RP log - Seamus and Mandy
Who: Seamus and Mandy
Where: Pleaides Theatre and then Mandy's flat
When: Sept 2, afternoon-ish
What: Seamus's jealous streak reveals itself, and it's not necessarily a bad thing
Rating: R for sex and language
Euterpes Corner was getting much too troublesome, Mandy decided as she exited the hotel room that she'd thankfully been able to book while the fire alarm charms had been going mad back in the building. One of these days she was going to have to talk to Charlotte about finding another place to live. The problem with that was that she'd actually have to talk to Charlotte. Which was even worse that poltergeists, unhygienic pets, and oversensitive alarms all rolled up into one. One of these days, she'll have to talk to her sister about moving. But not today.
Today she was bringing lunch to Finnigan again. She didn't do it often, since she didn't want him to start thinking that he could expect such service, but she was in a good mood from finally getting a good night's sleep (having him sleeping beside her didn't hurt, either), so she figured she could be thoughtful and generous.
Her altruistic and benevolent act was stymied, however, by the simple detail of him not being in the carpentry shop. Mandy considered waiting for him there, then decided that it was too pathetic, so she simply left the food on his table. If he came back before any of the crew stole it, he could have his chicken souvlaki. If not, well, that was just too bad, wasn't it? It wasn't Mandy's responsibility to make sure that he was fed.
...still, it wouldn't hurt to see what he was up to, just in case he was trapped under a pillar somewhere. Or chatting up one of the understudies.
She was on her way to the outdoor patio when an olive-skinned man with flashing black eyes crossed her path. Upon seeing her, he broke out into a brilliant smile. "You're Mandy, aren't you?" At her puzzled look, he explained, "Seamus has a picture of you on our family and girlfriends board. You are by far the most beautiful woman there."
Mandy's interest was instantly piqued. "Really?" she said, giving him a dazzling smile of her own. Maybe she wouldn't have to worry about understudies after all. "Tell me more."
Cesar smiled.
By the time Seamus returned from loading the massive backdrop that the paintshop had created into the theater, Cesar was working every bit of his Latin charm on Mandy, leaning close to speak softly in her ear and make her smile with all the pretty compliments. Not that he was really on a girl-stealing mission; Cesar just had something of a compulsion to hit on anyone attractive who crossed his path. He and his own girlfriend were very "adventurous", and would have been happy to have Mandy and/or Seamus over to play, but he certainly wasn't trying to upset anyone. If it had been anyone else's girlfriend he was flirting with, Seamus would have laughed it off as "Cesar being Cesar".
However, Mandy was his girlfriend, and that made everything different.
As soon as Seamus saw them, he felt a rush of hurt and furious feelings unlike any he'd had in quite some time. He stalked up to the two of them and gave Mandy a pointed look. "Can I see you outside?" He didn't seem to be leaving options other than agreeing open.
Cesar was just in the middle of comparing Mandy's eyes to a clear summer sky when Seamus came up. Mandy pulled back, still smiling. Even if she didn't take Cesar seriously and she actually preferred Seamus's less flowery but more sincere compliments, she loved being told how pretty she was.
Her smile faded when she saw the look on Seamus's face, however, and instantly she went on the defensive. "What?" she demanded, not budging.
"Outside, Mandy," he snapped. "Now."
She probably hadn't really meant anything by it, Seamus knew. The fact remained that he didn't like seeing Cesar hanging all over her and her smiling at him while he did it, and Seamus intended to tell her so.
Somewhere in there Cesar had murmured an excuse to get going and disappeared back into the theatre, but Mandy didn't even notice. She was too busy glaring at Seamus, who seemed to be speaking to her as if she were a dog who'd just peed on the carpet. All right, so maybe she shouldn't have encouraged Cesar quite so much, but she'd only been doing it because she knew it didn't mean anything to either one of them. It wasn't as if Finnigan had caught them in flagrante delicto.
"I am not a dog you can order around," she hissed, but she stomped past him to head up to the patio.
Seamus stomped right after her, snarling back as they walked. "I wasn't ordering you like a dog! I asked if I could see you outside, and you insisted on making an issue of it!"
