A/N: No, this isn't Richobel. I'm sorry to those who might've been looking for that. I've got a fresh WIP that needs my attention; what am I doing writing a new piece? I can only say that a number of forces have combined to make me fall in love all over again with Isobel and Reginald Crawley. I had every intention of sticking this in the Regibel series I started (Our Endless Numbered Days), but when it ended up so lengthy it seemed right to let it stand alone.
There will be more Sink or Swim sometime. I'm struggling with confidence issues regarding that fic. I was completely head-over-heels about it one moment and swiftly taken down a few pegs the next.
My inspiration for this one was manifold: I always go back to Isobel's line about being "sick with love" for Reginald, plus I've been thinking a lot about life and loss and the transcendent qualities of love. And listening to all kinds of things, like "Changing Tides" by The Fray and "Under My Skin" by Peter Bradley Adams (actually, LOADS of The Fray and Peter Bradley Adams). And reading Nora McInerny's new book, No Happy Endings.
I recognize that this is going to be VERY few people's cup of tea, but please know that many of my feels and a huge chunk of my heart are in here and be gentle, yeah?
xx,
~ejb~
He doesn't know why he wakes, but straightaway it's clear that something is amiss. Her shift was meant to finish from 11, so he waited up till midnight, cleaned the kitchen, started a load of laundry. Having just come off a twelve-hour shift of his own, however, he began to fade shortly after, and after nodding off in front of the late news, he went to bed, certain she'd be along soon.
But it's 3 am now, and her place beside him is cold and undisturbed. They have a system of sorts, a way of letting the other know if they're going to be detained at work for longer than usual. A message on the answerphone, a page to the other's bleeper. He checks his, sat on the nightstand as it is. Nothing. The phone is across the room atop the chest of drawers. They silence the ring nights they're not on call, but the indicator light would flash green if there was a message. Instead it's lit up solid red. It's possible that she came out of theatre utterly knackered, sat down in the staff lounge to collect herself and ended up falling asleep there, but still. Five years married and they've never once failed to let one another know if they weren't going to make it home.
He is wide awake now, alert and rocketing towards alarmed. He gets out of bed and paces. He is a doctor; he should be turning to logic and rationalism to determine the best course of action. Not ringing every A&E department or calling round with her photograph at every police station between here and London. Principles drilled into him in medical school come to mind. Lex parsimoniae, the Zebra Rule, Occam's Razor. Three bloody bynames for the same theory, namely; among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Or, more colloquially, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. Right about now he'd like to throttle the smug American professor responsible for coining that analogy. He bets that sod never had to face the fact that his wife might be missing!
This isn't like him! He is known for keeping a cool head under pressure, having been taught by the best of the best. Sir John Turnbull. His teacher, mentor, hero. His father-in-law. Her father. Taken from them too early, four years already. Still, he can call up the man's face, his voice, on command. 'Let's not get ahead of ourselves, lad.' The oft-repeated, stern-yet-kind admonition he recalls having heard on the daily during his foundation years. It's the same principle, just differently phrased, and whether it's the words themselves or the fact that they are attributed to a man he loved, they cut through the chaos swirling round his head and give him pause.
What would Jack do?
Well, considering his own daughter is the subject in question, Jack would already have beaten down every door in the close! But barring that, he'd have started with the obvious things. Is the car in the drive? He looks out the bedroom window and, indeed, it is there. So she is here. His heart begins to beat again, and though his knees are still weak, he manages to make his way down the stairs.
It isn't immediately obvious to him where she is, not until he enters the darkened lounge and stops by the doorpost. At last he catches sight of her, sat at the piano. Her back is ramrod straight; she sways from side to side as her fingers dance across the keys, though he can barely make out what she's playing. At this late hour, she'll have engaged the practise pedal so as not to disturb him. In the low light he can just make out a glass of amber liquid atop the piano. Whisky is never her drink of choice, which leads him to wonder just what transpired in the last few hours.
He watches her for a long moment. It's not uncommon for her, in distress, to turn to her instrument, though he's never actually seen it happen in the middle of the night before. Her voice breaks through his thoughts. It's Joni Mitchell tonight. "A Case of You." It's always struck him as an odd song, beautiful but mournful; melancholy but still clinging onto hope. Clearly this particular selection means something to his wife. Her craft, after all, is the avenue by which she exorcises her personal demons.
He approaches her, stands beside the bench in her line of sight. "Hi, love," he says softly, so as not to startle her.
She nods towards the bench, bidding him to join her. He sits down beside her, wrapping his arm about her and swiftly pecking her cheek. Her eyes close, a sweet smile gracing her lips. She continues to play and he doesn't interrupt; he simply goes on watching her, mesmerised by the set of her shoulders and the curve of her lashes as they brush her cheek.
