This Place Is Where I'm Meant to Be

Written by Anakin McFly

Short story spin-off sequels to Quinto Formaggi and Plane Between.

« Collection I

8. the first time. | Smudge/Sasan
9. watching a star. | Leo + Adam
10. the quietness of loss. and recuperation. | Adam + Spock + Sasan + Smudge
11. strangers in a strange land. | Jason + Mitchell + Mike + Tony
12. rest. | Adam + Sasan + Leo
13. changing paths. | Adam + Leo + Sasan + Smudge + Mike

Collection III »

VIII.

The first time

Sasan realises he has expected their bodies to be more similar than they are. The basic framework is the same, but Smudge is thinner, more wiry, and under his clothes his skin is marked with a collection of proudly-earned scars from his recklessly-enthusiastic approach to life. Smudge can't remember where he got most of them, and doesn't seem to care, shrugging off Sasan's concerned questioning with nonchalant comments about how he used to do spontaneous science experiments and sometimes they exploded, or that taking that old shortcut over the pointy-edged fence evidently left some physical evidence.

Sasan's body is unbroken and unmarked and well taken care of, and stands in contrast against Smudge's. Different people. He's never been more aware of that until now. Smudge wears his body in a completely different way. It's another person behind those eyes.

And Sasan loves him.

IX.

They ask about his life, and Leo tells them. The relevant parts – the normal parts, the things that parents want to hear from a son they haven't seen since he'd been kidnapped back in kindergarten and hidden from them for decades. Things are awkward, though they try their best not to make it so. But the lost time is painful, sometimes, and more for them than it is for him. They still cling on to memories of a boy named Henry, and Leo can't ever be that boy again. It's a different person. It was another life. A month ago he wouldn't even have recognised his biological parents if he'd seen them on the street. All he has are displaced memories of faces, places… a voice calling him by another name, a snatch of fading melody, a particular fragrance on a long-ago breeze…

They're different now, all three of them. They've led separate lives, gone different paths, and it's only blood and what-ifs that bring them together. The man Leo experienced as his father is dead, and the only family he truly feels a part of now is one that shouldn't even exist.

But he doesn't tell his parents about them. It's too personal, a secret that only he, in his entire universe, knows about, and Leo would rather keep it that way and keep up the illusion of his wholly normal, boring life, which – why kid himself – is what he has if not for the frequent getaways to an apartment in another world. Although that isn't particularly exciting, either. There's a limit to the thrill of sitting on a couch with a book – admittedly dependent on the book – regardless of the setting and company.

Of course, he'd also escaped imprisonment in a labyrinthine hotel, been toyed with by powerful interdimensional beings, temporarily experienced wielding a host of superpowers, been way too close to a serial killer, come to the brink of death on a few occasions… but that was over, now, and nobody needed to know about those things.

For all other intents and purposes, he's just normal.

#

On the bookshelf in the apartment is a small collection of unmarked CDs sitting by the magazines on the bottom shelf. They assumed they might be blank discs, and with no computer conveniently at hand to test that theory – Adam gave them a death glare when asked if he could lend them his, and that fleeting resemblance to Sylar had convinced Sasan to never again request the use of Adam's laptop – the CDs were eventually forgotten about.

Leo sees them one day and decides to expend the limited but troublesome effort required to nip back to his home and bring his own laptop over, preferring the idea of apartment things staying in the apartment rather than bringing the CDs back home. There's a divide between his life and his time in the apartment that he'd like to maintain.

There's no one else home this evening – Smudge and Sasan seem to have developed a life over at Sasan's world, and Adam usually comes by later, when he does.

So Leo boots up his laptop on the kitchen table and slides one of the CDs in.

It loads. The contents folder pops up.

It's filled with videos of Zachary Quinto interviews.

For a while, Leo just looks at the screen, not doing anything. The CDs contents aren't wholly unexpected; the magazines contained a fair chunk of print interviews and that one photoshoot that Smudge and Sasan were fascinated by, and whoever stocked the place apparently thought they'd like the videos too.

Leo hasn't read the print interviews, cursory glances aside. They'd felt intrusive, somehow, and unsettling, and that same trepidation creeps up on him at the sight of the video list.

But there's also curiosity.

Leo double-clicks on the first video. Windows Media Player opens, a few moments pass, and then the video starts playing.

Soon he moves on to the next, and the next, and the next. His gaze is glued to the screen, his pulse racing, he's trembling slightly, and he's hooked.

He's met Zach before; but he's different on screen, as a celebrity, not as a person, yet still retaining that same surreal quality of being all of them at once and yet none of them. Leo sees himself in Zach the way he doesn't with any of the others. But Zach on the screen remains a stranger, the distant Hollywood star. Not the almost-kindred spirit he met, where Zach had been not that different from any of them… their creator, sure, but otherwise normal.

But here, presented in his regular setting, no different from the celebrities he sees on the TV and in tabloids back in his own world, Zach is at once unreachable and right there, with them, as them, and the paradox hurts his mind.

Zach's been to places on Earth that Leo never would, and interacted with famous people who might exist as well in Leo's own world. His own favourite actors or directors he'd never get to meet… Zach might be friends with them for all he knew, far off in his place amidst the richest entertainers and glamour and flashing lights of intrusive paparazzi cameras.

Leo wonders what it's like.

