ALL SNUG IN THEIR BEDS
by perletwo
Joan's head popped up through a manhole on Crawford Street, and she found herself face-to-face with a tumbledown stone mansion that looked equal parts modern and Gothic architecture. Pulling herself up to sit on the sidewalk, legs dangling down into the tunnel, she noted that the windows were blacked out by heavy curtaining, and dropped back down
.
"Randy? I think I found something. Can you make it a few yards to a door in the sunlight, you suppose? Maybe if you use my coat as a sunbreak?" She passed him the coat and went up ahead of him, and he waited at the top of the ladder in shadow while she checked the windows and doors.
Making quick work of the lock and finding everything covered in dropcloths, Joan decided the place was unoccupied, officially at least, and gave Randy the all-clear sign. He dashed across the sidewalk to the door, making it in just as Joan's leather duster began to emit a few tendrils of smoke. "What is this place?"
"I don't know, but look at the windows. If there aren't vamps nesting here now, I bet there have been in the past. I'm hoping it'll be safe for you to hide out here until we figure out where you live," she said, and they both began prowling the stone floor of the main room, each taking one end of the big empty space, picking up the edges of dustcloths to look at the furniture. "Although I gotta admit, I don't get a big feeling of...safety...off this place..."
Randy knelt down to examine a steamer trunk beside the low-slung sofa. "Pretty Brothers Grimm, innit? You'd think a vamp like me'd like that." He felt a warm hand settle on his shoulder from behind, her body heat soaking into his skin even through the thick tweeds.
"*Not* like you, pal. Noble creature, soul, quest for redemption, remember all that? Trust me. No vampires before were ever like you." He turned to look up at her, eyes shining with gratitude, and found her face had frozen, gaze falling over his head to a spot on the floor beyond him.
Turning, he bent over to examine the black markings on the floor that had caught her attention, and pulled back the edges of the Oriental rug over them to reveal burn scars biting deep into the stone floor, outlining the silhouette of an adult male, curled into a fetal position.
"No....*definitely* not feeling very secure here," he agreed.
Across town, Rupert and Anya filed into a small, pleasant, Spanish-style apartment, both a little relieved to find Giles' key still worked. Giles headed into the kitchen, intending to start some tea, while Anya headed upstairs in search of bed and bath. Both rather pointedly ignored the dustcloths covering the furniture.
Rupert quickly discovered that while the water was still in service, the electricity was not. "Anya, darling..." he called as he headed up the stairs after her.
Turning in the bedroom door at the top landing, he found she'd already noticed the lack of power, and compensated by lighting a half-dozen candles at strategic places around the room. Anya herself was curled up invitingly in the center of the bed, shoes off, a warm smile beckoning him to her.
Giles fumbled with his glasses and spun back out onto the landing, leaning against a stucco wall for support. His heart hammered in his chest and he was breathing in painful gasps, squeezing his eyes shut. The panic attack made his heart hurt, and strangely, he could smell roses and hear an operatic aria echoing in his ears.
Alex ushered Willow into his small apartment with awkward formality, sensing the redhead's stiffness. "Not much, I know, but..."
"Alex, I'm not really sure what I'm doing here," she said, turning to face him as he pulled the door shut behind him. "I mean, my ID says I live at the Revello Drive house..."
"I know, but we seem to be, um...together, you know? I found stuff here like there's a girl - woman - staying here with me at least part of the time, and I just thought, umm..." He put his hands on her shoulders and she startled back from him, dropped into a corner of the red velour sofa and pulled a throw pillow protectively into her lap.
"Okay. Okay, I see what you mean. We're, ah...like a couple, I guess...so I guess we should -" she swallowed. "- get used to spending time together. Like, like a - a - couple," she finished weakly.
"Yeah. Yeah," Alex rasped, shoving his hands in his pockets, shoulders slumping. He dropped into the opposite corner of the couch and curled up so he was facing her from a safe distance away.
"Look, Will, I know this is all really weird feeling, okay? I - I don't really feel at home in this place, or - or anyplace else I've been since we woke up..." He looked up to meet her eyes, which were huge and staring back like a doe's. "The only thing I do know for sure is, when I look at you...you feel like home to me, Willow. Like, wherever you are, that's where I belong too."
Willow nodded, and edged her way awkwardly across the expanse of sofa cushions, still clutching the throw pillow to her torso. At last she settled her head awkwardly on Alex's shoulder, and he tucked his chin over the crown of her hair.
