A/N: Sequel to that last modern soulmates!AU because I wanted to write them getting to know each other and being all cute as A Balm to how I ended CTW. Nothing groundbreaking or impressive, I just wanted to write them again.


Her soulmate, Theo was discovering, was not able to shed his seemingly de facto air of formality at will. The fact that she discovered that via watching him as he sat in a cheap plastic McDonald's chair like it was a dining table at Buckingham Palace just added an extra bit to the charm, she thought. It made her smile. How could it not? They were just so…different. She was still reeling from the fact that she'd done her Risky Business routine right there in front of him - God knew if it was possible for soulmates to cut and run, he'd have been the first to ever do so then and there. Instead, he'd found it funny. Theo tried to take comfort in that, as well as in the fact that it could only get better from here. She wasn't particularly successful, and she was certain that her cheeks were glowing crimson beneath the harsh, pale lighting that this fine branch of McDonald's offered.

What did bring her comfort, though, was that his were much the same - flushed with a shade of pink that began at his neck as he toyed with the paper coffee cup that sat on the table between his hands. The two of them had been engaged in a little game, one that had been ongoing ever since they'd sat down and didn't have things like ordering and standing and walking to distract them. It was a bit of a staring contest in reverse.

She looked at him, eyes taking stock of his hands, the hollow of his neck where it peeked out from beneath his shirt, the smile that played on his lips so slight that she couldn't even be sure if he was aware of it or not, the dark strands of his hair that rebelled against the rest and stubbornly fell forward no matter how many times he pushed them back. Then she'd look away, and pretend she couldn't notice him in her peripherals doing the exact same in return.

And then, somewhere along the way, one of them messed up their timing - or maybe he just realised something needed to jolt them out of this - and they wound up looking right at each other. Which only spurred on a bout of simultaneous nervous snickering, something which seemed out of the ordinary for him, and sure as hell wasn't a habit for Theo herself.

"I…hardly know where to begin," he admitted.

Like they hadn't just been furiously necking outside a party not even an hour ago.

"This is all new to me, too," she pointed out with a little smile.

He breathed a laugh, shaking his head "Yes, I gather that."

Who spoke like that? So…so posh. Like something out of a book she'd been assigned to read when she was back at school. She never thought herself capable of finding such a thing charming. And yet.

Still, for all she knew he was sitting across the way marvelling at the fact that he could be attracted to a woman who sounded like an extra from Father Ted, to his ear. She was nothing if not self aware.

"I always thought I'd know exactly what to say or do when I got here," she continued, eager to continue speaking properly now they'd finally managed it.

"And your earlier performance was not part of that?"

"Stop," she groaned.

His smile widened into a grin - a painfully bloody handsome grin - which he barely hid with his coffee cup as he took a sip, giving her a warm look as he did so.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"No, you're not," she huffed "Just you wait, I'll have my revenge."

"I look forward to it."

Those words were filled with promise - of the future together that sprawled out before them now. That sort of thing would have terrified her from an almost-stranger before now. Although in those cases, she supposed there'd be good reason.

"What I was saying," she said before he could grow bashful "Is that being so late to…this, you'd think I'd have had time to…write out a script or something. Although I s'pose that would've been weird."

"Late?" he echoed with an amused smile "You hardly look a day over fifty."

"Har-har," she said - and then ruined her point by actually laughing "I'm twenty-five. But the last of my close friends found her…her person two? Three years ago? That feels like a long time when you're the only one flying solo. Although now that I've said it outloud, it just makes me sound like a right sad-case that I noticed it at all."

"That was not what I was thinking."

"What were you thinking?"

"I'm thirty, myself," he said.

He paused then, and if there was any worry in her mind that she was the only one nervous about saying the wrong thing, it would've been dispelled when he took a moment to make sure she didn't immediately wrinkle her nose and deem him absolutely ancient.

"But I didn't face such worries until relatively recently," he continued, shoulders relaxing when he saw no such distaste in her face "Most in the Navy are late finding this, unless they both happen to be there. It is rather an insular life."

"I know," she nodded.

"Of course you do, I forgot," he made a face.

"I thought for a while that maybe it was some sort of sign that I was meant to join up," she said.

"Is that…something you wish to do?"

"Not in the slightest."

She didn't know what she was more taken with - the fact that he waited until he heard her thoughts on the matter to show his dislike of such a prospect, or just how relieved he looked now that he had heard them. It was the same relief, she suspected, she felt upon knowing that chapter was closed for him, too.

"I've watched a lot of sons - daughter, too - go into the family business, I never felt the temptation. Except calling it the family business sort of makes it sound like the mafia, doesn't it?"

"I know what you mean," he said "It was my family business, too. My father, my father's father, his father. None were ever medically discharged, though."

"I'm sorry."

"I was sorrier over it six hours ago,"

"Well, that's either a glowing review or a hell of a lot of pressure."

"I didn't mean-"

"I'm teasing," she placated "I take it as a compliment. But I do want to ask…"

He watched patiently as she tried to figure out how she'd word her thoughts.

