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sagesolsticewrites · 3 months ago

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Yes, Captain

John Brady x Juliet Thompson (OFC)

a/n: in honor of Ben’s post on his Instagram story yesterday… that cheeky lil shit was saying " I am the captain now" and all I could think was "yeah you are 😩🫡" here’s a thing I’ve been working on for longer than I care to say lmao

word count: 3.5k

warnings: mature content (fingering, oral [f receiving], unprotected P in V sex [wrap it before you tap it!], use of titles [Captain]), generally just John Brady being feral for his wife and Jules being feral in return 🤭 enjoy~

@winniemaywebber @ginabaker1666

Masterlist

“Honey!” Juliet calls as she scrambles to get the essentials into her purse, “Are you almost ready? We should’ve left—”

The reminder that they’re already running late for a 100th Bomb Group reunion dies on her lips as John steps out of their room in his crisp, clean uniform, medals and ribbons shining on his Class A.

“I’m coming, sweetheart, I’m coming,” John Brady assures his wife as he adjusts his tie, hat tucked neatly under his arm, “Is my tie straight?”

She can only nod, eyes wide as she takes in the glory that is her husband in uniform. It takes her a moment to remember how to speak— can you blame her?— but eventually a soft, appreciative “You look very nice, Captain,” slips out, a heated undertone weaving through the words, lingering on his rank.

She’s learned to read him very well over their months of marriage, and so she can see exactly what kind of effect her words have on him as he takes a shaky breath in and out, deft fingers fumbling with the knot of his tie.

Juliet can’t help but grin, a thrill running through her at the effect she has on him, until his hands are on her waist, pulling her close.

“You look lovely, Jules,” he says lowly, “But if you knew how much I wanted to rip this off of you…” His voice trails off in a warning as his fingers trace over the deep red fabric of her swing dress, and her breath catches, her knees turning into jelly as his lips just barely brush over hers.

“But I know we’re already running late,” he continues, all business as he pulls away save for the teasing glint in his eyes, “So that will just have to wait for when we get home.”

Her jaw drops as he slips his keys and wallet into his pocket, turning expectantly to her as he waits by the door.

“Johnny, that’s not fair,” she whines even as they step out into the warm evening, his arm draping easily around her shoulders.

“I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, my love,” John grins, opening the passenger door for her to slide onto the bench seat before slipping over to the drivers side, “Now let’s go, I’m sure the ladies are waiting for us so you all can start your gossiping.”

“I never gossip, John Brady, and I have absolutely no idea where you got that notion,” Juliet says primly, the effect utterly ruined by the grin on her face that tells him she has plenty to tell her friends once they arrive.

“Oh! And did you hear—”

Whatever Jo heard, Jules will never know, because her husband chooses that exact moment to make eye contact with her from across the room and very deliberately adjust his tie, a dangerous heat simmering in his blue eyes that makes Jules grip the bar she’s leaning against just a bit tighter to hide the sudden weakness in her knees and down the rest of her drink in one gulp.

Lord, this man was going to be the death of her. She had felt his eyes on her all night, anticipation straining between them like a string stretched almost to its breaking point.

She waits patiently for a break in the conversation to flag down the bartender for a refill when someone in a familiar dress jacket sidles up next to her, pressing a fresh lemon drop into her hand.

“For the pretty lady.”

She turns, smiling at her husband.

“Thank you, Johnny.”

“Anytime, sweetheart,” he says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. He brings his hand to rest at the small of her back as he effortlessly joins the conversation while Juliet sips at her drink, his hand subtly drifting lower and lower as the night goes on.

As she sets the empty glass down on the bar, John catches her gaze with a regretful look.

“Sweetheart, I hate to do this, but… do you think we could slip out a little early? I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

“Oh honey, I’m sorry,” Jules pouts, doing her best to ignore the warm hand resting sinfully low on her back, “Yes, of course let’s get you home.”

They bid a quick farewell to their friends and the rest of the 100th crew— the knowing smiles of Olive, Val, and the rest of the girls going unnoticed as they hurry out— and as soon as they’re out of sight Juliet tugs him into a fierce, heated kiss.

“You,” she gasps into his mouth, “are an absolute menace, John Brady. Faking a headache, really?”

“Who, me?” He grins as he pulls away, hands remaining firm on her hips for the moment to hiss in her ear a teasing “Never.”

A soft, desperate sigh tumbles from Juliet’s mouth as John’s lips brush against the sensitive spot just below her ear.

“Johnny,” she breathes with a gentle, insistent squeeze of his arm.

He pulls back to meet her gaze, pupils blown wide and growing wider at her next words.

“Take me home.”

He ushers her to the car faster than she could’ve imagined, pulling her close so she’s pressed flush against him the whole drive home. John takes every shortcut he can remember at startling speed, though most of Juliet’s attention is on his hand resting possessively on her thigh, tracing patterns indecently close to her core but never touching it.

She’s pulled into the house as soon as the car is parked, John’s hands firm on her hips as he presses her back against the door.

“Johnny—”

She’s cut off by his lips crashing onto hers, stealing the air wholly from her lungs.

“Do you have any idea,” John’s voice is ragged as he drags hot, open-mouthed kisses across her skin, “what you’ve been doing to me all night?”

All she can do is let out a desperate whimper as he continues unraveling her.

“You in this dress,” he growls, bunching the offending fabric in his hands as he presses every inch of himself against her, and she lets out a ragged gasp as the heat building in her core intensifies, “Having to act like I didn’t want to drag you back home the second we got there, couldn’t keep my eyes off you the whole time…”

His mouth lands roughly back on hers, and Juliet reciprocates with equal enthusiasm as she clumsily fumbles with the buttons of his Class A jacket.

Her squeak of surprise is swallowed as John effortlessly lifts her into his arms, his mouth never leaving hers as her legs lock instinctually around his waist, her favorite red heels tumbling noisily to the floor at the action. He stumbles up the stairs, one arm supporting her while the other splays across her back, nimble fingers blindly undoing the buttons of her dress. Juliet’s hands slide up to bury themselves in his hair, nails raking sweetly across his scalp as her husband makes a swift ascent to their bedroom.

She’s pressed up against the wall in short order with a muffled gasp of his name, her feet settled back on the ground at the squeeze of John’s hands at her hips.

The sight that greets her as he pulls away is one that won’t be leaving her mind anytime soon.

Her husband’s pupils are blown wide, sweet blue eyes nearly black with desire, chest heaving, pulling air in through deliciously kiss-swollen lips that are now smeared with Juliet’s red lipstick.

“You look stunning, sweetheart. I don’t think I told you that enough tonight,” John murmurs tenderly, a timbre that has Juliet’s heart melting, then shifts into a low, heated tone as his hand slips around her back to continue his work with her buttons, “But this dress needs to come off now.”

She reaches back to help as he makes quick work of the fastenings, her dress and half slip soon pooled around her feet. Juliet steps out of them and nudges the clothing to the side, butterflies flurrying in her belly at John’s appreciative gaze dragging over her figure.

“See something you like?” She teases, fingertips gliding softly up and down his forearm.

“You know I do, Jules,” her husband breathes, yanking her close as his head dips towards her, his lips skimming across her cheeks to press a path of slow, hot kisses down her neck.

Her breath hitches as his lips move lower, dragging over the hollow of her throat, her collarbone, just brushing the edge of her brassiere, her head falling back against the wall with a soft thunk that’s just on the edge of her awareness.

