December 24th, 1887 — Highstreet sidewalk

Alfred was currently engaged in trying to brainstorm a way to not go to Evander's for Christmas tomorrow. It wasn't that he didn't want to be with anyone for the holidays, or anything dour like that - he just figured that he probably wasn't Evander and Laura's first choice of company on Christmas. They'd felt obliged to invite him, he figured, but would prefer he found a reason not to intrude on their holiday. Trouble was, he wasn't very good at coming up with excuses. He could feign illness, he supposed, but not very convincingly; someone was bound to see him out and about and word might get back to Evander and his wife. He might use the Fudge's holiday celebrations at the Sandition, which he'd been invited to, as an excuse to stay home, or even the Christmas dinner the Pinces were having that Paul had extended the invitation for, but all of that would involve starting a conversation with Evander where the main point of it was 'I'd rather spend time with people who aren't even my family on Christmas than you,' which was... just not ideal.

He'd resigned himself to going, but trying to stay as briefly as possible. Picturing how the actual day might go down lead him to the realization that he had entirely forgotten to buy a Christmas gift for anyone except Paul (and that had been more of a whim, really). He was trying not to add any extra awkwardness to the meeting tomorrow, which meant he was on the hook for some sort of gift. Something bland and unexciting like Evander.

Getting a gift for Evander hadn't actually been difficult, but Laura was problematic. He didn't really know her, and Alfred had never really had to give gifts to women that he didn't know well before. He was quite at a loss as he wandered through Hogsmeade, the package from the bookshop under one arm, until he saw a familiar face.

"Miss Zelda!" he greeted with a smile. "Happy Christmas. Er, Christmas Eve," he glanced down at the book a bit sheepishly, as though he was embarrassed to have been caught doing such last-minute shopping. The sheepishness was only momentary, however, as he realized that Miss Fisk might, in fact, be in a position to help him out with his present dilemma. "You have a lot of siblings, didn't you say? What does one get a sister-in-law for Christmas?"

@"Zelda Fisk"

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda was not trying to find a present for Brannon at the last moment. She wasn't. She had actually been trying to find a present for Brannon for weeks, and today had finally given up on finding something for her father and ended up getting him something that her mother would have loved. She had Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet tucked under her arm from Tomes & Scrolls, and a rather sore feeling in her chest.

Miss Zelda! caught her attention, and she whirled around with a preemptive grin on her face. "Happy Christmas Eve, Mr. Darrow," Zelda said cheerfully to the adventurer, coming to a stop in her progress towards home.  

"I have no sisters-in-law," Zelda said, "But I do have a lot of sisters. I get Ros a plant, usually - Katch gets something poetic or eccentric, this year it's a book on matchmaking - and Xena..." Her smile faltered. Xena was always difficult to shop for, and moreso this year, when the sisters had both inadvertently bonded and seemingly created a giant road-block in their ability to converse. She continued: "Xena's not the easiest, but I got her a bolt of fabric in a pattern I think she'll like."

  

Zelda Fisk was being just as helpful as he'd anticipated, though Alfred wasn't really sure that any of her suggestions would have been good ideas for a gift exchange between him and Laura. Evander and his wife lived in London, and Alfred had never seen any sort of a garden at their house, so he wasn't sure what Laura might do with a plant. Theoretically it could just go somewhere around the house, but that seemed a bit like the proverbial white elephant. If she didn't like it but then felt obligated to care for it just to avoid hurting his feelings... well, it would make dinner at the Evander Darrow house even more awkward, and the three of them certainly didn't need any help in that department.

He blanched slightly at the idea of buying someone a book on matchmaking. Paul had started his own matchmaking efforts on Alfred's behalf, and that was more than enough for him; he hardly wanted to give Laura any ideas on the subject, or worse, seem as though he was even encouraging those sorts of ideas. Who even wrote books on matchmaking, anyway?

Maybe she was talking about actual matches, and her sister just had some strange arts-and-crafts sorts of hobbies?

