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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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She's so assured. She sounds so damn sure but she was also so young and...and he brushed that aside. Staring at her. What it says to him is accept yourself. If he wants to stop Warren?

"...Can I try something? With you? Just an experiment." He pauses, "I want you to think. Of a place we can go. Just. Stay with me and think of that place and I'm going to...find out what it is."

This could go a lot more places, he realizes, but for now.

"Whatever this is, if we're going up against warren I need to know how to use it."

"Yeah, sure. Of course. I trust you." He'd asked for her trust once not that long ago, and Alex had said that it wasn't an issue because it wasn't. When she'd talked about her show she hadn't said that she didn't, because she'd needed to have some level of objectivity, but she'd trusted him since he'd gotten back from seeing Charlie. She'd trusted him even before then, mostly, but the break had been hard on her.

So, Alex just takes a deep breath, and she clears her mind of other things. (Well for the most part anyway, Alex's brain is never very good about the 'one thought' sort of deal. Mindfulness had always been the most impossible therapy skill to learn.) One thing she knows is that she doesn't want it to be a place where anything from the Tapes had run through. That's not what this is about. Instead, she pictures a trip she'd taken when she was in college and had spent time at a small bed and breakfast in the Irish country side. It was a tiny hamlet, off the beaten path because when had Alex ever really done the beaten path.

It's a town by the sea, and there's a large back garden at the place with a rickety wooden swing on it. Alex just focuses on that swing and the scent of heather and lavender, and the sound of the winds in tall grasses outside of the stone fence.

This is so stupid.

It's not supposed to work. None of this should work. This is ridiculous and pointless. Richard Strand should not be doing this, he should not be trying this...

But it comes, a hazy image of a swing and a smell of warmth and -

"Heather and Lavender? And..." He tilts his head, "A creaking - a chair? Or a swing. A swing and...stones"

That took effort but he breathes, and he knows he got it right. But.

Alex just grins at him with a nod that is nothing if it's not encouraging really. "Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. Can you tell me any more details about the place?" If he can tell that she loves him, after all and knows that she was thinking about it then he can do this, even if he needs a bit of practice. Alex wants him to have that practice, so in her mind she also focuses on details.

The feel of the cobblestones beneath bare feet as you sit on the swing. The way that it has the feel that old wooden swings always do that it might drop you, so there's danger mixed in with the excitement of each upward and downward movement as the tree that's older than your home country creaks and groans in protest of your weight. The tension of the old rope beneath your fists that you know is definitely older than you are and was woven together by hand rather than by machine.

A cup of Irish Breakfast sits on the little table next to the swing, it's color a murky gray-brown from the amount of sugar that you'd shoved into it. A scone with a bite out of it, light and fluffy like you've never had sits on a plate next to crumbs of the first one. Clotted cream, sweet and rich gives the scone a murky sort of glaze but the richness of it settles on your tongue, an indulgence like you've never had and you're not sure if you're ever going to be able to find anything like it again.

This is for her. For Charlie. Even for Coralee. He has never wanted this. Never in a million years. It's just a different way of looking at the world. You are still human.

And she is not beside him anymore.

Instead he is sitting there and not sitting there. He walks, in shoes, feeling the stones beneath his shoes, smelling the air and the grass, tasting the breakfast. He kneels beside it, actually tasting it. It's heady, he can feel the wind on his face, see it, smell the salt and the flowers and even feel like he's there...

Outwardly he is sitting very still before rolling slightly to his side. His eyes stay closed before they snap open - filmy and white.

He isn't so much pushed back as he is pulled. and he gasps - stomach rolling. The white film around his eyes is gone as he staggers to his feet.

"Move." When you are out of practice these things are hard to do. It's like lifting hundreds of pounds after years of languishing. Bolting to her bathroom he pukes up the sushi and the scotch and heaves until his stomach is empty lying there digesting what he had just done.

He had biolocated.

He had been in two places at once.

Curling back away from the toilet he rolls his head back, wrapping his arms around himself as he'd done as a child, unaware of anything else in the room.

But the taste of coffee stays on his tongue and the smell of grass lingers in his nose.

