Fic: It’s Way Too Soon (To Be Obsessin’ Like This) (Stargate)
Title: It’s Way Too Soon (To Be Obsessin’ Like This)
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: het
Recipient: mackenziesmomma
Prompt: Stargate, Joe Simmons/Miss Wilson, After just three days (just three days)/One great kiss (One great kiss)/It's way too soon/To be obsessin' like this
Summary: It's the US 1967 and Joe "McSmartypants" Simmons is back from his tour in Vietnam
A/N: So. Holiday Fic Request Meme, here we go again. This is a story that takes place in the Military Madness 'verse, an AU 'verse to Protect and Survive/Minor Characters, so if you never heard the name Joe Simmons before, you probably haven't read a story from those 'verses. Originally this had been planned to be a story much further down the road (there are a couple MM stories I have on the backburner that fit into the original 16 Proofs of Love meme and take place before this but I didn't get to post them before December started so my bad. But you'll get them as soon as they're ready. I promise.). Anyway, here we go!
( Kennedy Made Him Believe (We Could Do Much More) )
( We'll Dance Until Morning ('Til There's Just You And Me) )
( With No Direction Home (Like a Complete Unknown) )
( So I Came in Here (And Your Long-Time Curse Hurts) )
( No Reason To Get Excited (The Thief He Kindly Spoke) )
( Forget The Dead You’ve Left (They Will Not Follow You) )
It’s Way Too Soon (To Be Obsessin’ Like This)
“After just three days (just three days)
One great kiss (One great kiss)
It's way too soon
To be obsessin' like this.”
Emerson Drive, “I Should be Sleeping”
So that was probably one of the worst days in the history of bad days. And it had started off so well. Waking up at the right time, getting done fast enough, clocking in five minutes early… and then it all went down the drain. From her first class in which not even half the students had read their assignments and just couldn’t be bothered to even make excuses for it to her boss citing her into his office and wanting to know if she’ll ever finish her PhD thesis it was just one big mess. That it’s the tenth day in a row that she didn’t get a reply to her last letter to the soldier she once affectionately dubbed McSmartypants when he was being especially obtuse about her not being interested in any apology at all is just the icing on the cake.
So it’s not the first time that it takes him more than three days to reply and the letter to take more than two or three days - it’s a war zone, after all and even she knows that things in a war zone are… different - but for some reason she’s been on edge for a while now and there’s a terrible feeling of dread pooling in her stomach whenever she thinks of Lieutenant Joe “McSmartypants” Simmons and something just doesn’t feel right.
She tries not to believe in anything the media tell them about the “conflict in Vietnam”, just out of principle and because she’s still an educated, intelligent person who hasn’t give up on using her brain yet, thank you very much. But the pictures of exhausted soldiers in the jungle and frightened civilians she’d seen on TV still had an effect on her and there was nothing good about it. They reminded her of her McSmartypants and all the flying in combat zones that he did and she felt her stomach knot up with horrible feelings of dread and foreboding.
She hasn’t told anyone about them, of course because people are talking about her enough already, ever since one of her students saw Joe enter her apartment on that evening that they met for the first and to date only time and not come out until early morning. That he’d just spend the night on her couch because it was really late at night when they came back from the restaurant he invited her to and she didn’t want him to have to drive through the night was absolutely irrelevant to the gossiping masses on campus. Wouldn’t have made such an exciting story of immorality and indecency, anyway.
Ever since the day the story got around on campus, she has become some weird cross between hoe and hero. Half the faculty - mostly the older members, both male and female, thank God not the Dean - have come to see her as some wanton seductress who will only corrupt all those innocent flowers of young female students at the College while a lot of exactly those students see her as some kind of Women’s Lib hero who goes for what she wants, stifling societal conventions be damned.
She’s neither of that, of course and she tries not to be annoyed with either of those groups, nor the third of male students and younger faculty members as well who think she became some kind of fair game for anyone to hit on her, make barely veiled offers of sexual relationships and get offended when she rebuffs them. Unfortunately, they are the group hardest to avoid and there were points in the last year, especially during winter and fall that she had the urge to get done with everything and be able to go home before it got dark. She’d never admit any of that to her female friends or her family or God forbid Joe but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.
