bakerstreet | May-December

[ ota, 18+. Obi-Wan can be aged anywhere between 35-50. potential sub-themes: student/teacher, bodyguard/guarded, monks-in-love? ]

[ooc: I've got this lady if you'd like her!]

[ sure! ]

((34 years old, handsome, overflowing with awkward dad energy, and wants to save the whole entire world. ota 18+))

((kunimi's got a very wide canon age range and i'd be comfortable playing him anywhere from 16 to 21 as the younger party for this. au time shenanigans could also be fun with canonmates, where one party is pre-timeskip age and the other is post-timeskip? i'm open to plotting!))

[ december! ]

( gwenaëlle wynne-york was born twenty-six years after franklin randall died.

as may-december romances go, it's sort of a doozy even if at nearly thirty gwen is not quite the scandal-bait she used to be. not none, of course; the new, improved, mature edition is still screwing around with a married man, which is the last thing she should be doing while trying to work out how to get back where she belongs. she is meant to be going home, not trying to make one, and—

lose 'em how you get 'em, that's the saying and for a reason. not that she's got all that much, she's not making anything, and being alone in boston in the sixties is a hell of a lot different to the world she's used to. her light skin and cut-glass british accent open some doors, but more are closed in her face than she's ever experienced, and maybe there's some petulant, spoiled part of her that wants frank just to prove she can fucking have him. that's an ugly idea to look full in the face, so she doesn't; when they're sitting in her little loft, drinking wine that he brought out of mugs that she thrifted, trying to keep her footprint ever-so-minimal even as she wants to leave clawmarks in him—

then all the rest of that is just noise. then she can forget, for a little while, that he is going to leave and that she's still here, ten years before her grandmother will even arrive when she'd only meant to go to her uncle, to safety. allegra de lacey is a little girl in england who maybe hasn't even met edmund seward yet, and the little boy they won't be allowed to keep is years from being born. the amount of persuasion and patience it's taken her to secure any word of her family is almost her limit of the latter, carefully snipping out society page announcements from old newspapers she'd had to have especially sent to her from the uk,

that's why she doesn't ask him to choose her over his wife. not because she's afraid he wouldn't. because she's temporary, either way; what's she asking him to choose, someone who's going to vanish one day when she figures out what she did the first time?

she should end it. she makes her mind up to do it. )

If I asked you to come on a trip with me, what would you say?

( —she can end it any time. maybe immediately after he answers her question, even. she puts a mug in his hands and closes the loft door behind him. )

[ He wonders, often, what she thinks of him.

It can't be hatred, he thinks, because she has deigned to spend time with him in the first place, but there is something about embarking upon an affair that itches uncomfortably at Frank's conscience. It's not the first time he's been unfaithful to Claire, but—

—well, things are complicated, to say the least.

There is a free-spiritedness to Gwen that Frank sometimes finds laughable — not because she strikes him as silly in any way but simply because it feels so much like a stereotypical midlife crisis, the buttoned-up professor stepping out on his wife with an attractive, more open-minded younger women. When they're not together, he feels like a joke, but when they are — there is something almost pathetically simple about the way that feeling wanted can sink its hooks into a man's heart. And for whatever it's worth, there's nothing that has to be quantified or second-guessed in the way he smiles at her. It's adoration, affection — he's not a bad man, for all that the context around him might suggest otherwise, and his attention, when given a subject, is freely given. The surprise on his face when she poses her question is, for better or worse, similarly unguarded; the answer that's written on his face, though it's not what he says, is yes, of course. ]

A trip?

[ There's no apprehension in his voice — he's not that kind of man. Rather: ]

It's a nice idea.

[ He follows her, then, into the loft, taking a sip from the mug she's handed him. It's a nice idea separate from any logistical standpoint, that is — leaving his wife and daughter (and, oh, how he loves that child) for any longer than a few hours (and even that) is something of a test. But the hypothetical, at least, is one he's happy to entertain. ]

Where would you want to go?

