COMMENTARY: Privilege (2/3)
Continued from here!
The thing that Richard doesn't mention to his mother, since he doesn't quite feel ready for it yet -- and probably she'd say "Well, that's moving a bit fast, isn't it?" and maybe it is, but he's absolutely certain it's in the right direction -- is that he and Anne have been talking for most of Trinity about the prospect of moving in together next year, assuming everyone's efforts to remain in Oxford as postgrads work out (and he doesn't even want to think about what he'll do if they don't, because every time he's tried he feels like throwing up).
As an international student from a Soviet-bloc country, Anne is probably having a total meltdown about this, internally, and not telling Richard about it at all. One day I will write that giant fic from her POV that will deal with it.
The first time he actually floats the idea is to Robbie -- who's never really been keen on the idea of living together for reasons Richard has never precisely understood, but Richard thinks maybe all three of them could be housemates, it would be totally different then -- but Robbie's response to that is "Oh, hell no."
I have no idea what Robbie's rationale is. I think mostly I needed an excuse for the fact that they apparently don't move in together at any point, although it's kind of obvious why not after Anne comes into the picture.
Anne is much more receptive to the idea, but at the same time, she's oddly nervous, even after the exam results (firsts for both of them, which Anne had found gleefully surprising and Richard a source of immense relief that he didn't fuck up epically) portend good things, insofar as the whole thing being feasible is concerned.
I think I put that in because several people on my flist got firsts around the time I finished this fic.
"We need to really talk," she says one day at breakfast, "about what's off-limits for us. Before we decide that we're definitely going to move in together. I mean, we've been together for less than a year, and -- "
"Oh, I've thought about that," Richard says. "What if I can have sex with other blokes and you can have sex with other girls?"
YES, RICHARD, THAT WILL SOLVE EVERYTHING.
A while after I finished this fic, I saw this picture:
Click to embiggen.
Extra credit assignment: Explain where everyone in the fic fits in this diagram. For super bonus points, use this one instead!
Anne puts down her coffee cup and buries her face in her hands for a moment.
"Richard?" she says, looking up at him despairingly. People have been doing that to him a lot, lately. "Schätzelein?"
Basically that means "sweetie" in German (not literally, but it's the equivalent). She calls him this largely because when I wrote this I'd just come off a semester of choral music in which the word occurred frequently.
"Yes?"
"I don't want to have sex with other girls."
"Oh." He absorbs this for about a second before it seems odd, and not a little disappointing. "Why not?"
In my original conception for this scene, Richard flailed a bit more about how it would be really hot if she did, but it got dropped because the scene ended up being more serious than I'd initially intended.
Anne's expression is now downright pained. "I don't know!" she says, flailing her hands a bit. "I just...am not interested in it."
"Oh," Richard says again.
"Not everyone is bisexual," Anne continues, somehow managing to speak through gritted teeth without actually gritting her teeth, which is kind of impressive.
I think one of the things about Anne I am sort of embarrassingly-overinvested in is that she is a monogamous heterosexual who is not obnoxious or heteronormative, and the reason it's embarrassing is mostly because I'm like "see, people with my socially-privileged sexuality can be okay, really!" LET ME TELL YOU INTERNET, IT'S HARD BEING A MONOGAMOUS HETEROSEXUAL.
"Well," Richard says, "isn't monosexuality really a social construct? I don't think we should let ourselves be pigeonholed when sexuality is really more of a spectrum -- "
Anne leans on the table and buries her face in her folded arms. "That is not even close to my point," she moans.
Richard leans over and gently extracts a lock of her hair from his toast.
Toast, as mentioned, is another recurring motif in my fic. In general there is a lot of breakfast-making in this thing, but mostly it is toast. I think this is because "toast" is an intrinsically amusing word (and also, they're university students, what the hell else are they going to eat for breakfast? Probably if they were Americans they would eat more bagels).
"You've got jam in your hair," he says helplessly.
"The point is," Anne says, grabbing a napkin and wiping at her hair with more force than is strictly necessary for simple jam extraction, "that I don't think it's fair to assume that everyone wants what you want."
That is basically, in a nutshell, why Richard is often bad at relationships, right there.
Richard is thrown off-balance enough by this that he has to feign an undue interest in his toast for a moment, even though the proper response is obvious.
"All right," he says, finally. "What do you want?"
Anne stirs determinedly at her almost-entirely-uneaten yogurt; the spoon stands up on its own when she lets go of it.
Anne, on the other hand, is not eating toast. Or if she is it's not mentioned.
I wrote this scene, incidentally, during a "MUST EAT GREEK YOGURT ALL THE TIME OM NOM NOM" phase. Aren't you glad you read this commentary? Haven't you learned such fascinating things from it?
"I don't mind that you have relationships with other people," she says, not looking up at him. "I know you and Robbie were together first, and I don't mind that -- I mean, I like him a lot -- it's just that -- " She runs a hand through her tangled hair and starts over. "I want this to be fair, and I don't know how it can be."
Richard covers her other hand with his own, and her fingers interlace with his, almost instinctively.
"Why not?" he says.
She looks up at him -- Richard can't help but notice (again) how blue her worn blue robe makes her eyes look.
It amuses me that while we generally agree what people look like, Anne has different colored eyes depending on who's writing her (I tend to give her blue eyes, gileonnen gave her grey eyes in this universe, and speak_me_fair and gehayi both gave her brown eyes). I am not sure what that says, but surely it says something. Richard on the other hand basically always has grey eyes, which I think is my doing, although since he's blond it is statistically likely that he'd have light-colored eyes.
YES THIS IS THE SORT OF THING I THINK ABOUT, DON'T JUDGE ME.
He's stricken with a piercing desire to kiss her, but Anne has let him know in no uncertain terms that doing that during arguments, or even emotionally charged discussions since this isn't really an argument exactly, is really terribly patriarchal of him and he should not do it anymore (so he doesn't, except to Robbie, who always lets him, and anyway since they are both men it isn't really patriarchal).
I mentioned before that half of this fic is apparently a deconstruction of my tendency to write that sort of gesture into fic. The fact that Anne calls Richard on it and Robbie doesn't is illustrative of the types of relationship issues they tend to have -- much like, as also previously mentioned, Richard and Robbie tend to defuse arguments with sex and then assume it's resolved because they feel better afterwards. BOYS. YOU NEED A COMMUNICATION WORKSHOP.
I did spend a lot of time worrying about the fact that the way that these particular characters react in this particular set of situations, and the choices I made in translating the canon material to a modern context, comes off as a more general statement on same-sex vs. hetero relationships; all I can really say is that I hope it doesn't. I mostly dealt with it by foregrounding the fact that Richard is often crap as a boyfriend (though this is complicated by the fact that everyone adores him anyway, including, obviously, the author) and having everyone argue about -- well, you know, this fic has its title for a reason.
"I don't want anyone else, Richard," she says. "Just you."
