WHO: Francis Lyon and Kiera Malone WHEN: A morning in early February WHERE: Francis's house SUMMARY: Snow day! Bacon is eaten and feelings are discussed. WARNINGS: In progress! There's kissing~
Winter in the American South was not proving to be the white wonderland Kiera might've been hoping for. Most of the time it wasn't even near cold enough for snow, and when it had occurred it had shut down the unprepared little town. For children -- and Kiera -- this was easily enough to run about building stunted snowmen and throwing dirty snowballs, and Francis had gotten into the spirit at first because her energy was contagious.
This time, it was early February and they'd had a surprising amount of snow for the region, but there were no salt trucks or plows, so what was a dusting in some areas of the country managed to cause dangerous ice that shut the town down once more. Kiera was at his house when he woke in the morning to the unmistakable glow of white light through the window, reflecting off the snow and ice below. She came over after work rather often, but today there'd been a purpose to it besides companionship.
Lucy had taken Francis to all of his neurology appointments since he'd gotten established with them in DC, but he'd finally gotten comfortable enough that when they'd realized that his appointment for today conflicted with some meetings Lucy couldn't miss, he'd asked Kiera if she would drive. He was comfortable driving again, but only in town or short distances out of town if necessary. He hadn't had another seizure since that fall day with Kiera, but he wanted to keep the right balance between freedom and caution, so one of the two young women was his chaperone most of the time.
He slipped out of the bed and stepped lightly over to the window, pushing the curtain aside so he could look out and see a thick accumulation. With a groan, he stepped back. The forecast had threatened snow, but he'd been expecting nothing more than a dusting that wouldn't stick. He returned to the bed and noticed Kiera's eyes had fluttered open. Before she could get up, he slid back under the covers to pin her affectionately and press a sweet kiss to her lips.
“Snow day,” he told her, blonde curls bouncing into his face as he hovered over her. He was due for a haircut, but now he was sticking to his playful decision to keep it long because he'd enjoyed her reaction to him tying it back. “It's already too much to try and drive up to DC. I'll call Dr. Koubeissi and reschedule.”
As winter had gone on, Kiera's enthusiasm for snow hadn't waned -- at least, it hadn't waned if she didn't have to go outside in it. She had made exactly one drive across town for a shift at the radio station to determine that driving in snow and on ice just wasn't for her, especially when the parking lot she'd arrived to was practicing an ice rink. Though the snow was pretty and she could appreciate that, she was a California girl and she preferred her roads dry (even if they were usually only dry because of the drought).
Still, even with snow in the forcast, she had agreed to take Francis up to DC. They hadn't been calling for much, so she found his determination of it being a snow day surprising. It only took a glance toward the window for her to realize he wasn't kidding, even through her bleary eyes; she'd grown keenly familiar with the glow of the snow in the morning light as it was almost more blinding than the sun itself. Kiera turned her face back to where his was hovering above her, bringing one hand up to rub her eyes gently. She never would be an easy riser, her body clock so attuned to being a night owl her whole life.
"You sure?" she asked, her words a bit slow as she finished waking up. Kiera raised her hand that had been at her eyes only moments before, then pushed his curls back from his face. "I don't want you to miss it if you don't have to."
“I'm sure,” he promised with a shrug. Her phone alarm, intended to make sure she woke up with enough time to make herself human before they had to make the drive north, began to ring and he reached over and hit the button to dismiss it for her. “If it were urgent, I could drive on this, but it's just a routine examination.” He kissed her neck at her pulsepoint playfully, grinning. “Unfortunately,” he teased against her skin, “it looks like you're stuck here with me today. Has the appeal of snow worn off yet, sweetheart?”
"Mm, nope." Sure, Kiera was rather tired of being cold more or less all the damn time, but when your concept of cold is anything under 60 degrees, that was only expected. The snow, though, she could forgive. Especially when considering that, while she did want Francis to go to his appointments and she was looking forward to finding a restaurant with cuisine more exotic than whatever was on special at Grandma's, it was hard to complain about getting to have a lazy day instead and getting a lazy day was all thanks to the snow. "I love the snow and the snow loves me."
Francis shifted his weight over her so he could slip his hand under her (his) shirt and stroke her stomach teasingly. “Is it only the snow you love? Are there no other things you like about snow days?”
A smirk crossed Kiera's lips, her amusement evident despite how she paired it with a teasing eyeroll. Still, she played along a moment later, her head cocking to the side from where it was still propped up against the pillow. "I mean, I do love the idea that I might be able to scrounge together enough ingredients in the fridge to make a truly fantastic omelette for my boyfriend." She paused, her expression suddenly thoughtful. "I think there might even be bacon."
