@lorelaigilmore became my adopted secret santa! em prompted “jean/lucien + i have waited for you for such a long time” and below is what i came up with. happy holidays, em and thanks for being such a huge part of our tiny fandom! your enthusiasm and energy keeps us all going!
3450 words; soulmate AU
Perhaps it sounded romantic: walking the world alone, forever twenty-five, and waiting, waiting, waiting for your soulmate. The legend went that the gods of old took pity upon the agony and suffering of mankind and promised them a soulmate, the perfect person with whom your life could be lived out and shared. So, while the humans slept, the gods descended upon them and like a warm whisper, simultaneously cursed and blessed them and every generation that followed.
You would simply turn twenty-five and stop aging until you met your soulmate. And then, as the stories told, you would feel the crackle and tingle of electricity as your lips touched theirs and your cells would come bursting to life with activity once more. Your skin cells would shed, your hair grow, cells would die and regenerate and you would age and live out the rest of your lives together: aging and in tandem.
Most found their soulmates within a few years. Soulmates, after all, were those you cried out for, the ones you grew up with, the ones you longed for. The longest someone had ever waited was fifty-three years. When Alice Harvey finally–finally–met Matthew Lawson, she just knew. As she later confessed to the reporters who hounded them, desperate for a story to lift the spirits of lonely souls everywhere: He was waiting for me and I was waiting for him. Someone had to stop waiting and go looking.
She had traveled from New York to London to Sydney to Melbourne to Ballarat, simply following her heart straight to him. Alice, on the arm of a beaming and shellshocked Matthew, had joked, “I had all the time in the world. I could afford a little walking, a little adventure.” She held the record for “Longest Soulmate Wait” but she preferred the accolade of Matthew Lawson’s soulmate best.
And then, stealing her record and baffling the world, Lucien Blake turned twenty-five and the world stopped turning for him for eighty-seven years.
At first, Lucien was confident, cocky. He was a good looking bloke, twenty-five, indestructible, cocky, and from a privileged home. Surely, surely his soulmate was simply around the corner, waiting for him, waiting for the best parts of their lives to being.
On the day of his twenty-fifth birthday, he kissed Monica Parker through a sure grin, confident he would feel the tingle of bursting cells, his mother’s engagement ring sat heavy in his pocket, waiting to be lifted and placed on her finger.
But the kiss, while as warm and wet and pleasurable as he could ask for, was just that: a kiss.
No tingle. No crackle. No electricity.
He pulled away, frowning. “I’m so sorry, Monica. But I–you’re–we’re not–”
But she had put a finger to his lips, a sad smile on her face and shook her head at him. “No, we’re not.” It was the first of many disappointments in Lucien’s life, a soulmate just out of reach.
When he returned home, his father–looking older than he had in some time–simply put a heavy, comforting hand on his shoulder, eyes sad and distant. “Perhaps it’s better this way, son. Perhaps it’s better to not find her.”
Lucien stared at his father. Thomas, who had lost his soulmate so soon after finding her, who had waited and waited for years only to spend a fraction of his life with her. Perhaps his father was right–a soulmate was something that stopped you from living. You could live forever, travel everywhere, do everything. He didn’t need love, didn’t need a soulmate.
He nodded at his father, thinking. “Perhaps.”
Upstairs in the quiet comfort of his bedroom, he slipped his mother’s engagement ring into his bedside drawer where it would remain for the next eighty-seven years. The soft click of the drawer, encasing the ring in darkness, echoed the closing of his heart. A soulmate was not for him, but life–life–was.
The next day, he traveled to Edinburgh and began his formal medical training. Life was waiting.
For eighty-six years and six months, Lucien Blake walked the world alone. Medical school in Edinburgh, residency in London, fellowship in France. Then, onto the military, enlisting in the Army and fighting beside his fellow countrymen. At each stop along the way, he saw man after man, woman after woman, find their soulmate.
He watched as sleek brown and blonde hair turned frizzy and gray, smooth skin turn wrinkly, and unadorned left ring fingers become encircled with bands of gold and silver and diamond and emeralds and sapphires.
