Title: Birthmark
Fandom: The Thick of It/The Musketeers (BBC)
Rating: Mature
Length: 430
Author notes: OC and crossover
Summary: Grey has a birthmark, and a nightmare

Malcolm pressed the tip of his middle finger between Grey’s breasts covering the slightly darker spot of flesh. “What happened?” he asked glancing up at her.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just a birthmark.”


Grey had been having the same recurring nightmare since the day she’d met Malcolm, not every night but often enough for it to bother her, especially since she’d never had recurring nightmares before. He was there, only he wasn’t quite him. It was his face, but different. He had a moustache and a beard and his clothes, they were not Malcolm’s clothes, but then the clothes she wore in the nightmare weren’t hers either. He wore leather while she wore a corset, and a dress. She was in love with him, in the dream (only in the dream she told herself every time she woke up from it as she tried to shake off the feeling.) more than in love with him really. She was completely and utterly devoted to him - the man in leather with Malcolm’s face.

The nightmare always started the same, with them running, no not running, being chased while men shouted at them, told them to stop or they’d shoot. He was old though, that was the thing, he seemed old in a way Malcolm never did and he couldn’t run, not far, not for long and then they were there, not cornered, but they couldn’t keep running, she knew that, she’d known that from the very start but they’d run anyway, trying to save each other, hoping they’d find somewhere to hide.

But they hadn’t.

“We knew you weren’t dead,” one of them said, pointing a gun at them, no, at him. “More lies, Cardinal.”

And then he fired, they all fired and she lept, pushed him out of the way, onto the ground and there was pain, searing, burning pain in her chest. She always woke up at that point, heart pounding, the strangest sense of loss that left her uneasy and wide awake every time. When she was on her own she’d lie there, wait for the feeling to fade, tell herself again and again that it was only a dream. When she was with Malcolm she curled herself around him, pressed her lips against his neck, when that didn’t wake him up she fell asleep like that, when it did she tended to shift on top of him and shag him sleepily in the early hours of the morning. It was always better waking up with him, even with the throbbing in her birthmark