Archive of Our Own

It’s not warm out by any means—though it is October, so it would be weird if it were—but it’s sunny and the light that comes through the window is keeping Mako warm and toasty.

The tea is also helpful.

She’s waiting for Ilisapie, who’s apparently running over fifteen minutes late for their lunch, which would be annoying except that Mako doesn’t have anything else going on. Also, she’d be stupid if she thought that she and Ilisapie weren’t going to spend the entire rest of the weekend together. It’s just what happens when they meet up, which is usually every couple of months since Ilisapie started working in New York.

Mako takes a sip of green tea and pulls out her iPhone, because when Ilisapie starts nearing twenty minutes late, she’s just asking to get a barrage of annoying texts.

“Please tell me you are looking at Chuck’s twitter.”

Mako jumps and looks up. “Ilisapie!” she says and stands up to hug her. “How have you been?”

Her cheeks are still cold from the outside, but she looks beautiful with the red scarf Mako knitted for her birthday wrapped around her neck. Her hair bounces because she’s still shivering from the outdoors, the curls flying like springs. The buttons of her coat are like little blocks of ice. When they break apart, Mako reaches across the table to pull out a chair for Ilisapie and gets a smirk of thanks.

“Such a gentleman!” Ilisapie says and Mako scrunches up her nose in response, but pours Ilisapie a cup of green tea.

“How is New York?” Mako asks. She asks it every time, but she knows that Ilisapie loves to boast and Ilisapie knows that Mako loves to listen.

The cafe is quite full—mostly with college kids in search of caffeine—and Mako is pretty sure they’ll be moving on to a restaurant soon, but she wants Ilisapie to warm up. Also it’s one of “their” places. The walls are painted scarlet and the ceiling is painted blue and the floor is just hardwood—but all the decor becomes acceptable because the armchairs are perfect. Not too heavy to move, but soft and comfortable, with wooden arm rests and deep seats with curved backs. Also the staff have never gotten annoyed at the pair of them, even when they stay at a table for hours on end, though the lack of backlash might be related to the fact that whenever they’re there they order copious amounts of tea and cake.

“New York is... busy,” Ilisapie says and Mako tilts her head because she knows there’s something Ilisapie isn’t saying yet.

“What else?” she prompts as Ilisapie tugs off her coat.

“I... may have received a promotion,” she says lightly and then looks at Mako, her eyes flashing in excitement. “I am now chief assistant to the head of advertising at Lightcap Designs.”

“Are you serious?” Mako asks and Ilisapie nods. They freak out for a couple minutes because this is important. Ilisapie is one of the smartest people Mako knows and, if there’s any justice in the world, she’ll be running that company by the end of next year. She deserves it. Ilisapie is artistic, ruthless and a power magnet and it’s for all these reasons that she and Mako became so close during their undergraduate years at McGill.

When they finally calm down and Mako’s gotten to order Ilisapie a slice of cake (because you really should never celebrate without cake), Ilisapie looks at Mako with bright eyes and holds up her phone.

“Chuck’s twitter,” she whispers and Mako leans forward to read the tweet.

It’s terrible. It’s mean. It’s cruel because she and Chuck are friends and basically siblings and Chuck and Ilisapie are also friends. And it’s wrong because Chuck entrusts Mako with so much all the time.

But Chuck’s twitter is too hilarious and Mako has given up trying not to laugh at it.

This morning’s tweet is part of Chuck’s on-going battle with the Celtic store across from his apartment and reads: “fuckin bagpipes at 6 fuckin am. i will cut a bitch #irishstore #JustLetMeSleep”

Mako bites her lower lip. “To be fair, they do have those pipers out there at six on a Saturday morning.”

“True,” Ilisapie says, but her voice is still shaking with laughter. “Okay, there’s another one on here that’s just motherfucker #SoundPolution.”

Mako chokes on her tea. “I still don’t know if we’ve topped...” She pauses, trying to remember. “I’m pretty sure i’m gay for my own dick #JewishStud.”

“What about want kosher salt? it’s in all my bodily fluids #GodOfSex.”

They don’t breathe for about ten minutes, just gasp for air and cry into their tea. Mako’s missed this sort of moment. The work drama with the Russians has had her on-edge for weeks. It feels nice to detox for a bit.

They eventually recover and Ilisapie orders a second pot of tea. The waiter looks at her for a moment, brow creased and Mako braces herself for impending awkwardness. Ilisapie is beautiful, mixed race and has the air of being approachable, which means whenever they step out there’s always the idiot that asks “are you black?” or “so where are you from?” and it’s just so annoying. But the waiter moves on and Mako gives Ilisapie a knowing look as he leaves.

Once he’s out of earshot, Ilisapie leans forward, one eyebrow raised. “I was worried I was going to have to give the “I’m Inuit and Canadian” speech.”

Mako sighs and shakes her head. “At least he had a tiny bit of sense.”

She takes a bite of her cake as Ilisapie says, conspiratorially, “Any new gossip?”

Mako glances around a moment. A cafe doesn’t seem like the sort of place a guy like Raleigh Becket would frequent, but she still wants to check that no one else from the office is there.

“We have a new receptionist and he’s such a cutie,” she whispers, taking a sip of her tea, which has gone a bit cold.

“Describe,” Ilisapie says and Mako unlocks her iPhone screen.

“Let me see if I can find his Facebook.” But of course the app is glitchy and they are left waiting a couple minutes before she can search the name Raleigh Becket.

“Have you not looked him up before?”

“Well, I see him all the time, don’t I?” The page loads and... Oh gosh. His cover photo is him standing in front of the poster for The Dark Knight Rises doing ‘rock on’ hands with his tongue stuck out. It must predate whatever happened to his arm. (She puts aside this information for later.) His hair is more neatly cut than it is now, but his clothes are much more casual—just cargo pants and a grey t-shirt. He looks very much like a soldier on leave.

Luckily, his profile picture is newer. It’s of him with his arm around the shoulders of a girl with short, light brown hair who’s taking the photo herself. She’s pretty. Her face is soft and her nose turns up neatly at the end, but her eyes look mischievous, teasing—like the kind of girl who, at sleep away camp, would dare everyone to give her Indian burns just to show how impervious she was; the type of girl who would drink vodka out of teacups in her dorm.

Ilisapie is leaning across the table, half out of her seat, looking at the screen. “Who’s that girl?” she asks as Mako pushes the iPhone toward the center of the table where they can both see it.

“I’m not sure,” Mako says, but it doesn’t really feel like much of a concern, because the shape of the girl’s eyes is similar to the shape of Raleigh’s and their mouths look almost identical when they smile. Mako isn’t even really sure why she keeps thinking of her as a ‘girl’ when she has to be at least in her twenties. Actually, she can’t even be that much younger than Mako or Chuck or Ilisapie. “I think she might be his sister?”

“He is a cutie,” Ilisapie says, nodding approvingly. She scrolls to the previous profile picture, which is of Raleigh playing cards and smoking with a couple other guys, none of whom are wearing shirts. (He doesn’t have a bad chest and Mako becomes very thankful for her friendship with Ilisapie when they both hum appreciatively at the same time.) The picture is from about eight months before the most recent one. “Great work updating. Also—like, are people actually named ‘Raleigh’?”

“Hey Ms. Mori!”

Mako jumps, slamming her hand over the screen of her phone, and turns around. Ilisapie turns too, her mouth falling open. And Raleigh is standing there, his smile uncertain, his nose and cheeks red from cold. He looks more and more awkward the longer he stands there, one hand stuffed into the pocket of his khaki coat. One sleeve hangs loose and Mako supposes it would be kind of a lot of bother to work a paralyzed limb through the stiff coat fabric. (This was all Stacker had told her, that his arm was paralyzed, but he hadn’t explained any further. She hadn’t pushed for information because it wasn’t her business to know any more.) He’s wearing a thick knit scarf around his neck—gray, the same color as the pavement.

He keeps looking between them. “I was just... I came in to grab some scones and I saw you here and I—um—I just thought I’d say... hello?” His cheeks are reddening and it’s not from cold.

Mako feels like she’s just woken up. She swallows, recovering from her surprise, and slides her phone back towards herself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Becket. You just made me jump.” She gestures to Ilisapie, who has sunk back down in her seat. “This is an old friend of mine from university, Ilisapie Flint. Ilisapie, this is a friend of mine from work, Raleigh Becket.”

Ilisapie smiles gracefully and puts out her hand, but Mako notices more the way Raleigh’s smile brightens when she calls him a friend. It’s sort of hilarious, like the way Chuck’s dog, Max, barks when she says his name.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Ms. Flint,” he says, grinning at her. He straightens up and looks between the pair of them and Mako worries for a second that this is going to be one of those Uninvited Guest scenarios and Raleigh will overstay his welcome. But he just raises his hand in a half-wave, half-salute and gives them each a final nod. “Have a lovely day, ladies. Hope you have a pleasant weekend!” And then he turns and walks towards the counter.

“Cute butt,” Ilisapie says and Mako nods.

