The Course of True Love (4/14)
by Jayel
Just what I needed, Danziger grumbled to himself. A hike through hell and back. The swath of blackened forest that marked he and Tara's path was a quagmire of thorny scrub over charred and broken roots, and to make matters worse, it had started to rain. "Great," he muttered under his breath, turning up the collar of his coat in a feeble attempt to keep the icy drops from running down his neck. "Just great."
"What a grouch," Tara teased, turning her face up to the cloudburst like a child expecting a kiss. "Nobody said you had to come."
"Like I was going to let you come traipsing through the woods by yourself," he retorted.
"Traipsing?" she repeated. "Is that what we're doing? I didn't realize . . . you know, I've been places by myself before. As a matter of fact, I was probably traipsing all over the mapped sections of the galaxy when you were still a babe in nappies." She looked him up and down. "Really big nappies . . . "
"Yeah, well, you've never been anywhere like this," he interrupted, refusing to blush. "Now button your coat before you catch cold."
"Yes, daddy," she replied obediently, her blue eyes dancing with amusement. They walked on in silence for several minutes with Danziger keeping his eyes focussed doggedly on the path ahead.
He almost wished they had let True tag along. She had wanted to, had chased them for half a mile away from the rest of the caravan, begging, wheedling, demanding, and making promises of future obedience no child could possibly have kept.
Finally, Tara had turned to the child, one gloved hand on her hip, and beckoned her closer with a single crooked finger. "What?" True demanded, returning the woman's mischievous grin with a conspiratorial giggle.
Tara leaned forward, her arms draped over his daughter's shoulders, their surprisingly similar little noses scant inches apart. "Go back to camp, True," Tara ordered, her mock-sternness undermined by laughter. She gave the child a quick kiss on the mouth. "Do your lessons like a good little girl and let me take care of your dad."
True glanced over the woman's shoulder at Danziger, her face the very picture of impish revelation. "Ohhh . . . ," she said, giggling again. "Okay . . . But you'll meet up with the rest of us day after tomorrow, right?"
"If not sooner, I promise," Tara said, crossing her heart before giving her a hug. "Love you much, baby," she said, almost too softly for Danziger to hear.
"Me, too," True had whispered back before coming to hug him as well. "You guys be careful."
"We'll be fine," John had said gruffly, giving her one last squeeze. "You mind Yale and Bess, all right?"
"I will," she had promised, happily waving good-bye until they were out of sight.
The memory of True and Tara's faces as they kissed good-bye made Danziger smile in spite of himself, which in turn pissed him off. "I thought you didn't like kids," he said suddenly, seemingly a propos of nothing.
"Why would you say that?" Tara asked. "Before True and Uly, I never really knew any kids, but I think they're the berries. True's my sweetie, and there's not a thing wrong with Ulysses that couldn't be cured by giving his mom a pill every once in a while."
"Hey, lay off Devon, all right?" he said sharply. "What is it with you two, anyway?"
"I can hardly answer that question and 'lay off Devon' at the same time," she said primly, looking up at the sky. "There, be happy--the rain has stopped."
"That's something, anyway," he grumbled, shifting his pack to a more comfortable position. "It's also getting dark--I don't suppose you and Val bothered to build a shelter where we're going."
"As a matter of fact, we did," she retorted with a grin. "Hang in there, big guy--barring act of God or grendler, we'll sleep indoors tonight."
***
Meanwhile, the rest of the Eden Project had already stopped for the night, having made an additional seven miles of progress after John and Tara's departure. Most of the tents were up, with Cameron and Morgan handling the erection of the ones remaining. Yale was sharing his considerable knowledge of the Trojan War with a fascinated Ulysses and a somewhat distracted True; Bess and Devon were beginning preparations for the evening meal. And everyone else was resting, preparatory to taking one of that night's staggered security watches.
Julia was actually supposed to be setting up supplies in the medtent, just in case someone had an emergency in the night. But in fact she was watching Alonzo wash up, a sight which never failed to make her feel safe and happy, no matter how tired or fretful she might be. "You may not realize it," she remarked conversationally from her perch on the cot. "But you have the single most perfect chest in the history of human anatomy."
He turned away from his own reflection to flash her his sexiest grin. "Is that a medical opinion?" he asked teasingly, sitting beside her.
"Absolutely," she answered, taking his hand and smiling back. "Professionally speaking, I'd say you're pretty much perfect."
"You're too kind," he grinned, leaning forward to kiss her lips. "But you're the real looker in the family, you know."
"Yeah, right," she laughed. "Particularly now, when I have this lovely, bulbous growth that makes me look like a pear with legs."
"Actually, I think that growth, as you call it, is very sexy," he asserted.
"Oh, please--"
"It is, I swear!" He laid a hand on her stomach, the expression on his face a sweet mixture of protectiveness and desire that made her knees go weak. "This is going to be our beautiful daughter," he went on, all the teasing gone from his deep brown eyes. "And you're my beautiful love."
"You silver-tongued devil," she joked tenderly, reaching out to welcome his embrace. "Do you know how much I love you?" she whispered, stroking his soft brown hair as he kissed her throat.
