Work Text:
"David," said Amanda, "do you know how to poison people?"
David glanced up from the book he'd been reading. "Yes, of course," he said. "How could I avoid accidents if I didn't know how my medicines worked?" He leaned back into the sofa—their sofa, in their own little sitting room—looking steadily at her, book forgotten.
"Have you ever thought about how you'd do it, though?"
David's eyebrows climbed. "No."
"Hmm," Amanda said, and shuffled a few pages of her manuscript on the little desk in front of her.
"Oh, it's for your book," David said in a tone of great revelation.
Amanda looked back up at him, startled. "Of course! I don't go around poisoning people."
"I'm very glad to hear it."
She put down her pen and joined him on the sofa. He carefully put aside the book, willing as always to pay attention to her when she wanted it. "Why did you answer me if you thought I truly wanted to know how to poison someone?"
"I supposed that you had a good reason for asking." David reached out to touch her hand gently. "I'm sure you wouldn't want to murder anyone who didn't deserve it."
"David!"
He was smiling at her, in the way that crinkled his eyes. "But I am very glad to hear this is merely one of your characters, darling. Who's getting murdered this time?"
"Lord Darkdown. Not truly murdered, of course."
"Corvin would never forgive you."
Amanda leaned over for a quick kiss before she went back to writing.
***
On days like this, Amanda worried about him the most: eyes tired, shoulders a little slumped. He worked long hours, which she'd expected, and she wouldn't have him any other way; but when he came home he tried to leave the worst of his worries behind. He'd tell her the funny stories, or the charming ones. She wrote them down sometimes, embellished, just for them. They wouldn't sell the way the novels would, anyway.
But some days he came home and she knew something bad had happened, even if she knew he wouldn't tell her what. She could remember the thrill of the first days with the Murder—how they didn't try to hide things from her, the way most people did, even Guy. And David never treated her like someone who needed to be sheltered, someone who couldn't handle the delights and disappointments of the world. But even David wouldn't tell her everything he saw—every patient he had who didn't make it.
So she flitted around the room being as amusing as possible. She demanded that they sit close on the sofa and embrace as they spoke rather than resting demurely in chairs across the room from each other, the way she'd always thought men and women did before she'd met the Murder and been married. And then she read him a positively scandalous piece from her latest novel until the sad lines around his eyes smoothed out and the light came back. She wasn't a nurse by inclination, she thought, but there were kinds of caring she knew how to do.
***
The other thing about David was—
She'd had an unhelpful letter from her aunt before the wedding. Her aunt had been so unable to write plainly about her chosen subject that Amanda had come away with a confused impression of flowers and religion, and when she'd handed it to the Murder, Guy had turned bright red and then in turn handed it on to Corvin, who let out a peal of laughter so loud that Sheridan had come running from the other room to see what joke he'd missed. Once Amanda had realised it was about sex she'd discarded it, because she knew what that was, thank you very much, she was raised in the country. And one of Lord Corvin's lady friends had had a very frank chat with her as well once she was in London but before she was married, with several useful practical tips. Corvin had also had an unusual conversation with her, come to that, which involved no physical detail but was very definite on certain other matters, such as just how much she should feel comfortable saying 'no' to anything at all regardless of what she'd heard was required of her, and 'yes' regardless of what she thought she was supposed to want. She found herself considering that conversation more often than all the others, despite how useless it had initially seemed.
But what the sum of those conversations (perhaps exempting Corvin's) had suggested to her was that David would need, well, training. That men, by nature, were inattentive and selfish, and with effort and incentive one could convince them to make it fun for one as well.
That wasn't David at all.
In fact, it was so good that she sometimes felt she was doing something wrong—surely it was a lot of work for him, to please her so well? But when she'd attempted to bring up the topic he'd decided she needed more proof of how much he was enjoying it, which didn't exactly dissuade her from wanting to bring it up again, but certainly made his point.
So she felt especially churlish when David looked her in the face and said, "Is there something on your mind?"
He was teasing, she knew. His eyes were crinkled in a true smile, and he hadn't stopped—well, anything. But he was perfectly correct that she was distracted, and she took just long enough to answer that he began to look surprised.
"Um," she said.
Then he did stop, which made her clutch his back in protest, and he kissed her before he said anything else. "Is everything all right?"
"Oh—yes, it's just, um, my novel."
"The muse waits for no man, I suppose," he said, sounding amused.
"Well—no, you see, there's something very like this in it—no, don't look at me like that, it's only implied. And it's the villain, so not like this at all, really. Except, I thought, what if she tried to escape and managed to roll them both over but then he held her in place and—" She ran out of steam there, embarrassed as she hardly ever was, because she hadn't meant to say anything and in fact she was going to edit it out of the book, how scandalous and not in the way she wanted to be.
But David only smiled down at her. "Is that a request?"
She hardly knew how to answer, except that as soon as it was a question she found she did know: "Yes."
And, well, it turned out Corvin's advice on saying yes was even more useful than she'd realised.
"In the future, you should feel free to mention to me any thoughts like that," David said drowsily when they were done. "And I know what your imagination is like so I expect many such requests." He kissed her on the shoulder.
"Yes, love," she said quietly, and treasured his sleepy, satisfied smile. She'd known he was the most wonderful man in the world when she married him, but she hadn't known just how far above the competition he was. She learnt it more and more every day.