A/N Nothing much to say other than huge love and thanks to all who are reading and enjoying this!

Disclaimer: Not mine.

EPOV

I felt as miserable as fuck for most of Saturday. I'd come so fucking close to losing it all and the knowledge was like a lead weight in the pit of my stomach. I didn't know what I could do to make it go away. Although bizarrely, Sookie's idea of me mowing her lawn did at least keep my mind off it for a while. It was all just fucking horrible.

I didn't know what to say and Sookie was wary of me. I'd catch her watching me as if she was waiting for me to run out the door or something. Part of me did want to run, rather than face the fact that I had a serious fucking problem. But most of me realised that no matter how shitty I felt at the moment, I'd feel 100 times worse if I didn't have Sookie.

After the kids were in bed I enjoyed just being held by Sookie. She was so lovely. I knew then that I had to do something to fix whatever was broken in me, so I wouldn't hurt her. I couldn't have lived with myself if that happened.

When I woke up the next morning she was lying there, just looking at me. "Hey" I said, and she smiled. "Morning" she said.

Despite the smile, I could sense she was feeling a bit apprehensive. "So are we good?" I asked.

"If you're good, then I guess I'm good. Are you? Good?"

"Very good. No more freaking out."

"Well then we're good" she said. I lent over and kissed her deeply. I was starting to roll her onto her back when we heard Amelia's voice at the bedroom door "Mum? Mum! I want my breakfast!"

Sookie sighed. "I guess we slept in. I better go. You hit the shower and I'll have one after breakfast", with that she was off to deal with Amelia. I lay there for a minute, willing my erection away. Fuck. There ought to be rules about kids disturbing you on a Sunday morning.

By the time I arrived in the kitchen it looked as though breakfast was in full swing. Amelia was munching on some toast and Sookie was trying to pry Felicia's hand out of her mouth so she could spoon some breakfast in there instead.

"Coffee?" I asked Sookie.

"Please!" she said, making another attempt at getting some food into Felicia. For a moment I thought about telling her my trick with the teatowel, but then decided that if she hadn't figured it out for herself by kid no. 2 she was never going to, so I left her to it.

After everyone was fed, Sookie went off to shower. I wanted really badly to gate-crash, but I'd been asked to keep Amelia from annoying Felicia too much. It was a lot harder than it sounded. Now that they were both mobile, you needed eyes in the back of your head. I looked away for a minute and when I saw them again, I caught Amelia hauling Felicia rather forcefully out of a corner.

"Don't do that, Amelia" I said.

Amelia looked at me "What?" she demanded.

"Don't pull your sister around like that. It's not nice."

Amelia looked at me, blinked, and then burst into tears. Shit, I'd expected her to argue, not do that. I wasn't sure what to do. "Um, don't cry Amelia" I said, which just caused an increase in the volume of her wails. Felicia was staring at her curiously from her spot on the floor.

Just then Sookie appeared. "What happened?" she asked. I looked at Amelia, who was red-faced and snotty. "Eric said I was MEAN!" she sobbed.

Sookie looked at me. "I, um, told her not to pull Felicia around is all." I was feeling like a total fucking louse about now for making a small girl cry and wished like fuck I'd never intervened.

Sookie turned back to Amelia "And did you?"

Amelia sobbed "I won't do it again!"

"Well you shouldn't have done it in the first place" said Sookie. "Come on, let's go to your room and calm down." She marched Amelia off and I wasn't sure whether I was in trouble or not. Fuck.

A few minutes later, Sookie came back. "Don't worry" she said, patting me on the arm. "She does that to me all the time; she's a complete drama queen. I'm afraid it just means you've lost your special status."

"Special status?"

"Yeah, he-who-can-do-no-wrong. Now you're just, I don't know, plain old Eric. Stink for you really."

Sookie looked delighted at my misfortune; I was just pleased as fuck I wasn't in trouble with her. "So, she's OK, then?" I asked. I wasn't really convinced I hadn't done some irreparable damage to her self-esteem.

"Oh, completely. She's spreading Barbies all over her room as we speak. I just gave her a small talk about being nice to Felicia and she's fine. It was always going to happen as soon as Felicia could move. Amelia's just feeling a bit territorial."

"But she was so upset with me."

"Yeah, well she wants to guilt you into feeling bad about telling her off." I looked sceptical, and Sookie continued "She's 3 Eric! She's as selfish as they come, all 3 year olds are."

Are they? I thought. "How do you know this stuff?" I asked Sookie.

"Dunno. Just figure it out I guess. Amelia is my first 3 year old, but I'm almost completely sure she's not unique."

Sookie just seemed so confident about the whole thing; I had a hard time believing that she was really making it up as she went along. Maybe it just came naturally to her? Like she was some kind of mother-savant or something? She was fucking awesome at this stuff.

"You should have more kids" I blurted out, instantly regretting it.

"What?" asked Sookie, sounding eerily like Amelia had earlier.

