#florian moinot

[flyswhumpcenter]

Gentle Frostbites [Fever February Day 8 - Keeping It Down]

FEVER FEBRUARY INDEX

Summary: They were right about self-care. He's terrible at it, but he tries his best, as he tries feverishly to prevent himself from going into deliriums.

Fandom: Original Work (PDV)

Word Count: 1.2K words

Notes: yeah it's bad and it's short but heeeeeeh that French essay is wrecking me

AO3 version available here.

They were right about self-care. He’s terrible at it.

All alone in an untidy, messy flat is a student desperately trying to tame down what’s currently afflicting him: a powerful, ill-intentioned strain of influenza. Of course, he would catch it: he has been working a lot lately, hasn’t he?

The only reason he even knows why he’s sick is because Henri brought the doctor to him. Otherwise, really, he was barely able to get up. He’s still barely able to get out of bed as he speaks. Well, thinks, since his voice has gone out this morning. That’s painful, by the way.

His wobbly arm struggles to reach the washcloth which fell from his head not too long ago. He doesn’t remember when exactly, or how, but it fell off. That’s the issue with being sick: the fever is always the worst. It’s always what strikes him the most. Not the cough, not the stuffed nose, not even the muscle aches and the unending want to end it off once and for all.

No, the fever is the goddamn worst.

It’s the worst because, as he is, Florian tends to overwork himself. He knows that. He’s the only one who doesn’t have a problem with it around here. He explains it as passion, the absolute will to power through what fascinates him and encourages him to keep on going and going. He lives for this. He lives for literature, almost in a romantic fashion, wanting to know and master everything he has under his hands.

Other people would explain it as him being a stubborn idiot who can’t ever stop working or thinking about something not his books, or his girlfriend for all it matters. They treat it like he’s been with a girl for the first time: it’s the second, but it’s the first one who knows from the get-go what he really is. Roxanne is amazing and he’s grateful for her: however, she’s a lesbian, and he’s not a girl. That’s not how it works, but they remained great friends after their couple ended in deep respect and profound platonic bonds.

It’s also the worst because it messes with his brain badly. Constant headaches, a sharp pain behind his eyes and all around his head, deliriums, illusions, hallucinations. A real bane. He can’t even read when it’s at its paroxysm: it even hurts to open a book when that happens. He can barely open up his phone, actually. And he always wants to bury himself in his sheets, only to desire moving in a fridge two minutes later, then back to cuddling with the heater.

It’s annoying and counter-productive. How is he supposed to work on an essay or take notes on a fantastic book when there’s such a thing wrapped around his brain?

Fevers also remind Florian of one thing. He’s easily lonely when he’s sick. Back when he still had parents, his mother would stay at home when he was ill. Roxanne would visit after school. Chris and Henri took care of him after classes or on weekends they stayed at school. But now that he lives alone, in his own flat he pays by himself, he doesn’t have anyone to bother with his fevers and his frequent illnesses because he’s always tired.

His fault. His fault, so he doesn’t call anyone over to see him in wrecked state. A ship sunk in blankets.

His hand manages to grab the washcloth. With the tiniest footsteps, he manages to dip it in the bucket’s water. He has to bring the fever down, and fast. It’s not at forty yet, but if it reaches that stage, he’s good for dead. He never knows what to expect from his fever dreams and his deliriums, except either slipping back into his former selves and spewing his dirty secrets around, or get vivid nightmares and failing to access the sleep he needs to recover quickly.

As he wipes the sweat from his face, he thinks of one thing. It’s been a while since Chris and Henri had to guess why he wasn’t attending class, if they even noticed it. Annabelle would probably notice: they attend the same classes. He’s not so sure for Chris, but Henri was the one to bring him the doctor. They should had noticed he was missing, right? Or maybe he sent embarrassing stuff again…

He goes back into his fort of blankets and cushions. It’s freezing and burning all around him. When did he last take fever reducers? He should take his temperature. A thermometer, his mouth, a beeping sound, 39.8. It’s getting dangerous around here. He feels very uneasy, right now, his head is spinning… He can’t pass out now… Not when he’s alone and defenceless…

He hears someone rummage through the door. He has to get up, fast, tell them not to enter. Nobody can see him like that. He looks like garbage. He takes a fever reducer, not giving a damn about when he last took one, and attempts at getting up, but he just falls. His head smashes on the ground, his knees and elbows hurt, his glasses fell off his nose. His vision is blurry.

The door opens by itself, and enters a new character into the play. He wishes it wasn’t her, of everyone who knows where he lives.

“Florian, darling??” a familiar voice screams as she runs towards him on small heels.

He rises his eyes towards the source of the sound. It’s all blurry so he can’t distinguish much, but at least, he’s certain it’s her. The warm colours, the perfume, the voice…

“Anna…belle…?” painfully exits his mouth as he coughs immediately after.

It seems like she gets down to him.

“Oh my god, darling, you look awful… Let’s get you to bed, shall we?”

He just nods. He doesn’t have any energy left to refuse such a thing. She wraps her arms around him, get him up with some grunts and in an ending pant.

“You are burning underneath… You are lucky I was there…”

A few instants later, he’s back in bed, except he’s wearing different cloths and has a fully new washcloth on his forehead.

“You have such a high fever,” she sighs as she looks at the thermometer, “goodness gracious… You need to take care of yourself more, Florian.”

He loves her voice but he also hates the tone she’s taking. He hates hearing her worry in general anyway.

“I tried though…”

Annabelle stares at the nightstand next to her, with something between disdain and upset feelings.

“I see so… Fever reducers aren’t enough and you know it, honey. You also need to rest instead of panicking… You know only a few people have the key to your flat.”

“I guess I never learnt to…”

“Hush now,” her tone gets stern, “your voice is almost gone.” She strokes a hand over his exposed cheek (the other one being buried inside his pillow). “Do you need anything else?”

He just moves his head in a pitiful no.

No, instead, he just falls asleep because he’s more tired than he remembered, but he gets to fall asleep with her smiling to him and wishing him a good night. He can even feel her kiss before it all goes black.

[thepdvblog]

Dandelion - Chapter 5: Watching the Orange Lilies Bloom

Dandelion Directory

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Summary: If I want to feel special, it’s not because of something I didn’t choose.

Notes: Damn, this chapter is much longer than I expected (and much longer than the rest of this story). I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless. I planned it to be the end of Lakanal Arc, but I guess this won't be happening today. Oh well. More story the better, right? It doesn't have as many flowers as I wanted it to be, so expect more flowers to come soon. Also holy shit, warning for intense depictions of dysphoria in this chapter. I don't guarantee you'll have a nice time going through Flo's dark thoughts.

AO3 version available here.

His first year of college goes by peacefully, as he is passing it with flying colours. He is one of the best elements of the class, the quantity of books he reads finally paying off when it comes to Literature essays. Latin is less glorious, as he does not put much effort into it, but it still convinces the professor responsible for it to grant him the points he needs to pass the year in the end.

The almost-tranquillity allows him to perfect his fake Parisian accent and speech. He has been copying his professors ever since the year started in the scope to remove every bit of his origins as possible. He needs to erase everything he once thought he was: a low-class girl with dreams too big for her little life. Removing his Lorrain accent, the one he got commented on by a few classmates upon arriving in Lakanal, is a way for him to get rid of his filthy past. For someone who was almost homeless and in the dirt of the situation, Florian sure looks fine.

 However, the tranquillity is never whole. His dysphoria is nibbling at him any way it can through the testosterone he has set up against it. The more his body changes, the closer he gets to be himself physically and socially, the more his anxiety rises in his veins. What if someone discovers he has been faking his crotch from the beginning? What if his roommates think he is a drug addict by finding the syringe and his hormones in his bedside table? What if they all find out he is not “like the other boys”?

The more he advances, the more he gets impatient. It always feels like it is not quick enough, not soon enough. The changes are slowing down: his voice is starting to get stable, not very low but still sounding genuinely masculine, his acne outbreak is on the slow side, his silhouette includes less and less hips. His new ID card, which he has painfully received through exploiting a few loopholes, is showing the right picture and sex. Finally.

 Inside the dorm room, everyone is slowly unveiling their secrets to each other. Henri confesses he dislikes his parents and decided to live in the dorms not because it was complicated for him to go to Lakanal every morning, but because that way he would get rid of them for most of the week. Christian tells them about his strained relationships with his former classmates who decided to either attend regular college or other Parisian preparatory classes, and Sceaux was a way to escape from them. Henri struggled with depression during high school, Christian has skin diseases still preventing him from having the confidence to engage in relationships.

Florian is surprised to learn both of his roommates are single. Henri comes out to them as homosexual, thus why he is struggling to find a partner: he is afraid of homophobia, remaining mostly closeted around their classmates, having difficulties finding someone to share his life with. Christian is plagued with a previous abusive relationship leaving him feeling like a broken boyfriend, and he is taking his time to heal. Florian himself has the issue of being transgender and not open about it. Who would want that?

 At times, his hand is about to write that name he used to have instead of his on tests and homework he needs to give back, but his wrist always spasms out of it and he writes the right thing instead. His professors are aware of his shady background because he had to explain before why it was impossible to get in touch with his parents, but he knows very well this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is better if everyone remains blissfully unaware.

Honestly, I still stand by this. Nobody but my close friends and family know about it. From everyone I currently know, I can make a full list of everyone who is aware: Chris, Henri, Rox, Eudes, Lilian, Julian… and you, of course.

 He adapts to it all habit by habit. He takes off his binder on the weekend, as told by his doctors, when Christian and Henri go back home for a couple days to see their family once the test is over and everyone who actually has a place to stay in goes back to. Going “back home” has become a foreign feeling, in fact: he has not gotten a real place to call home ever since he realized his parents were going to rob him of one someday, of the one he had always known. The flat in Colombes was at best a temporary solution, his dorm room just does not feel like home because of the restrictions and public nature of it all. It just does not feel intimate, knowing someone has been there before and that someone will be there after, every year, until the end of this dorm room.

He gets used to living on the weekend entirely on his own. He takes advantage of the breakfast on Saturday mornings and the dinner Sunday evenings the dorm’s cafeteria serves as two actual meals he does not have to worry about. The rest is split between groceries stocked in his closet and ready-to-eat lunches he can buy here and there. After all, it is a rare moment of almost complete serenity, the dorm barely inhabited during the weekends and especially the school holidays they get. It would be a waste of an opportunity not to profit from the odd silence.

 As such, his first year of college is split between a few different types of days. There are the class days, the presentation days, the weekend days and, most of all, the mock exam days. They are especially exhausting and, well, his weekend job does not make it easier. By the end of December and May’s mock exam sessions, he is glad to know he will be able to sleep off exhaustion once his Sunday shift is finished. The professors look either sympathetic or downright condescending whenever they stare at him and his dark rings during presentations, stuck between admiring a young boy’s efforts to maintain himself afloat in a difficult condition and despising the mere thought of a student of his kind having this piss-poor of a situation in the first place.

I’m pretty sure this would be called “classicism” in today’s times, but back then, we had no word for it. Perhaps I should have gone against these judgements, but it wasn’t really worth the added effort.

 And yet, Florian rises to the top of the class. His readings from high school to ignore the hard truth of his life and the way he winds up after shifts pay off. Serious, disciplined, mature, remembering easily, always open to criticism despite how hard it can get. He is defined as a model student on his semester bulletins, despite rising concern about how tired he looks. Most of them point out a lack of personality: a solid A-student, but without the punch needed to get into the prestigious ENS of Ulm Street.

I think it was the ever-growing idea that I was too bland and expectable at the entry exam that pushed me even further. My second semester’s appreciations were already more in my favour on that field, even if they kept pointing even more at a poor physical, and perhaps mental, condition. They weren’t wrong.

 The first year of college ends in a hot summer season, at the end of June. It is saddening for the three roommates to leave each other’s company next year. After all, it has a surprising good experience to him: he feels understood and respected, although privacy was scarce and limited on the weekends. When filling his dorm papers for next year, he gets asked by Christian and Henri if he would mind being with them another year. The usually secretive Florian answers with an overwhelmingly happy cry, an “of course I don’t!” his soul pours into his mouth.

It is just a goodbye. They promise to spend time together next year, even if they do not share the same room next year, as they put away their own belongings and leave with the help of their families. Christian has his siblings, Henri has his newly-found boyfriend and younger sister. Roxanne has come to help him too, but because of traffic jams in the region, he is left all alone for a few hours in the almost-empty room.

He feels empty too, now, but he shakes his head and think of summer.

 The summer break goes by in a heartbeat. This time, Florian has found himself a better holiday job for the next two months: instead of being a cashier, he is helping at a library during regular employees’ vacations. Being surrounded by old and newer books feels like paradise. People call him the right way: even if it would get old for anyone but him, the way mothers tell their children “Say thank to the boy right there!” or ask him “Excuse me sir, could you help me with something please?” makes him swoon on the inside. Perhaps the badge he wears on his shirt, given to him to signal the clients he is a helper at the library and not just a student reading something there, is also giving this out.

