Untitled

You don’t know what drove you to do it. Or rather, you do know. All too well.

You snuck out at night, like a thief, leaving your husband in bed.

How ironic. Until recently, you were responsible, a devoted wife, someone who tried her best to make the relationship work.

Of course, that was before you found out your husband was systematically cheating on you. Every sudden meeting, every urgent deadline, every project he had to work on late into the night—it was actually his boss secretary riding his cock in a seedy motel.

So what was the point of struggling to hold together the shards of something that was shattering right before your eyes?

What was the point of settling for your vibrator, masturbating silently in the bathroom, biting your lips and stifling your desperate need for someone to make you come the way your husband hadn’t even dreamed of doing for so long—far too long—while he had no qualms about shoving his cock into another woman’s pussy?

One day you stopped by the construction site where you thought you’d find your husband to bring him his favorite sandwich.

You didn’t find him. But you found Joel, his boss.

He was nice. He told you your husband was out to lunch. “Actually, he’s running late—he was supposed to be back half an hour ago.”

You looked at him. You looked at the desk next to his, and then back at him.

“Where’s Joanne?”

“At lunch,” he told you.

“They always disappear at the same time, right?”

You saw the exact moment when something clicked in his brain, when he connected the dots and his eyebrows furrowed, his lower lip trembling.

“Shit,” he whispered, his hands on his hips.

He didn’t dare look at you anymore, his eyes fixed on Joanne’s empty chair.

You didn’t want to cry, but you felt your cheeks streaked and wet.

Joel looked embarrassed, sorry, still confused as to how something like that had slipped his mind.

“I had no idea, I’m sorry,” he tried to explain.

“It’s not your fault, you know. A wife notices that kind of thing…” you said, quickly wiping your cheeks with the back of your hand.

Joel hugged you.

Driving home, you spent the whole time thinking about why you’d chosen a man like your husband instead of someone like Joel.

Why did you always fall in love with jerks? Why did you always let them treat you that way?

Your husband was late again. By now, you’d given up hope that he’d change. You pretended to be asleep, waited for him to get into bed and hear him snoring, and then you slipped out from under the covers.

Fuck it. Fuck him and the way he never knew how to satisfy you. Or take you into consideration. He’d been taking you for granted for at least a year.

At that point, you’d had enough of having dinner ready for him, the house clean, and his clothes washed and perfectly ironed.

Fuck it.

You threw on a dress in a hurry, fixed your hair, grabbed your bike, and started pedaling into the night. You weren’t even thinking about where you were going as the wind whipped against your face and your bike’s light cut through the darkness.

You arrived in front of Joel’s house. You left your bike in his driveway and knocked on the door.

The light was on in his bedroom. You heard his footsteps approaching as you waited under his porch in total silence.

The neighborhood was asleep.

“What are you doing here? Did something happen?” Joel asked you. He seemed surprised but stepped aside to let you in.

“Sorry for showing up here at this hour,” you mumbled, suddenly feeling the weight of what you were doing. “Joel, he…”

“Did he do it again?” he interrupted, looking at you with concern.

You instinctively buried your face in his chest. Joel didn’t touch you, but he let you do it.

“I’m so tired, so tired,” you cried, soaking his shirt.

You looked at him through your tears, asking the one question you were truly afraid to ask.

“I have to file for divorce, don’t I?”

“I mean…not my business but he’s a jerk. He doesn’t deserve you,” Joel nodded.

You knew that.

Joel had become your confidant by chance, but he’d been a good friend.

You’d been talking for a few weeks, ever since the first time he’d comforted you.

It was nice. He was nice. 

You didn't have the courage, and you'd never been the vengeful type, but a few times you were on the verge of asking him to fire your husband.

Joel’s hands rested on your shoulders, then on your back, holding you close. “Cry,” he said simply, in a gentle voice, “let it all out.”

Joel was warm. He was gentle, reassuring, affectionate. And you needed that.

Your tear-filled eyes met his again, his knuckles brushed your cheek in a barely perceptible caress.

You took his hand. Clasping it tightly in yours, you pressed your lips to the back of his hand, whispering, “Thank you, Joel.”

“Don’t worry,” he replied, smiling at you “You can stay here for a while if you want. I'll go to my room, but call me if you need anything.”

“No, please, don’t leave me alone…” you begged him, unable to let go of his hand.

You hadn’t held a man’s hand in a long time, and Joel’s fingers intertwined with yours felt wonderful.

A feeling you’d been missing.

“What can I do for you?” he asked you. No one had asked you anything like that in years.

No one had paid you any attention in months. 

Your husband fucked you lazily a couple of times recently, just quick thrusts, without any care or feeling, just out of marital duty. It was as if he were having sex with an inflatable doll. 

It made you feel stupid and inadequate, without any charm or allure.

You didn’t know what to say.

“I…” You were afraid. Afraid to express what you were feeling, to say what you were going through, to put a name to what Joel was making you feel.

You realized you were trembling in his arms. It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t fear—it was desire.

And when your brain registered it, sending the message to the lower part of your body, you felt a warmth rising from your stomach. A sensation similar to when you let yourself go in the privacy of your bathroom, slipping the vibrator into your panties.

So screw it.

“I just want to feel alive again, I want passion… I want…”

“Sex?” He interrupted you. Straight to the point.

“I…yeah” you lowered your gaze, looking at the tips of your shoes.

“With me?” He asked, gently taking your chin with two fingers and bringing your gaze back to his.

“P-Please…” you muttered.

You couldn't have thought of anyone else. No one who made you feel as safe as Joel.

“Take my hand where you want it,” he invited you. He was calm, reading your eyes, sensing your need.

“Take my hand where you want it”

Holding him by the wrist, you lifted your dress with your other hand, placing Joel’s hand on your hip, just above the waistband of your panties. Joel’s hand was relaxed; he let you guide it.

That was all it took.

You were standing in his living room, and the way Joel’s eyes were looking at you made you think you deserved more. You deserved someone who would look at you as intensely as he was. You deserved him.

Joel held you gently, respectfully; his fingers lingered at the hem of your panties, waiting for your consent. He didn’t go any further, letting you enjoy the weight of his hand on you, his warmth, and his long, calloused fingers resting on your bare skin.

You basked in that sensation, feeling your body come back to life, ignite, and burn.

Joel had never allowed himself to cross the line; he’d always acted like a friend up until that moment—never an inappropriate joke, never a mean remark, never trying to dominate you or force you to do anything you weren’t ready for.

But now, this unexpected closeness was telling you everything you needed to know. His gaze spoke for him, as did his hands and his hips, which moved involuntarily against yours, like a reflex he couldn’t control. He lowered his gaze, you even thought you saw him blush.

You were ready to allow yourself to think about yourself—and only yourself—as you hadn't done in far too long.

You let his hand slide down onto your panties.

His fingers moved cautiously, sliding down at the side, as if he were afraid to get too close to your center.

“Joel…”

“What do you want, baby?”

“I want you” you hesitated for a second before adding, “I want you to remind me what it feels like… touch me, Joel.” Your voice was shaky as you looked into his eyes. But you were certain, more certain than you’d ever been about anything.

“Guide me, then. Use your words, sweetheart, tell me exactly how you want me to touch you.”

And you did. 

His hand slid down over your mound, while his mouth was on your neck, kissing and sucking on you tender skin. 

His index and middle fingers found your wetness, plunging into it, gathering it up, and guiding it toward your clit.

You moaned, and when he began to trace tight concentric circles on your nerve bundle, you praised him, “Like that… just like that, don’t stop.”

Joel tried to take it slow and steady; whenever he applied too much pressure, you gently corrected him, and he caught on immediately, learning to read your body’s reactions.

His other hand clasped your breast again, and you found enough strength to whisper, “Play with my nipples.”

Two of his fingers closed around it, twisting it, pulling gently, making it harden. A shiver ran down your spine, and a guttural sound escaped your throat: “God… yes.”

He was completely focused on you; his clothed erection was pressing against your thigh, but he didn't seem bothered by it. 

Your dress slipped over your head shortly after, he pulled down your bra, and his fingers were around your button again.

He leaned down, his fingers still tracing circles over your clit as your nipple slipped between his lips. He began to suck slowly, his tongue darting over the tip, his hand cupping the underside of your breast, testing your softness.

“Bite it…” you moaned, your hand tugging his hair at the base of his neck. 

He did it, softly, holding his bite ever so gently but squeezing enough to make your knees buckle.

He smiled on your skin, watching you slowly fall apart for him. 

“You like that, huh? Want more?” 

“Yes” you replied under your breath, clutching your other hand on his bicep. 

“This pussy’s been neglected for too long, babe, you want me to take care of her?” He whispered.

“Please…that’s all I want” you whined.

“Table, couch, bed… choose” he growled. 

“Table” You didn't know how long it had been since your husband had slammed you onto your kitchen table to fuck you. He'd done it when you were newlyweds. Now it was a faint memory.

God, you missed that type of passion so badly. 

Joel took you in his arms, your legs around his waist. He pushed you on the table, took off your shoes and slid your panties down. 

“Taking this a little souvenir, okay?” He said, pushed them down the pocket of his jeans. 

You giggled “yeah, why not” 

He looked at you, all spread and open for him. 

“You look amazing like that” 

You felt your cheeks heat up as you begged him, “Fuck me, Joel, please.”

“How do you want it?” he asked. He was calm and composed, waiting for your instructions, despite the bulge growing in his pants. 

“Rough,” you replied, “and raw.”

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes, Joel.” You smiled at him. You had a IUD and you trusted him more than any man you knew.

Joel wasn’t a womanizer. He raised his daughter on his own, built a company from scratch, he didn't have time to screw around. 

But boy, he fucked you like crazy that night. 

He leaned down over you, kissed a trail down your neck, along your collarbone, and down your arm until he took your fingers into his mouth. 

He coated them with his saliva, his tongue gliding skillfully over them. He released them, smirking. 

“Do me a favor, okay? Use them on your clit while I fuck you. I'd really love to see it”

You nodded, feeling your whole body aching for him..

He took off his shirt, revealing his freckled, tanned chest. Your mouth watered at the sight. He was so handsome. Muscular, but not too much. Your eyes took in his broad shoulders, his biceps, and drifted down to the happy trail that disappeared into his jeans. He pulled them down, kicking them off.  When his boxers joined his jeans on the floor, you were left breathless. 

He was huge. He wrapped one hand around it, moving closer. 

“I know what you’re thinking. It’s okay, it’ll fit.”

You were soaking wet. With every centimeter he entered you, you felt his veins sliding against your walls, his girth stretching you, as you eagerly sucked his cocked in. 

