Chapter Text
Don’t bother showing up, she stabs out a text to her nowhere-to-be-seen, stubbornly-incommunicado, soon-to-be-ex boyfriend.
Angrily mashing the garnish in her drink with the straw, stubborn pride forbidding her from glancing down at her watch. Three quarters of an hour, at least, that she’s been sitting at the bar on what’s supposed to be their anniversary, very conspicuously alone.
Not that she’s sure why they’d want to commemorate their first, disastrous date. When she’d walked out on him twice, before their main course had even arrived-
That’s not the point, she reminds herself sharply, shoving her grovelling-message-of-apology-less phone into the depths of her handbag. The point is that, whenever she’s the one who’s late, no matter the excuse, Danny’s all tutting disapproval, a possessive interrogation about where she’s been. Rigid-shouldered and holier-than-thou morally upright.
Just like he is in bed-
She cuts off the thought, lest she lets the resentful half of her mind admit that it’s right.
But she can’t silence the bubble of grim satisfaction that, now Danny's stood her up, she’ll have the ammunition to snipe back at him the next time he criticises her.
Why does there have to be a next time?
She drowns the question in the dregs of her third co*cktail of the evening, or maybe it’s the fourth. Swigs the fruity, sugary, icy mush at the bottom of the glass and stands up to leave.
Pauses. She could go home and fume silently.
Desultorily-microwaved leftover Chinese takeaway, glaring at the photo on her lockscreen, fuming through a few chapters of Wuthering Heights.
Or, the Devil of frustrated humiliation on her shoulder whispers, she could have another drink.
Wounded pride versus reason; it’s not a fair fight.
It’s been a long day, and her boyfriend’s an arse; she heads toward the bar.
Slightly wobbly as she picks her way back through the rowdy crush around the bar. Balancing a precariously overfull wine glass – the fruits of flirting with the bartender in a way she just knows, with a delicious thrill, would have made Danny purple with jealousy.
Jostled sharply sideways by an overly-amorous couple; she doesn’t have the time to appreciate the irony, too busy stumbling on the ridiculous heels she’s wearing, a fountain of pinot grigio flying through the air-
It’s as though time slows down, a treacle-thick haze of drunken bewilderment as the world tips on a precipitous angle, and gravity suddenly becomes her worst enemy. The trendy reclaimed hardwood floor looming fast - too fast - toward her.
Before strong hands catch her around the waist, saving her from a broken nose and having to flee Bristol under an assumed identity.
It takes a moment for the rum and the mint and the lime to stop sloshing around inside her skull, and the room to stop spinning. Sticky with white wine, she looks up at the man whose lap she’s fallen into.
All she can see is a pair of enormous, startled eyebrows. They’re terrifying, and dripping with pinot grigio, too.
She stutters apologies, trying to scramble upright, her heels slipping on the wet floor like she's the world's least competent figure skater. The hands holding her tighten momentarily, setting her safely back on her feet. Before rapidly retreating to the safety of gripping the bar.
Now that she’s straightened up, ineffectually smoothing down her sodden dress, she can take in her saviour properly.
Thin, tall – so much taller than her, even perched on his bar stool. A shock of messy curly brown hair, with significant incursions of grey. And bewildered blue eyes, looking at her like she’s fallen to Earth from another planet.
The way the last thirty seconds have gone, she feels like she might have.
“Are you, err, alright?”
He’s Scottish, she registers dimly.
Scottish, and good looking, notes the wild corner of her mind that's terminally dreadful at reading the room. In an older, quietly heartbroken kind of way.
She realises that, while she's been staring at him, all inflated eyes and smudged mascara, he’s been waiting for a response. Opens and closes her mouth like a confused goldfish. If goldfish cartwheeled tipsily across wine bars to throw their drinks in strangers' faces.
“Fine. Yes. Umm. Great. Thanks to you-” Feeling her face flushing, wishing she could travel back a minute or so in time and take her chances with the concussion, instead. “I’m, umm, I’m sorry about the-"
Waving a hand, inarticulately and inadequately, at the mess she’s made of both of them.
Light blue eyes, which, she realises, haven’t left hers since he caught her, glance down at the wet patch on his suit jacket as though he's only just noticed it. He reaches across the bar to grab a handful of napkins, wordlessly hands her half the stack.
