South London Forever // George Karim

-vanilla and moss-

George woke up as he sneezed, nearly falling off the puffy red armchair. He sniffed and looked around blearily, but he could only see vague shapes that he assumed were bookshelves and sofas. It was warm in the library, and he sunk back onto his pillow.

Then he realised what, or rather who, his pillow was.

"Shit," he whispered, sitting up as gently as he could without waking up Freddie. She was holding his waist like he was a teddy bear, her white shirt bunched up where her shoulder connected to her arm. Where his head had been. She mumbled something, eyes still closed, and brought her bandaged hand up to touch her face. George grabbed her wrist quickly and put it back in her lap before she hurt herself again.

The movement hadn't woken her up, and George had to pull his thoughts away from how soft her hand was and her messy hair. Chai thumped his tail once and blinked up at George with brown eyes, and shuffled over onto Freddie's lap with a yawn, shiny white teeth showing.

George gulped and extracted himself from the tangle of limbs, holding his breath.

There was shuffling downstairs. Lockwood was home from wherever he'd run off too. George put one of the blankets over Freddie and made sure her leg was still on the stack of books. He grabbed the empty cups of tea and patting his hair down, padded out of the library quietly.

"Sleep well?"

George froze in the doorway to the kitchen. He wasn't sure how to answer that question, it was probably a trick, and the tone of Lockwood's voice showed he'd seen them. He just nodded stiffly and hurried past where Lockwood was sitting at the table to the sink.

He started washing out the cups and wiping down the bench that had crumbs on it again, for some reason. "Do you two know what a chopping board is?"

"I went to the hardware store," Lockwood interrupted him, opening a white booklet on the stained table and squinting at it. "We're going to build shelves today, to store things on. And some racks. Oh, and I bought some more chains"

George blinked. "Uh, what sort of things?"

"I don't know, whatever Agencies store on shelves," Lockwood said offhandedly, and scraped the chair on the floor as he stood up. "Keep all the Sources in one spot so Freddie doesn't knock one over, I guess."

He was gone for a moment, and then a large flat cardboard box slid into the room, knocking over the umbrella rack. George watched as Lockwood leant on it, grinning like he was the smartest man in the world.

"That's a box."

"How observant, but you underestimate this box." Lockwood said dramatically, tapping the brown cardboard as tall as him happily. "There's a shelf inside! Well, an unmade shelf."

George squinted at him and put the cups on the drying rack. He wasn't sure what this boy was up to, but he had a feeling Lockwood didn't think it through. And after living with him for a total sum of two nights, George figured that he didn't think through anything. "Do you know how to build a shelf?"

"Of course not, that's what these are for!" Lockwood said, waving the white booklet that George quickly grabbed and opened, wrinkling his nose when he saw the complicated instructions that he was sure weren't in English.

Lockwood had simplified his statement, failing to mention it wasn't a single shelf they would be screwing into a wall, but an entire metal bookcase. "This isn't a shelf, this is an entire shelving compartment, this is like, six shelves stuck together!"

"...We have a lot of stuff to put on shelves."

"Lockwood, how many shelves that you don't know how to make did you buy?" George sighed, leaning back on the table. He had an idea of what they would be doing for the rest of the afternoon.