Rating: 12
Pairing: Guy/Marian
Summary: "Do not feign stupidity, Marian!" he snapped suddenly furious. "It is not becoming."
Warnings: Very silly little fic that I wrote a long, loooong time ago and never finished or posted. Very AU and possibly very out of character too.
Status of Fic: Completed one shot
Author's Note: Haven't written anything for so long that I'm a tad rusty. I'm hoping to get back into the writing and possibly to finishing Lawless at some point, if work and muses permit. But this is just a little daftness on my part that made me happy when I wrote it and now seems a little…weird. LOL!
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own anything Robin Hood-esque…but I would like to steal it…
Seen
She jolted with surprise as she entered their bed chamber to see his figure stood silhouetted against the wide window that looked out and down upon the forest surrounding Locksley Hall.
"Guy?" she queried his name to get his attention more than anything. She had grown to know his stance, his form better than anyone's in the past months since their marriage. She would have known that it was him even had she been struck blind at that moment. "I cannot believe it! You've returned from London. So soon!"
Guy turned briefly, stealing a glance at her over his leather clad shoulder before resuming his stare at the darkening trees before him. He did not look at her long enough to see the flush rise to her cheeks, nor the smile touch her lips. She had, despite their complicated relationship, missed him immensely.
"You are surprised then." he stated slowly and Marian, gathering the skirts of her dress in her hands for quickness, began across the room towards him.
"Pleasantly." she countered, smile faltering as she sensed something was wrong merely from the set of his shoulders. She reached her hand out to lay it there and his flinch away from her, the tension in his jaw and neck only confirmed her suspicions.
He was angry. With her most likely.
"I doubt that." he growled again, so quietly and deeply that it was almost unheard by her ears. Her arm dropped back down to her sides and she stood for a moment, unsure of how to proceed around this strange creature that had taken the form of her husband.
"Whatever do you mean?" she queried, not needing to feign her confusion, but Guy remained stoic and unmoving, eyes trained upon the trees and grounds about their marital home. "Guy?"
Silence.
"Guy, look at me!" she ordered, her voice strong, a fierceness coming over her suddenly as she stepped around him to glare up into his face. "Tell me."
He clenched his jaw a little harder, closed his eyes and turned his face down to the floor for a long moment, taking a deep breath stealing himself for what was obviously about to transpire between them. And then his blue eyes were upon hers, burning almost as brightly as hers had when he had first told her that he was leaving for London and would be gone for three weeks.
"You were seen." he begins, voice calm and controlled and that frightened her more than anything.
"Seen?"
"Do not feign stupidity, Marian!" he snapped suddenly furious. "It is not becoming."
"Tell me then." she retorted without missing a beat. "Tell me where I was supposedly 'seen' and who with and let this be over and done with so that we can return to some form of normalcy. I had presumed, when I saw you stood there, that you would require a fitting welcome home from me."
His jaw only seemed to tighten more at her brief allusion to more pleasurable activities, but a flush did rise upon his own cheeks even as he turned and stalked away to sit upon the edge of their bed, not willing to let her revel in her little victory over him.
"You were seen with him." he ground out with something akin to pain flashing across his down turned features.
"Him?"
"Hood!" he snapped bitterly. "The Sheriff's armed guard have seen you meeting with him every few weeks consecutively." he glanced up at her, eyes boring holes through hers, as if he could read her mind and see her thoughts but had taken them out of context. "Those nights that you said you were visiting with your father, you really went to him. The Sheriff has-"
"The Sheriff wants nothing more than to drive us further apart." Marian cut over him in a cold, hard voice, fists clenching and unclenching at her sides. She knew now where this conversation was heading and she needed to fortify her already raw emotions from further attack.
"You deny it then?" he snorted, a grim, bitter smirk twisting his features and turning his face into someone she did not recognise. "You deny meeting to deliver him food. Three moons ago? Do you deny that you allowed him to kiss you, even though we had been married not a week previously?" his eyebrows drew together, his tongue spat the words from his mouth as if they burned him, clawed at his throat. He stood suddenly, towering above her and any lesser woman may have shrunk away from him as he clasped Marian's upper arms in his gloved hands. Fingers biting into her skin and muscle painfully. "Do you deny that it is his child you carry within you, and not mine?"
