Christmas Ribbons
Title: Christmas Ribbons
Series: On the Threshold of Christmas
Author: Manniness
Rating: M (for reference to sexual situations of the solo variety)
Summary: Tarrant hears the words he’d only ever entertained in his dreams.
Notes: Christmas Ribbons was written for the aiw_advent 2010
“Tarrant... Tarrant...”
The sound of his name, whispered in Alice’s voice, was a call he could not deny. He looked up, surprised to find Alice in his workshop, most especially after what had happened on the threshold... Why, he had very nearly... and she had been so... and it had nearly made him sob to tear himself away from her... and even after he had... dealt with the issue of his arousal, he had been unable to look at the doorway let alone place himself in it it to see if Alice had still been there, waiting for him.
He’d feared that she would be gone.
He’d feared that she would have taken down the holly and left it on the threshold for him to collect: fairfarren... forever.
And yet, he’d feared that she would be waiting.
He’d feared that she would be Muchness itself.
He’d feared that she would ask Why...
He’d feared that he would not be able to bid her good-bye a third time.
He blinked up at this Alice who was not standing in the doorway between his workroom and the old, cluttered and full-to-bursting storage closet.
“Alice? What are you doing here?”
“I came to tell you something,” she said simply, trailing her fingers over a spillage of ribbons that arched like a rainbow over the cluttered corner of the table. “And I won’t even make you go outside in the snow for it.”
“You won’t?”
“Would you prefer that I did?”
“I prefer you,” he heard himself helplessly confess, unable to derail, detain, or detour the inconvenient truth. “Whatever pleases you.”
“Then why did you leave so suddenly?” He had to turn away at the disappointment in her eyes. “I’ve never felt like that before,” she continued, innocently twisting the knife in his heart. “You made me feel such... wondrous things and I-”
“Stop, Alice,” he begged, holding up a hand and fisting the other against the tabletop to remind himself to stay in his seat. He could not - must not - leap over this table and...!
She hesitated, but he knew the silence would not last for long. In a whisper, she queried, “Is that what they mean by making love?”
He dropped his hand to the table and spread his arms wide, as if bracing himself. “Aye.”
“And you... want to do that... with me?”
“Alice,” he pleaded. “Please, I’ve been a fool to think... to imagine... to dream...” He shook his head. “Let this be fairfarren, lovely Alice. You have such... adventures before you...”
“We’re in one now,” she informed him with a rather determined gleam in her eye.
He considered that for a moment - upside down and inside out - and found it to be true. “We are.”
“And I’ve noticed something about adventures in general.”
“What is that?” he heard himself ask.
She smiled and he felt his heart suddenly spin and dance the futterwhacken in his chest. “I prefer them with you.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
He opened his mouth to reply to that but it took several breathless attempts before his voice realized his intent and deigned to cooperate. “Alice... is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“Not quite. Do you still want to hear it?”
He was not sure. Not sure at all! “Yes...”
She leaned forward and he shivered as her fingertips - smooth and uncallused, so unlike his! - brushed over his bottom lip. She breathed, “I love you.”
*~*~*~*
Tarrant opens his eyes and blinks at the sewing machine in his line of vision. He had dozed off here, yes, sometime after he had left Alice on the threshold, had very nearly pivoted smartly back to her and rucked up her lovely, unwrinkled skirts and... But he hadn’t! He had flung himself at his workbench and had... taken himself in hand, so to speak.
He ought to feel ashamed of himself for leaving her there, for thinking of her without her expressed permission as he had touched-imagined-wanted-needed-come! But...
But...!
Tarrant sits back on the bench and clenching his jaw, his fists, his eyes shut, he turns himself toward the doorway above which the holly still hangs. He takes a deep breath, opens his eyes, and nearly sobs at the empty, Alice-less space there.
And then he remembers: of course it’s empty! It is always empty unless he is in it! Only then is he able to see Alice there... if she is there.
He consults the clock (which had been bullied into minding its manners by the White Queen herself) and frets. He bites his lip, fiddles with his lace cuffs, tugs at his half gloves...
Suppose Alice is still waiting for him?
Suppose she isn’t...
Suppose you never know one way or the other...
His hands slide over the work surface of the table and grip the edge... as if the strength of his own arms will be enough to stop him from abandoning his seat.
He shouldn’t get up. He’d just bid her farewell. He should let it be farewell. In fact, he thinks as he glances once more at the clock, she is probably at dinner now. Dancing. Laughing. Being charmed by a man who is young and scarless and interesting rather than off his head and has a future that is full of curious things for her to explore and conquer and know...
