A/N: Oh, this has been a long time coming. I've been busy momming. It seems strange; my kids were all born within a span of less than four years. I had three in some form of diapers at the same time for a while. Three under four and two under two; a preschooler and two toddlers and years and years of sleepless nights. Even so, they seem to need more of me now, aged 6 and 8 and 10, than they ever have before. It's good. I ought to be the first one they run to. And it's also really freaking hard. I often feel as if I have been subsumed.

In addition to a dearth of time, I've been fighting my own demons. Like many of my contemporaries, I am my own worst enemy. I doubt my ability every time I sit down to write. I allow the ghosts of old trolls, both anonymous and known to me, to haunt me to the point that I get stuck on the same sentence for weeks and the same paragraph for months. It isn't cool, and I'm not proud.

Anyroad. I've begun to use my espoirmerveilleux blog to collect things — quotes and photos and lyrics and the like — that feel like they have potential as writing prompts. I've wrestled with how to tackle them (hmm ... wrestle; tackle ... does my choice of verbs give me away as a karate mom at all?) and come up with NOTHING. So I'm back with a one-shot, making no statements about what'll be next or when. I have an idea brewing, but tomorrow begins a new school week so WHO KNOWS?

I love Richobel. That said, I also love thinking about who Isobel was before she knew Richard. We know she was married to Reginald for a number of years, and the fact that she speaks of having been "sick with love" for him seems to indicate that theirs was a very loving marriage. As to my personal thoughts, I believe that they loved one another extraordinarily, that his death was a blow that knocked her off her foundation for a time, and that his love ultimately gave her the strength to heal. It goes further, but that's a good stopping point as far as the basis for this piece is concerned.

There are many who believe that Isobel and Reginald lost several babies, hence making Matthew an only child. This fic deals with the two of them in the early years of their marriage as they navigate some pretty major bumps in the road. I picture it as being set in the late 1970s simply because it fits as a forerunner to my modern Richobel AU. But really, I suppose it could have happened anytime.

Without further ado, I offer Keep Us, inspired by the Peter Bradley Adams song of the same name. Where lyrics are quoted, they are from that song.

xx,
~ejb~

When the rain set in we had nowhere left to go
So we just stayed in bed while the thunder rolled

He had carried her across the threshold on their wedding night, and all the while she'd giggled and called him dozy and nibbled at his lips, his chin. And he'd laid her down and undressed her and then himself as she watched, breathless, and reached for him. It had rained all night on their very first night as man and wife, and into the next day as well. And they'd laughed about it and dared the weather try and thwart the plans they'd made for the week.

They'd made something else that week, and six weeks later she'd laughed and cried and trembled with fear in his arms. They had known the odds; to be sure, their workdays were centred entirely around the results of the very behaviour in which they were now free to engage. And yet, somehow, aged nineteen and twenty-three, they believed it would never happen to them.

How will we do this? She had whispered as she lay with her head on his chest in between bouts of nausea. What about school, the hospital … what about Daddy's practice? How can we afford this now?

Hush, beautiful girl, he'd breathed as he held her. You leave all the worrying to me. When at last she had succumbed to sleep, lulled by his caress, he could not resist watching her, laying a protective hand on her belly as a smile spread across his face. She's carrying my child, he had thought as he ran his fingers through her hair. She's going to have our baby! It was true; they were young. She had another year and a half of medical school and he was a senior house officer; between them they had a dozen years more to go before they would achieve senior consultancy. Before the wedding they had talked a bit about when might be the right time to start a family and agreed that it was something they should table for the next couple of years at a minimum. To say that having a baby now would throw a spanner in the works was an understatement. And yet he'd found he could not contain his excitement. He loved her, had loved her for as long as he could remember. They could do this. They would do this!

In the eye of the storm, in the safety of this house
We lay hand in hand while the world turns wrong

He found himself carrying her again two weeks later, laying her broken body and her shattered heart in their bed. She was limp in his arms, listless, her eyes red and swollen and her throat raw from crying. Outside it poured. Insult, meet injury.

He had known when she met him on campus that morning that something was amiss; she had known it was over. They had both presided over the worst days of many patients' lives, but nothing could have prepared them for their own experience. The hospital docs, most of whom had known her since birth, had wanted to keep her overnight but she'd insisted upon coming home. Given that she was the wife of a junior physician, herself a medical student, and her father lived in the next house, she was granted discharge. He'd encouraged her to stay the night next door, let her mum keep vigil and her dad watch her vital signs, but she'd refused.

