I reached over and snoozed the alarm clock before it had a chance to go off. Two minutes to seven, must be the weekend then, since I was still in bed, rather than in my office. Sam's soft breath tickled the side of my neck, and his arm rested lightly on my chest. Sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and I still had half an hour before it's time to get up. Not a bad start to the day, not bad at all.

For more times than I ever dared to count in the past couple of months, I feared that we would never have mornings like this ever again. And it had came so close. So damn close. Worried didn't even begin to describe how I felt. It was difficult for Sam to sit in the hospital waiting room and wait for news of my surgery when I was shot, but for me to sit by Sam's bed night after night, seeing the violent reactions the drugs had caused on his body, hoping that they worked, knowing that even if they worked they might kill him along with the cancer as well, was beyond grilling. It was painful. It was hollowing. It was sheer agony. And there was little I could do.

Maneuvered quietly, I turned to lie with him face-to-face, and watched him sleep. It's good to see his lean face had finally gained a healthier shade, rather than the sickly gray paleness. When Sam first came home after his hospital release, I watched him sleep almost every night. I would jolted awake at some wee hours, by dreams where I couldn't find him anywhere in the morning, and just lay there and watched him until I had to get up for work. I knew I was being irrational, but I just had to know for sure that the dreams were not true, and that he was real. To see it with my own eyes that he really was there, beside me in our bed, and would still be there in the morning. I had to know.

I reached out and ran my hand through Sam's short hair, they seemed almost brown in the morning light. He had decided to cut them several weeks after he started chemo, so that the hair loss would be easier to manage and looked less awkward. I had never told anyone, but I was secretly obsessed with his hair. I enjoyed the fact that it was him who had the good hair so that I could play with it, and not the other way around. That would drive me absolutely insane. His hair felt a lot different now, but the fact that he was still here for me to run my hands through it once more, was good enough.

Resting my hand on the small of his back, I pulled us yet closer, and he, eventhough still asleep, snuggled up against me. I could feel his chest moving gently against mine as he breathed, and our heartbeats echoed.

He's right here with me, and I will make sure that he stayed.

No matter what.