Mister and Missus

There was not a smidgen of modesty left in Melissa Hayes. It was the marauder in her that sought the rise and the response out of those she was around. Years had passed since suspect substances saw her doing the most ridiculous of things. Said substances were gone but for the occasional twitching need for Spice. The cigarettes too could not endear themselves to her of late. She wAs growing up in some ways she supposed. Lack of provocative substances did not give her a sense of restraint, though. Nudity was not something she dreaded.

"You are a silly," she told Kieran with a laugh as she tossed her arms onto his shoulders. She laced her fingers together behind is head and smirked cheekily before stepping forward, bringing her chest flush against his.

Marriage, Millie decided, was an odd thing.

The young woman let the water flow down her back, soaking her hair and saturating her skin. She smiled openly at Kieran, content with him, and brought herself up onto her tip toes to steal a kiss. Certainly, she was getting used to those.

"No agenda for today," she murmured, nuzzling her head back into his neck. "Chillaxing, chocolate and cuddles."

Physicality was never going to be a problem for her. Affection was something Millie had thrived on giving as much as receiving - thus she had no qualms about pressing Kieran into such situations. What she objected to was the necessity of emotional attachment which could not be so easily forgotten. Sex was simple. Kisses were easily brushed from thought. Emotional dependency was impossible to be rid of and Millie was already concerns about what would happen when the time came for the law to be repealed. Surely, they'd go their separate ways? Was it wrong to be used to Kieran - to not be sure that she wanted him to go when the law was over and done?

Millie lifted her head and looked at Kieran with a smile tinged ever so slightly with sadness.

"Kiss me?"

“Silly? I'm trying to be a gentleman.” Keiran sniffed dramatically. His intended hurt tone was lacking, however, once the space between them had been all but destroyed. “I suppose that's out the window now, though.” He added belatedly, unable to stop his arm from curling around her back.

This girl – this crazy, entertaining, lovely ball of excitement – had completely done away with his careful, meticulous self and replaced him with this mercurial yet fun-loving man he didn't really recognize. He didn't even seem his quiet Slytherin self anymore. Some of the staff had noticed, Keiran was sure, because he had burst out laughing at dinner earlier that week and at least two of the other professors had given him a wary look.

Her smile brought one of his own to the surface, and Keiran felt it grow as she pulled back from her kiss. “None,” He agreed, chuckling at her words. “Clearly, chocolate is the best of those things.” He joked lightly, touching the tip of his nose to hers to ease the teasing blow to her ego. “A day spent filling myself with chocolate is undoubtedly a day well spent.”

Putting jokes aside, Keiran's eyes darkened at her request. He lifted his free hand to push its way through her wet and somehow tangling hair.

“Will you always have this power over me?” He asked, planting kisses along her jaw and under her ear, rather than where she probably had intended. “You always-,” his mouth moved towards her chin, “manage -,” a kiss on the corner of her mouth, “to get what you want.” He finished, catching her lips.

Keiran's arm tightened around her as he tilted her head back, leaning into the kiss. He was entirely lost, and knew that now more than ever. But lost in the best sense of the word -  lost in his head, lost and wondering how she had destroyed his boundaries. When they met his hardly touched anyone, let alone let something like this happen. Keiran was pretty sure he didn't mind. If she left, he was quite sure his walls would go up and be more well-fortified than ever.

“You can still be all noble if you want to be,” Millie teased brightly before leaning forward to conspiratorially whisper: “I won’t tell anyone if you lapse for just a minute, though.”

Her hands slid across Kieran’s shoulders and she tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to chase the ridiculousness of the situation from her mind. His chivalric intentions were honourable and shamelessly Gryffindor whilst her less than honourable cheekiness was hilariously Slytherin. It was vaguely endearing, in fact, to find that their clichéd characteristics had almost been exchanged for the benefit of her mischief amongst other aspects in regards to her intentions.

She leaned almost instinctively into his touch and the feel of his fingers thrumming through her hair, leaving behind tangles which mixed and set with the introduction of the water - ones which something in the back of her mind conceded would be an awful trial to comb out after the jaunt in the shower was over. Still, it meant that there would be a lazy towelling off, some half-hearted search of pyjamas which would result in Millie giving up and stealing some of Kieran’s t-shirts (because, after all, what’s the point of being married if you can’t wear your spouse’s clothes) before the pair could trundle off to sit in the front room, snugly warm with designs on movies and chocolate.

