Perfect, Again (Morgana/Nikki)
Title: Perfect, Again
Fandom: Merlin!Modern AU/Silent Witness
Characters/Pairings: Morgana/Nikki
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3,000
Summary: Requested One-Shot Conflict of Interest Sequel. Morgana decides that the first time wasn’t quite perfect enough. So she does it again.
Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin or Silent Witness, this is purely for entertainment purposes.
Exhaling noisily, Nikki collapsed gracelessly on the swivel chair at her desk, intentionally drawing Harry’s attention. It was Friday and after five. She still had two reports to complete and the order form for the lab supply company to fill out. What had happened to their latest assistant? She couldn’t remember. None of them seemed to last longer than a couple of months lately. Perhaps it was her fault. Maybe Harry’s. Or did they all just do the job long enough to get proper ‘experience’ for their CVs? She would definitely have to sit in on the next set of interviews and make sure the successful candidate was over the age of thirty. Hopefully then they could hold on to someone for more than a few months. She was getting sick of doing their work on top of her own.
“Roll on Saturday morning,” she sighed, pulling the chair in to her desk and squinting in dismay at the array of paper scattered across its surface.
“Ah, but then you would miss Friday night,” Harry quipped with a smile, looking up from his own lean pile of paperwork.
“Friday night? What’s one of those? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve spent the last seven working,” Nikki complained, shaking her mouse to rouse her dormant computer. She was going to have to put in a report to the powers that be to get the team iPads. Doing notes by hand and then typing them up was time consuming and increasingly maddening when their medic counterparts were swanning around with Apple’s latest and greatest. “Morgana’s starting to get sick of it, though she would never admit it. She went out with Arthur the other week and spent the next two days complaining about the pub he took her to. Since then she just orders takeaway and watches QI repeats on Dave. I feel like I’m steeling her youth.”
“Mmm,” Harry mused non-committally.
“You aren’t even listening are you?”
He laughed. “I’ve learnt to tune you out over the years. It has come in very useful.”
Nikki picked up the stress ball she had got through Secret Santa the year previous and chucked it at Harry’s head. He had probably been the one who bought it anyway. Leo wouldn’t dare.
Ignoring him, she opened up the data logging system that the lab had recently switched over to and began entering the data with the name. It wouldn’t accept it.
“Not now!” she fumed, pressing the enter button a few more times for good measure. “Why does this thing never make things easy for me? I swear we’re all being experimented on by the social sciences department.”
“Check the error number,” Harry suggested, still not looking up.
“What’s the point? It’ll only tell me that there is some unidentified error like it always does,” Nikki grumbled, clicking on the little blue link. “And another thing, I don’t even see why we had to stop using the - Oh, it says that an entry already exists for Lucille Hamilton. The date of birth is the same and every - Everything... Harry did you...?”
“I did them both whilst you were finishing on the hold to the toxicology lab. And I’ve put the order form in. Well, everything but your signature at the bottom. I’ve put down twice the volume of sterilised pipette tips. We seem to be going through them so quickly these days,” Harry said conversationally, as if he hadn’t just said that he had finished all of her work for the evening.
Nikki’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You do know that it isn’t my birthday.”
Again, he laughed. “Can’t I do something nice for an overworked friend?”
“No. You’re up to something,” Nikki said decisively. Harry wasn’t in the habit of doing other people’s paperwork. He was barely in the habit of doing his own.
Putting down his handful of paper, he gave her ‘the look’. “Go home Nikki. Trust me.”
Unwilling to probe any further lest she ruin some surprise, Nikki gave him a thankful smile and grabbed her coat from the back of her chair. “If there isn’t something spectacular waiting for me then it’ll be one hell of an anti-climax after this.”
“And your complaining that I’ve done your work and you get to go home, why?”
Bag in hand, Nikki paused to think about that for a moment. “I haven’t got the faintest idea,” she said, a small smile creeping onto her lips. “Thank you, Harry. I’ll see you on Monday.”
He flashed her one of his winning smiles. “Not if I see you first.”