ANNE. &hearts
There's nothing Richard can possibly say to that. Instead he slides from his chair to kneel beside Anne and wrap his arms around her; she leans down to hide her face in the crook of his neck, clinging to his shoulders as if she could make him absorb her entire body, and what she says next, muffled against his skin, almost breaks his heart.
"And when I tell you I want to make rules, it's because otherwise I'd let you have anything you want."
Anne is the sort of person who worries a lot that she's too comfortable with things she knows she ought to be opposed to (in this case, being in a relationship with unequal terms). That's even more evident, of course, in the next scene. I think she gets a lot of that from me (I mean, because I feel like that a lot, not just because I wrote it).
Richard draws back a little and cradles her face with his hands.
"I want you to be happy," he says.
***
November 1989
It's nearly four o'clock on Monday morning when Richard and Anne return home from Berlin, exhausted, light-headed, and more than a little hung over.
I mentioned Gil's "Reunification" earlier; this scene takes place shortly after it and is probably really confusing if you haven't read it.
"Oxford feels so quiet now," Richard says, as they lie fully-clothed and unchanged on their bed, trying to work up the energy to change or take a shower or something. "Even when you allow for it being four in the morning."
"It doesn't feel like any of it's real, anymore," Anne says, her eyes wide. "Two days ago I was dancing in Alexanderplatz and now -- I'm back here and I have to pretend to care about my dissertation -- "
Just to clarify for non-UK readers, she's working on a Master's -- in the UK they say "dissertation" where we'd generally say "thesis," and vice versa.
"Let's not talk about dissertations," Richard laughs. "I'd rather think about the fact that we're getting married."
"Yes!" Anne turns over onto her side in order to kiss him without having to sit up. When they break apart, Richard notices she's actually shaking a little.
"I would have defected for you," she says. "If you'd asked me to marry you before. I don't think I've ever said it to myself before now."
I've mentioned a couple of times in this commentary that Anne must have a hell of a lot of internal conflict that she doesn't really show -- given that she's a devout (mostly-small-c) communist studying in the West in the late eighties! Writing this fic was one of the things that really clarified that for me; since then, I've thought a lot about her background, what motivated her to leave, and how she probably worried a lot about -- selling out, basically, even if it's for love. As I've also mentioned, I have a fic brewing about all of this that I will someday write when I have the time to do research for it.
It is interesting, too, that she apparently doesn't talk about it with Richard.
Richard wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head.
"It's all right," he says. "You don't have to choose, now."
"I know," Anne says. "It's just that -- I had always meant to go back, after studying in England. I thought it was the right thing to do to stay, to work for a better kind of Communism. But I'd have given it up for you, if you'd asked."
Richard looks closely at her -- the only light on is the tiny bedside lamp, and her face is deeply shadowed, her eyes hollow with fatigue. (He is not convinced she has actually slept since leaving England -- he distinctly remembers that they have been to bed, as it were, insofar as furtive, muffled, oh-God-can't-wake-the-roommates celebratory lovemaking counts as going to bed, but Anne was always up long before Richard.
I kind of wish I'd written about that. That's hot.
I don't want to miss anything, she had said.) He knows he will never forget the light in her eyes as she hefted a hammer seemingly as big as she was (it couldn't have been that big, really, he knows that), to strike at the wall, the clash of metal on concrete like bells.
He is utterly convinced that he is willing to do absolutely anything for her.
"If you want," he says, "we can go back. As soon as we're done with Oxford. Before that, if you'd rather do it that way."
I love that this is an oddly sweet passage and yet all my betas' initial reaction -- and it was one I was basically looking for, though maybe not as strongly as that -- was "RICHARD YOU DICK" (no pun intended).
Anne smiles at him, heartbreakingly.
"What about Robbie?" she says, and before Richard can even begin to think of an answer, she presses her fingers to his lips. "I didn't have to choose between you and seeing my home and family again. I can't make you choose between me and him."
See, this is why it gets that reaction.
Richard leans in and kisses her again, very gently.
"I think we should probably sleep," he says.
"I'm not tired," she says, but her eyes are already beginning to fall shut. Richard carefully unlaces her boots, and then pulls the duvet over her before switching out the light, staring at the darkness until he can make out her shape beside him.
They don't talk about Richard's offer the next day. Perhaps it's enough for her that he made it.
***
"You're what." Robbie, frustratingly incredulous, nearly drops his beer all over the kitchen floor. Richard has planned this all so carefully, not springing it on him after sex or anything (he has not noticed a particular tendency to do this, despite what Robbie has suggested) -- and it has apparently made no difference, because it's going to go miserably.
He does the bad-news-after-sex thing a lot in the Victorian AU. Possibly Robbie is like Guinan on Star Trek TNG and has a meta-level awareness of parallel universes.
"I told you," Richard says. "We're getting married. You know, like people do."
Robbie buries his face in his hands. "That was an expression of anger, Richard, not a request for clarification."
"Robbie, I don't see what your problem is. Anne and I have been together for two years. We live together, for God's sake. You like Anne."
"That's not the point."
"Why does everyone keep saying that?"
"Maybe because you never seem to fucking get it?"
This is another one of those O HAI SIGNIFICANT THEMATIC ISSUES, I SEE WHUT U DID THAR passages (you can recognize them in the commentary because they are heralded by lolcat). I do hope it feels organic rather than soapboxy -- I mean obviously Robbie is feeling a bit soapboxy here and that's fine, I just hope it doesn't sound like it's just bolstering my dodgy fic with lj social-justice discourse.
"Look -- " Richard rubs his eyes for a moment. "This isn't actually about you" -- and Robbie absolutely freezes.
"Isn't it," he says. It's not a question.
No matter how true or not true it is, I think there are few words that can set someone's teeth on edge like "This isn't about you." Poor Robbie.
"I mean. I don't want you to feel rejected -- "
"You've got a fucking funny way of showing it, then."
" -- because if I could marry both of you I bloody well would."
"You're fucking incredible," Robbie says. "You don't even get that that's the goddamn point, do you? It's all fine for you to act like everyone's equal when you can run off and marry your girlfriend and I can't hold your fucking hand in public without it being a fucking statement, so don't even fucking talk to me about how much you love both of us."
Robbie pretty much pwns him here.
He might as well have punched Richard in the face. It feels basically the same.
Richard spends much of the next week not exactly avoiding Robbie so much as working under the assumption that Robbie is avoiding him, and feeling guilty about being miserable on the grounds that he's getting married and should be happy about it, and indeed is extremely happy about it, but it's hard to act like it when you've been told you're a heterosexist asshole for it,
I'm not sure "heterosexist" was something people said a lot in 1990, but that's okay.
and so you spend a lot of time sulking and being on edge and not being at all fair to your poor fiancee who hasn't even done anything wrong and who is doing her incredibly awkward best to support you at a time when she deserves to be happy not only because she's getting married but also because the oppressive crypto-Soviet government she grew up under has just collapsed.