When she finishes, she reaches for the glass, knocking back half its contents. Then she turns to him. Her eyes are clouded, troubled. "Did I wake you?" She spies a chip in the veneer at the edge of the bench and begins to worry it with her thumbnail. He picks up her hand and brings it to his lips, pressing a lingering kiss to the back of it.
"Your absence woke me," he tells her, forgoing a reprimand without sparing the truth. "I waited up a long time. Finally got to sleep and woke up again still alone. No message on the answerphone, no page. It was only thoughts of your dad and Occam's Razor kept me from searching the roadsides."
"Well, then. Cheers, Daddy." She raises her glass in salute before tipping back the remainder. The burn as it goes down makes her eyes water. Her face falls; she turns her head away, arms crossing over her midsection. Classic defensive posture. "Reg, I'm sorry. I did so want to ring you." She looks at him for the briefest second before her gaze falls once more to the rug, her eyes glassy, her countenance impervious. She goes on:
"There was a patient after you left. Should've been a case for MFM; why the entire department were AWOL beats the bloody hell out of me. I was just getting ready to go off shift and of course you know what happened. 'Crawley, you're our girl.'"
That gets his blood up. "Where in God's name was your brother?"
She holds up a hand to stop him. "Reg … don't." He nods. "Thirty-year-old primagravida brought in by helimed; suspected abdominal trauma after a car crash. Twenty-five weeks gone." She pauses, dropping her head into her hands. Several moments pass before she continues. "The potted version is that I couldn't ring you, seeing as I was elbow-deep in her abdominal cavity for two hours after an emergent Caesarean. And it was all for nothing anyway. The odds of surviving either a total placental abruption or an abdominal aortic rupture are slim; it was ludicrous to think she could make it through both." She stares into nothing again. Her brow furrows deeply. "So. I hope my failure to let you know I'd be late home can be overlooked this once." Her expression is empty; she is drifting fast away from him.
He gets to his knees before her, clasps her hands in his own. "Oh, Christ. Darling, I'm so sorry." Reaching out, he brushes the backs of his fingers across her cheek. "I daren't ask about the baby."
She inhales and a stuttering series of dry sobs escapes. He suspects they weren't dry earlier on. "He's alive. Just. They were preparing to transfer him to St. Mary's in London as I was leaving."
He releases a sigh, exhaling for them both. "Isobel." He opens his arms and she falls into them, into the floor. Into him.
"I just needed to put distance between myself and the event. I never meant for you to worry." She slips her hands beneath the fabric of his pyjama shirt, murmuring, "I love you," against his chest.
"Hush." He kisses her hair. "Forgiven."
oOo
It has been beaten into her from the first day of medical school: a physician must keep her work from intruding upon her private life. But when the very power of life and death is in her hands, how can she be expected to leave the day in her locker and traipse home happy as a lark? It's why she's so thankful for Reggie. He gets it. It's his life, too. Does she love him for the fact that they're on the same path, chasing the same dream? Or is it that she was always going to love him, and coincidentally they both chose the same destiny? As his heart beats sure and steady beneath her ear she concludes that it doesn't matter. The why behind their love isn't something to be quantified or qualified. It is multifaceted; simple and unfathomably complex, an entity unto itself. It's strange and powerful. And it's theirs.
Struck by an urgent need to be against his skin, she opens the topmost button of his shirt and then the next, looking up at him briefly. "Alright?"
It's all she says. She needn't say even that much, but he loves her all the more for it.
"Izzy." His voice is gentle but firm. "Anything you need."
Rising to her feet, she stands before him, watching whilst he does the same. She works his shirt open and drags the sleeves down off his arms, all the while maneuvering them backwards toward the couch. She pauses, perching on the arm, to touch him. He smells of soap and aftershave and his skin is wonderfully warm.
To the untrained eye, she exudes confidence, self-reliance. She is only young, but already hers has been a story of success, her own determination the key. Nobody else has got her there.
And yet, and yet. The world of which she is master has been a hostile one at times; indifferent, at best, to her victories. She savours the opportunity to heal and to save, thrives on the exhilaration of witnessing life at its inception day in and day out.
But such virtuosity has its dark side. Guilt; grief; doubt: they swirl about constantly high in the atmosphere. Mix in the element of tragedy and they all combine to form a tidal wave that builds silently, raindrops in an ocean stealthily expanding in volume until the dam bursts, destroying everything in its path.
She is rudderless now, weary of treading water, storm-tossed and weather-beaten.