I need home. And our bed. And you.

And so he helped her into pyjamas and stripped down to his vest and shorts and gathered her into his arms. She lay so quietly, so eerily still, that he felt compelled to run his thumb over her pulse points every so often, just to check she was still with him.

"Isobel?" he whispered finally, when the silence had gone on too long.

She drew a ragged breath, shaky from hour upon hour of sobbing. "I'm sorry, baby," she murmured, to him and to the child who'd been and gone, "so terribly sorry I let you down." Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her body turned away from him. She looked so fragile.

And he felt so alone. Don't do this. Don't shut me out. I love you. I love you! "What are you talking about? This wasn't your fault, my darling. You've never let me down; you never could!" He touched her shoulder blade, traced his thumb along her spine.

"I should have wanted it more from the start. Perhaps if I had done—"

"Isobel," he said, more sharply than he'd meant to. She winced. He touched her cheek. "Please look at me."

She tried to turn her body towards him as a wave of pain seized her abdomen, a cruel reminder of what was gone. Screaming, she clutched her empty womb.

Jesus Christ. Did he say that out loud? No time to worry about it now. He helped her to lie on her back and lay his warm palm on her belly, willing her muscles to relax.

Her eyes met his as she lay looking up at him. "I don't know how to do this, Reggie," she confessed, her tone apologetic, as if she should know the protocol.

A sob caught in his chest and stuck there. "Darling … oh, darling, neither do I. Here I've been thinking I'm a failure because I can't fix it for you, make it not have happened."

She sobbed for the pain he carried, and then with the next breath she laughed and reached up to touch his lips. "We're a pair, aren't we?" She paused as she stroked his cheek. "You haven't got to fix this," she told him. "You can't. Just love me, and I'll love you."

There's a lesson in the rain that change will always come
Let us ride this wave and then greet the sun

Time passes and healing begins, but a year and a half later another loss comes. This time they aren't even aware she was pregnant until it's over. The pain, however, is no less significant, and they decide to put the notion of starting a family on hold. Perhaps not forever, but certainly for now. It's suspected and subsequently confirmed that Isobel has inherited the prothrombin deficiency responsible for her mother's many miscarriages, and the couple have yet to realise the carefree blissfulness that is supposed to surround the newly married. The fact is that she's twenty-one, and he is twenty-five, and the burden they're carrying was never meant for people their age, occupation notwithstanding.

Her body recovers in fairly short order, but her mind is another matter. From the time they became lovers, sex was never about procreation. Now, however, despite how much she wants to be with Reginald, she cannot divorce the act of lovemaking from the feeling that she is a reproductive failure. She goes on the Pill in the hope that it will help. It doesn't. He is wonderful about it ("Izzy," he tells her, "I didn't marry you in order to have children. It's you I want.") but she can feel the distance growing between them. Is she the only woman ever to have felt this way? He is her best friend, her all, but there is only so much she can say, given that this concerns him.

In desperation she finally confides in her mother. Mortifying as it is, there is no one who knows better what she's going through. It'll come back, Mum assures her, and don't rule out physicality that doesn't end in sex in the meantime.

"If you find you want him, give him what you can. Love heals, a leanabh."

oOo

She lets him find her in the bath on the day her test results come back. She had thought there would be comfort in the why, but instead she has spent the day vacillating between numbness and rage. When it had occurred to her that he'd be home soon, she'd wanted better than for him to find her in her dressing gown, so she'd run the bath and made up the bed and cleaned her teeth.

He drops to his knees beside the bathtub when she spies him through the doorpost and calls out to him. There's everything and nothing to say and her mouth opens and closes a couple of times before she finds the words she wants.

"It's the strangest thing: I can create life but I can't sustain it. It makes me feel like a murderer." She pauses, shaking her head. "And all that I wanted was to love my husband. I can't reconcile it all. I just … I can't."

He wants to touch her, wants to wrap her up in cotton wool. He won't, won't do anything she doesn't want.

"What can I do?" he asks her. "What will help?" In high times he never has to ask; they simply jibe together. It's easy and effortless and it's why they fell in love. But now they are adrift, their innocence lost.

She is angry. Why should he have to ask? And why doesn't she know how to answer? Their relationship, prior to marriage, had been so light and carefree and fun. But it isn't his fault things have changed any more than it's her own.

