A/N Thank you all so much for the reviews! They really make my day (or night).

Disclaimer: Haven't managed to make Eric real yet. Bum.

SPOV

The next couple of days went by without much incident. Eric and Felicia and I hung out and did chores at home and tried to avoid going near the shops as it would be mayhem with everyone out Christmas shopping.

Friday morning though, it all went a bit to poo. For one thing, it was pouring with rain. Absolutely bucketing down, making it all feel a bit close and humid. Although nowhere near as humid as it can feel in February.

I woke up with the telltale tightness in my skull that said a headache was coming. A bad one. I did a quick calculation of the date. Yep, period tension headache. Terrific.

I wriggled out from under Eric who seemed reluctant to let me go even though he didn't actually wake up, and I went to the kitchen in search of some ibuprofen. Hopefully that would work. I didn't want to have to pull out the big guns. I thought maybe coffee would help too, because caffeine does something to blood vessels I'd read, so it helps get rid of a headache. So I put the coffee on and sat down with a cup when it was ready, watching the rain run down the glass doors to the deck.

When I'd just about finished my coffee, Eric came padding out looking worried. "Hey" he said "You weren't there when I woke up and it was so quiet." He sat down next to me and looked at me. "Are you OK?"

"Headache" I said. "Really nasty period headache. Which must mean it's coming soon. Hopefully the painkillers kick in before too long. And the coffee."

"Yeah, you look really pale."

"I don't feel that great at all."

"Is there anything else you can do?"

"I'll just have to wait it out. I can take stronger painkillers, but they knock me out so I can sleep it off. And I can't do that with kids."

At that Amelia came stomping down the hall and I started to stand up so I could get her breakfast, but Eric looked at me and said "No, it's OK. You stay here" and he stood up and went to see what she wanted.

I did the best I could through the morning. Amelia is really loud, and actually so is Felicia when she starts squealing. I tried everything I could think of. I stood under the warm water in the shower in the hope it would help with the pain that was radiating down my neck and shoulder. I got out the wheat bag and tried that. But nothing worked. By lunchtime the pain was worse than before. My neck hurt, my face hurt, my teeth even hurt. I felt a bit sick and there were spots in my vision where there shouldn't be spots. Shit. We'd wandered into migraine territory.

Eric was in the living room trying to entertain Amelia and Felicia which is no easy task on a rainy day. He stood up and came over to me. "You really don't look very well" he said, putting his hands on my shoulders.

"Yeah, um. It's not good. Listen, I think I need to take something stronger and just have a lie down. Will you be alright? Felicia should be going down for a nap soon anyway."

"Yeah. Yeah, we'll be fine. You just rest and try to get over it" he kissed my forehead and went back to the kids, while I went to find my migraine pills. I then went and lay on the bed, listening to the rain on the roof until everything faded away for a bit.

EPOV

Sookie freaked me out a bit on Friday morning. She was so pale and quiet and she'd wince everytime she moved. It was horrible to watch. Especially when Amelia was shouting at her, it didn't matter how many times you told her to just use a normal speaking voice, she couldn't seem to grasp the fucking concept.

I was almost glad when she said she was going to bed. There was just nothing I could do for her, so I hated to see her like that. Of course I would have quite liked to be going to be with her, even if it was to just hold her, but I was in charge of two very bored children. Fuck. What the hell were we going to do for the afternoon?

Felicia went for a nap too and I switched the TV on for Amelia in desperation. Something called Dora was on; it seemed to involve a small girl and a lot of shouting. I wondered if that's where Amelia got it from.

I wasn't sure what to do next. I wondered what Sookie would do? I looked around and saw there was a basket of clean washing that needed folding. I peered at its contents. Yeah, I wasn't the underpants fairy and had no idea where most of the stuff went, so I thought I'd find something else. I thought of vacuuming, but maybe that would disturb everyone who was sleeping. In the end I gave up and sat on the couch with Amelia trying to read the paper while she asked me questions about what was going on in the programme as if I fucking knew. In the end I asked her why she didn't just watch it herself.

"Oh" she said "I've seen this one before. Dora has to get to school."

At that point I gave up and just made a lot of affirmative noises every time Amelia asked a question. That seemed OK.

Felicia yelled when she wanted to get up and I could escape for a bit. Although there was a less than pleasant smell around her when I picked her up. Fuck. I was stuck with the baby with the poopy diaper again. I hoped it would go better than last time, I'd changed a few diapers since but they weren't ones that had been pooped in.

