who: Alex Reagan and Open what: May normal stuff, plus mingle stuff and possibly sickness plotting stuff. when: Month of May! where: All over Riverview. warnings: Possible illness stuff, shippy stuff.
[Following her post, Alex has in fact been out and running along areas of town, trying to fill in the map so that it could be rendered and anyone who wants to would be able to play pokemon go. It was something stupid, but also something that she was looking forward to, so if she needed to clock in a few extra miles? Well, Alex wasn't going to complain. Instead, she just keeps good and average time for someone who doesn't run marathons, but she does it confidently. She's dressed in running clothing, and her communicator is in a makeshift strap around her wrist so that she can log areas as she runs. But if she sees someone, she stops and gives them a grin and greets them with a:]
[Other than her job, the place that Alex was most likely to be found in was a coffee shop. But honestly, she often dragged a lot of work or research over to be her date for coffee, because it was just so much more efficient that way. After all, where the good coffee was was where the good reporter did her best work. There was a reason that she'd gotten a keurig for her office (and not just because Nic was monitoring her caffeine intake in the break room) so at this point, she had it down to somewhat of a science. In front of her is a tray of multiple cookies. They're not just for her, although she has her favorite tucked next to her coffee cup with a bite out of it. When someone approaches, Alex just grins and gestures to the chair opposite her.]
[She wasn't one to visit the coffee shops. They were often too busy for her liking, but right now, Elizabeth needed the crowd; the whole of this plague was setting her at unease and she needed signs of life-if only to have the outward signs of normalcy.
She did order tea instead of coffee, adding a good amount of milk, before she spotted Alex at her table. She was only about to ask for an invitation to sit down-when it was gladly offered.] Thank you. I do not mind sitting by myself, but someone to talk with is always welcomed.
[Well, someone she knew atleast, to do so otherwise would just be awkward.]
[Alex definitely looks better than she did the last time that Elizabeth saw her, the dark circles below her eyes are gone for the most part, and she's got more life in her than she even did during the dance. Clearly, life is agreeing with her at the moment. The grin that she gives her friend is bright and she nods.]
Of course, Elizabeth. If you ever want someone to visit coffee shops with, I'm your gal. I'm practically here all the time anyway!
[Close inspection, she had noticed, recalling what Mr. Strand told her about her sleep: clearly there was some truth in what he told her.] Clearly, you have made your home here, indeed.
[She carefully moved some of the books aside, catching their titles.] You are looking much better now. So am I to believe that you are finally getting more sleep?
[Cheerful as she kept her expression, she also couldn't help but voice some concern; she was indeed worried about the state of her health prior to this meeting.]
[Alex's dog is rather large but adorable and he tends to stick rather close to her as they're walking around the Communal housing area. Apo has gotten much better about being good with people other than Alex, but only because she's worked with him so hard. Every so often, she stops to have a conversation with someone, and Apo sits at Alex's feet. All the while she's talking, Alex will occasionally give him a piece of dog biscuit to keep him chill. It's probably a dumb thing, but hey, Alex's going to go with what works.]
[It would probably really surprise people who listened to the show, or it would have only been a surprise to them that it hadn't happened already that Alex and Richard had moved in together practically immediately after he'd shown up. After all, she'd just asked him to run away with her for him, and Alex had just realized that she'd actually had feelings for him and then told the entire network about it, even if it was anon. So, after the two of them had spent a fair amount of time just talking, Alex had just gathered up her dog, some clothing and some things she was working on and just made herself at home in the same way that she had made herself at home in his life.
What would probably surprise people more is that they'd decided to do the relationship thing, and the living together thing the two of them hadn't even actually kissed yet, other than the one that Alex had given him when he'd showed up and she expected to be rebuked. But then they'd gone back to his place, and Alex slept probably more in the last twenty-four hours than she had in the last three weeks. Refreshed and actually happy for once, Alex dove into the network to see Tony's post about people getting sick. She immediately offered to help, because Alex Reagan was Alex Reagan, she just assumed that Richard Strand would be okay with it. Like in so many things when it came to him, Alex was about to be proven wrong.]
