Work Text:
March, 1929
The last chilly breeze of March’s winter fluttered her bangs across her face as she hurried across the crowded cobblestone street to the front door of the brick apartment building.
“I’m home!” She called up the staircase as she latched the apartment door behind her and hurried up the warm stairs.
“Kitchen!”
Cella smiled as she slipped her shoes off next to Al’s on their entryway mat and loosened her scarf from around her neck. Her sooty black coat went on the hook next to his everyday green coat, and she looped her scarf over it all. She draped her bag over the back of the chair they kept nearby to make putting shoes on easier, and walked into the bathroom to freshen up and fix her hair before helping get supper started.
Although, she could already smell something warm coming from the kitchen, so it seemed Al had been home longer than expected.
Walking into their small kitchen after swapping her short black work sweater for a loose blue cardigan, she glanced around the room and stopped in surprise. Their small circular dining table had already been set with the nice, soft blue tablecloth from her hope chest and her pretty pink petal dishes, which she was slowly buying with what was left from her paychecks at the end of each month. The steel forks and knives had been polished and carefully placed on their white napkins with the knife teeth pointed in towards the dishes. Her floral glasses were full of a tempting yellow liquid, each with two chunks of ice floating lavishly on top.
Even more surprising than Al’s use of ice in their drinks was the bouquet of fresh, sweet smelling flowers that Al had placed in an old tomato soup can and set in the center of the table up against the wall so they could still see each other as they ate. Somehow, despite Thursdays being his busiest day of the week, he’d found time to run down to the docks to buy the fresh flowers the merchants brought in every week. Several blooms had been popped off their stems and decoratively laid across the table between their place settings, with a few gaps left for the serving dishes.
The table was simple, but deliberate.
She chuckled lightly under her breath as she grinned at him, hands propped on her hips jokingly. “Did I miss a birthday?”
Al scoffed as he poured hot vegetables into a warm serving bowl with a smile, “No.”
“What can I do?”
She laughed at the mischievous smirk he gave her while he looked over the tops of his fogged glasses. “You can go sit down,” he answered primly, waving his wooden spoon in her general direction, “and take the corn with you.”
“Yes, dear,” she teased as she took the yellow bowl from his offering hand and, trailing her fingers over the back of his other hand and fingers, snatched the spoon from him.
She ignored his low chuckles behind her as she portioned out the corn between them, humming a song low in her throat as she set the serving bowl on the table and looked at their glasses again.
Lemonade.
Not only had he been down to the docks today to buy fresh flowers, but he’d either bought lemons while he was down there or stopped at the store on the way home to grab them.
Both purchases on the same day were too extravagant for tonight to just be a quiet supper before Alastor went off to work at Rosie’s for the rest of the night. However, it wasn’t either of their birthdays, Mardi Gras was still weeks away, and she wasn’t aware of any promotions pending for either of them.
So, then, what was he up to?
She tucked her skirt as she sat down and contented herself with watching him finish cooking their dinner. The electric light over the stove provided sufficient light for cooking, but cast odd shadows on his face as he worked, and Cella’s eyes followed the shadows as he moved. He was making something she didn’t recognize, by sight or by smell. He’d scoop several objects from the cabinet counter into a pot of boiling water, drain them well, then drop them into another serving bowl that had some white sauce in it.
“You need to do something about your chickens.”
“Hmm?”
“Your chickens,” he repeated as he continued to work at the stove, Cella’s eyes slowly trailing down the firm line of his shoulders over the slight bulge of his muscles tucked behind his white sleeve to his working hands.
“Since when are the chickens mine?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, an eyebrow raised. “Since they don’t try to kill you when it’s time to gather eggs.”
She covered her laugh with a cough into her hand. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” he said shortly, holding his hand up to the side to show off the cloth bandage wrapped around his palm that she hadn’t noticed earlier. “If I’d been able to catch the thing, I would have wrung that chicken’s neck and made you dumplings to go with it.”
Cella rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Rosie would have just added it to your debt, bought a rooster, and had Mimzy work it into her comedy show.”
Al shrugged his shoulders as he considered her words with a contemplative smile. “Well…” he started, bringing his completed dish over to the table and pulling the spoon from the corn to start serving, “You’re not wrong.”
