InsaneJournal

WHO: Natalie & The Baron
WHEN: Sunday afternoon (2012-02-21)
WHERE: Conrad's place
WHAT: You have a what??
WARNINGS: language

There were certain things Natalie was not prepared to hear from boyfriends. Like, 'I have a kid'. For Natalie, those kind of things had always been deal-breakers. Natalie was impressed enough at her ability to entertain Bernie let alone any kid who actually expected her to be entertaining. Although, Conrad had said a teenager? Or something like that? It was quite frankly a little hard to process and she took a few shots of vodka for courage before getting a taxi over to Con's.

There she unlocked the door quickly and came in, calling out to find out where he was. Before she'd even found him she was adding, "can you try explaining this in very small words, please?"

Conrad had been as mind-boggled as Natalie on the matter. He had no true family to speak of. The girl's mother was a twenty year memory and nothing more. Another failed relationship that had gotten too serious. She had reacted the same as Natalie first had. It was no surprise. Conrad just hadn't ever felt that there was more to the story than that. He never had his own family in the past life. This was new ground for him as well.

That fluttering in his chest was the worry that Natalie would take this as an excuse to run. Though things had been well again between them, as Natalie was the woman he could see spending the rest of her mortal life with, this was a roadblock. This was either her scape goat or a chance to really show her maturity.

Conrad looked over his shoulder from the sink where he'd been cleaning dishes as Natalie dropped the bomb. He wiped off his hands and turned to face her, towel in hand. "I have a teenage daughter." He would give her more when she asked. It seemed she had to process this sentence by sentence.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-21 04:22 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"A teenage daughter," Natalie repeated, standing in the kitchen and watching him. "How teenaged are we talking?"

Natalie thought she was being remarkably calm. But she was going to need to go raid the liquor cabinet in a minute.

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-21 04:30 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Nineteen, twenty at least." He tossed the towel to the counter, leaning his hands on either side of him. Natalie was one step away from raiding his liquor cabinet, so he pulled two glasses down for a running start. As long as she hung around with a few drinks, it was a progressive step forward. He'd rather not see her walk around this and out the door. To be quite honest those months without her had been excruciating no matter what she'd put him through. This may have been fate's way of throwing it back at her, but Conrad wouldn't be so vengeful.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-21 04:37 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Twenty. Okay, that made the girl at least ten years younger than Natalie which meant no matter how awkward this wasn't, it wasn't about to get creepy. If he'd had some twenty-eight year old daughter, Natalie wasn't quite sure how she'd been dealing with that.

She walked over to the cabinet and pulled out the scotch pouring them both a drink. Natalie downed hers in one and then poured a taller one before looking at him. "Okay," she said after reminding herself to take a breath. "Tell me everything."

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-21 04:56 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Conrad took a deep sigh letting her pour him a glass before figuring out how to answer this. "Similar situation as it was with Isabella. Even you. I proposed, she broke it off. I never knew anything about her being pregnant. Not until a few weeks ago when I ran into the girl in the market." Conrad had been dumped by Isabella because she thought him crazy. Emma's mother hadn't even known.

"Her name is Emma."

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-21 05:00 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Natalie ran a hand through her hair, trying not to stress out about this. "You need to propose less," she muttered, reaching for the drink. Because clearly it was the proposals that were the problem here. But the actual problem was person-shaped. Emma-shaped.

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-21 05:11 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Isabella would have married me had I not told her who I really was." She'd been the last girlfriend that had truly broken Con's heart before Natalie came along.

He took a swig of his own drink, stepping back from the counter, finger tapping the glass. He wanted to know more of what Natalie was thinking.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-22 05:15 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Natalie wasn't quite sure what the point of Isabella was right now when it was about a daughter not by her, but she said nothing.

"She pretty?" Natalie asked after a long time, since it seemed she should say something. But then she immediately rolled her eyes. "Pointless question. Look, I don't know what to make of any of this, Con."

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-22 11:54 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"I know no more than you, Natalie. I've never had any family to speak of since I came back. How do I even approach the subject of who I am? With a daughter?"

