A/N: I almost made it in time for this week's Unofficial DA Series 8 roundup. This was not how this chapter was going to go. I know I often say that, but this one really evolved today out of nothing after struggling for over a week to string together more than a couple of words.

Originally I had planned (inasmuch as I plan as a writer, which is to say ... HA!) for this piece to fill in some of the backstory after Richard and Isobel become lovers in One More Morning, and before we see them retired and living in Yorkshire full time in Sweet Seasons. Basically, I'm time-hopping as I tell the retirement saga, and I guess that likely doesn't matter to anyone else as much as it matters to me.

But I've had some friends comment in reviews about how much they enjoy reading about Isobel finding happiness with Richard and Matthew being alive and developing a friendship with Richard. That has happened because thus far we haven't reached the point at which Matthew and Mary are married, Mary gives birth to baby George, and then Matthew dies.

But then I thought, screw it. My readers are happy. I'm happy. And most importantly, Isobel is happy. So from here on out, consider Feel Again the AU of my AU, or The One Where Matthew Doesn't Die.

As to the tone of this update, I've been rewatching Last Tango in Halifax for the sweetness of the Alan/Celia romance. It's a very similar dynamic to that of Richobel, so I find inspiration in the plot lines, but also in the wonderfully convincing banter between Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi. God, they're cute. I also retell a story that Richard first shared with Isobel in Sweet Seasons; the difference being that this time around, his romance with Isobel is in its infancy. So, whatever. The premise in both instances goes back to David Robb's having said he believes Richard was engaged once, as a young man, and that it ended badly.

To the friends who stand by me and this crazy-beautiful ship through thick and thin, much love and thanks.

xx,
~ejb~

When we arrive at the house in Newton, I help Richard get the water turned on and the pilot lit. I offer to run into town for groceries, but he sends me straight off to bed. I start to put up a fight but quickly realise I haven't got the energy to keep it up. I almost say it to him then. Richard, I want to retire. Up here. With you. Now. But what I end up saying is, "At least lie down with me for a few minutes."

He rolls his eyes and says that he was going to mow the lawn and check the level in the oil tank and a couple of other things I don't hear because I'm working on fixing him with a convincing-looking glare. Stepping close, he takes me by the hips and pulls me against his body. "I got you," he laughs hotly in my ear. "I got you good."

"I'd never have guessed there was so much of the devil in you," I murmur, close enough to kiss him. At the last second I turn my head away, undoing his belt and zipper.

"Yeah? Look who's talking," he fires back, making short work of his jumper as I reach behind me, under the hem of my t-shirt, and wiggle out of my bra, pulling it off though one of the sleeve holes.

He shakes his head. "Never knew you were a contortionist. Impressive."

I chuckle. "Darling, every woman everywhere has that trick mastered by about year seven," I tell him, but he isn't listening. His eyes are fixed on the outline of my breasts, my nipples tightening beneath my shirt under the heat of his gaze.

He gathers me against him, wrapping his arms tightly around me, and I tease him for a moment, my lips hovering near his mouth, tasting his warm moist breath. He calls an end to the pretence, catching my bottom lip between his teeth. My tongue slides into his mouth and Jesus, it gets hot in a hurry.

I don't know which one of us makes the decision — perhaps it's mutual — but we pull back after a long few moments, our foreheads resting together as we catch our breath.

"I wonder if it'll always be like this between us," I whisper, tracing the shape of his lips with my fingertips.

"Always?" He echoes. "You think about us in those terms, do you?"

I nod. "I do. There's nothing like this, is there?" I can hear my heart pounding as we turn back the covers. I hope I've not put my foot in it, talking of always. I lie down on my back and he on his side, the palm of his hand resting on my ribs, beginning to move in small soothing circles.

"Pity we didn't get round to it years ago, while we were still young," he muses.

I tangle my legs with his. "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not old."

He grins as the tips of his fingers brush the underside of my breasts. "You, madam, are timeless." He lowers his head to press a quick kiss to my nipple through the fabric of my shirt.

"Ohh." The breath rushes from my lungs. "And you, Major, are irresistible. It's entirely unfair how men get sexier with age."

"Well I don't look at other women, so I can't speak to what happens there. But you certainly have done."

He's so brilliantly matter-of-fact that I have to check to be sure I've heard right. "Done what?"

"How long is it we've known each other? Fifteen years now, innit?" I nod. "I've always thought you were beautiful, but now …" he pauses, his fingertips making a circuit down my midline and then back up. "... Now you're just … stunning. I walk past you in the corridors or watch you operating in theatre and think, I get to wake up next to her every morning, and take her to bed every night. I'm the one stood in her kitchen watching her sway along with the radio while she cooks." We share a smile and then he leans in close. "I know what she tastes like, and how she feels from the inside."

