fen (cutslike) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-07-24 20:53:00 |
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Eliot was sitting in the front room with Tom resting against his chest, as the kitten set his paws on Eliot's shoulder and stretched forward, nuzzling his face against Eliot's. For his part, Eliot had a hand resting against the kittens back paws while the other rested against his back, giving gentle and loving strokes as they sat in silence. For awhile, Eliot had tried to busy himself but he kept glancing towards the door at any sound, thinking it might be Fen's return. It hadn't been thus far. He felt like he was resting on pins and needles since she left, with the conversation prematurely ended and knowing full well that it would start up once she returned. Now it was a matter of simply waiting. He sighed and bowed his head forward, pressing his forehead against the kitten. And then, hearing the door, he lifted his gaze. Tom was set down, with mild protest, while Eliot rose to stand fully, eyes locked on the door. Fen hadn’t expected him to be there waiting. If it hadn’t been for Fray, using a word Fen knew was manipulative but couldn’t help but long for, the blademaker’s daughter would have stayed a few extra days with Annie. What she didn’t want was for Fray to feel unwanted or at fault, however, so Fen gave herself a night and morning to clear her head and walk her way back to the cottage. The forge, the space, they were all things Fen did for herself and the act was freeing. She wasn’t an advisor, a second rate standin for a royal, or not-even-sidekick to the adventures the Children of Earth frequently went on. “Where’s Fray?” Fen asked. She was promised a hug. Fen gave Eliot a quick glance, but tried hard to keep her face neutral as if nothing had happened at all. "Danger Room," he said, simply. It was Friday and their daughter was invested in the self defense courses. He didn't suspect she would miss out on it willingly and he didn't expect her home until later that afternoon. And, as for his wife, he hadn't known when to expect her. He just knew she wasn't coming back the prior night. He wouldn't have been surprised if she had stayed away longer. “Right,” Fen said. She had a bag on her shoulder that looked like it had been packed for more than one night. She glanced at Eliot, uncertain of what she was supposed to do. He had clearly been at the door, ready for her to come home. The old her would have dropped all her things to ask what he wanted or needed. But now? “I’m just going to my room to unpack,” she said. It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but she didn’t give any indication that he couldn’t talk to her while she walked. Maybe it would be easier if she didn’t have to make eye contact. He glanced at the bag and felt a ping of sadness. He wasn't sure if it was Fray or not that had driven her to return home but considering that was the first thing she asked about, it was the likely assumption. He pinched his fingers between his other hand and hesitated for a moment, watching as she walked away with the statement. "Did something happen? With Fray?" Their daughter had a tendency to hide things from view. He found out a lot of information about her grievances from others. It was a logical assumption. With the question, he took several long strides to emerge from the living room and to enter the hallway, keeping his eyes on Fen as he did. “What? No, I don’t think so.” Fen adjusted the bag on her shoulder and then walked through the cottage toward her room, next door to Ren & Eliot’s room. She shot a glance at the other door, listening for signs of Ren or Margo or Quentin in the house. Fen left the door open to her room when she walked in and set her bag on the bed. Pulling out her clothes, she refolded and straightened them slightly, organizing them so that they would be easier to put away. On a farm, in Fillory, she had just one dress. The night of her wedding was the first new dress she’d ever received in months. As the king’s consort (for she wasn’t a queen herself, just the High King’s wife) she had multiple dresses. It had seemed overwhelming then, but nothing like the variety of clothes available on Earth. "Oh," he said, as he stood in the hallway. He didn't immediately move to follow her up the stairs wand instead stood on the main landing, watching as she headed up the. Then he took in a breath and unclasped his hands, moving up and coming to stand outside her bedroom door. He didn't enter. "Are you ready to be home?" He asked, looking at the outfits as she folded them, easily able to see them from his position in the hallway. It was a bridge to the conversation and a way to gauge if he needed to simply walk away and give her more time. “I’m here, aren’t I?” Fen said. There was no real venom or enthusiasm in her voice. Opening a drawer, she quickly and quietly started putting her folded clothing away. "That doesn't mean you are ready," he said, in response. He took a step forward, pressing his hand against the doorframe, leaning against it. “I’m fine,” she said. Fen paused. “No, I’m angry. I’m mad at myself. I let you do this to me every time. Everytime I think I’m important to you, you let me know exactly where I stand.” "I --- " He began, because he didn't believe she was fine, but he stopped himself as she continued, choosing instead to listen to what she was saying. He'd told Margo he didn't know which aspect of the previous nights