Yea, I know the characters aren't mine, I'm just borrowing them for a little while…taking them out for a spin. I'll return them when I'm done I promise, please don't sue me in the meantime!
by
Maxie
(maxie_s@hotmail.com)
Fran and Max stood staring at the sleeping couple, mouths agape. Looking at each other they reached a silent understanding and quickly backed out of the room, closing the door behind them.
A few moments later, Niles leaned over and whispered in C.C.’s ear, "They’ve gone."
"I know," she replied rolling over towards him. Propping herself up on one elbow she looked down into the blue eyes of her husband. "How did you know?" she asked.
"Know what?" said Niles.
"That they would come in here tonight….I mean, after all these years"
"Elementary, my dear C.C.," he answered looking very pleased with the results of this latest scheme. "With both of us having resigned tonight, they were bound to come in here to try and talk me out of it. They do care about us you know," he said, shifting slightly and stretching his arm back to put his hand behind his head.
"I know" said C.C. laying her head on his chest. She began lightly tracing circular patterns across it with her finger. "Niles, how did our lives become so complicated?"
"Whatever do you mean?" he answered teasingly.
"I mean…," C.C. said, somewhat exasperated "we’ve been married, what nearly 18 years now?" Feeling Niles nod, she continued "…and still nobody knows, in fact, until very recently, everyone in this house has been under the impression that we hated each other! How did our lives turn into such a soap opera?"
"Well, my dear, if my memory serves me correctly…." Niles said, stilling her hand movements. He didn’t need the distraction just then. "….you were the one who started it."
"Wh…." C.C began. Niles put his finger to her lips to silence her.
"Yes, you!" Assuming the voice of a story-teller, he continued "Once upon a time, Niles and C.C. were a nice ordinary couple. Niles worked as a butler who one day found himself attracted to his employer’s new business partner. She fancied him too. How could she not? For he was so devishly handsome…." At this, C.C. snorted and kicked him under the covers. Niles flashed her a quick grin and carried on. "Anyway, after a few weeks Niles approached her and invited her out. She, of course, accepted and that was that, though they did decide initially to keep it quiet while they got to know each other and enjoyed their flourishing romance.!"
C.C. smiled as she remembered how fun and special those first few months with Niles had been.
"It wasn’t long before Niles and C.C. realised they were soulmates who wanted to be together for life, so, not wanting any fuss, they quietly slipped away and got married. It was upon their arrival back at the house to share their news that things took an unexpected turn…." Niles trailed off.
"Sarah’s parents," said C.C. interjecting and taking up the story "I remember now, while we were away, Sarah’s parents had arrived unexpectedly to stay for three months. Poor Sarah, she was already so stressed at that time, Maggie was going through the terrible twos and Brighton was just a newborn. Then on top of all, that she now had her mother to deal with. God, what a horrible woman. Such a snob! All that rubbish about status and classes not mixing.!"
Niles smiled as he reflected, not for the first time in his life, just how different his C.C., the real C.C., was from the C.C. the Sheffields knew.
Meanwhile, C.C was still talking.
"I’d gone into Maxwell’s study while you were making some tea, immediately I felt the tension in the room and I knew it wasn’t the right time to announce that Maxwell’s business partner had just married his butler. Then you came in and handed me a cup of tea…..’Thanks D…dusterboy’ I said realising that Darling was not appropriate…boy….you looked so confused for a second, then, quick as a flash you said ‘You’re welcome Miss Babcock, by the way I’ve parked your broom by the front door, ready for you to fly home on.’ " C.C laughed, mimicking Niles’ voice.
They lay there chuckling at the memory of that moment. Later that day, they had discussed the issue and decided to keep up the pretence for the duration of Sarah’s parents stay. So whenever they felt they were about to utter an affectionate endearment, they’d hurl an insult instead.
However, 3 months later, after Sarah’s parents had left, Niles and C.C. had discovered they were having a lot of fun with their ‘little sit-com’ (as they would come to call it over the years). For Niles, it allowed him to indulge his acting aspirations he always held without compromising his job of caring for the Sheffields, and C.C. ……well, she wouldn’t have been a partner in a production company if she didn’t enjoy a piece of good drama! Also, the couple found that the fast and furious fighting during the days led to fast and furious loving during the nights! So, by unspoken agreement, they continued the charade.
