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The whole thing started with Thomas forgetting to send a text message.
He’d taken a picture earlier in the day of some files they’d discovered in an office of a woman they were investigating. He was supposed to send the pictures to Juliet once they left the building, but after receiving an urgent call from their client they had to jet off to another spot on the island. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that Juliet realized she hadn’t received the files.
“Thomas, did you ever send me those pictures?”
“Ah, damn.” He paused in the kitchen where he was making them sandwiches for a late lunch to pull his phone out of his pocket. He slid it across the counter. “Sorry, Higgy. Go ahead and send them to yourself.”
It wasn't the first time one of them had given their phone freely over to the other. There were no secrets between the couple, save perhaps Christmas and birthday and anniversary surprises, and neither ever felt the need to hide their phone's content from the other. They regularly answered texts for each other depending on who was closer to the phone. So when Juliet attached the file pictures to a text message, she wasn’t expecting to find what she found in Thomas' camera roll.
“Thomas?” She looked up as he placed her plate in front of her.
“Yeah? You find them?”
“I did. I also found this.” She turned the phone around so he could see. “Do you regularly take pictures of me when I’m asleep?”
Thomas at least had the decency to look slightly sheepish, but he couldn’t completely stop the wide grin from gracing his handsome face.
“I mean, I wouldn’t say regularly! But look how cute you are with your hand tucked under your chin!” He took the phone and zoomed in on the picture of her asleep against his chest. Juliet studied the photo.
“This was from last night?”
She recalled cleaning up after supper and moving to the couch to watch a movie. But between her full belly, the soft blanket across her lap, and her warm boyfriend pressed to her side it didn’t take long for her eyes to grow heavy. She vaguely remembered Thomas shifting and coaxing her to rest against his chest. The next thing she knew she was being carried to bed. She'd feebly protested that she was awake and could walk, but when Thomas kissed her forehead she couldn't help but snuggle closer.
“You didn’t even make it twenty minutes into the movie before conking out. Then your nose started twitching and you started mumbling stuff in your sleep and I lost all interest in what was on the TV. No sexy dreams, though.”
Juliet’s cheeks flushed.
“And you decided you needed to take a picture?”
“Well, yeah.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and shrugged. “I have a lot of pictures of you. Sometimes when I’m waiting for an appointment or bored or something I’ll pull one up just to look at it. It calms me.”
Juliet wasn’t sure how she didn’t melt into a giant puddle and slide off her chair at Thomas’ words. His eyes were wide, like he was worried he’d done something wrong, but his voice was soft. She reached out and laid a hand against his cheek.
“That’s very sweet, Thomas.”
He brightened.
“You’re not mad?”
“Not at all. I love that I bring the slightest bit of reassurance to you, even when I’m not around.” A sudden thought crossed her mind. “You don’t have any nude photos of me though, do you?”
“And run the risk of Rick or TC, or worse, Jin stumbling upon them by accident? Of course not! I’ve got that all catalogued up here, anyway.” He tapped his temple and smirked.
They finished lunch and after a quick cleanup they moved to the couch to continue working. When finally they wrapped up as much as they could for the day Juliet asked the question that had been on her mind.
“You said you have a lot of pictures of me. What others do you have?”
“C’mere. I’ll show you.”
He laid back against the arm of the couch and waited for Juliet to settle between him and the back of the couch; head on his chest and arm across his waist. Thomas opened his phone and navigated to his pictures.
“Alright, let’s see.” He scrolled past several that were just the two of them, ones he’d snapped at La Mariana or on their beach. There were even a few that others had sent to him: on the dance floor at a Cultural Center fundraiser gazingly adoringly into each other’s eyes, Juliet settled in his lap in one of the lounge chairs on the TR Belle during an ohana day on the water, at Joy’s first birthday party with the birthday girl in Thomas’ arms leaning over to kiss her auntie Higgy’s cheek.
“Will you send me that one? I can’t remember if I already have it.” She pointed to the one of them and Joy.
“Of course. Okay, here we go. I love this one.” He tapped on something and up popped a picture of Juliet standing alone on the beach at the water’s edge. She was barefoot in her workout clothes looking out at the ocean. “This was one of the mornings after Rick moved in when we first got together. You’d texted me to meet you on the beach once I was done with my workout. You looked beautiful in front of the early morning sun and I couldn’t help but take your picture.”
“I had no idea you’d taken it.”
“I know. I think I meant to show you, but then you turned around and saw me and your face just lit up. I remember being in awe that your smile was because of me, that you were excited to see me.”
Juliet snuggled closer, lifting her head to nuzzle along his jaw.
“I love Rick, but those days when he was living here were agony. Then I was mad at myself for wanting to wait to tell everyone.”
Thomas chuckled and slipped his hand beneath her top. His fingers traced patterns into her side and back. He closed the picture then scrolled up to find another particular one. Juliet made a surprised noise when he opened it.
“Is that when I sang that gambling song at karaoke night?”
“That was one of the first times I remember you letting loose and just being Juliet. Plus, you looked amazing in that dress. I think that was also one of the first times I consciously wanted to touch you; to see if your skin was as soft as it looked.” His hand drifted down her back to dip just below the waistband of her jeans.
