"No, no, no, she can't do this," Juliet said, looking at the white-erase calendar they kept on the wall, color-coded by person and type of event. Her frown was large and caused sadness dimples on the sides of her face.

Gus had just erased "May 12: 3:42pm, Mira arrives at @ SBA," which was written in red, and had replaced it with a "?", written in a somber blue.

"Took time off, huh?" Gus said, walking over and massaging Juliet's newly-tensed shoulders, his fingers working gently on the fabric of her suit jacket.

"Three days," Juliet confirmed, sighing back into his ministrations, a hand going to her forehead. "I mean, it's not that I don't want to re-schedule, but getting this time was hard enough..."

"I know," Gus said, massaging a little deeper. "She'll understand."

"And come stalk me at work," Juliet said, laughing a little.

"And come stalk you at work," Gus agreed, planting a kiss on the back of her head. "She said she'd call tonight. Let's eat while we wait."

"Ooh, you cooked?" Juliet said, perking up instantly.

Gus raised an eyebrow at her. "Did I cook? Please. Cast iron wept."

*

"Darlings!" Mira cried out, sounding slightly crackly over the phoneline. "I've missed you both so much."

"Mira," they both said, in unison, exchanging slight smiles when they caught themselves.

"I wish you were here," she said, and she may have been yelling because of the noise in the background -- stampeding bison? a circus? an alleyway opera? There was really no way to know, and they knew better than to ask -- but the more likely reason was that she was as exuberant in missing them as she was in all other things. "You wouldn't believe how amazing it's been. I have so many presents for you guys, I can't wait to show you!"

"So what's going on with your arrival date?" Juliet said, fidgeting with a dry erase pen on the dining room table, spinning it in circles.

"Oh," Mira's voice instantly dropped three octaves, "right, about that."

"Your e-mail wasn't very detailed," Gus said.

"Right, wellll, it looks like I'm going to need to make a little detour to Denver for this thing, no biggie, it's just a favor my mom asked me to do, and I still feel kinda guitly about the whole twenty-three-hours-of-labor thing, so I was just going to pop in there and take care of it." Her voice went chipper again. "And then I'll be home in no time!"

"What kind of favor?" Juliet asked, her eyebrows furrowing.

"Um." Mira paused; they heard what sounded like trumpets in the background. "IkindapromisedherI'dsitinatthisfivedayseminarandtapeeverythingforher."

"Five days?" Juliet said, face falling. "Aw, Mira, that won't line up with my vacation time at all."

"I knooow, I'm so sorry, JuJu, you know I'm going to make it up to you the next time I'm in town, right?"

Juliet exhaled slowly. "Yeah, I know. It's okay."

Gus reached over, squeezing her hand. She shot him a grateful expression.

"I'll be back before you know it, promise! Anyway, gotta go, my harp's ready. Kisses!"

"Stay safe," Gus said, and Mira's end of the line clicked off.

"Think she'll bring the harp back with her?" Juliet said, standing up and setting her empty plate in the sink.

Gus smiled. "How much you wanna bet she brings back the harp teacher, too?"

*

"Gus," Juliet whispered, ten minutes before their clock radio set the the soft rock station was about to go off.

Gus' eyes opened widely and his gaze fixed on her with shocking accuracy for someone who'd been sleeping two seconds ago. "What? What's wrong? What happened?"

"Whoa, nothing, calm down," she said, putting a hand on his chest; he'd started to rise up and she pushed him back down. She shifted from standing to half-lying on the bed, kneeling above him. "I was just thinking."

Gus blinked, apparently still absorbing the fact that there was no emergency he'd gotten his heartrate up to 163 bpm for. "About what?"

Juliet looked back and forth, her mouth quirking.

"Flights to Denver," Gus said, reading her expression.

"They're on sale," she said in an excited whisper, hands gripping his shoulders and shaking a little in her enthusiasm.

"Check your e-mail," Gus said, arching his neck up and giving her a quick peck. "I forwarded you a copy of the seminar's itinerary."

"Continental breakfast?" She said.

