Cam's in the kitchen, hands covered in flour and cussing at the pie crust dough, when the general level of mayhem in the house spikes sharply: another arrival. A minute later he can hear, over the sound of the cousins, a familiar voice; he grins and is washing his hands off by the time Momma hits the kitchen, Sam in tow.

But Lord, she looks like shit. Sam, not Momma; Momma's exhausted the way she always is at Christmas, trying to wrangle a house full of fifty or so kin and however many strays they bring home, but Sam just looks beat. She's thinner and leaner than she was last year, but that's not what makes her look so fragile; it's the shadows under, and in, her eyes. He almost says something, but she gives him one of those looks -- not in front of Momma, it says, and he's pretty sure Momma's already read her the riot act -- so instead he just gathers her up in a careful hug.

She's tense, and her body's thrumming. No bruises, he notes. At least, none he can see.

"Glad you could make it," he says into her hair. "Day early even. 'Course, that means you're going to have to help with the cooking." Christmas at the Mitchell homestead always starts a day or two early, when the more-distant clan start to converge. Cam's lucky enough to be dirtside for this one, luckier still to be free to take the full week, so he's been drafted into helping Momma for the better part of two days; his brother Ashton is hopeless in the kitchen despite Momma's best efforts, Ash's Cindy is near to bursting with their second, and Momma insists that if Cam's not going to bring her home another daughter-in-law, he can at least make himself useful.

"Fate worse than death," Sam says against his shoulder. "You really want to risk the emergency room with forty people?"

"We're up to fifty-one this year," he says mournfully, and she shudders with high theatrics. "The cousins won't stop breeding."

It's a promise of normalcy, of not-gonna-push; he'll grill her later, when there aren't children underfoot everywhere and a constant parade of adults in and out of the kitchen getting a snack or a drink refill or just looking for a breather for a minute before heading back out into the fray. He knows she'll be steeling herself for it. He steps back, letting her go, and hands her a dish towel to tuck into her jeans -- she knows better than to show up in anything fancy; it'd get dirty or stained in a New York minute -- and points her at the bushel of apples sitting on the kitchen table. "Peel," he says, and she sketches a salute and sits herself down.

Cam settles himself back down with his pastry -- it's always fussy when he sextuples the recipe, but they've got neither time nor space to bake each pie individually, even though his parents finally caved to necessity and put in the double oven two years ago. Between Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and all the birthdays, it gets plenty of use, even if Cam and Ash moved out years before, and besides, there's fifteen Mitchells and associated kin in a twenty-mile radius, so Momma doesn't lack people to feed. He keeps an eye on Sam while he works. She's skittish, shying whenever anyone comes barreling in or whenever there's a bang or a crash from outside the swinging door, but he'd been expecting that, so he looks past it.

She's not sleeping, he thinks. Perhaps not recently, perhaps not at all.

Still, he's got twelve pie crusts to roll out -- apple, blackberry, pecan, Gran'ma's chess pie. Cherry and rhubarb and shoofly and peach, and then one each of the chess pie and the peach and the pecan and the apple for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow night. He'll have time to fuss later; for now, he has to cook. She works quickly, deftly, on her peeling, and she has a sweet smile and pretty words for Aunt Annabeth and Uncle Lou and Uncle Fred and all the cousins, Mary Frances and Little Jerry all the way down to Sara Nell, who's seven and calls Sam "Auntie Sam" with the lisp of two missing front teeth. But she's got her back to the wall and a line-of-sight to both doors, and he can't help but notice she puts down the peeler or the knife so she can have her hands free any time someone else comes bursting in.

He catches her sneaking apple wedges into her mouth as she's slicing; usually he'd smack hands for that, but she looks like she hasn't had a decent meal in a month of Sundays, so if she's hungry now, he'll let her be. They'll feed her up right until she leaves, at least. And Momma will probably send her home with leftovers. No matter how many people they have, there are always leftovers.

"Should bring some of your team next year, if they don't have anywhere else to go," he says, testing out the waters as he starts cutting the strips for the lattice-work. "They can stay at the hotel if you don't want to inflict us on them."

Her head comes up, startled at the thought, and he can see the minute when she starts to find something funny; he grins at her laugh, because it's good to see. "Daniel would be okay, he'd just plop down with Uncle Al and start talking Sumerian literature --" Uncle Al teaches archaeology down at U.T. Austin; Cam files it away, because ancient Sumerian is a weird hobby for an Air Force man to have. "And the colonel and your dad would be best friends in a heartbeat. But I can't exactly see Uncle George and T -- Murray getting on all that well."

