fic: colorblind - one (miranda montgomery)
Title: Colorblind
Rating: NC-17 (language, sexuality, drug use)
Characters: Miranda Montgomery; ensemble cast; assorted pairings
Disclaimer: Not mine; they’re property of ABC, and I’m just playing with them
Spoilers: Everything through the tornado drama is canon except for one tiny little thing, a death I'm still firmly in denial over.
Teaser: Marriage is a time for family- and for avoiding those devastating childhood issues.
1;
It came as no surprise when the news reached her.
Miranda knew herself to be one of the only people to know about the engagement, and she had warned them, often and insistently, of what would happen when Kendall found out about their plans to elope in an attempt to avoid the drama of a Kane marriage.
She got the first call from Kendall during lunch, her aunt sounding infuriated.
Demanding to know when it had happened (“You should be glad he’s found the one-” “I am glad but he should have let me congratulate him when he figured it out!”) and how much she had known (“You were hiding this- Oh, my god, all those times I came in to find everybody whispering!” “We were talking about Christmas presents-” “Don’t you lie to me, Miranda Mona Montgomery!”).
Chris called her hours later, with only one demand.
“You have to come save me.”
“Excuse me?”
“You,” her cousin enunciated slowly, “have to come save me, I need you, get your ass over here.”
“I’m working this week-”
“You work every week,” he snapped irritably, the hint of temper in his voice promising that her impossibly laid-back cousin was serious in his demands. “Go home, pack a bag and get over here, I need you.” There was a beat. “Never mind, fuck packing, you can buy clothes here, just fire up the jet and come save me.”
“But-”
“Miranda,” he said plaintively, and she sucked in a helpless breath at her own weakness.
He wasn’t just her cousin, they both knew, he was the closest thing she had to a brother, closer to her than Gabby had ever been or could ever hope to be even if they decided to try to open the lines of communication beyond the basics.
“Fine,” she’d whispered mutely, and heard his quiet sigh, knew he had just dropped his head in relief.
And so Miranda went home to her penthouse after work and threw the basics into a duffel bag, headed for the airport while making calls to shift meetings onto others. Leaving work was harder for her than working was painful for most people, and everybody knew it- it was their job but her personal coping mechanism.
But she had to go save Spike, who had always protected her as if he was her big brother.
So she headed to Pine Valley earlier than she usually did.
Emma was dealing with the fallout of an incensed Kane as well as anyone could.
Already a crazy driver, she had become deranged behind the wheel.
“Mom’s completely cracking up, and Dad’s, like, two seconds from joining her,” Emma informed her as Miranda gripped her seatbelt desperately, tried to brace herself. ”She’s guilt tripping us one second and then talking about doves the next second, and Spike keeps trying to hide at uncle JR’s.” The car jerked, swinging off the freeway as Miranda gritted her teeth, forced a breath out of her lungs. “Not that it works because Mom just follows him with cake samples.”
“Oh, god,” Miranda breathed as the car jumped forward in front of a truck, and Emma nodded vigorously.
“I know, right?”
“Uh huh- Jesus-”
The last when the car hit a curb and Miranda bounced violently in her seat, reminding herself insistently that Emma had never actually gotten into an accident, had some kind of sixth sense that had developed along with her crazy driving.
“I mean, it’s insane, you don’t even know-”
“Yeah,” Miranda agreed, devastatingly grateful to see the landmarks that meant they were almost at her aunt and uncle’s house, pushing her feet against the carpet in a subconscious attempt to make the damn car brake. “How’s JR handling it?” she asked as the traffic around them started to ease up.
“He wants to have it at the mansion.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“Spike just wants to run off to Vegas or something and have their own private thing and then come back and do something for the family and Mom says they can have the ceremony at home, the house is big enough but Dad says that-”
“It’s not big enough for what aunt Kendall wants to do.”
“Yep,” Emma chirped, turning up the drive and then jolting to a stop, yanking her key out of the ignition and flinging the door open, stepping out and flouncing around to open Miranda’s door. She grabbed the duffel bag, helped Miranda to shaky feet and set out for the front door, arm hooked tight with her cousin’s. “Spike’s probably going to use you as a shield.”
She didn’t see her uncle’s car, which she decided had to be a good thing.
She offered a grunt, standing to the side as Emma unlocked the door and pushed it open, pulling Miranda into the house behind her. “We’re home,” she announced to the house at large as she shed her jacket, dropped her keys to the table. “Our prisoner is here, and helpless.”
“Twerp,” Miranda hissed.
Emma just winked at her, mouthing, “You’re the twerp,” before disappearing into the living room.
By the time Miranda was there, Emma was gone, only vague noises pinpointing her direction in the kitchen.
Dropping her bag to the couch, Miranda followed again, finding her cousin digging through the freezer, line of her shoulders suggesting some kind of deep annoyance. “What are you looking for?”
“Spike’s been here 24/7 since the Crusade started,” Emma muttered as she slammed the freezer closed and glared.
“Chris brought some here?” Miranda could admit, she was surprised at that thought.
“He must have, I can smell it on him.” The blonde straightened after a few moments of digging through the fridge, wearing an expression that was a mix of annoyance and smugness and holding a bottle of wine. “And I know Dad knows.”
“He’s been covering?”
Emma paused in the middle of pulling two glasses down from a cabinet, shook herself and then continued. “I smelled it out on the back porch the other night, and they were both out there for, like, an hour.”
Miranda spent a moment considering that mental image.
Then she forcibly shook herself and dragged her sorry carcass onto a stool by the kitchen island, rubbing her palms down her thighs and glancing around the kitchen. “Those asses better share.” It still looked the same and it was something she was grateful for as she accepted a glass and started nursing it. “Where are they?”
“Spike was here when I left but mom and dad were going out for more color samples”-(Miranda had a sudden image of her aunt throwing stacks of color swatches violently at Uncle Ryan and had to stop drinking for a moment)-“I don’t know.” She caught Miranda’s look, rolled her eyes. “I’ll call them in a minute, chill.”
“Then where’s Chris?”
A shrug was her answer, her cousin once again looking through the freezer.
Grunting, she eased off the stool and left the kitchen, peering into the living room and then the dining room, straightening when she caught sight of a laptop sitting open with a notepad and an energy drink.
It was damp, condensation pooling along the sides.
“Hah,” she whispered triumphantly, ignoring the grumbling she could hear from the kitchen. Taking another sip of the wine, she slunk through every room on the ground floor before heading up the stairs, bypassing the three smaller bedrooms and popping her head into the big one at the end of the hall.
Nothing, and nothing in either of the bathrooms, either.
