A/N: For those reading my "Don't" series, please be advised I have not left it to work on this...the following story - and the two series it comes from - have been completed for some time, and it is only now being posted at fanfiction.
Title: The Ties that Bind (...and Chafe, and Ensnare - and Join, and Endure)
6.4 in the "We Are 2011" universe OR 3 of 8 in the Allan-A-Dale A True Outlaw Story series
Author: Neftzer writing as Nettlestone Nell
Word Count: 7244
Rating: R (to be on the safe side)
Characters/Pairings: Allan, Robin, Much, Little John, Matilda, OCs Nell Stone and Aly; Allan/Nell
Spoilers/Warnings: Probably best to read 1-6.3 of my "We Are 2011" series first. But, I suppose, for the most part you don't really have to...
(I have decided to refer to the 6.+s as being in that 'universe' because they are not truly part of the 1-6 series, which has a clear beginning, middle, and end.) Recall that in this universe the ending of series Season Two, and all of Season Three as aired (per my series) is not to be trusted for either plot or truth.
[In briefest recap: Gisborne did not kill (but inadvertently injured) Marian in the Holy Land, and was banished from Richard's kingdoms, from that point his life unable to be taken other than by Marian or Richard Himself. As the King remained abroad, the Sheriff escaped back to Nottingham to return to power and scheming under Prince John. Carter lived. And most importantly, the gang is still knocking about, at the doing of all good things, in present day.]
This fic also follows my 2011 INTERCOMM flash fic, "The Trip to Jerusalem", which first introduces my OC Nell, without using her name. (Please see story's end for a listing in order of the two fic series' titles and their orders.)
Summary: A story of Allan-A-Dale and Nell Stone, from their second meeting to current discoveries in Nottinghamshire that once again bring them together.
Disclaimer: Characters and characterizations herein recognizable as those from BBC Robin Hood are BBC/Tiger Aspect's.
Category: Drama/Comedy/Romance/Fantasy (it is possible that what all those words really equal here is Fluff); Epic Short Fic
LJ Community: Treat Allan Right
A/N: This (6.4/6) is entirely for and at the direct request of sylvi10. I confess I don't even know if it will amuse anyone, save her (I hope) and me (which I already know it does). But she was very down, and inquired about some more of Allan/Nell. And as I had no way to deliver flowers or chicken soup to otherwise cheer her up, here it is.
She has - in a short period of time - written great lengths of kind, encouraging, and insightful words to me, and I hope this will stand as a little something just for her.
The Ties that Bind (...and Chafe, and Ensnare - and Join, and Endure)
As was his well-established custom from time to time, Allan-A-Dale began to sneak away from the Sherwood Outlaws' camp.
At his noisings (though very, very slight they were), Little John's voice rumbled through the underbrush, likely terrifying small rabbits burrowed in with their mothers. "Where're you off to?"
"C'mmmmmon..." Allan, frozen in place, began to protest, but did not step out to reveal his exact location. He was only a voice, a voice of one wheedling in the wilderness.
"None of that, Allan," Robin vocally sided with John, casting his eyes over the underbrush, though his tone was a less confrontational one. "'Tis a fair question...of late."
The gang had not long been returned to forest life from their journey to the Holy Land.
Gisborne, the one-time tempter toward Allan's now deeply repented wrong, was banished at the word of the King, disappeared from their world entire, yet even so, Allan was finding that the gang's trust was, apparently, among the troika of things one could neither con into being, nor steal.
So he stepped out into the light, away from his cover, showed himself to them. "If you must know," he volunteered before they could ask a third time, "I'm off about a girl..." he inclined his head, "and a spot of cash for the general fund."
Robin's wary expression visibly relaxed at his explanation, and in doing so alerted him that he was acquitted of John's present suspicions, and dismissed to go his way.
As he threaded off back through the woods toward the Nottingham Road, Allan did not catch the sound of Much concurring with his pronounced itinerary, as the manservant vouched for Allan to the others; "Third Saturday," Much commented as he crouched to stir the cook pot. "...Means Melissa, at the Salutation."
But Much could not know it was not the usual Melissa that Allan expected to see that day. For though the gang's requisite thief had not lied - he was off about both a girl, and some cash for the general fund - the girl he had discovered would likely be waiting for him at the Salutation was not expecting him to know it would be her, nor had he ever - in their single prior encounter - given her money of his own free will, nor received any service rendered in turn for that which she had relieved him of.
He was walking into a trap - a honey trap, possibly, but a trap no less. The knowledge of the jolly challenge he faced fairly caused him to dance his way down the Nottingham Road.
