He wasn’t allowed inside the house.

Normally, with anyone else that wouldn’t have kept him from going in, it would have given him all the more reason to scale the guttering and climb in an upstairs window, it would give him reason to wait and watch and focus on absolutely nothing else but getting into the house. But America was different, he knew that if he pushed the reasonable boundaries she had set that she would make them even less reasonable and make everything worse for him in general by involving other people in his actions. She had been lenient in a sense, permitting him near the house at all and he felt that this was because in some way they understood one another, if she set the boundaries beyond what his mind permitted he would not abide by the rules, being separated from her by walls and glass was torment, being separated from her by some other invisible boundary was not an option at all.

So he waited. It was getting dark outside, the sun already dipping below the horizon, long lost to him behind the level of distant trees. It was peaceful in the way only the island could be, void of the distant movements of insects darting through the twilight haze or of the sound of birds not yet settled down to roost. It was uncannily quiet in the way it always was here, an oppressive silence which always made the world outside seem excessive and fraudulent when you returned to it. He had taken a break in Greece to simply listen to the sounds of night again, just to remind himself how it sounded (and get bitten by a mosquito in the process).

Here however was home, as much as it was possible for someone like Lawrence to have a home. America was here and therefore it was the centre of his universe, trapped in her orbit like a stray planet caught in the thrall of the sun. It didn’t matter if he objected, if logically it would be better if he was free, he didn’t have a say in any of it. All that mattered was her and he’d do almost anything just to be permitted to sit by her, to be close enough to be able to inhale her scent or see the unique constellations of her skin. The times he had been with her lingered faintly like haze in his mind, wishing that he could reach out and seize them, pull them close and vivid again to relive the time before she had realised what he was, when she’d indulged him in the blush of naivety. He could not, they remained far off and tantalising, mere mocking echoes of a failure which had left him where he was today, reduced to this, reduced to humiliation she mocked him over time and time again.

When it got dark properly, he made his way to his target, since she’d returned going through the trash in the way he used to, treating anything he found of Dawson’s with utmost disdain and anything close to her with delight and satisfaction. Tonight fate had decided to smile on him and nestled with the other refuse was hair. Her hair, unmistakably so, vivid and rich and when he held it up to breathe it in smelling like her too. His senses had grown over-sensitive to some things in recent months, perfumes more offensive and chemicals more prominent, but garbage didn’t smell bad any longer and people, well people smelled like the olfactory impression of a rainbow. America most of all was the scent he sought and having it in his hand was a prize he could not have hoped for.

With reverent care each strand was stowed away for later and the bin once again set back to its former position. But regardless of this victory he could not leave, if anything the scent, the lingering impression of her held him even more fastly in place, listening by the crack of the window for so much as a muffled echo of voice or laughter. She was with Dawson, and that was not unexpected, he was everything safe and everything that most people considered as good, it was not something he could prevent or control, nor was he sure that he would. Taym had been just another nuisance, background static against the backdrop of her, contorting and twisting her but never managing to extinguish the value she held. Dawson had taken something precious from him and he resented that much, robbed of a figure who had let him close and who perhaps he had placed too much hope in but even then, it was not truly personal. He wasn’t sure anything could be personal when everyone was just various levels of nuisance like buzzing flies it would be nice if one could swat but did not have the energy to do so.

She held him at arm’s length now because he had threatened Mimsy and it was too much effort and too much wasted time to tell her that he had only been lashing out to ease the void that she had left in him, that she always left in him. She didn’t like excuses, so he didn’t give her them. If she wanted to think he had done it because he was simply malicious that was acceptable. He was malicious too.

Melvin would be wondering where he was, so he called him, the whole time talking as if he was in the labs, as if he was working late, as if he was fine and would be home soon, asking about Rodney, telling him he’d be working late, lying and lying and lying.

He hung up at the end of the call and leaned his head back against the side of the little house that was as impenetrable as a barricade.

He wasn’t allowed inside the house.