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]

Diego was going to definitely blush again when he heard fiancé out loud, so be ready for that.

Right now though, he was going to enjoy kissing his fiancée, reaching for her left hand so he could feel the ring there. That novelty was also going to take awhile to wear off.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I actually get to marry you," Annie murmured between kisses, gently twining her fingers with his and enjoying how he was clearly so pleased to see (and feel) the ring on her hand. "This is so surreal. I've been thinking about it forever."

Like, seriously. They'd started talking about this in September, and that was just when everyone started saying the scary words out loud. They'd both been thinking about this for...a year? (Maybe longer, if Annie was really honest with herself.)

[knife_bender]

"Me too," he said, laughing softly. "Thank god you found that ring today, I wasn't sure how much more waiting I could take."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Well, whose fault is that?" Annie teased fondly, still honestly really proud of all his various hiding spots. She leaned up to press a kiss to his jaw, because this was one of those times where it was just going to be hard for her to conceive of a moment when she'd want to stop touching him. "Most creative proposal ever."

Sure, sure, Maeve had used the words, 'fucking insane,' but all her other friends were going to be so jealous, probably.

[knife_bender]

"I'm glad you didn't want to kill me towards the end," he joked. "You had every right to after the fourth or fifth empty box."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"There could have been fifty empty boxes," Annie assured him, smiling softly. "Though I'm gonna spend like, our entire engagement and probably the first year of our marriage trying to figure out how to get you back."

Just transparently using all of the blush-inducing vocabulary, yes. It was making her really happy.

[knife_bender]

"Might take you longer than our first year of marriage," he said, his cheeks indeed turning a little red. "I'm gonna be on the lookout now."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"And I just gained four new allies in getting one up on you," Annie pointed out with a grin -- she was not immune at all to the vocabulary -- and leaning up for another kiss, lingering for a bit this time.

Like Klaus wouldn't help her. Hell, they would all probably help her, but Klaus would probably have the best ideas.

[knife_bender]

Luther would be no help, even if he wanted to be. So three new allies, and one big guy looking on.

"I look forward to whatever you come up with," he murmured before kissing her again. "...we don't have to clean up the apartment right away, do we?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Not really my highest priority at the moment," Annie replied softly, sneaking a peek at her ring before kissing him again and twining her right hand up into his hair.

Her left hand was finding its way to holding Diego's again.

(Also, she was probably going to insist on trying to clean their apartment up all by herself, considering she'd made the mess all by herself.)

[knife_bender]

He was definitely going to help. It was his fault she wrecked it in the first place.

"I was hoping you'd say that," Diego said, bending his knees so he could lift her up.

[defenderofdesmoines]

And regardless of how practiced they were at this -- practiced enough for Annie to make sure that hand in his hair became a stabilizing arm around his shoulders -- she couldn't help her delighted little squeal, all the same.

"What do you think is a better use of our time?" she asked, pressing a kiss to Diego's cheek as soon as she was able. "We should call people, right?"

She did not want to call her mom or his siblings just yet, no.

[knife_bender]

"Calling people can wait," he said, making sure he had a good grip on her before moving them out of the bathroom. He'd have to be a little more careful to make sure he didn't trip over anything on to the bedroom at the moment, however.

"You said Maeve knows?" he asked.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"It was Maeve's idea to check the air vents," Annie confirmed, hanging onto him tight and probably not making it any easier to watch his step, seeing as how she'd moved on to kissing along his neck. "So yeah. No one else knows, though."

Aside from everyone on the island, since it had made radio on Sunday.

[knife_bender]

"We can tell everyone else tomorrow." Though, again, thanks to radio the whole island would have been told twice by tomorrow.

He had to sidestep a couple piles of clothes, but he did make it to the edge of the bed without tripping and falling. Which would have sucked, no matter how good the story would be to tell later.

"Have the feeling once you tell your work you're gonna be bombarded."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"We'll need to talk about how we want to handle that," Annie told him, leaning up for another kiss to signal that she didn't mean right now. "'Cause it's also -- ours. I don't know how much I want to share with the whole world yet."

Probably very little, but she was also planning to leave a lot of that up to her husband-to-be. (Sigh.)

[knife_bender]

Diego kissed her again, relieved to hear those words. He had accepted the fact that they would need to be made public because of this, but it was nice to hear that she immediately wanted to put up some boundaries.

He gently moved to lie her down on the bed, grateful that the entirety of their closets hadn't been thrown on top of it while Annie was searching for her ring.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie already had a few ideas about how she could temper the publicity of it all -- or at least shoulder the vast majority of the burden, since she was used to it, anyway -- but they were fairly far from her mind right now in light of the kissing and the bed and the still-overwhelming feelings that were making it too hard for her to concentrate on much of anything but Diego himself at the moment.

She hoped she made herself clear with the way she was trying to pull him down with her -- as though he wouldn't be following of his own accord -- just as gently, even if she knew she didn't have to.

[knife_bender]

He was definitely following her down, without or without the hint. He did pause for a second to pull off his shirt, namely because he knew it would happen anyway, and also because he needed to feel her against him more closely as soon as possible.

They had done this a million times before, but now it was because they were getting married. That called for a sense of celebration.

[defenderofdesmoines]

This was special, yes, and not just in an arbitrary way because this was the day that they got engaged, but because of what this all meant. Annie felt sort of like she did when one of them got hurt, except the intense need she felt to be close to Diego didn't stem from a place of fear and near-loss -- it came from the magnitude of the decision they'd just made together, and how dizzyingly in love with Diego she felt.

They could definitely wait to tell relatives and stuff tomorrow. Today was just for them.

She wriggled out of her own shirt, too, pushing it up over her head and wasting no time in reaching for Diego to splay her hands across his back. She needed to be close to him. Like, it might actually hurt to be apart right now.

[knife_bender]

Diego pressed himself against Annie as much as he could, moaning softly as he settled himself against her. He ducked his head down to mouth at Annie's neck, having no real goal other than to be close to her right now.

They were very good at this sappy thing.

[defenderofdesmoines]

They were really outstanding at the sappy thing. It helped that it was kind of everyone's favorite.

Annie gave an answering little sigh, immediately twining her leg along the backs of Diego's just to tangle herself up with him a little more, and arched her neck. "You're amazing," she murmured, pressing a kiss to the side of his head.

[knife_bender]

"We're both amazing," he murmured, kissing his way down her neck. "We're going to be the most amazing husband and wife ever."

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie flushed with pleasure at hearing both those words -- more vocabulary she didn't know she'd love hearing, but there it was. Her hand found its way up into his hair, just idle and affectionate for now (but ready to play a little rougher at a moment's notice.) "We're going to have the most amazing marriage," she agreed, thrilling at the words. "I'm so happy, Diego."

Like, he made her happy on pretty much every day ending in Y, and now she was just sort of buzzing with love and excitement and the promise that they'd be continuing that trend for another half-century or so.

[knife_bender]

"Me too," he said, sitting up on an elbow so he could look at her. "Pretty sure this is the happiest I've ever been."