Who: Pete & Lina What: Setting the townhouse on fire Christmas morning thanks to one of Lina's dream items, and exchanging rings When: Christmas morning Where: Their partially burnt townhouse Rating/Warnings: Pete's violence towards inanimate furniture and walls?? Cute, hilarious feels so not terrible Status: Complete!
Christmas morning, Lina put her ninja skills to the test.
And by ninja skills it was essentially ‘waking up and being careful not to disturb the light sleeper that was Pete Wisdom.’ Fucker never slept like a rock, and she wanted to at least a get a head start on making breakfast for them - pancakes, with all sorts of decadent ingredients - to kick off the holiday. Last year’s celebration had been bittersweet, ones before that spent in the safety of her van scarfing down gas station burritos. This time around things were actually perfect; a fiber-optic tree downstairs, stockings hung (for her and Pete, Guess and a tiny one for the developing chimichanga), garland with lights, paper-wrapped and bagged gifts. Nothing over the top. Everything was simple. Cozy, and felt like home.
Her attempts seemed successful. Lina tried not to move much on the bed (and may have conveniently missed an odd, compact sized and red-jeweled sheathed dagger nestled between the mess of pillows and soft blankets), and used the very tips of her toes to sneak away from the bedroom. Down the stairs, stepping over the obese calico cat that had snatched one of the tree ornaments to make into her own personal play thing, and into the kitchen! Where most of the ruckus commenced anyway - the beginnings of making white hot chocolate, pulling out all the fixings food. And bacon. Actually, throw in some eggs to scramble, too. Someone was hungry.
“Hey, bum! I made breakfast, get some before I eat it all!” she called out, after she was more than halfway through the preparations. Guess was plopped her happy fatass on the counter, licking pancake batter off a spoon. Her serving of a hot beverage mixed, she took a quick sip before peeking out from the kitchen. “I might be nice and give you early birthday services, too!” Snicker.
A double-whammy of festivities, and the redhead was most determined to make it good for him. And to distract him from the inevitable Wisdom Family Reunion in the horizon.
Normally the smell of food and the promises of services would have gotten Wisdom downstairs faster than two shakes of a lamb’s tail. But not when he was awakened by the sensation of Lina’s weight leaving her side of the bed (and it wasn’t like she sunk the mattress very much but as she knew, he was a light sleeper and just hyper aware of changes) and also not when he rolled over and nearly got a dagger up his bum. What the fuck - ?
That had been the first question that was popcorn in his mind - pop pop pop - along with a million others, like what was this, why was it here, was it hers, was it a dream gift, if not then why was Lina stashing weapons in bed, things along those lines. Out of curiosity, he’d unsheathed the dagger to get a look at it.
Fast forward to violence rattling through him. Fast forward to not giving a fuck, to brute strength and the urge to just end things.
It pulsed through him, and the response to Lina’s beckoning was a boom as his anger transplanted to his fingertips and there went the sofa in their living room. “I’m not hungry!” he snarled, oh, okay then. Wisdom had never liked that sofa anyway. This whole house needed a redecoration.
Um, what the fuck?
Alright, not the reaction she was expecting. Not the reaction she was expecting at all, hence the widening of sanguine eyes and that large step back when all hell, quite literally, broke loose. Guess scrambled from the surface of the counter, utensils clanking on the ground and she dove into the window - face first, paws and claws scratching at the glass for sweet, desperate release of get me the fuck out, I’m a cat, don’t kill me.
Now, it didn’t take a fucking genius to detect this behavior was of the abnormal variety. A whiff of something caught her senses; a pulsate of energy, something magical, why was she sensing something -
“Oh,” Lina breathed, the epiphany there. Head cocked to the side her, stare locked in on what was in his hand. Oh, fuck. Gourry had gotten into that, didn’t he? In goddamn dreams - which seemed over for now, that particular arc of almost-world destruction - and like most bullshit it carried over, a present from the OC’s own personal Santa. A dagger with a berserker enchantment. That’s fantastic. “How the hell did - oh for fuck’s sake, Pete, put that thing down! You’re gonna burn the presents!”
