Fiction: Legal Theft Project -- Homecoming.

They knew, even before they got married that their life together was going to be rather atypical, and therefore rather stressful.  While they may have a joint home base, a house that they called theirs, they knew their times overlapping there would be few and far between.  He would have to go spend a month in London, then she’d have to spend a couple weeks in Vancouver. She had to visit with a backer in Tokyo for a little while, then he would have to go supervise in Montreal. They both had to spend a couple days in New York City, but of course those days never overlapped.  Sometimes they would meet up at the airport for a quick dinner, but more often than not she would fly out a solid six hours before he was scheduled to land, and she would have to be half way around the world by the next morning.

But days like this, he revealed in.  He’d been working at it for days, calling in favors wherever he had them, and now, heavenly, they had come through for him. He had managed to get himself free from work and flying home two days ahead of schedule, and his lovely wife had no idea.

It was two in the morning when he finally pulled into their driveway.  Smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, he paid the taxi and let himself in.  As he expected, the house was quiet, his wife having gone to bed probably around midnight.  In the dim light filtering through the windows from the full moon, he could see where she had been working--papers, notebooks, books, and her laptop all spread across the coffee table, positions where she could work and still see the TV hanging above the fireplace.  He could just picture her sitting on a cushion in front of the couch, pretending to be hard at work, chewing on the end of her pen, but her attention focused entirely on Chuck or Leverage or whatever DVD it was she had popped in before getting to work.

Making sure the sound system was off as to not wake her, he clicked on the TV, but found that she hadn’t been watching a DVD at all right before she went to bed.  Instead, the Xbox’s YouTube app was pulled up, and the video was paused at him and one of his good friends, an interview they had done ages ago, shortly after he and the woman asleep in his bedroom had met.  He couldn’t help but chuckle at how ridiculous he had looked in those days.  But for some reason that he would never really understand, she fell in love with him anyways. 

He turned the TV off again, and made his way quietly into their bedroom.  Just as he expected when he wasn’t there, she sprawled out, taking up most of their queen sized bed, laying diagonally with her limbs out in every which direction.  She wore an old t-shirt of his, and a pair of short shorts, which he just found wonderful.  The sheet was twisted almost into a rope, wrapped around one of her legs, her waist and pulled under her head where a pillow would normally go.  As for her pillow itself, it was laying under her right arm, while her left arm clutched a beat up old stuffie, an old teddy bear she had since she was a little girl, tightly into her—her chin resting on top of the animals head.  (He’d never admit it to his other friends, but on the nights that they were both home, he slept with the teddy bear clutched tightly to his chest. That way, when they had to separate, the bear would smell more like him then her.  She loved it.)

He hadn’t thought this part through, though.  In their however many years of dating and being married, he had never really had to wake her up.  She was always the first one awake in the morning. When he came to bed after she had already fallen asleep, she was aware that he was coming and was always asleep on her side, so he could just crawl under his side of the covers.  Now—he was drawing a complete blank.

He watched as she muttered something in her sleep, and twisted onto her side a little more.  In spite of himself, he had to smile.  Maybe she was going to whap him around the head with that teddy bear when he tried to wake her up, but when she saw who it was and gave him that smile, it would be worth it all.

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This was the original story to go with the first line that I gave to Gwen yesterday.  Check out her blog to see what she did with my first line yesterday, and to see the original story from yesterday's first line. It's all over at http://apprenticenevermaster.wordpress.com/

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