None of these characters are mine. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox.
This one shot is a (sort of) continuation of the lives of Bo and Lauren set int he same universe/timeline as my previous long form story The Thirteen
Some more one shots on their way in the future.
Home
Isobel
You make a home with memories.
You make a home with welcome and warmth.
You make a home with a table and stories and conversation.
You make a home with the safety to fail and fall and get up again.
You make a home with acceptance; without conditions, without judgement.
That's what my mothers gave me. A home and a hearth. A place of comfort and a place I could always go back to no matter how far I wandered. A place I felt safe and loved and at peace.
I only hope that Connor, Dagny and I can build a home half as warm and welcoming as The Lewis House.
As adults, my siblings and I have always called it that. The Lewis House. I always smile when I think of the place. Ironic that none of my mothers were born a Lewis. They took a pseudonym and made it their own. They took the name and carved its reputation, just the same way they created our home and our family. Heck, even Tamsin took the name eventually and I dare say she's as much as Lewis as any of us.
Because when you share a home like that, you can't help but become a part of it.
XXXXXX
It was Tamsin who found them the perfect house. A house they determined between them would be their home. The four women had known that staying in Lauren's apartment long term was a non-starter – that became clear by the third day after the return from the Nexus.
So when Tamsin all but bounced into the cramped living room with news she had found a candidate they poured into two cars and followed her to the edge of a leafy suburb of the city. Bo noted with interest that it was close enough to Lauren's clinic for a comfortable commute and also within a reasonable distance to The Dal for semi-regular visits.
Walking slowly up the path towards the two-story house, Tamsin carried her daughter on her hip, Bo doing the same for Isobel. The Succubus' other hand was entwined with Lauren's as the three of them and Kenzi followed the realtor from room to room, the lovers finding each other's gaze every time they felt the excitement that this might just be the place. In the roomy basement the doctor leaned into her wife with a smile on her face and pointed. "We can split this into two spaces. A small lab on this side and a training/sparing come gym area on the other. And that reception room would be perfect for running the agency out of." Bo pressed into Lauren's hand and nodded, a smile spreading over her face at the thought Lauren was already making plans for their combined future.
The garden with the Maple tree large enough for a swing for when their children were older was the icing on the cake. The doctor and the Succubus only took a moment to share a look and a smile, Bo nodding and glancing at Tamsin who was already sold. As Lauren shrugged on her professional doctor demeanour to talk to the realtor, Bo graced Tamsin with a smile. She reached out and took the Valkyrie's hand to give it an affectionate squeeze. "It's perfect Tamsin. We'll be happy here."
XXXXX
The thing was, Tamsin would have been happy in any house she shared with Bo and Lauren and with her daughter. Before she had been part of Bo's life, she had been a wanderer. Shiftless, rootless, no ties of loyalty except perhaps for Acacia. She had never really considered Valhalla her home, more of a head office. It was a place she was never comfortable in. A place it had been easy for others to manipulate her. And if there was one place she felt safe from manipulation, it was with Bo and Lauren.
Three years being around the couple, along with Kenzi and Dyson, then two more in the Nexus with The Thirteen Companions had taught her what it meant to have a home and a family. An old dog learning new tricks, not least of which what it meant to love and be loved. And how love had multiple aspects.
She had known, unequivocally, that she and Bo would never be physically intimate in a sexual way again. At first, Bo's apparent rejection had broken her heart. But through their time together in the Nexus Bo had shown time and again, through word and deed that she was unconditionally loved, even if not in the way she had initially desired. And seeing how Bo and Lauren were together, the looks in their eyes, the obvious affection, how they fit so perfectly, it was enough for her that Bo was happy and made to feel special. But then on top of that Bo and Lauren, and the rest of the Thirteen, wove together that broken heart of hers with a deep abiding friendship beyond anything she had known. They showed her every day that she was more than a body to be used; more than a weapon to be pointed; more than a mad man's errand girl. Just like Bo, she wasn't lost any more.
XXXXX
Like Tamsin, both Bo and Lauren had been wanderers. Both running from their past, one hiding behind a new name and identity, one in a ten year spiral of self-loathing and fear. To both of them, finding each other had been a miracle. So just like Tamsin, they would both have said home was wherever the other was.
Bo had been lucky enough to start to have a home with Kenzi for four years in the clubhouse; a home she had burned to the ground while under her father's influence. And although Kenzi was staying with them for the moment, something had changed between the two women who considered themselves sisters. The tiny Russian was always welcome. But she would always be a guest. This wasn't her home.
Instead it was the home that Bo and Lauren built together, built around their love, their family, their hopes. It was the home they would bring up Isobel and Dagny, where Bo and Tamsin would take cases from, where Lauren would work late into the night on occasion in her home lab, where meals and stories where shared. And because they were starting from scratch there were no parts that were already Lauren's or Bo's. It was simply 'Ours'.
XXXX
The housewarming was an all day affair. Being at the tail end of summer meant a barbeque and Dyson and Mark taking charge of burgers, beer and ribs. Friends and family old and new drifted in and out through the day; Fae and humans rubbing shoulders in a foreshadowing of what was to come – of how Bo would remake the Fae of this colony and one day all of Faedom.
By early evening almost all the guests had thanked the hosts, said their goodbyes and left. The two infants of the household had woken from their naps and were holding court among the doting adults on the decking between house and grass. Dyson, once more in wolf form to please baby Isobel, lay on the edge of the grass while the little succubus sat on his back as if she was riding a horse. Bo took a deep breath as she lay back with Lauren snuggled into her, both of them watching their daughter in her own happiness. Kenzi had told her earlier in the day that it was time for her to return to Spain, at least for the moment. She would miss Kenzi, as always, but she knew that they would return to each other time and again. So she determined not to let the news spoil the day, or how happy she felt in this moment.
It was this moment, this feeling of contentment, of pure joy that would always come to mind when thinking of the word home. She would never be happier than with Lauren in her arms and hearing her daughter's laughter. That laughter would become on of the defining sounds of their home, of their life together. She knew then she would never live anywhere else again. She would never need to run again. And neither would the women she loved. For her, for Tamsin, for Lauren. For her daughter, this here finally was Home.
