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Forget-me-not	By : fundamellie Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Pet Shop Boys Views: 872 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the celebrity I am writing about. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Forget-me-not
- 1
The smell of freshly brewed coffee and toast greeted Neil as he came down the stairs and approached the kitchen. The door was ajar and he could hear cluttering noises as well as soft music playing from within. He opened the door and saw his boyfriend Stefan crouching in front of the oven, apparently trying to figure out if whatever was inside was ready for consumption.
He stepped inside, still buttoning up his jacket. Even though it was only shortly past
9 o’clock in the morning, he was already dressed smartly in what he called his business suit; a simple, yet elegant black Hugo Boss one complete with plain black tie.
In fact he was in a bit of a hurry; the taxi he had called was due any minute. He hated to have meetings that early, especially because usually the earlier a meeting was scheduled the bigger the chances of his friend and partner Chris being late.
“Morning,” he said, slightly startling Stefan, who jumped up a little and almost knocked his head on the oven handle. The boy got up and shot Neil an irritated glance.
Most likely because Neil usually did not wear a suit at home.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he replied.
Neil gave him a quick kiss on the cheek as he passed the boy to cross over to the coffee maker. He grabbed a cup left to dry on the sink and poured himself half a cup of coffee. He blew on it before he took a careful sip.
“Are you expecting somebody over breakfast?” he asked. He continued, no waiting for the answer. “I’ve got to fly now, cab’s coming any second. Another meeting with EMI.” He sighed and drank more of his coffee.
“It’s supposedly important, so it’s going to last forever and will be frightfully boring.
Do you want to meet up for dinner later?”
“No,” Stefan replied, sounding a little too bright. “No,” he repeated. “Actually I’m quite busy today.”
Neil frowned and wondered what he had done or said to upset the boy. He knew Stefan well enough to know when he was disappointed and for some reason unknown to him, the boy was upset now. Before he could do or say anything else though, the door bell rang. Neil sighed again and put down his cup.
“Got to go now, we’ll talk tonight” he said and in passing kissed the boy goodbye.
“See you then,” the boy shouted after him, but when the sound of the closing door was the only answer he got, he slumped down on one of the chairs and buried his head in his hands. After a moment he jumped up as if bitten by an invisible Tarantula and hurried over to the oven. He yanked the door open, put the heat down and gazed at the slightly blackened heart-shaped cake.
“How typical of you to forget it’s Valentine’s Day, you git” Stefan mumbled under his breath as he fled the kitchen, leaving the cake to cool down.

About three hours later the meeting at EMI had come to a momentary halt and Neil and Chris were on their way to an early lunch. While Chris stirred them through the thick midday traffic, he cheerfully hummed along to the songs on the radio. Mostly kitschy love songs or ballads, Neil noted and inwardly shook his head about his partner’s obscure choice in music. Suddenly Chris turned to him with a cheeky grin.
“So, what are the boy and you doing today? Any special plans?”
“Plans?” Neil echoed lamely. “What plans? It’s not his birthday or something.”
Chris threw his friend a sideward glance that seemed to say:
‘I should have known you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about!’
He shook his head in disbelieve. “God, you’re really the most unromantic person I know!”
“Why?” Neil inquired, frowning slightly.
“Why? You’re seriously asking why?” Now Chris was actually laughing. “Well, because it’s Valentine’s Day today, that’s why!”
Neil turned his head to face Chris sharply. He looked totally thunderstruck. It slowly dawned on him why Stefan had looked so disappointed when he had left in such a hurry that morning. A breakfast table set for two. Flowers in a vase. Something in the oven that had smelled like cheese cake.
“Oh no,” he groaned.
Stefan had planned a romantic breakfast and he had not even noticed! He had to make up to the boy, and make up big time. He reached for his mobile and dialled a number. After a moment of waiting he spoke.
“Hi, Kevin. Do you have time this afternoon? No, not for long. I just need your help with something…”

It was four minutes passed three o’clock when his mobile made that annoying beeping noise that meant that it had just received a message. Stefan jumped up from the sofa on which he had been sitting – or rather sloughing - , switching TV channels every 30 seconds or so. The woollen socks he was wearing made him slip on the polished parquet and he only narrowly managed to keep his balance. He skidded to a halt in front of the huge dinner table where he had placed his mobile the previous evening. It had stopped beeping by now but the display signalled that there was an unread message waiting for him. He pressed the buttons and read the short text. While he read his temper rose again and he felt the disappointment and the stab of anger from earlier this day return.

“Pls don’t expect me home before 6 a.m. Meeting drags. Sorry. See you later! N.”

