BIRD ON A BEAM

A Titanic Fanfiction

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and a story beautifully originated/crafted by James Cameron and I obviously don't own them in any way; it exists purely for entertainment purposes!

Author's Note: Guys, get ready for a behemoth of a chapter that is, admittedly, a bit intense; it flowed from me in an odd way, took me in directions I didn't expect. I can't wait to hear your feedback. There's some M territory near the end, so you know the drill.

Please review! I adore it!

I'd also love to hear what you want to see from the story now, now that they're settled in Napa and have the whole world at their fingertips, in a way. I write these chapters without an outline, I go from straight intuition and spontaneous inspiration, so I'm incredibly open to ideas.

Lots of love-

SEVENTEEN

October 17, 1913

Here the climate is so generally temperate that the autumn foliage comes on slowly. When we arrived in late September I expected all golds and ambers and sharp wind, for I am used to the Northeast and that sudden chill that settles over everything. The cord of summer is cut, there, in one clean motion at the equinox. But here the summer hesitates to say goodbye. Here the afternoons stayed rather warm even when the calendar turned to October; some of the vineyards stayed a dark green and plumped their grapes full of more sugars, the sun lingered with us as we settled into the little cottage: five cozy rooms, an old hearth at its center. We left the door open, the windows open, we got to know this place with the kiss of warmth still on our backs. Jack and I both slept in nothing, twisting under just a thin sheet in the mornings. Josephine barely needed booties on her feet and she scooted about the tile floors in circular motions, going everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

But the last few days have been different. We are waking up now with frigid feet. We unpacked the flannels. The bigleaf maple trees have begun to turn a shade of orange like marmalade, and the far-off sycamores a crimson. We are surrounded by layers and layers of trees, of foliage at different elevations, and then of course there are the vineyards themselves, harvested completely now and giving up all their ghosts, wrinkled leaves crunching under our feet. Even though Jack works in the pressing rooms we know the rows and rows of vines already. They are, really, our backyard. During the tail end of harvest everyone chips in. I even strapped Jo to my chest two weeks ago and picked some myself, eager to fulfill my fantasy of sampling a warm grape in the California sun. The moment lived up to every notion that I had about it. Jack said I looked like a Greek goddess because I'd worn my long white dress, made of gauzy cotton, and left my hair down except for a single braid wrapped at the top like a crown. I don't know if I deserve quite a comparison, but I do feel powerful working with my hands, contributing to such a finite process on this land, garnering such a sense of place. The only thing from my previous life that ever felt like that was when I traveled alone with my father and we'd find ourselves lost on old winding roads or in labyrinth-like hallways of some ancient-seeming museum.

The previous inhabitants of our house moved to Spain and left behind their oak furniture, which is sparse in its design, Dutch almost, elegant in its simplicity. The wife of the winery's manager had arrived the day we did with piles of fresh linens and towels, all in white. So the look of it all is bright, open. I adore it. The walls begged for adornment but Jack would eventually take care of that. We'd brought precious little, just the amount we felt comfortable hauling from train to train over the past few weeks, mostly clothing and keepsakes and Jack's drawing materials. Alma had shipped one crate for us of housewares and Jo's toys. Our one large purchase had been a new crib, which we found at a furniture store in Santa Rosa. It had been quite the ordeal to transport it back here via carriage in four pieces and then reconstruct it ourselves. I rarely see Jack flustered, but that evening he stayed silent for a full hour while he dealt with a stripped screw; he emerged from Jo's bedroom, placed his hands on his hips, and gulped down a glass of wine that had been sitting on the table, leftover from dinner.

"Josephine has to sleep in that thing until she's ten years old now." He laughed, grunting out a sigh. Jack's fuse falls to a whimper fast. "I lost a part of my soul to it, it's not going anywhere now."