NOTTINGHAM TOWN - The Salutation Inn - James, the innkeep below had waved Allan on to the usual room upstairs, without (as the man would with other customers) demanding to see his coin purse, perhaps insist on half - or all - in advance. Yes, trust was something that Allan-A-Dale had in spades...at least at the Salutation.
He entered the room to find a woman of admirable figure - at least from behind - casting a glance through the lone window out onto the Nottingham street below.
"Where's Melissa?" he asked, though the woman wore that wench's best frock, unmistakable in its gay stripes. He let curiosity seep into his tone, though he was of too keen an eye to mistake the female backside standing before him (though he had only ever had a single opportunity to commit it to memory). And too keen of a mind to forget the situation he was willingly walking into. "I'm here for her, regular," he declared, though in his wind-blown ways he did very little with any regularity - even this. "Every third Saturday."
"Mmm. She's busy," the girl at the window told him, casting the words over her shoulder, the strong sun backlighting her so that her face was not easy to make out in the blinding contrast. "I'm the new girl," she encouraged him, a flirtish flippancy in her local, of-the-shire accent. "Most men," she nearly purred, lifting one leg onto the seat of a nearby chair, the leg bent at the knee, the frock's striped skirt not full enough to drape and cover it, "most men like the new girl."
Allan let himself enjoy the tart reveal of flesh, let himself recall that he, too, was rather fond of new girls. Of legs. Of frocks that only dabbled in modesty.
It was just this relishing of the moment that allowed her to get the drop on him, her seeming to reach to caresses her own self, bared knee-to-thigh, when in fact, back still to Allan, her face in fetching profile, her hand was unsheathing the stiletto she had strapped there.
He had taken a step toward her, toward the lure of her leg, silhouetted in the unshuttered window's light. This made it easy for her, in two quick moves, to tumble the chair with her foot as a distraction, and bring her dagger under his left ear.
"I have no interest in killing you," she told him, their proximity now close, her eyes sparking to the moment - to her having gained the upper hand. "...But I can, very shortly, make you quite ugly to look at. I shall have your purse."
He produced it without fuss or comment, though internally he congratulated himself that she did, in fact, then, find him presently, not ugly to look at.
"...And I shall have your pants."
He buried a smirk. Now this, this was almost too much. He fought against the urge to grin at her plan to frustrate his immediate pursuit of her, and of his stolen purse.
"Strip off," she said.
And he did.
When he had undone his lacings, and kicked off his boots to ease his trousers' removal, once they were on the floor she demanded he kick them, similarly, to the corner.
Only then did the knife's pressure under his ear slacken. She took a step away, where he could now better see all of her in the room's normal (if not very ample) light.
She really did Melissa's frock more than justice. But she was a bit too clean for a tavern girl, her hair still in place - not tumbled like a working wench's (no use to put it up when one never really left one's bed). Not a love bite on her, her posture almost commanding, in a 'to business'-way, rather than submissive, or playful. And the skin around her eyes showed nothing of a tavern girl's particular sorrows, where they usually settled about the corners, under the lower lashes like bricks baked, cracking in the sun.
Yes, he saw her.
And she saw him. Pantsless, bare-bummed. Swinging free, his present summer tunic not a particularly long one.
"Not bein' funny," he told her, "but if you think I've got some problem with public nudity - " he gave a smirk as he saw her eye drawn (at his comment) below where his sword belt would have been, had he chosen to wear one to town today (which he hadn't). "It's abundantly clear," he gestured to his exposed bits with a degree of self-satisfaction, "I've nothing at all to be ashamed of..."
Her brows clashed together at his unexpectedly immodest acceptance of the state of undress in which she had left him.
He put his hands to his hips, which actually brought his tunic up even shorter. The movement of the fabric (or perhaps something else of interest) again distracted her, and before she could form a solid thought of how now to prevent his following her, he had her - and her blade - in his control.
"Look, Whatever-your-name-is - NotMelissa, bit of advice - " He did not truly hold the knife very threateningly. "Never cross blades with a street-trained pickpocket of the first caliber, currently studying under a former Crusader. Right?"
He had her, restrained by his arms, using his person also to hold her, knife to discourage her from protesting too stringently, and he found...he did not immediately know what to do with her. It was not as though he were in a position to call the Guard down upon her.
Though he did not mind having his trousers off, it was still somewhat chill in the room, doubtless things were not looking their best down there - or, perhaps, he took a moment to mentally inquire. Or perhaps things were looking...a little too spry to easily explain for a man so shortly ago prisoner of her knife.
But before his mind could study on his next step too closely, the female thief's belly gave an immense and vocal growl. Where one of his hands was positioned, he even felt the accompanying rumble.
