A/N: This is set before the story begins, probably a little over a month after Jude moves to London. It also contains what is arguably the most explicit sex scene I've ever published, so that's a thing. (That's not saying much, writing sex scenes makes me very uncomfortable so I don't do it very often)


"Aside from the tuning, it's really not too different from the guitar," Lucas said casually as he plucked out a melody on the mandolin. "Neck's smaller, obviously, so the angle's a bit different for the chords, but I think you'd pick it up quick." He held the instrument out to Jude. "Want to give it a try?"

She took it from his hands and held it. He leaned in close, gently adjusting the position of her wrist. She felt a tingle of electricity where his hand touched hers, and something in her chest squeezed. Don't think of him, she thought, even as the memory flashed in her mind of Tommy with his arm around her at the lake, the fluttering in her 15-year-old chest. A lifetime ago.

She focused her attention firmly back on the instrument, the strange new feeling of the mandolin strings under her fingers. She strummed a few times. You've gotta coax them out, gently. She shook her head slightly against the memory and turned to look at Lucas. His eyes were blue, like hers (like his), but a darker color. Deep blue, his eyelashes long and dark. He had a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. She smiled. "It's a great sound, those doubled strings."

"Lovely, right?" he agreed with a smile. "Don't ever get a chance to play it in the studio, but I love it."

"Is this you trying to get me to write a song with a mandolin part you can record?" she joked. "Is that why you brought me here?"

He gave a laugh. "Well, I wouldn't complain."

She handed the mandolin back to him and he placed it back in its case and set it on the floor next to the couch. "When did you learn mandolin?" she asked.

"'Bout five years now, maybe?" he answered, looking back at her. He shrugged. "To be honest, I don't remember. There was a while when I was on a new instrument every week, and I think that's when I first picked up mandolin. I was playing anything I could get my hands on, but I couldn't commit to one for long. I was determined to learn to play everything, I think." He laughed. "A bit impractical of me, that ambition. Mandolin had staying power, though."

"How many instruments do you actually play?" she asked, surprised.

Lucas shrugged again. "Oh, dunno, haven't really counted."

Jude shook her head, looking at him in disbelief. "I hate you."

He laughed. "You don't mean that."

"No, I really do," she joked. "You come in as a drummer, then you show me up on guitar, now I find out you play so many different instruments you can't count them? I officially hate you."

"Well that's a right shame," he said, leaning in close again, his voice suddenly low, "seeing as I think you're brilliant."

Her pulse quickened, and she bit her lip. Don't think of him.

"Jude," Lucas said her name softly. "Do you know how incredibly beautiful you look right now?"

His gaze was intense, and heat crept up her neck, muscles clenching in her belly. Don't think of him. "Lucas…" she breathed.

"I would very much like to kiss you," he whispered, his face only a few inches from hers.

She felt guilt twist in her stomach, the sensation that she was betraying something, someone. Don't think of him, she told herself, firmly this time. He's not yours anymore. You're not his. You're not anyone's. She reached out a hand, placing it on the side of Lucas's face.

And she kissed him, his hand on the back of her neck. When she broke the kiss, her lips tingled and her heart was pounding. It was a good kiss, one she'd been trying not to want since the day she first saw him play guitar, since he first gave her his crooked smile and complimented her song in his lilting Dublin accent. She opened her eyes to look at him, and he looked back with those deep blue eyes, his hand still on her neck. She whispered, "Lucas, I…" She hesitated for a moment, the desire warring in her with the irrational guilt. "I think I would like to do a lot more than kiss you."

His smile was slow and wide and brilliant, and he leaned forward to kiss her again.

She didn't think of him.

Lucas pulled her up from the little couch, too short for his tall frame. She pulled her shirt over her head and he did the same with his, wrapping his arms around her. His skin was warm against hers. He pulled her to his bed, really just a queen-sized mattress on the floor in the corner of his loft. It was a fairly big apartment for the center of London, but it had no walls save the ones around the tiny bathroom. He had no furniture other than the ratty love seat couch, the mattress, and a small chest of drawers. There was no table, no chairs, but there was an old baby grand piano in the center of the room, guitars and other instruments in cases and on stands lining the walls, a drum set, a djembe in the corner. When Jude had walked into the apartment, her first thought had been that Lucas really lived like a true musician. She laughed a little at the thought as she sat down on the edge of his mattress, pulling him down with her.

Lucas looked at her quizzically. "What?" he asked as he leaned forward, pushing her back so she was laying on the bed with him on top of her, carefully holding his weight so he wasn't crushing her. "What's funny?" He ran his fingers lightly along her collarbone, her shoulder, down her arm. She shivered at the touch.

"Nothing," she answered, entwining their fingers. "Your hands have even more callouses than mine."

