NEW FIC "Best Laid Plans" Susan/Seamus 12/13

[thanfiction.livejournal.com]

Title: Best Laid Plans
Pairing: Susan/Seamus
Prompt: Let's just say
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,900
Summary: (Guest summary by ceirdwenfc) Seamus and Susan plan their wedding...with a little help from her mother, her mother-in-law and her former mother-in-law.
Author's Notes: Set in the DAYDverse, uses the canon of Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness and the sequel novel, Sluagh. Will not make sense without them. Both stories, as well as the rest of the 'verse, can be found here
Link to Prompt Table: On my LJ, here

OOO

“Well, we’re just goin’ to have to make the fences higher, won’t we?” Seamus shrugged in frustration as he unclasped his cloak, not bothering to hang it on the hook inside the door, even though he knew that he would be lucky to make it ten minutes before one of the witches made him retrieve the crumpled heap of fabric. 

Robbie shook his head, dropping his own cloak next to Seamus’ as he bent to unlace his mud-spattered boots. “They were your idea, ye need tae solve it.”

“Aye, because all I know about any kind o’ bleatin’ bugger’s done come from ya and yours, it has,” he pointed out caustically. “Ya want my view o’ it, I say that we hex the wee buggers’ legs off, since it’s the middle o’ them what’s got the hair any –“ He stopped in mid-sentence, the long hours spent trying to solve the disdain of goats for fences abruptly forgotten. Susan was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, and she hadn’t seemed to even notice that they had come in, much less where they had put their cloaks, her head cradled in both hands as her shoulders shook with what looked distressingly like soundless sobs. 

One boot still half-on but unlaced, he dropped the other – from the squawk behind him, possibly on Robbie’s foot, scarce that it mattered – and hurried to her side, frowning as he wrapped an arm carefully around her shoulders. “Sue, love, what’s goin’ on? Somethin’ happen, did it?”

The words were muffled against her hands, but his frown deepened, and he was certain he must have mis-heard. “Me mother? What could me mother have to do with aught?”

Now her head did lift, and he could see that her eyes were pink and swollen as if she had been crying for quite a while, her fair cheeks deeply flushed. “Your mother, my mother, Ernie’s mother!” The words were spat somewhere between a helpless sob and a furious rebuke. “Maybe they’ve brought in a few more, I don’t know, and I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it?” 

Seamus blinked, confused, even as he tried his best to look sympathetic to whatever had so clearly upset her. “Me Mam’s in Belfast, Sue, and yours on t’south coast, ain’t she?” 

“They arrived this afternoon.” Susan wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, and her mouth twisted bitterly into the shadow of a smile. “They have a wedding to plan, it seems.”

“I thought we –“

The smile broke into a dark chuckle. “You silly, naïve little boy.” 

Of all the things he had been called in his life, and all the things she could have called him, naïve was the last he had ever expected, and he felt his brows lift in a look too surprised to be properly offended. “Am I, now?”

“Thinking this is our wedding,” she raised one hand, ticking off the points on her fingers. “They have to decide who’s invited, what kind of dress I should wear considering my delicate condition, how they’re going to make you look presentable – you’ll need a haircut, of course, and there must be some kind of spell to do something about those tattoos – and your mother wants a priest, but Fiona has her heart set on a proper Scottish wedding, and my mother –“

“That’s a load o’ shite,” Seamus snapped fiercely, gesturing to the side of his face. “Part o’ who I am, these are, and if they ain’t likin’ that, they’ve bigger problems than how it’ll look. And ya can tell Fiona I ain’t gettin’ married in no skirt.”

“Kilt,” Susan corrected him automatically.

“Skirt,” he repeated firmly. “Kilts are for Scots, and I ain’t no Scot, and neither’s ya.” He took a deep breath, swallowing the temper that had been rising almost too hotly for him to catch. “Grateful enough I am to them, but ain’t nothin’ goin’ to be bringin’ Ernie back, and wouldn’t be right to try and have us the weddin’ they wanted for their son.” 

He reached out, wrapping her hand in both of his to look deeply into her eyes. “We’re both more than grown, Sue. Closer we are to the years what start with thirty than the ones what end in teen, and I ain’t lyin’ to say I’m a bit surprised ya let yourself get run o’er.” 

“It’s just….” Susan trailed off, sighing, then shook her head quietly, and her voice was low and a little rough when she spoke again. “You don’t understand what it’s like, I guess.  They all love us, Seamus, they really do, and they just want what’s best, and my mother especially, she can make me feel like I’m still five years old – she has this tone, and oh, she’s so disappointed in me that I’m in trouble like this…and I already let her down so badly eloping with Ernie, I owe her, and I owe Fiona so much, and there’s no question where you get your stubbornness from when it comes to Kate….” She smiled weakly, clearly ashamed of herself as she shrugged. “It’s stupid, I know. I’m sorry. It’s just a wedding.” 

“No need for ya bein’ sorry.” He shifted closer on the stairs until their bodies were touching, pulling her into his arms so that his hands rested on her belly where it was just beginning to curve beneath his touch. Even through the indignation he felt on her behalf and the determination to find a solution for this mess, he still felt a sense of wonder that it was his child there, that he was going to be a husband and a father, the prospect at once astonishing and more than a little intimidating. 

“Parents…ah, Sue….” His soft laugh ruffled her hair as she rested her head back against his shoulder, and he shifted slightly to still meet her eyes. “Ain’t no shame to feelin’ as ya are – heaven knows me Mam can still give me a look make me feel not more’n a kid meself – but it ain’t just blind obedience we’re owin’ them, ya know. That’s much disservice to them’s as writin’ them flat out, ‘tis. Hard as ‘tis for them to admit that we ain’t their little ones no more, maybe we need be showin’ them they’re wrong.”

