(no subject)

[formicine]

Blue wakes, and isn't sure what it is, at first, that has woken her. Her mind puts together the sounds slowly. Hywel is so often a collection of sounds: laughter, music from another room, the creak of old metal, the rustle of animals. Right now it's quiet.

No: her sock is wet. She blinks, and realizes it's Copper's nose. She's whining, a little, nosing at Blue's foot.

Blue blinks, lifting her head from her arm. She's not entirely sure when she fell asleep last night, but whenever it was it was unexpectedly enough that she hadn't changed into pajamas to do it, or closed the door. It's the sort of sleep that feels like she was dragged kicking into it and it wasn't keen to let her go, but it had no dreams, or rest to it.

"Hey, girl," she says sleepily, pushing herself up on her elbows and looking around. "What's up?" It's not entirely common for Copper to come wake her up; not, at least, without Adam in her wake. There's a tension to her, even as she starts wagging her tail at Blue's voice. Her speckled ears flicker back and she picks up her feet and puts them down as though she would jump up, but she's too aware that's not good dog behavior.

It could just be hunger, impatience. But why would she come to Blue to go out or be fed? It twists a strange knot into Blue's stomach, and she swings her legs over the edge of the bed, rubbing her eyes. Copper huffs softly, encouraging or urgent, and turns back toward the door, running out to the hallway and back to Blue. Blue frowns, trying to listen as she follows her, but the house is silent as though asking her to answer her own question.

"Did your boy forget to feed you, Cops," she asks with an unsteady tone of nonchalance, reaching to ruffle the dog's ears. He's always with her; it's as unsettling as seeing Chainsaw without Ronan or Tris without her tattoos. Maybe Ronan got him out of the house somewhere, or he got Ronan out of the house - both of them need it. Maybe he was called urgently into work. There could be an absolutely normal explanation. "Hey, Adam," she calls, "come get your dog."

There's no answer.

Blue clucks to her, light-toned as though speaking to a small child she was wary of upsetting. "Come on, girl, let's go find Adam. Yeah! Go find him."

"Find it" is a command Copper knows, and takes to with gusto, and she puts her nose to the ground, taking off eagerly, but then pauses and circles back, looking at Blue plaintively. Blue looks straight back at her, sort of willing her confusion away, as though it's Copper being difficult that is the problem here. Copper wags her tail a couple of times, heads toward Adam's room ahead of Blue, and whuffs gently, turning back around to look at Blue.

"Adam," Blue calls louder, looking around the common area of the house, following Copper their rooms. "Ronan? Guys."

Not even a raven answers her, and Blue can feel her lips tingle with anxiety, her heart pick up. They've all done this too recently for the idea not to be in her head -- what if he's gone? Or Ronan, what if Ronan disappeared and Adam left to look for him or had to get out of the house to process it?

She wants to be sick, a little. The warehouse feels impossibly big as she calls through the halls, ducks her head downstairs, plays a failing game with Copper and disturbs Persephone-cat. She checks their rooms -- they aren't in them. Ronan's is spare, but seems sparer, somehow. Adam's -- Adam's is full of everything that should be there. Textbooks, toolbox, the elderly floating rats that belonged to Noah and Bay before him and have been passed along again.

His phone, and his keyring.

They sit, patiently, insufferably, on the nightstand desk with his wallet, waiting for him to idly grab them on the way out of the house.

Blue stares. Her stomach has become some kind of hole, and she numbly, desperately fumbles for her own phone, unlocking it and somehow, she can't tell how, paging to the contacts. She finds Adam's number and dials, eyes fixed on his phone. It's going to ring. It has to ring.

We're sorry, Darrow tells her. This number has been disconnected....

She dials Ronan, already rehearsing the sort of thing she could say, should say, about one's only real love being gone, wondering if he knows already, the strange situation they're both in.
And maybe she knows, a little, already, the message she's going to hear.

Blue slides down onto the floor and sits there for a long time staring at her contacts list. The rats' wheel squeaks in their cage. At some point, Copper sighs and leans into Blue's side and she wraps her arms around the dog. "It's okay," she says to her, distantly. "It's gonna be okay."

It's not okay. She's the only one in Hywel, she's going to be here by herself for who knows how long and she suddenly can't stand it. She wants to cry, only she doesn't quite know how. She wants to break something.

She can't even call Gansey because he might never wake up.

She stares at her contacts list. Over half of her favorites are only there because she can't bear to delete them. Ellie she's not talking to really. Tris it seems like it might be a lot, all at once...