Looking up at her through his lashes to scan for any hesitation, upon seeing none John makes quick work of her brassiere fastening, letting the fabric fall to the floor as his eyes soak in the view. The groan that leaves his mouth at the sight is nothing compared to the feeling of his mouth finally on her, tongue swirling hungrily around her nipple as she takes the Lord’s name in vain several times over, her husband’s name tacked on in a whimper at the end. His mouth drags over her for what feels like hours, leaving no inch of skin untouched as he carefully kisses his way down her stomach. Having carefully slipped her other undergarments off, his fingers linger delicately over the gap of skin just above her pantyhose, unclipping the thin fabric from her garter belt before carefully rolling it down and discarding it, repeating the agonizingly slow action on the other side.

Once both of his wife’s legs are revealed to him, John kneels between them and presses a gentle kiss to Juliet’s right knee, brushing a path up her thigh, soft whimpers and pleas tumbling from her lips as he works his way towards her core.

The pleas become louder and more frequent as he turns his attention to her other leg, repeating the process before pausing at the apex of her thighs… if only to tease her for a moment.

A whimper of “Johnny, please” tumbles from Juliet’s lips, a plea to get him to do something, anything to relieve the ache building in her core.

She lets out a cry as her pleas are answered, and…

She doesn’t mean to let it slip, truly. It was something she called him only in her head on especially lonely nights when he was away, and she had never really planned for him to know about it. But now she’s feeling positively drunk on the sight of John Brady in his dress uniform, silver bars shining on his collar, sinking to his knees in front of her, the intoxicating mix of her husband’s lips worshiping every inch of her skin, the soft mumbles of praise falling from his lips, and the careful control he’d nearly lost once they’d arrived home making her skin tingle, and it’s as she finds purchase in his hair to tug him closer that it spills out.

“Oh god, Captain—”

There’s a sharp inhale from between her legs, the proximity of it to a very sensitive part of her making her jolt as John freezes, dark blue eyes darting to meet her green.

Slowly, he leans back just enough so she can see his face, his expression unreadable.

“What did you call me, angel?”

Juliet’s mind is going haywire, alarm bells ringing as she imagines every worst possible scenario resulting from her stupid slip up.

“I—”

“Say it again.”

Wait… what?

Her confusion and overactive mind must be crystal clear on her face, because John swoops in to distract her the best way he knows how.

He brushes his lips softly against her hipbone, scattering kisses all over her pelvis as he lifts his fingers to drag them delicately through her folds, angling to hit all the spots he knows she likes.

“Say it again,” he murmurs lowly against her skin once he’s got her writhing underneath him, two fingers pumping slowly in and out, a dark twinkle in his eyes, “or I stop.”

“Captain,” she gasps, feeling herself near that familiar precipice, “fuck, Captain please—”

His fingers crook just enough at just the right angle to have her gushing over his hand, her knees going weak underneath her.

There’s a moment of heated silence, blue and green gazes locked as Juliet catches her breath, a soft, helpless sound slipping out of her as his fingers slide out of her and into her husband’s mouth.

She’s frozen there until John speaks again, a low, dangerous tone she’s never heard before.

“On the bed, sweetheart.”

On wobbly legs, she does as he asks and perches on the edge of their ivory floral bedspread, eyes wide and heat building anew in her core.

The ache between her legs intensifies as her husband takes his sweet time carefully draping his jacket over the chair at Juliet’s vanity, making sure his eyes are locked on hers as he loosens his tie and tugs it off, his musician’s fingers making quick work of the knot and moving swiftly to the buttons of his shirt.

Once he’s stripped down to his undershirt, he makes his way over to his wife, gently prying her legs apart from where she’d pressed them together in an attempt to soothe the ache between them. Two fingers come up under her chin to tilt her gaze up, but she doesn’t feel him anywhere else, even as her body unconsciously arches towards him, needing his touch on every part of her.

A soft, trembling “please” slips out of her, barely a breath, but it gets a slow smile out of him.

Juliet feels fingertips skimming up her side and suddenly she’s being gently guided onto her back, his lips bumping just once against the corner of her mouth as he murmurs against her, “Let me take my time, darling.”

And take his time he does, his mouth dragging over her skin at a snail’s pace as the ache between her legs grows.

“Johnny,” she whines impatiently, grinding her hips against nothing as he hovers just out of reach, lips pressing a slow path down the valley between her breasts, “Please, need more—”

Her plea turns into a despairing wail as his mouth leaves her entirely.

“Try again, sweetheart,” he says lowly, “Otherwise I start all over.”

Her mind is terrifyingly blank for a moment, and then—

“Captain,” she sighs desperately, “please.”

She can feel his predatory grin against her skin as his lips return to her, the murmur of “good girl” sending a fresh wave of heat through her core.

Her breathing becomes heavier, the sighs and soft moans more frequent the lower her husband’s mouth travels. Her hands fist into the bedspread as his lips brush her lower belly, her hipbone, skimming down to her inner thigh, and she fears she may actually tear a hole in it if she doesn’t get what she needs soon.

Leaning her head up slightly to watch, the planned plea dies on her lips as darkened blue eyes lock on hers. With a wink, he maintains eye contact for as long as he can, then her mind is overtaken by relief as his mouth finally reaches her.

“Oh, god—”

He makes short work of making her fall apart on his tongue, large hands pressing down on her hips in an attempt to keep her still as she bucks into his mouth. His tongue drags hungrily through her folds, the occasional gentle suck at her clit drawing out incoherent gasps of “yes” and “Captain” and “right there” from Juliet’s lips, the words running together into a wordless cry as she reaches her second orgasm of the night.

Gasping, Juliet returns to her body, a shudder running through her as something brushes just outside her core. Tilting her head up, she realizes it’s still her husband, mouth glistening as he presses a series of kisses to her inner thigh, her hipbone, working his way back up her body until he captures her lips in a sloppy, heated kiss.

A moan erupts from her throat at the taste of herself on his tongue, the sound promptly swallowed by John’s eager mouth on hers. With fumbling fingers, Juliet tugs his undershirt out from the waistband of his slacks, her hands slipping under it to blindly map out the expanse of his back.

John reluctantly pulls his mouth away from hers, lips kiss-swollen and shiny as he reaches to tug the white fabric over his head, tossing it to some unknown corner of the room. He slides off of Juliet to undo his belt, giving her time to appreciate the view of his muscled torso as the belt joins the clothes scattered about the room, his slacks hitting the floor soon after along with his boxers.

Juliet catches her lip between her teeth, her eyes dragging hungrily over every new inch of exposed skin. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t utterly melt at the sight every time.

There’s a glint in John’s pretty blue eyes as he moves to hover over her once more.

“See something you like?” He murmurs, mimicking her own words from earlier.

Juliet tugs him down for a hungry kiss, her breath hitching as his hips settle snugly against hers.

“Yes, Captain,” she grins against his lips, rolling her hips in a practiced motion against his own.

“Shit, Jules,” John gasps, huffing out a laugh. He pulls back just enough that their noses brush, maintaining eye contact with his girl, “You ready?”

At her eager nod, he shifts his weight onto one arm, rewarded with a stuttering gasp as he drags the head of his cock back and forth through her folds, a delightful high-pitched sound escaping his wife as it bumps her clit once. It catches at her entrance and, with practiced ease, he slowly presses into her, Juliet’s head falling back with a moan as she adjusts to his size.