She needed more wine now.
Huffing out a vague breath, she slipped back down the stairs and into the kitchen, finding Emma obsessively puling items out of the freezer and putting them to the side in her furious search. Refilling her glass, Miranda considered for a moment, completely sure that her cousin was somewhere on the property-
“Hah,” she repeated smugly, opening the back door and stepping out, clicking it closed behind her before heading down the stairs and across the grass. Pausing below the tree house perched high over her head, she noted the lack of the ladder and smirked knowingly, for once glad that she hadn’t finished the second glass.
“Let me up,” she ordered, trying to force as much imperiousness as she could into her tone. When silence greeted her, she rolled her eyes and kicked childishly at the trunk of the tree. “Let me up, Spike.”
A head popped into view, impossibly annoyed. “Chris,” he reminded her.
“A Chris would let me up,” she retorted, and got an eye roll of his own in response.
But the next second a rope ladder dropped down right in front of her and she set down her glass, climbing up carefully and gratefully grabbing the arm that reached to help her get her feet up into the house itself. Pulling the ladder up behind her, she dropped to her ass onto the wooden floor. After a moment, she acknowledged, if only to the tiny knowing voice in the back of her head, “We’re getting too old for the rope ladder.”
“Says you,” her cousin snorted, perched staring out the window where the foliage protected him from anybody looking into the tree house from the kitchen window. “I’m still young and fancy free, remember?”
“I thought you were engaged.”
She got a stink eye for her teasing, Chris tapping an open notebook with his cheap ballpoint compulsively.
Swinging her legs around, she scooted to sit by him, tucking close to his side so that she could take advantage of the cover the leaves could give her. “You made a run for it when you heard the car in the drive-way didn’t you?”
“I plead the Fifth.”
“You should have brought your computer out with you, you could have finished your story out here and it would have taken me a little while longer to figure out where you were-”
“I panicked,” he sighed, looking a little embarrassed but not as if he completely regretted bolting to hide. “I heard the car and thought it was mom,” he explained needlessly. “I banged my toe twice but made it up in time.”
“I’m not Aunt Kendall.”
“Yeah,” he deadpanned, twisting his head to stare at her blandly. “I know.”
She smiled back broadly and he rolled his eyes again, turning back to his study out the window.
“Want me to sneak up your computer?”
“Too much of a risk,” he sighed, tossing the empty notebook down and toppling backwards, propping his head up on one forearm to peer at her intently in a way she didn’t want to deal with at the moment. “You look skinnier than usual,” he stated and she closed her eyes in annoyance, counted to ten before smiling over at him.
“I’m naturally slim.”
Chris just stared at her harder and she looked away hastily, in no mood for such a conversation.
Not that it mattered.
“Aren’t you supposed to get fat on all that rich food over in Paris?” he prodded, nudging her hip with his knee when she ignored him. “And yet you always show up looking like a damn third world child.”
“I’m just active, Spike.”
“Bite me,” he snapped irritably, worry creasing his mouth as he sat up again, reaching to play with her darkened hair before she jerked her head back, swatted at his hand defensively. “You need to take care of yourself better-”
“Stop it,” she ordered, shifting to put more distance between them, annoyed that she couldn’t meet his eyes and now confronted with a new worry beyond the wedding obsession currently driving her cousin to insanity. Both her aunt and uncle were overprotective, always exchanging identical frowns every visit when they thought she wasn’t looking and constantly insisting she go out to eat with them.
As if she wasn’t a freaking adult, as if she were incapable of taking care of herself.
“Miranda-”
“Hey!”
Oh, thank god for crazy driving Emma.
Popping her head out of the window before Chris could get another word out, she found Emma peering up at her, one hand gripping the phone and other perched on her hip in a ridiculously mom pose. “Mom and dad should be here any minute,” she informed them, “they’re just taking the last street.” Emma glanced at Chris when he poked his head out, only something in the set of his jaw promising Miranda that this discussion wasn’t over yet. “Where is it?” Emma demanded of him.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Chris informed his sister solemnly.
Grunting in annoyance, Emma flicked him the bird- and then did it again when he simply smirked down at her.
Glad for the distraction, Miranda dropped the ladder out of the door and carefully eased down again, heaving a sigh when her foot hit the ground and the vague free feeling evaporated again. Leaving Chris to follow, she followed Emma back into the house just as she heard the front door open, her uncle’s voice calling out for them.
Hesitating helplessly, Miranda reached up compulsively, tucked dark brown hair behind her ears and smoothed down the loose strands that had escaped her braid. She slid palms down her jeans without thinking, tugged the edges of her top spontaneously, wishing she had a mirror and knowing it was useless.
Aware of Chris pausing in the doorway behind her, feeling his eyes on her, she moved fast into the living room, spotting Emma going out the front door muttering about being a pack mule in the second before her aunt and uncle, speaking in quiet tones, noticed her. “Hey,” she greeted, grin on her face the sincerest thing she could manage. “I just got in-”
She didn’t get the rest out, Aunt Kendall locking her arms around her and her uncle pulling at her the same time, the two of them engaged in a vague tug-of-war over who would get to hold Miranda longest. It was a wonderful feeling, left her to drop her head onto her aunt’s shoulder, breathe her in.
But then she felt fingers slide up her back, and her aunt stiffened, palms finding Miranda’s shoulder blades.
Pulling away instinctively, she gave her uncle a quick squeeze and then stepped back again before he could return it, her grin now forced as they exchanged a now familiar glance and Chris made a fuzzy noise behind her. “Emma said you guys did the cake testing without me?” she finally joked, and was awarded with her aunt’s snort.
“We’ve just narrowed it down to ‘no Twinkie cakes allowed’,” her aunt promised her, hooking an arm with hers and leading her straight into the kitchen, depositing her on a stool as her uncle and cousin followed along behind her.
“I like Twinkies,” Chris sighed as he dropped onto a stool of his own, and got a dirty look in response from his mother.
“That’s not a wedding food.”
“If people use it for weddings, it’s a wedding food,” he retorted.
Kendall stopped in the middle of pulling items out of the fridge, turned around to stare her oldest son dead in the eye. “You are not having a wedding cake made out of Twinkies.” She nodded to Ryan, now disappearing into the living room at the muffled swears coming from the front door, Emma’s cursing unmistakable. “And your dad agrees with me.”
“That’s right,” Ryan shouted from the living room.
“Dad’s whipped,” Chris muttered childishly.
“That’s right,” her uncle replied, coming back in to drop several heavy-looking folders onto the table in front of Chris. “You have to go through those, too,” he informed Chris needlessly. “Your mom said she called Adam for tomorrow-”
“Mom!”