Adam comes in and is about to go off to his usual spot when he pauses, captivated by the sight of another computer in this place. His fingers twitch slightly.

Leo pauses the video.

Adam sets his laptop down and goes over. "What's that?" he asks as nonchalantly as he can manage, using his curiosity as an excuse to get closer to Leo's laptop, which looks like a newer model than any currently available back home in 2003 and oh god he wants one and it's taking a lot of self-restraint right now not to ask Leo to move so he can passionately investigate the workings of his computer and perhaps no one would notice if he slipped into Leo's or Sasan's or Sylar's world and bought himself one, because aaaahhhhh. His pulse hikes up in the thrill of geeky anticipation. He doesn't show it. Adam is good at not showing things.

"The CDs on the bottom shelf," Leo replies. "They're interviews with Zach."

Adam looks at the frozen screen, and the geeky anticipation takes a temporary backseat. He stares at the still image of Zach at some famous talk show that he'd probably find terribly difficult to even get into the audience of. He glances at Leo right next to him, and it's the same face; only that Leo is right there being accessible for conversation and sneaky-laptop-borrowing in a way that he doubts Zach ever would be. Dem never even gave them the coordinates to get to Zach's world. He's just another inaccessible Hollywood star now.

Leo returns the look. Adam wonders if he's thinking the exact same thing. An awkward silence develops and passes, leaving them both feeling suddenly extremely self-conscious and hurriedly looking away.

Adam leaves to do his work and secretly fantasise about obtaining advanced futuristic computers.

Leo closes the media player and ejects the CD. He's seen enough for now.

#

Leo wonders if he could do all that. Walk red carpets, be ambushed by paparazzi, stand up on stage day after day before an audience, sign autographs for screaming crowds, be subject to the private and not-so-private psychoanalyses and fantasies of anonymous fans, be acknowledged, thought about, talked about by unknown thousands every second of every day…

He wonders if he could be Zach, and how long he would survive, if at all, and feels a sudden surge of simultaneous terror and respect.

"If he could be you, why can't you be him?"

Dem is perched on the edge of Leo's sofa, an ethereal shadow against the rain-washed light of the evening.

"You can read my thoughts?" Leo asks, with more calm than he thinks the situation warrants.

Dem shrugs. "If I wanted to, perhaps. This was a lucky guess. I know you saw the interviews."

"He's an actor, I'm not," Leo says in belated response, suppressing the urge to tell Dem to please stop watching them because it's creepy. "He… he knows me. I barely know anything about him."

"No one would need to know that," Dem says. "It's all about appearances. You've met Zach. You know how he moves, how he talks… replicate that and you could fool anyone."

Leo blinks at him. "We're still talking hypothetically, right?"

Dem smiles. "I could always make it real if you wanted. I could take Zach on an educational tour around the multiverse – I'm sure he'd enjoy the break – and leave you to take his place."

"…Don't do that," Leo says.

Dem shrugs. "All right."

"What are you doing in my home?"

"I go anywhere I want," Dem says airily. "I like chatting with you. You don't talk back as much as the others." He gets up, dusting off his coat. Crumbs of cheese and various edibles topple onto the floor. "Any time you wish, Leo. Not many people get the chance to be a celebrity for a day and then vanish back into complete obscurity. Good evening."

He disappears.

Leo looks at the crumbs on the floor, and goes to get a broom.

X.

That Friday evening, Adam doesn't want to go home.

He's clearing up his things at the end of the work day when the depression and despair hits again. For a moment he just stands there, not doing anything, and his hand slips into his pocket where the key to the apartment is. He's been carrying it around with him of late. It comforts him, somehow; knowing that no matter what, he always has a way out, a place to escape to.

On usual days he goes home the normal way. He does what most other people do, crushed amidst peak hour crowds on the subway, squeezing through masses of tired humans to get anywhere. Doing otherwise – just opening a portal, going into the apartment, reprogramming the controls and going back out straight into his home – feels like cheating.

Adam doesn't like cheating.

But it's different this evening. The thought of just walking out of the building looms heavily on his exhausted mind. He mentally charts out the entire path he'd need to take to get home, noting every single little action he'd have to do, and takes a shaky breath. He doesn't want… he doesn't want to do that, all of that, because he's tired and he just… doesn't want to go home. He just wants to sleep, forever, and never have to wake again, because what's the use… what's the use of anything…

Adam shuts his eyes and grasps tightly onto that small moment of nothingness.

Get a grip, Kaufman.

He lets out a breath, opens his eyes, forcefully grabs his things, and heads off to a deserted corridor with an empty stretch of wall. He pulls out the key, hating himself for his weakness as he does so, goes through the first door, bitterly sticks his finger against the reader, and lets himself into the apartment.

The calm hits him the moment he steps through the door. He almost wants to cry.

The weekend. He can spend the weekend here. Sasan said it was an open offer.

There's no one else here at the moment. Adam trudges to his desk, unloads his things, and goes back to the door to reprogram the controls for his home. He almost doesn't want to – he just wants to go sit on the couch and not-think for a bit – but he remembers the ridiculous hipster clothes in the upstairs closet, and he wants some of his own things with him. It will only take a while, he tells himself. Just a while. He'll be back here in no time, and then… then it will be all right…

His own apartment seems drab and gloomy in comparison when he enters through the designated spot in his living room wall and flicks on the lights.