Felicia looked happy enough when I put her on the change table. I hoped it stayed that way. I took off her shorts, held my breath and opened the diaper. It was bad, but not as bad as I'd seen. At least everything was still in the diaper. I still didn't know what the hell we were feeding her to produce quite all that disgusting stuff, but I got it into a bag, got Felicia cleaned up and dressed without any of it getting anywhere it shouldn't.

I felt quite pleased and wanted to tell someone. Only there was no one to tell. Well there was Amelia, but most of the time she showed a complete lack of interest in anyone else. She probably wasn't going to be interested in any sense of achievement I felt in changing her sister's diaper.

I put Felicia on the floor of the living room. Amelia looked at me. "Home's borin'" she said. Yeah, I could kind of get her point. It was boring without Sookie. How did she cope with this all day every day?

I left Amelia building towers for Felicia with Felicia's blocks and went to check on Sookie. She was awake, but only just. She looked rather spaced out.

"How are you?" I asked.

"I've been better. The headache's still there. I just need sleep. But we're running low on nappies and I need to go out."

"No, it's OK. I can do it."

"Well I better get up anyway so I can look after the kids." She started to haul herself up. "Ugh, that's not good, my whole skull is pulsing."

"You stay there; I'll take them with me."

Sookie looked at me. "You sure?"

"Yeah, we need to get out of the house anyway." As if on cue there was a shout from Amelia and the sound of Felicia bursting into tears. "Hang on" I said, while I went to investigate what was happening. It looked as though Felicia had touched the blocks and had been yelled at then burst into tears. It was all over by the time I got there, so I went back to Sookie, who was lying down again.

"If you're sure" she murmured "then it would save me going, and I'd be very grateful."

"Yeah, I know. It's no problem." I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek before going to get everyone organised.

We weren't going on a particularly long trip, but as I stood in the kitchen trying to work out what I needed to take for everyone, I started to appreciate why Sookie made lists. I had the diaper bag for Felicia, but what did you take for Amelia? Snacks I thought, as I rummaged in the pantry for a muesli bar and a packet of raisins and put that with Felicia's things. I couldn't think of anything else.

Getting everyone into the car in the pouring rain required a few trips with an umbrella and even then I got wet while standing there to do up the buckles on each car seat. Amelia was happy to be leaving the house and Felicia just seemed a bit confused. I backed out of the driveway and was part way down the road before I realised I didn't have Felicia's stroller, which meant I had to drive back, go in the house to get Sookie's car keys, and get the thing out of the trunk of her car. It confused Amelia who kept asking why we were going back and made me even wetter as I'd run through the rain without putting the umbrella up again.

I tried to think where we could go where there would be undercover parking. The only place I could think of would be St Luke's, which would be fucking crazy this close to Christmas. But maybe we'd be lucky. I didn't fancy having to unpack everyone in the rain.

So St Luke's it was and the carpark was heaving. I pulled to one side of one of the rows while Amelia interrogated me about why we had stopped without leaving the car.

Eventually I saw someone leaving and pulled forward to take their spot, putting my indicator on. However some fucking woman in a mini was coming from the other direction and zipped in first. Fuck. That was all I needed, to spend longer stuck here with Amelia chatting to me. I really wanted to get out of the car and yell at the stupid bitch, who had quite obviously seen me, but I knew that would just get reported back to Sookie at some point.

So we were stuck waiting for a parking space again. Amelia decided to pass the time by singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star about 600 fucking times. Felicia had thrown the toys she had been holding onto the seat and was now chewing one of the socks I'd put on her feet before she'd left.

Eventually another spot appeared and I took it. It felt like we'd already been here for fucking hours and we hadn't even got out of the car yet. I unpacked the stroller and put Felicia in it, now minus her socks which were saturated, with Amelia pouting because she wanted to get out first. I didn't trust her not to run off into the traffic, so no way was I falling for that one.

We made it into the mall and it was fucking busy. There were people everywhere. I tried to get Amelia to hold my hand but she wanted to skip ahead, which meant she skipped in front of a whole lot of people who were trying to rush through their shopping and nearly caused several accidents, so I was apologising left, right and centre. Fuck. In the end I grabbed her arm and told her she had to hold my hand or I was putting her back in the car, by herself. She huffed, but complied.

Felicia kept throwing the cat toy she had out of her stroller, meaning I had to stop every few paces to pick it up and run the risk of being knocked down by busy shoppers myself. Eventually I figured out it was supposed to clip onto the seatbelt bit of the stroller. That fixed her.

We still hadn't actually made it to the supermarket. How the fuck did Sookie ever get anything done?