But he, Lucien, remained free and young and youthful. There had been moments in which he was sure–so sure–that he had found her. Mei Lin had filled his heart with wonder and adventure and excitement. Her kisses were hot and searching and left him gasping for air, wanting nothing more than to lean back in and drink her up.
But his face remained smooth and ageless and Mei Lin kissed him soundly, murmuring against his lips that just because they weren’t soulmates didn’t mean they couldn’t have a good time.
When he made love to her, it took on a desperation that had never been there before–as if he could fuck his way into making her his soulmate. For the first time in his long, long life Lucien felt desperate and lonely. He wanted to move on to the next chapter of his life.
But that aching, hollow, empty feeling that loneliness sometimes leaves sat in his chest and his father’s words from long ago echoed in his mind: Perhaps it’s better this way. Perhaps it’s better to not find her.
And when he received the note the next morning that his father had passed away, he took it as a sign that he needed to come home, that his father had reached out and reminded him with his last breath that soulmates were for suckers.
He kissed Mei Lin goodbye and wished her good luck as he gathered his pants and shirt and shoes and headed for the airport–only his wallet and clothes in hand. The flight home had never felt so long.
Jean Beazley, his father’s housekeeper, was shockingly beautiful. A young, smooth face, curled hair, and stunning eyes that seemed to pierce through you, see into your heart and size you up before you had time to utter your name.
Her eyes were narrowed as she took in his disheveled appearance and she ignored his outstretched hand of introduction and simply stepped aside to let him in. “I know who you are,” she said, simply. And for the first time in a long time, it felt like she did know who he was–perhaps better than he knew himself.
They stood in the hallway of his childhood home, the ghost of his father hovering in the walls, and Lucien felt his heart pick up speed. Was this her? He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this pull towards someone before–as if an invisible golden thread connected them.
As they walked to the kitchen, exchanging introductions and pleasantries, Lucien couldn’t help but notice the way they orbited one another, balanced each other. For each flick of his eyes towards her, she would turn away. For each furtive glance she snuck, he would avert his gaze. Yin and yang.
Lucien was getting ready to take a chance–one last chance–to ask if she had been waiting, too. Had she felt the pull between them? Had she been waiting as long as he had?
The words were rising up in his throat, sticking against his tongue, about to drop from his lips, his heart beating wildly, when he saw it: a wedding ring, glinting off her finger in the dim yellow light of the Blake kitchen.
The words dried up immediately, the hope dying in his chest.
Married.
Was he so lonely, so desperate, he was sensing connection where there wasn’t one?
He accepted the slightly shaking teacup and saucer she offered him with a smile and winked at her as he pulled out a flask from his coat pocket and added a splash of whiskey. He laughed at her shocked look and tucked the flash back in.
“You get to be my age and you learn to enjoy the consolations of life–however few they may be.”
Jean snorted into her cup before reaching over and plucking the flask from his coat, shaking it slightly and hearing the liquid slosh about. She quirked an eyebrow at him. “There seems to be rather a lot of consolation here.” Then, to his surprise, she unscrewed the cap and added a generous splash to her own cup before handing it back to him.
They clinked their teacups together and drank deeply, Jean grimacing at the burn of whiskey. Lucien hid a smile behind his cup.
Jean Beazley may just made it worth his while to stay in Ballarat. At least, he told himself, until he could understand this thread, this connection between them–wedding ring or no.
In the ensuing months, Lucien had never felt so frustrated, so challenged, so enamored by another human being before as he did with Jean Beazley.
Jean–who offered nothing of her personal life–but was was there pick and hover and thread herself into his own life. Jean–who wore a wedding ring–but never spoke of her husband. Jean–who learned how he liked his tea and who woke him with a gentle touch on the back of his neck when he fell asleep over a case file. Jean–who he was starting to lean on more and more, who he was falling in love with more and more each day. Jean–who agreed to be not his housekeeper, but his partner.
It was driving him crazy. She was driving him crazy. For almost eighty-seven years, he had accepted his fate of loneliness. That perhaps there was simply no one for him. And now, with the woman he felt he could hand his heart over to, the woman who he wanted to see sprout age lines around her eyes and see her curling brown hair streaked with grey–this woman was married.
