A month later, at the Harvest Festival, Jack and Diane shared a piece of pumpkin pie while sitting on a log near one of the bonfires.
Between bites, Jack told the story of the time he and Mac had defeated a bunch of bad guys at a Harvest Festival.
'…I kid you not, the kid just grabs all of this stuff, and tosses it into the fire, and there's a fwoof…'
Behind them, there was a fwoof.
Diane arched an eyebrow.
'Like that?'
'Yeah, exactly like that!'
A look of nearly comical realization crossed Jack's face, and he turned around, to see a purple bonfire. The bonfire was surrounded by a gaggle of the town's kids at a good, safe distance, who were very excited and watching with wide eyes. Some of them were clapping. Standing a little closer to the fire were Mac, Beth, Alex and Jill, both sets of newlyweds with several bundles of goodness-knows-what by them, and apparently giving a science lesson as well as a show.
Beth finished explaining something, then, with a rather childlike grin, tossed one of her bundles into the fire, which turned it green.
Jack and Diane watched the scene for a couple of minutes.
Given the looks on the two couples' faces, as they talked to the children and let some of the older ones toss bundles in to change the fire's colour, Jack fervently hoped that they'd have their own sooner rather than later.
That thought had barely crossed his mind when he was hit with a terrifying vision of the future.
Two little boys, both blonde and blue-eyed (though the shades varied), close enough in appearance that they could be brothers, running through the castle corridors, pulling a kite-like thing behind them and chattering about aerodynamics (a word they had to carefully enunciate), or absolutely covered in grease and with springs and bits of metal and whatnot sticking out of their hair, looking sheepish but insisting that they absolutely had to try and work out how it worked, or accidentally (possibly on purpose) turning some stuffy nobleman's hair bright orange.
Diane smiled knowingly at him, like she could see what'd been in his mind's eye, and leaned closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder.
'Looking forward to being a grandfather?'
Jack smiled and shook his head a little.
Who was he kidding?
Mac's kids were going to be more-than-handfuls, he was sure, even with Beth's influence, babbling about science that he didn't understand by the time they were five, roping him into experiments with puppy dog eyes and please Grandpa Jack, but he'd love them to bits.
'Yeah.' He gestured to the group around the now-pink bonfire. 'Hopefully sooner rather than later, while I'm still young enough to enjoy 'em…and deal with 'em.'
Meanwhile, Billy brought a platter of food over to Riley, whom, on his insistence, was sitting at a rough-hewn wooden table, relaxing over a mug of beer after a hard day's work.
She smiled up at him, then stole a miniature meat pie, which made him chuckle as he sat down next to her and picked up a quarter of a chicken sandwich.
'Oh, I see how it is, lady…'
Riley swallowed her mouthful of pie, and spoke just as teasingly.
'The way to a woman's heart…'
The bounty hunter laughed, before finishing his chicken sandwich quarter and growing serious.
'I found out today that I'm gonna have to go out of town for a while, Riley. We got a skip who's real good at hiding and got himself a real good head start…'
Riley sighed.
'Weeks?'
Billy nodded, and she sighed again. He reached out and squeezed her hand.
'I'm gonna do everything I can to be back for Yule.'
He said it like it was a promise, because it was, which made Riley smile again.
(She got it. Billy's job – and his family, by extension – were very important to him. She couldn't ask him to give it up for her, just like he couldn't ask her to give up the restaurant – for which she worked long hours, reducing the time they could spend together - for him.)
She took another bite of her pie, chewed and swallowed.
'Then we'd better make the most of tonight.'
Billy smiled at her, soft and loving, and leaned over to kiss the side of her forehead tenderly. Then, he pulled back and smirked.
'Lady, I love the way you think…'
'Come on, Leanna! It's lots of fun!'
Leanna arched an eyebrow at Bozer as he did a very strange dance that she had never seen before, along with a bunch of kids.
They seemed to be impersonating some kind of bird?
She raised an eyebrow further, hesitating (she didn't really do much by way of silly or undignified…this was way out of her comfort zone), and Bozer broke off from the group and pointed at Nessa with a grin.
'You're in charge!' Then, he made his way over to Leanna, holding his arms out. 'I promise, it's fun!'
She gave a little smile.
'It does look like it.' She paused, a suspicion coming over her. 'Did you come up with this dance?'
Bozer nodded, a surprisingly fond, soft touch in the grin on his face.
'Yeah, it's a long story. Involves my bro studying chicken flight, not enough sleep and a little too much liquor…' Bozer looked a touch sheepish, before grinning outrageously again. 'I'll tell you all about it later, Miss Martin! Now, come on, let your hair down, relax and do something out there!'
He held out a hand to her, and after another moment's hesitation, Leanna took it with a smile and a head-shake.