The beating of his heart answers her distress beacon; the expanse of his chest is her port in the storm. He reaches out to kiss her, tipping her head up until their eyes meet. "Izzy, you're safe now."
The floodgates open. How did he know the words she needed to hear? When his lips touch hers she sobs in relief.
"Let it go now. I'm here," he breathes against her mouth. Taking her hands, he pulls her down to him as he reclines, his chest a pillow for her head.
A dream she's had from farther back than she can remember; her carefree youth sacrificed to ambition. Five years of training after uni, countless thousands of dollars spent and this is what she has to show for it all. A mother who will never meet her son. A baby too fragile for the savagery of this world, clinging onto existence by a gossamer thread.
He holds fast to her as she cries herself dry; ragged, wrenching, ugly sobs are torn from her chest one after another until she lies brittle, broken and unmoving. Like a fish out of water. His large hands span her back, registering every painful gasp, collecting the scattered wreckage. He will piece it all back together for her before the night is through.
She gathers the strength to lift her head and sees the pool of tears that have collected in the depression of his sternum. "Sorry," she whispers with a watery smile and reaches for his discarded shirt to mop them up.
He snatches it back from her, tossing it aside once more. "No better place for them," he says, kissing the tip of her nose. A lopsided smile tugs at his lips and he lies back against the arm of the couch to look at her. "So pretty, my girl." The pad of his thumb brushes the last of her tears away.
She snags the digit with the edges of her teeth, kisses it. "I'm not, you silly sod." Her face is blotchy, her eyes swollen.
To him, she has never been more beautiful. "Says who, hmm? You can't even see yourself." His eyes flash sky-blue with mischief. Go on, just you try and prove me wrong.
"You want your head examined. Or at the very least, your eyes." Giggling, she shoves him, getting him to lie down, and pins his hands to the couch cushions.
She's strong, but he's stronger. He hooks his legs around hers and pushes her arms up over her head, reversing their positions. She lands on her back with a soft thud. Her mouth opens in shock while he grins playfully down at her.
"Reginald Crawley! Why, I ought to thrash you!"
He's all too pleased with himself, and she'd box his ears if he weren't so bloody handsome. The moment feels eerily familiar to her, as if they've been here before.
He waits expectantly.
"Oh God! I remember now!" she shrieks, and he cannot help but smile.
Twelve-year-old Reginald was kicking the football round the Turnbulls' back garden with Eddie, while seven-year-old Isobel was playing nearby on the swing her father had hung from the cherry tree. This was the third time in as many minutes that Ed had sent the ball sailing towards his little sister "accidentally," and she'd had quite enough.
"That's it!" she announced, grabbing the ball and wrapping her arms around it as tightly as she could manage. "I'm telling Mum!" She stormed through the gate and towards the back doorstep, but Ed's longer legs outpaced hers and he grabbed her by the plaits.
"Ow! Let go of me, you tosser!" she shrieked. He may have been taller, but she had the advantage of speed. Before he could blink, she spun round and kicked him hard in the shin.
He groaned and fell to the ground. "You little brat! Wait until I tell Father! Reg, don't let her get away!"
Reginald wasn't about to lay a hand on her, but Ed and he had always been best mates. He braced his hands on the door casing, blocking her access to the knob.
Isobel fumed. "Reginald Crawley! Why, I ought to thrash you!"
He hadn't known what to do, confronted with Eddie's tiny fury of a sister. She was half his size, but he was pretty sure he'd never inspired those heights of rage in anyone. Not even Mama when he'd knocked the cricket ball through the kitchen window.
He'd been right to be afraid. Before he could see it coming, Isobel hauled back her fist … and punched him on the nose.
"Good job for you I was seven!" She hoots with laughter at the memory. There are tears running down her cheeks again, but now it's for a different reason altogether.
He rubs his nose at the memory. "It still hurt! You've a mean left hook, Turnbull."
Leaning up, she presses a kiss to that spot. "So sorry," she whispers, swiftly taking his lips. The kiss is slow and sensual.
He chuckles as they break apart. "I'll never forget the look on your father's face when he found us!"
"He made a show of dressing me down in front of you and Ed, but I don't think I ever saw him prouder than he was that day. He told me I must never resort to violence unless my life was in danger, but I reckon he was set for life knowing his little girl could fend for herself." She gets a faraway look as she reminisces. "I miss him, Reggie," she tells him quietly.
He runs his hands up and down her arms soothingly. "So do I, love." A moment passes in silence, and then he adds, "I know for a fact he was tickled by the way you handled me that day. When I was his junior, that was his means of introducing me to everyone —patients, colleagues, even donors! 'My Isobel gave this lad a pasting, so he went and married her!'"
