Watching The Door
It had been three days since the breakout was reported on the news.
No, not breakout. Riot. They had reported it as a riot. A riot with no injured and one dead.
You took a deep breath, hands trembling as you poured two cups of tea. Sharon said, with the money you paid and the time needed to have the body removed by her associates, that it could take up to a week to get him home to you. Still, you poured him a cup of tea every morning anyways. It was better to be prepared.
Part of you still wondered why he had gone back to that memorial. It wasn’t worth it to wonder why he did what he did, though. Helmut was a man with a brilliant, but straightforward mind. If he chose to do something he was going to do it no matter what. For as annoying as that was you did love it about him. You sighed. Maybe it would have been easier if he’d said goodbye.
All of that was over now, though. You’d never have to worry about it again. Once he was home and safe and dead to the world you could live your lives in peace. All that was left to do was wait.
The clock on the wall of the kitchen ticked slow. Seconds felt like hours as you stared down at your steaming mug. You never drank it, not these days. It reminded you of too much. It gave you too much to lose. Every creak of the old wood floors as your old house settled around you for the day made you jump. It gave you hope only to pull it away when you realized it wasn’t the door.
Sometimes it felt like going mad, the sudden thrill in your heart that died just as fast as you realized that Helmut wasn’t waiting for you in the doorway. Other times you relished in it. That feeling meant you still had a heart at all. It meant there was still hope, that the emptiness in your chest you woke up to every morning wasn’t permanent. Still, hope without reason was a certain type of madness in and of itself.
So, you sat in the kitchen alone watching the steam from two full mugs rise and disappear into the air around you.
That is, you did, until out of the blue a familiar creak broke you out of your own thoughts.
The second you heard the soft jingling of the bells on the wreath that adorned your front door, it was as if the whole world had colors again. You shot up from your place at the kitchen counter. It couldn’t be, could it? With soft feet on the hardwood, you crept towards the living room.
There, standing in the doorway, was Helmut. He looked exhausted, a small bandage holding together what looked like a nasty gash on his brow bone, but overall he looked like himself. He was home.
“Helmut?” You whispered from your place across the room.
In an instant, his eyes shot up to meet you, and when he saw you he smiled. “Schatz,” he murmured. There was a strangeness to him, a warm, fuzzy softness around his edges that beckoned you closer. You’d missed him so much. When he opened his arms, dropping his small bag of belongings on the floor, you wasted no time running into his embrace.
There were tears, but the good kind, and they flowed freely from both of you as you reunited. He still smelled the same, cedarwood and mint. Part of you thought he would have changed despite the fact that it had only been a few months since you’d seen him last, but no. He was still himself. Still the Helmut you had fallen hard and fast for. Still in love with you.
Then he kissed you and it was like he had never left.
It was desperate, a plea or a promise or something in between delivered wordlessly through breathless presses of his mouth to yours as you let your lips meet madly again and again and again in the doorway. You didn’t know how, but as he kissed you then you knew it was going to be okay. There would be no more madness, no more running, just a quiet life at his side until you grew old together and moved on from one world to the next in each other's arms. That only made you more desperate to kiss him more.
When you finally had to pull away, both of your lips were swollen and red from the constant, rough contact. Neither of you cared. The only thing that mattered was that Helmut was solid in your arms. The rest could wait.
“I missed you,” he whispered, eyes misty.
You nuzzled closer to his chest. “I missed you too,”
As he stroked your hair, he tried to offer up some sort of placation for the choices he’d made. The choice to leave you alone.
“Schatz, I-”
“Shh,” You shook your head, “I don’t wanna talk about it right now. Can we just… can we just stay like this for a little while?”
He huffed out a laugh. “Of course. Whatever you’d like,”
So you did. You stayed connected there, simply holding each other, for as long as you could bear to. When you finally did break apart, the tea was long cold, but more could be made. There was a lifetime of tea left to make with Helmut at your side. That lifetime had just begun.
You couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.