He had dared to hope and that hope had been wadded up and thrown back in his face.
So he did what he had done for his entire life: he drank it all away.
Whiskey after whiskey at the club, he downed each one of them as if the burn from the alcohol could burn away his feelings. If he could forget her, he could move on. He could continue roaming the Earth alone, forget what it felt like to want a soulmate, to want her.
But then he remembered Jean’s soft confession from a few weeks ago, that she and her husband had wanted to travel before he fell ill; that she wanted to see the world. He would travel alone and see the wonders of the world, yes, but he would forever think of her, of Jean, and wish she was at his side, hand in his, seeing the wonder right alongside him.
The whiskey, he decided, wasn’t working. The tab paid, his vision blurring, his head fuzzy, and his heart aching in the way only alcohol could make it do, he stumbled home. Lucien wanted to fall into bed and wake up and have the strength to leave Ballarat, leave Jean.
Except, upon his rather loud and clumsy entrance into his home, he found himself face to face with an irate Jean Beazley.
He squinted at her, as if unable to believe she was there, standing in his hallway. But there she was, hands on her hips, and a glower firmly in place.
He groaned and slumped against the wall, sliding down it and looking up at her through blurry eyes. “Jean, please, just go. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
She squatted down in front of him, hand on his arm. There it was again–that hot, electric jolt all across his skin, as if he was coming back to life after a long, long sleep. Her hand crept over his arm and up to his face, tilting his head back so she could look at him. Her fingers pushed the stray curl of hair off his forehead and she shook her head at him.
“Oh, Lucien,” she sighed. There was something there–a sadness–to her voice that made Lucien keen, made him want to roll over and beg and plead and promise that he would do anything to make her happy again.
“What happened that you needed this?” She stood and tried to lift him, slinging his arm over her shoulders and behind her neck, and he went willingly, allowing her to lead him to the bedroom.
His brain whirled as he processed her question and he thought how he could tell her everything, even as he tumbled into bed and she pulled his shoes off and tucked him in. It came to him then and he grabbed her arm, stopping her from leaving.
The light from the hallway cut across her face, leaving her in half shadow and Lucien wished he could see her.
“I have waited,” he started, the words thick in his throat. “Such a long time for you. Almost eighty-seven years. And then I find you and you’re–” He broke off, chuckling in that dry, flat way when all you can do is laugh in the face of misery. “And you’re married. I have waited for you and you aren’t for me at all. I just wanted you.”
The alcohol caught up to him, then, and his eyes flickered closed and he turned over, mumbling into the pillow, “I just wanted you.”
With his back to her and his eyes closed, Lucien missed the way Jean’s face contorted, the way her fingers twisted at the thick gold band on her finger. All he knew was the heavy weight of a confession, of a burden, leaving his shoulders as he fell into a deep, alcohol-induced sleep.
The next morning, Lucien stumbled down the hallway, the events of the previous night flooding into his mind. He half-expected to see a note of resignation from Jean on the kitchen table. Perhaps this was the sign he needed: it was time to move on. There was nothing here for him. He had ruined the one good thing he did have.
However, instead of a note, he found Jean herself at his table, the tea kettle still gently steaming on the stove and two fresh cups of tea spread out on the surface of the table. Next to his cup stood a tall glass of water and a handful of white Bex tablets.
He took his seat beside Jean, sneaking glances at her over the rim of his teacup. With a contented sigh at the feel of the smooth tea soothing his throat and the Bex already working their magic, he slumped back in his chair, nervously tracing the rim of his cup with the tip of his finger.
Before his apology could bubble up from his lips and escape, Jean slid her wedding ring off her finger and placed it on the table between them. Lucien stared at the ring and then at Jean, mouth parted slightly.
Jean swallowed and began her tale. “I have hidden behind this ring for far too long, Lucien. I was married, yes, long ago. When Christopher and I met, he was my first love. I had never kissed another boy, had barely even touched one. My mother was old-fashioned–believed in saving myself, every part of myself–for my soulmate. When Christopher kissed me at twenty-five and slid his ring on my finger, it felt like he was my soulmate. Kissing was so nice and kissing Christopher felt right.”
