Work Text:
The sense of fear and danger is said to make people more carnal.
The sense of terror and fragility is replaced by that irrepressible desire to still feel alive and to experience pleasure. Human nature seems so complex.
The last night I spent at home with Rosie, before I left as a soldier, we made love like never before.
I was young at the time and didn't know anything about the world.
I thought it would all be over soon; I wanted to live every second I had left with Rosie, passionately, loving intensely everything that had made me happy up to that moment.
I had never killed a man, and no nightmares yet haunted my dreams.
Then I came back from the war and things changed radically.
I became a police officer, and was no longer the scared soldier who could barely hold a rifle.
I thought I knew what I was doing.
The memory of the fear and terror of dying seemed like a thing of the past.
Until I kissed her, Miss Fisher.
Phryne.
Her lips are soft, painted red, and fit mine perfectly. It's a silly thought. All I was trying to do was protect her from herself and the ghosts of the past.
When her tongue darted into my mouth, for a split second, I was surprised at how quickly she responded.
Of course, many men certainly had the privilege of kissing her before me, but I wonder if everyone caught her at the height of her vulnerability.
She, too, had lived through the horrors of war, and then she had decided to forget everything, giving herself up to her mad joy and pomp and shallowness; but I knew that far more often than it seemed, her mind plunged back into the past.
Phryne Fisher had dropped her mask, and from a proud and courageous woman she had grown small and frightened as a fawn.
Perhaps this was the feeling that had always nourished her ex-lover, Dubois.
Rene had been violent, mad, obsessed with her.
I believed that nothing would break Miss Fisher, and instead it had taken a stupid mediocre painter, to see her falter.
I stroked her face, she breathed in my cologne and stopped shaking. Catching her breath, she had sought my gaze. She was confused, amazed, and at the same time pleased.
And so I felt, too.
It started out as a simple kiss, but it felt like it had turned into something else entirely. It's like all the pieces of a puzzle have finally fallen into place. Her lips on mine, the taste of her in my mouth. It had all felt so right, despite the fact that the context was totally different from a romantic courtship.
A few weeks earlier, I'd told her that although my wife wasn't currently living with me, I still kept my marriage oath, and there would be nothing to stand in the way of that pledge of fidelity.
I was a married man. I am still a married man.
Maybe I should have talked to Rosie specifically about our marriage.