An awkward silence as the two of them perform a sort of synchronised dabbing at their clothes; marooned on a cringing island in the babbling sea of happy hour chatter.
“I suppose I should appreciate the irony-" Her mouth opens, again without permission from her brain.
It’s like she’s having an out-of-body experience; she’s aware of, but can’t stop, the impossibly limp joke bubbling up from the very deepest reaches of the mojito-y mush that's replaced her consciousness-
“Somebody stood me up, and now I can’t stand up.”
Idiot, Oswald, she winces through the too-long pause that follows.
Mighty eyebrows perform a confused gymnastics routine. “Right. Well, I’m, err, I’m sorry about that.”
Clara wonders, wildly, whether, if she threw herself at the floor again, she might be able to fall through it. If she wished really hard.
Her silent self-flagellation must be - mortifyingly - apparent on her face, because he clears his throat and tries again, in the sort of placating tone she imagines the bomb squad uses when they're teaching a brand new recruit which wire to cut. “Whoever it is, they’d have to be a pudding brain to let you down.”
Pudding brain. She pauses.She rather likes that, thinks it describes Danny nicely. Banks it in her memory for their next, inevitable, argument.
Her grudgingly amused snort seems to embolden the man in front of her. “You don’t seem too heartbroken,” he points out. “Unless throwing yourself headfirst at the bar was a deliberate attempt at self-harm?”
She looks up sharply, catches the cautious amusem*nt dancing in his eyes. Feels herself smiling, for the first time that evening.
The barman’s wandered over, probably to check that he doesn’t need to evict her for being drunk and disorderly. Eyes her beadily and sets a glass of scotch down in front of her reticent Scottish white knight.
Who nudges it toward her. “You look like you need it more than me.”
Blinking at the glass, for a moment. “I’m the one that should be buying you a drink, to apologise.”
Two sets of rueful eyebrows glance down at the pile of soggy napkins puddling on the counter.
“If I’m honest, you’ve been generous enough, err, sharing that with me.” A small grin, it looks unpracticed. He nods at the whisky again. “Go on, I wasn’t going to drink it, anyway.”
Clara looks from the orange juice she realises he’d been sipping before she inadvertently waterboarded him, and then questioningly at the glass that’s now in her hands.
Thin shoulders shrug. “I don't drink much, these days. Heart attack.”
She frowns, confused.
“A year ago today, actually.” Too casually, his gaze fixed on the seemingly-fascinating depths of his drink. “Genetic thing, apparently.”
Eyeing him incredulously. “And this is how you’re celebrating?”
A long finger draws a pattern in the condensation on the side of his glass. “Aye.”
Well done, Oswald. She’d have kicked herself, had her heels not still been wobbly on the sticky floor. Ribcage squeezing painfully at the idea that he’s on his own, commemorating being alive on a lonely bar stool in front of a mid-priced scotch.
“So why the whisky?” Taking a long, smoky-peaty, sip of it, in the hopes that occupying her mouth might keep her from putting her foot into it any further.
He huffs a wry laugh, low and Scottish. “I was just going to look at it, for old time’s sake. So it makes more sense for you to have it.”
It's certainly the least-conventional way a man's ever bought her a drink.
Lost for words, all she can think to do is reach out and clink her glass against his. Can’t help noticing how elegant his fingers are.
“Mark,” he offers, an adorable red flush creeping up to his ears.
It takes her a moment to remember her own name.
“Clara.”
Divorced, she guesses, glancing around the spartan flat as she follows him in. From the sadness in his eyes, she’d thought he might be a widower, but he’s not wearing a ring.
Divorced she can handle; she’s slept with plenty of divorced men. Probably some married ones, too, not that she cares to examine that too closely. Sad, lonely, all carrying that sort of bewildered dishevelment that comes with being forty-five and on their own for the first time in decades.
And bewildered certainly describes the expression on his face right now, long arms hovering uncertainly in mid-air, as though he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch her.
He’s got no right to look so adorable, Clara thinks, far too fondly for what’s supposed to be a consequence-free one-night shag. It must be the warmth of the whisky in her veins.
