward the group, Lila could feel the smile in his stride as he approached. Her hands squeezed the railing before her, the knuckles fading white as the long plastic of her nails dug into her palms.

“I’m not going to let you win this, Dupain-Cheng,” Lila hissed the noxious words through her teeth as she glared daggers at the group far below.

~~~~~~~~

Adrien felt weird around Mari, not bad weird but ‘I can’t tell my girlfriend that she’s my girlfriend because she thinks she’s dating a guy in a cat costume and doesn’t know that it’s me’ weird. She was radiant in the light, her happiness infectious. Her hair was shinier, her eyes more curious and searching, she looked how Adrien imagined happiness personified would look. He slouched onto the ground beside Mari and stretched out his long legs, her giggles were meshing with Kagami’s laugh as they played the least competitive game of snap he’d ever seen Kagami participate in.

As he watched Marinette and Kagami play, Alya folding the silky black strands of Mari’s hair into a thick, shiny braid, he thought of the talk he’d had with Nathalie before he’d left for school. When he’d gotten home last night from visiting his new girlfriend, he’d climbed into the shower and smiled into the scalding spray hitting his face; he wanted to tell someone, he needed to tell someone. He’d told Alya and Nino of course but he hadn’t told them as Adrien that he was dating Marinette and Marinette didn’t even know that she was dating him, but what about his father? Could he tell his Dad that he was seeing someone?

Adrien had realised in the shower, late last night, that his Dad really wouldn’t care. He’d rifled through every person in his life and realised that, for most of his existence, it had been just him and Nathalie. Climbing out of the shower and dressing, Adrien thought of the screensaver on his computer, a beautiful picture of his mother from before he was born, and felt a very strange sensation zap through the back of his head. He picked up his phone and opened the notes app, where he’d saved Mari’s text from ages ago, saying that she hoped he’d make Nathalie proud. Her words from the holidays played in his mind too, but they kept catching on the words ‘Nathalie’ and ‘proud’, the spare phone in one hand and his normal one in the other, Adrien sat on the edge of his large bed and looked around his room.

He didn’t keep track of how long he sat on his bed and stared into the dark corners of his room but he did remember when his mind had finally come to the conclusion that Marinette had told him to look closer at what Nathalie did for him. Maybe he was reading too much into her words, maybe he was looking for a clue where there wasn’t even a puzzle, but he crossed over to his closet and pulled the doors open. Sliding the clothes hung up inside along the rack, Adrien counted how many of them Nathalie had gotten for him, how many times she’d been the one giving him presents and supporting him; he lost count but he knew that the number was higher than the amount of times his father had even sneezed while physically in his presence. 

The spare phone was safely tucked between Adrien’s mattress and bed-head as he scrolled through the pictures on his phone. Not the ones with his friends or of Marinette/Ladybug but the ones of him at events and competitions, Nathalie was in all of them. Curling onto his side on top of his covers, Adrien decided that Nathalie was the person who meant the most to him, after Mari of course, and he’d never thanked her for it. She’d raised him pretty much single-handedly because Gabriel Agreste didn’t exactly exist to his son past an image on a tablet and an incredibly distant figure. 

Nathalie would love Marinette, Adrien decided, and he couldn’t wait to introduce them to each other. Adrien gazed at the ink-haired girl laughing and chatting before him, watching her lips move and her crystalline eyes roll as Kagami said something to her. 

“Yo, Adrien, come here,” Nino’s voice slapped Adrien out of his daze and called the lithe blonde boy to his side. 

“What’s up, man?” Adrien flashed Luka a smile as he walked around the other side of Nino to lean beside him. The music program Nino used for his dj-ing and music production was open, showing a tonne of different buttons and switches and coloured lines that Adrien really didn’t understand. 

“I’m editing a demo for Luka and I want you to give it a listen, we know that our boy,” Nino pointed his thumb at Luka who laughed and shook his head. “Is one talented jackass but you’re the one with the sensitive ears and Mari is the one who can get this dropped off to Jagged Stone.”

“You’re making a demo, Luka?” Luka cocked an embarrassed half smile and nodded. “That’s awesome! You’re in good hands with Nino editing it for you.”

“Nino’s been awesome so far, I’m lucky he’s taking the time out of his schedule to help me out,” Luka fiddled with the buckle of the leather bracelet wrapped around his wrist. Kagami saw Luka’s movements out of the corner of her eye and flicked her eyes up to meet his. They’d grown closer over the last few weeks, exchanging numbers 3 days in and speaking in any free time that they had. There wasn’t much in common between the two of them but that’s what made their conversations so interesting, past their shared languages and class, Kagami’s hobbies weren’t even on the same plane as Luka’s. She’d been slowly falling for him over the past few weeks, his easy smile and soft voice had the strings of her heart playing a melody of Luka’s making. He didn’t know how to tell her that he’d already fallen for her, and hard.

She was stiff sometimes, hard to talk to, monstrously competitive, achingly literal, and confusing as hell but Kagami was unlike anyone Luka had ever met. The rarity of her smiles made them work the weight of the Eiffel Tower in gold when she gave them and her occasional jokes were always perfectly timed, thought through and had yet to not send him into a deep belly laugh. Luka knew that he had a tendency to get lost in the currents of his music and float out to sea, everyone thought he was an anchor but he was more untethered than all of them, but Kagami had a way of drawing him back to reality. Her stoicism perfectly matched his spontaneity and balanced both of them out.

Kagami wasn’t good at reading emotions when they were aimed toward her, reading other people was easy but when they turned that attention to her, she would be completely unaware of how they felt about her unless they said it bluntly to her face. She wanted to know if Luka liked her but she didn’t want to give away that she liked him if he didn’t return her affections. Embarrassing herself was Kagami’s biggest fear and rejection was the second biggest, to be rejected and embarrassed would be her own personal hell. Luka couldn’t figure out how to tell her that he liked her, he had no problem with her rejecting him and he could tell that Kagami returned his feelings but he just didn’t know how to bring it up in conversation. The way her eyes lit up when she saw him and her posture softened had been more than enough to tell him that Kagami liked him back.

“That sounds awesome,” Adrien pulled Nino’s earphone off his head and held his hand up to Luka for a high five. Giving Kagami a sweet grin, Luka broke their gaze and turned to slap Adrien’s hand in the high five. 

“I think it’s missing something, I don’t know what,” Nino scratched his head and frowned slightly. Turning the bluetooth off on his laptop, Nino began to play the song out loud to the group. “What do you guys think?”

All chatter in the group died down, Marinette and Kagami paused their game of snap and Alya even stopped braiding Mari’s hair so she could dedicate her full attention to the music. Kagami tilted her head slightly as Luka’s rich singing voice began to filter through the small speakers of the computer, the words weren’t all in English but a mix of French and Spanish too; she caught the word ‘echo’ as the chorus began to play. The lines alternated between the three languages as Luka sang the chorus.

‘Echo, Echo, Echo, I never miss your voice,

Your eyes, your smile, your laugh,

Echo, Echo, you could play me in any key,

But I don’t know how to make you see,

You’re in my head, in my heart, in my soul,

When you’re here it’s hard to stay in control,

I’m not Narcissus laying by the pool,

You’re the only one, Echo, who makes me a fool,

My head is yours, my soul is your and my heart too,

Echo, Echo, Echo, you ground me,

I didn’t understand how perfect an anchor could be,

But I don’t know, Echo, Echo, how to make you see,’

Kagami translated the lines as the chorus played for the second time. Wa-was this song for her? She met his gaze again, questioning, and was given a poked out tongue as the only answer. Childishly, Kagami stuck her tongue out at him too, so Luka blew her a raspberry which earned Nino clapping his hand over the dark blue and black haired boy’s mouth.

“Piano,” The song ended as Mari’s head perked up with her answer. “It needs a piano. The acoustic guitar is perfect but with an accompanying piano, it could be so much more soulful. I’m not sure it’s going to be Jagged’s style but he’s not the one playing it and he knows better than to turn me down.” Marinette grinned at her friend. Chewing his lip, Adrien studied the computer screen.

“Actually, yeah, I agree with Mari,” Adrien inclined his head toward the girl cross-legged on the courtyard floor. “A piano melody would be perfect with this. Juleka could write up some piano chords for this, couldn’t she?”

Nino took his hand off Luka’s mouth and wiped it on his jeans with a grimace. “Jules definitely could but she’s so busy out of school currently, her modelling is picking up and so is her own music. She really doesn’t have the time, plus, Mum is hoping that she’ll decide to take the class Echo and I are currently taking next year,”

“Damn,” Adrien chewed his bottom lip and looked at Marinette for an idea. Maybe it was because he was the only one out of the two of them that knew they were together or maybe it was because he just wanted to look at the girl who owned his heart.

“You could do it, Adrien,” Mari’s eyes sparkled in the light filtering into the courtyard. “You’re a great pianist and I’m sure you’d be able to write the chords up during your piano lessons, hasn’t your instructor been asking you to write your own notes for weeks?”

“Yeah, Adrien, you could totally do that,” Nino grinned up at him. Alya and Kagami nodded too.

“If you’d be alright with me doing it, Luka, I’d be happy to do it,” Adrien straightened and looked at the musician beside him.

“That would be incredible, man, if you could,” Luka pulled Adrien into a hug. “It would be even more incredible if you could play it for me.”

“Play it for you?” Adrien looked bewildered. Seeing the expression on Adrien’s face had Alya leaning forward and whispering something to Marinette and Kagami that dissolved all three girls into a fit of badly contained giggles.

“Piano isn’t really my forte but I’ve heard you play and you’re really good. Plus, how many times would I be able to say that the amazing Adrien Agreste helped me produce my song?” 

“Count me in,” Adrien and Luka recreated Nino and Adrien’s secret handshake, Nino watched them do it was a satisfied smile. It had taken Luka way too long to learn the handshake and seeing him properly execute it made Nino very proud. “Let’s make some beautiful music, my friend.”

Adrien looked at Marinette, who leaned her head back in Alya’s lap and asked the red-headed girl something. Kagami was shuffling the deck of cards they were playing snap with, her mind replaying Luka’s song over and over again, changing the language each time. The whole song first in French, then Spanish, then English, it all had the same meaning but she didn’t know if the meaning she’d prescribed to it was the one it was meant to give. Luka could see the cogs turning in Kagami’s mind and hoped that she’d ask him tonight what it meant, he wasn’t sure if she would because she was almost as unpredictable as she was predictable and that only made her even more confusingly unpredictable. God, he loved her so much.

