"It's my fic and I'll write what I want to."
Title: The Devil and Darrell Rivers
Author: pathology_doc
Fandom: Malory Towers
Pairing: Alicia/Darrell. Discussion of Alicia/Betty. Some Sally/Darrell.
Rating/Warnings: MA-15+. Not light and fluffy.
Summary: Set during “Third Year at Malory Towers.” Sally and Betty are away due to illness, so Alicia and Darrell make a pair. But just how close a pair? Alicia sets the agenda.
8600 words, after vicious trimming.
Darrell Rivers lay in bed and wondered why it was that the nights of the first week back always seemed to be so hot. It didn’t help at all that Sally wasn’t here; Darrell had been counting on her to cool her temper, which always seemed to rise with uncomfortably warm nights. She also wondered why she always seemed to need two or three trips to the bathroom. To the first question, the answer lay in a chance of the weather. Her father could have given her an answer to the second – what goes in must come out, and caffeine only encourages the process.
It encouraged Darrell out of bed; it was warm enough that she did not need her slippers, and she simply padded directly to the appropriate room. Despite the hour, well past midnight, it seemed that the mistresses were still patrolling the halls. She happened across Miss Peters, her current form mistress, who thought briefly of challenging her, but settled for a polite greeting when she saw where Darrell was headed.
When she got there, what should she find but Alicia Johns sitting on the floor, back against the wall, reading what looked like a letter. Most other girls might have looked up in surprise, even a trace of fright, at someone suddenly walking into the room, but brazen young Alicia was too cool for that. She looked up at Darrell and smiled. “Hello, Darrell; up again, are you?”
“I’m sure it’s the coffee,” Darrell replied, not knowing how right she was. “What are you doing here?”
“Can’t sleep; too warm.”
“You too.” It wasn’t a question, and both girls knew it. Darrell walked into one of the many cubicles and made use of it. When she was done, she sat down next to Alicia. “Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all,” Alicia replied. “It’ll make me feel a little less lonely. It’s absolutely rotten having Betty in quarantine. And since it’s whooping cough, even if I could visit her, she’s almost too breathless to talk. She’ll be all right, the doctor says, but it’s most inconvenient.”
Darrell grinned. To a pair of irrepressible mischief-makers as Alicia and Betty, losing the power to be garrulous would be a worse punishment than any Miss Grayling could mete out. “Oh, the poor thing,” she offered, but she was surprised to find herself lacing her voice with not the smallest trace of irony. “And Sally’s had mumps, poor girl; been sick the whole hols, too. And she’s still in quarantine until her doctor is happy. Who’s the letter from; Betty?”
Alicia shook her head. “No. It’s actually my mother’s; she went here when she was a girl, you know.”
Darrell did indeed. “Yes, of course; I’d wondered why you seemed so at home here, even though you were only a first former like myself, but of course she’d probably filled your head so full of Malory Towers that you knew all about it since you could walk.”
“Not far wrong. I wrote her telling her how badly I was missing Betty…”
“…already…”
“Of course, already; can you picture me without her? Anyway, she wrote a most helpful letter back. You see, she remembers what it’s like to miss a special friend the way I’m missing Betty, and the fact that she understands so well made me feel ever so much better.”
