The drive home began, as it always did, with her head on the steering wheel. For a few moments, August’s hazel eyes closed as she took a few slow deep breaths. With the throbbing in her knee, screaming about how dare she not use her shining silver cane to help it across the parking lot, the mental strain of being someone else for eight hours was flowing out. The smell of her car, the sound of the rustling trees, and the blasting of dwarven heavy metal music would help August recover from the normal stresses. Within a few minutes, the engine could barely be heard over the sound of dwarven warriors killing dragons and taking the gold for themselves.

By the time she got past the first cow field near the library, her mind wandered to the nagging thought from earlier. Romance. Creating that spark of something special between two people. It felt so easy back then. Cuddling on the couch, dressing up in couples cosplay costumes. Even taking time to write stories to each other when they were both busy. But they were married now. With kids. With jobs. Not to mention she could only imagine how tired Beau was at the end of each day. Cleaning the house, doing his freelance, laundry, yard work. The man did it all. Damnit, he deserved romance in his life and what was she even doing to make it happen?

August turned past the grocery store, glancing at it. Somehow the big box stores never took over in this town. This was just a nice little local store run by the Murchesters. Oddly enough they simply named it “The Store”. That one always had robots and such Beau wanted for his collection. And because it was such a small town, the harder to find ones would often be there for a while. Would it be tacky to buy him stuff as a surprise? It felt so much like she’d be trying to buy his love. But he liked that kinda thing, right? Getting things. It was a love language thing she’d read about on one of the slower days.

But romance had to be more than that right? He was a sucker for those Victorian style romance animes. Beau would probably love it if August did something like a scene from one of those.

“I should look up a con and we could go together,” she mumbled to the roaring dwarven singer. Sadly he had no useful response, only demands to dig deep into the mountains.

Still, that sounded great. August pulled into the house’s driveway, growing excited. That was it, a couples costume, a con; the kids could stay with the grandparents. As soon as August parked, she swung the door open and attempted to leap to her feet. Only for her knee to declare it had decided to take the rest of the day off. She barely grabbed onto the door in time to prevent a nasty fall.

“SHIT!”

“You ok, August?” She could hear the water from the hose hitting the other side of her car. Surely David had something better to do than water his lawn all day every day. It was amazing there wasn’t a moat around his home.

“I’m fine!” August struggled to pull herself up on the car door. Thank god her tiny car was sturdier than it looked.

“You don’t look fine. Maybe I should call Beau.”

“I’m fine, honest. I can tell Beau later. He’s busy with the kids.”

“Oh, yeah . . . still you should get that knee fixed. You’re too young to have a knee acting up like this.” David proudly stood there as if he had solved her health problems. He made no move to get closer or help her stand properly.

Finally standing upright and feeling like a flamingo, she turned to grab her cane and get her purse. “Car accidents and deer really don’t care about that sort of thing, David.”

“S‘pose they don’t, do they? Well, if you got to losing weight—”

“I gotta get inside, David, it's my turn to make dinner.”

“Right, right. Take care then.”

Thanking the universe that David had decided to go inside, August made her way into the house and hobbled towards the kitchen, feeling like a old granny as she did. She did need to somehow make her knee stronger if she was going to do a lot of things with Beau. That was the one thing David was right about. Thanks to the accident, and other things, she had more easily put on weight and couldn't walk or stand for long. A couples costume to a con?

“I’ll barely make it to the first line,” she muttered, getting out the vegetables and roast for dinner slowly. Beau had set up a small folding table and chair she could easily get in and out of for when she wanted to cook.

Even a barstool for cooking at the stovetop. August couldn’t help but smile at that. Beau really was so sweet, so thoughtful. He had more romance in his pinky than most couples had in their entire bodies. He knew how important making the meals was to her, and he made it happen.

As she carefully chopped the potatoes, she thought a bit more. Maybe standing more while cooking would help? There had to be a few books at work on how to help a knee heal and get stronger. August hesitated at the thought. Not tonight. Not yet. Focus on dinner first, a nice and simple roast. Then . . . maybe wash dishes? Yeah, she could do that much. Then it was just keeping the twins busy until the food was ready. That shouldn’t be too hard since they had the Team Gators Swim Club today after school.

With each chop, August remembered the first dinner the two of them made together as a couple. Not a married one, mind you. Money was tight for both of them, so after getting their jobs, they moved into a small two-bedroom apartment. There had been some pork on sale, and it looked enough to feed them both for a week. She chuckled remembering Beau struggling to peel the potatoes while she smashed the garlic and chopped the onion. How she overdid it on the pepper by mistake, making it black on the outside. And Beau ate it with a smile on his face, scraping off the pepper when he thought she wasn’t looking.

It seemed so simple back then. Maybe that was just nostalgia putting on rose glasses for her. August looked down, seeing she’d gone into autopilot again. Well, at least it was ready. After a bit of scooting around on the chair, she had the food slipped into the oven and started. Looking over to the sink, she took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Ok, August, just man up and do it.”

Grabbing their cane, they carefully pulled up and hobbled towards the sink. Washing the dishes wouldn’t be too hard. She'd just make it over to the sink and get things going. The nerves about falling again were kicking in. Shaking their head, they started singing loudly as they could, “Down in the kingdom deep, a fierce dragon sleeps, keeping the gold mine by our ancestors of ooooooooooooold”

August knew if they sang loud enough, long enough, they could avoid facing the pain. Mentally pretending they were in that mountain, waiting for their warrior husband to return with the troops from the deep made it that much easier. And if they overdid it? Well, tomorrow was a day off. They could even avoid the damn girly blouses and stick to a baggy t-shirt and sweats. It was so much easier to deal with the world when you didn’t have to worry about all the texture nightmares that came with women’s clothing. It worked right until the twins came in hearing their mother singing at the top of their lungs.

“DRAGON MUSIC! DRAGON MUSIC!” Alexandra and Raven started chanting.

Raven rushed over to hug her mother, on the bad leg side of course, forcing August to quickly grab the side of the sink. “Hey, baby.”

“Mama! You shoulda seen us!”

“I’ll bet.” August did her best to smile at the girls. They were still only kids, just turned ten. They didn’t always think about the knee.

Alexandra walked over. “Ray, Mom’s cane.”

“Oh right! Here, Mama, your sword!”

“Well, thank you. But go help your father bring everything in and go get showered off.”

“Ok!” The twins spoke in perfect harmony as they hurried out to the car. August watched from the window as Beau seemed to struggle with the backpacks and swim bags. And then the girls half tackled him to get their things.

Beau really did work too much; they needed to make sure the perfect romantic moment was made for him, and soon. For now, they needed to hobble to the couch and pretend to be fine for five minutes. Not that the ice pack she grabbed before going back wouldn’t give it away.