She sighs and sits up, baring her body to him for the first time in months. "I want us back," she tells him.

He is silent, his hand hovering over her shoulder, hesitating.

"It's alright," she assures him with a nod, her eyelids fluttering shut as his hands cover her shoulders.

"I don't think it works like that," he tells her gently. "I don't think we can go back." He traces his fingertips down the length of her arms and back and leans down to press a kiss into her hair.

"Yeah," she sighs heavily. "But how do we move forward? I don't want to think of blood and pain every time we're ... intimate."

He strips off his clothes and she watches. He's beautiful, she thinks. He meets her eyes, gives her plenty of time to say no, but she just looks back at him, love and fear and doubt and trust and a hundred emotions written all over her face. He steps into the tub and sits behind her and waits. The next move is hers to decide.

Smiling at him over her shoulder, she scoots back to recline against his chest, her hands resting on his shins.

"I've missed this," he murmurs near her ear.

"So have I," she confesses.

He isn't sure what to do with his hands. "May I touch you, darling?"

She nods her head against his shoulder. "This was always so easy between us. I'm sorry I've made it hard."

He wraps his arms around her, holding fast. "You've done nothing of the sort. You're frightened, and it's no wonder. I just want you to know I'm here, lovely."

"I don't know how … how to be with you, sweetheart. I do want you, very much in fact. But I'm afraid that … that … ohh!" She tries to give voice to her fears but the words feel thick and acrid on her tongue. She panics.

He flattens his palms over her rib cage, her diaphragm. "Breathe, Iz. Slowly and deeply. It's alright." Her chest rises and falls with his as he demonstrates. A few minutes of breathing with him and she relaxes in his arms.

"Clever girl," he soothes. "You've done it! You've done it, my darling."

She rests silently against the warmth of his body. Her hands lay atop his own and she tangles her fingers with his. He kisses her neck, the side of her head.

She's got to say the awful thing. To name it so that they can face it and move on.

She rehearses the words in her head. It doesn't help; they still sound like a nightmare, like a horror film. "Reggie?" she manages after several false starts.

"Isobel," he answers. Just her name. She hears the rest of it without his having to speak. I'm with you always. Nothing will erase my love for you. She also hears what he doesn't say. Nothing will change my love for you. Because it has changed. Perhaps even for the better. But it will never again be exactly the same.

She blinks hard, feeling the tears well up. She considers turning to face him. He deserves that. But she can't. Clearing her throat, she squeezes his hands. "I just keep thinking … suppose you're inside of me … and I see it in my head — the … the baby, when I lost it?"

Mother of God. She's trembling, and what the hell can he say? What can he do? "Oh, Izzy," he breathes, "oh, babe." The water has gone cold, which can't be helping. He drains the tub and lifts her out and dries her gingerly, careful not to sexualise his touch. He leads her by the hand to their bed and and lays her down and tucks the covers around her, around them both.

"Have you any idea," he asks her, "how brave you are?" He chances slipping his arms around her waist, his knee in between both of hers.

She presses in closer, her hand over his heart. "I don't feel brave," she tells him. "I feel so broken, so paralysed."

He touches her cheek, her lips. "Yeah, but you're not. What a terrible weight you've been carrying, but it's in the open now, and we can work with that. If that isn't courage, I don't know what is. There is nothing broken about you. You're my stormbraver."¹

She is quiet, giving his words time to sink in, allowing herself to enjoy being close to him. He feels so good, she thinks. She feels lighter now her secret has been shared, and stronger, buoyed by his love. Still she has to know: "You don't think I'm horrid, then? That I'm sick and morbid and death-obsessed?"

He takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger and makes her look at him. "Isobel. Is this how you would have chosen to spend the early days of our marriage? Did you ask for any of this?"

"Of course not," she answers him, feeling indignation rise up at the thought.

"Easy," he admonishes her. "Hear me out. You've been through hell, darling. And before you say that you've seen plenty of patients come through it, consider this: you've never been in their bedrooms. You've not actually seen what goes on between those women and their partners at home. And it's worse for you because you know the entire biological process. In answer to your question, no; you are not sick. You're traumatised. You need time to heal. I want to take it on together, to brace up against it with you. Our joy is worth fighting for."