( the loft itself is, like gwen, controlled chaos: she still hasn't bought a table or chairs, only thrown cushions down on her shag rug in front of the sofa that she sleeps on as often as in her bed. there are library books neatly stacked in two piles (read, unread), and a pile of travel brochures, west germany, italy, scotland. a pile of new scientists and one vogue with dog-eared pages and highlights.

it's a mixture of high and low end; her thrifted, mismatched kitchenware (—the takeout menus beside her rotary phone for restaurants in walking distance), the fur wrap thrown carelessly on her armchair and the high heels that only bring her to his shoulder that without a doubt cost more than her rent does. how much does music tutoring and vocal coaching actually pay?

she's always been vague about her finances, besides oh, you know, I get by. but she says, )

I wanted to go b— I was thinking about Florence, maybe,

( warmed by the idea that he wants to say yes, even if being honest with herself she knows it's a longshot. and never december, when she'd really want to go; maybe if she can convince him to go somewhere with her nearby in november, she can just...

the problem with ending it is that she doesn't actually want to, and she's spoiled. she doesn't like to do things she doesn't want, and no one is making her do anything but herself. )

And there's this place in Scotland that I was meant to go with my grandmother, but she's—

( not my grandmother yet )

—been held up.

[ I get by, she says, and Frank doesn't pry. It's not a lack of curiosity so much as it is an acknowledgment of boundaries — if she doesn't want to get more specific, then that's that, and it's hardly as if he, in the grand scheme of things, is being particularly generous about how much of himself he affords to her as well. It hasn't escaped him that this arrangement isn't fair to her, certainly not emotionally, even if it as much her choice to keep things going.

(The problem with ending it is that he doesn't want to, either. It's something a bad mix, he supposes, but it hasn't felt that way.) ]

Florence would be lovely, [ he says, by way of an answer.

Granted, it's partially avoidance, too — Scotland, though he doesn't react visibly to the suggestion, is something of a raw nerve, considering that his last trip to the Highlands, also meant as something of a romantic getaway, had gone about as disastrously as possible. It's a thought he banishes as quickly as he can — with his back to her, as he chooses one of the cushions as a seat — his expression serene once more when he turns back to her.

Still, for the sake of conversation: ]

Do you have family in Scotland, then?

I did. Do.

( will—

it gets confusing. she keeps meticulous notes, now; she's written down all the important dates she can remember, the broad strokes of what she isn't sure she ever knew in detail. where did the marquerings live? when will they divorce? in the seventies, she thinks, but when, where are they now,

what's she going to do, visit them? no. but it eats at her, the not knowing; it was one thing to be lonely still surrounded by her family. now there's only frank, only snatches of him, and he knows less about her than they do. what would he do if she told him the truth. and which truth, at that?

she's never lied, exactly. )

There's a stately house there that's going to be shut up to the public in a few years, ( when yvonne marquering reverts to yvonne lennox and wants a family home for herself and her daughter, ) but at the moment you can holiday there, it's even got a cottage and a gate house if you want to be terribly self-sufficient.

( she sits opposite him on the floor, leaning against the sofa behind her, tucking one foot beneath herself and hiding her hands in her cardigan, manicured fingers peeking out around her mug. )

And I might go to Florence for Christmas, but I know you'll have plans.

( it is a terrible fucking idea, with or without him. she knows it, and the tangential leap isn't as far as all that when she reflects, )

I've always wanted to go to Prague and I never have but I feel like I've built it up so much I'll have to wait until I'm so deliriously happy that it wouldn't matter if it turned out to be the most disappointing shithole on the planet.

( it'd be melodramatic to declare she thinks she might never go, and she is just self-aware enough to stop short of saying it out loud. )

[ It would be incorrect — and a disservice to Frank — to say that he isn't sympathetic to his wife's circumstances. He had been frustrated at first — and who could blame him, being fed what very well appeared to be a yarn about time travel — but as the picture has cleared and time has passed, he understands, in his own small way, what she's been through. The issue is where that leaves them — strangers despite the years and shared custody of a child, and him forever left in the shadow of a man long dead. It's a different kind of not knowing from what the woman in front of him is experiencing, but one that feels uncannily similar, sometimes, in terms of displacement. ]

Maybe the inverse would work, [ he says, both continuing the conversation and avoiding answering the question of whether or not he'll be occupied around the holidays.