“Because,” Millie replied, giggling, “I am clearly craftier than you, Mr. Slytherin.”

Of course, ultimately, Kieran won out in the end as all wit and sassiness whistled out through Millie’s ears, her mind completely assaulted by the kiss and the rush of desire that had begun to thrum through her, wild on the back of the blood coursing through her veins. All false sense of propriety and modesty and physical distance was lost there that morning and a distinct lack of awkwardness was destined to follow. The students would wonder what on earth had happened to their professor and why their papers were so bizarrely marked. No longer had they come to worry after the cat footprints but the slightly different air was something that only came from certain activity and they’d all know it too. If Kieran didn’t give it away, Millie’s insatiable optimism - far too horrendous for a Monday - would clinch it.

Eventually, the water came to lose its heat and the shower was switched off. Fluffy towels were sought and excess water rubbed clear from their skin. Laughter ensued as it always did and they wandered contentedly back to their bedroom, fetching clothes to stave off the cold air. Having donned hers which did, as she had thought originally, consist of leaning over Kieran and plucking something out of the drawer he was looking in, Millie set about combing her hair and did so on her return to the kitchen, a spring in her step and a craving for hot chocolate dancing on her taste buds. She knew the whipped cream was in the fridge. The caramel was in the cupboard. There was indeed a vanilla pod. Chocolate was stored. Milk was in the fridge. They were sorted.

“How does hot chocolate sound?” Millie asked, setting down the brush long enough to draw close to Kieran, as though to touch base for a moment before drawing away long enough to fetch a saucepan from one of the cupboards. After setting it on the hob she returned, her arms looping around his waist. “Happy Saturday, love.”

Keiran scoffed lightly at her whispered promise of a secret, replying, “Just a minute?” In the end, though, his joke didn't mean much as all that came to matter was her.

He had not even registered the chill of the water until Millie was turning it off and stepping out to pick up a towel. After some time wasted in joking around, he made his way to his chest of drawers to retrieve a tee-shirt and was only partly surprised by Melissa nicking one of his shirts and donning it. He smirked at her retreating form as she made her way into the kitchen, pulling his own shirt over his head as he followed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Keiran wondered if the Marriage Law was working out for others like it was for him. That made him question where Millie was in all of this. Was that something he could just ask about? He doubted it.

His attention was caught again as she neared, offering homemade hot chocolate. “Sounds brilliant, sweetheart.” He returned, leaning against the counter nearby. Keiran couldn't help grinning when she returned to curl her arms around him.

“How about this: We have the rest of the day to do nothing, but I vote we take the cocoa back to bed and just chat,” he suggested, brushing though her hair with his fingers in an attempt to rid it of the last few tangles he'd caused. “We could talk about.. anything,” he suggested, “or everything. Or nothing.” He punctuated the last one with a kiss to her forehead. “Whatever you want.”

Soon, the cocoa was prepared and Keiran had snagged from Millie's hand the container of whipped cream – which he tended to use far too much of on hot chocolate, adding more when the first or second or whatever number batch dissipated from the heat. Gesturing to the bedroom, he offered a partly-sarcastic and mostly-dramatic, “Milady.”

After she headed out of the kitchen, he followed closely, setting his cup down on one of the matching bedside tables before he let himself fall across the bed. Keiran grinned at her upside-down, silently suggesting that he wouldn't be moving, and she would have to deal with whatever part of the bed he offered her. He even left the pillows open if she wanted to lay the other way across the bed and face him, so Keiran felt he was offering her a pretty good deal. He was feeling like his old, relatively careless, student self that day and he couldn't find reason to complain. As far as he was concerned, she had done him some good. It was like in University when he would go out on a Friday night to chat with Avery or other classmates and roommates. When he was allowed to be as much of a lazy tosser as he wanted. The papers definitely could wait.

Watery winter sunlight had broken and stolen past the curtains and newly streamed healthy, full beams into the bedroom the Hayes’ returned to. There was a natural warmth to the room caused by the dawning of that pretty, lazy Saturday and it took the edge off of the cold stones that made up the ancient castle.

However, that didn’t mean that Melissa Finnigan Hayes wasn’t eager to return to the warmth of the bed she shared with her husband. No, indeed, she couldn’t think of anything that she wanted more – hot chocolate in hand.

