Welcome to the Fitzgerald Residence (tag Cleo) on At Home

Parker Fitzgerald

April 30, 2020 9:21 AM

Welcome to the Fitzgerald Residence (tag Cleo) by Parker Fitzgerald

A part of his hair kept sticking up. No matter what he did it still flipped up. He licked his hand again and stuck it to the top of his head pressing down. Parker gingerly lifted his hand off and… the piece of hair popped back up.

“Ugh,” he said, throwing up his hands before sticking them under the faucet and washing them. He turned his face side to side. He was excited for today. Today Cleo was going to be at his house and nothing, not a piece of hair or anything else, could stop his excitement. He knew part of it was a planning session with Lyssa, who had a binder ready for the event, but it was the combining of his two worlds. As he walked out of the bathroom he found Lyssa leaning against the wall outside. She just raised her eyebrows multiple times at Parker and smiled.

“Looking good lover boy,” she said before sliding into the bathroom.

Parker walked down the hall to their living room, an iron stove resting in the middle instead of a fireplace with the kitchen sitting behind it. He smiled, remembering the good times they’d had around the stove, and winced slightly at the memory of a man standing in his kitchen that had brought him and his sister to this place. He turned, his back to the kitchen, standing in their living room looking out the wall to wall windows that showed the whole wide valley beyond. It being summer the green grass was growing about two miles away in the meadow that was the bottom of the valley before it rolled up again into smaller foothills. Parker took a deep breath. It was nice to be home, but it was nicer that JR and Tes weren’t there today. He wasn’t sure he wanted to introduce Cleo to them just yet. To be honest, it was enough that she was going to meet his mom.

At that moment, Susan Fitzgerald came out of the master bedroom that was off the side, a bundle of excited energy. She’d been baking and getting Parker to clean since the night before. She had already asked Parker what Cleo’s favorite Muggle food was. Parker had to explain to his mom, again, that the food wasn’t really all that different between the two worlds, but she had tutted him and said, that was no answer at all and grabbed two cookbooks down from the shelf and started putting post-its on pages.

“Parker, can you go clean up the magazines please?” his mother directed him from the kitchen, waving her hand vaguely towards the living room. For a moment, Parker reached towards his wand and then stopped. He was pretty sure that would have been a violation and so shuffled over to the coffee table littered with magazines and other detris that showed humans lived here.
Picking up the magazines, he was intrigued by one of his father’s magazines called Dwell. The headline read, “A Perfect Garden To Go With Your Perfect House”. Parker put it to the side to read later, picking up the rest of the magazines in his hands.

“Mom, Where do these go?” He asked over his shoulder.

“Umm…” he could hear his mom thinking. He knew she would want to put them out of site, but if they were too far out of site, no one would think about them again for another few months to a year, and then there would be a giant pile of magazines that she’d go through to make sure there weren’t articles she still wanted to read in them. This was not the first time this had happened, and Parker assumed it would not be the last.

“Can you put them in your dad’s office? There should be an empty milk crate in there,” she said and Parker dutifully walked down the hallway, past the bathroom where he could hear Lyssa singing softly to herself and into their dads office.

He gingerly pushed the door and stepped in seeing his dad on the phone.

“Yes, well the beams will need to be braced otherwise the weight of the room won’t be evenly distributed,” John Sr was saying as he waved Parker in. Parker held the stack of magazines in his hands looking around for this mysterious empty milk crate his mom had been talking about.

“What are you looking for sport?” John Sr. said putting his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Mom said there was a place to put these in here?” Parker turned around in place. It almost, almost, looked like a tornado had torn through the office. His father's desk cluttered with papers, stacks of contracts and boxes of who knows what lined up against the wall. The only piece that was clean being his drawing board on the back wall and his computer keyboard.

Parker’s dad waved towards the bookcase next to the drawing board.

“Put it in there somewhere and we’ll find it eventually,” he said with a wink.

“No Jason, I’m still here. Yes, that would probably work fine,” John Sr. said, his voice going back to work mode. Parker put the magazines down and saw a book titled “Topiary and the Art of Training Plants”. Parker picked it up, flipping it over to read the back. He held it up so his father could see and pointed to it. John Sr. nodded and gave him the thumbs up while still on the phone and Parker backed out slowly taking the book with him.

He walked back down the hall and threw the book on his bed before heading back towards the living area. Lyssa, fresh from the bathroom, seemed to have taken over the newly freed coffee table area and was pulling out papers from the binder and putting them down.

“Come on Lys, I just cleaned that,” Parker said.

“And I thank you for it Parker,” Lyssa said, not looking up from the sorting of papers and making notes.

