Overcome

The alarm went off on the bedside table, the morning program's upbeat music dancing its way to fill the silent bedroom before a professional male voice cut through the notes and David turned on the bed, searching for the old-fashioned digital clock and pressing its top button.

It was 8 AM, the display informed, too early by anyone's Saturday morning standards. So early, by David's own, he could feel the inside of his head crackling like fireworks as he pulled the bed sheets from over him and sat, the light peeking from the other side of the heavy red curtains to his left making him hiss when it hit his eyes.

"Damn it—"

David had know when he had retired at 6.30 AM last night—or should he say this morning— that setting the alarm for a mere hour and half later would be a mistake. He didn't sleep well in the best of days and, unsurprisingly, having a ticking time bomb right next to his ears pressing him to do so didn't help in the slightest. Nor, he might add, had the books Sam had helped him take out of his old office. In fact, as far as the books went, David had cut through half an extremely dry lecture on "Intercellular Signal Transduction" before his mind had started to shut down and even after that, after dragging himself upstairs and into the bedroom, he had laid on the bed, wide-awake for so long he was unsure how much time he had actually slept, except—

"Clearly not enough," David mumbled in resignation.

And that would be it. A simple acknowledgment of what was an inevitable daily occurrence followed by him getting out of bed and into the shower. Like every other morning. Or it would have been like every other morning if David hadn't found his attention being called to the corridor beyond his bedroom's closed door. A door had just been closed outside. The sound of heels was echoing on the corridor's wooden floor and then moving down the stairs. Some moments later, he could hear the kitchen door being opened on the ground floor and Sam's high-spirited "Good morning, Mrs. Dalton" filling the house. It made him shake his head. How Sam was able to be this lively this early in the day—

David sighed.

"Come on get up."

His feet sank into the carpet on his side of the bed, soft fabric giving way to cold hard floor as David approached the large window to the balcony and pulled the red curtains wide-open. The bright morning light entered the room, washing over books and notebooks and the many other things that contrary to those were not his but Laura's, before David reached for the balcony door and pulled it open.

A shiver went down his back as he stepped outside, the cold October breeze hitting his naked chest making David shiver, then sigh. Last night's storm had left a visible mark on the estate. A large broken branch was even now lying over the garage's roof, snapped twigs and leaves were all over the manor's driveway, the back garden—He didn't dare look there, not now, not when the balcony itself had taken a beating and he was being forced to go around the puddle left there, to walk around it so he could reach the stone parapet, lean over it and, in what had become an automatic gesture by now, hide the right side of his face with his hand.

David hadn't stepped into this balcony in three years. Standing out here, taking in the night sky, a glass of wine in hand, all of that had lost its meaning without Laura. And to be honest, standing here now—just like going to Timmon's Park some days ago, searching for what little was left of her—only served as a reminder the world had continued on, that time kept at its unrelenting march forward, that it cared nothing for those it left behind—or for those who chose to stay with them. Timmon's Park had changed. The river Laura had loved so much had dried out. The trees had grown. And change was true even here at Dread Hill, David had only never cared to look outside to see time pressing at the walls, to notice it had forced it's way inside long before it sent Sam crashing through the front door.

"It was two days ago," Stella had said and David thought those words would haunt him forever. "I was making your bed. I saw… Well, I thought I saw a woman in the mirror on the dresser."

David rose his eyes from the overgrown trees to his left, from the painfully neglected back garden, and on to the old tower right in front of the balcony, to the window overlooking his bedroom and then behind him, inside the bedroom itself, towards the mirror that stood on the opposite wall, and that same tower reflected there.

God, how blind had he been? How had he not seen this? How was it possible that it had never crossed his mind that the woman in the mirror could have been in the tower? How much had he wished it to be Laura that he had closed himself of to every other possibility? How much had he wished her to be here that he listened to nothing else?

Desperately, a side of him answered. Desperately.

And for a moment, for a magical, hope-filled moment, he had thought Laura was here. He had believed the woman appearing from this very balcony, stepping into the room, wearing Laura's white dress, looking so much like her, was Laura. He believed that by sheer power of will he had brought her spirit back. And, if Sam hadn't come running after him all the way from London, he would probably still believe that. He would be here right this moment believing Angela was Laura. He would be living in that lie, happily living in that lie, until—

The sound of the garage door being pulled up spared David having to finish that thought. It spared him from delving straight back into this never ending stream of horror inducing scenarios that lead nowhere and that didn't matter anyway for they weren't real, for reality was standing right beneath the balcony.

