"You know what would do you good, Val?" Tanith said, looking at Valkyrie over the top of her sunglasses. "You need a boyfriend, that's what you need."
The sip of coffee Valkyrie had just taken left her mouth at high speed when she spluttered at her friend's statement. Tanith took another bite of her chocolate cake, watching Valkyrie try to regain her bearings.
"Wh- no!" Valkyrie kept spluttering, her incredulity just further aggravated by how cooly Tanith was watching her over the rim of her coffee mug. If Valkyrie didn't know better, she'd say that Tanith had been taking lessons in disdain from China Sorrows. "I don't – I would not – what!" Valkyrie was well aware of her voice breaking, the last incredulous word coming more like a strangled bark than anything else.
"Well, a boyfriend, a partner, a case could be made for a girlfriend," Tanith said, looking distinctly unruffled. Valkyrie loved her like a sister, she did, but sometimes she hated her, too. "I'm not too fussed, I know you aren't fussed about it either, but what you really need to be more fussed about is being not alone."
"I'm not alone, though!" Valkyrie exclaimed, slamming her cup down on the table. "I have a partner! I have Skulduggery!"
"Partners in crime-solving is not the same thing as someone to share your entire life with, Val." Tanith rolled her eyes, sighing. "Skulduggery simply doesn't count, okay?"
"Bu-!"
"No buts. I'm going to set you up on dates, I think, see if I can't find someone for you," Tanith hummed, clearly deciding that was the last of it by switching subjects entirely. "Anyway, Ghastly wants you to come by soon, he had a new coat for you he said? And a suit for Skulduggery, as if he needs another."
Valkyrie looked helplessly at her friend, knowing there wasn't any point in trying to get her to change her mind.
Valkyrie stared at the ceiling, one hand holding the duvet to her chest and the other hand clutching her partner's.
"I'm going to start dating," she said, the words hanging in the air while Skulduggery spluttered. "Oh, stop the dramatics, you can't even choke."
"I think it's a valid reaction!" the skeletal man replied, while he waved his free hand wildly around. "It's not every day your fiancé of fifty years tells you she's breaking up with you!"
"Well, fair, but you still aren't capable of choking." She had to admit that, in some circumstances, that would've been a very reasonable reaction. Valkyrie wouldn't tell him that, of course, since that would make his ego unbearable, and she'd also have to admit to some slight wrongdoing.
"I'll activate the façade if you want?" Sometimes it was difficult to interpret Skulduggery's expression, but she knew he was looking at her.
She laughed, unable to resist the urge to roll over to look at him properly. She could tell, by the tilt of his head and from many years of living together, that he was mostly playing at offence – but that somewhere in the back of his head, despite all their years together, a small worry was niggling.
"So that I can encourage your dramatics?" Valkyrie tutted at him, never feeling more like her nana than she did then.
"I live for them!"
"You're dead."
"You're breaking my heart! First, you break up with me by telling me you're going to start dating, and then, as if that pain wasn't enough, you tell me I'm not alive?" Skulduggery played at heartache, clutching at his chest and swooning. The theatrics likely would've been better if he wasn't an actual skeleton, which somewhat removed the 'blushing maiden' aspect of it.
"Of course, that's absolutely how I'd break up with you, after fifty years of living together. I'm planning my first date before I've even thrown you out yet." She rolled her eyes at him, sarcasm thick enough to cut with a knife.
"Why am I the one getting thrown out?" Skulduggery exclaimed, the affront in his voice thicker still than the sarcasm in hers.
"Eh, it's my house?" She'd thought that much was obvious, but clearly not.
"I'm the only catch in this relationship!" He genuinely looked as if he was offended when she laughed at him.
"If you're not careful I will throw you out for real, don't think I won't." Skulduggery only snorted in reply, and she laughed again as she rolled over to bury her face in his collarbone. She didn't stay that close for long, considering that he was rather bony when he didn't have the façade activated, but it was cosy while it lasted.
