Chapter Text
When I climbed back from the far reaches of sleep, I knew I wasn't alone. Someone was at my back, stretched out, making a depression in the mattress that tilted me back toward him. Maybe it was how he breathed, or how I could sense his height in the way his legs extended well past mine. Or maybe It was the fact that he was on top of the blankets, but I knew it was Stephen.
He was sleeping. Possibly unintentionally, but he was. And he was right next to me, close enough to feel his breath shifting the mattress
I twisted onto my back. He was there, propped up on a couple of pillows with his laptop across his legs. A sentence in what I assumed was Latin bounced around his screen, and while he’d folded one arm across his stomach, the other looked like it had recently fallen to the blankets.
He wore a dark blue tee shirt with gray sweatpants. They were not the thick, scratchy sweats you can buy at the big box stores in Benouville, which don't try to flatter anyone. There was a clingy sort of drape to this fabric, like it was made of something more expensive than simple cotton. I suspected Boo had been shopping until I noticed the wear on them. There was a hole where the shirt was cuffed, and the logo on the sweatpants had been mostly washed off.
They outlined his body in a way that made it hard not to stare.
Sometimes I wonder if boys know how good they look in clothes. I’m sure some of them do, I mean, Callum probably knows. I’m sure Callum has spent hours in shops, trying to find the shirts that showed off his intimidating biceps. Stephen, though? I doubt he’d ever approached a piece of clothing with the question of whether it would make him look hot. He probably mostly worried about sleeves and trouser legs being long enough.
I let my eyes drift up the slender waist to the curve of his chest, the strong shoulders, and decided that tee shirts are a thing Stephen should wear. First of all, his arms are all long bones and surprising swells of muscle, with an athlete’s prominent veins down the backs of his wrists. Second, he has one of those long necks with prominent tendons and pale skin. Because he's been off the grid for days, there’s a fair amount of stubble there.
When I looked a little higher, though, I gave a little gasp of shock. Sometime after I’d fallen asleep, he’d cut his hair. Not just cut it--buzzed it short, like something that wouldn’t be out of place in the army. I hadn’t realized how dark his eyelashes were. Or how thick his eyebrows looked.
That was another thing--he wasn’t wearing his glasses. I looked for them on the bedside table, but saw only a ceramic mug with the dried tag of a teabag dangling from the handle.
My gasp must have been kind of loud. There was movement behind the closed lids, then his chest expanded and he gave a little twitch, hand moving to catch the sliding laptop.
“Guess I wasn't the only tired one,” I said.
Stephen had been trying to resituate the computer when I spoke, and his gaze flashed to me in surprise. The screensaver blinked off, lighting up his face in bright blue-white. His eyes were dark. Brown, not the normal clear blue-gray I was used to.
He was wearing contacts. Stephen Lancaster must have dark eyes.
Stephen sucked in a breath, cleared his throat, and looked back at his laptop. “I must have been more tired than I thought. I was waiting for you to wake before I gave you these. Marigold said every four hours should be fine, if you feel you need them. I can’t imagine you don’t.”
He set the laptop on the bedside table and grabbed up a pair of pills. I fought the entrapment of covers, which was more difficult because Stephen was pinning them down on one side. Normally, I’d have said something, but I knew he’d use it as an excuse to leave, and I really, really didn’t want him to.
I earned a flash of pain in my shoulder for my struggles, and though I thought I did a pretty good job of stopping any noise, the slight hiss was enough. Stephen twisted to look at me, realized my dilemma, and stood.
“It’s fine,” I said, embarrassed that he had to grab my arm to keep me from falling back into the pillows. It was like I’d never done a single sit-up in my entire life--my stomach muscles were just that weak.
I shoved the covers away and scooted back against the headboard. Stephen handed me the painkillers, and regarded the mug on the bedside. The string was brown, having wicked up the tea and dried against the porcelain. I could only imagine the contents of the mug were both highly-concentrated and ice cold.
“I’ll get something for you to take those with,” Stephen said. “This is past its best.”
