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adriiibell · 4 months ago

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Stranger At My Gate - Chapter 2 (Pero Tovar x modern!OFC)

A time-traveling Pero. A modern woman trying her best. A kitchen full of possibility. A helping of Midwest kindness. A dash of magic. And a lot of Christmas spirit.

pairing: Pero Tovar x modern!OFC

rating: T for now

word count: 5.3k

a/n: okay, first of all, wow. The reaction to the first chapter of this story was far beyond what I could have hoped for, so thank you. One general note/warning I want to put here for this fic before we proceed further: as you may have guessed, food is going to play a huge role in this story - the preparing of it, the enjoying of it, and some issues around it regarding food insecurity and hunger that would be expected of someone from Pero’s time. I know that discussion of food can be tough for folks, even outright triggering, so I did want to say something about it here. I will do my best to tag individual chapters with any warnings and such as we go along. If that’s cool with you, read on!

Previous chapter.

————

Two.

“Why is it always ‘Henry, please come over to help me deal with the dirty, wounded stranger who showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night’ and never ‘Henry, please come over just because I love you and miss you and want to spend time with you, the best brother in the whole world’?”

Tessa elbows him in the ribs with a precision honed from thirty years of practice.

“You’re the best brother in the whole world because you come over to help me deal with the dirty, wounded stranger.”

Tessa hadn’t heard the man knock on her door, she’d felt it, her Gift waking her up from a dead sleep around four in the morning with a wild sense of urgency. She hadn’t even realized she’d gotten out of bed and run to her front door until she’d opened it and found...him.

For a few terrible moments, she’d been afraid he was dead. She’d been relieved to feel a strong, steady pulse under his jaw, though he hadn’t stirred once the entire time she’d wrestled his large frame into her house and out of the storm.

After getting him inside, she’d called Henry, knowing that regardless of the early hour, when she asked him to come over right away with his basic medical kit and some spare clothes, he’d answer.

If Tessa’s Gift is intuition, her brother’s Gift is healing. He can’t work instant miracles, but his patients tend to get over their flus, their colds, their ear infections far more quickly than usual. If you were to ask them, they’d also say there’s an inexplicable sense of comfort they feel when they see him, that something about his manner just puts them at ease. As far as Tessa is concerned, that part has nothing to do with his Gift. Henry has the biggest heart of anyone she knows. It’s just who he is. Tessa is certain that even without his magical talent, he’d have become a doctor regardless.

After a preliminary examination hadn’t revealed any obviously life-threatening injuries, at Tessa’s insistence the two of them had managed to carry the mysterious stranger into Tessa’s guest room. They’d gingerly stripped him of his boots, leather outer tunic, rough cloth undershirt, and a somewhat concerning number of very real-looking weapons before covering him up in several spare blankets to get him warm and dry. He’d flitted in and out of consciousness a few times, especially when Henry had cleaned the wounds on his knuckles and the cut on his temple, but never long enough to be coherent before slipping off again.

Now, just after seven in the morning, Tessa and her brother stand in her still-dark kitchen, waiting for the sun to come up and debating what to do next.

“Think he’s gonna be okay?”

Henry shrugs, grabbing two mugs from Tessa’s extensive collection and helping himself to her coffee maker.

“From what I can tell, there’s no immediate issue. The wound on his head doesn’t look severe enough to cause a concussion, and he’s not exhibiting any clear signs of infection. But I can only do basic first aid with what I’ve got, otherwise there’s nothing for it except to wait for him to wake up. If we took him to a hospital - ”

“No.”

They’d had this argument when Henry had first arrived, and she’d shut him down then too.

“Tess, why the hell not? His appearance is odd, I grant you, but if it turns out he could use a psych eval, too - ”

“He came through the Gate.”

Henry jerks his head to look at her, alarmed.

“He what?”

“He came through the Gate,” Tessa says again, and she’s not sure why she says it, but as soon as she does, she knows it’s true.

“The Gate.” It is impossible for Henry’s eyebrows to rise any higher. “You can’t be serious. Those strange looking trees in the woods? The little fairy circle Gran always warned us away from as kids? You think, last night, it actually acted as, what, some kind of portal?”

“Gran warned us to stay away from it for a reason, Henry.”

“Yeah, I always thought the reason was she didn’t want us wandering too far away from the house. Not because it was real.”

“We of all people should not be surprised when magic in this world rears its head,” Tessa chides him gently. “You know the lore about All Hallow’s Eve and Samhain the same as I do. Gran would sit us right over there by the fire and tell us about spirits and fairies and the borders between worlds growing thin, magical things happening that wouldn’t be possible most other nights.”

Henry hands her a full mug of coffee that reads “Pritzker School of Law” on the side and firmly decides not to explore that particular topic any further.

“I’ll call out of the clinic today.”

“You will do no such thing.”

They both try to make it sound like they will brook no argument, but only Tessa pulls it off. Henry tries to protest anyway.

“Tee, you can’t be serious, I am not leaving you here with a strange, injured man, alone. Especially not after telling me you think he’s some kind of magical time-traveler from who the fuck knows when and where.”

“You are not shirking your responsibilities at the clinic to babysit me. You said it yourself, there’s not much we can do at this point besides wait for him to wake up, anyway.”

Henry runs his own small family practice, but he volunteers several times a month at the free clinic run by the county. Under absolutely no circumstances would she prevent him from spending the day caring for folks who need his help far more than she does.

“Besides, I’ll be fine. He won’t hurt me.”

Henry narrows his eyes at her.

“Are you telling me that? Or is your Gift?”

“It’s the truth, Hank.” And it is.

