Oh! You Pretty Things!

The French countryside’s mornings were small events that Baird McLaggen could truly see himself getting used to.

He woke that morning to the sound of hummingbirds and the cheeky trills of robins darting about in the trees outside. The balcony doors had been left open during the night and the soft breeze that rustled the thin net curtains and ghosted over the softness of their skin had cooled the temperature in the room to something largely more bearable than the stifling smog that had reigned over the southern peninsula of the wine, bread and cheese country that the Ravenclaw found himself in. No, that morning, it was perfect.

The sunshine was already bright in the sky, glistening gold in the great swathing pool of never-ending blue. The light danced in on the back of the breeze, combing through the hair that drifted in the light air, ghosting across the cheeks of those that had glistened in their slumber, curled around each other, their limbs entwined in a manner that suggested an unconscious need that neither would admit aloud. In the dream world they’d succumbed to, all was said and nothing held back. It was with a wistful, contented smile that Baird woke to find them tangled the way they were.

Lifting his hand out from beneath Sonia’s arm, Baird reached up and smoothed back some of her dark, flyaway pieces of hair back behind her ear. He tipped his head forward, allowing himself to inhale deeply the fresh, strawberry scent of her hair before lifting it once more and letting his eyes fall across her gently like the ebbing tide against the golden particulates of a beach.

Bringing his head down once more, Baird pressed a butterfly kiss on her neck, barely a flicker of his lips against her skin. He pressed a little firmer against her then as a revelled in the milkiness of its taste on his tongue. He dragged his lips down the length of her neck and darted them over her shoulder, bruising his nose along her collarbone as he did so.

Baird’s arm snaked back around his girlfriend’s waist and slipped his fingers beneath her top to rest his palm against her stomach. His fingertips tickled gently against the gentle outline of her ribs in her skin and he leaned further into her, curling his leg around hers as he drew closer, willing them to implode into each other if it meant he could keep the warmth she provided him with forever.

Eventually, the press of his fall bladder made lying any longer almost unbearable and Baird regrettably had to slither out from underneath the covers. He tucked them carefully around them Sonia, so as not to abate her heat, and then hastened to the en suite bathroom where he relieved himself with an audible groan of simple delight. After flushing and washing his hands, Baird snuck back into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of sweatpants.

Sleeping naked was fine. What he was sure both he and her parents would protest to would be walking in on him stark-bollock naked too.

After that, Baird crept back into bed and settled once more behind Sonia, content just to watch her, knowing that it wouldn’t be long until she too would traipse into the land of the living, refreshed and famished, ready for something to sate herself with. And Baird hoped, perhaps crudely, that she could sate herself with him as well as a hearty breakfast.

The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and the entire scene looked like something out of Cinderella. But no Disney princess had ever slept with such a scandalously dressed man in her bed.  

Sunlight was hitting Sonia's cheeks and bit by bit she became more conscious of the bed beneath her, sheets above her, and warmth radiating on her back. In sudden rustling movement she turned over and opened her eyes to see the best view she could imagine. "Morning." she mumbled, thoughts still slightly clouded by sleepiness. Sonia leaned over and stole a quick kiss from her almost-lover, a content smile on her lips.

Sonia tugged the sheets down slightly, the combined warmth of the sun and Baird's body making her almost too hot. The pleasantly cool summer air that came from the window tickled her breasts and stomach in the most pleasant way possible. Looking over to her bedmate she felt surprisingly naked in just her bra and panties, though it was normally him who was so much more exposed than her.

Several birdsongs drifted through the open window as well as the undercurrent of the breeze, combining to make a beautiful symphony that rang of the coming of autumn. She hadn't seen Baird nearly enough over the summer but the perfection of this moment made up for it with leaps and bounds. It never felt like any time had passed with him. The pair always picked up right where they had left off in an incredibly natural way.

He looked so peaceful, laying there on her pillows. It was hard to image that this was the same boy who she managed to get in screaming matches with and wrestle with and occasionally draw a knife on. No, these were the moments when things seemed almost normal between them. Their steady heartbeats and shared warmth between the covers. Baird was beautiful - there was no other way to phrase it. And it was in moments like this that Sonia remembered just how special her boyfriend really was.

Sonia took Baird's hand in hers and laced their fingers together. "How did you sleep?" she asked, the sleepiness disappearing from her tone, though the tenderness remained.

The human need for companionship had always mystified and, understandably, interested the Ravenclaw philosopher and scientist in Baird McLaggen. Consequently, it also gave him buds of butterflies flowering in his stomach and a discomfort in his jeans that couldn’t be relieved without some serious attention paid to a particular area. Of course, that was all part of the investigative process. Sleeping without a shred of clothing between his self and Sonia was something he enjoyed immensely and that, too, was part of the investigative process. He liked to see how his self control could go, would go, and so far he was doing oddly well. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was entirely ill at ease with the whole thing, he would’ve congratulated himself.

