Title: Trials & Smiles
Author:
lazydazyficsArtist:
princess_vevayArtist:
jungle_rideFandom: The 10th Kingdom
Characters/Pairings: Wolf/Virginia
Rating/Category: PG
Genre: Rom Com
Word Count: 12,149
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: All characters are that of The 10th Kingdom and I do not own them nor seek renumeration from my writing. I merely play with the characters and ideas of its writer, Simon Moore.
Notes: Many heartfelt thanks to both of my wonderful artist’s and my super-awesome Beta
glitterfics :D
Summary: “Happy Ever After was really about something else. If she lived every day with all her heart, then she would be Happy Ever After....This truly was a magical place. She just hadn’t realised how magical until now.”
Wolf & Virginia begin their life in Manhattan following their journey in the Nine Kingdoms. Will Wolf ever find a job he is good at? Will he ever realise how to live Happy Ever After as Virginia has done? Will the Singing Ring ever shut up? Join them as they journey towards parenthood and the answer to all these questions.
Link to art master post 1:
http://princess-vevay.livejournal.com/91706.html Link to art master post 2:
http://warmwetcircles.livejournal.com/10293.html Trials & Smiles
Virginia watched as Wolf walked down the path from the entrance foyer to their apartment building. She felt a huge jumble of emotions at seeing him go off to his first job. Wiping a tear from the corner of her eye she thought back to their arrival in New York. On returning to Central Park with Wolf, leaving her father behind, she had been content to just sit with him on a bench in the park and take in the surroundings. She had absorbed all that they had gone through and was taking the time to enjoy the peace that they now had. As much as they wanted to do absolutely nothing after the adventure that had been through, it was not practical to sit in Central Park for the rest of their lives. They had a little one to prepare for.
They had found themselves an apartment, Virginia had contacted her friends and found herself a waitressing job again and Wolf had set about making the apartment ‘homely’. This had primarily consisted of him shopping with the money Virginia had given him and picking up any random item that caught his eye. He had been so excited when she got home that she hadn’t the heart to tell him that a real life stuffed sheep just wasn’t the right kind of ornament for the living room. Especially when they already had a coffee table that doubled as a fish tank. That one was in honour of how her engagement ring had made it to her finger. And then there were the stools that were basically logs with soft tops to them. They weren’t even the right height for the breakfast bar, but they were kind of cute. It was all his way of making home in New York feel like part of the Nine Kingdoms, she was sure of it. There was no way she wanted to hurt his feelings by telling him he’d got it wrong.
Laughing to herself and turning away from the window, Virginia rubbed her stomach as she returned to their little kitchen and her cup of half drunk decaffeinated tea.
“Oh it’s such a great joy
To be a part of this girl and boy!”
“What are you singing about now?” Virginia lifted her hand to look at her engagement ring. “Look at me, I’m talking to a singing ring!”
“Singing is what I do,
When Baby’s born there’ll be three not two!”
“Yes, the baby is due soon, that’s why I’m drinking vile tea instead of decent coffee and I can barely fit out the front door. Speaking of which, I’m going to work soon and I would love to get through it without you piping up.”
“Baby will come when he’s ready
You must take things steady!”
She saw concern on the ring’s face as she watched it whilst listening to the rhyme it sang. Its words made her wonder what it meant by that. She was due in just over a week and none of the scans or appointments she’d had had led her to believe any different. They’d even gone to birthing classes, an experience she never wanted to repeat again.
Wolf was always extremely excited at the thought of doing anything to help with the pregnancy and going to birthing classes had been no different. He had been over exuberant and extremely touchy feely with the other pregnant women, much to their consternation. But that hadn’t been the point at which Virginia had started to cringe; the practise breathing had been. He had been loud and enthusiastic and had bounded round and round her as he encouraged her to breath. ‘Huff puff! Huff puff!’ He even took to telling off the other men in the room for not doing it well enough but when he started on the teacher was the point that she had wanted to disappear through the floor. In the end she just ended up laughing and huffing and puffing along with him.
“This is my last shift. I will take it so steady afterwards that I will barely have to move,” she sighed looking at the ring as she wondered whether it was trying to tell her something. It was eerily capable of picking up on things that they, or she at least; Wolf having some form of sixth sense better than hers as well, hadn’t noticed or discovered yet.