"Oh my God, Richard!" I don't know what I thought he was going to say, but I hadn't anticipated that! But it's magnificent. There's so much I could say, and I open my mouth to speak several times but nothing comes.

"Is she speechless?" he teases. I nod. "Blimey." Sitting up, he pulls me to straddle his lap. Overcome by the intimacy of the moment, I tuck my head in against his neck. He alternates smoothing my hair and running his hands up under my shirt to rub my back.

I look up at him after some moments, gliding the backs of my fingers over the contours of his face. "If it's as you say …"

"That you've got lovelier as the years have passed," he interjects.

"Yes, well," I demur, "if that's the case, then you're the one responsible. I'm … well, I'm happy now. I could say things I've already said, but that's the long and short of it. Love is the difference."

"C'mere, baby," he whispers, drawing me to him with a hand at the nape of my neck.

"Oh, I love that," I breathe as his lips brush mine. He slides his hands under my bum to bring me right against him and holds me there, kneading me as we kiss. I reach to trace the trail of soft hair that starts under his bellybutton and ends beneath his waistband. He is hardening already when I touch him through his shorts, massaging him gently. He groans and lets his head drop to my shoulder.

"You're meant to be resting, you know," he tells me breathily.

'I know, I know," I gasp. "I will. I'm trusting you to slow us down." One of the virtues of age is that we can start something and wait to finish. "Just move with me a little, hmm? I love the way you feel."

He runs his thumb along the centre seam of my knickers. I'm already getting damp and he gives a throaty half-laugh, half-moan. "You aren't exactly making it easy to stop, sweet girl." He nuzzles my nose with his own.

I lick his upper lip. "So sorry," I tease. "Perhaps we should lie down."

It isn't any less intense with him lying behind me, but since I'm not looking at him it's easier to say some of the things I need him to hear. "Love has never been like this for me," I tell him as he lifts my shirt, sliding his hand up from my hip, over my belly to my breast. It's both wonderful and painful, this thing I've gone and told him. My heart threatens to burst from the sheer volume and intensity of love I have for Richard, and at the same time it hurts, raw and searing. How can there be more between myself and this man whom I've been with for a few months than there was with the one I'm still in love with, who grew up alongside me and delivered our son and whom I still miss as much today as the day he died? "As much as I loved Reg, as much as I still love him, I never had to have him like I have to have you. I want to reconcile that and I can't."

"I'm sorry that it hurts you," he says softly, "but I understand. Better than you know." He twists my hair up and out of the way and kisses the back of my neck, sucking gently. His hips roll against my bum, just a little, enough to keep the embers burning.

"I knew that there was something," I reply, pushing back against him softly. "You've been my rock, and you're the only person who has ever understood me — this me, post-Reg. I'd always marvelled at that, wondered how you could possibly, and I decided it was best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. But nobody's that good … to just give and give to me for all those years when I never gave you anything in return. Unless you'd been through something similar, and knew that I was dead inside. But you never said, and it's the sort of thing I know from experience I couldn't push you on. I know it's hard to believe that I could keep my mouth shut, but …"

It gets a chuckle out of him, which is what I was hoping for. "Yeah, I haven't said … not because I wanted to keep it from you or anything of the sort, but … It was all so long ago. After med school, when I was a junior, with massive debt and working ninety-hour weeks plus a second job to pay for it all — you know how it is …" He kisses my neck again, cradling my breast in his palm. Soothing himself, I realise with a smile. That's the thing about committed love. Physicality in all of its iterations can be comforting and sensual at the same time.

"Yes, I remember it well. Thank God we were young then, eh? That would kill me if I had to do it now." I bring my own hand to rest atop his, mine on top of my shirt and his beneath.

"Truer words …" he says, nodding his head. I can feel it. Wonderful. "Anyway, I met a girl, a friend of the sister of one of my cricket mates. I was horrendously shy …"

"You still are," I interrupt. "It's adorable, actually."

"I'm glad you think so. And I'm glad she did. She spoke to me first, or I'd never have done. Just like you, she was leaps and bounds out of my league …"

"Would you stop that? You're a beautiful man, Richard. And brilliant besides." I turn my head to kiss his mouth.

"Well then, I've snatched up the two women in the world who've thought so," he says as our lips part. "Anyway, our timing was awful. She was an art student and between us we didn't have tuppence to rub together. But I loved her, and she loved me. She was my first love, and you're the next. The last."