After some thought he pulls a small luggage bag out from storage and brings it over to his room, neatly folding in some clothes to last him a couple days – or three, or four – and packing in his own toiletries. It's like taking a holiday, almost. A holiday from reality. He stuffs a few more bills into his wallet in case they ever go out to eat, though Adam wonders if his money would be legal tender in another world.

He zips up the bag, turns off the lights, opens the portal, and rolls the bag through into the apartment.

He sets it down in his corner by his desk.

Then he goes to collapse on the couch with his arms hugging himself and wonder why he's shaking and why his eyes are burning with suppressed tears; but he doesn't want to think about that, so he gives in and sinks into the lull of the deserted apartment, and tries to just focus on the moment. He's here now. Nothing else matters. Nothing else. Nothing…

It's evening here too, through the windows, the darkness lapping gently against the dying twilight and deepening the shadows of the alien garden. A single light hangs on above the kitchen. Adam fades against the couch, just looking ahead with a strange yearning on his face; his eyes flicker shut, and he listens to the sound of his own breathing.

The door opens and shuts with a soft click. Footsteps, then silence. Probably not Sasan and Smudge, then, unless one of them was alone. Could be Leo…

Adam opens his eyes and turns to look.

The distinctive silhouette by the doorway inclines its head in a brief nod. "Adam," Spock greets.

Adam stares. "…You," he finally says, tonelessly. "You… you never come here."

Spock slowly steps forward into the light of the kitchen, hands clasped behind his back. "I found myself in need of a quiet moment away from my ship."

"Oh," Adam says, then he turns his head back to the windows. "Yeah. This place is good for that… it's not always quiet, but… it is now."

Spock moves to the windows, where he pauses, gazing out at the foliage and the sky beyond dotted with the first stars of the night.

"Some of these constellations appear familiar to me," he murmurs after a moment.

"If anyone can figure out where we are, it's probably you," Adam concedes. "But it's not really important."

Spock raises a hand to meet the window in a searching touch, his breath misting on the glass. Stars. Planets. Perhaps in this world, Vulcan survived.

Eventually he lowers his hand and joins Adam in his silence; him by the windows, Adam on the couch, and together they wait for night's embrace.

#

"You haven't eaten?" Sasan asks in horror after casually enquiring about the status of Adam's dinner and being informed that, no, Adam hadn't had it yet. "What, you've been sitting there the whole time? Adam-"

"Spock dropped by," Adam mentions, still on the couch.

"Oh he did, did he," Sasan says, putting his bag down on the kitchen counter and going over to the couch, where he grabs Adam by the shoulders and pulls him off after vague physical protest. "There was an amazing spread at my parents' place, we can't finish it all, and I'm sure my mom won't mind if you had some."

"I can't just go-"

"Of course you can," Sasan insists. "Smudge is still there, and one more person joining in shouldn't be a problem." He smiles in that firmly patronising way Adam has come to recognise as useless to fight against.

A part of him would still rather just go sit on the couch, but now that he's up from it and Sasan is resolutely steering him towards the door, it would take some effort to resist. Plus, he figures that getting food in him is probably somewhat important, too, and if he keeps looking tired, he might even be spared from any awkward conversations with Sasan's family.

#

He misses having a family.

But this one isn't his, no matter how they treat him.

He must remember that.

#

Sometime in the night Sasan gets out from bed and goes down to get a drink of water, leaving quietly so as not to wake Smudge. The starlight and moonlight through the windows is enough to see faintly by. He moves over to the kitchen to get his cup, filling it with water from the jar.

A sound from the living area halts his hand as he brings the cup to his lips. He looks over at where Adam is asleep on the sofa bed, his breathing a little too ragged for someone who should be peacefully dreaming. As he watches, Adam shifts again, a tight, uncomfortable motion, and he hears a faint murmur: "No…"

Sasan takes a sip of water and puts the cup down. He pads cautiously over to the sofa bed.

Adam is still asleep, but barely. His face twitches with an unknown agony as he struggles against an invisible enemy, hand clenched in a loose fist, legs tangled in the bedding.

"No…" Adam mumbles again, voice muffled by sleep and dream. "Don't… no…"

There's something about his manner that reminds Sasan of Smudge, and a sudden wave of compassion brings him to cautiously sit down on the bed.

"Adam?" he says gently.

The sleep-talking stops for a moment, as though Adam heard. Unreadable emotions flash across his closed eyelids, his body trembling. There's a whimper.

Sasan reaches out to touch Adam's forehead, moving his hand back in a light stroke of his hair.

"Adam, what's wrong?" he murmurs, concern in his voice.

Adam's body shudders slightly beneath his touch, then seems to relax. He rolls over to his side and is silent, falling into a deeper sleep. Sasan's hand slides to rest lightly on his shoulder.

"It's okay," Sasan says softly. "It's safe here."

He gets no reply, but Adam's breathing has steadied. Sasan watches him for a while longer, face creased slightly in worry, but nothing else happens; and so Sasan soon leaves, and goes back up the stairs, and returns to his bed and Smudge.

#

"Good morning!"

A nod. "You too."

"You were talking in your sleep last night, you know that?"

Blinking. "I was? What did I say?"

