INTERCOMM: Short Fic - Estranged Bedfellows

[nettlestonenell.livejournal.com]

Title: Estranged Bedfellows
Author: Nettlestone Nell
Word Count: 1647
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Robin, Marian, Robin/Marian
Spoilers/Warnings: This occurs during 1x03 "Who Shot the Sheriff?"
Summary: One little near-deadly throw of a dagger-hairpin (1x01, "Will You Tolerate This?") [sadly, you will never again have a matching set], and suddenly you're contending with outlaws in your bed.
Who have already paid a pillow-talk visit to your #1 enemy (the Sheriff) before dropping in on you, unannounced.
Disclaimer: No one can truly own the legend of Robin Hood, but BBC/Tiger Aspect seem to hold rights to this particular iteration.
Category: Action/Adventure, Drama, Romance; Short Fic (1,001-5k words)

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Estranged Bedfellows

He had not been among Nottingham Castle's bedchamber corridors in more years than he recalled at the moment. But it was the miles, the journeys since then that made that time away seem far longer than it truly had been.

He had nearly forgotten how each corner, each doorway and stonewalled niche held memories of times going as far back as childhood, when his mother and father would often accept the then-Sheriff, Sir Edward's invitations to stay the night following the Council of Nobles' meetings, at his request attending banquets and entertainments rarely seen at Locksley.

How he would (for more years than he would ever have admitted to his fellows, then) take the warm spot on the mattress between them, and feign sleep so that he might listen to them talking, sharing their day with each other above his head, their corresponding hands clasped together in a type of lover's knot meeting atop their son's pillow. That snug, perfect feeling of peace and protection with the two people that loved him best (and that he loved best), both set about him like the strong walls of a citadel. Surely nothing could have broken through that barrier, save Death (as it had), and the inevitable passage of time, spurring on his maturity, rebellion, and thus sporadic conflict with his father.

And there were memories more recent (some of them rather more on the embarassing side), of a teenaged Robin of Locksley attempting to meet up with pretty girls who had caught his eye (or the attention of another of his newly-acquired, rather heightened, senses) among the ladies' corridor.

And then there was this particular set of doors, the largest (and only double set) among the ladies' chambers. The candle sconces on either side lit, he recalled, only when the Lady Marian was present within.

Of course, in that time long past, 'the adolescent' Robin still a more accurate description of him than 'the man' Robin, a set of forbidding castle guards tended to accompany those lit sconces, Sir Edward (like many a noble father) never one to take chances where his daughter's chastity and reputation were concerned.

And beyond those doors, sconces and guards, a lady-in-waiting-type attendant (no trouble to surmount if she proved young enough, still swooning over tales of Courtly Love, keen to act out her part by looking the other way from a stolen assignation), and, perhaps worst of all, the nurse Tabitha, who only very rarely slept soundly enough not to awaken when her young, ladyship charge entertained uninvited guests.

In his youthful ardor he used to envision this gauntlet of obstacles like a maze, himself as the hero in the Labyrinth, waiting at its center no montster, no Minotaur, rather, his reward for stealth, for perseverance and cheek in attempting it: Marian.

No guards visible tonight, wax in the sconces still warm to the touch, their flames only recently snuffed. He slipped in through the left-hand door, surprised to recall so clearly that the right had a tendency to creak on its hinge-ings.

The chamber was large, as he remembered it, divided into three separate spaces, and he had first to navigate the darkened sitting area, littered with comfortable furniture, pillows, and racks and standing frames of needlepoint in-process, to get to the brocade-curtained bed.

The curtains on the bed had not been closed for the night. Only a single taper burned, but it proved more than enough for him to see there was little, if anything, left of chastity in this room. And nothing at all of Marian.

Before him rolled and romped a set of bare backsides, tangling the familiar bed's covers and straining its wooden frame, and when the woman opened her mouth to moan, he recognized her for Lady Midmere. Robin had no chance to identify the, er, 'gentleman' paying her the favor of a nighttime visit before he was sighted by the Lady. Who then cried out in a very different fashion alogether.

After all, it was widely known Lord Midmere was well into his dotage when he had taken her to wife, and he never traveled beyond his fief. Naturally, having been caught en flagrante delicto by an unknown burgular or castle spy was cause to call the guards, to see the prowler done away with before he might spread vicious, unsubstantiated lies about the already precaious state of Lady Midmere's marital fidelity.

Which is what had brought the guards (whom to that point he had so easily eluded) down on his head. But still he could not hold back a grin, thinking of the incommoded Lady Midmere, her interrupted, left-unsatisfied partner, and mostly, how Marian would laugh with him when he told her of it.

The guards in pursuit of him behaved as though they had heard one too many stories of spirits haunting the castle. They avoided dark spaces at all costs. Shied away, even, from closed doors, and further impeded their search and chase by some of them trying to run with the castle's top-heavy iron-clad torches.

