They're still in California. So many flights have been canceled in the last couple of weeks, he's really starting to doubt he'll ever see Egypt again. It's doing bad things to his mental health, to... well, to everything. It's a new year, now, but it still feels like the same old, same old. Even Alicia's steady warmth next to him and the comfortable familiarity of Sofia wandering the guest house and Andre's steady breathing and intermittent babbling does nothing to sooth his frustration.

As if sensing the wayward path his thoughts have taken, Alicia sits up and hovers over him, cradling his face in her hands, stroking down his jaw with a slow, soft smile. "Hey," she greets him.

He blinks up at her. "Hey," he echoes. She hums and continues soothing his skin with her fingers, leaving him breathing slowly, softly, not wanting to break the moment up with his own myriad of issues. "I'm ok," he tells her, watching as she examines his face somberly.

"It's ok if you're not," she tells him softly. "I know how badly you wanted to be back in Egypt weeks ago, and it's just been one delay after another."

He sighs. "Yeah. But I am glad you got to spend the holidays with everyone." The main highlight of everything bad in the last month had been that. Getting to see her laughing and enjoying the company of various friends of theirs. Helping Andre open gifts and laughing when the baby coos and waves around a big strip of wrapping paper, more enamored in that than the actual toys he'd received.

"I'm glad we all did," she muses, the fond smile on her face telling Ricardo that she's remembering their baby boy's first real Christmas as well. "It was as near to perfect a I could imagine." She stares down into Ricardo's eyes again and murmurs, "New Year had been too."

He chuckles and flushes, fingers tapping against her hips as he remembers it. Them going over to Mike's to ring in the new year after Sofia had insisted on staying with the baby, the group of them laughing and playing some weird board game Ricardo had never heard the name of before and still barely grasped the rules of. Then they toasted to the new year once midnight had officially struck, and he and Alicia had stumbled back to the guest house, relieved to find the house quiet, Sofia and the baby deeply asleep. They'd taken advantage of the silence and the peace, the adoration on Alicia's face still imprinted in his mind as he'd held her close and kissed her, the two of them lost in each other until late into the night.

"We should do that more often," she murmurs into his mouth and he gasps, closing his eyes.

"Alicia," he murmurs. "Alicia..."

Her eyes glint and he finds he can't look away, completely lost in her as her hand trails between them, steady and slow and absolutely perfect.

For at least a little while, every thought he has for Egypt is washed away.