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| Details |
| Author: | Jessa |
| Summary: | The morning after Bruuk's, Ben and Mizzy have their first fight. And the day started off so nice, too. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Chain: Bizzy
In the Ironforge townhouse, Ben rolls over and sits up abruptly in bed. An impression of the creased pillowcase marks his cheek, and his hair is mashed into a wild upright thicket on the same side of his head. He needs a shave. Good morning, Ben.
He looks blearily around the room, clearly trying to place it. “Ironforge,” he says aloud after a moment. He scrubs at his face with both hands and then checks again. Yes: it continues to be the Ironforge house.
He swings his legs out of the bed and puts his feet on the floor, looks around for his discarded clothes. “Time is it?” he asks the room, rhetorically.
His pants are nearby, hung neatly over the end of the bed. His shirt has probably been burned. Where his wife is, that’s another mystery. Let’s hope she’s not been burned as well. Certainly something is burning. Careful sniffing will reveal it as a food-something and not as a shirt-something.
Mizzy glares at the bowl. It’s flour and eggs. Mostly flour and eggs. There are a few pieces of shell and she’s trying to pick those out of the batter. Beside her on the stove, a griddle pan smokes gently, butter turned the color of swamp mud.
Ben sniffs the air, and his expression takes on a certain grim clarity: The Wife Is Cooking. He reaches for his pants.
He comes thudding barefoot and shirtless down the stairs only a moment later, still buttoning his pants, and beelines for the kitchen. “Heyyyy, Miss Kitten,” he drawls. “Good mornin’. Ain’t you a picture?” He takes her by the waist and draws her away from the stove to kiss her, turning them both in the process to interpose himself between her and the stove. One hand drops away from her waist and vanishes behind him to turn off the flame beneath the sullen griddle.
The kiss takes some time — perhaps a diversionary tactic, but a sincere one if so — and then he straightens to smile broadly down at her. “Are you makin’ me breakfast?” His gaze is warm and fond and still drowsy.
Plainly, she has no objection to Diversionary Kisses and is diverted. “I was going to. But I forgot what else goes in besides flour and eggs, so I think I made paste with eggshells in it.” She rests her palms against his bare chest. “Goodness, don’t tell me I forgot to leave a clean shirt out for you.”
Her big brown eyes blink at him, huge and innocent, and it might be at this point that anyone who is now feeling more confident that the kitchen isn’t about to burn down would note that she, in fact, is wearing his shirt.
“Oh,” she says, running a finger along the collar of the (ginormous) shirt. “Here it is…”
I mean, all the bits are (mostly) covered. It hangs to her knees. She probably could stand to do up another button or two. Probably for the best she didn’t try making bacon or there’d be Uncomfortable Grease Spatters he’d have to heal.
“Ma’am, are you flirtin’ with me?” Ben steps back to appreciate the full effect. “I will have you know I am a married man.” There is a brief (and definitely appreciative) silence, and then he observes, “I am gonna have to let you keep that, it suits you a hell of a lot better than me. But lemme just show you–”
Gently, he undoes a few more of her (his) buttons. “There,” he approves, when only one button remains. “That is how to wear it.” He grins at her and reaches for her waist again, this time sliding his hands beneath the sides of the unbuttoned shirt, around her bare skin. He bends his head to breathe in the scent of her hair: apples and… burned butter?
Ah yes, the breakfast.
“Paste with eggshells is… like my third favorite breakfast. But how about maybe I make you some pancakes instead? You want to do the coffee?” Surely she knows how to make coffee by now. She married a Hazan.
She sighs and leaves off flirting with her husband. But it’s a happy sigh, a pleased sigh, and if it shifts more of the shirt around, that’s just fine with her. She gives his pecs a double pat and attempts to slide past him. “Maybe if you wrote it down,” she says. “I can mix up a potion that will make someone invisible for ten seconds, including their clothes, so I refuse to believe that pancakes are beyond my grasp.”
Rising up on her tippy-tippy toes gets her within reach of the coffee pot. “You slept well, then? Did my attempts to cook for you wake you up?” Even on tippy-tippy toes, the bottom of the shirt covers her decently.