"Sometimes I forget," he admitted, kissing her ear. "Like when you tell me you want to marry me, just not right now."
"Alonzo," she pleaded. "It isn't that I don't--"
"I know, doc, I know," he interrupted, unbuttoning her softly faded denim shirt, an over-sized hand-me-down from his own wardrobe. "Tara and I had a long talk about it."
"You and Tara?" she repeated, struggling to keep a mental grip on the thread of their conversation as he wove it around his kisses. "I shudder to imagine . . . "
"She said it had nothing to do with me really," he went on, the near-comic speed with which he disposed of his boots belying the casual slowness of his words. "She thinks you just have this . . . I don't know . . . vision, I guess is the words, of the way your wedding should be." He eased her boots off, too, and massaged her aching feet. "And our Valentine, as much as we both can't wait to have her, wasn't really part of what you had in mind."
"I see," Julia said, her eyes falling shut in pleasure and comfort blissfully combined under his touch. "Tara can be very perceptive when she tries . . . . too bad she's so far off base with Danziger . . . "
"What are you babbling about now?" he teased, drawing her forward onto his lap, his hands supporting what used to be her waist as he kissed her mouth.
"Tara and John," she insisted, tugging her t-shirt over her head, snatching the pony-tail band from her hair in the process. "She's never going to do anything but alienate him by attacking Devon--even if she had a chance with him in the first place."
"You are so wrong," he laughed, kissing her bare shoulder as his fingers gently kneaded the muscles of her back. "She's playing him like a violin . . . "
"Alonzo, John loves Devon," she insisted, struggling to stifle a sigh of cat-like satisfaction. Her back felt sooo much better when he did that .
. . . "I know he does . . . "
"He does love her," he agreed. Her breath felt so warm and nice when she nuzzled his chest that way . . . . "I'm just not so sure he's *in* love with her."
"What's the difference?" she asked, feeling a familiar impatience building inside her like the most delicate flutter of wings.
"I'm *in* love with you as well as loving you," he explained, kissing her sweet-smelling hair, losing himself for a moment in its silk. "From the first moment I saw you I wanted to touch you so much it hurt."
"I'm flattered," she breathed, kissing his adam's apple and knowing just what he meant.
"But John and Devon . . . John's a pretty impetuous guy, wouldn't you say?" he said, bending to kiss and nuzzle her breast. "Still tender?"
"Yes, but that's nice," she purred, cradling his head in her hands. "And yes, Danziger is definitely an impetuous guy."
"So I'm thinking . . . if he were going to actually put real moves on Devon, he would have long before now," he finished, shifting her hips forward to press her soft stomach closer to him, a warning and a promise.
"I think you're wrong," Julia insisted with a giggle. "But just now I'm willing to concede."
***
The red-orange face of the sun , its rays reaching like slender fingers through the clouds and the brown-black lattice of trees, had almost disappeared behind the horizon when Danziger and Tara reached the end of the burn-line. "This is it," Tara announced, shining a luma off to the right.
"This is what?" Danziger demanded, shining his own light in the same direction and seeing nothing more worthy of comment than a big, gray, vine-covered rock poking out of the side of a small hill.
"The shelter," she explained, leaving the path. "I thought surely the grendlers would have figured it out by now." She walked over to the rock and ran her hands under the vines that covered its face. "Val's aunt and uncle were a couple of those environmental terrorists you guys are so crazy about," she explained, seeming to find what she was looking for and giving it a sharp tug. The rock let out a shriek of rusted metal, and a perfectly ordinary-looking wooden door swung open beside it. "He spent a couple of summers with them as a kid and learned how to build a camouflaged bunker," she continued, shining her light inside. "Still dry, even. Come on in."
Even with his aching feet and the beginnings of the sniffles, Danziger had to admit the shelter was impressive. A little smaller than the common room of their old dome, it was dug out of the side of the hill, but not nearly so dank as a Terrian cave. "Where's the ventilation?" he asked, shining his luma at the ceiling.
"Very thin synthetic graphite tubing pushed up through the top," she explained, going over to the small, round fireplace. "The individual tubes are too thin for much rain to fall through, but there's enough of them to let in plenty of air." She struck a match and dropped it onto the kindling already neatly stacked inside. "I always thought it looked sort of like a hobbit hole."
"Not so much furniture, though," he agreed, his light picking up little more than a woodpile and an open--and empty--food locker. "You know hobbits?"
"I love those books," she said with a grin, straightening up. "You?"
"Yeah, I read them when I was a kid," he admitted, looking away.
"We took most of our stuff with us when we left here," she explained, opening her backpack. "Boy, that was a fight . . . I just wanted to stay here, but Val . . . Anyway, the stuff we did leave is outside in ground lockers--much more secure than the actual shelter. We can get what I need in the morning."
"What are we here for, anyway?" he asked. "Or are you going to bite my head off, too?"
She took out a pot and a pair of semolina packets. "You'll see," she said. "Now here--there's a well out back. Go find me some water so I can cook your dinner."
End of Part 4
Author's Chapter Notes:
This section contains some sexual activity (PG-13, maybe?), so be warned. (And no, it IS NOT Danz and Tara . . . )