Work Text:
First Steps
“Put your hand here.”
“What? Like this?”
“No, higher up.”
Robin grabs Guy’s gloved hand and shows him how to place it just above the knife-belt the outlaw is wearing, the one he’s reluctant to take off, despite his resolve to do this thing with Guy of Gisborne.
“Comfortable?” he asks.
“No,” Guy says, “not very.”
“You’ll get used to it. Now, try wrapping your right leg around mine.”
Guy gives Robin a ‘you’ve got to be joking’ look; hands around waists are one thing, but getting any closer than that to Robin Hood, his longtime enemy, is another.
“Come on,” Robin urges. “I won’t bite.”
“No, but I might,” Guy retorts. “Why do I have to be the one doing the leg wrapping?”
Robin shakes his head, tuts. “I can’t believe this is proving so difficult.”
“And I can’t believe I agreed to do this in the first place,” Guy says, removing his hand from Robin’s waist. “I must have been losing my mind.”
“So that’s it?” Robin huffs. “You’re just going to give up, after all the careful plans we made, all the time I spent working out where we could meet in this godforsaken castle?”
“Go home, Hood,” Guy says, pulling on his tall, black boots. “Go back to the forest and let’s just pretend this never happened.”
“You know, I figured you for many things, Gisborne,” Robin says, shrugging into his leather jerkin, “but never a quitter.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you’re a quitter.”
Tweaking his gloves from his hands and tossing them aside, Guy stands in front of Robin, his nose a scant couple of inches from the outlaw’s nose. Placing one hand back on Robin’s waist, he slides the other behind Robin’s back.
“Now what, Hood?” he grinds out.
“Now we start to move, very slowly,” Robin says, a grin spreading across his face.
After a few awkward moments, and a great deal of eye avoidance, Guy pulls away.
“It’s no good. I can’t do it. I just can’t.”
“Look, Guy, this is all about trust. You have to learn to trust me.”
It feels strange, Guy thinks, hearing Robin Hood calling him by his first name, but then there is nothing un-strange about this situation. Here are two men – mortal enemies no less – performing intimacies that, should they be caught, would not only result in them being the talk of Nottingham, but quite likely finding themselves spending the rest of their days in the sheriff’s dungeons. The thought of what the despotic Sheriff Vaisey might do and say to Guy really didn’t bear thinking about.
“Forget it!” Guy snaps, striding across the room and retrieving his discarded gloves. “I’m not doing it.”
“Why not?” Robin asks. “What are you frightened of?”
“I’m not frightened of anything.”
“Yes you are. You’re frightened you won’t be good enough, or I won’t.”
“Rubbish.”
“Look,” Robin says, a little more kindly. “Nobody can see us. We’re in your private chambers, and the door is locked and bolted. The only way anyone could catch us out is if they scaled the castle walls and peeked in through the window, and in case you hadn’t noticed, I happen to be here.”
“So you do,” Guy says, dry as dust. He glances at the bed – the bed he would be tucked up and asleep in if Robin Hood hadn’t managed to persuade him otherwise.
“Well?” Robin asks.
Guy licks his lips. “All right. We’ll give it a go. But don’t blame me if this doesn’t go right.”
“Guy, it’s my first time too, remember?”
Once again, the use of his first name causes Guy of Gisborne to think that perhaps they can do this thing after all.
“How about we start off slowly?” Robin suggests.
“You mean no leg wrapping?”
“Just simple hand holding, that kind of thing.”
Guy nods. He thinks he can do that.
“All right?” Robin asks, after they’ve been standing quietly, arms wrapped around each for some considerable time; just ‘getting used to the feel of it’ as Robin had grinningly put it.
“No,” Guy says.
“What do you mean no? We’ve hardly done anything yet.”
“I mean it’s too bright in here. Let me snuff out a candle or two. I think I’ll have a better chance of doing this thing if I can’t see you so well.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“I am not being ridiculous.”
“All right, have it your way, but let’s keep one candle burning. When we get to the trickier moves I need to at least see what position you’re in.”
Again, Guy nods. After a moment of eye-balling each other, Robin relents and does the honours of snuffing out the many candles that Guy has ranged about his bedchamber, apart from the one that sits by the large bed on the far side of the room – the bed that Robin of Locksley is doing his best to not look at and failing miserably.
