A month after that

Joss didn't think of herself as the motherly type.

She knew she wasn't as conventionally nurturing as other women, so she particularly enjoyed watching John's landlady, Mrs. Soni, lavish upon him large doses of maternal care from time to time.

With Taylor on a real honest-to-God Saturday night movie date with a girl, they had retreated to their red-lined booth at the rear of Pooja's restaurant where John kept a room.

But before Mrs. Soni would permit them to devour another one of her delectable vegetarian dinners, she had insisted that John let her bind up the bruised fingers on his right hand.

Like a dour sentry, she stood at their table in silent reprimand until he relented.

Joss agreed with Mrs. Soni's assessment: the ring finger and the pinkie might both be broken. But when John refused professional care, Mrs. Soni had retrieved her medical kit to do the delicate job herself.

She probed the swollen fingers, he winced. She straighten them, he hummed a tuneless air.

She positioned splints under both fingers, curving the metal struts to a natural position before she began the extravagant process of winding white surgical gauze around the injured digits. Then over the gauze she wound an extra layer of adhesive tape so that only the tips of the fingernails and the raw edges of the metal splints peeked from her bandage.

No soldier in Florence Nightingale's care ever received better battlefield nursing.

Mrs. Soni placed two aspirin pills next to a goblet of water in front of John and watched with solemn patience until he swallowed the medicine.

When he grimaced rather theatrically at the bitter taste, Mrs. Soni seemed satisfied that her medical service was complete.

Prudently, Joss kept her fingers in front of her mouth to suppress the giggles that threatened to burst forth several times during the long ordeal.

But after the motherly nurse had departed, Joss couldn't resist embroidering the incident by offering the invalid more maternal help.

"Do you want me to cut up your food for you, John?"

"Don't say another word."

Brandishing the fork in his left hand, his blue-eyed glare was warmed by the quirk of his lips and they garnished their dinner with peaceable conversation and avoided further remarks about his war wounds.

In deference to John's injuries, Joss carried the tray with their mugs of jasmine tea up the three flights of stairs to his square room above the restaurant. They finished the tea and ate almost all of the home-made ginger cookies before tumbling into bed.

They were both tired; the week had been long and tense and intermittently violent, as most were for them. The tea made them drowsy and their eyelids drooped over the cookies.

They had intended to fall right to sleep, lulled by the fragrant air wafting up from the restaurant and the comforting murmur of patrons' muffled chatter below.

But the mood heightened when John drew the bright yellow coverlet over their naked bodies.

The scent of jasmine – tea and her perfume - curled around them, insinuating itself into their minds, lubricating all their senses, and urging their limbs to slide over and under and around in graceful accord.

They combined slowly, blurring the boundaries of where one body began and the other ended. The salts of their flesh and their tears joined together; the sweetness of their mouths blended together, the throb of their pulses merged into one.

Afterwards, completed, they lay silently entwined for many moments.

Leaning forward to retrieve the coverlet again, Joss noticed a small dark blot on the sheet where she had been lying. She stretched over the stain to hide it, feeling it was a bad omen somehow.

But John saw it and ran a finger over the spot to test it: blood.

He sat up behind her, turning her around to inspect her back.

"These cuts on your shoulder." He ran a finger lightly in a circle over the abrasions.

"I must have scratched you with my hand." He held up his bandaged fingers and the rough edge of the metal splint flashed for a second in the moonlight.

He bent to kiss her left shoulder and licked at the little wounds.

"You need better than that." His tone was more somber than the occasion merited, she felt, but she said nothing as he rose from the bed.

His departure sent a draft across her neck; the chill loosed a shower of goose bumps falling to her waist. She shrugged once to recapture the lost warmth and ward off the premonition needling inside her.

When John returned from the bathroom he was carrying a tube of ointment with the tangy smell of antiseptic. She hoped it wouldn't burn too much.

He sat behind her again, his legs splayed on either side of her hips. He turned her this way and that in the pale light, painting the salve in a film across her shoulder blade.

She tried to not flinch, but there was a definite sting to the treatment, whether from the antiseptic itself or from the movement of his fingers across the torn skin, she couldn't tell.

She couldn't see his face as he worked behind her; drifting clouds obscured the half-moon hanging low over the rooftops outside the window. The darkness deepened in the room.

When he was done he drew her toward him, pulling her against his chest, his arms encircling hers, his hands clasped lightly over her stomach.

She felt the next words rumbling against her spine, vibrating through his ribs.

"I made a will."

"What?"

"I made a will."

She wanted to laugh, wanted to suppress the grim thoughts rising up in her, wanted to return to the jasmine-scented mood of a few minutes ago.

"With a lawyer and everything?"

He was serious and wouldn't be diverted, it seemed.

"No, I just wrote it out and gave it to Harold."

