Ava/Mercy Valentine's Day Short

In a perfect world, I would write a little snippet for each couple. Assume the rest of the Dartmoor crew had similar evenings. 😄

“What’s in the bag?” Aidan asked, gesturing to it with his sandwich. He had a mouthful of meatball sub, though, so that’s at least what it sounded like he asked. He sprayed crumbs down into his lap and a dab of marinara sauce dripped out, unnoticed, onto the knee of his jeans. Because he was a fucking slob who wouldn’t appreciate what Mercy had in the bag at all.   

But, he was Mercy’s brother-in-law, and he loved the idiot. So. He set the bag down and pulled out the little bottle within, turning it so the label faced out.

Aidan squinted at it, and managed to swallow before he said, “What?”

Tango, eating his own sandwich like a civilized person and not a hyena, leaned forward and quirked a grin. “Nice.”

Aidan looked between them. “What?”

Mercy sighed. “It’s massage oil.”

“Lavender massage oil,” Tango added.

“Okay,” Aidan said blankly.

It really was a miracle the guy was married; Samantha was a saint. “Do you know what Wednesday is?” Mercy asked with as much patience as he could muster.

Aidan took another bite of sandwich, squinting up at the ceiling in thought. “Buy one get one burgers as Smokey’s?”

“It’s Valentine’s Day, you asshat,” Tango said with a snort.

Aidan absorbed that a moment. And then his eyes bugged. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” Mercy said, smiling now. “You’re welcome.”

Aidan set his sandwich down on the desk upon which he was seated and pushed his hands through his hair, clasping them together at the back of his neck. “Aw, damn it, I totally forgot. You think it’s too late to get reservations somewhere?”

“Probably,” Tango said. “But Sam won’t care about that. Just do something thoughtful.”

“Okay.” He blinked a few times. “Shit, like what?”

Tango and Mercy shared a look.

“I got Whitney this set of fancy pastels she wanted,” Tango offered. At Aidan’s blank look, he added, “It doesn’t have to be jewelry or anything like that. Just something you know she’ll like. The more personal the better; that shows you put some thought into it.”

Aidan glanced toward Mercy. “And you got message oil?” He sounded doubtful.

“To go with the massage,” Mercy said, waggling his fingers and grinning.

“Ugh.” Aidan made a face. “Don’t give me the visual, man.”

“It might even be a happy ending ma–”

“Dude!”

Tango and Mercy burst out laughing, and Aidan gave them the bird. “Fuck y’all for real,” he muttered, picking his sandwich back up. “Coupla assholes.”

~*~

The guys gave him good-natured hell about it, but the truth was Mercy liked doing thoughtful things for his girl. There was a part of him that would always fear that no amount of gestures or I-love-yous could make up for what he’d done to Ava when she was seventeen. Leaving her, breaking her heart like that, when she needed him most…maybe Ghost had been the architect, but he’d gone along with it. Best intentions or not, he’d walked away, and in his own mind, that was unforgivable.

So he liked doing thoughtful things for her.

He also harbored an abiding fear that, love of her life or not, she still resented him a little.

That feeling had been intensifying lately. Ava and Sam were collaborating on a project they refused to name for fear of getting their hopes up, and he’d arrived home one day last week to find them both with their heads in their hands, bottle of wine and two glasses on the coffee table, the living room strewn with kid toys. They’d been busy and distracted, and Mercy had felt the growing pressure of not enough, do something in the back of his skull for days.

But what was enough? How was it possible, when you were the same blue-collar shithead, with the same job, making the same money, with the same face, and the same voice, to up the ante again and again in a way that would make her think, damn, I’m glad he’s mine?

He didn’t talk about any of those fears with the guys. How could he? He was the fucking romantic one of the bunch. If he showed doubt…it wouldn’t be good for them to see. Somehow, he’d become a rock for the younger ones, a handhold in the relentless, rushing river, and he would never show them the way the sand eroded at his base, way down beneath the rippling current.

He bought a bottle of massage oil, a pack of steaks, some taper candles, and a signed first edition of Interview With The Vampire. Ghost, the unromantic bastard, had agreed to ride escort with a rig trucking guns up to New York, so Maggie had offered to keep the kids at her place, let them have a sleepover. It was all set.

And then Ghost called at five p.m. to say that their convoy had been ambushed and he needed reinforcements. Now.

They got the guns back. Barely. But the trip north was off. Mercy pulled into his own driveway at little after two in the morning. The lights were off.

He sat for a long moment after he killed the engine, arms draped over the handlebars, head tipped back. Each exhalation left his lungs in a plume of white steam, swirling up toward the brittle, black glass of the February night sky. He counted the constellations he knew the names of; a clear night; he could see Venus, a blue orb brighter than the rest.

