#angst ridden huzzah

[hamlets-ghost-zaddy]

queen of peace

Part 6/10 Shifty Powers x Reader

“Many more New Year’s Eves to come.”

“Thank you.”

. . .

“Many more January 4ths to come.”

“Thank you.”

. . .

“Many more January 10ths to come.”

“Thank you.”

. . .

“Many more January 17ths to come.”

Shifty pauses, a smile hiding in the curl of his mouth, and he replies as he always does: “Thank you.” Whenever his hand finds yours as he pauses on his way out of sewing classes, as you go your separate ways after visiting with Margaret at the post office or hunkering in the tea shop to hide from the seeping later winter chill, his fingers squeeze a light pressure. You know he’s asking as politely as he knows how—without really asking, a pleading gleam lighting his eyes, instead—to assure him as you promised you would.

You hope your surprise doesn’t show now, your coat still on your shoulders, Shifty catching you in the middle of stamping snow from your boots after scuttling to your usual table in the tea shop to join him (in the back, next to the little bakery display case, long since vacated since the beginning of the war). He usually never reaches for your assurances when you first meet, instead wanting to savor it until leaving, perhaps to carry with him until he sees you again. You study his expression now, trying to keep the worry from your eyes, not sure if you’re successful.

“How are you?” you ask, shucking off your coat and putting it on the back of your chair quickly, hoping he won’t notice that the inside liner has been seam-ripped out. A nurse had placed an order for a new silk slip, and the only available silk was from the liner of your winter coat. It meant going cold, but it allowed you to buy milk to soften the dry bread ration, allowed you to put aside a little money for the water bill.

“I’m alright,” he replies, unconvincingly and you frown at him. Neither you nor Shifty have articulated it—and you’re grateful for it—but something has changed between you since Christmas. He confides in you, lays out his homesickness and the daily struggles of soldiering neatly along with the cups of tea, sugar bowl, and cream pitcher, and you pick each concern up, examining and offering the proportionate consolation. You maintain a careful grip on your feelings for him; you’ve gotten quite good at only allowing your imagination to stray into heady, intoxicating dreams of being more than his friend when you stay up late at night, sewing and completing orders. In the daylight hours, however, you see the truth of the matter: you’re one of his best friends, and you’ll not let nothing jeopardize that relationship, not even yourself.

“Wrong answer,” you say, raising a hand to wave down Rosanna, the tea shop’s iron-haired owner to place your order. “Want to try again?”

Shifty sighs, a smile once against threatening to spread across his face. “Sometimes, it’s inconvenient that you can read me so well, you know,” he observes, an evasion tactic, and you arch an eyebrow as your cheeks threaten a blush.

Rosanna pulls up to your table, order pad in hand. “Hello to you, my ducks,” she greets, as usual, her beaming smile pulling her round face into a thousand lines of happiness. Her eyes sweep from Shifty to you, both a familiar sight throughout January. By all accounts, Rosanna and her tea shop have been an institution since Aldbourne was organized into a town back in the 1500s.  “What can I get for you today? Lemon mint?” Her eyes land on you.

“Why change from a classic order?” you ask, pleased she knows your order.

“Why indeed; very sensible of you,” Rosanna replies. To Shifty, who she refuses to refer to as such, she asks: “And you, Mr. Darrell?”

“Something strong and caffeinated; we’ve got a nighttime maneuver tonight, and I need to be wide awake for it,” he answers before hesitating. His eyes dart to you. “Do you want something to eat? Sandwiches or a cookie or something?”

“Oh, um,” you flounder. You have exactly ten pence in your coin purse; one of which you budgeted for the tea, another for the postage to send a meager portion of the loan to the bank in London, and the rest reserved to make change for the nurse’s slip order. No amount of finagling would budget for unnecessary spending like sandwiches or ‘cookies.’ “I think I’m happy with just tea,” you say to Rosanna, knowing something about the panic lurking in the shadows of your face—you could feel it seeping in—would tip off Shifty, and you’ve so desperately tried to keep your financial troubles from him.

“Are you sure?” Shifty says as Rosanna moves away. “You look kind of pale today, maybe the food would help?”

