Naturally, I could not resist participating in @mercurygray's Blind Dates again this year! I'm not getting a bonus cookie this time around, as I have paired this new OC with someone I've written a fair few times already (hello Nix!), but I think this is certainly a bit of an "off the beaten track"-path I've suddenly found myself on... A strong warning here, guys, as this OC's got a mouth on her and the nature of her profession at the infamous Lulu's does turn this conversation a little.. questionable in places. 😉
Merc was lovely enough to provide us with nifty banners this time around (ty!), so I'm going to stop rambling and introduce you to...
There is nothing like the swirl of amber at the bottom of a glass. He’d almost pressed his nose against the carafe when he was still a child, determined to find out if it harbored the same dragonfly wings some of his mother’s jewels did. He’d been convinced of spying the soft lace structure in its burnt umber shade, of seeing the gossamer spread of flight twinkle in its brightest golden hues. If he looked hard enough, taking care to not ruin the glass with his hands or his nose, he could still see the flutter bubble forth from its depths.
Lewis Nixon tips the amber-coated dragonfly liquor into his mouth and feels the slip of wings unfurl down his throat and take hold of his belly. Long gone are the days when the sensation turned him giddy, though the warmth still spreads down to his toes. They should have warmth like that, all of them, once they head out into the winter woods. His demands to put the liquor on the Army supply list have yet to be met, let alone be taken seriously. There is nothing to help stave off the cold, not where they’re going.
It’s enough to drive a man to drink more, and grasp warmth where he can.
He misjudges the stretch of space between himself and the bottle. Or, rather, stops in mid-air as another hand closes around its neck before his fingers can reach it.
“Last pour?”
“It would be,” he snipes, not caring one whit about that perfect manicure but stopping short of touching that hand all the same, “if you took your hand off my bottle.” Lew knows his gesture at her and then at himself isn’t perfect. Thinks he gets the point across well enough, especially as he takes a moment to emphasize the obvious. “I’m not interested in anything beyond that drink.”
“The girls already mentioned that,” she says, with a warm lilt sing-songing her otherwise rather clipped words. “They say you are not interested in any of our buxom ladies, or our few exotiques”– comes the near-French hum of a lady born and raised around this part of the world –“nor in the tall blonde or the very freckled redhead who can put a smile on anyone’s face.”
Tap-tap goes one red-coated fingernail against the bottle’s neck. Lew snorts out something that could be annoyance or recognition. He’s not sure which, though once he raises his head he realizes it is very much both.
Her hair is perfectly coiffed in today’s fashion, with only a small curl near her ear escaping confinement. Red-lipped is the pout that seems to come natural to her, with big doe eyes blinking at him in what he knows to be well-faked innocence. She’s coltish, this one, dressed in a faded floral that bares the top of her breasts even before she leans toward him, and Lew spies long legs and heels beneath the skirt that even his sister would deem scandalously short.
“I am not interested in you,” he half-smiles, thinking he recognizes her efforts for what they are, “but nice try, sweetheart.”
The flicker of amber in her dark eyes is a warning Lew heeded far too late. “Oh, I was not trying,” she refutes. A familiar flatness has entered her voice. “If all you do is drink, then you can go drink in another place. If you do want a girl, or two, or five, then you pay upfront and right now.”
Lew blinks. Then stares. “You’re kicking me out?”
Her shrug is a special form of callous, or so he decides when she takes the seat opposite his own and tugs his bottle over to her side of the table entirely. There’s only a small swirl of flight still trapped inside that bottle. Just a bottom of a pit he doesn’t want to crawl out of. All of it escapes containment now, with her hand tipping the bottle back, with her lips closing around its mouth and suckling it dry with well-practiced ease, with amber droplets lingering at the corner of her insincere smile once she sets the bottle down again.
“I was drinking that,” he says, snapping for real now that she’s emptied his bottle and taken ownership of his space. “I came here to drink, not to entertain the likes of you.”
Her brow quirks. “You came to a brothel to drink instead of fuck? Aren’t you special.” The derisive snort is one he’s definitely heard back home more than enough times to count. In fact, he’d say his wife would give this woman a run for her money where that is concerned. “Sure, you can be the drunkard in the corner who might still finish in our youngest’s hand before stumbling home to his bunk. That’s usually no skin off my back”– follows another shrug –“but you carry rank. Enough rank to rattle our paying clients. Enough to worry the girls. And I don’t want them getting ideas, hm?”
“What sort of ideas would that be, hm?” Lew cannot help mimicking her speech any more than he can stop the damned sun from rising tomorrow. “My apologies, Madam Lulu”– he nods, fully aware that the press of crowd around them carries more than enough soldiers who’d ordinarily refer to him as sir –“but this drunkard’s disgrace is a well-known fact among your clients.”
“It’s Valerie, actually,” she corrects, waving her hand airily now that there’s no need to cling to his bottle any longer. “Lulu was my teddybear once. It had the cutest button nose”– a smile, fleeting but real this time before it turns into a shark’s grin –“and it felt great to hold its head between my thighs, mm?” Her leg stretches. Brushes against his just so. “I held on to that bear even when maman called me too old for it, obviously.”
“Charming.”
