A/N - Hey all, I must apologize for disappearing over the summer. It's been a difficult one because my grandfather was diagnosed with stomach cancer and dementia and died a few weeks ago. Quite honestly, I've had no time or much of a desire to write until recently.

I suppose you could count this story as a 'hey, I'm still here and haven't gone AWOL.'

"You've forgotten one thing - me."

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing you can't fix."

- Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) to Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart). The Big Sleep, 1946.

oOo

The sleepy haze clears from her eyes as she squints to catch the red, glowing numbers. It's nearly two, and the street lights cast a familiar glow across the ceiling. The sheets are wrapped intermittently around her legs and torso, and she catches sight of the button that came off her suit jacket in their haste that traveled sometime during the night to land on her bedside table.

She is pleased and happy here. There is a glow that still warms her from the night breeze that skates through the open window and a sense that her pilates classes have never been more useful.

Turning her head slowly, she feels her lips widen to a full smile, enraptured in the moment of peace and near-silence. He is here, she thinks.

The house still smells of garlic and alfredo sauce and the undeniable scent that she identifies only with him. Don's hand rests on her hip and she wraps her fingers in his. The rough calluses are pressed to her lips as she breathes in and catches whiffs of the herbs they cooked with earlier and the ever bitter scent of gun smoke.

He murmurs softly, and Robin shifts closer as if to soak up each word that comes from him. Don moves with her and buries his face between her shoulder and under a pillow. Her heart catches at his sigh. She reads it as one of contentment and if for at least in this moment she knows he feels happy and safe.

Don kissed her like they had no tomorrow. Insistent and gentle, he never said the words but as she returned his fervor, kiss for kiss in some mad frenzy, she realized then he had given her the power to crush him forever.

In the same token, she realized that he's ruined her for any other men.

She feels like a vampire, laying there in the dark and watching his slumber. Her thoughts are traveling an overly-studied path tonight. She remembers Miami and the incredible sense of finding nothing she was looking for there. Remembers how Don's face contorted the time she told him that they weren't working out and that she was leaving town.

There are times now when she catches a glimpse of scarcely-disguised fear as he looks at her, as he works so hard to please her. It is rare but she swears in certain quiet moments that she can almost hear him begging her not to leave him again.

There is nothing but time and kept promises that can take that fear from him, that hurt from him. And it's not until she starts wondering what their children will look like, that she realizes that she's been domesticated.

The word love is out there. Neither of them has said it, but this time around it is implied as they exchange house and apartment keys and do couple-y weekend things that involve golf and grocery shopping and him repairing her kitchen sink.

She knows his lease is up in two months and doesn't think it'd be any sort of a stretch for him to move in.

The pillow gets pushed to the side and she can hear it wisp off the bed as she draws close and very fondly traces his hair line and kisses him at odd intervals.

"You're mine," she whispers. Her tone is fierce and there is a flood of tears that push against her eyes. Robin closes them tightly and the words catch in her throat, "You're mine."

She wants this moment to last forever. She wants this forever. She wants to take back the time they were apart, she wants to take that doubt from his eyes.

She simply wants him. Forever.

Her eyes open as the burn fades and her composure steadies itself. Robin shouldn't be surprised to see him awake. As he blinks in the darkness she figures maybe he's only halfway there.

"Go to sleep," she tells him.

Don instead looks at their entwined hands and tightens his grip on hers as a soft expression slips over his sleep-glazed eyes. He then looks at her deeply, drinks her in with something that tells her that she's the only one to ever see him like this before.

"What did you say?" he asks.

She swallows back the lump in her throat and there it is, the point of no return, she thinks and wonders if she can even get the words out without stammering like an idiot. He does this to her and he doesn't even know.

Don is playing with their hands, rubbing their thumbs in soft circles against the Egyptian cotton and looking so incredibly right in her bed.

She kisses him again, long and slow, the heat steadily building between the two of them. The tears are back and she feels incredibly silly as he traces them down her cheeks and wipes them away.

"You're mine." She says it louder than the first time and presses her mouth against his until he knows. "You're mine."

He smiles then, not tentatively, not shyly. But one of his ridiculous, over-blown, hand-in-the-cookie-jar grins that make her melt like ice cream in August. He kisses her back and Robin knows its not sex he's after.

They lay there for a long while, her hand in his as he traces circles through her hair.

"You know," he starts, his voice rough with sleep and a tenderness she doesn't try to measure. "I feel the same way."

She thinks about the watermelon candy he buys and his willingness to wander art museums with her. The goofy way he gets when he tries to help out her golf swing or that pleased expression that comes whenever she quotes Preston Sturgis for him.

Robin rests her head on his chest and takes a slow breath. "I know, Don," she says. "I know."