The last suggestion was simply baffling. Having never really been involved in the lives of young debutantes, Alfred had no idea why any women would want a bolt of fabric. Was her sister a seamstress? Even if she was, it hardly seemed like she might then want a Christmas present that was just more ways to work. Maybe there was some phenomenon he'd never observed before where women got sentimental over uncut cloth? If that was the case, he was prepared to blame his ignorance on his absence and not bring it up to Miss Zelda. She'd probably already gathered that he was a bit of a mess when it came to society and keeping up with it, but there was no need to bring it up in conversation.

"Well, er," he said with a frown. "The problem is I don't know her at all. So I don't know how to pick out something she'd like. I just got back from abroad and she's married to my brother now and we've actually only just met," he explained with a shrug. After a beat, a realization hit him, and he added a bit distantly, "I don't even know how long they've been married." Had they mentioned it and he'd forgotten, or had it not come up? It definitely seemed like the sort of thing he ought to know.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Mr. Darrow's life seemed like a bit of - well, a bit of a mess, but at least he was definitely a real person. He was in the papers, and her professor's nephew, and his personal life was detailed and interesting. He was real, unlike other certain gentlemen that she knew, and so Zelda was charmed by this entire situation. Charmed, and a little amused. Her mouth quirked up at the corners.

"Well," Zelda said, "That is a bit of a capital-S Situation, I'll give you that one." She realized that she did not know anything about Professor Darrow's other nephew. It had to be something to be related to this Mr. Darrow, with his fake-death and his real adventure and everything.

"Do you know anything your brother likes?" she suggested, "She might like the same things. As long as they like each other, I guess."

  

Alfred, being a sailor and used to hearing people talk the way sailors did, interpreted the phrase a capital-S Situation as a polite euphemism for saying a shit situation, which surprised him. Polite euphemism or no, it didn't seem like the sort of thing that would come out of the mouth of someone who was, at least as far as Alfred knew, mostly proper. He glanced at her curiously, his head tilting just a slight amount as he wondered whether he'd interpreted that correctly.

His mild surprise didn't leave him much of an opportunity to watch where he was going, unfortunately. Which shouldn't have been a problem, since they were walking along at such a leisurely pace it really might better have been described as meandering. Despite that, however, it seemed he was either forgetting how to walk, or was about to trip over his own feet, because just at the moment when he looked over at her Alfred stumbled. He put a hand out instinctively towards the nearest shop wall to keep himself from falling flat on his face, and dropped the book he'd bought Evander onto the nearby sidewalk. How embarrassing!

Without even bothering to see what he'd tripped on (because, with his luck and his general social awkwardness, it really might have just been his own feet), he reached down to retrieve the book. He was able to pick it up, but his feet weren't cooperating the way he wanted them to, which was his first sign that something was certainly Amiss.

"Uhm, I don't—" Alfred began, still vaguely under the impression that whatever was going on with his feet was his fault and inclined not to bring it up if he could avoid doing so. He was too distracted by the situation to talk about Evander, though, so the attempt was rather short lived. "We're not really—are your feet stuck, too?"

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda watched him stumble and reached out to grasp at his elbow, just to find herself lodged in place on the sidewalk. Her eyes opened wide.

"Yes," she said, "I think it's - oh no."

This was not the first time that Zelda had encountered enchanted mistletoe. Last time, she had been a Hogwarts student, and so it took her a moment to realize what had trapped them. She looked up. Her face reddened. She was struck with a sudden urge to swear, but resisted.

"Oh no," she said instead. This was a Problem. Not least of which because she could not think of anyone tangible to blame, and she was going to need someone to blame, and oh Merlin what if she really did have to kiss Mr. Darrow?

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"What is it?" Alfred asked, not (at first) following her train of thought and rather surprised by what a strong reaction she was having to what he considered, at least for the moment, a mild inconvenience. His feet might have been stuck, but it wasn't as though they were sinking into the cobblestones, or anything. This would be a temporary problem — it could not be otherwise, in the middle of a bustling shopping area — and for someone who had seen men die in front of him, it rated rather low on the whole myriad of things that could happen. She seemed rather distraught, though, which made Alfred glance around to see what had elicited such a response, and it took only a moment before his eyes landed on the mistletoe.

Having not had any previous experience with this sort of thing, he was still rather perplexed. Mistletoe had no magical properties in and of itself, at least as far as he was aware, and while its presence here was a bit obnoxious (in an oh yes, your little holiday decoration is quite adorable, now go the fuck away sort of way), it did not strike him as necessarily problematic. "You don't think that has something to do with it?"