“I sell the pleasure that bear once gave me,” she smiles back, seemingly undeterred by the frost he’s allowed to creep into his own voice, “and so do the girls here. Refusing them all is not something that happens, you see? And when someone does, well, then… others may take it as invitation to refuse, too, n’est ce pas?” Again the amber flutters in her gaze, as though the last of the liquor is seeking flight. “They will drink, and they will make merry, and they will drink even more. I will be out of stock before the night is up, but that is not the problem. Oh no!” She lifts a single finger. “They will drink and then they will haggle price. They will drink and then they will take a girl or two to bed, or share a girl between them. And then they will have drunk so much that they will not get it up so easily, and then the blame will start…”
“And your girls might get hurt,” he finishes for her as her pause is a little too long.
“Just so, oui.”
“All this because I sit and drink? I am a married man, you know.”
Her scoff is entirely derisive. “The majority of men here are married, so I will thank you not to use that for an excuse.”
“Maybe I don’t feel like taking anyone to bed tonight? Been a hell of a day, Valerie,” he comments, nudging her leg with his foot until she grimaces and withdraws. “Lot on my mind.”
“It’s a war,” she says, “don’t we all?” Valerie’s chin comes to rest atop her hand as she studies him. “Poor little rich boy, hm? Not used to all this work, not used to foreign whores who don’t beg for him to marry them, not used to having reasons to drink and piss away all of daddy’s fortune.”
Lew smirks. “You are certainly one to talk. Tell me,” he says, mimicking her gesture, “how does a poor little rich girl become the madam of a brothel? Must be one hell of a story.”
Her gaze shutters a moment before she regains her bearing. “Backstory costs extra.” Her tone is flatter than ever before. “In fact, that would cost more than being swaddled in a blanket like a babe and mothered over the way one of those Nazi officers always requested. But tell me, sir”– and oh, the venom that drips from her tongue carries more sting than any alcohol –“what gave me away?”
He tilts his head. “Your command of English, lightly accented but impeccable otherwise,” he nods. “Your hands are not like some of the others I have seen here, less calloused by far. You don’t look straight at me, but at a point just beside my head. You make an excellent conversationalist, or you would if you did not mention using your own poor teddybear’s nose to help you ride to climax”– and here Lew cannot help smile, imagining those long legs wrapped around such softness for a moment until his trousers feel almost tight–“and you know how to deal with poor drunken sods like myself by steering them away from whatever meets your disapproval. Truly, chapeau. Whatever does your daddy have to say about his daughter, I wonder?”
“Last I heard, he stopped his whoring just long enough to divorce my mother,” she says breezily, “and that information will be an extra tenner on top of all the tenners you already pissed away at this table tonight. Want to keep going? I’ll keep talking until your whole trustfund is in my possession, and then where will you be?”
“Nice to know you care enough to warn me, Valerie.”
“Oh, so you suddenly buy something I sell after all?”
Lew shifts in his seat. “Easier to believe the lie, isn’t it?”
“That it is.” She hums a moment, lingering on a few stray bars of a song that’s been playing at the periphery of his mind all evening, before her amber-hued gaze flits over to a space just behind him. “I have a client waiting, and I believe I told you to leave if you are not going to buy anything but a drink and lies tonight.”
He follows her gaze. Cranes his neck long enough to spy some D Company men raising a glass to their table. “What, all of them?” he laughs, nodding back at them before turning his attention back to her. “Or did good ol’ Sparky send his men to fetch you for him?”
“Speirs? Heavens no, never him, I am not to his taste,” comes the twinkle of laughter, very real now, and the fact that she recognizes both nickname and man makes Lew groan. “One of his men always pays me a handsome sum to talk and fuck the night away. He said you’d be his new leader soon, though, so naturally I had to come see you for myself. Charlie will be curious what I made of you, hm, don’t you think?” Valerie rises to her feet in a flurry of motion and grace. “Nice meeting you, Mr Nixon. Be sure to tip little Aimée, who’s been running to find your special liquor in our stores all night, before you leave. The steep price of her usual finish should do it, no?”
Lew grimaces. Raises his voice at her even as she sweeps away from his table. “It’s Lewis, actually. Mr Nixon is my father!”
Her raised eyebrow is imperious as she turns on her heel. “Somehow,” she spits back, amber eyes burning holes into the very depths of him until his insides quail, “I very much doubt anyone could tell that difference at this hour.”
@mercurygray was doing her Blind Dates event again this year and since I had so much fun doing it last year, I knew that I had to write something for it again. I used a random name generator and got the name Alexandra Wolff. So here’s my entry that I wrote for the Vikings fandom (which I’ve started camping out in since doing the event last year).
The only downside is that this was supposed to be nothing more than a short intro to introduce an unknown OC and to establish her as the leading character. But by the end of it, I had a full blown fic on my hands for some reason. I’m so sorry, Merc 😅
Title: Cheated Hearts
Pairing: Ivar Lothbrok/Original Female Character
Word Count: 4700 😅
Summary: Alexandra Wolff hates Valentine’s Day with a passion and a messy run-in with a stranger certainly doesn’t make her feel otherwise...
If she had to look at another teddy bear with a tiny red sweater that had “I love you beary much” written on it, she was going to scream.
She would. Right in the middle of the goddamn store. Right in front of all the customers that flocked to the counter with all kinds of Valentine’s Day themed shit with the biggest smiles plastered all over their dumb faces.
