Author's Note: Fill for a LJ Week 27 Friday one word prompt "Arrow" for Wash and Taylor.
This is set in the context of my other stories, mid-series, during the episode Nightfall. Yes, I'm going with the obvious. : )
And this is just an intermission – am definitely working on the next part of "How Do You Feel About Dinosaurs?"
Disclaimer is the same as always – don't own them, just borrowing, no profit here.
As she climbs the stairs to the command center, Alicia feels fatigue in every inch of her body. It has been a very long day cleaning up the havoc wreaked by the meteor, EMP and the Sixers, and all she wants to do is go home, get cleaned up and crawl into bed. She's here to check in with Nathaniel, and then she intends to call it a night.
She enters Nathaniel's office, and she stops in surprise when she only finds Jim and Guz standing there. They're deep in conversation about the need to tighten up the fences and close security breaches, and she clears her throat to get their attention, assuming that Nathaniel will be along shortly.
They both look up in surprise. "Wash!" Jim rallies first. "He's not here."
She furrows her brow. "I'm sorry?"
Guz elbows Jim in the side and answers, "Taylor. He's not here, Wash."
She nods, still confused. "I can see that." The men both shift on their feet, both clearly nervous. They both seem to want to say something, but neither is speaking up. "What the hell is going on, guys?"
Guz looks at Jim, and Jim motions towards her as if he wants Guz to answer. Guz shakes his head. She rolls her eyes, too tired for this kind of game. "Seriously? What is going on? Stop acting like children and talk to me."
Jim sighs, still staring at Guz. He then turns to her. "Now don't kill the messenger, OK, Wash?" Jim looks genuinely concerned. "He kind of got shot."
"What?" She blinks, feeling her stomach flip over, and she advances on him. "How the hell do you 'kind of' get shot, Shannon?"
He takes a step back. "It was with an arrow."
"A crossbow bolt, Shannon," Guz corrects, completely unhelpfully.
Alicia favors Guz with a withering glare, and he holds his hands up in surrender, retreating as well. She turns back to Jim. "Is he all right, Shannon?"
"He seemed that way when he left."
"He left? To go where? Is he in the infirmary?" She lifts an eyebrow at him.
"Not exactly."
"Shannon." Her voice drops to a near growl. She's out of patience with the evasive answers.
"He wouldn't go, OK, Wash? And he threatened me when I said I was going to tell Liz." Guz nods, confirming Jim's account. "He said he was sure he'd see you later, and that you could look at it."
"Are you kidding me?" She can't believe this. "Guz, at a minimum, after all these years, I expect you to call him on his crap! Why didn't you send someone for me?"
"He told us not to, Wash. Technically, he ordered us not to." Guz shakes his head. "I'm sorry. He seemed OK, so I wasn't going to push him."
She throws her hands up in the air and turns to leave. Before exiting, she looks back at them. "Chickens."
Guz acknowledges the accuracy of the statement with a nod, and Jim just shrugs and says, "Bock, bock," making Guz snort out a laugh before composing himself under her murderous glare.
Alicia stomps down the stairs, stripping off her body armor as she goes. As she walks, she mutters, "Idiots. I'm surrounded by idiots." She's heading home, intending to dump her armor and pick up her med kit before going to look for Nathaniel. She assumes he's at home, so that's where she'll start. Underneath her irritation is a strong current of fear for him, fear that she pushes down as hard as she can.
Since they are still mostly without power, her house is dark when she gets to it. Her door is unlocked, she assumes because it automatically reset when the EMP hit. It's a powered lock, and usually only she, Nathaniel and Guz can open it, as they all have access to each other's homes.
She enters the small house, dumping her armor near the door. She heads for her bathroom to grab her med kit. Once she has it, she's about to leave again when she hears a sound from her bedroom. She drops the med kit on the floor, pulling the pistol from her thigh holster. Powering it up, she swings around her bedroom doorway, gun at the ready in the near complete darkness.
She nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound of his voice. "I'd prefer not to get shot a second time today, if you don't mind, Wash."
Immediately lowering the gun, she lets out an exasperated breath. "Damn it, Nathaniel, I might've shot you. Are you insane?"
"According to some, absolutely." As her eyes begin to adjust to the lack of light, she sees him struggle into a sitting position on her bed.
She holsters her pistol and puts her hands on her hips. "Did you bleed on my sheets?"
He just chuckles weakly at that, a sign to her that he's in at least some pain. "Probably."
"Up and to the kitchen, Nathaniel."
"Is that an order, Lieutenant?"
"If you need it to be, Commander."
"Can't you fix it here?" His voice is nearly a whine, and once again, her patience is gone.
