Wonderland
*
"They're taking too much time," Luanne grouched, folding her slender brown arms over her chest, a dark scowl on her oval face. Impatiently brushing a strand of her silver hair out of her black-flecked brown eyes, she glowered at the clock hanging on the coffee shop's wall. "If *this* plan doesn't work…" She left the sentence unfinished, hanging threateningly over her and her somewhat lazy partner.
"Ah, relax, m' cherie," smiled Pierre in his ever-relaxed way, dark blue eyes twinkling enigmatically as always behind his lowered sunglasses. "They will be here, do not worry." His slightly French accent irritated her, for some reason, and she swallowed some of her rather nasty coffee in one defiant, burning gulp. A few seconds later, when she gagged on it and choked, sputtering shortly, he merely smiled wider and flipped through the pages of his just-purchased newspaper, whistling an annoyingly bright song - one she recognized through her sudden lack of oxygen as being "The Purple People Eater." With his infuriating calm personality, Pierre suggested lightly, "Perhaps you should swallow before you breathe. Might go down smoother, wei?" She pounded the table with the palm of her hand, gasping as soon as she managed to force down the hot drink. Shaking the newspaper, he gave her a blinding smile, answering himself with: "Wei."
"I," she gasped out, shoving her dangling silver hair away from her face, "detest…you!" Luanne inhaled deeply and straightened her spine, glaring dangerously at him.
"I am wondering," he continued, ignoring her dirty look, "did you send out the letters in order to set them up? It would be," he added, as she suddenly smacked her forehead and let out a despairing half-sob, "most helpful to our cause if you did."
Luanne merely made a pathetic sound and, turning to the side, began banging her head against the wall to the surprise and amusement of various people in the café.
Leena hurried through the crowd as quickly as she dared, clutching her bags tighter to herself and rolling her lips together as the cold wind pushed harder against her. A few snowflakes drifted down, here and there, and as much as she wanted to stay and wait for them to fall faster, thicker, she had no time. An anxious check of her watch reinforced her fears. Ten minutes left until the café closed, and she needed a warm drink from her day of shopping before going home - back to her small, silent home. Shifting the heavy bags piled up in her arms, neatly wrapped presents (thank God, she thought briefly, for present-wrapping services at the department stores) stacked up in a not-so-neat manner, she doubled her pace, loose slacks shifting with each movement, her tacky green-and-red Christmas vest flapping quickly. The sky was already inky black and the clouds sheening over it were dark grey, occasional tiny dots of white spurting out from the cloud cover and twirling like odd ballerinas to the Earth. Craning her neck slightly around one of her enormous bags, she checked the time again. Eight minutes to go.
"I'm not going to make it," she grumbled, making a sharp turn around the corner and muttering darkly to herself. Again, she quickened her pace, knowing that the cozy coffee shop was nearby. If only, she thought with a mental laugh at herself, she had remembered where it was exactly! Leena skirted around a happily chattering teenage couple - a wiry boy with delicate glasses and a husky girl with a cheerfully smiling round face - and wished them a better Christmas than she was going to have. God knew she needed some outer help in saving her dwindling toyshop.
She knew she should have taken Leon and Naomi up on their offer to let her stay with them and their kids over the holidays - it would be a heckuva lot less stressful for her, and it would have given her a chance to visit with her nephews. But still…she'd left the Zoids Competitions for a reason, and she didn't need to be bombarded constantly from all sides by a family that participated, albeit not frequently, in Zoids activities.
Funny, though, that she couldn't remember why she'd left. A quick flash of memory passed through her mind and she cursed the infallible timing of her remembrance.
Finally, as she was busy musing over her current predicament, Leena almost ran into a little handpainted sign with a jovial Santa Claus statue holding it, but managed to pull away from it just in time. Of course, as fate (or God) would have it, the Santa-sign was propped up outside of the coffee shop she had been looking for. Absently setting her bags to the ground, she dug in her pockets and pulled out a few dollar bills and two or three dimes fisted in her hand. Carefully, she fed the money into the slot cut in the hollow statue's forehead. The sound of the money finally clinking, near the bottom, made her frown - people were less generous this season than ever before, it seemed.
