Chapter Text
The front door had swollen in the damp again.
Sidney got it open far enough for cold air to push past her skirts before the bottom edge caught against the floorboards, and she had to brace one hand against the frame and put her shoulder into the wood. It gave with the same reluctant scrape it had been making for the better part of a week, swinging inward hard enough that she caught it before the handle struck the wall.
Warmth met her immediately, carrying the dry smell of woodsmoke into the wet October air clinging to her coat, and for several seconds she stayed where she was simply because stepping across the threshold meant she could finally stop paying attention to everything behind her. The road was empty when she glanced back.
Nothing had followed them out of the trees, nobody had decided at the last possible moment that two women asking inconvenient questions warranted pursuit, and whatever mud had found its way into the hem of her skirt could become tomorrow’s problem. Caitlin apparently reached much the same conclusion without needing to check, because she slipped past Sidney the instant there was room and planted one hand against the wall to wrench her right boot off with the heel of the other.
“I’m burning these,” Caitlin announced with the controlled irritation she had maintained for most of the walk home, although Sidney had watched it sharpen every time the torn wool at her knee caught against her skin.
She freed the second boot, nudged both neatly enough out of the walkway to suggest that she wasn’t actually as furious as she wanted to sound, then caught her skirt above one knee and lifted the ruined stocking toward the nearest lamp. A dark ladder had opened from just below her knee almost to her ankle, and the tear across the kneecap itself was wide enough that Sidney could see the scrape underneath.
“No mending. No pretending they’re salvageable because the damage is technically below the hem. I mean it this time.”
Sidney pushed the door shut behind them until the latch caught and worked her cold fingers out of her gloves. “You meant it the last three times.”
“And I was correct the last three times,” Caitlin returned, lowering her leg and turning toward the warmer end of the house. The severity of her expression survived approximately as long as it took her to hear the faint metallic scrape coming from beyond the open workshop doorway. Her eyes shifted toward it before the rest of her did, and Sidney watched some of the remaining stiffness leave her shoulders as Caitlin added, much less interested in her stockings now, “Those were also terrible stockings.”
The workshop occupied what had once probably been intended as a dining room, although Sidney had difficulty imagining it as anything other than Drake’s now. The broad table against the far wall had accumulated tools, unfinished pieces, wire, scraps of leather, wood shavings, tiny labelled drawers, and inexplicable fragments of metal over the past year or so.
Lamplight collected warmly over the section he was using tonight, catching Drake bent slightly forward beneath it with his longer brown hair fallen toward one side of his face while he turned a narrow piece of brass between his fingers. He had pushed his sleeves above his elbows, exposing forearms that had never quite passed for ordinary skin under close inspection.
The texture was subtly uneven, smoother in some places and faintly rougher in others, as though the body assembled for him had healed every joining according to slightly different rules.
Pale seams crossed the insides of his wrists and traveled irregularly up his forearms, too deliberate to be scars from injury, disappearing beneath the rolled fabric at his elbows; finer ones divided the backs of his hands near the knuckles and vanished between the dark lines of his tattoos. Another traced one side of his throat before slipping beneath his collar, visible whenever he tipped his head toward the light.
None of them looked fresh. They had softened with years of movement and healing, raised in some places and nearly flush in others, but there was no mistaking what they were or the fact that Drake’s body had been put together rather than born whole.
His hands were steady despite it, broad fingers manipulating a hinge scarcely larger than Sidney’s thumbnail with a precision that always seemed faintly at odds with the strength she knew was in them. One boot was hooked around the rung beneath his chair, his posture loose with concentration, and if he had reacted when the front door opened, Sidney hadn’t caught it. She knew better than to take that for inattention.
Caitlin knew better too. She crossed the room without announcing herself, shedding her coat over the back of an empty chair as she went, and Drake finally lifted his head when she reached him. His attention went first to her face, then traveled downward with enough precision that Sidney could almost follow the inventory: coat intact, hands intact, no blood where there shouldn’t be any, torn stocking, scraped knee.
Whatever he found satisfied him enough that the faint line between his brows eased.
Caitlin put a hand against the back of his neck and bent before he could return his attention to the brass piece, brushing his hair away from his temple as she kissed him. It was brief and familiar, no more ceremonious than taking off her coat had been, but Drake’s hand came automatically to her waist while she was within reach, his thumb settling against her side until she drew away. Caitlin gave the back of his neck one last stroke before passing behind his chair, and Drake followed her for a second with his eyes before looking down again.
“How bad?” he asked quietly beneath the ticking of the little mechanism between his fingers, although his attention returned to the torn stocking before Caitlin had even sat down.
“Fine. Annoying. Wet. Fine,” Caitlin answered as she settled into the chair beside him, releasing a tired breath as soon as her weight was off her feet. She turned sideways rather than sitting properly and lifted her injured leg onto the edge of his workbench, entirely unconcerned by the possibility that her stocking might be contaminating some delicate piece of machinery. “I’ve also spent the last hour listening to Sidney insist the conversation was productive when the man answered every question with a story about himself.”
Drake’s mouth moved slightly at one corner. He set the brass piece down at last, caught Caitlin’s ankle in one hand, and drew her foot a few inches closer without asking. “That bad, then,” he murmured, already inspecting the scrape visible through the torn stocking.
“Worse conversation partner than usual,” Caitlin corrected, watching him inspect her knee.
There was no hesitation in the way Drake handled her, no testing pressure or tentative withdrawal when his fingers settled around the back of her calf. He simply touched her because she was there and because he wanted to know whether she was hurt, his thumb resting against the inside of her ankle while his other hand carefully moved the ruined wool away from her knee.
Caitlin let him, one elbow propped on the bench beside his tools, and the look she gave him when he glanced up was considerably softer than anything she had afforded another living creature for the previous three hours. “I think he liked the sound of his own voice.”
“He had competition,” Sidney observed from the doorway as she unfastened her coat.
