All characters belong to Janet. The mistakes are mine. The concept for Ranger's present, I saw online and one of the gifts was inspired by artist Alexis Fraser's work.
"Morning, Birthday Boy," Steph said in a tone less sleepy than I'd expected.
"I haven't been a boy in a long time, Babe."
She smiled, stretched her arms high over her head, and then turned on her pillow to run a few fingertips up, down, and across, my chest muscles.
"I've noticed," she murmured, replacing her fingers with her lips.
"What are you doing?"
"I was planning on showing the Birthday Man how happy I am that he was born today ... and that he's alllll mine. Are you okay with that idea?"
"You've just discovered a question you never have to ask me, Steph."
She grinned against my navel and then slid up to press a good morning kiss to my lips before kissing her way back down the full-length of my body, stopping to spend time kissing, licking, or sucking, any part that stood out to her. When she ditched her sleep-shirt and was about to straddle me, I moved fast and pinned her beneath me. Knowing she loves me, and enjoys expressing that love through my body is satisfying, but I don't feel complete unless I've had her in the same manner.
Thankfully, Olivia stayed asleep until we'd had our fun both in bed and again marginally-faster in the shower. I can tell this is a day special to my wife based on how she didn't complain about being up two hours before our daughter usually chose to wake up, just so she could have her husband and give him her gift too.
"I wasn't kidding when I told Kane how hard you are to get a gift for, so I went for a unique and hopefully memorable one," Stephanie said to me.
"I love anything you give me just because it comes from you, especially since I know how you stress out over picking out presents."
"I do find it completely nerve-racking. This time around, I decided to give each one of your senses a gift," she said, disappearing into the closet and reemerging carrying a five-present tower stack.
Each box was wrapped in obnoxiously-celebratory birthday-themed paper. The party hat-printed one said 'SEE'. The balloon box's tag read 'HEAR'. 'SMELL' was designated to the paper decorated with birthday cakes. Images of wrapped gifts covered the 'TOUCH' package. And the final present shouted 'Happy Birthday!' between Bat Symbols and around a label stating 'TASTE'.
"It's not much ..." Steph began, climbing onto our bed with the ribbon-secured tower.
I sat opposite of her on the mattress and made a 'Gimme' gesture with my fingers for her gifts. I stand by what I said … that I don't require any, but I'll never tire of getting a new glimpse into her thinking process.
She handed the stack over, but then looked uneasy. Her bottom lip was being not-so-carefully gnawed on, and her blue eyes bounced between my face and my hands at a rapid pace.
"Stop worrying, Babe. My day was already made by you, these will just be extra icing added to the cake." I paused, looking warily at the last box. "There isn't a cake in the one marked 'Taste', is there?"
She shook her curls in the negative before giving me a vocal assurance. "No. But that would've been a good idea. We could've taken care of breakfast at the same time."
"I'll keep that in mind for yours."
"Great. Now you got me actually looking forward to October. Okay, I'll stop stalling. Go ahead and open them."
She had rendered me speechless from box-1. Fortunately for me ... she didn't notice because she was nervously explaining each one and the reason she made or bought it. The 'See' present contained a small framed heart print.
"I'm not sure if you can tell, but my lip-prints are what created the heart."
"I'd know your lips anywhere," I assured her.
"I went through my whole makeup case just to make each kiss different. It obviously isn't as bright, because she and I know the makeup rule, but the pale pink glitter-gloss kiss in the left-hand corner beside the heart is from Julie. The purply 'O' smudge on the opposite corner is from Olive. Our baby had some blueberry puree in preparation for her 'We love Daddy' kiss."
"I think I'll stop here. There's no topping how this is making me feel," I admitted.
"Maybe ... but your curiosity should make you want to see what I choose to put in the other four boxes."
She's right, but I postponed their opening to pull her close and kiss her actual lips thoroughly. I'd spoken too soon, my 'Hear' present was a recording of Steph coaching Olivia to say 'I love Dada' and our daughter's sweet voice loudly mangling the sentence so it came out as ... 'I bub Daba.' The Daba part turned into an excited squeal. It clicked in my mind that I had actually walked in on the tail end of this session, which Steph had quickly and cleverly covered up so I wouldn't know they were up to something like this. The enthusiasm Olivia expressed in my message was actually due to her suddenly seeing me standing in the doorway of her nursery that day. My wife had effectively gifted me a captured memory.
"You may have just outdone yourself," I told Steph.
"And there's still three to go."
The 'Smell' present consisted of a paper target frequently used in my building's gun range. This one contained four holes, two through the heart and two through the paper-bad guy's head. All four are kill-shots, and each one takes considerable practice and skill to accomplish.
"I had Tank sprinkle extra gunpowder on the target so you'd be able to smell it and feel like you were standing in the gun range with me when I finally hit everything I aimed at ... thanks to your direction and endless patience."
I glanced down again at the target, feeling proud of her for being able to protect herself and Olivia if she ever needed to, but not liking that this kind of defense is required not only of my family, but everyone else's these days.
"Proud of you, Babe."
"Thank you. I'm proud of me, too. Another seventy-years with you ... and I bet I'll be the perfect person."
"You already are."
"Too you anyway."
"It's my birthday so my opinion is the only one that matters."
"True. Keep going. I have a feeling you'll like the last two for a very different reason."
She was right. 'Touch' turned out to be a sexy gift, which is likely why she chose to give me these in the privacy of our bedroom before our daughters would be awake and moving around. The sleepwear isn't all that different than what she typically wears to bed, when she gets paranoid about Olive scaling her crib's walls, or when Julie's visiting, and decides to wear something that I usually coax her out of. But having the sleep-shorts much smaller and the top tinier, both made from red silk with lace hinting at the delicacies hiding beneath them, had my body acting like my morning wake-up hadn't happened.
"I figured you'd enjoy that one once I've put it on ... and you get to touch it all you want until you decide to remove it. If you open the 'Taste' present, I'll be putting that on underneath the silky pjs tonight."
That was all the incentive I needed to make fast work of the last of the wrapping paper. My reward was the bottle of birthday cake-flavored edible body oil.
"I thought you'd prefer just a hint of cake and a lot of me, over watching me completely devour your Ella-made cake after I feel you've ignored it for too long."
"I don't know ... I seem to remember feeding you icing roses as being pretty fucking sexy."
"So I shouldn't crack that open? I should just return it and get my money back?"
"Over my dead body. You, I, and these, have lengthy plans tonight."
"If our girls cooperate," she reminded me.
"No problem. If we time the Manoso family dinner and cake correctly, and hint that my parents should exhaust our kids while we're in Newark, they should both be out by nine at the latest."
"Now that I have your permission to encourage your Mom's celebrating you, you can bump up sleep-time to eight-thirty. Happy Birthday, Batman. If it were up to Olive, Julie, and I, the day you were born would be named an International holiday."
