#to be dead serious luna is a huge art inspiration to me and i love everything about her art. i hope i can get to the point where

[hauntedzone-byebye]

@lunaaltare‘s ocs! she mentioned they were this meme so i traced it please check them out on her blog

[countessofravenclaw]

Memories of Time: Chapter twenty

What if you woke up one morning and realized that you were back in the beginning of your story? But to your surprise, you remember how that story will play out. Did you go back in time?

“Why do we have to sign up for these elective workshops? Don’t we have enough to deal with?” Gastón lamented as Matteo took the sing-up sheet from the wall. He was right, though. Matteo was totally dead from the constant training. He and Ambar had managed to come second in the first round, but they needed to keep that up.

He looked down at the signup sheet in his hands and wrote his name down for the Theatre workshop. Truth be told, he hadn’t remembered that they had been mandatory, but he didn’t mind that, not really, he would be able to spend some time with Luna. “What’s the matter? I thought you liked the workshops when you did them?”

“It’s not that, I’d just rather not have any extra classes if I don’t have to.” He took the sheet from Matteo and wrote his name down. “But I guess I have to, so I have no other choice.”

Matteo understood what he meant. After their quick encounter with Ms. Fernandez a couple of weeks ago, almost every teacher had started to take note of Gastón’s miraculously “elevated” IQ and had decided to make him their star protégé. The whole situation did make Matteo laugh. He did understand that it was quite serious in their situation, but there was nothing to be done now. The same had happened to Nina, but to a little lesser extent. He guessed the masters’ degree level of intelligence—from Oxford nonetheless—was hard to not let show, and he didn’t blame them. He himself would be in huge trouble if Blake offered music class.

“Oh yes, I totally get you. You’ve become more of a teacher’s pet than you ever were before.” he joked.

“Ha-ha, super funny.” Gastón rolled his eyes. “I have never been a teacher’s pet.”

“Really? You and Nina have literally become Blake’s golden couple.” Matteo always loved teasing Gastón about the fact that after his graduation from Oxford, he had received a “couple hundred” calls from their former teachers congratulating him. Gastón was held as somewhat notable alumni alongside Nina.

“Okay, not everyone from here goes to Oxford, no matter how prestigious the school. We were the first ones in a couple of years, that’s why Blake is keeping tabs on us, just to preserve the association. They want us to come to talk to the new senior class to inspire people to apply to Ivy-leagues or equivalents. And with Nina and her book success … and since we are engaged they asked us both. I don’t think they would bother with me otherwise. We’re not famous or anything, like you, and I wouldn’t want to be.”

“Yeah, but Blake doesn’t bother with me because they never bothered with performing arts.” It wasn’t like Matteo was jealous—he was definitely very proud of Gastón and all he had accomplished, and someone needed to have a normal job in their friend group.

“You know, we have really complicated lives.”

“You’re realizing this right now?”

“Well, no. I was thinking recently about what you told me a couple of weeks ago.” Gastón said as they began walking towards their next class. “Have you made a decision about it?”

“You know, I don’t know.” Matteo sighed. He hadn’t really had time to think about it. He still knew that he wanted to propose to Luna, but the question of when was still up in the air.

He had had the perfect plan. He’d already thought through the whole speech and had imagined getting down on one knee next to the crystalline Cancun sea … but then they had climbed up the Eiffel Tower and time had gone backward and now no one could even know that Luna was his girlfriend.

“Maybe you’re right and it is a bit hasty, right now anyway. We need to focus on the plan, and I wouldn’t have the time to plan it all out.”

“You know, if you want to do it, you don’t need a huge plan.” They saw that the door to the classroom was already open and, seeing that it was empty, they went in early so they could talk more in peace.

“Says the guy who might have popped the question on a random Saturday morning, but still did it with a book that he had been holding on to for six years, and still failed to inform his best friend about it, might I add.” Matteo grinned. He would never let that go. “So don’t talk to me about not needing a grand gesture.”

“Nina would have killed me if I’d had done it in public, and having no one around did have its certain privileges. And are you ever gonna let me live down the fact that I didn’t tell you? I couldn’t risk Luna finding out. You can roast me all you want at the wedding … If we get out of here. If we don’t …” They heard footsteps as the teacher entered that classroom. They’d have to finish this conversation another time.