"You know that's right," he said, and they laughed, her jumping on top of him and the two of them all getting tangled up in the covers.

*

"No, no, I'm sure it's this way --"

"Gus. It's not that I don't respect your completely wrong sense of direction, but the map says that Conference Room B is that way, and we're already ten minutes late and if we have to stand in the back of another --"

Although they'd both been gearing up to say more, neither Juliet or Gus managed to finish their sentences, because they were tackled to the ground by one-hundred thirty pounds of very, very happy Mira.

"You came!" She shrieked into their ears, lying in a gloriously colorful and happy puddle in the middle of them. "I can't believe you came!"

"Six months is too long," Juliet said, her entire face lighting up as she looked at Mira. She propped herself up on one elbow, brushing a curl out of Mira's face with one finger. "So we brought the reunion to you."

"Please tell us you got a room with a king," Gus said, one hand massaging his lower back. "This entire place is booked and we spent last night in a cheap motel."

"Oh, oh, oh," Mira said, waving her hands, "my room is gorgeous, I have to show you, just wait until you see the shower, you will die. Come on," she said, getting up, and holding out her hands to get Juliet and Gus off the floor, "let's go!"

Juliet and Gus each took one of her hands and they ran towards the elevator, Mira telling them all about her adventures as they went.

Aw, thank you! The second I saw the long-distance prompt I thought of Mira, because I can't imagine her staying in one place for very long, but I figured they'd manage to make it work.

Oh, thank you! I'm so glad the voices worked.

Thank you! And they're pretty adorable in canon, too, hee.

Aw, thank you!

Aw, thank you! I love Mira and I would say she's definitely worth the waiting, although it's hard to imagine being able to say no to Gus and Juliet's adorable puppy faces, which they both do so well.

“I still need to—”

“No, you stay in bed and rest,” Amber tells Wilson insistently, reinforcing her orders by firmly pushing him back onto the mattress. He looks very confused, as though he’s never been sick before.

“He’s totally faking,” House says.

“Believe what you want. But if you’re going to test that theory, you’re sleeping with Wilson. I’m not catching the flu and missing work.”

“You do realize you’re the only one here who likes working?”

Amber ignores his remark, turning back to Wilson, and says, “I’m serious. Don’t bother getting up. We’re adults—at least, I think House is, most days. You don’t need to take care of us.” Wilson nods, but still doesn’t look too happy about his predicament. Amber looks at House, raises an eyebrow. “Coming?”

“Question: if I stay in here, does that mean you’ll wait hand-and-foot on both of us?”

“No,” Amber says, not missing a bit.

“Worth a try.” House follows her out the bedroom.

Amber pokes her head back in to add, “And just ask if you need something!”

“Yeah, puppy eyes don’t travel nearly as well as voices,” House says mostly to himself. Amber stifles a laugh; it’s an accurate description of Wilson’s expression at the moment. She walks down the hallway, and when she’s almost at the front door of the loft, she realizes House is following her. “What?”

“We should run some tests.”

Amber can’t believe she’s hearing this.

Actually, she can.

“It’s the flu.”

“He has flu-like symptoms,” House says. “See, this is why you didn’t wind up on my staff. Well, technically—”

“Flu,” Amber repeats, grabbing her purse. “And try not to run any bizzarre experiments on him while I'm gone.”

~

When Amber returns home that evening, she finds House watching TV in the living room, still dressed in his robe, and appearing relatively mischief-free. She leans over the back of the couch and kisses his ear. “So is Wilson still alive?” she asks.

“Well, he did start convulsing, but you said not to work my magic…” House shrugs.

“You’re hilarious,” Amber says drily, already heading down the hall. She peaks into the bedroom and sees Wilson is asleep. Oh well. At least he can’t look forlornly at the…unfolded laundry. Amber sighs to herself and returns to the living room. “I’m curious, did you do anything productive today?”

House thinks for a moment. “I figured out how to make the VCR stop flashing 12:00.”

“We don’t have a VCR.”

“Oh. Then, no,” he says.