The fact he works there also allows him to read during his breaks and study right after work is done on the books for the next year. It almost feels like home, when he has to rent a flat for two months because Lakanal’s dorm closes for the two-month break. The other staff members are kind and helpful, giving him advice for his student life inside and outside of school, express how they are going to miss him and how much they would love to see him visit them from time to time if he ever has the opportunity to do so. Among these tips are some about reducing the cost of life, mostly about groceries.

 Despite the happiness he feels when working at the library, his summer break is also reminding him of what he has postponed for most of the school year: his medical appointments. Aside from the therapist he sees every month on a Saturday afternoon, he has to go to a few other specialists and doctors. Included in these is his gynaecologist, the very symbol of his condition.

The very idea of having to see a gynaecologist and not a proctologist is making him nauseous. Every time he puts a foot inside that waiting room, with its pinkish-purple chairs and pastel blue linoleum floor, he feels sick and out of place. It reminds him something is wrong inside of him, something he wants to get rid off but does not have the funds to go through with it. Since he has to wait, he remembers the sentence his Latin professor always tell them and which he cannot deny but applies to so many elements in his life: abstinere et sustinere, “abstain and endure”. He breathes in, breathes out and wait.

In itself, waiting for the gynaecologist to take him in for his appointment should not be this difficult. After all, it is easy to wait for anything as long as he has a fascinating book to read and take notes on. Usually, in a waiting room like this, he reads casually, with no notes taken. However, this is not any waiting room: it is a waiting room that asphyxiates him. He is surrounded by pregnant women, single or accompanied, all speaking among themselves about pregnancy, how many pregnancies they’ve had before this one, commenting on pregnancy-themed posters on the walls, complaining about pregnancy-related issues. And this is always the last streak before Florian feels like crying, rushing to the men’s bathroom to spill tears.

 “Young man,” one of these women asks him this year, “what brings you here?”

She is rubbing her stomach. He feels nauseous again.

“When there’s a boy this young here, it’s to accompany his girlfriend. Where’s yours?” a second woman adds.

He tries not to stare at them in disgust, hides his uneasiness behind a façade.

“Perhaps she’s in the bathroom,” the first woman says, realizing he is alone at the moment.

Florian hesitates on either lying, considering the opportunity given to him, or tell the truth. They arrived after him: he was on page two-hundred-and-five when he arrived, on page two-hundred-and-forty-two when they did. They will know the gynaecologist will not call for any girl, but for a “Florian Moinot”. Maybe he will see them again.

“I’m… I’m here for myself,” he replies earnestly, ready to delve back into his book and pray the MP3 player in his pocket his roommates bought him for his birthday works properly.

 The two women stare at him as if he has just said some irrational nonsense. To be fair, they have probably never met someone like him, someone with the wrong genitals having to suffer the consequences of having these. He is just “a man with a vagina”. This is not too difficult to comprehend, right?

“How come?” the second woman asks, either fascinated or disgusted.

“I just need to…?” he sputters back, hoping the doctor is going to call him in soon.

The first woman almost glares at him, eyes squinting shut enough to seem like they are analysing his entire body.

“Oh, then you can have kids too, right?” she says, a smirk creeping its way on her face as her eyes fixate on his abdomen.

“I wish my man could do that. It’d be easier,” the other woman comments with a similar glance.

 A sudden wave of nausea takes a hold of him, from his unwanted parts to his mouth, eyes watering beyond reason, glasses blurring. Those women are sickening, vile and disgusting. What they said was wrong to the point of bringing him to the limits of bearable dysphoria. He feels lightheaded from all the thorns suddenly appearing all over his body, squeezing the air out of his chest as if his binder was suddenly too tight. He hates getting reminded of all of this mess. He wants to be a normal boy. He wants to be anywhere but the one place to remind him of how bad this all is.

The door opens.

“Florian Moinot?” a masculine voice calls for.

If he could have, the boy would have taken the hand and ran with it.

 Why I feel like this should be told? I know this sounds very cliché and unnecessarily overblown, but I also feel like this needs to be said. I want people not to look at us and think, “oh, this person has the wrong set of genitals, that means they can do this thing and it’ll be exotic!”. It needs to get out there. I want it to get out there and spread the right information.

The discomfort of this visit made me realize something: I’d never be fully safe from being thought off as “exotic” or “special” by people who didn’t understand what it felt to be me. Despite all the supportive people I’ve known in my life, it’s always these two women who come to my mind whenever I get asked why I’m not openly transgender. This is why.

If I want to feel special, it’s not because of something I didn’t choose.

 He gets his driver’s license, but he does not have a car, so he just slips the little piece of pink paper in his wallet and hope to get a car soon enough, probably used, probably after he is out of khagne class. He lands a small job as a cashier again in a small shop near the school on weekends. His library job is too far for him to get it again just for days where he does not have classes, but he still knows it is better than having no money on hand.

This all feels like the “adult life” the teachers were speaking about in high school. The life they would not want later, why they should be enjoying being young and free, if not just to stop complaining about the lack of freedom given to teenagers more and more aware of the liberties of adults. Turning eighteen was an Eldorado to reach back then: the possibility to own a car, drink alcohol, buy whatever they wanted, partying hard and maybe vote.

 Inside his temporary place to call home again, yet another flat he will forget about next year, he feels like he has matured too quickly. He is merely nineteen and he senses most of his classmates are still happily unaware of how difficult living on their own can be. He cannot blame them: in fact, he envies them. He, too, wants to come home to a loving family on the weekend and being able to hug someone instead of a plushie he has kept ever since he was a child. No matter how much he loves Soleil, a pastel brown stuffed rabbit with a sunflower clipped to her left ear, she will never have the human heat of a sibling, a parent, a friend could have.

Roxanne is too far, Juliette even further, Lilian has stopped responding and all his college friends are now on vacation, so Florian just crashes onto his bed after work and tries not to cry from the loneliness. He will just satisfy himself with the relationships he has with temporary workmates, hoping it will be enough.

It wasn’t enough.

 The issue is, when he gets lonely like this, his mind often loops through negative thoughts. Studying all the books for next year, reading essays, writing notes and scribbling hearts whenever he likes something, working at the library, staring at himself in the mirror and realizing he will never be a “real boy” unless he seriously mans up in the eyes of an unforgiving society. He cries in his bed, whenever there is no author or thesis to be thought about and all is left is the toxic cocktail of solitude, blank-page syndrome and dysphoria.

There was always this part of me who was screaming to be soft and feminine in a time where I couldn’t afford being so. I would use being in a literary field as an excuse to be feminine, to excuse it to myself in a way I could brush off the feeling of “you’re not manly enough” as just societal codes. It really was society’s gender roles speaking against me, against the type of boy I was. In these moments, I almost thanked dysphoria for reminding me I was an actual man: just not a manly-man like so many people would want to be.

 In an attempt to calm down, Florian thinks of how far he has come ever since he realized it. He went from a girl not getting taken seriously, ignoring his true nature, to someone actually gendered correctly most if not all of the time. Moving to Sceaux, trading everything for something else, changing social spheres helped with it: his current classmates and professors have not known her at all. To them, he has never been her. To them, he has always been Florian; and that is what should matter beforehand. Not the past, but the present and the future.

He stares at his medical papers, disguised bills, as he calculates his August spending to determine a better trajectory for September. He has refused freezing his eggs before starting HRT a year ago: looking at a reminder of that is pleasing in a way he cannot describe properly. He gets reminded he needs to get some parts removed if he does not want hormone disbalance in three years at most. He does not have the money to afford it, so he writes it on a special diary he has kept hidden from anyone but Roxanne.

I almost threw the diary away, once I was finished with most surgeries, if not all. Yet, I kept it because you told me it would matter whenever I would feel like I’ve not made any progress. You were right. It is a keepsake for all these times of despair I’ve overcome.

 When the summer break ends, Florian is sure he is the only one happy to go back to school, as he tidies up his belongings again, ready to move back into the dorm and perhaps, just perhaps, find himself grouped with Christian and Henri in the same room. Books under the arm, head full of idealistic thoughts about the year to come and the end of his pitiful loneliness, he enters Lakanal’s campus with a smile and finds himself strangely, yet warmly, happy to see what is a prison to so many of his classmates.

To the happy few.

[flydotnet]

Cruel Clocks

Femslash February - Day 10: Waiting

Summary: Magdalena relishes in Louise's breathing, because waiting to know if a friend is going to be alright is painful.

Fandom: Original Work Ships: Louise/Magdalena, background Annabelle/Florian, platonic AnnaMagLou

Wordcount: 919 words

Notes: Yes, I kind of cheated, I know. But hey, Magda/Louise is the one canonical lesbian couple of this shabby original work, so rejoice!

Seriously, after A Glass of Wine, Novembre 2015 and the few extracts I've written about it for A Dandelion in Colombes, how much can I write about this specific instance? At least, this version is slightly different, considering Magda and Louise weren't in the waiting room in Novembre 2015.

I'm actually really proud of this one haha.

Event hosted by @femslashfeb

AO3 version available here.

Warning: contains implied/referenced terrorist attacks and shooting. Reader discretion is advised.

Time ticks ever so slowly, the numbers of her phone taking ages to change, seconds having turned into painful hours to wait through. Boredom tracks the smell of people who need to wait in weird conditions, when there is nothing to do than wait. Wait, and wait again, with the very few thoughts not guilty of dying of boredom obsessive and repeating themselves.

 Waiting on hard plastic chairs, clearly put there because every other seat in the waiting room-slash-corridor, is uncomfortable. The air is hot and cold at the same time, the overworking heaters and exhausted doctors still trying to save lives around making oxygen heavy on the lungs; but the polar winds of the November night keep entering the place, making them all shivers, when their bodies are already taking the toll of sickening stress and anxiety.

 Magdalena doesn’t know how long they are going to last this way before someone has to go vomit somewhere else, or faints under the strain. Louise is about to fall asleep, head lulling on her shoulder, their hands intertwined, arms crossed together. They’re both exhausted, she knows it, but seeing her fiancée this drained breaks her heart, well, breaks the few shards she had left in her chest. She’s herself mentally fatigued, body paralyzed by staying in the same place for so long, consciousness threatening to leave her if waiting is going to be longer and longer; but she must stay strong, they must all be, so her head lulls on Louise’s.

 She glances at the two other occupants of their shitty makeshift bench. Eudes’s already asleep: the poor guy’s all bandaged from receiving glass shards in the arms and hips. He originally was with Henri and Christian, but they both left to get some rest. Eudes refused to go with them: he wanted to remain with his twin sister, on which he’s now leaning for comfort in his sleep. She’d have usually made fun of him, teased him on being asleep, or go the whole other way around and scold him for being an unsupportive piece of lazy crap; but he’s lost blood and she hasn’t, so she shuts the fuck up and she waits, yet again, for something to happen.

 “Magda…” Louise rasps under her head, eyes looking blankly at the floor. “How long do we need to wait for something to happen…?”

“I don’t know, Loulou”, she answers in all honesty as she gives her fiancée a peck on the top of the head, the apple smell of her shampoo like an anchor in dire seas.

“Please tell me it’s gonna be all done soon…”

“I promise, Loulou.”

The truth is that Magdalena doesn’t know if things are ever going to be better soon.

 She glances at Annabelle herself next. The girl is the one under the most stress of them all: even if her twin, her confident, is alive and somewhat well, there’s still a piece of her heart missing. Even if Magdalena took a hatred in him at first, she cannot deny Florian did a lot for Annabelle, starting by being her ideal boyfriend turned fiancé turned husband. She also can’t deny the guy has grown on her since their college days where she teased him because it amused her and because she was weary of a guy like him: the perfect romantic, really? She didn’t believe it, and she wouldn’t let a douchebag snatch Annabelle’s heart.

But the thing was, Annabelle had stolen Florian’s heart first, and she was afraid she wouldn’t pay attention to Louise and her once these two started dating.

 “I’m worried for Flo”, Louise’s voice slurs again. “We’ve waited here for hours on hand…”

Magdalena doesn’t reply at first, yet she doesn’t know why. If it’s because her admitting she enjoys Florian’s presence would be admitting her defeat, she needs to get her shit together; because as funny as this running gag was, it’s lost all its value when Florian almost lost his life to some terrorist attack.

“Magda…?”

“I was… just thinking of how much I’d be stressed right now if I had almost lost you,” she replies, earnest yet hiding her shame away.

“Same here…”

Perhaps Annabelle is already mourning. Magdalena wouldn’t be too surprised to hear that: her husband has always had pretty terrible luck, and even if Annabelle was the luckiest person in the world, perhaps it wouldn’t be enough to save him.

 And so Magdalena clutches her beloved’s hand harder, scared of the future for the first time in a decade, finally realizing the world has never been fine, that she could have lost her most precious person in a catastrophic shooting if Louise and she didn’t have a one-on-one dinner in some other part of the region that night. They could have accepted Eudes’s invitation to hang out together, and they could have almost lost each other.

