There's another bookstore, famous for its first editions and collectibles that Reid would like to visit, sometime.
But tonight, there's a friend he wants to see. The first one he'd made, in death. And the last person he'd ask for advice on a subject only souring, every day he keeps it locked away. Aria hadn't told him that when she'd gone off to New York with her lover, that there was a fight at every pit stop. But maybe that's just him, and his.
Scarred hands, and new jewellery, included.
Bookends is quaint. But the small boy, pretending to be a plane, and making loud noises between the shelves shatters that illusion of tranquillity. Henry's jogging between all the open gaps the moment the bell jingles to announce their presence. He's not sure if it's a headache, or the avoidance to show the boy what Reid does at night — and what he hasn't done tonight, whilst Anika's out.
Maybe Aria can help him find a new book for bedtime, or something.
Reid's not sure, in looking around, if it's that type of store. "Hey, little man. Come over here." A hand gestures for Henry to come back from threatening to knock over the shelves like dominos. There's an older later, with a birthmark on her chin, and a kind smile looking down at Henry. She looks like the type to aid the kid into a sugar rush, and Reid's not about to encourage that. The boy veers closer, but with Reid's second bout of encouragement, he finds himself distracted with the counter beside the checkout. Kid's trying to lean over on his tiptoes and see what's on the other side.
Then he finds the bell, and begins slamming his hand on it over and over, like a demon. Reid curses, rubbing at his ear as he dives to pick up the kid from dinging the service bell. "Okay, that's enough." Sighing and laughing, he shakes his head, whilst Henry is placed back down on two feet, trapped between Reid and the counter to he can minimise the damage for a whole thirty seconds.
Her eyes caught on movement -- his fingers on the doorframe. Annabelle's head tilted to the side as she noticed something new wrapped around her older brother's finger. A ring. One that was most definitely not there the last time she'd seen him. Her jaw clenched ever so slightly but she chose to not ask about it or comment on the new jewelry. It wasn't her business, clearly.
"Were they?" Belle asked as if she hadn't already known. It didn't bother her all that much, though. She rarely talked to anyone anymore. "Everything is fine. Colder, but fine." She wasn't sure what else he wanted her to say, or what he was expecting.
At his question, she let out her own sigh. Was it late? Yes. But it wasn't as if she was going to be falling asleep anytime soon. "Yeah. Come in." She muttered as she turned and walked away from the front door and towards her kitchen. "Want anything to drink?"
She acted like she didn't know. And it provokes the idea that maybe Anika had been right; Rose had no interest in maintaining the thread of communication. He'd killed it — and buried the brother she'd known, when he put a knife in their father's neck to save Lis. Put a wooden cross in the grass on Halstead land, when he left the town that had been not only the death of him, but the death of so many others, too.
If she hated him, it didn't change that he wanted to know she was safe.
Reid knows better than to take her dismissive attitude as truth. She's been in crisis, and in places he's never been able to save her from. He's at least trying to be some semblance of an anchor, even if he only docks once in a while.
Stepping over the threshold, he follows her inside, gently closing her door behind him. There's something herbal-smelling inside her apartment, but he cannot pinpoint it. Just like he isn't sure how to talk to her, anymore.
It hits him so suddenly, about how he doesn't know how to be a brother.
Clearing his throat, he nods at her polite gesture. "Sure, sunshine." Habit. Even now. Reid lingers by the door, unsure how far he's supposed to step into her space without fulfilling the shoes of the parasite that he is. Instead, he nods towards her, hands tucking awkwardly underneath his biceps. "You cut your hair. It looks good."
When he emerges, his gaze immediately falls on the familiar figure at the edge of the room. Maybe it's a draw to his sire, maybe it's just the idea that it's a familiar scent - but he cannot help the surge of emotion that he has to tamp down. Cameron is still not very skilled at naming the things he feels, so as Reid approaches - he tries to find the words for it. Relief? Is he happy to see an old friend? Perhaps. His lips slide into something of a smile - his real one, very small, and tight.
His gaze flicks from Reid to the sculpture. "Clay. Made to look like bone." Because he is not an animal.
They leave the gallery to the nearest place to grab a drink - and Cam does not protest any bit. In Reid's time away, he doesn't think he's changed much, doesn't think much has happened to him, either. Glass in hand, he sips and savors the ashy burn of alcohol - all while he eyes the pulsing vein in the bartender's neck.
Maybe a nightcap if Reid is open to it. He won't ask, because he knows what he was like before. His thumb traces the rim of his glass and he finally asks, "Why are you back? I'd banked on it being a few decades before I saw you again." Another sip, and he drags his eyes away from the call of blood.
"I hope there's no trouble." In paradise, with his family, or on the road.
"Good. That's less fucked." On the sliding scale of Reid's life, it might not have been the most unhinged of discoveries if McCormick had taken to vulgar habits, given new abilities. But he's still relieved Cam isn't entirely off-kilter. And even more glad that he doesn't have to wrestle with morality tonight about potential bone sculptures; he doesn't have to pretend he's still so righteously driven, when he's got bible-thick bloodshed on his soul.
He's ready for that drink.
A sweating beer in his hand is comfort, and every time it touches his lips, he imagines it's going to cure whatever broken parts are inside of him.
Reid's back in Port Leiry, and so far, everyone he's checked on is safe. It's relieving, but he isn't sure that the woman he dragged back to hell is so glad for it.
"Yeah. I thought that too," he admitted, even though he hadn't given much thought between being driven out of states, and crashing cult parties. "I couldn't get hold of anyone. This snow knocked out the comms, I guess. I just wanted to check on Lis and Rose, you know?" That isn't a secret he minds sharing with Cam, who'd known them long enough. It'd been all the push Reid had needed; an excuse, he supposes. Someone else though it had been, anyway. "You know anything about it, man? I've never seen snowfall like this that's almost put the city in standstill—"
Reid's distracted by Cam's line of sight, and hesitates in pointing it out. Because the man manages to divert his attention away from the obvious, so Reid doesn't make a thing of it. Laughing, it could almost be considered a scoff as Halstead lifts the beer again to drink, "You should know just as well as I do. There's always trouble."
Lately, Annabelle hadn't been using her phone all that much. It wasn't because she was avoiding people, necessarily, but half of the time the signal didn't work. So what was the point in trying? She didn't have many people that she talked to and the ones she did, she knew how to find them.
Belle hadn't talked to her sister in a few weeks. Her brother, far longer. She had no idea what to say to either of them anymore. Not after what had happened with their parents. And on top of that, she was still mourning while trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the family estate.
She had no help from Reid. He'd killed their parents and then left with a person that used to be her close friend. They'd left together. Reid had left her, and Lis, again. Even if he and Annalise hadn't killed their parents, how the fuck was she supposed to get past that again?
The knock on her door was unexpected. The snow was still falling, causing a town wide issue where everyone was urged to take shelter. So who the fuck was at her door, uninvited?
As the voice traveled from behind the door, to her ears, her whole body tensed. Why was Reid here? She racked her brain, trying to remember the last time he'd reached out to her -- had he told her he was coming? No. No, she hadn't received anything from him in a while.
With a sigh, Belle grabbed a jacket, pulled it on, and then opened the front door. A mixture of sadness, confusion, and anger twisted in her chest as her eyes met his. He looked... Worried. She almost laughed.
She ran a hand through her now short hair and then finally addressed him: "Reid." Her eyes flickered over his shoulder, observing the surrounding snow. Only one track of footprints. "You're alone." Because saying oh my god you're back didn't feel like it fit. Her expectations of him, now, were that he'd leave.
He can hear her inside. At the very bare minimum she's alive. It doesn't give him the reprieve he's hoping for, though. There's a heavy weight keeping the door shut, and not even Reid is strong enough to push through it. Belle would have to find a way to move it aside, just to face him.
His mouth opens to call again, and he'd tell the neighbours they don't want to get involved if they got too interested in the noise he's making.
But then the door opens, and he's looking at his sister. Hair cut short, tired — wrapped in a jacket and held tightly against her. He didn't know what he expected, in making sure she was okay. Maybe a hug, or some sort of faux brotherly-sisterly thing that resurrected the dead parts of what they'd lost.
"Yeah." he says, because the fuck is he bringing Anika to Belle's door after knowing his sister's opinions on his damn life. He loves her, even if she hates him for it all. A thumb twists the ring on his finger, around and around as it lowers from the doorframe. And for a moment, he thinks he should have taken it off, just for now to avoid all their tensions. But without gloves, there's no hiding the scarred hand, absent a hunter mark from her, either. They're both a little different, in the distance.
Too late to change it now. "I couldn't get hold of anyone. Phones were out." Croft said — but that part didn't matter. "Just needed to know if everything was alright."
Clearly, it isn't. The city he's known for his entire life is buried in snowfall like nobody's ever seen. "I know it's late." There's not exactly an early for him. "Listen," he sighs, and looks at the door. "Can I come in?"
Whilst the night's young, Reid wants to use it; no more days in cramped trucks, or wondering what had become of his family. The last days had been the longest in stretched silences, and quiet arguments. It'd all been to bring him to this point, where he knocked with some urgency on Belle's door. Waiting, waiting.
He can hear a heartbeat inside. A steady, settled thing, spiking at the noise he's making.
Boots wet with melting snow, jacketless in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. He's every part unequipped for the shift in weather. But he's not cold. Just concerned, enough to ache and dismantle everything he'd left Port Leiry to build. Enough to rush across states, on the off-chance she needed him.
Reid's good at burning down towers. Casualties be damned.
Swallowing, he braces on her doorframe, tense, because he isn't sure if Anika's right; Rose has moved on from him, and ignoring his messages hadn't been all bad weather, but choice. She already said she didn't want to fly out to visit him, and he understood. Her anger isn't without reason; he'd done unspeakable things; hurt her in ways he'll never be forgiven for; she feels abandoned in hiding in shadows for years, and more in leaving their home. And on top of it all, Reid had stolen their parents from her, to save Lis that burden.
But he'd come back, to make sure they were okay. Isn't that worth something?
He'd crack the doorframe if she made him knock again. Frustration coils in, because he's hiding the worry, "Belle. It's me. Are you alright — can you open the door?"
Reid tips his head away from whatever violence paints the canvas he's looking at, to look at the dark-haired, charcoal-eyed figure in a long overcoat. He hadn't paid much eye to the stragglers in McCormick's gallery, not even the shifty looking ones who stare at him like he's hiding something.
He is, but it's hardly what they're hoping for.
Arms folded, and indifferent to whatever the guy's looking for, Reid's gaze flies beyond the stranger's shoulder to see Cam's shape emerge from a staff door. That assured poise and invisible link that almost had Reid forgetting he's done that to the man. Torn him back from the edge, so he can be here, talking to art collectors and the like.
"No. Here for him." Reid shoots the overcoat a sharp smile, and nods over towards McCormick's approach. He doesn't wait, bypasses the stranger and slowly meets his old friend in his stride. A smile that's less room for conversation in Cam's house of horrors, and instead one that Reid's more adept within. Familiar faces that don't expect him to balance the beast of a lock on the cage in his chest, "McCormick. You're coming for a drink." Too long without. And still, not enough time planned to stay in town, to waste it with explanations upon his return. Not at least, without a beer in his hand. The scarred hand shifts awkwardly in the crook of his elbow. "I don't care if you don't need one. I do."
And company who won't fight him about needless shit, seems good. Or at least if they fought, Reid hopes they're drawing lines at eyes, this time.
Unrelated but equally as fucked, "Also, is that sculpture carved out of bone over there?"
"We’re back here again, and it’s the same talk. Only the monsters are different, ain’t they?" The rancher had asked, whilst they sat on the mud-ridden barn floor, sharing a bottle like they were a decade younger than they were. They'd started reminiscing on youthful freedoms, before the unsettling truth of what Colt knew in half measures had Reid coming to take away the man's ignorance. Cash's blood was speckled between them; a tragic irony that Colt hadn't known in that moment. Didn't know what he had sat on the ground, beside. Fingers tapped uneasily on a bent knee, fast and irregular. Reid wondered if ripping off the band-aid would be the most merciful way to shatter what was between them. If it would give Mercer peace, or drop him in the fire to burn.
"Yeah. They're different." They'd been the same ones Reid had always face, but the rancher had only ever been kind to even the deadly things in the night. Reid knew that, because Mercer had let him in his door, over and over again. If he'd let the worst kind through, who else would Mercer allow through? "I'll tell you, and then when you think it sounds crazy, man." Or liquor-lipped. "I'm going to show you."
Reid doesn't know if that night had been a mistake. If down the road, it'd save an old friend from danger that might come knocking on his door. Mercer had been spiralling; a mind torn in two directions between monsters and men. The weight that had lifted, in the lie, seemed light when he found himself back outside Mercer's door. Not in the barn tonight, Halstead would have heard it. It's quiet, and the snow sat thick under his boots as he'd kicked through it to get to the front of the house.
Being back in town when it's heavy with white fog, and brimming with new unknown's, Reid understands why he chose to leave in the first place. And at the same time, it hurts to ever think he did.
Colt may slam the door in his face, and retract an invitation the man's probably forgotten he once extended. The rancher had seen teeth, and the dark of eyes no longer human. But in the time away, people weren't just erased, they lingered in memory. Reid's is full of selfish wants, and ugly desires.
SMS TO BIRDIE T
Reid: if you don't pick up the phone b, i swear
Reid: im gonna knock on your damn door
Reid: what the fuck is going on with the weather
The familiar stretch of road delivers them the Now Entering Port Leiry, OR, sign.
Only, it’s caked in snow that doesn’t appear to cease. The roads barely gritted and Reid forces the truck through the thick of it, wipers spattering away wet flakes. By the time they’re reaching the edge of the city, the truck’s had enough.
But they’re back.
Anika could see her breath, float out of her mouth, her shoulders shivering and her eyes dragging over the frost outside, then to Henry, who'd gone to sleep but looked just as cold as she was. "Where are we going?" she asked, although she hated the idea of doing it.
He thought he’d known this city like the back of his hand — did know it. But the back of his hand’s no longer black and inked like he once knew, it’s now scarred and pinkish. And he can barely make out one street from the next; everything’s white, and there’s cars staggered, trapped in the snow. Left there for however long.
They’ve come back to a town of snow and ghosts.
It’s quiet enough, and dark enough that he thinks they can figure something out later.
“Get behind the wheel. I’m gonna push. You steer us clear.” He’ll think about where they’re going to stay whilst they’re here, when he knows where the hell they are. Port Leiry looks different, when the roadsigns are iced over, and the ground is lost beneath a snowy sea.
21:30. 5th January 2026.
He’d finally figured out that they were a few blocks from Baliol Street. And as long as he was facing North, he knew what buildings were either side of him, too.
Henry had woken up, shivering and complaining of the cold. Anika is too, but she’s refusing to admit that. Reid’s got half a mind to knock on a door, and borrow the place for the night. But that’s just a temporary fix. He needed to get them out of the chill, before he began searching for who they were there for, in the first place.
If his phone signal worked even half, he might’ve been able to call through.
“There’s a short stay around this corner. You need me to carry him?”
That’s the stage they’d reached; they’re asking each other stuff that they’d usually just go ahead and do. Unquestioned. Permissible things, in case one bit the other’s head off for saying the wrong thing.
"I got my father's house keys," Because she'd rather get stabbed, over and over again, than set foot in Port Liery's motels. She braced herself for the cold, quickly walking out of the truck to get to Henry's side and drag him out, with his head on her shoulder and his small arms limp around her. "If we can find the damn apartment. What's over there anyway?" That short stay. Every corner turned hostile, as though someone was about to jump out and attack her any minute now. Her heart was in her throat, making it difficult to breathe.
She’d left that detail out of their days of silence.
Reid doesn’t particuarly want to rip up the skeleton of a dead friend — or Anika’s father. But he supposes that compromise is their favourite thing to neglect ever committing to.
“I know where we are.” He mutters, grabbing out their bags from the back and nodding for Anika to follow. The quicker they were inside, the faster they could save the kid from getting sick from the cold. “It’s ten minutes this way.” Maybe longer, trudging through snow and fighting off the falling flakes. Then, as if it might be the first opening to a real conversation in days. “I didn’t know you had keys for his place.”
Does she own it, too?
Is he sitting in the corridor, because she won’t invite him in?
Or can he walk into a dead man’s apartment without issue?
"Yeah, I couldn't get rid of them." It was quiet, the way snowflakes danced above her head and did their funny pirouettes on a mess of disheveled black hair. Cold seeped through the thin fabric of her long sleeved shirt, the leather jacket thrown somewhere in the back of the car beneath take out boxes. Henry was wrapped in Reid's sweatshirt, long and grey, down to his ankles. She hurried up after the vampire, "How the fuck do I even get rid of them?" It wasn't a question. It was sorrow finally finding a way to leak out of her.