To say that Alex was surprised by the white film in his eyes is an understatement, and Alex just gasped when she saw it. She can't help it. For all of her believing in Simon and how he could bilocate, she'd never actually seen him doing it. She'd just heard the effects of it. But something inside of her knows that Richard did it now, and she moves out of the way when he runs to her bathroom.

As the veteran PNWS mama bear caretaker when people at office parties (and the PNWS office parties where interns are invited are a legend onto themselves) Alex has helped a lot of interns when they'd been sick. While he throws up, Alex just uses the time to grab a clean washcloth and went it with cool water, wringing it out so that she can place it on the back of his neck when he's wrapping his arms around himself. Alex also filled a cup with water, but she doesn't give it to him yet. Instead she knows that he needs a different form of comfort.

So Alex goes down onto her knees next to him and just wraps herself around him as much as she can, pulling him close to her chest so that she can stroke his head carefully. "It's alright, Richard. You're here with me. You're here with me and I've got you. You're here and you're safe and I've got you and I'm not letting go." There's comfort and reassurance in her voice, as well as the trademark Alex Reagan fierceness as well. She can't help it, if need be she'd fight Warren and anyone else for him.

Including the Goddess that Alex doesn't know is slowly slipping her claws into him.

Here is what comes of creaking open doors. Of peering through thresholds. Of crawling into places you should not go. You have a hard time closing them again. Richard feels her arms around him and he holds her as tightly as he can. Squeezing her before letting go and staring at the wall. It was like pushing open a locked door, like shoving his shoulder against it, but now that it's there...

I should look for Charlie and Coralee it's a whisper through his mind that he ignores. He clings to Alex, leaning against her shivering visibly.

Do it

That same echoing female voice. His eyes widen and he stares at nothing before shaking it off.

Hello Richard. I've been waiting for you for a very, very long time.

The air drops several degrees around him and he stares at nothing - before wrapping a protective arm over Alex. It's draped across her and he laughs weakly. A genuine laugh.

"...So you've been to Ireland too?"

The laugh lowers some of Alex's anxiety about what's going on, but it can't lower it entirely, not with Richard clinging to her so tightly for a moment and then just staring at the wall. She'd followed his gaze to it, but she didn't see anything. She can stare at it all she wants to, but it's just the pale green of her bathroom wall to her.

A shiver moves through her that Alex can't help, and she doesn't understand why the room has gotten so cold. It's not like she has a window in the bathroom to let a draft in or something like that. It's climate controlled and after a minute Alex can feel the heat kick on in response to the change in the temperature. Her frown sticks, because Alex can't help it, and for all that he says that the connections that she sees aren't there, they both know that they normally are. Alex is making such a connection now, and she doesn't like it, but it's definitely connected to the way that he stared at nothing and she knows it in her gut.

"I traveled a lot of places when I was younger. I actually thought about being a travel writer for a little while." It's a reflex to answer the question as she keeps her arms around him.

But Alex wouldn't be Alex if she didn't ask the tough questions: "what just happened Richard? Just now, after you were sick. I know something did. The room got colder."

"Nothing."

She sits at the sea door and the Tall Pauls stand around her. Her legions, and he is there and Alex is at his side and why...Why...

When he looks at her he holds her tightly, "...Trust me. I have no idea. Jesus let's get out of here and get a blanket."

Moving away from the bathroom is better, and he feels warmer, but he is also eager to open the door. To bridge new scientific discoveries.

"I think if I practice the...sickness will get better. I don't like throwing up."

“I know. Food poisoning. I remember.” Alex gives him a quick smile, but the concern about what just happened doesn’t go away. When she’s helping him up, Alex can’t help but to look to the wall once more. Even if she would deny it now, Alex wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow there was some sort of smudgy smear that Richard would deny was sacred geometry or demon related. Maybe. Maybe not anymore. But she still wouldn’t be surprised all the same.

“Do you think you can stomach some water? Or do you want to brush your teeth? I always keep extra toothbrushes around. Something my mom always taught me to do just in case someone unexpectedly dropped by.” Like Amalia she thinks quickly before she pushes her thought aside.

