Callum felt the change in Lux before she said anything, the way her body softened against his while his mouth rested in her hair. Her fingers moved lazily over his ribs as she informed him that he went around doing noble things in the ugliest shirts known to man, and his eyes opened just enough to stare down toward the top of her head. He could have defended the shirts. He probably should have defended the shirts. Instead, her accusation that decency in front of witnesses was a branding problem pulled a tired smile from him. “These shirts are durable, which is more than I can say for half the shit you buy because it looked interesting in a thrift-store window, and I ain’t changing my entire personality because my wife keeps mistakin’ basic human behavior for sainthood.” That was the problem with Lux. She could take something he considered obvious and hold it up until he was forced to see what it looked like through her eyes. Of course he had helped with the coop. She wanted chickens, and if living animals were going inside something built in their yard, he wanted the walls solid and the wire secure. Of course he had called the vet. Leaving an injured animal beneath the coop when he had a phone in his pocket would have been cruel. None of it felt noble from inside his own head. It felt like noticing what needed doing and doing it. Lux had always insisted there was more to him than that, and Callum had spent enough years married to her to know arguing rarely changed her mind.

When she tried to turn his promise about her shoulder into another indictment of the sounds he had made during the massage, his hand tightened gently against her back. “Those noises remain protected medical information, and you agreed to confidentiality until breakfast,” he reminded her, feeling her settle closer despite the objection she was making. Her leg shifted comfortably against his, and that told him she was going to let him take care of her tomorrow regardless of how many restrictions she attached to the agreement. Coffee first, shoulder second, no lectures longer than a church bulletin. Callum rubbed his thumb once along her shoulder and said, “Fine. Coffee first. Then shoulder. And I’ll keep the lecture short if you refrain from tellin’ me you’re fine while visibly movin’ like somebody replaced one of your joints with a rusty gate hinge.” Her assessment of his bedside manner earned a faint lift of his eyebrow. “You respond to criticism. If I come at you gentle, you start negotiatin’. But I’ll work on it since apparently we’re runnin’ a clinic now. Between you, me, three future chickens, two cats, Sawdust under the porch, and a raccoon at the vet, seems like the natural progression.”

He heard himself include the raccoon in the household inventory and wisely chose not to examine that too closely.

Lux did not tease when he admitted he hoped the raccoon’s leg could be fixed. Callum noticed that immediately. Her hand moved to the center of his chest instead, warm and open over him, and the simple agreement that she hoped they could help him settled something that had been lingering since the carrier disappeared down the driveway. Then she said Waylon had gotten lucky because he had picked the right yard to be scared in, and Callum stared toward the ceiling for a moment while his fingers moved slowly through the ends of her hair. That one got him. There were prettier yards in Bedford Falls and houses with fewer unfinished projects scattered around them, but something hurt had ended up beneath their crooked little construction project, and nobody had chased it off for being inconvenient. “Yeah,” he said eventually, the word quiet against her hair. “Suppose he did.”

Lux rescued the sentiment before it could sit there too long by reminding him how profoundly unprepared they had actually been. One flashlight, an unfinished coop, Biscuit incarcerated inside, and Callum apparently assembling a wildlife-response operation from whatever happened to exist in the garage. His chest shifted with a quiet laugh beneath her hand. “That flashlight is a good flashlight. Don’t drag innocent equipment into this. And Biscuit was the real problem. Fucker acted like I violated his civil liberties because I wouldn’t let him personally investigate an injured raccoon.” His hand traveled once along her back as the memory of the orange face pressed against the door returned to him. Biscuit would probably spend tomorrow sniffing every inch of the yard like an underpaid detective.

Then Lux circled back to his comment about the shorts, and suspicion began creeping across Callum’s face well before she reached the threat. The second she announced that future emergencies might find her standing on the porch in a tank and underwear, his head turned fully toward her. “Absolutely fuckin’ not. You are not standin’ on our porch in your underwear while half of Bedford Falls suddenly finds reasons to drive by at four miles an hour. I know these people. Somebody would remember they desperately needed directions to a road they’ve lived beside since birth.” He was not actually scandalized by what Lux was wearing. That would have been ridiculous after everything they had shared. His objection belonged entirely to Bedford Falls, a town where somebody could sneeze behind the hardware store and three people would know whether they covered their mouth before supper. The imagined version of Lux casually greeting a veterinarian dressed exactly as she was now made his mouth twitch despite himself. “You can exercise your constitutional right to hate pants inside the house. The porch falls under local jurisdiction, and August ain’t testifyin’ on your behalf.”

