AN: This is where the STEAMM train makes a stop at the S/T station. (See what I did there?) To any M/M or E/A shippers still reading: hope I did your ships a little bit of justice. To everyone: thanks for reading and reviewing! Playlist at the end.

A yellow glow filters through Sybil's eyelids as Tom opens the door; just as quickly it's gone as he swings the door nearly shut, leaving just a crack for the hall light to shine in. Drifting on the fringes of sleep, she hears him edge into the room. "She woke up, eh?"

Siobhan's still in Sybil's arms, nursing dozily. Sybil hadn't meant to fall asleep; certainly hadn't meant to leave her on the breast this long. "Not quite, but something had to be done. I started leaking in A&E." She chuckles without opening her eyes.

Tom gives a sympathetic laugh. "Poor darling." His fingers knead her forehead gently. "Not much of a night out, then?"

Sybil snorts. "Mary and Edith started in on each other as usual. They got back in one piece, I assume?"

"Yep. Seemed friendlier than usual, as a matter of fact. Edith actually offered Matthew and Mary a lift to their hotel."

Sybil's eyes snap open. "You don't say. Well, I'll definitely have to have that story from Mary before they go home." She detaches Siobhan, who whimpers a bit but then sinks deeper into sleep, and tucks the blanket more securely about her small body. "How'd it go with you?"

"Fine."

She opens one eye. He's backlit in the dim glow from the door, his face a dark blur above her. She closes it again. "Really?"

"'Course. She was a perfect angel."

"Please," Sybil scoffs.

"She was fine, love. She was... herself. D'you really think our daughter's going to be easy every minute of every day?"

"Fair enough." She smiles. "How's your arm?"

"Hurts like a bitch."

"It must, if you're talking like that in front of the baby," she teases. Sybil doesn't share Tom's preoccupation with keeping Siobhan's ears pure. "Go take your painkillers."

Tom sighs. "You know they'll just make me pass out. I don't want to leave you with—"

"Don't be ridiculous." She puts on her nurse voice, jolly but with just enough steel to be authoritative. "Now, I don't want to hear another word about it. Two of those pills, down the hatch."

"Syb, I really don't need—"

"Two of them. Now. Off you go."

"All right, you win, Nurse Crawley-Branson." He laughs and leans down to kiss her forehead, and then turns and pads down the hall. Sybil scoots off the bed, lays Siobhan in the cot, and goes to clean her teeth. By the time she returns from the bathroom Tom is a hump under the covers on his side of the bed. She finishes changing and settles in, a scant distance away from him. Normally she'd burrow into his warmth, her hand seeking the smooth solidity of his back, but she doesn't want to bump his cast.

The mattress creaks a little as he rolls over. His left hand pats her hair, her cheek, and she lets him guide her to him until his mouth finds hers in the dark, soft and fumbling a bit, their lips not quite open but not closed either. They settle back into their respective pillows, Tom turned away from her on his left side. Sybil thinks about her recent follow-up visit and how Dr Banerjee gave approval for the resumption of certain activities, not that either Sybil or Tom has been in the mood lately. We will be again, though, won't we? She must be done in: her inner voice is more plaintive than usual.

"Love you, darling," she says.

"Love you." A half-dozen minutes go by. His breathing deepens. Sybil is wide awake. She wonders how they'd manage even if they were in the mood, with his arm in a cast. It could be a couple of months before it's off, with a compound fracture. He might need surgery if the bones don't heal cleanly. The car was going quite fast; he got off lucky, really. They got off lucky. She should remember that.

She slides closer and eases her arm around his body under the cast. Presses her cheek to his shoulder blade, fits the fronts of her thighs to the backs of his, slots her knees into the bends of his legs.

She squeezes too hard and he snuffles, half waking up, and rolls onto his back. She squirms out from underneath him but his good hand's on her face again, his fingers walking to the back of her neck, drawing her close. She hovers over him gingerly. He pulls her down so her mouth covers his. Delicately his tongue pushes inside and it feels odd after so long, the old rush through her lower belly. They haven't kissed like this since weeks before Siobhan was born, about the time Sybil started feeling like a beached whale. The oddness only lasts a few seconds, though; after that she's home again, like she never left.

The little chuckle he lets out as she pulls away makes it clear that the feeling's there for him just as much as her, but—

"Are you all right?" She asks.

"Are you?" His fingertips dance across her cheek. "We don't have to—"

She shuts him up by pressing her lips on his. The eagerness of his response tells her just how much he's been holding back; he fumbles at her waist, his spread hand slipping up her back under the hem of her t-shirt. He rears his head up so he can kiss her neck, flick his tongue over her earlobe, and Sybil moans deep in her throat.

He puts too much weight on his bad arm and inhales, a pained hiss. "Feck."

Sybil rockets to a sitting position. "Sorry! Shit, Tom, I'm sorry." Her voice is louder than she meant it to be. Siobhan stirs in her cot, then stills again. Mentally, Sybil counts the likely number of hours until the baby wakes: not many. We should sleep.

But Tom has other ideas. "It's fine," he whispers. "It's fine." He moves the cast up out of the way, lain back on the pillow above his head, and with his left hand tugs at Sybil's hip until she takes the hint and shifts to straddle him. They kiss for a little while, slow and deep, Tom's palm rubbing a circle on her lower back.

