A/N: Just want to say that I hope all my readers/reviewers had a fabulous, lovely, rockin', and safe holiday season. I give a heartfelt thanks to every last one of you who took the time to read and/or review my humble fanwank, um, I mean, fanfic. Okay, guys, now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty. Hope you like!

Betty and Daniel were in the middle of a heated debate over whether or not she should be buried with him. Daniel, as usual, was the instigator, pointing out where he was to be buried next to his dad in the family plot, and that, of course, lead up to what he should be buried with. He favored the notion the Egyptian pharaohs had of having everything they would need or want in the afterlife packed in the pyramids right along with them. As the self-described pharaoh around here, Daniel pointed out reasonably, he'd naturally need Betty and a few other essentials.

"So I guess the plan is to have them exhume your smelly corpse and dump me in right beside you after I kick, along with that porn collection you have that would make Ron Jeremy blush."

"I love how we both pretty much agree I'm shuffling off this mortal coil first. And how do you know about my porn collection?"

"It's right there in your DVD cabinet. 9021-Ho, Daniel? Really?"

"SO…Gio." Daniel skillfully changed the subject.

"Christ on a cracker, you're nosy tonight. There's really nothing to tell."

"I'll bet."

Betty heaved a melodramatic sigh and bit into a taco, but when she began to speak, Daniel knew it was in earnest. "I guess neither of us was what the other needed. Wanted, maybe, at first, but in the end, not even that."

"And…?"

"Don't pick up the phone."

"Gio, I have to, he's my boss. We've been over this, like, a million times."

She looks at her cell's small screen over it's tinny rendition of "La Cucharacha." She can't hide her grin of pleasure.

Gio can't hide his jealousy, knows it will show on his face, doubts if she would even notice. Even care. He rolls over and pretends to go back to sleep. It was 3 am, for Chrissakes, after all.

"And…that's it." Damn, but he was on to her. He always, always knew when she wasn't giving him the whole truth. Pleading the fifth was never an option with Daniel either, a curse on his interfering hide. Betty decided enough was enough. She was going to bite the bullet and see where this crazy-ass thing led. She knew Daniel, brutally frank as he was, appreciated it from others. He now sat watching her, idly propped up against his father's obelisk and tracing the engraved "M" in "Meade" with his fingertip, his expression dangerously mild and passive.

Betty looked up at the moon and, as if reading off of it, began to speak. "We broke up because Gio said I always put you first. There. Satisfied?"

Daniel was silent, but not offendedly so. When she ventured a glance at him, she wasn't surprised to find he was staring at her with unnerving intensity.

His words came out very clipped, his eyes narrowed into sapphire slits, never leaving hers. "And how did you respond?" This was important to him, she could tell by that expression, which deeply unnerved everyone but her on the rare times that he wore it.

Her eyes never left, couldn't leave, his. "I didn't. I couldn't…Daniel, he wasn't wrong."

"I'm sorry." She could tell that he meant it. She took off her glove and put her hand on his cheek, gently stroking, noting the night stubble growing there. Once, on a late night at Mode, they'd both gotten a little silly with fatigue, and Daniel had reached over and grabbed her from where she sat beside him looking at mock-ups. He'd put his sandpapery cheek against hers and rubbed, eliciting a light, playful smack and a giggle.

"Eleven o'clock shadow," he'd said by way of explanation.

Now even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant moments in their history came rushing back to her, to him, flowing in between them.

In response to his apology, Betty said through swollen vocal chords, "Don't be. I wouldn't have it any other way."

For the past five minutes, Daniel had been fighting the urge to gloat over his rival's fallen, bloody carcass. Maybe he could pull a hit-and-run on Gio tomorrow, stop by his rat-trap sandwich place, yell "HAAAA!!!" really loud, and scoot. He chunked that idea almost immediately, because 1) he'd like to at least give the illusion of class, especially in matters where Betty was concerned, and 2) he could tell the lady in question was in a testy mood tonight and doubtless into the next two months; if he actually carried through on his piss-ant prank, he'd also have to book a surgeon in advance to retrieve his testicles from the rest of him after Betty got done with him.

Of course, what he was about to do, what he couldn't stop from doing when she was looking at him all earnest—wrinkled brow, biting lower lip, serious as grim death—probably wasn't the best course of action, either. Oh, well. Daniel never claimed to be a brain trust.

He picked up the small hand from its place on his cheek. She was starting to go from quizzical to nervous. He could tell because she balled her hands into little fists when she was feeling insecure, and now was no exception. Betty watched wide-eyed as her best friend in this life and the next gently but forcibly opened her fist, kissing the tip of each finger and then, finally, her exposed palm.