[Richard had never been one to pry, not really. It exhausted too much effort and rarely netted any sort of gain on his part. Alex, however, had become different. She asked too many questions and dug too deeply into his life. Like an ant, she'd made tunnels inside of him and because of that he'd grown more interested, more invested in her. In the end, she'd stolen his heart, and now he couldn't help wanting to know as much about the her of now as he could.
When she started typing up something on the network, something that, of course, she would be completely up to date on and incorporated in, he couldn't help leaning over her head to read the post and her reply. Some sort of 'nano-virus with magical capabilities', clearly this was her fault, not his. Her belief in this place, in the reality of magic and demons and all that other nonsense, had created a virus to counter his logic. Between the two of them, this place was ridiculous and counterbalanced.
"You're not getting involved." The words were fact. He wasn't letting her get involved with something as dangerous as that. Even if it was all in their heads, the repercussions of it would, most likely, manifest on their real selves. There was no way he was letting Alex get into something that dangerous. Something that could kill her in reality. Something that could take her from him without his even being able to lift a finger.
Alex hadn't been making any sort of effort to hide what she was doing. One, she wasn't doing anything wrong in her mind, two he had a device of his own and three, it wasn't as if Alex's handle on the network was anything that was hidden even if she didn't tend to make most of her posts as audio. Audio was just easier, especially because of how much time Alex tended to spend talking in her life back home. This was just an extension of that, because Alex wasn't going to spend her time trying to be something that she wasn't here.
After all, Alex was the sort of person who had gotten involved in things like this before, even without the Black Tapes and him, and she'd been the same since she'd been here. So, she was shocked when he told her that she wasn't getting involved, and Alex's brow climbed up towards her hairline before she said one sharp word, because honestly, at first she couldn't think of anything else to say. "What?" It went with the normal twisting up of her face in disbelief.
"Of course I'm getting involved. I can help people figure out what it is and maybe stop it before it gets worse." Getting worse of course meant that someone might die from it, and honestly, right now she was more invested in stopping that then ever. The two of them didn't have any actual good luck when it came to things, and she wasn't expecting that they'd start now. If she could help Tony and Victor, then she would, especially Victor because she trusts him implicitly.
"Richard, you're the one who thinks that this is a shared mass delusion between us. What do you think would happen if I don't try and stop it?" Alex knew without asking that he was blaming her imagination for this. Because honestly, Richard would never come up with a science and magical combination on his own. Of course, she didn't believe in his theory at all, but was hoping that maybe approaching it on his terms might head off a fight that seemed to be brewing.
Back home, in the early days when they had fought, it had never gone well. The two of them would just shout at he one another until he would bring up leaving the podcast, and she would bring up that this wasn't how it worked and the two of them wouldn't speak for a few days before one of them brought coffee or a black tape or a lead to the other and then they acted like it didn't happen. Honestly, Riverview was too small for them to try and do the same sort of thing in and she didn't want that to be what they did.
The first few buttons of Richard's shirt was unbuttoned, and his coat was sitting on one of the chairs. Adding to his hot and cold spells the fact that there was, apparently, a virus that spread quickly had only one conclusion. One that he had just decided not to tell Alex about. He'd sanitize everything later. Spend more time away from her to keep her from getting infected (delusionally infected, that is).
And yet she was running headfirst into the thing. Running right into an infection (delusional infection) that, she had already admitted could get worse. Richard wasn't alright with that. He wasn't okay with the possibility of her getting sick, delusion or not, of possibly losing her.
"And what happens if you're infected?" The counter was natural because it was his worry. It wasn't a trick, and it wasn't what he was hiding this time. His voice was low as he asked it, a slight tinge of the emotion he often hid behind it. He was worried. It wasn't exactly something he was used to being, but he was.