He waits for her nod to begin rocking his hips back and forth, slow thrusts that allow her to feel every inch of him, that soon have long, breathy moans falling from her lips.

“M—”

Whatever his wife was about to say, it’s cut off as another moan spills out of her.

“What was that, honey?” He gasps, bumping her nose with his.

It takes her several tries, but eventually a plea of “more” tumbles from her lips, a whine of “faster” on its heels.

John grins, “of course.”

Meeting her eyes, John’s hips snap into hers with military precision, the utterly perfect staccato rhythm of his thrusts drawing out cries of “yes, oh my— right there, don’t stop—”

He lets out a sharp gasp of his own as Juliet’s nails rake down his back, building towards her third orgasm of the night.

She tightens around him, nails digging into his skin as she reaches her peak, his rank tumbling from her lips in a broken moan. John follows suit not long after, his hips stuttering against hers before spilling into her with a groan muffled in her neck.

They stay there for several long moments, feeling the rise and fall of her chest against his as they catch their breath. Her husband pulls back to meet her gaze, falling in love with her all over again at the sight of her dark curls splayed out atop the bedspread, the rosy flush in her cheeks, the satisfied glow in her sparkling green eyes.

He dips down to capture her lips, muffling the whine that escapes her as he slides out.

“You alright, sweetheart?” He pants softly, brushing a damp curl from her forehead.

Her gaze is so fond he feels his heart might burst as she replies with a smile, “I’m perfect,” adding teasingly, “Captain.”

He chuckles, brushing a kiss to her cheek as he moves to stand, making his way over to the bathroom.

“Hey, you started that.”

“So I did,” She’s beaming as he emerges from the en-suite with a warm, damp washcloth, though it falters slightly, “You’re sure that was okay? I know it was kind of a surprise—”

“It was,” he acknowledges, moving gently between her legs to clean up the result of that particular surprise, “But I promise, sweetheart,” — there’s a glint in his eyes as he meets her gaze — “it was a very good surprise.”

“Well,” her smile turns the tiniest bit shy, “I’m glad.”

She takes the cloth from him, sitting up to toss it into the hamper before standing, incredibly aware of her husband’s gaze following her.

“I’ll be right back,” she assures him with a laugh as she slips into the bathroom, emerging fresh faced and makeupless, her hair tucked up into a silk scarf.

She joins her husband under the covers, both forgoing pajamas for the night in favor of the skin-to-skin contact Jules tends to crave after lovemaking. She lets out a contented sigh as her husband’s arms wrap around her and pull her close, pressing a kiss to where she can hear his heartbeat under her ear.

“Goodnight, Jules.” He murmurs into the crown of her head, squeezing her the tiniest bit tighter for a heartbeat.

“Goodnight, Johnny,” Juliet murmurs, eyes already drifting closed.

The "I love you’s” are unspoken, but no less true as the Bradys drift off to sleep in a sweet tangle of limbs.

#everyone remember 'yes major'? yeah we're projecting that onto all the boys <3 #kindly ignore that i absolutely rushed the ending of this its fine ksfhsdfh #oc: juliet thompson #brady x jules #love’s light wings #john brady x oc #masters of the air #mota #mota x oc #masters of the air x oc #mota fic #masters of the air fic #john brady smut #mota oc #mota smut

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latibvles · 4 months ago

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❛ i’ve been thinking about you all day. ❜

For Willie and Brady please!

settled.

CERTIFIED MUNCH JOHN BRADY WHO ELSE CHEERED!! this is adults doing adult things under the cut. postwar willie & brady just hit different for some reason. this is nsfw. you've all been warned.

There is no better feeling than this — hands in his hair, breathy sighs against his mouth, John’s hands moving lower, lower, until they’re smoothing against the swell of her ass, squeezing enough for a small giggle to vibrate against his lips. He loves that sound. Loves her. Loves this.

He’s pressing her up against the arm of the couch and she’s tugging at his tie until she can pull it off and let it fall to the floor. This goddamn couch. He’s hoisting her up by the thighs only to settle her back down against its cushions and marvel at her a moment.

It’d been his realization this morning. No more movers, or plumbers, or repairmen. No more furniture to buy or things needed to make this place a home. No more job interviews and looming rejection anxiety.

They were settled. Him and Willie. They’d been married for months but now it felt like they really were and he’s a bit amazed that they got to this point. She’s looking up at him, and he knows they’re both a mess — wrinkled shirts and messy hair and kiss bitten lips.

He doesn’t care. He’s leaning down to crush his lips against hers again and she’s arching her back until their fronts are pressed together. His hand finds her breast, squeezing until he’s fumbling with her blouse buttons and untucking it from the skirt and letting his fingers graze against the delicate lace of her brassiere. He shifts his head, nosing against her neck to inhale the faded scent of her perfume mingled with the smell of old books.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he murmurs against her skin, presses a kiss there and Willie lets out a steady exhale.

“Good work day?” she asks, and just hearing the smile in her voice has him smiling too, dragging his nose up her neck to press a kiss to her jaw, lightly nipping at her ear to make her shiver.

“Mhm, really good,” He’s leaning back then on his haunches, hands hooking into the sides of her skirt to tug, to drink her in. He could bunch the garment around her waist but he doesn’t want to.

They have time now, there’re no movers. No repairmen. And he likes this view of her — flush-cheeked, chest rising and falling, her eyes trained on him. Dark gaze piercing and curious. Typically this would be the part where he’d tease her, make her lay out what she wants in the plainest terms until she’s bright red and grabbing at him. But he’s feeling kind this time, or needy, the line’s blurry and he doesn’t care to dissect it much as her skirt slides off her legs.

“Christ, look at you,” John swears. “Sight for sore eyes, Mrs. Brady.” He drinks in the sight of her blush intensifying.

“John,” Willie huffs out, an arm going over her eyes, the other draped across her middle. He knows what she’s covering up almost instinctually and doesn’t resist when he moves her arms, looming over her to trail kisses from her forehead, nose, lips, down further.

“What? It’s true,” he murmurs against her skin, tongue poking out to trace the divots of her skin; the column of her throat and dips in her collarbones, blunt canine brushing against bone and John tries to withhold the urge to leave a mark where everyone can see it.

“You’re ridiculous,” she giggles, the sound vibrating against him, coupled with a sigh as he kisses at the softness of the tops of her breasts, and then the peaks of them through her brassiere.

“And you’re gorgeous. We can keep stating the obvious if you want,” John offers, as he stalls by the shrapnel scar she’d been covering along her ribs.

He doesn’t know if there are enough words to convey that simple fact: if there is anything in the world he won’t flinch away from, it’s her, so the least he can do is show it. He presses a kiss against pink scar tissue, drags his tongue along its jagged edges and grins at the soft exhale of “John” that tumbles from Willie’s lips. He loves dissecting all the different inflections of the way she says his name, the pitch and breathiness of it — what it means when she says just one to two words.

Lower, lower, he’s lathing kisses down her stomach, her thighs, until his mouth hovers over the apex of them and she’s groping for his hand to lace their fingers and squeeze, pressing it right between her breasts — her heart hammering against the back of his hand.

John kisses her once through the flimsy fabric, grunting at the suppressed sweetness of her before he’s pulling her underwear off with the free hand and bowing his head to taste her in full.