~~~~~~~~~

Mari had been carrying the number Chat had scribbled in her pocket all day, she hadn’t messaged it yet because she dissolved into a puddle of mush the minute she read the words ‘your boyfriend’ at the top of the torn piece of paper. She wasn’t happy that he’d written it on the edge of her maths homework but it was such a Chat Noir thing to do, to write it on a worksheet that she had to hand in the very next day. Whenever she thought of him, she’d slip her hand into her pocket and touch her fingers to the small scrap with a giddy smile.

Ducking into the bathroom before class started again after lunch, Marinette took out the slip of paper and took a deep breath. She entered the number provided into the contacts on her phone under the nickname ‘Furball’ and pressed the little message bubble that popped up as soon as she saved the contact. Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard on the screen as her mind tried to formulate a perfect greeting for her brand new boyfriend. The bathroom door thunked open, in her anxiety, Mari ducked into the stall furthest from the second entry door and locked the cubicle, sitting on top of the closed toilet lid and pulling her legs up underneath her.

“Sabrina?” Chloe sounded worried, her voice following the closed slam of the secondary door as footsteps thudded against the tile floor. “Sabrina!”

“Leave me alone, Chloe,” Sabrina hiccuped, her voice thick with emotion. “Leave me alone.”

Had Chloe done something to hurt Sabrina? If Chloe claimed to have changed, why would she turn against her best friend?

“I’m not leaving you alone, Sabby,” Chloe’s voice got closer and sweeter, calming. “It was a lot of info to tell you at once and now probably wasn’t the best time but I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore.”

“W-why tell me now, Chloe? Before we have to go into class?” Sabrina’s voice wobbled around the bathroom, Marinette felt incredibly unwelcome but knew that she’d only make things worse if she gave herself away. She didn’t feel right, sitting here and eavesdropping so she texted ‘Hey Chaton’ to Chat and set her phone to vibrate.

“Because I love you, Sabby,” Chloe sounded as sad as Sabrina did as the words left her lips. Marinette covered her mouth to hold in a gasp, Chloe was in love with Sabrina? If Chloe loved her romantically, like the tone of her voice hinted toward, then maybe this is what drove her to want to change. “It took me too long to realise it and if a right time wasn’t going to just appear, I’d have to make one. You make me a better person.”

“I-I….,” Sabrina couldn’t form a word. Mari heard Chloe shuffle closer to her best friend and the telltale rustle of clothing as Chloe wrapped her arms around the sobbing Sabrina.

“You don’t need to feel the same way, Sabby, but I needed you to know because if I didn’t, I was going to explode,”

“I do feel the same way,” Sabrina’s response was muffled by wherever she’d pressed her face in Chloe’s embrace. “I have for so long and I never thought you’d notice. I never thought you’d actually pay attention to me past my hero-worship for you.”

“I was a bitch to you and you didn’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you,” Chloe’s voice was infused with unshed tears. Mari’s phone buzzed in her hand, Chat had responded. ‘What’s crackalackin’, purr-incess?’

“I wanted you to leave me alone so I could fix my makeup, Chloe,” The tear choked voice of Sabrina released a hoarse laugh which Chloe eched.

“I’ll fix your makeup, Sab, but you know that I’m going to find you gorgeous even when your face is bright red from crying,” A thwack told Marinette that Sabrina had just slapped Chloe’s arm for the comment, Chloe’s laugh was belly deep and surprisingly pleasant to Mari’s ears.

‘Just trapped in a bathroom, what’s crackalacking with you?’ Mari typed back with a smile. The two girls beyond the stall started chattering as Chloe fixed Sabrina’s makeup.

‘Being bored to death at school, why’re you trapped in a bathroom?’ Chat’s response was incredibly quick.

‘I fell in, why else would I be trapped in a bathroom?’

‘What have I told you about being careful when you play in the bathroom, Mari?’ Chat accompanied the message with an eye roll emoji.

‘Don’t fall in unless you can press flush?’

‘Smart girl! You remembered!’ Marinette felt a chuckle rise in her throat but she immediately bit down on her hand as she heard Chloe zipping her makeup case closed and the two girls prepare to leave the bathroom.

‘What about school is boring you?’

‘The fact that we haven’t started learning yet and I’m currently sitting at my desk listening to the most annoying person ever talk at me,’

‘Poor kitty,’

‘Please, beautiful and strong Marinette, save this helpless kitty from his annoyance and boredom,’

Mari pressed her lips together in a smile as the bathroom doors closed, signalling that she was now the only one in the bathroom. She lowered her feet to the floor and unlocked the cubicle, leaning against the frame of the stall as she responded; ‘No can do, Chaton, I’ve got school too and I don’t even know where you go to school, so how can I save you anyway?’