With a sigh, she picked her bags up, grunting momentarily at the sudden weight, then maneuvered her way into the tiny shop.
"Look who just walked in the door, cherie," Pierre said suddenly, and Luanne looked up from her self-discipline (if, in truth, it could be called that). "Leena - the girl."
Luanne blinked, once again swiping at the stubborn forelocks that kept falling in front of her eyes, obscuring her vision blurrily. "What are the odds?" she muttered, unrolling her sleeves from where she had pushed them up to her shoulders. As Pierre softly intoned something to himself that sounded rather like '1 in 3,400,908,000,' she stood up and shook her arms lightly, eyes glowing for a moment. "Right, then," she continued after a moment, her tone shifting from disgruntled to satisfied. "Voice says we need to get Harry here, then - sounds like a manipulative job." Her gaze flickered across to Pierre, who paused in his hasty scribbling of numbers, abbreviations, and theorems (all of which made no sense to anyone but him), and she grinned. "Guess who's going."
He smiled disarmingly. "Obviously not you," he all but laughed, instead settling for taking her smooth, dark hand and kissing one of the knuckles tenderly as he, too, stood up. "It would appear that I, Monsieur Pierre, master of--"
"Manipulation," Luanne added helpfully, gently prying her hand out of his grasp and seating herself back down, sipping gingerly at her cooled coffee.
He frowned at her, somewhat miffed, then his expression cleared slightly as he admitted, "Wei, wei." Straightening his tie and swinging his jacket up, and on, Pierre bowed his head slightly. "I am off."
"No kidding," she retorted, casting a momentary glance at the clock. "You better hurry though," warned Luanne, eyes worriedly settling on Leena's form as she leaned across the counter to ask the motherly woman behind it for a drink of some sort. "It looks like Leena is getting a coffee to go, and the store's closing in about five minutes. We haven't got much time to pull this off."
"Don't worry," he said dismissively, waving his hand a little bit and blinking both his eyes decisively and quickly. In a heartbeat, he had vanished in a swirl of nigh invisible red hearts that swiftly popped out of existence.
A few of the small number of people still in the shop lifted their heads and wondered, only for a few seconds, where the handsome companion to the cute black woman had gone.
"I wish he wouldn't do that," Luanne sighed quietly, kneading the bridge of her nose.
Five days until Christmas Eve, Harry thought darkly to himself, five flippin' days, and the servants take holiday before anything can get done! It was one of the worst situations he'd ever been in, and he was not enjoying it at all. He didn't know the simplest thing about decorating a house or organizing a party for aforementioned Christmas Eve, and he vowed to never volunteer his services during the Christmas season again - especially with both parents off on some cruise, Mary off with her latest boytoy (some horrid guy from Spain who only spoke one word of English - "yes"), and the servants taking holiday. It was enough to drive him almost insane.
It also made him wonder - in a way, he was still the immature teenager he'd been some six years ago, back when he was seventeen and obsessed with one Leena, but he felt far more mature…if less independent. So…why was it so hard to do something on his own? He'd done it before.
Shoving off the glass windows overlooking a gaudy display of wreaths, fancy gold decorations, and the traditional colorful lights, he shook his head doggedly, reminding himself that he was out, at 9: 6 PM, for a reason - to find suitable decorations for the annual Christmas party his family was renowned for. (So why the heck was he running it by himself? Some 'family' party, indeed!) Harry exhaled in a whoosh, his breath coalescing in a momentary cloud of puffing white moisture. The night was cold, a sure sign for a white Christmas.
There was a sudden little tingling in the back of his head, an idea that took root out of nowhere. Why not, a part of his mind offered, go to that little café around the corner? It shouldn't take long to get a cappuccino, he reasoned, and I can finish looking afterwards. The wind whipped up again, colder and brisker, tempting him further - not that it took much to convince him.
So, with great resolve, and after cinching his coat tighter about himself, the twenty-three year old billionaire set off down the sidewalk, moving steadily toward the shop.