Joel was praising you, whispering in your ear, “Good girl. All nice and wet for me. You’re taking it so well.”

Every word that slipped into your ears sounded like honey—or perhaps like a poison that was hypnotizing you. You liked it. You wanted more. Moans rose from your throat uncontrollably. 

“All the w-way in,” you managed to stammer, “give it to m-me. . . all of it, Joel.”

When he reached the bottom, you felt his balls press against your butt. 

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” You were filled to the brim. Craig, your husband, couldn't even come close to competing. He had a nice cock, sure, but Joel...

He grabbed your legs, holding them slightly raised with his arms, and started moving.

You were bouncing on the table as if you weighed nothing, while he thrust into you. 

One of his hands reached for your breast, the other held you by the hips.

“That's what you needed, right? For me to stuff you like this? To stretch out this pretty little pussy, huh?” He grunted. 

“Yes. Yes Joel”

He lifted you up to sit on the table, sliding you along the edge—still inside you—while holding one of your legs. 

The change in position allowed him to reach that special spot inside you. 

You slid your hand down between the two of you, reaching your clit.

“Yeah, baby, touch yourself.”

It was intoxicating. As soon as you started drawing circles on your bundle of nerves, you started moaning his name, over and over. So loud that you thought the whole neighborhood would hear you. 

Your breasts were pressed against his sweat-beaded chest, your nipples rubbing against it with every thrust.

Your other hand slid through his hair, tugging at his curls. 

“That’s it, gorgeous, Don’t stop stroking that pretty clit for me”

That idiot Craig never let you do it, every time you tried, he complained that he wasn't enough for you.

Joel was urging you on, “Come on, baby, I know you’re close, I can feel the way you’re clenching around me” speeding up the pace.

You did, your cunt was literally spasming around the huge thickness of his cock, crying all over, juices dripping on your inner thighs. 

You came, quivering in his arms, your whole body shaking, overstimulated and exhausted. 

He came right after you with a convulsive thrust of his hips, unloading his cum inside you in long, thick spurts. 

“Everything okay?” he asked you, as soon as he caught his breath. 

He gently kissed your lips, cupping your cheek. 

You smiled. You hadn't smiled like that in so long you couldn't even remember when.

“It was amazing. Everything I could have wanted, and more.” You returned his kiss, lingering on the taste of him. 

Craig was no longer even in the back of your mind. He and his lover could have a happy life—you didn't care.

"We don't have to," he says, the same words he's used three times this week alone, delivered in the same careful register – not cold or resentful, but something more exhausted than either of those things. Like a man who’s learned to keep his voice very level around something that spooks easily.

"I know we don't have to."

You hear the snap in your own voice and hate yourself for it. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"

"It’s okay."

But it isn’t okay. Not because he’s angry, but because he isn’t and somehow that’s almost worse. You'd prefer anger. Anger would give you something to push against, something to explain yourself to. Instead, there’s just this careful, considered gentleness that makes you feel like a wounded animal being handled by someone who doesn’t want to lose a finger.

You shift onto your side, facing away from him. His hand stays on your hip for a moment longer, then withdraws to his own side of the bed.

The coals tick and outside the wind moves through Jackson in long dark sighs that mirror how you feel.

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes, because you haven’t always been like this.

You can remember – with a vividness that now feels almost cruel – the way it used to be. The hunger and ease of it. Joel’s not a demonstrative man by most measures. He doesn’t talk about his feelings any more than he absolutely has to or offer reassurance or emotional narration. But in bed, in that particular dark, he’s always been completely present with you in a way that feels like its own language.

His hands know you, have learned you with the patient attention of a man who genuinely wants to learn something and who finds the subject endlessly interesting.

You’ve wanted him just as badly, more some weeks. You've been the one reaching across the space between you in the early morning light, when he makes a low pleased sound and pulls you closer, and it’s been easy. Not effortless, but easy in the way that breathing is easy, the way you don't have to think about it.

Now it feels like breathing at altitude. Like your body has quietly, without consulting you, moved somewhere the air’s thinner.

It started, if you had to name a starting point, maybe eight months ago and it was small things at first. Like when you went to bed on a regular Tuesday intending to reach for him and found yourself simply...uninterested.

You weren’t tired, not upset, not distracted by anything specific. You were just blank where the want usually lives. You rolled over, went to sleep and told yourself it was nothing. That it was a phase, or a bad week or, more likely, the cumulative weight of living in this world doing its usual arithmetic on desire.

But the blank Tuesdays became blank weekends, the weeks between stretching. And when you do try – because you love him and don’t want to lose the thread of this thing between you – there’s the dryness.

You've never experienced it like this, that specific discomfort that makes everything feel wrong, that makes you tense when you've always melted, that turns something that’s been pleasure into something you’re simply enduring and hoping he can’t tell.

Of course he can tell.

Joel Miller has spent twenty years before ever laying eyes on you learning to read threat and deception in the smallest tells of human behaviour. He isn’t going to miss the way you go a little still, or the way your breathing shifts from something good to something controlled.

He pulled back the first time, quietly, without making it a thing and kissed you carefully.

But you saw his face in the low light, saw the confusion there, the careful way he smoothed it back to neutral, and you felt a cold shame settle into your chest that hasn’t fully left since.

****

The hot flashes start in October.

That’s what finally makes you go to Dr Vee.

They come at night mostly, though not exclusively – this drenching, furnace-blast heat that wakes you from sleep damp and disoriented, your heart clattering, kicking the blankets off while Joel sleeps beside you oblivious. Sometimes you get up and stand at the window in the cold air until your skin cools and your pulse settles.

Once he wakes, finds you there and asks if you’re all right. You tell him you’re fine, just warm and that he should go back to sleep. And he does, slowly, with that same careful patient stillness he's been wearing like armour for months.

The sleep disruption makes everything worse. You’re tired in a way that sits in your bones. Your moods become unreliable, small things snagging at you. You snap and then feel terrible and then snap about feeling terrible. Your cycle has gone strange too – irregular, showing up when it pleases and sometimes not for two months running.

The brain fog is the worst indignity. You stand in the kitchen trying to remember what you've gone to get and find the word for it has just – slipped.

Like a wet bar of soap.

Gone.

You’re forty-six years old, you’re falling apart and you don’t know why. And you haven’t told Joel any of this properly because you don’t know how to explain something you don’t understand yourself.

Dr Vee is sixty-something and was a family physician before the outbreak, keeping meticulous notes in a series of composition notebooks and has a memory like a steel trap. She stitched your shoulder up two winters ago after a patrol gone sideways and, in some way, you trust her.

You sit on the paper-covered table, whilst she listens to you with the particular quality of attention that good doctors have. The kind that makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world and your problem is the only problem.

You tell her everything. The libido, the dryness, the hot flashes, the fatigue, the mood swings, the irregular cycle, the brain fog. Your voice stays level and clinical because you’re holding it that way with both hands.

When you finish, she’s quiet for a moment, tapping her pen against her notebook.

"How old are you?"

"Forty-six."

She nods slowly. "And these symptoms – all of them, taken together – when did they begin?"

"Eight, nine months ago, I guess. But they’ve come on gradually."

She nods again and sets her pen down. "I'm going to ask you something and I need you to think about whether any of this is new information or whether some part of you has already been thinking it."

You frown.

"Perimenopause," she says. "That’s the transitional phase before menopause. It can last anywhere from a few years to a decade. The hormonal fluctuations account for every symptom you've described – the hot flashes, the night sweats, the sleep disruption etc. The irregular cycle is also textbook." She pauses. "You're not falling apart. Your body is doing something it's been designed to do but just doing it rather loudly."

You sit with that for a moment.

Some part of you has known. Some quiet, careful part that you haven’t wanted to examine too directly because examining it means acknowledging it, and acknowledging it means – what? You’re not entirely sure what it means and that’s the problem.

"The obvious treatment is hormone replacement therapy," Dr Vee says, "which we don't have."

"Right."

"But there are things we can do. I have some dried black cohosh root which helps some women with the symptoms. There are also things you can do in your overall lifestyle things, which in Jackson, mostly amounts to what you're already doing. A cool sleeping environment is essential and help with managing stress which is, of course, not simple in this world.”

She writes something in her notebook.

"The genitourinary symptoms – that’s the dryness, the discomfort during sex – that's a direct effect of declining oestrogen affecting the vaginal tissue. I have some things that can help with that too. Vitamin E oil and coconut oil for example. It’s not the same as actual oestrogen cream, but they can provide some relief and work on lubrication, externally and otherwise."

You nod slowly.

"This is a normal transition,” she says gently. “It’s not a failing. A lot of women go through this without ever talking to anyone about it because it's been treated as something shameful or taboo for most of recorded history, which is frankly absurd, and I won't have that in my practice." She looks at you steadily. "You doing alright?"

"Yes," you say, your voice only wavering slightly. "I just…I didn't know what was wrong with me. I thought I was…"

"Thought you were what?"

"Losing something."

She pauses for a long moment. “Are you still with Joel?”

"Yes."

"Have you talked to him?"

"No."

She looks at you with the particular expression of a woman who’s seen a great many people avoid a great many necessary conversations.

"That might be worth doing."

****

You hold off for four days, telling yourself that you’re waiting for the right moment, the right mood, the right confluence of evening light and privacy and emotional bandwidth. In truth you’re waiting for the courage to arrive, and it’s taking its time.

The morning of the fifth day you wake before dawn from another hot flash, the searing flush cresting up through your chest and neck, and you sit up in bed breathing through it while Joel sleeps beside you.

You watch his face in the dark – the lines of it, the grey at his temples, the slight parting of his lips in sleep – and you think that this man has has watched you cry, has stitched you up, has held you through nightmares, has seen you covered in mud and blood and worse, has loved you through four winters and the particular relentless grinding difficulty of this world, and the idea that you can keep something from him because you’re embarrassed seems, in this predawn hour, genuinely absurd.

You get up and head to the kitchen. Standing at the window, you watch the first pale light come into the sky over the ridge and put the kettle on. When you hear his footsteps come up behind you, you don’t turn around.

"You're up early," he says casually.

"Couldn't sleep."

He comes and stands beside you at the window. You hear him pour himself a mug of coffee and lean against the counter drinking it quietly. If there’s one thing you’ve learned since you hitched your wagon to his it’s that Joel’s good at quiet. Sometimes it’s the thing you love most about him and sometimes it drives you absolutely insane.

"Joel.”

"Yeah."

You turn away from the window to see him watching you with those dark eyes that always seem to be calculating something, reading something or running some private assessment that you stopped trying to decode years ago. He’s in his undershirt and flannel pants, a crease from the pillow on his cheek, and he’s so familiar it aches.

"I need to tell you something," you say, "and I need you to not make it into something it isn't."