I snagged his hand. “Wait.”
I was so tired, I’m not sure how my reflexes managed it, but there was a flutter of anxiety in my belly that told me I should keep Stephen near. I couldn’t let him re-engage with the world outside this room or he’d remember something else he had to do and, in a fit of responsibility, stop paying attention to me. Call me selfish, but I kind of wanted his full attention right now.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t care if it’s cold.”
Stephen hesitated. I squeezed his hand and gave him a little tug. He resisted, frowning at the tea. “No self-respecting English person would let you drink this.”
“Stephen. Give me the stupid tea. I am in too much pain right now to care how I get these painkillers into me.”
That did it. I mean, I might have overstated how much I was hurting, but then again, there was a quiet, pulsating burn in my shoulder that seemed to be getting worse. My painkillers from that morning had totally worn off. I could feel every spot where the needle had gone into my skin, and the deeper root of aching pain that was the stabbed muscle. Maybe I wasn’t really overstating that much.
He handed over themug, and I took my pills. The tea was awful--bitter and so strong that it managed to dry out my mouth when I swallowed it. I handed the mug back to Stephen, who had a look on his face that plainly said, ‘I did warn you’.
I was still holding his hand. It had gone warm in mine, loosely curled to keep my palm against his. “What’s everyone else doing?” I asked.
“Boo went home to mollify her parents. Callum and Freddie went to check out some disability records at the municipal office. We have a lead on one of Sid and Sadie’s old crew. I was checking through available microfilm--what’s been digitized, anyway, which is quite a bit of the old stuff.”
“What about Thorpe?”
“Home office. Reporting in with our pictures. We’ll need legal IDs, passports, and I imagine I’ll need a warrant card.”
“So you’re still going to be police?”
Stephen shrugged. “I’m not sure what else I could be.”
“I thought we covered this. You’re going to be a cabbie.”
“For some reason, Thorpe thought the idea didn’t suit.”
“Wonder why.”
“Not a clue.”
I smiled and did not point out the fact that I’d noticed Stephen and I were in the house alone. Neither did he.
To my surprise, he sat down. One leg off the side, one bent up on the mattress, he leaned back into the headboard next to me. I was a little disappointed when he slipped his fingers from their awkward tangle with mine. My hand curled in on itself, as if trying to capture the retreating warmth.
“I mean, you’d still get to drive drunk people around,” I said, trying to pretend I didn’t care that he’d pulled away.
“Remarkably similar job to police, actually,” he said, untying the sneaker that was up on the bed. “Except I’d be taking them to the next bar.”
He pulled off his shoe, shoved the other off with his foot, and drew both feet onto the bed. With the covers shoved down, I guess he hadn’t wanted to put his shoes up on the sheets.
That was when Stephen turned his hand over, palm up, on the crumpled sheet between us.
I paused. Processed. Moved my hand. My fingers slid between his until they caught at the join and his hand spread, letting them weave closer. We stayed that way for several breaths, staring at our joined hands instead of at each other.
His palm was much bigger than mine, surprisingly callused along the base of his fingers. Rowing? I guess all that pulling at oars was bound to create some wear and tear. I ran my thumb along the rough skin between his thumb and forefinger, where there seemed to be another callus. Then I finally let myself tip sideways, leaning my head heavily on his shoulder. The blue shirt felt soft against my cheek, and his ware the passed through it easily.
“I’m not sure about this Stephen Lancaster,” I said. Stephen grunted. “I miss the glasses.”
“I keep trying to adjust them,” he agreed. “I only ever wore contacts to play rugby, so I’m not used to being without glasses. Still, It’s a more effective disguise than one might think.”
“Clark Kent and Superman proved that, I guess,” I said. “But won’t it make it easier for computers and stuff?”
Stephen shrugged. “It’s true, the eye area is crucial for fooling facial recognition software, but it’s unlikely that anyone looking for us would have access to it. This will fool a passing glance. That’s all we need it to do for now.”
