"Why haven't you unpacked any of this stuff yet?" Jim asked from somewhere in his bedroom. Leonard thought he might be dreaming about her for a second -wouldn't be the first time- but the look on Jim's face when he forced his eyes open was very real.

"What…? How are you here? When is it?" he grumbled as he rolled over, reaching for his watch on the nightstand. One of her hands gently pushed him away from the edge of the bed and she sat down next to him. Why the hell was she on his bed? Leonard closed his eyes and willed her to go away but she didn't.

"It's a little after oh-six hundred, Tuesday. Joanna let me in," she told him as she rested a hand on his forehead. "You're hot… and not in the 'I wanna bang you' sense of the word."

"Go away," Leonard moaned and tried to push her off but he didn't have any strength in his arms. What the hell?

"Can't do that, Bonesy. You kinda look like death," Jim said. He felt like it too but he wasn't going to tell her that.

"I'm fine and nobody asked for your help."

"If you're fine then I'm Captain America. Your daughter asked for my help. Joanna called me half an hour ago, said you were throwing up all night. She was in here on your phone and you didn't even notice. Kid was worried that you were gonna die on her," she sighed. "You probably picked something up from one of your patients. I already called Doctor Boyce, he'll cover your appointments and I'm gonna stay and keep an eye on you."

"Don't you have a job to get to?"

"I'm on the night shift for the next few days. I just got off duty," Jim said with a tired smile. She should be at home in bed, not worried about him. Leonard actually felt bad that he was messing with her sleep. "Look, I'll get Joanna to school and then I'll come back and make Grandma Kirk's chicken noodle soup, which you will eat because you're stubborn but not stupid and it's awesome. You're gonna take a shower, drink lots of fluids and you're gonna rest. Arlene said she'll pick Joanna up from school and Sam will drop her off after dinner and stick around to keep an eye on you both when I go to work. So, you're stuck with us. Unless you want Gaila to come over here."

"She never stops talking," he groaned.

"She's been my friend my whole life, I'm well aware of that fact," she said with a smile. "Those are your options, Bones. It's either me or her."

"Fine, you can stay. Damn woman," Leonard grumbled.

"You'll thank me later. Unlike you, I take food as payment for my services," Jim smiled. He rolled his eyes. "I'm gonna go get Joanna ready for school. You need anything just let me know."

"Yea, yea…"

"You did my dishes. And folded my laundry," Leonard said when he stumbled into the kitchen a little after ten in the morning. Not that he and Joanna made a big mess or anything, he just didn't feel like dealing with any of it the night before. Leonard was not expecting the clean kitchen or the laundry basket of folded clothes when he ventured downstairs.

"Also remade your bed and tossed your linens in the wash while you were in the shower. It's not a big deal, stuff needed done so I did it," Jim said as he sat down in one of the chairs at his kitchen table. "You hungry?"

"Starving. How was Jo this morning?"

"She was good. Tried to talk me into giving her ice cream for breakfast. She settled for pancakes."

"That's my girl," he chuckled as Jim put a bowl of soup and a glass of water in front of him. The steam from the soup hit his face and Leonard might've made a noise before slowly digging in. "This is really good."

"Told you it was but you were kinda out of it when I got here this morning," she smiled. "You want tea?"

"I have tea?"

"Yes," Jim smiled. Since when did he have tea? Or the stuff for homemade chicken soup? "I stopped by the store after I took Jo to school." He gave her a look. "You said that out loud."

"Oh." Leonard nodded as he ate before he raised an eyebrow, "You didn't go home. Did you?"

"Not yet. How'd you know that?"

"You're wearing my shirt." Even though it was big on her, the light blue dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up and the just the right number of buttons open at the top, seemed to suit her perfectly. He was tempted to give her all his shirts just to see what they'd look like on her lean frame.

"Mine is in with your sheets. You kinda puked on me a couple hours ago," Jim smiled as she sat a cup of green tea in front of him. "I figured you would prefer if I didn't walk around your house topless."

"I don't know, that might make me feel better," he chuckled.

"You're lucky, Bones, but you ain't that lucky," Jim laughed, her eyes sparkling with she did.

"You know, that's what I thought when I got married."

"How so?" she asked as she sat in the chair on his right side with her own tea.

"I couldn't believe I ended up with that smart and beautiful woman. I kept thinking that I can't be that lucky. Guess I was wrong."

"Not from where I'm sitting," Jim smiled.

"You call getting divorced and moving to the Midwest lucky?"