The next few years passed by so quickly, that Niles and C.C were amazed one day to realise they’d been married for five years and still hadn’t told their best friends. It was time to tell the truth.
Sensing where her thoughts had led her, Niles wrapped his arms around his wife and gave her a hug.
"I told Sarah," C.C. said sadly, "the day she died." C.C. had gone to Sarah’s work that day and told her over lunch. Sarah had been stunned, then bemused and finally delighted for her best friend. "She was coming home to tell Maxwell when she was hit by that drunk driver. You know, I still feel guilty about it sometimes….if I hadn’t told her that day, she might not have been on the road at that particular time…"
"C.C.," Niles said, putting his finger under her chin to raise her eyes to meet his, "it wasn’t your fault, it was an accident, a tragic accident."
"I know," sighed C.C. "intellectually I know that, but every now and then I can’t help but wonder…"
"Well, you shouldn’t."
Niles decided it was time to divert C.C.’s thoughts, so he picked up the threads of their story. "Anyway, after Sarah died Max was so shattered, it just wasn’t the right time to tell him about us, so once again it was back to pretending. All we could do was to leave Max to grieve, be there when he needed us and look after the kids while he sorted himself out."
Niles always thought is was sad for C.C. that the children were too young and traumatised to remember that initial period after their mother’s death. While he’d busied himself making sure they ate, wore clean clothes, etc, it had been C.C. who’d been the one to go into their rooms at night when they cried and held them until they had fallen back to sleep. She’d done everything she could to help them. It really wasn’t fair that those same kids now considered her to be some kind of man-hungry witch who couldn’t even remember their names! He voiced these thoughts aloud and was surprised by her quick response.
"Niles,"she said, sitting up and turning to face him taking the sheet with her to cover herself, "what I did for the kids back then, I did because it needed to be done …and for Sarah, not so that I would become some kind of loved Aunt."
"Still…," Niles said.
"Besides," she added quickly, "I don’t think the kids do hate me. I think underneath they have a lot of affection for old C.C….a bit like the butler," she teased.
"So," said Niles, getting back to the original topic, "we decided to wait until Max was ready before telling him we were married….however time passed and he never seemed to recover. I was beginning to think he never would….until the day Fran arrived."
"I remember the day Fran knocked on the door selling her cosmetics, I took one look at her and knew she was just what Max needed." Niles was saying.
"Well, once again I have to hand it to you Niles," C.C. answered, "as usual your instincts were bang on. The change in Maxwell was amazing. The first time he saw her, it was like the life came flooding back into him."
"Trouble was he'd been shut down for so long I was so afraid he'd never admit his feelings….even to himself, let alone her!" Niles said.
"I know," said C.C. "that's why I came up with that ridiculous 'sub-plot' that I was after Maxwell for myself. I figured it would give Fran the right incentive to keep chasing him."
"Babcock, you're a genius!" Niles and C.C. shared a hi-five in celebration of the success of that particular scheme of theirs.
"What amazes me" C.C. said, settling back against the pillows, "is how the hell we've managed to get away with it for so long! I mean for the last 18 years I have either been here at night with you or you have slipped away and come home to me."
"It's incredible isn't it?" agreed Niles, "all those times you've gone out one door only to come back in another and shoot up-stairs and you've never been caught! Obviously they are just not as nosy as….well, us! Let's face it, CaCa, as much as I love Fran and Max, I have to admit they're not the sharpest tools in the shed."
"What about the time they came home and caught us kissing in the lounge? They still never twigged!" laughed C.C.
"Hmmph" Niles was still annoyed about slipping up that night. He liked to think he gave a perfect performance in every 'scene' he played out. That night, like so many others, the sparring in which they had engaged in during the day had crossed over into their 'personal time'. Niles, pretending to masquerade as Max, had crept up behind C.C. in the office and asked her to cluck like a chicken because it turned him on. C.C., knowing full well it was Niles behind her, had complied. She'd then turned around and they had a 'faux' fight before ending up, as always, in a passionate embrace. However, that night he'd lost control and forgotten where they were. "I still blame you for that!"
