bakerstreet | A reunion worth waiting for

[ prefs ]

[ most likely the one "waiting", but can also play a gentler sort unable to place your muse in danger for some reason or another. au's and canon welcome. ]

( definitely writing this from my 63! sam account but, how comfortable/willing are you for a deanna? )

[ Oop, I vanished, but I'm always open to a Deanna! I had an awesome chemistry with one once, though she went with "Dana" so I'm forever biased. ]

[ I have a character who regularly lives in a different dimension, so if you're down with crossovers, that could leave anybody waiting.

I can also provide more info on her if you'd like! ]

[It's easier to put Beth in the role of the person waiting, but she can take either role. Interested in both canon and cross-canon CR, happy to do things in her world, your character's world, or a jamjar! Kinklist here if you want it.]

Edited 2018-08-18 18:50 (UTC)

[ ooc: his modus operandi, to be honest. He is likely the returner. ]

[Shall we?]

[ oh yes. Mary's time period?? ]

Three months previously, the man she had known as Benjamin Adams had suddenly reappeared in her life under a different name. Mary remembered him from when she was about fourteen and had visited Downton. Seeing him at a party so many years later had unnerved her. He looked exactly the same as she had remembered and was now going by a different name.

Benjamin had then shared his secret with her, the fact that he was immortal. At first, she hadn't believed him. It was ridiculous. But all of the pieces fit together too well: the fact that he hadn't aged, the fact that he seemed to know everything about the time periods of the past, more than one person could learn just by reading about them. Mary begrudgingly accepted his explanation.

Meeting him again as an adult was different. She had thought him handsome when she was a girl and had enjoyed listening to his stories. Now, she was a beautiful woman. A widow, but Mary knew that she was still pretty. Benjamin apparently thought so too and soon the two of them were together. Mary kept it a secret from her family. She had no idea how to explain him to them.

She had been staying at his flat in London for several days. He had already warned her that sometimes he up and disappeared, and that when it happened, she should try not to worry about him. For the past three days, she hadn't seen him at all, and despite his warning, she was concerned. Even though he couldn't die, she still wondered if something had happened to him. He didn't usually make her wait like this when she visited.

It was a warm night in London and Mary had the windows open to let some of the breeze in. Her nightgown was a thin satin with tiny straps to hold it up, and her hair fell down her back in a long braid. She couldn't sleep. After sitting at the window and looking out at the city lights for a while, Mary got up try to go back to bed. That was when she heard the door to the bedroom open. She turned and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Benjamin was back.

"Thank goodness," she said as she moved quickly across the room to embrace him.

Back then, he hadn't really thought that anyone would have bothered to remember the face of one simple Doctor. He had been just another of the many who came and went from such parties. He hadn't really considered the span of mortal memory, least not of a single young lady. He had thought he could return, leaving Dr Adams behind to become Abraham Lif. It had been easy to return to Downton as a lawyer instead of a doctor and no one had seemed the wiser of it.

No one but Mary.

Mary who had grown so much. Mary who had gotten so beautiful. She recognized him still and he had found himself willing to share it with her. His secret. He didn't feel the need to cut himself and heal before her eyes, but only because he saw in her a sharp intelligence that said that she would believe without grizzly demonstrations. She'd had enough ugliness in her life for him to add to it in such a way.

Once he had told her, he found is easy to chase after her. He didn't care that she was a widow. He was a widower so many times over he doesn't care to say the number out loud. Her status didn't matter. What did was how beautiful she was and how alive she made him feel. Around Mary, he could remember what it was to be mortal again. He could see in her the vast wonders that had become old and stale to him. She gave him a new life. He just wished he could give her more in return.

More than the heartache of having to sneak around. More than the sadness that came from his sudden unscheduled disappearances. He had warned her about that and while he honestly can't feel guilt like a normal man might, he does feel something like that when he returns to his home to find her waiting for him.

How long has he kept her waiting this time? He knows he can't explain his absences. She deserves more than flimsy excuses. Instead, he hangs his coat and holds his arms out just as she finishes crossing the room.