Biffy...Biffy might not be up, but he might be, and he'll at least have tea. Impulsively, she hits the call button.

Comments

[modern_alpha]

The night is ending and Biffy is getting ready for his day to end, ready to sleep for the better part of the day after a night spent mostly in shapeshift. The relief of spending the last full moon night human makes this night somehow feel more stressful. The fact that it's a blue moon that's supposed to hang large and heavy in the sky only wears at his nerves more.

He's in the midst of turning off the lights when he hears his phone go off. His first reaction is to wince, afraid that it might wake Robin in his cot, and he snatches it up immediately. The fact that it's Blue's number is the only thing that stops him from turning the phone all the way off.

"Blue?" he asked. "Hello."

[formicine]

"Hey," she says, and she feels even more annoyed at Darrow when her voice wavers tellingly. "I didn't wake you, did I? I'm sorry--"

She wraps her arm around her knees, teetering on the edge of speech. "They're gone," she says all at once. "Ronan, and Adam, now, too. Everyone but Gansey, but he's -- it's just me in Hywel."

[modern_alpha]

It didn't take his particular hearing ability to know that Blue was distressed and it pushed any worry about waking Robin from his mind. He knew now that he'd be awake for quite a bit longer whether or not Robin stayed asleep, which he blessedly had.

The way Blue's voice wavered made his heart hurt even before he processed the words and he sucked in a long, tense breath before nodding. "We're all here," he said. The house wasn't empty. It had never felt so full, really. "Come here?"

[formicine]

She agrees at once and thanks him profusely, and somehow Blue manages to get herself to the little country house on her bike, though what route she took she couldn't have told you.

(It feels a little unfair, leaving Copper and Persephone and the rats alone at Hywel, but they have plenty of food, and they do this every day. It's not as though she isn't coming back; she even promises Copper that, even though who the hell can promise anything? There's half of her that doesn't quite believe that Biffy will be there when she arrives.)

She knows they have a baby now and that Biffy's Professor Lyall is probably asleep, it being morning; hell, depending on their schedules, Daine and Amalthea might still be asleep too. Blue leaves her bike in the yard and knocks softly, wrapping her arms around herself.

[modern_alpha]

Biffy didn't care a whit. As soon as he heard the bicycle wheel, felt the gentle press of someone in his territory, he opened the door. The weak sunlight stung unpleasantly but he could bear it. When one's whole life was built around pain, he learned to put it aside now and then. it was the same with the manners he put aside now when he threw his arms around Blue. Propriety could go to hell when she was hit by such sadness.

"Come in," he said, as if he wasn't lifting her over the threshold with the force of his hug, her own body so very light to his supernatural strength.

Once the door was closed, kicked with his foot, Biffy finally let her down. "Kettle's on. There's blankets on the sofa if you'd like...well..." He wasn't exactly sure, to be honest. The blankets were there if she wanted to wrap herself up against the world, if she wished to stay for a day or night. Loss was hard and there was no real comfort, but there was this.

[formicine]

Sans a houseful of women to clasp her to their bosoms, stroke her hair, or pull her into their laps even when she needs some private space and is an adult, Jimi, I swear, Blue very rarely turns down a hug. Right now, the sort of rib-squeezing, lifted-bodily-off-the-ground embrace that Biffy gives is exactly what she needs. It's not as though it can fill the emptiness in her chest, really, but it feels like it could almost reach it, and she hangs on.

"You're wonderful," she says in a sigh, when she's put back down on her toes; she kicks off her sneakers and pushes them into a sort of line by the door. Manners indicate she should ask if he needs help, but Biffy is a step, maybe a whole universe ahead of her, and everything feels so overwhelming.

She sits and after a minute, does in fact wrap the blankets around her shoulders. "I can't stay," she says after a long minute. "I don't think. Copper, and my cat, and the rats are all still there." Her voice wobbles a little. "But I -- I don't think I can just stay there. The whole place is full of -- " Full of their things, but not them.

Ghosts.
If only that were true.

"Full of no one," she says and runs her hands through her hair, looking helplessly back at Biffy.

[modern_alpha]

Even though he set her down, Biffy lingered a moment. In his home city and with a different man, it would have been utterly inappropriate, but here it came naturally to him to offer that little intimacy. Biffy knew the nature of this city and he knew, now, the nature of immortality. It was loss, always loss. Blue without her boys was like a wolf without a pack. Untethered.

He was not the right kind of man and she was not a wolf, but he could try.