T'Murray? Cam doubts the guy's a Vulcan. "More the merrier," he says. "We can lock Uncle George in the shed."

"Who's locking who in the shed?" Cam's cousin Kelly says, on her way in with the baby on her hip.

"Uncle George," Cam assures her, and Kelly nods in perfect understanding as she gets a bottle of juice out of the fridge (and sticks a finger in the potato salad to taste; Sam, noticing, throws an apple peel at her.)

The baby starts fussing, and Kelly bounces him a little. "Can we stick him in the shed, too?" she asks wistfully. "I remember when I had a life. Really, I do."

"Hand him on over," Sam says automatically, and holds out her arms.

Kelly surrenders the baby in a heartbeat; her husband, Cam's father's brother's son, is stationed overseas, and hasn't been able to get home in a long damn while. He bets she'd be more tired of being the sole parent, except it's tradition in the Mitchell clan that when one parent's deployed, the other gathers up the kids and moves in with whoever's got room. "Bless you," Kelly says, and settles on down right next to Sam while Sam fumbles a little before getting her arms in the right places.

Cam remembers when Sam was awkward with the kids, but that was a long time ago, and he's pretty sure she alternates between using visits home to scratch her itch for wanting her own and going away wistful that she doesn't have one yet. Kelly claims the apples and the peeler while Sam and Cady are getting acquainted, and by the time Sam's settled in with the baby in the crook of one elbow, Kelly's grilling her about what she's been up to, Sam's starting to relax, and Cam can safely turn back to the pie.

It's like that for most of the rest of the afternoon -- Sam stays in the kitchen with him the whole time, and he's not sure if she's hiding out from the noise, trying to ease herself back into the chaos that is Clan Mitchell, enjoying the chance to spend some time with him, or just genuinely in a mood to be helpful. Maybe some of all of them. They actually order pizza for dinner -- fifteen pies for twenty-two people, and there's nothing left over but crusts -- because the oven's been busy all day. Momma gave up on Christmas Eve Eve supper after Dad's accident, when Dad couldn't help wrangle ingredients too well anymore, and they just never picked the tradition back up.

Still, it's a merry evening, and a good one, and Cam misses his people so damn much even though it's like he never left. There's a big to-do about Ash's promotion to Major, and Little Jerry (broader than Cam and about as tall, but his father, Dad's youngest sister's husband, is Big Jerry and always will be), who's the family disgrace -- which is to say, a Marine -- just got another sergeant's stripe. Calla Sue -- Cam's still a little fuzzy, but he's pretty sure she's his second cousin -- is finishing up her Ph.D. at Duke, nearly done with her dissertation -- it's got a long-ass title even she can't remember, but it's got something to do with math and physics, and she and Sam tune out the rest of the world and throw techno-babble at each other for a while. Peggy's pregnant and both she and Del are over the moon about it. It's comforting; every time he starts to question what he's doing with his life and why, he stops and remembers that he does what he does so families like these, gatherings like these, can be safe and possible even halfway across the world.

*

It's his year to get up at the asscrack of dawn to put the turkey and the ham into the oven, and Sam's yawning pretty early -- yeah, she's worn through; he can see it in her eye and the way she carries herself -- so they both excuse themselves at around the same time. They're not full up yet -- they won't have people sleeping on floors until tomorrow night -- so they've got the bedroom to themselves. He's already dozing a little when she gets into the shower and slides in under the covers next to him.

She kicks the sheets and the covers out from being tucked in at the bottom of the bed, which he always forgets to do before sacking out. She hates feeling confined when she's sleeping. He doesn't say anything as she tucks herself up against him. It's only a double bed -- he remembers being so damn thrilled when his parents had bought it for him, twelve years old and suddenly feeling like a grown-up boy with a grown-up bed -- so there's not as much room as he'd like, as she'd probably be comfortable with, but there's room enough and he likes the feel of her against him.

She takes the outside of the spoon -- usually does, says she likes him keeping her back warm all night -- and he puts a hand tentatively on her hip. She's been flinching whenever anyone's touched her all night, which is a lot of flinching. They're a touchy people. She doesn't quite pull away, but she doesn't lean into it either, and her muscles are quivering under his hand. He sighs a little, but only inside, and strokes her flank once before bringing his arm up and letting it fall over her waist.