“This shit, it’s all a lie. Commercial bullshit, all designed to make you spend money for one perfect evening. Then a month, or a year from now if you’re lucky, that same person will tear your heart out of your chest and then they’ll eat it right in front of you making it the last thing you see before you die.”
That’s what she desperately wanted to say. Maybe it would break the spell for one of these saps at least.
Instead, all that Alexandra did was produce her best plastic smile and then told the customer to have a great day. She needed this dumb job to pay the bills, she couldn’t afford to get fired. Not again.
At least the day was almost at an end.
She couldn’t wait to stop at Starbucks on the way home so she could get a frappuccino. Her one indulgence of the day. The rest of the evening would consist of nothing more than curling up on the couch with some leftover mac and cheese while watching Fatal Attraction.
It’s not like she had always been this bitter. From the time that she was old enough to even realise what Valentine’s Day was, she would eagerly wait for the mailman, but apart from two cards from her best friend at the time, there had never been a card from a secret admirer to declare his undying love for her.
Sure, she’d had boyfriends during Valentine’s Day, but none of the guys that she dated had been considerate enough to buy her something. One of them realised halfway through the day what day it was and had opted for a handwritten note with “roses are red” scribbled on it. That had been sweet at least, but afterwards she found out that he’d written similar notes to at least three other girls in school.
That had not been a good day.
Standing in line at Starbucks and seeing a couple of loved up couples in the place made her remember the reason why she had even started to hate this day at all.
Her last boyfriend, he who shall not be named, had been pretty perfect at first. Though she might just have been viewing him through a pair of very rose tinted glasses all along. He had been the one that kept going on about how commercial Valentine’s Day was, even going as far as implying that if it hadn’t been that he would have bought her something.
No, the fact that corporations were telling him that he had to buy his girlfriend something on this specific day, that’s what was the problem.
It wasn’t like he ever bought her anything on his own.
Oh no, wait. He bought her a book once, some dumb romance novel from a writer that she’d never even heard of, and then he actually told her, “You like to read, right?” So it wasn’t like that had been a particularly thoughtful gift. Didn’t help that he mentioned that he’d found it in a bargain bin either.
Yep. Really lucked out with that douchebag.
Her mind had been filled with all the other shitty things her ex had pulled when she walked out of Starbucks and turned the corner. Didn’t help that she hadn’t been looking where she had been going at all.
Nor had the hard body that she suddenly found herself colliding with.
Her caramel frappuccino fell from her hand, landing on the floor with a great big smack, sending the contents flying all over her old white sneakers and white trousers. It also stained the light grey trousers and leather shoes of the guy in front of her.
Usually she’d apologise profusely, but Alexandra’s day had been so shitty that her first reaction wasn’t anything like it normally would be.
“Son of a bitch! Well, that’s just great!”
It wasn’t until she looked up that the rest of her words left her completely. For the blue eyes that were looking straight back at her were the most beautiful eyes that she’d ever seen. There was a whole storm raging inside them and it was sadly directed straight at her, but it did nothing to deter their beauty.
“Are you done?” The anger was dripping from his voice, obviously, but it took her aback nonetheless. “You fucking ruined my trousers.”
“Maybe if you’d been looking where you were going…”
“Me? You’re the one that wasn’t looking!” She’d been so focused on his angelic features, which she’d sadly angered, that she hadn’t even noticed that he had been leaning to the side slightly, one shoulder slanted downward. “It’s not like I could have gotten out of the way.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you could have…“
Her eyes moved downward (over the wide expanse of his chest, which had her clenching her thighs reflexively), and down his legs that she noticed the outline of something underneath the wet fabric that was clinging to them. It was also at that moment that Alexandra noticed the cane.
“Oh.”
She’d walked straight into someone with a leg injury. As if this day couldn't get any worse. She could have seriously injured this guy if she'd walked into him with enough speed and he had taken a fall. Thankfully, all that she had done was soil his trousers.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“What do you want me to say!”
“That you’re sorry? That you'll pay for my dry cleaning bill?”
“Excuse me?” She looked down at his trousers again, they didn’t look particularly special to her. The shoes, now they obviously were expensive, but the trousers? “You can put your Gap trousers in a washing machine. I’m not paying for that.”
“Gap?!” His voice went up a few octaves, obviously insulted that she had implied that his trousers looked cheap. “They’re Armani.”
“Well, congratulations. Good for you,” she bit back, sarcasm lacing her voice now. “I’m still not paying for that. Or is Armani so special that it’ll disintegrate in a washing machine?”
"The fabric needs to be handled with care," he replied with a practised sneer. "Something that you obviously wouldn't know with your bargain bin clothing."
Alexandra's nostrils flared in anger. Sure, her clothes weren't that expensive, and yes, the trousers had been on discount, but that was uncalled for. It wasn't like everybody could drop what she considered to be a small fortune on a pair of trousers.
Her eyes fell on a half full cup on a table, filled with some unidentifiable brown sludge, coffee from the looks of it, and before her brain had the time to register what she was doing, she picked it up. At least she had the common sense to take a step back first before chucking the contents all over his trousers and shoes. There was no need to get herself more dirty than she already was.
"What the fuck!"
Very calmly, Alexandra reached into her bag, dug out her wallet, grabbed a banknote and shoved it against his chest. "Here." She produced another one of those massive plastic smiles, the millionth one of the day. "I'll gladly pay to have that dry cleaned, asshole."
