chapter forty-six.

Val

It's been half an hour since Noah bailed Simon out of the police's custody, twenty minutes since Noah dragged him to the car and I realized how—how tired Simon looked, fifteen minutes since we stopped on the side of the road, watching Simon's whole body shake furiously as he switched from skin to skin, none of us able to do much other than pray.

The original plan was to take Simon back to his apartment; I'd talk to him there, I thought, I'd apologize and tell him I was overreacting and then maybe we could start over. Larry, however, sees a massive Denny's sign looming above the freeway and orders Noah to stop the car.

Considering it's barely past six o'clock in the morning, I'm surprised when we enter the dilapidated, grease-scented breakfast joint and it's fairly populated. And it's not the pleasant sort of surprise.

Simon notices the amount of people and immediately shrinks. I want to reach out and take his hand and lace our fingers together. Half to convince him that everything's going to be fine. Half to convince myself.

But something stops me. Something keeps stopping me.

A random Rockabilly-esque song plays over the speakers as Noah peruses the menu and the rest of us pretend to peruse the menu. Noah gets black coffee and eggs Benedict. Larry orders a chocolate pancake stack. I get waffles (Simon gives me a weird look) and Simon gets nothing until Noah makes him drink coffee, at least.

The food isn't here yet, but God, it couldn't come any slower. As long as I've been thinking it over, rehearsing it all in my head, I still have no idea what to say to Simon. Doubly so now, after what I just watched. I knew what was going on, didn't I? I knew. And I didn't say anything.

The window beside me presents a fogged view of the city outside; when I press my hand against it, it's cold enough to make me jolt. I close my eyes, listen to the whir of Noah's spoon as he stirs cream into his coffee, the hiss of something cooking back in the kitchen, the warble of voices around the diner. I want to look at Simon, but I don't. I want to talk to Simon, but I don't. More than anything I want one of us, any of us, to say something—but I don't want it to be me.

"You know," announces Noah, suddenly, his voice singsongy, "I believe the last time I was in a Denny's I was hungover—"

"Shut up," Larry says, and jumps up from the table. All three of us look at him, concerned, but he just gestures silently for the door. "Noah? Valerie? Can we talk?"

I stand, carefully. I don't want to go outside, partially because it's absolutely abysmal outside, partially because I'm not sure I want to leave Simon alone yet. "Simon?" I say, and I realize it's the first time we've spoken to each other since the Hotel Room Incident but I don't want to think about it. "Are you gonna be okay—?"

He waves me off, slumping his head into his hands. His voice sounds hollow, a synthetic copy of the one I know, a remake of Simon St. John's voice that mimics it well enough but lacks any true emotion. "I'm okay," he says, and when he says it again, I know he's not even really talking to us. "I'm okay."

Noah and I exchange a questioning look, but by then Larry's bulky form has already disappeared out the restaurant's front exit.

We stand in somewhat of a huddle underneath the awning, trying to avoid the slow trails of sleet falling from the grayish-black clouds. Noah flips his collar up like a vampire, until Larry notices and scowls at him, flipping it back down again.

Noah starts, "But my neck is col—"

Larry unravels his scarf and tosses is at his cousin. Then he folds his arms, leaning against the wall beside the door. For the past hour or so, I've been looking at this older, scruffier relative of Simon's, trying to pick out any resemblance—however, I've yet to find anything. Simon's narrow, fair-skinned, with a long nose and round eyes and of course, that irreplaceable galaxy of burgundy freckles. Larry's face, though, is freckleless. Sunkissed. Lines splinter from the edges of his eyes and mouth like he's been frowning the entire forty or so years he's been alive. Larry's shoulders are broad and his stomach protrudes a bit noticeably from underneath his shirt and his hair is thick and wavy and yellow-gray.

I'm beginning to think there's a reason I can't see the resemblance, and the reason is it doesn't exist.

A woman and her two children bustle out of the Denny's; Larry moves aside to let them pass.

He looks at us gravely.

"I think you already know," he says, eyeing Noah and me in turn, "but Simon is dying."

I let out a long breath. Guessing, or at least being pretty sure, is one thing. Being told straight to my face is another.

Noah's face has gone ghost-pale. He almost looks sicker than Simon. "I mean, are you positive?"

"Noah," Larry says, and I hear it, the pity in his voice, how sorry he is that he has to say this at all. "When I said I've seen this before, it's because I have. It's because it happened to me."

