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There was a sense of anticipation in the air that Alex doesn't like one damned bit. It feels too familiar to her, too similar to the way that the world felt after Coralee and Warren, after they'd learned about the Axis Mundae. It had been days since she'd seen Strand, it feels like and Alex missed him. After their fight when she'd gotten back from Turkey, things had been better. Or at least they'd seem better to Alex once he'd gotten his anger out of his system, once he'd used Coralee's name and the nature of his relationship with her as a blunt weapon that was swung whenever the two of them had become too close.
But the thing of it was that Alex hadn't done anything this time. There'd been no fights, nothing that had caused him to pick up his toys and stomp off home as he had so many times before. There was nothing wrong other than the fact that Richard was gone. Her calls were sent to voicemail, her texts and emails went unanswered and even calling Ruby wasn't helpful in the slightest. Not that it ever really was when Alex needed to deal with his broad punk wall of an assistant.
So, she just tried to continue on as normal, as if he was just taking a break outside the room. Throwing herself into her work is second nature for Alex, but Nic had decreed that the studio needed to be empty by ten in order for Alex to get some sleep. It never worked for her of course--Alex just took the work home and spread it on her coffee table. A fresh brewed cup of coffee from her french press had been made and Alex was still sitting on the floor with her back to her couch as she went over everything that she had with a pen in her hand and a heavily filled notebook at her side.
Granted, due to the fact that she was home, Alex was wearing comfortable pajamas: an old and well-loved pnws shirt that had been hers since she’d been an intern (complete with a hole on the collar) and a pair of old boxer shorts that had never belonged to anyone but her—they fit her too well for that. With the heavy makeup that Alex normally wore to hide the dark circle under her eyes, they’re prominent and so is the smattering of freckles across her face. Her hair is still damp from the shower, and tied up into a messy bun at the base of her neck. With Nic gone in Russia and all of her friends having been pushed away due to work, Alex wasn’t expecting company. She definitely wasn’t expecting Richard considering she always went to his father’s house or came to the studio. Oh, she knows he knows where she lives (Alex has pointed out her apartment building more than once) but him coming to her seems entirely laughable at this point.
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Well, he's doing as best he can, and he knows he is mostly because he has spent half an hour sitting at the nearest parking lot away from everything trying to reach...what?
An understanding? For the door? Coralee had seemed terrified of him (Good) but if she was so insistent on using Alex, if Warren was, if they all were...
He has always seen the shadows. He prides himself on his reason being so succinct, so apt, so driven that they could be anything. They didn't have to be ghosts. Then Charlie comes in, claiming he hurt her by trying to instill the same thing in her and had that been so wrong?
The hurt coming from his father. Had he really hurt Charlie that much? That he had missed everything she was? and Coralee knew and she had tried to have a child with him. He had tried to have a child with her and it had just never...never taken. The thought filled him with hurt and revulsion because...
Because to have someone you love at one point call you a pervert when she claimed to love him...
His licks his lips, staring up at Alex's apartment.
He has never been here before. But this might be important. There was a good chance if he took the conference in Geneva he would not come back. Maybe. It was the one thing he couldn't wholly sense. Sitting in front of her stoop he opened his mind to the sounds of the world around him.
It's not fucking pasta Marla!?
God I can't believe I'm-
Mommy?
Cheating on him with Paul-
Fucking 4-2 why do they always let me down I should give up-
It's ramen. It's ramen you stupid idiot-
On sports.
It's so subtle and he wonders if it was bad for Charlie. That he wasn't there for her. He could do right by all of them. Just by giving in...
After all what was there to truly be afraid of?
He exhaled and looked to his passenger seat. The scotch was cheap, nasty stuff that hit him harder. Which was good. Wiping a hand over his face he belched before staggering out of the car up to Alex's apartment.
The world spins and he can still hear whispers - it's like talking now and he shoves it out of his mind because it's not important. Accepting himself is not important the only thing that matters is...accepting Tiamat and using Tiamat against his enemies. Warren. This all came back to Warren.
A faint salt smell ran across his nose and he exhaled, breathing it in. I have waited for you. I have waited for you for so long...Richard...