And the rest of everything that was contained in these four walls at this rate, christ. Mug abandoned, chant whispered under her breath, a whip made of literal energy formed in her hands. Long, buzzing. “Put it down. I’m going to spank you with this and you’re really, really not going to like it.”
Hands itchy for violence, face a mask of hatred and fury, those eyes of his were two blue fires - and Pete most certainly did not put the dagger down. He was too in the zone to bother, and then the glass shook in its frame and blew outward. Leaving Guess an opportunity for escape, since now the window was shattered, and well, obviously one of her owners had gone absolutely mad.
“Go on and spank me, I bet I’ll love it,” he hisssssssed (rivaling the cat, in a way). Blood was rushing, he couldn’t even hear clearly because it was all a roar of sound.
And he couldn’t stop. That’s when the flatscreen went next, and actually, now he owed them a new TV. Fuck it all.
Alright, alright, time to nip this in the bud - carefully. Pete was volatile, Lina was pregnant, she knew he needed to let go of that goddamn blade to break the berserker thrall that ensnared him. All the mayhem hadn’t even made her cringe (poster-woman of destruction, at your service) but goddamn, did she take the obliteration of their flat screen television - with all the 3D perks they’d never used - rather personally.
Not his fault. It was that stupid thing with its stupid timing and she had no intention on giving him permanent brain damage, or knocking him on his ass too hard. Magic whip cracking at her side for a quick test-drive, she lashed it out like a lasso of burning, searing hot energy that not only slapped the hand wielding the cursed weapon but coiled around him tight, a constriction felt like it could possibly cut skin if it remained there long enough.
“Listen to my voice, Pete,” she commanded, a soothing undertone with to her words. “It’s Christmas, I’m knocked up, the pancakes are burning and you scared the crap out of my cat. Let the dagger go, dipshit.”
Fuuuuuuuuuck, the pancakes.
Pete absorbed energy, it was his natural state of being - which was why he had a fast metabolism, was hungry a lot of the time, and ran at a little bit of a warmer temperature than a regular human might. His hands especially, he was like a walking and talking space heater. But if he attempted to absorb that which was wrapped around him like a boa constrictor, he’d probably explode - it was magic, or something, not the usual ambient heat and solar energy; still, his body radiated its own energy anyway, he was enveloped in it, like a force field surging around him in a ripple and shimmer of the heated air surrounding him.
So he did drop the dagger, but not before angrily blowing out an entire back wall of their living room - where the fireplace was, but there were no yule logs burning or chestnuts roasting at the time. Now there was simply a hole. And scorching debris where a wall should have been.
It wrenched him back to his senses a moment later.
“What the fuck was that?” he demanded. “And what the fuck happened to our house?” Were there still pancakes, was his third question, but he ought to get the other two answered first.
Lasso of magic reeled back, it seemed to somehow disappear slither back into her palm - almost like she was absorbing it - and sighed. “You owe me a TV, Pete,” she grumbled and knelt to the ground. Obviously she wasn’t going to pick up the damned thing while it still had the enchantment, so she waved her hand over and expelled a shimmer of something white and glowy. Then picked it up and waved it at him lackadaisically. “Berserker Dagger. It’s one of my dream things. Once the wielder unsheathes the blade, it makes them kind of lose it in a thrall of rage. I guess I didn’t notice it when I woke up?? You really had it out for the furniture, y’know.”
As for the pancakes, well. Shit. Lina heard the beginnings of a beep beep beep and black smoke swirling from the kitchen, flailed her arms in a brief moment of spazzy panic and hopped over to the stove to shut it all off before something else was burned to the point of ruin.
“Pancakes are burnt. That’s, uh.” Grabbing one of the kitchen towels, she began fanning the smoke away and sputtering out a couple coughs. “That one’s my fault.”