He understands that isn’t a literal question requiring the obvious answer. And it’s cold to tell her to throw them in a trashcan; that isn’t what she needs to hear. Problem always is, that he never seems to know what she wants — let alone needs to hear.
Reid assumes her father lived in the same place that he remembers. Almost ten years ago now, and he doesn’t really remember what the door looked like, but he knows the building. He’s got to trust she’ll know the rest. Maybe she didn’t want him to answer, either. But he does with a sigh, “I don’t know, Anika.” A hand cracks through the iced up apartment building door, and he moves aside, to assume she’s capable of leading the way. Henry’s asleep in her other arm; she’s mastered balancing him in the crook of an elbow and a hip.
The kid stirred, as she bounced him up,just enough to ease up the tension in her arm, and keep it from trembling as she wiggled the key in. It was an old, wooden thing, easy to break through with a kick, but she wasn't about to alert everyone that newcomers have arrived. She hushed Henry back to sleep and walked through, leaving Reid behind. The door was wide open, but he needed much more than that to follow her.
He can walk the length of the corridor, like a shadow on her back. Silent, and tedious. But at the apartment door, he has to pause, eyes that trace the doorframe. His tongue pokes his teeth, because he expects he knows what’ll happen if he tries to step through. So he puts his palm up against the threshold. It’s a magnetic force that shoves back, far harder than he can and his hand drops.
Maybe that’s better. If he can’t get in, then neither can any other monster.
It’s early enough that he’s got hours of the night to go find Lis, or Belle. He already knows Anika and Henry will be safe, sleeping in a dead man’s apartment. They’ll be plenty of weapons there, too. He steps away from the door, shoving hands in the pockets of stained jeans because his jackets wrapped around Henry. He doesn’t even try to ask for an invitation, because it’s just another thing she can weaponise against him, the next time she wants to be cruel.
“I — yeah.” What’s the point of even trying? “I’ll be back by sunup.”
Probably sitting outside the door, but she can figure that all on her own.
She glanced over her shoulder, holding his eyes for the longest they've looked at each other in days, threw him the keys. "You can come in, and take those."
He catches the keys mid-air, and he half expects to look down and see a crossbow keychain.
There isn’t one. Just a worn leather strap with lettering long gone.
Nodding, he hadn’t realised how much he’d convinced himself that she would never have invited him in — or at least, left him out for a few days, like some death-defying doghouse. There’s remnants of who they used to be, stuffed in the cracks of hardened armour.
Pocketing the keys, he swallows, “Thanks.”
Then, he juts his head up in a swift motion, indicating for her to come to the door. “Hey, c’mere.”
"Got a whole ass kid on me."
Reid gives her a look, like he knows she’s making an excuse. Put him down. Kid must be so exhausted being the mediator between violent guardians, that he’d have slept curled on the floor.
But there’s a couch right behind her, if she stopped to realise Reid isn’t being an ass.
Anika turned to put Henry down on the couch, careful not to wake him (as careful as someone like her could be) and finding an old blanket to cover him up with. It still smelled like her father. But she didn't dwell on the memory. Instead, she found her way back to her husband, "Better?"
“Almost.” Either side of the threshold, Reid’s hand is allowed to pass through, and push the dark locks of hair back from her face. Features softening, because fighting’s tiring. If she’s going to kill him with one of her father’s stakes, then she could do it with their eyes closed and lips touching. “I love you, you know that.” Against her mouth, it’s the clearest truth. “Even when we’re like this.”
Whatever the fuck it is they become when they’re pitted against each other.
Before he allows her time to argue about what he’s stolen from her mouth, his hand slips from the side of her face.
Reminding her, because communication has to start somewhere. “I’ll be back later, okay?”
She chases his mouth, reclaiming what's always been hers for a moment longer, before he leaves.
"You better come back, and in one piece, Halstead."
"Henry, wake up—" She was sitting on his bed, gently nudging his small shoulder. "Wake up, kid."
A small series of drowsy murmurs left him. His tiny hands were fighting back hers. Anika sighed, "You can't fucking fight me, you're the size of a rat."
He startled awake when her shaking turned more urgent, blinking up at her in confusion. "Sorry, we just— you gotta get up and put something on. I’ll find you something. You want that turtle man shirt?" She rummaged through the pile of clothes tossed over the chair while Henry slowly nodded, still dragging himself out of sleep.
"Can’t find it, kid. Gotta pick something else." She held up a blue shirt, jam still crusted along the collar. "What about this?"
Kids didn't give a shit about stains, did they?
The good thing about dressing a three year old that was still half asleep was that they didn't fight back. Henry was quietly lifting his hands, while lulling his head from side to side, like a drunk old man. Anika put on his socks and a pair of shoes and took him in her arms. He didn't even ask where they were going. Or why she was waking him in the middle of the night just to get dressed.
His head slumped onto her shoulder, small mouth hanging open as drool soaked through her shirt. He was asleep again before she even made it outside. For a three year old, he weighed as much as a fucking sack of bricks. Reid was already sitting in the driver’s seat when she reached the car, just as silent and angry as she’d left him.
"Got the kid." She said. "Anything else?"
They'd lost an hour of night, where it would have taken Anika ten minutes before, to pack. Eyes onthe rear view, watched Henry stir in his sleep, wrapped in his blanket. The last time he’d been so fucking cold towards Anika, they’d been at a motel — and it had been painted red.
He didn’t know who the villain was, but it felt an awful lot like him, still.
She blamed him — for the loss of her hand.
She wished his sisters were dead, once.
He’s taking her back to the place that ruined them both.
But if he looked the fuck around, Colorado, Oklahoma nor Texas was doing any damn better for them.
Reid starts the engine, silent. It’s the loudest thing above her and Henry’s heartbeats.
They were both staring at Henry, as if to avoid looking at each other. Anika closed the door and took a small step back, casting a glance to the driver's window with her arms folded tightly over her chest. The engine's roar sounded like a warning. Get in or get out. She knew the risks with either option. Yet, she stayed on the side of the road, feeling less like a companion and more like a heavy luggage, he'd have to drag around.
Go, she wanted to say, but didn't. Go, I don't want to die. Because he'd given her something to live for. She was living a life she feared of losing. Fear was a master at the silent kill — a gaping, gun shot wound to their relationship that neither saw coming. How was she going to fix this, when she felt so frozen in one place?
She isn’t going to get in. And he won’t look at her, or imagine the expression of betrayal on her features. That’s what she thought it was, right?
He won’t beg her to go with him.
He won’t even ask.
Hands squeeze the wheel, and his eyes linger on the blackened charcoal of a ring. Green lightening of the resin struck around the centre. There was only the headlights, and the overhead — a warm yellowed hue that made the polished wood gleam. His thumb of the same hand reached under to twist it around his finger.
It had been a promise, a commitment. A dream and a hope. He finally understood the guys down in Oklahoma, when he’d watch the game, as they joked about calling their wives the ball and chain. He’s halfway between pulling her into the damn truck, and letting her stand in the cold; a shadow in the rear view.
Fuck. Is there a vow about doing and saying stupid shit when angry and afraid?
They need one. Because he’s scared that he’s wrong just as much as he’s right about Port Leiry. Anika could be speaking truth — maybe his sisters have finally moved on, and left him to rot. But he’d never forgive it, if he didn’t find out for himself. Maybe she’d never let it go that he was a monster made in the basement, whilst she was turned into one all the same.
She knew the strings of grief, and she used them to stake him.
Reid shifted the gear into drive.
She knew she'd regret it. Letting him go like that. Maybe this was all she was ever meant to be — an angry woman destined to end up alone. Childless. Loveless. Afraid. The ring was stuck on her finger no matter how hard she tried to twist it free. Why the hell had he given her that stupid ring if he was going to leave? Was she supposed to watch him walk away from her? Her head turned the other way, where there was only darkness. Behind her, their house sat in shadows, too. She'd find nothing inside but silence.
What the fuck are you doing?
Her heart pounded inside her chest. She could feel it drumming in her ears. It was so loud, she couldn't hear her own thoughts. He didn't want to look at her. Not say goodbye, or something equally as shitty. She was just left there, punished for fearing a world that never stopped taking from her. Even now — It was still taking. There was nothing left to give.
With the handbrake on and murder in his gaze; love that hurts so much it feels like hate. Reid lets go of the wheel, and reaches over to the passenger side of the truck. Shoving the door open with an impatience. His eyes find the windshield, because he’d never wanted to say venomous things to her, like they once had. And he would be that monster again if he gave himself the chance.
In or out, Anika?
Her eyes were on the car, stubborn in their search for his face. It was easier to look at him, with the door wide open. An invitation that she wasn't sure why he made twice.
"You hate me?" she asked, "Is that why you won't look at me?"
He hates that she can be as monstrous as he can be. She shouldn’t have asked him in this moment — she should’ve gotten into the truck, and shut up. There’s nothing human, or kind about what he wants to say.
He checks on Henry in his periphery, so the boy doesn’t hear how nasty the two of them can become.
You really were right, Anika. You’ve still no idea how love works.
Eventually, his eyes settle back on her — the woman he wanted to wife, standing on the damp grass outside the ranch. Windowed by the car door, swung open in a dangerous welcome. He hates that he loves her, all the same.
“Are you done being a fucking bitch?”
They were losing night by the minute.
She lifted her hand, the one with the ring on her finger. "You married a fucking bitch."
Or had he forgotten that? Playing house had really changed their perspective of one another. But they were seeing each other clearly now. He was still a monster. And she was still — a fucking bitch.
He jerked the truck back into park. A hand slammed on the wheel as he shoved out of the drivers side door. Marching around the hood to face Anika. He hadn’t been able to do it an hour earlier. Tense with anger, and with teeth threatening to slip, he isn’t sure it’s much better timing, now.
He’s too close, and he knows it when he grits his teeth, “Yeah. And she’s either in or fucking out.” Her call. He isn’t waiting any longer — or letting her fuck around spitting her nastiness when he could be on the interstate already.
She could smell it on him, hunger that threatened to consume. "What are you going to do? Hurt me?" Her voice didn't waver. He was capable of worse. And yet, his sire had only ever known his mercy. Port Liery was like a locked box filled with tiny figurines. They each had a part in his life. He held the key. Anika stepped closer. "Come on."
She wants a reason to walk away that isn’t her own stubbornness. Reid had been long done with trading blows of cruelty — but Anika’s never done. Easier to hate, than it is to admit love hurts worse.
He steps back, because she’s taunting.
“Fuck you.”
It’s the first time he’s allowed the merciless thought to cross his mind so violently; to bleed into her, and snap her neck. Lay her in the passenger seat, so she has a real reason to hate him. To loathe him — like he loathed a monstrous nature. It scares him, but not as much as it should.
They were never going to change.
He slams the passenger door shut, and is back in the drivers seat in a blink. They’d continue to stab each other, if he let her draw him into her mean, terrified box of shit things to say. She’s had her chance; he didn’t expect an apology, and maybe he’s in the fucking wrong, too. But it’s a long drive back to Oregon, and he isn’t sure what he’s going to find, when he gets there.
Anika’s just a shadow in the rear view, when gravel spits out the back of the tyres and he turns onto the main road.
The ring had finally come off. She was watching the car get swallowed by darkness, when it slipped through her hands from all that twisting. The sound of metal hitting the concrete pulled her attention and she looked down. There it was, a soft gleam amongst shadows. Anika left it there. Then she looked back up at the street, where no car was coming back. There was no man running back to spit more regrets at his wife. No child crying for his mom. She wasn't his mom. Henry was sleeping, and he was fine. He'd live a good life, she thought. Her chest felt tight and breathing had suddenly become very difficult. Reid's absence and the deafening silence right after he'd left had made her wish for strange things, like screaming and fighting until their lungs gave out, or saying cruelties and apologising right after in their own way. There was no more of that. It was only quiet now, when she sat down on the pavement.
02:40. 1st January 2026.
There’s no forgetting Anika. She is an ember inside of him, taunting him. Speaking words she might’ve said — or could have, if he had stayed to listen to them, a little longer. Words cut deeper than any blade she ever drove into him. He knew what she meant, when she made him bleed. It’s just torture and cruelty to drag out his adversities and turn them into fears, and regrets.
If Henry hadn’t been in the backseat, Reid might have shut the lockbox lid, for good.
Is he in the wrong? His disregard for the city — his hometown, and its demons and all they’d endured. For the sake of knowing his family were alright. It felt like his head was being cleaved in two.
Reid had been at the rest stop, only ten miles down the road from the ranch where he’d been for over an hour. He hadn’t been able to pull away, after pumping gas. Just let Henry sleep with shitty overhead yellows as his nightlight. His phone had been in his hand, tapping on his thigh for long enough he thinks the bruise has healed twice over.
Some guy in a pickup, who’s noticed Reid blocking the gas pump, picks the worst goddamn time to tell him to move.
Halstead’s head twists to look at the Texan approaching. He’s chewing on gravel by the time he’s figured out how bad he’s going to hurt him, “Dude, don’t even try. Go to another one.” They — he, can never catch a break. Since Anika’s not there.
He wishes she were.
For a moment, when the Texan gets back in his pickup, Reid thinks he’s about to slam into the back of the truck. Henry’s inside. And god help that cowboy, if he even got close.
He drives past, cursing, and circles around to the other side, to get his fucking gas.
Reid’s feet don’t get back into the truck, because he doesn’t know how to drown the hate clouding up the resin in the ring on his hand. Emerald and onyx, staring at him like a dare. He doesn’t know why it would have changed anything for her. It’s never enough. He isn’t — between silent threats, and fears. Between being unable to have a conversation before a fight.
What if one day, he doesn’t walk away?
What if she dared him again, and he did because he was no different to any other monster?
‘What are you going to do? Hurt me?’ ‘Bullshit. Your family is in Port Leiry.’ ‘Where the fuck were you when they butchered me?’ ‘But there was a moment, way back, when I really fucking wanted you to know what it feels like when they're not.’ ‘I don't wanna spend three months in a basement, over someone else's mistakes, again.’
Then she’d ended up in an attic.
They’d found Henry.
Reid could stand propped against the truck, until the sun came up, thinking about every nasty thing they ever said to each other. He could wonder how they were ever able to draw lines in the sand when they’d already tried to so many times before.
He told himself he deserved what she said, because she was human, and he was a dead thing. And there’s some version of love in the middle of it; a dark, broken sort that they both need.
By the time he got back into the vehicle — and drove the fifteen minutes back to the ranch — he’d given her enough time to do something stupid. He expected she made plenty good use of it, too. They haven’t got any lines, just weapons pointed at each other shaped like their tongues.
She was no longer sitting outside when the truck drove past the ranch. Tires screamed outside their bedroom window. Anika didn't need to look out to know who it was. She walked out with a duffle bag, locked the door behind her and waited for him to look at her, before she made her descend to the truck.
He did — look at her, and she hoped that meant he hated her a little less than he did an hour ago.
The passenger door cracked open.
"I found Henry's stupid turtle man shirt." Anika said, sitting down. "It's in the bag."
What the fuck else was she supposed to say? Sorry I was acting insane? Sorry I'm fucking scared? He knew she'd never apologise, because she never learned how to do that. He was also supposed to know how afraid she was. He'd seen it before, hadn't he? He'd seen fear in her eyes. He knew what it looked like. He had to know.
What she doesn’t know, is that he’s afraid of so much more than that.
Reid didn’t even know she’d been looking for the damn shirt. He just slumped in the drivers seat, and watched her, waiting for if she would twist and drive wood through his heart.
She might have done, if she’d known what he’d been thinking about earlier.
Her eyes dipped down where her hands were clasped together on her lap. There was no ring on her finger. Quietly, she added: "Why'd you come back?"
Of all the things she could have asked him. This is the stupidest.
“Because I fucking love you, idiot.” A sigh. She isn’t wearing her ring — and he doesn't know if that’s worth asking about. It’s whiplash, from boiling rage to defeat, and back again.
Is he a monster? No different to the next.
Reid kicked the car back into drive, before they lost any more time.
I love you was kind. I love you was more than she deserved. "Did you figure that out now, or—" A pause. "Sounded different before." Why'd he leave in the first place, if he loved her?
She didn't want a real answer. Anika was just buying herself time. But there was nowhere else to go now. "Listen," Eyes on him. "I'm really fucking scared this time."
Foot on the brake, the truck hits a stop at the connecting junction.
Does she think he doesn’t know that? She runs. She fights. She makes everything into a war because of fear. He does that too — but when he doesn’t run, he’s doing something awful. She’d put him in the position where he had to stop and breathe, before he compelled all that fear out of her and became something other.
He isn't afraid of the city as much as he’s afraid of what they’ll become stepping foot into it, if this is what they are already.
“I’m not going to let anything fuck it up.” A vow he’ll probably end up breaking. Eyes linger on hers, but his hands stay palming the wheel. “It won’t be for long. I told you that.”