‘Put yourself in danger?’

Marinette cracked up laughing. ‘Absolutely not! I’m not going to put myself in danger to get you out of school!’

‘You mustn’t love me then,’ The text came with a crying emoji. Mari walked out of the bathroom, eyes still glued to her phone and made her way back to her classroom. Madame Bustier made no comment about Marinette walking up the stairs scrolling through her phone as she handed worksheets around the room, Mari walked around Adrien, who was scribbling something in his workbook, and took her seat with a small huff.

‘I do love you, silly kitty,’ She placed her phone down beside her pencil case and opened her own book. Adrien watched as Marinette’s brow scrunched from the equations Madame Bustier had pulled up on the projector. The worksheets made their way up to where they sat at the back of the classroom, Mari took one with a frown and rolled her eyes jokingly at Adrien who chuckled. His phone felt like a tonne of bricks in his pocket, the device had buzzed when Mari had sent her last message but he hadn’t had the chance to read it yet. He ached to know what she’d said to him after he’d teased her. Lila had been trying to talk to him when he’d been texting Marinette, the now platinum blonde swinging her booted feet as she sat on his desk and prattled. He’d given the occasional ‘uh huh’, ‘yeah’ and ‘cool’ when he felt inclined to but his eyes and complete attention remained glued to the phone in his hands. Lila hadn’t been impressed with his complete ignorance of her and had tried to pry the device from his hands twice in the time she’d gradually encroached further and further into his personal space. Chloe and Sabrina had come back into the classroom hand in hand, giggling, and Madame Bustier had asked everyone to return to their desks. Adrien shoved his phone in his pocket and watched the door as Marinette walked in, up the stairs, and to her seat.

Once Mari started working, Adrien sneakily pulled the phone from his pocket and gently pressed the on button. ‘I do love you, silly kitty’ glowed up at him from the illuminated screen, he glanced at Marinette as a smile curved across his face and his heart started beating 40 million times faster. He was so, so in love with her and she couldn’t even see it, as she chewed on the end of her pen Adrien wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything more beautiful in his entire life. Oh, he was hopeless.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Duusuu hadn’t been lying about being able to find Tikki and Plagg but she also hadn’t been completely truthful. Once Kwamis bonded, they gained the ability to switch their auras off for anyone that wasn’t their bonded. Seeing as Tikki actively tried to stop Plagg from finding her, Duusuu wasn’t sure that she’d be able to track even the faintest remnants of the Ladybug Kwamis power; Plagg had a tendency to be absolutely useless but he was also incredibly bad at covering his own tracks so she hoped against hope that he hadn’t started using his meagre brain power in the last thousand or so years. The Peacock Kwami’s magic utilised sentiment, unlike Nooroo’s power which was based off emotions, and there was a slim chance that she could trace them though places that held importance to either of them.

Once she’d flew a considerable distance away from Nathalie’s office and made herself invisible, Duusuu had arched out her magic in as wide a radius as she could possibly could. She hadn’t seen Tikki or Plagg in so long that the attachment she had to both of them was nothing more than a gossamer thread. There was a strange aura around the Agreste Mansion though, the purple-black that Duusuu associated with Plagg was faintly filmed over the window of Adrien’s room and, for a reason she found both completely predictable, the kitchen pantry. Glancing around, the same purple-black aura seemed to waft around a balcony on top of a bakery in the distance; the top floor of the Eiffel tower, and the Franciose Dupont college. Tikki’s crimson seemed to sparkle dimly around the balcony, the Eiffel tower and the college as well as the carousel in the middle of a park of the Champs Elyeese. Well, they certainly had some awfully strange places they’d tacked sentiment to but judging by the ones they had in common, Duusuu decided to check the ones they had in common first.