How is this man captivating even when he's angry, I wondered, and walked over to kiss his right cheek. Somewhere in the back of my head I thought about another baby using it after Jo, about how long that piece of furniture might end up staying in our lives, but I left those fuzzy feelings in the background just for now, where they belonged safe in waiting.

Reveries interrupted, I saw him walking toward us from the main road; he worked alongside a Krug Vineyards veteran named Pete who lived just off the estate and dropped Jack back this way every afternoon in his motorcar, which to me always seemed to clunk along uneasily and emit far too much smoke from its tailpipe. Almost every day I make sure to catch this view of him through the windows of the kitchen, though I don't know if he's aware. I love seeing how he settles as he walks that stretch, I love knowing that how much he leans on his cane can give away how his day has been, and how his step always seems to quicken once he's almost upon the cottage. Some days he feels good enough to leave the cane outside, under the awning that covers the front steps, which jut off from a porch the size of a postage stamp. It is a complete reversal of our life in New York, of course. I had been so used to the other side of things, to the relieving sigh as I left a version of myself behind at work and came home to sink into Jack and Josephine. There was a symmetry in both of us having played each role. We understood both sides, respected each one. I was at a distinct advantage in having these lush surroundings within which to spend long days with her, though, and thinking back to Jack's tireless care of her in that tiny apartment, it made me admire him even more.

"Daddy's home, my girl, go find him." I set Jo down on the kitchen floor and she was off like a dart in the direction of our front door. She amazes us, how she's able to navigate with her crawl. She's fast, she's determined, she knows where things are more than a nine-month old should. She has begun to pull up on sides of furniture as well and I do not think it will be long before she's walking. I finished setting a loaf of bread to prove in a bowl in the warmest corner of the kitchen, which is modest but has a blue toile-patterned tile that lines the counters and makes the room feel graceful. I used the skirt of the linen apron I wore to quickly wipe the last bits of flour from the sides of my palms and ran to follow Jo, taking the corner to the entryway just as Jack set his things down and gathered her up.

"You taste like apples all over," Jack laughed as he planted kisses along her cheeks. He looked up at me and smiled in blissful exasperation. "Her whole body, how does it always get everywhere?"

"I know, she's extraordinary at it," I joined them and reached for her little caked-up cheek. "That's after warm water and soap even." My face turned and I breathed him in. I love how he smells all the time, but I especially love how he smells when he comes home from the production rooms, where he's learning to press the grapes; the scent is that of the emitted fruit sugar, that first bit of fermentation, mixed just a tad with his sweat and the heat of his body. The white oak of the barrels they use here, we all smell of it I'm sure, and on him it's divine. Everyone in production wears the same black collared shirt; Jack's, as much as I wash and wash them, retain the oak. I kissed him, then, that first kiss after a long day. Still holding Jo, he leaned in and squeezed the whole of my bottom lip in his mouth for an extra second, an extra pulse. When we leaned back and exhaled I brought one hand to his cheek to just barely graze it. There had been a tinge of gauntness in his face back in New York, back when we first found one another again, but it was gone here, completely gone.

"We had a big day." I sighed and watched as Jack took off his work boots. "We made about eight hundred pounds of applesauce and now I'll have to take jars around to everyone to get rid of it." Dozens of people brought apples to the vineyard every week, hoping to trade for some of the harvest. Some just brought them out of pure surplus; all in all, we were absolutely swimming in apples.

"You can bring some tonight, people will be drunk out of their minds by nine." Jack walked with Jo at his hip and joined me in the kitchen, where I kept working on our dinner at the small butcher-block island. "Just bring spoons."

