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snzluckys · 3 months ago

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we can but hope -> a/c/g/a/s ; james. [1/3]

basically: yorkshire dales. late 1930's. vet in a small, rural veterinary practice. set somewhere just after 3x02, after j and helen's wedding. i love me a sickeningly in love newlywed phase, ngl. especially when that involves colds that in no way get in the way of said sickeningly in love-ness 😇

[ PART 2]

“Mmph… Jess, get away…”

Helen’s lips paused where they had been pressing kisses to her husband’s jaw, intent on rousing him from sleep.

“You what?!”

With the early morning sun still struggling to rise, the room was bathed in a dim grey din, and everything felt hazy as James too had been struggling to wake. In stark contrast to the sweetness of her previous attentions however, the suddenly sharp indignance of her tone was more than enough to finally fully wake him once and for all.

When his eyes flew open, heady awareness of the warm bracket of her thighs around his body flooded his system. An apology came quick off his tongue despite the drowsy, lingering sleep clouding his head.

“No! I was-” he yelped, rather unintelligently, having to clear his throat as the words got caught in it. “I was dreaming, about- about Jess…“

Helen’s eyebrow quirked up as she watched him stammer, a smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth “Y’know,” she said, “Some wives would have their newly wedded husbands strung up for muttering the names of other women in their sleep.”

Suddenly, a familiarly deep, good-natured bark from the lady in question emanated up through the floorboards from downstairs, followed by the sound of her nails skittering across the kitchen floor towards her bed.

They both looked at each other, shared humour in the glance, and laughed at the hilarity of it.

“Not you thinking I was the bloody dog! My kisses can’t be that slobbery, surely…”

“Look, in fairness to me, with the amount of times I’ve fallen asleep on that sofa downstairs and been woken in quite a similar fashion-” James argued. Although, his lingering smile was stubborn as he cut himself off mid-thought, taking an extra few seconds just then to study the loveliness of her face, feature by feature in the muted half-light of November daybreak.

He’d never get over the novelty of this, surely? Her being the first thing he saw every day, and the last thing at night? The idea felt impossible. He couldn’t imagine ever not feeling how he did right now, chest light and fluttery, giddy with how lucky he knew he was.

His hand slid mindlessly up from the skin of her thigh left exposed by the rucked-up nightdress, to her waist.

“Sorry,” he tactfully muttered instead.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, discovered in the few weeks it’d been now since they’d gotten back from their honeymoon, not being able to stop smiling at any random given point in the day. In true Yorkshire fashion, Maggie from behind the Drovers’ reliably sticky bartop, had warned him his “face would get stuck like that” if he wasn’t careful.

Like all good things though, he wasn’t sure how long this dream-like, rose-tinted tableaux of marital bliss could last before it began to subside, give way as they settled further into a domestic normality (as much could be called normal at Skeldale House - that being precious little), but they could live in hope. He’d decided to take every last molecule of it he could; was determined to hold onto it.

In any case, Helen’s smile mirrored his own, he could feel it against his mouth when she leaned down for a kiss, her lips still a little sleep-warm.

“Good morning,” she said, like she was finally getting around to it. He surrendered to it easily, repaying the kiss with a murmured ‘Morning’ in return, wrapping his arms around her back and holding her tight against his chest.

“D’you have any water there on your side?” He asked when they pulled apart and he reluctantly released her from his clutches, brow furrowing as the thickness in his throat refused to budge with another attempt at clearing it, emanating a dry, persistent ache instead.

“Mm” she affirmed, reaching over to hand him the glass from her nightstand, his own taken up completely by the phone he had to be by for any manner of emergency out of hours call-outs. She shifted a little, allowing him the room to sit up a bit. “Save me a mouthful though, will you? You know I’d never dare say, not to Mrs Hall, but-“

“Aye,” he said with a short, knowing chuckle, the water blessedly cool against the rawness of his throat. Ever since she’d moved in after they’d gotten back, Helen had been trying to find her place within the inner workings of both the house and the surgery. Which wasn’t proving to be as totally seamless a task as she’d like, not when the boys and Audrey all had such well-defined and long-entrenched roles at this stage. Either way, offending the de facto ‘woman of the house’ was the very last thing she wanted to be at. “The beef last night was on the salty side.”

They allowed themselves to indulge in the rare privacy of only the other’s company for a few more minutes, knowing they were unlikely to get another until it was time to get back into bed later that night. With Siegfried being away for a couple of days at a special bovine veterinary sciences conference in Darlington, and a still very newly-qualified Tristan only being trusted to run small pets surgery, a list of farm visits as long as his arm had ended up falling into James’s rather unfortunate hands.

