All based on the prompt 'stuck'.

Stuck (100 words)

Trapped in the passenger seat of his own car, Lucien rubbed his face, trying to ignore the stabbing voice in his ears.

"You embarrassed yourself, but you insulted the rest of us."

Couldn't she see his brain hurt and his stomach was threatening to mutiny?

After a night locked up, listening to endless stories about jumpers and dentists, then alone in the dreadful, suffocating dark, he needed air, and fragrance, and freedom, and sympathy.

He could taste Jean's disappointment. There was no escape.

The pain hammering his skull couldn't hide that other pain, the one that insisted she was right.


Stuck Again (100 words) based on a S5 promo picture.

"Why can't we have a dinner party without you inviting along a photographer, Lucien?"

"Don't you want to remember this? People want to see us happy. It won't take long."

"We've been stuck here thirty minutes already, and I haven't had my sherry yet."

He grasped her hand firmly and moved it further up his thigh.

"Smile, Jean."

But her other hand had ideas of its own. Jean made her move.

He slowly turned his head to see her grinning.

"Is your hand really on my arse?" he whispered urgently.

"Just a taste of your own medicine," she replied.


Still stuck (200 words)

A policeman is never off-duty. The noise that woke Charlie was brief, smothered, desperate, and so unfamiliar that he was immediately alert.

Suspecting burglars, he pulled on his trousers and looked around for a weapon. He tiptoed onto the landing and knew something was not right; the air held something alien, an electricity that didn't come from his nerves alone.

The linen-cupboard door stood open. Would a thief look in there? Charlie peered into the blackness of the closet, raising his shoe, his only defence, above his head. At that moment he sensed a rush of air, a trace of fragrance, and a firm hand on his back propelling him forward.

The door clicked shut, and he heard retreating light footsteps and a distant giggle. He shook the door handle but nothing would shift. A wave of shame washed over him; locked in a cupboard by a burglar. How would he ever live that down at the station? And then he thought again: that scent, that giggle…

Meanwhile, Jean closed her bedroom door and skipped back into bed.

"That'll keep him out of the way for a few minutes. Now, where were we?" And her hand slid back across his belly.