A/N: Your Herculean feats of patience are much appreciated, gentle readers. And special thanks to CreepingMuse, who has kindly but firmly insisted I write more of this painful fic.
Blind
The trinket worked: Abbie and Ichabod recovered Katrina (at which point the damn thing literally melted out of his hand and soaked, like blood, into the ground). Jenny is doing better. Captain Irving's trial is taking forever, and meanwhile the new Captain is a piece of work.
Ichabod and Abbie still fight the good fight, but the rest of the time Katrina and Ichabod are inseparable. They've set up house in the cottage. She does that thing where she touches him all the damn time.
She's nice. It's fine.
Three days, the doctor said, and then Abbie can see again. Three days with eyes totally bandaged. Any less and she risks permanent blindness. (Three days minimum, he said, but she is ignoring that last word.)
Jenny volunteered to play nursemaid. First thing she did was stop on the way home from the hospital - left Abbie in the car like a damn pet - and got her a blindfold. Laughed like a loon about it. Hilarious. But it's actually a nice little velvet thing, soft, fastens in the back. It's probably merchandizing crap that came out with that 50 Shades book, but Abbie doesn't even care. It's better than feeling like she's still in the hospital, scraping her fingers against bandage tape again and again.
She can't distract herself, though. Can't read, can't Netflix binge watch. She's stuck seeing the explosion in the tunnel on endless loop. How she pushed Crane behind her to shield him the moment they both heard the sizzle of the burning wick, and then like a dumbass turned her face back just as the dynamite exploded. She sees it billow out at her, red and black and orange and blue. Left her with a few scratches, a wicked sunburn, and a short vacation from sight.
Katrina stopped by her room at the hospital to report that Crane sprained his wrist and has a hairline fracture along his shin. No doubt Katrina is taking excellent care of her husband in their lovely little rustic cottage for two. Jenny says he tried to visit on his way out, but the doctor was in the middle of covering her eyes with gauze.
Jenny sucks at helping. She forgets Abbie can't see and after two days, Abbie's over reminding her. Stop fuming, Jenny tells her. What exactly does Jenny expect Abbie to do instead, mop the damn floor? Repaint the kitchen? Learn to crochet? How about target practice, a little research, even some paperwork?
Jenny has no idea how to assist a blind person but in her defense, Abbie sucks at being a blind person, so they're a pair. And now that Jenny's getting bored, she keeps inventing reasons to go out and leave Abbie here, alone.
Twelve steps to the bathroom. Eight steps to the kitchen. Twenty two hours until this is over.
It's true, turns out, that when one of your senses goes to shit, the others get sharper. It happens pretty quickly. So Abbie hears footsteps outside before the gentle, somehow apologetic knock on the door. "Miss Mills?"
Huh. The cute couple, probably with a basket of muffins she won't be able to find in her kitchen once they finally leave. "Door's open, I think."
Abbie hears the squeal of the hinges – how did she never notice how noisy they were before these last few days? – and then two footfalls. Just him. Huh.
"Are you in pain?" Ichabod asks, his voice low and serious.
Abbie shakes her head. "Nope, you?"
Crane's exhalation is its own answer, but he continues. "I have of late become enamored of Advil. Truly marvelous, your many anesthetics." Yeah. What must it have been like to be wounded when he was a soldier? Abbie doesn't want to think about it, but now, with nothing else to see, it spools out like a movie: festering wounds, amputations… "Miss Jenny tells me the bandages will be removed tomorrow?"
The revelation is a small, annoying stab. "You've been talking to Jenny?"
"Exchanging text messages, to be exact."
"Well, aren't you tech savvy," she teases. It comes out harsher than she meant it to, but she leaves it there. So hard to judge social interaction without functioning eyeballs.
He overlooks her gentle dig, earnest as the family dog. "I hoped for news of your health but when I called, I was taunted endlessly by your invitation to leave a voice mail."
It's this, the way he means well, that begins to soften her. "I turned my phone off at the hospital," she starts to explain.