He pauses. "Okay."

"And I need you to not try to fix it immediately."

The pause lasts longer this time, and you can see his brain already working through a million different scenarios. "I'll try."

You wrap your hands around your mug and look at the table rather than at him.

"I went to see Dr Vee."

The quality of his silence shifts. You feel him go still in a specific way – the way he goes still when the information arriving requires him to revise something, to quickly run new calculations.

"When?" he asks, carefully.

"A few days ago."

"You didn't tell me you were goin’."

"I know, I'm telling you now."

You make yourself look up and instantly see that his jaw’s tight.

"I'm okay. It's not…it's not that kind of thing. I'm not sick or hurt. I'm..." You exhale. "I'm going through the change of life. It’s called perimenopause."

The word sits in the kitchen between you.

Joel says nothing. He looks at you with that particular expression that means he’s processing and isn’t ready to respond yet. You’ve learned over the years not to rush that expression because rushing it gets you something defensive and half-formed rather than whatever he actually thinks.

"It's the…it's the hormonal transition before menopause," you say, because the silence is getting heavy and you need to keep talking or you’re going to lose your nerve. "The hot flashes I've been having, those are a symptom. The…the sleep stuff, being tired, the moods…"

You swallow.

"The...the not wanting to. The difficulty with…with being dry when we…when we try."

The last part costs you something and you haven’t known how much until you say it, until the warmth hits your face and you realise you’re actually blushing, actually mortified in a way you haven’t been in front of this man in years.

Joel sets his mug on the counter and stays quiet for so long that you’ve started to construct catastrophic narratives – he's disgusted, he's disappointed, he's realising he's stuck with someone whose body is doing something irreversible and unglamorous and…

"Why didn't you tell me?" he says, his voice low.

"Because I didn't know what was wrong," you reply, "not exactly. Not until I saw Dr Vee. And before that I just thought…" You press your lips together. "I thought I was losing something. Or becoming… less. I don't know. It's embarrassing, Joel. It's embarrassing to not want someone you love, and not know why, and not be able to explain it to them. It's embarrassing to…"

Your voice threatens to fracture, and you hold it level.

"To be lying there while someone you love tries and feeling nothing and not knowing if it's ever going to come back."

Joel looks at you for a long moment. Then he crosses the kitchen, takes the mug out of your hands and sets it next to his, his hands coming to rest on either side of your face, large and warm.

"Look at me," he says and you raise your eyes to meet his. "You thought I'd…what, think less of you?"

You don’t answer, because yes – that is precisely what you thought, and saying it out loud to his face feels even more foolish than it seemed in the privacy of your own catastrophising.

"Hey." His thumb moves along your cheekbone. "I've been worried sick for weeks. I didn't know if I'd…if I'd done somethin’ or said somethin' wrong. I didn't know if you were tired of me, I didn't know if there was somethin’ wrong and you weren't tellin’ me…I've been lyin’ next to you not knowin’ what was wrong, watchin’ you pull away and not…not known how to ask without makin’ it worse."

Oh.

You haven’t thought of that. You’ve been so consumed by your own experience of this thing – the confusion of it, the embarrassment, the quietly devastating sense of your own body becoming unreliable – that you haven’t fully reckoned with what it looks like from the other side of the bed.

Joel, who loves you, can’t fix things, can’t explain things and has been waking up next to a wall he doesn’t know how to scale.

"I thought you knew it wasn't you," you say.

"How was I supposed to know that?"

You close your eyes briefly, because he’s being entirely fair.

"I'm sorry," you say. "I should've…I should've said something earlier. I was ashamed and I didn't…"

"Don't." His forehead comes down to rest against yours. "Don't apologise. I'm not…I'm not angry with you, baby, I just." He exhales. "I just needed to know."

You stand there, and something you've been carrying for months loosens in your chest. Not entirely, but enough that you can breathe differently.

"Dr Vee gave me some things," you say. "Botanical stuff, and some…some preparations that are supposed to help with the physical symptoms. She said it's normal. She was very clear about it being a normal process."

"Good."

"It doesn't mean the wanting is gone forever. She said for a lot of women it adjusts and evens out eventually. Just the transition is…a lot.”

"Okay." He pulls back enough to look at you, his eyes moving over your face in the way they do when he’s committing something to memory or making a decision.

"What do you need?"

The simplicity of the question almost undoes you.

What do you need. Not, what should we do about this or how do we fix it. Just, what do you need.

"I need you not to make me feel like something's broken," you say. "I need you to…I need it to be okay when I can't. And I need you to not…not pull away entirely, just because I've been different. I still need you close, Joel. I still need to feel like you…like you still want to be close to me, even when it can't go anywhere."

Joel holds your face in his hands for a moment longer, and you watch him work through something – that interior processing, the careful assembly of a response that’s actually true rather than just immediately comforting.

"I pulled back because I didn't want to push," he says finally, “not because I didn't want you. Those two things ain’t the same."

"I know that now. I think I just needed to hear it."

He makes a low sound that isn’t quite a word and pulls you into him, one hand flat against the back of your head, your face against his shoulder, and you stand there letting him hold you with the particular solidity he has and feel, for the first time in months, like you’re in the right coordinates. Like you've been slightly displaced and have finally found your way back to exactly where you’re supposed to be standing.

"We're gonna figure it out," he says into your hair. Not it'll be fine, not don't worry, but rather the specific practical commitment of we are going to work this problem together, which is the most Joel Miller expression of love you can imagine, and it breaks something loose in your chest that you haven’t realised was still clenched.

****

The first week after the conversation is its own kind of awkward.

You've spent so long not saying things that having said them leaves you both slightly exposed and uncertain how to proceed. The way you feel after finally lancing something – relieved but also raw and tentative about what comes next.

Joel’s careful in a new way now, a way that’s warmer than the previous caution. He touches you more in the small ways – his hand at the small of your back when you pass in the kitchen, the deliberate way he drops a kiss to the top of your head when you’re reading by the fire. Not loaded touches, not leading anywhere, just present. I'm here. You're here. This is still us.

You keep meaning to use the preparations Dr Vee’s given you and keep finding reasons to put it off. They sit in the small box on your side of the dresser, and you regard them each morning with the complex emotional relationship one develops with necessary but humbling things.

On a Thursday evening, almost two weeks after the kitchen conversation, Joel picks the box up off the dresser and you look up from where you’re taking off your boots to see him turning it over in his hands with an expression you can’t immediately read.

"This what she gave you?"

"Yes."

He opens it and looks at the small, stoppered bottle of vitamin E oil, the tin of coconut oil and the cloth packet of dried black cohosh with Dr Vee’s careful handwritten label. He examines each one with the focused attention he gives to anything mechanical or practical, the same way he assesses a weapon's condition or a vehicle's engine problem – with genuine interest and no apparent judgment.

He sets the black cohosh aside and holds up the bottle. "This one?"

"And the tin."

He nods slowly, sets them both on the nightstand and sets the box on the dresser.

"Okay.”

That’s it – okay. No commentary, no visible awkwardness, no performance of being fine with something he’s secretly weird about. It’s such a profoundly Joel response that you find yourself laughing and he glances over at you.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just…you."

The corner of his mouth moves. "Me?"

"The way you just…filed it."

"What else was I gonna do?"

You don’t have an answer for that, so you finish pulling your boots off, set them on the floor, look at him and feel, quietly and simply, that you love him very much.

****

The hot flashes continue. The black cohosh helps by blunting the worst of them and taking the edge off the frequency. You still wake sometimes in the small hours with that internal furnace blast, but more often now Joel’s awake too, or half-awake, and he simply folds the blanket back without a word, and you lie there in the cool air until it passes. He waits until, eventually, you're cold again and he pulls it back and then settles back into sleep.

He starts leaving the window cracked without being asked. One night you wake up to find it’s cracked, and it always is after that.

The mood swings are harder to navigate cleanly. There are evenings where something small catches at you and becomes enormous without your full participation.

Some hormonal amplifier turning minor friction into something that feels catastrophic. You hear yourself say something sharper than you intend, see his jaw tighten and know he’s choosing to absorb it rather than return it.

Afterward, when the chemical weather has shifted and you feel like yourself again, you apologise and tell him it’s not about him, and he says he knows and means it, you think. Or is at least working on meaning it.

Once he says, almost under his breath: "This what it was like livin' with me for years?"

You look at him.

"The moods," he says. "The not knowin' where it's comin' from."

He’s mapping it onto something he recognises, offering a kind of symmetry that you haven’t expected. A quiet, private acknowledgment that the territory of being difficult and not fully choosing it is not unfamiliar to him.

"Probably something like that," you say carefully.

He nods once, looking at some middle distance. Then he goes back to whatever he’s been doing, the conversation over, and it’s been one of the most unexpectedly intimate exchanges you can remember.

****

It’s a Saturday night in late January, the cold absolute outside, the woodstove doing its best, when things shift.

You haven’t planned it. That’s the thing about desire – when it finally finds its way back through the fog and the flatness, it doesn’t arrive with ceremony. It arrives the way returning feeling arrives in a limb that's been asleep – tingling, slightly shocking and suddenly present.

Joel’s at the table reading one of the battered paperbacks from the community library, and you’re watching him from across the room with a cup of cooling tea and registering, with something like surprised relief, that you want him.

Not a polite wanting, not a decided wanting, not I should try. Just clean simple want, easy as breathing, the old thing returning like a word you've forgotten you know.

He looks up and finds you watching.

"What?”

"Nothing."

He holds your gaze for a moment, and you see him recognise something in your expression, something he hasn’t seen in a while. The particular quality of his attention shifts and he closes the book.

In the bedroom, with the lamp turned low and the cold pressing at the windows, you let him relearn you slowly. Not rushing, not the practiced ease of a routine you can both do without thinking – this is more careful than that, more deliberate, His hands move over you with the genuine attention you remember from the first year and also entirely unlike it because you’re not who you were in the first year, neither is he and the difference isn’t loss.

He finds the oil on the nightstand and uses it without comment or making it a thing, with the same practical and focused care he brings to anything that needs doing right. His hands are warm and unhurried, and you feel the tight-held embarrassment you've been carrying for months release its grip. Because there’s nothing here to be ashamed of, nothing clinical or distancing about it when done like this, in the low light with his eyes on your face and his attention fully and specifically yours.

"Okay?" he asks.

"Yes," you say, genuinely meaning it.

"Tell me if it's not."

"I will."

He believes you. That’s the thing – he believes you now, because you’ve finally told him the truth about what’s happening in your body, have let him into the actual territory instead of leaving him to navigate it blind. The trust moves in both directions, and it makes everything different.

