Drake/Wendy - Epsilon theme set

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#01 – Motion

When he sprang at her, caught her around the waist and dragged her out of the path of a reckless truck, it was a few minutes before she could speak again, partly because all the breath was forced out of her lungs when they landed, partly because he's just come out of nowhere after years of not speaking, and partly because of the shock of seeing him move so fast.

#02 – Cool

It's blazing hot out here today, but you'd never know it to look at her, and he thinks he might admire this cool-as-a-cucumber, perfectly composed demeanour a lot more on her if he didn't know that it came directly from Joker.

#03 – Young

Damned if he'd ever admit it to her, but the day she dragged him to that outdoor rock festival was about the youngest he's felt in years.

#04 – Last

Wendy thought she was over silly girlish romantic fancies, but as Drake leans forward to kiss his new bride, she swears to herself that this is the last man she'll ever wake up with and snuggle while he's still warm and pillow-creased, so maybe not.

#05 – Wrong

Well, shit, Drake protested as Wendy shot him a half-deprecating, half-sympathetic look before trotting back to the convenience store to exchange the "feminine products" he'd bought under heavy protest for a listless and groggy Maggie, who the hell knew there was more than one kind?

#06 – Gentle

"I thought you said you were over the klutz thing," he chuckles, bandaging a twisted ankle and kissing it better on impulse, and then laughing and kissing the top of her head when she sticks her tongue out at him.

#07 – One

"Drake, I get tipsy if I have one of those, and I've already had three tonight," she protests half-heartedly as he grins and presses another beer into her hand all the more insistently.

#08 – Thousand

"Good God, how much did Joker pay you?" he mutters, shaking his head as he glances briefly at the effect on the household accounts made by pouring her savings directly into his, and reflecting sourly that it's nice to know that the going rate for a soul is still pretty good these days.

#09 – King

He tries his damndest to teach her to play chess, even though she warns him dubiously that Joker tried and failed, but he keeps getting side-tracked when she acts out famous love scenes with her king and queen.

#10 – Learn

On the bright side, she takes immediately to riding a motorcycle, and earns her Class M license without a hitch.

#11 – Blur

But she still likes riding with him better, arms wrapped around him from behind, cheek at his back, the scenery blurred as much from the vibrations as from the speed as they blaze past.

#12 – Wait

"Good God, Wendy, could you wait until we get home?" he pleads, keeping the car on the road with some difficulty as one slim, surprisingly strong little hand slides up his thigh and works at his belt and zip, and she purrs, slightly slurred, all the things she wants to do tonight.

#13 – Change

"Well, that's just wonderful; now I have to go change," she huffs, stomping away from the kitchen sink and their impromptu waterfight, until Drake's grip on her wrist stops her and he voices a request that she stay with the drenched see-through braless white.

#14 – Command

It might be convenient, being married to a girl who sees commands and requests as interchangable and hurries to obey both, but damned if it doesn't make him a little sick to think about how Joker must've gone about training her.

#15 – Hold

He glares at Maggie and her friend as they both grin and aww when a half-asleep, half-drugged Wendy with half a bottle of NyQuil in her system crawls into his arms, snuggles up, and promptly falls asleep.

#16 – Need

"It's not true," he says quietly when he finds her in their room, tearstained and packing, after a particularly tense visit from those Paper Sisters in the city for a job and looking forward to meeting Drake's pretty young wife of three whole months now, only to find a former enemy; "the only way you're going to ruin my life is by leaving."

#17 – Vision

She pouts when he makes her wear safety goggles while they're rebuilding the fence, but she really pouts when he makes fun of his little space invader – especially when he then proceeds to get down to work without putting on his own goggles.

#18 – Attention

When the sixth hour passes with not a peep from the area downstairs where he's set up his pottery wheel, she begins to feel neglected, and makes a point to remove most of her clothes before sashaying over to see what he's up to; and now he's ignoring her because he's mad that she distracted him and made him send what had previously been a really nice jar crashing to the floor.