Back when they started sharing a bed – she sleeping, he meditating or reading – she'd insisted on sleeping in his arms. That want hadn't lasted very long, but she'd kept on insisting for almost half a year longer, simply because she wasn't going to admit he'd been right from the start.
Almost an hour of silence passed, Valkyrie lying on her stomach, dozing off to Skulduggery running his hand through her hair.
"…you're not breaking up with me, right? Not actually?" Her head shot up, inadvertently causing him to get his fingers tangled in her hair.
Five minutes, one detached and then reattached finger, and what felt like half of her hair pulled out, Valkyrie had managed to reassure Skulduggery that he wasn't getting thrown out on his non-existent ear – unless he pulled out all of her hair, all bets were off by then.
Valkyrie stared in disbelief at the slinky red dress Tanith held out to her. It looked to be floor length, and Valkyrie wouldn't mind wearing the dress – but when it was offered in conjunction with the words 'blind date', she wasn't quite as impressed.
"No," Valkyrie said, arms crossed. She threw another glance at the dress before she looked back to Tanith. "No, I am not wearing that."
"Why not?" she replied, dress held out entreatingly. Tanith shook the dress a little as if to make it more enticing. "It's a good dress! It's exactly something you'd wear!"
"Yes," Valkyrie agreed reluctantly. "It is something I'd wear – for a partner, not for a blind date. It's been months, I thought you'd let this go!"
"But I'm trying to get you a partner," Tanith said forlornly. Against her will, Valkyrie felt something like regret creeping in. She scrubbed a hand down her face and heaved a deep sigh before meeting Tanith's eyes, the dress still held out between them. "I just want you to be happy…"
"Give me the damn dress and I'll try it on."
Tanith's squeal was the girliest sound Valkyrie had ever heard her make and filled her with instant regret. The regret abated slightly once she wore the dress, the burgundy of it the kind of colour she didn't think cloth could be – then again, it was a Bespoke original, and when it came to Ghastly Bespoke nothing was impossible.
"I'm not certain about the slits, actually," she said, twisting in front of the mirror. Behind her, Tanith scoffed.
"With legs like yours, not having slits would be a crime, Val." Tanith tilted her head, looking admiringly at her legs. "I fight crime, so I'd have to arrest you, you know."
"Oh, I love them for the look of the dress, but I'm just worried they're too high to hide a knife properly," Valkyrie answered, rolling her eyes. She twisted her leg again, the slit falling open to reveal most of her thigh. "Hm, it's not like I can return it to Ghastly… guess I'll just have to accept the dress."
Cocky smile in place, Valkyrie turned to look at Tanith, who looked entirely too pleased with herself for Valkyrie to feel comfortable.
"Great! Your date is at 6 pm, tonight, at The Black Swan," Tanith said very quickly through gritted teeth, self-satisfied grin pasted on as if that would make the news easier to digest.
"Tonight?!" Valkyrie screeched, going crosseyed with the surprise and red enough to match the dress – mostly from the rage, that.
"Yes!" Tanith screeched back, cheerfully, and before Valkyrie knew up from down she'd had makeup applied, a jacket put on and then been hustled first to the car and then through the door of The Black Swan.
"…I'm not entirely sure what just happened," Valkyrie said to herself, swirling her complimentary wine around the glass. "I'm not at all sure, but I do think I don't like it."
She took a sip of the wine, suppressing the urge to swig it as she did at home. Fine restaurants are not for swigging, she had an internal voice exclaiming – sounding a lot like Skulduggery.
"Val? Val Cain?" The man asking was tall – taller than her, which was unusual – with a voice almost smooth enough to rival Skulduggery's. Before she could reply either way he pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down, smiling so smarmily Valkyrie was struck with the immediate urge to throw the remains of her wine in his face.
Fine restaurants are not for wine throwing, she reminded herself.
"Hi, yeah, that's me," she said, smiling tightly back at him. "I'm sorry, I never caught your name?"
