all lovely, divine

[Wendy Palmer]

What had seemed like a shitty start to the holidays had quickly turned into one of the best Christmases Wendy had ever had. She was supposed to go home this year – that is, go to her aunt and uncle’s sheep farm back in Greater Manchester. It would have been only her second time going home for the holidays (the first time being in first year when she’d been a little homesick and needed the visit), but she still remembered how her Aunt Moira always made the turkey just right, and how Uncle Patrick was so proud of his mashed potatoes (lumps and all), and even though she didn’t get to do it last time, Wendy had been looking forward to helping Aunt Moira prepare the pie for dessert this year. But a few weeks before Christmas, her plans had all been cancelled when she received their letter saying their friends had invited the two of them down to Spain for the holidays. Christina was going to stay home to care for the dogs and The Boys would pop around every day to tend to the sheep and make sure Christie and the dogs were okay. They were sorry, they said, but they couldn’t say no, and they loved Wendy very much and wanted her to have a happy holiday without her, and she would be getting her present with the owl post when they returned from Spain. They were sorry it would be late, but they wanted to get her something nice from that country and they couldn’t have owls showing up and frightening their Muggle friends. Wendy wrote back to tell them she completely understood and told them to have fun – and she meant it. She really did. Sure, she was jealous that they were going to Spain, and a little upset that she wouldn’t be home for the holidays this year, but it was all right. She would just stay at the castle.

Then Ian came to her rescue and invited her to his farm for Christmas. His uncle okayed it, Aunt Moira and Uncle Patrick had sent signed permission forms, and Wendy’s plans for Christmas had been salvaged. She’d been up most of the night, but she wasn’t tired. Wendy was used to not sleeping at night; besides, she’d been too busy to sleep much last night. The Yule Ball had taken them almost until midnight before Dumbledore called for them to pack it in. Then Wendy had all but dragged Ian behind her up to the Gryffindor common room, fixing his small crown on his head as she turned around to snog him, and had barely parted lips with him for a moment while they manoeuvred their way up the stairs to the sixth year boys’ dormitory and tumbled onto his bed. Wendy made sure to draw the curtains while Ian put the Imperturbable Charm in place, and then they had spent a good portion of the night ‘celebrating’ his unexpected win. Wendy couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride in knowing that her date was voted the Yule Prince. As soon as she’d heard his name announced, she’d let out a shriek of delight and planted a hearty kiss on his mouth before sending him up to the platform, giving him an encouraging pat on the bum as he went. Her date had won it. He wasn’t even her boyfriend, but Wendy cared about him deeply, and they’d spent an awful lot of time together lately. Sure, their flirtations had started off mostly in games – first with poker, then with Never Have I Ever – but they didn’t need silly competitions to have fun with each other. No time spent with Ian was time wasted; he didn’t have to say much for Wendy to understand what he was feeling. The way he called her “Wen” was something special only to him, and she had to admit that the way he touched her was different from the way she’d been touched by anyone else – and in a very, very good way.

She’d been nervous at first to meet his Uncle Aaron, but he’d been so similar to Ian in a lot of ways that she grew comfortable around him rather quickly. The dogs had all seemed interested in her arrival (though she was still having trouble telling the difference between Nipper and Bullet; Shadow, thankfully, was a girl, so she was easy to identify) but moved on soon enough. The house was plenty spacious, but apparently a family reunion was held here every summer; Ian only lived with his uncle, but his extended family was huge, apparently. The house had to be big, Wendy supposed. It wasn’t too incredibly late when they arrived, but it was dark anyway, so she didn’t get a grand tour of the farm (though she could see hear cows mooing from the barn when they arrived); she did notice that there was a distinct lack of Christmas decorating, though. Other than a wreath on the front door and a tree (a nice tree, too) with a star on top of it, there wasn’t much done in the way of the holiday spirit. Wendy supposed that living alone and running a farm kept Aaron too busy, but she could fix that. Wendy had helped her Aunt Moira decorate for Christmas for the couple she’d spent there, and when she lived with her parents, she’d helped her mother decorate for the holidays too. After checking to see if they were tired, she then asked Aaron if he had any decorations stashed away somewhere. Fortunately, he did, and he seemed to be okay with Wendy adding a woman’s touch to the place. Ian helped her root around in the attic until they found the decorations, and Wendy set about decorating the tree and putting other Christmas knick knacks around the house. When all was said and done, it really only took about an hour. It wasn’t perfect (there weren’t enough decorations to fill the tree as much as Wendy wanted, and she did wish she had some evergreen and decorations to wrap around the stair bannister) but it did make the place considerably more festive, and Wendy could only giggle when Ian ran a hand over her backside.