“He needs to help choose colors.”
Miranda remained quiet, hoping to avoid the inevitable.
Sitting as still as any prey animal, she watched Emma stomp in and make a beeline for the wine, swigging from the bottle as she turned and left the kitchen again, her footsteps informing them that she was going upstairs to hide.
“You cannot just call over Adam to intimidate him-”
“I’m not trying to intimidate him.”
“Excuse me?” He gestured at the fridge, and then the knife block. “Every time he comes over, you start cooking something and always make him pass you knives so you can dice carrots and celery, and gut chickens!”
“I’m just protective-”
“Psychotic,” Chris corrected, and then had the good grace to look away when his father shot him a look of warning.
“I wouldn’t be like this if I’d had more time to prepare.”
“We’ve been together for four years, this isn’t a new thing,” he reminded her, jabbing the air in a way remarkably reminiscent of grandma Kane. “And we’ve been flirting for longer, you’re the one who taught me how, remember?”
“That’s not the point-”
“I’ll never forget when you two first started making googly-eyes at each other,” Ryan remarked, voice muffled but understandable as he started going through the cabinets. “And if any of us had any doubts, prom assured us once and for all.”
“You should have told me as soon as one of you got down on your knees.” Chris simply stared at his mother, cocking an eyebrow when she closed her eyes and sighed. “That came out wrong,” she said after a moment, opening her eyes and fixing her son with a hard stare. “And bad wording or not, you know you should have told me everything as soon as there was marriage talk.”
There was a curious beat, and Miranda stiffened, shaking her head furiously-
“Miranda knew, too!” Chris announced, heartlessly throwing her to the wedding-crazed wolf.
“Traitor,” she hissed but then jumped when she found her aunt staring at her, back straight and mouth tight.
“I was going to ask about that,” she stated after a moment, and Miranda bit her lip, swallowed. “He says he told you as soon as it happened, called you up, what, an hour-” Chris nodded furiously, and Kendall continued, “An hour later and you gave your congratulations.” Miranda said nothing and her aunt added, “Well?”
“I told him to tell you,” she sputtered, not a little desperately.
“Liar,” Chris countered immediately and she smacked him on impulse, feeling like a ten year old again. “She hit me!”
“Oh, Jesus,” Ryan whispered, moving fast to grab his son, pull him off the stool and away from Miranda. “We’re going to go make sure we got everything out of the car,” Ryan informed his wife, drawing his son back with him through the doorway. “We’ll be back in a little while, you two can talk.”
Miranda had a last glimpse of her cousin’s grin before they were gone, leaving her and her aunt alone in the kitchen.
Shoulders hunched, she glanced over at her aunt, found Kendall staring at her with too much emotion on her face.
“Sorry,” she offered after a pregnant moment of silence, twisting her fingers together in her lap.
“It’s not-” Her aunt stopped, closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths. When she reopened them, they had softened a bit, her aunt taking a step forward. “Have you given any thought to what I asked you?”
Miranda didn’t expect the shift in conversation, and it took a minute to shake her head, manage, “I don’t think…”
“I really wish you would.”
“I like Paris-”
“I don’t think Paris is good for you,” Aunt Kendall said bluntly, intensity of the words leaving Miranda to fall silent, look away. “You’re in town for now, at least until the wedding is over- I think you should see about finding a place here, go check out a few houses, maybe you’ll find something.” When Miranda didn’t say anything, she continued to press her case. “I think you should be here, with us, get settled here.”
“I’m an adult, I can-”
“We’re worried about you.”
Miranda knew this speech, the way her aunt’s face had opened, the expectant look in her eyes.
She’d heard it constantly over the years- they’d been offering to take her in for more than just the holidays ever since that first visit when she’d been ten, and at first, her mother had always intervened. She’d step in long enough to take Miranda back to Paris and then disappear again, leaving Miranda in the capable hands of well-paid nannies. When she’d hit eighteen, they’d started being more insistent and her mother had long since stopped appearing in her life.
But there was a knot of something tight and horrible in Miranda and she went back to Paris after every holiday visit anyway, not sure what she was looking for there but sure it was there if she could just find it.
“I like Paris.”
“I just wish you would think about it.”
Silence greeted her aunt’s words, Miranda unable to find words, but Kendall must have seen the defiance on her face because she finally sighed, shoulders dropping as she turned away, fiddling with the door of the fridge. “Anyway,” she said after a moment, tone muted but sincere. “We already made you up one of the rooms.”
“I’m staying at the Valley Inn.”
“Miranda-”
“I already reserved my suite,” she replied hastily, grateful she had.
But Aunt Kendall looked hurt, wounded, and Miranda couldn’t handle it.
She fled the kitchen without another look back at her worried aunt.
Mike was older, remembered the years of neglect better than Nate still did.
When Maggie and Lena had adopted them, he’d joked constantly about being the man of the house and, knowing him enough to hear the vulnerability in his tone, they had embraced his obsession. Over the following years, he had gotten his feet under him, was much better adjusted than their social worker had ever thought he would be.
He had grown up, had calmed.
But when he decided there was something to worry about, he nagged until it drove everyone around him insane.
“She needs to be home with us.”
“She’s a grown woman.”
“Not as young as she used to be,” Mike snapped as he dug through the drawer for a bottle opener and missing the way Nate rolled his eyes behind him. “The only reason I let her go is because she said it would be a short trip-” He finally noticed the bottle opener hanging on the wall behind the stove, snorted at himself. “The nesting is getting worse.”
“She wants to come over to baby proof my apartment. Never mind it’s already baby proof, right?”
Nate only got a grimace of sympathy before the nagging resumed. “She gets so depressed after a trip over there-”
“She already got a job at the hospital.”
Mike paused in the middle of putting the bottle opener back, glanced back to give his brother a dirty look. “I know.”
“Oh, right, sorry, you knew that already.”
His big brother’s dirty look became one last stink-eye as he left the kitchen and stepped out onto the back porch, sighing heavily as he dropped onto his ass on the back step. Waiting for Nate to join him, he passed the younger man his beer when he had stretched out his legs and held out a hand to have it.
Maybe if he was quiet-
“I just think the last thing she needs right now is the PV depression.”
“I know.”
“I’m just saying-”
“Yeah, and you know how she is.” Quiet met his announcement and Nate took a long swig, sighed as he set the bottle down to the side and leaned back comfortably. “She can’t even sleep in the house anymore, you know that.”