Jean looked up at him then, tears stinging her eyes. “But I was so wrong, Lucien. We married and the years passed, but we never got older.”
Understanding dawned on Lucien’s face, the hope in his chest blooming once more and he leaned forward, covering Jean’s hand with his own. The crackle, the heat, of their combined touch slid up their arms and this time, like a veil had been lifted from his eyes, Lucien saw that Jean felt it, too. Jean shuddered and he tightened his grip on her.
Jean licked her lips and continued, eyes fixed on their joined hands. “We realized we had made a mistake–that we weren’t each other’s soulmates at all. We agreed to part ways and start over. But Lucien, I felt so, so ashamed. I had been so wrong. I thought about what my soulmate–my real soulmate–would say when he learned I hadn’t waited; when he learned that I couldn’t tell the difference between a nice kiss and a soulmate’s kiss.”
She shook her head at herself, wiping a tear from beneath her eye. She gave him a watery smile. “So I moved here and pretended that my soulmate had died. It was easier this way–to just pretend. It stopped the whispers and stares and speculations. But then,” she laughed. “Then I met you.”
She peered at him from beneath damp eyelashes. “I thought maybe it was just me. But then last night…”
Jean trailed off and Lucien scooted forward, his chair scraping against the linoleum floor and his large, calloused hand cupped her cheek, thumb wiping away a stray tear. “It wasn’t just you. Oh, Jean. It wasn’t just you at all.”
He wanted to tell her about how long he had walked the world, the things he had seen, the number of times he had given up hope of ever finding her. He wanted to tell her sometimes he felt like a scared little boy, afraid to be alone in the dark and desperately wishing for a hand to hold.
But his chest was tight and eighty-seven years of loneliness and longing seemed to be charged and electric within him and he lifted their joined hands to his lips, pressing a single solitary kiss to the place where their fingers entwined.
At the touch of his lips to her skin, both jolted as warmth and heat flooded through them. If this was what a simple kiss on the hand felt like…
Lucien traced her lips with his finger and Jean shuddered at his touch. “Please,” he croaked out. “Please let me kiss you. Please. I have waited–we–have waited so long, love.”
The endearment, the desperation, years of waiting all culminated into a single gesture: a nod.
Lucien seemed to sink against her–into her–their joined lips a point of contact as their bodies and souls cried out together. His lips covered hers and they drowned in the feel of light and life and a new beginning crashing over them.
She gasped at the sheer electricity his touch elicited and he took the opportunity to lick into her mouth, tasting tea and honey and lemon and Jean.
Jean’s hands anchored themselves on either side of his face, holding him to her and drinking from his lips, each kiss a fresh sip, each lave of her tongue quenching her thirst for him.
For the first time, they felt complete. For the first time, they were home.
Pulling away, breathless and happier than he had ever been in his entire life, laughter and happiness and love bubbling up from his chest, expressing itself as peppered kisses across Jean’s lips and cheeks and forehead and nose, Lucien felt everything click into place.
He pulled away, forehead resting on hers, and teased, “Do you think that was a soulmate’s kiss?”
She swatted his shoulder before grinning and pulling him closer to her by his robe’s lapel, lips slanting over his and laughing into his mouth. “Prat,” she murmured.
Their kisses were tinged with the taste of tea, the sunlight filtered in through the kitchen window and bathed them in a warmth of light that equaled the warmth of their union.
His father, Lucien decided was wrong. It wasn’t better to never have this, to never find this. Jean was his.
And she was worth every second, every year, of waiting.
Since it’s officially the 23rd in Australia, I present my gift for the Doctor Blake Secret Santa Exchange. This is for @lucienblakes, who gave me the following prompt: it's Christmas Eve and Lucien doesn't know if he'll be home in time for morning. I hope you enjoy, and wish you a very happy holiday!
A very happy Christmas to @thetucc, my giftee for TDBM Secret Santa! Since you let me pick the pairing, I used my advantage based on nice things you’ve said about past fic and gave you...
Matthew x Alice, 2500 words, The Doctor Blake Mysteries. Also on AO3.
