Kimberly woke up groggily, she didn't want to wake up yet and would have just as soon just stayed in bed snuggling with Tommy. She reached out her hand expecting to find Tommy within easy reach. The bed was empty beside her. "Not again," She muttered, pulling herself up into a sitting position, glancing at the clock on the nightstand, four in the morning, it was way too early to deal with him and his guilt complex. Where could he have gone at this time of night? If they were at home in Reefside she would check the lab, but the lab was three hours away. Maybe the Command Center, but how would he have got there in the middle of the night. Unless he... "I need to call Billy," she announced, groping around the nightstand for her cellphone.
She swung her legs off of the bed, standing up quickly as she started to dial the number. Tommy must have woke up in the middle of the night, headed over to Billy's garage, and took the Radbug to the command center. Or had he, her hand froze as she was just about to hit send, she didn't want to wake Billy and Kat if she didn't have to. Besides Billy worked on enough questionable experiments that he doubtless had a security system, especially with a hyperactive kid like Katy. Tommy would have triggered at least three alarms, woke them up, and she would have received a grumpy phone call from Billy about him waking the kids up.
She slowly opened the door and peered out into the darkness of the hallway, the only light came from the window at the top of the stairs from the street beyond. Kim slowly crept out of the room. creeeaaak... Kim jumped slightly at the sound, looking around sharply for its cause before glancing at her own feet. It was just the floorboards squeaking underneath her. She almost laughed at her own silliness, her father in law had mentioned that he needed to fix a squeaky floorboard but hadn't had time to move the carpet to find the problem, let alone fix it. She had probably just stepped on it.
The house was once again plunged into silence, Kim could hear the rustling of blankets from the spare bedroom where the girls were sleeping, and the sound of a dog barking in the distance. She frowned, the house and the land around was so quiet. It didn't have the bustling twenty four hour noise that Florida had nor did it have the soft noise of the wind in the trees and the nocturnal creatures calling out to one another. It was almost too silent. No wonder Tommy couldn't sleep.
Kim padded down the hall, double-checking to make sure that Tommy wasn't just in the bathroom. The door was ajar, as Kim peered in the room, at first glanced the room appeared pitch-black, which made sense since the nightlight was a motion sensor one. A low growl caused her to look up, up above the toilet two glowing green eyes peering down at her. Her stomach lurched as her heart jumped into her throat as she slowly backed away from the growling glowing eyes. The glowing eyes suddenly jumped down and something furry brushed against her leg as a new sound filled the room.
Kim let out a sigh as she bent down to scratch the creature between the ears, listening to its purring. She was sure being jumpy, first the floorboard, and now her In-Law's cat nearly gave her a heart attack. She shook her head, she still hadn't found Tommy, where had her husband disappeared to? Where could he have gone? Her jaw split open as a yawn escaped, she should be asleep in bed at this hour, but then again so should Tommy. She padded down the stairs slowly, stopping every other step to listen, if her husband was downstairs she should be able to hear him moving around, hopefully, before they collide with each other.
"Tommy," she called out softly so as not to disturb the rest of the household, "Tommy are you down here?"
Silence greeted her, nothing but the sound of a sleeping household surrounded her. Sleeping, that's what she should be doing right now, not searching the house for Tommy. Perhaps he was down in the basement, working on his parents' computer. She opened the door to the basement only to discover pitch darkness, Tommy wasn't down there.
"Where could he be?" she muttered, walking back towards the front of the house, a thought caused her to freeze midstep, if he wasn't in the house then perhaps he was outside, in the fenced backyard, or maybe he went for a midnight stroll. She quickly turned around back to the kitchen and peered outside into the yard, she couldn't see anything, but the yard was in so much shadow from the large tree in the back corner of the yard that Kim couldn't be certain. She carefully unlocked the back door, looking once more to make sure that there weren't any unexpected surprises waiting for her, and stepped outside into the brisk night air.
"Tommy?" she called out, searching the shadows. A sudden flash of bright light caused her to fling her hand up over her eyes. She whirled around, confused, only to find her husband standing in the doorway of the house, one arm still pressed against the wall from where he had turned the outdoor light on.
"What are you doing out here in your nightclothes?" he asked, with just a bit of a smirk.
"Looking for you," She confessed, "Where did you go?"
"Go?" Tommy asked looking his wife up and down, "Ellie climbed into bed with us, so I tucked her into bed again, but she woke up so I had to lie down next to her until she was asleep. When I got back to the bedroom you weren't there."
"I thought you wandered off," Kim accused him, "You keep going to the lab in the middle of the night at home."
Tommy stepped away from the door, striding comfortably across the yard, before wrapping his arms around Kimberly, "You know that I would never leave the house without telling you where I was going," he murmured softly into her ear.
"You still worried me," Kim said, as her knees threatened to buckle beneath her as her stomach lurched suddenly and the world spun. Somewhere during all of this Tommy's hand tightened its grip on her.
"Are you all right, Beautiful?" he demanded, his voice husky, as he adjusted his grip on her so that she could lean more comfortably on him.
"Y...eah," Kim said, her voice still a little shaky, "I'm fine, just tired."
"Well, we better get you back to bed," Tommy stated, glancing at his watch, "We have about two and a half hours left before kids are going to be dragging us out of bed because someone promised them a trip to the park today."