Work Text:
As soon as Ron entered the kitchen, Samantha knew he had had a rough day. Though they had spent time discussing the importance of communication, he held himself to out-dated ideas of masculinity that insisted he never discuss his emotions, even to her. Except, she could recognize the blend of purposeful blankness, eye contact avoidance, and stress in his body that meant he was repressing something emotionally.
He closed the back door quietly, set his shoulder bag down against the wall, and bent to unlace and pull off his shoes without a glance in her direction nor greeting. That was another sign.
“Welcome home,” she said warmly.
He made a small noise of acknowledgement. Straightened, holding the shoes, not looking at her, and he squinted his eyes towards the hallway past the kitchen door. He tightened his lips slightly. His shoulders were stiff.
“Ron,” she said gently. His shoulders raised slightly, defensively. He watched the door frame. “When you have changed out of work clothes, could you keep me company as I cook dinner? Please?”
The shoulders lowered, and now he looked at her, a cautious assessment of a trap somewhere in the request. Blinked. His mouth opened and shuttered an inhale like answering was tiring. The clinical part of her brain labelled the movement as him momentarily collecting himself. He was decompressing after work, switching gears from “Ron the Businessman” to “Ron the Husband”.
She was trying to help him as his wife, not his therapist. Though on his bad days, she was both. Similarly, on her bad days he tried to help with what he had. The imperfect effort was enough, most of the time. He was gradually improving, becoming more empathetic. He just needed time, and someone to reflect the love he had back to him.
“Uh, y- yes,” he managed after a second. He let out a breath, blinked, shifted his body to stand looser. Dropping weight. “I can.” His voice was softer its deepened version for work. She smiled, hearing it, and Ron looked at her smile and eyes for a moment before glancing down to readjust his grip on his shoes. “I’m going to…” He lifted them without meeting her eyes, and she nodded.
He shuffled out of the room, and she returned to chopping vegetables. It was less clean-up with chili to chop the onion, set it to soften in the bottom of the pot, drop in the ground turkey-
Ron’s proud face when he said he had high cholesterol levels.
She paused chopping the green bell pepper. Acknowledged that she had been- was worried about his health. Acknowledged that it was difficult to fully express the concern to Ron involving the potential of him developing heart issues. Acknowledged that losing Terrance without warning was a trauma she was still processing after two years. Reminded herself that she had control in taking steps to prevent bad dietary habits when she cooked meals and encouraged Ron to eat healthier despite the convenience of fast food. She let the anxiety go with an exhale. She could control what she was able to.
She could brown the ground turkey while dropping in chopped vegetables: a green bell pepper and two diced jalapenos. Then the two cans of kidney beans and a can of diced tomatoes. The seasoning packet. Cornbread baking in the oven with more diced jalapenos in the dough. She could clean as it simmered.
Terry Junior was undergoing a change in taste buds, suddenly asking for spicier food. Ron, since the first date they went on, had a tolerance for spicy foods. She herself had simply been raised in a flavorful household. It made cooking for them both easier-- that overlap in tastes where all three of them met. Terry Jr. and Ron had more in common than they thought they did. Not just banal subjects such as food though that certainly could serve as a bridge. The grief both held in their bodies, unspoken. That she loved them both but was made to wait for that love to reach out. Neither being strong communicators.
“I- I’m back.”
Ron stood at the door entrance in pajamas she had bought him last Christmas. Blue checkered sleep pants and long-sleeved soft cotton shirt. He was watching her, tension drained but gauging her reaction to his presence. Ah. One of those moods.
She smiled. “Cozy. I’m glad you still like the gift.” She added when he only nodded, “You can sit at the table. Food will be done in fifteen or so minutes. I just want to talk to my best friend before dinner.”
The chair scraped against the floor quietly as she stirred, making sure the meat was not sticking to the bottom. She scraped the peppers in, retrieved the can opener, and started pouring in the canned vegetables. She asked conversationally, “How was work today?”
“Fine.”
Another similarity to Terry Jr. sometimes.
“Hmm, your body language was heavy when you entered. That is why I asked.”
“Well, my body lies.” He sounded sad about the state of his body. “Like the Shakira song. Or… uh, I guess, not like the- the Shakira song. Hips do lie.”