They go out to dinner after they’ve finished their second pot of tea and then return to Mako’s apartment. Mako is quite proud of her apartment. It’s not big—in fact an argument could and had been made by Chuck that it bordered on small—but it’s the right size for her. It’s got a kitchenette, a living room/study, a bathroom and a bedroom. The walls are all the same lemon-y yellow they were when she moved in, because she’s not allowed to paint them.

But the furniture is all hers from the time she and Ilisapie went to about six different antique shops and bought whatever they could afford. The bed frame is one of the sort of antique iron ones Mako remembers from the Madeline books (the mattress is new). The desk is just an old table, painted mint green, with a single, slim drawer. She has a book shelf beside her bed that Mako is very sure should’ve been much more expensive than what she and Ilisapie paid for it. It has hand-carved flowers at the top and, while there are a couple of cracks, it’s still a beautiful piece.

It’s probably ridiculous that she’s so proud of her furniture. It’s not like she’s in university anymore and can boast about things like owning non-plastic furniture, but it’s important to her. They remind her of when she and Ilisapie got their first apartment together and had to sleep on the floor the first night, coats folded under their heads as pillows. The old, flowered armchair still has a wine stain on it from when Mako used to curl up in it to study, books balanced on one arm, a glass of burgundy balanced on the other.

And Mako knows that Ilisapie still has her portion of all the things—the roll-top desk they found, marked down to nothing because it was missing the drawers; the night stand with the sculpted legs; the glass-fronted cabinet that she and Mako had once used for their DVDs. They’re like friendship bracelets for them: a constant reminder of the other.

They mix drinks and watch television and Ilisapie talks about the latest drama at her work and they laugh at Chuck Hansen’s twitter. Ilisapie spoils Gingerbread, who is Mako’s grumpy, overweight calico cat. He purrs only for Ilisapie that night, the tip of his tail curving towards her, and glares at Mako as if to say, “See? If you were this nice to me then I would sleep next to you instead of on you.”

Mako knows that she’s going to feel bitter and sad when Ilisapie heads off back to New York, because she’s feeling a bit fed up with Philadelphia at this point.

(These sort of thoughts bother her, because by all rights, Mako shouldn’t even be alive, let alone ungrateful. But Philadelphia, working for Stacker, eating lunch with Chuck and dinner with Herc Hansen... It feels like her life has moved backwards. As though, despite her master’s in business, despite the antique furniture and her friendship with Ilisapie, she might as well have never left home.)

“I just don’t get why you didn’t invite me,” Chuck mumbles, shoveling more lo mein into his mouth. Mako sighs through her nose and takes another bite of her sandwich. “Ilisapie’s my friend too.”

It’s Tuesday and Chuck has finally consented to speak to her again after finding out she and Ilisapie spent the weekend together. She keeps trying to explain that it was because she needed girl time, because their office is a “sausage fest” (to quote Ilisapie), because she didn’t want to see anyone from work and that included Chuck—but he doesn’t really listen, because that’s just Chuck.

So she waits it out. It’s sort of terrible, but, just like laughing at Chuck’s twitter, it’s become habit. Chuck only really has two close friends: Mako and Ilisapie. And when he refuses to speak to either one of them, it’s really only a matter of waiting until he gives in.

“We ran into Raleigh when we were having tea,” Mako says, after swallowing.

“Who?”

“The receptionist.”

Chuck snorts. “What was he doing? Pouring coffee all over himself?”

“What? No.” Mako places the sandwich on its wrapper and wipes her mouth. “He just had come in to get some coffee or something and dropped by to say hello.”

He takes another bite of lo mein, expression sour. Mako knows what this is. Chuck is a jealous friend and the fact that they grew up side by side doesn’t improve matters. That there’s a new person in the office at all would definitely make him nervous, but the fact that Raleigh bought her a green tea latte (how did he know it was her favorite?) is probably pushing him over the edge. (Everything kind of pushes Chuck over the edge.)

“Whatever. He’s a spaz.”

That’s a weird thing to say. Mako watches Chuck carefully. They’re sitting on either side of his desk, legs up on the bit of empty space. There are loose sheets of paper everywhere and the bookshelves are a mess. Chuck’s office is just a disaster. Like a hurricane in a library, if the hurricane then restacked everything stuck post-it notes everywhere. It sort of gives her a headache, so she focuses on his face. “What do you mean?”

“He’s just—” Chuck tosses his fork into the box of Chinese food. “I don’t know, like—he walks around with his arm up like—” he bends his left arm at the elbow, wrist held limp, and holds his right beside his head in a way that reminds her of old cigarette advertisements, “and then he fucks up faxes and shit and, like, right. That day, the board meeting, when the Kaidonovskys came in, he was walking around with all those coffees in one hand like a fucking ponce and I knocked into him and he, like, I don’t know, like, he just got all weird. Like, use both hands and I won’t knock into you, you know?” He looks at her as though this is totally obvious and normal and not psychotic or anything.

“You knocked into him? On purpose?” Mako asks, horror turning her blood cold. She moves her legs from the desk, causing some papers to slide to the floor. “Chuck, are you serious?” He nods and moves the box of lo mein to a shelf beside his desk. She resists the urge to pull out her hair. “Chuck, no...”

“What?” Chuck says, as though there’s no ‘t’ at the end. He runs his tongue over his teeth and pulls a pill bottle out of a desk drawer. “He didn’t learn his lesson and, like, he got all up in my face about it later. Fucking dick.” He dry-swallows a pill without breaking eye contact.

“Chuck, he is disabled,” Mako says, her voice a little too high. “You could get in so much trouble for this. Also it’s just terrible. Chuck, why would you do that?”

“He’s fucking handicapped?” Chuck says—more like shouts. He shifts his legs off the desk quickly, sitting up in his office chair. “Why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Why would we tell you? Most people don’t go around knocking into people on purpose!” she hisses. Chuck’s cheeks are going red in that kind of blotchy way that mean he’s going to blow up at any minute and she knows she should back down but, honestly, what had he been thinking?

“Well, I just thought he was just—I—just fucking up or something. I don’t know. Why would I know he’s fucking handicapped? What the fuck—fucking—” His breathing is uneven and his eyes are watery, because he’s working himself into a frenzy.

“Chuck—” she starts, but he’s already grabbing another pill bottle from his jacket pocket and shoving one into his mouth, hands shaking.

And this here is really the problem that Chuck always has and always has had and probably always will have, because he’s always taking something. He’s been taking psychiatric drugs since they were both ten and Mako’s never known him when he’s not been on something—usually not even treating the actual problem. At least it’s not Prolixin anymore like when they were juniors and at least it’s not being combined with the massive doses of Zoloft like when they were seniors. And he doesn’t know how to do anything anymore without taking something.

Mako sometimes wonders if there was ever anything even wrong with him and then she remembers.

He puts his head down on the desk and whispers, “Fuck.”

Mako stares at him, twisting her napkin around her fingers, and watches as his breathing calms and slows to something much more normal.

“What should I do?” he asks, pushing himself up a little so his forehead is resting on his folded arms. “Apologize or something?”

“I don’t know. Can you apologize without saying something foul?” she asks, annoyance clear in her voice. She doesn’t want to be annoyed at Chuck, but it’s really difficult when he does things like this. And he’s always doing things like this so basically it’s always difficult.

“How was I supposed to know, Mako?” He sits up, angry again, as usual. “I mean—like, how’s he handicapped?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, yeah!” Chuck snaps, flinging his hands to the side as though to emphasize just how much it matters. “I mean, I’m fucking handicapped, but you—”

“Chuck!”

“Fine! Whatever! I guess I don’t get to know!”

She rolls her eyes, leaning back in her chair and waiting for him to calm down. That’s how she and Chuck argue: they fight, they yell, they take a break so Chuck doesn’t destroy himself or something and then they restart.

When his cheeks aren’t so red and his breathing is more steady, she finally says, “Chuck, it’s his business for you to know.”

Chuck sneers. “Yeah? How d’you find out?” Her cheeks flush a little and she ducks her head. “Ha! Yeah! See?”

“Chuck—”

“Who told you?”

“Stacker, but Chuck, that’s—”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Fine! Then would his disability impede him from holding several drinks properly?”

“Yes.”

Chuck grumbles to himself, but the crease between his ginger eyebrows tells her that he’s really very upset. Which is actually for the best, but she’ll have to stop bugging him now or else he’ll start being angry at Raleigh for making him feel bad. She wraps up the rest of her sandwich and stands up, brushing any crumbs off her clothes. She takes a moment to examine Chuck’s face before deciding he’s stable enough just then to hear it.

“Please be nice to Raleigh, okay?” she says. He looks at her, mouth a little open, like he knows what’s coming next. “I think he’s sweet.”

Chuck knows what that means, so he just nods once and doesn’t look her in the eye.

“Come on,” she says, smiling. He stands and follows her out of his office, still muttering to himself. She leans against the wall that leads into the main corridor and points at him to round the corner to the receptionist’s desk.

