Hey peeps. whats up? uhm...since last upload, i flew cross country, went to marching band camp and "this one time at band camp..." i broke my ankle! yay! now i have a giant blue cast on my ankle. and my foot itches like a mother right now. crap. anyway, i start school tomorrow, so idn when the next upload is going to be. i will try to have it be soon, but ... anyway, onwards and upwards. The title of this chapter is from "i'm only happy when it rains" by garbage. btw, if in anywhere it says chapter 6...its cuz i cant count.

Disclaimer: only the cast is mine
Dedicated to: the people who put on alert. i love them. they're pretty chill.

Chapter 5: You can keep me company

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Four days later, Katie arrived at Oliver's apartment promptly at ten. Oliver glared at her for waking him up – again – as Fred and George hauled in the couch from Katie's apartment. They had chosen to move her couch in the Muggle way, considering both Oliver and Katie lived in Muggle neighborhoods. When the twins tried to take Oliver's couch out the door, he flung himself on it and they were forced to set it down again.

"Oliver, get off the couch." Katie's voice was filled with boredom as she looked over the list she had created.

"Ollie, mate, it's not going far. Just down to the dumpster three flights below!" Fred said.

"Yes, but then it leaves…forever!" Oliver protested.

"So, you see, this is just the transition period. You have time to get used to it before it leaves," George patted Oliver's head and Oliver glared.

"You're full of shit," he remarked in a surly tone.

"Ollie, what's wrong with Katie's couch?" George asked, attempting to get his ex-captain off the beloved couch. Oliver bit him and the red head recoiled with a swear. Oliver hissed and George returned the noise. "Down, kitties," Fred joked, sitting on the arm of the stolen Gryffindor couch.

"It doesn't go with the décor!" Oliver wailed, hugging a beaten cushion.

"What décor? Oliver, you walls are a yellow color that used to be white, your carpet is crusty and your shelves are bare of everything but dust. What style are you going for? Messy bachelor?" Katie perched on her own couch and raised an eyebrow.

"Yes!" Oliver grinned, "So you see, your girly couch would just stick out like a sore thumb!"

George laughed and said, "Ollie, if you're going for something masculine, you might want to rethink the wallpaper in your kitchen."

"That was here when I bought this place!"

The twins rolled their eyes as if he was lying and they knew it, and he threw a pillow at them.

"Whatever," Katie said, and then walked towards the fireplace. "I have to go down to Diagon Alley. I'll be back in around an hour. George and Fred, can you please get that thing formally known as a couch out of the living room?"

"You all used to love this couch at school!" Oliver yelled, although he was ignored by all.

"We'll do our best. If he bites any more though, we're going to have to tranquilize him," Fred assured her and ushered her into the floo network. Oliver bared his teeth. Turning to the captain, the slightly taller of the two twins crossed his arms. "Okay, Oliver, what's the real reason you don't want to get rid of this couch? Just last week you were talking about buying another one, and now you're biting George. You haven't done that in years!"

"Not since I tried to take his firewhiskey after the House Cup game," George remembered.

"Yes, well, he was drunk then. That's more of a reason for biting than a couch that you've wanted to get rid of for awhile. What gives?" Fred began to tidy up.

Despite the fact that he was one half of the notorious Weasley Twins, Fred was a closet neat freak. He was also madly in love with Angelina, and much to his twin's dismay, her messy tendencies had not worn off on him.

"There's going to be a girl in my house!" whined Oliver, pouting.

George barked out a laugh. "Oliver, it's not that bad."

"Yes it is! The last girl I lived with was my mom!"

"I don't think Katie's going to be filling that position anytime soon. For you or anyone else."

"Especially with the dates that she's had recently!"

George said, grinning.

Oliver's pout disappeared. "What do you mean?" he questioned worriedly.

"According to Angie," Fred's tone took on one similar to that of a teenage girl with a especially juicy bit of gossip. "She went out with Cameron Thompson and he was not only disgustingly flattering, but he 'had such a mood swing that even Kelsey wondered what was stuck up his bum.'" Fred's impersonation of Angelina was dead on and the boys laughed.

