L'EDgendary

by dobanochi

A few years since we last saw any of them, the Peach Creek Boys and the Merry Men run into one another at just the right time, working together to undermine an oppressive city government as well as their burgeoning insecurities. An action-comedy-drama character study about friendship, leadership, self-esteem, and the divide between who we're born as and who we choose to be.

8. The Naked and the Afraid and the

8. "The Naked and the Afraid and the Famous and the Dead"

Cough, cough.

"Are you alright, Johnny?"

"You awake, Rob?"

"I just spoke to you, now didn't I?"

"Oh, c'mon, Robin. How could someone as worldly as yourself never once run into somebody who talks in their sleep?"

"Have you encountered sleep-talkers who say entire sentences that directly relate to the situation at hand?"

"Yessir. Several times, in fact."

"...Huh. Well then. You got me there! I suppose one man can only have so many experiences. Ah… It's a curse, really. A tease. All the time we get to spend on this Earth, and we have to spend it stuck in one body. You know, I-"

"Rob, whenever you're done philosophizing, I'd like to have a turn to say sumpthin'."

"What's up, Johnny Boy?"

"You smell that, don't you?"

"...I wasn't going to say anything."

"Why not?"

"I didn't want to embarrass you, Little Jo-"

"You thought that was coming from me!?"

"Where else could I logically deduce it's coming from?"

"I dunno, maybe those kids murdered a rodent and the guy's rotting under the driver's seat."

"Oh, that is a grotesque image, Little John."

"Hey, they didn't seem like they'd be murderers, but maybe that's their bent. Maybe they're even better actors than you and me."

"Oh, wouldn't that be an intriguing twist!"

"And maaaybe that smell is actually coming from you and you're just blaming it on me to cover your own ass!"

"What!? No…"

"And after all I've done for ya, Robin…"

"Come now, Johnny, I-"

"My people have been the victims of prejudice that we're a bunch of dirty, unhygienic mongrels, and you perpetuate that hurtful stereotype just because you're too embarrassed to own up to your body's natural functions? For shame, Robin."

"Little John, surely you're just taking the piss with me, right?"

"I'll take your weird little Britishism and raise you some good ol' American folk wisdom: 'he who smelt it, dealt it.'"

"I thought that only referred to, er, gas, not body odor in general."

"Ain't we talking about gas?"

"...Okay, the fact that we're having this confusion tells me that perhaps it really wasn't you."

"Took ya long enough. But seriously, I kinda smelled something when we first got in here, but I was too tired to say anything. I might not have been able to sleep through it if I weren't drop-dead exhausted."

"I remember smelling something, too, but it wasn't nearly this strong. I would have thought that it would have aired out by now with the window open."

"Oh, yeah, the window's open! That is weird! Th-that it stuck around I mean. The smell."

"I understand you, Johnny."

"I'm not stupid, Robin. I'm just sleepy-headed. I just woke up. I'm not thinking straight yet."

"I never disputed this."

"Hm… But I really do think it's some... residue or something from what the kids were doing, whatever they were doin'."

"It would have aired out by now. The window's- no, you know what? The window isn't even open because the window is gone. It's but a memory."

"How nice your life must be that you've never encountered a smell that just won't air out after hours and hours and hours."

"I count my blessings, Johnny, don't you worry."

"Maybe it's a smell they left combined with our, uh… our own-"

"Aromas?"

"That's the ticket."

"Like our musk and the van's must are working in synergy?"

"More or less."

"But the only really pungent thing that I saw them with was the generators full of petrol."

"And this don't smell like gasoline."

"I'm glad we can agree on this."

"Ditto. But… hey, come to think of it, that bear kid did look kinda funky."

"How was he looking 'funky', Johnny? I was just a young lad in the seventies and I don't remember them very well; you're going to have to give me a crash-course."

"I didn't mean that the kid looked like he was on his way to the fucking disco hall, Robin. And I barely remember the seventies myself, but I don't remember them being that great."

"Glad to hear I didn't miss too much."

"I meant that I could see that kid skipping showers."

"Well, then. You're the one judging a minor by their looks, not me!"

"Oh, hush up, Rob."

"For the record, I thought you were going to say the bear boy looked like something else."

"Like whaddaya mean?"

"...Nevermind, it was stupid."

"You can tell me. No skin off my bones."

"No, no, it was an underdeveloped joke that doesn't really make sense now that I think about it. Spare me my own embarrassment."

"If you say so."

"..."

"...How long has it been since we've been together in a space this small for this long?"

"I'd say it's been awhile, Johnny."

"And how long's it been since we've had the chance to take a dip?"

"Longer than I'm proud to admit."

"If Marian knocked on this van's door right now, would you be afraid that you'd scare her off because you looked and smelled like a homeless person?"

"Oh, come now, Johnny…"

"Hey. Hey. Rob. I'm sorry… but was that not a damn good way to pose the question?"

"...It was."

"So would you?"

"Would I…?"

"Resist the urge you've held for years to embrace her because you thought you were, oh shall we say, hygienically unbecoming?"

"...Well, the thought would certainly cross my mind. I suppose it would depend on her reaction to my, er..."

"Odor."

"To put it bluntly."

"So, my thinking is that even if the smell isn't coming from us and us alone, we're probably not helping our own cause."

"Little John, you do make a solid argument."

"I forget, did we pack soap before we left?"

"I think I grabbed a bar of hand-soap for when we're done using the facilities."

"Well, I don't wanna go wash up in the latrine. Do you think it's safe to go run to the creek for a few minutes?"

"What's the point of finding a safehouse for the night if we just go right back into the woods?"

"Well Rob, what's the point of having a safehouse if we can't breathe the air inside the safehouse?"

"...Johnny, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that it might be foolish to go and act upon what you're saying, even if it is right."

