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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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“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.]

Hey, it's okay, you don't have to go anywhere. I mean, unless you want too. But I can just turn around, it's not a big deal. I even promise not to look.

[Alex isn't surprised by how well he keeps himself fit--she does know him after all, and she'd seen him when he was wearing flannel shirts over Yale T-shirts. It's not as if she's blind. Besides, when has Alex ever looked at him without some sort of unwavering intensity? Even when her expression is concern or care or anger, that intensity, the learning the bits of his face and cataloging it (along with his sighs, and the way that his voice shifts depending on his mood or when he's being intentionally evasive on something. The way that he clears his throat following an outright lie to her like the trappings of Richie Strand being an honest kid never left.) is still always present.

Besides, the man can wear the hell out of a suit. Everyone knows that.

And Alex herself would have offered to change while he was changing, but she'd been in pajamas for hours. On another night she might have changed into something that was less 'no one is going to see me in this so fuck it I do what I want' and something more 'this is very sexy for the first time someone sees me naked' but that's not where they are right now. And that's definitely okay with her. Alex has never had a problem taking things slowly, even if they'd been taking tiny steps for three years.

But she doesn't want him to be alone in the bathroom again, not the way that he'd came out of there. Alex doesn't want to say that to him either, so staying close to him seems like the best course of action.]

We're not children Alex.

[He looks amused, sliding off his pants. His boxers are dark blue and the pants fit over his front. After a few adjustments - his whole plan proved that he's endowed - he straightens and smiles sleepily.]

What do you think? these pants look great right?

No, Richard we are not.

[Alex looks just as amused as he does, but she does keep her eyes locked with his own while he's removing his pants, just because. It's only when he asks does she actually lower them. The brown sparkles with amusement and she very obviously checks him (and the pajamas that she'd given him) out, but it's more for effect than anything else.

She's tired too. Alex is always tired these days.]

I think that the person who gave them to you has excellent taste in silly pajama bottoms. And you wear them very well.

[But then she goes to her made bed and tugs the decorative pillows off and leaves them on the chair next to it before she asks softly, because this is always awkward:]

Do you have a side of the bed that you prefer to sleep on? Because I think we both definitely could use some sleep right now and I want you to be comfortable.

[It doesn't matter what side he says, to Alex sleep isn't something that happens no matter how she sleeps, but it might be easier for him.]

It doesn't matter.

[He stares, touching the mattress softly. He presses down at it before looking at her and tentatively moving to the right side.]

I should warn you I snore a little.

[Letting him take the right side, Alex herself takes the left, and she just settles into her bed, pulling the lavender sheet and comforter over her while she's doing it. Giving him a quick grin along with a helpless and embarrassed little shrugs, she adds:]

Well, I don't sleep and when I do apparently I chant the names of demons so.

[She belatedly wonders if he'd listened to the show at all over the past few months, and if he'd heard her say that. Heard Nic say that actually. Alex still doesn't know if she had been the one who was chanting the name of the demon. But she didn't want to fight Nic anymore so Alex had just accepted it as being herself.

Taking her glasses off and just setting them on the nightstand there, Alex shifts forward to face him, laying on her side.]

Do you want the lights on or off, Richard?

[When she says demon his hand snakes around her wrist gently. Holding there staring briefly at nothing before he takes off his own glasses]

There's nothing to be afraid of in the dark.

[Especially now. It's all light, it's all clearer in the dark now but Alex mentioning demons...It's like a punch to the gut and he gently squeezes her wrist.]

I'll hold you if you're concerned. I wouldn't...I'd like that.

[Alex just turns off the lights then, because either lights or shadow don't seem to make a difference in her inability to sleep. Besides, she knows all the shadows in their forms in both situations, so she'd just rather go with what he'd preferred.

And then she slips closer to him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face into his chest for a moment. It's a cuddle of course, and the familiar scent of his cologne is still on his skin underneath the smell of the new cotton. Alex wants to hold him, and she wants to be held in return and that's all that there is too it.

Well, maybe not all there is to it, because she lifts her face and presses a little kiss to the corner of his lip before she just whispers:]

Good night, Richard.

[His hand strokes her hair and he-

Pushes himself out of his mind. To roam around the building. Just to experience it. When the morning comes there is someone in his arms, which is like an anchor, locking him back into place. Into his body. She is home in more ways then one.]

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