A/N: just a bit of Sunday-night silliness because I'm sad about having to return to work tomorrow. This is pretty fluffy, but is borne from a conversation that my friend and I were having about how unfair it is to be a woman sometimes...xxx
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The unmistakeable aroma of frying bacon wafted through the house, rousing a heavily pregnant Mary from her repose on the sofa, a wide smile spreading on her face. Her husband could be utterly wonderful sometimes, knowing exactly what to do to cheer her spirits. It was 11am and she had developed a routine of preparing a mid-morning 'snack' - which usually ended up as the equivalent of an average person's lunch - but today she had felt too lethargic to do so. It seemed, therefore, that Matthew had taken it upon himself to make her something scrumptious to boost her energy levels.
"Mmmm..." Mary hummed as she entered the kitchen, sidling up beside Matthew and wrapping her arms around his waist. "That smells good." She murmured, gazing down longingly at the sizzling meat.
"It does." Matthew grinned and continued to move the rashers around the frying pan. "Did it wake you?" He asked apologetically. He knew how tired she had been feeling lately and he didn't want to interrupt the rest that she needed.
Mary shook her head against his shoulder, her eyes glued to the bacon. "I couldn't seem to doze off. It's fine anyway, I don't mind getting up for this. This is just what I need." She smiled.
Awkwardly, Matthew cleared his throat. "Erm," he began hesitantly, "this isn't actually for you..." He winced as Mary raised her head from his shoulder to look him in the eye. The eyebrow of sternness was raised to its full height. A hand settled firmly on her hip. He was in for a large dose of his wife's hormones.
"Excuse me?" She asked.
Shifting from one foot to the other, Matthew turned his attention back to the bacon. "This - this is for me. I didn't get to have breakfast so thought I'd make myself some brunch." He explained, hoping that she wouldn't explode at him. She was almost eight-months pregnant now, and her moods were no more predictable to him as they had been at the beginning of her pregnancy. It felt like, just when he grew accustomed to one behavioural pattern, it was displaced by a completely different one. For much for the time she was sweetness personified. For a lot of the time she was his normal Mary, quick-witted and sharp. But every now and then, she would descend into the depths of irrationality and stubbornness, and it was poor Matthew who had to bear the full brunt of it.
"And you thought you'd let me go hungry while you enjoyed your hearty meal?" Mary asked pointedly. Her condition had caused her to abandon her usual reservations of speaking hyperbolically or exaggerating and she said whatever she felt she needed to to achieve her desired result.
"Of course not!" Matthew said defensively. "I was going to make you something too." He declared, convinced that he had redeemed himself.
"Oh really? What?" Mary asked, intrigued. Her gaze followed his gesture to the kitchen table, upon which sat two small bowls. Shuffling over, she peered to inspect their contents. Inside one bowl was a mixture of chopped, rather soggy-looking fruits. In the other was what appeared to be a dollop of plain yoghurt. "What the hell is this?" She demanded.
Unsure whether her question was rhetorical or not, Matthew ventured tentatively, "It's a fruit salad, with some yoghurt to make it more filling." Seeing that she remained unimpressed, he added, "Nice and healthy."
"Well, I don't want 'healthy'!" Mary exclaimed stubbornly. "I want food! How come you get a heap of bacon and bread and all I get is watery fruit and tasteless yoghurt?"
"Because, darling, you need to watch what you eat." Matthew responded patiently. They'd had this same discussion (which, more often than not, took the form of an argument) several times over the past few weeks. Mary's initial cravings had been for organic, healthy foods such as salads and fruit and nuts. More recently, however, her appetite had turned in favour of fatty meats and sugary desserts. While it was of course fine for her to indulge in these cravings if it was what her body was telling her she needed, Matthew - along with his mother and her family - were concerned that her diet remain balanced and she didn't consume 'too much of the bad stuff', as Violet had youthfully put it.
"Will you stop telling me that I'm getting fat?" Mary bit back angrily. She had put on a little weight over the last few months but only enough to fill out her curves and lend her a slightly softer figure. Matthew frequently told her - and showed her - how attractive she was to him, yet in moments of frustration she still thought herself to be an obese buffalo and was particularly sensitive to any comments about her appearance or calorie intake.