"Why?"
"Lord, woman, the things you can do with that tongue of yours….robs a man of his ability to think straight!"
"Well, thank you Sir!" she said, giving him a sideways look and fluttering her eyelashes.
"No, no….thank you!" he said, nudging her gently with his shoulder.
C.C. sighed, "You know in some ways it's a shame it has to end…."
"I know," said Niles, "but if you're serious about wanting to try for a baby….."
"I am, I know when we got married we decided not to have kids, but seeing Fran pregnant with the twins and so happy…it made me realise I don't want to miss out on that experience."
"It's okay, I'm rather excited about the idea too, but it does necessitate that we bring our relationship out into the open."
"Wouldn't it be easier just to tell them the truth?" she asked.
Niles thought for a moment before answering her. "Actually, I did consider it. But…."
"But what?"
Well, I'm not too sure how they'd react. It's been so long now they might be really offended that we've lied to them all this time. I'd hate to hurt their feelings….besides this way is much more fun!"
"Fun," protested C.C. "that phoney proposal, sitting up last night making that false tape, our pretend fight and resignations tonight, having them catch us up here in bed….." she trailed off, then, her lips twitching said "yea, you're right, this way is much more fun!"
"That's my C.C!" Niles gave her an approving slap on her rear.
"O.K, where do we go from here?" Niles pondered aloud.
"Niles"
"Mmm?"
"Before you and that twisted brain of yours get busy, could you go and get me something to eat? All this scheming makes a girl positively starving."
"O.K, O.K" sighed Niles, putting his developing ideas on hold for a while. He quickly shrugged on his robe and headed to the door. Suddenly, he turned and walked back towards his wardrobe, he snatched up his apron and tied it around his waist.
"What on earth are you doing?" C.C. asked.
"Well, if I bump into Fran or Max it might make them wonder about the kinky tastes of my new girlfriend."
"NILES!" she roared and threw her pillow at his hastily retreating form. She was a nano-second too late and the pillow hit the closed door.
Niles was back 10 minutes later carrying an armful of food which he dropped in the centre of their bed.
"Niles, what on earth is all this stuff?" cried C.C looking at the assortment of dessert toppings Niles had brought. "When I said food I was expecting a sandwich or something!"
"I know but Fran and Max were in the kitchen."
"So?"
"Well, I decided that this…" he gestured to the pile on the bed, "….was more appropriate for a couple spending their first ever night together."
"Oh…but what can I eat? I'm starving!" Rifling through the pile she eventually found a banana. "I guess I'll have to make do with this."
After taking a bite and leaning back against the headboard, C.C. realised what Niles had said about Fran and Max being downstairs. "So, what did they say?"
"Hmm…who?" Niles said absently, also looking for something to eat. Not really finding anything he grabbed a bottle of chocolate topping, squirted some on his finger and proceeded to lick it off.
"That's disgusting" shuddered C.C.
Niles looked at her, shrugged and carried on.
"What did Fran and Maxwell say about us, you know….being in bed together?" repeated C.C.
"Nothing."
"Nothing! You're kidding! Surely they must be curious as to how we got from fighting down there to being up here…together! I mean, if you were an outsider watching this little 'sit-com' of ours, wouldn't you be curious?"
"I would. And so would anybody else, but as I keep reminding you, we're talking about Fran and Max here… you know – not the brightest lights on the Christmas tree! The man turned down Cats for crying out loud."
"Yeah, I guess you're right." C.C. acknowledged. "So you don't think they plan to say anything at all?"
"Nope!"
"Then what was the point of all this?" C.C. asked waving her arm towards the mattress.
"The point is, my dear, now that we know that they know we're together – we can move onto the next act of our little drama."
"Which is?" C.C. asked, half afraid of the answer.
"We get married." Niles replied succinctly.
"Married!" spluttered C.C. accidentally spitting a mouthful of banana across to Niles. It landed with a soft 'plop' on his apron.