The singing ring simply stared back at her, simpering and smiling which Virginia took that as a sign that the ring would be quiet for the day having had its say. She sighed and muttered good to herself then went back to the window, staring at where Wolf had been.
“I hope he’s going to be ok,” she said worriedly to herself, “it’s the first time he’s ever had a job!”
******
Meanwhile, Wolf was well on his way to his new workplace, trying frantically to not get so excited that his tail wagged. It was always painful to do that when you had it tucked inside your trousers besides he was desperately attempting to fit in to this new world and the new life that he and Virginia had embarked on.
Walking through Central Park with a spring in his step he wildly greeted everyone that he walked near.
“Huff puff!” he exclaimed to himself excitedly, “I’m a working wolf now! Good morning!”
The jogger that had witnessed him talking to himself and been close enough to be brought into the conversation with his over exuberant greeting gave him a look of sheer alarm, sped up her pace and ran away as fast as she could. Wolf didn’t even notice the joggers’ fear as he whirled around laughing, his jacket twirling in the breeze with him. He was going to be the best refuse collector in the city!
Nothing was going to get him down. Not even the strange looks the other early morning risers were giving him; the majority of them not being quite so bouncily excited about the morning as he was. He was headed to the city’s Department of Sanitation. His first ever job! He had been practicing at home. Clearing up around the house, putting things in the bin and then emptying the bin and starting all over again. He was super confident that he had this job lark down. How hard could it be for him to empty bins?
With an enormous smile and an extra bound to his step, Wolf reached his destination and reported to the receptionist at the front desk to start his day’s work.
******
It took Virginia a lot longer than usual to get to work these days, even though it was only round the corner. She felt like she was the size of a truck and couldn’t wait for her due date. It was only a little over a week but she felt like she was going to pop at any moment. She headed to the bathroom to freshen up and clean her teeth before setting off but was met with the sight of an empty toothbrush holder and a clear sink where normally there was facial wash, toothpaste and hand soap.
“What’s going on?” She wondered to herself as she looked first to the bath tub and then, seeing nothing there either, she turned to look in the little cupboard above the radiator. That was also empty.
“Where has everything gone?” She asked the apartment as she looked the bathroom again.
As she looked for a third time, unable to believe her eyes that the bathroom was empty of all their things, she spied the bin in the corner next to the toilet. It was also empty. Which was strange because Virginia knew that she used it since that last time she’d cleaned the bathroom, for make-up wipes and the like, so there should be something in there. Not least of all the bin liner, which also appeared to be missing.
This was not what she needed for her last day at work.
Leaving the bathroom she went to the main bin that they kept in the corner of their small pantry off the kitchen. When she opened the lid, the bin bag from the bathroom bin was sat, open, right at the top. It was full of everything that should have been sitting on the sink and bath tub in the bathroom, including the stuff that should have been in the little bathroom cupboard. As well as the actual rubbish at the bottom of the bag.
She stared at the contents of the bin for a while as she picked out the items that shouldn’t have been thrown away one by one. Underneath the white bathroom bin liner there were other household items that were certainly not supposed to be in the bin and Virginia started to laugh as she realised what was going on.
Wolf had been so nervous about his first job in the Tenth Kingdom that it only required a small connection of the dots to work out that he had been practicing at home before leaving for work. He had obviously been filling the bins around the apartment and then going through all the rooms and emptying them into the large kitchen bin.
Virginia spent the next ten minutes returning everything that wasn’t rubbish back to its rightful place and then she was able to continue on with her usual routine. She cleaned her teeth, gathered her bag and coat and, locking up behind her, set off on the slow waddle to work.
******
The introduction for new people was short and sharp. There were a few of them and they were each being added to a different truck going on a separate route. They were given their overalls, shown the locker room, rest room and canteen area and then passed over to their respective teams and left to get on with it. Wolf had been placed with a no-nonsense crew. The leader seemed to be a large, male Texan who was constantly chewing on gum and belittling the rest of the crew. The others didn’t seem to like talking much and it wasn’t long before Wolf was yelled at to shut up.
He had leapt into the truck and the seat he had been shown to and hadn’t been able to stop talking about how excited he was the entire journey out to the district they were to clear.
“How exhilarating to be entrusted with the city’s waste!” Wolf exclaimed.
That comment was the last straw to break the camel’s back.
“If you don’t shut your trap for the rest of the day,” the Texan yelled at him, “I will shut it for you and stuff you in the back of the van!”