Anika averted her gaze. "She's still there."
They have different she’s.
But it doesn't matter which. “My sisters are there, too.” Their friends. More powerful creatures than Reid likes to ever give credit for. Maybe Anika’s afraid because there’s no hunter magic in her blood, and those pinpricks on her skin don’t heal. She can’t hide that he’s a monster from him, either. Firmer, with less adoration, and more possession.
“Now you listen to me.” his hand reaches for hers — ringless, and still warm. “She’s never going to touch you.” He’d murder to keep that promise.
There was comfort in his touch. Their hands were meant for each other. Like two puzzle pieces. Anika closed her eyes and leaned her head back into the seat.
“Nobody is going to lay a hand on you. That city — it’s nothing. Those people, they’re nothing. Our friends — our family, they’re what we’re there for.” They were going to go do their business, and fuck off out of Halstead lives, again.
If they’d just pick up the phone, it’d save a whole lot of fucking psychopathy. “Okay?”
Fingers squeezed his hand. "I don't need you to protect me. What if someone hurts you?"
She'd kill them.
He laughs. It’s not funny. But they’re deluded — so are his half-cocked promises. “Believe me, I know.” He tried to strain the bitterness out of that, but it’s hard, when he just fought himself about hating and loving her. “We aren’t going to be around long enough to give anyone a chance.”
He should have killed that Texan at the rest stop — no, not killed. He didn’t mean to think that, he’d meant —
Same thing. Because the burn in his throat isn’t making his tone sound any softer. And he thinks she needs it to be.
You hurt me more than anyone ever could.
Really, he had nothing to fear other than her.
“You divorcing me?” he asked, when they turned off the stony driveway. His thumb ghosted over her finger. “You took it off.”
Fuck.
She wasn't stupid enough to think he wouldn't notice. But she was also lacking optimism when it came to their arguments and how long they lasted. This one seemed to have resolved faster than others. Well, they had been together for a long time already, that certainly was supposed to mean something.
"You did leave, baby." If anyone was divorcing someone, it was him. "You gotta stop the car, though."
He’d argue, she left him first; he held the door open and she chose not to step through.
Choking down the next fight, he lets it go. Because he’s still wearing his.
Then he veers into a lay-by, and stops the car. “Why?” He looked up at the crescent of the moon, and then the clock on the dashboard. Lip twitching, he checked on Henry mumbling in the backseat. He resisted asking if she wanted him to stop, because she was walking away, again. “Anika.” He tries not to stress the time at her; they've done this dance a hundred times; she knows.
"I gotta get my ring back." Her hand was still in his.
Get it back?
“What —?”
The fuck did she do with it? The hurt in his face got lost in the disappointment, because she’s not pocketed it, out of sight. She’s actually done something with it. She’s given up all her hope, as she always does, when they argue.
Their hands were still laced.
"It's just on the sidewalk. I was twisting it and it came off, and uh— I didn't know what to do with it." She sighed, "I didn't really know if you were coming back."
To her, it didn't seem like he was.
For fucks sake. “Like back at the ranch? Or you walked somewhere?” Reid hadn’t been sure he was coming back, either. A man possessed, really. He wished she’d stop throwing shit away every time she heard something she didn’t like.
"Yeah." She nodded, "Back at the ranch." Hearing it out loud made her feel really fucking shit. He made those rings. And she was throwing one of them away like it was nothing. "I didn't mean to, I just—" Shut the fuck up.
Reid turned the truck around and they headed back to the driveway. Quiet. Because it’s already done — she’s done it, and he can’t change it. But Anika is going to be the death of him, and she should know it.
The neighbours must think the truck screwing around on the road is a fucking psycho, since it’s been up and down so much in the last hour.
Sighing, he slows on the gravel of the drive, “Just show me where.”
"There," she pointed outside the passenger window at the sidewalk outside their house.
He gets out the cab, shutting rhe door gently behind him. As he walks over to the spot she gestures to, he’s focusing his eyes on the ground, looking for any objects out of place. A part of him wants to leave it behind, and tell her that if she threw it away like this, then she never wanted it to begin with. It shouldn’t come off so damn easy.
But he’s too tired, and too hungry to give a damn about provoking another battle with her.
Black and emerald gleam under a monsters gaze, nestled between winter leaves, and tree dirt. He stops dead, and looks at the ring for a few moments longer. Thinking about the time he’d spent, away from her, to craft them.
Picking it back up, he’s soon back in the cab, and dropping it back in her lap.
“You take it off again, I’ll assume you mean it.” He mutters, before he gets the car moving again. He won’t come back a third time tonight, so if there’s any other secrets about things she’s done, then he doesn’t care to know them.
It sounded like a punishment. Of course it would. He always had to find a way to make her feel worse somehow. Anika looked down at the ring in her lap, suddenly finding herself wishing he hadn't found it. Black wrapped around her finger again. He could leave her all he wanted, but she was the one getting chastised for thinking he meant it this time. She made a mental note to shut the fuck up next time. If she hadn't said anything about the ring, he wouldn't have turned back. If she hadn't been honest with him, Reid wouldn't have dealt another blow.
"Wake me up at the next stop." She muttered, curled up in her seat and closed her eyes.
A day in a shitty motel, waiting for the sun to drop out of the sky feels so much longer, when there’s nothing but animosity as company.
Reid paces the dingy room and Anika’s gone out to find Henry a new Scottie the Trucker. They left that behind in Texas and he’s asked about it every ten miles.
Anika’s avoiding Reid, like he’s the plague. Although they both still wore their wedding bands, they acted more like a divorced couple than newlyweds. She looks for a new Scottie in every gas station until she found something that looked like Scottie. Satisfied with his toy, Henry behaves alright for the majority of the day spent in Archer City. He doesn't want anything but attention, and to avoid giving hers to Reid, Anika obliges to the kid's wants and needs.
17:35. 1st January 2026.
The minute the sun disappears behind concrete and it’s dark enough he can crack a blind. Reid’s making buddies with the motel clerk.
He’s only gone for ten minutes, before he’s waiting for Anika to coerce Henry back into the truck. Hands wiped clean of anything unnatural. He catches Anika’s gaze when they get into the truck and head out.
She knows.
And he tries. “Day alright?”
His feeding habits didn't bother her as much, as his general personality did. In all honesty, that wasn't at the very core of her fury either, but she liked to pretend it was — simply because the truth was much harder to admit. A dry reply: "Yeah." Then she went back to stretching her legs on the dashboard and finishing her crossword puzzle.
19:20. 2nd January 2026.
The fuck were they risking going back through Colorado, after the way they left.
Anika and Reid had just switched seats again. That was the most of the talking they did— 'suns out, you drive." and "it's dark, now's your turn.' Like a couple of hitchhikers. Anika hoped that by tomorrow, they could do that silently. It wasn't a task that required much talking. They only did it out of habit.
Diner food had the truck hot with the smell of reheated frozen food. Henry ate like he was a starved boy, who’d just been spoiled rotten with a late dinner. Sat up straight with styrofoam boxes of fries, and slider dogs balancing on his lap, and in the middle space.
He just kept eyeballing the apple pie, which Reid had told him could only be eaten at the end.
Crumbs spilled down the gaps in the seats.
Anika’s balancing a soda between her legs. Also Henry’s, who’d discovered he couldn’t have everything at once, when learning to eat in the back of a truck.
Reid turned from the wheel, to Anika. “Make sure you eat something, too.”
She usually just told him she wasn’t hungry. And he’d wanted to call her a liar.
Her stomach's grumbling—often a giveaway she couldn't hide. "Yeah." That put an end to both her silent strike and her hunger one for the day. She wanted to say something else, how she missed eating noodles in bed with him, while he kissed every inch of her face covered in sauce. It was easier to fall into those memories, when there was nothing before her but roads for miles. "Pass me a hot dog."
07:53. 3rd January 2026.
Anika’s had to pick up the last two hours of the drive, because they’re out of night and the sun nearly cost him three fingers on the wheel when they’d singed. Henry had cried, and Reid had promised him it’d be fine and that they’ll stop soon.
Half a day in a truck had a three-year-old restless.
Reid had refused to stop unless it was to go to the bathroom — a dusty side of the road — when he can sit in the back with Henry, and block out most of the window light.
Twin Falls, they know.
Henry demanded truck videos on Reid's phone, and Anika watched the two in the rear view mirror, as the sun blazed through her window. The back was all in shadows — a thick blanket over the two, that had put Henry to bed quite fast. Her eyes settled on Reid, and their stares locked for a brief moment, before she averted her gaze. The ring on her finger blinked in the light. The curse of having just one hand, the band on her ring finger was always there, in her face — a reminder that she should at least look at her husband, if she didn't wish to talk.
Cold fingers brushed through a boy’s hair, as he laid wrapped in the same heavy blanket against Reid’s side. He almost suggested he took it to the truckbed, and got comfy out there. But Henry might’ve caused a one-handed woman to crash, if he didn’t have some kind of distraction.
The amount of times Reid had considered asking Anika if they were going to keep doing this silent, bitter love-hating would have fed him for weeks, if that was all it cost to satiate the roiling pit inside him.
He isn’t convinced she wouldn’t roll the window down in the back, if he even attempted to put a band-aid on what parts of them are utterly broken. Instead, he’s holding onto the memories of them laughing the last time they were in Twin Falls. Where hot showers were exciting, and towels were littered all over the motel floor, because they were barely leaving the bed.
The shithole that had been the Tipsy Tractor, hadn’t been half bad either. Especially memorable, when he beat her at the game of pool he’d promised. From the backseat of the truck, with his head tipped down towards Henry in the shadows, there’s a small, wistful smile ghosting his lips.
"What are you smiling about?" She intruded on his thoughts, of course. Because her eyes rarely left him, especially when he wasn't watching. And she had that special ability to read the lines around his mouth and the ones around his eyes, and know exactly what he was thinking. She might've picked up on that during the days they were roommates, cooped up in an apartment that is now ash, where his face adorned the pages of her sketchbook.
There was a blooming bruise on Dana Summers’ cheek. A cigarette hung between bony fingers, the butt stained red with dollar store lipstick, some of it smeared across her front teeth, too. She was skinny, like a starved-up dog, Anika figured there wasn’t much food in her belly, let alone in her fridge.
That angry boyfriend of hers liked to leave his mark, then fuck off for a couple of weeks.
Mary-Beth and Lily Mae were as blunt as any five-year-olds, asking how their mommy got hurt.
"Tripped and fell, girls. Ya know your mama’s clumsy," Dana said, waving a thin hand, smoke trailing every movement. "Ain’t nothing to worry about."
They trusted that broken smile of hers, and skipped over to the fridge to grab sodas. Reid had made sure they had everything for tonight; soda, juice, candy, chips. Anika didn’t know kids needed that much junk. But Henry, grinning like a monkey on crack, because he got to stay up past his bedtime and watch the fireworks, seemed determined to eat all of it.
Anika shot Dana a look. "I can kick his ass, you know?"
She could do a lot more than that.
"Make him pay for what he did to you."
"Naah, I'm fine." Dana didn't like to whine, she'd gathered, a strong woman, independent and tough. Stupid too, if she was letting that asshole turn her into a punch bag. Then she killed the life out of that cancer stick, smoke coming out of both nostrils as she eyed the ring on Anika's finger, "You got hitched over the weekend?"
It made Anika look down at it, too.
"Yeah, something like that. It ain't anything big, just—" Somehow, she struggled to find the words that described the turbulent, strange and wonderful relationship between her and Reid. "—He loves me, I guess."
To Dana Summers, that sounded like something out of a fairytale. There was no envy on her tongue, when she replied: "Yeah, he does."
They bumped shoulders. "Where is he anyway?"
Reid’s outside on the porch, trying to get phone signal. The New Years messages to his sisters won’t send, and he’s getting kind of sick of scrolling through previous messages, and overthinking how much they might want to talk to him. He’d given them his new number, a while back, and they’d dropped lines intermittently, checking in. Reid’s tried to keep his nose out of their business, because he’s not there.
Belle’s always quick to remind him about that, too.
He’d asked them, when they’d been in Oklahoma if they wanted to fly out and visit. He’s glad they never did, now. Because that’d been a shitshow in itself. And Belle would have picked a fight with Anika, had she been around.
His signal refuses to pick up — and when it does, it never delivers his texts. They’ve talked since being in Texas; argued, mostly. Unbeknowst to Anika, who doesn’t need to know the animosity between Halstead siblings; she can’t help. A lot of their warfare, is because they feel like they chose Anika, over family. Reid would say that there’s not a choice, and there’s nothing to choose between.
Reid won’t expect Rose to forgive him, or Lis for what happened to their parents, either. But he’s been trying to keep the thread between them, alive.
What he does know — over the last months, is that Lis got out of rehab, and she seems to be doing real good. And Rose doesn’t answer many of his messages on a good day, between hating on him and reminding him of every failure. But she does get back to him, eventually. He can’t get a single letter through to her, now.
Then he tries Birdie.
Nothing. Failed to send.
Aurelia.
Same thing.
Then he tries to call — first Lis, then Belle, Birdie, Croft, Aurelia, Colt, Cam —
Dialling tone; unable to connect the call.
Reid steps further afield, off the porch, until he’s a shadow in the field ahead. Full bars. Yet —
“What the fuck?” To himself, as his eyes snap up to a firework let off prematurely. A single, red flare of spray in the distance, before it disappears into the darkness again. Is it his phone? He pockets the thing, and marches back inside. It’s stuffier in the ranchhouse, where Dana’s brought her cooking over, and kids run rampant on the floor, excited about showing off their Christmas gifts.
Everytime he glances Dana, he gets a little more agitated thinking she’s sharing a space with a fuck who wants to decorate her black and blue. He’s asked Anika if he should take care of it, and she’s always said she would, but Dana’s forever putting her off the idea. When he smiles at them now, walking through the door, it’s with a tightness to think that there’s more than worry in his chest.
Probably stupid, he thinks. As he crosses the entryway to kiss Anika softly, and nod a greeting back to Dana. Polite. Sharp. A little irritable, but nothing that he wants to let on. “Something smells good in here, Dana.” It’s the food. It’s always her food. Because it’s never Anika cooking.
"Sneak a piece, before those kids devour whats left." Dana said, looking over her shoulder at Reid.
“Sure will.” He replies, taking stock of the cornbread on the table.
Anika knew when something was wrong, without even so much as glancing at his face. There was a tightness to his voice, lacking its usual warm charm and humorous sarcasm that laced almost each word, always.
"I'll be back." She exused herself, as she hurried after her fiance, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, when she finally caught up with him. "You wanna tell me what's going on, baby?"
He isn’t sure it’s anything, except having to dwell on past mistakes. And he reaches up to lace his fingers through the hand over his shoulder. Turns towards her, as he picks at the cornbread, “Can I borrow your phone?”
She frowned, "Answer my question first."
In the corner of the kitchen, between the fridge and the sink, Anika leaned back against the countertop, studying Reid's face with an intensity he knew all too well.
"I can’t get hold of my sisters.” Anyone, in fact. His face said he’s worried but not enough to derail the evening. He’d just feel better trying to call them again, probably. “It's probably nothing.” Assuring, the both of them.
She hadn't heard from them either. Mostly because Halstead women avoided her like the plague. "Here, try mine." Anika gave him her phone, glancing past his shoulder at the kids munching on more of Dana's dinner. They seemed to be doing fine, without them. So she stole another moment — "You tried Birdie? Maybe she can tell you where they're at."
He had tried both Birdie and Croft. Twice.
Nothing.
Silently — despite the unease, he thanks her for the lack of argument about the phone. And scrolls for names in her contacts.
Puts it to his ear.
Dialling tone.
Beneath his breath, he bites back the curse before it breaks free. There’s children around and he isn’t Anika — they don’t need to hear that, even in the excitement of New Years. Offering it back to her with a frown, he’d not thought much of him having a busted phone, but Anika’s, too? He’s got half a mind to ask for Dana’s next, in case they’ve forgotten to pay the phone bill.
He’s rationalising, and they both know it.
"Still nothing?"
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t. “Service might be out or something.”
Silence. Dana came over to grab a beer from the fridge, opening her mouth to say something but then quickly deciding not to. Anika's head bowed slightly to her chest to peer at Reid through furrowed brows.
"You think something's wrong?" He looked like it — those deep, prominent lines on his face, around his eyes and between his brows. He was worried.
“I guess I’ll have to try again later.”
He has no reason to think anything’s wrong. But he doesn't like the not knowing. For all he knew, a Texas windfall took down a pylon and there’s shoddy signal. Even if it’s showing him bars. He shakes his head of the frustration, and tries to put the whole thing aside, at least for tonight. He doesn't want to be responsible for Dana and her kid’s thinking they’re inhospitable.