I actually had a scene here originally with Richard and Anne, but it wasn't working so I dropped it; it was mostly just Richard pouting. Also flinging a copy of Froissart at the wall, which can't be good either for Froissart or the wall.
Another upshot of the whole clusterfuck is that he totally fails to write the conference paper that he's supposed to be delivering in a week and which he has scarcely even looked at since before Berlin. He's sorely tempted to blow off his appointment to discuss it with Simon, but he suspects he is already in the hole for the entire jetting-off-to-Berlin-and-getting-arrested business, even though Simon was actually very understanding about all of it, what with the whole world-changing nature of the thing: it isn't every day that the Cold War comes to a non-nuclear-winter-and-horrible-horrible-death-causing end.
One would hope, anyway.
Simon, of course, is meant to be Simon Burley, though I don't think his full name is ever given in the fic; I am pretty sure everyone reading this knows that, though.
It is much more awkward, however, when you've fallen behind in your scholarly work because you are having a fight with your boyfriend, even if your relationship with your adviser is the kind where you're -- well, not comfortable talking about that sort of thing, because telling someone you are fighting with your boyfriend over the fact that you're marrying your girlfriend is never comfortable even if it's not as bad as actually doing it, but rather, it doesn't feel wildly inappropriate.
I can't imagine having this conversation with my adviser, but I have talked with him about the stigma of antidepressants, which is its own kind of awkward. And they're at Oxford, so apparently the supervisor/-ee relationship has many fewer boundaries. Or something.
Still, he sort of wants to crawl into a hole and die as he explains his personal crisis and the myriad ways it is fucking up his life and, more relevantly at the moment, his conference paper, especially since Simon is sitting there watching him impassively and demonstrating a remarkable knack for smirking even while smoking a pipe (which he clearly does ironically as part of his Queenly Old Oxford Don persona).
Simon got queerified in this universe largely because I needed a queer character in a disinterested position to give Richard advice, since he is clearly not going to pick up on his own that having a female partner means he can pass for straight, and he is too irritated with Robbie at the moment to accept it from him.
"I don't pretend to understand your love life," he says, finally, removing his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I suppose the only advice I have for you is to remind you that it hasn't actually been that long since homosexuality was completely illegal. That wrecked a great many lives, you know. I was about your age in the fifties and I imagine it's hard for someone of your generation to imagine what that was like, even though it's not as if things are particularly rosy even now -- I assume you haven't forgotten protesting against Section 28 last year?"
Section 28 of the UK's Local Government Act prohibited the "promotion" of same-sex relationships by local authorities and schools (which was deemed to include any depiction of LGB relationships as normal). Although it did not establish any new criminal offenses, it did lead to the closing or self-censorship of many student LGBT groups and council materials aimed at LGBT citizens. It also served to galvanize LGBT rights movements in the UK. The clause was not revoked until 2000 (in Scotland) and 2003 (in the rest of the UK).
"No, of course not," Richard mumbles, wishing he had bothered to keep up on his work, so that he wouldn't have had to make excuses for not finishing and consequently wouldn't be listening to Simon reminding him How Things Are For Gentlemen of Our Persuasion.
I bet Simon actually says "Gentlemen of Our Persuasion," too. With the caps like that.
"It's a major advantage, socially, to be able to pass for straight. I'm sure I needn't tell you so."
"I'm not trying to pass for straight," Richard says.
"But you still need to remember that you can."
Richard, of course, assumes he broadcasts "O HAI I R QUEER," and he is not entirely wrong, but he has failed to consider how being in a heterosexual relationship affects other people's gaydar.
Richard looks at his hands for a moment, and then at the bookcase, and then at the prints on the wall behind Simon -- why the hell does he have "Boy Bitten by a Lizard" up there, Richard often wonders: what kind of message does that send to undergrads, not that they'd pick up on the iconography -- before he finally nods and swallows hard.
Caravaggio's "Boy Bitten by a Lizard." You can draw your own conclusions.
"Can we, um, talk about Froissart now?" he says, but he does get that Simon has a point and everything even though it now feels sort of like he's just had a first-year tutorial on The Gay Lifestyle.
I'm not sure the phrase "gay lifestyle" is really true to Richard's inner monologue.
It's nearly midnight when Richard knocks on Robbie's door with absolutely no idea what he's going to say despite spending two-and-a-half pints contemplating it (he's even got a notecard with a lot of false starts which is now no good because they've all been scribbled out).
Richard is so adorable. Even if he is an enormous dork.
He's even asked Anne for her input, when he called to tell her he'd be home late, but all she said was "Richard, I am probably the last person you should ask about this."
But before he can say anything Robbie pulls him into his arms and exclaims "Christ, I miss you, you fucking bastard," and after that it's not hard to apologize at all.
I love that Richard and Robbie use "bastard" as a term of endearment, although I wish I had made more use of "tosser," because it is a great word.
***
[lj-cut text="'I thought all women were completely mad about weddings...'"]October 1990
"I thought all women were completely mad about weddings," Robbie says one evening while they're sitting around in the Turf, discussing their relative lack of major wedding plans, and he's scarcely finished the sentence before Anne is rolling her eyes and Phil, whom Richard has known since they were nine years old and seeing the same child psychiatrist on account of his dad's death and her parents' very nasty divorce, is leaning over to swat at the back of his head.
I am writing a fic about this! It consists pretty much entirely of Richard and Phil being awkward seventies children, with gratuitous references to Doctor Who, the Chalet School, and 1970s road-safety campaigns from the COI.
"Traditional weddings are specifically designed to be a celebration of patriarchy and conspicuous consumption," Anne says, while Phil, more concisely, says "Fuck you, Robbie."
YOUR HIPSTER SEXISM IS UNCOOL, ROBBIE.
"Oh, come on," Robbie says. "I bet you totally creamed your knickers over Princess Di's wedding."
HAVE WE REMINDED YOU LATELY THAT WE ARE BRITISH AND THE EIGHTIES HAVE JUST COME TO AN END? NO? CONSIDER IT DONE.
"I did nothing of the sort," Phil sniffs. "I spent my ninth birthday party half asleep because I'd been up most of the night listening to my parents arguing about swinging. They thought it'd save their marriage. That kind of thing tends to put you off the whole enterprise."
Everyone stares uncomfortably into their beer for a minute. Robbie bites his lip and starts rolling a cigarette.
Phil has Stereotypically Bad Seventies Parents. Poor Phil.
Robbie's cigarette-rolling was either speak_me_fair's idea or gileonnen's, but whoever came up with it, it was a good one.
"Um, I mean, not that you guys won't be fine," she adds, smiling apologetically at Richard and Anne. "Since you're not horrible people like my parents."
"We try," Richard says. "I do like to think we actually, you know, communicate with each other and whatnot."
At which point Anne starts coughing uncontrollably and Robbie nearly inhales his cigarette. Richard looks around the pub, but nothing particularly startling seems to be going on.