I let out a laugh for his sake but my mind clouded a bit, thinking of the event. It was a harvest celebration, a ritual each year for all the staff and their families to open up some of the previous year's bottles and sample, to take a collective breath, so to speak, after a busy fall. We'd only been here a few weeks, came in for effectively the culmination of the harvest, and even we were exhausted really. I'd met several of the winemakers, of course, and we'd picked alongside the family that lived in the cottage about a half mile down our little dirt road, but I hadn't been in a real social situation here yet, not a gathering. In fact, I hadn't been to a social event of any sort in eighteen months. Part of me worried if I'd become a hermit of sorts, whether those skills of mine even worked anymore. Jack was excited. He'd re-bonded quickly with his friend John (who'd gotten him this job) and several other men who had also been here when he was, four years ago; they had stayed, apprenticed and now held significant positions in the production process. He'd fit right onto the canvas of this place in a matter of days, certainly not to my surprise, and I felt a fair amount of expectation to be the partner he needed in this community encased within itself. Jack doesn't apply any of that pressure. I do it all to myself. I cannot help it, I think, not given what and where I came from.

"I hope you're right," I began to chop a carrot and lifted one cylindrical piece right to his mouth, popped it right in, and he nodded in appreciation. "It's always fun to see people lose their minds a bit and all that, isn't it." I laughed, let the worry go for the most part. Jack would never want me to waste a second on it. "Just don't let me drain an entire bottle of Cabernet like I did our first night here, I'd rather watch other people end up in that particular state." I smiled, looked up again and his eyes were dancing. I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was playing it all over like a nickelodeon in his head, wasn't he, and I should be completely mortified. But I'm not, of course, because it's Jack.

The vineyard manager had left us with several welcome bottles to try when we'd arrived, along with a set of stately green goblets; apparently it's all customary when a new employee comes aboard like this. We had a lot of reasons to celebrate that night, in the silent cottage, brand new to us, what with absorbing a place, absorbing our adrenaline. The problem was, we had almost no food in the house yet, and our stomachs were empty from travel. I was even more depleted than him given that I'd had to feed Jo under those circumstances. At one point I asked Jack to dance with me even though we had no music; five minutes later I had inexplicably taken most of my clothes off to a tune I suppose I heard in my own head.

"I don't see why not, I remember being quite happy with the end result of it all that night." He sat a restless Jo down at his feet and cleared his throat to tease me more. "I'd be fine with a repeat performance. As long as it's not in public, you know." I'd walked right into, I did, but still my face felt like it was ablaze. I set the knife down and walked over to stand in front of him; he was sitting on a stool, and I stood so that my hips settled a little into the v-shape made by his. He raised his eyebrows; he has the strange ability to turn his markedly handsome face, for a split second at least, into something so silly he resembles a vaudeville performer who should be waving a hat of some sort. He took a deep breath and reached for my arms, then, up, down, caressing them both. "Rose, you're beautiful even when you're being ridiculous, though." A breathtaking smile, and his hands drifted to the top of my hips, where their presence made me feel restlessly wanting. "It's not even ridiculous when it's you. Drink a thousand damn bottles, I want to see what happens after every one."

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

As tends to be the case with these things, it was largely my own insecurity that caused any sort of unease that night; with the perspective of hindsight, the best instructor, I see now that I waltzed right into that evening ready to find something wrong with it. Perhaps I was raw from all the change.

I wore a butter-yellow dress with long sleeves that Alma patiently helped me make from a pattern we bought on a rare jaunt into Manhattan back in August. It was drapey, criss-crossed at the chest, but with a cinched waist and a silky sash the color of milk; I felt somehow as if I were a cranky girl off at boarding school again, though, uncertain of her appearance, angry at herself for trying to impress anyone. I stood out like a sore thumb, at least in my estimation; the other women wore muted tones of blue, gray, there was a sea of black and brown. These weren't staid people by any means, not in their sensibilities, so I didn't dare read anything into it. It is likely all just a product of practicality and convenience. If anything, they are jovial as a group. I think I was a bit perturbed at the ease by which Jack floated from person to person, his hair still wet from a bath, which isn't a fair perspective on my part whatsoever given the things I'd put him through when we first met. Here he was more at home, here he thrived. And it wasn't even a matter of traditional or repressive class structure, really. Among the guests this night were the winery's owners, their extended families, and its investors. I was the one now who had to learn to navigate an unfamiliar milieu.

