Author's Note: This prompt came from Nobbie_Slicks and the story was edited by GravyRaven.

Vinh was glaring at her computer. She'd been doing that for a few hours now, actually. Around noon she put in her earbuds and buried herself in her first term paper. Isaac would no doubt make fun of her for stressing so much about it already - especially since it wasn't due for another four weeks - but she couldn't handle the last-minute way of doing things like he could.

Her room was still decorated for the lunar new year. Red paper lanterns hung from the ceiling and strings of bright yellow lights dangled from every corner of the room. She'd even put up a few styrofoam apricot trees on the walls. It was beautiful, and it felt like home. But in order to keep all of it from distracting her she turned her desk so that she was facing the wall, back against the door, so that the colors and decorations were out of sight.

With her desk situated the way it was and her earbuds playing music loud enough to drown out her roommates bickering in the background, it was no wonder that she didn't hear the person walk into her room. One minute she was tapping away at her keyboard like it was a race, the next she was practically jumping out of her own skin as she felt a large figure envelope her from behind.

She yelped out loud, even though it was only a moment later that she recognized the familiar way the man behind her hooked his head over her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her waist. She could even tell from the scratching sensation on the back of her neck that he was wearing his rough black hoodie with the words "GIDDY UP!" stenciled across the front.

"Isaac!" she shrieked, whipping around in her chair and slapping her open hand against his chest. "You nearly killed me!"

Her boyfriend was laughing so hard he couldn't even defend himself, his head thrown back and his lungs desperately pulling for air. She continued to beat her hands against his chest, shoulders, and head until he fell to the ground and curled up into the fetal position.

"I didn't mean to," he wheezed between fits of laughter. "I thought you heard me come in."

Vinh crossed her arms over her chest. "You thought I heard you with my earbuds in?" she asked disbelievingly.

"I didn't realize your earbuds were in!" Isaac defended, lifting an arm just enough to peek through and confirm that Vinh wasn't preparing another assault on him before starting to sit up.

Vinh contemplated giving him a kick for good measure, but instead chose to relent. She harrumphed as she sat down in her chair, watching Isaac as he scrambled to his feet. She tried to keep a grumpy facade up, but she couldn't deny that she tended to get sucked into whatever she was working on. Her earbuds tended to conceal themselves in her long jet black hair, and Isaac probably hadn't really intended to give her a heart attack.

Her heart was still thumping too hard in her chest for her to completely forgive him, but when he leaned over her to snatch up the baseball he left on her desk she reached up and gave him a peck on the cheek. She also pointedly ignored the smile that crossed his face like had somehow known she was going to do that.

She slipped one earbud back in and resumed work on her paper, trying to find a good stopping place where she'd be able to resume her pace later. Isaac flopped backward onto her bed and began doing his best Steve McQueen, tossing his baseball into the air over his face and catching it.

The easy silence, broken only by the quiet tapping on her keyboard and the gentle thud of the ball landing in Isaac's hand, stretched between them for quite a while as she worked. When she finally found a good stopping point - nearly twenty minutes later - she knew that Isaac would have worked up some sort of talking point. The boy did his best not to distract her when she was deep into "work mode," as he called it, but his overactive mind wasn't good at staying quiet for long.

Sure enough, the second she closed her laptop and spun in her chair Isaac sat up on the bed and asked, "What's with all the cats?"

Vinh raised an eyebrow at him, leaving her question unspoken.

Isaac blanched a little, offering a bashful grin before explaining. "I mean the stickers and everything," he said, gesturing vaguely to her walls. "I thought this was supposed to be the year of the rabbit. That's what Fred was teasing Kelly about when they left earlier, at least."

Vinh smiled. Isaac's family roots were Irish, and his family held tightly to the Roman Catholic traditions of their ancestors. He was doing his best to understand her different customs, but sometimes it bore some repeating.

She sat beside him on the bed. "In Chinese tradition, this is the year of the rabbit. In Vietnamese tradition though, it's the year of the cat."

Isaac mulled over her words for a moment. "So, what's the difference?" he finally asked.

"There are a few different theories on that," Vinh answered, "but the one that I like best is that the legend of how the twelve animals that make up the Zodiac calendar differs between China and Vietnam. In Chinese tradition while all of the animals were racing across the river the rat pushed the cat into the water, leaving it to finish last and be disqualified with the rabbit jumping across stones spanning the river and arriving in fourth. In our tradition, the cat was able to swim the rest of the distance on his own, finishing in fourth place. That's why the cat is seen as a symbol of good luck."

Isaac nodded along with her explanation, his eyes sparkling the way that they did whenever she explained anything to him. It was one of her favorite sights. His eyes eventually dropped, though, and he rubbed the back of his neck bashfully.

"I guess that this doesn't mean much to you, then," he said, embarrassed, as he pulled an object from his jacket pocket. When he opened his hand, he revealed a small origami rabbit crouched on his palm.

Vinh smiled, plucking the paper rabbit from him and examining it in the light of one of her lanterns. "Of course it does," she exclaimed, turning back to him. "You made it for me."

She bounded over to her desk and placed the rabbit on top of her laptop, then grabbed a sticker book from the top drawer. "This is for you," she said, peeling a sticker of a cartoon back from the paper and showing it to him. When he reached for it, Vinh reached past him and pressed the sticker onto his forehead instead.

Isaac gave her a look. "You think you're funny," he said, raising his eyebrows in mock annoyance and crinkling the skin on his forehead.

Vinh pushed his arms aside and sat on his lap, smoothing the sticker down over his forehead to keep it from falling off. "No," she corrected, "I know I'm funny. But I wasn't being funny with this - the cat is a symbol of good luck. It belongs with you, because you're my good luck charm."

Isaac rolled his eyes and called her a sap, but he was still smiling when he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.