Wings

"...little caramel coloured grandchildren would be fabulous. I'm quite excited."

"Mu-uummm. He's a friend."

"A friend that sleeps in the same bed with you every time he visits."

"Ok, he's a friend with a really nice dick. But I... Look... Just don't push."

"Not pushing girly. Just saying, he's lovely, he likes you a whole bunch. What are you afraid of?"

"I don't want to talk about this."

"Lara. Darling, I'm sorry. I was..."

"What Mum? You were what? Wanting me to get my fucking hopes up? What if some pretty girl comes along and... You can see me, can't you? I know what I look like."

"He doesn't seem-"

"Just fuck it. I like where we are. But I'm... If I let myself love him... and then he was taken too... Just fuck this. Fuck this, Mum. I told you I didn't want to talk about it, but you have to fucking push everything. Jesus Christ!"

Then there are slamming doors. Slamming doors and a huffy looking, crying Lara strutting out across the veranda and off down the road to the windmill. She's followed outside by Elaine who is carrying a bottle of rum and a bottle of coke.

"Oops..." She says.

Eric laughs. "I'll get the ice; this could be a long night."

He stands and walks inside. Elaine takes a chair and pats my knee. "How much of that did you hear?"

"Enough." I rub my chin.

"Silly cow. She's afraid of falling in love with you, but the jokes on her."

"Oh?"

"She has been for ages and she knows it." And Elaine is still chuckling and slapping her thigh when Eric returns with glasses and pours us all rum.

"Um. Elaine... What actually constitutes a 'really nice dick'?" Eric laughs.

"Oh dear, you did hear everything." She laughs too. "Probably one a bit like yours."

"Thanks, I guess."

"But you know... Man-sized."

"Fucking cow." He chortles. "I'll pay that one."

Eric and I are discussing an old Commer Knocker he has in the barn.

"It's rooted. You can have the fucking thing."

"Eric, they're worth good money to the right people."

"So? It's worth fuck all to me. Dad loved it but there's a hole in one piston and god knows what condition the supercharger's in. Maybe you're the right people. If it's worth something to you, then take it. If you can fix it and get it back on the road, that would be worth it to me. Just seeing it run again."

"No. That's too generous. I'll pay you five grand for it. Take it or leave it."

"Bullshit boy. Bullshit. Our girly was moping around like she was one foot in the hole herself before she went up there to give you Sammy's things. I don't know how you did it, but if you can put that truck back together like you did with her then that's... Shit."

"Hmmph." She stomps and I try not to smile. "Fuck off inside Dad. Leave the rum."

"That's my ticket then." He says and takes his glass inside.

"You didn't come for me."

"Someone told me not to chase her once."

"Gimme." She nods at my rum.

She drinks the whole thing in one go and hands it back.

"You're supposed to not chase for a while, and then come looking. Are you stupid?"

"Probably." I laugh.

"Jaxon. I have a problem."

"Just the one?"

"Don't be a prick. Fill that glass up." Then she plonks herself in my lap and snuggles into my neck.

When I hand her the glass, I ask, "So the thing about problems is you don't solve them till you identify them. Help me out a little."

"Apparently, I'm madly in love with you. Have been for ages."

"Oh. That's quite a problem."

"I know, right."

"Is it the black thing? Because I could probably try some bleach or something."

"Fuckwit." She kisses me. Right on the nose.

"Oh, I forgot. I like your new nose. The little snouty bits are the same. Do you reckon you'll snore still?"

"Arsehole!"

"Hmm... Well here's the kicker. I've been struggling with the same issues for a while, too."

"Really Jaxon? Don't fuck with me now."

"Hmm. Here's this great chick but she's my angel girl's lover. That's a big 'weird' right there. The female-female thing for one and the fact that we were both grieving."

"I don't know how many times I've wondered if I just am holding on to every last memory you have of her."

"Me too. Your memories. I've quizzed myself about whether I just want you around because you bring her back."

"And?"

"And she's gone still. Regardless. I like that we can remember her, but do you know what I like more? I like having you around. I like your kisses and your triumphs, and I love... Well. I just love you too."

"Don't you fuck with me Jax."

I shake my head.

"You love me?"

"Can't help it. And I've been thinking a lot lately about those caramel coloured kids."

"Bullshit." It's husky sounding. "Jax... I always wanted kids. Three or four of them. Sammy said we could do ivf. Well that's a lie. She wanted to ask you for... But, I'm such a possessive bitch. You're gonna be sorry."