There are more gales of laughter from them both, and then it falls quiet again. "I do hope I didn't let him down today," she confesses.
"Darling, you could never. You fought as hard as you could have done to save her. The outcome would've been the same had the case been mine, or Ed's, or even your father's."
"That baby, Reg. I know it's not supposed to rattle my cage, but …" She shakes her head. When he touches her cheek, she turns her face into his palm and kisses the centre of it.
He shifts them so that he can lie beside her. The couch is not really deep enough for them both to fit, but he tangles his legs with hers and it's cosy. She has on one of his t-shirts, nothing but that and her knickers, and when she stretches, the hem of the shirt rides up to her waist. He slips his hands beneath the fabric to touch bare, satin skin. She sighs pleasurably at the contact.
"You've got to let it go, Iz. Let it go, or else talk about it. You mustn't let it haunt you." His knuckles run along her spine, numbering vertebrae as he soothes her.
Instantly she stiffens. "Of course it puts me in mind of ours, if that's what you're implying." The words come out sharper than she meant them. She knows that he's right and that she can't afford this kind of attachment, or the accompanying guilt. Still, she can't help but draw parallels between the baby born too soon and the two that she and he lost together in as many years. Her shoulders sag. "I didn't mean to be ratty. I'm sorry."
"No matter," he says. He means it, she knows. Never one to hold a grudge, his forgiveness of her is instantaneous. It covers a multitude of sharp-tongued and thoughtless jabs.
"Reggie? You said anything I needed?"
"Indeed, I did." He takes her chin between thumb and forefinger and tips her head up. The alabaster skin of her neck draws his fascination; with the pad of his thumb he strokes the column of her throat, and she keens.
Her heart beats hard and fast in the aching cavity of her chest. Playing with the balance of trust and vulnerability thrills her. The edge of fear that sings along her nerve endings; with his knowledge of anatomy, he could kill her instantaneously if he were of a mind to do so. The warm rush that comes behind it: knowing that she is safer in his hands than ever she could be in her own. He cherishes her, pushes her out past the bounds of her own frailty and then opens his arms, a refuge. Safe harbour in the storm.
"You need." He relieves her of the burden of having to ask for what she cannot name. His thumb strokes over her carotid pulse, feels it pounding wildly.
"Yeah," she tells him, barely a breath; shallow movement of air in and back out. Her lungs are burning; she is drowning.Take me over. Make me whole. Hold me fast, lest I slip away.
He pulls her up; she's limp as a ragdoll. Climbs over her and takes her hands. Twice she fails in her attempts to get to her feet; on the third try she pulls him down with her and they land in a heap of tangled limbs in the space between couch and coffee table, giggling like mad fools.
"Christ, woman" he swears, more caught on the back foot than cross, "can't hold your liquor for shite."
She howls with laughter. "I like that about me," she tells him as he rises from the floor. This time when she takes his outstretched hands, she helps him pull her to standing.
"So do I," he says, hands on his hips, looking her over. Sweet and shy, bold and wicked, delicate; relentless. A firecracker, whip-smart, beautiful enigma. And his. He grins. "But you're an absolute nutter."
He determines that it's a fruitless endeavour to have her try negotiating the stairs, and so he pushes her up against the wall at the foot of them, lifting beneath her bum and urging her legs round his waist. "Hold on tight," he tells her just before he takes her lips.
"Don't let me go," she breathes, hot on his cheek, arms round his neck. Not just words; he hears the plea. She is at sea on gale-force winds; he must be her anchor now.
"Never." His solemn vow, eyes on hers. He means it the same as he meant 'I do.'
She whimpers, whinges, squirms, impatient as he carries her up to bed. He is the only remedy, antidote, answer for the ache that is heavy beneath her belly button; inside her bones; within her soul.
"Hold on for me, baby." A plea of his own. Don't break before I have the chance to mend you.
"Reggie!" She sobs. The pain, the pulse that beats between her legs, the desperate need to hide inside him. She cannot bear up under it any longer.
He kicks the bedroom door shut behind them; the resulting slam echoes loudly in the room, his head, his heart. He backs her up against the cold wood and she gasps, but he will wait no longer and neither can she. Her centre: hot and swollen, damp through the fabric of her knickers, presses against his belly and he curses indelicately in her ear. "Want you," he growls, grasping her hips hard enough to leave white impressions on her skin. He grinds against her. She's wet, warm, soft; he can't get close enough, fast enough.
"Bed!" A rush of breath leaving her lungs, this most vital of directives.
In two paces he is depositing her in the centre of the mattress, knelt above her, tugging at the neckline of her shirt. This makes her laugh.