He dislikes that Anika can read him as easy as she can, though. And he pulls a smile back onto his face, nodding towards the cornbread he’s yet to touch. “Do me a solid, and eat this for me.” It’s not bad, but Reid’s found that certain foods — especially the stodgy, breaded kind, taste more like chewing on a dish sponge.
Mossy eyes followed Reid as their giggly boy wrapped small hands around his legs, tugging at his joggers and dragging him into their mess of scattered toys and crumbs of junk food.
Reid puts on the boyish smile so quickly, he might’ve convinced someone who didn’t know him that there’s nothing else on his mind, besides racing trucks and talking about when the fireworks start.
Anika shoved a large piece of cornbread into her mouth and unlocked her phone. She tried Lara’s number again, firing off a couple of texts while Dana watched her curiously.
"Everything okay with you two?" she asked.
Anika nodded, "Yeah, he's just worried 'bout his sisters. They ain't picking up his calls." she said, tapping on her screen. A sudden blue glow licked her face and a loud ping drew both their eyes to the phone.
A message made it back.
'signals weak af. hello?' Lara texted.
'you ok?' Anika typed back, 'reid said no one’s picking up. you seen his sisters?'
'we’re fine? it’s starting to snow. i haven’t seen them. its like everything is on the fritz'
A sigh of relief left Anika's mouth, and she was off — shoving the phone in Reid's hands, forcing him to read the exchange. "There's a snow storm or something, I told her to keep an eye out for them."
Snowstorm, in Port Leiry?
“Since when did they get snowstorms?” He muttered, mostly to himself. Anika wasn’t a native, and Reid’s see the power of weather made into weapons. They’d learned from the hurricane, all about sudden shifts in the natural order. But relief doesn’t settle for long, as his eyes glance at Anika and Lara’s exchange. “Hey — thanks. Tell Croft thanks, too. From me.”
But she already knows he is. Grateful.
Her hand rose up to meet his cheek. A smile, soft and reassuring, forming on her lips. "It's fine. It ain't a big deal. " But it was, to him. Worried when he did, even if he didn’t want to.
Her phone went back in her pocket. He'll try texting them again, shortly. And hope that in the meantime, someone can gets eyes on his sisters. Even though, it’s nobody’s job — but his, to take care of them. He’d done a shitty job of it thus far. Reid doesn’t want to keep the streak hot.
"It's just a little snow, baby. They're fine." There was no way for her to know that. Anika only hoped that whatever was happening in Port Leiry, stayed there, and didn't threaten to touch them.
She’s probably right. They’ve had snowfall. But he doesn’t remember the signal cutting out so severely. Maybe they were just ignoring him, for the most part. Between throwing Henry up into the air, and saying that he’s a firework, and throwing Anika a look that she knew all too well, he shifted them back to the moment. “Who wants sparklers?”
Henry lay splayed across their bed, arms and legs hanging slightly off the edge of the mattress, blankets warm and loose around his small body, tucked between two sets of bare legs. It was to fireworks booming outside that Reid sucked a pretty bloom of blue and purple into Anika's shoulder. There was cheap champagne on her breath, when she said: "Happy New Year, baby."
Her fingers slipped beneath his chin, tipping his face up to meet his eyes, blue and warm with love and adoration.
Two plastic cups rolled across the floor.
Against her mouth, “Yeah, happy new year.” When he shifts closer, he’s blockaded by the small child asleep between their ankles.
He hasn’t forgotten that there’s been no message back from anyone, since. And it plays on his mind — because he's convinced Lis, of all people would’ve gone out until the sun comes up, on new years.
She’d have dropped him a line about it.
Reid pulls back, quietly apologetic. “Just gonna go try calling again, okay?” so that when he slips out of the bed, in just grey sweats, she doesn’t have to worry he’s about to lose his cool.
The kitchen is still a mess from earlier, when he wanders in to dial every number in his phone. He messages wishing them a good new years, and that he misses them. Others, he just tries to dump anything on — even ‘are my messages coming through?’ to McCormick, and Mercer.
Snowstorm.
He can’t shake the feeling that it’s another hurricane, where something other than the natural kind is at play.
There’s toys left on the floor of the lounge, with cake batter stomped into the floorboards. A pollock painting of the modern kind. Reid smiles, wistful, because it feels as close to something other than monstrous that he will get — even if it’s not deserved. If Anika feels the same, she doesn't voice it so directly. Not at least, in her usual blunted way.
He’s about to uproot it, or at the very minimum, disrupt it.
Reid props himself back in the doorway of their bedroom, phone tucked in his hand, nestled at his side. Henry in his sugar coma, and exhausted from being up way past bedtime — and Booker laying pretty in the blankets, waiting for him.
There’s something of a picture worth taking here. Resting his shoulder on the doorframe, he purses his lips, knowing that what he's about to say is will go down like a brick in the ocean.
“I need to go back.” She knows where. She knows why, too. “Something feels wrong about this snowstorm. I need to check they're alright.”
Her eyes blinked against the ceiling, in their bed where he'd been holding her just a moment ago, with lips plush and sweet to her skin. Platonic, almost — because there was no midnight kiss. No making a wish she never wanted to make in the first place. No watching the fireworks or some ridiculous shit like that.
Anika sighed, because she knew they've had it too good to be true, until now.
"Go then." A quiet defeat.
She couldn't fight his demons. They'd always win.
He knew by now what it looked like when they’re about to have more than a disagreement.
Who would take care of Henry, when he went away? Quiet anger seeped through the cracks of her defences. She didn't want to have a stupid fucking conversation in the middle of her foolish attempt at making this night something meaningful for them. A sweet moment that he tore apart. They didn't get moments like these, before a monstrous thing came to claw at them.
Reid chews on his words for longer than usual, sifting through the better thing to say — to ask — without shattering the fragility of her upset. “You’re staying.” More of a question, than it is a statement. If he got closer, would she push him away?
She got off the bed, turning her back to him to grab her jeans off the floor. "No, I just can't fucking wait to go back to the damn place where I watched my father die." A bitter laugh escaped her. She mocked him for acting like a fucking fool. But it was her who was the real idiot, wasn't it? For thinking their escape could last longer than a couple of weeks.
He frowned, watching her retreat from him, like he’d left that bruise on her shoulder for another reason. “Anika.” he sighed, because what is he supposed to say? It’s my sisters. Imagine if it was yours. He’d died there, too. Long before her father did. They’d lost so much in that town, but it’s where his family were. “Anika—”
No longer half naked, Anika padded across the floor to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. A ringed hand gripped the sink, shoulders slumping as she they gave out beneath the weight of her expectations shattering. With her head bowed, Anika took shallow breaths, to regather her composure and allow rationality back to her messy thoughts. Was she staying or was she going?
Reid found his way to the other side of the door, quietly leaning against it. As if she might realise he’s there, with just a piece of splintering wood between them. “I just want to know they’re safe.” Is he overbearing for that? She makes him out to be a criminal, for trying to be half the brother he once was. For trying so hard to give a damn between a broken emotion switch, and caring about nothing at all.
If he locked the box, he thinks he could stay in Texas, and he’d believe they’d be fine. It’s cracking it open to find the slither of hope that he could be better — that Belle might forgive him some of his mistakes, and that Lis might still grow into herself, yet. That didn’t mean he didn’t know Anika would hate every second of it. It’s a balance he cannot control, and he wonders when Anika might notice how vicious his dishonesty is, about what he feels. “Can we not talk through the door.”
Her eyes burned. The sounds of fireworks going off pressed into their bathroom window. A trail of smoke in the winds outside. If she looked up, in the mirror, she'd peer into a memory. The path to her past would open up and beckon her to enter — walk back to the ruins and stay there, in darkness and melancholy. Anika didn't think she deserved to live in the past.
Watery gaze remained on porcelain white. "Go—" she muttered, "And take the kid with you." Make up a life for him too. A life with loving aunts and legacy that wouldn't ever be his by blood, but would still make him a son, nonetheless, if he was treated as one. "Go back to your family."
Reid’s set the charges, and detonated the bomb that is Anika, all in one fell swoop.
They were still talking through the goddamn door.
“You are my family, too.” She is. And she’s still putting herself on a seperate page, because what the fuck were they doing if they couldn’t have a conversation?
"Bullshit. Your family is in Port Leiry." She said, swinging the door open with a woosh. "And I fucking asked you. Did I not fucking ask you, on my fathers grave, if you wanted to come with me? Huh? I did and you agreed. And you've regretted it ever since."
She wants to push him away, and the kid. Call it a night, just like that? If she hadn’t opened the door, he would have said something regrettable.
Then she’d know what regret looked like.
“Can you slow down for a second?” Reid’s blocking the bathroom doorway, where she stands. “I’m telling you I need to see my sisters and you’re condemning me for it.”
"Where have your sisters been the last two months?" Hating her guts probably. But at least they were alive. Unlike hers.
“Answering my damn calls and texts.”
"Well, maybe they've fucking moved on."
Fuck you, Anika.
He bites back the retort, because he doesn’t want to believe that. Yet, there’s a part of it that feels like she could be right.
“Then they can tell me that themselves.”
She's afraid, he figured. Whatever they left behind would haunt them, if they crossed the county line. “The world outside of us still exists, okay. We can come back to fucking Texas, if that’s what you want, but you’re acting like —”
As if she’s making him choose, like some comic book anti hero.
Henry stirs from behind him, because raised voices aren't quiet, beneath the fireworks.
"What am I acting like?"
“Nothing.” It’s a foolish response, because she’s never letting it go. She can’t. It’s physically impossible for her to drop anything. Reid knows better but she's dynamite and he’s lit the fuse already.
"It ain't nothing so now you're just a liar."
She shoved him away hard, to make herself escape him and the small bathroom all together. The damn house felt like it was closing in on her.
He moves away from her, because there’s nothing he can do to salvage this.
He’s tired of it.
He’s been tired of it, everytime she acts batshit about something so trivial to him. They’re opposing forces, light and dark — and all the grey washed mess is always darkening over until the painting is all black. Until there’s nothing left.
Fuck the kid, she wanted to yell, and fuck this house, and fuck you. Because it was all for him — a kid, a house, this version of herself she couldn't recognise, it was all for him.
“Yeah. I’m a liar then.” He’ll agree. Because the hell does it matter? “You don’t want to talk, then we won’t. I don’t know what you fucking want.” That's another lie, because he thinks he does. And it’s them, in an isolated corner of the world untouched by civilisation.
Reid’s fine with that. But he doesn’t just shut the world off that used to — still does, matter to him. “Anika, I love you, but you can’t run from the entire fucking world, all the time.”
She had finally stopped running. It was him that had finally slowed her down. It was him that helped her build a home from the ground up. But his home had always been, and always will be — Port Leiry. Deep down she'd always known that. That one day, his home would call him back, and he'd leave.
"No, no, you love yours— no, fuck, that's not right, you love your sisters, and then you love that kid, and you love yourself because I managed to love you, so now you feel better for yourself, and Im a fucking—" You're supposed to be his wife.
But how much did she know about marriage when she was the product of a broken one? Anika dug the heel of her hand into her eyes, wiping the wetness away. She'd gone down the stairs, where Dana's dinner was still spread out in plates, leftovers nobody bothered to move to the fridge. She had to busy herself with something, picking up and dumping cuttery into the sink.
“And I love you.” Fuck, wasn’t it enough? “You’re my family. That’s what being a wife means — a fiancée, however you want it. You’re a Halstead too. I’m not fucking — what the hell are we doing, Anika? We’re arguing about the tiny sliver of care —”
He shut up, because she isn’t finished.
"This place took my fucking hand. Where the fuck were you when they butchered me?" It was fear — the force that made her crazy. She'd only ever allowed herself to feel it when she was with him.
He hadn’t thought they'd dredge this back up — because he said he wanted to see his sisters.
She knows exactly where he was.
“Don’t do that. You can’t bring that up as a weapon.” Reid shot, and he crossed the room, to stop her on her pursuit of dirty dishes and stale food. He isn't going to plummet into that, because he’d lock the box again — and everything would numb. “I thought we were —” Doing better?
"It's me who has to fucking live with it!" A loud crack tore though the room, where a shattered plate made a mess of blood and glass. It made her stop, the sudden fragility of the moment they were holding, how quiet everything went right after. "Being your wife means going back there." A softer sound. "And there's nothing for me there."
The back of her hand hit the faucet and water splashed over blood.
He’s a fucked-up, deadman, with a half-a-hunter-almost-wife. They had bigger problems, if there’s harboured hatred they can’t let go of.
Softer, with a dry throat, his voice is lowered — the scent of blood makes him want to get closer, “— Do you hold that against me? What happened to you?”
"A lot happened to me." A pause. "I hope your sisters are fine. But there was a moment, way back, when I really fucking wanted you to know what it feels like when they're not." It was not her hate that had complicated things for her. It was her love, for him, that has sprung out from poisonous grounds, that had really fucking complicated things for her.
What does he say to that?
The silence stretches, and he stares at the woman washing the blood from her hands, spitting venom at him out of spite.
She’s hurting. And in that hurt, she tears him apart. Reid barely recognises who they are supposed to be; this was what they were good at, wasn't it? Fighting. Surviving a vicious world that had chewed them up time and time again. He couldn’t imagine that her virulent words it made her feel any better.
It made him walk away.
Because nothing good would happen if he walked towards her.
She only remembered that it must've been her birthday, because it was the month of December, and because Reid was hovering over her like her mother used to, many winters ago. Barely awake, eyes squinted at her boyfriend — the dead man, who still remembered birthdays. Or so she thought. Maybe he just remembered hers, because she was now an inseparable part of him.
A groggy sound left her dry mouth, like a dragon woman who did not wanted to be woken up.
"You look creepy when you smile like that."
Was there more than a toothy clown grin? Was he hiding a present behind his back? She'd fucking kill him if he pulled out a box and yelled surprise. The only thing worse than that would be a fucking cake.
Suddenly wary and afraid of what today might offer, Anika rubbed the sleep from her eyes and pulled herself up into a sitting position.
Knowing it provoked a reaction, only made him smile more. Reid hadn’t made extensive plans for a birthday Anika didn't even want to celebrate, but the least he wanted to do is acknowledge it. Fill it with little tokens of things that she likes — or make new memories she’d have that didn’t make her so dismissive of it.
“Happy Birthday, my love.” He kisses her, whilst she’s still groggy — and between them is the result of his morning misadventures.
It'd been years since the last time she heard those words. Although she knew they were coming, nothing could prepare her for the wave of nausea they brought over her. A memory unfolded, like the pages in a book, and she was ten, or maybe twelve, blowing off the candles on a red velvet cake, while everyone around her clapped and cheered. Make a wish, Anika. Her father's voice was a distant, forgotten sound. She wished for stupid things, like getting a dog. Having her parents not yell at each other.
What would she wish for now?
Anika smiled into the kiss.
A tray of pancakes, berried and sauced. A coffee he’d remade four times (he drank the first three, out of principle of wastage) until he got the milky heart shape on top at least somewhat distinctive and there’s an artistic rendition of Anika herself, as drawn by a budding new crayon maestro Henry. He said he wanted to give it to Anika in the morning, so here it is.
Scribbled hair, and a pink face, coloured in five different shades — a Picasso-style uneven eyes, and a red lips drawn so wide, she might rethink her phrase about creepy smiles. It’s cute — and it’s addressed to ‘Ani’, and a smaller, out of line addition of ‘ka’ too far right. Reid had watched Henry, with his tongue poking out sketching it carefully for her. He’d tried to sign his name in the corner, too.
"Is that for me?" She pointed at the breakfast laid out like from a magazine. Her finger dipped into the syrup, then she licked it clean. "You really did all that for me?" For that stupid birthday.
“Well I didn't do it for the ghost.”
It was delicious, both the sight of Reid beaming over something as silly as a date on a calendar, and the coffee he’d clearly fussed over for a while. Anika was glad there was no cake, and no surprise shouting. No people hiding behind doors waiting to jump out. Not that they had friends out here. Just Henry.
Reid had thought about what Anika might want for weeks. He had no idea what the woman who asked for nothing wants. She always wanted things that couldn’t be purchased. He considered waking her up earlier, with something that might stir a less dragonite response.
But Henry in the other room might have thrown a spanner in the works, if he wandered in asking about his birthday drawing for Anika.
Sticky fingers found Henry's drawing. It had syrup stains all over it now. Is that what I look like, to him? It was impressive, actually, that a three year old could draw a stick figure with that much hair.
"How'd you remember this? My birthday?"
“Same way that you shouldn’t forget it.” He sat down at the end of the bed, “Food’s gonna get cold.” It was always better warm, and steaming.
She popped a blueberry in her mouth. Then stuffed another one in his. Her fingers danced across his jaw, warm like sunlight through the window. "I don't like my birthday, baby. It reminds me—" That I shouldn't be alive. "—of my sisters." Sad eyes dipped down to the scattered fruit on her plate. "And my mother." Her father purposely left out. She didn't feel anything for him anymore.
