(FIC) (Evil Dead) "Courting" (1/1) (PG-13) (Ash/Sheila/Arthur)
Title: Courting
Author: rise_your_dead/Missy
Fandom: Evil Dead Trilogy/Army of Darkness
Pairing/characters: Ash/Sheila/Arthur
Disclaimer: Doesn’t belong to me, belongs to Universal/Sam Raimi/Ren Pictures
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,625
Spoiler: General movie spoilers; takes place post-AOD with an alternate ending.
Warnings: (if any or choose not to warn) : mild adult content
Notes: Written for samuraiter for holly_polly! I NEVER THOUGHT ANYONE WOULD REQUEST IN THIS FANDOM BESIDES ME I’M SO HAPPY YOU DID!
Summary: Things go awry, the Promised One does not end up back in his own time, and Sheila has a unique solution for the triangle that develops between them.
For a few months, it was quiet. Too quiet, in Sheila’s opinion. Her life had once been perfectly ordinary and perfectly peaceful but now - post Promised One, her life seemed an empty parade of pretty dresses and fancy banquets. Only one person heard her laments, her bitter wishes for the return of her lost love - her Lord and confessor, Arthur.
Arthur himself missed Ash, though for reasons that had more to do with military prowess than the smell of his skin and the gleam of the sunlight off of his hair. He and Sheila would walk through the slowly-mending land, he trying to console her, she distraught and near to beside herself with sadness.
And then, like a bolt of thunder from God’s own divine hand came the piercing cry. And for miles around, the shouts pealed out like monastic bells, echoing off of the purple mountains and rolling lush hills surrounding the Castle Kandar.
“No! No! DEAR GOD! NO!!!!!”
Sheila pierced her thumb upon her needle and, cursing his name, leapt to her feet, eyes shining. She called to Arthur and he, naturally, was the one who accompanied the reeving party out to pick up Ash at his rock-strewn cave/slumber chamber. When the two of them saw each other again, it was around the armored shoulder of the Promised one, Ashley Williams.
Sheila had been thrilled to see Ash again - to Arthur’s consternation - and they had gone off to a secretive peace for a good many hours. It was Arthur who hung stiffly back, glowering over the worshipful peasant horde whose lives he had managed to save. They were unmanageable in their excitement, and Athur found himself bribing them as if they were children to return to their shops and fields.
Ash, once he had spent a goodly amount of time with Sheila, headed directly to the Wiseman’s room.
Then he punched the old man out.
****
Arthur walled himself away in his war room. At dinner he commanded the lion’s share, and the same of Sheila’s attention, to the point of forcing Arthur to retreat in a snit to his chamber. When a metallic knock sounded upon his door, he knew who it was, and fairly ripped the door from its hinge.
“I thought we were cool,” said Ash.
“We shall be whence thee are sleeping in thy cave abode.”
The resentment remained unspoken, and Ash seized upon it. “I didn’t ask for this to happen! Do you think I wanna be palling around with you rockbiters? I should be eating a Big Mac and watching some Skinnemax by now. Instead I’m choking down gooseberries and trying to figure out how to get rid of Sheila…”
That was enough to get Arthur to charge him. “If ye lay a hand upon the lady’s fair countenance I shall…”
“What, beat me?” Ash smirked. “You ain’t got the guts, tin can,” he declared. But Arthur stared at Ash until he squirmed. “All right - ya forced it out of me. Maybe it isn’t so easy for me to walk away from Sheila. Maybe I didn’t wanna leave her in the first place. Maybe I don’t REALLY want to leave her - I just don’t know how to court like you old farts court.”
The sudden burst of emotion from Ash didn’t surprise Arthur, but as always it appalled him. “Ye spoke of leaving her. Ye dishonored her with thy….”
“Y’ever heard of talking a good game?” then he continued on before Arthur could answer, “nah, you probably wouldn’t. It ain’t easy for me to even think about looking at women other than Linda, but Sheila - she’s got that it, y’know? She’s special.”
