baby don't hurt me
_{no more.....}

Stupid bloody owl always needing things. If it wasn't one thing it was another and really, Alek had no idea why he kept the bastard around when he just kept costing him money or you know, being stupid. The ruddy owl had slammed into the wall the night before and now he was spending most of his break having to go get the fool medicine and a splint for the broken wing. He just wished for a one minute that he could love Oddball a little less, so that he could get another owl, or you know another pet that Oddball wouldn't eat. That one time with the pet rat had not been fun to wake up to, let me tell you.

He walked through the shop and carried the cage, looking around for the things that he was going to need to fix up the ruddy bastard. He grabbed the things and stopped to pet some of the babies that they had sitting around and debated it for a few minutes. Oddball was over ten years old. He was not going to be around too much longer and then he was going to need a new owl. Would it be wrong of him to bring a new owl home now and let Oddball be spoiled? Was that mean to do? Would it be wrong of him to want to?

Fuck it. He got the small cage and watched with a smile as the little bird that he had been petting hopped onto his shoulder. "Well that answers that then, hm?" As he turned he almost hit a small young woman with Oddballs cage and he nodded to her. "My apologies Ma'am."

Lucy Janet MacGuffin | OUTFIT | 284

Eeylops Owl Emporium was, without a question, Lucy’s second favourite shop in Diagon Alley right after the Magical Menagerie. She had even helped out a couple of times in both shops during the time of her training as a nurse — not as often as she might have done if Elliot hadn’t been at St Mungo’s and she had spent almost every free minute trying to cheer him up, but still, repeatedly. Maybe she could even properly get a job at one of the places? She didn’t have magic anymore, so there was a limit to what she could do as a nurse. But no, she couldn’t give up her job at St Mungo’s. The Healers were the ones who had it hardest without magic. They knew what had to be done to a patient, but they couldn’t perform the spell. They had to suffer so much that they couldn’t help like they wanted to. She, on the other hand, had needed magic mostly for small tasks that could also be done manually. Much more of her time she spent listening to the sick, especially those who rarely got visited by their family. It was just as important as the medical treatment, nobody would convince Lucy otherwise. Lying in a hospital bed and being absolutely helpless was one of the most despairing situations she could think of with her memories of both Elliot’s wretched condition after his back injury and of half the country, including herself and her family, suffering from the flu this autumn.

She had recovered, and though she had lost her magic, she hadn’t really lost too much. It was inconvenient and had made her reconsider her wish to study at Lig-na-Paiste. She couldn’t constantly move between the island and London, it would be just too much. There was of course always the Floo-network, but without being able to perform a cleaning spell, it was more irritating than anything else.

So, she was in London now more often than not so that she’d only have to move between the hospital and Lufkin. And Diagon Alley of course, like today, finding herself once again in the owl shop. She didn’t have the time for a pet right now and all she could reasonably do was buying treats for her parents’ and her brother’s dogs (she made a mental note to stop at the Magical Menagerie later on), but even just watching the owls fly around was a delight to her. So with no other prospect in mind, she ambled through the aisles, stopping here and there. “Oh!” she exclaimed in shock when something nearly hit her. An owl cage she noticed a moment later, one that belonged to another customer that she hadn’t realized was there, lost in thoughts as she had been. “It’s nothing,” she replied, quickly recovering from the surprise. “I should be sorry, I didn’t see you in time.”

---

Words: 484

Baby, Don't hurt me
_{Don't hurt me, no more}

Alek didn’t often allow himself to be caught up in matters of the heart, but rather matters of the mind, and of the body. The soul would follow, or so his mother had always told him. He had once wished for things that most people did but a he had gotten older and his ex had left him because of his commitment to the business that he had started with his friends, well…. Since then he had not really allowed himself any time or a chance to feel things or allowed himself to do anything other than work and the hookups. Yes, there were many of those, but those girls usually weren’t around much. Did that make him a ‘fuckboy’ he wasn’t sure, he didn’t know what was going on half the time if it didn’t involve numbers or booze.

His friends helped him keep himself straight with the ‘wanker’ jar at home but when he was in public or at work there was no such thing so he assumed that he could do what he wanted to do, or he would just… be himself? Was there any difference in that? You can bet your sweet aunt fanny there was. The main part of it was that he cared about things now, about animals when beforehand he hadn’t really even cared all that much about things like that. He had been trying to be better over the years but as his friends well knew, it wasn’t worth trying to make him something that he wasn’t.

A smirk formed on his face and he bounced an eyebrow at the girl as he looked her over. She was younger than he was, that much he could tell for sure, and he could say that he had no idea who she was, because he would have remembered a face like hers. Her voice matched her sweet face and he nodded his head to the lass. ”Well, I am glad we avoided any damage, I would certainly feel horrible about hurting anyone so pretty.” He said, flirting shamelessly. He saw no point in hiding his shame or trying to not flirt like the man-child that he was.

tag: Lucy Janet MacGuffin // words: 365 // OUTFIT

template by eliza @ TB THQ

Minor accidents occurred to Lucy on a daily basis. It was hard to avoid when you walked too fast with your head in the clouds — or in her case on the animal she was currently studying. There were in fact so many things that demanded her attention, it was hard to just concentrate on what was happening in front of her face. She could focus on tasks of course. She had no problem being fully precent when assisting a Healer or while composing an essay. Her daydreaming only happened when she was strolling around and forgetting that there existed other people in the world that didn’t exist to be run over by her — though, in her defence, she liked to point out that she was definitely not massive enough to cause much damage to the victims of her thoughtlessness.

