And the Snow Fell

"Tomorrow," he said, smiling as he stood in the hallway just inside the door and I didn't want to let him go.

"Tomorrow," I said, and I did something I'd never done before either. I kissed him goodnight in front of my parents and I walked him to the door and I watched as he climbed into his truck before I closed the door.

"Good boy," my Dad said, looking at his watch as the door closed behind Brad and I heard his truck start up outside and yeah, it was eleven forty five so even after all that I was still home before midnight.

"We're going out on a date tomorrow night," I said, smiling, and I wasn't even touching the floor, I was just floating and I could remember every kiss, every caress, every movement of his body against mine. On mine. In mine, and I knew I was in love, like, completely and there was never gonna be anyone else. Not now.

"Okay," my Dad said, and I guess gweilo or not, Brad'd passed the parental test. Maybe not with flying colors, but he'd passed.

He'd sure passed mine.

We married a year later, in my first year at College, and Brad had moved with me, gotten a job and looked after me right through my Nursing degree and they hadn't been great jobs, because if you were a white guy and a vet, like Brad was, the jobs were hard to get and the economy was just tanking what with all the new environmental restrictions.

That new free trade agreement, that just killed the factory jobs and the oil and gas industry, which was what Brad was kind of hoping he could get a job in, that just died with all the green crap and it was free this and free that for everyone but guys like Brad and inflation just took off like you wouldn't believe and the illegals, sorry, undocumented workers, were undercutting everyone and the businesses loved 'em.

No low interest student loans for Chinese students either. Too frigging smart apparently, although it sure didn't feel like that to me and that nursing degree cost real money but Brad'd found a job. Two jobs, actually, and we managed. I'd got myself a part time job and we'd turned down help from my parents, because Brad said I was his wife and his responsibility and we loved each other and that was enough for us and we scraped along and we were together.

That was more than enough for us.

"It's ours" Brad said, and he picked me up and carried me across the threshold and our buddies all whistled and then they started unloading the back of the truck and Eddie's van and Mikey's old F350 and that was about it, didn't take long.

"We've got a lot of work to do on this place" I said after the guy's had moved everything in and that didn't take long because we really didn't have that much and what we did have was kind of used or passed on or it'd been given to us by friends and by friends of friends. And none of that mattered, because we had our own house and we owned it, or at least, the bank owned it, but it was ours and we were together and okay, it was old and it needed a lotta work but it was ours.

"Who cares," Brad said. "It's ours, we'll do it but there's something else I want to do first and we both need a shower." He grinned and I knew exactly what he was thinking and he didn't wait for an answer. He picked me up and carried me into our bathroom and it was only us in our house so he didn't shut the door behind us and I smiled, watching his fingers as he unbuttoned the old shirt I'd been wearing for moving and peeled it off me.

My shirt, and then my bra and I was breathing a lot faster as he unzipped my jeans and knelt on the floor to work them down so that I could step out of them, and my socks followed and then my panties and I was just alive with excitement as he reached in and turned the shower on and adjusted the temperature.

"In you get, Jenny," he said, and he was watching me and peeling his own clothes off as I stepped into the shower and under the beautifully hot water and it wasn't a huge shower but it was big enough for two and I turned towards him, enjoying that expression on his face as the water flowed over me and my hands lather soap everywhere.

"Like me to wash your hair, Jenny?" His voice was so gentle as he slipped in with me and he had my shampoo in his hands.

"Yes, I'd like that," I just about purred, closing my eyes as he massaged shampoo into my hair, massaged my head, his fingers working my scalp gently, draining away all then tension and stress and I was already feeling so much more alive as I bent forward to rinse my hair.

"Again?" he asked.

"Please," I said, smiling as he shampooed my hair a second time and I knew I shouldn't because shampoo was so expensive but his fingers were so tender and I loved it when he did that. I loved it when he dried me and carried me out to our bedroom and lowered me to the bed as well and then he lifted me and turned me and I was kneeling for him, on my hands and knees and he was behind me, one of his hands cupped one boob and his arousal brushed me. Found me and his hold on me tightened.

