you magnificent fuck up (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
apostatised) wrote2008-09-30 01:17 am
apostatised) wrote2008-09-30 01:17 am
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[log] you act like you’re hip to their tricks and you're strong
The past few weeks have been, for Martel...an interesting time. Today, though, today isn't very interesting. (Yet.) Today is mostly quiet; he's been occupying himself with finalizing his staff (as it'll stand for a time - it's more than likely he'll need to expand later, but for now he thinks he has everyone he needs sorted out), and now he's escaped the lot of them for his favourite pastime.
That would be: avoiding Ewar's near-supernatural ability to find him anywhere in the castle by taking his books and his drink in Stigmata, flexing the fingers of his right hand and really looking forward to when it's properly good as new. The pull of still-healing flesh is making his already typical-scholar's-handwriting more strained.
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Maria arrives looking...uh, thoughtful; she's had a pretty interesting few days, herself, though drastically different to Martel's. When she arrives in Stigmata, she beams at Martel and crosses the room to hug him hello with one arm. "Hey, you!"
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Martel wraps whichever arm is convenient from this angle around her shoulders when she does, just briefly. "Hello, little witch." He leans back, slightly, getting a look at her. "I haven't seen you in some time."
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Maria looks well! ...if slightly marked around the throat! That's just fascinating, isn't it. She settles down on a chair nearby him, smiling. "I know! It's tragic, I had to go and have a baby and stuff, it kept me kinda busy. How are you?"
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...Martel's choosing not to comment on the marks on her neck, but he hasn't failed to notice. "I'll have to meet her soon. I'm well-" that's a slight exaggeration, but he's not awful...at the moment, "-and I've been busy, as well. The castle's staffed, now." He's pleased with this.
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"Yeah? Busy place? How's your girl?" She is full of questions, but fortunately is attempting to go one or two at a time for Martel's sake.
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"It'll get busier." The question about Candice gives him a moment of pause, because oh of course... "Candice? She's living with me now." That is not the half of it, sir.
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"Aww! I didn't realize you were that serious--but, well, I should have. I'll have to be around more." She's firm about this. Keeping track of everyone is important!
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"We're getting married," he says, blandly.
...it's a testament to the kind of man he is that he could just as easily be making a horrible deadpan joke here.
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Maria, however, believes him, and responds to this by flailing at him. "Oh my God--you should have told me that the second I--oh my God! Who asked who? Do you have rings? When is the wedding? Can I come? I so did not realize you guys were this serious!"
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Martel endures this flailing with the expression she would probably expect from him, unsurprisingly. "I proposed." There's a beat. "By accident." ...this is not a thing people often do, but there you go, he pulled it off. "She has a ring, the other rings are locked away. Of course you can come, when we've set a date. We're not in a hurry."
To the last comment he says, wryly, "I'm a serious sort of man."
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"You haven't set a date at all?" Maria asks, curiously. "Are you just kind of--what, coasting? Seeing what happens?"
She sounds like she can relate, which is...perhaps telling.
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"More or less." Martel's looking at her with slightly more interest for that tone, yes, his gaze dropping briefly to the marks on her neck.
...still, there are things he doesn't want to know, okay. (He has no idea.)
"It'll be a long engagement either way - there's no need, for now."
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"Patience, right?" Maria says, dubiously, and then makes a little face for some reason. She should really just tell him.
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"I have an unlimited supply of it," he says mildly, making a small gesture of 'out with it'. Apparently his unlimited patience doesn't extend to coaxing information out of nineteen year old girls unless it's at knifepoint.
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She hesitates, and then says, in an onslaught of words: "I met a guy, and don't freak out, he's really--well, I don't know if he's nice, but I have a type and nice doesn't usually coincide with it--but he's great, and he is the tiniest bit older than me but really nothing to worry about, and, um. Well."
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After running through a series of internal reactions - which included both 'freaking out' and then reminding himself he has no reason to do so, but of course then why would he, and more importantly why would she think he would - he raises his eyebrow at her. "Well?"
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She sinks down in her seat and says, in a tiny voice: "He's from my world, a city called New York. His name is Aloysius."
Now she's going to wait to see if he registers.
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Aloysius-
Several things align in his mind: Maria's worried about his reaction and 'Aloysius' is also the given name of Maria Martel's-
"Oh, for God's sake."
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"He kissed me first!"
What. What the hell kind of excuse is that, Maria.
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Martel has no words for this, Maria. He's utterly at a loss for coherent sentences with which to detail all the ways in which this is a terrible plan among terrible plans.