“You think this is it? The thing your Gift was telling you about?”

Tessa snorts. “I’m not sure yet, but I fucking hope so. I’d hate to see what else the universe has in store for me if it isn’t.”

Henry takes a long sip from his own mug, then sets it back down on the counter with a sense of resolve.

“I expect you to text me at least once an hour so I know you haven’t been murdered.”

“I will.”

“And I’ll be back as soon as my shift ends to check on you. And on him.”

“Of course.”

“If anything happens, call me. If I don’t answer, call the front desk and have them page me.”

“It’s so cute when you think you’re in charge of me.”

“Tess.”

“I’m teasing, jeez. I promise if anything goes wrong, you will be the first to know.”

“Good. And for the love of god, don’t tell Amie.”

Tessa rolls her eyes.

“Do I look like an idiot? It’s less than a month until the farm officially opens full-time for the season, she’s got enough on her plate. She doesn’t need a reason to go into ‘protective eldest sibling’ mode right now.”

“No she does not.” Henry eyes the green glowing numbers of the clock in Tessa’s microwave, still looking unsure about leaving. She reaches over and puts a hand on his arm.

“Henry, go. This isn’t where you’re needed most right now. And if it will make you feel better, I’ll call Aunt Moira.”

Henry nods. “You should.”

“I will.”

“She should know about this.”

“Did you not hear me when I said I would call her?”

“A text every hour or I’m sending the cops, understood?”

“You’re lucky my Gift isn’t telekinesis. Now go.”

———

The door shuts behind Henry, and Tessa is alone.

Well, sort of.

She runs a hand over her hair and exhales a big raspberry of a breath.

What now?

She finishes her coffee, leaving the mug in the sink for later.

She wipes up the lingering water the stranger had left on her floor when she’d first wrangled him inside. As the sun starts to make itself known, the sky remains cloudy, but the rain has since stopped, the storm blown over.

She changes from her pj pants and hoodie into leggings and a cozy sweater dress.

There are lots of other things she could do. Her unfinished to-do list from the day before still needs addressing. She has Halloween decor scattered around that needs to be taken down. She has boxes and boxes of Christmas decor sitting in the attic that she usually cannot wait to start putting up as soon as November rolls around.

She does none of those things.

Instead, she grabs the current book she’s reading from her nightstand and settles into the chair in the corner of her guest room.

She wonders if she’s being a bit creepy by just hanging out in the same room where her mysterious stranger still rests, dead to the world. But she figures she should be here when he wakes, in an unfamiliar place and in an unfamiliar time. To try and reassure him that he’s okay, he’s safe, and that there’s no cause for alarm.

The room is much lighter now than it was when she and Henry had first laid him out on the bed. Tessa lets herself take in the mop of dark, unruly curls that flop over his brow, the patchy stubble that covers his jaw and the fuller mustache across his upper lip. His nose is strong and slightly hooked, and he has a faded scar over his left eye. The rest of him is covered up by blankets now, but she can’t help but remember how broad his shoulders had looked, how solid his arms and back had felt under her hands when they’d gotten him out of his wet clothes.

Despite the wet dog smell and the fading bruising under his eye and the fact that he’s covered in several layers of dirt, sweat, and grime, he’s undeniably handsome in a rough, rogue-ish, Viggo-Mortensen-in-Lord-of-the-Rings kind of way.

She isn’t worried that she’s in any danger here alone here with him. She hadn’t lied to Henry.

It was frustrating, her magic. Her siblings had active Gifts; they could call on them when they needed to, wield them like tools to shape the world around them. Tessa’s simply was. She could never predict when or how it might surface, a vague feeling in her gut, a prickle in her bones. A bubble of knowledge she hadn’t had a moment earlier, but once spoken out loud she can feel the surety of truth snapping into place like correctly matched puzzle pieces.

He came through the Gate.

When she meets someone for the first time, it usually gives her a general feel for the person, a sense of their character, their being. Tessa knew what a bad person felt like, the greasy feeling of selfishness and greed, or the hot, sharp warning of a desire to do harm.

He won’t hurt me.

She reads for a bit, looking up every few minutes to make sure she can still see the stranger’s chest rising and falling.

She fires off one “still alive” text to her brother, then another. She makes a little more progress on her book.

By hour three, one of her legs has fallen asleep, and she’s actually starting to get slightly annoyed at the mystery man.

“If you’re going to break multiple laws of physics and time, the least you could do is be conscious while you take advantage of my hospitality,” she grumbles at him, albeit very quietly.

She gets up and takes a closer look at his clothes and belongings they’d stacked on the dresser. She fiddles with the two swords for a moment, admiring how much heavier they are than she’d anticipated, before turning to the little pouch tied to his belt. Inside she finds a handful of silver coins with irregular edges, each stamped with the design of a Greek cross. And something else, too, some sort of...necklace?

The angry grunt of an unintelligible sentence from behind her makes her nearly jump out of her skin. Tessa whirls around, both coins and jewelry making small ting sounds as they clatter on the dresser.

The stranger is awake.

Awake, and staring at her as she rifles through his things.

“Uh, hi,” she says, years of debate and public speaking and experience as a litigator apparently flying right the fuck out the window.

He glares silently at her in response.

“I, uh, I was just looking, you know, at, at your stuff,” she tries again. “I wasn’t going to do anything with it, I promise. Except maybe try and google the coins, see if I could find out more about when they were made, and when you might be from. Cause you were still passed out, and I didn’t want to wake you, and I think you might have come here from a different time - ”

She finally takes a breath and approaches him, hands held slightly out in front of her like she’s trying not to scare off a wild animal.