“What about dinner?” she asks.

“Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

“You’re going to wind up on the couch,” Amber says. “And don’t try to whine about your leg to get out of it.” She goes to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator to inspect its contents. After a few moments, she says, “What did you and Wilson have for lunch?”

“A fine delicacy called peanut butter and jelly. It goes on bread.” House manages to tear his gaze from Bad Girls Club for two seconds to look at Amber, and get why she’s asking. He breaks into a smirk. “You can’t cook.”

“Of course I can cook,” Amber says. “It's just like chemistry.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You can’t cook.”

“And yet I’m not the one who’s embarrassed by it.”

After a pause, Amber nods her head, conceding the point. She finally closes the fridge door and says, “I’ll get the menu if you get the phone.”

~

As soon as Amber wakes up the next morning, she feels it. She swears to herself and then pinches House to jar him awake. “Thanks, asshole,” she says, her palm resting on her forehead. “You lied.”

“And you’re surprised by this?” he asks. At least House looks like he feels like shit, too, even if he is smiling about it.

“No, I’m plotting my revenge.”

“Looking forward to it.”

“You won’t see it coming.”

“Bet I will.”

“Two hundred says you won’t.”

“It’s on.”

There’s a long pause, then Amber asks, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Flu sex?”

“Uh…no,” she says.

~

Wilson wakes up to find himself sandwiched between House and Amber. “What's—?”

“Shut up,” House mumbles, half-asleep.

“I’m kicking your ass, too, by the way,” Amber whispers in Wilson’s ear. He’s not entirely sure what’s going on, but then again, that's how it usually is. He doesn't mind too much.

Thanks! House just can't go with the simple explanation, can he?

He wears it so well ;)

Haha, thanks =)

There's not enough House/Wilson/Amber love in the world...welcome to the dark side!

This is super-cute; I really love the way the characters play off each other, and they sound oh so true to themselves.

Thanks =)

Alec was still drifting in that blissful post-orgasm haze, feeling loose and lazy and amazing—seriously, the world was just all-round awesome—when Eliot said, poking at Alec’s upper arm with his finger and at Alec’s calf with his knee, “Hey, shove over a little, huh?”

On Alec’s other side, Parker made a soft sound against his hip. It sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

Alec turned his head to look at Eliot directly. “You want me to shove over into Parker?” he said. “Because right now, man, she is dangerously close to my junk, and that is not a situation in which I want to make her mad.”

The sound Parker made this time was definitely a laugh, ghosting hot and ticklish against Alec’s skin.

“C’mon now,” Eliot said, “I’m hangin’ off the edge of the bed here,” and he actually sat up. How the hell did have the energy to sit up? Alec didn’t think he’d be able to move for at least an hour. Obviously, he and Parker needed to kick things up a notch in the Giving Eliot Brain-Melting Orgasms Department.

“I told you we should have gone to Hardison’s place,” Parker said, yawning. At least she seemed to be tired out. “He has a bigger bed.”

“No,” Eliot shot back, “what you said was that you wanted to have sex right this minute. Then you said that Hardison’s place had a hot tub but that my place was closer.”

“And then you pulled your shirt off,” Alec added.

He glanced down to see Parker shrug. “Same thing.”

Eliot glared. “Not the same thing.”

“If you want my side of the bed, we can just switch,” Parker said in a reasonable tone of voice. Then, before Alec could stop her, she started to clamber over him to get to Eliot's side. Alec let out a strangled noise and shot up the bed before she could knee him in the groin.

“Oh, please,” Parker said, rolling her eyes at him. “I’m not going to hurt your penis. I like your penis.”

Eliot, the bastard, was smirking when Parker crawled over to him and ended up half in his lap. “I like your penis, too, Hardison,” he said.

Alec closed his eyes and groaned. “Would both of you please stop saying ‘penis’? It’s not as sexy as you think it is.”

They were silent for a minute except for the soft, wet sound of kissing, and Alec didn’t even have to open his eyes to feel his dick stir to life again. Okay, so maybe an hour had been an exaggeration.