"And then Licia said she went out with a guy who was so boring she couldn't even remember his name." George said this while entering the kitchen and scrounging in the fridge for something other than condiments.

Oliver sighed and hung his head in his hands. "It's just…Katie and I have a history, as you guys know and … well, I'm worried. Like, we fight a ton, and so what happens when we want to kill each other? Maybe she should live with you George, you do have that extra room."

"Hell no, I love Kates, but neither of us wants to live together, and you're so full of it," George said returning with what could only be called a 'ketchup and mustard sandwich.'

"What?"

"You're worried that her being here is going to make your life enjoyable and that her table's going to get moved to the front again!" George took a bite of the condiments-on-bread sandwich.

This time, both Fred and Oliver questioned him.

"You've been hanging out with Alicia too long!" Fred added.

"No, it actually makes a ton of sense! Okay, so like, your heart is like this restaurant right?" George said excitedly and launched himself onto Katie's couch.

"And so, this place doesn't take reservations, but if you're really important and have visited there before, they save your table. Well, your heart's like that.

Like, some people are just those people that stop in for lunch and then you never see again, and others are those people that have a table always saved for them, whether or not they come back. Katie's like that with you. She has a table in your heart and you're not willing to get rid of it yet and neither are you willing to bring it to the front of the room for easy access, so instead you're hiding it in a corner until someone forcefully drags it out from the shadows. Katie doesn't know it's there, so she's not the one who's gonna do the dragging, and beside you, she's the only one who can." Oliver and Fred stared at him for a minute, but he failed to notice their shocked expressions. "By the way, Ollie, you're out of mustard."

That broke their silence and Oliver chuckled unwillingly. "Thanks, I'll get right on that. Now, about this table thing, where did you hear that?"

"From Alicia."

"See! You have been spending too much time with her!" Fred shouted triumphantly.

"There can never be too much time with her," George grinned cheekily.

"Ew, I don't want to hear about your sex life," Oliver gagged.

"It's better than yours!"

"How do you know?"

"Oliver, you're worried about Katie moving in here.

Not because you have a parade of girls through your bed, but because you're worried about getting too close to her and falling for her again. We realize she hurt you in school, but you can't just tell her that you'll let her move into your tiny apartment and then kick her out again. You got yourself into this, you're going to have to follow through."

"George, when did you become so mature?"

"When I realized that even though I can make my living off of pranks, I can't live my life off them. They were fun at Hogwarts, and so we continue to invent them for posterity, but they're not a way of life anymore. In case you haven't noticed, Fred and I have both grown up."

"Fred's always been slightly more grown up than you,"

Oliver remarked dryly.

"I resent that."

"Good, it was meant as an insult."

"Well than, in that case, I'm going to have to retaliate, I do hope you're forgive me," and with that, George unstuck his pieces of bread and threw one at Oliver. It landed on his face and then slowly slid down onto the couch. Fred's guffaws were stopped suddenly as the other piece of bread hit him in the shoulder.

"Oh, that's war!" he shouted and chucked the bread back at George. George ducked it and ran into the kitchen and furiously began to make more projectiles.

Oliver and Fred leapt off the couch and ran after him.

Fred attempted to grab the butter knife away from his brother while Oliver jammed the ketchup-y bred down George's t-shirt. George screamed like a little girl and squirmed away from the sticky slice that was attached to his back. Oliver laughed and then stopped when a glob of mayonnaise flew off the end of the butter knife and hit him in the eye. After that, the events are a little blurry in all three of the twenty-somethings' minds, but one thing is very clear:

When Katie returned with Alicia and Angelina an hour later, there was ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise all of the house.

Just as the girls entered the front door, loaded down with bags of groceries, an especially odd mixture of condiments flew and landed on Angelina's dark braids.

The boys stopped in horror as Angelina exhaled slowly and reached a hand up to wipe the goo off her head.

Katie and Alicia snickered at the scolding the boys were going to receive and went to put things away in the kitchen.

"Fred, what is this?" Angelina asked slowly.

Fred peered closer at the pinkish-orangish glob on Angelina's finger and then said, "It seems to be ketchup, mustard and mayo, Angie. Would you care for a sandwich?"