"Well, this is nice, at least," Randy said, lighting some of the candles in tall wrought-iron stands in an upstairs bedroom. Joan peeked out the heavy draperies on the room's one narrow window.
"Sun's going down, finally," she said, turning back to find her friend draping his suit jacket over the wrought-iron rail at the foot of the bed and tugging at his bow tie. "Think you'll be okay to stay here tonight?"
"Guess so. I figure if we get any crashers, they'll stick to the ground floor," he replied. Joan laughed at his struggles with the tie and made her way over to him.
"Hold still, lemme see that." A few sharp yanks and the tie was considerably loosened, though still knotted. "Can't imagine how you got this thing tied in the first place if it's this much trouble..." At last the strip of silk gave way under her fingers, and without really noticing she'd done it Joan slipped the top two buttons of his starched shirt loose, a light touch burning the base of his cool throat.
"Joan..." he breathed, leaning in over her as her face slowly tilted up, a delicate blush tinting her cheeks.
Randy caught her lower lip in both of his, nibbling and caressing gently, and after a moment's hesitation she began applying the same treatment to his upper lip. Joan felt her conscious thoughts dissolving into mist when his fingertips came up to caress her neck and jawline, and pulled back. "Randy, we shouldn't..." she breathed.
"D'you know your scent changes when you're...having strong reactions...?" he asked in a low voice, his own breathing coming a bit quickly, and she felt her face flame as his fingertips kept tracing along more of her skin. "Why not? I have these feelings...you have these feelings..." he edged in a little closer. "Why shouldn't we...explore them a little?"
Whatever reply Joan was formulating quickly dissipated as Randy leaned in to the base of her throat and ran just the tip of his tongue up the pulsing vein along the side of her neck, under the corner of her jaw and up to work over her earlobe, his mouth drawing and nibbling gently at the sensitive flesh there. She instinctively turned her face in to match his and their mouths met, tongues and teeth clashing into a fierce kiss that rocked them both.
Joan started and giggled into the kiss, a tiny cut opening on her lower lip as his mouth crushed the soft flesh against the line of her teeth. He gasped and pushed her away from him quickly, breathing labored, face contorted with strain. "Joan..."
"Randy? What is it, what's wrong?" Something cold skittered down her spine as he edged out around the footboard, putting the entire bed between them.
"...I'm hungry."
Her hand came up to her mouth, suddenly aware of the taste of her own blood under her lip, and he flinched as she took two steps back. "Stay - right - here. I'll be back."
"Sure, don't call us, Giles, we'll call you..." he muttered angrily, struggling to keep his human face locked in place.
"HEY!" The volume shocked both of them. "This is *me* here, pal! If I *say* I'll be right back, then I'll be back!" The anger went out of her as quickly as it had taken her over. "I know you've got no real reason to trust that, but -"
"Joan?" She met his eyes, found them frightened and a little desperate. "Hurry."
She nodded, spun on her heel and took to the staircase at a dead run.
"Rupert?" Anya came to the door, carefully keeping a respectful distance, and he looked up to find her eyes darkened with concern.
"Anya..." Giles fitted his hand along the shallow curve of her cheek. "If it helps any at all, I don't - I don't think it's you. Or me, exactly."
"Are you remembering something?" Her hand settled delicately over his.
"Not - not remembering, per se." He took a deep breath. "Impressions. Sense-memories and associations. Strong ones." Anya's eyes studied his closely. "Powerful emotions; bad ones. Dread and pain...old, buried feelings. Something...the candles, or that pose...dredged up something awful in me."
"Can you describe it at all?" Her hand began a gentle stroking along his knuckles.
"Fear. Horror. Overwhelmed me, when I saw you lying there...but...you weren't you...taller, leaner, darker..." Giles stopped for another breath. "I could smell roses, everywhere...and there was opera music...That's as much as I can analyze it." He pulled her into a light embrace. "Except that underneath the emotional reaction, my rational mind was thinking of *you*. Afraid for you, for some reason. I didn't want anyone to hurt you..."
Anya ran her hands gently up and down his back and shoulders a moment, then pulled back. "Wait." She ducked back into the bedroom, blew out all but the two largest candles and brought them back out with her. She handed him one, slipped her free arm around his shoulders and led him back downstairs. She put the candles up on the mantel, pulled the dustsheet off the couch and settled him into the corner, curling up close beside him.
"First off, I don't get any kind of a hit off anything you just said; no reaction at all, except worry about how hard it's hit you," she told him, fingertips stroking the graying hair at his temple. "So I'm assuming whatever you're flashing back to, it's something I wasn't involved in, maybe didn't even know you then?"