And reality wasn't Angela. It was Sam.

She was pulling that over the top ugly bike of hers out of the garage, sitting on it, fighting against the wind to get a map of Oxford open and, looking down to the manor's driveway, David didn't know what was in any of that made him want to smile.

Silly, he thought, before he made his way back inside the room, in his retreat blind to Sam stealing a glance his way, to her smile right before leaving—if not in anyway blind to the rabbit, her rabbit, as it stood happily sprawled right in the middle of his bed!

"How?!"

David would end up dropping Houdini back in its cage before heading downstairs. Or he would do that after taking a bath, dressing himself and telling the damn thing to stop following him around. In the end, however, Sam's comment about the rabbit having a tendency of "sort of appearing" actually made him go back to make sure the door to her room was closed and the rabbit inside at least three times before making his way to the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, upon getting there, he found Stella standing near one of the white counters, cutting vegetables, gray hair tied up as always and wearing an apron—not to say a smile once she turned to find it was him who had made his way inside.

"You are up early," she greeted and at that David had to scoff.

"Yes, and I'm regretting it already," he retorted, sitting at the kitchen's center aisle, back to pressing his still crackling head in his hands. As bear-like as Stella nevertheless thought his answer was she refrained from hitting him over the head with it like so many times before. That or she never even heard him. She was still smiling as she made her way to the sink, to wash her hands, one of the kitchen's cloths being taken from its hanger for her to dry them.

"Tea and toast?" Stella offered.

"An aspirin would be better."

David shouldn't have said that. He shouldn't have said it. The words had but to leave his lips and Stella had dropped tea pot and bread and crossed the kitchen in mother-like fury to get to him.

"I hope to heavens, you didn't catch your death last night!" she scolded while holding one hand against David's forehead. "Going out into that storm without a jacket, if I catch you running a fever, David Styles, I—!"

David sighed, watching Stella's lips turn into a thin line as she stood with his head in her hands. It was back to being 7 then, and he might have tried to get away from this, he might, if infancy hadn't taught him one thing above all others: there was no winning against Stella. He hadn't stood a chance with her when she was on her thirties, he stood even less of a chance with her in her sixties.

"It's just a headache," David ended up saying.

And it turns out aspirins were all passed their expiration date in this house, which meant—

"I will ring up Sam to buy some before she gets back," Stella said while walking from the house's pharmacy to the sink, kettle being filled with running water. "She has already left for the university."

"I saw it."

"She is staying with us, then?"

Closing his eyes, fingers going to press them, David sighed.

"I thought that was sufficiently clear without me having to spell it out," he said.

"Well, it wasn't clear," Stella replied, sternly, and even with his eyes closed David could see her closing the tap, making the way back to the oven, kettle being put to the flame, and then turning back to him.

"Still," Stella went on to say. "I'm very glad you decided to let her stay."

There was no way those words wouldn't have made David shake his head.

"You might be gladder to know I stopped her from hitting the road last night," he commented, fingers starting to run distractedly down the edges of the mask hiding his face. "Right in the middle of that storm."

Stella's voice become quieter.

"She was leaving, then?"

David blinked, attention jumping up to find Stella with her back to him and cutting bread over the far off counter, the last of an extremely generous pile of slices being put inside the toaster.

"You don't sound surprised," David pointed out and at those words Stella shook her head.

"I thought Sam was acting strange," she said and she turned, walking up to stand on the opposite side of the center aisle David sat at. "Sad. Looking at everything in this house like she was trying to bind it to memory. It crossed my mind we might wake up one day and she would be simply—gone."

David might have been stunned into silence. In any other situation he would have been. In this—

"What is it with everyone in this blasted house and not telling me anything?!" he snapped.

"Well, forgive me if I thought you were behind it!" Stella immediately hit him with. "After all that song and dance about not wanting Sam in the house and telling me not to get attached to her and—"

Stella stopped herself abruptly, eyes dropping to the floor, voice turning into a whisper.

"Other things."

"Laura's appearances, you mean," David offered, ruthless. "Angela."

"That girl, yes," Stella confirmed, discarding all the rest. "You were so beside yourself when you found out Sam was not a student, I thought you might have said something to her to leave her in that state."

The toaster catapulted the toasts a few centimeters up in the air and straight into the cutting board behind Stella. Instead of turning and getting back to work, however, she stood there looking at him—and, as it would seem, straight through him and into that vein of guilt that had just made David start massaging his forehead.

"What did you tell her?" Stella demanded to know, arms crossed.