“Sorry,” she says softly, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “I don’t mean to overwhelm you right off the bat. How do you feel? You were out for quite a while.”

He says something in response, but it’s not in a language she recognizes.

“I’m afraid I can’t understand you, buddy.”

He repeats himself, or at least she thinks he does. It almost sounds like Spanish, but there’s something vaguely Latin about some of the pronunciation. A dialect of some kind, maybe?

Fuck. This was a complication Tessa had not considered.

“This is gonna be a lot more difficult if we can’t communicate with each other,” she tells him.

The next thing he says to her is a question, based on his intonation. When she doesn’t give any indication she understood him, he asks her again in what is clearly a different language from the first one he tried.

One she cannot understand, but thinks she recognizes, thanks to a semester in college spent studying Beowulf using a translation alongside the original text.

Old English. A language no one has spoken in almost a thousand years.

She swallows thickly at the implication of that and shakes her head. “It seems you know more languages than I do, stranger, but none of them are ones I know.”

There’s a hint of concern in his stare now, as he must come to the same conclusion she has about their predicament. His eyes are brown, she notices.

He opens his mouth to say something else, but is suddenly overcome by a small coughing fit instead.

“Oh, shit, here - ” Tessa helps him sit up and hands him a glass of water that’s been waiting on the bedside table. He drains it in one go, nodding at her in thanks.

Tessa takes a moment to get an internal grip on herself. She can do this. She can figure this out. This man needs her help, even if he doesn’t quite realize the extent of his situation yet. This grumpy, injured man who did not speak or understand any discernible modern language and who was clearly way, way out of his own time.

“We should at least be able to tell each other our names,” she tells him. She jabs two fingers into her sternum, holding his gaze, and says, “Tessa. Tessa Walsh.”

She flips her hand towards him and looks at him expectantly, hoping it’s obvious what she wants.

He looks at her for a moment, then slowly rests his hand on his own chest. “Pero Tovar.”

Tessa can’t help the way she smiles at him then. “Pero,” she murmurs softly, trying to shape his name the same way he had with his accent and hoping she doesn’t fuck it up too badly. “Pero Tovar.”

Something flickers across his face, a millisecond of emotion she doesn’t get a good enough look at to identify.

“Tessa,” he says, and she has to suppress a shiver at how he makes it sound, his plush, full lips wrapping around the syllables of her name. “Tessa Walsh.”

A little bud of triumph blooms in her chest. “Okay,” she says, “that’s one thing we know about each other, then.”

———

Tessa grabs Pero a second glass of water, and it seems to slowly become clear to him that something isn’t right, that there are things about her home, just about this room, even, that are not what he would expect from his own time. She sees him looking closely or even running his hands over things she’d never even think of as being foreign, like the clear, perfectly round glass he drinks from, or the bright floral print on the extra blanket tossed over his feet, or the little battery-powered clock on the nightstand.

He pushes the blanket back and tries to stand up. He wobbles on his feet for one perilous moment, and Tessa doesn’t hesitate to reach out and steady him. His bare torso carries more scars, several white and red lines of tissue bisecting the outline of muscle under his skin and interrupting the light dusting of hair across his chest. But after a few seconds to get his bearings, he seems alright without her help.

Tessa tells herself that she is not disappointed by that fact. She makes an educated guess about what he needs, and shows him to her spare bathroom.

Things get further complicated here. There had been no need to have any lights on in the bedroom, but there aren’t any windows in the bathroom, so Tessa crosses her fingers as she flips the lightswitch. There’s not a simple way for Tessa to convey the concept of electricity and running water and all the things in her home that they make possible via hand gestures, so she resorts to simply explaining things to him in English anyway, hoping that a calm, deliberate tone of voice will help ease the anxiety of the unfamiliar for him. For his part, Pero processes what information he can with a mostly silent stoicism that Tessa knows she would not be able to emulate for a second if their situations were reversed. After a bit of awkward pantomime and a little show and tell with various faucets, she thinks she gets him to understand the relative functions of the sink, shower, and toilet.

She brings him an extra towel and a change of clothes that Henry had dropped off earlier, and leaves him to it. She lingers outside the doorway until she hears the shower turn on, then retreats into the kitchen.

Her mystery man - Pero - occupied for the moment, she calls her Aunt Moira.

Aunt Moira is actually her Great-Aunt Moira, but nobody with any sense of self- preservation ever calls her that. After Gran had died, she’d inherited the title of the family matriarch, which in Tessa’s family meant that when something odd and magical happened, you called.

“Somebody better be in the hospital or something better be on fire for you to call this early, Tessa,” she grouses by way of greeting.

Tessa is uncowed by her tone. “It’s almost noon, Aunt Moira.”

The older woman hmphs into the phone.

“It’s the day after Halloween, kid. This is early for the day after Halloween. I was up all night celebrating. Honoring the ancestors and whatnot.”

Playing bridge and drinking too much gin with her fellow octogenarian friends is hardly a traditional method of observing this particular holiday, but Tessa doesn’t say that out loud. Moira had been spending Halloween this way with a group of lifelong girlfriends every year since before Tessa had been born.

“Who hosted this year?”

“Ethel. You know it’s already below freezing here in Minneapolis? I don’t know how the woman can live here year-round.”

“Moira, you live one house over from me. In Michigan. There’s a non-zero chance we’ll get lake effect snow, like, next week.”

“Yeah, well, next week is next week, and today is today, and today I’m freezing my tits off in Minneapolis.”

“When do you get home?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Fuck,” Tessa mutters, but not quietly enough.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Moira’s tone softens with concern.

The water is still running in the shower.

