"Mmmm.  M'okay."  As Carol tries to stretch, Tim follows.  Tim is a sunflower and Carol his sun.  He'll reach for her and follow her wherever she goes.  "Y'okay, Stinkhole?  Getting tired?"

"Hungry, not tired.  You think you can get off me for ten minutes?  I ordered some Thai.  And yes, I did get your favorite."  Oh my god if I don't get to stand up soon I'm going to scream.  How does he do it?

"Mmmmphhh."  Tim clings to Carol's midsection, keeping his face buried in her abs.  "I appreciate you.  Sorry for calling you Stinkhole, you didn't deserve it.  This time."  Tim punctuates and undercuts his apology with a blown raspberry on her tum.

"Eeeargh!"  You little shit you know I'm ticklish there!  "Let me the fuck GO, Timothy, I'm starving because I've been cuddling YOUR narcoleptic carcass all day!"

"Mmm'kay."  Tim will flop off next to her, but leave a hand on her 'til she actually stands up.  I'm not thaaaaaaaaaat tired.  I could get up if I wanted to.  But this is a really comfortable mattress.

Carol playfully slaps his hand away and wriggles off the mattress, but she does deign to give him a playful scritch on the scalp before moving on.  She stretches, one muscle group at a time.  Fingertips and wrists, forearms, biceps and shoulders.  Back, hips, and abs, her neck, then thighs down to ankles.  Feels like it's been years since I've gotten a good stretch off.  I know it was just six hours, but... 

When she strides to the front door of their silo, it's like a panther: barefoot, confident, silent.  Hard to think that just a year and a half ago it was 'fake it till you make it'.  Now I've made it.  She cracks the door, peeks around for any voyeur - nothing, good - and snatches up five pounds of Thai takeout.  He better appreciate that I thought of his dumb ass.  That boy will be the death of me.

The 'boy' in question has graduated to a sitting position.  "Hey, Car.  You really got me those crab rangoons?"  Maybe it's all in my head, but using my powers just makes me so hungry. I don't think it's backlash, I think most patients wind up extra-hungry.  It makes sense for them, but I'm not regenerating, I haven't been hurt in days.  While pondering the imponderable, Tim's gaze roves over the goal of 90% of the teenage male population: a gorgeous, muscled, badass blonde bearing takeout.

"We've been over this, puppy.  I don't care if I drive you crazy, I am not a 'car'.  And don't you Stinkhole me, you know they don't."  She huffs at him.  "Put your head in my lap and you'll find out what I got you."

"Yes'm."  Tim knows better than to press her too long.  She gets embarrassed easily when she's not in game face.  Curl around her, wriggle so that his shoulders and the back of his skull lay on her thighs.  Close his eyes and part his mouth slightly.

"I want you to listen to me, Tim.  I'm going to feed you, and you're going to listen.  Understood?"  Carol's voice is stern.  It doesn't have any hint of worry, no concern.  She shifts a little bit and rips out the staple holding the takeout bag shut.  Reaches down and hauls out a paper bag full of crab rangoon.  The soy sauce container goes on Tim's chest, on his breastbone.

Tim raises an eyebrow.  She must be feeling self-conscious about something, she's got her "voice of command" back on.  Bid to remain silent, he opens his mouth further.

Just get it over with.  Dunk the rangoon in soy sauce.  "You need to cut back."  As soon as the sentence is out of her mouth, she presses the savory dumpling against Tim's teeth.  "I want to support you, the way you need.  But you're doing too much.  I can't keep guiding you like this, not for eight hours a day."

Tim was taught to take ten seconds before saying something if he was angry.  Tim is in fact, quite irrationally angry.  However, a gorgeous body, lovely guiding, and a mouthful of delicious cheese-filled wonton has bought Carol some time.

"Our guiding needs are different.  I can't stay here all day, and Tim, you're barely awake half the day.  I know you're able to help people.  But I can't, can't shackle myself to you while you drowse the day away."  I'd been trying to drop hints, but my stupid little puppy has the thickest skull I've seen.  And I don't just mean his power, either.  "I want to keep our - partnership.  But I can't watch you do this to yourself."

Tim has hit eight and started to open his mouth two seconds early, only to find it unexpectedly full of soy sauce and wonton.  Perhaps it should have been 'expectedly'.

Carol's shoulder muscles are knotted with anxiety.  "We don't have to solve this tonight."  Coward.  "But I want you to start thinking about how to take care of this, puppy.  Can you do that for me?"

"You want me to help fewer people."  Tim's affect is flat.  There's only so much slack you can buy, even if you are guiding Tim while hand-feeding him his favorite comfort food and resting his head directly on your thighs.  She agreed with this.

Just leave it you don't need to say anything right now runs through the back of Carol's mind.  But she's been forged into a fighter, and while her internal model is working itself into knots her mouth is running.  "I won't be a party to your assisted suicide, Timothy Delgado."  FUCK.

Fuck.  Fuck fuck fuck.  She's actually mad.  Tim isn't worried about a fight.  He can recover from anything and he thinks he can take her if the chips are down, and he knows that she's actually mostly worried.  But.  She can't tell him to stop healing people.  If it's her or the healing silo, he can find another healing silo.  Besides, hypocrisy, thy name is Carol.  When it comes, his voice is perfectly even.  "Carol.  I seem to have forgotten.  Do you think you can remind me - how long does a combat esper live?"

why, tim.  "W-well.  The data's pretty skewed, when you count the 80s.  Almost every dataset leaves out the 70s, because there wasn't really any - "

Timothy's voice booms out, his mother's screaming genes shine through.  "How long, does a fucking combat esper live, Carol?"

"Thirty."

Oh.  Oh no.  I.  "I-I'm sorry."  You absolute moron.  Idiota.  Babouin.  Tim begins calling himself 'stupid' in three languages, but the narration is too small to contain such depths of name-calling and will skip over this.

Tim reaches up to touch her cheek.  This is a weird position to be comforting someone.  And it was my fault, too.  "Hey.  I'm.  You didn't deserve that."  You don't deserve to touch her.

Unbeknownst to Timothy, this is the first time anyone has seen Carol cry in a little over a year.  She cries, she's human.  But never in front of another person.  Until now.

It takes her a few moments to get her lungs under control.  They seem to have a mind of their own at the moment.  "No.  I didn't.  I, I don't deserve that."

"Y-you're.  You're right.  I'm - " a moron, a fool, un hijo de puta, putain FOCUS, Tim. " - sorry."  You said that already.