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The problem with dating someone on the team was that you rarely, if ever, got to actually see them in person. Liz’s fledgling relationship with Abe had been curtailed, first by a ghost train in the Midwest, then by a series of missing children which had led the team on a wild goose chase across the Hudson River Valley (and which Kate and Hellboy were still currently pursuing), and just recently by ominous reports of violet lights appearing over the horizon in Alaska. It wasn’t really Liz’s ideal mission, as she was none too fond of Alaskan weather, but she’d been the only available senior agent, and so to Nome she had gone. There was some whispering about investigating the disappearances that had plagued the area, but Liz privately believed that the FBI probably had it right, and that the missing individuals had simply gotten drunk and wandered off into the tundra.
It was, seemingly and unfortunately, the only thing to do out here. Liz had reached her absolute limit when it came to games of solitaire and none of the rookie field agents that she’d dragged along were any good at Scrabble. It made her miss HB and Abe even more, though HB tended to cheat and Abe often insisted that the nonsense words that he laid down counted as they were technically words, just in another language, and it didn’t matter how often Liz pointed out that Scrabble was meant to be played strictly in English, he still somehow ended up with the points.
Any of that would have beat sitting in a nondescript hotel room, wondering whether or not it was too early to order room service again. If this mission didn’t end soon, she was going to going to get really fat, and at this point she wasn’t even sure she minded. There had been no violet lights, no paranormal activity, not even a bear with mange that she could squint at and imagine as some sort of hideous monster of the netherworld. It was, in short, a total waste of her time and energy. Not that she was expending much energy.
Her phone rang and she glanced at the display, then picked it up and thumbed the answer button. “Hello,” she said, settling back against the mountain of pillows she’d built up on her bed. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Good things, of course,” Abe said, a touch of warm amusement in his soft voice. He sounded tinny and indistinct, reinforcing the sense of isolation that had been creeping up on her since she’d arrived in Alaska. She sighed and closed her eyes.
“Not really. I was wishing you were here to cheat at Scrabble.” Abe made an offended noise and she smiled. “I’m pretty sure that all the guys here would much rather I wasn’t there when they played so that they could see how many points they could score off of dirty words.”
“I seem to recall you getting a triple word score off of some really inappropriate words,” Abe remarked dryly. Liz snorted. She remembered that game, too; Hellboy and Abe had both feigned shock and Kate had nearly laughed herself stupid. That had been in the good old days, before they had been so busy that they only saw each other once a month, if that, and never all at the same time.
“Yeah, well. These guys either think they can’t get dirty around their boss, or they think I’m a lady. I’m not sure which.” Abe’s little gulp of laughter was gratifying, and Liz snuggled down further into the pillows. “How’s your thing going? Where are you, even?”
“Latvia,” he answered. No wonder he sounded like he was talking through a Coke can. The bill was going to be through the roof. “We’re hunting killer gargoyles.”
“Any luck?” she asked.
“A little,” he said. “We caught one but it smashed itself apart against the wall before we could study it.”
“Gross.”
“Mmm.” She heard him turn away from the phone and say something, and a pang of jealousy shot through her. It wasn’t that she thought he was seeing someone else – although their… thing was fresh enough that the fear existed as a strong and constant current that she struggled to stay above – it was the simple fact that there was another person there, speaking to him in person, looking at his surprisingly emotive face, surrounded by the fresh, cool scent of his skin, and it wasn’t her. The vehemence of the emotion surprised her and she cleared her throat.
“If you need to go, it’s fine,” she said.
“No, it’s all right,” he answered, though now he sounded distracted. “They think there may be a nest of them nearby.”
“Gargoyles have nests?” she asked. She didn’t really care. She wanted to tell him that she missed him, that Alaska sucked, that she wanted to just lie in bed with him and watch reruns of Saturday Night Live because they were the only thing showing. She wanted to tell him about how she was trying every sandwich on the hotel menu and pitting them against each other, complete with an elimination bracket, in a vain attempt to inject some excitement into her days here. She wanted him to drop his voice and teasingly ask her what she was wearing so that she could tell him about the ridiculous salmon-print underwear she’d bought at an airport gift shop. In short, she wanted to talk about pretty much everything except work.
“I don’t think they’re really gargoyles,” he said. He murmured something to someone else again, and Liz rolled onto her belly and buried her face in the pillows. “Anyway. How is your thing going? The lights, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, voice muffled by cheap hotel pillow shams. “No lights so far. I’m getting really bored.”
“I bet.” Abe sounded sympathetic, at least, and she rolled back over. Silence fell, then, both of them having run out of harmless things to say and neither wanting to break the seal on talking about more personal topics. The weight of it hung over Liz’s head and she thought with disgust how she could be so brave in the face of freaky monsters and undead sorcerers and then completely chicken out when it came time to talk to her kind-of-boyfriend about her actual thoughts and desires. If they ever managed to get together long enough to have sex, it was obviously going to be terrible.
She was saved from these dark thoughts by the sound of running feet and then a rapid hammering on her door. “Hang on,” she said, tossing the phone onto the bed and hurrying to the door. One of the rookies stood there, panting and wild-eyed. There was a fierce smile on his young face and Liz felt her blood jump in response. “Something happened?”
“Something happened,” he confirmed. “The lights started a few seconds ago. You ready?”
“Yeah.” She was about to step out the door when she remembered Abe on the other end of the line. “Hang on.” She darted back into the room and scooped up the phone. “I have to go. The lights.”
“I figured,” he said, amused and resigned at the same time. “I’ll call back later tonight, if you want.”
“I do,” she said firmly. It would give her some time to work up the nerve to tell the salmon underwear anecdote. “Talk to you later, Abe.”
“Be safe,” he said. She started to hang up but, emboldened by her own disgust with herself, she lifted the speaker to her lips and kissed it.
“Love you,” she said. Stunned silence greeted this pronouncement and she thought for a second that she had done something incredibly, horribly stupid, but then Abe spoke again and he sounded bemused and relieved and more present than he’d sounded for the entire short conversation.
“Love you too, Liz,” he said. “And… I’ll see you soon.” It sounded like a promise, and Liz hung up the phone feeling more triumphant than she had in her entire life.