This is a fic for STEAMM Day (if you're unaware it's just a day for everyone to pitch in with all things to do with Sybil/Tom, Edith/Anthony, Mary/Matthew). I don't really know how good it is, but it was quite fun to write.

Complete Family Exhaustion

"You've got your phone, haven't you?" Anthony asked his wife.

"Yes, all three of us have, but you needn't worry. You've got Tom and Matthew as well – they know what they're doing!" Edith replied with a smile on her face. Of the three sisters, Edith was the last to become a mother. Sybil and Tom had Belle, and then Mary and Matthew had George. Sybil and Tom then had their second child, Susannah, just before Edith and Anthony found that they had their first on the way, whom they'd named Josephine after Anthony's late mother. None of the children were by any means 'newborns', but Anthony still felt that Josephine was too delicate to do anything and there were times when Matthew and Tom felt that their own children were a little too fragile, despite the fact they were becoming ever more independent. Belle was six and was rather outspoken, though it was impossible to tell which parent she'd got that from the most. She had her father's blue eyes with slight flecks of gold and green, and she had her mother's dark hair and rosy cheeks. She was also a bright child; she loved school, and was currently at the top of her Year 1 class. George, her eldest cousin, was five and was a year below Belle in School. Like Belle, he was one of the oldest in his class, but he was also only in reception, so didn't have much to judge on when it came to whether he liked and disliked school (for him it was more about making friends and having a good time). Susannah was only two and a half and seemed to be growing up to be quite headstrong like her parents and sister; she knew what she wanted and would always find a way of getting it even if her vocabulary wasn't perfect. And then, the youngest of the cousins was Josephine, at only a little over a year old. She'd been born two months premature so she'd always been fragile, though she was doing well and had been for the past three months or so. But despite this, her father was still worried about her all the time.

"We'll be back in a few hours; it won't be too bad, I promise," Sybil said, mostly to Tom, but also looking at her two brothers-in-law. And then, only to Tom, "You've done it before with Belle and Susannah, love."

"Yes, but not with four children all at once," Tom protested.

"Oh, come on sweetheart, there are three of you against four children, you're not that outnumbered," Sybil said, trying not to laugh at his pouts.

"You underestimate the power of the younger generation, Syb!" Tom said, smiling. "Especially when three of the four can travel around the house and cause havoc everywhere else!"

"We probably ought to go," Mary said to her younger sisters, "if we want to be back in time for supper."

"I suppose we should," said Edith. All three women said goodbye to their husbands and children, telling the children to be good and wishing the grown men luck. The three ladies walked out of Sybil's front door into the biting chill of the wind. Mary and Edith were visiting Sybil for the week, as it was Christmas week and they'd decided they'd spend Christmas day together: Robert and Cora had taken Violet on a Christmas holiday in America to keep her out of the worst of the weather and Matthew's mother had gone to visit old relatives in France, so the two youngest generations of the family were left to fend for themselves this year.

The three sisters had decided to get some last minute Christmas shopping done before the big day. Although… actually, all three of them were highly organised and efficient, so they weren't shopping for anything in particular, instead it was more like window shopping at Sybil and Tom's favourite market. The sisters had been at the market only a few minutes when they walked past a sweet shop and they unanimously agreed that a sugar supply was needed, so they walked into the small, toasty shop. "Hi, Gary," Sybil said as she saw the tall, dark-haired man in his fifties standing behind the counter.

"Afternoon, dear. I see you've got some friends with you today," he noticed, cheerfully.

"Yes; Mary, Edith, this is Gary – Gary, Mary and Edith are my sisters. They've come down for Christmas."

"Hello, ladies," he addressed Mary and Edith. "Enjoying it here?"

"Yes, thank you," Edith replied, as she and her sisters began to wander around, looking at sweets. "The children are loving it!"

"Oh, I bet they are!" Gary laughed at his thoughts. "I remember when my cousins came to stay when I was a child. How many of them have you got running around your house causing havoc then, love?" he asked, addressing Sybil.