 As it stands, Magdalena and Louise should probably be happy it happened to Florian instead of them, but Annabelle’s grieving glaze and the weight of their own friendships prevent her from being any relieved; and so she clutches Louise against her chest, relishing in her heartbeats which are still here, still living, because they’re still alive; and if Annabelle didn’t feel so far away, she’d have pulled them into a hug like when they were in college, when they were still rather innocent and free from the horrors of this planet.

Instead, she relishes in Louise’s breathing, and lets a tear for her friend drip down her cheek.

[thepdvblog]

Dandelion - Chapter 3: Turning the Page

Dandelion Directory

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Summary: His objective is clear: make a name for himself and see if he can make a couple friends, especially in his dorm room.

Notes: A bit of a shorter chapter, mostly serving as a sooth transition from high school life to the first type of college courses featured in this story. I'll probably name this one by its actually most common name, hypokhâgne/khâgne, in the future, so I hope it won't bother people. I'm way too excited to show Florian's roommates. (sorry for the lack of trans-related matters in this chapter, I promise the focus will be back on these in the near future)

AO3 version available here.

Outing himself as a transgender man without saying the exact term was only the first step in a journey Florian knows is going to be long and tedious. He knows he will have to move out of Colombes sooner than he would like: there is no university in the town, and he does want to be better than his now-gone parents and have an actual diploma aside from his Baccalauréat. Moreover, he has graduated in Literature, as opposed to Roxanne and Juliette with their respective Sciences and Economics and Sociology majors, so he cannot really pretend this is going to make him go very far in life aside from maybe, just maybe and by sheer luck, work as a cashier or something alike.

He has had a number of these “let’s take an hour to find everyone’s dream career and paths!” classes in the past two years. Of course, his ears have always been at least half-opened, so he knows he wants to set his life in the great sea of literature… but how? College feels like it will be too expensive unless he goes to the other side of the country. Most of his classmates seem already set on Paris’s numerous universities, including the prestigious ones (to that he laughs a bit, considering some of these same classmates cannot spell properly), but him? He does not know what he wants exactly.

 His Literature teacher, the old and soon-retired Mrs Paris (a name that would have fitted would have she not been born and raised in Nanterre, the nearby prefecture), tells him he should think of preparatory class. Apparently, it will give him the ability to shoot for the stars and rise to the top of the intellectual society of the country if he ever goes to the end of it. Ambition is not something he has been known for, so this surprises him, but the description of this multi-course class to replace the unforgiving first two years of traditional college tempt him. Moreover, if he can find one with a dorm, he can pay less than if he had to have a flat and necessities to buy on top of it.

A student, from when I was a professor in Brest, once asked me why I allowed myself to be concerned about her finances because I was just paid so much. I came clean to her that I once was an almost-homeless disowned boy. Her face’s expression immediately softened.

 However, there are a lot of different literature preparatory classes he could attend, and as such he needs to pick his favourites. He discovers Henri IV and Fénelon in Paris are the most prestigious ones, but their reputation and proven efficiency make it so they are the hardest to get. Instead, and thinking of living costs beforehand, Florian finds a far more interesting offer in the Hauts-de-Seine themselves, reducing the costs of moving in case he does need to rent a flat for the holidays. He talks about it with Roxanne and Juliette who are moving to Paris for their studies, the logical course of action to take in these cases, but they wholesomely support his decision and wish him good luck.

Post-secondary orientation is one of the toughest trials a teenager has to go through. I myself hesitated over my future job, there and after, and I suppose attending Lakanal helped me stall by thinking of potential competitive exams and great schools I could attend later. Who could guess I ever thought about becoming a landscapist by looking at where I am now?

 In the end, and with the help of his main teachers, he fills a demand for two schools. He still caved in for Mrs Paris’s requests for him to request Henri IV, but his main objective is in his first wish, the school which seems to call for him: Lakanal, in the city of Sceaux. It is the closest school he could think of, and yet the few pictures he has seen of this campus-sized middle-high school hybrid resonate with his want for education. There are results in there too, with a few graduates from the prestigious ENS of Ulm Street amongst its former students. To be exact, he has two wishes, and his very first one is the one with the dorm.

He is about to go into his Latin exam, a supplementary oral exam he wishes he did not take back in freshman year when he had to decide if he wanted to continue with that language, when the results are announced with the classic boards he has grown to known for miscellaneous information. Despite the obvious questionable character of displaying everyone’s results publicly like that, he cannot help the grin forming on his face. He allows Roxanne, who discovers his results near him, to hug him despite the discomfort she may feel from his binder and the one he feels from his chest in general. For the span of a few minutes, everything seems all right, everything seems like it cannot go wrong anywhere down the line.

 The finals arrive quicker than everyone ever expects. On his side, his class still has not finished the philosophy program, his English classes are still a mess to decipher, and it seems like he may be running out of time for studying. As such, he allows himself to read his learning sheets in all the waiting rooms he ever is in (mostly Mrs Flamand’s, he has to admit), recites some parts of his lessons when he cooks or showers. Before he knows it, before the entire school knows it, the finals have rolled around and have finished almost as soon as they have come, leaving behind them only the bittersweet taste of predicted subjects and others who completely threw him off guard. He is still sore over the travesty that was the Literature exam.

The day the results are announced is a blessing. He is graduating and it feels so good to have managed to land the “Very Well” general mention on it once he gets to see his grades. Roxanne and Juliette share his joy, to their own extent and personal results, and the three of them realize the downsides to all these: they will not see each other again once this is over. They are parting ways, them to Paris, him to Sceaux, them to college, him to preparatory class. And yet, Roxanne keeps a smile on her face, tells them it is not over for their friendship as long as they can remain in contact. She gets her phone out, smiles as she points at it, reminds them of their email addresses they all have by this point. Juliette dries the beginning of tears in her eyes, agreeing with another smile. In the end, Florian is the last to get over it, but he does not cry, and instead he gives them his address from way back home on a piece of paper.

Needless to say, I did my best to remain in contact. I’ve eventually lost Juliette, due to her changing phones and having her email address unresponsive after a few years, but Roxanne and I are still best friends to this day.

 The summer holidays start on the note that they need to see each other as much as possible while working to spare money for college. As such, they try to have workplaces near each other, but Florian is left out by his much earlier preparations. Instead, he has opted for a place near Mrs Flamand’s office, just in case he needs to see her in a hurry. It is not the most fulfilling activity he has ever had, but it pays decently and he needs this money, so he shrugs off the boredom and soreness at the end of the day by thinking of the pay check and his future studies.

In fact, he gets great enjoyment from following the instruction he got sent early in the summer as a confirmation for his enrolment in Lakanal. He has bought most of the books required for the Literature and language classes, got far more lenient on Philosophy and especially on History. He has nothing against the latter –in fact, he was a great fan of his former teachers on this – but they are the most expensive books for what seems to be a limited use.

 He starts class back in early September, so when he tells Roxanne about it, she almost pleads him to let her drive him there. To be fair, Florian did not have the time or money to get his own driver’s license: he made sure to have his road code before it, but he cannot drive a car himself and it is otherwise very difficult to get from Colombes to Sceaux, so he accepts what she calls an “impromptu road trip!”. It is the best day he has spent in a while, laughs shared and remembering old stories from their previous years.

“To think I dated a boy!” Roxanne seems to tell herself aloud as she tries to keep her calm in the middle of a traffic jam. “Now that’s something I didn’t expect. To think you were still closeted a couple months ago… How has it been?”

“To be honest, it feels so much different. I get stares and some people still call me ‘miss’, but I suppose that’s to be expected. Tell me, does my voice sound bad?”

“No, you sound like… a normal dude? Well,” she seems to correct herself, “a guy whose voice is changing, but that makes sense considering it’s like a second puberty or something. Don’t worry, you’re doing great Flo!”

He blushes slightly at the compliment before replying “thank you”.

 There still are formalities to fill when they arrive to the school. Its grandeur is not reflected in most of the pictures he has seen of it: imposing buildings carved in stone, surrounded by the green of the grass shining in early September’s summer sun. This truly looks like a dream school, one with a rather expensive dorm and lifestyle, but he has the money for it. His summer job and his financial helps for being a student living on his own are all going to this and he hopes the part-time position as a cashier he has found not too far from Lakanal itself will help his finances.

When they arrive to the desk to fill in the last-minute details, such as exact option classes and installing in the dorms, he is the first surprised when the secretary calls him “Florian” without a shred of hesitation. She does hesitate when glancing up to them, hesitating between the short-haired Roxanne and the assigned-female-at-birth Florian, but she has otherwise no difficulty continuing the process.

 It is when they are en route for the dorm that Roxanne fully expresses her surprise about this. She has been used to administrations calling him by his obsolete name that she is perplexed now that he does not. To this, Florian replies with the proudest smile that his enrolment in Lakanal’s preparatory class is the first step of his “administrative transition”.

Even if Roxanne is his closest friend and the one who has seen him at his most vulnerable, he still tries to hide how soothing it was to hear the secretary call him anything but a female name. He has worked on changing his name legally ever since he turned eighteen and got disowned, steadily writing his actual first name on everything, from his bank account to his identity papers. He has stalled on his driver’s license so it could have this, the real way he refers to himself, with a photo of his actual face.

 Once at the dorm, he fills a bit more paperwork, mostly focused on medical information and who to call in case he feels ill. He writes down the number of Mrs Flamand, even if she lives in Colombes, because she is the closest he has to a parent nowadays. He gets the key to his room and another for the post-secondary-only door to the dorm, granting him access to where he is going to sleep. He makes sure to check if it really was remembered that he lives there on the weekends and holidays, to ensure any paper is sent to Roxanne’s home, list goes on. His parents do not need to know where he has actually gone.

When they arrive to his room, on the second floor’s boys building, he is the first to arrive to his room. He says hi to the boys and parents he comes across in the corridor, wondering if they will be in his class or if they are either second-years or in the other similar courses to his. In any case, most if not all of them refer to him as a young man, calling him “sir”, not even noticing how weird his changing voice sounds like. He can see Roxanne winking at him every time he gets called a boy.

 Classes start in the afternoon, so they quickly unpack everything. There are three beds, a small working space and a tiny bathroom with two sinks, clearly meant to just be a quick place to brush one’s teeth (and shave, in men’s case) because of the main bathrooms being collective showers and toilets. A classic, he thinks, considering this seems to be the overwhelming norm in every dorm in the country. He picks the bed closest to the desks, filling his dresser with clothes and some space in the bathroom with a few things here and there. Unpacking his razor reminds him of the seemingly silly joy he feels to finally be able to shave something other than his developing body hair.

Before they part for the afternoon introductory classes, Roxanne wants to go through the “moving list” she has prepared before they left with him. He has made sure to have found a new therapist in Sceaux, a nearby doctor, a supermarket to buy anything he could need… Keeping the note in his belongings, he hugs Roxanne one last time as she leaves the premises and he goes to attend his very first class. His objective is clear: make a name for himself and see if he can make a couple friends, especially in his dorm room.

[thepdvblog]

Dandelion - Chapter 2: Daffodil Bouquet

Dandelion Directory

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Summary: She gives him a bouquet of daffodils before they drive off, telling him these are his favourite flowers and that he now needs to move on. Isn’t this the meaning of daffodils? I think you once told me that when you picked them as your symbol or something.

Notes: I should precise beforehand this story (just like all my original work) is set in an alternative France where technology and society are more advanced than their IRL counterparts. This is why Florian has access this early to hormone blockers and hormones, when this story is set in anno domini 2003 for the moment.

AO3 version available here.

Finding a name to refer to himself is a life changer. Roxanne calls him “Flo”, Juliette, who is still struggling coming to terms with this but is trying her hardest, calls him insists on “Florian” because she is still not used to it. And yet, she gives him some advice to look more masculine, basing herself off things she has seen among male soccer players: how to make his voice sound lower, how to present as confident and self-assured when he truly isn’t, somehow provides him with brand-new male clothing and underwear he could not have wished for more.

Juliette once told me, when visiting me in this hospital years later, that her mother was a cashier at a local Carrefour, and that she could easily access unsold products that way. Barely legal, but I doubt much of my early transition was condoned by most of societal conventions.

 Mrs Flamand tells him, during a session where she finally realizes this has been illegal all along, that she will only give him the green light for the next step once he is an adult in the eyes of the law. This makes Florian realize a few things, starting with what legally being an adult is going to allow him to do. He will finally be able to change his name to the eye of the world, go on what seems to be a dangerous therapy, stop being himself only around Roxanne and Juliette, stop being “Catherine” around the teachers and the classmates who know he is supposed to be a girl.

Florian makes a third friend who does understand who he is, but he is an online buddy. He lives in the south of the country, kilometres upon kilometres away from Colombes, living under the Mediterranean heat, near the Rhône’s delta. Their friendship is unlikely, considering this friend is already in college, yet feels natural: Lilian is trying to understand his little sister, Florian is just trying to get his voice somewhere where he won’t be targeted by the crude remarks of people reminding him, “you looked better when you weren’t pretending to be a boy”.