Your stomach grumbles at the reminder—man does not live on rations alone, you think, wryly—and you determinedly pretend you don’t hear it, even as Shifty eyes you worriedly. “No, I’m feeling quite well, actually. And don’t think you can distract me; what’s the matter?”

Shifty sighs, running a hand through his neat brown hair, leaving strands of it ruffled and standing on-end. You find yourself endeared. “It’s trouble with the NCOs.” Shifty’s earlier explanation of American military acronyms helps you make sense of what he means.

“Not Don Malarkey? Or Skip? Are they hurt? Are they in trouble?” you ask, eyebrows furrowing; you could see Don and Skip brought up on charges for practical joking—swapping out all the sugar for salt in the mess halls, maybe—but certainly nothing to make Shifty’s eyes cloud as they currently do.

He shakes his head. “No, they’re fine for now. They all, well…” He sighs, and you watch him deflate. You want to reach across the table and clasp his hands. You knit your fingers together in your lap. “The NCOs resigned because of Captain Sobel. He, um, well, he didn’t do right by one of the lieutenants and the NCOs are all concerned about following a man like the Captain into real battle.”

The furrow in Shifty’s brows, eyes lowered as he talks more to his worrying hands than you, broadcasts the truth: Shifty agrees with the NCOs; he knows Sobel would get every man in his company killed the instance their boots make contact with occupied soil, but he’s Shifty and would never say such a thing. You also know he’s desperately concerned with the extremities taken and their repercussions. “Do you know what’s going to happen? Resigning is…its mutiny, isn’t it? Could this…?” You’re not sure about the American Army, but in the British one, mutiny is grounds for execution during wartime.

Shifty’s mouth tightens and you have your answer before he replies: “I’m not sure, but it could be very bad. It’s an impossible situation, no doubt about that, but I’m real worried about what’s going to happen. We’re already down a good lieutenant, he got bounced to battalion, but giving an ultimatum like this doesn’t seem right either, does it?” His eyes flick to you.

You spread your hands, suddenly nervous and jittery under his imploring gaze. He looks at you for comfort, but the nuances of the American military and minutia of consequences for insubordinate are quite beyond you. Yet, with his hazel eyes pinning you, you want to try. Have to try. “They were doing what they thought was best, and I know you’re apprehensive on how all of this will affect the lives of your friends, but you also have to do what you think is best, right?”

Roseanna returns with the teas then, informing Shifty his is a simple black coffee (‘with real milk and sugar,’ she adds, because she’s soft on Shifty and his Virginian accent, but then, who isn’t?) and after she moves away, he asks, “Are you absolutely sure you’re not hungry? I’d be happy to get us something.”

You color at the implication, hate the pang of resentment echoing through your chest (Shifty paying for you, owing him for his kindness and knowing you’d never be able to pay him back), and hurriedly assure, “No, really; that’s quite all right.”

“Wrong answer,” he echoes you from earlier, his mouth curving into a smile that sends the bridge of his nose crinkling, his eyes twinkling. “You want to try again?”

Rolling your eyes to disguise how your skin blanches, how your stomach pits out, you flap a dismissive hand. “Please, we’re talking about you—don’t think you can distract me, Shifty Powers!” You snap your fingers under his nose in a gamble for sass, but its weak and awkward—you can tell by how he looks at you, endeared and fond, and you flush anew. Shifty sees me as a little girl, only suited to be a friend and it’s a realization you’ve had a hundred times over but you don’t think it’ll ever stop hurting—sharp and white-hot—when you’re reminded.

. . .

“Many more February 4ths to come.”

“Thank you.”

. . .

“Many more February 13ths to come.”

“Thank you.”

. . .

“Many more February 21ths to come.”

“Thank you,” Shifty tells you as his hand finds yours, squeezing your fingers. You can almost feel the sinews of his muscles through the wool of his gloves, through the fuzz of your mittens, if you focus hard enough. His eyes scrub your face—your flyaway hair curling around your stocking cap, your running nose, your cheeks chapped red from the rushing gusts sending flurries of snow to kiss your skin—and you swear you see intention coloring his eyes, as if his thoughts threaten to brim, boil, and overflow from his mouth. Yet, whatever unborn words those may be are swallowed down, dead and forgotten, as Shifty releases your hand and says, “I’ll see you on Wednesday, at Rosanna’s? Same time?”

