The reality of it is a lot less tidy than either of them expects.
His shoes, his battered and beloved trainers, they’re so hard to get off. The first time they’re right in the thick of things and he’s wearing them, it’s a full three minute delay. They stop completely, laughing and panting, and he’s sprawled across the carpeting tugging at the double knots and swearing colorfully, while she perches on the end of the couch and takes her time unbuttoning her shirt.
Her knickers, the striped cotton ones, the ones that won’t give with just a flick of his wrist. The ones that she trips over when they’re forgotten around her ankles and she jumps a mile at the sound of her little brother on the other side of the pool house door.
The noises, the words, all these filthy, vulgar things, things he could never have imagined coming from her perfect little mouth. Things that make him blush and give him ideas and that he can only answer in grunts and groans, breathy incoherence ground out with wide eyes.
The mess, the real mess, showers and wet spots and a week every month, sweat and spit and there’s no saving the duvet.
The timing, oh, god, the irony of the timing, so much time now, but so many other things to fill it, too. The way he gets a stomach ache from too many tacos, or they’re covered in mud and back out into the field in five minutes and it’s too much, the pressure, and she can get there, but he can’t, tucking himself up in heavy trousers and feeling defeated while she apologizes. And glows.
(And the times he does get there, but it’s too soon, hips still moving, trying trying trying but she had a long day, a fight with her mum, and it’s his mouth and his fingers then, and sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn’t, and she smiles at him anyway, and she means it.)
The precautions, and the forgetting of them, standing shoulder to shoulder in the small bathroom, watching for a line, and then another one. The stunned silence and the tentative grins and the logistics of who’s on top in the third trimester.
Their bodies, their aging, treacherous bodies, back spasms and knotted muscles and morning breath and body odor.
The interruptions, their friends, their family, the barking little mutt they found at a shelter, unlocked doors and stuttering explanations. The Doctor, pale and sweating and your mum and da love each other and, yes, they should wrestle for England. Next Olympics, he swears.
The best of it and the worst of it, angry and silly and bored and happy. Vacations and romance and nothing else to do, frantic and rushed and everything broken.
The reality of it is a lot less tidy than either of them expects.
(The reality of it is better.)