She kisses me harshly and I love it.

"You'll be so sorry." She shakes her head and laughs, "I told her there was no way on God's green earth that your sperm would ever end up in my body."

"Right. Um, that didn't-"

Then we're both laughing and she steals the rum glass again and downs it.

"So... Here we are. You know, she... I. I kind of knew it would always have to be me to have children and be the 'mum'. She was so driven."

"I know. Well not about you two, but about her drive."

"Oh god, honey. Jax, I have to go and apologise to Mum."

"No, you don't." Elaine says from the kitchen. "We've been listening."

"Fucking creepers!" She yells and I laugh.

"Can we have the rum back?" Eric asks.

"Fucking stalkers. Come and help yourself." She tells them then puts those pretty little lips on mine and nuzzles me with her now more symmetrically correct nose.

"Oh... I'm not sure." I tell her quietly while Eric and Elaine assemble themselves and fix their glasses of rum. "I didn't... Y our fingers and the surgery, but this was Nan's." I put it in the palm of her left hand.

"I missed you so much while you were in hospital. I worried about the surgeries and anaesthetics. Wasn't sure some days if I'd see you again. My head fucked with me and imagined all these terrible surgical problems. Made me worry you'd be taken from me too now that I want to build a life with you in it."

Her eyes open wide at that. Then they absolutely saucer as she unfolds her fingers like she couldn't three months ago and stares at the little ring.

"Maybe we can get it altered. Grandad found that stone on the side of the road in Nineteen-Thirty. He was driving a grader out at Thargomindah and stopped to have lunch and there it was all dirty and navy blue. He got it to a jeweller in St. George and had it faceted and set in that. Cost him fifteen pounds he said. It's not much but..."

Silence is broken only by mosquitoes and Elaine's tears.

Lara marvels at the little ring. It's white gold and deep sapphire blue. It's old so I'm not sure what it's worth to other people but to my family it's priceless. Mum gave it to me when I told her of my plans last week. Lara twirls it between her fingers. The fingers that couldn't move very well last time I saw her. The same ones she jerked me off with in the car.

Then she tries to put it on with her bandaged right hand.

"Hey. Hang on phoenix girl." I tell her and drop to a knee remembering Mum's cautionary warning to take a wooden spoon to me if I didn't 'do it proper'.

"Jaxon honey, I was always so jealous of Sammy. So jealous every time she said you gave her wings. I wanted someone like that for me. And here you are. You didn't help me fly, but when I needed to crawl out of my ashes you fitted me with phoenix wings. You're gonna be so fucking sorry, fuckwit."

I slipped it on. It fit almost. It made sense and slotted where it belonged. "Marry me please Lara. Make me the happiest fella in the world and I swear I'll do my best to help with your happiness."

"Yes Jaxon. Yes."

Elaine was blubbering. Eric was drinking rum and I was feasting on little pointy lips.

~~<>~~

"You can't stop the girl"

That was ten years ago now. Not to the day but the fact of Samuel Eric Waters turning nine last week means it was ten years ago.

"Are you serious about wanting children, Jax honey?" She asked me quietly as we lay beside each other that night I proposed. We were excitedly making plans for her to move to Toowoomba and let out her unit.

"Very. Does it worry you somehow? We have time. Plenty of time to think and talk about it."

"Haha. I told you that you'd be sorry, fuckwit. I'm twenty-eight. Not too old yet, but clock is ticking, honey."

"I turn thirty soon. I was starting to worry I'd never have family."

"So, the wedding won't be until late next year. I don't think it's going to be a small family thing... Up at picnic point where you showed me. Not where you took Sammy, where you took me down that drive under the gum trees."

"It's only January. Why so long?"

"I want it after the baby is born. Not when I'm big and fat, silly. I stopped taking the pill when I was in hospital."

"Oh..."

"For a mechanic, you're pretty slow to put things together sometimes. Now get over here and help me get this little family started."

"You sure?"

"Are you?"

"God yes."

"Just watch out for my hand, Daddy."

The first time I filled her that night she took me missionary. I crawled over so carefully, afraid of her hand and awed by what she was offering me. She was giving me her future. Committing fully. Giving me her body and giving me the possibility of children.

My eyes never left hers except to kiss her. She was wet. I felt it and smelled it and slid straight into her. Her ankles held me tight against her for a moment.

"Oh god, I've missed this Jax. Missed your touch. Your body. Your kisses. Your dick."