"So he has this will? He's the witness?"

"And the executor of my estate too."

"I don't want to hear about this, John."

She rolled her shoulders in an attempt to flee, to change the subject. But he held her firmly.

"Why not?"

"Too morbid. Too soon."

"I may die tomorrow. Or I may die in this bed, fifty years from now. But I still want Harold to know what to do with my money when it happens."

In counterpoint to these morose words, he smiled against her neck to dislodge her gloom. The technique worked for a brief moment and she tried to be light in response.

"So, you gonna tell me? Or do I have to kill you to find out what's in your will?"

He encouraged her attempt at levity and squeezed her arms against her breasts.

"If you kill me, you're automatically excluded from any benefits. I made that part crystal clear to Harold. I have to protect my ass, you know."

"Yeah, alright. So I won't kill you. Now tell me: what's in it?"

"I told Harold I want him to give everything to you."

"What! Why?"

"Because I want you to have it. I want you taken care of even if I'm not around. And anyway Harold has more money than God, so why would I leave it to him?"

The jocular tone of these last words did nothing to ease her dread.

Something sounded forced to her now; the false buoyancy of his voice straining in the top notes to float over a more turbulent current that washed over her, filling her with unease.

"Yeah, I guess."

He continued on in a rush to prevent her from interrupting again.

"And I want Taylor to be comfortable. And if there's another baby, I want her taken care of too."

"What? What do you mean? Another?"

"It could happen again."

"Again?"

"Yes."

She lowered her head but didn't try to move away from him. Lifting his clasped hands to her mouth she kissed his knuckles and the bandage encircling his damaged fingers.

When she spoke at last, it was in a strangled whisper.

"You know?"

"Yes."

"How? I mean… Did Harold? He promised…"

"No, Harold kept your secret. He didn't say anything."

Not seeing his face, only feeling his warm breath against her nape, made it easier to let her fears creep out from the dark place she had hidden them so many months ago.

"Then how?"

"You just seemed different those weeks last fall. Anxious somehow. Like you were ready to bolt from me at any time."

He tightened his arms again, as if wanting to fend off even the memory of those days.

"You looked different. And, I don't know... You felt different too."

Hitched breaths from his chest reverberated through her body.

"Felt different?"

"Yes."

He touched his left palm to her stomach and the underside of her breast.

"Just different…somehow. More tender, more soft for me. I don't know…"

His voice trailed off, leaving space for her heavy sigh.

"You know I wanted to keep it, don't you?"

"Yes, I know. It was an accident. Couldn't be helped."

She could feel his hot tears dropping along her neck and running down her back.

She needed to know where this absolution ended, if it's limit had been reached.

"Do you hate me for it?"

His quick intake of breath sounded like shock and the words came out firmly.

"No, of course not. Why would I?"

"Because… Because I didn't tell you?"

"I wanted you to share it with me, yes. I wondered why you didn't. But I didn't want to make you do it."

She sobbed roughly then. And her next words came out in a wail.

"You were waiting for me."

"Yes, Joss. I was waiting for you."

She leaned back against him and turned her head to the left, dropping kisses against his heart as she wept.

"I couldn't figure out the right way, the right time to tell you."

"I know. There isn't a right time or right way, is there?" His open mouth moving against her shoulder felt hot and wet, pulling at her skin.

She thought about the broken fingers, about the clumsy bandage and the exposed metal splint, the abraded skin, the salve, the revelation, the confession.

Each little knot in a net of trust leading on inexorably to another and another and another; unavoidable, required, and necessary.

She needed to get all of this out at last; this pressing thing clawing inside her had to come out now. If it didn't come out, if she delayed again, she feared that she never would be able to expel it at all.

"I wanted to so much, John. I wanted to tell you before Christmas, but you seemed so happy then. You even told me once that you felt happy. So how could I tell you then?

"I wanted to tell you when we met on the pier, that midnight after Rikers. But then the time was taken from us. You were taken from me and I couldn't tell you then.

"I wanted to tell you after Harold saved you from the bomb. But you seemed so distant then. So detached that I could never find a way to get the words right. To reach you the way I wanted."

She sputtered to a halt, gasping in all of the misery and the loss they shared.

For a long while she wept and he wept. Her skin felt soothed by the tears coursing down the channel of her spine.

Then he said the only thing that mattered to her.

"It's alright. We're alright. We will be alright."

They lay down together again on the damp sheets, her body enfolded in the curve of his. He pressed his mouth against her nape and she could feel the flat of his tongue moving against her skin, suckling, laving in a primordial rhythm.

He pulled the coverlet over their bodies again and they slept past dawn.

Author's Note: The events in the immediate aftermath of Carter's miscarriage and the consolation offered by Finch are examined in a previous story, The Grain, posted here: s/8563612/1/The-Grain