Thank-you, thank-you, Pierre thought with a grin, stepping out from behind the absurd plastic candy cane decoration that more than hid him from view with its size. His hands glowed light red for a moment more, then it faded and, with a jaunty whistle, he tugged on his gloves, smoothing out the wrinkles in the creamy leather.
You are all so kind - please, hold your applause…
The amber liquid in the Styrofoam cup the woman had handed her was steaming and released a wonderful smell that tickled Leena's nostrils pleasantly. The only problem, of course, was how on Earth she was supposed to carry it, while lugging her bags back to her car - which, conveniently, was quite a few blocks away, in the public parking lot. She bit her lower lip; unconsciously sweeping her raggedly cut pink hair behind one soft ear and frowning a tiny bit. A sigh escaped her lips as she loosened her jaw, and she bent down, threading her arm through the insanely small handles of the bags, lifting them slowly with her forearm, elbow and wrist crooked so as to prevent them from sliding off. Once she had unfolded herself to her natural height, she flashed a triumphant smile at the woman behind the counter, carefully picking up her small coffee. Score! she thought happily.
And as she turned around, taking a step forward, she ran right into the chest of one very tall man, bouncing back and landing painfully on her rear end. She yelped, startled, her coffee thrown into the air and the liquid spilling all over her pants and the man's as well. The Styrofoam cup landed and rolled in a few circles, oblivious to the suddenly soaked legs of the two people.
"I am so sorry!" both said at the same time, and they blinked. "Are you okay?" they said, once more in unison. This time, instead of blinking, they each blushed, a bit flustered and a bit embarrassed.
"Here, let me help you," the man offered, quickly moving to his feet and holding his hand out for her, sandy brown hair in disarray. "I am so incredibly sorry," he apologized again, as Leena pulled herself up with his help, tilting her face down as she grasped the edges of her slacks and tugged the wet fabric away from her legs with a suction sort of sound coming from the motion. He glanced at the thick pile of napkins perched on the counter - the woman had left in a hurry to find a mop - and snatched up several, holding those out, now. "Here," he offered again, feeling a smidgen useless.
"Thanks," Leena smiled, lifting her face and dabbing at her pants with the napkins. "You better get some for yourself." His jaw dropped; he was staring at her like he'd seen a ghost. Oh, God, she thought distantly, I've got something on my face! Please don't let it be from my nose… He was oddly familiar, though, but he wasn't overwhelmingly so. The closest mental similarity she could find was of to Harry - who had never been so…well…aesthetically mature.
"Leena?" he gaped, even wider than she had when the accident had occurred.
The voice was suddenly far more familiar than the face.
"Harry?" She resembled a fish out of water.
Pierre waltzed in through the door, avoiding the quickly spreading pool of coffee and still whistling. "Well," he smiled beautifully at Luanne as he seated himself across from her, leaning forward and pecking her cheek briefly, "I think it's going rather well, don't you?"
"They're just standing there," she replied flatly. She looked at the two again, and then returned her gaze to Pierre. "Correction, they're standing there and staring at each other with their jaws unhinged."
"They could just be struck speechless by how pleasing the other looks?" he suggested. "Especially that Leena girl - she isn't unattractive."
Luanne gave him a withering look. "At least," she conceded, "stage one is completed."
*
End AN: Hmm. Set-up-y! And that's the first part. Yay. ;] I'll have the next three parts up by tomorrow, if anybody out there cares. Or is reading this.
Summaries for upcoming parts -
In Part II: Harry and Leena go out to eat and reminisce over the good ol' days (back when Harry worshipped Leena, and she showed her affection to anyone and everyone by abusing the crap out of them - most significant being, of course, Harry) and find out what the other's been up to. (Leena: much. Harry: not much.) [Some Harry-type angst near end.]
In Part III: Leena calls Harry and she comes over to his house (*cough*mansion*cough*) to help him decorate. Fun with emotions! [And lotsa WAFF - Warm And Fuzzy Feeling.]
In Part IV: The overly sentimental lovey-dovey ending. Bah, humbug.
