(no subject)
Title: Of Myth & Legend Part 2/3
Pairing: Queen/Ahamo, Ambrose/Cain, Cain/Ahamo
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I checked the post-office. They're not mine.
Summary: He fell from the sky. He stole her heart.
Notes: This is basically an AU, but one that glimmers in and out of reality with the actual 'verse.
PART ONE: A good way to start any story is improbably and so an unconventional love story deserves the best of improbable starts.
Ambrose had been directed up six flights of stairs to a loft at the very top of the brick-walled apartment. He had a Royal-Stamped letter in his hand and was wheezing as he cleared the last of the stairs (honestly, who put seventy-eight narrow stairs in a building and didn’t bother to build an elevator).
Yet, this was where Wyatt Cain lived and he was the official go-between for John Grant. So when the Princess wanted to send letters, send away she did, and Ambrose was sent with them in hand.
He reached apartment 601 and leaned his free arm on the door, brushing away sweat that made his curls absolutely unruly before knocking and wheezing to catch a breath or two.
“Who is it?”
“Ambrose,” he panted, composing himself and rising up to full posture as the peephole darkened and he could feel himself being scrutinized. “The Princess’ messenger? I have a message here for John. I was told to go through you for protocol and safety’s sake. Not to mention you were so rude and proud about it the last time.”
He waited for the inevitable click of the door and it came. It just came after an endless amount of time that had Ambrose wondering if Cain was actually planning to let him in or not. Eventually though, that click came and Cain drew back the door to let Ambrose in to deliver the letter.
“Oh good gods!” he shouted in alarm when he saw what Cain had opened the door to. “How do you live here?” It didn’t take more than a moment of looking to see the disarrayed sty that was passing for Cain’s loft. It wasn’t messy so much as absolutely disorganized and with no sense of care for where papers landed or clothes were put. He clutched the letter more protectively, no longer wanting to hand it over when it might land just about anywhere under a pile of goo and might not ever be found.
Cain gave him a decidedly unimpressed look. “Yes.”
“It’s disgusting!”
“It’s my home. And it’s what I can afford.”
The sheets on the bed were in disarray and there were opened books everywhere along with the components of guns sprawled out on a desk nearby. Ambrose was stuck staring at the bed and wondering if that mess had been made by one or two people. Not that he really had any business asking, but well…he was bored and Cain was one of the few people he got to socialize with.
He dared a step inside and winced when he was very much sure that he had just lifted his shoe out of a particularly gummy and sticky area of the floor.
“It’s disgusting,” Ambrose protested, his weak stomach churning at the thought of having to spend more than ten minutes inside. “Let’s go to that bar downstairs to talk, if we stay here, I’m going to suddenly snap and do your laundry and dust for you.”
Cain seemed to get a considerate look on his face as if he was contemplating pushing for that turn of events.
“No,” Ambrose said sharply, yanking on Cain’s arm, “That’s not an option. Bar, now, before I catch the plague from your dirty socks.” He was already dashing for the threshold of the door and the gateway to all things cleanly. He felt as if germs might latch onto him, leaping from hidden corners and perhaps it wasn’t ‘that bad’, but considering the pristine background Ambrose hailed from, it really was to him. You just had to put it all in context.
He waited for five minutes as Cain locked up the room and dug out letters from his trenchcoat, lifting them to give Ambrose the indication that he wasn’t the only one doing an exchange at that particular time.
By the time they were through with ordering drinks and sliding letters across the bar, there was a better mood in the air. Ambrose would say that it was because they were far away from the disaster of Cain’s room and Cain would say it had to do with the fact that Ambrose had imbibed a slight amount of alcohol to loosen him up.
“So, you met him,” Ambrose was saying on their second beer, drank when they had vacated their post at the bar for more comfortable tables further in the distance. “And you slept with him? Right off the bat?”
“Why, you never did something like that?”
“What, be that impetuous?”
“Yes.”
“And that impulsive?”
“Yes.”
“And that reckless?”