"Your injuries are my fault. If I hadn't -"
Abbie interrupts, unwilling to let him take this on. "Nope. Nothing happened that I wouldn't do again in a heartbeat. Except for turning back around. I wouldn't mind a second shot at that."
"I should have shielded you from the blaze."
She shakes her head. "Then you'd be watching the inside of your face instead of me. And how's that fair? Today, my injuries suck worse than yours. Tomorrow, it will be the other way around. I mean, I'm oh-for-two for digging out of a grave with nothing but my fingernails, so."
"Well," Crane says, still stubbornly hoarding the blame.
They could spar over this for hours. "So where's the missus?" Abbie jabs instead. She's gotten so used to Katrina draped at Crane's side, stroking his forearm, petting his shoulder, a sour smile plastered on her face. It almost feels weird that she's not here. Almost.
She can just about hear his face go blank with uncertainty. "She asked to come along, but I thought…"
"Yeah, no, it's good." At least he knows that much, that at her most vulnerable she'd hate to have visitors. Especially Katrina. Not that she's not a nice person. She is: extremely nice, way too nice, irritatingly nice.
"And, selfishly, I wanted you all to myself."
Abbie's breath stops. What the hell does that mean? For the first time since the accident, she seriously considers tearing her bandages off early. If she could see his face, she'd know right away how to take that. It's such an intimate thing to say, but they are different now, since Katrina came back. Meticulously platonic. No wanting what she cannot have. (Almost none.) And obviously he's been otherwise occupied, with Sugar and Spice at his beck and call. So he can't mean what her suddenly twisting guts hope he means. Because guts are idiots that jump to stupid conclusions.
Before she can exhale, Abbie hears the creak of a cane, then a heavy step toward her. "And to that end, I come bearing gifts."
Still stuck, she lunges for the kinds of light quips they once shared. "Art supplies? Crossword puzzles?" It's too jagged. She's been failing at this sort of thing for months now.
"A book."
"Now, that's just mean."
"How little you esteem my intentions." A few more hobbling steps and the couch shifts under his weight. "I shall read. You need only listen."
The offer immediately sets her on edge. "Uh, I don't think so."
"Whyever not? You are temporarily without vision, and I have -"
"Because it's weird," she interrupts. This can't happen. There is peril down this road. Unpredictable intimacy. Variables she can't account for.
"It's not. How is it weird?"
He has to be taking up his entire half of the couch plus most of Abbie's. As far as she's concerned, the couch has shrunk to the size of a narrow ottoman. Abbie scooches up against the armrest. She scrambles for an excuse to turn him down; she absolutely cannot use it could lead to groping. "Look, I'm not a child," she tells him. "I can read for myself. Usually."
"Are children the only happy beneficiaries of the well-spoken book? In my time, friends and family often read to each other of a fine evening. If I may boast, my dramatic readings of the newest tales or poetry did garner praise. I promise not to disappoint."
"I'm just." It could lead to groping. "Not really in the mood."
Abbie hears the fabric of Crane's great coat rustle. What she really needs to hear is the sound of him leaving.
"But thanks anyway."
Crisp pages flip beside her. Crane clears his throat. "I dismiss your rejection on the grounds that it is born of inexperience. Further, I forgive you for being cantankerous. Impatience and melancholia are not uncommon in the recuperating invalid."
Abbie laughs in spite of herself. It's a bit hollow, but it lifts a weight. "Gee, thanks."
"Ovid," he announces, "in Sir Samuel Garth's poetic translation."
And he's back, Professor Crane, bringing the boring since 1750. "How 'bout we just talk?"
Miss Mills turns to him, squaring her slight shoulders in his direction for the first time since he stepped inside her close rooms. How is it that, without sight, she appears so much smaller? Ichabod has grown accustomed to the way her presence expands to fill every inch of space. He wonders if she has any notion of this effect.