For a long moment Marian could only blink up at him in shock. Not comprehending the words, his accusations. Her brain suddenly sluggish, unwilling, unwanting to process the thoughts to conclusion. And then something within her snapped. She ripped herself from his fierce hold and drew her hand back to slap him across the face as hard as she could. So hard that his face snapped to one side, though it did not move him more. So furious was she that she raised her hand to strike him again but he was quicker that time, expecting her action and catching her hand by the wrist.
"How dare you?" she ground from between her teeth. Eyes shimmering with tears of betrayal and fury. "How dare you?! I never once have broken that vow I made upon our wedding day! Never once. I met with Robin Hood, yes, but I have never, ever let him touch me. He never would, because he is a man of honour.
"I met to give him food for the people forced out of their homes and made outlaws not due to their crimes but due to the evictions that the Sheriff's extortionate taxes have caused. I visit him only to help the women and children and the sick living and dying in that forest every day!" she pointed furiously out of their window but Guy's glare never left her face. "You cannot stop me from wanting to help the people who need me the most."
She struggled away from him, trying to break his grip on her once she had finished her defence of her honour but he would not let her go.
"Marian. Marian." he called to her, his tone suddenly less accusing than it had been moments before. He reached his free hand out taking hold of her chin firmly, turning her face back towards him.
"Do not 'Marian' me when it is obvious you trust your Sheriff more than you trust your wife!" she spat out but she stilled in his grasp, her tears no longer hidden, no longer able to be suppressed. "Do you truly think so little of me?" her words were quieter and his hand moved from it's firm grip of her jaw to smooth across her anger flushed cheek, tangling in her hair.
"Marian, I think the world of you…" he responded, tugging her gently towards him and, even though she protested, body going rigid in his embrace, she allowed him to.
"And yet you accuse me of such things?" she murmured into his chest, the leather cold against her heated face. "I know that I have not exactly been the best wife. I have not been as easy to live with as some perhaps would but I do not think that-" she could not finish, overwhelmed by her emotions.
"Shhh," he soothed, tightening his arms about her and pressing her head to his heart. "Marian, Marian, think no more on it. Forgive me my insecurity. Forgive me for being so easily led by the Sheriff's assumptions. Forgive me for my fear of losing you."
She pulled her head up at that, locking her eyes onto his.
"Losing me?"
And Guy shook his head, his arms slipping from about her as he turned away, hiding the shame upon his features, the concern that he may have put asunder their relationship further than it already had been with his unavoidable visit to London upon the Sheriff's orders.
"I fear every day of my life that you are going to wake up one morning and realise that you do not want to be here. I fear that one day you will leave me for another life." he spoke quietly and there was no doubt as to what life he was referring to. The life that she could have lived with Robin Hood if she had so desired it. But Marian shook her own head, wiping tears from her eyes and placing her hand, palm down, comfortingly, upon Guy's broad shoulder.
"I told you that I made my choice a long time ago." she responded almost as quietly as he. "My vows, my promises are not so lightly or easily broken as Robin Hood's. Besides," she grinned suddenly, a wicked glint in her eyes that made Guy's own eyes shine with a hungry sort of curiosity. "The moment that I do not want to be here…" she paused, slipping around him, linking her arms about his waist, her grin widening through the last remains of her emotion. "You'll be the first to know."
He growled, making a noise deep in that back of his throat then that set the hairs upon the back of Marian's neck standing on end and a shiver racing down her spine, a path that his finger tips soon followed after he had tugged his gloves off with his teeth and her help, tossing them behind him to the floor.
"That is good to hear…" he murmured, smirk returning to his features, hesitating just before his lips brushed across hers and she raised her arms to cradle them about his head. Her answering smile and the need for air the only thing that broke their kiss as he moved them back towards their bed. "I must apologise for bringing up something that you said earlier in our conversation…" he breathed, the back of Marian's knees hitting the edge of the feather filled mattress. The sudden jolt brought them to a standstill and she rested her arms across his shoulders, letting her fingertips wander through his lengthened hair, across his stubbled jaw line, over his cheeks and brow, relearning him after three weeks apart.
"Oh, really?" she responded distractedly as he ducked in for another kiss, less polite and gentle than the last, taking her breath away. Lips parted and tongues entwined and then his mouth removed, turning to her cheeks, her neck, her collar bones and she suddenly found it very difficult to fill her lungs with any air at all.
"Yes, Lady." he responded at length and she felt rather than heard the words as his lips ghosted across her skin. "I'm afraid that you promised me a fitting welcome…did you not?"
"Oh…" she chuckled deep in her throat. "So I did."