lslines

The Slow Seduction of Jack O. Trades

Prologue:
A Starting Point

Prompt: I'll paint you valentine evenings, spin you mornings of gold.
Series: Named - TSSOJOT
Warnings: Pre-established slash [m/m], eventual threesome [m/f/m]
Authors Notes: Probably the only chaptered and planned thing I will ever write. I mean, it has plot. Fr srs. Of course, it's not much of one, but hey! Plot!

Ansel Wrapper is a kind soul; no one who knows her would argue the fact. And, if her hands are a little too large and her face a little too hard, well, no one will hold it against her. Broad shoulders just give her more room to carry those who need someone to lean on. She can sing like a bird and the marvels that have emerged from her kitchen can bring a professional chef to his knees and make him weep. But I digress. None of this has anything to do with anything, and you should dismiss it as if I have said nothing. All that matters is you know that Ansel is nothing if not a kind soul.

So upon finding a young lady outside her back door trying to sleep off the exhaustion, Ansel immediately bundles the poor thing inside. Another stray, the neighbours say with a roll of their eyes and fond exasperation in their voices. Another child to care for, to use as a substitute as she has none of her own. They don’t expect anything to come of this new child, this new name on Ansel’s long list of those who have come and gone over the years. With a sigh and a frown of pity, they wonder how long it will be until Ansel’s heart is broken once more.

Of course, none of them know how Ansel’s strays keep in touch—sending her mothers day cards, Christmas presents, well wishes on her birthday. She may have none of her own, but Ansel’s children are many in number and each and every one of them loves her beyond measure.

When the young lady wakes a handful of hours after Ansel’s pulling her from her nap in the gutter, it is dark. Sometime during her unconsciousness someone has thrown a blanket over her and tucked her in as best they can considering she was sleeping on a couch, and she can smell stew. The only light is from the fire, snapping and crackling in an absent sort of way and only just making itself heard over the noise of the rain on the windows. Frowning at the lateness of the hour, she gets to her feet and folds the blanket into a neat square to leave it on the rumpled leather of the couch. She pulls on her boots and creeps quietly past the open hallway towards the garage door, hoping to sneak away unnoticed. She knows she should do the polite thing and thank the kindly lady who pulled her in from the rain, but she has somewhere she wants to be. Besides, she’s worried about her bike.

“Jack,” She flinches as she hears her name called and releases the doorknob, turning about to see who caught her trying to leave without a goodbye and a thank you. “In here,” calls the voice again from behind the door hanging slightly ajar a few paces down the hall. Wrinkling her face in puzzlement and thought, she pushes the door the rest of the way open and peers around the corner. The voice is familiar, smooth and gentle, and she places it as belonging to the woman who had let her inside even before she lays eyes on her. What was her name? She thinks quickly, eyeing the back of the woman’s head as she stands at the stove, bushy red hair held away from her face with a simple scrunchy. Agripina? Anchor? Angel?

“Ansel, who’s this?” Jack does a double take at the second voice and looks around. There, sitting at a table; she hadn’t noticed them, the layout of the kitchen hiding them from view with it’s three steps to a lower section of floor where the bench top is just barely higher than their heads. Her look of confusion is met by a matching expression on the face of a blond boy, perhaps a year or two younger than herself, twirling a fork around his fingers. The older man beside him, in at least his early twenties, looks bored and unsurprised to see her.

Ansel turns, a casserole dish held firmly in her mitted hands. “Jack, there you are. Be a darling and fetch the napkins? Third drawer on your left.”

Jack, in her confusion, complies with nothing more than a disbelieving stare as Ansel strides past her and down to the table. Pushing the door half closed again on her way back past it, Jack slowly follows Ansel’s footsteps to hover, unsure, one foot on the floor and one on the bottom of the three stairs. Uncomfortably aware of the blond’s eyes on her and the way the brunette beside him spares her no more than an amused glance, she wonders longingly if perhaps she could just bolt for the door without being intercepted.

“Don’t even think about it,” Ansel chides her without turning to look, removing the oven mitts from her hands and fussing purposefully with the cutlery on the table. The table, Jack notices, set for four.

She lets her eyes stray once more to the blond before holding out the packet of napkins. “Here,” She says with her offering, and finds herself a little startled by how subdued and sleepy her voice is.

