we are billions of beautiful hearts [grey]

[Deleted]

Camping. The concept was simple enough: pitch a tent, stay someplace overnight, be at one with nature, or something like that. Even though the concept was simple, Cecelia was still worried about putting her and Grey's plans to go camping in action. They had spent snatched minutes of time together since Grey had gone to Auror training, but nothing like overnight since the training program had started. Her schedule and Grey's were incompatible, at best, since he was at training all day and she was up observing the stars all night. Dusk and dawn were about the only times that they could feasibly be together, but the Auror program left Grey exhausted and Cecelia didn't want to take up precious time that he could spend sleeping. She sometimes resented herself for that - she was sure that Grey wouldn't begrudge her an hour or two together, but she was already having a hard enough time with the idea of him being an Auror, and she didn't want to make either of them resent the other for the path that they were taking. That was one surefire way to make a relationship implode, and if there was one thing in the world that Cecelia was going to fight to protect, it was her relationship with Grey.

In any case, Grey had had a long enough break that their plans to go camping were going forward. Cecelia hadn't had much to contribute to the trip, since she had never been camping before. She had gotten some groceries so that they could eat during the trip, and of course her ration of blood so that she wouldn't have to bite Grey, but other than that, she had nothing. Grey was bringing the tent and some other supplies, and more importantly, himself. The idea of being in the middle of nowhere with Grey was strange, but it would be nice to be able to catch up and just spend uninterrupted time together.

grey xavier slater

[grey xavier slater]

@cecelia

The camping trip was beyond necessary. Training lately had been…difficult. Physically and mentally. He had anticipated it to be tough with an insane learning curve, and while the training wasn’t exactly the hardest, doing it all day every day was the draining part. He assumed he and the other trainees would get used to it eventually but it was still the beginning, and this was the weeding out process. A good portion had already dropped and there were times where he too wondered if being an auror was what he still wanted to do as a career. Those thoughts had existed for months now and yet he was still committed to completing the training, or at the least, making it until the end and then deciding on where he would go next. There was nothing bad that could come from extensive dueling training or learning how to deal with common criminals. If anything, arming the general rabble in such a way was a hell of a way to stop the dark witches and wizards from doing what they did best: killing people.

Those thoughts had to be set aside though. He had a Friday free, which was practically unheard of, and now was better than never to go on the camping trip that he and Cecelia had been planning for the last few months. They hadn’t managed to do much aside from the odd dinner (or breakfast for her at times), but that wasn’t exactly either of their faults. Their careers just didn’t line up currently, and that was fine. Eventually everything would fall into place. He was sure of it. In the meantime, he was going to take advantage of the chances he did have to spend time with his girlfriend. Making sure that this wasn’t anything less than a camping trip to remember was the current goal. Packed into a bottomless bag, Grey had the majority of the supplies required. Cecelia was getting the food, and he had the tent, sleeping bags, and everything else he could think of whilst rummaging through his parents’ camping supplies. They hadn’t asked any questions, which was pretty common for them, but he was also kind of disappointed. With how much he had spent at work, he still hadn’t brought up Cecelia to any of his family members. It would happen one day. That day just didn’t happen to be today.

Backpack and bag loaded with the supplies on his person, Grey disapparated from home and to Cecelia’s apartment building. It was easier than popping straight inside the building, and the back alleys around there were typically quiet. Weird that he even had to think of things like that. Entering just like he normally did, he headed up to her apartment, only stopping once he got to her door in order to knock on it.

[Deleted]

There was a knock on the door, and Cecelia didn’t even bother looking through the peephole. She knew it was Grey, because she had only given her apartment’s address to a few people, and Zander and Bay rarely had the time to drop by, since they were off doing their married-life things. Cecelia still had a hard time remembering that her sister was married sometimes, but she chalked that up to not being in attendance at the wedding and adjusting in general to Braelynn’s physical presence in her life again. Cecelia swung open the door, smiling broadly at Grey and stepping back so that he could enter the apartment. “Hey.” She greeted, ever the epitome of eloquence. Cecelia gestured to the groceries that she had on the counter of her small kitchen. “Do you want to check and make sure I got everything? I realized that not having gone camping puts me at a disadvantage for knowing what to buy.” She had asked some people at the market that she had gone to, and they had been more helpful than she had anticipated as far as suggesting what foods to bring with her that would be easy to cook over a campfire, but some of their suggestions just seemed… weird. Like marshmallows. It seemed to Cecelia that bringing candy to eat with you on a camping trip was a waste of space, since you could eat it just as well any time, but she had been told to get marshmallow and chocolate and American graham crackers. She hoped that Grey knew what they were supposed to do with those ingredients, because she didn’t have a clue.