“I need your help.” Tessa explains the events of the past few hours as quickly as she can.

“Damn,” Moira says when she’s finished. “This would happen while I’m away. Lived on the other side of those damn woods my whole life and never seen anything more interesting than deer come out of them before.”

“I think he’s traveled here from a long time ago. I mean a long time ago.”

“And a long distance too, no doubt. Nobody ever spoke Old English on this continent.”

“So you see why I’m in need of your particular talents.”

“I’ll see if I can’t get home sooner than tomorrow. But if I can’t, will you be okay until then?”

“This is far from the scariest thing I’ve ever done, Moira.”

Tessa swears she can hear her aunt purse her lips.

“That is not what I asked you, Tessa Elizabeth.”

Annoyed affection swells in her chest.

“I’ll be fine.”

———

It takes less time than Tessa had anticipated for Pero to emerge, dressed in a plain black t-shirt and sweatpants. Tessa wonders if this is all too new for him to truly relax and enjoy something like a hot shower.

He stands in the threshold where the hallway to the bedrooms ends, looking around her kitchen and the main living room it opens into. Even in modern clothing there’s something off about him, like he doesn’t belong in the current year. There’s something in the way he stands, maybe, or perhaps it’s the unmissable scar across his left eye, that makes him look mismatched to the present time.

She’s not exactly sure what she’s supposed to do with Pero for the next twenty hours or so until Moira can get there, but she’s damn sure of the immediate next step.

Food. And if there is one thing Tessa Walsh knows how to do, it’s feed people.

“Hi, Pero,” Tessa says brightly, watching him from her spot near the stove. She’s defrosted a container of homemade tomato soup from a batch she’d made last week and is now standing guard over a pair of grilled cheese sandwiches sizzling quietly in a pan.

He just gives her a tiny nod in response.

“I made lunch,” she says, “I figured you’re probably hungry.”

He wanders over to her, intrigued by the smell. And, she suspects, by the way she’s cooking something hot via something other than a fire. If she had to guess, she’d say he’s an inch or so taller than Henry; she has to look up quite a bit to meet his eye. A few spare drops of water cling to the ends of his curls.

“It’s almost ready,” she tells him. “You can go sit, if you want. Probably shouldn’t be on your feet too long, take things slow.” She points at him, then at the table, chairs, and built-in bench that serve as her breakfast nook in the corner. He takes her meaning and sits.

A few minutes later she puts a bowl of soup and its corresponding sandwich (cut diagonally) in front of each of them. She briefly considers the cans of Coke in the back of her fridge, but opts instead to fill up two more glasses of water. Pero may not be showing it, but he’s got to be pretty overwhelmed as it is. If indoor plumbing is new to him, soda is definitely going to be a shock.

“Bon appetit,” she says, clinking her glass against his before picking up her sandwich and dunking a corner of it into the soup.

He looks at her, then down at his plate, and picks up his own sandwich to follow suit. At his first bite, he makes a noise, eyes closing and brow furrowing in a combination of pleasure and surprise.

Tessa can’t help but grin at him.

“Good, right?” She says. “There’s no food as comforting as grilled cheese and tomato soup, I swear. My mom used to make it for me whenever I would stay home sick.”

After that first bite, however, Pero polishes off his food in record time, mopping up every last drop of soup with the last bite of sandwich so quickly Tessa isn’t sure he actually was able to taste any of it. He’s done before Tessa’s gotten through even half her sandwich, and she catches him eyeing the triangle of golden brown bread still untouched on her plate, perfectly melted cheese oozing from between the slices. There’s something a little feral, a little desperate in his gaze, that says he wants her food but doesn’t want to be obvious about it.

She pushes her plate over to him. He looks at her first with guilt at being caught out, then with suspicion, like he thinks there’s going to be some sort of catch, and it breaks her heart a little. He shakes his head the tiniest bit, and tries to push the plate back to her. He jerks his chin at her, as if to say, you need to eat, too.

But he’s still hungry. Tessa can see it, and she wonders what his life has been like, what he’s had to endure.

She picks up the sandwich half and deposits it directly on his plate this time instead. He scowls at her, and perhaps it’s because he thinks she’s taking pity on him. So she drops her chin into her hand, and looks at him with a firm, deliberate kindness.

“Don’t argue with me, Pero,” she says. “People don’t go hungry in this kitchen. Not when this house belonged to my grandmother and not now that it belongs to me.”

His frown deepens. She quirks an eyebrow at him instead.

“That’s a very intimidating look you’ve got going on there, Pero. Is that the look you use to instill fear into your enemies right before you gut them with those two pointy swords you carry around?”

It becomes a brief staring contest. Tessa meets Pero’s gaze head-on, and after a few moments, with a small huff through his nose, Pero relents, attacking the remaining sandwich half with vigor.

———

The rest of the afternoon passes surprisingly quickly. It’s clear that Pero is still exhausted and still healing. He settles on her couch after giving the contents of the shelves built into either side of the fireplace a cursory inspection (which are filled to bursting with books and the occasional framed family photo). He ends up nodding off, which gives Tessa a few hours to get some work done.

This work includes updating the post that should have gone up on her site yesterday and hitting “publish.”

It includes texting Henry to let him know she is still not dead, and to successfully convince him that he should come over to check on Pero tomorrow after Moira’s had a chance to come by, instead of today.

It does not include answering the emails.