Caitlin’s eyes narrowed toward her immediately, but Drake’s quiet laugh stole most of the force from whatever response she had prepared. He bent his attention back to Caitlin’s knee, and she reached across the workbench to brush a loose strand of hair away from his eyes with the absent familiarity of someone who had done it often enough not to think about it anymore. Sidney smiled despite herself as she hung her coat beside Caitlin’s.
She had seen the same exchange in a hundred variations. Caitlin arriving home full of words and irritation, Drake allowing her to spend both at whatever pace she liked while his hands found some practical way of looking after her. Sometimes he asked questions. Sometimes he handed her tea halfway through a complaint without interrupting it. Tonight, apparently, he was going to deal personally with the consequences of the treeline’s attack on her stockings.
Sidney had finished hanging her gloves over the edge of the little shelf before something about the room finally registered as wrong.
Clancy hadn’t appeared.
She looked automatically toward the hall. Usually the front door was enough. Sometimes she barely had time to get it closed before she heard his step from somewhere deeper in the house, and on particularly long evenings he seemed to materialize with such suspicious speed that she had accused him more than once of waiting within earshot. He always denied it. Sidney had never believed him.
Tonight there was no movement from the stairs, no quiet footfall crossing the hall, no familiar dark head appearing around the workshop door under the transparent pretense that he happened to need something from this exact part of the house.
Caitlin followed her glance and immediately knew what she was looking for. “Other room,” she supplied, her voice gone bland in the particular way that meant she knew something Sidney didn’t. Drake lowered his head over Caitlin’s knee, but Sidney caught another twitch at the corner of his mouth before his hair obscured it.
Sidney gave them both a suspicious look, received nothing useful in return, and went to find her boyfriend.
The sitting room beyond the workshop was dimmer, lit mostly by the banked fire and one lamp left burning beside the settee. Clancy occupied the far corner of it with one leg folded beneath him and the other planted on the rug, a book spread open across his knee.
For half a second Sidney wondered whether Caitlin had been wrong and he genuinely had been reading. Then she noticed that his free foot was bouncing against the floor, the same short restless motion repeating beneath the edge of his trouser leg, and that his eyes had not moved down the page once since she entered.
His head came up. The foot stopped.
There was always a moment when she returned after being gone longer than he liked. Sidney had started recognizing it months ago: the fraction of a second in which Clancy simply looked at her, as though whatever part of him had spent the evening tracking the absence of her had to catch up with the fact that she was standing in front of him again.
Tonight his eyes went over her face, dropped quickly to her shoulders and hands, then returned to her face. The book slid unnoticed toward the edge of his knee.
“You’re back,” he said, and the relief threaded plainly through his voice made the unnecessary observation considerably harder to tease him for.
Sidney did it anyway, letting a smile tug at her mouth as she answered, “Very good.”
Clancy was already moving before she finished. The book landed crookedly on the cushion behind him as he crossed the space between them, and Sidney had just enough time to get her arms free of the last folds of her scarf before his hands settled around her waist.
He drew her into him with none of the uncertainty he might once have shown about wanting her this close, wrapping both arms around her until the cold trapped in her clothes met the warmth of his shirt. Sidney let herself go with it. Her arms came around his shoulders, one hand sliding naturally into the short hair at the back of his head, and Clancy exhaled against her temple before turning his face into the long fall of her hair.
There he was.
The thought came with such familiar affection that Sidney closed her eyes. Clancy nosed once against her hair near her temple, then again closer to her ear, breathing her in with absolutely no attempt to disguise what he was doing. His hands shifted over her back as if conducting their own assessment, one flattening between her shoulder blades while the other settled at her waist, and the last tautness Sidney hadn’t realized she was still carrying from the evening finally began to loosen.
The house was warm. Caitlin was twenty feet away complaining to Drake. Clancy was attached to her as though somebody had informed him she might vanish if he left an inch between them. Everything had returned to its proper place.
“You didn’t have to wait up,” Sidney murmured, turning her face enough that her mouth brushed his cheek when she spoke.
Clancy’s arms tightened by a degree before he insisted, far too carefully, “I wasn’t waiting.”
The answer was so deliberately casual that Sidney opened her eyes against him. She could hear the lie before she even saw his face. “No?” she asked, drawing back just enough to watch him attempt to construct a defense.
“I was reading,” Clancy told her, his expression becoming increasingly earnest as he committed himself to the lie. His hands remained exactly where they were, apparently unwilling to concede that much ground. “For quite a while, actually.”
Sidney glanced deliberately past him at the abandoned book, still open where it had fallen onto the cushion. “What page?”
Clancy looked over his shoulder as though the book might supply this information telepathically. When it failed him, he turned back with an expression of profound betrayal directed at absolutely nobody. “That isn’t important.”
“Mm,” Sidney hummed, sliding both hands higher and smoothing them along the back of his neck until her fingers reached his hair. “Was it a good page?”
“It was an excellent page,” Clancy assured her with enough confidence that she nearly admired the attempt.
“What happened?” Sidney asked, letting her fingertips toy idly with the hair at his nape.
His eyes narrowed at her. “You’ve been home for less than two minutes and you’re already interrogating me.”
“I’ve been interrogating people all evening,” Sidney pointed out, enjoying the way his hands had begun moving absently against her back. “I’m warmed up.”
“You should rest,” he said, and beneath the put-upon tone was enough genuine concern that she knew he had already catalogued the tiredness around her eyes.
“I am resting,” Sidney answered simply.
Something in his face softened at that, too quick and unguarded to tease. Sidney felt it in the way his hold changed as well, less like he was confirming she had actually returned and more like the ordinary embrace it would become if she gave him another minute.
She rose slightly onto her toes and kissed the corner of his jaw, catching the faint roughness of evening stubble beneath her mouth. The response came immediately. A low vibration stirred under his ribs where they were pressed against her, quiet enough that she felt it before she properly heard it, and Sidney smiled against his skin.
Clancy went still when he realized what had happened. Sidney kissed him again, closer to his ear this time, and the vibration deepened until she murmured with unmistakable satisfaction, “Oh. There it is.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Clancy replied, attempting dignity without releasing her, which undermined him considerably. The purr continued steadily beneath his denial.
“You do,” Sidney said, running her fingers once through his hair.