One of my favorite nasty things to do to Richard is to point out his delusions of self-awareness. Cf. also his comments on threesomes and communications in this ficlet (which was written as a deliberate foreshadowing of this fic, although it's set before Richard has met Anne, or at least before they've gotten together).
***
In the end, Anne and Richard do their best to have a terribly unromantic wedding, but their best, in spite of the fact that the preparations are dominated by a tangle of immigration paperwork, isn't entirely good enough.
They are JUST THAT CUTE.
Even though the actual ceremony, such as it is, is held in the register office and it rains for basically the entire day. Anne has expressed a determination to wear jeans to her own wedding, as if daring anyone to object, but ends up finding a floaty purple dress at Unicorn that wouldn't have looked out of place at Haight-Ashbury.
I can tell you exactly what it looked like! Viz., like this.
Unicorn is another Real Oxford Place, although I suspect that everyone reading this already knows that. It's a vintage clothing shop.
(Richard pins a green carnation to his lapel, an esoteric insistence that his marriage to a woman does not mean he has turned straight, and Robbie laughs at him for it.)
The green carnation as a Victorian symbol for homosexuality was popularized by Oscar Wilde. (It also lent its name to an 1894 novel by Robert Hichens that was cited by the prosecution at Wilde's trial the following year.)
It turns out, anyway, that none of the things they've been worrying about matter all that much, or at least they don't seem important while they're all at the Elizabeth drinking copious amounts of champagne (although the sight of Mum dancing with Simon is perhaps the most disturbing thing Richard has ever seen).
Fun fact: Gervase Mathew's The Court of Richard II (a very useful reference if you're writing about canon!period) totally ships Joan of Kent/Simon Burley. That's why I put that in there.
Anne's brothers, out of some combination of regard for their sister and post-unification euphoria, even take a stab at pretending they like each other ("Don't even ask what their problem is," Anne has said, "because I don't even know").
This is a vague historical reference; Anne's brothers Wenceslaus IV and Sigismund spent a lot of time trading off the imperial and Bohemian thrones, when Wenceslaus wasn't busy being drunk and Sigismund wasn't busy "accidentally" killing his in-laws.
The reunification of Germany became official on 3 October 1990. Everything else aside, this probably made Anne and Richard's lives considerably simpler since she'd have gained EU citizenship.
Even Robbie is blissfully, shockingly happy. Richard has no intention of asking how, precisely, he got into that mood, since he has been accepting about the marriage but fairly glum about the wedding itself -- although he is pretty sure he could guess, if he weren't occupied with the feeling of bubbles in his head.
Ecstasy. In case you hadn't guessed.
Someone asked me how high Robbie was supposed to be during this scene. The answer: very.
"Oh God, you're just both so cute," Robbie says. "I don't even understand how you do it -- " and then he snogs each of them in turn, full on the lips, which makes Anne laugh and Richard blush, because seriously his mum and his supervisor and his in-laws are all right there.
And yes, I kind of was thinking of Jack Harkness snogging both Nine and Rose there.
"You're so beautiful -- " and he trails a finger along Richard's jawline, before stopping abruptly and staring closely at Anne. "Do you have any idea what your hair is doing?"
Anne continues to smile, but her eyes widen, just perceptibly.
I intended for the implication here to be that it appears to be moving, rather than that Robbie is being bitchy about fashion.
It's very late at night when they get home, and it's then that the slight strangeness, everything mostly the same but intangibly different, begins to set in: they have the piece of paper, and the rings, now, but has anything changed really, and can you even tell when you're just coming back to your flat like any other night?
"I suppose," Richard says, dropping his jacket over the back of the sofa, "it would be more suitable to take you off to the south of France, wouldn't it?"
Anne laughs and kisses him. "It's all right," she says. "We have plenty of time for that."
Richard slides his arms around her waist. "We do, at that."
This is what we in The Biz call "Tragic Irony."
Although Rio and I do have a fic planned in which the two of them do go to the south of France, and because they have no sense whatsoever, they also bring Robbie and Phil. Wackiness, unsurprisingly, ensues.
He smiles down at her, brushing a tendril of hair off her forehead. "God, you're beautiful," he adds.
"Oh, I'd say you're the pretty one, really," Anne says. "Robbie's right about that."
And then it's like something snags in his heart, and he lets go of her. "I should call him, or something," he mutters. "Make sure he's all right -- you saw him, he was clearly high off his face..."
"Richard." Anne drapes her arms around his neck. "It'll be all right. Phil's looking after him."
I am not really very nice to Phil either, am I? Actually she and Robbie are friends in this universe -- this is actually why the one thing she does onscreen in this fic is thwap him in the head -- except that she is Sekritly in Love With Him and he is Very Very Gay and then later on they attempt to have sex in spite of that and that Ruins Everything.
"I know," he says, and swallows hard. "I just -- "
Richard has pangs of conscience at the most awkward moments.
Anne presses a finger to his lips. "I don't think it will help, Richard. Just let him come down in peace." She draws him down to kiss him again. "And besides, it's our wedding night. Come to bed."
Richard smiles at her, but she seems to have caught something of his transitory melancholy; she sighs and leans against his shoulder, and he bends in to kiss her, just under her ear at the corner of her jawline. Her fingers slide up the back of his neck into his hair -- and then he apparently has a fit of romantic traditionalism and he's stooping to lift her up, whispering "Hold on" into her ear.
"What are you doing?" she asks, half-startled and half-laughing, clinging to Richard's neck as her feet go out from under her.
"I'm carrying you to bed, what does it look like?" he says, and then she's laughing for real as he takes a step and immediately wobbles, nearly twisting his knee as he attempts to redistribute their combined weight.
I think this may be one of the most adorable things I've ever written. It was sort of a gesture of desperation on my part, because if they kept talking the scene would get too angsty. Which also works as an in-story motivation for Richard, so it's all good.
"Put me down!" she giggles, sliding out of his arms. "We're not going to accomplish much if you break yourself, are we?"
"That's an excellent point, isn't it?" he says, as she pulls him toward the bedroom.
***
"Do you think it feels different?" Richard asks afterwards, as they lie tangled together. "Now that we're married?"
Anne leaves off kissing his neck to think about this for a moment. "Not really," she says.
"You know, I didn't think so either," Richard laughs. "I don't suppose that's very romantic, is it?"
Yet more sex ahead! This is another bit that doesn't really need much commentary beyond "la la la it's Richard and Anne being cute."
"I like to think it means we've been doing it right." She presses him onto his back, her hair falling about his face as she bends over him, and whispers, "Of course, a valid experiment needs repeatable results."
"And we're certainly conscientious scholars." Richard grins at her, and then gasps as her hand curls between his legs.
They may not be doing anything differently, he suspects, but they're certainly doing it right.
la la la Richard and Anne still being cute.
I should have the last bit of this up before too long. It will be THE BIT THAT IS ALL SEX.