*
"They're taking too much time," Luanne grouched, folding her slender brown arms over her chest, a dark scowl on her oval face. Impatiently brushing a strand of her silver hair out of her black-flecked brown eyes, she glowered at the clock hanging on the coffee shop's wall. "If *this* plan doesn't work…" She left the sentence unfinished, hanging threateningly over her and her somewhat lazy partner.
"Ah, relax, m' cherie," smiled Pierre in his ever-relaxed way, dark blue eyes twinkling enigmatically as always behind his lowered sunglasses. "They will be here, do not worry." His slightly French accent irritated her, for some reason, and she swallowed some of her rather nasty coffee in one defiant, burning gulp. A few seconds later, when she gagged on it and choked, sputtering shortly, he merely smiled wider and flipped through the pages of his just-purchased newspaper, whistling an annoyingly bright song - one she recognized through her sudden lack of oxygen as being "The Purple People Eater." With his infuriating calm personality, Pierre suggested lightly, "Perhaps you should swallow before you breathe. Might go down smoother, wei?" She pounded the table with the palm of her hand, gasping as soon as she managed to force down the hot drink. Shaking the newspaper, he gave her a blinding smile, answering himself with: "Wei."
"I," she gasped out, shoving her dangling silver hair away from her face, "detest…you!" Luanne inhaled deeply and straightened her spine, glaring dangerously at him.
"I am wondering," he continued, ignoring her dirty look, "did you send out the letters in order to set them up? It would be," he added, as she suddenly smacked her forehead and let out a despairing half-sob, "most helpful to our cause if you did."
Luanne merely made a pathetic sound and, turning to the side, began banging her head against the wall to the surprise and amusement of various people in the café.
Leena hurried through the crowd as quickly as she dared, clutching her bags tighter to herself and rolling her lips together as the cold wind pushed harder against her. A few snowflakes drifted down, here and there, and as much as she wanted to stay and wait for them to fall faster, thicker, she had no time. An anxious check of her watch reinforced her fears. Ten minutes left until the café closed, and she needed a warm drink from her day of shopping before going home - back to her small, silent home. Shifting the heavy bags piled up in her arms, neatly wrapped presents (thank God, she thought briefly, for present-wrapping services at the department stores) stacked up in a not-so-neat manner, she doubled her pace, loose slacks shifting with each movement, her tacky green-and-red Christmas vest flapping quickly. The sky was already inky black and the clouds sheening over it were dark grey, occasional tiny dots of white spurting out from the cloud cover and twirling like odd ballerinas to the Earth. Craning her neck slightly around one of her enormous bags, she checked the time again. Eight minutes to go.
"I'm not going to make it," she grumbled, making a sharp turn around the corner and muttering darkly to herself. Again, she quickened her pace, knowing that the cozy coffee shop was nearby. If only, she thought with a mental laugh at herself, she had remembered where it was exactly! Leena skirted around a happily chattering teenage couple - a wiry boy with delicate glasses and a husky girl with a cheerfully smiling round face - and wished them a better Christmas than she was going to have. God knew she needed some outer help in saving her dwindling toyshop.
She knew she should have taken Leon and Naomi up on their offer to let her stay with them and their kids over the holidays - it would be a heckuva lot less stressful for her, and it would have given her a chance to visit with her nephews. But still…she'd left the Zoids Competitions for a reason, and she didn't need to be bombarded constantly from all sides by a family that participated, albeit not frequently, in Zoids activities.
Funny, though, that she couldn't remember why she'd left. A quick flash of memory passed through her mind and she cursed the infallible timing of her remembrance.
Finally, as she was busy musing over her current predicament, Leena almost ran into a little handpainted sign with a jovial Santa Claus statue holding it, but managed to pull away from it just in time. Of course, as fate (or God) would have it, the Santa-sign was propped up outside of the coffee shop she had been looking for. Absently setting her bags to the ground, she dug in her pockets and pulled out a few dollar bills and two or three dimes fisted in her hand. Carefully, she fed the money into the slot cut in the hollow statue's forehead. The sound of the money finally clinking, near the bottom, made her frown - people were less generous this season than ever before, it seemed.