And then we got there. The supermarket. I only had to get one thing and get out again. I looked over at the checkouts which all had long queues. Fuck. In doing so, I'd turned my attention from Amelia who'd taken off again. She'd made a beeline for the strawberries.

"Can we get strawberries Eric? Please?"

Well that wasn't the worst thing she could ask for, I figured. "Yeah, we can get strawberries." I grabbed a couple of the boxes and we headed off so I could find the aisle with the diapers. It took us a couple of passes before I remembered to look for the sign saying nappies. We got there and I soon realised what I'd done wrong. I hadn't fucking looked at which diapers Felicia used. Fuck. There were a lot of diapers there. I knew I was looking for pink ones, but which fucking size I didn't know. I suppose I could have estimated her weight, but when I looked at the packets it was all listed in kilograms which were no fucking use to me. How much was a kilogram? Why couldn't they use pounds like normal people?

Feeling desperate I asked Amelia which ones Felicia used. She pointed to a packet and said "Those ones." I looked where she was pointing. It said Newborn. I looked at Felicia. I was pretty sure she wasn't classed as a newborn.

In the end I grabbed a packet that said Crawler feeling sure that was her category. She could crawl. I knew that much.

We joined the queue for the 12 items or less checkouts, which looked long but was moving pretty quickly. But not fast enough as we ended up stationed in front of a display of candy. "Can I have a lollipop?" Amelia piped up.

"No."

"But I was a good girl. I want a treat."

"You've got strawberries. That's a treat."

"Strawberries aren't a treat. They're strawberries." Amelia was now talking to me like I was an idiot.

"Yes, they're a treat and you won't be getting those if you don't stop asking about lollipops."

Amelia pouted but shut up. I caught the eye of the woman in front of me who had a very well behaved looking little boy sitting in her shopping trolley, and she smiled at me, just as Amelia said "Can I have an ice cream?"

"We'll see" I replied, and then we finally got to the checkout.

Once I'd paid and made it through the checkout we were back into the crowd of people in the mall. Amelia stared longingly at the ice cream stand that was just outside the supermarket. Fine, I thought, let's get an ice cream.

So we queued up and I got us two tubs of ice cream and we sat down at one of the little tables they had. Fuck it was nice to sit down, even in the middle of a busy mall. I couldn't believe that we'd been out for such a simple errand and I felt like I'd run a marathon.

Amelia was busy eating her ice cream, a lot of which she was wearing around her face. Felicia was looking at me and licking her lips. I felt a bit sorry for her missing out, so I gave her a little bit of my ice cream on the spoon to try. It was only vanilla ice cream. I figured it probably wasn't going to hurt her. She pulled a face at the cold, then obviously got used to it as she looked at me expectantly, waiting for more. I gave her a bit more. She couldn't tell Sookie.

Amelia was making inroads into her chocolate ice cream when she suddenly said "Eric, I'm thirsty."

"Oh, well, you'll have to wait."

"But I'm thirsty now. Where's my water bottle?"

"What water bottle?"

"Mum always brings my water? Where's my water?"

Oh fuck I thought, giving Felicia another taste of my ice cream which was pretty much all gone now. "OK" I said. "Look you stay here. DO NOT MOVE from that seat. I'll go and buy you some water." So I went and queued back up at the ice cream stand and paid for their expensive bottled water, while keeping an eye on Amelia. Thankfully she was too absorbed in the ice cream to run off anywhere.

I took the water back to Amelia who took two tiny sips and then ignored it. Eventually she declared she'd had enough ice cream and I cleaned her up as best I could with some serviettes. She was really sticky.

"Right, let's get going" I said, taking Amelia's sticky hand in mine and we started to make our way through the crowds. We were almost back to the entrance to the carpark when Amelia said "Eric! I need wees!"

"What?" I asked.

"I need wees. The toilet. I need to go!"

"Well, can you wait until we go home?"

"No I need to go now!"

"OK" I sighed. I turned us around and we headed back in the direction of where I'd seen Sookie take Amelia when were here before. There was something called the Parent's Room apparently. We went in and I felt completely out of my depth, there were women in there feeding babies. Breastfeeding babies. Yeah, I really was not fucking looking at that.

The toilet was straight ahead of us and I tried to send Amelia in alone, but apparently I needed to come too. I wasn't sure what to do with Felicia, so I just parked the stroller to one side and hoped none of the women were babynappers. Luckily Amelia didn't need any help with actually going to the toilet, the fact that they had a miniature toilet her size helped. I think she just wanted to have someone to talk to.