“If this is going to be a conversation where you just rattle off adjectives and I just say yes, how about we stop and move on to other things,” Cain suggested, words slightly sharp with the wryness he held in his tone. “Because that could go on a lot longer and I have to be up for class in the morning.” That still didn’t stop him from sliding across yet another drink over the table, as if tempting the fates to see just how relaxed Ambrose could become.
Ambrose was willing to play this game for a while longer, being that the Princess wasn’t expecting him back for some time, now.
They went around in that cycle of drinks for some time as they spoke about things like the kingdom and Cain’s education and Ambrose’s station. Somehow, there was a marker at some point in the evening when they each had too much to drink and the subject slid to the colour of the Princess’ thighs unbound and unfettered of clothing and the way John Grant appeared when he let all his burdens loose and came.
That was probably when they should have parted.
Instead, they had wound up in a dark corner booth with Ambrose in Cain’s lap, Ambrose’s palm smack-dab against the oak-chestnut mix wall and sloppy kisses that were probably along the lines of over-affectionate kisses from a dog. And worse than that, they each held each other’s secrets in those lips. By the time they were ushered out of the bar for the night, they had hardly the grace to stand on their own two feet and none of the ability to see their mistake.
Hindsight, Ambrose had always been told, was twenty-twenty. Or maybe it was something about clouds.
Tipsy on messy kisses and good wine, he couldn’t find the ability in him to care.
*
She made no small secret about how absolutely out of the bounds of her rules it was that she was going to actually go on a date with him. John had trimmed his short blond hair back and put on his best suit (procured through a little bit of tricky talking at the store while Cain stood there with a gun, looking threatening as he could) and now he was waiting at the set spot, the one the letter had told him to go to.
Now all he had to go on was faith that sooner or later, she would turn up.
He’d even found himself a handful of flowers he couldn’t even dare to name, whose names Cain had given to him, but now they slipped his mind and his nerves refused to let him think about anything but, is she going to show up?
“You’re talented,” said a musical and accented voice from behind him, making John’s heart soar right into that sky he fell from and he whirled to stare at the vision in purple he was regarding. She was clasping his letter and the portrait of her between her fingers as she approached and the moonlight reflected off her raven-black hair. “I don’t think even the palace artists are this good.”
“You came,” John exhaled with wonder and a giddy grin.
It seemed contagious because within seconds, she was grinning right back at him with the same sort of enthusiasm. For one moment, John had been genuinely panicked that this was all going to be for nothing and that the woman of his dreams was going to flee and pop the bubble that was holding all his fantasies. And yet, there she was and looking as beautiful as he remembered her and better than that, she looked happy to see him.
John Grant could die a happy man, let the storybooks know that.
He nearly tripped over his own feet in his attempt to be graceful and to accompany her over the little hills until they found a picnic basket and a cloth waiting and the sketchbook that he had begged Cain to find for him. Apparently, a man with a gun was as persuasive on the Otherside as it was back home.
“Tell me where you came from,” the Princess begged. “You hint at it in your letters and you never say and I can only imagine such a land with only one sun to protect its skies.”
“People around here,” he began, pouring her something of a drink, “they call it the Otherside, but it’s only ever been Nebraska, to me. The United States of America,” he announced proudly, a broad grin on his face.
And hell, but John was quick to notice the way she didn’t seem to be able to take her eyes off it. Maybe some of the twinkling charm he had about him that he used to con easy marks at the state fairs back home wouldn’t go amiss. He couldn’t help an extra wide grin, considering that he wasn’t even trying to con her out of anything except for maybe trying to coax her to try and entrust her love to him.
“It’s a beautiful place. Maybe one day, we can rustle ourselves up one of those storms again and I’ll take you back for a visit,” he murmured, taking hold of her palm and brushing a kiss to her knuckles. “But then, I’ll go whenever you want to be, so long as you want me at your side.”
She seemed to preen under his touch and it only buoyed him onwards. For every grape he fed her, for every Papay fruit he would slice and hand to her, he would press a kiss to her forehead or her cheek. For every smile she gave to him, he would offer forth a witty story of a time when he had been on the run and had done everything in his power to stay a free man.
Even sailing the skies and accidentally finding a new world in the process.
