Will is halfway up the path to their little cabin when he smells bacon. More correctly, he smells bacon burning, and it hurries his step as he tries not to slosh the pails of well water he's got in each hand. He sets them down just inside the door, kicks off his muddy boots and runs to rescue their breakfast. She looks at him with a sheepish smile, chewing on her bottom lip in that way that shows she's embarassed. Helen was never much of a cook. Or a cleaner, he's learned. He's shocked to find out just how much of their lives had been taken care of for them, he's even more shocked to realize how much he hadn't even noticed until it was all gone.
That morbid thought sends a painful hurt through his chest. She must have read his expression because her hand comes up to his chest and she rests her head on his shoulder. It's gotten so much longer since they'd moved out here. And she was letting it grow naturally, golden roots quite a site to see for him. He liked to run his hands through her hair, rubbing his thumb across them ('You can't just rub it off, William,' she'd giggled, squirming in his lap, 'That's not how it works'). "Will. The bacon." she mutters and he jumps to attention, pulling the pan off the wood stove, blowing on it as she produces a plate for him to scrape it out. "Nice and crispy," he joked, "Just the way I like it."
It took a little more than that to make her feel better though, and he chewed until the ashen meat was more of a paste, swallowing with a hard gulp. She was trying. That was all he could ask. "Yes?" she asks.
"Thank you." he says with a grin. She is once more in his arms, kissing him with the enthusiasm of a girl a fraction his age. "I love you." she tells him candidly, and he lifts her by the hips to sit on their little island. She strokes her fingers down his cheeks, admiring the beard he's got going. "You and your facial hair."
He chuckles, leaning forward to sprinkle her face with butterfly kisses. "I'm not so sure about it this time either. Maybe in another fifty years."
She shrugs a moment, considering it. "I don't see why not. All the time in the world."
Slowly, their smiles faded, falling into a somber quiet. "I love you, too." he says. He has to. They're the only ones they have left.