| Home for the Holiday |
[Dec. 26th, 2007|07:43 pm] |
'Twas the night of Christmas, and in the double-wide
A creature stirred at the stove, careful not to burn his hide.
His companion seated on a newly-bought chair,
While smells of vegetarian lasagna danced 'round her hair;
Rhiannon in her best, and Whislter in his hat,
Had just settled down for an untraditional meal (lean, not fat),
When from the fire detector, there arose such a clatter,
He sprang into action, to deal with the matter.
"Jesus!" Whistler grabbed the potholders and dove towards the gourmet offense. He threw open the oven door and retrieved the slightly burnt garlic bread.
Unceremoniously the metal pan clanged onto the stove top, and he spun ninety-degrees using his right foot to close the metal beast while frantically waving the holders in the air to disperse the smoke and silence the alarm.
"Give me those." Rhiannon scraped a chair under the smoke detector and climbed on it. Instead of fanning the pot holders, she ripped the cover off and pulled the battery out. The eruption of noise stopped. "What're you, expecting a visit from the fire marshall?" The battery thudded on the floor and rolled under the fridge, alongside untold numbers of dust bunnies and formerly frozen peas.
The air reeked. She got down and went to the front door, then made an effort to push some air out of the trailer by opening and closing it. "Christ... That's what you get for watching Wheel. You're making me feel 80."
"It was that or 'Pimp My Grandmother'," the Agent winked. Christmas fare on television was sparse at best and the idea of a fake yule log with muzak-muzzled holiday tunes ran shivers up his spine. Definitely a demon-spawned idea. Give people a sneak-peak of what awaits them in the afterlife.
The hatted man watched as the battery disappeared, made a mental note to retrieve it. Like he'd done when the first two spatulas were accidentally kicked under the stove, or the spilled change from the pizza he'd ordered last week. In the future, archeologists would puzzle over the time capsule contents in Whistler's kitchen.
If Gerald let them in.
He dug out the garlic bread from the pan and threw the edible pieces into a wicker basket laced with paper towels, and set it on the table. Most of his compensated check from Star went to refurbishing/renovating his trailer, with the main treat being an actual three-piece dining set. Whistler gave the contents a once-over: vegetarian lasagna (check), garlic bread (check), caesar salad (from a bag, check).
"Dinner is served. Can you make it back to the table," he asked with a smile, "or do I need a wheelchair for your geriatric ass?"
Rhiannon slammed the door. "I only do wheels under the car." There was a pitcher of tea on the table; it made for a more civilized holiday meal than two bottles of beer would, and besides, alcohol had been the theme last year, and last year...
Instead of sitting, she curled a knee into her chair and poured the hot brew over the ice in their cups. When that was done, she looked around for anything else. "Oh, hang on." Over on the couch with her coat, there was a lump in a grocery bag. Rhiannon went and picked it up. "Dessert," she explained, "But you can't see it yet." She put it in the third chair and then scraped her chair up to the table.
Lasagna for Christmas dinner. It wasn't traditional like ham and deviled eggs and rolls; this was more them. Despite the strangeness of the sort-of anniversary, she was relieved to be there. Relieved that they could still sit in the same room, relieved that she was alive at all. Had she stayed at home, not only would Rhiannon have ended up eating from a can, but it would've felt too vacant.
"Okay, now I'm ready." She scooped a hefty square of lasagna on Whistler's plate, and then mirrored with hers. She set the spatula down and a string of cheese clung to her finger. Rhiannon sucked it into her mouth.
Whistler picked up and shook a bit of sugar into his glass, then pushed the canister towards the Slayer. He absently stirred the tea, ice and crystals with his spoon. "Helps the medicine go down, eh?" Of all he was, Mary Poppins wasn't on the list. The chimney sweep was a better fit.
The Agent gave silent thanks for his company at the table, and that they could share the time together. He wasn't sure if Rhiannon would accept, but the holiday was empty without being with the people who mattered.
