Alfred glanced down at his chest and considered for a moment. The question of regret was not really one that he had contemplated before, and he didn't have an immediate answer. He shifted, moving one leg out from under him and propping it up on the bed.

"No," he admitted. He'd chosen to do it, in the moment, but as soon as it was done and the other man was dead it had seemed less like an action he had undertaken and more like a fact of the universe. It was a thing that had happened, and yes, he'd had agency in it, but it had also seemed... well, inevitable, in a strange way. As though nothing else could have happened in that moment, despite what he'd just told Zelda. The person that he was, at that moment in time, wouldn't have made any other choice except the one he had.

"But it's not something I like to tell people," he added. "It's... sort of a hard thing to understand, I think."

The following 1 user Likes J. Alfred Darrow's post:1 user Likes J. Alfred Darrow's post
   Zelda Darrow

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

So he hadn't regretted it, and Zelda filed that away into a mental box with all the other facts of this situation: he hadn't had to, but he didn't regret it, and it had been to protect a friend. "Yeah," she said, because it was hard to understand — or it was hard to reconcile Alfred and killing someone, even if she was trying to.

"I think I understand it. Or —" she frowned, "— I want to understand." She didn't think differently of him, she didn't think, she just couldn't quite fathom it — Zelda did not know anyone who had killed anyone, (at least as far as she knew), and so it didn't feel like something people did.

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Her response caused his chest to swell once again. That was the first thing about Zelda that had caught his interest, when he'd first met her — that she wanted to understand him, when everyone else seemed content to write him off as odd or barbaric and leave it at that. His mouth flicked into a smile briefly but it didn't last long before he leaned in to kiss her again. It was a slow kiss, savoring these moments they had together in the near dark.

"You understand me better than anyone," he said with a sheepish sort of smile, when he finally pulled away. "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda put both her hands on his sides when Alfred kissed her, thumbs touching the bottom of his ribs. She smiled at him, bright and a little mischievous. "Then we'll get to sleep together just — all the time," Zelda said, "And it won't have to be a secret."

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The following 1 user Likes Zelda Darrow's post:1 user Likes Zelda Darrow's post
   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred perked up at her response, his mind jumping immediately to conclusions it probably shouldn't. Maybe it was just because of the moment, with both of them already at least a little undressed and her hands on his sides and the taste of her kiss still lingering on his lips. Maybe when she said sleep together she just meant actual sleep, but — maybe she didn't. He'd just assumed that they weren't going to do anything like that tonight because he'd promised Ari Fisk he wouldn't get into any trouble, but there were ways to go about it that wouldn't get them into any trouble, weren't there? And if he'd told Ari he was going to be patient and wait that was one thing, but if it was really just right around the corner — if he was moving to the Sanditon and changing his career and Brannon Fisk was going to agree and he was going to be married to her before the year was out — then maybe it didn't matter so much?

"Did you — did you want to —?" he asked, still not sure if she was trying to be suggestive or if that was just the way he'd interpreted it.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"Oh!" Zelda chirped, flushing pink. She had mostly been thinking about sleeping really — she was still a little fixated on her inability to fall asleep without hearing the sound of someone else's breathing — but now that he brought it up... It would be so easy, even with Delight in the next room, to get away with it without anyone else hearing. It would also almost certainly be their last opportunity to be alone for a while, especially since she wasn't supposed to be here at all, and disasters didn't come around every day. Her face stayed flushed with heat, and she felt a little tongue tied.

"I - well, yes, but," Zelda exhaled; she kept her hands on his sides, although her fingers curled nervously towards her palms. She was sure there was something coherent to be said but she could not articulate it: she wanted him, she was ashamed about wanting him, she didn't want to be caught, and the ever-present threat of trouble, which would have been nearly as bad now as it was three years ago.  She was sure she could sound smarter about this, but she couldn't figure out what to say — and this was not something she was supposed to talk about, anyways, and whenever they edged past kissing she ended up getting in trouble. "It's - I -" she frowned, still unable to articulate anything useful past the sudden cloud of neurotic sexual shame, unsure where any of her sentences had actually been headed.

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Alfred's insides surged at her yes, and his body remained tingling with anticipation even as she immediately followed it with a but. He hadn't expected this, even though earlier he had given at least a small degree of conscious thought to preventing it. He'd known if he just kept kissing her they might get carried away, and he'd known that would be a bad idea, and... maybe in retrospect the decision to undress and have very deep and intimate conversations hadn't been the best distraction, but — well, it was too late now, and here they were, and he really wanted to and it seemed that she did, too, despite the verbal fumbling.

"We could do some things," he pointed out. "Without doing everything. If you're worried about —" trouble; he didn't think he needed to finish the sentence.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Heat rose in her face again at the mention of trouble; usually (okay, the two times) that they'd done this it hadn't involved much talking beforehand, and talking about it had Zelda tangled in her sensibilities. Surely it wasn't bad for Alfred to know that she wanted him back, since they were getting married, and since they had already done things like this before. "I - I don't know," Zelda breathed, "I want to, but what if —" when she was actually thinking about it, the threat of trouble felt more paralyzing than it had in her garden, when she was propelled by the energy of her desire in the moment. And, more tangible than that threat: "I don't want Delight to hear."

