Same disclaimer. Lyrics are from DR's "Sleep, Don't Weep."

Sleep, don't weep, my sweet love

Your face is all wet 'cause our days were rough

So do what you must do to fill that hole

Wear another shoe to comfort the soul

Those times that I was broke, and you stood strong

I think I found a place where I feel I will...

Sleep, don't weep, my sweet love

Desmond waited in the car, leaning his head against the steering wheel as he tried to wrap his mind around this sudden turn of events. Was it sudden, really? He knew that they were close to each other—closer than they would admit, closer than he could explain. He knew that what he wanted was to be with her, in the literal sense and every other. When he was far from her, it was because he was hiding from his secret wish. When he was close to her, nothing else mattered. She lifted the burden of his past. She gave him hope—useless, thwarted, deceitful hope, but all he had. He knew she felt it, too.

When he saw the babysitter walk across the lawn and leave in her car, he slowly unbuckled his seatbelt (why hadn't he done that before?) and made his way to the front door. He knocked instead of ringing the bell, knowing that Aaron would be asleep, and Claire answered almost instantly. She had already changed out of her dress into the sweater she had been wearing earlier, with a tank top underneath and pink pajama pants.

"Still cold?" he asked as he stepped over the threshold.

"Always, unfortunately. I don't think I've been warm in a month." She looked down awkwardly. A month was how long Charlie had been gone.

"Do you want something to eat or drink? I mean, I know we've just had things, but I'm having a Diet Coke and an orange… very healthy, I know."

"An orange would be good, actually. There wasn't much fruit at the party."

"It was lovely though, wasn't it?" She was leaned toward the orange tree, looking over the fruit to pick one for him, her arms crossed across her chest and her sweater bagging around her. He loved this look almost as much as her party finery, because it's how she would look in the mornings or late at night, the times you only see someone if you're close to them. The way he wanted to be, the way he was.

"Here you go." She held out the fruit to him in one hand, looking into his eyes, and he took it without breaking their gaze. He thought of Eve holding about the apple to Adam. No wonder he had taken it.

They sat on the couch and Claire turned on the TV. Desmond hated television, but he liked the opportunity it gave him to look at her without her noticing. She watched Saturday Night Live, giggling at the fake news report, then changed the channel to some station with music videos. She had the TV habits of a teenager, and Desmond got that cradle robber feeling again. She got a hairbrush from upstairs during the commercial break, and his eyes followed its path through the labyrinth of her silky, tangled hair as she combed it out during a lengthy rock video. She had the half-peeled orange balanced on her knee and the Diet Coke on the arm of the couch, and she took alternate bites and sips as she continued the surprisingly lengthy task of straightening out her hair.

"Multi-tasking?" Desmond teased as she carefully set her drink down.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I've got talent." Her cheeky, contagious grin.

She hit a knot in her hair, hissing with pain as the brush tugged on it, and he reached over and extricated the bristles, then righted the knot with gentle fingers.

"Thanks." Her big eyes peered at him over her shoulder.

He scooted a little closer to her and began untangling the remaining knots in her hair, using his fingers more often than the brush. He tried to act like this was normal, like it was nothing, but he was secretly reveling in the scent and feel of her hair, the closeness to her, the quiet house around them. Everything.

When the last tangle was gone and his pretense for the proximity was gone, he sighed and slowly lowered his hands, but he didn't want to move away yet. He lingered for a moment, then jumped in surprise when Claire leaned back, laying her head against his chest.

"Sorry. I'm sorry." She took his motion for discomfort and squirmed away.

"No, no, I was just surprised. It's fine. Come back." He tried to look reassuring and hoped that it didn't come off as desperate.

She slowly leaned back again, and he set his chin on her hair, put his arms around her waist.

"I've been meaning to ask you something," she said quietly, and he felt her little stir of motion with each word.

"Yes?" He didn't let himself wonder what it was.

"Can you think of a good job I could get where I could still be with Aaron?"

