Chapter Text
To say Gerard was doing well would be a straight-faced lie. He and Elody were on an extended-and-maybe-possibly-forever break. The problems had snuck up on Gerard, though mostly through his unwillingness to face them, and after an argument over dinner one night, Elody had braved the question to ask for some space. He couldn’t say no and packed his things the same night. She stayed in their house- more of a mansion than anything- and he’d spent the night in a hotel a few streets away for a week until he found a small beaten-up house to rent.
He'd come from old money and barely used a dime of it, having spent his time until eighteen completely cut off and bullied at a distant boarding school. By the time his parents passed, leaving everything to their sole heir and son, Gerard and Elody were already engaged and married two years later.
At the age of thirty-eight, he found himself reliant on the inheritance, not wanting to touch the joint account between him and his maybe-still-wife.
It wasn’t as if he could complain though. The house, though in some dire need of work, was enough space for his books and clothes. Sure, his bed felt colder, even without the draft from the window frames, and the silence was starting to itch at his skin- but it was fine. Everything was fine. He wasn’t crying, it’s all fine.
He was eating his supper (a freshly poured bowl of Lucky Charms with half-and-half milk) late in the evening. It’d been a long day of TLC on his new ‘temporary’ home, sealing up the cracks in the window frames with directions from a YouTube video and struggling to put together his IKEA furniture. By the end of it, after a steaming shower, he was already dressed into his pyjamas- which were composed of a large shirt with a faded logo of some beer brand and annoyingly bright patterned shorts- with a cereal bowl in hand.
He avoided the dining table, instead shuffling around the wooden floors in his slippers as he ate and stared at nothing in general. Gerard was mid-chew when the doorbell rang. He winced at the sound, the chime extremely scuffed and more akin to a torture method than a doorbell.
Gerard set his bowl down on a window sill, spoon held up in his hand in case he needed to defend himself, and answered the door. Entirely drenched head-to-toe from the rain was a young girl. Her clothes were out of style yet barely worn; a tag still attached to the bottom of the jacket. She was shivering, blonde hair clinging to her very familiar round face.
“Cousin?”
“Oh.” She looked up in surprise and drew her soaking coat closer around her “Gerard, I didn’t… I was unaware you lived here.”
“Well, yes, Elody and I have- we’re taking a…” Gerard shook his head and pocketed the spoon “Never mind, come in.”
He ushered Rosamund inside, taking her jacket and jogging up the stairs to dump it into the bathtub. He grabbed a few towels, as well as his dressing gown and his cleanest clothes, and hurried back down to his cousin. She leaving a puddle in the hallway and gratefully took the towels when Gerard approached.
“Please, you must be freezing. By all means, use the study to change before you catch a cold.”
Through the chattering of her teeth, she thanked him and disappeared for a few minutes. In his time to himself, Gerard retrieved his ‘dinner’ and finished off the last few bites, leaving the bowl in his sink. Not too long after, Rosamund appeared again, now in a change of clothes and swaddled in a fluffy robe. Her hair was twisted up into a towel, and her wet-clothes were half wrapped in another.
“Thank you so much, I can’t say I was expecting to meet you here, cousin.” She smiled nervously, rubbing at her arms to fight off the cold.
Gerard took the wet clothes and bundled them up further into the towel “I could say much the same.” He poured out some still-warm coffee from the pot he’d made earlier, which still held enough for half a mug. Gerard handed it to Rosamund, who thanked him again in a small mumble “I was under the impression you were living a good while from here. What are you doing so far from home?”
“Uh, well.” Rosamund took a long sip and shifted in the armchair “I’ve decided it best I find my own way in life, away from my parents.” She lifted her chin a little higher, as if daring him to argue.
“I see.” He narrowed his eyes at the floor “While I’ll be the first to admit I am not the best with dates and such, but are you not seventeen?”
“Eighteen!” Rosamund protested “My birthday was two whole weeks ago!”
Gerard groaned and rubbed at his face in exasperation. What a cousin he was, he hadn’t even sent a card “Regardless, you are still a child. Where have you been staying?”
Any confidence Rosamund had gathered up slowly wilted at the question “I have, ah, been…”
“How did you even get here?”
“I took a few trains.” She shifted in the chair “And walked.”
“In a storm?”
“Uh-”
“I think that’s enough said.” Gerard huffed a laugh “You can stay in my room, upstairs.”
“I couldn’t possibly take your bed, that would be rude of me.”