"No, Fred, I would not like a sandwich, I would like to know why there are condiments in my hair."

Angelina's voice was still slow and cold.

"Well, it's really simple actually," George began to explain but Angelina held up a hand.

"Never mind. Actually, I don't want to know. How is it that we leave you three here for an hour and the house is covered in—" she was cut off as a large ball of cake batter splattered on the front of her wizarding robes. She stared in horror and then looked up at Katie and Alicia standing in the doorway. Alicia quickly tried to hide the batter-covered spoon behind her back, but not before Angelina grabbed on of the original slices of mustard-covered bread and hurled it at her best friend. Alicia dodged it, but Katie was not so lucky. The bread landed on her and Katie screeched. "That's not fair!" she protested. "I didn't do anything!"

"You picked out the batter!" Angelina yelled, dodging behind Fred as another glob of batter came flying from Alicia.

"Well, you do have a point there," Katie remarked as she threw the bread at Oliver who was laughing silently at her. He stopped as the bread hit him, and he grinned impishly at her.

"No, Ollie, no!" She squealed when he leapt over the furniture and scooped her over his shoulder. "Oliver, put me down!" she demanded as he walked nonchalantly into the kitchen. He dug through the bags on the counter until he found a can of whipped cream.

"Dearest Katherine, I do hope you understand that I have to do this now. You've entered our war and—" he paused as a scream and a splat echoed from the living room, "and therefore, you are safe no more." With that last remark, he set Katie down and squirted the whipped cream all over her face. In retaliation, she wiped her face on his shirt and ran away laughing. She ran into the fray of the living room and soon all of the six ex-teammates were sprawled in the small living room and grinning.

Angelina buried her face in Fred's chest and he nuzzled her hair and than glanced at George and Alicia. Alicia was picking batter out of her hair, (the bowl had been overturned on her head at some point) and was wiping it on George who didn't seem to notice. George was leaning over and finger painting with condiments on Oliver's cheek as Oliver relaxed with his eyes closed. Katie was lying spread-eagled on the floor and was laughing happily.

Fred sighed. It's been a long time since we've done something like this, he though, too long. I miss this, he suddenly realized and gave Angie a small kiss on her dirty hair. She stuck her tongue out at him and used her sleeve to remove some whipped cream on his nose. "I love you," she whispered.

"Forever," he whispered back.

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Later, after the twins and their respective girlfriends had left, Katie and Oliver got to the business of cleaning up after the Food War. She grinned to herselve as she watched him performing cleaning spells on the walls. Katie herself was soaping and drying the couches and rug. Oliver's close cropped hair was stiff from all the food product in it and his jaw was clenched with thought. His t-shirt and jeans from earlier had been thrown in the bathtub to soak, along with Katie's clothes, and now both were dressed in gray sweatshirts and shorts. Katie noticed for the second time that week how sculpted his legs were and just as her mind ignored her wishes and began to venture into fantasyland, Oliver's voice snapped her back.

"Thanks," he murmured.

She paused. "Why?"

"Because I needed something to show me that this wasn't going to be scary and that I wasn't going to regret it. When you flung that piece of bread at me, I knew it was going to be okay." Katie snorted with laughter at the cheesy way he said it, but she still knew he was telling the truth. "I mean, you weren't pissed that we had completely destroyed the house, and you weren't even worried that you were going to get dirty. It showed me that you're still yourself, even if you are dating strange men all of a sudden." He laughed slightly and with a final spell to clean the last wall, he turned to help her with the couch.

"I am not dating strange men!" Katie protested.

"Cameron Thompson?"

Katie blushed with frustration, "Okay, so maybe he's a little strange."

Oliver grinned smugly and Katie's wand spat water at him. "I'm not doing any more cleaning after this, Katherine," he warned. She made a face at him, but began on the rug.

The two teammates continued to clean until the dingy apartment sparked as much as it could. They then moved the couches so that they faced each other with the table in the center. "My girly couch needs a manly one in her life," Katie explained. As the night got older, they settled in for a night of relaxation and finally sleep. Oliver in his room, and Katie stretched comfortably on her couch.

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read and review, as always. nitpick. loves and fizzies.

-h