i can be a lone wolf with you [robin]

december 2001

This place was starting to feel like a second home to her. Second, anyway, if she considered any place her first home and Hogwarts certainly didn’t fit that bill. So it was homey, she felt at home. It was cozy, warm, lived in, didn’t have that ‘just furiously scrubbed’ feeling that other people gave their homes before (and probably after) she visited. She knew her way around the kitchen, though only for tea-making purposes, and she didn’t feel quite as out-of-place as she did a few months prior.

Tea made, Fflur muttered a quick “Sorry, Bert,” as she left the kitchen, disturbing the comfortable spot the dog had found on her feet as she stood still, waiting for tea to steep. Two mismatched mugs in hand, she reentered the living room to set them down on the coffee table, amongst books, a deck of cards, and the morning’s tea cups. School was out for break now, so she really had no other pressing appointments to get to. Before reclaiming her spot next to Robin, however, she moved towards her coat, heaped unceremoniously in an armchair across the room. Moving it aside, she snatched up the rectangular box she had hidden beneath it, haphazardly wrapped in old Daily Prophets.

They had never discussed giving gifts, nor was she expecting one in return. She simply assumed they wouldn’t be spending the day together, each having their own families to attend to, so there would be no harm in giving him the gift a couple days early. It was a set of matching sweaters, though not a his and hers set; it was one for Robin and one for Bert, red with little lines of reindeer on them, and she was fully expecting them to wear them until it was too warm for sweaters.

She thrust the box out before her, waving it a bit too eagerly in front of Robin’s face, smiling as she did so. “I know we didn’t say we were doing this and I don’t want you to feel like you have to get me anything or whatever, so.” She was rambling, not sure if she even had a point she was trying to reach. “Dunno, just open it.” She set the box down in his lap as she finally sat back down, oddly happy that she had managed to be so thoughtful, just this once.

@Robin Byrne-Davidson

As he saw Fflur return to the living room Robin shifted back aside on the couch, opening up the spot for her, but she didn’t take it. Instead she rummaged under her coat and produced a box, wrapped sloppily but clearly with intent. Robin felt his stomach drop a little. As the holiday decorations in the village went up and the radio started to play Christmas carols he’d been feeling an increasing pressure to find Fflur something perfect. Presents were always crucial to him. It was the time to show off his cleverness, his perceptiveness, the thoughtfulness he didn’t really have but wanted to project. And this first Christmas he had to get Fflur a gift that showed how good he was for her.

Of course, he hadn’t yet.

She gave him a speech, all assurance that there was no need for reciprocation, but Robin knew at once that he was going to ignore it entirely. “I’ve still got a few days,” he reminded her as he slid a finger under the folded paper to unstick the tape. “Stay tuned, I promise—Oh, oh wow… Sexy.” He lifted the sweater from the box and held it up against his chest, grinning. “I’m wearing this to bed from now on—Wait.” His attention was caught by the remaining scrap of knit in the box. “Is this what I think it is? Wow—I love you.” Laughing uproariously, he showed the smaller sweater  to Bert. The dog leapt halfway onto his lap appreciatively, but Robin was sure he was more interested in his happiness than the prospect of wearing clothes.

Robin looked back at Fflur, realizing that she’d done this early. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, Christmas still felt too far in the future to think of even though it was just days away. But of course they wouldn’t be spending it together. “Are you having Christmas with your family?” he asked. “I’m glad.” Family Christmas for him was still something to get through more than something to be excited for, but their reconciliation had felt unequivocally like a good thing. He wanted that for Fflur too.

“Yeah, of course.” She smiled as he reminded her of how much time remained before the actual holiday. But it was a nervous smile, one that remained as he undid the wrapping, hoping he wouldn’t think her absolutely mad for what was inside the box. Sexy. A much better reaction than she had been expecting. “Well,” she leaned into him, “y’know.” But there was more to the gift, plenty for her to still be embarrassed about if he hated it. She had thought it was a brilliant idea up until ten seconds ago when it had left her hands. At least he would just make a joke out of it instead of telling her how awful it was.

The ‘I love you’ wasn’t as shocking this time, certainly not as much as it had been the first time he had set it. But it was still enough to catch her off guard. She shrugged, like she did every other time he had said it, especially after she had realized the phrase was simply a very commonplace one in his vocabulary and not meant in that specific way she had initially thought. Fflur laughed as Bert joined in, giving him a quick scratch behind the ears before she leaned back into the cushions. “Yeah, I mean, I thought they’d be,” she paused searching for a more appropriate word than ‘cute’, but really only coming up with “Warm. I dunno.”