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"I one hundred percent think that has something to do with it," Zelda said, voice going up half an octave with the stress of the situation. Clearly, Mr. Darrow didn't understand -- which made sense. This was not an average situation and since he had not attended Hogwarts when he had - he had actually been missing in the wilderness for several of those years - it was unlikely that Mr. Darrow had encountered enchanted mistletoe before. Which meant - and her heart dropped - that she was going to have to explain it to him if she wanted to get home in time for dinner.

(If she was late getting back because of this, probably her father would ask her about it, and probably Zelda would be so flustered that she'd have to admit it.)

Zelda clutched her present for Xena to her chest. "It's a classic Hogwarts prank," she said, "The mistletoe locks you in place until the people trapped under it - um. Do the mistletoe thing."

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AMAZING set by MJ

If this was, as she said, a "classic" Hogwarts prank, it was certainly news to him. This had never been a thing he encountered in his own Hogwarts career, and wondered vaguely when it had started. Perhaps all that rubbish about Hogwarts Hussies in the papers all those years ago hadn't been based solely on idle speculation.

A history lesson on this particular prank, however, was not going to get them out from underneath it. "Oh," Alfred said simply, glancing up at the mistletoe again as if to check and see whether they both hadn't somehow misinterpreted what it was. It remained, of course, quite staunchly mistletoe.

"Er," he said rather awkwardly, returning his attention to Miss Zelda as his cheeks flushed scarlet. "Sorry." Not, of course, that this was his fault, but he did think it was rather more unfortunate for her than for him — she was younger and (at least in theory) more innocent than he was, which made sharing a kiss a much bigger ordeal by default. She was also the one who was mostly likely to have someone whisper about this tomorrow, if there were anyone to see when it happened — because she was an impressionable young lady, and he was a sailor, and already known for being strange. Passersby might almost expect something like this from him (though he hoped not), but it could not help but show rather negatively on her, he was afraid. Oh, dear.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

He was apologizing and Zelda was pressing her lips into a thin awkward line. She looked, again, at the mistletoe above them. It was too far up for her to reach to grab it, and she did not think that that would help, anyways. If this was the same as it had been when she was a student - and it probably was - then there really was nothing to be done. Except, of course, to kiss him.

She had never kissed anyone on purpose. She had wanted very badly to kiss Charlie Williams before the truth had come out, but had not quite managed to gather the nerve. She had not even gathered the nerve to do anything more than hold onto his wrist, even after he had saved her life. Mr. Darrow, meanwhile, was a sailor. She bet that he had kissed plenty of people, and probably done more with several, too. So on top of everything else - everything else - he was probably going to think that she was bad at this.

"Well," Zelda said, "I mean. It's not your fault. I'm sorry too."

She realized, glancing around them, that they were being watched. Her face turned red again. Just when she had thought that things couldn't get any worse -- they managed to.

---

  

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AMAZING set by MJ

"Oh, no, you don't—" have to be sorry, was how he was going to finish the sentence, but he realized midway through that this was a redundant sentiment, and if they continued on this way they'd just both keep apologizing in circles for a situation for which neither of them were at fault. Which was just silly, and it would waste a good deal of time when it appeared that they had already loitered too long to avoid becoming conspicuous. Alfred's cheeks grew even redder. Did those people looking at them know they were stuck under the mistletoe? It would almost be worse, he thought, if they thought the two of them were just dawdling around together for the sake of it, because then the inevitable kiss would seem... well, intentional. Not that it wasn't going to be intentional, he supposed — given the choice between kissing Miss Zelda Fisk and just staying there forever, he'd clearly choose the former, but... well, this was going to be rather awkward, for both of them.

Had she ever been kissed before? Alfred didn't know and was certainly not going to ask — he didn't know her hardly well enough to go diving into her personal business that way! — but was suddenly rather self-conscious. If this was going to be her first kiss, that was a lot of pressure on him, he felt. For however long it took for her to be kissed by someone else she might be carrying around this memory and thinking that this experience was what all kissing was like, and — well, that was just a lot, and he felt preemptively guilty for potentially disappointing her.