"I'll give you what I can," she whispers around the lump in her throat. He's taking it like a champ and she feels such relief, but at the same time her heart aches for the pain she knows he carries beneath the stalwart exterior. "I want to be with you now, but I don't know if … if I can make love. Yet, I mean."

"Do you remember how long we were together before the wedding?" he whispers, ducking his head to kiss the hollow at the base of her throat. She nods and he feels it. "We always managed to enjoy one another, didn't we?" Another nod. "We'll do it again." His meaning is severalfold.

She gets it and it makes her pulse beat faster. His hands are warm on her skin; it tingles where he touches. She feels safe and cherished, exhilarated in a way she thought was gone from her. So she can still respond to him! She moves closer. Her breasts press against his chest. She gasps at the contact and watches him close his eyes, his fists clenching and unclenching as he fights his body's response to her. She trails her fingertips from his biceps to his wrists, trapping them one on either side of his head, pinning him to the mattress. And she kisses him. Attacking his mouth, bruising and sweet and hungry.

"It's alright, darling," she murmurs, hovering above him. "I love the feel of you. I need to know you want me."

"Want you? Christ, Izzy," he pants, pulling her down to his mouth. The change in her is so drastic his head is spinning. "You are so damned beautiful. I love you."

They kiss until their lips hurt, until she can't breathe, and then he gathers her to him. She stretches long, feeling his skin touch hers from head to toe. He says nothing about it when his erection brushes her inner thigh. It's progress, this, more than they ever made following the first miscarriage. She wiggles against him just enough to make it clear that she feels him, feels what he feels. She marks the ridges of his collarbones with lips and teeth and pulls back to share a look with him. You are mine. She dares him to challenge her.

He grins, chuffs a laugh and rolls her beneath him. There she is. His sweetly wicked beauty. His eyes sparkle. "You've got me, Isobel," he rasps, holding himself above her. "We're going to beat this." Slowly but surely they begin making their way … not back to one another, but forward. Together.

There's a comfort in the rain, one that lovers only know
So we lay hand in hand while the water rose

It's the rainiest spring Manchester has seen in twenty-four years, and that's saying something. It storms for ten days straight from the day of her diagnosis. The Crawleys of Number 14 Moorfield Grove are insensible to it. By day he shoulders the OB cases and funnels the routine GYN visits her way. At the hospital where they have less clout he still switches with her whenever her limited credentials will permit it, and in so doing he manages to shield her completely from two devastating miscarriages. She never knows they had been assigned to her. They steal away to his car on breaks and drink coffee and kiss like the teenagers they were, long ago but not so very long ago.²

By night they find refuge in the shelter of duvets and coverlets, of firelight and bare skin. On the fifth evening the power goes out, so she fixes scrambled eggs and they feed one another forkfuls by candlelight straight from the pan. She languishes in his arms by the fireplace after supper and two glasses of red wine, feeling warm and lax and safe.

"How are you, Izzy, really?" he asks. She has a habit of soldiering through her own hardships for the perceived greater good, and it's difficult to recognise unless one is as close to her as he. Most would become cold and bitter in the emptying of themselves, but she is as warm and welcoming as ever.

She reclines against him as his strong hands massage her scalp, turning her insides to mush. "I'm …" she sighs. She hasn't taken a personal inventory since the second miscarriage; she's simply been going from one day to the next. "I don't know, Reg. I'm the same and yet I'm different now. Jaded, I suppose, but there hasn't been time to let it steep, which is for the best." She reaches for his hands and brings his arms around her waist. "The thought did occur to me this week, when I did an antenatal for a patient who conceived around the same time as us, that it would be starting to show now, had things gone forward."

She feels him tense behind her. "I told your brother I wanted antenatal visits handled between the two of us and not to involve you—"

"Well, what would you have me do, Reg? Chuck them out with their intake paperwork? It happened on the day the both of you were called into theatre. I had two choices: close the surgery or take it on the chin. The work I've chosen isn't about me; it can't be. And that's good and it's hard and it's all I've ever wanted. Besides you, I mean." She turns to look at him over her shoulder and smiles softly, all doe eyes and long lashes.

He returns the smile and catches her chin in his hand, leaning forward to capture her lips in a gentle kiss.

"I suppose it would make a change to feel as if my body belonged to me again," she confesses. "To us."

His brow furrows. "Can you elaborate, love? You're not bleeding still … again … are you?"