The thing that Richard doesn't mention to his mother, since he doesn't quite feel ready for it yet -- and probably she'd say "Well, that's moving a bit fast, isn't it?" and maybe it is, but he's absolutely certain it's in the right direction -- is that he and Anne have been talking for most of Trinity about the prospect of moving in together next year, assuming everyone's efforts to remain in Oxford as postgrads work out (and he doesn't even want to think about what he'll do if they don't, because every time he's tried he feels like throwing up).
As an international student from a Soviet-bloc country, Anne is probably having a total meltdown about this, internally, and not telling Richard about it at all. One day I will write that giant fic from her POV that will deal with it.
The first time he actually floats the idea is to Robbie -- who's never really been keen on the idea of living together for reasons Richard has never precisely understood, but Richard thinks maybe all three of them could be housemates, it would be totally different then -- but Robbie's response to that is "Oh, hell no."
I have no idea what Robbie's rationale is. I think mostly I needed an excuse for the fact that they apparently don't move in together at any point, although it's kind of obvious why not after Anne comes into the picture.
Anne is much more receptive to the idea, but at the same time, she's oddly nervous, even after the exam results (firsts for both of them, which Anne had found gleefully surprising and Richard a source of immense relief that he didn't fuck up epically) portend good things, insofar as the whole thing being feasible is concerned.
I think I put that in because several people on my flist got firsts around the time I finished this fic.
"We need to really talk," she says one day at breakfast, "about what's off-limits for us. Before we decide that we're definitely going to move in together. I mean, we've been together for less than a year, and -- "
"Oh, I've thought about that," Richard says. "What if I can have sex with other blokes and you can have sex with other girls?"
YES, RICHARD, THAT WILL SOLVE EVERYTHING.
A while after I finished this fic, I saw this picture:
Click to embiggen.
Extra credit assignment: Explain where everyone in the fic fits in this diagram. For super bonus points, use this one instead!
Anne puts down her coffee cup and buries her face in her hands for a moment.
"Richard?" she says, looking up at him despairingly. People have been doing that to him a lot, lately. "Schätzelein?"
Basically that means "sweetie" in German (not literally, but it's the equivalent). She calls him this largely because when I wrote this I'd just come off a semester of choral music in which the word occurred frequently.
"Yes?"
"I don't want to have sex with other girls."
"Oh." He absorbs this for about a second before it seems odd, and not a little disappointing. "Why not?"
In my original conception for this scene, Richard flailed a bit more about how it would be really hot if she did, but it got dropped because the scene ended up being more serious than I'd initially intended.
Anne's expression is now downright pained. "I don't know!" she says, flailing her hands a bit. "I just...am not interested in it."
"Oh," Richard says again.
"Not everyone is bisexual," Anne continues, somehow managing to speak through gritted teeth without actually gritting her teeth, which is kind of impressive.
I think one of the things about Anne I am sort of embarrassingly-overinvested in is that she is a monogamous heterosexual who is not obnoxious or heteronormative, and the reason it's embarrassing is mostly because I'm like "see, people with my socially-privileged sexuality can be okay, really!" LET ME TELL YOU INTERNET, IT'S HARD BEING A MONOGAMOUS HETEROSEXUAL.
"Well," Richard says, "isn't monosexuality really a social construct? I don't think we should let ourselves be pigeonholed when sexuality is really more of a spectrum -- "
Anne leans on the table and buries her face in her folded arms. "That is not even close to my point," she moans.
Richard leans over and gently extracts a lock of her hair from his toast.
Toast, as mentioned, is another recurring motif in my fic. In general there is a lot of breakfast-making in this thing, but mostly it is toast. I think this is because "toast" is an intrinsically amusing word (and also, they're university students, what the hell else are they going to eat for breakfast? Probably if they were Americans they would eat more bagels).
"You've got jam in your hair," he says helplessly.
"The point is," Anne says, grabbing a napkin and wiping at her hair with more force than is strictly necessary for simple jam extraction, "that I don't think it's fair to assume that everyone wants what you want."
That is basically, in a nutshell, why Richard is often bad at relationships, right there.
Richard is thrown off-balance enough by this that he has to feign an undue interest in his toast for a moment, even though the proper response is obvious.
"All right," he says, finally. "What do you want?"
Anne stirs determinedly at her almost-entirely-uneaten yogurt; the spoon stands up on its own when she lets go of it.
Anne, on the other hand, is not eating toast. Or if she is it's not mentioned.
I wrote this scene, incidentally, during a "MUST EAT GREEK YOGURT ALL THE TIME OM NOM NOM" phase. Aren't you glad you read this commentary? Haven't you learned such fascinating things from it?
"I don't mind that you have relationships with other people," she says, not looking up at him. "I know you and Robbie were together first, and I don't mind that -- I mean, I like him a lot -- it's just that -- " She runs a hand through her tangled hair and starts over. "I want this to be fair, and I don't know how it can be."
Richard covers her other hand with his own, and her fingers interlace with his, almost instinctively.
"Why not?" he says.
She looks up at him -- Richard can't help but notice (again) how blue her worn blue robe makes her eyes look.
It amuses me that while we generally agree what people look like, Anne has different colored eyes depending on who's writing her (I tend to give her blue eyes, gileonnen gave her grey eyes in this universe, and speak_me_fair and gehayi both gave her brown eyes). I am not sure what that says, but surely it says something. Richard on the other hand basically always has grey eyes, which I think is my doing, although since he's blond it is statistically likely that he'd have light-colored eyes.
YES THIS IS THE SORT OF THING I THINK ABOUT, DON'T JUDGE ME.
He's stricken with a piercing desire to kiss her, but Anne has let him know in no uncertain terms that doing that during arguments, or even emotionally charged discussions since this isn't really an argument exactly, is really terribly patriarchal of him and he should not do it anymore (so he doesn't, except to Robbie, who always lets him, and anyway since they are both men it isn't really patriarchal).
I mentioned before that half of this fic is apparently a deconstruction of my tendency to write that sort of gesture into fic. The fact that Anne calls Richard on it and Robbie doesn't is illustrative of the types of relationship issues they tend to have -- much like, as also previously mentioned, Richard and Robbie tend to defuse arguments with sex and then assume it's resolved because they feel better afterwards. BOYS. YOU NEED A COMMUNICATION WORKSHOP.
I did spend a lot of time worrying about the fact that the way that these particular characters react in this particular set of situations, and the choices I made in translating the canon material to a modern context, comes off as a more general statement on same-sex vs. hetero relationships; all I can really say is that I hope it doesn't. I mostly dealt with it by foregrounding the fact that Richard is often crap as a boyfriend (though this is complicated by the fact that everyone adores him anyway, including, obviously, the author) and having everyone argue about -- well, you know, this fic has its title for a reason.
"I don't want anyone else, Richard," she says. "Just you."
