This fic is a co-production with Rockbird86.com, a favorite Call the Midwife fan fiction writer. Inspired by a Tumblr discussion and a comment by  @missouiser:

“I don’t mind the updo when she is in a suit and managing the surgery, but a scene where she’s walking in the door of the Flat of Requirement, pulls the pins out and shakes her hair down and fluffs it with her fingers would be worth more to me than the time-has-passed proper kiss.”

 

LSS, before you is the first ever collaborative fic by Two Old Bird Productions. I have to warn you, it was so much fun, it won’t be the last!

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Summer was in full swing in Poplar. The air was hot and heavy, so much so that the simple act of breathing took effort. Families spilled out of stifling flats, the children caught up in the unaccustomed joy of night games in the street as their parents found their own respite in gossip and cigarettes. A door opened, and light silhouetted the shape of an exhausted Shelagh Turner. With a deep breath, she reached down deep into herself and found the momentum to propel her home.

 

Just three minutes, Patrick told himself as he flopped onto the sofa. Three little minutes and then he’d move. He felt guilty. His last call hadn’t taken as long as he’d thought and really he should have gone back to Shelagh at the maternity home. But she was closing up the surgery and would be here any moment and he’d be better occupied putting the kettle on, taking care of lamps and curtains so that his exhausted wife had a cheery home to greet her. But against the stifling heat of the summer evening, the flat was cool and he felt himself able to breathe properly for the first time that day. And so the kettle stayed empty and the flat cloaked in darkness as his eyes began to close.

 

Seventeen steps, she promised herself. Seventeen steps up the old stone staircase, then twenty-three paces and she’d be on the other side of  the enormous door to their home. Her old counting trick had worked to motivate Timothy as he learned to manage his braces so long ago, and tonight it would get her home to a hot cup of tea and her favorite spot on the sofa. After the extra long day, she was glad they had such a treasure as Mrs. B., and took comfort in the fact that tonight, at least, there would be no night-time parenting duties to demand the last of her energies.

 

It was all so confusing. A moment ago he had been waiting for her to come home to him, now this. Patrick pleaded with her to explain. “Shelagh? Shelagh, I don’t understand, why are you…?”

 

He faltered, the look she gave him was cool. “I’m sorry, but I don’t answer to that name anymore,” she said.

 

He opened his mouth to speak but no words came. Instead he could only watch as his wife, her trim figure now hidden by the heavy blue woollen habit, began twisting her hair up before covering it with the close fitting white cap and finally, the starched white of the wimple. His head throbbed with fear and confusion and he closed his eyes against the pain. She was going. He heard her footsteps peter out as she reached the end of the long Nonnatus corridor and the heavy slam of the door behind her.

 

After a moment he opened his eyes again, then relief flooded his veins as he felt the soft cushions of the sofa underneath him. The slam had been his own front door.

 

The flat was dark, the only light a dim beam peeping out from beneath the bedroom hallway door. They’d all gone to sleep then, Shelagh realized. She buried a wave of disappointment and stepped to the kitchen.

 

Not only was the kettle cold, it was empty. A tired woman’s worst fear. Could she last ten more minutes waiting for a cup of tea, she wondered. Perhaps she could just leave everything and go to bed.

 

“And pigs will fly,” she muttered. Giving in to the inevitable, Shelagh filled the heavy pot and placed it on the hob. Her eyes drifted close, and her hands crept up to ease the tension in the base of her neck.

 

Patrick watched as Shelagh entered the kitchen, felt the kettle and sighed wearily. His head throbbed, whether from the oppressive heat or the horrible dream he’d had as he dozed he couldn’t tell, but he couldn’t bring himself to move or speak. He was exhausted and wrung out by what he’d just imagined and he couldn’t shake it off. Instead he shifted his position slightly so he could see her through the hatch, watching closely to reassure himself that Shelagh was really there and not about to run off clad in blue wool.

He continued to watch as she stood waiting for the kettle to boil, tension and tiredness in her stance. She drummed her fingers on the worktop a few times and snaked her neck, wriggling her shoulders as she did so. Then she lifted her hands to her head and rubbed her neck. He smiled. She needed one of his massages and it would surely cure his own tension too. He’d see to that.

And then she reached up and pulled out the first hairpin holding that updo in place.

As she slipped each pin from her dark honey locks, Shelagh could feel her body begin to relax. A memory of her mother stirred, her warm hands gently brushing young Shelagh’s hair smooth each morning and night. In the years since her mother’s death, it was the memory of those quiet minutes that Shelagh depended upon to ease her anxieties. She would escape to the privacy of her own room, she would release her hair from its confinements and pull her hairbrush through her hair.

Hairpins clattered softly on the countertop. Shelagh slowly stretched her neck, then shook out her hair. She loved the feel of her hair as it teased her shoulders. Raising her arms from her body, she slid her fingers up from the base of her skull and fluffed through her locks. A slow smile hovered in the corners of her pretty mouth, and a familiar sense of calm flooded her mind.

And there was his cue. He never had been able to resist her hair. In his tortured dreams in the days before she was his, her hair always featured. He’d daydreamed hours away wondering about the colour, the length, how soft it would be against his bare skin. In his bolder moments he pondered how the sisters would feel if they knew that the garment designed to hide the hair was, in its own way, so alluring, drawing more attention to that which it aimed to hide and fuelling his fantasies.

With that last thought he gingerly rose from the sofa, swallowing back a groaning as his back protested against the unnatural angle he’d been lying at, but he didn’t take his eyes off his wife. Shelagh was still fluffing out her hair the way she always did when it had been pinned up all day, especially in the heat, running her fingers through it and shaking out the kinks caused by hours held by pins. He made it in time to see the expanse of her neck exposed to him. He put his hands on her shoulders and bent to kiss the pale skin.

“Oh!” she cried out. “Patrick, don’t do that!”

He nuzzled his face against her soft hair and inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry, my love.” he whispered.

“You’re not, not really,” she scolded, but there was forgiveness in her voice. Her hands slid down to rest on her husband’s forearms, and she hugged him to her. With a slight tilt of her head, her hair fell away from the line of her throat he never could resist.

A low sound rumbled in his chest. “Shall I do this instead?” he wondered aloud, his voice soft and ardent. Shelagh felt the gentle grasp of his long fingers on her arms as he turned her to face him. His face glowed with desire and she forgot the aches and fatigue and pressures of the long day.

“I love your hair.” His hands traced the outline of her shoulders, her neck, her jaw, then slid to cradle her head. Silken strands slipped through his fingers as he gently massaged her scalp, and Shelagh’s body became taut with the anticipation his attentions always provoked.

Patrick smiled against her skin. Oh yes, he could feel the tension subsiding with every passing moment. He moved one hand away from her hair and carefully removed her glasses, placing them on the work surface behind her.

“Now that’s my Shelagh,” he murmured, continuing his journey from her neck up to her jawline. “Just mine, no one else’s.”

He felt her pull away slightly, and raised his head to see her eyebrows raised questioningly.

“Aren’t I always yours?”

“Oh no my love,” he resumed his quest, lips moving now from jawline to earlobe. “The hairpins, the glasses…they’re for the outside world. They’re Nurse Turner, they’re Sr Bernadette. Your hair and your eyes, they’re just for me.”

He ran his fingers once again through the soft honey tresses. “This neck is for me, this bit here behind your ear is for me. And these lips…”

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If this was 1/10th as much fun to read as it was to write, we’re happy.