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From the very first interview with the aeronautics company which wanted her as a manufacturer's rep, back when they had learned that Jack would work out of Lowry and they could easily stay near Sara's family, Sara had insisted on a part-time schedule, a home office, and time off worked around her husband's erratic leave. Her mix of high-tech and people skills was perfect for the job, so the company had agreed.
Which was why Sara was home at three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon in June. She happened to be doing her laundry.
She'd pulled the bedspread from the dryer when it was still damp, and tossed it over the back porch railing to air, because she liked the way the breeze and the sunshine made the fluffy fabric smell. When she walked back in, through the kitchen, heading for the center hall and the basement stairs, to put the next load into the dryer, something about the echo of her footsteps, something about the fall of light through the kitchen door made her pause, just for a second, not quite half a step, and tilt her head.
The thought, I didn't leave the front door ajar, did I ..., skimmed away half-formed when she went on through to the hall and glanced to the right and saw the dark form, outlined in sunlight. That moment of almost-unconscious warning had been enough to blunt any alarm. So the jolt of surprise she felt wasn't the bad, heart-stopping kind. It was the good kind; the crash of relief, the burst of escaping joy.
"Jack!" she gulped, and her bustling stride turned into a skip, a trip, and then she was falling against him, pulling him to her in a shocked grab of recognition and happiness.
She hugged him hard, hard as she could, smashing her face against his shoulder, burrowing in to push her forehead against his neck. She heard the thud of a bag dropping to the floor, and his arms came around her, too, crushing her just as close. She felt his cheek pressing down against her hair. He smelled of cigarettes and dust and the faintest trace of jet fuel and oil. Tears burned behind her squeezed-tight eyelids.
"Jack," she repeated, and he kissed her hair, his arms tightening even further. Between his grip and the tightness in her own chest, she could barely breathe. She inhaled anyway, gasping, still pressing against him as hard as she could, rocking him a little, scrabbling at the coarse fabric of his jacket. His arms shifted, one coming up to softly V the elbow around her neck. She smiled wider and leaned, and put weight on her toes and lifted her chin so she could press her mouth to his neck.
He grunted, an abrupt, cut-off sound, but it made her grin, and she kissed his neck and leaned harder, making him take her weight, nuzzling and laughing silently and kissing and running firm hands along his spine.
She felt the huff of his released breath, and he shifted again, leaning back a little and taking her face in both his hands. Her smiled faded at what she saw in his expression, but she kept her arms tight around him as he stared into her eyes, then searched her face, as if looking for new worry-lines, looking for traces of what he'd missed while he'd been gone. Looking for changes.
There was no relief in him at all. Not yet. He was still so grim, so lined and determined. And god, he was tired. The dark circles under his eyes were purple. She closed her eyes as his hands tilted her head the way she already wanted it to go, anticipating, and then, slowly, he brought his face to hers.
The kiss was searching, the getting reacquainted that their 'first kiss of a leave' always was. He'd been gone this time for four months and fourteen days. Because of his missions. Because of the life she'd known she was signing up for when she said yes.
She kissed him back, gently, carefully, following his lead, letting the kiss be how he wanted it, and she pushed down the thoughts that had become way too familiar over the years, the thoughts that somehow, dammit, managed to interfere with this moment, and also interfered when she was playing back the stored and repeated almost-identical versions of this moment from other homecomings, and the similar moments and hours she knew were about to follow.... Who has he kissed since the last time he kissed me? How? When? Why?
He made that sound again, that moan-y grunt, and licked into the kiss, and held her even tighter. Gentle was leaving the premises; careful was right behind it. She got one hand to the back of his head and met it all, opening her mouth, gripping his shoulder. He was taking, now, diving in, and she opened to him, fiercely glad to be what he wanted, to be desired like this, so so relieved and triumphant to feel his equally fierce demand.
God, it was Jack. Still her Jack, here again, home again, in one piece. Still hers. Still coming home.
He moaned again and gave her his tongue again, and he was ratcheting up the urgency to something more like desperation. He still had one hand on her face, and wrapped the other arm around her ribs. He was practically lifting her off her feet, lifting her up to him. She bent a knee, pushing her thigh between his, and yes, he was hard already. Knowing that she did that to him sent a red wash of arousal down her spine and her legs.
She took over the kiss, and he let her, and she explored his mouth, patiently, determinedly, brazenly, and a quick glimpse told her he'd closed his eyes, but the frown was still there, dark brows drawn together, dark eyes hidden. His grip on her didn't ease at all.
