A/N Wow! I've now received over 300 reviews so thank you all!

Disclaimer: Not mine

SPOV

It was kind of crowded when I woke up the next morning. I had Eric pinning my torso, Bob clinging to my feet and Amelia poking my arm and announcing it was up time. As soon as Felicia could start getting herself up in the morning I wanted a bigger bed.

"I can't get up" I whispered to Amelia. "I'm kind of stuck here." I nodded in Eric's direction. He was doing well to sleep through this. Amelia frowned at me like I was an idiot, and then said really loudly "Eric! Let Mummy get up!"

"Huh?" he mumbled, opening his eyes and blinking at me, like it was my fault.

"It. Is. Up. Time." Amelia said again.

"No, I don't think so" Eric said and he closed his eyes again, which just made Amelia sigh loudly and look at me pointedly.

"Come on" I said, nudging him with my leg, which made Bob move anyway. "There's no escaping it."

"Urgh" Eric moaned, rolling over. "It's too early."

"Not as early as you'll be getting up tomorrow for your run!" I said gleefully, getting out of bed.

"Don't remind me!" Eric complained as I left the room with Amelia.

We got Amelia off to pre-school OK and Eric unpacked his laptop and sat at the table. Only things didn't seem to be going so well judging by the amount of swearing and muttering that was going on. "Have you tried turning it off and on?" I suggested from where I was wiping down the kitchen.

"Yes" Eric said in a very strained voice.

I went over to have a look. "Um, have you tried this?"

"Yes."

I sat in his lap and clicked a few things. "Jeez, Eric. Have you cleaned out your temp directories recently?" I asked.

"Sookie, who died and put you in charge of the computers around here?" Eric asked, not sounding particularly amused.

"Duh! The person who used to be in charge of them!" I swivelled round to look at Eric and he was just frowning. "Bill" I said, and he looked a bit sheepish.

"Oh. Sorry" he said.

"No. It's fine. Don't worry. Didn't I tell you he was in IT?"

"No."

"Oh. Thought you would have figured it out from the amount of computer crap we moved out of the study."

"Yeah, guess I wasn't paying attention. So what did he do?"

"Um, his last proper job he was an Infrastructure Architect."

"Is that a real job?"

I shrugged. "There were business cards. Must have been."

I turned back to the laptop and tried a few other things. "Nope" I said "I've got nothing."

Eric reached around me and tried a few things himself. It was going, but it wasn't quite right. "I shouldn't really worry" he grumbled. "It's not mine and it has to go back at some stage. I'll probably have to take it back."

"Oh" I said. I didn't really want to think about Eric going back to the States. The worry about whether he'd actually come back once he got there would be too great.

Eric put his arms around me. "I should probably look at getting one for myself."

"Yeah, well there'll be a lot of sales next week after Christmas" I said. "You'll probably get a bargain then."

I turned around again and looked at his face. "But you've had the idea now and you want to go today because you're not good with waiting?" I asked.

Eric looked sideways and half-nodded.

"Sales suck?" I asked putting my head on his shoulder.

"Yep. I can't see the point."

"Fine" I said, standing up "Let's go to JB Hi-fi then."

Eric frowned. "I don't know if that sounds like the best place."

"Well, for starters, it's the only place I can think of that's not actually inside a mall and therefore off limits this week. As it is it will be busy. But anyway, you'll like it there. Trust me."

It took us a while to get a car park and I couldn't interest Eric in a game of car-cricket with me while we were waiting. It had kept Jason and I amused on many a long car journey. Felicia chanted "Bub. Ma ma ma ma mum. Da" from the back seat and attempted to chew her toes once she'd thrown all the toys she had away. She was getting really good at throwing.

We finally got inside and yes, Eric liked the shop a whole lot. It had every gadget going. I left him to it and wandered down to the TV section to see if they were showing something animated that might amuse Felicia for a bit. She just sat in the stroller and yelled at people. I got approached by several sales assistants, who were overly hopeful of selling me in a TV for Christmas, and not particularly interested in my suggestion to install seating and perhaps a playpen as a shop where you could leave kids and blokes for hours on end would be a godsend.

