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 Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2026 3:30 pm
It was not his proudest thought, that he'd debated ghosting her.
It was even less proud that he'd been moved to the contrary less by honorable impulse and more by the fact that his fridge was empty and would remain so for the foreseeable future.
But he took some wretched comfort in the knowledge that while he had not had the best motives in acting against his worst ideas, there was a relief in the fact that he had. He had not known how much he was dreading a guilty conscience until he had delivered himself from it. He had nothing to say to her. He had spent a lot of time in the last few days rehearsing, over and over, what words might possibly procure him a pardon, or at least a tendency to look at him with less open disgust. And he had come up emptyhanded, and now waited, early and miserable, for a conversation he hadn't been able to plan out in advance and that might wander away from him to God-knows-where.
The quitting was still sticking. The omnipresent lollipop stick was being rolled around between his teeth - one of them in the back a white-hot knife of pain when it was indiscriminately touched; he would have to find some way to get that thing pulled in the next few weeks since he'd probably waited far too long to save it - and he was pretending that he did not even now desperately want the cigarette that it was a poor substitute for. It was as well that he spent a lot of time pretending to be something he wasn't.
He was, even now, pretending that he was unruffled and cheerful and doing nothing more than enjoying the clear, cold night air - less dressed up than the last couple of times their paths had crossed but not less conscientiously well-dressed in more casual clothes, his nails freshly done, his hair behaving itself, the fit of his coat immaculate and the line of his leg making him look at least two inches taller than he was. He looked comfortable, easy, even warm when offering a smiling wave to a passerby walking her tiny dog. He looked like what he wasn't, and - not being on the heels of a party - he looked as sober as he unfortunately was.
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2026 6:42 pm
She was honestly dreading it—meeting him again to deliver the promised cake. It was a decently sized cake, made with as much care as any other cake she would have made for anyone else or for any other occasion. Not that she was looking to get any compliments from him, but she wasn't going to let her thoughts or feelings about the man ruin her reputation when it came to the things she created in the kitchen, after all. It had come together rather nicely, actually, between the actual cake, the candied oranges and other small bits of decoration, and the little bit of piping involved. Admittedly, while the design looked decent enough, all she could think of as far as congratulatory or encouraging words were, "Go you!" so that was all that she put. After she finished, she wondered if it might have been better off left blank, but having already put in the work she popped the cake into the refrigerator and left it alone. "He'd better like it," she grumbled to no one in particular as she rounded the corner. Lulu barked in response to her voice, and she glanced down and smiled at the pup. She was kitted out in her normal winterwear—a light jacket, handmade knit beanie, and booties—and walking obediently at heel, her lead just a little slack as a result.. "Having fun?" she asked her, to which Lulu barked again in response and trotted along a little bit faster. Mel sighed, happy that at least one of them was thoroughly enjoying herself, and looked up to see that Kay was already standing and waiting for her in the agreed upon spot, dress as well as he usually seemed to be, though in a more casual sort of way this time. The usual annoyance at acknowledging anything good about him raked at the back of her mind, and she sighed again as she closed the distance. "Hey," she greeted, managing to sound almost friendly. She checked her watch. "Sor– Uh. Did I get the time wrong?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2026 7:08 pm
"No," he said. "I just hate being late." This was not strictly true, but it was truer than most of his lies. He said it with his usual easy smile, dropping down to a squat to put out one hand to the dog. He was not exactly on the best of terms with dogs, but he at least did not despise them as he did cats and could give them a wary, respectful show of friendliness, which he now dutifully did. "The famous Lulu, I presume. Very fashionable," he said approvingly, although it was addressed more to Lulu directly than to Mel. "Petitcru could take some sartorial advice from you, you know. She doesn't need rhinestones on every sweater, I think." He lifted his eyes, then, to the other end of Lulu's leash, and for a visible moment he hesitated. One of his hands was busy making friendly overtures to the dog, but the other, sure enough, smoothed down the corner of his mustache as if he could in some way summon the right thing to say by doing so. "I'm worried if I go ahead and say thank you now I won't know what to say afterwards," he said, with unwonted frankness. And it came, of course, with the smile, but the smile sat a little less easily on his face this time.
