Rating: G, appropraite for all ages
Warnings: Nothing but fluff
Abstract: A small little soft fic about Eris and Atlas for the Mob AU that i wrote for the hell of it today. It's long or anything.
Eris hates the quiet of the house. It is for too quiet for her liking as she reads her novel on the stairs to the second level. She reads Atlas’ scribbled notes in the margins and her sisters’ additions to those notes with a sad type of happiness. Athena’s loopy lettering that she can clearly hear her voice and Hera’s small cursive words that reflect her smooth tone when talking.
Both her sisters are gone on jobs. Athena and Hera making sure a deal goes through so it is only Eris at the house because Atlas was needed at the company. Alone in this large house with only the cat for company, but he is somewhere hiding and most likely sleeping in a patch of sun. She has never felt so lonely after years of living with the other three. The house feels bigger and much much colder than is really was so she pulls Hera’s favorite blanket tighter around her shoulders and begins the slow descent to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea.
The cup she ends up using is Atlas’s favorite: an old tea cup with a large cracked down the side and a chip in the handle. The crack has what he called ‘kintsugi’ so a line of gold runs over the artwork of pink flowers though the chip remained unfixed. She smiles at the memory. ~
Atlas’ Home Upper East Side Manhattan, NY, 1939
The girls were running through the house, all giggles and shrills shouts of excitement for they out of the house together. They have a list ready for all the stores they were going to shop in and the quickest route to Coney Island. If Atlas is being honest with himself, this is the earliest he has ever seen his girls up and ready to start the day. From upstairs he can hear Athena scream and then an outburst of laughter from Hera and then a thud of someone falling onto the floor. Their eagerness makes him chuckle into his morning cup of tea while he waits for them in the parlor room behind his desk to give out their spendings of the day.
“You cheated!” Eris shouts and the sound of her footsteps running down the upstairs hall trail above him. “She said I could wear it, not you!” Ah, the Assoulin dress. Every week they would fight over who could wear it. Sometimes he regrets buying the thing, but the smiles on their faces when he had brought it home as a birthday gift to Athena made it very well worth the trouble that it had brought along. There more running, another crash into a wall, and then thunderous steps as they rush down the stairs.
Hera walks in with a faux pout as Eris follows wearing the Assoulin dress, very much proud she was able to get it from her sister’s hands and closet. Athena is still laughing when she walks into the parlor room. They may have their own rooms, but the three girls definitely share one closet with how much swapping they do with their clothes because Hera is wearing one of Eris’ skirts with Athena’s yellow blouse and Athena is wearing one of Hera’s pant suits with a tweed flat cap to match.
“I adore the hat,” he says smiling. “Where’d you buy it?”
“This old man had it and I thought it did wonders for me,” Athena snipes back with a giggle. “Unless he wants it back?”
Atlas laughs. “It hides your face so you are more beautiful than ever.” Her sisters' laugh in the navy chaise lounge while Athena gasps in mock offense. She falls onto their laps with a dramatic wave of her hand.
“And you’re supposed to be an English gentleman, Brian,” she says with melodramatic flair of hand gestures to the older man, who laughs in return.
“Never said anything about being a gentleman, darling,” Atlas remarks. “Now, you all know the rules: be home before I wake up in the morning and keep each other safe. Too many-”
“Dangerous men out there,” Eris finishes for him helping Hera push Athena up from their laps. “We know.”
He smiles warmly at them, walking over and kissing each of them on the cheek. “I know, I just need to be sure is all.”
This is true. He reminds them every time they leave the house together. Atlas -- Brian -- has been a father to the girls, pulling them from the streets during the Great Depression after the first Great War. He clothed them, bathed them, cared for them. These girls were his daughters in every sense of the word. He would kill anyone who would seek to harm them in any way. Now with a secondary war starting in Europe, he is more worried than ever.
The girls all smile as him, each also giving him a kiss on his cheek as they leave the house together. Their day is spent together gossiping, shopping, and eating cheesecake at Lindy’s. On their way to Coney Island though, an antique shop that looks to be just opening for the first time or opened a few weeks before caught their wear with a china set in the display window. Porcelain cups with a matching teapot and saucers had them entering the store asking for the price, only to be devastated when they counted and found they did not have enough. The clerk apologizes but says that she will not lower the price because it was her grandmother’s tea set and will not settle for anything less, but pulls out a cup from the back with a large golden crack in the side and a chip in handle saying that she will sell this cup for the five in their hand. ~
She spends the rest of the day cleaning the house from the attic down. She cleans her sisters’ rooms and organizes the desks and papers, sizes their perfume bottle by their favorite scents and their jewelry by how often they are worn. She does not even realize she fell asleep in the small library until she hears Atlas closing the door and walking up the stairs to his room, feet dragging across the rug. It must be late then, Eris thinks and begins to prepare herself for going to sleep as well only properly this time.
Eris feels like a child walking down the hall towards Atlas’s room, dressed in one of Athena’s pajama sets and Hera’s favorite blanket around her shoulders still. She winces as the door creaks when it opens alerting the man to her presence and waking him from his sleep. His confused face makes her feel more guilty because he did get home late from the company and was probably exhausted from the work, but she still feels lonely and cannot sleep in her room without Hera or Athena. She has grown too used to them falling asleep with each other.
“Is everything okay, sweet girl?”
She shakes her head and crawls into the space next to him. “I just miss them is all and I was alone today.”
He kisses her forehead. “I miss them too. They’ll be home soon, I promise, Priya.”
