Chapter Text
Pete feels like it’s probably kind of embarrassing how little he’s acclimated to the part of Time Travel where he actually Time Travels.
He’s got the parts around it down at this point, it’s just a lot of math and focus to stay put, or try and influence where and when he ends up, but getting rocketed across the timestream is always overwhelming. Mostly, really, because it’s so underwhelming. He’s one place, and then everything goes yellow and wobbly and immediately he’s somewhere else, and he feels like shit about it. Like… physically. For blood sugar reasons.
To be fair, though, this time, the hard transition from Bangkok in 1977 to a weird, random forest in the middle of the night, probably isn’t helping in terms of temporal whiplash.
He digs around in the pocket of his pointedly era nonspecific jacket, yanking out a couple of his immediately-post-Travel hard candies. He shoves them all in his mouth at once, hoping it’ll work it’s magic faster rather than later on combatting how fucking dizzy he is. Wherever this is, it must be pretty far back, or away, from where he’d come from, that always makes his levels extra fuck-y.
There’s not much in the way of a path, it’s not like he’s on a hiking trail or some shit, so he closes his eyes and relaxes all his muscles until he can feel the tug in his chest, familiar and reassuring.
He follows it, awkwardly clambering over raised tree roots and, at one point, really startling a freaking badger, which he feels sort of bad about. As he turns his way around a particularly massive tree trunk, to a line of mostly abandoned looking little shacks, the feeling loosens, and then slips away, just as a figure, mostly hidden by the shadow-y late night lighting, darts into the furthest cottage. Bingo.
He follows it down the line, gently nudging open the door, “Steph?”
Two shiny, cat-adjacent eyes glint at him from the other side of the room, pissed looking and probably dangerous, but it just makes relief crack open in his chest. The figure steps into the dull moonlight just barely seeping in from outside.
It is Steph. But for a second, he almost doesn’t recognize her. Which is… disconcerting.
Steph is always the same. She’s immortal. She’ll change up her hair, or her style to suit the times. Honestly, she’s always a little too quick to catch onto trends if anything. But physically, as a person, she stays pretty consistent, which Pete has always appreciated, when literally nothing else in his life can.
But this Steph looks different, wrong, all her edges are too gaunt, bones visible under too pale skin, every feature thinned out and exhausted. And he doesn’t like that shit at all.
She spits something angry, and guttural enough to presumably be German at him-- shit, okay, that gives him some sort of idea of his setting and time frame.
Oh. God. That means he’s pretty early in terms of a Steph timeline. Shit. Does she not know him yet?
“Sorry, I don’t--” He gestures lamely in a way that’s supposed to be reassuring, but probably just comes across more as flail-y.
“Go away,” She snaps, switching to a thickly-accented English quicker than he’d anticipated, still scowling warily. He realizes a little belatedly that her gums are stained an ugly bruise-blue, shrunk back a little to show more of her teeth, in a way that doesn’t feel intentional.
Her eyes keep cutting over his shoulder, and it takes him a second to realize she’s looking at his backpack like it’s a bomb or something.
Slowly, trying to telegraph his movements the best he can for this Steph who he’s starting to become increasingly sure does not recognize him at all, he reaches back and pulls it off. She lurches a step forward, going to grab or swipe or something else that would probably go very, very badly for him, and he tosses the bag hard onto the floor between them with a thunk.
She flinches back, hissing something wordless that’s mostly teeth.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, Steph.”
“Then I suggest you leave before I hurt you.”
He probably should. Even if it’s a little too early for him to be able to force another bout of Traveling, he can go hide out somewhere else in the forest and try his best not to get eaten by some manner of night animal. But before he does he’s just gotta know. For science. “You don’t know me, do you?”
“No.” She spits out, hands balled into fists. And then, she tilts her head to the side, eyes going huge, “I… you-- you were in my Father’s court. Even before we were-- you should be dead.” Her voice raises high and nervous, in a way he’s not used to hearing from her.