Felicia was getting restless and starting to try to climb out of the pushchair by this time so I wandered back over to find Eric who was deep in conversation with a sales assistant and looked like he might be there a while. I went over to him and said "We're just going to the shoe shop next door."

"Uh-huh. OK" Eric said glancing at us briefly.

And that was how I ended up in No. 1 Shoe Warehouse buying Felicia jandals that she patently didn't need because she can't walk. But they looked cute.

I wandered slowly back into JB Hi-fi. The only other stores around were The Warehouse and a toy store which would be far too busy to go into. It looked as though Eric was just about finished though as he was moving towards the checkout.

When he was done and had everything packed up he came over to us. "Da!" Felicia shouted waving her feet. Eric looked and frowned, "Flip-flops?" he asked.

"Jandals!" I replied.

"Yeah. They're very nice."

"So are you all sorted?" I asked.

"Yep. Let's go home. It's fucking busy around here."

I rolled my eyes. "What did you expect Eric?"

He didn't say anything but just took Felicia's pushchair and started walking back to the car.

EPOV

I spent the afternoon getting the new laptop set up, although after this morning I wasn't completely convinced I shouldn't be getting Sookie to do this for me. I felt a total shit when I made that remark about someone dying, but it hadn't occurred to me that Bill had worked for a living. I didn't really think much about Bill and I hadn't got further than thinking of him as a fucked up loser really. I wasn't particularly interested in him.

After getting Amelia from pre-school Sookie came and hovered near me for a bit to see what I was doing. I looked up from the screen.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"Fine." She looked like she wanted to say something else. "What?" I asked.

She sat down on a chair. "I'm a bit worried about Amelia. She's in her room with her Barbies and the one you say looks like me just told the one that used to be Sophie-Anne that she was a bitch. How much did she hear yesterday?"

I shrugged. "A bit. She'll get over it though."

"Do you think? I'm worried I've stuffed her up for life."

I snorted. "Trust me, Sookie. It takes a lot more than that to stuff someone up for life. Even I'm not completely stuffed up."

She looked thoughtful. "I guess. I just worry that she shouldn't see things like that at her age."

"What? Her mother standing up to a bully?"

"Well I was thinking more the language, and being dragged into adult stuff by that…" she looked over her shoulder, presumably for Amelia "…fucking bitch."

"She'll hear worse at school. She's fine. She just knows that you don't take shit from anyone." I kissed her forehead.

"Yeah. I hope so. I hope she doesn't decide to use her new words on the kids at pre-school." She looked at me and smiled. "If she does I'm blaming you for it!"

"Thanks very much!"

She patted my knee. "So do you want to go and get the barbecue set up?"

"What for?"

"I got butterflied lamb loins at the butcher's yesterday. I thought you could have a go at cooking those."

"Oh, yeah. No problem." Well I knew what steak got me, what were the rules for lamb I wondered?

Later on, after the kids were in bed I found out. I was in the living room, watching TV, when Sookie came in.

"So, um, do you want a shower?" she asked.

"Oh. Yeah, that sounds good."

I followed her into the bathroom and we started getting undressed. "Now there's no sex still" Sookie said, as I grabbed her and pulled her to me. "Uh-huh" I said.

"But, um, we could do that thing again?" she asked, looking embarrassed.

"What thing?" I waited for Sookie to get into the shower, and then followed her in carefully, trying to avoid the shelves for once.

"You know. The thing we did last month, where you sort of picked me up…" she trailed off and bit her lip.

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea" I said, bending to kiss her.

"Well I thought so. But Eric?"

"Yeah?" I was kind of busy at this point.

"Remember I'm not light, so don't drop me. And don't hurt yourself."

"Shut up Sookie." And then for a bit she did. Well the words stopped, but the moaning was pretty fucking awesome.

I got up far too fucking early again the next morning. This time Sookie didn't even stir until the alarm went and then she looked pissed at me because I hadn't turned it off quickly enough. "Have fun" she muttered, before making herself comfortable again. Fuck, I wanted to be going back to sleep about now.