The house is quiet in a way Tessa typically cannot stand. Normally she’d always have music playing or the tv on. There are lots of things Tessa loves about living alone, but being alone with the silence is not one of them. How ironic, then, that today, she doesn’t dare turn on her usual background noise out of concern for her mostly silent visitor. She finds after a while that she doesn’t mind it terribly much, though. It could easily be unnerving, having Pero - who is still a time-traveling stranger - take a catnap on her couch. But instead, she finds it oddly comforting knowing that he’s there, and that she can hear the occasional snore emanating from the cushions.

As quietly as she can, Tessa also gathers up the fall decor around the house: tiny decorative pumpkins on the mantle, orange and purple string lights in the window, cute wooden signs leaning up on her kitchen counters that say things like the witch is in. Once it’s all back in its designated plastic tub, she retreats to the hallway and pulls down the ladder that allows her to access her attic. Once up there she stores the fall bin away and looks fondly at the pile of plastic tubs that hold wreaths and garland and lights and ornaments. Soon, she mouths at them.

She starts thinking about dinner as she makes her way back down the ladder. There’s chicken in her fridge somewhere, she’s pretty sure. Some solid protein would do Pero some good -

She’s four rungs from the bottom when her foot slips. The hand she flings out to steady herself misses, and with a yelp of surprise she tumbles backward -

And crashes into something solid and unyielding, something that lets out an annoyed grunt at the impact.

Pero.

He catches her before she can hit the ground, wrapping his arms around her and for a moment, she’s cradled against his chest. Even in just a thin shirt, he’s warm, and then he puts both hands on her waist and sets her back on her feet with hardly any effort at all.

Tessa clears her throat to cover her embarrassment at both falling and the heat that licks up her spine and floods her face at Pero’s fortuitous manhandling.

“Thanks,” she manages to squeak.

He grumbles something that may or may not translate to the world’s grouchiest “you’re welcome” before heading into the bathroom and shutting the door.

Right. What was she thinking about before?

Oh, yes. Dinner.

———

Half an hour later she and Pero sit down to chicken breasts wrapped with prosciutto and stuffed with goat cheese, and brussel sprouts sauteed in olive oil and soy sauce until charred and crispy.

Pero inhales the meal again in record time (“I wish I could get my niece and nephews to eat their veggies with half that enthusiasm,” Tessa remarks as he practically swallows a brussel sprout whole). The cuts on his forehead and hand have completely healed over, the skin still a bright new pink. What swelling he had in one eye had lessened, and the bruising around it has gone from inky black to fading yellow-green. All evidence of her brother’s influence.

Tessa makes Pero help her wash the dishes this time, which he does without audible complaint. For as much as she loves to cook, Tessa despises doing dishes, and it’s actually nice to have another pair of hands around to get the job done.

As though by some unspoken signal, Pero and Tessa decide to head to bed at the same time. They find themselves at the end of the hall, doors to their respective rooms across from each other. Tessa turns to Pero, wanting to say something, but she’s not sure what. Some reassurance, maybe, that her Aunt Moira will be here tomorrow and she’ll help figure out what to do next. That they will get him home.

But before she can, he reaches out and takes her hand in his own, swiftly lifting it up to brush his lips across her knuckles. He breathes some phrase against her skin, and she can just make out her name at the end before he releases her and steps away, looking as surly as ever, like he’s a little angry with himself for what he’s just done.

“Goodnight, Pero,” is all Tessa is able to murmur in reply, her throat gone suddenly dry, and he gives her a tiny nod before turning away and disappearing into the guest room.

She shuts her own door behind her, leaning back up against it and letting all the breath in her lungs out in a big whoosh.

When she finally falls asleep that night, Tessa dreams of dark eyes and soft lips on her skin.

Chapter 3.

—————————————————————

a/n: Remember how I said all recipes I mention in this story are from Smitten Kitchen unless otherwise noted? Prosciutto-wrapped stuffed chicken is from Chrissy Teigen, and the brussel sprouts are how I make them. 😊

Tagging interested parties (some of you have explicitly asked to be tagged, while others just indicated they’re interested in reading where this story goes, so if you would not like to be directly tagged, please let me know!): @littlemisspascal @prostitute-robot-from-the-future @whataperfectwasteoftime @oonajaeadira @bunniesofsteel @jazzelsaur @ezrasbirdie @kiizhikehn-cedar @hopeamarsu @iamskyereads @thosewickedlovelies @theredwritingwitch

#pero tovar x ofc #pero tovar fic #pero tovar fanfiction #Pero Tovar fanfic #pedro pascal fanfiction

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adriiibell · 4 months ago

Text

Stranger At My Gate (Pero Tovar x modern!OFC)

A time-traveling Pero. A modern woman trying her best. A kitchen full of possibility. A helping of Midwest kindness. A dash of magic. And a lot of Christmas spirit.

pairing: Pero Tovar x modern!OFC

rating: T for now, but this will change (as a general rule, minors should not interact with my blog)

word count: 3.7k

a/n: Okay folks, here we go. Some general notes before we begin - I’ve attempted to make many historical aspects of this fic and Pero’s knowledge/experience as accurate to his time as I can wherever I care enough to put in the research effort. And all recipes in this fic are from Smitten Kitchen unless I note otherwise.

One.

Grennich, Michigan. Present Day. All Hallow’s Eve.

This is not how Tessa had intended to spend Halloween.

She’d had a list. A very neat, nicely organized to-do list all written out underneath where it reads “October 31” in her planner.

Finish writing out new recipe post for the website

Publish new recipe post to the website

Make attempt #1 at next week’s recipe (apple crumb cake)

Catch up on emails

Decide on the next chunk of recipes to include in the book

Respond to emails

Call Steven for quote on getting the fence fixed

Help Amie & Thom take the kids trick-or-treating

Seriously, ANSWER THE EMAILS

She’d even doodled little pumpkins and stuck a cute sticker of a black cat in the margins, as if to try and trick her brain into thinking the list would be more fun to complete than it really was. But now the sun has set on this All Hallow’s Eve, and Tessa has accomplished precisely none of the things on her list.