“Well huff puff! You don’t need to be that extreme!” Wolf had muttered to himself before submitting to silence and scratching at the side of his forehead.
Not long after this all bar the Texan driver were ejected from the truck. They had reached the start of their round and it was time for them to start the real work.
“Oh goody!” said Wolf, with none of the sarcasm you would have got had it been one of the other workers saying it, as he sprang down from the truck and scampered across to the other side of the road and the first bin he could see.
“Oi! New boy!” came the yell from behind him, “We do that side of the street on the way back!”
With a gasp and an “Oops!” Wolf dashed back across the road - causing the people in the cars to swerve, brake suddenly and beep their horns at him in anger.
“Sorry! Sorry!” He called out to the drivers and his new work mates, “I always get ahead of myself!”
“Well, get ahead of yourself to that trash can on this side of the street,” yelled the Texan pointing down the street to the next one that the other lads hadn’t reached yet.
“Sir! Yes Sir!” Wolf replied mock saluting him and practically skipping off down the street.
He reached the bin and grabbed hold, pulling it towards the truck with all his strength, his muscles bulging through the sleeves of his overall with the strain of it. He reached the truck and one of the others showed him how to attach the bin to the back, pressed the button and he watched as all the detritus of that building’s inhabitants poured into the opening and then got eaten up by the big metal monster. The bin was returned back to the floor and he was sent back with it and told to get the next full one.
It only took another couple of bins to get him into a routine where he was quite happily running down the street to grab the next full bin, attaching it, pushing the button and heading back with an empty bin and then moving onto the next one. The snag was to come later on, when something shiny was to catch his eye.
******
It had been a long shift at the restaurant. They had switched Virginia to the lunchtime shifts later on in her pregnancy as it was supposedly a lighter, easier shift. It was the same hours but not usually the same amount of people tramping in and out, which is why the boss thought she would cope with it easier as she got closer to her due date and maternity leave. This last shift, though, had seemed to involve serving every single person in Manhattan. She felt like she had been run ragged and Candy told her she looked like it as well. She had to laugh at that, Candy wasn’t one to say things maliciously but she was great at speaking her mind without stopping to think about how it might sound first. She was also extremely kind hearted, especially where Virginia was concerned. She sent her home early with a card and present telling her that she would finish the clean up as she was back in for the evening shift anyway.
Virginia hugged Candy gratefully and put on her coat, collected her bag and gathered up the card and present to set off home. The next time she came to the restaurant it would hopefully be with a gorgeous little baby in tow to show off to her work colleagues and joke about when she would be back working again. The thought nearly made her cry, she was so anxious for the birth to happen and for everything to go right, so she forced herself to smile, wave and leave without any more to do about it all.
It was a slow walk back to the apartment. The sun was shining and dappling through the leaves in the park and, even though she would have walked slowly anyway due to her condition, Virginia took her time on this walk home to soak up the sunshine and the glory of the nature of the park. She even spent a few moments sat on a bench looking out across the park watching the joggers and the skaters and the lovers and the children and just generally soaking up the pleasant atmosphere that the park exuded.
When she opened the door to their apartment and got hit with the stench of rotting garbage, she was glad that she had taken her time coming home. Glad that the moments she had spent sitting in the park had brought her peace and tranquillity, because it was enough to enable her to stay calm and discover whatever had happened or was happening that was resulting in the atrocious smell. She didn’t want to ruin the first day of Wolf’s first job in the Tenth Kingdom by walking in and complaining about the smell. It could quite easily be that after spending the day emptying trash cans in this heat he had come home smelling like one.
She walked into apartment, placed her bag and present on the table in the hall, hung her coat up and walked through to the living room whilst calling out to him, “Hello! Wolf? Are you home?”
She was greeted by quite a sight when she entered the living room. All the furniture had been pushed back and Wolf was on the floor in the middle of the room, in his overalls still, bent over something with a bowl of soapy water next to him. She gasped as she saw him, not having expected quite that sight and he heard her and jumped up to greet her.
“Oh love of my life! Have I got a treat for you!” he cried as he took hold of her face with his hands, kissed her gently on the lips and then patted the bump as had become his little routine.
He then turned round and pulled her beside him flourishing his arm in the direction of the item on the living room floor.
“I found it at work today and I just couldn’t resist it! No-one should throw such a thing out!”