 Yet, anxiety remains in his veins. The more his birthday nears closer, Roxanne swearing to buy him the best she can for this important occasion, Lilian thinking of a thousand ideas for a drawn present, the worst it gets. His dysphoria is rushing him to finally take the goddamn hormones before it threatens the remainder of his mental health, so he focuses on books and flowers to pass the time until it gets better.

He remembers an old thing his eighth-grade Literature teacher said once during a class, that there are birth month flowers just like there are birthstones, albeit there is no universal version of it. Searching in the local library on a free Wednesday afternoon where he does not feel like going back “home”, he finds out his assigned flower would either be a narcissus or a daffodil. The latter resonates so much, once he looks into the symbolism behind it: new beginnings, unrequited love, respect. The daffodil quickly becomes his personal symbol, the flower he likes to draw on science lessons instead of actually listening.

It is every time he goes home from school that he remembers why there is still so much fear inside his heart. He is not afraid of the decision to start HRT: it only feels like the next step on his journey. However, he is terrified of the reactions he will get when he will have to eventually come clean about it, about the fact he is a he and not a she, about how his parents are going to disown him quicker than lightning. Considering their rampant racism and internalized classicism, there is no way they will accept their daughter to actually be a son.

Phrased like that, I almost sound like I’ve once enjoyed being born to them.

 Even then, Florian presses on. He has no time to lose worrying about his parents’ reaction when he can spend said time researching where to live in case the worst happens and he gets kicked out from home. He has no real way to gain money until he is out of high school, but he still tries: he applies for holiday jobs for the Easter and summer breaks, he sells some old belongings like most of his female clothes, he still abuses of his parents’ lack of concern and constant arguing to steal a few bucks every week after school. All flats he could possibly get in at the last minute are too expensive for him to afford until his first jobs, so Roxanne finds a solution of him: he can live in an abandoned flat the owner, a man living in Calais named Norbert Leeht, has forgotten he was still paying for.

When she brings him there for the first time, he discovers why someone that guy has forgotten they he was paying for it until it was rented: it is incredibly small, just enough for one person with a ridiculously tiny bathroom and barely any other furniture than a bed that was left there years ago and a small kitchen. It is still much better than he expected to get: at least, he does not have to pay for anything not additional furniture or food.

 The premise being this eerily advantageous, Florian looks more into it and into its owner. Norbert Leeht is known online for his abandoned flats people love to occupy illegally when in a pinch, flats he has forgotten he owned and had not rented, too busy counting the amounts of money he gets from villas he actually cares about. In order to receive his mail properly, he decides to make his address Roxanne’s, the easiest option he has considering this flat will never have his name on it.

Furnishing the flat is harder than he wishes it was. He needs to move most of his room’s furniture without being spotted by his parents, for which the ideal time is on Wednesday afternoons where his father is at work and where his mother is out shopping for groceries. Roxanne, Juliette and he always strike around his time and, soon enough, only the bed and a dresser he plans on replacing anyway are out of there. After a while, the flat feels more like home than his supposed house has ever done. Everything is in place for the final revelation.

 On March 20th, 2003, a warm Thursday where spring is just around the corner, he decides to let his plans finally play out, hoping for the best like the young and optimistic boy he has been ever since seeing things go forward. His therapist hands him out a strange box after his session of the week. Upon opening it, he sees a small recipient and a syringe. He does not need to read the label on the former to have a smile invade his face and his eyes tear up.

“I figured you’d be mature enough to handle these by yourself, Florian,” she tells him as she looks at the box. “And since I know you’re rather shaky on your finances, I’ve paid you the first dose and the syringe with it. You told me you didn’t mind needles, right? I can provide you with pills if you do.”

His voice catches up in his throat, and even he wants to be a man and not cry, his thankfulness eventually explodes.

“I… Thank you so much, I… I don’t know what to say…”

 Dr Flamand then spends some time explaining him how to inject himself, and even if his fingers are shaking around the syringe as if it could break under his touch, it feels like the best piece of news in the latest year. It is finally in his hands, the way to break away from womanhood even more, to provide his body with what he is missing: his facial hair, a lower voice, a better repartition of his body fat.

Of course, he does not go blind into hormone reassignment surgery. He has researched its symptoms, asked high-school science major Juliette if she can clear up things, eventually blesses Lilian for being a medical student in an internship. He knows he will look very… teenage-y for a while, with a lowering voice, potential skin issues, possible hair loss, a risk to get excessive body fat he does not really want. After all, he is wearing a binder to hide his chest, no need for it to get bigger. And yet, he feels more than ready for it, already eyeing the syringe in desire.

I remember being terrified of this decision, when I first found out about HRT and what it was about. I kept asking to the mirror, “What if this isn’t what I am? What’s going to happen to me?”. I have to say, I regret not having started it before, even if I know I had to be mature to handle it correctly.

 Everything is set in stone in his eyes when his eighteenth birthday rolls around. It is a time of truth, his moment to come out, to tell everyone “Catherine” is dead, to welcome Florian, the one he has been all along. It is exciting, it is terrifying, like his first rush of injected testosterone, the fear of the needle and the euphoria from the hormone he has craved for years. He already thinks of all the pros and cons of coming out, having studied the matter for the past months and having talked about it with Roxanne and Juliette for days on end. He prepares himself for school, gazes into the mirror wishing for facial hair to come soon, puts on his needed outfit and heads to school, both terrified and ecstatic.

I’d define myself as a careful and prudent man, but it wasn’t the same when I was a boy. It’s difficult to see what discrimination you are about to face when it’s invisible to most people due to how rare this all is.

 For the first time ever, Roxanne and Juliette call him out by his real name instead of “Cat” as they are used to around his class. They help the anxious, now tetanized boy to ask his homeroom teacher, the Literature one, if he can make an important announcement. Of course, this makes the old lady be suspicious, but she accepts nonetheless, and he mentally prepares himself to break Catherine’s shell once and for all, never to be seen again, so ready to reject her for the last time and never look back on it. Looking at his entire class, all there for once, taking his proudest stance despite the sheer terror stacking in his throat, he takes one deep breath in, one out, and stares at everyone though his clear, “enticing” irises.

I remember by heart what I said on that day, fifteen years later.

 Everyone, listen. It’ll sound weird, I know, but I’ve never been a girl. I’m a boy, a boy in a girl’s body. It’s a rare case, a mental disorder if you want to call it that. Please, even if you don’t believe it…

Don’t call me Catherine.

Call me Florian.

 The surprise it drops onto everyone’s shoulders is mind-blowing. Most of them stare at each other, bewildered, and the fear rises inside his chest at an alarming rate. Roxanne is not in his class, and so is Juliette, so he is all alone in a class who barely knows him anyway. Some start to laugh, others seem to remember some sex education lessons provided by Planned Parenthood during their earlier school years, or by that one Biology class from last year, and in the end he is torn between people not taking him seriously and others trying to understand. The teacher stares at him, at loss for words, so she gulps and just politely, almost quietly, tells him “please take your seat again, Ca…” and she stops herself.

Acceptance does not come easily after this announcement. The mockeries start even more, saying he is just “playing pretend” and “a tomboy who takes it too far”. The jokes are common and start almost immediately, but some classmates really show empathy and a will to understand, so it is all fine. Well, the mockery does remind him of the risks he has read about online all that time and how dysphoric they all are, but it is nothing compared to the last straw.

His parents.

 For the first time in years, Florian goes up to his parents as he wants to be, rather than what they would have him rather be so they would have no more issues.

It may sound strange to the outside ears, but I was an undesired child. They were just against getting an abortion for me and too uneducated to know they could put me elsewhere, although I have to give them kudos for trying to raise me and always feeding me. I suppose routine and familial allocations helped me being more helpful than they had expected.

In fact, he almost shows it heavily on purpose, binder on, hair freshly cut by Roxanne’s sister Solange, dressed in all dark blues and men’s apparel, in a spirit of provocation and spite he did not think he had before this day and preparing it for it. His heart still tries to break out of his ribcage, smashing itself against the bones in his chest, but he keeps it together and mans up.

 The reaction he gets from them as soon as he says “Mom, dad, I’m a boy” is baffling at best. They stare at him, asking him why he is saying that, how it is “just a phase” and how “he’ll see that he’s gonna know he’s a girl soon again”.

What a joke.

Florian arguments back, pulls together all the ideas and explanations he has ever done, while not even hoping to get their approval. It seems counterproductive, he knows how this is all going to play out. He has nothing to lose, so he puts between his parents and him the paper officially diagnosing him with gender dysphoria, another with all the actions he has taken to “fix” the issue. The eyes of his father shoot through his irises, rage burning in that stare, barking following.

 “You’re no daughter of mine.”

“And I’m no girl,” he replies.

“Fuck off, get out of here, you fuckin’ crossdressing fuck!”

“I guessed you’d ask me to do just that.”

“Why did you tell us then?!” his mother asks him through tears he can tell are fake, the way to bribe her way out of divorce threats.

“Because I’m no dishonest man. I waited for this day for so long.”

“Fuck off.”

“Farewell.”

 Taking the remainder of his bedroom’s things, Florian sets off, leaving nothing behind him but a few unsold girly clothes and a rotting flower which died before seeing spring come back. Roxanne is waiting for him outside, a warm smile and welcoming arms he still loves despite the split-up. Despite how ready he felt he was before, tears come to his eyes and he abandons himself in his best friend’s embrace.

Eighteen-year old me would have liked to know how painful being rejected by your own family can be painful, even if you know the end result isn’t going to be pretty.

 Roxanne invites him to come in her car, saying she would drive him back home, putting the last of his belongings into the chest of the vehicle. She lied: minutes later, she tells him she is paying him a good dinner in a not-so-expensive restaurant, “because he deserves only good things when he’s been that brave with this”.

She gives him a bouquet of daffodils before they drive off, telling him these are his favourite flowers and that he now needs to move on. Isn’t this the meaning of daffodils? I think you once told me that when you picked them as your symbol or something.

“Thank you so much” escapes in a sob from his mouth before he takes off his glasses and wipes them with his arms. To all the preparation he has made for this day, and to all the better days to come.

[thepdvblog]

Dandelion - Masterpost

Summary: Catherine Moinot is born on March twenty-first, nineteen-eighty-five in Colombes, France. Her father is a low-wage worker in a factory of the city, her mother is a housewife who gave up on finding a job once her daughter was born. Her father comes from a low-class Lorrain family, her mother is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. A childhood in the middle of the thick urban fabric surrounding Paris, trapped between the roads and the concrete, in the outskirts of the outskirts without the pros of the richer parts of Colombes and the better landscapes of the rest of the country. I should know that. I once was this girl.

Status: Ongoing

Notes: My notes are pretty lenghty, but please don't turn away from this story just yet because of it! I originally planned this to be a very long oneshot, but It'll probably be a multi-chaptered fic, albeit it's probably going to be somewhat short. I projected for a very long time on Florian without thinking I did. I just thought it was because I was intrigued, almost enticed to something I wasnt't. It all started last year, very early in the school year, when I started to think making a character out of my new Modern Lit prof was a good idea (no regret there, tbh), but it also kept crawling in the back of my mind. "Hey, maybe he's trans, even if that's probably just you ain't gonna lie. Making your character trans can't hurt if you do enough research, right?" I still stand by that, but it's been weirder and yet more intimate to do it once the sour-ass realization of "you're not a girl" hit me like a truck in the middle of an English class. As to the story itself, it's essentially one of Florian's backstory, but told in a weird prose.

AO3 version available here (recommanded).

Chapter links under the cut.

Chapter 1: A Flower in Spring’s Haze

Chapter 2: Daffodil Bouquet

Chapter 3: Turning the Page

Chapter 4: Pink Tulips

Chapter 5: Watching the Orange Lilies Bloom

Chapter 6: In the Field of Anemones and Peonies

[thepdvblog]

Busy Days, Busy Daze

Summary: Usually, it's magisters who help their trainees around. But when your magister is sick, you have to help them, right?

Notes: Story dedicated to @taylortut aka Beef Mom (and a follower of this blog), based on this prompt by @toosicktoocare. These two persons have been a great inspiration for my work and me. Alternate canon exploring the possibility of François being Florian’s disciple in a way.

AO3 version available here.

There are empty days, and there are full and busy days at college. Today is one of the busiest days they’ve got in ages, as they browse a hundred books a day in hope to find what they need for that one thesis his training period magister is writing. When everyone thinks he’s being a slave, François doesn’t think so: each book he opens up is a book he’ll probably remember when his time to write his thesis comes around. For now, he simply browses books, trying to find which one will suit his magister best. It’s simpler than it sounds, really.

He considers himself lucky that the magister lets his door open for them to chat easily. François really enjoys speaking with him: they share most of their opinions on literature, view on people, etc. He even got behind the magister’s Parisian façade, as soon as he spilled his cup of coffee on the ground and got help for cleaning.