Before he can fully process the implications of that, though, he’s being slammed back first against one of the walls so hard he feels something in the structure itself crumple a little against his spine. (If circumstances were any different, he thinks, this would actually be really hot. And then, he thinks, this so, unbelievably not the time.) Steph glowers at him from too close, forearm pinned close across his throat, “You are a member of his Coven, then? Tell me, I am curious, have you come to bring me back or to kill me this time?”
She must have seen a future version of him, he realizes a little dizzily. One that got sent far enough back that Steph wasn’t even a fucking vampire yet, from the sounds of it, so he hadn’t spoken to her, incase it would have messed something up. Yeah, he can see why that would be startling. He gets it. If he thought the same thing she was thinking, he’d probably crush his windpipe too.
“No, Steph, I--”
“Be quiet.” She presses down a little more, and he struggles around an attempt to inhale. She bites out something in German he can’t translate, but it sounds enough like a threat where he gets the overarching concept.
“Feel m’h’rtbeat! ‘M alive, see!” He chokes out, slapping awkwardly between the two of them at his chest. “C’n’t be a v’mp’re. Not dead.”
Steph hesitates, her hand not currently occupied with destroying his jugular drifts down to press sharply over his heart. Something in her relaxes, and then immediately sharpens back up.
“I am not stupid. This does not change anything. I know you are working for my Father,” She pulls her shoulders back, fangs pulling even more visibly down from her shrunken gums, ready for some kind of fight Pete would really rather not be a part of, “What are you, one of his thrall?”
“Hey, hey, no.” He wriggles the best he can in her very tight grip to put his hands up, visibly empty and placating, “I’ve never even met your Father. Which is, really, honestly, probably a good thing, actually, because he sucks and I would try to kill him, but, like, I don’t think it’d go very well for me?”
She keeps her teeth out, but something in her still tense body relaxes a little bit, forearm loosening across his throat, “Then who are you?”
“Right. Yeah. Sorry.” He considers putting his hand out between them for her to shake, and then decides immediately against it, “Peter Spankoffski. I’m a Time Traveler. So, like, we’ve met before? But not for you, yet. That's how I knew your name.”
She looks confused, and then annoyed about being confused. It makes her look a little more like his Steph in a way he appreciates, “Time Traveler?”
“Uh, yes? I’m actually from the year 2023, but this whole thing happened with my brother that… we don’t actually need to get into, right now. Sorry. But, I get sent back through Time randomly. Usually around you.”
“Why?”
He shrugs, because, well, honestly, he still hasn’t figured that one out, “Dunno.”
“And you are expecting me to believe this?” She says, sharply, but she takes a step from him back, anyway.
“I mean, I was sort of hoping you would?” He’d thought about this a lot. Actually, probably an embarrassing amount that he wouldn’t be willing to admit. He’d made several plans for what to say the eventuality finally occurred that the Steph he’d appeared by was a Steph who didn’t know him yet, “I figured the whole vampire thing would kind of give me a leg up here.”
And yet, somehow, now, when it’s actually happening, he’s fully shitting the bed. Good job, Spankofski.
She crosses her arms tightly across her chest, “This is why… why you were able to be back at court, then? This Time Travel?”
“Presumably?” He makes a hesitant move away from the wall, keeping a very close eye on the still angry apex predator standing half a foot away, “I haven’t been that far back yet, though, so that was probably a future version of me.”
At least, he’s hoping so. Stephanie could still fully kill him right now, and he couldn’t stop her. He’s pretty sure, as far as paradoxes go, though, he’s safe. His Steph has met older versions of himself, and actually hung out with him, so unless he’s totally wrong and him dying now would just retroactively void those interactions, there’s not much to worry about right now.
He’s still going to worry about it. But not as much as he could be.
“Alright, future boy. Prove it to me.”
“Yeah, okay, cool” He nods a few more times than feels strictly necessary, “… how, though?”