“Why does he get to be in the middle, anyway?” Eliot murmured, his voice tinged with a tone Alec had previously identified as gruff, with a nice touch of growly sexiness. Excellent; that meant Eliot was getting turned on, too.

“Good point,” Parker said.

Alec had been so distracted by Eliot’s husky bedroom voice that he hadn’t quite processed what Eliot had actually said, but his recent orgasm hadn’t deadened his brain to the extent that he didn’t recognize the speculative tone in Parker’s voice.

He cracked his eye open and held out his hands. “Oh no,” he said.

But the two of them were already on him, pushing and rolling him. Alec yelled and flailed his limbs in protest, but the next thing he knew he was sitting on his ass on Eliot’s cold hardwood floor with half the sheet tangled in his legs.

“Ow,” he said deliberately.

Parker was grinning at him, her head propped up on her hands, and Eliot was sprawled diagonally across the bed, smug satisfaction written across his face. As Alec watched, Parker winked at him and rolled over to kiss Eliot again.

“Oh, hell no,” Alec said “not without me,” and scrambled back up there to join them.

Ha, it is hard, isn't it? XD Thanks so much!

"Ow. Move your elbow, Carter."

"I can't. You move over."

"Um, if he moves over, I'm going to fall off the bed."

"Fine. Teal'c, can you move back a little so I can give Jack a little more room?"

"I cannot."

"Shit! Jack, what the hell?"

"Are you okay, Daniel?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Sorry. Her elbow was..."

"This arrangement does not seem advisable."

"No kidding!"

"Whose idea was it to do this at Carter's place anyways? The bed is too damn small."

"I didn't hear you complaining an hour ago."

"We weren't all lying on the bed an hour ago. If we had been, it would have been too small."

"What do you suggest, O'Neill?"

"King-size. Only way to go."

"Are you paying for it?"

"Jack, can you please let me get back in the bed?"

"Sorry."

"Okay, how about we all turn so we're this way, and then... Teal'c, scooch."

"Yeah, this is comfortable."

"Can you guys please stop fighting? We'll figure something out. Here, Jack, you lay facing that way. Yeah, back that way. Okay, now Sam, you turn the same- Yeah. Okay, now Jack, you put an arm around her. See? No elbows."

"And I, Daniel Jackson?"

"Teal'c, you get where you were before, but hold on and face the other... the other direction. Right, almost like a bookend. And I'll just... There. See? We fit."

"Daniel?"

"Yes?"

"I, uh, don't think Jack's interested in cuddling anymore."

"Are you serious?"

"Call it an educated guess."

"Fine, but can everyone memorize how we are, so next time we don't have to-"

"No memorizing. I'll get us a king-size bed this weekend if you just lemme roll over so I can kiss you."

"Okay."

Work-Life Balance
AN: Part of a larger universe called the Rabbit Hole AU that's all about these three.

***

Lisa's mobile rang. Cursing, she turned it off without even looking at the ID. Anyone who was important had his or her own ringtone; this call had been the generic ring. She turned her attention back to the readings on her scanner. "Power fluctuations are getting stronger. We're running out of time."

Two minutes, a flurry of motion, and a large number of bullets fired later, the Gr'nak who'd come through the Rift planning world domination was dead. Johnson holstered her weapon while Gwen made the call back to the Hub to let them know it'd been taken care of. Lisa didn't correct the premature celebration, but instead went to work on the Gr'nak's energy device, unfastening the cover and following Tosh's instructions in her ear on how to safely disarm it.

As she pulled wires carefully, Tosh said, "This isn't the first Gr'nak to try this plan."

"Good thing for us they only have the one plan, then." Behind her, Gwen and Johnson hefted the body into the back of the SUV. Crazily, Lisa had an annoying song from one of her daughter's favourite programmes running through her head: "What's gonna work? Teamwork! What's gonna work? Teamwork!" Parenthood rotted your brain from within, she decided, and pulled the last wire. The energy device failed to destroy south Wales.