"Ohhhhhh," I breathed, his cock nudging me, both his hands cupping my boobs now and I eased myself back onto him, sliding myself onto his cock, shuddering and moaning with the sheer exquisite pleasure of having him inside me.

"Jenny," he breathed, fervent with his love. "Jenny, I love you" and I shuddered as his cock slid inwards where I opened for him.

"I love you, Jenny," his voice was so gentle in the night.

"Brad," I moaned. "Brad, I love you. I love you," pushing myself backwards, pushing myself on to him, further and further onto him, feeling him slide up inside me as I pushed back. I was so wet, so dripping wet, I could feel that wetness on my inner thighs now as I jerked on his cock, moving myself, reveling in how wet I was for him. How ready for him.

"Do me," I moaned. "Do me now, don't tease me."

His hands moved to my hips, my butt and I lowered my head, arched my back, pushed my butt higher. Pushed myself back onto him and he always felt so big like this, big and long and hard and everything that I'd ever wanted as his hands gripped my hips and pulled me back hard onto him. I loved that feeling, knowing that he wanted me so much, feeling him inside me, so hard, filling me so full. All of his cock in me, all the way.

"Uuuuggghhhhh." All of him and he was pressed up hard against me and now he was moving inside me, slowly, fucking me thoroughly. Long slow deep slides, the sensations from those strokes rippling through my body from my head to my toes. Big. So big. So good. I began to push back against him, meeting his strokes, pushing myself back onto those long slow thrusts, taking him deeper still. Taking him all the way up inside me.

"I love you, Jenny," he said, his voice coming from above and behind me.

Yes ... yes... I love you, Brad." My own labored breathing loud in my ears, the wet noises my sex, his grunts of pleasure louder still, the slapping impact of his body against mine.

"Huughgggh... nnughhh... ooohhh... nnnaaghhhh... oooaaahhh." His cock worked its way deliciously up inside me again and again. I wanted to scream and moan and beat my hands on the mattress. I wanted to collapse forwards and just lie there as he took me and rode me, hearing my moans and sobs and little cries as he made love to me.

Now Brad was fucking me harder, pushing me forward, my legs spread wider, resting my weight on my forearms as he thrust hard into me. One of his hands left my hip, moved under me, cupped one boob, captured one nipple, squeezed it, tugged at it as his other hand moved under me, touching me where we joined, finding my clitoris.

"Ooohhhh .... Ohhh Brad..." I cried out now, forgetting everything except Brad's cock pumping into me so relentlessly. Making me his the way he always did. Completely his. His forever and my eyes were open now, wide open, staring blindly down at the mattress as he drove himself into me harder, harder still and I reveled in his taking, crying out wordlessly again and again until his relentless thrusts released the pressure that had been building and building inside me.

"Uhhh... uuhhh... uhhhhh." I cried out again, sobbing groans that echoed the rolling waves of pleasure that his pounding cock released within me. Waves of pleasure that washed through my entire body, a release so intense that the world seemed to spin and crash around me.

When it was over, when the world steadied, Brad was still fucking me with those deep hard strokes that felt so good, thrusting, thrusting into me, deep, hard, his groans of pleasure echoing through me. I was totally possessed, totally taken, totally Brad's.

"Jenny ... Jenny... I'm going to... I have to... Jenny I love you... I love you."

His fingers dug into my hips, pulled me back hard as he thrust deep, his groans of pleasure filling the night as his cum spurted out inside me, those hot jets of semen bursting out inside me, filling me. Filling my soul with such an intense happiness that nothing else mattered as I sagged down onto the bed, Brad half collapsing over me, panting, his cock sliding out of me, his cum flowing down my inner thighs.

"God, I love you so much, Jenny," he breathed, much later and that look on his face as he looked down into my eyes, I knew he did and I looked back.

"Don't ever leave me, Brad," I whispered. "I couldn't bear life without you, I love you so much."

"I'll always love you," he said, kissing my nose, my lips, burying his face in my ear as I clung to him. "Always and forever, Jenny Wong."