So it was to bed that they returned having abandoned the pan and such in the sink.

Millie set her cup down next to Kieran’s and grinned when she saw him sprawl out over the bed, wondering where the light heartedness had come from. It certainly made a difference because he was a consistently serious snake and being the lively lion that she was, she was concerned about his stoic serious snakiness.

The blonde flopped down on the bed opposite Kieran and let her head rest against the pillows, her hair splaying out around her head. She smiled and rested her hand on his leg before reaching forward with her own, poking him in the cheek with her foot.

“What is it that you want to talk about then, Mister-Man?” She inquired brightly, reaching over to pick up her cup once more. She rested it on her chest after taking a drink and looked at Kieran questioningly, tapping an absent rhythm into his skin with the fingers that rested against him.

After she had settled into the pillows, Keiran realized that he hadn't had anything specific that he wanted to talk about. More than anything, he had realized that the vast majority of their time was quiet, or was spent making jokes rather than actually just sitting about and having a good chat. In that moment, as he watched her sip from her mug, he couldn't help but wonder about her application. What had she said that made the Ministry decide that he should be matched with her? His application had been almost entirely sarcasm and downright passive-aggressiveness that could hardly be taken as anything else.

He glanced down at where her fingers tapped against his leg before realizing that the usual Keiran would have been annoyed at her prodding at him with her foot or even her hand. He sat up to look at her, making sure he didn't move his leg from beneath her hand.

“When did I get used to you touching me?” He offered a half smile to assure her that it wasn't some sort of insult or rejection. “I can't remember. This seems far more normal than I expected.”

He shook his head, keeping down a chuckle, then leaned forward to pluck his mug off of the table he'd set it on. He took a long drink before staring into the mug, watching the remnants of the whipped cream floating atop the warm drink. He tilted his head to look at her without having to sit up fully. “I'm not complaining, love. I just want us to be on the same page.”

The endearment slipped out without his realizing until he had stopped to see how she would respond to that second comment. Keiran found that he didn't regret saying it, or feel that it wasn't appropriate. Instead, his saying it to her felt normal by that point.

He removed one hand from his cocoa mug to return the gesture she was sending him through her touch. This sort of conversation didn't quite feel comfortable without some kind of contact to prove that their words weren't just statements sent out into the air, but rather were promises or admissions. His fingers wrapped themselves around the top of her calf, the thumb of his hand brushing the underside of her knee. Keiran didn't know, yet, what it took to comfort her when she was upset, so that was the best he could come up with. He watched her face closely over the rim of his cup as he lifted it to his lips again.

Seemingly overnight the dynamic had changed between the newlyweds. They’d never really had a honeymoon period per se but the change in mood certainly seemed to qualify as one. The atmosphere no longer dampened itself with awkwardness and quiet dismay at the situation they found themselves in. If at all possible, the pair sort of seemed, well, happy. They seemed happy to be together. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows but they were content and when they set eyes on each other they were slowly beginning to see a person each, not just a stranger staring back to whom they were irrevocably tied.

He was a crutch for her, Kieran – one that Millie hadn’t realised she’d garnered for herself. In Kieran she was putting little bits of herself and sealing them up safe, trusting that he’d keep safe the contents she’d placed in his care. It was, mainly, her pinpricked soul and bruised and battered heart. She’d set them aside his for a while, on a little shelf he called his own. There, they could work on repairing themselves, soothed by company.

Kieran was the person she trundled home to every close of the day. She’d dump herself to him and there they would be, content for a while in the silence until one or t’other grew impatient and needed something to do. Sometimes, though, they wouldn’t move, not for hours, and would wake up at dusk, hungry and rested – then at a loss of how they’d sleep on through the night though they’d never had trouble. They were a team – an almighty duo – the dream team.

At his query, Millie raised her eyebrows, tipping her head to the side to observe his curiosity. She shrugged and stretched a little, curling her toes as she snuggled her head into the pillows, a sudden, fleeting sleepiness grasping at her for a moment before disappearing once more. She smiled warmly and shook her head a little before twiddling her fingers in an idle pattern over Kieran’s leg. She looked up at the feel of his own hand against her skin and she quirked her eyebrows before sitting up a little to meet Kieran half way.

“When my sleepy-self discovered you are ten times better than pillows and the world’s cuddliest bear!” Millie declared with a bright smile, before laughing and conceding, “I shan’t tell anyone. Promise.”

