Moments like This
A/N: Hello! Here's another M/M drabble, prompted by francuskiakcent on Tumblr. Enjoy!
March 1920
Young springtime leaves crackled noisily beneath Matthew's boots; pale green speckled with spots of brown, as he strode idly in the direction of Downton Abbey, the chill in the air fresh and sharp on his face. It was a Friday afternoon, he'd finished early at the law office … and, quite without his own volition, his feet had carried him to the Abbey rather than Crawley House, as they tended to do so very often these days …
A gentle smile lit his face as his thoughts wandered inevitably to her – but then again, when did they not? Scarcely an hour passed when she wasn't at the forefront of his thoughts … while meeting with clients, sifting through stacks of case briefs and ledgers and thumbing enormous books that made him sneeze when he opened them … she was there, always, somewhere at the back of his mind, wondering what she was doing at that very moment; grinning over a silly incident at the office, and imagining her reaction to it … his heart swelling with warm excitement at the thought of seeing her at dinner in only a few hours (however painfully, indeterminably long); resplendently attired in those fine new fashions that temptingly displayed her neck and shoulders at their most stunning …
It so happened that at that very moment, he came upon the object of his imaginings; seated on that dear bench under the old Lebanon cedar that had witnessed so much of their past – absorbed in a novel, her hair a little windswept, becomingly blown across her forehead.
"My darling!"
"Matthew!" Her dark eyes sparkled in welcome, and she rose instantly to adorn his cheek with a fond kiss. "Darling, what are you doing here?" she asked, as he settled himself down beside her, their fingers linking together.
"I finished early back at the office, and – well, I had to see you," he said shyly, with an endearingly soft smile, his heart fluttering in his chest at the faint blush that coloured her cheeks.
"I feel quite flattered," Mary twinkled. "Mama and Granny absolutely refuse to stop wittering on about writing the wedding invitations, you see, so I had to get out here by myself for a bit."
"And are you glad of the change of company?" he asked, his thumb tenderly playing over the delicate diamond ring glittering on her slim finger, placed there only two blissful months ago …
"Hm – very much so …" Her voice dipped lower as she leaned nearer to him, his darling smile and blue eyes shimmering with adoration utterly impossible to resist – "In fact, darling, I'd like to demonstrate how very glad I am of it, if you would be so kind as to oblige me with …"
She hadn't quite finished her sentence – she didn't need to – his hand was already lightly cupping her cheek, his thumb lovingly caressing its smooth expanse, before their lips met for that inevitable moment; softly slipping together, gently gliding … the fact that their location was hardly secluded, and the very high probability of someone walking past entirely wiped out of their minds, as they took deeper tastes, ever more eagerly, of what they had only dreamed of for so very, very long – the golden promise that this was now theirs to savour, for all time …
They parted reluctantly for want of breath, the last points of contact between skin still lingering as though unwillingly to be drawn apart, hearts surging with an anticipation that told all too truly that in little over a month, such pleasures – and much more of them – would be completely their own … after it had so nearly not been …
Mary rested her head against him, smiling into his shoulder as she felt several kisses crown the top of her head.
"This feels somewhat familiar, doesn't it," she mused softly, thinking back to another time long ago, seemingly in another lifetime entirely, when a much younger boy and girl had sat in a – rather less openly affectionate manner – an invitation to see more of each other¸ as darling Matthew had put it … a remembrance of their innocent, tentative flirtations that they'd been so excited by. Little did they know that … that was just the beginning.
How very far they'd both come since then.
"Moments like this … and yet, in some ways, it doesn't."
"Hm – quite so, my love," Matthew whispered into her hair, the stray, windblown chestnut strands tickling his face. "And I'm sure we'll have many more moments like this to come – darling, you can't imagine just how happy I am that we're going to be married at last …" He tilted her face up with devoted affection, bestowing new kisses upon her forehead – gentle, promising, anticipating …
But oh, she could imagine, and did, because of everything that might have torn them apart from the other half of themselves forever, from the one person they each loved and trusted more than anyone in all the world … because of the sweetness of their present that somehow buried everything that had ensued since that moment when they had parted here under this tree, near this little wooden bench … a chasm ripped between their broken hearts, now healed and whole because they were together.
Wonderfully, delightfully together.
The little bench was a quiet well of memory that had silently seen moments of both despair and delight – and many, many more of them to come.
Moments like this.
A/N: Thanks for reading! I would love to hear what you thought!