"But you never married her?" I realise that question has potential to be taken the wrong way as the words leave my mouth. What I don't want him to hear is, Does that mean you're never going to marry me? As if I've got the right to say anything.

He doesn't, thankfully. "We almost … As I said, we were both of us flat broke, and I wanted to be able to provide for her, I suppose ..." I can't see his face, but I can hear him blush, thinking that I'll see him as old-fashioned. And I do, but in a wonderful, chivalrous way. I say nothing, but I reach back to smooth my hand over his hip and he continues, "... at least until she finished her degree and got a job in her field. So I wanted to wait, but she wanted to marry. So I did propose properly. I am capable, in spite of appearances …"

"That was me getting the wrong end of the stick, darling. Your only crime was perhaps knocking back a few too many that night." Cupping his cheek, I kiss him again. Oh, how I wish I could erase that one stupid misstep from our past.

"Aye, that … and the fact that at that point neither you nor I had ever made mention of romantic feelings …"

"But any fool could have seen they were there. At any rate, we're here now. Tell me why you never married this … what was she called?"

"Jessica. Jessie. We'd got a flat of our own together, just a little one-up-one-down, but it was ours. The wedding was three months out and I was at home trying to get a couple of hours' sleep before an overnight shift at the hospital. Jess hadn't got home from work and I thought that was curious, but it was an internship at a gallery and getting hung up past closing wasn't all that strange. The doorbell rang and there were two police officers stood on my front step, telling me there'd been an accident. Jessie's car was run off the road by a transit van on her way home to me. They said she was, ah ... " I hear him swallow hard and clear his throat. "... She was killed instantly. So …"

"Jesus." I turn in his arms and his eyes — forthright to the point that I feel as if I'm seeing his soul — meet mine. "Oh, love … I'm sorry, so sorry. You do know, don't you?"

"Yeah, sadly, I do." He kisses me, deep and slow and sad and needy. He has been in my life for the majority of my grieving years, but what about him? Who has there been for him to turn to?

"What did you do … after, I mean?" I lift his vest over his head and toss it somewhere. For reasons I don't understand, I feel I need to be close to his heart. Laying him down, I kiss him there, as if somehow I can heal thirty-some years of heartache. Jesus, he's been hurting longer than I have, I realise. Now I have an inkling of how difficult it must have been for him since we've known one another. I hurt, I hurt. For him; for that young woman full of promise, dreaming of a brilliant future, who loved him and lost her life.

"Oh, Isobel," he sighs, "I didn't. I deferred my training, enlisted in the Army and left Edinburgh. Drank too much; blamed myself. I rose through the ranks quickly, but it had less to do with valor and more with idiocy. I volunteered for all the missions no one would send their worst enemy into. Practically gave my mother heart failure, I think … the number of times she got that call. 'Mrs. Clarkson, your son's in a military hospital in Ramstein, or Kabul, or Beirut.' I reckon I thought that if I were killed doing something honourable, it would atone for Jess dying so senselessly. I dunno; the decisions we make in our twenties …"

"Yeah, or when we're grieving. I get it. I wanted it to be me. Me instead of Reg; me alongside him. But you went back to medicine …" I lie on his chest, stroking his abdomen. Anything to soothe. I know now how helpless he must often have felt with me.

"But not without missing the last years of my father's life. I was discharged with honours after Beirut. They wouldn't take me back with half a rib gone, so they sent me home, and when I got there Mam was alone. She'd lost Da six months since, and I wasn't there." He runs his fingers through my hair absently, turning his head away. Too painful; I understand. "Still haven't forgiven myself for that one," he nearly whispers. "He was the best of men. If there's anything decent in me, it's thanks to him. Anyways …" He's tapped into something more raw than he bargained for and doesn't know what to do with it. So he kisses me. Rolls me beneath him and holds my hands against the mattress and kisses me: hard and bruising and sweet and searching. This is making love, just as much as it is when he is inside me. This is us, each one broken down to the basest level of ourselves; reaching out, holding fast to the beacon that sounds our frequency.

We cling to one another until he finds peace and collapses beside me. "Are you alright, darling?" I ask, smoothing back the hair at his temples.

"Oh yeah. Aye. Sorry. I didn't tell you to bring down the mood. I actually didn't tell you for any other reason than things are moving forward with you and I, and it's the sort of thing you ought to know before much more time passes. And to say that I understand the conflict. Some of it, that's to say. I had almost a year with Jess and you had twenty years of marriage and a son with Reginald, so I can't say it's the same …"

"It is, though! You loved her, and I know how you love." That gets him to smile, and he raises my hand to his lips and kisses it. "If she were alive now you'd be married almost thirty-five years, and I'm sure you'd have had a lovely bunch of freckled, blue-eyed little Scots babies. You get to think about what might've been, Richard. It makes me love you more, you know. We've both of us been there. We've made it. And now here we are! And do you know what else?"

