MC4A; Hogwarts
Stacked With: Hogwarts; Spring Bingo; BAON
Individual Challenges: In a Flash (Y); Click Bait It (Y); Yellow Ribbon (Y); Yellow Ribbon Redux (N); New Fandom Smell (Y); Neurodivergent (N); Quiet Time (N)
Representations: Garret (OC); Tea; Autistic Garret
Bonus Challenges: Teat Juice
Prompts: Mistaken Identity (auction); Comfortable (365 words); What Was Lost (Insane Prompts); Bingo - 2E (Warmth)
Word count: 665
Garret was walking home with his red coat collar flipped up to protect his neck from the wind and rain. His black curls were slicked back and lay flat against his head for once in his life. He had a messenger bag slung across his left side with its multitude of pins from various events and organisations jangling as he speed-walked home.
As another man walked in his direction, Garret stuck his gloveless hands in his coat pockets to warm them up. The man bumped into him and Garret quickly apologised—not that the stranger seemed to notice, he was already continuing along the path. Garret sighed as he kept walking and silently berated himself for apologising when it was the other man who had bumped into him. Manners had been drilled into him however, and it was now habit to say the right things when they were usually necessary.
Reaching his apartment building, Garret swiped his key card at the entrance and the door buzzed open. He quickly ran up the stairs to the third floor and unlocked the apartment he rented. Flinging his keys onto the desk near the front door, Garret immediately headed towards the heater and turned it on. It was freezing outside and he had left his warm jacket and gloves at home like an idiot.
As the heater slowly brought up the temperature of his home, he set about making a cup of tea that would serve to warm him up more. Then he pulled off his bag and dumped it on the couch. He would need to do some work once the tea was ready and his laptop was currently in the bag. Not that he had ended up using it while he was out, there had been enough free computers at the library that he hadn't needed it.
The kettle boiled and he poured the water into his cup before adding milk and carrying it over to the couch. With a soft groan, he sank into his comfortable couch and just sat still for a few moment—cradling the warm cup. It had been a long day and it wasn't over yet. Taking a fortifying sip of tea, Garret sat up and pulled his bag closer to him.
Placing his cup on the table next to him, he then opened his bag and let the laptop fall out onto his lap. There wasn't anything else in there that would fall out and he didn't have the energy to hold the bag open and dig inside until he got a grasp on the laptop cover. He was proven wrong about nothing else being in the bag when a small flash drive fell out along with his laptop.
He examined for a few moments—he didn't remember having a USB that looked like the one he held. Eventually he shrugged and placed it on the table next to him. He'd deal with it later and if it was something he'd accidently picked up at the library, he'd return it to lost and found when he went back.
On the street outside, a man with slicked back black hair, a red coat with its collar flipped up, gloveless hands, and a messenger bag with various pins clacking together walked back and forth, waiting for another man to bump into him. He stayed on the street for several hours; the information his source would be giving him via a flash drive slipped into his bag would hold some valuable information he could use.
After four hours of pacing up and down the same street, he gave it up for a lost cause. MI6 must have caught on to the mole and dealt with him before he could deliver the information. Cursing the Double-0s that had undoubtedly stolen his chance at insider information, the man stormed away to his current hideout with no idea that the information he so desperately wanted lay next to a cup of tea several stories above him.