The kiss broke at last. He smiled at me, still close, then took a step back to continue shucking his admittedly smelly work clothes. “I brought you something else, too. Pull the folder out of my bag while I rinse off and get changed.”
“It all right if I throw all this into the washer, too?”
“I wish you would.”
Once I had the laundry ready to start, I dug into his bag to find a manila folder. It reeked a little, too. I wrinkled my nose at it as I glanced at the papers within.
My nose wrinkle faded. I was too surprised to maintain it. Jackson had brought home the notarized, legal, binding, and official paperwork that showed he’d changed his next of kin, the executor of his advance directives, and all his permissions to handle his business when he deployed.
Sebastian Galen Sadlersat in all the appropriate boxes and blank lines.
“Thought it was about time for my husband to handle my affairs when I can’t,” Jackson said from the bedroom doorway.
I looked up, startled. He’d padded silently out of the bedroom in bare feet, damp and with a towel around his waist. Words fled, except “durr” and “hot guy” and “naked”, which didn’t count.
Words are funny things. I’d spent days pondering how I wished Jackson would say the words,I love you.I’d convinced myself that if he said them, I could let myself love him in return. As if saying the words would bandage the wounds my past had left behind and put a verbal armor on them to protect me from future pain. Words couldn’t do that.
We also didn’t need them. Had he not just told me he loved me by trusting me to do right when he was at his most vulnerable? The last time he’d deployed with a lover left behind, that man had abused Jackson’s trust and stomped his heart into pudding. Now, with a few silent strokes of a pen, he had placed that faith inme.
This was a poignant, poetic moment. And the words my brain supplied were “durr”, “hot guy”, and “naked”.
“Thank you,” I said, again sounding stupid with that but I wanted to acknowledge what he’d done. “Let’s go over these this weekend. I want to be sure I understand what you want done in case of emergencies or whatever.”
“Sure,” he said, and smiled with a warmth that stole the air from my lungs. “Let me get some clothes on, then we can head out.”
He didn’t have to get dressed on my account. The image of him leaning in a doorway wearing just his towel had seared into my retinas and kicked awake the porn lobe of my brain. I set the papers on the television stand and wandered off to the bedroom to ogle.
* * *
We were late to the barbecue. Blame the bratwurst.
Jackson drove us to a nice house in an upscale neighborhood, laughing the whole time about how much shit he would catch when we arrived. Smoke billowed into the still-bright summer sky from the backyard as we parked behind another truck and an SUV. Both displayed US Army decals as well as the official logo for soldiers who served on Mars.
“This is Xasan’s place,” Jackson said. He lead me towards a tall, wooden gate that would admit us to the backyard. “He’s our rifleman. His wife did two tours on Mars before she lost a leg defending a supply drop in Arabia Terra.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. Brave lady. Hasn’t slowed her down any. She does training on base still.” Jackson reached up and over to work the latch, then swung the gate open. “Their parents set them up together while they were both deployed. They came back and got ambushed with a wedding. Turns out, it was a perfect match.”
It did seem to be a perfect match. We stepped into the backyard to see a small knot of people, beers in hand, clustered around a hamburger-bearing grill. They all cheered as we walked in, and an Asian man and woman disentangled their arms from around each other so he could trot over to Jackson.
“Boss! You made it!” Xasan pulled Jackson in for a back-slapping hug. “We were starting to wonder.”
“Got home late,” Jackson said. He left out the bratwurst tango we’d really delayed with. “Xasan, this is Sebastian. My husband.”
“Sebastian!” Xasan said. I found myself mauled in an exuberant hug of my own. “Jackson’s told us all about you. It’s so good to meet you!”
“Great to meet you, too,” I said, returning the embrace. “Jackson says you’re all fine, obedient troops who would follow him anywhere.”
Xasan flashed a toothy grin. “Jackson’s a liar, you say.”
“Yeah, that’s the shape of it.”
By then, the rest of the fireteam had made their way over, as had the woman I assumed was Xasan’s wife. She stood about five-feet high, and I had no doubts she could kick my ass to the moon and back with her fleshy leg. After which, she would remove her prosthetic leg and beat me with that. She moved with a confidence I couldn’t match the half of.
She also smiled with sunny joy and held out her hand. “Sebastian. I’m Jiaying. Welcome. It’s so nice to have another spouse in the team!”
I took her hand to shake. “Been stuck as the only one?”