They couldn’t prove it, but they reckoned it was secretly punishment for James daring to take a full week’s leave for their honeymoon, but regardless, with the way the weather had taken a turn it was certainly starting to feel like one, whether intentional or not.

They were in that awkward pocket of time in the year between late autumn and early winter, when the trees were still adorned with hues of orange, red, and brown, but sparser than earlier in the season. Many of the leaves instead ending up wet and trampled into mush underfoot between the grooves of the cobbled streets. When the harvesting was finishing up as the nights drew in earlier, the chill in the air beginning to nip with a little extra teeth.

Also, because it’s Northern England…

“Miserable ol’ day, that,” Helen remarked idly as they finally set about getting ready for the day, removing the satin scarf from around loosely tied fabric curls as James slipped a freshly laundered shirt over his undershirt. She nodded her head towards the window as she said it, just as a particularly relentless sheet of rain pelted against it, the wind that accompanied it so bracing it nearly had the frame rattling.

An involuntary shiver raced up James’s spine just for having heard it, and he made even quicker work then of doing up the buttons and slipping a jumper on top.

“It’s apparently set to be like that all week, and all,” he nodded, smiling ruefully. “Perfect day for Siegfried to have skipped town, I should think.”

With the beckoning scent of toast and bacon filtering up through the house and into the bedsit, the two of them seemed to wordlessly and simultaneously hurry themselves along a bit, the thought of a hot breakfast and, particularly for James at least, an even hotter cup of tea like an oasis in the middle of the desert.

“Have you seen my other shoe?” he asked at one point as they manoeuvred around each other in the poky space, brandishing a lonely brogue in one hand as Helen dropped into the stool at her dressing table, now fully dressed. She looked up at him in the reflection of the mirror, seemingly amused.

“Wherever you left it, I’d imagine?” she quipped, her tone softening as she once again gestured towards the heavily rain-spattered window. “Would you not be better just stickin’ your wellies on for the day and leaving it at that?”

James gave a little huff of discontent, dropping down onto his belly by the side of the bed. Peering underneath, he made a grab for the vaguely shoe-like shape lying on its side. “Well aye, I’ve got them in the boot of the car for the actual calls themselves. Got to maintain some semblance of professionalism in between though,” he said, voice straining a little as he reached, before finally getting a hold of it.

“On your own head and your nice dress shoes be it,” Helen replied, resigned. The Yorkshire Dales could be a cruel beast this time of year, that she knew well. “They’ll be soaked through before the day’s end…”

She trailed off, glancing upwards to meet his eye in the mirror once more as she realised he wasn’t listening to her. “James?”

The persistent twinge of an ache in his throat had crawled up into his sinuses, leaving him heavy-lidded as his nostrils flared in imminent warning. Both hands still occupied by the shoes he was holding, with how fast it came upon him he only just barely had the mind to twist off to the side, sneezing haphazardly down towards his arm.

“hH’AESSSH’hh!..... ih’IDZSSSSsh’ue!”

God, if she hadn’t been paying attention to him beforehand she likely would have jumped. For the overwhelmingly gentle, softly-spoken man that her husband was, by heck could his sneezing half-deafen you.

“Bless you, love,” she said, reaching for her lipstick as James groaned, the sneezes having scratched up his throat like a sheet of sandpaper. Dumping the shoes on the floor by the chair, he dipped into his nightstand drawer for a handkerchief, sniffing wildly.

“Thank-you,” he mumbled genuinely from behind it, burying his nose in its folds, and then because he can simply never resist the urge to apologise for something, anything, “Sorry.”

Helen shook her head, expression long-suffering but unquestionably fond. “Don’t be daft, up here’s needed a going-over with the hoover for days and I haven’t gotten round to it.”

Ironically, ever since they’d gotten back, and she’d subsequently moved into Skeldale with James and the Farnons, she’d been making sure to spend as much time as she could up at Heston Grange. Trying to maintain some degree of normality for her dad and Jenny amongst all the change, ensure they were coping okay with the workload without her there all the time as she had been. It’d been such a big change, and it all happened so quickly. Sometimes Helen herself didn’t know whether she was up or down. It’d even shocked her, flipping through the post and her name reading ‘Helen Herriot’ rather than ‘Alderson’.