grey xavier slater

[grey xavier slater]

@cecelia

Hearing the handle of the door click before it actually swung open was always the best part of visiting her. There was a mini buildup, starting with entering the building, and ending with Cecelia standing in the doorway. The transition from training to this was literally the door to the apartment. “Hey,” he returned the smile. That seemed to be their go to now. It was simple. As she stepped to the side to let him in, Grey dragged himself over the threshold and towards the kitchen, which Cecelia pointed out had all of the groceries they would need for the trip. Grey set his bags of equipment down on the floor next to the counter and studied the groceries, pulling back the sides gently, not to disturb the stacked contents within. Everything looked like it was there. While he wasn’t necessarily a sweets person, there were still a few unique camping treats that passed. Like s’mores. He had already seen graham crackers and chocolate bars amongst the bags, but as he made it to the last few, he was starting to lose hope about the marshmallows. Surely Cecelia knew that those were the main ingredient in them, right? If she had grabbed the other two components, the third was practically a no-brainer. Then again, she had never had muggle take-out before he had brought it over, so anything was possible. “Looks like everything is there,” he said as he peered through one of the last bags to see if his precious marshmallows were there. Doing one last run to the store wouldn’t be the worst thing possible, but it would set them back a few minutes of setting up the tent at their campsite. He wanted to get as much as possible done before it got pitch black out. “Are there marshmallows? I may have missed them in there somewhere…” Grey asked as he turned to face her slowly.

[Deleted]

Grey returned her greeting, and Cecelia just kept smiling at him, wondering if there was a protocol for how long one could smile at their boyfriend before it became weird. She was going to assume that there wasn’t, but since Grey was busying himself with checking the bags of groceries that she had gotten, he wasn’t going to notice her smiling too much, she hoped. Cece knew it probably would have been prudent for her to check Grey’s supplies as well, but she didn’t know what she was looking for the way Grey did – it would just be a waste of time and probably put the supplies in a state of disarray when they didn’t need to be. Her boyfriend said that it looked like everything was there, and Cecelia let out a relieved sigh… until he asked about the marshmallows. “There should be.” She responded, making her way over to the groceries that were sprawled on the counter. Cecelia had noted the marshmallows especially because she thought they were bizarre to bring – she wouldn’t have made a note of bringing something against her better judgement if she didn’t actually buy them, right? Cece moved to the bags that Grey had just looked through, pawing through them quickly to see if somehow his eyesight had drastically diminished since they had last seen each other, and Grey had just missed them somehow. But no… there were no marshmallows to be seen. “I’m sorry, Grey.” Cecelia said with a sigh. “I thought I had gotten them.” She added, though her stressed, neat-frantic reaction to his question had probably been indicative of that already. “What’s our game plan?” Cece asked. She wasn’t sure how set Grey was on having s’mores. If he wasn’t, then they could just make bastardized versions without the marshmallow, but if he wanted s’mores, then s’mores Grey would get, even if it meant having to stop in a store again.

grey xavier slater

[grey xavier slater]

@cecelia

The question of whether or not there were marshmallows somewhere within the bags of groceries was turning into more of an investigation with every passing second. He had already looked through all of the bags, but it had also been just a glance into each; from his experience, bags of marshmallows were malleable in a way that other foods weren’t. Their puffy, light nature allowed them to be wedged in between larger, sturdier objects without much effect once they were brought out of their package. Having that sort of rebound ability meant that they could still be somewhere within the piles of grocery bags. There was still hope. Cecelia came over as well and began doing her own search as he took a few of the ones closest to him to conduct his own deeper inspection, making sure to actually take items out to see if the marshmallows had been hidden all along. His were empty, and as he finished the second round on the bags, he looked up to see where his girlfriend was at with hers. The outcome didn’t look good on her end either, as she apologized for thinking she had picked them up. “It’s not the end of the world,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Where’s the closest market from here? We can just run over quick and pick some up.” A little adventure never hurt anyone either. There was a good chance they would something else they’d need as well, because that almost always happened to him when he thought he had everything necessary for a trip. Quickly packing the food items he had torn out of the bags he had searched through, Grey double checked all of his gear to see if anything was missing just in case. It looked like everything was good, as it had when he left home earlier, but there was no telling. “Ready?”