“Did any of the other girls you dated wonder why you had pictures of your caustic business partner on your phone?”
“No one was around long enough to see the contents of my phone. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. You’ve always been the most important woman in my life, Higgy. They would have had to deal with it.”
“Thomas, you don’t have to say that.”
“It’s true. Remember when I told you what Abby said when she broke up with me?”
Juliet nodded against his shoulder.
“I’m still not sure how she saw that back then.”
“I think it might have something to do with the way I’ve always looked at you. I’ve always been captivated by you. Lia even said something, after her and I broke up and you and I started dating, about how I perk up when you come into the room. You’ve always been my #1.” He pressed his lips to her temple and she squeezed his waist tighter.
“What other pictures have you taken of me without my knowledge? And what one do you look at the most?”
Without hesitation Thomas scrolled to the picture that lived rent free in his head. He angled his phone so Juliet could see, and she immediately burst into laughter.
“Thomas!”
“What?” He joined her in laughter. “Look at you! Look at that smile!”
The picture in question was from when they’d gone to the fair the previous fall. It was near the end of the night when Thomas had insisted they buy some cotton candy to share. Juliet held the cardboard cone with bright pink fluff in one hand while clutching a large stuffed sea turtle Thomas had won her in the other. Her head was thrown back in laughter, eyes dancing in amusement, cheeks pink, mouth stretched wide in a smile. She couldn’t remember what Thomas had said to make her laugh so hard, but now she wondered if he’d done it on purpose just so he could take her picture.
“I look at this one pretty much everyday,” he admitted. “It’s my little reminder how lucky I am that I get to wake up next to you every morning and fall asleep next to you every night. That’s another reason why I take all these pictures of you. I never want to forget a moment of our life together.”
“God, you just get more sappy and romantic as the days go on, don’t you?” She kissed his cheek and he grinned that big dopey grin of his.
“All part of my charm.”
Two weeks later the couple was enjoying a lazy Sunday morning in bed. Thomas had gone downstairs and returned with two mugs of coffee and the newspaper tucked beneath his arm. Juliet leaned against the headboard and accepted her coffee and the paper as well as a kiss. With that taken care of Thomas climbed back into his side of the bed and began scrolling through baseball scores on his phone.
“Oh, hey,” he said after several minutes. “Will you send me those pictures you took of me and the guys last night?”
Juliet’s eyes never left the paper as she handed her phone over to her boyfriend. He smiled at the picture of the two of them at the Pillbox she had set as her lock screen, then punched in the security code and opened her photos.
“Wait a second, what’s this?” Thomas turned the phone so Juliet could see she’d been caught.
“What? You have pictures of me you like to look at.” She shrugged, but failed at keeping her mouth from turning up into a smile. “And how was I supposed to not take a picture of that? My favorite boys all cuddled up together.”
As if on cue, the sound of elephants came flying down the hallway and a few seconds later Zeus and Apollo appeared in the bedroom’s doorway, having returned from their morning patrol. They clomped over to the bed and waited for Juliet to pat the covers before jumping up and flopping down between their humans.
“Mama knows about our afternoon naps, boys.” He rubbed Apollo’s neck. “She caught us in the act.”
Juliet giggled and scooted over to stare at the picture in question. Thomas was stretched out across the couch in just a pair of sweatpants with Apollo tucked between him and the couch with his head on Thomas’ bare torso, and Zeus was curled up between Thomas’ legs with his head on his thigh. All three of them were fast asleep.
“I’m a little surprised you haven’t already caught me staring at it,” Juliet said, resting her head on his shoulder. “I look at it all the time now.”
She zoomed in on Thomas’ face.
“You look so peaceful when you're asleep, like you don’t have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
Thomas made a noise but didn’t argue. He found the pictures he’d originally been looking for, the ones Juliet had taken of him and Rick and TC at La Mariana the previous night, but when he went to attach them in a text he found another little gem.
“When did you sneak this?”
The picture was just him leaning back in his chair laughing at something.
“Shammy said something witty in response to something Rick said and I had my camera up at the exact right moment.” She touched the corner of his eye in the picture then traced a finger along his actual temple. “I’ve always loved the way your eyes crinkle when you smile and laugh.”
“Always, huh?”
Juliet didn't even have to look at him to know he was grinning the grin that turned her insides to mush.
“For as much as you’ve always been able to get a rise out of me, you’ve also been a calming force in my life for almost as long. That cocky grin of yours used to grate on my nerves, but now I feel a sense of relief whenever I see it.”
She turned her head and pressed a kiss to his bare shoulder.
“Your smile and the sound of your laughter bring me more peace than I’ve ever felt in my entire life.”
Thomas wrapped an arm around her and pulled her even closer. He'd never understand how he'd gotten so lucky to have this woman in his life, and to have her love him.
“The Juliet Higgins I first met would never have believed she’d one day say those words.” Thomas chuckled.
“I’m not sure the Thomas Magnum I met would ever have believed he’d get to hear them.” She moved closer as Thomas opened up the forward-facing camera on her phone and snapped a picture of their still sleepy, but happy faces.
Her curls were wild and the Tigers shirt she wore was wrinkled, while Thomas still looked like he was half asleep with part of his hair sticking straight up. They both thought it was perfect.