***

Gastón walked into the classroom for the photography workshop. Half of him was totally done with everything to do with school, and as he had said to Matteo, he’d rather not take any more classes where he could get exposed and the risk of his parents finding out about yet another thing that seemed a bit out of place. They definitely knew that they had not been even close to England or any other English-speaking country during the summer, so his cover story for him speaking near-perfect, if not perfect, English would be torn to shreds.

The other half of him was glad that they were forced to do these workshops. They had been focusing on the plan, which included him enduring Delfi’s not so unnoticeable advances, since she really couldn’t take the hint, no matter how hard she and Ambar tried. The workshop could be a nice breath of fresh air. And the workshop brought a lot of good memories to his mind.

Nina was already sitting at the table on the left, and he sat down at the same table, carefully leaving two seats between them. It was still extremely hard to not look her in the eye, let alone completely ignore her.

The teacher, Mr. Acosta, entered the classroom and Gastón averted his eyes to his phone to keep himself from greeting him. He was just a student and being on first-name terms with a teacher was not proper. Of course, nowadays, Gastón and Nina knew Mr. Acosta quite well, as they had commissioned him to take their engagement photos, and he was going to be the photographer for their wedding as well. They had debated using the same photographer as Simon and Ambar for the wedding, but, since they both had actual photography knowledge and experience, they wanted someone who knew them and their style.

Gastón doodled something on the paper while waiting. He didn’t consider himself to be all that artistic, at least not compared to other people in his life. Nina was really the artist, and Matteo had the performing art covered. Still, Gastón had ended up minoring in architecture because the artistic aspect of it had ended up being pretty similar to photography with the layout designs, etc., and it complemented the engineering career he had ended up pursuing. It was a bit of a dream of his to design and build a house for them, later in life.

He and Nina already had a house, one they owned. Of course, his parents couldn’t have let them live in a rental flat after they returned from Oxford, especially since they were engaged. They wouldn’t live in it forever, though, no matter how nice it was.

He didn’t want to stay in the inner city of Buenos Aires. They wouldn’t be able to leave the city, his work wouldn’t allow it, but he wanted his children to grow in a smaller and safer area. Somewhere like where he had lived for a couple of years when he and his parents had moved from Cordoba to Buenos Aires when he was six. They had not stayed there for long, since Mom and Dad had gotten more work and they had moved closer to the city center. His parents were self-made, having both grown up quite poor. They hadn’t given him siblings, but they had worked hard to give him a good and well-off life, even if that had meant that they had gotten very busy and had been barely around by the time he entered his teen years.

He didn’t blame them. He had always been an independent person and they had still made the effort to be around as much as they could—they had never missed his birthday or any other milestones, and letting him stay in Buenos Aires had given him the stability that Matteo had lacked while growing up while traveling around with his father.

It was quite weird to think about the future that he thought he’d have, now when nothing was certain. Everything had been perfect. Nina was finally going to be his wife, something he had been dreaming about since he was 18, and he had a job he loved. He had always admired Mr. Castillo, so it was a huge privilege to get a place in his firm. Would they actually be able to return?

***

Ambar sat down at the table on the right side of the classroom after using all her efforts to make Delfi stay there instead of pushing into the other table, all seats of which were already occupied, in order to be closer to Gastón.

“He has barely said a word to me since the competition,” she started complaining as soon as they sat down. “We came in third, we should celebrate.”

Ambar had to admit, Delfi and Gastón had done a surprisingly good job, not to mention her and Matteo’s almost impossible performance. Luna deserved every praise that she could possibly think of. The task was not over, though, and they needed to focus. The downside of everything was that Delfi was keener than ever on Gastón, so keen that she had thankfully left any questions about Matteo unasked.

“What were you even planning to do to celebrate? You didn’t win.” Jazmin joined in.

“Well …” Delfi seemed to be sucked into some daydream for a moment.

“Maybe you’re being too obvious,” Ambar chimed, just as Delfi was about to open her mouth again, since she definitely did not want to be privy to whatever Delfi had just imagined.