Well, at least she didn’t get hit on or propositioned on the way home today, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad day… no scratch that, it was bad and all she wants now is a hot bath and some tea and a good book afterwards and… doorbell.
The… freaking doorbell.
She can’t believe that just happened. She can’t believe someone actually had the guts and the stupidity to ring Kassandra Wilson’s doorbell on a Friday night, after eight when she’s about to undress and slip into her bathtub and forget about this horrible no good really bad day.
And the… freaking, freaking idiot just pressed it twice.
And a third time.
Okay, that’s it, she thinks and nearly stomps over to her door, wrenching it open, ready to read that idiot the riot act and… “Hello, Miss Wilson.”
On impulse, the very first thing she does is shut the door right into his face and walk away a few steps in a daze, blinking and looking at random corners of her living room. That… didn’t just happen, did it?
No, no, it didn’t, just as that knock she just heard didn’t happen. Nope. Um-um. Didn’t happen. No way. No freaking… “Please, Kassandra?”
God, why did he just have to sound so pleading? Heaving a sigh, she moves to open the door and stands in the door frame and yes, that’s definitely Lieutenant Joe “McSmartypants” Simmons standing in front of her, in a sky blue uniform coat and hat, looking like the late winter Colorado cold is really getting to him and a duffle bag next to him on the ground. What… “I, uh… good evening, Kassandra.”
Still taken aback, all she can mutter is, “How in God’s name did you get here?”
He shrugs. “Uncle Sam was so nice as to pay for my flight from Tan Son Nhut to Peterson AFB when he let me go after I finished my tour uh… three days ago.”
Huh? What? “Joe, what is going on here?”
“I’m back from Vietnam, Kassandra. For good.” Oookay?
She frowns. “But shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, at your base or something?”
Rubbing his neck with a gloved hand, he looks a little embarrassed. And cute as heck. Aw, no. “I don’t have to be there until tomorrow morning. I… went straight to your house after I got off the plane. Kassandra…”
“I… I don’t understand. Why did you do that?” There’s a look in his face, just for a moment, that makes her flinch inwardly because it just showed so much hurt, such a wound in his soul that she wonders what the heck happened to him in Vietnam. And what that has to do with her.
And why a strange warm and fuzzy feeling just started spreading through her when she realizes what he meant when he said that he was back from Vietnam. That he… “Because… because I wanted to… look, this last year, it was…” This isn’t going to well. She just know that it isn’t and still she can’t bring herself to tell him to shut up and go to his base, leave her peace to battle that feeling of giddiness and warmth inside of her that his presence is increasing. “This last year was something I never want to live through again and I’d do it again only for one thing.”
“And… what is that?” She almost dreads his answer but she just had to ask.
He clears his throat. “Your letters, Kassandra. They made everything bearable, even when I thought I couldn’t go on another day. I just… I… Kassandra, I… when I was in Vietnam, during those last weeks, I was really, I mean I was afraid that we’d crash the helicopter and I might die because then I’d never get to do what I’m going to do now.”
Huh? “What? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to ask you… Kassandra Wilson, will you marry me?” What?
What?
For some reason, she then does something that she will never be able to fully explain, even years later. She just stares at him for a very short moment and then… plants a fist right in his face, with every ounce of strength and technique that her brothers once taught her when she told them she’d move away to a big city for college.
Funny enough, he doesn’t even duck or move out of her way, just gets caught totally unawares and she honestly never thought she’d see such an agitated reaction from Joe “Aw, shucks, ma’am” Simmons but he actually stumbles backwards, holding his nose with one hand and wiping tears of his eyes with the other and shouting, “Jesus Christ, Kassandra!” loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.
Realizing what she just did, she wants to reach out and tell him how terribly sorry she is but he just goes on, sounding a little nasal, “What the hell was that for? And how did you get such a mean right hook?”