Ben surveys this decency with disappointment. Helpfully, he reaches out to lift the hem of the shirt and drape it neatly at the small of her back. Yes, good. He gives her bared backside an approving squeeze, and then turns to consider the bowl of eggshell paste and the pan of scorched butter. “Just woke up,” he says. “Reckon I was done sleepin’. How long was I out for?” Discreetly, respectfully, he slides the bowl of goo and fragments aside and stoops to get a clean bowl out from the cupboard beneath the counter.
Mizzy squeaks at the cool air on her bottom. The lift she got with her next yip from the pat nets her the coffee pot, though, so she’s not upset. She does shimmy the shirt back where it belongs, because one must be decent even if it does give one’s husband a quick view at shimmying backside.
“Ben,” she scolds, “what if someone had walked in?” Yes, she’s unsuccessful at holding back a smile. Yes, she’s blushing. She picks up one of two mortars (and their associated pestles) from the cupboard, sniffs it carefully, then puts it back and pulls down the other. Listen, Ismene Hazan, alchemist, will grind her own coffee beans, thank you very much. Experience (and Niris once having pointed out that coffee is, basically, hot potion) tells her how many beans to use, and she’s soon adding a thread of Potential Liquid Coffee to the scents in the kitchen.
It’s totally an accident and not revenge at all that, with the motion of grinding, Ben’s shirt slips off her slender shoulder, revealing a nice portion of one breast without enough to quite tip this over from R-rating to NC-17.
“You were asleep for ten hours.” The blast of Ironforge’s hourly horn corrects her. “Eleven hours.”
Ben gives a low whistle and knits his brow at the bowl, in which he’s stirred together flour and some sugar. He adds a pinch of salt and then reaches for the eggs. “‘leven hours? No wonder I feel like I was out for the count.” He glances over at Mizzy and then shifts his weight a little, lifting his chin and trying to crane over her head at the latest glimpse of revealed skin. “… don’t s’pose you’d want to go back to bed?” he offers hopefully. Responsibilities? I don’t know her.
She smiles at the coffee beans (thus ensuring happy coffee). “I do, actually, but I told Walton we’d be by this morning and it’s barely that even if we leave right this minute.” She looks up and over at his peering face, leaning back a little. “You did say we could go by the farm the next time we were in Ironforge? See the orchard? I should have confirmed with you, and I did sort of show up unannounced…”
“Hn?” Ben is simultaneously gratified and distracted by Mizzy’s shift in angle. “You show– What?” The egg he has just cracked splats from its shell onto the countertop beside the bowl. He blinks down at it. “Shit. Sorry, Walton? Yeah. Yeah, the orchard, we can go.” He swipes raw egg with one hand off the edge of the counter into the palm of his other hand and discards it with a grimace. “Tibbs should’ve sent up the rifles by now, so I can see about those, and the shootin’.”
Mizzy shakes her head at her husband’s distraction. “I honestly can’t decide if you’d pay better attention if I were completely nude so you could look your fill, or if we’d never end up getting breakfast at all that way.” She is not displeased. She is, dare we say, a little smug about it all.
She pinches the now-ground beans to feel their coarseness, then separates them into unequal piles onto a couple of layers of pre-cut, slightly stained cheesecloth. Finally, she fills a pot with water, though it does mean brushing past Ben, and having to stroke his back with her hands on the way by oh darn you tiny kitchen.
Ben gets handed the pot to put on a burner. “I hear the spring wheat is coming up well now. It looked like grass the last time we were there. I didn’t even know it was there until Walton wrote me. You’ll love what they’ve done to the well, too. That man is positively gnome-like with his inventiveness.”
“You could get completely nude so we could find out,” Ben suggests in the spirit of scientific inquiry. But, apparently chastened, he turns back to his proto-pancakes. This time the egg makes it into the bowl, and he sets the empty shell neatly aside. “Good, about the spring wheat. I’d start worryin’ if it ain’t took yet. What’s he doin’ with the well?”
“Installing a windmill to act as a pump. They get nice breezes off the coast. He says he thinks he can set it up so that all the homes can have running water, even if they don’t have the steam power that Ironforge does. Can you imagine? A farm all the way out there with running water in every home.” Lowering her voice dramatically, she confides, “Apparently, it’s based on a Tauren design.” This comes with a significant look. Scandal.