I swallowed it mostly. I mingled. We'd brought Jo along in her pram and the noise put her straight to sleep. The party was held in the huge hall that adjoined the winery's public tasting room, a cavernous chamber with high beamed wood ceilings and Lilliputian lights strung in long strands from every corner, lanky potted ferns lining each wall. It was gorgeous, to be sure, and with the smoky smell of autumn hovering and the cold Chardonnay upon my lips I suppose I did relax for a while. To be introduced to an entire room as the Dawsons, to be perceived by an entire community as the Dawson family, without footnote, it was heady; we were pure to them, weren't we, natural and organic because we had just appeared one day to them, already this unit. What a long way we had come. The smile on Jack's face when he introduces me as his wife is enough of a drug to overcome mostly anything.

Someone had wheeled in a piano for the night and an older man with a bushy white mustache and a tiny tartan cap had been stationed to entertain; when he played "Maple Leaf Rag," which the band played on the ship the evening I ran to the stern, played it as I ran from the reception room actually, I moved in closer to Jack and grabbed for his waist, explained under my breath why my whole body felt a little weak. He brought his lips to my ear and whispered that we could go if I needed us to. I squeezed his side in appreciation and shook my head in a no. When the next song began he twirled me around a few times in the corner that a few dedicated attendees had cleared into a makeshift sort of dancefloor. Jo, miraculously, continued to sleep just a few feet away. It's incredibly difficult not to smile when being twirled around by a slightly-tipsy Jack Dawson.

"Rose, you're settling in well, then?"

I found myself sitting at a table with John, who is one of those people that at first glance seems painfully quiet and tends to linger at the back of situations but, once comfortable, has a surprising amount of information to share. I think he said all of three words the day we arrived, although he and Jack shared an emotional hug and I could tell they'd been closer in the past than I'd perhaps even realized. But here he was tonight, kind eyes animated, telling me everything I could possibly ever wish to know about Jules Verne and lost world narratives in literature. It was endearing. His brown hair, curly, flops out at each ear and shakes as he talks.

"We're doing very well." I fanned myself with a label card I'd found on a table; with close to a hundred people in the room it was getting hot. "You'd think Jack just walked away from this place a week ago, for as well as he seems to remember every little bit." It was true.

"It's not surprising, he loved it here." John took a sip from his glass and looked a little pensive. He has the same habit that Jack does, of rolling up his sleeves and then spending the next hour pushing on them constantly. "I'd always wished he'd stayed back with us, of course, we had a little band of misfits going, but we all knew he had other adventures to get off on. He had that sense about it all, to go see so much more." He smiled at me then, but he looked cautious. "I suppose it's a good thing he left here so he could find you eventually, huh." John knows how Jack and I met. I don't think the others know much, but John knows just about everything.

"I'd say so," I offered him a warm smile in return, trying to communicate that it was all okay to speak of. My lips felt a little dry. The moment to talk about the sinking passed, between us, silently and I let it die; I didn't have in me this night to relive anything. "Tell me about him then. Tell me how he was back then."

"Oh, boy," John chuckled, adjusted his glasses and rubbed his hands together as if preparing to spill gossip right upon the table; he's funny, I felt at ease even though Jack had been off floating around for most of the night. "Where to begin. We were all crazy, we thought we were immortal, as most guys that age do. He was the ringleader half the time, has he told you about the trip into the woods when we got chased down by a wolf? An actual wolf?"

"Actually, he did mention that one." I spotted Jack making his way back toward us, all smiles; his cheeks were flushed, his step was confident. "He didn't mention he was any kind of ringleader, but I remain unshocked."

"There was the time we got locked in the barn. There used to be these old decrepit red barns on the northern edge of the property, I guess from way back before the Krugs even bought the land, and we thought no one else went in them. We got locked in one once because an old caretaker apparently had come by to check on them."