"I've got somethin' for after too," he offered, a knife now slicing effortlessly through layers of noodle, eggplant, spinach, diced tomatoes, meatless sauce, and cottage and mozzarella cheese. "Not edible though. Just a heads-up." Whistler eyed the bag on the third chair, hoping for a glimpse.
Rhiannon scooped out an ice cube and threw it. "Quit peeking."
She dried her fingers on a paper towel. The smells from the lasagna made her stomach growl. Without any further encouragement, the brunette pushed her fork into the entree and cut a bite-sized piece. "This smells insane." She blew on the steaming mouthful and tasted it. "It id inthane," she garbled around the hot cheese. After swallowing, Rhiannon raved, "Thank god, I would've starved at my place," and stuck her fork in the salad bowl.
A few bites later, the ruckous in her midsection settled down. She took a sip of tea. "Okay. So what've you been doing?"
Whistler lifted a piece of the bread and dipped it into the sauce surrounding his piece. It'd turned out much better than he'd hoped. And for the first time in weeks, he felt like himself and inspired to cook. He held a cough as his tongue was assaulted with an attack of garlic.
"Aside from diggin' up dirt on Atia? Which is harder than findin' a woman under thirty at a Tom Jones concert." He put down the bread and instead scooped another bite of lasagna onto his fork, allowing it to cool naturally. "Got into a metaphysical poker game -- which I thought I was goin' for money but instead played for magicks.
"What about you?" he continued, then making quick work of the food on his fork. "I remember a mention about being tortured."
Rhiannon groaned. "Mmm, tortune. Awesome dinner topic." She popped a bite of lettuce in her mouth and chewed it into nothing. The fork turned between her fingers. "I did an interview with a vampire-- shut up!" She jabbed her fork at the air. "Anyway, it backfired, big surprise. All it took to get out was a little help from my good friend Elfleda. Plus some other stuff." The tines on her fork flashed beneath the overhead light. "But I'm okay. I took out a nest in a railcar and now I'm right as rain."
It wasn't the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but Whistler would know that. He'd also know that Rhiannon would tell him everything in time. She put the fork down and tore her bread into pieces. "So I'm guessing you won the poker game."
"Heh, railcar." Whistler inhaled a third of his sweet tea, then returned to the lasagna. "That was the password. Faced three of 'em, loser in each hand didn't live to see the next sunrise." There were blanks in the story the Agent didn't need to fill. His dining companion knew he kept the most dangerous cards close to his chest, and played them when needed. "So wait," he continued, finally venturing to his caesar salad. "Does this mean I should be expecting an exposé on the bookshelves called 'Interview With a Vampire Slayer'? Do I need to practice my 'no comment's when asked if you prefer boxers or briefs?"
"No, you should tell 'em the truth." Rhiannon winked. "I prefer neither."
She bit another piece of bread and sighed. Across the room, Whistler's traditional Charlie Brown tree twinkled. Ornaments were sparse. She figured he probably lost a few when the trailer got trashed a few months back. Ugh, Elfleda's little experiment in defiling. Now the Slayer was going to help her? Like everything else in the world, things were never as cut and dry as they should be. Sometimes you had to pick between the worse of two evils.
"I guess if you found something on Atia, you'd have mentioned it by now." God, an actual piece of information she could use, what a concept! Things were easier back when monsters were in the books.
Whistler attempted the bread again, this time forewarned of the garlic. He noticed Rhiannon's glance at the tree, but whether she'd noticed the package propped up against it was unknown. Her poker face was better than his.
"Nothin' historical," he offered in response. "Who she was before Leviathan took her on, though I've still got irons in that fire. All I know for sure is that Atia's the redheaded step-child in the family. Last to be picked in a shirts versus skins game of corruption, ya know? Very much the capitulate or perish sort. Portal summonin', demons, just like Elfleda. Might have magicks on her side but that's not confirmed."
