who: Eliot & Fen Waugh when: Early July 29th, after this where: Fen's Room What: Eliot tells Fen about his and Kylo's engagement. warnings: It's super duper cute status: Complete.
On a typical day, especially in the summer, Eliot was rarely up before the double digits of the morning. He liked his beauty sleep. Even if he was up early, he would take his time getting ready for the day, wanting to be presentable in all definitions of the word. Only, he hadn't slept much at all the night before, even once he was actually trying. Instead, he'd laid with his forehead pressed against Kylo's shoulder, arms wrapped around him and being largely content with the projection of their future. When dawn had broke, Eliot finally gave into the fact he wasn't going to get much in the way of sleep and slipped out of their room, padding down the hall to the next door in only his silk pajama bottoms.
He didn't knock.
Instead, he opened the door and slipped in quietly, letting the light remain off as he did. He crawled into Fen's bed, behind her, and wrapped his arms around her just as he'd been doing earlier that morning with Kylo. For her, he pressed his lips against her collar bone and bowed his head to rest against her shoulder.
Fen woke with her eyes still closed and her lips smiling. Turning in bed, they fluttered open to see an Eliot with long, wildly curly hair that she ran her fingers through so he wouldn’t need to know how he’d allowed himself to look even for a few seconds outside the bedrooms.
“Good morning,” she said. He was in a good mood and it was early. Fen pressed a few kisses around his face before settling down next to him.
He caught sight of the smile, watching her as she reached out to thread fingers through his hair, and his eyes focusing on the smile. After everything that had happened in their marriage, he found that seeing it appear upon her face was one of his more favored moments with her. And when she pressed kisses around him, he let his face scrunch up in reaction, but his own smile remained as he did so.
When she'd finished, he brought a hand up to her cheek, while he leaned in to catch her lips in a kiss. Bowing his head when it broke and resting his forehead against hers, he nodded gently. "Good morning," he repeated.
“You’re up early,” she observed, it was almost a complaint. Her lips formed a pout because she’d grown accustomed to sleeping in herself. Gansey and Fen set their own hours, and earlier normally would have been better for the heat, there was plenty of modern and magical conveniences to make it easy to work when they wished. “You’re never up this early.”
She’d kissed him back and then buried her face in his shoulder to hide it from the rising sun.
There was an amused huff of laughter from him when she spoke as he noted the complaint. "I'm not even certain what time it is," he informed her, "I've not actually slept," he said after a moment. He gave an idle shrug of his shoulders, as he leaned his head down to rest against hers, and moved his hand to tangle back in her strands of hair.
"I did try not to wake you," he added after a moment.
Fen looked up with a small, concerned frown. “Is everything alright?”
It was the mention of not sleeping. She couldn’t imagine that was a good thing.
He supposed that was an appropriate reaction. They'd been hit with a significant amount of information and challenges over the past few months. But he'd been happy when he slipped into the room and that happiness didn't go away just from the sight of her concern. "Everything's fine," he reassured her. His arms then shifted, wrapping around her and proceeding to roll them both so she now laying on top of him and he had his back against the mattress.
He grinned deviously upwards at her. "I have something I want to say."
Fen knew that look. She humored him with a smile, eyeing him with a friendly amount of skepticism. She couldn’t hold it. Not when she sat up with her hands anchored on his shoulders to look him in the eye.
“What is it?” she asked. She expected something silly. He seemed awfully playful. Fen didn’t mind it at all.
His arms unwrapped from her and his hands fell easily to rest on either side of her hips, looking up at her still. He didn't mind the skepticism and the smile gto another in her direction from him. He brought in a breath.
"Ren is our family, correct?" He spoke her name for Kylo, even though it always felt strange to be spoken from his lips. It felt more like hers than his own. But they'd operated as such before. They made decisions as one. And she'd told him she wanted to act together as one.
“Of course,” she said. She saw how he tried with Fray. How protective he was with her. How he’d tried reaching out to Fen during her own struggles. How she could depend on him in even the strangest of circumstances. “What is it?” she asked, combing his hair from his face with her fingers.
He turned just enough to press his lips against a patch of skin of her arm as she combed through his hair, but his eyes did not gaze away from her. "I want to make it official," he said. There was a hint of uncertainty of how she would take the statement but largely there was a hopeful look in his eyes, that she would not be against this suggestion or be hurt by the desire. And as he spoke, he let his hands move up and down her skin, a silent reminder of even though he wanted this to occur that he was still very much here for her, too.
“Official?” Fen asked. She didn’t understand at first. Ren had always felt official. Since the beginning of Fen’s arrival in Tumbleweed, Ren had always been there and always made space for her. When it dawned on her she asked, “Like marriage?”
Her lips slowly spread into dazed, happy smile.
There was a simple nod as he waited for the realization to dawn upon her. He didn't think she was going to be against the idea once she understood. Or, at least, he hoped she wouldn't be. When she asked the clarifying question, his smile grew, and he nodded once again. And as she offered up a smile, he propped himself up some with the backs of his elbows. "What do you say?"
“Have you asked him yet?” She nudged him slightly with her fingers.
It'd been a constant in his thoughts for months now, ever increasing once Fen had arrived and Kylo began to feel like he wasn't as important. It wasn't reactionary to those feelings, because he'd known it was what he wanted as far back as when he'd made his choice after his memories, but it had increased the desire. And the departures solidified it. He didn't want to waste anymore time.
Only, he had meant to talk to Fen first.
His cheeks flushed and he gave the sheepish look that was shown to her more than most. "Well," he said, still with the playful tone, and hoped she wouldn't be upset that she'd not been consulted first.
“And?” Fen tried giving him a stern look, but the smile in her eyes were a counter-weight. “What did he say?”
"He said 'yes,'" he informed her, with an excited tone that he could not contain, as his smile grew so wide his cheeks almost hurt.
Fen shrieked with excitement and embraced her husband happily, kissing the sides of his face.