They had sentiment associated places all over Paris too but they weren’t as strong or as mixed as the incredibly faint ones surrounding the bakery, Eiffel tower, and the school; as fast as Duusuu could float, she zoomed toward the college. The crimson and purple-black auras twined around her the closer she got; Duusuu flicked on her magic aura for the first time since she’d bonded with Nooroo. She sat on a gutter at the top of the school and waited in silent hope that at 2:47 on a Thursday afternoon Tikki and Plagg would be within the walls of College de Francoise Dupont with their guardians.

~~~~~~TAGLINE~~~~~~ @lady-charinette @mochegato @starkerismyking @katieykat513 @maniic-pixie-dream-girl @nifflerstorm @aussie-lesbian

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[shirindanesh]

FAST-TRACK YOUR SALES SYSTEM WITH AGILE IN 90 DAYS - AND KEEP IT GOING

What if I told you there is a really simple way to accelerate your sales.

Sales leaders know what needs to be done in their sales pipeline but their problem is getting the team’s buy-in to fix it. You’ve got lags, blockages, overloaded people… everything that’s getting in the way of hitting your team targets. If everyone was on board with the fixes everything would happen faster, like a beautifully oiled machine operating smoothly.

Let me show you a system that will improve your sales numbers and fast-track your opportunities in your pipeline. 

“It's not a new sales methodology. “

In fact, regardless of what methodology you're using, this will work. 

1 - Visualise the problems in your pipeline: All relevant fixes AKA backlog of improvements

You are  aware of the fixes that need to happen in your system. The things that are currently not working, your pain-points.  You know that a lot of little things need to be improved. 

If you look at this simplified pipeline (for the purpose of this article); you can see it goes from Lead Gen→  Opportunity →  Proposal →  Contract mapped out in Trello. 

Let's get a sense of the type of improvements I'm talking about: 

In the “Lead Gen” stage, we are not using events well to create leads, or we're not using LinkedIn for lead generation. 

In the “Opportunity” phase, we don't have enough videos to show the demo, or we don't have any battle cards, or they are out-dated.

In the “Proposal” stage, we don't have a tracking system. So we don't know if customers are using our system or if they are interacting with the case studies or emails that we've sent. 

In the “Contract” stage, we know our current contract structure is old, and it's not easy to amend. And it takes a very long time, forward and backward, to get a sign off on a deal.

Pro Tip: To compose a backlog of improvements, think of your dream sales team and sales operation, think what needs to be done. Add that in your list. Get access to this Trello Board here. Duplicate it for your business and take it from there.

2 - Sizing and prioritising the sales pipeline fixes

Each of these improvement cards are associated with a metric. The key question is “How do you decide which one to go ahead with first?”

Actually, you don't!!!? Let’s walk through a case...

In this picture (above) you can see we have mapped out an end-to-end of a sales pipeline  at the back of the room. It has all the steps in the sales pipeline, from beginning to the end.

We invited the sales team. Some of the guns, a couple of the architects, SMEs, some of the newcomers, the hunters, the farmers, anyone that is working on the sales pipeline.In this workshop we asked them to map the pain-points across this end to end pipeline (using the red post-it notes you can see in the background). 

Sizing the improvement

Next step is about sizing the issues that the team has highlighted.  We ask them to use cards (pictured) to indicate the size and frequency of these problems. Now, everyone can see which one is the bigger problem. Next step we'll ask them to prioritise.

Prioritisation

All problems require attention but not all at the same time. This is actually a specific method of prioritisation. We ask the team, "Which one of these problems is the most important one from our customers’ point of view?" NOT which one is the one that makes more money for us. And you can tell from this picture which one was getting the highest point and will get nominated.

The dot-voting method

The dot-voting method is another option for decision making. This is a democratic method where you nominate the high priority items. This is useful where there is no data available because it harnesses the collective wisdom and team's understanding of customers. 

Each participant has 10 dots, in 1,2, 3, 4 

They place dots next to issues identified on the sales pipeline.

Issues with the most dots “win” and will be priortised to be resolved.

Other names for dot voting are multi-voting, sticker-voting, sticky-dot voting, dot-mocracy and dot democracy.

Pro-tip: To prevent skewed voting from  strongly opinionated team members, invite junior participants to place their votes first, while saving stakeholders or subject-matter experts for last. This approach protects the votes (and voices) of those who may be less likely to authentically contribute and may automatically defer to others.

3 - Implementing the Improvement

If we go back to the Trello board, the backlog of improvement cards, let's say the team prioritises three improvement cards for us: 

Lead generation Stage: We are light on lead generation, so let's look at LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the future.  

Proposal Stage: Our Battle Cards belong to the industrial era or stone age. 

We need to install a tracking system to make sure we are measuring the things that we want.

At the beginning of a quarter, we will commit to three prioritised cards.  Then we agree for seven sprints we will apply the change and see how we improve on the metric associated with them.

Why 7?

For seven sprints we will do what we need to do, and then we'll stop. Why is it seven? To change a habit or behavior in a person or an organization, which is made of people, you need to hear something seven times and you need to do it 21 times. However, before committing to 21 times, we stop at seven to see if it's working. 7 sprints can also be mapped to a quarter which works well for organisational financial calendars.

4 - Measuring the impact of change

After seven sprints we stop. We will do a measurement. When we are measuring, we want to always compare the results to get insight to see if it's working or not, or if it helped. We compare that quarter's results with the previous quarter, and we compare that with the last year, same time. That's to make sure that the change and the result is not because of the environment, and is a true change.

5- Zoom in at “Linkedin Lead Generation” Card

Let me look at ANOTHER item, so you get a view of what could be inside it. Let's say the team has never used LinkedIn before. We need to get our sales navigator license. We need to create filters so we know which accounts we're targeting. We need to create the right messaging sequence because we want to have different touch points with our clients. And we want to have a couple of case studies. 

At the beginning of a sprint, the team comes together and decides which accounts they want to target. Each day they will update their trackers to what they've done. That's basically a tactical way of looking at the activities. In our sprint review, we say, Okay, how did we go?

TEAM TRACKS THEIR ACTIVITIES RELATED TO THIS

Let me show you a tracker that we put in place a while ago. This was a sequence of messages, the period that we were using it, the delays, between each message and the team’s tracker. So they could show their progress. This is a simple tracker designed to show us the leads, calls and the impact of the change or activity. We go seven sprints with it and at the end we stop and compare the results. It’s as simple as that.

6 - The human element of this system

This system that I showed you allows you to get your team's buy-in.

Remember, you didn't tell them what needs to be done, you ask them and involve them in the prioritisation and decision making process.

What’s important is you’re moving from a "knowing" space to a "doing" space.

Many, in fact all sales leaders, know what needs to be done. But getting their teams to come along with them, that's their challenge. This system is a quite tangible method to get people moving and create momentum and results.

It’s also really helpful in terms of managing noise, if you know what I mean.

7- The metric that rules them all

One other point, probably the most important point of this 45-day plan ; each one of these improvement cards is for improving a specific metric, a number or a percentage. However, the whole system will improve one overarching metric; your "Funnel Velocity".

As you know we have two types of indicators, leading and lagging indicators. 

Leading indicators - you straight away see an impact after you��ve put a change in place. These are normally observable, behavioural changes and metrics.

Lagging indicators - are the result of change that we’ve put in place over a period of time.

Funnel Velocity is a lagging indicator.  

On a separate note, Funnel Velocity has an element of time to it, and it can be translated to an accounting concept of “Early Revenue Turn-On”. 

The two above reasons, being a lagging indicator and having an element of time, funnel velocity is a difficult metric to go after. For you to be able to change that or improve it, you need to do so many things in your system in order to be able to increase the speed of opportunities in your funnel.

