Late
Title: Late. Fandom: Assassin's Creed.
Author: write_rewrite
Rating: PG-13.
Pairings: Shaun/Desmond.
Warnings: Craaaack.
Notes: Blame themulletbullet for this.
Summary: It's their wedding day and Desmond is late.
It was already two o'clock, and the room was three quarters full, and Desmond hadn't so much as phoned. Shaun was a patient man - entirely too patient for that bloody bartender - and wasn't about to start raving over Desmond being a tad late but, on the other hand, Desmond was being a tad late on their wedding day.
That was rarely, if ever, a good sign, and Shaun didn't feel so good now that he'd started thinking about it.
"Rebecca?" who looked stunning and somewhat sacriligous in a backless blue dress, but it wasn't like they were in an actual church anyway, and Shaun was just nit-picking out of fear now, "have you seen Desmond?"
"I thought he was with you," she offered, which was only slightly more help than 'what a stunning tie you have' and only half as pleasing.
Shaun's face twisted into an unpleasant expression for just a second, and rapidly snapped back into a pleasant half-smile - that camera-man was loping around like a tiger in the grass, and had an uncanny sensor for telling when a face had shifted into an expression other than 'mildly ecstatic'.
"Oh, right!" he exclaimed, loudly enough that folks clear on the other side of the room lifted their heads, "I forgot that I shrank Desmond down to pocket-size just a couple of days ago, I must've left him in my other jacket. Silly me, guess the wedding's off!"
A portly guest - from his mother's side of the family, whom owned a perpetually hard-up dog that had never really learned the difference between Shaun's leg and a female dog - put a little sausage roll in his mouth and chewed over the last part of that speech. Shaun felt like strangling him, and then strangling Desmond, and then perhaps meeting a nice Arabic lad for a revenge bunk-up.
However, the only thing more hormonal than pregnant mothers-to-be in their sixth month are broody groom-to-be historians fastly approaching their fourth half hour of waiting. His thoughts pinwheeled, suddenly, from 'Desmond, you are a dead man' to 'WHAT IF HE IS A DEAD MAN?!' (capital letters included).
Abstergo couldn't have possibly tracked them down...
No. Shaun straightened subconsciously, as though he could ward off the feelers of an encroaching monolithic company by good posture alone, and straightened his jauntily-patterned tie (it had knights on it) and marched over to the wide doors to look outside again.
The green was lush and verdant and fairytale-precise, and empty. There was no man in a white hoodie, there was no man in a suit, there were no men of any description hanging about on the lawn or on the flower-shrouded walls or off a neighbouring rooftop. Men of all kinds were clearly off doing something that men did - chopping trees or watching television, perhaps updating Facebook in between fist battles with grizzly bears - and his particular man was not coming. He'd changed his mind. He didn't want to take this step with him at all.
"Could've bloody told me. Got dressed up for nothing. My mother's been nattering my ear off all morning about children, Rebecca's here, that one creepy lad from the bar showed up and talked for hours about my boyfriend's arse, Rebecca made it," grumpily, Shaun plonked himself down on a stone bench just outside the wall, wishing he could materialize a bottle of Jack Daniel's at will, "I had to take a day off work, which made the headmaster angry at me, people have been teasing me for ages about being the ball and chain, and he invited Rebecca."
Shaun sniffed, and wasn't ashamed to rub openly at his eyes, though he would write it off as bird flu should anyone try and get him to acknowledge this. Nobody would, mind you - located within that room just a few step away were the people who knew Shaun best, a few that knew Desmond best, and a few that didn't know them at all but had tagged along as the 'plus one', and the only thing that these people had in common was that they all knew an unhappy Shaun should be avoided.
Besides, there were very few things to say to a jilted groom; that's why there were cards.
They'd been so happy. Shaun settled his bunched-up hands on his knees, and stared at a patch of gravel, the glinting bumper of a vintage Bentley, half-doubtful that they'd ever really been happy at all, if Desmond had fled in the end. This wasn't - hadn't been - how their freedom from Abstergo and the Assassins was supposed to go. There wasn't supposed to be this kind of pain anymore; that kind of pain that sunk in so deeply, it was as though nothing would ever feel right again.
Desmond had left.