"No," she assures him. "No, no, no … nothing like that. You saw the test results: scans all clear, beta³ zero two weeks out. By rights it's over, but it feels all wrong." She pauses, thinking. "It's like I'm not just a woman anymore, a lover, a wife. I'm a statistic; a diagnosis. A lousy incubator. We can never pretend that there aren't … pieces missing. People who belong to us and aren't here. And I feel wretched saying this but … I'd never have chosen for their stories to end before they began, but I feel a bit of an unwitting participant in the whole thing." Another pause, and she runs a hand through her hair in vexation. "I'm probably not making any sense to you; I'm not even sure my thoughts make sense to me."

He kneels on the floor in front of her; it's critical that she hears him now. Taking her hands in his own he tells her, "First off, you've never been just anything, Isobel. You're brilliant; you're kind. You're cool under pressure, a quick thinker. You're more compassionate than anyone else I know. You're my wife and my best friend; you're a daughter and a sister and a doctor. If you want to be a mother one day, you will be, and if not … Hell, I'll schedule a vasectomy tomorrow if it'll prove to you that you're all I need. And it doesn't much matter whether it makes sense; you get to feel what you feel without explaining or justifying it to anyone. Alright?"

She lifts his hands to her lips and kisses them, her eyes welling up with tears. "I don't know what I'd do without you," she whispers.

He grins, his blue eyes shining. "Come to bed with me?" he asks.

She giggles. "It's just gone eight!"

He waggles his eyebrows at her teasingly. "Well I wasn't exactly thinking of sleeping." His expression then turns somber. "But I don't want you to feel any pressure …"

She rolls her eyes like a long-suffering wife. "Honestly, Reggie. Take me to bed." She makes for the stairs, trailing a hand behind herself. He enfolds it in his own and follows after her.

He shuts the bedroom door behind them and they stand staring at one another for a long moment. Then she moves towards him, backing him up against the door, catching his wrists in her hands and pinning him to it. "I still don't know if …" she tells him quietly, "... but I mean to try." She pulls him down to her mouth and moves in close enough that he can feel her breath on his face. So close, in fact, that he can conjure up the taste of her sweet mouth, yet she does not kiss him.

"Oh darling," he whispers mirthfully, "don't tease."

She smiles up at him through her lashes. I love you, she mouths, the tip of her tongue darting out to lick his upper lip.

He growls when their mouths meet and lifts her feet off the floor, wrapping her legs around his waist as he flips their positions, pressing her back against the door. He is rapidly hardening at the feel of her, warm and soft and wanting, and he's certain she can feel his body's response to her nearness. He hopes against hope that it doesn't frighten her.

He needn't worry. "God, Reggie," she pants, "I've missed this." The remainder of her declaration is obscured, punctuated by his hungry kisses. "Need …" —kiss—"Oh! …" —kiss—"Mmmm … bed, love!"

He laughs and carries her to the bedside. Were it not for the rain and the power outage they'd be warm enough lying atop the covers, but she says they'd best turn them back before they abandon their faculties entirely. He watches as she bends to turn down her side, the vee at the opening of her dressing gown exposing the tops of her breasts. When she straightens he is there, standing before her, his eyes gone indigo with want of her. She fixes her gaze on them.

He reaches out, exaggerating the movement so he can be sure she understands his intentions, and brushes a hand over her breast, tracing the outline of her nipple through the slippery satin.

"Oh!" she cries as a sharp dart of arousal twists through her belly. Her nipple stiffens at the contact. He bends his head to kiss her there, sucking the hardening bud through the fabric.

"God!" She feels her knees buckle. Then he turns his attention to the other breast, his thumb teasing the nipple he abandoned. "Oh … my … God, Reg!"

He looks up at her, his mouth full of her satin-covered breast, and her knees fail completely. He catches her about the waist as they tumble onto the mattress, landing in a tangle of limbs.

"Are you alright?" he asks. She nods and he realises she's giggling madly.

"Ohh," she sighs, catching her breath. "I'd forgotten how much fun we always were. Count on you to bring me round." Moving in close she steals a kiss. He grins against her mouth.

"Shall I assume that what we were doing was to your liking then?"

"Mmm." She nods again. "Wonderful. Might there be more where that came from?" Before he can answer she kisses him again, parting his lips with her tongue.