It’s slower than it used to be. Some things are different, some sensations subtly altered, some angles better than others. You tell him what you need as you find it and he adjusts without question, without ego in it, which is its own language, its own kind of devotion.

Afterward you lie with your head on his chest in the dark and his arm around you. The woodstove ticks and outside the wind moves and you feel quiet in a way you haven’t felt in months.

His hand moves up and down your back in a slow unconscious rhythm.

"Still with me?" he says. He sometimes asks that, after. It’s never entirely lost the meaning it acquired in the first year – are you here, are we here, is this still the thing we're building?

"Still with you," you reply.

"Good."

You press your lips to his collarbone and think about what Dr Vee said. You’re not losing but rather becoming – which is harder to hold in the mind but feels, in this moment, truer.

"It might not always…"

"I know."

"Some nights it might still be…"

"I know." His arm tightens slightly. "And some nights you'll wake up at two in the mornin’ like you're on fire and I'll open the window and we'll lie there 'til it passes. And some mornin’s you won't be able to find a word you're lookin’ for, and some days the smallest thing's gonna catch you sideways, and I'll figure out which days those are and give you a wider berth."

He pauses.

"And I'll still be here."

You lift your head to look at him, his eyes finding yours with the ease of long familiarity.

"You rehearse that?"

"Little bit."

You laugh – really laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere warm and involuntary – and feel him smile against the top of your head, that rare private smile he only wears when no one’s watching, which means he’s wearing it for you.

"Joel."

"Mm?"

"Thank you for being…" You stop and try again. "For not making it smaller than it is or bigger than it is. Just…"

"Just what it is," he finishes.

"Yeah."

He pulls you back down against his chest. "Get some sleep while you can."

You close your eyes and realise that you don’t feel like something’s ending. Rather you feel, in the particular stillness of this room and those arms and this quiet dark, like something’s continuing – not unchanged, not unmarked, but continuous.

Still yours. Still his. Complicated and warm and stubbornly, essentially here.

The window’s cracked two inches.

You’re already half-asleep when you notice.

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The bunk is cool on his side. You lay your palm against the place where his hip has been and realise that he’s been up for hours.

You sit up, pulling the blanket around your shoulders, your bare feet on the cool deck plating and listen, the way you’ve learned to listen on this ship, for where he is. The cockpit hum is steady – no jump prep, no manoeuvring. The faint scrape from the hold is him at the workbench, or near it and you hear the small clink of a stylus against a datapad.

Standing up, you pull on your sleep shirt and trousers and pad through into the warm light of the hold, stopping at the edge of the bunk alcove to look at him.

He’s moved the small fold-out table from where it lives against the bulkhead to the middle of the hold and pulled the bench around to face it. On the table, he has three datapads, a stylus, and a small open notebook.

The visor turns when he senses you.

"Morning, cyar'ika."

"Morning.”

"Sit. I made you something."

As you come around the table, you see he’s made you a plate of flatbread with the nut paste from the market three planets ago accompanied by a neat row of dried fruit and, beside it, a tin cup of water with a slice of something pale-yellow floating in it that you don’t recognise.

"What is the…?"

"Ginger root. From Pakuuni. I’ve read that it helps with the nausea. At least, some women say it helps. It's worth trying."

You sit down slowly on the bench, pick up the flatbread and eat a piece. It tastes good and the water with the ginger root is, against every odd, exactly the thing your stomach has been wanting but not known to ask for.

You close your eyes a moment against the warm spread of it down your throat, then open them again to see him watching you through the visor with the careful attention of a man who’s just successfully treated a wound and is waiting to see if his work will hold.

"It's good," you say.

The visor eases. "Good."

He picks up the stylus again and angles the leftmost datapad toward you.

"I’ve made some lists."

You slowly set down the flatbread.

"You’ve made some lists?"

"Yes."

"Din. It’s…" you look at the chrono on the bulkhead, “it’s the fourth hour of the day cycle."

"I know."

"I went to sleep at the eleventh hour of the night cycle."

"I know, cyar'ika. I let you sleep because you needed it."

"But you didn’t sleep.”

"I slept some."

"Din…."

"Cyar'ika, I’m alright. Look at the list."

When you look, you see that the list is thorough, the kind of thorough that you’ve seen him bring to a bounty briefing and to a weapons inventory and to the careful planning of a job, and you understand, looking at it, that he’s transferred the whole of that competence in one seamless overnight motion to the baby inside you.

The leftmost datapad is a list of medics.

Nevarro sits top of the list, with the comm channel and a note in his small precise hand - commed 02:14, no answer, message left, awaiting return.

Below that, a midwife that Karga had apparently mentioned once, two years ago, that he’s filed away in the precise inventory of his head against the possibility of a day exactly like this one.

Below that, a Twi'lek obstetrician on Ryloth whose name he’s somehow obtained during the night.

Below that, a backup.

Below that, a backup to the backup.

The middle datapad is a list of foods.

The column entitled tolerated contains the dried fruit, the flatbread, the nut paste, water and the ginger root.

Refused or causes nausea is a longer column, with the caf at the top, and the ration bars, and the meat from Akkadua, and a list of small specific things he’s been quietly cataloguing for three weeks while you’ve been thinking he wasn’t paying attention.

To procure at next port is a third column, longer than the other two, containing more dried fruit, more flatbread flour, more ginger root, more nut paste, bone broth (gentle stomach), unprocessed grains, fresh greens (iron), citrus (folate), and three or four other things in the small precise notation of a man who’s spent some of the small hours of the night cycle reading the small online medical reference library on the subject of pregnancy.

The rightmost datapad is a list of threats.

You stop at that one because it’s a list of things that can go wrong on a ship like the Crest during a pregnancy, and the list is long, organised by trimester, and each item has a small precise notation beside it in his hand.

Carbonite chamber – coolant leak, low risk, retest seals weekly.

Hold ventilation – filter due for change, prioritise.

Bunk – too small for late-term sleeping comfort, consider modifications.

No medbay – nearest equipped facility Nevarro 4-day jump, must remain within 6-day jump radius by month seven.

Rifle cleaning solvents – fumes, relocate cleaning to airlock or post-jump.

Gravity plating in hold – uneven near ladder, mark and pad.

Combat –

You stop reading and sit back. He’s watching you, the visor angled at your face.

"Din…how long have you been awake."

He pauses before answering. "Since the second hour."

"You went to sleep at the eleventh."

"Yes."

"So, you’ve slept for three hours."

"Yes."

"And in five hours you’ve…" you gesture at the three datapads, “you’ve done this."

"Yes."

You sit with the knowledge for a long careful moment, because two things are happening in your chest at once, and you need to understand which one of them is going to come out of your mouth first.

The first thing is a great, warm wave of love so unexpected and undefended that it brings the prick of tears to the corners of your eyes.

He’s stayed up the small hours of the night cycle, read the medical library, made you a plate with a slice of ginger root in the water and has built – in five hours, on three hours of sleep, in the warm dim of the hold with the woman he loves asleep in the bunk – a careful, comprehensive scaffolding of practical preparation around the baby inside you that’s not even, yet, the size of anything.

He’s done it because he loves you and the baby already, sight unseen, certainty unconfirmed, with the same practical, absolute love he brings to every other thing he’s ever loved. He’s done it because he’s a man who loves by doing, and he’s been given a thing to do.

The second thing is that you want to throw the datapad at his head.

You want to throw the datapad at his head because you gave him this thing six hours ago with your hand laid flat across his on your stomach and you said tonight, we have the three of us and you’d meant it. You’d meant one night. You’d meant let us be inside the having of it for the space of one night before we’re organising lists.

And he’d said yes, then waited until you were asleep, gotten up and spent the small hours of his night organising it into lists.

You set the datapad down and pick up the cup of water, drinking it slowly, letting the warm spread of it down your throat steady you. You look at him across the table to where the visor is very still.

"Din."

“Yes?”

"I…” you take a breath. “I love you so much, right now, for what is on those datapads and I want you to hear that first because what I’m about to say is going to sound, on the surface, as if I don’t love you and I do, okay?”

He pauses. “Okay.”

“But I asked you, last night, for one night with just the three of us, and you said yes. And then I went to sleep, and you didn’t."

The visor holds very still.

"Cyar'ika…"

"I’m not angry, I’m just…I’m two things at once. I love you for the lists and I’m also a little hurt about the lists. The lists are the morning conversation, Din. The lists are the thing you and I were supposed to sit down over breakfast and start making together. And instead, I wake up and you’ve made them already without me."

He doesn’t answer.

"I’m not saying the lists aren’t good because they are. The lists are good. The lists are…" you laugh a little, in spite of yourself, “the lists are the kind of lists I couldn’t made if I’d stayed up for a week. The medic on Nevarro, the Twi'lek on Ryloth, the ginger root… I wouldn’t have thought of the ginger root, Din. I would’ve spent six months throwing up over the basin in the cycler thinking it’s a thing I have to endure. You’ve spared me that, so I’m grateful for the lists."

"I…"

"But the making of the lists was supposed to be ours. That was what I was looking forward to about the morning. Sitting on this bench with you and saying, alright, where do we start? And then starting together. The two of us, with our heads bent over the same datapad, working it out. And instead, you’ve done it and I’m a little…lonely, Din. A little lonely about it."

The vocoder catches and the visor angles down at the table. The gloved hand on his thigh flexes once, very slightly, and stills.

"I couldn’t sleep," he says finally.

"I figured."

"I tried, cyar'ika. I lay there with you, and I tried for an hour. And then it was as if…as if every small thing that can go wrong with the Crest between now and the day this foundling is born walked into my head and sat down. All of it. The carbonite chamber, the ventilation, the gravity plating by the ladder, the bunk…”

He pauses.

“The bunk is going to be too small. You’re going to be too big to sleep on your back in that bunk by the seventh month, and we’ll need to widen it, and widening it means cutting into the bulkhead, and cutting into the bulkhead is a job that needs to be done in a hangar, not in flight, and we don’t have a hangar booked anywhere in the next four months, and I…"

He stops again, the vocoder catching a small, uneven breath.

"I got up and I’m sorry. I got up because lying still with all of it sitting on my chest wasn’t a thing I could do. I came out here, I sat down and I started writing. I told myself I would write down one list, the medics list, just so I could put it out of my head and go back to bed. And then the medics list was done, and I started the food list. And then the food list was done. And then…"

"Then the threats list."

"Yes."

"And then it was the second hour and then the third."

"Yes."

You reach across and place your hand on his bracer.

"Din, I understand."

The visor lifts and finds your face.

