How to Make a... Future | Sebastian Sallow x F!OC| One Shot Collection

Strawberries & Cream

This scene will likely feature in my fifth year AU WIP but was written for a discord writing event with the theme 'Cupids arrow' (the theme is there if you squint really hard, I promise.)

Content: Bickering is a love language. They're insufferably fifteen. Two orphans idiots insisting they're not in love with each other. His mouth says "I'm not in love" but his body language says "I burn for you". Aurélie would like it to be known that they absolutely did not go on a date and if anybody says otherwise, they're lying.

~x~

Jammed uncomfortably into a too-small table in the corner of the cramped tea shop, Sebastian Sallow wore a scowl as dark as his all-black outfit. As far as his meticulously crafted plans to save his sister went, taking a French girl to fucking Steeply & Son's for an outing that she repeatedly, with much tenacious finger-pointing and foot-stamping, insisted was "not a date!" wasn't something he'd ever thought to factor in. Now, instead of spending an otherwise productive Saturday afternoon sneaking into the Restricted Section to nick another book he'd been eyeing (“Hexes and Hiccups: An Unintentional Villain's Spellbook”), he was hunched over a doily-covered table while Aurélie cast a critical eye over the assortment of tiny cakes piled on a platter between them. 

Sebastian didn't have time for carefree forays into the village to sample cakes and sip tea; when September slipped quietly into October, Anne's condition had worsened. When Halloween ushered in November, she'd gotten worse still. And now that December had arrived with unrelenting sheets of snow, Sebastian could practically see his twin sister fading before his very eyes. Every moment he wasn't working towards a cure was a moment he didn't have to spare.

Most days, it was all Sebastian could do to keep from screaming. Most nights, he did not sleep. More often than not, he was short-tempered and argumentative. But did nobody understand the gravity of the situation? — That if he lost his sister, he'd lose himself, too? That if he lost her, his heart would remain eternally homeless, adrift in a snowstorm of grief, frozen in place forever and ever? 

Sebastian's scowl darkened. All around him, happy couples made gooey eyes at each other. Opposite him, Aurélie held up a cake between her thumb and forefinger as if it were an active dungbomb and let out a long, drawn-out sigh. 

'But why are they so small?' she asked for the third time in a row. 

Sebastian squinted at the micro-dollop of buttercream and what he guessed was a sliver of strawberry atop the teeny cake and answered, for the third time in a row, 'I told you. To maximise their profits.'

Repeatedly he’d tried to warn her that Steeply & Son's was renowned for their overpriced, undersized pastries, and that if she was expecting a tea shop run by a woman with a hunchback in Hogsmeade village to be anything remotely close to her beloved boulangeries back in France, she was bound to be bitterly disappointed. But had she listened to him? No. And now here she was, disappointed by cake just as he'd predicted. 

“I told you so” burned so hot on his tongue he thought he'd combust if he didn't say it out loud. Somehow he managed to swallow it back, but it scorched all the way down to his stomach. 

Visibly sulking, Aurélie set the little cake back on the platter and stared at it for a long, mournful moment before declaring, 'I want to leave now.'

Sebastian spluttered. 'What? We just got here!' he argued, but the red-headed embodiment of moodiness was already on her feet, hastily gathering her coat, scarf, extra scarf, woolly gloves and fluffy blue hat with a pout that deepened by the moment.