Disclaimer: None of the characters in the story belong to me! They belong to J.M Barrie. Enjoy! Reviews would be appreciated. Thanks ~ Nightingalelynx.
Pairing: Wendy & Peter Pan
Summary: Wendy tries to teach Peter and the Lost Boys some table manners. Wendy and Peter talk about responsibility, and how it links to maturity. The rest is history, of course.
Table Manners
John reached over the wooden dinner table for the last of Wendy's apple pie, knocking Slightly's bowl over in the process.
"Hey!" Slightly cried in anger as the last bit of Wendy's soup that he'd been carefully saving in his bowl spilled onto the table. For revenge, he snatched the last piece of apple pie from John's plate, and ate it quickly and messily.
John, having lost the apple pie, made a grab for the strawberries in Curly's plate. He only managed to take two, but Curly would not settle for minus-two strawberries. He threw one at John.
Splat!
It hit Nibs instead, who frantically tried to clean up the sticky, red mess from his Wendy shirt. When the stain did not disappear, he turned on Curly.
Splat! Went the cake into Curly's face. Unlike Curly, Nibs could aim. However, the cake was put slightly off-course by Tinkerbell's flight over the table (she'd been unlucky, and she now had creamy, cranberry cake on her pretty green outfit). So instead of hitting Curly straight-on, it hit Curly and Peter who was next to him.
Peter threw a blueberry with force back at Nibs, and then decided that this was a great way to have fun during dinner. He proceeded to throw more at the Twins and at Michael.
A food fight ensued, naturally.
Wendy put her chin on the palm of her hand tiredly, and she sighed with weariness. She hated it when the boys got boisterous at the dinner table like this. Anywhere else but the dinner table and after the curfew was okay to Wendy. In fact, she joins in. But this… this was too much.
"Boys!" Wendy announced loudly over the dinner table. No one paid any heed.
She slammed her fork down. A blueberry flew into her hair.
"That's it!" She cried, and, gathering up her nightgown, she climbed onto her chair, standing over all of them. The boys looked up in amazement at Wendy Darling, who seemed to have grown a lot taller.
"That's it!" She repeated. "I'll teach you all table manners. You need them!"
Peter noticed a faint flush across her pale, translucent cheeks. Her blue eyes went bluer—her trademarks for when she was angry.
"Uh-oh," Peter thought.
"First of all," Wendy continued. "You must never, ever have a food fight at a dinner table."
The boys groaned. Wendy lifted up her chin defiantly. A few scatterings of 'fine' and 'okay, mother's rang around the room.
"Second of all," She said, climbing back down from her chair and walking around the table. "You must never take food from other's plates."
She eyed the John pointedly. Silence hung in the air for a moment, before Michael plopped the Twins' cake back onto their plates.
A pause.
The boys started returning others' food to their plates without a sound.
Wendy was delighted. "Good." She said. "Next, you must always say please, and thank you at the dinner table when you want something. John, would you like to demonstrate?"
John looked around at all the expectant eyes, and then into the blue eyes of his sister. He grumbled under his breath, "Fine."
He looked around for any food left to ask for. The honey jar was sitting untouched by the edge of the table, only because it was too sticky to throw.
"Nibs," He muttered. "Would you please pass me the honey?"
Nibs handed it over.
"Thank you." He said uncertainly. He looked up at his sister again, standing there with her piercing blue eyes and that wild brown hair drifting all over the place, and her arms crossed.
"Thank you, John." Wendy said with a big smile on her face.
"Next point, no making loud noises. Polite conversation at the dinner table always. Hold your forks, spoons and knives properly. Peter, would you like to demonstrate?" Wendy continued, her confidence boosted by this positive response from the Lost Boys.
Peter's green-and-blue eyes narrowed. Something Wendy could not figure out flashed across his face. The hideout was eerily silent as the boys waited, almost not breathing, for Peter's response.
Peter shifted from his lounging position with his leg over a chair arm into a proper seating position.
"And the fork, knives and spoons?" Wendy prompted him, her eyes brightening in triumph.
Peter's hand strayed toward the unfamiliar eating equipment, even as his eyes stayed locked on Wendy's flushing face.
Peter Pan hesitated once more. He was unaccustomed to this frustrated, bossy Wendy, rather than the sweet Wendy, the one who knits quietly by the fire long after the Lost Boys fell asleep, and long after Peter was supposed to be in bed.
He thought he rather liked it. He didn't have to make the decisions for once.
But then he thought again; if Wendy can tell me to be well mannered at a dinner table… that means she thinks she's the leader here. She's not.
Peter's soft, unreadable expression hardened into a very readable one. Soft, forest green eyes became steel-like, the grey flecks becoming more and more prominent as they became darker with rage. They said, very clearly, no.
When Wendy's heart fell, so did her eyes.
"No." Peter's voice was but a whisper, but it was firm. End-of-discussion type firm.
He reached over and grabbed the honey jar before marching out of the house, just to rub it in.
Wendy climbed back into her seat quietly. The table, boisterous not five minutes ago, was now deadly silent. They all stared at Wendy, wondering what she was going to do now.
The Lost Girl glared at the door where Peter had disappeared. She ran her options through her mind. She could never teach the Lost Boys table manners again if she let it go like that.