“Then she should move in with us-” Mike paused, considered, looked over one shoulder into the house that was currently being taken apart and cleaned obsessively by a woman five months into insanity. “Scratch that.” He glanced at his brother, reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe you could-”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You mean you weren’t going to propose I share my one bedroom apartment with Mom?”
“It was just a thought.” But Mike’s tone suggested he had already seen the error of his ways and he had a hint of panic on his face that cemented his realization at the insanity of such a thought. He looked into the house again, sighed and then shifted his gaze to the backyard, eyes skimming the swing. “She should be with us.”
“No, she should be with Ma, but that’s not going to happen.”
There was silence beside him and he bowed his head, staring at his bare feet in the dark, taking a breath to steady the immediate wave of grief that passed over him from just the thought of Lena. He was an adult, had his own life and his own place and he was a great uncle-and he still felt like a fucking orphan.
He could only imagine how Mom felt right now.
“She shouldn’t be alone right now,” Mike stated mutely, voice as depressed as Nate now felt.
“She isn’t.” He took a sip of his beer, and then another when the first tasted bitter. “You know, she’s with Uncle David working at the hospital, keeping herself busy-” Another sip, a harsh snort of amusement. “You know how she is.”
“I just wish I could go get her but…” Mike gestured at the house over one shoulder, shook his head.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” he snapped, once again trying to fix everything, handle everything the way he thought only he could. “I don’t want Tina to travel and I don’t want to leave the girls alone at all, they’re having a hard time, you know…”
“I think we should just be patient, give her time.”
“She shouldn’t be alone.”
“She’s not alone,” Nate insisted, a little annoyed now.
But Mike was glaring into the backyard and Nate dully went back to his beer to keep from thinking about Ma.
The day consisted entirely of long periods of heavy bonding and the awkward moments that kept popping up whenever one of them mentioned how much they’d love her to stay. Lunch, sandwiches thrown together, was eventually followed by dinner- pasta and chicken in the heavy tomato sauce that they knew she liked.
“Ian won’t be home until Saturday,” Kendall explained when Miranda’s curiosity got the better of her.
This meant that he was still somewhere in Europe with Zach.
Trying to ignore her annoyance at this fact, knowing quite well what Ian really wanted to spend his life doing other than taking over Cambias, Miranda instead tried to absorb everything she needed to in regards to the upcoming nuptials. The grooms wanted basics and Kendall was leading the charge for anything but basic- when Chris mentioned that he and Adam were thinking about a “salad and chicken sort of thing,“ her aunt’s eye twitched as she immediately brought up words in Greek that even multilingual Miranda had to struggle to work out. When Chris brought up how they wanted to do a summer kind of thing, Kendall launched into a tirade about how that wouldn’t work with the timeframe.
Chris had apparently decided to handle one battle at a time, starting with how many people (he wanted fewer than a hundred and fifty, and he was winning the argument) and continuing when it came to the look of the cake (Kendall wanted big, towering, and Chris was working to get simple- and he was gaining ground).
By the time Miranda gathered up her things and extricated herself from the group, Kendall looked like an angry cat.
More than half an hour after tense goodbyes (promising to be back for dinner the next night), she was climbing out of the cab (another decision that had included a battle of wills with her aunt and uncle that she’d barely won and then only with Chris’ grudging help) and carrying her pathetic duffel bag into the Valley Inn.
Tomorrow, she would get up early and handle things before going back to the house- rent a car, go shopping for clothes beyond the hastily thrown together assortment she had brought with her, brace herself for weeks of worried nagging.
Because it wouldn’t just be Chris and Emma, or the aunt and uncle she privately (and shamefully) thought of as her real mother and father. It would also be Adam and Aunt Erin and Uncle JR, and they would all fret about her, start trying to get her to stay; and then aunt Greenlee and Uncle David would start in on her. It would keep going, the entire family sliding into her life without hesitation, all trying to bring her back to Pine Valley.
And she couldn’t do that.
So she was a bit tense as she handled checking in, throwing her name around in a way she rarely did to get the key to her suite as fast as she could, intent on getting a shower and regaining some of her equilibrium before bed.
Turning away from the front desk, tucking her wallet away while keeping a careful grip on the room key tight between two fingers, she got a few steps before crashing into someone, staggering back as she heard someone swear. “Sorry,” she panted, looking around before jerking her head down, realizing the guy was already crouched down trying to get his stuff together and that she’d dropped hers. “Sorry,” she repeated, feeling like an idiot and an ass as she hastily bent to help him.
“It’s fine, fine- Mom?”
Confused, she really looked at him, blinked when she noticed the cell phone pinched between his shoulder and ear, trying to keep it from falling as he struggled to scoop up the stack of papers. “Are you still there?” he was asking, trying to get a handful on a stack only to have them fan apart. “Fuck!” he hissed, and then added hastily, “No- no, Mom, I didn’t swear.”
Miranda couldn’t hold in her laughter at his tone, almost cut her tongue in half as she clicked her teeth closed when he tilted his head back, glared at her childishly. Flushing, she made a grab for the papers currently escaping his reach, focused on tapping them straight against the floor until she was sure she wouldn’t snicker. “Here,” she mouthed guiltily and got a ridiculously grateful look in response as he randomly shoved the pages into whatever folder he could get them in.
Shifting messy folders to one arm, he passed her the room key and then her purse as she rubbed her hand against her mouth, listening to him apologize into his phone. Duffel hooked in the bend on her arm again, her control slipped the second time when he blurted out, “I’m twenty-eight, Mom, you- you can’t ground me.”
Hearing her snort of laughter, he gave her another glare, one she tried to deflect with an apologetic shake of her head.
“Sorry,” she mouthed for the third time as she staggered away, heading slowly for the elevators.
Jabbing a finger at the button, she blew out a noisy breath, rocked on her heels, squirmed as she watched the lights flash above her head and then felt like an idiot as she felt laughter bubble up inside her again. Oddly embarrassed by it, she nervously glanced over her shoulder, blinking when she found the guy staring at her from the front desk.
Looking startled at her catching him, it was his turn to mouth, “Sorry.”
Thrown, laughter still tugging at her mouth, she finally lifted a hand, waved a bit uselessly.
When somebody cleared their throat, she jumped, whipped her head around, found an older man staring at her expectantly, holding the elevator doors open while gesturing for her to come in. Ashamed, she ducked into the car, stood awkwardly only to lean forward when she remembered she had to punch a number to actually move.
Stepping back again, aware of the man shooting her wary glances as if she was wearing a hockey mask, she cleared her throat, coughed and gave herself a shake until the laughter finally died away for the last time.