After a few more fumbling attempts, Guy gets the leg-wrapping thing sussed. Thereupon, things start to move more swiftly aided, no doubt, by the near darkness, and before too long Guy finds himself falling into step with the outlaw. He allows himself a small smirk, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Robin.
Robin, meanwhile, is starting to feel drowsy. He’s been doing food drops, swiping taxes and tearing through the forest for the better part of the day, and now it’s well past the midnight hour and his warm bed – any bed in fact – is starting to sound more than a little attractive.
“Do you mind,” Guy says, somewhat testily.
“What?” Robin raises his head, realises it’s been lolling against Guy’s chest. “Oh, sorry. Getting tired. Perhaps we should call it a night?”
“No,” Guy insists. “We’re only just getting the hang of it. I’m not stopping now.”
“Can we at least take a quick breather?” Robin asks.
“Very well,” Guy says, padding across to the bed and sitting down. “But only for a short while. I don’t want you still here when the castle wakes up.”
Nodding, Robin skirts around to the opposite side of the bed. He sits, pulls off his boots and rubs his stockinged feet, finally slumping back on top of the thick blankets.
“What are you doing?” Guy asks.
“Resting.”
“There can be no rest for the wicked,” Guy says.
“Is that what we are then?”
Robin yawns.
“Come on.” Guy reaches across the bed, grasps Robin’s out-flung hand and jerks him to his feet.
Sighing, and grudgingly pulling on his worn boots, Robin joins Guy on the large, black rug in front of the unlit fire.
“Here and here?” Guy asks, hooking his arms around Robin.
“Yes, but you need to be smack bang in front of me for this to work,” Robin reminds him.
Guy shuffles, shuffles some more.
“Closer,” Robin instructs.
“You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re just taking the piss now,” Guy grumbles.
“Trust me,” Robin says. “I know what I’m doing.”
“How do you know? You said you’d never done this before.”
“I’ve seen it though.”
“Where?” Guy asks.
“In the Holy Land.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you’re making it up. I think you’re just doing this to humiliate me, and that any minute now that pathetic gang of yours are going to come bursting through the door shouting ‘nah, nah, got you’.”
“Now who’s being pathetic?”
Robin jerks Guy into his chest.
There’s a moment of silence, a moment when both men think the other might hear how their hearts are thumping that little bit faster than usual, that if their eyes met they’d be regarding each other with something other than mutual loathing.
“I felt that,” Robin says, indistinctly.
“Pardon?”
“You’re...you’re...”
“I’m what?” Guy says, straining against Robin’s sudden vice-like grip.
“Aroused.”
“I am most definitely not.”
“I beg to differ,” Robin says, inclining his head towards the floor.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Guy quickly retorts, trying but failing to disentangle himself from Robin’s arms. “It’s just late and I’m tired and I let my mind wander.”
“I don’t believe you,” Robin says, pressing himself into Guy, chest to chest, toe to toe.
Guy gasps. “You too?”
“Looks like it,” Robin agrees, meeting Guy’s eyes – eyes, he realises, that are alight with more than the dewy wash of tiredness he’d noticed earlier. “The question is: what are we going to do about it?”
Guy follows Robin’s nod towards the bed. “No.” He vehemently shakes his head. “No way.”
“Yes, way.” Robin slides a hand to Guy’s crotch and gently fingers the increasingly bulging leather.
“No!” Guy shoves Robin backwards.
Robin snorts. “It was a joke, Guy. A joke. You don’t seriously think I want us to fuck, do you?”
Simultaneously, both men glance at the bed and then back at each other.
“Oh,” Robin says.
“Oh, my God,” Guy utters.
It is in that precise moment that both men realise that their dance lesson – the one they’d been planning for weeks in order to sweep Marian off her feet (and may the better man win) at the upcoming Nottingham Ball – has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning.
“First time?” Guy asks, quietly.
“First time,” Robin echoes, equally subdued.
“We’ll take it slowly then,” Guy says, his hand tentatively cupping Robin’s ball-sack.
“Slowly,” Robin agrees. “That is, until we’ve mastered the basic steps.”
“And then?” Guy asks, lacing his fingers through Robin’s and leading him to the bed.
“And then it’s no-holds-barred.”
“I think I’m going to like learning to dance with you, Robin Hood.”
“Likewise.”
Slowly, the two men start to undress.
Marian will have to find herself a new dance partner, it seems.
to be continued...