Unclasp a secret book, Slings and Arrows, for lucifuge_5
Title: Unclasp a secret book
Author: llassah
Recipient: lucifuge_5
Fandom: Slings and Arrows
Characters/Pairing: Anna Conroy, Ellen Fanshawe, Geoffrey Tennant, Nahum
Prompt request: Anna-centric fic
Word Count: 1000
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Thank you so so much to catwalksalone for a sterling beta and handling my erratic grasp of tenses.
Summary: A morning in the life of Anna after the series ends. The more things change...
She has an unusually enthusiastic toaster, which catapults the bread onto the worktop. On some days, the toaster manages to get it onto the plate and it looks as smooth and rehearsed as a well-blocked scene, and she feels as if she should dance as she pours the juice or something. She knows it doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but she has never really cared about that. She has a box full of hats taking up half of her tiny living room, and Darren keeps sending her German poetry and strange pictures of kittens and flowers, because he has decided she needs comforting.
*
The breakdown didn’t happen in the gunfire, the breathless crawls and bullets whistling past, or when she had to keep a man with a wound in his thigh from bleeding out with desperate strength in her pressing hands, or even when they cauterised a wound, the heat of the fire on her face, a smell she would never forget-
It was when they were relatively secure, in a deserted cabin, and the photocopier broke, and all of them looked at her. The trajectory she suddenly saw for herself had a clarity that she realised later must have been how Geoffrey sees the world all the time.
The weeks following were full of men in suits, cosy interrogations with cups of tea and clipboards, then a flight to Canada. She went home, went to the Threshing Museum and sat on a bench between a Fordson Major and a Massey Ferguson as the notice-boards showed that within these walls nothing could be unexplainable, and very quietly got her sanity back as she drank apple from a juice box.
*
“Anna, my love, you should act!”
Anna looks at him over the box of hats. “Who quit this time? And I don’t act, I can’t.”
“Have you tried?” he asks, then buries his face back into the cup of coffee he makes for himself every morning and tries valiantly to drink, usually failing. It’s more sludge than coffee, really.
*
Yes, she tried. When she was fifteen. She was good, but she wanted-it was making things work behind the scenes she loved, not other people’s words and gestures. She chose Geoffrey to work for when she was a maternity cover secretary and he was still in college. She chose him when she saw him as Hotspur, in the moment when he was lying on the floor, his uncle’s cane on his neck, pinning him down, and even when he had ostentatiously relaxed under it, he was all tightly coiled, frustrated energy, hot-headed and rude, but so very brave. She wanted to follow him as a soldier wherever he went. Then she slept with the man who played the uncle, gasping in the dark under his rough, callused hands, wanting him to subdue her and not knowing why-a passing phase, thankfully-then in the pillow talk afterwards found out about all the difficulties of putting on a play, mentally doubling them because there were always things the actors didn’t think of. She traced Geoffrey through the newspaper clippings, and followed him when he looked settled without knowing quite why, only knowing that he had something that not everyone had and she wanted to do something she was good at while feeling like she would follow him into battle.
*
Ellen appears dressed in paint-splattered overalls, steals Geoffrey’s cup and gives him her own, considerably nicer, coffee. “You said no to acting?” she says before hello, giving her a quick smile. Anna nods.
“I can’t act. I-”
“You can act, Anna. You merely choose not to,” Ellen tells her, then spreads her arms in response to Geoffrey’s eyebrows. “What? You don’t have the monopoly on surprising insights.” He looks as if he’s going to say something, but doesn’t. Anna hands him the box, which he upends onto the stage and begins scrabbling through, muttering.
*
She found him by the George Rivers’ Galloping Engine, a huge traction engine-or rather, he found her, and was waiting for her, leaning against the wheel, arms folded. She stopped. “You’ve visited here every Thursday for a month,” he said, and she half expected a tirade or a spy narrative, or at the very least a deerstalker reference. He opened his arms, silent, and she had collapsed onto him, all solid warmth and a steady heartbeat.
“Fancy a job?” he said in the café half an hour later. “I figured it was my turn to follow you, to make things easier for you. If- if such a thankless job is easy. But...you need something.”
“At least I won’t be shot at,” she said, and his eyes widened for a split second.
“It’s still a terrible job. No money, and you deserve a hell of a salary. You’re under no obligation to take it.”
“Does the photocopier work?”
“We have no photocopier. We write in wet ink backwards, press pieces of paper together and hope. Ellen’s plan--you know, I think she has an odd kind of genius.”
The journey to Montreal was by car. She discovered Geoffrey’s profound love of Paul Weller, and that he couldn’t change a tire. She had done it in the jungle, and performed the task with quiet efficiency. When she got back into the car, her hands were shaking. Geoffrey gave her an After Eight and hugged her one-armed, stretching out uncomfortably across the seats. They drove on.
*
Nahum comes in, looks at the stage full of hats, picks one up and puts it on, all with steady calmness, then smiles at her. She smiles back, content with this waiting game of mutual kindness and bumping hips and brushing hands. She likes him; he makes her feel oddly contented when he’s in the room. “Is it a toast on plate day?” he asks quietly as Ellen and Geoffrey quarrel over military hats. A drop of water hits her head from the leaking roof. One day she’ll be brave and kiss him. Today it’s enough that they are friends.