"I'm River – River Ignis," he said smugly, pulling his fingers through his sandy blond hair in what he probably thought was a rakish way. It mostly made him look nervous. "I'm sure you've heard of me."
Valkyrie had spent most of her formative years with a walking, talking skeleton, which might have been the reason her social skills weren't her most well developed skillset. Of course, despite that she knew that she really shouldn't say what she was thinking, which was that she'd never even heard his name mentioned, so she only smiled vaguely him, nodding noncommittally.
"What do you do, then?" he asked after they'd ordered their meals. Valkyrie had had her glass refilled, mostly due to a premonition that being tipsy – at the very least – would be the simplest way of getting through the night with both Ignis and her leaving the restaurant alive.
"Oh, I work with cases of a-" she managed to get out before Ignis interrupted again.
"That's nice," he said absentmindedly. "I work within the Sanctuary, of course, and once I even met China Sorrows."
"Did you?" Valkyrie looked up from her wine to thank the waitress when she set the bowl of asparagus soup down in front of her, noticing that Ignis barely leant back to let her set his gazpacho down in front of him, much less thank her.
Fine restaurants are not for wine throwing, her inner Skulduggery voice sternly reminded her.
"She really is as beautiful as it's rumoured, you know?" Ignis tasted his gazpacho, eyes first going wide and then narrowing. "This is cold!"
"Yeah, it's – ah, gazpacho is supposed to be served cold." Despite her words, he shoved the bowl away from himself in disgust but refrained from berating the poor waitress when she came back with their main courses.
Conversation, such as it was, quieted down while they started eating their main courses.
"Well, I do think it's good that you women have something to do with yourselves during the day, you know?" Ignis suddenly said, the two of them having been quiet for quite a few minutes before. Her shock at his words only let him dig himself deeper. "Everybody knows that China was only a pretty figurehead, not someone with any real say in things. And you, well, you'll do fine as my arm candy."
Fine restaurants are for wine throwing, Valkyrie thought vindictively to herself as she swept from the table, leaving the wine-soaked Ignis to settle the bill – and hopefully never repair his ego.
Having decided it wasn't worth the wait asking Skulduggery for a lift home would mean, Valkyrie had flagged down a cab outside the restaurant. It was strangely enough much easier, and it did make for a much more pleasant ride when one was wearing a gown rather than bloodstained leather.
She paid the fare, walked through the door to Gordon's house – she and Skulduggery had lived there for longer than Gordon had, but it would always remain Gordon's house – and sighed with relief as she stepped out of her shoes.
Valkyrie startled when someone took her jacket, only to relax into the touch once she remembered that Skulduggery was supposed to be home that evening.
"I've now been on my first date in 50 years, and have decided to get married as soon as possible," she said after a while, once the two of them had relocated to the couch. Skulduggery had his façade activated, letting her lean back against his chest without a pillow in between, and without getting weird rib indents over her entire back.
"Oh?" he replied absentmindedly, strong hands kneading at her neck. "Anyone I know?"
"Mhm, he's wonderfully dead, gives the best massage and he owns handcuffs. What more could I want?" She smiled when she felt more than heard him laughing and twisted her head to kiss his cheek. "And the reason it will be tomorrow is that I need both an alibi if someone would accidentally end up damaged or maybe dead, and I really want Tanith to stop setting me up on dates."
"This was your first date in a long while?" Skulduggery pointed out, hands now busy massaging her arms and causing her to melt into a puddle.
"He told me I'd do fine as arm candy in the future." It shouldn't offend her so, but Ignis' entire way of expecting everyone conform to his view of the world, and the sheer misogyny of his statements made her blood boil.
"And he's alive still?" The shock wasn't entirely theatrics, and she felt that was probably a quite reasonable reaction.
"Barely – I tried to drown him in wine, which actually was a pity on the wine because that, that was a very good red," she said mournfully. The wine had been that good.
