Paul wasn't doing so good.

He held it together until the funeral. Futile rituals of the living meant to comfort and explain away what was going on, not that it mattered. Not that death cared. For the first time in a long time he was at war with himself, the part of himself that was Paul rejecting the wisdom and distant sympathy of the part of himself that was Anubis. Awareness of the soul's passage into peace was little comfort to a man who had lost a former lover and good friend.

They'd somehow managed not to kill each other over reconnecting over Tucker. Paul had meant to talk to him, give him advice on how to approach the kid with, well. Everything. Tuck and Jack had never communicated well. He'd meant to call. All these things he meant to do, piling up in his head. He'd even gone so far as to pick up the phone once or twice before he realized that there would be no one on the other end of the line.

It hurt. It hurt a lot.

Peter was... a godsend. If that wasn't too ironic a term. He didn't ask when Paul came back from the funeral in a quiet seething fury, didn't ask when the alcohol stores drained away quicker in a few days than they had in the past year and a half. Didn't say anything when Paul skipped work three days in a row. He made the phone calls, arranged for the time off both retroactive and to come, and stayed with his husband as much as he could.

Somewhere round about the third day, Paul stopped drinking. It wasn't giving him the ease he wanted, and it was just going to worry Peter if he kept it up. He put the bottles back in the cabinet, the empties in the trash, took out the trash and slammed it into the bin, slammed the lid down. Then he kicked it clear across the street.

This wasn't right. It wasn't fair, it wasn't just... he should have the power to change this. To fix it. To bring them back.

That night and into the following morning, there were finally tears. They had been a long time coming. He curled his fingers around Peter's arm around his body, dug his fingers into shirt and flesh beneath, and cried. Sobbed into his shoulder until he had no tears left, drank water like a dying man and cried some more. It helped.

Then, more sleep. For two more days. Then it was the weekend. Somehow, he'd lost a whole week to this.

Paul woke to a gummy, sticky face and panic at Peter's side of the bed being empty, before a clatter in the kitchen made him jump. Just breakfast.

What time was it?

He rolled out of bed, set feet to carpeted floor, one pajama pants leg all rucked up around his calf. It shook out as he headed into the kitchen to find Peter making omelettes and toast. And potatoes.

Paul smiled a little. He liked potatoes.

"Hey," he coughed, so Peter would know he was up.

The other man looked around, over his shoulder. "Hey..." One hand still on the pan in which the omelette was almost done, and his other arm reached around Paul's waist to snag his husband and pull him in close. "Sleep all right?"

"Mmm," Paul nodded, wrapping his arms around Peter as close as he could and still let him cook and tucking his face into his shoulder. More tears. Just a few, this time. He was still waking to a world without Jack in it, and that was very hard. "Making breakfast?"

"I thought you might be hungry." Hoped. Hoped was the word, there, the word he meant and the world Paul heard.

He nodded, a small motion into the old gray t-shirt and Peter's shoulder, fabric worn soft and smooth with time. His fingers reached up to catch the cuff and rub it between the pads of thumb and forefinger. Of this, such memories are made, he thought. No, Anubis thought. The disconnect was still there, though shrinking.

"Yeah," he mumbled finally. "I guess... yeah." He was a little hungry. And, potatoes.

Paul reached out to snag a piece from the pan.

"Hey!" Peter laughed, arm tightening around Paul's waist out of relief and not rebuke. That was what the spatula to the knuckles was for. "You can wait five minutes."

"No I can't," Paul teased back, even if he didn't quite feel like it. Still felt quavery inside, like he was going to throw up. His voice still sounded weak, but he was speaking. "I'm starving. I'm going to waste away to nothing."

"You're not wasting away," Peter kissed his forehead. They should have been teasing each other, but while the words might have been light the tone was the same he had used the night before, had been using for the past few days. "I'm almost done, and then you can have your potatoes. And omelette," he added, for good measure.

"And toast?"

"And toast."

Peter kept cooking, and Paul kept clinging. The scent of his husband, shifting from his aftershave and shampoo to the smells of the kitchen, garlic and butter and potatoes and eggs and cheese, always with the scent of his body underneath it. The reassuring solidity of him beneath his hands. A warm, living, moving body, standing calmly at the kitchen, shifting a bit to cook around the clinging person glued to his side.

This was real. He was real. He was still here, but so was Peter. He hadn't lost everything.

Jack...

Paul squenched his eyes shut again, turned his face into Peter's shoulder, but it didn't last as long this time. His chest tightened, tears came, dropped down, and then there were no more tears. His mind smoothed over the idea that there would be no more Jack, no more silly looks or ridiculous comments, no more trying to mend things with Tucker. No more of those thousand little things that had made him smile; even if they hadn't worked out so well as lovers they had been good friends for over ten years.

No more Jack. Just a collection of memories that would fade over time, handled over and over like a photograph wearing down under fond fingertips.

And Peter's hand, rubbing his shoulder, patient as always. Quiet, now, and watching him. Breakfast must be ready. He could just about hear his old friend, too, Come on! You're not going to let a good breakfast like that go to waste?

No, of course not, Jack.

Paul smiled.

"Did..." scrubbing the back of his hand over his eyes, straightening up. "... did I ever tell you about the time Jack tried to make pancakes for all of us? Me and him and Tucker... I think Tucker was... what, ten? It was right after he came to live with Jack, I think..."

Peter, who might well have heard the story at least a couple times before, shook his head. Bless him. Paul couldn't see how he put up with him, sometimes.

"Ah, well, that was a total disaster." Going to get the plates, now. His voice was hovering somewhere in the vicinity of normal, now, maybe in the suburbs of it. He held out their plates, one after the other, for Peter to fill. "I don't know where he got the idea that he could make pancakes from scratch, but I never saw a bigger mess..."

No, it was all right. He would be all right.

Eventually.

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