He quickly divided the food between their plates and set the empty bowl back inside the cabinet before he sat down at the table with a relaxed sigh.
She blinked down at her full plate.
Two small cornbread muffins, a healthy serving of corn, and six dough things with crinkled edges covered in some kind of cream sauce.
He’d made some form of pasta for their supper.
Al had made pasta. By himself.
It’s a cheese stuffed pasta,” he explained suddenly, his napkin already on his lap as he began to eat, “I’m not sure if you’ve ever had it before.”
Cella shook her head as she shook her napkin out onto her lap and took up her fork. “I haven’t. I’m sure it’s good though.”
He’d made her something new for supper by himself. With fresh lemonade he’d also made today and broken off ice chips for. With real, out of season, flowers.
Who had he killed this time, and how mad was she going to be when she found out?
“Busy day at work?” she asked as she worked her way through her pasta and corn. It was good. Really good.
Too good to have been his first time making it.
Al shook his head immediately as he took a sip of his lemonade. “No, Rosie had me running errands for her most of the day.” He gestured to the flowers, “I was already down at the docks for something else, and they reminded me of you. Figured you’d like ‘em.”
She could feel her blush spreading across her nose as she took another bite of supper to avoid his knowing gaze. “Did you grab yourself some tobacco while you were there?”
“Of course.” He smiled smugly as he chased a few loose corn kernels around his plate, “Have you finished with Franklin’s taxes yet?”
“Ugh,” she groaned, setting her glass down harder than intended and pushing her hair behind her ear, “I swear if I’m expected to help them wrangle tax receipts and file those forms next year, I’m asking for a raise or a one way vacation to Guam.”
He blinked at her. “That good?”
“Franklin is lucky numbers are simple creatures,” Cella grumbled as she continued to explain her day, “I don’t know how the last girl had any handle on keeping their finances on the right side of the government.”
An odd look of concern passed quickly over his face before he schooled it, and Cella’s fork froze halfway to her mouth. Her forehead furrowed as she set it back down. “What?” She demanded, leaving no room for debate or for Al to worm out of this one.
Al closed his mouth quickly and shook his head. “I’m pretty sure you’re the first person who’s ever been allowed to see the finances to file their taxes, Cel.”
A spark of pride lit inside her chest as his words washed over her, warm and complimentary. “I see,” she mused with a smile before taking another bite of supper. “So I should expect a bonus after all this is straightened out, then.”
“I would be astounded, and possibly concerned, if Franklin didn’t do anything,” Al agreed as he swirled the last slivers of ice inside his glass and watched them melt. His tongue darted out to wet his lower lip, and he swallowed. “Anymore issues with Lawerence?”
“Issues with Lawerence?”
He nodded, determinedly looking away from her and at the purple flowers on the table, fingers wrapped around his empty glass.
“He was the most vocal one about pet naming you, if I recall correctly.”
“Oh,” she breathed, suddenly understanding what Al was beating around this time. “It’s the same as it always is, Al,” she answered, missing the way his knuckles whitened suddenly. “Sure, they’ve backed off a bit after that whole Christmas debacle, but you know how men like that are.”
She watched Al stew in a stony, petulant silence as she cleaned the last of the delicious sauce off her plate with the remains of her cornbread muffin. After whipping her fingertips and lips delicately with her napkin, she reached across the table and stroked her fingers on the back of the clenched hand he had resting there. His brown eyes snapped up to hers instantly, and she smiled at him.
“Al, it’s okay,” she said reassuringly, “I promise. It has gotten better. You know I’d tell you otherwise.”
He shifted his hand under her fingers and grabbed them lightly, rubbing his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “But they’ve continued to call you names, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And it still annoys you?”
She shook her head lightly, “Not as much as before, but like I said, they’ve backed off a bit since Christmas.”
“I wish,” he started softly, eyes flicking down from her face to their joined hands, “I wish that they’d just leave you alone.”
“So do I,” she agreed with a lighthearted shrug, “But there’s nothing we can do about it, so it’s not worth lingering in misery and inventing worry, dear.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he glanced back up at her. “I thought you didn’t like the names,” he teased, pulling his hand from hers after a quick squeeze as he stood and reached for her dirty plate.