“And that’s not a bad thing.” A hand skirted along her wrist, where it rested on his face. It came out quieter, because he never wanted to rip open a wound — and never on her birthday. “You don’t talk about them, much.”
She fell quiet, for a moment. Their silence had always felt comfortable, yet now it felt stuffy with ghosts.
He thought of his sisters often. Maintained the thread between himself and Port Leiry, when they texted. Rose was mad at him — and spoke in short bursts, and Lis never picked up. Reid knew why; he was here with Anika and Henry, in Texas. He wasn’t with them, after hiding his death for years. “It doesn’t have to just be that. It can be you and me, too.” Reid added, a soft but solemn smile. He wasn’t sure what ghosts he was stirring, but he hoped they weren’t disturbed from their resting place. “— And Henry.” Maybe.
“I never talk about them,” Anika murmured. “Like you never talk about yours.” It was a sad truth. “Like… Henry probably won’t ever want to talk about his parents.” She was sure he remembered them. Little fragments of a world he’d once known and loved.
He chewed on the blueberry, and it was like saltash on his tongue. "It’s different.” His were alive, and resentful of his choices. Most of which came from the desire to protect them.
A subject change then, because cowardice took root; he wouldn’t linger on topics that hurt them both — they were the kind of talks unsuited for birthdays. Reid gestured to the colourful, creative sketch. A gleam of pride in his gaze, “He was so excited for you to see this.”
Their eyes lingered on the wobbly stick figures living on the page — a moment long enough to appreciate childish naivety. Then she spoke: "We don't even know his birthday." Anika couldn’t wash the darkness out of this day. But maybe she could keep Henry’s from becoming the darkest day of his life
"What if—" she said slowly, thinking it through as she spoke. "What if we make one up? A date for him. A day where he blows out candles, makes a wish, and…doesn’t grow up hating himself for it.”
He smiled, because it was an idea he didn’t think Anika would be brave enough to voice. Reid had thought about it, before. Going back and hunting down records at Oklahoma City Hall; birth certifcates, and copies of a life that they didn’t deserve to be a part of. Just so they might know.
“I think he’d like that.” What kid didn’t enjoy being gushed over, at that age? Pain was still confusing to the mind, and easily smothered with adoration and distraction. It was the getting older part that laced bitterness into memory. “But that doesn’t have to be done right now. Today’s your day.” He kissed her nose gently, and she laced arms around his neck, stealing a kiss from his lips, while he was still busy talking. “I have a surprise for you, after you eat your breakfast.”
Anika wrinkled her nose, "A surprise? Good or bad one?" She'd been too used to the latter.
He wasn’t sure yet.
Reid isn’t an artist, and he hopes Anika knows that, because the kitchen was in utter disarray. Cans of spray paint, and bundles of tape, off-cuts and dried — mostly ruined paintbrushes hang over the kitchen counter. It wasn’t quite finished, he wanted Anika to help him.
He figured that he would sort out the mess later as Reid took her hand, and led her into the thick of it.
Bare feet padded across the room. "What's all that?" she asked, mouth hanging out in a perfecty shaped 'O'.
A canvas sits on an easel, a background sprayed in blues, and greens; shades of their eyes, and colours of life. Tape was haphazardly ripped to strips and stuck in shapes — the ones he’d forgotten to peel off when he was trying for ‘clean lines’.
He’d watched a video on stencils and sprays — it was his best chance of executing his idea.
“I wanted you to have something, from me.” Because he couldn’t give her much; a dead thing; he didn’t know if he had a soul, even. He’d have given it to her though, he thinks, if he did.
"So you tried to paint?" she asked, dumbfounded.
She wouldn’t know what to do with roses, or chocolates; he’d gift her those anytime. She wasn't one for expense or glamour; it was always things not easily acquired.
Maybe if he had any talents to show, she'd appreciate the gesture, but he’d butcher a serenade, and a slow dance to some romantic song would only end with her stumbling and laughing the whole time.
“I’m not so good with the paints — so I uh,” He holds up ripped stencils that he’d damaged unsticking them from the canvas. Maybe it’s a stupid idea he’d put together overnight because Anika is a hawk, and notices everything.
Like how clammy his hands had become when he worried the stencils between his fingers.
In messy, frayed colours adorning the canvas, is two hands holding. Ringed, and a little darker in places — one of his had a scar now, and Anika had lost the one that bore hers. They each only had one that he’d tried to capture on the canvas. Used layers of stencils atop each other, over and over until the details were just small lines printed.
He thinks the idea is there.
She’d have asked questions, if he’d have done it sooner. Not that anything could stop her from asking now. Reid didn't seem prepared. But when was one prepared for Anika's type of questioning?
"When did you even do all this? It ain't bad or anything, just—" Anika stumbled over her words, "—wait, is this my sketch?"
If she looked closer, she would see it’s the details that he wanted her to see, really. If she ran her fingers over their hands, she’d notice that something was cut into the canvas, raised up from the surface — two things, actually.
And her sketchbook — the one that had caused an argument a while back, lay open next to the easel, with a page torn out.
Because Reid had borrowed it to smelt a replica of her design — a hunters talent he hadn’t exercised in years. Dark wood, and blackened metal, molded, sanded and polished so it looked like lightning striking through the centre in a loop; two of them, embedded into the canvas for Anika to pull.
Rings that matched.
It could mean whatever she wanted it to. It could be a waste of his time — because he’d ruined her artist corner, and defiled her sketchbook without asking.
If there’s anything Reid has learned, it’s that Anika doesn’t like to be taken off guard.
But she must have really been shocked, because for a long moment there wasn’t a single peep out of her mouth.
She stared at the canvas like it was a monster she couldn’t bring herself to shoot. The same way Reid had once stood at the threshold of their relationship — a monster she couldn’t bring herself to hate, or one she had tried, desperately, to hate and failed.
To her, he hadn’t been a monster for years now. She loved him with every ounce of her tired heart. And he loved her, she thought, he really must've, if he was hiding rings inside a painting. That was a funny thing to do for someone you didn't love.
Say something, she told herself, anything.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing at the rings sticking out of the canvas, like she had absolutely no idea what those were.
He swallows, because he’s suddenly doubting everything he’s done. It's too much. She's not ready — she thinks he wasted hours of his night, spray painting stencils until hands looked somewhat recognisable. He’d been careful when arranging the rings, to try and make them look like part of the image.
“For you, Anika.” Reid says, “You and me.”
He can’t ask her for forever; he won’t ask her for forever, because it’ll destroy them.
But he can ask her for as long as they have.
She glanced at him and wondered what she was expected to say. She was wary of saying the wrong thing with no immediate means of escape, save hurling herself into the oncoming traffic outside.
"Those are rings."
“Perceptive, Booker.”
What was Reid expecting, really? Anika thought he’d been trying to trick her when he’d ran her a bath. Everything felt like it had an ulterior motive to her.
Quieter then, "Are they supposed to stay there?"
Reid turned to her, teeth stabbing a lip like he’s trying not to laugh. It came across amused — it hid the worry in which he believed this might have been a mistake. “Do you want them to stay there?” Evidently, that hadn’t been how he planned it. But maybe she’d pluck them out when she was ready to. Slightly more informative, he pulled at her drawing, “I thought we could wear them.”
Her eyes dipped to his lips, fighting not to break into a smile. Her own mouth curved, following his head. "Not really a jewelry person, me."
Because she'd never had anything like that to wear. Nothing her father had left her, before he died. No family heirloom, no pendant passed down from mothers to their daughters, no charm bracelet, though she'd always hated those dangling from her sisters wrists and the whining that followed when a charm slipped loose and disappeared into the ground.
She could wear it around her neck, like widows do when their partner is dead, he supposed. It wouldn't be inaccurate. Reid wants to say ‘Okay’ and leave it there. Just to see if she’d walk away, and they’d forget all about the graffiti and the rings he crafted.
“You could be.” He muses, like there’s still an option to say no.
She could be. He wasn't wrong. Before him, she never thought she could become the person she was now.
"Yeah? Better find out if it fits then."
That made his smile widen.
“I love you.” and when he next moved forwards it was to gently slide her one out of the slot in the canvas. He held out his other hand for her to take. “Can I?”
Anika said it back — I love you, three stupid, little words that made her heart jump into her throat. "Careful, it's my only hand," she teased, "You'd run out of options if my fingers are too fat on this one."
She put her hand in his, an impulsive decision sprung from her love for the man who stayed up all night doing arts and crafts for her. Then she waited with quiet expectation, like something spectacular was about to happen, like lying in the grass and waiting for a meteor shower, hoping to catch a shooting star as it passed across the sky.
His hands were steadier than he thought they’d be, thumb gliding over the ring he’d polished for hours, so the details weren’t scuffed. He could hear the drumming of her heart, as the pulse vibrated under his fingers.
He slipped the ring onto her finger, and let it settle there, fearing everything might disappear in his grasp the moment he realised it fit. They didn’t say anything, as Reid softly traced the back of her hand with his thumb, picturing Anika at the altar with him; a dream he’ll likely never have. This is as close as they’ll get to a promise tied tight. She’ll still doubt him, even with a ring on her hand. She always would, he thought. Whilst he would always quietly know she deserved something better.
But he loved her, like a moth loves a flame.
"It's pretty, the ring." Her eyes traced every detail, as she muttered, "Where'd you get it?"
Did she think he’d stolen it?
“I made them.”
"You made them?" she slapped her words to his, stunned.
He made the rings, the same way he’d once made the hilts of bowies, and the shaft of a glock. Arrowheads had bred interest in self sufficiency. Reid could pour hot liquids into molds, at the very least; resin and hardwood weren’t difficult to acquire. They taught that in woodworking class, even.
Anika didn't have that experience. She knew how to carve wood, make bullets fit for a dead chest, sharp enough to pierce, but bending metal wasn't something she'd been taught, by Winston, or any of the others, Brotherhood or Fellows.
“It never seemed like diamonds were your style.” It had nothing to do with cost, but the woman who had to wear them; a jewel that didn’t sparkle so keenly as emerald did. Reid nodded to the folded up page by the canvas, splayed out and stained with paint spatter, “I used your instructions.”
"This? It was a stupid fucking thing, Reid—" A fantasy, that he was never meant to know. A what if. Something that she knew she could never have, a normal life, a house, a home, a dog or a cat, a photo of him kissing her cheek at sunset or something ridiculous like that, sitting in the corner of a coffee table.
They've tried to play house. It hadn't worked the way they hoped.
In the mess of her revelations, her smile saddened. "Why now?"
Because of Henry? Because Reid was planning on meeting the sun soon, and didn't want to leave her with nothing?
"I didn't mean to make this a big deal, that's why I got mad at you, when you went through my sketchbook, I never wanted you to see it."
Maybe it’s trivial to her. It's probably a dying tradition now, anyways; rings and vows. Reid can’t ask for the piece of paper, because he’s dead. And he can’t ask her to walk in the darkness with him — there had to be a line. “Hey — it’s okay.” Maybe he wouldn’t have had the design drawn up, but a sketchbook didn’t stop the act being the promise it was. This didn't need to be agonising for her.
But why now?
Because there’s never going to be a right time. They’ve fought each other, monsters, themselves — they've battled ghosts, and horrors enough that tomorrow isn't promised. “It’s not about the sketchbook.” His smile lifted in the corner, and it felt like the heat pressed against his hand. “I wanted to do this.” Long before Anika. Back when his life had been ahead of him, and boyish arrogance hadn’t doomed him. She’d made it seem possible, again. Even if it hurt that she’s quick to dismiss it as anything. “It was never stupid, and I can't promise you forever,” She knew what he’d meant — he’s never going to ask, because it’ll never happen. “But I want to do every day with you.”
Anika leaned closer until their foreheads were touching, and their mouths were just inches apart. "We are already doing every day, Halstead."
With or without a ring.
But she was quickly getting comfortable having it on her finger. It didn't feel foreign or strange. It felt just right. "Do I put the other one on you? Is that how it works?" Embarrassing, to not know how any of this was supposed to go.
“If you want to.” His tone shifts into something teasing.
She pulled back just enough to take the ring out of canvas. He was waiting for her. There was something so beautiful about that simple gesture, both frightening and overwhelming, that she almost rushed it — like she did with almost everything. But not him. Reid was patient with her, kind and gentle, and she wanted to give, at least some semblance of it back. So she slowly slid the ring onto his index finger, "This one?"
Reid bit back his smile, “Any finger you want.” He began, softly touching her wrist, “I might move it to the ring finger later; it’ll keep the flies away.” There was only one for him, and he wanted her to feel like it was known. It was the only finger he didn’t usually wear anything on.
Now, he’d wear this for her.
She laughed, "I'm real bad at this."
But she didn't want to be. So fingers quickly switched the ring from one finger to the one where it was supposed to be. Then she placed her hand next to his, and they both looked at the matching rings.
Was that it? Was it official now, that she was his, and he was hers, and no flies were to take them away from each other?
"Better?" she asked, "Do you not have some grand speech?"
She wanted to laugh, but she mustn't.
There’s no grand speech. He hadn’t had the foresight to know if she’d even get far enough to put the ring on. Unpredictably says she could have waved her sketchbook at him and started an old argument. The dark band made his flesh look paler — but it made the olive tones of hers look alive. He’s thankful she likes them, because there’s no artistry in him, as seen by his graffiti.
Her mouth is close enough to his to kiss — and when he breaches the space, lacing his hand through hers, he’s proud to say: “You know Anika Halstead has a ring to it.”
"'Anika Halstead'..could be worse, I guess."
She pressed her lips to his then, while the old refrigerator hummed around them and daylight had just begun to peek through the blinds in the kitchen, and that kiss held the promise of forever.
Henry looked cute in his reindeer pajamas. Bouncing on the couch, cheering: “Can I now? Now? Now?” He was talking about the gifts beneath the tree; there’s only a few. But they were wrapped in colourful paper and labelled with his name. Reid had written Anika’s on some, and he wasn’t sure she’d even noticed amongst the evening hot cocoa making, and the marshmellows stamped into the kitchen floor. She was still huffing about chocolate being everywhere whilst Reid's stopping the toddler from knocking over a half empty mug; the sides stained with dried cocoa.
It was chaos. Anika never really cared much for cleaning, or putting back things that certainly did not belong on the floor, or on top of the lamp, or lost in a shoe, in the hallway. With Henry, this was where things ended up, regardless, of their origin — and nothing could ever be found.
“Tomorrow.” Reid told him, for the eighth time in half an hour. Hindsight says that the sugar rush right before sending him to sleep, had been a mistake. “It’s bedtime, now.”
Anika scoffed, crouched down by the side of the couch, finishing up a present for Reid in secrecy. Wrapping up gifts wasn't like shooting up monster, she'd found out it was especially hard when you only had one hand. The wrapper ripped, and Anika tried to talk over the sound:
"You really think he's gonna go to bed now, with all of that under the tree?" Fuck, it was one ugly gift. She threw a quick look at the pile of presents with her name on it, and realized they all looked like they've been done by Santa's freaking elves. She couldn't compete with that.
The ring on her finger couldn't compare to the pair of socks in one of the wrapped up boxes for Reid.
He had no idea what Anika is doing crouched behind the couch. But Reid’s patience would thin out if it’s another patch of cocoa stomped into the carpet. He realises that he has to pull out the big guns for this bedtime battle: “Santa doesn’t come for little men who don’t sleep.”
A pointed look fired at Henry, as he bounces on the cushions. He watches the joy deplete from his face, like Reid’s just set fire to all his gifts.
Meanwhile, Anikas creation was getting uglier by the second, as urgent hands worked double time to make it more presentable and less — whatever that was. She laughed malevolently, "Santa doesn't even know where our ranch is."
Henry sat back down, in one sad, defeated hop, pouting at his adoptive parents and Santa, who he was now certain would never find their ranch and therefore leave him without his truck.
"What about Scottie, the trucker?" He whined. Trucker came out sounding like twucker.
While Reid wasn't looking, Anika shoved her present under the tree, far in the back behind a few big ones. "The what?"
Dana's kids, Mary Beth and Lily-Mae, had a deadbeat dad, who picked them up every other weekend, if he didn't forget, and bought them dollar store presents they later bragged about to Henry.
Look what our daddy got us, Henry, they'd say, and it'd be this big truck, chipped at the edges with rusty tires, a plastic man with a cowboy hat they've named Scottie gripping the wheel.
Henry wanted a truck, too. Because his daddy rarely took him anywhere.
"I told Santa, I want Scottie. He has a cowboy hat."