"Well, I do agree with him on one thing, though," Skulduggery said, voice gone gravelly, and trailed his hands up the slits in the skirt of the dress, and higher up still. "You do make very fine arm candy."
Valkyrie didn't say much more that evening.
"I'm getting married!" Valkyrie said to Tanith, the day after that first – and last – blind date. Tanith choked on her coffee.
"To Ignis?" Tanith finally managed to get out, and Valkyrie was more than a little confused why her friend seemed more panicked than pleased about the upcoming ceremony, and she told Tanith as much. "No, Ignis wasn't – you weren't supposed to like him!"
"What." The word was said entirely without infliction, but Tanith felt it would probably be in her best interest to answer, and that quick.
"You weren't supposed to, you know, get along with Ignis," Tanith repeated, laughing uncomfortably. "You were supposed to take him down a few pegs – it was China's idea!"
Tanith had no qualms about throwing anyone under the bus, but she had a feeling that a bus would show more mercy than Valkyrie Cain would.
"I can't believe you believed I'd marry River Ignis," Valkyrie replied, still without much in the way of infliction, and Tanith didn't quite understand those words in that order. "Ignis is an idiot, a misogynist, and suffers from very grand delusions of adequacy."
"Oh thank the gods," Tanith said, almost deflating in her relief. "I wouldn't wish Ignis on anyone, that's how awful he is."
"He really is that awful." Valkyrie poured herself a cup of coffee, took a seat at the small kitchen table and studied Tanith over the rim of her cup. "So that's why I'm getting married. Preferably soon. I said today, but that was too soon – or so they say."
"But if it's not Ignis, then – who, exactly, are you going to marry? And no, I won't accept a self marriage as a valid relation meaning you don't need a partner," Tanith said, a finger pointed at Valkyrie as if to show just how serious she was being.
"Oh, I'm marrying Skulduggery." The crash as Tanith's cup hit the floor was deafening in the silence that followed that statement, the woman in question just stared at Valkyrie. Some small, petty part of her couldn't help but rejoice in her reaction.
"Just… what? No." Tanith waggled her finger at Valkyrie as if that would make her more likely to listen. "You marrying your crime-solving partner of more than half a century just to get out of the blind dates, I'm not going to accept that."
"Honestly, it's not my fault none of you believes us when we tell you."
"Tell us what? What is it we don't believe?"
"I and Skulduggery have had a romantic relationship for the past five decades, Tanith."
If Valkyrie thought the crash of Tanith's cup hitting the floor was loud, it was nothing on Tanith herself fainting and hitting the floor.
Valkyrie stared at the ceiling, one hand holding the duvet to her chest and the other hand clutching her partner's. She turned her head to look at Skulduggery but had to look away again. She really needed to say what she was about to say without laughing, something that would be difficult if she saw his way of making his reading glasses stick to his skull. That evening he was using rubber bands.
"Well, I've managed to convince Tanith we're actually dating and also probably getting married now." She trailed her gaze along the veins in the wood, and her eyes, as usual, caught on the spot that looked incredibly like a cow.
"That explains why Ghastly called about tuxedos earlier, I guess," Skulduggery muttered absentmindedly. "'Staff that climbs', six letters?"
"'Bovine'," she said, rolling over to be close to him without getting a hip imprint on her forehead. The scratching of the pen when Skulduggery filled out the crossword helped lull her to sleep, and she was very far from awake when she managed to mutter her last words that day. "We'll have to let China plan the wedding…"
The scratching of the pen stopped, but by the time Skulduggery had regathered his bearings enough to aks Valkyrie what she meant, she was already deeply asleep, a smile tugging at her lips.
Right-o! This can also be found on AO3, under the same author and name. Written for the 2020 Skulduggery Pleasant Fic Exchange, as a gift for bubblemoon66.
As per usual: I make no money from this, I don't own anything of it (other than River Ignis, but tbh I don't want him).