➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.
➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”
➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”
➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”
➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”
➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.
“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.
“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”
➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”
➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”
However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can ask be “outside”!
➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.
If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)
➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations, dashes typically express—“
“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.
➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.
➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”
➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.
“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”
A/N: My 2nd contribution to the Different Universe Same Love Content Creation Challenge, Day 5 Academia / Small Shop AU (I combined them), hosted by @xxsycamore and @queengiuliettafirstlady
Leonardo and f!Reader
Word Count: 2332
Fluff, Romance, First Kisses
“And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?”
-Percy Blythe Shelley, from "Love’s Philosophy"
The little brass bell over the book shop door chirps out a greeting as a customer walks in. You hear it from all the way in the back, your ears honed to the sound as a conductor to each instrument in his orchestra. An exhale, a quick brushing down the front of your sweater. Excitement buzzes through you. Your heart is an eager child with its face pressed to the car window.
Is he here yet? Is he here yet?
He is here, his large hands and sculpted fingers splayed out on the wooden counter as he waits for you.
God, he is beautiful with his tousled hair and whiskey-colored eyes. He elevates everything around him, even his white button-down shirt and brown leather jacket feel elegant and worldly because they are touching him.
You pause a moment, hidden by a bookshelf, fingers wrapping around the edge to watch him, to enjoy this tiny bubble of time where he does not know you are there, his expression relaxed. He reaches down, picking up one of the small business cards of your bookstore, Parnassus. You remember the first time he walked in and had immediately known the reference to Christopher Morley’s 1917 novel about a bookshop on wheels. That was the moment you had heard the faint thrum of cupid’s bow string, the second you began falling in love with Professor Leonardo Da Vinci.
You breathe out once and then pop out from behind the bookshelf, the smile on your face completely genuine. He is the sunshine that will always coax the shy flower to open itself to the light and blossom.
“Good morning Professor!”
He pockets your business card (he must have hundreds of them by now the way he plays with them and tucks them into the infinite pockets of his jacket) and returns your smile. Your heart falls into stereotype and skips a beat.
“Hello cara mia,” he answers, his lightly accented voice running over you like warm water. “How are you this morning?”
“Great.” You keep your tone breezy, an unconscious way of shielding him from the depth of your feelings. “I finished that edition of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ you recommended.”
He grins slowly, dipping his chin and looking at you through those long lashes, dark frames to golden pools of light.
“And? Did true love prevail?”
You know you can’t stop smiling when he’s around, you feel it in the way you want to smile and realize there is no where else to go with it. You’re already there.
“Sadly, the play still ends in tragedy. But I did enjoy the variations of the lines in Acts II and III.”
“Of course you noticed them right away,” he teases. That honeyed dip in his voice, that winking grin on his lips….they should be illegal. Out of nervous habit, you brush your hair away from your face and then lean down, picking up a small package from under the counter.
“So….I know you’ve been waiting…and here it is! It finally came.”
You know he is going to be excited. He always is when it comes to his purchases.
“Ah!” He reaches for the package, his fingers brushing yours in his haste. Your hands tingle, his skin a conduit for all the electric feelings you have coursing through you, circuits of admiration and desire. He doesn’t seem to notice as he eagerly begins unwrapping the book like a child on Christmas morning. You curl your fingers inward, ignoring the echo of his touch.
“A thing of beauty,” he says when he has freed the book at last. You nod, smiling at the pleased look on his face.
“The Selected Works of Christina Rosetti,” you read out loud as he touches the gold embossed cover. “You sure do like your love poems,” you say with a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.
Since he wandered into your bookstore seeking shelter from a sudden downpour, every book he has bought or had special ordered has been about love. He can talk about other subjects for ages, certainly. He’s regaled you with stories about historical events, art, architecture. And he is a phenomenal listener. He’s spent hours, cup of coffee in hand, listening to you wax poetic about Whitman and Dickinson and Poe and Frost and countered with stories about Michelangelo, Goethe, and Gaudi, but when it comes to the actual purchases he makes in your little store, they have always revolved around love. You can recite them like a litany: “Shakespeare’s Most Romantic Sonnets”, “The Lord Byron Collection”, “Rainer Maria Rilke: The Essential Poems”, “Wordsworth’s Love Poems”. Clearly he has someone he is head over heels for and your tiny flame of love is destined to burn, unrequited.