Right. He says that as if it’s a bad thing. Irritated, she crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I grew up with a lot of brothers.”
He shakes his head one more time, and in a corner of her mind she’s glad to see that there’s no blood coming out of his nose or anything looking out of place in his face. The rest, though, takes issue with his unnecessary and uncharacteristic sarcastic tone when he says, “Yeah, I hadn’t noticed until now.” Then, with just a bit too much of incredulity, “And why in God’s name did you just do that?”
Unfortunately, it’s a good question; one she didn’t think she had an answer to but for some unfathomable reason, suddenly the words start to tumble out of her mouth in an agitated jumble, “Because you thought you had to apologize after I showed you up in the assembly hall and invited me to a restaurant and were being incredibly silly about spending the night on the couch and wrote me nearly every week for a year and made me wait with bated breath for the postman and for making me care. About… about you and the other soldiers and those guys you called the “gang” but most of all, most of all you.”
There. That’s the thing. That and, “And then you had the gall to show up here, in the middle of the night, in your… your darn uniform, looking so smart and everything, and just basically ask my hand in marriage and why did you do that?”
It’s a valid question, one she very much wants, very much needs an answer to but she almost misses his reply because of the blood rushing in her ears and the… intensity of all those… feelings he just invoked. “Because you made me care, too. Because you made me think. Because I decided not to re-up because an Air Force nurse told me to go home to my “little girlfriend” and I realized that it’s exactly what I want.” What? Girlfriend? Re-up? What is he talking about? “To go home and be with you and never be without you again.”
He looks at her, sincerity and nervousness written all over his face and her head is still stuck on “never be without you again” when it escapes her, “You have no right be so good.”
Because he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a right to faithfully write to her almost every week for a year and talk to her about his war and take her meanderings about faculty life serious and make her wait for his next letter with so much anxiousness that sometimes she can’t concentrate while she’s teaching and ask her to marry him. He doesn’t. “Kassandra…”
Oh. Not good. That look just isn’t good. Oh, dear, God, please, please not. “Don’t tell me you actually asked my father for my hand.”
“Was I… was I supposed to do that?” Huh? “Oh God, Kassandra, I didn’t and I’m so sorry that I didn’t think about the consequences of not asking…”
Oh no. Oh no no no. “Don’t you dare apologizing for not being a paternalistic asshole and ask my father’s consent before mine.” Because she never expected a proposal of marriage and she never, never expected wanting to say yes so badly and she’s trying to find excuses not to because she always thought that she isn’t ready yet to give up her academic life for being a homemaking little wife.
And she still isn’t.
It’s not very helpful, though, that all he does is blink at her like a dumbfounded puppy and mutter, “…does that mean I did the right thing?”
She shakes her head, forcefully trying to keep herself from reaching out to him and hug him. Also, blinking away stupid tears of stupid… whatever. “Of course it does, idiot. Because you always do the right thing and no one can ever stay mad with you for long and that makes me so freaking mad.”
And then, then he makes everything just so much worse by grinning a slightly wicked grin and saying, “I love it when you try to swear without using actual swear words.”
Narrowing her eyes, she growls, “Shut up and stop being sexy on top of everything else.” And then realizes what she just said. “Oh my God, did I just say that out loud?”
He makes an embarrassed face, going so far as to suggest sounding his usual, overly honest self, “Would it help if I pretended I didn’t hear it?”
She shakes her head, almost exasperated. “No, I’d just hate you more for being such a decent human being.”
There is absolute and frightening sincerity in his voice when he says, after a moment of silence, “I love you, Kassandra.”
She hadn’t expected that. “I…”
“I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I’m really sorry if it’s a bad time or if you don’t see it that way and I will leave you alone if you say no.” She doesn’t doubt that a second. It doesn’t make it any easier. “I will. All I want… is an answer. Just any answer. Please?”