“Didn’t notice your dream dagger in bed with us, sure thing, love,” Pete grumbled, but alright; he sighed, following Lina into the kitchen as he stepped over the plaster and crap that was the remnants of his so-called ‘berserker’ rage. “Oh, fine, since we clearly need a new house...” He’d just add a new flatscreen (with 3D whatever the hell capabilities) to that.
Though he supposed that they didn’t need a new house, they could always just repair the wall and replace the furniture, but that still brought up something which had been simmering in his mind for awhile. “Our third TV aside, we’ll need a new place anyway?” he said, scraping the remnants of charcoal pancakes into the rubbish bin. The smoke made him cough too, and he moved to open the window to let it billow out a little more - neither of them needed to be breathing that in.
“Someplace bigger and maybe not with stairs?” Lina wouldn’t want to climb up and down in the later months of the pregnancy - may as well just get something with one level, that had plenty of rooms. If they stayed here, they’d have to turn the guest room into a nursery and wouldn’t have space for visitors to sleep, in theory. “Wasn’t expecting...all this. But maybe we can turn shit into gold.”
“I didn’t!” Lina huffed defensively. “I didn’t search the bed, I was trying not to wake you up!” Most things appeared on her nightstand, or if it was massive (like Galvayra, a recurve made of dark lord ju-ju that transformed will into arrows of light) on the floor so she could trip on it in the morning. This was a set up. Whatever. They were handling this fairly reasonably anyway, all level headed and the like - but that’s typically what happened with them, didn’t it? Ruin by fire. It wasn’t the first thing destroyed by one of them and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.
Though she preferred ‘next time’ to not happen under the roof they lived in, thanks.
She stuck her head head outside the shattered window next to him, the gusts of white snow and frosty weather welcomed against her skin after dealing with all that literal firepower. Guess had climbed a tree, clung to the branch for dear life and yooooowled. Guh. “Yeah, sure, we needed to do that down the line anyway,” she agreed, blowing hair from her eyes and putting hands on her hips. “On the bright side, you didn’t burn the tree down? Or the presents. We can unwrap them at Waffle House?”
Breakfast plans trumped the much needed plans on how to clean this mess up, alright.
After burning down an opera house, Pete was sort of blase about firepower - but no, burning down his own house was highly frowned upon. He had more control than that, prided himself on it, but under the influence of a fucking dagger then all bets were clearly off. “Waffle House. I suppose that place holds sentimental value, eh? I’ll...get a sheet, or something, tack it up where the wall was,” he responded grouchily - not at Lina, more like at the current situation. “Or put something there. So we don’t get robbed while we’re out.”
Because Guess didn't look to be wanting to guard the place. What with her shaking and yowling like an obese scardey-cat in a tree and all.
But first he stopped and placed his hands on Lina’s burgeoning baby bump, ducking a bit to speak to the little demon. “You don’t get any ideas, alright? Better not come out of there throwing fire like your parents do.” She (okay, they didn’t know for sure if it was a girl in there) could hear limited sounds, he thought - in the second trimester, maybe, was when it happened so he wasn’t too proud to already start talking to the sprog.
Blankets wouldn’t do. There was tarp in the spare bedroom, wasn’t there? Lina remembered getting some anyway - good for all sorts of natural disasters, even OC ones, and dead bodies. They’d deal with that in a minute, because Pete actually talking to the developing baby gut was all shades of stupid cute. Almost four months of down, five more to go, and that tank top she’d slept in clung to her tight - that bump was very much there, and starting to get a little more obvious.
Hell, she already had a little old lady in the grocery store line try to play petting zoo with her stomach. Next time someone’s getting punched, in the face.
