Disclaimer: Marvel's. Not mine.
Rating: For general audiences.
Author note: Just a short, fluffy Romy one shot, written for its-rogue-lebeau-blog's birthday last year, which she gave me permission to share. Originally posted on Tumblr. Enjoy! :)
-Ludi
x
- Unbirthday -
It was just another night, warmed by the residual heat of the Valle Soleada sun and of their intertwined bodies.
They'd been here for 3 weeks now, every moment giddily glorious. For the first time ever they had a place to call their own, a place that didn't involve fighting and angst and a mansion full of prying eyes. No responsibility to anything except each other.
Every night they'd been lying like this, facing one another, talking. They played a game of truth without the dare, a challenge to reveal at least one thing about themselves that they'd never known before. It was an exercise in mutual trust that was both frightening and exhilarating. And they'd both learned that sometimes it's the simplest things that are the hardest to confess.
"When's your birthday?" he broke the silence by asking first. It wasn't the first time he'd asked this, but instead of her usual swift change of subject, she frowned, screwed up her nose and said:
"What's yours?"
Neither answered. Neither was willing to budge. They realised the irony of it. They'd both divulged deeply personal things, but for some reason birthdays appeared to be a sensitive sticking point.
"Why does your birthday bother you?" he asked.
"Why does yours bother you?"
He gave a shrug and reached out, putting his palm on her thigh –soft, smooth skin that he can't get enough of after all those years spent wanting – and answering:
"It doesn't really. I just don't really know when my birthday is. Bein' abandoned by your parents as a bébé, livin' most of your childhood on the streets... Birthdays weren't never important. They were only somethin' other kids had."
The words were the last thing she'd expected, and they softened her.
"I couldn't imagine that," she murmured. "Not knowin' when I was born."
He shrugged.
"Y'get used to it."
"Do yah?"
"Yeah. Kind of. At least," and he sighed, caressing her thigh thoughtfully with just his thumb, "y'get used t'the fact you ain't never gonna know."
There was a short silence.
"I guess my birthday never meant very much to me," she admitted pensively, running her palm down his chest. "Kinda makes me guilty, to hear you never really had one."
"Don't be guilty," he said softly, clasping her hand in his own. "I get it."
"Yah do?"
"Yeah." He touched her cheek tenderly with his free hand. "You left a lotta stuff behind when you left Caldecott. I guess your birthday was just one of those things."
She gave a half smile.
"Yeah. My home, my family, my name... The girl I was died the day I left. She's a part of me, always will be... But she ain't me anymore." She bit her lip and thought about it. "I ain't thought about my birthday in years, if I'm honest."
He slipped his hand into her hair and cradled the nape of her neck.
"Guess that's another thing we share in common, chere," he murmured. "No birthdays."
"Sugah," she whispered back, inching closer to him and sliding her leg slowly up his own, "that's the least of the things we share in common."
They kissed, first sweet and soft, then harder; and he pushed her back into the mattress and her legs wrapped round him, pulling him in closer than close. Afterwards the sound of the Valle Soleada waves sang them both into a blissful slumber.
-oOo-
He woke her the following morning with the heady scent of coffee and cake.
"Mornin', chere," he greeted her with a sunny smile that he'd rarely worn back at the mansion – usually his smiles were lopsided and sarcastic, and it was a joy to see smile like the one he was wearing now so often.
"Mornin', sweetheart." She yawned, stretching and sitting up sleepily. She rubbed her eyes with heels of her hands as he sat on the bed next to her, bearing a tray of delicious-smelling coffee and two, even more delicious-looking, cupcakes.
"Bit much for breakfast, don'tcha think?" she joked. They were her current favourite flavour – salted caramel.
"Figured, since neither of us have a birthday, we'd share an unbirthday," he explained with a grin. "Went to that artisanal bakery down the beach. They made these up specially for the both of us." He held one out to her, looking apologetic. "Sorry, no candles. I wanted to get back before you woke up."
She took the cake, for once stunned into speechlessness.
"Remy," she spoke at last, "you're pretty darn sweet for a womanizin' Cajun swamp snake, yah know that?"
"I know." The lopsided smile was back. "I love you too, chere."
It was the truth disguised as a joke. She laughed, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him down to her.
"Not as much as I love you, sugah," she murmured sultrily. "Happy unbirthday, Remy."
"Happy unbirthday, Anna," he whispered, as his mouth finally met hers in a slow, deep and long-awaited kiss.
-END-