Whatever happened, he does deserve an answer but honestly, she has no idea what to say. She wants to tell him yes yes yes but she knows him through letters and a dinner and the English major in her tells her that this has the potential of ending very badly for both of them. She takes a deep breath. “Look, Joe, I…”
“Oh.” What… oh. Oh no, he just thought that she was about to tell him… “Oh, okay. I guess, I’ll just… you know…”
With that, he turns around, shouldering his duffle bag to walk trudge through the cold dark night, his feet dragging through the slush and that image just broke her heart. She moves to run after him. “Oh no, don’t go! Joe! Don’t go!”
Thank God he turns around, looking a little incredulously at him, as if he never even expected her to care so much about him that she doesn’t care that she’s getting her feet wet and freezing her behind off in nothing but a dress and a sweater. He fumbles for words, finally landing at, “But I really understand if you don’t…”
Oh good God. “Stop that, you idiot!” She actually reached out to give him a slap on the arm because honestly, would she be out here if she didn’t give a fig about him? “All I wanted to say was that I hadn’t expected it and that it surprised me and that I’m not good with surprises.” It’s true, she isn’t. Which is why it is pretty hard for her to say what she needs to say now, “But I… I think I love you, too but I just… I’d just like to know if I really love you.”
The liberal arts teacher inside of her applauds her for being able to admit to herself that she might very well be in love with a fantasy, not an actual man and for being able to say that out loud but he looks so heartbroken that she can’t help adding, “Look, I just don’t want us to rush into anything so maybe instead of finding the next courthouse and getting hitched… maybe we could try dinner and a movie, first?” There’s a tiny moment in which she wonders why anyone would be so stupid as to say that but then she realizes that she really wants that. She really wants an honest to God date, with everything just like in the movies, and she wants it with him. “Just one and if we like that, we could try another and maybe a third and well…”
“Yes.”
That… wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. Apparently, Joe Simmons is full of surprises and she can’t say she doesn’t like it, at least a bit. “Yes?”
“Yes, I want to try that with you.” The earnest tone in his voice makes her forget the snow and the cold, just for a moment, and kiss him right here out in the open where everyone and their mother can see her and damn them all for their double standards and Victorian morals.
Still, she has to ask, “Just like that? No protest or coaxing? Just “yes, I want to try that with you”?”
Emphatically, he nods. “Yes, just that.”
Struggling not to laugh, she can’t help saying, “Will you ever stop being such a darn decent guy?”
H shrugs again, a sheepish little grin in his face. “’Fraid not. That’s not how my momma raised me.”
Ah. Damn it. Damn it all to hell. Throwing all caution to the wind for just a moment, she stands up on the tip of her toes and puts a kiss on his lips. Just a very light, feathery kiss, not more than a butterfly’s touch and when she says, “And she raised you good, soldier boy,” her voice catches for a moment and she half expects him to blush and start to stutter but he surprises her once again, bending down and putting an arm around her waist, holding her tight and kissing her again, stronger than her timid kiss, but not forcing his tongue onto her, like Jimmy Swanson did in her junior year at college or Dr. Petrovsky shortly after she started working in the liberal arts department. She kisses him back.
When he breaks the kiss after only a few seconds, he looks afraid, as if he thinks that she’ll hit him again but she just smiles. “Welcome home, soldier.” And then, because she can take only so much romance, she carefully extricates herself from his arms and turns towards her house, angling one of her arms into the crook of his, saying cheerfully, “Now come on up, it’s late and you’re just back from a war, I take it you’d like something warm to eat and a nice couch to sleep on?”
He doesn’t make any attempts at freeing his arm from her grip, just grins at her in that sheepish way of his she very fast comes to appreciate and says, “Yes, ma’am. I’d like that very much.”
And with that, they walk back to her house and into it and she changes out of her sodden tights and he gets comfortable in her kitchen and when she starts to cook he doesn’t waste any time and helps her right away and maybe they can make it after all. Maybe she’s starting to get ready to become a wife, if not ready to give up her teaching job. But really, that’s not something she has to think about right now is it?
