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THOSE SUMMER HOURS
By Char Chaffin
MSR, Post-Col, Vignette Scenes, 2nd person POV Rating: R
Disclaimer: Clones on Loan
Spoilers: After "The Truth"Thanks to: The Preview Squad!! Tess, Sallie, Carol, Robin and Donna! You ladies, as always, ROCK!
Dedicated: To NancyBratt (who really is more of an angel than a brat!), with much love and caring -
"Those Summer Hours"
~~ July, 2005 ~~
Scene One: Morning Sun
There's a shimmer over the yard, glistening on the dew, trembling on the leaves of the old red maple tree. This early in the morning the only sounds to be heard are birdsong, high and sweet in the still, already-humid air. It's warm in the house, in this room, in your bed. You awaken with the damp of your sweat already collecting on your bare flesh, the pillow beneath your head smelling of shampoo.
Her shampoo.
On her side next to you, one hand curled under her cheek, she sleeps deeply. Her hair is a tangled mass on the faded blue pillow, her shoulders where they rise from the wrinkled sheet lightly freckled and peach-tanned from long hours in the garden. Her nails are short and a little ragged. She probably forgot to wear her gloves. She often does, in her eagerness to get outside and dig her hands into the rich garden earth.
You rest your head on your own pillow and your sleepy eyes gaze at her, your waking thought as always centered around the wonder of her in your life, that in your most undeserving moments she's yours, at your side, loving you. Taking care of you.
It's not an easy life you've pegged for yourself and dragged her into. There's no money and no frills for her; no pretty dresses and fancy high-heeled shoes. She cuts her own hair, as she cuts yours. There are no funds for trips to the beauty parlor or appointments for manicures and such. Even if there were any services like that available...
She has no makeup to wear and she never complains about it because she knows how you adore that lovely face of hers when it's scrubbed clean, when any pink on her cheeks has been put there by the sun and wind, maybe a blush now and then.
The farm is small with enough crop acreage to assure you won't starve. You have just enough to survive and you wish like hell it was a hundred times more. She deserves a hundred times more... but she never complains.
All around you, the world has gone mad; big cities have toppled and government as you know it has ceased to exist. The war rages, on distant shores as well as on patriotic soil. You have buried yourselves in the deep, high mountains, far away from civilization, in a forgotten place. Looking out your window it could be the mideighteenth century as easily as the twenty-first. You cook and heat with wood, light your lamps with kerosene out of a huge barrel that you found behind the barn... bathe in a copper tub in the corner of the kitchen. You walk to the privy with a wick-burning lantern in your hands and you keep your perishables in a root cellar deep in the earth beneath your kitchen floor.
Most of all, you live, as best as you can. You take care of your woman as she takes care of you. You wish, how you wish, that it could be more - that you could give her more. You wish it every day. But there IS no more, and since she's accepted it so easily, then you must do the same. For as little as you own, still you have so much more than others.
You have love, strong and pure. Not many can boast of something so great, not now, not in the maelstrom of this new world.
The sun rises a little higher in the sky. Soon you'll have to rise as well, and see to the day's chores. On a place this old and broken down, there's always something that needs fixing, repairing, redoing. As soon as you've repaired one thing, something else falls apart and demands your attention.
But right now, this moment in the early summer morning, your woman is slowly opening those beautiful eyes of hers, slowly stretching the slender body that sleeps so close to you. Smiling that perfect smile, hands reaching for you, mouth already parted to take yours. A soft yawn against your shoulder, her warm lips kiss you from your collarbone to your neck, to your jaw and then to your mouth. And it's as if you've never kissed this woman before in your life; her kisses are that exciting, that wonderful; that necessary to you. It seems each one is a tiny bit different from the last, so that you're always on the edge, wondering what the next one will taste like. It's a gift, you think... a gift she somehow creates for you each day.
You wrap her in your arms, your eager body presses her down into the soft feather bed; your smile blooms in reaction to the warmth of her regard, the love you see beaming from those blue, blue eyes... and another summer day has begun, for both of you.
Scene Two: Chores
Here on the mountain there's always a breeze. Sometimes it's nothing more than a gentle whisper that lightly ruffles the old lace curtains at every window. Other times it's hard and noisy, whining through the patched screens and bringing with it the smell of pastures, of flora and fauna. In mid-July you'll take any kind of wind you can get, whether gentle or hard. Thankfully, today you've got something that's midway between whisper and shriek, enough to keep the black flies away.