“Only for you,” he mumbles, scowling, and stomps off. Mako listens carefully, but of course Chuck is Chuck so the first thing he says is, “what are you trying to do with that pen?”

“I’m just writing down a message,” Raleigh says. His voice is a little snappish, which makes Mako smile a bit. It’s good to know Raleigh doesn’t really forget rudeness. Mako has trouble understanding people who forgive too quickly and too freely. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I... I just wanted to apologize for knocking into you the other day. It was—like—I didn’t know that your arm is fucked up or whatever and I shouldn’t’ve been such a dick about it. So... yeah. I’m sorry about that. And for being such an idiot after. It was a shitty thing to do and... yeah, I apologize.”

Mako expects there to be a pause or some hesitation, but Raleigh’s voice, no longer terse, follows Chuck’s almost immediately : “It’s cool, man! I’d forgotten all about it.” There’s a pause and Mako would kill to see Chuck’s face. Congenial people always piss him off.

“Right,” he says and Mako can hear how tight Chuck’s jaw is. “Well, then.”

“Thanks for apologizing,” Raleigh says, his voice bright. Mako is pretty sure he must still be nursing a bit of a grudge, because the speed from which he went from annoyed, even mildly so, to cheerful is a little bizarre. He must be faking it, just to make sure he isn’t on Chuck’s bad side. Mako feels a little bad for him. Chuck seems much more frightening than he actually is.

He comes back around and grimaces at her as if to say ‘are you happy now?’

“Good job,” she whispers and pats him on the arm before heading back into her office.

There’s going to be a party for their investors. And Herc Hansen is the host.

Okay.

The thing is that Mako doesn’t actually dislike Herc Hansen. He was very kind to her when she was young and still struggling a lot to master English and she knows that the enduring friendship between him and Stacker has stopped both of them from going off the deep end more than once, but... It’s hard to explain what bothers her about Herc’s behavior. It’s in his dismissiveness of her degrees, his crassness about whenever Chuck is less than Herc’s ideal of masculinity—he’s kind when he doesn’t need to change his point of view to encompass an experience other than his own (for example, mental health problems, sexism in business schools, et cetera). It doesn’t mean he’s less kind, but it does make him a little suspicious in her eye.

Luckily, it’s on a Friday and that means that Chuck won’t be going. Chuck heads over to Doctors Gottlieb and Geiszler’s every Friday evening for Shabbat dinner. (She’s a little jealous about this still, since she misses doing Shabbat dinner with Chuck, but it seems to make him happy, so she tries not to complain.) Not having Chuck there will make everything run much more smoothly, but it still means she’ll be spending Friday evening trying to prevent the Kaidonovskys making more stupid threats to back out of their deals and making sure there’s copious amounts of alcohol and hors d’oeuvres.

Maybe she’ll take a personal day next Monday, just so she can catch up on sleep.

Luckily the majority of the organization was finished several weeks before, now it’s just small things that have to be set up: Stacker’s suit getting pressed, the guest list being finalized, making sure the catering service doesn’t pull anything obnoxious at the last minute—on top of her usual duties around the office. It’s stressful, but at least on Friday there will be champagne and inane conversation. The investors usually bring their handsome-but-dim sons. Maybe she’ll be able to have some fun by the end of the night.

She has lunch in Stacker’s office and they discuss what needs to be done in the days leading up to the party. She has a flip-pad open on the desk beside her. The to-do list only has five items so far, but she doesn’t doubt that it will grow over the week.

“And Chuck isn’t coming, is he?” Stacker asks, a touch of annoyance audible in his tone.

“No, he’s not,” Mako says, trying to hold back her grin. Stacker’s bewilderment with the relationship between Herc and Chuck is one of her favorite things. She knows that the majority of Stacker’s arguments with Herc are about his parenting skills—or his lack of them. Because Herc really is a pretty terrible dad—or maybe he’s just a terrible dad for Chuck.

She was lucky with Stacker.

“Thank God,” Stacker says, taking a swig of coffee. “Are you bringing a plus one?”

Mako shrugs. “I might. I usually don’t because it’s so busy.”

“Understandable, but you’re more than welcome to. The Russians seem to have settled a bit—or they aren’t arguing their contracts anymore at least—so the evening shouldn’t be terrible.”

“Is Mr. Chau coming?”

Stacker’s expression goes sour again. “Thankfully, he’s unable.”

Mako nods and writes this down. “I don’t think Doctors Gottlieb or Geiszler are coming.”

“Probably for the best. I’d rather not deal with more public fighting than I have to.”

Mako hears the mug being set down and says, without moving her eyes from her notebook, “you need to take your medicine.” There’s a rattling sound of the metal pillbox Stacker uses and Mako keeps her eyes fixed downwards. She feels a small swell of pride all the same, because she doesn’t have to argue or nag and he doesn’t complain about how the medicine makes him feel tired or sick. He knows she wants what’s best for him and he knows that she needs him in the most painful way. “Should I talk to the caterer today or tomorrow?”

“Today. And take Becket with you. To be honest, you can head home afterwards. I know you stayed up this whole weekend with Ilisapie.” He smiles. “How is Ilisapie, by the way?”

She looks up and can feel a strand of hair get caught in her earring. “She’s good. I—Why am I bringing Mr. Becket?” she asks, because honestly, she has her own car (and it’s not some terrifying, old, rusty death-trap like Raleigh’s) and she can deal with the caterer any day of the week. It’s one of her best talents.

“I want him trained up for things like this so you can delegate.”

“But we need someone here with the phones. Why would we want him running any errands besides lunches?”

“You know when the downtimes are. It’s not like we’re getting a lot of phone calls even at peak hours.”

She nods and gets to her feet, recognizing the end of a conversation. Stacker stands too and gestures for her to come closer.

When he puts his arms around her, she feels so small, so fragile. She presses her hands into his back. She can feel the weight he’s losing and it aches, so she buries her head into his chest and squeezes tighter.

They break apart and he grips her shoulder tightly, a small smile on his lips—quiet emotion.

“Do me well, my girl.”

She smiles back and leaves.

“This is a great car,” Raleigh says, his cheeks still red from cold. They look even pinker from the green of his coat. Mako wonders vaguely when he’s going to stop looking like he’s just hiked through a snow storm rather than walked a couple feet in the wind, but figures it must just be the way he reacts to cold.

“Thank you,” she says and smiles at him. He blushes—truly blushes. And she shouldn’t be as surprised by this because she grew up with Chuck who is very, very, ginger, but even he doesn’t blush as much as Raleigh Becket. He smiles back and she realizes that he’s got a thin layer of stubble. It’s blond—a sort of golden color that reflects the afternoon sunlight and lights up like peach fuzz.

“So there’s a party this weekend?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to go?” He’s looking out the window, smiling a little, looking sort of like a puppy on its first car ride.

“Yeah, I have to.”

He turns back to look at her, his eyes seeming strangely bright next to the dull gray of his scarf. “You have to?”

She finds herself laughing even as a few drops hit the windscreen. She really hates driving in the rain and pulls up at a red light.

“That’s cool though,” Raleigh says, his voice soft. She’s seriously bewildered about how on earth Stacker managed to find a literal puppy in human form.

“Do you have plans?” she asks, looking at him and the way he glances down at this question. “Come on! Friday night? And you’re handsome!”

And his eyes are back on her so quickly it’s sort of alarming, his cheeks flushed pink again. His grin is so broad she’s pretty sure his face is going to split in half and his shoulders shake from suppressed laughter. “I don’t have any plans.”

She tsks and turns back to the road just as the light switches back to green.

They don’t really talk until they reach the shop, because the rain has picked up and Mako doesn’t talk while parking because that’s just the rule of the car. He opens the door for her when they reach the store, his eyes still glimmering with laughter. She can’t help but smile back, biting her lip to stop herself giggling.

And, as always, Kennedy LaRue is standing at the counter, expression pinched, dark hair pulled back tight from her face. She grimaces when Mako comes in, like she’s trying to smile and can’t manage it.

“Can I help you, Ms. Mori?” she asks, looking her up and down. Mako gets the uncomfortable feeling like she’s receiving an x-ray. Kennedy looks over Raleigh too, pausing a little at the coat sleeve. “Who’s this?”

“This is Mr. Raleigh Becket, our new receptionist,” Mako says, her voice calm. She knows Kennedy by this point, that her temper isn’t personal. She just actually hates everyone. Raleigh steps forward to offer his hand and Kennedy looks like she’s going to beat a quick retreat into the kitchen. “I wanted to ask how everything is coming with the preparations for Friday.”

Kennedy purses her lips and leans against the counter, her skin looking sallow from the pale gray walls. “It’ll be ready.”

Mako sighs softly and tosses her head to move some of the hair from her face. “Can I see what you’ve done so far?”

What follows is less a conversation and more of a debate. Mako can see Raleigh, out of the corner of her eye, moving his head back and forth between them as they speak. Truth is, Mako doesn’t dislike Kennedy, but Kennedy and Stephanie are basically impossible to work with when it comes to planning. Figures the best catering place would have the flakiest owners.