"It doesn't matter."

"What did you tell her, David Styles?!"

"I might have threatened to call the police."

Stella seemed to know it wasn't just that by a long shot.

"And?"

"I might have told her something to the lines of not wanting to see her face ever again."

"David!"

"I thought it was her!" David snapped. "Those pranks going on at campus, what happened in the cafeteria—What else was I to think?! Sam had the knowledge and the opportunity, I—!"

David brought himself to a stop, attention stopping for a moment in the crockery in the shelves right over Stella before he pressed his lips at himself. Enough with the justifications. There was no justifying his behavior.

"I jumped to conclusions," he told Stella. "And it doesn't matter, it's solved."

"You solved it last night," Stella pointed out making David go straight on his chair.

"It never crossed my mind it wasn't solved before!"

"When not even I understood that, David, no one—"

Stella snapped a hand over her mouth. She had gone far enough though. David was staring at her.

"You—" he stammered. "You honestly thought me ungrateful enough I would toss Sam out when it was Angela—?"

Stella had thought it. He could see it in her face. She had thought it. And now David truly had been struck silent. Sam standing with her back to the fireplace last night, her expression once she had stuck her head inside his office, asking if she could stay, that rabbit peeking from her bag, she—

Aggravation swept over David like a roaring flame, he was on his feet now. On his feet and pacing, a note of anger to his voice.

"What on earth do you two think I am?!" he snapped. "Sam might have been the second person I managed to make cry in less than—forget twenty four hours, it was less than three, you should seriously reconsider releasing me back into society, Stella—but I am not that heartless!"

The hand Stella had been covering her lips slipped away, fondness making its way to her eyes.

"That was never the problem with you," she agreed, walking along the kitchen to take the butter out of the fridge. "But having a kind heart, a quick temper and awfully thin skin is never a good thing, David!"

David rolled his eyes, still pacing.

"Life-changing advice as ever, Stella."

Stella shook her head at the sarcasm, going back to the toasts, a glance being given to the place David was now at, standing near the small table by the window and looking out to the overgrown back garden.

"How did you manage to convince Sam to stay?"

Convince? David had to snort at Stella's choice of words.

"I didn't convince her," he remarked, looking back to her. "God knows Miss Everett doesn't seem liable to be talked into anything by nothing short of a cataclysm befalling all of us."

Stella raised her eyebrows at him from the other side of the kitchen. It made David sigh.

"She wanted to stay," he informed in a quieter tone. "God knows why she would."

Stella rolled her eyes, a very piercing gaze being given at him before she went back to spread butter on the toasts.

"That poor girl," she mumbled.

"What?"

"I never said!"

"You clearly thought," David replied, but the kettle beginning to whistle like an out of control locomotive right that moment rendered any sort of conversation impossible. In fact, it rendered David incapable of remaining in the kitchen, he was out in the atrium, Stella's—

"David, the food!"

—becoming lost to him as he made a sharp turn to the left and opened the door to the basement.

A cold blast of air hit his face right when David stepped through the threshold and the lights went on, shinning a pale white glow over what looked more like a dungeon than a basement. Stone heads looked down at him from high up the walls, the sound of dripping water echoed in the distance, the smell of the dust hanged over everything. Going down the stairs, David stopped for a moment to gaze at the wine racks.

He really should donate all the bottles that were stored here. It made no sense keeping them if he had no intention of ever touching them again. He should probably also clean-up the lab he had just opened the door to. The sheer amount of things that were still lying around despite Sam having tidied-up most of his files was overwhelming—but not a concern for today. In fact, walking by the filing cabinet and the MRI equipment, going to sit at the computer that stood at the entrance to the round chamber where he had conducted his last experiment, David had disappeared into his work the same moment the computer jumped to life. Angela's brain scans, the university newspapers, more neurobiology books than he could count, all were held against each other as he sank deeper and deeper into conjectures, theories, all of those things where he would have stayed for hours… if something being laid on top of his head hadn't forced him to make his way back. To turn on the chair. To find Sam standing behind him, arm outstretched and with a small pile of papers being unapologetically held over his head.

"It is certainly not that hard to give me those normally, Miss Everett," David snapped, Sam still holding the papers in place, making his lips curl. "Sam."

A mischievous smile went over her face despite David's wintry tone, papers now being put on his hands.

"It wouldn't have been 'that hard' if I hadn't been standing here for the last half an hour trying to get your attention," Sam told him right before pointing at the other end of the lab, towards the table right by the entrance and the food tray she had clearly left there. "Also, Mrs. Dalton asked me to bring that down. It must be cold by now. Do you want to heat it up or something?"