Christmas had been lovely. A neighbour friend of Aaron’s had visited (Lynn, her name was) and helped with the cooking, and had brought a pie for them to enjoy as well. Wendy grinned to herself, wondering if Lynn had taken a bit of a fancy to Aaron, given how fondly she spoke to him. She helped as much as she could, though cooking was never her forte. Baking was where Wendy shone in the kitchen, and there wasn’t much of that going on. Still, it wasn’t fancy, but it was filling and delicious and nothing was burned and nothing caught fire, and the potatoes weren’t lumpy and it really felt like family, even though they weren’t Wendy’s family. It amazed her at how quickly she had been welcomed into Aaron’s home. She’d only really known Ian since September, and they only really started to connect in November. But Ian hadn’t even known her for four full months, and he had invited her to his home for such a traditional family holiday with almost no hesitation. They weren’t dating, but they had been seeing a lot of each other, and they were getting closer, but it still amazed her that he seemed to trust her that much. It made Wendy happy; it made her trust him more, too.

Perhaps it was because life on the Darwin farm was considerably busier than life at Hogwarts, but to Wendy’s amazement, she had actually been getting to sleep easier and easier. Her nights were still broken with bouts of wakefulness (and it bothered her that she slept in the room down the hall from Ian’s rather than in bed with him) but she was getting more hours of decent rest during the night. The only times she really woke were because of a strange noise or just out of habit.

Until she had the nightmare.

It was the same one she’d had since she was a kid: her father, three times his normal size, bearing down upon her and clenching her tight in his grasp. He squeezed and the air escaped her lungs in a cry, and she couldn’t breathe, and she woke up just as her dream-world went black. Wendy woke with a gasp, staring at the dark ceiling of her room, automatically turning onto her side to move closer to Ian before remembering he was in his own bedroom. For the first time since being there, she felt nervous, and drew up her knees so that she was in the foetal position as she tried to return to sleep. She shivered slightly, realising the dream had made her sweat and now she was getting a bit of a chill. The alarm clock next to the bed showed that it was a little after quarter past two; Wendy groaned a little, knowing she wasn’t going to sleep again tonight. She fought with herself a little before reaching a decision and kicking the blankets off. She wanted to be close to someone right now – no. She wanted to be close to Ian right now. She knew her father wasn’t there, she knew it was only a dream, but it hadn’t been just a dream at one point. Right now, she wanted warmth and comfort and protection and safety and someone who wouldn’t reject her because of “rules”. She wanted Ian. So, sliding out of bed, she slipped her feet into her plush white slippers and pulled her robe off the back of the bedroom door. After putting it on, she opened the door wider, heeding the creaks, and crept along the shadows to Ian’s room. His door was open a bit, and she pushed it open enough to slip inside before putting it back where it was. His bed wasn’t as wide as the one at Hogwarts, but that was okay. She wouldn’t mind being that close to him anyway. Wendy folded her robe over the footboard and kicked off her slippers, then lay down beside him on top of the covers. She didn’t want to wake him, after all.

She only needed to be close to him to feel better.