But she was smiling, especially as he looked at her. She rotated herself where she sat, stretching out to rest her legs across Robin’s lap, propping her head up with a lumpy pillow near the end, and making herself perfectly comfortable. “Yeah.” She paused before deciding the answer warranted a little bit more information. “I mean, I haven’t been explicitly uninvited.” She assumed her parents expected her there, and she hadn’t forgotten when Nerys told her she could be in charge of shopping for her nephew this year. That probably just meant that she was being expected to get him anything at all; keep expectations low and lower the risk of disappointing people.

“I still have to buy gifts. They’re not as easy to shop for.” She stopped short of asking him to go shopping with her. Would it be weird for him to be there when she was looking for something to get Nerys? She had been mostly successful so far in avoiding talking about her and she wasn’t about to ruin her holiday by starting now. Instead she changed the subject back to him. “I figured you were doing things with yours? I’m not really sure what I’m in for in Cardiff.”

“Warm, right.” Robin laughed. “Just say it, you think I’d look cute.” For all he’d seen Fflur open up these last few months, she still wasn’t much for verbal affection. He could understand it, of course. It was putting yourself out there in a perilous way. And he figured he more than made up for it. If Fflur avoided explicit affection, Robin showed so much it became meaningless. It was the same result, in the end.

He wrapped his hands around her cold feet, rubbing slowly to warm them up. “I’d help with gifts,” he said, “but I don’t know how useful I’d be, I mean…” He chuckled, suppressing his nervousness about reciprocating her present. “You know them better than I do.” It was easier to talk about his family than hers. “Oh, no, yeah,” he said at once. “Maudie wants to do Christmas with her husband. They’ve got a baby now, it’s a whole thing.” He shook his head. “That’s not to say you couldn’t come along if you wanted to,” he said, focusing his eyes on the dog and giving a nonchalant shrug. “They’d probably all think a lot better of me if I brought home a woman, honestly.”

Robin looked up and gave Fflur half a smile. “I mean, I really think it’s good that you’re talking to your family again,” he said. “But if you’re not ready for y’know, a whole holiday...” He shrugged again. “I guess meeting my parents isn’t not a big deal,” he continued, sort of to himself. “You could just stay here and feed the dog, if you want, I dunno.”

“I thought you’d look cute,” Fflur repeated with a roll of her eyes, barely keeping down a laugh. “Downright adorable.” She smirked, adding one more eye roll for good measure; joking or not, she still felt her cheeks grow hot, though certainly not as much as they would had this conversation taken place months ago. She had started feeling less flustered every time she remembered who she was dating, how her seventeen-year-old self wouldn’t believe her if she knew. She was almost to the point of being completely herself around him, the self that she had figured out and carefully curated after her quidditch disaster and years spent abroad.

She waved off his non-offer to help her shop, not minding at all. “I’ll figure something out.” She missed the days where a good gift meant a good bottle of wine, something requiring much less thought.

Anyone, current or former self, would be properly caught unawares at the prospect of meeting the parents. “Yeah,” she agreed automatically, more to the idea of improving Robin rather than the idea of spending Christmas with his family. Meeting his parents meant that at some point her really ought to meet hers and then she would need to have that really-shouldn’t-be-uncomfortable-but-probably-would-be conversation with her sister that she had been so careful to avoid. Things were almost good between them, or at least appeared that way to anyone who knew them.

“Yeah,” she agreed again, shifting to prop herself up on her elbows. “I mean,” she paused to return his smile, “That would be cool.” She paused again, searching for the words to properly express how much she loved the idea, maybe falling a bit short with, “I would like that.” She sucked in her bottom lip, her thoughts now straying toward how best to split her time while still avoiding any more-than-awkward conversations.

It had been months since she and Nerys had resumed speaking to each other, and she had yet to inquire about Fflur’s love life. Who’s to say that she would start asking now? “How about Boxing Day? Won’t have to embarrass myself with cracker trivia that way.” Her family had always saved the trivia from Christmas crackers for the next day, saving an extra present for the person to get the most answers correct, who was, practically always, Nerys. She wasn’t sure if that tradition continued now, but it was easier just to avoid the possibility altogether.