Ben whistles again, impressed. He does not seem terribly scandalized about the Tauren engineering, but then again some portion of Azeroth knows he recently kind-of-defended? Tauren in the newspaper.
“And there’s something else we should probably talk about, while we wait for coffee and food.”
He glances over from cracking the third (successful) egg and raises an eyebrow. “Yes’m?” He wipes eggy fingers on his pant-leg and then steps back toward the icebox to find the buttermilk. “I’m listenin’,” he assures her.
She leans in to check on her pot of water. “Babies.”
Ben does not drop the buttermilk, but there is a brief twitch in his movement that suggests a fumble swiftly averted. “Babies,” he repeats, like this is a word he’s heard before but it does not totally make sense out of context.
Which, to be fair, is accurate here.
“We didn’t exactly have the same reaction to hearing I wasn’t pregnant,” she says, leaning against the counter so that she can see Ben’s face. She’s trying to keep her own expression neutral, but her arms have folded.
Ben eyes the folded arms, eyes her face, and shifts immediately into puzzled-puppy-eyes mode as he straightens, holding the buttermilk. “Uh. We did not?”
He does his best, but the question mark is unconvincing, and he realizes it even as he tries it. He grimaces and sets the buttermilk on the counter. “We– okay. So you want to… talk?” He rakes a hand through his hair, which was already standing on end on one side, but now it’s kind of evenly standing on end so that’s… something?
She picks at one of the baggy sleeves under her fingers and looks at it. It’s a sleeve, all right. There’s some fabric and everything. “We don’t have to.”
“No, no.” He shakes his head and props a hip against the counter, studying her seriously. “Reckon we had got to. No quiet dinners, an’ all. We talk about things.”
She peeks up at him without lifting her chin. “Do you want to go first?”
He considers her, those big brown eyes, and his expression softens. “I mean, I know my piece, Mizmainy. But I am afraid if I say what I am thinkin’ first, and it ain’t what you are thinkin’, you will try to agree with me anyhow. Because you are gentle like that. So maybe you ought to.”
That makes her smile. “I’ve argued with you plenty. A lot, in fact.” But her arms have dropped so that’s good. She tucks some of her hair behind her ear. “I suppose all logical things say it’s not the right time. We have a lot to do, we don’t have a home yet even though we have places we can live. We’re both still in a frontline squad.
“So logically, we shouldn’t have children yet. But… I was really happy to think I was.” She falls silent, thinking about it, more than a little wistful now. “And I know everyone says we have a long time, but do we? Niris lost her child and never got to have his child at all. Husbands and wives die all the time, they die young and in battle a great deal more than just getting run over by a cart in a street. I don’t want to miss the chance to have your child.”
Ben colors faintly. It’s his turn to fold his arms, and he knits his brow, dropping his gaze to the bowl of pancake preparation beside him on the counter. “That is– I mean, that is all good and reasonable points. I do hear ‘em, Mizz, and I am thinkin’ on them. This is not– my sayin’ my piece is not to say any of what you said there is wrong, or anything. Just, like… counterpoints.” He is silent for a moment, and then exhales and lifts his gaze to hers again. Oh no, it is Puppy Eyes Time. He clears his throat.
“I am– you know it meant a world to me when you told me it. Last year. That you want to have– my children.” He pronounces the word ‘children’ carefully. “You know from us talkin’ last year that I was… not plannin’ on havin’ ‘em at all. Ever. Now, that ain’t so anymore. I would like ‘em, and I would like ‘em with an’ because of you. Also this time last year I was pretty set on not gettin’ married ever.” He smiles ruefully at her. “So, you know, I know I been wrong, and I am glad I changed my mind on both. But it is … a lot for a fellow in one year, Mizmainy. Less than one year, for us two bein’ together. And you know I will go to hell an’ back for you, there ain’t a thing I will not do for you if you want me to. But also I want… some time to just be us, married, for a bit.
“I am twenty-three, and I got ambitions, and I dunno if they are ambitions I can carry a baby around in. And– to be clear, you know I will be carryin’ that baby around some, I do not want to be a dad who leaves you tucked home with the babies while I am off half a world away not gettin’ to see ‘em grow.
