Or, my version of the met-at-a-wedding prompt, where everything is AU and I regret nothing. Inspired by an AU ficlet on steampunkmagic's tumblr.
And although this fic is pretty Mortinez centric, there are hints of my OT3 here, too.
They get caught in the rain together the day before the wedding, running for their hotel in a mad rush. Naturally, names and titles are exchanged once they get on the elevator, still wet and shivering, and her cheeks flush low and dark with heat when he brings her hand up to his lips for a kiss.
"Enchanté, Detective." He says around a smile as he releases her hand, and she blinks at him as though waking from a dream.
"I'm sorry, what? I don't speak French." She murmurs, then, and he gives her another smile, crooked and warm, as the elevator dings and stops at his floor.
"In the City of Lights? Ah, don't worry." And his gaze flickers from her eyes to her lips as he disembarks, murmuring, "I'll teach you."
"Think I could still take you up on that French lesson, Doctor?" Comes the sound of a voice behind him, soft and lovely. He turns, then, gaze moving over dark hair, high cheekbones, a face symmetrical enough to break the strongest of hearts, and eyes warm enough to bewitch even him.
Oh.
It's been a long while since he's been bewitched, if and only if he isn't counting yesterday, in the elevator. And he knows, then, that it's her, that it's the woman from his mad rush through the rain.
But he thinks he recovers with practiced ease and an easy smile as he murmurs a cool, low, "You certainly could, Detective."
"Glad to hear it."
And perhaps his practice isn't quite perfect after all these years of charming one-liners and smoldering looks, because a half-smile curves Jo's lips as she says, "You seemed pretty loathe to look away, for a second there. Almost like this guy I met on the elevator yesterday."
Busted.
He doesn't know if it's because of that last glass of champagne on his tongue or because of the way the fairy lights shine soft and warm across her face, but Henry Morgan doesn't stop himself from leaning close and murmuring, "Because for a second there, Detective, I couldn't find a single reason not to. But if you'd like me to apologize for my behavior today or the day before, I'm sure I could appease you."
She bites her lip, then, smiling some as she holds out a hand to him. "Dance with me?"
He accepts with a whispered word in French before they move out onto the dance floor.
"So how d'you know Molly, then?" He asks as one song bleeds into the next, and she tells him that they were college roommates a long, long while ago. He assures her that it mustn't have been too terribly long ago, and she graces him with a wide, white smile.
"Ah, so you can pull off charming." Jo says, then, as he spins her out of his arms and into a twirl. When she moves back to the circle of his arms, he murmurs a soft, "Mm, so I can. But only if I've got the right partner, you see."
And she grins, grins, grins at him and says, "Henry Morgan, you are infuriatingly impossible."
He replies that he knows and then dares lean close to murmur, "And you are infuriatingly lovely" in reply.
The DJ eases up on the slow songs soon enough, and she decides that it's her turn to spin him, now. She sends him into the arms of a young man who flushes red, red, red at his easy smile and mutters something that sounds like a name. His name. Lucas, he thinks.
"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone." Henry whispers at the man's ear as they dance a while, with Henry leading and the stranger following.
"Oh, thank God. I try not to be too obvious about it, y'know? But sometimes I just can't-" He blinks once, twice, words falling away as Henry pulls back a touch to look at him with a smolder in his eyes.
And Lucas swallows, then, flush returning in full when Henry finishes, "Can't remember why you shouldn't?"
"Uh yeah, actually. How did you know?" He says with a certain wonder in his voice.
And because Henry Morgan cannot seem to lie today, he glances to Jo across the room a moment before meeting Lucas' eyes again, murmuring, "Because everyone wants something they can't have in the City of Lights" around the softest of smiles.
He bids Molly a lingering goodbye and leaves her to enjoy the night ahead with her newly-wedded wife. A good number of the wedding guests have already come and gone, now, but he thinks he can still slip out of the venue relatively unnoticed.
He just wants to make a neat and tidy exit before he moves out into the night and lets Paris lead him where it may. And he doesn't know if it's the night or the wedding or the sheer magic of this old, old city, but when Jo calls out his name into the rain, he cannot help but turn towards her.