When they were in the car headed back, Lisa remembered to check her voice mail.

"Hello, Mrs. Jones!" piped a perky voice. "This is Anita from Frost Lynch. I've got a list of homes ready for you and Mr. Jones to view. I've left messages at the other number you gave me," she added, with the perkiness dropping a little. "If you could call me back, I'd appreciate it!" She gave a number, which Lisa knew they already had on a magnet on the refrigerator with Anita's smiling picture printed on it.

She closed her phone.

"Everything all right?" Gwen asked.

"Fine. Bloody estate agent."

"Oh. How's the house search going?" Gwen was good at offering openings: not exactly prying, but allowing other people to overshare. It was how they'd met, months back.

"It's going fine. We just haven't had much time to look."

"I know what you mean. Rhys practically had to choose our house by himself."

Johnson, as usual, had nothing to add to the conversation. Lisa met her eyes briefly in the mirror, but found no emotion she could name. Lisa kept wanting to find common ground with the other woman besides matters directly related to work. However, an opening conversational gambit of, "So how do you feel about the fact that I'm sleeping with your girlfriend's father?" was simply not going to lead anywhere constructive, no matter what Gwen said.

Back at the Hub, Gwen handed the keys to the SUV to Ianto with a pat. Lisa offered him a quick kiss. "We have to talk about the house tonight."

He nodded, took the keys, and went to deal with the body in the car. She watched him go. One of the problems with working with one's spouse was trying to negotiate the boundaries between work and home. They'd been co-workers before they'd been lovers, and stayed co-workers after they'd married, and she thought on the whole that they'd managed a stable balance.

The outer door opened again as Ianto reached it, and Jack swept in with Andy and Mickey in tow. "Hope Street," he announced happily. "Now with two fewer Weevils." He handed Ianto the keys to that vehicle and gave him a quick kiss of his own.

"At work," said Mickey in a less than patient voice.

"Going," said Ianto, two sets of car keys in his hand and a flush creeping over his collar.

Lisa sighed, checked on the baby, then walked back to the lab she shared with Toshiko to thank her for the help. Balance was something that was much harder to achieve when one and one's spouse were dating the boss. Jack gave them orders every day, orders that could easily lead to their deaths if it meant saving the Earth. Some days she had trouble parsing that man as separate from the one who was not technically living with them but came to their bed almost every night and made breakfast for the children in the morning.

***

Ianto lost the coin toss to leave work on time. While Torchwood never worked to the clock, the agreement was that unless the world was in deadly peril, someone left to fetch the children from Rhiannon's place and feed them supper at home. Seeing as it was Lisa's turn, that probably meant spaghetti hoops for the older two. Jack didn't take many turns staying home with the kids when work called, especially late at night, but then, Jack rigged the coin tosses and thought neither of them had noticed yet. It was both exasperating and charming.

When the last proverbial fire had been extinguished -- a Melorian raider and her crew in a near-collision event, fortunately avoided -- Jack shooed out the rest of the staff, set the alerts to automatic, and then waved his own car keys at Ianto. "Need a lift?"

There was always that second question in the air. While Jack seemed to enjoy his time with them at the little house they were renting, and while he thought nothing of showing up uninvited, it was always with the quietest note of fear. Part of him expected to be told to go. The staff therapist wasn't permitted to disclose anyone's individual details, but Ianto knew that if he had access to Jack's file, the words "Abandonment Complex" would be written in red at the top. The manifestations of same were also exasperating and charming.

"I thought you'd never ask." And there was the relief, flickered past the bravado and gone again.

They didn't talk much on the ride home. The perils of living with someone one worked with included a much tighter list of safe topics for small talk. For example, Ianto couldn't blow off steam about his idiot boss or inept co-workers, and neither could Lisa, while Jack was no doubt dying inside to have just one person to complain to that he could have hired trained marmosets to do a better job some days.

This, Ianto mused, was why people had friends outside of work.