Internalising his sigh of exasperation, Matthew once again explained his reasoning for interfering with her diet. "Mary, that's not what I mean and you know it. It's not good for the baby to be exposed to so much fatty food."
"What about what I want? Isn't what I want good for the baby, by default?" That's what the thousands of pregnancy books and websites that she'd read had told her, so surely she was correct? There may have been something in there about eating healthily too, but Mary's selective memory chose to ignore those parts...
Not wanting this conversation to spiral into an hour-long debate, Matthew attempted to gently cut it short. "I'm making you a pastrami sandwich for lunch so you can spoil yourself then, but for now I think you need some vitamins." He concluded by nudging the two bowls closer to her and handing her a spoon. She snatched it from him, refusing to meet his eyes. It wasn't easy for him to deny his wife, whom he adored, things that she wanted but he hoped that in the long-run she would understand why he was being hard on her.
He turned back to preparing his bacon rolls by cutting two large bread rolls and spreading thick butter over them. Behind him was the sharp clatter of a metal spoon against the inside of a glass bowl as Mary aggressively mixed the yoghurt with the berries. Occasionally the racket was drowned out by her loud sighs and mutters under her breath that he couldn't quite decipher.
"What is it?" Matthew stopped what he was doing and frowned gently, suspecting that this was more than just another of his wife's hormonal fluctuations.
Mary sighed again frustratedly as she threw the spoon down into the bowl. "I feel like I'm nothing but a big bump." She said seriously. Unable to stop himself, Matthew began to laugh. She looked completely adorable with her rounded belly and unkempt hair and petulant expression. "This isn't funny!" Mary said angrily, stomping her foot and unknowingly making herself even more endearing to her husband.
"Sorry, sorry," Matthew hastily ceased his laughter. "What do you mean?" He asked.
"It's like all you see when you look at me is this!" She gestured to her large stomach. "Like I'm not even a person anymore!"
"Mary, don't be ridiculous," Matthew said sincerely, approaching her. He rubbed his hands warmly over her bare arms and she instantly softened at his touch, although it was clear that she wasn't yet persuaded that she was wrong. It took an awful lot to persuade Mary Crawley that she was wrong, whether she was pregnant or not. "Of course I see you as a separate person to the baby. You're my wife. But you can't deny that you and baby are pretty closely linked together." He explained softly, dropping one hand to caress her bump through her dress. "So, only when it comes to eating, you do have to think about what the baby needs."
Mary's face was still set in a pout and he was sorely tempted to capture that protruding bottom lip between his. "Fine, I get the food thing but it's not just that, though." Mary insisted. "The other day my mother wouldn't let me go into the attic to get my old baby clothes. She came stampeding up the stairs when I was halfway up the ladder and forced me to come back down."
"You tried to climb up the ladder?!" Matthew panicked at the knowledge that she had even attempted to mount that rickety old contraption in her condition. Seeing Mary's narrowed eyes, he refrained from lecturing her on how dangerous it was. "Yes, well, again, that's because if you get hurt then the baby gets hurt too. So you need to act for the both of you." Matthew replied patiently. She was a naturally independent person, so he could imagine how irritating it was for her to suddenly have to obey other people's orders on matters that were objectively none of their concern.
"What happened to 'only when it comes to eating', then?" Mary asked sarcastically, throwing his words back at him.
"Alright, fine - when it comes to eating and when it comes to...erm..." Matthew hesitated as he tried to summarise the second activity.
"And when it comes to general movement?" Mary prompted drolly. He instinctively rolled his eyes at her hyperbole but then realised that he couldn't really narrow it down any further than that. As expected, this irked his wife greatly. "Essentially, then, I can neither eat nor move as I please? Everything is about the baby and nothing is about me? So I am nothing but a big bump?" Mary's voice was raised, but Matthew knew how to deal with that. What he couldn't deal with, however, was the growing tremor in her tone as her eyes began to tear up. One would think that he would have grown accustomed to seeing her cry, after witnessing all the hormonal rollercoasters that she'd been through during her pregnancy thus far, but it was the one sight that would always tear at his heart.
