Jan. 14th, 2008 05:39 pm
Impermanence 2/5
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lovely_ambitionTitle: Impermanence 2/5
Pairing: Glitch/Cain
Disclaimer: They do not belong to me. They really don't.
Rating: PG-13.
Notes: Part One here.
Summary: Two annuals pass and Ambrose begins to fall in love.
His hair had conformed to a style seemingly on its own when the half of his brain that had been missing connected with the one that had always been there. The zipper was slowly removed in several appointments before hair could grow back. Once it had begun to, slowly it came to find its own style of smooth black curls. Ambrose corrected the wayward tendrils in the mirror each morning, recalling how an annual ago, Wyatt Cain had done just that, when he had been more than a mess in trying to desperately get the former Tin Man to someone who could heal the gunshot wound he had attracted.
Cain didn’t seem to correctly remember everything about the shooting. It was that or he simply refused to talk about it.
He had grasped Ambrose’s arm, clutched it so tightly and had begun to recite instructions like a prayer over and over again while Ambrose called his name, to try and get him to stop, to save his energy. Too many instructions began to cause panic to grip at Ambrose’s heart, not wanting Cain to die, to the point that all he could do was plead for Cain to stop, using only his name, Ambrose’s begging growing louder and louder until the man passed out.
The event had been on Ambrose’s mind for some time, now.
Things were resolving themselves now into the little patterns of daily life and twenty-seven months after the Royal Family was reunited, Ambrose found himself wanting to share in the familial joy they so clearly radiated. The problem was that he wasn’t sure he belonged there exactly. The Queen had done her best to include him in her discussions and had even taken it upon herself to bring in the finest ladies from the various courts to have them dance with Ambrose. That seemed less like being part of the family, though, and more that she wanted him to have his own happy story to embark on.
“He has a lovely sense of rhythm,” the Queen would enthuse while Ambrose and whichever woman he was with that day spun around the dance floor in waltzes and foxtrots, in tangos and quicksteps.
Ambrose would always smile politely, but the sparkle in his eyes was never there and he always wished for a different dance, in which he could follow the steps and find himself swept into the rhythm, where he wouldn’t have to think.
One day, after one of the arranged meetings, he gently took the Queen aside. “My Queen, please,” he begged quietly, searching her face for any emotion that wasn’t sympathy towards his loneliness or his time spent reclaiming lost memories. “I don’t know that I can do this much longer. As much as I love dancing, even,” he added with exhaled relish.
“None suit your fancy?” the Queen asked worriedly. “And yet, you seemed so fond of Breanna,” she remarked curiously.
It had to be the climate of the realm. Now that a pattern of order had settled, people had resumed the cycle of life that occurred. DG spent her time around some of the young men who occasionally stopped by to learn to fight from Cain. She spent all her time that wasn’t rebuilding a land in shambles smiling and laughing at all their jokes. Jeb had met a young woman some months back and had taken to asking his father for advice on the matter.
The Queen and Ahamo were, of course, a shining beacon of how love blossomed and made life so much happier.
Apparently, everyone wanted Ambrose to follow in the happy footsteps, the ones that even Raw seemed to also share, given his latest infrequent messages. Every single person Ambrose knew seemed to be taking the opportunity to jump forth, to leap into the unknown and risk their hearts.
“I think you’re imagining things, Ambrose,” Cain said, with that merciless teasing mood hanging off his shoulders like a spring coat. “I mean, think of this way. If the Queen really wanted her way, she’d just have you and this Breanna girl paired off in no time.”
Word travelled entirely too fast around the palace for Ambrose’s liking.
Wearily, he replied with, “Honestly, Wyatt, because I smiled at the woman during a waltz, I’m apparently supposed to propose to her.” He was slumped in the reading chair in Cain’s room, an object that hadn’t been there at first. Ambrose had arranged to move it into the vast space and had positioned it by the fire.
The truth was that Cain spent less and less of his time at the palace these days and had permitted Ambrose to hide within his room to avoid the unending inquisitions that poured in from too many sides.