“I should have known that you were trouble,” she ruefully remarked, as he was busy kissing the sweetness of blueberries from off her fingertips.
John just grinned at her, flicking back a lock of his blond hair. “Hell, Princess,” he announced. “I think you’re worth the trouble, but more than that, I think you’re just as bad when it comes to breaking the rules as I am. I notice your Advisor isn’t here.”
“I sent him with a letter.”
“But why would you need to send me anything in a letter when we’re here right now.”
“I didn’t want company,” she said, so simply and sweetly that he would have to be mad to question that train of logic. Maybe both of them were thieves in different means. He thieved stories and picked pockets for spare change and she sat there so perfectly and stole his heart without even showing the feint of her hands.
He had to admire her all the more for it.
When the evening drew on into the early hours and the moons rose in the sky, John knew that he had to have some semblance of dignity and honor and as much as he wanted to invite her back to his place (or rather, the room he was squatting in when Cain kicked him out for the night), he knew it shouldn’t have to play like this.
Then, would she expect anything more of him? He was a stranger to her world. He had no home. He wanted to be part of her home.
He tried to make amends for his indecision by standing with her at the edge of the park with a purple rose in his hands, gently fixing it to the collar of her dress and twisting it until it bloomed in the moonslight, catching pale slivers of silver without hesitation.
“It deserved a vessel as wondrous as you,” he murmured, kissing her palm and bidding her goodbye with a graceful bow of his head.
Maybe the trick this time was to constantly leave her wanting just a little bit more.
Even if that didn’t exactly track so well with him. It left him wanting and oh, how he wasn’t sure just how long he could last. Though, he supposed that every story had to have chapters and obstacles or it was nothing more than a concise poem and just how many of those went down in history as epic. So long as she still appeared to want him, he was on the right track.
He loved her.
He could deal with wanting her a mite longer.
*
Ambrose was swaying to and fro by the time the Princess returned back from her date with the mysterious Othersider, the one of whom Central City was already raving about in myths and perpetuating him in stories and paintings. She bustled inside and shed her cloak, grinning madly at Ambrose as she clasped his hand with both of her own and pressed a long kiss there.
“If Mother asks,” she insisted, “You were my chaperone.”
“And if your Mother asks, I’ve never touched an alcoholic beverage in my life,” Ambrose hiccupped the words, attempting a semblance of dignity. The Princess laughed gently as she managed to ensconce herself safely in his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck snugly in a sisterly gesture, curling up as tight as she could.
“Oh, dear Ambrose,” she praised with a soft laugh, kissing his temple. “Just what were you doing? Or should I ask who you were doing it with?”
“I’ll have you know I was on official business!” he said, wounded as a man could be as he gaped at her, his mouth forming a perfect ‘o’ while staring at the Princess’ lovely lavender eyes. “I even almost contracted a disease from his disgusting, disgusting place…” He went on muttering about this for a great deal of time, but there was one snatch of a sentence that made her pay attention.
In fact, it made her freeze completely, her fingers in his hair gripping tightly.
“…I wonder if he took John back there when they had their fling.”
“Pardon?”
The silence might not have been so frightening had Ambrose not been keenly aware of the Princess’ magical abilities and how they often exhibited themselves in times when her emotions were at their most tumultuous. If Ambrose had not known about this and if he had not said something to condemn her newest love, then he might not be so terribly worried.
As it was, Ambrose was beginning to fear for his life as the silence drew on and on.
“The Tin Man in training?” she clarified, icily. “Wyatt Cain and John?”
“Just the once, apparently,” Ambrose babbled. “Just the once and…”
“Arrange a meeting,” the Princess demanded, on her feet almost instantly and storming out of the room, her words carried back almost as if they were sent on a cloud and needed to be completely said before she was gone. “I want to see him now. No excuses shall be accepted, I don’t care what he’s doing! Sober up, send the message, then we leave.”
Ambrose cringed as he watched her go, slamming his door in the process, and wondered if it was truly a selfish thing to be grateful that he had all his body parts where they were supposed to go.
He didn’t feel it was, after that display.