"Let me guess, a prime place for some clandestine alcohol consumption?" I laughed. I'd seen enough of how first-class girls will go to the greatest lengths to sneak off with the smallest bit of illicit alcohol, back at school, to know I probably could never begin to imagine what a group of seventeen year old boys got up to in an old barn with literally no supervision and very few consequences. I sent a tiny wave in Jack's direction as he got closer, and John realized he was approaching then as well. I gulped down a huge sip of water; it was getting late.

"Jackjack, I'm getting you in trouble, old sport." John did an exaggerated British accent and reached to clap Jack's back as he came to stand next to our table. Jack looked the opposite of worried, of course. He looked like an open book. He always does. "I was telling her about the old barns. Remember that night old Scotty caught us all? You were there I know, you and Ida were up in the…" He stopped talking then and opened and closed his mouth three more times like a fish. He looked, in fact, like a very panicked fish.

Jack had come into all this a little hazy from wine, I think, and he handled it messily, which is fine because he's human of course. But gone was the cool, collected demeanor he managed to maintain even in awkward scenes; no, here he turned bright red, here he turned to John and bit his lip in a motion toward his friend that intimated, if not betrayal, perhaps just a whisper of stupidity. A look to say something along the lines of "why in the world, old buddy, why in the world."

I like to think I saved the moment even though inside I felt like my organs had twisted up and I might need to vomit.

"John, for goodness sake, it's fine." I waved with a little flourish of my hand, leaned over to check on Jo and took a deep breath. "I'm neither prim nor a prude, I hope he's told you. I'm aware Jack lived a life before me. Please, go on." I looked over to Jack though and his eyes widened, he looked a little nervous. I didn't like seeing that. When there's nothing wrong his face stays steady. I couldn't handle it all just then, it was too much really, so I focused in on John and heard the end of the ludicrous tale of boyhood debauchery which must have originally included a segment in which Jack was doing Lord knows what in a hay loft with a girl named Ida. I spent the next ten minutes imagining both that Ida was as gorgeous as a siren of myth and legend and that she must have played a significant enough role in Jack's narrative for him to clam up in a way I have never, ever seen. We said our goodbyes, John looking unfortunately like a cat who'd let out a hairball in the middle of the floor (for hadn't he, in some ways?), and I gulped up the cool night air when we emerged from the building. Stars were everywhere. We see so many out here, it assaults my senses every time, even after weeks.

"Let's just walk, it would be a hassle to get Jo's pram up in a carriage again, right?" Jack's voice was far off somehow. I just nodded. It was over a half a mile, but if he was up for it, I wasn't going to protest. We walked in silence for a few minutes, I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders. I didn't know how to proceed, what to say, and that's rare for us. I had never cared about Jack's physical relationships or encounters before me, especially since they existed so vaguely and so outside of us; he answered little questions here and there when I asked, and I appreciated his honesty. He'd traveled the world, he'd matured fast. I wasn't an idiot. But I'd never known a name. I'd never imagined a face, a location. This felt different.

"I'm sorry I ran off for so much of the night, there were just people's families to meet. I shouldn't have left you to watch Jo on your own like that." He looked down as he walked, kicking a rock down the path. I pushed Jo's pram.

"I was fine, I had company." I steeled myself. "Who was she, Ida, I'm just curious." I didn't even make it a question, really. By making it a statement I suppose I was attempting to neutralize the feel of it all. "I don't care, really, whatever the answer is, I just would like to be informed. If people are going to mention her." What a lie. It felt like a huge thing, a huge rock wedged between us and I couldn't even see the edges of the damn thing.

"Rose, you're full of shit," Jack stopped and put his hands in his pockets, breathed out a sound that fell somewhere between a laugh and a howl. I looked at him in surprise. "You absolutely care what the answer is, which is why I'm so confused. You've always, always said none of that in the past even mattered, Jesus." He started walking again. I refused to budge, though, and about ten steps in he realized and turned back to me. "Rose, what do you want me to say? I had a bunch of wine, it surprised me that he brought it all up is all. She was a niece of one of the Krugs, she used to come here in the summers with her family to work, she was here the summer I met everyone."