The young trainee quickly glances at the half-opened the door, only to see the taller man drowning between two piles of books (he’s starting to feel guilty: he’s the one who found and brought those to him), then gets back to reading. He’s found some more books on Aragon which could be of some interest…

“François?” a familiar voice calls for him.

“Yeah?”

“Are you cold?”

Curious, if not puzzled, François gets up from his spot and walks to the door, only to see his magister leaning against the door frame, now that the door is fully opened. The latter seems like he’s freezing on the spot, desperately clutching his arms together in an attempt to heat up (he guesses so, at least? He’s not cold at all, and he’s in a plain shirt when his superior is wearing a sweater). Aside from that, he looks alright. And aside from the dark rings under his eyes, but that’s a given when you work a ton in a few days.

“No, why?” is all François asks.

His magister, a tall brown-haired man with a three-day beard and huge glasses, frowns and looks away. His hands seem to dig even deeper inside the tight embrace of his arms, clawing the fabric for even an ounce of warmth.

“Huh, this is weird. I cannot get warm, for some reason,” he replies. “Well, this is a minor thing. We need to get back to work, François.”

He turns his back to him, heading to his office, as his subordinate desperately try to keep him back.

“But…”

The frown intensifies as the magister glances to his trainee.

“I said, we need to get back to work.”

Usually, François is assertive. He obeys. But this time, as his training period master walks back into his office, he follows through, feeling himself frown. This isn’t normal. His “boss”, if he can call the other teacher so, isn’t doing as well as he would like him to think. So he follows. The pit in his stomach is not stopping him. The pinch of his heart doesn’t stop him either. So he follows.

He’s seen this office before. It’s pretty classic, with a wooden floor, wooden furniture, somewhere to hang hats, coats, gloves, scarfs on. A desk covered in books and paper sheets. The magister sits down in his chair again.

“You’re sick?” the trainee eventually asks, glancing over the book to see the tired face of the professor in the room.

He shakes his head as he sinks deeper into his chair, exhaling feebly.

“No, I am not. Do not worry for me.”

Now he doubts that statement. François creeps behind the professor and puts a hand on his forehead. There is a familiar warmth under his fingers, a warmth which is usually his, but for once he gets to be the one who serves a living thermometer. As unprecise as it would be.

“You’re sick!” he yells in the middle of the office. He’s trying his hardest to sound angry, no matter how hypocritical he’s being, but all he ends up doing is sounding worried. Which he is. And which he shouldn’t be.

“I am fine, François, really… Don’t stress over it…”

“No, you’re sick! You have a fever, Florian!”

 …did he just say his first name out loud like that?

 Did he just do that?!

 He’s not supposed to do that!! He’s supposed to call him Sir, right?!

“I-I meant sir!! Prof Moinot, you’re sick, you’ve got a fever!!” François blurts out in high-pitched screams.

All Mr Moinot does is rub his head.

“Please calm down, François… I’ve already told you that you could call me by my first name, I don’t want that stupid hierarchy between us… Now please spare me your yelling because I’ll actually get a headache from those…”

The young man tries his hardest at calming down: breathe in, breathe out, resume with where he was before. After a few seconds, he’s back to a somewhat normal stature.

“Ahem… As I said, you have a fever, sir.

“That’s Florian for you,” the prof snaps back. “I also happen to have work, so while I appreciate your solicitude, I would like to…”

He looks up. François isn’t listening to him, at least not to his excuses, as he glances around the room, then points out the couch next to a small bookshelf.

“Look,” he says, “let’s give you medicine and let you take a small break, okay? I’m your assistant, lemme do my job, m’kay? Take a nap and we’ll see when you wake up.”

Florian raises an eyebrow. The usually assertive, submissive trainee is ordering him around like he was a bad child. A smirk creeps on his face. It amuses him so much, in fact, he’s going to do just that. He gets up from his chair and goes to lie down on the couch, grabbing his coat to serve as a blanket on his way there.

François can barely believe what he’s seeing. His boss has just accepted to go to sleep because he told him too. That’s surrealist! Is he dreaming? He would slap himself was he not taken by the situation and worried. Instead, he goes to get some ibuprofen (he can take it, despite his haemophilia) in his bag (he would lie if he said he never got headaches from working intensely), a glass of water and gives it to the older teacher.

Barely minutes after, Mr Moinot is completely out, snoring.

The trainee sighs in relief. That was much more stressful than he had thought it would be. Now that that’s out of the way, he goes on to work on whatever Mr Moinot was doing. Turns out it’s mostly taking notes on books in order to have a sooth writing once he turns out his computer. François exhales again: this is going to be easier than he thought, so he sits down in the boss’s chair, turns once or twice on himself just because it’s funny, and starts his work.

Now if only Florian’s desk wasn’t entirely set up for a right-handed writer, that would be nice. Instead, he’s stuck with a tiny space for his actual writing hand. Moving a few books here and there should help…

The clock keeps ticking as he hears more and more coughing from his left. A few glances here and there, the only times he even breaks his focus, make him notice the shivers get more and more regular and the flush eats out his face more and more. Each time he looks, François feels his heart sink a little deeper, worry bubbling down his veins. He hates seeing his friend like this.

Did he just think they were friends? Man, they must be closer than he thought.

Eventually, time to go home gets around. That’s when François hears a wet cough sound and sees his workmate right next to him. He looks like shit.

“Did… did you do all of the work…?” he croaks out before coughing.

“Not all of it, but most of it, I guess… Don’t worry, all you need is to get home to your bed and rest!”

The younger man shines him his brightest, worried grin. He gets up from his chair, the prof already dressed in his coat and scarf.

“Yeah, let’s go home…”

As they go downstairs, François watches carefully for his magister not to fall in the stairs.

“Say,” the latter asks, “do you have a way to go home…? It’s already late around here…” Another cough rattles his chest.

“Usually I take the subway,” he replies, “but you sound like you’re the one who’s gonna need some help with that. I’ve got my driver’s licence, I can drive you home with your car.”

“I’m not against that…”

“I’ll just have to go back home from there. That’s no big deal.”

Florian’s face emerges from his brown scarf.

“Please be our guest, François…! I’m sure my wife won’t mind having you around…”

The trainee stops in his tracks, looks back at his magister, his face conflicted between happiness and concern.

“Really?”

Florian beams him a small smile.

“Of course… Now, if you don’t mind, can we get back as soon as possible…? She’s going to worry for me…”

“Obviously!”

They hurry back to the car and drive off.

[flyswhumpcenter]

Hazed Visions [Fever February Day 7: Deliriums/Hallucinations]

FEVER FEBRUARY INDEX

Summary: When you fail to effectively tame a fever down, you get exposed to getting stuff revealed in your face. Christian and Henri happen to discover a well-hidden secret of their roommate and friend, just because he's that delirious. And delirious Florian is also spewing his backstory like there's no tomorrow.

Fandom: Original Work

Word Count:

Notes: I feel like this OS is insulting, somewhat and sorry for the deadnaming, but it was essential to the story The friendship between Christian, Henri and Flo reblog if you agree

AO3 version available here.

The small dorm room fills with the smells of sweat and blood as a stubbled young man is desperately filling a bucket of cold water. That implies rushing to the floor’s shared bathrooms as soon as possible, with zero care about running into someone as long as the bucket is empty.

Of course, that happens.

He runs into a familiar face from their class. Of fucking course.

“Christian?!” the other glassed man reacts, clearly upset by just getting smashed into. “Can I know what the hell you, Florian and Henri are up to, once and for all? You’re making too much noise for anyone to focus properly!”

“Don’t have time for you Thomas,” he blurts out as he needs to stop for the least amount of time possible, “I have a fever to bring down!”

As he rushes to the bathroom holding his trusty bucket (whose nickname is Serge because that’s how crazy the situation has become), he can hear his classmate wonder aloud about what fever he’s talking about. Too bad he won’t get to know for now, huh.

Once he’s back with a bucket which could freeze his hands, Christian carefully puts it down next to the only occupied bed of the room. Henri is still there, sitting on a chair, wiping their roommate’s face. Roommate whose face displays something like torture and agony, if his constant moaning and clenched teeth are any indication of how he feels like.

“Thomas’s wondering what the fuck we’re doing. What do we tell him?”

“I’ll take care of it when I get to go the goddamn bathroom,” Henri grunts back. “For now, go fetch me a towel.”

And so Christian does, until he realizes it’s either his or Henri’s. He sighs and grabs his, throws it at his other roommate, and goes back into the main part of the room.

“If you have to piss,” he tells Henri, “let me take care of Flo for a bit. You sound like you’ve been there all night,” he pauses, “which is a bit true, after all.”

Henri gets up, stumbling upon himself, then looks at his own roommate.

“Thanks a bunch, man. I’m coming back asap.”

He then leaves the room, sighing in relief, as Christian takes his place on the chair. For the first time of the day, he gets to see how their friend is actually doing.

And it’s a goddamn catastrophe.

Florian is clutching the sheets, panting and grunting at the same time, clutching his teeth as he contorts, maybe trying to get rid of the fever. It’s become impossible to take his temperature with the only thermometer they have, as he refuses to even open his mouth now. They can only guess the fever isn’t lowering in the slightest, considering he’s been that miserable for a full day now. That was the worst time to be Sunday, because they know for sure he can’t afford hospitalization, nor losing his side job. There’s also no nurse on Sundays because school nurses are the worst.

So instead, they’re stuck with a very ill and feverish Florian, because the guy is intelligent enough to be a literature master but dumb enough to overwork himself to a terrible fever which wants to destroy everything about him. That’s terrifying, in a way, how not himself he is when he’s afflicted with a severe ailment.

For the first time in what feels like ages, he creaks his eyes open. Christian is already grabbing his glasses, neatly folded on the nightstand, to give him because otherwise he’s blind as a bat. One time, he mistook Sophia for Bouquinerie, and while that was hilarious, it’s the moment for him to mistake him for whatever teacher they have he doesn’t like, no matter how far the stretch ends up being.

He can already see that his eyes, despite being mainly closed down, are bloodshot and unfocused. His friend probably won’t stay up for long enough for them to explain to him everything and why he shouldn’t worry about class. He’s been in-and-out so much, he probably thinks it’s either Friday or Monday.

The sick one of them stirs numbly, coughs, then stares directly at him with the weakest glaze Christian has ever seen.

“D-dad…?” he slurs before coughing again.

Uh-oh, seems like he’s in for a wild ride.

“No, I’m not your dad Flo. I’m Chris, your roommate.”

“I thought you were gone dad…”

Okay, he’s fucked to Jupiter and back.

Maybe calling him by his full name will work…

“Florian? Florian, you’re with us? Florian?”

Instead of a response, all he gets is shivers down his spine from how out of reality his friend is. It’s not just the eyes: it’s also the half-opened mouth, the pants, the frowned eyebrows… Everything in him screams fever: his deadly pale yet flushed face, the sweat pearling down his temples Christian wipes away in vain, his dark rings… It’s almost not Florian anymore.

“Florian…? That’s got a nice ring to it, dad…”

He isn’t even reacting to his own name. Great. That’s just great. How is a forsaken college student supposed to deal with identity-removing deliriums like that?!

“What do you mean? That’s your name. You’re Florian Moinot.”

“Dad… I’m supposed to choose my new name… Not you… I like it a lot though… Reminds me of flowers…”

Christian feels a drop of cold sweat going down his temple. Not only is Florian thinking he’s his father: he’s speaking like he isn’t even Florian in the first place! How is he also supposed to give back his identity so he’s… Oh, right, he heard one name completely stranger to both Henri and him, one time, when Florian had fallen asleep on his work yet again.

“Catherine?”

“Yeah…?”

Are you fucking kidding him. This is the name he reacts to? Christian needs an explanation, right now. And maybe a week worth of rest, because that’s some paranormal stuff.

Henri comes back into the room, looking refreshed.

“How’s it going with Flo, Chris?” he asks as he grabs a second chair and joins his roommates.

“Bad,” Christian replies, “very bad. He’s conscious, but he’s clearly not with us. He doesn’t even react to his first name, Henri! The only way to get his attention is to somehow call him Catherine.”

“Catherine? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know, right? He even said once he hated that name, when we wanted to name the orchid. That’s weird he would react to that.”

“Have you tried making him a little less hot in there? Like opening his shirt?”

“Mom…?”

Christian and Henri both stared at each other. Now that didn’t make any sense, it was twice the wrong gender.

“Flo… I mean Catherine, we aren’t your parents,” he said as a pitiful attempt not to be the mother, which would have made Christian laugh far more than his small snickers.

The glasses-wearing man went to unbutton a bit his friend’s pyjama top as Henri made diversion.

“I know your sight is probably garbage right now, but we aren’t your parents, at all. You’re in Lakanal, F… Catherine.”

“Lakanal… That’s not where I have class… Where’s the school…? Mom…?”

“Chris,” Henri’s voice shifts to worry, “I think he’s back in high school in his mind. No wonder why he doesn’t recognize us.”