He approached Natalie, his hands resting on her hips. His forehead touched hers, "tell me thos doesn't change things with us?" He wasn't asking Natalie to be a mother, just a friend, someone that was important enough to know this new situation of his life.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-25 12:27 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"I don't know," Natalie said, looking up at them. Then she shook her head and said, "no," as though she had just decided it right then. "No, it doesn't change anything. I won't let it change anything." She would fight for this thing of theirs this time. She was managing to be better, managing to stop herself when she started trying to pick fights with him. (Sometimes though she needed Con to remind her, to gently guide her back to where she needed to be.)

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-26 12:06 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
There was a moment his heart sank when she started to confess her feelings, he could feel her severing this tie all over again. It was savage. And when she reversed her words he couldn't help but look at her adoringly.

He kissed her softly, just a brush of his mouth to her full lips. The door was wide open for her to leave, he wouldn't force her to stay, but they had managed through a new step in this relationship that he wanted her to stick with. It would show just how mature she had become.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-26 01:38 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Just don't try and push me," Natalie said after she drew away from the kiss, her voice honest. "I'll meet her later once you two have gotten more serious and I'll try and be... whatever it is I'm supposed to be, but don't ask too much of me, okay?" She wasn't step-mother material, especially considering she and Con were still working out their own things without throwing some biological complication into it.

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-26 02:50 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"I won't push you." He kept his hands on her waist. "Perhaps it was boyish fantasies that drove me to keep close the women who came into my life. To have a family I never had the chance to experience. But I won't push you." Not this time. Not with the woman that reminded him of the pilot he was. How he'd fight a war with grace. This was just a new war. A war of the heart and he wouldn't give up Natalie so easily again. Even with this new life twist he wasn't used to yet.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-26 03:37 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Just don't propose to me," Natalie teased, and only now did she realise what she should probably be saying to Conrad. She felt selfish and ridiculous that it hadn't been her first question. "Shit, what am I even thinking here. How are you dealing with this?" she asked him, reaching out for his hand. "I mean... a daughter. That's rather big news."

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-26 05:10 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"But we're already married dear." He teased her as well, thinking back to their sham marriage she'd had for show. Conrad shook his head. He wasn't sure what to think.

"I feel a little in the dark." He'd always been one to take things full force. It was tackle life down as he would another plane in his first life. If you couldn't without giving your all then you stepped back until you were certain. "Twenty years and I didn't know a thing. Her mother kept it from me." Secrets were never part of who he was.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-26 05:38 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Right, right," Natalie nodded with a little smile. "Forgot all about that." She still had that ring tucked away in her drawer as well.

"Can see why she did," Natalie considered. "If you guys had broken up, I guess she didn't want to do the whole surprise baby thing. She probably figured you'd never even know about her." Although Natalie wasn't sure that made it any better from Conrad's perspective.

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-27 12:17 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
In Conrad's viewpoint it was dishonest. Had it brought either of them any peace by letting the girl live on false hopes that her father was alive? That she'd ever find him? Now, here she was nearly twenty-one, barely able to understand the depth of this whole situation. It was strange for the both of them.

"Imagine you'd been told your father was a lost cause. You find him by chance and have no idea how to handle it." He added a few curses under his breath, his accent coming in heavy, his anger a little more apparent. His anger didn't come out of the blue, he had every reason feel as if he'd been punished. "Was marriage to me such an awful crime?" It seemed every woman believed it so.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-27 12:59 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Natalie could have said something about how Emma's mother didn't see a failed relationship as being something to bring a child into, or how maybe she thought it was too late by the time she realised. She could have said that the chances of Emma actually finding him had been a million to one, and that was at good odds. She could have said that she'd had abortions before without ever telling the men she'd been involved with at the time because, in the end, whatever happened to something growing inside her was a woman's own choice.

But all of these things were attempting to argue a side that wasn't actually hers anyway, and so she didn't. Her job here wasn't to try and find reasons for Con, but to try and help him deal with how he felt about all this. And Natalie, who'd grown up with two loving and supportive parents, couldn't really imagine what Con was asking her to imagine. So instead she just reached out for his hand and squeezed it. "You're a good man," she promised him. "Sometimes things just don't work."

