Anticipation [RP thread for fey_fire]

[sandandwater]

It’s half past eight and Pippa’s going through the motions of opening Last Call for business. It’s a routine she can perform mostly by rote: sweep the floors, take the chairs down from the tables, wipe off the bar and the table tops, deal with petty cash for the register…let the band in the back door when they arrive. The band. Breaker Street. Rory.

Ro

.

She closes her eyes and forces herself to take a deep, calming breath. Normally, she loves Wednesdays. Loves being the only one here as they set up the stage with their instruments, tune up. She usually helps Morrie run the sound check. Chats with the band and gazes longingly at Ro whenever he’s not looking at her. But tonight—

The red haired woman has a feeling that tonight’s going to be

much

different. She hasn’t seen Ro since their phone call revelations and she’s counting on (hoping, really) him keeping his word about kissing her. She’s even gone so far as to dress a bit nicer this evening. A simple baby doll smock with capped sleeves and jeans. Her usual funky collection of jewelry. Heeled shoes that give her considerably more height, taking into account Rory’s tall, lanky frame.

She hears the solid cadence against the metal fire exit doors. That’d be Kreske, the drummer tatting out some ridiculous rhythm instead of just knocking.

Here goes nothing

…Pippa smooths a hand over her riot of curls and hurries across the bar to let them in. She tucks her blistered and bandaged hand behind her back as she uses her free arm to brace the door open. “Hey, guys…”

Comments

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

All right. Only two words, but those two words brighten Rory's eyes and put a slowly-widening smile on his face. All right. Pippa wants him too. Wants to be with him. He still senses a shy hesitancy in her, but the smile is returning to her face and eyes. They can deal with anything else.

Slowly, almost reverently, he turns his head to place a kiss in her palm. Then he stands, again moving slowly to avoid jostling her, and wraps her in his arms. With a soft sigh, he dips his head to press his face against her hair.

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

His kiss sends warmth spiraling through her palm and up her arm and by the time he's wrapping his arms around her, Pippa is more than willing to melt into his embrace. Being held, feeling his breath on her neck as he rubs his face against her hair, she can't help but think of the previous night and the way they had stood together in Last Call's storeroom. Hesitant touches turning into hungry kisses and eagerly exploring hands...if she just thinks about that, thinks of him as the man whose kisses she wants, everything else is easy to overlook.

She turns her head then, pressing a light kiss just below his ear before offering, "I'm not afraid you."

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

A last trace of tension eases from his neck at her words. Rory presses Pippa just a little closer to him, savoring the feel of her warmth against the length of his body. He's humming something, and smiles to realize that it's the same tune he hummed when they danced for the first time, the tune he reworked into a song just for her.

But first ... he lifts his head to look in her eyes and murmur, "I'm so glad, sweet." When he lowers his head once more, it's to cover the full curve of her lips with his own.

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

"Mmmm..." The sound comes out on a soft sigh as she returns his kiss, the action nowhere near as timid as it the night before. After letting him capture her mouth and exploring his in the same manner, Pippa slowly pulls away and smiles up at him. "I really should start dinner. Come keep me company in the kitchen?"

She has no intention of letting their conversation end here and she certainly isn't going to try and put a stop to his kisses, but Pippa is determined to salvage what was a very nearly wrecked evening. She'll make dinner as promised. Dessert too. And somewhere between the two she'll find the courage to talk to him about the things she does fear.

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

"It would be my pleasure." Rory trails Pippa into the kitchen, still grinning. He thinks he probably won't stop grinning for a while.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" he offers. "My mother made very sure that all her children knew at least the basics of cooking. If you have anything that needs peeled, chopped, washed or whatever, I'm your man."

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

She shakes her head and looks up at him, only pausing briefly as she catches sight of his odd eyes--they're growing on her. "No, I did most of the prep work earlier, while I was waiting for you to get here. Just talk to me."

Pippa is pulling covered bowls and containers from the fridge and placing them on the counter as she talks, her stove already laid out with the copper-bottom pots and pans she prefers to cook with. "Your mother taught you to cook?"

Maybe she'll start in slowly with things, he is giving her a bit of an opening. "That's nice. I...I don't think my mother actually even knows where the kitchen proper is in the house. I don't recall ever seeing her in there. The butler's pantry on occasion..."

Pippa stops what she's doing as she attempts to twist the lid off of a jar of marinated capers. Holding it out sheepishly, "I think I could use your help after all."

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

"Well, with five of us to care for and all the work she did with the parish, Mam needed all the help she could get around the house." Rory accepts the jar and pops it open carefully. "There you go."

He notes Pippa's hesitancy in mentioning her mother. She's said little or nothing of her own family in all the time he's known her; surely such a warm and loving person has her reasons for such a silence. Maybe he's not the only one who's been working up to difficult revelations this evening.

He goes to collect their wineglasses, then takes a seat nearby, watching her movements as she arranges her ingredients. "A butler ... sounds like you grew up in a different world than I did ... in more ways than one." No judgment, no pressure. Just a quiet opening to speak if she wishes.

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

Mam, what a charming name. Pippa smiles as she listens to him talk and quietly thanks him as he hands her the jar and then later her wine glass. Taking a sip from her glass, she shrugs a shoulder then turns up the flame under a pan, heating it through. "What sort of work did she do?"

She'd much rather talk about him, his family and where he grew up, keeping her snide remark about one faerytale or another to herself-- Pippa's aware of how people tend to envision that 'different' world. That's certainly not the impression she wants to make on him this evening.

She'd rather, but she shouldn't. Give and take, she reminds herself. Give and take and if she wants something real with Rory she's going to have to be honest with him. Honest yes, but she doesn't have to look at him while she speaks.