His stomach rolls and he barely keeps the whiskey down before composing himself. Adjusting his tie, wiping his face. He had an iron will, an iron sense of control and absolute mastery over himself. He would master all of this. The salt breeze smell got stronger and he felt clearer headed. The only hint of anything when he knocks at the door was a slight redness to the eyes.
He knocks.
"...Hello Alex."
He looks impeccable, but his very expensive cologne barely covers up the smell of liquor.
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While Alex Reagan can be an idiot in some ways (most ways really. And often too) there are some things that even she knows not to do. Like to open your door to someone at midnight when you’re not expecting anyone. So, she checked the peephole and just gasped to see the tall man standing on the other side of the door. Undoing the multiple deadbolts on the door, and then releasing the chain lock, Alex just threw open the door to stare at him. Her look is a mixture of relief (he’s here finally, she thinks. He’s okay) and anger (where the hell has he been for the last few days? Why did he ignore me this time? What did I do?). She can see that he looks okay of course (looks good honestly) but the smell of the cheap liquor wafts towards her below his normal pristine scent and Alex’s nose just wrinkles upwards.
She’s a little more than half-tempted to slam the door in his face, but Alex knows that Richard doesn’t come to her, and he never comes to her drink no matter how normally he’s looking. So Alex just makes a decision without saying anything at first, and steps back to let him into her apartment.
The apartment is filled with bookshelves on the wall, even if most of them have been gathering dust for a while. Awards that she’d received for her reporting are placed here and there on them, making up for most of the negative space on the shelves. They’re signs of happier times, even if she they too collect dust. Photos are arranged around the room—people she loves and doesn’t get to see very often. Nic, the interns when she was one, Alex with friends and at parties. Alex with her parents dressed for graduation. All of them are a sign of older and better times, even if there is a photo of her and Strand that one of the interns had taken when the two of them were working. The frame was cheaper than the others, not because she valued it less but because it had been a gift from one of them during the last Holiday party.
Windows make up another wall, and her curtains are mostly drawn to the city and it’s street lamps outside. As one would expect from Alex, the blue couch is covered in mix and match pillows and comfortable as hell despite of it's age. But it’s the tables that tell the true story of where Alex’s brain is these days: covered in files and folders thick with post it notes and her cramped writing. They’re spread all over the coffee table where her coffee sits and Alex just gestures to the couch or to the old leather recliner covered with a blue throw blanket before she announces over her shoulder. “I think you need some coffee, Richard.” Oh, Alex knows that he prefers tea (and how he takes each of the different varieties of it) but this is definitely a coffee situation. The floor plan is open and the tiny kitchen lays beyond her living room. Freshly brewed coffee already fills the air, mixed with the scent of the calming candle that Alex had lit when she’d gotten home—it’s a contrast of lavender for sleeping of course but what is Alex but contrasts.
She doesn’t make it three steps and only until the door is shut behind him before Alex just asks, unable to keep the hurt anger from her tone: “where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling and went to your father’s house and everything!”
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His hair is slightly askew up close as he breathes. Honestly. How to explain. Watching her move, slow and soft his chest hurts. But she comes in and declares that she has a monopoly on his time like that.
"I had to attend to some things." His voice was stiff, "I have academic commitments. You don't have a monopoly on my time Alex don't assume that you can control me." There's an edge to his voice but he deflates.
"I'm sorry. I haven't...I had something I had to take care of. It was about...About Charlie and Coralee." he growls and his voice softens, "It was wrong of me not to tell you." Especially you.
He has promised he will never lie to her again and putting his hands around his neck, not looking at her, he breathes, "But. I have not been...honest with you. And I need to tell you that I'm leaving the country for a speaking engagement in Geneva."
Can lies be comforting? This one is. It makes him almost feel like his old self, drawing up to look at her,"...There are things we should talk about. And it might be the wrong time to talk but we need to."
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Richard Strand loves his daughter, that was never in any doubt.
But the hurt doesn't change, and Alex's expressions and voice have always been able to read with things like that--no one requires an outside ability to do so. Thoughts of making his tea are abandoned, and Alex just instinctively takes steps closer to him. Her feet stop when they're close enough to touch if Alex extended her shorter arms, but she doesn't touch him. Instead, Alex just crosses her arms against her chest like a shield as she looks up at him with a shake of her head. "I don't understand..." The words are just soft, that hurt lacing and weaving through each of the sounds that form them. "Richard, it sounds like you're trying to, or are about to say goodbye."