"Sorry," she says, too quiet in the dark. She can read him too well; he's never been able to lie to her, not even with his body.

"S'okay," he says, easy and free, and shifts his weight until he's got his chin on the top of her head. "You wanna talk about it?"

"Not really." And just as he's about to take her on her word, she says, out of the blue, "My father's dying."

It kicks through him like a horse's hoof to the head. "What?" he asks, and would sit upright, pull her up as well to face him, except for the fact he knows she'd hate it. But he holds on a little tighter. Feels like just the tip of the iceberg, truly, but it's something, even if it's only a piece of what's bothering her, and it's a start, and oh, Lord, his heart breaks for her.

She laughs, wildly. It's not amusement; it's nascent hysteria. "Cancer. Two months? Three? If he's lucky? And he -- he wants to make sure I'm okay, he wants to make sure I'm settled, and -- I can't talk to him, I can't tell him anything, and he has no idea and he can't even be proud of me --"

"Baby," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say, and gets his other arm underneath her to wrap her up and hold on. "Oh, God, baby, he knows how amazing you are. He has to know."

But she isn't even hearing him. It's all pouring out of her in a rush, like she's been holding onto it for months. Which she probably has. He's the only one she talks to, he thinks; even if she and her squad are close, his Sam doesn't let people that close unless she's known them forever; he's always been her exception. And she can't even tell him things like this on the phone or in letters. God, he wishes he could see her more often. "--so much stuff I wanted to tell him, so much I wanted to let him know, and I can't even be in the same room with him for more than ten minutes without being back in the same damn old argument, and -- God, I haven't been able to sleep right in what feels like months and I can't even tell you why --"

"Baby," he says, feeling the heat of her tears splashing over his arm, wanting to be able to take it away and make it stop hurting more than he wants to breathe. There's nothing he can do but pull out the old platitudes: "shh, it's all right, it's okay, shhh, baby, I'm so sorry," over and over again, rubbing his chin along the back of her head, touching her everywhere he can reach in the hopes some of his love will shine through. He'll keep murmuring nonsense in her ear for as long as he has to.

She sniffles and burrows her face down into the pillow. She'll be mortified in the morning, he knows. But it's best for her to cry it out now. "--like we can't even catch a break," she's saying, indistinct and fuzzy. "Can't get ahead, can't slow down, can't even catch up, and -- oh, God, Cam, I'm terrified --"

And that's the heart of it, right there. Whatever it is, whatever she's doing, it's big enough that she's frightened beyond belief that she's going to fuck it up, and that it's going to be bad. And knowing that -- well, it frightens him, too. Because he can't imagine anything she could be bad at, and if it's big enough that she's this terrified, that means it's important.

He wonders if she's admitted she's scared to anyone else. (No, of course she hasn't.) He wonders if she's admitted she's scared to herself. He'd be willing to lay money that she hasn't. His baby girl gets by on pretending she's a robot half the time, because in the career she's chosen, a smart woman, a pretty woman, has two strikes against her already without being a General's daughter and trying to live up to it to boot. There's enough talk about her to begin with, enough that Cam heard it even before they'd met, and there've been things spoken in his earshot he'd never repeat to her in a million years. She knows better than to give them any ammunition, and if that means closing off her emotions even from herself, well, so be it.

So he just holds on, and he tells her stupid things like "it's all right" and "it's gonna be okay" and "you can make it through anything you have to, baby," but he doesn't once tell her not to cry, because judging from the sound of it, this has been building up a long time and if she doesn't get the chance to let it out some, she's like to go blind with holding it back. And her tears start small and work their way up to whole shuddering spasms, deep wrenching sobs that quiver through her body and translate back through his chest to take up residence in his throat, but she doesn't make a sound past the gasping for breath, and he knows it isn't just because there's a houseful of people she doesn't want to wake.

But eventually the sobs slow, and the tears trickle to a halt, and finally, with him stroking her hair and whispering low nonsense into her ear, she drops off into a restless and sodden sleep. He lies there in the dark -- she's on his arm, and it's going to be asleep in another twenty minutes, tops, but he'd rather lose feeling in his fingertips than wake her, not given what she's said about not being able to sleep. Maybe she'll sleep better if he's there to watch over her. He doesn't hold out total hope, because she's been shying at shadows all night, holding herself back every time someone moves too quickly around her, but he's not a restless sleeper and maybe her brain will assign him to the category of "safe" and not alert those subconscious sentries.