Helplessly, he glances toward the doorway again. He should not step under the holly again. He should take it down, bundle it up in a muffler - a wool one, perhaps? - and send it on its merry way...
“I love you.”
Tarrant shivers. He should not let himself remember that. It had been a dream. Merely a dream. Nothing more...
Or had it? Had he not visited her in a dream? (Oh, it had taken him months and months of trying but, in the end, he had done it, hadn’t he?) Is it so impossible that she might have done the same?
No, he denies. She had not just dreamed him (although he suspects she had done just that very thing - he had been far too forthcoming with the inconvenient truth in that dream for it to have been one of his own making!) nor had she just told him... just said that she... that she... It had only been a dream! Nothing good will come from believing in it! Impossible rubbish that it is! ... or is it?
Suppose you never know if it was just a dream... or if it was Alice herself who said-
Tarrant can bear the uncertainty no longer! His hands flutter over his trouser fastenings and he checks to make sure he’s decent... and then he stumbles over to the doorway. Is she still there? Has she been waiting all this time?
No, he tells himself, she is away. She is dining and dancing and he had dreamed it all himself and it had been his conscience and not Alice that had made him speak so truthfully and she is not waiting and he will not think about what it will mean when he sees she is gone and...!
With a fortifying breath, he ducks beneath the holly and...
... yes: there is Alice, sitting on the floor with her back against the door frame and her legs curled beneath her beautiful and irreparably wrinkled skirt.
Tarrant lets out a long breath and watches her. She is asleep. And frowning.
Knowing he could still turn away - knowing that he ought to turn away and give Alice the gift of a brighter future than his - Tarrant kneels down, carefully braces himself on his arms against the door jamb over her head and peppers her tense brow with butterfly kisses.
“Tarrant?” she croaks, turning toward his soft attentions even before she opens her eyes. He has never heard-seen-received a more beautiful thing in his life.
“Aye, Alice.”
Her eyelids flutter once and then open. Her expression is delighted and unguarded and her smile is warm and so welcoming! “You’re back.”
“Of course, I am.” The words sound so confident and yet he had been everything but. In fact, he still isn’t. “I... I had to confirm...”
“Confirm what?” she replies, looking puzzled and on her way to being irked.
He shifts away, pulls his arms away from her and watches her sit up with a wince and a hand massaging the small of her back. Tarrant ventures, “I... I was in your dream just now?”
“Yes,” she answers, looking very Irked, indeed! “And you left rather abruptly.”
“Before as well. I left you on the threshold. A bad habit, it seems. You are often late and I am...”
“Hm,” she agrees, arching a brow at him imperiously. He experiences the urge to lean forward and press a kiss to that single brow, but refrains. For the moment.
“Why did you leave so suddenly?” she asks, just as he’d feared she would.
He sighs. “Why did you wait? I expected you to go to Christmas Dinner. To dance and make merry...”
She reaches out to him but he intercepts her hand before she can touch him, distract him.
“There are better lads than me,” he says baldly, then winces. Perhaps he should have been more circumspect on that point but he fears - should he permit himself - he will dance around the issue for all eternity.
Alice shifts onto her knees, pulls her hands from his and cages his cheeks with her palms. “I don’t agree,” she replies. “I thought I made that clear in my dream.”
“Did you... do you...” he struggles to ask, to clarify, to establish beyond any doubt whatsoever... despite the fact that he knows disappointment will Crush him should he realize those three words had been misunderstood, taken out of context, rashly uttered. And yet he suspects it will be better for her if she had not intended for those words to be taken so literally. But he is lovesick and mad and he cannot help himself from wondering! “What I mean to say is... In the dream, you indicated that you...”
“Yes, I love you,” she says without a moment’s more hesitation.
She shuffles closer to him. No doubt her skirt is snagging on splinters and getting soiled with dust. “Yes, I have been waiting here for you since you left. No, I will not be dancing with another man tonight. Nor any other night.”
His hands move along her arms without even bothering to ask if they might do so. Alice, thankfully, does not seem to mind. “But, Alice... your plans, your adventures...”
“Yes,” she continues, “I am still going to leave for China. And, yes, I’ll be taking the holly because... I want you to be there with me... even if it’s just like this.”
“And I... I want to be there with you, Alice,” he assures her although he doubts she needs reassurance as much as he needs to hear himself say it, promise it. He hates his need for her - hates what he selfishly demands of her - and yet he is not strong enough to even put up a token protest. He will not be able to bid her farewell again; he feels it in his soul; he cannot be without her.