“I’ll see to it later, yeah?”

Aye, James thought, with not an insignificant amount of relief, of course. That makes sense. Case closed, then. No more need to worry. It was the dust; the irritation of it was burning a little even still.

Giving his nose one last definitive swipe, he pocketed the handkerchief and set about at last putting his shoes on. “Of course. Don’t worry about it.”

He knew it was an adjustment for her, one he probably couldn’t fully understand having not had to go through it himself. Going from the farm to Skeldale House, a lifelong farmer to the wife of a vet, living in the village with him and not in a farmhouse out in the Dales with her dad and sister. The last thing he wanted to do was put pressure on her, or unfair expectations. He was resolute in his intention to never be a husband who simply demanded and expected from his wife simply by virtue of having been born a man and her a woman. It wasn’t how he’d been raised, wasn’t how his dad had been with his mum, and it wasn’t how he’d ever want to treat his wife either.

At the end of the day they were a partnership in all things. A team.

All throughout his life, as most people probably do, James had imagined himself being married at some point. Knew it was to some extent inevitable. Having a wife, children, a family of his own. Not that he’d not looked forward to it, but he’d always just had so much else to focus on - school, then college, final exams, certification, and then the nine months it took him to eventually find a job. Moving down from inner city Glasgow to the rural depths of the English countryside. Getting settled into his rather… unorthodox way of life here; earning people’s trust and respect with their animals, their livelihoods, and making himself part of the community.

He’d always had some vague sort of outline of a picture in mind depicting what his future would look like, but it’d been like trying to read it through a screen of smoke, rendering it blurry and indecipherable.

The day he met Helen though (properly, not counting when he’d been ploughed through by Jenny getting off the bus on the very first day he arrived), on one of his first days in Darrowby, it all came into view with a clarity so startling it could have taken his breath away. He wasn’t a greatly religious man, but it’d been as if God himself had picked him up from where he’d been and dropped him into the arse-end of nowhere in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside, right where he needed to be to find his wife.

And what a woman to have found.

“No, no,” Helen insisted as James gravitated back across the room and into her orbit, his broad, but yet still tender hands, a little calloused from the hard work they weathered each day, finding their way to her shoulders. “If it’s bad enough it’s got you sneezing all over’t shop, it definitely needs done. I’ll see to it before I head up to the Grange later on.”

He knew better than to challenge her when she set her mind to an idea, so he backed down, his expression soft. “Thanks. I appreciate it,” he near-whispered, resting his chin on the top of her head for a second, before dropping a kiss down onto the crown.

Helen glowed under the affection, the honey-sweetness of it, the ease with which the instinct seemed to come to him, infusing into her bloodstream, and she let it warm her from the inside out. She brought a hand up to grasp one of his own, letting her thumb swipe against his knuckles.

“Suppose that’s why you were snoring an’ all last night as well,” she teased, the urge to do so unable to be quelled.

His body went rigid with affront, bringing his face out of her hair just so he could shoot her a disapproving look. “You’re having me on now, I don’t snore!”

“Well you certainly were last night! Trust me, I was there.”

He rolled his eyes, words dying in his throat as he backed down. What could he say to that?

A faint inkling of unease crept back in. He, reportedly, only really tended to snore when he-

No, he thought, quashing it quickly. I’m being a big hypochondriac, fretting over nothing. It’s the dust, she’d said so herself. He’s grand.

“Which one?” Helen asked, indicating towards the small metal jewellery tree where her necklaces hung, a couple of plain, simple ones she gravitated towards for everyday wear, and a couple more she’d only pull out on special occasions. It’d become a silly little game they’d play in the mornings, James having to pick one, trying to match it to what she was wearing and what kind of mood she was in. He’d gotten pretty good, he liked to think. She never really complained no matter what he chose.

He smiled, taking a longer, more deliberate look at what she was wearing, a cream woollen jumper, a long, blue cotton skirt, and two pairs of tights to protect against the cold. Ready for a blustery day as winter encroached.

With only one option for it, he leaned over her shoulder and plucked a simple gold chain from the metal hook, the one with a little, understated golden thistle on the end. He’d gotten it for her as a little extra surprise wedding present; the way it matched the bouquet and boutonnieres immediately catching his attention, something that’d last far longer beyond the day after the flowers themselves had wilted away.

“If you’re no’ having either the ceremony or the honeymoon in Scotland, you’s’d best have a part of it with you on the day at the very least,” his mum had groused, influencing their choice of flowers for the wedding.