Bozer's enthusiasm was hard to say no to. It was also contagious.
'…now, you just gotta bend your arms like this, then flap along to the beat…'
A week and a half before Yule, Beth got out of the bathtub, dried herself off, wrapped a towel around her hair, put on her nightgown and robe, then searched for her hairbrush.
It'd been a long and difficult day at the Houses. One of those days.
A young farmer had died of injuries inflicted in an accident with his farming equipment. She hadn't been able to save him, and he'd left behind a toddler and a heavily-pregnant widow. One of his farmhands, a teenage boy, had tried to save him, and suffered injuries to his left arm that were likely to cripple function in that arm for the rest of his life.
She was looking forward to just curling up in bed with Mac and getting a good night's sleep, with the hope that tomorrow would be a better day.
Her hairbrush wasn't where she'd left it in the morning, nor was it anywhere in the bathroom.
Beth made a noise of great frustration.
Five days ago, it'd been using all of her hairpins, so they'd had to improvise some out of paperclips in the morning. A week before that, he'd used the whole container of toothpaste. Before that, all three cakes of soap they had, the poker and every single writing implement in their chambers.
Not to mention, all the stuff he'd pick up and absent-mindedly put somewhere else, before or after using it in a non-destructive way.
It drove her orderly, be-prepared nature nuts. Besides, one needed things like hairpins and toothpaste and soap; she wouldn't mind him using some of it and letting her know so she could have the supplies replenished sooner than expected, but he tended to forget to tell her, and often used it all, so they didn't have any when they needed it.
She opened the bathroom door.
'Mac, what did you do to my hairbrush?' Her husband was sitting on their bed, in the middle of cutting a strip off her breast bindings. An already-cut section was pinned to a pair of handkerchiefs using paperclips in front of him. And that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Beth lost her temper, and wound up yelling at him. 'What are you doing with that? Mac, you can't just destroy my things just because an idea seizes you! I can't stand it anymore!'
Hope, curled up at the foot of their bed, raised her head. She wasn't used to her 'parents' fighting, not at all. She let out a quiet little whine, before something reassured her, and she lowered her head and dozed again.
Something hurt flickered across Mac's face at her words, and his voice was definitely defensive when he replied.
'You like the things I make, and my ideas!'
After a long moment of staring at him, that was enough to give Beth pause, make her take a deep breath, as some of her anger evaporated.
She knew that his mind was always buzzing with ideas, and that he had an itch to keep his hands busy, and that he could get seized so deeply by an idea that he forgot about things like manners and politeness and the laws against petty theft and the need to ask for permission.
(The ideas usually came about due to his constant desire to help, but his attempts to fix or improve things for people were not always appreciated.)
Mac tried his best to keep that in check, but in certain spaces, like the workshop or his study or their chambers, he let go and relaxed completely, which was fair enough.
He did still keep his hands off certain things (he never cannibalized her father's projects without permission, nor did he touch the valuable jewellery in her jewellery box or destroy things like Hope's favourite toys or her couple of expensive, fancy dresses), but otherwise, let the ideas take him.
And to be fair, she did love almost all the things he made, and his crazy, brilliant brain and ideas.
She just didn't love not having any hairpins or not being able to brush her teeth or take a bath or stoke the fire.
Beth took another deep breath, and her voice was apologetic when she spoke again.
'I'm sorry for yelling at you.'
Mac's initial defensiveness had faded away too, while he'd given pause and taken a couple of deep breaths as she had. He gave a little smile at that, one that was more than a touch sheepish, and put down her ruined bindings and his Engineer's knife.
'I'm sorry for destroying your things.' He glanced at the ruined bindings again, then at the lock of wet hair that'd slipped out of her towel, remembering how drained and saddened she'd looked when she'd come home, looking rather guilty. 'I think you have a right to be angry at me.'
Beth walked over and sat down on the bed beside him, putting a hand over his, her voice firm.
'I love you, and your crazy, brilliant mind and its ideas and what you make.' That made Mac smile a little wider. 'But, I also require hairpins and underclothes and the like, and we need a poker, toothpaste, soap and so on and so forth.'
Mac nodded in agreement.
If they didn't come up with some kind of solution to this, they'd keep arguing. Worst-case scenario, like tonight, she'd lose her temper at him from time to time, and he would react defensively, wounded and hurt, it'd feel like she was rejecting him for who he really was on a fundamental level.
(That was a sore point for him. He was self-aware enough to know that.)
Beth was orderly, well-organized and liked to be prepared, to a near-obsessive and somewhat unnecessary degree. He was happy to live in a disorganized chamber, and tended to be on-the-fly and admittedly too careless about using up things like soap and toothpaste.
They had to find some kind of compromise.
Beth tilted her head to the left, thinking, before an idea hit her.