By the time she tucked herself against him again, Callum could feel sleep beginning to win in earnest. Her body fit against his without either of them needing to arrange much anymore, the familiarity deeper than conscious choice. He smiled when she defended her vendetta against waistbands and accused him of considering pants optional after sundown. “Boxers are sleepwear. That is established law. You wanderin’ around in an old tank and underwear because you declared war on buttons is a separate legal issue.” Her yawn undermined whatever argument she might have made next, and Callum rubbed his palm slowly along her back, no longer particularly interested in winning anything.

Then she told him she was glad he was there, and Callum went still beneath her for a second. Lux immediately started qualifying it, specifying that she meant in bed, then generally too, then warning him not to make it weird before explaining that she was glad he had not stayed downstairs inventing more reasons to inspect bowls or boards or whatever else could keep him moving. His expression softened where she could not see it. He understood exactly what she meant because there had been plenty of nights when he had found one more task simply because tasks were easier than stopping. Something in the garage, something downstairs, something that technically could have waited until morning but gave him another half hour before he had to lie still with whatever was running through his head. Tonight he had come upstairs. He had let Lux work on his back. He was lying beside her instead of wandering through the dark pretending a food bowl required immediate engineering oversight. His arm drew her a little closer as he murmured, “I’m glad I’m here too. In bed and generally, before you start backpedalin’ so hard you fall off the mattress. I ain’t makin’ it weird.”

When she granted permission for tomorrow’s clinic call under whatever terminology protected his pride, Callum smiled against her hair. “You makin’ no face might be the least believable thing you’ve said all night. You’re gonna sit there pretendin’ you ain’t listenin’, hear every damn word, and somehow know more about his leg than I do by the time I hang up.” He knew her too well to believe otherwise, but there was no irritation in it. If the clinic had good news, he wanted her to hear it too. If they did not, he suspected he would want her there for that as well.

He was already drifting when she brought up the purple coop, and Callum’s eyes opened again. For several seconds he simply stared into the dim room, wondering how a woman could be nearly asleep and still find enough energy to make terrible design decisions. His hand stopped moving against her back as he said, “We have discussed this. Purple is haunted. I am not spendin’ two days predator-proofing a chicken coop just so you can make it look like three hens are recordin’ a Southern Gothic gospel album behind the garage.” Unfortunately, now that she had said it, his mind supplied the image anyway. Deep purple siding. Dark trim. Stevie, Dolly, and Joan Jett wandering around in front of it. Probably some ridiculous little sign Lux would find tomorrow and insist had character.

The irritating part was that it did not look bad.

Callum frowned into the dark, immediately annoyed with his own imagination. Lux had waited until he was exhausted and then planted the idea where he could not properly defend himself against it. “That was dirty,” he murmured, thumb beginning another slow pass over her back. “You waited until I was too tired to argue and put that purple coop in my head on purpose.” He settled deeper into the pillow, eyes closing again as tomorrow arranged itself somewhere beyond the room: the clinic call, checking whether Sawdust had eaten, cedar behind the garage, hardware cloth, hinges, the latch, whatever else Lux managed to put in the cart when he was not looking. None of it needed solving tonight.

His mouth pressed once more into her hair as sleep pulled harder at him. “Still ain’t paintin’ it purple,” he murmured, though the certainty had weakened enough that even he heard it. His mind returned unwillingly to the version he had pictured, and after another few seconds he added, “Maybe somethin’ darker wouldn’t look completely stupid. Plum or whatever the hell you call it.”

Callum realized what he had just done before the sentence had fully left him.

His eyes opened.

Lux remained tucked against him with her eyes closed, but he knew better than to believe sleep had saved him. That woman could remember incriminating evidence from a coma.

His hand tightened faintly against her back as he muttered, “Don’t you dare remember I said that tomorrow. I mean it. I will deny the entire conversation, and there ain’t a witness in this room I trust.”

Lux heard him.

She was mostly asleep, or near enough to sleep that her thoughts had gone soft around the edges, but not so far gone that she missed plum or whatever the hell you call it. There were certain phrases a wife was biologically designed to catch. Her eyes stayed closed against his chest, and for several seconds she let him believe, with what little mercy still survived in her body at this hour, that maybe exhaustion had carried her under before the evidence hit open air. His hand tightened faintly against her back as he issued his denial preemptively, and that only made the sleepy smile press harder into his skin.