Twenty minutes later, they’re back on the sidewalk. The rain is still falling, but Mako pulls an umbrella from her purse and holds it up, offering space to Raleigh.

“What else are we getting up to?” he asks, smiling congenially, his right hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans. He’s still half out of the umbrella, so Mako shifts closer. She can see for a moment the way his expression changes—less than a second where he’s making sure he understands her motives—before he moves closer as well. “Do we have to rent a tux for Mr. Pentecost or something?”

She smiles. “Nope. Everything else we have to do is above your pay grade.”

“Jeez—I didn’t realize I was in a Bond movie.”

A motorcycle speeds past them, engine roaring louder than the rain. Raleigh’s eyes track its progress down the road.

“Mr. Pentecost gave me the rest of today free,” she says and she can’t help but notice the redness already returning in his cheeks and nose from the cold.

He laughs a little, burying his chin a little into the fabric of his scarf. “I’m guessing I’m walking back from here?”

“No!” She ducks her head for a moment, laughing, and when she looks up again, he’s grinning back at her, his eyes lit up and shining blue. “I’ll give you a ride back. I just wanted to get some tea first.”

“Nice!” He nods, reminding her a little of some of Chuck’s old surfer friends. If he were more tan, he’d fit right in with that crowd.

She wonders if he burns in the summer.

They step into a Starbucks before going back to the car. Raleigh catches her eye when she orders her green tea latte and winks, rendering her speechless from laughter for almost a full two minutes. She doesn’t get to hear what he orders, but next time she looks up, eyes still teary from laughing, the barista is handing him a scone. Raleigh looks at her, the skin around his eyes crinkling with premature laugh lines.

“Try not to die, Ms. Mori,” he says as the barista calls her order.

She snatches the green tea latte from the counter, trying to glare at him, but it’s hard when she’s trying not to laugh. He turns to head toward the door and she stops laughing, confused.

“Didn’t you order anything?” she asks and he shakes his head.

“Just a scone,” he says and holds it out. “Want some?”

“No thanks.” They step back out into the rain. She almost asks him to hold her drink while she gets her umbrella out and then realizes how stupid that is and fumbles, one handed, with the strap.

And then Raleigh lifts the tea from her hand, his scone resting in the crook of his left arm. She looks at him, surprised for a moment and her fingers tingling a little from the rain and from where his brushed hers. She opens up the umbrella, hyperaware, somehow, of the noise of the fabric rustling, of the metal reaching out. Raleigh smiles at her, his hair darkening with the damp and the rain.

It’s only a few seconds, but there’s something in that moment—in the way the raindrops glisten on the wool fibers of his coat, the flush across his nose and cheeks, the smile on his lips, the heat in her ears as they become accustomed to the cold air...

She takes back her tea and, as they head back towards the car, says, “So I found your Facebook.”

Raleigh grins hugely and takes a bite of his scone. “Oh God... Am I about to be fired?”

She laughs and he bumps his right shoulder against her left. “No! Of course not!”

“Thank God.” He takes another bite.

“I just wanted to ask about the girl in your profile picture. Who is she?”

Raleigh nods for a moment, swallowing before he says, “It’s my sister Jazmine. We were hanging out a lot this summer and she’s big on, like, Snapchat and stuff.”

“Oh! Is she in the army?”

He starts a moment and glances towards her, his expression a little skittish. “Nah, she’s in law school. She’s going to Harvard, actually.” He smiles, his expression proud, but distant. “She’s really smart. She, um, she graduated high school early and she did a bunch of AP classes and then did a fucking double major...” His grin falters as he catches her eye again, his face turning red. “Shit—I mean—I’m so sorry—”

“It’s fine outside the office,” she says, smiling a little as they reach the car. They both get in and spend a couple minutes trying to wipe the rain from their faces and clothes. She can’t help shivering as she starts the engine. It seems like all her friends love the rain and she just hates it. When the heat finally seems to be sinking through her skin, she turns back to Raleigh, who’s blowing on his right hand to warm it. “Cold for October, right?”

He laughs. “I was just thinking how stupid it is. Like, I’m from f—I’m from Alaska originally. I can’t believe I’m getting this cold. It’s just... embarrassing, you know?”

“Last summer it got very...” Oh. She’s forgotten the word. Wet... When they air is wet. She can remember the word in French, but that’s not helpful. “Uh... Wet. And it was very hot and sweaty, but it’s always wetter in Japan in the summer and that’s where I was born.”

“That’s so cool!” Raleigh says, his eyes lighting up. “Shuushin wa nan desuka?”

She grins. His accent is absolutely terrible—super American with his vowels and just entirely Raleigh—but his grammar is good. Granted, it’s a pretty elementary phrase. “I grew up in Tanegashima. Why did you come here instead of back to Alaska?”

He pauses. “I left Anchorage when I was sixteen to live with my cousins in Ohio and after, um, after the army, I was sent to a facility here in Philly and then I just... I just stayed here.” He sounds sullen. She glances over at him and he’s playing with his left shirt sleeve, his cheeks red again.

Mako suddenly understands what makes Raleigh feel so strange to her and it’s like he’s honest and knows that it makes people uncomfortable, but, like Chuck and his stupid temper, he doesn’t know how to change it.

She tries to smile at him as they reach a red light, but he’s not looking at her. There’s a long, awkward pause as they sit there, listening to the turn signal.

“Do you also know Mr. Hansen?” she asks, because the silence is driving her crazy.

“Wait—Chuck?”

He’s looking at her again and the blush has subsided in his cheeks. She laughs a little. “No, Hercules. I thought, because you know Mr. Pentecost...”

“Oh, yeah...” He pauses then looks a little taken aback. “Shit, yeah, I actually do know him. God, that’s... that’s so weird...”

He’s smiling a little, like he’s remembering something funny, right hand rubbing the stubble on his cheeks.

And Mako has an idea.

“You have no plans this weekend?” she asks as they pull into the office parking lot.

“Ha! Still no, unfortunately.”

“Well...” She eases the car into a space. Chuck has parked sort of diagonally again, which makes everything trickier. “Would you like to come with me to the party on Friday? I have a plus one.”

“I—serious? Is this a pity date?”

She bites her lip to stop from laughing. “Yeah, a little bit.”

He grins hugely. “Then I’d love to.”

It takes a stupid amount of searching, of scouring google and old facebook stati, but she finally finds it.

Raleigh Becket’s twitter account: right_brained85, but his display name is Ral El. Within just a few minutes, Mako realizes that she’s found a treasure to rival Chuck’s own feed.

Trying to get off, the most recent tweet reads, but can’t finish #ColdHands #BrokeHeating #fml. There’s no banner picture, but his icon seems to be a photo of Raleigh with a bad burn on his nose and a pair of sunglasses. Mako is pretty sure he’s leaning out of a car window. Five minutes of scrolling reveals that the majority of the posts that aren’t Raleigh retweeting things from what seems to be his sister’s account are just about masturbating and a lot of them are tagged “INeedToGetLaid”. It goes from weirdly legitimate concerns (Bought some lube to stop chaffing but it smells like fucking roses wtf) to really stupid jokes (Can’t tell if I’m hard all the time or if I’ve just gotten too fat for my jeans #INeedToGetLaid).

 She finds it on Wednesday afternoon, but doesn’t get a chance to properly go through it until that evening when she gets home from work. She isn’t sure how many masturbatory tweets she reads, but it’s...

It should feel much funnier, much more pathetic and hilarious, kind of like Chuck’s twitter feed—it should feel more awkward and “too much information”-filled, like Newton Geiszler’s—but it doesn’t. Somehow reading through the sheer number of tweets, all the way through July and August, that are just full of pent up sexual frustration and discussions of internet pornography, she doesn’t feel uncomfortable at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s sort of nice, because according to Facebook Raleigh is just a couple years older than she is, but he’s just as stupidly horny.

It’s a nice realization. She can remember being a teenager and thinking there was something wrong with her. She can remember studying for finals week, her freshman year of university, thinking there was something wrong with her. And in the end it’s just that Mako has a high sex drive and that’s fine. And it’s sort of nice to see that someone else is the same, like the split-second of camaraderie shared between students before getting chewed out by a teacher, where they glance at each other and recall everything that led them to that moment in that office and they know that they are both very much equally responsible.

There are tweets on other subjects though, like the cost of decent beer (Why is it that any beer that isn’t urine colored costs as much as fucking brain surgery? #Guinness) and a lot of livetweets of terrible sounding films (Something about this movie feels like a giant snake is going to eat the main dude soon but idk what. #Anaconda). Some have that sense of the two AM philosophical discussion had in the dark at a sleepover and others feel like he might’ve been intoxicated while writing them (@JazBex i think we both should move into a tiny log cabin and eat catfish forever).

It’s kind of fun to read, because while Chuck’s twitter is funny, it’s always got this undertone to it like Chuck is just waiting to snap back at anyone who crosses him—because Chuck is always ready for someone to insult or make light of the things which really do make his life difficult. But Raleigh’s seems like the adventures of someone who finds himself and his life completely hilarious and just wants to share the joke, even though he only has about fifteen followers.