“It doesn’t seem like he knows, to me.” Jazmin was not helping, as usual. She had never been that good in love advice, even years later, no matter how much she insisted that she had only stayed single for career-related reasons. It didn’t matter anyway, as long as she was happy.

“I’ll ask him to do an interview with me. Jazmin, you get to film us.”

“But you didn’t even come first …”

“Just do it.”

“Quiet. The class is starting.” Ambar stopped the girls’ argument as Mr. Acosta started speaking.

Ambar had never actually experienced this first class fully, as she had sneaked off to spy on Matteo the last time. She had never had that big of an inclination towards photography or any other art form outside of skating—she was surrounded by enough artists as it was—but she still found the class very interesting. She had been quite good at this years ago, anyway. Maybe she should bust out the camera a little more often, maybe later in life when her and Simon’s family would be growing and there would be moments to capture. She’d need a bit of refresher lesson from Nina if she did that though, she was too much of a perfectionist not to.

It felt a bit weird to think about the future, as they currently had no guarantee of ever getting back to that life, back to the future, but it was impossible not to long for it. There was nothing else to do except be optimistic and follow the plan.

“Did I leave my tablet?” Delfi had stopped in her tracks outside the classroom door while Ambar was still gathering her things from the table. Delfi’s tablet was at the table so she picked it up after finishing putting her own stuff in her bag.

She looked up and, to her horror, she saw Gastón whispering something to Nina. They had probably thought that the classroom was empty aside from Ambar, but she knew that Delfi was standing right at the door and could have seen them had she not been focusing on searching through her bag for the tablet which, she would realize at any moment, was in the classroom.

“Yes, I did leave it.” Ambar saw that Delfi was just about to turn around. She had to act quickly. She couldn’t even fathom what Delfi would do to Nina if she found out. Delfi had not been as cruel as Ambar had been, but Ambar had had a lot of bad influence on her. Not to even mention all the questions the sight of Gastón and Nina would raise.

Ambar quickly kicked a chair over to alert the lovebirds, and then practically flew out of the door, dragging Delfi with her.

“Here’s your tablet. Let’s go.”

“What the hurry?” Delfi asked, confused as Ambar pulled her along.

“We’re late for our next class,” Ambar added hastily as Delfi forced them to stop.

“No, we're not. It’s literally lunch.” Ambar looked down at her watch. Delfi was right, it was lunch. It would soon be two months since they woke up in their shared nightmare.

“Oh. My watch must be wrong then. I’ll get it fixed.”

“Since when do you wear a watch?” Jazmin had appeared seemingly out of nowhere again. Ambar was beginning to wonder if that girl had some kind of magic powers.

“They’re very practical.” Ambar shrugged her off. She really wasn’t in the mood for inventing explanations to all of her accessories. “Come on! Let’s go eat.”

Ambar wasn’t even that hungry, but she appreciated the chance to sit down and relax a bit. She had had an early training session with Matteo and Luna in the morning and had managed to save those other two from getting caught just now. And it wasn’t even 1:00 pm yet. When was all of this going to end?

No one knew the answer to that.

“Do you wanna go and take those photos for the class after school?” Delfi’s voice shook Ambar out of her thoughts. The question had apparently been directed at her.

“No, I don’t have time.” Since it was Friday, she definitely had some very different plans. Luna had mercifully allowed them all a free weekend from her excruciating boot camp. That girl really took her skates seriously. Ambar wondered why on earth she was surprised. “I’m going shopping.”

“Ooh, can we come?” Jazmin jumped at the opportunity. Ambar had forgotten that you were not allowed to mention anything related to shopping if you wanted to get rid of her.

Her actual plans were lightyears away from a silly shopping trip. She and Simon had a date weekend planned. It was easier for the two of them to sneak away, since Simon didn’t have parents breathing down his neck and watching his every move. Ambar had usually resented Sharon’s disinterest in her, but it had its benefits. She had adopted Luna and Nina’s excuse of “going to stay overnight at a friend's house” while she and Simon snuck away to some hotel or Airbnb she had rented. Good thing no one monitored her money usage.