Tarrant takes a deep breath and damns himself, his weakness, his want as he says, “But will you please permit me to give you one thing?”
She leans toward him. “You may give me anything you like... except another fairfarren,” she replies with a steely gleam in her eyes and her lips curved into a very Alice-y smile.
He helplessly returns her smile to her along with one of his own, and, reaching into his pockets, seeks out the various tools of his trade that he always keeps on his person. A clip-sew-snip later and he holds out the creation - so insignificant and so quickly and cheaply made! A truly accurate representation of all he will ever be able to offer her, pathetically transitory baubles at best - and his heart breaks for her as she accepts it and slips the band made from braided ribbons onto her finger. It rests where an engagement ring would - where one of gold and sapphires might have rested had his own handily-made trinket not already - brazenly! - claimed the space.
“I will never take it off,” she tells him before he can beg her to do that very thing. He should not speak for her; Alices should not be spoken for by Mad Hatters! Alices deserve much more than a man who drinks the queen’s tea only because she is gracious enough to permit it.
“And this is for you,” Alice says, calling his attention beck to her. He watches as she pulls a ribbon from her hair, causing the left half of the intricate style to collapse and cascade onto her shoulder. For a moment, he is distracted by the similarity between that fateful motion and the inevitable tumble of a too-tall stack of bolts of fabric. And then the ribbon in her grasp flutters, draws his gaze. He watches as she then ties it carefully around his wrist, with a bow.
“Do you... do you mean it, Alice?” he asks, blinking as his vision blurs again and again. “This? You? Me? ... us?” The last word, daringly conceived, is hesitantly spoken on a rasp.
Alice snuggles into his arms, kisses his collar, breathes deeply of his scent. “Yes,” she answers.
Tarrant leans his cheek against the crown of her head and holds her close. Yes, he knows that he has nothing to offer her except himself. He knows that Alice does not need him to look after her; as the White Queen’s Champion, she will never want for anything here in Underland, under the White Queen’s rule, for the remainder of her life.
He knows that Alice seeks adventure, that she will go to this place called China on a ship, but he knows he will share a doorway with her because she had asked him to, because - for some strange reason - she believes she needs him. But he knows the truth: she doesn’t need him. And yet here she is, insistently nuzzling against his neck, her arms around his waist and...
And...
It is inconceivable, but it is Real: despite all that he cannot give her, she wants him.
And he has never been more aware of the fact that Alices are not only Muchy, but Stubborn once they set their mind to something. Someone.
Yes, he wishes for More for her... but she has Chosen.
Who is he - a mad hatter - to argue?
Tarrant sighs, relents. Gives in. He is hers... for as long as she desires him. And considering the innate stubbornness of Alices, he suspects - with a heart that swells painfully large with Hope - that she will wish to keep him for a Very Long Time.
And if that is the case, then, one day, when Alice has finished her adventure, he will send her another dream; he will show her how to take down the holly and how to tie it in her hair and how to focus on her heart’s desire... so that she will be able to step through the doorway and into Underland again.
But for now, he has her in his arms. He has his ribbons around her finger and the bow she’d tied around his wrist. It’s enough. It is more than Enough. It is nearly Too Much...!
He blinks as another thought comes to him.
“Alice?” he whispers.
“Hm?”
“I haven’t stolen your heart, have I?”
She giggles. “No more than I have stolen yours.”
“Ah, good. We’re all right, then,” he murmurs into her tangled, unstyled fall of hair. “For I’ve already given it to you freely.”
And, for the first time in a long time, he feels just so: Free.
The End... until next year! (^__~)
Er... maybe...?
*~*~*~*
Notes:
So, it's subtle, but I left some hints about how the dreams worked and how the expectations of the dreamer color the dream: just like Tarrant's preconceptions colored his dream of Alice (he expected that she'd forgotten him so - in the dream - Alice didn't recognize him right away), Alice more or less demands the truth from Tarrant in her dream of him. When she asks him a question, he answers with helpless honesty. Gotta love a Take-Charge!Alice. (^__~)
Also, while Tarrant feels Alice might be "better off" with someone else, in the end he trusts her to know what she wants and as it's the same thing as what he wants, he can't bring himself to fight it. I hope that came across - this understanding they reach, I mean: she wants him; he trusts her; they both find peace in that. And peace, really, is what Christmas is supposed to be about, right? Peace and hope... on the threshold of a new year.