SPOV:

"Harder…" I said, even though I was sure if we went any harder we'd end up on the other side of the wall. But he pushed harder still, lifting my bottom slightly off the bed.

"Oh. My. God… Eric!" I knew we had to be quiet, but it just slipped out. "Oh God… Jesus!" I panted once more, as I clung to him for dear life. That all too familiar feeling was building in my toes ready to shoot throughout my body.

I felt him smirk into my neck. "Close, baby?"

He knew I was; this was a well oiled machine as far as fucking hot sex went at this point.

"MOMMY, DADDY!" Came the shriek from across the hall.

"You have GOT to be kidding me," I groaned as Eric slowed down. "No, don't stop." I gripped his back but to no avail.

"Didn't lock the door…" he said into my neck again, this time as he came to a standstill.

"Eric!"

"She's coming!"

"I'm coming! Which is more important right now," I said, though it didn't matter. He stopped with a frustrated groan, rolling beside me and covering us both up with the bed sheet right before the bedroom door burst open.

"Mommy! I was callin' for you. Why'd you no come to me?"

Because I was coming for someone else, I thought.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" I asked, wrapping the sheet around myself fully.

"I want juice."

"Jess, you have water beside your bed," Eric said, the mood officially killed.

"But I want juice. Please? I promise not to pee."

"Jess, we've talked about this."

"But, please?" she said, coming into the room fully now, knowing to focus in on Eric. He was the good cop after all.

"Water. And what did we say about bursting into Mommy and Daddy's room without knocking?"

She curled her finger into her hair before pouting, "Not to do it."

"Right. Come on, I'll take you back to bed. I pushed his boxers up from the bottom of the bed with my foot before he slid them on under the blankets.

He picked her up, kissing her on the cheek.

"What woke you up anyway, puddin'?" he asked her.

"Mommy was praying loudly again."

Both Eric and I burst out laughing.

"It's no funny!" she said thinking we were laughing at her. We really weren't.

"Well, maybe Mommy should pray a little quieter next time," he quirked an eyebrow at me, like it was all my fault!

"Well, she would if daddy would help her stay quiet. It wouldn't be so loud."

"We'll work on that."

I scoffed. Not now we wouldn't. The mood was well and truly cock-blocked.

I got up and pulled on one of Eric's t-shirts, not even in the mood for proper pjs and crawled back into bed.

By the time I felt Eric's weight on the bed again, I was almost asleep. So when I felt his lips on my neck I was struggling with the urge to laugh.

"Not even happening," I said half unconscious.

"She's asleep. And you have to learn to be quiet," he kissed me again.

"Sleeping…"

"No… Sookie come on, we were doing so good." He poked me in the arm with his finger a little.

"And now the mood is gone. And I'm tired, let's just sleep."

"Let's have sex." He snaked his arm around my waist pulling me closer into his body. I was still set on sleeping.

"Sleep."

I heard him sigh, reaching over to turn out the bedside lamp on his side before he yanked the comforter with more force than necessary, alerting me to the fact that he was pissed. Well, it was his own damn fault. I was tired of arguing over locking the bedroom door at night. I wanted it locked for privacy and so we didn't completely traumatize our daughter with the possibility of her walking in on us fucking. He didn't. Jessica had one tiny freak out when our bedroom door was locked one morning, and we didn't hear her outside the door. It annoyed Eric so much that he'd been against locking it ever since. Which then meant that we had to embrace silent sex… because Jessica seemed to have hearing like a bat and was a rather nosy four-year-old. It was difficult to near impossible for us to say the least.

In the three, almost four years that Eric and I had embraced our couple status head on, we'd realized silent sex was never something that was going to be an option. Even that one time with the blindfold—that we'd ultimately ended up using as a mouth gag—it just wasn't happening. Hence my argument for the key being turned if we were having sex. Jessica would just have to deal with it. It was either that or she would receive a visual education none of us was ready for.

I flipped the heart shaped pancake from the frying pan onto Jessica's plate as she sat at the island, her hair frizzy and sticking out all over the place, as she yawned.

"Thank you mamma."