[Ian Fleming]

Ian’s Christmas holiday had started off pleasantly enough. On his last night at Hogwarts before coming home for the holiday, he’d gone to the Yule Ball, with Wendy as his date. He’d had a lot of fun, dancing and socializing with Wendy and their friends. He’d even sneaked occasional kisses onto Wendy’s lips, more often than not without the prompting of mistletoe. The most memorable part of the ball had come when Professor Dumbledore announced the winners of the Yule Court and Ian was named Yule Prince. As soon as his name had been called, Wendy had grabbed his face and snogged him heartily. After going up to the stage and being crowned, he’d looked into the crowd to see her hopping up and down, clapping and cheering for him. Smiling, he’d returned to her side to spend the remainder of the ball with her. Afterward, they’d gone up to his dormitory for a hormonally charged “celebration,” which probably had less to do with his crowning than their lust. Ian had woken up the next morning feeling pretty good, even though he’d ended up needing an impromptu nap on the train ride to London. When the Hogwarts Express pulled into King’s Cross Station, he’d woken up to find Wendy dozing on his shoulder. As the train came to a stop, he’d simply called her name gently, knowing that she was a light sleeper and didn’t need much prodding to come out of a catnap. His uncle Aaron had been waiting for them with a smile, and Ian had greeted him warmly before happily introducing him to Wendy. The three-and-a-half-hour drive to Cheshire in his uncle’s ’59 Ford F-250 4x4 pickup truck hadn’t seemed quite as long as usual with someone new there. Wendy had gotten along well enough with Aaron that Ian hadn’t felt the need to interfere in their conversation. Instead, he’d listened to them—and the sounds coming from the truck’s bonnet, partly to make sure that nothing was wrong with the vehicle and partly because he’d just missed hearing the sound of an automobile engine—quietly.

Inviting Wendy to spend Christmas at his house hadn’t been a difficult decision. Ian went home every Christmas holiday to spend time with his uncle. Normally he didn’t bring other people with him, allowing his uncle to have a bit more quality time with him during the short couple of weeks before he had to go back to school. This year, however, he hadn’t hesitated to extend an invitation to Wendy as soon as he’d heard that she wouldn’t be able to spend Christmas with her own family. When she’d gotten the letter from her aunt and uncle that they would be going on a trip without her, she’d seemed disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to go home for the holiday. Even though they’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks at that point, Ian had felt comfortable telling Wendy that she could come home with him instead. He hadn’t felt apprehensive about her meeting his uncle, confident that Aaron would like her—which, as it turned out, seemed to be true. After reaching their destination, they’d found the farm’s three Lancashire Heelers in the house waiting for them. Nipper had been the most eager to meet Wendy, circling excitedly around her feet and paying virtually no mind to his masters. The other two had been a bit more wary of the newcomer; Shadow stuck closely to Ian once he came into the house, and Bullet sniffed at Wendy in interest but kept a respectful distance. After he’d introduced Wendy to the dogs, Ian had then taken her upstairs to show her his own room and the bedroom in which she’d be staying, which hadn’t had a guest in it since Imogen’s visit in the summer.

Wendy had settled in quickly; shortly after unpacking, she’d expressed her desire to make the house look more festive. While Aaron always put up a Christmas tree and a wreath on the door, he and Ian usually didn’t decorate much more than that simply because they didn’t feel the need to. (For some reason, the wreath this year was more ornate than usual, leading Ian to wonder whether someone other than his uncle had picked it out.) Indulging Wendy’s request, Ian had taken her into the attic and found a couple boxes of old ornaments and other holiday trimmings. Then he’d helped her decorate. The one decoration he’d most appreciated, however, was something she’d put out when he wasn’t looking. He’d just come back from a trip to the loo when he’d noticed several decorative pine cones placed around the living room. Touching one, he’d felt a soft smile reflecting his fondness and nostalgia form on his face. “My mum used to decorate with pine cones. She'd get them from outside.” Turning to Wendy, he’d kissed her to show his appreciation for her and what she’d done. He hadn’t needed the decorations to feel happy, but they’d helped bring a more festive atmosphere to his home.

