Abigail Theien (resistance_) wrote in the_colony, @ 2011-01-05 20:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 24, abigail theien, gregory blair, | abby and greg |
Week 24 - Saturday Afternoon
Characters: Greg Blair and Abby Theien
Location: The Barn
Summary Greg and Abby become a couple.
Rating PG
“There we go,” Greg said to himself as he carted out the last load of soiled straw out to the compost pile behind the barn. He’d let the horses out into the pasture while he oiled their tack and then mucked out their stalls. Now all that was left was to start tossing down fresh hay from the loft and give both Ginger and Gustav a quick grooming and they’d be taken care of for the next day or so.
One hand snaked out a handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and the chevalier used it to wipe the sweat from his brow. It had been a warm couple of days for January in Oregon, with temperatures climbing into the sixties each day. The hard work of cleaning out the stalls had him stripped to the waist, and he had every intention of dunking his upper half in the water trough outside once he was finished with the work inside the barn. In a way the weather made him homesick for SoCal, even though he hadn’t called California home for close to a decade.
Brushing the thought out of mind, Greg moved to the ladder to the hayloft and begun climbing. The sooner he got started the sooner he’d be finished and could clean up.
“Git’cher big ass in there...” came the lilting Texas twang of Abby’s feminine persuasion, directed at the steer she was attempting to corral into his stall, after catching him get a little rough around the pregnant heifer out in the field. He protested and lagged, but the insistent leaning and pushing from the much smaller, redheaded creature at his flank was slowly doing the trick.
Her boots kicked up dirt and dust with gold flecks of hay mixed in, thankfully covering the mystery substance on the toe of her left foot that she hadn’t been exactly certain was mud. Her massive companion crooned, swinging his head back at her, stalling at his gate. Abby set her jaw at him.
“Nu-uh. Time-out, Mister.” Clearly Abby had no qualms scolding a cow. They were easier to deal with than most humans--at least when they didn’t realize they were much bigger than her.
“Need a hand with him Abigail?” Greg asked as he peered down from the opening of the hayloft, making sure the way was clear before tossing a bale down to the ground floor. He’d heard the commotion as he’d gotten the bale from the stack, and thought it best to see what was going on.
Abby tilted her head back to look up the loft, only to be snorted at by an insolent steer. She gave him a glare and a smack on the rear (that he likely didn’t even feel). “We’ll see in a second...” This said as the redhead grabbed the fabric lead around the steer’s muzzle and started with a different tactic: steadily pulling him from the front. Of course, stubborn thing he was (and heavy), ‘Jackass’--as she named him in the first week of being at the farm--refused to budge.
Another hale bale joined the second one on the ground floor before Greg descended the ladder to help Abby out. “Come now Jackass, don’t be so stubborn.” He wheedled in coaxing tones toward the steer as he approached. “We’ll get you some nice fresh straw to much on, wouldn’t that be nice?”
He came around and joined the redhead in pulling on the lead. “Come on ye daft beastie.”
Try as she might, Abby couldn’t resist the quirked brow and upward glance at him, clearly amused by the off-color language he tended to slip into. Not off-color like her version of off-color, but no one ever accused Abigail of being a gentle-lady. Well--no one except Greg.
“Bribery don’t work on’im,” she finally said, grinning in spite of herself and leaning her weight into pulling Jackass into his stall.
“If bribery doesn’t then brute force will have to do.” Greg muttered, coming to stand just to the side of Abby and pulling with all his strength. “And threats of physical violence besides. If the stupid beast doesn’t get with the program then perhaps I can persuade Tom to have a feast with Jackass here as the main course!”
Though it probably wasn’t due to any understanding of the idle threats against his stubborn hide, Jackass did start to move--albeit reluctantly. His head was going into the stall, thanks to the two humans pulling on him, eventually the rest of the body was coming with. Abigail laughed through the grit of her own effort, keeping her toes away from the steer’s lumbering hooves. “Ya hear that?” She was talking to the cow again. “I’d like you a lot better as barbecue.”
Unfortunately, the universe decided to give Abby a little cue of karma, when the boot baring most of her weight shifted on some of that fresh straw Greg had laid down. Friction lost out to gravity, and so did she--dropping to her ass with a squeak.
