Danny isn't going to lie- the cocoa by the fire really is helping to lift his spirits.. especially with Linda chattering away about the Christmas holiday coming up. The scene reminds him of the first Christmas they spent together as husband and wife. They didn't have heat in that tiny apartment either, and the tree just barely fit beneath the ceiling.

~~~~~~~~~~

"It's too big," Danny tells her, crossing his arms to ward off the winter chill at the Christmas tree farm.

"It is not!" Linda says, sizing up the tree. It's tall and green and definitely too big to fit into the corner of their apartment. "It'll fit fine!"

"You have to account for the tree stand, too. That's a good foot and a half extra."

"Oh come on, Danny! Where's your Christmas spirit? This one is perfect!"

He groans lightly, walks to another tree, "this one's just as good."

"That one's all scrawny! Come on, Danny, please?" She bounds over to him, grasps his arm with her gloved hands. She pouts, "please?"

~~~~~~~~~~

"You're thinking loudly," Linda's words bring him back to the present. "What're you thinking about?"

"Our first Christmas together as a married couple."

Linda's smile is wide, "that was a good Christmas. A terrible apartment, but a good Christmas."

"The tree was too big."

"It was not too big! The apartment was just a little too small."

Danny laughs at that, puts his arm around her. He can definitely survive this cold, one hundred percent... okay, maybe eighty percent...

She smiles, kisses his cheek, then his lips. Maybe she can warm him up better than the fire and cocoa can. Besides, she thinks with a smirk, her way is much more fun. She cups his cheek with her hand, shifting closer to him. She's determined to make him forget about the cold.

*********

Danny shivers. He freaking, freaking, freaking hates the cold. Being cold just brings back memories...long nights patrolling the freezing cold hell that was Fallujah.

All the (instant) coffee and instant heat-pack-thingies in his boots and pockets, hadn't made a dent in the bone-numbing cold. He's surprised he had come home without frostbite.

He shivers, pulls away when Linda deepens her kiss. He wants to tell her he's not in the mood but the words won't come. He doesn't wanna hurt her. So he doesn't say anything at all.

"Danny?" Her voice is confused.

He jumps. "Sorry, I was...thinking. It's...too cold to do anything that involves taking our clothes off," he says--that's an easy excuse, she'll buy that one.

She studies him for a minute; she knows the antidepressant never puts him in the mood- which sucks for her- but this isn't because of those pills. "Okay."

That's it? Just an okay? She usually wants reasons and answers to why he doesn't want to love her. She'd probably yell at him for thinking that way, but he can't help it. He sighs, "it's really cold in the desert at night. Think of the coldest you've been- ten times worse than that."

"I can't even imagine..." her voice trails away. She can't even remember the coldest she's been-- how can she imagine desert cold? What even is desert cold? Danny says it's a dry, chill-you-to-the-bone cold, but she doesn't know what that is, what it means. She's kind of scared to ask him; she's been yelled at for asking about his time in Fallujah.

Danny shivers again, and notices Linda moving away. She's probably leaving, he thinks, so she doesn't have to deal with all his crazy. He deserves that too, along with being dead cold; he's been kind of a bitch to Linda. Then some of the time, like when he's dabbing aloe cream on her face, he's been amazing.... Does that make him schizophrenic?

"Here," Linda drapes a blanket over his shoulders, puts something on his head. She sits down again, pulls on her magenta beanie. "Wear your hat; heat escapes through your head, and wearing a hat keeps it from going away."

He vaguely remembers that from seventh grade life science... or was it physics? What kind of science did he even take in middle school? He supposes that's why he doesn't have a college education. "Do you care?"

"What?"

"Do you care that I'm crazy?"

"You're not crazy, Danny, and of course I care."

"I am crazy! What kind of person has a mental breakdown because there's no heat in their house?!"

"You didn't have a mental breakdown, sweetheart." She uses their "code word" to make him listen. "And you're not freaking out. You're remembering a traumatic thing that happened to you. Something you want to forget, but you can't."

"It's frustrating. Why can't we just be normal? I have flashbacks and you hurt yourself..." he shakes his head, hating the tearful lump in his throat. He pauses, "have you been hurting yourself?"

"You took away the razors."

"You didn't answer the question."

Linda bites her lip, looks away. "I... may or may not be picking scabs until they bleed and leak, and leave me with a nasty scar."

Generally, picking scabs would be... normal, he guesses.... But Linda's done it so many times, he knows it's part of her self-harming ways. He knows she picks until it becomes bigger, and ends up hurting every time she moves.

"You shouldn't do that," Danny's voice lacks the anger she expected.

She says evenly, "You shouldn't blame yourself for everything." She's quiet for a few moments, then asks, "besides, who wants to be normal? I like weird- I bask in the glow of weird!"

He snorts, "bask in the glow?"

"Yes," she says with false authority, "it's a thing. Look it up."

He will say one thing- as weird and messed up as they may be, Linda never fails to make him smile. Even when he was at his lowest, she still managed to get a smile out of him nearly every single day. He rests his head against hers, stares into the fire. An almost understanding silence hangs in the air, then he teases, "that tree was as big as the apartment building."

"It fit inside the room! It couldn't possibly have been fifteen or whatever stories tall!"