"How do you want to go about this?" she asked finally, gesturing vaguely between the two of them "Er, going forward, I mean? What's the…"

"The plan of action?" he asked drily.

"Ah, finally, terminology we're all comfortable with," she smiled "Yes. That."

"How do I wish to go about this?" he mulled the question over "Carefully. Wisely."

Theo smiled a little, and he took it the wrong way judging by how he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck as he continued.

"Of course, I realise now that those are hardly the words of romance novels."

"I wouldn't say that - they're the words I was thinking of."

"Oh," he blinked, and then he smiled "Well…good. I don't suppose I should be surprised that we view the matter similarly."

"All I'm saying is I think we should be able to look one another in the eye for longer than two seconds at a time before we go moving in together."

He chuckled lowly - a sound, she discovered, she liked very much - before murmuring "It may help."

Shifting in his seat, he hesitated for barely a moment before he let go of the coffee cup with one hand and extended it forth across the table, fingers unfurling until his palm was exposed. Smiling, Theo slid her hand forward and laid it atop his - butterflies stirring in her chest when his fingers curled around her hand and then flipped it over so hers was the one facing palm-up. From there, he sought her permission with a look before easing the sleeve of her dress up, revealing the words - his words - once more.

"A shade less revealing than what I had," he mused.

"They told me you had manners," she offered.

He snorted, his fingertips trailing down again, following the hill of the base of her thumb, and then dipping into the hollow of her palm. Did he notice the goosebumps rising across her arm as he did so, she wondered? If he did, he didn't let on, and she was left fighting the urge to purr under the ministrations like a housecat.

"Do you see a handsome Englishman in my future?" she teased as he continued to trace invisible lines across her palm.

"I should hope not - I would be jealous," he said.

"Oh, so you're the jealous sort, then?"

It was difficult to imagine such a thing on him, and ordinarily she wouldn't like it at all. But she had a feeling he'd make it work well.

"Ordinarily no, but in your case I may be compelled to make an excep-"

Just as they'd managed to leave shyness behind for some top tier long-awaited flirting, it was cut short when Theo's phone began to buzz in her lap and House of Pain's Jump Around began to ring out. James moved to pull his hand away - although he seemed as reluctant to do so as she was to let him - but she caught his hand, grasping for her phone with the other.

"Believe it or not," she said "I'm not even slightly embarrassed about the ringtone."

He chuckled and relaxed - squeezing her hand as he did so. His fingertips resumed their goosebump-inducing venture as she answered the call, and she resumed her internal debate over whether anybody in the world had ever had more striking eyes than he did. Or maybe it was just the look those eyes were giving her.

"Hello?"

"Why is word spreadin' like wildfire around this party that you took off with the Englishman?"

"Ha. Erm. Hi, dad."

"Where are you? And if you're at a hotel or something, please just make up a lie."

"I…am at the twenty-four hour McDonald's around the corner with the very nice lad who has some of my trademark stupidity written on his arm."

Her dad's lack of response on the other end of the line freed her up to hear James' bemused echo of 'lad?' to which she snickered.

"Are…are you joking with me right now?"

"Not even slightly."

"James? Norrington?"

"That's the one."

"Well…Christ. I s'pose I should meet him, eh?"

"I mean, you knew him before I did."

"You know what I mean. And tell him he has my condolences," there was a smirk in her father's voice - but also warmth.

"Har-har. I'll see you later."

Hanging up, she stifled a smile and their entwined hands and then sighed "My dad wants a re-introduction. Given the, erm, context."

"Does that worry you?"

"Oh, I don't think he's your type."

"You know what I mean," he said "Am I due a lecture while he polishes a shotgun?"

"He'd never be that subtle. But no - genuinely, you're sound, and he knows I can handle my own shit. He's the one who taught me how to, after all."

"I imagine he did," he mused.

"Does that worry you?" she echoed his own words back to him.

"On the contrary, it would be a sight to behold."

"It would be?"

"And I pray to never invoke it against myself."

"It can't be worse than the Risky Business routine, can it?" she snorted.

James smirked, and then he seemed to have little difficulty at all in looking right at her.

"I fail to imagine what can be better than that."

Theo rolled her eyes, and pretended that she wasn't blushing crimson.


A/N: I don't have any appropriate research tidbits to share with you here, only the story behind Theodora's ringtone. Once, when I was a student, I was on a train across the UK to visit home for the weekend, and throughout the entirety of this ~4 hr train ride, a guy a few seats back had Jump Around by House of Pain as his ringtone. He refused to put it on silent/vibrate, or at anything below full volume, and it rang at least once every ten minutes - just the first ten seconds of that song, over and over. Every time it went off it got funnier to me, and more annoying to everybody else in the carriage...which only made it funnier to me. If it was literally any other song, it wouldn't have been funny, but something about that specific intro combined with everybody being like :( was just outstanding. I didn't even put headphones in because I didn't want to miss the chaos and sheer British tension that it was instilling in my fellow passengers every time it went off again.

So this chapter is in his honour, I guess. It was like six years ago and it still makes me laugh every time I hear it. Iconic. I hope he's thriving out there. Jack energy.