Greg swore, momentarily torn between making sure Abby didn’t get caught under the steer’s hooves and securing said steer in his stall. Seeing her immediately start to get back up made his decisions easy, and he moved to secure the gate to prevent Jackass from leaving after all that effort made to get him into the stall.
That accomplished, he immediately turned to his redheaded partner in cattle wrangling. “Are you all right Abigail?”
Besides a bruised tailbone and sense of pride? Sure, she was peachy. “Y’all didn’t see that.” She suggested, snickering lightly at herself in spite of it all, and dusting her rear with a hand.
“As long as you’re sure,” Greg relaxed slightly, and reached out to brush a few strands of hay out of her hair. “I must admit, for a split second I imagined Jackass deciding to get a little of his own back by stepping on you.”
“He wouldn’t dare...” Regardless of how much truth there was in that declaration, Abby sent it with a glare in the bull’s direction, who had finally been distracted by the oats in his trough. Ignoring her, essentially. This is why she called him Jackass.
The delicate pull of his fingers in her hair caught her attention though, snapping big blue eyes up. Without the distraction of a half-ton animal not following instructions, a few things she’d noticed subconsciously became a lot more obvious. And with them came a softer version of Abby’s slightly leaning smile, and bits and pieces of recent conversations. With him, and with her brother.
“Ain’t you cold?” One of those obvious things that jumped to the front of her mind--the fact that he was shirtless.
“With all the work I’ve been doing today and all the insulation of the hay and wood?” He shook his head, his smile broadening a bit as hers became softer. “Not in this weather. I’m enjoying the warm days while I can, I’m certain old man winter isn’t through with us yet.”
The weather had been a bit of a strange reprieve from what Abby knew of Oregon in the colder months, but she was also sure it wouldn’t last. Didn’t mean she was focusing on that at the moment.
How do you feel about him? Nathan’s oddly placed conversation bounced around in her head, making it a little hard to respond with anything more coherent than a hummed nod. She felt the wood of the stall wall against her back when she shifted weight, and naturally leaned against it--not having any particular desire to move. Abby also didn’t notice her hand had gone to the silver necklace she wore, fingering it. Maybe this was the reason for the gossip? The more she thought on it, the more sense it made--and the thicker that tight feeling in her chest got.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Greg asked quietly as her attention seemed to drift away from their conversation. Now that she’d brought it to his attention, he was a bit surprised she was wearing the necklace he’d given her for Christmas while she was cleaning out the barn. Had she just forgotten to take it off or was there some deeper meaning behind it? Greg wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
He might be disappointed, after all.
For some reason, a twinge of sensation tightened her stomach when he asked her that--now that she was sure he had zeroed in on her thoughts before she even said them. Her smile twitched into one cheek, and she felt her eyes drop for a moment. Despite her earlier inquiry about him being cold, there was definitely a flush of warmth across her cheeks.
She brought her eyes back up to his face, a sound of nervous uncertainty made her words just a little quieter. “Did you know.. or hear, maybe, someone asked Nate if you an’ I were a couple?”
“No, I hadn’t heard that.” Greg was a bit surprised. Had he been so obvious in his attentions toward Abigail that people were talking?
He exhaled and realized that the moment of truth had come to pass, whether he’d wanted it to happen here and now was irrelevant. “I must admit though...I did speak to your brother about you the other day.” Greg reached over and brushed another piece of straw out of her hair. “I wanted to ask him a question and hear his response before I did anything else.”
She quirked one brow, clearly curious now, on top of the slightly intensified flutter caught at the bottom of her throat. “What’d you ask?”
All of this was new to her, and Abby didn’t understand it beyond that this was simply who she was now. Even as a teenager, she never felt those proverbial butterflies when in similar situations, and she could only imagine the slight nausea had to do with the months spent in Hell. Then again... this was a different grip on her stomach. It wasn’t painful, and she wasn’t frightened. Best way to describe it--she wanted this.
Greg had his own butterflies, and he forced down a surge of irrational fear that she’d laugh in his face, turn him down flat, or some other reaction other than the one he was hoping for. While they hadn’t been consciously heading down this road at first, she’d been beside him at every step and had given no indication of ill feeling.
