Happy birthday to me!

Today's my birthday! Woo hoo! I'm old!! Actually, I'm going to share this day with Beppe ^^^^ (ta very much Stuart Bellamy <3). Why not? JK Rowling shares her birthday with Harry Potter. I'm selfish that way. It means I get to keep him all to myself. Mostly. So, to celebrate us both, I'm giving you all a sneak peek of Beppe in one of his little moments that makes Mimi fall for him. It is without doubt one of the kindest things a man could do for his woman.

Mimi dragged her pillow over her head, cutting off Beppe mid-conversation and rather unfairly, mid-seduction. “They’re such selfish bastards!”

“Who?” What just happened? Why wasn’t any loving happening right now?

She lifted the pillow, face puffed with anger. “The fuckers across the road who are having yet another party! It’s Wednesday night! I’m working tomorrow for your bloody best friend!”

“Ah.” That made him feel somewhat better. His prowess remained intact. “Okay, let me deal with this.”

“And what are you going to do?” she asked, curling her top lip in sarcasm. “Execute them all?”

“Wendy Darling,” he caught her hand and pressed it to his chest. “I’m offended that you’d think I’d stoop to the lowest common denominator. I’ll be back.”

He threw back the sheets and pulled on his jeans and chucked a t-shirt over his head. No need for too many clothes. Mimi watched him, and he could feel the concern burning holes into the back of his skull.

“Seriously, don’t kill anyone.”

“I heard you the first time.” He flashed her a grin and loped down the stairs to where his bag remained, abandoned in the corridor of Mimi’s home. Just when he thought they were getting somewhere, yet again someone else interfered.

Beppe scrambled around in the canvas, on the hunt for ah, just where he left it. He lifted a gas mask from the bag and fitted it over his face, then snapped on latex gloves. Whistling, he stalked out of the house, and removed exactly what he needed to get Amelia to focus for longer than five minutes on one thing. As a woman, she could multi-task to glory, but as a girlfriend, she was failing on basic concentration.

With two cans of tear gas in each hand, and one in each pocket, Beppe walked across the road to the neighbour’s rowdy party. A loping, intoxicated man slurred at him, “Oi, where the fuck are you going?”

Beppe just nudged him gently and he toppled like a toy car. He broke off one of the cans of tear gas and threw it into the living room, repeating the same in the kitchen and watched streams of people trying to leave the house. He lobbed a can up the stairs and then stopped to locate the electricity box.

Singing Whitney Houston’s How Will I Know to himself as people screamed and yelled, he reached into the back pocket of his jeans, withdrawing a miniature toolbox. With a pair of pliers, he nipped through the electricity mains. The music and lights died instantaneously. Easy. Why people refused to be considerate of their neighbours, he had no idea. They would be the same people who would look out for their property if they disappeared on holiday; alert them if something strange happened in their living room, and more than likely allow them to share the Wi-Fi password. Neighbourly-ness went far. And Beppe knew all his neighbours, so well that each and every single one of them would vouch for him, if worst came to the worst. Maybe he should introduce them to Mimi... 

He gave it another five minutes for the gas to take effect and then left the house, closing the door behind him. Beppe retreated to Mimi’s back garden, loping himself over the fence. Behind her azalea bush, her actual plant and not the body part she was trying to keep him from; he removed his gas mask and clothing. He doused his naked self with water from the garden hose, and re-entered the house. A good, chivalrous night’s work.

Mimi stood on the stairs, staring at him. He blinked at her, dripping water on her bare floorboards. The minute she got the place carpeted, would be the minute she would stop looking for problems between them, he had a really good feeling about that. An uncarpeted house just caused problems for any relationship. Budding or otherwise.

“Did you just tear gas my neighbours?” she asked, a hand on her throat.

Beppe shook water from his ear. “Yeah, I did. But to be fair, they’re quiet now. And perhaps, you and I can have a bit of a chat. Because, and I’ll be honest with you Amelia, it’d be nice if we could talk without you finding everything else in the world more interesting than us…”

She cut him off, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to his. The warmth of Amelia drizzled through him, seizing the cold shivers from his hose pipe shower. She lifted her mouth and whispered, “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

Wary, Beppe eased back to look at her face. Nothing but sincerity and gratitude blazed from her. “Really?”

“I’d take this over a bunch of flowers any day.” She traced a hand over his collarbone. “Do you want a hot shower? You feel cold.”

He lifted a brow. “Are you coming with?”

Her lips curved into a devious smile. “I’ve got surprises for you that are waterproof.”

At that moment, Beppe realised that he would owe Rocky and Anna for life. They’d found the perfect woman for him. Those bollocking bastards…