"Do you — uhm, do you want me to do it — properly?" he asked, rather uncertainly.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda had a problem, sometimes, where her mouth operated faster than her brain could keep up. This was certainly one of those moments, and she blurted:

"How do you kiss someone properly?"

She caught herself, of course, as soon as she said it. In almost over-the-top horror, Zelda clapped a hand over her mouth. She looked up at him instead of at his shoes, and removed her hand so that she could add, "I mean, as opposed to improper kissing. I'm just not sure what the difference is. I'm sorry - you must think that's a dumb question."

He was going to think that she was silly and inexperienced. He wasn't wrong, but this entire encounter certainly didn't need Zelda making it even more awkward than it had already been.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred didn't think it was a stupid question at all, but metaphorically kicked himself for the way that he had asked in the first place. There must have been a better way to phrase it, but he wasn't sure what it was and was struggling to come up with it now. "Er, no, I mean—" he stumbled awkwardly. "I mean a— uhm, like a real kiss."

Was that making his meaning any clearer? Probably not. Looking down at his shoes, Alfred rambled on, "Instead of just — something quick and — well, I don't know. I don't know if that would even work for this thing," he said, glancing up at the mistletoe once again with a look of exasperation. "But I didn't want to just kiss you — you know, like really kiss you — if that's not what you wanted."

As if she wanted this! Realizing what he'd said only after it was out of his mouth, Alfred quickly added, "I mean, not what you wanted, obviously I know you don't want to — oh, you know."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda's eyebrows arched so high it was a wonder they did not fly off of her forehead. No one had ever tried to explain the techniques of kissing to her, and this was, hands down, the most awkward she had ever seen Mr. Darrow. That ought not to be a surprise - they usually were not obligated to kiss - but considering how awkward he was normally, Zelda found herself shocked nonetheless.

Her heart was beating too fast and there was a rushing sound in her ears, and she realized that she had not, actually, said anything. Instead she was just staring at him. Very predictable, but also very embarrassing.

Zelda blurted: "I think you should really kiss me."

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

The silence and the staring were, he supposed, to be expected, given how thoroughly he had just shoved his own foot in his mouth. Alfred was rather at a loss as to how to correct the problem, though, and so merely stood awkwardly and waited for something to happen — either for Miss Zelda to say something, or, he supposed, for enough time to pass that he just died of embarrassment right there on the spot. When she eventually did speak, her words took him absolutely by surprise. There was a good deal of color in his cheeks when he looked up at her, startled out of embarrassment at least for the moment.

"Oh," he managed, and was suddenly quite aware that if he said very much more than that he was likely to ruin it. He wasn't sure what it was, but it seemed now as though there was an it, a thing that existed here in this particular moment which could very well be ruined by any of his usual social missteps. He'd continued with, "Uhm, alright," before he could stop himself, but then made a conscious effort not to ramble on about anything else — which meant it was time to actually kiss her, if they had run out of things to say.

Leaning in, Alfred pressed his lips against hers and shut his eyes. His free hand found its way towards the back of her jawline to cradle her neck only a second afterwards, as if he had forgotten which order the steps usually came in. He hadn't done this in years, but it seemed to be the sort of thing one didn't forget how to do, because the longer the kiss lasted the more it sent his insides to buzzing. By the time he was aware of this he had the sudden suspicious that he was being horribly uncouth and that he should have stopped kissing her at least two seconds ago — nevermind that she had said really kiss me — and pulled away rather abruptly, cheeks and ears glowing cherry red.

"Sorry if that was rubbish," he mumbled before he could think better of it. "I'm out of practice with this sort of thing."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

This was not just a real kiss but a Real Kiss, and Zelda's hands tingled by her sides. She did not know what to do with her hands, she realized - Mr. Darrow was kissing her and he was cradling her face and she did not know what to do with her hands. She didn't. But she shut her eyes because his eyes were shut and his mouth was soft, and as awkward as she felt she was also very immediately hungry for more kissing.

But then he pulled away, and his ears were red, and Zelda was very suddenly aware that as soon as her eyes opened she was staring again. "No, no," she said, "I'm sure I was bad. I -- well, I don't really have any - knowledge. About. This."

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