"State secrets. No, I'm kidding," Sasan adds hurriedly at Adam's horrified look. "Nothing important. You were having a nightmare or something. I talked you out of it."

"Oh. Thanks, I guess."

"You're welcome. Hope you don't mind waffles for breakfast."

"Sylar likes waffles," Smudge says absently, shaking out some fish food into the aquarium for Sandwich the goldfish.

"Well, there's always a good side to everyone," Sasan says with a smile, and goes to set the oven.

#

Sasan does not let him do his work.

"You need a break," Sasan cheerily declares, and Adam can't find the energy to argue. There's nothing urgent due, anyway, and of late, actually trying to work on his computer has more often than not resulted in him just staring blankly at the screen, trying in moments of sudden lucidity to remember what he'd last been thinking.

So he lets them drag him off to Sasan's world (Adam fleetingly wonders how much time they spend in Smudge's place, or if Smudge has disowned his original home altogether), where Adam tries his best not to look as awkward as he feels around Sasan's family and friends, who all seem fascinated with his existence and a bit too invested in his finally-admitted heterosexuality. It doesn't take long, though, for the curious people in question to realise that Adam is not just some straight version of Sasan, and can be kind of mean when he's pissed off, and looks perpetually stressed over something, and whose idea of fun involves idly watching a computer run through a program he wrote, and who generally is not good boyfriend material for the kind of people who are attracted to Sasan to begin with.

Adam wants to complain about the socialisation he's being forced into. But in a way it reminds him of what Sara used to do: make him talk to people and attempt to make friends. And given that the alternatives are either being back home feeling sorry for himself or being in the apartment feeling sorry for himself, he supposes it isn't that bad.

They whisk him off to a mall for lunch and Christmas shopping, Sasan paying for the meal at some small restaurant where the waitress who takes their order seems happily oblivious to how they don't look significantly different from each other.

Adam trudges behind listlessly as Sasan and Smudge – mostly Sasan – move enthusiastically amongst the various stores, probably buying more stuff for themselves (well, Sasan) than others. But then a computer store catches his eye, and after an involuntary happy sound escapes him along with most of his angst, they leave him to wander into that geeky paradise to gawk in awe at computer models at least three years newer than anything he would be able to find at home.

Adam spends about an hour in there, his eyes slightly glazed over in lovesickness.

"Do you want that?" a voice asks, and Adam jumps, turning away from the displayed laptop computer to where Sasan has returned from wherever he and Smudge had gone.

"I wish," Adam replies, trying to sound dismissive and failing, because it is hard to sound dismissive about a laptop he has spent the past hour or so repeatedly going back to stare longingly at. "Not at that price. I don't even think my money works here…"

"Take it," Sasan says firmly. "I'll pay."

"…What? No, you can't-"

Sasan cuts him off with a smile. "Adam. I can afford it. And you need to be happy once in a while."

Adam wants to protest, but can't bring himself to, and he just stands there numbly as Sasan makes the purchase, and a sales guy carries out a box with the laptop inside, and soon him and Sasan and Smudge are walking off in search of a convenient wall to portal through, and Adam is still stumbling out repeated thanks, and somewhere beneath the murk of depression, his heart is almost singing.

Back in the apartment, he takes over the coffee table, taking out the contents of the box and poring over the manual and booting up the laptop and partitioning drives and-

"He's adorable when he's geeking out," Sasan comments to Smudge, who looks almost jealous until Sasan gives him a playful smile and kisses his head. "Not as much as you."

#

The laptop did something: lowered some barrier, and Adam spends the rest of that day in front of it, a little less closed off, less guarded, and at one point Sasan thinks he saw a smile. Adam doesn't move much from his spot before the screen; he gets up once to bring his old laptop and a USB cable over to shift his files across, worrying briefly about the wisdom of using the new one at work, and then deciding that he'll come up with some excuse for where he got it.

Adam is in his element. Almost. But it's an excellent distraction from everything else, even if it's just temporary, and every now and then he'd be hit by the spark of excitement at how he's effectively working on a computer from the future.

Yet the tension is still there; and it is after dinner, when the three of them are just hanging out around the kitchenette over glasses of wine that Smudge asks, with uncharacteristic gentleness but characteristic lack of tact:

"Who died?"

Sasan shoots him a reproachful look that goes unnoticed.

Adam gives a start at the question, but quickly settles down again. "My sister," he says. "Her name was Sara."

"Oh."

Silence.

"There was a virus," he continues after a while. "It was a terrorist attack, they… it got a lot of people. Killed them, and… we couldn't stop it in time."

"It's not your fault," Smudge says.

"But what if it was?" Adam spills out suddenly, forcefully. "What if there was something I could have done differently, or something I didn't notice that could've-"

"It's not your fault, Adam," Sasan says, reiterating Smudge's words. "Even if there was something you could have done, it's over now. You'll just make things worse by dwelling on it."

Silence. Adam lets out a breath and gazes at his glass.

"I miss her," Adam says quietly, almost inaudibly, and takes another gulp of wine.

XI.

Coincidences happen, sometimes more often in spaces outside of conventional worlds; and it becomes such that, one early afternoon, the people who find themselves in the apartment are not the ones who are usually there; not the ones who are familiar enough with it to call it home.

