Archive of Our Own ^beta

3:42, blinked the red lights on her bedside table. An ungodly hour if there ever was one. But how was she supposed to fall asleep with the questions going through her mind?

Joan rolled over to see her husband and found him peacefully in the realm of dreams, his hair perfectly mussed and his worry lines softened. Adoration beat gently against the inside of her chest, and she smiled in spite of her fatigue. “I love you,” she whispered; he twitched but didn’t wake.

With this newfound surge of energy, Joan snuck out of bed and downstairs. Maybe it was more customary for the wife to be treated to breakfast in bed when celebrating a wedding anniversary, but the two of them had never been a customary couple. Exactly true to form, Arthur didn’t play his part very well: she was just sliding their eggs off the frying pan and onto their plates when she felt warm, muscled arms encircle her waist and chapped lips press against her nape.

“Arthur,” she half-sighed, half-laughed. “Ruining the surprise, like a true spy.”

“Well, the surprise ruined my morning,” he said, teasingly nipping at her earlobe. “I wake up to find my bed a cold void, no gorgeous wife to be found… I’d spent the whole night dreaming of it, so imagine my disappointment…”

Joan, shutting off the stovetop, turned in his arms to give him the full force of her arched eyebrow. “You were dreaming about waking up?”

“About waking up to you.” He made his point with a low-burning kiss, unhurried but unrelenting.

When they broke apart who knew how much later, she didn’t wait to catch her breath before saying, “Your morning better not be ruined. I made you breakfast.”

He smirked a little at her breathlessness, the smug bastard, but hid it mercifully enough by tugging her into a loose hug so he could look over her shoulder at the dishes she’d prepared. “Delicious,” he said, almost right into the shell of her ear, the ghost of his breath on her skin eliciting a shiver that was truly disproportionate to the act. “Delicious,” he repeated even more quietly as he turned his face to kiss her temple in a tender thank-you.

She turned halfway in his arms, leaning her side into his chest but now able to survey her cooking as well. Chagrined, she said, “So do we make breakfast-in-bed into breakfast-at-the-island-like-usual?”

His chest rumbled against her with his low chuckle. “I am amenable to taking this all up to bed, as long as you’ll be joining me. What do you prefer, sweetheart?”

“No, no.” She shook her head, still considering the plates. “This is the rest of my gift to you—you decide.”

“The rest of your gift?” His hands, clasped around her midriff, moved now to take her shoulders and turn her to face him. “What was so incomplete about what you gave me last night?”

“Arthur.” But the look she levelled at him didn’t make him waver in the slightest. “Arthur, you gave me a stunning, meaningful necklace from Europe, and I—”

“Got me something I’ve been angling for in the most protracted and bloody fantasy football game in history and was starting to lose hope of ever gaining. You can definitely count me as stunned, and it was perfectly meaningful.” All traces of teasing were gone from his face as he stared her down. “Perfectly, Joan. Who else would know me so well? And who else would have made those guys fall in line and fumble a star player? I can only imagine the vision you must have been—”

Despite herself, she laughed and whacked his chest. “Alright, alright.”

He pecked her nose. “So? Here or upstairs?”

Biting her lip—those questions from earlier fading from her mind into nothing, she wanted to smile so hard her cheeks would hurt—she leaned up to whisper in his ear. “Let’s go back to bed, honey.”

He was grinning when she lowered herself back. “I love you.”

At that she gave up, and let herself smile.