Date Night! (Closed: For Amelie)

[under_the_radar]

Daniel was tidying. He'd been tidying for what seemed like days but the apartment was looking spotless and that was all that mattered.

When he was finally done, he looked at his watch. Amelie would be here in thirty minutes. Just enough time for a quick shower. When he was done, he changed into a pair of comfortable jeans and a soft, well loved white tshirt. They'd agreed that tonight was going to be quiet and casual. No fancy clothes or food. Just a homemade pizza (the one thing Daniel knew he was good at.) and a few beers, while they watched a movie together on the couch.

He smiled at the thought of curling up with Amelie on his couch. They'd had to put up with more than enough shit from family and press lately and this evening sounded like the best way to deal with it.

Just as the clock struck seven, the buzzer sounded. Daniel smiled and went to the intercom.

"Hey...Come on up." He said, pressing the door release.

Comments

[under_the_radar]

Daniel frowned. "Still?" He asked and tried to lighten the mood. "She'll probably get use to the idea by the time the third kid comes along." He said, waving a hand while he ducked into the oven to check on the food. It was just about ready so he grabbed the garlic bread and started cutting it up, passing her a piece with a grin. "I've been avoiding my family and working on something new." He gestured to a really, really ugly commission he'd been working on for an obscenely rich client that had zero taste. "Isn't it ugly? I'm going to recommend that he put it up over his dining room table because it's 'got the best light'."

[ameliecoombs]

She laughed, nibbling on the garlic bread happily. "We'll have to call the third one Aoife or Cassandra or something in order to get her to speak to us again."

She glanced over at the commission while he talked, trying to tilt her head to understand and try and appreciate it before he said it was ugly and she sighed with relief. "Oh good I thought I was going to have to make something up about the artistic interpretation of yearning or something."

[under_the_radar]

"God yes. Let's hope they're all girls." He smiled at her, glad he hadn't freaked her out with talk of future kids. It had come out of his mouth before he even realised what he's said. "Boys are terrible." He added.

He laughed when she described the horror show that was the 'art' next to her. "No way. It's just ugly as sin." He said, winking as he pulled the pizza from the oven and put it on the serving platter, slicing it up into neat, even slices. He smiled at her and nodded at the couch and the large coffee table in front of the entertainment centre. . "Couch okay?

[ameliecoombs]

"You would know, coming from a family of mostly boys." She thinks on it and huffs a laugh. "Then again, coming from a family of mostly girls, we're not much better."

She realises, when she thinks about it, that she's seen the Thornton boys around town but it's been months since she caught any sign of June. June she liked. Despite this stupid rivalry, she'd always admired June's character - she reminded her of a mix between herself and Aoife. "Speaking of - what's June up to? She's vanished."

She headed towards the couch as he cut up the pizza, flopping down on it and stretching. Pizza and wine and Daniel, this was the kind of night she had desperately needed.

[under_the_radar]

"Well we have to come down on one side or another. I can guarantee that boys are worse. We smell bad, we're clumsy, we're weird looking until we've finished puberty and even then." He said, waving a hand up and down himself as he brought the pizza over to where she was spread out on the couch. He put the food down and handed her a plate and served her a slice while he thought about how to answer the question about June. "She's been studying really hard. Between that and some drama over a guy a little while ago, she's decided to spend more time at the house or out of town. I think she's finally realising that she can't have everything her way and it isn't sitting well with her." He said with a roll of his eyes as he sat down next to her, grabbing the remote and pulling up a list of movies on his DVR and handing it to her. He didn't care what they watched, he just cared that they were doing it together.

[ameliecoombs]

Amelie sees a lot of herself in June. She's been there and done that with the boys and the parent-defying and the disappearing out of town for weeks on end. She'd eventually come to the same realisation and it had brought her back here, and she wonders how long before June comes back, too.

"I get how she feels," she says simply, flicking through the list of movies before she settles on something at random.

[under_the_radar]

"Oh? You had a rebellious phase?" Daniel watched her and smiled. "How did I not know that? I could have been your teenage rebellion." He teased.

[ameliecoombs]

She grins at him, sipping at her wine and shrugs. "I was a Coombs girl, remember? My mother is like, the kind of mother every girl wants to rebel against." Moira had always done it much more successfully than Amelie, but she'd had her share of it. "I went to college to get away from this place, and she was never particularly happy with what I did there. Saw a lot of men, avoided the Coombs name, stopped using magic."

The last is the crux of it, and why Violet has always been disappointed in her daughter. Amelie hasn't been able to use magic well since she was a child, and she suspects it's something to do with the amount of time she spent pretending she had nothing to do with it in college.