Willie whines, breathless and pitchy as he runs his tongue up and down, circling her bundle of nerves, and then her entrance. Her praises are soft whispers that squeeze at his heart while making him impossibly harder through his slacks. The line between pain and pleasure blurs — he involuntarily ruts his hips against the cushions when her free hand finds his hair and tugs, seeking some form of friction.

There’s a sting there that spurs him forward — nails digging into his hand, tugging his hair. His tongue is working inside her with practiced precision, nose nuzzling at the special bud that has her moaning into the quiet of the living room. Their living room. Their house. He’s grinning against her, looking up at her to drink in the sight of her head tilted back and her eyes screwed shut as she squeezes his hand like a lifeline.

“C’mon Mrs. Brady. Eyes on me,” he coos against her wetness, and Willie takes in a trembling breath before forcing her eyes open to look at him. He chuckles and the sound has one of her feet digging into his shoulder blade. “There she is. Eyes on me.” A kiss to her inner thigh, one where he bites hard enough to leave a mark and elicit another whimper from her before refocusing on that bundle of nerves. He circles it with his tongue — quick, precise movements before he’s sucking it into her mouth.

“John I— Christ I can’t— I need—” she’s stumbling over her words, breathy and trying, clearly, to keep watch of him. Trying not to completely shut her thighs around his head. He wouldn’t be opposed. There’s an ache there from how hard she’s pulling and squeezing and he just grazes his teeth against that bud, just enough to get her back to arch deliciously off their couch cushions and for her to press his head impossibly closer.

“I’ve got you, honey. Promise,” John grunts out through his minstrations.

“I’m gonna—”

“I know. I know.” He doesn’t know if it’s his encouragement or the vibrations of his voice or what that sends her over the edge, but she’s spilling onto his tongue, his chin, and he groans at the taste of her as she relaxes a moment. He presses another kiss to her thigh as she comes down from the high, and then Willie’s eyes zero in on him with some sort of indiscernable newfound determination. She’s reaching for him before he can even pull himself up properly.

“Come here, Mr. Brady,” she huffs, and John is more than happy to open his mouth to her when she pulls his face towards her to kiss him again.

#*poet writes #ship: willie/brady #ch: willie neumann #john brady smut #john brady x oc

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ab4eva · 6 months ago

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This is truly one of the most beautiful, poetic, romantic, insightful things I’ve ever read. It’s utterly gorgeous and lovely! You’ve outdone yourself this time, baby! Needless to say I’m obsessed.

MotA Fanfiction: John Brady and first person/reader/insert no use of y/n.

18+: John Brady had me at “like you told me” five seconds before “son of a bitch that’s France” and now we’ve got seven kids and a mortgage. The following could be a very existential diary page about the first few months of that marriage.

But basically, John Brady makes me rabid: here have some purple prose smut about it mixed into an essay on happiness

My mother readied me for many things but not for this. I dig through the archives of her heavy advice, her off handed comments, her jubilant prognostications, all I keep so dutifully in my mind, and I search for some hint from her that she knew it could be like this. But I find nothing, it is all too weak or strong or wordy.

Did it not come in words?

Were her misty eyes when she settled the veil over my face the true meaning of it? Had I mistaken her emotion as a presentment of missing me when it was instead tremulous excitement for what was in store? Had she known when she wrapped me in white and insisted it fit me lovingly to my proportions that it was not tidiness and appreciation for good seams but instead, that holy knowledge of what more awaited me? That a wedding dress in its fit reflects what happens when the groom removes it?

She knew I had myself a good man. Did she suspect how well he’d fit me?

And I thought it was merely cloth, I had been too busy even for my own wedding. I was too busy loving him, the idea of him, of him being mine. Perhaps if we had met in peacetime, if he had courted me between his hours at the office and my semesters I would have looked forward to my wedding, planned each detail and worried over all manner of things that brides are said to care about.

But we had not; I’d no sooner loved him than he’d gone, and no sooner had death returned him on loan than I married him. I loved him and everyone else but me seemed to know what that meant as he kissed frosting from my wrist.

I had thought I’d known at the registry office, signing in ink my name, scrawling a practiced B that ended with a flourished Y.

Mrs. Brady.

I’d thought I’d known then. I had given the benign judge a saucy smile of the fully enlightened. I had no idea. To ask me if I was happy that day would have been a good joke, to ask me if I could be happier when we waved out a window chalked with news of our nuptials: it would have been more than half insulting.

I was happy. I thought I knew. And that night, what little doubt I had about the gaps in my theory, he filled. Love in its rawest form, breaking me apart, making a place for himself, I clung to his shoulders; this part my mother had told me of. She told me it got better; I can’t speak to that. He was pushing and petting and I endured until surrender turned to fascination and again to arousal by his rhythm, the concrete sense of his need, the clarity of his release. And still I was urging my sweet boy to take and take; it did not get better, it got sublime. I could not fault my mother for her faulty preparations, even though I think she knew -for her own sake I hope she knew. There are no words for it when two bodies become one, minds meld and he finds his way eased by your blood till he’s in so deep you think he’s probed at your heart. I don’t hear of people speaking about that part, and mother didn’t tell me, but I think they know.

I am quite forgiving of her that night, I thought I knew then, I assumed what she left unsaid, it was merely out for lack of vocabulary. Lying beside him, having tasted heaven, I am generous. She tried. I know.

He had put a pillow under my hips before he opened me, it tilted me kindly for his invasion and I wonder who told him of that. His innate desire to please had long ago led me to find he was good at kissing, and that he liked to kiss me everywhere. He was as delighted by the back of my knees as he was by my throat, and he forgot all reason when he tasted between my thighs, only his firm and unyielding hands on my hips gave a mottled clue he kept at such kissing for his own satisfaction as much as mine.

I know that I am happy then, on my wedding night, and next morning I am happier still. I might try at being cross with my own self, for sabotaging my arrival at absolute knowledge except that I cannot help but be giddy for it; he loves to kiss me, my boy, and he has a warm blush on his face in the sunlight, this first morning I’ve woken up beside him, and his hands are already busy with me. Mine grow busy with him and I know this is how we will spend our days, kissing with him inside me, and I am happy.

No one who encounters me in the coming weeks can doubt it. My parents whisper amongst themselves, his too, church members and fellow servicemen. My Johnny is not settled with a job and so we lodge at various places in the next two months, and soon each of our hosts knows it, too. It cannot be stifled beneath his quieting palm when he breaks me apart, thin walls and no place to call our own except the harbor of my body, that’s his home and he goes into it. Often and more vigorously each time until I associate happiness with the most alarming strength of exertion from the lithe length of him rolling against mine, noses to toes; I draw blood from his hand.

Even my boy is beginning to see: he makes me happy. He has the most melancholy eyes, my boy, I recalled them as being calm and observant before he went away. But he has observed too much though he never says so, and out of his army greens there is not a speck of baby blue left in them, they’re cold gray and the only time I see them sparkle are when I’ve made him laugh so hard a tear rolls down his creased cheeks. I am impatient with his happiness, I know it and I know I’m wrong for it, but I miss the sky blue of them and the way I didn’t used to have to guess at what roils beneath them.

