A/N: I had a random idea to do this series of one-shots…I'm not sure if they'll be in chronological order or not (I'm planning on doing some when they're married, with kids etc.), but it shouldn't matter if they're not. Enjoy!

…

Mary stirred under the covers. Poking her arm out from the quilt, she fumbled around on her bedside table for her phone and switched the alarm off with an aggravated sigh. How was it already 7am? Her eyes battled with her head, refusing to open and acknowledge the sunlight streaming through the slit in the curtains. She brought a hand up to rub her eyes, coaxing them open. She sat up slightly, her brow creased with confusion, when she noticed that her hand was covered with a black smudge. Crap. Forgot to remove my make-up.

She felt the body on her left turn to face her. At least he makes mornings bearable, she thought with a smile, turning to receive her morning kiss.

"Mary!" Matthew called, directing his voice towards the bedroom door. "Come in here quickly- there's a racoon in our bed!"

"Piss off." Mary kicked his shin as he laughed heartily at his own joke. So much for a romantic wake-up call. "You should've reminded me to take my make-up off." She said huffily, self-consciously wiping her face with a tissue (this would have to do until she could be bothered to go to the bathroom).

"Should I have?"

"Well you seemed to remember to take everything else off of me." Mary remarked as she lifted the covers and noticed her very naked body.

"It's fun taking everything else off of you." Matthew said with a smirk, trapping her underneath his arm so she couldn't leave the bed. "I'm not sure I'd find it as arousing to watch you remove mascara with a make-up wipe." He teased.

Mary rolled her eyes at him, but she was smiling on the inside. She wasn't a morning person- she never had been. Waking up was by far her least favourite part of the day. But since she and Matthew had moved in together, she found it infinitely easier- even enjoyable- thanks to their break-of-dawn banter and the inevitable ribbing which accompanied it. The fact that Matthew was usually fairly randy in the mornings also helped motivate her to leave slumber behind.

"I definitely drank too much last night." Mary said, rubbing her forehead to ease the pain which was throbbing through her head.

"So did I." Matthew laughed lightly, reached over to soothingly massage her temples.

Mary let her head fall back to the pillow as she enjoyed the tingling sensation that Matthew's fingers created. "How come you never seem to be as hungover as I am?" She pouted.

"Because I'm a much more careful drinker than you are. I stick to one drink, maximum two. Whereas you're all over the place! How many different kinds of alcohol did you have last night?"

"I don't remember." Mary replied automatically, having heard this mini-lecture from her boyfriend several times before. She grew worried, however, when she realised that she actually didn't remember what she'd had to drink. At all. The night was a big, blank memory.

"Well, I do." Matthew said. Mary would have been irritated at his naturally condescending tone, but his fingers had moved up to rub slow circles on her scalp, and it felt far too good to interrupt with an argument. "Let's see- you started off with champagne, as we all did, then you had wine with dinner- red, white and rose, I might add- then you tried some of my beer, then you did vodka shots with Alison, then I think you had a G&T, before finally ending the night with some port." Matthew raised his eyebrows at her in a matronly, 'does-that-sound-sensible?' fashion.

"Alright, fine." Mary conceded wearily. He had a point- she should stop drinking like a seventeen year old who'd been let loose on their father's alcohol cabinet. Plus, she wasn't getting any younger, and these hangovers were becoming increasingly pronounced. "Although I don't think my head would ache this badly if I'd been able to sleep more." She argued, still not willing to let Matthew triumph in his maturity over her. "Why would someone have an engagement party on a Wednesday night?"

"The restaurant was cheaper to hire out on a weekday." Matthew replied, ceasing his massage in favour of playing with her hair, now that he could see she was awake enough to converse with him more fully. "And anyway, what about when we went out for my birthday, hmm? You had plenty of sleep the next morning- you woke up while I was having my lunch, if I remember correctly- yet you were still hungover."

"OK, OK, I get it." Mary began to roll herself out of bed slowly, wary of the fact that the room had started to spin. "But your little list was wrong." She pointed out to him.

"Was it?" Matthew had been keeping an eye on her all night to make sure she didn't reach the point of no return (and because she'd been wearing a rather fetching dress), so he was fairly sure he hadn't made a mistake.

"Yes- I also had a shot of baileys with my dessert." She said smugly, prompting a chuckle from her boyfriend.

"Of course, how did I forget?" Matthew said drily. "That renders my entire argument invalid."

"By the way…" Mary began cautiously, realising again that both of them were stark naked. "I don't mean to offend you, but- did we do anything last night? I genuinely don't recall. But I suppose the state of our undress suggests that we did…" She blushed. Being with Matthew was always memorable, however frequently it happened, so forgetting it must have meant that she really had been quite drunk.

"I think we started to…" Matthew said sheepishly. "But we both passed out in the middle of it."

"Oh. Oops." Mary flushed with embarrassment.

"Or maybe we decided to postpone it until this morning, when we're both sober?" Matthew asked hopefully, feeling blood rush to certain parts of his body now that Mary was stood up at the end of the bed without a stitch of clothing on her.

Mary raised an eyebrow at him. "Nice try. But I think you're forgetting that we both have to leave for work in less than an hour." She threw a cushion at him and walked into the bathroom to have a shower.

"Is that all the time we have?" Matthew called after her. "Well, we'd better be efficient, then!" He grinned, running into the bathroom behind her.

…

A/N: was that fluffy enough for you? Let me know if you have any ideas/prompts for other one-shots, and I'll try and work them in!