"I'm gonna cook some fried rice and chicken," I said, much later, showered again and dressed now because it was getting colder and we couldn't afford to turn the heat on until it got down to freezing, sitting on his lap and resting my head on his shoulder, and I'd rather have ordered takeout but that woulda cost money we didn't have and at least I knew where the wok was and the rice steamer was on the bench and then there was this knock on the door.

"Who's that?" I asked. "We don't know anyone here."

Brad lifted me off his lap and picked up his 1911 and headed for the front door and there was another knock and I had my 1911 out as well when Brad opened the door and this huge bearded guy was standing there, big as Brad.

"Hey, I'm Rick," the big old bear of a guy said. Gestured with his thumb. "Live a coupla doors down, we saw you two moving in. Figured you'd be busy unpacking so mama send me over to ask 'ya both over for dinner. Come and meet some of the neighbors."

So we did and they were real friendly and everything and they didn't give a damn that I was Chinese or anything and most of them were like Brad, they'd been in the Army or the Marines or the Navy and they'd been in the 'Stan or some other shithole and by midnight Haymaker was wound up real loud and they were teaching me the words because I'd never heard of them before because they sure weren't k-pop and I was singing away with them, sitting on Brad's lap with one of his arms around me and sharing that bottle of Budweiser he was drinking from...

And the last to find the bloody reason why

Again and again since I don't know when

The first to die has always been the working man

We didn't leave until around two maybe three in the morning and we went shooting down at the range with Rick and his boys and some of the others the following weekend and yeah, it was a bit of a rough neighborhood but they were just great neighbors.

"People like us," Brad said, and I kind of agreed because yeah, well, didn't exactly look like me but I felt like I belonged already and it was home and we really worked on that old place, fixing it up and Rick and the guys 'd drop by and help whenever we needed a hand with something and I'd babysit the neighbors kids and it was home and we got by and those next couple of years just flew by.

It was the hammering on the door that woke us up. Both of us. "What the...?" and Brad was rolling outa bed and he had his emergency gun in his hand and I reached under the bed and found mine and put it on the nightstand while I threw some shorts and a tee on and raced downstairs after him because he hadn't bothered.

"Cover the door," he said without looking and I did, because it really was a bit of a rough neighborhood even though we knew a lot of the neighbors now but at least the house was maybe ten percent ours and we only owed the bank about two hundred years of our combined salaries and we were thinking about that first kid and trying to figure out how the frigging heck we could afford it and I was even thinking about asking Mom and Dad for a bit of help without telling Brad.

Yeah, it was that tough.

"Rick? What the fuck?" Because it was three in the frigging morning.

"You heard the news?" Rick was carrying one of his AR's and even in this neighborhood you didn't need to go that far, although yeah, I always carried except at work, where it was verboten by the commissars and that scared me because one of the other nurses got raped in the parking lot at three am when she went off shift because they were too cheap to have security walk us to our cars and after that Brad got up in the middle of the night and came and picked me up when I had those shifts and you couldn't complain because if you did, well, fuck, they made some shit up and fired you and believe me, I'd seen that so I didn't say a thing because I wasn't stupid and we needed that money real bad.

"What the fuck're you talking about, man? It's three in the fucking morning." Brad wasn't the best conversationalist in the world when you woke him up in the middle of the night.

"The assholes blew her away. Her and her fucking family. Blew her plane outa the air, man. Turn on your frigging TV."

"Don't have one," Brad said. We didn't have TV. Didn't have cable. Didn't have satellite. Didn't have the internet for that matter because it was one more expense we could cut that last time my pay'd got chopped back six months ago. There wasn't much of anything else we could chop back anymore so Jesus alone knew what we'd cut next time. I didn't and I was already working a part time job on top of my nursing job and I was just lucky that was still full time because they needed a few of us that knew what we were doing to cover all the hires that'd got through because they couldn't fail them.

Didn't watch the news either, because the main stream media, that was all lies and bullshit and we just tried to ignore it all. We'd gotten out and voted though. Voted for Svetlana like everyone else we knew and we'd even gone to one of her rallies and oh man, you should've heard that crowd when she got up there and spoke.