Which he can't be, because the two of them are supposed to be at the center of this together! Alex's thoughts are a swirling mess of emotion. He can't be leaving me. But I... This can't be happening. Not again. But there's also a hurt resignation involved with it, something that is a slow press against an already bruised heart. But at least he's saying goodbye this time, I suppose. At least this way I don't have to tell him that I love him. I don't want to be Coralee and trap him here because I love him. I never want to do that.
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"I'm-"
He swallows, "I'm going to Geneva."
He has to make a decision. And, struggling to get it out, he swallows, "It's for a conference sponsored by the Deva corporation."
He's not stupid. He knows it's to his death, his possession. It's to something. Just holding onto it, he can't hurt her like this, now that she knows she loves him? He folds his hands on the table.
He wishes Charlie were here. He's never been good with his emotions. For someone so in touch with the emotions of others by default...
He stares at his hands clearly struggling with something.
"...It...It's not like it's forever. I'll come back." His laugh is a little weak, that same familiar little chuckle, "...I just. I have this tendency to disappear."
And he sits. Staring at her, waiting for her response as quietly as he can.
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“What? You’re going to be walking into a Davea Corp trap! A Warren trap!” Richard doesn’t need to say that he’s not coming back. He can say that he is but Alex isn’t an idiot. All of this had been leading somewhere and there are definitely days where Thomas Warren seems less like the attractive man who had crashed her coffee date and more like a spider sitting in the centre of a web that he’s been luring the both of them into for a long time. The hurt refuses to ceed to anger in her and she just shakes her head. Richard mentioned Coralee and Charlie, so Alex just invokes the woman’s name again, as much as it tastes like salt and bitterness on her tongue.
“Coralee told you to stay away from Warren and you did it anyway. We did it anyway. Are you forgetting that he threatened me just a few days ago, Richard. I don’t think that doing anything that he wants is a good idea.” Which is an understatement honestly. Alex Reagan may only have a single cell of self-preservation but right now it’s screaming at her to not go and to not let him go either. This is a trap and it seems like everyone knows it.
Alex is certain that he knows it. The certainty is clear and calm in the front of her brain, weighing heavily against it but more heavily against the delicate places of her heart.
“Richard.” Alex just says it softly, in a low and heavy tone. She doesn’t know what she wants to say after it other than just begging him not to go. Other than begging him to take her with her so he doesn’t need to walk into the spider’s parlor alone. Other than begging him not to lie to her about his coming back this time when it sure doesn’t feel like he’s going to and he knows it.
Alex Reagan isn’t psychic by any stretch of the imagination. That’s not who she is and that’s probably for the best considering how she already is. But what she does have is gut instincts and they rarely lead her wrong. Gut instincts were what led her to making those eleven calls, to the tapes being connected, to Coralee being alive, to Keith Dabbic being in danger and to the fact that what was happening to the world was real and it was definitely her fault. Nic and Strand himself had told Alex that it wasn’t a spy thriller right up until the moment it was complete with a tire-screeching van and an operative not dead wife telling them to come with them if they wanted to live.
Her gut is telling her that if he leaves right now then he’s not coming back. Alex doesn’t want it to be right (she’s praying to something that she doesn’t even believe in that it’s wrong) but she knows it is.
So she just whispers softly: “please don’t. “
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Alex wasn't destiny. Alex was a force of nature. He doesn't stand. Instead he stares at her like a lost animal looking for it's home before his features grow firm.
"I don't have a choice in this Alex." They will hurt you if I don't. and not just Warren anymore.
He draws in a slow calming breath, "I'm not going in unprepared Alex. New information has come to light that would turn the scenario to my advantage."
He's on firmer ground here and indeed, intrigued to experience it. Scientifically, strategically. You could always use help with it.
"...When have I ever, been unprepared for a situation? Everything will be fine." He doesn't believe that entirely but maybe he could project it somehow, "Everything will be fine, and you could...you could come with me."