“Like I said last time,” she teased back with a smile as she grabbed the other side of his plate to keep him from going anywhere, “Whatever you want to call me is fine.”
His brown eyes darkened as they strayed low on her face before he forced them back up to her eyes and tugged the plate from her weak fingers. “I’ve got it, Cel. You sit.”
Cella shook her head before he’d finished talking. “You’ve already done enough tonight, at least let me help with the dishes before you have to go,” she protested, turning back to the table and reaching across it to grab his empty glass. Her gaze shifted down to the bright flowers on the table as she continued, “I appreciate the extra effort, but you don’t have to—”
Her voice broke off suddenly, and the glass disappeared from her grasp.
Nestled amongst the daffodils laid out in front of her place setting was a box.
A small, blue velvet box.
Time stopped.
Everything around her stopped as that small box that she hadn’t noticed until right now pulled every piece of her focus and became her only reality.
Oh.
She blinked rapidly and cleared her throat, trying to make sure this box wasn’t another figment of her imagination.
That might possibly completely explain what was going on tonight.
Maybe.
This was her Alastor after all.
She couldn’t just assume that the most glaringly obvious reason for something was the real reason he did something. For all she knew, the box was a gift from Rosie and was the key to a new apartment, one designed to accommodate two unmarried people who just happened to occupy the same space. There was no reason for her to assume this box was from Al at all. It was much more likely that this was a new pair of earrings from Rosie and Franklin for dealing with their taxes. That would make sense.
That was a safe thought.
It was a much safer thought than thinking this small velvet box was from Alastor.
A safer thought than this ring box being from Alastor.
Ring box.
There was a blue velvet ring box sitting on her table, and she didn’t know who it was for, or who it was from, or why someone had let it inside her house.
There, nestled perfectly amongst the flowers on her dining table that Alastor had set, was a small, dark blue velvet ring box.
Her fingers brushed over the fuzzy top lightly, carefully.
Timidly.
“What…” she managed to get out, voice cracking around the word, “What’s this?”
“An early birthday present,” Al’s voice said from somewhere nearby.
With trembling fingers, she picked the box up from the flowers and sighed deeply. For an object so small, so heavy, and imposing looking, it was quite light as she held it up. A bright yellow brass hook kept the small, octagonal box closed, and the small hinge on the back matched the hook's bright brass.
She wouldn’t open it for the world.
She couldn’t.
Taking another deep breath, she looked up from the table and found Al sitting across the table from her, watching her carefully.
Nervously.
He was leaning back in his chair, one hand’s fingers tapping silently on the table, and the other’s rubbing a nervous path across his lips. There was a flickering tension that ran along the sides of his exposed neck as she looked at him, and nerves clearly swam in his brown eyes.
She’d taken so long to gather the courage to pick the box up that he’d had enough time to clear all the supper dishes and return to his seat.
Slowly, as if not to spook him, she reached a hand out for him. The hand at his mouth moved immediately, his warm fingers wrapped around hers as she released a shaky breath.
His fingers were real and steady. Unconfusing. Something she could focus on.
He tightened his hold on her as he reached across the table and carefully pulled the box from her limp fingers. He flipped the clasp to the side with his thumb and popped the top of the box, revealing the contents to himself as he paused with a deep breath.
She saw the way his fingers tightened inconsistently around the blue velvet, and how a red burn began trailing under his collar. She felt the way his breath hitched in his chest and how his fingers twitched around her. Anxiously.
Her Alastor didn’t get anxious, and she wasn’t scared of little boxes.
This was ridiculous.
“Alastor, what—” she started quickly as she pulled her hand from his and straightened in her chair, just as he firmly placed the open box in front of her and spun it around so she could see the contents. Her hand collapsed back onto his as she stared down.
A ring.
The ring box contained a ring.
Her ring box contained a ring.
He’d gotten her a ring.
He’d gotten her a ring.
He, Alastor, had gotten her, Marcella, a ring.
A real ring.
“Oh,” she breathed with a wide smile as she picked the small, open box up and admired the glittering ring hidden inside.