“Very much so.”
And it is.
Author: llassah
Recipient: lucifuge_5
Fandom: Slings and Arrows
Characters/Pairing: Anna Conroy, Ellen Fanshawe, Geoffrey Tennant, Nahum
Prompt request: Anna-centric fic
Word Count: 1000
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Thank you so so much to catwalksalone for a sterling beta and handling my erratic grasp of tenses.
Summary: A morning in the life of Anna after the series ends. The more things change...
She has an unusually enthusiastic toaster, which catapults the bread onto the worktop. On some days, the toaster manages to get it onto the plate and it looks as smooth and rehearsed as a well-blocked scene, and she feels as if she should dance as she pours the juice or something. She knows it doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but she has never really cared about that. She has a box full of hats taking up half of her tiny living room, and Darren keeps sending her German poetry and strange pictures of kittens and flowers, because he has decided she needs comforting.
*
The breakdown didn’t happen in the gunfire, the breathless crawls and bullets whistling past, or when she had to keep a man with a wound in his thigh from bleeding out with desperate strength in her pressing hands, or even when they cauterised a wound, the heat of the fire on her face, a smell she would never forget-
It was when they were relatively secure, in a deserted cabin, and the photocopier broke, and all of them looked at her. The trajectory she suddenly saw for herself had a clarity that she realised later must have been how Geoffrey sees the world all the time.
The weeks following were full of men in suits, cosy interrogations with cups of tea and clipboards, then a flight to Canada. She went home, went to the Threshing Museum and sat on a bench between a Fordson Major and a Massey Ferguson as the notice-boards showed that within these walls nothing could be unexplainable, and very quietly got her sanity back as she drank apple from a juice box.
*
“Anna, my love, you should act!”
Anna looks at him over the box of hats. “Who quit this time? And I don’t act, I can’t.”
“Have you tried?” he asks, then buries his face back into the cup of coffee he makes for himself every morning and tries valiantly to drink, usually failing. It’s more sludge than coffee, really.
*
Yes, she tried. When she was fifteen. She was good, but she wanted-it was making things work behind the scenes she loved, not other people’s words and gestures. She chose Geoffrey to work for when she was a maternity cover secretary and he was still in college. She chose him when she saw him as Hotspur, in the moment when he was lying on the floor, his uncle’s cane on his neck, pinning him down, and even when he had ostentatiously relaxed under it, he was all tightly coiled, frustrated energy, hot-headed and rude, but so very brave. She wanted to follow him as a soldier wherever he went. Then she slept with the man who played the uncle, gasping in the dark under his rough, callused hands, wanting him to subdue her and not knowing why-a passing phase, thankfully-then in the pillow talk afterwards found out about all the difficulties of putting on a play, mentally doubling them because there were always things the actors didn’t think of. She traced Geoffrey through the newspaper clippings, and followed him when he looked settled without knowing quite why, only knowing that he had something that not everyone had and she wanted to do something she was good at while feeling like she would follow him into battle.
*
Ellen appears dressed in paint-splattered overalls, steals Geoffrey’s cup and gives him her own, considerably nicer, coffee. “You said no to acting?” she says before hello, giving her a quick smile. Anna nods.
“I can’t act. I-”
“You can act, Anna. You merely choose not to,” Ellen tells her, then spreads her arms in response to Geoffrey’s eyebrows. “What? You don’t have the monopoly on surprising insights.” He looks as if he’s going to say something, but doesn’t. Anna hands him the box, which he upends onto the stage and begins scrabbling through, muttering.
*
She found him by the George Rivers’ Galloping Engine, a huge traction engine-or rather, he found her, and was waiting for her, leaning against the wheel, arms folded. She stopped. “You’ve visited here every Thursday for a month,” he said, and she half expected a tirade or a spy narrative, or at the very least a deerstalker reference. He opened his arms, silent, and she had collapsed onto him, all solid warmth and a steady heartbeat.
“Fancy a job?” he said in the café half an hour later. “I figured it was my turn to follow you, to make things easier for you. If- if such a thankless job is easy. But...you need something.”
“At least I won’t be shot at,” she said, and his eyes widened for a split second.
“It’s still a terrible job. No money, and you deserve a hell of a salary. You’re under no obligation to take it.”
“Does the photocopier work?”
“We have no photocopier. We write in wet ink backwards, press pieces of paper together and hope. Ellen’s plan--you know, I think she has an odd kind of genius.”
The journey to Montreal was by car. She discovered Geoffrey’s profound love of Paul Weller, and that he couldn’t change a tire. She had done it in the jungle, and performed the task with quiet efficiency. When she got back into the car, her hands were shaking. Geoffrey gave her an After Eight and hugged her one-armed, stretching out uncomfortably across the seats. They drove on.
*
Nahum comes in, looks at the stage full of hats, picks one up and puts it on, all with steady calmness, then smiles at her. She smiles back, content with this waiting game of mutual kindness and bumping hips and brushing hands. She likes him; he makes her feel oddly contented when he’s in the room. “Is it a toast on plate day?” he asks quietly as Ellen and Geoffrey quarrel over military hats. A drop of water hits her head from the leaking roof. One day she’ll be brave and kiss him. Today it’s enough that they are friends.
“Very much so.”
And it is.