Talking freely would be unwise. Talking is exactly what they have avoided since they found Katrina. Since Miss Mills found Katrina, if he's honest. For it is she who supplied the ambition, the drive to see the plan through, she who pushed him, oblivious to the conflict brewing beneath his industrious facade. How could he feel this – this spark, this longing – for another, when his faithful wife languished behind a demonic veil?
Once they procured the amulet, he had above all required time to think. But Miss Mills was relentless, and how could he ask her to pause? How could he explain himself? Please, Miss Mills, if you would wait a few months and also please kiss me once or twice so I could decide whether to abandon my wife whose only hope for rescue is me? Preposterous. In the end, he let the rescue unfold, torn but grateful.
And then, as he feared, Miss Mills drifted from him. Katrina required his instruction, care, and above all reassurance, and Miss Mills soon became more independent even than when they first met. Certainly she was at her most scrupulously circumspect. The two witnesses spoke only of their mission or of her work at the precinct. The few mentions Ichabod made of his wife caused palpable tension between them. Katrina attempted to reach out to Miss Mills, her generous heart brimming with gratitude. But for every meal the three of them enjoyed together, Ichabod refused a dozen. Spooning soup to his lips while seated between them, making inevitably stilted conversation, was nearly intolerable.
No, Ichabod suspects just talking could only lead to complication, which is why he has brought a safe, predetermined script for their time alone. "I assure you, Ovid's stories will be a balm for you during this trying interval."
Crane isn't budging and, as ornery as she could be if she let herself, she'd rather not hurt his feelings. "I bet. Fine, go ahead."
Ichabod clears his throat and begins. "Of bodies changed to various forms, I sing…" The words are familiar on his tongue. As he reads the elegant English, he recalls stammering through the original Latin while still a child in his father's study. Savor it, his father insisted. This is the world's most precious poetry.
Ovid recounts the creation of the world, the transformation of dirt and light into paradise and love. Ichabod wants to interject comments on the nuance of the translation, the influence of the crown on even the most innocent word choice. But it is more pressing to lull her from resistance to ease with the inevitable rise and fall of Garth's iambic pentameter. And so he reads on.
Crane's voice isn't bad on its own, when he's not warning her of something coming or shouting instructions across the field of a fight or complaining about how the founding fathers didn't mean for everything to go to shit this way. No, his voice is good. Good for reading. When he's speaking nearly meaningless words in a regular rhythm, it goes low and warm. Like a caress.
And now, surrounded by his ardent baritone, her mind veers exactly in the direction it is not supposed to go, imagining it closer, just this side of a whisper. She can almost feel his breath against her ear, his arms sliding around her waist, his hands spread wide to anchor her against him. The words make no difference, and she's not following them anyway because that voice, amber and now nearly boiling, has her sinking into a full blown fantasy in which Crane is removing her clothes. Slowly. While speaking. His lips hover beside her ear, brushing it, tickling it with T and P and F as his hands, his very good hands slide up under her shirt, down her jeans, exactly and immediately where they are needed most. His voice teases but his hands are all business…
Until she feels his very real hand on her knee, hot and tentative. "Miss Mills, is something wrong?"
Her knee is bouncing a mile a minute.
And dammit, his hand on her actual jeans, alone with him here in a cocoon of darkness, sends her mind right back to their night together in the cabin, lying curved against him, his one free hand breathtakingly wise. She freezes under his palm. "What? Um."
Ichabod does not lift his hand. Instead he stares at the fabric beneath it. The sensation of the worn weave under his fingertips launches him back to the cabin. His fingers curve to encase her knee. They find the seam, bent and strained along the outer edge of her leg, and now he can think of nothing but another seam once under his fingertips.
Ovid, forgotten, falls to the cushion, then the floor.
"You okay?" Abbie startles at the noise. "Was that the book?"
Crane takes a deep breath but doesn't lift his hand. "It was."
"What, no more story time?" She did not mean for it to come out so nakedly intimate.
He doesn't answer right away and though she doesn't want to spook him, she can't help herself. She hovers her own hand above the back of his, feeling the warmth grow between them.