The blonde dropped herself back down against the pillows, a contented smile again changing her features.

“I don’t know, honestly.” She admitted, seriously. “Spose it just happened like most things tend to.”

The blonde chucked herself forward and traded ends to lay on her front beside Kieran. She dropped her head gently onto his stomach and caught his spare hand, looping her fingers in with his gently, finding the ring clasped around his finger, just loose enough still to twist between her thumb and forefinger.

“Thank you for having me, Kieran,” she murmured, her eyes flicking up to his. “I don’t think I actually said it at the time. I guess I was too busy being moody and angry and all that jazz. But thank you, really. You could’ve said no. You could’ve sourced a friend to do you a favour and keep you sweet until everything blew over but you decided to do the silly thing and put up with me and while you’ll probably regret it, I am grateful. I don’t think it’s so bad, is it, this marriage thing?”

Her teasing response made him close his eyes and release a laugh as he lowered his drink once more. Drinking anything in Millie's presence had proved dangerous; at any moment she could open her mouth and provide some sort of hilarious comment that made it nearly impossible for him to keep from laughing, regardless of the drink in his mouth. Inhaling cocoa didn't sound like a very pleasant experience, if he were being honest.

Keiran found himself wishing that the world made sense. But it never would, would it? He didn't expect so. But as he set his mug down, he barely released it in time to be pushed backwards onto the covers once more so Millie could use him as a pillow. And suddenly he wasn't so unsure about the world. Sometimes, he mused, the Ministry didn't screw up royally. Only mostly.

As serious as her words were, Keiran was smiling in return. It was often as of late - and particularly that morning, in this newfound ease - that he found himself wishing he could kiss her for no reason. Perhaps he could, Keiran thought, except that eventually they would lose meaning like a word repeated endlessly. After a time, it just starts to sound like some nonsense language you've made up. Her admission, however, didn't feel like a pointless reason to kiss her. Keiran only feared she wouldn't want him to. Not when they were being so honest and open. He did wonder, though, if she could tell when he thought about doing so. He wasn't about to ask.

"Are you joking?" He asked, rather than pulling her up to capture her lips with his. "Haven't you any idea how easy you've made this? I don't think I'd want anyone else." The hand she wasn't toying with came around her back and tugged lightly on the hem of her shirt, his mind going over the idea of touching the skin beneath. His need to explain how grateful he was in return, though, won out, so he stuck to pulling the fabric instead.

"Darling, I-" Keiran paused, surprised at himself. "Well, for starters, I never use endearments with anyone else and mean them. Not really. And you must know by now how rarely I toss out words or touches. Every one means something, even if you can't read them yet. I hope you can..." His eyes ran over the lines of her face, taking them in as if he hadn't memorized them, yet. "I wouldn't call what we have bad," he continued, answering her question. "No, I'd say you just might have fixed me."

Something inside her expanded in feeling at the words of her husband. Her chest smarted, suddenly filled as though it was fit to burst. Millie lowered her head and brushed her lips against Kieran’s knuckles. With her comparably tinier grasp she unfurled his fingers from his palm and brought the tip of each one to her lips, ceasing not even for a breath until each one had been graced with a lingering kiss. She looked up then, her bright blue eyes sparkling with something that was familiar yet an untrustworthy friend and, often, foe, too. But, Merlin, was it a shining stare, teaming with the emotion that, for better or worse, friend or foe, was quickening inside of her.

The blonde brought herself up onto her knees and shifted a little so that she had one leg either side of Kieran’s hips. She settled in his lap as a gentle smile crossed her lips and her hands reached to curl around his jaw. Just as he had done, Millie’s eyes searched his face, drifting over every plane and contour, through the forest of his eyebrows and the flickering blush of his lashes, across the smoothness of his cheeks to the peppered copse around his mouth. He was a creature that she could undeniably class as nothing less than handsome. His was an expression and bearing of a man, tweaked here and there with a feminine edge that gave way to prettiness.

But he was a man, very much so: her man.

“Fixed you?” She murmured, as though the very idea was pure ridiculousness. Her hand brushed gently across his forehead, her fingers tickling up through the front of his hair for the barest of moments before sliding back to cup his cheek. She leaned forward and nudged his nose with the tip of her own, a smile taking her lips immediately as she did so.