She considers, for a moment, sending the link to “Ral El”’s account to Ilisapie, but decides against it.

She’s not fully sure why she doesn’t, but she knows she made the right choice.

On Friday, she arrives at Herc Hansen’s house about an hour and a half before the party officially starts. There are already a couple cars out front: the van from the caterer’s (Mako breathes a small sigh of relief), Herc’s green Land Rover and Stacker’s black Volvo. Mako pulls up beside Stacker’s car and climbs out, bringing along her dress, still in its bag from the dry cleaner’s.

She wishes Herc had had the gardener come out and mow the lawn that morning. The grass looks a little mangy from the autumn weather and there are weeds creeping up along the driveway, but the house itself is impressive enough to render most of these issues invisible. It’s gray stone and three stories tall, with narrow windows to keep out the cold, the blue shutters open to let in the light. The exterior borders on the severe, but it’s warmed by the red of the surrounding foliage. There’s smoke rising out of the chimney and Herc has hung some strange autumn-themed wreath on the front door.

Mako walks up the little gravel-lined path and knocks on the door, but no one answers. She can hear loud talking inside and the sound of Kennedy calling something to someone else. Mako tries the knob and the door opens.

The entryway and the living room are a mess of people—the decorator and the catering crew (Kennedy gives her a curt nod that makes Mako think of soldiers) and the wait staff. The cleaning lady, Miranda, frantically follows behind Stephanie, who keeps dropping grapes from huge trays of crudites and fruit salads. One of the waiters has already spilled something on his white shirt front. Mako weaves her way between people towards the kitchen, stumbling a bit over a rug that’s gotten bunched against one of the walls.

She can hear Herc and Stacker talking to one another in low voices before she crosses the threshold; can see their heads stooped as Stacker pours coffee into a pair of mugs: one white and chipped, stolen from a diner somewhere years ago, with a blue strip around the top and the other a sort of brick color that shifts like its hand-glazed. (She wonders sometimes if all dads have that one mug that is somehow superior to any others. She knows Ilisapie’s father doesn’t, so it might just be Stacker and Herc who flinch when other people even handle their mugs, which is annoying and stupid and kind of one of the most important factors in their friendship.)

Herc spots her first, a smile spreading easily across his face. Herc is one of those people who doesn’t age so much as he weathers over time. His face is lined, but his hair still shines blond and he can still hoist suitcases up the idiotic number of stairs in this house. He’s sporty, like Chuck, and tends to be the sort of person who can get things done.

Also he gives wonderful hugs, such as the one he gives her now. Herc hugs her as if he’s not seen her in years, his arms tight and his hands pressing hard against her skin. He inhales deeply and holds her at arms’ length, admiring her as he always does after a hug. “It’s wonderful to see you, Mako,” he says, smile lines creasing at the corners of his eyes.

She smiles back and catches Stacker’s eye over Herc’s shoulder. He looks alright, better than he did that afternoon. He’d hardly been able to finish his lunch, but now he seems better. Seems better. Soon she’ll be pestering him about whether or not he spoke to the doctor or if he’s actually taken something to manage the pain, but she’ll let him breathe a little. For now, at least.

“I’ve not seen you in a couple weeks!” Herc says and she shifts her attention back to him, trying to look politely surprised. “How have things been going?”

“Well!” she says, nodding vigorously because Herc always makes her feel like she has to express her emotions twice as strongly. And she is happy to see him. Stacker always seems to do better when Herc’s around. “Stacker finally got me a receptionist so I don’t have to answer all the phones myself.”

Herc laughs and Mako sees Stacker smile too. This sort of moment is one of the reasons why she loves Herc a lot. There are other things she loves about him as well obviously, but he’s been such a friend to Stacker, following him into retirement from the military, through the beginnings of Hansen-Pentecost (which had always been much more Stacker’s idea than Herc’s). Herc is aggressively loyal and when he cares for people, he cares deeply and fully.

He was the one who found the Philadelphia house, about half an hour outside the city, when he moved to the United States and originally fixed it up for himself and Chuck when he wanted out of the University of Pennsylvania campus. But when Stacker had become sick, Herc insisted that Stacker move into the house so there would be someone to look after him in the night. (Before this, Mako had been spending nights sleeping on the sofa in Stacker’s apartment, despite her back’s protests and the impossibility of sleeping properly on an Ikea couch.)

Herc’s a good man and a good friend to Stacker and even though she wishes Stacker would try to go out and find someone to date, she’s glad he’s got a friend in Herc. She’s fairly sure—and the certainty solidified when Chuck came to her when they were both seventeen with red eyes and his knuckles bleeding (he and Herc had gotten into another fist fight) to tell her that his dad was gay—that Herc has feelings for Stacker that go beyond, perhaps, usual friendship. It’s hard to tell, though, since Herc is a “touch-y” person, prone to slapping people on the back or the shoulders and rubbing a palm down the length of one’s arm as a sign of affection. He touches Stacker more than he touches other people, rubbing his hands over Stacker’s buzz cut or leaning against him while watching television. Mako has never seen Stacker reciprocate though and she knows he used to date Luna’s wife before those two met, so she assumes he’s straight.

“Yeah, I heard about that,” Herc’s saying, looking back at Stacker and grinning more broadly. “It’s that Becket kid, right?”

“Raleigh,” Stacker says, nodding slowly and taking a sip of his coffee. She glances over to see if his hands are shaking at all.

“That’s the one!” He raises his eyebrows at Mako and winks. “He’s cute, isn’t he?”

Mako sometimes wonders how Chuck was surprised to learn his dad is gay.

“He’s coming this evening,” she says, touching the dry cleaning bag over her dress to indicate what she means by “this evening”. “I invited him to join me.”

“Wonderful!” And Herc does look really delighted. “Is Chuck coming too?”

Mako shakes her head. “He’s doing Shabbat dinner at Doctors Gottlieb and Geiszler’s.” And she knows what’s coming next because this is Herc and—

“Of course he is,” Herc says, his expression suddenly cool and a little sour. Mako wishes he would just work out that Chuck is the way he is and Herc is just the way he is and they’re different and that’s fine. But it’s Herc, so he will never, ever give up trying to pretend that he can change everything about Chuck through sheer force of will. “Well, you’re welcome to go up and get ready in his room, if you’d like. You know where it is.”

She glances at Stacker, who’s looking at Herc like he’s ready to pick a fight, and makes a quick exit back into the living room, through to the main entryway and up the stairs. The pale wood floors shine in such a way that gives Mako the impression they were just mopped a few minutes before. She runs her fingers over the striped wall paper as she ascends. There’s a painting by Chuck’s Aunt Miriam on the first landing of ten year old Chuck playing with his old dog, an enormous German Shepherd named Louis. She reaches the second floor and sets off down the carpeted hall.

There are more pictures hanging up here: photos of Herc and Chuck, more of Miriam’s paintings, old army pictures. There are a couple photos of Stacker and Mako, the number steadily increasing the longer Stacker lives there. One of them is from her graduation from McGill when she accidentally ordered too long a gown and the sleeves kept falling over her hands. Another is from the summer after her GCSEs, when they—her, Stacker, Herc and Chuck—went on a holiday in Hawaii and Chuck taught Mako to surf. She smiles at these, glad that someone held on to the photos.

She reaches Chuck’s room and goes in. Mako theoretically is supposed to have a room at the house, but she’s never really moved into it properly, so hers is more of a guest room. Chuck’s is a proper bedroom, decorated with his taste (or what Herc thinks Chuck’s taste is) in mind. The drawers, Mako knows, hold most of the overflow of items that Chuck doesn’t want in his apartment. On the desk is a stack of old external harddrives, each labelled by year, and a box of old iPods.

The furniture is all fairly simple—Mako is pretty sure it’s the same stuff that was in Chuck’s room in Sydney—and the bed is pretty standard, except for the quilt lying on top, which Mako knows was sewn by Chuck’s maternal grandmother. There’s a photo album on the nightstand, along with an empty glass. Mako knows that there’s an identical set up in Chuck’s apartment.

Mako sets her dress down on the bed and walks over to the bookshelf that sits to the left of the desk. The window above the bed causes her to cast a shadow across a lot of the books, but she still finds herself laughing a little at the titles: largely children’s books or those sort of pre-teen novels that are usually mysteries or something, old video cassettes (including a full collection of Land Before Time cartoons) and old Nintendo 64 cartridges.

She gets dressed quickly, using the mirror that hangs inside the closet to touch up her make up. Mako has basically two black-tie dresses: one for spring and summer and other for autumn and winter. The autumn one is just a gray wool sheath, but it’s got silver over-stitching and a geometric neckline and Chuck calls “artistic sexy”. She’s still wearing her silver chain necklace from that morning and the outfit is suitable for the occasion, though she’s sure Herc will make some comment about how she needs a new dress or how come she doesn’t wear something a bit more exciting and Stacker will forcefully change the subject, because Herc doesn’t know when to stop sometimes.