If you are anything like me and you’d like a good challenge: improving Funnel Velocity is a good challenge.

8 - The 45-day Acceleration Plan

To bring all the theory and practical sides together, I've designed and tested a 45-day acceleration plan that is action by action to help you implement the process explained above.

The intention of this plan is to show you how to implement Agile ways of working into your sales pipeline. It’s innovation in leadership applied to sales pipelines to increase numbers

I am passionate about Sales Transformation with Agile. If you have any questions, any problems, or you want me to clarify anything for you, contact me,I would love to talk to you about this.

If video is more ‘your thing’ I’ve also created a video walking through this process for you.

Compose a backlog of improvements, think of your dream sales team and sales operation, think what needs to be done. Add that in your list. Get access to this Trello Board here. Duplicate it for your business and take it from there. 

Shirin Danesh is founder of Momentum Pipeline a program designed to make top-tier consulting practices in Agile transformation accessible to a wider range of companies. She invites sales leaders to improve one challenging but rewarding metric - Funnel Velocity. She is an Executive Agile Coach, working with futuristic, caring and ambitious executives to level-up their business. You can read her blog on Agile transformation here.

Article originally published on www.shirindanesh.com

[eldritchsurveys]

672.

When was the last time you let someone know you truly love him/her? >> Hm.

Do you complain when you are bored, or look for something to do? >> I might say that I’m bored, conversationally, if I’m not alone. But usually I just flop around and wait until my brain settles down. (Usually, boredom for me isn’t a lack of things to do, it’s just a kind of restlessness or anxiety that prevents me from doing anything or focusing on anything.)

Do other people's complaints ever get on your nerves? >> Sure.

Generally, what is your favorite ride at an amusement park? >> I remember liking roller coasters, but I haven’t been to an amusement park in a long time.

Who is your favorite 90's musical artist? >> I mean, a lot of the music I enjoy is from the nineties...

Do you think that music was better when your parents were young, or now? >> Music is just music. Some of it I like, some of it I don’t like, but every time period in the past century-plus has had its pop music that older people hate. I think it’s just more difficult to adapt to new music trends as one gets older, and one is more likely to experience nostalgia for the music they grew up with, and mistakenly assume that their nostalgia means that the music was obviously objectively better back then. There are some musical trends that I wish were still knocking around, sure, but there are some new trends that I love, too. People will always be around making music that I like, no matter what year it is.

How did you develop your specific taste in music? >> I mean, it wasn’t any effort on my part. I just like what I like; I assume it’s mostly subconscious.

If you drink coffee, how do you like it (with cream, black, etc)? >> Black.

Did your parents sign you up for things like piano lessons and ballet? >> He always signed me up for things I didn’t enjoy, and then wondered why I didn’t perform to his standards.

What is your favorite children's song? >> I don’t have one.

Is there a funny story about yourself that you like telling others? >> Probably, but I can’t remember it right now.

Are you good at telling jokes? >> No, I don’t have the memory for constructed jokes.

Are you uptight, or are you easy going? >> I’m neurotic about some things because of how I’m wired, and I’m pretty apathetic about other things for the same reason.

Other than gas, what do you frequently purchase at a gas station? >> I don’t regularly buy things at gas stations.

What is one concern you have about the present state of the world? >> Meh.

Ten years ago, did you think that this was how the world would turn out? >> I wasn’t thinking about how the world would turn out ten years from then.

Ever think you might be better off living in a different time period? >> No.

Do you drink regular or diet soda? >> If I’m going to drink soda, I’m going to drink regular soda.

What CDs would you take with you on a road trip? >> Thank god for Spotify.

Think of your favorite band? What album by them is your LEAST favorite? >> I don’t have a favourite band.

Have you seen your favorite band in concert? If so, how was it? >> I’ve seen live several bands I’ve called “favourite” in the past. They were all great shows.

Do you walk regularly? >> I don’t. Especially not in this season.

Did you take a Health class in high school? How was it? >> Yeah. I don’t know, I slept through most of it.

If you could have the answer to one question, what question would that be? >> ---

Do you like any bands from other countries? >> Sure, of course.

When was the last time you mailed a handwritten letter? >> Uh... middle school?

Do you still receive Christmas cards? >> Not unless I do a card exchange amongst my tumblr mutuals, which I did do one year. But executive dysfunction got in the way last season so I didn’t get around to it.

Do you know anyone who is really hard to please? >> I mean, maybe.

What gets you through the day? >> *shrug*

Do you have a Before Bed routine? >> Not really. I just make sure to take my pill at around 10p.

Describe your stance on organized religion? >> I don’t have a stance on it, really. I find some aspects of it fascinating, some aspects of it helpful, and other aspects of it harmful. Just like... anything, I guess? I’m considering conversion to a particular organised religion, but I’ve been spoiled by the sheer freedom of being unaffiliated and I’m not sure how willing I am to give that up.

Describe your stance on religion in general? >> I’m notoriously interested in and even passionate about religion in general, even when I don’t care to personally participate in it. It’s one of those things I’d consider majoring in if I was in any way inclined towards formal education.

If you found out your bf/gf was homosexual, how would you react? >> Whaaaaat? The woman that is always saying “I’m gay” at any given occasion (particularly when she sees other women) is not straight?????? News to me.

If you are homosexual, and you find out your bf/gf is straight, then what? >> I mean, that’s a situation I can’t really imagine being in.

Have you ever sung karaoke? What songs? Was it fun? >> I’ve sung at live-band karaoke... I’d say around 100, 150 times? I was pretty much a regular. My go-to songs included Smells Like Teen Spirit, Jeremy, and No One Knows. Oh, and The Trooper until I saw [fellow regular] Dorit do a belly-dance bit with a sword on her head during the solo. I think all of us regulars gave up on doing The Trooper after that, lmfao.

Do you study for big tests? >> ---

What makes you nervous? >> Oh, a few things, I guess.

Have you called anyone today? What did you talk about? >> No.

When was the last time you went bowling? >> The last time I was even in a bowling alley is when I was eighteen. The only reason I remember is because that was the last time I saw Thomas before he died. (That bowling alley isn’t even there anymore. Always thought a bowling alley in Port Authority was weird, anyway...)

Do you drive around the neighborhood to look at lights around Xmas? >> We usually just see them on regular drives. When I lived in the Pine Barrens as a preteen, it was nice because we lived by a four-mile-long lake, and you could always see the reflections of the lights across the lake in the water. Also, there was this one house that always went absolutely apeshit with the lights every year. I shudder to think of their electric bill.

Why are so many single people bitter on Valentine's Day? >> Because they’re lonely or have been hurt by exes or are unhappily aromantic, and don’t like being bombarded by hearts and romantic shit everywhere. It’s not rocket science, dude.

What holiday is a big deal for you? >> I mean, Christmas. I enjoy it and for once in my life I get to fully celebrate it.

What is one tradition you hate participating in? >> I don’t know, but whatever it is, I probably just refuse to participate in it period.

Have you ever been sledding? >> Nope.

Do you have acne? >> Not since high school.

Have you made a fool of yourself today? >> Not to my knowledge.

Is there someone you wish you could talk to, but you're too afraid? >> Not specifically. But in general, fear is the foundation of why I don’t open up to people.

Do you have a favorite cookie? >> I like lemon cookies...

When was the last time you did something for someone else? >> Neighbour left her key in her door and I knocked on the door to alert her to it.

Do you let other people choose the radio stations in your car? >> ---

Would you say that you are an accepting and openminded person? >> Sure.

Have you ever been convinced to try something you didn't want to do? >> Not if I really didn’t want to do it. I’ve been convinced to try things that I was on the fence about.

What happened? How did you feel about your choice? >> ---

Have you ever tried to influence someone else? >> I mean, sure, probably.

When was the last time you cheated--at anything? >> I don’t remember.

Do you play any online computer games? If so, what? >> Yeah. I play several MMOs (not at the same time, I usually alternate between them from month to month).

What food can you not seem to get enough of? >> Cheese and crackers, for some reason.