He glances up from the book. “Do you like Shelley?”
You know only a little about the poet Percy Blythe Shelley and yet the words that fly from your lips like escaped birds from a cage are: “I absolutely adore Shelly!”
He smiles and it does nothing to stop the immediate panicked stumble your heart has just taken, first at your lie and second, at that look on his face.
“The university has a very rare copy of “Love’s Philosophy” on loan. Would you like to take a look at it?”
*
And that simple question is why you find yourself rushing through a downpour of epic proportions, heels kicking up rainwater, hurrying to meet him at his office. You ignore the looks from the people heading home, grumbling under their umbrellas. It’s been a long day and here you are, a banshee in a pencil skirt, flying past them as fast as two inches will let you through a rain so thick you could probably wear goggles and see better than through your squinted vision.
You run, nearly slip, your way up the steps and into the College of Arts and Sciences where Da Vinci is senior professor. The adrenaline rush that has been powering you began less than an hour ago when you realized you had spent too long picking what to wear, finding the right makeup tutorial on YouTube and searching for a hairstyle that would tame the lion’s mane on your head. Time had slipped so quickly through the cracks of your fingers that you ended up in the same clothes you had worn to work, your hair in a bun that valiantly tried and failed to hold all your locks, and a swipe of lip gloss that has long since faded. And now, on top of it all, you are late.
Leaving little puddles in your wake you manage to find the elevator and then drip your way down the hall to the door that says “Professor Leonardo Da Vinci.” You try to steel yourself, but the scaffolding is weak and you buckle, hands on your knees as you struggle to catch your breath. This is a bad idea. Maybe you should cancel. You exchanged numbers. You could just send a text that due to the weather, you weren’t–
“Oddio, come in!” The door to his office has been flung open and there he is. Concern paints his handsome face as surely as embarrassment is coloring yours. You have no choice now but to step inside, acutely aware of how wet you are. That is until you take in his office and momentarily forget anything else..
Bookshelves filled to overflowing line the walls, stacks upon stacks of papers and notebooks and are those scrolls? He has Post-Its all over with reminders, even the bottom of his monitor is lined with them. Pencils, pens, a tablet, even an old-fashioned inkwell and quill are arranged on his desk. It is so impressive, so overwhelming in it's chaos, you forget for a moment your resemblance to a wet cat.
He approaches you, holding out a small hand towel. Outside the rain pelts the glass window of his office, eager to say hello. Your heart hammers back that this is all its fault. The rain ignores your accusation.
“Here. Please take this. I know I must have something here you can….change into…” He trails off and it dawns on you that he can’t seem to focus. You follow his gaze, your head dropping until you realize the rain has soaked you so completely, your blouse and skirt are molded to you, like Ives’s famous sculpture of Undine rising from the water. Your eyes fly back to his and what you see in them burns through you so strongly you’re half-surprised all the water clinging to you doesn’t evaporate immediately.
You hurriedly grab the towel from his hand and it breaks the moment. Leonardo turns, clearing his throat as he makes a vague gesture toward the smaller, backroom of his office, words like “extra sweater”, “somewhere back here”, “right back” tumbling from his lips as he disappears.
Breathing out, you hastily begin trying to dry yourself off, your limbs as graceful as a marionette controlled by a drunken puppeteer. Of course you knock over a pile of books from the edge of his desk. Kneeling, you hurriedly try to gather them up again. When you notice what is in your arms, you can’t help but pause, a smile on your lips. All the books he has ordered from your store. You stand, carefully setting them back on his desk and breathe out. No one will be the wiser.