"Um, I was just saying you should have more kids, because, you know, you're, um, good at this stuff…"

Sookie gave me an odd look. "Yeah, maybe. But not right now, the two I've got drive me bananas most of the time. Right, well shall we take Felicia outside and see if she'll crawl on the grass?"

We'd only been outside a short while when Amelia appeared at my side. I braced myself in case she was going to cry again, but instead she just said "Eric, can you kick the ball to me?" She really was over it, I guess Sookie was right.

Later on while Felicia was napping, Sookie went out to buy some groceries. I offered to go with her, but she said it was actually a treat to wander around by herself for a bit. I guessed that wander was the important word there, and she'd be spending fuck knows how long checking out specials on washing powder and diapers. Sounded like torture to me. I guessed that the whole incident with Felicia and the shoe hadn't put her off leaving me in charge of the pair of them, so I should at least be grateful for that, but I was still a bit wary of Amelia after her tears that morning.

She was fine though, and when I told her to be quiet because her sister was asleep her lip wobbled a bit, but she didn't burst into tears, so that was a huge fucking improvement. And more importantly she stopped yelling. It was actually quite gratifying to be in charge. Even if I was just in charge of a 3 year old, a sleeping baby and a pile of plastic…ponies. Yeah, that was fucking worse than the Barbies.

SPOV

Sunday turned out to be a much better day than Saturday; Eric was a lot more fun when he wasn't freaking out. Although Amelia crying when he told her off threw him for a loop. Up until now she's treated him like an honoured guest, like she does Uncle Calvin. Now I guess he's been here for so long he's just become another adult figure, one she wants to manipulate to get her own way.

I got to go to Foodtown by myself which was nice, in a sad way. This is what motherhood reduces you to; you're happy to do groceries if you don't have to bring the kids with you.

When I got back everything seemed to be going OK. Amelia had her My Little Ponies all over the floor and Eric was keeping Felicia well away from them. Guess he'd learned his lesson there.

He came out to help me unload the car, and then helped me unpack everything. He managed to stay quiet until I was trying to work out where to fit six cartons of orange juice into the pantry and was muttering to myself as I moved things around. "So, they were on special were they?" said the voice behind me.

"Shut up" I said, and went back to restacking the crackers to make room. Eric just laughed and laughed. Sometimes he thinks he's so funny.

I was putting away some muesli bars when Eric said "Hey, did you know that Amelia can read?"

"No she can't"

"Yeah, she can. She wanted a muesli bar before and I couldn't find the strawberry ones, only blueberry, but she picked it out no problem."

I pulled out the boxes and put them side by side. "Look at the pictures" I said "See, they show the fruit on them. She just looks for the picture of the strawberry."

"Huh. I never look at the pictures."

"Yeah, well. You can read. You don't need to."

"That's pretty fucking clever."

"I guess so. It works for her. She has all kinds of tricks up her sleeve that kid."

I figured that Amelia and Eric were friends again when I found them sitting on the deck with cartons of chocolate milk I'd just bought and a bag of biscuits between them.

I was glad that they got on so well together. It hadn't hurt Amelia to find out that Eric was perfectly capable of being the adult in charge this morning. But it was nice that she wasn't one of those kids who got all jealous and upset with their mother's boyfriend.

Wow, I thought, is he my boyfriend? I thought about it for a bit more. He was a man who lived here, who slept with me, who was good to me and helped me with my kids. I guessed that made him my boyfriend. Yay for me, I had a boyfriend again. It was nice. But I wouldn't tell Eric that's what he was. I didn't fancy him freaking out on me again. If he seriously wanted to go and get drunk I couldn't have physically held him back if I'd wanted to.

I'd bought steak while I was out (it was on special, but I wasn't telling Eric that and setting off another round of laughter), so I suggested we have a barbecue. Eric was obviously feeling more confident this time because he decided he wanted to concoct a marinade for it. I said fine, and tried to only hover a bit while he was doing it. I thought I was being really sneaky, and just glancing over occasionally while I was peeling potatoes, but Eric said "You just can't help yourself can you?" and grinned at me.

"What? I was just wondering if you were finding everything you needed."

"Yep, I'm good" and he carried on.

I went back to my potatoes. I was going to have to be less obvious next time.

Dinner was good, the marinade was very tasty. Eric refused to tell me what was in it, but I had my suspicions. He looked very pleased with himself though, so I didn't press. I figured he could have his moment of glory, especially as, for once, Amelia was eating steak and the not the sausages I'd make Eric cook for her. I don't know what it was about my cooking that she hated, but Eric's was obviously better in her eyes.

EPOV

Sookie had let me loose with the steak at dinner time and thank fuck I hadn't stuffed anything up. I'd caught her watching me like a hawk in the kitchen, although she denies it completely. She's so fucking obvious though, I can feel how much she wants to come over and butt in. When I called her on it, she got all defensive and blushed. It's really fucking amusing.