"You butted into a conversation and then ordered me around like a dog," Mandy snapped back, finding it patently unfair that he'd accuse her of being the one who started this. He was the one who'd started making demands!
"Oh, a conversation!" he sarcastically declared, flinging the door to the outside open. "Is that what that was? Because it looked more like negotiations!"
"Negotiations for what, exactly?" Mandy asked furiously. She stepped out, but as soon as he was on the patio as well, she whirled around to glare at him. He'd better not be implying what she thought he was implying.
The very next instant he had the door shut and her pinned up against the brick outside wall of the shop. "Nobody touches you like that but me," he whispered harshly, his lips just a hair's breadth from hers. "Nobody talks to you like that but me. And for Merlin's sake don't encourage them when they try it, or I'm gonna end up fired and arrested on assault charges."
Damn, but he was hot when he was being all furious and possessive. Mandy really shouldn't be getting turned on by his ire, but there was just something in the way he was barely restraining himself that made her feel like he was this close to simply taking her up against the hard, brick wall and showing her that no one else was going to do it for her like he could. It made her feel as powerful as the Dark Lord Himself, to have that much force of personality at her command.
She forgot her own anger. She forgot the fight they'd just been having. All she could think about was making him close the tiny distance between their lips and then finding a dark corner where she could put all that aggression and passion to better use. "Merlin, you are so hot right now," she breathed, and grabbed him for a hard, hungry kiss.
When she was kissing him like that, he couldn't think about fighting with her. He was actually thinking about exactly what she thought he was: taking her up against that wall and making her moan and scream and keep it up until she swore she'd never even think about messing around with anybody else.
Seamus kissed her thoroughly, finally breaking the kiss with a gasping breath and grabbing the door handle to just barely crack it open and shout into the shop "Going home for lunch!" The door slammed back shut, and without asking her permission he apparated himself and Mandy straight to her bedroom, where she soon found herself pinned up against a different wall entirely. "'m serious, Mandy," he whispered as he yanked her skirt up over her hips. "Next time, you tell him to back the fuck off."
"It didn't mean anything," she said breathlessly, trying not to get her arms tangled with his as she reached down to shove down his trousers. "Just talking." But there was too much talking going on at the moment, so she cut off any reply he might make by surging up to kiss him again.
"He was practically drooling down your top," Seamus shot back when the kiss broke so he could pull her top over her head. He'd managed to wrench its tiny little fastener open with undue force while she was kissing him. "And you were giving him that look."
Mandy really didn't want to be continuing this argument, not when they had much better things to do with their time. So even though she wanted to deny it, she didn't. "Fight later," she ordered, holding up her arms to help him get her top off. Once that was done, she immediately set to doing the same to his. "Fuck now."
Well, it wasn't as if they hadn't already known it was going to be passionate-to-the-point-of-violence jealousy-fueled angry sex. Seamus did exactly as she asked and then some, and by the time he was finished with her they were both gasping for breath and had to collapse onto the bed because neither of their knees would hold them up anymore. It took a few minutes before either was even capable of speech.
"That didn't do much in the way of negative reinforcement, did it?" Seamus finally sighed, running his fingers slowly through her hair.
"I'm going to make you jealous every day," Mandy raved, amazed at just how good that'd been. They'd always been great together in bed, but that'd just blown away everything she'd ever thought she knew about sex.
That answered that question, then. "Augh, you'll kill us both," Seamus groaned, but he rolled over to pull her close anyway. "And you're lucky that one was with someone I know! If some stranger in a pub tried that shite I'd have punched him in the face, and what would that do about all the "Oh no, what boyfriend, Charlotte?" business?"
"Good point," Mandy said with a grimace. "I do so hate it when you're practical." She wrapped her arms around him, though, and rested her head on his chest despite the sweat they'd worked up. "But it would've been fun."
"Yeah, well, I'm sure Cesar will be happy to let you try it out on him now and then," Seamus snorted. "But I swear, if I ever think you for real mean it, someone's gonna die."
"What if you just channel your homicidal tendencies into shagging me senseless?" Mandy suggested. "Because that was amazing. I didn't know you had it in you, Finnigan."