He was sitting alone, with around forty people in a room behind him, in a brand new gray suit, on his wedding day.
And Rebecca was here.
Lowering his head to his hands, Shaun muffled the urge to cry, to curse, and just savoured the rare warmth of a summery day in Britain and the free singing of the birds.
Anger would logically follow sadness, though perhaps not so soon, but the more that Shaun tried to think of things that annoyed him about Desmond - like his utter lack of knowledge about history, his habit of folding socks rather than rolling them up, the way he let Malik onto the bed when Shaun wasn't around - the more that they seemed like petty, small things, not worth this; so, what had it been? Had he just grown tired of him? Maybe he wasn't attractive to him anymore without the Animus messing with his head; maybe all that there had ever been between them was based on the mental manipulations of his ancestors.
"Shaun?" Desmond asked, in a gentle and disconcerted voice, "are you alright...?"
Shaun looked up with reddened eyes, and a terrible case of The Sniffles (bird flu, as its proper name was) and glared at him. Hard. As hard as one could glare in glasses, The Sniffles and a groom's suit.
Then, Shaun lifted one of his bunched fists, and punched Desmond in the stomach, though this was slightly less hard and slightly more of a non-verbal 'I am going to kill you as soon as we are married' vow.
"I'm sorry I'm late - traffic, and there was this kitten in a tree, and I got pulled over by the police because they thought I was drunk..." Desmond babbled, a remarkable feat for someone who was currently using his kidneys as tonsils.
"Because you keep driving on the right, you pillock," Shaun dug deep into his pockets for a handkerchief, as the one Desmond offered should be kept for later, when the afore-mentioned vow was put into practice, "we drive on the left."
Desmond sat by him, and pulled Shaun's handkerchief out of his right pocket, holding it out wordlessly.
Shaun took it without a thanks, and wiped his teary eyes. The wind was picking up a bit, and it pulled a springy bough laden down with small purple flowers over their heads, and the petals scattered wildly over the two of them. Desmond dusted them off his lap, silent.
"I thought you weren't coming," Shaun admitted, though the words had to be forced to leave his mouth. "I thought you'd changed your mind."
"Babe," Desmond said, and swung his arm around Shaun's shoulders in such an over-exaggerated manner that Shaun had to smile, "I took down a company for you; a little ol' wedding's not gonna frighten me off." The smile grew just a tinier bit, more for the exaggeratedly American accent than the actual words. "Your Momma, on the other hand..."
"Right. Took down a company, yet you are terrified of old ladies." Shaun's smile dipped a little, crushed against the solid wall of Desmond's chest as the strong American all but dragged him into his lap for a hug, and he wasn't sure what he'd been thinking before. It all seemed stupid, now, with Desmond hugging him the way he always hugged him after work (like they'd never see each other again) and the American's familiar hard, toned body, and his broad, muscled arms, against him and around him.
He kissed the top of Desmond's head, though it was greater than the bartender deserved, and squealed in mild shock as the world suddenly shot up a couple of feet. His legs were lifted off the ground - and Desmond spun with him, underneath a rainfall of lavendar petals, and then placed Shaun back down.
That infectious grin - lopsided because of the scar - flickered on and didn't go out. "I can't wait. Come on, Shaun, let's go, we'll mingle with the guests a couple hours, then we'll take off. Can't wait to get you alone, Mister Hastings."
Shaun swallowed a flirtatious comment back, paranoid that Mum would be perched just behind the doorway to listen in, and nodded his head. He allowed Desmond to walk in first; heard the smattering of 'Desmond!' and 'Boy!' (his mum).
They were really going to do this. Here and now and in front of friends and family -- this was happening. This was real.
Shaun closed his eyes, and steeled himself -- the castle had first been a bishop's hall, which was then converted to a castle in 1129 by the Chancellor of King Henry the First and it had been held under siege during the first Baron's War that occured during the reign of King Stephen.
Re-opening his eyes, Shaun took a last look out at the background - the rolling hills were green and vibrant, and here and there, white stones and turrets rose in sight. Desmond had picked this place, just because he'd thought he'd like having a historical background.
That was, granted, quite a nice thing that Desmond had done - but Shaun still dawdled on his way in.