Samantha idly wondered about Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” as a metaphor for emotional repression. She furrowed and tilted her head. Possibly emotional release. Some lyrics seemed to parallel, from what she could remember. A thought for later. She let Ron’s statement go unchallenged, switched topics. “I thought about you today, during lunch.”
“You did?” Ron asked, more soft than arrogant. If he was in a good mood or trying harder to fake confidence, he would say something funny like ‘of course you did’. Instead, he was waiting for something with an uncertainty. Like she was going to insult him suddenly. One of those moods when his father’s voice was present.
“Mm-hmm. I saw some moss on one of the rocks at work. One of the zen garden rocks. It made me think of your mustache.”
She glanced over to smile at him. Ron lifted his fingers to his mustache and felt it, considering. “I saw a dog, driving home today.”
“Lucky!” she said, meaning it. “What breed were they?”
Ron was starting to smile a bit. “Very small. I think chihuahua.”
“Ooo, it’s been a while since I have seen a good small dog.” She stirred in the seasoning before placing the lid on and the spoon over the sink to keep it clean. She crossed her arms and leaned back, smiling. “One of my clients had a Pomeranian as a service dog, but I no longer see them.”
“They are small,” Ron agreed sadly. She caught that he thought she meant that the Pomeranian was present but no longer visible during sessions. She didn’t correct him. Now that she had ten minutes of simmering, she could focus her attention on her husband.
He met her eyes and held them for a moment before glancing with reserved interest from her feet, up her body, and back to her eyes. The look wasn’t objectifying as much as it was almost reminiscent of when they made love. He met her eyes again with a slightly more open expression. She assessed how she was feeling and decided that she did want to kiss him.
She smiled slightly and gestured with two fingers. Called, partially jokingly, “Google doc.”
Ron blushed slightly as he stood. He walked over, glancing over her--and really she was in a t-shirt and pants. It was not particularly flattering, but his eyes lingered on parts of her like her hands and shoulders more than her breasts, and it was one of the aspects of his personality that had caused her to give him the initial date after the dogfishing.
She cupped his cheek, and up close, she could see the specific shade of his eyes. The small flecks of color, hidden unless he was close enough to see. His flickered across her expression as she held his cheek. She rubbed a thumb across his mustache. He had trimmed it over the weekend, shorter than he meant. The small brown bristles against her thumb and his upper lip. She moved the hand underneath his chin and wrapped the other arm against his side to pull him gently closer, and he followed her pull. She brushed her lips against his in quick pecks.
He leaned forward, stretching on his toes in her arms, and she leaned down to deepen the kiss, hand against the back of his head where the gradual balding had yet to reach his curls. He tugged against her bottom lip briefly, hand on the back of her neck, and she hummed before sliding her tongue into his mouth.
He took a quick inhale and made a small noise like he did every time she mildly surprised him by being assertive. His hands were gripping the back of her t-shirt, holding her as she angled their heads as their lips moved together. He tilted his head up and caught his breath after a moment, and she kissed along his lip to his cheek, then jaw with her eyes still closed, feeling him. Knowing him by feel like they were in the dark together.
He made a small whine, and she paused to look at him with a hand stilled against the back of his neck. He looked back at her with half-lidded eyes, flushed red. She smiled to herself, seeing him like this. That she could make him feel like this.
He gave a small, self-conscious frown, but his body had caught up to him enough to fully relax. He seemed to decide to not worry about “his role as a man” after a moment and closed his eyes. He let out a large, content sigh and leaned further back against her hand on the back of his neck to expose his throat.
She allowed herself a second more to see Ron like this, one of the many shades of him as a person. All of the fear of power dynamics, how a man should or shouldn’t act, drop as he let himself be held and kissed by her.
She kissed his throat, not hard enough for a hickey. A memory of Ronnie saying that he was a professional businessman as he straightened a collared shirt made her smile amongst her kisses. Ron was pulling her closer, so she scraped her teeth lightly against his Adam’s apple. He whimpered, and his Adam’s apple disappeared momentarily as he swallowed and gasped. She kissed the spot tenderly and trailed kisses lower into the hollow of his throat as Ron half-mumbled, "Sammi."