Seamus gave a sideways shrug and a half smile, having a hard time grumbling at her in the face of that sort of review. "Didn't know you liked it like that," he simply replied. "But if you want a bit of rough now and then, sure and I won't argue."
"So hot," Mandy repeated, thinking back to the patio at the theatre and how he'd staked his claim to her right up there against the wall. She was getting excited all over again just thinking about it. "Must have more often."
"Duly noted," Seamus said, chuckling quietly. "Just do something to make me angry and wink at me or something. I'll get the hint. Or a simple "Oh Seamus, I have been a naughty, naughty girl and desperately need to be punished" will work."
Mandy laughed at the image, then quieted down a bit. He was funny; she liked that. She liked a lot about him, in fact; much more than she originally thought she would. It'd been two months since they'd first gotten together -- the longest she'd been with anyone -- and she hadn't gotten bored at all. It was worrisome when she thought about it, really, because she'd never thought she'd be with him for so long. When she'd first agreed to be his girlfriend, she'd thought that it wouldn't last very long. And here she was, still with him, with no end in sight.
But when he held her like this, and she could feel the steady beat of his heart, it was hard to worry too much about when she should be leaving him. Still, she sobered a little as she tilted her head up to kiss him. "I left souvlaki on your work table," she told him. "Someone's probably already eaten it."
Seamus smiled faintly; he always liked those occasions when she brought him lunch. It was one of those nice things that made them seem almost normal. He could forget the bits of secrecy and head games when they had those times, or in moments like this when she snuggled up and kissed him.
"Nah, food's one of those sacred things you don't mess with in the shop," he said. "You can nab a cigarette or kiss a bloke's girlfriend, but you don't take his lunch. Though I'm gonna have to have words with Cesar about the girlfriend thing."
Mandy, who'd been opening her mouth to remark on the girlfriend thing, grinned. "It's all right to kiss a bloke's girlfriend as long as it's not yours?" she teased.
"As long as it's not you," Seamus clarified. "I've had girls who I didn't care if she wanted to snog somebody else in a round of cast party spin-the-bottle. You...well, you're different."
He got possessive of Mandy in a way he never really had with previous women. He didn't feel tied down by her, and she never bored him...the truth was, Seamus was afraid he'd gotten in deeper with Mandy than he'd ever planned to. It had been bad enough when what was supposed to be just casual sex for the purpose of fun and distraction had turned into really liking her and wanting an actual relationship. Now it was even worse; now he was pretty sure that he'd gone and fallen in love with the crazy woman. Given their circumstances, that couldn't possibly be good.
"Really?" She liked the sound of that. She'd sometimes wondered who he'd been with before, who'd taught him to do that little nibbling thing he did with his lips, and always felt a surge of rage towards the unknown woman, who'm she'd always envisioned as having the same sort of smug self-righteousness that Potter and Patil and the rest of the Gryffindors did. She liked the idea that he liked her more than anyone else he'd ever been with, because she certainly felt the same about him. She hoped it wouldn't go further than that, though. This couldn't possibly last, and she had to be able to walk away when it was all over.
In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to fish for more compliments. "How?"
"I never really used to be the jealous type, for one thing," he answered, smiling teasingly. Obviously that was a bit of a problem now. It wasn't all, though. Seamus let the smile drop, and thought of all the ways in which things were different with Mandy than with other girls. It was hard to explain exactly how it felt, at least in a way that would make sense to her. "'dyou ever do any uppers?" he asked. "Speed, Jolt potion, anything like that?"
"Sometimes," Mandy admitted, wondering what this had to do with anything. She wanted to hear more about how she'd turned him into the jealous type. "I was so addicted to Jolt in Amsterdam. Everyone drank it there."
"Okay, so...you know how when you're on it, everything's about a hundred times more intense?" he continued. "Sharper, brighter, stronger, feels better or hurts more...your heart's beating so hard you can feel it in your ears and your brain's vibrating and your skin's on fire and you thank god it's expensive or you'd just do it all the time and never, ever come down?" She'd get that, he thought. Anyone would. It made sense, and it was rather disturbingly the most accurate metaphor he had at his disposal. "You're like that, for me. And everyone else is just caffeine by comparison."