He swallowed, glanced her way and nodded when he saw she wasn't upset or offended. "Could it have something to do with Randy's mother, d'you think? Ever since he asked about her earlier, I've wondered about your other family, about how we got together..."
He shook his head, straining for clarity of thought under the panic. "I don't know. I don't know. I do feel sure whatever happened here, it happened to another woman. One who was important to me somehow. I don't seem to want to connect my son with it, but...it's all so jumbled up, if only I could *think*!"
Anya hopped off the sofa, knelt in the middle of the living room floor and pulled one of the packing boxes over to her. "Look. I know you were getting ready to leave and all, but Rupert, your whole life is in these boxes someplace. And I really think you need to know what's going on inside you, right *now.*"
He joined her on the floor and tore into another carton.
Randy jumped at the sound of heels striking the stone steps, then relaxed; the scent was Joan's.
"RANDY? You still here?" She burst into the room, breathing in gasps in her haste, and tossed a paper bag down on the bed between them. Plastic bags of blood spilled out of its mouth. "Did you know Sunnydale has 24-hour butcher shops? That sell animal blood by the pint? *Three* of 'em!"
"Sounds like somethin' I might've forgotten, luv," he said as he all but pounced on a bag of blood, sinking his fangs into the thick plastic. "AUGH! That's awful!" Joan looked alarmed, and he hastened to add, "Don't worry, I'll take it! It just tastes...I don't know. Wrong."
"Because it's not human?"
"No. I think maybe because it's cold. It's got this metallic aftertaste that's just really vile." He fell silent as he fed desperately, finished off the first bag and looked up from his seat on the bed at her as his vampire face slid away. "Doesn't it bother you? Watching me feed?"
She sat down on the opposite edge of the bed. "Not really. I don't know why...I was just so scared for you, all I cared about was that you got what you need," she said matter-of-factly. "I guess it should bother me...I mean, some fearless vampire killer I am!"
"Look, let's just make us a pact, right here, right now, okay?" He toyed with the empty pint bag, smoothing it with the flat of his fingers, and Joan found herself staring at the motion of his hands. "Starting right now, nothing either one of us thinks or feels is ever wrong. If there's any rules to this or a blueprint for how either one of us is supposed to live our lives, they got thrown out along with everything else we've forgotten."
"So, as far as the whole vampire/superhero thing goes...we feel our way along, a little bit at a time? Roll with the punches? No harm, no foul?"
"Well, there's just the one thing we're both rock-bottom sure of, right? That neither of us wants to harm the other, or see each other hurt by anything or anyone else?" His eyes had gone soft and blue and very warm, and she was getting lost in them.
"Right." She reached across the bed and curled her warm fingers around his cold ones, still clutching the empty bag. "You got yourself a deal." An electric current of emotion flowed heavy and strong through their joined hands, and a shiver went through her.
"Well. I need to get home and see to Dawn..." she said, pulling her hand back and standing up.
He nodded, looking up at her with an ache in his eyes. "Joan? ...We're okay, right? You and me?"
She smiled, and he felt the smile light up his insides again. "Yeah. We're very okay." She leaned across the bed and pressed her lips to his, chastely but firmly. Then she turned and in a swirl of black leather was gone down the stairs.
"Wow..." Randy whispered to the empty room. "Very wow."
"Anya?"
The blonde looked up from her work to find Rupert looking at her with empty eyes. "I found her."
She crawled around to his side and took the stack of papers out of his hands. At the top was a snapshot of an elegant dark-haired woman, whose exotic looks made it impossible to place her age. Beneath that, an obituary and a news article on the death of one Jenny Calendar, high school teacher. Anya sat back on her heels to read it.
"Well, one thing I've gotten out of all this is an education in euphemism," she said dryly. " 'Death was caused by excessive blood loss.' Is that Sunnydale Courier-speak for vampire attack, you think?"
"Indeed. " His shoulders slumped.
"Is this Randy's mother?"
"I don't know. I don't think she resembles him, particularly." He studied the photo in her hand.
"Hard to tell what's under that bleach in his hair. But on the whole I'd say he takes after his father," Anya said, brushing Giles' errant forelock off his face. "Ruggedly handsome, in a very British sort of way." That earned her a wan smile.
"I think she is Randy's mother, or at least the nearest thing to one he knew. Look at the date of death. Four, almost five years ago - Randy'd have been barely out of his teens, just the right age to be devastated by the loss of a parent." He gazed hollowly into space. "No wonder he resents me so."
