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 Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:43 pm
It didn't matter that Lori was taller. It didn't matter that he could take Luca's father in a fist fight, and probably pretty quickly. It didn't matter that they were going to his wedding near his childhood home. Lori's back straightened and he tried his very best to look respectable, even as old as he was.
The little comment on his appearance, though not necessarily the nicest, made him smile. It was an attempt to continue to be a dad, and that was all Lori could ask for. He allowed himself to relax, and decided to not elaborate that, in the gay community, he was technically also a bear. 'Fairy' was also not a term he wanted to use right now, knowing both sets of parents.
He settled on "I look younger than your son when I shave."
Younger, sure. Younger than Luca, not necessarily, but it was a good-hearted joke that didn't make him look like too much of an a** and that was good enough for him.
"Sure," he agreed then and motioned for the others to follow. It felt good to have some modicum of control back. "Unfortunately we're going to have to take the car a little ways more, but not much. Everything else is on foot."
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:59 pm
Younger than Luca?! Luca's father stared for a moment longer, baffled, before he started to smile. "You have the curse," he said. The elvish curse of forever baby-faced.
"Oh no," Luca's mother muttered, at the mention of the car. She looked pale.
"She gets carsick," Luca revealed, and grinned at Lori. He took his hand. Well! Today was going better than he'd expected.
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 6:26 pm
"I do," Lori agreed and nodded. Really most Elves had young faces. It just didn't suit him. Of course Luca had lost that game, though seeing his mother Lori wasn't entirely surprised. He was sure that sometimes people thought that he was Luca's dad.
Holding Luca's hand seemed taboo, but he was more concerned with how his fiancee felt than his fiancee's parents, so he took it. It would be best to not make him angry before the big day, not when it had cost so little that abandoning it would basically mean nothing, not that he thought that Luca would.
"You could have told me that beforehand," he said, and arched a brow at Luca, then turned back to his mother. "It's only ten minutes or so, is that okay? If it's not and if you take pills I can grab you some dramamine at the corner store first. It's anti-nausea." A lot of entities from the outskirts shunned medications, though. He'd have brought something more natural if he had been warned!
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 6:53 pm
"Honestly, I forgot," Luca said, looking apologetically towards his mother, and then to Lori. Why hadn't he remembered? "Sorry mom," he added.
"I'll be fine," she assured them. "Let's go. We're headed to your home, Lori? You should tell us more about yourself on the way."
"Luca's given us biased reviews."
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2017 7:06 pm
Lori thought, did he tell you that we live underground? The forest was a lot different than the rath, but they had plenty of accommodations for people who weren't comfortable thinking they were going to die in a landslide and even more for people who didn't want to stay in a hotel either. Hopefully Luca had been right about his parents preferences, but if he wasn't there was a lot of wiggle room.
"I bet he is," he said instead, "but you know I'm going to try to impress you and only tell you the good things." He offered Luca's parents a smile as they approached the car and he unlocked it. The lights went on and off and it beeped but he pointed to it anyway. "That one." It was only a soft side-comment though as he continued. "Technically we're only going to my childhood home. I've lived out here a long time, and my job doesn't really allow for me to live anywhere too out-of-the-way. I get to visit, though, maybe more than the average person, so that's nice."
He opened the door for Luca's mom.
"Is there something you wanted to know?"
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2017 12:02 pm
The parentals climbed into the car, and Luca sighed. Poor Lori! He had no idea what he was getting into. Luca suspected they'd be in for a question and answer session until they got there.
"We'll read between the lines," Luca's mother assured him. "How did you two meet?" Luca had said something about meeting him at his job, but when exactly had they started loving each other? Could they support each other? Would they be safe? "Luca says you have an important job," she prompted, then.
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 11:40 am
Lori heard Luca sigh. Uh-oh. What did that mean?
The question that came was entirely normal, though. People asked how they had met all the time, because they weren't exactly the most evenly-matched of couples. Luca didn't go to the gym and he certainly wasn't the type to go clubbing, and the media had society convinced that the club was where all gay couples met.
"We got a call about a strange book, and Luca happened to be on the other end of it," he explained as he got in himself and started up the car, "Someone was up to something and had brought a fae text to an everyday library. I'm fae myself. We got the book out of there and your son asked me out." He smiled over to Luca. "Well. Sort of."
He nodded then. "Technically I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but most of the people at the wedding are going to be talking about it anyway." Besides, Humans were the ones you had to be careful with. "I work for a government organization that finds, protects, and serves non-human entities. We have to solve the problems they cause too. I'm the head of research. We... do the research, but we also look through videos and things to see if we're dealing with an actual entity or if someone's just fooling around." Also, they knew about every entity they had been able to find yet, and with Luca as a client of theirs his parents were no secret either, nor was their clan. People tended to get unnerved when they learned about that, though. "I'm a part of the organization that helped save you. I just wasn't working there at the time."
"It's beyond 'classified' or 'top secret' though so if you could not-talk about it in public I'd be much obliged." He laughed then. He doubted that they'd actually be bragging about their gay son-in-law but it had to be said.
