Guy had to get out of there. It wasn't that Will was annoying him or anything; quite the opposite, actually. He hadn't done anything. Hadn't said a word, hadn't stepped on his toes. He didn't even seem to have any particularly annoying habits. He'd just politely waited until Guy finished with the grindstone to sit down in front of it and set to work sharpening the axes Allan had given him.
The ax gave him an idea, though, and he glanced over at the firewood rack to see that it was nearing empty. He would go get wood, and perhaps by the time he got back, Will would have run out of ways to creatively avoid him.
Just as he made it to the mouth of the hideout, though, he was stopped.
"Where are you going?"
He turned around to see Will staring at him. He'd paused in whatever it was he was doing with that belt of his – probably cinching another hole in the damn thing, from the look of him – and was looking at Guy with a curious sort of look.
Guy pointed the ax in his hand at the nearly-empty thing of firewood. "It needs refilling."
Will went back to working at the leather, and Guy thought for a moment that he'd been dismissed, but then he spoke again. "It's going to rain soon." Not a criticism, just an observation, but it was said so matter-of-factly Guy couldn't help asking,
"Awfully apt prediction. I don't see any clouds out."
Shrugging, Will didn't so much as raise his eyes from his work. As he watched him, Guy noticed how sure those hands were. Long fingers, calloused fingers, but the way they worked with those tools was as graceful as a painter with a brush. "Smells like rain."
Briefly, Guy considered demanding what that even meant. Smelled like rain…he knew of charged air and strong wind, but in all his years, he had never smelled the rain. And here this hardly-more-than-a-boy of a man was saying as surely as if he were saying the sky was blue.
But then he realized he wasn't being cryptic. At least, it didn't sound like he was. It wasn't said with any trace of enigma, any sort of mystery. It just…was. And since he wasn't in the trade of beating dead horses, he saw no point in demanding an explanation. Instead, he rolled his eyes and headed out into the forest.
Less than an hour later, Guy was tying his haul when he felt something on his face. Something cold. Something small.
Something wet.
"You've got to be kidding me…"
He'd no sooner spoken the words than the sky seemed to open up. Raindrops the size of buckets fell in torrents, and Guy's hair was matted to his face in a matter of moments as he grabbed up his firewood and ran.
He might as well have walked the whole way; by the time he made it back, he was soaked through to the skin. Annoyed was edging its way towards livid, and he was more than ready to rake Will over the coals if he so much as thought the words "I told you so."
As he entered the hideout and dropped his now-dropping wood near the stack, he saw Will's smile and started to draw in the breath to do just that. He wasn't laughing or anything, but there was amusement dancing in those blue eyes of his, and that was enough.
In point of fact, Guy nearly drew his sword when Will pulled back his arm and threw something at him. It wasn't until he caught it, inches from his face, and felt the fabric on his fingers that he realized what it was. A blanket. Will had thrown him a blanket.
"There's more out in the back," he said. "Thought you might be needing them." As he spoke, the amusement in his eyes did nothing to detract from the sincerity in his voice, and all thoughts of a rant faded from Guy's mind, leaving nothing but gaping silence in their wake. He could only imagine, if it had been Allan or Robin, or even Tuck sitting in Will's place, how big of a laugh they would be having at his expense.
But here was this relative stranger – this boy, who by all rights should hate him – preparing blankets for him.
"But I did tell you so."
Guy saw the teasing, almost jovial edge to that grin on his face, and he felt something spark in his chest.
And then he threw the blanket at him.
True to his word, Will really had put out some blankets for him in the back. Guy quickly shed the sodden clothes he'd been wearing, drying off as best he could with one of the blankets before tugging on a dry set of braies and trousers. Nothing could be done for his boots; they would have to dry in their own town.
He grabbed a shirt and started back into the main room partition of the hideout, but Will was nowhere to be seen. Guy could tell he'd tended the fire. It had started to get cold out, and the chill was seeping in; the fire was doing a much better job keeping it at bay now. The only question was where he'd gotten off to.