Arthur glowered. “You shall not court that girl…nay! You shall not be the only to court her! I would rather she be wed to a toad then be married to an honorless fool such as ye!”
“Woah,” Ash said. “Why don’t you ask the lady what she wants? Maybe she’s cool with dating both of us.”
“There IS no discussion, in spite of what thy futuristic heathenism may tell thee!” Arthur glowered. “Though I am in thy debt, I am not required to pay kindness to one such as thee. Be gone!”
Ash turned and walked, but his slamming about let Arthur know just how deeply he had been displeased by this turn of events.
***
The castle promptly degenerated into an even larger warzone than it had been when the Deadites had roamed freely. Arthur began paying ardent court to Sheila, and Ash - stumbling in his wake but with far more history on his side - as well as half the kingdom, to Arthur’s consternation.
It was Sheila who called an end to their literal and metaphorical jousting, ceased their midnight gambols under the moonlight and forced them to quit their epic struggles with romantic poetry. When she called the both of them to her chamber late in the evening, calm and cool after the evening meal, Ash was visibly agitated and Arthur put himself sentry at the doorway, for fear that an outburst might wake the rest of the castle.
“I have come to a solution,” Sheila said, her eyes flashing, brilliant.
“So lay it on us,” Ash said, leaning casually against the sideboard, his arms crossed.
Sheila took a deep breath, then walked to Arthur and took his hand. Before Ash could back away, she also seized his fleshly hand and took it in her free one. “We shall handfast. The three of us.”
“Handfast? Three of us?” Arthur sputtered.
“And you said I was a hedonist!” Ash chortled.
“Milady,” she pointed out, “it would be against man and God…dear God, why are you laughing, Williams?”
Ash snorted. “’Cause the royal family ain’t got nothing on the three of us.”
“If you mean to confuse me with talk of thy strange future…”
“I’m not making anything up! I don’t need to! Lemme spill ya some truths about Hal the eighth.” Arthur raised an eyebrow. “In a couple hundred years, he’s gonna make up his own religion ‘cause the church won’t let him get a divorce. Bingo-bango, in my time there are STILL people running around following that church!” Ash snickered again. “You don’t have any room to get stuffy with me!”
“You spin lies to bewitch me!”
“You think I’d waste time with lies when the world’s already fu-“
Sheila coughed deliberately, and both men glanced downward, only to see that their wrists had been bound quite thoroughly to Sheila’s by the length of a red ribbon. The men simultaneously turned their glares upon Sheila, who smiled serenely and then untied herself from the strings.
“Let us consummate the bond,” she said, reaching for the hem of her chemise.
“But…” stammered Arthur. “Surely ye don’t mean to…with us both…together?”
“Arthur,” Sheila called firmly from behind the gauzy veil of curtains, “come to bed.”
While Arthur sputtered, his quasi-husband acted. “First dibs!” Ash cried, scrambling over the distance to get to Sheila first.
***
It was awkward and messy. Ash compared the entire encounter to wrestling with a squid, putting Arthur into yet another snit Sheila was forced to smooth over with her classy diplomacy. But somehow, in the midnight depths of the evening, their bodies found the right rhythm; if that forced Ash to place his hand just-so on Arthur and Arthur’s mouth to discover parts of Ash that no man had ever before touched, so be it.
While Arthur and Ash lolled, half-comatose, in Sheila’s bed, she leapt to her feet and started making plans for the ceremony, for the feasting and the castles. The two men listlessly urged her on as she bathed and dressed and headed out to make orders.
“Where does she get her stamina from?” Ash muttered.
“From me. I am spent,” Arthur groaned.
“Uh…hey Art?” Arthur grumbled.
“Aye?” his mouth was filled with feather pillow.
“Whatever happened here stays here. “
“…If ye so wish it to be.” Arthur did not like the idea of lying to the kingdom.
