Dawn proposes to Elliott. Set in early spring of Year 3.
Dawn was astounded that she’d been able to make it through dinner without blurting out a marriage proposal.
She’d hid her true intentions from Elliott relatively well, but she didn’t know how much longer she could wait to pop the question. She’d purchased the mermaid pendant last spring, keeping it in her bedroom as she waited for the timing to feel right. When she’d invited Elliott over for dinner tonight, she’d known that it was finally time.
“All right,” she said as she sprung up from her chair. “Let’s go.”
Elliott frowned in confusion. “Where are we going?”
“Outside, so put on your jacket,” she said as she grabbed her jacket off the hook and shrugged it on, trying not to think too much of the pendant in her left pocket.
“We’re not going too far, are we?” he asked.
Dawn shook her head. “Just to the porch,” she said as she opened the door. “No need to bundle up.”
She shepherded Elliott out the door, guiding him to the edge of the porch where they had an excellent view of the night sky.
“I never knew there were so many stars until I moved here,” Dawn said. “In the city, you’re lucky to see one or two, but here you can see everything—even the Milky Way sometimes.”
Elliott nodded. “I felt the same way when I moved here,” he said. “It’s quite stunning.”
Dawn murmured something in agreement. “My grandpa used to take me out here when I was little to look at the stars,” she said. “He’d point to them and tell me that there were as many possibilities for me as there were stars in the sky.”
She stepped closer to Elliott, leaning her head against his shoulder. “I don’t remember when I stopped believing him, but I did,” she admitted. “At some point, I stopped thinking that I could be anything and figured I should be happy with the bare minimum. After all, I’m a queer girl with ADHD, dyslexia, and an associate’s in liberal arts. The odds aren’t exactly stacked in my favor. So I thought that selling myself short, taking whatever was given to me, was the only way I could make it.”
Elliott leaned over to kiss her on the head. “But it’s not,” he said. “You deserve so much more, Dawn.”
“I know that now,” she said. “You helped me see that I deserved better. Even when I didn’t believe in myself, you did. You saw the parts of me that were sensitive and scared of failure and loved them. Seeing you—this beautiful, brilliant man—believe in me made me think that maybe I could believe in myself. That’s what encouraged me to start turning the farm into something I wanted instead of just eking along with the minimum: planting some crops and maybe keeping a chicken and a cow. And now I’ve built something that I really love and am proud of, but I never could’ve done any of it without you.”
She blinked back tears as she reached into her pocket, her fingers closing around the mermaid pendant. “A couple months ago, you said that you don’t want to grow old as a hermit on the beach.”
She took his hand in hers and pressed the mermaid pendant into his palm. “I don’t want that either,” she murmured. “I want you to grow old here on the farm—with me. If you’ll have me, that is.”
Elliott gasped softly as he opened his hand, looking at the pendant. “Of course I will,” he said as he pulled her into an embrace. “Nothing would make me happier.”
“Me neither,” Dawn replied, resting her head against his chest as she exhaled deeply. Now that she’d finally proposed, she felt a sense of peace settle deep in her chest. She’d been more worried about getting the words out coherently than Elliott’s response, but hearing him say yes eased a nameless tension inside of her.
“I’m glad you’re the one who asked,” Elliott said. “When it comes to romantic confessions, words always seem to fail me—as I’m sure you recall.”
Dawn laughed as she recalled the day when Elliott had confessed how deep his feelings for her ran. She’d found his nervousness more adorable than anything, but she was more than happy to spare him the additional anxiety of a marriage proposal.
“I don’t care who asked who,” she said. “I’m just glad that we get to spend our lives together.”
Elliott pulled her closer, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “So am I, love.”
Dawn has one condition for Elliott before they get married: he needs to read The Lightning Thief bc the whole Percy Jackson series was important to her in the time after her ADHD diagnosis when she was trying to figure out what was up with this part of herself (the series also led her to realize that, like most demigods, she’s also dyslexic). She just wants him to understand how important this is to her bc it modernizes something she loves and allows her to see herself in those stories.
He reads the first book and is like “well that was good, but idk if I’ll read the rest” and she’s fine with that bc it’s not for everyone, but she’s glad that he has a sense of the thing she loves so much.
A few months later, she finds him in the library one evening, a third of the way through The Battle of the Labyrinth and looking mildly disheveled bc apparently he picked up Sea of Monsters out of curiosity and then just...kept going.
Dawn’s like “okay well I’m gonna bring you water and tea and food and then I’m gonna braid your hair, but please don’t stop for me!”
The two of them wind up going to bed way too late bc every time Elliott smiles/laughs at something, Dawn looks over to see what’s happening and eventually they just end up reading together.