You lean on the scythe and rub your sweaty forehead against your shirt. The field unrolls before you, rocky in spots, level in others, covered with waist-high hay surprisingly free of clover and dandelions. Whoever owned this farm before you took it over, kept the hay fields in top condition, something you're grateful for. It makes it easier for you to swathe your way through the rows, swinging the deadly-sharp scythe, dropping thick reams of hay that will be hand-baled later on. The calluses on your palms; the random pattern of nicks, splinters, torn nails all tell a story of the kind of man you've become.
Cutting is simple enough, baling is time-consuming but also easily handled. What remains most difficult is the lack of viable transportation. You can't blame the previous owners for the life they led here. You're still not sure if they were Amish or Quaker, you only know they never had their farm wired for electricity and there isn't a tractor in sight. You curse them out once in a while, when you need a means of hauling and all you have is a wagon and draft horses. But then you go to the barn and you see the supplies of oats, the bags of feed - and you have to offer some thanks to the family who lived here, feel sympathy for the way they must have given into their fears and snatched up their children, tore on down the mountain as if the Devil himself might be after them. They left everything behind, at least those things necessary to work a farm, and you and your woman have benefited from their leavings.
You look beyond the field you're cutting, suddenly desperate for a glance of her. Two hours ago you kissed her over coffee and eggs, sitting at the wooden table in the kitchen. You smiled into her eyes and trailed your rough fingertips over her freckled cheek, through her long, waving hair. It wasn't enough, though you'd just risen from the bed after having shared a stolen hour of loving. Even as you'd sat across from her, eating the meal she prepared, you were plotting ways to take her back to bed, love her for another sweet hour. Instead you allowed her to pull you up out of your chair, to push you toward the door and the work - always the work - that waited for you outside.
But now the urgency is overpowering, not to make love again so much as just assuring she's still here on the farm with you. Of course, where else would she be? You're paranoid and fretful and there's really no need. You left her weeding the garden and that's where she still kneels, as you climb into the wagon and stand on the raised seat, looking out over the field toward the farmhouse. She's right there, old straw hat on her head, wearing a pair of overalls at least two sizes too big.
You huff a quick prayer of gratitude under your breath that she's here with you, and safe. You pick up your scythe and return to your work.
Later, she comes to you, carrying an old water jug filled with spring water she hand-pumped. It's surprisingly cold and it slides down your dusty, parched throat like silk. You wrap one hard arm around her waist and anchor her to your side as you gulp the contents of the jug. She slips soothing fingers over the newest scrape on your neck, compliments of a huge thistle that you didn't see until after your scythe bit through it and part of the severed plant flipped up and caught you. Luckily it missed your eyes. You should be wearing protective eye gear but there isn't any to be found. You'll just have to be more careful. She murmurs the words to you as she kisses your neck, and you close your unprotected eyes against the bright sun and revel in that one tender, healing kiss.
It's the small moments in your summer day, these tiny spots of touching and caring, that keep you moving forward through the backbreaking tasks that make up a farm life. You were not educated for this, yet you do it all very well. You were never prepared for it, yet you stepped up and took it on when others might have blinked in horror at the unrelenting load of work involved, then turned tail and run in the opposite direction.
You were meant for other things, meant to jump into the battle and fight like a madman... but there's more at stake now than just your existence. In both your existences, for your woman was meant to be a warrior, too. And the frenzy of war is easy enough to embrace when the cause is this important, but you have more than yourselves to consider. You have more at stake than just the desire to right the unspeakable wrong that's currently being dealt your world. It's what made you run, six months ago. It's kept you here these past four months, working this land, living this life. For another life had just taken root, had begun to grow.
Precious. Priceless.
Your palm cups over your woman's rounded stomach and her fingers lace through yours as you hold both your loves in one hand, and shield the harsh summer rays from her delicate face, with the other. And you don't regret, not for one tiny millisecond, the decision you made when instead of turning into the fray and fighting the enemy, you grabbed her small hand and took off in the other direction, as far as you could get from the madness. She's worth the price of the guilt you carry for not staying behind. Your unborn child is worth far more than chance-taking and the dreary and dangerous trek of ongoing war.