“He’s got a weird undershirt. Do I take it off?”

“No!!”

Florian suddenly crawls back into a ball.

“Don’t touch that! Don’t…. touch that…”

It looks he’s going to pass out for a few seconds, then he’s back to… whatever the hell he’s in right now.

“I thought you were gone… Mom… Dad…”

Christian and Henri glance at each other and just keep quiet. There’s no way in speaking to Florian: he’s right now too far gone for them to bring him back to reason. Maybe they’ll get something if they let him babble his delirium away.

“You said you’d disowned me… That you’d never see my face again… I’m surprised you changed your minds about that… It’s too late though, I’m getting to Lakanal whether you want it or not…”

Oh, so the time has gone by in his mind. His voice trembles, which is quite the disturbing sight for both his friends, who’ve never seen him that way until that very moment.

“Don’t even call me Catherine again… I’m not Catherine… She’s your invention…”

That’s such a puzzle.

His eyes close down again as he inhales and exhales heavily, with labour, before they open up again. They look much more focused this time, and he grabs his glasses by himself. Henri puts a hand on his forehead: the small smile on his face can only indicate the fever has lowered for a bit.

“Florian, you’re back with us?” Christian asks. Urgh, the worry dripping down from his mouth is so cheesy.

“What do you mean, back with you…? I just woke up, right… You two seem like you’ve seen a ghost…”

Henri grabs the fallen washcloth, dips it in Serge, and wipes the sick guy’s face again, before repeating the process and just letting it there.

“Your fever got so high you started to hallucinate we were your parents,” explains Christian to the best of his understandings. “Your mind was stuck in high school, that scared the crap out of us!”

He blinks a few times, rubs his eyes and blushes. His eyes grow wide.

“W-wait, high school, you said?! Tell me,” he suddenly gets upset, “was I reacting to my own name? Florian, I mean.”

“That’s a very specific question there,” Henri replies, “but you weren’t reacting to it. You were reacting to another name, though.”

“Catherine.”

Henri and Christian don’t have to look at each other to know they wonder about the same thing.

“How did you guess?” Henri asks.

Florian’s eyes get dark, his glaze lowers, and he looks at his hands and chest area.

“That’s my given name.”

The cold, atone voice sends shivers down the two guys’ spines. This is completely out-of-character.

“Your given name isn’t Florian? That’s weird as fuck.”

“No, it was Catherine… And that’s a long story for another day, but I guess I should tell you something I’ve hidden for a while…”

Henri deadpans a bit.

“Will it explain the syringe in your nightstand and the used pads from the bathroom when we’re all single? Well, especially you and Chris I mean.”

“It does. Guys, I’m…”

His face distorts into sorrow as he seems to choke on his words.

“I’m… I’m… I’m a… I’m t… T…”

He buries himself in his hands, reddening by the second. He eventually spits out his response in a rush.

“I’m born female, I’m transitioning, please don’t ask, just call me Florian and we’ll get this over with!!”

The two friends look at each other in confusion, then glance at their roommate with the most compassionate look. That’s so fucking cheesy. Henri puts a hand on his left shoulder, Christian on the right one.

“Hey, Flo. You’ve always been Flo to us,” Henri says, “and you’ll always be Flo. We don’t care you were born a Catherine or whatever.”

“Henri’s right, Flo,” Christian adds. “Your parents may have been assholes, but we couldn’t care less. You’re our Flo, understood? We’ll not let you down for such a…” Maybe “trivial” is undermining the issue at stake. “Such a reason.”

Florian’s face radiates with a small but heartfelt smile.

“I should have trusted you earlier, guys.”

I actually had that idea in mind since the day I mentioned it in Sollicitude chapter 4 and wrote out the prompts forf Fever February. I didn't know where to end it sadly, but nothing prevents me from rewriting it one day. Except Chris or Henri mentions Florian said his parents were dead, but it was all metaphorical in literature nerd's mind. I guess.

Also I guess I had to write again about Florian's transidentity because hello dysphoria

[flyswhumpcenter]

That’s What Friends Are For [Fever February Day 2 - Overwork]

FEVER FEBRUARY INDEX

Summary: Three friends, only one mission: convince Florian to go the fuck to sleep. It takes some conviction, compromising text messages and some girl to get him to marry his bed once and for all.

Fandom: Original Work

Word Count: 1.6K words

Notes: Florian is finally getting the fluff. I guess I wrote fluff two times in a row because Sollicitude is Florian and François angst central lately. They deserve some floof.

AO3 version available here.

“For the thousandth time already: I’m okay!” Florian yells in the general direction behind him as he gets his head out of his novel.

“Yeah, sure. Still as likely as Bouquinerie going missing for a single day,” Christian replies from behind his desk chair, his tone flatter than the medieval representation of planet Earth.

“You cannot have possibly worked so much lately and be entirely okay. This is not humanly possible, and you know it, Florian,” Eudes, who is visiting, adds.

“Oh my God, would you stop bothering me already? I have a paper to finish for tomorrow, and currently you’re making it impossible to do!”

The two men get farther from their friend, who breathes out. Their heads get close to the other, as if they were imitating TV reality starlets portraying high school girls.

“There’s no way we’re getting him out of there,” whispers Christian. Not even the fever stops him.”

“Wait,” Eudes almost speaks too loudly, “he is running a fever?! How do you even know that?!”

“He was so focused on his thing,” the History major explains, “I managed to put my hand on his forehead. He’s getting himself ill over some kind of essay… thing. I never really understood literature specialists but geez, that’s overdoing it.”

“A fever, you say…” the redhead mutters to himself, a sly smile on his face.

Christian doesn’t really get what makes him so happy, but he’s damn curious to know what.

“Yeah, a fever. A probably not-so-low one of that because, duh, it’s Florian. The guy gets sick as soon as he’s tired, even if it’s just a stuffed nose.”

“Thank you so much for the information, Chris. I know exactly what to do now.”

His smirk turns into a mischievous grin. He has the best idea he’s gotten in the entire year, and he’s certain it’s going to work perfectly.

“Florian?” Eudes yells suddenly in the room.

He gets an angered “What?!” in response.

“You’re going to piss him off,” Christian murmurs to him, “you’re not making it any better. He’s already very snappy when he’s getting told he’s sick.”

“Do you know who will come to get your soft behind to stop overworking yourself if you do not stop?”

“Yeah, Henri,” Florian replies. “Because why not invite all our goddamn room from Lakanal, while you’re at it. Why are you two still around anyway?”

“Henri? He is busy. I know someone in your course who is not, however…”

Florian’s head slowly turns towards his friends’, and he’s finally out of his book, which he put on the desk. It finally dawns on Christian, and they both say the same name at the same time.

“Annabelle.”

Eudes’s grin turns into an exploding laugh. He likes to mess around with Florian, that much has been established since the beginning of last year and meeting with both him and her, but this time his little devil jokes may serve a use.

“That’s weird, Flo. I thought you were alright, but you seem pained at the idea of seeing Annabelle,” Christian teases, getting way too much enjoyment out of bothering his friend.

“I-I have an incoming deadline…!” he defends himself. “I don’t have time to spend with her…! I…”

“Be honest here. You’re feverish and you don’t want her to worry.”

“I don’t have a fever! How would you know that anyway?! I don’t remember you chasing after me with a thermometer.”

“Turns out you’re completely vulnerable to touch when you’re deep into your stuff, friend.”

The literature major’s eyes grow wide as his face distorts. Some cold sweat mixes with the hot one he already has going on.

“I… When… When did you do that…?” is all he replies, so taken aback he can barely speak.

“Earlier in the afternoon. You’re a real human heater when you’re feverish.”

“You couldn’t possibly know I was ill, if I’m even ill in the first place,” (Eudes sighs: that guy’s really stubborn), “since I don’t even have class today.”

“You sent Henri and me a message at three in the morning signed François, and somehow it was meant for a Roxanne, whoever that is. I didn’t know you once called yourself François until this morning.”

“Oh, right, I once thought of… Wait, what was in the message?!”

“Stuff about your paper, or something, your verbs weren’t making sense. Then you mentioned ‘going on T’ and surgery. Let me guess, she’s…”

“Not in front of people who don’t know that!” Florian snaps, almost out of breath.

His face is both flushed and red from his obvious embarrassment. Eudes is both dying of laughter and barely understanding what all that mess was.

“You should go to bed, at least until that fever you-totally-don’t-have-right goes down. I’m sure you can’t even read what’s written properly and that you forgot you finished it like… two days ago.”

Florian blinks furiously, quiet, and then looks down at his paper.

“You’re right… I’ve already finished it…” he whispers to himself. “What was I even doing already?”

“Who knows,” Christian replies. “But now you can go to bed and sleep until you have to give it back to whoever charged you with writing it.”

“Right…”

He slumps inside his chair, no matter how basic and uncomfortable it actually is. His weak giggle is half-rewarding, half-paining. It wasn’t easy to make him come clean about his fever: it’ll be harder to convince him it’s okay to rest when there’s an impending deadline because perfectionism isn’t the key to everything.

“It means you can go to bed before you pass out cold on your chair,” Christian says.

“You’re still going to call Annabelle if I do…?” is all he asks.

Eudes sighs, “Is this all you think of when you overworked yourself to a fever? I still do not get why she chose you over all the other nice boys from her class. I did not know she liked her men vulnerable.”

Florian’s blush is now radiating over his flush, hiding the lower half of his face behind his hands. If he was Henri, Christian would have found this cute.

“Do not tell me you would not want her to take care of your fever. You are drooling over the idea inside.”

His blushing is reaching dangerously bright territories.

“T-that’s false!!”

Christian smirks and whispers to his friend, “His native accent is showing, that means he’s being embarrassed. He’s totally drooling the idea of seeing her take care of him because he’s easily lonely when he’s sick.”

“He is? I would have never told.”

“Flo’s actually a teddy bear, not a stone giant. He needs company when he’s ill.”

“This is… actually a bit sad. We seem to be bothering him, however, are you sure he does not want to be alone?”

“He’s tricking himself into thinking he’s good enough not to need company. Call her.”

Christian walks up to his other friend and gives him his hand.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed. You have a fever to sleep off.”

A quick look behind him confirms that Eudes has left. Florian grabs the hand and pulls off from his chair, gets unbalanced for a bit, and catches himself before Christian has to.

“You’re going straight to bed.”

“You’ve only said so thirty times today,” Florian snickers before almost collapsing on his friend.

“If you had listened to the first one, I wouldn’t have needed the twenty-nine others, you know.”

A few minutes later, he’s back into his pyjamas and inside his bed. Now he gets to notice the fever’s strength, with all the chills it can get out of him. It’s harder than it looks to be both hot and cold at the same time, not so surprisingly. Time flies weirdly, and he’s unable to either look at his phone, his watch or the clock in his room. That place has an awfully placed bed.

He can however find comfort in a cup of tea served by…Goddammit Eudes.

“Hello… He still called you, huh…” he tells his not-so-surprise guest as a hand lands on his forehead and someone sits next to him on his bed.

“Eudes told me you were not doing so well… It looks like he was right, you seem to need some care.”

“It’s just a tiny fever from pushing myself too much… Nothing major, I promise…”

“Hush now,” she puts a finger on his mouth as an emphasis. “Everyone here agrees you need your rest. You have to at least lay back in order to do that.”

“Mm-hmm,” he mutters, leaning against the hand on his cheek. He doesn’t want her to leave his side, ever. He’s sure she has a ton of other things to do aside from taking care of his overworked face: she has the same essay to give back as him, friends to see, books to read, quotes to learn by heart… But he can’t tell her to remember those because she told him to be quiet, so he stays quiet.

Annabelle opens a book, holding it in her left hand as her right one is still stroking where he hasn’t shaved for a few days now (he does like finally having facial hair, though). It doesn’t look like she’s leaving for a while, so he just fully leans under her touch. That’s one blessing he doesn’t want to miss any piece of.

An hour later, Eudes realizes he forgot his phone on Florian’s kitchen counter (if a kitchen that guy even has, buried under all the other crap on his furniture). When he goes to get it, he notices a peculiar scene that he finds absolutely disgusting: the guy sleeping in his bed, with his sister having fallen so while doing whatever couples do.

“Nerds.”

[thepdvblog]

FBMH III - The Façade’s Poison Ivy

From the Bottom of My Heart Masterpost

Summary: Florian has something to tell Annabelle, but it's painful, like there's needles who want to get out from his trachea. Needles straight from his chest.

Length: 1.2K words

Notes: I haven't officially released something in English dealing with transidentity in a while. I've been slained two years ago for an inacurrate depiction, and I'll give this to people, it was pretty inaccurate. I originally inserted a birth/deathname, but ultimately chose not to, as I didn't know if it was OK for people. With all due respect, I apologize for any inaccuracy. It never was in my intention.

AO3 version

“Annabelle, I have something to tell you.”

