A heavy sigh of relief escaped him once Gus finally disappeared through the floo. "Thank fuck." He murmured, his back slouching against the bricks. At long last he and Winnie could actually talk and Dory wouldn't need to fear what this strange Gus overheard.

"I really don't want to talk about him anymore. You have friends, it's fine. I'm sorry for the misconception." The apology was genuine, even if his body language and expression said otherwise. She was allowed to do whatever with whomever and he really couldn't say much in response. Truthfully, he didn't want to say much, either. Winnie and he had been involved for years now and never before did her exploits bother him. Perhaps it was only the stress that had made him so grumbly.

Reaching into his pocket, Dory toyed with the seam of the box that had caused so many issues. He wouldn't ask anything tonight, whatever thought he'd had to that effect had vanished, but it was a steady reminder of what he hoped to achieve here. "I know." He agreed with a brief nod. "It's why I came over tonight, to talk things through."

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Why did it have to be this complicated? Winnie didn't do complicated. She didn't have to. She was practically a spinster, she worked, made her own money, lived her own life and he floated in and out. But every time the gravity of it felt heavier and heavier. Idly she toyed with the ring on her necklace. She needed something to do with her hands and bourbon felt like a poor choice.

"Alright, talk." She had pretty much said what she needed to; was still waiting on an elaboration about the moving in statement. It all seemed so turned around. She hadn't the slightest clue what they were anymore or how deep everything ran. It was easy for her to admit she loved him, of course she did. But it wasn't straightforward or easy and Win really wasn't even sure it was what she wanted.

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Where to start? Did he elaborate on his confusion? Was he to dove straight into the affair with Mabel? He didn't want to cast blame on either of them, as he feared the spiral defensiveness would send them down.

Eventually, after a second too-long stretch of silence, he finally settled upon, "I thought we were moving towards something this spring." Something meaningful and long lasting. Something they could both find satisfaction in, just with the added security of marriage. "I erm - I had this whole plan, and then we stopped seeing as much of one another." The box suddenly felt as if it weighed a ton, like his trousers were now loaded with boulders.

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beautiful set by lady

The waiting would surely kill her. What something? Winnie had been too much of a frazzled mess in the weeks after her birthday to truly acknowledge what had been going on. She was far too out sorts to wrap her head around her normal routine, let alone the possibility of something else.

She nearly growled in frustration as the sentence was left hanging. What was she supposed to do with that? This wasn't explaining much of anything. What plan? She kept spinning Gus' ring it its place on the chain that was usually concealed beneath her dress. This already felt like it was going in circles, or nowhere, it was hard to tell. Watching him carefully, she raised her eyebrows at him, urging him to continue and put her it out her misery. She also didn't trust her tongue just yet, either.

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"We were together all the time - I mean, I'm not complaining. I liked it - a lot. I liked having you near. And when we started not seeing one another as much I thought -" he broke off, looking from her to the ground at his feet. Confessing his belief that she might have begun to prefer someone else's company to his left him feeling far too vulnerable. Even if that person was Gus - gay and uninterested - she could too easily squash his hopes.

"I'm not good at this, Win. I'm really trying to be but I'm not. If we're going to talk I need you to talk, too." He said instead, shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

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Well she hadn't been smothering him then. That was news to her. Winnie wasn't great at telling when it was too much. She was too much by nature, but the balance they once had seemed to work for both of them, she wasn't sure when that changed. The weight to their emotions had changed so drastically to what had once been that she couldn't even pinpoint how she was feeling other than overwhelmed.

This was weird, the edge to it felt sharp and dangerous and Winnie didn't know who was going to get cut. They weren't on the same page, or even in the same chapter, and she did not know what to do about it. "I don't know what to say until you tell me what it is you want from me Dory." There was no point in trying to make assumptions, nor could she fully collect her thoughts, until he spelled it out for her.

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Winnie's ignorance struck him like a sucker punch to the gut. All this time he'd been convinced they were building towards something he'd previously only run from and it wasn't even something she was aware of. He may as well have been speaking gibberish for all she knew of his feelings and plans. Yes, she was still suffering from the attack at the time and yes, she still wasn't quite herself. But she was enough of herself that Dory was convinced it all meant something.