Niles looked down at it in mock disgust. "Good God woman! Remind me to be the one to teach our child table manners." He got up, started untying the apron and walked towards the clothes hamper in the corner of the room. "Getting married is the next logical step."
"Logical! Believe me Niles, nothing about this entire farce is remotely logical….besides I hate to point out the obvious, but we're already married!"
"I know that, but Fran and Max don't , so we have to get married….again."
Walking back towards the bed, Niles suddenly got a mischievous glint in his eye. Coming to a stop at the side of the bed, he dropped to one knee and took C.C.'s hand in his.
"C.C. Babcock, will you marry me?"
"Gee Niles, I don't know. I answered that question once before and look what it got me." C.C. joked.
"The best marriage in the history of marriages!"
"Best! Try bizzarest, sickest, most twisted…."
"Most exciting?" offered Niles.
"Most entertaining," compromised C.C. "and yes! of course I'll do it again….er…what exactly do you have in mind?"
"Well, I was thinking about a hospital wedding…while Fran's having the babies." Niles revealed, getting up and sitting beside her on the bed.
"At the hospital! You can't be serious!" C.C. stopped herself. Of course he was serious, and she'd come to learn over the years that her husbands schemes, no matter how off the wall, always seemed to work out. "God, I can't believe I'm going along with all this. I must be losing my mind. Genuinely, not like the so called last time! I still can't believe you did that to me! There I was lying in a clinic being poked and prodded by all those doctors to see if I could carry your baby, and what are you doing? …Running around telling everyone I was in a mental institution!"
"Hey, I had to tell them something" defended Niles unrepentantly.
"You couldn't just say I'd taken a few days off?"
"How boring!"
"Yeah, heaven forbid we do anything boring! Ok, I guess I'll leave you with the wedding plans then. But you're not going to have all the fun! I've got a little act of my own to perform tomorrow."
"Oh yeah, what's that?"
"I'm going to spend the day mooning around. See if I can get Fran or Maxwell to say anything."
"Mooning?"
"You know….looking lovestruck. Like this." C.C. said, tilting her head to one side and staring blankly into space, fluttering her eyelashes occasionally.
Niles snickered at seeing his keenly intelligent wife looking so air-headed and …well blonde! Continuing to look at her, his face took on a loving look.
"What did I do to deserve being married all these years to such an amazing, albeit sick and twisted, woman?"
"You just got lucky I guess" C.C. said smartly, rifling again through the pile of food on the bed. She picked up a can of whipped cream. "You know Niles, new lovers aren't the only ones to use this stuff!"
"Oh no?"
"No." C.C. demonstrated by squirting a dollop of cream onto the side of Niles' neck, and leaning forward to lick it off.
"Umphgh." Niles said unintelligibly, pulling C.C. down onto the mattress with him.
After a few minutes C.C rolled away and reached for the bedside drawer, intending to retrieve her diaphragm. Stopping her, Niles pulled her back down to him.
"How about doing without that for a while?"
"But what if I get pregnant….you know…before 'the wedding'?"
"Well, we will just write it into our little script. Maybe we could arrange for the doctor to tell us in front of Fran and Max, then we could both pretend to faint."
"Niles, you are so baaad!" giggled C.C. squirting the cream again, this time onto a somewhat more lower region of his body.
Meanwhile, downstairs in the kitchen, Fran and Max were having a revealing conversation of their own.
"So we're agreed," Fran said, placing a bowl of ice-cream in front of Max, "tonight was a set-up. They wanted us to walk in on them."
"Of course it was a bloody set-up! After all these years they wouldn't have been so careless as to leave the door unlocked. Plus the way they've both been carrying on the past few days…"
Fran remembered how stunned she'd been when Max had first told her that Niles and C.C. were married. She'd only been working at the house a few weeks when he'd let her in on the 'little secret'.
"I don't know why you've never told them that you know….that Sarah rang you that day from her car….before the accident?"
"It's always been a timing thing." Max replied, "After Sarah died it just didn't seem to be the right time to talk about it, and I guess they knew that being around a happily married couple wasn't something I wanted at that time." Fran reached over and gave Max's hand a quick squeeze in silent understanding, "Then, as time passed, it didn't seem right to tell them….they appeared to be having so much fun with their little drama!"