He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times like a fish, obviously trying to come up with a response and failing miserably, but she wasn't going to stand around and let him hurl more abuse at her. With the smile still on her face, she walked around him without saying another word and walked back home without a care in the world.
Despite the fact that her trousers were filthy and that her socks and shoes were wet, she barely noticed it. That encounter had left her on a high of epic proportions. The perfect way to unload after a long and exhausting day.
It wouldn't be until much later, when she was sitting on her couch and crying into her ice cream over the sad state of her love life, not even Glenn Close going after Michael Douglas with a knife able to lift her spirits, that she felt horrified over her earlier actions. This wasn't what she was like and knowing that she'd even let her emotions get to her like that… All because everything leading up to Valentine's Day pissed her off to no end.
There was little that she could do about it now though, because it wasn't as if she'd ever see the mystery man again.
*****
Another day, another day closer to Valentine's Day.
There were only a couple of days left and then all this sugary sweet madness would be over.
Alexandra wasn't sure if she could handle any more of this nonsense. Not when her heart had been torn out almost a year ago to the day now, which was why she had come to loathe this day so much to begin with. Seeing hearts all over the place, the myriad of cards with sickly sweet words, signs everywhere urging people to buy even more shit for their sweethearts…
She was pulled out of her thoughts when someone placed a basket on the counter. Peeking inside, she groaned when she saw the contents. She looked up, seconds away from greeting the customer with her customary plastic smile…
"Well, well, well. Fancy meeting you here."
"Oh god." Her face fell when she looked at the man in front of the counter, the same guy that she had thrown drinks on yesterday, once accidentally and then deliberately the second time. "Good afternoon, sir," she said through gritted teeth. "How can I help you?"
"This is the gift wrapping counter, isn't it?"
"As you can see." She pointed at the little sign next to her. "Can I see your receipt please?"
It was practically shoved in her face. Fine. She guessed she had that one coming after what she'd done yesterday.
Glancing in the basket once more, she rolled her eyes. How many things were even in there anyway? Must have been six different things. Since he didn't look like the type of guy that would lavish just one girl with such attention, Alexandra immediately assumed that it must have been for several different ladies.
"What was that for?"
"Hm?" She barely looked up from the first item that she had fished out of the basket, a snowglobe with a bear holding a card with a heart inside it. "I didn't do anything."
"You rolled your eyes." She shook her head and wrapped up the present. "Why?"
"No reason," she remarked with a voice completely devoid of emotion. "You bought a lot of stuff."
"Oh, so that's why." He leaned over the counter to look at what she was doing and right when she'd been about to move the first present to the side to start working on the next one, he tapped on the paper. "Not like that. Do it… neater."
"I could always give you some paper so you can do it yourself, you know?"
"And why would I want to do that?" Her growing annoyance only made his wicked grin grow. "This is a nice service that this store offers so I'm going to use it."
The aim of the game was obviously to make her suffer, she had realised that much, and she needed this job. It wasn't like she could refuse to help him, because she just knew that he'd complain to management for the sheer enjoyment of it.
So she gritted her teeth once more, kept her head down and helped the Prince of Darkness to the best of her abilities. He made her redo the wrapping of at least three other presents, but when he noticed that he wasn't getting a rise out of her like he managed to get yesterday, he seemed to drop the matter entirely.
When she finally put the last of the items in a paper bag, she handed it over to him, without the big smile this time, because she had ceased giving a shit, and said, "Have a very pleasant day, sir."
"I'm sure I will. Especially now," he said with a smug smile. She longed to wipe it off of his face, but she could hardly reach over the counter and actually do it. The muscles in her jaw clenched and there was a brief flash of some indescribable emotion on his face, making him pause for a few seconds before finally turning away. "Until next time."
Alexandra watched him hobble out of the store and she hoped to god that this didn't mean that he'd be visiting regularly with the aim of torturing her some more in the future.
*****
"It'll be fun." Sigrid held on to her hand, gripping it like a vice. "You'll see."
"It won't be. I'll be miserable all night."
"You are not going to spend the rest of the evening sitting around at home and being even more miserable. This way you can be drunk and miserable." Before she could open her mouth, Sigrid had turned around and hugged her tightly. "No more thinking about that douchebag, okay?"
"I can't just-" Her friend's arms were so tight around her that it made her wonder if this was what it was like if a boa constrictor had wrapped itself around your body and was busy squeezing the life out of you. "I'm fine."
"Like hell you are." When Sigrid pulled away, she flicked Alexandra in the middle of her forehead. "You wouldn't even reply to my texts the last couple of days. You need this."
"I need vodka shots?" She chuckled then, reminded of how Sigrid was practically trying to bang down her door earlier as she threatened to stand there all night if she had to. "Alcohol doesn't solve every problem."
"It will this time." Sigrid flashed her a smile and started tugging her along to the bar again. "Trust me!"
They reached their destination of the evening shortly after and Alexandra was pulled along to an empty table in the corner. Sigrid disappeared to the bar and came back with the first round of shots later.
The next twenty minutes were spent shit talking her former boyfriend and though Alexandra longed to dismiss men altogether, she knew that Sigrid had started dating a new guy about a month ago, so she focused all her negativity solely on her piece of shit ex.
Only one more day to go and then it would be exactly one year-
"Please don't hate me."