"We just won't go anywhere near the tree. Easy."

"And if they get lost and run into us by stupid luck?"

"Then we see them coming first and we ambush them. Disarm them and take them on in a scrap. I can take 'em."

"I tried to tell those boys you were a good guy, and here you are itching to jump headlong into a row."

"Robin, every man and boy in my life always told me to toughen up as a kid, and I wanted to, too. So I did. Yeah, it took until my fucked-up pituitary got its ass in gear, but eventually managed to get myself to a point where I could be a honey bear in my natural state, but switch to a grisly bear when I need to be. And dearheart, wouldn't it be a waste if I didn't put that new side to me to good use? After all I did to try to become more like the person I wanted to be?"

"Truly an inspiring story, Johnny."

"Now I just need to buy some of your charisma and charm off of you."

"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself, Johnny! I wish I could be the life of the party like you!"

"You say this now, but I wish I could be the person people turn to when it ain't time for partying."

"That's why we work so well together!"

"And I can appreciate that. But for most of my life, I wasn't part of some dynamic duo, and if one day I'm in that position again, maybe I won't be prepared."

"Johnny, stop thinking so much about things like that which may never even happen."

"You're right - let's think about this smell instead. It's dark out; do we know what time it is?"

"Night-thirty."

"Heh. Real funny. So much for the legendary wit of British humor."

"Seven years, and you still bring up the transatlantic quirks at every turn."

"Yeah, because never had I ever thought that I'd find myself being tight with a well-to-do British guy. It never stopped being downright astounding. Every single day it amazes me that this is how my life turned out. I just stop and think about it: 'Wow, I'm livin' in the woods, using morally-difficult vigilante tactics to try to make other people's lives a little less bad, and my closest confidante is a British guy who grew up crazy rich and crazy tall and crazily good with an arrow, among other old-timey weapons.'"

"For the record, Johnny, I didn't grow up rich. And no I need to explain to you the socioeconomics of the North of England again?"

"Buddy, you were able to go to college across the ocean from your house. You might not have been an aristocrat, but you came from money in my book."

"Should I go back home and rob my parents and give it to the people of Nottingham?"

"You could probably afford to fly first-class both ways and still have plenty left over!"

"Oh, nonsense!"

"That sounds like something a posh British guy would say."

"Do you want to hot-wire this van and drive me to the airport, then?"

"Heh…"

"..."

"Okay. So. I'm gonna go grab the soap and maybe my stick and I'm gonna mosey on down to the creek. You can come with me, or you can stay behind, knowing you left me alone to die, and then you can fantasize about your woman and whittle your weiner or whatever you do when I'm not around."

"..."

"..."

"You need me to help you find the soap, don't you, Johnny?"

"Oh, would you be a dear?"

"It would be shameful for a posh English aristocrat like myself to not help out a dashing young lady like yourself."

"Why, thank you, milord."

"Certainly."

"..."

"..."

Sniff, sniff. "I figured it out."

"What?"

"Gravy… This van smells like gravy."

-IllI-

Honestly, Little John really had come a long way in terms of self-confidence, including but not limited to his relatively-new devil-may-care attitude to being bare-ass naked in the presence of others, especially other men. The first several dozen times that the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest had decided that they needed to take a timeout to go to the Peach Creek and wash the parts of their bodies where the sun refused to shine, Little John had always insisted that he wait for the others to finish before he went, and he would hang out on the banks "keeping lookout" - which wasn't incorrect when he was looking in any other direction but at the other guys - while the others fraternized without him.

Just the thought of joining them brought back unpleasant memories of several occasions during his youth - no fewer than two times but not exceeding seven - when, during his lonely walkabouts through the wooded hilly countryside at Nashville's edge, he happened upon some other boys skinny-dipping in the river. The boys were all some combination of bigger, stronger, older, socially smarter, tougher and/or meaner than him, and each of them invariably was brimming with a self-confidence that John Edmund Little simply did not yet have. Accidentally invading their public privacy would have been mortifying enough, but when they saw him, they all had the compulsive urge to jump out of the river, chase him down, bumrush him - recall that they're all still stark naked throughout all of this - and kick his ass while accusing him of being a homosexual for looking at them while they were nude. The irony was palpable, and the boys probably realized it but didn't care; teenage boys in the Bible Belt during the Reagan era will be teenage boys in the Bible Belt during the Reagan era. Eventually, Little John just started walking somewhere else.

Of course, the worst part of those memories is that on at least one of those occasions, John's brother, the big personality and friend-to-all that he was, was among the boys in the river, and in his infinite blissful ignorance, the guy just thought that they were play-fighting; after all, sparring and boxing had always been some of the naturally-extroverted brother's favorite pastimes, so he had genuinely thought that John had stopped by for a spur-of-the-moment good old friendly dogpile. At the end of it all, the dumb motherfucker was genuinely confused as to why Little John would limp away toward home trying not to openly weep instead of laughing it off and coming back with him to chill by the river and finally be one of the guys. Said guys would then profess to the bigger Little brother their ardent disbelief that the two of them were brothers, let alone fraternal twins.

Little John still did think about that when it was bathtime, but now he had become able to rationalize it, knowing that he was among trusted friends (who were also exposed in their birthday suits) and that there probably wouldn't be anybody or anything there who would try to hurt him. Plus it had eventually clicked in his brain that he was roughly three feet taller and several magnitudes heavier than any other member of any iteration of the crew, so he knew that they knew it would probably be unwise of them to risk pissing him off by joking that he had funny-looking genitalia.