"Love, easy! It's your favourite." Batting his hands away, she lifts the hem, tugging the garment over her head. She sends it sailing in the direction of the hamper as he pulls her down and strips off her knickers. She catches him by the waistband of his pajama trousers, yanking swiftly downwards. He kicks them the rest of the way off and drops to his knees on the mattress beside her. Before he can cover her body with his own, she moves, rolls out of the way. "Off, off," she's chanting, tugging at the leg of his shorts.
He groans, rolls his eyes. She fixes him with that look: You don't want to try my patience. He lifts his hips and her palm grazes his hard length as she removes the final barrier between her and his heat, his skin.
He's beautiful, lying prone, slack-jawed at her touch. His eyes, normally crystalline, are nearly dark as her own. The sway that she holds over him is a heady thing, and in moments like this one she is cowed by the force of the love they share. It is incongruous with their youth. She hasn't lived long enough —or enough, enough— to know how to love him or to know him this intimately, and it's that truth that makes her certain she's known him before, in lifetimes that were not their own. The urge is stronger than she can comprehend: to dominate him; to be subdued. It's a battle she won't win tonight (but how can she lose).
"Reggie, Reggie …" She calls to him, a painful gnawing inside her chest compelling her. It's going to crush her soon: this wild, urgent want; thrumming desperate need for him to fill her emptiness.
"Isobel, Izzy, darling. Hush, my love; I'm here. Right here." He is above her, nestled in the cradle of her hips, belly to belly and heart to heart. He moves, lithe and slow. Grazes his chest against her small, firm breasts, tearing a guttural cry from a place deeper than ever she's longed for him before.
"I know, baby," he croons, dropping kisses on her temple, her closed eyelids, her mouth. "It's alright, it'll be alright."
She frightens him a little. She's been beset by difficult cases in past, but he's never witnessed her taking it out on herself before. He needs to see her, soothe her, steady her.
He moves his hungry mouth over her skin, nuzzles her erect nipple. Licks it. He can see her heart pounding and it triggers something primal in him. His lips and tongue engulf the tiny bud, suckling greedily, drawing deep. She arches her back off the bed and presses her flesh into his mouth, his hands. She bites her lip as his tongue flutters, her legs falling open, knees splaying to the sides. He trails his fingers downwards, past the quivering muscles of her abdomen, his index finger looping round her navel. Her breath quickens; his fingertips continue to wander. He palms the mound of her pubic bone, the thick, wet heat of her.
"Yeah," she cries, a high, thin wail. Her pelvis rolls into his hand. He splays his fingers, stroking, probing her swollen folds. The first time he taps her clitoris, it's purely accidental.
"God!" she yelps, and he repeats the motion, a tiny scraping with the blunt edge of his smallest finger. She hisses, sucking air in through clenched teeth, her head thrashing from side to side. He is onto something, but she's still too restless to break. And break she must, completely shatter, and he will help her fit the pieces back together.
He holds her face in his hands, leans in close enough she can taste his breath. "Izzy, turn over, love."
She scowls up at him. "What?"
"On your belly. You're too keyed up. You can't enjoy it."
"I was enjoying it just fine, thank you!" She's fuming. And perplexed. Why would he touch her like that and then take it away?
He kisses her mouth, and she answers back, opening to him, letting his tongue search out her own. Her way of saying, 'I concede,' because she'll never bloody well say the words, not even to him. Especially not to him.
"Close your eyes, darling," he murmurs, the tip of his tongue tracing the shell of her ear as she presents him with her back.
It's a beautiful back, he muses, not that there's any bit of her that doesn't strike him as exceptionally lovely. Even her acid tongue. He bites the inside of his cheek so as not to chuckle. She'd have his bollocks if she thought he was having a laugh at her expense.
He places his knees on the outsides of her hips, straddling her, and lowers his lips to her shoulder, kissing a path laterally from one to the other. His thumbs work the knots of muscle at the base of her neck, coaxing them loose. She groans; it's the sort of thing that feels worse before it gets better. He makes a noise in sympathy.
"Breathe, sweet one." His lips brush her cheek on the side her head is turned towards. "So soft," he marvels. "You feel like silk under my hands."
Her muscles relax beneath the firm heat of his palms; her breathing deepens as he kisses his way down her back, his lips and tongue marking the ridge of each vertebra. She feels cocooned, treasured. The fire he sparked earlier is flickering pleasantly, tendrils of white-hot flame curling round her abdominal muscles. That ineffable aching feeling, its precise locus maddeningly elusive, beats beneath her belly button. He was right when he admonished her to breathe; a steady flow of oxygen seems the only means of managing sensations she longs both to alleviate and to magnify. She has all she can do to resist the urge to grind herself against the mattress.
