"Your secret is being you," he says, smiling for the first time since seeing Tobias. "You're smart and great and ambitious and gorgeous and hot and nice and curious and you know how your mind works and I love you."

Kiss. Just a little peck.

He sighs again, not altogether unhappily. "Okay, we can work through this, it won't be awful, holidays are short, it won't be hell again."

Nod. Pet pet pet.

Snuggle.

And Sadde manages to disentangle from Isabella to get out of the car.

She takes his hand as soon as they've gone from car to house. "Home sweet home," she says.

He looks around and nods. "Hi, Isabella's home," he says a bit lamely.

She laughs softly and squeezes his hand. "We didn't wind up eating anything. Alex, what've we got in the fridge that's fast?"

"Tuna salad with pasta in it, but like one and a half people's worth. Frozen leftover pizza. Uuuum." He goes and checks. "Oh yeah, there's meatball soup, it came out sort of weird. I could make eggs or something?"

"I'm feeling like tuna. Pet?"

"Well, I've been promised weird meat and didn't end up getting any, the meatball soup sounds good."

"Okay. Alex, do you mind?"

"I got it, you snuggle your traumatized sub."

Sadde raises an eyebrow at Alex. "I'm actually mostly okay, now," he says. "Not that I'll refuse snuggles, but. I'm over the shock, at least."

"Oh, well, in that case," Alex flops onto a couch and waves a hand, "somebody should fetch me pizza."

Isabella snorts and kisses Sadde and gets up to putter around the kitchen.

Sadde giggles. "Want my help with anything?" he asks Isabella.

"Sure, pet, come in." And she has him microwave Alex three slices of frozen pepperoni pizza while she pours him a bowl of soup and plates herself some tuna.

He does all the things she asks, of course, now with a little bit more volition than right after leaving the restaurant.

And then they are all sitting around the kitchen table eating their food when the garage door opens again.

"Guess your mom's home," he says between bites.

Indeed she is. "My god, I am so sorry, I would never if I'd known," she exclaims as soon as she's in the house. "Oh good you're finishing off the soup - I'm so sorry, are you all right, Sadde?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. You don't need to worry, you couldn't have known."