Taking pity on him, pressing him up against his front door for a rough snog. He’s so tall; she has to stand on tiptoe and drag his head down to hers, but it’s worth it when, after a few seconds of stunned hesitation, he returns the kiss enthusiastically, sloppily.
The faint sweetness of orange juice on his lips, his stubble scratches her chin. She lets her hands roam, down into his back pockets. Groping his arse, like she’d been thinking about doing the whole time she was following him up the stairs on their way to his flat. Grinding against his thigh, revelling in the way that makes him groan, and snog her more deeply.
Tugging him away from the door, impatient to feel his skin on hers. He’s gorgeous, even if he doesn’t know it.
“Bedroom?” she asks.
His eyebrows seem to have taken up residence in orbit, now, and he doesn’t look fully capable of speech. Tie askew and lipstick on his collar; Clara’s sure she shouldn’t find the idea of dishevelling him quite so intoxicating.
Leads him by the hand toward the door he’d shakily nodded toward, on the far side of the room. Shedding her heels as she goes; frustrated that their height difference means there’s no way she can reach up to kiss him now.
A situation she resolves by shoving him down onto the grey sheets of the double bed that’s almost the only furniture in the room.
A room that’s only for sleeping in, she thinks. Doesn’t know why her heart aches quite so much for a man she’s just met.
He sinks down on the end of the mattress, pliant and obedient like he’s in some sort of feverish dream. She straddles his lap, tongue down his throat, fingers urgently working open the buttons of his shirt.
He’s twitchy, ticklish, underneath her, when she trails her hands down his chest. Skinny ribs stand out under thin skin, a greying dusting of hair and a darker trail leading below the waistband of his boxers.
She wants him.
“Stick insect,” he shrugs ruefully, and she feels a rush of fondness at the uncertainty in his eyes as he watches her studying him. “My cardiologist only lets me eat rabbit food, nowadays.”
Her fingers brush over the long, raised red scar that cuts his chest in two. “So you won’t-?“
“Clara, I promise not to have a heart attack while I’m in bed with you.” Earnestly, before his face breaks into a shy smile that makes her insides melt just a little.
Doesn’t trust herself to be able to speak, so she leans down to snog him again.
His fingers fumble with his belt buckle, she shoves them aside. Slips a hand into his trousers, palms him through the thin cotton of his boxers, and he gasps into her mouth.
He’s hard, painfully hard – no problems with blood flow, from his repaired heart, a corner of her brain that’s somehow both sardonic and impossibly turned on observes – and big, from the way he’s straining against the elastic.
He lingers on the zipper of her dress, like he can’t believe she’s letting him take it off her. Cautious eyes asking burning permission with every notch he slides it down, as though he has no idea he's sending trails of sparks across her skin, everywhere he touches.
She wriggles out of the rest of her clothes, tossing them to the floor. Relishing in the gratifying slackness to his jaw as his eyes drink her in.
“You’re so beautiful.” A hoarse whisper, he’s breathing hard already.
Clara doesn’t know why the word beautiful sounds so perfect in his accent.
Arching into his touch as warm, gentle hands come up to cup her breasts, hesitant thumbs circling her nipples. Her skin feels electric and so, so sensitive, the buzz of the co*cktails and the thrill of his body – unfamiliar, skinnier, older – against hers.
It’s like he can’t stop touching her; a one-handed struggle to shove his trousers and boxers down his hips. Clara tries not to giggle at his frantic writhing as he kicks them off.
He makes a gorgeous little noise when she scrapes her teeth down his throat, so she does it again, smirking against his collarbone.
Long fingers grip her hips; a moment’s confusion as he pulls her gently but insistently forward. Until she’s straddling his face, knees either side of his head, her insides flipping with realisation and arousal.
“You don’t have to-" Barely able to form the sentence, with the teasing of his breath on her inner thighs.
“I want to,” he replies, adamantly. Like it’s important to him, somehow.
And she certainly isn’t going to argue, as he nudges her legs wider apart.
Eyes fluttering shut as he leans in to press his mouth to her.
Sparks of exquisite pleasure at the hot, wet glide of his tongue. Digging her nails into her palms, angry red crescent moons, to keep herself from crying out as tastes her, explores her.
“f*ck, Mark-" her voice sounds ragged, even to her own ears.