He dips his tongue into the dimples at the base of her spine, his memory flashing on medical school and her helping him to revise for anatomy and physiology exams by being his own personal model. Remembers their peals of laughter at pillow talk only med students would understand. 'Nothing inspires romance like the view from the iliac crest at dawn.'
She squirms a little beneath the upturn of his lips against her skin. "'I was just thinking how you taste like sunlight,'" he quips.
"Sounds every bit as silly now as it did back then," she mutters, her words muffled by the bedclothes even as her hips twist, arching against his mouth.
"Yeah, and you hate it," he teases. His lips graze the curve of her bum. "No effect on you whatsoever."
"Oh, kiss my arse," comes her rejoinder.
"I'll do you one better than that." Slipping his arm around her waist, he raises her hips up off the bed.
"Will you hell," she starts to say, but it morphs into a shriek. He applies his hot mouth to the depression at the base of her tailbone, his index finger slipping gently between her buttocks. Swirling, seeking, pressing in against tight muscle. "Oh, Christ," she gasps, her hips pushing up and back. He moves over her, cradling her against his belly, his groin; his own hips working in counterpoint to the slow swelling undulations of hers.
"Tell me, darling." He slips his finger again over that place he's never touched before. "Do you like that?"
"Yes!" she moans. He grins. She's magnificent like this, monosyllabic and inarticulate. It gives him no small thrill to know that no one but he knows her in this way.
"Do you want more?" He presses his body closer. Every circuit of her hips, every push back into his hand, he feels deeply. The heaviness in his scrotum, the curling, unfurling, wonderful-awful throb low in his belly: is this the same ache of which she speaks?
Her words run together, laboured and frenzied. "Just like that! I need—"
The hand that was cradling her belly is drifting downwards now, through sodden curls; his fingertips trail fire, her womb clenching hard in breathless anticipation. The tip of his thumb grazes her clitoris again as before. "This," he rasps, a hiss of breath in her ear. "Is this what you need?"
"Ohlove! Ohmore … please, please!"
He laughs heartily, joyously, knowingly. Thinks in his own unintelligible streams of wonder. Godshesbeautiful, shefeelssogood.
He holds her in place with his frame, his touch so light, gentle, spare. She loves it that way. She, who (as he can't resist teasing) possesses all the subtlety of a cyclone, craves it in bed. The barest of caresses, breaths in her ear and provocative words, a well-placed finger just there, and she is gone.
"Reggie, darling, so good. So close."
He wants to feel it from inside her, but she's magical like this, so lovely. So free.
"Let go, love." He; his lips on the shell of her ear, orchestrating delicate friction between her thighs. His erection in the crease of her buttocks, slipping against her there.
And she; so brazen; so broken.
It's delicious. Pressure where she's never felt it before. So different. She's always been in control of her response to him, even if that means letting herself fall, and him overtake her. She has no power now over what she feels. The deep coiling, pulling, sharp ache: longing, need. All she is, is what she feels. "Reggie, I'm losing myself! Don't let me go, please!"
"It's alright, Izzy. You can let go. I won't let go."
And she does. The wave crests … higher … higher … and then breaks, over her head, inundating her. She arches up against the onslaught, into him, damp back against damp chest and he holds her there, anchoring her to the bed, to the room, to the moment. To him.
He is kissing her hairline when next she is aware of him and of their surroundings. She doesn't remember him turning her over, gathering her up. She feels weak, utterly spent. But warm, and wonderful. She blinks his face softly into focus and smiles. Opens her mouth to speak, and tears spring forth instead.
"Sweet Isobel, hush now."
She begins to stroke him almost idly as they kiss, effervescent as the tips of her fingers meet the inside of his thigh. Everything about him is altered in that moment; his eyes take on a glassy, dreamy look. His breath hitches, quickens. She wraps her fingers round the length of him. Just holds him there, as his eyes drift slowly shut. The balance of power, always shared, shifts. He surrenders. He has been strength for both of them; is always two steps behind her, watching her back. For all that she eschews it on the regular, clearly she needs it.
She is small next to him, and not only owing to his height or the breadth of his shoulders or the way her hands disappear inside his own. His soul is still, quiet, sure. He will come to greatness in this life and she will be beside him, the momentum that moves him steadily forwards. He, like she, is older than his years, and yet so very au courant. A silent champion of her as equal in their profession and practice, their marriage and home. He may outrank her (he is older than she, after all, and longer in their field) but at present she out-earns him (owing to her possessing a singular certification that he hasn't got yet), and he gets no end of a thrill from telling it round.
Still. She can be a handful to live with. Her intensity has yet to get her into a scrape she can't work her own way out of, but she senses, at times, that he's waiting for the day. She frightens him sometimes, plainly and simply.
