Ahem: a collection of stories for my little sister's birthday. I shall put my music library on shuffle and pair her top 10 ships with the first 10 songs. Each ship gets a story related to the song with decreasing times: ship #1 gets 10 min., ship #2 gets 9 min., ship #3 gets 8 min., etc. So ship #10 is a hot mess 1 min. panic attack.

You don't HAVE to listen to the song first...but you might want to. And author's notes are bolded.

2. ChristinexErik (The Phantom of the Opera) – "Flea Market Montgomery" – 9 min. timer

You absolute Phantom illiterate, Erik is spelled with a K, not a C! Also...oh, no, I'd like to go back to the nice "This song is almost too relevant" thing from the last story! And I don't know if in the rules you expect me to listen to the song the entire time the story is being written, but I'm going to, 9 min. of constant living rooms, bedrooms, dinettes, oh, yeah!

"How did you get furniture down here?"

Her little voice piped up from the end of the long table. The table was dark and elaborately carved, and her chair was high-backed with a red velvet cushion.

He looked up at her from the other end of the table, a spoonful of soup halfway to his deformed lips.

She had been here for almost a week...well, a week and two days, because, yes, he was very much counting. She was certainly going to demand to be taken back to the surface imminently, and every passing day that she hadn't was a miracle.

She didn't talk very much, only nodded and ate and sang when he told her to.

She wanted to know about furniture?

"Magic," was all he said and finished his bite.

"Maybe you made it," she mused. "You do so many other things. Maybe you can make furniture too. Or…" She thought for a bit. He found it highly amusing. "I don't suppose you could have taken it down here by yourself?" She looked at him curiously.

He didn't like to have her gaze pointed at him, and he flinched slightly.

"Are you very strong?"

She had never thought about it before. It was hard to concentrate on anything that wasn't his face.

And then she...oh, no, she was coming towards him-

She put her little hands around his bicep, and he froze and almost groaned and almost pushed her away.

"Make a little muscle...you know-" And she made the motion herself which was highly amusing, and he might have laughed out loud if his heart hadn't been about to stop.

"It's hard to tell through your jacket. You have to make a muscle."

So he did. This was the most inane and most humiliating and most fantastic thing that had ever happened to him.

Oh, please, please, have her be impressed, years of pounding the keys, setting up traps, he could carry her, surely that made him slightly physically fit.

"Oh…!" She gave him an extra squeeze and then let him go and sat right next to him.

So, uh, the timer went off before I wrote the last sentence. She was impressed XP Also, piano playing and writing, oh, yeah, it'll give you killer biceps. Also also, I have zero idea what universe this takes place in, lol, I guess the book, some version where she stays for a few weeks, and he's hanging out without his mask. Also also also, because you asked which one was my favorite, this one is my favorite. It's such an absurd and adorable situation, but I can weirdly maybe see it happening, and I think his reaction would be hilarious. And I like the concept of, yeah, his face might be hideously deformed, but like, maybe she's into the rest of him, idk :P