~*~
TBC in America Has Heard The Bugle Call (And You Know It Involves Us One And All).
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: het
Recipient: mackenziesmomma
Prompt: Stargate, Joe Simmons/Miss Wilson, After just three days (just three days)/One great kiss (One great kiss)/It's way too soon/To be obsessin' like this
Summary: It's the US 1967 and Joe "McSmartypants" Simmons is back from his tour in Vietnam
A/N: So. Holiday Fic Request Meme, here we go again. This is a story that takes place in the Military Madness 'verse, an AU 'verse to Protect and Survive/Minor Characters, so if you never heard the name Joe Simmons before, you probably haven't read a story from those 'verses. Originally this had been planned to be a story much further down the road (there are a couple MM stories I have on the backburner that fit into the original 16 Proofs of Love meme and take place before this but I didn't get to post them before December started so my bad. But you'll get them as soon as they're ready. I promise.). Anyway, here we go!
( Kennedy Made Him Believe (We Could Do Much More) )
( We'll Dance Until Morning ('Til There's Just You And Me) )
( With No Direction Home (Like a Complete Unknown) )
( So I Came in Here (And Your Long-Time Curse Hurts) )
( No Reason To Get Excited (The Thief He Kindly Spoke) )
( Forget The Dead You’ve Left (They Will Not Follow You) )
It’s Way Too Soon (To Be Obsessin’ Like This)
“After just three days (just three days)
One great kiss (One great kiss)
It's way too soon
To be obsessin' like this.”
Emerson Drive, “I Should be Sleeping”
So that was probably one of the worst days in the history of bad days. And it had started off so well. Waking up at the right time, getting done fast enough, clocking in five minutes early… and then it all went down the drain. From her first class in which not even half the students had read their assignments and just couldn’t be bothered to even make excuses for it to her boss citing her into his office and wanting to know if she’ll ever finish her PhD thesis it was just one big mess. That it’s the tenth day in a row that she didn’t get a reply to her last letter to the soldier she once affectionately dubbed McSmartypants when he was being especially obtuse about her not being interested in any apology at all is just the icing on the cake.
So it’s not the first time that it takes him more than three days to reply and the letter to take more than two or three days - it’s a war zone, after all and even she knows that things in a war zone are… different - but for some reason she’s been on edge for a while now and there’s a terrible feeling of dread pooling in her stomach whenever she thinks of Lieutenant Joe “McSmartypants” Simmons and something just doesn’t feel right.
She tries not to believe in anything the media tell them about the “conflict in Vietnam”, just out of principle and because she’s still an educated, intelligent person who hasn’t give up on using her brain yet, thank you very much. But the pictures of exhausted soldiers in the jungle and frightened civilians she’d seen on TV still had an effect on her and there was nothing good about it. They reminded her of her McSmartypants and all the flying in combat zones that he did and she felt her stomach knot up with horrible feelings of dread and foreboding.
She hasn’t told anyone about them, of course because people are talking about her enough already, ever since one of her students saw Joe enter her apartment on that evening that they met for the first and to date only time and not come out until early morning. That he’d just spend the night on her couch because it was really late at night when they came back from the restaurant he invited her to and she didn’t want him to have to drive through the night was absolutely irrelevant to the gossiping masses on campus. Wouldn’t have made such an exciting story of immorality and indecency, anyway.
Ever since the day the story got around on campus, she has become some weird cross between hoe and hero. Half the faculty - mostly the older members, both male and female, thank God not the Dean - have come to see her as some wanton seductress who will only corrupt all those innocent flowers of young female students at the College while a lot of exactly those students see her as some kind of Women’s Lib hero who goes for what she wants, stifling societal conventions be damned.
She’s neither of that, of course and she tries not to be annoyed with either of those groups, nor the third of male students and younger faculty members as well who think she became some kind of fair game for anyone to hit on her, make barely veiled offers of sexual relationships and get offended when she rebuffs them. Unfortunately, they are the group hardest to avoid and there were points in the last year, especially during winter and fall that she had the urge to get done with everything and be able to go home before it got dark. She’d never admit any of that to her female friends or her family or God forbid Joe but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.
