(no subject)

[butcivilization]

After weeks of mulling and fretting, of lying awake concocting the perfect scene and musing over just the right thing to say, after talking to friends and even reading some of those blasted books with which the bookshelf had mocked him, Henri had finally come to a decision. He would propose to Thomasina at New Year's. The timing was too perfect - it would be their first true anniversary, the Compound would done up in festival fashion, and the entire island would have a celebratory air. From there, in the hours of the night after Thom had drifted off to sleep, he had planned in his head the time, the place, the very script.

But as the weeks of December had passed with startling speed, he had grown nervous. His stomach had twisted in knots as the Christmas holiday flew by. Joyful as it had been, he had found himself struggling to concentrate on the collective joy of the holiday when so much waited in his future. And now, with New Year's Eve only a few days away, he could think of nothing else.

But life went on. For the moment, at least, Henri was miles away from the island or impending engagement, studying something so distant from the world around him as the evolution of the first land creatures in a prehistoric age. He was sprawled on the bed, slightly disheveled in jeans and a tee-shirt, one toe sticking slightly out of a hole in his sock. Afternoon light warmed the little cabin, and the steady sounds of the jungle could be heard outside. Henri's nose was buried in his book, oblivious, for the moment at least, to his surroundings.

Henri was so absorbed in his book that he did not notice when Thom opened the door; for a moment she did nothing but stand in the doorway and watch him with something of an overly fond smile. They had lived together for a long time, now - it had been their hut for far longer than it had ever been only her hut - but Thom rather thought that it would never fail to make her heart jump a little when she came home to him. A year ago, she recalled, she had been despairing of the island ever feeling like home; now she could not imagine that any place without Henri in it could ever have felt like home at all.

He had not noticed her yet, which meant that it had officially become a challenge; she entered the room and set her bag down as carefully and quietly as she could. In the space of a few steps, she was at the side of the bed, and she slipped one cold hand beneath the hem of his t-shirt to warm it. "Good book?" she asked lightly, even as she grinned in anticipation of his protestations.

She wasn't quite clever enough to pass entirely unnoticed, for Henri looked up with a soft grin as Thom came close. But he wasn't quick enough to speak or stop her before she slipped her icy hand onto his bare skin. He yelped with surprise, his book going tumbling to the ground, and then he was laughing. "Thom!" He pushed her hand away in mock-annoyance. "What was that for?"

She smiled and set herself down beside him on the bed. "The walk left me with exceedingly cold hands," she explained, as though had been entirely sensible. "I had to do something." Besides that was the fact that it was always irresistible to watch him squirm, just a little, though this was not a reason she felt compelled to share. "How is your afternoon?" she asked as she began to unlace her boots. Just now it seemed that joining him for a lazy afternoon in bed would truly be the best possible use of their time; indeed, she didn't see how she had ever anticipated anything else.

"Mm. Of course," Henri said with appropriate skepticism. Shaking his head, he crossed his legs and rested his elbow on his knee. "Oh, uneventful. Well, except for one thing. Oddest thing, too. I was reading my book, minding my own business, when all of a sudden this woman walked in and attacked me. What do you think of that?" As much as he tried not to, he was grinning by the end.

"Terrible," Thom exclaimed solemnly, shaking her head as though she wasn't entirely playing along. "I think you'll have to be sure to teach her a lesson, and thoroughly." She grinned and reclined beside him on the bed. "I'd also suggest that you be a bit more careful with your standards on who you let into your hut, monsieur. You never know what kind of terrible person might be lurking around the next corner - or, maybe, on the bed beside you."

Henri ruffled her hair. "Ah, but you see, the trouble is that I know a certain young lady of my... intimate acquaintance that might not appreciate my giving such a lesson. But I shall keep your advice in mind." He let the joke drift away after that, gazing down at Thom fondly. "How was your afternoon?"

"Oh, it was fine," she said, turning on her side to face him. "Classes continue apace, naturally, and I shall be very disappointed to see them end. But for today..." She smiled and pressed herself a little closer into his side. "I am glad just to be home." The holidays had been a season full of many conflicting emotions this year for Thom. Few on the island would disagree that it was difficult not to miss the people you'd left behind when Christmas came along, and miss them she did, dearly. And yet she'd gained so much in the past year, and the fact that the anniversary of when things had truly begun between her and Henri - New Year's, at the stroke of midnight precisely - approached so rapidly gave the time a sense of the oddest excitement and happiness, too. She knew rationally, of course, that there was no reason she could not miss her family and appreciate what she had all at the same time, but it was quite a bit of emotion to process all at once.