She left the office laughing, wondering how it was that she got so lucky in life. Maybe it was time that she stopped to smell the roses. Figuratively speaking of course, roses were far too much of a cliché. Morgana always bought her colourful Metallica Thai Plumeria or purple Calla Lilies. She wondered if any would be waiting for her at home.
...
By the time she had struggled through Friday evening rush hour and found a place to park two streets away, it was well after six thirty the sky was purpling to match the moon. The roads had been a nightmare and her good mood had vanished somewhere near Hammersmith Broadway. What she wanted more than anything was a glass of good wine and a hot bath, preferably with Morgana in it. She most definitely wasn’t in the mood for surprises, not matter how pleasant they might turn out to be or how much effort had been put into them. When she opened her front door, however, her mind was instantly changed.
Morgana was cooking. By the smell of it, she was making all three courses.
“I’m home,” Nikki called, dropping her bag under the table by the door and shrugging out of her coat. She pushed closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock, depositing the key in the drawer by the door. “I know I’m early but -” Morgana had appeared in the hallway to the kitchen. Her hair was curled in waves that flowed over her shoulders, as midnight black as the smoky makeup of her eyes and the close fitting classic black dress which hugged her hips in a pencil skirt cut. Sheer black tights complete with a seam and killer matt black heels finished off the look which Nikki knew would frequently enter her fantasies.
Morgana smiled coyly and leant artfully against the wall, the cream of it making the contrast between her skin and the black appear even more striking. “Had a good day, Dear?” she asked in some ridiculously hot mockery of a fifties housewife.
Nikki’s mouth was dry. “Have I... forgotten something?”
“No,” Morgana laughed, pushing off the wall and moving the meet Nikki, her hips swaying. Along the way she collected a glass of wine from the cupboard and pressed it into Nikki’s hand. “So stop panicking,” she leant down to kiss her ‘hello’, “and relax. You’ve been working far too hard lately.”
“No harder than you,” Nikki protested, tilting back her head to see Morgana’s spring-bright eyes, her heels increasing the differences in their heights.
“Have a taste of the wine,” Morgana suggested. “Tell me what you think?”
“Do I want to know how much it cost?” Nikki asked teasingly, bringing the glass to her lips and sipping the dark liquid.
“It’s nothing outlandish, don’t worry. I’m saving that for later.” Morgana’s smile turned mysterious, enigmatic.
Rolling her eyes, Nikki let the wine sit on her tongue, breathing in and letting the taste bloom. There was something... familiar about it. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was sure she had tasted it before. The eagerness Morgana’s eyes told her that she shouldn’t get her answer wrong. Closing her eyes, she let the wine slip back, warming her throat as it went. It was then that it came to her, as heady as the wine, enough to make her dizzy with the thought of it. They had shared this wine once before, the night that began with her spilling said wine over the prime suspect in her latest case and ended with her in Morgana’s bed. It was enough to make her weak at the knees.
...
“There’s something to step over here,” Morgana murmured, guiding Nikki over the bottom of the doorframe and out into the night air. “Be careful.”
“I wouldn’t need to be led if you hadn’t blindfolded me.” Nikki’s voice was more amused than annoyed. She shivered, confused. “Are we outside?”
“Keep going,” Morgana encouraged, ignoring Nikki’s question. “That’s it, let me lead you.”
“I don’t really have a choice,” Nikki muttered, a smile turning up the corners of her lips.
“It’s just a little bit further... We’re nearly there... Okay, stop. You can take of the blindfold.”
When Nikki pulled off the blindfold it took her eyes a moment to adjust, but one thing was immediately evident: they were on the roof. She had never been on the roof before. The view in itself was... breathtaking. She could see half of London - seven and half million people lighting up the black night with a myriad of twinkling lights. And the light show wasn’t confined to the world around their building. The floor that stretched out around her was covered with a hundred flickering church candles, making the roof glow as if it were home to colony of fireflies. Around her in all directions was beauty and light and blackness, a display fit to put the stars to shame.
