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"I was going to ask Sal if he'd bring me restraints. Figured I could cuff you to the bed, make sure you don't go anywhere while I was sleeping."
"I won't go anywhere," she said. Suddenly sobering, she curled her fingers around his wrist with her other hand. "And you aren't either. You hear me? I don't care about statistics or anything else. You're going to hang around long enough for me to grow old with you. Better or worse and all that."
"Good thing I asked first. I'm pretty sure not only is the man supposed to be the one to propose, but a Dom would definitely be the proposer."
"I'm a pushy sub. You've said so. And a New Yorker." She smiled, but then she shifted uncertainly, as if doubting herself, or his feelings on the matter.
"I do. I will. I feel like we already are." Des touched her face, stroked it. "If I should go before you, it won't matter, Julie. I'm not taking a boat anywhere you can't go. Whether it's a day or fifty years from now, I'll wait right there on the other side. You're worth the wait to me. You always will be. I knew it the first time I saw you."
She blinked back tears. "You're just saying that because I let you touch my breast within a minute of meeting me," she said.
"Well, yeah, there is that." He considered her. "You know, I haven't given you flowers in a while. I liked the liquid nitrogen scene Tony did with Charlotte. Would you like it if I gave you flowers that way? Leave the blush of a rose's petals against your fair skin when the bloom explodes into a million pieces?"
"I'd like anything you'd give me. The first date we had, you took me to see flowers."
"Actually our first date was my daring spider rescue. The notorious breast-touching-excuse incident."
She chuckled, held him tighter and he kissed the top of her head. "We're okay, love," he murmured. "We're okay."
Four days later, they let him come home. Julie had been as glad as Des was to be back in his bed. And, as much as she'd enjoyed his reaction to her surgical gown gift, she was happy to have him back in his jeans and
T-shirts. Though it might be a while before he did handstands on a roof again, she was okay with that.
Des's post-surgical instructions forbade him from lifting anything heavier than a cinder block for several weeks, or exerting himself too strenuously, so he coordinated his roofing jobs by phone and very brief visits out to job sites. He had good people working for him, so his income didn't suffer.
While he hadn't lied to her when he told her he had few expenses, Julie had learned his medical insurance, available to him only because he paid a high premium and maintained a sizeable deductible, didn't cover everything, like the expensive pump supplies. He'd learned to keep all his other bills low to meet those costs.
Yet like her, there wasn't much he needed in life except the pleasure of day-to-day living. He was at least able to minimize the doctor visits he disliked so much, because with Betty nearby, the nurse handled a lot of the follow up monitoring that would have been done in an office, including staying alert for any warning symptoms of rejection.
Julie had one-heart stopping night when she rolled over and discovered he had a fever. In a blink, she'd concocted all sorts of emergency scenarios involving organ rejection or life-threatening infection, but it turned out to be fine. Over his protests, she'd woken Betty to check on him. After a brief interrogation, the nurse learned he'd let some of his Type I kids come visit him and meet her horses the day before, and Justice had a cold.
Betty designated Des the stupidest man alive--which she said was a very notable distinction, since anything with a penis was incurably stupid--and determined he'd simply caught the boy's bug. He'd been relegated to bed and chicken soup for the next three days under the pain of her wrath.
For the time being, Des was supposed to minimize contact with immune system risk factors, like groups of children. Julie knew that, but she'd been at the theater when he'd decided to invite the kids over, so she hadn't been able to run interference. Not that it would have helped much, since Des was getting more recalcitrant with every passing day. Whereas he'd take a certain amount of mothering from Betty, he tolerated zero levels of it from Julie.
However, though Betty was scathing in her discussion with him, she'd called Julie later to give her some even-handed advice. "He's going stir crazy. Once the cold passes, if he'd be a help to you at the theater and no one there is an adolescent petri dish, see if he'd like to go to work with you."
Julie hadn't attempted to snow him as to her reasons. She simply asked him if he'd like to come with her to the theater to get out of the house. With a searching look, he accepted.
It turned out to be the best solution for all of them. Not surprising to her, he was a big help, and it came at an opportune time. Lila's play had opened and run with better than decent ticket sales for all showings. Harris and Madison had picked up the extra slack and made it happen while Julie's care and attention were focused on Des.
Audience reception was so strong to Done Right, they decided to ride its momentum. The next production they'd planned had hit a scheduling hitch, so they bumped it further down the schedule and decided to do a follow up play Lila had already written, set in the same world.
Julie was pleasantly surprised to find Des was willing to do anything needed to help, even mundane clerical tasks. One day he sat with her at a table in the front row, assembling promo packets for her student volunteers to pass out at the area colleges, local community organizations and anywhere else potential audience members would be. As she'd sat across from him, working on her computer and emailing press releases to the local news outlets, she'd secretly watched and savored his efficient way of working while he bantered with the tech repairing a couple of lights along the stage edge.
Lila was directing this play as she had the first, with heavy support and guidance from Harris and Julie. During rehearsals, Des provided good input to her on how the Dom/sub dynamics would come across to an audience. He also supervised volunteers on scene building--after Julie made it clear she would eviscerate anyone who let him do anything he shouldn't.
He didn't appreciate such overprotectiveness and was quick to inform her of it, not always in kind terms. She understood there was a line he didn't care for their relationship to cross, but she also couldn't help caring about him and being protective. Fortunately, through their arguments, they learned to understand one another somewhat better.
"You're not going to get to be bossy much longer," he warned her in a lighter moment. "You'll be back at my mercy and then I'll make you sorry."
"Yes, I'm a terrible girlfriend for looking out for you," she retorted. Yet she longed for that time as much as he did.
However, his recuperation period brought a bolstering reassurance about the substance of their relationship. While she'd never thought it was based only in sex and BDSM, before his surgery those things had been new and exciting enough to overshadow learning other things about one another.
He didn't care much for TV, but they both loved good films. He liked Fast and Furious type action films, while she was a classic film buff. They found common likes in older movies such as Forrest Gump and Regarding Henry. They also enjoyed choosing the worst of the B flicks--double ZZ basement finds, as Des called them--to dissect over popcorn.
They returned to Daniel Stowe gardens and wandered the trails, enjoying the flowers, sitting by the water and talking about everything. They never ran out of topics, though she equally liked their comfortable silences. One night when Betty deemed he was doing well enough to be out in a crowded environment--and he was chafing too much at the prolonged restrictions to keep him at home--they joined Logan, Madison, Troy and Shale at a karaoke bar and each tried out the mic, with hilarious results.