(To be honest, he's not sure — the whole point of moving to America had been to start over, to go where nobody knew them, which complicates more family-based holidays like Christmas.) ]

Going to Prague when you've hit rock bottom — at that point, anything else would seem like benediction.

[ Granted, there's a non-zero chance that depression will only beget further depression, but that's not exactly the kind of hypothetical they're tossing around right now. ]

Any particular reason that city's been on your mind?

( it's a good point, actually, which has no small amount to do with the way it fades her smile to nothing. maybe prague would be a better option than florence, where everything will only be almost what she remembers, with no one that she loves—

she imagines frank will be with his daughter, on christmas, because where has she ever been in december except with her father? with her mother, once, one time, and she's yet to hear the end of it—will he miss her, this year? is she absent? missing, and for longer than only twenty-four hours this time, long enough to be looked for. her birthday party become a vigil. there's guilt entangled in with the awareness that she could have been trying harder to leave.

she doesn't need this apartment, this little imaginary life, this love affair. she could sink into river-water and not let go until it let her leave,

she stretches her legs out in front of her so she can place her bare feet ever so delicately in his lap. she's always just a little too cool to touch, no matter how warm she makes the loft for him. )

Restless, I guess. I've been in one place for a while, on my own mostly. My birthday's in December and I've never planned my own birthday, isn't that ridiculous?

( she talks about her family, sometimes; their absence a thing taken for granted, matter of fact, even as she speaks of them with such easy warmth and closeness that the lines don't quite meet, the obvious barriers not quite fitting into place. vague, those persistently drawn boundaries of what she will and will not speak of; she's never talked about where she grew up or how she was educated but makes casual reference to a yacht holiday here, horse-riding from childhood there, driving in paris (that she likes to do it, which is mad).

she's never met frank's daughter. she thinks about hasibe, and that summer, and wonders what brianna would make of her if they did meet, and even in her own head it feels presumptuous. )

Mm, that is dangerously and unattractively melancholy territory, though, and I'm not on my own now, am I. Tell me you were thinking about me all day, I don't mind if you're lying.

[ He sets aside his mug as her feet find his lap, his hands first finding her ankles, then her soles, fingers working gently into her skin in an impromptu massage. ]

I was thinking about you all day, [ he says, his tone dutiful, though the smile he still wears suggests that, teasing or not, it's not far (if at all) from the truth.

He's good at things like this — at domesticity, at being nice in a way that isn't demanding or overbearing. (It's what likely makes it harder to leave — he's easy to be around.) And for whatever else he keeps locked up, twisted into a ball in the trellis of his ribcage (what he'd seen during the war, the resentment he can't make heads nor tails of thanks to circumstances that, just years ago, had seemed totally impossible), he is free with his affection for her.

The thought of somehow spending some time during the holidays together is already knocking around his head. Brianna would like her, she's sure, but there's no good way of broaching this with Claire (in no small part because the idea of leaving her is, for Brianna's sake, one he hasn't entertained in any serious measure) and no good way, also, of really explaining it to a child whose grasp on family and love is still a nascent thing. Daddy's friend doesn't quite have an easy ring to it, after all, not least of all explaining why Claire couldn't simply tag along, too.

(It's similar, to a certain degree, to the strangeness with which she talks about her family. He's not so inattentive not to have noticed that not all of the details she offers him line up, but he wouldn't be sure where to begin a line of interrogation even if he wanted to.)

And yet, and yet— he wants too much, he supposes. He doesn't deserve her. ]

When in December? Your birthday, I mean.