"Blimey!" he intuited. "You've gone and had yourself a bowl of Halnet's stew!" He disappeared the knife, used his foot to cleverly bring the capsized chair straight, and had her seated in it in a moment.
And not a moment too soon. At another great quake of her belly, her face greened over, and she barely held back a gag.
Stepping clear of the danger zone, but keeping his eyes trained on her, he slid on his trousers, laced in record time, re-hid his money purse (and what his quick fingers had found of hers with it), and dragged his tall boots over to the bed to pull them on.
"Between us, Love," Allan advised her, sympathetic with her nauseous belly, "as much as I revere the Trip, there's no good stew to be bought in town, save at the Bell. At least there you can be mostly certain nothing rancid's been added to the pot."
The momentary gruesome turn of her stomach passing, she grunted a very subdued "thanks," to him, but still occupied the chair where he had placed her, and produced no additional weapons from on her person with which to menace him further. She did seem to be discreetly pouting at her present reversal of fortune.
"Come now," he encouraged, coaxing her, working on his second boot - trying to take her mind off her theft-gone-wrong, and letting her in on his foreknowledge of it. "I've had George at the Trip looking for you ever since that 'day after Market Day'."
Her head snapped around to take the measure of his face at this pronouncement.
His eyes trained on hers to gauge her reaction. "You're not really from Nettlestone, are you?"
"And you're not really from Rochedale, are you?"
He gave a short laugh. He hadn't used that one in a while. "Dale's my father's name," he answered. "'Allan of Dale', you see."
"Riiiight," she replied skeptically, her eyes enlarging with her pronouncing of the word. "And he was a blacksmith? A bootblack - a bootjack?"
"Ah. I see you have studied up. Nice. Always good to know as much as possible about a potential mark." He gave her a devilish wink, rising from the bed where he had finished with his boots, giving them a dual stomp on the wooden floor to cap off his dressing.
He considered aloud. "Then how is it I know so little about you?" And then he brought his own hard-sought information to bear, "οΎNell?"
She reacted to the use of her name, which she clearly had not expected him to be in possession of - much less to learn that it was her he considered the mark. The space below her nose (and a nice nose it was) and above her lip (also, a very generous lip - from the right angle) flattened, telling him he had undisputedly won their bout.
Savoring that he now had the upper hand, Allan motioned to her (only with his hand, the short knife no longer in play) that it was her turn to strip off. "Get on, Nell," he enjoyed using the name again. "Best find Melissa and get her frock back to her. 'S the best one she's got."
He made it a point not to come too close to where she still occupied the chair. After all, he could not predict every trick she might yet have up her sleeve.
Strangely, this Nell did not protest (as he had surely thought she might). She stood from the chair and began to see to the waist corset's ribbon ties, her response to his direction like that of a child obediently making ready for bed.
Something in Allan's eye honed in on this about her, and pulled the corner of his mouth into a smile not entirely of smug 'gotcha', but now also shaded with a true liking, with his won-over approval.
While her hands were busy at disrobing (though not, interestingly, in any titillating way), she began to speak, her tones no longer those of the brazen thief he had first encountered in this room, nor the 'village girl come to town to trade and carry home to mum and dad' that had first cleaned him out that day at the Trip.
"It is said," she quoted more of her research, clearly not having accepted his own assertion of such a trip from their previous encounter, "you are newly returned from the Holy Land. And that you met the King." She looked up from her work to ask, "what was He like?"
"Richard?" he considered it for a moment. In thought for an answer he nearly let his eyes wander to the ceiling, before recalling them to himself, and their task of watching the girl. "He was kind of a prick in the beginning, but he seemed to shake out alright in the end, I guess."
"I have often dreamed," she shared, her tone grown wistful as she pulled first one arm, then the other, out of the sleeves, and rolled the top of the frock down over her hips, leaving only her own shift as slightest covering, "dreamed of such exotic places. Their textiles, their weavings...their dyes." She stood for a moment before returning to the assignment of taking off the dress, stepping over toward a corner near the bed to retrieve a saddle bag and pull another frock (presumably her own - or at least, currently in her sole possession) from it, this one brightly lilac. As she stepped past him, the hem of her shift grazed the back of his knuckles, and if he had let himself pay attention to such barely recollectable things, he might have noticed in that flash of a moment how his mind wanted to extrapolate that sensation - wanted to experience the tease of her muslin not only on his knuckles, but also against the pads of his fingers, the underside of his forearms. For that flash, his hands craved purchase in that plain fabric as they usually itched for silk, for coin, for anything of monetary value, anything seen to be dear.
As it was, his conscious mind grabbed onto what she had said. "So it is true? You are a dye seller - from Nettlestone?"