“Oh might there?” He laughed and kept his expression innocent even as he moved his hand to caress a little higher. “It must be luck then that I went to the grocer’s yesterday. If there weren’t bacon and eggs, whatever would you do?”
"If there weren't bacon and eggs, I would brave the winter weather to get some," Kiera decided, consciously making no reaction to his touches. Her own hand was still in his hair, still and buried in his curls. "That is how much I love you, Francis. So much that I would potentially hit a mailbox or slide into the ditch, all for the sake of making sure you have a healthy breakfast."
“Breakfast is not what I currently have in mind, my love,” he said pointedly, giving her a particularly strategic pinch where he knew she could rarely help but react, a smirk forming. This battle of wills was not entirely uncommon and he was just as often on the receiving end, her own hand lower as he pretended to be unaffected, but it seemed it was his turn today. That was okay. They had time now that the snow had come to change their plans. Perhaps there was an upside to icy roads after all.
Kiera jumped and slapped his pinching hand gently in reprimand. "You don't say," she teased, rolling her eyes again in an exaggerated way. Not that she was opposed, of course -- she just couldn't help but give him a hard time. "I couldn't tell."
At that, she leaned up to give him a hard kiss, but just as quickly backed away with a raised eyebrow. "Call your doctor, Francis."
Francis gave a dramatic sigh, rolling away from her toward his side of the bed where his phone was plugged in to charge -- though in doing so he rolled away with all of the blankets, leaving her to enjoy the full force of the slightly chilly morning air from his thermostat not being set with snow temperatures in mind. “When did you become the responsible one?” he pouted teasingly as he pulled up the number for the neurology group. When Kiera tried to steal the blanket back, he gave her a playful kick and grinned, fighting her off until the receptionist answered and he had to act like an adult again.
“Hello, yes, I need to reschedule my appointment with Dr. Koubeissi?” The receptionist took his information and he patiently waited as she pulled him up, before he explained that the roads were a mess by them and he wouldn’t be able to get a ride -- the easiest explanation that mirrored the more specific truth. Luckily he had an opening again in just shy of three weeks and Francis happily took it, thanking the receptionist before hanging up again.
“There. Now get your arse over here,” he said to Kiera, before grabbing her with a playful roughness and pinning her again. He kissed her with a renewed fervor, clearly far less willing to let her get away with playing aloof and disinterested now that the only responsibility he had for the day was taken care of.
Kiera indulged Francis for a few moments -- quite happily, of course, because she had a hard time complaining about having the chance to kiss him properly. Though there had been a steady uptick as their relationship progressed in nights after work spent at Francis's, she still spent most of her nights at her apartment that she shared with her brother; given their work schedules, it was often those later nights that were the only time she and Niall were free to hang out and Kiera liked having that time to spend with him watching movies or playing video games. Still, she had come to enjoy being able to wake up with Francis.
This morning he was distracting her from breakfast, though. Not that that would normally be an issue, but Francis had sparked her default tease within her and it was impossible for Kiera to turn that off. After a few moments passed, she nudged him, indicating that he should roll over, letting her be able to take his place and hover above him instead. Rather than stay in that position, though, she simply kissed Francis a few more times... then continued to roll until she was off the bed and landed on her feet, her ballet and gymnastics training apparently not going to waste. Her parents would be so proud.
Standing, she smoothed her shirt and placed one hand on her hip, looking down at him. "Bacon, Francis."
“No, Francis Bacon.” He grinned broadly at his stupid joke as he stood. “Sir Francis Bacon, in fact.”
Kiera stood, her hand still on her hip as she looked at her boyfriend a bit incredulously. She knew who Francis Bacon was, of course. She'd gone to school and history had been one of her better classes, but that didn't stop her from raising an eyebrow.
"Nerd." She raised her hands, her gaze lifting toward the ceiling. "Why am I surrounded by nerds?"
Francis laughed, stealing a kiss and nipping playfully at her bottom lip as he did so, and then shrugged innocently. “Well, it was either you get a nerd or a shag. You chose poorly.”
"Please," Kiera replied immediately, rolling her eyes. "You'd always be a nerd. I'd just be shagging a nerd." As always when she dropped in one of his Britishisms, she put on a ridiculously over the top impression of his accent. She actually could do a pretty fair impression -- she just didn't. It was more amusing for her that way.
Though he intended to let her carry on in her search for bacon, he did encircle her waist with one of his arms for a moment. “You’d be shagging a gentleman,” he corrected before smacking her lightly on the ass. “A gentleman who will begrudgingly share his bacon.”