“Mm,” she mumbled, voice thick and pleased, every word tucked against him instead of lifted fully into the room. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I’m asleep. Can’t remember nothin’.” Her hand shifted lazily over his side, fingers dragging in a slow little arc that held no real purpose beyond touching him. “But plum is a very mature, weather-appropriate compromise made by a wise and handsome man who values visual cohesion.”

She felt the shape of whatever objection he began to build before he even made it, felt it gather in his ribs beneath her cheek, and headed it off by tipping her face up just enough to find the side of his neck. The kiss she pressed there was sleepy and warm, barely coordinated, more affection than seduction, though with Callum those two things had always liked to blur at the edges anyway. Her mouth lingered for a second, soft against his skin, and when she settled back down, her leg tucked more securely between his. “Goodnight, Cal,” she murmured, the nickname coming out low and familiar, worn smooth by years. “Dream about exterior paint and emotionally neutral raccoons.”

She did not wait for his answer, mostly because she knew it would be some muttered correction about neither subject being dream-worthy and because sleep had finally reached up with both hands. Lux burrowed back into him with the stubbornness of a woman who had chosen her place and saw no reason to negotiate, her old tank twisting slightly where his arm held her. The room faded in pieces: the fan overhead, his breathing under her ear, the lingering warmth of massage oil on her hands, the distant summer noise beyond the window. Somewhere in the last soft pocket before sleep, she smiled again because plum was absolutely going to become relevant tomorrow, whether he chose to respect the legal record or not.

At some point in the night, heat separated them.

Lux did not remember doing it. She only woke in the gray-blue wash of early morning with one leg kicked free of the sheet, her tank rucked up along one hip, and Callum no longer pressed against her side. The space between them held a pocket of cooled air where their bodies had given up on romance sometime before dawn in favor of survival. August did that. August took even the most devoted marriage and reminded it that skin was still skin and humidity was a moral failing. She blinked slowly at the ceiling fan, watched one lazy rotation blur into another, and tried to decide whether the day had officially begun or whether she could bully it back outside for another hour.

The room looked different before full light reached it. Softer, less cluttered by intention. His discarded work pants were still where he had left them, her jean shorts abandoned near the chair, the massage oil bottle sitting on the nightstand like evidence from a domestic wellness crime. Beyond the window, the yard had gone quiet in that early way before insects remembered their responsibilities. For a second, Lux lay still and listened, not with alarm, just habit. No yowling. No crash. No strange scraping beneath the coop. Nothing urgent enough to require her feet on the floor.

Good.

Her gaze drifted to Callum. He had ended up on his back again, one arm bent above his head, hair a mess against the pillow, mouth softened by sleep in a way he would never tolerate being informed about. The sheet sat low across his hips, and without the day moving through him, without work or crisis or his own hard-headed need to be useful, he looked almost unfairly peaceful. Not boyish exactly. He had too much life in his face for that, too many years and weather and choices. But sleep loosened something in him that the waking world rarely got to touch.

Lux watched him for longer than she meant to. There was no reason for it except that he was there and she loved him and morning had not yet required either of them to become practical. The thought came in plain and unadorned, too early for sarcasm to properly dress it. Her husband. Her sore-backed, soft-hearted, argumentative husband who had somehow agreed to chickens, invented conditions, called a vet for a raccoon, and half-accepted plum paint in the vulnerable shadowland between exhaustion and sleep. She could have built a whole religion around less.

Instead, she rolled toward him.

The mattress dipped carefully beneath her shift, and she moved slow enough not to startle him, though some selfish part of her hoped he would wake before she had to decide whether she was being considerate or needy. The air between them cooled her bare skin for a second, then disappeared when she slid close again. One knee found the outside of his thigh. Her hand settled first at his ribs, light enough to be a question, and she waited for the little change in his breathing that told her his body had noticed her before his mind arrived.

“Cal,” she whispered, not because she needed him awake urgently, but because his name belonged in her mouth before the day got crowded. Her fingertips moved over his side, slow and soft, tracing a familiar path up toward his chest, then back down again. Not tickling. Not demanding. Just waking him with touch the way the morning woke the room: gradually, with no sharp edges. “Hey, baby.”