Sigrid got up and smoothed out her skirt. Alexandra frowned, not entirely sure why her friend even said that at all. Craning her neck, she saw Sigrid disappear into the crowd and approach a guy who she promptly embraced. And then kissed.
Oh fuck.
The happy couple approached the table and it wasn't until she could see another guy walking right behind them, that she realised that she'd been set up. This wasn't just a drinking session between friends, this was a double date.
"Alex." Sigrid's smile was unbelievably sweet, even when she was being levelled by Alexandra's angry stare. "I want to introduce you to someone."
"Hi." Her new beau seemed unperturbed by the fact that she wasn't hiding the fact that she was incredibly pissed off. "I'm Ubbe." He held his hand out to her which she took, not wanting to be too rude. "Nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you."
"Great," she replied with a flat voice. "I'm Alex. Sigrid's clueless friend."
Sigrid didn't look too pleased with her right now, but she didn't care. She was beyond livid at the moment and she would be sure to let her friend know all about it later. Ubbe merely laughed in reply and when he stepped to the side to reveal the guy behind him, Alexandra nearly dislocated her jaw.
"No." She got up and held her hands up. "Nope. Not happening."
"So we meet again.” The guy behind him, or her nemesis as she now liked to call him, pulled a chair back and sat down next to the one that she had vacated. “Not that I was expecting to meet like this, but I’ll take it.”
“Ivar.” When Ubbe said the guy’s name, it sounded like he had uttered it in that way quite often, instantly giving the impression that he had scolded him before. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Like hell you did!” Alexandra pressed her index finger into his chest until he focused those stunning blue eyes on her again. “You are the single most unpleasant person that I have ever met in my entire life.”
“Need I remind you that you threw coffee on me. Twice.”
“Oh fuck. That was you?” Ubbe sounded impressed now, though she wasn’t entirely sure why he would be impressed that she’d almost assaulted his brother. “I apologise for my baby brother,” he sounded genuinely apologetic. “I don’t even want to know what kind of shit he pulled for you to do that.”
“Hey!”
“I know you, Ivar.” Whatever else Ivar was going to say, he was effectively silenced by his brother’s angry stare. “Why don’t I buy the next round, huh?” He pulled Sigrid to the side and spoke to her in a hushed voice. Ivar, meanwhile, was sitting in his chair with his arms folded, looking every inch the petulant child. “I’ll be right back.”
“Alex.” Sigrid tugged on her sleeve to stop her from trying to stare a hole right through Ivar’s chest. “Toilet break.” Alexandra wanted to say something in reply, about how she was leaving, but Sigrid held a finger up to let her know that she wasn’t allowed to say anything. “Now, Alexandra!”
Since Sigrid hardly ever used her full name when addressing her, it was enough to get her to follow her friend meekly.
“Okay, so what’s the problem here?” Sigrid asked as soon as they got to the ladies room.
“That guy is an asshole!”
“So this is the coffee guy, right?” She’d already told Sigrid all about it on the way to the bar of course, and also about what had happened when he came to the store yesterday. Alexandra nodded. “Well, that’s just great.”
“Why‘d you even trick me like this?” Now it was Alexandra’s turn to talk. “You know I don’t like double dates, not after the last disaster.”
“Yeah, I know, but if I’d told you that I’d invited Ubbe and that he was going to bring his brother, you wouldn’t have come.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t have!”
“I just didn’t want you to spend all night wallowing in your own misery, okay?”
“I wasn’t going to-“
“You were. Don’t lie.” No reply came, because Sigrid was able to see straight through her bullshit. “So just hang out for a bit, have a couple of drinks. Not like you have to get off with Ubbe's brother, right?"
"I wasn't planning on it so don't worry about that."
"He sure is cute though."
"His personality isn't," Alexandra replied. "Trust me on that one."
When they rejoined the two guys, Ubbe had gotten the drinks and was talking to Ivar in a hushed voice. Their talk ended abruptly at their arrival and Alexandra sat down in her seat once more. She glanced at Ivar, his expression unreadable. His brother kept grinning at her though and she wasn’t entirely sure why that was happening, but she shook it off.
The conversation flowed easily. Ubbe was a genuinely nice guy and it was plain to see that Sigrid was head over heels in love with him. He displayed a similar level of affection to her, which was nice to see.
Ivar, for his part, kept relatively quiet. Alexandra noticed that he would look at her out of the corner of his eye occasionally, when he thought that she didn’t notice, and she kept waiting for an apology to come, but he never offered one up.
Why he was even here at all was something that she wondered a few times. With all the gifts that he bought at the store, one would be inclined to think that he was too busy to spend the evening before Valentine’s Day in a bar, tagging along with his brother on a double date. Ivar didn’t appear to be getting any messages from his mystery women either. He only glanced at his phone once, only to put it back in his pocket with a slight frown.
But why the hell did she even care anyway? What he did in his spare time was of no concern for her at all. If he kept his foul mood under lock and key, he was probably quite pleasant to be around. Ivar was easy on the eye after all. There was no denying that.
Still, it was nothing that she should even be thinking about. It didn’t matter.
It wasn’t until they had been left to their own devices, with Sigrid and Ubbe a little bit too occupied with each other, in the process of sucking each other’s faces off, that Ivar finally found the courage to talk to her.
“My mother.”