"Four," Sybil said over her shoulder, picking up two red and white striped candy canes for her daughters. "We've got Belle and Susannah, obviously, and Mary's son and Edith's daughter."

"Not leaving Tom to look after all of them, I hope!" Gary teased.

"No, no. I wouldn't be quite that cruel! The brothers-in-law are doing their bit as well."

"The children are being quite excited," Mary explained, "with it being Christmas in less than a week and having cousins to play with, so we've decided to take the afternoon off from hard work and come shopping instead." Soon they'd all picked out sweets for themselves and for their loved ones at home, so they thanked Gary and continued shopping.

Back at Sybil and Tom's house, Josephine was sleeping peacefully, which surprised all three men as the oldest three children were in the kitchen with Matthew, trying to make a cake. Tom had gone to answer the door, so Matthew was left to keep three small children under some sort of control. But Belle ran off after her father with mucky fingers and ran into his legs as he shut the front door and began to turn around. He had a parcel in his hands and Belle asked what it was. "It's a Christmas present for Mummy, Belle."

"What, though?"

"It's a book called Oh Dear Silvia, honey."

"Oh," said Belle, who had never heard of the book before. She then ran back into the kitchen with Tom behind her. There was flour all over the table and a little more on the floor than when Tom had left the room, but he didn't mind – if he was cooking with Sybil it wouldn't have been much different. They'd managed to do a decent amount of work when Susannah tipped the bag of flour over. It completely covered Matthew and gave Tom a fair coverage as well. Remarkably, all three children had managed to avoid getting showered in white dust. Tom and Matthew laughed when the children laughed and thought nothing of it. They were having fun, even though the room and the people in the room were a complete mess. They managed (somehow) to pour the mixture into a cake tin and get it into the oven. Matthew said,

"George, why don't you and the girls go and play for a bit and we'll make the icing a bit later?"

"Okay," George said to his father. So he and his cousins ran upstairs, traipsing flour around the house as they went. Tom cleared the kitchen table to make space so that they could cool the cake down as well as have some room to make the icing once the time came. Matthew started to mop the tiled floor to make it appear that nothing had gone wrong. Once they were done, the only thing that appeared to be out of place was the flour all over them, but they decided not to change their clothes just yet, as they knew that they were going to end up with more food all over them by the time they finished making the icing and decorating the cake.

Tom and Matthew walked into the front room where Josephine had woken up, but wasn't complaining about anything and Anthony was sitting with the telly on a low volume. The men collapsed next to their brother-in-law and fixed their eyes on the old episode of Doctor Who that was playing quietly. Then the phone rang. Tom reached over to the small table next to the sofa to grab it. "Hello?" he said, wearily.

"Hello, love, what's wrong? You sound a little warn out," Sybil said through the phone.

"Oh, hi! Well, we've made cakes and all I can tell you is that it's even more stressful than when we make them by ourselves – but we made a similar amount of mess, so I suppose it's not all bad!"

"That's only because it's not possible to make more mess than we make, sweetheart!" Sybil teased. "I was only really ringing to see how you're doing. It's been an hour and a half; we should be home in another hour or so."

"Oh, great, so we're only half way through?" Tom joked down the phone.

"It won't be too bad! No need to whine quite so much!" They both laughed. "But you're okay are you?"

"Yes, we're all fine here. How much shopping have you got done?"

"Quite a bit. We've stopped to have a cup of tea, but, as I said, we'll only be another hour or so," Sybil explained.

"Okay then. Well, I guess I'll see you later."

"Alright then. Bye, love – I love you," Sybil said.

"I love you too. Bye, darling," Tom said to end the conversation, letting them both put the phones down.

Before long, Sybil, Edith and Mary were shopping again. The girls found a book stall and indulged themselves in the books they saw. Some of them were well known – Pride and Prejudice and Alice in Wonderland – but some were books that none of them had ever heard of. Some were hardback, some were paperback and some were leather-bound. There were all sorts. Edith found a book for Anthony that she thought he'd like, Sybil found two books for herself and one for Tom and Mary found one for herself, but couldn't spot anything that she thought may interest Matthew. "Sybil, I thought you were complaining about not having any more shelf space," Mary said suspiciously.

