A Rainy Day’s Work (M)

[groundcontrol]

This week on, fics no one asked for, we have this one I whipped up while listening to my favorite Irish song for St. Patrick’s Day, “Whiskey in the Jar”. In it, our protagonist and highwayman has a cold and his Jenny is more sympathetic to the cause of highway robbery than is her song counterpart. Onwards, I guess! :) 

  The wet wind blew the door shut behind me, and just as it rattled in its wooden frame, so too did I rattle in my corporal one. “Heh’ISSHH!” I sniffed back desperately what I could and, by habit, fumbled in my pocket for a kerchief to take care of the rest, only to find, of course, that said piece of cloth was as drenched as the rest of me. Sniffling almost compulsively around a completely and utterly blocked nose, I bit back a groan as I rang out the kerchief, adding to the puddle of wetness from my dripping overcoat already forming at my feet. 

    There was a scuttering sound and I looked up to see Jenny hurrying toward me, wiping her floury hands on the body of her dress. Though I was chilled to the bone, a miniscule part of me warmed at the tenderness of her expression as she scanned me over with an urgency that suggested that little old me with my ratty clothes and my wretched cold was worth all the concern in the world. 

“Oh darling, you shouldn’t have stayed out half as long as you did in this weather.” She clucked her teeth as she removed my sodden coat from around my shoulders to hang it on a chair to dry, and I shivered. “Look at you, you look half drowned.”

“Better half than hah-wholly! Hhh’RSSHH’uhh!”

Between my sniffles (whose wetness, admittedly, lent credence to my state as half-drowned), I heard Jenny murmur a soft oh sound, the sweetness of which, could I have captured it in a jar, would have attracted all the bees in the summertime. Abysmal though I felt, I relished in the depths of care she was showing me. Though not strictly necessary (I had only a bad cold, after all) , it was more than welcome all the same.

Jenny came at me with a cloth from the kitchen and began rubbing furiously at my hair, left damp by the rain that had infiltrated my holely hat. I coughed a bit, and she paused in her ministrations to rest a palm gently against my warm cheek. Her brow furrowed, knitting the lines of her soft brown eyes with concern. 

“I knew your sniffling this morning was the start of a headcold brewing,” she said before returning to toweling my hair with fervor. 

The tickle was growing in my nose again, but even as I tried to duck away, between Jenny’s hands and the towel I was trapped. As soon as I pulled an inch away, she’d catch me by the hair and pull me back. “Jesus, you’ll pull out all my hair doing that!”

At last, I managed to shove her away from me long enough to jerk to the side with a heavy sneeze. “Hehh’RSHH’uhh! Heh’ISSSHhh’uhh! Hehhh’ISSSH!” The cold had so fully settled in my nose that I barely got a glimpse of respite from my congestion before I was completely bunged up once more. 

“Christ almighty!” Jenny winced as I coughed slightly in the aftermath. “Don’t you have any sense in that head of yours? Why didn’t you ride back as soon as you saw the clouds blowing in? You’re doing yourself no favors, poorly as you are.”

“Ah, snf!” I wagged a finger at Jenny before reaching for my purse, undoing it from my belt as deftly as my wet, trembling hands would allow. “But if I had rode off before the storm came in, I wouldn’t have gotten this, would I?”

I poured the purse’s contents onto the rickety wood table at which we took our meals. From the corner of my eye I watched Jenny’s widen as coin after coin came tumbling out, spilling across the tabletop and even clacking to the floor. When I had finished, it was as if the table had been coated in a flood of golden rain.

Jenny’s voice was hushed when she spoke again, her awe nearly tangible. “Who’d you get all this from, then?”

“Fresh young navy captain,” I replied, giving a brief cough behind my fist. “Stopped him about two miles out from the village.”

“Did you--” Jenny began, but I stopped her.

“Didn’t have to,” I said, watching her shoulders relax a little. For all she understood of highway robbery, the idea of taking a life still unsettled her. “He was about ready to give me the clothes off his back when he saw my pistol.”

“Perhaps you should’ve taken him up on that,” Jenny said wryly, giving my sodden overcoat a squeeze. A small downpour came off the coat and to the floor.

