I disclaim. This really wasn't set at any time except before New Year 2002 / 3. It just happens, and yes, I still have the cricket bat at the ready if you even subconsciously wonder about stealing this. It may be truly awful, but it's mine.
Breathless, they broke apart. So much had happened in so little time: His mother was alive. Tony Dimera was her father's brother supposedly. Billie wasn't anymore brain dead than usual. Lexie's faked death had been revealed. Bo wasn't a murderer. Lexie was pregnant and no one knew if the child was Abe's or Brandon's. The Gemini twins were proven Dimeras which made them some kind of cousin of hers. Chloe was Craig’s child, not Dr Sykes’s, and pregnant in turn with Brady’s child. Philip had found love and solace in Mimi's arms. Nicole had married Colin and they had left for their honeymoon in Ireland. Victor was dating Maggie. Kate was back with Nicholas Alamain. Eric was back in town, wooing Greta. Austin was in love with the waitress from the Java cafe. Best of all, they were back together again after she had been kidnapped by mistake by a crazed Canadian 'Hours of Our Existence' fan who had thought she was Kiki Hurricane and he had rescued her with a little help from his baby brother.
The world was nothing to them. They wouldn't have noticed if they had been standing on the top of an erupting volcano so involved were they in each other.
Looking back on everything they had been through, it was incredible they were still alive, let alone still in love.
Diapers to dances.
All day suckers to sucker punches.
Cookies and milk to chocolate body paint and kisses beneath coconut trees.
Light hearted playing at aeroplane pilot to deadly serious playing at Survivor.
Oh, and the biggest danger of all: High School.
And now, at last, they had stopped throwing sand and snowballs at each other and begun throwing sensual stares and sexy glances.
A love like theirs neither fades nor flickers. It matures into the kind of flame that started the Great Fire of London. The passion between them now could burn down a thousand Cathedrals. It had burned a Dimera and from the ashes no new Phoenix would arise.
They'd had more than their fair share of problems.
Jabbing fingers to Jan Spears.
Dangerous dares to Dimera twins.
Broken bones to broken hearts.
But that was over now.
Only one thing was left between them, unspoken, unheard, not even glanced between them, but more glaringly obvious by the day that they were together once more.
He had said it first: with a snowman and her red lipstick.
With a thousand kisses beneath a million billion stars.
With every move of his body and beat of his heart.
With promises of a Someday yet to come.
She had answered him clearly: with tiny touches.
With comfort and strength when the world went dark.
With butterfly touches that said more than words.
With everything in her body and her soul.
Now all that was left was to say it aloud. To confess, and hope for the echo of their words to return to them.
Uncertainty wracked them both to the point of distraction.
You could promise 'Someday' but in the end, you were the one who had to make it 'today and forever after'.
He said it first. She had risked her heart on him time and again. It was his turn to take the risk.
He stepped forwards slowly, and cradled the back of her blonde head in his large hand.
"If I tried to show you how much I love you everyday for the rest of our lives together," he murmured, bringing her closer so that his vision was filled by the sight of her eyes, and his whole world was within her, "and you added all that love together, it would be but a grain of sand on a beach the size of the universe to how I really feel about you. I love you that much."
She blushed, and would have been embarrassed, but couldn't be with him. "I don't have your fancy words," she began, and a kiss on her temple told her that he didn't need them, "I can't tell you what you mean to me. The universe isn't big enough for all the love I have for you."
They kissed then, with the thoroughness and gentleness of lovers who know they have eternity to be together in, and aren't going to waste a single second.
"I love you," she whispered.
"I thought that was my line," the smile that had enchanted her since she could first focus her eyes on him warmed her and made her cheeks glow. Or perhaps that was the gentle movement of his hands.
She leaned her head against his shoulder, enjoying his warmth. "Do you remember when we watched that movie?"
She could almost see his grin broadening as she nestled deeper into his shoulder, listening to the music no one else could hear wash around them in sensuous waves. "Which one?"
"The one with the singer who was being stalked and fell in love with Kevin Costner for some box office reason." He wasn't distracted from her, though her very aura was enough to distract him.
"Yes." He waited for more. It came in a rush.
"Well," she lifted her head and stared into his eyes, "she sang 'And I will always love you'."
"And?" He was still waiting.
"Do you think she really loved him?" She was playing with his hair now, her fingers twirling and tugging it gently.
He frowned a little. "The singer or the real person?"
"Either." Another little twirl, another finger threaded into the thick locks of his dark hair.
"Maybe." She laughed then. She would never know how much he loved the sound of her laugh, the very sound of her happiness. "Why?"
"Because," she moved even closer and their breathless feeling returned. "I don't want you to laugh when I say this, if I sound a little like her."
"I won't." He promised it as seriously and solemnly as he could manage when she was so close and so warm.
She took a deep breath, forcing him to suck in deeply too. "I will always love you."
He didn't laugh.
"Promise me you won't laugh when I say this," he asked her with as much solemnity as she had shown.
"OK." A smile as bright as Christmas snow and as warm as a Puerto Rican noon time sun.
"Baby, not only do I love you more than anything else in this world," he was still solemn, but if she had looked into his eyes she would have detected the slightest hint of mischief in them, "but Whitney Houston has nothing on you."
He glanced down at her lovely face, his gaze falling as far as their bodies pressing together would let. "But if you ever decide to go for a Dolly Parton look," a wicked grin at last, though still laced with the gentility and tenderness of before, and a quick wiggle of his eyebrows, "I certainly won't object. Just as long as the short skirts and cowboy boots don't turn you into a bronco bunny."
Half infuriated, half amused by his obvious mocking of her solemnity, she did the only thing she could think of to shut him up and make him forget all about 'The Bodyguard'.
She kissed him good and hard, and whispered a promise of eternity into his ear. That had him forgetting everything but her, just as it was supposed to.
"You know what else?" He cuddled her closer as the kiss ended, but she moved just far away enough to look past his jaw.
"What?" She asked, amused and joyous, cheeks pink with pleasure.
"Every day from now on is going to be our Someday, love," he brought her in for another kiss, "and I will love you until long after eternity runs out."
She remembered another film then, and before drawing him into another promise sealing kiss, whispered, "Ditto."
This is not ‘The End’. Only the beginning of the middle…