conversation was the one she was most upset about. He frowned. "And how did I do that, exactly? By not telling you or by him existing?" He needed to know which pathway was the one she was thinking. He could see arguments for either. Fen winced. “Both? Why not both. Let’s go with both. You… You don’t get it. I wanted a family with you, and you panicked. You are the only person I’ve ever been with, and every time I’m stupid enough to think you want this, you find new and interesting ways of showing me where I really stand. Every time. More than once. And I let you. Every time.” The urge to be defensive was automatic. He could easily revisit arguments that hadn't ever been completed. They'd never had the chance to be, really, because the only time it had ever come close to getting anywhere had been stopped by Bayler. "I do want this," was the piece he decided to combat against first. His hand slipped down from the door frame. He didn't like standing inside it. It felt imposing and wrong. He took a step fully into the room now, coming up by her, his frown still held back. "You didn't even let me explain, Fen." “Then explain. If you weren’t hiding your whole other family from me, explain what was keeping you from mentioning it. Explain what makes it okay to have a family with someone else but so awful with me?” Fen cared very deeply about Fray. She was the daughter they had adopted. But she wasn’t the daughter they got to raise. She was already so independent. Fen wondered if that was all the parenting she was ever going to get. She was afraid to admit she wanted more. "Because I don't have every moment you do!" He said, firmly, in reference to the entire notion of information and memory. "I didn't know how you were handling everything. Margo gave me facts but I didn't get to live those moments with you. I didn't know how you..." he stopped for a moment trying to find his words "...I didn't know how to help you when you first came back from the fairy realm. I didn't know what to do. And I wanted to make sure you weren't close to that again before I told you about him." "I just told you about Quentin. I was planning to tell you about Rupert. I just...we have a lot we are working through, Fen, and I hadn't got there yet." He frowned now. "How I felt when you and I first got married is not how I feel now. It isn't awful." Fen winced. It wasn’t that anything Eliot said was unkind, but her heart was still wounded. We have a lot we are working through. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel about that, if she wasn’t supposed to feel, if it was okay to let herself be a little irrational. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” she said. It took her a little longer to form words, “I just want to be enough. I feel like I don’t know how to do that and I keep trying and it’s never good enough.” "Probably," he said, without actually thinking, but then he winced in turn. He raised his hand up to his brow and pushed some hair back. "Nothing as intimate or personal as him, but, there is decades I have memories of that I lived but I also didn't. There is probably something." He brought in another breath. "I really was going to tell you but I don't talk about him the way Q does. It…" He sighed and let the thought go unfinished. "I don't know what to say to that." “Then don’t say anything,” Fen sighed. She looked as exhausted as she felt. Despite being a few years younger than Eliot, growing up in Fillory she sometimes looked older. In that moment, Fen looked closer to thirty. She didn’t have the energy to argue, but the desire was there. She didn’t have the energy to cry, though she wanted terribly to summon tears as well. Fen sat on the bed and crumpled a little. He hovered near the door as she sat down on the bed and for a moment, he allowed the silence to remain. His eyes remained on her and the exhaustion was evident, something of which he could sympathize himself. He was equally exhausted but he also knew he was the one who had brought this on. He caused it. He sighed and moved for the bed, but instead of taking a seat upon it, he dropped to his knees in front of her. He looked up at her, with his hands resting on his legs. "I don't want to not say anything. I want us to talk about this. We can't move forward if we don't." He brought in a breath. "Explain enough because that is something I don't know how to answer. Not when it's more than you and I. What do you mean?" He gave a pause, turning his gaze up to watch her, looking apologetic as he did. Fen looked down at her knees, eyes focused on Eliot’s hands. There were some thoughts that were so private and deeply humiliating that she started with the easier and obvious things first. “I didn’t grow up on Earth. I don’t have the things in common with you like your other friends. I don’t have any powers. I’m not the person you depend or turn to, the way you depend on Margo or Quentin or Ren.” Fen sighed. There was more to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Not when they just started spending time intimately together again. Except… “I don’t think I please you,” she added quietly. His fingers flexed against the fabric of his pants. There was a moment of instinct, to immediately speak back against the statements, but he withheld that. Regardless of whether he agreed or not, it was how she felt. And, if he was honest with himself, he could see why she felt that way on some of those aspects even if it hadn't been his intention. "I'm