"Well, we know what that's like!" laughed Fran nasally. The truth of the matter was, Fran and Max had actually gotten together within just a few short months of her arrival. However, the new couple were having so much fun watching their friends' attempts at getting them together that they started putting on little acts of their own. "All those fake arguments and false misunderstandings we staged! …and calling each other Miss Fine and Mr Sheffield…."
"What about me….pretending not to notice C.C.'s blatant flirting all those years!" laughed Max.
"Yeah, what was that about?" asked Fran, who sometimes struggled to keep up with the state of play.
"I think it was to make you jealous, to ensure you kept chasing me." Max answered wryly.
"I don't know how the four of us have managed to keep it up all these years." Fran said, shaking her head in bemusement.
"It's like a good game of chess, my darling, you have to keep one step ahead of the other player…and never, ever under-estimate their ability. A trap I fear Niles and C.C. have fallen into!"
"Ok. Mr Smarty-pants, ….what are they up to? Why now, after all this time, are they making sure we know they're a couple?" Fran asked.
"Actually, I do have a theory about that," replied Max. "Remember a couple of weeks ago in my office when the twins were really kicking you about?"
"Yeah…you rubbed my stomach to quiet them down."
"Well, C.C. was sitting on the couch behind you. I couldn't help but notice she had a really odd look on her face and she was subtly rubbing her stomach."
"Oh my God! Do you think she's pregnant?" shrieked Fran, thrilled at the idea.
"Either she is or I think she wants to be." Max answered.
"Oh wow! That would be so great, the four of us raising our babies together!"
"Well, it is just a theory. I might be wrong."
"So what now? What do we say to them tomorrow?" Fran asked.
"I reckon they will be expecting us to say….nothing."
"Nothing? At all?" said Fran, a little disappointed.
"Yep…you know 'Fran and Max…a sandwich short of a picnic'" said Max, imitating Niles' mocking voice.
"So what-da-we-do?" whined Fran.
"We sit back and keep watching and waiting for their finale….knowing those two, it should be really entertaining!"
"I guess you're right," said Fran. She looked at her husband and shook her head in amazement.
"What?" said Max.
"I can never figure out exactly how such a clever man passed on 'Cats'?"
Max shifted uneasily in his chair and wondered if it was time to tell her the truth. Deciding it was, he cleared his throat.
"Umm…Fran,"
"Yeah?"
"About 'Cats'…..I always knew that show was going to be a huge success, from the first moment I read it. It had 'smash hit' written all over it."
"What?" squealed Fran.
"I deliberately turned it down."
"Why?"
"Well, whoever produced that play was going to become famous…really famous."
"Really, really famous," said Fran.
"Exactly, I realised I didn't want that….I didn't want what it would do to me….or my family….So, I passed. I was happy being a moderately successful, but unsung, producer."
"Why didn't you tell us that? All those those times we've ribbed you about it…"
"I guess I'm just a martyr," said Max heaving a mock sigh.
"Well, I think that's sweet." Fran said, leaning over and planting a kiss on his cheek.
Pulling back, he looked at her. "Ok. Now it's your turn," he said.
"What do ya mean?"
"You know the rules, darling, when one of us reveals a secret about themselves, the other has to do the same…And I get to choose what it is!"
"Oy, this can't be good!"
"Ok Fran, tell me…. How old are you?"
"Oh Max. Pleeze not that! Anything but that!"
"Come on Fran…spill."
"Ok. Ok." Fran took a deep breath and looked him in the eye, "Max, I'm 36 years old."
Max looked at her and grinned. "There, that wasn't so hard now, was it?" He pulled her in to him for a hug. Over her shoulder he allowed himself a smug grin. He knew she was really 39. On the day they'd gotten their Marriage License, he'd found a copy of her birth certificate in her coat pocket!
Over Max's shoulder, Fran was also grinning as she imagined the smug look on her husband's face at that moment. She knew he had looked at that phoney certificate she'd planted.
For Fran Sheffield had recently turned 41 years old!
The End
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