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Especially considering he doesn't have a choice. If there's one thing that's become more and more apparent to Alex over the course of their three years working together, it's that whatever 'choices' Richard has had, for the most part they've only been the illusion of choice. Corlaee, his skepticism, whatever abilities he may have had as a child, those had never been choices that he'd made. More than that, Alex knows that she, herself, has taken his choices away. Finding Coralee, revealing the past he'd preferred that would have remained long secret, just shoving herself into his life--Alex had done those things. Out of what had happened in his life, it seemed like only Charlie had been a choice that he'd made, but that relationship too had been tainted and twisted by what Coralee and her actions had caused.
She wants him to have a choice, Alex always does now. There's no doubt that his offering for her to come with him is a choice that he's making for himself. How could she say no? Not that she would have said no even before all of that.
So, Alex just nods quickly. "Of course I'll come, Richard. You and me at the center of this, right?" The smile she gives him isn't quite a normal Alex Reagan one, but she's trying to find the space within herself to make one anyway. For him. So, even knowing that this is a trap that neither of them is probably going to come back from, Alex just sits down next to him, close enough to touch him and she asks softly: "what's this new information that has so convinced you that you need to go?" There, that was a little bit easier--it was less about their feelings (well, Alex's feelings and her love for him) and was more like their normal professional dynamic.
Even if it hadn't been professional in a very long time.
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"I know the Deva group set up my speaking engagement. And that Warren will be there." Coralee was like a brick wall and he wondered just how far behind he was, in managing this ability. He deflates a little, "I really hate to be a bother but I really could use that cup of tea Alex. Please."
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Watching Richard deflate is hard, and her concern doesn’t need to be psychic to be felt when she looks at him. Giving his arm a tentative squeeze, Alex just gets up from the couch. “It shouldn’t take long for the water to heat up. I had just made coffee.” In her French press of course because Alex Reagan is a coffee snob always.
But she does have some tea, most of it’s supposed to be to help her sleep but she’s got a little collection. Not as much as the one for him that lives in her desk drawer at work, but enough of one that she’s able to find a box of English breakfast. Putting the tea into a mug that she’d not been allowed to bring to work because it says ‘fuck you before my coffee’ and has a picture of a ghost on it. It had been a birthday present from Amalia and is Alex’s second favorite mug. Her first favorite is the size of a soup can and holds basically three cups. It’s the one that’s already on the table.
Alex’s concern for him is a running theme as she goes about making his tea the way that he likes it and she knows that he hasn’t eaten because he doesn’t when he’s stressed out. So after a minute she grabs one of the brownies from her fridge (there’s not much in there honestly: milk, juice, wine, take out containers and mustard. Alex doesn’t cook) and adds that to the top of the mug of tea still within its plastic container.
That done, Alex just hands it to him and sits down next to him again, close enough that their knees almost brush.
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Just say it.
He swallows. He's told her everything. Maybe it was time for no secrets. It really was.
"Coralee reached out to contact me. To warn me about Warren and she confirmed...something that I've been thinking of since you and I started working together.
Since you found out about my sister." He breathes, "Something I began to suspect that she confirmed about the pseudoscientific bullshit my father put me through as a child."
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Alex has never wanted to remind anyone that they were not alone as much as she wanted to do so to Richard Strand. But professionalism, her journalism and Strand himself only made it so that this was allowed. And even then, it had been new before he'd gone away for the first time and only since the night that Coralee had kidnapped them in order to save them from Warren.
It's on the tip of her tongue to say that Cheryl had been the one to reach out to Alex, that she'd been the one who was insistent upon being on the podcast. But she doesn't, not yet anyway. Instead Alex just listens with a frown, fighting the urge to automatically be angry at Coralee. Its not a new one: it's been there for two years.
Alex Reagan is normally a woman of many questions upon questions, but right now she settles for one: "What is it?"
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How he knew Braun was a fraud.
"When I tried to use the abilities that I used to help me find Bobby Mames...it wasn't that I couldn't use them. It was that she blocked me. Because she has the same abilities that I do. That Charlie does."
He stares at Alex, unflinching, uncompromising, before taking a long sip of the tea and peeling off a corner of the brownie.
"Because she's psychic and Charlie is because I also have a latent psychic ability."
That he knew nothing about. But he was always am an who could fake it til he made it. Who could rely on reason and facts. This was now just a part of him. Accept it and move on. A biological action. No less natural then breathing.
