Disclaimer: The characters and relationships between the characters from the Tarzan books and the movies are copyright of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Disney. I only own any fanfiction characters.

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

Category: Disney (Tarzan)
Genre: Romance/Action/Adventure
Rating: PG
Summary: More strangers encounter the African jungle, but what do they want? One of the humans finds herself rather attracted to Tarzan, but how can she reveal her feelings when he has devoted his life to Jane?

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

Visitors from the Outside World

Part One

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

Jane Porter awoke early, to greet the pleasant first rays of sun that warmed her rosy cheeks. The humid air was tight around the jungle, but Jane was rather used to this, for she had been living in the jungle for almost a year, and she admitted to herself a hundred times a day that she could never be happier. She never wanted to be happier. She had everything she ever wanted.

As she stood outside on the wooden support of her treehouse, she sighed in contentment, placing one elbow on the wooden rail, and cupping her cheek in her hand. Soft, gentle breezes of the premature dawn flowed through her light brown hair, tickling her neck lightly. Rising birdcalls could be heard springing from the canopies, and the balmy sunshine danced across her face. She loved the jungle. There was no doubt about that.

But then, another thought crossed Jane's satisfied mind. A considerate, loving, sweet soul that filled Jane's heart with joy at the first sight of him. Always moving swiftly to some place or another, matted, dark brown dreadlocks hanging over his face, his shining blue eyes providing warmth and safety. Arched, gorilla-like postures were included in his glance and movement, as his knuckles and back were recounted as if he were one of them. His soft, gentle words gave Jane life, and his heart-warming smile, determined attitude and friendly nature made Jane proud to be who she was. She was proud to be married to him. To have come to the jungle, to meet him. To be finding herself in his soul, to have themselves coming together, to be one. Their hearts and hands combined, they would live prosperously forever in each other's eyes. His loving, sky- blue eyes entwined with her royal sapphire ones, mixing each other in their lives and their minds.

Jane was so happy to have met him. Tarzan. The apeman.

Jane thought about yesterday, what Tarzan had told her about. She couldn't help but wonder if they were really gone. She couldn't help but think that Tarzan hadn't driven them off after all. In a flush of memories and worried expressions, she considered the oncomings of the last few days.

It was amazing what only a few months removed from society could do to a person. Before coming to Africa's coast, Jane Porter would have sworn that she could not live without her corsets and gossip, or the occasional tea social held by the Manchester Ladies' Club. Having becoming familiar with the rain forest, however, she was learning the truth: that corsets were the work of the devil, that gossip was for air-headed socialites, and that tea socials were merely a breeding ground for women who enjoyed the former two.

Not that she didn't enjoy tea. Truth be told, she and her father had both been pining for their noon teatimes under the balcony parasol, with the soft strains of Vivaldi playing on the Victrola from the adjoining parlour. The jungle had within it a wealth of plants and tropical fruits, all of which were a pleasure to their palate, but as yet she'd been unable to come up with a single mixture of dried flora that could replace good old English tea.

How the Americans had gotten by without it for so long was utterly beyond her.

Nevertheless, in between her long visits with Kala, and hours spent perched precariously in the treetops, sketching all the wondrous fauna of the jungle canopy, Jane had developed a new hobby and game for herself: Teahunting. It was ridiculous, really, and Tarzan simply could not understand his mate's fondness for picking and drying every new plant she came across on the jungle floor, but he had learned long ago not to question her. When Jane Porter got her mind set on something, there was no moving her. She was a force with which to be reckoned.

It was for this determination that the unexpected arrival of new humans to their costal paradise had brought both fear and delight: fear that they, like those who had come before, would seek to destroy the happy harmony of the ecosystem... delight that perhaps they'd brought some tea with them.

Tarzan promised to go look, and look he did, although his return to her in the middle of the night brought only grimness to his stern features, and freshly bloodied knuckles for her to fuss over anxiously.

"I take it you weren't well received," she sighed, sorting through their limited first aid supplies in search of bandages. He waited patiently in a crouch at her feet, flexing his hands open and closed in the oil-lamp dimness of the treehouse.

"It could have gone better," was his reply, impassive as she dabbed alcohol delicately across his knuckles. "They came with cages, and guns--"

"Guns... like Clayton?"

A nod. "Poachers."

"Good heavens," Jane sighed, pinning a strip of gauze in place and beginning to wrap one of his broad hands, focusing upon it as if it were the only task for which she had been created. "And may I assume that you didn't hurt yourself in your eagerness to give them a warm welcome?"