But as the duo crossed the log-bridge to get to their usual spot on the opposite side of the creek, Robin was in no mood to praise his friend for having achieved a serviceable level of confidence. It was essentially an entire day later, and he was still gobsmacked that his friend - a man who was pushing forty, no less - had acted so damned childish that morning. Or maybe childish wasn't the right word, but that was the word that kept popping into his head. Robin had always regarded Little John as mature, at least inasmuch as a product of the bear's sense of loyalty, his great balance between bravery and caution, and a touch of jadedness, and now opening a can of worms about how he was starting to suspect Robin had regarded him as lesser - seeing John as juvenile, one might even say - seemed in and of itself to be a juvenile move that clashed with the Little John he knew.

Vulnerable? John wanted him to be more 'vulnerable'? Granted, it was Robin who had conjured up with the word 'vulnerable' to describe what Little John was getting at, but John didn't fight it when he asked if that's what he meant. Evidently John's self-confidence still had a ways to go if he needed to see his friends be weak before he could feel strong by comparison.

Ironically, Johnny had come close to forcing that side out of him by invoking the names of his girlfriend and his brother. One of them was a case of lovesickness that had run unabated until it eventually developed into a forlorn heartbreak, and the other was… well, a profound personal tragedy, to say the least; one of them was someone he was growing increasingly certain he'd never see again, and the other was someone he knew he'd never see again, at least not on this mortal coil. Because things that are cruelly uncertain and things that are cruel certainties can feel equally but oppositely bad, the which of the two he felt worse about flip-flopped on a regular basis, but rarely did a day go by when he wouldn't take some extra time when he had excused himself to use the water closet to be alone for a second and just stop and think about each of them and how damned terrible he felt. He would think about how alone he felt, abandoned even, with those two gone, let alone all the others who'd came and went. And now that his closest and last remaining friend was turning into a stranger, that wasn't doing much to help assuage his feelings of loneliness.

But he had to stay strong - not just for himself, nor just for Marian nor Will nor any of the others left behind, nor just for the poor people of Nottingham who relied upon him, yes for all of those people but beyond them all, he had to stay strong for Little John. Johnny might not like it that Robin was lording over him with his mental, physical (well, proportionally speaking) and emotional strength, but little did Little John know that he needed Robin to do it for him. If the two of them were to survive - nevermind whether they were to successfully dissolve Nottingham's political machine and dethrone the Prince Mayor, if they were to literally, physically stay alive on the fringes of society - they would have to be strong, and if Little John wasn't going to be strong for himself, Robin would have to do it for the both of them. Ol' Johnny was deteriorating. But after all the loyalty he'd shown to Robin, it would be cruel and unfair to John if Robin were to deprive him of a shared sense of strength when they needed it most.

No, no, no - Robin realized he was doing the both of them a disservice. It wasn't that Little John had a low resilience factor and Robin was at the baseline; Little John was at least as mentally tough as your average person, if not still much stronger, while Robin was just crazy off-the-charts headstrong. But doing what they were doing for seven years and watching their numbers dwindle would take a major toll on anybody, and in that time, the two of them had probably both lost a fair chunk of their minds since they'd started - Robin just still had a long way to go before he'd start to show it. Their birthdays were both coming up in the fall; Robin would be thirty-two, John would be thirty-eight, and they both were seriously wondering if the rest of their lives were just going to be like this, so Robin couldn't hold it against him if the old bear was starting to lose his grip. Poor John was the victim of circumstance, and Robin felt bad for blaming him.

And Robin knew that if he absolutely needed to confide in anybody, Little John was as good a choice as anyone; the rapport was there, the respect was there, and John was right that he'd already spilled so much of his guts to Robin that Rob could probably tell a stranger a pretty good rendition of the story about how Little John literally and figuratively went from being tiny and timid to being big and boisterous, so Robin did indeed owe him a secret or two simply as a metric of trust. But that would be all well and good if they were civilian friends chit-chatting while watching sports and drinking beer on their day off from their 9-to-5 jobs. As it was, there may have indeed been lulls in the action when, for example, they'd be stuck in a tree for more than an hour with little else to do but talk, but even in moments like those, there was the persistent threat of danger coming out of the shadows at any moment. There simply was no good time nor place to sit around and talk about what made them feel bad and experiment with the boundaries of platonic male bonding. It would have been foolish to do so.

Then again, they still had a long walk until they got to their preferred spot, with the rock formations that made the perfect place to set their clothes and weapons and accessories down without them getting sandy or dirty. And as they walked along the eastern bank, the only other signs of intelligent life they'd heard were their own footsteps, the only other beings there were the fireflies and the junebugs, and the only thing watching them was the moon above their heads.

"We need to go robbing again," Robin finally said, breaking the silence. "Martin's family was a wash, so that didn't count."

"You're saying this like we've been out of commission for a week," John responded in as low of a voice as he could; after all those years of trying and failing to garner attention, he now had trouble keeping his voice down. If Robin thought that John was cross with him, he needed to remember the size of the bone Little John had to pick with genetics and puberty.

"It might be tempting to ultimately take a week off while we're hiding out in the van. But we can't have the people of Nottingham feeling like we've abandoned them."

"Oh, they know we would never do that."

"Yes, but stressful situations like an unexplained absence can make one's mind draw some irrational conclusions."

"Heh. You said it, brother."

The near-silence returned. Little John thought it was simply a boredom silence, but to Robin, it felt tense.

"I think it might actually be safe to speak, if you do," Robin offered. "Just use your inside voice."

"Shit, I'll try. Did you wanna say something?"

"So you say you want me to tell you more when something's eating me up inside?"

"Only if you want to."

"Well, I feel like I ought to tell you that I can't stop thinking about how you said that."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I can't stop thinking about how you said that. It was so… unlike you."

"How was it unlike me?"

"How was it not unlike you?"

"...Well, shit, sorry I said anything."

"You don't have to be sorry; you just told me to tell you, so I'm telling you."