Given how he’d responded when he kissed her, Alex goes on to suggest: “there’s a good blanket on the couch actually.”

"Toothbrush would be great." Don't leave "I'll brush that and come out and sit with you." Don't leave. Please don't leave. "...And then ...water?"

The moment she leaves him alone with a toothbrush he'll get to it, feeling warm and fuzzy - right until he stares into the mirror and sees himself smirking back at him.

It's him down to a tee - the same clothes, his body, but he looks colder, harder, meaner, and his eyes are a deep demonic black.

You opened the door Richard. The other him smirks, I have been waiting forever for you to grow a sack and open that fucking door. Coralee, all of us have been pushing through for awhile now. Tiamat awaits. Your dad couldn't protect you forever.

"Who...Who-"

Who am I? You. Or who you're supposed to be. She's cute. Can't wait to see what we do with her. What you do with her.

"Stop it."

Coralee was right. She's a lure. Every time you think about her you poison her chances at living.

"Stop it."

...How do you want to kill her?

He doesn't break the class. That would be cliche. He does shuffle out of the door to stare at Alex with a haunted look on his face before moving to the couch, grabbing what he hopes is a blanket, and wrapping it around his shoulders.

"...Recovery is going to take a bit. Sorry to startle you. It just...goes to show I need more practice."

Practice would be good. Lots of practice. Pull the door open wider.

Alex is worried. She's worried and it's etched in every bit of her when they're apart. It's there in the way that she paces her living room rug, the way that she chews on her thumbnail, the way that she keeps throwing glances towards the closed door and then to him when he comes out with a haunted look on her face.

Dropping her hand when he settles back onto the couch, Alex just grabs the blanket from the chair and comes over and sits next to him. She tucks herself into the crook of his arm once more, leaning against his chest as Alex just spreads the warmth of the blanket across them both. "Hey. It's okay. Recovery can take as long as it needs to alright?" Alex means it, even if she does have questions (and of course she has questions) about what happens to be going on with him right now. Why he looks so close as to how he did the night he'd seen Coralee.

"Do you..." She fumbles. Pauses. Starts and stops. That too feels familiar to Alex and like that night between them when he was so honest with her. "Do you want to tell me about it, Richard?" There. Better than her just coming out and straight up asking him.

"About biolcation? It was incredible. It was like - Like - Like Alice in the looking glass. Like that movie. The one about the computer. The Matrix? The matrix. It was like being inside reality and time and space and...When I feel better I should go again. And write it down and do...do experiments because...oh Alex.

If I could? I would have been able to reach out to Charlie. She's in Italy. I would have been here and in Italy. And to think I hesitated. I was so afraid..."

He moves forward, cupping her face, his hands are like ice and he pulls back aware of how cold he is.

"...Could you hold me. Just - just for now. Please."

If there's one thing that Alex knows about him, it's how Richard can go down the rabbit hole of things. He gets excited on a new topic and throws himself into it just like Alex herself does. It's one of the things that they have in common really. But now it seems worrisome, and not just because the temperature in her house is colder than it should be. And not just because his hands on her face are like ice.

Wordlessly, Alex just tugs him forward so that she can wrap her arms around him below the blanket on his shoulders. It's funny how quickly she'd gone from not touching him being the norm to holding onto him being it. She just rests her cheek against his neck, trying to offer him whatever warmth she has within her, as well as the blanket that she'd drawn over them before. "I've got you, Richard." She knows that she said it in the bathroom before, but it seems like he needs it now.

Seems like he needs an anchor now when normally she was the one who does. "I'm here for whatever you need okay? We'll figure this all out together."

"I need to practice." He doesn't pull away, "I can beat this. It's just. I am not going. Panic or get in over my head but you'll help me and I will...I will think about it tomorrow."

He swallows, "My flight leaves in 3 days. Can I stay here?"

It's out of character but the thought of going home makes him feel sick, He swallows, "...I'll just go to Target tomorrow. I don't want to go back to his house."