"No. The other part though, that's lucky. Every day, you wake up and that beautiful little girl gives you one of her sleepy smiles and it's like… the sun is out of a job. And every night, after you put her to bed, you watch her sleep and you think that nothing can ever beat that. Then, the next morning, she smiles at you again. You teach her. You protect her. You love her. And what's more, she knows it. One day, Joanna will grow up and she'll meet someone and she'll know what love means because you taught it to her. She'll be strong because you encourage her to be. When that woman you raised puts your first grandchild in your arms, you'll feel like the luckiest man in the universe. Your ex-wife is a bitch but she gave you Joanna, then she walked away. As far as I'm concerned, you were too good for her, not the other way around."

"That's how you see it?" Leonard asked. Jim didn't say anything, she just shrugged and moved to take his empty bowl. "Is that why you don't talk to your mother? You think she didn't protect you."

"We're not talking about me."

"Only because you dodge the question every time I bring it up. So, how 'bout this, you tell me what the deal is and I'll stop asking?"

"She didn't protect me. That one day doesn't fix almost six years of abuse. Denying it for the last decade and a half afterwards just adds insult to injury. Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my mind. Like the last twenty years is all in my head. If it wasn't for Sam… How sick is it that our shared memories are the only reason I haven't just given up?"

"It's not sick at all," he told her. A thought crossed his mind when he looked at her. "I probably know the answer to this but I'm gonna ask anyway. Did you see someone after everything happened with your step-dad?" Jim raised an eyebrow. "Didn't think so."

"My mother wanted it to go away. She pretends like he didn't beat the crap out of us all the time. Like the broken bones and bruises were all in my imagination. You honestly think she was gonna let me talk to a shrink?"

"No, I suppose not. The sheriff knows, right?"

"Of course he does," she sighed. "He's the one who talked my mother into letting me take that house. He even helped me with some of the repairs. I never felt safe with my mother, which is fucked up because I watch her with Sam and then Peter and I wonder why she was never like that with me. She was depressed after my father died and she would forget about me. Then she married that man. It's why I've lived alone, aches away from everyone and everything, since I was a teenager. Hell, the first time I ever got a good night's sleep, it was a week after my eighteenth birthday. There was fresh snow on the ground outside. I crawled into bed and I just felt… safe. I drifted right to sleep not scared out of my mind."

"You think she doesn't know any of this?"

"If she does, she's pretending that she doesn't and I'm not sure which pisses me off more," she sighed. "Okay, you have to stop doing that."

"Doing what?" Leonard asked. "I didn't do anything."

"You just… Every time I'm around you I have a sudden urge to spill my guts. I mean, there are people I've known for years who don't know any of this stuff. You're in town for a month and a half and you know my deepest, darkest secrets."

"It's a gift," he smiled, then yawned.

"Come on. Back to bed with you," Jim chuckled. She refilled his glass of water, grabbed his tea and handed him a bottle of Gatorade before she pushed him towards the stairs.

"Are you gonna sleep any?" Leonard asked as they headed up to his room. She had to be back at work at six, which meant she had to sleep at some point.

"Might," she sighed. "Wouldn't be the first time I've gone without sleep and I'm sure it won't be the last."

"Stubborn woman," Leonard muttered to himself a just before two. When he woke up, the house was eerily quiet. Leonard figured out why when he spotted Jim passed out in the chair in his bedroom, her feet propped up on his bed. "Idiot's gonna hurt her neck."

"I can hear you," she muttered.

"Oh, can you? Then maybe you should find somewhere else to sleep," he pointed out.

"That couch is worse than this chair and I'm not taking your germs into Joanna's room."

"You need real sleep, Jim."

"I'll be fine," she sighed.

"Did you know that driving while exhausted is just as bad as driving drunk. If you're planning on getting behind the wheel later, you need to sleep. Don't make me call the sheriff and tell him that his favorite person isn't sleeping."

"Fine, smartass, move over," Jim said, getting up from the chair, putting her phone on the nightstand and lying beside him on the bed.

"You're gonna get sick," Leonard told her. His heart was going a million miles an hour. When was the last time a beautiful woman was in bed with him? A beautiful woman that he may or may not have had a few slightly inappropriate dreams about, no less?

"I've been here all day and you threw up on me, I'm probably a lost cause anyway," she mumbled. "Go back to sleep."

"You're really gonna sleep in my bed?"

"You were the one complaining about me sleeping in that chair, which isn't the worse place I've ever slept, just so you know. Now, go back to sleep, Bonesy."

She had a very valid point. He wasn't going to win this one and he knew it. Leonard got comfortable, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.