I was always 'mamma' in the mornings or right before bed, then it became 'mommy' for most things and 'mom' when she was having a temper tantrum. Eric, well, Eric was always just her daddy, and her favorite—shocker, right?

Wrong.

Jessica was very much a daddy's girl. She always had been, even when we first got her. But their bond over the years had only gotten more and more solid. She was, in every sense, the apple of his eye and he was just her big damn hero. It was ridiculously adorable to watch at times, when at others I felt like someone had cloned Eric into a little girl. It brought up the nature versus nurture debate a lot, internally. Technically, she shouldn't have our personality traits. She did have Alcide's or Hadley's way about her sometimes—they were in her so completely—in her laugh or her smile. They were definitely there. She had Hadley's eyes, and Alcide's pout, but the majority of her personality was pretty much peppered with her growing up with Eric, Pam, Amelia, and myself. As well as everyone else influencing her as a little person.

I gave her the cooled bacon and some eggs and she sat quietly munching away—her legs bobbing along to the radio. It was her morning routine, and oddly like Eric, she was almost silent in the morning when she first woke up.

"Mamma?"

"Yes, baby?"

"Do I has to go to school today? Hoyt's still sick. I don't want to go."

"It's not has, it's have, and no, sweetie you know you have to go. Ms. Monroe is doing movie day, remember?"

She smiled. It was pre-school; she wouldn't be missing life changing events, but we had wanted her to socialize with more kids. Since she and Hoyt seemed so attached to each other, Maxine was attempting to do the same. It seems like our kids liked being loners, but only together.

"Okay..." she sounded out before chomping on her bacon.

Eric came around the door looking just as dishevelled as Jessica—his hair sticking out all over the place and his boxer shorts were wonky and sliding down.

I giggled slightly as he came over and kissed me good morning and went straight for the coffee pot.

"Look at you two, you must really enjoy your sleep getting up looking like this!" I laughed attempting to calm the cat on Jessica's head.

"Sleep well?" I asked Eric, even though I knew by the scowl on his face that he wasn't a happy bunny. I ignored it while I set out our breakfast next to Jessica. With his coffee in hand, he walked over and kissed Jessica on the head before taking a seat next to her.

"Yeah, fine... mostly," he said, sipping the hot black tar.

Still a man of very few words in the morning. Some things never change.

But on the other hand, millions of other little things do change.

After our second first date, came our first second date, then a third, and then a fourth. In between our dates, we'd go back to life at home, just us, Jessica and Molly the cat. Molly who originally belonged to Amelia, but once she and Pam moved in together, she had to get gone. Pam had an intolerance for cats and told Amelia outright that the only pussy Amelia would be stroking, would be hers. And so, Molly got 'donated' to Jessica. Thankfully there were no allergies and Mol was as sweet as any animal could be. Despite Eric's objections at first, he had grown attached to the little fur ball, though he'd never admit it. As well as the new addition, I had decided after I quit Sophie-Anne's house of horrors, that I'd take some time off just to be a mom and bond with my daughter. It was the best thing I could have done, for all of us.

"Daddy?"

"Hmm?"

"You look funny," Jessica said with a giggle and half a piece of bacon sticking out of her mouth.

"Oh yeah?" he said scooting in next to her, "Well, you look funny too munchkin. And don't talk with your mouth full, why?"

"Cause it's rude." Rude, coming out more 'wud' than anything as she still had the bacon on the side of her mouth.

"I'M DONE!" she announced after three more bites of her eggs and a sip of her juice.

"Okay, go upstairs and get your shoes, then come back down and I'll do your hair and then we'll go."

"In piggy tails?"

"Yes, in piggy tails. Now scoot or we'll be late."

She slid off the chair with ease and made a break for the hallway, Molly following at a slower more leisurely pace behind her.