Alexandra looked up and straight into those eyes that had no right being that blue.
“Excuse me?”
“My mother,” Ivar repeated his words. “The stuff I bought yesterday. It was for my mother.”
“As if I’d believe that!”
Ivar pulled his mobile out of his pocket and pulled up a picture before handing her his phone. “Look,” he said simply.
Looking down at the screen, she found herself staring at a picture of an older woman, with a face like she had been a supermodel in a former life, with that hideous pink sweater with the red hearts on it that Ivar had bought yesterday. In her arms were all the other things that he had bought, the big pink bunny plushie right in the middle. It looked like she was in tears from laughing too much and Alexandra couldn’t help but laugh as well.
“That’s my mother,” he repeated one final time before taking the phone from her, his fingers brushing against her hand gently. “I do that every year. Buy her hideous stuff like that for Valentine’s Day just to make her laugh.”
“That’s so sweet,” she blurted out and she instantly cursed herself for even admitting that out loud. The self satisfied smirk on his face made her cringe. A little. “But why?”
“So she won’t be reminded of my father.” He sighed when he saw her questioning look. “He disappeared. Years ago now. We think he’s in England, but we’re not sure. No one’s spoken to him in years.”
“That’s terrible.”
“I know. Their marriage wasn’t great, but we never thought that he’d just leave like that.” There was a deep overwhelming urge to reach out and grab his hand, but she fought it. “I’ve been doing that ever since, because she deserves the attention.”
“That’s a really lovely thing to do.” The urge won out in the end and while she did not grab his hand as intended, she did at least pat the back of it and then let it rest there. It was obvious that he really loved his mother. “Very sweet.”
“So I recognise the pain, you know.” Alexandra frowned at that, not knowing what he meant with those words initially. “In you, I mean.”
“Oh.” She looked down at his hand and how he had turned his own hand upwards to grab hers. “But I’m not… it isn’t…”
“It’s okay.” He gave her hand a comforting squeeze. “Whoever he was, he’s obviously an asshole.”
“Thank you.” Her breathing stuttered, almost choking when he said that. She got up from her seat so quickly that she knocked her chair over. “I-I think I need some air.”
Not thinking of grabbing her coat, she headed straight out into the street and the first thing that hit her was the cold air. There were a few seconds where she contemplated heading back in again, but decided that maybe the difference in temperature would help and clear her head.
When the door opened again and Ivar hobbled out into the street with her coat in his free hand, she almost started crying there and then. Instead, she sniffled and rubbed at her eyes, to stop any potential tears from falling at all.
“You forgot this,” he held it out to her and she put it on quickly. “Want me to stay?”
“It’s a free country,” she said with a nervous laugh, but when he didn’t respond she added a quick, “Yeah, sure. I don’t mind.”
The silence between them afterwards was pleasant, for want of a better word. Ivar simply stood next to her, leaning against the wall like she was doing. She swore that she almost saw his lips move from the corner of his eye a couple of times, but he must have been as much at a loss as Alexandra was.
Waiting for the questions made her nervous and almost made her blurt out a hasty apology herself, but the words didn't form. It would be too difficult to explain away after all.
For where does one start this sad sob story? The one where she was happy in a relationship, oblivious, but happy, only to find out about her then boyfriend’s betrayal by accidentally walking in on him having sex with someone that she had considered a friend?
It was such a fucking cliche too, like something straight out of the movies, but at least Alexandra could boast that her first reaction to seeing this hadn’t been to run off whilst crying. No, her first instinct had been to grab some hideous ceramic that his mother had gifted them, which he had insisted be placed in the bedroom so she was forced to look at it every morning that she woke up, and she had lobbed it straight at the couple.
It had shattered right on her back, because she hadn’t even bothered getting off of him, and then she’d screamed bloody murder at Alexandra, who had very calmly stood in the doorway and had told both of them to get the fuck out her house. The exact same level of calmness that she had displayed when she had first met Ivar and had thrown that second drink on him.
How does someone even start a story like that? She’d only start rambling incoherently and then he’d obviously be so put off by this display that he’d never want to see her again. And she kinda did want to see him again, didn’t she?
Christ. She was royally fucked.
“So…” She finally opened her mouth, opting instead to blurt out some hasty apology even if she had no idea what to say. “The thing is…”
Ivar had turned to her at the exact same moment that she had, but instead of listening to her lame ass excuse, his free hand moved to the back of her head and he dipped his head down to close the distance, their lips finally meeting.
The kiss was gentle and soft, his lips moving against hers slowly. She kissed him back, of course she did, how could she not. It was slow and sweet, no pressure, but with a hint of more if she so desired. When he broke away, she chased after him, giving him a final quick peck before all contact was broken.
His smile was almost as gentle as the kiss and then he said, “I don’t have to know.” She didn’t know what to say to that, having been successfully stunned into silence. Instead she found herself looking down at the hand that he was offering her now. “You want to come back inside?”
The lovely @mercurygray organized the second Blind Dates OC Fest, y’all, and I came out of hibernation on this blog to gift you a little something for that! I plucked a name out of my brain for this one, gave her a little in the way of backstory, and put her with good ol’ Bill Guarnere and company... I do not write Wild Bill very often at all, hehe, and so it seemed like the right thing for this particular ‘assignment’. Hope you’ll enjoy!
the many-lettered words
Seven letters horizontal. The close of a day.