It’s difficult not to smile, because Reid never would have imagined arguing with a toddler on Christmas Eve about toy trucks with cowboy hats, and names. It makes him think about a rancher, back in his hometown — and about a Halloween that hadn’t started so shitty, exchanging a cowboy hat for buying drinks. Henry doesn’t have those memories, though.
“Then you better get your teeth brushed, and tucked into bed, hadn’t you?” Reid tells him, with this fake sternness that sounds a little like he’s choking down a laugh.
He knows Anika hasn’t bought him the damn truck, and he can’t remember if he did either. Eyes search for her in the living room, moving around like a ghost. He tries to catch her eye, as if the question could be read in his gaze.
Did we get him the truck?
Anika shrugged, shaking off any responsibility he might've shifted onto her, for trucks and plastic cowboys.
He thinks they might have got the blue one — maybe green, was that Scottie? Fuck.
He can’t remember, because they’d been arguing about cookies that day. Fighting some clerk about the Christmas stock, and how Anika hadn’t cared to decorate and Reid said it wasn’t about them, but the kid needed to see tinsel and baubles. It was a minor sacrifice in the way of finding a reason to endure. But he doesn’t know if the truck ended up in the cart.
He’d had to chase Henry around the store enough times, he remembered Anika just wanting to leave.
Reid tipped his head back to the kid, folding his arms as if he were cross: “I don’t hear your feet moving, little man.”
Henry padded across the room to wrap small hands around Reid's legs and press chubby cheeks into his sweatpants. Then tipped his head back, aiming those big, green eyes at the vampire, like a stake to the heart. The little man waited for Reid to join him in the bathroom, where they'd brush their teeth together and make funny faces in the mirror with mouths full of foam.
07:45. 25th December 2025.
Anika wore the same shirt she had on the night she agreed to marry Reid. An old, grey one she'd pulled from his things, a little ripped at the back so when he leaned over, while she was painting or washing the dishes, he could kiss the nape of her neck.
She’d lost track of how many nights in a row she’d slept in it. Probably many, but she didn’t want to sleep in anything else.
That morning, she woke up early, and tip toed in the kitchen, pulled the Christmas present with the ripped, ugly wrapper she'd made for Reid, and with the stealth of a puma, walked back into the bedroom.
She climbed onto the bed, and sat down on her heels with her feet tucked under herself, staring at Reid's sleeping form. When was the last time he fed? With Henry around, finding time to disappear and feed on a human had become difficult. Anika had offered her blood, though he was firmly against it, and it had seemed to satisfy his hunger for only a little while.
A hand reached out and pried one of his eyelids open. "Got you something." she said, with a smile unnaturally big for her.
A pale hand snapped up to grasp the one pulling at his eyes — an instinct that says he's ready to lunge. Anika’s scent is quick to flood his senses, and he lets her go as quickly as he'd turned. An apology hanging ready on his tongue, for the suddenness.
Nightmares came and went, and his feeding habits were out of sync. He remembers it’s Christmas, and offers her a warm smile. The same hand comes up to reach for her cheek as he sits up from the bed, “Morning — I wasn’t expecting, that.” He should’ve; they’d been safe here. Morning playfulness isn't new. Just a little jarring, coming from Anika on Christmas morning.
His reaction made her question the idea of this surprise. It was silly, stupid and unlike them, but so was exchanging engagement rings, and that had been all Reid.
So Anika thought it might be nice, wouldn’t it? To do something for him, too.
"What did you expect? Breakfast in bed, naked?" she asked, sardonically.
This was the happy version of her. At least, what she believed happy was.
He wouldn’t have been mad at a naked Anika waking him up on Christmas morning.
The place reeked of gingerbread, and something burnt. He’s surprised that Henry hadn’t found his way in to jump up and down on the bed, but he’s glad that he hasn’t; he wouldn’t have liked surprising Reid out of the rare sleep he gets. His first Christmas holiday with them, spoilt by a monster.
Reid's eyes dipped to the gift, wrapped in strange shapes in her hands. His smile widens, as he shakes off the sleep. “You got me something?” He repeats, like a fool.
"Mhmm." She nodded, tucking her long hair behind her ear, sheepishly.
It’s sweet, and her smile is oddly upbeat — he lifts a brow at her; it’s suspicious too. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Without another word, she shoved the present into his hands and waited in anticipation for him to tear through the ugly wrapper and find out that inside, hidden in another less christmasy packaging was a pair of socks. Blue and long, white letters along the side reading 'best husband in the galaxy', little planets scattered all around.
She'd spotted them next to the pantyhose on sale at the dollar store when she'd gone to get Henry's crayons. Then she remembered he'd made her play one of those games back in Denver, spaceships racing through open space, shooting weird alien creatures.
The paper’s tough; overtaped in some corners, and it tears easily in others. Blue cotton that’s soft in his hand, brings an ache to his chest. It’s special, because Anika’s done it; she’s found something and made it personal.
"'Cause you're a nerd, you know." And my husband, she wanted to say, but decided to wait for him to mention that part first.
He stares at the socks, laughing quietly at the stars and the planets — and the words that makes him look back at her, eyes dipping in the corners. He leans forward in the bed, ready to kiss her, “Just this galaxy?” Playful, before he steals her mouth, for a moment. Reid doesn’t defend his geekiness. Not this time. She can have this moment, without him saying something that she'd misconstrue. He loves her, and the socks.
"Mhm, 'cause I'm here."
Anika Halstead thought 'handsome', a stupid word she wouldn't say out loud, as she watched him pull back, softly, “Does this mean it’s okay to call you my wife?” The only other word she could think of, for the way he looked at her, would maybe be 'beautiful'.
Mouth soft and warm against his, loving hand coming around to comb back blonde hair and then slide down his bare back, dragging nails up and down, up and down.
"It's okay to call me whatever you want." Her breath danced across his lips.
Is she ready for that? No paper. No vows. No altar. Just a promise that their worlds were no longer just a collision of meteorites, but a new world, together.
08:30 25th December 2025.
They walked out of the bedroom, like newlyweds, his arms snaked around her waist, scrunching the fabric of her shirt at the center of her stomach to keep her as close as physically possible, nose pressed to the crook of her neck. Her head leaned back to give him more room to breathe in her scent, while she laughed and laughed, because his beard tickled.
In the living room, a trail of wrapping paper laid scattered like breadcrumbs, leading to a little gremlin hungrily devouring another present. The windows were wide open and sunlight blasted in like some kind of an atomic weapon. She'd forgotten to shut the blinds the night before.
"Someone's found his presents." she said, turning to Reid. "You hurt?"
He flinches, as he head lifts from her throat — feet backing up to create a sudden distance between him and Anika. A man retreating into the shadows because a sharp hand has sliced between them. He nods, through a quiet hiss. “No. It’s okay.” Eyes linger on his arm and shoulder that'd been caught in the beams, smoking like he’s the coal. He can’t look at the window without burning out his retinas, so he focuses on Anika and Henry, looking at him. “I’m alright.” He smiles tightly at the boy, as the burns on his skin slowly fade.
Anika would notice how slow it is, and know he’s fallen back into bad habits.
Worried eyes studied the burn, "Baby, it's cause you ain't feeding."
But it’s Christmas. And Henry’s looking at him like he isn’t sure what'd happened. He's torn open all the gifts, even the ones without his name.
Reid shot Anika a look that says he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact in front of Henry. As soft as her voice had been, it’s truth. And the boy hadn’t needed to know what they were, even if Anika’s tattoo was drained of it magic since Oklahoma. Reid’s habits were different.
He knows he needs to stock up from the hospital more, but it’s a journey that takes time he’s busy spending with them.
Quietly, he murmured, “It’s okay.”
Henry noticed the shift between the two, and how Reid was now hunched, and small, angry bubbles had covered his upper arm. Presents left behind, Henry joined his parents in the shadowy corner of the room, wearing his truck pajamas, going on and on about kissing it better, and how he'd seen Anika kiss it better before.
"Why did the light hurt you?" Maybe, Henry thought, Santa could bring his daddy some medicine, for the bubbles.
The light, he says. Because I’m a thing of the dark, Henry.
Reid looked at Anika, as if to ask for a clever story to tell. But he isn’t sure what to say — it’s the holidays, it’s not a gift to know what lurks in the shadows. “I’m sensitive… that means my skin doesn’t like it…” A beat, “But we only talk about it between us, Henry. You can’t tell your friends.” He wouldn't usually be so blunt with it, but he didn’t know how to dull down the language for him.
He would lie to the boy, tenfold, if it meant he could skirt away from the details of the truth — it’s cruel to ask a curious boy to keep that kind of secret. He would barely understand what it means.
Anika laced her fingers with Reid's, squeezing tight to give him a semblance of reassurance. The truth was hard to say, especially chewed down and spit out in the form of something a three year old would understand.
"Maybe we can get you gummies for it."
What Henry was actually suggesting was — pills. The colorful gummy bears Reid and Anika got him, when he had a tummy ache. Sometimes he’d drag one of the kitchen chairs over to the counter and reach up into the cupboard above the sink, find where they’d hidden the small bottle, and sneak a couple when they weren’t looking. He was a sneaky kid, just as smart as he was troublesome.
Reid smiled. Because it would be nice if that ailment wasn’t so agonising. But he knew that it was necessary, to keep himself and everyone else, safe. He could do less damage, if he slipped; if he was limited to only the dark. The catch on the lockbox inside him is already broken enough. It’ll shutter entirely if poked the wrong way.
“What gifts did Santa bring you, hey?” A hand squeezed Anika’s back, as he glances to the open window, and then back to the boy on the floor, in the middle of the light. “Show us what you got.”
Anika remained beside him, where she belonged. Not in the light, not with a child they barely knew. With him. The man she chose to love. If the shadows were where he had to be, then that would be her home too.
The kid looked up, beaming with joy, holding up a blue truck to his guardians. "Look! Looook! Looook! Look!" It wasn’t really Scottie’s truck, but a small plastic doll steered the wheel, a cowboy hat, one she’d taken from another doll at the store, perched on its head. Anika thought that had to do it.
Henry made no difference between this one and the one Dana’s kids had. He jumped up and down, "Vroooommmm vroooooommmmm"
Reid laughed, looking at the truck, and Henry’s excitement like it was a gift all on its own. Then, he bowed his head to Anika, to kiss her temple, “You did good,” a quiet knowing that she’d put together something the boy would love.
He had one of his own; space socks on his feet, pulled up taut to the ankles.
He hates having to ask her, too. “Can you get the blinds?”
She nodded, already on her way to rid the room of any daylight. Henry didn’t mind the shadows. The sooner he grew comfortable in the dark, the less Anika and Reid would have to worry about him. The monster under the bed would be just another shadow he could befriend. When he grew up, Anika thought, he’d learn how to stab them too, to protect himself from the ones that wanted to hurt him. Before shutting them out completely, Anika peeked at the street outside, empty and vast, no cars, no people around. She liked it like that, peaceful.
"Better, baby?"
He nods, grateful for the understanding. It didn’t come with an argument, either. Christmas seemed to serve them well. Henry would figure it out when he got older — if he stayed with them, that long. If there was somewhere safer for him than two fractured pieces of glass. Reid rolls his shoulders back, allowing reddened flesh to fade as he steps forward into the shadows — he smiles over at Anika, jutting his head towards Henry’s mess of wrapping paper and toys, “Did Santa bring you anything?”
It's probably somewhere on the ground, by now. Since Henry can’t read labels.
"Santa's never been a big fan of me." Anika leaned a little closer to whisper in his ear, "Says I'm a naughty girl and all that."
A grin, as he reaches across to squeeze her against his side. “You are?” Under his breath, he plays into the teasing, "Then someone else has left you something.”
"Oh?" She said, fainting surprise, "And what's that?"
Her eyes drifted to the mess of wrapping paper and gifts scattered across the floor. Henry was driving his truck over a torn package, something darker and softer peeking out from underneath.
Anika turned back to Reid, cocking an eyebrow expectantly.
“Why don’t you go and look?”
She pulled the package beneath Henry's truck, the kid's lower lip puckering out at the intrusion. He had to find another place to ride his truck on, because that mountain of fabric was hers. It was a leather jacket — brand new and almost shiny black. Anika let out a small gasp of surprise, slapping a hand to her mouth, "You got me a new one? Where'd you get the mo— You stole that shit, Halstead?" A narrowing gaze, eyes that turned to slits, with no real malice behind her voice. Even if it was, stolen, she'd never return it. Finders, keepers.
Reid’s eyes roll — because Henry’s repeating shit, shit, with a maniacal laugh, and Anika hasn’t even noticed. She’s busy accusing him of theft.
“It’s yours.” Not stolen. And he’s about to drop the big ‘it wasn’t really santa’ bomb, for the sake of clearing his name: “I kept the receipt, in case you wanted to exchange it.”
Quickly, Anika shoved her arms through the sleeves, fixing the collar around her neck where her long hair had been trapped. Reid had never seen a smile quite that big on her face. Not even, when he did his version of a proposal and slid a ring on her finger. Then she'd looked more in awe. Now, she was beaming, her smile all teeth.
"It's pretty great, yeah? It fits nice?"
She didn't need a mirror when Reid was standing right in front of her. She liked seeing her reflection in his eyes.
A moment to smile before he’s turning his attention to the boy running a truck up Anika’s leg. “Henry, Anika has a naughty mouth, don’t say that.” The boy went back to car noises, as he banged the truck on every surface he could reach.
"Hey, I ain't your highway, kid." She nudged the truck, shifting out of its reach. "Climb over on your dad."
It slipped — dad. As deserving of the title as Reid was, she'd never called him that. Henry had a dad and he was dead. The kid didn't seem to notice when exactly the man had turned from Reid to Dad, but Anika shot her fiancé an apologetic look, and a small shrug that meant 'sorry—accident.'
Reid stares at her, swallowing down that unease. An ache in a heart that did not beat. The smile left his eyes, but he nods his approval at how she looks in the jacket. Distracted, suddenly — by the boy, and Anika’s skewed perception. Henry had a dad, and he was a different kind of dead.
“Yeah, it does fit nice.” A truth, as Henry uses his leg as a racetrack next. In the same moment, he pulls Anika toward him, by the cuff of her new leather, “You look hot, actually.”
Anika stepped over Henry, as though he was a chihuahua, wrapped her arms around her fiancés neck to pull him in for a sweet kiss. "Thanks, Santa." She murmured softly. "You keep being good to me, and I might let you in my bed later."
“Might?” Playful. Teasing. He nips at her lip, whilst a truck is wheeled up his thigh and over his hip. His gaze wanders down to the little man jeering excitedly over gifts. He pokes Henry, ruffling his hair gently, “You hear this? Hope you’ve got room on your floor.” A joke that the boy was too young to understand.
“You hungry?” he asks, then turns to Anika again — mouth capturing hers, to add: “I’ll make something."
By the first of November, the last of the leaves were gone. Night came earlier, around five o'clock the light was already fading. And by six, Reid did no longer have to hide inside.
They had no one to trust in this place, Anika thought, as she opened the blinds and watched the lights go up, one by one, in the distance, like fireflies.
Henry was wrestling with a pair of Reid's joggers, dragged all the way from the bedroom to the kitchen, like on some kind of treasure hunt. His entire head fit inside, plus both arms digging for something, and then coming out disappointed with a cry. Anika didn't know why they bothered buying him toys, when he enjoyed playing with clothes, forks, and plastic bottles.
He looked like he had a tent on his head.
It made her laugh, which she thought automatically made her a bad mother. Because a good one would tell him to stop, or reach for him, and pull him away from the joggers that could eventually suffocate him.
Reid had managed to sleep for three hours; from the late morning, until now. A balance between nourished and something less. Time seemed less sparing with a third person squeezing in the gaps of their quiet.
Being greeted with the sound of Anika’s laughter in the other room is worth the busier spells. He walks out in boxers and props himself against the doorframe so he can look across the kitchen.
A jogger monster is coming for Booker. He cracks a smile. "He gets the clothes stealing thing from you, by the way.”
"Yeah?"
He wasn't her blood.
Thank fuck for that.
Anika leaned her back against the counter, one hand on her hips, "I think he's just bored of the shit you got him." Meaning — dinosaurs and toy soldiers.
A fucking chocking hazard, if you asked her, but what the fuck did she know about three year olds and the shit they could or couldn't put in their mouths.
“He sees you wearing anything but your own stuff.” Reid counters, brushing over the explicit language — it’s a step down from her usual fucking sailors tongue. Then, to add: “I’ve seen you play toy soldiers with him. You know he likes it.”
Like a sudden brick wall between them, Henry chimed in: "Shit."
An innocent sound coming from a child lost in a pair of grey joggers. Reid’s eyes find the ceiling, just for a moment. Then they drop back down to her, once again.
It wasn't that Anika didn't like playing toy soldiers with him. The problem was that she did. "He doesn't know what my own stuff look like. It's just clothes." She said, trying to brush over the fact that Henry was turning into a tiny version of her.