Until it burst out of her as a snicker on the poor frightened man’s floor.
Rating: NC-17 (language, sexuality, drug use)
Characters: Miranda Montgomery; ensemble cast; assorted pairings
Disclaimer: Not mine; they’re property of ABC, and I’m just playing with them
Spoilers: Everything through the tornado drama is canon except for one tiny little thing, a death I'm still firmly in denial over.
Teaser: Marriage is a time for family- and for avoiding those devastating childhood issues.
1;
It came as no surprise when the news reached her.
Miranda knew herself to be one of the only people to know about the engagement, and she had warned them, often and insistently, of what would happen when Kendall found out about their plans to elope in an attempt to avoid the drama of a Kane marriage.
She got the first call from Kendall during lunch, her aunt sounding infuriated.
Demanding to know when it had happened (“You should be glad he’s found the one-” “I am glad but he should have let me congratulate him when he figured it out!”) and how much she had known (“You were hiding this- Oh, my god, all those times I came in to find everybody whispering!” “We were talking about Christmas presents-” “Don’t you lie to me, Miranda Mona Montgomery!”).
Chris called her hours later, with only one demand.
“You have to come save me.”
“Excuse me?”
“You,” her cousin enunciated slowly, “have to come save me, I need you, get your ass over here.”
“I’m working this week-”
“You work every week,” he snapped irritably, the hint of temper in his voice promising that her impossibly laid-back cousin was serious in his demands. “Go home, pack a bag and get over here, I need you.” There was a beat. “Never mind, fuck packing, you can buy clothes here, just fire up the jet and come save me.”
“But-”
“Miranda,” he said plaintively, and she sucked in a helpless breath at her own weakness.
He wasn’t just her cousin, they both knew, he was the closest thing she had to a brother, closer to her than Gabby had ever been or could ever hope to be even if they decided to try to open the lines of communication beyond the basics.
“Fine,” she’d whispered mutely, and heard his quiet sigh, knew he had just dropped his head in relief.
And so Miranda went home to her penthouse after work and threw the basics into a duffel bag, headed for the airport while making calls to shift meetings onto others. Leaving work was harder for her than working was painful for most people, and everybody knew it- it was their job but her personal coping mechanism.
But she had to go save Spike, who had always protected her as if he was her big brother.
So she headed to Pine Valley earlier than she usually did.
Emma was dealing with the fallout of an incensed Kane as well as anyone could.
Already a crazy driver, she had become deranged behind the wheel.
“Mom’s completely cracking up, and Dad’s, like, two seconds from joining her,” Emma informed her as Miranda gripped her seatbelt desperately, tried to brace herself. ”She’s guilt tripping us one second and then talking about doves the next second, and Spike keeps trying to hide at uncle JR’s.” The car jerked, swinging off the freeway as Miranda gritted her teeth, forced a breath out of her lungs. “Not that it works because Mom just follows him with cake samples.”
“Oh, god,” Miranda breathed as the car jumped forward in front of a truck, and Emma nodded vigorously.
“I know, right?”
“Uh huh- Jesus-”
The last when the car hit a curb and Miranda bounced violently in her seat, reminding herself insistently that Emma had never actually gotten into an accident, had some kind of sixth sense that had developed along with her crazy driving.
“I mean, it’s insane, you don’t even know-”
“Yeah,” Miranda agreed, devastatingly grateful to see the landmarks that meant they were almost at her aunt and uncle’s house, pushing her feet against the carpet in a subconscious attempt to make the damn car brake. “How’s JR handling it?” she asked as the traffic around them started to ease up.
“He wants to have it at the mansion.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“Spike just wants to run off to Vegas or something and have their own private thing and then come back and do something for the family and Mom says they can have the ceremony at home, the house is big enough but Dad says that-”
“It’s not big enough for what aunt Kendall wants to do.”
“Yep,” Emma chirped, turning up the drive and then jolting to a stop, yanking her key out of the ignition and flinging the door open, stepping out and flouncing around to open Miranda’s door. She grabbed the duffel bag, helped Miranda to shaky feet and set out for the front door, arm hooked tight with her cousin’s. “Spike’s probably going to use you as a shield.”
She didn’t see her uncle’s car, which she decided had to be a good thing.
She offered a grunt, standing to the side as Emma unlocked the door and pushed it open, pulling Miranda into the house behind her. “We’re home,” she announced to the house at large as she shed her jacket, dropped her keys to the table. “Our prisoner is here, and helpless.”
“Twerp,” Miranda hissed.
Emma just winked at her, mouthing, “You’re the twerp,” before disappearing into the living room.
By the time Miranda was there, Emma was gone, only vague noises pinpointing her direction in the kitchen.
Dropping her bag to the couch, Miranda followed again, finding her cousin digging through the freezer, line of her shoulders suggesting some kind of deep annoyance. “What are you looking for?”
“Spike’s been here 24/7 since the Crusade started,” Emma muttered as she slammed the freezer closed and glared.
“Chris brought some here?” Miranda could admit, she was surprised at that thought.
“He must have, I can smell it on him.” The blonde straightened after a few moments of digging through the fridge, wearing an expression that was a mix of annoyance and smugness and holding a bottle of wine. “And I know Dad knows.”
“He’s been covering?”
Emma paused in the middle of pulling two glasses down from a cabinet, shook herself and then continued. “I smelled it out on the back porch the other night, and they were both out there for, like, an hour.”
Miranda spent a moment considering that mental image.
Then she forcibly shook herself and dragged her sorry carcass onto a stool by the kitchen island, rubbing her palms down her thighs and glancing around the kitchen. “Those asses better share.” It still looked the same and it was something she was grateful for as she accepted a glass and started nursing it. “Where are they?”
“Spike was here when I left but mom and dad were going out for more color samples”-(Miranda had a sudden image of her aunt throwing stacks of color swatches violently at Uncle Ryan and had to stop drinking for a moment)-“I don’t know.” She caught Miranda’s look, rolled her eyes. “I’ll call them in a minute, chill.”
“Then where’s Chris?”
A shrug was her answer, her cousin once again looking through the freezer.
Grunting, she eased off the stool and left the kitchen, peering into the living room and then the dining room, straightening when she caught sight of a laptop sitting open with a notepad and an energy drink.
It was damp, condensation pooling along the sides.
“Hah,” she whispered triumphantly, ignoring the grumbling she could hear from the kitchen. Taking another sip of the wine, she slunk through every room on the ground floor before heading up the stairs, bypassing the three smaller bedrooms and popping her head into the big one at the end of the hall.
Nothing, and nothing in either of the bathrooms, either.
She needed more wine now.