The deep back-and-forth of their mouths gradually disintegrated into sloppy, quicker kisses, and he didn't smile, didn't take her up on one of their quiet physical jokes, and that told her about his mood, just as his frown had.
She slowed the kissing and leaned her head back to look, to catalog his face as he'd checked hers. Jack's eyes stayed closed, his head a little to the side. His mouth was wet and red, now. He looked wrecked. His hair was dirty, a little stuck together, like he'd not had a real bath, only wash-ups. She wondered how long he'd been awake, and where he'd flown in from. He inhaled, deep and big, and pulled her in again and kissed her some more. A moment ago, he'd wanted to dive deep. Now his kisses were shallow, with unexpected targets interspersed, some landing on her chin and the corners of her mouth, and now he was turning her, never pausing the kisses. Turning her, and kicking the front door shut. Leaving his bag there and pulling her toward the stairs. She stumbled beside him, turning her face up and to the side to keep snatching kisses, knowing the way with her eyes shut, just as he did. Up and up toward her bedroom. Their bedroom.
At the first landing, between kisses, she pushed at the shoulder of his jacket, and he helped her, pulling his arm free, and letting the coat fall to the floor, never letting go of her, and then it was her turn, stumbling up to the second landing, his quick fingers finding the hem of her button-down (it was one of his old shirts) and pulling it up and over her head.
They were kicking off shoes at the bedroom door, and shoving down pants and briefs at the bed. She fumbled for the clip that held her hair in a messy twist, got it free, tossed it toward the nightstand, not caring where it landed. The bed was stripped, she remembered too late -- just the mattress pad and bare pillows, and one light blanket folded on the chair, the bedspread out there fluttering in the sun -- but Jack didn't seem to notice. They fell together, arms sliding easily across warm skin, and the smell and touch of him was like a drug.
Desire and arousal were flaring brightly in her, like banked coals brushed by a warm breeze to suddenly burst to new flame. He could always do this to her; had always done this to her, from the first time she'd seen him at that car show, his buddy an old date of her girlfriend's, when she'd been captivated by his charming manners and his bright eyes and his careless unselfconscious athletic grace. She'd fallen in lust with him first. The love had come later. The lust was still potent, dormant during the long months alone, but one touch from him and...
God.
They rolled across the bed, skin to skin, holding tight, and she was moaning, already so wet, so willing and ready. They arrived on their sides, and she wrapped her upper leg over his, pushing her pelvis against him.
He'd put his face in her neck, when they'd gotten horizontal, but now he found her mouth again, and took his hand from her breast to hold himself, to aim, and she tilted her hips and dug her heel into the back of his calf and ... there. He was there.
Pushing his warm palm against the small of her back once he'd seated himself, holding her close, pushing into her, steady and unhesitating. She groaned; she couldn't hold it in even if she'd wanted to, the sound raw and torn out of her, and pulled her mouth away from his to pant, her fingers clutching reflexively at his back, probably scratching him. He pushed until he was all the way in, and she held on and he gasped and she started to move against him, still clinging to him, balanced against him, balanced on her side.
She was so wet; it was easy. Warmth and fullness and so, so deep.... God, she wanted this. Wanted him. Taking him inside so quickly was as shocking and sudden as the surprise of him coming home. So quick, but yet, so good, to know they could get right to this. Could come together again just like this, so easily, so urgently.
He felt wonderful inside her. She squeezed around him, making him groan, and slid her hand down his spine. He moved in her, gradually picking up the pace of his thrusts. She was loving the clench and pull of the muscles under her hand. Was he thinner than he'd been when he left? Hard to tell.
"God, Jack," she said, and another deep, intense kiss was the way he chose to answer. She realized through a haze of red that he hadn't said a word to her since he'd come in the door.
It took effort, to fuck like this, took some effort to work their muscles to stay on their sides and keep their hips together, but it seemed so right. Pushing together, and pulling with that leg she had wrapped around his, mouths locked. She moaned into his kiss, and felt more than heard his answering moan.
And soon, she felt it get away from him -- and again the triumph, the sense of victory, that being with her carried him away, made him lose control -- and he turned them so that he could be on top. Jack got up on his fists, eyes shut tight, head up, and kept working his hips in liquid, heavy pushes, over and over, slapping against her, big long strokes that brought him halfway out of her every time and scrubbed their thighs together, and she grabbed his butt with both hands and wrapped her legs around his and met every stroke.