"You're extra quiet this morning," I pointed out. He just shrugged. I knew he was still stinging from last night. It wasn't like we'd never got interrupted during sex before, it's just that before, we'd always have finished, at least in some capacity. But not last night. See the thing was, for the last number of months, I'd been toying with the idea of going back to work. Since Jessica was in pre-school from morning till the early afternoon and with Maxine and Hoyt after that if necessary, I had tons of free time, too much free time. And so, I did. I bought a restaurant across town. Well, I say restaurant. When I bought it, I bought it for a steal since it was nothing but an abandoned warehouse on the water—it was a shell. But, I took that shell and put my heart, my soul and a good chunk of my sanity into it. And within seven months, I'd managed to bring it from a shell, to a fabulously decorated and beautiful restaurant slash bar. It had been a source of much debate between Eric and I. The same old arguments arose—why couldn't I just partner with him and run that business together? Why did I feel the need to do this alone? Was I sure I wanted to stop being a full-time mom? Was I sure I could handle it all on my own…? Those sorts of things. And it was ridiculous because while I knew his arguments came from a place of concern, it annoyed the hell out of me that he'd even doubt that I would take on more than I could handle. But we dealt with it as best as we knew how, just like everything else that came our way. Including any and all problems in the bedroom.

"Are you mad at me or something?" I finally asked him, as I poured the remainder of my coffee down the sink.

"No."

"Yes you are. Why, because I didn't want to finish what we started last night?"

"No, I get it. Whatever. You were tired and pissed, that's fine. But you did it, didn't you? You…" He switched his mug from one hand to another. "You got yourself off before I got back into bed. There's no way you would have just drifted off otherwise."

I rolled my eyes. Another source of contention between Eric and I was the fact that sometimes, just sometimes when I didn't feel like getting all hot and sweaty with him, or I felt the need for a little… self love, that I still got myself off. It wasn't like I didn't think that he didn't—I just didn't care either way. He seemed to care—a lot.

"Oh not this again, really? Eric, it's not like I'm cheating on you!"

He just pouted. It drove me nuts.

"Momma I can't find mah shoe!" I heard from the top of the stairs.

"Which ones, the red ones or the black ones?"

"The wed ones with the wittle buttons." Jessica had been having trouble with her W's and her R's lately, no matter what we tried, we hoped she'd grow out of it.

"Red one is on the inside of your closet beside Lizzy." Lizzy was her old rag doll who lived in her closet for 'bed time' these days.

"Okaay," I heard her feet scamper into her room again as I zipped up her backpack.

"Look, Eric it's not like I'd mind if you did it. Really, it's not that big of a deal."

"Well, maybe it is to me!"

"Why?"

He never really would tell me why it annoyed him so much.

"Because it feels like—"

"I'm ready!" came the little voice as she ran into the kitchen. We both looked at her. She had her shoes on alright, but they were on the wrong feet. Eric just laughed and lifted her up onto the island to fix them. She got her morning cuddles from him and he let her down again. This time she came to me with the hairbrush in hand.

"One piggy tail or two?"

"Two silly!"

So two 'piggy tails' it was. Her hair was the same color as mine and Hadley's. Her eyes matched mine and Eric's too, if you didn't know what Hadley's looked like. No one really questioned her about her parents at school. She had a few friends but their mothers knew the story and that was good enough for me. They weren't even five yet; they didn't need to know the ins and outs of death. Though for Jessica we thought it was different. Eric and I had decided early on that Jessica should know who her birth parents were. As far as we and she were concerned, Eric was her daddy and I was her mommy, but she knew about Alcide and Hadley. We had their pictures scattered around the house with ours beside them. I didn't want their memory to die just because they did. So, she knew. She knew she had a birth mom and dad that loved her very much everyday, but that now they were in heaven because everyone needs their angels. I had my Gran, Eric had his dad, and she had her birth mom and dad. She seemed to accept it, and it was a story she told Hoyt from time to time.

"I have to take her to school then drop by the restaurant to see how the decorating is coming along, but we will talk about this later, right?"

He just nodded, looking downright sullen. Awesome start to the morning.

He kissed Jessica goodbye promising that he'd pick her up after school and they'd go get food and ice cream if she was really good for her teachers. While I was just too pissed to kiss him goodbye at that point I grabbed my keys and Jessica's backpack and headed for the car.

Sometimes he was just so impossible!