Parker stood for a moment staring at Lyssa as she moved papers around. He could feel his heart beating a bit faster and his right heal vibrated off the ground even as he stood. He was staring out the window thinking of nothing when the doorbell rang, jerking him into motion as he almost ran to the door.

He pulled open the door with a smile. From behind him he could hear his mom yell, “Make sure you offer her slippers Parker!”

Parker couldn’t help it and he let out a nervous chuckle.

“Umm, Hi. Welcome to my house. As my mom has said, if you’d like,” he pointed to one side of the entryway where slippers sat waiting for owners, “feel free to take off your shoes and put on some slippers. Otherwise, you can keep your shoes on. Lyssa seems to have… a small war room set up inside. Afterwards we can go outside and enjoy the garden though.”

OOC: As the writer of Lyssa I gave myself permission to write her parts in.

41 Parker Fitzgerald Welcome to the Fitzgerald Residence (tag Cleo) 1402 1 5

Cleo James

May 12, 2020 7:35 AM

Thanks. It's... impressive. by Cleo James

Cleo tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, took a deep breath and rang the doorbell, trying not to feel intimidated as she looked around. It was undeniably a beautiful location. And a beautiful house. Very beautiful. And very big. Parker had visited their tiny little apartment for her birthday, of course. She was almost relieved she hadn’t been to his house prior to that. On the whole, she knew that other people’s homes tended to be bigger than hers was. For starters, they often had at least twice the people living in them. Sometimes bringing in two incomes. Not usually ‘twice’ the income. Not if at least one of them had a comfortably middle class job. Then it was much, much more…

Still, she did not want to trade lives, and nor did she think Parker was going to be judgemental. He had been her friend even after seeing her own home, and had still invited her to his.

She hoped she was dressed okay. It had been hard to work out what to wear. Was this a… date with Parker or a meeting with Lyssa? Or both? Even if it was a date with Parker, what did she wear for those? There had been the ball, of course, but the thing she was finding nicest about Parker right now was that it didn’t feel like she had to stop being herself to be around him. It felt like they could carry on doing the things they usually did - which, for the most part, involving grubbing about in the garden.

She had worn the neat and tidy version of clothes that she didn’t mind getting dirty. She doubted a lot of literal getting dirty would be on the cards, but it felt comfortable, and it felt appropriate both to hanging out with Parker and doing planning with Lyssa. She was wearing jeans, but reasonably well fitted ones that weren’t permanently grass-stained, and a pale purple t-shirt with ‘Two peas in a pod’ in swirling writing, accompanied by a little smiley cartoon that depicted just that. Her ears, once again, were adorned with the plastic sunflowers, which she thought would forever remind her of Parker, even though they had actually been a present from her grandma.

The door opened, and Cleo found herself relaxing as it was revealed to be Parker on the side. Smiling at her. She couldn’t help but smile back. It was always fun seeing people in their everyday clothes after so long at school. Of course, they didn’t wear their uniforms outside of class. He was currently what she thought of a dinner time Parker. Not wearing his robes, not in scruffy clothes for doing the gardening. Just… normal, every day stuff. Except that a part of his hair was sticking up at a funny angle. She did her best not to stare at it.

“Hi,” she smiled. “Hug?” she added, holding out her free arm. The other one was currently supporting a small, open wooden box which she’d transfigured a large handle onto for easy conveyance.

“Sure,” she nodded, changing her sneakers for the indicated slippers. Slippers felt a slightly funny thing to borrow from someone else, but it seemed like the polite thing to do.

“That sounds great,” she smiled, more about the promise of the outside than the war room. She was looking forward to finding out what Lyssa had for them. She was sure it would be useful and helpful, and that at at least one point she was going to feel out of her depth or stupid. Not because of Lyssa or how she said anything. She was nice and a good teacher. It was just the fact that Cleo was three years older than her but needed teaching all this stuff that Lyssa somehow just… knew. Well, Cleo thought, glancing around at the very different lifestyle she could see in the hall alone. Not ‘somehow.’ Like this. “I can’t wait to see your garden. Or, well, I can and I have to I suppose,” she joked. She needed to earn it through hard work. “Can I say hi to your mom first and give her these?” she added quietly, indicating the basket. It contained radishes, runner beans and cherry tomatoes, all of which showed the wobbly unevenness of being decidedly homegrown. “And are they...okay?” she checked regarding the gift. Flowers were, she knew, a more traditional ‘thank you for having me’ but she and daddy had never been particularly flowery people.

13 Cleo James Thanks. It's... impressive. 389 0 5