“I’ve done nothing,” he maintained, even as his eyes nearly closed beneath the movement of her hand.
Sidney drew back enough to see him properly. “You’re purring.”
“I’m aware of the allegation,” Clancy said with an expression of grave patience.
“It’s happening against my chest, Clancy.”
“That proves very little.”
Sidney laughed and combed her fingers through his hair again, deliberately this time. His eyes closed for half a second before he caught himself, and when they reopened Sidney saw the first faint wash of amber gathering around the edges of his irises. It wasn’t alarm. She knew his alarm now, knew the sharpness it put into his body and the way his attention snapped outward toward whatever had caused it. This was warmer, his pupils wide and his face softened by the effort of pretending he wasn’t affected by her while every other part of him betrayed the lie.
His gaze moved over her again, lingering this time, and Sidney watched the amber deepen by another shade before she told him, “You’re doing the thing.”
Clancy blinked at her. “What thing?”
“The thing where you look at me as though I’ve been gone for a year instead of an evening.”
“I’m looking at you normally,” he protested.
Sidney raised her eyebrows. “No, you aren’t.”
“This is my normal face.”
“Your normal face has less amber.”
That finally made him glance away. The response was instinctive enough to remind Sidney of an older version of him, one who would have forced the color back down the instant she noticed it. He didn’t do that anymore. His eyes remained amber at the edges when he looked toward the fire, and after a second he seemed to realize what he’d done and brought his gaze back to her with a faintly sheepish set to his mouth rather than trying to hide it.
“Better,” Sidney murmured approvingly.
Clancy knew exactly what she meant, and his mouth twitched despite himself. “You are a terrible influence.”
“You like my influence,” Sidney reminded him.
“I tolerate it because I’m very patient,” he corrected with exaggerated seriousness.
“You sulk when I leave the house.”
“I do not sulk,” Clancy said, drawing himself up just enough to make the denial official.
From the workshop, Drake’s voice carried through the open doorway with perfect, devastating calm. “He paced for forty minutes.”
Clancy’s entire expression collapsed.
Sidney turned her head toward the doorway, laughter already catching in her throat, while the purr against her showed no sign of stopping. “Forty?” she repeated, looking back at him with open delight.
“I did not pace for forty minutes,” Clancy called toward the other room, managing considerably more offense than credibility. His arms remained locked around Sidney while he defended himself, which did nothing for his case. “I walked through the room several times.”
“You used the same route,” Drake replied, the faint scrape of a chair from the workshop suggesting he had already returned his attention to Caitlin. “Repeatedly.”
“That is not pacing,” Clancy insisted.
“You wore a path between the window and the fireplace, didn’t you?” Caitlin called after Drake, her voice dry with the unmistakable pleasure of having been handed evidence.
Clancy stared toward the doorway in silence, amber brightening noticeably now for an entirely different reason. Sidney managed to keep herself composed until a low, aggrieved growl started somewhere in his chest beneath the purr, creating such an absurd combination of contentment and wounded dignity that she lost the effort altogether. Her laugh came out against his shoulder when he pulled her back into him, and Clancy buried his face fully into the top of her hair.
“They’re insufferable,” he muttered into it.
Sidney was still smiling as she reminded him, “You paced for forty minutes.”
“I missed you,” Clancy admitted.
The admission was so plain that Sidney’s laughter softened almost immediately. There was no embarrassed correction after it, no attempt to make the words smaller once they were out. Clancy only shifted his face from her hair to the side of her neck, his nose brushing beneath her ear while his arms remained firm around her middle. Sidney ran her palm slowly over the back of his head. “I missed you too,” she told him, and felt the purr deepen under her hand.
That seemed to settle whatever had been left unsettled in him. His weight eased toward hers, not enough to make her support him but enough that she could feel the change, and his thumb began moving idly over her waist without any sign that he knew he was doing it. Sidney stayed there for another minute because there was nowhere else she particularly needed to be.
She could hear Caitlin talking again in the workshop, her voice lower now, interrupted occasionally by Drake’s much shorter answers and the small sounds of whatever he was doing to her knee. Clancy had started nosing lazily into her hair again. If she let him continue much longer, she suspected they were going to end up on the settee with him half on top of her for the remainder of the night.
That wasn’t an especially compelling reason to stop him.
Sidney eventually coaxed him toward the workshop instead, although coaxed was generous when Clancy simply kept one arm around her waist and came with her. They found Caitlin still sideways in her chair, but Drake had turned his own toward her and drawn her injured leg across his lap. The ruined stocking had been carefully cut away from the scrape at her knee. A basin and folded cloth now occupied the one clear patch of workbench, the little brass mechanism abandoned beside them while Drake cleaned the last traces of dirt from Caitlin’s skin.
Caitlin looked up as Sidney entered with Clancy attached to her side, her gaze dropping pointedly to his arm before returning to Sidney’s face. “Recovered, has he?” she asked, amusement sharpening the edges of her expression.
“Miraculously,” Sidney replied, resting one hand over Clancy’s where it lay against her waist.
“I was never unwell,” Clancy protested, and Sidney felt his fingers flex once at her side when Caitlin raised an eyebrow.
Drake didn’t involve himself in that argument. He finished wiping Caitlin’s knee, set the cloth aside, and rested his palm against the outside of her calf while he inspected the scrape one last time. Caitlin had gone quiet again. She watched his bent head for a moment before reaching down and pushing his hair back from his forehead, letting her fingertips linger briefly at his temple. Drake looked up at the touch, and whatever passed between them required no explanation Sidney could hear. Caitlin’s thumb moved once along his hairline. Drake turned his head just enough to press a brief kiss into the inside of her wrist before returning his attention to her knee.
Sidney felt Clancy’s nose brush her temple and glanced sideways at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” he answered, although he made no effort whatsoever to look elsewhere.
“You’re staring again.”
“I’m allowed to look at you,” Clancy pointed out, faint indignation returning to his voice.
“Certainly,” Sidney agreed.