“Well, then,” said Robin, “I’ll have to think about how you would look cute.” Maybe he could figure out some riff on this, some joke that would make a mediocre gift cleverer and more heartfelt. He was starting to feel rather thankful she’d given him this early now. It gave him more of an idea of her expectation. Without it he wouldn’t have had any idea where to start, surely staring in shop windows for hours forgetting everything he’d ever known about his girlfriend.

Fflur, however, was still struggling with unknown expectations. Robin felt lousy about how unable he was to help. That was the problem with the pair of them, he figured. He didn’t have much good advice to offer her on anything, nor she for him. But he could try to be supportive, at least. He stretched up from where he sat under dog and feet to pull the sweater over his head. With the fire going it was a little too warm for it in the living room, but that was neither here nor there. “Perfect,” he said.  If nothing else turned out well then he hoped this did.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting her to say to his proposal, but somehow her shy agreement was the best of surprises. “Really?” Robin replied, breaking into a hopeful grin. “I mean, no pressure, obviously, but—I’d love that.” Impulsively, he leaned over Fflur and gave her a quick kiss. “Boxing Day is good,” he said. “Still going to brave the family holiday, then, good.” Still resting across her chest, he laughed cheerfully. “Never thought I’d be so ready for Christmas Day to be over.”

“Yeah, I was right.” Fflur smirked as she appreciated the sight of Robin in the sweater she had gifted him. “Cute.” She really hadn’t doubted herself, even considering the absurdity of the reindeer design or the fact that she had bought a matching set so he and the dog could coordinate their outfits. She nearly regretted not getting herself one to complete the set, but that seemed a little too eager, more of a second-Christmas kind of gift. Still, she was rather chuffed that he at least seemed to like it, saving whatever jokes he had about it for a moment other than this; she tried to not read too far into that.

She nodded, answering his ‘Really’ with a “Really,” of her own and returning his grin. “Well, maybe not, if you’d love it,” she added, though that was more reason to tag along. She smirked as he kissed her, nodding along as he listed off the good things, feeling much less confident about her family holiday than his, even with the added prospect of meeting his parents. “Good,” she agreed with a laugh, laying back again and bringing Robin with her, wasting no time before wrapping both arms around him.

Fflur couldn’t wait for Christmas Day to be over either. “At least now you have a gorgeous sweater to remember me by while you’re enduring it.” She was assuming that he had meant it in a can’t-wait-to-see-you sort of way and she had to agree. So far every afternoon spent in Cardiff had been made more bearable knowing she would be seeing Robin at day’s end, but this time around she would be having her first overnight in Wales in nearly seven years. It was almost enough to throw any cares she had about Nerys out the window and invite Robin, but that, too, seemed like more of a second-Christmas kind of thing.

But she didn’t want to think about her own family anymore, finding it far easier to talk about his. “Do I need to like, do anything special?” She ran her fingers lazily through Robin’s hair as she spoke, asking more along the lines of dressing a certain way or pretending she liked her job or not being Welsh. “I’ve never really done someone else’s Christmas,” she added, almost as an afterthought. Christmas had never been a big affair among her circle of friends in Paris, and before that she had spent every Christmas with her family. She didn’t want to mess this up but she also didn’t want to seem like she cared too much. It was a fine line to tread.

They were sickening together, honestly, in a way that made Robin feel giddier and giddier the thicker he laid it on. Most of the time they weren’t so over-the-top as this. An arm around shoulders or legs across a lap, the sort of conversation he’d always associated more with friends than lovers. But it was sort of thrilling, being happy. The more he embraced the exuberance of it, the less he could stop himself. It was like the fuzzy loss of inhibition he still ached for sometimes.

“I dunno,” said Robin, resting his cheek on her collarbone. Fflur was obviously different than his family was, but he hadn’t considered asking her to change. Maybe if his parents had expected anything out of him he might have thought it.  Maudie had brought home someone well-groomed and wonderfully normal, and he was so close to perfect that the distance from it had been all the more bothersome. But Robin was different from his family too, like Fflur was, and they’d all known it forever. It was enough for them now that he find stability in anything,  be loved by anyone. A forced kind of enough, he couldn’t help but feel sometimes. But they cared enough to force it.

