This Charming Man ~ Teen AU
Seventeen-year-old Tom Pratt-Leigh is more than half-way home before he realizes that, somewhere in between wandering around Oxford Street and taking a trip to the London Library, he's somehow managed to lose his set of house keys. It's a hot afternoon in early July, and trekking back across the city to retrace his steps is the last thing in the world Tom wants to do at the moment--but it's not as if he has a choice in the matter. His parents are both away at work, aren't expected back until early evening, and in the mean time, Tom has no other way to get inside the house. And so, his messenger bag full of library books weighing heavily on his shoulder, he has no choice but to sigh long-sufferingly, turn back, and start looking for his keys.
The library is closest, and as Tom approaches the bench where he'd been lingering earlier in the afternoon, he prays that the keys will prove themselves to be easily found. It'd be bloody embarrassing, after all, at his age, to have to wait outside on the front steps until his parents came home--or worse, to have to call them and admit to losing the keys.and beg them to come bail him out. No, that would just be too awful.
He's faintly surprised to find another teenage boy occupying the bench now, even more so to realize that the boy is actually reading something that looks heavy and studious. Tom readjusts the strap of his bag on his shoulder and clears his throat politely, before he asks, "Excuse me, but--you haven't happened to come across a set of keys round here, have you?"