“Morgana, it’s...” She couldn’t find the words. No one had ever done anything even half as romantic for her before, and she had a feeling that Morgana was just getting started. “It’s beautiful.”
“You like it?” Morgana asked, her nerves showing through for a second.
“I love it,” Nikki assured her, reaching up and kissing every shred of emotion in her heart onto Morgana’s lips. It was the desperate sort of kiss that made her feel faint, every nerve ending lighting up, overwhelming her. It would have brought her to her knees if it wasn’t for Morgana’s arm around her waist, holding her up. She held Morgana’s face in her hands and whispered against her lips, “I love you.”
“And I love you,” Morgana said with easy certainty, “so much.”
...
They ate at a table that Morgana had had to reconstruct on the roof, unable to fit it up the rickety flight of stairs and through the doorway. Two large electric heaters warmed them from both sides, heating the food in the picnic basket and keeping away the chill of the night, and a picnic blanket covered an area about twelve foot square upon which the table stood. Morgana had cooked a replica of the first meal she had ever made for Nikki, the evening after the bar. Some of it hadn’t done too well being kept warm by the heaters, but everything tasted exquisite all the same. If there was one talent of Morgana’s that had definitely been God-given, it was her ability to cook. It had destroyed almost completely Nikki’s desire to eat out. Why pay extortionate prices for something her fiancée could do better and cheaper? Plus, Morgana was irresistible in the kitchen, and they often took dessert in bed. They definitely couldn’t do that in a restaurant.
“I’ve finally gotten to eat my chocolate fondant,” Nikki said triumphantly. “I never did get to pay Harry back for scoffing it all last time.”
Morgana laughed, standing up to clear away their empty dessert plates. “I would have made you another one if hadn’t been, you know, arrested.”
“Mmm,” Nikki murmured, taking a sip of the reminiscing wine. “We didn’t exactly have the best start.”
“Though it’s gotten better, I hope,” Morgana charmed, shooting her an almost Harry-like smile as she closed away the plates in the basket.
“Much,” Nikki agreed.
“That’s good,” Morgana began, and suddenly Nikki realised that packing away their plates had been a cover for getting down on one knee, “because I have a question that I want to ask you once more, properly this time.”
Nikki felt her heart skip a beat.
“The last time I asked you this, you said yes. But I’m not really sure that you should have done. I had a whole thing prepared with a nice dinner and flowers and trip to the theatre, but when it came down to it, I just couldn’t wait. So I didn’t do it properly. You deserve better than being proposed to whilst we were both still in our pyjamas. I didn’t even have a ring,” Morgana apologised, avoiding her gaze. “Well, now, I intend to rectify that.” She pulled a little blue box from the picnic basket and looked up at Nikki with wide, worried eyes. “Nikki, you caught me completely by surprise. I wasn’t expecting to fall in love again. I certainly wasn’t expecting that love to be almost instantaneous.” Her eyes flicked down and back up again, determined to look Nikki in the eye when she said this. “The way we met was so far from ideal that you almost lost your job because of me. You had every right to run for the hills when every piece of evidence seemed to go against me, but you never seemed to doubt me, not even for a second. I can never express how much that meant to me or how integral it was in keeping me strong, that someone I barely knew, someone I had only just met, knew resolutely that I was innocent. Without you I would have fallen to pieces and God knows where I would be now.” She took a deep breath. “What I’m trying to say is that you saved my life and you changed my life. You’ve given me a future to look forward to and made me want things I could never have seen myself desiring before I met you.” Another breath, this time shakier, nervous. She opened the box and held up the ring for Nikki to see.
The platinum band gleamed in the candle light, the intricate etchings on its inside visible with every flicker of light. There was a date there, the date of the day that Morgana had proposed, and their initials intertwined in a way that reminded Nikki of the writing on the spines of old leather-bound books, like the ones in her grandfather’s library when she was a child. Set into the slim band was a beautiful round-cut diamond - not so big as a to look cheap or ostentatious, but big enough and stunning enough to make Nikki’s breath catch in her throat and her skin tingle.
