Disclaimer: Robin Hood, Grease - all copyrighted.
A/N: This ran through my head like greased lightning, because modern-day Marian rocks in pink, and Guy still looks like a greaser in any of the AUs. Simple fluff and a bit of Team Castle fun, with poor use of 50s hipster slang.
For LadyKate, fandom stalwart and enabler - an RH fic a long time coming :)
Noontime rolls around in a press of heat and white light, and the noises on the fairground lull into a stupor as their party seeks out shade, sodas, and the odd gossip or two whilst waiting for the various repairs to the old creaking rollercoaster.
"I saw Ellie leave with Lou Frankel not half an hour ago," Meg leans in with a unholy glint of amusement in her brown eyes. "You'd think they would be more discreet, after Mr Gene caught them behind the store last Friday and all."
The girls titter in their high clear laughs, and Marian joins them with a forced smile. The summer sun is still glancing off the packed dirt ground and much as she loves this time of year, with its clear skies and warm seas and never-ending days, she has to admit that sometimes, it got a little too hot around these parts.
"You're quiet today, Mare." Saffy pats her arm, noticing her disinterest. Her friend plucks her shades off and sticks it atop her short cropped bob. "You 'kay?"
She sees the other girls quieten their conversation as they look to her, and she waves them off.
"Oh, don't mind me, girls. It's the heat, that's all. Look, I've got hardly a drop left in my bottle."
Katie nods sympathetically, dramatically, as she drains hers. "Hottest day of the summer; I heard it on the radio this morning. Guess it's just our luck we picked today for the fair."
"Did we have to come out in these, then?" Ann whines, flapping her pink jacket around her, but immediately puts her hands up at the chorus of outrage sounding around her.
"Ann-Marie-!"
"I know, I know," the youngest of their group huffs, the heat flush in her cheeks reddening further in her embarrassment. "Pink For Life. But y'all can't say it isn't too gosh darned hot to be wearing jackets today."
"Y'know who else is?" Katie smirks, cherry gloss still startlingly bright on her lips.
At the tilt of her head, they all turn to look the only other table under the canopy. Marian can feel the instinctive roll of her eyes coming on when, as if on cue, the table of black leather and pomade erupts in a chorus of whoops and yells.
The Sheriffs.
Marian had heard about them from the older girls - Sherwood High's resident boys' gang who all come, as expected, with big walks and bigger talk and their souped up rides you could a mile off.
"What are they doing here?" Meg sniffs, turning away and flicking the hair from her face.
"Looking for trouble, no doubt." Ann's words earn her this time a murmur of consensual distaste, and a shared silent agreement to ignore the ruckus behind them as they lean in to hear more from Meg about her tattles and sleuthing.
When a hot wind picks up through the tent, however, Marian stands up. Heat stroke was not in the plans for this girls' day out.
"I'm getting another of these," she waves the pop bottle, "be back in two minutes."
The stand is surprisingly empty, the floss machine quiet next to bags of ready-to-sell cotton candy and sausage franks lie abandoned on their stationery rotisserie. Two are in the line in front of her; a kid picking out a handful of Twizzlers, and a Sheriff boy with a raven proudly emblazoned on the back of his leather jacket.
She stands stiffly waiting for her turn, her handful of change sweaty in her palm. The grease boy glances at her every now and then, bouncing on his heels with his hands in his pockets. He's not much taller than she is, and maybe not much older either. From this angle, with his light brown hair and upturned nose, he almost looks friendly.
"Double 'dog with everything, and a cherry soda with ice cream," he hands the man the dollar, then looks over at her with a grin. "This is me not-very-hungry."
"Uh huh." She nods, dubious and curious all at once, and his eyes light up when he gets a response out of her.
"So, you're one of them Pink Ladies, huh? Saw you girls back over there at the tent. Cool threads."
She runs a semi-critical eye over his getup. "Not so bad yourself, bird boy."
The boy laughs, unruffled as can be. "It's Allan, but call me Al - everyone does."
"Mare." She returns for herself.
"Like the horse?" He prods, and she cannot help but rise to the gibe.
"Like short for Marian, smartass."
"Alright, alright, I was just teasing." His grin had hardly subsided as he retrieves his meal. "You're pretty spunky, kid. Why don't you come over and say hi? Bring your friends, come meet mine."
She doesn't answer until she picks up her bottle and hands over the coins.
"Maybe," she says, sauntering off and noticing how he scrambles after her.
"That's a yes?"
"It's a maybe." She allows herself a small smile. "But I wouldn't get my hopes up."
