The idea of owning a house had never been a tangible one for Michelle Dessler. When she and Tony had worked at CTU, the long hours and inconsistent work shifts made buying an apartment close to their workplace the most logical option. Being just the two of them, the one-bedroom residence offered all the space they really needed, anyway. Kids had never been something they discussed at length; raising a family just wasn't feasible in their line of work.
During Tony's sentence and her temporary position at CTU's Seattle branch, she buried herself in her work, spending the minuscule amount of free time she had alone in her new Washington apartment. The nights were unbearable, loneliness suffocating her as the hole in her heart became a physical, excruciating ache. She didn't want to be there, not while her husband was rotting away in federal prison. Not while Tony undoubtedly needed her. She wanted nothing more than to visit him every minute of every day without a thick layer of glass between them. To smell him, not his old sweatshirt she slept in every night. She wanted his fingers in her hair, to wake up to his kisses and groggy "good morning" instead of just the buzz of her alarm clock. To run to him and throw her arms around him, vowing never to let go. But she couldn't.
Following his release, she returned to Los Angeles, now working as Associate Special Agent in Charge at Division. At first she was so relieved, so overjoyed to be reunited with her husband after what felt like a lifetime, she had hardly noticed a change in him.
She remembered feeling him withdrawing, a brokenness, one she was unfamiliar with, beginning to seep through his tough exterior. She could see it in the way he held himself, shoulders slumped, a stark contrast to the proud, strong man he once was. His crushed spirit and new tendency to reach for the bottle when life just wasn't something he wanted to deal with anymore. The fruitless job search that was testing his resilience.
He thought he was disappointing her.
She remembered the screaming match that ended it all. Those dark, distant, glazed over eyes piercing through her, damaging her in ways she never knew they could. The way he—or this new version of him—made her feel like an intruder in the place she once considered home. Like she meant nothing to him at all. The way he acknowledged her, flatly. The way she had never heard her name fall off his lips like that before; she barely recognized it as her own. It was then that she realized he wasn't Tony. Not her Tony. This Tony was little more than a stranger.
He'd gotten in her face, close enough for her to smell the alcohol on his breath. He would never hurt her, she knew. No matter how furious he got he could never lay a hand on her. Still, his words had a tendency to cut her deeper than physical blows, and something inside her finally snapped that time. She had spent the last few months watching him drink away their life together, bearing the pain of his rejection and trying in vain to hold on as he pushed her further and further away. Everyone had their breaking point, and she had reached hers. She had no fight left.
She told him she was done. That she couldn't do it anymore. She remembered tearing her wedding ring off her finger and sending it flying in his direction. The heart-wrenching sob that threatened to escape her as she heard it hit the floor. She was out the door, hot tears flowing silently down her cheeks, before she could see the look on his face.
She spent that night in a hotel, wrestling with the bedsheets and getting no legitimate sleep despite her exhaustion. All she could feel was herself engulfed in him, the old him, tangled up in his arms, his hot breath against her skin. She could still taste his kiss on her lips, but she promised herself it all would fade. That sometime between that night and the day she died, she would learn to let go of Tony Almeida.
She wanted him. More than her next breath she wanted him. But they were all or nothing. She couldn't love him if he didn't love her back. She couldn't pretend everything was fine, that they were fine, when it wasn't and they weren't. She wanted him, before prison, before everything. She couldn't live in the broken pieces of their beautiful marriage. Couldn't cling to what was wrongfully stolen from them. Tony was hurting and, hard as she tried, there was nothing she could do about it. It killed her, ate away at her like a poison, but it was their reality. The one she would have to live with.
She met with her lawyer the next day and served her husband with divorce papers shortly after, ignoring the protests of her broken heart. She didn't allow herself time to think about it. Didn't give herself the chance to change her own mind. She became numb, dedicating her very existence to her job; not even Bill Buchanan could break down her walls had she even wanted him to. She got rid of her signature curls—looking at them only reminded her of how much Tony adored them—taking a straightener to her hair religiously. She avoided her new place like the plague, dreading walking through the door of the empty apartment to the sound of nothing but the whirring of the air conditioning system every night.
And yet, here she was now, transferring the last few boxes of belongings into her new house with Tony Almeida—her Tony Almeida, whom she was definitely married to and as in love with as ever.
It was nearly four months ago now that they decided to really leave the past in the past and get back together. The better part of their days following the nuclear threat had been spent cuddled up in bed at Michelle's apartment before they'd actually found it in them to go to the courthouse. She surprised him by taking his name this time, and together they filled out and signed all the necessary forms, stealing glances at each other with looks closely bordering on amusement. No pride. No hesitation. Just relief.
He'd kept her ring—of course he'd kept her ring—and sliding it on her finger again, he was sucker punched by one beautiful, unmistakable fact: He had his Michelle back. If he had anything to say about it, she was never leaving his side again. He wasn't letting her go this time.
"Last one," he told her, smiling as he lifted a particularly heavy box through the doorway.
Her lips turned up at the corners in response as she pulled a picture frame from the medium-sized box under her arm and set it on the shelf. She ran her finger over its top edge, admiring the familiar image she hadn't seen in over a year.
A noticeably younger couple smiled back at her from the photograph, dressed in semi-formal evening attire with their arms wrapped around each other's waists. The girl was wearing a simple, black dress with a V-neckline and the sparkle of whatever adorned her left hand wasn't missed by the camera. Giddy, love-drunk grins lit up both of their faces.