With a sigh, she picked her bags up, grunting momentarily at the sudden weight, then maneuvered her way into the tiny shop.
"Look who just walked in the door, cherie," Pierre said suddenly, and Luanne looked up from her self-discipline (if, in truth, it could be called that). "Leena - the girl."
Luanne blinked, once again swiping at the stubborn forelocks that kept falling in front of her eyes, obscuring her vision blurrily. "What are the odds?" she muttered, unrolling her sleeves from where she had pushed them up to her shoulders. As Pierre softly intoned something to himself that sounded rather like '1 in 3,400,908,000,' she stood up and shook her arms lightly, eyes glowing for a moment. "Right, then," she continued after a moment, her tone shifting from disgruntled to satisfied. "Voice says we need to get Harry here, then - sounds like a manipulative job." Her gaze flickered across to Pierre, who paused in his hasty scribbling of numbers, abbreviations, and theorems (all of which made no sense to anyone but him), and she grinned. "Guess who's going."
He smiled disarmingly. "Obviously not you," he all but laughed, instead settling for taking her smooth, dark hand and kissing one of the knuckles tenderly as he, too, stood up. "It would appear that I, Monsieur Pierre, master of--"
"Manipulation," Luanne added helpfully, gently prying her hand out of his grasp and seating herself back down, sipping gingerly at her cooled coffee.
He frowned at her, somewhat miffed, then his expression cleared slightly as he admitted, "Wei, wei." Straightening his tie and swinging his jacket up, and on, Pierre bowed his head slightly. "I am off."
"No kidding," she retorted, casting a momentary glance at the clock. "You better hurry though," warned Luanne, eyes worriedly settling on Leena's form as she leaned across the counter to ask the motherly woman behind it for a drink of some sort. "It looks like Leena is getting a coffee to go, and the store's closing in about five minutes. We haven't got much time to pull this off."
"Don't worry," he said dismissively, waving his hand a little bit and blinking both his eyes decisively and quickly. In a heartbeat, he had vanished in a swirl of nigh invisible red hearts that swiftly popped out of existence.
A few of the small number of people still in the shop lifted their heads and wondered, only for a few seconds, where the handsome companion to the cute black woman had gone.
"I wish he wouldn't do that," Luanne sighed quietly, kneading the bridge of her nose.
Five days until Christmas Eve, Harry thought darkly to himself, five flippin' days, and the servants take holiday before anything can get done! It was one of the worst situations he'd ever been in, and he was not enjoying it at all. He didn't know the simplest thing about decorating a house or organizing a party for aforementioned Christmas Eve, and he vowed to never volunteer his services during the Christmas season again - especially with both parents off on some cruise, Mary off with her latest boytoy (some horrid guy from Spain who only spoke one word of English - "yes"), and the servants taking holiday. It was enough to drive him almost insane.
It also made him wonder - in a way, he was still the immature teenager he'd been some six years ago, back when he was seventeen and obsessed with one Leena, but he felt far more mature…if less independent. So…why was it so hard to do something on his own? He'd done it before.
Shoving off the glass windows overlooking a gaudy display of wreaths, fancy gold decorations, and the traditional colorful lights, he shook his head doggedly, reminding himself that he was out, at 9: 6 PM, for a reason - to find suitable decorations for the annual Christmas party his family was renowned for. (So why the heck was he running it by himself? Some 'family' party, indeed!) Harry exhaled in a whoosh, his breath coalescing in a momentary cloud of puffing white moisture. The night was cold, a sure sign for a white Christmas.
There was a sudden little tingling in the back of his head, an idea that took root out of nowhere. Why not, a part of his mind offered, go to that little café around the corner? It shouldn't take long to get a cappuccino, he reasoned, and I can finish looking afterwards. The wind whipped up again, colder and brisker, tempting him further - not that it took much to convince him.
So, with great resolve, and after cinching his coat tighter about himself, the twenty-three year old billionaire set off down the sidewalk, moving steadily toward the shop.
