Author's Note: The best way to get out of one swing into another is just to swing, right?
She likes his house. It smells like him. It feels like the future. She never turns the lights on when she comes here and she always comes here during the day when the morning sunlight streams in turning everything a greenish sort of blue through the huge picture windows. She waters a plant, cleans a few questionable things out of his fridge, goes out to check the mail. She makes polite small talk with his elderly next door neighbor who, by now, thinks Sam's his girlfriend and Sam does nothing to disabuse her of the notion because she likes the way feels and who's the old lady going to talk to anyway? NID at worst, right? And fuck the NID. She puts the handful of mail on the dining room table.
His hallway is dark since none of the window light reaches this far. The darkness and his last phone call lead right to his bedroom. He took and took and left her heavy and wanting. She'd be lying if she said she didn't like it. She'd always suspected he had it in him, always suspected he'd held that part of him back to keep from scaring her off. But it didn't even come close to scaring.
In his bedroom, the bed is meticulously made. In fact, everything is meticulous down to the military straight medal boxes top of his dresser. New medals. Ones he didn't want and can never wear. There's a clothes hamper in the corner and it's the only thing that gives away that the room might ever actually be used - a sock hangs over the edge. She picks it up and drops it on the floor in front of the hamper. Like it makes him more there with her, the room suddenly feels a little fuller, like some life has been breathed into it.
In his bathroom there's a toothbrush and a razor in the holder attached to the wall. She takes the razor down and sets it on the counter. She looks for stray whiskers or flecks of toothpaste, but this room, like his bedroom, looks staged. There's a used bath towel hanging over the shower curtain rod. She drops it on the floor between the tub and the toilet. How can the same man who lives with beer caps and takeout containers be the one who inhabits these military-precise rooms? Guess you never really can take the man out of the barracks.
Back in his bedroom, she kicks off her shoes, pulls his comforter down and slips between his sheets. She wiggles out of her jeans and t-shirt and lets the gunmetal grey sheets caress her skin. With the curtains slightly askew, a slashed mark of light cuts across her legs in the bed. She thinks about what it would be like to be in this bed with him one day. Maybe one day not so far from today. Six missions from now, after she's done like she said she would and taken him out somewhere remote, closer to the stars and fucked him into oblivion. Because after everything he'll have done, she figures he'll deserve it.
She thinks of the way she went down on him the night before, all voice and phone and too many miles, but damn if she couldn't taste him in her mouth. She spends too much time thinking about what he'll look like, she's lost countless hours imagining how he'll feel in her mouth. Between her legs her panties prove she's thinking about it now. She rubs herself through the cotton remembering the way making it all about him had made her so hot she got off three times on his voice and her fingers before he hung up the phone and another with the help of a vibrator and a very active imagination. She'd soaked the sheets in sweat and else so she'd slept on the wrong side of the bed, sticky and almost satiated.
Almost. The rest she'd take care of right now, nipples rubbing against the lace of her bra and the Egyptian cotton of his sheets. Using the scent of him on the pillows like an accelerant she catches the fire of his hands playing over her skin, pretending it's his long, long fingers instead of her own playing around the elastic edges of her panties. She's careful to never pull them away from the wetness he's created even though she wants them out of the way, wants his fingers inside her, wants them plucking at her clit. Instead she rubs at herself like an unpracticed girl, but it feels almost good enough.
Frustrated with almost she pulls her bra off and flings it. It falls down behind his dresser but she can't bring herself to care when he's got her nipples pressed between his fingertips, his nails biting into the sensitive skin. The air kicks on and then his breath is wafting across her neck. He drops his hands back to her panties, pressing the cotton into her dripping hole, as far as he can, stretching the elastic, testing the fabric.
He teases her until she starts shifting her hips and then goes back to her needy clit, flicking at it through the sodden barrier. When she comes it's with her face pressed into his pillow. She can smell her perfume mixed there with whatever it is that makes him smell like himself and it leaves her satisfied to know she's marked his bed.
She wriggles out of her panties and pushes them to the bottom of the bed tucked into the folds she'd put in his sheets. She climbs out of his bed, slips back into her jeans and her t-shirt and leaves the bed unmade. He'll be home soon anyway, and there's no way she'd be able to make it back as perfectly as it was. Besides, she's pretty sure he's not going to care.
In his driveway, when she waves at the old woman, her breasts swing beneath her t-shirt and she smiles.