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-27 01:20 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
There were plenty of rational reasons, Conrad knew this, but he was from a different time. He was over 90 years old now. There was an unseen line that wasn't crossed when it came to taking on life with valor.

He swore he could feel his old arrogance come back into play. Defiant. He would have rejected Natalie's protests if she'd actually given any. Instead she said the right thing. "I would have liked to have known her before this. Before it feels almost too late."

His lips pressed against her forehead.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-27 02:09 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"It's not too late," Natalie assured him, leaning up to kiss his lips gently. "She's still young and you can have something now." She pushed the scotch on the table towards him. "I'm going to be overly-optimistic and promise that everything will be fine."

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-27 02:44 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"If I wasn't here, she wouldn't either." It was something at least to cool his temper. He'd never had any kind of legacy other than his cult-heroism. This was something a little more real.

He took Natalie's words kindly and a hard swig of that glass of scotch. This was their favorite past time when it came to being thrown curve balls.

He smiled at her over the glass. "What would you have done had you met me then?" he asked leaning against the counter. "When I was Manfred, not Conrad?"

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-27 02:49 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Natalie could deal with this subject change and she smirked a little. "I would have fucked you senseless, obviously," she told him, leaning over to kiss him again. "You wouldn't have known what hit you, fly boy. And then I would have stolen your plane." She grinned.

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-27 02:54 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
It was a subject change they both needed, he didn't need to wrap his head around the what would have happened had he known about his daughter sooner. She was there now, and time was always about living in the now.

"I would have let you," he smiled against her lips. "I got more action in the sky than on land those days." She would have been a welcomed change.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-27 02:58 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Natalie came around the table and slipped herself up to sit on it, wrapping her thighs around Conrad. "See, I would have been the naughty nurse back down on earth trying to make you misbehave." She grinned and then shrugged. "Actually, I probably would have been unhappily married to some twat in the country and never would have done anything exciting ever."

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-27 03:24 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Wouldn't I give anything to see your face if I looked like my old self." There was always the thought that she still doubted him, but there were some things he had no control over. "You would have been unhappily married until I crashed my plane in your backyard." He wasn't ever known for good landings.

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-27 03:32 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"You're cuter now anyway," Natalie said with a smile, running her fingers through his hair. She tightened her legs around his, pressing closer. "So you would have come and rescued me from my dull life in... England? Germany? What am I in this little scenario of yours? Either way, you crash landed and saw this gorgeous woman you desperately needed. (And in this fantasy we're clearly ignoring all social mores of the time and my status of half-Chinese is being conveniently swept under the rug.)"

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-27 03:42 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
His eyes migrated to her legs then back to her face as he put his hands onto the counter, chest pressed softly against hers. "Am I?" he scoffed. "England," he started with a hum. "You're motherless, outside hanging laundry when this red Fokker crashes to the ground." This fantasy talk was quite the turn on. "Completely not an issue when I see your face and can't take my eyes off you."

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[info]bornincrossfire
2012-02-27 03:51 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"And then what happens?" Natalie asked, licking her lips and leaning in to kiss his throat. "Do I just abandon my life to run off with this handsome enemy pilot? Maybe," she purred against his skin, "I hide you away in the barn and by night I come to check on you. But you're so handsome, so exciting, and I'm so stifled here. And when I kiss you, you smell like engine fuel." She did kiss him then, her lips lingering against his until she'd finished speaking.

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[info]the_red_knight
2012-02-27 04:11 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"I am injured then. You have no choice but to stash me in the barn and tend to me." His eyes flickered shut. Just the feel of her lips, the softness of his breathing and that steady beat of his heart palpitating under his skin. "How could you resist a blonde, blue-eyed boy?" His hands reached for her face, taking her kiss deeper, completely fixated.

"And you taste sweet. A summer breeze," his words he could hardly get out, just softened whispers in between kisses and breath.