A timer went off, startling them both. They straightened, staring at the oven’s mysteriously buzzing before Samantha recognized it and let go of Ron’s back, leaving a hand against his neck to help him regain his balance, to turn off the oven and alarm. The room became quiet again as they caught their breaths slightly.
Samantha let out a laugh at herself and then started laughing more in flushed happiness. Ron took back his hands but leaned into her as he rubbed his face as if to wipe away the red flush.
“That was nice,” she commented, smoothing his hair back down again from where her fingers had become caught in the curls. Ron stopped rubbing his cheeks and studied the pot of chili, lopsided grin present. Samantha asked, “Do you feel better?”
The smile lessened, but he met her eyes. Let out another half-shuttered breath. “Yes.”
“Good.” She took his hand and squeezed before retrieving the oven mitts to pull out the cornbread.
“Someone at work didn’t believe that I was married to you.”
“Oh?” as she opened the oven.
“He thought you… He thought I had printed off your photo from the internet.”
She paused and thought through the comment. She pulled out the loaf. “He was wrong.”
“Yeah.” But he didn’t sound convinced. After a moment, he started, “If you ever want to leave-”
“I don’t,” she answered firmly. She turned off the stove top underneath the chili.
“But if you do,” he insisted and she let him finish, “you can leave, and I won’t be angry. I won’t try to find you. I- I will miss you- I will miss you so much, but…”
“Ron.”
He blinked the tears forming out of his eyes and wiped them away with annoyance at himself.
She waited until he had collected himself and offered her hand, open palmed. He was frowning at himself but took it. She shifted her hand to position his fingertips against her wrist. “Find my pulse.”
He moved his thumb to different points along the bridge with a look of concentration while she pressed her index finger against his. His pulse was quick with anxiety underneath his look of concentration. “To your left,” she said gently. “The other direction.”
He found it and studied the kitchen table rather than look at her.
“Ron,” she redirected. He looked to her with expressions mixing--annoyance, stress, hope. His pulse remained quick. She said, quiet but firm, “Can you feel my heartbeat?”
“Yes.” Some stubbornness, self-consciousness, because he found it embarrassing afterwards, doing this, but he wouldn’t believe that she wasn’t lying otherwise.
“What does it feel like?” She mentally calmed her heartbeat to make it beat slower.
“It’s… it’s strong. I don’t know, Samantha.” He was frowning, close to tears again. “I don’t know. It’s your- it’s yours.”
“It’s strong and it is calm, and that is how I feel when I am around you, Ronnie.”
He bit his lip, and she could see his eyes start to water. She wanted to smooth out that wrinkle in his brow. How he was wanting to look away and disassociate. Listen to the voice telling him that she was lying. That her love was conditional.
She said slowly and calmly, “Ron F. Stampler, it is going to be a long, long time before we ever depart, and I am looking forward to spending every single last second with you.”
His heartbeat had slowed. He was sniffling slightly as he cried. She leaned forward to kiss his forehead.
“Are you done?” Terry Jr. snapped with annoyance. He was in the doorway frowning, one headphone over his ear and one off. Something with bass and lyrics could be heard from them. “Can I get some dinner or what?”
“Yes, dinner is done,” she answered with a smile. “Can you grab some bowls and spoons please, Terry Jr.?” She turned and began to set a ladle in the chili and cut the cornbread into squares as Terry Jr. huffed about the bowls and silverware not being set out beforehand. Samantha suddenly remembered. “Oh, darn. I forgot to grate cheese and cut the green onions.”
“It’s fine,” Terry Jr. answered, sounding calmer as he set the bowls down on the counter. “There’s, like, some leftover cheese from enchilada night in the fridge.”
“Ron?” she prompted. Ron was still leaning against her side, wiping his eyes, but he seemed more relaxed.
He sniffled again before blurting tearfully, “I love you too, Terry. I promise I won’t leave you either.” Terry Jr. was frowning at his step-father’s display. “Even if you tell me to leave, I won’t leave you.”
That maybe wasn't what he should say, but Samantha kissed Ron’s forehead again. Terry Jr. was making a face when she looked up, so she walked over and kissed his forehead too, to Terry Jr.’s overexaggerated offense.
Ron and Terry Jr. both looked at her with their own measured affection, and she smiled warmly at the two of them. She had her little family, and everything would be alright.