Already halfway down Angela's enrollment files or, in other words, the sheets Sam had given him, chair being turned back to the computer, David gave her words a dismissive wave.

"Take it back to the kitchen. I'm not hungry."

Sam didn't bat an eye.

"Mrs. Dalton warned me you would say that," she pointed out from behind him, her footsteps echoing in the lab's stone walls. "She said: you have to eat—"

A sneeze put an end to Sam's best take at Stella's scolding tone. A tone with which, David might add, she was doing such a good job with that their present conversation was threatening to turn into a broken phone kind of scenario between him and Stella. Or it would have, if he didn't know Sam well enough by now to know he was going to get stuck in an argument with her, instead of with Stella, if he even tried to start such a thing here.

That sneeze, however, brought all that could have been to a halt. David made his chair turn away from the computer and the journals and his notes and by doing so he found Sam standing to his right, right at the entrance to the lab's main chamber, back against the beds and medical equipment, hands on her hips.

"It is not a cold," she protested before he could even speak.

"Of course not," David retorted. "It just has the same symptoms."

"I thought David Styles was a neurobiologist," Sam replied, eyebrows raised. "Not a general practitioner."

"It overlaps."

Something trembled in Sam's expression. Laughter. Not that it ever made it cross her lips. Not that she allowed it to. Not that she needed to for David to be left staring at her.

"It doesn't, right?" he heard Sam ask, clearly just to be sure. "Those two. They don't overlap."

"No."

"Figures," she whispered with a chuckle and, this time, David got up before she noticed he was still staring, before she could conclude he hadn't known he could still make someone laugh, before she concluded he had given up on that too when Laura had left. He got up, made his way to the lab's entrance, took the cup of tea that was on the tray—it was lukewarm but it would do—and made his way back to put it in Sam's hands.

"Drink that."

Sam was left looking between the dark concoction and him.

"This is yours," she whispered.

"And you obviously need it more than I do."

She blinked, bringing the cup closer to her chest, bringing it so close she seemed to be hugging it.

"I—" She visibly swallowed. "Thank you."

Sam said that so quietly David doubted he would have heard it if he hadn't been standing right in front of her. He wouldn't lie and say he didn't think that strange. Of all the things he had noticed about Samantha, the main one was that she wasn't meek or timid by any stretch of the imagination. Quite the contrary. And yet, she was all but hiding behind the tea cup right now. Eyes on its dark contents. Standing in front of him like she hadn't been given anything in her life. Practically jumping out of her skin when David reached to touch her shoulder.

Odd.

And odder still was how quickly Sam seemed to recover. Rapidly retreating into the chamber behind her, going to sit on the closest of the medical beds, slightly hunched over, softly blowing the tea. David had just gone back to sit at the computer, when she found her voice.

"By the way, David—"

He looked up from the book he had just picked up in time to see Sam reaching inside her corset—today, it seemed, she had gone for a red one—and take a green and white box from inside. A gesture from him and she had tossed it his way, watching the aspirin box as it fell on his hands, frowning when David opened it.

"Are you feeling sick or something?" Sam asked and, truly, if she had followed Stella's footsteps and come to hold a hand against his head—and Sam seemed exactly the type to do it—David swore he would have fled for cover someplace where none of the two could get him. Which probably meant his private lab. God knows he was probably not safe there either and would get out to find Stella and Sam waiting to ambush him just outside the door.

"Headache," David therefore informed. And why, why did he have to continue? "I have my head crackling like its your 4th of July."

Sam looked at him over the tea she was sipping. Concerned.

"That doesn't sound good."

It wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination. That, however, wasn't saying it wasn't normal given how little he had slept. Still, Sam was studying him from behind deep blue eyes, frowning, lips parting and David should probably dedicate himself to divination because—

"It has nothing to do with last night!" he snapped.

"Well, you were sitting in the freezing cold!" she tossed back.

And now they were glaring at each other. David while sitting on the computer, Angela's student enrollment files over his legs. Sam seated in one of the medical beds with her cup of tea. Both getting more aggravated by the second, which was a complete idiocy no matter how one looked at this and, for once, David was the one to actually back away.