So, used as she was to collisions, she recovered quickly and was mostly just glad that the stranger took it with such good humour — even if it wasn’t exactly her type of humour. “Oh, fie,” she snorted, failing to be melodramatic while torn between grinning and glaring up at the man before her. “Are you going to tell me you’d have been fine hurting someone ugly?” Men said weird things in jest, she had learnt this much during her time on this planet. Apart from Elliot of course, but her brother was perfection anyway. It wasn’t like anybody could ever come close to being as wonderful as he was. “That’s a really cute owl,” she said, pointing to the animal that had briefly spread its wings but then settled down on his shoulder again. She did prefer to turn the conversation in a direction more to her taste. “Is it yours?” She eyed the other cage that indicated that he already had an owl and didn’t need another one. But then, the other owl might belong to someone else in his family. Or he just needed to send a lot of mail around. Not that she really cared what he used the owls for as long as she could see how comfortable the one owl was on his shoulder. There was really no more heartwarming sight but of a human and an animal getting along.

Baby, Don't hurt me
_{Don't hurt me, no more}

It was not typical to find Alek without the company of a lass. He was a man who liked many women, and the idea of commitment was scary. He had been there before and it had gotten him very hurt. He had almost lost everything that was important to him and his friends because his ex had been a raging brat about the fact that he had had to work to get the place up and going. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the kind of women that he attracted. He was not a rich man, and though he was a handsome man he was not one that really fit inside the box that many people tried to place him in.

He found that his life, his family, and even his background was something that got called into question on a semi-regular basis by his friends. Mason more than the others, but that was because while Mason was his best friend he had seen him go through some shit, and he knew just who Alek was. He wasn't one who stumbled or faltered. Even when things around him started going to shit, Alek kept his head up and kept going. When his mother had died it was something that he had seen his own father have to do, and when his ex had left him. He had picked himself up, wiped his face and kept going.

Life was a series of challenges and one thing that Alek, like many people, was learning; it was not those challenges that molded you into the person that you became, it was the way that you reacted to the things that came your way. Some went through bad things and became serial killers. Some chose to do what he and so many others did, make you stronger. It was an easy choice in his eyes, but it was hard for him to see sometimes that good things would come out of anything when he had been pretending for so long that he was okay.

He laughed softly and shook his head before giving her a wink. "No, lass. I'd not hurt a fly, it's not in me to be cruel really. Well, not intentionally." He was pretty sure that he had broken more than a few hearts but there was nothing to be done about that. Not like he tried to make women fall in love with him. Well, not on purpose anyway. "It will be. My other owl is rather old, so I made the choice to retire him into a life of leisure." He said before giving her a smile.

tag: Lucy Janet MacGuffin // words: 439 // OUTFIT

template by eliza @ TB THQ

There were some sort of men that weren’t that much fun talking to — and that despite how much Lucy liked getting to know people. Usually, if she was friendly and out-going, she’d be met with the same reaction. Everyone was nice, some just had more trouble showing it, but she had time to find out. And if she didn’t, she’d have to take the time. It sometimes was a problem at St Mungo’s because she’d keep talking to patients instead of quickly making her rounds, but she had mostly managed to avoid reproaches by exact planning. It was stressful, but happy patients were more important than how she felt. And yet… there was a certain sort of men… they’d sometimes make weird comments about her. How she looked or… there was just something weird about it, and it made her feel uncomfortable. Who cared what she looked like enough to mention it to her? Certainly not some random stranger. Then again, it was just a weirdness some men had, and that she didn’t see the point wasn’t meaning anything and they just wanted to be nice. And in any case, this stranger before her now had made but one comment, and it was meant in jest. He also had an owl. They were in a pet shop. He therefore cared about animals. The conclusion was clear. He was a nice person, and it would be fun talking to him.

She did blink at the mention that he might be unintentionally cruel, but then immediately stopped thinking about it. This had to be a figure of speech. “Good to know I didn’t run into a psychopath,” she replied with a grin. Not that psychopaths were funny, mental illness was a serious issue that desperately needed treatment, but he had answered her so seriously, he had sounded comical to her. Then again, Lucy had never much trouble to find good-hearted humour even in the most dire situation when any other person would, if they had still any sense for the comical left, react with harsh sarcasm. Yet, this was nothing that Lucy could ever find amusing — and if it was just that such a situation was beyond her imagination. She used all of that to convince herself that everyone and everything around her were intrinsically good. “The lucky bird,” she said. “That sounds like a good way to grow old. Does his replacement already have a name?” She stretched out her hand to pet the little thing before realizing that she had asked for the owl’s name not even knowing who she was talking to. “I’m Lucy by the way,” she said, in the last moment offering her hand to him instead of cuddling the animal.