Of course, then he looked up. Somehow, Will had managed to squirrel himself up to the top of the hideout. He was laying flat on his back atop one of the supports on the top, and was working very intently on something. It wasn't until Guy looked down and saw the puddle on the ground, then back up to the lack of water coming in that he realized what the lanky man was doing.
He was patching leaks. Guy looked on incredulously. He'd only gotten back to the camp that day, and he was doing bloody maintenance work. And loads of it, it looked like. Now that he'd gotten to thinking about it, most of the usual leaks were dry as bones.
Scratch that, all of the leaks.
"You're handy, I'll give you that," Guy said, staring up at him. To himself – and only to himself – he'd give him more than that. He was handy, clever, and in all honesty, he was actually starting to grow on him. He had this dry, quiet sort of humor. A playfulness just reserved enough to make it worth reaching for rather than something that needed to be restrained.
Needless to say, Guy'd had a lot of time to think while he was out looking for firewood.
Will slid the last of his tools back in the belt on his waist. The same one he'd seen him fixing earlier. Christ, the man had been busy while Guy was out.
"Now that you mention it, I could use a hand," he said.
Guy looked at him dubiously. "I'm no carpenter."
"And I'm no cat."
A blank look from Guy.
"I don't always land on my feet," Will said by way of explanation.
That made more sense. Good thing, too, because he wasn't going to get much chance to figure it out from the looks of things. Will pulled himself up into a crouch on the top rail. Cat or no, he was surprisingly agile as he stepped down to the lower one. He wasn't more than a head's height off the ground anymore, and when he stepped down to the next one—
Guy retracted his previous assertion of agility. Will's foot went out from under him, and the very next moment, Guy found himself looking down at where the youth had fallen flat on his back on the ground. Leafs fluttered up around him, and he looked decidedly dazed for a moment.
Then he laughed.
Guy looked at him strangely. "You hit your head," he said.
"No, I didn't."
"Then you're mad. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt."
"It was funny," Will said. "You've got to admit. Like watching a jester hit himself with his juggling pins. Allan got plenty of kicks that way when I was building this place."
"Some friend."
Will shrugged, still looking up at Guy from his spot on the ground. "I figure a man can laugh at his friends all he wants, so long as he's willing to give them a hand up after."
The comment struck Guy as oddly…understanding, especially for someone that age. Without thinking, he stuck his hand out and helped the younger man to his feet. It wasn't until Will smiled at him that he realized what he'd done, and then he was too dumbstruck to say anything.
Luckily, Will seemed to have found his voice where Guy had lost his. "Suppose that makes you my friend," he said.
"You're quick to jump to conclusions, aren't you?"
Another one-sided shrug. "Perhaps. But you're alright by Robin and the others."
"And you're willing to put your whole confidence in them?" The thought actually incensed Guy. "Have you no mind of your own?"
His tone was sharp, but Will just set his jaw and bore it. "I trust them," he said firmly. "They are my family, and they're far wiser men than I. But yeah, Gisborne, I've a mind of my own. I've a mind not to trust you. Honestly, I've a mind to kill you…everything you did to my family and me. But that'd make me just as miserable and vile as the people I'm against." A little of the hardness left his face, then. "Besides, you do anything funny, I can still kill you."
"Can you, now?" Guy had to admit he admired Will's fire. He had life in him, and that wasn't something there was a lot of in the world those days.
Will nodded. "But I'd rather not have to face Robin after."
"A truce, then?"
"Truce."
Only, when Guy went to shake his hand, he realized he hadn't let go of it since he helped him up. He didn't know what was worse: that he hadn't noticed then…or that he didn't mind it now.
Either way, he was quick to let go. "I'm going to eat," he said, turning and making for the kitchen.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Will staring after him for a second, but then the youth turned back around. He didn't say where he was going or what he was doing – something told Guy he was even less the talkative sort than Guy himself was – but if Guy had to take a wager, he'd say it had something to do with carpentry, the way he was holding those tools. As he walked, though, something caught Guy's eye…he craned his head a little to watch him go. That was odd, he thought.
Because he could've sworn Will was limping.
