Four tumblr drabbles. 100 words each. Post s5 Telemovie: Family Portrait. Slightly edited from the original.
Blake telling Lawson how much he loves Jean.
They are incredibly drunk, he's giddy, and he knows for a fact that Matthew disappeared at least three times to "get some air outside" with a certain pathology registrar. Lucien Blake is in just the right mood to bail up his buddy at the bar and tell him to get his act together.
"I love Jean. So much"
"Well that's good, on account of you just married her"
He giggles, a drunk little sound, grinning.
"Love is wonderful, Matthew. The best"
"If you say so"
"You should let yourself have some, my friend"
The ensuing eyeroll does not deter him.
The wedding night.
It's not as easy as she thought, getting used to sleeping next to someone again. It's the early hours of morning just before dawn, and she can't fall back to sleep, no matter that she's thoroughly exhausted. There is a foot slightly encroaching on her side of the bed and irrationally, childishly, she doesn't like it being there.
But she does like him being there. Very much.
All at once that feeling hits again; he is her husband, they are married, this is forever. The tightening in her chest leads to tears in her eyes.
The foot isn't so bad.
Lucien and Jean and the weirdness of cleaning the study
"Are you sure I should be the one to go through this?"
The box is full of his parent's memories and secret lives; remnants of two people so close to him, yet near strangers.
"Who else?" he asks, and she concedes she has every right. It feels like an invasion of privacy to be going through Thomas' things, even if he is long dead and it is technically their house now. Their future bedroom.
She finds a photograph of a baby Lucien. His dimples are the same, his hair long and curly. She smiles and tucks it in her pocket.
Jean and Lucien's first night back home.
The ceiling is alarmingly tall compared to the slant of her attic bedroom. The gold leaf glitters like stars and she finds it strange to sleep in such an open, oppressive space. Sleepily, her eyes are drawn to him as she watches her husband slip into bed.
He shuffles against her and she smiles. They're too weary after travelling for any of that, but he still wants to hold her. It's been four months, and she will never tire of drifting off with him wrapped around her back, lips against her neck, the ceiling tall but his arms solid, grounding.