Evidently, it was all the same to her. Casual buddies who only slept together when there were no better options.

Taking the box from his pocket, Dory turned it over in his hands thrice before tossing it gently onto the bed. "I thought it was more obvious." He muttered, unable to meet her gaze. "I was going to ask you to move in and when you argued that people would talk I was going to propose. And it wasn't to trap you or force you into a monogamous type of life, you could still do whatever. I just - I had hoped you would want to come home to me in the end."

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beautiful set by lady

Winnie dropped the ring between her fingers as soon as Dory pulled the small box from his pocket. That couldn't be. He had to be joking. The thought of him asking her to move in felt like a stretch, but if that contained a ring, she must have surely lost her mind. A myriad of emotions bubbled up inside her but the one that rose to the top the quickest was panic. Abject and resolute panic because she truly had not seen it coming, nor did she know what to do with it. She also knew that this would ruin them somehow, she just knew it.

"Dory, I—" She what, she honestly did not know what to do. He had asked her to talk and he had shared his side so maybe she had to start from the spring. "I thought I was smothering you with how needy I was," In retrospect, she had forced herself to be "alright" before she actually was. "So I started to ease out and you didn't stop me. Then you found someone else," She may have been oblivious to his feelings, but she did know him well enough to see that he had been preoccupied. "So I thought we were back to square one." It had been fine, she didn't have expectations for him beyond their initial agreement, even if he had already gone above and beyond after her birthday. That he had found someone else to go to was no business of hers, though now she had to wonder how that went. That he was back here in her room had to mean something had happened and she was the fallback. She had fallen back on Gus again herself, for when she needed somebody who got her, but that was entirely different.

Win was looking resolutely Dory and not at the box on her bed. She will was struggling to process that. A little over a year ago he had been mad at her about choosing to end a pregnancy that neither one of them was prepared for, how had he gotten here and she felt like she was off in space.

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"I erm - I saw you out one afternoon with someone else. Stopping you didn't seem fair if you were happy." He admitted with a sigh. In hindsight, the man she was out with was likely Gus - the gay, uninterested man. Asking for clarity then hadn't made sense, not when her attack was still so fresh in his mind and he'd thought she was moving beyond it. Obviously, it was a mistake to not ask, but there was little to be done now.

Dory sighed again and sank down along the wall until he was sitting fully on the floor, his elbows resting on his knees. He'd been sure Winnie was completely in the dark about Mabel, but that was yet another mistake. "And then I got involved with someone else for a myriad of wrong reasons." Mabel deserved someone so much better than he — someone who was better able to provide her the type of life she yearned for. Someone able to fully commit. "And its end took a bit for me to move past."

Moving from marriage and a baby to nothing had shaken him. And, he would have married her still had she not discovered the very box resting on Winnie's bed.

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The someone else had to be Gus, he was the only one she continually pestered without fear of being rejected. There had been they very, very brief fling with Algie, but that had just been for fun and they'd parted ways as friends. There had been nothing at all public about it. Gus was the only one subjected to her constant presence and that had only been because she thought Dory had turned elsewhere.

This whole thing was just a giant miscommunication. What else was new?

"I'm sorry that didn't work out the way you wanted it to." She murmured, watching him across the room without moving. She hovered near the fireplace, leaning back on the wall, finally realizing she should shrug out of her outer layers. Casually she unhooked her cloak and unwound her scarf, tossing them on the nearby chair unceremoniously followed by her gloves. Win truly didn't know what to do. The box on the bed between them seemed like the elephant in the room and she didn't know what to do with it. Had it been for the other woman? Was it for her? Was it even a ring? It had to be, what else would be so important that he felt the need to make its presence known.

"I'm sure you could fix it." If Dory had wanted something to go differently in the other situation, she was sure he could fix it. Whatever it was that had been, she certainly couldn't compare. Truthfully she wasn't sure she wanted to. If he had thought about marrying the other woman, Winnie would have supported him every step of the way. She was not the marrying kind herself, but she knew he wanted that.