Sonia was a Slytherin. Slytherin Sonia. Sonia Slytherin. She wasn’t someone who Baird would’ve voluntarily joined with in any partnership, let alone a mutually exclusive romantic partnership. Needless to say, the idea was disconcerting but Baird could see many a decent reason as to why he’d want to continue such a charade. The first of many reasons, decent ones, was that he rather liked having a blobby, unmercifully soft creature curled up beside him more often than not. Now, that wasn’t to say Sonia was fat in any way but the human condition was so dreadfully interesting, females in particular, and while males were ropey and, well, masculine, there was this layer of soft, err, blobbiness about females that made them prime for nuzzling.

This was the first thing he had learned, trialled and proven to be correct in Sonia and there were many more that followed. Kisses helped, too. Kisses helped immensely and it was for one of those special little pecks of the lips that Baird reached for when he found his girlfriend had graced him with her glorious presence.

“I most definitely support you waking up like this every day,” he encouraged with the smooth drawl he’d developed over the summer as he’d wound up his mother, her screaming at him that he sounded like his father. Of course, he did cease when she started throwing things. It was totally unnecessary to destroy the urn of their deceased feline-creature once known as Richard III despite no other Richard’s in his immediate feline family predeceasing him. Nevertheless, that was his name and after spooning his remains into the fixed urn, Baird decided to call it quits.

Lacing fingers together was an important thing - a girl thing, he noted. Sonia liked to do it. Baird preferred to plant both hands on her chest and squeeze. Although, that wasn’t deemed appropriate any time or any place for reasons he had yet to discover. Through the thin, sheer material of her bra which did about as much lifting as it did concealing - not a lot, if you needed clarification - Baird could see most clearly the pieces of husky skin, swirling rather darker than the rest of the milky plane, that he rather liked the look of in the bright morning light.

Baird lowered himself down into the bed until he was head height with her chest. His fingers were nimble and lithe around the straps of her bra and he lifted it fluidly, slipping it away from her shoulder slowly, tantalising and teasing himself as bit-be-bit more skin was shed into the golden light of the morning.

Her words registered just as the skin changed in its colour from milk to blush, pebbling at the very surface, and Baird lifted his head, looking at her with his wide, expressive eyes that betrayed his confusion for a moment before he opened his mouth and nodded enthusiastically.

“Wonderful, truly wonderful. You have a very soft bed. In fact, I’d wager you couldn’t disrupt the comfort even with a pea! That woman from that fairytale would be hard pressed there. Perhaps we should test it!”

Baird scrambled up, Sonia’s chest momentarily forgotten as he had a brainwave that was, understandably, stupid, but what he considered absolutely logical and brilliant.

“We’ll go into the village,” he declared, bouncing on his knees. “And we’ll find every young virgin it has and we shall take them back here and test their sensitivity to all things pea-like and while we do that we’ll also try and distinguish whether they detest frozen peas over freshly picked ones and, also, we’ll cause arguments in many of the local families when they find out some of their precious ones aren’t, in fact, virgins. Why we need virgins, you ask? I’m not sure. It just seemed like a good thing to base my findings on. Perhaps we’ll find every young woman in the village, instead. Test virgins opposing, uh, non-virgins. We’ll start with you, Nia. Where do you keep your extra mattresses?”

Sonia let out the softest of sighs as she felt Baird's eyes traveling her body - specifically in the chest region. Unashamed on his gaze he scooted down to get, what she interpreted as, a closer look. Far from being concerned with his posture, she reveled in it, his stare bringing a new kind of heat upon her skin. Sonia would have thought he must know her head to toe by now - she often caught Baird examining bits of her, from the curve of her thighs to the creases on her forehead when she laughed. He seemed indefinitely interested in every aspect of her and she was a willing lab rat, subconsciously eager to let him unravel her, inside and out.

Her question sunk in and he jumped up, clearly enchanted by a new possibility that had popped into his head. Baird explained his plan and Sonia laughed, a crisp sound in the morning air. She rolled on to her back, staring up at Bear's figure hovering above her. "I'm not sure if we have any spares. But there's an unused one in the guest room down the hall and there may be another in the attic for storage. I'm afraid our selection may not be at par for our needs if you want to recreate the legend. " That was the thing about Bear - half of what he said rode the line of being taken seriously or taken as a joke. Over the course of dating him, Sonia had discovered that in most cases it was the former. He never joked about scientific study.

She sat up, a thought striking her. "And there's another problem. How will we tell the virgins from the non-virgins? Girls who have been deflowered might not admit they've been whoring around, while those who are still perfectly innocent may say they're not." Sonia leaned back against the headboard and smiled. "We must find a way to test them if this data is going to be truly accurate."

Part of her felt as if she was joking while part of her knew she was serious. If Baird wanted to round up the virgins than Sonia knew he would do it with or without her help, and she much preferred his company to being alone. There was something comforting about him for Sonia, and she longed to be closer, even when they were less than an inch apart. Looking over the bed and rumpled sheets, Sonia considered how nice it would be to fall back into them with him. But a day of adventures was clearly waiting to be had, as it always was when they got together.

Besides - there was always the fact that Sonia knew where she would fall on his data sheets - the virgin side.