"It's good to have you home." Henri shifted on the bed so that he was lying beside her, then tucked her hair gently behind her ear. Even after the years he had been on the island, and the time he had been away from his first home in the south of France, thoughts still drifted to family this time of year, just as Thom's did.

His stomach tightened, not unhappily. Perhaps by this time next year, they would be able to say they had a family of their own. "I always find Christmas here to be a little odd," he admitted ruefully. "But I have those that matter most with me, and that is what matters."

Thom smiled. "As do I," she said softly, and leaned in for a kiss. For a long moment she let it linger, slipping her hand once again under the hem of his shirt, until finally she drew back with a little disappointed murmur. "It is too early to go to bed," she said, shaking her head a little. "Regrettably." Not that similar facts had stopped them on many previous occasions, but from time to time Thom thought that one was perhaps obligated to act like something at least resembling a responsible adult. Any day now she would get the hang of it, she was sure. "Should I allow you to return to your book?" she asked, gesturing to where it lay on the floor, a casualty of their earlier teasing. "Or should we think of something else to do?"

Irresponsible or not, Henri wasn't about to let her slip away so easily. Even as she pulled away he shifted closer and kissed her hair, his spectacles bumping against her temple. He wrapped his hands around her still-cool ones and grinned softly. "The book has been interrupted and there is no going back," he teased. "I am certain we can think of something else to do."

Thom grinned and settled back down against him. Well, if he was going to give her an excuse, then far be it from her to fail to take advantage of it. "I shall blame my sloth on you entirely, you know," she warned, pressing close for another kiss. "My schoolwork is going to suffer terribly, I am sure of it." She was quiet for another moment, comfortable in their closeness, before she looked up at him with a slightly more speculative look. "New Year's is coming soon, you know," she said, without any particular weight behind the words. In truth she didn't really know what she was asking - or if she was asking anything at all, really. She supposed she just wanted to know if the thought of the approaching anniversary had occurred to him, as it had to her.

"Your schoolwork has not suffered yet and shall not now. And if it does, that will be your own fault. You do not need me to be distracted from it, God knows." Henri's amorous mood was more lazy and thoughtful than passionate, though, brought on by the chill in the air, and the holiday, and his own teeming thoughts. He nudged his nose lightly against Thom's and absently stroked her side as they lay next to each other on top of the bed. Their quiet moments captured together like this were many, but he still cherished each one.

Her next words took him by surprise. That very fact had been at the forefront of his mind that to hear it from someone's lips other than his own sounded strange. "Yes-" he said vaguely, feeling a slight flush rise on his cheeks. "Yes, I suppose it is. Only a few days now."

The slight blush did not escape Thom's notice, though she did not dwell on what it meant for long. As close as she and Henri were, and as much as they could talk at length about most topics under the sun, they had never been terribly good at discussing their relationship without a great deal of blushing and grinning and stammering. She didn't mind it, honestly, knowing as she did that it was a product of how happy they were together, how much they felt for each other. "It's been quite a year," she mused, thinking of all that had happened. The most eventful - and meaningful - of her life, to be quite honest. "I asked you this last year and I think I am obliged to again - do you have any resolutions, monsieur?"

The obvious answer that sprang to his lips wasn't truly a resolution, at least not in the usual sense of self-improvement for the new year. But it was still something he resolved to do, something he wanted more certainly and desperately than anything else in the next year. This was obvious to him, so obvious that he could not stop the words from springing from his throat and destroying his hours of careful planning and meticulous thought. There in bed, pressed gently close to her, he told Thom exactly what he wanted in this new year to come.

"I want to marry you."

It took a moment for what Henri had said to sink in. It was not, after all, the first time that the word marry had passed either of their lips; it would not have been the first time that they'd discussed it with some vague and future intent. But after a moment she saw the fiercely serious look in his eye, the way that he seemed almost to be holding his breath, and then she felt her heart seize with the beginnings of a joy so great she hardly knew how she would bear it.

"Is that only a statement, Henri?" she asked softly, biting her lip to keep from - well, she didn't quite know what, laughing or crying or kissing him - though it did nothing to hide the beginnings of a radiant smile. She needed to force herself to be sure of exactly what he meant before she jumped to conclusions, as she was so often wont to do. "Or is it a request?"

"I..." Henri's eyes went a little wide as he realized what he had done. Always one to plan everything down to the smallest detail, he had shocked himself with his spontaneousness. "Oh, God." Then he was scrambling out of bed, nearly falling over her as he did so, then searching through belongings for a ring he knew he did not yet have. "I- I am having a ring made, I swear it. It's only mahogany, but there is a man who does carving for trade, and it seemed appropriate, God only knows why. In any case, I don't believe it's finished yet. I wasn't planning to ask for a few more days, you see..." Abruptly he turned, realizing that he was searching through his clothes for something that was not there. He was red to the tips of his ears. "It was the latter. What I mean to say is-" he swallowed. "Will you marry me?"