“Sure, Shift,” you agree, smiling, trying not to hold your threadbare coat against you for warmth too conspicuously.

“Good,” Shifty replies, “Great!” And he turns away quickly, leaving that too-bright pronouncement to bounce over the thin months-old snow edging the lane, hurrying along. You know he spends too much time in town with you, insisting he walk from sewing lessons to the post office and well out of his way just to accompany you, risking being late for afternoon rifle training. Still, every time a twinge zips through your chest to watch him walk away.

To keep from calling out, it’d only be to stop him so you might see his face one more time, you push into the post office, sighing as a wave of heat cocoons your skin on contact. Leaning against the door for a moment, allowing the chill to ease from your bones, to loosen your arms from clenching the coat so tightly at your middle, you don’t notice Margaret frowning at you from her post behind the counter.

“You look skeletal,” she observes, breaking the silence with sudden bluntness.

Her words make you jump and gasp out a clipped “Oh!” Yet, when you register its only Margaret, you puff a sigh, tilting your head back. “Sorry, Margaret; you startled me.”

She plows on: “You’re rod thin, y/n! I swear, I see you at least every two to three days, and more of you vanishes every time.” You don’t open your eyes; it’s a coward’s ploy, but not being able to see her concerned squint makes it feel as though you can hide from the truth: this morning, while dressing, you could count each of your ribs in the mirror.

After Christmas costs, the unexpected purchase of the tea kettle, and logs for the heating furnace to combat the uncommonly long and deep frost of the winter, it’s been increasingly difficult to carve out money for food. Your ration portions mostly went to your Mother—who’s fatigue the night of Margaret’s Christmas Eve party has become a reoccurring theme—leaving you hungry (but not behind on loan payments, you think smugly. You’re waiting for the money to come from the hemming you did for Mrs. Mathison’s daughter to add to profit earned from the American nurses’ orders, you’ve cut nearly every cost you can, but the year’s loan payment has been scraped together and sits patiently in your bedroom vanity’s drawer to be sent off next week).

Margaret finally offers with a tongue click, her tone resolute, as if settling the matter for the foreseeable future: “I’ll send over some bread and salted ham; Father won’t miss it. Doubt you’ll be able to carry it with this package, anyway.”

Your eyes snap open, pushing off the door, compelled to the counter in your urgency. “What? What package?”

Margaret nods to a great box—coffin-size, you think, all feeling in your limbs seeming to pool downward, heaving your hands, your feet, dragging you into the ground: you recognize boxes like that, recognize the stamp embossing the brown paper—propped against the cubby holes for the post, far too large even for the shelves designated for packages. Margaret squats and with a great harrumph, hefts it onto the counter. “I haven’t seen one of these come in since before the war. Did you finally get a big order?”

You don’t reply; you don’t have the mental capacity to. With hands hanging limply at your sides, brain emptying of any coherent response or processing facilities, all you can do is stare. Stare at the great rectangular package—wider than your arm-span, tied up by three cords of neatly knotted twine—until a phrase surfaces from the fogged waters of your mind: Surely not.

Surely not.

Air goes jaggedly down your throat, choppy and disparate with how your mouth gapes and closes, gapes and closes, blood humming in your ears, and one hand pats for the tin on the counter’s surface without your conscious decision to reach for it. You fumble, dazed and slow, ringing the silver surface bell in your haze before your fingers curl around the handle of the scissors.

“I have half a mind to order something new for myself; I saw Tommy Beale yesterday, you know, and he asked me on a date, and you know with mad days like these, things might move—” Margaret babbles, not a syllable registering in your ears, lost in the chanting garble of surely not, surely not, surely not, surely not, surely not.

Surely Mother hadn’t ordered new fabrics, not from Aigle, not when there is a war on and money’s so tight and—the scissors snap the twine easily, allowing the brown paper to flop open, revealing long sheaths of fabric. Creamy satin that catches the weak whirring electric lights overhead, stiff tulle that whispers against your fingers, gold damask bruised with red and yellow strands of silk that glimmer, lace as fragile as the ghosts of snowflakes that stung your skin. Surely not, you think.

“This isn’t ours,” you choke out around a wheezing exhale. Your voice sounds foreign, hanging and lingering in the dead air around you.

