Violet Sparks | Daisy Johnson (thescarecrow) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2018-02-28 23:37:00 |
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The memories still came thick and fast. Flaming cars, the vacuity of space, the terror of loss. The girl named Daisy had a thousand things on her mind and most of it flowed through her palms. Violet, however, brought a handful of seedlings to the cabin. Considering this her home, she had determined that she would begin to make her own mark in their living spaces. And in so doing, she had built a small shelf just off a window in the kitchen. Now at a counter, she heaved a small bag of dirt, a trowel, and a few small terra cotta pots, onto the flat surface with the intent of crafting a small and year-round herb garden that she (or Quincy) could use for food. Violet liked to eat fresh. She liked it because it was flavourful and sustaining. But she also - Daisy also? - liked it because she understood that you could be rich without having things. And that somehow (here) began with four small seedlings. Somehow, Violet had gotten under his skin and settled around his heart, like she belonged there and always had. It had taken him off guard at first. At the beginning, Quincy had let her stay just because she needed help, but that morphed into something deeper than he’d ever imagined. He wasn’t afraid anymore, not of anything. He blinked and she filled his house with love. She made it a home. It was better than he’d ever imagined. There wasn’t a lot of space here, so he knew he wasn’t surprising her when he came home from work. He still came up behind her as she worked and dropped a kiss to the side of her head. “Whatcha up to?” Indeed, Quincy’s entrance was no surprise. Violet found herself - particularly since their admissions to one another - uniquely attuned to his comings and goings. She lifted her chin in deference to the kiss and grinned, quickly swiping the tip of his nose with a dirty finger before she explained her activities. “A little window herb garden. I’m going to teach you that fresh rosemary goes on everything.” “Oh yeah?” Quincy smiled as he took in what she was doing, not bothering to brush his nose off. “I’ll gladly be your padawan.” For all his creativity in other areas of his life, his cooking tended to be simple -- take-out, pizza, variations on pasta with sauce out of a jar, burgers. He could cook up a mean grilled cheese, but the real cooking skill in the family was Oliver. Quincy tended to go for simple and fast because he worked long days and the last thing he wanted to do at night was spend an hour in front of the oven. He brushed his fingers through her hair, one calloused finger running briefly across the edge of her ear. “And to think there was a time you didn’t want to stay here.” It felt like a lifetime ago, even though it hadn’t been that long at all. “Oh yeah.” She laughed, both from being mildly ticklish and the idea of teaching Quincy about anything. He seemed to have the market cornered on Jedi Master. So she was glad to turn the tables a little bit. “This is the first place basically in my life that’s felt like home,” she admitted to him, voice a little shy as one hand fisted in his collar. Then, bravado back -- “And it’s bigger than my truck!” Quincy chuckled. “That doesn’t take much,” he teased, wrapping an arm around her waist to hug her closer. She’d touched on something big, just before, and Quincy was struck by how true it felt to him too. He had a family, of course, so he knew the meaning was different for her. He still had his mother, his brother, his nephew, cousins -- but this was different for him, too. “This didn’t feel like home until you showed up.” Quincy’s heart was pounding. “It was… just a place I slept, sometimes.” “Fate.” She kissed him then - firmly and thoroughly. “Do you …” She wanted to ask him if it was their weird shared whatever. She didn’t want to say memories. But she also had no other word for it that made sense. “Do you think it’s our dreams?” There. A slightly less absolute word. But she meant memory and leaned into him like she meant it. “Or kind of both? Because …” with a bitten lip. “I mean, I love you. You’re the first and only person who’s ever stayed and that means so much.” His heart swelled to hear that declaration from her, and he let it soak in for a moment before focusing on her question. Quincy honestly didn’t know what to tell her. He didn’t want to say that he loved her because of the dreams only because he was afraid that would sound like he didn’t love her, and instead loved some fabricated or glorified version of her. But he couldn’t pretend it didn’t impact him to have her in his dreams as well, so vividly and so alive. He loved her there, too. “I think I love you for you,” was what he settled on, looking down at her with warmth written all over his face. “I don’t