Written for Godricgal, who introduced me to this amazing book. This is my first The Time Traveler's Wife fic, and it's set after the second scene in the chapter "First Date, Two."

Of Sex and Santa

Wednesday, February 8, 2000 (Claire is 28, Henry is 36)

HENRY: I'm going to be late for work, but I don't care. I don't want to stop making love to Clare.

Sex, since we started trying for babies -- and started losing babies -- has become a means to an end, an act equally fueled by hope and hindered by fear. Getting back to basics -- sex for sex's sake, because Clare loves me and I love her -- is a welcome change of pace, makes me believe this won't tear us apart or change us into people we don't recognize in a way even time hasn't been able to do.

In fact, for once, it's time that's brought us together. A few minutes ago it was 1977 and I was in the Meadow and Clare was six and threw a wicked shoe at my mouth, exactly how she should have greeted a naked stranger. Twenty-two years later my mouth is still bleeding and Clare is kissing my swollen lip and bruised jaw in a way that would have been almost child-like, had it not been so damn sensual. Kissing me better. But the little vixen hasn't apologized for hurting me. She didn't when she was six, either. At work, when Matt asks me what the hell happened to me, I'll tell him, truthfully, that my wife threw a shoe at me.

The thought, among others, makes me chuckle. Clare removes her lips from mine and sits up, a movement which turns my laugh into a deep groan of pleasure. I slide my hands around from her back to curve over her breasts, her long, soft hair, the color of faintly glowing copper in the pale winter light pouring through the blinds, falling over her shoulders tickles my knuckles as she looks questioningly down at me.

"You asked me if I knew Santa," I tell her.

"Of course I did. I was six, and you told me Santa time traveled. Made sense you'd know the other time travelers."

"Perfect sense."

I tilt my head up toward her, and she leans over me again. Our lips part as they touch and our tongues dance -- we should go dancing one night, I think, it's been forever -- and Clare rolls her hips down...and in...oh so slowly, and my God, I nearly come. But I bite my lip and draw a deep breath and manage to hang on. Just a little longer...My hands reluctantly leave Clare's breasts and settle on her hips, holding her still. She leans low to kiss my cheek, and her hair and her hard nipples grazing my chest almost undo me.

"Santa's one of the ways knowing you made me a weirdo," Clare says in my ear.

"Santa? How?"

She sits up again, looks me matter-of-factly in the eyes. "Think about it. Most kids six, seven, eight, start to realize how impossible it is that Santa could visit all the children in the world in one night. But me, I had a secret time traveling friend. So why not Santa?"

"Why not?" I repeat.

"It was hard to let go. I'm not sure I ever really did stop believing in Santa." Her voice drops, becomes husky. Of course that could just be the sex. "It would have been like not believing in you."

Her fingers trace an unconscious pattern on my chest, and I catch her hand. My other hand cups her face, my fingers sliding into her perfume-smelling hair. Her gray eyes are so huge and girlish in the woman's face.

"You never stopped believing in me."

She shakes her head, and I have to kiss her, need to make love to her, cannot wait any longer. I roll our bodies so that she lies beneath me, her thighs gripping me, calves wrapped around my waist, heels digging into my ass, pulling me deeper as I drive into her.

As I come, I hope I'm giving Clare the baby she believes I'll give her, a baby who won't leave us, who will look at me with her mother's big gray eyes when I return from somewhere in time and will ask me if I know Santa.

A/N: Those kind enough to leave feedback will get their very own Henry to make late for work...