[under_the_radar]

"I imagine that didn't go down well, no." Daniel had deliberately not mentioned her powers. The whole thing was fascinating but she'd tell him about it when she was ready. "Father was the same. I went to school for law. Came away with an art degree." He said, pausing to finish off his pizza slice and pick up a new one. "Did you enjoy your time away though?" He asked.

[ameliecoombs]

She doesn't even realise what she's said until it's done and dusted, but now she wonders. She's never brought up magic around Daniel, never heard him mention it either, and they've all been playing at like she's a perfectly nice human girl. Aoife is paranoid that the Thorntons want to destroy them and their magic, and she finds it maybe a little odd that Daniel hasn't asked about it, but she's sure it's nothing.

"The art degree is making you money, though, he must be happy with that." Probably not as much as a law degree would, but Daniel seems to do alright. "College was great. I missed Aoife. But it was refreshing. Did you?"

[under_the_radar]

Daniel nodded. "I did. I didn't have to have a social life that was dictated to me. I could stay in and read whenever I wanted." He made a face. "Had to come home for family dinner some times, but mostly I just got to do my own thing." He smiled. "If I could have gotten away with it, I'd never have come back." He said honestly. Wiping his hand on a napkin first, he reached out and pushed a lock of her hair off her shoulder. "Glad I did now."

[ameliecoombs]

She smiled softly at him, linking their hands together before he could pull back. "There was a while there where I thought I was in love with some ridiculous guitarist and I was going to run away from the family and live with him in his shack or whatever." She laughs, remembering. He'd gotten her onto the smoking, that was the only lasting relic, and even that was starting to disappear again now that she was back home. Her first day back when Aoife had admonished her, she'd already found herself slipping back into proper Amelie Coombs instead of the Am she'd been at college.

"Anyway, it didn't last, obviously. This is better. Much better."

[under_the_radar]

"No no no." Daniel laughed. "You don't get away without telling me that story." He said, squeezing her hand and sipping his drink with the other. "How far did you get with the running away plan?"

[ameliecoombs]

She rolls her eyes but snuggles into him anyway, sipping her wine and trying to decide where to start. The story isn't all that exciting, she'd been young and stupid, and Aoife will never know the full story because it's the kind of thing she'd disown her for. Well, would if she hadn't already.

"I used a fair amount of my trust money to go and buy my running away pack - you know, suitcase, clothes, cigarettes, etcetera. I turned up on his dorm room doorstep with it, and we got about half an hour out of town before he decided it wasn't going to work." She pauses and shrugs. "Anyway, I went back to college, finished my degree, and Violet's never noticed all the missing money, thank god."

[under_the_radar]

"Ouch." Daniel said, not unsympathetically. He'd made some stupid mistakes at college too. "Do you think you would have liked that kind of life?" He asked, pizza forgotten in favour of watching Amelie and running his fingers over her arm.

[ameliecoombs]

"Maybe." She honestly doesn't know. She convinced herself almost a year ago that she needed to stop running away and come back and be a Coombs. Now she's not so sure.

"I gave up who I was then to come back to this," she starts. "Some of it I like, some I don't." She wonders which Amelie he would prefer, whether it would make a difference to his father if she was still the flaky, failed Coombs daughter, but it probably wouldn't.

[under_the_radar]

Daniel nodded. He understood that. He'd given up some of himself when he'd come back. Duty and family pride filled the void and he hated it as much as she did, he thought. "Duty." He said quietly with a rueful smile. "We all have to do ours with the families we have. But the little rebellions make it worth it sometimes." He said, taking a drink of his pilfered wine. "Although I think witches rebellions are a bit more complicated than us mere mortals."

[ameliecoombs]

The subject of magic was broached again and Amelie shrugged. Magic in her family was a big deal, moreso than other witched she knew, but it was never her strong suit. Aoife was good at magic, especially now that she was better at controlling it, and Moira had always excelled at anything she attempted. Amelie was the witch who couldn't, and it was never going to be something that Violet accepted. "I don't know about other witches, but the magic rebellion was not really my thing." For a moment she wonders how much she should talk about this with him, before she decides that if she can't, they might as well stop this whole thing. "I'm not very good at it," she admits quietly.

[under_the_radar]

Squeezing her hand, Daniel smiled and decided to come as clean as possible. "My Father would like me to hate that you even have magic at all but it always struck me as so stupid. It's like hating someone because they have blue eyes or something. You can't help it. And I wouldn't want you to, even if you could. Honestly, I think it must be as hard to live up to your Mothers magical standards as it is for me to live up to my Fathers social and political ones." He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I'm curious, sure, but if you never mentioned it again, I'd be totally okay with it." He said, wanting to reassure her.