Millie brought her head back and returned her gaze to its study, drinking Kieran in as though he was some queer elixir that she knew little of but understood she could not help but desire more of.

“What was so cracked and broken about you, my love, that you needed me to fix you, hmm?” She asked him, her fingers tracing their prior path once more, slipping further into his hair before slipping down to the nape of his neck.

Millie’s smile returned as her other hand brushed over his cheek, her thumb tracing down over his lips.

“You sweet man. You sweet, sweet man. What a gift you are.”

Keiran nearly moved to sit up as Millie lifted herself from atop him, but that idea was quickly squashed as she began observing him almost to the extent that he felt a need to look away. Instead, he let his eyes close at her touches. For a breath, he considered ignoring her words and flipping them over so he could look down at her instead. His wife seemed far too intent upon her questioning for him to dismiss it, though.

"Don't you remember how I was when we met?" Keiran chuckled, opening one eye to look at her. He had been loathe to speak, fearing she would remove her hand, but settled on getting his words out so they could work their way back to more simple or trivial conversations and activities. Both eyes opened to take in her face and the hair that fell around him. "I was hardly the type to spend a lazy day, even on a weekend, and dared not show emotion. It wasn't for my lack of caring, really, on the inside. But I guess my time in school was... Stifling, for lack of a better word. By University, I hardly took my feelings for anyone seriously."

His hands swept up her legs to wrap around her sides as he sat up so they were more properly face to face, Millie still settled in his lap. "I can't say such things anymore."

For what it was worth, Keiran wanted to say those words that, for eight tiny letters, were so very monumental, so big.  His eyebrows pulled together in his desire to say it, but as he so often did, the professor was questioning himself. Odd, perhaps, for one who was meant to teach others to wonder so frequently if he was doing the right thing. The impulse to act without thinking had always been something Keiran tried to quash. In this case, he wasn't sure that he was at the point of no return, where he could freely state that she was his person and that he would refuse any desire of hers to leave. He did know for certain, however, that he would never be quite ready to let her know if his feelings rang true and undiluted. He wasn't sure she would ever accept unconditional love from him, whenever he became ready to admit it.

Her words, though, combined with the sudden nearness from his sitting up proved too much for his attempt to hold his tongue.

One of the hands at her waist flashed across her back to hold her to him as he flipped them over. His other hand braced itself next to her head when they landed once more against the duvet. The usual Keiran would have minded that his arm was trapped beneath her, but this new, married Keiran didn't give the slightest care. No, he was too busy reveling in the realization that he even wanted to say what his mouth opened to admit. It wasn't exactly right, but it was definitely something, and something was more than he expected.

"Oh, Mrs Hayes," he laughed quietly, "you're entirely brilliant. In the three months I've known you as more than a student, you've become everything. You really need to stop invading my thoughts, love." Keiran winked at her - far too playfully for his own taste - before leaning down and pressing his lips to the spot below her ear. "I sometimes wish this had been different," he admitted, mouth brushing her skin as he spoke, "where we could turn to each other and swear that we loved the other completely." He lifted his head to meet her eyes.

"But then, most of the time, I conclude that if things were different, you wouldn't be here at all. I wouldn't get to have you. And you wouldn't have wanted me even if we crossed paths properly due to my previously mentioned lack of people skills." Keiran had no problem joking about himself if it meant that she might take his ill-formed speech well. "So perhaps I should be thanking the Ministry for once, hmm?"

Gods, but if Robin could hear him now. The Slytherin was sounding more like a hopeless, sappy romantic than he should have. It momentarily blindsided him, this unabashed acceptance of the idea of giving inordinate parts of his heart to Millie. Keiran was stuck in his head for a second as he pondered over what might have happened if he had been matched with someone else. Or if there had never been a law. He decided he didn't want to know. His thoughts strayed, instead, to their wedding and his attempt at vows and their miserably unfortunate first kiss and dance. Merlin, he'd made a fool of himself that day.

A blink, and he was seeing her face again rather than the flashbacks of his failings on what was undoubtedly the most important day of his life - at least to date. He had no idea what the future would bring him or his wife. Choosing to ignore the unknown of the future, Keiran decided he would rather remedy the past. His sort-of speech had been what reminded him, Keiran realized, of their vows. The only thing to be done after vows was to kiss the bride, so his eyes flicked to her mouth as a silent sort of warning before he met her lips with his.