Are there any Best Beta Awards out there? 'Cause if they are, I'd like to nominate pigeonattack. She's been an absolutely fantastic beta, picking out all those sneaky little cheese monsters amidst the fluff, and teaching me the meaning of "idiomatic" :) Thanks so much, pidge! What would I do without you...

Constructive criticism welcome! And greatly appreciated, considering this is my first attempt at fluff and all.

DISCLAIMER: Yes. Yes, I DO own HIVE. I persuaded Mark to give it to me. No guns were involved, oh no, perish the thought...(A bazooka, though, now that's a different matter.)

By the time Laura Brand was seven years old, she was had had it with all the teasing. And so she decided that her Prince Charming would have red hair, like her. Maybe even redder (although whether or not a shade like that actually existed in nature, she wasn't really sure). Disney didn't seem to think Prince Charmings should have red hair, but she was stubborn.

Because then, in addition to valiantly defending her from bullies and mean girls, he would be also be able to empathise with her plight, and, most importantly, he'd never call her "Ginger" or "Tomato Head".

Some five or six years later, when she made the mistake of sharing her expectations with her roommate, said roommate immediately burst into peals of undignified laughter..

Cut her some slack! She was seven! And Hermione Granger, fellow genius-slash-nerd, was quite happy with her redhead, thank-you-very-much, but when she tried to point that out, it just made Shelby laugh even harder.

Laura didn't dignify her with a response.

Laura Brand, age 7, decided that her Prince Charming would have red hair.

She outgrew that stage eventually, of course. Somewhere around the age of ten or eleven, she found herself smitten with the "surfer-boy" looks-blonde hair, tanned skin, lots of muscles, a smile right out of a toothpaste advert and eyes bluer than the summer sky...

Shelby just snorted and said that those boys were a dime a dozen back home, and they were all idiots and doing more for the "dumb-blond" stereotype than even Paris Hilton.

Whatever. You didn't exactly find surfer boys roaming around the lochs of Scotland that easily, did you? They had seemed very foreign and exciting and appealing and stop laughing, Shelby Trinity, because it's not funny.

Laura Brand, age 10, was smitten with the "surfer-boy" looks.

And then she was twelve, just before she came to HIVE, and she spent her time dreamily doodling the names of crushes at the back of her notebooks. They all seemed to have certain things in common, and eventually Laura realized that she had outgrown the surfer-boy stage and moved on to tall, dark and handsome.

This did not evoke laughter from Shelby, who immediately straightened up and asked, "Like Wing?"

Not like Wing! Just...tall, and strong, and stoic, and mysterious...okay fine, maybe a bit like Wing. But not Wing.

"Why not? Don't be an idiot, Brand. That guy is potentially the smexiest male to have ever walked on earth. And dayum, that body...Wing is hot. You'd be crazy if you didn't think so."

Rolling her eyes, Laura conceded that okay, sure, he was.

Immediately, Shelby lost the dreamy look in her eyes and studied Laura suspiciously for a moment. "Back off, Brand. He's mine."

Well. You just can't win, can you?

Laura Brand, age 12, realized that she had a thing for the tall, dark and handsome types.

Otto Malpense had white hair.

He was very pale; he looked like he had never seen the sun outside of diagrams.

He had no muscles to speak of.

When he grinned, you could see that his two front teeth were just the tiniest bit crooked.

His eyes were bright, piercingly blue, like little shards of crystal.

He was not particularly tall-maybe just an inch or so taller than Laura?

And should anyone use the words "Otto Malpense" and "tall, dark and handsome" in the same sentence...well, Shelby, for one, would start convulsing in fits of hysterical laughter.

He wasn't a redhead, he wasn't a surfer boy, and he wasn't tall or dark...although maybe he was handsome, Laura blushingly admitted...

At which Shelby just snorted at her, which resulted in Laura falling on her bed with a huff as she refused to look at Shelby (lest she see her blush) and resolutely stared at the wall instead.

No, he wasn't any of those things...Laura felt a smile tug at her lips as she snuggled deeper inside her blankets...

But his white hair stuck out at odd angles in the cutest way...

And he wasn't all that strong, but he was always so firm, like a rock...

And his smile always managed to send her heart rate in a tizzy...

And his eyes weren't the exact shade of blue she had wanted, but they were so deep...

And he wasn't really tall, but that was okay, because their similar heights allowed her to brush her hand against his every now and then...by accident, of course...

Yeah...she decided, drifting off to sleep...

He would do.

Happy Valentine's Day! Feel the FLUFF!
~Fly~