This is the part where Sybil would normally sit up and whip off the t-shirt and things would escalate from there, but she feels strangely hesitant. It's not that he hasn't seen her body since she gave birth: what with trying to figure out breastfeeding, she feels as though she's spent half the time since Siobhan came home in various stages of undress. Anyway, the room is almost pitch dark. But it's different in this context, and she stiffens when his hand moves around to the side of her still somewhat thickened abdomen.

Almost automatically her hand grasps his and moves it away. As soon as she lets go it's back, gentle but implacable, sliding up towards the nursing bra she wears to bed now. Thinking of it takes her out of the mood completely. Shit shit shit. Frustrated tears, always so close to the surface these days, spring up behind her eyes and something thick and acidic rises in the back of her throat. She swallows hard and sits up, suddenly conscious of her weight on Tom; she must be so heavy. Gargantuan. A great ugly lump.

She tries to move off him but his hand tightens on her hip. "Where d'you think you're going?" He sounds playful, a little slurred, definitely aroused: apparently he's oblivious to the turmoil inside her head. He lifts the hem of her shirt. "Help me out here, love, would you?" She doesn't move, her mouth clamped shut on those damn stupid sobs, and the silence spins out. Finally he twigs that something's wrong. "Sybil? You okay?"

She exhales. She's got control of herself now, she can speak without crying. "I feel so weird. Everything's different, it's all shifted around, and I feel…" She grabs his hand and stops it wandering up her shirt again. "I wish you wouldn't do that."

"What, touch you?" He sounds genuinely confused.

Does he really not get it? "I just… I'm not sure I want to right now."

"Okay, fine." Still confused. His hand comes to rest on her thigh, kneading it idly.

"I mean, I want to, but… shit." She sighs and rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. What she wants is to feel like herself again, vital and sexy and comfortable in her skin, and what if the days of feeling like that are over? She hugs her elbows.

"Sybil…" He mumbles over the "b" a little bit and pauses for a long moment to get his thoughts in a row; clearly the oxycodone is doing its work. "D'you know how amazing it is, what you've done? I mean, you grew a person inside you. How amazing is that?" She almost laughs at how faux-profound he sounds: revelations from Morpheus. But he means it.

"I know it is," Sybil says in a low voice. She's heard it before, read it in the pregnancy books: Amazing. Beautiful. A bleeding miracle. She doesn't feel beautiful or miraculous at the moment.

"My point is…" He pauses again, for so long that Sybil wonders if he's drifting off. "My point is that nothing's going to be the same after that experience. You're not the same. I'm not. It's okay, it's fine." He sounds so calm and reasonable, like he's explaining some fundamental concept to a child, and Sybil gets a sudden vision, breathtaking in its completeness: Tom on the sofa with his guitar, an older Siobhan sitting cross-legged on the floor before him like an acolyte. Her sapphire eyes follow his, to his fingers on the fretboard. These are power chords. Don't overuse them. Sybil draws a long breath. "And now you're feeding that person with milk that you make with your body. Bloody amazing." He chuckles. "I'm saying 'amazing' a lot."

"Yeah," she whispers. He's not telling her anything she hasn't told herself. She has great respect for her body and its abilities, but now she yearns for what she always took for granted, what she feels like she no longer has.

He blows a breath through his nostrils. "Syb," he says in a slightly blurred version of the voice he used when she was waffling about going back to school. "Syb Syb Syb. Love. C'mere." She makes a small sound of protest but he overrides her. "Come here."

She leans over and kisses him again. His lips pull at hers sluggishly. Sleep is coming for him, and soon, whether he likes it or not. But his hand is on her stomach again, and this time she lets it stay. Softly he caresses the slackened skin, the new bulges that she is trying hard not to dwell on just yet. "I love you," he slurs. "You're beautiful and gorgeous and sexy and I fucking love you and I really want to fuck you." She can't help but laugh, especially at the way he drops his voice to a whisper when he says fuck. "No, I'm serious, I do. I…"

Silence, except for his heavy breath. He's nodded off.

Sybil shakes her head, smiling, and starts to clamber off him.

He inhales sharply, his hand twitching toward her. "But like I was saying…"

She settles at his side and kisses his forehead. "Get some sleep, darling. We can fuck later."

He snorts a laugh. "Fine. But don't think for a minute that you're off the hook for the entire time this cast's on. As soon as I can stay awake longer than three minutes together, you'd better watch out."

Sybil smiles drily in the dark. "There is the little matter of the baby."

"All right, fine. As soon as Siobhan's asleep and I can stay awake longer than three minutes together."

Her smile widens. "I'll look forward to it."

-ooo-

Appendix K: On the Other Side: Punks Before and After

I kind of shot my wad with the parenthood-themed songs after New Developments, so here's a playlist including some of my favorite musicians who grew up (or maybe just got older...) yet still managed to stay punk rock. Or at least keep making music. :)

Gang of Four: "I Found That Essence Rare" / "You Don't Have to Be Mad"

New Order: "Dreams Never End" / "Working Overtime"

Sonic Youth: "Brother James" / "Reena"

Fugazi: "Suggestion" / "Ex-Spectator"

Helium: "Baby Vampire Made Me" / Wild Flag: "Romance"

Blonde Redhead: "Luv Machine" / "Spring and by Summer Fall"

Social Distortion: "I Want What I Want" / "I Won't Run No More"

Excuse 17: "I'd Rather Eat Glass" / Sleater-Kinney: "What's Mine is Yours"

The Pixies: "Subbacultcha" / Frank Black and the Catholics: "Nadine"

Wire: "Lowdown" / "Stealth of a Stork"

Bad Brains: "Right Brigade" / "We Belong Together"