They’re sitting at a table in her flat, a cosy place all covered in warm colours, but especially a glamorous burgundy for the carpet under said table. Florian has looked at this carpet for… thirty seconds or so, trying to gather up the courage he’s currently in dire need. He didn’t want to land there but there he is.

“Like… I know we have both been in love for a while, without any of us having to tell the other, it is just… natural for us, right?”

“Of course it is,” Annabelle replies with a curious tone in her voice, “you just want to make it formal, do you not?”

“Yes, but… I have something else to tell you about, something you need to know before I feel like we can properly date.”

“I am all ears, Florian.”

It’s way harder when he’s actually facing her, her smile, her patient eyes, her general sweetness. It’s been a while since he did so, and changing colleges made it ten times easier, since he didn’t have to reveal the nasty thing.

However, he can’t say the same thing about a relationship meant to be intimate and built on trusting the other like one would do for themselves, if not more. He’s about to reveal to the girl who has haunted his heart for the past year about the worst part of himself, his very own weak point, that one aspect of himself he can’t help but hate. The hole in his now perfect Parisian façade.

“Listen, I… I… I’m a boy.”

“I… know this, Florian. It is pretty obvious, if you ask me.”

Snap. This isn’t how it’s going to go today, isn’t it? It’s a whole other nature.

“No, no, that wasn’t what I meant… I… I don’t know how to say it…”

His accent’s rearing its ugly head again, and he doesn’t want that, not in front of her, the girl he’s supposed to be worth of, so he focuses on his façade again. It’ll be easier if he has his façade. He finally looks into her eyes.

“Annabelle, I am not like other men. I am…”

He scratches his head, hands shaking and he sighs. It’ll be easier if it takes it the scientific route. What if she doesn’t know the word? It’s always possible. He highly doubts it, if even himself knew about it before entering college,

“Do you know the difference between physical sex and brain sex?”

“Is it not called gender? I have a vague memory of studying this in high school biology class. Why so?”

“It is called gender. The thing is that… that…”

The word rolls on his tongue over and over again, and he feels it in his chest, in his veins, in his nerves, and it feels all wrong again. It’s now or never. It shouldn’t be that way, if she loves him, she’ll accept that, won’t she? But if… There’s no time for ifs, if he doesn’t spit it out right now, he’ll never do so.

“Annabelle, I’m transgender. I’m a transgender man.”

Florian instantly falls back into his chair, barely releasing his breath, his eyes focused on her even if he feels like crying right now. It shouldn’t be this way. He shouldn’t feel so afraid, but there he is, wanting to cry like he was sixteen all over again. It’s still way too painful to say every time, like he hasn’t won over that yet, and like he never will. Maybe he’s damned to always feel so pained about that part of him.

“I’m… I’m born a woman.”

That sentence just reminds him of his birthname, every time. It’s like he can’t escape it. He doesn’t want to hear it again and simply suppress it from his memories, but it always comes back, crawling back from its tomb, like an undead that has been shot a thousand times but still comes back because he can’t find where to target the thing.

But he isn’t her to the world now. He is Florian. He’ll always be Florian. He’s always been Florian.

And every time she comes back, she fades away even more, to the point she’s just the ghost of a rejection he suppressed the memory of enough to just remember his family.

“Are you alright? You look very shaken” says Annabelle, looking at him with the sweetest glance he’s ever seen, and his shoulders finally let a bit loose.

“I’m… I’m alright… It’s just tough to say, it’s always been… Sorry for making you worry” he apologizes, head still slightly spinning.

He comes back to a correct sitting position, lays his arms on the table. She puts her hand on his, a comfortable familiar warmth invades him, and he’s never been so grateful for the angel she is. He barely deserves her.

“It does not change any feeling I have for you, Florian. I am glad you trust in me enough to confess a thing so deep and painful for you, it shows how brave you are and how far we have come. However, believe me when I say this does not change the way I see you, nor my feelings for you. You are still yourself. I would follow you to the end of the world if it meant staying together.”

He feels like crying again, and he does, but this time it feels amazing. He has to take off his glasses and wipe his eyes out.

“I should have known you weren’t going to make a huge fuss about that… Sorry for all the worry I’ve induced in you, that wasn’t my purpose…”

She looks away, reddened cheeks, as he puts on his glasses again.

“You know, Florian, you should also stop with the Parisian attitude. This is not yourself, and I do not see what is fundamentally wrong enough with your natural speech for you to hide it.”

“Wait, how do you… Snap, I’ve been talking with my accent all along, haven’t I?”

She just giggles at his slight panic.

“Oh, Florian… You always talk like this when you are nervous… Not to mention this is how you spoke when you were ill. What is the issue with this?”

“It’s… just that I don’t like being that countryside guy in the class… I’ve come very far from where my family came from, but I can never entirely get rid of it, and I just relay on hiding my accent and speech…”

“Speaking of which… Where do you come from? I do not think I have heard this accent before.”

“I’m born and was raised in Evry, but my family is from Lorraine. I inherited my family’s accent during my childhood.”

Annabelle gets up from her chair, goes next to him.

“Can you get up for me, please?” she asks.

He doesn’t really see why, but he still does. She goes on the tip of her feet, takes support on his chest and leaves the smallest kiss on his lips.

“You are quite tall,” she says in a gentle laugh.

Florian simply decides to lower so she can do whatever she wants to do with his face.

“I will have to buy taller heels,” she snickers.

“You just have to ask me to bow down.”

He’s the one to kiss her next.

So... I guess this is the first time I get to say this.

Florian is transgender.

I've always been scared of making it official because, well, I'm questioning (I think I have genetial dysphoria, but I need to get diagnosed because I say anything) but it's possible I'm "just" cis. I know it's a touchey topic, so I handled it with as much care as I could for him. I hope this shows, and if it doesn't, I'm very sorry again.

In case you ask how Annabelle already knew what transgender means... Let's say I cut the part where she says she has a cousin in this case.

[thepdvblog]

From the Inside Masterpage

Summary: This isn't your average teacher substitution, far from it. There is both a direct and indirect link between the substituting and the substituted, all because of a student who got herself involved beyond her will and fell into the rabbit hole of self-doubts and lies to oneself. It's not that Justine doesn't want to play Mercury, or that François doesn't want to substitute, or that Florian doesn't think having his workmate substitute for him is necessary. It's just that they all think the situation is wrong in some way and can only half-trust people ready to do anything unreasonable if it means helping other people out. You can never really trust someone altruistic with their own life.

Length: 6K words (3 chapters, ongoing)

Notes: From now on, every new chapter will also receive a Tumblr publication, along with the usual AO3 one. This is the sequel to Magistrismorbulogy, which you have to read before this one.

[thepdvblog]

From the Inside Masterpage

Summary: Justine was sure everything would be all right, that it was just another test she would try her best not to flunk, and all this sweet stuff to think about when you're trapped in a room for six hours. Instead, she has to deal with a man desperate to reunite with his house, and that implies no ambulance and using her friend as an improvised taxi driver.

Length: 19K words (6 chapters, complete)

Notes: As it’s pretty long and finished already, I will not directly post the chapters on this blog.

[thepdvblog]

FBMH II - Cura and Cure

From the Bottom of My Heart Masterpost

Summary: Annabelle can't focus on class today, and she's fully aware that's not how things usually are, except she can't exactly tell why she's like that. At least, that's until Magda helps her realizing why, and then Christian indirectly helps her to realize exactly why things are that way, by simply encouraging her to make a visit.

Length: 2.4K words

AO3 version

Annabelle is quite out of it today. Usually, she is fascinated by the Ancient French class, comparing it with how French is currently getting spoken around her, how she speaks it, the list of uses goes on. However, her mind cannot find a way to focus on what their teacher is currently speaking about, and she struggles to keep up with it. This does not feel right, and the way Magda and Louise are looking at her from the neighbouring row of chairs and tables make her acutely aware of this.

A piece of paper lands on her table, coming from the left. It must had been Magda, and when she looks at her khâgne godmother, she sees a small smile on her lips, the one she used to give when she doubted herself last year. Her eyes then go back to the class, as Annabelle should be doing. She opens the paper and read what is written on it.

“It’s bcs he not here, no?”

Who is “he”? Magda seems to be oddly vague about the whole ordeal. She still glances at a table at the other side of the classroom, next to the wall and the door, only to notice an empty seat. Oh, so this is the “he” she was referring to earlier… Annabelle can only put this as an explanation of her difficulty to focus on anything today.

She sighs softly to herself, head resting on her hand, as she wonders what could have possibly happened to him. She hopes it’s not much. It’s not his kind to skip class, so something must had happened for him to be stuck outside of their classroom.

When it finally rings off, Annabelle exits the room. As soon as she spots him in the forum space, she walks up to Christian, a friend of her brother’s, but mostly a friend of Florian. He must know where his comrade is, right? Or at least he has an idea of so. When she tells him hello, Christian is surprised. They never spoke to each other directly yet, only when Florian was there. He still greets her back.

“Let me guess, you want to know why Flo wasn’t in class today?” he asks her, smirking.

“Is it this obvious? Oh my…” she replies, feeling a bit guilty of being such, such an opportunist.

“You weren’t as focused as usual, so I guessed you were worried for him. He hasn’t told us anything yet, but I’m sure he’s just sick and forgot to plug in his phone.”

His smirk turns into a grin. He whistles as his eyes look away.

“I’m sure a little visit wouldn’t hurt him, though… What about you check up on him? I have to attend class at Sorbonne this afternoon.”

Her face lights up with surprise. This offer is too attractive for her to resist the urge to accept, especially since she doesn’t have any class for the day… But is it right for her to do so? She doesn’t even know where Florian lives…

“You look like you’re hesitating, am I wrong?”

“I-it’s not that, but… I don’t know where he lives…”

“It’s just that? Let me send you his address. Don’t forget to bring him some soup!”

Walking down the street, going back to her flat, Annabelle receives a text message from Christian, containing the address he said to give her. The young lady clutches the phone next to her chest, already thinking about what she needs to bring with her.

Soup will take her too much time to make on her own, she’ll buy some at the nearest shop. Maybe he’s running low on medicine, she should make a small trip to the pharmacy and buy some fever reducers and cough drops. Oh, she should bring some tissues with her too. Man, so many things he needs, and so many things she’ll gladly pay for.

Now that she is in front of the door indicated on her phone, the small student feels shy and almost scared. It makes her nervous to knock at his door when he doesn’t know she got her hand on his address. She also doesn’t want to wake him up, if he’s asleep. A sigh escapes her glossed lips as she lays back to the door, looking at the ceiling, her hand firmly holding her small basket.

Her ears twitch when she hears coughing inside. Her hand knocks on the wooden surface before she can think about it. Now facing the door, she anxiously waits for something. Her nose transforms into a leaking air balloon.

The coughing gets louder and louder until the knock starts to shake. Wood gives the spotlight to blue fabric, buttons, body hair, then a familiar face. It’s him, obviously, dressed in a badly ironed pyjama and covered in a blanket.

“…Anna… Annabelle…?” a hoarse voice calls for, a rather strong congestion and sounding like there’s an accent that shouldn’t be in there.

Her heart hurts.

“H-hello…,” it’s as if her voice has dried by the second, “it’s indeed me… Do I disturb you?”

Florian, under the flush of what she can only guess is a fever, makes her a small smirk.

“I’m very happy you came to visit me,” he coughs, “but that’s not the day to do so…”

“You have gotten this wrong!”

A scoff escaped his mouth as his face got covered in a pained amusement.

“You’re kidding me, right…? I look like crap, I sound like crap, my flat is a mess and…”

“You are ill, and when someone is ill, someone else has to take care of them. And I will be the one to do so for you, even if you refuse me.”

Her friend’s eyes looked on the side, his cheeks reddened, and eventually, he just sighed.

“I can’t possibly say not to such solicitude… Please enter… I’m sorry, the place is a mess, I haven’t had the energy to clean lately…”

Annabelle, who has been crossing her fingers behind her back, steps inside the flat. She can see it is indeed pretty disorganized, with books and some other items on the floor of his one-room flat. Meanwhile, Florian just staggers in front of her, only to collapse on his bed, head crashing first while his coughing echoes in the entire room.

“My, my, Florian, you sound like you came down with a terrible illness…” slips out of her mouth as she rushed to him.

“Do I…? Guessed so… Everybody looked at me like I was about to die when I went to the doctor…” he croaks out as he laid properly in bed. “Please forgive my unformal look… I didn’t plan on getting a visit today…”

Annabelle didn’t say anything. Instead, she lowered herself to the bed, took her own temperature with the back of her hand, then laid it on his forehead. After barely touching it, she took it off, shaking her wrist, accompanied by a small hiss.

“You’re running such a fever…!”

“Come on, it’s not that bad… I think it’s around thirty-eight…? I can’t remember when I t-”

Before he could keep on, she had already put a thermometer in his mouth. His eyes, which had tried to be stern until then, just rolled slightly and he simply took it in and let it go.

“Thirty-nine point six… This is pretty high if you ask me…” she muses as she reads the numbers on the small stick.