His boots brought him to a door with a light still visible underneath it. At this time of night he felt more than a little confident it would prove to be Marian's new chambers. He cracked the door only just enough to accommodate the passing through of his rib cage, sucking in what there was of his belly and bum.

He heard someone start in the bed, but, thankfully, none of the tell-tale noises of hasty intimacy he had encountered when breaking-in upon the adulterous Lady Midmere.

It was Marian, lone in the medium-sized bed, her hair brushed out for evening. Marian, the reward at the center of the Labyrinth. Marian, as always, still yet to be won.

The accommodations here were by far less grand than her former double-doored suite. Rather, something more suited to a single gentleman, a roaming knight of lower degree, or visiting friar. Certainly not where one ought to house the daughter of a lord of Sir Edward's caliber, of the former Sheriff of Nottingham, friend of Old Henry. A daughter who once had the castle entire at her disposal, who in her early adulthood had stood as its chatelaine, its mistress in all things domestic and social.

All this, Robin took in in a brief flash. The anger (the hurt, even) he felt at her sorry treatment under the current Sheriff, though, the slight to her, would last far longer.

Upon seeing that it was him, some intuition Marian possessed clueing her into the trouble that pursued him (though the tromp of boots and clang of guards running in mail had yet to sound in this corridor), she immediately shed her unlaced sleeping shift over her head, leaving only the thinnest (and least-covering) of chemises below.

Quick as lightning, off it had come. Quick as that she had gone from a woman covered in so much gathered fabric she was hard to distinguish from the bedclothes, to a woman, like a half-hidden treasure, revealing flesh in a tempting amount just enough to beckon one's mind to mull over what might also have been bared beneath the sheet she held up so protectively to just under her arms.

He offered her no greeting, beyond that of his eyes. Her only salutation to him was to throw back her heavy coverlet and display what room there was in the bed to hide. Beside her.

"What's this, then?" he asked, referring to her stripping, his voice as low as the castle's resident mice shuffling their padded feet upon the stones.

She answered him in kind. "So that when they come in to search they will not trouble me."

"Not trouble you?" he scoffed, unable to contain his grin. "You must be the only woman alive to expect less trouble the less-dressed you are." His bum was to the mattress. He risked drawing the more-sensitive back of his Crusader's hand along her exposed upper arm, the hairs on his knuckles caressing her milk-white skin, "You do realize most men would consider this an invitation to 'trouble' you?" His eyes flicked up for a moment, away from her skin, but never made it to full eye-contact. Instead he found himself distracted by the proximity of her mouth.

Knowing he had no time to indulge himself further, to see how far she might let him randily trespass before calling him down, he had bundled down next to her, the mattress there sagging under his weight, the support ropes on this bedstead in need of tightening. Better to sink down than show my outline in the coverlet, he assured himself, thankful for the bumpy lay of the elaborately embellished goosedown duvet.

He found himself surprised to note he could smell her, not like the noblewomen of Palestine, heavily perfumed and fond of frangrant ointments (exotic scents he had certainly learned to enjoy). But Marian: clean, from Knighton-boiled soap, light leather from her horse's tack, her hair always holding something of Nottinghamshire's wind.

And as he waited for the guard to come, to learn whether this hurriedly improvised ruse would work, he did not mind the darkness beneath the covers one bit, did not mind that whatever there was of Marian now bared to the sheet he could not see it with his eyes. He had never yet balked at navigating the castle without the assistance of light and sight. He knew it like an old friend. He could think of no reason this moment, this opportunity, would prove any different.

Clomp. Thomp. Jangle. Thud. The door thrust open without a request for permission, shockingly (a lady was housed within, after all), without a courtesy or deference of any kind. Upon sighting Marian, a guard mumbled naught but a rushed, "I'm sorry, my lady." Seeing her state of undress, he hastily reclosed the door, surprisingly troubling her no further.

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Comments

Estranged Bedfellows

[nettlestonenell.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you!
I have a lot of personal issues with this scene. (I like to reconcile myself w/ them by saying that it was filmed very early on, b4 they had their chemistry fully mapped out--where it should be at that point in the show, as well as the eventual progression of their relationship. I mean, there's chemistry there, abundantly! But...)
I feel pretty strongly that Marian would NOT have had Robin in her bed (and her barely clothed) at that point in his return from Crusade, AND I don't think in a million years he would have kissed her (cheek) and she would have accepted it, I mean, it's 10 episodes later b4 they get any onscreen kissing.
And let's not even TRY to explain Robin's so-chipper mood before she calls his mind back to the important matters of the day...
So, please, everyone write something about this scene to further examine what's up with it!
(And let's think about the Middle Ages' first sports bra)