Straight Up

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

The door flew open a second before Madeleine stepped through it, Russ following behind her. She clapped her hands, and the lights came on.
“There’s a clapper?”
Madeleine smiled, turning to him. “Yes, why?”
He didn’t respond, just smirked.
Nothing much had really changed then.
“So this is your domain, then?” he said, his deep, rough voice echoing gently.
She laughed at that, perching herself up on the edge of her stage. “If you want to call it that.”
“It’s as good a name as any,” he said, walking about the room and studying it. “So what do you make them do here? A pledge of allegiance? Shooting dummies and targets? Mannequins stuffed with sheep guts?”
She arched an eyebrow.
He chuckled, shaking his dark hair back from his face. “Sorry, then. Do they have to swear allegiance to you, then?”
“No. Professor Hoodham isn’t too keen on the idea, what with everybody being so young, and to be honest, I wouldn’t be happy about it.”
“It’d be a little egotistic,” he agreed.
Madeleine shook her head. That wasn’t really the main problem that she had with it, but it was certainly a good point. Who was she, for anyone to swear allegiance to? She was no better than anyone else. It was sheer… well, not chance that she was Head of the Warriors. Perhaps stupidity on the parts of the teachers, though Madeleine liked to think that she wasn’t doing too bad a job.
Maybe that in itself was egotistical, though. And it wasn’t as though anyone would ever tell her otherwise.
Maybe Levi would have, before…
She shook the thought away, before following Russ with her eyes.
“Do you have weights and things like that in here?”
She laughed. “As though you didn’t bring your own.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to give any of my dorm mates inferiority complexes.”
Madeleine laughed again, appraising him. Russ, with his dark hair, onyx gypsy eyes. Tall, dark, and handsome Russ, with the ability to make most girls go weak at the knees. Talented Russ, an expert saxophonist without any lessons, and with a gift for carving wooden things with his fingernails. Muscled Russ. Her eyes ran over her ‘cousin’, noting how much his muscular body, always impressive, had become more so. Of course, she and everyone else at Orchid Hill would see exactly how impressive it was when the weather warmed up. A lot of her memories of Russ were of him without his shirt on – he was completely comfortable with going around topless.
A lot of his appeal to girls probably had something to do with that.
“Well, don’t go around doing that too soon,” Madeleine admitted, unable to tell him off for being cocky. “Who are your roommates?”
Russ shrugged, his dark waves falling over his eyes again. “No idea.”
“You need a haircut,” Madeleine advised him.
“You sound like my mother.”
She chuckled. “It’s the whole wife-y thing, it’s getting into my system early,” she said, sarcastically.
Russ finished his inspection of the room, and sat on the edge of the stage beside her, not even needing to jump to get on it.
“You still haven’t told me about him.”
“Who, Lee?”
“Who else? Unless your embracing bigamy as well as incest, now?”
She blushed bright scarlet. “It was not-”
He laughed, the deep sound ringing about the room. “I know, it’s not incest. It’s… cousin-dating?”
“Something like that,” she muttered, looking at the ground.
He stared at her, his eyebrows furrowing, the darkness in his eyes becoming opaque. “It really embarrasses you, doesn’t it?”
“It didn’t,” she admitted. “I mean, okay, we were both a bit… grossed out when Shaun told us-”
“Understatement.”
“- but I didn’t really get embarrassed about it until I came here, and I saw what people would think. I mean, you know what it’s like, the way we all are is that we don’t really know much of our cousins, so no one judges. But here… these people have all been raised with their cousins close to them, they have more of sibling-type bond. It was…”
“Different for us, but they’re not going to be able to see that,” he finished.
She looked up at him, smiling sheepishly. “I guess you feel the same.”
“No, actually,” he said, honestly. “It doesn’t bother me.”
She shivered. “So, you’re going to tell people that, when I introduce you?”
“Straight up?”
“Yeah.”
He’d be honest. Russ was always brutally honest.
“I think it’s about time you owned up to your past, Madel.”
Ouch.
She shook her head, stung. “What do you mean?”
“They still don’t know,” he said, simply. “Do they?”
Madeleine blushed again. “No.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of-”
“I’m not ashamed!” she cried. “Mum made me promise-”
“Like that matters,” he said, with a roll of his eyes. “You’re lying every time you leave something like that out. Does Lee even know yet?”
“Of course he knows,” she spat. “Do you really think I’d let him marry me without-” She broke off, knowing what Russ would say.
“Knowing what he was marrying?” Russ finished, almost angrily. “Tell me that wasn’t what you were going to say.”
“No, it wasn’t, it was ‘who he was marrying.” She rubbed her temple tiredly. “Leave it, Russ.”
“I’m not going to lie, Madel,” he said stonily. “I won’t do that for you.”
