occultigen | IC Inbox

i dunno if its solemn so much as
i dont know im just nervous for no reason i guess
probably i should ask you in person too its pretty important
important but not bad in any way

...You know you can always tell me anything. And I'll always listen.

Do you want to come by the boutique? We could talk about it over lunch...

yeah
thatll be good
should i bring us anything from the house?

There ought to be a few things in the fridge — and a few apple fritters, I know for a fact.

gasp
APPLE FRITTER LUNCH
<3<3

Only the best for my very best!!

(ʃƪ✿^ 3(●ε●)ノ

be right there
☆ヾ(●ε●*)ﾉﾞ =з=з=з

[And certainly he will, she knows, because Dave is nothing if not enthusiastic about zipping off to see her always, so she gets up from what she's doing and starts to tidy up her workspace a bit in preparation for his arrival, knowing full well that it won't be long until she sees him in person.]

[And here indeed is the enthusiastic boy, laden with leftovers, apple fritters, and love. Where once he might have felt alien in a boutique like this, now he slides right in like he belongs, just another article expertly crafted under Meridiana's care.

Not to say he isn't still nervous, of course, but that has nothing to do with their setting. It has to do with their settling.]

Hey, babe.

[But first, Dave ambles over for a kiss.]

Hey, yourself.

[Even to this day, it still makes her smile to echo that greeting — now so natural and second nature, but still almost a joke, in light of how she'd had to be taught to even use it in the first place.]

You made it all right?

[And that, too, is getting to be second nature around here — the standard check-in for the times when they've been separated, you've been all right since last I saw you, because in the end it's still always safety that ends up being the first priority, before anything else can happen.]

Uh-huh. I think those clouds are gonna break soon, though.

[April showers bring May flowers and all that. It's been stormy lately, and definitely warmer; it reminds him of home, a little.

He lifts the bags of food he has to show her he hasn't brought anything else.]

I'm not going out in the rain without an umbrella. You might be stuck with me all up in your work space all day.

[The tragedy.]

Oh, goodness. A Dave in my boutique all day, whatever will I do?

[It gets a laugh out of her, though, and she offers her arms to take one of the bags from him, obligingly.]

Certainly I won't get any work done, once the cuddlemonster makes me his prey.

[Well, if that isn't an invitation...! He snakes his freed arm around her and nuzzles in, breathing an unvoiced laugh into her hair.]

Grandmother, what long and noodly appendages you have. [He switches to a growly, wolfish voice.] All the better to smoosh you with, my dear. Wrruff wuff wuff.

[He punctuates the last with a kiss against her temple, then holds on, happy even though his heart's sitting in his mouth. After a moment, he asks softly:]

When do you want to get married?

[...]

Is what I wanted to ask you.

[She shrieks and laughs as he sets in on her, squirming more in a playful manner than out of any genuine protest.]

Grandmother, what a question! I suppose when I should happen to meet a most charming wolf and he...

[But the thought slowly tapers off as it dawns on her that the two thoughts aren't actually intended to go together, and all of a sudden the reluctance from before makes a lot more sense, and the whole world goes warm and soft with understanding.]

...Oh. Have — you've been worrying about it...?

[Dave nods without speaking. With Meridiana in his arms, what might have been a nervous shifting of his weight turns instead into slight, gentle swaying, like a slow dance slowed further.]

And Madam Lutece asked me the other day. When we were gonna, I mean. She didn't ask me to marry her, that'd be. [He pauses and looks up.] --Hilarious, actually, but also, mmmm, nah.

[He's already got an older woman. EYYYYY.]

We haven't talked a lot about it, so... just wondering if you had thoughts. [His voice drops a little, soft and low.] Don't want to hold things up.

I should certainly hope not, I'll have to stop making her so many dresses if she's only going to steal my fiancé as my thanks for it.

[Which strikes an odd note with her, as soon as the words leave her mouth — just the pure phrasing of it, dredging up echoes of Emmeline that never quite go away, but it's a testament to how far she's come that she's equally quick to shake it off, and settles comfortably against Dave instead.]

I think...it's hard to shake the notion that I ought to be, at my age. I-I know it's different in the modern times, but all that bit about the shelf, and...

[She pauses.]

More and more I come to realize that there were so many things about London that were just so...oh, what's the word. Pervasive...? And everyone just...treated them as musts and shall-bes and there was never any reason to think otherwise.

[And of course he knows that, too, all too well. There have been plenty of things in Dave's life that weren't as they ought to be, but he'd never known any different because they were treated that same way. Of course he understands that; neither one of them ever had things as they ought to be, and that's the whole reason for their fumbling to try to suss it out properly now.]

So...I suppose, to start with at least, I do want very much to be married. But...I don't feel as though I'm less for not being. I know I'm certainly not loved any less for it, and neither are you.

[He nods again. Yes, yes, yes: Yes, he understands just how "normal" just means "unquestioned;" yes, he wants to get married; yes, yes, yes, nothing could lessen the love between them--the love they are. If nothing else, that will always be a surety.]

Yeah. For me...

[The thought's still taking shape, and he pauses for a moment, tracing the shape of her cheek for a moment like it might lead him to the conclusion he's looking for. Somewhen, they became each other's maps, these two. He lifts a hand to tuck a curl bend her ear.]

Marriage didn't even seem like a real thing I could do, growing up.