The rest of him might be uncertain, gentlemanly, she thinks, warmth flooding her veins, but his tongue belongs to a more daring, much more wicked, man.
She whimpers; doesn’t think she’s ever whimpered in her life, before. It’s all she can do to grip onto the headboard, to hold herself upright as her back arches into the teasing swirls and flicks of his tongue.
Her other hand winds into his hair. It’s so soft, she’s been wondering all night what it would feel like. Fingers raking across his scalp; he groans, and the vibrations nearly make her come on the spot.
There’s something… competitive about how focussed he is, the way he chases every little inarticulate noise she makes, like he’s desperate to please her.
He pulls her closer to him, tongue dragging slow and flat and decadent against her.
Daring her to beg him for more.
Her only answer is to grind down harder; riding his face roughly. Certain she must be suffocating him, tugging painfully on his hair as he obeys her silent plea, and licks and sucks and f*cks her into another dimension with his impossibly clever tongue. His fingers dig into her skin, holding her in place. As though she’d want to move away.
“Don’t stop,” she hears herself pleading, thighs shaking.
Pleasure bubbling up to a breaking point, all of her nerve endings on white-hot alert. Clutching the headboard, certain she’ll collapse if she doesn’t hold on.
She isn’t usually loud, certainly hasn’t been since she started dating Danny, but when Mark finally lets her tip over the edge, she comes so hard that her last functioning brain cell, the only one that hasn’t yet plummeted over the precipice into white-hot ecstasy, worries for a moment that his neighbours will hear her, through the thin walls.
That thought dissolves into jumbled oblivion, as he holds her there, teasing tongue drawing out her org*sm through wave after wave, while she swears and shudders and sparks dance behind her eyelids.
Thighs squeezing the sides of his face, exquisitely oversensitive as he finally relents, and she sinks back so that she’s sitting on his shoulders, fighting to catch her breath, waiting for the room to stop spinning.
When she’s able to open her eyes again, the state of his face between her legs almost makes her come again, untouched. Cheeks flushed, mouth and chin glistening with her wetness, sweaty hair sticking up on end where she’s been pulling on it.
One of his hands comes up to wipe his face, just the ghost of a shyly smug smile playing on his lips.
Where did he learn to-?
Shuffling off his chest and flopping inelegantly down onto the mattress next to him, heart still racing.
“Okay?” he turns his head to ask, all uncertain eyebrows and velvety-thick accent.
It’s all she can do to nod emphatically, as she leans in to snog the taste of herself off his lips.
She almost loses track of time, in the blissful post-org*smic fog. Just Mark’s hands on her skin and her tongue in his mouth and the press of his erection against her hip. He smells so good, cedar, the hint of citrus. He’ll smell of her perfume, by the time she leaves tonight; the thought turns her on unreasonably.
He carefully rolls them over so that he’s on top of her, body pressing hers into the mattress, and for all that she’s been worrying about his heart, it’s hers that, inexplicably, stutters when he cups her face in his hands.
He’s a gentle man, she thinks. And wonders how his wife ever let him go.
Shakes herself out of sentimentality. It’s one-night stand; a sharp reminder to herself.
Stop snogging him like it’s something more, then; she pushes him back gently.
“Condom?”
He seems like he’s having a hard time forming sentences, swallows hard. “Right. Yes.”
An undignified scramble to reach over her shoulder; she takes the opportunity to bite at his collarbone, watching him fumble with the unopened box in the bedside drawer. Mark blushes; Clara’s only thought, the warm build of need coiling tight in her lower body once again, is that the rest of the women in Bristol don’t know what they’re missing out on.
She tears open the foil square he hands her, wriggles back down his body. His breath catches sharply as she takes his co*ck in hand, the lightest of strokes.
Looking down at her, eyes dark with want mixed with wariness. “I, umm, haven’t-" she watches his throat working- “it’s been… a long time. Since-"
A year, Clara thinks, eyeing his erection – thick and long and hard and leaking. That seems like a waste.
Chooses not to comment on the choked-off gasp he makes as she rolls the condom down his length; anyway, she’s not immune, herself, her muscles already clenching in anticipation of how he’ll feel inside her, for all that she’s just come so hard the room’s still spinning.