He wasn’t good at this sort of thing anymore, he wasn’t the same man he’d been in the World Before. He was damaged, broken.
Incomplete.
The chevalier put aside his fears, took a deep breath, and committed himself to his fate.
“I asked if he would be opposed to the idea of us becoming romantically involved.”
There. He’d said it. Greg watched with ill concealed anxiety for her response.
Her response was a very complicated thing--at least from Abby’s perspective. As the nerve-laced words sank in, a number of subconscious thoughts collided and tangled with each other: the notion that she already knew what he was going to say, the fact that it tightened the knot in her stomach, and interestingly enough, the sudden curiosity as to how in the world that conversation went. She would definitely have to find out.
Later, though. Despite the fact that her heart seemed to have been replaced by a humming bird, and her cheeks were on fire, Abby’s smile spread like warm honey.
Her response was encouraging, and Greg found his own lips pulling back to a matching smile. “I would take your smile as a sign you would be favorable to such an idea as well?”
With everything going on in her head at the moment, Abigail apparently had forgotten to speak. The realization hit her along with his hopeful smile and lowered voice, and embarrassment added a little spice to the blush. Abby cleared her throat and glanced away for a split second--two opposing forces in her brain made it difficult to maintain eye-contact, but also hard to keep her gaze astray.
“Well...yeah, guess you could put it like that.” She finally managed, almost amused at how fragile her voice suddenly sounded.
Greg’s smile became broader still, his expression more confident. “Ahh Abigail, I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.” He told her softly, moving to close the remaining distance between them and enfold her in a loose hug. “I’ve been lost to anyone else since before we arrived here.”
He wanted to hold her closer, but given her history the last thing he wanted to do was make her feel uncomfortable.
But she wasn’t uncomfortable, besides the extra acute teenager feeling that she never recalled actually experiencing during puberty anyway--and that was saying something. Besides him and Nathan, Abby had barely even spoken to any of the men around the farm. Even Leo, who had been with them before coming. But the loose weight of his arms draped over her own didn’t prick those same tarnished instincts. If anything (besides the butterflies), she felt safer.
She set her hands lightly on Greg’s biceps and breathed deep: her lips unable to suppress the genuine, slightly anxious smile, and their brows touched. The wonderment of just what in the world came next: with how acutely well she knew of how society had changed, all she had to go on was feelings and instincts, and both of them blazed and shook in those short, silent moments when she just breathed him in.
Greg closed his eyes and simply enjoyed the feeling of having her in his arms. It had been close to two years since he’d been in this sort of situation, and longer still since he’d cared for someone with this intensity. After a moment he opened them again and looked down at Abby, seeing his own excitement mirrored in her eyes, along with no small amount of anxiety. “It’ll be all right Abigail,” he said softly, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “We’ve nothing but time.”
With that he put a finger under her chin and tilted it up before putting his lips to hers in a gentle kiss.
If her heart had been a humming bird before, now it was a hummingbird on crack: flailing a little wild against it’s cage, a sensation made all the more potent by the fact that her breath stopped when their lips touched. A not-so-little part of her seized up tight, like she’d been shocked, and it manifested by way of a subtle tightening of the grip she had on his arms. But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t want to pull away.
After a tiny moment which seemed like an eternity to her, she gingerly kissed him back.
Eventually Greg was the one to break off the kiss, though how much time had passed he really couldn’t say. He didn’t let go of her, but did relax his hold. Baby steps Blair, baby steps.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for some time now.”
Abby’s cheeks were aflame, and she wasn’t aware of the sudden weakness in her knees until his grip laxed. She felt vaguely electrified, her blood buzzing in a subtle chaos that was impossible to define. All she knew was that everything, every sensation and reaction and feeling, felt exaggerated. Greg’s voice laid a muffling blanket over all that background noise, at least, opening her eyes. They focused on his lips, first, then slid up to meet his gaze. Smiling.
“Don’t suppose you expected it to be in the barn.” The breathy humor didn’t quite cover her subsiding nerves, but it was still genuine.
“No, I can’t say that I did.” He chuckled as a memory came to mind. “My first kiss was in a horse barn, oddly enough. I liked this one better though.”