[No matter what the reasoning for it, being out and investigating something on her own terms again felt good to do. Oh, she'd been doing her job and looking into things all along, but this was different. This was Alex letting her journalism instincts off the leash, and she was going to chase them down until she couldn't do it anymore. That would have been enough for her anyway, but there was also the concern that something might happen to Richard from whatever was going on.
So far no one had died, and Alex's gut was telling her that was by design. Yes, she knew how it sounded, and she could hear Strand telling her that she was making leaps of logic with it even before she did it, but it was a lead that she was going to chase. Magic and technology together was weird enough, and it needed to be released, and just that it was done during this month said a lot to her. It said that someone was doing this for personal reasons but didn't want a lot of death on their hands.
Alex had also been doing research into local legends, and her office at work was a mess with it. The bag slung over her shoulder was heavy with books and notepads, and Alex's phone was in the makeshift strap on her wrist to act as a recorder, just in case. Some things died hard and Alex's tendency to default to audio was one of them. Waiting outside of the apartment building, Alex shifted her weight from one foot to the other, anxious to get going. It wasn't a new look, and she looked to Strand over her shoulder with a frown before she asked, probably for the tenth time:]
[Not for the first time, Richard wondered if this was payment for never asking Alex how she was feeling. Since he'd told her about being sick, it felt as if she'd been asking if he were capable of doing everything. The day to day things had been getting a little more than annoying, but it wasn't hard to remind himself that she'd never seen him ill before. With the advancement in their relationship, it was a given that there were going to be some oddities, though he doubted this was one of them.]
I'm fine, Alex.
[Reaching forward, he took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. As annoying as she may be right now, he felt the need to make sure that she understood that he was fine for this investigation. It wasn't their first, and he knew enough about her leaps of logic to know that he needed to be there as the proper logic that was needed.
Especially when she'd mentioned a 'magical detective.']
[Said detective appeared a moment or so later, ambling down the street with a notebook tucked into his pocket. Peter had forgone the uniform for today, and the idea of working in just his docs made it feel significantly more like home. Well. Somewhat.
He nodded once at Alex as he approached, then glanced briefly at the unfamiliar gentleman. He barely blinked anymore at the soft wash of magic he'd gotten sadly used to from people as he got closer, though it did still give him a brief chill. No points for guessing that this was Alex's sick friend, then. He looked to be doing decently, at least.]
[Alex squeezed Strand's hand in return and she gave him a quick smile. Of course she knew that he didn't believe that Peter was magic in any way, but that was beside the point. Alex did and being as she had all of the magical power of a stick, she was going to trust him to lead to where this whole thing might have started.
After all, if they could find who started this, then they could fix it before someone died or Richard ended up in a coma. That was the last thing that she wanted, honestly. Strand in a coma scared her, even if she knew he would wake up like everyone else did. There was always the chance that Richard's stupid big brain would try to test the limits of it and make it worse.
Her smile grew when she saw Peter and she waved to him rather than extending her hand because it was wrapped up with Strand's at the moment.]
Peter Grant, this is my partner Dr. Richard Strand.
[From the way she said it, and the smirk on her face it was clear that this was indeed her not Gillian Anderson irrational skeptic Scully.]
Richard, this is my friend Peter, the magical London detective.
[Alex was completely well aware of the fact that she was being ridiculous. She got changed in front of people all the time. It was sort of a joke around the studio that Nic had seen Alex changing more times than any of her partners put together. There was no reason to be embarrassed. After all, she hadn't been when she had changed around an actual goddess looking elf, and there was no reason to be nervous.
She loved him, and she wasn't exactly ugly either. Neither was he. It was just the first time that Alex was changing in front of someone when it didn't involve something either being a seduction or straightly platonic. This was a weird gray area, and everyone knew Alex Reagan was historically bad in that context.
In the end, Alex just dealt with it pragmatically. This was nothing out of the ordinary, she was putting on clothes for bed. So, in the end off came the armor of her sweater and shirt and bra and on came a cami and off came the jeans and the socks and the underwear and on came the silly pair of pj pants with rainbows on them because Alex was absurd. And then she just turned around after putting her clothing in the hamper. Look, they aren't even on the floor.]