#19 – Soul

"Hell is for bad people, Kitten; you're a good person who did something really stupid, and I think God knows the difference."

#20 – Picture

Her favourite picture of him is the one she got while they were at the beach and he fell asleep sunbathing; and not just because he was shirtless and glistening a bit with sunscreen and absolutely mouth-watering in general.

#21 – Fool

"You know you're acting like an idiot, right?" he asks coolly when she adamantly refuses to come with him on this job in Tokyo because she knows he'll want to meet up with those girls if at all possible.

#22 – Mad

"For God's sake, Drake, I'm not trying to stop you from visiting your friends, but you're crazy if you think I'm going to go bowing and scraping for grudging forgiveness, because the only one who might offer it is the only one I don't want it from!"

#23 – Child

When he storms out of the house after that, the first time they've fought like this, she's not sure she'll be welcome here when he gets back, too many years of being ignored and rejected and thrown out by the people she loves catch up with her, and after the first hour of waiting by the door, she breaks some pretty things she bought on their honeymoon and then sobs like a heartbroken little girl.

#24 – Now

"Explain this," he orders, dropping her overnight bag on the guest room bed where she's still curled up and staring blankly at the wall, and she understands immediately that she won't be leaving the house, or even the bed, until she's given him an answer.

#25 – Shadow

It's really tempting to throw herself at him and just cry into his shoulder until they both fall asleep, and then pretend that nothing ever happened, but she forces herself upright, and draws on six years of steel spine and emotionless mask to stumble through the worry always in the back of her mind that one of these days, he'll realize that those girls were right, and she was never good enough for him and never will be.

#26 – Goodbye

And there is a goodbye said that night, but it isn't to each other, just to the house for a while because they've decided to go on a little trip of their own before he needs to report for his job in Tokyo.

#27 – Hide

"It'll be okay," he murmurs into her hair as she tenses and adopts a look just like a terrified rabbit ready to bolt, and his hand tightens at her wrist to stop her from diving under the table when they notice Yomiko Readman and Nancy Makuhari at the door of the cafe.

#28 – Fortune

"I think that maybe it's lucky you two found each other again," Yomiko admits slowly, unable to feel any anger or malice towards her adoring little friend of years past when she notices a slim, tanned little paw clasped protectively in Drake's iron-strong grip, "and I think it might mean that we're supposed to be friends again."

#29 – Safe

"There's no way you're going back alone like this," he tells her firmly when he comes back from a trip to the ice machine to find her flushed and feverish, rambling about everything and nothing.

#30 – Ghost

His fingers run gently through sweat-matted hair as she burrows against him to hide from fever-dreams and whimpers into his shoulder that the men she killed are crying for their families and she wishes she was dead too, so she could apologize.

#31 – Book

When he returns from a successful job, and another visit with the girls that she thinks she might like to forgive her, he has a little package, some books that the girls sent along to keep her company until she gets better; a book of fairytales from Michelle, and Spicy Bedtime Stories For the Modern Woman from Yomiko, but chosen with a lot of help from Nancy.

#32 – Eye

Maggie never would have believed it if she hadn't seen it for herself: her dad, her big scary dad who periodically threatens to forego the baseball bat and beat the guys off of her with a pick-axe, reduced to complete meekness and compliance in the matter of her slinky red Christmas dress, by a warning glare from a cute little blonde woman who can probably still shop in the teeny-bopper stores at thirty.

#33 – Never

"Well, at least life with me will never be boring, right?" Wendy points out with a weak smile and pleading eyes as they both bolt for the fire extinguisher to bring her attempt at cooking to an ignominious halt.

#34 – Sing

Even though she's been training herself for years not to care about silly occasions like birthdays, she can't stop a delighted giggle when he emerges from the kitchen after supper singing an embarrassed happy birthday to you with two ice cream sundaes, a single candle stuck haphazardly in one.

#35 – Sudden

When he leaves again and returns with her gift, a beautiful leather jacket – "so you don't have to wear my old one when we go riding" – she leaps at him, snuggling happily away until he gives a shout of pain and pushes her abruptly away as her other gift, hidden carefully in his shirt, digs tiny claws into his chest.