Back at the house, Lisa was putting the kids to bed after their baths, so Ianto tidied while Jack fixed the adults something to eat that wasn't out of a can. They tried, and failed to avoid bumping into one another as they went about their tasks, but the space had been small with the five of them, and adding another adult to the one storey house hadn't helped.

At last, they settled at the table with plates of something that looked like chicken and noodles, and smelled like garlic and butter. Ianto heard scuffling from the bedroom Callie and Kyle shared. Lisa saw his face and said, "I told them they could play quietly for a little while. You can both go in for kisses after dinner and tell them it's time to sleep."

Ianto didn't miss the slight emphasis on "both," and neither had Jack. He saw Jack smile around a bite of noodles.

Lisa said, "I heard from the estate agent today. She says she's found us some houses to look at."

Ianto groaned. "Can we make time on the weekend to look?" He glanced at Jack.

"Put it on the calendar. Lois can schedule you around a few meetings during the week if that's what you need to do."

"The Rift doesn't pause for house hunting," Ianto said.

"No, but if we know we're going to be down two people for an hour or two, we can work around it if something comes up. When Gwen was buying a house, she was called away all the time." Jack went to smile but it got caught in a memory somewhere and left him again. Ianto did the math and figured that Gwen would have been buying her house around the same time that everything went very badly for Jack. There was no good way to offer comfort to someone who'd survived horrors that had later been rewritten, although Martha seemed to understand.

Lisa said, "We should call Anita tomorrow. We have to tell her our specifications have changed."

"Hm?" Close to good schools, close to work, reasonable price range, probably a three bedroom and the girls would share when Isabelle was out of her cot. It'd be … "Oh."

"We'll be looking the in same neighbourhoods," Lisa said, "and I'm sure she'll be able to find something."

"It's going to raise the prices we're looking at."

Lisa shrugged. "It's only money." She looked at Jack. "One of us will meet with the agent to look when she's got a list. After we've narrowed it down, we'll plan an afternoon or a weekend, something when the Rift predictor says it's going to be quiet, and make a decision."

Jack nodded. "Just let me know when you'll want the time off."

Lisa look to Ianto for help. Ianto looked back, with no idea of what she wanted him to do. More precisely, he did know, but had no idea of how to say it.

Finally Lisa said, "Fine. I'll see if Lois can clear your schedule."

"If Lois can … " Comprehension dawned. "That'd be helpful. Thanks." Ianto wasn't sure if he should read the somewhat dazed expression as happy or worried. The problem with Jack's abandonment issues was that he often took them as a reason to be the one to leave first, at least according to rumour.

Ianto said, "Tell the agent we want five bedrooms. My sister is only going to believe Jack is sleeping on the sofa so long." Poor Jack, going through a divorce and needing to rely on the charity of friends, and so far, both extended families bought it.

Lisa found a slip of paper and began to write. "I'll want an office as well. We can turn the fifth bedroom into that, but I'd rather have a study or similar to use. What about the kitchen?" This she asked of Jack, pencil at the paper. "Any requests?"

"Counter space," said Jack. "Anything else can be bought later." His eyes locked on her hand as she wrote it on her list.

Ianto said, "A basement or a decent attic for storage."

Lisa wrote "storage," then said, "A real dining room."

"We should look at new furniture," Jack said, and Ianto only heard the catch on the "we" because he'd been listening for it. "If we're going to have a dining room, we're going to need a better table than this one." Lisa made notes on the other side of the paper. The noise from the nursery had ceased. They'd have to sneak in for goodnight kisses.

She said, "We'll have to purchase a washer and dryer. The children are dirtying two and three outfits every day."

Ianto nodded. He took their work clothes to the dry cleaner, but the piles of tiny clothes in the children's room were reaching scary proportions as the adults tried and failed to find time to do something about it. He'd been a stay-at-home father for a reason. But Torchwood had beckoned, and Jack had given him the look that said he already knew what Ianto was going to do before he did it, and "No" was no longer an option.

He summoned up that look now, and turned it onto Jack. The dazed expression faded, to be replaced by a familiar, rakish grin as Ianto said, "Tell Anita to make certain the master bedroom is large. We're going to buy a bigger bed." He stopped himself from commenting how none of them were small; Lisa was still sensitive about not having lost the last of the baby weight yet.