“Agreed… I just blanked out there…”

“This does not sound like you to say so, Florian. It is almost as if you are… someone else…”

He looks away, bits his lip, scratches his beard.

“To be entirely honest with you, Annabelle… I’m not in the right state of mind to look fancy…”

“Does it mean you’re… usually playing a role…?”

“No, I’m just trying harder than that… If you don’t mind, can we have this talk later…?”

“Sure thing. You look like you need some care and not some deep conversation.”

After a quick blink, the little woman rushed to the tiny bathroom of the flat, grabbed a bucket, filled it with water and fetched the first cloth she had under her hand. She then proceeded to dunk it inside and wipe the sweat off his face.

“Wait, is that… your handkerchief…?” he coughed out.

“It is not a problem, before you ask… Maybe you should change clothes if you feel up to it. You look like you are sweating a lot.”

“You… don’t mind doing all of this…?”

Annabelle blinks before a light-hearted laugh escapes her mouth.

“Of course, I do not, silly! I was worried for you, it makes me feel better to be able to do something… You look like you needed some help and care anyway…”

His face lights up a little, to the point colour may be coming back there to counter the red of fever.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve this… but I’m truly grateful…”

“Do not mention it. I am just doing what I think is right.”

She eventually flats out her handkerchief on his forehead, intrigued by a small piece of paper she noticed when she first entered in his flat. She reads it, notices his healthcare card right next to it, deciphers the cryptic writing.

“Florian,” she asks, “did you get the medicine your doctor told you to get?”

“I didn’t… I fainted before I could grab my credit card…”

A wet, violent coughing fit hurts her so strongly she clutches her own chest, right where her beats are getting out of control.

“You still need it. I am borrowing this,” she says as she shows him his own card, “and the paper. I will be back in a bit.”

Annabelle gathers her coat and purse when she notices her classmate’s hand reaching out for her.

“I’ll go… Let me just… gather myself over there…”

Before he can step more than a foot outside of his bed, she rushed out to him, grab his shoulders and gently puts him down back to bed.

“Are you insane, Florian? You are in no condition to get up at the moment… Let me do this for you, okay?”

“You’re not gonna pay for that… I’m weary about my credit card code…”

“Oh, come on! I can do this for you! And if you want to repay me so badly, you can do so when you’re feeling better, is it right?”

He simply nods back.

“Deal…”

She passes a hand through his hair, kisses the top of his head and waves him a “I will be back soon” look as she grabs the key and closes the door behind her.

As soon as she’s out of view, Annabelle hides her face in her hands, feeling all of her blood reaching out to her head. She can barely believe she just did that without realizing it! It’s something she would do out of sheer affection, to her brother when they were younger, then to her ex-boyfriend… It doesn’t have the platonic resonance it used to anymore, it’s become something else over time.

She can only hope Florian was too dizzy to realize how unpolite and intimate the gesture was. Still, she doesn’t have much time to lose to her clumsiness: she has medicine to buy.

As the pharmacist she usually goes to is maybe the gentlest man she’s met (after Florian, that is), the literature student enters the same pharmacy as before, clutching the paper in her gloved hands, her purse firmly clutched in her armpit. Today is chilly outside, but so, so warm inside.

Her small boots clack and clack to the desk, where the white-coated man smiles at her with his ice blue eyes and his dimple in his left cheek. He’s as lovely as he ever is.

“Hello again…” she says, unable to retain a smile.

“Hello again, Ms Baudelas! What can I do for you this time around?”

“I am here to get my friend’s medicine… Here you go…” She puts the bill on the counter. “Thank you very much, once again.”

“I will take care of it.”

He reads the contents of the small piece of paper with the help of a pair of reading glasses.

“Hmm… One preparation of Tamiflu, three doses per day, for Florian Moinot…” he muses to himself. “Do you have his healthcare card?”

Annabelle gets it from the chest pocket on her overcoat, “here you go.”

He scans it and goes through a door in the back of the shop, whose sign reads “Staff only”.

When he comes back, a couple of minutes later, he has a small plastic bag in his hand, which he then hands to her. A payment with her credit card later, she can’t help but notice her pharmacist seems… puzzled.

“Is something wrong, doctor?” she asks, feeling her worry intensify.

“No, I was just wondering about something… When you came to buy some medicine earlier, was it for this man too? If you do not mind telling me, obviously.”

“It was…”

“You are a wonderful friend, Ms Baudelas. I am sure he is very grateful for you.”

When she comes back to his flat, Annabelle finds her classmate sound asleep in bed, an half-opened book on the ground right next to his hanging arm. A soft smile installs itself on her lips as she takes off her shoes, tip-toes to his bed and lays the blanket over him, retrieving his arm under it as well. She also picks up the book and puts it properly on his nightstand, right next to his lamp.

From her purse, Annabelle grabs a piece of paper and writes on the back of it the instruction the pharmacists gave her about the medicine, until her hand slips and she writes down a small word to him.

“Dear Florian,

I wish you a safe and sound recovery. Please take care and do not overdo it, at least not until you are all recovered. The better you take care of yourself, the sooner you will be back in the swift of things. If you ever need help, do not hesitate to send a small message to either me or any of our friends, okay? Do not stress over me having paid for the medicine.

I also left you some homemade soup and an Egyptian fairy tale book in case you are in a dire need to read something easy and lovely.

With love,

Annabelle.”

As she exits the flat, trying to make as little noise as possible, Annabelle feels a lump of warmth and bliss rise in her chest. It never felt so right to take care of someone. Her heart finally beats at a normal speed as she cannot help but realize it.

She never thought she would be back in such feelings so soon.

[thepdvblog]

FBMH  I - Through Her Pink Glasses

From the Bottom of My Heart Masterpost

Summary: How two lovebirds started their journey: a pretty awkward encounter in the school library.

Length: 1.3K words

AO3 version

“Can I ask you both something?” he suddenly whispers, raising his eyes from his book on romantic poetry, as he looks away.

“Sure thing,” replies Christian, “what is it?”

“I bet you’re going to ask us where we can find this very rare book you once read in Lakanal’s library” deadpans back Henri.

“The… girl right there, her name is Annabelle, right?”

His shaky, trying-to-be-sneaky finger points in the direction of an auburn-haired, petite young woman from their class. She is speaking with two of her friends, a blonde and a redhead, both of which are taller than she is. They all seem to enjoy themselves as they speak about a topic they cannot hear about.

“Yeah, Annabelle Baudelas, our class major. It’s been two months since we’ve been in the same class” replies Henri. “It’s time you realize that I guess.”

“Don’t forget Flo is bad at remembering names. He called Juliette Soissons “Julie” as long as we studied Lamartine in high school.”

“Guys, this isn’t the time to argue about my bad name memory…”

Christian’s face lightens with a wide grin.

“Hey, Flo, you’re all red suddenly. Care to explain to us why?”

The glasses-wearing boy hides his face in his hands.

“I-I-I’m not blushing…”

“You totally are. Let me guess, you think she looks really pretty and really nice and you want to talk to her?” asks Henri, allowing his friend to break out from his embarrassment.

“Y-yeah… Goddammit, my stupid accent is slipping…”

“You’re auto-commenting yourself again, Flo. Just go for the kill.”

He takes a deep breath in and walk towards her, struggling to find his words. They know it because his eyes are squinting. His demeanour is the less natural thing since Formica tables, but they are sure he will manage to at least pick her interest.

“Huh, Annabelle…?” he squeezes out from his chest, right hand over it.

“Yes?” she hums back as she turns towards the source of her name, only to stop for a bit.

Her friends look at each other, nod and swiftly walk away, blinking at the two boys across their dedicated library spot.

“You are… Florian, right? How can I help you?” she asks, waving him a small smile.

He is already happy she is even smiling at him, even if it is just by politeness.

“Well, I, huh… I know we never really talked yet… But I really wanted to talk to you…? You seem like a pretty nice person, and I want to know you better…”

He is really, really awkward right now. He swallowed down a huge part of his pride and tried to stop fuddling with his hands right in front of the lovely Annabelle.

She chuckled softly.

“Aw, you are so sweet… You seem like a very nice boy too, I am glad you want to get to know me better. It is really kind of you.”

He could almost taste his heartbeats from how vivid these were.

“Are you all right? You look like you are going to fall down” her voice tints in worry as he feels his legs transform into jelly. He almost feels lightheaded too.

He feels himself lose his balance as she caught him in his fall, sitting him on the chair right next to her. Between his furious blinks, he sees her put a hand on her forehead, then it’s on his, then she’s looking at him with worry.

“Fortunately, you are not running a fever… What happened?”

“I think my stress got relieved too quickly and I lost control, or at least I suppose. I’m not really sure…”

“You were this nervous to talk to me? I am flattered, but you got me really worried for your well-being there.”

“I’m…” he corrects himself from slipping into his native accent, “I am sorry. I did not want to worry you.

She smiles again, a hand on his shoulder. Is she a little redder than before? His mind must be playing tricks on him.

“It is all right, there was more fear than harm. Just take a bit more care of yourself, okay? There is no need to get this stressed out. This is all fine.”

A small giggle escapes his mouth. He feels stupid right now, he really does, but being around her makes it so it is okay in his mind to look stupid at the moment. She grabs a chair and sits next to him.

“What did you want to ask me to know me better?” Annabelle asks, looking at him through her pink glasses.

Honestly he sees her through pink glasses too.

“I am not really sure… What do you like to read, maybe? Who are your favourite authors?”

“These are really precise questions. I do not think I have set favourite authors. However, I mostly enjoy poetry. There is something about both the freedom and the constraints of it which fascinates me. The sound some verses have is simply wonderful.”

“Poetry is my favourite genre too. I cannot really state why so, strangely.”

He still feels somewhat dazed, but it’s all okay if he’s with her. It’s like he’s already in love when, really, that can’t be the case. They just started speaking to each other.

“Now is my turn to ask you a question.” Annabelle continues, eyes shimmering. “What is your favourite music instrument?”

“I love how piano sounds the most. Classical music soothes the most, would you not agree?”

“I like piano a lot too, but I will have to say my favourite instrument is the violin. Most people only see it as crying, sad, inherently depressing. This is not the case. You can convey such a wide variety of emotions with it… One day, I will show you how so, if you agree.”

“Anytime…”

They continue to make small talk, learning about each other’s tastes in various fields. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they disagree, but it’s all okay. He’ll roll with it, if it means they can spend more time together in the coming future. After an hour or so, he has to attend to his Ancient French class. It’s with some sadness he leaves her to be, but not before getting her phone number after he asked her for it. He is still so glad she accepted to entrust him with it.

After Florian left, she gets up from her chair and puts it back where she got it. Feeling lovestruck, Annabelle simply muses about having given him her phone number. She wishes very hard he will send her a message as soon as possible. She wants to talk to him again, just like they just did. Her thoughts are a mess: she does not remember what book she just read.

The verses are all lost on her. She does not remember what they were even about. All there is in their place is a soft piano melody she will write down whenever she gets back to her flat.

There is something in his voice, in his laugh, in his eyes which she loves, but she cannot pin-point what. All she knows is that Florian is lovely and that she wants to know him more even more now.

Magdalena and Louise were waiting for her at the door of the library.

“I can’t believe he talked to me...!” she squeals, trying to keep her voice as low as possible.

“Told you he had eyes for you since day one,” smirks Magdalena gently slapping her shoulder. “How did it go?”

“It was wonderful! He almost fainted because he was nervous, but once he got all settled down, I did not see the time go by…”

“That’s really nice to hear,” comments Louise smiling to her friend. “It looks like you’re already in love with him, am I wrong?”

“Not yet, it’s impossible!”

However, Annabelle cannot deny she is the happiest she has been in a while. Or that she is blushing previously.

“You do sound like it’s going to happen soon” Magdalena scoffs, a large grin on her face.

[thepdvblog]

Summary: The tales of two bookworm lovers, from their studies in Paris to their domestic family life in Lille. Expect some fluff, some angst, some hurt/comfort, love, pain, sadness, happiness, anger, ups and downs, books, music. It's not because you're a literature professor in a-not-so-prestigious khâgne class in the north of France that you cannot have a rich romantic life.

Length: 2 oneshots (ongoing)

Note: I’ll post each individual oneshot separately. For now, I’ll have this as a masterpost of sorts, as the stories will take place over the course of a few Periods.

ONESHOT LIST

[PDV 0 J] I. Through Her Pink Glasses

[PDV 0 J] II. Cura and Cure

[PDV 0 J-L] III. The Façade’s Poison Ivy

[thepdvblog]

Summary: This isn’t just some annoying joke done by street kids bored on a Friday evening. This is a shooting, in the middle of a usually calm street. This is a shooting. The bullets and glass shards drown out the screams of civilians passing by. He’s not used to shootings, and he’s a little scared about it. 

Word count: 1K words (ongoing)

Notes: Please read the disclaimer at the beginning of the AO3 page. This is to be read with viewer discretion.