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 12:11 pm
"I thought you guys would be interested in it," Luca said, and smiled at Lori. He'd been immediately fascinated with the books. He'd wisely kept them off the shelves until he'd called HQ. "I didn't expect someone as handsome as you to come in for it, though," he teased. "Coffee was the least I could do."
"Oh, that one," Luca's mother nodded. They'd been moved from a forest humans had begun taking over. "We're very grateful for the help," she added, "Even if we weren't very happy about it at the time." Woodland elves didn't have the abilities to protect their forests through magic, it had been a bad situation all around.
"Who would we tell?" Luca's father shrugged. "But don't worry. We'll keep your secrets. When did you two--" What was the best word for it? "Begin seeing each other seriously?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 12:57 pm
Lori gave a little snort of laughter. Handsome! Well, Luca was biased. At least fae had a little more bone structure than the average High Elf. He'd have been doomed then. The gym would have done nothing.
"People rarely are," he said then, turning his attention back to Luca's parents. "We have to be the bad guys sometimes, unfortunately." It usually meant saving a life, but entities were just as prone to material attachment as humans. It could be hard. He'd taken plenty of time to get used to life outside of the rath and woods himself!
Lori was horrified for a moment, expecting Luca's father to ask one of those inappropriate straight-people questions about how long they'd been having sex or something. While the implication was there, it wasn't quite that, thankfully.
"A year and a half or so ago?" Lori asked, turning to Luca a moment in question. What qualified 'serious' anyway? Lori didn't tend to date more than one person at a time, and on top of the lack of qualifications time passed differently once you hit the tripe digits.
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:29 pm
"You are!" Luca said, in response to the snort. Personally, he didn't think he could've found a better looking love anywhere. Not that looks mattered so much--Lori's interest in the books had interested Luca first.
"No, I suppose they wouldn't be." Losing home had been hard. "You don't think you two are rushing things?" One and a half years?! That wasn't long at all, especially for immortals. That was concerning. "Shouldn't you take... a bit longer to get to know each other?" She looked to her husband.
He sputtered. "That's such a short time! You're already getting married?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:43 pm
Lori just grinned. It was true, it was pretty soon to pledge forever, especially when 'forever' could be a literal eternity. People always said that you'd know when you found them, right? He and Luca had such similar interests and such complimentary personalities, it had gotten pretty serious pretty quickly, and then why wait?
"Well we already live together," Lori said. He assumed that Luca's parents must know that, but it was worth saying. He shrugged. "I was always told that you'd 'just know.' Maybe I'm more humanized than I'd thought. I love your son, though."
Of course Toby was already married and had only known Maia a little longer, and they hadn't been dating from the start. Dari and Cody were even more recent, and they had more than marriage holding them together. Cody had been human until very recently.
"Besides, Luca's the one who proposed."
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:59 pm
Already live together?! Wait, they'd already known that. Luca had told them. But marriage so early in the relationship... "Well..." Luca's mother began, looking between Lori and her son. "As long as you two are happy, I suppose." They really did seem to love each other, and with Lori's job--and Luca's, she was sure they'd be alright financially even if a crisis occurred. They'd be fine.
It was Luca's father who was disgruntled. His arms were folded across his chest. He grumbled; "I knew we shouldn't have let you go live with humans." And only fell silent when his wife put her hand on his arm.
"I'll introduce you to our friends when we get there," Luca said. He seemed to be ignoring his father.
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 2:33 pm
Lori laughed with delight. Luca's father was clearly annoyed, but it was over something very silly. Humanity could very much warp your views on the world, though, and quickly-moving relationships might be one of those victims, but who could really say? His own parents had been married pretty quickly and they were still together over a century later.
If Luca wanted to ignore it, though, Lori would too. Still grinning, he added on to what Luca had offered.
"Most of them aren't Elves," he admitted, "I mean just because of where we are my clan will probably be in the majority, but everybody else is mixed. There'll be some humans too, and people who used to be human." Plus one dead guy, if Michael decided to actually come to the ceremony and stick around.
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Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2017 5:02 pm
"Not elves?" Luca's mother didn't seem to know whether to be alarmed or impressed. "And these are your friends?" She directed that at Luca.
"Yeah. They're Lori's coworkers, too," Luca smiled. "You'll like them." It didn't matter what species they were, not to him, so he didn't feel the need to mention it. He was so excited! To be married with all their friends around them, it'd be a perfect day.
"Almost there," he promised.
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Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:39 pm
"Nope," Lori said. He'd been the butt of a lot of Lord of the Rings-style jokes over the years but the truth was that he was on an elf in the modern lexicon. It didn't bother him, of course, but he didn't want Luca's parents arriving and expecting Elven culture.
True to Luca's word, they came up on the parking lot in short order. Others had clearly already arrived. The forest was far back from the road but easily accessible. The rath itself, the raised lump that only some of humanity cared to respect any more, existed well beyond the trees, not in the fields that some expected. it was magic that would be keeping them out this week.
Lori parked and came around the side to open Luca's mother's door for her.
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