Huffing out a vague breath, she slipped back down the stairs and into the kitchen, finding Emma obsessively puling items out of the freezer and putting them to the side in her furious search. Refilling her glass, Miranda considered for a moment, completely sure that her cousin was somewhere on the property-
“Hah,” she repeated smugly, opening the back door and stepping out, clicking it closed behind her before heading down the stairs and across the grass. Pausing below the tree house perched high over her head, she noted the lack of the ladder and smirked knowingly, for once glad that she hadn’t finished the second glass.
“Let me up,” she ordered, trying to force as much imperiousness as she could into her tone. When silence greeted her, she rolled her eyes and kicked childishly at the trunk of the tree. “Let me up, Spike.”
A head popped into view, impossibly annoyed. “Chris,” he reminded her.
“A Chris would let me up,” she retorted, and got an eye roll of his own in response.
But the next second a rope ladder dropped down right in front of her and she set down her glass, climbing up carefully and gratefully grabbing the arm that reached to help her get her feet up into the house itself. Pulling the ladder up behind her, she dropped to her ass onto the wooden floor. After a moment, she acknowledged, if only to the tiny knowing voice in the back of her head, “We’re getting too old for the rope ladder.”
“Says you,” her cousin snorted, perched staring out the window where the foliage protected him from anybody looking into the tree house from the kitchen window. “I’m still young and fancy free, remember?”
“I thought you were engaged.”
She got a stink eye for her teasing, Chris tapping an open notebook with his cheap ballpoint compulsively.
Swinging her legs around, she scooted to sit by him, tucking close to his side so that she could take advantage of the cover the leaves could give her. “You made a run for it when you heard the car in the drive-way didn’t you?”
“I plead the Fifth.”
“You should have brought your computer out with you, you could have finished your story out here and it would have taken me a little while longer to figure out where you were-”
“I panicked,” he sighed, looking a little embarrassed but not as if he completely regretted bolting to hide. “I heard the car and thought it was mom,” he explained needlessly. “I banged my toe twice but made it up in time.”
“I’m not Aunt Kendall.”
“Yeah,” he deadpanned, twisting his head to stare at her blandly. “I know.”
She smiled back broadly and he rolled his eyes again, turning back to his study out the window.
“Want me to sneak up your computer?”
“Too much of a risk,” he sighed, tossing the empty notebook down and toppling backwards, propping his head up on one forearm to peer at her intently in a way she didn’t want to deal with at the moment. “You look skinnier than usual,” he stated and she closed her eyes in annoyance, counted to ten before smiling over at him.
“I’m naturally slim.”
Chris just stared at her harder and she looked away hastily, in no mood for such a conversation.
Not that it mattered.
“Aren’t you supposed to get fat on all that rich food over in Paris?” he prodded, nudging her hip with his knee when she ignored him. “And yet you always show up looking like a damn third world child.”
“I’m just active, Spike.”
“Bite me,” he snapped irritably, worry creasing his mouth as he sat up again, reaching to play with her darkened hair before she jerked her head back, swatted at his hand defensively. “You need to take care of yourself better-”
“Stop it,” she ordered, shifting to put more distance between them, annoyed that she couldn’t meet his eyes and now confronted with a new worry beyond the wedding obsession currently driving her cousin to insanity. Both her aunt and uncle were overprotective, always exchanging identical frowns every visit when they thought she wasn’t looking and constantly insisting she go out to eat with them.
As if she wasn’t a freaking adult, as if she were incapable of taking care of herself.
“Miranda-”
“Hey!”
Oh, thank god for crazy driving Emma.
Popping her head out of the window before Chris could get another word out, she found Emma peering up at her, one hand gripping the phone and other perched on her hip in a ridiculously mom pose. “Mom and dad should be here any minute,” she informed them, “they’re just taking the last street.” Emma glanced at Chris when he poked his head out, only something in the set of his jaw promising Miranda that this discussion wasn’t over yet. “Where is it?” Emma demanded of him.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Chris informed his sister solemnly.
Grunting in annoyance, Emma flicked him the bird- and then did it again when he simply smirked down at her.
Glad for the distraction, Miranda dropped the ladder out of the door and carefully eased down again, heaving a sigh when her foot hit the ground and the vague free feeling evaporated again. Leaving Chris to follow, she followed Emma back into the house just as she heard the front door open, her uncle’s voice calling out for them.
Hesitating helplessly, Miranda reached up compulsively, tucked dark brown hair behind her ears and smoothed down the loose strands that had escaped her braid. She slid palms down her jeans without thinking, tugged the edges of her top spontaneously, wishing she had a mirror and knowing it was useless.
Aware of Chris pausing in the doorway behind her, feeling his eyes on her, she moved fast into the living room, spotting Emma going out the front door muttering about being a pack mule in the second before her aunt and uncle, speaking in quiet tones, noticed her. “Hey,” she greeted, grin on her face the sincerest thing she could manage. “I just got in-”
She didn’t get the rest out, Aunt Kendall locking her arms around her and her uncle pulling at her the same time, the two of them engaged in a vague tug-of-war over who would get to hold Miranda longest. It was a wonderful feeling, left her to drop her head onto her aunt’s shoulder, breathe her in.
But then she felt fingers slide up her back, and her aunt stiffened, palms finding Miranda’s shoulder blades.
Pulling away instinctively, she gave her uncle a quick squeeze and then stepped back again before he could return it, her grin now forced as they exchanged a now familiar glance and Chris made a fuzzy noise behind her. “Emma said you guys did the cake testing without me?” she finally joked, and was awarded with her aunt’s snort.
“We’ve just narrowed it down to ‘no Twinkie cakes allowed’,” her aunt promised her, hooking an arm with hers and leading her straight into the kitchen, depositing her on a stool as her uncle and cousin followed along behind her.
“I like Twinkies,” Chris sighed as he dropped onto a stool of his own, and got a dirty look in response from his mother.
“That’s not a wedding food.”
“If people use it for weddings, it’s a wedding food,” he retorted.
Kendall stopped in the middle of pulling items out of the fridge, turned around to stare her oldest son dead in the eye. “You are not having a wedding cake made out of Twinkies.” She nodded to Ryan, now disappearing into the living room at the muffled swears coming from the front door, Emma’s cursing unmistakable. “And your dad agrees with me.”
“That’s right,” Ryan shouted from the living room.
“Dad’s whipped,” Chris muttered childishly.
“That’s right,” her uncle replied, coming back in to drop several heavy-looking folders onto the table in front of Chris. “You have to go through those, too,” he informed Chris needlessly. “Your mom said she called Adam for tomorrow-”
“Mom!”