If he can’t feel happiness as thoroughly as me, he at least presents with quiet confidence as he finds a peacetime footing, there is a job offer in Maryland and we take our first road-trip. He is full of plans and maps and well drawn schedules and I am full of 55 mph breezes up the nose, feet in his lap and face hung out the window merrily, there are endless rows of pines and the feel of bark against my back at the rest pavilion. More, more, more, I demand of him and he gives it, it’s happiness turned hungry, greedy, close to vicious. Happiness that needs topping off.

We fight that night before his interview. A silly thing, inconsequential, hotel room adding to the displaced feeling I have begun to feel after our adventure calmed into adult necessity. He is preoccupied with being excellent and I am preoccupied with happiness. Chiefly if I make him happy or not; this is the first night he has not been so undivided in his passion and I allow it to vex me. I am young and I am happy and I guard it jealously, thinking that holding it -gripping him- tight fistedly desperate about it, will keep it all the closer.

“I am doing this for us.” his tone cuts me, I have admired it slashing others but it has never been directed at me before. He is wiser than I am and a self proclaimed cynic. I think he is fighting me in my happy quest, but, “For us, I’m doing this for us.”

His fingers dig into my cheeks and it is assurance enough. I have to agree that even heaven must have some maintenance work intruding on the celestial revels from time to time.

By the time I stand on the bed and cinch his tie the next morning before his interview, I have never been more in love. I am happy, yes, but there is admiration for him there too, but I struggle with finding a place for it.

Love, it seems, multiplies and I remain fixated with happiness in its tidiest form. Like the moment we cut the cake. I ask him that night if he has ever felt that, felt it simple and tidy.

“I feel a million things about you.” he swears instead; his tone suggests it is the most devout compliment.

I pray for wisdom next Sunday. I can feel that there is more to happiness than I know and it unsettles me. Our fight has long been made up but those million things that Johnny thinks and knows of me haunt the little life I try to construct, they haunt it as badly as whatever plagues his dreams at night.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” he begs a hundred times to me night after thrashing night; he suggests the sofa, I won’t hear of it. The bruises his flailing limbs land on mine are no darker than those he makes in calculated romance. His dreams respond to the feeling of my hands on his belly, he wakes easily with it, I have something to wake for and it is not perfect or quiet or even gentle always, but I am in love and when he allows me, I feel powerful and needed, hands on his belly, a thin tickle of hair beneath my palm. “You’re an Angel.” he swears to me, lips warm and plush against mine, I am so in love.

My cycle stops soon after the interview trip. I wait until I am sure to tell him one night, we are sprawled across our bed gasping back breath and I tell him, simple and direct as he prefers. I had wanted him one last time before he thought of me as a madonna. It had not been so different, I had been preoccupied with the child but I had also found my peak, and he had grasped greedily at my breasts, my nipples knotting beneath his fingers and only a lingering soreness in them to remind me of my secret. With his seed dripping from me, redundant and warm, I tell him.

“A baby?” My husband’s eyes glow, he cups my face like I am holy, his lips thank me with kisses to my nose and eyelids, “We’re havin’ a baby?”

He is all preparedness now. Striding with purpose and when he kisses me he is kissing the mother of his child; he gets the job in Maryland. We tell my parents of our happy news before we go, it surprises no one and yet there are celebrations as if we waited a decade. My Johnny is pleased and his smile is fixed, but I remember him when I told him, the glow about him, the naked press of him to me, his kisses on my belly. These are things I wish I could tell my mother -these are things that make me happier. Even more than the child itself.

On the way back to Maryland, our car trip is sedate, I eat ginger candies to quell the nausea and Johnny contemplates an unspoken thing. When I contemplate at all I think of driving down here over a month ago and the feeling of bark behind me and his hips snapping into me. I wonder if our child was made in the pines -how very different a few weeks makes a trip. He has foregone smoking his pipe indoors out of consideration for my queasy stomach.

“There’s somebody out here I should see.” He answers me at the gas pump, knowing I can tell he is preoccupied.

One of his crew lives off this exit, it’s why he’s filling up when the tank is half full. Johnny says he should go see him, and where he goes I will too.

Waist gunner Timmons is missing both legs. Together he and Johnny speak of bonds and education, his new job and the likelihood of drought, tidbits about the other boys' peacetime business failures, they laugh without malice. They laugh at themselves too. When taking our leave Johnny tells him our news. It makes me blush and I don’t know why, I was proud of our making the child. I should be proud of our finished product. I see him slip a hefty dollared bill in the coat pocket of the garden cover by the door as we leave.

Johnny stops our car at the end of the long gravel drive and while it confuses me, I know he is in a turmoil. His fists suddenly slam against the steering wheel and his face goes red beneath it’s feckless.

“Baby?” I question him but then he is weeping, forehead pressed to his knuckles on the steering wheel, aggravating buzz of a fly against the windshield unheeded.

It’s ugly and hiccuping and half panicked, he can’t seem to stop though the angry set of his shoulders tells me he wishes to, and after helpless fluttering beside him, I undo my waist belt and slide over to his side, arm thrown over his shoulders, forcefully prying him from the wheel. He lays in my arms and weeps for what feels like hours, letting me hold him and swear to him and soothe him. I’ve never known him like this, he speaks of Whys and Who’s and What’s He Got Going For Him to Deserve So Much Good Luck.

I am his good luck, his lips tell me as they press to my belly, he has fully sagged into my lap in his misery. I am his good luck, me and the baby and the job in Maryland and it is the first time I’ve ever thought of happiness as guilt.

The first days in Maryland, I cannot say that he is happier but he looks at me more openly, the guarded set of his eyes is gone and something sheepish but trusting shimmers there instead. Still steel gray but I notice the flutter of lashes around them and the dusting of pink cheeks more often. We never speak about Timmon’s driveway but I come to realize with a jolt: he’s softer for having let me see one of his million parts. I know him better now and it shows in his loosened shoulders and his shy smiles, the almost joyous eagerness he has to begin life here.

We close on an offer on a house, brick with a little porch, a small front drive and boxy lawn but in back there is a tall whitewashed fence going round and garden beds that are empty and waiting. It’s a prize and we are both delighted and he swoops me up, light as a feather, and brings me over the threshold.

“You’ve been waiting to do that!” I realize, he didn’t do it on our wedding night at the hotel or any of our other lodgings.

“We’ve got ourselves a home.” he grins back and there is such relief in his face I wonder at how much concern he was harboring before.

I begin to watch my man the way he watches me, I think less and less of whether he is happy and more and more if he feels safe. It’s why I’ve made no move to couple since he has not, not since I told him of the baby. We have been traveling, then moving in our boxes and he has been feeling whatever it was he felt in Timmons driveway. Some modicum of selflessness takes up residence in my childish heart, allowing him to hold me and not demanding proof of happiness from him. He cradles my belly every night as we spoon and I can feel his lips quirking in smiles as he gently hums to our child.

I watch my husband like he first watched me, from the bandstand, boyish cheeks blown full and nimble fingers flying over brass keys, I knew I wanted him then before he did. I went after him fast and furious, unlike myself in the way I tenaciously kept our first halting conversations going, shocking myself with the way I fanned my skirts around his lap and let him play beneath them -he was better at that than talking and I obliged him ravenously. Told him he looked handsome in his uniform and he told me he’d like to marry me. He came back to me as promised, four years late, yet the happiness that his first glittery eyed glance sparked in me is something I crave now as if I have not dabbled in far more heady pursuits with him thus far. His child grows in my belly but I miss his blush when I first stared at him past his bunker behind his music stand.

