He knew she was awake. She was never this still in her sleep. Plus, she snored. The cat curled tightly behind her neck had one eye open, staring at him resentfully.

She knew he was standing at the foot of the bed, looking at her. She knew he was sorry, that he hadn't meant it, that he just wished everything could be the same as before. But nothing ever stayed the same, and even if he hadn't meant it, he'd been thinking it, or why else would the words have been so handy for him to say?

In the morning they'd both pretend it was old news. Or maybe it had never happened. Never going to bed without settling a fight sometimes only led to sleepless nights, and bosses in the morning didn't care why you were exhausted.

Twenty years together meant something, even if only knowing when to just swallow the words and let the night carry the whole mess away.

one of these days I'm gonna write a happy drabble

Oh, Connie, wow. I really like that. And know whereof I like.

The detail is nice, too, especially the bit about the cat. Last week, I cried at Whale Rider, and the dog was convinced that the SO had done something to upset me. He glared at him balefully for about a half an hour until we had reassuring family puppy time.

Yes, that is really good. And murder and mayhem deficient, unlike mine.

I do have a happy drabble on the theme

Joe was always honest about what first attracted him to me. "You've got great tits," he said, propping his head up on his hand. "Plus, they're real."

"Most tits, not being holographic, are real." What passes for pillow talk with a geek girl and her first serious lover.

"Well, there's real, then there's real." He got up and went to the foot locker by the bed. The locker that held three years of back issues of Playboy, legacy of a stint in the Navy in the last days of Vietnam. Now, though, he pulled out several issues, flipping to the middle to check the centerfold. "See? Fake tits."

"How can you tell?" And we spent the next several hours comparing two dimensions unfavorably to three dimensions.

And murder and mayhem deficient

Yes, sigh. Life is dull.

Connie, I liked that one too. It was cute. Or, you know, endearing or something.

Yeah, Joe had his uses.

Okay, here we go. Inspired, as it were, by my current state of under-the-weatheredness.
---
potential

She lies on the couch, enshrouded in her fuzzy pink blanket, all the fires of hell battling in her throat. He tucks her in, the only stillness in the dorm lobby.

It is the first time she’s been sick away from home. He brushes her hair from her cheek, tells her he’s borrowed Murph’s car for the doctor.

She smells like death (though he won’t tell her he notices this until later) and probably looks worse. If he can care for her through strep with such gentleness while they’re dating, maybe they can care for each other all their lives.

I love all of these drabbles, the bloody and the sweet. For some reason, I want to write about my grandfather again. I was going to do a "hands" one about my grandmother, too. Maybe I should be writing more about them.