Malice + first time Alice sees Matthew's leg (professortennant)

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Ballarat isn't like the rest of Australia. There is no desert nearby; no white sandy beaches; even the hills around it are rolling and flat, save for the steady elevation that makes the town that much colder than Melbourne, only an hour away. Ballarat feels the chill the way the north feels humidity; constant, oppressive, and inescapable. The Poms like to settle there because it reminds them so much of home, with the occasional snowfall in winter and a year-long need for a coat.

But there are always a couple weeks of the year, just after Christmas, when the mercury rises above forty degrees Celsius and stays there. Two or three weeks in the whole year to prove they are in fact in Victoria, and not in some distant place in northern Scotland. The town isn't built for a true Australian summer, and just like in the UK, residents escape their insulated houses and wear as little as decently possible, and they walk around with a particular lethargy, willing the unending dry heat to stop.

Her little flat is built of brick and has tiny windows, and offers absolutely no protection from the unyielding sun that beats down on it during the day. So Alice escapes her flat for the cool shade of the Blake home. For some reason the house always stays chilled, nestled between enough tress that it remains in constant shade, which is a battle to heat in winter but a blessed relief in summer. Anyone with a reason to be there is present, sipping Jean's cold lemonade and taking refuge in the shade of the yard, a light summer breeze offering occasional respite.

It's lazy, and decadent. They look like A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, lounging in the wicker chairs or on a blanket on the grass. She has found a lovely spot on the ground in the shade of a tree, her, Jean and Bill Hobart of all people, playing a game of go-fish on a picnic blanket. Rose reads her book in a chair with the widest brim hat anybody could own, and Lucien has fallen asleep in a white wicker chaise with his newspaper over his face. Matthew walks out the back door, finally off-duty and changed, and she is transfixed for a moment at the sight of him in honest-to-God shorts; khaki green, knee-length, a brown belt to keep them up and keep his white short-sleeve shirt tucked in.

She's not sure she has ever seen any man in shorts. Not a living one, at least.

"Do you have any threes?" asks Bill. She snaps herself out of her trance.

"Go fish"

"Damn" he whispers.

"Language" mutters Matthew out of habit, dragging another seat over towards them to observe their little game. Jean hands him a glass of lemonade that she prepared for him and he nods in thanks as he plonks into his seat and sighs.

His chair is only three feet away from where Alice sits on her blanket.

"Deal you in, boss?" asks Bill. Matthew just waves at him no, and slumps a little, relaxed for the first time in hours.

Alice tries not to look, but with his leg so close she takes a peak from the corner of her eye. There is one long scar, deep and unforgiving, that runs almost clean around his leg just under the knee. The repairs to his femoral artery and the stitching of his ligaments and muscles were all done via that gaping hole in his leg, and it shows. Lucien stitched him well, she can see; neat and even, the mark of a skilled surgeon. But it's still a sizable wound, the damage underneath permanent, and it glistens in the sun, peaking out under the seam of his summer shorts to remind the world of what he went through to earn the ever-present limp.

It's a mark of how much he trusts them all that he would expose himself so much to them. That he would allow his vulnerability to be seen at all. She remembers those days in the hospital, watching him battle between anger at his fate and gratitude to be alive, high on morphine but lucid enough to understand. She remembers not knowing him well enough then to express how grateful she was not to be cutting open his chest with a disposable scalpel. She had settled for comforting Lucien instead, hoping that was enough. Hoping her feelings would somehow domino down to him.

They are close enough now that if such a situation occurred again she is certain she would cry for him right there in the hospital room.

"Do you have any fours?" asks Jean to Bill, and she lets out a smug a-ha! when he grumbles and flicks the card at her. He's been trouncing her all day, so she's not the least bit humble about getting him back. Lucien cracks one eye open, rolls his head to look out from under his paper, smiles at them all, and then dozes off again. They are the picture of a lazy summer, and though Alice has so many questions about what lies beneath the scar on his leg, where sinew and scar tissue raises the flesh in ugly bumps, she finds herself distracted by the quiet comfort of Matthew's company; the small chuckles he lets out as he listens to their conversation and doesn't contribute much; the grins they share like a private joke. They've become close since Christmas, and she likes it very much.

It's beyond dinner time, the sun almost completely set, before they retire inside for a supper of cold meats and salad, and she's sorry they have to move at all.