I gave her a small smile in return. “Perhaps.” I sneezed again, which sent me into a fit of coughs, barking and deep, that swept me up much quicker than had any earlier in the day. Dimly, I felt Jenny’s hand on the small of my back, and the sensation of her warm hand against the coolness of my shirt and skin made me jolt with a shudder.

“If we’re lucky, all this money will be just enough for your treatment once you get pneumonia!” Jenny shepherded me toward the tiny kitchen stove and pulled up a chair which she promptly pushed me down into. She undid my belt deftly, and placed it and my pistol aside the chair where my overcoat hung. “Stay put here, and I’ll bring you dry clothes and get a fire going.”

Jenny disappeared into the other room, where the bed and clothing were kept. I smiled to myself as I set to unbuttoning my shirt. I had seen the way her eyes glowed as they flitted across the sum I’d taken home; with it we could buy new cloaks and shoes and have plenty left over for pretty things. 

My cold snatched me from my reverie. “Hihh’ESSH! Hehh’ihh’KSSHH! Hhh’RSHH’uhh! Unghhh… Sod the dry clothes,” I groaned from behind my hand. “Find me a dry h-h-hah-handkerchief! Ihh’sshhh!”

I opened my eyes to see a white square of cloth floating before me. Jenny’s kerchief, then. I took it anyhow and buried my nose in it, giving a solid blow as I did so. “After wiping my nose on a sopping wet kerchief all day, this is as close as I’ll ever get to heaven.”

“I can’t imagine you were all that frightening today, sniveling and hacking all around as you are,” Jenny hummed, her back to me as she loaded kindling into the stove and ignited a flame. “Lucky thing I had the thought to bring in a bit of wood for the stove and save it from the rain, eh?”

I rose to the bait. “I’d say I was mighty menacing enough, thank you very much, and I’ve got the money to prove it. Do you reckon my cold was the secret? Perhaps I should catch cold more often, scare the daylight out of villagers. Maybe one well-placed cough is all it takes to have them turning out their pockets.” 

My speculations proved too much for my sore throat, and I descended into coughing once more. Jenny slipped my wet shirt off my shoulders, her fingers lingering soothingly on my aching chest, before she helped me pull on a fresh nightshirt.

“Even if that were so, I’d rather have you well and all in one piece,” she said, all traces of teasing gone and a warm feeling spread all over me that I knew had nothing to do with the now-crackling fire before me or any budding fever. “You sound miserable. Should I boil up a pot of steam for you, to try and clear out that head of yours?”

I shifted in the chair, feeling slightly ashamed at her coddling. Even two years ago, before I had met my Jenny, I would have spent this kind of night asleep in a barn’s hay, as I always did, and I would have awoken the next morning to a day of stealing, as I always did. Perhaps I would have scrounged up a bottle of liquor if my fever got too high or my throat too raw, but otherwise, so long as I could stand upright I could make my living. 

Jenny must have sensed my discomfort, for she merely placed a blanket around my shoulders and withdrew. “You think about it. I’ll be boiling up some stew once I finish this dough, so it wouldn’t be any trouble.”

I watched Jenny’s braid ripple down her back as she returned to kneading the dough. I shivered into the blanket, my head so heavy I felt stupid with the effort of keeping my eyes open tlong enough to focus on her. My body ached and I knew that I would regret having chased down the captain tomorrow, even despite the money I had stolen from him. It had been a long time since I had felt so utterly and completely ill. Perhaps it was the cool autumn rain or perhaps it was Jenny’s coddling or perhaps I was coming down with something worse than a headcold, that made me feel so low. Whatever it was, I was grateful beyond measure that I was ill in a house with a bed, shabby though they were, and not alone in a barn somewhere in the highland. And I resolved to make the most of that fact.

“Jenny, darling,” I said raspily, palming my throat. She turned to me just as I buried my face in the blanket. “Heh’KMPPF! Ihh’KMPCHH!” I remembered her kerchief, and pressed it to my nose. My head felt full of cotton. “That pot of steam sounds wonderful.”

She smiled a knowing little smile and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, leaving a trace of flour on her cheek. “I’ll get started right away.”

[ID2006]

This is lovely and very well written. Especially since I haven't been feeling well, I will take all the caretaking fics I can get.  

[Sneeze-aholic]

I really enjoyed this, thanks for sharing 

[JustASneeze]

This was super cute. Love it.