Chapter Text
The house is quiet in the early morning. Alice lies awake wrapped in a tangle of sheets, ruminating on the journal she’d been reading late into the night and listening to the rhythm of Matthew’s breaths beside her.
He won’t wake for hours, not unless the sharp ring of the telephone interrupts his slumber, but Alice is often awake at this time, reading and researching, or watching his sleeping face.
He has a beautiful face. Perhaps not what others would call handsome. But kind eyes, and a smile that is precious to her with its rarity and candour. It’s an expressive face, even if those expressions are often shades of annoyance. She smiles at that, reaching out to brush a finger down the sharp line of his cheek; her grumpy man.
It’s been almost thirty years since she first caught his gaze across a room, Alice dressed as the Queen of Hearts and he as Sherlock Holmes. She’d stood in the corner of the room, content to watch the students twirl around her with saucers of champagne in hand and Duke Ellington playing on the phonograph.
“A Lewis Carroll fan, I presume?” His curious voice was marked with a hint of flirtation.
She couldn’t help but smile, “You’re the first person to guess correctly. Holmes, I presume?”
He shuffled uncomfortably, as if embarrassed.“I came off second best in a dare.”
“Oh?”
“Lawson. Constable Matthew Lawson.” He held out his hand.
“Oh,” she laughed. His hands were soft – a very new constable, she assumed.
“Alice Harvey.”
“No.” His voice was quick, and she frowned, confused. For the first time since he’d started talking to her she felt that familiar swoop of anxiety in her stomach. Had she said something wrong?
But the smile on his face grew as he looked at her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. Is your name really Alice?”
And suddenly she realised. Alice in Wonderland. And here she was, dressed as the Queen of Hearts.
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” she admitted, “I’m studying the circulatory system.”
She’d thought he might have left her at that point. Alice Harvey, too odd, too strange. But Matthew’s smile had been genuine. His interest true. And when he’d leant in at the end of the night after listening to her describe atherosclerosis and infarctions, and murmured, “Until next time?” with no expectation and no attempt at a kiss, but with a smile that told her he would the moment she asked him – she knew that there’d never be another man like Matthew Lawson in her life.
Other people have tried to dictate the nature of their marriage.
She’s used to the whispers, the implications it was arranged, or that one of them was in trouble and needed a cover. That she’s his beard. That he only married her out of pity. All because they don’t have a white picket fence and family sedan.
He was only looking for someone to take care of him. Nonsense. They share the work between them. Matthew cooks meals and she organises the house. They both sometimes forget to vacuum the carpets. Matthew washes the dishes in the sink and Alice stands by his side with a tea towel, working her way through pots and pans while describing the day’s autopsies. He hums every now and then to prompt her to continue, and sometimes he’ll ask a question – “Couldn’t that have been a screwdriver?” “Nonsense. Not with those grooves.”
They had no choice. But they did have a choice. Sometimes she thinks that’s the most precious thing about them. For all the things that have happened in her life beyond her control – a family shattered by alcohol and abuse, her long-lost sister, the whispers behind backs – Alice chose to marry Matthew. She chose him.
She knew his touch long before she walked the aisle, but they had been careful – Alice planned meticulously – and their marriage was of their own volition, not some shotgun affair. Matthew had whispered the words into her hair one warm summer’s eve, the two of them laid back on a picnic blanket and tucked behind a Moreton Bay Fig in Fitzroy Gardens, her head resting on his shoulder and their fingers tangled in the breeze.
“Marry me?” he asked. But it hadn’t felt like a question.
She’d turned in his arms to face away from his hopeful face, his broad chest against her back and his fingers trembling. He wanted this, wanted her. She could feel it in the way he didn’t push. He chose her, but he wouldn’t take anything. And that meant everything.
So she chose him too. “Yes.”
She can still remember the way his smile had turned to laughter as he kissed her, lips and teeth and gasps for breath; his fingers in her hair and his body a warm, familiar weight pressing her into the blanket. The purest moment of joy she’d ever felt.
But the one that stings the most, that makes her pause on tired days when Matthew is solitary and taciturn, or she feels the world begin to close in around her; the one that makes doubt swim through her veins, is the whispered suggestion that he was lonely.
Perhaps. But perhaps they both were. They’ve lived lonely lives. The disconnect she remembers from her childhood and teenage years didn’t evaporate the moment Matthew Lawson stepped into her life. She still feels the distance between herself and her colleagues, still aches sometimes to make herself understood. And Matthew is quiet, prefers to watch the world unfold around him with a keen eye and well placed words. They’ve both carried their loneliness with strength and dignity, but she likes to think they’ve dismantled it piece by piece with love.