[Richard had his own state of awkwardness about this whole thing. It had been twenty years since anyone had been in his bedroom, let alone his changing clothing in front of them. He'd taken his jacket off before, of course, even rolled up his sleeves, but never taken everything off. The last person to see him in any state of undress, was Coralee.
It took him moments before he even took off his jacket. All while Alex seemed to be casually stripping and pulling on her pajamas. It was strange; he'd never thought of this part of things. The day to day pieces of just being alive. If they'd run away together it would have been the same, wouldn't it? Cooking, living in the same space, changing. It would have all been the same. He'd committed to this, so he should have expected it. Except that he didn't.
When he finally did start to take off his jacket, she was well and finished with her changing, and he could feel the fact that he was the only movement in the room, the only one removing his armor. Something he hadn't done, not to this extent, before.
He paused for a moment, holding his jacket in his hand before setting it to the side, laid over a chair. He'd put his things on a suit hanger later. For now, he needed to concentrate on buttons. It wasn't that he was uncomfortable with his body. He wasn't. He was fairly well built and worked out a reasonable amount of time. You had to keep in shape when you were going who knows where to disprove someone's idiotic theory.
As the buttons came undone and the shirt finally slipped off, it exposed a solid shape on his upper arm. A protection sigil in the form of sacred geometry. Geometric shapes in two concentric circles with writing inside. The tattoo wrapped it's way around his upper arm, encircling it entirely and allowing the two sides of the circle to meet. Once the most vulnerable parts of him were exposed (At least to his thinking), he almost easily removed his pants and socks, putting on the pajama pants he had bought. Simple and black.]
[Alex wasn't watching. Or at the very least she wasn't just watching. She knew Richard Strand, and she knew how he hated to be vulnerable to anyone, even to her, and this removal of his suit was the very definition of of vulnerability. Even when he'd been in his flannels, that had bonded with his grief to form an armor of its own, and she had respected it. Hell, Strand had hiked up to a creepy not! church cabin wearing his suit, there had been times when she'd joked with Nic (before his unabomber period) that he probably was born in a suit rather than naked like everyone else.
So, while he finally took off his shirt, Alex just glanced over at him before she perched on what was her side of the bed (the left, thank you, away from the door) because well, she was the insomniac here and if they didn't have casper mattresses and sleeping potions, then she was gonna do that. While he fiddled with his buttons, Alex fiddled with brushing out her hair, using the length of it like a curtain to give him some privacy.
Stopping one of her baser instincts and coping mechanisms was difficult and Alex was more than a little tempted to start humming something inappropriate that might have come in an old-timey strip show, but she just bit her lip because sometimes tension was good and she didn't need to make a stupid joke all of the time. Just most of the time. But not times like now.
When he was in his pajama bottoms, Alex shifted to put the brush on the nightstand and to grab a book when her eyes widened. Really widened. They really widened and she shifted, kneeling in the bed to look at his arm. Her voice was soft when she spoke:]
Oh my gawd I owe Amalia a hundred bucks!
[It wasn't the classiest thing that Alex had said, and she colored even more dark immediately before she added:]
You have a tattoo! How did I not know you had a tattoo?!
[That was far from a reaction he'd expected. It wasn't as if he was the first person in the world to have tattoos. For Richard, it was just the one and had been gotten long ago, but Alex acted like he had grown a second head. Maybe he should have just changed in the bathroom, and worn a pajama top as well.
Still, at her baffling response, he raised a brow and moved his arm slightly away. He couldn't tell if this was a positive or negative thing in her eyes, and the fact that she was staring at it made him feel less then comfortable with it all and as if he'd shattered some preconceived notion that he didn't know she had. should he have told her? He didn't think it was something worth mentioning. Besides, it wasn't as if he were the type of person who went about getting random tattoos. This one was something that had been more of a request from someone else.]