"Is that bad?" he asked, pulling his hand out of hers to trail it down her ribs and across her stomach, the rough pads of his fingers raising goosebumps on her skin.

"No," she laughed breathlessly. She moved, pushing him so he was laying flat on the bed, and climbed on top of him, her fingers going quickly to the button of his jeans.

It was strange, having sex with someone else. Not bad, but very different. She was used to being with someone she knew, someone who knew her body almost better than she did. With Lucas there was more fumbling, more clumsiness, more awkwardness than she was used to. She tried not to compare…

She didn't think of him. She didn't think of him. She thought too much about not thinking of him, so she kissed Lucas fiercely, demanded faster harder more and he complied. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, felt skin peel off under her nails. Lucas gave a grunt, but didn't complain.

And then sensation overwhelmed her determined willpower and she let him in, let herself think of him, picture his eyes, his lips, his hands, only for a few seconds. She cried out, came hard enough to see stars. Lucas panted "Wait, wait, fuck, not yet," and she clung to him, her fingers still woven through his hair, her other hand entwined with his where he pressed it into the pillows. He buried his face in her neck, gave a muffled moan, his grip on her hand tightening for a moment before he went still, collapsed with his full weight on her for a few heavy panting breaths before he pulled out of her and rolled off onto the bed beside her.

Cold air rushed in in his absence and she lay still, boneless, her head spinning. She stared up at the ceiling and thought of him murmuring "I love you" into her skin. Her chest tightened, a lump forming in her throat, a wave of grief filling her up as the aftershocks of the orgasm faded. Next to her, Lucas shifted, sat up, then stood, walking over to throw away the condom. She pulled the blanket up to her chest as tears filled her eyes and she tried to fight them back. "Bloody hell," Lucas laughed as he came back over to the bed. She glanced at him to see him looking over his shoulder at the scratches on his back. "You've really got some fingernails."

"Sorry," she said softly, her voice tight.

"Don't be," he laughed. "That was–" he cut off as he turned back to her, saw the tears on her cheeks. "Whoa," he said, concerned, sitting down on the bed. "You alright, Jude?"

She nodded. "I'm fine." But as she said the words, a sob forced its way from her throat.

"Whoa," he said again, looking freaked out now. "Are you… Really, do you need–"

"No, I'm okay," she insisted, even as she couldn't stop her crying. She sat up, put her head in her hands and tried to keep her breathing even.

Lucas reached out as if to put a hand on her back, but she let out another sob and he pulled it back before touching her. "Is there anything I can…"

She shook her head. "No, it's fine, I'm good, I'm okay."

"Do you, er… just always cry after, or…"

Jude let out a laugh at that, through her tears. "No," she answered, shaking her head. She thought of the last time, laying curled up with Tommy and sobbing into his chest until all her tears had been used up. He had cried too, though he'd tried to hide it from her. In the whole time she'd known him, she'd only seen him cry once before that, a few tears shed when he talked about Angie, and seeing him cry because of her had broken her heart. She pulled her knees up to her chest and let herself cry harder, giving in to it for a minute. Eventually she took a deep breath, her crying slowing.

"Not exactly an ego boost, that," Lucas said after a moment as her tears stopped. "It's… never really the goal, you know, to make a woman cry."

"Oh God, Lucas, no, it's not you," she insisted, sniffling and wiping her eyes with one hand. She reached over to put her other hand on his arm for a moment. "Seriously, you're great, you're… This was good. It was amazing, actually, I just… I promise, this isn't about you. I don't know where the crying came from, it's… It's complicated, I'm so sorry."

Lucas tilted his head, still looking concerned. "Complicated," he repeated slowly.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a second and took a deep breath, then said, "So I haven't…" she sighed. "This was the first time I, uh…"

"Oh." He sounded shocked, and she looked over at him. His eyes were wide. "Jesus, really? You were–"

"Oh, no," she cut him off, quickly, realizing his misunderstanding. "I didn't mean first first time, no, I just…" she bit her lip, then decided to just say it. "Okay so I was, um… I was with someone. In Toronto. It was… we were…" She sighed. "Anyway, you're, uh, the first person I've been with since him." She didn't add that he was also the only person she'd been with besides Tommy.

"Ah," Lucas sighed. "Yeah, I wondered."

"Wondered what?" she asked, surprised.

"If you'd just been through some sort of a bad split. You have the look about you."

"'The look'?" she quoted incredulously.

He shrugged. "You look sad when you think no one's watching. Like, sort of… wistful, I guess, nostalgic, but really sad. And the way you sing, sometimes, and certain lyrics. I didn't know, I just wondered."