The next morning, they’d had breakfast and then settled near the more-festive-than-usual tree to open their Christmas presents. After opening a few presents from his friends—not including Imogen, as the early Christmas gift she’d given him was already upstairs in his room—he’d paused to watch Wendy take the wrapping off the unlabeled present he’d put under the tree for her. Knowing that she liked Divination and enjoyed palm reading, he’d gotten her a book on palmistry written by Perpetua Wenlock, a famous expert in the field. When she’d finally gotten the present open, she’d just stared at the book, seeming to have been rendered speechless. Amused, Ian filled in the silence with “You like it.” The happy smile and peck on the lips she gave him confirmed his deduction, and he’d continued to unwrap the rest of his presents in an even better mood. Afterward, he’d given Wendy a tour of the farm, and then they’d begun to prepare Christmas dinner. Halfway through their preparations, they’d received a visit from Lynette Sawyer—or Lynn, as she told everyone to call her—a woman who lived on a neighboring farm. She’d just come to drop off a pie for Aaron and Ian, but Wendy somehow convinced her to stay for dinner. Ian hadn’t objected, more amused than anything that Wendy had sensed Lynn’s affection for Aaron and was subtly encouraging them to spend more time together. They’d ended the dinner with Lynn’s delicious chocolate meringue pie, and Ian had gone to sleep with very pleasant memories.

However, while Christmas Eve and Christmas Day had been wonderful, the holiday had been far from perfect. On the morning of the twenty-sixth, Ian received news that Marlene McKinnon had been killed the night before. After reading the newspaper article that reported the tragedy, he’d immediately sent an owl to Benjamin, firmly reminding his best friend of the support he would give him if he needed it. While Marls had been an ex-girlfriend and a good friend to Ian, she’d been much more than that to Benjamin. In his return letter, Benjamin had stubbornly maintained that he was fine, prompting Ian to reemphasize just how much his best mate meant to him and the fact that he would do whatever Benjamin needed, even if it meant physically going back to Hogwarts and fetching him. Ian took Benji’s promise that he would tell him if he needed him with a grain of salt. He would trust him for now, but he knew that Benji usually preferred to be self-sufficient and might not want to lean on him for comfort or even be able to admit that he needed it. In the meantime, Ian had his own grieving to do. He’d spent a long time sitting with Wendy on the couch, at first simply holding her for comfort. After a while, he’d started talking about Marls and how he’d felt about her and what had happened, and she’d listened.

A couple nights had passed since Marls’s death, mercifully without any more bad news, but that didn’t mean the need for comfort was gone. Sleeping peacefully as was his norm, Ian didn’t notice when Wendy first crept into his room and lay gingerly on the bed beside him. After a while, however, the sense that someone was near caused him to stir. Looking to his left with the puzzled expression he wore whenever he awoke unexpectedly, he relaxed when he recognized Wendy’s familiar form. About to return to sleep, he then noticed how low the temperature in his room was. Realizing that Wendy was on top of the covers rather than under them, he immediately sat up a little and began tugging them out from beneath her body. “Wen,” he called, a bit of urgency in his voice. He didn’t know why she was even here, but his thoughts refused to linger on that question. In the moment, he was concerned only about her being cold. His instinct told him to get her under the covers now, and he did so as quickly as possible. Irrationally, an image of Marls flashed through his mind, and he focused his attention even closer on tucking his blankets around Wendy’s body. Only after she was settled under the covers with his arm around her did he ask in a hushed yet caring tone, “What are you doing here?” When she told him she’d had a bad dream, he asked, “What kind of dream? You can tell me.” Listening to her with a concerned look on his face, he pulled her in closer to him. “Hmm. Didn’t want to sleep by yourself?” Frowning slightly, he said, “I don’t mind, but… Why didn’t you put a blanket on? It’s freezing.”

[Wendy Palmer]