"...you're not going to-" Oh, no, he suspects she is. "Maria."
...really, though, after an absurd amount of serious business and generally having a difficult time of it for reasons entirely his own fault, this is just insane, and he starts to laugh helplessly. (What else can he do, honestly.)
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"You don't even look that much alike," Maria huffs, "Like--brothers, maybe. It's only an eighteen year age difference."
Only. Admittedly she's not at all like other women her age.
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"At least he didn't raise you," Martel contributes to that, contemplatively.
(Yes, he went there.)
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"What?" Maria twists around to raise her eyebrows at Martel. "That is ninety million flavors of creepy, right there."
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"Sparhawk's a good twenty years the Queen's senior," Martel clarifies the comment, rubbing his hand over his face. "He raised her before she took the throne. That's not the point." What is the point. The point is 'why do you want to screw my alternate', but he doesn't really want an answer to that.
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"Think of him as your cousin," Maria advises, "Your very modern, very weird younger cousin who you barely know but have heard a lot about."
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"My cousin who wants to-" That expression? That is the expression of a man who can guess fairly accurate exactly what the rest of that sentence should be, and is abruptly and mentally pedaling backwards as fast as humanly possible.
After a moment, he says, "You certainly know how to put things in perspective, little witch."
Though he's convinced at this point that the nexus is just fucking with him.
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"I have a knack," Maria agrees, tapping her fingertips on her bare knee. After a hesitant pause, she asks, mildly, "So I suppose I shouldn't ask you for guy advice...?"
She's probably kidding.
Probably.
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Martel gives her a flat look.
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Maria smiles at him, innocently.
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"...why," he says, plaintively.
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"He likes me," she says, stubborn, "and I like him. I know that sounds really overly simple, when it isn't, of course, but--well, don't you want me to be happy?"
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"Of course I do," Martel says, exasperated. "I'm not following how your happiness requires..." He makes a gesture intended to encompass, apparently, all of the Martel-issues in the world.
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"I don't know if it does," she says, leaning forward with wide, sincere eyes, "I barely know the guy. I just think it could maybe go somewhere good. If you really, really don't want me to go for it, though...well, I won't. I won't like it, but I'll stop."
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He gives her the skew-eyed look of a vaguely paternal figure who suspects he's being manipulated and can't find a safe way out of it. "I'll leave it alone on one small and almost meaningless condition."
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Maria tilts her head.
"Okay. What's that?"
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"Unlike apparently all of your alternates, you never, ever ask me anything about certain qualities mine and I have in common."
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"...you got it," Maria says, with a little mock-salute, "Really. I wasn't gonna. Honest."
Okay, no, she actually totally was, because that's how she rolls (inappropriately), but she can do without. After all, he hasn't expressly forbidden her from mentioning things! And sometimes she can surmise the answer from his reaction.
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"You're a dear creature and I'm very fond of you, but I'm almost positive you're lying through your teeth." He smiles, anyway, though, because he really is fond of her and-
Well, at the end of the day, who is he going to trust with people he cares about but himself?
The nexus gives him a fucking headache, hand to god.
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"I would never." She giggles, though, which is a clear indication she's dancing around the truth just a little. "Anyway. When can I come see the castle again?"
Do not let her anywhere near Ewar, Martel, she will make teasing him her goal whenever she's in his presence.
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"When would you like to? We're making a lot of progress with it." He's quietly sort of pleased with how his castle is coming, actually - very pleased, actually.
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"Wednesday?" Maria guesses, trying to figure out her schedule. She doesn't have anything planned with Aloysius--yet, and she figures she can work around that if he calls...
Wait. When did she start doing the 'if he calls' thing. Damn it.
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"I think we can manage Wednesday." He smiles, briefly. "I'll have to show you the statue...I think you'll like it."
(Martel doesn't even want to think about Aloysius yet.)
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"I'm sure I will." Maria watches him for a few seconds. "You seem like you're doing--okay."
Maybe not 100% yet, but...better than he was, in her opinion. She doesn't know what's been going on, of course. "Your girl taking good care of you? Proper and serving on hands and knees and all?"
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Martel gives her a look for that, even though he's probably teased Candice worse himself, to her face. "Do you mind." No, not a bit, dude. He exhales, though, taking the question more seriously- "She's been extraordinarily patient with me. I haven't been easy to live with lately."
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"You should buy her a dress or something," Maria advises, sagely.
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"We'd discussed that," he says, blandly.