"I was," Sybil confessed. "So we'll just have to get more shelves, won't we? One can never have enough books, Mary. I'll make space for them. You know perfectly well that I love books almost as much as I love Tom and the girls."

By the time the three sisters were on their way home it was about 5 o'clock. They hadn't actually bought much, but they weren't really expecting on spending a fortune. They were there for the quality time together, really, and as a way to have some time away from husbands and children. Sybil parked the car on the drive and they all trudged their way towards the front door, where Sybil got out her key and thrust it into the lock. They were happy to be in the warmth and once they'd put their bags down where their relatives couldn't get at them they each went to find their husbands. They were all in the kitchen, as it happened. Anthony was holding and bouncing Josephine in his arms, watching the chaos, as his nieces and nephews were helped by his brothers-in-law (who actually weren't much help at all) to ice the cake. Belle and George climbed off the chairs they were standing on so that they could greet their mothers again. Susannah got Tom to lift her onto the floor so that she, too, could give her mother some affection. Edith walked over to Anthony and greeted both him and Josephine with a kiss, before Edith took her daughter in her own arms. Once Belle, George and Susannah had finished hugging Mary and Sybil they ran back to the table to continue to make a mess of the icing on the cake, which they insisted was a masterpiece. In the short gap between them letting go of their mothers and getting back to the table, their parents were reunited. "It looks like you've been having fun!" Mary said with a smile before kissing Matthew on the cheek.

"Well, either having fun or getting stressed and covered in flour. I suppose it depends which side of the fence you're on!"

"They're the same thing, aren't they?" she answered with a smile. Tom greeted his wife with a kiss on the forehead.

"Buy anything good?" he enquired.

"Yes, some things," she responded. "And how, my gorgeously incompetent man, did you manage to get flour all over your clothes and…" she reached up to his dark hair, "… there?" She dusted some flour from his hair and gave him a kiss. "You're less than hopeless, you know?" she said unmercifully with a cheeky grin. "No, no, no, no, no…" Sybil said rapidly as she quickly reached out to the table where her youngest child was attempting to crack (but it was actually more like squishing) an egg into the bag of flour. Sybil managed to get the flour out of the way just in time for the egg to splatter all over the table and all over Susannah. She clearly knew she wasn't biding by the rules as she laughed fiercely once her mother had recovered from the panic. The cake had, in actual fact, been covered in icing; the ingredients and cooking utensils just hadn't been put away. Mary turned to Sybil and said, "How about we go up and give these poor children a bath while our chaps clean the mess up?"

"That sounds like a jolly good idea!" Sybil said. "Maybe you can earn the title of slightly hopeless rather than completely incompetent!" Sybil grinned at her husband. Mary followed her laughing son as they climbed the stairs and Sybil followed with Susannah on her hip and Belle just in front of her.

"Can we have the cake for pudding with dinner tonight, mummy?" George asked.

"I'm sure we can, but only if you get washed and squeaky clean and in some clean clothes!" Mary smiled at her son. Sybil went to turn the water on the fill their bath tub, knowing that that three children of two and a half, five and six wouldn't mind sharing a bath in the slightest. They all knew that they could splash water at each other which made the experience of getting washed rather more fun.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Tom and Matthew were clearing things away and wiping surfaces down as quickly as they could with help from Anthony, so that their wives would be satisfied with the cleanliness of the place for making supper. Edith had gone up to hers and Anthony's room to change Josephine's nappy and to avoid the chaos of the kitchen. It had been a rather hectic day so far and they were aiming to get things done quickly so that they could stop for a little bit – even if it was only ten minutes – before the rest of their families descended the stairs. But there was no such luck. The men had been sat on the sofa, finally able to relax, for barely two minutes when their excited children and wives came into the living room. All three of the children were now sparkling clean with new clothes on. George wore his favourite pair of jeans with a dinosaur T-shirt, Belle was wearing a red dress with a red bow in her dark hair and Susannah had on a light blue skirt and a green top, matched with green tights. "You all look very clean and smart!" Tom said to his daughters and nephew.