She raises one eyebrow at him, looking so much like herself he stupidly feels more of his don’t-get-your-throat-ripped-out defenses lower, “You can figure this out yourself, no?”
“Sure, ‘course, I, um, one sec--”He ducks past her, doing his best to ignore the low growl that she aims at him for it, grabbing for his bag. She gets there first, ripping it away right before he can get to it. Right. Still faster than him.
She uses her free hand not holding his backpack to grab him by the front of his jacket, “You think I am an idiot. Do you?”
“We’re going to have this conversation a lot, but I genuinely, very much do not.”
“Going for your stake, then? Or do you prefer holy water?”
“Oh my god, Steph. I’m not going to kill you. Just-- look in the front pocket, the tiny one. Please?” She glowers at him, eyes shiny and almost-red in the low lighting. He’s really trying to be less attracted to it than he is. Right now is still, maybe even more not the time. He adds, carefully, “And then if there is, like, garlic or some shit in there you have my full permission to eat my face for it. Sound good?”
She scoffs, sharp and definitely at least a little amused, shoving him down to the floor and yanking open the top pocket harder than she needs to. Which is… fine.
“It’s the longer strip of paper--”
“Yes, I see it.” She pulls out the photobooth strip, holding it close to her face with a pinched up, pissed off kind of look on her face, “What is this supposed to prove?”
“It’s, look, it’s you and it’s me, from the future! We took it at a photobooth at some point in the 1990’s. That's-- actually, what year is it? Do you have cameras, yet?”
She gives him another flat, eyebrow raised look and he nods, “Yeah, okay. Doesn’t matter. Fair enough. But it’s real, I swear.”
She squints down at it again, finger tracing the four boxes before stilling on the last one. Right. Shit. He’d been meaning to avoid that part. The top three are perfectly innocent, Steph posing like she actually knows what she’s doing, and Pete very awkwardly trying to copy her, even though he’s mostly just laughing. But, for the last one, Steph had pulled him forward into a kiss.
Maybe they’re far enough into the past where kissing is one of those casual, cool things close friends do? Like in ancient Rome?
Based on the look she shoots his way, he doesn’t think so.
“Look, I know this is really weird, but--”
“Fine.”
He splutters more than he means to, well aware that makes him sound way too suspicious for someone who has actually achieved the goal they’d been trying for, “Fine? You’re… this is all good, then?”
She huffs, plopping down in an unnervingly graceful criss-cross onto the floor next to him, still looking down at the photos, “If this is a forgery, then this is the strangest strategy anyone has attempted to murder me, or bring me back to my Father, so…”
“Oh. Okay. Good.”
“He does not get me, then? I… will make it out of Deutschland?” Her voice sounds so small and hopeful and tired. God, she really does look like shit.
“You do. At least, as long as I’ve known you.” He presses his mouth shut before he can do something stupid like spill all the bad parts. The close calls he’s been there for, and the ones he hasn’t. How often she’s packed up and moved somewhere else, even before she’s actually been caught. Always on edge and waiting until she’ll have to run away until she finds someplace that feels safe, temporarily. It doesn’t feel helpful, “And, like, cumulatively? I’ve known you for a really long time.”
She smiles, small and hesitant down at the photo strip, before thrusting it in his direction. He takes it carefully, awkwardly pulling his bag closer without getting up to tuck it back into the right pocket where it’ll be safe.
“Thank you, then. Peter Spankoffski.” She says his name way too sarcastically for someone who doesn’t know about, like, microwaves yet should be able to. It’s funny, hearing how her pronunciation changes in her stronger accent.
He likes it.
“No problem, Stephanie Lauter.” He says back, she rolls her eyes, and for half a second, things actually feel kind of normal.
She slumps forward to rest her elbows onto her knees, rubbing a hand hard down her face with a sigh.
“You okay?”
“Yes. I am just… tired. This is all far too strange for me to be able to handle it right now.”