I hope you like it!!
****
It’s strange, Alice thinks, how silence can sound so different with each person.
With Jean, silence is companionable, a sort of sisterhood that Alice isn’t used to but appreciates. The soon-to-be Mrs. Blake is efficient and kind, and the silence around her hums in a pleasant way.
With Lucien, silence is cheerful. It feels safe, just like he does; unusual for a man. Alice has never had a brother, but she thinks that it must be something like spending a quiet hour with Lucien in his parlor while Jean fixes tea.
But with Matthew...oh, silence is everything at once.
I.
She goes to him at night in the silent hospital room, returning when she knows he won’t have any other visitors. The staff doesn’t try to enforce the usual rules; after all, she’s a doctor.
Alice can’t say what brought her back, following his curt dismissal of her earlier concern. A strange curiosity, perhaps. She hadn’t given him much thought before as a coworker--he’s a good Superintendent, seems like a decent man. It’s not as though they chat much.
But lying pale and sweaty in that bed, pain etched into his features, Matthew has got her attention now. She wants to know more. She sees something in him she recognizes.
It didn’t hurt, when he brushed off her sympathy. She understood it.
And it’s very rare, for her to feel she understands someone else. Especially someone she barely knows.
So Alice sits in the antiseptic quiet of his room, watching him sleep, waiting until the next rounds begin. Trying to puzzle him out.
She slips away before the nurse’s bustling disturbs him.
Her scent lingers after her, and infiltrates his dreams.
II.
Their first real conversation occurs in the Blake home, after Alice joins the three of them for dinner.
The tableside discussion was lively, as it always was when Lucien baited Matthew and teased Jean, and the food delicious. Though Alice is relieved that Jean talked her out of learning to cook, there is still a part of her that envies her skills. Alice may know how to wield a scalpel, but to run a household as Jean Beazley does is a formidable talent.
Charlie is out, making them a foursome for after-dinner drinks. When Lucien and Jean retire--separately, but at the same time--Matthew offers to pour her another sherry.
She doesn’t want to go home. Her silent apartment isn’t nearly as warm--as happy--as she feels sitting on the couch with Matthew lightly interrogating her as a form of small talk.
Alice doubts he knows he’s doing it. Sometimes she conducts entire autopsies in her sleep; you can’t always leave the job behind.
Besides, she rather enjoys it, oddly. She’s not used to being the center of attention, but with Matthew it’s not so bad. He seems as curious about her as she is about him.
It’s nice that he’s interested. It’s nice to be found interesting.
“I’d love whiskey,” she tells him, instead of taking more sherry. He blinks, but recovers quickly and with a nod pours two fingers for her next to his own.
The quiet that settles between them is warmer after he hands her the drink, their fingertips brushing for a moment that is inconsequential and momentous at the same time.
A smile lights up Matthew's eyes as he sips.
When he offers to walk her home, Alice declines.
When he asks her out to dinner, she accepts.
III.
The summer air is thick and heavy as he walks her home after their fourth date. Alice is starting to wonder if he’s ever going to kiss her. If he even wants to.
Why would he keep asking her out if he weren’t interested? Could he just be that desperate for friendly company?
What if she’s completely misunderstood his attention?
As Matthew limps silently beside her, she is torn between frustration and a deep, gnawing need.
Maybe it makes no sense, but she is ridiculously attracted to this man. The way his sullen expression verges on a pout when he’s especially upset; his insistence on pulling out her chair and holding open doors, no matter how often she argues that it isn’t necessary; those bright, fierce eyes she could fall into and that strong, solid jaw she itches to run her fingers down.
She doesn’t want their time together to end. It wouldn’t be the first time she was rejected for being pushy...challenging...too much. All of it is male code for ‘not deferential enough,’ Alice knows--but that’s little comfort when she’s alone.
They reach her porch, where the light has gone out again. She keeps forgetting to see to that. Alice leads the way up the steps, waiting as Matthew follows more carefully. She decides not to risk it. Not now, not yet.
She can live with the frustration. She doesn’t want to live without nights like this, where even a slight possibility that he might reach for her hand makes her heart race in delicious anticipation.