“No, you can’t. I am going with my godmother.”

“I thought she hated shopping?”

***

“We’ll learn how to use the most important tool in theatre: the body. In order to learn this, you’ll have to break free of your prejudices.” Luna tried to keep her focus on Mr. Perez’s lecture about authentic acting. The workshop on acting had actually been exactly what she’d needed. She sucked at acting or keeping a poker face, so, given the situation she was in, this would be very helpful.

Plus, she was very glad that she would be able to spend some time with Matteo due to these workshops. It would be really nice to just be together without constantly worrying about getting caught, and free of the shadow of the knowledge that their time together was bought by lying to her parents. She knew it was all necessary, but she still didn’t like it.

Matteo was late for the class. Maybe he was doing that on purpose since he was, surprisingly if you considered all his Chico Fresa-ness, a very punctual person. It was unlikely of him that he had forgotten, since they had agreed together to join the theatre workshop.

“You can’t like Ramiro.” Luna heard Yam’s voice say something in Jim’s direction. She tried to sharpen up her hearing. Not that she really cared, but she wasn’t fully immune to the temptation of some juicy relationship gossip, especially if it was from the past. And maybe it wasn’t the worst idea to have something to hold over Ramiro if he decided one day to be lazy when she wanted to do more training, Luna thought mischievously.

Not that she believed that it would ever actually come to that. She and Ramiro had been such a good match in the world of skating that she was surprised that they had not been partners before that. They were equally ambitious, motivated, and weren’t afraid to try some new out-of-the-box things.

“Is this the theatre workshop?” Finally, Matteo had decided to show up as the teacher had told them to partner up. Luna had intentionally left herself without a partner so Matteo just naturally joined her after getting a scolding from the teacher about being punctual.

“Hello, Chica Delivery. Are you following me?” Matteo threw himself right into the performance mood.

“Don’t call me that here. People can hear you.” Luna was pretty certain that no one had heard, and even if they had, she didn’t think that anyone would have cared what Matteo had called her. But she decided to play along, this was the Theatre workshop after all.

“Oh sorry, let me try that again.” Matteo grinned back at her. “Hello, person who I definitely have not met before.” Luna had to laugh at him as they turned towards the teacher, who was giving them their assignment.

“Each of you will try to pretend to be their partner…” Oh, so this was that exercise. Luna’s mind was filled with memories of this certain instance.

“You two, come up first.”

This she had not remembered—her and Matteo would be going first. She didn’t have much time to react as Mr. Perez was already gesturing for them to come to the front of the classroom. Okay, she could totally do this. She could definitely be Matteo, as she knew every bit about him from his favorite color to the particular way he had to line his guitars up—from the easiest to tune to the hardest. She knew that his childhood dream had been to represent Italy in Eurovision one day.

“Action.”

Before either she or Matteo knew what was happening, they were reenacting the original performance that they had done in this class eight years ago. Luna pretended to have the biggest ego in the world while Matteo shamelessly made fun of her way of walking around with her head in the clouds and feet not on the ground—since they’d be on rollerskates. They were having so much fun that they forgot that people were looking at them.

“Oh no, a pool!” So Matteo was doing that again? Luna tried her hardest not to laugh too much as Matteo pretended to drown, as the pool thing was very ironic now, seeing as no one had fallen into it this time.

“I’ll save you!” Luna pretended to jump into the pool. Whether by accident or on purpose, Luna didn’t really know, she landed on Matteo's chest. That really was what you called repeating history, as all she wanted to do was kiss him. They stayed like that for a long time, or it might have been just two seconds, Luna could tell, until the applause shook them both back to reality.

***

It was at that moment Matteo knew he had to marry her. or at least ask her to marry him, since he had known it forever. Repeating that moment had really settled it for him … somehow, he just knew. No matter what time they were in.

***

Nina was walking around in the park taking pictures for the workshop assignment. She had decided to take the photos at the same place as last time, so they would look as similar to the original as possible. Even if writing had taken the forefront of her artistic direction, photography had remained a dear hobby that she and Gastón had spent hours doing in England. The house was mainly decorated with photos they had taken themselves, just as their former flat had been in England.

