Chapter Text
“Have I told you about the time I fought off three highwaymen single-handedly with nothing but a dagger and a bootlace?”
“Hmm?” I didn’t look up from the recipe book, but out of the corner of my eye saw movement as Julian brandished a vegetable knife. “Were these the highwaymen robbing the duchess and her daughter?”
“Ah. I have told you.”
Sounding a little crestfallen, Julian turned back to his task of peeling potatoes. He was perched on a stool at the kitchen table, and I was stood beside him, the big book laid flat on the table. A pot of water was coming to the boil on the stove behind us.
I was hot, and irritably brushed away a lock of hair that had got stuck to the beads of sweat on my forehead before leaning onto my forearms on the table to look at the book. I rested my cheek in one hand, and with the other ran my finger along the line of the recipe I needed. Feeling a little guilty, I looked up. Julian was looking intently at the potato in his hand.
“Tell me again,” I said. “I particularly liked the part where you made a tripwire from your bootlace.”
Julian’s shoulders straightened and he visibly brightened.
“Ah yes, the tripwire! They didn’t see that coming. So of course, once the biggest had fallen flat on his face, I had room to…”
It didn’t matter how many times I heard his stories, I couldn’t help but be drawn in, as he punctuated his words with stabs and swipes with the vegetable knife as if reenacting a knife fight, his voice rising and falling to carry his speech with just the right amount of drama. Through his energy, animated enthusiasm, his voice, sparkling eyes and vigorous movements, I relived the story. It also helped that each time he retold the story, he embellished it a little more.
As he spoke, I went about the kitchen collecting the rest of the ingredients we needed, adding them to the pot, and when I turned back I noted that few potatoes had been peeled.
“And then I took the reins of the duchess’s carriage, and- Oh.” Julian looked from me to the potatoes, then slowly turned his eyes up again, a guilty flush blooming on his cheeks.
I couldn’t help laughing.
“Julian, I love you, and I love your stories, but at this rate we’re going to have a potato soup with no potatoes.”
I blew him a kiss and he reached up, pretending to catch it and put it in his pocket before turning back to his task with renewed, silent vigour.
“Did you remember the leeks?” I asked him.
“Of course I did, how could you even ask?” Feigning indignation, he held his hand over his heart. “Do you think so low of me that I could forget to buy something so important, so valuable to the integrity of your wonderful soup, so-”
I rolled my eyes but smiled fondly as he winked with a grin, because we both knew he very rarely went to the market without bringing home something we didn’t need, and forgetting something that we did.
“Where are they?”
“In the cupboard where they’re supposed to be. How could you doubt that I would put them anywhere else?”
I caught his eye and his playful smile, a gleam in his grey eyes. His otherwise pale face was flushed pink with the heat of the kitchen, and there was a slight sheen of sweat on his brow, his neck and his chest beneath his half-open shirt. The late afternoon sun coming through the window caught the golds and burnished copper reds of his messy curls. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and as he turned back to start again on peeling the potato in his hand, my gaze glided along the furrow of his lean forearm. He must have noticed, because he flexed just a little, and I pretended not to see him turn his eyes on me.
Biting back a smile, I went to fetch the leeks. But by the time I’d chopped them and added them to the pot, between Julian’s chatter and his meticulousness with picking off every tiny eye and speck of skin, there still weren’t enough potatoes.
I got another knife and pulled up a stool to sit beside him.
“They don’t have to be completely clean,” I told him gently, as I picked up one of the potatoes to help him. “The odd bit of skin here and there won’t hurt.”
“What can I say? I’m a perfectionist.”
As we set to our task again, our arms brushed time and again. I could feel the heat emanating from him after his exertions, a faint musky fragrance under his shirt. My eyes turned to his hands; strong and lean, tendons and ligaments pushing against the skin as he worked.
He nudged my shoulder with his, but didn’t look at me when I looked up, though his lips curled in a half smile. I nudged him back, harder. His response was an almost cat-like nuzzle into the curve of my neck, making me laugh.
A couple of minutes later, he leaned in and asked,
“Race you?”
I snorted a laugh. “Alright. Three each. Is there a prize?”
“My dear, there’s always a prize. The winner gets kisses, the loser does the washing up.”
Under the table, I pushed my thigh up against his. He ran the side of his foot up my ankle.
“Three, two-”
“That’s cheating!”
I was faster, but just as I was finishing the second, the knife slipped and nicked the side of my forefinger. I yelped at the sudden sting and dropped the knife, raised my finger by instinct to put in my mouth, but Julian grabbed my hand.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry! How bad is it, let me see.”
“It’s fine, Julian, really.”
He held my finger up to his face, and groaned when blood welled up in a neat line.