"You just sit," he said, in case she was about to be polite. If he could do away with manners then Blue damned well deserved it. As it was, Pawvus came ambling out and laid himself across her lap. In a moment, he could hear the engine-like rumble of his purr and thought perhaps he ought to be giving the cat a little more credit. Maybe he wasn't the cleverest beast, but he was smart enough to know when a warm weight might help.

Rather than separate himself in the kitchen, Biffy brought the kettle out to Blue. Already there were a few tins of looseleaf and a pot with cups on the table. It would do. "I know exactly how you feel," he agreed sadly. Even now, with the farmhouse brimming with people, he could still remember the day he'd gone there and known for sure that Scott and Bay were gone.

[formicine]

Biffy is a bit like an older brother or uncle, just from a very, very different background, and it doesn't seem untoward or strange at all to Blue for him to hug her a little longer. At least, it helps enough that if it is strange, she doesn't care. If Darrow has given her anything, anything more than the constant taking away it has done, it's the very strange experience of men she trusts, aside from the boys, who were themselves an anomaly really.

It hurts even to think about that, right now. Pawvus comes and settles in her lap like a living heating pad, and she focuses her attention on the Siamese, stroking his sleek fur and letting his loud purr sink into her bones. It squashes any impulse she has to get up and fuss, because of course you aren't allowed to unsettle a cat.

She takes a long breath. "I'm sorry," she says, "I wish you didn't. This place was Bay and Scott's, wasn't it?" She still remembers when losing Bay was the biggest, most abrupt change in her life. It certainly has shaped much of her life in Darrow, her determination to keep the cat cafe open. Right now, she can't imagine getting herself to work.

"How do you do it?" she asks, half rhetorically. "I can't -- I don't know what to do." It's not even that Blue's never experienced loss before. She's lost so many people. It's just that with Gansey (or at least, his conscious self), then Noah, now Adam and Ronan gone -- everything she thinks of as a foundation here seems to be slipping so quickly away from her no matter what she does.

[modern_alpha]

Biffy would have liked to say he'd done it to plan. It would be fiendishly clever, deploying a cat to prevent houseguests from helping, but he was not that particular sort of mastermind. Lyall, perhaps, but not him. No, this was entirely the cat's doing and Biffy made a mental note to give him a few extra treats later.

He was about to take a sip of tea when Blue began apologizing and Biffy shook his head. "Don't presume that my grief makes yours less," he said, setting his cup down and coming around to sit next to her. Biffy knew just how close Blue had been to her boys. They had practically had tethers to one another. What she was going through was nothing short of wretched and he would not let her diminish it.

That, he thought, was one of the things he missed about his time. Plenty of people went overboard with morning (their own illustrious queen among them) but sometimes there was good in wearing markers of grief and letting the world know that one was a little fragile.

"I do it because I must," he said. Even in his own ears, the answer sounded typically English. How could he tell Blue, as well, that he could now remember what it was to stay the same as friends grew old? It put a hard shield around the heart.

"For now, what you do is you drink tea and pet the cat and if you wish to scream or cry or break something, that can be arranged. So long as you wait until I turn up the sound machine in the baby's room before we commence some real destruction."

[formicine]

"I don't," she says, and whether that's entirely true or not she's not sure, but Blue feels torn open and discombobulated right now, like she's been swept overboard into an ocean full of debris. "Not really. I just hate that you know what it feels like."

She holds her cup in both hands and takes a long breath, nodding and looking hard at the reflective surface of the tea and the slight sediment of tea leaves that always escapes any filter, no matter how small. What sort of truths could someone read in her tea now?

Blue leans into Biffy's side, all at once, eyes filling despite herself. She's incredibly grateful for him being here. And for knowing exactly the sort of things she does want to do, or might, more than she does she thinks. "Thank you for -- everything," she says, sounding very little and miserable even to herself, and she laughs a little at the idea of having to drown out punching something. "How are you doing, with the whole fatherhood thing?"

If his preparedness for emotional disasters is any evidence, Blue thinks it must be going pretty well.

[modern_alpha]

Biffy knew a thing or two about clutching at a cup of tea and trying to divine answers that would never come. He chose patience in this moment. Though he and Blue weren't tethered at the soul, he thought he knew a little of how to manage her sadness from managing the needs of his pack and people. It was an instinct that came from being from a large family, from being a drone, and now from being Alpha.

"Well enough," he said. There was a leading tone to his voice, one that suggested he was happy to fill Blue's ears with idle chatter if she liked. "I don't know that I've ever told you–my blood family isn't much a part of my life–but I actually had eleven siblings and most of them younger. I know a thing or two about babies."

