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"Are you sure Tommy won't mind us loitering around his stables?"
Michael's words stumbled alongside his feet as Nancy tugged him up a steep country hill by his sleeve. The greenery around him should've reminded him of the horrid country hell he'd spent most of his life in. But it didn't, surprisingly.
It felt like the perfect middle ground: the verdant patch of land reminiscent of that pretty village green was decorated with a filthy, smoggy skyline of Brummie factories and terraced houses. The stables looked worn and beaten-down, in all honesty, and the trees weren't like the evergreen ones they'd have in the village - they actually shed their leaves in the winter, leaving an unsettling skeleton of a birch tree behind.
It looked like what he always wanted home to be, like the world just knew where he went in his dreams every night. Call it kismet, perhaps.
The girl in front of him stopped abruptly after digesting Michael's words, pulling him to a stop with a final tug of his sleeve. Nancy turned around, and he noted that her hair was unceremoniously tangled from the wind. And from the smile on her face, Michael guessed she wasn't aware of that fact at all.
"That's the best part, Michael," Nancy's lips pulled up impossibly further into a mischievous grin - Michael thought of it as a more charming homage to the Cheshire Cat from Alice In Wonderland - and her chin held itself higher as she spoke assuredly, "These stables aren't Tommy's. They're mine. Technically, maybe, I don't really know how it's sorted legally but according to–"
"–I think I know what you mean." He let a chuckle freefall from his mouth when he caught her rambling, he found it strangely sweet.
They leisurely made their way into the stables, and Michael's face fell in awe at the horses strewn throughout the shelter. A Friesian horse was idly scuffing it's hooves against a pile of hay, there was a brown one with silky coat having what looked like an absolutely compelling conversation with the Arabian horse in the stall over, and a black-and-white shire horse lay comfortably in a pile of hay he probably wasn't meant to be asleep in.
"These are all yours?" He gingerly passed by each stall of the stable, admiring each and every horse he crossed. When he turned his head, he found Nancy crouched by the sleeping shire horse, petting the bridge of its nose.
The girl moved to sit on a nearby hay bale, "They're my dad's, really. But I've grown up loving them, like Woodhouse."
As she continued, Nancy started absentmindedly playing with the mane of the horse - or Woodhouse, as Michael has come to learn.
"Dad got Woodhouse when I was old enough to ride. Known him since he was but a foal, we grew up together." Michael observed her while he listened to her talk; she spoke to and about Woodhouse like he were her own kin. Her cardigan had several loose threads caught in loops around the cuff of her sleeve and the frizzy strands of hair caught from the wind outside had settled atop her shoulders again. In Michael's awkward teenage boy mind, she looked seraphic, almost.
He bumblingly sat down beside Woodhouse, internally wincing at the dusty earth that'll likely stain his trousers later. Looking up at Nancy - who seemed to be comfortable in the newfound silence gently plaiting Woodhouse's mane - something in Michael's throat seemed to just push out any words his brain could find.
"Mum tells me she's quite close with your mum?" The second those words left his mouth and he saw Nancy grimace, he used every ounce of strength possible not to give himself a whack round the face.
"She was, yeah," She responded, albeit a bit hoarsely compared to her dulcet tone before, "She used to help me care for my mum when she fell especially ill. She was ill a lot, since I was born, but she insisted on working to the bloody bone which made it all worse."
"Did she work in the betting shop?"
"No, God, no," Nancy laughed pitifully, "She had a sweet shop at the end of Watery Lane, had the best sweets Birmingham had to offer, honestly. It had schoolkids queuing out the door, even adults digging through their pockets on payday before the pub. 'Was like my second home, now it's a damned pawnbroker's."
Once Nancy found herself rambling, she feebly stopped herself, and the sight pulled at Michael's heartstrings a tad bit. In an attempt to light up the sombre mood they had uneasily fallen into, Michael spoke again with a faithful smile.
"Did she sell rhubarb and custards?"
"Oh, I'll be damned–" She gaped with a weird concoction between a scoff and a laugh, which caused the boy opposite her to furrow his brows despite being happy to see her frown wiped away.
"What? I like them!" He found himself laughing along with her, amused at her utter shock.
Nancy leaned back against the stack of hay bales behind her, grinning all the while, "No, it's just that your entire family loves those things; kept my mum's business afloat during the recession a couple years ago, honest!"
At that, Michael snorted - albeit unattractively - and let his head fall forward to rest between his knees, "Really?"
"Well, I just said 'honest'."
Michael lifted his head from his knees, and his eyes promptly found hers. He let the freefalling silence ease around the two of them, and a nagging little part of his brain begged to know if she felt just as soothed as he was.
The short bout of quiet - and subsequently their lingering eye contact - was interrupted by the scoff of the Arab horse in the stall Michael was sat against. Looking up, he was greeted with the snuffling nose of the horse leaning over trying to nudge him, igniting a fond smile upon his face.
"So," He heard Nancy drawl timidly, "Would you say this is better than the auctions?"
Michael turned his head back to the girl, whose eyes were reminiscent of something he couldn't pinpoint. His smile didn't falter, for it simply couldn't, as he replied, "You could say so."
elizabeth chats utter shit ! . so... i'm back.
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. i swear to god life has been so busy lately with school, work and balancing my other fics i kinda dropped off the face of the earth again 😭 . but im back !! kind of 🕳️🚶♀️ updates will most defo be slow but i am NOT giving up on this fic it's like my baby . speaking of, i've had a couple other fics in my drafts for ages, including a heartbreak high one because that show has invaded my life in the best way possible, so if anyone else is in their anthony vaughn era i've got you fr . thanks for reading! 💌