A glance up brought into focus his intense eyes, stopping the breath in her throat as she watched his thin lips curl up into a shrewd smile. Sighing softly, feeling pride tug at her heart, she folded over the gauze and went to work on his other hand.

"Yes, well... that answers that question, doesn't it."

She did not ask--and in truth, did not want to know--what he had done to drive them off, but Tarzan assured her that they would not be returning anytime soon. Contenting herself with this, she had returned to her vigorous teahunting duties the next morning, scouring the undergrowth of the jungle floor while her mate went off on his daily rounds, assuring himself that his wild sovereignty was once again at peace.

It was during her expedition that she heard the familiar whoosh of his passage overhead, and felt the jungle floor darken as his swinging form momentarily eclipsed the thin shower of light from above.

"There's no sneaking up on me, you know," she called up, adjusting her basket over one arm and bending carefully to retrieve a handful of wild lilac from amidst the clover at her feet. Descending in a controlled slide down the length of a vine, he dropped to a crouch beside her and rocked back onto his haunches. There was simply no getting past the perfection of the man's physique, Jane mused, immediately distracted from her thoughts as she slid her eyes over the toned length of his body. From broad shoulders to solid torso, down to an almost delicately narrow waist and the powerful, coiled muscle of his legs... if not for his still determinedly primitive posture, he would have been the very definition of the word 'statuesque'.

"I wasn't trying to sneak up on you," Tarzan reminded her, reaching out to pluck the lilacs playfully from her hand, then galloping away from her on soles and knuckles. "Or you never would have heard me coming."

"Is that so," she smirked, planting a hand at her hip and turning swiftly, making a grab for the loose bouquet. It was no use, of course--he sprang with unmatched ease from the earth to the lichened surface of a tree trunk, then to the opposite side of the underbrush, using it as a safe barrier between them. Her laughter struck with a bell's sweet clarity as she stamped a bare foot indignantly in place. "Now give them back!"

Extending a forearm towards her, he held her at bay with the press of his fingertips to her collarbone, making a gloating show of lifting the dark violet petals to his face and deeply, almost exaggeratedly inhaling, sniffing playfully. "Ahhh...."

"Tarzan," she protested, the remnants of mock anger dissolving beneath amusement as he held her so easily at arm's length. "For heaven's sake, I'd very much like to finish this so that I can get back before dark."

With a slightly fainter grin the pilfered flowers were offered out to her, and she snatched them away in both hands, tucking them securely into her basket. "Thank you... and just for that I'm going to make you carry me home." Jane arched a glance up at him, widening her eyes at the brand new expression upon his face: deep brows furrowed with dismay, prominent nostrils visibly flared, and a small, open frown developing upon his lips. He had only the barest recollection of his human nature, but it appeared that even that did not alter the universal face of a man about to sneeze.

"Serves you right," was all she had to say.

The expression culminated into an open grimace, and he broke the quiet with a sudden, thunderous, "HEEIISSSHH!"

Even having expected her mate to have an impressive sneeze, Jane blinked in alarm, fussing a hand along her skirts in search of a handkerchief... only to recall that they were all back in England, with the tea socials and the corsets. Blast it all.

"Oh dear--God bless you, Tarzan."

Irritatedly knuckling his nose, clearing the underbrush with a single, muscular leap, he landed before her and squinted one eye. "What?"

"God bless you." Seeing only that earnest, unblinking curiosity upon his face, the woman sighed, "When someone sneezes--as you just did a moment ago--you say 'God bless you'."

Tarzan, having been under the mistaken impression that sneezing was better left ignored and unacknowledged, took her word for it, wrapping a sinewed arm abruptly about her waist. She was swept off her feet--quite literally--and suddenly spirited into the air as he leapt ambitiously for a dangling vine.

Jane cried out in alarm, hanging onto his neck fiercely as he swung them hard towards the tree's massive trunk, then sprang away again with a powerful push of both feet. "A little warning would be appreciated next time, my love."

He grinned at her, unashamed, and the swift momentum as they gathered speed through the vines whipped the thick dreadlocks from his brow. Backed by the verdant blur of the living jungle, Tarzan inquired of her plainly, "Why did you say 'God bless you', when I... what was it?"

"When you sneezed?"

"Yes--" He released one vine, trading it for another in a plunging, single-handed grab, and Jane screamed aloud at their momentary suspension in mid-air. Sometimes she swore he did that on purpose.

