Disclaimer: BBC, Tiger Aspect, Foz and Dominic: they own it all.
Characters: Guy/Marian. Guy/Sheriff; because their subtext is too text to be ignored. (Thanks, Keith Allen).
*Warning: contains some adult situations and dubious consent. *Spoilers for Series 1, 2.
A/N: Spoilers for 2x12 (and that scene, yes, that scene). Hands over my eyes as I'm uploading this - here goes nothing. Thanks everyone for reading! Really been enjoying the responses thus far. Final chapter in over the weekend - promise. :)
Guy:
In the war room, the Sheriff rounds on him once more.
"Tell me."
At the command, he tells, of their deception and his disloyalty, and he cannot avoid his master's gaze, not with fingers gripping either side of his jaw. Marian draws a breath from somewhere behind him, and he fights down the urge to scream at her for ruining everything.
Instead, he only mumbles the penitence the Sheriff makes him repeat, with words of fealty like those he remembers from long ago.
The fingers move to pat his cheek. Guilt like bile rises in his throat.
"Good boy. Now, let's go kill a king."
Marian:
It was more than the prickly straw that kept her up that night, and Allan's hasty departure had done little to allay her fears of what was to come.
So much was at stake – the King's life, England, Robin – and yet she could do nothing. Not this night.
She tugged at her chain out of habit and frustration. Remembering that Guy had chained her here only made her struggle harder, as she cursed that blind, dogged obedience to a madman which so sickened her.
It was as if he'd become someone else entirely.
Times like these, it felt like she had never known him.
The Sheriff:
It's better this way.
No Robin Hood, no boy Allan, not even Lady Leper.
Just us.
He likes it when it's just us.
That's why he lets me bear down on him, hands tight on his shoulders, my knee digging into the small of his back.
It's why he relents, in the end, with bared teeth and clenched fists, and tries to make his body remember that I could have made this much worse.
Why he lets me curl him against me, pliant, unresisting, with my hand against the pulse of his heart.
And why he squeezes his eyes shut when I whisper: I forgive you.