"It really bugged you that much that I said, 'Hey, Rob, sometimes you're a pompous dick'?"

"Mellow out, Johnny. I wasn't offended, I was just shocked. I had no idea you felt that way. So… thanks for telling me?"

"Are you actually grateful I said that, or are you just saying that because that's what a good leader would do?"

"Bloody fucking hell, Johnny, you want me to prove that I have flaws like a normal person, and then you give me shit for it when I do?"

"Brother, do I need to write ya a dissertation on how everything you're saying has a subtext of you thinking I was actin' like a pussy or whatever?"

The two arrived at their usual spot and started preparing as if the conversation wasn't even happening.

"Well, if you really want to know what rubbed me the wrong way," Robin mentioned, "was your casually writing off my feelings about Marian and then about Will all in the span of five minutes."

"Huh! So now I finally know what really gets to ya."

"Oh, does it make you feel good to have this sort of power over me?"

"Absotively posilutely."

"What do you plan to do with this power, Little John?"

"Don't worry, I'll use it wisely."

"It wasn't very wise of you to just forget my half-brother existed."

"Hey!" Little John grunted as he doffed the last of his garments. He lumbered over to where Robin was turned sideways from John, neatly folding his shirt. Little John made a point to stand not just immediately next to the fox, but also over him. "Is that the kind of fucking person you take me for?"

Robin saw his approach in his periphery, but was nevertheless surprised when he turned his head to the left and saw the upper regions of Little John's gut staring back at him less than a foot away from his face. Robin turned his head to the sky to try to make respectful eye contact, but that was a tad difficult because Little John's head was hanging directly over him and the scant available moonlight was now behind his face. From the lungs that were right in front of his ears to the snout that was dangling a meter above his head, Robin could hear from all parts of John's respiratory system that his exhales contained a faint but unmistakable growling.

Right at about that moment, a cool breeze passed through the woods. A cold shot ran through Robin's body, and certain parts of his now-exposed body may or may not clenched or retracted in a most emasculating way. Robin hadn't felt this afraid of this creature since the conflict they had the day they met. For the first time in seven years, Robin had actually, genuinely, irrevocably pissed off his eight-foot-and-change, eight-hundred-or-so-pound grizzly bear friend. And he didn't enjoy remembering what it felt like to realize that.

"I didn't forget about Will," Little John growled, speaking in a much deeper register than usual, a gravelly grumbling that Robin had heard before, but he didn't remember the last time it was directed at him. "What the fuck kind of asshole do you take me for?"

As for Robin, who had on several occasions throughout his adult life been told 'wow, Robin, you have such a nice deep voice for a fox, and yet it just doesn't match your face… or species,' now found himself speaking in a higher-pitched voice that much more matched his face, and species: "Er, Lit-Little John, I, er, I apologize-"

"Do you think I'm stupid, or do you think I'm just forgetful?"

"I-I- Neither, John. Nei-neither…"

This reminded Robin of when he and Marian had taken an acting class together in college; it was their first time being taught the ropes of theatre by an American. In that class, the professor had imparted them with a quirky little stateside moniker for a situation when two actors in a scene are in extremely close proximity to one another: "fuck or fight" distance; if two actors are that close to one another, especially if they're facing each other, then surely they're either about to start fucking or start fighting. Right now, one of those wasn't an option, and Robin doubted that either one of them had much interest in the other.

Further complicating this was when Little John put his huge left paw in the crook where Robin's neck met his right shoulder. Instinctively, Robin turned to look at it, but Little John took his other paw and grabbed Robin under the snout to turn his head to face him.

"Look at me. You think I'm stupid, don't you?"

"Wh-!? N-no! Johnny, I-!"

Robin tried not to dart his eyes when he remembered that his bow and arrow were literally just a few feet behind him to his right.

"You think you're a wise-ass fox-boy and I'm just your brainless beast of burden, dontcha?"

"Little John, I misspoke! I'm sorry!"

"We've been through this before. You think yer so smart, but ya don't learn lessons."

"Little John, you're scaring me."

"Fuck off. We both know nothin' actually scares you, Mister Fucking 'Hero-of-the-People'."

"I-I'm serious-"

"THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!"

So he did. Robin twisted his head and shoulders in opposite directions as he jumped backwards to get out of John's grasp. When Robin realized he had miraculously not broken his own neck, he hopped back toward the bow and arrow as John came after him. By the time Robin reached his stuff, John was too close for Robin to get extended with his bow, so Robin just grabbed an arrow and held it like a dagger.

"Little John, back off-!"

But Little John's inhibitions had called in sick to work. He grabbed the arrow out of Robin's paw with his left hand and grabbed Robin around the neck with his right, and without a visible hesitance bit the metal end off the arrow with the side of his mouth. He tossed the broken end off into the woods to his left without looking and turned to spit the metal point into the creek, where it landed with a troubling splash. Little John grabbed Robin's arms and pinned him down to his torso.

"You wanna feel big around Little John? Then why don't I make ya feel big?"

Little John picked Robin up and held him right in front of his face. Their faces were level, but Robin didn't want to look into John's eyes; he didn't want to see what was in there.

"Look at me," Little John ordered. Robin kept his head turned but slid his eyes over to meet John's. It was a measure to make sure they wouldn't have to smell and taste each other's breath, but Little John wasn't in much of a mood for such an arrangement.

"Look. At. Me!" he hollered as he shook Robin back and forth until he got the hint. Robin turned his head to face John head-on, and took in what it was like to be eye-level with a giant.

"I didn't forget about Will," Little John seethed. "I didn't think of him as your brother; I thought of him as our friend. Because that's what he was: our friend. We lost our, fucking, friend."

