A/N: "This is a part of a series of stories, but you can read it as a stand-alone. Each of these stories is meant to be readable in isolation, but, if you want to read them in the chronological order of events, they go like this:
Tami Taylor Is Always Right (between Season 1 and Season 2)
Back in the Saddle (Season 2)
How Did I Get Here (Season 2)
The Best Man Wins (Season 2)
Please leave comments! It's encouraging to know people are reading.
[FNL]
What was that clicking sound coming from the bedroom while Eric talked? He was muttering about something; Tami didn't know what. From the bathroom, she just mumbled a sympathetic, "Frustrating" as she finished up brushing her teeth. That one-word acknowledgement should just about cover it. He was clearly frustrated.
She caught the reflection of a flickering flame in the mirror. Ah. He'd been lighting candles. There was also music playing. Soft music. Sex timemusic. Did he think they were going to have sex with Gracie in the room?
Wait, Gracie wasn't in the room.
"Where's the baby?" she exclaimed.
"Shhh….she's out there sleeping. Where did you think she was?" Then Eric asked, "How did it go at the doctor's?"
Tami knew where this was going. "Aren't you sweet to ask about little old me."
So sweet. So selfless. Not thinking about getting laid at all. Just thinking about how well she was doing. Uh-huh. Nice, Eric. Nice. How about offering to help her get some sleep around here, if he was so damn concerned about her health? How about that?
She told him she was a little bit anemic and she'd been taking vitamins, but she was pretty sure that wasn't what he was asking. He was taking off his shoes.
Eric switched off the light and smiled. "So, did you by chance get the…the…uh….green light?"
"Green light?"
His smile grew. "Yeah."
She winced. There was no getting around this confrontation, but she could delay it a few seconds. "What do you mean?"
"Come on." He went over to the other side of the bed and switched off that light too.
Damn it. She wasn't going to be able to deflect this seduction gently. He hadn't given her an inch to be subtle.
"When Julie was born," he said, "we got that green light."
"It's amazing that you remember that little tidbit of information. Incredible."
He'd done this after Julie was born too – rushed her into sex before she was ready. And she'd given in because she'd felt guilty; she'd felt like it would have been wrong to deny him any longer. As a consequence, the sex hadn't been that good for either of them. Well, she wasn't in her twenties anymore. She'd learned a thing or two since then.
"Of course I remember it," he said as he titled his head to kiss her.
He wasn't going to stop was he? Not until she threw up a neon stop sign. "What are you thinking, honey?"
"I'm thinking it's been a long time for you." He took her hands and tried to nudge her toward the bed. "And I'm thinking about us, and I'm thinking about together time. Together time."
"You know what would be great?"
"Yeah, I do." He kissed her, but she wouldn't let his lips linger for even a second. She wasn't going to give him the slightest hint of an opening. "You and Gracie. And you've already put her out there…"
He was telling her no, no, while she was telling him he could give her the gift of a good night's sleep. She shoved him a pillow. "I don't want to," she said. He couldn't ignore a sentence as direct as that.
"It has been so long!" He was done with the wooing, apparently, and had moved on to the whining.
"I don't want to," she repeated.
He took the pillow with a clenched jaw.
"Thank you, honey."
He grimaced and started off for the living room.
"Thank you for thinking."
"You know what – "
"- Close that door behind you." She closed it for him.
She turned around. Lord but that bed looked beautiful. That empty, warm bed…fluffly pillows…blankets….a full night's sleep. She blew out the candles, turned off the music, and crawled into that beautiful bed.
Sexy, sexy sleep.
[*]
They hadn't had any kind of sex during Tami's last few weeks of pregnancy because Eric had been in Austin for his job. It had now been eight weeks, five days, and nine hours. Well, he wasn't sure about the hours, but he was sure about the weeks and days. He hadn't gone this long without sex since his senior year of high school, when she'd been a freshman in college. But even their longest stretch then hadn't been quite eight weeks, five days, and nine hours. Hell, he hadn't gone this long without sex since he'd been a virgin.
How could she shoot him down like that? He'd brought out all the big guns. Candles. Music. Romance. It wasn't just that it had been a long time since the last time they'd had sex, it was that they had had so very little sex in the past several months as a whole, with him in Austin.
He slapped the pillow onto the couch. He looked at Gracie in her pack and play and grimaced. His tight lips twitched. They curved a little. She was a cute one, his Gracie Belle. She was his. He'd made that baby. He smiled. Pretty impressive work, if he did say so himself.
Might as well get himself a couple of beers and watch his beautiful baby sleep, maybe while watching some game tape on mute, so it wouldn't bother her.