"They do indeed," Sybil said, walking over to her Irish husband. "Unlike you! Which one of you men have had the worst deal? Who needs a shower first?" Sybil said in her motherly tone to Tom and Matthew.

"Daddy does!" Belle and Susannah chorused together. Sybil smiled at him.

"Go on then, daddy – clean yourself up!" Sybil sent her husband off upstairs. She then called after him, "And let Matthew know when you're out so he can have a shower before we start eating dinner."

"What are we having for tea?" George asked aimlessly to nobody in particular.

"Macaroni cheese," Sybil answered. "If that's alright." George and the girls nodded at Sybil. "How about you lot watching TV while we go and start cooking, okay?" she said, bending down and passing George the TV remote.

"How come he gets the remote?" Belle whinged.

"Because he's a guest, Belle," Sybil said and then she and Mary walked into the kitchen together.

"I'm not sure I'd give him the power of the remote control!" Mary confessed as they began to find what they needed to start cooking a meal for ten people.

Edith soon joined Sybil and Mary to help cook. Although the sisters didn't always get on, there were times when they revelled in each other's company and this time they played a Christmas CD to get into the spirit of things. Everybody else, now clean and smiling was watching children's TV in the front room. It didn't take long for the food to cook, but the women had a laugh while they were preparing it. They discussed how Christmas day was going to work in terms of watching children open their stocking presents, and then when was a good idea to hand out gifts from under the tree in relation to when lunch would be ready to eat and when the few Christmas TV programmes that all the adults wanted to watch would be on. Once the food was ready they sorted things onto the dining room table and told the rest of the group that dinner was waiting. They all seemed to rush towards the dining room like a herd of elephants, Tom turning the TV off as all the children left with no concern for it whatsoever. Sybil also got out a glass of red wine and poured some for all the adults. "Can I share your wine, mummy?" Belle enquired.

"Yes, you can sip at my wine… but not too much though," Sybil answered. Belle nodded and smiled at Sybil. George asked the same question to Matthew, and he replied along the same sort of line. Once everyone had finished their main course and the plates had been cleared, Tom got up and went to fetch the cake that caused oh so much trouble earlier in the day. He grabbed the cream from the fridge and a knife to cut the cake while Sybil got out bowls and spoons. The children all cheered when the cake came through the door and the adults laughed a little at how proud their children were at their far-less-than-perfect cake. But looks can be deceiving; it turned out to be a very tasty cake with a huge amount of flavour to it. Before long the table was cleared and everybody was pitching in with a floor-sized game of snakes and ladders where the player is actually the playing piece and the die is bigger than a football. Everybody joined in and had a great laugh with it. Edith and Josephine (who were playing as one person) were ahead for most of the game, but Susannah and Matthew sped ahead at the end, with Susannah winning, but with Matthew coming in a close second, and Belle, who had rolled well on the die, but constantly landed on the heads of snakes and only once on the bottom of a ladder (and it was the shortest ladder on the board), came last, only at square 18 when there were 100 squares to get through. The adults had let their offspring stay up until 10 o'clock, so all of them, including the parents, were completely knackered and decided to go to bed all at the same time. They all helped their children into bed (Susannah and Belle had their own rooms, but they'd decided that they'd use this week as one big sleepover, so all four children slept in Belle's room, which was slightly bigger than Susannah's) and then went to bed themselves.

Once Edith and Anthony were in their room with the door shut they undressed – trying as hard as they could to get covered again quickly before they got too cold and curled up together under the covers of their bed. Anthony spooned around Edith and whispered, "I love you, Edith," in her ear. Edith turned to look at her husband and replied,

"I love you, too. And today wasn't too hard, was it?"