Thom pulled herself upright in bed as he launched himself out of it, thoroughly puzzled by what he could be looking for even as the words he was babbling began to sink in. He was talking about a ring, she realized, and by the time he turned to finally ask the question that they had both, in some fashion, been waiting for, Thom's cheeks were as pink as his and she was only a moment away from rising to her feet.

"Yes," she said, and the one little word hardly felt like enough for all the love and elation it carried with it. "Yes, of course I will, Henri-" and in the next instant she was in his arms, her mouth pressed to his. In a moment she would be somewhere between happy tears and laughter, but right now all she wanted to do was kiss him, and kiss him, and never stop. Not for the rest of her life.

Henri caught her in his arms and kissed her- he kissed her like he was afraid he might never kiss her again, like a parched man might drink water, or a diver might breathe once he reached the surface. He wanted to say a thousands things more: how much he loved her, all he wanted to give her. Had they parted in that moment, he might have apologized for asking that sacred question while he stood in his socks without a thing to give her, and not in that celebratory night as he had planned. So perhaps it was for the best that they said nothing at all right away, but only held each other in their arms, pressed close together.

After a long moment, Thom pulled back, just enough so that she could rest her forehead against Henri's. She didn't speak yet; the moment itself was overwhelming enough that trying to clutter it up with words, she feared, was just too much. But after a long minute she finally pulled back enough to meet his gaze. "I love you," she said, her eyes shining with the few entirely joyful tears that had welled up. "More than I would have ever guessed it was possible to love someone, more than I ever expected to. And if I had the choice of any world, any time, any home, I would want nothing more than to be right here. With you." She kissed him again.

"I love you, too," Henri managed to whisper before they dove into another needy kiss. When it ended, he was trembling a little and his eyes were closed. Once again they rested their foreheads together. All the words he had planned to say had fled his mind, but he no longer cared. "I could never manage to show you just how much I love you, not in a thousand years or with a thousand words. But I must try. I want to spend every day of the rest of my life trying."

"The rest of our life now, I think." Thom pushed away the few tears that had found their way to her cheeks and pulled him in close again. It was a decision that would affect everything, she knew; there would be people to tell in the next few days, and after that so many plans to be made. But for right now, it was only about the two of them, the decision that they had made and of which they were both certain, she knew. It was all she needed.

Well, perhaps not all. "I need to sit down for a minute, I think," she said with a little laugh, tugging him over towards the bed. "Up till now I'd always thought that when someone said their knees grew weak, it was only an expression."

Henri laughed sheepishly, allowing himself to be tugged along. So much had happened so fast, but unsteady as he felt, very little in his life had ever felt as right as this. They sat down on the bed, and he gathered Thom close in his arms. How, he asked himself, had he managed to be this lucky? What had he done to deserve such good fortune? Thomasina - the island at large - it was all he could have ever wished for without even knowing he wanted it. Once, on a faraway barricade, he had made peace with the fact that he would have no piece of the future. And now he had more than he could have ever dreamed.

"I hope you can forgive me for not yet having a ring," he told her with a small grin that proved he knew such an apology was ridiculous. "I love you..." Never would he tire of saying those words.

"I love you too," Thom said with a grin, "which is why I won't dignify the previous comment with an answer." She swatted him lightly; the ring, much as she would cherish it when he gave it to her, was only a symbol of something much more infinitely precious that she carried with her every day: his love, the knowledge and assurance of it. Of course she would be glad to have it, but right now its absence made not a whit of difference to her.

It was a strange mix of emotion with which Thom now found herself flooded. She was happy, above all else she was of course happy, but there was a kind of gravity in that happiness that she might not have otherwise expected. She looked at Henri now, serious although not grave, and captured his hands in hers. "Do you know," she said softly, her mind for the moment a very far way away, dredging up old anticipations and hopes, "though I thought of this day very often when I was younger, I never imagined it would be so unutterably happy an occasion." She had, at the time, believed that it would mean leaving home, abandoning all she knew and loved. Now she saw that it would instead be nothing so much as coming home, with all the love and goodness that implied. "I don't know who I have to thank for it, Henri, or what I did to deserve it, but I know that I could never ask for anything more than this."

"Oh, Thom," Henri murmured, melancholy in a way that rarely was for the fate the girl in Sidley Park would have had, even if she had not died in a terrible fire. Gone with their necessity were the day when he thought of women and children who were as unappreciated, unnoticed, and fragile as the poor, and when he had looked on and wondered if the world would ever change for them as well. Thom, in a funny little way, had not been meant for her own time, he thought.