[*]
Maybe the game tape wasn't the best idea. Maybe Eric should have gone straight to sleep, because later he was up with Gracie twice, heating the bottles of breast milk Tami had left in the fridge, feeding, and changing her. He'd barely slept at all.
He dozed off in the office after practice the next day. Mac woke him up by saying something as he helped himself to a seat. Eric only caught, "Trouble at home?"
"What?"
"A new baby can be a sonofabitch sometimes. You and Tami back in the saddle yet?"
Eric went deer-in-the-headlights. He did not like people asking personal questions about his life. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked.
"I just found that when me and Susan got romantic again, everything just fell into place. You know?" Then Mac shared his plan of seduction: a night out with the girls, a drink or two to loosen her up.
"Do me a favor," Eric said. "Not now or ever again… I don't want to hear about you and Susan riding in the saddle."
"Understood."
"Thank you."
But it wasn't understood, because then Mac immediately said, "You might want to bring some flowers home too. It's a nice touch. Susan likes the tulips."
[*]
Patience. Eric just had to be patient. And maybe he had to work a little bit harder. That had been a problem after Julie was born, hadn't it? So that night he did all the wake-ups. The next morning he cleaned the kitchen and made a hot breakfast. He even bought tulips. Not because of the advice Mac had given him, but….well….flowers couldn't hurt.
"There are gonna be some changes around here," he told Tami.
He even created a hand-crafted schedule and sent her to book club.
"Those ladies are crazy," she protested.
He certainly hoped so - crazy enough to ply a nursing woman with wine.
[*]
Eric was irritated by his dinner with Matt and Brian, and especially by the words Matt had said to him, which made him feel ashamed for leaving the Panthers and for leaving his family. And when Eric felt ashamed, he got angry.
He was violently washing the dishes when he heard Tami singing her way in.
"Hey, how you doing?" he asked.
"How are you?" she said very cheerfully.
"Good," he said, even though ever muscle in his body was still tense. Although…she looked relaxed. She looked happy. And pretty. Very pretty. "How was the book club meeting?"
"It was really, really good. It was nice to get out. It was nice to have some conversation with some people."
"Good." He kissed her.
She asked how dinner was, and the irritation – the anger mixed with shame – rose up again. "Dinner was pretty much a flop," he admitted.
"Awww! Nothing your chili couldn't fix?"
Her eyes were a little glazed there. He couldn't help but smile. "No."
"That's awful!"
Now he was really smiling, because she was leaning in to kiss him.
"You look very relaxed." Relaxed enough to relax into bed he thought. And they were kissing now… Kissing through the words.
But then she started laughing and told him that every single woman at that book club had a story about her husband wanting to have sex too soon after the baby was born. "Isn't that funny?"
No, it wasn't funny. This attempt at deflection was not the least bit funny. "You know what those people are? Those are…" he lowered his voice, "bad, dirty people…" She was laughing. That was good. He almost always got laid when he made her laugh. He kissed her again.
She pulled away. "Ow, ow, ow…My boobs are killing me. It's like concrete. I've got to go pump and dump, babe."
Her boobs. Gracie's boobs. In no way his boobs anymore.
She left him there, empty handed.
He tried not to be mad. He tried to remember how he'd gotten through this the first time, how fantastic the sex had been, eventually. It hadn't been that great at first, to be honest, but maybe that was precisely because they'd started back earlier than she had really wanted to.
Right now, he supposed, as hard as it was, it was his turn to support her by being patient. As he'd told her this morning, "A man takes care of his wife."
[*]
Eric was exhausted after the game. Exhausted and relieved. He was leaning back into the couch, his ritualistic, post-game drink in his hands between his legs, when Tami sat next to him. "Good game, honey," she said as she stroked his leg.
He was too tired to read anything into her touch. "Mhmmmmm."
"Want to fool around?"
He hadn't been expecting that. Was she serious? "Do you?"
He'd rather she not do it out of a sense of obligation. That wasn't much fun.
"Yeah," she said.
"I don't sense a true commitment from that answer."
"No…I do….I'd like to. It could be nice."
Could be? He'd give her one last chance to retract. He'd open the exit door for her. Just to make sure. "Seriously?" He raised his drink to his lips.
"Mhmmm…yeah."
Good enough. He slammed his drink on the table and grabbed her hand.
[*]
One lamp was already on when Eric dragged her into the bedroom and slammed the door. When he turned to her, his face was one great big eager grin.
He'd been surprisingly patient after his initial complaint. And he'd tried so hard to seduce her. Tami wished, for his sake, she could have been ready sooner, but she wasn't going to fall into the trap of duty sex.
