redfiona99 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
redfiona99) wrote2022-10-19 07:41 pm
redfiona99) wrote2022-10-19 07:41 pm
Entry tags:
Fic - A Suitable Husband (1/1, Last of the Summer Wine)
Title: A Suitable Husband
Author: Red Fiona
Fandom: Last of the Summer Wine
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, the BBC do, and no money is being made from this.
Characters: Norman Clegg
Rating: PG-12
Notes: Much delayed lgbtfest 2012 fic, written to the prompt, "Last of the Summer Wine, Norman Clegg, Getting married seemed to be the easiest way out (Cleggy's queer identity open to the author)."
Warning: Mentions of canonical character death
Summary: He never did quite understand the sex thing.
~~~~
He never did quite understand the sex thing.
He'd always assumed that he'd grow into it. He wasn't too worried when he hadn't at first, because he was taking a long time to grow anyway and he assumed it would come with height.
It hadn't. Then again, Compo hadn't exactly grown and he was always throwing himself at girls. Not that Cleggy would have wanted to throw himself at the kind of girls Compo liked, he never did have much of a thing for battleships, not even when he'd been building model boats.
No-one ever said anything. You didn't.
Well you did, but to your mates, and it was all done in a sort of elbow-based mee-mawing.
He decided that if he kept his head down, it'd all blow over and he'd be safe.
He hadn't counted on the female of the species. They seemed to be determined. And ferocious.
It wasn't that he was some sort of lothario of the Holmfirth dales, but there were three or four girls, and their mothers, who had decided that Norman was the answer to the problem of a suitable husband. He wasn't sure why, and he couldn't avoid them all because his mother had told him he wasn't to hide in the pantry every time there were visitors.
According to the assembled mothers, who sat in a tea and carbolic-perfumed premonition of Edie Pegdon's tea and cake afternoons, Cleggy was a nice young man, tidy, dependable, biddable, *suitable*.
There seemed to be no way out.
Although Mrs. Utterthwaite was one of the assembled mothers, she, thankfully, never showed much interest in marrying Norman to her daughter, although given how particular she was about tidiness, Norman doesn't understand how she let her daughter marry Wesley Pegdon.
Norman chose Edie, his Edie, because she seemed to be the only other person as uncomfortable as he was. They'd spend these embarrassing occasions staring at their feet, and speaking only when spoken to. He thinks they'd been married three years before they got beyond looking at each other's ankles.
He was lucky in Edie, because she was satisfied with that, or if she wasn't, she never said, and she wasn't the sort who wouldn't have said something. She never didn't say something when something wasn't up to her standards. Her discomfort was in being a public show, and she seemed pleased that Norman didn't want to do more than hold her hand in public.
If they weren't happy, then at least they weren't unhappy, and that counted for something. He's seen the covers of the Mills and Boon books that shuttle through hospital wards, not that Edie had much time for them, and he knows real life, and love doesn't look like that. He's not quite sure what it does look like, something like the ununderstandableness that explained Ivy and Stan or Nora and her Wally, but if he and Edie didn't quite manage that, or the faintly ridiculous couples on the front of Mills and Boon, then at least he never disappointed her. Edie knew what she was getting, and it was what she wanted.
It's probably the best either of them could have hoped for.
End notes: Cleggy is a delight to write, not least of all because he gives me an opportunity to write in authentic Northern gibberish.
Author: Red Fiona
Fandom: Last of the Summer Wine
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, the BBC do, and no money is being made from this.
Characters: Norman Clegg
Rating: PG-12
Notes: Much delayed lgbtfest 2012 fic, written to the prompt, "Last of the Summer Wine, Norman Clegg, Getting married seemed to be the easiest way out (Cleggy's queer identity open to the author)."
Warning: Mentions of canonical character death
Summary: He never did quite understand the sex thing.
~~~~
He never did quite understand the sex thing.
He'd always assumed that he'd grow into it. He wasn't too worried when he hadn't at first, because he was taking a long time to grow anyway and he assumed it would come with height.
It hadn't. Then again, Compo hadn't exactly grown and he was always throwing himself at girls. Not that Cleggy would have wanted to throw himself at the kind of girls Compo liked, he never did have much of a thing for battleships, not even when he'd been building model boats.
No-one ever said anything. You didn't.
Well you did, but to your mates, and it was all done in a sort of elbow-based mee-mawing.
He decided that if he kept his head down, it'd all blow over and he'd be safe.
He hadn't counted on the female of the species. They seemed to be determined. And ferocious.
It wasn't that he was some sort of lothario of the Holmfirth dales, but there were three or four girls, and their mothers, who had decided that Norman was the answer to the problem of a suitable husband. He wasn't sure why, and he couldn't avoid them all because his mother had told him he wasn't to hide in the pantry every time there were visitors.
According to the assembled mothers, who sat in a tea and carbolic-perfumed premonition of Edie Pegdon's tea and cake afternoons, Cleggy was a nice young man, tidy, dependable, biddable, *suitable*.
There seemed to be no way out.
Although Mrs. Utterthwaite was one of the assembled mothers, she, thankfully, never showed much interest in marrying Norman to her daughter, although given how particular she was about tidiness, Norman doesn't understand how she let her daughter marry Wesley Pegdon.
Norman chose Edie, his Edie, because she seemed to be the only other person as uncomfortable as he was. They'd spend these embarrassing occasions staring at their feet, and speaking only when spoken to. He thinks they'd been married three years before they got beyond looking at each other's ankles.
He was lucky in Edie, because she was satisfied with that, or if she wasn't, she never said, and she wasn't the sort who wouldn't have said something. She never didn't say something when something wasn't up to her standards. Her discomfort was in being a public show, and she seemed pleased that Norman didn't want to do more than hold her hand in public.
If they weren't happy, then at least they weren't unhappy, and that counted for something. He's seen the covers of the Mills and Boon books that shuttle through hospital wards, not that Edie had much time for them, and he knows real life, and love doesn't look like that. He's not quite sure what it does look like, something like the ununderstandableness that explained Ivy and Stan or Nora and her Wally, but if he and Edie didn't quite manage that, or the faintly ridiculous couples on the front of Mills and Boon, then at least he never disappointed her. Edie knew what she was getting, and it was what she wanted.
It's probably the best either of them could have hoped for.
End notes: Cleggy is a delight to write, not least of all because he gives me an opportunity to write in authentic Northern gibberish.