When you are mad at someone, how do you show them? >> I usually just don’t talk to them or don’t give any friendly social cues. Kind of freeze them out, I guess. I figure most people don’t care if I’m upset with them or not, so it doesn’t make any sense to tell them or have a conversation about it. That may be fallacious, but I... also haven’t been explicitly proven wrong yet, lol.

Do you like to think that you are better than other people? >> No.

When was the last time you felt you had a reality check? >> I don’t know.

Have you ever felt out of touch with reality? >> Sure, many times.

Have you ever been sick to the point of possibly dying? >> Nope.

Have you ever had a tooth pulled? >> Yes, because I can’t afford a root canal.

How long do you you usually chew a stick of gum? >> Not that long. The flavour only lasts like five minutes at best, after all, and once the flavour’s gone the gum starts to lose pliability.

Did you chew gum in school, even if it was against the rules? >> I don’t recall doing so.

Did you take a foreign language in school? >> I tried. I didn’t get very far because of changing schools all the time, being in the mental hospital all the time, and also that stupid fiasco where I got no credit for a whole year of Spanish I (I don’t remember why, but it was definitely some bullshit).

Did you attempt to make Honor Roll? Did you make it? >> I only made honour roll in elementary.

What was your favorite school project? >> That report I did about Jim Morrison. Or that project I did about the war against rock and roll, lol (you know, the Satanic Panic around metal music and all that noise; I basically got tired of being told I listened to “devil music” and decided to expose the ridiculousness of it in my final project).

Did you attend any school dances? >> I mean, I went to prom.

Were you in any after school clubs? >> I tried to be, but my father made me leave them because he didn’t approve of the kinds of clubs I wanted to be in (and I didn’t want to be in the kinds of clubs he approved of).

Was there any teacher that made life living hell for you? >> I definitely felt that way.

How about any student(s)? >> Some years, yes.

When was the last time you felt overwhelmed? >> I don’t remember. It’s a common occurrence so I don’t make much note of it when it happens.

Which parent are you more apt to go to if you're upset? >> ---

Do you have any coffee mugs with funny pictures/sayings? >> I have a mug with a cute cactus on it! But Sparrow has all the punny mugs (they’re all cat puns).

Describe your favorite t-shirt? >> ---

Describe something strange that you own? >> Hmm... not sure I own anything strange. Or maybe it’s just that nothing I own is strange to me.

What do you like to do on a friday night? >> Go to Cafe Boba for a weekly meetup group.

What do you like to do on a sunday night? >> Whatever.

Are monday's a drag for you? >> No more or less than any other day of the week.

Do you think graffiti is a valid form of artistic expression? >> Of course.

Do you know where the food you eat comes from? >> Of course not, I live in the US. It’s all a clusterfuck of obfuscation.

Do you ever worry about where the world will be in 20 years? >> No. My peers seem to have that covered.

Have you spent much time contemplating your death? >> Oh, definitely.

Do you know what you want your funeral to be like? >> I know that I want a home vigil (assuming I die when I’m older, after we’ve already bought an actual home). If I die, like, tomorrow or whatever, I guess people can do whatever they want funeral-wise because I’m not interested. Just bury me in a cardboard or pine box in the green section at that one cemetery near us, please. Not in a fucking thousand-dollar metal casket or whatever. Let me decay.

How often do you think dirty thoughts? >> I don’t know, often enough, I guess.

Can mere images turn you on? How about words? >> Images, sure. Words, if they come from Inworld, yeah...

Do you give a good back massage? >> No.

Do you think that feet are disgusting? >> I mean, not inherently. At least they don’t... secrete stuff. (I mean, besides sweat.)

Do you have a girlish scream? >> I don’t recall ever screaming, period.

When was the last time you screamed? >> ^

What is your political affiliation? >> I don’t have one, but I usually vote Democrat.

Are you registered to vote? >> Yeah.

Are you GOING to vote? >> *sigh* Yeah, guess I oughta.

Do you think you would enjoy living in college dorms? >> No. Nooooo no no no no.

Have you ever been to the YMCA? >> Yeah.

If you ditched school, where did you go? >> ---

Have you ever been offered drugs? What, and by who? >> I mean, by friends. Not by complete strangers the way D.A.R.E. insisted. (I mean, that probably does happen too, just not at all with the frequency one would expect...)

Are you afraid to walk places at night if you are alone? >> No.

What's in your school backpack? >> ---

Are you put off by overly social people? >> No. I’m easily exhausted by very extroverted, exuberant people, is all. Doesn’t mean I don’t like them as people.

What do you think of people who are shy? >> I don’t think anything of them, specifically. Some people are just shy. That’s fine.

[spacehologramcollection]

Clones and Secret Santa.

First thing I’ve wrote in many moons. But I am back! I’ve wrote some more trash for the Clones. Hope you guys enjoy! Request box is open but be gentle with me, I need to warm back up to writing since my hiatus! Long arse post so more under the cut! I randomly generated who picked who!

·         Rex BUYS FOR Fives;

He wants to buy him something really sarcastic but restrains. Was going to buy him a book on how to keep quiet and still but opts out. Instead he gets him a framed photo of him, Echo and Fives after the two of them were inducted into Torrent. He wrote a little note on the back saying how proud he was of him and how far he’d come. He knows Fives will never look at the back so feels safe writing it. Fives actually loves it and has to pretend to go to the Bathroom to have a lil cry. Guesses it’s from Rex because of the way its wrapped- terribly.  That and only Echo or Rex would think of doing that and Echo has Hardcase, so it couldn’t be him!

·         Cody BUYS FOR Kix;

From what little interaction (And notes from Rex) Cody knows two things about Kix 1) He hates mess, germs and is full of himself and 2) the bitch loves scented candles. So, he does the easy thing, he asks Kenobi what makes a good scented candle. Ends up buying him one of those giant ones that last for a year! Gets it in the scent of fresh linen, since he likes clean things and he’s 110% sure they don’t do candles in the scent of anti-bacterial wipes. Kix actually loves it, he’s not sure who got him it, doesn’t recognise the handwriting. It’s too neat to be anyone in Torrent, apart from Echo, but he knows Echo can’t keep a secret when it comes to gifts.

·         Fives BUYS FOR Tup.

He debates getting him some Tupperware for a really bad joke. Echo talks him out of it, in fear of inciting a riot and ruining Christmas… again, just like the time they set the oven on fire. Fives ends up brainstorming for a few days, trying his hardest to think of something. In the end he settles on getting him two things, a big pack of bobbles (Hair ties) because he constantly loses them/snaps them because his hair so thick. And he gets him a new sketchpad. Wraps them together (VERY BADLY) so he can’t guess what it is. He also gets Echo to sign it, so he can’t guess. Tup is legit so happy on Christmas, he’s in love with the bobbles more than the new sketchpad. He can’t believe it. And there jumbo ones so they won’t snap as easy! Tries to guess but fails, Fives manages to hide his smug smile, is dying to tell him that it was him!

·         Echo BUYS FOR Hardcase.

Echo gets the easiest one. Fives is cursing him in his head. Hardcase would be happy getting a pack of elastic bands. But Echo still puts effort into it. He spends a few days researching where he can buy things from that will arrive in time. He’s the first to sort it and wrap it. He wraps it pretty neat and even puts a little bow on it. He gets him a giant tub of giant strawberry sweets (Much to Rex’s dismay, sugar and Hardcase don’t mix well) He’s so happy, he’d have been happy with anything though. Instantly guesses its Echo because of the bow and how neat everything is. Gives him a massive hug which almost breaks poor Echo’s bones. Legit shares them with everyone. The tub doesn’t last very long but he enjoys them all.

·         Kix BUYS FOR Wolffe.

Kix grimaces a little bit. He once had to give Wolffe a medical and it was in a nutshell, terrifying. He has no idea what the Commander likes, if he likes anything or if he even smiles. Has to go to Rex and ask for advice. Wolffe does like things and does in fact smile. Just not often. In the end he buys him a new water canteen and tucked into the package is a photo of him and Plo for his Scrapbook. It’s decently wrapped, but the handwriting is bloody awful. When he opens it he’s happy with the canteen, he’s been complaining for a few weeks that his is knackered. But when he sees the photo, he briefly smiles before it disappears when someone asks if he’s smiling. No of course he’s not. He tucks it in his pocket and puts it in his book later. He knows it’s not Rex or Cody, then he remembers Kix’s doctor handwriting and it all makes sense. Next medical he actually speaks a bit more and always nods to Kix when he sees him. Kix feels like he’s in an exclusive club of people Wolffe can tolerate. He boasts about it none stop. Fives wants him to shut up.

·         Wolffe BUYS FOR Rex.

