Prompt# 239- Quid pro quo - Matchmaker- Tekia - original

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: Matchmaker
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Quid pro quo
Warnings: none
Rating: PG
Summary: A day in Meria’s life on this side of the fire. Squeal to my story, Firelight

Meria had a hard time adjusting to life in high school. She found the other students dull and childish after a life in her father’s world. Where she was old enough to have a family and house of her own in that world, in this one, she was still very much a child and expected to behave as such.
And, when she didn’t, it proved disastrous.
She didn’t have many friends in this world her own age, as she was much more mature. In her father’s world, she had friends that had children of their own already and sometimes, she resented her mother for forbidding her father from arranging a marriage for her.
But then she saw the life she could have in this world and thanked her mother instead. While she loved her father’s world as much as he did, it was in this world, she knew her destiny awaited. She drank in books like water, and learned all she could about every subject available to her. Her mother encouraged her lust for knowledge and her father only shook his head while he reached for the books on the high shelves.
Meria had two languages on her tongue and she often stumbled over the words when speaking to people outside her family. Her father only spoke Latin, and her mother spoke both English and Latin, so when she was forced to speak solely English, she had to really pay attention to what she was saying.
The students in her school mocked her for her halting speech and even a few teachers offered to have her given special classes, because they thought she was a slow learner. It made her angry, but, like her mother, she learned to shrug off things that angered her.
When she entered her sophomore year, she was chose to take an ancient history class and discovered that her teacher was one in a million.
She entered his class with a grin on her lips and an eagerness unmatched by any other student. She aced her tests and spent many an afternoon after class with her teacher, discussing history. Mainly, the Romans, which she was an expert.
For this too, she was teased by her fellow students, but she didn’t mind so much, as this was her passion.
After one such session, she returned home to find that Maxima was in their house in this world, cleaning up the kitchen after her younger brother had tipped a bowl of soup over the floor. Meria stopped dead in her tracks and a wicked grin lit her features.
Maxima glanced up in time to see the crazy gleam in Meria’s eyes and paused in her cleaning, rag clamped firmly in her hand on her hip.
“And what are you up to missy?”
“Nothing,” she answered sweetly, stepping up to the fridge and finding an apple to munch on until dinner.
“Don’t you nothing me, girl,” Maxima said, matching Meria’s smile, “I know you too well.”
“Really, Maxima, it’s nothing.” She turned to face the woman and considered her age. Maxima was a young girl when Meria was born, so maybe she was about thirty years old? She mentally shook her head, it didn’t matter. “Is Mum home?”
“She’s cleaning up your brother. He’s a wild one, that boy.”
Meria nodded her agreement as she left the kitchen in search of her mother. She found her mother kneeling just outside the bath as her little brother slashed in the tub. He still had food in his hair, but Julia seemed content in letting him play in the water. When Meria stood over her mother, Julia looked up at her daughter with a ready smile on her lips.
“Another study session?”
Meria nodded and bit into her apple. “Can I invite someone over for dinner later in the week?”
One side of her mother’s lips quirked up in an almost there smile. “A boy?”
Meria grinned, a flush coming to her cheeks. “Yes, and no. It’s my teacher. I want him to meet Dads.”
Julia’s eyes widened. “Meria,” she started, but Meria stopped her.
“No, I got it covered. I’ll tell him that Dads’ got this thing about teaching us Latin and won’t speak any other language around us so we learn it as if it were our natural language. People do that here.”
Julia was nodding and absently reached out and took a cup away from Trajan before he spilt the water over the side of the tub. “I don’t know, Meria.”
“It’ll work, Mum, it will. I’ve got this covered. Just, can I invite him?”
She sighed and Meria knew she had it. “Let me speak with your father.”
Meria made a face. Her father wasn’t going to refuse her mother anything, and if Meria really wanted it, her mother would support her.
“Tell me why, though?”
“Oh, I thought that he should meet Maxima.”
Julia gaped at her daughter a moment before she laughed and rubbed a finger under her nose. “Matchmaking, are we?”
“They’d be perfect together.”
“Alright, if you say so.”
Meria cheered as she began planning on how to get Mr. J. Holmes and Maxima together. As she turned away, Julia grabbed her by the hem of her shirt.
“Wait, girl.”
“What?”
“Help your brother get dressed for dinner and set the table.”
“I don’t need her help getting dressed!” Trajan shouted, standing in the dirty water, soap bubbling from his hair. Meria snickered.
“I need to visit Claudia before too late to ask if she can make dinner for us for when Mr. Holmes comes over.”
“That can wait.”
“But Mum!”
“I don’t need her help!” Trajan shouted, stamping his foot. He slipped in the water on the slippery bottom of the tub and Meria’s hands shot out and caught him under his arms before he fell.
Julia glared at the boy and he flushed in embarrassment. Julia then turned her glare on her daughter. “I’m going to speak with your father about you inviting people into his house. Quid pro quo, as they say. Watch him and set the table.”
Meria rolled her eyes and took her mother’s place, kneeling at the tub to help her little brother wash the soap out of his hair. As her mother walked out of the room, she muttered, “If I wanted to watch children, I would have married Gryllus’ nephew and had my own.”
“I heard that,” her mother called as she walked down the hall, “and I’m sure your father can still arrange it if that’s what you really want.”
Meria made a face of disgust.