Jason discovers Mitchell Sullivan standing near the doorway by the kitchen counter, gazing at the rest of the apartment with a wistful look in his eyes.

"Hi," Jason greets, a little wary. Mitchell turns to face him. His gaze is impassive. The little that Jason remembers of him largely involves antagonistic engagements with Adam, and he hazards a guess: "You don't come here very often, do you?"

"It's my second time," Mitchell replies, eyes darting away from Jason and around the room, surveying it.

"I haven't been here that often, myself."

Mitchell shrugs, moving forward in a languid sort of way to one of the potted plants (Smudge had christened it 'Henry'), fingers playing with the leaves in a calculated manner. "It's just them, isn't it?" He looks up at Jason, briefly, his eyes shining, then looks back at Henry.

"Well…"

"I'd have thought a group like this would be more inclusive," Mitchell says.

"No one's stopping us from coming by."

"But do you want to?" Mitchell asks. "I don't feel welcome here. Do you?"

Jason concedes the point, and also thinks that perhaps he should come back another time; but he's also forced to admit that this is probably the most attention he's received from one of… them… in a while. And it's nice to be acknowledged.

They lapse into silence. Mitchell goes on from Henry to the kitchenette, taking in everything, a possessiveness to his movements, as though he's reclaiming the place. Fingers sliding over the kitchen counter, brushing against the grain of the wooden cupboards, hand resting lightly, momentarily, on the tap…

Jason doesn't do more than stand there. Watching. Being aware of their similarities and differences and similarities: both somewhat outcasts in this place, but their respective appearances stark in contrast: Jason well-groomed and neatly dressed; Mitchell trailing around the kitchenette in T-shirt and loose jacket and jeans that have seen better days, face peeking out from a mess of hair, giving off the faint aura that it's been a while since his last shower. But his eyes – Jason recognises them as his own, even while not, even while the surreal jolt of meeting them with his own is broken by the equal recognition of the foreign, alert intelligence looking out from there.

The door opens. Mike comes in, slows to a stop at the sight of them, and volunteers a hesitant: "hi".

"I don't remember you," Mitchell says after a moment's appraisal.

"Yeah, I… missed out on some of the stuff that happened with the others." Mike glances at Jason, who looks decidedly less shifty, and feels a little safer. He attempts a shy smile. "Um. I'm Mike."

"Mitchell."

"Jason. Hi."

"Do you… know the others?" Mike asks.

"We've met," Mitchell says. "They stick to themselves, don't they?" He walks on to the centre of the room and gazes up the spiral staircase.

"They're… they're okay," Mike says. A bit intimidating, sometimes, but that's mostly just Adam. The others have been nice.

Mitchell makes some noncommittal sound and hops onto the first step of the stairs, starting to climb. He pauses a few steps up and looks at them. "Wanna come on up?" And upon them not moving: "It's not like we're trespassing. We have as much right to this place as they do."

They follow him up.

Mike has never been on the second floor before, and feels a surge of excitement as they approach the trapdoor; Mitchell pushes it open and goes through, Mike and Jason coming after.

Jason shuts the trapdoor with a soft thud. The other two stand by his side in silence.

They're in a bedroom, and it does feel like trespassing.

A double bed faces their left, the sheets neatly made beneath the comforter. Digital clock on the nightstand beneath a lampshade, next to a box of tissues and a book. The ceiling slopes down away from them across the bed to end in a series of closets followed by a bay window to the right. An armchair facing a television set by the window, a towel thrown over its back, bedroom slippers stashed partway under it.

To their right: a door leading off to the bathroom, and a floor-length mirror adjacent to it next to a dresser. There's an open notepad lying on that, scribbled notes (in his handwriting, Jason notes unsettlingly; no, their handwriting) about some dog clothes company. A comb, a pair of scissors, several bottles of hair and facial products, a couple of pens, a small photo of Smudge and Sasan, loose change, a calendar with random dates circled and comments like "Mom's birthday" written next to them, a small box of mints…

"I don't think we should be here," Mike says in a small voice.

"Why not?" Mitchell asks, and there's bitter anger in his tone. He goes over to the bathroom door, opens it, and goes in. Towels over the rack, a clutter of toiletries by the sink, a stack of trashy tabloid magazines by the toilet. Mitchell comes back out. He trudges across to the other side of the room, gazes out the window at the unbroken greenery beyond, opens the closet doors – those clothes would fit him, Jason thinks; would fit all of them – and pulls drawers open, peeking in at their contents.

"Let's go back down," Jason finally has the courage to suggest. "This is someone's home. We shouldn't-"

He falters at the challenge in Mitchell's eyes.

"We have the keys," Mitchell states. "It's our home too."

Jason doesn't know how to respond to that. Eventually, he casts Mitchell a faintly-apologetic look, then goes back down the trapdoor, Mike following quietly after.

Mitchell falls back onto the bed, shuts his eyes, and breathes, fingers clutching the comforter in desperate yearning.

#

Tony enters the apartment as they're coming down the stairs, giving them a brief double take before continuing on his original path to the refrigerator. He takes out a can of Pepsi, pops it open with a hiss, and gestures at the fridge. "Help yourself to anything," he says.

They don't. They just reach the bottom of the steps and stand awkwardly around, watching as Tony settles down at the coffee table with the Pepsi and a textbook that he opens to read, casting them a quizzical glance as if to ask what exactly is so fascinating about watching him study.