She knew that he wanted to excite her, and tonight he had, out there on that field. She didn't know why watching him coach was so often a turn on for her, but it was.
She kissed him, and his hands slipped under the back of her shirt. She could tell he was fighting to restrain himself, that he wanted the sex to last, but he was also ravenous for her. He was devouring her lips and breathing heavily but keeping his waist away. She pressed against him, and he groaned. He was already hard.
"Let's do this first." She unbuckled his belt. "And then we can take our time."
"Do what?"
"This." She yanked down his zipper. Tami slid his pants and boxers down even as she slid to her knees.
"No no no," he protested. "I thought we were going to go all the way."
She loved that he said those words, "all the way," as if they were teenagers again and it was a really big deal, not something they'd done a thousand times across two decades.
"We will," she promised. If he had his release, though, he'd be able to give her all the time and attention she needed to get fully in the mood. "Later tonight." She kissed his bare hip.
"But what if I…can't? I'm not twenty anymore, babe. I'm not event thirty."
"True." She kissed his other hip. "But right about now, you're as needy as you were at nineteen." She trailed her kisses from his hip to his navel and then down.
His headed thudded back against the door. "Oh Gooood," he groaned. He buried a hand in her hair. "That's so right…."
She was pretty sure she wasn't going to get anymore argument from him.
[*]
He was still slumped against the door when she stood up and shed her jeans and panties. "My turn," she said as she walked to the bed. She turned down the comforter and got in.
He stripped and followed her. She watched as he approached in the glow of the single lamp. She'd half forgotten how good-looking he was, or, at least, she hadn't been thinking about it for a while.
He crawled in bed beside her. They lay side by side as he kissed her forehead, her cheek, her nose, her lips. He tugged at her shirt.
"No," she murmured. "I don't want to take it off. The stretch marks." There was too much light.
"You're beautiful. Let me see how beautiful you are."
"Eric – "
He urged her onto her back, pushed her shirt up slightly, and then kissed the lines, every single stretch mark, one by one.
After kissing each mark, he said, "You're gorgeous" or "You're beautiful" or "You're sexy" or "You're lovely" or "You're stunning"…she lost track of all the synonyms he came up with because she was crying just a little bit. She hadn't meant to, but it felt so good to have him worship her body when she had felt so bad about it for so many weeks now.
He pushed her shirt up farther. "Please," he said.
She sat up and took it off. He adeptly unhooked her bra, as he had a thousand times by now, so unlike the confused fumbling of his teenage years. He slid the bra from her shoulders and tossed it aside on the carpet.
When Tami had lain back down, Eric traced his fingers from her neck ever so slowly to her breasts. "I know they get sore now," he said. "I'll be very gentle."
His lips followed his fingers. She let him explore her. She was thankful he didn't linger long on her breasts. She enjoyed his touch, his lips, but in time it would have become too much. He trailed kisses down to her navel.
She whimpered. It was too slow, too torturous. She put both hands on his head and pushed him the last few inches. He teased her only a little longer, his warm lips against the insides of her thighs, before giving her what she wanted.
For a long while after that, they simply lay together kissing and nipping – lips, ears, necks – the way they'd made out in high school beneath the bleachers. It was thrilling in its simplicity.
It wasn't often they spent this long on lovemaking. Life was busy. Time was short. There were a hundred things they each needed or wanted to do – but not tonight.
They whispered I love you and I want you and a dozen other things. They caressed and laughed and loved.
At length, she felt him stir to hardness again. "I told you," she whispered.
"Tami, babe, you make me feel young again." He shifted so that one of his legs was parting hers. "You ready for me?"
"Yes."
"You sure?"
"Mhmmm…"
"I'll be gentle."
He was gentle – gentle and disciplined but half lost in the moment.
It was beautiful. They were husband and wife, old familiar lovers, savoring their union as if it was the first time.
In the afterglow, as she lay curled against his side, Tami thought how glad she was that she'd made him wait this time, that she hadn't let guilt or duty drive her to an early consummation, the way she had after Julie. She was older now, wiser, more sure of herself and of her husband's lifelong love.
She kissed his shoulder. "Was it worth the wait?" she asked.
With his eyes closed, he murmured, "You're worth…Tami, babe, you're worth …" His chest rose and fell. He was asleep.
She glanced at the clock. It was after midnight, and in her pack n' play in the living room, Gracie was stirring. The crying began low and then mounted.
Tami eased out of bed. Eric had coached hard tonight. He'd worked hard, and he'd loved hard. She'd take this one.