He's standing at the back window, staring out at the yard as I slice vegetables. I smile to myself and watch as his breath fogs the glass. The pile of onions and mushrooms and tomato grows and his hands slide around my waist. He asks if he can do anything to help and I say no, just let me spoil you. Fine, he says, but tomorrow I'm going to make breakfast for you.

We fall into comfortable domesticity together, as though the months apart were hours. He showers while I brush my teeth. I cook and he cleans. We both shovel snow. Our bed (because it's our bed now) is warm and soft and small. We lie pressed together, our knees and elbows hanging off the edge but we sleep the best we have in months.

The museum is warm and weekday-empty. He takes my hand and we spend hours geeking out over old machine tools, guns, and locomotives. He steals a kiss from me in the locomotive cab, I steal one in the glass gallery. We smile like idiots and imagine living together in a Dymaxion house.

In the morning we go out to the river and walk across the ice. (Neither of us knows how to skate and it's only cute when one person is falling). He marvels that the world is covered with frozen water and never tires of looking at it. The snow is too dry for snowballs but he tries to throw them at me anyway.

--

reQuest 2018: "I want RedOmega to actually make a gushy daylog or node about her and Admin, like she keeps saying she wants to in the catbox :p"