It was funny: first he'd compared her to an ocean that was unpredictable and likely to smash him to bits, and now he was comparing her to an expensive and addictive drug. Coming from anyone else, it wouldn't have sounded so complimentary, but somehow he made each comparison so sincere that it was impossible to take fault with them. They moved Mandy more than Cesar's pretty but empty odes to her eyes.
"All right, I get that," she said, and barely managed to stop herself from telling him that he felt the same for her, that when she was with him she felt like she was alive for the first time in her life, where everything was more intense and brighter, and that when she saw the world through his eyes, it seemed so much happier and less depressing.
She quickly switched topics, because now she was getting as sentimental as he was, and that wouldn't do. "So how's the new production coming along?"
"Going well," he said, tracing his fingertips idly along her hip and her waist. "We're running ahead of schedule, which almost never happens on a musical. The TD's really good, though, and he had all his shite planned out perfectly before we ever started cutting boards. And we got the last drop hung today, which means...if I call out for the rest of the day, it'd probably be fine."
Calling out of work wasn't Seamus's usual habit. Most of them he was obnoxiously responsible about going to work and being on time and doing his part. Today just seemed like a good time to make an exception, despite the fact that lunch was waiting there.
In two months, Mandy had come to realise just how responsible he was -- mainly through trying to get him to stay home from work and having him go anyway -- so when he offered to call out for the rest of the day, she looked at him in surprise. "Really?" she asked, feeling as if she'd just been handed a present out of nowhere. "Then you should do it!"
"Gimme just a second," he said, giving her a kiss and a smile. Five minutes later he'd told Ed he wasn't coming back that day and was back in Mandy's bed with his arm around her waist. "Well, everybody's definitely laughing at me, but I'm cut loose for the day."
Even five minutes was too long for Mandy, who immediately wrapped her arms around him again when he returned to the bed. It was then that she realised that in all the time since Seamus had apparated them back here, the fire alarm charms had not gone off once. Definitely a good sign for a good rest of the afternoon.
"Well," she murmured, as she rolled over onto him, "let's make sure we have the last laugh."
Where: Pleaides Theatre and then Mandy's flat
When: Sept 2, afternoon-ish
What: Seamus's jealous streak reveals itself, and it's not necessarily a bad thing
Rating: R for sex and language
Euterpes Corner was getting much too troublesome, Mandy decided as she exited the hotel room that she'd thankfully been able to book while the fire alarm charms had been going mad back in the building. One of these days she was going to have to talk to Charlotte about finding another place to live. The problem with that was that she'd actually have to talk to Charlotte. Which was even worse that poltergeists, unhygienic pets, and oversensitive alarms all rolled up into one. One of these days, she'll have to talk to her sister about moving. But not today.
Today she was bringing lunch to Finnigan again. She didn't do it often, since she didn't want him to start thinking that he could expect such service, but she was in a good mood from finally getting a good night's sleep (having him sleeping beside her didn't hurt, either), so she figured she could be thoughtful and generous.
Her altruistic and benevolent act was stymied, however, by the simple detail of him not being in the carpentry shop. Mandy considered waiting for him there, then decided that it was too pathetic, so she simply left the food on his table. If he came back before any of the crew stole it, he could have his chicken souvlaki. If not, well, that was just too bad, wasn't it? It wasn't Mandy's responsibility to make sure that he was fed.
...still, it wouldn't hurt to see what he was up to, just in case he was trapped under a pillar somewhere. Or chatting up one of the understudies.
She was on her way to the outdoor patio when an olive-skinned man with flashing black eyes crossed her path. Upon seeing her, he broke out into a brilliant smile. "You're Mandy, aren't you?" At her puzzled look, he explained, "Seamus has a picture of you on our family and girlfriends board. You are by far the most beautiful woman there."
Mandy's interest was instantly piqued. "Really?" she said, giving him a dazzling smile of her own. Maybe she wouldn't have to worry about understudies after all. "Tell me more."
Cesar smiled.