He looked at her then as he picked it up, awaiting judgement. She pretended to give him an appraising look, but couldn’t bite back the smile for long, accepting his choice with a nod. Glowing with pride, he opened the clasp and draped it around her neck, letting his fingertips linger against the delicate skin, trail upwards with a featherlight touch.

Helen shivered, but made no move to displace his hand.

“James! You know I’m ticklish there,” she whined, though the breath seemed to catch in her throat, the chastisement coming out stilted and a little breathless.

“Do I?” he replied innocently, but with an incorrigible smirk, as he bent down, replacing his fingers with his lips against the side of her neck. He inhaled deeply, intent on savouring the soft, floral notes of her favourite perfume before a day full of farm visits. He met resistance though, the movement sounding more like a sniff not even just once, but the two times he tried.

Huh, it was fainter than usual. Maybe she hadn’t put that much on today.

Either not having sensed his trouble, or simply not minded, her hand snuck round to clutch the back of his neck, mouth hanging slightly open, eyelids fluttering against the onslaught of sensation.

“Don’t start something you don’t have time to finish” she managed out, brittle and edged in warning but making no effort to stop him all the same. We can but live in hope.

“Who says we don’t have t-”

“JIM! HELEN! If you’re not downstairs in the next 30 seconds, your bacon is fair game! Just a warning, heed it at your leisure!” Tristan’s voice suddenly boomed from the bottom of their stairs, giving them both a start, jumping apart as if he’d burst into the bloody room and all.

It was followed by the sound of heavy footsteps, two pairs, in the opposite direction, as if he was being frogmarched back down the hallway.

“Don’t listen to him, I never agreed to that!” Mrs Hall’s voice followed, not quite as loud, but characteristically firm, if marginally harried. “But even so, I’d recommend not taking the chance, y’know what he’d like.”

It succeeded in piercing through whatever romantic fog had settled in around them. They felt it melt away into reluctant acceptance as they sighed, James retreating as Helen got up from the stool.

Alright, maybe they didn’t have time for that.

“Drovers later on?” she suggested as they made for the stairs. “I think Audrey’s out at the pictures with Gerald, so we’re fending for ourselves anyway. We could grab a drink and something to eat?”

“You’re on.”

—-------------------

By the time James made it back to Skeldale House later that evening, despite it only being just gone six o’clock, it was just dark enough outside that he didn’t feel self-conscious about letting his head fall forward onto the steering wheel in an exhausted heap.

Resting his eyes. Just for a second.

Suffice to say, it’d been a long day.

The rain had continued its relentless downpour all day long and now into the evening too, managing to sneak up on him and soak him through to the bone even in just the short time it took to dash from the car to the barn, stable, coop, or any such place with a blessed covering over the top of it. Once the chill set into his bones after the first couple of calls though, it’d been rather hard to shake.

He’d expected the sore throat and tenderness in his sinuses from the morning’s escapades, maybe naively chalked up to a mere dusty carpet, to shift as the morning wore on, after getting some fresh air in his lungs. Blowing the cobwebs away. That should’ve done the trick.

Instead, with each chilly, draughty barn one after another, the aches only embedded further, almost melding into one eventually. As the hours ticked by he only got more lethargic and bone-weary, his entire face started to feel more and more swollen in that unmistakable, ominously viral kind of way that left little question about what he was in for. He could drink enough readily offered cups of tea to fill Loch Lomond, pass the incessant sniffling and throat clearing through appointments off as being down to the weather as much as he wanted.

As much as he liked to think himself an optimist, at the end of the day it didn’t change the now inescapable fact that he was definitely getting the cold, and there was likely very little he could do about it. At the worst time bloody possible, too.

Upon returning to the house, he’d reversed into the driveway rather than just driving in, and only far enough that the tip of the hood was just shy of cutting out onto the pavement. Yet more reluctant acceptance in his consideration that, with Siegfried not due back until late the following afternoon, he’d be heading back out to do it all over again first thing tomorrow morning as well.

He let out a sigh, pressing his forehead a little harder into the smooth, leather-covered metal, finding blissful, if momentary, relief in how it kneaded into the pressure gathering between the top of his nose and in between his eyebrows.

There’d been a point earlier when, wrist-deep inside the business end of a labouring heifer no less, he’d swallowed absentmindedly and had been caught off guard when the ache wasn’t quite as piercing as it had been before. Trying again and again it seemed not to be a fluke, and by the time he’d been making a bolt back for the safety of the car the sting had, miraculously, all but gone.

