Tracy grinned as he tucked the spent bulb away onto her little arm-shelf. "Hero, huh?" he asked, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. "That's a different job title than 'glorified light bulb changer.' Am I getting a raise with that?"<br/><br/>Cynthia pushed herself up onto her toes and pressing their chests together to hold up the case, the only thing that separated him from her. The case was unsteady at best and Tracy wrapped his arms around her waist. To keep them steady, of course. "I have an thought. Or two." She kissed him then,<span style="font-style: italic">really</span>kissed him. She hadn't done that in about two hundred years at this point. He'd counted. When Cynthia's grandma passed, everything kind of stopped for them. She'd just lost a family member, she wasn't in the mood; it was understandable. The sex stopped, the kisses were infrequent at best, the hugs were stiff. But when she kissed him then, he threaded his fingers through the fine hair at the back of her neck and tilting her chin just slightly higher.<br/><br/>The blanket fell in a waterfall down Cynthia's body, pooling around their feet. Her hands crept down his back, her feather light touches sending a chill up his spine, but she wasn't so gentle when her fingers dipped down into his pockets. His hands made their own descent, traveling from her neck, down her sides, stopping only briefly to squeeze her hips before his hands moved further down.<br/><br/>He almost didn't hear her when she spoke. "Did I lock the... what-?" he managed, staring at her a moment until it clicked. "I locked the back door, yeah. Hey, I<span style="font-style: italic">did</span>, don't give me that look." She looked terrified, looking around the room for something. He looked with her, but he couldn't see much through the veil of darkness, but he hadn't heard anything. "Wait here. I'll go check."<br/><br/>The back door wasn't a very long walk away, but when everything was black, the halls seemed to stretch on forever. He left the lights off as he walked, he could still see the light from the family room from where they'd left it on earlier. He slowed down as he approached; Cynthia looked<span style="font-style: italic">horrified.</span>She might have actually heard something, and there might<span style="font-style: italic">actually</span>be someone in here. Why hadn't he brought a bat? Did he own a bat? Questions flooded through his mind as he crept, peering around the corner, heart beating out of his chest - and then everything just stopped. The room was normal, the back door was closed, everything was in it's place. Tracy tentatively straightened up, walking to fully enter the family room. He looked around for something out of place in the stacks of boxes, home decor, and family photos. Everything was unsettlingly normal.<br/><br/>At least mostly satisfied that there was no one else in the room, Tracy padded the rest of his way across the room to the sliding-glass back door. His fingers curled around the handle, giving it one sharp tug and giving an airy laugh at the resistance he met. "Yeah," he called out, leaning forward to peer outside, looking around the back yard just in case before slowly turning around, "the door is-"<br/><br/>Tracy was interrupted by a thunderous sound as all of the light bulbs in the chandelier blew, dropping a curtain of pitch black around him. He jumped, clutched his hand to his chest and felt his heart beat. He exhaled slowly, laughing nervously as he looked up at the silhouette of the old light fixture. "Hey," he called out, more for his own reassurance than actually needing anything form Cynthia. "Tomorrow we've gotta call someone about the wiring in this house. It's not safe for them to be sparking out all the time."