Rings and Chocolate Biscuits
Merry Christmukkah @slightlyrebelliouswriter23!! Have a soft Jurdan as your gift 🥺 Thank you for all the scheming and help with other fics. ily!
“It wasn’t a criticism, just an observation …”
“I know all your tells now,” Cardan says, raising his eyebrows as if to chastise his girlfriend for trying to lie to him.
Jude’s never been good at it, and after two years he doesn’t even have to look at her to hear it in her voice. She’s annoyed and he can’t blame her. He knows she hates surprises and yet he surprised her with this Christmas getaway to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. But he’ll get her to come around, eventually.
“You can’t read my mind, Cardan,” Jude argues. “You don’t always know what I’m thinking.”
She stalks off to the kitchen and he puts two and two together: she’s not only cold, she’s getting hangry. He smiles to himself and turns back to the fireplace. Once he gets a fire going, the cabin will warm right up. Soon they won’t need it with the generator jumpstarting the HVAC. But he’s not going to sit around listening to Jude’s teeth chatter while they wait for it to get above freezing.
“Want one?” Jude asks, handing him one of the chocolate biscuits he had to scour three stores to find for her. He opens his mouth and she feeds it to him with a warm smile.
“Mmmm,” he says with his mouth full of sugary goodness.
“Where did you find these?” Her mood has perked up and he realizes his whole body has relaxed.
He finishes chewing before replying darkly, “if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
She rolls her eyes at him and watches as he sets a spark alight. Soon, there’s a roaring fire and it’s giving off heat. Jude gets down on the floor next to him and warms her hands.
“Good job,” she says, leaning in for a quick kiss.
“I’m sorry it’s so cold in here,” he says. “I should have thought about that. I should have come yesterday to set up.”
“It’s fine, love, really,” she says, pulling off her mittens to feel the warmth on her bare skin. “It was just an observation.”
He gives her a look and she gives him one right back.
“Don’t you want to ask me what I was observing?” she asks playfully.
He sighs. “OK, I’ll bite. If you weren’t annoyed about it being cold in here, what were you thinking about?”
She puts her hand on his cheek and leans in closer. “I was thinking about all the ways we could warm up.”
She’s bested him yet again. Just when he thinks he has her figured out – just when he thinks she’s going to do the nagging girlfriend thing – she does the Jude Duarte thing instead. As if he didn’t already know she makes the best out of every shitty situation they’ve ever been in. God, he just loves her so fucking much.
He fills the space between them in an instant and his lips meet hers in a hungry kiss, tasting the sweet residue of chocolate biscuits. They’re wearing so many clothes: hats, SHIELD-grade parkas, long underwear, snow pants and bulky boots. It’s the opposite of sexy and when he unzips her jacket, she shivers in his arms and he stops. He zips her back up and they laugh.
“Maybe it’s too cold for that still?” she suggests, disappointed, keeping her bared hands in his jacket pockets for warmth.
“Yeah, definitely should have set up yesterday,” he grumbles. “You hungry?”
“Starved,” she smiles, looking toward the grocery bags and coolers in the kitchen. “But I see you brought enough food for a month. How long are we staying?”
He bites his lip. “Three days,” he says guiltily. “Maybe four, if nothing goes wrong back at Elfhame HQ.”
“Which it will,” she commiserates.
“Hey, I know for a fact that the Folk take off for Christmas, too,” he says, trying to restore hope for a longer holiday.
“Oh, is that why you brought me here of all places?” she asks. She’s giving him a knowing look and he starts to wonder how much of his surprise is still intact.
“The flight time. And I didn’t have to be a genius to know we flew west. But why here, Cardan? Of all places?” She looks concerned for him, clearly wondering why he’d return to this place.
“I wanted to show you,” he answers simply.
She smiles warmly at him. “You wanted to share it with me.” She looks around at the four walls of the small cabin and nods in approval. “I can’t believe you built this.”
The act itself boils down to one sentence: He built this cabin. But it hides the blood, sweat and tears that went into it. He barely survived his first winter alone in the wilderness. The police had taken his mother that fateful day, and she hadn’t come back. He was desperate, all the time. He stole all he could.
Until he had finished renovating the cabin. It restored some normalcy to his situation and gave him shelter, fulfilling his most basic human need. It became his home, his hideaway, and after all these years there’s never been anywhere to replace it. Unless you count Jude, and he can always count on Jude.
“I can’t believe it’s still standing,” he jokes, hiding his dark nostalgia.
“At what point did you modernize it?” she asks, pointing to the kitchenette and duct work.
“Last year,” he says. “After …”
“You came here?” she asks, surprised.
“Yeah,” he feels almost guilty admitting it. He never told anyone where he went for those weeks after his father died. The man turned out to be a monster, but he’d started out as the person Cardan had wanted to be most. Updating the cabin was a way for him to grieve without judgment. And he hadn’t been back, until now.
He realizes it was pretty stupid not to check the place out before he brought Jude, but he’d only had a couple of days to prepare. Cardan wanted to take her someplace special to show her how much he cares about her. She’s always giving of herself, and he’s been slowly taking off his armor so he can give back.
“I wanted to tell you about that,” he offers, still seeing the concerned look on her face. “And other things. I don’t want any secrets between us.”
She stares at him. “That’s not like you. Being all sappy and shit, I mean.”
He lets out a deep belly laugh as he holds her as close as he can with their puffy parkas in the way. “Is it?” he asks. He releases her and fumbles with his zipper, pulling a small box out of an inside pocket.
He wanted to do this later. After all, they’re still kneeling on the floor, huddled in front of the fire under layers of clothing. She should be standing, and he should be on one knee. Perhaps it would be better after dinner. Or maybe tomorrow, on that hill he liked to climb to see the view over the river. But the moment feels right and he doesn’t want to wait a second longer.
She looks at the box with her most hopeful, earnest expression and he’s so damn glad he can read her or he wouldn’t be able to ask her the question that’s on the tip of his tongue.
“Jude,” he starts. “You are the light of my life. All the good things come from you. If I hadn’t fallen for you– I don’t know where I’d be now.” She starts to cry and it would break his heart to see her tears if it wasn’t already bursting with love for her.
“I always want to be by your side. Not just to protect you like it started, but so I can laugh with you … wipe away your tears.” She laughs as he uses his thumb to do just that.
“I love you so much.” He forgets everything else he wanted to say and pops open the box to show her the ring. It’s one he’s spent hours agonizing over, before deciding on a non-traditional ruby one. “Will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”
“Yes,” she says quickly, her eyes bursting with tears again. “Yes, Cardan!” She throws herself into his arms again and ardently kisses every uncovered part of him that she can reach: the back of his neck, below his ear, his cheek, his forehead, his other cheek, his chin and finally his lips.
He insists on sliding the ring onto her finger immediately, which she does not object to for one second. They both stare down at her left hand with the shiny ruby on it.
“I love you, too” she says, only now able to speak without crying. “And I think right now, we really are the happiest people in the world.”
He beams at her: his fiancée. He can’t wait to say the word out loud, so he does.
“So fiancée, how about some champagne?”
“Why thank you, fiancé, that would be wonderful!” she says, grinning back at him.
TFOTA taglist: @charisse @sevenfreckles-for-sevenloves @addies-invisible-life @starborn-faerie-queen