She doesn't tell the girls about her meeting with the boy from the Sheriff gang, and makes it back to the group discreetly enough that only Saffy had seen her last moments of conversation with Al and had given her a pointed look when she sat back down.
"I miss anything?" She settles back into the chair, and holds the cold glass gratefully against her heated cheek, outrightly ignoring Saffy.
"Only Katie getting the scoop on the love letter Mr Leon wrote Miss Navarra for her birthday." Marian makes a face, and Meg laughs. "Yeah, what I said."
A bell rings loudly just outside their tentage, and Ann peers out excitedly.
"Oh, they've fixed it! Finally."
Silently, inwardly, Marian curses her stroke of luck, for she had been grateful for the breakdown, and hopeful that the repairs would take until tomorrow because she did not want to be on that roller coaster, even small as it is. She does not do well on roller coasters. Not that anyone else needed to know, however.
"Let's go!" Annie chirps, fumbling for her clasp bag. "Quick, before the queue starts up."
They tumble out with their jackets flapping around them, and even Katie is grinning widely behind her shades and red lipstick. Until they turn the corner, and find, to their horror of horrors, that they'd been beaten to the jump by -
"Of all the low down, no good -"
"Ladies!" The Sheriff boys break their huddle as they came up to them, smarmy grins as plastered down as their hair. There are five of them in total, in head to toe black leather, and a Zippo passing between their hands as they took turns lighting up. Marian catches sight of Al, who gives a discreet wave, even as the other boys look them up and down, chests puffing.
"Come along for the ride?" A tall redhead swaggers up, but stops short as Meg plants her foot almost atop his.
"You wish, Johnnie boy." Meg smiles as her girls back her up with a hooted 'ooh!'
"Girls, girls, why the fightin'? Plenty of room on the cars for all of us, if we cozy up." The shortest boy spreads his hands mockingly, his grin showing off his gold capped tooth. When the train comes to a stop at the gate not half a minute later, he snaps his fingers and points out the five cars.
"Get." He tells his boys, who proceed to take one seat in each car, leaving a space for each girl next to them.
"Well. I'm just gonna wait for the next one then!" Saffy huffs, turning away with her arms crossed haughtily, and the rest of the Pink Ladies follow suit, feeling rather proud of the right snubbing they had given the boys.
Only to be told, in a bored apologetic tone by the operator that, "this is the last ride, girls. We're closing up soon."
The Sheriffs' leader hangs out his cart with a grin at that. "Whaddya waitin' for?"
Marian feels a right urge to slap him, but doesn't, and merely gleans some satisfaction from seeing Saffy walk up to the front car and corner the older boy into the far side of the seat.
"Don't mind if I do," her leader says, and plants her elbow in an unprotected side when the greaser tries to put his arm around her.
They move to take their seats by the boys, some more hesitantly than others, but none more hesitantly than Marian, whose feeling of impending doom grows only stronger with each step she takes past the gate. She'd hoped to improve things by at least getting to sit with a familiar face, but her moment of indecision costs her - by the time she's reached the car, Annie had already taken the seat with Al.
"Hiya," he says to her, looking between her discomfort and Annie's steadily growing blush.
"Hey." She says, then stands there dumbly for a moment until Al purses his lips in concern. He jerks a thumb behind him, giving a half-glance backwards.
"You could sit behind us. Gizzy's a quiet one, but he's alright once you get to know him."
Her gaze follows his thumb, back to the last car, and the tall boy with jet black hair and sharp blue eyes seated in it.
She takes the seat beside him, and brings the bar across her lap securely. What the flutter-beat in her chest is currently thumping about, she can't quite tell.
The train starts off with a sudden jerk, and she inhales sharply. When she calms enough to breathe out again, she realises her hand's hard grip on a leather sleeve, and quickly lets go, keeping her eyes forward.
The boy next to her shifts minutely, and clears his throat.
"Giz." Al turns back to look at them as the roller coaster takes a trundling start along the level track. "Meet Mare. Mare, this is Giz."
The other boy sighs heavily. "Guy."
"But we call him Gizzy anyway." Al flashes a grin so wide it crinkles his forehead. "Mare's not her real name either. It's short for Marian, ain't it, Mare?"
"Thanks, Al," she says somewhat curtly, the churning in her belly turning his jokes sour. She can feel Guy's gaze rest on her, like a weight upon her shoulder that is almost-touching his.
"I'm Ann." Ann-Marie pipes up next to Al, and she's rewarded with his attention on her now, his blue eyes twinkling as he shifts to look at the youngest Lady.