He watched me first, I wanted him worse. His eyes were blue then.

I admit my petulance to my mother after a week at the new house. Not that I am so wanton as to be bereft after a ten day abstinence, but that I cannot seem to settle some gnawing resentment that has begun. Again, not over the coupling. I am not sure what it’s over. I love him more than ever, and yet, that first blush of blazing white happiness of our first few days has given way to a nurturing watchfulness, an almost heartbreaking sympathy, a self effacing desire for his joy that robs me of my own. I ask her for a remedy.

She tells me I loved the idea of him before, and now I love him. And love is not made of happiness alone. She tells me to talk to him. “If you don’t know what it is,” she says, “he may. He knows you.”

He loves a thousand million parts of me, he had said. And then I had scoffed, feeling so sure I was comprised of only one: happiness.

Amongst the other basic necessities of settling in, we do our best to scope out the town, having arrived on a Thursday we attended mass soon in the only Catholic Church to be found in the small place, we find the town’s rec hall more promising, I keep my eyes peeled for a music store. There is one in Millersville, I find it when I go to inspect a couch that caught my eye in the Hutzlers catalog.

I do not know if he needs reeds. He hasn’t played since he got back, he may have a stack of extras in some box. But the sentimentality fills me strongly, the memory of missing him and waiting for him and having no ability to reach him over there except by sending the packages. And each of his letters with their little sheepish addendum: please send more reeds.

I got up from dinner that night to give them to him. He had asked about my day and as if I had some horrid secret to cover I had choked on my descriptions of the couch until I had broken down and admitted there was more. I place the item beside his plate and he puts down his fork while I stand in suspense.

An innocuous plastic wrapped package of saxophone reeds was probably not what my Johnny was expecting but he lets out a cut off little laugh about it.

“Did you even need more?” I am weirdly in knots over it, fingers nervously bunching at my dress and he leaves off opening the package to slip his own into mine to prevent the tick.

“I did.” he murmurs warmly, pressing a kiss to my forearm that dangles beside him, “Thank you.”

“Is that why you’re not playing?”

He looks surprised. “I -just busy, I suppose?” he questions himself.

“I miss it.” vocalized at last, I realize just how much.

“Do you?” his lips curve in a smile against my arm and move across to my belly, the hot gusts of his affection damping my dress. “Well, if my sweetheart misses it…” his lips have moved so low along my dress I feel an ache where I am missing other things.

He cleans his instrument that night while sat at the table while I do the dishes, our clearing of it a joint endeavor. He fusses over the need to grease it and other things too technical to be questioned but I understand, it won’t be played tonight. But it’s good to see him at the familiar task, his affection and seriousness for his work both manifesting across his face.

The next day he goes with me to Hutzlers, his opinion on household furnishings having been impeccable thus far and far more decisive than my own. He humors my myriad of hypotheticals regarding comfort and staining and color schemes, hands shoved easily in his pockets and a gentle smile on his face, I know by look alone he is categorizing each of my expert arguments into tidy little categories that he will present to me again in fifteen minutes time when a decision must be made.

In the end we purchase a pale blue couch with roses imprinted tone on tone into the fabric. It was decided upon only after he had hauled me down to the cushions to see if it were a plausibly good place to kiss. I now wonder if we have gotten a blue couch instead of a peach one simply due to the fact it was further from the window and he felt free to dip me down over the arm for a brief half minute.

Either way, it is set in stone that our new couch will be blue and on the way to the cash register, he immovably halts at a counter displaying the most heart wrenchingly cute baby items.

“We have to get somethin’.” he sounds almost exasperated at the previous weeks’ oversight.

We leave with ten different things, not having agreed upon what gender our child will be and I am unable to argue that booties are always a sensible option for either sex, I also want to strangle the woman behind the counter whose over eager desire to help robs me of the unguarded delight Johnny was showing over the little things before she came up.

He is opening my car door and teasing me for being so mercurial when he himself turns mildly glum before a hard determination sets his jaw.

“What?” I question, half wondering if he sees some old acquaintance or is having some awful recollection. I can’t imagine what amongst this urban place and departmental hedonism could inspire it but, stranger associations have done so.

“It’s midway through September.” he mutters, keen eyes fixed at the store’s grand facade, hand still heavy on the window before closing my door.

“Yep.” I am at a loss.

“But the seasons are milder down here.” he is presenting a case of his own for something and all I can do is agree, Maryland is more temperate than New York.

“Your mother even gave me a book about the different zones.”

“Yeah.” he is pleased with my perceived understanding, face lighting up, “So it’ll stay warmer down here.”

“For longer.”

“Yeah.”

“Johnny? What?”

He seems to realize I’ve not understood what he keeps looking at so intensely across the parking lot. “I want to buy bushes and flowers but it’s September.” he admits.

An extravagance this late in the season, and my man is not extravagant. “They’re very pretty.” I settle for acknowledging, knowing this is something he must decide but he looks so torn I would do anything to smooth that creased brow.

“It would make the place more, I dunno,” he stares down at his hand on the still adjar car door and shrugs, “…homey?”

“Some things are perennial.” a little blossom of hope tinges my own voice, my mind had gotten away with me -if he is this invested while yet undecided, I cannot imagine what diligence he might display at husbandry were he to act on it. And there’s nothing I have grown to love more in all my watching than him at some diligence.

We don’t get them. But in the car on the ride back there is discussion that the place is only a fifteen minute drive. Which pertains to the delivery of our couch, and we must hurry back to have the front door opened and I wanted to sweep where it will be once more. The delivery boys thump the blue thing on our floorboards carefully and its large presence is exactly what Johnny was saying we needed -Hominess. Emphatic. Settled. Ours.

No sooner have they left with his kind tips in their pockets than he is pulling me down on it, a hungry imitation of his actions at the store with hands more risky and insistent. I have been missing him so badly I come apart easily from his finger’s ministrations between my legs, sidetracked in trying to pull off my panties and garter belt. When he sees me go, he takes mercy and lets up, a gentle swiping through his prized currency of sticky pleasure and I watch him bring those long fingers to his lips, sucking them clean.

“You taste different.” he admits with heavy lidded eyes, “Since…” he doesn’t finish his explanation of the change in my belly, the slight swollen pooch that is our child.

“Bad?” I ask with feminine panic at the very notion.

He is settled on his belly between my thighs, blue couch a plush landing beneath us both, “N’bad.” is emphatically mumbled against me and my legs kick out the buzz of his voice. By his vocal and insistent enjoyment of it, I cannot help but be assured. Not bad. I keen up at our ceiling as he wrings one and then two and then -he won’t stop and I am needy for it, enjoying the familiar span of his hand dominating my belly, only this time it is cupping my swollen womb. I settle in relief that the proof of my maternity beneath his palm does not deter him, or at least, distract. He hums into his messy work and noses at me where I am all lightning and pulsing need, his hips jerking down into our plush new addition each time I pull at his dark locks.

Different, he says of my taste, and wedges his face in deeper, his hips beginning to move with the movements of his face against my parts and I swear to him that he is good, that he is perfect, that I’ve missed him, that he is beautiful and that he should have gotten those flowers.

His corresponding laugh makes me gush onto his tongue and his humor turns into a moan that only prolonges my delicious agony. He pushes my legs wider so forcefully I think he would like to take them off entirely if he could, his face smothered in my heat.