“You don’t have to,” she said wearily.
“This could all come crashing down around you, if your foundations aren’t strong enough.”
She looked up at him, unable to keep the disgusted tone out of her voice. “Isn’t that the reason I’ve been keeping it quiet?”
“Quiet? More like silent.”
She glared at him.
He was quiet for a second. “Your Warriors?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think the majority of them will care, and I hope that they all trust me enough by this stage to know that… well, you know.”
Russ leaned back slightly, kicking his legs off the stage.
“And if they don’t trust me,” she added. “Well, Hoodham knows. They’ll trust him.”
“Hmm,” he said, looking up at her. “I didn’t come here to make this difficult for you, believe it or not.”
“I know,” she lied.
So, why had he came? She liked Russ, but she knew that their last go at being together wasn’t good for them both, and they’d both changed so much during that time. She knew Russ better than anyone else, and she knew what he was like. What he would do. What he would say.
Russ was so proud of his background, and his family, know that he knew who they were. He was proud of being a gypsy. So proud of it, and he hated it when people lied about it. And in his opinion, that was what he believed Madeleine was doing. Denying her past, and herself, as he’d told her when she informed him that she was going to Orchid. She would get prejudice for other things, and she was tough enough to cope with it. And besides, people would figure it out quickly – Shaun was legendary, and he didn’t ever keep it under wraps.
Maybe Russ didn’t come to do this. But he would do it anyway. And who knows? Maybe she’d be better off for it. Of course, people would be mad at her keeping a secret, but she hadn’t lied. And once they saw the inevitable prejudice, and possibly discrimination, they’d see why.
There was a silence for a while, before Russ broke it.
“So, does Lee know about me?”
“He knows you were a gypsy guy I dated. He doesn’t know we’re cousins. His cousin and he are like twins, I wasn’t sure he could deal with that information at first, and after the first few weeks of our relationship, it didn’t really come up. Well, it never did, really, but that was the prime time for telling him.”
“Oh,” Russ said. “Right… well, you should be the one to tell him. I won’t do that on you.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Unexpected bit of decency.Thanks.”
“I’m full of surprises. So, what’s he like?”
“You’ll meet him soon enough.”
Russ laughed. “Yeah, but I don’t know anything about him yet. I have to know some background on my cousin’s fiancé, right?”
The word still caused a wince, but only because he intended it to be that way.
“You’ll probably be surprised when you meet him,” she said carefully. “It’s a bit of a deviation from type.”
“Meaning he’s different from me.”
She snorted. “Right.”
A pause.
“Go on,” he prompted.
“He plays chess-”
“Oh, Jesus…”
“What? Shaun played chess, and you know how to-”
“It’s the fact that was the first thing you said about him,” he pointed out, groaning. “Go on, how many times has he won the championship?”
Madeleine couldn’t help be glad that she’d told him this before he’d met Lee. At least he was saying this to her, and not to Lee. Because if he had found this out in Lee’s presence, he would have said it anyway. That was just Russ.
“Four.”
He snorted. “I thought the only sportsmen you liked were-”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, rolling her eyes. “And don’t make the assumptions I can see you making in your face. He’s not a nerd.”
“He doesn’t play Dungeons and Dragons, does he?”
“Oh, go to hell.”
“Was that a yes?”
She sighed. “No, Russ, he does not play Dungeons and Dragons. What do you take me for?”
Russ looked amused. “What else?”
“I don’t know exactly what you’re asking for,” Madeleine said truthfully.
It was his turn to roll his black eyes. “Never mind then. Where’s he from?”
“Outside Dublin.”
Russ started to laugh. “You and your thing for accents.”
She had to laugh too.
“Why doesn’t your mum like him?” he asked, curiously.
Madeleine paused, hesitating before she answered.
Why indeed?
“It’s not that she doesn’t like him,” she said, slowly. “It’s being engaged this ‘young’, and … I think she thinks that he’s bad for me.”
Russ snorted. “He can’t be any worse for you than I was.”
“Not that kind of bad,” she said quickly. “Like… I don’t know, you heard about what happened in December, didn’t you?”
“His memory loss.”
“Yeah, that… well, I kind of… caved in on myself.”
“Oh, that.”
“You heard, then.”
He shook his head. “Mum called down from our camp, don’t you remember? I didn’t come – I didn’t think it was a good idea. But she said you were … dead. Catatonic.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I don’t even remember Imogen being there, to be honest.”
“So she’s worried about the power he has over you,” he interpreted correctly.
“Something like that.”
There was another silence.
“So, any hot friends for me?” he asked, changing the subject with a smirk.
Madeleine laughed, hitting him around the head. “Don’t you dare, Russ.”
Don't you dare...