"I've missed you too, gorgeous."

"Ha. 'Gorgeous'. I wondered if you'd ever come up with a funny name for me. I like it. Gorgeous... You're probably the only human on the planet that thinks so."

"Dickhead. You are gorgeous. Heart, soul and body. Gorgeous."

"Well it beats the fuck out of 'babe'. Now come on. We're supposed to be making babies here."

She giggles as I get with the program and start working in her. It's been three months. Clearly for both of us. In just a few minutes she arches her back and throws back her head and I feel her clutching insides and her feet holding me still, buried deep inside her. I've been holding off waiting for her and with her release, my butt cheeks clench, my balls rise tight and my dick surges with waves of semen.

When I stop pumping into her and we fall together to kiss and embrace, she urges me, "No stay in me a little while. Stay there. Give them time to..." She giggles excitedly, "Do you think we made a baby?"

I don't know how to reply to that, so I simply smile down at her closed eyelids and watch as she rubs her abdomen with her left hand and smiles. I don't know if we made Sam that time. But we tried again a few moments later and then again in the morning.

As I stepped from the shower she slunk in through the door and sat to wee. She watched me shave and rinse and just sat there long after she finished.

When I reached for my clothes she said, "Once more before you take me home. Just to make sure."

Then smiling she bent at the waist and spread her legs apart to hold on to the toilet seat.

"Hard and fast Jaxon honey. Before Mum and Dad are up and about."

I filled her quickly that time. The thought of being caught out by her parents had me feeling like a naughty school boy and with no regard for her entertainment, I slammed as quietly and quickly as I could against her and filled her with everything my poor drained balls could muster.

"I hope we made it last night." She told me smiling as she stepped into the shower. "If it was that time, we're probably having a puppy."

I looked at her quizzically and she laughed, "Doggy style, get it?" And she closed the shower screen.

That was the beginning of our new world. She was moved to Toowoomba within the month. She came home with me that weekend but her furniture and so on arrived a month later. Once we'd decided we were making a baby, we put in a concerted effort at the task to hand. I think she claimed every room in the house like she was marking her territory. Even the deck one evening and a quick little exercise at the clothesline in the back yard one day.

Pregnancy suited her. She groaned about her changing body, but she glowed with it. So did her libido. She became insatiable. I was almost surprised that little Sam didn't come out with a dint in his head. Some days late in the pregnancy, she'd even come to the garage in the middle of the day and take me in my office.

I say 'take' because she would just strip my pants off as soon as the door closed and push me to a chair to use me like a life support system for the dick she craved.

There were no complaints on my behalf.

Samuel Eric Waters weighed six pound three when he was born. He was a long pointy little thing with dark black hair.

He's so much like her. She likes the word, 'determined'. I prefer 'pig-headed'. As he grew up, if he got a thing in his head, he would achieve it at all costs. The first toy she bought him was a mobile for his cot with little brightly coloured planes and he wasn't happy until he learned how to turn it on and off and make it change directions.

Now, model airplanes hang from the roof of his bedroom and he has a collection of drones. He has a kind of barn storming circuit set up outside. He flies them through the basketball hoop, around the posts on the deck, between the wires on the clothesline and all over the place. That is, when he's not got his head in a textbook or some on-line tutorial that his mum has found him. He desperately wants his own wings. Even if they're virtual. Probably preferably, if they're virtual. I tried to interest him in the garage but he has no clunky proclivities for spanners.

He was our ring bearer. He could barely toddle. But he was so damn cute.

Motherhood suited her even better than pregnancy. If she glowed with pregnancy she absolutely shone with motherhood. I was concerned she'd get really bored. I knew her passion and drive.

By the time little Sam was one, she had sold her units and used the money to finance, "Pheonix Foundation." She recruited Elly who had passion to burn and they started an online business which linked disabled veterans with services.

I'd come home greasy and wrecked in the afternoon and she'd be glowing and handing me a little man that needed his 'Da' and she'd be busy in the little laptop she bought herself until dinner time and I loved every moment of her enthusiasm for their scheme. Mostly I loved the way her pretty face beamed at me as she explained all sorts of things, I really didn't understand but she felt so very passionately about while I fed little Sam and had a beer or two.

She also started doing a lot of talking. Not just at me... She had a lot of paid motivational speaking appointments and occasionally she was gone for the weekend. Mum came and enjoyed 'Nan' time. I enjoyed my little mate, Sam and Lara would come home invigorated and expansive with more and more ideas every time. She was a virtual dynamo.