They don't know how long they’re staying in Texas for, so Reid hasn’t brought up the subject of schools, or kindergarten. Between them, he doubts they’d cover half the necessary subjects to educate him into any half decent member of society. Neither of them set the bar high.
He can't help but smile at the wriggling boy, fumbling through the opening of sweats as if he could tunnel through them.
Reid’s there in the next moment, scooping Henry up, joggers included and tossing him skyward, just beneath the ceiling before catching him squealing, and giggling. “Gotcha, little man.” A hand pulls the pants from his head, to reveal a reddened, but smiling face. Henry reaches up, squirming in Reid’s arms. “Again, huh?”
The little boy hadn't asked about his parents in weeks. it seemed as though burnt toast and toy soldiers had taken his mind off the fact that he now appeared to be stuck in a house with two total strangers. Reid had stuffed his feet inside the new dad shoes rather eagerly, but Anika was still learning how to walk in hers. She often thought that the kid must notice the difference. And mourn the loss of what he remembered was home.
Was he old enough to know what loss was? Did he know what death had taken away from him and replaced with two incompetent monsters?
He called for his dad at night, when tossing and turning somewhere between four and five am, digging tiny heels into Anika's back and reaching grabby hands for something solid to hold. Daddy, he'd cry and find shelter in Reid's embrace. Brush a red, stuffy nose against his chest while strong arms soothed him back to sleep.
Reid might not have been his father, but he comforted him like one. He played with him like one. Up he went, caught in strong arms, as Reid looked over to Anika, smirking. “Does Anika want a turn?”
"No, Anika wants to shower."
If they didn’t have a small boy to keep an eye on, Reid would have asked if she wanted company in that endeavour. Childish laughter between his hands, reminds him that he can’t.
But he can tease and poke. “I think Anika does want a turn, doesn’t she, Henry?” The toddler is lowered in his arms and two sets of eyes find the woman on the other side of the room. He puts Henry down, playfully encouraging — “We should get her.” And the boy sets off running right at her.
It’s Reid’s turn to laugh.
And Anika's turn to run.
They chased each other — tiny feet following bigger ones, around the table, stumbling over toy soldiers. Laughter spilled out of them, filling up the cracks in the walls, and the ones in her heart.
"You two are so fucking annoying." she said, between laughs, then stopped before the fridge and held the door open like a shield. "Truce— for a snickers bar?" Emerging from the cold depths of the fridge, was a hand, offering candy for five minutes of quiet.
As if Henry would understand the concept of truce, and not simply reach wantingly for the chocolate. Grabby fingers murmuring for the bar in Anika’s hand.
“Now that’s cheating, Booker.”
She waved a middle finger, with a satisfied smile on full lips.
Henry was munching on the candy so eagerly, as if he hadn't been fed in weeks. They haven't forgotten have they? Reid made dinner last night, and she remembered the kid did put some in his mouth. There were those burnt toasts again the other day. He'd had plenty of food, hadn't he?
Reid shakes his head at the morning sugar rush that Anika is about to supply Henry with. If she wanted him settled, she’s gone the wrong way about it. He’ll miss his afternoon nap because he’s bouncing off the walls.
She thinks she’s so clever, bribing him to avoid playing chase. All she’s done is put fuel in the gas tank. Reid points a playful finger at her in return, “You can run that energy out of him now.”
"It's not like he's gonna eat the whole thing….right?"
Probably not without making himself sick.
“No, we’ll find it melted into the carpet later.”
Rather melted all around his mouth. A few minutes later they found him curled on their bed, with his arms spread wide above his head, and one sock missing. Chocolate all over his face. Some people would call this adorable, but Anika thought he looked like a tiny pig.
At least that meant they'd get an hour of quiet. She'd never known just how much she appreciated silence, before Henry came around. Hopefully she'll get to enjoy it soon, for more than an hour a day, when they find him a nice, little family.
A better one.
Maybe Bob and Kate Whatever would know where to get the kids clothes from.
"You think he needs shirts his own size and shit? What size even is that? Barbie doll size?"
If he didn’t know Anika better, Reid would think it’s a joke. “That’s not difficult, we’ll find him more clothes.” They’ll get him everything he needs.
"Where?"
His lip ticks up in the corner, “A store, like anywhere else. We can drive to the town just before closing,” he hesitates, before adding, “Or you can go earlier, and just look at the labels, it’ll say an age.” The more they talk about it, the more real it feels. It allows the madness to take root, just a little.
Anika scrunched up her face. A nose all in wrinkles. "Look at labels? What the fuck is it supposed to say? Dwarf? Are you kidding me? I don't know this shit." She wanted no part in shopping for tiny fuckers.
"I'm not sure how much money we got." Close to nothing, probably.
He crosses the distance, careful not to set off the bomb that is Anika Booker.
So Reid settled for a delicate kiss to her shoulder.
“It says ages, baby. We can get three, or four — whatever. See how that fits him.” Hard to guess without him trying it on, but even if it’s big, he can grow into it. “We’ll find some money, see if we have anything left on those cards we got in Oklahoma.”
Three or four. Must be on the label, Anika thought. This was an entire different world to her. She knew of monsters, and how to kill them. A world made out of black and white — where there was mostly darkness, and very little light. But what did she know of the world where shops had shirts with lebels three or four, and picture books with rabits on them, and backpacks in the form of a panda? Shit.
Henry stirred on the bed next to them, and she lowered her voice, careful not to wake him.
The only thing Anika has ever been careful about was trying not to die. And she wasn't always too keen on surviving, but it was a basic human instinct — to want to keep breathing.
"You gotta come with or something, I'll end up buying him a bunch of sweatshirts down to his fucking toes. I'm not this kids mom."
“I think some of the stores at the mall open late.” As if that’s agreeable enough that he can go, too. The approaching winter is probably the best season for longer nights, and shorter days.
There was no protest. Reid hadn't tried to convince her that mother or not, she was all that kid had. But Anika knew.
"That means you coming, baby?"
His smile curls, because her worry bleeds into her tone, “Relax. We’ll get him what he needs, right now he doesn’t need anything but a nap.”
Her smile faltered, just a little — "Yeah." She said, and watched the kid, who'd nestled inside their world, sleep soundly. He looked calm, not a trace of worry on that small face. Did he feel safe with them? Bullshit. That couldn't be true, could it?
Green found blue. "I keep thinking that we can get this kid killed."
Or worse. Turn him into a monster.
Reid swallows the lump, because natural instinct wants to argue that with her. Tell her she's wrong, and only thinks in negatives.
But she's right. They might. He just hopes they don’t — and they have to be better than the crackhouse that Henry was almost dumped in.
“Our broken morals will do nothing if not keep him alive, Booker.”
"What if we can't?"
As if them both coming back from the brink of death, no less, isn’t proof enough.
“Stop that.” Thinking they’re going to fuck everything up, again.
"You ain't helping, you know. Telling me to stop that. Like it's a goddamn switch."
She knew he had one. Turned it on when he felt like it, then off again. On — off. Lucky, fucking bastard, she thought.
Reid thinks that Anika knows exactly what she’s saying, and he has to brush it off before it burrows into his chest and rattles the locked box of his emotions. “I can offer a distraction, but you’ll say it’s bad timing.”
They’ve done horrible things, and he imagines they would again, if they had to. Even for the kid. Maybe he can grow up and into an extraordinary life, encouraged into an Ivy League college, and become something he and Anika never will. Maybe if he had people fighting to the death in his corner, with persuasion that pits him above others, they could repent for what they’ve done and he could be the one good thing to come out of all that death.
The look she gave him was sharper than a stake through the heart. "Don't try to change the subject."
Dana, who lived on the neighbouring ranch, next to the only market for miles had stopped by for coffee. She’d cornered Anika once while she was grocery shopping, asked her to read the expiration date on a can of beans she was holding. Said she’d forgotten her glasses at home.
A single mother of two girls. Anika only knew that because Dana’s mouth ran like a mill. Harmless farmer girl, the hunter had decided. Too young for two kids, but who the fuck cared? The girls were like two tiny grenades. Who else would they take after?
“You doin’ anything for Thanksgivin’ with the boys?” Dana asked, fishing another cigarette from a half empty pack.
Anika didn’t own a calendar. Barely glanced at the one on her phone. Time didn’t mean much to her. Reid had an eternity ahead of him, and she was living on borrowed minutes already. The only one time mattered to was Henry. Bath time. Dinner time. Play time. Shit time.
Well, poop time. She wasn’t allowed to say shit anymore.
“I ain’t much for holidays,” she said, brushing it off quick.
Dana squinted at her, “Yeah, you don’t look the type. But boys gotta love pies, don’t they?”
Dana didn’t know the only pies Reid cared for came soaked in blood.
Anika reached over, stole a cigarette from the pack on the table, and kept her eyes on the yard. Dana’s girls were chasing Henry, trying to jab his ass with a long stick. He was laughing like crazy.
She’d never heard him laugh like that.Not even when Reid tossed him into the air at night, fresh from the bath.
Anika had learned a few things about kids.Mostly how not to kill them.
“This one? No. He eats chicken wings straight outta the fridge.”
Dana barked a laugh. “Hell, you raisin’ a pit bull or what?”
19:35. 27th November 2025
In a couple of hours, the stench of sweat had followed Dana out the door, along with the two bullies in braids and skirts. Henry had taken a slice of the pie she’d left behind and was crouched under the table, stuffing his tiny face. That was where he liked to lie and watch TV, chin propped on his hands like some feral little thing. Was that normal? Did kids do that? Anika caught herself asking that question at least seven times a day. She was starting to think she was going insane.
“Hey,” she said, nudging the table leg with her boot. “Give me some of that pie you got under there.”
“No,” he said, mouth full.
Henry was about to find out just how thin his adoptive parent's patience was. A silver fork gleamed in the darkness beneath the table, then stabbed the pie like a killer in the night. Kid let out a whiny cry. Most of the time, Anika and Henry looked less like a mother and son, and more like siblings. She'd forgotten what that felt like.
"Henry, you gotta start sharing. I don't want you being an asshole."
"What's an asshole?" he asked, through dramatic sobs.
It’s a greeting Reid hadn't expected when a foot nudges the ranch house door open. “We try not to say those words, Henry.” Evidently, he’s not got the most ideal influences.
Reid has to stifle the laugh, still, as he places the paper bag of groceries on the sideboard. Mild bewilderment stares at Anika and a toddler underneath the dining table. “Even if there’s good pie on the line.”
He assumes it’s Dana’s. And the second clue that says she’s been by today, is the mess the place is in; the kind only children launching toys like missiles could create. Third — and most obvious— hint is that neither Anika or Henry can make baked goods.
They’re still managing the animosity between them, where Henry is concerned. Conversations that never get finished, and neighbours that force them to wind stories tighter and tighter, until it’s choking the truth.
He hadn’t been gone long. A desire to make a dinner for them that will never be a thanksgiving spread, but something to repaint the holiday in less misery for Anika. Something less awful for Henry to recall, too.
He fixes a smile, and closes the front door.
Reid has a smaller, grey refrigerator bag hanging off his hand. It’s a new habit, brought on by the necessity of their isolation. There’s over a dozen medical centres in Dallas, and it hadn’t taken too much trial and error to find a decent contact, willing to take a risk and supply a steady flow — they’ve learnt that low profile is making sure there’s as little evidence they’re in city as possible.
Thanksgiving needn’t be another shit memory for Anika, if Reid had left a trail. He won’t make the Denver mistake again.
He puts it down on the dining table above them, so he can tap Anika’s foot with his own. “You two finished yet?” Messing with pies, or whatever they’d gotten up to in his absence.
Mossy hues found him the second the door cracked open. There was nothing she wanted more than his eyes on her. If there was anyone who could make her smile just by standing there, it was Reid.
“If you’re asking about the pie,” she said, “I hope for Henry’s sake there’s a piece left.” Her voice turned vicious in the same breath she slipped under the table, right by the kid’s ear. “Or else.”
Henry yelped, dropped the plate where the last piece of pie was hiding, and crawled out from beneath the table, straight into Reid's legs.
His failed escape made her burst into laughter. “Where d’you think you’re goin’, you pie thief?”
Reid reaches down to run a hand through Henry’s hair; it’s getting long, and he should get it cut. “Quick Henry, take the pie and go.” He murmurs playfully, encouraging the kid to dash in the opposite direction.
And Henry did just that, ran like his life depended on it. A flash of blonde in a sloppy bowl cut was the last thing Anika saw before he disappeared around the kitchen corner and into the hallway.
“I’ll distract her.” He adds, sending a wink at Anika like a gunshot. He’s soon there, feeling the laughter rumble up from her belly as he pulls her out from beneath the table.
He’d like to keep hearing that laugh, until the end of days.
“Is this what our life’s like now? Trading pie for fifteen minutes alone?” Her hand looped around his neck and dragged him down until their lips meet. Laughter spilled from both their mouths, forming a river of soft noises, rumbling and going down their throats. Filling themselves with each other had been something they've grown quite good at. “How long d’you think we’ve got before he comes back? Think you can get your pants off fast enough?”
“Do you hate that?” He asks, fearing the real answer. It’s hasty, and hot — heated in the knowing that their time is dictated by a toddler on the loose. Reid’s smile is devilish. They only needed to be loosened at the zipper, before she’s soon getting her answer.
Hasty fingers worked on his clothing, dragging pants and briefs down to his knees, while letting him take care of hers. She gave no answer to his question, just pressed her lips to his hard and bruising. That'd shut you up.
She’s always got the most callous way to never have to answer his questions. But they’re in the worst position to argue when he lifts her up, and lowers her down, slowly. The clock is ticking, a little gremlin boy could scamper back at any moment.
Once they’re comfortable, it’s anything but slow.
Fifteen minutes seems like a lifetime, when the dining table creaks — under a steadying hand refusing to break momentum. Kisses that swallow moans, and a heartbeat hammering heavy enough for two. Reid’s mouth dips to the crevasse at her throat, and he feels his teeth graze her skin whilst they quickly work themselves to an end.
He bites, just as their hips stutter.
It’s electric — a fight they’ve stopped having, for the most part. A monstrous desire that they’ve —he, has learned to balance.
Then there’s a squeal, and Reid pulls his mouth away like a dart, eyes snap to the door. Dark gaze lands on Henry, staring at them from across the room. Fuck. A tongue tries to wipe away bloodstained lips — and he attempts to casual unbury himself from Anika, whilst hastily dragging their pants up. “Henry… little man, it’s okay. Alright? We were just playing —”
Playing what, she almost said, hide and fuck?
Reid’s broad frame threw a shadow across her chest, half hanging out of a shirt torn at the shoulder. Henry hadn’t seen the worst of it. Still perched on the edge of the table, Anika peeked over Reid’s shoulder at Henry’s scrunched up face.
A laugh burst out of her before she could stop it, slipping past lips pressed tight in a losing battle.
“Kid, close your eyes,” she said through a fit of chuckles.
Henry squeezed his eyes shut so hard his whole face turned red. Then he slapped his small hands over them, like he was hiding from the monster under his bed.
Fuck. It repeats in Reid’s head, like they’ve just committed a crime. In some ways, they had. Zipper and button done back up, and a sleeve that wipes frantically at a mouth still tasting of Anika. He looks at her, as if she might actually have an idea about how to play this down.
She didn't.
He realises quickly that she finds this a lot funnier than he does. Is it? Should he laugh, and pretend that they were just messing around, and Henry caught them in a game?
“You can open them now. It’s alright. We’ve finished.” He clears his throat and makes space between them again. Anika adjusted her shirt and hopped off the table, ruffling Henry’s blonde hair with a final, breathless laugh before leaving the two of them alone.
He’s plucking at straws, because he’s yet to know if the boy understands. “Did you eat all your pie?”
“I want to play this game too,” Henry said, voice wobbling on the brink of tears and eyes, big like two full moons.
Reid laughs, an edge of nervousness creeping in. But he crouches down, to be closer to Henry’s height. “It’s a game for the grown ups,” he said, reaching forward to bring him in for a hug.
Henry popped his lower lip out. The tremble of his mouth said to Reid that something bothered him. “Did we scare you?” Did I?
Just a little, he wanted to say. Instead, Henry's small arms wrapped around Reid's neck and they stood like that for a while. Henry hadn't been held by his mother in almost eight months. He hadn't been kissed on the cheek by his father longer. What he wanted most in the world was simple — arms that stayed. In Henry's head, that was what the game was. A game of warm hugs. His lips no longer quivered, they stretched into a big smile, full of small teeth. "No, Anika says I have to be brave."
“You are very brave.” Reid answered him, in a voice that suited making a childlike promise. Softly, he stroked Henry’s head. He could only imagine what the boy had seen. “But it’s okay to be scared sometimes soon.” The last thing he wanted was the boy to run into danger because Anika told him that bravery was how it had to be. “Me and Anika didn’t mean to scare you, okay?”