His eyes narrowed at the ease of her answer, apparently suspicious that he had walked into something. Sidney saved him the trouble of finding it by leaning in and kissing him, brief and warm, one hand resting against his chest. His surprise lasted barely a second before his hand came up behind her neck and kept her there for another kiss, softer this time. When she pulled away, the amber had returned unmistakably around his irises.
Caitlin made a knowing sound from her chair, and Sidney didn’t bother looking over as she warned, “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.”
“I said nothing,” Caitlin replied, innocence poorly concealed beneath the amusement in her voice.
“You were going to.”
“I was thinking something,” Caitlin corrected.
“That’s usually where the trouble starts,”
Across the workbench, Drake lowered his head, but not quickly enough to hide his smile. Caitlin caught it and gave his shoulder a light shove with her good foot. He caught her ankle before she could withdraw it, keeping her leg comfortably across his lap, and Caitlin’s attempted glare lasted all of two seconds before her mouth betrayed her too.
Sidney leaned back into Clancy’s chest and let his arm settle more securely around her. Outside, rain had begun tapping softly against the front windows, blurring the dark glass and whatever remained of the road beyond it. The fire shifted in the next room with a low crack, and the house carried all its usual evening sounds around them.
Caitlin objecting when Drake informed her that the stocking really was beyond saving, the minute click of the brass piece when he picked it up again, Clancy’s purr returning beneath Sidney’s ear as soon as she rested her head against him. Her clothes were still damp at the hem, there was mud drying on one boot by the door, and tomorrow somebody would have to decide what to do with everything they’d learned tonight.
Sidney could leave tomorrow to tomorrow. Clancy’s thumb was tracing an idle line against her side, Caitlin had stopped complaining long enough to watch Drake’s hands return to their work, and the rain had put enough distance between this room and everything waiting outside it that Sidney no longer felt any need to keep listening for the road.
Sidney woke to the room beginning to turn grey.
It happened more often than not, no matter how thoroughly they drew the curtains before bed. Some change in the light always seemed to reach her anyway, not enough to hurt through the heavy fabric but enough for her body to recognize that night had ended.
She opened her eyes to the faintest silver seam around one curtain and the shape of the bedroom slowly resolving around it: the chair with yesterday’s clothes draped over the back, her boots beside Clancy’s near the door, the washstand disappearing into shadow along the opposite wall. The fire had burned down sometime in the night. Only a dull red remained between the blackened pieces of wood, nowhere near enough to keep the October cold from working its way into the room, although Sidney felt very little of it beneath the quilt.
Clancy had seen to that.
He had gone to sleep with one arm around her waist and apparently spent the intervening hours making the arrangement substantially less negotiable. Sidney lay mostly on her side with her back against his chest, one of his legs tangled between hers beneath the quilt and his arm heavy across her middle, his hand tucked against her stomach. His face was buried in the curve where her shoulder met her neck, warm breath touching the same patch of skin every few seconds, and sometime during the night he had managed to get one fist loosely tangled in the fabric of her nightdress near her waist. Sidney looked down at it, then carefully lifted her hand to cover his.
The purr was still running. It was quieter asleep, deep enough that she felt it through his chest more readily than she heard it, a soft continuous vibration against her back that had probably been going for hours. She had discovered early that Clancy had absolutely no control over it once he was asleep.
Awake, he could at least attempt to pretend it wasn’t happening. Sleeping Clancy possessed no such dignity. Sleeping Clancy purred into her shoulder, held her like she might wander off in the night, and occasionally nosed closer into her neck without waking.
Sidney liked sleeping Clancy very much.
She stayed where she was rather than reaching for the matches beside the bed. The cold could have the rest of the room. There was enough warmth trapped beneath the quilt, and moving would mean disturbing the arm across her waist when she had no particular desire to be released from it.
Instead she watched the narrow stripe of morning light gradually sharpen along the floorboards and listened as the house began waking around them. Pipes complained faintly somewhere inside the wall. A door opened below, followed several seconds later by the familiar scrape of a kitchen chair. Something metallic touched the stove with a quiet clink. Sidney wondered whether Caitlin was awake or whether Drake had beaten everyone downstairs again.
Clancy’s breathing changed against her shoulder. Sidney felt it before anything else, the slow rhythm hitching once before settling into something shallower, and the purr faltered beneath it. His fingers flexed against her stomach without opening. A moment later his entire arm tightened, pulling her backward until whatever insignificant space sleep had permitted between them disappeared, and his nose pressed more firmly into the side of her neck as a groggy sound escaped him.
His eyes still hadn’t opened when he mumbled, “You’re here,” the words blurred enough by sleep that Sidney nearly missed them.
“I would hope so,” Sidney murmured, keeping her voice low in the quiet room as she covered his hand more firmly with hers. “You’ve had hold of me all night.”
Clancy answered with another indistinct sound that might have been agreement. His hand moved from her stomach only to search beneath the quilt until it found hers, his fingers threading through hers with the blind certainty of long practice. Once he had them laced together, he tucked their joined hands back against her middle and went still again.
Sidney waited several seconds before asking, amusement already warming her voice, “Are you actually awake?”
“No,” Clancy answered immediately into her shoulder.
She turned her head as far as his position allowed and caught a glimpse of dark hair rather than his face. “You’re talking.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” he muttered, the sleep-thick seriousness of the answer pulling a quiet laugh from her. Clancy responded by burrowing closer, his nose brushing the side of her throat before his face settled there again, and the purr that had nearly disappeared began slowly rebuilding against her back.
Sidney ran her thumb over his knuckles where their hands rested together and waited. It took another minute before Clancy finally lifted his head, his hair flattened on one side and standing at an improbable angle on the other. His eyes opened only halfway before finding her face, and Sidney watched them focus through a sleepy pause in which he seemed to establish where she was, what time it might be, and why she was already looking at him. A faint crease appeared between his brows.
“You’re awake,” he mumbled, voice thick with sleep and faintly accusing, as though she had done something wrong by beating him to consciousness.
Sidney had to press her lips together. “I’m always awake before you.”
“Don’t like it.” Clancy didn’t lift his head any farther, letting it sink back into the curve of her shoulder while his fingers tightened loosely through hers. “Like waking up and you’re already looking at things that aren’t me.”