When she was finished we could finally, finally leave the mall. I got everyone back in the car under the watchful gaze of about three other cars who were all waiting for spots. Good luck to them I thought. It took a while to manoeuvre out of the carpark as there were so many people waiting, and then a queue to turn out, but soon we were back driving along in the pouring rain to the sound of Amelia singing Incy Wincy Spider.

I don't think I'd ever been quite so fucking glad to get back home.

I got wet again getting everyone and everything back out of the car and once inside I put the diapers in the Felicia's room. Thank fuck they looked like the same ones she already had. I'd managed to do something right.

I took the strawberries into the kitchen. "Eric" Amelia said, wandering in. "I'm bored."

"Well, go and play with your Barbies or something." I was out of ideas and needed to sit down.

Amelia huffed a bit but wandered off. I went in to check on Sookie, who woke up and looked dreadful. She sent me off to bring her more water so she could take more of her migraine tablets and then she was out for the count again. So it was just me for a bit longer.

At dinner time I discovered two things. One was that if you dig really far into the freezer you can find where Sookie has stashed her 'emergency' frozen pizza. The other was that Amelia will eat quite a lot of pizza if you let her drown it in ketchup. And Felicia likes to chew the crusts.

While we were eating Amelia looked at me. "Eric" she asked. "Where's the vegetables? I think there's supposed to be vegetables?"

I peered at the pizza we were eating. "I think there's vegetables on the pizza?" I said, sounding unconvinced even to myself.

Amelia looked as well. "What vegetables?"

"Um, tomato?" That was in the sauce, anyway. Thank fuck that seemed to be enough for Amelia and she shut up for a while. We had the strawberries for dessert anyway, so that surely cancelled out the pizza. And I may have been able to sell them as a special treat.

After dinner I had to give Felicia a bottle, while Amelia told us some really bizarre story about a dragon and a witch. Then I had to bathe the pair of them, and get them into bed. After reading a story to Amelia. And persuading Felicia she didn't want to crawl around the crib, but actually lie down.

Finally the house was quiet. It was only 7.30pm but I was exhausted. I made coffee for myself and sat in the living room, flipping through channels. I soon realised I was fucking lonely as well. Was this what it was like for Sookie when she lived alone? Fuck. How the hell did she stand it? I had a whole new respect for her. One day and I was fed up.

By the time I finished my coffee I decided that I needed company, even if that company was currently in a state of drug induced sleep. So I took the book I was reading, something on the American Civil War that had probably once belonged to Bill, and went to sit in bed next to Sookie.

And I thought maybe I could practice saying 'I love you' to her some more. Since I'd said it that first time, when she was asleep, I said it every night. But only after I knew she was asleep. I was maybe hoping for the whole subliminal message thing to work, but maybe I was also scared of what her reaction would be. But I liked to say it. Even if she didn't say it back. Or hear me.

So I got into bed and kissed her softly, said 'I love you' and sat there reading for a while before she woke up and rubbed her eyes and asked what the time was.

"About 9 o'clock."

"Shit. Are the kids OK? Sorry I left you like that."

"It's fine. They're fine. How are you?"

"The headache is wearing off, but I just feel so washed out. Those pills always do that to me. I feel all drugged up."

"Are you hungry?"

"A bit. Not for much though. Maybe some toast and marmite?"

"I'll get it."

I got out of bed and went to make her some toast with that disgusting marmite stuff spread on it. When I got back with it, Sookie had changed into her pyjamas and put the TV on. It was some boring cooking thing with Gordon Ramsay. I sighed, but I didn't have the heart to make her change over, so I sat back in bed and picked up the book again."

Sookie was quiet while she ate her toast, then she got up and took her plate out to the kitchen, switching off the TV. I watched, half afraid she was just going to collapse or something but she was OK. She brushed her teeth on the way back to bed, and then I went and did the same, before stripping down to my boxers and getting into bed.

"Thank you for looking after everything today" she whispered, still sounding very dreamy and spaced out.

"No problem. It was fine. I'd do it again." Fuck I thought, I hope this doesn't happen every month.

"Can you rub my neck for a bit? It's still really sore?"

She lay on her side, facing away from me, and I rubbed her neck and shoulder for her. "That's really good, you're very good at that" she said.

I kissed the spot where her neck met her shoulder. "That helps" she said sleepily.

I kept rubbing and eventually she was very quiet and all I could hear was her regular breathing.

"I love you Sookie" I said, kissing her neck again, before reaching to turn off the light. I lay down against her back and put an arm over her side.

"Yeah" Sookie said, in her dreamy, sleepy voice. "Love you. Night" And then she sighed and her leg twitched, and everything went really, really fucking quiet.

Thanks for reading!