title: the city lights are in your eyes
triangle: teddy/victoire
author: Listen (fabricated fantasies)
for: Tatoe (heading for a huge collision)
They are a living fairytale, all passionate first kisses and childhood friendships that end in love; but there's a world beyond the legend, when the leading lady and the dashing prince begin to live their lives, and this is their story.
"I can't believe you're leaving," she says, the dark sky almost empty of stars, only blackness where the moon should be. The birds in the trees are completely silent, as if they know two hearts are breaking tonight and they don't want to witness it.
"There's no use changing my mind now," Teddy replies with a faltering grin, though it firms up the longer he looks at her, and she knows he's trying to be strong for her, now as much as always. He checks his watch, a battered heirloom that once belonged to his father, and when he looks at her again she knows it's time to let him go.
"I don't think Andromeda would be happy to hear that you've bailed on this, after all the work she put in getting an interview for you," she replies with a brief laugh, and he joins her, their smiles not quite reaching either pair of eyes. "I'll miss you," she adds, her voice wavering on the last word.
"Hey, don't get soppy on me, Vicky – you promised you wouldn't cry," he reminds her, but he hugs her anyway, his lips lingering near her ear. She hasn't missed the glitter in his eyes that informs her that he isn't as dry-eyed as he's telling her to be, but she doesn't mention it.
"I'm not crying yet, am I? As if I would waste my precious tears on you, Teddy dear," she teases, her voice soft as she mutters into the delicate shell of his ear, his brunette hair mingling with the blonde of hers. She feels him shift in her arms as he checks his dilapidated watch over her shoulder, and when he sighs she can tell that their time is almost up. Her arms wind even more tightly around his waist as if she can physically keep him from leaving her, because no matter how much she has encouraged him to chase his dreams, she really doesn't want him to go and live on a dragon reserve without her for two years.
She stretches up as he leans down slightly and kisses her, a thousand unsaid words passing between them. She tells herself that it's just two years, only seven hundred and thirty days, and it's not that long, really. She doesn't believe her own lies.
"I'll miss you too," he says, untangling himself from her with a look of what she suspects is reluctance. She hopes it is, as selfish as that sounds; he hopes he'll miss her just as much as she'll miss him, no matter how cheerful she's acted about his departure. That's how they've always dealt with things over their nineteen years of friendship, pasting smiles and laughter over the cracks in their lives, and until now she's never really wished that they acted otherwise. Now, two minutes before he leaves her for a country she has never set foot in, she wishes he was the kind of guy who would fall to his knees and proclaim his everlasting love for her – or better yet, not leave her at all.
It's selfish, she knows it is, and when it comes down to it she would choose Teddy over any other boy, hopelessly romantic or not, because he's her best friend and she loves him, and he turned out to be a surprisingly good kisser once she got past his inability to keep his morphing in control when they get a little too hot and heavy.
He presses a last kiss to her lips and takes a step back, and she can't bring herself to speak as she watches him walk into the darkness and pick up the Portkey that will take him to the other side of the world from her.
Teddy,
My dad thinks you're an idiot, you know that? Mum, of course, loves the fact that you went to all the trouble of finding dozens of charmed purple roses and getting them sent to me at work several times a day.
It was sweet, I'll give you that. I guess you're a little bit romantic after all.
Maisie's engaged, did you hear? She owled me yesterday; apparently Callum finally proposed, after a year and a half of carrying the ring around in his pocket and dithering about 'the perfect moment'. Honestly, it's not that hard. It's four words – will you marry me? And no, Teddy, that isn't a proposal.
At least you'll have to come back for the wedding, right? I miss you, and you won't pass up the opportunity to see me, will you? Consider your answer carefully.
How are all the dragons? And Uncle Charlie? I hope your leg burns have healed up again. That's the third time since you transferred over there. After a year of handling dragons, any normal person would have figured out how to avoid getting burnt in the same place every time.
I can't believe it's been eight months since I last saw you.
Love,
Victoire
"And a hot chocolate with sprinkles for you, Adam," she grins, placing the cup onto the table in front of her, twisting her wrist just in time to stop some of the liquid from pouring out. The seven year old reaches out for the mug with sticky fingers, and she messes his hair up fondly as she walks back to the counter, purposely avoiding the rambunctious couple in the corner gesturing for her to serve them. She loves her job, really – Muggles are far more interesting and diverse than wizards, she's found - but she knows from experience that people like those two will dither for hours over how much milk they want in their coffee, and she's far too tired to deal with that right now.