“And you are only nineteen, and seein’ the world and doin’ good too. Are you– I mean, are you ready to be tied at home already? Nineteen years old an’ six months married?” His expression is earnest. “That is not a rhetorical question. I am askin’. Because maybe you tell me you are. An’ that is legitimate, you know you. I just– I dunno about me. I am still comin’ around on the whole… dad thing. What one is, how to be it. I reckoned we’d have some time to practice, with my brother.”
Silently, Ismene takes the boiling water off the burner. She arranges one grounds-filled cheesecloth packet over a mug and slowly pours the water onto the cheesecloth, giving it time to trickle through. “I know how badly you wanted me to be in a squad, and that you talked to the Captain about me, and that was a wonderful thing, that you’d put yourself out like that. And I know you think I’ve been doing a good job and you’ve liked having me with you.”
Sadly, she finds she’s enough of a coward to leave it there for a moment. Maybe Ben will say something.
Ben watches her in silence for a time, his brows drawn together unhappily. “But you do not like it,” he says at last, quietly. “You ain’t– you are not happy.”
He sags more heavily against the counter and drags a hand through his hair again; he looks abruptly tired for a man who just slept eleven hours. “You– I’m sorry, Mizz. Ismene. If I pushed you. I thought– I mean, you and me and Sil had been talkin’ about it so long, ever since I made squad. And then when I was in the Plaguelands, and you were sayin’ about havin’ you with me… I just thought. But I did not mean to– drag you. Into somethin’.”
He grimaces and looks away, toward the cupboards. “But I do like,” he says, still quietly, “havin’ you with me. Even if… not on squad. Like how you come through the Portal? To be out there by me? Mizmainy, I cannot even tell you. I was sick with missin’ you and worryin’, until then. And if– I mean. If you ain’t on squad, and you want… is that what you want? Just to… be at home? When I am– off wherever?”
He looks back at her, Despondent Puppy. “I do not want you to be unhappy, Mizmainy. I do not. If it is what you want, then it is how we’ll do. I just– I married you because I want to be married with you, to be us, together. And maybe I just can’t. Maybe it’s selfish, if I am gonna keep soldierin’, and all. To want to carry you everyplace I go.”
She has snuck looks at him from time to time, keeping track of his expressions and the emotions he shows. To her own pile of grounds, she adds a sprinkle of cinnamon, then does a pour-over for herself. “I don’t like it,” she confirms. “And… I probably should have told you I didn’t ever want it. I just kept quiet a lot when you and Sil would talk about it because I thought it’d never really happen. Not me. That’s why when you told me, why I was…”
Setting aside her cup, she squeezes the last drips out of Ben’s pour-over and holds the cup out to him, though she doesn’t yet look up. “Why I was so afraid. I thought I was going to pass out, I couldn’t believe it. I thought the Captain would talk to me about it so I could tell her no, I thought I’d have time. But then it was just done and I couldn’t back out. And Cressidha kept dying, the whole group fell around me once and Sir Gavynn gave his life to keep me alive…”
With a whisper, she concludes, “It’s been awful.”
He takes the coffee cup from her gently, and just as gently sets it aside on the counter. He folds his arms across his (bare) chest again and hunches a little, as if cold. “Mizzy,” he says. “I am sorry. I am– you got to tell me these things, Ismene. Shit. I am– so fucken sorry.” He straightens abruptly and turns away, his shoulders tense, his hands fists at his sides. He draws back slightly, muscles tightening, as though he means to hit the wall — and then by visible force of will he opens his hands again, drops his shoulders, exhales.
He continues to stand with his back to her, staring at the wall, though. “I’m sorry. I did not know you was so unhappy. So is that– that’s what you want, then. To… come back here, settle down, while I am off?” He hesitates. “And a baby.”
“Are you angry?” she asks in a tiny voice. “At me?”
He looks bleakly back at her, over his shoulder, and then turns around to face her again. He drags both hands through his hair. “I do not think I could be angry at you if I tried,” he tells her wearily. “No, Ismene, I am not. I am– angry at me. And… sad, I guess. I am– sad.” He puts a hand over the apple blossom tattoo on his chest.