I should have been more worried, but his thumb had starting drifting in soft arcs from my thumb knuckle to my wrist. My nerves were waking up, the feeling pinging through my synapses until my whole arm tingled with that one small touch.
“You could grow a beard,” I said. “Rock the grad-student look.”
“Could do. Thorpe did suggest it.”
“It would definitely make you look...not like you. The hair. That’s weird. Not as weird as mine, but weird.”
I felt him turn his head. “Yours isn’t that weird.”
“It is. I keep scaring myself in the mirror. I look like my Granny Deveaux and that is just freaking me out. You’ve heard the stories about her.”
Stephen nodded. Then he leaned his cheek against the top of my head and suddenly I didn't care anymore about hair or contacts or whether I looked like Granny Deveaux. I pulled his hand against me, cradling the back of it against my stomach, and tucked my elbow into the crook of his. He sighed, and it sounded… kind of unhappy.
“What?” I said, glancing up at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You suck at lying, Stephen. Is it…” I lifted my head, started to untangle my fingers from his. It was possible he still hadn’t realized my display with Jerome in front of the Athenaum club had been a ploy. Or maybe the fact that I was capable of making that sort of ploy at all was the problem. Maybe he didn’t trust that I wasn’t trying to play him too.
His hand tightened around mine, arresting my attempt to move away. “Nothing’s wrong, Rory. I’m just thinking.”
Some of the tension left my shoulders, but I still couldn’t quite relax. “About what?”
He looked down at our twined fingers and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled them onto his knee. Then my hand was completely enveloped in both of his. He took a long moment to marshal his thoughts. I practically watched him constructing sentences behind his eyes, disregarding them, hunting for new words to express whatever it was that was bothering him.
It was hard not to prompt him, but like reaching for a shy cat before it was ready to approach, it was best to wait for Stephen. So that’s what I did.
At last, he gave a soft sigh. “I know you have a new identity, and that Thorpe has come up with something to tell your parents for now. At least until this is all over. What are your thoughts on...after. Do you think you’d want to go home?”
I’m kind of an expert at dodging serious conversations, but I was pretty sure that a joke right now would shut down the part of Stephen that was willing to tell me stuff. So, despite this being a topic I’d been avoiding--even in my own head--I forced myself to think about it.
What did I want to do? Could I go back to Louisiana? To Benouville, where no one knew about the Sight, or the Squad, or anything I’d been through other than what had been on TV or in my post-stabbing emails to friends. Could I stand that? Probably not. Then again, could I really handle staying in London forever, half a day’s plane-ride from my family and the place I still thought of as home?
“I think… I’m pretty sure I’d go insane if I went home. I don’t know what I’d do without you guys. I’d start to question everything. I’d stop thinking any of it was real, you know?”
Stephen nodded, and started fiddling with one of my fingers.
“Still, like, I have no idea if I can ever say forever, you know? I mean, can you say forever?”
Quietly, and without hesitation, Stephen said, “Yes.”
I blinked.
“But I don't have anything to lose by staying,” he said. “All I have is my job, and the squad.”
“And me,” I said. “Unless you're finally ready to admit I'm part of the squad.”
He pinched my knuckle softly. “Hmm. Thorpe has sort of made that decision.”
I frowned. “But you still don't like it.”
“There's a reason for that.”
“Wanna tell me what it is?”
He sighed and knocked his head back against the wall. “I just don't want you to make a hasty decision because it feels like you've got no other future. You do. You have a family and a life back in Louisiana that you would be giving up to stay here.”
I pulled my hand back, suddenly feeling a little hurt. He didn't resist, which expanded the feeling to a genuine, hollow ache in my chest. “Do you not want me to stay or something?”
Stephen closed his eyes. “That's not what I wanted you to take from this. Rory, I'm supposed to-” He stopped himself abruptly.
I was starting to feel a bit dizzy--the painkillers kicking in--but I didn't miss this slip.
“Supposed to what?”
“Lead the squad.”
I snapped my fingers in front of his face to get him to look at me.When he did, I lifted my eyebrows expectantly. “Wanna try that again? What were you actually going to say?”