When the kiss breaks he nips her bottom lip. "Perhaps," he teases. Gathering pillows, he places two under her head and one beneath her hips. "Now, Isobel Crawley. Lie back and think of England."

She snorts with laughter and pulls him down to her, seeking the curve where his neck and shoulder meet. "Touch me," she whispers, then kisses his neck, sucking hard at the skin.

Kneeling beside her, he leans in and parts the fabric of her dressing gown. "Look at you," he rasps. She watches his eyes go wild, almost black, as he gazes at her bare breasts. "You're not broken; you're beautiful. Just beautiful." His hands spread over her flesh, cupping and massaging, his thumbs coaxing the tips to a tingling, pulsating hardness. She gasps and writhes, pressing herself into his hands.

"Easy, Iz," he soothes. "I'm not going to ravish you. I'll just … be with you."⁴ He traces the contours of her breasts and gooseflesh rises on her chest, further tightening her nipples. She breathes a curse and they share a laugh.

"More's the pity," she tells him breathily, her hands clutching and releasing the sheets. "I was rather looking forward to a thorough ravishing."

Lowering his head, he blows cold air across her left nipple, then covers it with his hot mouth.

"Jesus," she hisses. "Yes, alright, I suppose going slowly has its merits too."

"Mmm." He hums his agreement against her breast.

She can't keep still. Her back arches off the bed as he nuzzles her, lavishing attention on each breast in turn. It has never been like this for her.

He pulls back to watch her, brushing his thumb across her nipple, still wet from his mouth. Her head thrashes back and forth on the pillow.

"So responsive," he marvels, rolling first one nipple and then the other between his thumb and forefinger. She shivers, her hips beginning to rock rhythmically.

"Don't stop, darling," she pleads, her hands pressed against her forehead, then fisting in her own hair.

"You're close," he says, an observation rather than a question.

"Yes," she confesses in a strangled groan.

"Do you want—" he starts to ask, but she cuts him off, taking his hand in her own. She brings it to her lips and kisses the centre of his palm, then presses it to the vee at the apex of her thighs.

"So brave," he murmurs in awe. "So beautiful." He trails hot, sucking kisses over her ribs, her belly. She gasps, her muscles quivering beneath his lips. As her eyes slip shut she feels him lift her thigh over his.

"Oh, love. Oh, love!" she cries as he traces a single finger through her folds. Her fingernails bite into the flesh of his shoulder and he grins.

"Good?" he asks cheekily. She leans up in response, glaring playfully, and bites his chin. He laughs heartily as he strokes her, pinching her clitoris between his thumb and forefinger. "Oh, Izzy," he chokes, "I do believe we've found us again."

Her mouth falls open in a soundless gasp as his finger slips inside her, thrusting gently. "Reg … God! Oh, God!" Her eyes go wide and she forgets to breathe. He nudges her g-spot and a senseless, high-pitched wail escapes her lips.

He feels her tighten, her body trembling, her neck and back arching in a singular graceful curve. He had once been sure she would get here again one day, but as her anguish over their losses had deepened his hope had begun to dwindle, even if he'd never let on. "Yes, beautiful girl," he coaxes, the ragged edge of all he feels evident in his voice. "Let it come now."

She reaches blindly for his free hand and, though it takes every bit of control she can muster at a moment when her faculties are blissfully clouded, locks her gaze on his as he pulls her under. Her orgasm blazes through her, white-hot and deep, rolling in waves that increase in intensity when she thinks they're about to recede.

He pulls her close, tucking her head carefully into the curve of his neck as the aftershocks fade. He runs his fingers through her hair, traces them up and down the length of her spine, kisses the top of her head. He is a young man, but he has seen much in his time. Life beginning and ending, sometimes simultaneously. The sun rising over the castle ruins at Scarborough and setting at 40,000 feet. He has held her before; this woman, the love of his life, in moments of passion and tenderness, in times of ultimate joy and crushing sorrow. She took his breath away at fifteen when he kissed her for the first time and at nineteen when he laid eyes on her in her wedding dress and at twenty when she delivered her father's eulogy. He has beheld much beauty, but every bit of it pales in comparison to this moment.

His reverie is broken by the scrape of her teeth against his jugular, the bed shaking as he realises she's giggling. He had forgotten that she gets like this, and how irresistible she is in these moments.

"Hey, you," he grins, tipping her chin up and taking her lips in a thorough kiss. "That was a big one, eh?"