Well, at least she didn’t get hit on or propositioned on the way home today, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad day… no scratch that, it was bad and all she wants now is a hot bath and some tea and a good book afterwards and… doorbell.
The… freaking doorbell.
She can’t believe that just happened. She can’t believe someone actually had the guts and the stupidity to ring Kassandra Wilson’s doorbell on a Friday night, after eight when she’s about to undress and slip into her bathtub and forget about this horrible no good really bad day.
And the… freaking, freaking idiot just pressed it twice.
And a third time.
Okay, that’s it, she thinks and nearly stomps over to her door, wrenching it open, ready to read that idiot the riot act and… “Hello, Miss Wilson.”
On impulse, the very first thing she does is shut the door right into his face and walk away a few steps in a daze, blinking and looking at random corners of her living room. That… didn’t just happen, did it?
No, no, it didn’t, just as that knock she just heard didn’t happen. Nope. Um-um. Didn’t happen. No way. No freaking… “Please, Kassandra?”
God, why did he just have to sound so pleading? Heaving a sigh, she moves to open the door and stands in the door frame and yes, that’s definitely Lieutenant Joe “McSmartypants” Simmons standing in front of her, in a sky blue uniform coat and hat, looking like the late winter Colorado cold is really getting to him and a duffle bag next to him on the ground. What… “I, uh… good evening, Kassandra.”
Still taken aback, all she can mutter is, “How in God’s name did you get here?”
He shrugs. “Uncle Sam was so nice as to pay for my flight from Tan Son Nhut to Peterson AFB when he let me go after I finished my tour uh… three days ago.”
Huh? What? “Joe, what is going on here?”
“I’m back from Vietnam, Kassandra. For good.” Oookay?
She frowns. “But shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, at your base or something?”
Rubbing his neck with a gloved hand, he looks a little embarrassed. And cute as heck. Aw, no. “I don’t have to be there until tomorrow morning. I… went straight to your house after I got off the plane. Kassandra…”
“I… I don’t understand. Why did you do that?” There’s a look in his face, just for a moment, that makes her flinch inwardly because it just showed so much hurt, such a wound in his soul that she wonders what the heck happened to him in Vietnam. And what that has to do with her.
And why a strange warm and fuzzy feeling just started spreading through her when she realizes what he meant when he said that he was back from Vietnam. That he… “Because… because I wanted to… look, this last year, it was…” This isn’t going to well. She just know that it isn’t and still she can’t bring herself to tell him to shut up and go to his base, leave her peace to battle that feeling of giddiness and warmth inside of her that his presence is increasing. “This last year was something I never want to live through again and I’d do it again only for one thing.”
“And… what is that?” She almost dreads his answer but she just had to ask.
He clears his throat. “Your letters, Kassandra. They made everything bearable, even when I thought I couldn’t go on another day. I just… I… Kassandra, I… when I was in Vietnam, during those last weeks, I was really, I mean I was afraid that we’d crash the helicopter and I might die because then I’d never get to do what I’m going to do now.”
Huh? “What? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to ask you… Kassandra Wilson, will you marry me?” What?
What?
For some reason, she then does something that she will never be able to fully explain, even years later. She just stares at him for a very short moment and then… plants a fist right in his face, with every ounce of strength and technique that her brothers once taught her when she told them she’d move away to a big city for college.
Funny enough, he doesn’t even duck or move out of her way, just gets caught totally unawares and she honestly never thought she’d see such an agitated reaction from Joe “Aw, shucks, ma’am” Simmons but he actually stumbles backwards, holding his nose with one hand and wiping tears of his eyes with the other and shouting, “Jesus Christ, Kassandra!” loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.
Realizing what she just did, she wants to reach out and tell him how terribly sorry she is but he just goes on, sounding a little nasal, “What the hell was that for? And how did you get such a mean right hook?”