She is soft and warm in his arms, as she always is. Her presence washes away the dark deeds he must do when he's gone. He holds her close and drops his nose against her bare shoulder to breathe her in. Breathe in home. "Hello Mary. I wasn't expecting you." He kisses that shoulder. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting. I hope I didn't make you wait too long for me." Because he actually does. He knows Mortals are on a much tighter time table than he is. He worries that one day, she will realize this and move on to a more appropriate man. Someone that would give her status and power and wealth as well as children. Someone she didn't have to hide.

Her greatest worry is that when he disappears he is off with some other woman. And why shouldn't he be? He has nothing but time and his unique situation makes it very easy for him to flit from woman to woman. It's probably easier that way. Committing to a relationship means that he will watch the person he loves grow old and die. As such, she knows that the two of them together won't last forever. It can't. But for now, he's what she wants, and she can't bear to think of him in the arms of another woman.

Mary can't smell any strange perfume on him though, which pleases her. "Three days," she replies. "I was worried you wouldn't come back." She threads her fingers through his hair as she tilts his head back up towards her. Mary presses her lips to his, opening her mouth against him as her hands immediately start to loosen his tie and unbutton his waistcoat.

If he were another immortal, she might have been valid in that worry. There were those of his kind that did dally like that, going from woman to woman, leaving lines of broken hearts in their wake. He is not among them. He knows a mortal's span is a short one and for that time, he is with them, he is with only them. Though he may have to leave, they are his world and he remains with them until they don't want him anymore or until they die. Either way, he mourns them deeply when he loses them either by their unwillingness to pick up and move every thirty years or so or by the simple ticking of time.

He likes to believe that Mary will want him around a while longer and he knows he has at least three decades as Abraham before him. Between immortal business he doesn't want to ever involve her in, he wants to spend as much of those coming decades with her.

"Only three days?" He lets himself be stroked and guided. She's a demanding and passionate woman. He likes that in her, encourages it. His kiss back blazes hot to make up for that lost time. "It felt like an eternity to me. Every second without you stretches on endlessly." He seems to mean it to with how close he holds her, lips warmly seeking to remember her taste even as she divests him. He does nothing to stop her, instead encouraging her by clever hands slowly traveling the softness of her nightgown.

"It certainly felt like an eternity to me," she replies. He must feel time differently, due to his immortality, but she's happy to hear that he missed her so much.

She doesn't know if they have 30 years. Downton will always be her home, and she can't see herself wanting to ever leave it. They have right now though, and Mary plans to make the most of it.

His waistcoat is opened in a flash and she reluctantly removes his hands from her body so that she might get the item of clothing off. At that point, she pauses before pushing the straps of her nightgown down her shoulders. The satiny fabric drifts down her body like a whisper and lands in a puddle around her feet, leaving her bare from the waist up.

Her lips are back on his as she continues to coax him across the bedroom, tugging gently at his belt buckle.

[ Here for all your wanted-criminal-on-the-run needs. ]

( ooc: prefs )

[ The song the band plays is slow and hopeful, the singer croons on about the calm after a storm, the rainbow that comes through the clouds. It was hard for Peggy not to think it was all rubbish. Endings seem to rarely be happy.

He'd asked for a raincheck on their dance. And she'd agreed. It had been a week since Steve had crashed landed the Val. It'd been a week since she'd last heard his voice. It had been five days since she'd been put on leave, forced to step away from the search for his body. She'd been at her wit's end and her heart was broken, shattered. There hadn't been any news since then. It was time to move on, they said. There was no hope for him.

And yet on that Saturday night, she sat at a table at the Stork Club, alone. Around her couples of all shapes and sizes dance, the war's winding down and there's reasons to celebrate. Peggy could barely lift her lips into a smile to thank the waiter for bringing her a drink. She didn’t have to check her wristwatch to know there was less than a minute until eight o'clock, her sense of timing had always been good.

She thought that he won't show up. He was gone and it was impossible. But she'd came there all the same because she'd made a promise. She'd finish her drink and go back to the office to throw herself into some paperwork. Most people would feel foolish, sitting there waiting for someone who wasn't going to come. And with every passing second, she felt her heart breaking a fraction more. Maybe she was a fool, to torture herself. But in her own way, it had been a tribute to him, the one last thing she could have done for him.

To say goodbye.

And just as she was about to stand to leave, to retreat back to the office where she's been forced to fetch coffee and fill out paperwork… She’d heard his voice, apologizing for being late.