Well, that one’s easy enough. Pippa reaches for the pencil she tucked away in one of the braids mother had insisted she wear today. Lifts it out of her hair triumphantly, with only a small wispy curl becoming airborne at the motion, and puts it to the paper in front of her face.
E-V-E-N-thump!
She hisses between her teeth at the rude interruption of sound. Scowls at the paper, which now sports a rather shaky start of an I for the next letter in her puzzle.
Thump! Thump!
Thwack!
She groans out loud. “Not this malarkey again.”
Pippa is disappointed to find, upon tipping her head back, that it is exactly this malarkey again. Or, well, better said, it’s the Americans again, and somehow that has felt like the same thing over the past month or two. In fact, she’s quite certain that the appearance of the Americans is wholly synonymous with any sort of malarkey that has ever occurred over the past fourteen years she’s been alive and quite possibly far longer than that.
Synonymous. She likes that word. It had been the 51 vertical in the puzzle three days ago, which had only taken her two tries to get right.
Thump! Thump! Pippa’s eyes narrow at the ball that somehow manages to be even noisier than the football the boys at school favor. It’s been plaguing this exact spot of pavement for weeks now, right across from the one spot that is great for climbing and thinking, and there are nights in bed when she thinks she can still hear the thump-thwack of what she’s certain is called a dribble-and-score.
Really annoying American game. Ten letters. B-A-S-K-E-T-B-A-L-L. Pippa sounds the letters out in her head alongside the thump-thwack of another loss dealt to the same guys that always seem to lose this game. She hardly knows why they bother to play, especially when one of the winners has a voice like a foghorn on the best of days. She thinks she would stuff his mouth full with the remnants of that stupid ball before she would tolerate hearing another “hehehe” from him.
“– slow like them tractors ya drive back in Kokomo, Tab!”
Oh, and every other word he toots into this world is unintelligible. She must not forget that.
Pippa sighs as she returns to her crossword and finishes spelling out evening. She doesn’t like the puzzle in this newspaper nearly as much as the one in the other newspaper, but it’s still good practice. Evening translates to nightfall translates to sunset translates to twilight translates to dusk, which is the opposite of dawn that is the dominion of Greek goddess Eos.
Eos had been the last clue Bobby had solved in the puzzle he had left unfinished on his bedside table before they’d made him go to Italy. She hadn’t dared finish that. Keeps it in her pocket, tucked away between a small pebble and a spare piece of gum, until Bobby gets home and steals the pencil out of her braid in a bid to solve the rest of it.
She shakes her head. Swings upright before she can contemplate the next clue in her puzzle. It’s bound to be another easy one again, like French word for snail that she had known full well was escargot, and she’s quite done with easy. Pippa’s nose wrinkles as she considers that the American soldiers behind her often proclaim they are part of Easy, too, as though that is a point of pride rather than something her mother would disapprove of.
They should have called their unit Echo, like the Greek nymph who’d lost her voice when she fell in love. Maybe then this one soldier would finally find it in himself to stop talking, though her hopes aren’t very high for him as she hops down to ground. Pippa tucks her pencil behind her ear. Neatly folds the paper until she can tuck it into the pocket opposite of the one she keeps her brother’s things in. The game behind her has started back up again, as though it’ll have a different result this time, and she suppresses a roll of her eyes as she turns around.
Only a lifetime of reflexes honed by virtue of an older brother saves her from being hit in the face with their ball.
“Oops!”
“Hey, kid, you all right?”
“–bout that, shoulda watched where that went!”
Pippa exhales the equivalent of a storm. “Really?” she asks, rather sharply, as she looks the offending parties up and down. Their ball has come to a halt against the tree. “How exactly does one lose control of a basketball?”
“Well, ya see,” perks up Foghorn, to her mounting horror, “ya would need ta move it like this right here, see?” His arms mimic something that is either a throw or a pantomime of a drowning man. “And if ya throw it a bit too enthused, it’s gonna have thoughts of its own about where ta go.”
She raises both eyebrows before she knows good and well that she would really like to argue about that. “That type of movement is called a trajectory,” she says, remembering last week’s crossword, “because inanimate objects like a ball don’t have a brain to think with.”
“I know what a trajectory is!”
“Congratulations,” she snaps out as her foot toes the ball. She nudges it away from the patch of grass she knows will house more dandelions and daisies in spring. “Now that we’ve established you messed with the ball’s trajectory in your enthusiasm and almost hit me in the face, I’m fairly certain you are going to ask if you can have it back so you can continue being all manner of obnoxious with it.”
Obnoxious, nine letter word, had tripped her up for three hours before she had figured out that sometimes a puzzle needs an x in the center of it all. She had stared at it as though it was a pirate’s map to treasure once filled out. X marks the spot, like in those stories about Captain Flint and the very clever Long John Silver who’d terrified her plenty when Bobby had read Treasure Island to her.
“Ya remind me of somebody,” says Foghorn, as though she has not just done her absolute best to insult him. The snap of his fingers is as loud as the rest of him. “Somebody from back – hey, Ralph, do ya remember Dot? Dottie, from five blocks down, who kept sayin’ youse gonna be in trouble ta them Petrelli boys?”
