Chapter Text
He likes to kiss Alice with her face cradled in his palms, thumbs brushing down the sides of her jaw in soft strokes until she sighs into his mouth. She’s always warm in his arms, and Matthew doesn’t know when his days started to revolve around the first and last moments of holding her, only that something in the way Alice presses herself into his space and slowly wraps her arms around his neck feels like home.
“Hello,” he murmurs, angling her face the other way so he can kiss up the corner of her mouth, chasing her smile. She responds by pushing herself further into his body and Matthew crowds her up against the wall. She tastes of coffee and shortbread.
“I didn’t see you today,” she breaths, curious voice filling the space between them. Is it his imagination, or can he can taste the dash of vanilla Jean adds to biscuits on her lips?
He nuzzles against her, brushing his lips to her cheek and her nose before responding. “Interviews all day, too many witnesses but none of them have a bloody clue what happened. Please tell me those results came in?”
Alice tips her head forward to catch his bottom lip and Matthew groans as the kiss deepens and her tongue strokes slowly against his own. She mumbles something, and Matthew strains to hear her, his fingers dancing up beneath her shirt.
She does this sometimes, questions his day or tells him about autopsies or runs him through the grocery list while he holds her against the wall. Her words become tiny snatches of sounds and sighs punctuated by his lips, and he suspects she likes this messy mix of warm mouths and instructions, the intimacy that passes between them as he sucks at the side of her neck and she whispers technical terms he’ll never hope to catch, like encephalopathy and ecchymosis.
It’s her own sort of teasing, like the way Matthew pesters her in the morning as she tries to complete the crossword or catches her hand as she tries to slide out of bed to pull her back beneath the sheets. She likes to tease him with long words on her lips and hands stroking down his side, challenging him to keep up with her.
“I know that one,” he growls, slipping his hands up to her jaw again as she tries to explain petechiae. She pulls back a moment, and the shine in her eyes lets him know she’s pleased.
“Good,” she says, pressing a soft, quick kiss to his mouth. She pulls back, an air of professionalism about her. “But the water sample results also came in, Matthew. No matches I’m afraid.”
He sighs. Another day gone.
“I’ll run more tests tomorrow. We’ll figure it out. Tomorrow.”
She’s rubs her hand up and down his back in soothing strokes and Matthew rests his forehead against her own, breathing in the clean scent of her.
“Tomorrow,” he murmurs. He presses a kiss to her forehead.
At least he’s home.