Thirty One Ruminations
Written for @microficmay 2022 : [ Draco POV + 50 word prompts ]
Prompt 25: Pain and Pleasure | Dramione | Read on AO3
CW: Depression
Draco paces, counting the minutes.
All his little joys in life, extinguished-- like some insidious House Elf snuffed out all the candles.
When she isn't there, depression leaves everything dark.
Finally, Granger arrives.
Dinner. Banter. Understanding.
Comfort.
Light.
Against lips, he whispers, "Stay, Hermione..."
She lets him know pleasure, again.
26 notes
·
View notes
I wish that in the afterlife, Mercer is waiting for Padma when she arrives, and they go for gelato on their first date :')
In honour of Padma/Mercer from LIATOTZA, here's a What If (They Lived) one-shot.
The characters are fictional, but the gelato bar and its amazing flavours are 100% real. The best flavour is peanutzilla, by the way (I will fight you).
Non-explicit, 908 words.
Pink was not his colour.
To be fair, Alec wasn't dressed in pink, his button down shirt was more of a medium magenta if you wanted to get technical, but unfortunately magenta wasn't his colour either. He had a naturally pink cast to his pale complexion, courtesy of his French ancestry on his mum's side. This went very badly in the Australian summer and no amount of slip slop slapped sunscreen could prevent him from burning up at the beach.
Dr Padma Patil did not have this problem. She had beautiful dark skin that looked and felt like warm satin and she was resplendent in any colour under the sun. She was currently in Sydney attending a conference and Alec had nearly fallen off his office chair when she rang to tell him.
The magenta shirt had been one of those spur of the moment purchases made when Alec was feeling confident and suave. When it came to Padma, it wasn't often that Alec felt either of these things, so he had forced himself to go through with the purchase. His colleagues at the Faculty gave his shirt and chinos ensemble the thumbs up, which in hindsight ought to have been warning enough. Alec's colleagues were all basement dwelling Morlock-types who came to work in boardshorts and Crocs. Why on earth did he take fashion advice from them? Not that the crowd at Cow and The Moon would care. Located in Sydney's village suburb of Enmore, it was full of quirky, eclectic types.
"There you are!" said a lilting, slightly breathless voice.
Padma Patil slid into the barstool beside him. Five-foot five inches, a sleek black waterfall of hair that fell to her waist, enormous brown eyes and a figure that made his accent twice as thick. She was dressed far more casually than Alec, in jeans and a bright white, fitted t-shirt with an asymmetrical hem. It wasn't the sort of t-shirt you washed, dried and folded. This was the sort you dry-cleaned and hung in your closet.
"Hi," he said. "Did you have trouble finding the place?"
She smiled. "Nope. It stands out." Her eyes took in the pink magenta shirt. "And so do you. That is a bold colour choice for you, Dr Mercer. I'm loving it."
It was true. He was normally a dark, Lowes polo t-shirt sort of guy. He was even wearing cologne. The last time he had put this much effort into anything, he'd come out the other end with a PhD.
"Have you ordered?" she asked, peering at the selection of gelato.
Her long hair fell across his arm as she leaned over. Even after more than year of working together, and then another year of occasional catch-ups with various members of Project Christmas, it took effort not to be a massive weirdo and visibly inhale the scent of her hair.
Padma Patil smelled like rosewater and honeysuckle. These were very advanced scents for Alec to identify and he was quite proud of himself.
"No way I'm ordering for you," he said, when he remembered that he'd been asked a question. "The selection process is part of the whole experience."
She hummed. "Oooh, yes. Look at all all of them! And you say they'll let me sample whatever I want?"
There was nothing inherently sensual about what she just said, but it still hit him like a battering ram. Alec figured Padma could achieve the same result if she read aloud the ingredients label on the back of a can of cat food.
They treated the sampling process like any other experiment. It was systematic and the same scorecard variables were applied to each flavour. It took her no time at all to narrow down her preferences, which, as far as Alec could surmise, tended to gravitate towards fruity flavours.
Twenty minutes later, Padma was professing her eternal love and devotion to the three scoops of gelato in her bowl - Cherrymania, Elderberry and Queenslanda.
"Merlinnnnn," she said, having taken another bite of Cherrymania. "You weren't kidding about this place."
Alec ordered what he usually did at Cow and The Moon - Strawberry Balsamic Pannacotta and a lot of it. "I never joke about gelato."
"Can I try some of yours?" she asked. Her eyelashes were so long, they cast shadows on her cheeks.
"Please." He was about to nudge his bowl towards her when he saw her lower lip fall open slightly, and the twinkle of expectation in her dark eyes.
Oh. Oh.
Hoping the blush on his face could be explained away as the unfortunate reflection from his shirt, he loaded up his spoon and fed her some SBP.
"Mmmmmmmmmohhhmygod."
Yes, he thought, blinking. God.
"I'm so glad we finally got to do this. I was looking for an excuse to come to Sydney for ages."
"And the conference provided that opportunity," he surmised.
Padma dipped her own spoon into his SBP to get another taste. A lock of her hair slid off her shoulder and was about to brush against the sticky spoon. Without thinking, Alec caught it and gently tucked it behind her ear. Padma didn't visibly blush, but he saw her eyes darken.
"The conference was the convenient excuse, Luthor," she said, from under her lashes.
Alec swallowed. "And how long does this conference go for?"
"Not nearly as long as my three month visa." She smiled at him. "Know any other cool gelato places we could visit?"
22 notes
·
View notes