He wasn't taking care for her, wasn't particularly trying to make her come. She knew he was getting lost in it, blissing out on the reunion, just like she was, and she didn't really focus on her orgasm either. It didn't always happen from this particular act, but this time she was beginning to be able to tell that it would. All the time spent apart, she guessed. All her lonely, pent-up demand for him. She closed her eyes and hung on, riding their wave, smelling his sweat and his warm body and the familiar faint scent of laundry soap from the bed. Yeah, it was going to happen. He was going to make her come, just like this. She bit her lip, her hips moving hypnotically with Jack's, and felt it build to a sharp sudden peak, and then it burst in her in a trembling release that brought tears to her eyes.
Jack groaned aloud when he felt her tighten and pulse around him, and it made him push into her harder and speed up his strokes. It wasn't long, then, before he was ready to finish, too, and he climaxed in silence, throwing his head back, holding inside her, wringing out a final series of tremors that started deep and caught her clit again as they spread outward, like ripples in water. She groaned, half crazy, pretty much delirious and gone, and held him against her as he came. It was long. There was sweat at the small of his back.
Finally he shifted his weight, a little stiffly, and then he lay right down on top of her in that way he knew she liked. His weight was warm, better than a blanket, and much heavier. His chin fit over her shoulder, and he turned his head to put his lips against her neck. She felt her tears gather again. But she didn't worry about crying or not crying. She twitched and settled, and licked her lips and tightened her arms around Jack's ribs. She felt him fall straight into sleep almost at once.
God, he must be wiped.... And thank God, he came right to me, right to bed. He didn't have to get all explanatory, worry about protection... There had been that one mission, the previous year, when he'd come home and she could see that the things he couldn't tell her weighed on him worse than usual; he'd talked his way all around it, but it was clear he'd been undercover, and he'd had to take someone else to bed. They'd gotten through it, waited it out, but that had been very hard. Very hard.
So no worries about that, this time. No worries. She breathed, against his weight, a blissful effort, and watched the shadows creep across the ceiling, and touched him and smelled him, and filled her senses with Jack. She couldn't fall asleep -- it was the middle of the afternoon, after all, and she'd never been much of a napper -- but she held him, content to lie there and feel him and just drift.
He slept for close to an hour, and then he twitched and jerked, his hands closing on nothing.
"Hey," she said, smoothing his back and putting a hand to his dirty hair. "It's me."
"Mm," he said, and he snuggled his face into the tangle of long hair that had bunched against her neck, burrowing through it until he could kiss her just under her ear. She grinned again at the sparkle of sensation, and held him tight. He'd slipped out of her as he slept, leaving a warm spill of stickiness between her legs, and it smeared along their thighs now as he moved. He hitched an elbow under him and lifted himself, sliding half away from her, a leg still hooked over hers, and looked at her, really looked, meeting her eyes, no reservations.
She looked back, delighted and unafraid.
"You're home," she said, and he smiled, but it didn't touch his eyes. Not yet.
He licked his lips and looked around the bedroom, and then he leaned down and kissed her and carefully rolled off her, going clear over so that his back was to her. He reached for the drawer in the nightstand, and she smiled, even though she knew he couldn't see it.
This dratted ritual. She loved it and hated it both. Loved it that he knew it would be there, ready to take up again, reliable as home itself. Hated it for how unhealthy it was. But given his line of work? Unhealthy seemed kind of irrelevant, for the time being.
He rolled back with what he'd gone for in the drawer. Half a pack of Marlboro reds, and the cheap orange Bic lighter. Still there, after six months.
He glanced at her, just a sidelong slide from under his brows. Then he bunched a pillow under his head, and lay back and shook a cigarette loose and put it in his mouth. She watched his hands as he lit it and handed it to her, same as always. Then he lit one for himself.
She never smoked without him. She'd never smoked at all until he came into her life. And he wouldn't be smoking at home, very soon. He picked it up when he was overseas, every time. And when he came home, he quit. Every time. It would take him about three days, and she'd smoke with him just like this, until he put it down again. But she'd leave the last partial pack they'd share in the nightstand drawer. Till they quit again, and after. And it would be there. The next time Jack came home.
They smoked in silence, the curling gray billows turning into a soft cloud that spread along the ceiling and disappeared in the breeze from the open window. Sara didn't cough once. She watched Jack's hand as it moved to his mouth and away. She admired the soft fall of his dick against his leg, the dark hair around it, the deep color of the skin. She watched his nearer knee, bent a little, as the dirty headrush from the Marlboro spread along her scalp and ebbed to settle in her chest.
Her coffee cup from this morning on the nightstand made an opportunistic ashtray. She winced, but used it when he offered it. The real ashtray, square and glass and kind of Fifties-ish, was in the bathroom. She'd washed it months ago. It had tweezers and a nail clipper and some cotton balls sitting in it. Later today she'd have to bring it out to the nightstand again.