“Yeah, I get that.” He sinks back on his hands, looking her over more carefully. Everything he’d noticed at first stays true. She looks exhausted, and too thin, and too pale. Still different in a way immortal beings shouldn’t be allowed to be. And, yes, sure, he guesses that’s fair enough, if she’s just left her Father. But he still doesn’t fucking like it.
Pieces begin to click together in his head, of this weird, complicated Stephanie puzzle sitting in front of him. He thinks back over the stories she’d been willing to tell him of when she first escaped. How terrified she was of feeding, or going anywhere public, doing anything that might raise the vampire-alarms for humans, that her Father, or, more accurately, her Father’s childer and thrall, could then be sent to follow and track her down.
There’s horrible piles in a few of the corners of the shack that he hadn’t paid much attention to when he came in, a little too distracted by the Steph, and then, the Steph-might-kill-him of it all, but now that he’s sitting he can make them out better. Stacks of desiccated rat corpses and feathery lumps of what used to be birds.
“When's the last time you fed?” He asks, trying not to look too closely at a still half-fur covered ribcage.
Her head snaps over to look at him, and he can’t place the expression at first, mouth pinched and eyes wide. And then it dawns on him. She’s embarrassed. Oh, Steph.
Steph doesn't like to feed off animals. Always says they taste too watered down, and never satisfy her hunger enough for it to be worth it.
(Which, he doesn't have any first hand experience in the matter specifically, so he’s sure it’s probably true, but looking at it now, part of him wonders if she had always just been more embarrassed by it than anything. If eating vermin just brings her back to right now, when her dickhead Dad pushed her hand and she’d needed to run and hide in a country teeming with his supporters.)
“I-- earlier tonight,” She answers him, carefully.
“You still hungry?” He pulls back his sleeve, and he offers her his wrist as non-confrontationally as possible. He doesn’t stretch his arm all the way out to her yet, waiting to gauge her reaction.
“What?” Her whole face is twisted in some weird, mostly indecipherable mix of surprise and horror and something, but he can almost feel the way her eyes track along the bared skin, following up the length of his forearm to where the line of his veins gets hidden back under his jacket.
“No pressure, or anything. I just know human blood is usually better for you.” He shrugs, trying to sound casual about it and probably coming across more as a weird, high pitched, blood freak.
“I am not-- are you insane?” She scrambles back from him just a little bit, dragging a hand over her nose less subtly than he thinks she means to, “I will kill you, einfaltspinsel.”
“You’ve fed from me before. I trust you.” He wonders if it’s weird to say that she’s told him he tastes good before. It feels like a good selling point, that his stupid, hypoglycemic blood is apparently got, like, unique flavor notes, or whatever the hell rich people say at wine tastings. But, still. Probably weird, right?
She swallows visibly, pulling her eyes up from his arm haltingly to look at his face. He does his very best to look sincere and trustworthy and drink-from-able.
“That would be another Stephanie. From your future. How do you know I will not lose control?”
“I mean, I don’t really,” He shrugs. Other than his general faith in the timeline’s dislike of inconsistencies, he technically doesn’t, but he can’t find it in himself to care anymore than he did earlier when she thought he was sent by her Dad. “But, even if you did, that’s kinda on me, right? You tried to warn me.”
She bites down on her lower lip, the edges of her teeth digging into the skin harder than they probably should, eyes flicking back down to his wrist and up to his face. He knows very well what Stephanie Lauter looks like when she’s hungry.
“Hey, if it gets too much I’ll tap you on the leg, okay?” He gestures vaguely downward with the hand that’s not held up, “So, I won’t even need to lift my arm up, or talk, or anything.”
The idea of doing that had been Steph’s, actually, the first time he’d let her feed off him. A safeword that they didn’t really ever need, because she had better control over herself then she ever thought she did.
And, logically, Pete had always known that, linearly, Steph had probably fed off him before he was aware of it. But it’s really, really weird to think that somehow he’d been the one to introduce their safety precautions to her. Fucking paradoxes.