“I just– it ain’t how I expected we would be, when we was married. With… talkin’ about Scholomance, you bein’ with me. You comin’ through the Portal after me. I just reckoned… I could keep you by me. On squad or no, that you’d want to be by me, at least. Where I’m at. But that is– I don’t know. I thought you liked travelin’, adventures, why you left home. If you want to just– you was not raised to be a soldier’s wife. And I did not want a wife till last year so I guess I got no business tellin’ you how to be one.”
“Oh no, no!” She reaches for him, pauses to turn to put her coffee cup down and reaches for him again. “No, where you go, I’ll go. Anywhere. Everywhere. No, I’m not… not with the settling down and having a baby. I didn’t mean for you to take my question as an answer. I just… before I answered I wanted to know if you were angry with me. Ben, I’ll follow you off the edge of the planet if that’s where you go.”
She sets her hands over his on the tattoo. “I thought you might be angry because I didn’t tell you I don’t like being on a squad. But I wanted so much to be able to live up to everything you thought about me and every vision you had in your mind of what it would be like if you, me, and Sil were on a squad together. I wanted that for you, and giving you that made it… well, tolerable I suppose.”
He looks down at her, bewildered and puppy-hurt. “Mizmainy, I am never– I could not be angry at you. I am serious. I can’t think of… a thing would make me angry at you. But I wish– I mean, I appreciate you wantin’ to… give me a thing?” He lifts his free hand, skims it along her jaw to slide his fingers into her hair.
“But what I want more than anything is to do right by you. You, happy, is the thing I want. So you have got to talk to me. You got to. So I know what you want, before I run off with a idea, or drag you into somethin’ wrong.”
She smiles at him, just a little, helpless not to. “But you were so happy. I like making you happy. And at first, I didn’t mind it so much, it’s just that as it’s gone…” Liar. “Well, no, I did mind it. I never felt like I belonged, and I still don’t. I know people think someone else could do a better job, and of course I know you’ve never heard anyone say so, but who would dare say it to you? But it was fine, I could do it. I just don’t enjoy it. I don’t like it. And I thought I’d just tough it out until the next break, then talk to you about it.”
Her eyes close and she nestles her cheek against his hand, savoring the scratch of his callouses. “I have to be near you,” she says softly. “I can’t be away from you. I’ll always be with you.”
His thumb strokes her cheekbone. “Ismene. You do a good job. I don’t know how to convince you it, because you think I am biased. And I am biased, but not when it comes to squad. I am responsible to lead those people, Mizz. I would not put them in hands I was not sure of. That is my job. I dunno how to make you believe you are ready, and I dunno how to make you believe you are doin’ a fine job. But you are.”
His thumb stops moving, and he gently tips her face up. “But if it is a job you don’t want to do, that is a whole other thing. That matters. I would not make you do it if I known, Mizmainy. And if you don’t– if you are gonna keep with me, then I ain’t gonna ask more than that. You and me is all I want.” His brow creases. “We are due for some time soon. The work we been doin’, we are due to get some time soon, and we can put in with the Captain to… rearrange again. If you are gonna be okay to make it that long? Until a break?”
When she looks up at him, she plainly still doesn’t believe she does a good job. But she’s also not going to argue, because that’s not really the point, is it? Instead, he moves on to what the point is and she nods. “I can do it. I could do it for months on end. And if there’s no other healer available, I’ll keep doing it if necessary.”
She grins, then. It’s definitely bashful, it’s not full-blown, but it’s there. “Do you know what I want to do?”
He raises his eyebrows at her. “I– do not, I guess? Unless you tell me?”
“I like battlefield healing,” she confesses, then her eyes brighten. “Silly, isn’t it? Me? I like when it’s just a race against time and they’re throwing you at people and people at you, and you have to slap a hand down on one person while healing another. Tourniquet a wound so you can fix something else and come back to it. Triage. The noise and the yelling and bringing order to it. There’s no time to think and everything, just for one moment, moves in a pattern, a rhythm…”
She stops herself from babbling on. “Even Honor Hold got boring after awhile. It was too easy. But at the gate? On either side of it? That was… I loved it.”
Ben drops his hand from her jaw and looks baffled. “I don’t– I mean, when we are in squad and it’s all flyin’, we are in a fight… you don’t like that. But you do like… a open battlefield?” He tilts his head.