“Breanna,” Cain was speaking to himself, flecking the last bits of stubble from his cheek as he shaved, preparing himself for a visit out to the home he was building, just on the outskirts of the nearest forest. “She’s young, isn’t she?”
Because merciless teasing was a game that two could play, Ambrose smiled to himself, hiding it with his fingers as he tapped his knowing smile lightly. “You might think that, considering your age,” he replied, light as air and very arrogant to boot. He was barely able to duck the balled towel pelted at him, which evoked a warm laugh from him as he resettled and watched Cain as he went about his routine. “How long will you be gone?” Ambrose asked, doing his very best to appear disinterested.
“Two weeks,” Cain’s metered answer came after a long moment of hesitance.
“Longer than the last visit, then,” Ambrose deduced.
“No one can get math past you.”
Ambrose’s smile was tempered with something other than appreciation at the half-compliment, because his mind was preoccupied with the fact that he would likely have to endure two more weeks of the parade he had already been marching through. “I’ll have you know that I could have deduced two plus two better than you could, even when I was Glitch.”
Cain turned, sitting his hat firmly atop his always-short hair. “You’ll always be Glitch to me,” he informed Ambrose and that struck him so hard that his breath caught in his throat and refused to dislodge until Cain was walking over to him and clasping his shoulder to squeeze it, Cain’s newest and most favourite form of saying goodbye.
When he was gone, Ambrose didn’t lift himself from his chair for some time, taking his moments to sit by the fire and contemplate just how to plead with the Queen to stop the endless offerings of women that were supposed to fill a hole within him that he genuinely had never thought to fill before. He wondered at her desperation and the timing, because she had never been so insistent before the fifteen annuals that no one wished to speak of. He didn’t need fixing, he wanted to shout from the highest point of the palace. He had wanted his brain back in order to take care of himself and become more capable and to feel things properly.
He hadn’t counted on feeling so much ennui.
Eventually, he rose from the comfortable chair and straightened his coat, readying himself for the world outside Cain’s doors.
In a show of what was perhaps the worst possible timing he had encountered in some time, he was closing the doors behind him when he found himself nearly toppling over a poor woman, an arm wrapped around her back to balance her. They wound up half-dipped and her lips were perilously close to Ambrose’s own before he righted them gently.
“Ambrose,” she greeted him, exhaling his name sweetly.
“Breanna,” he offered in turn, smiling and offering her the courtesy of a half-bow. Though his hair had grown back, he still could not make himself bow fully, for the self-conscious panic that tended to grip him when he did. She spent a solid minute fixing the loosely-curled strands of her grey-blonde hair, which bespoke her age and experience, despite what Cain said of her. She was no more than thirty-five, but her stories of the annuals spent in darkness attributed to the early greys that had grown out upon her head. “Can I escort you anywhere?”
“Perhaps to the ball in two days?” she asked hesitantly, her eyes shining in the dim light of the hall.
Cain wouldn’t be back for fourteen days.
Somehow, he sincerely doubted he would be let to miss a ball. “The honour would be mine,” he assured her.
*
Three weeks and some time passed before Cain did come back to the palace and if it weren’t for letters sent back to reassure DG and the rest that he was detained, Ambrose might have thrown a pernicious fit over how the Tin Man so obviously couldn’t tell time and just who was the one with half a brain now. The letter came in though and after twenty-two long days of ladies staring right through Ambrose, Cain returned to the palace.
It was early morning and the only one awake for his arrival had been Ambrose, which suited him well. He had missed the man and was looking forward to recalling the events of the last stretch of time, including his surprisingly enjoyable evening at the ball with Breanna.
The heavy doors were pushed open and the first thing that Ambrose heard was the unmistakeable sound of squelching over marble floors. It wasn’t entirely surprising, seeing as it had been raining since the previous night, but it dawned on him quickly that Cain had let himself get thoroughly and absolutely soaked, without a single concern for his health.
Maybe that pernicious fit would revisit.
Though Cain’s state of wetness was the first thing that Ambrose noticed, something else caught his eye soon after. While he had shaved and his cheek was as smooth as it always was, his hair had begun to slowly grow out. The lightest of pale blond curls caught Ambrose’s eye as Cain approached and tugged him into one of the tightest, largest, warmest hugs he had ever experienced.
