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lunarrwolf · 1 year

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Okay so here come the Enola Holmes requests; hear me out, Tewksbury best friends to lovers where the reader makes things out of paper and tries to teach Tewksbury how to make paper flowers when he asks. He SUCKS at it, but he's head over heels for her and so he spends hours alone practicing and he makes her this cute bouquet out of newspaper and maybe it has like a little love confession note or something in it idk idk but my brain is in overdrive rn

YES this idea is literally the cutest thing ever to me, hope i did it justice!

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Tewkesbury doesn’t know that he’s lost until he sees her. It’s been too long since he’s been able to get away like this, trade off the drama of the House of Lords and every rule he’s expected to follow for the actual thrills of life. It may be his destiny to grow so deeply entrenched in politics that he stops seeing the difference between his working life and the rest of his waking one, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

Needless to say, the second he was able to skive off another day spent around the members of Parliament, Tewkesbury did so with a flourish. He could think of nothing better than tracking down his best friend and spending the rest of the weekend annoying her without pause, but now that he’s actually here, he finds himself coming up short. It was supposed to be nothing out of the ordinary, these couple of days away, but yet when Tewkesbury stares at the girl who’s been like a sister all of these years, he suddenly wishes that connection would disappear in his head forever.

The problem is that the girl who looks up at him with a smile when she sees him looks different somehow, as if spending a mere month or two out of her company has been enough to completely rewrite Tewkesbury’s entire mental picture of her. Do her eyes always shine like that when she sees him, or is that new? Has he always wanted to smile like mad whenever they’re together, or is that the lingering affection of some new affliction Tewkesbury doesn’t think he could name if he tried?

It shakes him to the core, this sudden feeling. One moment, he’s rounding the corner to meet up with a friend, just that, and then he’s looking at this girl and all he can think about is that he never wants to leave her side again. Politics can go to hell without him. Tewkesbury only has an excuse to leave the government buildings for this weekend, but he wishes it could be forever.

He doesn’t have all of eternity to ponder this, though. Y/N L/N races up to him when their eyes meet, and then he’s standing before her, breathless and wondering how on earth he is supposed to go about as if nothing has changed when he’s pretty sure that every possible thing has.

Y/N, however, seems utterly devoid of the miraculous transformation currently wreaking havoc in between Tewkesbury’s ribs. “It’s wonderful to see you,” she beams, “I was beginning to think that you’d gone ahead and moved into the Palace of Westminster forever. I haven’t seen you in years.”

Tewkesbury finds it within himself to scoff at this blatant lie. “That’s absurd. I saw you not seven weeks ago.”

Y/N arches a disbelieving brow. “Yes, seven weeks ago. That’s a perfectly ordinary time to go without visiting your best friend even once, you traitor.”

Tewkesbury clasps a hand to his heart, feigning hurt. “Cruel. I have never once been a traitor to you.”

He doesn’t know that he could, now. He can’t imagine a world in which he is not following her around, either in endless loops around the London streets or in constant cycles of daydreams in which Tewkesbury is able to put an actual name to the emotions currently driving him mad.

Y/N grins. “I’m glad to hear it. I was worried for a second there, you know.”

“No you weren’t,” Tewkesbury laughs.

“Perhaps not,” Y/N says with an elaborate shrug, “but I like to keep you on your toes. It makes for a more dramatic weekend if we’re both slinging accusations left and right.”

“Not as fun, though,” he argues.

Y/N concedes this point through a solemn nod. “No, not as fun. I’ve never had to worry about fun with you, though.”

She looks up at him with a smile, and Tewkesbury thinks that his heart might explode out of his chest. He wants to say something, needs to say something, but all he can manage is–

“You know what would be fun? If you showed me how to make those paper crafts. I know you can do it, I’ve seen you make tons of stuff from paper before. It’s really cool, and I missed seeing you do it. I missed–”

He cuts off the hopeless flood of words before he can say something incriminating like that he missed her, but Tewkesbury gets the feeling that he’s already said too much. Also too little at the same time; Y/N promises him that they’ll get to make the paper shapes as requested, but he swears her face drops a little, like she could sense that there was something Tewkesbury was trying to say but just couldn’t manage. He wants to try again, but the words choke up his throat and he can’t get out a single syllable.

Instead, he contents himself with watching Y/N as they walk, how the sun dapples her skin with endless patterns of gold. He watches as they leave the streets as well, once they head for Y/N’s house down the block. Tewkesbury pushes the door open; it’s always been more of his home than any other corner or annex of his family place. This is where he feels at peace, and although he’s always thought that was just what came with finding a friend like Y/N, he’s starting to think that it could be more. That maybe they could be more.

It is a false hope, however, and one that will only serve to make him bleed, to rob the happiness from his chest whenever Tewkesbury looks over and sees Y/N. They are friends, compatriots, brethren in a war that all young children grown old must face at some point. Never have they been closer, and never has he wished that they could be closer still.

He’s caught staring as they head up the stairs, and he looks away hastily although the damage is done. Y/N laughs at the blush forming on his cheeks. Although Tewkesbury reacts by habit and shoves her with an outstretched, playful arm, he can’t seem to stop his hand from lingering there on her shoulder, fingers reaching as if to pluck some sort of love out of her through willpower alone.