Wendy had had enough. Blue eyes hardened, similar to the way Peter's did, but instead of anger, it was determination that drove Wendy to grab a knife, a spoon, and a fork before standing up and following Peter out.
Wendy knew where Peter would go. She knew him too well. Sure enough, by the time Wendy got there, the mermaids were all present and hissing with laughter at Peter Pan's tales… of himself.
Peter was in the middle of a story of how he defeated a band of Indians from far away islands when he noticed a slim, pretty figure in white in the shadows, just along the border of the trees. He growled in annoyance, spun on his heels, and flew to another spot.
This one was a tiny, quiet clearing in the middle of a small circle of trees and bushes. He sat down on a rock and leaned back into the tree. He could hear Wendy's breathing as she made her way through the leaves.
Stubbornly, Peter put the honey pot next to his rock and took out his panpipes. He began to play a loud tune to drown Wendy out.
Suddenly, there she was, standing in the middle of the clearing with him, holding—a knife, a fork, and a spoon. Peter turned around to face the tree and kept playing.
"Peter." Wendy said. "It's me, Wendy."
Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So…
"Please, Peter." Wendy persisted.
"What?" Peter finally relented, turning around to face the Lost Girl. In the moonlight, her nightgown looked blue, and her lines were all blurred together, except for the blue of her eyes and the red of her lips.
Peter's eyes, similarly, became bluer in the moonlight. His golden hair reflected the white, gentle light that shone through the canopy.
"Why won't you let me teach them table manners?" Wendy asked softly.
"Because you were being very bossy, and only a leader can be bossy." Peter pursed his lips together in a definite frown.
"But I am their mother. It is my duty and my responsibility to teach them to be pleasant, well-mannered children." Wendy explained.
"I know not of the word 'responsibility', nor of the word 'duty', Wendy." Peter told his Mother.
"But Peter, responsibility is the seed to maturity. If you are responsible and fulfil your duty, then you will be a very pleasant, mature boy," Wendy told him earnestly, forgetting that he wished always to be a boy and never mature.
Peter's eyes grew wide with shock. "If it leads to Maturity, then I shall never, ever allow it." He cried, losing his calm composure at last. "If you ever encourage it, I shall banish you away from here!"
Wendy lifted up her chin. "If you wish it, Peter." Her blue eyes sparkled in the starlight.
Grumbling, Peter turned away. His face pinched into a deep frown, and his eyebrows furrowed.
"You know, Peter," Wendy said thoughtfully after a while. She walked a little closer. "There are a few perks to using the knife, fork, and spoon, you know."
"Go away," came Peter's muffled reply.
"Not only responsibility. It is my responsibility to take care of you all. Doesn't make me an adult, now does it? It just makes me the most sensible among you all."
"Humph," Peter muttered.
Wendy walked a few steps forward. "The Lost Boys and I need a sensible leader as well as a quick-thinking and brave one, Peter."
Peter grew silent, waiting to hear the rest. His interest was aroused, no matter what he wanted Wendy to believe.
"Responsibility makes you a better leader, Peter. I just wanted to teach you that. I wanted to help you. Don't you understand?" Wendy ran her fingers through her hair in frustration.
"Look, I need a break, too. I work day and night to help you boys take care of yourselves. Don't take it all for granted, okay? I need a little help in the responsibility department, Peter." Wendy knew she was ranting, and she knew she should stop, but she didn't.
"I just want a little pleasant peace and quiet during dinner times and after curfew, Peter. Is that too much to ask?"
Peter turned around. "So that's what you wanted all along?" He asked plaintively, very much like a child at that moment.
"Yes…" Wendy trailed off, uncertain.
"You could have just asked," Peter told her, jumping up and suddenly appearing in front of her. Shocked blue eyes gazed back at him, and he noticed how there were dark circles under her large blue eyes, how her hair was wild and unruly, very different from when he first saw here, when it was straight and fell perfectly. He noticed that her perfectly upturned nose was slightly pink from the cold night air.
"I… Peter… really?" Wendy asked, not believing her ears, although they insisted that was what they heard.
"Yeah." Peter confirmed. A smile floated across his face as he tried to hide a mischievous smirk. He zipped back towards the rock, grabbed the honey, and dangled it in mid-air in front of Wendy.
"Honey?" He asked, his eyes playful.
Wendy's heart thudded. For a second, she almost believed that Peter Pan had called her honey. But no, he was just offering her a sweet, sticky treat.
Wendy tilted her head and lifted up the fork and the knife. "Take your pick, Peter. We are not eating that with our hands."
Peter chose the fork, but he took the knife along with it, anyways. He put it in his belt, next to his dagger. "Two-in-one," he said gleefully.
Wendy opened the jar carefully, and dipped her spoon inside. The thick, sweet honey made her tongue scream in joy. She dipped the spoon inside again. Peter landed next to her, and, almost tentatively, dipped the fork inside, too. Then he put it in his mouth.
They both had big smiles on their faces as the two children shared a pot of honey in the moonlight.
It was a sweet victory for Wendy, indeed. For Peter? Well, it was just plain sweet.
The end! Haha, how did you all like that? Never expected it, huh? The idea just popped up one night while having dinner.
As always, leave a review whether you liked it or not. Actually, I think I wrote this quite fast, really. Just a day after I posted the last chapter of my Peter Pan story Of Tigerlilys and Wendys. Until next time-Thank you for reading! ~Nightingalelynx.