The vague words are beginning to distress me. "Because what happened to you?"

Larry's eyelids hover over his eyes; he sighs, pulling his jacket closer around himself. "I shapeshifted a lot when I was working for the Feds. Practically everyday, I had a different face. When you do it that much, it's like—like a phone battery, maybe. You use it a lot and it's not as efficient. It's the same thing with shapeshifting."

A lightbulb has gone on behind Noah's eyes. "So," he begins, bringing Larry's scarf away from his mouth, "you're saying it stopped...working?"

"Sort of. It stopped working in ways I could control," Larry explains. He rubs his eyes. "My body couldn't handle it, I guess. All this constant changing. I started losing control more regularly. I was always in pain. I started having organ failures, my bones started to break, even my short-term memory was bad, all of a sudden."

The front door opens again, and a burst of heated air floods out into the cold. I turn my whole body towards it, my arms still huddled close to my chest. "Your body started to degenerate."

Larry looks at me for a moment, then nods, carefully. "Exactly."

Noah lifts his pinky to his mouth, nibbling at his nail. When he realizes what he's doing he stops and looks up. "Then if Simon keeps going like this..."

None of us finish the sentence, because there's no need to. It echoes in our minds anyway, ceaseless and loud: He'll die.

I let my eyes travel back towards the booth the three of us left behind, where Simon, thankfully, remains. He's still half-slumped over the table, his head held up by a hand as he stares endlessly into his coffee mug. The skin beneath his eyes is a pale purple, and if I look close enough, I can still see his hand shaking as he tries to lift it. He looks like a suffering drug addict, dying for a fix. He doesn't look like the boy who took me to a bakery at one in the morning and bought me pastries and kissed me like he loved me before I knew he did.

It hits me like an arrow to the chest. I don't want him to die. I have no idea what I would do if he died.

Noah adds, "But you're alive, obviously. So Simon can live, too. So how did you live through it? How did you..."

Noah notices the dejected look on Larry's face and stops talking. Silence settles between us, until finally Larry sighs and mutters a curse word under his breath.

"There's a way to save him, but I know for a fact," Larry answers. "I know for a fact Simon would never agree to it."

"Well," I cut in, and both of the St. Johns look up at me helplessly, "do we have any other option?"

Larry meets my gaze. "No," he says. "We don't."

I leave Larry and Noah outside and retreat into the warmer, albeit louder restaurant. I notice Simon's eyes flick up momentarily as I approach the table, but then he looks away again, endlessly stirring his coffee. He hasn't even added cream or sugar to it, I don't think. He's just sitting there, twirling the spoon around.

I slide in across from him, tenting my hands and resting them on the table. Then I realize that I probably look dumb, so I crack my knuckles and rest my hands in my lap instead. Simon still seems intent on studying his coffee instead of me.

I remember the beach. The hot sand, the waves rushing to greet my bare toes, the sun glowing from the blue skies. Most of all I remember the lingering taste of sea salt on Simon's skin as I kissed every freckle on his body.

I try to remember, really, how we got from there to here. The difference between not talking because we didn't need to and not talking because we didn't know what to say.

Simon exhales. When he speaks, his voice sounds gruff, throaty, like he's losing his voice. "Are you going to say something," he says, "or are you just going to sit there and stare at me?"

I pretend I'm not hurt. "I've been trying to say something to you all day. The trick is finding something to say that you'll actually bother listening to."

"You say that like I'm the one with listening problems."

"Simon," I snap. "I don't wanna fight. I'm done fighting."

One of Simon's eyebrows lifts, viciously. Though I have seen Oliver mad before, Kenzo mad before, etcetera, I have never seen Simon mad before. I'm trying to decide, in the face of everything I know now that I didn't then, if that makes any difference. "It's not that easy," he grumbles. "It's not that easy."

"You want me to say I'm sorry first? Fine. I'm sorry, Simon. I really am. I was just really worried about Charlie and Jo and frankly I was worried about you, too, so maybe I overreacted a little," I say, and I don't know why, but it nearly feels like I'm just giving up. The waitress swings by again, delivering my waffles and Noah's eggs Benedict and Larry's chocolate pancake stack. The air smells like syrup and toasted bread. "I don't like being lied to, so I guess I just didn't let myself think that you had a good reason for lying in the first place."