He stopped to growl-breathe for a moment and plan his next sentence. It almost sounded like his throat was starting to hurt from growling more than usual. Eventually, Little John figured out what he wanted to say:

"...And maybe I lost you, too."

Despite the scarce light, they could both see every individual eyelash on each other's eyelids. Despite all the noise they'd been making, there still hadn't been a sound of anybody else in the area. There was another cool breeze, but it may have been that there had been many cool breezes, and they had only noticed the ones that came by in moments of silence.

Robin didn't know what he ought to say, so he said the only thing he could think of:

"Are you going to kill me, Little John?"

Little John just stared and seethed with his infuriated look frozen on his face. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale… and then there was a twitch on his face, and his look was broken.

Little John tossed Robin up in the air for a quick moment before sliding his arms under Robin's armpits and pulling the fox into a very literal bear-hug. Robin's chin came to rest on Little John's right shoulder, along with his left arm, and his right arm was limply strung around John's left shoulder. Their cheeks and ears were ever so slightly brushing one another. Robin, still processing what was happening, maintained a petrified look on his face. As for Little John, although Robin couldn't turn his head to see his face, he could hear the bear was crying.

"God… dammit!" Little John choked out; now it was him whose voice was hitting the high notes. "I… I just… I just want to feel competent!"

Robin was still stupefied, and his speech was on autopilot. "Little John… I'm sorry."

"I ju-just want to feel good at- I wanna feel like I'm good at being a person!" A loud sniffle came through, and Little John rocked the two of them back and forth. "I want to- For fuck's sakes!"

As John turned back and forth, Robin - who was at least three feet off the ground, probably more with the outward angle of Little John's stomach, and who couldn't even feel whether the tip of his long tail was brushing the ground - tried to accept that he was just along for the ride. He made a better attempt at connecting his arms around the bear's neck to reciprocate the surprise hug, and he succeeded. "Little John, I'm sorry."

"I just want to be like you, Rob!"

"Y-you do?"

"I-I wanna be confident, a-and I want to be- I wanna be charming and charismatic and all those words I've heard people call you! I wanna command respect like you do!" - Little John paused for a moment to clear his aching throat - "And I wanna always feel like I'm saying the right thing like you always say the right thing! And I want to be someone who other people like without feeling like I have to try really hard to be somebody they'll like! I want to feel like the person I am and the person I want to be are the same person! I just wanna feel like I'm being myself and be happy with that! Like you! A-and my brother! And like every other man on this planet seems to be when I'm around!"

Robin debated telling him that he didn't always know what to say, and that he wasn't always confident, and that in tough situations he had to try really fucking hard to maintain his air of charisma so that he could still come across as a capable leader when somebody had to fill that role but nobody else could; an uncomfortable and alien situation such as this perfectly exemplified all three of those things. But no; he had to be strong for John when he couldn't be strong for himself. If he were to divulge sensitive information, they'd be there all night.

"A-and girls think you're fucking handsome, and-and…" Little John trailed off.

Hm. Robin didn't know how to fight that one.

"How-" Little John sputtered, "How can someone so perfect exist, and no matter how hard I try to change who I am, I still can't be who I want to be!?"

"I'm not perfect, Little John."

"Oh yes the fuck you are, and we both know it!"

"And I like you just the way you are, Johnny."

"I don't."

"I wouldn't trust anybody else with my life as much as I trust you. I wouldn't have trusted Will as much. I wouldn't have trusted Tuck or Alan as much. I wouldn't even have trusted Marian as much, nor my own mother and father. I like you just the way you are, John." He felt sappy repeating that line, but he thought Little John really needed to hear it.

"You sure as hell thought I was gonna kill ya just now," John blubbered. He had stopped swaying, but his hold hadn't loosened.

"Because I trust your judgment. If you thought that would be the right thing to do… I would have let you." Robin had tripped up for a second there because of a sudden itchiness that he thought was a bug walking on his face, but to his surprise, it was a tear of his own running down his cheek. He wasn't being insecure about his feelings; he genuinely didn't know where the tear came from, because no part of him felt like crying. Upon closer inspection, his eyes were a tad watery; apparently the mood was infectious. "Maybe I would be a narcissistic twat without you around. But you keep me in check, Little John."

"There! Ya see! Ya always know exactly what to say!"

"Oh, no I don't…"

"Well, I wish I was as good at faking it as you were."

"And I wish I were as intimidating and supportive and… fun as you are. Life is strange like that, I suppose."

"Oh, hell, you're all three of those things." Little John seemed to be regaining his composure. "More than anything, Rob… I want to be as heroic as you are."

"I'm no hero, John."

"Not everybody would throw away their future and break the law on a regular basis to help a bunch of starving people. Most people wouldn't put everyone else but themselves first like that."

"You did that, too, Johnny."

"I followed your lead."

"Little John, if you knew the things I knew about myself, you would know I'm not a hero."

"Okay. Then tell me what I don't know."

A series of breaths.

"...A real hero would be able to tell you."

"Ya see? You always know exactly what to say, Robin." Little John took a deep breath to clear his lungs of pain. "Do you ever think I'm just a small man in a big man's body?"

"...Of course not." Robin didn't think he was lying.

"Well, I do."

"Well, I don't know what to say to change your mind."

"Even when you don't know what to say, you know what to say…"

"I wish I was as flattering as you, Little John."

Little John kept standing there perfectly still with Robin in his arms. He thought about what the boys from back home would think of him if they saw him there, completely naked, hugging another completely naked man a fraction of his size, all the while both were crying in the moonlight at the river's edge in a public space. He forced himself not to care; he knew what was really going on, and they weren't there.

"Goddammit, I'm sorry I list my damn mind, Rob."

"You have nothing to apologize for, Johnny. I'm the one who should be sorry for making my closest friend feel betrayed."