He pitches over the edge of sleep himself thinking of what it is that could breed such instincts down to the bone, of what it is that could scare his Sam so deep she'd lose sleep over whether or not she could stand up to it. He's honest enough with himself to admit that he doesn't exactly want to know.

When he wakes, it's slow and gradual, coming up to the surface and retreating while he's not quite sure it isn't a broken dream. She's kneeling between his thighs -- he's shifted to lying on his back the way he usually prefers -- the flash and glow of her bare breast luminous in the moonlight. He's dazed. He hasn't slept long enough. Her hair is on end, every which way. Her eyes, red and swollen; her face, dry and full of resolve.

Her hands, stroking his dick: relentless, desperate, the opposite of tenderness.

She can tell the minute he's conscious enough to recognize what's happening, because she shakes her head just as he's about to voice confusion. "Don't," she whispers, and whatever he was about to say dies on his lips at the harsh rasp carried there.

Instead, he reaches down and wraps his hand over hers, stilling them both, and blinks the haze of sleep out of his eyes. Her breath stutters, and she knocks his hand aside, her eyes blazing hot and then fizzling down to shame a second later. "Sorry," she breathes, letting her hands drop and turning away, and he pushes himself up on his elbows and suddenly understands she's chasing after something she couldn't even name.

He tugs one of her hands loose from where she's let them fall in her lap and brings it to his lips. Turns it over and presses a kiss into her palm, closes her fingers over it. Her eyes are wide and wild as they meet his, and he closes his eyes for a little bit longer than a blink, trying to drag himself awake enough to be aware, to pay attention, to figure out something to say. Then realizes there's nothing he could say, nothing that would do anything to ease out whatever's riding her, and he sighs a little (but only inside, where she can't see it) and brings their joined hands back down.

He can't tell if she's looking for comfort or oblivion, if she's looking for a connection with someone who isn't involved in her daily life or if she's trying to prove to herself that she still can make someone feel something if she wants to. He wishes he could tell, because whatever it is, whatever she needs, he wants to give it. But she's not saying anything, not even meeting his eyes anymore, just leaning over to her side of the bed where her duffel's sitting on the floor and rummaging, reaching, until she finds the condoms she's looking for. And she'd brought them, he thinks, drifting back off on that sea of exhaustion, half-dozing already despite the awakeness of his body, and that says something, but he's too detached, too distracted, to realize what it is. She tears one free and rolls it on to him with neat, sharp motions before he can protest. If he would protest. He's not even sure.

And she's not in the mood for foreplay, not in the mood to be touched and tasted, and he can tell that too; even if he were awake enough to offer, awake enough to provide, she'd brush him aside. She kneels over him, sinks down on his dick, and he can feel the tight taut heat of her, stretching and shifting around him. She breathes out, and he can't tell if it's a sob or a sigh.

They stay there for an instant, suspended, and he grips her hands in his tightly enough to grind bone against bone and tries to tell her without opening his mouth: whatever you need, baby. Always.

She looks down at him, and the moon paints her face distant and edged, a pagan goddess. And maybe it's the moonlight, and maybe it's the darkness, and maybe it's that it's the middle of the night and he's half-dreaming still, but for a minute she looks like a stranger, a hard sharp woman with glowing eyes. Then she moves, and she's just his Sam again, tired and upset and looking to him for some reassurance that she's still there inside her own skin.

It's the middle of the night, and the rest of the household is asleep. Sound carries in this old house, and he remembers every inch of motion he can make on this bed before starting it squeaking. So he shows her, lifting his hips, rocking into her, feeling the velvet gloss of her even through the latex sheathing him. And she bites her lip, nodding once, knowing what he's saying, and then takes up the rhythm herself: flexing her thighs and gripping him tightly around the hips, working herself back against him at an angle so sharp as to be almost painful but which he knows is designed to bump the head of his dick right against her sweet spot with every stroke, even as she's grinding her clit against his pubic bone. It's designed to get her off quick and explosive, and he's quivering with the need to move against her, but he knows better than to break her stride.

But it doesn't take long before her hands are tensing against his, gripping even tighter, and her body seizes up around him. Just on the edge, and he thinks she might be swimming in that awful tension between needing it to stay just the same and needing to stop everything and concentrate on it, on the potential of her orgasm sneaking up around her edges, and he tries to time his offering just right: let me. She gives him that inch he needs, and he plants his feet down on the bed and flexes, his thighs burning, his hips straining, trying for it -- right there, like that, the way she's been showing him, tough and rough and fast, and there go the springs, squeak squeak squeal but he'll have to hope nobody's awake enough to hear it or curious enough to go looking for who's making the noise. She's biting her lip and reaching, wordless plea, and he tries for it, tries to hold on and stay just there, just the way she needs him, and she's almost there, but he can tell by her face that she needs something else to make it the rest of the way.