Mitchell comes down eventually from whatever he was doing upstairs; he pauses on the bottom step, gazing at Tony for a while before he speaks.

"So who are you, Tony? One of us or one of them?"

Jason finds this unnecessarily divisive, and wants to know what the deal is with Mitchell's obsessive need to separate them, but he can't find the nerve to say anything. So he keeps his mouth shut.

"Neither," Tony says, after a brief glance up to see who was addressing him. "I'm my own man. Are you guys just… going to stand around there? It's hard to concentrate when you're all looking at me. I've got a test in less than an hour."

They fall back into silence. Jason sticks his hands into his pockets and wonders if he should leave. He thinks he should, but no one else is moving; perhaps they're all thinking the same thing. Then Mitchell does move, getting off the step and moving over to the living room area, running a hand over the back of Adam's favourite couch and taking a moment to appreciate the new television set that Sasan had recently bought to replace the one that had come with the apartment – that one had been shifted upstairs to the bedroom.

Sasan would have thrown it out or donated it, if not for how it – unlike the new one – was able to pick up reception in this place. It gave them access to any odd number of programs that didn't seem to originate from any reality they were familiar with. There were strange languages (thankfully with convenient English subtitles), beings that looked human but had the wrong amount of eyebrows, a reality TV show in which homogenous contestants competed to be something called 'The Last Keanu Standing', and once the weather report man ("cloudy, chance of meatballs") had looked Smudge straight in the face and said, "yes, it is because you're bisexual." On the back of that television set was embossed 'Product of Aquintos, Xavarin'.

The new television set could not pick up any of those channels, so they just used it to play DVDs.

For now, Mitchell pauses in front of the screen, staring into its dark depths as though trying to derive some answer from it. But all he sees is his reflection staring back at him – his, and those of the others, and that gives him no answers; though something about it calms his mind.

"This place isn't supposed to exist," he murmurs. "It shouldn't."

"Don't diss the apartment," Tony says, then regrets it upon realising he's lost his train of thought.

Jason has settled into an almost meditative state where he stands. He's lost the desire to leave. He almost feels that he belongs here; that he can belong here. He glances at Mike, who looks back at him like a ghost of Jason's younger self, and he realises they haven't really talked. Mike might be nothing like the kid he used to be. Appearances are deceiving. But it's weird, seeing Mike there – and Tony, for that matter – like a living embodiment of his past just an arm's reach away, and it takes effort to remind himself that they're completely different people.

Mitchell has moved away from the television set to the shelf next to it; he settles on the floor, thumbing through the neat row of magazines on the bottom shelf, picking one at random and flipping through the pages to settle on the one advertised on the cover; he takes in the words and images of the richandfamous stranger with his face, and wonders what meaning there is in things.

In anything.

Physical identities are meaningless, he realises; how else would some guy with a body practically identical to his quite likely have a hat collection that cost more than Mitchell made in a year. But he doesn't feel jealous. Quinto is too distant, too impersonal for that. There's just a numbness, and a reinforced conviction: everything is meaningless.

Mitchell closes the magazine and puts it back. He gets up.

It's time to go home.

"You guys can come over whenever you like, you know," Tony says. "The others are pretty cool."

"Yeah," Mike agrees.

Mitchell simply shrugs. "Goodbye," he says tonelessly, and leaves the apartment.

Mike and Jason soon follow after.

XII.

Adam is ill, fighting a bad cold, and fighting against Sasan's demand that he take the day off work.

"I'm fine," he insists roughly, sniffing back a sneeze.

He looks worn out from the all-nighters he pulled the previous couple of days: the first of which saw him collapsing from sheer exhaustion at his desk in the apartment only to wake an hour later when his alarm went off, then returning that evening after work, wired from too much coffee and blinking a lot, practically wincing at the glare of his computer screen as he re-immersed himself in work ("I've got to decrypt these codes. It's urgent."); and falling asleep again in the same way. When his alarm went off again and he forced tired eyes open, Sasan practically flew over, turning off the alarm in one swift motion and pointing firmly towards the sofa bed.

"You're not kidding anyone, Adam," Sasan counters. "You're not fine, and you're not leaving this apartment until you've had some decent rest."

Adam just stares blankly at him, his mind still fogged with weariness. He glances at the clock, rubs his nose, and picks up his things for work-

"Adam."

He looks back at Sasan, a little annoyed now. "What?"

"I'm serious. You need sleep. I came down at five a.m. for water and you were still up. You're going to kill yourself at this rate."

"I can't just skip work-"

Sasan gives him an exasperated look, regarding him as he would a particularly-recalcitrant child. "Adam, I'm sure you're great at your job. But I'm also sure they know you're only human, because I don't think they trust robots in the CTU. Let someone else take over for today."

Adam appears aghast at the thought, but the surge of protective defiance that results brings a sneeze with it, and he grabs at a tissue just in time.

Sasan looks vindicated.

"I can't not go," Adam reiterates when he's done sneezing. He jabs a finger at his computer, an action which would be impressive had he more energy. "Look, they need this report-"

"Can you e-mail it?"

Adam glowers at him. Then: "Yeah."

"Great. Go home and do that after you call in sick. If it's that important they'll find someone else to do it. Go."