And now, now, it was only bound to get so much worse.
tbc
Pairing: Queen/Ahamo, Ambrose/Cain, Cain/Ahamo
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I checked the post-office. They're not mine.
Summary: He fell from the sky. He stole her heart.
Notes: This is basically an AU, but one that glimmers in and out of reality with the actual 'verse.
PART ONE: A good way to start any story is improbably and so an unconventional love story deserves the best of improbable starts.
Ambrose had been directed up six flights of stairs to a loft at the very top of the brick-walled apartment. He had a Royal-Stamped letter in his hand and was wheezing as he cleared the last of the stairs (honestly, who put seventy-eight narrow stairs in a building and didn’t bother to build an elevator).
Yet, this was where Wyatt Cain lived and he was the official go-between for John Grant. So when the Princess wanted to send letters, send away she did, and Ambrose was sent with them in hand.
He reached apartment 601 and leaned his free arm on the door, brushing away sweat that made his curls absolutely unruly before knocking and wheezing to catch a breath or two.
“Who is it?”
“Ambrose,” he panted, composing himself and rising up to full posture as the peephole darkened and he could feel himself being scrutinized. “The Princess’ messenger? I have a message here for John. I was told to go through you for protocol and safety’s sake. Not to mention you were so rude and proud about it the last time.”
He waited for the inevitable click of the door and it came. It just came after an endless amount of time that had Ambrose wondering if Cain was actually planning to let him in or not. Eventually though, that click came and Cain drew back the door to let Ambrose in to deliver the letter.
“Oh good gods!” he shouted in alarm when he saw what Cain had opened the door to. “How do you live here?” It didn’t take more than a moment of looking to see the disarrayed sty that was passing for Cain’s loft. It wasn’t messy so much as absolutely disorganized and with no sense of care for where papers landed or clothes were put. He clutched the letter more protectively, no longer wanting to hand it over when it might land just about anywhere under a pile of goo and might not ever be found.
Cain gave him a decidedly unimpressed look. “Yes.”
“It’s disgusting!”
“It’s my home. And it’s what I can afford.”
The sheets on the bed were in disarray and there were opened books everywhere along with the components of guns sprawled out on a desk nearby. Ambrose was stuck staring at the bed and wondering if that mess had been made by one or two people. Not that he really had any business asking, but well…he was bored and Cain was one of the few people he got to socialize with.
He dared a step inside and winced when he was very much sure that he had just lifted his shoe out of a particularly gummy and sticky area of the floor.
“It’s disgusting,” Ambrose protested, his weak stomach churning at the thought of having to spend more than ten minutes inside. “Let’s go to that bar downstairs to talk, if we stay here, I’m going to suddenly snap and do your laundry and dust for you.”
Cain seemed to get a considerate look on his face as if he was contemplating pushing for that turn of events.
“No,” Ambrose said sharply, yanking on Cain’s arm, “That’s not an option. Bar, now, before I catch the plague from your dirty socks.” He was already dashing for the threshold of the door and the gateway to all things cleanly. He felt as if germs might latch onto him, leaping from hidden corners and perhaps it wasn’t ‘that bad’, but considering the pristine background Ambrose hailed from, it really was to him. You just had to put it all in context.
He waited for five minutes as Cain locked up the room and dug out letters from his trenchcoat, lifting them to give Ambrose the indication that he wasn’t the only one doing an exchange at that particular time.
By the time they were through with ordering drinks and sliding letters across the bar, there was a better mood in the air. Ambrose would say that it was because they were far away from the disaster of Cain’s room and Cain would say it had to do with the fact that Ambrose had imbibed a slight amount of alcohol to loosen him up.
“So, you met him,” Ambrose was saying on their second beer, drank when they had vacated their post at the bar for more comfortable tables further in the distance. “And you slept with him? Right off the bat?”
“Why, you never did something like that?”
“What, be that impetuous?”
“Yes.”
“And that impulsive?”
“Yes.”
“And that reckless?”