He stirred beneath her hand, and Lux smiled before his eyes opened. She shifted closer, propping herself partly on one elbow so she could brush a few curls away from his forehead. The movement was gentle, but the affection in her was not. It pressed through her palms, her fingertips, the bend of her body toward his. She smoothed her thumb along his temple, then down near his cheekbone, watching the sleep cling to him with fond amusement.

“Mornin’,” she murmured, voice husky from sleep and shaped soft by the hour. “Before you accuse me of anything, I am not wakin’ you for chores, raccoon updates, poultry policy, or paint litigation.” Her fingertips drifted from his face to his shoulder, lingering there as she leaned in close enough that her hair slipped forward around them. “I’m wakin’ you because we got separated in the night like cowards, and I require correction.”

She let her mouth brush the corner of his jaw, barely a kiss at first, then another a little lower where his beard shadow roughened his skin. Her hand moved over his chest, slow and soothing, testing the morning version of him the same way she had tested sore muscles the night before. She was mindful of his back even now, keeping her weight off him, letting closeness return without trapping him beneath it. “How’s your back?” she asked, but the question came against his neck, softened by another kiss. “And don’t you dare say fine in that man voice. I know where you live.”

The old house held around them, quiet and blue and not quite ready to become a day. Lux settled more fully into his side when his arm made room, her bare leg sliding against his beneath the sheet, her tank twisted and useless against the heat of him. She could feel sleep still dragging at her own body, but it was pleasant now, not heavy, a warm leftover thing she could carry while waking. Her fingers traced another lazy pattern over his chest. “Also,” she added, because some pieces of evidence deserved morning preservation, “I had the strangest dream that a wise and handsome man suggested plum for the coop.”

She lifted her head enough to look at him, eyes bright despite the sleep still caught in them. “Wild, ain’t it?” Her mouth curved slowly. “Must’ve been the heat.”

Callum heard her lie about being asleep somewhere through the first pull of sleep, and even with his eyes closed, his mouth moved against her hair. He had known damn well she heard him. Lux could sleep through thunder if she felt like it and somehow wake from a dead sleep because he had muttered something incriminating three rooms away. Her declaration that plum was the mature choice of a wise and handsome man earned a low sound from him that might have been disagreement if exhaustion had left him enough energy to shape it properly. By the time her mouth found his neck, he had already lost whatever argument remained. “You’re a menace,” he murmured into her hair, tightening his arm around her when she tucked herself closer. Her goodnight and instruction to dream about exterior paint and emotionally neutral raccoons got the last scraps of his attention. “Raccoon ain’t emotionally anything to me,” he muttered, which was such obvious bullshit after everything that had happened that even half-asleep Callum knew better than to elaborate. His mouth found the top of her head once more before sleep finally won. “Night, trouble.”

He did not remember when they separated. One minute Lux had been tucked into every available inch of him, and the next thing Callum knew, her voice was somewhere near the surface of a dream, saying his name in that soft way she almost never used once the day properly started. His brow pulled faintly before his eyes opened. For several seconds there was only the ceiling fan turning overhead, blue morning light, and the familiar confusion of waking before his brain had agreed to participate. Then her hand moved over his side, warm fingertips tracing upward, and the rest of the room arranged itself around her.

Callum breathed in slowly and felt his body perform an immediate inventory before he could stop it. His back was better. Not magically fixed, not enough that he wanted to spend the morning bent beneath a car, but the sharp catch from last night had settled into a dull stiffness above his left hip. His shoulders felt looser too. Apparently Lux’s deeply unlicensed practice had produced results, which was information he intended to guard carefully. His eyes found her as she leaned over him and pushed his hair away from his forehead, and whatever suspicion waking had put into his face softened almost immediately. “Hey,” he murmured, voice still rough with sleep.

She was close enough that he could see the marks sleep had left on her, the slight mess of her hair, the old tank twisted from a night spent fighting August heat. Callum’s hand moved automatically toward her waist when she informed him that she had not woken him for chores, raccoons, chickens, or paint litigation. His thumb settled lazily against her side while he listened, eyes narrowing faintly when she claimed their nighttime separation required correction. “Cowards?” he repeated, the word coming out gravelly. “Darlin’, it was ninety fuckin’ degrees. At some point you were puttin’ off enough heat to forge steel.” There was no resistance in him when she moved closer, though. His arm opened around her before she needed to ask, pulling her back into the place she had apparently decided was legally hers.