[Deleted]

Maybe it wasn’t the end of the world that she had somehow forgotten marshmallows, but Cecelia couldn’t help but think that it didn’t bode well for her that the camping trip was starting off on a bad foot, before they even got to the campsite. Grey asked where the closest market was, and Cecelia thought a moment before answering him. “There’s a grocery store about three blocks away, where I got all of this.” She replied. “They definitely have marshmallows.” Cecelia knew, because she had seen them, and even held a bag of them up for inspection, since she had never eaten anything of the sort before. She was still mildly angry that she had forgotten them after everything she had done. “How do we want to do this?” Cecelia asked. They could lug all of the gear with them to the store and go to the campsite from there, or they could go to the campsite and do two different things – one of them setting up the tent while the other went to find the forgotten marshmallows. The latter would kind of defeat the point of doing everything together, but it would also be a lot simpler, and probably get them fewer strange looks in the grocery store. Cecelia had already had to avoid enough looks for her unusual paleness and unwillingness to open her mouth, lest the Muggles see her fangs, so she wasn’t sure she wanted to endure more awkwardness at the hands of Muggles when she could just go hide in a forest.

grey xavier slater

[grey xavier slater]

@cecelia

Three blocks away. That wasn’t that far, and definitely wouldn’t take them all that long to get over and back. Grey wasn’t sure why he was treating this like a time sensitive matter – yes, they did have to go quick to avoid pitching the tent in the dark, but they also had magic to brighten things up a bit, and it wasn’t like getting there would actually take a ton of time. Again, magic made everything simple. Cecelia said that they definitely had marshmallows at the grocery store, and he nodded his head, practically confirming that he was going to make the run over as soon as possible. It would be fun to act like normal people once in a while too. Walking amongst the muggles had always been an interesting experience, and amidst them shopping was even better. The fact that they would never know the amount of power both he and Cecelia had was a thrill. “Good. Sounds like that’s the place then,” he decided to say, not sure if his head motions were enough in this situation. She asked how they wanted to approach this, and he assumed that meant either bringing everything with them and going from the store, or running over, picking the marshmallows up, and then returning to her apartment once again to leave. Either worked for him, really. “I’d prefer not to lug all of the equipment and groceries over there, if we can just as easily come back here first,” he offered up. “And I don’t know how long we’ll have to hike once we get to the forest, so the less time spent carrying all that, the better.” His muscles would be thanking him the next day too. Way too much time in training had been spent dragging heavy things around, which he thought was ridiculous since levitation charms worked just as well, if not better, and required minimal amount of spent energy. But maybe that was his laziness showing.

[Deleted]

Grey said that the grocery store that she had referenced sounded like the place, and Cecelia gave a sharp nod of confirmation. Grey said that he’d prefer not to lug all of the equipment and groceries over the store, and Cecelia couldn’t agree more. He had a better idea than her, though. Rather than Apparating to their campsite, setting everything up, and going back to the grocery store only to complete the hike again when they were finished, they could leave the supplies at her apartment and come back there after getting the marshmallows. “Are you sure you’re not a Ravenclaw?” Cecelia asked with a laugh. Grey had been thinking much more logically in the whole situation than she had, which was a shame, considering both of her sisters were Ravenclaws, and she should have been at least somewhat able to replicate their logical nature.

“I guess we’d best be on our way, then.” Cecelia said. The quicker they could nip out to get the marshmallows and return, the better. Even if they did have magic to illuminate their campground if they needed to, Cecelia would rather do it in the natural daylight. Speaking of daylight, though… Cecelia needed to bundle up to make sure that she didn’t accidentally get a life-threatening level of sunburn. Luckily, she had taken to having various cover-ups strewn around her apartment, and she pulled on a full-body, robe-esque satin cover-up. She looked ridiculous, but she’d rather look a little strange than accidentally end up with her skin peeling off or something disgusting like that. Cecelia checked the pocket of her extra cover-up, and found that she had stuffed the change from her previous grocery excursion in it. Excellent – now they were really prepared to go.

grey xavier slater

[grey xavier slater]