( gwenaëlle talks about her family like she's never been out of the warm light of their love in her life; she responds to the small, sweet things between her and frank like she's been starved of affection, peremptory in play but always disarmed surely and swiftly by his sincerity. nothing takes her off-guard quite the way his easy kindnesses do, so she laughs when he indulges her but the way that tension slides out of her underneath the casual press of his hands is a truer thing.

it's not that she doesn't know she's making a mess. it's never that. )

The sixteenth, ( she supplies, adding with a glimmer of humour: ) I'm a Sagittarius.

( she's a fucking faerie, but that's neither here nor there. )

I don't normally care very much, well, it doesn't tend to matter, ( she can care as little as she likes, in the wynne-york household december has always been a festival for the whole month, preparations for her birthday beginning at the first and the actual celebration kicking off celebrations and the comings and goings of excesses of guests until new year's, ) but it feels like I should mark it, I don't know. The big three-oh.

( thirty had seemed impossible, even a few years ago. an improbability. even imagine living that long, without wrapping her car around a pole or pissing off the wrong person or just finding herself sick and tired of being sick and tired. it feels like it should mean something that she's made it, she's just

not sure what. or if it's so much an accomplishment as all that, after all. or, frankly, if she's done her math right because it's not as if she'd time traveled perfectly one to one on the calendar.

what she did was this:

in a moment of desperation, fear and pain she dove into the water and sank until the River took her and without a true destination in mind she had reached for: where am I safe. where am I loved.

she is pretty sure she fucked it up. )

Oh, it's all bollocks, anyway, time isn't real.

[ The divide doesn't escape him, but it doesn't confuse him much, either — to be showered with affection is not the same thing as to feel content with it, whether it's the person giving it or the difference between familial love, which can sometimes feel like a given, or romantic love. And besides, he enjoys the way he seems to surprise her, the way she relaxes around him. (He almost can't imagine a time when Claire had behaved in at all a similar way. Had they really known each other? Had he made some mistake?)

His gaze only leaves her briefly as she speaks, his expression turning contemplative. ]

I suppose no birthday really matters, in the very grand scheme of things, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't matter at all.

[ He sits up a little, then, his speech slowing as if he were picking out each word — because he is. ]

I— could take a week off. For your birthday. We could go somewhere before the sixteenth, properly celebrate on the day, spend a few more days and come back.

[ It feels a little unfair to her — the unspoken end of that last sentence is before the holidays, so he can pretend that his house isn't falling down around his ears and that his marriage isn't holding on by just a thread — but it's what little he can offer. He wants to apologize, say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm not— but then comes the question: not what? Not a proper boyfriend? Not not-married? Not some magical time-traveling Scotsman? Truth be told, it's the kernel of a feeling that's been souring inside him ever since Claire had first disappeared: the feeling that he isn't enough, somehow.

(And yet she's here, not least because of magic that had somehow decided that safe and loved would manifest in a man whose self-loathing could fill an encyclopedia.)

Instead of sorry: ]

You pick the place. If you want to, anyway.

( it is less than—

less than anyone deserves, probably. less honesty in his marriage, less certainty in this relationship, just less. sometimes frank seems to her like someone trapped — not fighting it, resigned, good at burying the resentment but she can't imagine it doesn't exist. she thinks about his wife, sometimes, about what it must be like to live her life, too; an unhappy marriage, an unfaithful husband, the way it can still seem like the best option while it eats you alive.

it's not sympathetic, exactly. gwenaëlle doesn't know or give a shit about claire,

but she's no stranger to the consequences of a life less honest, and knowing something, understanding it, is not the same thing as caring. how terrible, she can think to herself, and then fuck claire's husband. case in point, )

I'd really like that, ( softening around her ever-present edges, imagining going somewhere no one knows either of them and they can walk somewhere holding hands and take pictures and do all of those ordinary things that she persuades herself she doesn't mind not doing, most of the time. ) Our very own we'll always have Paris. Oh, not actually Paris, though, it's intolerably full of fucking French people—

( says the girl who was born in calais, and spoke french as her mother tongue, yes. )

No, somewhere for just the two of us. Maybe somewhere neither of us has been.

[ This is just life, isn't it — life, not some fairytale or storybook version of it. Life, where they both have baggage they haven't sorted through (or is it won't sort through), where he's married and she doesn't belong here, where what little pieces of freedom they can salvage for themselves require some kind of compromise.