She pulled on the lilac dress by lifting it over her head, in the raising of her arms her narrow shift catching on the underside of her bosom, outlining its plumpness beyond any doubting, and waited until she had settled the frock about herself before replying. "Come now," her eye blazed in challenge, and slanted skeptically, her former spiritedness recovered. "Would you truly believe anything I told you at this point?"
Half his mouth seized into a wide grin. "And you, I?"
She settled the saddlebag across her right shoulder, and let the slowest, most knowing of smiles bloom on her lips. "But you have a tell."
"A tell! G'won!" he scoffed.
"Just there," she gestured with her first and second fingers, using them as one digit, her hand clearly delineating the spot without coming close enough to contact his skin there. "The crease at the head of your left eyebrow, where it joins with the bridge of your nose. Fleeting as a hummingbird's heartbeat, shallow as a faery's footprint. But there, all the same." Her own brow arched as if encouraging him to deny it.
"Oh, nice try!" He blew it off. "'Exposing' a tell, trying to get me to believe - or at least worry - that it's true. You hoping that planting such a seed will cause me to doublethink my expressions at key moments - thereby creating the very tell that you have even now fabricated discovering."
Wait. He thought through that again. Actually, that was quite good. Quite an angle. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more genius it became. Brilliant.
Now, where did she go?
Nell, possibly of Nettlestone, should not have been hard to sight among the Salutation's barroom, nor out on the Nottingham street the popular inn fronted - not in that bright, lilac frock. Her being likely the only female with a saddlebag thrown over her shoulder.
She should not have been hard to sight. But she was.
Allan-A-Dale had lost her again.
2011 - Ground that once was Sherwood Forest - "Let's have another go, Bill, before we lose the light. The forest can be tricky that way," Nell Stone cautioned her cameraman.
"The forest?" Bill questioned, looking about himself. Where they stood, though in view of distant (and not particularly plentiful) trees, was hardly forested - for all that it was said to be part of the ancient domain of Sherwood's once-mighty oaks.
She shook her head. "Yeah, sort of forgot myself, there," she apologized sardonically, shaking her head to clear its cobwebs.
Bill signaled Nell to begin. Theirs was not to be a live feed, the story they were chasing more human interest than top-tier hard-hitting news, and she relaxed in the knowledge she was allowed multiple takes to get the piece they would shortly transmit via their van's uplink just right.
The consummate professional (even if she had let it show that the forest was, in point of fact, not at all where she had last left it) she did not even have to consult her tablet out of view of the camera to get her copy spot-on. "Only this afternoon, BP soil sampling teams nearing the finish of their usual round of work first hit upon the unexpected cache of what are being tentatively identified as late twelfth century coins. In less than two hours a proper excavation team had been bussed in. Though the hoard was not far-reaching, and, we are told, disappointingly did not point to an ancient village (and the valuable objects such an undisturbed site might hold) having sat upon the land now owned by the petroleum company, the unexpected find was nonetheless heralded as historic.
"Seven bags of various sizes, at least two made of textiles not local to the area, and one sack of coins bearing an obscure, unregistered crest, point to the uniqueness of the discovery, which comes at a time the British oil giant is struggling to win back positive public opinion in the wake of last year's environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
"BP has announced that everything uncovered at the site has now been taken to the British Museum, where it will be tested, cataloged, and, some industry experts speculate, in order to aid BP's image-overhaul, be gifted to become part of the Nation's permanent collection there. Numismatic experts the world over have been called in to research the coins' origins, and perhaps uncover what they were doing hidden belowground on land that we are told was once among the oldest of old growth in that mythic forest, Sherwood.
"Nell Stone reporting for BBC News Online, Nottingham."
"That's the one," Bill assured her. "We'll see if we can track down some official images of the bags and crest in question to put in with the full package." He studied her for a moment, having taken the camera down from his shoulder, letting its weight swing in his hand. "Everythin' okay with you, Nell?"
"Why do you ask that?" she questioned, finding it difficult to fully wash the worry over his insight out of her voice.
"Nothing, really, only...I don't ever recall you needing quite so many takes to get something right."
She laughed, hoping to shrug off his shrewd perception.
"Well," he assured her, "no worries. They say you can take the girl out of the shire..."
"...But not the shire out of the girl," she finished the old adage for him, realizing with an exhale of relief that he was only reacting to her tongue tripping over the occasional word of her copy, as after hearing the locals speak, her own tongue had momentarily rejected the trained BBC-pronunciation she had worked so hard to cultivate.
"Let's get you home, Billy-Boy," she encouraged him.