“The last time I asked you this, you said yes. I want you to know that you don’t have to again, not if you’ve changed your mind, not if have doubts. I’m not expecting anything from you. I just wanted to make sure that if you say yes, then you will have something to look back fondly on, something worthy. And if you say no... If you say no, I want to be sure that you will at least understand just how much that it is that I love you,” Morgana explained, her voice strong and clear despite the fact that Nikki could see the hand holding the ring shaking.
“Morgana-” Nikki began, but Morgana cut her off with a pleading look.
“Please, Nikki, say ‘yes’ again and I promise that I will spend the rest of my life making you happy. Marry me?” Morgana pleaded.
Nikki couldn’t breathe. She was hot and cold all over, and she felt as though her heart might burst from all of the perfect, exquisite love swelling inside her. Carefully, trembling, she slipped down from her chair and onto her knees on the blanket, reaching out to brush back the curtain of hair that had fallen forward to hide Morgana’s face.
“Yes,” she said softly, because it really was the most obvious thing in the world. “Yes.”
Morgana’s bowed head snapped up. “Yes?”
Smiling softly, adoringly, Nikki nodded. “Wasn’t me agreeing once good enough for you?” There was a single tear running down Morgana’s cheek. Nikki brushed it away. “Morgana, the last time you proposed was the best moment of my life. The things you said... I never knew I could feel that happy. I want to marry you more than I’ve ever wanted anything else. Surely you know that?”
So Morgana, her eyes damp and her pale cheeks flushed, took the ring and slid it onto her fiancée’s finger, sealing it with a kiss. “I promise that you won’t regret it.”
Nikki cupped her jaw and pressed their foreheads together. “Never,” she promised. “Even though you do seem to have turned into a sappy fool.”
They both laughed.
“It was okay then?” Morgana asked in a small voice that showed just how anxious she had been about getting it right.
“Perfect,” Nikki assured her, “again.”
And there, on the roof, surrounded by candles and the lights of London, below a blanket of stars and wrapped in Morgana’s arms, it was pretty damn perfect.
Fandom: Merlin!Modern AU/Silent Witness
Characters/Pairings: Morgana/Nikki
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3,000
Summary: Requested One-Shot Conflict of Interest Sequel. Morgana decides that the first time wasn’t quite perfect enough. So she does it again.
Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin or Silent Witness, this is purely for entertainment purposes.
Exhaling noisily, Nikki collapsed gracelessly on the swivel chair at her desk, intentionally drawing Harry’s attention. It was Friday and after five. She still had two reports to complete and the order form for the lab supply company to fill out. What had happened to their latest assistant? She couldn’t remember. None of them seemed to last longer than a couple of months lately. Perhaps it was her fault. Maybe Harry’s. Or did they all just do the job long enough to get proper ‘experience’ for their CVs? She would definitely have to sit in on the next set of interviews and make sure the successful candidate was over the age of thirty. Hopefully then they could hold on to someone for more than a few months. She was getting sick of doing their work on top of her own.
“Roll on Saturday morning,” she sighed, pulling the chair in to her desk and squinting in dismay at the array of paper scattered across its surface.
“Ah, but then you would miss Friday night,” Harry quipped with a smile, looking up from his own lean pile of paperwork.
“Friday night? What’s one of those? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve spent the last seven working,” Nikki complained, shaking her mouse to rouse her dormant computer. She was going to have to put in a report to the powers that be to get the team iPads. Doing notes by hand and then typing them up was time consuming and increasingly maddening when their medic counterparts were swanning around with Apple’s latest and greatest. “Morgana’s starting to get sick of it, though she would never admit it. She went out with Arthur the other week and spent the next two days complaining about the pub he took her to. Since then she just orders takeaway and watches QI repeats on Dave. I feel like I’m steeling her youth.”
“Mmm,” Harry mused non-committally.
“You aren’t even listening are you?”
He laughed. “I’ve learnt to tune you out over the years. It has come in very useful.”