She always finds it relaxing being here. She should visit more often.

She turns around from the mirror. Something’s scratching at the door. Grinning, she rushes over and opens it.

“Hello Lucky!” she says, grasping the tiny dog—part-pomchi mixed with something else—and lifting her up onto her lap. “Do you remember me?”

Lucky yaps loudly in response, licking her nose. She grimaces and then kisses the dog back. Herc bought Lucky about a year or two after Chuck left for university when she was still only a puppy. Of course, by this point, Herc has managed to spoil her completely, letting her roam around the house, napping on various beds, only settling to sleep beside Herc each night.

Mako climbs to her feet, Lucky still in her arms, and shuts the door to Chuck's room behind her before she heads back downstairs. She can hear the creaking of the lower stairs. She hesitates just above the landing as Stacker appears, coffee in hand. He's breathing a little heavily and she moves closer to the wall to let him pass.

He grimaces when she does this and at her worried expression. "I'm by no means broken and by no means fragile, Miss Mori."

She barely holds back a scowl. "I was just going to ask if you had gone to the doctor today. You were feeling very poorly today and you said you would contact Dr. Schoenfeld."

"I'm afraid I didn't get around to it," Stacker says, his expression stern and stubborn. This is the problem with all their arguments: Mako is just as stubborn as Stacker and so their arguments never go anywhere. They just end, nothing changed and nothing decided.

Lucky licks her jaw to get her attention, but she almost doesn't notice because her eyes are tearing up. She opens her mouth to continue, but Stacker sighs, his expression quickly softening.

“I’m alright,” he says, his voice calm but firm. “If I weren’t alright, I promise you, I would be in Dr. Schoenfeld’s office this very instant.”

She nods and he continues up the stairs. She takes a couple moments, ignoring the jumble of voices just half a flight of stairs below her, to freak out a couple minutes. There are no external signs of her emotions, just that she strokes Lucky more fervently. After ten seconds, she takes a deep breath and continues down toward the kitchen.

Herc must’ve changed at some point when she was in Chuck’s room, but that makes sense because he’s the sort that can’t spend more than five minutes preparing anything. He’s still struggling with his tie though and she places Lucky in his arms and shows mercy on him.

“Here,” she says, taking the silk in her hands and undoing the sloppy half-Windsor that Herc had been tying.

“You’re an angel,” Herc says, relief clear in his voice as he raises Lucky closer to his face and kisses the top of her head. Mako wonders for a moment if he’s talking to Lucky or her.

“I found Lucky up by Chuck’s room,” she says, finishing the fresh knot, which is free of any awkward twists. “I guess she was looking for you.”

“More likely for you.” Herc holds Lucky higher against his chest and she curls against him, licking his face. Lucky reminds Mako of Gingerbread sometimes, only not as mean. Herc straightens out his shirt, assuring that it’s tucked in on all sides, and then checks his watch. “So people will start arriving in about an hour. Do you want a beer or anything now?” Lucky licks his mouth and he kisses her back, muttering something about such a good dog.

“No thank you. Shall we finish setting up the living room?”

Stacker rejoins them about a quarter of an hour later and finally manages to get the catering staff shepherded into the kitchen. Then it’s just a matter of making sure there’s plenty of wood for the fire and that all the rugs are straightened and that there are enough glasses sitting out. Herc tends to get all flustered at moments like these, so he’s not especially helpful, just wandering from room to room with Lucky in his arms and mumbling to himself. Stacker and Mako end up doing the brunt of the work, but that’s fine, because they all know that Herc is going to be doing the larger part of the entertaining.

And about twenty minutes before the first guest arrives, the doorbell rings.

Mako ends up being the one to answer it, because Stacker and Herc are having some argument about the curtains in the living room or something. She’s quite taken aback when she sees Raleigh standing outside, very underdressed and holding a bottle of red wine.

He smiles at her and she can see how his gaze moves from her legs up to her face, hesitating briefly around her chest. His cheeks are red with cold, but he seems to have tried to style his hair a little. It’s not as rumpled as it normally looks at work and his jaw is free of the usual lines of stubble.

He’s actually put in the effort, even though she can already tell he’s not wearing a tie.

“I brought wine,” he says sheepishly, handing her the bottle. It’s French and not a bad label. “I know it’s not enough for the party, but I figured I should bring something in thanks.”

She nods approvingly at the bottle because he seems to actually have an eye for wine and smiles at him. “This is very sweet of you, Raleigh. Come in.”

He steps in and shrugs off his overcoat. He’s not wearing a blazer. Well, she supposes this was her own fault for assuming he would know what she meant by “cocktail wear”.

He looks around the entry way, at the high ceilings, at the exposed beams and the luxe wallpaper. “Is this how Lieutenant Hansen’s living now?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck...” He touches the dark wood coat rack, but draws his hand back quickly, as though he’s worried about getting it dirty. He turns his gaze back to her, a sort of dazed smile in place. “This place is the shit.” His hand runs over the end of the banister, his expression still vaguely mystified.

“I think he did most of the work himself,” she says, but Raleigh doesn’t get to respond, because then Herc walks in, Lucky still pressed to his chest.

“Becket!” he shouts, reaching out his right hand for Raleigh to shake, but Raleigh’s sort of frozen. It’s strange—his smile is still in place, but his eyes are slightly wider than before and his shoulders seem to have lowered, his back straightened, his chin held perfectly parallel to the ground.

And then he takes Herc’s hand, his expression much more serious.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” he says, his jaw still held at an almost cocky angle.

“Don’t—!” Herc waves a hand, as though brushing off the rank. “Just call me Herc, alright?”

Raleigh looks distinctly uncomfortable, but nods and then grins cheekily. “You sure you wouldn’t prefer Hercules?”

Herc closes his eyes and presses his lips together. “Nah. That’s definitely worse.”

They both laugh and Stacker enters, brushing something off his suit coat. He and Raleigh shake hands and Raleigh gestures awkwardly to the wine bottle in Mako’s hands.

“I brought wine,” he says, as though this will somehow help. Stacker nods stiffly, but he’s smiling a little. Herc takes the bottle from Mako and looks it over.

“Oh, it’s that frog shit you were always hunting for,” he says , mockingly dismissive. Raleigh grins and shrugs.

“I could never settle for a substandard wine.” His eyes are bright. They look bluer when he’s all cleaned up this way. It’s odd, though. Even with the hair gel and the freshly shaved jaw, he still looks somehow unkempt, which suits him really. She can’t imagine him looking completely cleaned up.

Herc rolls his eyes and slaps Raleigh’s good arm. “It’s good to see you again, Becket.” He heads off toward the cellar where Mako knows he keeps all his liquor.

Stacker moves to follow him and then turns back to Mako. “We can set up everything else, Miss Mori, if you’d like to show Raleigh here around the house.”

“Of course,” she says and he disappears after Herc through the door beside the stairs. She looks at Raleigh, whose eyebrows are raised as if to say, I don’t understand what’s happening. She almost laughs. “Do you want to see the house?”

He nods, beaming. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

Sasha Kaidonovsky is drinking champagne with a sour expression, her red lips pursed and her gaze stern but bored. She looks flawless as always, which used to bother Mako until she realized that she was competing with someone who didn’t care. Her platinum hair is pulled back from her face as usual and wrapped in a tight bun, but she’s wearing some fantastic black sequined dress that reaches just past her knees and Mako feels vaguely conflicted about her two-dress policy.

“This isn’t champagne,” Sasha finally says, taking another sip anyway.

“Excuse me?” Mako asks, because it’s such an odd thing to say that she’s sure she must’ve misheard her.

“This isn’t champagne. This is a crémant.” She taps a red fingernail against her glass. “They are subtly different.”

Mako looks at her and hesitates a moment before saying, “Yes... the champagne is at a different table...” She points to a set up by one of the windows, with a number of bottles, as well as a variety of fruit and seafood. “This is the table for the crémant.”

“Oh! Well!” Sasha knocks back the rest of her glass and then leans close to Mako and says, “You know, I actually prefer crémant, but I was confused about the taste. It is so different to champagne, you know.” She waves her glass at the waiter manning the table and he refills it after seeing Mako’s nod.

The party has been going for about an hour and a half, investors and partners all jammed into the living room and dining room, gathered in little cliques around the different wine tables. She can see Raleigh, near one of the red wine tables beside the door to the entryway. They haven’t gotten to speak since the arrival of the first guests, but it’s alright because they chatted a lot as they wandered through the house. Raleigh still seemed overwhelmed by the size of the building and the expense of the decor, but he also talked a lot. Not so much that she can’t get a word in, because he makes sure she gets to talk and asks her lots of questions about her life and her work and everything, but he just seems to become rapidly uncomfortable in the face of actual silence. Which is okay, she supposes. Everyone has their things.

He seems to be in conversation with Herc and a few of the investors. He’s actually sort of a gift to have at a party.  When the Wei Tang triplets arrived about five minutes before everyone else while Herc and Stacker were still setting things up, Raleigh immediately walked over to them, introduced himself and began making conversation. He’s still weird and seems constantly a little nervous, but he’s somehow also very socially gifted. It’s sort of remarkable.