“I’m not usually in the battlefield, you know,” she points out. “I’m in the back, in the healer tents. I’m on my battlefield, and I don’t have to deal with someone constantly attacking the people I’m healing and then coming after me for trying to heal them. I don’t have to prioritize people based on who’s likely to survive a fight, so I let someone die and hope I can bring them back.”
She tucks herself up against him. It’s wrong not to be tucked against Ben. And his bare, warm skin is one of her favorite things. “Being in a squad feels like trying to hold back a tide with a fishing net. Being in the tents feels like I’m leading an orchestra. I gesture, and things happen. I say a word and everyone moves to do what I need done. I help, and there’s never a question about doing it wrong or poorly, because no one can judge me there.”
Looking up at him, she repeats, “It’s my battlefield.”
He puts his arms around her. “Okay,” he says. “That sounds– I get it. I do. That is… your work. And if that is what you want to be doin’, Light knows they can use a talent like you. You are a talent, Mizmainy, you got to know that. And if that’s the place you feel yourself shinin’, then you deserve to feel it. As long as I got you near me, even if you ain’t… followin’ me down into every fucken necromancer’s cellar, exactly, that is okay. And as long as I am soldierin’, wherever I go there is gonna be battlefields that need you.”
He rests his chin on her head. “I am proud of you, Ismene Hazan. You know that? I don’t mean like I done anything, like I am takin’ credit for anything you done. I mean I am just proud you are my wife. You fret all the time that people are judgin’ you, or you ain’t good enough, but I wanted you on squad not just cos I know how good you are, but because I am proud to show you off, you are that good. ‘That is my wife, she has got this.’ But I am sorry if me just bein’ a damn show-off put you in a spot you did not want.” He hesitates. “And to be clear, I would be proud to show you off even if you wasn’t a hell of a battlefield healer. Just because of everything else you are besides.”
There is a ruminative silence. He strokes her back. After a time he asks gently, “How did we get here from talkin’ about babies? You want a baby, Mizmainy? Or you just don’t want to be on a squad no more and a baby seemed like how to do it? I just– I mean, either answer is okay, I just am wonderin’ what one it is.”
She yanks back, and from her expression, his chest hair is in danger of being yanked as well. “Bennarin Hazan, I would never bring a life into this world just because I wanted to leave a situation I didn’t care for!” Angrily she pushes herself away from him, shoving against his chest to do it. Not that there’s far to go in the kitchen. “We got here because you asked if what I wanted was to be tied home with a baby at nineteen! Which, by the way, is not the worst fate in the world, and I’m so sorry you seem to think it is! I’d be perfectly happy if I were pregnant and I did get to stay home and see to a life on the farm which also by the way is not some retirement plan, it’s the life I’ve wanted to live my entire LIFE!"
The last furious word echos off the stone. Dane probably wakes up next door.
Well, shit, Hazan, now you went and done it.
This is what Ben’s expression very clearly telegraphs, but it is also kind of a Whole Vibe.
He stands paralyzed for a moment, and then shifts to step cautiously toward her, hands out placatingly. “Hey. Hey. I was not– Ismene, I was not suggestin’ it was a worst fate. I said. I said if it is what you wanted to do. Just– it ain’t what I was expectin’. What I thought. Because… I mean, because we ain’t talked about it. Which we are doin’. Now. And you know I got… I am the last fellow’s got somethin’ against a life on a farm. Just I– wasn’t expectin’ it straight away, again. I got off the farm and come out in the world to fight. And I always plan to go back to the farm. To farm it, ain’t no one ever retired to farm unless he was a damn fool don’t know how farmin’ works. Just… not straight away. I got responsibilities. And… well. Ambitions. Plans. Apart from, not instead of farmin’.”
Ismene plants her fists on her hips. The last time she did that, someone almost got thrown to sharks. “Maybe we should talk about your ‘ambitious plans,’ since they seem to come before raising a family and living in a large house and overseeing orchards.”
“Whoa, whoa, now. I mean. Before is a… question of chronological, not priorita– priority. Tell me you have seen me not takin’ serious my responsibilities about the land, the tenants, the farmin’ plans. You cannot tell me that, Ismene Hazan. You cannot.” He has raised his voice now. “And none of my plans is a surprise to you, not like you tellin’ me you want a baby right now. My plans are that I finish what I fucken well start. I am a soldier and a officer and a lord, I got those responsibilities. I am trainin’ to be a paladin. I spent a couple’ve months with the Argent Dawn in the Plaguelands and that place ain’t done yet. I reckon I could go pretty far with it all, Ismene, I set out last year to make the name Hazan mean somethin’, and you known that from the start. Hell, you told me to!”