"Darling, I promise that's not what it is." He assured her, wrapping his arms around her and placing lots of kisses on her cheek and temple. "You know how much I still love spending time with you, talking with you and - other things." He rubbed his hands soothingly over her back as she continued to sob against his chest. "All I'm saying is that you need to be careful."
"But it's not fair!" Mary cried, her voice thick through the tears, "How come you get to do whatever you want and I'm stuck in the house most of the time and can't even use the bathroom to relieve myself without someone on my heels insisting that they help me?"
"Was that Sybil?" Matthew asked curiously. His youngest sister-in-law was the only person whom he could imagine offering to do such a thing.
Mary shook her head. "Your mother."
"Oh God, I'm sorry." Matthew made a mental note to tell his mother to back off a bit.
"And I have to give up work soon." Mary continued, "Everyone else will be going out and doing things with their lives while I'll be sat on the sofa uselessly, shovelling spoonfuls of out-of-season blueberries into my mouth!"
"Don't say that, Mary," Matthew tutted, "You will be doing something - the most important, wonderful thing! You'll be looking after our baby."
"Oh, Matthew, you don't understand." She said wearily, scrubbing at her face with the back of her hand. "That's just it. Don't get me wrong - I'm so happy about the little one and want to look after them but that doesn't mean I want to give up absolutely everything else."
"It's only for another 6 weeks or so," Matthew reassured her. Her due date was approaching with a speed that, quite frankly, terrified Matthew. He would never reveal his fears to Mary, at least not now; she had enough to cope with by carrying the child without having to hear of his worries.
"Is it?" Mary scoffed, "What about the months afterwards when I'll go from being nothing more than a big bump to nothing more than a lullaby-singing, milk machine? You'll still be able to spend time with the baby but you'll also be working and - and contributing to society! What if I wanted to start volunteering at a homeless shelter or something?" She said dramatically.
Matthew's face contorted as he tried to stifle a smirk. "Darling, you've never volunteered for any kind of community service in your entire life."
"Well I might want to once I've had a baby!" Mary retorted. "People say having a child makes you more compassionate."
"You're compassionate enough as you are." He placed a firm kiss on her cheek.
"Thanks but that doesn't make me feel better." Mary sniffed.
"What do you want me to do, Mary?" Matthew sighed. He completely understood where she was coming from but he didn't see what she expected from him. "You know I'd carry the baby if I could. But I can't. I'll take on as much of the responsibility as possible but there are certain things that only you can provide." She had, thankfully, stopped crying but a frown still marred her pretty face. "Graham said he'll let me take a couple of weeks extra paternity leave because the office will be quiet around then anyway, so I can take on some of the night feeds or whatever else needs doing. We're lucky enough to have our parents nearby to help us out, so maybe," he said cautiously, rubbing a thumb over her cheek, "it will only be a couple of months of craziness and then, if you feel ready, you can gradually start working again. Or volunteering at a food kitchen." He added wryly, and the sound of Mary's small chuckle lightened his heart. She opened her arms out to him and he gladly embraced her in a tight hug.
"I'm sorry, I know there's nothing you can do. It's Mother Nature, I guess." Mary murmured into his shoulder. "I just get frustrated sometimes."
"I know." Matthew kissed her neck. "But once the baby arrives I bet you'll forget all about those other things. And I'll be the one whose resentful for having to go to work every morning."
"Hmm, maybe." Mary smiled, snuggling against him even more. "I don't think I've thanked you yet for putting up with all my moods, so thank you." She affectionately ran her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck.
"You're very welcome. You know I'd do anything to make this easier for you." Matthew replied warmly. "Do you feel better now?"
Mary pondered this for a few moments. "I suppose I feel a bit better, but..." she trailed off, knowing that Matthew would grab the bait. As expected, he pulled back to look at her, concern etched on his face.
"But what? What can I do?" His expression morphed into one of mild confusion as he saw Mary smile mischievously back at him.
"You could let me have some of your bacon."
With a deep sigh and an exaggerated eye-roll, Matthew went to retrieve the plate of freshly-fried bacon, leaving his wife chuckling smugly behind him.