Margaret interrupts her own dialogue, shaking her head. “Can’t be; it was addressed to you and your mother.” She forges through the mound of brown paper, producing the postal card with your surname printed neatly on it.. ‘Aldbourne’ follows, as if attempting to normalize the absurdity of it—as if allowing it a hold in reality—because surely not, surely not, surely not, your brain assures, refusing to comprehend those letters or assign meaning to the words, or meaning to the situation.

But then surely not becomes how could she?

How could she?

How could she?

“How could you?” you roar, not caring how the front door ricochets off the entryway wall, how your wildly grasping hands slam it behind you. Tracking snow across the entry, through the sitting room and into the kitchen, ripping your coat from your shoulders (the sharp fissure of fabric tearing is a problem for another hour), you find your mother sitting over the newspaper, her three o’clock tea cradled in hand. She blinks at you in startled confusion. Her innocuous stare, her eyebrows climbing, fan the flames in your chest, stoking them until you feel as though you’ve swallowed a fire. “How could you? All those fabrics—Mother! That’s a fortune! Why did you buy it? What could possibly—?”

“It’s for a wedding dress,” Mother interrupts when you splutter, seizing her first opportunity to interject. She takes a meditate sip of tea, watching you over the rim of her cup as if riding out a toddler’s tantrum. You could scream.

Grinding your teeth to repress a feral snarl, you ask, evening your voice to a low simmer, “Who’s wedding dress?”

“Margaret’s,” Mother replies, her smile turning self-satisfied.

“Margaret?” you repeat, eyebrow arching. “Mother, Margaret isn’t engaged, let alone able to afford Aigle satin, tulle, damask, and handspun French lace.”

“She will be soon,” Mother replies definitively. “That American of hers, the one who works with the mail. The nurses were telling me they’re sure he’ll propose before the Americans ship out for Europe and she’ll be needing a dress. And the deal I got for it all, you should have seen—”

Ignoring Allen Vest’s apparently having marital designs on Margaret, you shout over her, “It doesn’t change the fact that you bought fabric for a dress that hasn’t been ordered; we don’t have the money, we don’t—” You nearly choke, your breath catching at the thought. “The money—where did, where did it—?”

“I borrowed from the savings in your vanity drawer; you have to understand, darling, I was acting on my intuition and when has it ever been—”

You don’t hear the justification Mother gives, your head hits the wooden floor with a blunted thud.

. . .

Before you leave the house the following morning, you rubbed mightily at your cheeks, wiped at your nose with your coat sleeve, but the specters of tears refuse to be scrubbed away. Your eyes shine, contrasting against the faint red rim, and you’re sure it’s obvious how tightly your skin is stretched over your cheeks: dried out from the salt of tears. Mother attempts to wrap a scarf around her neck, force a cup of tea into your hands, but you only add the scarf to your pile and absolutely forbid her from consuming more than her single three o’clock tea. Then, you bundle your arms with one of the sacks you worked through the night to fill and set off down the lane, toward Aldbourne’s town center.

Last night, you worked in a foggy whirl. Opening all the drawers, yanking every dress and coat and jacket off their hangers in every wardrobe around the house, you sorted out the loveliest pieces—things once considered the absolute crème of London, that could still fetch a price—leaving behind a scant few options for both you and your Mother. As you went, Mother occasionally bid to dissuade you from selling her garden-green tea-length dress made from an air-light crepe; she tried to protect the old fox stole and the real lamb-skin gloves (with holes in both thumbs); she wrestled away the blue dress repurposed for the Halloween dance, but you managed to snatch it back when you finally spat out the truth: the money for the loans, taken out by your parents fifteen years ago to buy an atelier (now buried under the rubble of the Blitz), had been used to buy fabric.

A flash of guilt gnawed your insides, watching Mother’s face pale as she flopped into her armchair, but you couldn’t afford to console her tears. You had sorting to do, and if you tried to soothe away her anguish, your own carefully regulated tears would spill over (when you finally allowed yourself to climb into bed after four in the morning, you let silent tears soak into your pillow). The clothes wouldn’t fetch enough to cover the loan payment, but certainly enough to sate the banker’s letters for at least two weeks; enough time to return the fabric order and demand a refund.

