Ahh, this chapter took such a long time to write! I don't know why, I guess it was just one of my slow weeks. It happens sometimes.

Disclaimer: I don't own it!

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After eating, they settled into what passed for a 'routine' on the ship—Robin adopted his position on the ship's rail near the bow facing Acre, Allan tried to find somebody to play dice with amongst the ship's crew or passengers that he hadn't conned yet, and Much was snubbing him and making 'holier than thou' expressions in his direction whether he could see it or not, and John paced restlessly up and down the deck like a bear in a too-small cage.

Djaq had been asked—conscripted was more like it—to help some of the other passengers with sea-related ailments. Sickness, headaches, dizziness, irritability, stomachaches, and sleeplessness all due to a combination of seasickness and the long and boring sea travel. She spent much of the late morning and well into the afternoon making the rounds. The sun was high in the sky overhead by the time she crawled out of the ship's hold and into the fresh air, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the light. She reached her arms over her head and stretched.

It was a little bit warmer and a bit less cloudy here, but there were still big patches of clouds overhead, blocking out the sun for several minutes at a time before the patches of sunshine would appear again.

Her friends were still occupied as they had been when she left, trying to busy themselves to keep from going crazy. She shook her head—poor boys. There were still weeks to go before they made port in Acre, and it was going to be a long, long trip.

The sails were bulged out with the wind, carrying them quickly over the sea. She took a seat on top of a barrel, resting her feet on a cannon and watching the featureless water pass by. Beyond that there was… nothing. No land, no birds, no other ships. No nothing. It felt eerily isolated, knowing that they were this one little wooden ship floating all alone in the vast and empty water, miles and miles away from anything. If something were to happen to them out here, there was no way that anybody would ever know about it.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, for certain.

She shivered, hugging her shawl around herself as she tried to find something else to think about to take her mind off of all of these frightening thoughts. She wrapped the fabric over her arms and her hands and buried her face in it. The shawl smelled like Will, musky and earthy and tinged with the littlest hints of their mixed sweat and the heady smell of sex.

Breathing the scent on her shawl again, she looked around the deck for him. He was sitting nearby, leaning back against the rail and scraping away at a small piece of wood with his whittling knife, occasionally tilting his head back to look at the water passing below, as if he expected the scenery might change. When the sun came out from behind a cloud, his whole face was bathed with the soft light. Every so often he'd turn to look at her and smile that knee-dissolving smile, and she would sigh and swoon and melt into the floor like a teenager with her first crush.

Oh, she was pathetic. Her stomach was doing flips and her heart was fluttering like an excited bird in her chest. All she wanted to do was go over there and snuggle up close to him and get lost again in their own little lovey-dovey world. She was utterly, hopelessly, ridiculously in love with him. In the past, she'd observed this sort of love-struck puppy behaviour before in other people and always rolled her eyes in annoyance at it—she even knew how silly she must have seemed right now, but she didn't even care.

Part of her felt guilty about sharing this new love with him, with Robin so close and with his future with Marian being so uncertain—after all, it was like they were flaunting this carelessly and callously in front of him. Nobody had said anything about her and Will, particularly not Robin, who said precious little these days, but that didn't mean nobody thought it.

Though it was entirely possible that Robin might have been happy for them—had he been himself. Still, she knew it was a good idea to mind themselves around him, lest they upset their friend.

But she couldn't help but swoon over him—he was just too, too beautiful, and it was growing more and more difficult to keep her hands to herself and to keep her mind from wandering into ever more dirty places as she watched him. Every time he tilted his head back, elongating his neck, she felt her heart beat faster. She'd never given much thought to the inherent attractiveness of a man's neck—it seemed a rather strange thing to think of—but watching him look back over the rail again, seeing his long neck exposed again and following those contours all the way down to his collarbones peeking out above his shirt, it was all she could do to keep from going over there and licking that neck right off of him.

She frowned and blinked curiously at herself. 'Lick that neck off of him'? Where did that come from? That was weird, even by her standards.

"Mooning over our carpenter friend, are you?"

She startled, jumping up a few inches in surprise and turning to see who was there. Allan stood next to her, leaning back against a barrel with his arms crossed; a crooked smile sat on his lips and he looked in the same direction she'd been looking, across the deck to where Will was sitting. He then turned to look at her, that lopsided smile turning up at one side.

She smiled, too. "Perhaps—what makes you say that?"