Matching dark blue satin lined the inside of the box, perfectly framing the ring held within. It was a beautiful daisy halo ring, with a white stone in the center, surrounded by six alternating green stones and pearls. Delicate filigree work went from the prongs holding the stones down the sides of the silver band.
It was beautiful.
It was too much.
Laughing nervously, she looked up at Alastor’s cautious face. “I—this had better be fake, or I swear I’m going to feed you to those man-eating chickens.”
His snort surprised even him, and the following long peals of laughter broke the awkward tension she’d accidentally built between them. His fingers slipped away from hers as he reached for the box and pulled the small ring out.
“Calm down,” he said between laughs, brushing tears from his eyes, “I haven’t suddenly found the key to the mint to get you a real one of these.”
“Good!” She laughed as she looked back at the delicate ring held between his fingers. “So, it’s glass?”
Al nodded as he presented it to her. “It’s supposed to be a daisy setting with a diamond center and emeralds and pearls as the petals. The diamond and emeralds are all colored glass, Cella.”
She took the ring from him gently, admiring the way the lights glinted off the glass and flowed down the filigree work on the sides. A tiny 14 had been carved inside the band. “It’s very pretty, Alastor dear. Thank you.”
She looked back up at him, her smile teasing. “A bit much for an early birthday present though, no?”
His blush had encompassed his ears the moment she’d spoken his name, and she giggled at his self-conscious grumbling and rubbing of his neck.
“Does that mean you like it?” He grumbled; a hand wrapped around the back of his neck.
“Yes,” she said decisively, “I’m not sure where I’m going to wear it, but it’s lovely.”
He swallowed nervously and let out a deep breath. Now or never.
“May I?” Al asked as he held his hand out for the ring, and Cella handed it to him. He twisted the ring under the light as she had done, examining the craftsmanship for the hundredth time since he’d brought it home and kept it hidden in his box of letters, which he kept inside the side drawer of his desk. It was almost exactly what he’d imagined in his head when he’d struggled to describe it in the first place. However, it was still missing something.
He huffed out a breath and turned back to her with his hand out. Her fingers were warm and delicate in his, and his heart stuttered.
“You could just keep it on,” he said lightly as he slid the ring up her ring finger gently and held her hand up to admire the effect.
Now it was perfect.
She sucked in a short breath. “You want me to wear a ring that you got me…every day? Everywhere I go?”
The squeeze on her fingers was all the answer she needed, and Cella felt her world shake down to its core.
His thumb toyed with the ring he’d placed on her finger, and her focus narrowed down to the movement.
He’d gotten her a ring. In a ring box.
He’d gotten her a ring that used both their birthstones as its defining features.
Alastor hadn’t just got her a ring; he’d had a ring made for her.
“You do…” she licked her lips, “realize that people will assume what it means if I do that?”
A satisfied smile spread across his face, and his eyes lightened as he held her gaze. “Yes.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Very much so, my dear.”
Her smile was sad as she squeezed his hand. “Are you okay with everyone assuming it’s not you, though?”
She watched as he stiffened at her words, his smile dropping off his face, and exhaustion clouding his features. His hand weakened in hers, but she refused to let go.
“I…I’m sorry I can’t give you everything you want the way it should be,” he finally forced out, glaring down at the floor, “I’m sorry that I won’t ever be enough, won’t do enough, to give you everything you should have, Cella.”
She tilted her head and stubbornly refused to release his hand. “And what’s that? What should I have that you think you can’t give me?”
“A husband, Marcella,” he scoffed, as if the answer was obvious, yanking his hand from hers as he burst up out of his chair. “You deserve someone who can stand by your side in public, who can tell your coworkers to take a hike if they make one more off-color comment. You deserve everything fine in this world, and all the doors that marriage opens!” He whirled around then, having been pacing around the kitchen, but always out of reach, “You deserve someone who can actually marry you. You deserve better than an ambiguous ring designed with the smallest shred of hope it would protect you!”
Her eyes hardened as she watched him pace, glancing every so often at the ring on her finger.
Her ring, that he placed on her.
He could be such an idiot sometimes.
“You got me a ring for my birthday to protect me?” She clarified when he paused long enough to take a breath.