He cupped her face and kissed her gently."I think you have earned happiness well only by being yourself," he murmured gently. "I am honored to have played some small part in its making."

"Earned it, perhaps," Thom said, smiling and pressing a little closer to him. "But as far as providing it goes, you have done the lion's share of that, and don't pretend otherwise." She kissed him, and after that her joy was entirely without check or reservation. "Married, Henri, can you even think of it! There is so much..." She let her sentence trail off, because there were too many ways that it might be ended to choose. There were the plans in the short term, yes, there were things to be arranged and planned and pieced together, but after that... after that there was a life to be built. A family, perhaps, to begin, a home to be expanded. Her world had expanded, Thom thought, and it made her excited and nervous all at once, but happy beyond all else.

"So much...?" He raised his brows slightly, a small grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, waiting to her to finish. In truth, he had not thought much about their engagement beyond her hopeful yes. But now, he realized bemusedly, there was much else to see to. He hadn't the slightest idea what Thom would expect for a wedding, for one thing. "I'll have you know, I shall be leaving the rest in your hands. I've done my part."

"Oh, indeed?" Thom asked, eyebrow arched. "I'll have you know, sir, that your part also happens to include listening very carefully and seriously to all the options I present to you, considering which is best, and then agreeing with my opinion. If you've no objections to that, then I suppose this marriage business can proceed." She grinned and slid a little more firmly into his arms, pressing him back into the pillows on their bed. "I certainly hope you're not planning to be so hands-off in all your husbandly duties," she murmured before she kissed him.

Henri chuckled. "Mmm, I think I can do that. I am terribly good at listening to you while you ramble on, you must have noticed." He grinned and nuzzled close to her, then let himself be tipped back as she leaned over him. "Oh, I'm not, never fear..." He tangled his fingers in her hair and tugged her down into the kiss. "I promise I shall be quite dutiful when it comes to all the bits that happen after the wedding day is through..."

"Mmm, I should hope so," Thom said with a bit of a pleased hum as they kissed again, settling very naturally into the comfort of their new status, though very little had actually changed. A promise had been made, that was what it amounted to, and that was more than enough for her. "Considering all the practice we have had, that is." She kissed him again. For all her talk of it being too early to go to bed, she rather thought that what had just happened qualified as special circumstances.

"Mmm, indeed..." He nudged her over onto her back, kissing her thoroughly before he bothered to say anything more. "That, at least, I do not expect to change," he added with a sly grin, then brushed his mouth lightly against her ear. That brought him up against another thought, though. The reasonable next step after marriage was children, a thought that terrified him and filled him with wonder in equal measure. In this, too, they had more choice here than they ever could have back home, a strange fact all on its own. That conversation would be another hurdle to cross, one that might come very soon.

"I should certainly hope not," Thom murmured, closing her eyes as he kissed her ear and then down her neck. For her part, her thoughts had not yet ventured in that direction, at least not as related to the events of the day. There was plenty of time yet to think about the future and what it would hold for them. Right now, she was far more concerned with the afternoon ahead of them... and the evening too. She slipped her hands beneath the hem of his t-shirt - thankfully, this time they were warm - and pulled it over his head, running her hands over the planes of his back once they were bare.

"You have nothing to worry about from me," he whispered, grinning against Thom's skin. Their earlier attempt to make something of the afternoon seemed to have been abandoned, but could anyone blame them for that? There was celebrating to do. Henri trailed his lips back to Thom's and kissed her lingeringly. "We'll get up later," he whispered, "and we will find some dinner. But for now I want to make love to my fiancee..." A thrill went through him as he spoke those words. "You have no objection, I trust?"

"None at all," Thom said, with a little smile. "In fact I find I have quite a pressing engagement of my own, with my fiance..." She, too, tried out the words for the first time and found them to be quite possibly the most satisfactory she'd ever spoken. "I love you," she said, repeating the words again and again as she put her arms around him and drew him as close as she could. There was a part of her that had expected this, truth be told, had expected it to come at some point ever since they'd spoken of it outside the midsummer's faire those months ago. And yet somehow that did not detract at all from the happy surprise she felt now that it was here.

"Good." He grinned softly, his mouth close to hers "I wouldn't want you accusing me of keeping you from your work, for example..." Henri pulled back enough to tug Thom's shirt up over her head, then sank back down again, letting his hands run over her newly exposed torso. "I love you..." he murmured, words of which he was sure he would never tire - now, not for the rest of his life.