The feeling of comfort came almost as soon as she settled in next to Ian’s warm body. There was something so calm about his very presence that it was sometimes difficult to be anxious around him at all. Normally, Wendy wasn’t a nervous person anyway, but everyone had their off days – or nights, as the case may be. The nightmare was beginning to fade from her mind when Ian’s eyes fluttered open. Having witnessed him waking several times by now, Wendy was accustomed to the slightly-puzzled expression he sometimes had on his face when he didn’t seem to know why he wasn’t sleeping anymore. It was, actually, very cute, and she didn’t resist the smile that spread across her face. He looked over at her, but the cute expression disappeared when he realised she was there and he began to struggle to put the blankets on her. Wendy helped, propping herself up on her elbows to make it easier to get the blankets out from under her so he could cover both of them. When that was all settled, he pulled her closer by putting his arm around her, and gently asked why she was there. Wendy paused a moment before shrugging slightly and answering, “I had a dream. I don’t remember it now, but it woke me up.” Lying to Ian was something she, surprisingly, didn’t do very often – probably because he had a weird talent of being able to see through them. This one was small and harmless and casual enough that he might not know the difference, though; besides, she wasn’t sure if she was ready to talk about it yet. It would mean telling him about her family. It would mean telling him about her father, and how he tried to strangle her before he walked out of their lives. Ian knew she didn’t live with her parents, but he didn’t know why, and telling him over the holidays just seemed like such a downer – especially after Marlene’s death – and… why was she thinking about telling him, anyway? He hadn’t asked, and it wasn’t like she had a great desire to do it anyway.

“Hmm? Oh. It… I guess it was a bad dream. I don’t wake up when I have a good one.” She shifted closer to him as he put his arms around her tighter. The truth was, she hadn’t wanted to sleep by herself since they got to the farm, but out of respect for his Uncle Aaron and his house rules, she’d kept to her bedroom until tonight. The nightmare had really shaken her this time, and she knew she wouldn’t get back to sleep until she felt better. Even though she was now, she had no desire to leave his bed and return to hers. Besides, just because they were young and had slept together before (several times, she had to admit with a blush) didn’t mean they would do it every time they were in the same bed. Even at school she slept next to him more than alone; really, the only days she hadn’t were the three or four days when she had her monthlies. So even though she knew she didn’t have to ask if he was okay with it, she still said a quiet, “If that’s all right with you,” in response to his question. Ian tended to keep on the safe side of rules, but if there was no harm in bending them, he seemed to be able to do so with no qualms. Besides, she had told him that she had an upsetting dream, and he was far too considerate to just pat her on the head and tell her it was just a silly dream and go back to her own bed. If he was really worried about his uncle’s rules, he’d at least make sure she was feeling better first – at least, Wendy was fairly certain he would. As familiar as she and Ian were becoming to each other, he wasn’t totally predictable yet. She hoped he never would be; she tended to quite enjoy his surprises.

“I didn’t really want to wake you,” she replied with a small shrug. “You were sound asleep and looked comfortable and I didn’t really want to disturb you. I guess I would have if I’d known you’d wake up anyway.” She let out a long, contented sigh and pressed her face into Ian’s shoulder. She stayed that way for a few moments, relaxing deeper and deeper and trying to get back to sleep, but her insomnia seemed to be making itself known and wouldn’t let her. She shifted her hips so that her body was more on her side. “Besides, you look innocent while you sleep.” She gave a soft snort through her nose and grinned. “Deceptively so.” Wendy didn’t exactly make a habit of watching others sleep, but being an insomniac meant that she sometimes inadvertently ended up doing it anyway. Some people looked troubled; some looked peaceful, even happy. Whatever Ian was dreaming about, it seemed to be calming. His face was often relaxed when he slept, almost taking years off him and making him look almost totally carefree. It was one of his many qualities that Wendy was growing rather fond of. She smiled and pressed her face into his shoulder again. Feeling a bit cheeky, she gave him a slight squeeze and said with a grin, “Besides, you’re more than enough to keep me warm.”

we are going to forget the day didi wrote this terrible horrible no good very bad short as hell post.

[Ian Fleming]

Ian was no stranger to having bad dreams in this house, although back then he hadn’t sought comfort from anyone the way Wendy was doing now. After his dad’s death, he’d spent months haunted nightly by memories of blood and dying gasps. He'd almost never slept through the night, often waking up with a headache several hours before dawn. His dog, Abby, had awoken with him sometimes and tried to offer him the best comfort a pet could to its distressed owner, but he'd never sought it from her. Instead, he’d absently rubbed her head to help her get back to sleep, which usually happened in a matter of minutes, while he remained tired but conscious. He’d stared blankly at the ceiling until fatigue claimed him, usually only giving him about an hour or so of fitful rest until his uncle came to rouse him for breakfast. He’d spent a long period of time suffering in silence, and he’d since come to realize that that had been needless. He’d thought, somehow, that he hadn’t deserved to feel comforted, that he’d deserved all the pain and misery his memories brought him. He’d resisted all of his relatives’ well-meaning attempts to comfort him, listening to what they said only on a superficial level and refusing to return the hugs they gave him. Having grown up quite a bit since then, Ian thought it was far braver of Wendy to admit that she needed comfort and actually come to him for it. It made him feel tender toward her, which showed in his embrace. He kept his eyes on her as she answered his questions, holding her securely.