Continuing to put dinner together one step at a time, she waits until she's whisking a pan filled with blueberries and stock (amongst other ingredients) to speak up again. "I don't really have anything to do with that 'world' any more, Ro. I haven't for a very long time. I suppose that's why I don't talk about it much...about them. I can assure you, they think nothing me. Nothing kind at any rate."

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

"Try asking what she didn't do; it might be easier to answer. She taught Gaelic and Irish history at a time when doing so was quite illegal. She helped with birthings and foalings, illnesses and injuries ... all kinds of things."

Rory's velvet eyes turn somber as they watch Pippa at the stove. Family is such a central part of his life that imagining such a rupture as she has suffered comes hard for him.

Figuring out how to respond comes even harder, but eventually he speaks softly, "If they don't see what they're missing in you, sweet, they're either very blind, very stupid or both."

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

She gives a small laugh as he lists off his mother's varied activities, the woman must have been a bundle of energy and ambition as far as Pippa can figure.

At the tone of his voice, she removes the pan from the heat then turns to face him. "They aren't stupid, Rory. Not at all. Rigid and uncompromising. Cold and unforgiving, but not stupid.

"I did things I shouldn't have done, things I knew they would never accept." Pippa chews her bottom lip as she considers how to best continue, moving to take a seat opposite Rory. She can't cook and have this conversation. "You can only buck the system so far before you find yourself excised from it completely."

She finds herself looking out the window and not into those deep, dark eyes regarding her. Ashamed? Possibly. "I couldn't be the person they wanted--no, expected me to be, so I left."

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

The system. A different world indeed, where family could be so cold. As if to counteract that coldness, Rory reaches for Pippa's hand and brings it to his lips.

"For a while I thought my bisexuality might break my relationship with my mother completely," he confesses. "But she came around, difficult as it was for her Catholic soul to accept."

He squeezes her fingers and looks earnestly into her eyes. "I can't imagine you doing something so awful, that your family should be so unbending."

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

Well, there's that out in the open, at least. One of Pippa's eyebrows arches slightly at the near-casual way he mentions his orientation. Not that it was of much concern to her, not after their phone calls and their shared kisses and of course his revelations that just took place in her living room. She does wince, however, at the mention of his mother's faith. "That must have been difficult for you too...I guess she came terms with it though?"

Pippa shifts in her seat, uncomfortable with the way he's regarding her, with his words and the implied question he hasn't yet asked. She entwines her fingers with his, grasping his hand because she expects him to pull away even though it's the last thing she wants. "I embarrassed them."

Playing with the edge of the place mat in front of her, Pippa swallows nervously then presses her free hand flat against the table's surface. Right, out with it. If he thinks ill of you for what you have to tell him, that's his problem. "I got pregnant at eighteen and I refused to tell them who the father was. I insisted on carrying it to term and I dropped out of the university I had been attending."

That's the concise telling of the matter and the look she gives him makes it clear that she'll only elaborate if asked.

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

"She did ... but I don't think she ever really stopped worrying." He never wanted to cause his mother such concern simply by being who he was, who he is, but such was not for either of them to choose.

Rory's head tilts and his brow furrows, but his hand remains snug in Pippa's. "And for that your family rejected you? That's -- my own aunt, my mother's sister, got pregnant at an even younger age, but Mam never turned her back on her. Even though they hadn't always gotten along that well, and even though such things were considered far more of a scandal back then, my parents helped her through the pregnancy and took the baby in to be raised as my older sister. This was years before I came along, of course."

If anything, the sympathy in his eyes has only deepened. "What you must have gone through, on your own like that ..."

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

"It looked bad amongst their circle of friends, colleagues a societal gossip mongers." Pippa looks up at him then, brow furrowed. He's made more than one comment about time and past events that Pippa knows are far from recent.

There's a question niggling at the back of her mind, but she doesn't quite want to ask it of him. Maybe afraid of the answer even now. So...

"And it wasn't just that I was stupid enough to...well, it was that I wouldn't do as I was told. If I'd terminated it, gone back to school, been a good little girl..." She shook her head, clearly disgusted with the idea even now. "The whole thing made me realize that I didn't want to be like them. I wanted something else out of life. I wanted a life."

She brushed her fingers over the back of his hand as she spoke, "Your mother, your parents really, sound like wonderful people. Caring people."

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

He watches Pippa's eyes, laden with old heartache and bright with determination. "I don't blame you," he says softly. "Parents who'd count opinion and rumor as more important than their own child's needs ... I don't blame you for not wanting to be like them. They don't sound worthy of anyone's emulation."

His own eyes warm at her compliment. "Oh yes. I'll not deny that I was very lucky in the parental lottery." Rory shifts his chair so that he can slide an arm around Pippa, then leans over to press a kiss against her temple. "I'd like you to meet my father some time. You'd like him, I'm sure, and I know he'll like you."

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

His gentle affection and the complete lack of judgment in his voice continues to put Pippa at ease and she relaxes into his embrace, smiles softly at his kiss. Meet his father--well, she's already met his sister and it isn't as if he's insisting upon it. 'Sometime' is rather vague considering how important most people consider introducing their family to their...what, girlfriend? Is that what she is now? "I think I'd like that too, Ro."

Pippa's hands find Rory's again, her fingertips lightly fluttering over the backs of his hands. Light caresses that offer hope of something more intimate. "You understand when I say I hope you never meet mine?" She makes a small noise in the back of her throat at the thought. "Mmm...Nana would like you though. My grandmother." Pippa clarifies with a smile. "She stays on Martha's Vineyard year round now, says she doesn't care for crowds in New York any more. I think she does it just to be difficult. She enjoys inconveniencing people."