"one more drink and i'll be fine" by irnan (G)
Fandom: The Avengers (movieverse)
Pairing: Maria Stark/Howard Stark
Length: 2836 words
Author on LJ: irnan
Author Website: AO3Why this must be read: "one more drink and i'll be fine" is on the short side, but it packs a punch. You see incredible shades of a woman who could be Howard Stark's partner and equal, and there are so many elements that point directly to how and why their son turned out the way he did. The period elements are particularly impressive.
Frank’s a businessman, and he doesn’t have time for orphaned cousins. He tells her they’re family and that means they take care of each other, but Maria drifts through his house like a pale little ghost, hating the marble, the big windows, the views, the rain, the god-awful English with the ridiculous accents that she barely understands. Mamma had been English, as English as the day, Papa had said, an English rose.
There is nothing rosy about New York.
She and Frank eat meals together; he talks about his day but never asks about hers; he buys her things but doesn’t seem to care if she likes them. And then someone says boarding school to him, and Maria thinks, oh, not again.
That doesn’t stop him uprooting her again.
Nothing Maria says is ever going to stop people destroying what’s left of her life. That’s a lesson she learns early.
*********
Her English improves. So does her right hook. Amazingly, the latter earns her more friends than the former.
But upstate New York is so far from the sea.
*********
The war passes over her head with barely a flicker. She has no stake in it whatsoever, and little interest; she’s safe and sheltered, lonely and neglected.
She has nightmares about bombs falling on the villa, the graveyard, about submarines surfacing before her beach and soldiers setting fire to the olive trees.
*********
When she leaves school at eighteen she starts running Frank’s house for him, playing the elegant society hostess, and not a one of his business partners and friends are unimpressed.
“Who’d’ve thought,” says Jeffries - he’s a defence contractor, Maria remembers - “that skinny kid Frank used to talk about like she was a rock around his neck…”
Around the corner, Maria stiffens.
one more drink and i'll be fine
Pairing: Maria Stark/Howard Stark
Length: 2836 words
Author on LJ: irnan
Author Website: AO3Why this must be read: "one more drink and i'll be fine" is on the short side, but it packs a punch. You see incredible shades of a woman who could be Howard Stark's partner and equal, and there are so many elements that point directly to how and why their son turned out the way he did. The period elements are particularly impressive.
Frank’s a businessman, and he doesn’t have time for orphaned cousins. He tells her they’re family and that means they take care of each other, but Maria drifts through his house like a pale little ghost, hating the marble, the big windows, the views, the rain, the god-awful English with the ridiculous accents that she barely understands. Mamma had been English, as English as the day, Papa had said, an English rose.
There is nothing rosy about New York.
She and Frank eat meals together; he talks about his day but never asks about hers; he buys her things but doesn’t seem to care if she likes them. And then someone says boarding school to him, and Maria thinks, oh, not again.
That doesn’t stop him uprooting her again.
Nothing Maria says is ever going to stop people destroying what’s left of her life. That’s a lesson she learns early.
*********
Her English improves. So does her right hook. Amazingly, the latter earns her more friends than the former.
But upstate New York is so far from the sea.
*********
The war passes over her head with barely a flicker. She has no stake in it whatsoever, and little interest; she’s safe and sheltered, lonely and neglected.
She has nightmares about bombs falling on the villa, the graveyard, about submarines surfacing before her beach and soldiers setting fire to the olive trees.
*********
When she leaves school at eighteen she starts running Frank’s house for him, playing the elegant society hostess, and not a one of his business partners and friends are unimpressed.
“Who’d’ve thought,” says Jeffries - he’s a defence contractor, Maria remembers - “that skinny kid Frank used to talk about like she was a rock around his neck…”
Around the corner, Maria stiffens.
one more drink and i'll be fine