He finds it not, though, and is forced to stay satisfied with smiling to himself and wondering if the rest of his life will be like this, just watching and hoping for a happy ending that may never come his way. Tewkesbury has always wanted something he could never have: a world outside of family rules, a universe that did not want him controlled, and now, worst of all, a love that should have stayed platonic. It is the cut that aches the most.

The moment is good, though. Y/N has always had this most peculiar skill when it comes to paper crafts, and Tewkesbury regards her now through lowered eyes. Her hands flit around the cut shapes, slicing off delicate corners and creasing folds until a simple note becomes a prancing pony, a soaring bird about to take flight around the room.

Tewkesbury shakes his head after she produces yet another paper marvel. “I don’t know how you do it,” he protests, “Show me, can’t you? Let’s make a flower or something.”

“Flowers have always been your favorite, haven’t they?” Y/N comments. She does as requested, although what are lovely narcissi and tulips in her hands turn into sadly wilted clumps of paper in his.

Tewkesbury just can’t figure out how she does it. Even after that particular day ends, he finds himself sitting in his room surrounded by heaps of useless folds, trying and failing to emulate her easy way with the paper crafts. One would think that Tewkesbury, with his lifetime of knowledge about every facet of flora there is to know, would be able to reproduce his beloved plants in paper form, but here you would be surprised.

Tewkesbury labors for hours, days even, but his progress is slow and totally frustrating. Y/N catches him at it a few times and laughs at him. The sound, so sharp it stings, carves a smile on Tewkesbury’s face even when he’s almost been driven to the point of madness by the infuriatingly unrealistic paper flowers.

He insists that Y/N show him a few more times, of course, but Tewkesbury can’t seem to pick up a single thing. Maybe that’s because he’s not really hearing but looking at his professor. The sunlight clings to her like a child, playing at her hair in ways that only golden beams can get away with in proper society. Despite Y/N’s protests that he really is getting better, Tewkesbury only thinks he’s getting better at one thing and one thing alone: falling harder for her.

Soon enough, he finds that he cannot go a day, cannot even draw a breath, without thinking about how much he loves Y/N. His room is dizzy and chaotic, the paper flowers piling up in the corners and spilling out of waste paper baskets. Tewkesbury’s hands are nicked by all the paper cuts he’s given himself by accident, and he finds his fingers keep twitching by his sides to run through the familiar folds and patterns as he goes by his days.

At some point, Tewkesbury looks up and realizes that he’s done it, mastered the things. They’re nothing compared to Y/N’s magic with them, of course, but they do the trick for now. An idea comes to him, and Tewkesbury carefully makes one pristine paper flower after another, all the types he knows by heart and some he has to consult in his books, too, just to get the right varieties.

Y/N is surprised when he presents them to her at first, this newsprint bouquet. Her eyes are enchanted and rove up and down the folded petals, the cut stems.

“You did all of this?” She asks, voice tinged with excitement.

Tewkesbury laughs. “You don’t have to seem so surprised. I was bound to get it at some point, you know.”

Y/N flashes him a grin in between her admirations of the paper flowers. “I never doubted you for a second, I swear it.”

He believes her, he always has. How is it that Tewkesbury can see straight through politicians and their lies, but yet find himself stumbling over Y/N’s every word? Every ounce of critical thought leaves his head in a blessed whirlpool the second she smiles at him. It is a problem that Tewkesbury refuses to solve.

A voice calls from behind him; Tewkesbury wasn’t able to stay for long today, only long enough to press the paper bouquet into Y/N’s hands and make her swear to look at it before he’s dashing back to the House of Lords again for the day’s work.

He doesn’t have to stay to make sure she’ll investigate, nor to discover what she finds. Soon enough, Y/N will be glancing over the paper creases and realize that not all of the flowers are made of newsprint. Some are made of notes, notes to her, notes that are at last able to explain all that Tewkesbury couldn’t put into words if he tried.

It’s a story about how a boy fell in love with a girl, how Tewkesbury is so lost on Y/N that he can’t think straight. Unable to help himself, he’s cataloged the flowers he’s made for her; camellias for longing, jasmine for sweet love, goldenrod so he’ll have luck in this, begonias so that even if she doesn’t feel the same way, he can at least thank her for all of the memories they made in the past years.

It might be the bravest thing he’s ever done. In truth, when Tewkesbury steps out of the reaches of Parliament for the day, he doesn’t know what to expect. In all his endless plotting and scheming about how to do this, he was never able to accurately sum up how Y/N might respond.

In the end, she surprises him. Tewkesbury enters the streets of London and there she is, waiting for him with a smile on her face unlike anything he’s ever seen before. Tewkesbury has prided himself on being able to place each one of her smiles in his memory, rank them on how happy she truly is, and this one blows all of the others away.

He walks to her, and they meet in the middle somewhere, both bursting with hopes finally answered.

“I love you too,” she says, “more than anything. More than you love me, I think.”

“Doubtful,” Tewkesbury replies, “I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to love more than I love you.”

She laughs. “I look forward to proving you wrong on that point.”

He looks forward to it, too. There are few things in life that can be described as going perfectly, but this, this is it. This is perfection itself, him and her and the glorious world stretching out around them. Nothing could be better.

requested by @thatfangirl42, i hope you enjoy!

enola holmes tag list: empty for now!

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