nextgenerationmarvel | Long Overdue

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Long Overdue

Luíz Adriano Alencar da Silva was visiting New York City once again. It had been a long time since his last visit, but this visit was a bit more personal than business. He hadn't seen his son in awhile, and there were things he needed to look into about his son. Particularly this woman he had been dating.

The flight in had been long, and though he was greeted warmly by his son, he was getting too old to spring right into action after a flight. Luíz begged off meeting Stephanie until he was more presentable.

Before a quick nap and exercises in the hotel's gym, Luíz used his pull and influence to get a nice, quiet table for three at Eleven Madison Park. He sent the time for Marcelo and his girlfriend to meet him and got ready.

He tried to be a little early, so he could watch how his son and his girlfriend interacted as they approached. Over two years with one woman was certainly a record for his son. That he had not proposed marriage was slightly worrying to the Brazilian father considering the last relationship before Marcelo left for the States. For now, Luíz needed to meet and learn.

Then he would start asking questions.

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It was a long, silent and awkward ride home, with Stephanie not saying anything until they were back at their place. She didn't want it to be a public thing, even in front of a cab driver. She locked eyes with him for a long moment, before speaking.

"Helena. Who was she?" Stephanie glared at him. "You told me all the other women were insignificant."

Marcelo didn't even try to talk once the conversation at the restaurant ended. He didn't want to poke an inferno with a toothpick. Though he would probably be safer in public since Stephanie was more concerned with public image than him.

He really wanted something to drink when he got home. All the wine with dinner was not helping as much as he wished. He let out a deep breath.

"Helena was a naive mistake. Which is to say she was my fiancee before I broke up with her and moved to America."

"You were engaged. You had a fiancee. And you never once saw fit to mention that." She looked at him. "Yes, I know what I said about the past. But that's not the same thing. When were you going to tell me that? Ever?" They'd been together for over two years. She'd moved in with him.

"Don't you think that is a thing you should have told me at some point?!" Her lips drew tight. "So was the naive mistake before or after you asked her to marry you?"

"I don't know. I don't think about her ever. First I've had to think about her was when my father mentioned her." He pinched the bridge of his nose momentarily. His sense of foreboding over dinner had been right.

He dropped his hand away from his face. He ignored what he assumed was the rhetorical angry question and when toward the latter one. "The naive mistake was thinking I should have asked her. She was the jewel of her father's eye, and her father is one of the drug lords I directly work against. Which I didn't find out until after we were engaged. So before to answer you."

Stephanie looked at him for a long moment. "So, in a roundabout way, you stopped seeing her because her father was a dangerous man. Now, think about me for a moment. And how confidant that's supposed to make me feel." Because though the drug lords were a more personal grudge, there was no comparison in how dangerous her father and Helena's father would have been.

"So what about me and my father, Marcelo?" There was steely anger in her face, but also real anxiety.

"And her father brought out some traits in her I didn't know I had to live with." He couldn't lay all the blame on her father. Marcelo knew he had been too impulsive and stupid. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Is your father going into the Brazilian drug trade? He going to put bounties on my head to have it on his desk as an ornament? Are you so loyal to your father that you'd would let him do that? Because as much as I dislike your father after his resurrection, return, or whatever, I don't see you as a threat to my life."

"My father would never deign to deal with common criminals. I can say that much about him. He weaves his webs from the corridors of political and economic power." And now, that he was very much alive and yet dead to the world, he could quietly control the web from the centre.

"I am angry that you never told me about this. But I can swear to you that Father will do no such thing." She looked at him, less glaring at him now than stating ironbound determination. "You're mine, and I am yours. And he will have to deal with that, because if he cannot, I will have no dealings with him."

She sighed, coming down to a more vulnerable place for a moment. "Part of it is that ... I knew I wasn't the first. I expected that, I'm okay with that. But the engagement ..." She didn't quite finish the sentence. "I'd hoped, maybe, sometime, that could have been a first."

He held his tongue on the 'common criminals'. If they were so common, he wouldn't have been giving most of his life to stop it. It also meant his mother's death was common. He pressed his lips together and let a couple breaths escape his nose.

"You the first person I've told my secret identity to." On purpose. He had made a huge mistake one.

"You're the first woman to be with me longer than a year." Which might have told Stephanie how long he had been with Helena, but he pressed on.

"You're the first to move in with me. You're the first woman I love with with all my heart. You've got plenty of important things outside of..." It was here his brain caught up to what Stephanie had been getting at. It caught up and sputtered into silence. So, too, did his mouth.

His mother's death was ennobled by the sacrifice she had made but the men who had killed her, no matter how great or powerful or dangerous they were, were gutter scum. Only the lowest of men would knowingly kill for the right to foist addictive poison on poor, desperate people. She wasn't sure exactly what to think of Father, but he was a different sort of man than that. He had a strange sense of scruple with his ruthlessness.

She nodded quietly as he told her. She didn't look away when his words trailed into meaninglessness. "Yes." She murmured softly. "That."

Edited 2013-06-23 05:20 (UTC)

"I... I... we..." He had no idea what to say. Stephanie wanting to marry him caught him flatfooted. He uncrossed his arms in front of his chest. One of the rules he had set out for himself was to leave little pain behind when he was gone. Which meant no big attachments.

He seemed to have flaunted that in his usual casual manner.

"I didn't know... you'd want to..." Flaunted it so good, he'd somehow gotten himself into Stephanie Shaw's big book of iron clad plans.