“Comb your hair, maybe,” he said, running light fingers through the end of a blonde lock on her shoulder. “It wouldn’t be a formal affair or anything, obviously, but y’know, just in case.” The fact that she was worried about it was making him worry about whether he should be worried. Surely not—but there wouldn’t be much else to do on Boxing Day than ask his newly arrived girlfriend polite questions. Robin was starting to rethink putting Fflur through that.

“I’m not promising it might not be kind of weird,” he said. “I mean, I’ve never done this before. Only came home for Christmas a few times before this anyway. I dunno.”

“Easy enough,” she agreed with a half shrug. “S’pose I should buy a comb, then.” And formal affair or not, she could certainly put in some effort. It was a rare occasion that she was concerned with how her looks or behavior reflected on another person, but this was certainly going to be one of them. “I can even wash up and everything.” If she was lucky, her mum would continue her tradition of buying Fflur new clothes for Christmas, her silent protest against her eldest daughter’s wardrobe. They were never her style, but she assumed if her mum liked them, then so would his. Unless she was expecting robes, in which case everyone was just shit out of luck.

“I love weird.” Her life as it currently existed was just a series of weird familial interactions; it probably wasn’t going to be as big a deal as she was making it out to be. But she was curious, after all, to meet his family. Even if she had walked the halls of Hogwarts in years overlapping his siblings’, it wasn’t like they had ever exchanged any words. And she hadn’t dated his little brother, so at least there would be one less awkward obstacle to avoid.

Fflur’s go to story with her extended family was that she had focused on charity work while in France -- of course, she had been the charity case at that point, but she was fine with letting people assume what they wanted. For the most part, she found that people usually felt too bad that they weren’t the ones being selfless that they didn’t inquire too much. Of course, her family was completely muggle and had no idea that quidditch even existed, let alone that it was possible to disgracefully end a career with it.

“I promise not to embarrass you any more than you’ll do yourself,” she decided with a nod, kissing the top of his head before poking his side. “Shouldn’t be too difficult.”

"Do you really?" Robin snorted softly. She knew he was talking about the kind of weird nobody liked. "You can do all the talking then." It was a crazy thought, that he'd shut up for more than five seconds. But coming up with things to say to his family was a lot more tiring than most other kinds of talking, he'd found. Not to mention that he was now sort of interested in the kind of conversations Fflur might start.

She poked him and he squirmed, sliding over to lie close beside her. "Yeah, you're right," he replied with a laugh. "Doesn't take that much effort." In truth he was rarely embarrassed at home. Uncomfortable, sometimes, but mostly it was too bland and shallow an experience to regret anything too much. They participated in small talk and passed the potatoes, and only told inoffensive jokes. And then once it was over they went their separate ways to, presumably, be people again. It felt right, though, the idea that he'd make a fool of himself. Even if it wasn't really his, Robin would own it.

"I'll bring your Christmas present," he said, shifting the thumb of his hand draped over her waist. "Guess it'll have to be something family-friendly, in that case." This was another level of pressure he hadn't expected. They had to look right together to his parents, the sort of thing they'd want for him, and gift-giving was the most dramatic show of it. "Don't worry," said Robin. "We'll floor 'em with the depth of our transcendent love." He moved his hand over to scratch the dog, still milling about on the floor on Fflur's other side. "Or, y'know, however close you can get to that in six months."

“No effort at all,” she agreed with a smirk. She shifted a bit, turning to face Robin a bit better. She wasn’t completely sure she wouldn’t let him down, but it was one day. How hard could one day be? She had successfully avoided the topic of quidditch for the past several years and that was probably the only aspect of her life she was truly embarrassed about. She could avoid the subject for another day.

Fflur’s face was frightfully close to his and it was hard to stay worried about meeting his parents for too long. “You can just regift the jumper,” she suggested, tracing one of the lines of red yarn with her thumb. “In case you can’t find something family-friendly.” She still didn’t care if he got her anything or not, but she didn’t want him to feel obligated that he impress both her and his parents with her gift. Never mind that the idea of a not family-friendly something was promising.

The mention of love caught her off guard again, but she shrugged it off. “Comb my hair and prove I’m attracted to you,” she mused. “Don’t know what’s worse.” They were already close but she took the opportunity to get closer as Robin reached for the dog, one hand draped over him and pulling herself in. “Still, should probably practice that second bit.” She nodded as solemnly as she could but it didn’t take her too long to ruin it with a smirk. They were too close and had been doing too much talking and Fflur was perfectly content to do some not talking.

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