“That may still not be enough to get me to stop.” Steph warns him, but she sounds less convinced than before.
“That’s okay.” He nods, “Once again, I’m fully volunteering to be potentially murdered. Which, I don’t think you’re going to do, to be clear. But, if you did it by accident, it’s still my fault.”
He scoots further back so he’s propped against the wall and represents his arm, “You don’t need to say yes, if you don’t wanna. But, the offer is on the table.”
Steph hesitates one last time before shuffling forward on her knees, taking his hand carefully in her own, and staring down at it for a second. And then, before he can prepare himself, she sinks her teeth in.
He sucks in a sharp breath, more out of surprise than anything. The first few moments of a feeding always hurts, a sharp sort of stinging as he grows hyper aware of something digging deeper into his vein that isn’t supposed to be there. And then, as suddenly as the burning starts, it’s gone. Melting into warm, and nice, and Steph.
She’d explained it once. That there was some sort of effect in a vampire’s saliva, which sounded to Pete as a pretty obviously pheromone-based reaction, that makes its prey relax, letting go of all their senses, before they can scream and alert other humans. Pete had expected to mind it more than he does the first time she’d told him about it, but it’s actually really nice, especially in the moment it’s happening. He just gets to let his brain go all soup-y and let Steph drink her fill. It’s kind of a win-win.
This version of Steph is rougher than his standard Steph, the pull of her teeth a little more aggressive. He can feel the desperation under the cozy, golden haze of having his blood taken out of his body. Aw, fuck, Steph. She really must have been starving. Part of him just wants to tell her to keep going, take as much as she needs, take more-- but actually, no, maybe that’s the pheromone-thingy-effect and his Steph-weakness talking, and he’s definitely getting a little light headed, and if he looks down, there’s a lot of blood happening--
He drags his free hand back and swats at her knee. And for a moment, just enough time for his stomach to twist, and him to think ‘ah, well, she did warn me’, she doesn’t stop, mouth wrapping somehow tighter around the curve of his wrist.
Before he can work up the effort to hit her again, though, she pulls back, tongue darting around her mouth in a curve of shiny crimson. And then, he has the same thought he has every time he’s drunk on vampire spit and blood loss. Oh, that’s really hot.
And then he swoons really embarrassingly back into the wall. Head all heavy and swimmy.
“Scheisse, scheisse, scheisse,” Steph’s hands are on his face, then, tilting it upward so he can see how big her eyes are, “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, don’worry ‘bout it.” He flaps his hand very lazily down by his side, where he’s not actually sure she can see it, “C’n’you grab m’bag? St’pid of me. Should’a thought’ve’t, ‘fore.”
“Yes, alright, do not-- do not die, future boy. Okay? Yes?”
“‘M’fine, d’worry.”
She thrusts his back into his lap and he offers her a smile that probably comes out looking more like a grimace, based on how she winces. He digs around in the main pocket without looking, half aware he probably should be doing something to stop the way his wrist is freely bleeding but, whatever. He’ll deal with that in a second.
Eventually, he frees a protein bar from the mostly empty box crushed at the bottom of the backpack, tearing it open with his teeth and taking a bite.
He really should restock next time he’s far enough into modern day for grocery stores and processed food to exist. He’s too tired to really try and figure out the math to push the odds into making that happen right now, though. Plus, he’s got a shit ton of glucose tablets somewhere in his vampire-girlfriend survival kit, anyway. He just hates those things.
He stops thinking about the logistics of it all and focuses on chewing.
Once his head stops feeling like it’s getting jostled around underwater, he pries his eyes open, tilting his head over against the wall in Steph’s direction. He isn’t really sure what he was anticipating, from past, historical, post blood-drinking Stephanie, but it definitely wasn’t her staring at him two fucking inches away.
