tumnus meets lucy pevensie on one snowy winter day in the central park zoo. she's clutching a venti hot chocolate between mittened hands, watching the penguins splash around with her head cocked to her side. she's pretty and easy to chat up, and tumnus finds himself liking her very much.

the main problem of the moment is the fact that he happens to be working for jadis at the moment. jadis, not a friend of the pevensies.

to be fair, jadis is in manhattan strictly for the purpose of fucking the pevensies over.

really, it's nothing personal on tumnus's part. just a job, after all. except then lucy tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow and drags him off to the nearest starbucks. and he keeps coming back to see her, even after he's already decided he's not going to give jadis the dirt she wants on the pevensies.

then one day he meets lucy at this french restaurant for dinner and there's another man already with her, golden-haired and handsome, talking familiarly with her. peter pevensie, her oldest brother. tumnus freezes.

tumnus is trying to, not so very subtly, look for an escape when peter looks up and sees him. the older pevensie's smile is ridiculously sweet and precisely calculated to charm; tumnus had seen its twin on jadis's face all those years ago when he'd gambled and lost more than he could pay.

"tumnus, right?" he says, standing up. "i'm lucy's brother peter. let's take a walk."