Right. He says that as if it’s a bad thing. Irritated, she crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I grew up with a lot of brothers.”
He shakes his head one more time, and in a corner of her mind she’s glad to see that there’s no blood coming out of his nose or anything looking out of place in his face. The rest, though, takes issue with his unnecessary and uncharacteristic sarcastic tone when he says, “Yeah, I hadn’t noticed until now.” Then, with just a bit too much of incredulity, “And why in God’s name did you just do that?”
Unfortunately, it’s a good question; one she didn’t think she had an answer to but for some unfathomable reason, suddenly the words start to tumble out of her mouth in an agitated jumble, “Because you thought you had to apologize after I showed you up in the assembly hall and invited me to a restaurant and were being incredibly silly about spending the night on the couch and wrote me nearly every week for a year and made me wait with bated breath for the postman and for making me care. About… about you and the other soldiers and those guys you called the “gang” but most of all, most of all you.”
There. That’s the thing. That and, “And then you had the gall to show up here, in the middle of the night, in your… your darn uniform, looking so smart and everything, and just basically ask my hand in marriage and why did you do that?”
It’s a valid question, one she very much wants, very much needs an answer to but she almost misses his reply because of the blood rushing in her ears and the… intensity of all those… feelings he just invoked. “Because you made me care, too. Because you made me think. Because I decided not to re-up because an Air Force nurse told me to go home to my “little girlfriend” and I realized that it’s exactly what I want.” What? Girlfriend? Re-up? What is he talking about? “To go home and be with you and never be without you again.”
He looks at her, sincerity and nervousness written all over his face and her head is still stuck on “never be without you again” when it escapes her, “You have no right be so good.”
Because he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a right to faithfully write to her almost every week for a year and talk to her about his war and take her meanderings about faculty life serious and make her wait for his next letter with so much anxiousness that sometimes she can’t concentrate while she’s teaching and ask her to marry him. He doesn’t. “Kassandra…”
Oh. Not good. That look just isn’t good. Oh, dear, God, please, please not. “Don’t tell me you actually asked my father for my hand.”
“Was I… was I supposed to do that?” Huh? “Oh God, Kassandra, I didn’t and I’m so sorry that I didn’t think about the consequences of not asking…”
Oh no. Oh no no no. “Don’t you dare apologizing for not being a paternalistic asshole and ask my father’s consent before mine.” Because she never expected a proposal of marriage and she never, never expected wanting to say yes so badly and she’s trying to find excuses not to because she always thought that she isn’t ready yet to give up her academic life for being a homemaking little wife.
And she still isn’t.
It’s not very helpful, though, that all he does is blink at her like a dumbfounded puppy and mutter, “…does that mean I did the right thing?”
She shakes her head, forcefully trying to keep herself from reaching out to him and hug him. Also, blinking away stupid tears of stupid… whatever. “Of course it does, idiot. Because you always do the right thing and no one can ever stay mad with you for long and that makes me so freaking mad.”
And then, then he makes everything just so much worse by grinning a slightly wicked grin and saying, “I love it when you try to swear without using actual swear words.”
Narrowing her eyes, she growls, “Shut up and stop being sexy on top of everything else.” And then realizes what she just said. “Oh my God, did I just say that out loud?”
He makes an embarrassed face, going so far as to suggest sounding his usual, overly honest self, “Would it help if I pretended I didn’t hear it?”
She shakes her head, almost exasperated. “No, I’d just hate you more for being such a decent human being.”
There is absolute and frightening sincerity in his voice when he says, after a moment of silence, “I love you, Kassandra.”
She hadn’t expected that. “I…”
“I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I’m really sorry if it’s a bad time or if you don’t see it that way and I will leave you alone if you say no.” She doesn’t doubt that a second. It doesn’t make it any easier. “I will. All I want… is an answer. Just any answer. Please?”
