There's a sequel to this that hasn't been written yet, called
'After.' As it will be of a more... adult nature, it will be found on
Geekfiction. Keep your eyes peeled. Thanks to PrincessKlutz for the
beta, congrats on turning 21.
She really wasn't sure
what a hutch was. The definition was unclear to her, but he bought
one, saying that every den needed a hutch and that was that. Not that
she cared much. Every den needed a hutch and now... theirs had one.
Every home needed a den, or so she'd been told, and now, they had one. However, Sara still wasn't quite sure what one did in a den or if it would ever serve a purpose. But there was a den, and a dining room and a spacious sitting porch that she suspected to be overrun with greenery in the near future.
If he ever allowed her out of bed to pursue her gardening. He was into cuddling an obscene amount and while she found that sweet, she also had a tendency to sweat when he'd been bunched around her for too long.
It wasn't so much the hutch or the china cupboard, or the fact that there were antiques in the living room now. The fact was that all of those things were now under joint ownership; those things were no longer 'his' or 'hers' they were 'theirs' and that had her mind spinning again.
That and that after thirty-five years she had a real place to call home and a real person to come home to.
There were minute arguments about the hue of the wallpaper and then fervid minutes spent forgetting the minutes before. They spent more time in the bedroom than anywhere else, not because they saw the need to be overly-physical but because they both felt the room breathed, nearly lived.
They would read books side by side when dawn was attempting to intrude at the window. They fell asleep reading said books and more often than not she would be awoken by his quiet snuffling only to have to remove his glasses. In her sleep she'd turn to the side of bed and curl directly on the edge, as far away from him as possible. For some reason, they never met in the center of the bed, but on either side and at times found themselves awakened as they nearly tumbled from the bed.
Sara lifted her gaze and was met with a mirror image of her eyes, peering back at her in the buttery yellow light of the bathroom. It hurt to want to smile all the time, but she tried to hold some back, keeping them to herself, in private. Now was one of those times; an eager grin broke across her face, herself the only recipient. A person could really have too many reasons to smile, but to have one thing rendering her a giant Crest ad had her nearly bursting at the seams.
And it was entirely too fabulous. So she smiled and dropped her gaze to the basin and the already-leaking faucet.
Sara had meant to take a shower, but when she reached the edge of the tub, he'd begun talking. Something about the score of that night's game or some such and while she loved him to death, really, baseball got tuned out. Standing there on the cool tile, she listened to his words, imagining him lying on the bed imagining something else. She imagined him pitching a baseball, eating popcorn in the stands, holding a beer while she went on talking about the mathematics of it all. Their bed, he was lying in their bed talking, imagining, and she was about to bathe in their tub.
Her palms were slick and hot as they came into contact with the freshly-installed porcelain of the sink. Eyes slipping closed, she launched into a freshly-favorite memory. It took only seconds to replay in her mind, but it felt like hours. His total lack of rationalization as he leaned forward and kissed her soundly on the lips, leaving her standing at her car with a, "This is okay." And as if she didn't already know that it was okay… that it was fantastic.
In the eight times they'd been together previous, she'd come to catalogue all of his gasps and how he tasted against the back of her palette. She'd learned that he had an amazingly broad chest and a more-than-slight paunch to his stomach and she found no reason not to want and need and love every bit of skin that was stretched over every inch of him.
God, she really did hate the evening breath but would kiss him anyway because what was a little bad breath when making a moment? He was never too tired to spend time with her when they got home and she was never too pissed off to tell him that his lasagna was actually really damned good and then taste how much better it was when smeared on his lower lip.
Even though they'd slept together only twice, he'd been the one to bring up the subject of cohabitation and she had been the one to freak out about it. But she'd been the one to suggest and entirely new set of furnishing for their bedroom; "A clean slate to dirty up," she'd suggested and his eyes had ignited with that spark that meant he was thinking entirely too much all at once.
They made love long and slow and woke up sore and bruised with something like a passion-hangover, but there were no vows of, "Oh God, I will never do that again." They wobbled around crime scenes and stretched in the break room and though yes, it had already happened eight times they were still becoming accustomed to the other's excitability when certain things were done.
Grissom would suck on an earlobe and she would be scratching hard enough to draw blood and Sara would bite at his jugular and he would immediately flip her onto her back. It was nice finding out each other's secrets in bed, just about as nice as it was finding out about each other's secrets in public.
Twinkie ice cream and sushi for her, Elio's frozen pizza and artichokes for him. He really was a bad dresser out of work, but she never faulted him for it; she never told him to take off his hideous straw monstrosity when they'd be meandering through the open-air market. He never told her that tye-die was truly a disgusting concoction that should have died along with free love. Jazz and oldies and classic rock meandered about as did new wave, alternative and modern rock.
They both liked wine, almost too much, and found the combination of old records and even older burgundy to be the most intensely romantic combination known to man. Tipsy and delighted they had danced on the worn wood of their back deck, at three a.m., pretending they were that sort of couple.
He hated her singing in the shower, or he said but would stand in the doorway and listen to her butcher Sting until the water would stop and he'd scamper away for fear of being caught. Dear lord, she could just barely cook and he wasn't that great either, but they just squeezed by and brought home cookbooks just to experiment with.
There was no talk of moving his insects in, not that she would have minded, he'd just never brought it up. Sara had once mentioned that perhaps the den would be an ideal place for a few specimens to which he had replied that they wouldn't go with the hutch.
She'd almost hit him for his interest in interior design, but realized it was only because she was lacking in the very same department and perhaps slightly jealous.
Their first fight was a blowout over the backyard and what to do with it. He wanted a shed and actual grass and though she thought that would be nice, it wasn't realistic. At the thought of being unrealistic, he'd flown off the handle and instead of reasoning with him, she was vehement about her idea of a rock garden. They didn't speak for three hours, then fell asleep and woke up having forgot about it.
Their second fight happened after he'd quipped that she would never be Susie Homemaker. And though she knew he'd been joking and that he'd meant it with love, she'd asked, "What, you don't think I could be like that?" And having no good answer, Grissom had just shrugged and asked her to "Just forget it."
Scoffing, Sara had dropped the pot she'd been attempting to scrub, threw the dishtowel across the kitchen and stomped to the bedroom. Minutes later, he walked in and apologized and she invited him to take a shower with her.
Sara wouldn't trade the bad moments for anything either and she thought that was probably the best sign that their relationship-
The word 'cancer' struck her out of her reveries and she took one last look at herself and moved to reenter the bedroom.
Their... their bedroom. She pretended that her knees didn't crack just a bit as she sank down in order to become eye level with him. Five, four, hell even a year ago she wouldn't have imagined that he'd be spread across a bed in front of her, looking as though he really, really was relaxed, that he lived to be a part of a moment.
In that bed, on those sheets they'd both agreed upon, he was so much hers that when she took a deep breath in, she felt him settle along the bottom curve of her lungs.
A little scared, that's how he looked really. Just a little scared; not too much, not too little. And Sara didn't want to stop the moment from happening, though it scared her too. No, there was no time for goodbyes, certainly no room to believe that this wasn't exactly how things were supposed to be.
There was no point in saying goodbye because they had barely even really said hello in all of those years they'd been together.