"You couldn't be more obvious if you tried," he teased.

"There is no reason to hide it, is there?" She asked rhetorically. "Everybody knows how we feel about each other. What is the point in trying to keep it a secret?"

"I guess you've got a point there."

Nod.

He nudged her thigh playfully with his elbow; when she looked at him, he winked. "So why not take him back to your cupboard, then?"

Her face tingled with embarrassment. She knew exactly what he meant by that. "I do not think so."

"Why not?"

"I do not like being quite that obvious!"

"So you'll sigh after him like a puppy, but you won't take it somewhere private for a bit of heavy breathing?"

The blush was creeping up her face, right to her hairline and back to her ears. "It is the middle of the day!" She protested.

"So what? Not like there's anything else to do on this little ship for five weeks. You two're lucky—you've got each other, you know? Somebody to entertain you, keep you from going mad this whole time."

He looked almost forlorn there next to her, looking between Will over there and her sitting on the barrel next to him. She knew—he never told her directly, but Allan a-Dale was an easy person to read, once she knew how, and she knew that he'd once had feelings for her; she suspected that maybe he'd once even been in love with her. How deep or genuine that love was, she wasn't sure.

It was no fault of her own that things had worked out the way they did—she had no control over what her heart wanted, after all.

"I would say that I am sorry," she said softly. "But I have not done anything that I should apologize for."

"I know—hey, look, don't worry about me, all right?" He assured her in that cheerfully flippant tone he adopted whenever he was trying to disguise his true feelings. She wanted to reassure him in some way, but no words came.

"I try. But I cannot help feeling…" she trailed off. What did she feel? Pity—guilt? She had no idea.

Maybe once—a long time ago when she was new to the gang and to Sherwood, and he was one of the only people who liked her—she'd felt a little something for him. Perhaps a private little girlish infatuation with his roguish personality, his devilishly cheeky smile, his too-blue eyes—but that was all superficial. Now she felt nothing of that nature for the man. He was her friend, and she loved him dearly, but as her friend and her friend only.

"'Ey, come on, now, I said don't worry about me. It would never've worked out between us, anyway. I'm fickle, I'm flighty. Even if we did get into something, it wouldn't've lasted. I'd've broken your sweet little Saracen heart."

That perky little tone was still thick in his voice, but Djaq knew that, in some strange way, he believed everything that came out of his own mouth. This was his way of making himself accept the reality and move on. She could think of nothing to help—she was normally so good with words, but they failed her this time.

Perhaps she should take a hint from Allan—convince herself of his attitude. Allan was definitely right about one thing: he was fickle. It wouldn't be long before his heart healed, before he found some other target for his affections. He was a passionate sort, in his own way. He just had to point it in the right direction.

When she realized that she hadn't been saying anything, she quickly tried to come up with some words. "Thank you," was all she said.

Pause.

"So are you gonna go take woodboy to the cupboard or not?"

"Allan!" She pressed her cloth-covered hands to her cheeks in renewed mortification.

"What, is there some sort of unspoken rule about not being allowed to make love in the middle of the day?"

She squeaked, buried her face further into her hands and hoped he might take the hint. It was bad enough that he walked in and saw them this morning. Why did he have to keep bringing it up? Although the idea of going back down into that private little cupboard with him again was appealing…

"Feeling a bit shy, are we?" He teased good-naturedly again.

"Yes, if you must know!"

"What are you saying to her?"

Her head shot up from her hands and she looked up at Will, who had left his spot on the deck nearby to come and stand in front of them. She smiled gently; he leaned forward to kiss her forehead. His shirt hung away from his skin as he leaned towards her, revealing the scrapes on his chest. They were slowly getting better, going from raw red marks to scabbing over as they healed. Next to her, Allan's eyes went wide in surprise as he looked down the shirt, and at her, then back at the shirt again with an amusedly surprised expression—he must not have seen those marks in the morning.

"Oh, nothing—just general conversation," he lied, smiling that cheeky 'I-am-full-of-shit' grin that never fooled anybody, and yet always somehow managed to get him out of trouble.

Will raised his eyebrows at their friend and looked over at her.

She raised herself up a little taller in her seat and pressed her cheek to his, her mouth against his ear. "He keeps suggesting that we go off and make use of the cupboard," she whispered.

The eyebrows went higher. He looked back and forth between them and laughed.