"So... new star trying to prove she deserves the spotlight." Rhiannon poked at an ice cube with her utensil. "Reckless like a vamp fledge." She cocked a brow and reconsidered the comparison. "No, reckless like a Slayer fledge. Great." She remembered back in the first months of being called, on a visit to Cleveland where it was ten girls to one Watcher, things had gotten ugly under the pressure of competition for attention. Some Watcher types seemed to get off on it. Imagining that on the dark side of the fence? Not pretty.
"Well, I guess I know how I'll be spending the new year. Fending off... fucking hellhounds and whatever else she summons up from the bowels of hell. Tell me something happy." Rhiannon got back to eating.
As Rhiannon processed the minimal information gathered, Whistler finished his salad and topped up his tea. With the ice quickly melting, he excused himself to retrieve more ice cubes and dropped two into his glass, and motioned to the Slayer if she wanted the same. "Something happy..."
The wheels turned behind his eyes as the Agent looked for something to put a smile on the brunette's face. An image flashed. "Jennie staked her first vampire last night."
"Yeah?" Rhiannon put up her hand to indicate no more icecubes. A smile broke across her face. Even if she hadn't been there to see it, she felt proud. Couldn't help it. Rhiannon had no hand in training the young Slayer, but Jennie was the only girl she ever helped find. It felt... incredible. Just to see it happen from the other side. Now she got Whistler, at least a little. "Took a while. I think her Watcher's protective." Which is good. "Did she at least get a black eye out of it?"
She shoveled the last of the main course into her mouth.
He kept the pipeline open a bit longer, gathering as much information as allowed. "A bit more than that, yeah." Whistler replaced the tray into the freezer and took his seat again. "Got a coupla' hairs yanked out at the root, nasty gash across her back."
He took the last bites of his lasagna, savoring the taste as it disappeared. "Don't say I told ya," he continued. "But you can expect a letter from her about it. Act surprised."
"I'll be uncharacteristically overwhelmed," she promised.
Rhiannon wiped her mouth and tossed the napkin aside. "You ready for dessert, or you wanna wait?" She reached for the bag and hesitated over it.
"I wouldn't say no," he nodded, and took a swig of his drink. The glass now on the table, he wiped his hands on the napkin resting on his lap, then rubbed his digits together in greedy delight. "And I took an Omega 3-6-9 this morning, so bring on the cholesterol."
The bag crinkled when she picked it up, so Rhiannon figured she heard him wrong. Her hands stilled on the bag for a second. "I'm sorry, a mega what?"
She kept unwrapping. It might've been just the pie pan wobbling, but it looked like the brunette's hand shook a little under the dessert's weight. Slowly a confection of brown and dark red was revealed. Rhiannon placed in on the table, alongside the bread. "Chocolate... raspberry pie. Voila." She balled up the plastic bag and stuck it in her lap. "See I actually baked. And I hope you appreciate it, because I had to learn what unpricked pastry shell is. Unpricked."
"Unpricked." It took the weight of the world on Atlas' shoulders to keep himself from making the obvious comment. But a smirk surfaced, with a twinkle in his eye. She'd know what he was thinking.
"You. Baked," he continued. There was no malice or sarcasm in the two simple words; just the surprise and (surpressed) delight from the hatted man. There was a Santa Claus and Christmas was a time for miracles. I believe. I believe. I believe. "I'm... fuck, I'm... wow. This calls for the good china."
The good china, of course, were the unchipped plates, which Whistler quickly retrieved. He remained on his feet a moment before dashing over to the tree. As presents went, his would pale considerably compared to Rhiannon's offering. He walked back and held the oblong, bulky wrapped object close to his chest.
As he placed the gift on the now empty third chair. "Shall I cut?" he asked, a bit nervously.
"Yeah, sure." Rhiannon wet her lips and reached for the gift. "I guess I should open?" Without really waiting for him to answer, she slipped a fingernail under the tape. If she opened while he cut, he wouldn't watch her face so closely. Knowing he was nervous for her reaction made it twice as hard to have one.
Whistler carefully dragged the serated blade across the width, then sectioned the pieces so that there were eight in total. He retrieved a clean spatula from a nearby drawer and slipped two pieces onto individual plates, the first to Rhiannon. "It's the thought that counts, right?" he spoke, eyes unable to meet hers.