ANNE. &hearts
There's nothing Richard can possibly say to that. Instead he slides from his chair to kneel beside Anne and wrap his arms around her; she leans down to hide her face in the crook of his neck, clinging to his shoulders as if she could make him absorb her entire body, and what she says next, muffled against his skin, almost breaks his heart.
"And when I tell you I want to make rules, it's because otherwise I'd let you have anything you want."
Anne is the sort of person who worries a lot that she's too comfortable with things she knows she ought to be opposed to (in this case, being in a relationship with unequal terms). That's even more evident, of course, in the next scene. I think she gets a lot of that from me (I mean, because I feel like that a lot, not just because I wrote it).
Richard draws back a little and cradles her face with his hands.
"I want you to be happy," he says.
***
November 1989
It's nearly four o'clock on Monday morning when Richard and Anne return home from Berlin, exhausted, light-headed, and more than a little hung over.
I mentioned Gil's "Reunification" earlier; this scene takes place shortly after it and is probably really confusing if you haven't read it.
"Oxford feels so quiet now," Richard says, as they lie fully-clothed and unchanged on their bed, trying to work up the energy to change or take a shower or something. "Even when you allow for it being four in the morning."
"It doesn't feel like any of it's real, anymore," Anne says, her eyes wide. "Two days ago I was dancing in Alexanderplatz and now -- I'm back here and I have to pretend to care about my dissertation -- "
Just to clarify for non-UK readers, she's working on a Master's -- in the UK they say "dissertation" where we'd generally say "thesis," and vice versa.
"Let's not talk about dissertations," Richard laughs. "I'd rather think about the fact that we're getting married."
"Yes!" Anne turns over onto her side in order to kiss him without having to sit up. When they break apart, Richard notices she's actually shaking a little.
"I would have defected for you," she says. "If you'd asked me to marry you before. I don't think I've ever said it to myself before now."
I've mentioned a couple of times in this commentary that Anne must have a hell of a lot of internal conflict that she doesn't really show -- given that she's a devout (mostly-small-c) communist studying in the West in the late eighties! Writing this fic was one of the things that really clarified that for me; since then, I've thought a lot about her background, what motivated her to leave, and how she probably worried a lot about -- selling out, basically, even if it's for love. As I've also mentioned, I have a fic brewing about all of this that I will someday write when I have the time to do research for it.
It is interesting, too, that she apparently doesn't talk about it with Richard.
Richard wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head.
"It's all right," he says. "You don't have to choose, now."
"I know," Anne says. "It's just that -- I had always meant to go back, after studying in England. I thought it was the right thing to do to stay, to work for a better kind of Communism. But I'd have given it up for you, if you'd asked."
Richard looks closely at her -- the only light on is the tiny bedside lamp, and her face is deeply shadowed, her eyes hollow with fatigue. (He is not convinced she has actually slept since leaving England -- he distinctly remembers that they have been to bed, as it were, insofar as furtive, muffled, oh-God-can't-wake-the-roommates celebratory lovemaking counts as going to bed, but Anne was always up long before Richard.
I kind of wish I'd written about that. That's hot.
I don't want to miss anything, she had said.) He knows he will never forget the light in her eyes as she hefted a hammer seemingly as big as she was (it couldn't have been that big, really, he knows that), to strike at the wall, the clash of metal on concrete like bells.
He is utterly convinced that he is willing to do absolutely anything for her.
"If you want," he says, "we can go back. As soon as we're done with Oxford. Before that, if you'd rather do it that way."
I love that this is an oddly sweet passage and yet all my betas' initial reaction -- and it was one I was basically looking for, though maybe not as strongly as that -- was "RICHARD YOU DICK" (no pun intended).
Anne smiles at him, heartbreakingly.
"What about Robbie?" she says, and before Richard can even begin to think of an answer, she presses her fingers to his lips. "I didn't have to choose between you and seeing my home and family again. I can't make you choose between me and him."
See, this is why it gets that reaction.
Richard leans in and kisses her again, very gently.
"I think we should probably sleep," he says.
"I'm not tired," she says, but her eyes are already beginning to fall shut. Richard carefully unlaces her boots, and then pulls the duvet over her before switching out the light, staring at the darkness until he can make out her shape beside him.
They don't talk about Richard's offer the next day. Perhaps it's enough for her that he made it.
***
"You're what." Robbie, frustratingly incredulous, nearly drops his beer all over the kitchen floor. Richard has planned this all so carefully, not springing it on him after sex or anything (he has not noticed a particular tendency to do this, despite what Robbie has suggested) -- and it has apparently made no difference, because it's going to go miserably.
He does the bad-news-after-sex thing a lot in the Victorian AU. Possibly Robbie is like Guinan on Star Trek TNG and has a meta-level awareness of parallel universes.
"I told you," Richard says. "We're getting married. You know, like people do."
Robbie buries his face in his hands. "That was an expression of anger, Richard, not a request for clarification."
"Robbie, I don't see what your problem is. Anne and I have been together for two years. We live together, for God's sake. You like Anne."
"That's not the point."
"Why does everyone keep saying that?"
"Maybe because you never seem to fucking get it?"
This is another one of those O HAI SIGNIFICANT THEMATIC ISSUES, I SEE WHUT U DID THAR passages (you can recognize them in the commentary because they are heralded by lolcat). I do hope it feels organic rather than soapboxy -- I mean obviously Robbie is feeling a bit soapboxy here and that's fine, I just hope it doesn't sound like it's just bolstering my dodgy fic with lj social-justice discourse.
"Look -- " Richard rubs his eyes for a moment. "This isn't actually about you" -- and Robbie absolutely freezes.
"Isn't it," he says. It's not a question.
No matter how true or not true it is, I think there are few words that can set someone's teeth on edge like "This isn't about you." Poor Robbie.
"I mean. I don't want you to feel rejected -- "
"You've got a fucking funny way of showing it, then."
" -- because if I could marry both of you I bloody well would."
"You're fucking incredible," Robbie says. "You don't even get that that's the goddamn point, do you? It's all fine for you to act like everyone's equal when you can run off and marry your girlfriend and I can't hold your fucking hand in public without it being a fucking statement, so don't even fucking talk to me about how much you love both of us."
Robbie pretty much pwns him here.
He might as well have punched Richard in the face. It feels basically the same.
Richard spends much of the next week not exactly avoiding Robbie so much as working under the assumption that Robbie is avoiding him, and feeling guilty about being miserable on the grounds that he's getting married and should be happy about it, and indeed is extremely happy about it, but it's hard to act like it when you've been told you're a heterosexist asshole for it,
I'm not sure "heterosexist" was something people said a lot in 1990, but that's okay.
and so you spend a lot of time sulking and being on edge and not being at all fair to your poor fiancee who hasn't even done anything wrong and who is doing her incredibly awkward best to support you at a time when she deserves to be happy not only because she's getting married but also because the oppressive crypto-Soviet government she grew up under has just collapsed.