Before he could protest and demand to know why he was doing such a thing, it occurred with a drip-plop to the ground.
Ambrose managed a tight smile in Cain’s direction and no words needed to be spoken while the other man just clapped Ambrose on the back and let out a deep and hearty laugh.
Ambrose was completely soaked.
His mind was occupied on more than the fact that Cain had hugged him to get him so spectacularly wet, but between the laugh and the slight extension of his hair, he was beginning to realize (in a painful aching way, the way reality always hit) that there was a very definite reason why he liked Breanna so very much.
She smiled like Cain did, from her barely-there amusements to her giddy laughs. Her hair curled the way his did and though their eyes didn’t share the same colour, Ambrose had enough imagination in one quarter of his brain to pretend, while they were dancing, that she was someone else.
Oh, oh, yes. Reality had a definite way of coming to make itself at home.
Ambrose watched Cain navigate the palace with practiced ease while Ambrose followed, observing that the rain had made the beige trousers stick even tighter and made him wish for the impatience and the straightforward way he had about him when half his brain was gone. Caution, apparently, was a mark of intelligence.
Glitch might have just tackled Cain to the ground, kissed him thoroughly, and announced his epiphany.
Ambrose, however, was all too painfully aware of the fact that he had no guarantee that Cain even remotely felt the same way and for all his subtle signals he sent out to try and ferret an answer regarding Cain’s current leanings, the fact that he still wore his wedding ring was answer enough for him.
He had to tread carefully, he knew.
Cain was waiting for him by the door, shaking a towel through his hair and only causing each curl to intensify, catching the firelight from the room and making Ambrose’s heart ache in a way he didn’t want to experience. Cain, after all, had somehow removed himself from the euphoric dance of pheromones that all of the O.Z. seemed to be under. His eye never caught at a pretty face and he didn’t speak about needing company the way the others seemed to flit towards companionship.
Ambrose wasn’t sure whether or not he was disappointed with that fact.
Because, he reasoned to himself, if Cain had been in the market for someone, Ambrose could be a very persuasive man.
tbc
Pairing: Glitch/Cain
Disclaimer: They do not belong to me. They really don't.
Rating: PG-13.
Notes: Part One here.
Summary: Two annuals pass and Ambrose begins to fall in love.
His hair had conformed to a style seemingly on its own when the half of his brain that had been missing connected with the one that had always been there. The zipper was slowly removed in several appointments before hair could grow back. Once it had begun to, slowly it came to find its own style of smooth black curls. Ambrose corrected the wayward tendrils in the mirror each morning, recalling how an annual ago, Wyatt Cain had done just that, when he had been more than a mess in trying to desperately get the former Tin Man to someone who could heal the gunshot wound he had attracted.
Cain didn’t seem to correctly remember everything about the shooting. It was that or he simply refused to talk about it.
He had grasped Ambrose’s arm, clutched it so tightly and had begun to recite instructions like a prayer over and over again while Ambrose called his name, to try and get him to stop, to save his energy. Too many instructions began to cause panic to grip at Ambrose’s heart, not wanting Cain to die, to the point that all he could do was plead for Cain to stop, using only his name, Ambrose’s begging growing louder and louder until the man passed out.
The event had been on Ambrose’s mind for some time, now.
Things were resolving themselves now into the little patterns of daily life and twenty-seven months after the Royal Family was reunited, Ambrose found himself wanting to share in the familial joy they so clearly radiated. The problem was that he wasn’t sure he belonged there exactly. The Queen had done her best to include him in her discussions and had even taken it upon herself to bring in the finest ladies from the various courts to have them dance with Ambrose. That seemed less like being part of the family, though, and more that she wanted him to have his own happy story to embark on.
“He has a lovely sense of rhythm,” the Queen would enthuse while Ambrose and whichever woman he was with that day spun around the dance floor in waltzes and foxtrots, in tangos and quicksteps.
Ambrose would always smile politely, but the sparkle in his eyes was never there and he always wished for a different dance, in which he could follow the steps and find himself swept into the rhythm, where he wouldn’t have to think.