Adam can't protest, not with Sasan's hand on his shoulder steering him gently but firmly towards the door. Sasan sets the controls for Adam's apartment, the door slides open, and he gently shoves Adam through the two doorways into his apartment.

It's daybreak, the place still steeped in slowly shifting shadows. Sasan stays to watch, arms crossed, as Adam reluctantly picks up the phone and dials, and in quiet tones lets the CTU know that he can't make it to work today.

He hangs up and regards Sasan with a kind of annoyed resignation.

Sasan meets his scowl with a smile. "Send your e-mail and go get some rest."

#

Sasan agrees to let Adam stay there after he promises that he'll go to bed and not sneak off to work, Adam pointing out that it would be better to keep him somewhere where he can't spread germs about. Sasan is sceptical of whether any such germs exist in the first place, believing that Adam is just sick from overwork, but he's not a doctor and can't say for certain.

Eventually, Adam is curled up on the couch – it feels less guilt-inducing than actually getting into bed, because at least this way he can pretend it's just a nap – with a pillow, too tired to be mortified when Sasan brings a blanket over and practically tucks him in.

Then his body gratefully gives in to exhaustion, and he's asleep by the time Sasan takes his leave.

#

Hours pass.

#

The door Sasan left through opens slightly, slowly, so as not to wake Adam, and Leo peeks in.

But Adam has already woken, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling, and he turns his head towards the door as Leo comes hesitantly into the apartment.

"Hey," Adam greets softly, his voice a little hoarse.

"I thought I'd check on you," Leo says. "Sasan said to make sure you hadn't died or run off to work."

Adam manages a snort. "He didn't trust me, huh."

Leo shrugs. "Apparently not."

Silence. Adam shifts on the couch. Leo looks awkwardly around the apartment, blinds drawn on the windows, grey in the afternoon light.

"You don't have to stay here," Adam murmurs, closing his eyes.

"You work too much," Leo says, ignoring that. "You're always working… every time we see you…"

"That's what they pay me for," Adam retorts, and there's a hint of irritation in his voice that makes Leo back off from that avenue of conversation.

He glances at the clock instead. "If you need lunch later, I can get you something," he offers.

Adam thinks of making a comment about how he's not an invalid and is perfectly capable of getting his own food, but changes his mind. It feels unnecessarily rude. "Thanks," he says. "You've got the day off?"

"Yeah… just finished with a client. Looking for the next one." Leo settles down to sit on the arm rest of the couch, and gazes vaguely at the door he came through.

Adam's brow furrows slightly. "What do you do, anyway?"

"I'm an architect."

"I didn't know that."

"You never asked."

Adam makes what almost qualifies as a wry grin. "There were more important things to worry about," he says drily.

"Like not getting killed or stranded in another universe?"

"Yeah, that."

Silence.

Leo finally stands up and pats the back of the couch. "Get better," he says, and leaves the apartment; and Adam goes back to staring at the ceiling, the outline of the door remaining, for now, as an assurance that friends are near.

XIII.

"I just quit," Adam says, and Leo is startled for a moment at the unexpected voice. Then he turns and sees Adam sitting at the kitchen table, an oddly blank look on his face. He's nursing a mug of something; wine, probably, judging from the bottle next to him – leftover Bordeaux from some recent party that Sasan's Hollywood friends threw.

"What?" Leo asks, sticking his key into his pocket and walking over. He pauses by the kitchen counter. It feels too intrusive to go closer.

"My job," Adam says, and there's a hollow quality to his voice. "Gave them two weeks' notice." There's a faint horror that creeps into his face as he speaks, as though he has no idea why on earth he would have done such a thing. He looks down at his mug and takes another sip.

"Oh," Leo says. "It's… that's good. They were killing you there. I've never seen anyone work that much."

Adam twitches. "I could handle it." He sounds defensive. "It was…" he gestures curtly with one hand. "Memories," he croaks out, and tries not to think about his late sister.

"Have you found another job yet?" Leo asks, after allowing Adam a few moments of silence.

Adam shakes his head no. "I haven't started looking."

"Look… take a break for a while," Leo suggests. "You deserve it."

Adam pushes his mug aside and puts his head in his hands. "I don't know what I'm doing," he says.

Leo finally walks over. He puts the wine bottle back into the fridge. "I don't think any of us do," he says. He pauses, looking wistfully at the television set, and then trudges over; opens up the cabinet beneath it with the DVD player on one shelf, and below that…

He glances at the bookshelf. He seems to remember there being games to go with the woefully-unused Xbox 360, and sure enough, he finds them near the bottom, next to the audiobook recording of Star Trek XI. There's something that looks like a puzzle game… Extreme Tetris… Halo 1-4… Portal…

"Hey," he calls over his shoulder. Adam blinks and turns his head.

"Do you want to try these out?" Leo asks.

#

Sasan does not expect to hear gunfire the moment he steps into his apartment with Smudge. But he does, and after his startled jump, he gapes at the scene in the living room.

"Did you move the couch?" he demands in what's almost a whine. He's not a fan of people shifting fairly-permanent furniture around; moving their own stuff was one thing, dumping unwanted belongings was one thing, but moving the couch…

It's now facing the television, like it used to when Smudge first got the apartment. They'd moved it after realising that they rarely watched TV, and that placing it parallel to the other couch enabled better conversation and helped act as a divider between the living room and Adam's makeshift study.