You never asked.
[He probably wouldn't have told her even if she did, but that wasn't the point.]
[After Alex had got him back home, she hadn't left the apartment, because she knew that if he woke up alone, it would be terrible for him. So, she had conducted interviews over the phone and she had collected all sorts of books around their bed. They weren't on him, not really, but there were enough of them that the open pages formed a ring around them almost like flowers in some romantic movie.
Of course, given that it was Alex, there were post it notes and pieces of scrap paper with notes around them which kind of ruined any illusion of order that there might have been. Honestly, when Alex worked, there was often a sense of organized chaos, but that was when she had a corkboard or a white board or a desk. Right now there was just the bed and the two of them.
Granted, Alex wasn't a flurry of activity herself at the moment. She was dressed of course, because it was daytime but she'd fallen asleep with a pair of leggings and one of her sweaters on, and she hadn't even bothered to take her glasses off so they were a bit skewed on her nose. More importantly, however, Alex was laid across his chest that was still dressed in his undershirt, with her ear pressed against his chest so she could feel the slow and steady rise and fall of his comaed breathing. The concern over him being out was literally written in the fresh circles below her eyes and the frown on her lips. Her other hand was wrapped around his side, holding onto him at the same time as Alex used him as a pillow.]
[It took Richard a few moments to understand that he was feeling something. There was something heavy on his chest and something sticking in his back. Without opening his eyes, he went through a list of anything that was heavy and could have fallen on top of him when he'd dropped. There, surprisingly, wasn't anything.
Frowning, he shifted, carefully opening his eyes and pushing up to a seated position as the sleeping podcaster's upper torso seemed to move with him. When he looked down at Alex, glasses askew and bags as dark as the ones she had when he'd arrived, the frown deepened. He'd done this, or, the illness had.
A little voice of reason in the back of his mind pointed out that neither he nor Alex would do something like this. Not something that would make the other suffer. He chose to ignore it, deciding what had been the cause later.
Instead, he reached down, carefully removing Alex's glasses and setting them to the side. There were questions; how long was he asleep for, who found him, and did Stan ever receive those philosophy books, but they could wait until later. Until a time after Alex had rested a bit more.]
[When he moved, Alex let out a soft sleeping protest in the form of a groan for a minute. She hadn't even meant to fall asleep, but now that she was, her body was trying to get her to stay that way. Of course, she groaned again and blinked when she felt him take her glasses off, and then frowned deeply for a moment before she realized what this meant.
Relief flooded Alex and it was writ large in her expression, and in the way the tension that she'd been carrying in her shoulders had relaxed. Because she was Alex, she couldn't stop the breathy exhalation of: Oh thank gawd
[Because after all, she may be agnostic now, but she was definitely raised inside of a church, so it was as much of a reflex for her to say that as it was her regular 'oh my gods' and 'wows.' Shifting so that she could sit up, her hand brushed over his face quickly, feeling the stubble below the pads of her fingers and not caring.]
Don't ever scare me like that again! [The words lacked a sharpness, and she just frowned at him before her hand moved to brush over his forehead.]
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Running and Pokemon go OTA!
Hey!
Coffee shop, OTA and especially Gansey.
Have a seat!
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[ Gansey greets her and he does, in fact, take a seat across from her. At the same time, he offers out his hand for a handshake. He's old-fashioned. ]
I hope I didn't keep you waiting that long.
[ Though, it looks like she does have plenty that could keep her busy even if he had. ]
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Nope, don't worry about it. This is sort of like a second office. It definitely has better coffee than mine.
[Then she offers him the plate.]
I don't know what you drink but I figured pastries are sort of universal so help yourself!
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I can imagine so. [ He takes a cookie and despite the talk of coffee he's probably going to end up getting a mint tea when he gets a drink. ]
You know, I know someone who likes yogurt more than pastries.
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Re: Coffee shop, OTA and especially Gansey.