Ambar and Simon’s wedding photos had been taken by a professional, but their live engagement photos in front of the palace had been taken by Gastón—as Nina had been left in the dark along with Luna, while Matteo had also known—and Ambar and Simon had been so happy with those that they had not wanted staged ones.

Nina was zooming in on a tree, now, so she didn’t notice someone comíng behind her until she was spun around so quickly she lost her balance.

“You are starting to make this a bad habit.” She laughed as Gastón caught her, preventing the fall that he had intentionally caused. It was a good thing the camera had a neck strap and was one of the school’s cheap ones. She would have actually been mad at him if she’d been holding the Canon EOS 90D DSLR, which was one of their prized possessions.

“Is it bad that I just enjoy having you in my arms?” he said as he helped her steady herself back on her feet. “Anyways, I came looking for you so we can not work together.”

Nina laughed at his comment. It was still a bit of a joke between the two of them, how they had been suspected of working together when they had barely talked to each other at that point in time.

“Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Acosta knew something before we did.” Gastón’s sentence was not a joke. Nina had wondered the same herself. It was not every day that you were called to take the engagement pictures of two of your former students, whom you had partnered up eight years prior, before they had known each other. She had been a bit doubtful as to whether he would remember them, but he definitely had. No introductions had been necessary, and he had even complimented Nina on her book’s cover photo, which she had taken herself.

“Maybe he was trying to give us a hint,” Nina said.

“A hint I definitely would have needed.” Nina knew what he meant, or more like who.

“Hold on. I want to try something.” Gastón had set his camera on the back of the bench and was pushing some buttons on it. She didn’t even try to understand what he was programming into it—he usually applied his engineering brain to everything.

“A new photo technique?”

“Something like that.” He dipped her back without warning, something that also had started to become another “bad” habit of his, and kissed her. She only remembered the camera once she heard the shutter click and he brought her back to her feet.

“You could have told me you were gonna do that for the picture, but you can’t give that to the teacher.”

“I am not planning to. It is just for me. And don’t worry, there is no one here who would have mattered if they saw.” He took the camera from the bench and walked back to her. “Plus, I have to get that dip down before the wedding.” He shot her a mischievous smile.

She smiled as he mentioned the wedding, but then her smile faltered. The wedding seemed like a distant dream now.

“What is it?”

“I just—what if the plan doesn’t work?” She had tried to stay optimistic, but she couldn’t shake the nagging voice in her brain. “What if we don’t manage to get back? Have you thought about it? What do we do then?”

“Of course I have thought about it.” He put his hands on her arms. “If it doesn't work and we can’t come up with something else, then we need to accept the situation. It’ll be hard, but we can do it. Then at some point when the time is right, we need to come clean.”

“About the time travel?” Nina was sure that if six of them admitted to the world they were from the future, they’d be locked up in some insane asylum.

“No,” Gastón laughed. “I mean come clean about us. We can’t hide forever. We’ll say that you are my girlfriend, and people can think what they want, we won’t care. And we’ll get married as soon as you’re eighteen again, because I am not waiting another eight years.”

“I am not waiting eight years either.” She started putting her hands on his neck, but he grabbed her left as she was doing it and kissed the ring on her finger. “you’ll get to elope after all.”

“Our life won’t be as straightforward as we thought, not that it has been so far, but you know what I mean. But I don’t care, because I know we can do it. As long as I have you, nothing else matters.” Gastón said, pulling her closer once again.

She smiled at him and started reaching up so she could kiss him— her cursed Blake uniform shoes didn’t any elevation whatsoever, so she was too short for him—when something came into her field of vision behind him.

It was her parents, sitting on a bench talking and … laughing? As far as she remembered, they did not get along at all at this point in time … and why did this feel so familiar?

“It can’t be.”

Okay, I just had to dedicate one full chapter to the workshops, since that was one of my favorite arcs in S1. Also, I just love my man, the photography teacher, who I have named Acosta now. He is the OG Gastina shipper and deserves his appearance. Tension is also growing, with more close calls, which l realize almost always happens to Gastina, but I guess the Oxford brains can make mistakes too. And Matteo has finally made a decision... or has he?