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It hit him the moment he stepped through and back.

Jeremiah stumbled, his head pounding, and he fell to his knees. It was a foggy feeling, a haze that settled over his mind that came with a sharp pain behind his eyes. They watered while his his vision swam.

The detective blinked repeatedly, head raised to look up at the night sky, his back protesting the movement. The muscles suddenly felt as if they were seized and tensed, the pain he expected but the cold down his spine he did not.

The pain did not feel quite right either. Not like burns, not like what he expected. Jeremiah had no idea how long he stayed like that, on his knees on the ground, but as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone - his gun was back? - and saw the time and the date ...

He knew something had gone wrong.

"It's where I got dropped out at." From other ashdown. Jeremiah had managed to find a place to sit, not just the alley he had found himself in once he had stepped from other ashdown to Ashdown proper. His head was pounding and as he stood, a pained grunt escaping, he was pinching the bridge of his nose.

There was no response, not yet. Not until he opened the car door and sat down inside it. Reasonably, he knew time was passed. He had seen texts on his phone, saw the conversations, but the memories were not there. The only things he remembered - what few details - were directly related to the fliers. His face, the bruising faded to barely there green and yellow was another tell.

His last solid memory, the last solid chain of events, was Algie pulling him by his belt loop with the umbrella through the doorway in Heliodora's demesne.

"I can't remember, Alg," he said quietly, head tilted against the headrest, "where my car is."

Was this another cost of the deal? Or was this because he had ignored what his senses told him and looked?

Jeremiah tilted his head down, staring at Algie's hand as it covered his own and squeezed. They were in a car but still ...

His heart suddenly ached.

"Alg ..." he started, then stopped. Not the time, not the place for that talk. "I ..." A deep breath. "The fliers that were all around town. I took them to other ashdown. I expected a vision or something." Jeremiah frowned, hand turning over in Algie's and finding the other's pulse point. The red leather case sat empty in his lap.

His gun in his holster.

"I saw a thing instead but I can't ..." His free hand he raised up to rub at his head. "Can we talk about this where I have tea? And pain killers?" Never a good sign when he wanted to take something for the pain.

Maybe alcohol. He did still have that bottle of stuff he liked. It was not the best, but it went down quickly.

The other night.

Jeremiah could not remember that. His heart twisted again and his head ached as he tried to push at his memories only to find nothing there. It was a blank and all the text and notes could not fill them in.

He just found himself mutely nodding to what Algie said, not even realizing they were to his place until the car was parked. Jeremiah followed along, rubbing a hand along his head and then letting it fall. Algie getting his keys out to open the door made his heart ache again.

What had he forgotten? Had they talked?

"No, Alg, I'm not, I can't ..." he started, then stopped. Algie's hand was warmer than he remembered and something about just holding it eased some of the knot of uneasiness in him. Instead of answering he just tugged the other man to him and hugged him. Jeremiah was expecting pain, his face to be still tender but it was not as he pressed his face to the other man's hair.

Jeremiah's expressions were guarded things, the man preferring not others to be able to read him. He always had a hard time doing that around Algie (and sometimes it did not matter because even his neutral expression had too many tells for the other man). The way his eyes flickered rapidly all over Algie's face was one of those tells. Taking it in, watching him, not sure what this was about or what was going to happen.

They did not get this close normally.

His heart hammered in his chest with the other man looking him over like that, pulse fluttering wildly. It was a surprised soft exhale of breath that was breathed into the kiss, as if it was the first time they had done this. Jeremiah's fingers curled tightly into Algie's clothing, face tilted towards that warm hand

It was still easing the knot in his stomach, smoothing out his frazzled nerves.

He broke the kiss with another soft noise, hand coming up to cover Algie's and then sliding so that his fingers were closed loosely around the pulse point in his wrist. "We talked, didn't we?" he whispered quietly. "About us."

The kiss definitely short-circuited his explaining.

Not letting Algie go now. The hand that was curled in the fabric of the other man's clothing curled tighter.

Jeremiah's hand was still curled into the fabric of Algie's clothing, still holding onto his hand. The warmth of one against his cheek seemed to fade as red flooded the other's cheeks. "Don't," he spoke quietly, "please."

Don't take the next step away from him.

Hope burned brightly, made the chill down his spine not seem so bad even if it did nothing for pain.

His head ached more, his heart starting to ache again.

The idea that he forgot they had talked, that there was a them, was enough to make some of this better. That he had finally done something that was right. Especially in the aftermath of so much wrong. Not that it lasted long, the memory loss was horrible.

Upsetting.

The detective was back to the place he had been before he came back. A sense of wonder, a sense of fear, a sense that he deserved some level of the other laying into him. Yet Algie was not and instead there was a them and he wanted it desperately.

"The last solid chain of events I remember is you pulling me by my belt loops in Helidora's demesne through the way back." He pressed his face to Algie's hair, hiding it. The next set of words were muffled but hearable. "After that it's a blank aside from what I did with the fliers. I can't remember anything but them and what happened when I went to other ashdown with them."

Jeremiah nodded, a ragged sigh escaping as lips brushed his cheek, his fingers squeezing Algie's once they were tangled together. It was reassuring even with the uncertainty of missing so much of his memory. The warmth of the other man's hand was not normal, Algie had never rubbed his hands together like he usually did to make them warm ...

This was a different kind of warm.

Not the place right now but later ...

With one last squeeze to Algie's hand, he let the other go to make tea but not before turned his head to catch the other in a kiss. Something soft and short (because it was new all over again) before he started talking.

"The fliers," the ones that read IT WALKS, "I took them to other ashdown," not that he could remember how he got there, "to see if they would give any answers." This was going to make Algie mad but the other was supposed to be mad according to his memory but he wasn't ...

"I met someone instead, Alg. When I touched the fliers there, something found me."

"It came up behind me," Jeremiah shivered, even under his layers of clothing. When he raised his hand up to rub at his neck again it came away bloody. The scratch was there, his collar stained, and he stared at it.

It was hard to forget.

Was it part of the deal?

"Talked to me like it knew me." Like it was his father, like they were old acquaintances. There were other things he knew he was missing but they could not be found. "I couldn't move, Alg. I was frozen in place. It wasn't fear it was ..." He took an unsteady breath, shivered again. "Danger. I can't explain it any way other than that."