Nikki picked up the stress ball she had got through Secret Santa the year previous and chucked it at Harry’s head. He had probably been the one who bought it anyway. Leo wouldn’t dare.
Ignoring him, she opened up the data logging system that the lab had recently switched over to and began entering the data with the name. It wouldn’t accept it.
“Not now!” she fumed, pressing the enter button a few more times for good measure. “Why does this thing never make things easy for me? I swear we’re all being experimented on by the social sciences department.”
“Check the error number,” Harry suggested, still not looking up.
“What’s the point? It’ll only tell me that there is some unidentified error like it always does,” Nikki grumbled, clicking on the little blue link. “And another thing, I don’t even see why we had to stop using the - Oh, it says that an entry already exists for Lucille Hamilton. The date of birth is the same and every - Everything... Harry did you...?”
“I did them both whilst you were finishing on the hold to the toxicology lab. And I’ve put the order form in. Well, everything but your signature at the bottom. I’ve put down twice the volume of sterilised pipette tips. We seem to be going through them so quickly these days,” Harry said conversationally, as if he hadn’t just said that he had finished all of her work for the evening.
Nikki’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You do know that it isn’t my birthday.”
Again, he laughed. “Can’t I do something nice for an overworked friend?”
“No. You’re up to something,” Nikki said decisively. Harry wasn’t in the habit of doing other people’s paperwork. He was barely in the habit of doing his own.
Putting down his handful of paper, he gave her ‘the look’. “Go home Nikki. Trust me.”
Unwilling to probe any further lest she ruin some surprise, Nikki gave him a thankful smile and grabbed her coat from the back of her chair. “If there isn’t something spectacular waiting for me then it’ll be one hell of an anti-climax after this.”
“And your complaining that I’ve done your work and you get to go home, why?”
Bag in hand, Nikki paused to think about that for a moment. “I haven’t got the faintest idea,” she said, a small smile creeping onto her lips. “Thank you, Harry. I’ll see you on Monday.”
He flashed her one of his winning smiles. “Not if I see you first.”
She left the office laughing, wondering how it was that she got so lucky in life. Maybe it was time that she stopped to smell the roses. Figuratively speaking of course, roses were far too much of a cliché. Morgana always bought her colourful Metallica Thai Plumeria or purple Calla Lilies. She wondered if any would be waiting for her at home.
...
By the time she had struggled through Friday evening rush hour and found a place to park two streets away, it was well after six thirty the sky was purpling to match the moon. The roads had been a nightmare and her good mood had vanished somewhere near Hammersmith Broadway. What she wanted more than anything was a glass of good wine and a hot bath, preferably with Morgana in it. She most definitely wasn’t in the mood for surprises, not matter how pleasant they might turn out to be or how much effort had been put into them. When she opened her front door, however, her mind was instantly changed.
Morgana was cooking. By the smell of it, she was making all three courses.
“I’m home,” Nikki called, dropping her bag under the table by the door and shrugging out of her coat. She pushed closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock, depositing the key in the drawer by the door. “I know I’m early but -” Morgana had appeared in the hallway to the kitchen. Her hair was curled in waves that flowed over her shoulders, as midnight black as the smoky makeup of her eyes and the close fitting classic black dress which hugged her hips in a pencil skirt cut. Sheer black tights complete with a seam and killer matt black heels finished off the look which Nikki knew would frequently enter her fantasies.
Morgana smiled coyly and leant artfully against the wall, the cream of it making the contrast between her skin and the black appear even more striking. “Had a good day, Dear?” she asked in some ridiculously hot mockery of a fifties housewife.
Nikki’s mouth was dry. “Have I... forgotten something?”
“No,” Morgana laughed, pushing off the wall and moving the meet Nikki, her hips swaying. Along the way she collected a glass of wine from the cupboard and pressed it into Nikki’s hand. “So stop panicking,” she leant down to kiss her ‘hello’, “and relax. You’ve been working far too hard lately.”
“No harder than you,” Nikki protested, tilting back her head to see Morgana’s spring-bright eyes, her heels increasing the differences in their heights.