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"No, that's done." Dory said without a moment's hesitation. "Regardless of what happens here, that's over." He wouldn't rope Mabel back into the chaos, especially not after how disastrously things had ended. Even now, he could still vividly picture her expression during that last fight. No, everything with Mabel was over.

"I'm not asking you anything tonight. I didn't even plan to tell you about the ring, honestly. It was more a reminder for me than anything." He felt like a rambling, idiotic fool. Here he was trying to talk through things with her and she was what? Granting him permission to chase after someone else? Dory knew when he'd begun explaining and she was completely stunned that they were on different pages, but he didn't realize it to be this bad.

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beautiful set by lady

Toeing off her shoes, Winnie set them next to the fireplace gently, listening, but afraid to look at him. That was over. Well then. Winnie didn't know how to feel about it all yet, but she did hate to see him hurting.

Softly, she padded across the room, looking at him down on the floor with a sigh. Hiking up her skirts, she stepped right into his space, straddling his legs and settling herself right into his lap. Gently she took his face into her hands and brushed her thumbs over his cheeks. She didn't know where this was going, which terrified her, but she didn't want to lose him either. "I love you, you have to know that," She whispered, eyes intent on his. She had said as much after the disaster that was her birthday and she meant it too. There was no denying there was some sort of love between them, even if if wasn't very traditional.

"And I'm sorry you're hurting and that on some level it's partially my fault." They really did suck at communicating and part of that was definitely on her. That he had a ring and a question for her, it seemed, still shocked her and caused an unrealistic panic in her chest, but she couldn't help that either. "But I promise to work on that, whatever happens next."

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To say he hadn't expected such a turn of events was an understatement. Their anger amd frustrations had obviously deflated into something more manageable, but that didn't immediately lend itself to them being intimate by any means again. Regardless of his surprise, Dory's body still naturally settled to better accommodate her; his legs straightened out, his hands moved to rest on her hips. This felt right, like after months of being thrown about into the universe he was home.

"I love you, too." He murmured, leaning so that his forehead rested upon hers. Had he ever told her as much before? He had to have, especially in the chaos surrounding her birthday. Even if Dory hadn't explicitly said it, his reaction had to have shown it, no? He didn't nearly commit murder for just anyone, after all.

"Let's get this right this time, okay?" They were both at fault for entirely different reasons, his worse than hers. He should have recognized how much pain she was still in. He should have spoken to her months ago instead of letting everything rot and fester. Dory turned his head to press a kiss to the palm of her hand before continuing with, "Whatever being right ends up meaning."

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   Bronwyn Moony

They'd managed to have a meaningful conversation without too much yelling, that was already progress, right?

This was doable, she could handle that open-ended sort of agreement. Whatever right happened to be for them, they would work on making that happen. "I can handle that," She hummed as her kissed her hand, enjoying the intimacy of the gesture. Gently she ran her other hand through his hair.

In the interest of being transparent and communication, she thought they should get everything out in the open. "I am not okay, I still have nightmares and you saw my reaction to anger. It's... Frustrating, I know, I hate it, but I need you to be patient with me." It was why she had latched onto Gus with such severity, she needed a calm, reassuring presence to keep her grounded and he was just that. She'd also seen Dory do it too, she just had to be more explicit about what she needed from him.

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Guilt for his actions tonight began to gnaw at his insides creating a rising wave of shame. Winnie wouldn't have reacted so aggressively had she stumbled across Maple and he. She likely would have laughed and attempted to make a quick escape. "I'm sorry, Winnie. Both for tonight and not realizing sooner." Dory whispered, his expression earnest and sad.

He once again had a blazing desire to go find the asshole that hurt her. It wouldn't take much effort, all he'd have to do was find the latest woman he'd brutalized. "I'm not going anywhere. You'll be okay again one day, I promise."

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"I know," They were both sorry, they were both a little broken, but it would be alright in the long run. Everything would turn out how it was supposed to, whether or lasted six more months or sixty years, she had no idea, but they would be alright.

Sighing softly, she turned her eyes back on his. She almost asked what had happened to propel him here tonight, but wasn't exactly sure she wanted to know the details. Unsure of what else to do so she leaned in softly to press her lips to his.

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