Work Text:
She needs eggs.
Eggs, and some tomatoes for a soup tonight, and oh, maybe some milk, they're running low. The milk is closer by, she can grab that and then go to the produce section for the tomatoes. Okay.
Pamela pushes her cart down the aisle, peering down at price tags. Thirty cents a pound, damn, if that's what they're charging. She doesn't have time to go somewhere else for a better price. The tomatoes are a bit soft, but they're going in soup anyway, so it won't matter. Robert won't mind.
She's pretty sure he likes her tomato soup. She doesn't know that he likes much else about her, though.
They have a little section up at the front with beauty products, probably to attract the young wives who shop here: some newfangled face cream, a few different hair gels, but Pamela's eyes catch on the nail files. She reaches down to her side, where an old, battered one sits in her pocket.
She carries it wherever she goes. It's a foolish sort of hope, that one day it might come in handy again. It's sat in her pocket through the years and years since she last saw Hannay, through school and travel and marriage, and even now, when there isn't much left to do with her life.
Used all her adventure up too early. God, she's so horrifically boring now.
It's almost too easy to quell the rising bitterness in her throat, the way her hand clenches at her side before relaxing and making her way to exchange empty pleasantries with the clerk- yes, my husband's doing well, yes, my family is healthy, and yours? Oh, good. No, no children, just the two of us. Well, goodbye.
Her feet trace the familiar path back to their flat, although it's a different route than usual because of some construction, and traffic is heavy as people head home from work. The calls of street vendors and tires splashing through puddles and horns honking fills the air, but she's in a daze, following crowds as they cross streets and oh, she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
She stops suddenly, in the middle of the road, glancing around herself. Where is she? Oh, the hairdresser is over on the right, she has to head south a while to get home, this is the emptier part of town. How the hell did she get this far?
A loud splash behind her alerts her to a car screeching to a halt and she turns and its bumper is suddenly in her face and her mouth screams and her legs carry her backwards and trip on something and pull her down and she lands hard, bag tumbling out of her hands.
"Would you watch where you're going?" she hears herself snap, a little of that old annoyance creeping into her tone. She stands and brushes herself off, wincing as her hands catch on a sore spot. Shit, that's gonna bruise.
The car door opens and slams shut but Pamela ignores it, glancing around and seeing her bag on the street, tomatoes strewn across the asphalt and red stains in the worn cloth. Shit.
"I am so, so sorry miss-" She hears a male voice, strangely familiar, and someone's hand clamps down on her shoulder. Pamela jerks her head up, ready to give whoever shocked her a stern lecture, and meets the brown eyes of one Richard Hannay.
What the fuck.
One curse doesn't seem to cut it. What the fuck?
He startles. She must have said that one aloud. Although clearly, he's having the same reaction. "Pamela, is that-"
"Hannay. Never thought I'd see you again."
They both stare at each other for a moment, uncharacteristically lost for words. It doesn't seem appropriate to hug. Or shake hands. They both put up a fantastic pretense of hating one another. At least, near the end. He drops his hand from her shoulder, stepping backwards a little.
"Well, it's.. good to see you?" he offers, looking about as conflicted as she feels now.
Pamela realizes she hasn't said anything back, after a moment.
The absurdity of the situation hits her. They're both standing in the middle of the street, there's a wet spot in her dress, and her groceries are strewn across the street and somehow, none of it matters because she's staring at a man she thought she'd never see again.
Someone she's fantasized endlessly about meeting since. It was a safe fantasy, she liked to justify to herself. That the hero-spy would sweep her off her feet despite them both having hated one another and they'd go on grand adventures and save the country and maybe fall in love, because hell, it would be a lot nicer than whatever she's doing with her life now.
She's gotten very good at needlepoint. Fucking needlepoint. She's better than that, she's better than what she does day by day, idling at home without any sense of purpose, and seeing him makes her realize that afresh.
Hannay looks worried, eyebrows furrowing as he waits for her to speak. She still hasn't replied to him.
"Hope you've been well," Pamela manages to grit out.
"I have, thank you," he says, frustratingly polite.
God, he hasn't changed a bit.
She knows she probably looks a little angry, and this is around the time Robert would start making hurried excuses to leave the room and she'd try to calm down for his sake but Hannay looks almost relieved.
"C'mon, let's get those tomatoes and I can give you a lift? Where do you live?"
Usually she'd get defensive if some strange man was asking her where she lived, but it's Hannay. If he was going to do something horrible to her, he'd had plenty of opportunity to. All bark, no bite.
Pamela rattles off her address as she picks up the fruits that look mostly undamaged. The milk and eggs survived, luckily, and she holds the bag in her lap so as not to stain the seat of Hannay's car.
They would never fit, really. As they drive through London's streets in silence, Hannay sneaking glances at her every now and then, Pamela watches him through the reflection in the window. She probably built him up in her head too much. Imagining some perfect future together, and it hurts a little, for that secret desire to fall to pieces after meeting him again.