“Jesus christ!” He startles back a little, and she blinks hard, almost looking slightly embarrassed at being caught out, “You okay?”
“Yes. Yes, I am sorry. Are… are you… okay?" She’s still got some of his blood smeared down her chin, a faded line of it stretching over her cheek from where it looks like she tried to swipe it away with her hand. She already looks more like herself, though. Cheeks and lips fuller, less pale and eyes more pointedly the wine-dark maroon he’s used to. Even her hair looks a little less flat and greasy, which is something he’s never understood, no matter how many times Steph has insisted that it’s a thing, that, apparently, totally makes sense.
He smiles at her, which, for some reason, just makes her look confused, “I told you, I’m all good. Just gotta sit for a bit.”
“I know that is what you said, just…” She fidgets with the fabric of her skirt, “I suppose I never waited around afterwards to see what happened to those I fed from.”
He thinks, maybe, he should find that more fucked up than he does. It makes sense, though. When she was part of her Dad’s coven, he got the feeling the blood-drinking system there didn’t leave much to look at, after feedings. And after she left, if she had drank from a human, she’d need to get the fuck out of dodge before someone caught her.
(It’s kind of cool, actually. He’s got to be an unintentional vampiric science experiment!)
“‘M’sorry I bled on you,” He hums, nodding down to the dripping smear he’d accidentally left across her skirt. Which is probably sort of stupid, considering.
“Do not be,” She laughs, sounding weirdly nervous about it, before leaning a little closer to whisper like a secret, “That is why it is red.”
He finishes off his protein bar, balling up the wrapper and shoving it into his still open backpack to throw away later, when, like, landfills exist and something nonbiodegradable won’t blow someone's mind. Steph watches him a little too carefully as he does it. He can feel her eyes following every micro-movement.
He turns slightly too fast back to look at her, ignoring the instant rush of nausea that the movement causes to crawl up his throat, “I’m fine, dude, I promise.”
“I know this! I just…” Her face goes slightly pink, and he smiles despite himself. That’s always been one of his favorite parts of when Steph fed off him; the actual, limited time ability to make her blush.
“What?” He asks, genuinely curious, since, right now, she shouldn’t actually have anything to be embarrassed about (and they definitely aren’t… there relationship wise right now for any other reason to be viable).
“I am just… curious about certain things.” She presses her lips together, looking away from him to stare back down at her skirt, “Except, I also feel guilty for wanting to ask questions when you allowed me to feed off you, and it seems wrong to bother the person whose blood I have just stolen with questions about the future.”
“Oh,” He tries not to laugh, but it just comes out anyway behind his closed lips. She whips her head around to glare at him, “No! No, that’s totally fine! I just really wasn’t expecting that.”
Normally, Steph isn’t shy with what future information she is curious about. Pete is normally the one who has to stop her from learning about things she definitely shouldn’t know, and even then, half the time, she tricks him pretty easily into telling her anyway.
He doesn’t like the idea of a version of her being nervous to bug him.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything? Where do I go? How… how far do I need to go for my Father not to find me? What is the most interesting thing to happen in your fictional sounding year of 2023--?” She cuts herself off, swiping the blood away from her mouth uneasily.
He huffs another, more careful, laugh, counting out the questions on his fingers as he goes, “Okay, so, for where you go… I just saw you in Bangkok, and before that it was Morocco? Um, really all across Europe. Definitely all of the fifty states.”
She shoots him a confused look, and he has to think back on what he actually said to figure out why, “Of the United States… of America?” She doesn’t look less confused, “Oh. Shit. What year is it? Are we pre New World expeditions?”
Steph snorts, and it feels like too modern of a sound for the setting. He gets over it pretty quickly when she grins at him, “I do not know what this is.”
“The year?”
“No. Obviously not the year, arschloch. It is 1611. I think.”
“Christ.” That’s earlier than he thought. Post-Columbus, at least, but The Mayflower is still well out from setting sail.