Fortunately, February has decided to ease in its ferocity this morning, a shy winter sun peering around clouds to shine occasional patches of warmth, chasing away the lingering snow. You pretend the sun is all there is to notice—not the neighbor’s curtains flickering as you hurry down the lane, not Mrs. Jamison’s eyes tracking your progress from her front porch, not the vicar pausing in befuddlement at you as he emerges from the parish house—and that you only stare down at your blue dress, eyelashes fluttering in quick succession, because the faint breeze sends the loveliest ripples through its folded skirt.

You hug the brown paper sack tighter to your chest, as if trying to press these beloved things into you so you might engrave them in your memory to at least wear in your soul; the floaty pink dress you wore, aged eleven, to accompany your father to the Savoy to meet with the Duchess of York, or the heavy red gabardine coat you wore, aged fourteen, to attend Elsa Schiaparelli’s New Years Eve party (though you were trundled back home long before midnight). You’d outgrown everything in the sack years ago, save the new blue dress, and you’ve been meaning to sell them. The tightly-clutched shreds of dignity you had so studiously cultivated allowed you to cling to sentimentality, but now you had no choice.

Though you try your best not to think about him, not to let his ghost haunt you, your father’s words, uttered off-handedly but somehow lodging in your memory, floats into your ears: It is the last act of a desperate woman to sell her clothes.

I’m not many things anymore, you think, turning into the central square of Aldbourne, smiling wanly to the neighbors and American soldiers who call greetings to you, not daring to pause for fear of losing your momentum, But ‘desperate’ is certainly one of them.

A body steps into your path, and you nearly collide with it before you blink, scrambling over your own feet, and realize it’s— “Shifty!” you exclaim, staggering back to regain your balance. “Pardon me, I didn’t see you.”

His smile is wide, his face warmed by it, and you can’t stand to look at him, not right now when you’re so lowly. “Didn’t hear me either; I’ve been calling after you, but you’re in your own little world.” He takes a step closer, gently tapping your forehead before tucking a flyaway strand of your hair behind an ear. “Everything all right up there?”

“Oh, um, yes, of course,” you try. You cringe at how feeble you sound.

Fortunately, Shifty’s attention migrates to the sack and he bows, peering at it. “Is that—?” he begins and, before you can rush out of reach or invent a faltering excuse, he gently scoops the blue dress from the top and holds it out. The fabric unfurls in great ripples, refracting the sunlight and appearing like liquid in his hands. The skirt flutters down, brushing your hands, your coat sleeve, and you tick your jaw, forcing yourself to remain still. Shifty’s brows furrow as his eyes study the dress, a question forming in those bunched wrinkles. His gaze swivels to you. “Is this the dress you wore to the Halloween dance?”

“Well,” you begin, taken aback he remembers. Even Margaret didn’t remember the color of your dress; a week ago, she mentioned wanting to borrow ‘that little green dress of yours from the dance.’ Maybe I should try selling it to Margaret, you think, but reject the idea immediately. She’d ask awkward questions, like Shifty is about to, you know from the worried glint in his eyes. “Um, well, yes.”

“What are you doing with it?” he asks, attention turning to it, apprehension heavying his voice.

“Um,” you hum out, stretching the word in a frantic bid for time. Your mind offers excuses as rapidly as it rejects them, each evasion weaker than the last, and the seconds drag on too long, dragging you with them, until the only answer has to be the truth, or at least half of it: “I’m selling them. They’ve been taking up space at home, and I’ve been meaning to clear them out. Figured today would be the day.”

Shifty nods, mindfully folding up the dress. It’s a boyish attempt, one without a concept of how seams ought to lay or creases could be hidden, but the gesture is sweet, nonetheless. “Getting a jump on spring cleaning, huh? Always thinking ahead,” he offers, arranging the dress in the sack and you allow yourself a silent exhale of relief. Its only now that your muscles uncoil, your nerves ease, that you realize you had primed yourself for the defensive; you expected him to sniff out the lie and drag the truth from you—a truth you could hardly admit to yourself in the comforts of your conscious, never mind out loud.

Your breath turns leaden and stoppers in your throat: his eyes have flicked up to you and you hear his thoughts clearly, ‘Why are you lying?’

Tag list: @gottapenny, @wexhappyxfew, @maiden-of-gondor, @medievalfangirl, @mayhem24-7forever, @higgles123