I actually had a scene here originally with Richard and Anne, but it wasn't working so I dropped it; it was mostly just Richard pouting. Also flinging a copy of Froissart at the wall, which can't be good either for Froissart or the wall.
Another upshot of the whole clusterfuck is that he totally fails to write the conference paper that he's supposed to be delivering in a week and which he has scarcely even looked at since before Berlin. He's sorely tempted to blow off his appointment to discuss it with Simon, but he suspects he is already in the hole for the entire jetting-off-to-Berlin-and-getting-arrested business, even though Simon was actually very understanding about all of it, what with the whole world-changing nature of the thing: it isn't every day that the Cold War comes to a non-nuclear-winter-and-horrible-horrible-death-causing end.
One would hope, anyway.
Simon, of course, is meant to be Simon Burley, though I don't think his full name is ever given in the fic; I am pretty sure everyone reading this knows that, though.
It is much more awkward, however, when you've fallen behind in your scholarly work because you are having a fight with your boyfriend, even if your relationship with your adviser is the kind where you're -- well, not comfortable talking about that sort of thing, because telling someone you are fighting with your boyfriend over the fact that you're marrying your girlfriend is never comfortable even if it's not as bad as actually doing it, but rather, it doesn't feel wildly inappropriate.
I can't imagine having this conversation with my adviser, but I have talked with him about the stigma of antidepressants, which is its own kind of awkward. And they're at Oxford, so apparently the supervisor/-ee relationship has many fewer boundaries. Or something.
Still, he sort of wants to crawl into a hole and die as he explains his personal crisis and the myriad ways it is fucking up his life and, more relevantly at the moment, his conference paper, especially since Simon is sitting there watching him impassively and demonstrating a remarkable knack for smirking even while smoking a pipe (which he clearly does ironically as part of his Queenly Old Oxford Don persona).
Simon got queerified in this universe largely because I needed a queer character in a disinterested position to give Richard advice, since he is clearly not going to pick up on his own that having a female partner means he can pass for straight, and he is too irritated with Robbie at the moment to accept it from him.
"I don't pretend to understand your love life," he says, finally, removing his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I suppose the only advice I have for you is to remind you that it hasn't actually been that long since homosexuality was completely illegal. That wrecked a great many lives, you know. I was about your age in the fifties and I imagine it's hard for someone of your generation to imagine what that was like, even though it's not as if things are particularly rosy even now -- I assume you haven't forgotten protesting against Section 28 last year?"
Section 28 of the UK's Local Government Act prohibited the "promotion" of same-sex relationships by local authorities and schools (which was deemed to include any depiction of LGB relationships as normal). Although it did not establish any new criminal offenses, it did lead to the closing or self-censorship of many student LGBT groups and council materials aimed at LGBT citizens. It also served to galvanize LGBT rights movements in the UK. The clause was not revoked until 2000 (in Scotland) and 2003 (in the rest of the UK).
"No, of course not," Richard mumbles, wishing he had bothered to keep up on his work, so that he wouldn't have had to make excuses for not finishing and consequently wouldn't be listening to Simon reminding him How Things Are For Gentlemen of Our Persuasion.
I bet Simon actually says "Gentlemen of Our Persuasion," too. With the caps like that.
"It's a major advantage, socially, to be able to pass for straight. I'm sure I needn't tell you so."
"I'm not trying to pass for straight," Richard says.
"But you still need to remember that you can."
Richard, of course, assumes he broadcasts "O HAI I R QUEER," and he is not entirely wrong, but he has failed to consider how being in a heterosexual relationship affects other people's gaydar.
Richard looks at his hands for a moment, and then at the bookcase, and then at the prints on the wall behind Simon -- why the hell does he have "Boy Bitten by a Lizard" up there, Richard often wonders: what kind of message does that send to undergrads, not that they'd pick up on the iconography -- before he finally nods and swallows hard.
Caravaggio's "Boy Bitten by a Lizard." You can draw your own conclusions.
"Can we, um, talk about Froissart now?" he says, but he does get that Simon has a point and everything even though it now feels sort of like he's just had a first-year tutorial on The Gay Lifestyle.
I'm not sure the phrase "gay lifestyle" is really true to Richard's inner monologue.
It's nearly midnight when Richard knocks on Robbie's door with absolutely no idea what he's going to say despite spending two-and-a-half pints contemplating it (he's even got a notecard with a lot of false starts which is now no good because they've all been scribbled out).
Richard is so adorable. Even if he is an enormous dork.
He's even asked Anne for her input, when he called to tell her he'd be home late, but all she said was "Richard, I am probably the last person you should ask about this."
But before he can say anything Robbie pulls him into his arms and exclaims "Christ, I miss you, you fucking bastard," and after that it's not hard to apologize at all.
I love that Richard and Robbie use "bastard" as a term of endearment, although I wish I had made more use of "tosser," because it is a great word.
***
[lj-cut text="'I thought all women were completely mad about weddings...'"]October 1990
"I thought all women were completely mad about weddings," Robbie says one evening while they're sitting around in the Turf, discussing their relative lack of major wedding plans, and he's scarcely finished the sentence before Anne is rolling her eyes and Phil, whom Richard has known since they were nine years old and seeing the same child psychiatrist on account of his dad's death and her parents' very nasty divorce, is leaning over to swat at the back of his head.
I am writing a fic about this! It consists pretty much entirely of Richard and Phil being awkward seventies children, with gratuitous references to Doctor Who, the Chalet School, and 1970s road-safety campaigns from the COI.
"Traditional weddings are specifically designed to be a celebration of patriarchy and conspicuous consumption," Anne says, while Phil, more concisely, says "Fuck you, Robbie."
YOUR HIPSTER SEXISM IS UNCOOL, ROBBIE.
"Oh, come on," Robbie says. "I bet you totally creamed your knickers over Princess Di's wedding."
HAVE WE REMINDED YOU LATELY THAT WE ARE BRITISH AND THE EIGHTIES HAVE JUST COME TO AN END? NO? CONSIDER IT DONE.
"I did nothing of the sort," Phil sniffs. "I spent my ninth birthday party half asleep because I'd been up most of the night listening to my parents arguing about swinging. They thought it'd save their marriage. That kind of thing tends to put you off the whole enterprise."
Everyone stares uncomfortably into their beer for a minute. Robbie bites his lip and starts rolling a cigarette.
Phil has Stereotypically Bad Seventies Parents. Poor Phil.
Robbie's cigarette-rolling was either speak_me_fair's idea or gileonnen's, but whoever came up with it, it was a good one.
"Um, I mean, not that you guys won't be fine," she adds, smiling apologetically at Richard and Anne. "Since you're not horrible people like my parents."
"We try," Richard says. "I do like to think we actually, you know, communicate with each other and whatnot."
At which point Anne starts coughing uncontrollably and Robbie nearly inhales his cigarette. Richard looks around the pub, but nothing particularly startling seems to be going on.
