MHA #2 | Tuesday Morning

[defenderofdesmoines]

For those of you playing at home: no, Annie had not yet found her engagement ring.

To be fair to her, she had found nine of the decoy boxes by now, which she thought was pretty damn impressive, thank you. She had them neatly lined up in the guest room, next to the previously well-organized white board that now boasted an increasingly untidy list of the found decoys' locations and of crossed-out rooms she'd searched. Organizing her thoughts had been a good idea, but as the search had worn on, Annie's patience with keeping things neat had frayed a bit.

That was also true in a more literal sense, as their apartment was a disaster by now. She'd pulled bookshelves out from walls, and books off of those shelves. Half of her and Diego's drawers were pulled out of their dressers and counters and sitting on the floor. She'd emptied the bathroom's medicine cabinet and left everything from her backup bottles of conditioner to the first aid kit sitting out, just so she didn't mistakenly retrace her steps.

It didn't help that she'd had pause her search to work yesterday for Memorial Day -- though on the bright side, she'd managed to confer with Maeve (read: whisper frantically at Maeve while they both made wistful faces next to various monuments in DC), and that had led to some untapped ground at her teammate's suggestion.

"Oh my God, I see a box!" Annie yelled from on top of a stepladder in their bedroom, shining an illuminated hand into an air vent. Nine decoys in, and you'd think the excitement would have worn off. And it had a little, in the sense that Annie didn't feel like she might faint every time she found one, at least. (The minute she found a box that made a noise when she shook it, though? Different story.)

[for the guy!]

Comments

[knife_bender]

The last few days had been so great for Diego. Annie seemed to be having fun and he was a contender for hide and seek champion at this point.

Still...even he was getting impatient at this point. But he held strong on not providing hints even though it was right there. She had touched it!

"That's a pretty good hiding spot, huh?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Maeve suggested I should check the vents," Annie shared, already pulling a screwdriver out of her back pocket to get the vent cover off. "It's a really good spot, babe. You're so smart."

And she was trying not to get her hopes up, but...there was only one decoy left, right? Literally fifty-fifty odds she'd found it, finally! And this was such a pain in the ass -- she was using a tool to retrieve this box! -- that it had to be the right one, right?

She was gonna feel real dumb when she realized she'd technically found the ring hours ago.

[knife_bender]

"Have I told you yet how hot you look when using tools like that?" Diego asked.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Not recently. I'm always open to feedback, though," Annie teased, raising a brow and giving him some deliberately exaggerated bedroom eyes as she worked the vent cover off.

And then totally tossed it aside in favor of reaching into the vent to retrieve the box. Much like everything else in their apartment, that could be set to rights later.

(She was ignoring how very calm Diego was about this box that was surely not a decoy. Okay? Maybe he just wasn't nervous about this at all because it was taking her multiple days to find the damn ring.)

[knife_bender]

He didn't want to get her hopes up! She might have killed him by now if he acted excited every time she found a box.

"Well?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie was shaking the box already as she drew her arm back out of the vent, and if her sigh wasn't enough of an answer, the lack of noise from the box was also probably speaking volumes.

"I found all the decoys?" she asked, both sort of impressed with herself and also faintly on the brink of despair. But more the former than the latter. "There's only ten, right?

[knife_bender]

"Yep, you found them all. I'm impressed," Diego said with a grin. "I seriously thought we'd be finding those things until Christmas."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"So that means that I have to keep looking, but the next one I find has the ring in it," Annie said as she slowly climbed down the stepladder and passed the decoy box from hand to hand.

It seemed obvious, but she hadn't found ten decoy boxes by accident. Her strategy was messy and mostly involved thinking out loud or on a whiteboard so she didn't forget anything, but it was working.

It was just kind of working both too well and not well enough.

"Are you disappointed I haven't found it yet?" she asked, moving over to give Diego a kiss because he did not, at all, seem disappointed. He seemed adorably pleased with himself, as he had since Saturday.

[knife_bender]

"Not disappointed. Impressed with my hiding abilities, mostly," he assured her. "Now a little impatient? Just a little."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I can't think of where I haven't looked!" Annie admitted, setting the screwdriver and the decoy box aside in favor of sliding her hands along Diego's arms. He had been a distraction all through her search, but her attitude there hadn't changed -- if you couldn't be distracted by your boyfriend in the very process of his becoming your fiancé, then what was the point? "That was probably the hardest-to-find one yet."

Which probably said something about where he'd actually hidden it.

[knife_bender]

"Want a vague hint?" he asked, wrapping his arms around her waist.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Only if it's really vague," Annie replied, sliding her arms up so she could drape them around his neck (and, of course, play with his hair a bit while she was there.) "No making it actually easier now."