Her eyes widen and she nods, smiling brilliantly. "No words, darling. Forgive me."

He kisses the tip of her nose. "Nothing to forgive. A speechless Isobel is the highest praise."

She feigns a scowl. "I don't know whether to kiss you or box your ears. I think I'll go with the former. For now." She reaches up to rake her nails lightly through his scalp and draws him down to take his lips.

He is putty in her hands as she trails gentle fingertips over his abdomen, and he gasps against her mouth when she touches him there, holding him in her warm palm. Oh, she had forgotten this: the feel of him pulsing with need, the soft silken heat of him. The joy it brings her, knowing that she is the woman who can do this to him, for him. His eyes closed in surrender, the curl of his lashes and the smile that tugs at his lips as she strokes him, tracing the vein that runs along the underside of his shaft. He has been so patient with her, prioritising her needs above his own for such a long time without a word in protest. But she is not naïve. She knows about the cold showers, the mornings he has awakened half-aroused with her body pressed against him, the nights he has lain on top of the covers until she is asleep. He has given her the gift of healing, the time and the method and the means. And she has never been the sort to get carried away by silly romantic notions, but she is certain that no one has ever loved as selflessly as he loves her.

"Reggie, I want you," she whispers, bringing him to rest against her folds. Holding him against her heat.

She is thick and damp with want and he cannot suppress a moan as she rubs herself against him. This is the closest they have been in so very many months. Even so, his eyes ask the question:

Are you absolutely sure?

He would content himself to simply hold her in his arms every night of their lives if it was what she needed.

She stares straight back at him, a sweetly defiant smirk lifting one corner of her mouth as she slips him inside of her.

"Ohhh …" she groans deep and long as he fills her, as she stretches around him.

Immediately he stills. "Did I hurt you?"

She shakes her head, her eyes wide in surprise as she rolls her hips against him. "God, no. Forgot how good this feels. How full I feel. So close to you." Her voice lowers to a whisper at the end, her eyes shining with unshed tears of joy.

He circles his hips, slowly pushing deeper. His intent is to keep from causing her pain, but it has an unexpected and erotic effect. He is right against her, the place where she aches for him. She has never felt him like this, throbbing inside of her, right there, right. there. She is impossibly tight; tightening still as they move together, and so deliciously slick that he knows he won't last long. And oh, how he wanted to draw it out, this celebration. This rediscovering of one another; this declaration of who they were and who they are now.

But he needn't be troubled.

"Babe, I'm sorry, I can't last," he hears her gasp. And then she is contracting all around him, pulling him deeper still. He thrusts once, twice. A third time and his cries mingle with her own. He pulses hot inside of her and she feels the oneness of them.

This is love, she thinks, and although simple it is revelatory, arresting in its profundity. She holds him within her, kissing away the beads of perspiration that trickle down his forehead. I in him and he in me⁵. She giggles. That's not the sort of literary reference one ought to be twisting round in such a way. But then again, perhaps it is. Unity in marriage and all.

She never does get to finish the thought as her husband, enchanted by the look of her, flushed and sated and laughing, steals a kiss that leaves her breathless.

Though the ground may shake and we'll think we've had enough
We must raise our flags for the ones we love

So keep us, and keep us, and keep us from the storm
Keep us, and keep us, and keep us from the storm

¹ stormbraver: A canon pet name of Matthew's for Mary. There are some M/M shippers who hold that he chose it in honor of his father who had used the same pet name for Isobel.

² long ago but not so very long ago: a James Taylor lyric, from "Our Town." You know, the song that plays in Cars when Sally is telling Lightning McQueen about Radiator Springs in the days before the interstate.

³ beta hCG: a blood test that measures the level of pregnancy hormone. As a pregnancy progresses, this number multiplies rapidly. After delivery (or miscarriage, stillbirth, etc) the number steadily decreases until it reaches zero. If it fails to do so within a specified timeframe, a D&C may be indicated. I am not a doctor, but I am a mother. If you want the science, visit NIH or JAMA.

⁴ "I'm not going to ravish you. I'll just … be with you.": a line from the ITV film Falling, spoken by Michael Kitchen's character Henry Kent to Pen's character Daisy Langrish. I've always wanted to redeem this line, as it is terribly evocative.

⁵I in him and he in me: Coopted from John 17:23. Certain of you will understand; for the rest, it's there because I'm partial.