The boy blinks at her, then smiles languidly and reaches out to take them from her outstretched hand. “Cool,” He says, and places them off to one side. He gestures to the empty chair in front of her and folds his arms in close, resting his chin in his hands. “You gonna have a seat?”

“Of course she is,” Ansel says mildly before nudging the chair out and inviting Jack to sit with a nod of her head. Cautiously Jack does as instructed, and a moment later Ansel is ladling stew into her bowl. “I hope you’re not allergic to anything, dear.”

“Uh,” Jack manages an attempt at coherence. Sharply, the part of her mind that paid attention to all her mother’s lectures reminds her that she is in a stranger’s house at a table surrounded by strangers, and the food might well be laced with something. It smells heavenly, she admits, and as the blond boy is wolfing his own serving down like he expects it to evaporate within seconds it certainly looks safe. Besides, she tells herself, if Ansel had any ill intentions towards me, I’ve been asleep on her couch for hours and that would have been a much easier opening. “No,” She continues weakly as she takes a mouthful.

All three sets of eyes are focused on her as a sigh escapes her and her eyelids flutter closed. Ansel is smiling brilliantly, while the blond boy’s eyes are wide and the brunette's gaze focuses in intensity. “Oh, Orange,” She breathes, leaning back into her chair and sinking halfway down it. “Guh. This tastes amazing.”

Ansel giggles, and Jack opens her eyes a little. “I’m flattered that you think so! I wasn’t sure whether I should try a new recipe or an old one, but I’m so glad I went with this if you like it so much. It’s always so good to have you taste buds to test on...”

“Just as long as it doesn’t mean you’ll be getting rid of us old taste-testers any time soon,” The blond boy adds happily, helping himself to a second serving. Jack pulls herself up in her chair and starts eating as fast as she can. The brunette gives off an air of having smiled at them both without his mouth moving at all, and starts on his own bowl at a decent pace.

For a few minutes, the only noise is that of the rain and of cutlery against dish ware, until Ansel gasps and claps her hand to her head. “Oh, I completely forgot! Jack, this is Babel and Flea. Babel, Flea, this is Jack; I found her sleeping outside my back door this afternoon and forced my hospitality upon her.”

“So it’s your bike in the garage?” Babel, the brunette, says his first words for the evening and Jack looks up at him from her chore of soaking up the soup left in her bowl with bread chunks. She nods, and he rests his chin on the backs of his braced hands. His eyes glimmer softly in the candlelight, and regardless of what his eyes say, again he doesn’t seem to smile with his mouth. “It’s beautiful.”

Jack does smile. “Thank you. Cost me nineteen years of savings, but she was worth it. She bought me my freedom.”

“Freedom?” Flea frowns.

“All of your savings?” Ansel frowns.

“Uh,” Jack says again, glancing at Flea once before ignoring his question. “Yeah. I’ve only got a few hundred left. I was hoping to find a cheap enough room while I went job hunting, but this place seems a little out of my league. Like I told you before, Miss Wrapper, I was thinking of leaving for Soupkitchen and seeing if maybe that’s more affordable.”

“Call me Ansel, please.” Ansel tilts her head thoughtfully, and catches Babel’s eye in a way that doesn’t go unnoticed by Flea or Jack. “Surely you weren’t planning to leave tonight?”

“Well, actually,” Jack starts warily, put on edge by the silent exchanged between the two of them. “I was planning to leave right away; I’d probably be gone by now if you hadn’t called me in here.”

“Without a thank you or a goodbye?” Ansel admonishes in her most motherly voice, and Babel tries not to snort and ruin the moment. Jack is wilting a little in her chair as it is, and Flea is tugging insistently at Babel’s belt loop in an attempt to learn what’s happening. Babel ignores him in favour of watching Ansel continue. “Well, I won’t have it. I insist you stay here for the night, and you can think about what you want to do in the morning.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly—” Jack protests but Ansel bulldozes through her objections.

“I insist.” She says loudly. “On one condition: you will hang around long enough in the morning to discuss what you want to do, and plan properly. No buts.”

Jack lets her head hang in defeat, those lectures from her mother swirling hopelessly in the face of this strangers personality. “Yes’m.”