Perhaps it was hubris, letting himself feel relieved and self-satisfied at that point, because not too long after it had become clear the sore throat had simply ceded centre stage, and-

“hhH’AESSSSZH’uh! hh…hu’EHDZSSSSCH’uh!” he sneezed, desperate and ragged, caught in the hurried cradle of his hands.

That had started. In an embarrassingly conspicuous, rather frequent kind of way.

James sighed. Did he have to get out of the car? It was rather chilly, and the thought of finally getting to sit down in front of the fire inside and warm up a bit was a tempting fantasy, but had he not been rained on enough for one day? Actually, he was rather content out here for the time being. Helen wouldn’t-

Helen.

Helen’s waiting for me in the Drovers. Helen’s waiting for me in the Drovers. Helen’s waiting for m-

Cutting off the feedback loop, James forced himself upright again.

By virtue of gravity and the fact that his nose had been running like a leaky tap for the better half of the day now, the movement forced a hurried, watery sniffle. Then another. Then another in quick succession before he gave up, pulling a now well-worn handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket, pressing it to the sore, wind-bitten underside of his nose.

His gaze flitted up across the village square to the Drovers Arms, only the faintest hint of light making it through the frosted glass windows shrouded by blackout curtains.

He needed to go. Shouldn’t keep Helen waiting any longer. On the other hand he could also feel, though, that he was likely going to sneeze again, sooner probably, rather than later, and admittedly at this point he’d rather it be in private, if possible. His nose had been so sensitive all day, set on a hair trigger, come to think of it, it’d probably be easy enough to just-

On that thought, James lowered the handkerchief, and pressed his fingertip into the bridge of his nose with what he hoped would be a teasing pressure, then moved to the side, rubbing circles into the tender passages, letting the edge of his knuckle scrape featherlight against the edge of his nostril.

It took barely a few seconds of effort before his eyes slammed shut, brimmed with moisture, and-

“hH’AESSSSHUE!” he sneezed, crushed into the fabric. “hhheh’AEHDSSSZ’uh! …..hihhH…. H’IHDZSSSS’ssh!”

Bloody hell. It was as if they were angry and resentful for having been forced from him in such a manner.

“Goodness! God bless you, Mr Herriot.”

James started, his heart skipping a beat, the voice having come out of nowhere. He rushed to look up through the tears of irritation, and found old Mrs Barton on the pavement in front of the car, lead in one hand with little Josephine the terrier on the end of it, and an umbrella in the other, looking on with a kind, genuine kind of sympathy that had any urge to be short-tempered quickly melting away.

He nodded her on, a polite smile still hidden behind the handkerchief.

“Thank you,” he said, the words coming out thick and a little muddled, before another instinctive sniffle. Mercifully though, she accepted it, walked on and let him be after that, and he was finally able to give his nose the blow that it needed.

Privacy? In Darrowby? Honestly, he should’ve known better than to assume such a thing was possible.

—-----------------------------------

When he finally psyched himself up sufficiently to brace the elements and run across the road to the pub, James found Helen at a table by the lit fireplace (by God whether it was foresight on her part of just plain luck, he could’ve married her all over again then and there on the spot), having a drink with Mrs Hall. She’d changed into a more practical pair of trousers since he’d last seen her that morning, a little splatter of mud, no doubt from the farm and on account of the rain making the entire landscape mucky, caked up the side, her soft brown curls a little wild and windswept, held up at the sides by a couple of barrettes.

“Sorry! Sorry, I know I’m late, I have no excuse,” he stuttered out in a rush as he hurried in, making sure to close the door quickly behind him before Maggie had a chance to give off about letting the heat out. Ducking down, almost by force of habit, he went to give Helen a kiss but, suddenly overly aware of his own condition, pressed it to the corner of her mouth instead at the last moment.

She tried not to look surprised at the diversion.

“But I kind of do have an excuse,” he tried, cautiously, as he sat down in the booth seat beside his wife. “In fact, I’d say that you’re lucky you’re seeing me at all considering how Mr and Mrs Dowson tried to rope me into staying for tea at my last visit. Pie, it was. Steak and kidney.”

Helen immediately turned her body towards his, her eyes suddenly saucers. “Mrs Dowson’s pies are the best in the county. They’ve won best in show at Darrowby Fair every year for the last five.”