Rhiannon ignored him to peel back the wrapping paper. Inside, there was an over-sized, leather-bound sketchbook, with pencils and charcoal included. The letters RIL were engraved in the lower-right of the cover. She pushed the pad of her thumb into the initials and smiled. "Hey..."
The brunette looked up. "This is gorgeous." Her thumb moved back and forth. "I really like it." She smiled and gathered the package to her chest. "I like it a lot." It meant the world that he gave her something from before, a part of her that she saved outside of slaying.
Rhiannon watched him dish up the pie. "By the way, the pie wasn't my gift." She chewed her lip.
He cut through the raspberry chocolate delight with his fork, scraping a liberal piece up towards his mouth. "I was gonna get your name written, but I think the initials give it a, uh..." his lips touched the pie as Whistler searched for the right word. The mixture lit up his senses, and he slowly chewed. If one had superior hearing, a whimper might've been detected.
"Holy shit!" he finally pronounced. "Fuck slaying," the Agent teased. "You need to open a bake shop."
"Shut up or I'll poison it next time," she joked.
Rhiannon leaned up from the chair while her fingers foraged in her hip pocket. They closed around an old piece of notebook paper, creased and printed with black ink. "Okay. So... I was a dorky sixteen-year-old. I used to keep a diary." She produced the folded paper and ran her fingertip over the scruffy edge.
"This entry's about you." With some difficulty, Rhiannon handed it over. "I keep a box of stuff from back then. Most of it's crap, but," she pressed her lips together, "I wrote that in March. So five months after I met you. It's about everything that was going on. Life was getting really hard."
She tried to make herself be quiet and held the charcoals tighter. Then she blew the lid off it anyway. "It says, 'I wish Whistler was my Watcher'."
Rhiannon shook her head. "And I know that's stupid, you know, like a hormonal teenager just saying... I wish I had a million fucking dollars and different parents and pretty hair, but it was true. It was how I felt."
He stared at the paper, not just at the words but the meaning, the intent. It opened a doorway into the past and he could see a young Rhiannon Isabel Lee, sitting on her sparse bed, legs brought up almost to her chest, as she wrote the entry. Her longish hair brushed back. The barely audible sound of pen against paper.
It wasn't a memory plucked, or an approximation of events. It was a vision, and it became a part of him.
"And you kept it all this time," he finally answered in whisper. "I... I'd have sucked you know. As one of those white hats. But. I'd always be there. Always will."
"I know." Rhiannon simply shrugged and stuck her fingertip in the raspberries on her plate. "But when it's late at night and I'm sleep-deprived and thinking about how I turned out... sometimes I still wish it. Obviously you and me... romantically, that wouldn't exactly have worked worked out, ethics-wise, with being a Watcher and a Slayer. But when I think about what Watchers are supposed to mean for a Slayer emotionally... you were it. So thanks."
She reached out and shoved the pie at Whistler. "Now eat, okay?"
"Because we're way too ethical in our day-to-day lives," the Agent snorted in return. He wasn't sure if he should return the page; he wouldn't want to rob Rhiannon of a page from her journal. Some day, after archeologists have dug through his scrap heap of treasures, they might stumble across her diary, and discover what wealth really was. "Imagine if that television show was real," Whistler continued. "Fans would write some steamy fan fiction about you and your 'hot' watcher."
He took another two bites of the pie. He hadn't exaggerated (much). It was quite good. "Unpinched," he giggled to himself. "You know I'm gonna have to work this off at some point. Don't suppose you'd wanna train sometime? Or have an old man tag along your patrol?"
"Absolutely." Rhiannon tucked into her pie without taking the diary page back. It was for him. "If that TV show was real? I'd be a lesbian."
Whistler enjoyed the rest of his pie. "That's right, just feed 'em ideas."
"Like fanfic writers need me to give them disturbing ideas." Rhiannon cut her eyes at Whistler and finished her dessert. |
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