"Aah-"

Martha tries to get up from undercounter; it doesn't work so well. She has the new bottle of oregano she wanted, but in the course of bending beneath the counter, her back locked up. This, she thinks, is the price she is paying for agreeing to coach Michael's sports team while Rex is at work – she runs the length of the field along with her charges, making sure they follow the rules and drills, and by the time she gets home with Michael, she's sore enough to collapse in a heap and not move until she is dragged from whatever spot she falls in.

Collapsing, though, is not an option – she has dinner to make and then dishes to do, and a husband to greet. And so she tries to force herself back upright as the front door opens, at least setting the bottle down on the counter. This is not just the wages of a child's football game, keeping the black-and-white ball in-bounds, making sure nobody is using their hands; this dates back to the last trip she ever took with her family before getting starstruck and running away to the city, the trip where her body decided it was faster than her skis and took her on a nasty tumble down the snowbunny trail. She calls a greeting all the same, thinking that if she can only sit down for five minutes, she'll be all right.

Then there are footsteps in the hall, and then a warm hand planted in the middle of her back, rubbing slow, gentle circles there. Rex reaches for the hand she has left on the counter and guides her to a chair, then goes back to the cupboard to pull out a glass and fill it with water.

"I should move these up for you," he says, picking up the spice bottle on the counter. "You hurt yourself every single time you get one out."

"You have more important things to do with your time than – " rearranging my spice cabinets is how she means to finish, but his lips get in her way.

"Than taking care of my wife?" he asks as he breaks the kiss, dropping two ibuprofen into her hand and offering her the water glass. "A fool I may be, but not an animal."

She swallows the ibuprofen, grateful even though she wants to protest that painkillers also kill the liver and she'd rather not live out her days past sixty on one of those dialysis machines, thank you very much, and then one of his arms is beneath her knees, the other behind her shoulders, her feet dangling in the air as though she's a small child.

"Rex - !"

"It's Michael's long day, isn't it?" he asks her, already headed for the stairs. She doesn't bother protesting. It would take him twenty seconds to check the schedule on the front of the refrigerator.

"Yes. And I have a lasagna to get in the oven."

"As appetizing as the thought sounds, I think it can wait twenty minutes," he tells her, using his knee to open the bedroom door, setting her on the bed as gently as he can manage when he has to bend a rather significant distance to do it, reaching for the hem of her blouse and pulling it up over her head. "Anything you try to put in the oven right now is going to end up on the floor."

That much she has to admit is true, and when he sits behind her and puts his hands on her bare back, rubbing small circles down her spine with his thumbs, relaxing the muscles and vertebrae there, she can't help being glad he minds her even less than Michael does sometimes.

She is grateful for the ibuprofen, and grateful for the warmth of his hands as her muscles slowly relax. She is not quite so grateful for the warmth his hands are spreading in her belly – the oven is on, warming, waiting for the lasagna that is still sitting uncooked on the counter, Michael is due home within an hour, and the bedroom door is unlocked and Rex' lips are on the back of her neck, doubtless ready and waiting for her to comment on how kissing her isn't doing anything productive so he can provide some well-timed but affectionate wit about the hands-on procedure being best. She leans back into his arms in spite of herself, letting his hands slip off her back and around her waist, turning her head to the side to give him better access to her neck. He reaches up with one hand to stroke her cheek, and she presses back against him, feeling the warmth of his body through his dress shirt.

They never do lock the bedroom door, and dinner is just a little late, but her back no longer hurts. She cannot quite credit the ibuprofen.

"Aah – "

Martha straightens up, or tries to, as she gets out from undercounter. It really is the most inconvenient cupboard ever designed, even when the only thing she keeps down there anymore is a bucket of cleaning supplies. She rubs at the small of her back and struggles down the counter, moving one small, painful step at a time, reaching up to get a glass out of the cupboard. A spasm shoots up her back, and she drops the glass with a gasp. It bounces on the counter, but does not break. A good thing. A lucky thing. Glasses have grown progressively harder and harder to come by, and though Yuusei and Crow managed to scrounge up half a dozen mismatched and very nearly unchipped coffee mugs for Christmas last, glassware itself is nearly as valuable as gold once was in this part of the city.

She fills the glass, finds the bottle of ibuprofen, pops the lid, grimaces when the action sends another wave of pain shooting down her spine. There will be no scrubbing the dining room floor this afternoon, she thinks; this is another task she is going to have to delegate to her children, no matter how very much she hates making them do her work. Fifty is not thirty, and it's foolish to pretend it is. That much she knows.

She takes the ibuprofen, no longer noticing the bitter taste from the pills she has split in half to make a bottle last twice as long, and sits at the scrubbed kitchen table with a long sigh. She will have to lay down. She doesn't want to, but there is no denying the spasms that are shooting up and down her spine, trying to lock her in place.

She sighs and gets to her feet, reaching for the broom as she does. She doesn't notice the tears in the corners of her own eyes as she uses the broom handle as a makeshift cane, not so much walking across the floor as propelling herself to the staircase so she can use the banister to support herself on the way up the stairs. At the top the wall will be her guide, but there is no wall here.

She feels her way down the hall, opens her door, shuts it. She doesn't bother locking it. Nobody else comes in here anymore except at night, when she will occasionally wake up to a child burrowing under her covers, trying to escape from some particularly bad nightmare. Then she sets about getting across the floor. The warmer temperatures spring will bring with it cannot come soon enough for her.

She sits first, sliding her feet out of the low-heeled black shoes she has worn for the past seven years, the ones whose bottoms Yuusei replaced for her last year by nailing old pieces of bicycle tyres to the worn-out soles. Crow wanted to get her new shoes altogether – went so far as to pick out of his deck the cards that didn't quite fit whatever strategy it is he's using these days, and to sell them – but shoes, like glassware, do not come cheap in the Satellite.

Shoes gone, she pulls her legs up onto the bed, pulls the light coverlet over them, leans back against the pillow, tries to relax.

Eventually, she may even sleep. And when she wakes up, the ibuprofen may have done its job.

"You should be more careful, Martha," he murmurs in her ear, letting the heel of one hand rub circles down her spine, probably enjoying the way she shifts beneath the touch. "One of these days you're going to land yourself in the emergency room." He turns her head with his hand, leans over her bare shoulder to kiss her, swings his legs off the bed. "I can finish dinner."

"It's not – "

"- finished," he says, running his fingers through her hair, letting the individual strands cling to his wrist and palm. "You were getting oregano. But everything is already in the pan. So you were topping it when I came in. I know how you do that, Martha. I watched you the last time you made it. Or have you forgotten?"

"I haven't," she says, not bothering to protest when he reaches down, pulls the coverlet up over her shoulders, then pulls on the jeans he left on a chair that morning to change into tonight. "But – "

"I can take care of it," he interrupts, and behind that, the unspoken reassurance: I can take care of you. "Rest."

"Rex – "

He covers her hand with his own, kisses her again, brushes her hair off her face. "Ibuprofen doesn't fix everything. Rest."

She sighs as he closes the bedroom door, knowing he's right, not wanting to stay for fear of falling asleep, and of course she does, the warmth he has left behind him a more effective remedy than any drug ever produced.

If only she still had it now.

Status: 4/100