"Ann, for Annie? I like it."
The train hits the incline, and the tilt is accompanied by another jolt that has Marian's breath catching in the back of her mouth. Her fingers squeeze tight on the fabric of her pants; she's careful not to accidentally touch the Sheriff boy next to her again.
"Marian, is it?" Guy asks, voice low and surprisingly, strikingly, deep. "You okay?"
"Mm-hmm." Her lips are tight together, and she parts them with an effort as the roller coaster continues its climb. "Don't like roller coasters much, 's all."
"Why's that?"
"They kinda make me - sick."
The puking-up-my-lunch kind of sick.
She expects a silence from him at best; a mocking laugh and a deliberate, humiliating, avoidance at worst. Instead, he hums a questioning sound in his throat, and puts a hand out beside her.
"You can hold my hand if you'd like?"
Her surprise is enough to make her forget her queasiness for a millisecond, and she nods even as her hand shoots out to seek out his. His palm is cool against hers, a point of grounding even as the ground moves further away from beneath them and the late afternoon sun continues to beat down its swelter.
Then, the tracks plateau, up at the very top, and awareness crashes into her at the lurch of her heart, the feel of the wind in her face, the swelling calm before the drop. Her hand tightens convulsively, and she hears Guy hiss at the squeeze.
"Sorry," she says, and is all she can say before the seat beneath her creaks, one last warning, and they are suddenly free-falling, laughing, screaming, all the way -
- down
- down
- down.
She doesn't remember much of the ride, her eyes closed the rest of the time after the first drop, and she only recalls the wind flapping her hair in her face and the sunlight flashing pink behind her eyelids; the car bucking beneath her, wheels jumping along the track, and each dive and loop throws her body against the rails or the warm solid mass next to her.
Truth be told, she spends the entire ride a little bit too scared to be sick.
The car finally slows, gentle bumps over the rails instead of the teeth-shaking rattle of before, and she registers sounds other than whooshing air now, boyish hollers and a giddy laugh that is distinctly Ann-Marie's.
"Boy that was a blast!" Al's voice rings out, louder now that he turns back towards them. "Wasn't it, Giz? Hey - hey, Mare, wha's the matter?"
"She doesn't like roller coasters much," Guy helps supply her answer, and given how the nausea is starting back up, she's ridiculously grateful for it.
"She don't look so good," Annie's concerned voice comes through.
"Marian? You can open your eyes now. We're back." Guy says.
She does. Catches sight of his blue eyes, bright and excited from the thrill of the ride despite his somber tone, and his hair is a right wild mess atop his head.
He's never looked more handsome.
Then she bends forward, and throws up all over their shoes.
"You should've said something," Saffy scolds, back at the tent where Marian is stretched out on three chairs pulled together. "Poor ol' Ann sure got a fright seeing you sick up like that."
"Yeah." She blinks up at the white canopy overhead. "Sorry, Annie."
"Is okay, Mare. But you sure made an impression with that Sheriff boy, I'll bet." Ann giggles, unapologetically.
His name is Guy, she reminds herself, and feels the corners of her mouth pull up in a smile, listening to the incessant chatter from her friends.
"I think he's kinda cute too."
"You think that of any guy who's tall, dark and mysterious, Meg."
"At least you weren't stuck with Johnnie Prince like I was."
"Is Marian here?"
At the sound of the last voice, familiar in its bass rumble, Marian sits straight up with a gasp. "Guy!"
Guy, and Al, to be exact. The two of them stand some feet away from the Ladies, hands stuffed in their jacket pockets and hair once again neatly slicked back into ducktail wings. Guy, on seeing her turn to him, immediately raises a hand to primp at the front of his coiff.
"Hiya, Mare." Al says, then shoots a look at his buddy as well as an indiscreet nudge with his elbow.
Guy scuffs a boot, which Marian notices had been wiped clean like her own pumps were. "We came to by to see how you were."
"All better now, really," she answers him only, and sees him mirror her smile back at her. The susurrus of whispers behind her go quite unnoticed.
"Good. That's good." Guy glances briefly over at Al, who raises an eyebrow and nods encouragingly. "Uhm. Do- do you wanna go for a ride?"
"Only if you're offering."
He offers his hand as well, Guy does, and she takes it with less force and more exhilaration this time. They leave the dusty fairground, and the excited cheers, behind them, cruising out in his lowrider with the engine hum loud in their ears. She settles into the sun-warmed seat, and feels his right arm slip round the back, and smiles.
Summertime can get a little too hot round these parts, but right now, she ain't complaining.