"I have more light in there, Nathaniel. Now get your ass up off my bed and into the kitchen." She doesn't wait for him to reply, just turns on her heel and stalks to the kitchen. On her way, she retrieves the med kit from the floor, dropping it on the dining table.
She doesn't look up at him when she hears him approach, just goes to one of the cabinets and pulls out a few candles and a gas lamp. He sits in a chair as she lights the candles and lamp. She arranges them near where he is sitting so she'll have light to look at his injury.
Once the lights are set, she finally turns and looks at him. The expression on his face is somewhere between defiance and contrition. She rolls her eyes, something that, not surprisingly, seems to bring out more of the defiance. She isn't impressed. "Where were you hit?"
"Alicia," he begins, and she can hear that it's his "I'm the commander" voice.
"Save it, Nathaniel. Tell me where you're hit. I'm going to clean it up, and then I'm going to send you on your way."
"You're going to kick me out?" He looks incredulous, and if she wasn't so mad at him, she would have laughed at his expression.
"You bet your ass I am. Clearly, my presence is completely unnecessary to you, seeing as you didn't see fit to let Guz or Shannon send someone for me." She meets his eyes head on, and, if his eyes are anything to go by, it appears that he's beginning to see just how upset she is. "Now where were you hit?"
He carefully pulls his t-shirt off, hissing when the fabric sticks to the dried blood near the wound to his torso. She tries to keep her face emotionless, but her eyes waver a little at the sight of ugly wound left by the crossbow.
As she begins to clean the area, he's already flinching, so she knows it must hurt like a bitch. "Who got the drop on you?" She knows the question will irritate him a little, but she's trying to distract him.
He bristles. "Who said someone go the drop on me?"
She pauses, indicating the gaping hole in his side, her façade breaking momentarily as she shoots him an amused look. He grumbles as she goes back to work on him. "I don't know who it was, but he was covering Carter."
She scowls at the name. "Please tell me you kicked Carter's ass."
"I got a few hits in before he got away with that damned box." He grunts as she touches the wound with antiseptic.
In spite of herself, she winces in sympathy. After the area is clean, she gives him a quick shot to numb the area, and she starts to stitch him up. She's silent again, and she's honestly still very upset with him.
After a minute or so, he says, "I didn't think it was that bad, and I didn't want to make a big deal out of it."
She doesn't respond to that, just keeps stitching. He sighs. "I'm sorry, OK? I didn't want to worry you."
She finishes the last stitch and less than gently slaps a bandage over it. Fuming, she puts her supplies away before responding. When she turns back to him, her eyes are flashing. "So what, Nathaniel, you thought it would be better for me to hear secondhand from Guz and Shannon that you'd been shot? Trust me, Nathaniel. That was not better."
She leaves him at the table, going to her bedroom to get him one of the clean t-shirts he keeps here for their occasional overnights. As she pulls the t-shirt from her dresser, she feels him come up behind her. "I'm really sorry, Alicia. Tell me how to fix this. I'll do whatever you want."
Turning around, she hands him the t-shirt. "I want you to go."
She leaves him standing there, heading back into the kitchen to pour herself a drink. She pours a couple of fingers of Boylan's version of whiskey into a glass and takes a drink. When she hears him behind her, she turns sharply, ready to tell him again to go.
Before she can say anything, he puts his hands on her arms and says, "Except that." At her confused look, he repeats, "I'll do whatever you want except that. I won't go. Not like this."
She glares at him. "You lost your right to try to make me feel guilty when you made me find out about this from Shannon and Guz. You don't get to treat me like an afterthought and then, hours later, act like I'm actually important to you. You don't get to have it both ways."
"Alicia, I," he tries again.
She wrenches free from his grip. "No, Nathaniel. Do you not understand? It was like being sucker punched in the gut. I just assumed that no one was hurt. In particular, I assumed that you weren't hurt. Then, I have to drag it out of Shannon and Guz. They were literally afraid to tell me. Even they knew how upset I'd be. How did they know that when you, the man who claims to love me and whose bed I've been sharing for seven years, didn't?"
She takes a deep breath and looks up at him, now unable to hide the hurt in her eyes. "And why is it that you felt the need to tell them and not me?" She turns back to the counter and picks up her drink, facing him again as she takes a deep swallow of it.
He blinks at her, and then realization dawns in his eyes. "Shannon was there when it happened, and Guz was in the command center when I got up there. He saw the blood. I didn't just tell them and not you. I wouldn't do that, Alicia."
She turns away again, her voice dropping low. "You should have sent for me, Nathaniel, or at least gotten a message to me. I don't like to be blindsided."
She feels him come up behind her. After a moment, he presses himself against her back and gently wraps his arms around her waist. She tenses, but knowing that struggling against him could hurt his side, she doesn't pull away. "I'm sorry, Alicia, I didn't think about it. You're right, I should've had Guz or Shannon send someone to find you. I sometimes forget that they both know about us, and that they'd understand why I wanted you alerted."