"You and me gotta look out for one another. I love ya, brother."

"I wouldn't look out for you if I didn't feel the same way, Little John."

Little John grabbed Robin by the arms and torso and held him out at arms' length to get a good look at him. "Welp… that just happened!"

"I won't tell the boys back in Tennessee if you don't tell Marian!" Robin joked.

"Honey, you know I'm not one to kiss and tell!" Little John said, and the two of them chuckled; it was a laugh they both badly needed.

Little John put Robin down, but let go before Robin - whose legs were half-asleep by this point - fully found his footing. Robin stumbled backward and landed sitting on his own tail, which bent at a painful angle.

"Aaargh!" he yelped as he pursed his eyes shut and turned his head to the ground.

"Oh, shit, Rob, are you okay? My bad, man."

Robin opened his eyes and slowly started raising his eyes toward John, but stopped when he fixed his eyes on Little John's belly button - but from John's vantage point, he couldn't tell what Robin was looking at. Robin felt like he could use another laugh.

"Oh, so that's what the old meat and veg look like!" Robin quipped. "First time laying eyes upon them after all these years - I never thought they'd look like that!"

Robin rolled over laughing as Little John pieced together what he said.

"Oh, why, you little-!" Little John cut himself off as he picked Robin up under the armpits again, this time from the backside. He swung Robin to his left - as Robin himself was still having a laugh and a half - and then to his right, letting go at just the right exit angle to send the guffawing fox right into the deepest part of the creek.

Robin's laugh blurred into a holler of exhilaration while he was sailing through the air, and he landed with a satisfying splash. After a second, he came up for air, spit out some water, let out a whoo-hoo! And immediately started laughing again.

"You son of a bitch!" Little John jeered playfully as he grabbed the bar of soap and started wading his way into the water. "Cheeky little bastard!"

"That was actually quite fun!" Robin remarked. "We ought to try that some more! I'm just sorry I can't return the favor! Heh… My, why haven't we done that before?"

"I'm assuming you mean getting tossed in the water."

"Oh, no, Little John, of course I'm referring to the naked hugging and crying!"

"Anything to see you smile, buddy," Little John quipped as he used his giant paw to splash the still-smirking fox square in the face. And for a time, it seemed like all was well again between them.

It was back to the task at hand: get themselves clean and get back to safety. They tossed the bar of soap back and forth as they took turns lathering up different chunks of their body. The only issue was that the soap was dissolving quickly after every time it made incidental contact with the water.

"Man, this stuff is murder on my fur," Little John muttered. "We shoulda thought to bring the body-wash stuff with us."

"I certainly didn't think we'd need to take an emergency bath, otherwise I would've brought the shampoo!" Robin answered. "But now we know for next time."

Neither of them wanted to think too much about how many 'next times' of running away to a temporary hiding place there would be - or whether the last of the next times would be followed by a return to normal life, a vacation in prison, or a trip to the grave.

"Hey, Robin, serious question: should we start recruiting again?"

"Recruiting for our little army? I wouldn't be against it, but how would we go about it? Just asking anybody who seems friendly? Or putting an ad in the personals?" Robin was moving up toward the bank to start covering his lower body without completely melting their only soap. "I'll be the first to admit that I got lucky the first time finding four people to join me in just a few months."

"Well, one of them was grandfathered in."

"How do you mean, Little John?"

"...Your brother," Little John answered as gently as he could.

"Ah. I see your point. But recall that I didn't want him to join us at first. But he insisted. I didn't want him risking his own life when he was just a lad."

"You were just a kid, too! You were, uh…" Little John counted on his fingers. "Twenty-four? And a half?"

"Ah, where does the time go?"

"Hey, do you think Skippy and the Turtle are out of juvie yet?"

"Johnny, even if they were, I think I've just established that I was barely comfortable recruiting a university-aged kid; I wouldn't want to drag an actual minor or two into this."

"How old would those boys even be at this point? I know Skippy'd just turned seven when we met him, but I don't remember how many years ago that was."

Robin was silent for a second, as he had to do the mental math, too. "I remember it was after we lost Will. I remember taking a shining to Skippy because I thought, 'I failed my first protégé, but maybe this is my chance to learn from my mistakes.' It must have been the summer after."

"Honestly, that's another thing about you I'm jealous of. I wish I was that good with kids. But I'm afraid that I'd just seem creepy."

"Little John, you're overthinking it."

"No the hell I'm not. Have you not pieced together how big 'stranger danger' is over here? Are you aware of the 'pedo-bear' stereotype?"

"My lord, you Yanks are a paranoid bunch…"

"You freaking Europeans aren't paranoid enough," Little John grumbled, not really joking. "...It was really nice of you to give that kid your bow and arrow, you know."

"Oh, it's not like those were my only ones. Or even my best."

"Still, I remember that kid following us around that summer. He admired you."

"And then that fall came, and we were so close to getting Prince John to resign out of fear for his life, but then… that thing happened in New York, security was increased everywhere, people started cautiously trusting their government again because they had nobody else to trust to protect them…"

"...and they arrested a couple of second-graders who were trying to copy us," Little John finished for Robin, who was getting visibly hot and bothered by the recollection. "I remember that now. That was four years ago, then. The boys would be eleven. Ish. Skip's birthday was in the spring, right?"

"We didn't just lose our momentum; we lost our hope for the future in those two lads," Robin said as he squeezed the bar of soap, which was now waterlogged and malleable.

"Chill, buddy. There's nothing we can do about it now."

"Maybe I shouldn't have given Skippy the bow and arrow for his birthday. He probably would have been content with just the hat." Robin was aggressively scrubbing his thick tail with the soap, which now was a very strange shape which had no name. "But in that spot, I would have given him the bow a thousand times out of a thousand, because zero times out of a thousand would I expect that those bastards would be so mean-spirited as to throw actual children in jail."

