prompts: actions to make them laugh & not letting them go when hugging

(set in 2e1 & contains dialogue belonging to JF)

Cora was reading her book when he came in. His brisk closing of the door moved the cold air from his dressing room into the slightly warmer air of her bedroom. Cora felt the small draught on her upper arms. The newer fashions allowed high slits in the sleeves of her night dresses, exposing even her full shoulders. Cora liked it.

Robert took off his dressing gown in silence. Cora noticed that something was on his mind, distracting him from the warm and welcoming atmosphere in her room. She abandoned her reading.

"Is anything the matter?" she asked.

Robert sighed a little. "Nothing," he said while pulling the sleeves of the cream-coloured dressing gown off his arms. "Except that today has shown me I'm not only a worthless man, but also a bad-tempered and ungrateful one." Cora listened to him attentively. His dramatic words both amused and irked her a little.

"But we all know that," she gave back and a smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth. She hoped it would make him laugh or at least smile. He shouldn't sulk. Surely, he saw that too. But his reaction was meagre. While he had been looking into the distance before, he turned his head now at her words and looked at her. He exhaled through his nose as he reciprocated her smile, but just very weakly. His brooding expression was back in an instant. He wasn't joking and her words didn't take away from his gloom.

Cora's smile vanished after she observed him smilingly for a moment. "Can I help?" she asked softly. She sensed he maybe needed a gentler reassurance. She didn't like seeing him like this.

Robert gave her a short look again and then put down his dressing gown on the armchair by her bed. He sighed and dragging his feet, went to the bed. He didn't answer her question. It had to mean that his mood and thoughts were worse than Cora believed initially.

"I wonder how Sybil is feeling," she mused. She had serious thoughts as well, and a part of her hoped that voicing these thoughts would take away from Robert's own struggles.

"The war's reaching its long fingers into Downton and scattering our chicks. But I'm glad we've made peace with Matthew," he responded while he turned up the bed covers.

"I agree. Let us give thanks to Sir Richard for distracting Mary at just the right moment," Cora emphasised. She threw her book onto the bedside table as she watched her husband getting into bed beside her. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her and her eyes were glued to the back of his head. A short image flashed before her eyes, how she brushed her hands through his short curls and tugged at them as his lips explored her cheek and neck. Not right now, she realised. She focused again on the topic at hand and remembered something to add. "By the way, she wants him to come and stay. So we can all meet him."

Robert's attention was immediately on her again. With an audible inhale, he turned to her. The absurdity of Mary's affiliation with Sir Richard put an expression of amusement on Robert's face. "She wants us to invite a hawker of newspaper scandal to stay as a guest in this house?" Cora knew he wasn't really amused. She looked at him from under her lashes as his intense look rested on her face with every word he enounced clearly. "It's lucky I have a sense of irony."

She lay down on her side with her arm under her head and looked at him. He pulled off his slippers. Cora could guess from his hunched posture that his mind was still clouded by gloom. She wished for easier times with better news if it was just for him. The constant worry did him no good.

When he finally sank into the sheets, turning off the lights with one hand, Cora's arms were around him at once, enveloping him together with the darkness. A little sound of surprise escaped him but he didn't say anything and just patted her arm. Cora breathed in the scent of his neck with her face at the neckline of his shirt. She was out of wise things to say and hoped this gesture of affection instead would help him at least a little. He didn't push her away and he didn't seek another sleeping position, which was already a good sign.

"You smell good," Robert commented out of the blue.

"I took a bath. And O'Brien put a new fragrance in my hair. Do you like it?"

"Yes. It is quite nice."

Cora squeezed him lightly as a rush of glee went through her. It was dark out in the world, but Cora believed that this didn't prevent personal luck per se. Why couldn't it be true for Robert too? He lay there unmoving with his arm loosely around Cora's body. Was he happy to hold her, she wondered. Did it make his heart the tiniest bit lighter?

She breathed a kiss to his partly uncovered collarbone. She heard Robert sigh. There was a thought that ran around and around in her head. It ran circles like it needed to be voiced out loud.

I am glad the war isn't taking you away from me.

But she didn't dare say it out loud. The cause of her happiness was the root of his hurt. At least, it was what partly upset him. But the situation in general wasn't rosy right now.

So instead, Cora pressed her lips to his neck again and held him close, trying not to suffocate him with her affection. It was then that he actively hugged her back, pulling her closer to him. Cora smiled into his neck. Maybe her affection helped him nevertheless.

"Do you think this lurid Sir Richard only wants to visit to find new cannon fodder for his newspaper? Hoping to unveil scandals in the aristocracy?" Robert asked into the dark. His mind still seemed to turn around Mary's supposed suitor.

"Do you think he is in for finding that the most scandalous thing in this house is the Lord and Lady themselves sharing a bed?" she gave back. Her pronunciation was lazy and the words were slightly slurred. It was a late hour already anyway.

Robert snorted at her words. She did manage to make him laugh, after all, Cora realised.

"Are we really that scandalous, my dear?" he asked lowly, trying to hide the tone of amusement in his voice.

"Oh, we actually do more scandalous things even," she remarked. She felt safer joking now that she knew he was a bit more aboard. "But I don't plan on letting Sir Richard know." She poked him in the side. His following laugh rumbled in his chest and gave Cora the confidence to lift her head a bit and nibble at his collarbone to tease him.

"My dear Lady Grantham. Are you working on giving the scandal some substance?" Robert mocked.

"Shhh, shhh," she shushed him. "There's no scandal if no one's seen or heard anything," she explained. She brushed her cold fingers over his waist where the tiniest bit of skin was exposed. "And do you see anything?" she asked into the dark room. Cora heard his head moving from side to side on the pillow. She grinned.

"No," he whispered after a moment.

"Good," she breathed into his ear. Her hand moved upwards beneath his nightshirt. He shivered slightly under her touch. "And do you hear anything?" she whispered as silently as possible as her leg locked his hips tightly to her.

His lips connected with her pulse point at her neck. Cora yelped voicelessly at the unexpected attack.

They spent the rest of the night as silent as possible. After all, this was no house of scandal. Right?