In her defense, the weather has taken her ability to complete the one item she’d actually been looking forward to out of her control. A nasty squall has rolled in, blanketing her tiny town in angry black clouds and winds deemed too dangerous for little ghouls and goblins to be out and about in. Such a storm is not unusual for southwest Michigan in late October, but Tessa can’t imagine her niece and nephews are taking the disappointment well. She makes a mental note to bring a batch of their favorite cookies (brown butter brown sugar shorties) with her when she stops by her sister and brother-in-law’s house later this week.

But as for the rest of her list, there’s few excuses she can make.

The main problem is the emails.

There are now at least three of them from her editor sitting in her inbox that have gone unanswered. The knowledge burns a hole of anxiety in the back of Tessa’s brain, but the more time that slips by, the harder it becomes to figure out what to say.

Hi Audrey, sorry for the late response! I know I owe you the next section of the cookbook, but I appear to have fallen into a paralyzing existential crisis and can’t figure out how to get out of it. I’m having serious doubts about every creative choice I’ve made and I’m afraid your publishing house might have made a mistake in offering me, a disillusioned former lawyer-turned-amateur home chef and glorified blogger, a book deal. Any chance you offer repayment plans for would-be authors who chicken out and end up having to pay back their advances?

Yeah, right.

And so the anxiety festering continues, as Tessa sits at her kitchen island and scrolls aimlessly through Pinterest on her laptop while her tv plays softly on the far side of the room, waiting for inspiration, for motivation, for something, and tries to ignore the prickle of electricity that’s creeping up the back of her neck.

Her phone lights up on the counter next to her with a call.

“Hey Henry,” she says, putting him on speaker.

“Happy Halloween, Tee!” His tinny voice sounds big in her empty little home.

“Happy Halloween,” she replies. “Though I’m sure our niece and nephews are feeling differently right now, stuck at home in their costumes.”

Her older brother snorts. “True, but you know there’s no way Amie doesn’t have a candy stash hidden in that house somewhere in case of emergencies like this.”

Tessa did know. Her sister’s sweet tooth is legendary in the family, a trait that, for better or worse, she’s passed on to all three of her children.

“So what’s up?” she asks, pushing her laptop away and looking down at her phone. “Everything okay with you and Martin?”

“He’s not happy he didn’t get to show off our couple’s costume to the neighborhood kids, but he’ll recover.”

Tessa chuckles. “I’m sure the kids will still enjoy seeing you guys as Josh and Blue next year. It’s not like Martin won’t get good use out of that blue-striped shirt in the meantime.”

“That is exactly what I told him,” Henry concurs. “But that’s not why I’m calling.” Tessa waits, already suspecting she knows what he’s going to say.

“Sis, I’m calling to talk about your current bout of ennui.”

His tone is so serious, she can’t help it; she laughs.

“I am not suffering from a ‘bout of ennui,’ Henry. Christ, that makes me sound like I’m, I dunno, dying of consumption or some other old-timey illness!”

“Call it what you will, Tess,” Henry replies, unamused. “But don’t deny it. You’re in a funk. A rut. You’re sitting all alone in that old cottage clear on the other side of town from me and I can still feel it. That terrible combination of lethargy and stress I know is sitting right there in your chest. It’s been festering for weeks.”

Sometimes, Tessa hates how perceptive her brother is. His particular Gift makes him the most empathetic of her siblings, and connected as they are by blood, he could sometimes sense her emotions even from a distance.

“Talk to me, Tess. Please.”

She sighs, pushing a great rush of air out of her lungs like she could force the feeling out of her that way.

“I don’t know, Henry. I just - I feel stuck. I can’t bring myself to make a single decision about the book, I haven’t felt inspired to make anything new, I’m doubting myself at every turn.”

Henry hums in sympathy.

“Well, what you’re doing is hard, Tess. Writing a book is hard. But you’ve done hard things before. You can’t tell me putting together a cookbook is harder than deciding to leave your corporate job and turn your cooking blog from a hobby into a full-time gig.”

But Tessa shakes her head, forgetting that he can’t see her.

“This is different, Hank. This feels like - this feels like I’m waiting for something.” She drops her voice lower, as if afraid someone will overhear, and confesses the thing that’s been keeping her up at night for nearly a month. “I’ve got that itch again, under my skin.”

“Your Gift is telling you something?” She imagines Henry sitting up straighter, the normally kind lines of his face deepening with worry.

“Yes. Though it’s being annoyingly vague about it, as usual.”

For the millionth time in her life Tessa wishes her family’s magic followed any of the standard witchy cliches. She wishes she could snap her fingers or wiggle her nose and have her pots and pans start cleaning themselves. She wishes she could wave a wand when her car won’t start on cold winter mornings and have it suddenly roar to life. She wishes that with all the ingredients found in her kitchen, she could brew a single potion from them. But instead all she has, all her family has, are their Gifts, the unique magical talent each of them is born with that manifests as they grow.

Tessa’s Gift is best described as intuition. A sixth sense that warns her when danger is afoot, or that sometimes alerts her when something is going to happen. But it’s more of an intangible feeling, rather than concrete premonition.

“What does it feel like?” Henry says, but she knows what he’s really asking.