They managed to keep themselves under control all day, instead spending the afternoon with Allan, who seemed glad to have the company. Apparently the last of the crew and passengers had caught onto his little con-game and refused to talk with him anymore, which left him quite lonely. The rest of the group was still collectively wary of their thief friend and what might or might not happen next on their journey, and they had every right to be. But she and Will still trusted him, knew the authentic nature of his apologies and his insistence that his work with Gisbourne and the Sherriff was over for good now.

He was so grateful for the company that he even kept his lewd comments about her and Will's previous 'activities' to himself, even though he must have been absolutely brimming with dirty jokes about it. Out of absolutely desperate boredom, Allan even began teaching her to play dice and they began a three-man game. And then he started to show them how to cheat at dice without getting caught.

It wasn't hard to see what this meant, coming from him—Allan had never been one for seriousness or open displays of sincerity, but showing another person the secrets to his slight-of-hand was his way of proving to the two of them, however indirectly, that he was sorry. It made him somewhat vulnerable, broke down the littlest bit of his walls. It was his way of saying, "I'm sorry for what I did. I trust you enough to show you this, and I hope you can trust me again."

It meant a lot, coming from him, but only because she knew what it meant. Chancing a look to the side at Will, she saw the relaxed look on his face; he'd probably figured it out, as well. He was cleverly intuitive like that.

After a while, she realized that she was actually starting to have some fun. Forgotten were the feelings of boredom and fear that came with being on board the ship, and the worry she felt about the newest step in her and Will's budding love. Gone, too, were the feelings of betrayal and uncertainty that had plagued them about their friend for his recent disloyalty, the wariness and the uneasy reservations.

Even Will smiled as they sat together. He, too had forgiven Allan, if only temporarily, for his crime, and he was almost the most entitled to hate him forever for it. Djaq knew that he had thought of Allan as his brother, loved him as such in the absence of his own brother. That betrayal had hurt him more, cut him deeper, than it had any of them. To see the two of them now, sitting together and playing dice, grinning and talking, sharing quiet jokes and laughing together once again—it almost felt like a family reunion.

The warm, fuzzy feeling in her chest almost surprised her. It was comfortable and familiar, warm, safe… content. She knew that feeling—she used to associate it with the quiet evenings the group spent together after a long day, full bellies and contented minds, sleepy and warm and comfortable and happy. She hadn't even noticed that she hadn't felt that way until just now, when it came back and settled over her again.

Closeness. Familiarity.

Love.

This was their family, after all.

"I can't believe you two!"

The sound of Much's distinctly disgusted voice broke her thoughts. He was standing nearby with his arms crossed firmly and that uniquely Much-like condescending frown on his face. That expression that said, "I am on higher moral ground than you for reasons that I shall bring up, reliably, every two minutes until one of us is dead."

She always rather hated that expression, but made herself feel better about it by making him look like an idiot later. It wasn't hard to do.

They all looked up at him from their dice game in the little circle on the floor.

"What can't you believe?" Will asked casually.

Much huffed as only he could. "That you'd just sit here with him like everything's the same as it's always been, like nothing happened! Playing dice with him and letting him con you like that…" he looked at the dice cup like it was some sort of malevolent being.

"Actually, mate, Djaq's winning at the moment—"

"I am not your mate!" The manservant spat, his eyes narrowed and his face turning red with anger. An explosion like that wasn't entirely unexpected from Much, who could be a bit of a histrionic, but it was still a little surprising. He hadn't been showing a great deal of outright hostility to Allan, instead preferring to show his distaste by lording the moral high ground over him.

"Hey, I'm sorry!" He said quickly, adopting a defensive position, sitting back with his hands up and his eyes wide. "I didn't mean to offend."

"You exist—that is offensive enough without you opening your mouth!"

"Much—" Will began.

"Don't you start trying to defend him!" He cut him off. "Just because you're so willing to just pardon the lying traitor doesn't mean that the rest of us are so willing to forgive and forget that easily! Not all of us are inherently trusting like you are!"

Djaq scowled deeply. She tried to hold her tongue—after all, it was best that Allan's past hurts and betrayals were off of their minds now rather than later, while they were trying to find the King and complete their mission in Acre—but she couldn't stand to listen to him spewing venom about him like that.

"Stop that," she told him sternly as she stood to face him, staring him down. "Just because you are still angry does not mean that all of us have to feel the same way that you do. Or does that rule not apply in the other direction?"