Her mouth brushed his jaw, then lower against the roughness there, and Callum closed his eyes again for a second. Not because he was falling back asleep exactly. He simply liked waking this way. There was no phone ringing, no alarm, no immediate problem demanding hands and tools. Just Lux touching him like she had missed him from six inches away. His palm moved slowly along her back while she kissed his neck and asked about his back, immediately banning the answer he had been preparing. A quiet laugh moved through his chest beneath her hand. “You take all the useful answers away before I get to use ’em.” He shifted carefully beneath her, testing the ache before answering properly. “Better. Still tight low on the left, but it ain’t catchin’ anymore. Shoulder feels good.” His eyes opened enough to find hers. “You were right. Don’t enjoy it too much.”

That admission reminded him of something else, and his hand slid higher along her back until his fingers reached the shoulder she had rolled last night. He did not dig into it or start examining her before either of them had properly woken up, but his thumb rested there deliberately. “And I remember our deal. Coffee, then this.” His fingers gave the sore shoulder the lightest squeeze before relaxing. “No church-bulletin lecture. I’ll keep my remarks concise and professionally judgmental.”

The house remained quiet around them, and Callum let himself stay where he was instead of immediately wondering what needed checking downstairs. That was progress he did not intend to announce. Biscuit could survive another few minutes without supervision. Sawdust had made it through the night before they ever knew she was under the porch. The coop had managed not to collapse while he slept. Whatever the clinic knew about Waylon would still be true after coffee.

Lux’s fingers continued their lazy path over his chest, and Callum had nearly closed his eyes again when she mentioned her strange dream.

There it was.

His eyes opened immediately.

A wise and handsome man had suggested plum for the coop.

Callum stared at her.

She blamed the heat.

For a long moment he said nothing, partly because he was still waking and partly because he was deciding how much dignity could reasonably be recovered after last night. Lux’s bright sleepy eyes told him the answer was none.

“That man was delirious from pain and subjected to experimental massage techniques without informed consent,” he said finally, his voice still too sleep-rough to carry the authority he wanted. His hand settled at her waist again as he gave her a deeply unimpressed look. “Anything he said after ten p.m. is inadmissible.”

Unfortunately, the image came back immediately. Dark plum siding. Black or dark hardware. Cedar boxes inside. The ridiculous future occupants wandering around like they had personally financed the construction.

Callum frowned.

Lux would see that thought happening if he did not kill it quickly.

He pulled her closer instead, rolling his face toward hers until he could press a slow morning kiss against her forehead. “And before you start,” he murmured against her skin, “I said it wouldn’t look completely stupid. That is not the same as approving it. There are committees. Permits. Public comment periods.”

His mouth shifted toward her temple for another absent kiss before he settled back against the pillow. He knew he was making it worse. There were no committees. The committee was Lux, and Callum apparently served as the exhausted dissenting member whose objections kept becoming construction plans.

His thumb moved lazily at her waist while he looked toward the window. Morning was beginning to strengthen outside, turning the yard from blue-gray shapes into recognizable pieces of their life. Eventually he would have to get up. He would make coffee, check beneath the porch without crowding Sawdust, look at the coop in daylight, and call the clinic once they were open. There would be work and hardware and whatever fresh argument Lux invented before breakfast.

Not yet.

Callum turned his attention back to her and found her still tucked against him, warm and sleepy and entirely too pleased with herself. His expression softened despite every effort to maintain the paint dispute. “C’mere,” he murmured unnecessarily, because she was already there. His hand slid up her back and drew her the last fraction closer anyway, his mouth finding her forehead again before he tucked her beneath his chin.

He let the quiet sit for a while, fingers moving idly through her hair as his eyes drifted shut. Then the thought escaped before he could apply any common sense to it. “If we did plum, it’d have to be dark. None of that bright purple shit. And the trim stays simple.”

Callum froze.

His eyes opened slowly.

He stared at the ceiling as the full betrayal of his own mouth registered.

“Fuck.”

His hand covered his face while Lux remained tucked against his side, and Callum already knew there was no taking it back now. “I want it entered into the record that I am not awake enough to enter contracts.” He dragged his palm down his face, looked at her, and pointed one tired finger in her direction without releasing her from his other arm. “And wipe that look off your face. We still gotta price paint.”