'Mac, if we can come up with a list of essential items, do you think you can refrain from using them up if they can't be replaced before we need them again, remember to get them replaced or replenished when you do use them up or nearly use them up, and/or put them away when you're done using them?'
He considered that for a moment.
He probably couldn't promise that he could, not without breaking that promise every now and then.
'I will try my best.'
Beth sighed, but squeezed his hand and smiled, wry and fond, anyway.
'That is all I can ask of you.'
She leaned up to kiss him. It was soft and tender and a little reassuring, like they wanted to mark that the fight was over.
After that, Mac stood up and after a moment of screwing his face up a little in concentration, reached behind his dressing screen and grabbed her hairbrush off his dresser. He glanced at it, then looking decidedly sheepish, went into the bathroom to wash it.
When he came out again, he held up the cleaned and dried hairbrush.
'Do you want me to brush your hair?'
Beth smiled.
'Oh, yes, please.' He smiled too, and knelt down behind her on the bed, unwinding the towel. Beth made a happy little noise in her throat as he ran the brush through her hair, then reached out to pull the handkerchiefs-and-cut-up-bindings combination onto her lap. She studied it for a moment. 'Mac, were you trying to redesign my bindings?'
'I thought it'd be more comfortable and less restrictive.' He paused, voice growing a little sheepish and wry. 'But in hindsight, I don't have any expertise in this area, so…'
Beth pursed her lips, studying the half-made garment she was holding.
'So this here would go around the ribcage, and the handkerchiefs would serve as, well, cups I guess, and then this part goes over the shoulders? You might be on to something, Mac…but I think you should fold the handkerchiefs this way…'
The next afternoon, after an early-morning run, three meetings and a lunch with a dignitary from a northern province, Mac walked into his study, to find a second box of presents from his wife next to the original box of junk (which Beth topped up periodically).
This second box contained fabric scraps, old hair ribbons, and a dozen handkerchiefs that were badly embroidered (he guessed they'd been used for embroidery training or practice), as well as some of her old bindings and what looked like 'mistake' defective hair pins.
There was also a proposed list of 'items off-limits', the note signed please let me know if you have any suggestions/objections/other modifications, and if you want more materials, there are plenty more where these came from! Love, Beth.
After a lot of discussing and testing of designs, fourteen prototypes, and some very confused washerwomen, they'd come up with an improved bust-holding/supporting garment.
It caught on among the women of the castle at first, then the women of Lafayette Town, before continuing to spread and spread.
(It was more comfortable than corsets – popular among women who didn't have to work, despite the health warnings on doing them up too tightly – or the bindings that Beth had used, apparently.)
Before he knew it, it'd become by far Mac's most popular invention (or more accurately, joint invention) to date.
Beth thinks it's hilarious.
The whole family thinks it's hilarious, actually.
Two days before Yule, as Bozer and Riley were closing up the restaurant one night, the latter was definitely a little distracted.
Billy wasn't back yet, and Bozer knew that Yule was important for Riley. Yule was the holiday for family, and when Riley was young, with the exception of the years when Jack and Diane had been together the first time, things had been tough for her and her mom, and Yule had fallen by the wayside. Now that she had a bigger family, and life had a lot more light in it, Bozer would bet his bottom dollar that Yule was Riley's favourite holiday.
He went into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of the leftover gingerbread slabs from the gingerbread houses he and his assistants had been building, using the techniques that he and Mac had perfected as teens.
Bozer plopped down in the chair nearest Riley, who was still holding the broom. He broke off a piece of gingerbread, popped it in his mouth, then offered his business partner the slab, nudging her a little.
Riley broke off a large chunk of gingerbread, and plopped down next to Bozer, who finished his piece of gingerbread before speaking.
'Hey, if Billy's not back in time, we can do a Yule do-over when he is.' Bozer grinned. 'Who doesn't want two Yule feasts?'
Riley blinked twice, then smiled, looking genuinely touched.
'Thanks, Boze.'
'It isn't Yule if the whole family isn't there.' He pointed at her as he took another bit of gingerbread. 'You have no idea how many times I had to do a Yule do-over 'cause Mac and Jack weren't back from some mission or the other…'
AN: Yes, Bozer is indeed doing the chicken dance, and he invented it while he was drunk and watching Mac (also a little drunk) attempting to study chicken flight. And yes, Mac and Beth invented the bra. Mostly because I thought it was funny. And I do maintain that living with Mac would drive you crazy on some level, because he'd do something to everything from the toilet plunger to the coffee machine to your clothes to the soap, and you'd be searching for things like the potato peeler or the extension cords endlessly when you needed them. Beth is really organized, so they had to work out a compromise or they'd drive each other mad!
Teaser for next chapter: 'You could always say yes to his offer.'