"No, but I reckon you're going to tell me." There's that adorable, impish grin I love.

"You get to love her still, and always. And I'll be right beside you, doing the same. We'll be our own little therapy group!"

He hugs me to him. "I do love you, sweet girl. You're an angel of mercy, d'ye know that?"

I rub the pad of my thumb across his bottom lip. "I'll remind you of that next time we argue over one of my patients," I tease.

Silence passes companionably for some moments as we lie sprawled amongst the covers. We touch sweetly every so often in a sort of unspoken I'm not going anywhere, and by the bye, I love you. I'm sure that he's thinking of his Jessica, and I'm thinking of Reg. We burned brightly together, my first love and I. He wanted this for me, what I've found with Richard. I still keep the note he wrote to me on top of my dressing table. You have so much love inside of you. Don't spend your life alone, Izzy. Find love again. Promise me.

"Richard?" I am first to speak, but I'd bet any amount of money he and I will have come to the same conclusion. We do that. It's weird, and it's wondrous.

"Yes, beauty?" He draws me close, his arm around my waist and one of my legs between both of his.

"I don't think we're meant to feel guilt over the nature of … things." I gesture to the space in between us. "Reg and I loved each other intensely. We did all of the first things together, you know? First car, first flat, first holidays. First lovers. But we were so innocent. Until we lost our babies and then my dad, death hadn't touched either one of us."

He nods. "Jess and I were like that. It was us against the world; damn the naysayers. The world was our oyster. I suppose it was important for each of us to have had — for me it was a glimpse and for you it was a young lifetime — but it showed us both the depth of love that was meant for us."

"... So that we'd know it when it came round again." I pick up his train of thought. "Yeah. I think there are different kinds of love — even romantic love — and none is more or less valid than another."

"And what we know now that we couldn't have known then is that time is a thief, and today is all we've got." What a succinct and perfect and altogether Richard observation.

"So perhaps it's not wrong for me to think that I want to love you better than I loved Reg, and perhaps it isn't that I failed him, or you failed Jessica. We loved the best we could have done, knowing what we knew at the time."

"That's it: it's time. The key factor in the whole thing. If we'd had more time with them we'd have grown, and they'd have done as well, and the better we think we missed out on giving them would have happened as a matter of course."

We look at one another and smile. "Well damn, love, I think we've cracked it. Shall we give quantum physics a try whilst we're on a roll?"

"D'ye know how far you've come, that you're able to be lighthearted about it now?" he asks me. This is why it's important to have a partner in the grieving process. Where I lack perspective, he fills the gaps.

"Have I? I couldn't have done, not without you. I'm glad you told me, Richard. I don't know whether you were lacking a sense of peace about it, but I know I've got one now."

"I'll have more peace once I know you've slept, though," he says, signifying his satisfaction that we've put paid to matters of the heart for now.

So much for his having agreed to a quick lie down; we sleep the better part of the afternoon away. Tea is cobbled together from cheese on toast and leek soup and we eat on the couch by the fireplace, swathed in blankets and drinking Glenmorangie. After a long soak together in the wonderfully spacious garden tub, we endeavour to watch Last Tango in Halifax on the iPad from bed, but he doesn't last ten minutes and with his head on my chest and my eyelids heavy, I surrender to sleep as well. Clearly this holiday was sorely needed by us both.

oOo

On the Friday Richard and I are both preoccupied, he with the lawn and getting oil delivered and replacing roof tiles on one of the outbuildings. I do what mothers the world over do when their children are coming home: I cook. Tomorrow will be taken up with the wedding but dinner tonight will be a family affair. Matthew and Mary arrive just after lunchtime and, just as he did when he was a tyke, Matthew nicks a bit of shortbread and a taste of the chowder I've got simmering away on the hob.

And just as I did when he was small, I smack his hand away. "Matthew Reginald!" I scold, but I can't keep a straight face. "You weren't raised in a barn for pity's sake. Where are your manners?"

"You love me, Mother," he plays along, winking. I see so much of his father in him in that moment, and I ruffle his hair as I've always done.

"You know I do," I tell him. My heart is full. My son is home, here in this house that holds so much of our shared history. I feel Reg's presence here in extra measure. It's almost as if he's giving his blessing to all of this — to Matthew and Mary, to Richard and I. To the family we all are forming, odd conglomeration of souls though we may be.