Simon is eyeing Larry's pancakes ravenously, so ravenously that I'm not even sure he heard me. Sighing, I wave my hand to flag down the nearest waitress and ask for an extra plate. When it arrives, I slide one of Larry's pancakes onto it and shove it in Simon's direction.

Simon glances behind me, likely towards the front entrance, where Larry and Noah still stand, conversing. "But—"

"I won't tell."

"It's taboo to eat off someone's plate when they haven't taken a bite first."

"Taboo, my ass. Eat the damn pancake, St. John. You need it more than he does."

He eats the pancake. I've never seen someone look so depressed while eating a pancake before. As he's dousing his plate in syrup, he lifts his head from his hand and says, "Apology warily accepted."

"Warily?"

"I don't know," Simon elaborates. "I know that I lied. I know that I was wrong, and I'm sorry for manipulating you like that. But for a second there I actually thought you were going to leave and never come back. Is that how it's going to be every time I slip up? How close are you to the edge? How many times do I mess up a little before it's just—over for you?"

He says for you but he doesn't mean for you. He means for us.

I see it in his face, how he's second-guessing all the years he's known me, all the time he spent convincing himself that the only reason he kept running into me and getting to know me over and over again was because I had to be worth it. I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt, a little. To watch him question if all that time was wasted.

I don't want to be a waste of time. I don't want Simon to be a waste of time.

"I was upset. It was temporary. I'm no longer upset," I say. "Or at least not as upset as I was."

"Oh. Great."

"What I mean, Simon, is that you and I are both human. This means that as long as we're together we're going to screw each other over sometimes. I may get mad. I may yell at you and storm off and leave you alone for a while. But I—" I exhale. Even as I stepped out of the hotel and hailed a taxi immediately to the airport, it was there. Even as I sat at the gate, awaiting my flight, it was there. Even when I got home and collapsed in Jo's arms and a plate of cheesy pasta, it was still there. It's intrinsic by now—my love for him. It's an irreplaceable part of me and I get the feeling it's not going to budge any time soon. "I could never hate you. I'm not capable of that. I love you so much, I guess there's just not any room in me for hate."

Simon's face is blank for a second. Then, he smiles brilliantly. Oh, how I missed that smile. "I thought I was the poetic one."

I shrug. "I learned from the best."

"Val," Simon says. I shudder because it's the first time he's said my name since we fought. Back then, his voice was broken. My name was his final plea. Now, it is a wish. The X on a treasure map. He says it like he's been searching for it his whole life and now, now he's finally found it. Relief. That is how he says it. Home. "I'm sorry."

"Apology very accepted."

"Is that grammatically correct?"

"Don't know. Don't care."

Simon laughs. As tired as he is, as fragile as his body has grown, as much as he's struggling to even keep his head up—while trying to pretend like he isn't—his laugh is the same. It is breathless, effortless, flawless. I could listen to it on repeat for years.

The laugh on his lips evaporates, however, when the bell above the front door dings, signifying Larry and Noah's reentry. Larry's face is utterly grave. Noah's is trying to act like it isn't utterly grave.

"Ginger Snap?" Noah says as he crawls clumsily over Simon instead of waiting for him to scoot over. "We're gonna...we're gonna go home."

I look at Larry and Noah sharply, but neither one of them pay attention to me.

"Home?" Simon repeats. Unease floods back into his face from wherever it was hiding. "Like, Marwick? Why?"

"See the folks," Noah says. "Calm you down. Stuff like that."

My heart has began an arrhythmic thrum in my chest. I've never seen Simon's house before, or met any of his family besides the two guys I'm sitting with now. As often as we crossed paths in the past, I realize now that none of his versions of himself ever invited me over. It sort of makes sense now.

Nevertheless, my excitement isn't enough to allay my concern.

Simon says, his exhaustion oozing into his voice, "That's assuming I make it there."

Noah chokes on his English muffin. "Well, Simon—"

"I think it's a great idea," I say, trying to lighten the mood. All three of the St. Johns' eyes zip to me. "I've never met your folks, Simon. Don't you think it's time they met the girl you spent a majority of your childhood obsessing over?"

Simon groans. "I don't think obsess is the right word for it."

Noah glances between me and his brother, seems to realize we're back on speaking terms, and laughs, albeit a bit uncomfortably.

Larry grins, too, but as he picks up his fork he seems to realize something and his expression sours.

"Hey," he says. "Who the hell ate one of my pancakes?"