As you continue to try and make yourself somewhat presentable, your gaze begins traveling over the spines of the books in his impressively full bookshelf. You spot biographies of Renaissance greats, books on the cartography of Italy, engineering histories. Wandering further brings you to his collection of poetry. Whitman and Donne and Eliot. And then you pause. “The Selected Works of Christina Rosetti”. But this is clearly not the copy he ordered from your store. That one you just put back on his desk. This one has a cracked spine that tells a story of age and use and fingers that have turned those pages countless times. You scan the rest of his poetry shelf. “Shakespeare’s Most Romantic Sonnets”, “The Lord Byron Collection”, “Rainer Maria Rilke: The Essential Poems”, “Wordsworth’s Love Poems”. They are all already there, and all well-worn and older.
“I’m afraid all I have is this school sweatshirt the faculty was given for some reason or another and–” He pauses when he sees where you are standing.
You turn, confusion in the furrow of your brow.
“Professor-”
“Leonardo.” He is walking toward you, expression soft, the maroon-colored sweatshirt dropping from his fingers to the floor. “Call me Leonardo.”
He stops in front of you, closer than he has ever been. No store counter between you, no barrier. Your heart is the thunder accompanying the rainfall outside.
“Leonardo….” His name on your lips feels like a kiss. It affects him too, hearing you say it. He blinks those beautiful, golden eyes of his.
“Yes, cara mia?” He takes a step closer.
“Why….” Your head is tilted upward, eyes on his face, your true north in the storm of emotion inside you. When you speak, your voice is hushed, as if a whisper could help you as you teeter on the knife’s edge between hope and regret. “Why…do you already have copies of all the books you’ve ordered from my store?”
Hope presses itself into your heart, breath held. Could it be….
He reaches up, brushing back the damp strands of hair from your face. His hands remain, cupping your cheeks, gentle and reverent.
“Why do you think?”, he whispers, his voice husky with something that sends sparks of radiant want bursting through your veins.
“Leonardo,” his name is a breath, hope igniting into flame, as he leans down, brushing his lips against yours. Once. Twice. And then he kisses you. Soundly.
His mouth is on yours and his lips and tongue tell you a story: how he was drawn to you from the moment he saw you, how every order was just an excuse to see you again. He pulls you against him, wetness be damned, his hands running over you, joining in the telling. How he had hoped you would notice the topic of all his orders. How you would see how much he admired your quick mind and open heart.
And now, pressed against him, rainwater bleeding from your blouse onto his shirt, skin tantalizingly visible and yet not, covered by wet fabric that doesn't quite hide its heat, he hopes you feel how much he has longed for you. How nights were eaten alive by visions of just this, holding you, touching you, discovering the mystery of what it means to taste you. He is a man of knowledge and you are a subject he has been aching to explore.
Breathless, you break apart, the only sound in the office the intermingled rhythm of your breathing and the rain falling outside.
Leonardo brings his lips to yours again, as if even this short break is too much, speaking between kisses. “The rain….brought me to your store….” You interrupt him when you kiss him back, gripping the back of his neck. He laughs softly against your lips. "And now it brings you to me. Like this."
You blink against the fog of happiness as you, still in the circle of his arms, glance down to see how soaked you both are.
"I'm so sorry! I should go home and change and–"
He tightens his hold on you, eyes gleaming, grin slow and sweet and rich as molasses.
"You, cara mia, will stay right here." He lowers his mouth to yours once more, your body yielding to his as a tree that bends to the wind. "I'm certain we'll figure out what to do about all these wet clothes."
"No one's giving me trouble," she laughs. "I think after six months here, I'm finally starting to get into a rhythm. I feel like I'm getting to know everyone else pretty well - their personalities, their daily routines, their quirks. Whenever he'll let me, I help Sebastian around the mansion. He won't let me often, though - says he's had a system in place for years and I'll only mess it up."
This makes Comte chuckle. "That sounds very like Sebastian."
Read it here on AO3.
Tagging: @entidy13 @gossamer-sky
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Being an anemo vision wielder and sneaking up on Diluc Ragnvindr. Entering through the window of the room where you know he's working in. Just surprising him with a big bouquet of flowers a casual smile and a greeting "Hello Red"
Him just huffing trying to hide a smile as he accepts those flowers telling you to just use the front door next time. but he keeps his window right open for you anyway.
