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There are some days when Jeremiah does not want to get out of bed. They are usually after those intense, trying times when other ashdown makes it’s presence known but they also come, he had found out, when it rained heavily for a long period of time. His back aches, as if the pain of the injury was fresh again, and no amount of stretching or rolling his shoulders makes it go away.

The chill just makes it worse.

He wants to stay in bed but he usually has to get out of it because there is work to be done. Detective Lieutenant Jeremiah Mercer has no time for this.

Sometimes the ache, the pain wins. He cannot bring himself to get out of bed, instead curling himself around Algie and laying on him. His lover’s warm, soothing hands on his back help. It’s something that he is grateful for because even if it does not ease the pain, it makes it tolerable.

Fingers slide through his hair on those days when he does not want to get up, a kiss pressed to his forehead, and breakfast is served in bed. It gives him the drive to actually move, to start the day, but he still never moves far away from the bedroom. Instead he lingers in it, reading tablet in hand and sitting in the bedroom bay window while Algie reads from a book or works on his laptop.

Eventually the pain recedes, reaches something more manageable, and he feels a little bit more himself, less like this controls him.

When evening comes he is usually able to find it in himself to go downstairs and cook. It is the least he can do when Algie looks after him so.

His nightmares are terrible, far more frequent of late. In the dark of the night, when he wakes Algie because of his hoarse screams, he whispers his darkest fears.

They will all die because he failed.

At some point he is going to have to check back in with June, when things have calmed down more, and make room on his schedule. There are answers, he is sure of it, in the old Ashdown police records.

Whether or not he is prepared for them, he is not sure.

Jeremiah certainly was not ready to run into himself in other ashdown.

Jeremiah’s handshake, for some, has always been odd. It started when he was a teenager and continued long into adulthood. Most did not experience it but those that were important to him, those that held meaning, had run into it.

His pointer and middle finger would stretch out, once a hand was taken into a solid grip, and rest against the pulse point of the wrist briefly. Some it lingered to check for the pulse itself, a quiet reassurance of life and the fact they were there.

He had not expected to run into her after dying in the mansion. To find her there young and looking as she did before leaving.

Never mind that she did not seem to have any knowledge of-

Jeremiah is not so sure how she could have gotten pulled in but she clearly has and it is because of who she is, who she is sibling to, that he wants to help her.

Even if there are warning bells in the back of his mind.

Jeremiah stared at Aleksy’s house and let out a breath. A text was sent before he got out of his car. This particular Spektor twin had never liked the police, never even bothered seeming as if he did. It had taken some time for them to reach something of a camaraderie but they had. If anything ever came up and Aleksy needed to be interviewed or be checked on, it was Jeremiah who would handle it.

His mind thought back to the texts, of Aleksy saying he saw her. (The young man’s fear of impending death in the back of his mind, a quiet whisper that echoed with his own dark fears.)

Then further back to the night of Blackfriars to when he had carried her and put her in his car. To make sure she would be alright, to maybe talk with her. Instead he had, once everything was handled and he was tended to, found thanks written on his windshield in lipstick and an empty vehicle.

They’ll find it on the beach and he’ll be dead. He’s been dead. He’ll be dead. He was a baby and he’s dead because of you.

He knocked on the door but there is no answer. Jeremiah goes to turn, to get back to his car and go by the flower shop, when he heard Laika’s whine and subtle scratching at the door. It turned into a bark that escalates louder quickly.

Something twisted uncomfortably in his stomach.

His hand goes to the doorknob, turning it and finding it unlocked. Laika is jumping at him almost immediately and he has to reach down to calm her with a couple pats to the head and a scratch behind the ears. Not that it works, she’s still barking and going around in a circle before walking a few steps further in.

“Aleksy?” he called out, following Laika as she dashes deeper in. The more he walks in, the more he noticed small out of place things. A couple mirrors have been turned around and things have been knocked over and-

Warning bells are resounding in his head that have nothing to do with his ability to sense danger.

It is in the bathroom where he confirms something is wrong. The mirror is cracked, a smear of blood on it that had dripped downward and was now dry.

Aleksy Spektor was nowhere to be seen.