In any case, you owe nothing to the fight, the cause... for they lied, and they cheated. They set the time at 2012, and then went back on what they'd vowed.
They came less than three years after you and your woman fled the desert that first, frightening time. Came sneaking in, when nothing had yet been ascertained as to the best way to fight back. Like thieves, cowards, murderers often do, they swarmed when least expected. They swarmed and began to conquer. Eventually they branched out from the cities and the dense populations. They swept through the high mountains, the remote areas. You figure they'll make another sweep, double-back, whatever. You figure sooner or later, they'll return and find you and your fledgling family.
No, you owe nothing but the vow you made to her as you raced to relative safety. That you'd protect, cherish, love. Always and forever, on pain of death. They'll no doubt come back, but you won't make it easy for them.
Right now, however... you're both safe. It's mid-day summer in midJuly and the pond is large and clean to swim in, well-stocked with fish. The barn shelters three cows and a nice brood of chickens, the pen outside hosts a few fat pigs. The draft horse and his mare are young and strong. You have guns to hunt with, to protect with. You have land to surround and cushion you; crops in the garden to feed you.
You have love to sustain you, that most important nourishment of all.
You kiss your woman's sun-warmed mouth and you head to the fields as she returns to her garden. She sends you a smile over her shoulder, one filled with hot promise, and you send your own back to her. Right now time is dragging but soon enough it'll be evening.
Soon enough she'll be in your arms again.
Scene Three: Soft Rain
It's late afternoon when the clouds roll in, bringing cooler air, wind and rain. You still have hay to rake but it can wait until the storm passes. The steady shower soothes your heated skin as you walk from the field and onto the back porch, shedding your wet jeans and boots, pausing for a moment on the steps and watching the clouds as they darken and the rain falls harder.
Anyone coming down the lane could see you, wet and naked, standing on the porch that overlooks the pasture outside your door. But there isn't anyone near, in a ten-mile radius, or twenty, or fifty. Nobody to walk by and point in shock at the wet, nude man who leans on the railing and stares up at the sky.
The tiny town that's nestled in the foothills seven miles from the farm is deserted; not a soul remains. Evacuated in time or ambushed, it makes no difference; they're still just as gone. You haven't been able to check on the small farms that dot the land all around you, but it's a safe bet they're abandoned either by choice or by something worse. It was this way when you came here and it will be the same when you leave... however the circumstances of that leaving occur.
You prefer not to think on it too closely at the moment. It's enough to know that for now you're safe; for now they think everyone is dead. It makes your position a little more secure. It buys you some time.
You walk into the kitchen, dim from the lack of sun that usually pours through the windows. They're all open and the wind that breezes through them flutters the lace curtains, cooling the small room. You climb the stairs knowing you'll find her in the sewing parlor, diligently teaching herself how to use the old treadle machine that you unearthed in the barn three days after you first arrived. So many of the clothes you wear in the fields end up torn or needing reinforcement at some stress point. They might be the only clothes you'll have for a very long time. So they stack up slowly in the corner of the room, waiting until she's ready to repair them.
Right now it's more important that you have her in your arms rather than working that old treadle with one bare, small foot. You promised yourself she'd be there soon enough; how were you to know just how soon? Maybe the rain was meant to come at precisely that moment just so you could both find that extra measure of security by gaining it together. Maybe the afternoon wanted to slow itself down just so you could have an hour or two... or three. Not for food because you're not hungry. Not for drink because you're sure not thirsty. For other sustenance, another kind of necessary fuel.
You like to call it 'heart-fuel.' You need it. You want it. When you walk in the room and she glances over her shoulder at you, sending you that slow, knowing smile... you can see she needs it, wants it, too. Or maybe she smiles at you because you're naked. It doesn't matter for the result is the same; she holds up her arms to you and you lift her out of the old ladder-back chair. You laugh down into her face and she presses her lips to the lingering sting on your neck as you stride down the hallway to your room. You lay her down on the bed and tug at her clothes, removing the baggy overalls, the little cotton camisole she wears beneath it; the demure panties. You strip it all off and toss it on the floor, uncaring where it lands.