He steps back, his expression fierce. “But not for one minute does it mean I ain’t plan to take care of you or a family or the farm we are buildin’ together, or nothin’. I am not… neglectin’.”
That word seems to take something out of him; he slumps a little, the heat gone from his gaze. “I am not goin’ to neglect, Ismene. I promise you.”
“Excuse me, my lord, I believe I have been the one taking care of your responsibilities to the land, the tenants, and the farming while you’ve been off being a soldier! Which is…” she falters. “Which is what we agreed upon.” Uncomfortable, she shifts her weight from foot to foot. Then she alights upon something else to stay mad about. “And I never said I wanted a baby right now! I said if I had one, I’d be perfectly content, and it wouldn’t be the end of my world and I was not relieved. I was sad. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant, you know!”
She huffs a little, deflating with the release of air. “And of course you’d never neglect me. Or your land, or your tenants, or your duty. You’re wonderful, how you take care of it all.” She still frowns a little, but her posture softens and her hands drop away to hang at her sides.
“It just hurt a little, to see you happy I wasn’t pregnant.”
His expression softens, and he steps forward again to take her gently by the arms. “Mizmainy,” he says. “I was not… happy. I was… relieved. I do not think… like I said, I do not think I am ready for a baby right now. And I did not think you was neither. That does not mean that sometime we are gonna find out you are pregnant and I am not gonna be over two moons to hear it. We are gonna have babies. We will have plenty of babies, until we are sick of fucken babies. Okay? Just… I was a little freaked out to think we might get one so early. I spent, like, ten years tryin’ not to get one, so it is– it’s an adjustment. Like I said. I am sorry you were sad, though, I am.” He stoops to kiss her forehead.
Automatically, her hands rise to rest on his waist. “It wouldn’t be my choice to have one now,” she admits, “but if I were pregnant, I’d be ready. If that makes any sense at all.” She steps forward too, and at this point she’s snuggling him again, cheek pressed against his chest. “And it’s best to have a baby when both parents want one. We’ve both seen what happens when a baby isn’t truly wanted.”
She looks up at him sharply, eyes wide. “Not that we’d ever treat any child like we were treated, of course!” Well, since she’s looking up at him, she might as well do a good job of it. She stares into his eyes, then smiles a little. “I’m sorry I yelled,” she says. “Everything good in my life has come from you.” A pause. “And Elohad. And the orchard. But mostly you!”
He smiles back at her wryly. “To be fair, I kind of come into– came into your life also because of Elohad. So. Orchard can’t take credit for me, though.”
“And I suppose I did only meet Elohad because of Casker John. So there’s that.” Smiling more, she stretches up to loop her arms around his neck, presenting her face for kisses. “And I get the credit for falling in love with you before anyone else could see your kindness, your gentle strength, and how safe you are. How safe you can make someone feel. So I get some credit, surely.”
“Ma’am,” he says, and bends obligingly to provide kisses. “You get all the credit from me.” Pause for more kisses. “And for me. The better parts.”
“Your coffee’s getting cold,” she says softly, still looking up at him. And perhaps shifting against him so his shirt opens just a touch more.
“Sorry, my what is what, now?” He peers down at the wider gap in the shirt, and then hooks a finger into it to widen it further. It may be playfully-feigned distraction, now, but it is happily so.
Mizzy giggles. “I said, breakfast can wait.”
Ben raises his eyebrows at her. He tilts his head and pretends to think. “But you said Mr. Walton is expectin’ us. Is he expectin’ us… at a particular time?”
“Well, we’re already late,” she says philosophically. “I can’t think that another… thirty minutes?” She pauses to look him over. “… another hour will hurt much.”
Ben nods thoughtfully. “Still. We had better get right to it.” Does he mean breakfast? Walton? He does not. He stoops to catch Mizzy up in his arms. “And then I am gonna need my shirt back,” he warns her, smiling.