"I do. The thing that you did last night is a thing I would’ve done too, if I were you. If I were the kind of man you are. It’s the way you love, Din. It’s the way you’ve always loved. You love by building. You love me, and half the things you’ve ever done for me have been by building. The chair lift in the cycler. The padding on the copilot's seat for the long jumps, the small shelf in the bunk for my datapad… you love by hands. I know that and I’ve known that for over a year. And the moment I told you about the baby, it became the next thing you were going to build for, and you couldn’t sleep until you’d started doing that.”

You flex your hand against his bracer.

"But I love by sitting, and the two are going to have to learn to live together, on this ship, for the next eight months. Because if you build everything by yourself in the small hours of every night while I’m sleeping, I’m going to wake up in the seventh month inside something that I had no hand in building. And whilst I’ll be grateful, I’ll also feel lonely, and I don’t want that. I want eight months of us. I want to sit at this table with you and write the lists with you, slowly, over weeks. And I want some of the items on the list to be mine and some of them to be yours and I want to argue with you about the ones that overlap. I want the building of it to be ours, not just the finished thing."

He doesn’t answer.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand.”

"Are you angry?"

"No, cyar'ika,” he says, the visor turning to you. “I’m never angry with you.”

"Are you sad?"

"Perhaps a little."

“Tell me why.”

"I don’t know how to do the sitting. I…I don’t know how, cyar'ika. I’ve not had practice. The Creed teaches the building, not the sitting. When the people I loved were in danger, I built. When the people I loved were hurt, I built. I don’t know how to sit with a thing. I don’t know how to lie in the dark beside you with my hand on your stomach, knowing that my foundling is growing inside you, and not get up and start the lists. But I’ll learn. I’ll learn, if you teach me."

You sit with his words for a long careful moment, because the thing he’s just set down is a thing that matters, and you’re not going to answer it cheaply. Then you draw him toward you and he bends, allowing you to lay your forehead against the brow of the visor and close your eyes a moment, because it helps you think.

"I’ll teach you," you say softly. "I will, but I need you to understand that the sitting isn’t the absence of the building. The sitting is the building done together. Last night I wasn’t saying don’t build. I was saying build with me. The building is good. The doing-it-alone-in-the-dark is the problem.”

You stroke the side of the helmet.

"I know you’re scared."

You feel him tense slightly.

"You’re scared, Din. That’s what last night was and that’s what the three datapads and the lists are. You’re scared and you’ve spent your whole life turning fear into building because the building is the only place the fear has to go. I want you to know that I see it, that it’s alright to be scared.”

"But I’m supposed to be…"

“You’re about to be a father and that’s a scary prospect. I’m scared too and I’m asking you to do the being-scared with me. Not in the dark by yourself at the second hour, but with me. Wake me up, even if it’s the second hour. Shake my shoulder and say cyar'ika, I’m scared, and I’ll wake up, and I’ll sit at this table with you, and we’ll be scared together and we’ll make one list, slowly, between us, and then we’ll go back to bed. That’s the deal I’m offering."

The visor presses harder to your forehead.

"Yes.”

“You’ll wake me?”

He pauses. "Yes, I’ll wake you."

"Good."

You hold him for a long quiet moment, the brow of the visor against your forehead, the warm faint smell of the leather of his gloves, the sharp clean of the oil on his armour and the faint trace of the ginger root in the cup beside you on the table.

"Din, you should eat something.”

“I’m fine.”

"You’ve been up since the second hour. Have a piece of the flatbread. I won't be able to eat all of it anyway. Eat with me."

He hesitates then picks up a piece of flatbread, turns the visor away from you the careful practiced few degrees that’s the privacy he’s built around eating in your presence, lifts the bottom of the helmet just enough and eats the flatbread in three small efficient bites. He’s done it a thousand times. You’ve watched him do it a thousand times and have loved him for it a thousand times. You love him for it now.

He drinks water from the cup and sets it down then turns the visor back to you.

"Better?"

"Yes."

"Good."

You lay your hand over his bracer again.

"Alright, show me the lists."

He blinks – you don’t see it, but you know from the small held pause that he’s blinked.

"Cyar'ika…"

"Show me, Din. I want to see them properly this time. Walk me through them. We’re going to go through them together, all three, and I’m going to tell you what I think, and we’re going to add things you’ve missed, because there will absolutely be things you’ve missed because you don’t know everything about what this is going to be, Mandalorian. And you’re going to listen to me, and we’re going to do this together, the way we should’ve done it this morning, yes?"

The vocoder catches the small modulated almost-laugh.

"Yes, cyar'ika."

"Good. Start with the medics."

He starts with the medics, reading each name and the precise notation under each. The comm channel, the location, the jump radius, the cost. You listen and ask questions. You add a question of your own that he hasn’t thought to ask.

“Does the midwife on Nevarro take payment in credits or in trade? If we’re going to be docked there long enough for a birth we’re going to need to know what the cantina runs the room rates at.”

He nods, picks up the stylus and adds a small careful note beside the midwife's entry, and you feel, watching it, the small warm satisfaction of a thing being built together.

You go to the food list and cross off two items he’s put in the wrong column then add three he hasn’t thought of. You laugh at him for putting citrus in the column without specifying which kind, because he’d once eaten a yellow citrus from a market on Florrum that he’d assumed was sweet, but which had turned out to be the sourest thing either of you had ever put in your mouth. He’d spent the rest of the day insisting it was fine, you’d laughed at him then and you laugh at him now, and the vocoder catches the small modulated almost-laugh underneath.

You go to the threats list and sit with it for a long careful moment. You read it slowly, without stopping, all the way to the bottom. You read every small precise notation and understand that what you’re reading isn’t a list at all but a careful inventory of love, the kind a man writes when he’s trying to put words to the shape of what he’s afraid of losing.

You lay your hand over his on the table.

"Din, this one we’re going to take slowly, one a week. We pick one item, we figure out what we’re going to do about it, we put a note next to it, and we move on. Not all at once. Not all this morning. We have eight months."

"One a week?"

"Yes."

"Cyar'ika, that’s very slow."

"It is very slow, Din, but that’s the point. Slow is the gift I’m giving you. Slow is the way you learn to sit with a thing instead of building around it in the dark. We’re going to take this very slow and you’re going to hate it for the first month, and by the second month you’re going to find that you can sleep through the night. And by the third month you’re going to find that the baby in here…" you lay your hand low on your stomach, “hasn’t, in fact, come to any harm because we paced ourselves, yes?"

“Yes.”

"Good."

You squeeze his hand and sit back. You look at the three datapads on the table and at the man in beskar beside you with his hand laced through yours on the table, and you understand that this is the thing you had wanted last night when you asked for one night with just the three of us.

You’ve not wanted, you understand now, the absence of the lists. You want this. You want the soft hour at the table with the lists half-made between you, the arguing about citrus, the bare hand laced through yours, the careful pace of two people deciding together what shape the next eight months are going to take.

You have it now.

You have it now because you’ve asked for it, he’s heard you, and because he’s a man who, when the woman he loves tells him in plain words what she needs, does the work of giving it to her – even when the work means setting down the careful comprehensive building he’s spent the night on and starting it over, slower, with her.

"Din, you did well."

The vocoder catches.

"You did. The lists are good and I love you for them. I love you for staying up and I love you for the ginger root because I didn’t think of it. You did well and we’ll do better, together, from here."

He bends and presses the brow of the visor to your temple.

"I love you, cyar'ika."

"I love you too, Din."

His hand on the table tightens, once, around your fingers.

It’s a small beginning, but one that the two of you have made together.

You pick up another piece of flatbread as your stomach suddenly grumbles. “Alright, what’s next?”

He picks up the stylus. “I was thinking about the cradle."

"Tell me."

He tells you and the two of you begin – together, slowly, the way you’re going to be doing everything from now on – to build.

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PART EIGHT

Taglist: @thelittlebats @sassythejedi @millercontracting @porganas @lovely-kitsune-exe @themilkhasjustexpired @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @seikamuzu

It's funny, in the bakery, how you notice some customers more than others. It might be the busiest part of your Saturday afternoon rush, long line of customers, juggling questions from patrons about allergies, orders, requests and that really tasty treat their great aunt baked for them back in 1983 with cinnamon, could you make that please? For tomorrow?

But when the well dressed man stepped inside, you noticed, immediately.

He didn't make a scene, didn't even say anything, and his clothes were understated, muted colours and soft fabrics, but still; you noticed him, and how warm the colour of his eyes was as he smiled at you.

And ordinarily you wouldn't remember his order either, not from a customer who just came in once and bought two of your individual lemon meringue tarts. Just a guy buying a nice dessert for a date.

But when he came back a month later, you noticed him entering again, and you remembered exactly what he'd ordered.

"Hi, what can I get you?" you ask, smiling at him as he comes up to the counter, "The lemon meringue tarts, or something new this time?"

Those warm brown eyes widen in surprise first, and then he smiles back at you, "I'm impressed. Do you remember everyone's orders?"

"No, but I was extra proud of those tarts, and I remember thinking that I hoped you and your date enjoyed them," you reply, "Were they a success?"

He gives a small chuckle, shrugging, "Yeah, the tarts were great, but the date was a bust."

"I'm sorry," you say, wondering what woman would turn down a man with eyes like his. They're the same warm colour of the chocolate you melt into your ganache almost every day, a rich, dark brown that distracts you for a few moments as he smiles, "So, no second date, what can I get you instead?"

He looks almost embarrassed, and shrugs again, looking down at his hands before he glances over at the display case.

"I've actually got a new date tonight. She's making me dinner and told me to bring dessert, so; here I am."

"So you need my dessert to guarantee you a second date?" you joke, and he laughs.

"If you can guarantee that, I'll pay double."

"Might be a tough order to fill, but these passion fruit mousse cups are sure to help," you say, pointing to two delicate cups filled with a pale mousse, decorated with fresh raspberries and a dusting of powdered sugar, "The secret is the sweet caramel in the bottom."

"You have a deal," he nods, pulling out his phone, "I'll take both."

"Excellent choice, and come back and let me know how it went. I'll add it to my marketing if you got a second date."

He smiles again, tapping to pay while you pack up the dessert.

"Have a great date," you say, and he gives you a wave, still smiling as he leaves, the fine lines around his warm eyes crinkling as he does.

"Thanks, and thanks for the help."

He comes back again the very next Saturday, patiently waiting in line towards the end of the day. He's wearing a suit this time, a sharp cut model across his wide shoulders, and the curls around his ears are shorter this time, like he just had them cut. They still look silky soft to the touch, and you have to drag your eyes from them as he steps up to the counter.

"Hi," you greet him with a warm smile as you run your hands over your apron, dusting it off, "Welcome back, did you get a second date?"

He chuckles, and nods, "Yeah, actually. I've got a second date tonight, and this time I'm cooking."