"Nah, let's have us a nip into town," he suggested. "Heard about a place there, Salutation Inn. Thought I might pick up something souvenir-y for the wife. You know about her collection of spoons..."
"Well," Nell told him dryly. "That would be the place to go, if not the Trip. It's certainly tourist-friendly."
"The Trip?" he asked. "Another pub?"
"I believe they call it 'Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem Inn' now," she informed him as they climbed up into their van, stocked with their mixing equipment in the back. "They called it that because it's said to have been the last stop for soldiers to drink on their way to Crusade."
"Nell," Bill grinned as he turned the steering wheel to pull the van up onto the road. "If I didn't know better, I'd take you for a local tour guide."
"Yeah," she agreed with him sardonically, muttering, though not entirely to herself. "Though I daresay those soldiers found plenty of other pubs to have drinks in on their long march to join with Richard and die."
Chelsea Harbour Luxury Condominium Development, LONDON - Nell Stone stood shirtless in front of her Modern dresser's round mirror, able to see her pristine-sheeted bed in the reflection over her mirrored shoulder.
Her skin was still quite good to her, she noted, the imperfections few. She pulled down one bra strap before deciding to simply undo the hook-and-eye closures in the back, and slide the bra off altogether. She let it fall onto the sparse home decorations set out on the dresser top. Though she was not one, really, to be given to great pride of self, or physical self-inspection, she began a sort of inventory of what she saw there, lifting and tucking in order to examine each breast's underside, their weight and - if any - their remaining bounce.
"A bit lonely, are you, my hen?" Allan's voice came to her from where he had managed to enter the room (and apparently the building) without her realizing it.
Every bit of her insides jumped at least a foot - having nothing at all to do with being taken off-guard. But her reliable exterior registered that rattling surprise not a bit.
"No," she nearly bit at him, him not even back in town for all that she knew. "I mean...what?" She clapped eyes onto him now, just out of her original line-of-sight in the mirror.
"Oh, just thought I might have...you know...stumbled onto something a bit...private, that's all," he cheekily conjectured at the circumstances under which he had walked in.
He moved closer to where she was, and she cagily watched him approach via his reflection. She thought of how it was best to cover the mirror in a room after someone died. But then she could not immediately recall why. Perhaps the mirror was then meant to capture the spirit of the next person looking into it. That would be handy. To have a mirror that might bottle up Allan, keep him in one spot, easy to find when needed. Convenient, on-hand.
She had not eaten an apple, nor brushed her hair in front of this mirror - as another old wives' tale recommended, yet the man she would - that she had - married (as the wives' tale promised)...nonetheless had managed to appear over her shoulder.
"They are brilliant," he assured her, the feel of his breath warm on her bare neck something no mere reflection could ever hope to generate. He came up against her back, his soft khaki t-shirt all that separated them.
Always something separating them.
"They are about to get decidedly more so," she told him, replying to his worshipfully-rendered declaration of their brilliance.
"Don't let them talk you into it," he protested, bringing his hands, unbidden, up past her waist, under the drape of her arms and nestling each one in his familiar, all-but-moulded-to-them-from-memory hands.
"Into what?" she asked, growing curious as to where this was going, yet continuing to allow his hands to wander or nest wherever they wished.
"Surgery," he replied, as though they were talking about the same thing. He looked over her shoulder, whereupon he had rested his chin, looked into her eyes through the mirror. "May as well Botox Madame X, lipo the de Milo...gastric bypass Ingres' Odalisque. Bloody crime against nature, that."
She scoffed and stepped away from him, causing his hands to lose their bundles, breaking the moment between them.
"Wot?" he asked. "I thought that was pretty good, Love." He casually shrugged. "'Specially since I meant it."
She narrowed an eye, pulling her casual at-home shirt over her head and covering up. Her chin bounced up as she spoke the accusation. "You've seen the piece on the coins."
"Wellll," he danced around the truth a bit, "I don't miss you," meaning her video feed.
She let her face harden into near-implacability, choosing to take it in the other possible sense.
"Not wot I meant," he protested, his brows leaping up into his forehead. "Not wot I meant! You, I miss."
"'Doesn't matter what you meant, Lover," she recalled to him. "'Matters why you're here."
"Yes, then," he admitted it. "I saw the piece about the coins."
"And you saw his sodding 'mystery' crest on the bag...and his mark on every coin in one bag - " her mind pulled at this, the question of that peculiarity had been troubling her since she went live with the story. She shook her head from side to side. "Why would he have done that?"
Allan considered. "To be a jerk, I suppose. He'd do that - mark one out of every five or so coins, hoping to track what I did with it, where I spent it - or just doing it to devil me, I suppose. I'd sort those out, keep 'em separate. 'S why they're all together. After all, Robin - and the others - couldn't very well find Gisborne-marked coin on me without expecting a better explanation than I was prepared to give."
