Title: Needing Somebody

Rating: slight M

Pairings: Surprise, even though I think that I will get skinned alive after this...

Spoiler: Slight spoiler for everyone who doesn't know what Isobel does in 2.04...

Disclaimer: As much as I wished it belonged to me Downton abbey belongs to JF. Lucky cad.

Summary: Sometimes two people just need someone.

Others: 1. Written for my 1000 words a day challenge and the first piece that's not longer than 2000 words (and growing) or written on a piece of paper still waiting to be typed down, and therefore finished to be posted.

2. While you read... I'm going to hide myself somewhere in the hope of surviving this...

~~o~~

He wasn't quite sure how they had ended up like this but in the end he did not care much about it really. Sometimes one just needed somebody.

It had started some day when she came to see him. It hadn't been incredibly important but she was worried and knew not who do ask about the trenches and what would wait for the country's boys there. Easing her worries about the soldiers in french mud they had then talked about some unimportant stuff concerning the village. One moment they had smiled softly at each other, nothing more than two people who knew it each other and had an occasional conversation. The next he had pressed her hard against his desk and his strong body to hers.

His hands had found her small waist and back. Traveled possessively over her body down to her bottom and up to her fair neck. Roughly he claimed her soft lips with his, teasing her for a moment, demanding more from her and she all too willingly opened her lips to him. Soft smaller fingers wound around his neck and into his collar before they trailed down his chest to the front of his jacket. Easing the material from his shoulders without him really realising what she was doing she made work on the buttons on his vest. Trying to open his shirt beneath it she leaned back against the desk, while he left her mouth alone and tasted her neck eagerly with his lips. Passionately he grazed his teeth over soft skin, biting the soft flesh, leaving his mark on her before he started to open the buttons on her collar and dress. Lifting her up on his desk he losened the hooks of her corset and then made her his.

~o~

After he had her once he wanted her again and again. If he had thought about it for more than one second he would have been terrified of himself, disgusted even. But he did not think. Using her body to forget everything that bothered him was all he did. And she was just as demanding as he was. Begging for someone to take her mind off all the things that kept her busy during the day.

So they ended up seeing each other not more than two times a week. Three if she could tiptoe away from all her obligations.

They'd meet in his house. Having always lived alone, without a servant or wife to take care of him, it was the safest decision. She'd come in the evening, dressed in a dark skirt and a light blouse. Not waiting to be invited in but simply entering when he opened the door and walking straight up the stairs into his bedroom. Taking her hat off on the stairs and starting to shed her clothes standing in the middle of his bedroom. He'd unbutton her blouse with skilled hands, letting them roam over her body, her back and bottom before he trailed them over her corset to unfasten the hooks and free her breasts of their confinement.

Here, in his house, they could be themselves, giving their bodies to another person they pretended to care about. Until she got up and left him, and what they wanted this to be, behind.

Their dalliance was passionate, filled with longing, a steady giving and taking, but never bespoken. They never talked much from the moment she stepped through his door and into his arms until she moved to get out of his bed. They weren't lovers, there weren't words of love to be spoken. Just two people in need, that's what they were.

~o~

Sometimes he wanted her to beg him to stop. To end this madness as long as they could do so voluntarily and weren't forced to stop being with each other, making each other forget what worried them, what kept their minds from settling into calmness. But she never did. Never begged for him to stop, only clutched him for more. And he never denied her wish.

When she trembled under his rough touch and panted she'd loved him he knew the words weren't designed for his ears. Weren't supposed to be heard by him, but he did not care. Grazing his teeth over the soft skin of her jaw and neck he did not care. Leaving his mark on her shoulder and on the fragile skin of her breast and collar bone, where no one would see them, he instead told her how beautiful she is.

Trailing his hand over her soft stomach, he breathed her name against her breast. Stroking down her sides, feeling her wiggle beneath him because of the soft tickle, he confessed that he should never had let her go. Caressing his hands down between her thighs he groaned how much he loves her against her cheek, while she moaned and whimpered under his touch. And then he would pin her hands above her head and her body beneath his and she would find herself passionately kissing him, accepting his hungry kisses and slowly joining herself with him.

Being someone else in his mind.

He wanted her to forget who she was, wanted her to forget her own name when she was with him. She felt him getting rougher and got more compliant beneath him, she spurred him on, not minding him gripping her wrists to find them discoloured in the morning. Silently telling the world that she had been taken and making her hope that no one would see them by chance. Especially not the man she was with in her mind when she joined her body to his.

He did not care that it wasn't his name she moaned in the highest moments of passion, arching her back into him and pressing his body to hers with her legs around his hips, for it wasn't her name tumbling from his lips either.

Feeling her writhing and moaning beneath him, the long silken locks spilling over her shoulders, resting in the nape of her neck and pooling in the valley between her breasts, he did not care about them being small dark brown ringlets. In his mind the long locks had the colour of golden fields of wheat, caressing his cheeks softly when he kissed her there just like his face was clean shaven in her mind and not sporting a mustache that tickled her skin whenever he gently kissed her navel and trailed lower.

~o~

Later, when she lay motionless and spend beside him, breathing heavily and shying away from his touch, he felt much closer to whom she was supposed to be than he had ever been, but at the same time more distand than they could physically have been.

When Elsie Hughes left his bed half an hour later, Richard Clarkson watched her dress and righten her hair while he lay naked beneath the thin bedsheets. She always left without telling him goodbye, just like she never told him when he would see her again. He only knew that she would be standing in front of his door again in the next few days, coming inside without invitation and walking straight up the stairs to his bedroom, taking her hat off on the stairs and sheding her clothes in his room until he helped her.

They never talked about how long this would go on like this. They hardly talked at all.

They only knew that as long as Charles was unwilling to let life change him, working himself into an early grave and Isobel resided in Paris, being in danger to be killed in a german attack, they would search for each others closeness in the evening. Would use each others body for release, to fulfill carnal needs. They didn't care that it was irrational, didn't care that it made things only worse when they finally had to come to an end. They only cared about the here and now.

And if they ever really thought about it they never were someone else than Doctor Clarkson and Mrs Hughes to each other. Greeted each other as these during the day when in the night they turned into Isobel and Charles.

They weren't unfaithful. Charles and Isobel weren't their spouses. Not in law. They did not talk about it. They hardly talked at all.

They just fulfilled needs.

They just needed somebody.

~~o~~

A/N: *hiding somewhere hopefully save* ...Ehm... Surprise? I blame my overactive mind during long nights that are spend with watching episodes 2.04 and 2.08, especially the scenes with Elsie and Clarkson where absolutely nothing happens. And the way David Robb just looks absolutely dashing in that uniform. Like I said: Overactive mind. ^^

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