Jack finished his cigarette first, dropping his butt in the cup, and she stubbed out hers half-smoked when he offered the cup to her. With another glance her way, he got up, heading for the bathroom, carrying the cup with him. Sara followed, her gaze lingering on the line of his spine and the muscles of his shoulders. Yeah, he'd lost some weight. Not that he'd ever been even a little overweight, but he was thin now.
He went to the sink, and he was looking around again, as if remembering where he was, checking out the place. She came up behind him and put her arms around his middle. Their eyes met in the mirror, and he smiled, just a corner of his mouth. He started opening drawers, and when he found a toothbrush in a new plastic box, he ripped it open, and by the time he had, she had the toothpaste tube from her side of the sink ready to hand to him. The smile continued to curve the side of his mouth.
She used the toilet while he brushed his teeth and started the shower. She brushed her teeth too, and followed him in behind the curtain. She picked up the soap and started washing his back, as he stood there, turned away from her, palms braced on the tile, the water hitting him in the chest. She washed him all over, carefully and quickly, and washed his hair, too, and he was so quiet while she did it, just letting her, turning when she needed him to, just standing there. Still not saying a word. He mostly kept his eyes closed. He was so pale this time -- no summer tan lines on his biceps, just the triangle of brown skin at his neck. She wondered what that said about where he'd been -- not the desert, probably. No place warm. She knew he wouldn't tell her. His haircut wasn't especially new. His hair had been shorter than this, at different times. He had no new scars or injuries, she was happy to note.
She stood, after working her way down his legs, and put the soap in the dish and turned under the water herself, letting the stream of water push her hair away from her face, and when she felt his hand on her nape she turned, rubbing the water out of her eyes. He was looking at her, frowning again, like he'd lost his place somehow, and his eyes were red. Was it the water? Or was he crying?
"Jack," she murmured, and put a hand to his cheek, stepping close, but he avoided her kiss and just pulled her in, holding her tight, and then he made a tsking noise and turned her so that the water was hitting their sides equally, so that no one got cold.
She waited, holding him, feeling his ribs move with his breaths. And he started kissing her again. Tasting her skin. Urgent kisses. Moving along her collarbone and down. She closed her eyes.
So it would be like that, then. No talking yet.... She could do it this way.
He worked along her shoulder, sucking and licking, making her breath catch, and then stooping to massage and kiss her breasts, and the roil of emotions she was feeling locked up into something like frustration, an overload of worry and relief and wonder that brought tears to her eyes again.
She leaned a shoulder against the tile and parked her hands in his wet hair and made herself breathe, made herself relax. He had her by the hips now, kneeling under the warm fall of water, and she knew what he wanted, knew what he would do, and again, like it had been in bed an hour ago, it was all about her and yet barely about her.
He kissed across her belly, around her navel, and she was a little ticklish there, always, but this time she resisted it, helped by the firm grip of his hands on her hips, and she spread her feet and tilted up to him and let him do it.
He was so good -- mouthing gently at her mound first, kissing firmly all around, circling slowly in. His last kiss landed right at the base of her clit, right where the folds separated, and he pressed with his tongue, extending it, parting the folds, and he did that over and over, slow intense laps. She let her head fall back against the tile, trusting his grip on her hips, letting him take her apart.
He gently, inexorably, worked her open, exploring all the folds and whorls, and finally, when he had her panting, melting, he nuzzled right in, nuzzled all the petaled skin aside, and sucked gently and then licked directly on her clit, and she cried aloud as she came, a blinding rush, and jerked in his hands. He waited her out, not taking his mouth away, remembering exactly how to handle her, what she liked and what she needed.
"Oh, God, Jack," she said, and she could barely hold herself up. He got to his feet, and she half-collapsed against him, still quivering from the waves of orgasm, and she muzzily knew that he'd reached to shut off the water, and she felt his erection knock against her thigh as he helped her, gently, insistently, out of the shower and back to the bed.
They fell together again, legs half trailing off the edge of the mattress, on their stomachs this time, and he slid over her, both of them still dripping wet, and braced himself on the mattress and thrust right into her again.
The sharp clean push of his cock into all that swollen aroused flesh shoved a new spike of orgasm through her, and she shouted again, tasting the cottony mattress cover, weak and boneless.
He was making noises now, urgent short groans in time with his hard strokes. He was really giving it to her, sliding through all that wet, and she had to make noise, too. It was like the orgasm spread out and kept going, continued without a break from what he'd done with his mouth, barely ebbing from the shower before it smashed over her again, a pummeling overwhelming thing.