She smiled as she wrote down, "Bed. Big."

Jack sat back in his chair, limbs in a happy sprawl. "You're right. And that's going to require a lot of comparison shopping. We'll need to clear, oh, at least three days on the schedule as soon as possible."

Ianto said in his most professional voice, "I'll inform Lois in the morning."

Lisa set aside the paper. "I'll give this list to Anita tomorrow. Are we done?"

Ianto shrugged and Jack said, "I suppose we are."

"Good." She stood up and grabbed a hand from each of them. "If we're going to replace the bed, we should at least give the old one a good send-off."

*grin* Thanks so much!

The rest of the stories are on LJ, same user handle. In the spirit of Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, I won't put up a direct link until the 17th, but they're really easy to find.

(I took liberties with the "Mom" part after a conversation I had today with amadi. She gets credit for the punchlines.)

The facts pertaining to twenty-two hundred hours ship's time, stardate 2260.31, were relatively innocuous. The Enterprise was en route to a routine diplomatic mission on a planet about two days from Earth at their current speed. They were transporting Admiral Pike for the treaty negotiations. Beta shift had ended four hours previous. Jim was bored.

What he saw when he casually keyed in the Captain's override on his First Officer's quarters, however, was anything but. The Admiral's chair was resting in the center of Spock's living quarters and Spock's head was resting in Admiral Pike's lap, the Admiral's fingers gently caressing his scalp. The moment was more tender than Jim would expect from either man, but Pike's little smile as Spock rose--swiftly, but not suddenly--to his feet told Jim everything he needed to know.

"If you gentlemen will excuse me," Pike said calmly, rolling into the sleeping area and leaving Jim and Spock alone in the room.

"You're fucking Pike?"

"I assure you, Captain, that I have carefully read all fraternization regulations pertaining to the situation..."

"Yeah, I bet you have," Jim muttered.

"...and I would be happy to provide you with exact citations should you wish to verify..."

"I'll take your word for it. Does this mean you've broken up with Uhura?"

"Negative." A slight arch of Spock's eyebrow confirmed Jim's suspicions.

"You're fucking Pike and Uhura? My life is so unfair," Jim sighed, flopping into a chair.

"And Uhura's fucking Pike," Uhura added crisply, emerging from the bedroom as Jim simply stared.

"My life," Pike chimed in as he followed her out, grinning at Jim and matching his intonation exactly, "is so fair."

Sleeping nestled between Sirius and James, cocooned by their bodies, made Lily feel safe in ways she hadn’t since the war began. During waking hours, however, the bed was simply too small.

At first, when even kisses were tentative, the bed’s size wasn’t too intolerable, but as the weeks wore on and all three became bolder in their confidence, the number of misplaced elbows or the times bracing hands met air instead of mattress became unbearable.

Tonight was different. Smug grins explained their part in the bed that’s only bigger when they’re on it.

Lily did love her clever boys.

Thanks!

Keep On Loving You

Pooch drops next to Jolene on the couch, shaking his head when Jensen trots off with an exaggerated wiggle of his ass, earbuds back in place so he can sing—loudly—while he runs dishwater. Jolene can barely contain her laughter.

"Why do you encourage him?" Pooch sighs.

"It's cute," she says and pats Pooch's thigh, drawing her legs up and snuggling against his side. "And you have to love it when he wiggles his butt for us like that. He's just so—" Jensen draws her attention again when he whips into a spin, ending the dance move with another swivel of his hips and a bob of his head. Pooch wants to give Jensen dancing lessons, or maybe some sense, and Jolene looks like she wants to give him a hug. "Enthusiastic. About everything."

Pooch snatches up the remote, hoping to find something better for them to watch. "I don't think that was the word you were looking for, hon."

"You're right," she says and kisses his cheek, plucking the remote out of his hand when he's distracted so she can mute the TV. "Adorable was the word I wanted."