This should have been easy. They’ve known each other for ages. But yet he has no idea what to buy him. Cody suggests bleach for his hair as a joke and Wolffe actually contemplates it. He’s an awful gift buyer. He wants to get him something sentimental, like something with a lot of meaning. But then he debates getting him something that will take the piss, like flying lessons since he knows he’s a piss poor flyer. He wants to do that but remembers Rex has a thing against heights. Instead Wolffe opts to get him something with a little meaning. He remembers the mission just after when Rex was first made Captain of the 501st. Wolffe was supervising the mission as Commander, he remembered how nervous the Captain was on his first night watch. They shared a beer and ended up talking. One of the few times Wolffe had been transparent and unprofessional. Wolffe had found a small rock that had a little blotch shaped sort of like a wolf… at a stretch. He’d kept it as a little trinket. Rex had snorted and said it looked more like a cloud. So, he gifts that a bottle of Ebla Brew, the beer they’d shared and the rock. He wraps it pretty badly like the wrapping is falling to pieces. Rex knows as soon as he sees it who it’s from. Nods to Wolffe and smiles. He loves it. He shares the beer with Wolffe that night when everyone else is passed out and they catch up. Keeps the rock on him at all times; when he’s nervous he just runs his fingers over it and it calms him down.

·         Tup BUYS FOR Dogma.

Tup actually likes Dogma. So, he’s pretty relieved he got him. He gets on with him and he knows him pretty well, so all is good. He doesn’t have to think hard and ends up buying him a diary. He knows he likes to keep organised and up to date so it’s perfect for him. Gets him one with his name personalised onto it. He even doodles a little version of Dogma in the front cover and a tear drop in the back. He kind of wants Dogma to know he bought it for him. Wraps it pretty neatly. Handwriting is terrible, so he signs it with a teardrop. Dogma instantly knows. He loves it. He likes to jot down his thoughts about what’s going on, what could be improved, how he could improve etc. He loves been organised, so this is one of the best things he could receive. Is really grateful for it and keeps thanking Tup. He’s so happy, Tup receives a rare Dogma hug. Every single one is filled with sunshine and rainbows, all well-organised of course.

·         Dogma BUYS FOR Jesse.

He knows Jesse isn’t his biggest fan. Then again who is? But the thing is Dogma knows everything about everyone. He’s more of an observer than anything else. He knows Jesse likes music, it’s the one thing that keeps him calm in Torrents bunk room. So, he does the decent thing, buys him that one album he’s been looking for everywhere and some noise cancelling headphones. He still doesn’t feel like it’s enough, he knows he was a little shit back then and he knows he’ll probably never be trusted. He’s really apologetic in his card. It’s well wrapped and it’s the second under the tree. Jesse knows from the note saying, “I know this doesn’t make up for what I did but I hope it’s a start” it’s Dogma. He’s pretty dam happy with the CD then he finds out the headphones will cancel out Hardcase’s sleep talking and nonsense. He’s over the moon. He starts to cut Dogma a lot more slack, doesn’t tolerate people taking the piss out of him as much. He gives him a friendly backslap and a thank you.

·         Hardcase BUYS FOR Cody

Commander Cody of 212th. A distinguished Commander and one who’s well respected. Suave and reserved. So, everyone is having a mini panic-attack upon realising Hardcase is buying something for him. But yet at the same time anticipating the chaos with glee. Hardcase is a bad gift buyer, he’s spontaneous and will buy the first thing that pops into his head. Kenobi manages to persuade him that something tea related would make Cody happy. Hardcase instantly knows what to get him. Dinosaur. Tea. Infuser. It’s small but it’ll do the job. Gets him some loose tea and a new cup to go with it. The cup is bright pink with yellow spots on it. He wraps it badly. Like it looks like it’s been gnawed by a Loth-cat. His handwriting is awful, borrows Five’s green crayon that he always signs everything with to sign the card. On the opening, everyone is anticipating what he’d been bought. Rex is ready to calm the situation, Fives is ready to record it and Kix has the medical kit on standby in case its unflattering. Everyone is pleasantly surprised to see how thoughtful and nice it is. Cody is asking who bought him it as a joke… but Hardcase immediately admits it was him. Cody smiles and thanks him for it. Offers to share a brew with him but Hardcase doesn’t drink anything that’s not really colourful and slightly sugary.

·         Jesse BUYS FOR Echo.

Echo is easy to buy for. Plus, Jesse has the power of Fives on his side. Echo and Fives are inseparable. Fives pretends to hate it, but he actually couldn’t live without his shadow, not that he’d ever admit it. Jesse buys him a book he’s been complaining about not been able get. He also gets him a little reading light, so he can read in bed without keeping the big light on. Which is a present for everyone really. It’s either the big light, a lamp or his bright helmet light. This one is more personal and its shaped like a worm/caterpillar Jesse isn’t sure which one it is. He puts everything in a gift box, he knows his wrapping skills are bad. He asks for Hardcase’s help but ends up watching him Sellotape his face. opts for a box since it looks neater. Draw little symbols instead of writing to throw of the scent. Echo still guesses because its Echo. He’s really happy with his gifts and basically just enjoys them throughout the day. Jesse receives an Echo thank you, which is usually an awkward hug and him being eternally thankful.

[shiningliive]

💝, 👘, 💭

💝Tell us your OTP?

I don’t really talk about ships here too much since they can alienate people, but I will literally ship anything. I don’t get up in arms about any ship wars or dynamics, literally every pairing has some good quality that can’t be found  in any others. rarepairs? hell yeah. dorm pairs? hell yeah. any character with nanami? sign me up. nanami/tomo? amazing. cross uni  pairs? Perfect. This goes for any series. I am open to any and every ship, I don’t think I have EvER come across soemthing I won’t ship given a bit of thought. 

I would of course have to go with the classic tokioto. I used to roleplay them (but thats another story) and honestly that serious character that melts around puppy character dynamic? hell yeah. I love that theyre both so clearly inspired by eachother. Their designs also work really well together. Of course this could just be my favourite because there is probably the most canon and fanon content for them (although m/m pairs for Utapri seem a bit rarer especially in western fanbase wehere people seem to really focus on /readers in fic.) I could talk about these two for ages, but I’ll do my best to hold back.

You bet I bought heaps of Utapri doujin when I went to comiket.

👘 Favourite outfit set? 

Very hard one! I’ll think about this not considering the art of the cards or anything, just the outfits. Not including event sets or single event themes, my favourite set outfit would have to be the Christmas v1 Set, Snowy Night’s Sparkling Stars Christmas Live. Not only does the sethave beautiful art and URs, but I absolutely adore everyones outfits. Usually, When Quartet Night and Starish have different outfits I’ll much prefer one over the other, but here, theyre a lot more uniform, yet still with individual touches. There seem to be three types of jacket, and I’d say my favourite has to be the simple one worn by Cecil, Otoya and Ranmaru. They just look so soft. When Setsugetsuka comes out though, they will probably be my favourite outfits in cards.

Marine and sweets are my two main aesthetics, so of course those two sets are definitely some of my favourites, but thats probably due to the theme rather than the actual outfits. I also really love the simplicity of Caught in the Rain.

Honorable mention to Secret Halloween Nightmare, love the set, lovely outfits, but I generally prefer lighter themes than darker ones. 

💭Interaction you’d like to see between characters?

I’ve mentioned before how much I love the canon fact then Ren and Ai are gamer buddies so off the top of ym head, thats the main thing I’d like to see mroe canon content for. Even if Ai wasn’t my best boy, I think this would still be my answer. You’s expect it from Ai, but its that gap with Ren that makes it so appealing. I love to think of them organising weekly or fortnightly 24 hour gaming sessions on the weekends or whenever they’re both free from work. The rest of Starish and Quartet Night know this, and make sure to keep that time free from any group work. 

I feel like it would be a really great time for them to unwind from a hard work week, and they probably have that bond where they can just sit there for hours and only talking about the game. 

Also joked with friends once that Ai can just play the mmo in his head during work breaks or when hes charging and at the end of the week Ren has to try and catch up. They probably buy eachother in-game currency for their birthdays. nerds I love them. 

[allie1804-fan]

Please Assist Me (Chapter 2)

Chapter 1 

He Said

Sophia’s trial month flew by  -  she had completely proved herself. By 6 months in, I really didn’t know how I’d coped before her - she had shown her value time and time again.

The gifts she helped me pick out were always perfect fits for the receivers and she always paid such close attention to the little details that made a gift personal. Kim was thrilled with the coffee set and Karina adored the genuine Moroccan tagine.

