The Music Academy

I've Got You Under My Skin by Frank Sinatra

~A~

Owen stared across his office. He was really just killing time before his music lesson with Sang. Well, now that they were back after Christmas break, the time in which he would have an undivided corner of his music room with her and she would try to focus on what he was teaching her.

God, when had it all gotten so complicated?

He sighed heavily and ran a hand over the back of his head before pulling his glasses off and pinching the bridge of his nose.

He really was running his own little academy.

It was like... the little academy on the prairie.

The two of them, heads of their team, teaching all of their family in one room. They got the assignments from the teachers and let the kids study on their own. Administered tests and did what they could to provide individual attention and class for them.

Which meant violin one on one time for Sang... piano time for Victor. Japanese for both of them with Sean. As a slight bonus, they were actually all going to test out for the classes they hadn't been taking.

Because they were all studying together anyway. And throughout the school year, if someone had been assigned homework duty, they were doing all of it anyway.

He should just pull them all out and homeschool.

Wouldn't Hendricks just love that.

He snorted softly and pressed his fingertips into his eyes gently.

This assignment was going to kill them.

He'd thought at the most that it would fracture them until one day, out of nowhere, a little quiet blonde bird dropped into the middle of them and stole all their hearts and became their focus. He'd almost broken down at camp and begged for another team to join them at the school because it would be so much easier with more people around.

That night in the woods, when Sang cried in his arms, he'd been on the verge of going to talk to the Council. To admit that they had to have Sang with them... that they were all hopelessly in love with her and that they couldn't continue to put her at risk at the school and they just... needed her with them.

He'd been composing his speech as he walked until she ran, as if by a miracle, straight into him and he hugged her tight to him to keep her from falling before he truly realized who he was hugging.

Owen sighed again and put his glasses back on.

She was like a splinter.

She was under his skin but instead of being annoying like a splinter was until you figured out that it was a splinter and you could take care of it, she was just part of him.

She'd stolen his heart and he kept his dreams of her locked deep in his heart.

I've got you under my skin

I've got you deep in the heart of me

He reached for the apple on his desk. He might as well have something to balance out his blood sugar levels before he went into the classroom with the others. There was only so much tea one could drink in a morning and he was starting to believe he'd had enough Earl Gray tea for a long while.

He rubbed the apple on his sleeve, absentmindedly thinking back to the conversation he'd had with Sean this morning on the way to school.

Sean had held up his choice of apple and raised an eyebrow. "You always eat honey crisp apples, Owen." He said, his tone of voice teasing.