When he didn’t feel angry enough to break something, he took off his helmet and walked to the door, let himself in as soundlessly as someone his size was capable. The house was cool, the thermostat turned down for the night.

Everything was as expected – disappointingly so – until he reached their bedroom door and saw the seam of faint light running beneath it.

He hesitated, hand on the knob. He’d texted Ava that he was on his way home about an hour before, but hadn’t received a response; he’d assumed she was already asleep and didn’t blame her. Millie woke up early and if you didn’t go to bed right after she did you were shit out of luck.

But the light was on. He let himself in slowly, not wanting to startle her, eyes doing a careful sweep of the room.

The nightstand lamps were on, clicked down to the low setting. Ava sat with her back against the headboard, legs folded, laptop balanced, appropriately, on her lap. She was dressed in cropped yoga pants and a tank cut so low under the arms he could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her hair was mussed like she’d been finger-combing it, tangled on her shoulders. She’d bought a pair of drugstore readers recently in the hopes they would help with her computer eyestrain, and they were perched on her nose now.

He knew she’d heard him. “Hi,” she murmured, distracted, typing.

Mercy eased the door shut and smiled. If he’d come home to find her with rose petals, and wine, and lingerie, he would have felt immensely guilty to have kept her up waiting. But she was writing; that was a part of who she was; it was what she did, with him or without him. So. He was glad.

He gave a soft wolf-whistle, and though her fingers kept moving, the corner of her mouth that he could see quirked up in a grin. “If that ain’t the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.”

She turned toward him then, snorting, rolling her eyes  behind her glasses. “Yeah, right…” she started, but trailed off when she saw the blood running down the side of his face. It had to look black in the low lamplight. “Shit, baby.” She set her laptop aside and scrambled across the bed on her knees.

“It’s fine,” he said, catching her by the shoulders when she reached him so she wouldn’t overbalance and tip off the bed. She skimmed her fingers up the side of his neck, squinting through her glasses to find the source of the blood. “Head wounds just bleed a lot. You know.”

“Head wounds. Sure,” she mocked, voice vibrating with an undercurrent of worry. She found the laceration at his hairline, probing it with delicate fingertips. He didn’t flinch – he was maybe a little too proud of the fact – but she hissed in sympathetic pain. “Baby,” she scolded.

“It doesn’t even hurt that bad.”

“Do you have a concussion? Were you okay to ride home?”

“Fine.”

She tipped her chin down, eyes huge and deadly serious over the tops of her glasses. “Did you lose consciousness?”

He caught both her hands in his own, swallowed them up with his giant palms. Squeezed. “No. It’s fine. I didn’t even feel it until Walsh noticed I was bleeding like a stuck pig.”

She cocked her head to the side, lips pursed. “Walsh, too? How many people did my jackass dad ruin Valentine’s plans for?”

He chuckled. “Seven or eight? Maybe.”

“Asshole,” she muttered, sliding off the bed, getting to her feet. “Okay. Let’s go clean you up.”

“I can do it, you go back to work.”

She gave him a look that was alarmingly, delightfully reminiscent of her mother. (In Mercy’s own personal childhood hell, mothers were anathema; To see his girl love hers, become hers, over time, was a special sort of Southern privilege he wouldn’t trade for the world.) “Bathroom. Now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Their master en suite was a much tighter fit than the kids’ bathroom down the hall: a walk-in shower that he’d retiled last summer, narrow vanity, and toilet all wedged in around a linen cabinet that was too big for the space, but necessary given the amount of towels a family of five went through every day. Mercy leaned a shoulder against the glass wall of the shower while Ava pulled the first aid kit from the cabinet and started laying out what she’d need on the counter. His brows went up when he saw the thread.

“DIY stitches?”

“Shut up, I’m better at it than I used to be. Here.” She turned to him with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball and he leaned down so she could clean the wound without having to stand on her tip-toes. It stung, like it always did, but her movements were gentle, her touch soft as she urged his head to the side with a fingertip against his jaw. She frowned at him with maternal concern as she worked, but he saw the corners of her mouth flicker, once, in veiled amusement. “Dare I ask what the other guys look like?”

He grinned, and she lost some of her fight to hold back her own smile. “They were pretty damn ugly before, so, use your imagination.”

She chuckled and turned back for another cotton ball. “Y’all get the guns back?”

“Yeah. Your dad’s gonna have us run ‘em up next week sometime. Now that we know what to expect…” He trailed off, not wanting to go into more detail. It would make her worry, and she had a full plate right now. If he wasn’t half-giddy with exhaustion, he wouldn’t have said what he already had.