“Hey, hey…wait!” Ash laughed. “I don’t mean whatever that little witch’s planning for us. I mean the whole…uh….making the beast with two beards part. I’ve heard people get burned alive for that in your time.”
Arthur said nothing. Indeed, he’d never thought he would try such delights afore this night.“Are ye ashamed of it?”
Ash paused. The world tilted. “No. It’s just…I don’t really do what we did. It…was my first time.”
“Oh,” Arthur remarked shortly. Silence filled the room. “There are wenches that may have corrected such embarressments for thee.”
“….Not with a woman, ZZ Top.”
“You don’t have to get all pissy about it,” Ash replied. “Stop trying to lay some weird guilt trip on me. I told you I’m cool with us doing…whatever. I just don’t want this to get her hurt. Or me. Or…you.”
A grumble. “I am trying to sleep,” Arthur growled. “I suggest you do the same.”
A cough from the archway. There was Sheila, watching over the both of them.
“Shall I be forced to keep thee separate when I am not in thy presence?” She was crawling between the two of them, crawling onto the bed, a place where Arthur feared she might truly belong.
Ash grumbled. “If this is gonna work out, you’re gonna need some good old basic defense training.
i wanna see you shooting anything that moves at fifty paces, you’re gonna ride like a banshee, and…” she kissed him silent. “Damn.”
Arthur lazily tugged on one of Sheila’s curls, earning him a dip and a kiss from her sweet lips. “Mayhaps sleep would be best.”
Sheila nodded, yawning, squirming under the covers in her white gown. They would quibble over whatever arrangements she’d made later, and deal with the encroaching Deadite forces in the Eastern woods while they did so. But now was a time for sleep, for lounging in the heavenly warmth of the evening.
Arthur took the right pillow, Ash the left. Sometime in the night’s dancing Ash reluctantly curled his hand around Arthur’s extended fingertips, and more naturally rested his forearm around his middle. There was a relaxation of muscles, a low sigh. It was a masterpiece in progress.
They had months, years to figure out how this was going to work, but Arthur was confident they’d learn the way.
The End
Author: rise_your_dead/Missy
Fandom: Evil Dead Trilogy/Army of Darkness
Pairing/characters: Ash/Sheila/Arthur
Disclaimer: Doesn’t belong to me, belongs to Universal/Sam Raimi/Ren Pictures
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,625
Spoiler: General movie spoilers; takes place post-AOD with an alternate ending.
Warnings: (if any or choose not to warn) : mild adult content
Notes: Written for samuraiter for holly_polly! I NEVER THOUGHT ANYONE WOULD REQUEST IN THIS FANDOM BESIDES ME I’M SO HAPPY YOU DID!
Summary: Things go awry, the Promised One does not end up back in his own time, and Sheila has a unique solution for the triangle that develops between them.
For a few months, it was quiet. Too quiet, in Sheila’s opinion. Her life had once been perfectly ordinary and perfectly peaceful but now - post Promised One, her life seemed an empty parade of pretty dresses and fancy banquets. Only one person heard her laments, her bitter wishes for the return of her lost love - her Lord and confessor, Arthur.
Arthur himself missed Ash, though for reasons that had more to do with military prowess than the smell of his skin and the gleam of the sunlight off of his hair. He and Sheila would walk through the slowly-mending land, he trying to console her, she distraught and near to beside herself with sadness.
And then, like a bolt of thunder from God’s own divine hand came the piercing cry. And for miles around, the shouts pealed out like monastic bells, echoing off of the purple mountains and rolling lush hills surrounding the Castle Kandar.
“No! No! DEAR GOD! NO!!!!!”
Sheila pierced her thumb upon her needle and, cursing his name, leapt to her feet, eyes shining. She called to Arthur and he, naturally, was the one who accompanied the reeving party out to pick up Ash at his rock-strewn cave/slumber chamber. When the two of them saw each other again, it was around the armored shoulder of the Promised one, Ashley Williams.