"Go ahead and tell me to put on a jacket next time, will you?" he snapped and truly, it was a very good thing neurobiology PhDs didn't offer a front row seat into reading anyone's brain for, otherwise, David wouldn't be seeing Sam turn as red as a beet and inhaling half her tea, he wouldn't be running to rescue her, the mug and the lab itself from the flood. He wouldn't have stood next to Sam staring wide-eyed and bewildered at her half-coughed:

"Please, don't put on a jacket."

No. He would be seeing himself through her eyes this very morning. Stepping out into his room's balcony. Leaning over the stone parapet. Dark hair caught in the cold morning breeze. Light washing over him. He would be here looking at himself—shirtless.

"Honestly," David whispered, the extension cord he was fighting to get away from the spilled tea with his foot—courtesy of holding a mug in one hand and running the other up and down Sam's back—getting momentarily ignored in favor of Sam's ongoing cough. "Are you even alright?"

David's only answer was a nod. A nod, more cough and—

"You don't mind that I call you David, do you?" Sam managed to say while being given back the mug, her change of subject so abrupt, David, now dropping for the extension cord, was left blinking.

"What?"

"You don't mind I call you David," Sam repeated, her clear intention of jumping down to help being cut short by a wave for her—and more importantly the mug—to stay put. "I started calling you that after you fired me in London. I thought it didn't matter anymore." Sam stopped for a moment, looking around the lab, voice dropping to a relieved whisper. "But I'm still here."

David glanced up. Above him, sitting, head leaned against one hand, Sam frowned at him.

"Do you mind I call you David or not?"

"If I did mind it," David retorted. "I would have made it clear already."

He got up with those words, the extension cord being put safely over the same medical bed Sam was sitting on.

"Furthermore," David stated, making his way back to the computer. "I'm under the impression you and the entirety of the Lamb's Club have been doing it since the beginning."

Sam tilted her head, taking a sip from what little remained of the tea. Thinking.

"Harvey calls you Styles," she informed after a moment, the odd cough still shaking her. "Charles and Malik don't give an inch on Dr. Styles, though."

David glanced Sam's way, his expression such she rolled her eyes.

"Look, you can hardly blame me and Helena for the David-thing," she said, unapologetic. "You are not exactly what comes to mind when anyone thinks 'Oxford Professor'."

Had David not put an extremely heavy book over his legs just now he would have jumped to his feet. Things being as they were, however—

"What is that supposed to mean?!" he growled. It gained him little more than a sigh.

"That you are young," Sam spelled it out, while distractedly starting to curl a lock of her dark hair around her finger. "When I got here I thought you were going to be ancient."

"Ancient," David repeated, still aggravated. "And that I'm not, apparently, makes it perfectly acceptable to blame me for—How did it go? Not being what comes to mind when one thinks 'Professor'?"

Sam smiled.

"You always sound like one, though," she whispered, starting to rotate the mug in her hands. "Are you really not going to eat?" she asked after a while, her tone one of concern. "If you go on like this you will skip right to dinner. It's the middle of the afternoon already."

David hadn't noticed. But then again—and at this his attention slipped to the lights hanging from the ceiling, to the dark gray walls, to the absolute lack of windows in the chamber—Hadn't that been why he had locked himself in here the last three years? To escape time?

"I'm not hungry," David ended up stating and if only he was not getting the distinct feeling Stella had told Sam about him skipping breakfast—

He got up that same moment.

"Come with me."

The order took them both out of the lab and into the large chamber outside. The key to his private lab being taken out of his pocket, David guided the two of them towards the large grates cutting this part of the basement from the rest of the vaults and stopped near the door to his private lab, opening it, guiding Sam inside. Or, at least, so David thought he had done for when he looked back, expecting to find Sam somewhere behind him, he instead ended up having to search for her. He found still standing outside.

"What are you doing?" David asked, facing her as she stood at the threshold, arms crossed, the wine rack behind her.

"Can I enter?" she asked, tilting her head at how sharp David's eyes immediately got.

"What else am I towing you around for?"

Sam ignored the tone of his voice, entering the lab while looking around. Her eyes, unsurprisingly, fell on the machinery to her right.

"That is an isolation tank," David clarified while making his way behind the desk. Sam's curiosity, however, was clearly not satisfied. She was still with her back turned to him, facing the tank, curious.

"What is it used for?"

A weight sank into David's stomach, attention on the contents of the metal drawer he had just opened.

It was better she didn't know the answer. It was better no one knew the answer. Even if David suspected it would take Sam about five seconds to reach the same conclusion Stella had long figured out.

Laura.