[knife_bender]

Diego thought about that for a moment, trying to think of how to make it super vague. "...it's in a place that you would never typically use."

There. That also included everything in the kitchen.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Okay." That actually wasn't that useful, which pleased Annie. "I already looked in the flour thingie," once more begging the question of why they even had a flour thingie, "I looked under the guest room mattress, I went through your whole closet...."

She tapped each of these items off idly against his shoulder as she listed them, frowning in thought. "Like, honestly, I almost feel like you would have been better off putting it in my underwear drawer or something because I already went through most of your stuff."

And by now she'd also been through most of her own stuff, too. But there was one fairly obvious, theoretically communal thing that she never used personally, and she had not looked in there.

[knife_bender]

"You'll figure it out," Diego said, pressing a kiss to her jaw. "What in this apartment do I use but you don't?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I mean, lots of stuff," Annie replied thoughtfully, angling her head to accommodate him as she trailed her hands along his arms. Getting to enjoy Diego in short sleeves was one of the few perks of summer, and she lightly traced the fingers one of one hand up under his sleeve, brushing her fingertips against the scar from when she'd cauterized his shoulder last year. "All your clothes, for the most part. I should check the breast pockets of both your oran...."

No, wait.

Wait, there was totally something she never used. Well, she used it on him, but --

Annie pulled back, her sentence trailing off and eyes going wide as she brushed her fingers against his scar again. And without a word, she turned and started off towards the bathroom, slow and quiet in contrast to when she'd torn off to the kitchen a couple days ago.

[knife_bender]

This time Diego did get a flutter of nerves as she raced off. Because, yeah, she had found all ten decoys, there was really only one option left.

He got up from the couch and followed after her, unable to contain his excitement this time around. It was just impossible to keep a straight face at this point.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Once Annie arrived in the bathroom, she found exactly what she'd been looking for right away. She'd left it out when she'd searched the bathroom earlier, after all.

She carefully opened the first aid kit, already pushing past the way her stomach was doing a little flip and her knees felt unsteady. For the first time since she'd found that first box in the fern, she knew it would be real this time if she'd figured it out.

And there, nestled in with the gauze and the bandages and the antiseptic, was another little velvet ring box. "Oh my God."

[knife_bender]

"Well would you look at that." Diego leaned against the doorframe, trying to act like he wasn't practically vibrating from nerves right now.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie carefully -- reverently, even -- pulled the box out of the first aid kit, looking helplessly up at Diego.

"I," she started, her mind not providing anything to come after that, having gone completely blank save for a blaring klaxon of nerves. Her voice was kind of unsteady and scratchy out of nowhere, too. "Um. I -- do you...?"

She was not actually shaking this box, because she knew she didn't need to, but her hand was trembling as she held it up towards him, unsure. Did he want to open it? Should she open it? Maybe he had a plan?

Annie had never been this nervous in her life. Even if she knew both the question and the answer that were coming, it didn't change the fact that everything was about to change for them.

[knife_bender]

Diego took the box from Annie's hand, being gentle with it. He looked down at the box, suddenly drawing a blank on what was next. He had been rehearsing it in his head for, oh, months now, but now the time was actually here.

"You ready?" He was aware they were in a bathroom right now. Did that sort of thing matter?

[defenderofdesmoines]

Impulsively, Annie leaned up and kissed him quickly. Just kind of as a -- reassurance?

This was irrevocable and huge and life-changing. It didn't matter if they'd talked about it together for months, or practiced what they'd say (because Annie had, too.) And it didn't matter if they were in the bathroom. (Frankly, they'd had some amazing times in this bathroom. It was as good a place as any.)

"I'm ready." And already primed to burst into tears at any second, but ready.

[knife_bender]

It was okay; he was probably going to cry too. Tell no one.

Diego got down on one knee--he knew that was a must--and opened up the box. The ring was in no way to everyone's taste--it was huge for one thing, and more than a little gaudy. But as soon as he saw it he knew Annie would love it.

"Annie January," Diego started. "will you marry me?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

The ring nearly did her in.

Not the size or the diamonds -- like, it was beautiful and perfect and maybe honestly kind of deadly between how big it was and how sharp it looked. But just the fact that it was gold and white and a star was just....

It felt like being seen, just like when he'd had that action figure made for her, well before every toy manufacturer in her own universe was pouring gold plastic into injection molds.

"Of course I will, Diego," Annie murmured, swallowing hard and blinking away tears that were already making it hard to talk in spite of how hard she was smiling. And maybe she actually needed to say the word? "Yes."

[knife_bender]

Diego immediately broke out into a grin, standing up to put his arms around her. Like, he knew the answer would be yes but hearing it was still a relief.

He'd put the ring on her finger in a second, first he needed to just hold her for a moment.