AN: Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed, followed and/or favorited! I'm really happy that you're enjoying it.

And now, some Branson sexytimes (and suggestion of - gasp! future plot developments).

August 1919

After living here nearly an entire summer, there was one thing Sybil could say about Dublin's weather: it rarely got uncomfortably hot. Today, however, was the exception that proved the rule. After a brief morning shower the sun had come out to steam the streets, and the temperature and humidity had risen steadily throughout the day. Now, even as the sun set, it remained sultry.

She'd been run off her feet at the hospital. The heat seemed to make people especially angry and accident-prone: there'd been injuries from motor crashes, fights, a streetcar wreck, and various other minor disasters, all in addition to the normal round. She'd come back to the flat after her shift and opened the windows (not that it did any good, as there was scarcely a breath of air to be had inside or out), had a quick bath and flopped on top of the bed in her robe, too tired to move. That was how Tom found her when he came home.

"Long day?" He inquired, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt and waistcoat. It was good to shed the constricting layers. His skin felt like it'd been swathed in oilcloth all day.

"You have no idea." Sybil did not move her arm from where it lay over her eyes.

Her husband smiled. "Poor you."

"And I've got to get up and do it all again tomorrow."

Tom groaned in sympathy, hung his suit in the wardrobe and climbed onto the bed in his underclothes to kiss her hello. This turned into another kiss, and another. "It's too hot," Sybil complained, but he persisted, shifting his attention from her lips over to a spot he liked just under her ear. "You can see that I'm trying to plan what to make for dinner?" A teasing note had entered her voice now, and she raised her chin so that he could more easily access the underside of her jawline.

"Let's go out. I don't think we need to heat up the flat any more than it already is, do you?"

"I was thinking just sandwiches. I was just going to get up and make them." She did not move, though, and he took the opportunity to undo the sash of her robe and put a hand inside it. She chuckled. "Are you ever not in the mood?"

"Yes," he replied. "Only I get into the mood so easily." His hand slid down and around to squeeze her, and he grinned and squeezed harder when she let out a little squeal. "Especially with you for a wife."

Now she moved her arm, to put it around his neck. "Flatterer." She drew him toward her.

After a few minutes he pulled back. "Sometimes," he murmured, "I'll be walking down the street or sitting at the office and I'll think about this -" he turned her hand over and lifted it to kiss the inner part of her perspiration-sheened wrist - "or this - " he ran his fingertips over the crease that divided her thigh and her torso, making her shiver - "and I just..." he made a low growling sound in the back of his throat, and his eyes flamed. Sybil thought she might melt into a puddle, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. She leaned forward and kissed him open-mouthed, their tongues touching. Together they divested Tom of his remaining clothes, discarded her robe onto the floor.

"I want to touch every part of you," Tom whispered, sliding his palm over the curve of her waist to settle on her hip. "Kiss every part." He moved his mouth down her throat, tonguing the hollow between her collarbones. He continued down, planting a line of kisses between her breasts and down her belly. "Taste every part." He looked up at her flushed face, then gently opened her legs and put his face between them.

The sensation of his kiss there, wet on wet, was unprecedented: so soft, yet it felt like his tongue was dancing on raw nerves. Sybil gasped, swore, thrust upward. "Yes, my darling, yes," Tom breathed, his hands anchoring her hips, feeling like he was about to let go himself. He loved finding new ways to stoke her. Sybil reached down to caress his hair, then had to stop herself from pulling it as his mouth found an especially sensitive spot. Her hand opened and closed, gathering up the sheet next to her.

He fumbled a little, gauging how intense he could be by her sounds and movements, reveling in her taste, the way she'd whimper and squirm when he circled his tongue in a certain way, or touched a certain place. Soon something deep within her rose to the surface, and she let out a shuddering cry and grasped his shoulders to bring him up and guide him inside her, moaning his name over and over as she spasmed around him. Tom felt himself beginning to unravel and moved to separate from her before he lost control completely, but Sybil wrapped her legs and arms around him more tightly, holding him inside. "It's all right," she whispered.

"Are you sure? What day - " He gritted his teeth. God, it was hard to be responsible sometimes. Especially right now.

"It's fine," she said. "We're fine."

He moved hard and fast then, mashing his mouth against her shoulder to stifle his own cries, and finally he collapsed on her, both of them slick with sweat and utterly wrung out.

They lay still for a while, and then Sybil said: "I love you. So very much."

He kissed the side of her neck. "And I love you," he said, "So very -" kissing her cheek - "very -" her forehead - "much." He rolled off her, their moist flesh clinging, and Sybil laughed lightly.

"We're sticking together. Literally."

"This is not typical, I hope you realize. Ireland's hardly ever this hot."

"I think we're handling it rather well."

"We are incredibly resourceful people."

Not resourceful as much as flexible, Sybil thought. They had to be easygoing, with both of them working and limited resources. The flat was always a wreck; meals were usually pulled together or bought in the pub or on the street; she'd cut her hair mainly to avoid having to do much with it. She occasionally felt a twinge of conscience at being such a rubbish homemaker. Not that Tom cared, or even seemed to notice most of the time. "So how was your day?" She asked, wanting to perform at least that good wife's duty.

"Busy. The RIC's on edge now since Smyth was killed - Collins' outfit is making it hot for them. So I've been looking into that for a story."

"Well, be careful." Sybil sighed. "I wish this could be done without killing. A lot of those men are just trying to do their jobs."

Tom chuckled mirthlessly. "You might not have as much sympathy if you knew what they're doing."

"Try me." It was an ongoing debate with them, how much Tom felt he should tell her of the information he dug up in the course of his work. Sybil couldn't help but love him for trying to shield her from ugliness, but there wasn't much point. It found its way to her easily enough at the hospital.

"Making arrests. Harassing people they think are operatives, or even just sympathizers." He paused. "People have been killed. We're in a war, Sybil."

"Like it or not." She sighed again and laid her hand on his chest, playing with the hair there. "Seems like we just got out of one and now we're in the middle of another."

"Well, it could all be avoided if your lot would just hand us back our country," Tom said, his tone lightening.

"My lot!" Sybil laughed. "So I'm always to be answering for the sins of my countrymen."

Tom sobered at that. "I hope not." He thought of rumblings he'd heard about actions against Protestants and British nationals in the countryside. It wouldn't be her, though. She wasn't one of them anymore. He snapped back to the present. "You're practically an honorary Irishwoman. You've an Irish name now, after all."

"That's true." She rolled over to her side and he rolled with her, the two of them nestling together, the heat somehow not as bothersome now. Tom wrapped his arm around her, his palm lightly on her belly. He could still smell her on his lips, and noticing that made him stiffen a little. Maybe...

Sybil's words pulled him back from where his thoughts had been heading. "I just don't want to go back to treating men's bullet wounds and helping them learn to move around again after their legs have been amputated. I'll do it, of course. But I don't want to have to."

"Maybe it won't come to that." Tom moved his hand to her hair, stroking her head, the back of her neck.

"Fighting in the streets of Dublin, you mean?"

"Or any widespread fighting at all. It's mostly guerrilla actions now; there's still some hope for a peaceful settlement."

"I hope you're right." She yawned and closed her eyes. Soon her breathing lengthened and deepened, but Tom remained awake. He didn't really believe what he'd said about a peaceful resolution, though of course one could always hope. At this moment it didn't matter. He could lie here with his wife in his arms, satisfied and happy, and pretend that none of it would ever matter. Until tomorrow.