2am, Hollywood Hills

He reached randomly, and the cool emptiness next to him pulled him toward waking. Always the same thing when she stayed at his place… no matter how tightly she was wrapped around him at the beginning, sooner or later he had to go look for her. It was a big bed, and she tended to wander. She was as used to sleeping alone as he was used to sharing beds with strangers, and while his urge for distance disappeared when he was with her, when given enough space her habit of solitude remained. Nothing personal, she just kept forgetting she wasn't alone. When he stayed at her place, though, there was no room in that small bed for her to forget. There he could hold her all night, and feel her matching him breath for breath and heartbeat for heartbeat.

Tonight he didn't find her as he usually did, curled up toward the other edge, sleepily surprised by his touch but always willing to roll easily into his arms. He didn't find her on the deck outside the bedroom, where she sometimes slipped away to stare at the stars and the lights of the city.

He pulled on his robe, the soft satin brocade one she'd given him on his birthday, the one she said made him look like a Texas Cary Grant. He'd laughed, but he liked the way it felt next to his skin, and he loved the way she looked at him when he was wearing it.

She wasn't in the hallway, where he'd found her a few times when she'd gotten disoriented en route to or from the bathroom. Not tumbled down the stairs, just sitting safely on the top step waiting for him to guide her back to bed. She wasn't really a sleep walker, she said, more like a "sleepy walker".

There were no lights on downstairs, but the full moon was pouring through the glass wall that faced the canyon, so it was easy for anyone to find their way. Halfway through the living room he heard it, the slightest of fragile sounds, a breath dampened by tears, coming from the music room. She was curled up at one end of the sofa, backlit by the glow of the equalizer bars on the sound mixer, wearing his headphones, holding them clamped over her ears so not a single precious note went wasted in the empty air. Her eyes were closed, and she was racked with silent sobbing.

The first time he'd found her like this, he'd done it all wrong. He'd turned on the light, turned off the music, had taken the headphones and tried to talk her away from what he'd believed was an incredibly long-lived, unhealed grief. She'd calmed down and gone back to bed but she didn't talk, and when he held her he could tell she was shut up in herself. He hadn't really helped at all, and that's all he'd wanted to do.

Since then he'd figured it out. He'd never asked, and she hadn't told him, but he'd talked to Peter a time or two because Peter had a softer connection to the world and life than he did. Peter had helped him figure out that the times once in a while when Bonnie listened to Benny's music and cried her heart out it wasn't relentless grief, or a plea for comfort. It was more straightforward than that, and his inability to figure it out on his own had come as a surprise to the man who considered himself a hardcore pragmatist. It was like this: Bonnie still had all that love for her brother, but Benny wasn't there anymore to give it to. Really, where does that kind of love go when the person you love is suddenly gone? It's not like a breakup, where the leftover feelings can turn into rage or guilt or eventual relief. When somebody who is that much a part of you dies, the connection is cut but the love is still there like it always was. When the rupture finally heals, that kind of love can go to sleep, and from time to time it gets woken up again. By a color, a song, by anything at all. Even by loving someone else in a completely different way. When it wakes up it can't be shut off by logic, words or comfort; it takes its own time to calm down and sleep again. All it really needs is a safe place to happen.

Careful not to disturb the headphones, Mike slipped in between Bonnie's curled-up form and the arm of the sofa, stretched one leg out along the cushions behind her and gently drew her up to sit back against him, her hands still holding the earpieces tight against her head. The tape spun out, and the machine shut off. He wrapped his arms all the way around her then, as her clenched fingers relaxed and her head eased back against his shoulder. He waited. After a few more minutes, she slipped off the headphones and he took them from her and laid them on the sofa next to them.

"Okay now?" he whispered, and felt her nod. "Good." He hugged her a little tighter and tipped his head forward to kiss her wet cheek. She leaned into him, and sighed.

"C'mon." He lifted them both together. She faced him, finally, wearing a shaky smile, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

"Thanks, Nesmith."

He smiled down at her. "At your service, ma'am. Now c'mon back to bed. I'll be that guy on your right, in case you get lonesome."