She becomes aware of a figure leaning over her and fixes a pleasant expression on her face, though inwardly she's despairing at the apricot jam stains dotting her shirt. "Hi, how may I- Teddy?" she gasps in surprise as she looks up and recognises the person before her, breaking into a smile that makes her cheeks hurt.
"Hey, stranger. Long time no see," Teddy replies with a matching smile, leaning towards her as she practically straddles the counter in her quest to touch him, hug him, kiss any skin she can reach, stretching her arms out to entwine them with his. "Someone's happy to see me," he teases, and she simply widens her grin, ignoring the scandalised looks directed at them from the couple in the corner. The rest of the coffeehouse's patrons look delighted for her, having heard so much about their favourite waitress' missing boyfriend.
"I love you," she says, looking up into his face and feeling the words slip out involuntarily. They don't often say that they love each other; they don't need to, they just know it, and the words hold more weight each and every time they say it.
"Step back," he responds, and she immediately lets go of his hands and tumbles off the counter without asking for a reason. He's too impulsive to spend a moment explaining whatever it is to her, and she's in less danger if she simply does as he says. She'll find out what it is soon enough, anyway. She watches with a lingering grin as he sits on the counter and swings his legs around so he faces her, before jumping down and sweeping her into a hug.
"I love you too," he mumbles into her hair, and she laughs as his hands tighten around her waist and pick her up off the ground. She has forgotten that they're in public, and that there's a half-full room of customers watching their reunion, but it really doesn't matter to her. She's seeing Teddy again for the first time in far too long, and the old man watching them from his seat can clap if he wants to.
"There is a door, you know," she tells him, rolling her eyes at his surprise. "How did you think we get in and out of the shop, then?"
"But you have to admit, my way was cooler," he says, and she kisses him, because he's really too adorable sometimes and anyway, it's the best way to shut him up.
A knock sounds from her front door and Victoire dashes down the stairs, taking them two at a time and almost tripping over the last step as her left shoe slides off her foot. Hopping the rest of the way to the door, she pushes her shoe back on and unlocks the door to her apartment, turning the doorhandle seconds later.
"I'm as bored as something incredibly bored. Save me!" Teddy exclaims dramatically the moment she opens the door, prompting a laugh from her that makes her wonder how she could be so lucky, to fall in love with someone who makes life feel so easy.
"The damsel in distress, are we?" she teases, pulling a hair tie off the nearest door handle and yanking it through her messy blonde curls to pull it into a loose ponytail.
"Does that make you Prince Charming?" he asks in reply, casually leaning against the doorframe and concentrating deeply to force the colour of his hair to match hers.
"Well, now you look like my brother, and I'd rather not kiss my brother, since that's pretty gross. And illegal," she adds mock-thoughtfully, her eyes sparkling with humour as she pretends not to notice the hasty change of his hair colour to an inky black that looks nothing like her strawberry-blonde locks.
"Do I get a kiss now?" he asks hopefully, and she laughs as she obliges him with a light kiss on his temple, exactly where a lone freckle decorates his skin. She skips out the door, her hair swinging behind her as she pulls a key from her pocket and locks the door with a click.
"Come with me," she tells him with a smile, holding out her hand expectantly as an idea forms in her mind of where she'll take him. Their time together was always simple; the one and only time they had gone to a fancy dinner together they had hated it, leaving before the appetizers arrived and leaving behind a post-it note with a smiley face.
"Are you taking me to your castle, Princess Charming?" he asks, but he takes her hand anyway and they exit the room and step onto the dusty street, the two wizards mingling with the crowd of Muggles rushing around them. She tugs him towards an empty seat, pushing past people determinedly and collapsing onto the seat seconds before another couple. She giggles at Teddy's self-satisfied expression at having beaten the other pair; he's always been competitive and she's always loved that about him.
She twines their hands together and scans the crowd, searching for the perfect person to demonstrate the game to, planning on showing her boyfriend something that entertained her when she was a little girl with the concentration abilities of Teddy.