Another uniquely Much-like look came over his face, looking both confused and timidly scolded, his cheeks and ears turning red, his mouth opening and closing like a fish's—an expression he wore only when he couldn't believe that somebody had just challenged him. But at least he was quiet, and not yelling about Allan.

She glanced over at her friend, sitting on the deck beside her; he was looking up at her piteously, his relief and gratitude to her written clearly in his face and those big blue eyes. When she smiled, he mouthed the words 'thank you' to her.

"How long is this going to go on?" She continued. "What happens when we get to Acre, or when we go back to Sherwood, and we have to operate as a team? When our success depends on all of us working together, we cannot afford to keep these animosities."

"It also depends on trust," Much growled. "And I, for one, cannot be on a team with somebody that I don't trust!"

Sigh.

"You're acting like a bratty child," Will growled. When he stood up to face him, he towered almost a full head and neck overhead. Much balked. "If you're still this angry, you could do what John's doing and just ignore him, couldn't you?"

The muscles in the older man's jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth, his fists balled down at his sides, and his eyes narrowing in anger. Clearly, he'd expected support for his anger towards Allan, not for them to jump to their friend's defense. For a split second, he looked like he wanted to say something about it, to argue some more, but his expression swiftly changed into one of concern.

"Good lord," he remarked, abruptly adopting a tone of worry. "What happened to you?"

"Huh?" He frowned.

"You're all scraped up!"

When she looked at him and saw the criss-crossed red marks peeking up over Will's shirt and tunic, Djaq felt the blood drain from her face. He'd seen the scratches! Oh, no—she really didn't feel like explaining herself right now, and even Much would be able to figure out where those marks had come from. He was dense but he wasn't completely stupid. The pair of them hadn't come to stay with the rest of the gang last night in their huddled sleeping group, and would probably have been noticed missing. That coupled with their curiously bedraggled appearance at breakfast and the scratches underneath the young carpenter's clothes clearly spelled out only possible conclusion.

Her whole face began to tingle and heat, that familiar feeling of uncomfortable embarrassment creeping up and fizzling into her cheeks.

"Hey, stop that!" She heard Will protest.

Much was trying to have a better look at his injuries, getting awfully nosy and trying to look down his front. Will stepped back sharply and batted his hands away.

"Have you seen this, Djaq?" He asked, sounding almost innocent in the way it clearly hadn't occurred to him where those scratches may have come from.

Unexpected laughter rumbled up in her belly, unbidden, and a short laugh burst from her lips briefly before she stifled it and pretended that it was a cough. To her right, Allan was artfully hiding his own laughter behind his hand and his shirt sleeve; on her other side, her lover was starting to turn a shockingly bright shade of pink while he tried to pull his shirt and cloak around to cover the marred flesh. The poor boy was probably absolutely mortified.

She wasn't thrilled about it, either, but she was starting to think she'd overestimated Much's ability to fit two pieces of a puzzle together.

"It's nothing—" Will began to protest.

"But you're a mess!"

Allan stepped in, trying to help save his friends some embarrassment. "Hey, come on, mate—Much!" He corrected himself quickly before he continued. "I'm sure he's fine."

Much ignored him. "Would you please come and look at this?" He asked her.

"But I feel fine…" he said sheepishly.

She took a deep breath and tried her best to look and sound nonchalant. "If they are just scratches, I do not see any reason to make a fuss over them," she said with a shrug. "Nobody has ever died from a few scratches. He probably did them to himself in his sleep." Oh, this was embarrassing…

The man eyed them both suspiciously, turning his gaze back and forth between them through narrowed eyelids. Djaq didn't like that sort of scrutiny and fidgeted nervously where she stood.

"If you say so, I suppose. You're the doctor…" he trailed off, shrugged, and left the three of them again at peace.

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Oh, goodness. Poor, innocent, clueless Much has no idea what's been going on. For all his 'euphemism' talk, he strikes me as startlingly innocent and a bit naïve.

Hm, a decidedly un-fluffy chapter. I had planned to make it a little longer than this and get into a bit more—ahem—spiciness, but that would have made the chapter get a bit out of control. So I cut it off here, in favour of writing another chapter of pure smuff. You'll see it next week—I hope it doesn't disappoint!

Until then, please read and enjoy. Any kind of feedback is, as always, greatly appreciated.