Stefan switched off the mobile and put it down on the table with more force than necessary. Neil could be such an insensitive idiot! Okay, it wasn’t exactly his fault that these record company people were keeping him but forgetting it was Valentine’s Day, overlooking all of the effort he had put into preparing breakfast and simply failing to notice that he had disappointed him definitely was! Stefan was about to go back to the sofa, when the doorbell rang. His mood brightened at once. So Neil had managed to escape the meeting earlier after all! The boy yanked the door open and his mood dropped to low again. It was not Neil standing there, it was Kevin. His friend grinned at him and gave him a pad on the shoulder.
“Hi there, mate! How are you doing? Listen, I need your help. Can you come shopping with me?”
Stefan frowned at him and wrinkled his nose.
“Why shall I go shopping with you? Do you need trainers again?”
Kevin ignored Stefan’s grumpy tone and continued cheerfully:
“Nah, no trainers. Something for Monica. You know, it being Valentine’s Day and all!”
Stefan starred at his friend for a long moment, feeling his face going completely blank. He could have screamed, though. Even this thoughtless, disorganized chum that hardly remembered his own birthday but for some reason had become his best friend had managed to remember that it was Valentine’s Day today. And his own boyfriend had been just so plain stupid! The boy closed his eyes briefly and shook his head as if trying to wake himself from a bad dream. He nodded his consent slowly which looked oddly like he was admitting defeat.
“Okay, I’ll come with you. Wait, I’ll just put on my shoes. Where are we going?”

Their first stop was an ordinary supermarket. Not one of the cheapest but still a far cry from the likes of Harrods’s food hall or Harvey Nichols. Kevin insisted on buying one of those huge, overly sweet, ghastly decorated cakes which seemed to be so very popular in England. The thought of having to bite through the thick sugar coating alone made Stefan’s teeth ache. Kevin chose a particularly revolting décor which consisted of yellow roses draped around Homer Simpson’s head.
“So, you don’t like our kind of cakes?” Kevin huffed. “What would you want as a surprise desert for the occasion then?”
Stefan considered this for a moment, obediently following Kevin who was pushing their trolley down the corridors. He didn’t like cakes all that much.
“Hmm… Fresh strawberries with real whipped cream. You know, freshly made one, not the one out of a can,” he offered after a while. “Or maybe this nut brittle ice-cream you bought last time we went to the cinema together.”
Next was the drinks department where they had a discussion whether or not it was true that girls liked pink Champagne better than ordinary one and Kevin settled on buying Prosecco instead because the only pink Champagne he could find cost more than his weekly travel card.
“I wish Neil would not drink Champagne that much,” Stefan admitted when Kevin had recovered from the shock of seeing the prices.
“I mean, he can drink it if he likes it but he seems to expect everybody else to like it. And I’m not that keen on it. I’d rather have ordinary sparkling wine, which is not so dry mixed with some nice juice. Otherwise I’m drunk in no time.”
Kevin nodded. “Yeah, Champagne’s not my thing either. A good old pint will do!”
The last thing Kevin bought in the supermarket was a bunch of sweets, including peanut butter biscuits and the super-size M&M box which came in a heart-shaped box.
While they were waiting in the queue at the counter, Stefan looked at the pile of sweets in Kevin’s trolley. “I don’t see why you like this peanut butter stuff so much. Don’t you like something sour for a chance? Like these little candy hearts?”

On the way to a decent flower shop Kevin wondered if the present he had bought for his girlfriend would be okay or weather Monica would be disappointed.
“I would have liked to buy her something fancy, like perfume or so but it’s all so dead expensive. So now I’ve got this nice little sleep-shirt for her. I even had the girl at the counter warp it for her. I’m so bloody useless with that!”
“I think it’s too commercialized anyway,” Stefan added. “You should give something for anybody for the most obscure reasons. Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas, Halloween, then there are all the birthdays… It just would be nice if you do or give little things instead. You know, like preparing breakfast nicely or maybe buying a tiny book or a rose. Not something that has to be expensive or designed.”

At the flower shop Kevin inspected every kind of flower they had, from tulips to carnations to exotic looking orchids to tiny bouquets of honeysuckle and forget-me-nots to weird creations consisting of bamboo and red berries. In the end he did the predictable and bought just one long-stemmed rose with one huge dark red blossom.
“Do you like it?” Kevin asked during their way back to the car.
“Sure I like it, it looks gorgeous.” Stefan assured him. “But I really loved these
forget-me-nots. It’s funny; we use the same name in German.”
“Shit!” Kevin suddenly exclaimed. “Looks like I forgot my car key in the shop.
Can you wait here? I have a quick look around there.”
Before he could even comment, Kevin was gone, leaving Stefan standing alone in front of Kevin’s battered looking car.