This… Everything had been for Laura. For this desperate hope she might still come back. That he might still be with her. He had spent three years not caring about what anyone thought of that, but now—

David raised his eyes from the drawer, rising back up with several carefully folded newspapers in hand, to look at Sam, to find her inspecting the tank's controls.

—now, for some weird reason, he did care. And above all, he couldn't stand to think Sam would come to look at him just like Stella did. With too much concern, too much compassion, too much everything. Maybe he just didn't want to find himself looking into those deep blue eyes and find Sam thinking he might break.

"Take these up," he instructed the moment Sam turned away from the isolation tank and back to him. The journals David had on his hands were immediately given to her. "I want you to find anything you can about what happened in the cafeteria some days ago."

Looking at the pile of newspapers and then at him, Sam frowned.

"Hadn't you talked with the police?" she pointed out.

"Chief-Inspector Paiser was not as helpful as I would wish," David admitted, arms crossed. "Go to St. Edmund, find the students who were on the cafeteria that day. Ask them where exactly they were, what they heard, what they saw, I want every detail they can remember."

Going over the journal in her hands, Sam didn't seem all that sure.

"Do you really want me to do this?" she asked to David's surprise.

"You have proven yourself good with people."

Sam shook her head, frowning at the newspapers, then at him.

"I didn't mean the interviews. I meant strolling back into St. Edmund Hall when nearly everyone there knows I forged a student ID to get inside," she said, sensibly. "I doubt that gives me any credits."

David might have laughed. He would if he still remembered how to.

"Credits?" he nevertheless scoffed. "There are probably entire groups of students getting outright drunk while celebrating your feat!"

Sam raised her eyebrows:

"Really?"

David didn't have any doubts whatsoever. But that mattered little. Sam's troubles would be of another nature.

"In regards to problems," David went on to say. "I expect my shinning reputation will cause you more trouble than before. I doubt things have gotten better after one of my students actually died."

It was like he had disturbed a volcano. Standing on the other side of the desk, the isolation tank on her back, at first listening, attentive, Sam all but exploded:

"Angela was not your fault!"

And it was touching. Her outrage. And yet, it was entirely misplaced. Angela… If it wasn't for him, if he had listened to her three years ago, if he had helped, if it wasn't for that one mistake—

"David."

A hand closed over his arm and David rose his eyes to find Sam was now standing on this side of the table, right at his side, eyes shimmering, trying to bring her point across by sheer force of will.

"It is not your fault," she said.

David wished he could believe her. He truly wish he did, but—

"You are clear on what your assignments are?" David instead said, the words taking him out of the private lab, Sam in tow. Looking at his side as he turned the key, he could still see something strange on the way Sam was looking at him—before she completely shut it out.

"I won't have this ready tomorrow," she put forth, newspapers now under her arm, voice echoing on the stone walls, the distant sound of dripping water mixing with her words. "Just so we are on the same page."

"We are on the same page."

"Also," Sam continued, head tilted, her sharp tone making David stop before disappearing inside the main lab. "It would be easier if you told me what you are looking for."

Yes, he supposed it might.

"Patterns," David clarified. "Repetitions. Anything that ties all of these happenings together. That can help me understand how Angela's brain worked now that she isn't here."

"Understood."

David frowned, watching Sam read the journal that was on top with deeply knitted eyebrows. Yes, he was rather sure she did, that he could trust this to her, and so David was back to work, back to the main lab, back to getting so lost in his work he didn't notice time fly by until the smell of meat and vegetables reached his nose and David looked to his side.

There was a tray over the stool to his left that hadn't been there prior and he had but to move, to lean back to see if there was someone in the lab, to feel something slip from his shoulders, to reach back to grab it and find himself with the red blanket from the parlor on his hands.

Sam. This had Sam written all over it. But he hadn't noticed she had been here again. He hadn't noticed any of these things arriving. And for a moment David stood silent. Watching the white steam rise over the plate. Hearing Sam's footsteps as she went up the basement stairs. Feeling a soft warmth slowly settling around him.

"Silly," David whispered to himself, a glance at Laura as she stood on the photo he had put over the computer making him sigh in defeat. "Don't you start too."

Laura didn't answer, lately, she no longer did. And yet, putting the tray over his legs, picking up knife and fork, taking a pick at the peas, David couldn't help but feel she was standing with Sam on this.

"Three against one," David grumbled, eyes going back to Angela's enrollment files even as he ate. "Obviously, I don't have enough trouble."

Had David known what laid in wait, he might have refrained from saying that.

Author's Notes: A big thank you to ReminiscentLullaby for reviewing this one :)