"Was it the passion fruit dessert?" you ask, biting the back a twinge of disappointment, "I told you they were good."

"Might've been the dessert," he smiles, "It was stellar, really world class. I'm sure she was impressed by my impeccable dessert picking skills."

"So now you need to out do it?" you laugh, "How am I supposed to top myself?"

"I've only had two of your desserts, and both have been better than anything I've ever tasted," he says, smiling as you feel your cheeks heat up under his praise, "I'm in your hands, anything you recommend."

"Well, at least now you have a second date, less pressure on me," you joke, "It's all up to you now."

"Don't remind me," he grimaces, but he's smiling too, "First dates seem to be easy, it's all the ones afterwards where things get complicated."

"So we need a sure thing here?" you ask, looking at your selection, "How about we bring in the big guns? My absolute favourite?"

You point to the pudding cups on one of the shelves, "It requires a little bit of assembly from you, but I'm thinking that might impress her even further, what do you think?"

He tilts his head and crouches down to take a closer look, "Chocolate mousse?" he asks and you shake your head proudly.

"No, and that's part of the secret. It's chocolate pudding. So much richer, smoother and more indulgent than mousse. And they come with some candied almonds, preserved cherries and whipped amaretto cream. It's the most decadent dessert, and the perfect balance of textures and flavours."

"Sold," he says with a groan that makes your stomach flip, "It sounds incredible."

"Might even get you to fou-"

You bite your tongue before you finish the sentence, but you hear a chuckle from your handsome customer as you quickly bend down to retrieve the desserts. Covering up for the giant foot in your mouth, you spend extra time with your back to him, packing up the cups, the almonds, cherries and the double cream.

"There," you say, putting the take away bag on the counter without looking at him, hoping he can't feel the heat radiating from your cheeks, and tapping in the total in the machine. A mischievous smile is still making his lips curl up as he taps his phone to pay, you see it as you glance up, and it makes you grab a cloth and furiously begin wiping the counter as he continues to smile.

"Have a good night," he says, "Thanks again for the dessert advice."

"Bye," is the only reply you give, and when the door jingles shut, you bury your face in your hands. Never mind that he's the most handsome customer you've had in a long time, you had to go and put your foot in your mouth and suggest that he should have sex with his date.

Very professional.

Also not very professional to have a crush on your clearly not single customer.

He comes back the very next Saturday, a bit before the afternoon rush, and this time he's in a soft looking navy sweater that stretches across his shoulders even more than the previous week's suit. The sight makes you weak, slightly unsteady even, and you force air in through your nose.

Smiling when he reaches the counter, he taps the wood and grins.

"You're a genius, that was the best dessert I've ever had, and Camilla loved it too."

Camilla

Your least favourite name in the world from this moment on you realise, as an ugly feeling sinks to the pit of your stomach. You almost grimace, but school your face just in time as he gives you the look of a love sick puppy, all warm brown eyes and soft smile.

"She said it was delicious, really tasty."

"I'm so glad," you say, forcing a customer service smile to your face that doesn't reach your eyes, regretting your stupid decision to sell him that dessert. Should've sold him something bland, not that you have anything bland in your bakery.

"So what does Camilla want for dessert tonight?" you ask, the back of your jaw tight as you try to not fill the name with venom, but he frowns, just for a split second.

In all honesty, you don't even know his name, so why should you be jealous of this unknown woman? But the tone of your voice clearly said something else, and you bite back on the resentment that filled you at the thought of him with another woman.

"Well…" he replies, suddenly looking a bit shy, coy even, as he looks over your selection, "I said I'd get those chocolate mousse cups again, and-"

"Pudding," you cut him off, and he looks up at you.

"Pudding?"

"It's chocolate pudding, not mousse. That's part of why they're so good," you say, and it comes out harsher than you intend.

"Ok, chocolate pudding. I'll have two of those. And then four croissants, for tomorrow morning."

You've done it now, you see it. Your tone snapped, even though you tried to force down the green eyed monster.

And he's stiffer when he replies, the smile slipping from his face as he clearly catches on, just a regular customer now, and he doesn't say anything else when you pack up the pudding cups, the almonds, cherries, and cream. And the four croissants.

For tomorrow morning. After he and Camilla….

"46.98. Please," you say, cutting off your train of thought.

He taps to pay.

"Have a nice night."

And leaves.

He doesn't come back after that. Not for a couple of months. You guess he and Camilla are a thing now. The thought crosses your mind as you make another batch of the chocolate pudding. It's become a staple at the bakery, it turns out not only people trying to have successful dates like it. You don't enjoy it as much these days though, the uncomfortable memory of your handsome customer still sits attached to the flavour.

So it's with mixed feelings you look up when the door bell jingles late on a Saturday afternoon and spot him walking into the bakery again. Tampering down the warmth that spreads through your chest at the sight of him, you remind yourself that he's not single, and you have no business pining after a taken customer. Especially not one who clearly has money to spend on some of your most expensive desserts. Good business is good business after all.

But it's hard to not let your eyes linger over him as he waits in line, the way he stands with a simple confidence, a hand on one hip as he looks out through the big shop front window with a blank face. His hair is longer now. Not unkempt, just not recently trimmed like last time, and he's in a simple black t-shirt and jeans. He might even look a little bit tired, but he still smiles when he comes up to the counter, the lines around his eyes are deeper today.

"Hi, welcome back," you greet him, and you can't help the smile that you give him in return. He's still as handsome as before, and when his eyes soften and smile widens, you feel your resolve to be indifferent melt away.

"Hi," he says, "You still remember me?" His greeting is paired with a crooked smile as he makes an apologetic sound, clearing his throat, "It's been a while."

"I thought maybe the dessert was a flop," you reply, "Did I accidentally add salt instead of sugar?"

He chuckles a little at that, but shakes his head, "No, your dessert was perfect as always, I just…"

The pause is long as he shifts on his feet and looks down at the counter for a second, a slight hesitation in him before he continues.

"I just…haven't been buying desserts lately."

You wait for him to continue, as someone behind him clears their throat, impatient.

"Sorry, I'm holding up the line," he says, glancing over his shoulder as he straightens up, "What do you recommend today?"

"What are you in the mood for?" you ask, ignoring the rude customer stomping behind him.

"Something…simple," he replies, "Like something you'd serve your grandmother," the last thing he says with a breath of self-conscious laughter, "I just really loved the Victoria sponge cake she used to make."

You smile at him, "Victoria sponge is a classic for a reason, it's one of my favourites too."

His eyes are making you feel warm as the corners of them crinkle, and he puts his palms on the counter and leans forward, his body relaxing and coming a little bit closer to you.

"I knew you wouldn't judge me," he returns your smile, "I bet you make really good Victoria sponge too, everything of yours that I've tasted has been incredible."

You know you're a great baker, but his compliment still makes your cheeks heat up as you try to stop yourself from grinning too widely.

"Thanks, it's all about the ingredients, and finding a balance. Cakes like the Victoria seem simple, but if you don't get the balance right it will just be bland jam wedged between dry slices of cake."

"I love hearing you talk about your desserts," he replies, ignoring the shuffle of the waiting man behind him, "You're really passionate about it, I like that and-"

"Excuse me, can we skip the flirting, man? I'm on the clock here."

The man waiting seems to have run out of patience, and now he huffs, shuffling as he tries to push up to the counter.

You frown at him, opening your mouth to retort, but the handsome man shakes his head, ignoring the other one with barely a glance over his shoulder.

"Do you have any Victoria sponge?" he asks, and you have to shake your head, apologising.

"No, sorry, I don't have any today. But a coffee cake maybe? I have a really nice apple and cinnamon coffee cake with walnut crumble. It was my granny's favourite."

He nods slowly as he seems to think about the offer, and then pulls out his phone, "Sounds great, I'll have that."

Later, when you're cleaning up the kitchen, the thought of him comes back to you as you go through the tedious job of organizing all the clean dishes. The way he'd said that he hadn't been buying dessert lately; such an odd way of phrasing it. He hadn't been buying desserts from you, but why say he hadn't been buying desserts at all?

'Maybe Camilla is on a diet," you say out loud to the empty kitchen, snorting as you picture the woman who you dislike even though you've never met her. You give her a haughty look, the kind you sometimes get from bridezillas when you deliver their wedding cakes. Pinched, constricted and possibly constipated.

"Did you say something?"

The high schooler who's been cleaning the front of the bakery puts their head around the door frame, and you shake your head.

"Just thinking out loud."

The handsome dessert buying customer comes back a couple of weeks later, and you have to admit to yourself that seeing him makes your heart jump a little. Especially as this time he smiles at you as he steps inside. The shop is having a bit of a lull, and it gives you an unrestricted view of him as he closes the door. The dark brown curls are neater this week, trimmed around his ears and pushed back from his forehead.

"You got a haircut," you say as he comes up to the counter, and he grins, reaching up and carefully patting his hair.

"You sure pay attention to the details," he laughs, "Yeah, just this morning."

"It looks good, the curls suit you."

"Thanks," he smiles back, "I needed a clean up, I've got a date tonight."

Your stomach sinks, and you fight to keep the smile in place on your face, but you're sure he sees it slip for a second.

"Camilla, right?" you ask, just to have something to say as you try to not break the edge of the counter with how hard you're gripping it.

He looks surprised at first, then shakes his head, "No, no, that didn't work out. But I…uuh…got set up on a blind date, need to…get out there again. So I'm cooking for her tonight."

He shrugs, almost an embarrassed look on his face as he says it.

"Good for you," you reply, but you don't mean it, and you can hear the edge in your voice. He doesn't seem to notice it though. He's glancing over the display case, nodding at the chocolate pudding cups.

"Can I have two of the chocolate puddings? They were really great. And four croissants."

"Sure, coming right up," you say, and slide the glass door open. You want to say something, comment on his choice of dessert, but all you can think of is that he's buying four croissants too. Which means he's planning on letting his date spend the night. Croissants are for breakfast after all.

Neither of you fill the silence as you pack up his order and ring it up. It feels uncomfortable, and you want to say something, get back to that easy back and forth from his previous visit. But nothing comes to you, and he taps his phone to pay.

"Thanks, have a good night."

"Yeah, thanks, same to you, have a good date," you say finally, and he nods, just a small smile in return.

The high school kid jumps when you stomp into the kitchen as the front door closes.

"Please, can you handle the till for a while, I need some air."

They nod, and bee line to the front of the bakery as you make your way to the back door, sinking down on the small staircase.

You haven't even asked his name, he's a complete stranger, except that he's not. Or at least he doesn't feel like one. But except for his taste in desserts and expensive looking clothes, you know nothing about him. And yet the very idea of him having a date, a date that's not with you, where he'll serve your dessert, and feed her your croissants the next morning, fills you with nausea and jealousy.

