Homecoming

At long last a tiny peep. This was in answer to 5 minute fiction (week 60), with the cue word ‘ouch’. Short, and hopefully a little sweet. A little cleaned up from the competition entry. –M

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Dara knew coming home was going to hurt. So did Alex, but really, they were both far too gone to care.
It wasn’t just Dara’s back-to-back tours of duty. She’d gotten through both with only a single – and very cute, if you’re of the mindset – shrapnel scar on her left thigh. It wasn’t the irony of Alex’s car accident three weeks before Dara’s return. His foot was just fine in its polyurethane cast. It wasn’t even the ironic pain of their crushing embrace as he met her, crutches and all at the airport upon her return.

No, as Dara lay back,  bare, sparkling clean from a long, long hot shower in her own bathroom, and Alex grinned down at her wolfish, crazed, hungry; she knew it was going to hurt in all the ways she wanted it to. All they ways they both needed it to.

Later – much later – her clean body and the white sheets of the bed long smeared and stained, she whispered into Alex’s ear, ‘Ouch,’ and bit him. And they began again.