Sheila had been thrilled to see Ash again - to Arthur’s consternation - and they had gone off to a secretive peace for a good many hours. It was Arthur who hung stiffly back, glowering over the worshipful peasant horde whose lives he had managed to save. They were unmanageable in their excitement, and Athur found himself bribing them as if they were children to return to their shops and fields.
Ash, once he had spent a goodly amount of time with Sheila, headed directly to the Wiseman’s room.
Then he punched the old man out.
****
Arthur walled himself away in his war room. At dinner he commanded the lion’s share, and the same of Sheila’s attention, to the point of forcing Arthur to retreat in a snit to his chamber. When a metallic knock sounded upon his door, he knew who it was, and fairly ripped the door from its hinge.
“I thought we were cool,” said Ash.
“We shall be whence thee are sleeping in thy cave abode.”
The resentment remained unspoken, and Ash seized upon it. “I didn’t ask for this to happen! Do you think I wanna be palling around with you rockbiters? I should be eating a Big Mac and watching some Skinnemax by now. Instead I’m choking down gooseberries and trying to figure out how to get rid of Sheila…”
That was enough to get Arthur to charge him. “If ye lay a hand upon the lady’s fair countenance I shall…”
“What, beat me?” Ash smirked. “You ain’t got the guts, tin can,” he declared. But Arthur stared at Ash until he squirmed. “All right - ya forced it out of me. Maybe it isn’t so easy for me to walk away from Sheila. Maybe I didn’t wanna leave her in the first place. Maybe I don’t REALLY want to leave her - I just don’t know how to court like you old farts court.”
The sudden burst of emotion from Ash didn’t surprise Arthur, but as always it appalled him. “Ye spoke of leaving her. Ye dishonored her with thy….”
“Y’ever heard of talking a good game?” then he continued on before Arthur could answer, “nah, you probably wouldn’t. It ain’t easy for me to even think about looking at women other than Linda, but Sheila - she’s got that it, y’know? She’s special.”
Arthur glowered. “You shall not court that girl…nay! You shall not be the only to court her! I would rather she be wed to a toad then be married to an honorless fool such as ye!”
“Woah,” Ash said. “Why don’t you ask the lady what she wants? Maybe she’s cool with dating both of us.”
“There IS no discussion, in spite of what thy futuristic heathenism may tell thee!” Arthur glowered. “Though I am in thy debt, I am not required to pay kindness to one such as thee. Be gone!”
Ash turned and walked, but his slamming about let Arthur know just how deeply he had been displeased by this turn of events.
***
The castle promptly degenerated into an even larger warzone than it had been when the Deadites had roamed freely. Arthur began paying ardent court to Sheila, and Ash - stumbling in his wake but with far more history on his side - as well as half the kingdom, to Arthur’s consternation.
It was Sheila who called an end to their literal and metaphorical jousting, ceased their midnight gambols under the moonlight and forced them to quit their epic struggles with romantic poetry. When she called the both of them to her chamber late in the evening, calm and cool after the evening meal, Ash was visibly agitated and Arthur put himself sentry at the doorway, for fear that an outburst might wake the rest of the castle.
“I have come to a solution,” Sheila said, her eyes flashing, brilliant.
“So lay it on us,” Ash said, leaning casually against the sideboard, his arms crossed.
Sheila took a deep breath, then walked to Arthur and took his hand. Before Ash could back away, she also seized his fleshly hand and took it in her free one. “We shall handfast. The three of us.”
“Handfast? Three of us?” Arthur sputtered.
“And you said I was a hedonist!” Ash chortled.
“Milady,” she pointed out, “it would be against man and God…dear God, why are you laughing, Williams?”
Ash snorted. “’Cause the royal family ain’t got nothing on the three of us.”
“If you mean to confuse me with talk of thy strange future…”
“I’m not making anything up! I don’t need to! Lemme spill ya some truths about Hal the eighth.” Arthur raised an eyebrow. “In a couple hundred years, he’s gonna make up his own religion ‘cause the church won’t let him get a divorce. Bingo-bango, in my time there are STILL people running around following that church!” Ash snickered again. “You don’t have any room to get stuffy with me!”