Aleksis wanders over to her and Sasha, looking huge and vaguely majestic in his shiny suit. His beard is freshly trimmed and his weird bouffant hairstyle impeccable. He’s wearing a tie pin and Mako almost sighs from sheer annoyance because it’s got a diamond in the center. A diamond. At a party like this.

He takes a glass from the waiter and Mako spots his nails, which are painted silver. She sometimes wonders if Aleksis Kaidonovsky is “secretly” gay and Sasha is so nasty because she’s just his beard. And then sometimes she wonders if both Aleksis and Sasha are just trying to get on everyone’s nerves, like the days when Aleksis comes in with make-up and earrings and Sasha is wearing insanely high heels or they just switch names out of nowhere.

Sasha strokes Aleksis’ chest, curling towards him, catlike. The most depressing thing is that neither of them is even sort of drunk yet. They’re just always like this: annoying, over demonstrative and downing drink after drink.

Mako considers seeking out a cute guy, because she’s tired and she deserves a treat, but it feels... strange. She’s brought along a guest this time and she’s not sure where that leaves her in terms of hook ups. And she’s not sure if she wants to hook up yet with Raleigh.

He’s sweet, but maybe too much so.

“Mako!”

She turns and sees Herc waving her towards the chardonnay table. It takes her a little while of weaving between the circles of gossiping investors and businesspeople before she can reach them. Raleigh smiles at her, looking a little nervous, a glass of wine in hand. She wonders how many he’s had, because he still seems pretty sober, but his cheeks are nearing scarlet.

“Mako—” It’s one of the Wei Tang triplets—Jin, she thinks. He’s definitely had a bit too much to drink, but Hu has a hand on his shoulder and he looks a bit more sober. “Mako, what is it like, dating Chuck Hansen?”

Oh. That’s what this is becoming. And Chuck wonders why she needs a break from work. She catches Stacker’s eye across the entryway, by the door to the dining room, and hopes her expression looks desperate enough.

“I’m not dating anyone,” she says, in the meantime. Raleigh keeps looking at her like oh God I am so sorry I am so sorry I didn’t want this to happen. She takes an offered glass of chardonnay.

“But you used to date Chuck,” Jin insists. She shoots him a glare.

“Yeah, I used to. I don’t now. We’re friends.”

“I am so sorry for whatever Chuck did to fuck that up,” Herc says, downing his glass. He’s a little worse for wear, which is surprising, because she’s seen Herc drink people under the table before. He grins at Mako, clearly unaware of the discomfort of the situation he’s invited her into. “But, I’ve gotta say, you must’ve had the patience of an angel to last as long as you did.”

“I—” she starts and Herc just shakes his head, looking suddenly somber.

“I love Chuck like hell, but he’s just...”

“He’s your son, isn’t he?” says Serge, one of the early investors in Hansen-Pentecost. He’s one of those painfully nice people—too trusting of everything anyone says, which means he’ll believe Herc’s whole Chuck speech without considering what he already knows about Chuck. “Obviously, you love him.”

“Of course! I just... It’s hard, you know? Because Chuck’s so... he’s just sick in the head. I used to worry if he’d ever even have sex and now I just worry that he’ll never be able to settle down. Not like he actually gets around but he's just terrible at relationship things, you know?"

"That's saying a lot coming from you, Herc," Hu says, his lips quirking a bit in a smile. Herc laughs, but still looks put out.

"I mean, when I knocked up Angela it was an accident, but, I mean, she wasn't even supposed to have kids. And Chuck sort of bears the brunt of that."

"How do you mean?" asks some plus one, her string of pearls swinging in her right hand.

Herc waves his hand like he did when Raleigh called him "Lieutenant". "It doesn't really matter. I mean, it doesn't stop Chuck being fucking crazy, right? He's actually crazy though. Like, he's properly mentally ill."

Raleigh is looking more and more uncomfortable, a crease deepening between his brows. He drinks his wine with more fervor, as though it will shield him from all the awkwardness. His cheeks are growing pinker and pinker as Herc continues.

"It's just hard because I know I can't really help him because he's just such a dick. And I know I shouldn't say that because of, you know, his problems. And then he does this shit and I feel like he's just cutting me out. Like his mum was Jewish and lately Chuck's been trying to explore, like, his Jewish-ness or something and he's always saying oh you can't understand, dad; you don't get it, dad; why would you even suggest I go out on a Friday night, dad. Like, well your mum used to, you know?" Herc shakes his head, taking another glass of Chardonnay and drinking deeply. "I just worry that with everything—especially the mental health, you know, issues—I just worry that he'll never get a life of his own!"

Serge pats Herc's arm. "That's terrible. I didn't realize Chuck was doing so badly." Mako resists the urge to swat his hand away.

"Oh, he doesn't even know he's doing badly. He thinks it's normal to show up at midnight at his dad's house to play video games or something, all I couldn't be alone. And—I mean—that's not normal. I mean, he's an adult." Herc pauses and sighs, his gaze focused on his wine glass. “I just... I worry about him, you know?”

Serge rubs his shoulder and Herc looks like he wants to continue, but there’s a bit too much wine in his system. Mako catches Stacker’s eye again and does her best get here now please face. He gives her a smile nod, says something to one of the guests beside him and starts making his way towards her.

“I mean, he lost his virginity at fucking twenty-one? I mean, what the fuck is that? Like—”

“Herc,” Stacker says, his voice firm. Herc turns to face him, eyes bleary.

“Hey Stacks,” he says, patting Stacker’s cheek fondly. “I was just talking about Chuck losing his virginity.”

“Of course you were.” Stacker catches Mako’s eye and gives her another small nod. Carefully, she edges herself away from the circle while everyone is still focused on Herc. To her surprise, Raleigh slips out at the same time, his eyes wide.

Once they’re largely out of earshot, he leans towards her and whispers, “So all of that.” His expression looks torn, between terror and laughter. She shakes her head.

“Herc is not good for Chuck,” she says, because she’s not sure how to encompass all that was wrong about that conversation in one sentence.

Herc is starting to raise his voice—saying something about how Chuck is his son and how Herc is allowed to say he’s worried about his own son God fucking damn it—and Stacker’s voice is becoming more and more like his “army voice”. Raleigh glances over his shoulder, his expression a little strange, somewhat distant.

“Champagne!” Sasha shouts, her laugh high-pitched like a scream and then the bottle opens behind Mako with a bang!

And Raleigh... ducks.

He just doubles over, his right arm thrown up to cover the back of his head. His breathing is fast, ragged. She recognizes the sound from over fifteen years of friendship with Chuck. Raleigh’s face is scarlet, tears falling from his eyes and dripping down his nose.

She reaches towards him and then draws her hand back, knowing it might make him feel worse. The rest of the guests seem distracted with their own conversations, but she tries to speak softly anyway.

“Raleigh, are you alright?”

He’s shivering so much she almost doesn’t notice when he shakes his head. She’s worried about touching him, but she might have to to get him out of the party. Slowly, she reaches forward. “Can I touch you?” she asks and he nods, pushing his chin into his chest, nails digging into his scalp. Gently, she places her hand on his shoulder and leads him toward the kitchen. A couple people glance up as they pass, but their expression imply that they think Raleigh has just had one glass too many.

“Raleigh,” she says, rubbing circles into his back like Luna always does when Mako’s upset. “Raleigh, are you okay?”

“What?” His voice is almost a whisper. His eyes are open but unfocused, glassy. His lips are shining and she’s pretty sure he’s drooling. His breathing is quick and shallow.

“Let’s go outside,” she says and leads him towards the back door. They have to cut through Stacker’s office. She’s only actually been in there a couple times. It’s a little messier than it has been in the past, papers stacked up on the desk to rival Chuck’s office at work. She wonders if it’s strange that she’s not freaking out about what’s happening, but she grew up with Chuck, so it would be stranger, she thinks, if she were to feel overwhelmed. She isn’t totally clear why Raleigh’s having a panic attack right now, but it’s happening so she leads him out onto the deck behind the house.

The cold air hits her like a slap in the face and she can feel goose bumps instantly forming all over her skin. Raleigh inhales deeply, hiccupping a little as he does so, and straightens up beside her, right hand falling to his side. He’s shivering too, but the cold seems to have woken him up a little. He wipes his face on his sleeve and turns towards her, face blotchy and still sort of damp from crying.

“Can we—um—can we go? Um. I—I need to go or—or something... Uh...” His lips are a little swollen and he’s looking at one of the covered deck chairs behind her. “I can’t...”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” she says, pressing her hand to his back. She walks with him, down the steps that lead to the back lawn, around the side and through Herc’s herb garden (she accidentally steps on part of the rosemary and mutters an apology), across the front lawn and to Raleigh’s car, which still looks like a lot of metal held together by prayers. She presses Raleigh’s hand against the cold glass of the passenger side window. He stares at the car, dazed, blinking too much.