"Okay, look over there," she says, discreetly nodding her head in the direction of a woman in purple velvet who reminds her of Grandma Molly. "She was once a Belgian princess, but she ran away to join the circus when she was eighteen," she tells him with a smile, though inside she's hurting because they still don't know where Lily is, apart from the few letters delivered to Victoire's front door twice a month. Teddy squeezes her hand in sympathy and matches her smile, and she finds herself gravitating towards him to lean her head on his shoulder. "And that guy-"
"Was the ringmaster of the circus for thirteen years until he married his star trapeze artist," he finishes, catching the eye of the heavily-moustached brunette walking past their bench. She laughs appreciatively, continuing the story of the Belgian trapeze artist and her husband the ringmaster, and they spend the rest of summer on their bench, making up dreams and past lives for the people who walk by.
"You've got some flour on your nose," he tells her, reaching out and touching a fingertip to the bridge of her nose, leaving a mark there. She grins wickedly and reaches behind her into the mixing bowl, delicately dipping her thumb into the concoction and quickly drawing a line down his cheek with it.
"We're playing dirty, are we?" he asks, raising an eyebrow in a manner so reminiscent of her sister that she has to laugh, prompting him to dot her face with flour again.
"Oh, this is war," she returns playfully, flicking yet more flour in his direction and bursting into laughter at the look of astonishment on his face as dust settles in his hair. He tackles her then, pulling her to the floor of the kitchen and running flour covered hands through her hair, though she's too busy covering every inch of his shirt with the raw egg that was dropped on the floor before the chaos started. She has only a moment to reflect ruefully back on that morning, when she had proposed they make cupcakes to celebrate Lily's recent return, before Teddy pins her shoulders to the ground and she finds herself looking up into his face.
"You have sugar in your hair," she mumbles, a laugh disrupting her voice, and she's unsurprised when he kisses her, his scarred hands tangled in her strawberry-blonde curls as she fumbles with the bottom of his shirt, her fingers slipping in the butter-coloured mixture coating the two of them.
"Teddy, the cupcakes," she starts, regretfully pushing him away, and he draws away from her with a low groan that just makes her want to start kissing him again. She pulls herself onto her knees and links their hands together with an apologetic expression, kissing him briefly on the lips before starting to stand up. Teddy doesn't move, remaining kneeling on the floor with his hand captured in hers, a silver ring clasped between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand.
"I love you, Victoire," he starts, and shakes his head when she tries to speak. "Please, let me finish. I love you. Sometimes I think I've loved you since you shoved picked gum off the sidewalk and stuck it in my hair," he laughs and she grins, a wide grin that makes the world light up and revolve around her, because much like Teddy and his Metamorphmagusing, she finds it hard to control the Veela side of her when she's emotional. "We've been through a lot, and I- I love you. Victoire, will you marry me?"
Her heart starts dancing in her chest, the blood pumping through her veins keeping time as she forgets how to breathe, because this is the moment she questioned would happen this way (she loves him, but no one can deny he's the flightiest person they've ever met), and her thoughts dart to the silver band in her pocket. She laughs, a rough sound at odds with her delicate appearance and the current situation, but immediately cuts herself short as Teddy's face falls and he lets go of her hand.
"Teddy," she drops to the ground again and kneels in the mess that covers the cream tiles, leaning forward and taking his hand again so they are almost mirror images of each other. "I love you. As I once told Roxanne when I was drunk, there's something about you that makes me all sparkly inside. Don't laugh," she warns as his stoic expression threatens to crack into a smile. "You know what I mean – you make me want to be a better person, and that's why," she slips her free hand into her pocket and extracts a thick silver band, "I wanted to ask you to marry me today. Obviously, you got there first. But will you marry me anyway?" she asks, and his smile is like the sun and hers is twice as bright, their eyes twin pairs of supernovas in their happiness.
"Only if you agree to marry me," he teases, and slips the silver and turquoise ring on her finger, waiting for a moment while she does the same for him with the silver band. This time she doesn't pull away when he presses their lips back together, because they're engaged now and she loves him, and there's really not a lot they can salvage from the ruined cupcake mix anyway.
Their story plays out as it should, a perfect fairytale that's tainted by reality, because she is Victoire and he is Teddy, and they live for the little moments.
a/n: please don't favorite/alert without reviewing, thanks.