"No, Josephine was fine – we had no problems with her at all!" Edith kissed Anthony on the cheek and then settled down again before quickly falling asleep after an exhausting day.

Mary and Matthew had a similar experience once back in their room, but they chatted for longer. Both of them were on their sides, facing one another, but their bodies were pressed too closely together to actually comfortably see each other's faces. Mary buried herself in Matthew's cotton-covered chest and spoke about how her day had gone. "… and George wasn't too troublesome, was he?" she asked her husband.

"No," Matthew replied, pressing a kiss through her hair and running his hand over her arm, "he was fine – he had a great time making that cake and playing with the girls."

"I'm glad. I know he was excited to come here, but I thought he'd lose interest after a while. It's always good to know that coming here for Christmas was the right choice," Mary said quietly.

"Yes, I think it was the right choice. It will definitely be different from years gone by, but I don't think it will be a bad thing. It should be a fun day for the kids – that's what we're aiming for."

"They'll have fun, trust me. It'll be Christmas day; they'll need calming down if anything." Mary wrapped her arms more tightly around Matthew and then loosened them so that she could look up to see his face and kiss him with a smile. They both then nodded off in each other's embrace, thinking of Christmas day in a few days' time.

Sybil was in her room alone, having just taken off her top when Tom crept up behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle. Sybil squealed quietly, wary of the fact that sisters and brothers-in-law were about to go to sleep and that her children wouldn't go back to sleep if they were woken again after an exciting day. Tom kissed her neck from behind and whispered in her ear, "D'you want to have some fun tonight?" He continued to kiss her neck.

"Tom," Sybil said with a smile on her face, trying to cover how much she wanted him, "you know very well that the walls in this house are about as soundproof as tracing paper."

"So?" Tom continued to beg for a good time. "It's not like your sisters haven't ever done this before."

"Tom," Sybil said quietly, but sternly. "I'm afraid you're out of luck tonight."

"But, Sybil, can you even remember the last time…" He was then interrupted by his headstrong wife,

"Yes, it was two weeks ago when Belle was staying at a friend's house and Susannah was at nursery while I was supposed to be doing some housework." Tom opened his mouth to speak, but Sybil kept talking, "Tom, you've waited for two weeks, you can wait a little longer."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Absolutely sure!" Sybil laughed at her husband's keenness and persistence to get what he wanted. Sybil felt Tom sigh against her neck and then take his hands away from her waist, lingering slightly as they passed her hips. Sybil turned to look at him. "You're not going to sulk, are you?"

"No," Tom said with a pout, "I'll just sit and try to accept the fact that you no longer love me." He sat on the bed and took off his top, but then Sybil walked over to him, still in her jeans and only a bra above her waist, sat on his lap with her arms around his neck, and kissed him. She smoothed his lips with her own tongue, begging for access, which he willingly gave.

"I do love you, Tom Branson," Sybil said, once she drew herself away for breath. "I love you more now than I ever did – I love you more with every minute that passes." Tom accepted this and kissed her on the nose once to show her that he knew that anyway. Tom found a pair of pyjama bottoms, but didn't bother with a top as he was used to the cold weather and found that being cold didn't affect him at all. He helped Sybil change into a pair of Christmas pyjamas, running his hands along her skin at any chance he could. Once they were in bed, Sybil tucked her head into the comfortable spot by his shoulder and ran her fingers over his chest, making patterns in his chest hair with her fingers. Tom tangled his fingered through Sybil's smooth dark hair and then kissed her forehead.

"You're perfect, Sybil."

"So are you," she replied, finally closing her eyes to go to sleep.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I know that I say this at the end of all my fics, but it means so much to me that somebody reads this stuff and every time a get a review (be it good or bad) and I have a little party in my own head. I really hope you enjoyed this fic, and let me know if you have any suggestions for other fics or suggestions on how to improve my writing (writing is something I'm really passionate about and I'd love to get better at it). Thank you all again so much!

Also, the book Oh Dear Silvia is by Dawn French. It's my favourite book and is quite emotional, but it's definitely worth a read.