It was a whirlwind reunion, a thousand questions raced through her mind and yet all she could do was scold him for being late, the words breathed out like a woman who had a weight on her chest. And well, lookers on be damned, she kissed him right then and there. She thought he was dead, she thought she'd lost him forever. And she never thought that they'd be here, together.

He wasn’t the worst dancer. Just a little clumsy on his feet and by the end of the night, he’d gotten a few of the more popular dances down. He explains what happened to him once she’s able to get over the shock of his appearance.

Maybe it was the champagne, maybe it was the fact that she’d almost lost him making life feel far more precious… But as he lingers outside the door of her room in the boarding house she’s been staying in, she looks up at him.]

Stay with me.

[ He'd wanted it to be a surprise.

More importantly, he hadn't wanted Peggy to worry. He wasn't even conscious for the majority of the week in question since he'd been pulled from the Valkyrie. Head trauma, Howard had explained to him when he'd woken, the kind that would've killed him instantly if he wasn't, well, him. Steve hadn't realized it at the time, too in and out to remember whether Howard had bothered to mention it before he was better able to retain the information, but he was being treated in a private wing of an Army hospital in New York. A wing owned by Howard Stark himself, as he hadn't been too modest to point out. They hadn't known if Steve would wake up. Peggy didn't know. Steve had nodded (and then regretted the motion and vowed not to do it again), and asked Howard to let him be the one to tell her.

He'd agreed, and maybe would've been happier if Steve had waited a little longer to tell her. His head's still tender, but he counts himself lucky, and he'd already gotten sick of staring at the same four walls, private or not. After pointedly wondering aloud if they were really meant to be keeping him in, Howard had agreed to bring him clothes — his dress uniform — and Steve had checked himself out against medical advice.

He swears seeing her does more to make him feel more like himself than another week in the hospital could've achieved, to say nothing of her lips on his. He accepts her scolding — he knows she's truly grateful, but he had been trying like hell to get to her on the dot. At least he can dance, though maybe he'd be a little less clumsy if he didn't have to take it slower than he'd like.

He'd only been thinking about whether or not he could kiss her again, as he'd walked her to her door; for a moment he's not even sure he heard her correctly. ]

Is that allowed?

[ He damn well wants to take her up on it, throat dry at the mere thought. But he knows places like this all have their own rules, and he doesn't want to cause any more trouble for her than he already has. ]

[ Peggy would sort Howard (and whoever else thought it better to keep her in the dark) out on her own time. For now, she selfishly basked in the revelation that Steve was alive, perhaps a little worse for wear but alive. She didn't even mind the few times he stepped on her toes if only because it reminded her that he was gloriously real and solid. Not some dream.

His question isn't surprising nor does it catch her too off guard. After all, despite that one indiscretion with Private Lorraine, he'd proven himself to be a gentleman. She was eager to help him shed that part of him, along with that uniform of his. Perhaps it was fast-moving and reckless but if she'd learned anything from this experience, it was life was so very fragile. It could end at any time and their job, the war was far from over. The world still needed help. They'd have to be there to defend it soon enough. ]

More than likely but... [ Her lips curve into a impish sort of smile.] Perhaps just this once, I would like to say: damn the rules. [ She offers her hand.] Will you stay?

A reunion worth waiting for

kylo ren ( STAR WARS ) ota

"ghost" | mcu | ota

Greyson Lorde | OC

Effy Stonem || Skins

sam winchester | supernatural | ota

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Dutch Velders | The Strain

Allison Argent | Teen Wolf

Dazai Osamu | Bungou Stray Dogs

James Griffin | Voltron: Legendary Defender | OTA

Matt Holt | VLD

Simon (PL600) | Detroit: Become Human

Lance | VLD | OTA

Orga Itsuka | Gundam IBO | OTA

Agnum Bulletheart | Shining Resonance

Paul | Pokemon | OTA

Jyn Erso | Rogue One | OTA

beth greene | the walking dead | ota

Methos | Highlander | OTA

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no subject

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trish walker | mcu

sam wilson | mcu | m/m

Itachi Uchiha | Naruto

steve rogers | mcu

anders | dragon age | ota

Steve Rogers | MCU

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Kieren Walker | In The Flesh

Nico Acosta | OC | M/F

Evie Montgomery | OC | F/M