"God-"
Flynn kisses her throat, his lips clasping the softness of her tender flesh.
His wife is beautiful and restless, and as he buries his fingers into long dark tresses, an inexplicable flash of enjoyment sets off the tectonic shivers throughout his body. Something about the sarcastic eyes, and her deadpan wit- it had reserved for her a solid place in his consciousness a few years back. This wasn't attraction as he had always imagined it to be, but it was something close enough.
He tries not to let these private reflections bother him.
Like any good officer, his toe never steps over that abominable line, and in his work, the young man is relieved of the burden of idle thought-wandering and the dangers it presented. Flynn addresses one issue at a time, eyes locked on his noble goal; his chief problem is fueling the fires of his ambition, and a night like this one is no different from one spent alone at his impersonal post.
It does not matter that something deep inside of him had creaked to a rusty stand-still, nor does it worry him whenever he is suddenly impressed by the swinging sign of an old tavern. He lingers a minute longer in front of the old door than seems appropriate, then leaves. It's a routine thing, he tells himself right afterward; bad habits die hard, after all. The smell of liquor and the discussion of wayward men follow him home.
"Yes," his wife gasps, one of a hundred soft-mouthed exclaimations. "Yes, just like- God, yes-" Her clavicle glistens with sweat in the dim light, and her hair and eyes look almost black. Flynn finds himself shutting out her voice and plunging in further, closer to where he wants to be. He buries himself in her warmth, pierces through the duplicitous veil he called his wife to find that point of familiarity and kinship she could never offer him. By his fresh exertions, the bed is unfairly tested and it complains with rhythmic groans.
The woman beneath him falls into a breathless mess; her vitality rears its head with sudden enthusiasm.
This reaction is encouraging, and Flynn dutifully continues, at once detached and yet too close to the apex of his frustration. A stifled snarl of frustration rumbles from his tight throat as he buries his face into the crook of her slickened neck. He inhales the alien scent of rose-water and the smell of wooden cupboards seasoned with hours of sunlight. All the while, he works- works diligently, uncomplaining, dragging the girl to the precipice with maddening patience: at last she cries out and dissipates into a watery, trembling blur before his eyes. For a brief moment, he thinks she is beautiful.
"Dear," comes her voice, floating down to the bottom of his well. "Whatever's the matter?" The woman's voice spikes up an embarrassing octave in her bleary distress.
Flynn blinks his eyes slowly, and suddenly the shattered image of his sweaty wife is made whole again. A heavy blur gathers along the lower rim of his vision, and he is half-aware of the weight on his lashes. It frustrates him further. "I must be tired," he says. Thin hands reach up. Slender fingers card through the damp hair at his nape, and he feels strongly compelled to press his point further. But all that comes out is the cowardly alternative to speaking his mind: "I'm so sorry.. I'm just really tired, that's all; Don't worry about me." The softness of his voice was a clear plea for an end to any further inquiry, and yet a silent underlining command for her to drop the matter entirely.
..It made her pause for a moment, at most. "Did you have a bad day?" she goes on gently, not brazen enough to probe any further than this. Nights like this remind her that she is married to not only to a man, but to his work.
In the poor light his boyish face takes on a sullen, almost bitter appearance. Gone is the fresh-faced enthusiasm from some years back. His is a face of short leashes and exact protocol, efficiency and dogged determination. After all, he pursues his goal with hard work and dedication- not because he can, but because he must.
His wife notices no change from the day she met him.
The sheets suddenly feel too thin and hot, and he wearily rolls off of her and onto his back. Somehow, the dutiful care in her voice only serves to separate her from him further, their existence sliced by an intrusive wall of formality and a general feeling of wrongness that Flynn had toiled for two years to dissolve, with little success. It made his heart buckle whenever he thought of the conscious effort. It was pathetic, really. Pathetic and wrong.
It's all wrong, he realizes, as his unanswered wife slides deeper into the sheets with a sated sigh. It's wrong, the way she said, 'Whatever's the matter?'
It should have been, 'Hey, what's eating you?' Or even better, 'Whatever it is, it's not gonna take care of itself.'
It was wrong that he preferred her hair down. And why can't she slap him around on occasion, set him straight, and take that gutsy pride he had so admired and take it a daring step further? Why couldn't she disagree with him for once, if only for the satisfaction of knowing that petty arguments would never break the bond they shared, would never change the way things were between them? Flynn was grasping at familiar smoke.
She is the quintessential Imperial wife.
Somebody has to be there to pick up what he fails to carry. The woman lying beside him isn't able to do this for him. Her life is equalized, tottering in a state of rest that he does not have the heart to disturb. He could try and sort out his disorganized thoughts and feelings, and perhaps attempt to explain himself to her, but his paltry excuse of a personal litany would be wasted on her simplicity. Flynn wants to protect things, whatever he could- be it the health of the state, his companions, his integrity, or his wife. He remains with her because she needed protection, because their marriage had been a loveless affair that neither of them wanted, but both of them needed.
She suspects nothing, and he honestly has no desire to ponder over his feelings any further.
Yet it bothers him.
There is something about the woman that lay beside him- something inside of her that he wanted to reach: an intimate knowing that he had touched upon before, sometime else in his life, somewhere else, with someone else.
Above him, the patchwork squares of white moonlight split the gloom into a geometric array. His sweat cools, evaporating slowly. Concentrate on things that are good, he thinks. She has such a lovely back, half-exposed, the tiny bumps of her backbone glowing in the flickering light and vanishing into the covers. But for all her loveliness and sweet temper, her spine is only an ivory train, and Flynn is only a man too young for his office.
In the morning, he would awaken to see her.
She would be standing in the east window, opening them with a clatter to let the cool air in. Ensconsed by the fuzzy haze of early light, her figure would become indistinct and sexless and somehow made infinitely more pleasing. But when she turns to speak, the falsetto of her voice would slay the illusion, the warm feeling would vanish, and she would simply be a young lady that had taken his surname as her own.
She was his Almost.
Almost what, or almost who, he was too wise to wonder.