A/N: Last night, I was introducing my five year-old son to the wonderfulness that is Cole Porter and he seemed to really like the song So In Love, and we listened to it over and over. The title here is a line from that song.
In Love With My Joy Delirious
She's curled into his body, back-to-chest, his arm wrapped around her and his large, warm hand resting protectively across her slightly rounded stomach. There is no movement, save the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes rhythmically in the early morning light, but he knows from experience that sometime soon he will feel an answering push from inside as he rubs soft circles from without. That thought, that milestone to look forward to, serves to ease the slight tension he can feel between his shoulder blades when lets himself worry about the future.
He's not a stupid man, despite how he sometimes feels when she goes off on one of her squinty tangents. He knows that they are so, so different…in very real, fundamental ways. He knows she is terrified of giving herself over to one person, even though she does, to him, every night. And he knows that she knows he needs that commitment from her, even though she pretends to be as clueless as she always was. And they haven't talked about it, even though they have, in their own way. She lets him know her fear whenever he has to convince her to spend another night with him, another day with no visit to limbo, just the two of them together without the cushion of their everyday lives. And she hears him loud and clear when they walk together and he insists on holding her hand, their fingers threaded together a statement to the world that yes, this is what we have become. Oh, they do talk. But not in a way that anyone outside of their relationship would ever be able to hear.
In her sleep, she sighs and turns her body slightly outward, her shoulder brushing his chin as he holds her closer in an effort to soothe whatever images are flitting across her ever-active brain. She hasn't been sick, but her symptoms have manifested themselves in strange and sometimes troubling dreams that she doesn't understand and has a hard time describing. He can tell by the tightness in her back that another nighttime adventure is underway, so he does what he can to help her. His presence seems to be the only antidote and it's not long before her breathing evens out and her body relaxes completely.
He smiles into her hair and returns to his absent caress of her abdomen, content in the knowledge that sometimes, when you love, the words are not nearly as important as the actions. And that while in another time, another place, with another woman he wouldn't have been satisfied with such limitations, this time and this place with this woman…it's never an impediment to what he's always thought he wanted and needed. It's true and comfortable and real. And it's a freedom unlike any he's never known.