“Are you saying I should’ve stayed?” James said, slipping his hand in behind her, letting it rest in the dip of her back, just about resisting the urge to melt into the warmth. “Left my wife here sitting all alone, waiting for me?”

Helen choked out a short, unbelieving chortle. “No, I’m saying you should’ve said ‘Ta ever so much for the offer, it’s very kind. I actually have to go and meet my wife, but if there’s bits of pie going spare, I’ll surely take two off your hands for you, one for the both of us.”

They all laughed.

“Helen Herriot!” Mrs Hall reliably chastised, even despite her own grin.

James guffawed. “If it were you in my position, you wouldn’t dare be so bold!”

Helen just shrugged. “Aye, but it don’t mean you couldn’t.”

“Goodness me, what are the pair of you no like?” Mrs Hall remarked, shaking her head. Eyes alight with amusement, she couldn’t help but laugh, even as she rose from her seat.

“Oh, don’t leave on my account!” James insisted. “Sit where you are, you’re grand. I’ll get us all a round in.”

Mrs Hall shook her head, bringing her wrist up to check her watch. “Oh no, I was only keeping Helen company ‘til you got here, I’d best be off anyway. For Gerald…”

James and Helen both gave her a silent nod of understanding, and muttered ‘good luck!’ and ‘have fun!’s as she set off.

Before the two of them so much as had the opportunity to breathe, never mind ask how the other’s day had been, Mrs Hall was quickly replaced at their table by Mr Sharpe, who seemed to have been lurking by the bar beforehand. James had been up at his place earlier in the afternoon, seeing to a beautiful dapple grey mare of his who’d gone off her food.

“Sorry to cut in, you two, I just wanted to thank you again, Jim, if I could,” Mr Sharpe said, sticking his hand out over the tabletop. As remiss as James was to shake anyone’s hand in his current state, the embedded urge against being rude won out, and he let the other man take it. “Greta’s doing much better after that shot you gave her, even just since you left earlier. I’m just sorry you had to catch a chill an’ all just to come out.”

James felt the flush rise in his cheeks, and he knew not to turn to Helen, as he’d only be caught out immediately if he did, though he could feel her eyes boring into the side of his head all the same.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Mr Sharpe continued, oblivious. “For the trouble?”

“Ach no, don’t worry about it. I’ve to get Helen another anyway,” James rushed to wave it off, with an evasive, slightly nervous, chuckle that bubbled into a light, crackling cough somewhere in his throat. “I’m just glad Greta’s feeling more like herself again.”

“Offer’s open to the missus as well then,” Mr Sharpe said, finally seeming to pick up on the way she was looking at him. “What’ll ya have, love?”

When it was clear he wasn’t taking no for an answer, they both just asked for a simple ale each, thanked him, and left it at that.

As soon as he left though Helen, with one eyebrow raised, nudged him in the side, concern in the set of her brow. “What’s all that about? Are you not feeling well?”

He doesn’t know why he said it, symptoms starting to weigh heavier and more obvious by the minute, but it escaped him before he had the chance to consider it further.

“No! No. It’s just… a wee touch of a chill,” he stuttered out, tone insistent but then deceptively smooth as he caught himself, even if he didn’t believe what he was saying. Not with how he instinctively sniffled after having said it. A misguided sniffle, apparently, as it stoked the dormant, underlying tickle that seemed to have situated itself firmly in the back of his sinuses.

Conscious of how crowded the pub was, how he could practically feel the person on the other side of him’s shoulder barely more than a couple of centimetres from his own, James jammed his nose into the side of his hand, the sneezes pitchy and demanding as he squashed them down.

“hh’IHGT!...... eh’XGT!........ hH…IH’GHXSTC’huh!”

“Bless mbe,” he breathed off-hand, with a sdnff. “Just… with the weather and everything,” he continued, with significantly less resolve than before, like the sneezes had sapped it from him. “I’m alright, sat by the fire now, really.”

“You do talk some load of nonsense sometimes, y’know that?” Helen said after a pause, studying him, voice soft with some degree of acceptance even if she didn’t seem to fully believe it even still. “Silly man,” she muttered with unmissable affection, shifting an inch closer into his side, and gave his arm a little rub before Mr Sharpe returned with their drinks.

Over the following hour or so, one more round, and bowls of the hearty autumn stew the Drovers had on that evening, they finally got round to talking about their days - James about the animals he’d treated, Helen about how her dad and Jenny were getting on preparing the farm for hunkering down now winter was quicking descending on them. Her dad even reckoned snow could come as early as the next couple of weeks, so they’re to watch themselves in the car for frost on the roads in the mornings to come.