He almost laughed at the sudden practical question. It felt like crashing down to earth.

"I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it."

"I know I could work at a daycare and he could be there, too. That doesn't really pay much, though. Some places have nurseries there, but those are more office jobs at big corporations and I'm not sure I could get those. I could work from home, but I don't think I have any skills that I can do at home. Or any good skills at all, really." Her face was tilted up to him, looking at him upside down. The angle was torturous. All he wanted to do was bring his lips down to hers, just once more, just to see what she would do. Just while he had this chance.

"I'm sure you can figure out something. Jobs are becoming more accommodating of family life these days." He sounded like a dry business journal.

"I really want to have a job so that I'm not just mooching off Charlie forever, but I would feel horrible if I left Aaron when I could have stayed with him. I mean, he's only a baby once. I'm so used to being with him all the time now." Her hands covered his hands, still clasped in front of her, his arms a circle with her safe inside it.

"I understand." He laid his cheek against her hair. This situation somehow felt natural and surreal at the same time, both familiar and miraculous.

"This is the first time I've felt warm in a long time." Her voice had taken on a dreamy, contented tone.

"A month?" It was his turn to jerk them back into reality a little.

"No, much longer than that," she whispered, and his mind reeled with sudden understanding, new possibilities. Then she was pulling out of his arms, but not leaving, just turning, leaning close into him, her chest pressed to his, both of them gasping in something like surprise but not quite surprise at all. Her lips were on his lips, and it was like a miracle, but it was also like coming home to somewhere you had lived for years.

The kiss lasted, and grew, and their arms were around each other, his hands in her hair again, tangling his fingers into it, filling his hands with his own ruined work. Penny's hair had been fine and smooth, almost too slippery to get hold of. Claire's felt alive, or like a rope he had grabbed, keeping him anchored. She was always saving him, it seemed.

Then she was in his lap, and he could feel her gasping into his mouth with each movement, his breath following the same ragged pattern. He was always hyperaware of her, but now he felt that he was feeling things with her, moving with her, part of her. He wouldn't be anywhere without her there to see him, to notice him as no one else did now.

Then, over the low hum of the TV, a loud cry echoed. They jumped, still moving as one, then he realized that it was Aaron over the baby monitor that sat on the coffee table. Claire vanished from arms as quickly as she had entered them, already upstairs by the time his breathing was back to normal.

She was up there for a few minutes, feeding the baby, he supposed. (She was somehow lovely doing even that; he imagined her in the dim glow of a nightlight, the curve of her neck as she looked down at Aaron with all her maternal love on her face.)

When she reappeared, she was disheveled, her hair full of rebellious waves and static electricity, her sweater fallen off her shoulder, and he felt a strange sense of pride that he had left visible evidence on her, made her a picture of the passion that had animated them.

"Desmond…" Her voice and pose were full of hesitancy and shame, and he knew that she wasn't happy.

"You don't have to say anything. I'll go." He rose, slow and achy, his legs still tingling from feeling her sweet weight on them.

"No!" She reached out and grabbed his arm. "I just wanted to tell you something. Two things."

"All right." He took the hand that landed on his arm and rubbed it gently. He didn't want her to be cold.

"The first one is… I guess I'd better say the bad thing. I want… well… a lot of things, but… I can't."

"What do you mean?" He got the sinking feeling that he knew what she meant, but he didn't want to acknowledge it. Her words were barely anything. Taken apart, or even together.

"Desmond... we should both stop pretending that we don't want… things, um…"

"I want things very much if by 'things', you mean you." He couldn't help grinning a little. For a minute her face lit up in a sweet schoolgirl blush at his admission, but then the worried look that aged her ten years took over.

"I want you, too," she said, but her tone had no air of finality at the end of the sentence. "It's just… this is Charlie's house. If things are going to change with him, I don't want it to be because I shagged our friend in his bed. I don't want to be the one who did everything wrong. I feel too guilty. Plus, I might be drunk, still." A lame little excuse tacked on.