The complaint was delivered with such drowsy sincerity that Sidney stared at the ceiling he had apparently taken personal issue with. “I was looking at the ceiling.”
“Exactly,” Clancy murmured, like that settled the matter, and pulled her closer despite there being very little closer left to achieve.
Sidney turned her head enough to look at the dark mess of his hair. “Are you jealous of the ceiling?”
“No,” he answered after a pause that lasted just long enough to ruin the denial. His thumb dragged sleepily across the side of hers as he added, “I just think you could make better choices.”
“You were unconscious.”
“I was available,” Clancy countered, finally lifting his face enough for Sidney to see the faint twitch at one corner of his mouth.
“You were purring into my neck.”
“That sounds very available.”
Sidney laughed outright at that and carefully turned within his arms until she could face him. Clancy permitted the movement only because it resulted in her being closer, his arm shifting from her waist to the small of her back while their joined hands ended up tucked between them. His eyes had opened properly now, though sleep still softened his face, and Sidney reached up with her free hand to push the worst of his hair away from his forehead.
The effect was immediate. Clancy’s eyelids lowered again, and the purr strengthened under her palm as she combed her fingers back through his hair. Whatever argument he might have intended to continue seemed to leave him altogether. Sidney did it once more just to watch his expression slacken, then murmured, “You’re very easy in the morning.”
Clancy opened one eye at the observation. “That sounds insulting.”
“It wasn’t,” Sidney assured him, although the smile pulling at her mouth probably weakened her case.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to,” she replied, sliding her fingers through his hair again, slower this time. His open eye surrendered despite his best effort, and Clancy attempted something under his breath that might have been a rebuttal before Sidney leaned forward and kissed him.
His hand tightened at the small of her back. The kiss lingered with the lazy warmth of neither of them having anywhere urgent to be, his thumb beginning an absent sweep against the fabric of her nightdress while Sidney’s fingers stayed buried in his hair. When she eventually drew away, Clancy followed her for the smallest distance before apparently remembering himself.
“Good morning,” Sidney whispered, brushing her nose lightly against his.
Clancy regarded her from several inches away, eyes still heavy and hair considerably worse now that she had put her hands through it. “Better now,” he murmured, and before Sidney could make anything of the answer, he pulled her back against him and tucked his face beneath her chin.
They remained upstairs long enough for Sidney to lose track of how much of the delay could reasonably be blamed on Clancy. She made one serious attempt at getting out of bed, managing to sit up and put one foot toward the floor before an arm circled her waist from behind. Clancy pressed his face between her shoulder blades and drew her backward until she had to catch herself with one hand against the mattress.
“This,” Sidney informed him, looking down at the arm locked across her middle, “is precisely why Caitlin accuses us of never leaving the house.”
Clancy’s answer came muffled against her back. “Caitlin is downstairs.”
“...yes?”
“So she can’t accuse us of anything.”
Sidney twisted enough to look over her shoulder at him. “That isn’t how accusations work.”
“It should be.”
She had nearly convinced him to release her when Caitlin’s voice rose through the floorboards, dry enough to make Sidney pause with one hand still resting over Clancy’s forearm. “Drake, if you explain the eggs to me one more time like you’re disarming an explosive, I am going back to bed.”
Whatever Drake answered was too quiet to make it clearly through the floor. Caitlin’s response arrived immediately, sharper with incredulous amusement. “They’re eggs.”
Sidney looked over her shoulder again and found Clancy already looking back at her. “Food,” she told him, nodding toward the door.
“Bed,” Clancy countered, tightening his arm once around her waist.
“Food first.”
He considered the compromise with the grave expression of someone being asked to make an unreasonable sacrifice, then finally released a long sigh into her shoulder. “Fine.”
Getting dressed introduced another delay when Sidney discovered that Clancy had put his shirt on inside-out and decided not to tell him immediately. He caught her looking at him twice while buttoning it, glanced down at himself once without identifying the problem, and finally narrowed his eyes at her when her mouth twitched.
“What?” Clancy asked, suspicion beginning to clear the last of the sleep from his voice.
Sidney busied herself fastening her own sleeve. “Nothing.”
“You’re looking at me strangely.”
“I’m looking at you normally,” she assured him, adopting his own defense from the night before with enough innocence that recognition immediately entered his expression.
Clancy stared at her. Sidney held his gaze for another two seconds before losing the battle and reaching over to pinch the exposed seam running down the side of his shirt. “You’ve done something interesting here.”
He followed her hand downward. The silence that followed was worth every second she had waited, and when he finally looked back at her, the tips of his ears had begun to redden. “I just woke up.”
“I know,” Sidney replied, unable to keep the laughter entirely out of her voice.
“You distracted me,” Clancy accused as he began undoing the buttons again.
“I was across the room.”
“You were still there,” he muttered, as though her mere presence constituted adequate grounds for diminished capacity.
Sidney left him to correct the problem while she went downstairs laughing.
The kitchen was warmer than the bedroom and smelled strongly of toast, butter, and whatever painstakingly seasoned eggs Drake had apparently spent the morning engineering. The curtains had been opened only enough to admit a muted strip of daylight, leaving the room comfortable for Sidney and Caitlin while the lamps supplied the rest.
Drake stood at the stove with his back mostly toward the door, shoulders bent slightly as he worked a wooden spatula beneath the eggs with considerably more concentration than breakfast required.
He had tied his longer hair loosely back at the nape of his neck, although several brown strands had already escaped and fallen around his face. He was dressed more lightly than he usually would have been outside the house, in a close-fitting white sleeveless undershirt tucked into loose, high-waisted brown work trousers, the heavier fabric gathered beneath a worn leather belt before falling broadly over his boots.
There was something particularly natural about seeing him dressed that way in the morning, without coat, waistcoat, or rolled shirtsleeves obscuring the construction of his arms; Drake spent enough time at a workbench that anything liable to catch beneath a tool or drag through filings eventually came off anyway.