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Alex Reagan makes it to three hours and twenty minutes before she wakes up cuddled against him, laying with her cheek against his chest. It's a second nature almost for her to look up to him, to look at him while he's asleep and see how he appears there. But what she sees makes her gasp in the first golden lights of dawn. Alex knows how people look when they're asleep and she definitely knows that people's eyes don't go filmy and white unless they're dead. Or bilocating. He has to be bilocating because Alex could feel the way that his chest rose and feel against her, and she had been listening to the sound of his heartbeat below her ear as she slowly stirred into being awake.
Sitting up onto her knees, Alex just reaches out with one hand and puts her hand on his cheek. There's an anxious firmness in her voice when she speaks:]
Richard. Richard. Come back. I need you to come back.
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Stirring, he stares up at her. His heart beats a little faster before he cups her cheek with his hand and looks panicked.]
...Did you sleep?
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Those women at Sephora had been godsends really, but no one can wear makeup constantly.
Alex can't keep the worry out of her voice when she answers him but adds a question of her own.]
I slept some. Did you sleep at all? Where were you just now.
[It's very clear that she knows that he was somewhere, and that it wasn't just here in bed with her. She wishes she knew how to contact Simon, or that there was some sort of bilocation guide that they had to help Richard with this. Especially if he wasn't doing intentionally. She hopes that he wasn't.]
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Chicago.
My house. I was there Alex. I couldn't interact with objects but I was still there and I...
[He laughs weakly. An actual laugh.]
I've spent my whole life looking for something like this. Some kind of...I don't know...I don't know how to describe it.
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She's quiet for a moment, considering what he'd said because honestly there's one thing that it makes clear to her:]
Maybe you were always looking for it because it was always supposed to be there. It was something that your father cut off. It's kind of like having a new sense or muscle it sounds like. So it kind of is something that you need to flex or get used to maybe?
[A pause and she gives him a smile.]
Are you feeling okay though?
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[He moves to get up and swoons.] Okay maybe not. I'm dizzy. I-
[I wanted to do it. But he doesn't say that, instead he nestles down in her blankets before lying back on the pillow and looking up at her.]
...You are gorgeous in the morning.
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[Alex starts to get up when he does, shoving the blankets down to her knees and she considers for a moment. Her hand automatically reaches for his cheek but her own colors when he says that she’s gorgeous.
Instantly one hand goes to the hair that she knows is a mess. And she worries for her dark circles but she leans over and kisses him gently because she can.]
Thank you. Good morning. Do you need water or Advil or anything?
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[He wants to get up but his head hurts] It feels like my brain took a walk out of my skull.
[Pushing himself to his feet, he stares at his pajama pants.] I should get up and make coffee. Unless you can make coffee.
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The world isn't ending. Not yet anyway.
But Alex just slides from her side of the bed and gives his hand a squeeze, before sliding her fingers between his.]
Do you want to come into the kitchen with me while I do it? Give the water and advil a chance to work on your head before the caffeine gets going on it. And I mean, you kind of did have your brain take a walk outside of your skull, you know. Considering...
[Chicago.]
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Did I snore? I used to snore, I've - It's been awhile since I've asked anyone.
[No. No mumbling, no snoring. Just being dead to the world. He exhales and rubs at his chest before twining his hand back towards hers.]
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[A little laugh that's only a bit teasing when she adds:]
Wanted to make sure that I could.
[But she gives his hand a squeeze as she leads him into the kitchen, which is bright despite it's smallness, and there are two stools set under a bar-like counter rather than a table in them.]
Coffee.
[The word comes like how a zombie would demand brains, and she lets go of his hand to fill up her electric kettle from the filtered water at the tap.]
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[He exhales, studying her making coffee. Watching the water run it feels like everything is heightened, everything is aching but he still sounds excited. An exhausted type of excitement.]
It feels...like floating. Like when you're in an elevator and your stomach drops or rises depending on the feeling but you're there. You are actually in two places at once. I have to wonder if there's a reason for it. Everything shifts and moves and it's like you're...aware of the nebulous connections between us and the world around us.
It's terrifying. It's beautiful and terrifying. But if I can understand it...
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