But now it's back. And the television set is on, and Adam and Leo's gazes are glued to the screen with near-vacant but intense expressions, hands furiously working two game controllers as gunfire and explosions and the squeals of blue-blooded aliens fill the room.

"Adam?" Sasan asks incredulously, barely able to believe that their resident workaholic is doing something so far removed from work as video games. But Sasan gets no response, and so treats them to a look of pained exasperation that goes likewise unnoticed.

"Watch out: grenade," Leo says suddenly; Adam makes a frenzied movement on the controller, and seconds later, an explosion erupts on the screen

Smudge wanders up to Sasan's side to see what's going on. Still watching the other two with a look of mild disgust on his face, Sasan takes Smudge by the elbow and steers him away from the sight of Adam and Leo being embarrassingly heterosexual on their couch.

Adam lets out a sudden yelp that makes Sasan jump, and then falls silent again until: "No, you drive, I'll shoot… Go… go, go, go-"

Sasan contemplates him for a moment. Then he sighs and shakes his head, deciding that he shouldn't begrudge the poor guy some long-needed relaxation time.

#

A while later, the two of them are just sitting there on the couch: Adam leaning back with his eyes shut and the game controller still in his hand, looking a little nauseated from motion sickness but otherwise more relaxed than he has been in a long, long time.

The television screen is blank, now. Leo gazes into its depths and ponders their reflections.

"I still have work," Adam murmurs. "Two weeks more to go. I shouldn't-" he opens his eyes with tremendous effort – "shouldn't be playing…"

But Adam doesn't budge from the couch. The world doesn't feel quite steady yet.

"Thanks," he murmurs instead, looking at Leo, suddenly awkward and at a loss for words now that they weren't blasting aliens together.

Leo just nods.

Adam glances over at his desk and feels a sudden weight of despair settle down on him; and then realises that perhaps the others had a good point after all about him needing a break. Right now, he just wants to sit on the couch. Maybe lie back on it, close his eyes again, and drift off…

When Leo next looks over, Adam is fast asleep. The controller slips from his hands onto the couch. Leo quietly takes it and returns it to the cabinet.

#

Adam stays on for dinner. They make shepherd's pie, the four of them hanging around the kitchenette and taking turns at doing whatever's needed. There's not much conversation, other than between Sasan and Smudge. But it's the first time that Adam is there, joining in rather than hunched over his computer working furiously away. There's still a tense, controlled look on his face that Sasan is convinced will probably always remain – he wouldn't be Adam without it – but there's a slight relaxation in his movements, and he doesn't snap at anyone.

None of them are particularly good cooks. But it doesn't matter; it makes the food all the more theirs. It's also still edible and sufficiently tasty, which is enough for them. Had Chad Warwick been both alive and with access to the apartment, he might have shooed them off in exasperation and taken over all cooking duties to show them what food could taste like when prepared with his culinary skills. But Chad was a ghost who did not know about the apartment, which was probably for the better. He might not have got on well with Sasan at all.

They eat.

There's something about Leo that tends to make the group a little more awkward than when without him. So he defuses the awkwardness by getting a book on post-modern hipsters to read while he eats. Sasan and Smudge are more than used to each other's company. Adam watches them piercingly as he chews, until Sasan tells him to stop that, which gets an annoyed eyebrow raise before Adam focuses his gaze on his food instead.

He can't be annoyed for long, though. There's good food, there are friends around, and the natural peace of the apartment eases away his fears of what he would do after the two weeks are up and he's officially unemployed. He does have money – quite a lot of it, actually, saved up and barely touched, because he's never had the time to do so. And if that runs out… there's always this apartment. Adam doesn't want to be living off the others' goodwill if he can help it, but he has the feeling that Sasan at least would welcome the opportunity to have him stay over even long term, limiting Adam's ability to escape from Sasan's increasing determination to give him a makeover and get him a girlfriend.

"It's such a waste," Sasan had lamented one day with a look of despair at Adam's physical existence while Adam resolutely stared at his computer screen.

"I don't need a makeover," he said.

"I know so many guys who would give anything to be a quarter as good-looking as you, and you don't even know how to appreciate that-"

"Your narcissistic flattery is creepy."

"Well, it's true. It's wasted potential-"

"Stop touching my hair."

"People could be flocking to you-"

"I don't want them to. Go bother Leo. He's single too."

Sasan gave him a patronising smile. "But he's happy being single, and Leo knows how to look after himself. Unlike you. You're just…" he gestured vaguely "…weird."

Adam spluttered indignantly at the injustice of being called weird by someone whose boyfriend was, at that very moment, standing over the fish tank trying to cajole Sandwich the goldfish into doing loop the loops.

But that was then, and at the moment, it's just dinner.

The door opens to let someone in. Young fellow, and Sasan is about to chide Tony for coming here just for food, when he realises that it's Mike, and softens some. "We're having dinner, want to join in?"

Mike glances warily at Adam, meets no resistance, and gives a small nod.

Leo looks up from his book. "Hey, we haven't seen you in a while. How are things?"

"They're okay," Mike says, sliding onto an empty seat and hesitantly scooping food onto his plate.

For now, it's just dinner, and Adam can deal with that.

The future can wait.

Collection III »

#