"Not following you there," Anya said, studying Giles' face closely.
"He blames me, obviously. Look there, at the crime brief. She died *here,* Anya. In this apartment. Killed by a vampire. And I....did nothing to stop it, or prevent it."
"Your options being what, exactly?" she asked sharply, and his attention snapped back to her.
"Taken her out of Sunnydale? Hung garlic and crucifixes? Fought the vampire? Died in her place? We're talking about the perceptions of a very young man here, Anya, a - a sensitive, emotionally receptive one as it happens...His responses aren't very likely to be based on rational thought." Giles sighed, leaned his head against hers. "And now, with you here in my life...it must bring up all the old bitterness and grief for him."
"Rupert? Did you know, I happen to like your son?" Giles pulled back to look at her in surprise. "I do. I think he's grown up into a fine man, or soon will be grown into one, anyway. I don't particularly get the sense he dislikes me personally, either. Whatever's going on there, it's all about you and him. He respects you, you know...hates to see you do things he thinks are beneath your dignity." Giles nodded slowly.
"He has to see what you've done with your life since this Jenny died...set up shop in the vampire hunting trade with Joan. You've devoted yourself to claiming vengeance for her as best you can. He may have forgotten it along with the rest of his life...but he knows you, Rupert, and he loves you. And he wants you to love and respect him, too." Anya cocked her head, thought a moment.
"As for you and me? I don't know if you've noticed, but he seems to be starting out on a pretty serious relationship with Joan. No way to guess what they were to each other before, but they're in it pretty deep now, that's for sure." Another nod from Giles. "The age he looks to be now, I'll bet it's his first real, true love, don't you think? And I bet you the deeper his commitment to Joan grows, the better he'll understand you and how you've conducted your own relationships."
Rupert stroked her hair, gazing at her in awe. "How did I ever get so lucky as to have you in my life?"
Anya leaned into his hand, bringing her lips ever closer to his. "Simple. I love you." He gazed at her, wonder in his eyes. "And I have excellent taste in men."
Finding clarity of thought at last, Rupert closed the distance to his fiancee's mouth and eased her back onto the floor, settling them into a nest of dustsheets.
Joan slipped into the Revello Drive house as quietly as she could, after a long time spent simply standing outside looking at it. No bells had rung for her at all.
As it turned out, her caution was a wasted effort; she met Tara coming around the corner from the kitchen, still fully dressed and carrying a glass of milk. "H-hi Joan. Did you drop Randy off somewhere on your way home?"
"Yeah." Although she was gazing around the house like the landscape of a foreign country, Joan hung her coat up in the entryway closet as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Tara noted. "Where're Dawn 'n Willow?"
"Dawn's upstairs in bed; it's the first room on the right at the head of the stairs. The room I think is yours is the second door on the right.Willow and I seem to be sharing the big room to the left." She blushed bright red. "Willow's over at Alex's place, getting...reacquainted. I don't know if she'll be back in tonight or not."
Joan put a hand on the taller girl's shoulder. "This is all really confusing for all of us, Tara. But I'm awfully glad you're here to help Dawn and me get through it all, no matter what else gets mixed up." Tara hugged her, trying awkwardly not to spill her milk in the process, and headed upstairs.
Joan wandered through the living room, picking idly through the small stack of luggage resting between the sofa and an easy chair. Definitely a guy in residence, she thought, and made her way to the kitchen and poured a glass of juice. She downed it in one long draught and poured another to sip at, poking idly through the glass shelves of the fridge and finding nothing appealing to nibble on. Then she drifted back out to the living room, picking at a pile of books and magazines here, a knickknack there.
After exploring the layout downstairs (nothing left but the dining room and laundry setup beyond that) she went upstairs to bed, staring at 'her' room in amazement. Was her taste really so...so cotton-candy? So *pastel*? She found it hard to imagine of herself. Ah well, perhaps the room hadn't been redone since its original occupant's teens. Her *very early* teens.
A quick search of the dresser revealed her stash of lingerie. But Joan ended up taking every last piece of sleepwear out of the drawer before she found anything she'd even consider - a long black satin slipgown with wide ribbon straps, shoved far to the back of the drawer. She wondered who she'd bought it to wear for, and how it ended up buried under the dreary everyday stuff.