Matthew doesn’t reach for her hand. He says goodnight in a tone so brusque that she could almost believe he hated the entire evening, and turns away from her to head back down the stairs.
Alice is fumbling for her keys in the dark when she hears the thud of his footsteps retracing his path back to her. They mirror the drumbeat of her pulse as he approaches.
Matthew stops a few inches behind her, the moonlight glowing against his skin. She is about to ask what exactly he’s doing, before he leans in and without a word, he just...takes.
He takes her by surprise, his mouth hot and softer than it looks, his tongue gliding between her parted lips. He takes her breath away, a hand roaming up the nape of her neck, changing the angle of their kiss until he swallows her moan.
He takes all her doubts and her fears and dissolves them, speaking with his fingers and his smile and his deep blue eyes. Alice sighs into his mouth before they break apart, both breathing hard.
Matthew leans his forehead against hers. “Can I see you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s Wednesday,” she reminds him. “You’ll see me at the morgue.”
He steals another kiss, this one quick and possessive and followed by his grin flashing in the shadows. “After that.”
“All right.”
He brushes her cheek with his hand before walking away. His posture is totally different now, his tone cheerful, and as he’s never been the moody type, she can’t leave it be. Her curiosity is too fierce where he’s concerned.
She doesn’t just want to understand Matthew Lawson now--she needs to. He’s become a mystery that she must solve, as essential as the murders he brings her. Maybe even more so.
“Matthew?”
“Yes?” He stops at the edge of her stairs, turns slowly to face her again.
“You seemed so...almost angry, before. Why?”
Lawson is taken aback. “I wasn’t angry.”
“What, then?”
“Well.” He shrugs, reluctant to explain, but Alice is focused on him in that unblinking, intense way of hers; he can’t avoid it. “I was trying to take it slow, you know? Be careful with you. Lucien said--”
Matthew shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You deserved better than me shoving myself at you. So I held off, I tried not to push. But...” He smiles a little. “You were driving me crazy.”
Though that hadn’t been her intention, Alice can’t say the idea is an unpleasant one.
“Was I?”
“Yes.” He watches her cross the porch, moonlight falling over her as she reaches him.
“How?”
The most delightful thing about her, Matthew thinks, is that she sincerely wants to know. There isn’t even a hint of deliberate seduction in the question, or in the way she laces her fingers through his.
Everything about Alice is genuine--and beautiful.
He lifts their joined hands and kisses her knuckles. “Well, for starters, there’s the way you smell.”
She sniffs skeptically. “I smell like chemicals. It’s hard to wash away, no matter how I try.”
Matthew shifts closer, pressing his nose against the curve of her neck and inhaling, making her laugh. “Under that. Maybe you have to be looking for it, but you smell like wild roses...and sin.”
Alice leans against him, laughing even harder. “Now you’re just making that up.”
“Am not. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to be so close to you, and not touch you?” Her smile fades as Matthew frames her face with his hands. “To not taste you, when I’ve wondered for ages how you would taste?”
She smiles. “And how do I taste? Like daisies and impulsiveness?”
Chuckling, Matthew presses a kiss to the tip of her nose, astonishing her. “No...like cinnamon, and honey.”
Alice hums low in her throat. “Interesting.”
“And that.” He runs a hand through his hair, watching her intently. “The humming.”
“What about it?”
“Sexy.”
“You’re crazy.”
Matthew nods. “About you, absolutely.”
If he had started quoting poetry, he couldn’t have surprised her more. Is this the stoic, serious man who intimidates criminals and puts himself in harm’s way without faltering?
“Matthew Lawson, you’re a romantic.”
The kiss he pulls her into is warm and deep and lingering.
“Don’t tell.”
IV.
Matthew lashes out at Dr. Wallace like Alice has wanted to since his first day in the morgue, never looking her way long enough to catch the shock she isn’t able to cover. The stunned silence that follows the snap of his control rings in her ears.
Of course Matthew loathes him, they all loathe him. He’s slow and incompetent and unpleasant and not Lucien; the latter being a sin he couldn’t live down even if the rest weren’t true.