Pippa lets out a huff as one of the man’s companions – Ralph, it must be Ralph – seems to actually give serious thought to it. “Ya mean Dottie the professor?” comes the follow-up question, sure as anything, because apparently she has stumbled onto the exact group of Americans who’ve got the makings of a hivemind. “The one blind Annie decked in the face once on account of that issue with them handbags, or was that someone else?”
“Nah, hehe, that was Lou, ya don’t remember Lou?”
The rest of this Easy group of soldiers may be content to follow this like it’s got the makings of the best tennis match that will never make it to Wimbledon, but Pippa thinks she can make better use of her time being anywhere but here. She stuffs her hands down her pockets until her fingers lock around the pebble in one and the match she keeps on the other side. Saunters up to the Americans, purposefully leaving their ball in the patch of grass behind her, and fixes the most floppy-haired of them with a firm stare.
“When you lot from Kokomo are quite done,” she says archly, resisting the urge to spell the weird name by a hair, “you might want to apologize to Mrs Townsend for upsetting her cat.”
“Now hang on just a bit! We ain’t from there!”
“You’re not from where?”
“Kokomo! That’s just Tab, fer cryin’ out loud!”
Pippa winces as Foghorn’s voice actually increases in volume, despite the fact that she now stands closer to him than she’s ever been. “Wherever you’re from, then,” she indulges, leaning away from him ever so slightly. “The point about the cat stands. It’s hiding in the bushes, which it never used to before you lot came along.”
“That’s just a cat thing, like them kittens youse found in that hayloft last week,” nods Foghorn, indicating some stragglers in his company who seem to want to be anywhere but in the middle of this particular conversation. “Ralph and me, we’re from Philly. The rest of this sorry lot is from all over.”
“Philly?”
“Philadelphia,” interjects Ralph, mercifully cutting off the big gulp of breath that Foghorn was in the process of taking. “It’s a big city in Pennsylvania.”
“It doesn’t sound that big when you know everybody within a twenty mile radius from where you live,” she points out. “It’s a good name for a crossword, though. Might come up as a clue.”
“That what you were doing, solving crosswords?”
Pippa nods. “I need to practice.”
“Practice for what, kid?”
“I’m not a kid,” she glares at Tab-from-Kokomo, “I’m fourteen. It’s practice for later, when they let me join the war.”
“Oh, she’s fourteen,” mutters Tab, with all the air of a man either used to younger sisters or used to wildly misjudging a girl’s age. Given the fact that he does not quail under her stare any, she’s convinced it must be at least one sister. “What’re you going to do in the war, then?”
Pippa barely resists the urge to stomp her foot onto his boot. “Stuff,” she says archly. “Important things. You wouldn’t get it.”
“Hate to break it to ya, kid,” starts Foghorn, so loud she’s certain half the kids from her school are going to hear, “but them war th–”
“Pippa!” she enunciates as she shouts him down and tries to stop her voice from doing the shrieking thing her brother always laughs at. “My name is Pippa. Pippa Kent.” She draws herself up to her full height, which is still at least a head shorter than any of them. “I’m not a kid and I certainly don’t need you to tell me about the war.”
She decides she hates the look that passes between them. Like she’s not all there, not in the same conversation they are, not worth acknowledging as someone who’s trying as hard as any of them to make this world make sense again. It’s like the look some of the girls in school get when they talk about these American soldiers like they are better than the English boys, as though it’s somehow better to get kissed by someone whose vowels all sound like a strangulation issue in progress. It’s something like the look her mother gives her, sometimes, when she keeps asking if Bobby has sent a letter from Italy and whether he’s coming home for Christmas at all this year.
“You’ve been here, what, two months now?” she asks as she pulls her hands out of her pockets and puts them on her hips. “Two whole months. We’ve been in this mess for years! Took you long enough, didn’t it?” The bitterness spills out before her mind can catch up with the barrage on her tongue. “Maybe, if youse stopped playing ball and started fighting, Bobby’d come home from Italy for Christmas and Mum wou–” She exhales a breath. Stops herself from uttering the Mum wouldn’t yell at me this much anymore. “What’s the point if you just stand here and play games? Honestly!”
Pippa doesn’t know the name for the look that they share now. It’s more solemn, though not without a hint of exasperation, and she would dearly like to know the term for it. She’s certain someday it will turn up in a code that only she can break, for this feels like a look shared between soldiers that she’s somehow made part of.
“We’re going to fight,” says Foghorn, then, quieter than she’s ever heard him be. “Scout’s honor, or my name ain’t Wild Bill.”
She rolls her eyes. “Lord, save me from well-meaning cowboys.”
“Yeah?” Wild Bill lets out a cackle that could rival that of the witch in that bloody story about Hansel and Gretel. “Ya wanna shoot some hoops against this cowboy now, little miss judgment?”
“Can’t,” she says, shaking her head. “Mum will have my hide if I’m not home by six. And you lot need to get going, too, unless you want to miss that debrief the posh man with the big eyebrows was talking about earlier.”
“What posh –”
“Eyebr– Pat, who do ya know who’s got them eyebr–”
“Gotta be Nixon, yeah?”
Pippa shrugs as their ball lies forgotten and the talking turns to shoving and a bit of panic before long. Honestly, and they’re supposed to win a war when they can’t even listen to their superior officers any?
Superior. Eight-letter word. Large lake in the United States.
Maybe she can ask tomorrow if they know anyone from there.
