The Long Way Home

Chapter Ninety Six: Breakfast In Bed

How I want you, give me just an hour.
You seem like an angel.
No one compares to you.

You're the best book I ever read.
You're the smartest thing I ever said.
You're breakfast in bed.

Train – Breakfast In Bed

For one night everything was O.K in John Sheppard's world. He slept peacefully through the night for the first time since Cassandra had left and when he woke up it was the early hours of the morning Cass was wrapped around his body, her knees tucked up behind his. Her palm was resting over his heart so she could feel the beating through her fingertips.

The feel of her warm breath on the back of his neck was a beautiful, reassuring thing to wake up to. His fingers clasped the hand on his chest lightly before he brought it to his lips. He kissed her wrist softly before Cass propped her head up with her free hand and nuzzled his bare throat affectionately.

"Good morning." Cass whispered, placing an affectionate kiss upon his rough unshaven cheek.

"Hi." John murmured, rolling onto his opposite side so he could face his wife.

It was hard for him to consider that this would be the last time he looked into her stunning sapphire gaze for a little while. He had forgotten what it was like to wake up beside his wife, to feel her love and want washing over them. He missed their lazy days together in bed, intertwined in one another. He missed the press of her skin against his in the darkness.

Back home he enjoyed listening to the sound of her shallow breathing beside him in the dead of night. It was pacifying to know that she was alive and breathing beside him. He had dreams sometimes, or rather nightmares that she was gone and he couldn't find her no matter how hard he looked. Those were the nights he woke up in a cold sweat, his heart racing and his chest straining with the desire to breath.

Lately John had been having these nightmares all too often. He would awake and reach out for her just to find Cass's side of the bed vacant and cool. It was those nights that he would remember everything that had happened between the two of them.

It would start with their first kiss when he had pretended to be ill in the hospital. He had been scared then, unsure and overwhelmed by the heightened emotions that had been building inside of him when he thought about Cass. He took himself through the journey of their relationship. He felt their moments of triumph and the harrowing tragedies. He relived everything when he was alone. He would lie on his side and recount the memory of her pretty features as if she lay beside him the same way she was now.

John reached, his palm cupping her face gently. His thumb traced over the delicate shape of her pert pink lips as she stared into doting hazel gaze. He hadn't got a chance to appreciate her last night, not like this. His rough hands cradled her cheeks as his lips brushed the lids of her closed eyes. She meant the world to him and he had this feeling churning up inside, this scared violent dread sitting in the pit of his stomach.

There was no reason for John to feel like this, the sensation of loss wasn't real. Cassandra was here under his hands right now but he couldn't help but think that something was brewing under the surface. There was a plan in place that was bigger than either of them and the sense of foreboding was almost oppressing. He had never believed in fate or a higher power but after he met Cass he had started to. There was no reason for the two of them to meet again other than destiny and he knew what it was like to feel the tide beginning to change.

"Your going to get frown lines." Cass informed him with that familiar teasing lilt.

Cass put her arms through her husband's, hugging him even closer to her loving, supple frame. She was his home and he didn't want to leave her here in this encampment. He wanted to hide her from the world and protect her but he couldn't. Cassandra made her own path, just as John made his. It was the way that their relationship had grown, they were both independent and there were times that it would be like this.

"I have to leave soon." John told her, closing his own eyes as he clasped his beautiful wife to him.

He inhaled her feminine, sweet scent absorbing her with every single one of his senses. His calloused fingers combed through her silky dark hair before trailing along the small ridges of her spine.

"I know." she whispered, snuggling into his firm grasp as he held her tightly. "But I just want a few more minutes with you like this."

John placed a butterfly kiss upon her forehead before allowing himself to be claimed by that resounding sense of serenity that was pouring out of Cassandra. She was happy right now and that was all that mattered to him. He could lie here in her tranquillity forever but that wasn't the way that their lives were. Maybe one day in the distant future...

Yet for now he could stay like this, even if it was only for few more minutes.