In the clearer morning light, the joins along his exposed skin were impossible to miss. Pale, uneven seams crossed the inside of one wrist and traveled upward along his forearm, disappearing and reappearing where differently textured sections of skin met, some raised enough to catch thin lines of shadow while others had healed almost flat.
Another curved around the outside of his upper arm before vanishing beneath the edge of the undershirt, and when he tipped his head to inspect the pan, Sidney could see the beginning of the longer seam climbing from beneath his collar toward the side of his throat. None of it made his movements stiff. His arms flexed easily as he shifted the pan, the altered skin moving with the muscle beneath it, and his broad fingers handled the spatula with the same careful precision he used for the tiny pieces at his workbench, as though the eggs might object to rough treatment.
Caitlin sat backward in one of the kitchen chairs, arms folded across its wooden back and chin resting on top of them. Her dark hair was loose and slightly disordered from sleep, falling over one shoulder while she watched Drake work with no particular attempt to help him. Her eyes moved toward the doorway when Sidney entered, then immediately past her into the empty hall. “Where’s your shadow?” she asked, one eyebrow lifting.
“Fixing his shirt,” Sidney answered as she crossed toward the table and reached for the coffee pot.
Caitlin lifted her head from her arms. “Do I want to know?”
“He put it on inside-out.”
A brief snort escaped Caitlin before she settled her chin back onto her folded arms. “And you let him?”
“For a minute,” Sidney admitted.
“You’re awful,” Caitlin told her, although the approval in her voice made the judgment useless.
Sidney poured herself a cup and glanced pointedly at her. “You would’ve done the same thing.”
Caitlin considered that for all of half a second. “Longer,” she conceded.
At the stove, Drake shifted the pan off the hottest part of the heat and reached for a small dish beside it. Caitlin’s attention returned to him immediately, her expression sharpening with amusement when he pinched a careful amount of salt into his palm before adding it to the eggs. She looked toward Sidney as if she had been waiting all morning for a witness. “He measured the salt.”
“I did not measure it,” Drake corrected without turning, his tone patient enough to suggest this was not the first time he had defended himself.
Caitlin pointed toward his hand. “You put it in your palm first.”
“So I could see how much I had,” he replied, turning the eggs once more with the edge of the spatula.
“He measured the salt,” Caitlin repeated to Sidney with the solemnity of delivering evidence.
Drake finally glanced over his shoulder at her. “Salt matters.”
“It’s eggs, Drake,” Caitlin reminded him, and there was enough fondness beneath the exasperation that the complaint lost most of its edge.
“Salt still matters,” he returned, the corner of his mouth shifting before he faced the stove again.
Sidney had just pulled out a chair when Clancy appeared behind her, his shirt now correctly oriented but his hair untouched. He had apparently decided one repaired indignity was sufficient for the morning. Rather than take the empty chair immediately, he stopped behind Sidney and put both hands loosely at her waist while she sat, leaning down until his chin nearly touched the top of her head.
Caitlin watched his arrival over the back of her chair. “He survived.”
“Barely,” Sidney replied, reaching up to pat one of the hands at her waist.
“I was ambushed,” Clancy informed Caitlin with wounded dignity before finally releasing Sidney long enough to take the chair beside hers.
“By your shirt?” Caitlin asked.
Clancy gave her a flat look and chose not to dignify that with an answer. His knee found Sidney’s beneath the table almost immediately, and she had barely reached for a piece of toast when his hand crossed in front of her and removed it directly from her plate.
Sidney slowly turned her head toward him. “Really?”
Clancy took a bite before meeting her stare. “I’m hungry.”
“There are six pieces right there,” she pointed out, indicating the communal plate sitting well within his reach.
Clancy followed her gaze, considered the untouched toast for a moment, then looked back at the piece already in his hand. “This one was closer.”
“It was on my plate.”
“Exactly,” he replied, the innocence of his expression so deliberate that Sidney elbowed him in the ribs.
He absorbed it without complaint beyond a small shift away, still chewing, and when Sidney looked at him again, the faint amber gathering around his irises made him look considerably more pleased with himself than innocent.
Across the table, Caitlin watched them with open disbelief before muttering, “You two are exhausting before breakfast.”
“You’ve been watching Drake cook eggs for entertainment,” Sidney pointed out as she reached for another piece of toast.
Caitlin’s attention snapped immediately toward her. “I have not.”
Sidney looked pointedly toward the stove and then back to the chair her sister had deliberately turned to face it. “You have.”
“I’m sitting in my kitchen,” Caitlin replied, lifting her chin as though the explanation were self-evident.
“Facing the stove.”
“That’s where the chair is facing.”
“You turned the chair around.”
Caitlin glanced down at it as though the furniture itself had betrayed her. “It’s more comfortable this way.”
Sidney let her expression answer.
Caitlin looked back up, caught whatever Sidney had failed to keep out of her face, and immediately pointed one warning finger across the table. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say a word,” Sidney replied, lifting both hands slightly.
“You were thinking it very loudly,” Caitlin accused, narrowing her eyes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” Caitlin said, and the faint warmth beginning across her cheeks made Sidney’s silence increasingly difficult to maintain.
Drake finally turned from the stove with two plates in hand and approached the table while Caitlin was still glaring at her sister. He set one plate carefully in front of Caitlin before remarking, in the same mild tone he might have used to discuss the weather, “She does.”
Caitlin twisted around in her chair to stare up at him. “Whose side are you on?”
Drake met her look for a moment. Then he leaned down, one hand settling lightly against the back of her chair, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Yours,” he murmured against her hair before straightening.
The answer robbed Caitlin of whatever argument she had prepared. Sidney watched her sister’s expression falter for half a second before Caitlin recovered enough to catch Drake lightly by the front of his shirt. She drew him back down and kissed him properly, brief but warm, her fingers resting near the pale seam that disappeared beneath the side of his collar. Drake’s hand settled automatically over hers while she was still close, his thumb passing once over her knuckles before Caitlin released him.
When Caitlin looked across the table afterward, she found Sidney watching. Her eyes narrowed immediately. “Not a word.”
“Still haven’t said one,” Sidney reminded her as she reached with exaggerated innocence for a replacement piece of toast.