I went into the kitchen to get some water, to find Bob waiting for me beside his bowl. Yeah, even I wasn't getting gifts now that he gourmet food on tap. I toyed with the idea of not giving him breakfast, but realised I'd only be punished for it later. The threat of another rat was a fucking good deterrent I had to admit.

I would like to say the run went better than Monday's, but I'm not sure. I kind of just worked on living through it. But the bit of my brain that wasn't occupied with just remembering to breathe was busy thinking about Sookie. And how great Sookie was. And I how I really wanted her to say she'd marry me.

I didn't know why it was so much better with her. A few months ago, if any of the women that I'd dated (although that may have been a euphemism), had suggested marriage I would have fucking run a mile. Or at least driven away because this running thing was fucking hard. And if any of them had kids I didn't know and I didn't want to know.

But Sookie was different. Maybe it was just that I gave her more of a chance, but I liked to think that it was because she was meant to be mine.

Although that dating thing made me think, I'd never really taken Sookie on a real date? The closest we'd come was the drinks that night which hadn't really worked out, blow-job or no blow-job. Shit, maybe she'd like to go on a date?

We got back to Calvin and Judith's and after a few minutes I could talk again. I got the impression that Calvin was taking it a bit easier for my benefit. I'm pretty sure he didn't look as fucked as I did about now.

Judith came out to say hello, carrying their kid in her arms. "OK was it?" she asked.

"Yep, good as gold" Calvin said, kissing her. I just nodded and swallowed some water.

"So, can you stay home this morning then?" Judith asked Calvin.

"Ah" he said, "No, there's that job in Kingsland that still isn't finished so I need to be there today or else we'll still be working on Christmas day."

"Shit Calvin! How am I supposed to get everything done when I have to take Jessie around with me? You know I need to get the rest of the stuff for Christmas day! I took the day off specially and I just need a bit of help!"

Calvin muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "It's your family, not mine." Fuck, that was playing with fire. Even I didn't dare criticise the Comptons and Sookie wasn't related to them. Maybe you were allowed to say that shit if you actually had a wedding booked?

Luckily Judith chose to ignore him and just kept glaring. "What?" he said "What the fuck do you want me to do? I have to keep working; we need the money for the wedding?"

Judith glared at Calvin for a few moments longer then turned her attention to me. "Eric? Can I ask a favour?"

SPOV

When Eric came home carrying Jessica in his arms, well, trying to stop her climbing over his shoulder actually, I looked at him and said "I don't care if she followed you home, you can't keep her!"

"Yeah. Ha ha. Shit!" Jessica just about made it over his shoulder and he decided to put her down, where she promptly ran off in the direction of Amelia's room. God, Amelia was going to be annoyed about Jessica touching her stuff when she's not here.

"So, what's the story?" I asked.

"Um, I did a deal with Judith. We have Jessica this morning so she can do her shopping and she's coming over here tonight to babysit."

"Babysit?"

"Yeah. I thought I might take you out" Eric grinned at me.

"Oh. Well, yeah, that sounds good. Where do you want to go? The Thai place around the corner?"

"Um. Maybe somewhere else…fancier. Don't worry, I'll sort it out. First, I have to shower. Then I have to um…go into the city for a bit." He started walking towards the bathroom.

"Hang on. You brought me an extra child and now you're buggering off?"

"Well, she's not really extra. You're used to two kids. You've only got two kids. You'll be fine." He stepped over Felicia who said "Ma!", and side-stepped Jessica who just stared at him, and then went to the bathroom. Right, so I was baby-sitting then. "Drink!" Jessica commanded.

Eric wasn't out for long thankfully, and he was back before Judith got here which was just as well because Jessica is a handful and runs around everywhere. I'm used to Felicia, who's still a bit slower, and Amelia who's far more interested in sitting and having long conversations with me. Jessica was hard work.

But Judith turned up about 2 o'clock and moaned about how busy all the shops were. Yeah, I could imagine. She was hosting Lorena, Portia and Glen on Christmas day as Sarah was going to see Matt's family up north. She checked again I didn't want to come. I really didn't, and I was sure Eric felt the same. We'd have Christmas with just the four of us. I didn't want Eric's first Christmas in New Zealand to be spoiled by Bill's family yelling at each other.

