A/N: and here we are: the reason i started this whole endeavour in the first place. thank you for your comments once again.

Swimming up through a sea of sedatives, he hears her coming from what seems like a long way off.

"Moretti," she says loudly, in that frustrated tone he knows means someone's called her Mrs Longmire again. "Deputy Moretti." She places heavy emphasis on both words.

Walt can't quite seem to feel his face right now but if he could he knows he'd be smiling. He does that a lot these days.

There's a slow, drifting pause, and then he hears Vic again.

"You see this? I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you can't read it, so I'll do that for you. It says Sheriff's Department. So I don't give a fuck if it's outside visiting hours. You either get out of my way right now or I arrest you for obstructing an investigation, throw you in lock-up, and then come back in here and see him anyway."

Yep, he thinks with pride, at no one in particular. That's my wife.

Her boots slap against the floor in a sharp rhythm like she's close to running. Walt wants to tell her there's no need to run. It's not like he's going anywhere.

Time lurches through another little bubble burst and pops him out into later.

"Jesus, Walt," Vic breathes. So it must be pretty bad. Her voice is shaky and he wishes he could look at her but his eyelids feel like they've been glued shut. There's a little hitching gasp and then a soft high-pitched sound.

"Don't cry" is what he tries to say, but all that comes out of his throat is a raspy croak.

"Hey," she says, her voice right next to him now. She must be leaning over the bed.

Walt feels the slide of her cold fingers around his hand and manages to squeeze a bit in response.

"Don't try to talk yet," she tells him. "They've only just taken the tube out." Paper rustles; she must be looking at his chart. "You've got a punctured lung, a couple broken ribs, and there was some internal bleeding. No sign of head trauma, but half your face is a fucking mess, babe."

Well, it's not like he was all that pretty to begin with.

Chair legs scrape against the floor and the bed rail rattles as it comes down. There's a slight dip in the mattress near his hip and then he feels the softness of Vic's cheek against the back of his hand.

"I thought we agreed you were gonna stop scaring the shit out of me like this," she says quietly.

Walt manages to stroke one finger along the side of her face in apology. The muscle in her cheek lifts and he knows she's smiling. For a minute or two they stay that way, with her even breaths washing over his wrist, and he floats in warm contentment. Too soon she presses a kiss to his hand and rises with a sigh.

"I need to call Cady. We're gonna flip to see which one of us gets to officially arrest the drunk asshole who hit you."

Scraping chair legs pull Vic away and then the mattress shifts at two points as she braces herself above him on her arms. With a great deal of effort Walt opens his eyes a fraction, but all he can make out is brightness and blur. The blur grows larger and darker, blotting out some of the brightness, as Vic leans in and presses her lips tenderly to his.

He has a soft-focus memory of waking up to a kiss very much like this one what seems like a lifetime ago. When he was too scared and too stubborn to acknowledge how he felt about her, even to himself. When he'd convinced himself he was running towards the truth instead of away from it.

What a damn fool he used to be.

"Just rest, okay?" Vic whispers, laying her brow against his. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Her voice is sweetly narcotic and his resistance dissolves. It feels as if he's seeping into the bed beneath him like a figure in a surrealist painting. His body itself feels abstract, all textures and theory, with no discernible edges. He struggles against the sensation of colour, the undertow of blue. But his mind's gone pulpy and viscid like a bucket of papier mâché; thick and sticky as a vat of melted marshmallows.

In a last hazy pocket of thought, Walt hopes he remembers that simile the next time he wakes up. It'll make Vic laugh when he tells her.

Then she kisses him again, soft and lingering, and he fades into sleep with the warmth of her mouth against his and her fingers carding gently through his hair.

[END]