By the time Seamus returned from loading the massive backdrop that the paintshop had created into the theater, Cesar was working every bit of his Latin charm on Mandy, leaning close to speak softly in her ear and make her smile with all the pretty compliments. Not that he was really on a girl-stealing mission; Cesar just had something of a compulsion to hit on anyone attractive who crossed his path. He and his own girlfriend were very "adventurous", and would have been happy to have Mandy and/or Seamus over to play, but he certainly wasn't trying to upset anyone. If it had been anyone else's girlfriend he was flirting with, Seamus would have laughed it off as "Cesar being Cesar".
However, Mandy was his girlfriend, and that made everything different.
As soon as Seamus saw them, he felt a rush of hurt and furious feelings unlike any he'd had in quite some time. He stalked up to the two of them and gave Mandy a pointed look. "Can I see you outside?" He didn't seem to be leaving options other than agreeing open.
Cesar was just in the middle of comparing Mandy's eyes to a clear summer sky when Seamus came up. Mandy pulled back, still smiling. Even if she didn't take Cesar seriously and she actually preferred Seamus's less flowery but more sincere compliments, she loved being told how pretty she was.
Her smile faded when she saw the look on Seamus's face, however, and instantly she went on the defensive. "What?" she demanded, not budging.
"Outside, Mandy," he snapped. "Now."
She probably hadn't really meant anything by it, Seamus knew. The fact remained that he didn't like seeing Cesar hanging all over her and her smiling at him while he did it, and Seamus intended to tell her so.
Somewhere in there Cesar had murmured an excuse to get going and disappeared back into the theatre, but Mandy didn't even notice. She was too busy glaring at Seamus, who seemed to be speaking to her as if she were a dog who'd just peed on the carpet. All right, so maybe she shouldn't have encouraged Cesar quite so much, but she'd only been doing it because she knew it didn't mean anything to either one of them. It wasn't as if Finnigan had caught them in flagrante delicto.
"I am not a dog you can order around," she hissed, but she stomped past him to head up to the patio.
Seamus stomped right after her, snarling back as they walked. "I wasn't ordering you like a dog! I asked if I could see you outside, and you insisted on making an issue of it!"
"You butted into a conversation and then ordered me around like a dog," Mandy snapped back, finding it patently unfair that he'd accuse her of being the one who started this. He was the one who'd started making demands!
"Oh, a conversation!" he sarcastically declared, flinging the door to the outside open. "Is that what that was? Because it looked more like negotiations!"
"Negotiations for what, exactly?" Mandy asked furiously. She stepped out, but as soon as he was on the patio as well, she whirled around to glare at him. He'd better not be implying what she thought he was implying.
The very next instant he had the door shut and her pinned up against the brick outside wall of the shop. "Nobody touches you like that but me," he whispered harshly, his lips just a hair's breadth from hers. "Nobody talks to you like that but me. And for Merlin's sake don't encourage them when they try it, or I'm gonna end up fired and arrested on assault charges."
Damn, but he was hot when he was being all furious and possessive. Mandy really shouldn't be getting turned on by his ire, but there was just something in the way he was barely restraining himself that made her feel like he was this close to simply taking her up against the hard, brick wall and showing her that no one else was going to do it for her like he could. It made her feel as powerful as the Dark Lord Himself, to have that much force of personality at her command.
She forgot her own anger. She forgot the fight they'd just been having. All she could think about was making him close the tiny distance between their lips and then finding a dark corner where she could put all that aggression and passion to better use. "Merlin, you are so hot right now," she breathed, and grabbed him for a hard, hungry kiss.
When she was kissing him like that, he couldn't think about fighting with her. He was actually thinking about exactly what she thought he was: taking her up against that wall and making her moan and scream and keep it up until she swore she'd never even think about messing around with anybody else.
Seamus kissed her thoroughly, finally breaking the kiss with a gasping breath and grabbing the door handle to just barely crack it open and shout into the shop "Going home for lunch!" The door slammed back shut, and without asking her permission he apparated himself and Mandy straight to her bedroom, where she soon found herself pinned up against a different wall entirely. "'m serious, Mandy," he whispered as he yanked her skirt up over her hips. "Next time, you tell him to back the fuck off."
