WHO: Chandler & Wendy Midgen (+ bb Eloise!)
WHAT: JUST CUTENESS OKAY?!
WHERE: The Midgen abode!
WHEN: ERRRRRR yesterday? Today?
Chandler was greatly flummoxed by his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Trying to get into the team spirit along with Wendy and the rest of the Tornadoes was not going according to plan, and now his hair was a shocking
purple, as he’d accidentally mixed the two hair potions. The subject had never been his forte, and was rather embarrassed at the result. He gulped, loudly, a sound that was quite often heard in their household, and it caused little Eloise to giggle and twitter from her seat on top of the toilet seat. Her father looked down at her, lips twisted in a smirk.
“Do you think it looks funny, Elly?” he asked, earning some applause from the nineteen-month-old. Chandler, though thoroughly unsure of his current situation, could not help but smile at his daughter and he took her hand to help slide her off the top of the toilet and out of the bathroom. “Will you help Papa find a hat?”
“‘at ‘at ‘at!” Eloise squeaked, her toes barely grazing the ground as Chandler held her hand up high. Before he could make it to the master bedroom he heard the signature ‘POP!’ of his wife’s arrival, as did his daughter. She squealed and twisted, pinching his hand so that she could be let go and allowed to rush to her mother. Chandler made sure Eloise’s feet were planted on the ground before he let her rush off, and hoped that she distracted her mother enough for him to find a indoor-appropriate hat to wear.
Practice had been grueling, but Wendy certainly didn't feel like it had been. Whether it was from a renewed sense of team unity or the much needed win from the weekend or both, she couldn't say, but she and most of her teammates were playing with a new intensity she just knew would pay off in the play-offs.
But as soon as she was in the coziness of her sitting room, Wendy could feel the weight of a day, even a good one, drop away. She loved what she did, but the hours were mad enough without bringing it home as well. The pitter-patter of little feet running to meet her was a familiar sound and she opened her arms wide to intercept the giggling mass that was much trickier than any snitch. "Hallo, Isey!"
If there was even one regret she had about being a professional athlete, it was that it took her away from home a lot in the season, and that meant being away from Eloise. Wendy had no illusions about her prowess as a mother—if it wasn't for Chandler, she was certain her darling child would be crawling backwards and speaking in tongues—but she hoped it was enough that she loved this little girl with all her heart and then some. Eloise plastered messy kisses to her cheek and squealed, fisting her hands gently in Wendy's newly-pink hair which she seemed to greatly adore. Holding the squirming bundle tight and making kissing noises right back at her, Wendy waited for the louder footfalls of her husband to follow, possibly out of breath from chasing Eloise around earlier. When none came, her curiosity was piqued.
"What did you do to your daddy?" she asked, tickling Eloise gently along the ribs. Her response was a wheeze and babbling, as her curly-headed daughter leaned backwards over the arms holding her and pointed in the general direction of their bedroom, so Wendy skipped towards it. "Chandler?" she called, nudging the ajar door further open with her shoulder. "Miss Elly Pat says—"
She stopped short at the sight that greeted her, mouth frozen in an "oh." "What—!"
“Oh---well-----you see...”
Chandler had been digging through his dresser to look for the hat that would most properly cover up his ridiculous hairdo, and was now caught in the midst of his burrowing. Well, he was caught, and any explanation other than the truth would just lead to mumbling and twitching and Wendy didn’t seem to
mind all that nonsense of his that usually happened when he became flustered. Which was often and a lot.
“I tried to get into the team spirit,” he explained, putting his hands out. Eloise pointed and laughed, and Chandler reckoned that she was going to have a very wicked sense of humor when she grew older. “But I believe that I mixed the wrong potions!”
Chandler lifted his wand and made the room a bit brighter so that his wife could get a better look. He came closer and Eloise’s laughter intensified and he tweaked her nose, “She’s a critic. It doesn’t look...
terrible, right?”
Oh, it did. But he really needed Wendy to lie and say otherwise.
Her hanging open mouth snapped shut very suddenly and Wendy smashed her lips together trying not to laugh. It wasn't that he looked silly! Although, all right, maybe he did, just a
smidge, but it was so very sweet that he would show support for her like this, even at the risk of looking just a smidge silly.
She shook her head vigorously, hoping Eloise's raucous sounding giggles covered her own wheezes. It really didn't look terrible; it was just shocking to see her ordinarily button-downed husband so… unbuttoned. And so purple! Not that he'd ever made her feel like this once, but sometimes she wondered if he wished his crazy wife did other things for a living, things that didn't have him putting
funny colours in his hair. Then he did things like this, and just knowing he'd done it with her in mind gave her a fuzzy, tingly kind of feeling and her arms inadvertently convulsed around her good-humoured child with her sudden surge of happiness.
"No, it doesn't look terrible!" Wendy exclaimed when she could finally make the words without her voice breaking. Leaning forward so they sandwiched Eloise between them, she lifted one hand to tug an errant lock of his newly-coloured hair. "See, it's like you support
all of the Tornados now!"
Chandler would always deny to anyone who might be interested enough to ask that being the may-as-well-be-a-stay-at-home-husband to a famous quidditch player took its toll, but times like this, when he found himself bored enough at home to actually convince himself that
dying his hair was a good idea, he wondered what he would be doing with his life if Wendy hadn’t wandered into Waterstone on that day, at that very time.
He would probably have succumbed to his mother’s wills and married their neighbor’s daughter, Marion Hansen, the nice girl next door. She would sit at home while he went to work, she would have dinner ready when he got home, and they’d sit in bed with a good book before kissing good night and going to sleep. It would be a simple life for a very simple man like Chandler.
But it would have been so
boring and dreadfully lonely, don’t you think With his Wendy, Chandler the simple man was loved for being quiet and thoughtful, and when she grew excited or came home with thrilling tales he absorbed them and admired her for it. They had very little to no routine, and it kept his mind racing and working; you had to be able to keep up with a literal tornado like Wendy, and Chandler decided that this little debacle of purple hair was just another attack of the whirlwind life he’d been accepted when he said those very famous ‘I do’s’
“This just means you lot better take the cup,” Chandler said with a grin, his arms going around his girls, kissing Eloise’s still laughing face before dipping his lips toward Wendy’s.