She frightened him tonight. Not by being late home; while he'll kid her for giving him a grey hair or two, it couldn't be helped. Hazards of the job. The loss of her patient, the tumultuous delivery of the baby; the depth to which those events discomposed her. It's personal, they're all personal. Every loss is personal to her, and it makes her stand out in a field of unfeeling old men. And it's also the very thing that will do her head in.
She knows the load of worry he carries, and it's time he lays it down. Even if all she can give him is just a moment's abandon, she owes him that a hundred times over.
She straddles his lap, still stroking him, her thumb tracing circles round the head of his penis. The other hand joins in, cupping his testicles, holding the weight of them in her palm for a long moment.
He groans, his fists clenching, the muscles of his abdomen quivering.
"Do you like that, darling?" she asks, leaning in to kiss him. He slants his mouth against hers, sighing into the kiss. She interprets that as an enthusiastic 'yes.'
He feels so good in her hands that she's practically squirming with the need to feel more of him. "I love to look at you," she tells him. "You're so strong, Reg." Leveraging herself with her hands on his shoulders, she raises up onto her knees, then slowly lowers herself back to him, sliding his length against her labia. "Can you feel how wet you made me? You did that, my love."
His head thrown back, his Adam's apple working vigorously. The whole of him drawn taut like a bowstring, the rapid, shallow breaths. He touches his forehead to hers. "Izzy, sweetheart, have mercy on a poor fellow. Please."
She chuckles, kisses him hard. Whispers as their gazes lock, "Don't let me go."
His hands cradle her bum. Spread her wide. Hold her fast. "Never," he breathes. It ends on a gasp of indrawn breath as she takes him slowly inside of her.
"Oh!" She goes wide-eyed, arrow-stiff at the sensation of their joining. She always does, and he finds it irresistible. She is innocent and wanton and the contradiction makes his head spin. Brilliant.
She seeks out the crook of his neck, burrowing into it. "Reggie," she breathes. He treasures the sound. Pure astonishment.
"I know, baby," he murmurs, his palms gliding over the velvet skin of her back. "I know, darling."
They linger; why should they hurry? All they've got is time this endless night. She matches her breaths to his and finds herself tightening around him, her arousal notching higher. She flexes her hips a little and moans at the result of her efforts.
"Tell me how it feels," he breathes, lips on the tender spot behind her ear.
"So full," she groans. "Feels like I always want to feel. Aches and I never want it to stop." She chokes on a sob. He moves one hand to the small of her back, presses her even closer and how can it keep getting better? She can feel his pulse. beating. inside. her. It is the single most erotic experience of her life, and she begins unconsciously to rock against him, into him, circling her hips.
Exertion and the heat of their bodies has slicked their skin with perspiration and they slide against one another. He holds on, gripping her hips, angling her just so. "Christ, Izzy … so tight! Need you."
"Yes, love. I'm here. I'm right here, my darling."
She loses herself in the clinging, the sweat and breath and hands where nobody else's have ever been. Moves on him slow, just to savour the contrast between empty and so full, the sweet stinging stretch at her opening. So much raw and desperate between them; fears they don't dare to speak are quelled in the clutching of his hands at her breasts, her teeth on his neck.
She muses idly as she rides him that her hipbones will bear the impression of his fingerprints, proclaims it into the darkness. Mark me, sear me. Your name on my lips and your blood in my veins.
"Yes."
He leans up, needs her, the flavour of her in his mouth, on his tongue to chase away the bitterness of doubt, the unknown dangers he can't protect her from in a future that he cannot foresee. Kisses her lips; bruising, sweet. Draws deeply from her nipples as she sobs that it feels like he's taking her over and don't ever stop.
Simultaneous orgasms are that awful stuff of the syrupy, idealised rubbish novels kept at the back corner of the supermarket. They always snigger at them, reading whispered passages detailing sexual impossibilities in each other's ear as they shop for paper goods.
Holy shit, it is real, she thinks, and would bet he is thinking the same as she collapses against his heaving chest, both of them tumbling down to the mattress in a sacred mess of sheets and limbs.
Long minutes pass in near silence, the hush of their panting breath and the rustle of the bedclothes as she covers them both. He lies facing her back with both arms around her, his fingertips still dancing over her skin, smoothing her hair.
"My love," she whispers, and it comes from the deep, conferred upon him like a knighthood. The exhale to my inhale. You have been to the end of me. They are so young —children still, really— him yet to see thirty and her not twenty-five. But their souls are ancient; within them both they carry a wisdom and weariness disparate to their years.
