allthatgoes | dated out of order

Reposted from a locked post in my journal, the first of the Robert/Alice drabbles I wrote Scout for her 21^st birthday.

Alice was laughing.

He didn't really understand any of what was going on around him – there were people smoking all sorts of things a lot stranger than anything Sully would grow, people with ridiculous haircuts and very strange clothes all singing in a low, steady tone as the band played on. The kids they had with them, Morgan and Gregory, were up ahead, all over each other in ways that Robert would never have been comfortable with in public.

It was loud.

Robert was fairly certain he actually hated concerts.

But Alice was laughing, and no matter what he thought of the Beatles, everything was fine. Everything was perfect, he decided, as he wrapped an arm around her waist and managed to hold her to him until she started dancing to the next song.

(She forced him to bop around like a fool, too. He held her hands and twirled her and still hated concerts, but he smiled and let loose and had fun because Alice was laughing.)

Sully's advice, as much as anyone could ever consider anything Sully said when not working advice, was really very simple:

"List of pros and cons."

"What? You're a psychiatrist. You are supposed to have better, more complex suggestions than –"

"Make a list of pros and cons on dating this girl. Alice. I mean, pro: I liked her. I'd go out with her if you don't."

"No, you will not."

"If you don't ask her out within three months – I'll give you a buffer longer than usual because you're slow by nature – I'm going to ask her out instead."

Pro: Sully won't get to keep her ended up the first on his list.

The problem with the lists, though, was that on first blush Robert couldn't actually find any cons.

I want you with me forever, he said, and she was there all the time anyway, and it was important to him to have her there, he never wanted her to leave him. He'd said that. He'd meant it.

She'd laughed and asked for elaboration; he'd kept going. Robert still wasn't sure how it had gotten where it did. He was astounded by the entire thing, even, many many years later. He stood in his front foyer and watched as she moved her things in, decided to stay and never leave. And now there they were again, with a son, moving into a place in London. Moving into a home that was theirs, that Alice had found and Robert had agreed was perfect.

Eventually, Fabian would leave for school. They'd agreed on Eton. Eventually, they'd be visiting Alice's family in South Africa. Eventually they'd be going a million places.

Right then, they were watching movers carry boxes up the steps of their new home. That's what it was. It wasn't a family house, it wasn't a tiny cottage, it wasn't anything but theirs.

(Fabian hated it, but only for five minutes.)

The problem, really, was that he hadn't intended to stay very long.

He hadn't intended to stay very long when he met her. That was why he was so afraid of getting close. But then they'd all loved her – Dawn and Sully and Mikey and especially Robert himself had loved her. She became one of their friends. Quickly. A part of their lives they wouldn't want to give up. Especially not Robert. Robert was mad for her and Alice was mad for him and everyone, everyone knew it. Robert was uncomfortably aware of it. He thought about her more than a person should think about another person he wasn't in love with.

Turned out, really, that he was in love with her.

There wasn't much of a way around love, when it came. And there it was.

So much for crossing over in 1970.

She was hiding it, but Robert knew.

Robert knew and Robert was afraid to say anything and Robert couldn't stop to think about it without being – well. He thought he'd be horrified. Terrified. More nervous than anything else. Maybe even ashamed or disgusted at himself – a child out of wedlock? That wasn't fair to anyone, child least of all. But that wasn't it at all. Not one bit.

Robert was elated.

Illegitimacy was less of a problem these days. He knew he should be marrying her but he still couldn't, because he wasn't good enough for her and he didn't know how long he was going to stay and oh god,a child, he couldn't leave a child what was he waiting for? but the idea of marriage was too late now, Alice would just laugh at him – anyway, illegitimacy saved the child from the peerage, if he were male. Thankfully. Robert had been glad to rid himself of politics by killing off his previous incarnation and landing one of the Ainsworths with the title instead, and yet somehow after the boy's crossing it landed back on Robert's child.

That was why he hadn't actually wanted to have any. But this was different.

This was him, and this was Alice, and this was a baby. A union. A new life.

Robert was absolutely and completely thrilled.

He was hiding it, but maybe Alice knew.

Fabian Fitzwilliam was six years old, and he knew what sex was.

He knew all about it, because his parents had explained it to him in a clear, scientific fashion befitting two very honest people, one of whom happened to be a doctor and the other of whom happened to be Isabella Radcliffe's daughter. Perhaps Isabella would have explained sex somewhat differently; either way, Robert and Alice did just fine at explaining it to him.

