A/N: Sorry for taking so long to update! It's been a very busy couple of weeks. I'm on summer break from school now, though, so I'm hoping I'll be able to update more frequently.

In reality, living together wasn't that different for Happy and Toby than post-accident recovery had been. In those months following Happy's crash, the pair had worked out a sort of domestic rhythm, an understanding of each other's habits, which they maintained once they moved in together.

But even knowing that their day-to-day life, on paper, was pretty similar to what it had been while Happy was on bedrest, both Happy and Toby would agree that this felt different. Before, their time together had been temporary, a product of a unique circumstance brought on by a horrible injury. It was situation that had a built-in expiration date.

Now, though, they weren't tied to each other by the odd relationship of wounded party and caregiver; they were together only because they wanted to be. There was no expiration date here; they could exist this way as long as they wished. It was infinitely different.

Toby, to his great credit, had taken on Happy's vacillation between cuddly and distant like a challenge, and had mastered the art of leaving her alone when she asked, despite his ceaseless wish to be with her. And Happy – wary of kicking Toby out a space that was no longer her own, that was so decidedly theirs – had become well-versed in the different coffee shops in the area. She had never thought of herself as a chill-in-a-coffee-shop kind of person, but they were a place that allowed you to sit undisturbed, alone in a room full of people. She actually grew to like them.

One evening, she came home from her second favorite coffee shop – her favorite closed early on Tuesdays – to find their apartment empty. A note on the kitchen counter in Toby's scratchy hand gave an explanation: the psychiatrist was over at Sylvester's house, helping to catch an apparently-very-intimidating bat. Bats carry rabies, as Sly reminded me three times in our two-minute conversation, Toby had written. Happy smiled slightly before walking into their living room.

The room was different, since she had moved in. They'd thrown out Toby's mess of a sofa, which was almost definitely older than both of them combined, and replaced his palm-frond curtains with slightly-less-ostentatious blue ones. Happy imagined the room as it had looked months ago, on the night she got into her accident. Her memory was clouded by the feelings of that evening, a funny mix of rage and guilt and betrayal, but she could still see in her mind the exposé of her boyfriend's lack of interior decorating skills. She was glad that they had changed it, glad she didn't have to associate her home with those noxious thoughts.

Boxes were still piled up in the corner of the living room from the move-in three weeks prior. Once things started to accumulate in an area that didn't get much foot traffic, they had the tendency to stay there. Happy and Toby set aside a few hours every week to unpack, but, in that moment, something about the clutter gave Happy the gusto to organize it.

She went over and opened the box closest to her. It was full of clothes she never wore – a pair of jeans a size too big, a shirt she used to love that had gotten torn on a mission. A slip of dark jersey caught her eye: the dress she wore to that date Toby had slept through.

She pulled the dress out, holding the soft fabric in front of her. It was a nice dress, more expensive than most of the clothes she had. She'd gotten it years ago – she was honestly impressed that it still fit – a few months after getting her first job in a body shop. She was the only woman working there, but her coworkers' wives hung around the shop. Happy, immediately excluded by the why'd-ya-hire-a-girl mechanics, had felt the intense need to fit in with the other women. They weren't mean to her, not really, but they loved clothes in a way she – someone who felt most at home when covered in oil and grease – never would. The first time they invited her shopping, she'd dropped a paycheck and a half on the dress simply because one of the wives told her it made her look nice.

Happy shook her head at the memory before walking into the bedroom to hang the dress in their closet. Toby had the bizarre habit of keeping spare hangers stacked on the top shelf of the closet, rather than hanging them on the rod, so she had to jump up to reach them. She undershot the jump slightly – her left leg was still weak enough to make the conversation of distance to muscle power tricky – and ended up knocking over the box that held Toby's dress shoes.

When she went to replace the box, she caught sight of a small green and blue bowl shoved to the back of the top shelf of the closet. She pulled it down, thinking it would fit perfectly on their living room coffee table, and accidentally dropped the four chips that were inside.

For a second, the coins registered in her mind as poker chips, and a wave of shock rippled through her. Then she picked up one to examine it and saw a small 30 written in plain block letters. It took her a second to realize what she was holding: a sobriety coin.

Happy knew of sobriety coins the same way that anyone knew of them: they were something addicts used, something very foreign. They were the kind of thing that existed in someone else's world, something you might see the importance of and recognize if you were handed one, but that didn't really affect you – in the realm of EpiPens and asthma inhalers.

Toby has sobriety coins. It really should have occurred to her earlier. After all, Toby had sobriety – he was coming up on his one-year sober anniversary – so why not sobriety coins?

It was just that he never talked about his addiction. He didn't mention gambling; if it ever came up on a mission, Happy would glance at him, but he would always look unfazed. The little quips he used to slip into conversation – jokes about his gambling problems – had all but disappeared. It had become easy to forget that his meetings, his breakfasts with Christine, his phone calls with other addicts were all part of a long process of recovery; they warped in Happy's mind into simple social outings, ones she wasn't invited to and didn't want to attend, anyway.

Happy picked up all the coins and put them back into the bowl. Then she walked out into the living room and placed the bowl on their coffee table. It went well with the blue curtains, after all.

Toby got home a few hours later, full of funny bat-catching stories. It wasn't until after a dinner of leftovers, when the pair sat down on the sofa to watch a movie and Toby kicked his feet up on the coffee table, that he noticed the addition to the living room decor.

"Hey, where'd you get that?" he asked, motioning to the bowl.

"I found it in your closet when I was putting some stuff away," Happy said.

"And you put it out here?"

"I did."

Toby was silent for a minute, and then simply said, "Thank you."

He leaned over and kissed her cheek before settling back to watch Brad Pitt save the world from a zombie apocalypse.