05 October 2020
Prompt: Beloved
Character/Pairing: Dingo King (OC)/Brielle Girard (OC), background Lukanette
Rating: T / PG-13 / Teen
Notes: I was very under the weather yesterday, so double update today. Whoooo let's do this! (I feel like this is a little…not rushed, but like I was trying to fit too much into the allotted time? Idk.)
Dingo is the kind of person who loves fully. Completely. Recklessly.
He knows Luka's not the same way. Luka's always been more guarded, more careful with his heart – though when he does give it, he gives it just as completely. It's how Dingo knew Marinette was going to be around for a long, long time, back when Luka first came to school after the music festival humming unfinished tunes.
But Dingo? Dingo falls quickly. Dingo falls hard. Dingo falls totally.
Like when he's four and gets his first drum. It's a stupid little thing his Dad finds in a street fair, and it isn't even what he'd been looking at initially – but Dingo had been fascinated by the little instrument, and he loves the noise it makes when he beats it, and it's something he's allowed to beat without getting yelled at (…much). What wasn't there to love about drums?
Or when he's seven and finds the stray dog sniffing through Grandfather's trash bins. Grandfather tries to chase it off with his old rifle, but Dingo screams and hollers until the old soldier relents. They have that dog until the summer before they leave the island, when he's too old and sick to survive the summer heat and…
Or when he turns thirteen and they move to Paris, and his cranky, stickler, kinda-crazy teacher sits him next to a blue-haired boy who introduces him to the prettiest girl he's ever seen. Brielle has hair that's straight like a tree and colored like rich bark – or maybe it's like a muddy waterfall, shielding her in its curtain when she wants the rest of the students to ignore her. Dingo can't ignore her, though, and for the longest time he thinks that annoys her more than anything else. Her skin is darker than his, naturally tanned where his just gets ruddy and red. He tries comparing her to caramel once, because she'd been drinking an iced caramel macchiato and he'd thought comparing her to a treat he just wanted to eat up would be cute, but she'd just dumped it on his head and told him that was racist. She wears too much black – because it helps her blend into the background, and it's cool, and when they're almost sixteen she gets her nose pierced because that's cool, too. (He pierces his eyebrow, because if Bri's tough enough to get a piercing he can be, too. Luka just rolls his eyes at both of them, but Luka's had his ears pierced since long before Dingo knew him.)
He knows Brielle for all of five minutes when he decides he's going to marry her. He tells Luka this, and Luka – who has known Brielle most of his life and Dingo a few hours more than five minutes – laughs and tells him good luck.
"Brielle's never going to marry anybody," Luka tells him, nudging him back towards their classroom. "She's like my ma. Married to freedom and her art."
Dingo doesn't fully understand that until he meets the Captain, and even then he thinks – hopes – Luka's wrong. Because he loves Brielle, and he wants to marry her someday, and he doesn't see that changing any time soon. Because Dingo King loves fully. Completely. Recklessly.
So maybe it surprises no one and everyone when they're seventeen-going-on-eighteen and Brielle agrees to date him. Maybe it surprises everyone but him when she dumps him two months later just to take him back the next month (a pattern that follows them well into their twenties). Maybe it surprises him when Luka calls him back to the Liberty, saying he has to make it within the hour because he can't very well get married without his best man, and as the Captain oversees the little ceremony on the river she leans over to him and asks, "So…when are we doing this, Perry?"
And he knows she's serious, because she never calls him Perry unless she means it.
So it probably surprises no one when Luka dips Marinette back in a kiss and Dingo clears his throat, asking the Captain if she's got another ceremony in her and if Luka and Marinette would terribly mind sharing. Because they really need to get this done before Bri can change her mind.
Because Dingo loves fully. Completely. Recklessly. And he's loved Brielle Girard – now Brielle Queen, because Fuck the Patriarchy she refuses to take his name and be a King – since he was thirteen years old.
And he's convinced he'll never love anyone more – until he meets Kurt.
"I made this," he whispers in hushed wonder, looking at the sleeping baby in a bit of a daze. Brielle, still exhausted from the delivery and the drugs, clears her throat weakly, and Dingo offers up a sheepish smile. "We made this."
"Damn straight," Brielle says on a yawn, and he falls for her all over again. Fully. Completely. And more than a bit recklessly.