He held my gaze, and with the short hair and the contacts and the dark eyes, it was super weird. It was Stephen, but it was a weird, dream-zone version of Stephen where some of the details were wrong.
Dream. I remembered him looking at me like this once in a dream. He'd been sitting next to me, on the grass, in a sort of agony of indecision.
“Stephen,” I implored, and I covered his hands with mine. “Tell me what you're supposed to do.”
He clenched his jaw. I waited.
“Do you trust me, Rory?”
Well that was a weirdly blindsiding question. “Yes,” I said, putting all the force of that truth into the word. “Of course. I trust you more than pretty much anyone on the planet.”
There was an almost-imperceptible wince. “And what if I were to put the safety of...millions of people before… Rory, I hate this. It drives me mad that I've got to weigh your autonomy against the safety of...well, everything. London. The world, maybe, I don't know how far this goes.”
“My...autonomy? Stephen, you're not making sense.”
“You can't leave London.”
The hurt that had opened up inside me healed a little with those words, or it wanted to. Stephen wanted me to stay. But something in the back of my head said that his tone had been wrong. Something about the way he'd said it…
“What do you mean, can't?” I asked.
He closed his eyes. “I mean, I don’t know what happens if you leave. You went to Bristol, and it was fine. But Louisiana is a lot farther away. You saw what happened when the Oswolf stone was moved--I don’t know what happens if you go away. The termini have been in London for hundreds of years.”
“But I’m not the only one anymore.”
“Which might be the only thing that kept it all from falling apart.”
My stomach was twisting now, dread rising in me alongside a chill certainty. “You lied about the Shadow Cabinet,” I said. “It is real.”
He folded his hands together. “I thought you might have remembered, at first. I did tell you about it, when you came to get me in...whatever interstitial world it was where I went instead of passing on. I told you about the Shadow Cabinet. But Rory, this does not pass outside the two of us. No one else can know. Not Thorpe, not Boo or Callum or Freddie.”
I swallowed. “So...why are you telling me?”
“I shouldn’t. I should be doing my level best to convince you to stay.”
“So why are you?”
He looked at me, then back down at his knees. “Because I want you to know why. If you decided you wanted to leave, I couldn’t let you. I would have to...do whatever I could. It wouldn’t matter if you wanted to go home.”
I stared at him a moment. “So if I tried to buy a plane ticket to Louisiana and headed to the airport, you’d, like, snatch me off the train?”
He swallowed. “I would...try to convince you. I wouldn’t want to do anything to-”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. Stephen froze. “If I’m the one who can’t leave, why don’t they just recruit me and say, ‘by the way, Rory, if you leave London, the entire world gets consumed by a thick fog of dead people and life as we know it ceases to exist.’ Seems like it’s my life, so it should be my responsibility.”
I burrowed my fingers between Stephen’s loosely-cupped hands. “Hey. Stop worrying. If my going back to Louisiana is going to, like, destroy the world or something, I won’t do it. I’ll stay in London.”
“If you decided not to, I don’t know what I would do.”
“I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t. I don’t know if my sense of duty or...or caring about your freedom would be stronger in the end.”
“Stephen, it’s okay,” I said, shifting onto my knees. I wobbled as the world tilted, my body heavy with the onset of painkillers. Stephen’s hands took my waist.
“Rory, you probably shouldn’t-”
I managed to turn around and face him, my knees digging into the mattress next to his legs. I steadied myself with both hands on his chest, looking down at his face.
“It’s okay,” I repeated. “I’m not going to make you choose.”
He gazed up at me, and without his glasses to protect him, I could see everything. I watched the moment he understood, saw the slight sliver of blue around his pupils vanish as they dilated. I was going to stay. I was promising to stay, not just because it might mean the end of the world if I didn’t, but because I would never, ever want to hurt him by making him choose between his duty...and me.
Stephen blinked rapidly. Then his hands moved up to my ribcage and he tried to direct me back to sitting against the headboard. I didn’t let him. I didn’t want that.
I pressed my hand more firmly against his chest. “Don’t.”