sorry I've given you reason to feel that way," he said instead. Catching the sigh, he waited and with the words, his eyes shut and he bowed his head. "You feel that way about here?" He asked, quietly, his head turning at just an angle that he could look at her through the veil of curls that fell down. “Everyone else knew about your family,” she said softly. Fen frowned, and wiped just under her eyes before they could betray her. “And… I know before I wasn’t what you wanted. That you’d rather spend nights with someone more experienced.” "I wasn't worried about everyone else," he responded. He'd told Margo because there wasn't much he kept from Margo, unless it was a subject involving Kylo. That was the divide between them. But Rupert was fair game and something he'd spoken to her about as soon as he had the opportunity. He'd told Kylo, because he didn't want secrets with his lover, and he felt the man should know about the shift in dynamic between himself and Quentin; even if Quentin and he had decided they weren't going to change their friendship in Tumbleweed. He shifted, raising up some on his knees, lifting a hand to extend out and rest against her cheek. "You're my family and I didn't want to see you suffer anymore," he whispered, swallowing as he said that. "I was scared." Then he shook his head, "No. Fen. That was never it." The admission of fear had Fen attention, even sympathy. It was something she could hold onto, make the information withheld from her hurt less. But her face fell when Eliot denied her lack of experience was an issue. She wasn’t sure she could quite believe it. The twist of her lips and eyebrows communicated as much. “You don’t have to…” Lie? Say what she wanted to hear? Fen’s heart ached when she tried to finish that sentence and she shook her head. “It’s fine,” she said, a little defeated. She didn’t know how to be any more interesting or alluring or what he wanted. He could see that she didn't believe him and he let his head drop for a moment, even before she'd spoke up, though his hand lingered against her cheek. He pulled in his lips and his gaze remained down now on the carpeted floor. "It's not," he whispered. He pulled in a breath. "Fen..." He said, knowing he was dangerously close to saying things he didn't tell much of anyone. Who had known? Henry knew. Had he ever told Quentin? He couldn't recall. He knew he hadn't spoke even this to Kylo, though he was certain the man would know sooner rather than later with the way they were documenting his memories. "...The only thing I wanted in those days was for..." His voice was barely there now, "...everything to end." He lifted his head now and looked to her, his face having fallen and eyes latched onto hers. "You weren't what I wanted," he admitted, because trying to say otherwise was wrong, "But that's not how I feel now." Fen’s frowned deepened, but for different reasons. She placed her hand gently over his, and squeezed his fingers with her own. “I want to be your wife, Eliot. Not because you had to. Not because you feel bad for me because I’m somewhere new. Not because I’m family. I want you to be my husband. This isn’t Fillory. I’m not in any political danger if I want to strike it out on my own, but I don’t want to. I want you. I always wanted you. I think that’s what makes it so hard for me. I wanted you from the beginning. I wanted this to work.” Fen leaned in and kissed his forehead. “I’m glad you don’t feel that way anymore. I just… I feel like I don’t know how to be the wife you want to be with. I don’t feel like I know how to do that.” He drew in an unsteady breath, "You are my wife." It had started because they had to. It was their original foundation and there was no escaping it. And he could see how that made this so hard for her and for him really. He hadn't wanted this in the beginning but he did now. It wasn't because he felt bad for her and it wasn't because she was family. "I don't want you to go," he whispered as an admission. She'd told him he'd offered her a divorce but he didn't think he'd actually wanted one. He couldn't say until he got those memories. Not for certain. But with what he remembered and his life here? He knew he didn't want that. "If you wanted to, I wouldn't stop you," he clarified. "But I don't want you to. And not because you are family." He shut his eyes when she kissed his forehead and his hand slid down from her cheek, dropping to rest against her forearm. "I want to be with you, Fen. If I didn't, I wouldn't be here right now." He then leaned forward and pressed his lips gently to hers. When he broke the kiss he breathed out, "I'm sorry." Fen kissed him back, a little more desperately than he had started, letting him break away gently with a sigh. She rested her forehead against his, hands combing through his hair at both temples and back before she responded with, “I love you.” The desperation did not go unnoticed. With his words spoken, he breathed out a shiver from the way her hands felt in his hair. Moving his hand from her arm, he brought both up to rest against her cheeks, rising up from his knees as he caught her lips once again. He didn't break from the kiss, matching the level of desire she'd shown moments before, and soon enough he was leaning down, intent on spending the rest of the morning with her in his arms. And though it wasn't repeated automatically in line with her own declaration, he eventually broke just long enough from her lips to breath out, "I love you, too." |