An odd expression, something balanced between hope and bafflement, creased the skin at her large, dark eyes. “I don’t understand.” 

“Screwed up good, we both have,” Seamus admitted bluntly. “Much as ya loved him, and dear as Cecily is to all o’ us, we both know ya rushed into things with Ernie, and it’d take longer than we have in this life to be listin’ me sins, but we’ve changed, Sue. Life’s gone on.” His voice fell to a whisper, and it was strange to be saying this out loud, giving unflinching spoken reality to things that he had been half afraid to even think to himself for fear that they would vanish into fantasy. “Ya ain’t no lovestruck girl; you’re a woman what’s chosen a man she loves in plenty o’ time and consideration, even if we’ve gotten goin’ with the family a bit sooner’d we’d o’ planned, and I ain’t no lit fuse challengin’ the world to a duel with each breath, I ain’t. We’ve hurt them so with what we did before, maybe we owe them seein’ they raised us right after all.”

Susan seemed to consider his words for a long moment, then shook her head ruefully. “That’s just all the more reason we owe it to them to let them do this.”

“We owe it to them to let them see we can do it,” he pressed. His fingers brushed a loose tendril of hair from her eyes, and he kissed her forehead gently, offering what he hoped was a smile that held even a fraction of how much he really had come to love her. “Now, weren’t ya tellin’ me this mornin’ ya’d found a dress ya liked?”

“Yes…,” she admitted, then made a face, touching her stomach. “But they’re right, it would show that –“

“And anyone who’d give ya hell for’t ain’t invited,” Seamus retorted insistently. “Do ya like it?”

Another long pause, her fingers tracing the changing lines of her body through the folds of the robes, then her head lifted again, and he felt himself smile to see the familiar spark and strength returned to her eyes. “Yes, I do,” she said firmly. “It’s a beautiful dress, and it’s what I want to wear, and I specifically thought that the bit of blue at the neckline would set off your eyes…and your tattoos, which I’ve said before, I happen to think are sexy.” 

“Then that’s settled.” He kissed her again, but she put her hand on his chest between them, pushing him away with a skeptically raised eyebrow. 

“You talk like they’re just going to roll over and accept it.”

“Roll over, no.” Seamus’ smile widened, and the spark of almost mischievous defiance in his voice felt better than he knew it probably should have if he really was supposed to have settled down so much. “But I’m goin’ in there, and I’m goin’ to be layin’ down a bit o’ the how and why o’ it…and I can be fair persuasive, I can, love.”

Susan giggled fondly, wagging a finger at him. “That I know, but you’re not exactly able to use the same kinds of charms on them that you do on me, and I think some of your other methods of ‘persuasion’ might be a little extreme.”

He gave her his most innocent look, his eyes wide and guileless in mock astonishment. “Why, I’d never dream o’ it!” The innocence turned downright wicked now, and he stood, offering her a deep, sweeping bow. “But I’ve more than one kind o’ a gifted tongue when need be, I do, and so’s promise you’ll be gettin’ your dress and I’ll be gettin’ trousers and I’ll be the one decidin’ how this weddin’ goes, so I will, though their opinions’ll still be welcome plenty.”

She laughed again, more freely now, and she stood to drape her arms over his shoulders, her mouth an inch from his, and it was difficult to even remember that there was anyone else in the world, much less the other room when she looked at him like that. “You’ll be deciding?” she teased softly, her breath warm on his lips. “And what, exactly, will you be deciding?”

“Let’s just say it’ll be same thing’s any other man what knows his rights and ain’t one for lettin’ himself be no pawn in no game, and who reckons they need know who’s in charge in this business.” Somehow, he managed to keep his tone utterly serious, even as he heard his voice deepen, felt his pulse quicken against her touch, and it was an act of supreme will power to pull away and brush nothing more than the tips of her fingers against his mouth. 

He left her there at the foot of the stairs as he crossed the hall, then turned back with one hand on the handle of the sitting room door, tossing an unashamedly cheeky grin over his shoulder. “I’m decidin’ that they’ll be doin’ whatever me wife wants.” 

THE END

Comments

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

Parents can make any relationship so interesting. I'm rather glad I've never been married---I've seen too many of my female friends crack under the strain of putting together a wedding and dealing with Mama. Particularly if Mama's got her heart set on a production that would make Cecil B. de Mille turn green with envy, and Daughter just wants something nice and simple and quiet. (There was a story arc in For Better or For Worse about this.)

Thank all the gods, I don't think that'd be a problem with my best-beloved and me, should we ever be in a position to tie the knot.

[bluealoe]

Yay, a new Susan/Seamus story! It's lovely, and so true to them. I especially liked "he dropped the other – from the squawk behind him, possibly on Robbie’s foot". :)

Seamus has definitely matured, but he'll always be a rogue at heart. He's just not the settling down type.

Can't wait for the next story! (And I'm curious to see how Cecily's going to take the news about the wedding...)

[ceirdwenfc.livejournal.com]

I found the summary compelling.

I loved the last line. And of course, "You silly, naive little boy." OMG. That made me laugh.

I also like his tough guy-ness, but also that he's so sensitive to her.

>but it ain’t just blind obedience we’re owin’ them, ya know

As a parent, I'm all about the blind obedience. ;-)

>I think some of your other methods of ‘persuasion’ might be a little extreme.”

He gave her his most innocent look, his eyes wide and guileless in mock astonishment.

This also made me laugh.

I really like how you go back and forth between serious and funny. Another nice one.

And in all seriousness to the process, he literally sat down, said, "I think I'll write #12 of my rarepairs," started typing and it was done before I finished editing my chapter. I read it and he asked if there were any typos (there weren't) and it was posted minutes later. I think it took longer to read it and write the summary.