One of my favorite nasty things to do to Richard is to point out his delusions of self-awareness. Cf. also his comments on threesomes and communications in this ficlet (which was written as a deliberate foreshadowing of this fic, although it's set before Richard has met Anne, or at least before they've gotten together).
***
In the end, Anne and Richard do their best to have a terribly unromantic wedding, but their best, in spite of the fact that the preparations are dominated by a tangle of immigration paperwork, isn't entirely good enough.
They are JUST THAT CUTE.
Even though the actual ceremony, such as it is, is held in the register office and it rains for basically the entire day. Anne has expressed a determination to wear jeans to her own wedding, as if daring anyone to object, but ends up finding a floaty purple dress at Unicorn that wouldn't have looked out of place at Haight-Ashbury.
I can tell you exactly what it looked like! Viz., like this.
Unicorn is another Real Oxford Place, although I suspect that everyone reading this already knows that. It's a vintage clothing shop.
(Richard pins a green carnation to his lapel, an esoteric insistence that his marriage to a woman does not mean he has turned straight, and Robbie laughs at him for it.)
The green carnation as a Victorian symbol for homosexuality was popularized by Oscar Wilde. (It also lent its name to an 1894 novel by Robert Hichens that was cited by the prosecution at Wilde's trial the following year.)
It turns out, anyway, that none of the things they've been worrying about matter all that much, or at least they don't seem important while they're all at the Elizabeth drinking copious amounts of champagne (although the sight of Mum dancing with Simon is perhaps the most disturbing thing Richard has ever seen).
Fun fact: Gervase Mathew's The Court of Richard II (a very useful reference if you're writing about canon!period) totally ships Joan of Kent/Simon Burley. That's why I put that in there.
Anne's brothers, out of some combination of regard for their sister and post-unification euphoria, even take a stab at pretending they like each other ("Don't even ask what their problem is," Anne has said, "because I don't even know").
This is a vague historical reference; Anne's brothers Wenceslaus IV and Sigismund spent a lot of time trading off the imperial and Bohemian thrones, when Wenceslaus wasn't busy being drunk and Sigismund wasn't busy "accidentally" killing his in-laws.
The reunification of Germany became official on 3 October 1990. Everything else aside, this probably made Anne and Richard's lives considerably simpler since she'd have gained EU citizenship.
Even Robbie is blissfully, shockingly happy. Richard has no intention of asking how, precisely, he got into that mood, since he has been accepting about the marriage but fairly glum about the wedding itself -- although he is pretty sure he could guess, if he weren't occupied with the feeling of bubbles in his head.
Ecstasy. In case you hadn't guessed.
Someone asked me how high Robbie was supposed to be during this scene. The answer: very.
"Oh God, you're just both so cute," Robbie says. "I don't even understand how you do it -- " and then he snogs each of them in turn, full on the lips, which makes Anne laugh and Richard blush, because seriously his mum and his supervisor and his in-laws are all right there.
And yes, I kind of was thinking of Jack Harkness snogging both Nine and Rose there.
"You're so beautiful -- " and he trails a finger along Richard's jawline, before stopping abruptly and staring closely at Anne. "Do you have any idea what your hair is doing?"
Anne continues to smile, but her eyes widen, just perceptibly.
I intended for the implication here to be that it appears to be moving, rather than that Robbie is being bitchy about fashion.
It's very late at night when they get home, and it's then that the slight strangeness, everything mostly the same but intangibly different, begins to set in: they have the piece of paper, and the rings, now, but has anything changed really, and can you even tell when you're just coming back to your flat like any other night?
"I suppose," Richard says, dropping his jacket over the back of the sofa, "it would be more suitable to take you off to the south of France, wouldn't it?"
Anne laughs and kisses him. "It's all right," she says. "We have plenty of time for that."
Richard slides his arms around her waist. "We do, at that."
This is what we in The Biz call "Tragic Irony."
Although Rio and I do have a fic planned in which the two of them do go to the south of France, and because they have no sense whatsoever, they also bring Robbie and Phil. Wackiness, unsurprisingly, ensues.
He smiles down at her, brushing a tendril of hair off her forehead. "God, you're beautiful," he adds.
"Oh, I'd say you're the pretty one, really," Anne says. "Robbie's right about that."
And then it's like something snags in his heart, and he lets go of her. "I should call him, or something," he mutters. "Make sure he's all right -- you saw him, he was clearly high off his face..."
"Richard." Anne drapes her arms around his neck. "It'll be all right. Phil's looking after him."
I am not really very nice to Phil either, am I? Actually she and Robbie are friends in this universe -- this is actually why the one thing she does onscreen in this fic is thwap him in the head -- except that she is Sekritly in Love With Him and he is Very Very Gay and then later on they attempt to have sex in spite of that and that Ruins Everything.
"I know," he says, and swallows hard. "I just -- "
Richard has pangs of conscience at the most awkward moments.
Anne presses a finger to his lips. "I don't think it will help, Richard. Just let him come down in peace." She draws him down to kiss him again. "And besides, it's our wedding night. Come to bed."
Richard smiles at her, but she seems to have caught something of his transitory melancholy; she sighs and leans against his shoulder, and he bends in to kiss her, just under her ear at the corner of her jawline. Her fingers slide up the back of his neck into his hair -- and then he apparently has a fit of romantic traditionalism and he's stooping to lift her up, whispering "Hold on" into her ear.
"What are you doing?" she asks, half-startled and half-laughing, clinging to Richard's neck as her feet go out from under her.
"I'm carrying you to bed, what does it look like?" he says, and then she's laughing for real as he takes a step and immediately wobbles, nearly twisting his knee as he attempts to redistribute their combined weight.
I think this may be one of the most adorable things I've ever written. It was sort of a gesture of desperation on my part, because if they kept talking the scene would get too angsty. Which also works as an in-story motivation for Richard, so it's all good.
"Put me down!" she giggles, sliding out of his arms. "We're not going to accomplish much if you break yourself, are we?"
"That's an excellent point, isn't it?" he says, as she pulls him toward the bedroom.
***
"Do you think it feels different?" Richard asks afterwards, as they lie tangled together. "Now that we're married?"
Anne leaves off kissing his neck to think about this for a moment. "Not really," she says.
"You know, I didn't think so either," Richard laughs. "I don't suppose that's very romantic, is it?"
Yet more sex ahead! This is another bit that doesn't really need much commentary beyond "la la la it's Richard and Anne being cute."
"I like to think it means we've been doing it right." She presses him onto his back, her hair falling about his face as she bends over him, and whispers, "Of course, a valid experiment needs repeatable results."
"And we're certainly conscientious scholars." Richard grins at her, and then gasps as her hand curls between his legs.
They may not be doing anything differently, he suspects, but they're certainly doing it right.
la la la Richard and Anne still being cute.
I should have the last bit of this up before too long. It will be THE BIT THAT IS ALL SEX.