“Gotta do some fireproofing and babyproofing,” she snickered, placing her hand over his. “Like our own little office for dream stuff, to make sure there’s no berserker toddler burning things down next time.” Terrifying, but entirely possible. She and Pete had plenty of stuff no tiny human being should get their grubby and chubby little fingers. “And before we go on about covering holes and Waffle House, I do have a present I wanna give you first.”
A tug on his hand to lead him back to the, uh, destruction of their living room but their still very much lit up and glorious tree.
Strangers talking to Lina’s baby bump, and touching it, now that was obnoxious. Pete had monopoly, of course, since he was gracious enough to bust a nut within her - but he’d be all for punching cooing idiots because no. “Especially with all of the things you’ve gotten from the dreamworld,” he lifted an eyebrow, as he was corralled back into the living room or rather what remained of it. For her it was the swords and whatnot, daggers, odd-looking skimpy outfits that he had trouble picturing her in. Wisdom’s own dream fairy didn’t really deliver too many presents - but that was fine with him. They’d have enough of a challenge preventing toddler berserkers from going on a rampage. “But oh, what’s this? I might have a present for you too.”
Under the tree, in fact, meant to be given to her this morning - but blowing up the house sort of shifted things around a little. At least he had the good sense not to incinerate the tree they worked somewhat hard on.
Dreams were a gift that kept on giving, weren’t they? Hey, she didn’t exactly mind. Lina didn’t have anyone from the dreams to share the hilarious misery with, she’d take solace in the familiarity of all the items carried over. It was odd, but the stuff made her feel less lonely in that department - some of it was magical in nature too, useful and worthy of study, and reminded her of the few friends she kept close there. Pete’s main present was made of something from that world, and was cleverly hidden in the tree as an ornament. A small velvet stocking with a treasure inside.
“You might, huh? You’re so sweet to me,” she giggled, swinging the little pouch in her hand. “But speaking of all my dream stuff, this is - well, I got a statue made of this rare metal, more valuable than gold in my world. It’s called Orihalcon. Legend has it that it’s made from the bits of skin, blood and nails from the reigning dragon god there.” And renowned for its magical attributes, one she worked on studying with Zee’s as a side project.
Sac opened, she pulled a ring that was neither silver or gold - perhaps it was both, sometimes one more than the other depending on the way light shone on it. There was lettering gently inscribed in it, something foreign to him but it was actually a draconic chant. Hilariously, as if she was proposing, she grabbed his hand to slip it on his finger to test the size. It fit. “It’s what this is made of. Considering my delicate state, I can’t join you when shit hits the fan, not for awhile. It’ll help make you more resistant towards magical energy and heals light to moderate injuries. If I find out a way to juice it up more, I’ll try, but that’s how it is right now. You know. In case something happens and -”
Phew, a bit of a ramble there, wasn’t it? Lina scrunched her nose up at him, smiling sheepishly. “You know what I mean, right? If I’ll be stuck at home with aching feet while you go help save this place, I’ll be stuck here with a little less concern. I kinda need you forever, Pete.”
Pete smirked a little, as Lina grabbed his hand to slide the ring on - he’d wear it on the third finger of the left hand too, because it fit perfectly there. He had no desire to take it off. “It’s...perfect, love, I can’t believe you did this for me.” The word forever didn’t even scare him - perhaps it might have, awhile ago, but what he’d truly wanted all along was for someone to stay, to stick it out, to leap over all the hurdles of life with him rather than leaving him in the dust. Oh, sure, he went through that stage of one-nighters that were meaningless, not really looking for anything else because he told himself he was better off - but he wasn’t. Then the little criminal came falling into his life and opened up to him, he did the same in return, they came and saw and conquered, loved and lost, and now they were having a baby. Pretty surreal, but he wouldn’t trade a minute of it.
“You know you can always count on me to save this metaphysical shithole, anyway,” he rolled his eyes, then wrapped an arm around her to pull her against him and duck his head for a kiss. “More than you know, yeah? Here...”
