knife_bender | MHA # 2 | Saturday Afternoon

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MHA # 2 | Saturday Afternoon

After work Diego had rushed home to enact his plan. He had promised (or warned?) Annie, that the only thing stopping him from buying an engagement ring was that he needed to deal with the whole lost siblings thing first. Well, they have now been found and Diego was wasting no time. He had taken Klaus and Allison out to Baltimore that very week and bought a ring.

Along with about ten empty ring boxes. Because he was going to have fun with this. Allison thought it was a bad idea but what did she know, she was divorced and her second husband was 60 years in the past.

[For the girl!]

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"Absolutely not!" He wasn't even going to tell her about the decoys. Let her find out that joy for herself. "That takes the fun out of it."

Correct answer.

Annie blew out a breath, carefully getting to her feet as she looked around their living room. "Okay. I need to be like, systematic about this," she decided, already kind of debating making a list of places to search so she could make sure she didn't cover the same ground twice. The plants seemed like an obvious choice, and because they seemed so obvious, she was going to start with the couch.

She reached to pull up the cushion she'd been sitting on, fishing around deep in the couch for a moment before producing a knife -- normal, duh -- which she discarded.

Diego looked absolutely thrilled by all of this. "Oh, so you're just jumping right in there, aren't you?"

"Are you allowed to help me?" Annie countered, making a point now to playfully reach around him to fish around in those cushions, too.

It was obviously not in the couch. (A second knife was, though.) But she also knew that if he'd gone to this kind of effort and she found it right away, that would kind of suck, right?

(She need not have worried.)

"Me helping would also be cheating," he said. "But, hey, if you want to gather up a posse to help you look I'd be fine with that."

He was fairly confident in his hiding place. And the decoys.

"No, this is mine. Ours," Annie said, shaking her head and pressing a quick kiss to his cheek as she moved to look under the couch. "I have too many friends with slick powers that would probably help, anyway."

Like Wanda probably had a spell for this. For all Annie knew, ring-finding was a special Jedi skill.

"It's just the apartment, right?" she clarified, her head popping back up as she determined that there was no ring under the couch.

"Just the apartment," he confirmed with a nod. "I would have hidden it on the island but I would like to get married sometime in the next decade."

You know, you'd think that the fact she was hunting for her own engagement ring might have tempered Annie's reaction to hearing Diego talk about getting married to her, but no. She still kind of took a second to visibly melt at hearing that.

She was caught up in the game of it, of course, and she was kind of purposely getting caught up in it because if she didn't she would sort of collapse in on herself out of nerves and what this all meant, right now.

"I still would have found it," Annie decided, trying for cocky but her tone was soft and fond and kind of emotional, all the same. And that was a big promise considering she hadn't found it just in the apartment, yet.

And she'd put on enough of a show, now. Time to start looking in places she thought were obvious, and so she was heading over to start sifting thorough her plants.

"Be careful not to hurt the plants." Now he was just screwing with her.

He got a little look for that -- like, please, she knew not to hurt the plants -- and if she'd let herself think about it a little more, she would have realized that he was screwing with her.

But Annie's mind went abruptly blank and she found herself kind of lightheaded...because from underneath the fronds of one of her ferns, she pulled out a little velvet box. She turned to Diego, her hand shaking a little, and held it out wordlessly. She didn't trust her voice right now.

Diego almost--almost--felt bad about what he was about to do, because Annie looked so cute when she found the box.

"Try shaking that box."

Annie frowned at him, puzzled, because that was not the romantic invitation to spend their lives together that she'd kind of thought was up next.

She obediently shook the box. And she didn't need to open it to confirm this, but she did anyway.

"It's empty?"

"I may have also asked the jewelry store for a couple empty boxes." A couple meaning almost a dozen. "I didn't want to make it too easy."

Do you now see why Allison had been concerned, Annie?

"...there's decoys?" Annie replied, equal parts impressed and also, you know, totally frustrated. "Oh, wow. You're not screwing around."

And she loved him for it but right now she also was dealing with a weird adrenaline dump from not finding a ring in that box, and it had left her kind of...thrown off. In the best, most fun way. This was going to go on for hours. "Shit, this really is going to take strategy."

And she was wrong. It would not take mere hours.

Diego laughed and held out his hand. "Come over here and discuss strategy with me."

"I don't know if that's allowed," Annie replied, smiling and feeling her face flush as she straightened up and went over to take his hand and join him again on the couch. "I can't believe you faked me out. My heart is beating so hard right now, Diego."

Like, seriously, was this what it felt like if you were going to faint?

"Sorry," he said, though the look on his face made it clear he wasn't that sorry. "There's only nine more empty boxes, I promise."

Yes. Nine.

"Nine?" Annie echoed, her eyes going wide. "You got nine empty boxes?"

God, Diego, she loved you.

She played idly with his hand, her mind racing with possible hiding spots. "What if I don't find it?"

"You'll find it," he said, lifting up her hand so he could press a kiss there. "It just might take a day or two."

Or slightly more than that.

Technically, Annie realized, he had gotten ten empty boxes. Okay. Ten decoys.

That would help, knowing how many fakes there were. She could make a list. And once she found them, she could narrow it down a little more each time.

"Maybe I'll find it really soon and we'll just be finding decoys for like, a year." No. "I mean, it's not that big an apartment."

"And whenever we find decoys we can be all nostalgic over this," Diego said with a smile. "That said, this apartment isn't that big, but you brought a ton of knick-knacks when you moved in."

Like, he probably have gotten double the decoys and have found places for all of them.

"Yeah," Annie said, glancing over to a little grouping of candles on a table, because he was completely right. She had brought so many little jars and candles and picture frames when she'd moved in. If she'd left it the way Diego had it, it would probably be a ton easier to find this ring.

"Remember how I used to hide cond...." Annie trailed off mid-sentence, her eyes going wide as she tore up from the couch and sprinted towards the kitchen.

Which was dumb, because she should have known anything as obvious as the flour container was going to be a decoy, too.

For a second Diego thought Annie had run off to puke or something, then he realized she was running to the kitchen. He got up from the couch and calmly followed her, looking so happy about this entire thing.

"You okay, babe?"

Annie had hopped up on the counter and had her arm halfway into the flour cannister in what she felt was truly impressive time.

When she pulled the little box out, this time -- not covered in flour, of course, because they still didn't keep anything in there -- she had the good sense to shake it immediately.

And then she was shaking it at Diego, just this side of accusingly. "So this is another decoy. I thought I'd cracked it."

"Oh the flour cannister would have been too obvious," Diego said with a laugh. "At least there's only eight more decoys left?"

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