One day, after one of the arranged meetings, he gently took the Queen aside. “My Queen, please,” he begged quietly, searching her face for any emotion that wasn’t sympathy towards his loneliness or his time spent reclaiming lost memories. “I don’t know that I can do this much longer. As much as I love dancing, even,” he added with exhaled relish.
“None suit your fancy?” the Queen asked worriedly. “And yet, you seemed so fond of Breanna,” she remarked curiously.
It had to be the climate of the realm. Now that a pattern of order had settled, people had resumed the cycle of life that occurred. DG spent her time around some of the young men who occasionally stopped by to learn to fight from Cain. She spent all her time that wasn’t rebuilding a land in shambles smiling and laughing at all their jokes. Jeb had met a young woman some months back and had taken to asking his father for advice on the matter.
The Queen and Ahamo were, of course, a shining beacon of how love blossomed and made life so much happier.
Apparently, everyone wanted Ambrose to follow in the happy footsteps, the ones that even Raw seemed to also share, given his latest infrequent messages. Every single person Ambrose knew seemed to be taking the opportunity to jump forth, to leap into the unknown and risk their hearts.
“I think you’re imagining things, Ambrose,” Cain said, with that merciless teasing mood hanging off his shoulders like a spring coat. “I mean, think of this way. If the Queen really wanted her way, she’d just have you and this Breanna girl paired off in no time.”
Word travelled entirely too fast around the palace for Ambrose’s liking.
Wearily, he replied with, “Honestly, Wyatt, because I smiled at the woman during a waltz, I’m apparently supposed to propose to her.” He was slumped in the reading chair in Cain’s room, an object that hadn’t been there at first. Ambrose had arranged to move it into the vast space and had positioned it by the fire.
The truth was that Cain spent less and less of his time at the palace these days and had permitted Ambrose to hide within his room to avoid the unending inquisitions that poured in from too many sides.
“Breanna,” Cain was speaking to himself, flecking the last bits of stubble from his cheek as he shaved, preparing himself for a visit out to the home he was building, just on the outskirts of the nearest forest. “She’s young, isn’t she?”
Because merciless teasing was a game that two could play, Ambrose smiled to himself, hiding it with his fingers as he tapped his knowing smile lightly. “You might think that, considering your age,” he replied, light as air and very arrogant to boot. He was barely able to duck the balled towel pelted at him, which evoked a warm laugh from him as he resettled and watched Cain as he went about his routine. “How long will you be gone?” Ambrose asked, doing his very best to appear disinterested.
“Two weeks,” Cain’s metered answer came after a long moment of hesitance.
“Longer than the last visit, then,” Ambrose deduced.
“No one can get math past you.”
Ambrose’s smile was tempered with something other than appreciation at the half-compliment, because his mind was preoccupied with the fact that he would likely have to endure two more weeks of the parade he had already been marching through. “I’ll have you know that I could have deduced two plus two better than you could, even when I was Glitch.”
Cain turned, sitting his hat firmly atop his always-short hair. “You’ll always be Glitch to me,” he informed Ambrose and that struck him so hard that his breath caught in his throat and refused to dislodge until Cain was walking over to him and clasping his shoulder to squeeze it, Cain’s newest and most favourite form of saying goodbye.
When he was gone, Ambrose didn’t lift himself from his chair for some time, taking his moments to sit by the fire and contemplate just how to plead with the Queen to stop the endless offerings of women that were supposed to fill a hole within him that he genuinely had never thought to fill before. He wondered at her desperation and the timing, because she had never been so insistent before the fifteen annuals that no one wished to speak of. He didn’t need fixing, he wanted to shout from the highest point of the palace. He had wanted his brain back in order to take care of himself and become more capable and to feel things properly.
He hadn’t counted on feeling so much ennui.
Eventually, he rose from the comfortable chair and straightened his coat, readying himself for the world outside Cain’s doors.
In a show of what was perhaps the worst possible timing he had encountered in some time, he was closing the doors behind him when he found himself nearly toppling over a poor woman, an arm wrapped around her back to balance her. They wound up half-dipped and her lips were perilously close to Ambrose’s own before he righted them gently.