I realized then, of course, that part of this I would just have to let go. He could look me in the eyes in the next few seconds and tell me he'd loved this woman, and I would have to keep moving no matter. He's my husband. The past is wrapped up in everything we accepted from one another when we took those vows; along with the good we took on all the hauntings, the graveyards, the dirty things, all the things stuffed in metaphorical drawers and wardrobes. I felt sad, I felt jealous, but I didn't have the energy to feel angry, not at Jack. This wonderful and loving man, his spirit exhilarating...was it out of line to believe that another woman would have fallen in love with him during some summer buried in the vineyards? Not at all. Maddening, maybe, but not mad to believe it.

"You're right, I am full of shit." I sighed and started moving again, giving him only one side eye sarcastically to offer any sense of relief. "It's okay, you don't have to say anymore. I shouldn't care."

"But if you do, it's okay. I'd care, if the shoe was on the other foot." His voice softened and he tried to catch up with me, but I can walk faster than him and (even though I shouldn't) I was using that to my advantage here. "Rose, we were so young, it was a whirlwind, it was a blink."

I looked back at him and caught his gaze directly, which with the huge moon and all the starlight wasn't hard. "Jack…" I laughed a little bitterly "So were we, a whirlwind. That's the age I was, when we met..." I moved in closer then and placed a forefinger on his lips, because I could tell he wanted to say more. I shivered. "Let's just let it go, though, please. That's enough of it, I'm fine."

I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel some amount of power as we got home and readied ourselves for bed that night. By controlling the hemorrhaging of the whole situation I retained it. It was a sense of power that accompanied a simmering melancholy, to be fair, but surely I am not the first woman in the world to secretly derive pleasure from her lover's sense of regret or guilt or embarrassment, whatever it was that played upon Jack's face. He looked at me so intently, surprised given the evening's turn, I think, that I still proceeded to remove my yellow dress while standing at the foot of our bed, right in front of him. I let it drop, stepped out of every stitch of my clothing and walked around completely naked while I searched for a nightgown I'd tossed aside the night before. I looked up and his mouth was slack. "Rose, come on." I feigned innocence and dropped the gown over my shoulders, felt it graze my breasts (nothing less than at attention), grabbed my book, and proceeded to nestle into the chair in the corner, where an old oil lamp illuminates my pages just enough in the evenings to not harm my eyes. I read for twenty minutes, most of which Jack spent in the same spot on the bed, his clothes still on, his shoes even still on, his hands rubbing his eyes over and over. I looked up once the curiosity got the better of me, once the words began to swim in front of me and meld into an incomprehensible soup, and we stared at one another for what must have been a full minute.

"Rose." He tilted his head and a lock of his hair fell innocently in front of his left eye. Unable to stay removed from him like this for much longer I put my book down, reached out one hand. It was a tiny gesture. A hesitant one. It all happened slowly, but he came to sit right in front of me. I hated myself for creating a situation where he felt he had to come begging, felt as if he had to sit at my feet, but the whole thing was in motion like a freight train and I couldn't stop it. "Rose, what can I do to fix this."

He rested his left cheek against the inside of my right thigh and pushed in a bit, pushed my legs apart, which felt exquisite but I wasn't ready to admit it yet; I could feel everything of his breath, his sigh, through the paper thin material of my gown. His right hand came to my other thigh, grazing it carefully with no assumption. He was looking for consent, if anything. I touched the top of his head. He knows that when I play with his hair that I feel enamored of him, so I held back. I am awful sometimes. I cleared my throat. "Rose, please trust me, there was nothing. Just two idiots fumbling around. It was nothing." His mouth moved closer and the reverberations of speech made delicious goosebumps form in a line down my entire leg like ants crawling in formation. Suddenly very aware that I wore nothing under my nightgown, that his mouth rested just inches from where I liked to feel it the most, I gripped his head even tighter, until we seemed as if two forces pushing against one another in some kind of passionate tug of war. He knows. He knows, and he moved his face even closer, breathing into me. "Rose no one could ever hold a candle to you, to how I love you. You have to know that."