Stomping your feet again, you march back into the kitchen and pull out ingredients for a brioche dough, slamming the ingredients together and forgoing the mixer for your own hands. When the high school kid looks into the kitchen again they've got a worried look on their face.

"You ok? You're kinda…grunting a lot."

Huffing, you slam the dough into the table again.

"Yeah, just seeing if this dough is better worked by hand," you lie and take a break, stepping back to glare at the dough. In reality, you're trying to not see his face as you punch your fists into it. The kid shrugs, and gives you another concerned look before the jingle of the bell pulls them back to the front of the bakery.

Stupid man, stupid desserts.

It takes you another fifteen minutes of kneading to work out whatever he ignites in your system, but eventually you give in and leave the dough to rest overnight. The only conclusion you've come to is that you won't be working front of house next Saturday.

Which is good, because he does come in the next Saturday, and he buys another dessert, and four croissants, from your high schooler while you hide in the back.

And then he comes again next Saturday, for more dessert and croissants. But this time he buys four pain au chocolate too, and through the bakery door you hear a woman tell him it's her favorite and she can't wait to try one 'when we get home'.

You can't help yourself. Slowly backing up, and holding on to the bowl you're mixing spices in, you glance through the door and catch a glimpse of them.

He's standing by the counter, getting ready to pay, as the woman he's with is looking at some of your more elaborate cakes on display. The dark green sweater on him looks both expensive and soft as feathers, but it stretches over his wide shoulders, tight around his biceps. His curls are a little bit longer now, and rumpled by the wind outside. With an absentminded smile at his date, he reaches up and pushes them back, and then he spots you.

Your face must be telling him something, because you lock eyes, and a grimace flashes over his face, or you think it's a grimace, he almost looks embarrassed for a split second, and you can't even move as he keeps looking at you. His eyes are the most beautiful shade of brown you've ever seen, and it's not like you haven't seen them before and noticed them, but now…the way the light catches them as he glances down at his hands, and then up at you again, the tiniest frown creasing his brow.

Why doesn't he look away?

"Excuse me, sir? That'll be $68.98."

"Harry, honey, you need to pay," the woman says, snaking her arm around his, and you jump back out of sight, almost dropping the bowl.

If he replies, you don't hear it over the pounding of your heart as you set the bowl down on the large kitchen counter. Your hands are trembling, and you take a deep breath. Heat is coursing through your limbs, your knees actually feel weak, like you're a damsel in a romance novel, and the image of the way his lips pulled up in a smile, just before she tucked her arm into his, burns your cheeks.

Closing your eyes, you take another deep breath and listen to the door close behind him. And the woman he was with.

Another date.

Someone he's been with long enough to bring here, to pick up things for 'when we get home'.

Whatever you imagined when he looked at you, it was just that; imagination.

Most Saturdays he doesn't come in after that. Just now and then, buying four pain au chocolate, but you make sure you never serve him. In fact, you hardly ever work front of house on Saturdays now. You just hear him come in, his voice so recognisable as he asks for the pastries. The tone of it makes you stop in your tracks every time, listening to hear if he's brought her with him again, or if he buys something different. But for weeks that's all he buys, pain au chocolate.

In your mind you see him and the woman tucked up in bed, feasting on them every Sunday morning, and you consider taking them off the menu. Make him buy her the damn pastries at another bakery.

But you don't. They stay on the menu. And so does Harry.

Weeks pass, and still even a glimpse of him makes you jump back into the kitchen. And you know he sees you, you just can't bring yourself to speak to him. How many words have you said to him in total? Barely a conversation to fill a napkin if you were to scribble it down. And yet, every glimpse of him reminds you of how his eyes soften when he smiles, the curls around his ears, the way every sweater seems to stretch across his shoulders, like he's buying them a size too small just to taunt you.

"Pain au chocolate guy wants to order an engagement cake."

The high school kid has stuck their head around the corner of the door, their eyebrows rising in surprise at the panicked look on your face.

"P-pain au chocolate guy?" you stutter, and they nod.

"Yeah, the rich guy who comes in and buys only pain au chocolate on Saturdays. He said he needs to talk to the baker about an engagement cake."

"Uuuhhh…" you stall, glancing around the kitchen as you beat back the panic in your chest, "Ok, send him in."

Fuck

You shake out your hands and quickly dry them on a towel before smoothing down your hair. The pulse of your heart beat must be showing on your neck, you can feel it beating as you hear Harry's shoes scuff over the floor of the bakery.

"Hi."

His voice is the same warm tone as always, and he's holding out his hand like you've never met, "I realised I never introduced myself properly all the other times I stopped by. I'm Harry Castillo."

"H-Hi Harry," you stutter out, "Engagement cake?"

You dive right in, small talk is the last thing you want with this man, especially not if he's going to gush about his…fuck…

Fiance.

Harry nods, and pulls out his phone, "Yeah, I've got some notes, but it's a surprise for Amanda so I couldn't ask her what she'd prefer."

There's another name you'll detest; Amanda.

"Yeah, ok," you reply, grabbing your notepad, "Tell me what you've got."

"So, I know she likes chocolate, and pain au chocolate. And…" he pauses and grimaces, "And that's it."

"I can work with just chocolate," you reply, keeping your eyes on the notepad, "Any colour preference? Decorations like flowers or patterns?"

"Ah…I'm…I'm not sure actually…" he hesitates, ending with a huffed sound that could be an embarrassed chuckle, and you glance up at him.

"I should know right?" he says, and his face is apologetic, like he's apologising to you for not knowing his soon-to-be-fiances cake preference.

"Why don't I just work with what you like? Like a version of a Victoria sponge cake maybe? I can do that with chocolate filling."

"You remembered that?" Harry smiles, his face softening, and you can't help but smile back.

"Yeah, I mean…of course? You said you liked something simple, like your grandmother's."

"I know, I just can't believe you'd remember that, with all the customers you have."

The way he's looking at you, that way his eyes are all warm and gentle, it makes your insides squirm, and you quickly look back down at the notepad.

"So, I can have the Victoria sponge as a base, and build a few layers on that, and maybe a chocolate ganache to cover it with? And I can keep the decorations clean and simple, to tie in with the classic style of the cake."

Harry doesn't reply for a few moments, and you look up at him again. He's frowning, rubbing a hand over his chin as he seems to think.

"If it was for me, I'd say yes. But Amanda, she's…she likes it a bit more decorated I think."

You nod, scrapping your notes about keeping it simple, and wait for him to continue.

"She…she's shown me the kind of engagement rings she likes, and they're all…very elaborate," Harry shrugs again, "Not really my style, but if it's what she wants."

"Why don't you bring her and you can decide on a cake that you both like," you suggest, biting back on the jealousy.

"She told me she wants the engagement to be a surprise,"

"But she knows you're proposing?" 

It comes out with a surprised tone, and Harry makes a non-commital shrug. 

"Yeah, we've discussed marriage, how we're going to set it up, merging our assets, the pre-nup obviously. But she told me to plan a surprise engagement party for her, and invite her friends."

"Sounds like a business deal," you reply before you can stop yourself, and you bite your tongue as you see the look on Harry's face. "I'm sorry, that was out of line, I didn't mean it like that, I just-"

"It's not a business deal," he cuts you off, "She's a good match for me. We're a good match."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…let me just look at the notes and I'll come up with some ideas for a more elaborate design, but keep your Victoria sponge as the base, with chocolate of course."

You're backtracking quickly, trying to smooth over your blunder as Harry frowns, looking past you, and then down at his hands.

He nods, looking up at you, and it stops your rambling.

"I'll leave my business card, e-mail me your thoughts and I'll get back to you," he says, and now it really does feel like a business deal.

You nod, not trusting your voice, and he leaves without another word.

The afternoon shifts into evening, but you can't stop berating yourself. Sketching ideas for the cake gets you nowhere, your usually so creative brain can't seem to merge the classic Victoria sponge with a more elaborate design. It all turns out gaudy and tasteless, and you can't see Harry in the cake at all. Scraping yet another failed design, you sigh and sink down on the low stepping stool, kicking your feet to make it go rolling across the kitchen floor. It comes to a slow stop against the heavy shelf of appliances, making it rattle slightly. Pushing yourself up with another deep sigh, you open the big walk in fridge and let your eyes drift across the space.

Your eyes land on a jar of raspberry jam from last summer. You'd gone with a friend to a farm that let you pick raspberries, and you'd returned sweaty, scratched and tired, but with two buckets of the sweet berries. The jar on the shelf is the last of it.

Maybe if you make a Victoria sponge to start with, just the classic, traditional one, some idea would come to you for Harry's engagement cake. But it's not like he's going to order the cake from you anyway. Not after you went and called his marriage a business deal. You'll never see him in this bakery again.

You begin picking up the ingredients anyway, if nothing else, you can sell it in slices tomorrow. And you suddenly feel like eating Victoria sponge cake, and not because it's Harry's favourite.

As usual the act of baking calms you, focusing you on the measurements and the manual steps, beating the eggs and sugar, folding in the dry, it all comes together as you try not to think of Harry. With steady hands you pour the batter into the cake tin and put it in the oven.

The door closes with a soft click as you set the timer.

A sharp knock on the bakery door makes you jump, the glass in the window pane rattling with the force of the rapping knuckles, and you drop the bowl you've been holding.

"What the fuck…" you hiss, looking at the dent in the metal as another knock rattles the door.

Putting the bowl on the counter you stride over through the door of the kitchen and into the long since closed bakery shop. It's raining outside, and the fat drops streak across the window, blurring the outlines of the man standing outside, and it stops you in your tracks.

Harry pauses his knocking, his hand hanging in the air in front of him, as he meets your eyes. The rain has plastered his hair to his skull, soaked through his sweater, and as you watch, he lowers his hand and wipes it across his face.

For a beat you wonder if you should tell him to go away, but before you've made your mind up, your feet move to the door, and your hands unlock it.

"Harry, what-"

"You had no right," he says, his voice tight as he looks at you through the falling rain, "I was happy. And you…" he stops, biting down on the sharp words, "You… It wasn't a business deal, we were a good match."

What he's saying sinks in as you feel the rain drops begin to collect on your own skin as the wind picks up.

"You…you broke up with Amanda?" you ask, and Harry winces, or shivers, and you grab his arm, pulling him through the door, and out of the rain.

"You're soaked," you say unnecessarily, looking around for a clean kitchen towel, but Harry doesn't seem to hear you. Suddenly he's crowding you, his hand firm on your cheek, his mouth a hair's breadth from yours, warm breath teasing your lips.