He rests his palm on her breast, over her heart and, with a single word, gives her the freedom, the certainty. Every answer she's been seeking.
"Yours."
She gasps; a sigh, a sob. Relief and surprise and too much to quantify. Clutches at his hand where it lies; weaves her fingers together with his. This. My heart is so full.
He kisses the back of her neck, nuzzles her with his nose. "Mine?"
She turns her head so that their eyes meet. "Yours."
They are loath to move; sweaty, sated and somnolent, they drift on the hazy edge of sleep and wakefulness. And yet somehow, awake for twenty-two hours, her mind is still working.
He feels it in her choppy breaths. A hasty inhale-exhale, then another that feels forced, like she's coaxed it forth. Then a punctuated inhale that hangs there.
"What is it, love?" He skims his palm over the contour of her hip as he breathes the enquiry.
She turns towards him, hooks her leg through his. "We weren't careful." She blinks, her eyes boring into him.
"Should we have been?" They haven't been actively trying for a baby since the second miscarriage three years ago. Sometimes she wants them to take precautions and others she doesn't.
"I don't know, Reg. I don't think it's going to happen, and I ought to be more devastated about it than I am. I used to think it meant something terrible about me that I couldn't carry a pregnancy to term. Now I wonder if it hasn't happened because it isn't meant to. I'm not sure that I can give this up. That I can share you, or that I want to."
He smiles against her forehead. "It's always been us against the world."
"Yeah," she breathes. Never once has she needed to explain herself to him, nor he, to her. Despite their youth they are not naive; theirs is a rare connection and they know it well.
He nudges her shoulder. "Well, we've always been a rather dynamic duo."
She jabs her elbow into his ribs in answer. "I refuse to be called either Batman or Robin."
"No, you're far too pretty. How about … indomitable? Indefatigable." He nibbles her earlobe (her insides clench in that most delicious, yelp-inducing way). "Irresistible."
A tiny moan slips from her lips before she can wrangle it. That quickly, heat is building between them again. "Anyone would think you have an aversion towards me sleeping," she tuts just before taking hold of his face, catching his chin in her hand. "I was going to say that the only thing besides my name I'd ever want to be called, is 'yours.'" She kisses him; he answers and flattens her against the mattress in his ardour.
Long moments pass this way and when they break apart he tells her, "I don't think it works like that. One kind of love doesn't cancel out another; they grow side by side. Look at your mum and dad. They had you and Ed, Jack's hospital hours and a busy practice to run, but there was nothing could keep them apart. And were they ever mad about you two. I always thought that they were the pinnacle. Marriage; family; joy. Love. They were what I wanted to be."
"Me, too," she whispers, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes at the memory of her parents together.
He catches them as they spill over. "Oh, but darling, don't you see? You came from that love; it's in your blood. Love isn't just what you do, Isobel. It's who you are. You're the best bits of the both of them; reckless like Fi and dogged like Jack, and kind. So very kind. And that's why I've no doubt that any baby of ours would have your whole heart."
She tries to swallow around the lump in her throat. How she got lucky enough to live alongside this beautiful soul, she'll never know. "And so do you."
"Yes. Now who's the lucky one?" His eyes, his smile. She'll remember them in distant future days as vibrant as they are in this moment.
oOo
She sleeps soon after, her ear pressed against his steady beating heart. He mulls it over, the ways in which love grows, as his fingers run through her hair. In the morning she will ring St. Mary's to ask after the baby she saved. Because she loves, even when it hurts her. He'll take her away for the day and make love to her in a room that overlooks the seaside. His love for her will multiply a hundred times when they learn, in two months' time, that she is with child again. A thousand times more in thirty-seven weeks when their son is born into his very arms.
She will learn the truth, the weight of his words, the first time he holds her as she nurses Matthew, thinking she could never feel more love, or more in love, than she does in that moment. Will fall to her knees at the beauty of it when she finds him napping with his newborn son on his chest. How can it possibly keep getting better?
Love will break her chest open when she touches his casket for the last time. The memory of his words, his kiss, the fullness of him deep within her body; heart; soul will, by turns, soothe and haunt in the years to come. On her knees beside his grave, she will beat the ground and wail. She will rage and ache and long for him, and time, in its inflexible grace, will mend the break. The strength of his love will reach beyond time and distance and she will find the courage to open her heart again, to fulfill the vow he made her swear to him as he slipped away.
"You have so much love inside of you. Don't spend your life alone, Izzy. Find love again. Promise me."
"... A cool thing about your heart is that it is constructed exactly like Hogwarts: filled with secret passages and rooms you never knew existed, a place where new love can grow alongside your grief, your sorrow, your own inner happiness, and all of your insecurities." —Nora McInerny