"A gentleman," Kiera replied, her tone deadpan and her eyebrows raised. Though she was teasing, she did a rather good job looking unconvinced. "Sure."
“If I weren't a gentleman, I might have given you a much harder time about getting out of that bed,” he pointed out. As he found and stole her hairtie from last night, combing his hair back with his fingers, he teased, “I still will if I don't reap some benefits of these bacon breakfast plans.”
"You say that like we need a bed," Kiera replied cheekily, her gaze lifting to his fingers as they pulled his hair back with her hair tie. She didn't even want to know what her own long hair looked like after a night of sleeping on it, but she wasn't thinking about that as she was clearly distracted. His hair had always been one of her favorite physical things about Francis, but she'd started to like it even more as he let it get a bit longer than usual.
But, she couldn't get too distracted -- not when bacon was on the line. Giving him a wink, she found her sweatshirt from where she'd discarded it the night before and shrugged it on to ward off the chill, his t-shirt and her pajama shorts not quite cutting it. That complete, she took off, leaving his bedroom, going down the stairs, and beelining toward the kitchen, only pausing to scratch George behind the ears from his perch on a chair. Once in the kitchen, she set toward her goal of making breakfast. Kiera was pretty useless when it came to making most other dishes, but she had a good list of breakfast dishes that she was more or less an expert at. Having spent plenty of nights at Francis's, she knew his kitchen as well as the one at the apartment she shared with Niall.
Francis enjoyed being in the kitchen with Kiera. The more he learned to cook, the more he found he both had a talent and an fondness for it, so the preparation became a joint effort. However, his part contained far less cooking and far more groping of her and her arse while she tended the food. Once he was swatted with a pair of greasy tongs he behaved a little better, but the smirk never quite left his lips.
While eating, though, he received a notification on his phone that made him appear a little more thoughtful, mulling it over while he chewed. It wasn't a text; he didn't give any of his siblings his cell phone number despite how much he loved them in case his mother used them to find him, but there were other ways to keep in contact with people.
Before Kiera could notice the shift in his mood and enquire, he asked her instead, “Do you think you might ever want to visit England with me?”
Kiera had been contemplating just how much butter she could get away with smearing onto her toast when Francis spoke. Her head tipped up and she raised her eyebrows. "I, well -- yes, of course. If you wanted me to."
He gave her a wry little smile. “What about this August?”
If it were possible, Kiera's eyebrows rose even further toward her hairline. She had expected this to be a discussion of somewhere in the future, not in six months time. It didn't make her opinion change on the matter, though it did make her curious where the question was coming from in the first place.
"I mean, well, I can ask off." She tipped her head to the side, glancing down at her toast once before letting it drop to her plate. "Do you want to go to England?"
“Yes,” he answered immediately, but then he corrected himself. “Well, no. I feel like I’m still adjusting to America. I have no desire to return home even for a short time. But Claudette is getting married, it seems.” Realizing that he had only told her his siblings’ names once each, maybe twice, he sipped his drink and then clarified, “That’s my middle sister. Elizabeth, me, Claudette, Charles, Henry, Margaret. She’s asked me to give her away, actually, since our father is dead. Claudette is the sort… I truthfully have probably said ‘no’ to her twice ever in her life.” He gave Kiera a small grin. “Besides… It should be entertaining. The whole thing is apparently an enormous scandal.”
"I do love a good scandal," Kiera replied on impulse, though her mind was already moving a mile a minute. Given how Francis had removed himself from his family so thoroughly, she had thought that there was little chance she would meet any more of them outside of Lucy. Now that she had met her, and was thoroughly convinced that his cousin didn't like her for reasons she was sure she could come up with given the chance, she had assumed that would be it.
Of course, it wasn't that she didn't want to meet his family… except, she sort of didn't. He'd met her own, so it was only fair that she immediately met his. The difference between hers and his, though, was that his were rich, British, and utterly terrifying.
He chuckled softly. “She's marrying a former servant of ours, Heath. A good man, a year younger than I am. I believe they've been involved since before her first marriage, and probably during… He was finishing university and my father liked him, so he hired him on with the company when he graduated. He's done quite well for himself, though it seems my mother can't get past his ‘humble origins.’” There was some amusement sparkling in his eyes, as though at an inside joke he and Kiera shared. They both knew without saying it that his mother, and a few others in his family, most likely, would not approve in the slightest of Kiera and they both knew that he didn't care one bit. He loved her for who she was and she him.