Love.
That mercurial concept she never thought she’d understand until the day she realised love was the way Matthew’s touch was always soft before becoming insistent, always with a pause to let her decide. The way he smiles into saying her name, like she’s something precious, and smiles into her kisses, familiar and warm. They don’t hold hands in public, rarely exchange endearments or publicise their life. She’s sure there are young constables at the station who aren’t aware she’s married to the Superintendent. And she knows there are people who believe there’s something broken between them, that they’ve remained married out of duty and fear.
But their love is private – it belongs to the safety and sanctity of their home. Slow dances on summer evenings, Nat King Cole and Sinatra in the air. Quiz shows with Matthew shouting eagerly at the television and Alice’s head resting in his lap. Matthew still nuzzles his nose into the back of her neck when he’s half asleep and feeling needy, still leaves her the crossword on Sunday mornings and sits by her side at the kitchen table to watch her eyes dart across the page. He makes useless suggestions to get a rise out of her and she swats him away with the back of her hand and a scolding. He steals her pens and she steals his shirts.
She’ll never grow tired of the hunger in his eyes when she crawls into bed in only his shirt. He knows her quirks and cues, and those nights mean she wants his hands on her skin immediately, slipping over her stomach and breasts and down between her thighs with his fingers and tongue.
And even on their darkest days – his demotion in Melbourne; the endless inquiries; those brief, horrifying hours when she thought she’d lost him to a madman behind the wheel of a car, and the months that followed, when Matthew’s face was twisted with anger and anguish, and even her love and support seemed not enough to make him whole, there was still something between them that made the thought of life without him impossible.
She chose him. He chose her.
Sometimes Matthew half-wakes in the early hours with a sleepy grumble deep in his throat, warm hands seeking her out across the mattress to nudge at her. Are you okay? Can I hold you?
Sometimes it’s enough to curl her fingers through his and feel the weight of his wedding band cool on her skin, the way the callouses on his fingertips drag across her knuckles in soothing motions, lulling them both back to slumber.
Sometimes she pulls until he rolls against her, wrapping his arm tight around her middle so there’s nothing between them; hip to hip, heart to heart. It’s a constant push and pull – sometimes she needs the space between them on the sheets to absorb the reality of his being, and other times she wants him in and around her, pressed into her body until they’re one. There are days in which she needs him so desperately she feels like she’s drowning; his lips on her neck, hands in her hair, scratches and kisses and whispers and moans.
It’s impossible to understand how she found someone who ebbs and flows with her nature, understands that sometimes she needs the constant pressure and motion of the world to disappear, and other times she needs him to hold her until every part of her is pressed back into being.
To find something steady in this frantic, volatile world is all she’s ever longed for. She thought she’d only find it in her work, or in the world of books. Never in a man. But Matthew is a safe harbour.
And sometimes it’s her own hands reaching for him across the mattress, curling at his bicep or brushing against his cheek. I’m here, her touch tells him. You can need me too.
He falls into her on days when cases rattle him to his bones; when fathers hurt their children and husbands hurt their wives.
Perhaps no one will ever understand the quiet respite they find in each other. The way her mind settles when she can rest against his side, or Matthew’s smile twitches when she strides into the station, reports in hand. Perhaps no one needs to. Perhaps this is theirs alone.
The phone doesn’t ring. Alice props herself up against the headboard with a medical journal in hand and her notepad balanced on her knees, scribbling in the dull light cast by the bedside lamp.
The air is cool on this March morning, the chill of Ballarat seeping back now that it’s Autumn. But the day will be fine, bright and clear. Alice has never been a fan of weddings, but for this one she can make an exception. Lucien and Jean have waited so long.
Matthew snuffles beside her and she glances at him fondly. Maybe she’ll find an excuse to sneak off with him during the reception. She’s looking forward to the sight of him in his suit and tie.
“Good morning.”
His eyes flutter open.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I was dreaming.”
He pushes himself up on strong arms but lets himself fall gently against her side as she leans into him, his head nuzzled in the crook of her collarbone.
“Just you and me, a beach. No murders. No police surgeons. No telephones. Just quiet, and the sun, and maybe a drink. We could go skinny dipping.”
She laughs and he smiles, boyish and proud. Twenty-five years of marriage and he’s still happiest when he makes her giggle.
A holiday does sound wonderful. “Perhaps when Jean and Lucien return?” she suggests.
Matthew hums and settles further into her side, already half asleep again. His voice has the warm, intimate growl she adores.
“Just you and me, Alice.”