Judith said she'd be back about 7 o'clock, so the rest of the afternoon was spent organising things and then feeding and bathing the kids so they were in bed before Judith got here. And also cleaning the house because nothing is worse than having someone sit in your lounge all night and stare at the dust.

I kept trying to find out where we were going, but all I got was that it was somewhere nice. So I got myself ready and actually put a dress on for the first time in forever. I needed help with the shoe choice though.

"Eric?" I asked. "Are we walking or driving?"

"Um. I hadn't thought about it."

"Well if we can we should probably walk, they'll have checkpoints everywhere for Christmas."

"OK then. Walking it is."

So I put my good shoes in my handbag and went with something I could walk in.

Judith turned up only five minutes late and we edged out the door as fast as we could. This was quite exciting going out just the two of us.

"So I take it we're going up to the Village then?"

"Yeah, the walking thing gives that away, huh?"

"Yeah, but I don't know where we're going."

I had to keep telling Eric to slow down as I didn't want to arrive there all hot and sweaty and so the walk took a bit longer than normal, but soon we were reaching the start of the Mt Eden shops. "So, where are we headed?" I asked.

Eric pointed. "Over there?"

"What the café?"

"No, down from there."

"Oh. Molten. Wow. I haven't been there in….years." I saw Eric register that I'd probably been there with Bill. Yeah, I had, but that wasn't the last time. "The last time I went was with Tara three days before I had Amelia." Eric relaxed a bit.

"I'm surprised you could get a reservation" I said when we were seated "It's normally so busy in here."

Eric shrugged. "I just called in here on my way back from the city today and asked."

"They must like you!" I laughed. "So…what happens next?"

Eric looked at me "What do you mean?"

"Well, I last went on a proper date about 16 years ago. So I'm completely out of touch. What on earth do we do?"

"Oh, well, we eat some dinner, talk about ourselves, and then in gratitude for it all, you put out." He went back to looking at the menu. I just about spat the water I was sipping all over the table.

"You're that confident, huh?"

"Yep."

"Good for you, Eric. Good for you."

"You say that like you're not a sure thing."

"Well let's just eat dinner first shall we?"

"Good plan."

It was a good plan because the food was really fantastic. As were the drinks. Dessert cocktails are the way to go.

And it was nice to talk to Eric for a while and have him all to myself. I didn't even mind when he kept calling me his wife to the waitress. Well I kicked him a bit under the table, but after a while I even stopped doing that. I blame the dessert cocktails. They had a Toblerone one. I highly recommend it.

So I was feeling happy and giggly when we left. Eric was looking a bit happy too. It was a good thing we were walking and not driving. Especially as I'd been walking for about 10 minutes before I realised I'd forgotten to change my shoes back so it was no wonder my feet were hurting.

As predicted we passed a police checkpoint on Mt Eden Road. We also passed the house that Eric had christened Santa's base of operations in New Zealand. It looked pretty in the dark and we stopped to look for a while. There may have been kissing at that point.

Eric was certainly getting fairly handsy as we walked down the road. It started with hand holding, progressed to his arm around my shoulders and ended with a lot of bum-grabbing.

So when we came in the door at home we were both grinning like idiots. We went into the living room and Eric stood behind me. Very close behind me. Practically rubbing himself against me. It wasn't that helpful when I was trying to check with Judith that there hadn't been any major problems while we were out.

Judith took in what was happening and grabbed her book and left pretty quickly. Eric scooped me up and carried me into the bedroom, depositing me on the bed.

"Fuck Sookie" he said, lying on top of me and starting to kiss down my cleavage "I really fucking want to fuck you now."

"Eric, have you ever noticed how sometimes every second word you say is fuck?"

"Fuck yes." He was busy with the zip on the back of my dress, so I decided I'd help him with his shirt buttons. It only seemed fair.

He tugged my dress off and then pulled the cups of my bra down. I'd got his shirt undone but wasn't having a lot of luck getting it off him as he had one of my breasts in his mouth and I couldn't push it far enough off his shoulders.

Then he looked up at me. "Let's try somewhere different" he announced.

"Different?"

"Yeah. Not the bed."

"Oh. Where then?"