She sighed, lay back on the pillows and shut her eyes for a long moment, then said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

She looked up at him. He was sitting close now, leaning back on his arm and looking down at her. He looked concerned, and she felt a surge of guilt. "You're great, Lucas. I mean it, I really… I like you a lot, but I'm not ready for… I know I should be over him, I'm trying to be… But I'm not looking for a relationship right now. I just… I can't. I'm sorry."

To her surprise, he laughed. "Did I say that's what I wanted?"

She propped herself up on her elbows. "What?"

"Jude, love, you're wonderful, truly. You're an amazingly talented musician, you're funny, you're beautiful, but this wasn't…" He shook his head. "I'd like to get to know you better, and I'd love to keep making music together. I also certainly," he lowered his voice a little, trailing his eyes over her body for a moment before looking back to her face, "wouldn't object to doing this again, but I never said I was looking for a relationship."

"Oh." She found herself feeling embarrassed, and actually a little insulted, though she tried to push that irrational feeling away.

Lucas sighed, looking away. "Alright, honestly, I… I'm no stranger to bad breakups myself. I said you have the look? Well, there's a reason I recognized it."

"Oh. How long ago?" she asked, quietly.

"Nearly six months, now." He sighed again. "But we were together for almost three years before…" He shook his head. "It was… really, really bad."

"How bad?"

She half-expected he might get angry at the personal questions, but maybe she was just too used to Tommy's defensively private personality, because Lucas just laughed, a little darkly. "Bad enough I left Ireland. Not just my flat, not just Dublin, the whole fuckin' country."

"Shit."

He laughed again. "Yeah. Yeah, it was." He looked back down at her. "That wasn't why you came to London, though, was it, your breakup?"

She bit her lip and shook her head. "Sort of the other way around."

He gave her a sympathetic look. "An ocean away is a lot to try long distance."

"That's not exactly…" she started, but then she shook her head when she felt tears threatening again. "It was more complicated than that, but yeah. It is." She closed her eyes for another long moment, taking a deep breath before looking back at him. "Sounds like you had it worse, though."

He smiled wryly. "Yeah, probably. I would hope so, for your sake."

"What happened? If you don't mind me asking."

He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Caught her in bed with my brother."

"Oh, God," Jude said, appalled. "That's…"

"Yeah." He shook his head. "You know, the worst part of it is that I'll never get that image out of my fuckin' head, my fuckin' brother bollock naked, on top of…" He grimaced. "Anyway, she left me for him, and I left. Went as far as I could think to go. I got to London and tried busking for a while at first, you know, playing in the tube or wherever, which was actually really fun. Doesn't exactly pay the rent, though, and the money I had saved was gone fast, in this city. I was on the verge of selling some of my instruments so I could keep a roof over me when I got the job at Bermondsey." He looked thoughtful. "Really, I suppose I should thank the pair of them. This job's the best I've ever had. Playing music all day, working with amazing musicians." As he said that part, he glanced down at her with a smile. "My name's not on the albums, but that's not what matters. The music's what matters. London's brilliant, terrific music scene, I even got a deal on a baby grand last month." He gestured to the piano. "What more do you need?"

Jude smiled, impressed again by his dedication to the music, his talent, his sincerity. "So you're going to thank her?" she joked.

Lucas laughed loudly, throwing his head back. "No fuckin' way. Hope she burns in hell." He turned, laying back down next to her, his hands linked behind his head. "So anyway," he said after a moment, turning his head to look at her, "I've not been too interested in relationships myself, recently."

Jude bit her lip for a second, looking at him, then said, "So… what, then? What… are we?"

He smirked at her. "Have you ever been told you think too much?" She frowned, and he smiled. "Why label it? We make music, we go out and get plastered, sometimes I let you take half the skin off my back. What more do you need?"

Jude rolled her eyes. "I did not scratch you that badly."

"You did!" He laughed, sitting up and showing her the red lines her nails had made on his back. "I think they might scar!"

"Oh, shut up," Jude said, sitting up and running her fingers gently over the slightly raised scratches. "Don't be a baby," she teased, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to one of his shoulder blades, "I barely even drew blood."

Lucas laughed again, and the sound made her smile. He turned to her and shook his head, "Oh, Jude Harrison," he said her name softly, smiling at her as he placed a hand on the side of her face, pulled her face towards his and kissed her, "you are trouble, aren't you?"

She laughed and pushed him back down onto the bed, leading down to kiss his collar bone, his jaw, the corner of his mouth. "Let's find out," she murmured in his ear.

Lucas's skin was warm, his skilled, calloused fingers gentle on her skin. He kissed her, and for once she didn't think of Tommy.


A/N: So apparently I find this Jude/Lucas relationship a lot more compelling than I originally planned, because I've written like five of these in the last week, pretty much tracing the whole course of these two being together. It messes up the extras format a bit, but that's alright. I enjoyed writing them.