Title: Tonight (And the Rest of Our Lives)
Author: Vashti
Character(s): Cain and either Princess (I think)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "You're my first." "You're my second."
Length: ~1030 words
Disclaimer: I don't know you. You don't know me. Let's keep it that way.
Author's Notes: I wrote this sometime betw 11:06 pm and 12:15 am last weekend. And then typed it up during lunch at work. And there's no beta. Forgive me

Tonight (And the Rest of Our Lives)
by Vashti

She was just beginning to think that turning out her lamp had been foolish--the room was a maze and dark as pitch--when she saw the light gently bobbing along the outer walk. Her mother had given them the run of Finaqua for three weeks, delaying the court's summer move for a week.

She sat up on the bed, the neck of her nightgown sliding down one shoulder as she rose to her knees. She'd already tried lying down. She'd tried waiting. She'd started by trying reading, and when that had failed she'd turned out her bedside lamp to try the other two. But nervousness was lending a tremor to her knees that felt nothing like the weakness Wyatt Cain could elicit with a kiss.

Wyatt Cain. Wyatt Cain. She had the right to use his first name now, though she rarely did. It felt strange in the mouth. She'd had the right for a long time. And now she was Mrs. Wyatt Cain. She didn't care that her sister thought it was old-fashioned, surprising though the observation had been. She still liked to say it. She liked to hear it. She liked to think of herself as hiding behind that name, peaking out only in the "Mrs." The rest was their secret, something just between the two of them.

For a moment Cain was haloed in the waning moon's light as he stood in the archway of her room, his face thrown into shadows by the way he held his lamp. "You're not asleep, are you darlin'?"

"Here I am," she called out.

Holding the lamp up and out, she could see his face and the amusement there. "How'd everything end up in your room?"

She shrugged, though he probably couldn't see it. "I don't know. The wedding gifts were all here when I got here. Were your things--"

"They're in my room okay. I somehow thought this stuff would be-- Well, not here. There goes my grand dramatic entrance." He slowly picked his way around things she could only half-see in the dark. "Makes me glad I brought the lamp, though. We'd be testing your ability to heal otherwise."

"They aren't very good, you know."

"I do know."

"So you just..." She struggled for words, watching him. "...brought the lamp on a hunch?"

"Nope. Experience. Nearly broke a few bones on my honeymoon with Adora. It was about three days... What in the world? ...later before we actually had a wedding night." Standing beside the canopied bed he looked back out over the large item he'd just skirted. "What--"

"I saw it in full light and I have no idea what it might be. And I didn't want to take it out of the box."

"Might never get it back in again." He slid a hand into her heavy, dark hair.

"Mmmhmm." Her nerves melted away and her eyes drifted closed as he gently scratched the nape of her neck. "How do you always know when to do that?"

"Experience."

Her eyes snapped open.

"With you. With you," he reassured her, fingers stilling for a moment. "I was trained to observe, assess, then act."

"That so, Tin Man?"

Drawing her head closer to his, he nodded. "That's so."

"You're my first," she said abruptly, almost as if she'd meant to say it before and had forgotten.

"And you'll be my second."

She frowned, drawing away from him. "Really. Just Adora?"

Nodding, he started the gently ministrations to her nape again. "I told you how it was. I was lucky if I remembered to sleep."

"Yes, but I didn't think that precluded a social life."

"It didn't. But my pop raised an old fashioned kind of man. I just--just couldn't imagine the way he'd look at me if he ever found out I'd been sleeping with some of the girls I knew. Or didn't want to imagine it, I guess."

"Even the nice ones?"

He snorted. "No, the bad girls. The ones that slept around. I learned more about the ways Little Wyatt could shrivel up and die, or turn putrid, or have creatures that weren't of my body's own makin' crawling around inside from my father than I ever did from any Academy training video."

Her peals of laughter were ringing out before Cain had quite finished talking.

"I always figured that if I slept with a nice girl at least I wouldn't get that particular talk. But I had a feeling a shotgun wedding might replace it."

Still smiling, she said, "I would have liked to meet your father."

"Yeah. He was something else. Died before Jeb. Not too long after I married Adora. But we're not here to talk about the past." He edged closer to her.

It warmed her how freely they could talk about his past. It wasn't a gift he shared with everyone. But he had a point, of course. And she didn't want to talk forever. Feigning surprise, she said, "Oh we're not?"

"No, Mrs. Cain. We're not." Nudging her over with his knee first, he knelt on the bed. "We're here to discuss the present. And maybe the future."

"That so?"

He nodded solemnly. "Yes, ma'am, it is." Then he ruined it all by half knocking her over and draping himself across her legs.

"Cain! Cain, what are you doing?" The laughter had returned to her voice.

"Waiting to be seduced."

"You're what?"

"Waiting," he said slowly, enunciating carefully, "to be seduced. Again."

"Is that how it happened, then?" she asked slowly.

"Mmhmm."

"So I haven't put you under a spell?" He shook his head. "Or a curse?"

"No, ma'am. Just you. Only and always you." He took her hand, her left hand, in his own. "That's why I married you."

"Because I seduced you?"

"To keep you away from all the others you've seduced."

"I'd never--"

"None of us even knew it was happening," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken at all. "Just looked up one day and..." He made a gesture. "Poof. I could finally see you."

Leaning over him, she asked, "Now who's seducing who?"

He grinned into their kiss.

[in]Fin[ite]