"And I believe that," Little John affirmed, waiting patiently for Robin to pass the soap back over. At this point, they were only about knee-deep still in the water. "You're a good man, Rob."

"Aargh, not as good as I'd like to be," Robin mumbled glumly and passed John back the soap, which was down to a flimsy little strip.

"Oh, c'mon, Rob, save some of the soap for me. I've got more surface area than you do!"

"But you don't have a body part that drags on the dirty ground so often you don't even feel it anymore," Robin corrected.

"Hey, do you remember what Skippy and the Turtle's real names were?" Little John wondered aloud. "I feel like the raccoon was something with a 'T', like 'Tommy the Turtle' or something?"

"'Toby,' 'Toby in the turtleneck sweater'. Skippy's name was… was…" Robin realized he was completely stumped. "Did we never actually hear his name? He called himself 'Skippy,' his sisters and his mum called him 'Skippy'... his real name couldn't have been 'Skippy,' could it have been?"

"It better not have been!" Little John quipped, "His mom seemed like such a nice lady; I'd hate to find out she named her kid 'Skippy' - that'd be child abuse!"

Robin let out one sharp laugh at that, and John bellowed one out to join him. This was a bad decision.

"I knew I heard people over here!" hollered a voice sounding like it sounded like a pubescent boy.

"Huh!?" Little John spit out, but Robin elbowed him in the gut.

"Shh!" Robin hushed. "Get down-!"

But before they could submerge themselves, a teenage hyena wearing a backwards baseball cap ran around the bend in the riverbank and came to a halt as soon as he laid eyes on them.

"Oh-! They're fucking naked!" the boy shouted as he made a dramatic display of shielding his eyes from what he'd already seen.

Robin and John both bent over and covered their nether-regions with their paws.

"Do we run, or do we negotiate?" asked Little John, showing none of his earlier enthusiasm for trying his hand at leadership.

Robin answered by example: "Oh-oh, don't worry, man!" he called out to the hyena, trying his best at putting on an American accent to hide one of his most unique denotative qualities; to conceal his other most notable attribute, he tried to shove his tail under the water, so that he might pass for a coyote or a small wolf instead of a large fox. "W-we're just taking a dip!"

"Kevin, what's going on? Who's there!?" came the voice of a teenage girl from somewhere beyond the hyena.

"I told you that I heard splashing and voices coming from somewhere!" the one called Kevin answered the girl.

"Don't worry, buddy, we don't mean no harm!" Little John tried his hand at civil discussion. "We'll give ya yer space if you give us ours - we were about to leave soon anyway!"

"Kevin, let's go!" the girl shouted, sounding rather distressed. Robin and John still couldn't see her.

"Stay back, Nazz! I'll fend off these nutjobs!" the hyena screamed back at her.

"Should we run for it now?" Little John whispered nervously to Robin.

"They might not know who we are!" the fox whispered back. "We mustn't do anything that might incriminate ourselves!"

"Look out!" Little John shouted as he grabbed Robin by the elbow and yanked him toward himself, tumbling him into the water.

Splash. The rock the hyena had thrown may or may not have successfully hit Robin where he'd been standing, but it was much too close for comfort.

"Get out of here, you faggots!" the hyena yelled just in time for Robin to pull his head back above the water and hear him. Kevin tossed another rock, but in the dark of the night, they quickly lost sight of it. It was soon rediscovered, however.

"Gah!" Little John roared as he clutched the spot on his stomach that was hit. He was lucky that it didn't hit a foot or so lower. He turned to Robin sitting on the creek's shallow bed and spat, "You were saying!?"

"Oh, sod this!" Robin swore as he scrambled out of the water and onto the shore. John stumbled ashore behind him as quickly as he could. Unfortunately, their stuff was on the same bank as the hyena boy, a few dozen yards away.

"Get the fuck out of here!" the hyena shouted.

"Kevin!" the one known as Nazz pleaded.

"Get a room, fags!" Kevin screamed.

"Johnny, guard me while I get my bow together!" Robin begged as he scurried to find his accessories in the dark. "Actually, no - grab our clothes!"

"Are we fighting or running?" Little John was understandably confused.

"The first one while we're doing the second one!"

"This ain't your place to go fucking skinny dipping!" the hyena yelled right before another rock plunked John right in the sternum. This one got him down on one knee for a second.

"Stay down for a second, Johnny!" Robin said. "I need a clear shot!" In the slim moonlight, Robin pulled back and released his arrow, hoping this wouldn't be the first time in years that he'd miss his target.

The hyena, also blinded by the darkness, could barely even see the arrow coming, and might not even have realized that it came by if not for the distinct ripping sound he heard coming from the crown of his head.

"My hat!" the hyena cried as he felt the top of his head and realized his favorite cap had been split cleanly in two. Just as the fox intended.

"I'll let you believe that I missed high if it makes you feel better about yourself!" Robin jeered, no longer even trying to conceal his unmistakable accent.

"Kevin, what's going on!? I can't see you!" Nazz shouted.

"Is that a fucking bow and arrow!?" Kevin yelled.

"Well, it's just a bow now, but I can present you with another arrow if you insist on hanging around!" Robin called. Meanwhile, Little John, who didn't have a damned clue where his quarterstaff was nor what he could do with it if he could find it, made due with the tools at his disposal.

"Yeah, and you wanna see even more primitive weaponry!?" Little John bellowed as he hurled one of Kevin's rocks right back at him, sailing through the narrow gap between the hyena's arm and his torso. Startled, the hyena hit the dirt.

"What the fuck is wrong with you!?" Kevin cried.

"Nice aim, Little John!" Robin praised quietly.