"You weren't drunk at the beach."

"What happened at the beach? We only… oh, fine, no more pretending. I know. I know it's not that. I just can't feel right about this right now."

Desmond understood, unfortunately. He wished he could disprove what she said, convince her that it didn't matter, resurrect the ghost of her desire that seemed to have vanished when she went upstairs, but he didn't want to make her ashamed. He never wanted her to be hurt, in anyway, not even by herself.

"I didn't know that shagging was an option." He savored the quirk of her mouth as she grinned. "But I understand." He looked down at his hands, tried to appear composed. "What was the other thing?"

"Oh, yeah." She had been standing awkwardly before him, as though giving a speech or presentation, but now she sank down to her knees in front of him, setting her hand on top of his. He felt like asking if she was proposing, but it didn't seem like a good time to joke.

"When I was upstairs, I remembered a dream I had last night." She pushed her hair back, one of her nervous twitches, and continued. "It was one of those stupid dreams where you have to do lots of pointless tasks and they're really urgent. Do you ever have those? I was looking for something all over my house, then I had to learn a song on piano—don't laugh, I know that's weird—and then I had to pick Aaron up somewhere, so I was driving, but it wasn't much like real driving, you know, it was kind of hazy and difficult." She had been looking off into the middle distance, but she looked up at his eyes then. "Don't worry, I'm getting to the point. So I got Aaron from wherever he was, and I was driving, and I kept thinking 'What's missing? What else am I supposed to do? What's wrong?' and then finally I got to this place, a random parking lot by a store or something, and I got out of the car, and it was you." She looked down again, ashamed. "And I saw you and all of a sudden I relaxed all over—because I'd been freaked out the whole dream—and I sort of floated over to you and you put your arms around me and I knew that everything was all right. That I'd been trying to get to you. It was strange."

"That's not so strange." He pushed her hair back before she could, even anticipating her useless habits.

"I know. It should be, but it's not." She leaned her face down to kiss his knuckle. "It's not right, but it's true." They stayed that way for a moment, he sitting like a statue, she kneeling like a supplicant, then she slowly stood. "Well, I'm going to bed."

And she did, no ceremony, no farewell, no instructions on where to sleep. Desmond was puzzled for a moment—and then he wasn't.

He waited a few minutes, then slowly, quietly made his own way up the stairs, following the hallway down to its end, where he knew Claire slept, though he had never entered that sanctum before.

He entered it now, moving slow and steady, leaving time to turn away, or to be turned away. She was in bed, her sweater discarded on the dressing table, her hair spread on the pillow and catching the light of the one small lamp still lit in the room.

"Do you want me to sleep here?" he asked, less nervous than he should have been.

Her quiet voice. "You know I do."

He did know.

"But you don't have to. I know that I'm a ridiculous trollop and the most horrible tease on earth. I make out with you, then make this big deal of how nothing can happen, and now I'm saying…"

"You're not horrible. I understand. We're both tired of sleeping alone."

"Not just alone. Without you."

He felt a strange wave of joy and arousal and inexplicable sorrow, but he tried to ignore it all as he pulled off his stiff shirt and dress pants and slid into the wide bed. Claire stayed far away, apparently trying to give him space in both a literal and metaphorical sense, but he didn't want space. Torturous as it was, he wanted her close to him, on any terms. It had been so long since his orbit had so nearly intersected anyone else's. They were turning together now.

He lay close to her, and after a moment, she rolled into his arms, her head laid on his shoulder, her own arms around his waist. Her body relaxed, and she let out a sigh of relief, just like in her dream. He felt as though he really had been there, not just his presence in her mind. Everything is all right. We take care of each other.

Her eyes closed and her breathing slowed, and he wondered if she slept, if she dreamed, or if she lay awake like he did, unable to lose a moment of this, trying to press this sweet and unbearable night of chaste passion inside of him like a plaster cast, the shape of this beauty, sleeping with her in the literal sense, making love to her in every other way there was. It was a long night, and he was glad.