Beside her, Clancy leaned closer until his shoulder pressed along hers. “You are thinking it loudly,” he murmured, clearly pleased to defect to Caitlin’s side now that it afforded him an opportunity to antagonize Sidney.
Sidney turned toward him. “Traitor.”
Clancy only smiled into the toast he had stolen from her.
Drake returned to the stove for the remaining plates, and by the time he finally sat beside Caitlin, she had turned her chair around properly and left it close enough to his that their arms touched from shoulder to elbow. Drake folded himself into the space with the slight care his larger frame required, one knee angling beneath the table. Caitlin reached for her fork, then paused to brush one escaped strand of hair away from his face before she started eating. Drake barely reacted beyond leaning almost imperceptibly into her fingers, but Sidney caught it. So did Caitlin, judging by the tiny curve that appeared at one corner of her mouth before she looked down at her plate.
Beside Sidney, Clancy had finished his stolen toast and apparently concluded that this entitled him to further contact. His hand found hers beneath the edge of the table, fingers slipping between hers while his knee remained pressed against her own. Sidney squeezed once without looking at him, and a second later his thumb began its familiar idle movement over the side of her hand.
The fire had been rebuilt in the adjoining room, and its heat was beginning to reach the kitchen through the open doorway. Sidney could hear the occasional pop of sap from the logs beneath the smaller noises around the table: Caitlin’s fork touching china, Drake quietly objecting when she reached over and stole some of his eggs despite having an identical serving, Clancy’s chair shifting closer by an inch he seemed not to notice moving.
Outside the partly opened curtains, morning had brightened from grey to the washed-out white of a damp autumn day, moisture clinging to the glass and turning the trees beyond it indistinct.
Sidney looked down when Clancy’s thumb stopped moving and found him watching her instead of his breakfast. “What?” she asked, turning slightly toward him.
Clancy’s gaze stayed on her face for another second before his fingers tightened comfortably through hers. “Nothing,” he murmured, and there was enough quiet contentment in the answer that Sidney knew better than to press him for whatever had brought the look on.
She lifted their joined hands slightly beneath the table and pressed her thumb over his knuckles instead. Clancy’s attention finally dropped to his plate, and the faintest purr started somewhere low in his chest.
Across from them, Caitlin’s fork paused halfway to her mouth.
Sidney looked up.
Her sister had heard it. Caitlin’s eyes moved from Clancy to Sidney, amusement already threatening around their edges, and Sidney narrowed her own in immediate warning before Caitlin could open her mouth.
For once, Caitlin took the warning. She lowered her gaze to her breakfast again, but not before Sidney caught the smile she was trying to hide against the rim of her teacup.
Breakfast dissolved gradually rather than ending, the conversation thinning out as plates emptied and everyone settled more deeply into their chairs. Sidney had stopped eating several minutes ago, although apparently that distinction meant very little to Clancy. His own plate had been empty long enough that she had watched him push it away, yet his hand still wandered onto hers every few minutes and returned with another piece torn from the edge of her toast.
The first time, she had elbowed him. The second time, she had moved the plate farther away. The third, he had simply leaned across her to reach it, one hand braced against the table while the other stole a piece directly under her nose, and the amber beginning around the edges of his eyes had made it very clear he was enjoying himself.
By the fourth attempt, Sidney caught his wrist halfway there. “You know there’s more toast,” she reminded him, keeping hold of him while his fingers remained suspended several inches above her plate.
Clancy looked toward the untouched pieces in the middle of the table, then back at hers, apparently giving the matter serious consideration. “I know.”
“Then why do you keep eating mine?”
His mouth twitched before he managed to arrange it into something more innocent. “Yours is better.”
“It came from the same loaf.”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Clancy replied, and when Sidney released his wrist with an incredulous laugh, he immediately completed the theft and leaned back into his chair with his prize. His knee remained pressed against hers beneath the table, their chairs close enough now that their shoulders nearly touched as well, and he looked entirely too pleased with himself while he ate.
Across from them, Caitlin pushed her chair back with a scrape of wood against the floorboards and rose before anyone else showed signs of moving. She began collecting the breakfast plates with the brisk efficiency she brought to almost everything, stacking them against one forearm while Sidney surrendered her own and Clancy carefully kept his stolen toast out of reach. The plates knocked together with more noise than necessary as Caitlin added Drake’s to the stack and turned toward the basin.
Drake’s hand moved before his attention seemed to. He had been reaching for his teacup when Caitlin passed behind his chair, but his arm changed course and his fingers closed gently around her wrist instead.
He didn’t pull her back or interrupt her stride enough to make the dishes wobble. He merely held her there for a second, broad fingers resting loosely around her wrist while his thumb swept once over the inside of it. The pale joins crossing the back of his hand shifted with the movement, disappearing beneath Caitlin’s skin where their hands met, and she slowed just enough to allow the touch before his fingers opened again.
Caitlin continued to the basin as though nothing had happened.
Sidney saw her face.
The smile barely had time to exist, no more than a helpless little movement at one corner of Caitlin’s mouth before she pressed it away. Sidney lowered her gaze toward the table before her sister could catch her noticing. Clancy was less subtle beside her; she could feel him looking across the kitchen, and when she nudged his knee beneath the table in warning, his shoulder moved with a silent laugh.
At the basin, Caitlin set the dishes down and turned her head toward Drake. Her gaze lingered on his face for a moment before she remarked, with perfect flatness, “You’ve got flour on your face.”
Drake, who had begun gathering the abandoned cups, stopped with one hand around Sidney’s. “I don’t cook with flour.”
“You’ve got something on your face,” Caitlin amended, leaning one hip against the edge of the basin.
Drake glanced toward her, his brows drawing together slightly. “That’s very specific of you.”
“I’m a specific person,” Caitlin replied without hesitation.
