Disclaimer: I make absolutely no claim to Desperate Housewives. This is all just for fun.

Story Summary: They're going to spend the rest of their lives together. Takes place pre-series.

Eighteen Down is Abie

A story by Ryeloza

It is a Sunday afternoon when Lynette first looks at Tom and thinks I am going to spend the rest of my life with this man. She knows this as though it's a simple fact, like how her hair is blonde or her chest is flat; inarguable. She is going to spend the rest of her life with Tom.

There isn't anything particularly special going on that day. They're still in bed even though it's after one because the night before they stayed up late watching The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. She's a closet western fan (something even Tom didn't know about her up until last night), and she's seen it enough times that she can quote lines from it. Usually that gets on people's nerves, but Tom just laughed and sang along any time the signature music flared up, and somehow it was just fun to watch the movie with him. When the camera spun around in the cemetery scene at the end, Tom had to close his eyes to keep from being sick. She teased him so tirelessly that he finally lifted her off of the couch, spinning her around in circles until she begged him to stop, but really it was just because she was laughing so hard that her stomach hurt.

But that wasn't when she first had the thought. It wasn't in the late hours after that, when they climbed into bed and actually slept the whole night through together (for the first time without having sex). It wasn't this morning, when Tom kissed her awake so tenderly that she thought she might cry. No, she realizes it now, at 1:18 on a Sunday afternoon.

Tom lies on his back, tapping the tip of a pen against his teeth as he considers the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. She's sitting beside him, pretending to read a book, but actually watching him out of the corner of her eye. Perpetually using her peripheral vision gives her a headache, but she's waiting for him to realize that "Irish Rose's fellow" is not "a lad" but "Abie" so she can see what he does. She's can't decide if he's bold or foolish for using pen to do a crossword puzzle, especially as he's not very good at it anyway, and she keeps waiting for him to ask for her help because she already knows that at some point he will. And it just dawns on her.

I am going to spend the rest of my life with this man.

She is going to spend the rest of her life watching him do crossword puzzles in pen, making irreversible mistakes that make the puzzle illegible by the end. And for what reason? He doesn't even like puzzles. Even now she knows he'll get bored halfway through and abandon it for her to finish, so why does he do this every Sunday?

She is going to spend the rest of her life sleeping next to this man at night. He doesn't snore (thank God), but he thrashes around in his sleep when he has a bad dream and never remembers to set the alarm clock at night. Even when they're at his apartment, she has to do it, and she still hasn't figured out how he wakes up on the mornings she isn't there. As it is, he doesn't get up with the alarm; he repeatedly hits the snooze button until the last possible minute he can get up or until she turns it off and prods him out of bed. Some days she's nicer about it than others.

For the rest of her life, she's going to share a home with a man who has an irrational hatred of vacuum cleaners, who hates to load the dishwasher but doesn't mind emptying it, who thinks that making the bed means pulling the comforter up over the pillows, and who is strangely possessive of his medicine cabinet. And yet somehow, none of that really bothers her because she knows he'd vacuum if she asked him to, and the dishwasher already seems like a fair compromise, and making the bed properly is something she actually doesn't mind doing, and the medicine cabinet will be theirs not his. It's all little stuff that will work itself out, like how she'll have to give up half of her closet space and start buying that more expensive brand of toilet paper he likes because he's so picky about it—things she doesn't really want to do, but she will for him because he's worth it.

They are going to spend forever eating meals together and watching television (at least they both prefer Letterman to Leno) and sharing a bathroom. Their laundry is going to wind up mixed together—socks and underwear and smelly t-shirts thrown into the same washer and dryer without any regard for boundaries. He folds his socks differently than she does. Maybe that's not such a big deal.

This is something that should scare her. She knows that. She shouldn't be sitting here with a smile on her face, privately knowing something she's sure hasn't yet crossed Tom's mind, and feeling so happy she could burst. But the truth is that the idea that she's going to spend the rest of her life with Tom is anything but terrifying. They belong together.

"Aw, crap. 'A lad' can't be right."

"Abie," she says with a secret smile. "The answer is Abie."