"And you buried them there, and left them because..?"
He had walked over to a corner of the room, throwing himself into a soft bedside chair. "Didn't mean to leave them. Thought of it as my stash. Only, Robin's birthday in Nettlestone barn come along, and without pause we were off to the Holy Land." He scoffed at his earlier self. "By the time we returned I dug and dug, but some woodcutter had taken his job a bit too seriously, and all my necessary landmarks were gone, lost to me - and of no help."
She saw the serious in him, masked below the lark-ish tone with which he chose to relate the incidence, no matter the sporty clothing he wore; t-shirt and khaki cargoes, trainers. No matter any of it, this (experience had shown her) this he did not take lightly.
"And so what do you plan to do?"
"Well," he sent a hand out toward her, to pull her to him, "kiss you for bringing it to my attention..."
She stepped out of his reach. "And?"
"And visit the British Museum." He used his hands to illustrate his very student-like attire, flashed her a security badge designating him a museum intern. "I have it on good authority they are being kept in one of the archive rooms while they undergo testing."
"But what good are they to you?" she asked. "Will you melt them down? They may be gold and silver but you'll've lost the better part of their value: the historical context."
"Nah. Got an interested party, on the down-low. Private collector. Ready cash. Came to see about Aly."
"Aly?" Her mind snagged on the mention of their four-year-old daughter. "What's she to do with this?"
"'S been decided. The Firm's bound for America," he used their code for the gang, "place called Butte La Rose, Louisiana."
"I know it," she offered. "There's been quite a bit of reporting there, as it's central to the devastating flooding ongoing in that region."
"And how," he agreed. "Had a chat with Robin. He and Marian will meet me there. We're set to distribute funds as needed, coordinate some housing for the displaced..."
She could hardly believe the cheek of him. "Aiding the very region BP screwed over with funds you're nicking back from them - that once were yours by way of selling out your gang? Taking your lost blood money to right the wrong from which that corporation will not fully repent? Feeding the poor, hand out to the needy," she acknowledged, knowing by now the drill.
"You, my hen, are not usually so jaded to speak so of it. Did I not just now pass in your larder sacks ready to be taken off to the local shelter?"
She ignored his inquiry. "You may take Aly, of course. Provided you keep her from the crocodiles."
"Alligators," he corrected her, with a smile.
"Alligators," she agreed to his correction. She almost let herself ask if his quick-study eye had noted what was in the sacks packed to be shortly on their way to the nearest drop-in shelter: caffeinated drinks, several boxes of Tampax, cranberry juice, sushi from the freezer, and three brand-new fitted skirts, and two tops - still with the stores' tags on them, bought just last week.
He had not seen the bottles of liquor - and one of pink champagne - she had first emptied into the kitchen sink and then packed the recycle bin with. No thought in her present mood to even attempt to find someone to give them to. Popping the cork on the unopened champagne had almost brought tears to her eyes - she was able to hold them back only because of the angry, frustrated rush she received upon watching it bubble, worthlessly, down the drain.
From his seat in the bedside chair, Allan pulled himself up short in his present glee over his stash not only having been found after all this time, but being also once again in his grasp (having gained considerably in value over the ensuing years), and shortly to be on its way to the doing of all good things.
He was not certain what he had said wrong, but something in his ex-wife's condo was not right. Something in the air was unusually flat, almost deflated.
He was used to almost every kind of reception here, and did not doubt he deserved any kind he received - the good and the grisly - but even when dispensing grisly, Nell was not the sort of woman to let herself be dragged down by it, rather, she was the sort to revel in a good dressing-down of him. Certainly that was one of the things about her that made her so likable.
There was no one else with whom he would rather quarrel.
He performed a sort of quick mental inventory of all that he had seen here today, all the while studying her lips, where she stood but a step or so away from him, and this chair.
He spied her upper lip - its fullness hidden like a treat where it was so slanted, so perched on an incline, that, short of kissing her, one would only find it if standing - or lying (perhaps in her lap) - in a way to see it from below. Straight on, one could barely glimpse fully half of it.
He saw how her nose was incrementally pulling down, flattening the skin just below it, threatening to smooth away the impression there that he had once been told was given by an angel's finger - pressed there to seal your lips as a newborn babe slipping down from heaven, just after they had whispered to you the name of your true love.
Well, he could not have her undoing angels' work.
The sacks. He set to recalling the contents of the sacks in the larder. Those items. Her threat that the brilliance of her breasts was soon to increase.
Blimey.
