Note: I'm reposting this story from my AO3 account. It was originally posted on 1-2-2018.

Souvenirs

It was all over so fast, and then there was nothing left but the afterglow.

And the mess.

There was always a mess, of course, but it usually wasn't quite like this. This time had been especially sloppy, and not in the good way. The sloppiness and its results had turned out to have their own sort of charm, though, at least for Domi. Cliff, on the other hand, was looking less enthusiastic about the experience, but then he had been the one who had gotten sloppy and suffered the consequences, so it was to be expected.

"We're going to be late for our dinner reservations," Cliff said sulkily, followed by, "Ow," as Domi probed at the worst of his injuries.

"Who cares?" Domi said. "We'll only be a little bit late, and this was worth it."

"Worth ruining both my shirt and my pants? Worth me getting hit with a rock and stabbed?"

"More than worth it, and he didn't hit you that hard or stab you very much at all," she assured Cliff as she fished some ice out of the cooler and made a cold-pack to put over his eye to slow the swelling. Then she turned her attention back to his leg. As she widened the hole in the fabric to get a better view of the aforementioned stab wound, Domi had to admit that she would miss the pants. She had picked them out herself, and they had looked good on Cliff, mostly hiding the weight he had started putting on around the middle. However, she had always hated that shirt, even back when it had been close to being in style, and if her husband was going to be a sourpuss about its well-deserved demise, then she would simply have to make sure that her bright smile was more than wide enough for the both of them, just like her books said that she should.

Besides, the fun they had just had and the fun that she was still having, all of that was definitely worth the time spent and the destruction of some clothing.

There was blood everywhere, like something out of a slasher movie. You didn't see arterial spray like that every day, not even when you did your best to make it happen. Whoever visited this campsite next would be in for quite the surprise. Or at least, they might be, maybe, if the vultures, coyotes, and other scavengers hadn't tidied it all up by then, which was more likely than not, given the remote location. Even one good summer thunderstorm should be enough to wash this place clean, and those happened almost daily this time of year. Domi always appreciated it when nature pitched in to make her life easier by hiding the evidence.

This was not how they had planned on celebrating their anniversary. Instead, it had been a crime of opportunity. The best ones often were. Now, don't get her wrong, because the long process of exploring a new venue, picking the perfect victim, learning their habits, and then moving in for the kill at the exact right moment was great too, like exquisite foreplay stretched over weeks or months to ensure a powerful climax. But sometimes a woman needed some spontaneity interspersed with the long-term projects to keep both life and death feeling fresh and exciting. Sometimes she needed the rapid build and explosive release of a kill committed on the spur of the moment, no stalking, no planning, just stumbling across an easy target by dumb luck, an old fashioned "Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma'am" quickie, you know?

Yes, today had been exactly like that, and it had been great, better than great, even if plans (or, rather, a complete lack of plans) had gone a bit awry and things had turned messy in more ways than one near the end. And now Domi couldn't quite force herself to stop smiling, even though she probably should, just for the sake of appearances while she patched up her husband if nothing else.

"Ouch!" Cliff flinched away from Domi's hand.

"Oh, stop squirming, you big baby," Domi told him as she dabbed antibacterial ointment into and around the bleeding hole in his leg, but there was more fondness than venom to her words. "This is small enough it should barely scar."

"I am not being a baby," Cliff said defiantly, crossing his arms over his chest as much as he could while still holding the cold-pack over his eye. "Nobody in their right mind would go to the trouble of stabbing a baby," he insisted. "They'd just smother it with something." He paused to draw a hissing breath through his teeth as Domi applied a final oversized smear of ointment to his leg. "Or drown it," he continued. "You only stab someone who might be a real threat."

"Now that you mention it, honey, that's absolutely true," Domi said and watched as some of the tension went out of Cliff's shoulders. She capped the ointment tube, then peeled open a suitably large rectangular adhesive bandage and stuck it over the wound. Proper stitches would need to wait until they got home. Domi finished her temporary patch job by leaning down and pressing a kiss over the bandage, just hard enough to make Cliff flinch again but not so hard that he made any more noise. Then a thought struck her, and she straightened up, grinning at her husband.

"I stabbed this guy a lot, though, and he should qualify as an honorary baby," she said and gestured to the remains of their victim. Or, at least she gestured to some of his remains. He was spread all over the place now, and it would have been difficult to gesture to all of him without standing up and spinning around. Domi was the only one who was allowed to hurt her Cliffy, and she might have gotten just the teensiest bit carried away while asserting that fact, and she had done so using a much better weapon than the ones that he had used on Cliff. "That pocket knife of his was big enough to do plenty of damage if he used it right. And yet, with all your easily accessible arteries to choose from," she stroked Cliff's inner thigh along the line of his femoral artery for emphasis, "where did he decide to stick it? In the outside of your leg! I mean, c'mon, what kind of childlike grasp of anatomy is that?" She laughed.

"Biggest baby I've ever seen," Cliff said. He still sounded a little bit sulky, but a smile was beginning to tug at the corners of his mouth, just as Domi had intended.

"If not one for the record books, then at least one worth commemorating with a souvenir," Domi agreed, "and I'm not talking about that little future scar of yours."

"You know, it has been a while since we killed anyone worth keeping," Cliff said, his smile growing wider. "And what better time to get back into it than on our anniversary?"

"My thoughts exactly," Domi said. Then, because she was such a good wife and her husband still needed further cheering up, she added, "Did you want to do the honors of picking it out?"

"Gladly," Cliff said, "but there's something else I'd rather do first." He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Domi's lips, letting his ice pack drop forgotten to the ground.

Domi eagerly returned the kiss, deepening it and pulling Cliff forward off of the low rock he had been sitting on. His involuntary squeak of protest at the unexpected jostling of his injured leg was muffled against her mouth, and soon she had pulled him all the way down until she had him pinning her to the blood soaked ground, with only the scattered remains of their victim and the last rays of the setting sun to witness the leisurely fucking that followed.

Domi had originally planned for the sex to be just a quickie like the killing, but one thing led to another, and another, including a few things they hadn't done since their honeymoon. They were much more than a little bit late for their dinner reservation. They didn't make it back into town until long after the restaurant had closed for the night, and by then, Domi's clothes had acquired enough ground-in dirt and blood to be just as ruined as Cliff's were, and there was barely enough ice left in the cooler to keep their newly acquired souvenir hand sufficiently chilled.

It was all more than worth it.

The End