“Well,” he said awkwardly, not expecting her question and rubbing the back of his neck, “It was a motivating factor.”
She blinked, raising a single eyebrow. “A motivating factor.”
He swallowed. “40%?” He offered.
Her fingernails drummed on the tablecloth. “40% of your reasoning was to protect me from my asshole coworkers?”
“30?”
“Al.”
“20.”
She scoffed a laugh and leaned back in her chair. “Then what’s the other 80?”
He froze, her question stopping him in his tracks. He should have known better than to let her back him into that corner.
“I think you would do a better job of protecting me than a ring, dear.”
“Cella,” he started after taking another deep breath, “I can’t always be around to protect you. You know that. But,” he argued as he adjusted his glasses, “I can do what I can. Please, for once in your life, let me do something to protect you.”
She looked at her ring thoughtfully.
One single encounter with bootleggers in the bayou that had ended with her outrunning them and running straight into his arms had done more than enough damage for him. Ever since, he’d been convinced that he owed it to her to keep her safe, to protect her from evil in the world, as if she hadn’t been exposed to her own mess of horrors and struggles. He was lucky she knew he was coming at it from a place of love, and not misplaced gallantry or thinking she was too weak to handle herself.
Even knowing that wouldn’t save him today, though.
The decision was set in her mind as she looked back up at him, and he looked at her nervously, shifting from foot to foot.
“Would you marry me if you could?”
His face paled, mouth dropped open, and Cella could have sworn she saw his soul run out of his eyes.
Her piercing green gaze trapped him in place as he watched her rise from her chair and stalk towards him.
“Forget about everything for a second,” she demanded before stopping in front of him with her hands on her hips, “Do you want me to marry you?”
His tangled emotions swirled around his throat and threatened to choke him under their crushing weight as he looked down into her demanding eyes. There was no malice in her voice, no trick in her words. She just wanted a straight answer.
She’d left her earrings in for supper with him.
“I—” he choked, fingers twitching at his side. “Yes.”
“Why?”
His words rushed past his lips. “Cella, please, I—” He swallowed the rest of his sentence and took a step back. “Cel, I can’t…”
“Do you want to marry me?” She demanded, taking a step forward as he stepped back, not giving him an inch of space. “Al, is that what you want?”
“I—”
“Al!” she said sharply, gripping the fabric at the front of his shirt. “Why? Why do you want us to get married? Why do you want to marry me so desperately that you won’t admit it?”
His hands found their way up to her shaking elbows, and he gripped them over her sweater, his breathing shallow and rapid as he struggled to control the thoughts racing in his head and emotions bleeding from his heart.
She’d left her pearls on, too.
He hadn’t even thought about leaving his tie on.
“Marcella,” he implored as his eyes frantically twitched between hers, “Cella, please. If I think about that…If I think about how things could be different, but they can’t be…I can’t do it, Cel. I can’t do that to myself, darling, I just can’t.”
“Do you want me to marry you because you think you can protect me better then?” she demanded flatly, hands refusing to loosen on his shirt. His eyes widened even further at her words. “Is that what all this has been? To protect me?”
“No, no, no,” he repeated as his hands trailed up her arms to her shoulders, and one hand lightly grabbed her chin. “No. Never. Never, Cel.”
Desperately, she tried to blink away the tears she could feel rising in her eyes. “Then what—”
He kissed her.
He kissed her, and every snarled, nasty, thorny thought and self-doubt in her mind vanished.
Alastor kissed her warmly, desperately, in their kitchen, in their apartment, and everything was right again.
Her hands were resting lightly on his chest when he pulled back, a small, satisfied smile on his face as he watched her.
“Why wouldn’t I want to marry you?” He asked gently, thumb stroking down the side of her cheek. “You’re my Cel, darling, and I’m your Al.”
She smiled, leaning into his hand as she kept looking up at him, heart fluttering in her chest.
“I would marry you a thousand times over if I could,” he admitted, blush spreading across his cheeks, “and I would ask you to marry me a thousand and one times if I needed to, if that’s what it took to keep your light in my life. Because I want…” he broke off awkwardly and swallowed, trying his best to maintain the eye contact between them, “I want you in my life. I want you, Marcella LaFleur, in my life, for the rest of it, however long it may be.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh,” he teased as he brushed her hair behind her ear. “In another world, in another life where I could, I would ask you to marry me with that ring in a heartbeat.”