He hadn't even done anything wrong. He's been a perfect gentleman. But she's seen Hannay furious at the world and her, consumed by a half-cooked impulsive plan, and that sort of impression doesn't leave someone easily.
He looks exactly the same, and that scares her. Pamela hadn't quite realized how much she'd changed until faced with him again.
"Pamela?"
"Hm?" She turns her head to face him.
"How've you been?"
A short, bitter chuckle escapes her. Oh, the small talk. She'd been neglecting that.
"I've been alright." It doesn't really seem appropriate to mention Robert. "You?"
"Fine, I suppose."
They drive on in silence.
The buildings pass by, like flashes of memory, growing more and more familiar as she gets closer and closer, and-
It's as if she's in a moment, frozen in time. Streets pass by, but she's trapped in her seat, eyes staring blankly through the window, and wishing desperately for this one last piece of hope to not leave her. And suddenly, the prospect of returning to the empty, heartless place she lives to wither away her years chills her to the bone.
That dreadful fear holds her close as Hannay slows to a halt in front of a residential area.
"Is this it?"
She nods, but makes no move to get out. Even willing her legs to move does nothing.
"It opens from the inside. I'm not trying to kidnap you."
"I know."
He peers over at her for a moment, then settles back in his seat, apparently content to wait. Pamela's grateful for that.
She breathes in and out, trying to ground herself. The car smells a bit like him.
"That was a lot of tomatoes. Are you cooking for someone else?" he asks, with a sort of forced casualness.
"Yes. Husband." She regrets saying it a little. It feels a little like breaking some sort of trust. She shifts a little in her seat, and opens the door, setting a foot down.
"Oh, is he there now? Won't he be suspicious if he sees you getting out of a strange car? Sorry." Hannay's rambling carries as she steps out and walks around to the driver's seat to say goodbye.
"No, he won't be back for a while," she says, stopping in front of the window and wondering how quickly she can wrap up the conversation.
He looks a little frustrated now. "Alright then, at least tell me this, Pamela. What the hell happened to you?" he asks, in that blunt way of his.
She blinks. Not the question she thought he would ask. Somehow she imagined awkwardly saying goodbye and going back to their lives.
What did happen to her, really?
Nothing. Nothing and everything and nothing again, and he's still just the same, how is he the same? Pamela wonders if she'll think she dreamed this tomorrow.
"I don't know," she says a little helplessly.
"Has he been, I don't know, doing something to you?"
She's a little touched by his concern. "No, we-" She was about to say we mostly ignore each other, but that doesn't really seem appropriate. "We're fine."
"Pamela Steward-" he remembers her last name, dear lord, "-if I let you go now and I knew something was happening I'd never forgive myself."
"No, you went traipsing across the country because some woman told you about some spy," Pamela snorts. "I don't really think there's anything you can do."
"Pamela." He's got this sort of worried, pitying look and she hates it.
"Hannay," she says, mostly just to say something.
"Richard," he corrects. Pamela raises an eyebrow at him, and he raises an eyebrow right back.
"Come on, we were handcuffed together, call me my first name."
"Fine. Richard. I'm fine."
"Do you really believe that, Pamela?"
No. But he doesn't need to know that, and right now she doesn't know what's worse, opening up to Hannay- Richard, or going inside with her heart dripping blood and staining the floor.
Her lack of response seems answer enough, and he sighs. "Look, do you want to meet up for, I dunno, coffee or something?"
Of course he would ask if they could meet again. This isn't a movie, where they can have a little happily ever after. They're both changed too much. Or, well, she has. She doesn't want him to see the full extent of it though.
"What, for old time's sake? Should I ask the police station for a pair of handcuffs too? Recreate the experience?"
"Why're you being such a little- ugh! I just wanted to ask. Nevermind."
It's all too much, she's about to either yell at him or start throwing things, and he deserves to see none of that. He needs to go, and the best way to do that is just leave.
"Goodbye." She turns and forces herself to walk up the steps and start unlocking her door.
"Wait, Pamela. Pamela! God's sake, you bumble-headed little fool-" The nostalgia makes her want to cry, and she fumbles with the door a moment before opening it and closing it shut behind her, sinking to the floor.
Too many emotions to compartmentalize right now, so she just sits and takes deep, shuddering breaths as she hears him trail off. Another few minutes, or perhaps more, and she hears steps coming up to the door, and she stands up hurriedly.
Must be Robert coming home early, and if he sees her like this it'll be horrible, and she's wiping her eyes and hears the mail slot swing open and shut and a small piece of paper flit through.
The steps get quieter, and a car engine starts, and Pamela vaguely registers the splash of tires through water as Hannay drives off. She picks up the paper, and it's got an address and a time and date, and there are too many emotions again and she slumps against the wall, clutching the slip to her chest.
A bit of hope left, after all that.