They pulled away just slightly, so Henry could look up at Reid. He nodded, then his face fell a little, chin down to his chest. "Are the bad people coming back?" he whispered.
The bad people.
Reid brushed long hair away from Henry’s eyes, and made sure that he was looking. “No. They’re gone. They aren’t coming back.” He wanted him to feel safe, and he didn't need Henry to have nightmares of what he and Anika got up to when he wasn't looking, either.
"Really?"
Henry didn't remember much of his time in the cold place (that was what he called it) but he knew what anywhere else was better. Even if this, here, wasn't home — it didn't feel cold.
“Yeah. Really.” Reid would never let people like that get hold of Henry. Whatever they planned with him, they would never get the chance to see it through. “It’s just us. Nobody else, okay?”
Anika might not like the way he said that.
Then, he ruffled the boy’s hair and stood back up. Encouraging him back towards his room, “You ready for bed, brushed your teeth?” He expected to hear what story he wanted tonight, and who he wanted to read it to him.
Henry liked to turn the pages for Anika, whilst she held it in one hand. And Reid liked to watch them, from the other side of the room, when they were like that.
"But I don’t wanna go to bed," Henry whined softly.
It was new, this thing where he bargained for a little more time. Most nights it ended the same way — Henry passed out on the couch, toy soldiers and cars with barely any wheels left scattered around him, the TV still blaring some ridiculous kids’ show. The last time Anika found him like that, there’d been a weird animated pickle man on screen.
"Well, you gotta," she said, standing in the doorway, "’Cause you’re a kid, kid."
Anika was leaning against the frame like a one handed bad character in a storybook, that showed up just to ruin the fun.
“Hey, little man, you’ve got time for a story. Just get tucked into bed, first.” Reid encouraged with a smile. Poking Henry’s side playfully, he kept the tone light. Even when he looked up at Anika and subtly indicated for her to say something helpful, too. Or offer to read the book.
Anika looked like he was expecting the world out of her. She'd turned into a professional bedtime story reader. Could she make actual use of that skill and start getting paid? Maybe she could read to old people at nursery homes. No. No way. "Come on, kid. I got a new one for you tonight." Her voice echoed in the hallway, as they walked away. "It's about this dog that gets taken away by these real bad people. There's other dogs too, and it's really cold."
There was a piece of burnt toast on a ceramic plate. Just like the one yesterday, and the day before that. Anika had genuinely thought she’d mastered breakfast by now. A sad looking egg kept the toast company. Droopy and yellow, like a cartoon sun drawn with a shitty marker. A tiny pinky jabbed the center of it, emerging coated in goo.
Henry's frown didn't escape her. "What, kid? It tastes fine."
Neither of them was convinced by that, but to the kid Anika looked terrifying enough, waving that spatula around, covered in smoke. So he scooped up the egg and shoved it into his mouth.
Cheeks puffed out, he mumbled: "It gwooped."
"It's supposed to goop." Anika lied.
Egg sticky finger pointed at the toast.
"It bwoken."
"It's toasted."
"It bwoken."
"It's not broken, kid." Apparently she'd turned into the kind of woman who argued with toddlers now. "It's just…dark."
"It cwispy."
No, it wasn’t crispy. It was pathetic and sad. She couldn’t even make toast that wasn’t the color of charcoal. Henry kept chipping away at the side that looked marginally less like death and put the crumbs in his mouth.
Fuck.
Damn kid had enough tragedy for a lifetime. He didn’t need to torture himself with burnt breakfast on top of it.
“You know what? You like cereal, kid?” she asked.
His eyes went big with stupid, childlike joy.
“Yeah, thought so.”
The door to the house creaks open. It echoes in the only living quarters on the Goldacre property. A lot that’d been up for sale for eight months, with no biters. Rural, with the nearest grocery store being thirty miles out. Isolated, surrounded by forests — the realtor that Reid had convinced to let them have it for a dollar, would likely make complications down the line.
But it’d worked out so far. Nobody bothered them out in buttfuck end of Texas. (Though, one could argue, every end was) It only meant that they had to drive into the city to get food, or people watch for the appropriate guardians to drop Henry off to. Kid seemed to get used to the drives, and Goldacre. Liked to run around in the fields outside, and scare the shit out of them when he disappeared into the woods to look for twigs.
Didn’t once mention witches, attics and whatever else the poor kid’s got in his nightmares.
Anika’s burnt toast makes him feel like he could be having some already dead stroke.
In his hand, there’s a paper bag with ramen bowls inside. He dumps it on the kitchen side, and smiles at the pair of cereal-toasters. “What's this then?”
They were still on rocky terms — silence followed them around most nights, so they wouldn't have to hear each other scream. Anika had stopped engaging in conversations longer than a sentence; yes, no, fuck you — the essentials.
Henry splashed milk onto the table. Two tiny hands drenched in milky white, poking around pink floating stars in a bowl.
"Bwoken toast."
"It's cereal." Anika corrected, deadpan.
The said broken toast, was on a plate — charcoal-like, and a disproportional amount of wheat stars waded in the white lake within the bowl. Reid can’t help but smile, even if Anika doesn’t say more than three words to him at any given time.
He loses her a little more everyday.
“Looks fun.” Mucky hands covered in breakfast foods, as Reid comes around to give Henry a plastic spoon. Soft, playful encouragement for the kid to eat instead of poke: “Scoop them up — you have to catch them before they float away, or sink, okay?”
When he looks back at Anika, the subtle shake of his head answers the question burning holes into the side of his head: has he found anyone last night to take the kid? She knows he hasn’t — she knows it long before he has to tell her. It's written in the smile on his lips, and the ruffling of a hand through the boys hair, watching him as he starts trying to chase the stars with his spoon. It’s in the laughter when Henry says something out of sorts, or something older than his years.
It'd been hard not to find the humour in Henry picking up on Anika’s obscene language. He’d shouted fucking shit at the top of his lungs running naked out of the bathtub a couple days before. Reid and Anika had argued about that, too.
To Anika, this was like handing over a shift at the diner. Here, take it now, I've had enough. She was more than happy to leave the two alone. Reid already looked like a dad — slipped his feet in the shoes and they fit. Unlike her, who looked like an ugly sister. With her heel sticking out, and toes shoved too deep.
Henry squeezed Reid's fingers with his own, wrapped tight around the silver, where the spoon wobbled in and out of the bowl. A mouthful of stars, dripping milk from the corners.
Hunger won over pride, and Anika was rummaging through the bags he'd brought home, pulling out a box filled to the brim with ramen, extra everything. Her stomach growled. "Fuck, that smells delicious."
"Fwuck."
Goddamitt, Henry.
“Don’t say that.” Reid mutters. No matter what disapproving look he shot the woman, she ignored it. Ramen wins. “Anika has a bad mouth, Henry.” It’s meant to be blunt enough for a child to understand, but it comes off like an insult.
The boy is left alone with the spoon, so Reid can get his own bowl, and make the kid stop asking why he doesn’t eat so much.
“How was your night?” He asks, before she’d stuff her mouth with noodles.
"Fine."
“Like every night then.” He asks. She deflects. It’s a habit they’ve developed. He doesn’t want the kid to pick up on it, but it’s hard to hide that they move around each other like they have sharp spikes jutting out of them, Reid would sooner impale himself on hers, than continue to try and avoid them. He picks at the box, with chopsticks, “If the noodles need warming — they’ve been in the truck a while…”
Now he's fishing for conversation, and it’s like pulling fucking teeth.
He spoke. She deflected. Like every other night.
Anika was sick of the fights. So it was silence now. She was punishing him for being the man that she loved — kind and merciful. It was infuriating. She was punishing him, because it was supposed to be just the two of them. Because she was supposed to be enough.
"They're fine." She said, with a mouth full of noodles.
Even if they weren’t, she wouldn’t do shit about it.
Fine. She doesn’t want to talk to him. He’ll talk to the kid — since that’s the topic of every silence, anyhow. “You sleep good, Henry?” he asks, parking himself in one of the breakfast chairs. Teasing then — “Did you wake Anika up early?”
"Yeah, kicked me in the face three times." Anika whined.
“Yeah, that’d do it.”
He figures they were up before dawn, for them to be up and making breakfast when Reid’s coming back. A part of him wants it to be because she’d missed him — but the rest of him knows she’s all sharp edges and hate, lately.
Least when they fought, they talked.
Henry looked between the two, and nodded, although he missed his bed. He missed his mother and father more, but he couldn't say anything without crying. His chin wobbled, and tears fell down onto the sea of soggy stars.
"You made him cry, Halstead. Good job."
Shit. “Alright, little man—” he reaches for the ramen bag, to find something sweet. “—I got brownies.” He doesn’t know what Henry has endured, so until he can verbalise it, they can show him there’s still good things in the world — even if he’s surrounded by dark.
Anika watched the exchange — brownies for silence. Kid took a big chunk of one, smearing chocolate all over his mouth. The only person who wasn't stuffing his mouth was Reid. But she assumed he's fed already. A finger nudged the other box closer to him, a truce of some kind, at least for tonight.
"You hungry?"
Maybe, for another kind of food.
A smile, and a nod. Reid picks at his own noodles, with subtle encouragement from Anika.
They ate in silence. Like they did yesterday morning. Anika hadn't slept in three nights, only managed to close her eyes in the early mornings when Reid had been back, and able to swipe babysitting shifts. Standing up, she took her boxes to the trash can. "If you're good here, I'll go lay down."
“Okay, baby.” He and Henry could find something to do this morning. Usually, it involved chasing him around the house, or building some badly executed tower of bricks with Henry’s architectural direction. Reid takes the smaller victory with Anika; she’s eaten; she's resting; she knows to argue with foul language when Henry’s sleeping. “I’ll have to remember that ramen joint, you liked it?”
She’d eaten two boxes.
Then left, without giving him any answer, but a door slammed shut.
He’d remember to go back there, if they get a chance to stay much longer.
Henry is covered in chocolate, and a few protested wipes of his mouth with a cloth has him whining with disapproval. “You’re going to get sticky fingers everywhere.” Reid laughs, cleaning the edges of his mouth, and fingers.
Kids should be playing outside, but it’d kill Reid to take him out there.
“Where’s your bricks, little man? We’ll build a big tower.” Like they did yesterday — and the day before. A routine that’s only ever going to be broken by real guardians who know what they’re doing. “Come on.” Reid lifts him off the stool and puts him on the floor where he runs to the basket of cheap toys they’ve got him. Anika did the clothes shopping, and it’s obvious in the mismatched navy pants that are too big, and the mustard yellow tee hanging down to his thighs.
He’ll grow into them, Reid had said, when Anika had told him she didn’t know what the fuck she was supposed to get. Eyes briefly glance to the closed doorway of the bedroom, where he knows she’s laying staring at the ceiling. A tightness in his chest that he’s done this to them.
Henry’s asleep on the couch, belly down, arm hanging off the cushions. Little, stunted snores echo in Reid’s ears as he leans beside the boy, covered in felt pens streaks.
In the moment of quiet, where there is no childish chuckles, nor inquisitive questions fired off that he can’t answer. Reid wonders what the silence would feel like again. Him, and Anika — at each others throats, breezing through towns and cities they can never stay in for long enough.
Then he pictures it with Henry laughing in the backseat.
And he knows he’s in trouble.
11:45. 21st October 2025.
Toys put away, and Henry moved to his own room, in his own bed. He’s quiet when he slips inside the shared one. Anika under the covers keeps the space warm. It cools in his presence.
Even in her sleep, she knew when he was near. When his arms reached for her, her body instinctively nestled into his — face to his chest, an arm limp across his torso. It was as if nothing had tried to wedge itself between them. There was no right or wrong, just them, still very much in love with each other.
A hum of acknowledgement into her hair, as fingers softly ghost along her spine. The silence is a peace they often forget could be. Either in tension, or filled with a child’s demands — the quiet of them here, is simplicity.
They laid like that for an hour, maybe more, tangled up in each other like vines. Until Anika stirred awake, dragged from slumber by how hot it was beneath the covers, where sweat beaded at her collar. We need to talk, she thought, felt it pressed up against her ribs every time they touched. But she couldn't bring herself to speak. Not when she feared the words might break whatever fragile peace they’d managed to stitch together this morning.
How long could they keep doing this?
They’d become ghosts brushing past each other in the hallway, haunting the same house but not really living in it.
He'd like to freeze this moment, and frame it in a new light where words come easy between them. Cocked smiles that light up the room like fireworks set ablaze. Their fingers are rivers, hers the warm springs, and his the artic tundra.
There’s no keeping this in, when Reid already knows the words are knotted on his tongue. A soft, whispery sound in the dark, “We’re doing good with him, aren’t we?”
How could she be sure? Anika barely survived herself, on her own, all those years — how was she supposed to know bow to take care of another being? It wasn't something she was taught. Not something she learned in school.
"He's not ours, Reid." A reminder she knew, no matter how softly spoken, would hurt him. He was already getting attached to the kid. "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."
It doesn't surprise him that she stabs a knife into his chest; the same arms that wrap lovingly around his chest as they do bleed it dry. “He’s not anyone else’s, either.” A thinly veiled truth, as he focuses on the fingers on her back. “It isn’t just you who doesn’t know, Booker. It’s us.” Reid expects he’ll only get hurt talking about this for too long. It’s anguish to allow himself the false hope that she might entertain his madness.
"You're doing a hell of a lot better, Halstead. You're— being a dad." And she didn't even know how to be a decent enough neighbor to this kid.
“I know I’m not his — I'll never be that. But what if we can give the kid a life, keep him safe?”
He knows it’s insane, and immoral.
But less so than abandoning a kid to a death sentence with those who would never know what he’s survived. Maybe there’s a better chance of some life, with two people who know how to face the monsters in the dark.
"You think we can keep him safe?" she asked.
Anika didn't know how safe this kid would be with people who hid their guns around the house, but something had been telling her for days that uncle Rainey was a lot less safe.
"Even if we do, Reid, I'm not— built up for this."
As though she has been made in a factory, assembled out of whatever scraps were left on the table. Whoever put her together forgot a few parts. There was nothing motherly about her.
It’s a low murmur, “You don’t give yourself enough credit.” They could take it one day at a time, figure it out — as he keeps promising.
"He doesn't like me."
A puff of a snort against her, “He likes Cap N’Crunch and waffles, of course he likes you.”
Anika wasn't sure if there was anything to like left in her.
"I burnt the fucking toast."
In the grand scheme of their fucking lives — “That’s not the end of the world."
She puffed out of her cheeks. "What am I supposed to do with it, Reid? Play fucking catch outside?"
He doesn't know what he's asking her.
And his silence — dragged on too long, is his mind picturing what it’s supposed to look like beyond tomorrow, and the next day, and in a year, two. When he’s old enough to realise that he’s endured more than any child should ever have to. It’s that conversation in an Oklahoma kitchen where Anika’s made her stance clear that she’s never wanted a role like the one that Reid’s asking her to step into.
It’s another way he can be selfish.
“No, I guess not.” Whispered in dejection. He can’t ask her anything more.
She couldn't play catch with him.
But Reid could. Reid wanted to play all sports known to mankind with this kid. If he wasn't chained by shadows at the wrists. Forced to live in the dark where no kid belonged.
The dark wasn't a playground. And he was no father, but in their silence, Anika realized something: "You look happy with him."
That didn’t change anything. He looked happy with her, too, he imagined. It didn’t always mean that there was good there.
They’ve been nasty things — can still be, if pushed to the limit.
“It doesn’t matter.”
"To me, it does." Because she lived to see that smile light up his face.
“What about what makes you happy?” His long dead dreams became long dead delirium, in the early hours. It’s not that kid in the other room that brings her joy, and he knows she’d fake a smile for him, because he’s opened up his lost desires and gave them a room. But he can’t do that for her.
Anika shook her head. "It's you. Seeing you happy, makes me happy, Reid. You know that."
It was why, she realized, the kid was still around.
“This is a little different to dinner dates, and barbecues, Anika.”
And didn't she know that? Anika didn't know shit about families, but what she knew was that, Reid had become her lover, her brother, her mother, the moon and stars.
"I know." She sighed.
He isn't sure she does. But when she's rested against him, tangled in blankets, he’s reminded that denying saying what they’re thinking has condemned them more than once — “You can't do this, just for me.”
Between the words, is exactly what he’s meaning. He’ll keep looking, if that’s what she needs from him. He’ll move past the grief bubbling in his ribs, escaping a locked chest.
Chin lifted, just enough to have gentle lips meet.
"I'll do anything for you."
He knows, and it’s terrifying.
Their lips brush. “Not if you’ll resent me for it.”
How could he even think that?
The man who saved her. She could never hate him.
A hand came up to rest against his cheek. "Don't be an idiot, Halstead."
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