Her fingers tightened on his shirt again, and she pulled him down to her with a wide smile before she kissed him.
A small sound of surprise escaped him before he relaxed and wrapped an arm around her waist.
She pulled back, leaving just enough space between them to speak. “I know you have to get going for Rosie’s,” she said between kisses, fingers stroking along his shirt over his thundering heart, “But I’d like you to ask anyway, and I’ll keep it on for you.”
His eyes shot open, and he pulled back from her slowly, cautiously, with a fragile smile building at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t work tonight.”
Cella leaned back in his arms, smiling warmly with an eyebrow raised. “Oh?”
“I figured we’d have a nice supper at home, I’d give you your present, and then we’d go down to Rosie’s for the ice cream social tonight. We have a table,” Alastor admitted bashfully, “I didn’t plan on the…existential crisis part of our evening.”
“Ice cream?”
He laughed, tightening his arm around her. “I should have known you’d pick up that, darling.”
She hummed, leaning into his chest and settling her ear over his heart. Her ringed hand continued to hold onto him, and, seeing its glittering sight over his white shirt, she smiled. Warmth blossomed in her chest as she relaxed against him, previous worries sufficiently put to rest.
It was a beautiful ring.
His fingers delicately stroked their way up her arm until they reached her hand, and, once there, they carefully toyed with her ring. She felt him look down at her but didn’t move.
“I don’t work again until Tuesday,” he volunteered slowly, and the words froze her against him, “and I know Franklin gave you off until then, too.”
“I wondered what he had up his sleeve doing that in the middle of taxes,” she mused quietly. “I suppose we can make having a few days off to ourselves work, though. We can worry about that after the ice cream; everything can wait until after that.”
His hand closed over her warmly, and he chuckled, the rumbling vibrating through her where she leaned against his chest. “Whatever you say, darling.”
Sighing lightly, she straightened up and took a lazy half step back, glancing into his brown eyes through her messy bangs. “I suppose we need to be getting changed if we’re going to have any hope of making it to Rosie’s on time?”
His grip on her ringed hand tightened, and, slowly, he brought her curled fingers up to his mouth to press his warm lips against them, his eyes deliberately trained on hers over the top of his glasses.
Her breath stuck in her chest, warming everything as a startled whine escaped from her throat. Something playful had been glinting in his eyes as he watched her, straightening himself and tilting his head to the side, but at her sound, something else began to flicker within them. His growing smirk did nothing to calm the hot ball of nerves and emotions building under her sternum, or to make her breathe any smoother.
“We do need to get going if we’re going to attend Rosie’s social tonight,” Al agreed, thumb still brushing across the backs of her fingers, that strange look still settling in his glittering eyes as he kept her gaze focused on him, “But we could always go tomorrow instead. All depends on what you say, Cella.”
“To what?” she asked breathlessly, leaning back into him, eyes half closed as his other hand burned a trailing path up her back until it came to rest at the base of her neck. She swallowed.
His warm breath ghosted over her lips as he softly laughed. “Rosie is having ice cream until Saturday night.”
Her eyes fluttered closed as he leaned closer, and she sighed at the increased pressure from his hand at the back of her neck. Whatever careful control he had over the situation was slipping, she noticed with a pleasing warmth as bits of his accent finally started poking through his iron defenses. Granted, it usually didn’t take much for his accent to come out when they were home together, but this wasn’t the normal relaxing atmosphere they kept at home.
This was…something else. Something they’d both been stepping around as it grew around the edges of their relationship, seeping its way into every room of the apartment and themselves. Something they just managed to keep at bay with kisses every night and morning, and resolutely ignoring the implications when they fell asleep on the couch every night instead of in their separate beds like they were supposed to. Something that now refused to be contained any longer since Alastor had opened that ring box.
“So, since we don’t have anywhere pressing to be tonight,” he continued, his voice low and teasing, accent curling around the ends of his words and twisting around the edges of her heart. She felt him swallow and tighten his hold on her hand.
“Will you marry me?”