She abandoned the dishes she had supposedly been so intent on clearing and crossed the few steps back to him. Drake stayed where he was, cup still in hand, while she reached down and caught his jaw lightly between her thumb and two fingers. Caitlin turned his face toward the window with the air of someone conducting a genuine inspection, although Sidney could see from across the table that there was nothing there to find. T
he muted daylight caught the uneven texture of Drake’s skin more clearly when his head turned. The faint seam beginning near his temple, traveling beneath one cheekbone and fading before it reached the corner of his mouth, paler than the surrounding skin and slightly raised where two sections joined.
Caitlin’s fingers stopped directly over it.
Whatever pretense she had been maintaining disappeared without announcement. Her thumb traced the seam slowly beneath his cheekbone, following its familiar path with none of the caution someone unfamiliar with him might have used. Drake’s expression softened almost imperceptibly beneath her hand. He set the cup down rather than continue clearing the table and tipped his head into her palm, just enough to put more of his weight against it, his eyes staying on Caitlin while she ran her thumb over the seam once more.
After several quiet seconds, Caitlin finally murmured, “There’s nothing on your face.”
“I know,” Drake answered, his voice low and steady, without even attempting to sound surprised.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I know you know.”
A hint of amusement touched his expression. “You just wanted an excuse.”
“I don’t need an excuse to touch my own boyfriend,” Caitlin informed him, the words delivered with her usual dry certainty despite the fact that she still had his face cradled in her hand and showed no intention of moving it.
That was when Sidney made the mistake of looking at Clancy.
He was already watching them. His elbow rested on the table, his chin propped against one hand, and the grin he was failing spectacularly to suppress made him look so openly delighted by the entire exchange that Sidney felt her own mouth curve in answer. There was something particularly endearing about how incapable he was of pretending not to find other people’s affection sweet when he thought no one was paying attention. His eyes flicked toward Sidney, caught her looking at him, and the grin widened.
Unfortunately, Caitlin noticed.
Her gaze shifted from Drake to the two of them across the table, and the softness disappeared beneath immediate suspicion. She still didn’t remove her hand from Drake’s face as she warned, “If either of you says a single word, I will personally make sure you regret it.”
Sidney pressed her lips together before assuring her, with considerably less innocence than the situation required, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Caitlin’s eyes narrowed further. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t need to.” Caitlin tipped her chin toward Clancy, whose expression had somehow become even less defensible while they spoke. “He’s dreaming of it right now. Look at his face.”
Clancy’s eyebrows rose. He removed his chin from his hand and sat marginally straighter, although the grin remained firmly in place. “My face is doing nothing.”
“Your face is doing everything,” Caitlin shot back, staring at him.
Clancy turned toward Sidney as though seeking an impartial judgment. “Is it?”
Sidney looked at him—the amber still faint around his irises, hair falling untidily over his forehead, mouth visibly fighting another smile—and decided there was no reason to lie on his behalf. “It’s doing quite a lot.”
The betrayal on Clancy’s face only proved both of them correct.
Beside Caitlin, Drake had watched the exchange without interrupting, although amusement had settled more visibly into his features. Caitlin seemed to remember eventually that she was still holding his face and began to withdraw her hand. Drake caught it before she made it far. His fingers closed around hers with an ease that suggested he had anticipated the movement, and he turned her palm toward him before pressing a slow, brief kiss into its center.
Caitlin’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling immediately. “You’re insufferable,” she muttered, although the word lost most of its force when another smile pulled at her mouth before she could stop it.
Drake lowered her hand but kept it within his for another moment, his thumb resting across her knuckles. “You came back.”
“I live here,” Caitlin reminded him, giving his fingers a squeeze before finally slipping free.
“I know.”
Sidney caught something quieter in the way he said it, too simple to draw attention to itself and too sincere to need anything added. Caitlin seemed to hear the same thing. Her expression softened as she looked down at him, and instead of answering, she leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to his temple before returning to the basin.
Drake watched her go for only a second before pushing his chair back and rising to collect the kettle. Standing made the difference in their builds more obvious, particularly dressed as lightly as he was that morning; the white undershirt followed the broad shape of his shoulders and left the constructed seams along both arms uncovered, while his loose brown trousers shifted around his boots as he crossed the kitchen. One branching join disappeared around the back of his upper arm beneath the fabric, another ran crookedly from elbow toward wrist, and neither interfered with the easy strength of his movements as he lifted the kettle from beside the stove.
Caitlin had only just turned from the basin when they crossed paths. Drake adjusted the kettle into his other hand and rested the freed one briefly at her hip as he moved behind her, fingers settling there with practiced familiarity to guide himself through the narrow space.
Caitlin leaned back into the touch for the fraction of a second it lasted, barely seeming to notice herself doing it. Neither of them said anything. Drake continued toward the stove; Caitlin went back to the dishes, close enough that when he returned for another cup a minute later, her shoulder brushed his arm.
Beside Sidney, Clancy gave a soft, contented sigh.
She glanced toward him and found that at some point during all of this, his hand had migrated back onto her plate.
Sidney slapped her palm over the last piece of toast before he could take it. “Absolutely not.”
Clancy froze with his fingers barely an inch away and slowly looked up at her. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“You were stealing my toast.”
“I was considering it.”
“That’s not better.”
His eyes dropped meaningfully toward the piece trapped beneath her hand. When he looked back at her, the amber at their edges had brightened with unmistakable mischief. “Are you going to eat it?”
“I might.”
“You haven’t touched it in ten minutes.”
“I’ve been distracted.”
“By what?”
Sidney stared at him.
Clancy managed to hold his innocent expression for perhaps two seconds before his gaze darted toward Caitlin and Drake and betrayed him completely.
From the basin, Caitlin spoke without even turning around, her voice dry with warning. “Choose your next words very carefully, Clancy.”
His hand withdrew from Sidney’s plate at once.
Sidney laughed and finally picked up the toast herself, while beneath the table Clancy’s knee pressed more firmly against hers as though he had to compensate for the loss somehow.
The house had settled fully into morning around them by then. Water running into the basin, the kettle beginning its low murmur over the stove, damp light whitening the windows while the fire warmed the adjoining room. Nobody seemed particularly inclined to go anywhere yet, and Sidney, with Clancy already edging his chair closer again beside her, found she wasn’t either.