“However,” She slaps at his ankle very, very carefully, “I do not know what the New World means.”
“Right, that’s fair enough.” He goes to slap back, and then is reminded he’s still bleeding, and pivots to grab the first aid kit out of his backpack, “It’s a series of countries, you’ll hear about ‘em soon. They’re where I’m from.”
“Ah, okay,” She nods, watching him wipe the blood away with an alcohol-wipe. The bite mark is always so much smaller than he’s expecting, “So, where do I go first?”
“What do you mean?” He asks, awkwardly tilting his hand back to hold the end of his gauze down as he starts to wrap up the wound.
“To get away.”
“Oh. I… I don’t think I should tell you that.”
Steph makes an offended, squeaky noise, “Why not?”
“Paradoxes?” He insists, which just gets him a completely blank stare in return. Which is fair enough, “I don’t want to say that you go someplace, and that ends up being why you go there, instead of you deciding to yourself, you know? You do a pretty good job on your own.”
He tries to be careful with that. Sometimes, yeah, later in the timeline, if his notebook lines up with answers, he’ll nudge her to the right place, but it’s never for important things. Steph can figure things out for herself easily enough, and he doesn't have to worry about all the moral, personal autonomy issues that come with meddling in Time.
Steph crosses her arms, mock-pouting at him, “You are unbelievably boring, did you know this?”
“I’ve been told.” He smiles at her, and she glares at him for literally half a second before she gives up on it to smile back.
“Good. Well, I believe I had more questions for you?”
“Slow your roll, I’m getting to ‘em.”
She snorts, eyebrows high on her forehead, “What is slowing my roll?”
“It’s… something that doesn't matter. Just-- shut up, so I can answer. Please?”
She raises both her hands placatingly, gesturing for him to continue.
At some point, as he tries to explain his way around endless bootstrap paradoxes, and Steph asks even more clarifying questions, he feels the tug twisting through his guts that means it’s time to go. He ignores it. It’s easier now than it was at the beginning, pushing the feeling down low in his belly until it’s just a vaguely uncomfortable annoyance, grounding himself into the year he’s currently in, with the Steph he’s currently with.
He manages to hold onto himself until the dark seeping in under the door takes on duskier gray tint, and Steph starts nodding off against his shoulder, yawning with all her teeth.
“I’ll probably be gone when you wake up tomorrow night,” he nudges her a little more awake, and she nods, all sleepy and definitely not totally comprehending.
“Of course.” She screws her mouth up small, “Thank you, again, for what you did tonight. I will… miss you. Even if that is strange to say when we have just met.”
“Hey, you’ll see me again. Probably soon, I don’t actually know specifically when, next? But probably soon.” He tilts his head, flipping through his own mental-recall of the timeline in his notebook, trying to settle on specifics. He’s a little too focused on staying put in the here and now to have this conversation to be able to remember anything, so he clarifies, “Well, soon for you. Might be a while for me.”
“You are a strange, strange man, Peter Spankoffski.” Steph huffs, dropping her head back into the wall to look at him better, “And all of your future talk makes my head hurt.”
“Yeah,” He inhales slowly through his teeth, “It’ll do that to you.”
He pushes himself off the wall, shoving the crumpled blanket barrier piled next to the entrance back under the crack in the doorway to block any sunlight from seeping in. When he looks back, Steph is already asleep. Or, as asleep as she ever gets.
He doesn’t like looking at her when she’s like this, gray and motionless and not breathing for far too long for it to be a conscious choice. She looks too dead. Which, admittedly, logically, Pete knows is a ridiculous line to draw in the sand here, since Steph’s always dead, but he still doesn’t like having to face it.
“Bye, Steph, see you in a bit.” He waves at her, and then feels dumb. If Steph was awake, she probably would have laughed at him for it. But she’s not.
So, he just preemptively unwraps one of the hard candies from his pocket, pops it in his mouth as he pulls on his backpack, and lets himself fall back into Time.