Does it feel bad? Does it feel wrong? Does it feel like it did when-

“No,” she’s quick to say, and she’s relieved that it’s the truth. “No, it feels like...like my skin’s been pulled too tight over my bones, not in discomfort, but in anticipation. It feels like energy that I can’t put to use yet, that I can’t channel into anything productive, into any of the things I need to do. Wheels spinning, engine revving, but I can’t get off the start line.” She takes a breath. “It feels like change, but not in a bad way.”

Henry’s silent for a moment. Tessa knows he doesn’t feel any need or desire for her to apologize, but she does it anyway.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to worry you.”

“You worry me far more by not saying anything, Tee.”

Tessa picks up her phone and wanders over to settle on her couch. On her tv screen, Tim Curry is just about to reveal to his guests how all of the evening’s murders were committed.

“Look, whatever it is, whatever it means, I just hope it happens soon. I can’t keep avoiding my editor like this.”

Somewhere in the Holy Roman Empire. 1033 AD.

As much as Pero hates to admit it, he supposes he really had brought this on himself.

Although in his defense, he hadn’t known the woman had been the innkeeper’s daughter until he’d been caught with his mouth on her neck and his hands up her skirt in the alley behind said inn by her father. But, the man having hauled Pero by the scruff of his neck away from her, he is all too aware now.

“Miserable cur!” the man bellows, fist colliding with Pero’s face. “You come into my establishment, partake in my food and drink, and now I find you attempting to dishonor my daughter?”

Neither the food nor the drink had been particularly good, and Pero strongly suspects that the woman in question (who has smartly made herself scarce) wasn’t a stranger to being dishonored, but he keeps his opinions to himself. He’s been taken very much by surprise, and when he thinks back to this incident later on, he’ll tell himself that is the only reason the innkeeper is able to land as many blows as he does. Normally, Pero would relish the opportunity for a bit of drunken fisticuffs in the street, but when the other man’s yelling draws the attention of several additional patrons from the inn who do not look like they’re about to take Pero’s side in this misunderstanding, he decides it’s time to cut his losses and run.

The town he’s stopped in for the night is not large, barely sizable enough to warrant having an inn in the first place. Pero darts between buildings and stays in the shadows as best he can, but it’s harder to disappear tonight.

Pero stopped abiding by the various tenets of organized religion long ago, sometime after the death of his mother and long before a difficult journey east showed him monsters are real. But he cannot avoid certain traditions tonight, not on All Hallow’s Eve.

The town is awash in firelight; candles lit in every window, bonfires in the fields and in the town square, evidence of rituals and superstitions about honoring the dead and warding off evil. Normally the light and warmth would not be unwelcome, but now they leave Pero with few places to hide.

And the innkeeper and his friends have decided to give chase.

It’s hardly the first time Pero has been run out of a town, but it is the first time he’s been pursued without the opportunity to retrieve his horse from the local stables. An unfortunate reality, but one that does allow Pero the benefit of taking refuge in the woods, away from the town and its main road, where he finally loses his pursuers, who don’t dare follow him there.

Especially not on this of all nights.

As the adrenaline of the chase wears off and the sweat he’s worked up cools on Pero’s skin, he slowly becomes aware that the night is far colder than he’d anticipated. His breath fogs under the moonlight, and the cold creeps steadily under the thin layers of his clothes. He curses the loss of his thick, fur-lined cloak, sitting abandoned in his room at the inn along with most of his other belongings. Blood drips from his split lip, and one of his eyes is half-swollen and sure to be a pretty black and blue by morning. He’d landed one or two hits himself back there, and gained a few bloody knuckles as a reward. He takes quick stock of what he has on him: never one to go unarmed, his scimitar and broadsword are still strapped to his back, hunting knife tucked into the side of his boot. He reaches into the small pouch tied to his belt, grateful to find the handful of coins he hasn’t yet spent jingling inside. And, oh yes...

Something else, to remind him that this night isn’t a complete loss.

The innkeeper's daughter had been pretty enough, and, far more importantly, willing enough. But after an hour of subtle glances and not-so-subtle touches passing between them as Pero ate and drank his fill in the inn’s common room, Pero had followed her outside with intentions even less honorable than the young woman had realized.

It had been the work of a few moments, distracting her with long, hungry kisses and one hand cupping the soft, round flesh of her breast while the other undid the clasp of the necklace she wore around her neck and slid it into his belt pouch. He takes it out now to get a closer look at it, a long, thin pendant on a tiny chain. The pendant itself doesn’t much interest him; it’s about two inches long and half an inch wide, made of highly polished wood and engraved with symbols Pero neither understands nor concerns himself with. The chain itself, however, glimmers even under the light of the moon, impossibly delicate, and made of gold.

It’s a pretty thing, and any guilt he may feel about taking it is far outweighed by the knowledge that this single piece will keep a roof over his head and food in his belly for many days if he can find the right place to sell it.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and desperate times are just about all Pero Tovar has known.

As the hour grows later, the air grows even colder, and Pero quickly comes to the begrudging conclusion that he will get no sleep this night. He dares not light a fire for fear of attracting trouble, and dares not fall asleep without one for fear of freezing to death before morning. If he can just make it a few more hours, wait for the bonfires to burn low and the last of the townfolk to go to bed, he can risk sneaking back to the inn in the early morning to fetch his things, or at the very least, his horse, before making good his permanent escape.

He decides it’s best to keep himself moving, walking in slow, steady circles as best he can through the trees to stay warm, keeping the nearby bonfires in sight.

He can practically hear William’s voice in his ear.

What trouble you’ve gotten yourself into now, eh Pero?

Pero scowls more deeply than usual.