She made me laugh sometimes when she questioned the budget but I always just said that “you can’t take it with you” and “why have it if you can’t spend it”. Anyway, I am not that extravagant about most things, well not compared to others in my business. Sometimes though, the cheaper alternatives she came up with were genuinely great ideas.

She made the house feel loved  rather than the scruffy dormitory it’s prone to become when I am left in charge! I remember that on the very first day, when I got home, the t shirts and boxers I’d left in the dryer that morning were neatly folded on my bed. I had felt a slight moment of anxiety at a woman handling my undies but figured since she had been married, it wouldn’t be the first time! My house even felt truly homely sometimes when she’d bring the kids over if we had to meet on a Saturday or the school holidays. They are adorable and very well behaved – a reflection of their mother.

And her cooking skills were very handy – she’d make me salads and soups so I had easy meals after a long day on set so I didn’t always end up stopping for Ramen on my way home! And she even helped me one time by half prepping a meal I was going to make for Alex Winter and his wife. She made me look good though I did admit I had help!

Alex said

Keanu had a real spring in his step since starting his new project. At first I assumed it was all a reflection of his creative satisfaction but then I noticed something else – at every opportunity after she started working for him, he would mention his new PA Sophia when we got together or talked on the phone.

He’d tell me how it was she who picked out my birthday card and gift  - well the options at least and even she who was helping Karina to arrange his mother’s birthday party.

One weekend he invited Ramsey and I to dinner. There we discovered that it was Sophia who had prepped a lot of the ingredients for him the day before as he was on set on Saturday morning! She was everywhere!

He seemed to view her as his personal saviour but at the same time also seemed oblivious to the affection he clearly had for her – and let’s not forget her kids and how he gushed about them.

I needed to talk to him and took my opportunity after dinner.

He said

I guess all those thoughts about how great Sophia was were bubbling away in my mind over dinner with Alex and Ramsey. I could feel myself going on about her and noticed Alex raise his eyebrows a couple of times when I brought her up yet again.

In the kitchen after dinner Alex brought it up asking if maybe I had a little crush on her.

“nahhh, come on, I don’t have time for that” I protested “I mean, yes she’s lovely, a godsend to me    in fact and she’s very attractive I grant you but ……. What?”

Alex was laughing and rolling his eyes at me but I was hesitant to admit anything. After all, she was my employee, and from a different world from me. I’d always imagined that if I got together with anyone, it would be someone in our profession or something related. Someone creative who’d understand my passion. Besides, she was a mother of 2 and I have never got the slightest impression she saw me as anything other than the boss, the busy guy who didn’t have time to buy his own groceries or his own mother’s birthday card and gift.

“It’s just that she is really making my day to day life easier so of course I mention her a lot – I mean she half cooked our dinner”

“Whatever!” Alex said in an exasperated tone “just think about it, will ya?”

“Whatever!” I retorted.

I continued to ponder all this for several days and then events kind of took over.

She Said

The first month flew by and I passed muster. I was now employed on a rolling contract.

I know it was only everyday tasks I was doing but it still gave me job satisfaction. I put care into leaving the house looking and feeling homely and I tried hard with the gift and card buying, making sure I understood what he wanted and also found out enough about the recipient to get the most suitable items.

His insistence on signing the cards himself was adorable.  Most days that I was at his house, I’d need to leave something for him to sign or a little message asking for instructions about groceries or meals. In that way and through phone messaging, we had a continuous dialogue. I knew he was my employer but  it also felt like he was my friend.

That feeling was further reinforced when, about 4 months into the job, he invited me and the kids over to lunch one Saturday to meet his younger sister Karina as she was organising a birthday party for his mum and he was essentially delegating his duties to me.

Keanu told me that Karina would do some buffet food for lunch so I made a contribution of some home-made tuna empanadillas which were one of my specialities. I can’t deny that I held my breath when Keanu and Karina tucked into my bake and delighted in their enthusiastic response

“God these are amazing, you sure you don’t want to cater mom’s party as well?” Karina joked

I liked her and it was fun to start the plans with her. Keanu said his role was basically “show up and cover the costs” and left us to it, preferring to play with the kids. He’d suggested they bring their swim things and took them out to the pool to play.

Miguel and Eva really liked him and he took great pleasure in doing his Duke Caboom impressions for them. I can’t deny that my heart skipped a beat to seem him out there being so sweet with them. They didn’t see much of their Dad anymore since he’d moved away with his new girlfriend so it was good for them, and specially Miguel, to interact with another man.

@fortheloveoffanfic @kindainlovewithkeanu @omg-imagine @iworshipkeanureeves @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @keanureevesisbae @penwieldingdreamer @witty-wallflower @paperplanesandwallflowers @bitchyslut99 @ladyreapermc @toomanystoriessolittletime @fanficsrusz @keanuficfiles

[seecourtneytravel]

September 7th, 2018 - 6 days out

Pre- trip Prep -random thoughts-

I’m laying in my bed at my parents house and I see everyone just finished posting pictures of their kids first day of school. These days, kids of all ages are given cute signs of their next grade ahead. To me, it’s much more realistic and awesome to have these signs compared to our old portrait school pictures we used to have. It shows their entire body, their background, their non fake smiles which show their pure excitement (or not excitement) of what’s next. It also shows a piece of their personality.

I remember the days so vividly being around 9 years old, laying in the same bed, up the same late hours, and unable to sleep from excitement. I was so excited to wear those “first day of school” clothes and to try to look the best I could while still being me. It was like a weird routine and ritual every year. As the years went by, the young fire and excitement faded for the first day of school. The jitters have passed and everything seemed predictable after a while.

I remember the September loud nights, with the crickets and grasshoppers, and chilling mornings with fog rolling in. I would spring out of bed just hearing my moms feet pounding the ground rooms away while she made her way to the door handle. It’s as if my mom had to walk on her heels and couldn’t bend her knees. It felt like she had to approach my room as as fast as she could and I heard every step even before I woke up. “BOOM, BOOM BOOM BOOM,”- just before swinging the door open, I’d frankanstein sit up out of bed saying “I’M UP!.

After extensively getting ready, The bus would be just coming over the railroad tracks. I could hear it from my bedroom slowing down in front of the house as I ran out the door. I was usually more unprepared in my school years, even with all efforts of wanting to be prepared. I’m still the same today.

It’s funny, I’d never would have thought I’d find myself laying in the same bed with the same excitement 15 years later. I will be heading out for my first multi country excursion in less than a week and those same nostalgic feelings are coming back. Since being a travel nurse, I’ve dabbled in independent travel to Thailand, Ecuador, and Australia. I spent an exact month in each location traveling solo in hyperdrive speed. This time I’ll be tackling about 7 countries in about 10 weeks. I say about because I don’t really know...Because that’s how prepared I am.

It’s September 7th at 4am now and I leave September 13. I work 3 more shifts and and have two more full days off getting my shit together before I leave to the Philippines as my first stop. I have not yet started packing because the thought of packing for summer, winter, monsoon, and desert season all in a one bag is a bit discerning. I’ll tell you how “prepared” I am and maybe it’ll help me organise my thoughts of things I need to do!

-Finish flight home

-Obtain travel insurance

-Check for visas

-Lay out what you plan to take- just take half

-Obtain diamox, motion sickness, and zpak off some street flee market

-Buy what you don’t have

-Organise room while packing (a.k.a- bomb room and probably leave because I’ll be out of time)

-Find your debit card you just lost

Planned Countries to visit

-Philippines

-Singapore

-Malaysia

-Nepal

-India

-Bangladesh

-Sri Lanka

I only have the flights down, I’ll explain what I’m doing in each as I go! Today I plan on packing for my trip to know what I need to buy and also packing for California. When I return on my international trip, I’ll be making my way west again!

I’ll try to keep these going as I travel! I’ll be writing on google docs and putting it somewhere out there if you wanna know what stuff I’m up too for this trip! The quality of my writing may not be the best but if I can get my stories out as I go, I’ll figure the rest out later.

I’ll be sharing photos, pictures, and random entries to keep my friends and fam in the loop!