“Wait here, I’ll get a bandage, where’s my medic bag…”
He stood up but I grabbed his wrist with my free hand.
“Julian, it’s fine!”
“You’re bleeding! Let me just- oh.”
I put my finger in my mouth, sucking at the tiny cut. I hollowed my cheeks and looked up at him through my lashes, sliding my finger slowly in and out. He bit his lip just a little. And then I took my finger out, turned it to him and said,
“See? All better. No need to panic.”
“Hmm. Come here. Let me check, I’m a doctor, you know.”
"So I've heard."
Julian sat back on the stool and pulled me close, between his thighs. I laughed and held my finger up for inspection, the other arm draping over his shoulder. One of his arms snaked around my waist, the other held my hand closer as he peered at my finger in an exaggerated fashion.
“Very good,” he drawled. “Healing nicely already.”
He drew my finger into his mouth and sucked slowly on it, looking at me with those smouldering eyes as his tongue circled my knuckle. Then he paused, and with his voice muffled around my finger, said,
“Tastes like potato.”
I laughed and withdrew my hand to playfully smack his shoulder, but I didn’t pull back. Both of his arms around my waist now, he held me and looked at me through those smokey eyes almost reverently, the slightest pull to his mouth. He parted his lips, and I sighed into his kiss. His arms tightened their hold, his lips were soft and pliant, movements unhurried. My hands curved over his shoulders, creasing his shirt to feel the fabric slide over his firm muscles. Julian hummed happily.
We were interrupted by scratching at the back door. Julian groaned softly as I pecked a kiss to the tip of his nose and then turned to open the door and let our cat in. Despite his complaints at the interruption, I caught Julian smiling as I picked the cat up and cradled her close.
“Of course you’d come back just in time for dinner,” he said to her.
“Speaking of which, there won’t be any dinner for us if you don’t get those damned potatoes peeled,” I said, but my voice was laden with affection.
Julian poked his tongue out at me. As he turned back to his task once more, he started to sing, the sort of song meant to keep up sailors morale. I didn’t know the words - and I wasn’t entirely sure that he did, or if he was making it up as he went along - but I knew enough of the tune that I hummed along with him anyway.
In the darkness of night, we lay together before sleep. I lay on my side and Julian lay behind me, folded against my back and legs, one arm draped over me and his body pressing up against me in such a way that I felt as if wrapped in a duvet. Skin to skin. His hand lay flat on my chest, over my heart, and the other lightly ran my hair between his fingers. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest on my back, and the brush of his breath against the back of my neck as he recounted the events of the day.
Eyes drowsily closed, I listened to him. His voice, soft, not quite deep, but smooth, seemed to penetrate my very being with words that spoke of a day that was, when all was said and done, mundane and uneventful.
But he spoke of how he’d watched me looking through my recipe book, how my tongue stuck out the side of my mouth a little when I concentrated, how his gaze had been held by my forearms leaning on the table, the curve and fold of my body and the finger I ran across the page. He spoke of how adorable my face was when I was irritated by my hair sticking to my face, and how he could hardly take his eyes off me when my cheek was resting on my palm - and how he'd looked away before I noticed. When I was concentrating, focussed and relaxed. When I showed him how to be.
He spoke of how tolerant I was of his stories, and thanked me for putting up with him, but that was light-hearted; because when I took a breath to speak he told me that he knew I really did enjoy them. And that every time I asked him to tell me a story, and I didn’t rush him, and I stopped to listen, and especially when I remembered his story, his heart nearly burst.
He spoke of how he’d caught me admiring him; and though I blushed at that, he told me how it made him feel wanted, how glad he was that he had a physique I liked; and at that, he squirmed in embarrassment, and I lifted his fingers to my lips and kissed them as I praised him for being able to accept affection in all its forms.
He spoke of how the hairs on his arms had stood on end every time they brushed with mine, how it felt like a spark jumped through him when my thigh touched his, and he didn't care how cliche that was, because who doesn't love a cliché from time to time? He told me how he’d enjoyed the silly little potato peeling race, and apologised again for overreacting to my tiny cut.
He spoke of how kind and caring I was, because the cat had been a stray we’d taken in some months back. How it warmed him to see me holding her, and that I cared as much for animals as he did. He joked - though perhaps meant it a little - that when we'd first met, he'd been a stray and I'd taken him in, too.
And then he spoke of how he adored being close to me. How warm my body felt against his, how I belonged in his arms. His lips brushed the nape of my neck as he whispered how much he loved the taste of my kiss, the softness of my mouth, the light touch of my fingertips. How he felt comforted in my arms.
Safe. Wanted. Needed. Loved.
And I told him he was all of those things, and more.
And he told me I was all of those things, and more.
And with those simple truths and words of love, we slept.