"Svet...laaaana... Svet,,,laaana." They just went wild, and, well, we did too, and we got off our asses and voted for her like everyone we knew and even people like my Mom and Dad and she'd been elected with this totally overwhelming majority that even the blatant Ratdog vote rigging couldn't stop, because they could only do that in the states where they controlled the electoral counting and that hadn't been enough. Not this time and you could tell they'd been completely surprised by that and the fake media were just in frigging tears and we were all cheering and laughing and just over the moon because, well, fuck them.

Bastards had cheated their way into winning control of the House, but they couldn't cheat their way into beating Svetlana and she was the President-elect and she'd made a lot of promises to reform the system and turn the Justice Department and the Feds lose on the cheaters and criminals and we just all hoped she really could turn things around. Didn't think she could, not really, but we hoped and just seeing her elected was enough of a fuck you that we were all frigging ecstatic.

"Come on over," Rick said, and his face was just red and he was breathing hard and I'd never seen him mad like that. Never seen him mad come to think about it. So we went upstairs and got dressed and walked over to Rick's and Jesus, there must've been thirty people crowded into his living room because a lot of our neighbors were like us, on the bones of their asses.

Wolf News was just playing and replaying this shot of Svetlana's aircraft taking off and then, a few hundred feet into the air, there it was, going up in a fireball and pieces came flaming down and none of us could believe it and the mood was just totally grim but what the fuck could you do and in the end we just all went home and it was, like, totally depressing.

They got the Vice-President and his family two days later and he'd been in a motorcade, armored limo, security out the ying-yang, even those armored fighting vehicle things and he'd been coming in from the airport. They said the road'd been checked but after what happened next, who the fuck believed them. Me, I was at work in the ER when it came on the news and it was ANN. All News Network, total lies mosta the time but that was what work said you had to have on and it came on and I wasn't watching.

Never did watch that crap.

"Hey, look, they blew the redneck asshole up," someone in triage yelled, and I looked. We all looked and the captions were running and a good ninety percent of the ER were just looking, dead silent, and I knew I probably looked like that too.

Stunned. Disbelieving. Horrified, and then, well, fucking furious.

Because right over the top they were announcing that Ortez was stepping up as the new Prez because she was the Speaker of the House and next in succession or something and that old President, that asshole O'Rorke, he was gonna swear her in tomorrow afternoon, way ahead of schedule "for stability and continuity" and fuck, the Veep's limo had barely touched back down after re-entry because it'd been blown that high and they were announcing it and that had to be prepped because no way they could do it that fast. No frigging way.

I looked at Wilson, standing next to me, and she looked at me and the patient we were working on said what we both were thinking. "They fucking got the veep, the bastards."

We all knew who 'they' were and my shift was just about up and I was splitting blood.

"They can't get away with this," the patient said, and he was struggling to sit up. "We can't let them, not like this, the bastards."

"What can you do about it?" Doc Savage said, pushing the old guy back down because whether he wanted to or not, he wasn't going anywhere and he had insurance so they were gonna fix him up, which is more than they did for a lotta people these days because the health system was as screwed up as everything else and fuck, everything was just going to hell in a handbasket.

"No idea," I shrugged, and we all got to work on the old guy and yeah, he was gonna make it at least.

"Assholes," Doc said, after the old guy 'd been wheeled away and we were taking a ten second break. "You know what they're having upstairs in the boardroom tonight?"

"No," I said, and I didn't give a damn.

"Well, let me tell you..." Doc said, and he did tell me and right after my shift was up I walked out and headed home and I was, like, totally depressed because we'd all hoped Svetlana would change things and her Veep hadn't been a bad guy either and those assholes were upstairs partying it up and they were probably laughing about the veep getting it. Bastards.

Brad wasn't depressed. Brad'd been coldly furious and when I got home, half the neighbors were over talking quietly and the guys were looking grim-faced and I looked at Brad and he looked at me and I just knew he'd lost it and he was gonna do something and right then and there, I just decided that whatever it was, I was Brad's wife and I'd be right by his side.