“He needs to help choose colors.”
Miranda remained quiet, hoping to avoid the inevitable.
Sitting as still as any prey animal, she watched Emma stomp in and make a beeline for the wine, swigging from the bottle as she turned and left the kitchen again, her footsteps informing them that she was going upstairs to hide.
“You cannot just call over Adam to intimidate him-”
“I’m not trying to intimidate him.”
“Excuse me?” He gestured at the fridge, and then the knife block. “Every time he comes over, you start cooking something and always make him pass you knives so you can dice carrots and celery, and gut chickens!”
“I’m just protective-”
“Psychotic,” Chris corrected, and then had the good grace to look away when his father shot him a look of warning.
“I wouldn’t be like this if I’d had more time to prepare.”
“We’ve been together for four years, this isn’t a new thing,” he reminded her, jabbing the air in a way remarkably reminiscent of grandma Kane. “And we’ve been flirting for longer, you’re the one who taught me how, remember?”
“That’s not the point-”
“I’ll never forget when you two first started making googly-eyes at each other,” Ryan remarked, voice muffled but understandable as he started going through the cabinets. “And if any of us had any doubts, prom assured us once and for all.”
“You should have told me as soon as one of you got down on your knees.” Chris simply stared at his mother, cocking an eyebrow when she closed her eyes and sighed. “That came out wrong,” she said after a moment, opening her eyes and fixing her son with a hard stare. “And bad wording or not, you know you should have told me everything as soon as there was marriage talk.”
There was a curious beat, and Miranda stiffened, shaking her head furiously-
“Miranda knew, too!” Chris announced, heartlessly throwing her to the wedding-crazed wolf.
“Traitor,” she hissed but then jumped when she found her aunt staring at her, back straight and mouth tight.
“I was going to ask about that,” she stated after a moment, and Miranda bit her lip, swallowed. “He says he told you as soon as it happened, called you up, what, an hour-” Chris nodded furiously, and Kendall continued, “An hour later and you gave your congratulations.” Miranda said nothing and her aunt added, “Well?”
“I told him to tell you,” she sputtered, not a little desperately.
“Liar,” Chris countered immediately and she smacked him on impulse, feeling like a ten year old again. “She hit me!”
“Oh, Jesus,” Ryan whispered, moving fast to grab his son, pull him off the stool and away from Miranda. “We’re going to go make sure we got everything out of the car,” Ryan informed his wife, drawing his son back with him through the doorway. “We’ll be back in a little while, you two can talk.”
Miranda had a last glimpse of her cousin’s grin before they were gone, leaving her and her aunt alone in the kitchen.
Shoulders hunched, she glanced over at her aunt, found Kendall staring at her with too much emotion on her face.
“Sorry,” she offered after a pregnant moment of silence, twisting her fingers together in her lap.
“It’s not-” Her aunt stopped, closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths. When she reopened them, they had softened a bit, her aunt taking a step forward. “Have you given any thought to what I asked you?”
Miranda didn’t expect the shift in conversation, and it took a minute to shake her head, manage, “I don’t think…”
“I really wish you would.”
“I like Paris-”
“I don’t think Paris is good for you,” Aunt Kendall said bluntly, intensity of the words leaving Miranda to fall silent, look away. “You’re in town for now, at least until the wedding is over- I think you should see about finding a place here, go check out a few houses, maybe you’ll find something.” When Miranda didn’t say anything, she continued to press her case. “I think you should be here, with us, get settled here.”
“I’m an adult, I can-”
“We’re worried about you.”
Miranda knew this speech, the way her aunt’s face had opened, the expectant look in her eyes.
She’d heard it constantly over the years- they’d been offering to take her in for more than just the holidays ever since that first visit when she’d been ten, and at first, her mother had always intervened. She’d step in long enough to take Miranda back to Paris and then disappear again, leaving Miranda in the capable hands of well-paid nannies. When she’d hit eighteen, they’d started being more insistent and her mother had long since stopped appearing in her life.
But there was a knot of something tight and horrible in Miranda and she went back to Paris after every holiday visit anyway, not sure what she was looking for there but sure it was there if she could just find it.
“I like Paris.”
“I just wish you would think about it.”
Silence greeted her aunt’s words, Miranda unable to find words, but Kendall must have seen the defiance on her face because she finally sighed, shoulders dropping as she turned away, fiddling with the door of the fridge. “Anyway,” she said after a moment, tone muted but sincere. “We already made you up one of the rooms.”
“I’m staying at the Valley Inn.”
“Miranda-”
“I already reserved my suite,” she replied hastily, grateful she had.
But Aunt Kendall looked hurt, wounded, and Miranda couldn’t handle it.
She fled the kitchen without another look back at her worried aunt.
Mike was older, remembered the years of neglect better than Nate still did.
When Maggie and Lena had adopted them, he’d joked constantly about being the man of the house and, knowing him enough to hear the vulnerability in his tone, they had embraced his obsession. Over the following years, he had gotten his feet under him, was much better adjusted than their social worker had ever thought he would be.
He had grown up, had calmed.
But when he decided there was something to worry about, he nagged until it drove everyone around him insane.
“She needs to be home with us.”
“She’s a grown woman.”
“Not as young as she used to be,” Mike snapped as he dug through the drawer for a bottle opener and missing the way Nate rolled his eyes behind him. “The only reason I let her go is because she said it would be a short trip-” He finally noticed the bottle opener hanging on the wall behind the stove, snorted at himself. “The nesting is getting worse.”
“She wants to come over to baby proof my apartment. Never mind it’s already baby proof, right?”
Nate only got a grimace of sympathy before the nagging resumed. “She gets so depressed after a trip over there-”
“She already got a job at the hospital.”
Mike paused in the middle of putting the bottle opener back, glanced back to give his brother a dirty look. “I know.”
“Oh, right, sorry, you knew that already.”
His big brother’s dirty look became one last stink-eye as he left the kitchen and stepped out onto the back porch, sighing heavily as he dropped onto his ass on the back step. Waiting for Nate to join him, he passed the younger man his beer when he had stretched out his legs and held out a hand to have it.
Maybe if he was quiet-
“I just think the last thing she needs right now is the PV depression.”
“I know.”
“I’m just saying-”
“Yeah, and you know how she is.” Quiet met his announcement and Nate took a long swig, sighed as he set the bottle down to the side and leaned back comfortably. “She can’t even sleep in the house anymore, you know that.”
