After dinner they return to the living room, Erin and Jay on the couch, and Mouse in an arm chair. Erin dangles a hand over the edge of the couch, fingers running over the strings of the guitar, back in its place on the stand. She tilts her head back to look at Jay.

"Play me something."

Jay quirks an eyebrow. Erin grins, sitting up straighter and tugging the guitar out of the stand. Mouse leans back in his chair, amused, watching her heft the guitar up and push it into Jay's lap. Jay obediently adjusts the guitar into position, fiddling with the strings and plucking a few notes to check the tuning. Jay glances up, grinning at Mouse, and starts strumming a familiar tune. Mouse laughs, shaking his head. Jay raises his eyebrows, and Mouse rolls his eyes. Erin watches this exchange curiously, eyes flicking between the two of them, and then the chords reach Mouse's cue.

"Where it began, I can't begin to knowing

But then I know it's growing strong

Was in the spring

And spring became the summer

Who'd have believed you'd come along."

Mouse takes the brief pause in the song to laugh at Erin's taken aback expression – eyebrows raised, eyes wide, lips parted.

"Hands, touching hands

Reaching out, touching me, touching you."

Erin recovers from her shock, grinning, and she joins in with the chorus. Her voice is untrained, but she's got good pitch and can obviously carry a tune. By the end of the song, Mouse is tossing out harmonies and they're all grinning and he feels like they should be sitting round a campfire as the sparking embers drift towards the stars.

"So you sing too? What can't you do?" Erin says laughingly. Mouse feels a faint blush skim across his cheeks, laughing and scratching the back of his neck.

"Draw. Dance, skate. Not much of a swimmer. Ride a horse, tried that once – never again."

"You can't skate?" Erin says incredulously. Mouse shakes his head.

"Never learned. My parents weren't into it, and I didn't care enough to make them take me, so…" He shrugs. Mouse and Erin both look up as Jay stands suddenly.

"Grabbing some water, you guys want some?" He passes the guitar to Mouse on his way past.

"Yeah, sure," Erin says as Mouse nods. Mouse pulls the guitar into his arms, fingers finding the notes absentmindedly. The tune flutters softly into the air.

"Haven't heard that in a long time," Jay says fondly as he pads back into the room with three water glasses.

"Haven't played it in a long time." Mouse smiles sadly, plucking the chords again, the sound seeming to vibrate somewhere in his lungs.

"What is it?" Erin asks curiously. "I don't recognize it."

"No, you wouldn't," Mouse answers absently. "I wrote it." If Mouse had looked up, he might have laughed at the comically surprised expression on her face. He didn't though, eyes watching the vibration of the strings.

"Play it for me?" Jay asks quietly. Mouse watches the strings a moment longer, the way dust motes dance around them, and then begins playing the chords in earnest. Sweet and somber, they reverberate in the living room and Mouse closes his eyes.

"Sing me a lullaby

Darling sing me to sleep

Promise to watch over me

And safe guard my dreams.

Sing me a lullaby

Darling sing me to sleep

Please sing it loud

Cause it's so hard

To drown out the screams

If you take my hand

Stay by my side

I won't promise you an easy life

I won't tell you a lie

But sing me a lullaby

And I'll sing one for you

We can stay inside

On the 4th of July

And just sing each other

Lullabies."

The last note of the song hangs in the air, and Mouse opens his eyes and finds Jay watching him with the familiar look of fondness and melancholy. His chest aches a little, as it always does when he plays that song, too full of all the things it means, and hollow for all the things they've lost. He glances apprehensively towards Erin, who is watching him with wide, sad eyes.

"That was beautiful Mouse," she murmurs. Her hands twitch, rising from their place clasped in her lap, then falling back. A flush rises in Mouse's cheeks and he drops his eyes, fiddling with the strings. "Guess we can add songwriting to the list of your talents too," she says wryly. Mouse chuckles.

"Hardly. That's the only song I ever wrote, and it's so short it barely counts."

"Oh, I think it counts," Jay breaks in, and Mouse rolls his eyes at the repetition of this refrain. He glances back up and finds that Erin's eyes still linger on him, but this time she doesn't keep his gaze, flicking over towards Jay, and Mouse thinks he sees a faint blush on her cheeks.

Mouse passes the guitar back to Jay and takes a sip from the glass of water Jay had set on the coffee table. Jay doesn't settle the guitar in his lap, but passes it along to Erin, who gently leans it back into the stand. Mouse's mind drifts, back to the base where he played that song for the unit for the first time, the way Jay watched him, aglow with pride, and how a poignant silence stopped time for a moment before his brothers in arms clapped and grinned; all except Hollingsworth, who stared back, pale, stiff, and stricken. The look on his face is one that haunts Mouse. Would it have been better never to know?

He blinks, rising back to the present as though emerging from a dark cave, Jay's living room slowly coming back into focus. The lights have been dimmed and an episode of Doctor Who has just begun playing on the TV. Mouse leans forward, finally putting down the water glass he's been holding absently. Jay is watching him from the corner of his eye. Mouse doesn't meet his eyes; he has a feeling Jay has been watching him the whole time. Erin glances over quickly, eyes drawn by his movement, and then her eyes skip back to the TV, and Mouse wonders if she's just being more discreet than Jay in watching him, or if she hadn't noticed anything. Discretion, he decides, as her eyes flick back to him once more, just briefly.

He ignores them both, pretending to watch Rose and the Doctor on the screen. Really, it's a struggle to focus on the episode, only flickers of lights and colours really registering. If asked, he probably wouldn't even be able to say which episode it was, but he must put on a pretty good charade, as by the end Jay and Erin have both stopped watching him.

When the credits start streaming across the screen, Mouse checks his watch and rises from his chair.

"I should get home," he murmurs. Erin and Jay's heads both swivel to look at him.

"You're not staying?" Erin asks, badly masked concern in her voice. Mouse puts on a small, tired smile.

"Not tonight." He slips on his jacket and stuff his hands in his pockets, wandering to the door. Erin and Jay both push off the couch to follow to the hall, as he pulls open the door.

"Mouse-" Jay begins quietly.

"See you guys tomorrow."

"Yeah, tomorrow…" Erin trails off, bewildered. Mouse tugs the door shut behind himself with a quiet snap, and is alone in the hallway.

The thing is, even as he wanders almost dazedly to the elevator and then out to his car, he knows that leaving is the wrong choice. But he keeps going, pulling open the door and starting the car, and pulling slowly out onto the road. Everything seems kind of muffled as he drives home, as he walks up to his apartment. He takes a few steps inside and stalls out, ears ringing with the sheer empty quiet of the place.

Finally, he sighs, bringing a hand up to rub at his face and shrugs off his jacket. It's not even that late, but he leaves the lights off, shucking his clothes and pulling on warm, soft pajamas, and climbs into bed, drawing the blankets close around his body.

It's like all the loneliness that had been driven away the past few months with Erin and Jay drops down all at once, leaving him breathless. This too is a kind of anxiety attack he knows, so different from the violent trigger based panic attacks Erin witnessed. His breathing isn't shallow – in fact, he takes deep, steady breaths – but it doesn't stop his head from spinning. Tears slide sideways across his face to dampen his pillow at his temple. He closes his eyes, and waits for sleep to pull him under.


AN: "Sweet Caroline" obviously does not belong to me. "Lullaby" does.

Review! I'll do my best to keep the updates rolling weekly for now.