He halted, grip gentling. “Sorry,” he said. “Are there bruises, or-”
“Maybe. I have no idea. I can’t feel any of it right now.” He looked confused. I sat back on my heels, twisting my fingers into his shirt a bit. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure what to say. He was close enough to smell. Detergent and the cheap soap from the drugstore, dulled by the time since his shower. I caught a whiff of the car exhaust that seemed to permeate the street in front of the safe house.
What I wanted was answers. What I wanted was for him to give me some sign that my feelings weren’t one-sided. He cared about me, sure. But dumb as it sounds, that wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want him to care about me. That wasn’t how I felt about him. That wasn’t even in spitting-distance of how I felt.
My limbs were heavy and drunk. I swayed a bit on my knees.
Stephen’s hands tightened again. “Rory. Sit down.”
“Not until you answer something.”
He took my hand, the one on my injured side, and moved it from his chest. “I’ll answer, but you need to keep your weight off that shoulder.”
I hadn’t realized I was leaning into my hands that hard, but I was. Half my weight was shifted forward, pressing my palm into his chest. I could have pinned him, had I been heavy enough or strong enough to do it. Stephen’s fingers were firm on my wrist and hip, and I let him guide me back so I settled on my heels. He had to sit forward to do this, which I didn’t like. It made it too easy for him to get up and leave.
My whole body felt heavy, and an unbearable ache had started in my chest. My head sank forward with the weight of the drugs. I forced myself to breathe deeply, try to clear the tangle of drunken distress from around my thoughts.
Stephen had let go of my hip, and I felt his hand on my good arm now. He rubbed it a bit, comfortingly.
“We can talk about this later,” he said. “When you’re not quite so out of sorts.”
He was about to pull away. I could tell. He would make sure I was comfortable, and then he would leave to let me sleep off the pills.
“Why can’t you just ask me to stay?”
The words were out before I could stop them, but I didn’t regret them. I really wanted to know.
Stephen’s hand stilled on my arm. “I...wanted you to make your own decision. It’s not fair to-”
“Then be unfair! Do you want me to stay? Not because I’m a terminus or whatever, but because you want me to?”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Yes, it is. It’s my point. I can’t go home anyway, so there’s no point in asking whether I want to stay. Just...tell me you weren’t pretending to like me. Lying, to make me stay.”
Stephen’s hand tightened on my good arm. “That’s exactly what I didn’t want you to think.”
“You definitely kissed me back.”
“I did.”
“Was that…?”
“Do you want to stay in London? Because if you don’t, there’s a window where you might be able to leave. A very small one, but we could do a test. See if the other Termini are enough to hold London in balance if you weren’t…” he trailed off. Possibly because he knew he was evading my questions, but probably because I had started crying.
I wasn’t sobbing or anything, but the hollow ache in my chest had finally grown so large that it displaced everything else. It pushed my heart into my throat, pressed the tears out in steady, hot streaks down my face.
There was a moment where he just froze. And then something in his posture, in the air around him, seemed to break.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice gone low and sad. “Rory, please don’t.” His hands were on my face, warm and sweeping at the tears. And then he was pulling me into his chest and I was sinking into him, holding on tight with my good arm. “I’m an idiot, I know,” he said. “A miserable prat with absolutely no context for what’s happening. I’m...I’m trying to do what’s right. Only I don’t know how to do it.”
I rested my cheek across his collarbone and tucked my knees up, making myself small in his embrace. “If you could be selfish instead of...well, acting like you usually do,” I said. “What would you do?”
He was quiet for a moment. Then his hand was under the back of my shirt, making long, soothing strokes up my spine. “I’d ask you to stay.”
“So…?”
His other hand joined his first, and I couldn’t have said whether it was the drugs or the soporific stroke of his touch on my skin making me lightheaded. I turned a little in his arms, shifting so we were chest-to-chest, and pulled myself close with my good arm.
Stephen turned his head enough to kiss my temple. I tilted my chin up, and he didn’t need further prompting or encouragement. He kissed me.