Thank-you, thank-you, Pierre thought with a grin, stepping out from behind the absurd plastic candy cane decoration that more than hid him from view with its size. His hands glowed light red for a moment more, then it faded and, with a jaunty whistle, he tugged on his gloves, smoothing out the wrinkles in the creamy leather.
You are all so kind - please, hold your applause…
The amber liquid in the Styrofoam cup the woman had handed her was steaming and released a wonderful smell that tickled Leena's nostrils pleasantly. The only problem, of course, was how on Earth she was supposed to carry it, while lugging her bags back to her car - which, conveniently, was quite a few blocks away, in the public parking lot. She bit her lower lip; unconsciously sweeping her raggedly cut pink hair behind one soft ear and frowning a tiny bit. A sigh escaped her lips as she loosened her jaw, and she bent down, threading her arm through the insanely small handles of the bags, lifting them slowly with her forearm, elbow and wrist crooked so as to prevent them from sliding off. Once she had unfolded herself to her natural height, she flashed a triumphant smile at the woman behind the counter, carefully picking up her small coffee. Score! she thought happily.
And as she turned around, taking a step forward, she ran right into the chest of one very tall man, bouncing back and landing painfully on her rear end. She yelped, startled, her coffee thrown into the air and the liquid spilling all over her pants and the man's as well. The Styrofoam cup landed and rolled in a few circles, oblivious to the suddenly soaked legs of the two people.
"I am so sorry!" both said at the same time, and they blinked. "Are you okay?" they said, once more in unison. This time, instead of blinking, they each blushed, a bit flustered and a bit embarrassed.
"Here, let me help you," the man offered, quickly moving to his feet and holding his hand out for her, sandy brown hair in disarray. "I am so incredibly sorry," he apologized again, as Leena pulled herself up with his help, tilting her face down as she grasped the edges of her slacks and tugged the wet fabric away from her legs with a suction sort of sound coming from the motion. He glanced at the thick pile of napkins perched on the counter - the woman had left in a hurry to find a mop - and snatched up several, holding those out, now. "Here," he offered again, feeling a smidgen useless.
"Thanks," Leena smiled, lifting her face and dabbing at her pants with the napkins. "You better get some for yourself." His jaw dropped; he was staring at her like he'd seen a ghost. Oh, God, she thought distantly, I've got something on my face! Please don't let it be from my nose… He was oddly familiar, though, but he wasn't overwhelmingly so. The closest mental similarity she could find was of to Harry - who had never been so…well…aesthetically mature.
"Leena?" he gaped, even wider than she had when the accident had occurred.
The voice was suddenly far more familiar than the face.
"Harry?" She resembled a fish out of water.
Pierre waltzed in through the door, avoiding the quickly spreading pool of coffee and still whistling. "Well," he smiled beautifully at Luanne as he seated himself across from her, leaning forward and pecking her cheek briefly, "I think it's going rather well, don't you?"
"They're just standing there," she replied flatly. She looked at the two again, and then returned her gaze to Pierre. "Correction, they're standing there and staring at each other with their jaws unhinged."
"They could just be struck speechless by how pleasing the other looks?" he suggested. "Especially that Leena girl - she isn't unattractive."
Luanne gave him a withering look. "At least," she conceded, "stage one is completed."
*
End AN: Hmm. Set-up-y! And that's the first part. Yay. ;] I'll have the next three parts up by tomorrow, if anybody out there cares. Or is reading this.
Summaries for upcoming parts -
In Part II: Harry and Leena go out to eat and reminisce over the good ol' days (back when Harry worshipped Leena, and she showed her affection to anyone and everyone by abusing the crap out of them - most significant being, of course, Harry) and find out what the other's been up to. (Leena: much. Harry: not much.) [Some Harry-type angst near end.]
In Part III: Leena calls Harry and she comes over to his house (*cough*mansion*cough*) to help him decorate. Fun with emotions! [And lotsa WAFF - Warm And Fuzzy Feeling.]
In Part IV: The overly sentimental lovey-dovey ending. Bah, humbug.