EPOV:

Sometimes it was like her brain was switched off. Of course it bugged me that she was getting herself off without me. It was nothing but a confidence thing, I'll admit. Especially, since I knew she had a history of 'pretending' she was having a good time with a guy, when really she was miserable and not enjoying herself at all. I wasn't about to let that shit start happening with us. I just didn't understand why did she need to get herself off when I was there, more than willing to do it for her? I knew it was something she didn't get because to her it just wasn't a big deal, but I hadn't felt the need to take matters into my own hands … so to speak, in a long time. The fact that she still liked to, it got to me. It seemed that lately everything we did got taken the wrong way. There were more arguments than ever, and I blamed it on the stress of work for both of us.

She'd started the project, at first just looking for work doing interviews, meeting with other businesses. Then she found the warehouse for sale from a friend of her grandmother's and the rest was put on hold since she dreamed up ideas of making it her own place. I was thrilled for her at first, because passionate Sookie was a fun Sookie, and she was very passionate about this project. Then it got off the ground and reality hit me square in the face. She wanted to go back to work which meant actually working. Odd hours, long hours. No more Sookie and Jessica snuggled up on the couch when I got home from work. That little reminder that no matter how shitty my day had been, all was in fact right with the world as long as I had them. I knew it was a childish fear, but it did feel like I was losing her bit by bit to this new job, and with Jessica getting bigger all the time it was only a matter of time before she didn't need me in the same way either. Top that all off with the one thing that Sookie and I were professionals at going south, and you have a very stressed out me. Sex—really great toe-curling, stars behind the eyes, I-think-my-head-is-going-to-explode-sex—that was our thing. It's always been our thing. Until she started stressing about work again and didn't want to as often, which, again, I accepted as best as I could since I loved her and respected her wishes. I thought she wasn't in the mood for sexy times, but it turns out she just wasn't in the mood for sexy times with me. With herself apparently, that was still fine.

So, all in all I was feeling a little put out by everything. I wanted to get over it; I wanted it to just roll off my back, but somehow I didn't know how. Somehow, it was still niggling into my brain when she came back two hours later.

I heard her shuffle in, dropping whatever bags she had with her on the floor of the hallway. Her keys hit the big bowl where they lived when we were home.

"Hey," I said, putting aside my paperwork on the kitchen table.

"Hey…" she said quietly, pushing the paper further back so her butt was nudged on the table in front of me. She snaked her arms around my neck.

"You wanna tell me, huh?" She whispered.

"Tell you what?"

"What's going on inside that head of yours?"

I stayed silent.

"Come on, Eric. I'm not a telepath, though sometimes I wish I was," she smiled, scooting from the table to my lap.

"Talk to me."

"Its stupid; it doesn't matter," I tried to reassure her, even if I felt like an ass. I really did. I wanted so badly to just shake this off.

"Well, obviously it does matter, if it's making you this closed off. I don't like closed off Eric, I like chatty banter filled, Eric. Now what do we have to do to bring him back?"

I kissed her cheek, sliding her off my lap to stand up.

"Eric?" She looked confused, about as confused as I felt.

"I just feel a little… stupid right now, that's all. It's this thing or that thing and it has been for months now. Nothing feels like it used to."

"Like what exactly? Like us?" she asked standing in front of me now, her arms folded, her mom-face officially on.

"No, yes. No. I don't know."

"What is this, because of one sex thing, we're suddenly on different pages or something?"

"No. It's just ever since you went back to work, things have been different."

"Well, yeah. Before I was here all the time, or with you at the bar, or just around a lot more. Now I'm not because it takes up some of my time. Of course things will be different. I thought you got that though, when we both agreed that it was a good idea?"

"I did, at the time. But I guess thinking about it and the reality of it, aren't the same."

She sighed letting me circle my arms around her waist. "I told you it was stupid."

"It's not. It's not stupid at all, but honey, you know that it's just going to get busier for me once we open, right? I mean, you of all people should know that—"

"I do know, and I want to feel differently about it but I can't seem to make myself. And I feel like shit because I'm being prissy when I should be nothing but happy for you, which I am. I am happy too, I just… miss how it was."