“Ambrose,” she greeted him, exhaling his name sweetly.
“Breanna,” he offered in turn, smiling and offering her the courtesy of a half-bow. Though his hair had grown back, he still could not make himself bow fully, for the self-conscious panic that tended to grip him when he did. She spent a solid minute fixing the loosely-curled strands of her grey-blonde hair, which bespoke her age and experience, despite what Cain said of her. She was no more than thirty-five, but her stories of the annuals spent in darkness attributed to the early greys that had grown out upon her head. “Can I escort you anywhere?”
“Perhaps to the ball in two days?” she asked hesitantly, her eyes shining in the dim light of the hall.
Cain wouldn’t be back for fourteen days.
Somehow, he sincerely doubted he would be let to miss a ball. “The honour would be mine,” he assured her.
*
Three weeks and some time passed before Cain did come back to the palace and if it weren’t for letters sent back to reassure DG and the rest that he was detained, Ambrose might have thrown a pernicious fit over how the Tin Man so obviously couldn’t tell time and just who was the one with half a brain now. The letter came in though and after twenty-two long days of ladies staring right through Ambrose, Cain returned to the palace.
It was early morning and the only one awake for his arrival had been Ambrose, which suited him well. He had missed the man and was looking forward to recalling the events of the last stretch of time, including his surprisingly enjoyable evening at the ball with Breanna.
The heavy doors were pushed open and the first thing that Ambrose heard was the unmistakeable sound of squelching over marble floors. It wasn’t entirely surprising, seeing as it had been raining since the previous night, but it dawned on him quickly that Cain had let himself get thoroughly and absolutely soaked, without a single concern for his health.
Maybe that pernicious fit would revisit.
Though Cain’s state of wetness was the first thing that Ambrose noticed, something else caught his eye soon after. While he had shaved and his cheek was as smooth as it always was, his hair had begun to slowly grow out. The lightest of pale blond curls caught Ambrose’s eye as Cain approached and tugged him into one of the tightest, largest, warmest hugs he had ever experienced.
Before he could protest and demand to know why he was doing such a thing, it occurred with a drip-plop to the ground.
Ambrose managed a tight smile in Cain’s direction and no words needed to be spoken while the other man just clapped Ambrose on the back and let out a deep and hearty laugh.
Ambrose was completely soaked.
His mind was occupied on more than the fact that Cain had hugged him to get him so spectacularly wet, but between the laugh and the slight extension of his hair, he was beginning to realize (in a painful aching way, the way reality always hit) that there was a very definite reason why he liked Breanna so very much.
She smiled like Cain did, from her barely-there amusements to her giddy laughs. Her hair curled the way his did and though their eyes didn’t share the same colour, Ambrose had enough imagination in one quarter of his brain to pretend, while they were dancing, that she was someone else.
Oh, oh, yes. Reality had a definite way of coming to make itself at home.
Ambrose watched Cain navigate the palace with practiced ease while Ambrose followed, observing that the rain had made the beige trousers stick even tighter and made him wish for the impatience and the straightforward way he had about him when half his brain was gone. Caution, apparently, was a mark of intelligence.
Glitch might have just tackled Cain to the ground, kissed him thoroughly, and announced his epiphany.
Ambrose, however, was all too painfully aware of the fact that he had no guarantee that Cain even remotely felt the same way and for all his subtle signals he sent out to try and ferret an answer regarding Cain’s current leanings, the fact that he still wore his wedding ring was answer enough for him.
He had to tread carefully, he knew.
Cain was waiting for him by the door, shaking a towel through his hair and only causing each curl to intensify, catching the firelight from the room and making Ambrose’s heart ache in a way he didn’t want to experience. Cain, after all, had somehow removed himself from the euphoric dance of pheromones that all of the O.Z. seemed to be under. His eye never caught at a pretty face and he didn’t speak about needing company the way the others seemed to flit towards companionship.
Ambrose wasn’t sure whether or not he was disappointed with that fact.
Because, he reasoned to himself, if Cain had been in the market for someone, Ambrose could be a very persuasive man.
tbc
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