"I just…I wanted to-"
Ever a patient man, Henry gives a little tilt of his head and waits for her to find the right words. She seems to find them soon enough and takes a step towards him and he, her. A shiver moves down his back when he realizes that her voice sounds the way the softest of kisses feels when she finally murmurs, "Someone once told me that the best thing to do in Paris is get lost with someone you find very special. I didn't believe him, then, but maybe…"
"But maybe?" He echoes in a whisper-soft voice as the distance between them narrows, narrows, narrows, and she shakes her head as if to clear it a moment.
"Maybe he was right and I've been looking for that person in all the wrong places." She says as she looks into his eyes, deep and dark and dangerously close to a smolder.
"So where d'you think you should start looking, now, Detective?" Henry asks as they lean ever closer to each other.
Jo shakes her head, then, looks away from him a moment before she meets his eyes and says, "I don't know."
Her lips curve up in the softest of smiles when she continues on, murmuring, "Elevators. Weddings. Out in the rain, maybe. Do you think that's a good start?"
And because Henry Morgan has always been a sucker for romance, for possibility, for Paris, he licks the inside of his lower lip and whispers, "I think it very well could be" around a warm, crooked grin.
She pulls him toward her, into her, with a single tug on his scarf and kisses him. And he surprises himself, then, because he moves to respond in kind, hand cupping her cheek as she moves her fingers to thread through his hair. It's a lingering kiss, this one, soft and warm and new. New. He thinks he quite likes new, thinks he could grow to quite like them, too. She smiles into his mouth, then, like she can taste his thoughts on her tongue. Maybe she can.
When she pulls away, he dares keep her close in the circle of his arms and murmurs, "Would you like to get lost with me, Detective?" against the shell of her ear.
He awakes the next morning to find his pocket watch sitting just outside his hotel door.
Beside it, he finds a note that reads, "Charles Bukowski once wrote that there is a space in the heart that will never be filled, and we will wait and wait in that space.
I will wait for you in that space, Henry."
He knows, then, that she understands about Abigail just as he understands about Sean. They'd talked about their ghosts late into the night, offering up their secrets to the streets of Paris as they walked together. Got lost together. So he saves her name and number in his phone and lets himself feel something, for the first time in a long time.
A year later, he looks into her warm, dark eyes as he kneels before her on the outdoor ice skating rink. She blinks, once, twice, and whispers, "Henry Morgan, you are not" around the softest of smiles.
"Jo Martinez, I most certainly am." He says around a smile of his own.
He can practically hear Lucas' shriek of joy from the other side of the rink, and he grins, grins, grins at the thought of him flying all the way in from Chicago for this. For Henry knows that Lucas loves them both but loves the thought of he and Jo together all the more. Because together is where you're happiest, Lucas once said over Skype, like that explained everything. And maybe it did, maybe it still does.
Henry thinks that Mike must be here, too, then, probably watching from a ways away as he wraps an arm around Karen. And he knows Molly's here as well, somehow, can feel her smiling at the two of them like for all the world, she always knew. Maybe she always had.
And for the life of him, Henry cannot stop grinning as he looks into Jo's eyes and echoes a question he'd once asked on a rainy night in Paris, where everything and anything seemed possible as they got lost in the glittering city and each other's company. But that question's worded a little differently, tonight, for tonight he asks, "Would you do me the honor of getting lost with me today, tomorrow, and everyday of my life?" as he lingers on one knee.
"Yes." Jo murmurs in answer, incandescent smile on her face.
But Henry's not finished yet, saying, "Emily Dickinson once said forever is composed of nows" around an incandescent smile of his own. "We have forever, Jo. And I want to spend an eternity with you, composing an infinite amount of nows."
She says, "yes" for every word that leaves his lips, but he cannot seem to stop talking now that he's begun. So after he slips the ring on her finger, she quiets him the best way she knows how, tugging him back up and onto his skates before pulling him in by the scarf and kissing him, kissing him, kissing him. His mind goes suddenly, blissfully quiet as her lips meet his, and he cannot help but melt into her and all that they are.
She smiles against his mouth and murmurs, "Our forever starts now."
He pulls away from her lips, then, dipping her low to the ice as he whispers, "No, darling, I do believe our forever started in Paris."
And oh, her answering smile could rival that of the City of Lights in all its warmth and wonder, in all its splendor and magic.
Henry Morgan made me do it. I don't think he's the least bit sorry about it, either.