"Baby," he whispers, guttural with need for her, and he tries to let go of her hands to reach for her -- a thumb on her clit, maybe, something else to add to the mess of sensation she's chasing -- but she's holding him so tightly he can't break free. He fumbles the rhythm, and she snarls, low soft growl. He casts around, trying to keep her where she needs, trying just to be there, hers for the taking, and she whimpers frustration, slams herself backwards, ass knocking against his hips, hard enough that one of them is probably going to bruise and he can't guess which. He's about to try to get a hand free again when her spine ripples, her thighs go tense, and she comes with a bitten-off squeak.

She freezes, and he's trying to figure out if that means she wants to stay there and hold on for a minute or if everything's suddenly so sensitive she needs for him to stop -- he's seen her either way, and it's tough to tell even at the best of times, and this isn't near to the best of times. He's about to ask, because they've never not been able to ask each other what would be right, when her eyes seem to focus right back on him. And it makes him shiver, and not just from the chill of the room, because now that she's seeing him, he can realize that she hasn't been. Not until just now.

She's warm and wet, over him, around him, and the room smells like they're doing exactly what they're doing, and for just a second, one heartbeat before it's gone, he wishes he was anywhere but here. And then her face changes -- apology, chagrin -- and she's sliding off him and squirming backwards before he can even react.

Shame, retreat -- but no; she's stripping the rubber off him quickly, curving her hand around him again, and this time it's a far more familiar touch, the one she knows is an echo of the way he touches himself. He's two steps behind, has been since he woke up, and he's still not sure what the hell is going on here, but she's got herself tucked in between his thighs and is taking him into her mouth, tongue curled around the head of his dick, hand curled around the base, and her other hand reaches between his legs to cup his balls and say without words: your turn now.

It's the last thing he remembers thinking, because she knows his body about as well as he does, and there is tenderness and care in her touch. But it makes him wonder, once he's through clutching the sheets and biting back the noise, once he's pulled her up to sprawl back over him and he's stroking patterns along her back, where she learned the rest of it, this almost-wrongness that's never been there before. Whether she's playing out things she's been doing lately, or whether the desperation comes from not having an outlet for those impulses at all.

She can feel him thinking, maybe. Through his skin, through the curve of his shoulder where his head is pillowed. He can feel her thinking, and it's sad, because at least a little while ago, whatever else was happening to her, she wasn't thinking. Not like this, the relentless overdrive of her shuffling through facts and replaying snippets. He can feel the minute she comes to the conclusion that she's done something she needs to apologize for, and he drags his hand up her back and strokes her hair before she can open her mouth.

"Don't," he says, softly.

She's trapped where she is, his hand in one direction, his shoulder in the other, but he can feel her trying to pull back so she can look at him anyway. He doesn't let her. He isn't sure what's written on his face right now, but he's pretty sure he can make his body and his voice tell her the necessary things.

"Cam --" she starts, and he shushes her again before she can finish the sentence.

"I said, don't, baby," he says, and means it, because there's nothing she has to apologize for. He's worn straight through, and he's pretty sure she is too, and they'll have (hopefully) another two days (if she doesn't get called back suddenly, if whatever grace of God that got her here doesn't evaporate, if if if) to deal with it then. "It's okay. I've got you. I've always got you. You sleep."

And she does -- restless, edgy sleep, but sleep nonetheless -- but he doesn't. It's only a few hours until he has to be awake and in the kitchen, and with the things swirling around in his head, well, he's a little worried about what he'd dream. He stays there, staring into the dark, and the weight of her head on his shoulder is a comfort, because at least it means she's got someone to lean on.

*

He's two hours into preparations when he hears Cady starting to fuss upstairs in the guest room that doubles as a nursery when the whole clan assembles -- the babies are always the first ones up. He's halfway through stuffing the turkey and his hands are filthy, so he can't go grab the boy before he wakes the house; he resigns himself to company in the kitchen sooner rather than later, a passel of people looking for coffee and breakfast and getting underfoot every time he turns.