Time seems to freeze as your heart stops beating. He smells of rain, wet sidewalks and damp leaves, softened by the heat of his body.

He drops his hand and steps back, and for a split second you think he's going to rush out through the door again, back into the rain.

Instead he charges into the bakery, spinning on the spot as he shoves his hands through his wet hair and glares at you.

"Why did you have to be so…." he spits, "why did you say…all that, all that…that…"

He trails off, and he seems to shrink as your eyes meet across the kitchen floor. Air escapes him, a slow exhale as you wait for him to finish his outburst.

But nothing more comes, instead he slumps, burying his face in his hands with a deep sigh.

"I'm sorry."

The words are just a low mumble behind his palms.

"I'm sorry too," you say, slowly coming over to him, and holding out a clean towel, your hand trembling slightly, "I was out of line, I shouldn't have said anything."

Harry shakes his head, and takes the towel, "No, it's not on you, you just said what I already knew."

With another sigh that seems to come from his toes he straightens up, looking at the towel in his hand.

"I already knew, even before she started talking about engagement. You…you just put your finger on a sore spot."

Shrugging, he makes an effort at wiping his face, and then drops the towel on the edge of the sink.

"Thanks, I'll leave now. I'm sorry for barging in, and for…" he trails off again, and you don't miss the glance at your lips. They still carry the imprint of his breath, and you can feel his fingers on your chin.

"Stay," you blurt out, taking a step forward. "Stay, don't…go."

Harry's eyes are impossible to read as you look at each other across the kitchen, but you hope he can see how much you want him to stay.

"Please," you whisper, "I always…want you to stay when you come here."

This time he's less sudden, crossing the short space between you with a few long steps as you wait for him by the work bench. His hand is warm on your cheek, cupping your face gently as you tilt your head up to his, your lips parting. The shirt across his shoulders is damp under your hands, but already warming up from the heat that he seems to radiate as he crowds you again. When his nose brushes against yours, you exhale, his lips teasing yours before he lets himself properly kiss your open mouth. There's no rush, just a slow taste. Your mouth closes around his plump bottom lip, tasting the rain as his hands slowly move up your back, and he steps closer, making space for himself against your body.

You can't help the moan that escapes you, his body is warm and firm, even under his rain damp shirt, and the sound makes him groan in reply, a low rumble deep in his chest. He pries his lip from your mouth, and touches it with the tip of his tongue, gently tasting, making you open up for him. With a whine you slide your fingers into the curls at his neck, tugging him closer, and the effect is instant. Harry's large hands slide down your back, onto your thighs, and he lifts you up onto the bench, suddenly pressing up against your core as he yanks you closer to him. As if he's trying to eliminate every smidge of space between your bodies as he licks into your mouth, stealing your breath.

The metal bench is cool underneath you as he pushes you further back, your legs closing around his waist, and he nudges your head to the side, licking a wet trail beneath your ear. You can feel the beating of your heart in your finger tips as they wrap around his curls, Harry's scorching breath against your neck, teeth grazing across the thin skin.

"Harry," you moan into the empty kitchen, gasping for air when he moves his hands, his thumbs drawing sharp lines over your pebbled nipple, making your breath hitch.

"You taste so good," he mumbles, moving up to your lips again, "salt and sweet, chocolate and cream. Do you always taste this good?"

"You'll have to find out," you mumble against his mouth, and you can feel him smile into your lips.

"Happily," he replies, "Are you free tonight?"

The question makes you giggle, and Harry pulls back to look down at you, raising his eye brows.

"Look at where you've got me, Harry," you say, "And tell me you think I'm not free tonight?"

His face splits into a wide grin, and he drops his head down again, pressing a soft kiss on your lips, much more chaste this time.

"I got carried away," he smiles in reply, "You taste so good, and you smell more delicious than any of your desserts."

"You taste like rain," you tell him, and he laughs, shaking his head to make rain drops scatter across your face.

"I'm not sorry I barged in," he says when you've brushed back the curls from his forehead again, "I'm just sorry I didn't realise I should've been dating you all this time. Can I make you dinner tonight?"

"I'm not sure, what's for dessert?" you ask him, and the grin on your face makes him press his lips to your neck, smiling as you squeal under him when he nips at the delicious skin.

"You," he replies, "Only you."

I had to include Mary Berry's receipe because who else, right? And I hope you enjoyed this re-visit to the bakery, and wish Harry all the best for his future dating life. I'm sure baker girl will make him very happy...

Tagging some of you who I know read A Baker's Dozen back when I first posted it. You all gave it so much love and I hope you want to dip back into this cosy universe!

@grogusmum

@harriedandharassed

@wannab-urs

@papipascaaaal

@perotovar

@thebeldroramscal

@readingiskeepingmegoing

@din-cognito

@angiewatson

@mysterious-musings-chaos-corner

@jessthebaker

@oberynslady

@laughing-in-th3-purple-rain

@fuckyeahdindjarin

@insomniamamma

@just-ashlee

@savedyounine

A Close Call cowboykylo69 on ao3 [rough sex]

Beg @amanitacowboy [edging]

Beyond My Skin, Deep In My Bones @djarins-wife [breeding kink, rough sex, spanking]

Bleed For Me series @saradika (mand’alor!vampire!din x f reader)

Beskar Doll series JustAGalWhoWrites on ao3 (brat tamer! Din x f reader)

Best Kept Secret Chapter Six: Torment series @lincolndjarin "din djarin is a little shit, helmet stays on" (bodyguard! Din x f reader)

Close Quarters cptnbvcks on ao3 (dom! Din x f reader)

Colosseum Capers @beefrobeefcal (Din x Dieter Bravo x f reader)

Darkness Trilogy series @queenofslowburn (demon! Din x witch! reader)

Despoliation Of The Flesh series @djarinmuse (possessed! Din) [dddne]

Din's Kitten @honeybunnyale ["darkish! fic"]

Deep Into The Wilderness mandoinevarro on ao3 [sex pollen]

Fifteen series @whocaresstillthelouvre (Din x cam girl reader au)

Grip mandoandyodito on ao3 [dry humping, wet dream]

Heresy @kewwrites (demon! Din x f reader) [dddne]

How To Touch @petalsinblood ["Din has nipple piercings"]

Hyperspace Nights series @jedijesi (rough Din! x f reader)

In A Perfect World, You Love Me @theidiotwhowritesthings [forced drug, hallucinations]

In The Dead Of Night @kedsandtubesocks (creature cowboy! Din x f reader)

Interlude: Burn in My Bloodstream @prolix-yuy (Din x f reader, Din x Xi'an)

Ignite @withmyloveasyourgarden [sex pollen]

Kinktober Day 2: Din Djarin - deep throating, rope play with Din Djarin @paulyenvol6

Kinktober Day 3: dark!din djarin x fem!reader @darkuselesssomebody [sex pollen, dddne]

Kinktober Day 11: Din Djarin October 11 – punishment, spanking with Din Djarin @paulyenvol6

Kinktober 14 – somnophilia with Din Djarin @paulyenvol6

Kinktober Day 23: Din Djarin October 23 – boot licking, cock worship with Din Djarin @paulyenvol6

Leading Blindly @pascalispretty (virgin! Din x sex worker f reader)

Limitless | D.D. @honeybunnyale ["t.w. : Dark fic, Smut (with a robot that looks like Dinny Din Din >:)), Breeding Kink, Angst, Din and reader are both insane for each other"]

Like A Moth To The Flame series @the-scandalorian (monster! Din x f reader)

Mand'alor Cabur nautilicious on ao3 (Din x Boba Fett)

Mandalorian's Mercy // bonus content: din's poc series @silver-pieces (alpha!Din x omega!cis!woman!reader)

Mutual @the-scandalorian (sex worker!Din x f reader)

Prisoner - Part 1 @almostempty (Din x f bounty hunter reader)

Quarry series AK_Vintage on ao3 (Din x f prisoner reader)

Riduur in Training @absurdthirst [sexual grooming, training]

Rule Maker, Rule Breaker mandoinevarro on ao3 [bondage, face fucking, etc.]

Rough Day series no-droids on ao3 ["Summary: When you woke up this morning, you didn’t really think it would be a 'fixing Mando’s knife wound and then giving him a handjob' kind of day"]

Secrets @absurdthirst (virgin! Din x f reader)

Shadows @burntheedges (monster! Din x f reader)

Sorgan Girls Are Easy- Solo Din Djarin murder-wife-deactivated20250628

Silent Genesis @sp00kymulderr [light choking]

Take Me To Church series on ao3 @frannyzooey is reworking to republish on Tumblr ["set in a brothel in the 1800s in the Wild West", Threesome F/F/M]

Take Your Time @ghostofaboy (Din x Cobb Vanth)

That Time Again @orcasoul [fluff but periods]

The Apostate Ch 1 series murder-wife-deactivated20250628 (fallen angel! Din, later chapters x ofc)

The Might Of The Realm @604to647 [bath sex]

The Way To A Great Wide Somewhere @myownwholewildworld (beast! Din x f reader)

The Throne @absurdthirst [pregnancy kink, breeding kink]

The Visitor Part 1 @whocaresstillthelouvre (husband din x omc! Jedi Kalel x f reader)

The Storm @frannyzooey (Ezra x Frankie Morales x Din Djarin x f!reader)

This Is The Tea @yespolkadotkitty [sex pollen]

Tight @frannyzooey [“'I don’t want you to wear anything but this when you sleep in my bed, okay?'”]

Told Before and Told Again @kiwisbell [sex pollen, "fuck or die"]

Torment series @djarinmuse ["They are both trapped and their captor has dark plans for them"]

Unexpectedly Mated @absurdthirst (alpha!Din x f!omega!Reader) [knotting]

Unfettered @the-scandalorian [sex pollen, use of restraints, "sex-pollened!Mando gets scary"]

Unrestrained @the-scandalorian [sex pollen]

Untitled or response to ask "A din that hasnt seen tits since he was 25, let alone TOUCHED THEM" @here-briefly

Untitled or "inspired by time for a haircut, king" @djarinmuse [masturbation] (Din x GN reader)

Welcome Home | D.D. @honeybunnyale ["Dark-fic!...Jealous, Possessive, implied crazy Din"]

Whispers In The Dark 2.0 series @kewwrites (dark! Din x f reader) [dddne]

You Were Marked series @handspunyarns (Din x *reverse age gap* *plus-sized* *fem* *afab* O/C) [dddne]

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

I listened to My Din YT Playlist while making this and had the best time.

Disclaimer: I haven't read all of these yet, I'm just feeling the vibes. Thank you to the authors - I tried to tag only once but Tumblr's not cooperating - if you'd rather not have your work mentioned please let me know. Din won't mind ;-P