Over the past month, Wendy had spent more time in Ian’s bed than her own, so Ian was becoming fairly accustomed to feeling her presence at night. Sharing his bed with her had started after the Never Have I Ever game, when they’d both gotten more than a bit drunk. Unable to get her safely up to her own dorm, Ian had carried her (slowly) up to his dorm instead. The night had been innocent, as far as nights he spent with girls in bed usually went. But over the next week, their relationship had developed more of a sexual charge, probably due in part to Wendy’s revelation during the game that she had never had an orgasm. While he hadn’t exactly been planning to change that fact, it might still have stayed in the back of his mind, because by the next weekend, he had. After that, Wendy had started to spend the night with him fairly regularly. She hadn’t done so yet here at the farm, presumably out of respect for his uncle Aaron’s rules. There wasn’t a spoken rule against it, because his uncle wouldn’t go so far as to forbid him from having sex if he were being safe. Ian knew his uncle wouldn’t get angry with him for doing it in the privacy of his own room, even if Aaron were on the premises, but so far, Ian hadn’t felt like having intimate relations in the house anyway. He wasn’t particularly uncomfortable with the idea, but he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it either. Of course, that didn’t stop him from doing it outside of the house. In fact, he’d done just that on Christmas Day, while giving Wendy a tour of the farm. He hadn’t planned it; Wendy had actually been the one to initiate it. He’d shown her the grounds first, followed by the barn, where he’d warmly greeted his horse, Othello, and spent a bit of time grooming him. Wendy had kept a clear distance from the horse stalls, but she’d wandered near the cows with less wariness. Then, deciding he’d show her something she’d probably appreciate more, he’d taken her up to the treehouse he and Aaron had built the first summer after he’d moved here. It had been dusty from months of disuse, but Wendy hadn’t been bothered. In fact, she must not have minded very much at all, because after listening to him share a few memories from his childhood, she’d all but literally jumped on him, and they’d proceeded to have sex for the first time somewhere outside of his bed.

But the time they spent in bed together wasn’t always sexual. They did have sex—a liberal amount of it, actually—but sometimes they just slept (“slept” being a specious term in Wendy’s case, as she spent more time in bed awake than Ian had initially realized). Ian felt comfortable with her body next to his, and right now, he was just warming and comforting her to the best of his ability, for her sake and his. He didn't usually feel a strong desire to cuddle, but he didn’t mind reciprocating when Wendy initiated it, as she often did. As Wendy explained that she hadn’t woken him up because she hadn’t expected him to wake up on his own at this time of the night, he decided that that made sense. Ian almost always slept through the night, which Wendy would have been able to observe on multiple occasions. For a while, he hadn’t known that Wendy spent enough time awake at night that she actually had ample opportunity to have observed how he slept. In her experience, Ian would have usually been so spent from physical exertion that he'd have fallen asleep quickly and wouldn’t have returned to consciousness until morning. Once, however, Ian had stirred in the middle of the night to find Wendy already up, composing an essay by wandlight. That was when he’d discovered that she often did her homework at night because she tended not to stay asleep for long periods of time. He’d been a bit concerned at first, as he knew that he himself functioned poorly if he didn’t regularly get a full night’s sleep. Wendy said she’d been that way for years, though, and her energy levels seemed high enough for her daily activities, so he hadn’t troubled himself worrying about the matter further.