“Have a taste of the wine,” Morgana suggested. “Tell me what you think?”
“Do I want to know how much it cost?” Nikki asked teasingly, bringing the glass to her lips and sipping the dark liquid.
“It’s nothing outlandish, don’t worry. I’m saving that for later.” Morgana’s smile turned mysterious, enigmatic.
Rolling her eyes, Nikki let the wine sit on her tongue, breathing in and letting the taste bloom. There was something... familiar about it. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was sure she had tasted it before. The eagerness Morgana’s eyes told her that she shouldn’t get her answer wrong. Closing her eyes, she let the wine slip back, warming her throat as it went. It was then that it came to her, as heady as the wine, enough to make her dizzy with the thought of it. They had shared this wine once before, the night that began with her spilling said wine over the prime suspect in her latest case and ended with her in Morgana’s bed. It was enough to make her weak at the knees.
...
“There’s something to step over here,” Morgana murmured, guiding Nikki over the bottom of the doorframe and out into the night air. “Be careful.”
“I wouldn’t need to be led if you hadn’t blindfolded me.” Nikki’s voice was more amused than annoyed. She shivered, confused. “Are we outside?”
“Keep going,” Morgana encouraged, ignoring Nikki’s question. “That’s it, let me lead you.”
“I don’t really have a choice,” Nikki muttered, a smile turning up the corners of her lips.
“It’s just a little bit further... We’re nearly there... Okay, stop. You can take of the blindfold.”
When Nikki pulled off the blindfold it took her eyes a moment to adjust, but one thing was immediately evident: they were on the roof. She had never been on the roof before. The view in itself was... breathtaking. She could see half of London - seven and half million people lighting up the black night with a myriad of twinkling lights. And the light show wasn’t confined to the world around their building. The floor that stretched out around her was covered with a hundred flickering church candles, making the roof glow as if it were home to colony of fireflies. Around her in all directions was beauty and light and blackness, a display fit to put the stars to shame.
“Morgana, it’s...” She couldn’t find the words. No one had ever done anything even half as romantic for her before, and she had a feeling that Morgana was just getting started. “It’s beautiful.”
“You like it?” Morgana asked, her nerves showing through for a second.
“I love it,” Nikki assured her, reaching up and kissing every shred of emotion in her heart onto Morgana’s lips. It was the desperate sort of kiss that made her feel faint, every nerve ending lighting up, overwhelming her. It would have brought her to her knees if it wasn’t for Morgana’s arm around her waist, holding her up. She held Morgana’s face in her hands and whispered against her lips, “I love you.”
“And I love you,” Morgana said with easy certainty, “so much.”
...
They ate at a table that Morgana had had to reconstruct on the roof, unable to fit it up the rickety flight of stairs and through the doorway. Two large electric heaters warmed them from both sides, heating the food in the picnic basket and keeping away the chill of the night, and a picnic blanket covered an area about twelve foot square upon which the table stood. Morgana had cooked a replica of the first meal she had ever made for Nikki, the evening after the bar. Some of it hadn’t done too well being kept warm by the heaters, but everything tasted exquisite all the same. If there was one talent of Morgana’s that had definitely been God-given, it was her ability to cook. It had destroyed almost completely Nikki’s desire to eat out. Why pay extortionate prices for something her fiancée could do better and cheaper? Plus, Morgana was irresistible in the kitchen, and they often took dessert in bed. They definitely couldn’t do that in a restaurant.
“I’ve finally gotten to eat my chocolate fondant,” Nikki said triumphantly. “I never did get to pay Harry back for scoffing it all last time.”
Morgana laughed, standing up to clear away their empty dessert plates. “I would have made you another one if hadn’t been, you know, arrested.”
“Mmm,” Nikki murmured, taking a sip of the reminiscing wine. “We didn’t exactly have the best start.”
“Though it’s gotten better, I hope,” Morgana charmed, shooting her an almost Harry-like smile as she closed away the plates in the basket.
“Much,” Nikki agreed.
