A/N: So my muse ambushed me and my mind to produce this oneshot whilst writing chapter 10 of 'In The End'. I figured I should complete this to allow me to carry on with ITE, and once I read it through, thought it might just be worthy of posting. I feel like it has a nice holiday theme underlying it, but that could just been the tinsel around me. And the fact it was Christmas yesterday.
Anyways, I do hope you enjoy this. Please R&R. Wishing you all a happy holidays and New Years!
Foreign meant being at risk. It meant not fitting in. Not knowing the rules, the language, the customs. There was a higher chance of making mistakes when things were foreign. A higher chance of being caught out. Of being hurt. Even killed; emotionally, mentally, or physically. Or for those really unlucky, all three.
This was a foreign feeling. It wasn't the same as the times he spent in the rural European countries, or a sub-continent Asian city, but it was still foreign. And foreign was foreign, no matter where, what, when, or why. This foreign, though, was good. The waking up with the sun shining on his face and the warmth of another body next to him. Not his body, as he pretending to be someone else; but him. His body and his self, with everything that he had to give.
Give. Another unknown task. There hadn't been many times where he had given something that couldn't be seen. Perhaps that time, too long ago for others to remember unless they were there, when he felt like he had a family. A sister. A baby sister. And parents who cared and loved him, unlike others who accepted him into their home simply for the cheques that followed through the post. Oh yeah, even in his younger years, he had figured it out. There were people out there who took him in for the money rather than for the actual opportunity to give someone with nothing, something.
Not that he had much to give either. Sure, he had plenty of the material things. Enough money to buy a decent house in the Beverly Hills neighbourhood down the road, and anything else she might ask for. But that was it. He knew that she wouldn't. Because, like himself, she hadn't had many times to give something non-materialistic to someone since losing the last person she truly trusted over a decade earlier. Instead, he'd take the cues from her actions and general words. Such as when she comments on someone else's necklace while they're 'pretending' to be a couple undercover. A basic, off handed line about how pretty it is, and simple, and nothing like she'd expect those who actually attended the high-class party they would be canvassing would wear, whilst waiting for a cue to do their jobs.
A week later, and he found himself thinking about it more. A visit to a jewelry store on the way home had ended with more than just a box with a beautiful white gold and diamond item inside it. She liked simple, so he kept it simple. Few hours later, they were sitting on the couch, watching some game show that, for some reason that he didn't understand, captivated her attention for a full 80 minutes. That was what usually happened, at least. This time, it was more along the lines of 47. A small commercial break and he reached over to the small silver gift bag that he had placed on the table at the end of the couch when he had arrived.
He had left it in plain sight on purpose. They were naturally curious people. It's what made them good at their jobs. But he knew that until she asked, or he gave her permission, she would keep that curiosity bound to the insides her mind. Privacy.
Tipping the bag upside-down onto her curled up legs, he placed it back aside and waited for her to reach for it. It balanced precariously on the top of her knee that rested against his thigh. When he made no move for it, she freed her hand from his waist to take a hold of it. Even as she tried to hide it, there was a slight shake in her hands as she turned the square box around to the right position before opening it up. When she pulled away to sit up straighter, as if it would make what she held any more real, he knew she got what he was saying. Asking. Proposing. Giving. Promising.
It was a foreign feeling, no matter how many times he experienced it. Waking up next to the person who meant the more to him than anything else in the world. Who gave something that she couldn't bring herself to give to anyone else. Who accepted him as he was, and took what little he could offer when it came to love. Who had readily said she would spend the rest of her life with him without even entertaining the opposite answer.
It was a foreign feeling, waking up with the sun glinting off the small but perfect diamond that adorned her finger as she slept, hand laying possessively on his chest. And, for once, he liked it. Heck, he spoke 7 languages, other than English. He could deal with foreign.
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