“You have a job now.” I present a case of my own to him, about the flowers as I try to get on top of the feeling, it is too much and he is unrelenting and I try to grasp onto something that is not his rocking body and clever lips, “A very good job and a car and -and we have this house, a-nd a-a a very nice couch -aaah God!”

His grip on my hips is deathly as I list his accomplishments until he seems to seize and then sag, tongue grown listless at last as his lips part and a shuddering groan fans over my tacky thigh.

“And we deserve flowers.” I whisper hoarsely, petting the dark strands from out of his eyes.

He’s spent himself in his writhing, I can tell by the molten expression on his face when his eyes finally drag up to meet mine over the small swell of my stomach, and set off by our new couch, they are the sparkliest of baby blues.

I have never been more startled. Or pleased. I had forgotten to watch for it, and so it had returned of its own skittish volition. I cling to that glimmer of blue until his smile grows wider and his eyes flutter shut in exhaustion.

Happiness.

At the end that night, bathed and fed and having inspected our new assortment of infant wear and argued once more over the likely gender, he brings his instrument out of its case with the package of reeds in hand. He has been offered a part time job at the high school, teaching music. It would be a hobby, he protests against his own interest in it, it would take away from time with me and Little One.

“I could go, too.” I point out.

“You’d like that?” he is pleased, the lamp is too dim for me to discern if there is blue but his lashes flutter briskly and I kiss his cheek, it’s hot beneath my lips.

“I always love watching you play.”

Before he fits the reed to the mouthpiece he makes me close my lips around it, a red stain marking it after, much to his satisfaction.

“You’ll be teaching children!” I swat at him, utterly pleased despite my own remonstrance.

“And I am married.” he says as if it were a universal absolution for all things.

The clock strikes five fifteen the next evening and he is not back. I have a plentiful assortment of excuses to choose from to explain his variance from routine. Traffic, work, a waylaying colleague -he has only been at work a couple of weeks, it is absurd to expect a forever unchanging home time. By five forty I cannot pretend expectation of what may have occurred and so keep the meatloaf warm with its proper cozy and when there is a bustle at the front door, I sprint to it like he’s back home from the war again.

It’s well I opened the door myself, he was endeavoring to while juggling three large potted plants in his arms. There is dirt in his white collar and I let out a little whoop at his uncharacteristic impulsiveness, stepping aside to help him get them through to the back porch. It doesn’t even need discussing, the large sliding glass door gives a beautiful view of the backyard from the living room and it’s sheltering insures privacy and a deterrent from our children’s stray balls flying to the next lot. At least for a few years. And the plants will go in the empty beds at the perimeter.

It is a Friday, and we eat my tepid meatloaf in between his smooching apologies for having been tardy and garbled plans for where we will put each plant and how we will stagger them according to their eventual size. It was far more than the three pots he brought, the trunk and also the cab were full of fauna.

Our excitement next morning is idiotic, we manage to snicker at ourselves for being so domesticated that this inspires frenzy but the self awareness gets not further than that, I throw on my rattiest -and coolest- sundress and he his jeans and with only his white singlet, breakfast is inhaled while standing at the backdoor, last minute plotting being discussed between bites. And then we spend our entire Saturday at it.

Johnny digs the holes and carries the plants to their allotted places and only then allows me to gently labor in filling soil over the roots, we eat cold meatloaf and slug down ice tea under the afternoon heat, not even bothering to go inside. When I have no other job, I weed the beds in preparation, watching unreservedly the way his shoulders glisten in his hard work. I have caught him eying the neckline of my dress, the recent changes he has imposed on my body now ensuring it does not gap so much as bulge while I lean over and grasp the next offending dandelion. I know he is watching and he knows I am watching and we are happy at our work, tidy garden beds filling out and his tongue pressed to his top lip to catch a drop of sweat.

The sun is a glittering soft light through the western trees by the time we take stock.

“Nothin’ left to do but water them.” he has his arm over my shoulder, hand nearly brown with caked soil where it hangs against my smudged breast, his undershirt gone translucent from sweat, the oddest attraction to his underarm blooms in me as he huffs in satisfaction next to me. I press a kiss to the swell of his pec instead, he folds with a shocked giggle, he is ticklish.

“It’s very homey.” I pronounce, feeling indeed a bone deep satisfaction over our garden at our own house from our own hands. His elbow crooks further and he has my neck secure in the bend, golden hour light the prettiest thing in the world as he nuzzles our sweaty noses and slowly claims a kiss.

“Our kids are gonna get to play out here for years.” he seems to realize as he lays his head atop mine, his voice sounds so softly comforted I can feel my eyes smart with tears.

He can feel my nod beneath his chin. “And us.” I suggest.

“And us.” he agrees with a laugh, “I’m gonna mow.” He decides suddenly and he is giving me one more smooch before moving away, headed at a jog to the garage for his machine before the sun fully dips. Never one to leave a job slightly imperfect.

I water our new additions while he pushes the mower, strip after strip, along our back yard, closer and closer to complete perfection. I have little doubt that once he finishes this he may find yet another task and knowing we have done enough, I go inside as he finishes the last swaths and grab a tablecloth, an opened bottle of wine along with salami and a brick of cheese. I have these waiting for him on a cloth, laid upon his freshly shorn grass. He cuts the engine, I watch him as he heedlessly take off his soaked singlet and uses it to rub the grass from his eyes. He is beautiful, my boy, where tan skin blends to fair and a strong, lean back disappears into jeans. There are dimples on his back, right below that belt, I know them, I’ve traced them with my tongue.

“C’mon, we’ve done enough. Sit and look at how perfect it is.” I beckon and his face lights up at my little spread, sauntering over, undershirt still clasped in his hand.

“Im filthy.” he warns and runs his hand along his sweat sheened belly in a motion I find obscenely captivating.

I pat at the tablecloth, “So am I.” for my dress is soiled and I am sweaty and only my hands are really fit for food as I scrubbed them thoroughly.

He holds his own up to show their grimey palms yet sits himself beside me anyway, and I notice the callouses dotted along the pads of his hands. I want to kiss them, soil and all.

“Then I’ll feed you.” I reply to his unspoken question and bring a bite to his lips.

We toast each other with the wine, drinking from the bottle and we watch as dusk begins to throw her first veil over the golden light.

“I’m not nauseous anymore these days.” I report and he is sweetly relieved for me, I pull out the pipe I packed for him and hand it to him between salami rolls.

His eyebrow, mobile and ever so empathetic, asks if I am sure but I am, and I watch as the match recreates a golden glow on his face once more today as he lights up and I watch him with the most lazy feeling in the world as he watches our gardens go muted by dusk.

“We’ve really done it.” he observes, relief dripping in his voice, a long exhale tinges the air around me with sweet tobacco and I am reminded of courting, of chasing him down while trying to appear reserved. Of wanting him so badly I had little choice but to remain devoted. The smell of smoke in the street would stop me dead in my tracks, thinking of this young man an ocean away.

I think I know what he means but I need to be certain, and I find I am hungry to know everything, every bit of him. If his current happiness is placed in stark relief against some previous melancholy, I want to know that, too. “What have we done?” I ask teasingly, scooting nearer to him on the cloth and kissing at his shoulder. He smells of gasoline and grass and pipe smoke. And I taste salt when I lick my lips.