After dinner she bathed the kids and put them to bed while I cleaned the barbecue, which wasn't my favourite task at all, but, as Sookie pointed out, if it wasn't cleaned now it wouldn't be ready to use next time.

When that was finished I went and sat on her bed and flipped through channels. There wasn't much on. I finally managed to find something halfway decent to watch, some English show about cars. The presenters seemed to spend a lot of the time doing fucking weird shit. It was quite entertaining.

Sookie walked into the room while I was laughing at something. "Oh" she said "I see you found Top Gear."

"Yeah. You were quick getting Amelia into bed tonight."

She shrugged and sat down next to me. "We did The Cat in the Hat. I read really fast. And kind of skipped over Thing One and Thing Two."

"Huh. OK."

"So the show's good then?"

"It's alright."

"Because your eyes are pretty glued to the screen."

I looked at her. "No they're not."

"Yep, they were. Shame really."

"Why is it a shame?"

"Well I had thought we could do something else, but, if you're not interested because it's more interesting to watch them throw a caravan off a cliff, then that's fine…."

"What something else?" I was starting to get curious now. If she was being this coy it had to be something fucking good.

"Oh, no. It doesn't matter. You watch your programme." She snuggled into my side. And started stroking my cock through my shorts.

"Well, it's not that good…" I said, looking at her hand.

"Mmmm, well, if you really wanted to know. I thought maybe you'd like a blowjob, but, you know…Top Gear's on and…"

I clicked the TV off. "No it's not." I said.

"Well, if you're really sure. Because I'd hate to distract you from TV."

"It's OK. I can live with being distracted." I grinned at Sookie and she smiled back. Then she undid my shorts and pulled them off, followed by my boxers.

Fuck. If I'd known I got this reaction from cooking steak, I'd do it more fucking often. Sookie kissed up one thigh, then up the other. Then she started using her tongue across my balls. I sank back into the pillows I was leaning on. Sookie was so fucking good at this. She licked me from base to tip several times, then finally took my cock in her mouth and swirled her tongue around before beginning to move up and down. I looked down at her. I could watch this all fucking night, although she was doing amazing things with her tongue and I wasn't sure I could last that long.

Pretty soon I wasn't sure I could last much longer at all. "Sookie, Sookie is it OK if I, uh..."

"Mmm-hmm" she said, without stopping what she was doing. That felt fucking outstanding and I groaned "Oh fuck Sookie."

Sookie got a devious look in her eye and started humming to herself. While increasing the suction she was using. "Oh, fuck. I'm going to come" I said and I did. Sookie just kept swirling her tongue around my now sensitive as fuck cock until I finished and relaxed.

She released me and smiled. "That was fucking amazing Sookie" I said.

"Better than sports cars?"

"So much fucking better." I leaned over and kissed her and rolled her onto her back. "And now I think it's your turn." She giggled but stopped when I started to stroke her boob.

However, just at that moment Felicia started wailing. "Ugh, I'd better go" said Sookie, rolling away and heading out the door. I sighed. This was all too familiar really, it was like the night she'd run off from my hotel room. Still, at least this time she was coming back.

It was a long time before she came back though. "She's teething again" Sookie announced. "Eye teeth this time, they're really nasty."

"Oh" I said. I guess playtime was over for the night. Sure enough, as soon as we were trying to go to sleep Felicia set off again. And several times again after that. Each time Sookie would get out of bed and head off to Felicia's room to calm her down. I dozed off and on, aware of her coming and going but losing track of how many times.

However, there came the time when Felicia roared and Sookie didn't stir. I wondered if I should wake her up, but it felt really mean when her sleep was so broken. I got up and headed down to Felicia's room and picked her up. "Come on" I said "You come to your mom for once."

I carried her back to the bedroom, where Sookie woke up and looked at me blearily. "Oh, crap. Did I sleep through the crying again?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it. Here, why don't you just cuddle her in here?"

"Oh, are you sure?"

"Yeah it's fine." I handed Felicia to Sookie, who was looking all soft and sleepy, and went around the other side of the bed to climb in behind Sookie.

Felicia had given up crying now she had Sookie and the only sound was the noise of her sucking her hand. "Thanks Eric" said Sookie turning around to give me a quick kiss. She snuggled down against my chest, putting her arm around Felicia. "You're the best boyfriend ever."

Oh. I was Sookie's boyfriend apparently. I was fucking glad I was something, something other than homestay anyway. I wasn't sure about boyfriend though, for one thing, I didn't want her to think of me as a boy. But I could get her to change that later on. For now I was just glad I had a place in her life.

"It's OK Sookie" I said. "You're the best…" I was stuck for a few seconds figuring out what she was to me. "…everything." I finished. And she was. She was the best thing I'd ever had. She was quite quickly becoming my whole world, the person I valued most. Maybe even more than myself sometimes.

But she was making gentle snuffly noises and I realised she was already asleep anyway.

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