“You spin lies to bewitch me!”
“You think I’d waste time with lies when the world’s already fu-“
Sheila coughed deliberately, and both men glanced downward, only to see that their wrists had been bound quite thoroughly to Sheila’s by the length of a red ribbon. The men simultaneously turned their glares upon Sheila, who smiled serenely and then untied herself from the strings.
“Let us consummate the bond,” she said, reaching for the hem of her chemise.
“But…” stammered Arthur. “Surely ye don’t mean to…with us both…together?”
“Arthur,” Sheila called firmly from behind the gauzy veil of curtains, “come to bed.”
While Arthur sputtered, his quasi-husband acted. “First dibs!” Ash cried, scrambling over the distance to get to Sheila first.
***
It was awkward and messy. Ash compared the entire encounter to wrestling with a squid, putting Arthur into yet another snit Sheila was forced to smooth over with her classy diplomacy. But somehow, in the midnight depths of the evening, their bodies found the right rhythm; if that forced Ash to place his hand just-so on Arthur and Arthur’s mouth to discover parts of Ash that no man had ever before touched, so be it.
While Arthur and Ash lolled, half-comatose, in Sheila’s bed, she leapt to her feet and started making plans for the ceremony, for the feasting and the castles. The two men listlessly urged her on as she bathed and dressed and headed out to make orders.
“Where does she get her stamina from?” Ash muttered.
“From me. I am spent,” Arthur groaned.
“Uh…hey Art?” Arthur grumbled.
“Aye?” his mouth was filled with feather pillow.
“Whatever happened here stays here. “
“…If ye so wish it to be.” Arthur did not like the idea of lying to the kingdom.
“Hey, hey…wait!” Ash laughed. “I don’t mean whatever that little witch’s planning for us. I mean the whole…uh….making the beast with two beards part. I’ve heard people get burned alive for that in your time.”
Arthur said nothing. Indeed, he’d never thought he would try such delights afore this night.“Are ye ashamed of it?”
Ash paused. The world tilted. “No. It’s just…I don’t really do what we did. It…was my first time.”
“Oh,” Arthur remarked shortly. Silence filled the room. “There are wenches that may have corrected such embarressments for thee.”
“….Not with a woman, ZZ Top.”
“You don’t have to get all pissy about it,” Ash replied. “Stop trying to lay some weird guilt trip on me. I told you I’m cool with us doing…whatever. I just don’t want this to get her hurt. Or me. Or…you.”
A grumble. “I am trying to sleep,” Arthur growled. “I suggest you do the same.”
A cough from the archway. There was Sheila, watching over the both of them.
“Shall I be forced to keep thee separate when I am not in thy presence?” She was crawling between the two of them, crawling onto the bed, a place where Arthur feared she might truly belong.
Ash grumbled. “If this is gonna work out, you’re gonna need some good old basic defense training.
i wanna see you shooting anything that moves at fifty paces, you’re gonna ride like a banshee, and…” she kissed him silent. “Damn.”
Arthur lazily tugged on one of Sheila’s curls, earning him a dip and a kiss from her sweet lips. “Mayhaps sleep would be best.”
Sheila nodded, yawning, squirming under the covers in her white gown. They would quibble over whatever arrangements she’d made later, and deal with the encroaching Deadite forces in the Eastern woods while they did so. But now was a time for sleep, for lounging in the heavenly warmth of the evening.
Arthur took the right pillow, Ash the left. Sometime in the night’s dancing Ash reluctantly curled his hand around Arthur’s extended fingertips, and more naturally rested his forearm around his middle. There was a relaxation of muscles, a low sigh. It was a masterpiece in progress.
They had months, years to figure out how this was going to work, but Arthur was confident they’d learn the way.
The End