Michael lay awake in the guest room, staring at the ceiling, trying and failing not to feel out of place, amateurish as a parent, and inconvenient. Sara had sent him to bed, promising him there was nothing he could do. That Mike would wear himself out eventually. "After I get him to sleep, I'll come join you," she'd said, looking anywhere but at him.
But all was quiet upstairs, finally, and she wasn't here. He wavered between going in search of her and giving her space. It wasn't hard for him to imagine the conflict she must feel, the questions she must have, perhaps even the doubt she might harbor. Could he blame her, if she had decided to retreat to her bedroom alone? If she had had second thoughts? If he had any chance of making this work, he needed to be understanding and flexible and willing to wait. Right? But then he remembered her words in Greece, whispered into his ear as they'd parted. Words echoed just the night before, as he'd sat miserably against Mike's wall. Come back to us. Don't leave us.
He went in search of her.
He found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table, hands curled around a glass of water she wasn't drinking. "You're not tired?" he asked. It was the least loaded question he could come up with.
She looked up, her eyes warm and overly bright, and definitely fatigued. She needed rest as badly as he did. If it wasn't to be in the bed she'd offered him, so be it. She must have decided she couldn't pull off a lie, because she answered, "No, I am." She gave him a weary smile.
"You should get some rest. Wherever you feel comfortable." The absurdity of this statement echoed in his ears. This was her house.
Her eyes flicked to his. "I feel comfortable with you, Michael," she said quietly.
"But you know what I mean." He sank into the chair opposite her, and laid his hands over hers. Gently, he peeled them away from the water glass. On her left hand, he felt the faint indention where she'd recently stripped her finger of a wedding band. On her right, the ring he'd put on her opposite hand almost eight years ago sat on her fourth finger.
Her eye followed his movement. "I got it back from Miami-Dade intake after my pardon," she said. "The request and paperwork took months." He toyed with it, aching to move it back to its rightful place. Hesitant to do so. Afraid of making assumptions.
Am I too late?" he asked bluntly. He knew she wanted him in her life. But in what capacity, exactly? Was theirs still a true marriage, whatever the legalities? Asking felt like ripping off a band-aid, if that band-aid were sandpaper and laid over the heart.
"You're not too late," she said immediately and emphatically, her head rising to look at him. His heart galloped at her willingness to cut straight through any doublespeak. "I just…" She looked back down at the table top. "Would you believe me if I said I had nerves?"
"Yes." He swallowed. "It's been a long time."
"Sometimes," she ventured, "I wonder if we were different people then."
He looked her in the eye, and a sudden, heated tension rose around them, solid as the physical barrier of the table top. He knew she felt it too, and he assumed this answered her question. This was not a nervous tension; this was a tension Michael recognized from countless shared moments: the infirmary. Buttercup Road. A train bathroom. Her boat in the warehouse. He knew all it would take to break it. He knew he wanted to break it. Still, he moved slowly.
He pushed back his chair, tugging her up gently by her hands. "Can we…?" Time to remove the barrier of the table.
She nodded, and when they were standing together, he released her hands to circle his arms around her waist. He drew her against him and simply held her for a long while. It felt wonderful. Better than the harried embraces they'd shared immediately after his return from Yemen, better maybe even than the kiss they'd stolen in this kitchen early this morning, before she'd bandaged his shoulder. But even standing quietly in his arms, her hands circling his neck, Sara's shoulders felt tense, the muscles under his fingertips along her lower back flexing repeatedly in erratic quivers up her spine.
Maybe she needed something to focus on, other than her nerves. He bent his head, lifting her chin to meet his kiss. He kept it languid and soft, a tasting of her lips followed by a single stroke of his tongue, seeking the warmth of her mouth. Her jaw opened naturally beneath his fingers, and her tongue brushed against his. Then again. She angled her head to deepen the kiss, and he let her, but he didn't elevate the intensity or speed. Instead, he just kept kissing her mouth in that same unhurried way. And when her muscles eventually relaxed under his palm, he smiled against her lips.
He moved his hands from her back and face to her hips, then allowed them to slowly slide up her shirt to span her ribs. She went rigid again, but in anticipation, not dislike; he could tell by the hitch in her breath, one he knew well. Then she was leaning into his touch, kissing him harder. "Michael?" she breathed. He pulled back in the circle of her arms to look at her face. Her eyes were dark and heavy-lidded and intense on his. "Take me to bed?"