"I thought you were on something," he announced, having smartly deduced the source of her melancholy - but not smartly taken time to craft a better ice-breaker on the subject.
"What," she looked at him, "you think that I, sleeping celibately, take the time to insert my diaphragm when I go to bed alone? On the off chance that not only will you break in, but that you will be quite randy when you do?"
True, that would not make sense. "Well, you know, quite often I am...randy...after a good break-in."
She scoffed hard at his attempt at joking. "And what of my job? People do not like a pregnant presenter."
"What are you talkin' about? People love a pregnant presenter. Didn't you tell me your ratings when up when you were carrying Aly?"
"Well, yes," she agreed contradictorily. "People love a pregnant presenter. It's a post-natal presenter that they do not love. Pudgy, over-tired, grouchy that they are not with their bairn. Do you not recall all the work it took to recover from Aly?"
"And you pulled it off wonderfully."
"It was hard. Work. It is no easy thing to go from eating on par with Henry VIII to...eating salads. While you walk a treadmill and hear how irritated your boss is to have to dismiss you from long meetings so you can go and pump."
"Suppose I ought to apologize..."
At the merest whiff of his apologizing, she dismissed it. "It takes two. Still, I think." She extrapolated on that thought. "I do not fancy being a single mother."
"No," he shook his head in solemn agreement, knowing she did not.
Her chin shot up for a moment in challenge. "You will not ask if it is someone else's?"
"If it were, you would not have had any qualms about telling me so." The corner of his mouth pulled into - and then immediately out of - a flash of grin.
"I do not have qualms, Allan-A-Dale," she told him staunchly. "I have...serious reservations. Important misgivings that need to be granted - " she nodded her conviction, "sober consideration."
"Nell, my hen," his voice grew soft, as if asking whether he might approach an angry lioness. He reminded her. "You like babies. You love our little Aly."
"I know I like babies." She sighed as though trying to remind herself. "I just - this just - another, unplanned? And you - " she didn't like to bring it up, but there it was. In this situation, her compromised ability to depend upon him unavoidable. "And you..."
This time she did not step away when he reached out for her, and let him draw her down onto his bent knees, where he occupied the oversized bedside chair. "She will be the most amazing, most bewitching - " he began to predict the child Nell now held within her.
"She?" Nell asked, knowing it was far too early in the process for even the doctor to know such things.
"Hush, now," he told her, stopping her mouth with his own before she could further protest, remind him of foul nappies and nights without sleep, the fearful state their babe (as Aly had proven) having the merest touch of a cold could rocket him into.
His hand came 'round to pull her bum more securely and deeply into his lap, that same hand happening to slip on its way back to embracing her, slip under the just-barely-opaque fabric of the lounging shirt she wore, and encounter her bare skin.
Despite it being of rather intense interest to him at the present moment, he forced himself to refrain from attempting a caress of her belly. After all, he was at trying to unruffle her, not get himself knocked about the head for such an ill-timed gaffe.
He felt her hand reach from its grasp on his neck down the back collar of his shirt, where he knew she always seemed to find strength and comfort in the muscles of his back and shoulders. He sensed the way in which she needed him near, and as always it hooked not only his libido, but also his heart. Here she had been alone, trying to sort all this out. Not knowing how to find him, even, to bawl him out. To take a swing at him. Unable to share her news with anyone.
Nell had always been, with the exception of himself, perhaps the most lone person he had ever encountered. Not because people did not wish to be around her, not because she did not have opportunities to join with others, only, that was simply the way she had always been. After following her own star. Certainly a life path he could appreciate. The fact (when he would slow down enough that the full spectrum of it would hit him) that she wished for him to join with her, that at times she actually needed him, needed something he could bring to the table - that at times he was her own star, near always took his breath away.
"One hour," he asked of her, trying to divest himself of shirt without dumping her unglamorously from his lap. "One hour. And we shall then consider soberly all the possible implications. I had not intended to be at the Museum until just before closing anyway. Do we have one hour?" he referred to Aly's coming home from her twice-weekly day school program.
Nell looked to the clock, reluctant to give up his tongue, to separate herself even incrementally from his so-missed embrace. "One hour and thirteen minutes," she mumbled.
"Perfect," he announced. "Thirteen minutes on the other side for well-rounded consideration. Agreed?"
She closed her eyes, in order not to look at him. Even so, they rolled in their sockets at what she was about to (again) do. She could still smell him, her skin still instinctively knew in whose arms she was held, whose lips were upon it. "Agreed," she said. After all, what possible further consequence now? The damage had already been sown.
When she awoke to a decidedly untidy bed, herself entirely bottomless within it, she had a full half-second to believe him gone. To believe him having skipped out before, even, the promised thirteen minutes of discussing their situation, and the situation to come.