He’s holding his breath as he scrambles up onto his elbows over her, Clara can feel his arms trembling.
“I want you,” she reassures, not sure why an anonymous, one-night f*ck should feel quite so… momentous, why she cares so much that he’s okay.
He squeezes his eyes shut, for a moment, as he pushes into her, a shuddery exhale. Clara has to bite her lip, both at how inexplicably adorable she finds him, and at the glorious stretch as he fills her.
It’s like he’s frozen for a moment, holding himself still, until she runs her hands down his chest to bring him back to the present.
Hesitant, uncertain thrusts at first, far too gentle; she’s not sure if he’s worried about hurting her, or himself. But he’s so responsive when she rolls her hips against him; groans at the sensation, increases the speed of his thrusts, driving himself deep inside her.
She wraps her legs around him, pulling him in closer, feeling her muscles fluttering around his co*ck.
Ordinarily, if it were Danny, she’d close her eyes, try to lose herself in the sensation, slip into whatever fantasy was more exciting than a workmanlike, grunting shag on their pre-scheduled Wednesday and Saturday evenings.
But she can’t stop, doesn’t want to stop, looking at Mark. He’s gorgeous above her, ridiculous curly hair flopping over his forehead, brow furrowed with exertion, expression somewhere just shy of utterly lost. Blue eyes dark, breathing shallow, the sheen of sweat making the angry red scar down his chest stand out even more against his Scottish-pale skin.
He’s so deep now, hitting the perfect spot inside her with every thrust. She doesn’t know if it’s skill, or just luck, but either way, she’s not complaining.
Wants to encourage him, tell him how good he feels, but part of her’s worried her endorphin-addled brain will say something mortifying about sex being just like riding a bike.
And then one of his hands raises her hips, shifts the angle, and she’s not sure she’d be able to form any words at all.
Scratching her fingernails down his back, thighs squeezing his sides, stretching up to kiss and bite at any part of him she can reach.
“Clara-" his voice is beautifully rough- “I’m not going to last much longer if you keep on doing that.”
She does it some more, relishing in the way it makes him swear and jerk his hips forward faster. f*cking her exquisitely hard, now; she arches up against him, chasing his rhythm.
Can tell from his expression that he’s on the verge of losing control, and the adrenaline and the rush of power and the glorious pounding of his co*ck inside her combine to have her spiralling upward again, too.
He notices, the clever man. Slips a hand between their bodies, fingers fumbling in the slickness, rubbing circles in the same rhythm as his thrusts. Enthusiasm over dexterity, but it’s delicious friction, and she’s already careering beyond the point of no return.
His thrusts become choppier, his breathing ragged, the tendons in his neck standing out; and her insides melt at the way he’s trying to hold himself back.
He bites his lip in concentration, and it’s that, of all things, that’s her undoing.
Free-falling into a shuddering, hot bright oblivion, fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to bruise, burying her face in the crook of his neck to muffle her half-cry of his name.
She feels his co*ck throbbing inside her, her muscles fluttering around him. His hips stutter, and his long, deep groan as he comes inside her might just be the sexiest thing she’s heard in forever.
His elbows buckle and he collapses on top of her, a solid, panting dead weight, boneless and vulnerable. Clara can feel his heart thumping; another brief stab of worry. Strokes her hands down his sweaty shoulders and back.
Mark seems to slowly come back to himself, rolls sideways to thump beside her on the mattress. Chest still heaving, cheeks flushed, a punchdrunk, dazedly euphoric expression on his face.
He’s dangerously adorable; she can’t help but curl into his arms, head resting on his shoulder as they both come down. Eyelids heavy, skin beginning to prickle with goosebumps in the cool air, his racing heartbeat under her ear.
It’s a long while, too long, before she’s able to drag herself out of the intoxicating haze of the afterglow. Reluctantly disentangling her limbs from his, swinging her legs down off the bed. Reaching for her dress, where it’s crumpled on the floor.
She feels his eyes on her.
“You could, umm, stay?” Lifting his head up off the pillow, hair a wild jumble of curls sticking up in a thousand different directions. “If you wanted to.”
Clara’s taken aback by the wrench in her insides, shakes her head to try to dislodge her unexpectedly treacherous thoughts.