Lifting her head from where she'd been hiding it against his shoulder, she explained, "It's simply the polite thing to do." Tarzan's eyes switched back and forth between her and the course ahead of them, and for fear of having him run them smack into a tree she clutched to him more tightly. "Listen, just keep your eyes focused ahead of us, and I'll explain."

Obliging her with a grin, he swung them to a tree branch, adjusting her weight against him before making a diving leap for another vine. Jane's alarmed voice rose to match their velocity through the perilous highway he'd created for himself among the trees.

"So explain," he encouraged.

"Well it... it's just something that you say. There's no real logic behind, I suppose. You simply say it to let the person know that you wish them well, and that you--Branch! Branch!"

They were airborne for a split second as he released the vine and captured the branch in a muscular hand, swinging in suspense above the endless drop below. He looked at her with a grin as they hung there.

"I saw it."

Slowly relaxing her eyes from their terrified squint, she twittered in nervous apology.

"Ah...haha... so you did."

"Go on."

"Shouldn't we be movin--aughgh!"

He released the bough and they plunged violently down through the lower canopy, leaves and bare branches whisking against them as they dropped. Jane's stomach leapt revoltingly into her throat as her companion captured a vine in passing, soaring them upward once more, and now into view of his parents' tree house. Their tree house. Weakly, curling herself against him for dear life, she appealed, "Please don't do that again."

With teeth whitely shining against the rich tan of his face, he defended, "It was a shortcut."

Tarzan propelled them a final time through the sparse boughs fringing the tree house, taking three vines consecutively before a deep swing launched him into a catlike leap towards the bamboo porch. He took the sudden landing in a cushioning crouch, the thunder of impact like a hard tremor through every tense muscle of his body. Straightening slowly, releasing his arm from around Jane's waist, he advised her gently, "...You can open your eyes now."

She did--one at a time--and breathed another fluttery sigh of relief at their return to the safety of shelter and relatively solid ground.

"Ahaha! Yes... so I can. How about that."

The apeman continued to watch her, drawing himself to his full height with an air of light amusement. Single-minded as they came, he inquired, "So you'll say it to me every time?"

Jane's eyes, blue and bright as the fragments of sky revealed through the broken canopy, rested upon him in unhidden confusion. One hand crawled over the contents of her basket, making certain that most of her afternoon's inventory had been retained inside. "What's that? I'll say what?"

"Bless you?"

"Oh!" In all their heart-pounding, death-defying, jungle-traversing madness, she had completely forgotten. "Why, of course, Tarzan..." Her small hand cradled his tapered chin fondly as she moved past him, into the dim seclusion of the tree house's crudely furnished interior. "I couldn't very well overlook such a thing, could I?"

She was not expecting, as she tossed her basket lightly onto the table, a replay of that most satisfying sound from beyond the open doorway.

"HEEEIISSSH!"

She might have mistaken it for some other jungle sound if not for its perfect distinction, and Jane's head poked back into view, fingers curled around the knotty doorframe as she squinted outside. Sure enough, Tarzan was lowered into his typical, primitive crouch, head bowed down so that the length of his dreadlocks were thrown forward, concealing his face. A sinewed hand vanished from sight as he knuckled his nose in the aftermath.

"Well," she chirped, inexplicably amused by his timing. Emerging to rest one hand smartly upon her skirted hip, Jane responded, "God bless you."

Looking over, catching a glance up at her from between the centre part of his hair, he gave his head a toss back and gracefully stood. The image of him striding towards her--shoulders thrown back, blue-green eyes lurking up under that powerful brow--reminded her too keenly of a lion setting out to hunt, and Jane, in spite of his gentle nature with her, found herself self-consciously backing up. The solid wood of the threshold met her back, and she leaned into it, eyes following his face until he was close--inches close-- and gazing calmly at her down the length of his aquiline nose. His nostrils became prominent with a split-second sniff.

"What should Tarzan say in return?" he asked.

"Uhr, ah... in return? Well, ah... that is..." Jane Porter was a certified scholar and primatologist; how on earth, she wondered, did this man consistently reduce her to girlish stammering? "I believe 'thank you' is usually the expected response."

"Thank you?" he repeated uneasily, and what Jane first mistook for dawning disbelief she quickly recognized as the approach of another sneeze. Instinctively she held her hands up between them, uncertain if he knew enough to turn away from her when it came over him. His broad chest began to rise and fall, and she squinted slightly, leaning back against the door as his eyes helplessly closed into that dreading grimace.

"Um, Tarzan, you might want to--"

"HEIISSSH!" he sneezed, suddenly and violently, and although the sheer force of it staggered him back, Jane still felt the most delicate aerosol fall against her upraised hands. Tarzan immediately went at his nose again, rubbing it abusively with the knob of one wrist, eyes shut into a scowl.

With a sigh Jane wiped her hands lightly down against her skirts, finding the fine moisture already evaporated into the humid air.

"My goodness--bless you again."

"Thank you," he muttered, visibly distracted by the effort of trying to itch at his nose. Jane watched him for a moment before reaching for his wrist, trying to hold it at bay. "Stop that a moment, now... the lilacs didn't bother you that much, did they?"

He blinked and squinted at her, sniffling lopsidedly without the ability to rub at his nose.

"No... I've just been..." a pause, as he reached for the word.

"Sneezing?" she supplied helpfully.

"Yes. Sneezing, all day."

"All day? Good heavens, Tarzan--since this morning?"

"Yes, since you... since you..." Here it came again, creeping over him. He looked weak and hopeful at the same time, uttering a softly mounting, "aehhh..." in preparation. His fingers curled up slightly as he arched his hands into view, nostrils tremendously flared.

She sprang back from him this time, well out of range, and watched between squinted lids as the sneeze mounted... and mounted... and gripped him suddenly with a gasp and a grimace.

"Heh'EISSSH!"

The sneeze stumbled him forward, and Jane yelped as he staggered closed the distance between them, pinning her against the door with the bare length of his body. His eyes reopened, close above her, and she saw his nostrils flare again with a quick sniff.

"Oh," she chirped, and nervously flashed a smile. "...God bless you."

He answered blearily, "Thank you." Sniff. "Jane..."

"Tarzan..."

"...I think something's wrong with me."

"Well, I... I would say so, if this has been going on all afternoon." Licking her lips, her hands closed at the warmth of his bare shoulders, gently easing him back--not that his closeness wasn't exciting, in its own way. "Let's... think about this rationally for a moment, shall we? This isn't precisely the environment for pollen-bearing plants, though I've seen one or two, so I don't imagine it's an allergy..."

"An allergy?" he backed away a step or two, and continued rubbing his nostrils with the side of a fist, answering some urgent irritation somewhere within his long, narrow nose.

"Yes, it's a... well, never mind, I'll explain it some other time. The only other answer, my dear, is--" Jane hesitated, seeing his nostrils flare again as a twitch slowly overtook his expression. Just as Tarzan's eyes shut in that visibly sneezy grimace she reached out, nestling her slender forefinger beneath his nostrils. They were wonderfully fleshy and warm, and to her surprise her touch actually worked; he relaxed into a blinking look of surprise. "There we are," she smiled, lowering her hand again slowly, watching as he irritably wrinkled and relaxed the bridge of his nose. "Now, as I was saying... the only other answer is that you must have caught cold... though I can't imagine how."

"A cold?"

"Mmm," she agreed, and with a backward brush of her fingertips combed a thick dreadlock behind his ear. "It's a respiratory infection... it might explain why you're sneezing so much."

"I don't understand." His broad hands wrapped about the small of her back, pulling her against him. "I've been cold before, but this has never happened."

Flustered by the sudden closeness of him, cheeks high with a schoolgirl blush, she danced her hands lightly across his chest and shoulders, uncertain just where to place them. He simply had no concept of personal space.

"Ah...n-no, I don't imagine it would have happened before, you see... you don't just 'get' a cold, you have to catch it, somehow. Usually from someone else. Except the only other humans here are my father and myself, and neither of us..." She stopped, staring over his shoulder, then snapped her gaze abruptly back to his face, dimpling her bottom lip with a delicate overbite. "Oh dear, I just thought of something. Tarzan... those poachers that arrived by boat--"

"Tarzan drove them off," he interrupted boastfully, and she felt one of his arms tense, as with the desire to pound a fist against his chest.

"Yes, yes, I know," Jane dismissed gently, unable to help a slight, flashing smile. "But how close to them were you, before they left..."

The question seemed a strange one, to Tarzan. His was a world of constant sensorial enlightenment, from the smell of the earth, to the taste of the air, and he'd never had need before to watch out for things as inconvenient or unknown to him as germs. If there were dangers in the world, they could always be detected in some way, right?

Jane surmised, from his wary silence, that the answer to her question was 'close enough', and exasperatedly folded her arms. "You must have caught a cold from them, then. It's hardly any wonder, really... you've never been exposed to anything from the outside world, you have no immunity, you... you..." She trailed off, frowning at him as he opened his mouth, as if in preparation to speak. When his eyes began to close, realization dawned on her. "Oh dear--you're about to sneeze--"

There was no room for her to dodge out of the way, and so she curled herself abruptly against him, feeling the dramatic expansion of his chest as he drew a sudden breath. Instead of releasing one of his trademark bellows, he embraced her with the tension of his arms, issuing over her shoulder a thunderous and plainly unprepared, "Heh'RRSSHH!"

"God bless y--"

"Heh'RRSSHH!", again.

"Heavens, God bless--"

"Heh'RRSSHH!" a third time, releasing another burst of little particles into the air, a thousand translucent pinpoints that caught the light and vanished.

Slowly his arms relaxed, the fit apparently passed, and Jane parted from him, holding his face between her hands as she bit again at her bottom lip.

"Well... Bless you again, my dear."

"Thank you," he sighed, visibly drained by the rather strenuous effort of sneezing. His nose, thoroughly unprepared for this level of irritation, appeared to be staging a revolt; as satisfying as each release was, it was at the expense of his flagging strength. "Jane, I think I--"

She interrupted quickly, attaching herself to his arm, "Should lie down now? I completely agree. Let's get you into bed, and we'll decide what to do with you from there."

At once the man found himself being guided--no, herded into the tree house cabin, Jane's busy hands flattening open at his bare back as she maneuvered him through the narrow door, and then in a beeline towards their mosquito-netted berth. It had taken a lot of coaxing to acclimate him to the comfort of a bed over sleeping in a gorilla nest, and although Jane suspected he still secretly preferred the cool bedding of palm leaves and ferns, he slipped beneath the gauze canopy without a single sound of protest, unfolding himself like a great golden cat upon the mattress.

Parting the curtain with her fingers, she settled quietly at its edge.

"I don't know the first thing about playing nursemaid without the amenities of home," Jane fretted suddenly. "I can't even make tea, for heaven's sake. How am I supposed to take proper care of you? "

"Jane will learn," Tarzan said calmly, and as he reclined, his long, thick-knuckled fingers laced together across the solid muscle of his stomach. He sniffed again, nostrils flaring into delectable prominence for just a split second.

"I suppose she will," she muttered, cupping her elbow in one hand and resting her cheek in her palm, eyeing him as he formed a musing little smile. Grumpy, Jane reminded him, "You don't have to look so bloody pleased, you know. You're the one that's supposed to be miserable here, not me."

"Then Tarzan will learn, too," came the reply, and he sat up--sat towards her--with that raptorish gleam to his eyes. His mouth neared, head tilting to kiss her, but the two fingertips she laid to his lips quickly halted that notion, and brought to his face an expression of dismayed surprise.

Jane smirked, "Yes... Tarzan will learn. Rule number one--no kissing. My immunity is far stronger than your own, and the chances are fairly small that I could even catch this from you, but small chances are still chances, and I'm not willing to take any."

He sniffed, crossing his eyes downward to focus upon her admonishing fingers.

"No kissing?"

"Not a one, I'm afraid. Not until you're better."

"Then I am going to be miserable."

"My dear," Jane sighed, once again supporting her cheek in her hand. "I don't think you have any idea."

She had left the oil lamp by the beside, and through the little glass panes the wick shed golden rays impressively outward. The mosquito netting was drawn closed over the bed, but from her station at the writing desk Jane could still see the silhouette of Tarzan's long body stretched upon the mattress, one knee bent up and his hands laced behind his head. Her pen scratched busily at the blank diary page before her, the writing becoming horribly crooked each she heard him sniffle and was forced to look over in interest. A half-hour of journaling had produced little more than two paragraphs of text, and most of it was a mess of jagged lines and overlapping cursive.

"You're not sleeping," she commented, the cricketing beyond the tree house cabin having grown louder with the onset of night. It nagged at her to have the windows open when he lay with a cold, but the air was so awfully hot and humid, it would have suffocated them both any other way. He was far from freezing to death, even in that modest little shred of a loincloth, but it was hard-wired into her that anyone even the least bit sniffly needed to be kept bundled up and warm.