"Um. Bathroom?"

"Just too small."

"Other bathroom?"

"Too close to sleeping people."

"Um…table?"

"We eat there! Living room?"

"Done that already. Kitchen?"

"No curtains. Andy and Halleigh do not need to see that."

Eric thought for a bit then a huge grin spread across his face. "Deck" he said decisively.

"Deck?"

"Yeah. It was great at Piha. It's a warm night. Let's have sex on the deck."

"Oh. But what about the neighbours?"

"The fence at the back is tall enough to hide us. And I don't think they can really see from the sides. Not unless they look. Come on Sookie! It will be fucking fantastic! You know you want to!" The weird thing was I did, kind of. Stupid dessert cocktails.

Eric looked up again and peered at me. "You do! You fucking do want to! I can see it! OK…" he stood up "…go and get two blankets." I stood up and pulled my bra back up. I guess we were doing this.

Eric was busy finding a condom so I crept to the linen cupboard and pulled out two old blankets. When I got back Eric had stripped off and was rolling the condom on. Boy, he was really keen on this idea.

I handed him a blanket which he held around his waist, then draped the other one around myself. Eric frowned. "You have to be naked Sookie" he said to me.

"I'm not going out there naked! What if someone sees?"

"No one will see. Come on. It's better if you're naked. And we have blankets anyway."

I sighed. Jeez, naked Eric was always so demanding. I started taking off my underwear and Eric disappeared out of the room.

I pulled the blanket around my shoulders when I was naked and headed off to find Eric. He was on the deck, sitting on the cushion off one of the sun-loungers, with the blanket still around his waist. When he saw me there in the darkness he opened the blanket so I could straddle him. Holding my blanket closed with one hand, I used the other hand to put him in the right place then I lowered myself down. Well, yeah. That did feel good. It always does.

Eric grinned at me. I think. It was pretty dark and we'd left the lights off in the family room. "See, it's fucking fantastic" he said.

"Yeah, OK. I'll give you that" I said and then I began to move. That felt so fucking good. But I still had the blanket clutched to my chest and my breasts felt lonely and unloved. So I loosened it and let it drop to my waist so I could press my chest against Eric's.

"Oh, fuck Sookie" Eric groaned, while thrusting up into me. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." For some reason that seemed funny and I giggled.

But then I felt my orgasm start to build and I stopped giggling and started just wanting more contact, more friction, more anything that was going to bring me my release. "So fucking tight" Eric whispered to me, which made me feel even hotter than I already was.

I felt like my skin was on fire and the cool night air felt lovely, so I wasn't actually upset when I had to let go of the blanket completely in order to cling tighter to Eric. It slipped down and off so that it was in a puddle on Eric's legs and I was pretty much uncovered completely.

"Eric" I moaned as his hand found my clit "Eric. Make me come, please."

"Oh fuck Sookie" he said and he started moving faster and his tongue slid into my mouth and mimicked the actions of his hips. Then suddenly I came with a great shudder and I felt Eric tense up underneath me just a few seconds later. We sat there for a minute panting and grinning at each other. Then Bob decided to wander over to see what we were doing and set off the sensor light above the deck.

"Fuck!" I yelled grabbing the blanket from behind me and wrapping it around me. Eric started laughing like this was the funniest thing ever. I eased myself off him and went inside to the bedroom. I heard him head to the bathroom and then he joined me.

"Thank fuck Bob waited until we'd finished!" he said still laughing.

"I'm glad you find it funny" I said. "Next time, turn the sensor light off."

"So there's a next time then?" Eric looked at me expectantly.

I got into bed. "Maybe. If you're good" I said grudgingly.

"Yeah. It was fucking fantastic. Sex on the deck." He pulled me to him "I think it brings out the exhibitionist in you Sookie. You're really hot." He kissed my shoulder.

"Yeah, but there are limits to my exhibitionism." We lay there for a bit. "It was a good date though. Thank you for that Eric, I had a nice time."

"My pleasure. We'll do it again. And I'll remember the sensor light."

I wanted to tell him not to count me as a sure thing, but frankly I was. Now he knew about the dessert cocktails I had no chance.

Thanks for reading!