Whatever happened, he does deserve an answer but honestly, she has no idea what to say. She wants to tell him yes yes yes but she knows him through letters and a dinner and the English major in her tells her that this has the potential of ending very badly for both of them. She takes a deep breath. “Look, Joe, I…”
“Oh.” What… oh. Oh no, he just thought that she was about to tell him… “Oh, okay. I guess, I’ll just… you know…”
With that, he turns around, shouldering his duffle bag to walk trudge through the cold dark night, his feet dragging through the slush and that image just broke her heart. She moves to run after him. “Oh no, don’t go! Joe! Don’t go!”
Thank God he turns around, looking a little incredulously at him, as if he never even expected her to care so much about him that she doesn’t care that she’s getting her feet wet and freezing her behind off in nothing but a dress and a sweater. He fumbles for words, finally landing at, “But I really understand if you don’t…”
Oh good God. “Stop that, you idiot!” She actually reached out to give him a slap on the arm because honestly, would she be out here if she didn’t give a fig about him? “All I wanted to say was that I hadn’t expected it and that it surprised me and that I’m not good with surprises.” It’s true, she isn’t. Which is why it is pretty hard for her to say what she needs to say now, “But I… I think I love you, too but I just… I’d just like to know if I really love you.”
The liberal arts teacher inside of her applauds her for being able to admit to herself that she might very well be in love with a fantasy, not an actual man and for being able to say that out loud but he looks so heartbroken that she can’t help adding, “Look, I just don’t want us to rush into anything so maybe instead of finding the next courthouse and getting hitched… maybe we could try dinner and a movie, first?” There’s a tiny moment in which she wonders why anyone would be so stupid as to say that but then she realizes that she really wants that. She really wants an honest to God date, with everything just like in the movies, and she wants it with him. “Just one and if we like that, we could try another and maybe a third and well…”
“Yes.”
That… wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. Apparently, Joe Simmons is full of surprises and she can’t say she doesn’t like it, at least a bit. “Yes?”
“Yes, I want to try that with you.” The earnest tone in his voice makes her forget the snow and the cold, just for a moment, and kiss him right here out in the open where everyone and their mother can see her and damn them all for their double standards and Victorian morals.
Still, she has to ask, “Just like that? No protest or coaxing? Just “yes, I want to try that with you”?”
Emphatically, he nods. “Yes, just that.”
Struggling not to laugh, she can’t help saying, “Will you ever stop being such a darn decent guy?”
H shrugs again, a sheepish little grin in his face. “’Fraid not. That’s not how my momma raised me.”
Ah. Damn it. Damn it all to hell. Throwing all caution to the wind for just a moment, she stands up on the tip of her toes and puts a kiss on his lips. Just a very light, feathery kiss, not more than a butterfly’s touch and when she says, “And she raised you good, soldier boy,” her voice catches for a moment and she half expects him to blush and start to stutter but he surprises her once again, bending down and putting an arm around her waist, holding her tight and kissing her again, stronger than her timid kiss, but not forcing his tongue onto her, like Jimmy Swanson did in her junior year at college or Dr. Petrovsky shortly after she started working in the liberal arts department. She kisses him back.
When he breaks the kiss after only a few seconds, he looks afraid, as if he thinks that she’ll hit him again but she just smiles. “Welcome home, soldier.” And then, because she can take only so much romance, she carefully extricates herself from his arms and turns towards her house, angling one of her arms into the crook of his, saying cheerfully, “Now come on up, it’s late and you’re just back from a war, I take it you’d like something warm to eat and a nice couch to sleep on?”
He doesn’t make any attempts at freeing his arm from her grip, just grins at her in that sheepish way of his she very fast comes to appreciate and says, “Yes, ma’am. I’d like that very much.”
And with that, they walk back to her house and into it and she changes out of her sodden tights and he gets comfortable in her kitchen and when she starts to cook he doesn’t waste any time and helps her right away and maybe they can make it after all. Maybe she’s starting to get ready to become a wife, if not ready to give up her teaching job. But really, that’s not something she has to think about right now is it?
~*~
TBC in America Has Heard The Bugle Call (And You Know It Involves Us One And All).