"Our flight leaves in three days," Alex can't help but to correct him automatically. "I mean if you're still asking me to go along with you." Her tone is clearly both assuming that he is and hoping that he is which is a very Alex Reagan thing to do honestly. She'd already said that she'd go with him when he'd asked so Alex is just taking it on faith that he still wants that. Somewhere.

But the question he'd asked her is easier than one might have expected it to be for her to answer. Or maybe not, it is Alex. "Of course you can stay here, Richard." Because if he needs her, Alex is there for him. Especially now. But she does add, because she wants him to not worry about it. "You can stay in the guestroom," like Amalia did, even if Alex adds. "If that's what would make you more comfortable." But from her tone, it's clear that's not where Alex thinks that he wants to stay.

"If you want, I can run to your father's house and get your things. You're going to need your passport if nothing else." And she knows that he'd be more comfortable in his clothing than in the things that one would be able to buy at Target.

"I'll go with you."

He stares at her and fights down the eager urge to go for it. To just reach into her mind, or perhaps into another mind on the way there. Being near Alex helps and he isn't ready to let go of that. Rising, he licks his lips, "I...I don't want to be alone."

I want to get out there. Fuck being alone I could go with her spiritually

He starts to rise, businesslike, "...I can pack quick. I promise."

“Hey. Wait.” Alex just reaches up and tugs him back down to the couch. “It’s like one am. We don’t need to go now. We can do it tomorrow in the light of day, okay?” Alex definitely finds Howard’s house to be easier in the light of day and she’s not the one that it chooses to haunt. Well, unless one counted the tapes that they’d watched on his couch together.

“We probably shouldn’t be driving tonight anyway.” It was a practical solution really. They’d both been drinking, it’s late and he’d just been sick and was recovering from bilocating. Getting into a car for the twenty minute drive to Howard’s house sounds like a bad idea. And when something sounds like a bad idea to Alex Reagan it actually would probably be a terrible idea to anyone with a shred of self preservation.

“We’ll make do for tonight, okay? I’m sure I’ve got something that you’d be comfortable in for sleeping.”

He's torn. On the one hand he is a bit vain and he - now that the prospect of having his things is here wants them, but on the other Alex is here and she looks like a buoy out at sea for a drowning man.

Nodding mutely he drops his jacket, slumping, as he nods slowly, "...Fingers crossed it's something cute."

He laughs weakly because also there is the other thing. The much darker thing.

I want out. I want to explore. He stares at a dark corner for a fleeting moment before he nods mutely at her, "...Let's do that."

Watching him stare at a dark corner, Alex just frowns again, she can't help it. It's scary the way that he keeps doing that. Anxiously, Alex just stares at the corner as well, peering into the shadows and more than half-expecting there to be something tall and dark lurking in them. But there's nothing that she can see and over the last two years Alex has gotten well acquainted with all of the shadows on her walls in all of their different positions at all hours of the night. There's nothing there that's not normal.

She doesn't want to think about the fact that the normal might actually be terrifying.

Honestly, she doesn't want to think at all anymore. Alex knows that Richard is a thinker and he can become desperately lost in his thoughts at the best of times. This isn't the best of times. So Alex doesn't think. They both need not to be thinking. So instead, she just kisses him good and hard and demandingly, her hands wrapping around his neck as she does it. There's something urgent in that kiss: stay with me.

Oh. Oh.

It's real and warm and it sounds cheesy but if he kisses her maybe it can chase away the darkness and the shadows. She is so warm, this incredible dedicated spunky reporter. This woman who holds him.

He holds her against him, burying himself in her warmth, swimming in it, leaving the slightest little nips down her neck. Slow drags as he holds her up with one hand and tugs another through her hair. This is theirs.

He doesn't pull back but he does whisper against her lips, "...I could do this. WE could do this. You love me and I love you."

God what would it be like to be in someone's mind during this?

Not worth it. One day.

"...I've wanted to say that for three years." But he's sloppy. His kiss is sloppy.

"We can do this. We will do this. All of it." And Alex doesn't mean sex, that much is very clear in her tone. What she does mean is the all all of it: taking down Warren, stopping him, not ending the world, dealing with the mess of everything that Howard left including his house, all of it. They're going to stop whatever is coming, and they're going to have their happy ending, Alex is determined to have that. And when Alex Reagan is bound and determined to do something, she does it. So the universe and Warren had better watch out.

