keep_counting | Fic: Sunshine (Downton Abbey)

Title: Sunshine
Characters/Pairings: Matthew/Mary
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers up to and including the S2 Christmas Special
Genre: Romance/Friendship/Humour
Word-count: 705
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this.
Summary: It hasn't rained all summer, and when it finally does, Mary is caught slightly unawares.

It’s raining again. It’s rained so little this summer, but now it does. And it doesn’t just rain, it pours, as if the dreary English skies are trying to make up for all the lack of it these past few months.

And there really hasn’t been any rain. Not in the night, when everyone was tucked away in their beds anyway. Not in the early morning, when the house was only slowly waking up. Not in the evening, when it is so wont to start, as if making it clear that now is not the proper time to go out anymore. Stay indoors.

It hasn’t been raining even the slightest and it has been a relief for most, for people whose work has gotten easier, people who haven’t had to go outside on errands and come back drenched to the bone.

It has been a complete dry-out, and Mary Crawley has absolutely hated it.

She remembers the sound of rain on the roof lulling her to sleep when she was young and thought her troubles were the worst in the world (she’s older now, and more experienced, but perhaps not wiser) and she’s missed that now, when she has to lie alone in her bed and can only think of Matthew and his eyes and smile and hands, and wishing he was there. It’s torture, lying in silence, complete, utter silence, and knowing he is there in the house and she’s never sympathized this much with Anna before, Anna who was around Bates so long but couldn’t touch, wasn’t allowed and Mary’s engaged to Matthew for heaven’s sake, but the rules are still too strict.

So she misses the rain. She misses the soft pit-patter over her head, misses imagining how everything would slowly become darker in colour, the grass, the roof, the trees, everything just a shade nearer black, hiding from view even under the moonlight.

“I hope it rains soon,” she says one morning and Edith gives her such a bewildered look, but she doesn’t even bother to explain, stating that she will go for a walk instead and, when her father informs her that it surely won’t rain, she takes an umbrella just to be contradictory and because she likes the weight of it in her hand.

So, yes, she has missed the rain. She hopes it comes, and she’s prepared for it. Or so she thinks – because her dress is one made for summer, and with the rain comes the cold, even in winter.

And it is suddenly pouring down over her.

She can only get the umbrella open and over her head so fast, and she’s already shivering as she turns around, walking in a brisk pace back to the house: the rain only falls harder, sounding like cannons and gunshots against the ground around her, splattering water and dirt all the way up to her knees.

She’s going to drown, and she laughs at the thought, delighted at getting her wish, at having proven the others wrong, but then she shivers when the first wind hits her and without even thinking about it, she has set off running, feet hammering against the ground and getting her clothes even wetter and dirtier in the process.

She’s probably alerted half the household with her high shrieks, but she doesn’t really care.

She reaches the open front-door in a manner of minutes (even in heels and dress she has always been a fast runner), and she doesn’t even have to stop, instead simply running directly into the arms of Matthew, Matthew who was standing there waiting for her – how long had he been standing there? But she runs, barrelling into him so hard they almost both fall to the floor and he laughs, and she thinks that no-one else would have done so, would have caught her like this. No-one but him.

“You’re getting my clothes soaked!” he protests, that smile still in place, lighting up his face.

She shakes her umbrella over his head, getting him as drenched as she is, and he laughs for her to stop it, that they’ll both have to change, that this is no way for them to behave.

He doesn’t let go of her, regardless.