“My couch folds out, it’s fine.” He waved her off.
After very little protesting, he convinced Rosamund to take the bed under the guise it would be short term. However, the next morning after their discussion over future plans and finding out Rosamund had been winging her venture from home from the start, he put in an order for a mattress and flat-pack bed frame. They set it up in the room next to his- which had been mostly used as storage for his unpacked boxes and deliveries- and she settled in with ease.
The company was unexpected yet not unwelcome. Rosamund had been surprisingly capable at setting up the rest of the furniture, even persuading Gerard to let her set up a small vegetable patch in their garden.
She dedicated most of her time tending to the plants, calling dibs on the front yard as her next project, and absolutely scaring the shit out of Gerard with a red-tailed hawk she’d befriended. She hadn’t even warned him, just announcing she’d made a friend and walked in with a freaking hawk on her arm- he’d dropped the plate he’d been holding with a very manly scream.
A few weeks passed in a domestic blur.
Gerard was tidying in the kitchen, watching from the window as Rosamund watered her plants when there was a sudden crash and scream. He dropped the tea towel in his hand, grabbed the nearest object for a weapon, and charged out of the house with it ready to strike.
On top of a collapsed panel of their old wooden fence was a little girl, tangled up in her red cloak, with a little boy laughing behind her. The girl Gerard recognised as one of his neighbours’ kids, the boy however- who only looked about seven with sticks and leaves sticking out of his hair, his skin dark and a small deformity to his nose- he hadn’t seen before.
Rosamund crouched and helped the wriggling girl by untangling the cloak “Are you alright little girl?”
The girl in question spat out some of her hair which had swept into her face and nodded in a hurry before scrambling up to her feet “We’re looking for Puss in Boots!”
Gerard lowered his spatula “You’re… do you mean the character from Shrek?”
“No, Puss in Boots!” The other kid piped up though his giggles.
“Oh.” Gerard nodded along, it must have been a game they were playing.
His spatula went flying with not-a-shriek as something fell onto his head with a thump. Gerard flailed his arms about, Rosamund rose to help him, and the little boy started laughing again.
“Pib!” The girl stretched out her arms for a black cat to jump down into.
Now it was no longer on his head, Gerard got a proper look at the creature. There was a scrap of cloth tied to its collar in a makeshift cape and there were tiny boots on its hind legs. The cat nuzzled down into the girls hold, shooting Gerard a look that could only be described as smug.
Rosamund looked at the sorry state the fence was in “Oh dear. I suppose we’ll have to replace the whole thing; it doesn’t look very stable.”
Gerard sighed and crouched on the grass; his head fully covered with his hands “Yeah. Yep. Great.” His cousin patted his shoulder in sympathy.
“Ylfa! Pinocchio!” An old man was running down the street at surprising speed “Oh goodness, did you break this poor poor man’s fence?”
“Ylfa did it!” The little boy- Pinocchio- pointed straight at the girl, who gasped dramatically and hefted the cat up in the air, dangling it.
“It was Pib! We were playing it and Pib was it, so I chased him and- and he hopped a fence, so I hopped the fence, and the fence must have broken under Pibs weight and broke.” As she rambled, she was swinging the cat side to side.
The old man pinched his nose, sighed “Of course it did, dear. Are you hurt at all?”
Ylfa shook her head again.
Rosamund took the silence as a chance to introduce herself and her cousin, greeting the old man- who introduced himself as Mother Timothy- kindly.
“I am terribly sorry for the trouble the kids caused. I’d offer to pay for the fence but… well.”
Gerard finally stood up from his sulking-crouch and waved Timothy off “Not at all, there’s no need to pay a thing.”
Ylfa tugged Rosamund’s’ skirt with a sheepish grin “Hey, Miss Rosamund, would you like to play with us?”
She was taken aback at the sweet offer and glanced at Gerard, who shrugged in return.
“Sure, go for it.” He yawned and scanned the grass for the spatula.
“You’re going to play with us too?” The boy shrieked with delight and bolted forward to latch onto Gerard's hand. He tugged the man forward and over his broken fence.
“I-uh-”
“Oh, how wonderful!” Rosamund beamed with a mischievous glint in her eye, taking Gerards other hand to help Pinocchio “Come along cousin.”
“I don’t want to play.” He whined.
“Nonsense, of course you do.”
Timothy chuckled and watched the poor man be dragged away and forced into a game of stick in the mud.