She did order tea instead of coffee, adding a good amount of milk, before she spotted Alex at her table. She was only about to ask for an invitation to sit down-when it was gladly offered.] Thank you. I do not mind sitting by myself, but someone to talk with is always welcomed.
[Well, someone she knew atleast, to do so otherwise would just be awkward.]
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Of course, Elizabeth. If you ever want someone to visit coffee shops with, I'm your gal. I'm practically here all the time anyway!
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[She carefully moved some of the books aside, catching their titles.] You are looking much better now. So am I to believe that you are finally getting more sleep?
[Cheerful as she kept her expression, she also couldn't help but voice some concern; she was indeed worried about the state of her health prior to this meeting.]
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Out walking Apo. OTA!
Closed to Strand.
What would probably surprise people more is that they'd decided to do the relationship thing, and the living together thing the two of them hadn't even actually kissed yet, other than the one that Alex had given him when he'd showed up and she expected to be rebuked. But then they'd gone back to his place, and Alex slept probably more in the last twenty-four hours than she had in the last three weeks. Refreshed and actually happy for once, Alex dove into the network to see Tony's post about people getting sick. She immediately offered to help, because Alex Reagan was Alex Reagan, she just assumed that Richard Strand would be okay with it. Like in so many things when it came to him, Alex was about to be proven wrong.]
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When she started typing up something on the network, something that, of course, she would be completely up to date on and incorporated in, he couldn't help leaning over her head to read the post and her reply. Some sort of 'nano-virus with magical capabilities', clearly this was her fault, not his. Her belief in this place, in the reality of magic and demons and all that other nonsense, had created a virus to counter his logic. Between the two of them, this place was ridiculous and counterbalanced.
"You're not getting involved." The words were fact. He wasn't letting her get involved with something as dangerous as that. Even if it was all in their heads, the repercussions of it would, most likely, manifest on their real selves. There was no way he was letting Alex get into something that dangerous. Something that could kill her in reality. Something that could take her from him without his even being able to lift a finger.
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After all, Alex was the sort of person who had gotten involved in things like this before, even without the Black Tapes and him, and she'd been the same since she'd been here. So, she was shocked when he told her that she wasn't getting involved, and Alex's brow climbed up towards her hairline before she said one sharp word, because honestly, at first she couldn't think of anything else to say. "What?" It went with the normal twisting up of her face in disbelief.
"Of course I'm getting involved. I can help people figure out what it is and maybe stop it before it gets worse." Getting worse of course meant that someone might die from it, and honestly, right now she was more invested in stopping that then ever. The two of them didn't have any actual good luck when it came to things, and she wasn't expecting that they'd start now. If she could help Tony and Victor, then she would, especially Victor because she trusts him implicitly.
"Richard, you're the one who thinks that this is a shared mass delusion between us. What do you think would happen if I don't try and stop it?" Alex knew without asking that he was blaming her imagination for this. Because honestly, Richard would never come up with a science and magical combination on his own. Of course, she didn't believe in his theory at all, but was hoping that maybe approaching it on his terms might head off a fight that seemed to be brewing.
Back home, in the early days when they had fought, it had never gone well. The two of them would just shout at he one another until he would bring up leaving the podcast, and she would bring up that this wasn't how it worked and the two of them wouldn't speak for a few days before one of them brought coffee or a black tape or a lead to the other and then they acted like it didn't happen. Honestly, Riverview was too small for them to try and do the same sort of thing in and she didn't want that to be what they did.
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And yet she was running headfirst into the thing. Running right into an infection (delusional infection) that, she had already admitted could get worse. Richard wasn't alright with that. He wasn't okay with the possibility of her getting sick, delusion or not, of possibly losing her.
"And what happens if you're infected?" The counter was natural because it was his worry. It wasn't a trick, and it wasn't what he was hiding this time. His voice was low as he asked it, a slight tinge of the emotion he often hid behind it. He was worried. It wasn't exactly something he was used to being, but he was.
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Wildcard for whatever. Want Alex somewhere else, toss a thing here.
