Work Text:
The baby isn't his; who the father is, she says she'll never tell. She shows up at his door one morning, her lines a little softer, maybe, but more or less the same, her jacket brown leather, tattered, her boots trailing laces, her fair hair tousled by her fingers and the wind. It's been a year since he last saw her, maybe more...eighteen months since he last saw her, and she's got the dust of other worlds on the soles of her shoes.
"I'm pregnant, Chris," she says (which she already told him on video-phone) and he thinks so fucking what? and kisses her.
She tastes of Orion, moons of Jupiter, dust.
The evenings are long and warm on the edge of the desert and she shrugs out of her jacket and leaves it on his rocking chair, stands out in the desert air with both hands in her hair and white cotton clinging. He steps in near and pushes his hand up under her tank-top, touches her gently in the small of her back.
"I missed you," he says.
She turns her head and smiles.
"I know," she says and winks.
She leaves a trail of road-smelling clothes through the bedroom and into the bathroom, and she sits on the edge of the tub while it's filling, her breasts cradled against her forearm, watching through the hair tumbled across her eyes. There's the champagne in the fridge, but he doesn't open it, bringing her the apple that she asked for, instead. She bites into it and a trickle of juice spills from the corner of her mouth and down, and he bends, kneels (still stiff, in winter, but this is the height of summer, even if it gets cold in the desert once the sun's gone down). He dips his head and licks from her nipple and up and she sparks sweetness.
Beautiful girl. He's endlessly glad, every time she comes home. No, not home. This house has never been home.
He's glad when she returns.