"It didn't mean anything," she said breathlessly, trying not to get her arms tangled with his as she reached down to shove down his trousers. "Just talking." But there was too much talking going on at the moment, so she cut off any reply he might make by surging up to kiss him again.
"He was practically drooling down your top," Seamus shot back when the kiss broke so he could pull her top over her head. He'd managed to wrench its tiny little fastener open with undue force while she was kissing him. "And you were giving him that look."
Mandy really didn't want to be continuing this argument, not when they had much better things to do with their time. So even though she wanted to deny it, she didn't. "Fight later," she ordered, holding up her arms to help him get her top off. Once that was done, she immediately set to doing the same to his. "Fuck now."
Well, it wasn't as if they hadn't already known it was going to be passionate-to-the-point-of-violence jealousy-fueled angry sex. Seamus did exactly as she asked and then some, and by the time he was finished with her they were both gasping for breath and had to collapse onto the bed because neither of their knees would hold them up anymore. It took a few minutes before either was even capable of speech.
"That didn't do much in the way of negative reinforcement, did it?" Seamus finally sighed, running his fingers slowly through her hair.
"I'm going to make you jealous every day," Mandy raved, amazed at just how good that'd been. They'd always been great together in bed, but that'd just blown away everything she'd ever thought she knew about sex.
That answered that question, then. "Augh, you'll kill us both," Seamus groaned, but he rolled over to pull her close anyway. "And you're lucky that one was with someone I know! If some stranger in a pub tried that shite I'd have punched him in the face, and what would that do about all the "Oh no, what boyfriend, Charlotte?" business?"
"Good point," Mandy said with a grimace. "I do so hate it when you're practical." She wrapped her arms around him, though, and rested her head on his chest despite the sweat they'd worked up. "But it would've been fun."
"Yeah, well, I'm sure Cesar will be happy to let you try it out on him now and then," Seamus snorted. "But I swear, if I ever think you for real mean it, someone's gonna die."
"What if you just channel your homicidal tendencies into shagging me senseless?" Mandy suggested. "Because that was amazing. I didn't know you had it in you, Finnigan."
Seamus gave a sideways shrug and a half smile, having a hard time grumbling at her in the face of that sort of review. "Didn't know you liked it like that," he simply replied. "But if you want a bit of rough now and then, sure and I won't argue."
"So hot," Mandy repeated, thinking back to the patio at the theatre and how he'd staked his claim to her right up there against the wall. She was getting excited all over again just thinking about it. "Must have more often."
"Duly noted," Seamus said, chuckling quietly. "Just do something to make me angry and wink at me or something. I'll get the hint. Or a simple "Oh Seamus, I have been a naughty, naughty girl and desperately need to be punished" will work."
Mandy laughed at the image, then quieted down a bit. He was funny; she liked that. She liked a lot about him, in fact; much more than she originally thought she would. It'd been two months since they'd first gotten together -- the longest she'd been with anyone -- and she hadn't gotten bored at all. It was worrisome when she thought about it, really, because she'd never thought she'd be with him for so long. When she'd first agreed to be his girlfriend, she'd thought that it wouldn't last very long. And here she was, still with him, with no end in sight.
But when he held her like this, and she could feel the steady beat of his heart, it was hard to worry too much about when she should be leaving him. Still, she sobered a little as she tilted her head up to kiss him. "I left souvlaki on your work table," she told him. "Someone's probably already eaten it."
Seamus smiled faintly; he always liked those occasions when she brought him lunch. It was one of those nice things that made them seem almost normal. He could forget the bits of secrecy and head games when they had those times, or in moments like this when she snuggled up and kissed him.
"Nah, food's one of those sacred things you don't mess with in the shop," he said. "You can nab a cigarette or kiss a bloke's girlfriend, but you don't take his lunch. Though I'm gonna have to have words with Cesar about the girlfriend thing."
Mandy, who'd been opening her mouth to remark on the girlfriend thing, grinned. "It's all right to kiss a bloke's girlfriend as long as it's not yours?" she teased.
"As long as it's not you," Seamus clarified. "I've had girls who I didn't care if she wanted to snog somebody else in a round of cast party spin-the-bottle. You...well, you're different."