That is, until now. Surprised at her next comment, Ian raised an eyebrow and repeated curiously, “I look innocent when I sleep?” He’d have to take her word for it, since he couldn’t judge his own appearance while he was sleeping. He wondered briefly why she thought so, but he supposed it was probably an opinion he wouldn’t really relate to, even if he could watch himself sleep. Chuckling slightly at her next comment, he added, “Hmm.” That was more like him, or so his teenage male ego preferred to believe. A smile formed on his lips when she squeezed him, but it faded when he was reminded of his initial concerns about the cold. “And my deceptive innocence is more important to you than your health?” he said, his tone coming out a bit sterner than intended. “Wendy…” He sighed, feeling the worry kicking in again despite her reasonable assurances. He felt a little guilty for worrying so much when he probably didn’t need to. “I—Sorry, I just—” Frowning, he tried to calm himself again. Ian’s father had gotten ill and died during winter, so it was easy for him to associate cold with illness and illness with death. That, combined with the recent news of Marlene’s death, was why he was so easily set on edge at the moment. “My dad died of pneumonia. I don’t… I don’t like it when people I care about get sick.” He didn’t hide the vulnerability in his voice, wanting Wendy to understand just how he felt. “Yeah, sorry, I just—I guess I get worried.”

[Wendy Palmer]

It was strange, Wendy had to admit, that she had somehow managed to find herself in a sort-of relationship with Ian. They’d never made it official, so Wendy didn’t consider them to be exclusive, or boyfriend-and-girlfriend. They were Ian and Wendy; whatever they were, Wendy liked them.

She pressed herself closer to Ian’s chest and inhaled deeply through her nose. He smelled wonderfully masculine, but fresh somehow, too. Maybe it was his soap. Of course, there were a lot of smells at the Darwin farm, but Wendy was used to such scents as she lived on a farm too. If anything, they were comforting and reminded her a little of home, too. But she preferred here: Ian was here. There was a comforting presence about him, something that made her feel at peace. Her nightmare was starting to become fuzzy and she let it, not wishing to hold on to the unpleasantness and fear any longer.

Her contentedness disappeared as Ian grew stern again. She sat up a little, propped on her elbow, and looked down at his face. Her eyebrows knitted together as he spoke, and she frowned empathetically as he explained his concern. Ian had never told her how his dad died before, or his mum. All Wendy knew was that his mum had died sometime before his dad, and Ian had been very young at the time. She tried to think back to his ages, because she was certain she knew them. He’d lived with his uncle since he was seven, she recalled… but she couldn’t remember the rest of the details. At the realisation of this, Wendy felt an odd twinge of guilt in her belly, and tried to mask it on her face. It was rare that she felt guilty for anything. And she knew Ian wouldn’t hold it against her. She pushed the feeling aside and focused on him instead, shifting around so that she could be closer to him. Deciding to be a little cheeky, she intertwined her feet with his and kissed the tip of his nose. Her skin against his made her aware of how cold she actually was, since he almost felt hot to touch.

“You never told me that before. About your dad, I mean.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. Wendy blushed and looked up at Ian apologetically.

But now curiosity was taking hold of her, and she couldn’t help but want to know more. It wasn’t just that she was interested in how they died, but she wanted to know about his parents when they lived, too. After all, she had seen how similar Uncle Aaron was to Ian, and how much of an influence he had over his nephew’s behaviour. But he’d lived with his parents for years as well, and obviously they would have had some impact on him. Ian was… he was unique, he really was, and he was intelligent and wise, and he knew how to get to the honest inner core of someone, even when they’d muddled the truth so much that even they weren’t sure what it was anymore. He was fun and he was intriguing, and all he seemed to want was for the people he cared about to be happy, and he was willing to help them get there. He was… He amazed Wendy sometimes, and now she wanted to know him more.

She averted her gaze for a moment to slip her hand down his arm and intertwine their fingers, then looked back up at him, her eyes finding his and locking on. She knew she should let him sleep. He was a much deeper sleeper than she was (she doubted she’d catch any more of it tonight, even in Ian’s bed), but now the question was digging at her and wouldn’t leave her be. “What… what were they like? Your parents?” she said gently, squeezing his hand. “It’s just… you don’t talk about them much. And all this… wonderful… has to come from somewhere. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but… I’d like to know.”