Author's note
Story inspired by this post from the Imagine your OTP blog on Tumblr:
Imagine your OTP sleeping in bed together, and Person A wakes up first. Person B is usually the one who wakes up first and makes them breakfast but Person A decides to give Person B a break and goes downstairs to make breakfast themselves.
Originally published to mark St Patrick's Day.
Breakfast in bed
Sunlight slanted into their bedroom, hitting their bed with a shaft of gold. Sybil stirred and slowly opened her eyes. She rolled over and looked at her husband who was still sound asleep - Tom's eyes were flickering under his eyelids and she wondered what he was dreaming about. Getting out of bed, and heading towards their little kitchen, Sybil lit the gas on the stove and set the kettle boiling…
They had only been married for a few weeks, and Sybil still couldn't quite believe she was waking up in their little flat in Dublin, rather than in the sumptuous but smothering surrounds of Downton Abbey. Somewhere she could be entirely herself, and not what someone else told her she should be. Somewhere she could give herself completely to the man who had been her best friend for years and who had recently become so much more - her husband, her lover, her guide. Somewhere they could share a life which was so unfamiliar but already so full of purpose, with her new job at the Rotunda Maternity Hospital teaching her more every day than she had learnt in her life until then.
As the kettle started to boil, Sybil put some slices of bread under the little grill and reached to the back of the cupboard to get down the raspberry jam. Soon she had everything ready - she'd made her very first breakfast in bed for them, another little milestone in their life together.
Tom was just starting to wake up as she came back, and he smiled at Sybil as she came in - "Morning, beautiful girl" - and watched her set the tray down on the bed. With her unruly curls falling over her shoulder as she buttered his toast, she looked much more delicious to him than anything else could be just then. He remembered their loving the night before, after they'd met some friends for a couple of drinks - the way that Sybil's hair had fallen across them both as she kissed him, how she had cried out his name as her pleasure overwhelmed her. With those images still in his mind, the cheeky grin he knew his wife couldn't resist came onto his face. "Sybil, darling - do you know what I would really like for breakfast?"