And then she was pregnant again.

She came home from the shops one Sunday morning when little Sam was about two and said, "Jax, honey... Fill me up. I want a little girl."

I did my best. My best was Joshua James Waters. Seven pounds neat. He's probably more like me. He loves pulling things apart and spent a lot of time before he went to school just hanging out in the garage with his extended family, Toby, Mick and Kaitlyn who has her own little girl now.

Her pregnancy with little Joshy was a bit different. She was distracted and cranky most of the time. She'd been offered another round of surgeries. The defence mob do look after their own. This time they were going to try and fix the skin on her legs and tidy up the last grafts on her neck.

"I don't see the need." She told me. "Sammy doesn't' care and you're so fucking easy. God... You'd fuck me in a heartbeat even if I took an angle grinder to myself."

"So, it's cosmetic?"

"Entirely."

"Well 'no' then."

"Jaxon?"

"No."

"You've never said 'no' to me."

"If the only purpose of this surgery is to... No... I'm not risking anaesthesia and infection for... No. But gorgeous phoenix girl, it's your body. It's your decision. I'll support you whatever you decide."

"You suck."

"Ha?"

"I wanted you to decide for me."

"Well, I think I just did. No. You're beautiful as you are. I like your legs. They look like what they are. Like a person used them to walk through fire for someone they loved. You should have them framed or something."

"I'm sorry I don't want to fuck."

"Okay. That was a switch."

"God Jax, it's been four months now. How haven't you noticed? Are you fucking Kaitlyn or someone?"

"Jesus Lara. No... You've met Michael. He's... No... She's my friend. He's my friend. And they work for me. I'd have to be mad. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we haven't fucked, Jax! Not in fucking four months! You're human and have fucking needs and I don't buy for a minute that you're just..."

Then she flops in the couch and starts crying. Little Sam comes in and looks at her.

"Da?"

"Hmm."

"What is fuck?"

"Oh shit, Sammy. Mummies just being stupid." She scoops him up and tells him, "Snuggle me little bug. I'm being a big silly."

I can't say it didn't bother me. I really enjoyed our sex life. Well up till then. She was an inventive lover. Elly had a lingerie party for Lara's hen's night and she added toys to our repertoire of bedroom hijinks. Nipple clamps and two vibrators, a little thing that sucks at nipples and clits and a few other dress-up items that she liked to wear briefly before they ended up crumpled in the corner while we sweated and moaned.

But this pregnancy just pulled the plug completely for her. Every now and then she'd make a guilt-ridden offer of a blowjob or something but her heart wasn't in it so neither was mine. Can't say I even felt much like rubbing one out. I mostly just got busy with family and distracted myself with work.

"I'm going to Mums." She told me over dinner that night. "Maybe a bit of time at home and a good old lecture from Mum will get me through this funk. Sam, you can either stay with Nana Waters or you can come with me. Up to you, honey but Dad won't be able to take you to work every day."

"Me wanna see Poppy. Take me on a tracka. Brmmm..." He drives his fork around the table.

She was busy the next morning while I got ready for work. In and out to the car and packing and hustling little Samuel around.

"Finish your breakfast Samuel Eric! It's a long drive and I'm not stopping for snacks. God's sake, Jax. You've got shit everywhere in here. Is it too much to ask that you put things back after you use them?"

"Sorry dear." I make a frightened face at little Sam and he giggles.

"Stop making fun of me you jerks!"

When she finally has the car packed and Sam strapped into his seat, she leans against the door frame to the bathroom where I brush my teeth and stares fiercely.

"Mwop?" I ask around my toothbrush.

"Right..." She points a finger at me. "You don't get a say in this. Just listen right?"

I nod.

"Steve's away." I nod at that too. He's off in Dalby all week at some land care thing.

"I've spoken with Elly."

"Hmm." I spit and rinse.

"I want you guys to start fucking again."

"Jesus, Lara." I squint hard at her. She doesn't look like she's about to let this go, whatever it is. "I'm fine, gorgeous. It won't always be like thi-"

"Don't give me that fucking shit. It's been fucking four months. It's okay for me, I have zero fucking sex drive. But you're fucking human if you hadn't noticed. I don't want you fucking the first pretty thing that smiles at you because you're all backed up. So just do this one fucking thing for me! Can't you ever just be less than fucking perfect, you fuckwit?"