“If this is going to be a conversation where you just rattle off adjectives and I just say yes, how about we stop and move on to other things,” Cain suggested, words slightly sharp with the wryness he held in his tone. “Because that could go on a lot longer and I have to be up for class in the morning.” That still didn’t stop him from sliding across yet another drink over the table, as if tempting the fates to see just how relaxed Ambrose could become.
Ambrose was willing to play this game for a while longer, being that the Princess wasn’t expecting him back for some time, now.
They went around in that cycle of drinks for some time as they spoke about things like the kingdom and Cain’s education and Ambrose’s station. Somehow, there was a marker at some point in the evening when they each had too much to drink and the subject slid to the colour of the Princess’ thighs unbound and unfettered of clothing and the way John Grant appeared when he let all his burdens loose and came.
That was probably when they should have parted.
Instead, they had wound up in a dark corner booth with Ambrose in Cain’s lap, Ambrose’s palm smack-dab against the oak-chestnut mix wall and sloppy kisses that were probably along the lines of over-affectionate kisses from a dog. And worse than that, they each held each other’s secrets in those lips. By the time they were ushered out of the bar for the night, they had hardly the grace to stand on their own two feet and none of the ability to see their mistake.
Hindsight, Ambrose had always been told, was twenty-twenty. Or maybe it was something about clouds.
Tipsy on messy kisses and good wine, he couldn’t find the ability in him to care.
*
She made no small secret about how absolutely out of the bounds of her rules it was that she was going to actually go on a date with him. John had trimmed his short blond hair back and put on his best suit (procured through a little bit of tricky talking at the store while Cain stood there with a gun, looking threatening as he could) and now he was waiting at the set spot, the one the letter had told him to go to.
Now all he had to go on was faith that sooner or later, she would turn up.
He’d even found himself a handful of flowers he couldn’t even dare to name, whose names Cain had given to him, but now they slipped his mind and his nerves refused to let him think about anything but, is she going to show up?
“You’re talented,” said a musical and accented voice from behind him, making John’s heart soar right into that sky he fell from and he whirled to stare at the vision in purple he was regarding. She was clasping his letter and the portrait of her between her fingers as she approached and the moonlight reflected off her raven-black hair. “I don’t think even the palace artists are this good.”
“You came,” John exhaled with wonder and a giddy grin.
It seemed contagious because within seconds, she was grinning right back at him with the same sort of enthusiasm. For one moment, John had been genuinely panicked that this was all going to be for nothing and that the woman of his dreams was going to flee and pop the bubble that was holding all his fantasies. And yet, there she was and looking as beautiful as he remembered her and better than that, she looked happy to see him.
John Grant could die a happy man, let the storybooks know that.
He nearly tripped over his own feet in his attempt to be graceful and to accompany her over the little hills until they found a picnic basket and a cloth waiting and the sketchbook that he had begged Cain to find for him. Apparently, a man with a gun was as persuasive on the Otherside as it was back home.
“Tell me where you came from,” the Princess begged. “You hint at it in your letters and you never say and I can only imagine such a land with only one sun to protect its skies.”
“People around here,” he began, pouring her something of a drink, “they call it the Otherside, but it’s only ever been Nebraska, to me. The United States of America,” he announced proudly, a broad grin on his face.
And hell, but John was quick to notice the way she didn’t seem to be able to take her eyes off it. Maybe some of the twinkling charm he had about him that he used to con easy marks at the state fairs back home wouldn’t go amiss. He couldn’t help an extra wide grin, considering that he wasn’t even trying to con her out of anything except for maybe trying to coax her to try and entrust her love to him.
“It’s a beautiful place. Maybe one day, we can rustle ourselves up one of those storms again and I’ll take you back for a visit,” he murmured, taking hold of her palm and brushing a kiss to her knuckles. “But then, I’ll go whenever you want to be, so long as you want me at your side.”
She seemed to preen under his touch and it only buoyed him onwards. For every grape he fed her, for every Papay fruit he would slice and hand to her, he would press a kiss to her forehead or her cheek. For every smile she gave to him, he would offer forth a witty story of a time when he had been on the run and had done everything in his power to stay a free man.
Even sailing the skies and accidentally finding a new world in the process.