Investigating, closed to Peter and Strand
So far no one had died, and Alex's gut was telling her that was by design. Yes, she knew how it sounded, and she could hear Strand telling her that she was making leaps of logic with it even before she did it, but it was a lead that she was going to chase. Magic and technology together was weird enough, and it needed to be released, and just that it was done during this month said a lot to her. It said that someone was doing this for personal reasons but didn't want a lot of death on their hands.
Alex had also been doing research into local legends, and her office at work was a mess with it. The bag slung over her shoulder was heavy with books and notepads, and Alex's phone was in the makeshift strap on her wrist to act as a recorder, just in case. Some things died hard and Alex's tendency to default to audio was one of them. Waiting outside of the apartment building, Alex shifted her weight from one foot to the other, anxious to get going. It wasn't a new look, and she looked to Strand over her shoulder with a frown before she asked, probably for the tenth time:]
Are you sure you're up for this, Richard?
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I'm fine, Alex.
[Reaching forward, he took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. As annoying as she may be right now, he felt the need to make sure that she understood that he was fine for this investigation. It wasn't their first, and he knew enough about her leaps of logic to know that he needed to be there as the proper logic that was needed.
Especially when she'd mentioned a 'magical detective.']
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He nodded once at Alex as he approached, then glanced briefly at the unfamiliar gentleman. He barely blinked anymore at the soft wash of magic he'd gotten sadly used to from people as he got closer, though it did still give him a brief chill. No points for guessing that this was Alex's sick friend, then. He looked to be doing decently, at least.]
Afternoon. Where are we off to first?
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After all, if they could find who started this, then they could fix it before someone died or Richard ended up in a coma. That was the last thing that she wanted, honestly. Strand in a coma scared her, even if she knew he would wake up like everyone else did. There was always the chance that Richard's stupid big brain would try to test the limits of it and make it worse.
Her smile grew when she saw Peter and she waved to him rather than extending her hand because it was wrapped up with Strand's at the moment.]
Peter Grant, this is my partner Dr. Richard Strand.
[From the way she said it, and the smirk on her face it was clear that this was indeed her not Gillian Anderson irrational skeptic Scully.]
Richard, this is my friend Peter, the magical London detective.
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Closed to Strand.
She loved him, and she wasn't exactly ugly either. Neither was he. It was just the first time that Alex was changing in front of someone when it didn't involve something either being a seduction or straightly platonic. This was a weird gray area, and everyone knew Alex Reagan was historically bad in that context.
In the end, Alex just dealt with it pragmatically. This was nothing out of the ordinary, she was putting on clothes for bed. So, in the end off came the armor of her sweater and shirt and bra and on came a cami and off came the jeans and the socks and the underwear and on came the silly pair of pj pants with rainbows on them because Alex was absurd. And then she just turned around after putting her clothing in the hamper. Look, they aren't even on the floor.]
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It took him moments before he even took off his jacket. All while Alex seemed to be casually stripping and pulling on her pajamas. It was strange; he'd never thought of this part of things. The day to day pieces of just being alive. If they'd run away together it would have been the same, wouldn't it? Cooking, living in the same space, changing. It would have all been the same. He'd committed to this, so he should have expected it. Except that he didn't.
When he finally did start to take off his jacket, she was well and finished with her changing, and he could feel the fact that he was the only movement in the room, the only one removing his armor. Something he hadn't done, not to this extent, before.
He paused for a moment, holding his jacket in his hand before setting it to the side, laid over a chair. He'd put his things on a suit hanger later. For now, he needed to concentrate on buttons. It wasn't that he was uncomfortable with his body. He wasn't. He was fairly well built and worked out a reasonable amount of time. You had to keep in shape when you were going who knows where to disprove someone's idiotic theory.
As the buttons came undone and the shirt finally slipped off, it exposed a solid shape on his upper arm. A protection sigil in the form of sacred geometry. Geometric shapes in two concentric circles with writing inside. The tattoo wrapped it's way around his upper arm, encircling it entirely and allowing the two sides of the circle to meet. Once the most vulnerable parts of him were exposed (At least to his thinking), he almost easily removed his pants and socks, putting on the pajama pants he had bought. Simple and black.]