“That’s good,” Morgana began, and suddenly Nikki realised that packing away their plates had been a cover for getting down on one knee, “because I have a question that I want to ask you once more, properly this time.”
Nikki felt her heart skip a beat.
“The last time I asked you this, you said yes. But I’m not really sure that you should have done. I had a whole thing prepared with a nice dinner and flowers and trip to the theatre, but when it came down to it, I just couldn’t wait. So I didn’t do it properly. You deserve better than being proposed to whilst we were both still in our pyjamas. I didn’t even have a ring,” Morgana apologised, avoiding her gaze. “Well, now, I intend to rectify that.” She pulled a little blue box from the picnic basket and looked up at Nikki with wide, worried eyes. “Nikki, you caught me completely by surprise. I wasn’t expecting to fall in love again. I certainly wasn’t expecting that love to be almost instantaneous.” Her eyes flicked down and back up again, determined to look Nikki in the eye when she said this. “The way we met was so far from ideal that you almost lost your job because of me. You had every right to run for the hills when every piece of evidence seemed to go against me, but you never seemed to doubt me, not even for a second. I can never express how much that meant to me or how integral it was in keeping me strong, that someone I barely knew, someone I had only just met, knew resolutely that I was innocent. Without you I would have fallen to pieces and God knows where I would be now.” She took a deep breath. “What I’m trying to say is that you saved my life and you changed my life. You’ve given me a future to look forward to and made me want things I could never have seen myself desiring before I met you.” Another breath, this time shakier, nervous. She opened the box and held up the ring for Nikki to see.
The platinum band gleamed in the candle light, the intricate etchings on its inside visible with every flicker of light. There was a date there, the date of the day that Morgana had proposed, and their initials intertwined in a way that reminded Nikki of the writing on the spines of old leather-bound books, like the ones in her grandfather’s library when she was a child. Set into the slim band was a beautiful round-cut diamond - not so big as a to look cheap or ostentatious, but big enough and stunning enough to make Nikki’s breath catch in her throat and her skin tingle.
“The last time I asked you this, you said yes. I want you to know that you don’t have to again, not if you’ve changed your mind, not if have doubts. I’m not expecting anything from you. I just wanted to make sure that if you say yes, then you will have something to look back fondly on, something worthy. And if you say no... If you say no, I want to be sure that you will at least understand just how much that it is that I love you,” Morgana explained, her voice strong and clear despite the fact that Nikki could see the hand holding the ring shaking.
“Morgana-” Nikki began, but Morgana cut her off with a pleading look.
“Please, Nikki, say ‘yes’ again and I promise that I will spend the rest of my life making you happy. Marry me?” Morgana pleaded.
Nikki couldn’t breathe. She was hot and cold all over, and she felt as though her heart might burst from all of the perfect, exquisite love swelling inside her. Carefully, trembling, she slipped down from her chair and onto her knees on the blanket, reaching out to brush back the curtain of hair that had fallen forward to hide Morgana’s face.
“Yes,” she said softly, because it really was the most obvious thing in the world. “Yes.”
Morgana’s bowed head snapped up. “Yes?”
Smiling softly, adoringly, Nikki nodded. “Wasn’t me agreeing once good enough for you?” There was a single tear running down Morgana’s cheek. Nikki brushed it away. “Morgana, the last time you proposed was the best moment of my life. The things you said... I never knew I could feel that happy. I want to marry you more than I’ve ever wanted anything else. Surely you know that?”
So Morgana, her eyes damp and her pale cheeks flushed, took the ring and slid it onto her fiancée’s finger, sealing it with a kiss. “I promise that you won’t regret it.”
Nikki cupped her jaw and pressed their foreheads together. “Never,” she promised. “Even though you do seem to have turned into a sappy fool.”
They both laughed.
“It was okay then?” Morgana asked in a small voice that showed just how anxious she had been about getting it right.
“Perfect,” Nikki assured her, “again.”
And there, on the roof, surrounded by candles and the lights of London, below a blanket of stars and wrapped in Morgana’s arms, it was pretty damn perfect.