He got possessive of Mandy in a way he never really had with previous women. He didn't feel tied down by her, and she never bored him...the truth was, Seamus was afraid he'd gotten in deeper with Mandy than he'd ever planned to. It had been bad enough when what was supposed to be just casual sex for the purpose of fun and distraction had turned into really liking her and wanting an actual relationship. Now it was even worse; now he was pretty sure that he'd gone and fallen in love with the crazy woman. Given their circumstances, that couldn't possibly be good.
"Really?" She liked the sound of that. She'd sometimes wondered who he'd been with before, who'd taught him to do that little nibbling thing he did with his lips, and always felt a surge of rage towards the unknown woman, who'm she'd always envisioned as having the same sort of smug self-righteousness that Potter and Patil and the rest of the Gryffindors did. She liked the idea that he liked her more than anyone else he'd ever been with, because she certainly felt the same about him. She hoped it wouldn't go further than that, though. This couldn't possibly last, and she had to be able to walk away when it was all over.
In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to fish for more compliments. "How?"
"I never really used to be the jealous type, for one thing," he answered, smiling teasingly. Obviously that was a bit of a problem now. It wasn't all, though. Seamus let the smile drop, and thought of all the ways in which things were different with Mandy than with other girls. It was hard to explain exactly how it felt, at least in a way that would make sense to her. "'dyou ever do any uppers?" he asked. "Speed, Jolt potion, anything like that?"
"Sometimes," Mandy admitted, wondering what this had to do with anything. She wanted to hear more about how she'd turned him into the jealous type. "I was so addicted to Jolt in Amsterdam. Everyone drank it there."
"Okay, so...you know how when you're on it, everything's about a hundred times more intense?" he continued. "Sharper, brighter, stronger, feels better or hurts more...your heart's beating so hard you can feel it in your ears and your brain's vibrating and your skin's on fire and you thank god it's expensive or you'd just do it all the time and never, ever come down?" She'd get that, he thought. Anyone would. It made sense, and it was rather disturbingly the most accurate metaphor he had at his disposal. "You're like that, for me. And everyone else is just caffeine by comparison."
It was funny: first he'd compared her to an ocean that was unpredictable and likely to smash him to bits, and now he was comparing her to an expensive and addictive drug. Coming from anyone else, it wouldn't have sounded so complimentary, but somehow he made each comparison so sincere that it was impossible to take fault with them. They moved Mandy more than Cesar's pretty but empty odes to her eyes.
"All right, I get that," she said, and barely managed to stop herself from telling him that he felt the same for her, that when she was with him she felt like she was alive for the first time in her life, where everything was more intense and brighter, and that when she saw the world through his eyes, it seemed so much happier and less depressing.
She quickly switched topics, because now she was getting as sentimental as he was, and that wouldn't do. "So how's the new production coming along?"
"Going well," he said, tracing his fingertips idly along her hip and her waist. "We're running ahead of schedule, which almost never happens on a musical. The TD's really good, though, and he had all his shite planned out perfectly before we ever started cutting boards. And we got the last drop hung today, which means...if I call out for the rest of the day, it'd probably be fine."
Calling out of work wasn't Seamus's usual habit. Most of them he was obnoxiously responsible about going to work and being on time and doing his part. Today just seemed like a good time to make an exception, despite the fact that lunch was waiting there.
In two months, Mandy had come to realise just how responsible he was -- mainly through trying to get him to stay home from work and having him go anyway -- so when he offered to call out for the rest of the day, she looked at him in surprise. "Really?" she asked, feeling as if she'd just been handed a present out of nowhere. "Then you should do it!"
"Gimme just a second," he said, giving her a kiss and a smile. Five minutes later he'd told Ed he wasn't coming back that day and was back in Mandy's bed with his arm around her waist. "Well, everybody's definitely laughing at me, but I'm cut loose for the day."
Even five minutes was too long for Mandy, who immediately wrapped her arms around him again when he returned to the bed. It was then that she realised that in all the time since Seamus had apparated them back here, the fire alarm charms had not gone off once. Definitely a good sign for a good rest of the afternoon.
"Well," she murmured, as she rolled over onto him, "let's make sure we have the last laugh."