In that full half-second she had already begun planning what Aly might need to have packed for a trip such as her father proposed.
And in that full half-second she had already begun to feel the present warmth of her bed (of the sleeping man that shared it) feel it wash away in the on-coming storm of recollection that not only was he to be again on his way (and her in such a fix), but that he was to be on his way with Aly as well, and then, truly, but for the speck of a child within her, she would face the coming days (for how long, she did not know) alone.
How many years, she thought as she realized he was still there in the condo, even, there breathing beside her in the bed. How many years had simply herself been enough?
She reached to pointlessly smooth his bed-tousled hair, where his sleeping head lay, closer to her waist than to the pillows.
One of his hands, damn him if one of his hands had not crept - like a child's to the comfort of a well-loved stuffed toy - crept onto her (still quite taut - thank you very much) belly.
She wondered, did you hate the man that showed you, finally, after centuries, that yourself was no longer enough? Particularly when you discovered such a fact in the face of the equally complicating fact that he could not, himself, settle? That (at times you feared) you were not - never would be - enough for him?
Not other women, you knew. At least not particularly. No, only his own star - its pull, apparently, stronger than your own, its hold on him never, over the years, slackening.
And now taking him, and your bright love, your daughter, away - for a fine purpose, of course, a noble venture.
But did you hate that man?
No, and herein she knew lay her perpetual problem. You loved that man. And that man's child - that man's children - you loved them for themselves - and you loved them for their father's sake. You loved them for him in the moments they would miss him; the skinned knees, the hurt-by-another-child feelings. You loved him for the moments he would miss; the first steps, the halting sentences spoken, the bikes pedaled, the unfortunate swear word repeated, the chewing gum bubbles blown.
And you learned, even, to love the joyousness of his arrivals and returns, and learned to slough off jealousy when your child preferred him during those brief times. For you, yourself, preferred him, too.
You loved the children because they would miss out...on parts of him.
You loved him, because he would miss out. Because you knew how hard he tried at times not to.
Tying yourself, your star, to such a man was not as easy as it might once have been. You could not risk a trip away from the village to the edge of the forest and Matilda's long-disappeared shack, purchase a potion to trick him into drinking that would hold him here, bind him to you.
No one any longer believed in such things. And in the light of the modern world's disbelief, such enchantments and potions seemed to have lost their powers.
She found her fingers suddenly desirous of finding that spot at the head of his eyebrow, where she once had told him she'd spotted a tell. 'For luck,' she used to tell him after that encounter, stroking his face there.
On the bedside table, startlingly breaking the peaceful afternoon calm of the room, her phone blurted at her. "Who can that be?" she asked the air.
"That'll be your bossman," Allan told her, sleepily waking from where he was tangled among sheet and legs. "Texting to alert you to pack for New Orleans."
"New Orleans?" she queried him on the destination, as much as about how he might know to predict such a thing.
"Well, there's no decent hotels open in flooded Butte La Rose, my hen. Gotta catch a chopper to get there and do your reporting."
"Butte La - " her eyes snapped over to the phone's illuminated text screen, taking in its content, all just as Allan had predicted.
"You did this - " she accused him. "I was tasked to cover the Washington D.C. Memorial Day services where William and Catherine were expected to lay a wreath." Her face did not know what expression to wear. It swam between exasperation, confusion, and on-coming delight.
"Prefer that, would you?" Allan asked, only his eyes visible now above the rucked up sheet. He peeped up at her for a moment like this, then rolled slightly to kiss at the sensitive back of her knee.
Her expression answered for her, without needing words. Her eyes blinked rapidly, traces of exasperation and confusion evaporating like shadows banished when the sun appears.
"Nah," he agreed, deciding soundly against her going to cover the American memorial holiday in place of traveling to Louisiana with Aly and him. "Neither would I."
He smiled at her, and if she (and science) did not know better, she would have sworn she felt that baby kick.
The End
"We Are 2011" the series
A Bit Too Much
Deposed
The Long, Dark Knight of the Soul
Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair
Much Gets By with a Little Help From His Friends
Why We Fought (series end)
...also occurring within the "We Are 2011" universe
Loose Ends
Stop the Presses
Royally Sacked
The Ties that Bind (...and)
The Allan-A-Dale series, "A True Outlaw Story" (some of which overlaps with the 2011 series)
*not all may yet be posted at fanfiction.
The Trip to Jerusalem
Why We Fought
The Ties that Bind (...and)
How to Tell a True Outlaw Story
Under the Greensward Tree
The King is Dead. Long Live the King?
Pardon Me, Please
A-Courting We Will Go