Then she carried the gown into the bathroom and spent a long time in the shower, getting the grit and confusion of the last day and a half off her body and mind. Donned the gown, which felt as cool and slick as...well. It felt how she'd hoped it would, was as far as she'd let her thoughts go. Slipped into bed, then sat back up and pulled the pillows out of the tatted and bobbled lace shams - pretty, but dreadfully uncomfortable - settled down, pulled up the covers and willed sleep to come.
It didn't. After five whole minutes of lying still, she sat back up in bed, eyes wide. And thought very hard for another five.
She got out of bed and slipped on the first pair of shoes she came to, black leather sandals, and headed back downstairs. She looked again at several of the things she'd seen in her first cursory pass, studying them hard to confirm the picture they'd suddenly crystallized into. Then she grabbed a set of keys off the entryway table (Tara's? she didn't know), retrieved her leather duster and ran out the door.
Giles lay on his back, wrapped in dustsheets and Anya, watching tobacco smoke curl in long ribbons above their heads. "Rupert?" came a drowsy voice from the blonde cuddled into his side.
"H'mm?"
"I don't think you smoke."
He took another drag. "Got cigarettes," he said lazily, breathing fire. "Got a lighter."
"Got an ashtray," she added sternly, reaching over him to snag it off an end table. "No, I mean, your clothes didn't smell like smoke all day. I'm pretty sure I'd've noticed. So I don't think it's a habit. Maybe you quit."
He nuzzled her hair, taking its scent into his lungs along with the tobacco. "Some occasions call for a cigarette. Demand it, even," he murmured. "This is definitely one of those times." He felt her smile against his chest, and she watched the smoke wend its way upwards with him.
"Rupert?"
"H'mm?"
"You know what's funny? Odd, I mean?" He turned his head back to her.
"Nobody seems really all that alarmed or scared about what's happened. All of us losing our memories. Dawn's had a few shaky moments now and then, but nobody's panicked or freaked out about it very much at all. In fact, it almost feels kinda - natural, to be like this."
She shifted in his arms. "Could that be part of the spell, d'you think? That this forgetting should feel like a good thing to whoever it was supposed to make forget?"
"Could be." He took another pull at his cigarette, exhaled a graceful plume of smoke as they both pondered the question.
"If that's so, then it would kind of suggest whoever cast the spell was trying to help someone. It could be a benevolent impulse, not a vengeful or malicious one. If it was, we'd feel more - menaced, wouldn't we? More paranoid?" she mused.
"Maybe. Then too, we all clearly share strong emotional bonds of one sort or another, among the eight of us. We've all instinctively pulled together, drawn on those bonds to get us through this." Giles kissed her temple. "But - what could possibly be so very wrong in any of our lives that - *this* - would seem like a good idea?"
Anya shook her head. "I can't imagine. Don't even want to, maybe. But I'll tell you another thing - I think you're wrong, about it being Dawn. I watched her a lot today, at the shop. I don't think she could be, ahh, focused enough to handle the kind of forces a spell this powerful would call for. Joan could, though, I bet...and I bet she would, too...if it was for Dawn." Giles stared at her, amazed. "Where are Dawn and Joan's parents, d'you think?"
"I've no idea. Have they even asked about their family? My God, could it really be that simple? And - how could it have gone so completely wrong?"
Another head shake. "Don't know. But I know it'd be nice if it were that simple." She smiled coldly. "I like all these people. I'd hate to have to hurt one of them." Giles measured her words, then laughed - realizing suddenly that she would, too.
"I begin to detect a theme running through your delightful little mind..."
She laughed with him. "One thing that still makes sense to me? Revenge is sweet."
"Not one to turn the other cheek, darling?" He stubbed out the remains of his cigarette.
"No." She reared up over him for a kiss, adding her taste to the tobacco and ashes. "You'd do well to remember it, too."
They lay in the darkness for a long while afterward, watching the cigarette smoke dance and mingle with that of the candles, flirting with thin shafts of moonlight edging in through the blinds.
"Anya?" She shifted towards him, the hitch in his voice making her catch in her own breath. "I almost left you, yesterday."
The thought seemed to stretch out before her endlessly before he turned to meet her eyes. "But now I know...there's noplace on Earth I'd rather be..."
Joan's sandals scuffed lightly along the staircase in the pile of brick and mortar on Crawford Street.
"Randy?" She pushed open the door to his bedroom, found the candles guttering out in the sudden draft. He lay on his back, pale and deathly still, suit laid out neatly on the foot of the bed. She reached a hand out over him...
...and found herself jerked roughly onto the bed, pinned down by a snarling, still-sleeping vampire. Without conscious thought or fear she broke his hold and flipped them, straddling his hips and pinning his hands until he came fully awake.