“Now that that’s settled, why don’t you go back to bed?” And Ansel is back to her diminutive self again, smiles and gentle-yet-convincing suggestions, the unrefusable mother-knows-best voice tucked away again. “In fact, I have a spare bedroom that’s just going to waste at the moment and is certain to be much more comfortable than the couch. Why don’t you go fetch your bags from the garage and I’ll show you where it is.”

“If you insist,” Jack mutters, too tired and full to object any further. She gets to her feet and pads quietly back out the door.

Ansel smiles as she goes, before turning to the boys still sitting at the table. “Babel, be a darling and clean up?”

“Yes, Sel,” Babel agrees mildly.

“Flea, you can help him.”

“’Course,” Flea snorts indignantly. “Don’t I always?”

Ansel rolls her eyes at them both and pulls herself to her feet, heading after Jack towards the garage, pulling the kitchen door closed behind her. They sit quietly in the flickering candlelight for a minute, before Babel gets to his feet and starts collecting the empty bowls. Flea places the lid on the casserole dish once more and carries it to the fridge.

“So, this is Ansy’s latest stray?” Flea muses aloud, and Babel glances at him. “How long do you think she’ll be here for?”

“At least three months,” Babel says without a second of thought. Flea blinks at him and swings the fridge door shut, meeting him halfway across the room to take the stack of bowls from his hands.

“So long?” Flea smiles tauntingly, a single eyebrow raised as he starts running the sink. “What makes you so sure? And what was that little look about?”

Babel schools his face back into neutral once more and begins to wipe down the table. “What look?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, and don’t you try and pretend otherwise.” Flea leans against the edge of the sink, one eye on the running water sending clouds of steam and detergent into the air and the other on Babel as he scrubs away at splashes of spilt stew.

“Honey, you’re imagining things,” Babel says firmly. “And don’t pout at me like that.”

“Like what! I wasn’t pouting,” Flea stopped pouting, despairing once again how well his boyfriend could predict him. “And another thing, when did you see her bike? We came in through the front door. I didn’t even know she was here! We didn’t go anywhere near the garage.”

“Remember when Sel asked me to fetch the good bowls? They were in the garage. And it really is a beautiful bike.” He straightens up and crosses the kitchen in a few long strides, leaning across Flea to rinse out his dishcloth and turn off the sink. Pulling back, his large damp hands curl around Flea’s hips and he kisses him slowly. Pressing their foreheads together with an actual smile, albeit a small one, he pauses for a second before whispering, “She’s really pretty, isn’t she?” Flea closes his eyes and nods in agreement. Babel kisses his forehead, “She’s even prettier when she’s asleep. And did you see her face when she had that first mouthful of Sel’s cooking? She seems nice too. Wanna be friends?”

“I know what you’re thinking, and I think it’s a bad idea. Not to mention Ansel will kill us for even thinking about it, so you’re already in danger,” Flea warns without feeling. “Her newest stray? Even if she is pretty. Ansel’d have a fit.”

Babel buries his face in the available neck. “Like that’s going to stop you,” He teases.

“Doesn’t sound like it’s going to stop you either,” Flea snorts, running fingers through the hair tickling his cheek. “If Ansel does convince her to stay—” He hesitates for a second before ploughing on. “There’s a market in the morning, down in Little Miranda. We could take her to that, I guess.”

“Spend the rest of the day showing her around the town,” Babel adds slowly.

“Introduce her to the Weather Boys...” Flea lets a smile curve onto his face and feels Babel huff against him.

“That might be going a bit too far for her first day in town.”

“Second, technically,” Flea corrects him. “It’s late after all. But hey, if she’s going to be hanging around, then all in good time, I guess.”

“You gonna wash up, or should I?” Babel pulls back with the sudden change of subject, and Flea doesn’t question him, just rolling his eyes instead.

“You can, of course. I’m going to make coffee. You want one?”

“No. And you shouldn’t have one either; you’ll never get to sleep tonight if you do.”

“Spoilsport,” The blond grumbles, but pulls his arm away from the cupboard door. “I’m going to go sit by the fire then and wait for you and Ansy, okay?”

“Sure,” Babel is already up to his elbows in soapy water, and Flea presses a kiss to his head before making his way towards the living room.

If he ducks into the garage on his way there, and just happens to runs his hands appreciatively across red and chrome and black leather, thinking carefully about freedom and the pretty girl in the room down the hall, well, no one would hold it against him.