March 17th, 1895 — a cottage outside of Dublin

This cottage had been her idea.

It was difficult for Sera to get time away from her husband on weekends, and she was still too nervous to have Dempsey over to her home. It had been too long since the last country weekend, too, and she could not rely on only having time with him when his family hosted parties. While they'd managed to snatch a few heated moments at events, nothing had been as satisfying as the night of his masquerade.

It was risky, but she wanted to see him.

So: the cottage, which she'd found listed in the back of a Witch Weekly. She reserved it under a fake name, having taken some of her allowance out of Edwin's bank account. She flooed to several different locations before heading to a witch-owned flower shop near the cottage, and headed over to use the key that had been mailed to the post office under her false name. She sat on the bed, trying to dispel her own nerves.

She'd brought wine with her, and drank half a glass while she waited for him. When the floo, which Sera had unlocked on checking in, lit up green, she straightened up — her shoulders only relaxed when she saw Dempsey's face.

"I hope the Irish are as serious about St. Patrick's Day as I've been led to believe," Sera joked. Her house dress was a deep, emerald green — she was in a festive mood. Or maybe she was feeling — and this was dangerous — romantic. She hadn't decided yet.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Don Juan didn't recognize the address, so he expected the chances of anyone else in his household recognizing it were low. It couldn't have been her house, because he would have known if she'd lived near Dublin, surely. He'd flooed straight there, with his hands tucked into his magically-expanded pockets and wrapped around the necks of two bottles of wine. He didn't know how much time they were likely to have, and he certainly couldn't send her back to her husband in any kind of a state, but if the opportunity allowed he didn't want to be in the position of running out of wine.

"Certain people would tell you I'm not serious about anything," he returned with a grin as he took stock of the situation: the cabin, her expression, the dress. He was liking the look of this. He also found it entirely adorable that she had been thinking of him when she'd chosen her outfit for the day. Of course she would have been, to some extent — they'd planned this, after all. But there was a distinction between wearing undergarments without stains because they were likely to be on display and having chosen the dress while thinking about his heritage and the holiday. "If we have time I can teach you some gaelige," he volunteered. The if was heavy with connotation; they might have plenty of other things to keep them busy. "You're a vision in green."

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MJ made this <3

The cottage was small, with a simple parlor, a dining room — presumably a bathroom that Sera had not investigated — and a set of stairs near the dining room that led up to a bedroom. She could have flushed at the thought of it, so it felt important to wait in the parlor, where she could pretend that everything they were doing was normal.

"Gailige," she mimicked, the corners of her mouth shifting upwards into a smile. "Thank you, darling," she said, because darling felt like the safest term of endearment possible. "It compliments my eyes, doesn't it?"

  

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"Your eyes and your complexion," he agreed. A darker color suited her, but it wasn't so dark to wash her out. The neckline framed her face and seemed to make her hair stand out more as well, even while it was still tightly pinned up. He'd only seen her hair down once, the first night; every other occasion they'd been too caution of having to get her buttoned back up and back to polite society quickly. He hoped she let it down again tonight. If one couldn't let hair down in a cabin then what was the point of leasing one?

A part of him couldn't help but preen at the word darling; she hadn't called him that before. There hadn't been much of a need to call each other anything in their previous encounters, and she hadn't needed to say it now. She decided to add it in, in the same way she'd been thinking about him when she chose the green dress. It made him jittery (— three parts butterflies, one part nerves, because he'd been down paths like this before. But he was older and wiser now, less romantic in many ways and more romantic in others — this wouldn't end the same way.)

"We could start with that. Darling," he said, drawing the syllables out as he divested himself of the wine bottles he'd brought. "Mavourneen; my darling. Literally it means," he met her eyes with a cheeky grin. There were a few words that might have fit here; he'd chosen this one for her, which had a more fitting metaphor than some of the others like the vein of my heart. "My little bit of joy."

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   Seraphina Bythesea

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MJ made this <3