“Then she should move in with us-” Mike paused, considered, looked over one shoulder into the house that was currently being taken apart and cleaned obsessively by a woman five months into insanity. “Scratch that.” He glanced at his brother, reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe you could-”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You mean you weren’t going to propose I share my one bedroom apartment with Mom?”
“It was just a thought.” But Mike’s tone suggested he had already seen the error of his ways and he had a hint of panic on his face that cemented his realization at the insanity of such a thought. He looked into the house again, sighed and then shifted his gaze to the backyard, eyes skimming the swing. “She should be with us.”
“No, she should be with Ma, but that’s not going to happen.”
There was silence beside him and he bowed his head, staring at his bare feet in the dark, taking a breath to steady the immediate wave of grief that passed over him from just the thought of Lena. He was an adult, had his own life and his own place and he was a great uncle-and he still felt like a fucking orphan.
He could only imagine how Mom felt right now.
“She shouldn’t be alone right now,” Mike stated mutely, voice as depressed as Nate now felt.
“She isn’t.” He took a sip of his beer, and then another when the first tasted bitter. “You know, she’s with Uncle David working at the hospital, keeping herself busy-” Another sip, a harsh snort of amusement. “You know how she is.”
“I just wish I could go get her but…” Mike gestured at the house over one shoulder, shook his head.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” he snapped, once again trying to fix everything, handle everything the way he thought only he could. “I don’t want Tina to travel and I don’t want to leave the girls alone at all, they’re having a hard time, you know…”
“I think we should just be patient, give her time.”
“She shouldn’t be alone.”
“She’s not alone,” Nate insisted, a little annoyed now.
But Mike was glaring into the backyard and Nate dully went back to his beer to keep from thinking about Ma.
The day consisted entirely of long periods of heavy bonding and the awkward moments that kept popping up whenever one of them mentioned how much they’d love her to stay. Lunch, sandwiches thrown together, was eventually followed by dinner- pasta and chicken in the heavy tomato sauce that they knew she liked.
“Ian won’t be home until Saturday,” Kendall explained when Miranda’s curiosity got the better of her.
This meant that he was still somewhere in Europe with Zach.
Trying to ignore her annoyance at this fact, knowing quite well what Ian really wanted to spend his life doing other than taking over Cambias, Miranda instead tried to absorb everything she needed to in regards to the upcoming nuptials. The grooms wanted basics and Kendall was leading the charge for anything but basic- when Chris mentioned that he and Adam were thinking about a “salad and chicken sort of thing,“ her aunt’s eye twitched as she immediately brought up words in Greek that even multilingual Miranda had to struggle to work out. When Chris brought up how they wanted to do a summer kind of thing, Kendall launched into a tirade about how that wouldn’t work with the timeframe.
Chris had apparently decided to handle one battle at a time, starting with how many people (he wanted fewer than a hundred and fifty, and he was winning the argument) and continuing when it came to the look of the cake (Kendall wanted big, towering, and Chris was working to get simple- and he was gaining ground).
By the time Miranda gathered up her things and extricated herself from the group, Kendall looked like an angry cat.
More than half an hour after tense goodbyes (promising to be back for dinner the next night), she was climbing out of the cab (another decision that had included a battle of wills with her aunt and uncle that she’d barely won and then only with Chris’ grudging help) and carrying her pathetic duffel bag into the Valley Inn.
Tomorrow, she would get up early and handle things before going back to the house- rent a car, go shopping for clothes beyond the hastily thrown together assortment she had brought with her, brace herself for weeks of worried nagging.
Because it wouldn’t just be Chris and Emma, or the aunt and uncle she privately (and shamefully) thought of as her real mother and father. It would also be Adam and Aunt Erin and Uncle JR, and they would all fret about her, start trying to get her to stay; and then aunt Greenlee and Uncle David would start in on her. It would keep going, the entire family sliding into her life without hesitation, all trying to bring her back to Pine Valley.
And she couldn’t do that.
So she was a bit tense as she handled checking in, throwing her name around in a way she rarely did to get the key to her suite as fast as she could, intent on getting a shower and regaining some of her equilibrium before bed.
Turning away from the front desk, tucking her wallet away while keeping a careful grip on the room key tight between two fingers, she got a few steps before crashing into someone, staggering back as she heard someone swear. “Sorry,” she panted, looking around before jerking her head down, realizing the guy was already crouched down trying to get his stuff together and that she’d dropped hers. “Sorry,” she repeated, feeling like an idiot and an ass as she hastily bent to help him.
“It’s fine, fine- Mom?”
Confused, she really looked at him, blinked when she noticed the cell phone pinched between his shoulder and ear, trying to keep it from falling as he struggled to scoop up the stack of papers. “Are you still there?” he was asking, trying to get a handful on a stack only to have them fan apart. “Fuck!” he hissed, and then added hastily, “No- no, Mom, I didn’t swear.”
Miranda couldn’t hold in her laughter at his tone, almost cut her tongue in half as she clicked her teeth closed when he tilted his head back, glared at her childishly. Flushing, she made a grab for the papers currently escaping his reach, focused on tapping them straight against the floor until she was sure she wouldn’t snicker. “Here,” she mouthed guiltily and got a ridiculously grateful look in response as he randomly shoved the pages into whatever folder he could get them in.
Shifting messy folders to one arm, he passed her the room key and then her purse as she rubbed her hand against her mouth, listening to him apologize into his phone. Duffel hooked in the bend on her arm again, her control slipped the second time when he blurted out, “I’m twenty-eight, Mom, you- you can’t ground me.”
Hearing her snort of laughter, he gave her another glare, one she tried to deflect with an apologetic shake of her head.
“Sorry,” she mouthed for the third time as she staggered away, heading slowly for the elevators.
Jabbing a finger at the button, she blew out a noisy breath, rocked on her heels, squirmed as she watched the lights flash above her head and then felt like an idiot as she felt laughter bubble up inside her again. Oddly embarrassed by it, she nervously glanced over her shoulder, blinking when she found the guy staring at her from the front desk.
Looking startled at her catching him, it was his turn to mouth, “Sorry.”
Thrown, laughter still tugging at her mouth, she finally lifted a hand, waved a bit uselessly.
When somebody cleared their throat, she jumped, whipped her head around, found an older man staring at her expectantly, holding the elevator doors open while gesturing for her to come in. Ashamed, she ducked into the car, stood awkwardly only to lean forward when she remembered she had to punch a number to actually move.
Stepping back again, aware of the man shooting her wary glances as if she was wearing a hockey mask, she cleared her throat, coughed and gave herself a shake until the laughter finally died away for the last time.
Until it burst out of her as a snicker on the poor frightened man’s floor.