She felt them slipping, and she got her elbows under her and braced one foot, and Jack kept giving it to her until he cried out one last time and came again, too, pushing so hard into her, holding it, and on the downward slide of his climax he wrapped his arms around her middle and rolled. They curled around each other, sprawled on their sides at the foot of the bed.
This time, on the ebb of all that sensation, she fell asleep.
When she woke, it was dark. Jack was right there, still curled around her. Her hair was still damp. The room was cooling off. She could feel his alertness; she knew he was awake. She fumbled with her hand and found his, and he squeezed it hard and laced his fingers through hers. They stayed there a little while. She listened to him breathe. He felt a little more relaxed, she thought. And herself? God. She couldn't have been more relaxed after a whirlpool bath and a professional massage.
God.
He squeezed her hand and eased them apart and got up. She closed her eyes and brought her knees up toward her chest. Her feet had been hanging off the side of the bed and she'd barely noticed. She heard the snap of the lighter, and then his soft footsteps. He was going back into the bathroom. She rolled to her back and opened her eyes. He was blotting at himself with a towel, as he came toward her, and he put the cigarette between his lips and smiled around it anyway, and gently opened her legs and blotted at her, too. She watched his face. It made her happy to see how he met her eyes. Then he handed the cigarette to her and turned and bent and found his jeans and pulled them on. She noticed he didn't bother with his underwear.
He was going then, heading for the door, so she heaved herself up and found her bathrobe and a clip for her out-of-control hair and followed him. She paused to take a final drag from the cigarette and put the ashes in the sink. She carried the butt with her downstairs.
He wasn't that far ahead of her; he was moving slowly. She paused at the bottom of the stairs and watched him go to his bag and kneel and unzip it, still holding the towel. She supposed he was getting more cigarettes. She went to him and took the towel from his hand and tossed it just inside the basement door, at the head of the stairs. Then she went in the kitchen, looking around as if with Jack's eyes, as if she hadn't seen the place in a season. She still felt a little dizzy, between the sex and the nicotine. She put her cigarette butt in the sink. She'd have to find an ashtray in here, too.
Dinner. It must be past time for dinner. She went to the refrigerator. There was leftover beef stroganoff, and she could boil some more noodles and open a package of frozen vegetables. Maybe a salad. And she didn't have any ice cream, but they could get some later. Jack would want ice cream. She heard him behind her while she was rummaging in the refrigerator. She realized he hadn't turned on the overhead light, and she hadn't either.
He went to the porch door. Probably to smoke out there.
She put the plastic container of beef and sauce on the counter, and all of a sudden it all welled up in her and she had to lean hard on the counter because her knees wanted to buckle. Her throat closed. She didn't let herself sob out loud, but the tears were coming fast. She lifted her wrist to wipe them.
Jack was home. Jack was home again, back home with her. Jack loved her. And he needed her. And she could still feel him inside her, still feel the gorgeous loving friction of his cock, still feel how he came to her, figuratively and literally.
But the work he did, the work he had just come home from, was classified and probably quite brutal. She had developed a good imagination. She read the papers. She'd talked to the other Special Ops wives. She knew he loved her; she was solid with that, never doubting it. And beyond that, she knew he would always do what he had to do for the Air Force, and when he'd done it, he would always come home.
She wanted to go out there and run her thumb across his freshly scrubbed cheek and ask him how he was. She wanted to ask him if he'd counted the pieces of his soul that got chipped away by every single mission, because she knew that was happening, and she wanted to know if he knew it too and she wanted to know how many he could spare and what kind of math he used to do that calculation. She wanted to ask him how he knew he could keep doing this, and if he could stand it, and if what she did helped enough, if losing himself in her body and her acceptance would keep being enough.
But she didn't. And she wouldn't.
It wouldn't be like this for his entire leave. They'd get out of bed eventually. They'd leave the house, do things, laugh, talk, tell stories, catch up, make plans. But she wouldn't ask.
She wiped her eyes, took a deep breath. Turned at the sound of his step, and there he was, in the back door. He had the bedspread, now dry and fluffy, folded neatly in his arms. He smelled like smoke. He was smiling, that goofy, self-deprecating smile that always melted her heart.
"Honey?" he said. "I'm home."
~~~~
"She'd never reached in to drag him out of his bunker; she'd opened her arms to him, bunker and all, and built a life with him around it."
-- Jack thinks about Sara, in "Come What May" by Paian