She simply nodded, grabbing my hand and yanking me towards the hallways and up the stairs.

"Why are we...? Sookie, if this is pity sex, I want us to turn around right now," I demanded. That shit wasn't happening.

She just laughed, "When have we ever had pity sex? Hmm? No, it's not pity sex I just think you and I need to sort a few things out, like we used to."

We walked into the master bedroom, our bedroom, and she kicked off her heels and unzipped her jeans, slipped her tank top over her head.

She did say it wasn't pity sex, right?

"You have too many clothes on for snuggle time," she smiled, hopping into bed in her underwear. We had two kinds of snuggle time, a term Jessica had penned a while back. There was snuggle time on the weekends, myself, Jessica and Sookie. It involved Saturday cartoons, breakfast in bed, and as aforementioned, lots of snuggling—all with our clothes on of course.

The second kind of snuggling happened whenever Sookie and I managed to get more than an hour alone together. It involved decidedly less clothing, lots of kissing, some touching and was usually followed by some pretty mellowed out sexing.

I smiled as I shed my clothes sliding in next to her. She leaned on her arm to one side, looking at me.

I kissed her forehead pulling her in next to me and we just laid there for a few minutes, in complete silence, just listening to the other breathe. It was ridiculous how calming that was.

"I'm just scared," I said after a long silence, gently.

"Of what?" she said back just as gently, stroking my arm absentmindedly.

"That you might not need me anymore." There, I said it. Step one, admit you're a pussy… or have a problem.

She sat up, then whacked me on the chest.

"Ow! Jesus, what was that for?"

"Being a tool. What the fuck? That I wouldn't need you anymore? I'm sorry, is this 1930? Do I need a man to 'look after me' or something, is that what this is?"

"No! I just…"

"You just what? You just suddenly decided to channel your inner sexist and pout because 'the little woman' got a job?" She was yelling now, the calm cuddles were gone.

"Sookie, that's not it. At least not totally like you described."

"Then what!"

"I'm so proud of you, first of all. For getting up and doing what you wanted to do and you know I support you a thousand percent right?"

"Well, it doesn't feel like it right now!" she huffed moving to sit up completely.

"I just grew to love how things were with us, and with Jess, and how we just seemed so mellow and chilled out, and that was because of you. You were chilled out and that wore off on me and her. Everything was so great. And I'm scared of losing that. That's all."

"Just because I own a business."

"Honestly, yes. I know better than anyone what goes into setting up a business—the hours, the stress—so yeah, our lives for the last, almost four years are about to be turned on their head. I'm having a little trouble accepting that. That's all."

"And the sex thing, that was just another notch in the 'oh she doesn't need me' column, right?"

Smart girl.

I nodded.

"Jesus fucking Christ. Men." She said, to no one in particular.

I yanked her back down, using a death grip for snuggle purposes. "Let me go, I'm still mad at you." She said muffled through my chest.

I laughed. "Nope, not a chance. You're stuck now. No surrender."

I gripped her tighter and she fake gagged, before she slid her hand down my boxers and decided to use a death grip of her own.

"You play dirty, Stackhouse," I said, letting her up for air.

She laughed before she straddled my waist. I forced myself to look her in the eye and not get sidetracked with her breasts.

"Can you get over this mood of yours, then? I mean, is that all it is, or are we looking at something deeper here?" she asked me seriously.

"I'll be fine. I promise. It's just a funk, I'll move on probably sooner than either of us think."

"Promise?"

"I'm not lying, I promise. I'll do whatever I have to to get over this. I love you."

"I love you, too. And I love our life, Eric. I don't want it to change either… but it's life whether or not we accept it. It's never simple."

We had no idea then, but we were really about to find out just how simple life could never really be.

A/N : *Waves* We're back! :D I have lots planned for these two this time around so I hope you're all back on board! *Bites nails*, I also really have to stop foreshadowing, it's such a bad habit I've gotten into with fic! Gah! Anyway, do we like it? Hate it? Love it? Loathe it? Hit the review and let me know bbs! Xoxo