#merimac drabble

[wisps-n-woad]

🩵🧡🍻🤎💙

WIP Week - Day 2: Newest WIP

Probably terrible to be posting in the middle of the night…but I didn’t want to be any later in posting for Day 2 (I didn’t even get to do Day 1, so this is a little better!!)…so here’s a fragment of the beginning of my newest WIP. It’s Merintosh and it’s an modern AU set in a pub. Hope you all enjoy!!

Merida breathed a sigh of relief as the last of the evening’s patrons staggered their way out of The Bear & The Bow on unsteady legs and a welcome hush fell over the cozy pub.

It had been a long day, made impossibly longer by her near-constant worry over her father’s health - a worry that manifested itself as an ever-present tension between her shoulder blades and a dull ache at the base of her neck. Though she couldn’t fully eradicate the worry, she had managed – with no small amount of difficulty – to push down the guilt she felt over not being at the hospital with her mother and brothers by reminding herself that someone had to keep the family business running.

Her mother needed to be with her father, both right now and in the coming days when Fergus would be released from the hospital and allowed to return home. They didn’t know exactly when that would be, or how long he’d be convalescing, and they couldn’t afford to close for the duration of his illness. As the triplets were too young to legally work the taps, the responsibility fell to her to run the place till her father was back on his feet.

She was needed here, and, frankly, focusing on the daily tasks of running the pub kept her from going out of her mind with fear and fretting. If Ruby had still been around, or Mulan, she wouldn’t have hesitated to leave things in their hands - they’d been working at the pub as long as she had and they’d all been friends even longer than that - but they’d both left for their gap year only a couple of months after Merida had left on hers. They were literally a world away in Australia at the moment.

Which meant that if she didn’t see to things at the pub herself, there would have been only one other person she could possibly have put in charge, and there was no way in hell that that was going to happen. Not on her watch.

He’d like that all too well, she mused, a frown pulling at her brows. He’s already made himself far too at home here. Struttin’ around like he owns the place. Well he most certainly does not–

“Why don’t ye let me close up t’night, lass? Ye look near t’dead on yer feet.” As if he’d sensed that she’d been thinking about him, Mac spoke up softly. His voice floated over to her from the center of the pub’s main room, where he’d been wiping down tables for the last several minutes. Looking up from where she’d fallen into a bit of a reverie while cleaning off and capping the taps for the night, she saw that he’d already flipped the door sign to “closed,” slid the locks into place, and turned off the neon lights in the windows. She huffed out a slightly surprised breath. Well that’s just irritatingly efficient of him.

She simply looked at him for a long moment, letting her eyes drift over him slowly. He was standing with his arms crossed over his chest, gazing back at her with a look that bordered far too close to concern for her liking. She could handle the barely-friendly sparring banter they’d fallen into after her return home the previous week, but this? This seeming to truly care, and the softness in his eyes as he regarded her?

She couldn’t handle it right now. Moreover, she couldn’t allow herself to believe in it.