Neil was already on his way back into the city centre when his mobile beeped softly.
He had a quick look at it and frowned, causing the cab driver to arch an inquiring eyebrow.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“No,” Neil shook his head. “Just puzzled.”
On the small display of his mobile were the words:

“Strawberries and whipped cream. Fresh. Sparkling wine. Juice. Candy hearts. Nut brittle ice-cream. Something tiny. Forget-me-nots.”

Neil starred down at this odd list a little mystified. Forget-me-nots? Did he ever know anybody who had wanted forget-me-nots rather than roses?

Three quarters of an hour later, Neil had pretty much everything he needed and being a bit clueless about the last item left for him to acquire, asked the cab driver who until now had patently driven Neil from one shop to the other.
“Do have any idea where I can find candy hearts? They didn’t have any at Harvey Nichols.”
The cabbie laughed at this remark. “Of course not! What school kid would go down that fancy place to buy candy hearts? Try any odd corner shop, you’ll get lucky!”
He stopped at the next one, which lay directly on Fulham Broadway and Neil hurried in and indeed found what he had been looking for. When he finally got out of his cab, gathering up all of the bags he had gotten in the last hour, he left quite a generous tip behind.
He had just dropped all of the bags on the living-room floor, when his mobile beeped again. It was another call from Kevin. He could tell by the ring tone. He had programmed a different one for most of his friends: The ‘Winnie the Pooh Theme’ for Stefan, ‘Passion’ by ‘The Flirts’ for Chris and Shaggy’s ‘Mr Bombastic’ for Kevin.
Neil only heard muffled voices at the other end, then suddenly he could hear Kevin fairly clearly.
“Oh, come on you really have to say hello to Monica. Not for long, just half an hour or so. Then I’ll drive you back to Neil’s place…”
The sound got bad once more and Kevin’s voice faded when the volume of the car’s stereo was turned up. Neil hung up. So he had about 45 minutes to prepare everything. At best. He better got started.

The bunch of forget-me-nots went into some tiny water glasses which he put on the dinner table. He surrounded them with some of the candy hearts, choosing the ones with the more charming sayings like ‘Cutie pie’, ‘Little angle’ or ‘Baby love’.
In the kitchen he filled two small heart-shaped bowls with the nut brittle ice cream and put them into the freezer. The strawberries went into another bowl. He had even bought a bit of fresh mint, which he used for decoration. He left the whipped cream in the plastic box he had bought from that ice-cream parlour in the Swiss Centre. Both of those went into the fridge for now. Same as the sparkling wine and the pomegranate juice.
He carried glasses, bowls, spoons and napkins over to the dinner table as well and set everything nicely. Then he tied a huge Winnie the Pooh balloon to Stefan’s favourite chair. It floated up nicely and then hung above the chair like a particularly odd-shaped cloud. It showed Winnie the Pooh hugging piglet. Not need to mention the heart-shape and the pink background. He put on some romantic classical music and hurried upstairs to change out of his suit.
The doorbell rang when he put on the T-shirt he had bought especially for the occasion. It was a little snug around his hips but it would have to do. He gapped a sporty jacket and pulled up the zip as he went downstairs. The bell was ringing again. He tried hard to force the smile from his face when he opened the door to find Stefan standing in front of him. The boy looked a bit grumpy and he did not bend down to kiss him on the cheek like he usually did for a welcome.
“Oh hi, Stefan,” Neil said, trying to sound absent-minded. “What a coincidence that you show up now. Could you help me with this thing? I just don’t get that damn zipper down.”
He stepped back, allowing Stefan to come inside and closed the door behind him.
He had to fake a cough to keep from laughing out loud. Stefan’s face looked like he just bitten into an extremely sour lemon. Neil could almost see the thoughts turning behind the boy’s eyes. Something like: ‘Damn old git, forgot Valentine’s Day and all he thinks of is his stupid jumper!’
Stefan stepped closer to Neil anyway and tried the zipper. Of course it came down nicely and Neil could see the boy frown at the lack of resistance.
“What the hell was that about?” he demanded.
Neil suppressed a grin and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, never mind. Don’t you think it’s dead warm in here?” He turned away from the boy and got out of the jacket. Then he slowly turned back to the waiting German.
“You could have at least…” Stefan had begun behind his back but the words died when he caught sight of Neil’s shirt.
It had the outlines of a heart on it and through it ran the words ‘Let me be your Valentine’ in a supposedly romantic script.
The boy gasped and Neil grinned at him. He did not have time to say anything as he suddenly found himself surrounded by a pair of arms which squeezed him quite tightly.
He kissed the boy on both cheeks and then softly on the mouth.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he whispered.
- 1
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Forget-me-not