Having Amalthea and Daine helped. They seemed just as taken with the idea of adding to the family as Biffy and Lyall had been, much to his relief. "Lyall's working on some ideas that may interest you, if you've need of the distraction."

[formicine]

Blue's sure that at some point, seeing people happy and laughing will make her want to punch through a wall, but it isn't the same for people she loves, and she finds herself glad of distracting conversation. "I don't think you ever did," she says, looking up. "Eleven. Wow. And I thought I had a packed house." Of which she's the youngest, which is a very different situation. She curls a small smile. "Did you think you'd have kids one day?"

"I'm open to just about anything that isn't bad news," Blue admits, and glances at him curiously.

[modern_alpha]

Biffy shook his head with a tiny smile. "I think it was known from a very young age, by all and sundry, that my destiny was in being a confirmed bachelor," he said with as much dignity as the sentence could allow. "The other eleven could provide my parents' legacy."

Blue gave him a quietly curious look and Biffy thought he really could take her at her words there. Good news, or at least the absence of bad, was probably welcome and if he was here to fill up the air, then he could talk. "Lyall and I have been thinking of trying to establish something like BUR was back home. We wouldn't have government sanction, of course, so we'd be acting as a private agency..."

Perhaps he ought to cut to the chase, to the part that involved Blue and that might give her some kind of project. "I know the back room of the café isn't being used at the moment and I wondered if you might allow it to be leased to someone else?"

[formicine]

Blue let out a tiny sharp laugh, unexpected and helpless, at the phrase confirmed bachelor. It surprises her as much as anyone else, sitting at the bottom of a pit, but it's welcome. It does sound like something a very old person would say if they were trying to politely refer to a gay man. Like saying someone was that way. "You and Lyall should get married," she says, "just to make that label even more stupid." Maybe that's crossing a line, she wonders belatedly, but she also is sure she can get away with saying whatever she wants here.

Besides, in this place, it's not as if otherwise un-thought-of marriages aren't a little rational. It's like going off to war, just living here. You never know what's going to happen or who's going to be gone tomorrow.

She looks up at that. Her mind feels a little foggy, distant, but she forces herself to keep up. Blue knows a little about what BUR was, not much. But there are definitely people who keep the supernatural in line here. Or kept, she realizes sadly. With Athos gone, Kingsman is -- well, she doesn't even know if it's still running, and a lot of the people who do that sort of stuff work independently and sporadically. Besides, as much as she loves Alec, it might be better to have werewolves investigating werewolves and that sort of thing, not working with an inborn confirmation bias.

She realizes he's asking her for permission for something pretty large, and Blue blinks. "Yeah," she says, in surprise and then realizes how good that might be. "I mean, there's some stuff that we've just put in there, but that's easy to clean up. Actually, that -- would be more than fine, that'd be great. We've been running in the red for, who knows how long, honestly. That back room hasn't been rented since before I started working there, and with Noah gone, I have to work twice the shifts, and so bookkeeping keeps getting put down --"

Blue rubs her face, suddenly overcome. "I have so much that I have to do. Like. Today. Tomorrow, anyway. I don't know how I'm going to go to work, or where I'm even sleeping..." She can't imagine sleeping in Hywel all by herself, with no one even maybe going back to it.

[modern_alpha]

Blue said one thing and then another and then all of it came tumbling out and it was only Biffy's desire not to upset her further that kept his features from giving away his faint horror. Blue was so young and she'd been carrying all of this on her shoulders alone for how long? In the space of a few sentences, she seemed to go from grieving to on the verge of breaking. Biffy threw his arms around her without a second thought. It was not quite a full strength werewolf hug, but it was close.

"You are going to stay here," he said firmly, if she wanted that sort of firmness. If not, he quickly added, "But only if you want to." There was probably at least the dog to account for, based on the scents clinging to Blue, but it would probably be all right to give the dog the run of the barn. Daine might even be able to communicate with her to let her know not to cringe or challenge.

"You could get a hotel room for the night." Perhaps it was insensitive, given her comment about the café being in debt, but it seemed a better option than sleeping alone in that massive warehouse. A pain he knew well.

He could not speak for his lover and Beta, but already with Blue's tentative agreement, he was beginning to formulate a plan. Lyall wasn't Channing when it came to figures but he had a good head for sums and Biffy had recently acquired twenty years' knowledge of running a hat shop. Between the two of them, they'd probably be able to get the café's books in order. And he, at least, planned to invest handsomely into making sure the place stayed open.

After all, what good was a front for another business if it closed?

He would Manage this and he would find a way to make it all right.