"I love you," Alex says it against his lips and that sloppy kiss of his because it bears repeating, it always bears repeating. "I love you." She adds again, the smile intrinsic in the words and in the kiss that she's sealing them inside of it. He'd wanted to say that for three years and honestly: "so have I." She can't help but to add it, because it's true and she wants him to hear it and know that this has never only been about a story for her. If it was, she would have walked away from it a long time ago. It's always been about him and who he was and her feelings for him. It's funny in many ways that the biggest story that ever could have happened in her career (if they even get to finish telling it, if anyone will ever believe it) starts out to be a story about the nature of belief and turns out to be a love story.

There's something fitting about that, really, but Alex doesn't want to go into that. Not now.

Without letting go of him, and without stopping kissing him, Alex starts to lead him towards her bedroom. She doesn't know if sex is in the cards right now, and it honestly probably isn't, but it's definitely more comfortable than being in the living room with whatever had been in that corner he'd looked at. And it's more comfortable just in the way of actual comfort as well. As one of the perks of hosting her show, Alex Reagan has a Casper mattress, and it's definitely something that she'd not been lying about being the best mattress that she'd ever owned.

[He wants...What does he want. He wants something. The alcohol and food are hitting him harder then he'd like and he feels achy and tired and sore and exhausted.

His hands struggle with his shirt before he stares at her bed and strips off his shirt. It's one smooth motion. Underneath he's wearing an undershirt and he shivers.

Curling up in her blankets with his pants still off he grimaces.]

...You said you had something I could wear.

I do.

[Alex just says it with a little bit of a grin, because it was honestly something that she'd done before well... Everything was so bad. It was something that had just seemed fun at the time, and something that she'd done in preparation for his birthday this year. Leaving him there for a moment, Alex just goes to her closet and she moves onto her toes to reach the top shelf of it with a stretch of her arm. There's a brown paper bag there, and it comes easy to her when she gives it a tug.

It's more awkward however, to offer it to him. Because well, this was the sort of thing that she'd done before the two of them were anywhere close to confessing their feelings for one another. When Alex had done it, it had felt intimate, maybe a bit too much but she'd rationalized it then as it being something else. After all, the shirt was one of the new designs they'd chosen for the show, just a simple blue with the logo for PNWS over the breast, rather than the more large Tapes logo (though she had considered the fanart one, but she knows he would have hated having his own self on his shirt. Even if it was a stylized version of both of them) and that could be excused as just merch.

The second item in the bag really couldn't be explained or excused so easily. It had been something that Alex had stumbled on entirely by accident when she was shopping for her dad one day. In the men's pajama section at Target around Halloween, Alex had found a pair of very comfortable looking flannel pajama bottoms that were covered in printed versions of ghosts. It was an impulse purchase entirely, and one that she thought might make him laugh if she ever got the guts up to give them to him. She hadn't, and Alex doesn't know if she would have if he didn't need something to wear right now. But what she'd hoping is that he would still be amused by them nonetheless.]

Here. I got these for you for your birthday but...

[Three months, their professional relationship, whatever else could be placed as an excuse here would have been fine with her. Alex doesn't want to explain any further as she just sheepishly waits for him to take the bag with her cheeks flaming.]

[The shirt gets a nod. He knows that he can't stop them from making logos but branding has always rankled him and the Ghosts...When she pulls out the ghost pants he has to laugh. A genuine laugh as he smiles at her, features full of affection.]

...Ruby will be thrilled. She once came to my house to deliver files and claimed that I needed a new pair of pajama. She said mine were "old man pajamas".

[That had been an interesting early morning. Ruby had been nonplussed. Heedless of anyone else in the room, he tugged off his undershirt revealing well taken care of pectorals, abs, and muscles. He keeps fit - pulling on the shirt.

The pants make him pause before he looks at her.]

I'm sorry. I should...

I should change in the bathroom. That was very rude of me.

[He rises, moving toward the rest room.]