This short one off fic follows on from the hug at the end of S2E10. Thanks to it-is-bugs' beautiful screencaps on Tumblr, we spotted some lipstick on Lucien's collar. This story is the result. Nothing much happens, by the way!
After the difficulties of the previous days, Jean was glad of a quiet morning. With breakfast cleared away, she turned her thoughts to doing the laundry. A glance out of the kitchen window showed it was a good drying day - sunny, and with enough breeze to ripple the leaves on the trees.
As she walked through the house, her mind inevitably turned to the evening before. She had been embarrassed at breaking down like that in front of Lucien, but more shocking still was the look she had seen in his eyes. She had grown used to the idea that she loved him, but had been comfortable with the certainty that he didn't feel the same.
She had seen the the moment when that changed, when desire flashed in his eyes, and it scared her. He had been holding her, wanting her, and she had backed away, glad of the ringing phone as an excuse. She wasn't ready.
She sighed in frustration at herself as she gathered up her washing, then Mattie's and Charlie's, and dropping the clothes onto the kitchen table. She headed to Lucien's room and looked around her. For a man who had been in the army, he was not tidy. She knew from long experience that most of the laundry would be in the bottom of his wardrobe, but she also picked up two shirts draped over the chair, and some socks under the dresser.
She always felt this was rather intimate. She was in his room, his space, searching through his belongings.
She hurried now, trying not to dwell on the ache she felt just thinking about him. She loved him, so why was she frightened of him loving her back? Wasn't that what she wanted?
She'd certainly enjoyed being in his arms. With her head against his chest she had felt safe. When he'd talked about home, she had known it was him that made it home for her, rather than the house they lived in. But she just wasn't quite ready to let go of Christopher.
As she sorted the clothes and filled the twin tub washing machine with water, her thoughts dwelt on her husband. They hadn't had a proper ending, she hadn't even had a funeral for him, and she couldn't let another man love her till that was settled in her mind.
Shirts first, she thought. Charlie's never seemed very dirty, and she put them straight into the soapy water. Lucien's, on the other hand, usually suffered from his habit of chasing suspects, vaulting fences, and crawling into dirty barns. She ran the wet bar of soap over the inside of the collar and started to scrub.
Behind the fresh smell of the soap lurked something else - a faint trace of sweat and masculinity. Something that was definitely Lucien; she could have picked his shirts out of a pile of identical ones, by an undefinable something that was his alone.
For a moment she stood still over the machine, the scrubbing brush in her hand, then realised with a jolt that she was sniffing his shirt! Reddening at the thought, she hastily added the shirt to the water and picked up the next one. As she scrubbed at the lining to the collar, she noticed something odd. A smear of something red on his collar. Lipstick.
The ache in her stomach that had been there all day suddenly intensified. She had never seen lipstick on his clothes before, not even when he was seeing Joy. She recognised the new pain as jealousy. Surely he hadn't been kissing another woman, had he? Not when he'd looked at her with...suddenly she realised, with a relief that made her stagger back slightly..
She clutched the edge of the machine with one hand for support. The lipstick was hers. She looked at it more closely. Yes, definitely hers. She must have smudged his collar when she started to cry, or maybe she'd touched her mouth, and then his collar. Embarrassment and relief flooded over her, and she scarcely noticed that she was holding the shirt up to her face, breathing him in and smiling foolishly.
She lowered the shirt to find Mattie looking at her quizzically. Jean hadn't even heard her approaching. "I found a couple more things that need washing," she said. "Am I too late?"
"No, that's fine," Jean replied automatically. Their eyes met and Jean blushed. Mattie grinned at her.
"Carry on," she said, nodding towards the shirt Jean was clutching. "Don't mind me." Mattie turned away, trying not to laugh out loud. How long would it be before they both realised what they felt, she wondered?
Jean hastily pushed the shirt under the water and started the machine. As the clothes swirled in the water, she stared out into the garden. Lucien had come so close to kissing her. Now she rather wished he had, and she regretted pulling away from him.
Now she knew what it was like to be held by him, and she was curious to know more. She was sure Christopher would not have minded her loving another man, he had always been a down to earth and practical man. But Jean was not sure how she would react to being with someone as different as Lucien. He was such a contrast to her husband: arrogant, confident, too clever by half, and very tactile.
Hmm, tactile. She was fairly sure it wouldn't be long till he gave her that look again, the one that meant he wanted to kiss her. Maybe next time she'd hold on to him. Maybe.
A little later as she hung the washing on the line, she glanced back at the house. Was she ready to risk her security here? What if it was all a mistake and came to nothing? Then she'd have lost her job, her home, everything.
But she found a smile creeping up on her. But what if it went well? What if Lucien loved her as much as she loved him? Maybe they needed a little more time, a little more thought, before she would be ready.
She fingered the collar where the mark had been, checking it had gone, and chuckled a little, quietly, at the thought of marking it again one day, marking him out as hers.