The gift for Lina was an envelope with a bow stuck on top of it - not a huge, intricately wrapped package but he hoped she liked what was in it. “I already talked to your parents about everything. I think even Luna’s a bit excited,” he chuckled. Inside she’d find details about a house in Orange County, a two-story place that looked cosy and down-to-earth, with soaring ceilings and a large yard. “Your dad’s got a space to brew his vodka in too. We both know they wanted to move closer, well, now they don’t have to worry about the down payment. And they can be here for the birth of the first grand-sprog.”
Family was important, and Lina was always sending them money to help out - Pete just wanted to take care of that for her this time, that was all. “Oh, and then, I think we were on the same brainwave.” He handed her a small velvet box. In that was also a ring, white gold dragon-shaped, with black sapphire on the scales and a glittering garnet for the eye - a very unique design, just for her.
“Romany helped me pick it out, mostly because she wanted to be nosy. But it’s a forever type thing too. I’m not going to let my hatred of fairies dissuade me from marrying a sorceress one day.”
“More than you know,” she repeated, a slow smile forming while their mouths were pressed together. Forever wasn’t a promise that was particularly terrifying to her. Lina was simply picky, and wouldn’t settle just for a twatwaffle that she messed around with once or twice. Pete was hers, and he was warm and safe and in each other realized that there was no point in letting assholes of the past ruin them for something like this. They’d both gone through hell, even chaos (literally, that black and gold void) to get to this point - forever just seemed like a thing that naturally fit after all that.
Then came the envelope, one that had her blinking over and over to make sure she was understanding what this meant, because - “Holy shit, are you serious???” Her parents weren’t rich by any means, they actually were heavily in debt to a shady ‘benefactor’ that forced Luna into waiting tables to help out with the income, and prompted Lina to help by more unorthodox methods - youth crime ran rampant in New Orleans, and she’d been another statistic - back in the day. Their debts were paid off, they were doing okay, but moving was expensive, lots of technicalities with that and Pete literally knocked down the biggest obstacle they faced.
There was a very distinct squee building from her throat, rumbling and about to erupt because that meant they would be close again, make up for all the lost times and right when the inhuman sounds of gratitude came to the point of being unleashed, it all ceased at the sight of the next bomb that dropped.
In a form of a ring, too, a gorgeous one that prompted Pete to say the ‘m’ word without breaking into hives from his traumatic marriage to a fairy in his mutant-hating dreams. “Well, I did just very sneakily propose to you, so…” Lina smirked, on the tips of her toes for another kiss - she still tasted like the white chocolate she’d been sipping on, just a bit. “Best, most perfect Christmas ever.”
Yes, even if their townhouse was partially burnt to a crisp.
“Best, most perfect Christmas - most unorthodox sort-of proposal ever,” Pete grinned, arm slung around Lina to lift her a little bit off her toes so he could kiss her properly. “We’ll...pick a date later. Maybe wait until the demon baby gets here.” It didn’t have to be tomorrow, but instead, one step at a time. They were still doing things backwards, which was how he liked it anyway.
Becoming a father didn’t fill him with as much terror as the thought of marriage, admittedly - but that was beginning to dissipate, and he was ready to think about it. And eventually do it, because there was no one else he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
“Alright, let’s throw a tarp up on the hole in our townhouse and go get some waffles.”
“Demon baby first,” she agreed, a laugh muffled into the kiss, arms wrapped around his waist for a stubborn latch. Lina wasn’t in a rush anyway - the commitment was there regardless, wedding or no wedding, and there was enough on their hands with the eventual arrival of their demonic little munchkin. It’d be cute, to have their spawn present for whenever it happened.
But, yes, patching things up and food. That got her vote, and she went for another kiss. The kind where those petite hands would cradle his face, where she might provoke him to get on the floor with her to celebrate in other ways as well, except -
“Mreeeeeeeeeow.”
Aw, shit. Guess was still in that tree, wasn’t she? Lina winced. “Let’s get the cat down first.”