She finally relaxes back into his embrace. "You scared me today, Nathaniel."
He hugs her tighter to him. "I'm sorry, Alicia. I didn't mean for that to happen. I didn't mean to scare you." They stand there like that for a while, and then, out of nowhere, Nathaniel asks, "Alicia, will you marry me?"
She spins in his arms, her eyes wide. "What?"
She almost expects him to be wearing a teasing grin, but he isn't. His face is entirely serious. "I asked you to marry me, Alicia."
Her mouth drops open in shock, and she can't find her voice. He quirks an eyebrow at her, and when she stays silent, he says, "You know, that wasn't a rhetorical question."
She blinks a few times. "Nathaniel, we can't, you know that. We're lucky we've managed to not ruffle the brass so far."
He sighs. "Alicia, I'm tired of us living our lives worried about 2149. We'll never go back there, we can't. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that there isn't a damned thing they'd do."
She shakes her head. "You don't know that, Nathaniel. We'd be risking everything."
"If they do find out about us, Alicia, we may be more protected if we're married."
Alicia pulls away from him and starts to pace. "Where is this coming from, Nathaniel?"
He runs a hand through his hair. "This is coming from the fact that I want to be here and not at home if being home means I'm not with you. It's coming from the fact that I don't want to wake up alone anymore."
"Nathaniel…"
He steps in front of her, blocking her pacing. He puts his hands on her upper arms, squeezing gently. "Alicia, stop thinking about our jobs, stop thinking about 2149. What do you want to do?"
She looks at him for a moment before whispering, "I want to say yes."
He squeezes again and leans down to press a soft kiss to her lips. "Then say yes, Alicia."
She reaches out and traces the edge of the bandage she just applied to his still-bare chest. Eventually, she breathes out, "Yes."
"Yes?" He grins.
She looks up at him. "Yes, Nathaniel. Yes, I will marry you."
He swoops down and kisses her again, far more possessive and powerful this time. She responds by pressing her body to his and wrapping her arms around his waist.
After she pulls back, she murmurs, "Bed time, Nathaniel."
His eyes darken, and she chuckles, shaking her head. "To sleep, Nathaniel."
His face falls as she points towards her bedroom. He protests, "But we just got engaged!" She douses all but one of the candles and the gas lamp, and she follows him with the remaining candle.
They get to her bedroom, and she puts the candle on the nightstand and pushes him down onto the bed. She toes off her boots and strips down to her panties. She then finds the t-shirt she'd pulled out for him earlier, slipping it on to wear as a night shirt.
Seeing that he's still wearing his boots and fatigues, she kneels down and starts to remove them for him. As she does, his hand snakes out, ghosting down her arm and moving to her breasts.
She bats his hand away. "Down, boy."
He frowns. "Really? We're just going to sleep?"
As she pulls his fatigues off, leaving his boxers in place, she laughs softly. "Yes, really, Nathaniel." She gets up off the floor and leaves the room briefly. She returns with a glass of water and two pain pills from her med kit.
When she holds them out to him, he tries to refuse. "It feels fine."
"Of course it does, Nathaniel. I deadened it to do the stitches. But in a few hours, it's going to start hurting like a son of a bitch." She continues to hold them out to him.
After looking stubborn for a moment, he takes them from her and swallows them with a mouthful of the water. She nods. "Now scoot over."
He complies, getting into the bed as she puts the glass of water on the nightstand and climbs in after him. She blows out the candle and then curls into his uninjured side, her hand coming to rest on his chest.
"We're really not going to do anything?" He sounds so put out that she can't help but laugh. She leans up and places a chaste kiss to his lips.
"Nathaniel, let me make the rules clear to you. On days you get shot, you don't get laid."
"I really feel fine!"
She sits up slightly to look at him as best as she can in the dark room. "Nathaniel, you have a hole and brand new stitches in your side. I'm not having sex with you. Period." She curls back into his side.
He grumbles, "So this is how it's going to be, then? You bossy and me putting up with it?"
She laughs. "Works for me."
She can almost hear him roll his eyes. "I'm sure it does." He pauses. "I love you, Alicia."
After dropping a kiss to his chest, she nuzzles her face into his neck. "I love you too, Nathaniel. And by the way, continuing with my bossy theme, in the morning we're going to see Elisabeth so she can check your side. I'm really going to enjoy hearing your explanation of why you didn't go to the infirmary right away."
He groans. "That sounds like retribution to me, Lieutenant."
"Good call, Commander."
He chuckles, shaking his head. "Good night, Alicia."
She grins against his neck. "Good night, Nathaniel."