It was her and Tony. The night they got engaged.
The next one she pulled out was more recent, taken shortly after his release from prison. The one he'd kept in his wallet even after the divorce, unwilling to face the finality in getting rid of it. He had his arm around her shoulders, both of them caught in a moment of pure and uninhibited happiness that would become all-too-rare in the months that followed. Before all the bitterness set in, the photo captured them in their most hopeful state, before the worst. That's what she loved about it.
She felt her hair swept gently off her shoulder, Tony's chin now resting in its place. His voice was low and velvety in her ear. "Still my favorite."
She leaned back into him. "And why is that?"
"Because... I remember how happy I was. Just being with you." His lips grazed the curve of her jaw. "Like right now."
She smiled, brushing her thumb over the glass filling the frame. "Your smile meets your eyes."
"Yeah... yours, too. That's the other thing I like about it." His fingertips raked up and down her back, drawing soft hums of content up from her throat.
"I still can't believe you've kept these all this time." She paused, shaking her head and angling toward him. "You know I wouldn't have blamed you if you had..."
He listened as her voice trailed off, grinding his teeth. She hadn't taken a lot with her when she moved out of their apartment during the downfall of their marriage, their modest collection of photos staying in Tony's possession. After they sold the place, he'd shoved them and the other remains of his life into cardboard boxes. Wherever he went, the pictures followed. He hadn't allowed himself to look at them—not that he really wanted to. He knew the life they belonged to wasn't his anymore, and rehashing memories from that past would only cause unnecessary pain. But the thought of doing away with them had never even crossed his mind. They weren't his to discard.
"Michelle. Don't..." He pried the frame from her hands, setting it on the shelf and spinning her around to face him. He twirled one of her curls around his finger. "I love you too much to hear you say things like that. What did you think I would do with them?"
She broke eye contact for a moment, shrugging sheepishly. "I don't know. I just—"
One thing Tony had learned early on in their relationship was that, in these moments, it took considerably less energy to just kiss her than it did to argue while trying not to kiss her. Once she got worked up, once she was looking at him like that, once her scent was in his system, he lacked most of the coherency required to form sentences, and all the desire to. Right now, whatever he was about to say was overtaken by the fact that the feelings he'd had every day they were apart—the desperate, untameable longing for her that no one else could satisfy and never faded to less than a dull ache—were still too fresh and she was just too close.
Her sharp intake of breath as she was cut off mid-sentence and the thud of the box in her arms hitting the floor were the sounds he faintly registered as he grabbed the back of her head and pulled her into him. He didn't want to listen to her make excuses for him. He just wanted her.
They found themselves in a heady kiss that left them clutching at one another frenziedly, passion surrounding them like a thick fog, clouding their senses. Fingers tangled in hair, lips seizing one another's with a sudden sense of urgency. He probably thought he was kissing away any lingering doubts she'd been carrying these past few months, but the truth was she had none. Even the most stubborn ones had evaporated the moment he'd slipped that ring back on her left hand where it belonged.
She gripped his forearms as his hands held her face, his tongue greeting hers as their bodies converged. Her arms locked around his neck as his hand slid down her back, catching hold of the back of her legs. In one smooth, effortless motion he tugged her up to him, tightening his hold on her as he felt her legs weave around his waist, the intertwining of their bodies coming as naturally as breathing. The familiar sting of her fingernails digging into his shoulder and back electrified him as he carried her, nearly stumbling, into their new living room—God knows he was nowhere near lucid enough to find the bedroom—still unable to pull his face from hers. Every nerve ending in her body was screaming for him and him alone as they came down on the couch, his hand grazing her bare skin as it slithered underneath her shirt, past her stomach up to the swell of her chest. She bit down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood though he couldn't have been bothered.
She gasped audibly when they finally resurfaced for air, panting feverishly and breathing his name as she arched into him. His scent, his curls tickling her face as he nibbled at her earlobe was her undoing, and she desperately grasped at his t-shirt, gathering its material in her shaky hand and dragging it off his body, not bothering to see where it landed. He reached for her face again and she complied, embracing the trail of warm kisses making its way from her cheekbone to the base of her neck. Fingers skimming down his torso, she blindly sought out the belt of his jeans, hungrily wrenching its leather strap from the buckle it had been looped through. She forced them past his hips where he was able to kick them off, him simultaneously peeling her shirt over her head and pressing wet kisses across her newly exposed stomach. Her breath hitched as his hands moved up her body, snaking behind her back to unfasten her bra and flinging the garment onto the floor below. The remainder of their clothing was hastily eliminated, and their sweaty bodies clashed in a surge of unbridled adoration.
She didn't notice the tear sliding down her face until she tasted salt in their kisses.
"I'm sorry." She heard herself mindlessly repeat the words as his face brushed against hers. Their next kiss was more gentle, mixed faintly with grief and regret. Of lost time they would never recover. She'd missed him like crazy, with an intense desperation she had never before experienced, and that was the fact that sent teardrops down her face and onto his chest as he held her tightly against him. And she was okay with that. He was the only one she could ever truly just lose it in front of. The only one whose arms she'd gladly crumble into because that was the only place she ever felt secure. He was safe.
"I love you so much."
He was home.