Virginia was unable to contain her reaction. Only this morning she had had to dig through their rubbish bin and rescue all the items of non-rubbish that he had thrown away and now she was presented with an item of rubbish that he had rescued from the bin of some random apartment building as though it was the one thing that their life had been missing. She couldn’t help it. She just had to laugh.
She laughed until the tears were rolling down her cheeks and Wolf had had to help her into a chair. He knelt down next to her a look of confusion that looked as though it could turn to hurt at any moment on his face.
“I’m sorry, I really am, it’s been a long day at work and I think my emotions are more shot to pieces than I realised. I didn’t mean to laugh so much.” Virginia stroked Wolf’s face as she spoke trying to convey the meaning of her words in her touch as well.
“You don’t like it?” Wolf asked.
“I don’t not like it,” Virginia replied, “I’m just unsure as to what we will do with it. I never thought that we would need our very own shopping trolley!”
******
A week went by and Virginia spent her days seeing Wolf off to work and pottering about their apartment doing a bit of cleaning here and a bit of tidying up there and generally making it ready for their new arrival as she counted down the last few days to the due date. The singing ring had worried her the other week and was being even more infuriating than usual by taking her request to heart and being completely and utterly silent. It hadn’t uttered a single word or sung a single rhyme since the morning of her last shift at work. It was creeping her out more than its usual annoying, song singing self.
Her mind was taken off the topic when a very distraught Wolf came through their front door only half way through his working day.
“What’s happened?” Virginia asked him as he went straight to the sofa and sat hugging the arm and whining.
It was unusual behaviour for him and worrying about what was wrong with Wolf immediately threw from her mind her worries about the baby and the singing ring. She approached him, bending over where he was sat, being physically unable to kneel down in front of him if she ever wanted to get up again, and took one of his hands in hers, gently stroking it as she asked again what had happened.
“Ohhhh!” he whined in response, the memory of falling into the dumpster, legs dangling above him all in aid of such a juicy treat, charging through his mind as he turned to look at her. That was when she saw the red, suspiciously bloodlike juice stains all over the white t-shirt he had on under his open collared overalls.
“Please tell me that’s not blood!” Virginia exclaimed as she straightened up, not letting go of his hand and not stopping stroking it either so that he could see she was more worried for him than annoyed at him.
Wolf whined again, “I couldn’t help it! I didn’t mean to, it just looked so juicy and sweet and succulent and it had been thrown out!”
He leapt to his feet, twirling Virginia round and grabbing her shoulders as he continued, “I mean how could someone throw out something so luscious and tender and scrummy?!”
“You took meat from a dumpster?” Virginia responded, slightly grossed out. “Go shower now!”
Wolf whined again, twirled her round once more and sat her down on the sofa.
“That’s not all,” he said sitting next to her and giving her his most endearing wolf pup face.
Virginia laughed lightly. “What could there possibly be other than taking trash-can-meat that deserves that pitiful look?” she asked tweaking his nose and leaning forward to kiss him, but finding herself stuck half way there because her bump was in the way.
Wolf turned away, looked down at his lap and wrung his hands as he quietly replied, “They sacked me. I’m such a failure, I don’t deserve you. I’m going to be of no use to you or the wolf pup...”
Virginia stopped him mid flow by taking a firm hold of his face, scrunching his lips up in the process to stop the flow from his mouth, and turning him to face her.
“You are not a failure!” she berated him, “I have been sacked from waitressing jobs lots of times and I still get work! This is merely a hiccup, not a complete down fall. Tomorrow we can go for a walk and see what else is out there and you can get another job.”
“Oh love of my life! What would I do without you?!” Wolf exclaimed as he leant forward to kiss her.
“Worry some sheep?” Virginia replied laughing as he deepened the kiss in response.
******
By a bizarre twist of fate, their walk the next day led them to a cute little beauty parlour nearby that was in need of a receptionist. Virginia’s face lit up when she saw the sign in the window.
“Cheap manicures!” She exclaimed pulling at Wolf’s arm as she headed through the door.
Wolf, for his part, was absolutely none the wiser as to what a manicure was or why it would be cheap if they went into this Hair O Dye Namic place. He followed Virginia anyway, wanting to stay as close to her as possible on the day the doctors had said she would give birth to their little wolf pup.
“Hello?” Virginia called as she approached the empty reception desk.
“I’ll be there in a minute!” Came the call from further into the shop.