It was good that they did, because he wasn't stuck asking what all of those noises were, coming from inside their door, the funny gasps and tiny cries and sometimes a kind of quiet laughter he knew was coming from his father, but his father never laughed like that when people were there.

It was, quite obviously, just sex.

He found it surprisingly boring, but at least he got the house to himself.

pros:
– funny
– clever
– beautiful
– has actual genuine interest in me
(actively)
– possibly the most remarkable woman on the planet
~~– not human either~~

cons:
– young
– has entire life ahead of her
– deserves better

On the wall of the doctors' lounge of Oaklands Hospital, there were a pair of nylons in a frame.

People who passed through found it extraordinarily strange, and had no idea where they came from until three weeks later, when a picture was mounted next to them, of young Dr. Robert Capio smiling like an idiot, minus his necktie, with lipstick on his face.

The note under both framed items read:

Oi, I know I don't strictly work here and probably won't under any capacity in the next five years but I thought you should all see this anyway!!!! It's important.
-- Sully

Not knowing who Sully was didn't stop anyone at all from laughing.

Alice wasn't pregnant anymore.

That was what Robert was going to tell anyone not from work the next day, he thought. Oh, Alice isn't pregnant anymore. In a sad tone. It would give them a right scare – Alice was corrupting him, had been over many years, and the desire to see people's faces when he said that, make themselves fall all over the place to be sympathetic, well. Well, he thought, that's a truly terrible thing to do to someone! What a joke to play!

What a joke to play when Alice is still in the hospital instead of being able to see the faces of the people in question, really.

Robert stopped thinking about it. There was something more important to worry about, right there.

Because Alice wasn't pregnant anymore, but she was curled up in his arms as they both fit on the maternity ward bed, a tiny tiny boy in Alice's arms, fast asleep just like she was.

"What's wrong with you? Mooning over the fact you haven't gotten laid in five minutes?"

"We haven't at all yet! What's that got to do with anything? Good Gad but I'm quite lost –"

"No, seriously, man, what the shit's – what? Come on, Bert, you stupid – hey give me that –"

(Robert was not in fact holding the joint anywhere away from his friend, holding it back over to him after taking a puff.)

"Give you what?"

"That. What is wrong with you? Is having a crush fucking with your head so much you can't, can't, I forgot?"

Robert started cracking up. "Don't ever change."

"Change what?"

"I haven't the faintest!"

They laughed so hard they fell off the bench, together, arm-in-arm, fighting over the pot.

Randolf Fitzwilliam hadn't killed him. Robert would take it as a win. He'd gone in there, said his piece, not actually chewed off his own lip, managed not to have a cane to fiddle with or anything to nibble on and hadn't stammered. And the best part was, they hadn't called him insane. They'd listened, Randolf and Isabella both, and hadn't laughed at him.

Robert felt like a child around them, despite how much older he was. They were Alice's parents. He had known Randolf's parents as friends, and he had come across Anne and her husband in the war, and that still didn't make it any easier to talk to them.

Somehow, he had also expected a no.

Maybe it was his age. Maybe it was her age. Maybe it was circumstance. Maybe maybe maybe Robert had no idea.

He had permission, though.

It didn't matter in this day and age, but it mattered to him.

And he'd do his best by her. Forever.

"But I don't want to."

"Fabian, please."

"I don't want to –"

"Bia! Listen to your mother."

"But she's –"

"Robert, it's okay, maybe we shouldn't make him –"

"I think it's a little important, don't you?"

Fabian absolutely refused to stop using Alice's calculator as a plate. It had buttons.

It wasn't just the sex.

That was a silly thing to think. It had never just been the sex; it had started on a good, solid friendship and kept going. It still wasn't just the sex. But it was the moments after sex where it really wasn't just the sex – when he found himself unable to breathe, after he'd come, after Alice had fallen asleep on top of him or next to him or in the crook of his shoulder or wherever she wanted, it wasn't because of the sex.

(Okay, so a little bit of it was – but really.)

Just her. Just the way her hair fell. Just the way she looked when she slept. Just how perfect she was, in general. Looking at her and thinking about her and remembering her. Her laugh. Her smile. The way she moved. The jokes she told. The weird things she did with his neckties. How she teased people and meant well. The trouble she caused in good fun.

How good a mother she was.

How he didn't want anything else but her, but them, this little slightly nontraditional family he never thought he'd have anything close to.