“I should have known that you were trouble,” she ruefully remarked, as he was busy kissing the sweetness of blueberries from off her fingertips.
John just grinned at her, flicking back a lock of his blond hair. “Hell, Princess,” he announced. “I think you’re worth the trouble, but more than that, I think you’re just as bad when it comes to breaking the rules as I am. I notice your Advisor isn’t here.”
“I sent him with a letter.”
“But why would you need to send me anything in a letter when we’re here right now.”
“I didn’t want company,” she said, so simply and sweetly that he would have to be mad to question that train of logic. Maybe both of them were thieves in different means. He thieved stories and picked pockets for spare change and she sat there so perfectly and stole his heart without even showing the feint of her hands.
He had to admire her all the more for it.
When the evening drew on into the early hours and the moons rose in the sky, John knew that he had to have some semblance of dignity and honor and as much as he wanted to invite her back to his place (or rather, the room he was squatting in when Cain kicked him out for the night), he knew it shouldn’t have to play like this.
Then, would she expect anything more of him? He was a stranger to her world. He had no home. He wanted to be part of her home.
He tried to make amends for his indecision by standing with her at the edge of the park with a purple rose in his hands, gently fixing it to the collar of her dress and twisting it until it bloomed in the moonslight, catching pale slivers of silver without hesitation.
“It deserved a vessel as wondrous as you,” he murmured, kissing her palm and bidding her goodbye with a graceful bow of his head.
Maybe the trick this time was to constantly leave her wanting just a little bit more.
Even if that didn’t exactly track so well with him. It left him wanting and oh, how he wasn’t sure just how long he could last. Though, he supposed that every story had to have chapters and obstacles or it was nothing more than a concise poem and just how many of those went down in history as epic. So long as she still appeared to want him, he was on the right track.
He loved her.
He could deal with wanting her a mite longer.
*
Ambrose was swaying to and fro by the time the Princess returned back from her date with the mysterious Othersider, the one of whom Central City was already raving about in myths and perpetuating him in stories and paintings. She bustled inside and shed her cloak, grinning madly at Ambrose as she clasped his hand with both of her own and pressed a long kiss there.
“If Mother asks,” she insisted, “You were my chaperone.”
“And if your Mother asks, I’ve never touched an alcoholic beverage in my life,” Ambrose hiccupped the words, attempting a semblance of dignity. The Princess laughed gently as she managed to ensconce herself safely in his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck snugly in a sisterly gesture, curling up as tight as she could.
“Oh, dear Ambrose,” she praised with a soft laugh, kissing his temple. “Just what were you doing? Or should I ask who you were doing it with?”
“I’ll have you know I was on official business!” he said, wounded as a man could be as he gaped at her, his mouth forming a perfect ‘o’ while staring at the Princess’ lovely lavender eyes. “I even almost contracted a disease from his disgusting, disgusting place…” He went on muttering about this for a great deal of time, but there was one snatch of a sentence that made her pay attention.
In fact, it made her freeze completely, her fingers in his hair gripping tightly.
“…I wonder if he took John back there when they had their fling.”
“Pardon?”
The silence might not have been so frightening had Ambrose not been keenly aware of the Princess’ magical abilities and how they often exhibited themselves in times when her emotions were at their most tumultuous. If Ambrose had not known about this and if he had not said something to condemn her newest love, then he might not be so terribly worried.
As it was, Ambrose was beginning to fear for his life as the silence drew on and on.
“The Tin Man in training?” she clarified, icily. “Wyatt Cain and John?”
“Just the once, apparently,” Ambrose babbled. “Just the once and…”
“Arrange a meeting,” the Princess demanded, on her feet almost instantly and storming out of the room, her words carried back almost as if they were sent on a cloud and needed to be completely said before she was gone. “I want to see him now. No excuses shall be accepted, I don’t care what he’s doing! Sober up, send the message, then we leave.”
Ambrose cringed as he watched her go, slamming his door in the process, and wondered if it was truly a selfish thing to be grateful that he had all his body parts where they were supposed to go.
He didn’t feel it was, after that display.
And now, now, it was only bound to get so much worse.
tbc