“We’ve got ourselves a home.” he grins so easily, my boy, and if it were earlier in the summer there might be fireflies out in the twilight. “And you’re not nauseous anymore.” he giggles.

I’ve wanted long enough these many weeks, when my lips trail from the meat of his shoulder to his beautiful neck, he cannot mistake my intentions.

“O-out here?” he stutters out, hissing at the end by my bite on his fragile throat, i place my hand on his jeans and palm at him. There is still nothing so thrilling to me than the feel of a man firming, the way he awakes to me and only me and at my least whim, even while his mouth is all stuttering questions and his eyes are startled shimmering pools. He is always surprised when I initiate, as if he can imagine his own desire being that needy but not my own, he is always surprised and I realize it may be the only one of the million parts he does not fully know of me: how badly I love him at all times. “N-now?” he is rocking denim clad hips into my palm and their fit has grown impossibly taut.

I have the zipper down, my hand meeting the sweat soaked crease of his thigh and wiry curls that are equally wet from his work, when I wrap my small fist around him, he is clammy and pulsing in my hand. It should be revolting, perhaps, with dirt and gasoline and sweat acting like a gritty lubricant, but nausea has been replaced by something else hungry and while he may have found comfort in having provided the necessary civilian checklist for our lives, I am a woman whose body he has forever altered with his child and I have never loved anything so much as watching him at work. I want to smell it, feel it, taste the gritty earth of the man who has renovated my very flesh.

“Yes, now,” I beg, giving him one last squeeze before I lay myself back, sundress riding up my thighs, “I want you to take me under our gardenia.”

He watches me raptly, boyish eyes fawn-like and batting lashes fluttering like moth wings in the dim light; he rises to his knees and stays there as I unbutton my soiled dress. There are twenty four buttons to the hem and I make theater of each until I am bare. More than he anticipated, for while at work I did enjoy the last bit of clement weather on all my parts.

He makes a pained noise of want at the sight, maybe he too loves the sheen of sweat that makes us both shimmer in the far off patio light, how it reflects off my swelling belly, breasts grown large enough my necklines are impossible to keep discreet. I stop him from tasting me with a foot to his clavicle, I love his mouth but I want to be taken. And he indulges me, shimmying between the parted scraps of my dress and laying himself against my body, denim rough and thrilling against my bare thighs, the slightest space between our bellies lest he crush me. I am hardly large enough for it to be a concern but I can see his fascination with it, his preoccupation, his hair hangs into his eyes as he stares down at where his desire parts my petals and I can feel the drag of him against me, sweat and unabashed want making a swamp of me.

I peak and thrash from the torture of his steady grind alone, and in a typical moment of firm implacability, I feel my husband press into me while I am yet writhing. He scoops the back of my knees into the crook of his elbows, leaning over me with mischief on his face as he folds me, “You started this.” he still has enough self possession to remind before he gives into the grip of my heat and begins to move in me, engaging work-sore muscles not yet fully fatigued.

If my novel new shape has created some preoccupation, if my symptoms and moods had once ruled me in earlier weeks, it is worth it now for the way my body goes alight beneath him, electric delight curling my toes and fuzzing my sternum at each thrust, I respond to him half possessed and he snickers like he knew of this before me. I swell until my sheath is so tight it makes us both keen from it, slippery to the point of cacophonous. I claw at his back and his shoulders don’t stand a chance at remaining unmarred as he stays unperturbed and sweetly vicious inside me, jamming himself deeper. When I begin to scream he lets down a leg and cups my neck, forcing my mouth against his own.

He tastes of wine. I hook my toe into the denim of his waistband and tug it further down, till I can fully see the pale swell of his backside and I think the motion tickles him as he giggles in his rhythm. I can register that the air has grown cool as the sun fully deserts us, leaving us to it with a final curtain call on the happiest day I’ve ever known.

The force of our endeavor has shoved me up the blanket until I am well and truly beneath the far branches of our gardenia. I tilt my head up and smell the blossoms’ heady scent, their leaves and white flowers blending into the canopy of nightly stars beginning to show. Johnny’s warm face is tucked, groaning, into my neck, our bodies so close as he begins to falter in his control that I cannot watch him. So I watch the blossoms above sway in my vision as his need rucks my body up and down beneath them for a few more desperate minutes. I turn my face and press a kiss to his temple, his hair damp with sweat and smelling so much of him I clench. I love you, so good, you’re so good to me, so deep, so deep, I love you- my mind is adrift and where he rocks inside me is all I know and I babble and beg and praise him for it.

His breath is a hot steam over my clavicle, dirty hands tenderly grasping at a swollen breasts, he bites at my lower lip to hush himself when the pleasure overtakes and I too go under one more time, legs drawing up again under the wracking delight and my modest man groans and pants the filthiest appreciations, for taking him, slippery beautiful thing, tightest little cunt, could spend all my days in you, milk me, that’s it milk me sweetheart, you like it when I make you?

What he babbles to me as he spurts is never something later to be answered, it is gibberish and rhetorical and yet I believe every word, treasure them when he rolls off and pants beside me, I will rehearse them in my mind when he is gone to work. I know this last set will have me ready down to my thighs long before five o’clock.

In the cold night air his hands are soothing the damage his forceful want has done, petting my trembling flank down like a horse after a race, it gives me zapping little after-quakes that make him hum into our kisses as his warm palm feels me twitch and clench and melt.

We should go inside soon -we both mumble it at the same time and barely have energy to laugh over it. We stay on the tablecloth, grass texturing our backs, his only movements are to roll me closer to him, pulling my gaping dress with me, and plucking a white starry blossom for behind my ear. After he has placed it he drops his head again, pillowed on my upper arm and I can feel his breath even out across my throat.

My mother did not tell me of this. I have asked others in the most discreet way I can summon, but they all just say they hope I’ll be happy, they’re sure I’ll be happy, he seems to make me happy, they themselves are happy.

It is likely only myself at fault, but now I think of happiness as a very desperate thing, tentative and elusive and ever watchful. I did not expect to find its most distilled essence in quiet things. There is nothing more to write as our happiness did indeed persist after we woke and rose and went to shower, chilly from our exposure, it went on after we had wrapped ourselves under the bedding and clutched at each other like twins. But what is there to relate of such happiness? It has no great drama, it is not so very vigilant unless it is to actively prevent sadness, and even that is welcome here when it must be passing by. Perhaps the poets, or the preachers, or my wise boy would tell me it’s joy I feel. Maybe that was what I was looking for all this time.

Maybe that is what feels so foreignly precious about lying on a blanket with his spend cooling between my legs, our shrubs like loyal sentinels dotting the fence line and my man gently snoring atop me after having created a life sworn to himself when he thought he might die. It is sobering to be integral to that dream, but it is also peaceful.

It is joy, I suppose. Or a sort of Garden Variety Happiness.

Here’s my widdle Brady Taglist, thanks to each of you for expressing such interest and always showing such love. This was a bit of a weird passion project and I’ve got no idea if it actually “worked” but it was the branching out my creative brain needed. So many of y’all are already nailing this Man so well, 🤨😏 I’ve been such a happy recipient of all yalls works. Scream at me. Lemme know. Xoxo

@luminouslywriting

@ktredshoes

@archival-hogwash

@gigisimsonmars

@steph-speaks

@ab4eva

@lilfreebee

@slowsweetlove

@xxanaduwrites

@blurredcolour

@venus-planetof-love

@pearlparty