Minute by minute, James could start to feel himself flag more and more. The air around them was hot and stuffy, making breathing more of a chore - not ideal when he was already coming up against issues in that department - and his head feel all thick and soupy. At one point, what felt like half the men in the place seemed to all pull out their pipes at once, adding a thin but pervasive layer of smokiness into the equation, drawing sneeze after tired sneeze from him with a newly reinvigorated effort.

Sometime around then, he had a mental word with himself and admitted defeat, pulling his by now barely usable handkerchief from his pocket and just held it in his hand, read on hand for speedy utilisation. By the way Helen kept looking at him, he could tell he was maybe starting to look about as miserable as he was beginning to feel, anyway, though it did nothing to dissuade the steady stream of people wanting to come up and chat, whether to Helen about Heston or village going’s on, or take the opportunity to try and wrangle some free advice from James about one livestock issue or another.

Eventually, after finally managing to prise themselves out, she ended up more or less marching him back over to Skeldale House and he easily let her, a hand on his back and her own umbrella open keeping the both of them dry, even if the walk was short. With the congestion settling in more and more noticeably now, and news of an empty house upon finding Tristan’s note that he’d be out at some dance hall over in Braughton for the night, she insisted that a hot bath would help set him right and went off to draw it herself.

He assumed, maybe a little disappointedly, that she’d run it and then leave him to it. Oh God, is the cold making him clingy? She’d almost certainly sat and listened to him sniffle in her ear quite enough at the-

Just as he lowered himself into the tub however, the hot water almost euphoric against his wind-chilled skin, there was a knock at the bathroom door that cut the thought off.

“Yeah?” he called out quickly, a little hoarse.

“Don’t worry, s’only me,” Helen said, popping her head round the door.

Oh… he hadn’t even considered it being anyone else. Suddenly struck by the, frankly, horrifying thought of anyone else who lived here walking in on him in the bath, he forcefully pushed it to one side almost as rapidly as it sprung itself upon him.

“I’m… very glad to hear that.”

She chuckled, his robe, pyjamas, and a fresh handkerchief in one arm, leaving the latter on the floor where he could reach it before draping the other two over the radiator, and a cushion from her vanity chair in the other.

“Feel free to tell me to clear off if you were lookin’ a minute to yourself, but do you want some company?” she asked, infused with a quiet, muted hopefulness.

His smile was wearied, but it came easier than any others that entire day. “Of course. Always. Come, sit.”

Content, she laid the cushion down at the side of the bath and let herself drop down onto it, crossing her legs so her feet stuck out a little, bereft of shoes and adorned only in the thick, woollen socks James’s mum had knitted and sent up last Christmas. They were a light, feminine lilac colour, but were also massive, and she hadn’t specified in the card which one out of the two of them they were intended for so neither of them had any idea. Helen mainly just wore them either in bed or around the house over the top of her normal socks, to keep her feet warm on the cold tiles and creaking hardwood.

They idly chatted for a bit, before James gave into the desire to duck his head back under the water, mostly to wash the firm grip of the pommade out of his hair, but maybe partly also to warm his face, the tip of his nose particularly bitten by the remnant chill of the outdoors. The irritation of the water, combined with the steamy air starting to loosen everything up a bit in his head, had him twisting his head away from her nearly as soon as his head rose again.

“huH’EHDTZSSS’sh! hhh’H?.... iH’TCHSSSH’ue!”

The sneezes came out ragged and raw, sprayed down into the water in the general direction of a semi-raised wrist, followed in the next breath by a groan of complaint.

“Ugh, sorry,” he bit out, bringing his hand up to cover his nose, growing sore and pink at the edges and corners, where he could feel it running readily.

“Bless you. Oh, James,” she clucked her tongue, reaching for the handkerchief to pass it over to him, and he took it gratefully. It could’ve sounded cloying or patronising from anyone else, but the little laugh that had slipped out alongside the sympathy made it okay. It made him feel warm instead, somehow; cared about.

“I know, I know…” he croaked, after blowing his nose, able to laugh at himself along with her.

“Well we’re certainly getting a jump start testing our vows,” she joked. “Go ahead and check ‘in sickness and in health’ off the list.”

“What, you can honestly say you still fancy mbe, want to have and to hold mbe, like this, sdnff, bunged up and sneezing my head off?” he asked, with an incredulous laugh. “Hand on heart, God as your witness?”