Virginia turned and smiled at Wolf. “This will be brilliant for me if they employ you. Money off hair and nails and its only just round the corner so you’ll be close to home when our little baby is born!”
Wolf smiled back at her with slight bemusement. He still didn’t quite get what was happening.
“Plus,” continued Virginia, “employing you will show that they are open to anything and anyone in their employment because you are neither gay nor female. Everybody wins!”
“Hello, sorry to have kept you, how can I help you this fine day?” The owner of the salon said as she approached the desk.
“Hi!” replied Virginia, “I was hoping that we would be able to help you.”
“Oh,” the owner replied, interest peaked.
“We’ve come in about the receptionist job you have advertised in the window. More to the point,” Virginia continued hurriedly as she saw the girl eye first her and then her bump, “my fiancé, Wolf, would like to apply.”
At this, the owner directed her attention from the obviously ready to pop Virginia over to that of said fiancé Wolf who was doing his best to hide behind her.
“Hello,” he said sheepishly.
“Hello,” the owner replied with a rising tone of sudden interest, “well isn’t this a turnout for the books. The advert has only been in the window for an hour!”
She held her hand out to Wolf for him to accept, not in a normal handshake kind of way, but in a way in which a gentleman of yore would take hold of the hand and raise it to their lips for a light, feathery kiss. She was hoping for just that, and Wolf didn’t disappoint. With a flourish and his best wolfish grin he took hold of her hand and bowed over it, lightly brushing the tips of her fingers with his lips.
“My name is Sheila,” she said giggling. She was trying desperately to keep a posh accent to cover up her brash Bronx one, but it wasn’t quite working. “I own the salon and I am rushed off my feet without a receptionist. The last one just simply left. No notice, no nothing! I have a full diary for today and the phone just hasn’t stopped!”
As if to prove this point, the salon’s phone rang and, holding her hand out to Wolf in apology, she answered, spoke briefly to the caller resulting in a booking for the next day and wrote it down in the book after elaborately closing the call with lots of ‘darlings’ whilst smiling sickly sweet at Wolf the entire time. Virginia was merely a shadow on the floor by this stage.
“It’s as simple as that!” she declared with a flourish of her arm and her best smile. “How about you start now, see how you go for the day and if it works out we can hash out your contract over a glass of wine when the salon closes?”
“I... er....” Wolf stared at Virginia for help.
“He’ll take it,” Virginia cut in for him.
“But, Gini, what about baby?” Wolf asked her quietly.
“There’s no sign of him yet and I’m sure Sheila won’t mind if you have to leave early, will you Sheila?” Virginia asked.
It was a sour puss face that turned towards Virginia, but Sheila agreed none the less even if it was begrudgingly. She then took hold of Wolf, practically draping herself over him and pulling him around to the important side of the desk to show him the ropes. Virginia smiled at Wolf, glared at Sheila, who was hopefully to be his new employer and left the salon hoping that it would be good news when Wolf came home.
******
There was no sign of the baby by the time six o’clock in the evening arrived. There was also no sign of her fiancé either. There was, however, a very vibrant, happy and annoying-song singing ring that had decided that Virginia needed company whilst she waited.
“See the doctors are wrong
Baby has to be strong”
“What do you mean baby has to be strong?” Virginia asked the ring.
“It will all be ok
You will see, come what may”
“Well, I’m glad you think so,” Virginia replied as she got up to greet Wolf who had arrived back from his trial run at the salon. “How did it go?”
“Huff puff! That was different to anything I’ve ever done before in my life!” Wolf growled excitedly, “Whatever mistakes I made Sheila didn’t seem to mind as she wants me to come back tomorrow!”
“That’s really good, and hardly surprising!” laughed Virginia as Wolf bent down to nuzzle her bump and received a good hard kick in return.
“Why not surprising?” he asked her, still nuzzling away trying to entice the baby to kick out at him in different areas of the bump; a bit like playing tag.
“Well,” Virginia shifted how she was standing to accommodate the extra person on her body. “She was all over you from the moment she actually looked at you properly. Your rugged good looks must have helped somewhat!”
Wolf practically pounced her for that, forcing her to sit down on the sofa and leaning over her in a mock intimidating kind of way. “Rugged? Don’t you forget it!” he nipped at her then kissed her thoroughly. “And don’t you forget that wolves mate for life.”
Perfectly happy to kiss him back just as thoroughly, Virginia replied quietly, “I know.”
******
Part Two