But when she says I'd really like that he looks visibly relieved — he looks happy, and that's worth something, isn't it? ]

What about Belgium? I've never been to Bruges. [ It's been long enough since the war, he guesses, for it to be in better shape than it had been. ] I actually haven't been to New York, either, if you'd prefer somewhere closer.

[ He laughs a little, then, a slight wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. ]

Maybe I'm thinking too small.

[ He's never thought of himself as a romantic — not in a way that would be remarked upon, anyway — but he's self-aware enough to catch himself at times like this. ]

Maybe Nice? [ Then, with a teasing sort of affect: ] Nice la Belle, I've heard it's called.

( it would take a hard heart indeed not to be charmed in the moment, and while gwenaëlle might have cheerfully and on more than one occasion claimed one unrelentingly black—

she can't help it. she's charmed. anywhere, really, is somewhere that she hasn't been in this time, and the number of places that she's been where she mostly saw them through hotel windows and from the back of towncars, well. nice holds no particular complicated memories, it's no paris or florence or even new york, where tavi's apartment probably hasn't even been built yet for him to leave frequently empty and tolerate her borrowing. )

Is that the extent of your French? ( —is a tease, too, albeit one curious for the answer. ) You'd never know I was a native speaker, once, I have an accent now, it'd be embarrassing if it wasn't sort of fun.

( paining french people is a deeply satisfying contact sport. )

Usually, I'd describe my facility with the language as barely passable, [ he answers, easily enough. A little French, a little German — anything that might have proved useful during the war, though those particular skills have languished for some time now. (And, though he's ever a scholar at heart, the circumstances had hardly been ideal.) ]

Though, given present company, I may deny any knowledge of French entirely.

[ It's— nice, for lack of a better word and for the pleasure of such a simple one. She smiles at him unreservedly, and for all that he feels that he does not deserve it, he cannot help but want it. He can't for the life of him figure out what a happy ending would look like, here — an ending that wouldn't hurt at least one person involved. But perhaps it'd be better to break free of the way things are, now, stuck in what feels like an endlessly draining pool, with no light on the horizon.

As though emboldened by that thought, he meets her gaze again, cocking his head. ]

How about it, then?

( she swings her feet from his lap in order to put the rest of her in it— a flurry of motion and fabric and perfume, landing there with her hands at his shoulders, unconsciously mirroring the angle of his head in the kind of open delight typically reserved among the english for children and dogs.

probably going to say no, then. )

You mean it?

( —gwen has never asked him to leave his wife.

but that doesn't mean she's never wanted to. )

[ooc; i do have a soft spot for jyn/krennic, so ... ]

[Thirty-five years on this planet. Open to him being May or December.]

[ Plot twist: she's older. Being a spirit guide/grim reaper/death entity does that. ]

( December at mid-30s, associate professor at a nice college, researcher on demons and other supernatural nonsense. Ben definitely gets protective and pragmatic doting pet crushes on younger guys 17 and up. love pre or early stuff, and tipping points such as h/c scenarios, aftermath of high stakes situations, collaborating under Ben's counsel on information or research, or one having to protect the other. all ideas can work in either direction. Ben is not suited for dub or non-con or any sort of grooming cr, definitely full consensual with him. (the nervousness from him is just the anxiety of being "liked, apparently.")

info + AUs/fave canons for your consideration. please PM to plot or discuss. )

[ Practical Application to Defense, his note from the Headmistress had called this standing appointment; one hour, twice a week, he is to meet with Dearborn for… help, Harry supposes. An additional resource to keep him alive long enough to face whatever was on the other side of his graduation date.

Better late than never.

As always, Harry tries not to think so far ahead into the future as he crosses by tall windows on his way to a staircase rising up to the professor’s office door – thoughts of what would happen after Hogwarts generally make his stomach twist with dread, and he really doesn’t want to be anything other than calm for this meeting, or lesson, or practical application.