That didn't make her position any easier and he reached out to take her hand, expression suddenly serious. “Kiera, sweetheart…” he began, gaze steady. “I have not told any of my family about you, for your sake, aside from Lucy. I'm only going because it's Claudette. She's been put through so much because of my family. She and my mother are too much alike, except she's got a heart…” He shook his head and got back on track. “My point is that I don't want you to go if you're not comfortable. My whole family will be there, including my mother. I can handle her, but I don't want to put you in a position you're not alright with.”
"Even if you don't tell them about me now," Kiera started, leaning back in her chair while keeping her hand in his, "they'll probably find out eventually. I know you're not in close contact with them, but these things have a tendency of getting out and I think I'd rather be presented as your girlfriend at something like this, than like some..." She shrugged a shoulder, her gaze dropping. "A secret, I guess."
Francis nodded, squeezing her hand. “You’re right. And I don’t want you to feel that way.” He tried not to read too much into the way she’d looked away from him. She hadn’t pulled her hand away at least. Still, he had to assure her. “I’m not ashamed of you, Kiera. If you were American royalty, I’d not have said anything to them yet. I simply didn’t want them to taint this… us…”
"Thank everything that I'm not American royalty, because I'm pretty sure that would require me to be a Kardashian or Jenner and I'm not ready to be kept up with, even if I do have a K name." It was a terrible joke, but it was what immediately came to mind and Kiera couldn't help herself. Humor tended to be the way she went when it came to emotions and talking about them, a defense mechanism of hers that she knew Francis had to be intimately familiar with by this time in their relationship.
But, in that way that made him differ from every relationship that came before him, Kiera found herself knowing that they needed to talk about these things. It was easier to shrug and smile, but they would just fester. Festing feelings were the downfall of 95% of her previous relationships and she didn't want this one to suffer the same fate. Not for the first time, she found herself struck with how odd it was to want this like she did. A year ago, she had been dating a man that she would have found out in about a month had been cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend from the very start of their meeting. A couple weeks after that, she'd started dating the guy that she'd been seeing right up until the day before she and Niall left for Virginia. Kiera knew that she had been as much to blame for many of her failing relationships as her partner might have been and though she was still the same person as she had been back then, she was at least able to recognize her failings and try to grow past them.
"But, I know," she admitted, reaching up with her free hand to push a lock of hair behind her ear. He had taken her ponytail holder and she hadn't had a chance to tame her mane, so she was sure it looked ridiculous. "I know that you're not ashamed of me, I mean. I just would hate to think that others might think it -- partially for my own sake, but mostly for you."
“Well, don’t you worry about me, little octopus.” He tucked more of her hair back, then scooted forward so he could lean in and kiss her forehead before settling on his chair again. “I can weather my family. I want to know what you want. Do you want to come to the wedding? And do you want me to tell Claudette about us? They’re not contingent upon each other. You don’t have to come along for me to tell her.”
After he settled back into the chair and stopped talking, Kiera moved forward herself, out of her chair and into his until she was straddling his lap and letting her head rest on his shoulder -- more or less living up to his nickname for her as she clung to him. Just as it was hard to imagine that only a year ago she had been going through relationships like they were disposable, it managed to also be hard to imagine that he hadn't been in her life at all back then. He had taken up such an integral part of her heart and life in the months that they'd known each other.
"Yes," she replied, breathing a sigh. "To both. I want to get dressed up and scandalize snobby British people, but I also want to have a chance to know or just be known by people you care about."
He tipped his head to lightly kiss her neck, arms holding her firmly around her waist. “You’ll scandalize them most with your blue jeans,” he teased, glad they’d reached a conclusion. “Oh, and the Kardashians were not what I had in mind. I think Rockefeller or Kennedy when I say American royalty. Maybe Hilton. We’d’ve locked the Kardashians in the Tower by now.”
"Given the trajectory that America is going, we definitely deserve the Kardashians representing us to the general populace," Kiera replied lightly. Her eyes closed as she soaked in being so close to him, happy to take that comfort from him as her head stayed resting on his shoulder. "If only we had a tower to lock them in. Maybe the Washington Monument should be repurposed."
“Perhaps,” he mused. “I’m not sure it’s threatening enough, though. It always seemed to me to be rather… phallic.”
At that, Kiera backed up so she could let Francis fully appreciate just how thoroughly she rolled her eyes at that comment. She pointed at her eyes, just to get her message across. "It's not phallic," she determined, though her insistence was tinted with a smirk on her lips. "You need to get your head out of the gutter."
His lips mirrored her smirk, hands cupping her bottom and wondering if she'd eaten enough to finally let him take advantage of being snowed in with her. “If my mind is in the gutter, sweetheart, it's because you led it there. I was a proper gentleman before you. I had regular hair cuts and everything.”