Ava gave him a sharp look as she came back with the next swab. “Who was it?”

“Hmm,” he hummed, and her expression darkened.

“Felix.”

He sighed. “New crew.”

“MC?”

“Street gang with cartel backing. We think. Don’t have all the details yet, but Ian called and said they’re giving him hassle. He’s tripled his security at the funeral home, and at his place.”

“Jesus,” she breathed, hands stilling.

“Hey.” He reached to curl his hand around her forearm and gave her a little squeeze. “We’ve got it, okay? Don’t worry.”

She gave him a long look, and then shook her head, turning back to the kit. “Don’t worry. Uh-huh. Sure.”

“I mean it. We’ve handled worse. We can handle this.”

“No matter how many of you wind up in the hospital. Right. Got it.” She threaded the suture needle with steady hands, but her breath rattled in her throat as she exhaled through her mouth.

Shit. It wasn’t his busted plans that had ruined Valentine’s Day; it was his big stupid mouth.

That wouldn’t do at all.

“Ava Rose,” he said, and put every ounce of feeling he possessed into her name.

Her hands stilled, and she half-turned to look at him sideways, worried and doubtful.

He looped an arm around her waist and drew her in against his chest.

“I’m trying to–” she protested, gesturing to the needle.

He kissed the side of her head, and she fell silent with an anxious little huff of breath. “I’m sorry, fillette,” he murmured. “Every time things start to settle down just a little, something new pops up.” And it did. Rivals, new enemies, new hurdles, new business ventures. Even personal crises; he’d spent so many days taking cookies and a listening ear to Tango’s place, terrified each time that this time no one would answer his knock, and he’d kick the door down to find that Tango’s third and final suicide attempt had been successful. The dust never settled; it came close, at times, but then someone always kicked it up again. “I wish it didn’t,” he said. “I know you hate it.”

She was still a moment…and then she snorted. “You wish it didn’t?” She twisted in his hold so she faced him, right up close, her arms looping around his neck. “You wish it would settle down? You?”

He fidgeted. Just a little. “Well, yeah…”

“You. The man who tells my dad he gets bored when he doesn’t have heads to cave in with a sledgehammer, wishes everything would be all boring and settled-down around here.” She rolled her eyes. “Riiiiight.”

He felt himself blush. “Well, I mean, I hate it for you. You and the kids…”

She looked so tired, and so beautiful, and she chuckled. “Baby, that’s just life. Things settle down, and then there’s another disaster. It happens to everyone. Granted.” She tipped her head to the side. “For most people it’s a fender-bender or a bad report card, and for us it usually involves murder. So. We’re not that normal. But.” She looked up at him with a kind of shining love he definitely didn’t deserve. “We get through it. I know we do. But a girl can worry, right?”

He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Right.”

She started to pull away, to reach for the needle again, but Mercy held her fast.

“Hey, I’m sorry about tonight.”

“Be sorry you’re not hurt worse than this or I’d have to kick your ass. And Dad’s.”

“No, I mean it.” He gave her waist a squeeze. “I wanted to do something romantic – cook you dinner, lavender oil massage – and I blew it.”

“It’s okay, baby.”

“No, it’s not.”

Her gaze sharpened. “This is really bothering you.”

“Well, yeah, I–”

Then her eyes widened. “Oh no. Please tell me this isn’t more of your ‘making it up to me’ bullshit. It is, though, isn’t it?” She grimaced. “Mercy…”

He set his jaw to what felt like a stubborn angle. “What if it is?”

“Then you’re dumb.”

“That’s sweet.”

She framed his face with both her hands, and stared at him intently. “We’ve had this conversation a few times.”

“Yeah.”

“Baby, I’m not holding a grudge.”

He fought the urge to fidget again. He could walk into a firefight guns blazing, could run at his enemies with nothing but a hammer in his hands, but his Ava reduced him to a squirming kid. Every time.

And she knew, because she knew everything there was to know about him. She rested her forehead against his, her features blurring thanks to the closeness. “I would ask,” she said softly, “if you knew how much I loved you, but you already know.”

He nodded, jostling both their heads.

“I’m not going anywhere. Not ever.”

He held her tight, unable to speak around the sudden lump in his throat. Everyone he’d ever really loved had been taken from him – except for her, except for their babies. He knew intimately the way that good things didn’t last; that men like him didn’t get happy endings. She could assure him all she wanted, but a part of him would always worry. Always doubt.

She kissed him, slow and sweet. When she pulled back, she whispered, “Tell me a story.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Okay. Wanna hear the one about the asshole husband who missed Valentine’s Day?”

“Wanna hear how he got laid anyway?”

He laughed, and kissed her back, and the night wasn’t ruined after all.