@cecelia

Him? A Ravenclaw? That was the funniest thing he had heard in weeks from anyone. If anyone in his family was going to be a Ravenclaw, it would have been Claire. He wasn’t anywhere close to being academically inclined past what he felt was necessary for his career, and even then there wasn’t much motivation towards it. At graduation, he probably would have won an award for being the laziest Ravenclaw that had ever existed. That was an indisputable fact. Regardless, Gryffindor fit him better when it came to his morals, whenever he decided to act on them. “I had a long discussion with the hat on that one,” he teased. Applying himself to school work had been important the first few years at Hogwarts, but the hat had seen through that years earlier. Turning into what he was by seventh year was inevitable. “Gryffindor was a better fit for me. Let me do what I wanted, when I wanted. Don’t think I could deal with the mental hurdles the Ravenclaws put themselves through all the time.” Not all of them were like that, but it was more than not. In Gryffindor, nobody expected much out of him. He liked that.

Grey nodded his head as Cecelia agreed that they should head to the store. Making sure he had his wallet and anything else that would be important while they were out, he mostly watched her as she layered up with all her jackets and whatnot. “Impressive,” he said, clapping his hands softly. “Can’t imagine having to do that each time you want to step outside during the day. They haven’t come up with a sun-proof potion or sun lotion specifically made for vampires yet?” It seemed logical that with the legislation normalizing vampires and werewolves, something like that would exist. Werewolves had wolfsbane, why couldn’t vampires have something to help them as well? “Shall we?” he asked, heading towards the door and holding out his hand for her.

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Cece chuckled when grey said that he’d had a long discussion with the hat about his hat placement. The Sorting Hat had asked her if she wanted to go to Ravenclaw, but Cecelia hadn’t been particularly bothered with which house she ended up in, so apparently the hat had chosen the house that it thought was the better fit, and had just offered the option to her to be polite – or maybe because she could have succeeded there, if she had really wanted to. But she hadn’t wanted to, so it was all a moot point anyways. “Ravenclaws try too hard.” Cecelia said, as breezily as she could manage while remembering that Desirae’s trying too hard in the service of the wrong person had gotten her killed.

Grey said that her various layers were impressive, and even went so far as to clap his hands for her. Cecelia rolled her eyes at that – it wasn’t like she had much of a choice in the matter. “That’s why I don’t go outside unless absolutely necessary.” She replied. She always made a list before she left her apartment, because accidentally forgetting something resulted in having to do twice the amount of work as she originally would have – hence why she was more than a little miffed at the lack of marshmallows in her shopping bag. “I’m sure they have, but potions lose their effectiveness if you use them all the time, don’t they?” She asked. She wasn’t a stellar potions student but she did know that the body could build up resistance to various potions ingredients, which was problematic for people. “Putting on the clothing is easier in the end. Makes it less likely I’ll miss a spot.” It would be awkward if she had random sunburns just because she hadn’t gotten the lotion all over her skin. Grey offered his hand to her, and Cecelia took it. “No time like the present to find some marshmallows.” She grinned.

grey xavier slater

[grey xavier slater]

@cecelia

Ravenclaws trying too hard was an understatement. While he was lazy and unmotivated most of the time in school, he still knew how to get work done – the school paper was indicative of that working out successfully in his favor. The things Grey happened to be interested in were completed with a level of efficiency and accuracy that was absent from everything else in his life. Why waste time on something that didn’t matter or he could always learn once it became applicable to his life? There were very few situations in which he would not be able to go to a bookstore, find a book on what he needed to know, and learn about it right then and there. Assuming perfection to that degree was why there were so many anal retentive people out there. Claire had certainly fallen for that trap set by his parents. “Agreed. Comparing stress levels and grades is too much for me.”

Watching Cecelia get prepared to outside was, while impressive, as he had stated, also somewhat somber. He knew that it was ultimately her choice in becoming this, but it was so excessive just trying to live normally. While most things in London could be completed around dusk, that wasn’t the case today. “Do they?” he returned the question. Passing NEWT level potions didn’t mean that he recalled everything they learned, let alone whether or not effects wore down after extended usage. He was more concerned with whether or not he could make the thing first. Once it looked like she was finished, she took his hand. “Let’s make it quick. Longer we take, the more you have to be subjected to this,” he said, pointing at himself. “So lead the way,” he added, bumping her shoulder with his as they stepped out of her apartment.