#36 – Stop

"Yeah, okay, it's hilarious," he grumbles good naturedly, scratching the kitten's tiny fuzzy head absently as tears of mirth drip down her flushed cheeks, "now cut it out."

#37 – Time

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" he demands quietly, deliberately crowding her as she hangs up her coat after a particularly late night out with some friends, and locks the door behind her.

#38 – Wash

Maybe he overreacted a little, but he knows she doesn't carry that gun in her purse anymore, and the thought of her wandering the city in the dead of night made him frantic; and anyway, he thinks with a grin as a little blonde visitor comes to join him in the shower, it looks like he's forgiven for shouting and menacing and a little bit of manhandling.

#39 – Torn

He's been away for almost two weeks, and as much as he loves having his two favourite girls close to him, laughing and teasing and just being silly together, he's still looking forward to leaving a pile of slightly ripped clothes on the floor of their bedroom and burying himself in her.

#40 – History

Sometimes she's afraid that the only reason he ever bothered with her was his almost legendary weakness for depressed, terrified girls in bad situations - just like Maggie's mother - but the rest of the time, she loves him so much that she doesn't care what started it.

#41 – Power

Sometimes it scares him, how tiny she feels beneath him, how easily he could break those bird-frail little wrists by just gripping too hard, could crush her throat with a too-ardent kiss, could reduce her to a sobbing child with a few well-aimed words; other times, it thrills him as much as it thrills her, and that scares him even more.

#42 – Bother

"Yeah, no problem, Dad, you know you're always welcome here," Drake says reassuringly despite a pained grimace, and with a tiny sigh, Wendy heads upstairs to change out of the silky red negligee she's been skipping around in, because it looks like it won't be tonight, either.

#43 – God

"Do we really have to do this?" she murmurs nervously to him as a kindly old man greets them at the church door with a beaming smile; "God and I haven't been on good terms for a long time now."

#44 – Wall

"Face it, Kitten; you might as well be tackling a brick wall," he chuckles as she bounces harmlessly off of him again.

#45 – Naked

When she exclaims, scandalized, that he can't just walk around the backyard naked like that, he demands to know why, and by the time she comes up with an answer, she's so mesmerized by broad chest and defined arms and legs and...other things, that she's forgotten what the question was.

#46 – Drive

He watches her joyously maneuver the gorgeous muscle-car she begged the salesman to let her test drive when they saw it on the lot and both fell in love, and shakes his head: "You know I'd never live it down if the guys ever found out my wife's a better driver than I am, right?"

#47 – Harm

It's kind of too bad, he thinks as she sits up dizzily after a tumble off the roof and reassures him that she's okay, that despite his greatest efforts to protect her, the greatest danger she's ever in is from her own clumsiness making a triumphant return in careless or stressful moments.

#48 – Precious

She wouldn't wish a flu like this on anyone, of course, and least of all him, but she hardly ever gets the chance to baby and protect him for a change, and she likes fetching him drinks and soup, and fluffing his pillows, and pressing cool cloths to his forehead, and singing to him, and climbing into bed and cradling him like a beloved child.

#49 – Hunger

And anyway, when he starts recovering of almost a week flat on his back in bed, he's so hungry that even her cooking tastes good, and there's something about watching someone actually enjoy something she made that makes her almost want to learn to do it well.

#50 – Believe

It's taken a long time, but they've finally managed to really let go of those secret, stupid fears: he doesn't worry about her running back to England the second Joker calls for her, and she doesn't worry about him waking up one day and realizing that he's really far too good for her; and both of them think, grumblingly fond, it's about time.

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End Notes: Ohh, this one was fun! I've got so many adorable little moments featuring these two bouncing around in my head, but it's hard to write a whole story about some of them, so this was the perfect opportunity to share 'em with the world! XD

I'm reasonably certain that I'm going to do at least one more theme set with these two, but I promise that it won't be until I've done some more with...other, more popular characters.