But Cady hushes up quickly enough, and a minute later he can hear the floorboards creaking, and Sam (in a pair of his sweats and a faded old Academy t-shirt that might be his, might be hers; they have identical ones, and they're both fond of them) comes padding barefoot into the kitchen with Cady held against one shoulder.

"I didn't have any trouble finding the diapers," she said. "But I think he's hungry, and I'm not exactly equipped to feed him."

Cam's still up to his elbows in turkey guts, but he wants to go and hold her anyway. She's nearly transparent in the morning light, like he could see right through her if she turned the wrong way, but the minute he thinks that he thinks no, that's wrong: she's solid straight through, tangible, real. Worn down to the whipcord-essence of her, but what's left behind, well, what's left behind is tough. Always will be.

"Let Kelly sleep in a bit," he says. "He won't starve for waiting." He gestures with his chin to the laundry room just off the kitchen. "I think there's a baby seat in there; plop him on in and let him sit on the counter and watch."

"See," she says, and there's a little hint of laughter in her voice that makes him glad to hear it, "I thought you were joking when you said your family starts cooking lessons before you can walk."

"God forbid," he says, and he's laughing a little too, and this is close enough to normal that he doesn't have to worry, not as much. Like the daylight chased away the nightmares, asleep or waking ones. And Sam stuffs the baby into his seat and plops him down on the counter, right where Cam points with his chin, and Cady fusses a little but Cam tells him to hush, his momma will be down to feed him soon enough. Just a typical Christmas Eve morning; Sam finishes the last of the coffee he made for himself when he finally slid out of bed, starts another pot (there'll be someone up to drink it before it can get cold or stale), comes by with her mug in both hands to rest her cheek against his shoulder and check on his progress. It's comfortable. Warm.

"What do you need me to do?" she asks. He can hear both apology and promise in her voice: apology for last night, promise that she'll set it aside, as much as she can, and let it be for now. Christmas Eve is the big gathering. He'll be in the kitchen all day, fighting with Momma over who's going to be the one to do all the work; then there's dinner, and presents (Calla Sue built the matrix of who's gifting whom this year, which they have to do or they'd all be broke and stuck opening packages for six days straight), and dessert, and then midnight services and to bed to wait for Santa.

She'll take strength from it, he realizes, suddenly, and it all makes sense about why she moved heaven and earth (he presumes) to get here. Not to see him. Or rather, not just to see him. She came for the chance to be a part of this, of something normal and rational and familiar, to get away from the pain and misery her life (he's realizing now) is made up with, day to day. She's here with his family for the holidays the same reason she's been here with his family for the holidays the past ten years running: because they take in strays and make them family, and they do so without making anyone feel like a freak -- or rather, like the kind of freak who fits in with a family of freaks. She's here because it's the closest thing to real she can find, and looking at her, he knows "real" is exactly the thing she needs.

So he turns his head and kisses her good-morning, soft and gentle, and hopes she'll take it as exactly what it is: no apology necessary, baby, and don't you insult me by trying to give one. "Potatoes could use scrubbing for the home fries," he says. "The troops'll be stirring for breakfast soon."

And she claims one half of the split sink to scrub potatoes in, and he trusses up the turkey and heaves it into the oven, and he can hear water running upstairs and the floorboards promise they'll have company soon. And he gets the turkey settled, and hip-checks her gently out of the way to claim the other half of the sink to wash his hands, and she bumps her shoulder against his in companionable silence. And here, like this, in the calm and quiet spaces, he can't even see any trace of the woman who shared his bed last night, even when he looks for her.

"I love you, you know," he says, turning off the faucet and drying his hands on the sides of his thighs. She turns, startled, and the sunlight catches the edges of her hair and turns it to burnished gold.

"I love you too," she says. Automatic, but no less heartfelt. Then she frowns. "What was that for?"

He leans forward and brushes her lips with his again. He'll make sure, for the rest of the time they've got, to touch her as often as he can, even if she's touchy about it, even if she shies away, because that's what he does; it's what they all do. And if normal's what she's here for, he'll give her normal with every inch he can, and if that winds up being the only thing he can give her, well, at least it's something.

"Just realized I hadn't said it in a while," he says, and turns away to start the batter for the biscuits before the hordes sweep in and demand to be fed. He can feel her behind him, quiet, confused, and he knows without looking the minute she shakes herself and bends her head back to her task, setting the rest of it aside. Maybe they'll talk about it later; maybe they won't. But until then, there's family to be fed, and she knows as well as he does the satisfaction that can come from taking care of the people you love.

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