The only care you have at the moment is the feel of her skin against yours, the way you fit together, two pieces of one very complicated puzzle. The perfect alignment of your bodies, her soft pressed to your hard, her silk touching your rasp. The bite of her lips on yours and the flex of her fingers on your back, your waist, your hips. Slender legs that tangle with yours, loving arms that clasp you tighter than tight, a broken murmur in your ear, words of love breathed there. The small mound of your unborn child that cuddles between you, safe in its own nourished world as you each proceed to nourish each other in a different, yet no less vital, way.
While the rain pours down and the breeze of a summer storm dampens the windowsills, you find and reaffirm the promises you made to each other when the world was a little more stable. You glory in the sex because it makes you feel alive, and you revel in the love because it will prevail when the physical self is but a used-up shell. Your bodies merge as only they can, with passion that stops the heart and with unshed tears of joy.
You slip into her on one long, fluid sigh of power; glide in a plunge and retreat that keeps you both gasping. So deep, so very, very deep... you touch her heart with strong, sure thrusts and she moans out your name as she tightens, as she convulses, as she comes. When the quiet of the room is broken with the high cry of your woman, that's when you let it all go; all of the worry, all of the cares that naturally stock up and daily threaten to boil over and take you down. You let it all go and it feels so good, it feels like nothing else in the world could feel; like love...
Like forever.
Outside, the rain lessens and the clouds disperse.
Inside, your pulses return to normal and the bed is now your haven, as you remain joined, face to face and palm to palm on the faded blue pillow in the old feather bed.
The day is passing quickly outside on the land, but in your room time has suspended itself in sweet aftermath. Soon enough you'll have to rise and see to the rest of your tasks. Soon enough the late evening will come, a time when you're most vulnerable. When you light your world with candles and lanterns and watch the fireflies dancing across your front yard.
When they could come back like the worst kind of plague, using the blessed night as their shield.
But you'll get through it, as you have done every night for the past four months. You'll pass the evening and join together to guard the night and you'll awaken the next morning ready to do it all over again.
But for now, the afternoon has an hour or so left and the bed is very warm, her body a comfort and a thrill against yours... and though you just had her, already you're thinking about the night to come and how you'll have her again.
When she smiles into your kiss, you know she's thinking the same thing, too.
Scene Four: Warm Evening
Sometimes she's afraid of the dark.
Sometimes you are, too. Neither of you are ashamed to tell the other, when you are.
You have reason to fear the dark. Dark was when they came, dark was when you fled. A premonition saved your life, and you suppose you should be thankful that you still have it within you; that knowing, that sensing where they are concerned. They don't know they gave it to you, during those hideous months when you were their plaything, their scapegoat. It's the only thing of real value, other than the immunity, that they left you. You only use it when you need to.
Six months ago, you needed to.
Outside the night encroaches like a live thing, an entity that should feel sinister but often doesn't. It's the utter blackness that tends to unnerve you both at times, for without power there is no outside security lighting. There are only stars and fireflies, a monthly full moon, to help illuminate the path when you have to go outside to the privy. Lanterns are handy to carry in the dark, but sooner or later you'll run out of kerosene. You tell yourself that if you live here long enough you'll think of a sanitary way to put the privy inside, maybe attached to the back of the farmhouse. You'll figure out something; you always do.
It's cooler on the front porch so you spend some time sitting on the old swing, moving it gently with one bare foot. Beside you, your woman curls up with her head on your shoulder and her hand clasped in yours. You don't speak much and when you do, it's in a kind of shorthand that only the two of you can decipher; a word here, a sigh there. Part of a syllable, cut off by a kiss... a soft moan that starts with your name and ends on a purr of contentment.
Such evenings are gold to you, priceless beyond measure because you can't estimate how much longer these evenings will last, and so you must take them as you get them and make each minute count.
They will be back, some other night, taking what they missed the first time around. Until then you wait for a sign. Until then, you look for stars to appear in the night heavens that venture too close, move too quickly. The sky is full of their endless twinkle and shimmer. You're still learning which ones are false and traitorous... and you hate that something as special as stargazing should cloak a greater threat, a higher danger. You hate it.
But you tolerate it. The importance to remember here is that you live. You have chosen freedom of life over defeat and you'll fight to the death to assure that freedom, for as long as you can. You've been in their hands before. Nothing in this world or beyond it will force you to return or to see your precious loves taken as well. It is a pact you both made, that night six months ago when you ran, not knowing for sure where you'd end up, as long as it was away from the knowing, the sensing.