He stretches his long fingers out and up, capturing the tips of her fingers between his own and drawing them down into his palm. He clutches her hand with an intensity that surprises them both.
"Abbie."
"Don't," she says. But she doesn't pull her hand away.
His mind grapples – what does she mean me not to do? – but the confusion is gone almost before it registers. She tightens her grip on his hand and he knows. Don't let go.
They sit, side by side, hands bound by fervent agreement. Ichabod, silently desperate to remain in this hopeful uncertainty as long as he can, finds himself turning, sliding his other hand between her hair and her neck, to pull her –
She feels the couch shift with his weight, then his fingertips in her hair. She leans deliberately away from them. "You're married. We are not doing this."
"Abbie, please –"
"We're not." Still, her grip on Crane's hand is fierce.
His free, nearly adulterous hand falls to his lap. "What would you have me do? Direct me, I beg you. I cannot trust my own self."
She shakes her head, stunned by the sudden shock of finally addressing this after so long. "The blind leading the blind," she murmurs at their clasped hands.
"Do not think to distract me with cleverness. I am earnest." They are both speaking so softly that a person standing three feet away might not hear them.
"So am I." She lets go then, smoothing her palm over the back of his hand, sensitizing every inch of skin. "Okay, rules then. You can't touch me. I can't handle – you just can't."
But she strokes his hand with her fingertips anyway, gently scratching spirals with her nails into the hair at his wrist. His breath trembles.
"You can't have me all to yourself. Can't even want to have me all to yourself."
His lips fall open to protest, but Ichabod steadies himself. "If you do not share my -"
"Of course I share it," she confesses. Then, more gently: "That's what the rules are for."
"And yet the rules as stated only pertain to me." The strain is too great to resist his natural impertinence. "What rules shall you obey?"
"Absolutely no time alone with you. Obviously." Abbie lifts his hand, heavy but pliant, and turns it palm side up, then threads her fingers between his. She doesn't hold his hand now, just slips her skin along his, back and forth in long, hypnotic strokes. "Can't let you read to me like that again, ever."
It is such a relief to say these things out loud that she ignores the alarm warning her to shut the fuck up. "I can't let myself imagine your touch at the nape of my neck," she goes on, reckless, glad she can't see his reaction. "Or what your lips feel like. What it would be like to have you hold me, to have you under me. How you would arch up to meet me. What you sound like when you come."
Crane is breathless. "Continue and I'll show you here and now."
She laughs, too loud, and clutches his hand. "That escalated quickly."
He could kiss her. Now. He could do it; the shallow tremors of her breath betray her longing as clearly as her rules do. He could slip his fingers around the nape of her neck just as she desires, press his lips to hers until her head fell back into his palm.
And what, finally, will come of it? After they are both drowsily sated – what happens then?
The couch shifts as Crane's weight leans away from Abbie. She hears him lift his book from the floor.
"Are you leaving?"
"I must," he returns, the words thick with guilt.
"I shouldn't have said… what I said. I'm sorry, it was. I just." What can she possibly say? She knew what she was doing. And he was too kind to stop her. Too kind, or too horrified.
He stands, leaning into the creak of his cane. Abbie feels his absence like a chill. "It's nothing I haven't contemplated myself," he reminds her, but he's still leaving.
She hears the doorknob click and twist, the hinges whine, and the whole fucked up situation explodes inside her gut. She takes two desperate steps into the empty chasm between the couch and the door. "Goddamnit. It's just your dumb body wanting to fuck and my dumb body being totally up for it. It's just sex, Crane. It shouldn't tear us apart."
His voice is a million miles away. "Is it just that? Is it not also your heart, given almost without your consent? My body would eagerly follow, 'tis true, but Abbie: it is my heart that longs for you. My wretched heart, entrusted with the greatest riches yet greedily hungering for more."
And then he's gone, and Abbie listens to every footstep until there's nothing more to hear.