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So, while he finally took off his shirt, Alex just glanced over at him before she perched on what was her side of the bed (the left, thank you, away from the door) because well, she was the insomniac here and if they didn't have casper mattresses and sleeping potions, then she was gonna do that. While he fiddled with his buttons, Alex fiddled with brushing out her hair, using the length of it like a curtain to give him some privacy.
Stopping one of her baser instincts and coping mechanisms was difficult and Alex was more than a little tempted to start humming something inappropriate that might have come in an old-timey strip show, but she just bit her lip because sometimes tension was good and she didn't need to make a stupid joke all of the time. Just most of the time. But not times like now.
When he was in his pajama bottoms, Alex shifted to put the brush on the nightstand and to grab a book when her eyes widened. Really widened. They really widened and she shifted, kneeling in the bed to look at his arm. Her voice was soft when she spoke:]
Oh my gawd I owe Amalia a hundred bucks!
[It wasn't the classiest thing that Alex had said, and she colored even more dark immediately before she added:]
You have a tattoo! How did I not know you had a tattoo?!
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Still, at her baffling response, he raised a brow and moved his arm slightly away. He couldn't tell if this was a positive or negative thing in her eyes, and the fact that she was staring at it made him feel less then comfortable with it all and as if he'd shattered some preconceived notion that he didn't know she had. should he have told her? He didn't think it was something worth mentioning. Besides, it wasn't as if he were the type of person who went about getting random tattoos. This one was something that had been more of a request from someone else.]
You never asked.
[He probably wouldn't have told her even if she did, but that wasn't the point.]
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Of course, given that it was Alex, there were post it notes and pieces of scrap paper with notes around them which kind of ruined any illusion of order that there might have been. Honestly, when Alex worked, there was often a sense of organized chaos, but that was when she had a corkboard or a white board or a desk. Right now there was just the bed and the two of them.
Granted, Alex wasn't a flurry of activity herself at the moment. She was dressed of course, because it was daytime but she'd fallen asleep with a pair of leggings and one of her sweaters on, and she hadn't even bothered to take her glasses off so they were a bit skewed on her nose. More importantly, however, Alex was laid across his chest that was still dressed in his undershirt, with her ear pressed against his chest so she could feel the slow and steady rise and fall of his comaed breathing. The concern over him being out was literally written in the fresh circles below her eyes and the frown on her lips. Her other hand was wrapped around his side, holding onto him at the same time as Alex used him as a pillow.]
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Frowning, he shifted, carefully opening his eyes and pushing up to a seated position as the sleeping podcaster's upper torso seemed to move with him. When he looked down at Alex, glasses askew and bags as dark as the ones she had when he'd arrived, the frown deepened. He'd done this, or, the illness had.
A little voice of reason in the back of his mind pointed out that neither he nor Alex would do something like this. Not something that would make the other suffer. He chose to ignore it, deciding what had been the cause later.
Instead, he reached down, carefully removing Alex's glasses and setting them to the side. There were questions; how long was he asleep for, who found him, and did Stan ever receive those philosophy books, but they could wait until later. Until a time after Alex had rested a bit more.]
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Relief flooded Alex and it was writ large in her expression, and in the way the tension that she'd been carrying in her shoulders had relaxed. Because she was Alex, she couldn't stop the breathy exhalation of: Oh thank gawd
[Because after all, she may be agnostic now, but she was definitely raised inside of a church, so it was as much of a reflex for her to say that as it was her regular 'oh my gods' and 'wows.' Shifting so that she could sit up, her hand brushed over his face quickly, feeling the stubble below the pads of her fingers and not caring.]
Don't ever scare me like that again! [The words lacked a sharpness, and she just frowned at him before her hand moved to brush over his forehead.]
You've been out for five days.
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