He didn't need to be told twice, but still, even now, he tried to go easy, to take care. His body disobeyed, rushing ahead of his brain, remembering her, knowing what she wanted by muscle memory alone, but he checked himself at each juncture: at the guest bedroom door, at the bed, at the feel of her shirt sliding off her body and into his hands. Because the Sara of seven years ago wasn't the Sara of today, he told himself fiercely. He would not assume carnal knowledge of her…that would have to be earned again.
His own shirt followed hers to the floor, then their pants, in a clumsy, desperate attempt to feel skin-on-skin. When they'd achieved it, they both seemed to stall again, hesitating as though caught in an eddy of a tide. Sara looked up at him, now on her back on the mattress, and he ran his palm up her ribcage, allowing himself to trace the underside of her breasts with the pads of his thumbs. She leaned into his touch, her body warm and willing, and he braced over her to recapture her mouth.
She met him there, and they rushed forward again, but it slowly seeped into his consciousness that she was crying. Really crying, not just teary or misty-eyed. And just as he realized this, that tears tracked in torrents down the sides of her cheeks to channel onto the sheets, her hand came up onto his chest, pushing him away. He froze, lifting himself on his elbows. "Sara?"
She rolled away underneath him. "I'm sorry," she choked out. Then, "I only need a second."
He let himself stop bracing against the mattress, sinking back down to turn on his side, too, toward her. He was left to study her backside, which would have proved distracting had he not felt suddenly miserable and confused.
"Sara?" He touched her shoulder, which shook in silent sobs. Suddenly his fingers froze; they grazed an inked crane, blocked just above her shoulder blade. The air left his lungs, and suddenly, he feared he might cry, too. If she heard his breath hitch, felt his fingers caressing this tattoo of hers, she didn't acknowledge it. Her spine curved away from him as she bent inward, arms cradling her midsection as she tried to stop crying. He decided his questions would keep.
"I'm so sorry," she said again.
He had to clear his throat roughly before answering. "Stop saying that," he appealed. "You don't have to say that."
She channeled her next sob into a hard, shaking breath. "It's just…you touching me like that," she gasped.
The misery doubled. "I thought you…I'm sorry," he said wretchedly, even though he'd just told her not to apologize. He took his hand off her shoulder.
"No," she said, and then she turned over to face the ceiling, the crane tattoo disappearing from view. She tugged the bed sheet up around her chest. "No, I mean, just you touching me. Made me cry." She moaned, drawing an arm up to rest over her eyes. "Do you know what I mean?" She didn't let him answer. "I don't know why I'm reacting like this." He didn't know how to answer, still caught between a current and an ebbing tide. Did she welcome his touch? Did she not? "I think I"m just raw right now. Emotionally drained."
This was clearly an understatement, but he knew exactly what she meant. They'd processed so much in the past 48 hours, and now, each touch, look, and word felt like LLI on steroids. "We don't have to do this right now," he forced himself to suggest. "I'm not assuming anything."
These words clearly frayed her nerves even further. She rolled to face him, removing her arm from her face to look at him almost angrily. "Don't say that."
Didn't she realize? He had no idea what to say. He just looked at her helplessly.
"I don't want you to stop," she said fiercely. She wasn't kidding about raw tension. It rolled off her in waves.
He felt relief at her words, but her body language still said differently. He reached for her slowly. Curling a palm back over her shoulder, he guided her back into the mattress. Despite her insistence, she kind of fought him. "What are you..."
"Close your eyes," he told her. Her emotions were so ragged, they were nearly shredded. He could hear it in her voice. See it in the quick flutter of breath in the hollow of her throat. Closing off one of five senses might make things better.
She looked at him instead, searching his face, her eyelashes still wet. He released her shoulder to lift one hand to close her eyelids gently. "This helps me, sometimes, when everything is just…too much. Trust me?"
She released one more shaky breath, then obeyed, keeping her eyes closed and lying still. He watched her chest rise and fall rapidly under the sheet, then bent over her. Placing both hands on her shoulders now, he ran them slowly down her arms, pressed stiffly on top of the sheet. She shivered. At her hands, he brushed his fingertips over each knuckle and digit, then continued down, skimming his hands along her hips and her thighs, over the bed clothes. She sighed again, but the sound seemed less serrated. A fresh tear or two escaped from behind her closed eyes, but she wasn't crying, exactly, anymore.