Rising to the challenge, Helen tilted her head to the side, squinting a little as if taking a second to survey an interesting painting, or a sculpture of some kind. She let her eyes trail from the top of his head, to where the water had matted together his fair eyelashes, down the length of his strong Roman nose, to his lips and then the angle of his jaw. Then, to the width of his shoulders where they peeked out over the surface of the water, and the hair that covered his chest, firm and rather serviceable as a pillow, from her own experience.

“Yes, absolutely,” she concluded, not even a hint of teasing to be found.

James rolled his eyes, huffing out a disbelieving breath of a laugh. “Give over.”

“I’m being serious!” she pressed, and when his expression didn’t shift, she continued. “Alright, well, if I end up in the same way in a few days time, would you still fancy me?”

“Of course, 100%” he replied immediately, face suddenly serious.

Helen threw her hands up “Well there you go, then! And you’ve not even seen that yet, so really you should be more inclined to believe me than the other way around.”

Shaking his head but rendered momentarily speechless, James sighed, letting himself sink back against the back of the bath, his elbows hooked over either side, anchoring him in place. “I’ll try mby best to keep mby germs to myself,” he said, maybe edging on a little self-consciously.

Scrunching her face up in rejection, Helen shifted in place a smidge closer to where his arm hung over the side, and leaned forward, pressing a quick kiss to his wrist. “Nah, don’t be worrying about it. I’m not made of sugar.”

Overcome with the affection laced in the insistence, James rubbed her cheek with the backs of his fingers, letting his own cheek rest against his shoulder so he could comfortably hold her gaze. It overwhelmed him sometimes, just how much he loved her. He felt like his heart could burst under the sheer pressure of it sometimes, especially when she looked back at him, eyes shining, like that. It humbled him to some degree that she felt the same way about him, it always had, and he suspected it always will.

Rising up to her knees, and then to her feet, Helen cupped his cheek, wet and flushed pink in the humid heat, and leaned down to kiss him with firm intention. She paused for a second before dipping back in, that second kiss slower, sweeter, more savouring.

When James’s eyelids fluttered open again, he looked a little dazed, and when he opened his mouth it was like he was powerless against the words as they uttered up from his chest with a slight, tickling cough.

“I love you.”

Helen smiled a small, secret smile, one that was just for him, and gave his cheek a little swipe with her thumb before unbending and resuming her seat on the floor. “I love you too.”

“Anyway,” she said, leaning back on one arm, failing to suppress a smirk, “I was gonna say, this whole, uh, image here, is taking me back. To ‘The Spring’.”

James groaned as the memory flooded his mind, the sheer mortification he’d felt and all. When, only a couple of weeks into his stay in Darrowby, she’d somehow accidentally managed to walk in on him swimming naked in this remote little spring one morning in a wood nearby to the village, Jess having failed in her duties as a guard dog to let him know someone was coming.

“Wait,” he burst out suddenly, eyes alight like a cat that’s caught a mouse in its clutches. “Are you saying you fancied me as far back as the spring incident?!”

Helen’s mouth dropped open, struggling for the right thing to say, all that came out was, “What?”

It wasn’t that big of a deal, all that business with Hugh. Not since officially burying the hatchet with him back at the annual cricket match that one year, and now that all parties involved are happily married. So James continued pulling the thread.

“Aye, we never really talked about it, not properly. I always just sort of assumed it happened much later.” When she didn’t respond immediately, looking off as if trying to find a more palatable way to explain it other than “Yes, I fancied you while I was in a serious relationship with another man,” he lightly prodded. “Did you?”

“None of your business!” she finally exclaimed, trying ever so hard to look serious, though was failing spectacularly.

In impeccable timing, the laugh he’d been chiming in with caught in his throat and had him smothering a bubbling of coughs into a closed fist. Then, following a desperate gulp of air, sneezing full and harsh and dripping into the hastily unfurled cradle of his hands, left with no time to make a grab for the handkerchief.

“hhhH’AEHZSSSH!”

Helen just shot him a smug look, this time, without even an ounce of sympathy. “See? That’s what you get for being a cocky bollocks, in’t it? Instant retribution.”

Put to bed sometime later with a hot, spicy herb-spiked whiskey in hand, the very last thing he wanted to do was get up and do this all over again in a precious few amount of hours.

Maybe he'd get lucky and head the worst of this thing off tonight.

It was so unlikely he scarcely let himself consider it, but he had nothing if he didn't have hope.

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