But having a problem with the man, even holding a grudge against him, doesn’t require standing up for Alice.
The last man to speak up for her was Lucien, and he did so on principle, as her friend. It was about her but also wasn’t--Lucien tries to protect everyone.
Matthew is nothing like Doctor Blake in that way; he has little patience for most people, and in all their months together Alice doesn’t think she’s ever heard him defend anyone other than his men. Even that was rare...he simply wasn’t the demonstrative type.
Or so she had thought. But when Wallace tried to pin his mistakes on her, she could see the muscles in Matthew’s jaw working, responsibility battling the desire to fight. For her.
Perhaps it’s odd, that they're dating and sleeping together yet Alice could still be surprised by the realization that Matthew respects not just her work but her, her skills and her perfectionism and the way she carries on even in the face of utter nonsense.
But it is surprising, and quite soothing; something she can hold on to in difficult moments, in the face of all the men who are more threatened, less self-possessed...simply less, than Matthew is.
“I love you,” she murmurs behind his ear after Wallace has vanished again to wherever he goes when he’s supposed to be doing real work. “I love you, I love you.”
“Because I told him off?” Matthew grins, kissing her lightly after a glance at the morgue door. “I love you, too. But I was just telling the truth.”
It’s so much more than that, to her, though Alice is not sure how to explain that to him.
For Matthew, it is that simple; simply the truth.
That’s what makes it amazing.
V.
A tense, slightly baffled silence falls between them when they discuss Lucien and Jean’s upcoming wedding and Alice confesses that she’s not that keen.
“Oh, I’m quite happy for the two of them, of course--you know I am. It’s just the wedding, itself. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.”
“You don’t want to be married?” Matthew’s furrowed brow and strained tone baffle her. It’s not as though he ever married; she knows for a fact he’s never even been engaged. The same cannot be said for her, though she’s never told anyone in Ballarat about that regrettable affair.
“I didn’t say that.” Exasperated, she leaves the bed to pace his bedroom floor. Apparently, it’s to be an argument, then.
“You implied something like it,” he replies, tone too calm now. Almost chilly.
“I absolutely did not. Stop putting words in my mouth.” She sits in the chair across from his bed, staring at the floor. He stares at her, and the echoing quiet between them hurts.
It’s Alice who sighs, and shatters it with a whisper. “All I said was that I don’t understand.”
Clearing her throat, she joins him on the bed again, entwining her fingers with his. “And I didn’t mean marriage. I imagine marriage can be...nice. With the right person.”
“What I was talking about was the noise of it, the big party. Everyone’s eyes on you, so many people talking and eating and staring. I don’t know why anyone would want that.”
“Ah.” This shouldn’t be news to him. He knows her. He knows her so well, it aches in his bones sometimes.
And yet, he didn’t see this coming. She’s got a deep well of feeling beneath that cautious exterior, which made him believe she was the wedding type--Doctor Harvey is a secret romantic. He saw her bury her nose in the tulips he brought her for her birthday, when she thought he wasn’t looking.
What Matthew should probably take away from this is that there’s more for him to learn about Alice, after all.
But as she presses a kiss to his shoulder, their hands still linked, all he can think is: Right. Elopement it is, then.
VI.
And then there is the Blake wedding, when Alice changes her mind--and changes his, with a deceptively bland smile and a twinkle in her eye.
The frantic, heated quiet of the back alley, both of them desperate for air as they steal kisses. As Alice’s words ring in his head, as Matthew breathes the question against her lips, and her cheek, and her neck. It feels as though he’s waited a lifetime to ask.
“Marry me. Marry me, Alice. Be mine.”
For her, he has waited his whole life.
The bubbling, almost manic silence they share when they head back inside, hoping no one will remark on their absence. Matthew leans against the wall, watching the couples dance.
Alice makes sure the neckline of her blouse doesn’t shift, so no one will see the marks he left on her in the shadow of the building.
The contented stillness between them as they watch their friends begin the next chapter of their lives...while they prepare to plan theirs.
“Of course,” she had whispered against his lips, without hesitation. “Of course I will. I’m already yours.”
With Matthew, Alice thinks, she found her favorite silence of all.