know if the dreams are ‘cause I love you, or ‘cause the universe was trying to tell me that we belonged together before we really knew each other, or what. But what I do know is I love you here, and I love you there.” “Oh boy.” With a smirk - watery, for all the truth and sweetness emanating from the pair of them - Violet managed to give him a smarmy wink. “Q’s a poet who is getting so lucky in the rosemary tonight.” But she couldn’t hold the act for long. Her face simpled down into one of pure wonder. Someone had been built to love her -- here and there -- and to belong in such a way made all of the other questions about who she was or what it meant clamor less about her brain. The world slowed in his arms. It was an in the moment kind of existence. “I love you,” she repeated quietly. “I love you here and I love you there.” It was easily the most romantic thing he’d ever said to anyone. She was the only person he’d ever wanted to say those things to, honestly. He’d never thought that anyone would love him. He’d never been able to open up to someone about his past like he had with her, so he wasn’t surprised that he could pull those words out of thin air. He was only surprised that he’d found her at all. “Come on,” he said gently, punctuating his sentence by pressing his lips to hers. “Show me what you’ve been doing. Now, or we might never get to it.” The warning in his voice was playful and suggestive, and he grinned as he looked at her. Returning his smile, she bumped her forehead against his briefly, then pushed back to re-introduce him to the project at hand. “So, we’re using the iron and the wood to build a planter shelf … and I can totally do it! I saw it on Pinterest! … and then I am going to put herbs in this terra cotta planter.” She gestured to the little plants in plastic cubes. “Rosemary, tarragon, sage and bee balm.” A pause. “To begin with, anyway!” He believed her instantly. She was smart - and she’d watched him work countless times over the last few months, even lending a hand more often than not. Quincy could see her vision, and he was a little taken aback that he’d never thought of it himself. It was ingenious. “... bee balm?” He’d heard of the others, but not that. “What’s that for?” The tables seemed turned a little - but it was fun. She liked sharing her knowledge with Quincy and the open way that he received it. A smile. “ … salad, preserves, and also? It’s just really pretty. Plus, it draws hummingbirds.” Violet felt purpose at the flower farm because of the life thrumming around her. She wanted to bring that here, to her home as well. “Hummingbirds?” There was intrigue and surprise in Quincy’s voice, and if he hadn’t already been convinced, that would have done it. He needed this sort of touch around here. Hell, he needed that sort of touch with his buddying construction company. He needed the sort of care and thought that she had. It gave him an idea that started poking at the back of his mind, but he tried to shake it off. He could think about that more later. “Do you have anything that’d bring butterflies? Or -- I assume bee balm attracts bees, too?” Honestly, plants were way out of his wheelhouse, but that was okay. “Gotta save the bees, you know.” “Bee balm will bring butterflies if we plant more of it,” she told him matter-of-factly and smiled. “And bees too. But since the kitchen windows get the most sun in the middle of the day, I say we plant some heliotrope too. If you want to be good to the pollinators I can go hog wild. But you have to help.” She poked him in the bicep. “ … with that stuff.” Quincy pretending to look wounded. “I’ll help!” He pouted a little. “C’mon, you know I will.” He liked the idea of planting something that would help in more ways. It was a little grander than her vision of little herb pots, and it would really mean they were putting down roots here, but Quincy didn’t mind that idea at all. “When it’s warmer,” he promised, “we’ll start on a real garden. Something bigger. How’s that?” “Good thing I work … ish at a nursery,” she told him. “We know all about when to plant. Which is basically Mother’s Day weekend.” The old couple who ran the nursery may have been friends of Daniel but were, at the end of the day, far closer to her than the shadowy figure had ever been. And now, with Quincy, all of those loose mysteries seemed to fade. Together, they could nurture good, growing things. And the air would live with all the electric presence of the tiny lives around them. They could do some good for the environment too. But even more than that, Violet could feel herself (even subconsciously) start to think in long stretches of time instead of snippets. She wanted to be in their little cabin, weaving wonder into the fabric of this life. And if that included their memories - visions - then it was only made the richer. She kissed him, smiling against his lips. “Promise.” |