The classroom he has always taken his Defense Against the Dark Arts classes in has not changed much over the past seven years; the same ancient desks, the same faded blackboards, the same view of grounds, the same familiar classmates. Only the teachers seem to come and go. Professor Dearborn is the seventh that Harry has personally met, and so far one of the few who appears to match their claimed expertise. His classes are far from the joke Harry and his peers have come to expect from the subject; in fact, they are quickly becoming something Harry looks forward to, though they are barely two weeks into term.

He makes a cursory attempt to straighten his collar and hair before knocking, but as always, his efforts barely make a difference. At least his smile and greeting are appropriately polite when he pushes open the office door. ]

Good evening, professor. I hope I’m not too early.

( Ben gets a particular comment pretty regularly in cycles, that he doesn't seem like the sort of person that is confident in public speaking. It's an impression people get from him after interacting with him directly, and even if most people wouldn't call him outright 'nervous' or 'uncomfortable,' he certainly has given the image of something stony to colleagues. If anything, instructing classes is less like taking to anyone — it's, well, instructing. Extending his hard-won knowledge that he speaks on with belief because he's had to use it is plenty comfortable for him, sometimes the most comfortable he gets to feel. He isn't an authoritative sort, not in such a classical brimstone sense, but authority still suits him well.

So it's a shame that Ben is feeling even more nervous than is normal for him now that the clock hands tick closer to the appointment time — volunteered by Headmistress McGonagall, and he appreciates the choice and its subsequent reasons why, alas. Staring down at the selection of books he's chosen to use as reference material look alien to him, stacked on his desk; this isn't a cram study, this isn't private tutoring to help someone pass their O.W.L.S. this is—

The most high-profile student this school could dream of boasting, a young man whose life is mired in conflict and threat. The entire purpose is to train the boy who lived in more sophisticated ways to keep him living, because every season seems to bear its own fruit of dangerous plots aimed at Harry Potter, or the school in which he dwells.

Ben feels for this cause in much the same way that Minerva does. In concept alone, he is dedicated to the cause, that is hardly a question.

But he can't say that it doesn't leave him feeling a little bit as though a sizable fraction of Potter's chance at success is being pressed into Ben's palms. Obviously, that is very much the case, and the weight of that notion sits heavy in his stomach, yet paradoxically presses heavy onto his chest. It's something about the fact that they've met, though only recently, the too-famous name now has a living person attached to it in Ben's mind. A real, vivid life, not just some grand reputation—

The knock comes so suddenly and sharp in Ben's ears that it shocks his nerves, but he's turning to face Harry quickly enough. Huh, wait — Harry comments on it just as Ben consults his pocket watch. )

—Not at all. ( Ben is...impressed, in a heartened way. ) Please, don't stand on ceremony, make yourself comfortable. ( Says Ben, a man that constantly struggles with being 'comfortable.' Ben has moved one of the desk chairs up to where his own desk stands at the head of the classroom, and he briefly gestures to its availability, but he can't really bring himself to insist that Harry sit anywhere specific. This whole thing is...for him, after all.

When he's instructing, Ben has no issue with eye contact, as any good teacher worth their salt is. Right now, however, Ben is vaguely...sparrow-like. Not animated to a comical degree, but the demeanor may read as different enough to spot. He busies himself with an attempt to review the books he'd laid out — until he remembers they're not going to tell him anything about Harry, and with a swallow he soon abandons regarding his desk to look at the other man again. ) How are you this evening, Mister Potter? ( ...Not very conducive to the 'curriculum.' Jesus. Ben isn't trying to be clinical here, but now that he's asked the question, it feels cliché. Is it cliché, even if earnest? Ben leans back to rest against his desk at a half-sit, deciding that maybe just not talking for the moment might be best before he fully loses himself to his nerves. )

[ Harry shuts the door behind him, a school bag slung over one of his shoulders, weighted down with a textbook and the usual messy assortment of notes, parchment, and quills.