Reminds me of that fiefdom in Avignon, what, five years ago? If you hadn’t provided a diversion and bought me a few precious seconds, that lord would’ve caught me in bed with his wife. I can think of several ways you’re significantly better off at the moment than I was that day, though.

It had been a harrowingly close call at the time, but Pero does find deep amusement at the memory now. And it is true - whatever else had happened tonight, he at least had not had to jump out a third-story window completely nude in order to avoid detection.

“You are lucky I was there to get you out of it, brother,” Pero murmurs to the night air.

I was. Despite our many misadventures, we had each other’s backs, didn’t we?

But not now. Not anymore. Now Pero is alone, wandering the continent without the one man he trusted by his side.

It has been months since he and William had parted ways. In the three years since their experience in China, they’d wandered back west, finding what work they could fighting in one conflict or another: disputes between the sons of the khan for control of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, petty squabbles between lords in the vast wooded lands of the Kievan Rus’, and, most recently, efforts by Conrad II to quell uprisings in Pavia.

Their time in the Kingdom of Italy in service to the Holy Roman Emperor had consisted of little actual fighting, the army laying siege to the city instead. Sieges, in Pero’s experience, are great for being paid while posing comparably little risk to your own life, but they’re boring. They leave you with a lot of time on your hands. And in such circumstances, men are easily distracted.

And if you’re William, well, this time around, that distraction turns out to be love.

The land around Pavia is rich and fertile, and by the time a peace had been brokered, William had fallen in love with the daughter of a nearby farmer. A young woman with pretty eyes and a penchant for teasing, and if Pero privately thought she shared the dark hair and headstrong nature of a certain general, he did not mention it to his friend.

I’m ready, William had told him. I’m ready to stop fighting, to make my living another way. To provide for those I love.

Pero couldn’t say he was surprised. China had changed William. Made him long for a different life. A meaningful life.

A life that no longer included Pero.

You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, William had insisted. But Pero knew there was no place for him in the newlyweds’ house. Not really. William had found it, a new life. A wife, a family, a purpose.

So Pero had left, knowing in his bones it would be the last time he ever saw the man who had been his brother in all the ways that mattered. Off to find his way in the world, alone.

The snap of a branch under his foot echoes in the still of the forest, pulling Pero out of his reverie. The moon is hidden behind clouds now, reducing his vision to only what is just in front of him. A sudden realization sends a shiver of dread down his spine.

He can no longer see the bonfires.

Trees spread outward in every direction, and Pero finds he’s wandered much further in from the edge of the forest than he meant to.

Part of him acknowledges that he’s likely only making the situation worse for himself by continuing to walk through the dense foliage, knowing he could be walking even further from the town, but what choice does he have? His teeth have started to chatter, and he can’t feel his nose. If he stops moving, he dies.

In lieu of proper pockets, he stuffs one hand into his belt pouch. His fingers find the wooden pendant. Without realizing it, he rubs his thumb back and forth over the symbols carved there, the minute bumps and ridges oddly comforting to touch.

The moon does not show her face again, and without that light Pero does not notice the strange nature of the little clearing he stumbles into.

A circle, devoid of all plant life, too perfect to be natural. And on the far side, a pair of ancient weathered trees whose branches reach for each other in the dark, but that stand just far enough apart to allow two horses standing side-by-side to pass between them.

More than enough room for one man, lost and alone in the woods, to unwittingly walk through.

Pero had thought it difficult to see before, but on the other side of the pair of trees, the darkness becomes absolute. The forest around him just vanishes, and everything goes quiet and still. No animals scrabbling in the undergrowth, no rustle of leaves in the breeze, no movement of air at all.

Then the darkness seems to press against him, everything contracting inward and squeezing, an invisible force crushing him on every side. Panic rises, and he can’t get enough air. For one terrible moment, Pero is sure this is how it ends, but then the wooden pendant goes white hot against his fingertips-

The tension breaks. His vision clears. He can breathe again, the wind rushing through the trees much more forcefully than it had before.

A drop of something lands on his cheek. Then another. Then another, another, another-

A brilliant flash of lightning crosses the sky, followed by a devastating crack of thunder. In an instant he’s suddenly swallowed up in the middle of a storm, rain lashing his body, wind pushing and pulling at his clothes.

If there is indeed a God, Pero is sure that somewhere, right now, they are having a laugh at his expense.

Lightning crackles through the clouds, providing brief moments where he can see his surroundings much better than before. Up ahead to his right, the trees thin, the forest giving way briefly to field before starting up again. There’s something odd about the trees on the far side though. They stand in neat rows, like soldiers awaiting orders. But another flash of light illuminates a road and a small house, pulling Pero’s attention.

God above, he’s tired. Tired, and so cold. His head pounds and he feels more and more acutely every blow he’d taken from the innkeeper despite the hours that have passed since they’d first landed on his flesh. He can no longer tell if the darkness that swims in front of his eyes is merely the result of the late hour or because he’s starting to lose consciousness, though he’s strongly starting to suspect the latter. It takes far more effort than it should to mount the handful of steps up to the door of the house. The hand he brings up to knock on the smooth white wood shakes, and he manages only a few weak raps before dropping his arm. The motion reopens the defensive wounds on his knuckles, the door now stained with his blood.

He stares at the smear of dark liquid and it swims in front of his eyes. He falls hard to his knees then, barely feeling the pain that shoots up from his frozen joints at the impact. He sways, unsteady, before toppling over completely, sprawled wet, bloody, and unconscious in front of some poor soul’s threshold.

Which is exactly how Tessa finds him a moment later when she opens her front door.

Chapter 2.

#pero tovar x ofc #pero tovar #pero tovar fanfiction #pedro pascal #the great wall fic

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