"Uh- thanks, Rob," John answered, not daring to mention that he hadn't been trying to miss on purpose. Little John turned his attention back to Kevin the hyena and answered the question asked of him: "What's wrong with you, kid? Don't you realize we were here first!?"

Robin set up another arrow, stepped into a well-lit spot so that Kevin could more clearly see him, and took aim, hoping he wouldn't have to release it this time. "Please don't make me waste another arrow on you, lad; these things are so hard to come by!" Robin pleaded smarmily. His smile didn't last for long.

"I-I know who you are!" the hyena murmured. He said it very quietly, but Robin and John could hear it perfectly.

"Wh-what?" Little John stammered, not knowing what else he could do.

"I-I… You're real!"

"Damn straight, we're real!" Little John boasted, not yet understanding the gravity of what he'd just affirmed.

"Johnny, grab our stuff and head back to the safehouse. I'll hold him off."

"I'm not leaving you here alone with this asshole kid!"

"The grab our stuff and get ready to head back to the safehouse while I hold him off."

"Right-o!" Little John got to business while Robin made sure the kid didn't move a muscle towards them.

"You-you're the outlaws who live in the woods!" said Kevin.

When Robin heard that, his entire body shook a little. He almost lost his grip of the arrow.

"I don't want to hurt a kid," Robin spoke stoically, "but asking you nicely to leave doesn't seem to be working."

Little John heard Kevin's epiphany as well. He picked up the pace and started grabbing all the clothes he could find and bundled them up in his jacket.

"My girlfriend was just telling me about you today!" Kevin declared shakily. "You w-were the ones who…"

He trailed off, and it wasn't clear if he was going to finish his thought. But Robin was concerned for whatever might be coming next.

Fwhoosh! Swish. Fwhoop!

Robin was just as shocked as Kevin or John that he had released the arrow. He was able to point it down at the last second, and it hit the ground in front of Kevin's face, bounced off the sand and went sailing over his head. Kevin jumped up and took off running.

"Kevin!?" Nazz cried one last time, the location of her voice still a mystery to the Merry Men.

"Okay," Robin said with his voice uncharacteristically quivery, "I'm ready to go. Are you ready to go?"

"I'm ready to go!" said Little John.

"Then let's go!" And off they went.

They ran all the way back down to the log bridge, all the while hearing Kevin and Nazz calling out to one another in the ever-furthering distance, but they did not pay attention to what they were saying. They only slowed down when they got to the bridge, needing to go slowly in the dark across the log to make sure they wouldn't fall into the water and make another loud splash that would betray their present geography.

"So," Robin began as he caught his breath while tiptoeing across the log; ever the extrovert, talking to people could often help him concentrate. "This is… twice today that… some kids have mistaken us for a gay couple. Is… is that an American thing, or just a middle-class suburban thing?"

"I… I woulda…" - Little John, naturally, was more puffed out than Robin was after their sprint - "I woulda said that's just a teenage boy thing. But… to be fair, we were naked this time."

"Not to invoke some unpleasant memories, but… I thought that skinny dipping was… a popular pastime over here, though?"

"Yeah, if you live in a hick town like I did."

"I see your poi-"

"Hey, who's there!?" shouted a gruff voice in the distance. It was a voice they'd heard before, but not a voice they'd heard recently.

"Huh?" came the faint voice of Kevin the hyena.

"They're trespassing!" came a much more familiar voice with a Southern drawl and an erratic speaking pitch. "It's your jurisdiction, get 'em!"

"No way," remarked Robin upon recognizing the voice.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Little John moaned.

"Stand down!" the gruff voice hollered.

"Kevin?" called Nazz again.

"I got 'em, Sheriff!" came a slightly smoother voice. This one put the pieces together: this speaker was County Deputy Sheriff Goldthwaite, and the other voice had been Nottingham County Sheriff Elkins.

"Crap, let's run!" Robin commanded, and he was about to take off before he realized Little John was in no hurry.

"Hold up, Rob. We're safe to stop here for a second. I need to catch my breath some more. Plus we might wanna hear this."

That's when the screaming started.

Two of them were screams trying to inject fear and assert dominance, trying to command authority and demand submission. Another scream was a pained scream, shouts and cries of infliction and oppression that contained no actual syllables nor sentences and yet told a thousand words. Yet another scream was a mixture of shrieks of terror and pleas for mercy:

"Stop, stop! What are you doing!? Stop! Let him go! He didn't do anything!" these shouts were coming from the girl called Nazz.

Most surprisingly, however, were the shouts of two others in near-harmony with hers. The loud jeers of Chief Woodland and the quieter shouts of Deputy Nutzinger. They too urged the County officers to stop whatever it was they were doing:

"Elky! Goldy! Elky, Goldy, stop! Stop!"

"Sheriff, Deputy! Stop! Stop right now! This isn't necessary!"

Little John and Robin stood at the banks, naked, wet, cold, and growing increasingly confused.

"I… don't want to hear this anymore," Little John confessed.

"Er, just as a point, I was serious about needing to restock on arrows," Robin noted soberly as he led the way to their home away from home.

The two kept some pep in their step as they navigated their way back to their makeshift hotel, but they didn't go faster than a quick walking pace. To be polite, they may have told you and I that they travelled slower because they weren't entirely sure of the way back and didn't want to run in the wrong direction. But the reality was that they knew the only ones who would have an interest in doing them harm were, evidently, preoccupied. Even when they heard the sirens of emergency vehicles coming from the major roads miles away, they would come to a complete stop and follow the sound with their ears, waiting for it to pass them by before they continued making their way back to the junkyard in no discernable hurry.

When they returned to the van, it still smelled like gravy, and Little John thought his nose now also detected hints of buttered toast.