“I can’t. Umm, plans. Err, tomorrow. Early.” Not sure why she can’t quite form sentences, why it’s so hard to lie to this soft-spoken Scottish man she barely knows.
The one who’s trying very hard, and very unsuccessfully, not to look adorably crestfallen. So much so that she has to drag her gaze away.
Anyway, it’s not a lie, she rationalises. She has got plans, plans that include being furious at her boyfriend for standing her up, and don’t include telling him about the forty-something-year-old Scotsman with whom she’s just had more fulfilling sex than she’s experienced in the whole of her and Danny's relationship.
Wriggling into her dress, yanking on the zip impatiently. Why did these have to be so fiddly?.
Soft blue eyes are still watching her, guarded now.
“Sorry,” she adds. Cringing at how inadequate that sounds, as though she needs to justify herself to a one-night stand.
There’s no sign of her underwear, but she’s willing to sacrifice them in her haste to make a quick exit, before her not-nearly-drunk-enough-not-to-know-better heart makes a stupid decision.
“Let me at least call you a cab-" he scrambles upright, all gangly limbs that don't quite seem to be running the same operating system. Hopping on one leg as he pulls on his boxers; Clara can’t tamp down on the amused fondness that courses through her.
A hand on his chest, sternly admonishing herself not to notice how warm his skin is. “I’ll be fine. And I, umm, I had a really nice night. Thankyou.”
Thankyou?
His ridiculous eyebrows have knitted together into a grey-brown caterpillar of post-org*smic befuddlement. “Me, err, me too.”
On impulse, it seems, he leans forward to very lightly kiss her forehead. It’s so sweet that, for a second, she’s not sure her knees will be able to hold her up.
She’d started all of this by falling into his arms, after all.
Shakes herself back to what passes for sanity, and steps back. “Right. Well, umm, goodbye.”
Kicking herself for the little awkward wave she does as she scurries backwards out the door, leaving him standing awkwardly in his only-for-sleeping grey bedroom, bewildered hand ruffling up his hair even more.
Nearly trips over her shoes, she’s so distracted by the argument raging between the insane half of her brain that’s begging her to turn around and stay the night, and her apparently-less-than-robust grasp on reason.
Thinks about leaving a note with her phone number, but reason prevails.
Shoves her feet into her heels, pulls the front door closed behind her. The latch clicks shut on sweet Scottish Mark and his second-chance heart.
She’s not remotely in the mood for Parents’ Evening; a hundred and one places she’d rather be than this twisted parody of speed dating, forcing herself to smile and nod and concentrate on the finer points of A-level mock exams and the indignities her students inflict on Jane Austen. And to ignore Danny glowering at her from across the hallway, every time she pokes her head into the corridor for a moment’s peace and fresh air.
Only just keeping herself from banging her head against the desk, caught in an interminable conversation with the parents of a student who, for all that he’s repeating sixth form, doesn’t seem to have the appetite for any coursework beyond writing melancholic, poorly-spelled love poetry pining after a girl who dumped him and ran off to New York City.
She finally sees off the distracted, bushy-haired mother, and the bizarre balding German man who she can only assume is the stepfather. Wrinkles her nose at the seats they’ve just vacated; doesn’t want to think about what she’s fairly certain their hands were doing under the desk during the interview.
Stands up to watch them out the window, leaving the school grounds. Their showy white BMW peeling madly out into the traffic, nearly sideswiping the ancient, beaten-up red Mini that jolts to a clunking stop at the curb.
Clara sighs, and braces herself to repeat the conversation, with the boy’s father. Takes a long sip of water, wishing it was something a lot stronger, but she’s forsworn drinking after last week. When she made a series of decisions she really ought, but can’t bring herself to, regret.
“Sid told me-" she's startled out of her heated recollection by a gravelly low Scottish voice- "that his English teacher was beautiful.”
She spins around, glass of water sloshing across the papers on her desk, but she barely notices.
Because there, in the classroom doorway, bright red up to the tips of his ears, is the man whose bed she’d awkwardly clambered out of the Friday before. The man whose tongue and touch and shy smile she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about ever since.
“He, err, wasn’t wrong.” Tugging on his earlobe and looking surprised at his own boldness.
“Mark-"