"Marry you?" Stephanie looked at him, articulating that which he could not. "Yes. I do want to marry you." She looked at him evenly. "Because neither of us knows how long the other will live, what's going to happen in the future. I want us to be together for a long time, but whatever else may happen, I want to be together. With you."

"And as much as I love living in sin, I like the idea of having things formalized. You are mine, and I am yours. I want the world to know that and get used to it. I would like to be Stephanie Shaw da Silva. To wear a ring to prove it."

She actually smiled slightly. "And that is what I want, Marcelo."

His head was spinning. He blinked a few times to try to clear it, but the shocked wooziness was sticking around.

"Did you just ask and accept?" He didn't know if he needed to sit down or not. "Not that I mind, but... you know what being married means? To me? Because we should have that clear if you want to put a ring on it."

"I know full well what that means." Stephanie replied. "In its various legal and other ramifications." She looked at him for a moment, letting out a small sigh and then looking back at him evenly. "I have something. Wait for a moment."

She wheeled about and went off towards her space in their apartment, intent on finding a safe she'd installed soon after moving in.

"I... wha..." He let out a breath. While Stephanie disappeared into her space, Marcelo walked a little unsteadily toward a chair and slowly collapsed into it. Oh, what has his father spurred into action. He had to admit his old man was sneaky.

He shifted to sit forward with his elbows resting on his knees. He hung his head as he tried to catch his breath and his mind out of a panicked spiral.

Stephanie came out with a slightly oblong box, itself rather elegant, lined in gold and silk. She strode towards him, eyes showing all manner of emotions, though it seems that the worst of the anger was gone.

"I thought, I thought it was sort of silly, the custom that only one partner wears the engagement ring. So, I ... I went and had a pair made. So we could both wear one. If you would." She laughed, a little nervously. And got down on one knee.

"So ... I'm going to say it formally. Marcelo, will you marry me?"

She opened it up to show the rings. Elegantly made, the stone sizable but not gaudily ostentatious. Clearly made to custom and not purchased.

Marcelo has raised his head to see his girlfriend down on one knee in front of him with a jewelry box in hand. He looked at her, at the ring box, and back at her. His eyes widened. He wasn't quite sure if he was imagining this.

So he pinched himself and then winced.

Yes. This was real. Stephanie Shaw wanted to marry him. How was he supposed to take that?

"Sim, querida. Você é o amor da minha vida." English had utterly fled him.

Edited 2013-06-24 02:58 (UTC)

"Como tú eres mío. El amor de mi corazón, la luz de mi vida." Stephanie replied, finding that English didn't quiet express it himself. She took one of the rings and provided he didn't resist, slipped it on his finger.

"Eres mía."

She held out her hand for him to put the other ring on hers.

"Y yo soy tuyo."

He didn't resist her putting the ring on his finger. Though he did look at it for a brief moment and wonder if it would help his punches any.

His hand shook a bit when he took her ring from the box. If she snatched her hand away and ran away giggling...

... he'd wonder who the hell replaced his Stephanie and where the real one went.

He slid the ring on her finger despite his nervousness. Then he leaned over and kissed the ring on her finger.

"Quero estar contigo para sempre," he said with a lopsided grin as he straightened up.

Well, there was really nothing to do but to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him like they just got engaged. Which is exactly had had just happened, as crazy as it all was to contemplate.

"I'm not mad at you anymore." Stephanie said brightly, unable not to grin once she parted from his lips. "I think lunch with your father tomorrow is going to be very interesting." She laughed.

The kiss was expected, but thoroughly enjoyed. He tried to pull her up onto his lap. He thought it would be more comfortable than the floor.

"You could still be mad at me. I deserved it," he admitted a little ruefully. "I just... don't think of her. At all. Why would I need to when I have a better woman?"

He gave Steph a gentle squeeze. "Though I should probably head off one more minor secret revelation..."

She wanted to share her life with him, Marcelo had to learn not to keep so many secrets.

It was true. They were going to be husband and wife, and secrets were not good. For either of them. She settled into his lap, arms still wrapped around his neck.

"All right. Reveal away." It was clear that she was too happy to consider too seriously what it may be.

Good thing she was happily on his lap, this demonstration worked best within 6 feet of him.

"Well, as Vesper, you've seen me do some things. Not all of it's equipment or trained skill." He put them in a silence bubble. He spoke words bu no sound came out. It was supposed to sound like 'But my powers aren't all that great in comparison.'

"You have powers!" Stephanie burst out, though no sound came out, it would have been clear enough what he said. "Not mutant ones?" Her next words were carefully spelled out, by lips as well as words.

The total silence was sort of astonishing. No sounds from the fridge, the clock, even their own hearts hammering away.

He dropped the silence when it was obvious Stephanie got the full effect of his powers.

"Not mutant ones," he answered. "Lab accident back home with bio-medical chemicals. I can put up a limited silence field. It was how we didn't get caught on the balcony at that one gala." Sometimes he tried to protect that public image Stephanie valued. "And then I have enhanced hearing. I can hear things up to two miles away. Helps with surveillance. And despite that, really loud noises can't deafen me. Which is how I escaped from Stahlman that time I ended up in the hospital."

"That would be rather useful with those jet engines as well. I've wondered how you were able to deal with that noise before." Stephanie leaned against him, frowning a little when he mentioned Stahlman. She remembered that far too well.

"But yes ... very useful for boring society galas." Her finger trailed slowly down his chest. "Speaking of ... I think we've some celebrating to do." She grinned wickedly.

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vesper_verde - 2013-06-24 16:51 (UTC) - Expand

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