He hadn’t known quite what to expect, or how to prepare… so he hadn’t. This is not a new phenomenon; he has always been a proponent of improvising. In fact, he had said as much during his meeting with the Headmistress at the start of term… which was perhaps one of several reasons that she had arranged this time with Professor Dearborn. McGonagall had not seemed impressed in the slightest with Harry’s apparent disregard for his plans after graduation.

Where would he go? What would he do? Did he not still intend to pursue a career as an Auror?

He’d have been glad worry about all the mundane things that preoccupied the other seventh years, though it was hard to muster the same enthusiasm for internships and letters of recommendation; these are Hermione’s latest obsessions, while Harry struggles to shed his apathy long enough to do even his coursework.

But this? A subject he enjoys, that feels practical and purposeful, that seems to be something better than sitting and waiting for the trouble to come find him—

Well, if nothing else, he is cautiously intrigued. Rounding that thoughtfully provided chair, his bag thuds gently to the ground beside it as he sits, studying Dearborn; noting the minor variances from his typical classroom demeanor, though neither of them know the other yet. Still calmly pleasant, he replies with a genuine enough, ] Fine, thank you.

[ He can sense the nervousness. To have someone look at him and know every tragedy already; to know they have an image in their heads of something greater than the reality… It’s typical, though he still thinks the strangeness will never fully fade. ]

And how have your first weeks been, sir? Are you tired of being the most interesting thing in school yet? [ The novelty of seeing the Boy Who Lived in the hallways has long faded for most of his peers, but Professor Benedict Dearborn is a largely unknown entity — something far, far more interesting than Harry, and a topic of much gossip.

He tips his head, green eyes flicking from the top of the professor’s head down to his casual lean against the edge of his desk and back up, casual in his own way as he changes the focus from himself to the professor. ] For what it’s worth, your classes have been well received. We haven’t had a proper Defense teacher in years.

( The breath that huffs pointedly out of Ben is mirthful, but also a bit sardonic, emphasized by the way his brow quirks up. ) I think this school deserves better than having me be their most interesting person of the semester. ( Or of the year, lord forbid. He was tired of the idea before the first class was rung in to begin the year. McGonagall was kind enough to forewarn him of the potential unwanted popularity, at least.

Tentatively: ) I've been told that this class 'could be the death of me.' ( Ben would love for that to be funny; maybe it was meant to sound like it, when someone had chuckled the phrase at him. His smile is definitely forced. ) Suppose that's a good way to prove what I'm worth. ( Ahaha...haha... Ha.

He doesn't want to join the Hogwarts ghosts. Their interpersonal drama is beyond his well of patience.

Harry at least graces Ben with an opportunity to talk about something that doesn't make his palms sweat, and he's so willing to shift gears that he can't even be shy about the truth. ) But really, it's...strange, but nice. I wasn't brought up in typical magic culture for much of my formative years. ( he looks across the classroom, across the intricate tall windows shaded velvet with the evening, up through the arched ceiling over them. ) I'd wondered what this place was like, I'd never even stepped foot on Hogwarts' property when the Headmistress first reached out to me. Yet something about being here...feels like finding a missing piece to a puzzle. ( Ben still doesn't know how to be so conceited as to tell himself that he feels like he belongs here. His family's magical roots were so well scratched out of his on-record ancestry, he doesn't even know where his family's legacy fits in amongst the rest of the Hogwarts alumni, after a few centuries of self-suppression. Something about it all is vaguely bittersweet in the most uncanny way... Perhaps it can be a reconciliation, returning home after a generations-since departure. Ben...really does want to make his contributions matter, for ancestors that locked their gifts away to be forgotten, and for the students here that are facing a second Wizarding War. )

In short — could be worse. ( always heartening to hear from a dark arts defence teacher. )

[ She's seen a lot of Decembers. ]

Edited 2022-05-15 01:55 (UTC)

[ Younger. ]

[ At 23-25, he's in the middle range where he works for either end of it okay enough. ]

[She's college-aged, so 18 - 22 depending on when you'd like to play with her. Up-to-date on all things MCU and D+, and also open to cross-canon, AUs, OCs, and anything else!]