Note: The first collaboration was so much fun, Peachdust and I just had to do it again! This time, as you can tell from the title, it's Alek's turn. :D
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"More tea, lovey?"
Alek smiles at Deryn's kindly auntie – what was her name? Agatha? Martha? – until he catches sight of Jaspert looming behind her.
Jaspert, who somehow manages to make his lieutenant's uniform – so similar to Deryn's – into an unspoken threat. It matches nicely with the scowl on the older boy's face.
God's wounds.
Alek swallows. "Thank you," he tells Agatha, taking the cup. Or is it Martha? No; he's almost certain it's Agatha. Deryn had introduced them earlier, of course, but his heart had been rather in his throat at the prospect of meeting Mrs. Sharp, and he had not, unfortunately, been paying the best of attention. "That would be wonderful."
"Such a dear lad," auntie Maude says on his other side. She crowds in closer, peering nearsightedly at the album in Alek's lap. As her widow's dress reeks of camphor, it's not an altogether appreciated move. "Now, this page is all from our holiday in Cardiff – oh, what year was that, Janet love? Before my dear Malcolm passed – and your Artemis, too, of course."
" '95, I think it was," Mrs. Sharp says. She leans over Alek's shoulder to examine the sketches carefully pasted to the pages of the album. "Mm, that's right – Jaspert had colic. Wailed the entire time."
Behind them, Deryn snorts. "Aye, sounds right."
Everyone turns their attention to Deryn. For this visit, Alek had chosen his only good set of clothes, but she'd worn her everyday blue airman's jacket and brown trousers. She'd discussed more ladylike clothing, but ultimately rejected the idea, on the grounds that it would make both Alek and herself uncomfortable (albeit for different reasons).
It has not been a popular decision with her mother.
And indeed, Mrs. Sharp's mouth now compresses into a disapproving line. "Deryn! I told you to go upstairs and change into proper clothes."
Deryn puts her hands on her hips. Defiant. "These are proper clothes."
"She does look handsome," Maude says to no one in particular.
"Just like her da," Agatha agrees.
Jaspert's scowl has nothing on his mother's. "Proper clothes for an airman," Mrs. Sharp says tartly.
Outraged, Deryn exclaims, "I am a bloody airman!"
"Language, Miss Sharp," Bovril puts in, gleeful, from Jaspert's shoulder.
Traitor, Alek thinks darkly. No more fresh strawberries for that loris. It had abandoned Deryn's shoulder for Jaspert's almost the moment her brother appeared, and seems perfectly content to stay there.
"That's enough!" Mrs. Sharp straightens and, in a move of surprising quickness and dexterity, has Deryn by the ear and is dragging her out of the parlor before Deryn can do more than yelp and Alek can do more than blink. "I'll not have that sort of filth tossed about my house, and you will wear a dress to dinner!"
Deryn's voice fades as she's hauled upstairs: "Ow! Barking spiders, Ma!"
Agatha smiles at Alek, her round face scrunching into a cobweb of wrinkles. "More tea, lovey?" she asks, holding out a teacup.
He looks at the proffered cup, at the full one in his hands, and back to Agatha's kindly – if somewhat vacant – smile. "Er – no thank you, ma'am."
"It was a lovely holiday," Maude says, as though the argument between Deryn and Mrs. Sharp never happened. "Oh, turn the page, do, Agatha – the next is all of my cats."
Alek looks at Jaspert. The older boy's scowl relaxes for a moment, mouth twitching at the corner into something almost like a smirk. "Think I'll go up and help, then."
"Abandon ship," Bovril says, cackling.
Alek watches them leave. It feels rather as though his every hope is departing with them.
"Now, Ermentrude, here," Maude says, pointing to a photograph of a very round, white cat wearing a jaunty silk-ribbon bow around its fat neck, "was my particular favorite. Oh! The mischief she would get up to! Why, one time…"
The story continues, and Alek manages to smile and hmm encouragingly, despite the fact that he would prefer to be upstairs, where a great deal of shouting has broken out. Or traveling across Austria at night, pursued by the German army. Or starving in the middle of Siberia. Or…
…anywhere else, really.
"Oh!" Agatha exclaims suddenly, one hand flying to her chest. "Maude, lovey, we've forgot to ask!"
"Oh, so we have!" Maude says. She turns from the photographs of her cats and squints at Alek, all friendly eagerness. "Alek, dear, when are you going to marry our Deryn?"
Anywhere else.
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Extra Note: Barking spiders, 125 chapters! And the five-year (!) anniversary of "Quite Peculiar" is coming up, too? Well, I'll have to post something extra fluffy to celebrate.