“I’m going to go get your coat, alright?”

He nods slowly, breathing uneven.

She rushes through the front door and has to dig through several layers of wool on the coat rack to find Raleigh’s, his wallet and keys tucked inside. She considers getting her own jacket from upstairs, but decides against it. She has her purse and, honestly, she’s mostly worried about being accustomed to the warmth indoors and then having to deal with the shock of the outdoors.

She sees Herc and Stacker in the living room, Herc’s arm thrown around Stacker’s shoulders. She’ll have to text Stacker as soon as possible to let him know what happened. He’ll understand.

Raleigh’s still standing there, hand on his car, when she comes back out. She wraps his coat around his shoulders and unlocks the door.

“I can drive,” he says, reaching for the keys. He’s looking somewhere behind her knees.

She shakes her head. “I’m driving.”

“It’s a stick.”

“I can drive a stick.”

He laughs sadly, sinking down into the passenger’s seat, head bowed. “Of course you can.”

“Buckle up,” she says, closing his door for him and crossing around to the front and surveys the cars parked around. Raleigh’s managed not to get boxed in, but it’s by a narrow margin. She’s going to have to do some tricky maneuvering. She gets into the driver’s seat and chokes.

The car is one of those eighties-style machines which has gathered a curious layer of crust and gunk through the years, but this isn’t actually what makes her cough. The interior reeks of old cigarette smoke, the sort that builds over time, the sort that doesn’t even smell like cigarettes anymore, but doesn’t really smell like anything else. Raleigh finishes buckling himself in, fingers shaking, reaches for the glove compartment and pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

“Do you mind?” he asks, shaking one free of the box and placing it between his lips.

“Nope!” she says, hoping the car won’t become too much of a hot box. She shuts her door and starts the engine. It turns over with a terrible sound that reminds her of broken clocks. Grimacing, she waits for Raleigh to light his cigarette, but he’s fumbling with his lighter, his fingers too cold or still shaking too much from his panic attack. Gently, she takes the lighter from his hands and clicks it open. The small flame dances between them, seeming much brighter in the dark. The warm light seems to lessen the redness of Raleigh’s features, erase some of the blotches around his nose. He leans back into the seat, inhaling sharply like he did on the deck. She puts out the lighter, cranks up the heat and prepares for some complex reversing.

They don’t talk for the first half of an hour or so of the drive. Mako tries to stay focused on the road and on Raleigh’s breathing, which is still shallow and somehow strange. The radio plays between them, stuck on some weird eighties-nineties rock station. Raleigh chain smokes in the passenger’s seat, lighting his second cigarette off the hot ashes of the first and a third off the ashes of the second and so on. He’s cracked his window, at least, and the car is still retaining quite a bit of heat.

But, part of the way through “Man in Motion”, she notices that Raleigh’s started breathing more quickly and so she says the first thing that comes into her head.

“So you smoke a lot.” Her voice sounds strange coming from her own mouth. Raleigh breathes deeply, the kind of shuddering gasp one takes after crying.

“Does it bother you? I can—I can stop, if you need...”

“No!” Raleigh’s passivity is starting to unnerve her. “It’s fine! I was just noticing.”

“Yeah,” he says, his tone sharp enough that she doesn’t know what to say for a moment. It’s that ‘end of conversation’ voice that Stacker gets. It calms her again.

“You’ll kill yourself that way,” she says, but she tries to keep her tone cheerful.

“Shut the fuck up,” Raleigh mutters. Mako raises her eyebrows disapprovingly, but it’s dark enough out that she’s pretty sure Raleigh can’t see. She waits a few minutes to see if he says anything else. When he speaks again, his voice sounds choked, like he’s about to cry. “Can we... Can we pull over? Like—I mean—is there a McDonald’s or something? I just need to get out of this—this fucking car.”

He slams his hand against the glass, cigarette clenched between his teeth. He doesn’t seem dangerous—just a little freaked.

“Yeah,” she says and her tone is a little too stern-sounding, so she tries to soften it a little. “Yeah, there’s one at the next exit, I think.”

“Okay.”

She glances over at him. He’s looking at his hand on the window, his face looking much younger without its usual layer of stubble. The cigarette hanging from his lips makes her think of ‘rebellious’ afternoons in secondary school with ill-gotten alcohol and cheap tobacco.

The yellow ‘M’ of the McDonald’s sign seems to almost glow against the darkness of the sky. The moment the car is in park, Raleigh yanks off his seat belt and open his door. There’s a rush of cold air and he leans his head against his knees, sighing. She looks at him for a few moments, watches as he tosses his cigarette on the tarmac outside without looking up and she stops herself from rubbing his back again.

“We’re going to go in and get some food, okay?” she says and he nods, forehead still pressed against his knees. “Come on.”

She opens her door and gets out. Raleigh follows suit. He wipes his eyes on his shirt sleeve again, as though he thinks she isn’t looking. She smiles at him and stretches out a hand.

“You ready for fine food?” she says. It’s a lame joke, but he takes her hand, his gaze distant.

“Let’s go.”

They’ve got their food and their drinks and have managed to obtain a booth. The place is mostly empty. A family with a couple of tiny kids sits at a table across the room, all looking exhausted, but it’s otherwise deserted. They must have just missed the dinner rush.

Raleigh just stares at the pile of French fries on the table. His eyes are still red and he’s still shaking a lot. Mako eats nervously, completely unsure of what to do at this point. Chuck is usually shouting at her by this point. Or crying. Or telling her his life story (again). But Raleigh is silent and shivering. She’s not sure what to do with that.

“I’m sorry,” he says, staring at the tray.

“Don’t be.” She takes a sip of her coke.

His hair is sticking up strangely and she feels an odd sense of loss, remembering how it looked when he first arrived at the house. Now he looks like a kid that’s just gotten in a fight, his eyes red and his coat slung over his shoulders. Awkwardly, he reaches forward and takes a fry. He dips it slowly in the ketchup and brings it to his mouth, brows creased as though he’s confused.

“I’m left-handed,” he says, after he swallows. “And then I got shot.”

“That’s terrible.” She’s pretty sure there are better things she could’ve said here, but Raleigh just nods.

“Yeah.”

She takes another fry. “Do you still hold scissors upside down? Chuck’s a leftie. He does that.”

Raleigh finally looks at her face, smiling a little with the bewildered expression people get when they step out of a dark room into the sunshine. “Every fucking time.”

She laughs. “That would suck.”

He nods, still looking firmly at her face, like she’s an anchor or something. His eyes are becoming teary again, his cheeks reddening. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s hard to deal with things sometimes.”

“I miss the army.”

She nods. Raleigh seems to be looking past her, like he’s seeing something right behind her head.

“I lost Yancy, my brother,” he says, his voice unwavering, “just after I got shot. He ran over to see if I was okay and then he just...” He blinks and his gaze is on her face again. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

He takes a deep breath and leans back in the booth. “My dad left us—me, Yancy and our little sister—right after my mom died.”

“I’m so sorry that happened.”

He shakes his head. “And when I was sixteen we moved to Ohio to live with some cousins and then I graduated high school and joined the army.” He shrugs and takes some fries. “And then I got shot during a patrol and was sent home.”

“How did your sister deal with you being overseas?”

She asks the question just out of curiosity, but Raleigh seems pleased that she asks it, like he’s glad she’s thinking of his sister. “She sent me a lot of emails. And I wrote really short replies.”

“How old was your brother when he died?”

Raleigh hesitates. “Thirty-one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

They talk like that until it’s almost midnight and the staff are glaring at them. Raleigh breathes more, tells her strange tidbits about his life: he can’t sleep most nights, he first saw Batman Returns when he was six and it’s been his favorite film ever since, his brother once slept with a girl he liked and they had a fist fight that culminated in Yancy breaking Raleigh’s nose.

Eventually, they awkwardly get to their feet and throw out their trash. Raleigh takes off his coat before they reach the door and places it around her shoulders. He then takes her hand once they’re out in the cold.

“Should we, um... Should we go back to the lieutenant’s and get your car?”

It takes her a moment before she realizes he means Herc. “No, I’ll ask Chuck to drive me down tomorrow and get it.”

“Right.” Raleigh wilts a little at this, his grip on her hand loosening. But then he smiles. “Do you want me to drive the rest of the way? Then I can I drop you off at your house.”

“That’ll be good.”

He drives shocking well, frequently steering with his knees to shift gears. It’s pretty fun. He turns up the radio too loud and drives too fast. He keeps singing along with the music, refusing to stop screaming the lyrics until she sings too. He interrupts this once when he turns to her, seemingly recovered from before, and says:

“Thank you for getting me out of that party.” His eyes are bright, his jaw set. He doesn’t look as childlike as before.  “I really enjoyed this evening. All of it.”

She smiles and something warm seems to settle in her stomach. “It’s no problem.”

They don’t speak the rest of the drive back into Philadelphia, but he reaches towards her on occasion—small, unfinished motions. She smiles and wraps his coat more tightly around her shoulders.

It’s a good evening.