The utter silence is broken by the soft call of a night bird, the gentle chirp of crickets; the occasional throaty burp of a bullfrog. Her body is warm and soft, her even breathing telling you she's dozed off. She sleeps more and more these days, as the child grows bigger inside her.
In a few months you'll deliver your son or daughter. You'll hold new life in your trembling hands and thank a God you know has not quite yet deserted you, for the child He's given two people who never dared to hope they'd have a second chance at parenting. The fact that the world is so frighteningly unsteady right now becomes secondary to the need for fatherhood, for motherhood. You tell yourselves you're not selfish.
Sometimes, you actually believe it.
It's getting late; you can tell by the subtle repositioning of the moon above. Tomorrow will be another long day, as you finish baling hay and start on repairing the breaks in the perimeter fence. You rise carefully and ease her into your arms, loving the way her hands curve around your neck to cling as you carry her into the house. Her lips are pressed against your ear and she mumbles half-words that make no sense to anyone but her, as you move through the dark house and climb the stairs to your room. You place her carefully on the bed and remove her clothes, knowing she prefers to sleep nude beside you. She cuddles into the soft mattress while you shuck your jeans and then join her.
Gathering your woman into your arms is as natural as breathing; you lay on your side with her spooned up against you and you find yourself dozing with one hand pressed protectively to her stomach and an arm lending itself as her pillow. You want to make love but she's so sleepy. She needs her rest, as much of it as she can manage. Neither of you are deep sleepers; it comes from months of dozing fitfully with one ear cocked, expecting to hear, somehow sense, their coming. When she falls asleep this easily, you want to guard that sleep and so you decide to keep watch through the night and let her rest.
Then she sighs a little... wriggles back against you, a little... breaks into a purring chuckle when her movements heat up your center and force a muffled groan from your lips. And in the utter dark of your room you understand that she wants to keep watch with you.
After the loving, that is. Always after that...
As she turns in your arms and winds herself around your needful body, you take what's offered because this could very well be the last night you have together.
Oh, chances are you'll sleep the night away and awaken to the call of a lark, first thing in the morning, as you have done for the last four months since you claimed this place for your own. Chances are another day, week, month, year or two - or more - will pass by undisturbed, with nothing more urgent than the search for things like salt, flour, coffee and kerosene... basic staples that you cannot manufacture yourselves. Chances are you'll name your child and watch it grow and love every minute of every day you have together...
But you never know. Not for sure. You'll sense some things and feel others, like a prickling under the skin, when you need to pick up what's yours and run again. It's what you count on, this 'early warning system' that you were gifted with. You never know when you'll have to use it.
Then again, it has always been your hope and your prayer that if they do come back, they'll take what they want and then leave, never to return. If you are very lucky they won't take what is yours to protect and to love. Hope springs eternal, so the old saying goes. It has never been more true than lately, when your world has tilted far off its axis and the future is difficult to plan for.
But for now, for tonight... your weary body has one more bout of sexual energy inside it; one more burst of heat and desire. As you kiss your woman, stroke her with increasing passion, as she comes alive beneath the hard press of your bottomless need... the stars hold steady in the night outside your window and the fireflies dance over the lawn. The moon offers a bit of illumination along the path. One single flute of night-dwelling birdsong harmonizes with the sounds of loving that hover in the warm air, floating toward the ceiling, in the old farmhouse nestled on acres of rich pasture in a forgotten place in the remote mountains.
You're safe, for now. You know it. You celebrate it.
End
End notes: Post-col is always a challenge. Uplifting, yet somewhat 'realistic' post-col is the ultimate challenge, I think! I hope that with this one I achieved just that. Nancy loves post-col but she also loves happy.
Thanks for reading! I'm always delighted to hear from you; email me anytime! char@chaffin.com
My fic reside on this nifty little webpage: http://char.chaffin.com Stop by, pull up a rocking chair and set a spell! <g>
And Nancy: love you, Sweetheart!
If you enjoyed this story, please feed the author.
Title: Those Summer Hours
Author: Char Chaffin
Details: 26k · R · Standalone · 01/01/06 · Email/Website
Gossamer Category(Keywords): Vignette [Romance]
Characters: Mulder/Scully
Pairings: Mulder/Scully romance
SPOILERS: Post-Truth
Post-Col
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