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AMAZING set by MJ

She was still fumbling with her words, but she had also still said I want to. They were already sitting so close that parts of them were already touching, and the difference in position of his face when he was kissing her and when he wasn't couldn't have been more than a foot. It would have been easy to have just taken her words as a yes and just leaned in and kissed her. He could move from kissing her mouth to her neck, then lower. He could touch her — this chemise she was wearing was already so thin it was hardly like she was wearing anything at all. She wouldn't stop him. He knew she wouldn't stop him because they'd done this before, twice, and she hadn't stopped him either time, and because she'd said yes even if she was fumbling.

But both of the other times he'd been drunk, and he didn't have that excuse today.

He leaned in, closing about half the distance between them. We could be quiet, he thought and nearly said. He imagined kissing her collarbone.

Eventually, he leaned back with a sigh. He scooted back on the bed, putting air between their bodies once again. "Alright," he said, shaking his head. "But I want credit for this. If you're going to be in my flat all night and we're not going to do anything, I want someone in your family to hear about it and be impressed by how much of a gentleman I am," he said with faux impatience. "Ari, maybe, since he already knows everything else."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

The increased air between them punctured Zelda's nervousness, as well as any vague sense of anticipation she'd gathered. She leaned back in his bed, elbows nearly resting on the blankets, as if the release had also taken out any ability to maintain her posture. She didn't understand why it was only frightening to do that sort of thing if they were talking about it first, and maybe there was something wrong with her — that she had the sense to back off like she was supposed to, but only if she was called out on it first.

Zelda smiled — it was muted, maybe by her sudden shyness — but genuine. "Ari doesn't know everything," she quipped, because latching onto talking about her brother would surely remove any remaining tension, and then maybe she could make sense of it.

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"Doesn't he?" Alfred challenged lightly. "He knew about the garden."

He was teasing, of course, and not actually angry about it, since it had all worked out all right in the end. It would have been nice to have had a little advanced warning that she’d gone and told her brother about it, before he’d been blindsided by the news in his parlor — but Zelda hadn't had any reason to think he was going to be talking to Ari, so why would she have brought it up? And Ari hadn't hexed him, this time, so it was alright. He was going to marry her soon and Ari still seemed to think that was possible in spite of the garden, so everything was fine.

It occurred to him a little belatedly that he hadn't mentioned this conversation with Ari to her before, and he had no ready excuse for why he’d sought Ari out except the truth. In fact, she still didn't know about the conversation in the hospital supply closet from years ago, unless Ari had brought it up in the meantime.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda flushed again, and brushed her hair back away from her face, leaving her hand resting on her neck. She hadn't realized that Ari and Alfred had talked about that — the thought of Ari and Alfred talking without her made her a little nervous — but that wasn't even the real point. "It was just because of —" she found herself at a loss for words again, and took her hand away from her neck just to gesture vaguely at the spot where the bruise had been "— there was a — a mark on my neck. The next day."

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Alfred pieced together what she was saying, and deflated a little bit. "Oh," he said, and for a moment nothing else. He hadn't realized there would be a mark, and obviously hadn't intended to leave one. This realization seemed to have made the venture in the garden all the more risky in retrospect. If Ari had seen, anyone could have seen, and it wouldn't have been difficult at all to put together the pieces. They'd gotten very lucky, then, that it had only been Ari (hopefully it had only been Ari?) and that he hadn't reacted so strongly this time as he had the last time they'd gotten into trouble.

"Sorry," he said with a slight flush to his cheeks. "I didn't mean to... I should probably go back to the front room," he said with a frown. He was feeling suddenly very self-conscious about what he'd almost done a moment ago. He was so close to being able to marry her, he was sure of it, and a misstep like that, if someone found out, could have derailed the whole thing.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

And maybe she shouldn't have said anything, because she hated to see Alfred deflate like that, and they had managed to avoid serious consequences for it, too.

She started when he said he should go back out. "Wait," Zelda said. It was embarrassing to admit this, especially now — she was not distressed anymore and the thought of being alone wasn't terrifying, except... "I can't — I can't fall asleep if I can't hear another person breathing," she looked down at her hands, "Xena and I have always shared a bedroom, so — I don't want to be alone." She wasn't scared of the dark, or anything, but — being alone in the dark was a separate issue.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Her confession was — oddly charming. Alfred moved into a more comfortable sitting position, his impulse to leave fading as quickly as it had arrived. With a small smile, he pulled Zelda in towards him until they were laying down together, his arms around her.

"Sometimes when I've been out to sea for a while I can't sleep when I come back," he admitted. "Because I get used to being able to hear the ocean while I'm falling asleep." He wondered if they'd be able to hear the ocean from the terrace at the Sanditon — a benefit he hadn't considered before this moment, but the possibility warmed his heart immediately.

"What are you going to do when she gets married?" he asked, reaching up to brush Zelda's hair back from her neck.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Zelda curled towards him on the bed, one arm draped over Alfred's chest. She smiled to imagine the sound of waves — distinctly different from the muted sounds of London in the snow, certainly — but sighed when he asked about the wedding. She tapped her index finger against Alfred's skin. "I don't know," Zelda admitted with a wry smile, "Be tired until I get over myself, maybe."

If it was really bad she could get sleeping potions, but that seemed particularly dire — surely she would get used to the silence sooner or later, especially seeing how much time she'd spent complaining about sharing a room with Xena in their adult lives.

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AMAZING set by MJ