[In some ways, growing up didn't seem like a thing he could do, growing up. Sure, maybe he'd get older--maybe he'd get bigger, stronger, smarter, find a way to stand his own ground--but why should anything ever have to change the way he and Bro lived? It was the way things always had been, before SBURB.

After SBURB, for some reason, the whole concept seemed ridiculous. Having a future, that is.]

When--when we do, it'll be... It feels like I'll be putting that all behind me, forever. Really... really stepping forward into the life I want to live with you.

[Live, she ordered him, like she somehow understood he wouldn't know how on his own. Because she did; because she knew, and knows, how hard it is, still, to trust that the steady chain of tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow won't suddenly snap on them.]

If that's what being married is, then I feel weird about doing it here, when... when I want forever to really mean forever. Especially a forever with you.

I see, yes. As though...we're burying the past, in a fashion.

[She's clearly tentative about how she phrases this, having arrived at a thought but not entirely sure whether she wants to voice it, and if she does, in what way.]

Isn't it? Setting aside the old Dave and the old Meridiana...and here, like this, we still are the old Dave and the old Meridiana, a bit. Aren't we?

[She hesitates.]

Not because being married will make it easier to sleep on Thursday nights or...or make either of us stop jumping at knives and washing machines and staircases. But this isn't home. And — it should be both. Home where you are, and home where we're both going to stay, together. And this isn't that, not yet.

Yeah.

[Marriage is a gesture, but there's a magic about it, too; a promise embodied in words, rings, and a kiss. If they get married here, and then forget... that's the thought that scares him. Not because the gesture would be meaningless or even the time, but because he doesn't want to forget something that big.

And still, he remembers Rosalind's words. 'That's all providing a secure and stable future truly requires: knowing that the other person is there for you, no matter what.']

But. It could be, eventually. Because...

[He loosens his grip and lets his hands fall, but only until they can meet hers.]

Anywhere you are. That's my home.

And whatever place we pick to put down our roots...even if we do it a hundred different times, it's still always home, because it's where we are together.

[And there's something to that notion, perhaps — the way that, in some fashion, they're refugees of their own circumstances, Dave from his destroyed universe and she herself slipped out of time. For them there is no deliberation between "mine" and "yours", the merits of one or another, because all of their attachment to either is dead and gone, and so the only thing that's left is what they choose to adopt for themselves.

This could be home, if they wanted it to be. Impermanent, fleeting — but it could still be home. Kalos became home in the same way, by their mutual decision and their conjoined investment.

Anyplace could be home, she muses, and there's something about that notion that warms her. Where once the thought of drifting unattached to a native locale might once have terrified her, now she finds a freedom in knowing that home can be anywhere for the both of them, so long as it is the both of them.

She tips her chin up, radiating that warmth at him in a smile.]

Perhaps we ought to start telling people who ask — we'll be married when it's in the cards that it's time.

[She winks, amused by her own little invocation of their two respective bailiwicks.]

That's really what it is, isn't it? When you know and when I know, and not a moment before.

[He responds to that smile before he even knows what it is he's responding to, before the words have time to permeate. It grounds his feet, gently presses the tension out of his shoulders, loosens the muscles around his eyes. Before he knows it, he's smiling, too, at first wondering like a child, and then bright and delighted and irrepressible.]

Yes.

[Yes to all of it. Yes to her. Biting his smile a little, eyes crinkling behind his sunglasses, he lifts her hands up to hide his face behind them, peeking at her over her ring.]

Christ, Meridiana, I love you... [So much, he could eat a dictionary and never have the words. He ducks behind her hands completely, then kisses her fingers, lets go so he can brush her hair back again and kiss her forehead.] I love you.

[He touches his forehead to hers a moment, lets the understanding between them settle and grow roots all around, keep them safe. When he feels it, he kisses her softly, gratefully.

Whatever--wherever--they build, it'll take something of him and something of her. Covalent bonds: that's something in science, isn't it?

'Besides, it needn't be a waltz just like I remember. One that's half mine and half yours would suit just as well...don't you think?'

'Well. Maybe three fourths yours and a quarter mine till we establish I know what I'm doing a little.'

He keeps smiling, feeling right--in place, safe, loved--all the way down to his toes.]

If you wanted to get married this literal second I probably wouldn't say no.

We've not yet buried the past yet.

[And maybe they won't, not for a long time. Maybe they won't do it here. Maybe they won't do it consciously, or by any sort of design. But one way or another, they'll lay the past to rest, and there'll be a future waiting when they do; that's something they can both believe in.

And so she leans up softly, kissing him, and murmurs like a secret against his mouth: ]

But say "I do", anyway, just for me. Because I do, too.

[He breathes in her words and lets out something between a sigh and a silent laugh. Something in his chest rolls over, like the sensation of a fall while knowing he's safe, safe, caught up by arms that love him.

In her same murmur, with the same earnest urgency, Dave says:]

I do.

[It rolls through him to say it, a shudder except good. He swallows, then smiles, wide and a little crooked because it's a smile he can't help.]

"Happily ever after." [He whispers it, moves down so his eyelashes brush against her cheek and he can nuzzle her jaw.] Where doing this, man.

Mmhmm. Just so...

[She doesn't open her eyes. She doesn't need to, not when it's so much better to feel him close and lean into the comfort of it and relish the sensation of her own smile starting to blossom on her own expression.]

Where making this "hapen".

IC Inbox | rubycity_rp

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject