Spiders

A little one shot inspired by real life. I found the prompt on imagine your otp on tumblr. Here it is: Imagine person A of your OTP is deathly afraid of spiders. Person B is woken up late one night by a frantic person A rambling about finding a spider in the bathroom. Still half asleep, person B follows person A to the bathroom and kills a hilariously tiny spider on the wall. As thanks, person A makes person B's favorite pancakes the next morning.

As always, the characters do not belong to me. Thank you a million times over to Granthamfan for being my beta! xx

Cora was sitting on the settee in her dressing room late one night, reading a book, when a spider suddenly scurried across the page. She jumped to her feet and screamed despite her efforts to suppress the sound. She had always been terribly afraid of any kind of spider from the time she was a child. No matter how much Cora tried to be rational and think of facts-such as her ability to quickly dispatch it in one step, or the likelihood that it was much more terrified of her than she was of it-nothing helped.

Robert came rushing into the room. "Cora, what on earth? Are you all right?"
Unable to speak at the moment, she gestured wildly at the floor. Robert followed the spider across the floor with his eyes, understood at once and gave the offending arachnid a decisive stomp which he hoped would soothe Cora's fears for good.

She ran into his embrace, though careful to steer clear of the spider remains now pressed into the Persian rug by the bed. "I was just reading and there it was, out of nowhere, running across the book!"

Robert held her and stroked her hair. "It's gone now, darling. No more spiders to bother you tonight." He had no idea what kind of night he was in for, thanks to the tiny intruder interrupting his wife's enjoyment of Pride and Prejudice that evening.

Cora tossed and turned in her sleep, muttering things about spiders, batting at the air to shoo them away. Robert gently held her close.

"Cora, you're dreaming, my love," he whispered in her ear. "Everything's fine now."

"No," she murmured, "there was one in the washroom. I saw it but then it ran away and I don't know where it is. That's the worst part," she turned to him with eyes widened in fright. "How do we know where it will emerge next? Or when? Oh, Robert, please go look in the washroom!"

Robert stood up and put on his robe. "I'll have a look," he agreed. As he started to walk away from the bed, Cora lunged across the space between them and put a hand on his arm.

"I'm coming with you! I don't want to be alone in here if it should make a return appearance!" The tone of her voice, firm and resolute, told Robert that there was no use in trying to dissuade her. And so they went into the washroom hand in hand.

There,on the bathroom wall, was one of the smallest spiders Robert had ever seen. Cora immediately shrieked again and covered her eyes as her husband stepped toward the wall and gave the wall a good slap, shook the crushed insect off in the basin and washed his hands.

Cora flung her arms around him. "My protective Robert! Whatever would I do without you?"

"You'd continue dreaming of spiders," he yawned, suddenly very tired despite the volume of Cora's screams in his ear. "Come on, Cora. Let's try to get some sleep."

The next morning, Robert awoke to the delicious aroma of his favorite breakfast. He opened his eyes to see his wife grinning at him, balancing a tray between them with both of their breakfasts sitting atop it.

"I got up early and asked Mrs. Patmore to make this for you," she cooed as she leaned in for a kiss. "My hero!"

The End