"...*a-a-hem.* I think we've just stumbled onto Rule One in the Vampire Handbook." Randy gave her a lopsided grin. "Never wake us out of a sound sleep." Joan eased off him, willing her pulse and respiration back to normal. "Couldn't stay away, luv?"
"Get up, get dressed, I've got something to show you." Following his stare, she realized how little she was wearing, cleared her throat. "No, not *that.* I think I've found where you live." He reached for his clothes, followed her downstairs and out into the night, back to Revello Drive.
"Yep, somebody's sleeping out here for sure, just like the others said. But why d'you think it's me?" he asked, looking over the bedroll and luggage in the living room.
"Check out the clothes in here. British styles, custom tailoring, lots of flannel and tweed. Looks a little too hip to be your dad's. And there's more. C'mon, this way." Joan took his hand and led him into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door. "Smell that? Blood. There, in the big styrofoam thing. Labeled 'Spike.' " Randy turned to look at her. "Those vamps last night? The sharkskin guy? They seemed awfully convinced *you* were Spike."
"But I don't feel even remotely...Spiky," he protested.
"Randy? What's the point of a secret identity?" He looked at her as if she'd gone mad. "To resemble as little as possible your superhero identity. Hence, Spike."
She picked up a big earthenware mug she'd found on the drainboard. "Smell this. Blood. Old, dried and baked into the pottery." She took out the styrofoam container, poured a mugful of thick liquid, popped it in the microwave and hit some buttons rapid-fire. When the bell rang, she took the mug out and passed it to him. "Voila!"
He sniffed, took a careful sip. "Perfect. Tastes almost fresh, I think. How'd you know how to do that?"
"Don't know. Just did it. Like dialing your best friend's phone number without thinking." She grinned. "I'd say I've fixed you dinner before, wouldn't you?"
His face still reflected grave doubts. "That sofa still looks awful close to an awful lotta windows, luv."
"True. But look here." She led him to a side door tucked into a corner of the kitchen, took him down into a dark, dank basement/laundry room. "Cot. Lamp. A stack of books and magazines. Very little dust." She beamed at him in the dark. "Perfect vamp nest, don't'cha think?"
"All right. You win. For now," he said as they reentered the kitchen. "So, do I have access to a loo? Maybe a shower?" She nodded as he settled onto the sofa and began going through the suitcases, taking an occasional sip of blood. "Grand. Clean clothes, proper meals, a shower and four beautiful women to attend me." He smiled wolfishly, though Joan looked puzzled. "What more could a bad-ass vampire ask for?"
She counted off on her fingers, muttering under her breath. "Aha! I see where you went wrong. It's only three beautiful women to attend you at the moment. Willow's over at Alex's."
"Pfeh." Joan chuckled at the sound.
" 'Pfeh'? You don't approve of Alex having designs on our little Willow?"
Randy waved this away grandly. "Willow can do better. That nice young Tara she's so hot an' bothered about, f'rinstance. She should trade up already. Let Tara make a dishonest woman of her."
Joan stifled a giggle, but was interrupted by a clatter on the staircase as Dawn trotted heavily downward, clad in pajama bottoms and a long T-shirt. The gold chain of her pendant glinted from under the shirt's neckband. She stopped cold in the doorway to the living room.
"Randy's staying here now?" she asked. Craning her neck to look over her shoulder at the girl, Joan nodded as best she could. Dawn considered this, head cocked to one side.
"Cool." She turned and skipped into the kitchen, came back through with a peanut butter sandwich wrapped in a paper towel and went back up to her room without another word.
"Cool? I'd hope I could get a little more enthusiasm!" Randy protested, and Joan laughed.
"She's like what, fifteen? Count yourself lucky, pal! For her that's like singing your praises from the rooftops!" They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, enjoying the momentary peace.
"So, you're upstairs, right?" Joan nodded, and he cleared his throat. "Would you consider...maybe, possibly...staying down here with me awhile tonight? Just, I mean, to keep me company? Like at the shop last night?"
Joan stared at him a long moment, taking in the haunted look in his eyes. Then she picked up his extra pillow and the bedsheet, leaving him the heavier blanket, and made herself a nest on the floor, using the juncture of chair, suitcases and sofa as a headboard. Randy fixed up the bedding on the sofa and settled in parallel to her, smiling warmly, one long arm dangling off the edge. "Goodnight, Joan."
"Goodnight, Randy." She reached up and slipped her near hand into his loose one.