He ran his hands back upward, over the slight curve of her belly to softly trace the muscles below her ribs through the sheet. He kissed her cheek now, tracking the tears toward her earlobe. His hands continued their northward journey, pausing below her breasts again. Very slowly, he lowered the sheet to access her skin, and her eyes flicked open.
He shook his head at her, and closed them with his fingertips again. Shifting one thigh between her knees to brace over her, he allowed his hands to return to her chest. He stroked a thumb against the underside of each breast. "Talk to me," he said into her ear. "Yes? No?" They would absolutely need clear communication tonight.
"Yes," she whispered, and he reached to cup her with both hands, kissing her mouth softly. "Breathe," he told her, after a moment. Because she'd stopped.
She inhaled, eyes obediently closed, and her arms reached up for him, her palms sandwiching each side of his jaw as he kissed her. The shift of movement brought her breasts more fully into his hands, and briefly, he forgot to breathe, too.
He kissed her harder, allowing himself to stroke the raised jut of her nipples with his thumbs, letting himself taste her approval in the hungry way her tongue moved against his. She arched into the solid muscle of his thigh between her legs, rubbing against him, and he lost concentration momentarily. His hands itched to be there, too, where warm, soft flesh pressed against his skin.
He reached up and captured her hands, bringing them back down to the mattress to pin her there lightly, his fingers loose against the heavy pulse of her wrists, so he could kiss his way down her neck and collarbone and breasts. She kept her eyes closed, but breathed faster.
He paused. "Yes?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, and his lips wet her nipple.
He closed his own eyes, remembering the feel of her. She was exactly as he knew her, even accounting for the subtle changes to her body that marked Mike's existence. Even with a difficult start tonight, they'd picked up exactly where they'd left off, so long ago: the heat ignited between them effortlessly, the desire for her as intense as seven years prior.
He let his mouth travel down her skin, tugging the sheet down with him as he went, pausing always for her 'yes'. Her hands and mouth caressed his neck, his shoulders, his chest, and after a while, he grew quiet, trusting his memory of her.
They moved together unhurriedly, Michael unwilling to jar her sense of calm, Sara taking his lead. Every once in a while, she opened her eyes and they smiled in wonder at each other, like neither of them could quite believe this was actually happening, that they'd somehow found their way back together. He only stopped to check in with her one more time, when they'd both reached their limit of soft and slow, and he'd rolled his weight on top of her to cradle himself between her legs. She was warm and wet and already arching to meet him.
"Yes, yes," she said against his mouth, before he could ask. He smiled against her lips as he sank into her.
They both exhaled as of one accord, Michael again understanding the urge to weep. He let his tears fall on her shoulder as he moved in her, shaking off her concern for him when she noticed. It was like the moment he'd seen her in Greece, when just the touch of her hand on his face had made him feel as though he were already home. This…now…he was truly there, where he'd wanted so desperately to be for seven years.
Later, Michael would tell himself he had tried to take his time, this first time back in Sara's bed, but before long, gentle and tender weren't working for either of them. Sara wrapped her legs around him, drawing him deeper insider her, lifting herself to meet him thrust to thrust, and just like with every other part of her, he remembered this part immediately, remembered exactly how to move in her to give her what she needed. After that, his focus narrowed and his vision blurred and it all went very, very quickly.
Afterward, they lay tangled together for several minutes, both of them still kind of crying. Sara wrapped her arms around Michael's torso, her head on his chest. Even with tears still in her eyes, she finally looked at peace, the anxiety replaced by the kind of lethargy only a very good and timely tumble in bed can bring. He thought about her ring again, on the wrong finger, and about his own wedding band, lost to him forever to the rubble of Ogygia. They'd get these details sorted, in time.
"Close your eyes," Michael suggested again softly. Maybe now, she'd get some sleep.
Her eyelids closed heavily. "Everything is going to be okay, isn't it?" she said, in a tone that somehow suggested both amazement and certainty.
Michael allowed his fingertips to roam back over the crane on her shoulder, tracing the raised flesh, drawing a shy smile from her lips against his skin. This time, she definitely noticed his perusal of the tattoo, but still didn't offer an explanation for it. Michael didn't know if he needed one. Her reasons for its existence felt obvious. "Yes," he told her with equal certainty. "Everything is going to be okay." He pulled the sheet back up over them both, closing his own eyes to follow her to sleep.