"Jack, it's okay…" I squirmed, I shifted under his touch. I was ready to forgive every sin imaginable just to feel him descend into me somehow. All I wanted was to go back to a moment before any of this had happened. I needed a time machine from one of the novels John had meticulously laid out the plot from earlier in the evening. "Jack, I'm not even angry, I'm just...I don't even know." I didn't.

"It's okay, I want to tell you these things." He looked up at me then and I've never seen his eyes so full of a storm. "Rose." He kissed me once, through the cloth. "You should never doubt anything." Another. "There has never been anyone like you." Another. I hadn't even had that much wine, maybe a glass and a half, but I felt drunk on all of this. "You were not a whirlwind, Rose, you were always forever." He began to pull up the material now, more bold. A few more inches and I would be right there for him to take in. "I love the way you kiss me." Another, his lips mumbling and kissing all at once and I was so wet that the entire bottom half of my body felt melted. "I love the way you touch me." One more. It was gone now, any barrier, and he glanced up at me once more before his breath seemed to reach straight into my body. "I love the way you taste, and it's never enough." My back arched against the chair and his mouth was on me now, hot, open, and a shiver went down my spine that would rival any electrical current.

"Jack." I called his name out into the night like I've done so many times but this felt different; I could hear the vulnerability in my own voice. So many times we'd joined together in joy, but a marriage, a love, is about more than that, isn't it. This night, for me, it was about feeling susceptible, devastatingly human, but coming up for air at just the right moment, right on the brink. And for him I think it was about the past and the present learning to dance with one another. I never gave him enough space to be just him, I realized. I wanted to be just me, so often, but I had to afford him the same right. His tongue danced over me, inside me, my favorite feeling in the world, and I reveled in learning something completely new about us, about how we worked. We had nuance. I came for him, quickly, so quickly, and we rose together only to fall back into our bed nearby, tangled. My gown fought with me as I tried to tear it off, making my face even hotter.

"I'm glad you love it here." I kissed him hard when I surfaced again, probably too hard, felt our tongues crash together and let the rest of my aggression seep into his body and dissolve like sugar in hot water. I wanted it gone. "I want you to be yourself here." I fumbled with his clothes as I spoke, grasping at buttons at random and feeling quite out of control of all my faculties. His shirt was half off. He smiled, seemingly bewitched by what I said, his features softening. "I love you here." I leaned down and kissed his chest, hot kisses with my mouth open, and his skin tasted like wine and a cigarette he must have snuck at some point in the night. He grunted in response, pulling me closer.

I gave in then, gave up the hold on the night, gave up the entire notion that I had any control over where either of us had been or what life might bring to us at any point in the future. If we could come together like this, if we could seek each other out like this even when we worried, when we felt raw, I knew we would be okay. Once I felt his whole body warm against mine, everything off, I tossed my right leg over him, trying to scoop him up. I always think I can scoop his whole body into mine, but of course it's physically impossible. I whispered in his ear, then. "Do that thing." And he knows what I want. He planted one single kiss at my right ear and then took my waist, lifted it, shifted it, with such gentle power, and I sunk into a pillow face first. He laid on top of me all the way. I like to feel all of him balanced across me, laid across my back like this. I like all of his weight on me sometimes. When he entered me I let out a whimper and he kissed my shoulders with so much love, that it's a miracle I did not begin to cry.

So many times I take the lead. So many times he defers to me. It's modern, it's beautiful. But some moments, like this one, I want him to seize control and take all of me, bowl me over. I want to be consumed, and he obliges.