It wasn't like Daniel had never kissed her before—just not like that. It had always been a brotherly kiss on the top of her head (granted, these usually came when she was about to leave for lunch with her boyfriend at the time, Daniel's eyes never leaving theirs as his lips brushed the top of her head, or cheek, or forehead), or a quick, teasing, mock-gallant kiss on the head after a long day and she'd just brought him much-needed coffee.

Momentarily, Betty found herself feeling confused and scared and delirious and almost betrayed by Daniel, of all people. But then, the words of Claire Meade came rushing back to Betty, words of explanation and apology, after Betty and Daniel had had one of their only truly nasty little spats over Henry:

"Sweetheart, my son always pushes the people he loves most to the limits of their sanity, just to see if they care enough to push back. He did that with his father. Now it looks like he's doing it with you. Don't be too angry with him, Betty. It's a defense mechanism, no more, no less."

So now Betty did what Bradford had never deigned to do. She pushed back.

She tried valiantly to quell her own pheromone output and that tiny, annoying voice inside her head, or maybe it was her heart, that was saying "WOO-HOO". "Whoa there, cowboy," she said quietly, gently, firmly; thank God her voice didn't shake. "Mind telling me what's going on here?"

Daniel wasn't as gung-ho about his little experimentation now that he realized that he'd just frightened the shit out of the person he loved most in the world.

He had to make it right. Now. He reached over and pulled her into his arms, felt his heart stagger and fall out of the gaping hole in his chest at Betty's initial flinch and then felt his heart climb back in again as she relaxed and snuggled against him. Now that he'd been forgiven, his words came out in a jumble.

"God, I'm so sorry, baby, I don't know what's been happening to me," he whispered raggedly into her hair.

"I think…I think I do, because it's been happening to me, too."

Daniel tried to think of what to say, but all his reeling mind could come up with when Betty's supple form was melded to him was the oh-so-brilliant "Really?"

Brilliant or no, just the same, there had never been so much behind that one little, loaded word. Betty's head was down-bent, the top resting against his chest; she did this a lot when she was thinking—walked right over to him and bowed her head to his chest and just stood, until she had worked out whatever.

They both knew exactly what the deal was here, had been feeling it, living it, breathing it for months now.

Apparently, though, Betty was still considering promising real-estate in Denial Land. "But Daniel, we can't," she squeaked muffled, "because it's stress, that's what it is,"--her voice raised another octave—"makes people do wacko things like want to sleep with their best friends and oh, look, there's a full moon and I just said that, didn't I?"

"Uh-huh."

She looked up at him finally, one hand clutched to her chest, the other splayed like a little beached starfish over his heart, feeling how her trip-hammer beat matched his, how, since the day they'd met, their heartbeats had synchronized, their brains had fused new neuron-pathways to accommodate each other's beings in every thought, every action somehow.

Betty sighed dramatically. "Okay, Meade, here's what we'll do. We'll wait two weeks to make good and sure that what this is isn't what happens when one of us gets too much sex and the other"—she jabbed an index finger at herself—"isn't getting any. You know, if we can even make it that long without getting swept away in a sea of unresolved sexual tension, resulting in us making good use of that space under your desk."

She'd meant this last as an ironic joke, but both of them realized it as a stark, hotly real concern.

"And if we can't?" All right, Betty, come back from your happy place, he's talking to you now.

"And if we can't wait two weeks without trying out your, um, scenario?" he repeated.

"Then you call me." Sexier words had never been spoken. A small, Mona-Lisa-subtle smile quirked the corners of her mouth, she was blushing furiously, and yet her eyes, for the first time in over a year, were serene.

"I mean, a lot can happen in two weeks." And there went the serenity, apparently. Insecure!Betty was on the premises. "You might meet someone. Giselle or someone."

"I won't."

"Well, I might meet…"

"You won't."

"How the heck do you know?"

"I'm psychic."

"Psychotic, more like."

"Well, hello, that's the Meade family legacy."

"Daniel?"

"Hmmm?"

"If we were about to make a colossally stupid mistake of the friendship-ruining, Betty-and-Daniel-devastating variety, you'd tell me wouldn't you?"

"Yep. And we're not."

"I don't want to lose you. I…can't lose you."

He didn't pretend not to know what she meant.

"You won't."

He meant it. He'd make sure of it.

Two weeks…Daniel, meet your right hand, right hand, meet Daniel. I doubt you've met under such circumstances but something tells me you're going to get very well acquainted…