Five Reasons Abbie Mills Wants to Kiss Ichabod Crane and One Reason She Won't.
I do not own Sleepy Hollow or its characters. This is only my own what-if imagining.
Reason One: He's smart. Scary smart. To have been a professor at Oxford, at his age, without the internet or even electric light, that was an achievement that never failed to astound her. She's lost track of how many languages he can speak, as well as read and write. He looks so comfortable when he's reading; it's as if that's where he's truly at home, no matter the time or the place. When he reads to her, a perfectly common and natural pastime in his day, as he's told her, she melts. Doesn't matter what he's reading. It's the way that he reads it, stopping to interject, to question, to explain or discuss, and then how he picks up right where he'd left off, as though that were the most natural thing in the world. Classic literature, instructions that came with the new microwave, the takeout menu stuffed into her mailbox, popular literature, the back of a cereal box over morning coffee; it all leads to...
Reason Two: The accent. It's almost a joke, how strongly American women find a British accent sexy, but it isn't funny because it's true. Not a factor when they're at work, because that's work and they're both professionals. Sex is the last thing on her mind when they're battling the supernatural bad guys, even when they're drugged out of their minds and lying half naked next to each other in a smoke-filled room. Day to day, though, that's another matter.
He talks. A lot. About everything. Life in his time. Life in hers. All the injustices of the world as well as its universal pleasures. She doesn't mind and she doesn't much care about the topic, He could go on about pretty much anything as long as he wanted, and she'd be fine with that. She's going to miss that voice when he's gone, and the mouth that voice comes from, well, that's...
Reason Three: He's gorgeous. That's probably the most obvious item on her list, and the one to which she gives the least amount of thought. Some facts speak for themselves. Objectifying men, to her, is as wrong as objectifying women, but that's not the issue here. He's not an object. He's Crane.
She wonders if some long ago ancestor of his got the name Crane for being so ridiculously tall and perfectly lean. Not skinny. There's a difference. He's all sleek muscle and sinew, and all of it natural. No gym, no steroids. What he's got is what his mama gave him. Blue eyes that show everything he's thinking. Brown hair that never stays entirely pulled back. Then there's the way he dresses. He's got to be the only person in the history of the world who can make the clothes he was buried in two hundred years ago look good, a fact that brings her to...
Reason Four: He's a man of his time. Whoever said they don't make men like they used to was right. She'd never known how much until she met him. He's a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. He pulls out chairs. He opens doors. He drapes that nasty old coat of his over her shoulders if he even thinks she might be slightly cold, and she lets him. The coat is warm from his body, and smells like Woolite and Bay Rum.
He calls her "Lieutenant," most of the time, even after months of living under the same roof. That's an arrangement he's not entirely comfortable with, so he pays her a small stipend out of his small stipend and does odd jobs. Technically, he's lodging, renting a room from her, not living with her. That one time he'd actually called her Abbie, that meant something. It was important. Intimate. Which brings her to...
Reason Five: He's passionate. About everything. Politics, mostly from his own time, though he's gone off on rants about the morality of taxation on food or the fact that people have to pay to get potable water. He could shame, outright shame a complete stranger into picking up after their dog or apologize after yelling at a cashier. Everyday things that most people don't even notice. He notices, though, and he wants to do something about it. He's not going to budge an inch until he's seen the wrong righted, no matter how small it might be.
Or how big. She's been right there with him when he's gone up against creatures she wouldn't even have imagined a few short months ago. The Sandman. One ex-best-friend headless horseman. That creepy-ass golem doll that still gives her nightmares, not that she's going to tell him about it. She's seen his indignance, his rage, his sorrow and his joy and he owns it all. If he wants to cry, he cries. No masks, no games, not this guy. She can't help but think that when he loves, he loves the same way.
The Reason She Won't: She knows he does, because she's seen that, too. He's married. Probably more married than any guy she's ever known or ever will. Katrina buried him two centuries ago, didn't tell him she was pregnant, didn't tell him she was a witch, either. Other guys might want to know what other secrets their wives might be holding, but not him. He loves Katrina. Flat out loves her, and he's going to do everything within his power to reunite with her, even though he has no idea how he's going to accomplish that. Neither does Abbie, and that's the worst and best part. Worst, because watching him go through hell is a special hell in itself, and best because, well, he's here. For as long as it takes, before whatever it takes, he's here, in her life, and that's good enough.