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2026 7:59 pm
She had softened, unintentionally, when she watched him greet Lulu in a perfectly respectable way, and frowned upon realizing it. Lulu, who always had a bigger heart than her anyway, leaned slightly forward and sniffed curiously at the hand extended to her in greeting. Her tail twitched, and then after a few moments she sneezed and sank back into a sitting position while shaking her head. Her tail was swishing lightly behind her though, which Mel took as a sign that she didn't mind Kay all that much. Definitely a bigger heart than her, the young woman thought as she slipped the hand holding Lulu's lead into her jacket pocket for something to do. "I'm sure Elaine would disagree," she replied, though going through the various sweaters she'd seen Petitcru in despite herself. Sure enough, she could only remember seeing ones with rhinestones on them, and she tucked away the sudden urge to ask Elaine if that was actually the case. She thought Petitcru looked adorable in whatever Elaine put her in, though, bejeweled or otherwise, so it was more sating a curiosity than questioning taste. Mel settled her eyes on Kay where he was currently crouched still in front of Lulu, and considered his words for a long moment. It sounded far more genuine than anything else she'd ever heard coming from him since he admitted to the lies. Granted, she also wasn't feeling any which way about him just then, besides maybe mildly annoyed—but that was starting to feel now like something of a tolerable constant when it came to him. "You could start with maybe an invite to some place warmer," she offered, her tone a bit dull but civil all the same, and she nodded toward the cafe she'd gone to last time. "Maybe under the pretense of a little chat before I hand this over to you. I'm actually kind of curious how you managed it." She paused at that, suddenly catching herself in a very honest and hating that she was genuinely curious as to how he managed to convince the Code (or whoever or whatever makes this decision—the universe, maybe?) that he should be granted more power. "I could go for a cup of tea right now, and Lulu could probably take a break from the cold."
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2026 8:13 pm
His mind moved very swiftly over several lines of math: the metaphorical kind of why the ******** she was extending him an olive branch all of a sudden, and the literal one of whether he could swing buying her even a cup of coffee without feeling the pinch later, since there wasn't any convenient way to dine-and-dash a cafe. Quitting smoking saved you a lot of money. And if he'd been sitting on that little nest egg because he was planning on blowing it on a carton of menthols in two days' time, he'd been neatly avoiding the thought til right this second. He struggled inwardly against the vision of the future Kay that would be so ******** relieved to fall back into comfortable failure and resume the ritual of stepping outside every hour to smoke in the cold, and managed, after a brief second, to triumph. "Of course," he said, straightening almost immediately, his silent struggle having come and gone in an instant. But he moved with uncertainty, preoccupied and troubled. He assumed the suggested script, however, amiably playing the part as if it had been his idea. "We should get out of the cold. Let me buy you a drink." And then: "I don't know how I managed it, though, so it's gonna be a short conversation." And he meant what she did - what might be called his promotion - but a fleeting and hungry thought of Lete was the only brief interruption in his being more baffled, instead, by how he'd managed to get this much civility out of her.
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2026 8:52 pm
"Oh." She had been just about to nod her head to his invitation when he more or less answered her question. Less, really, but who among them actually understood how any of this was determined? So, rather than start walking towards the indicated cafe, she stayed rooted to her spot, making split-second considerations before landing on a decision. "Well, I did say 'pretense,' didn't I?" She looked down at the box in her hand as she spoke, and tapped her finger lightly on the handle. "Works for me, though. We can keep it a short conversation, like you said it would be anyway, and we wouldn't waste any extra time or money on drinks and pretending like we like each other." Which suited her just fine. She could grab tea at any other cafe on the way back, and if she thought Lulu could really use some time out of the snow she could wrap her own jacket around the pup while she carried her the rest of the way home. And then she offered him the box. "Chocolate orange cake, as promised. And no, I didn't half-a** it just because it's for you."
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2026 9:10 pm
He barely even registered any commentary about the cake that he was here solely to collect. He was instead looking at her with unvarnished astonishment at her abrupt change of tune. And then he laughed. Maybe there was a little bit of despair in it, but it had the grudging quality of being sincere when he'd rather it not have been. And he still did not take the cake. "That was really ******** funny," he said. "Did you set me up for that on purpose? Because that was so ******** funny I can't even pretend like I'm upset about it." It was sincere - as sincere as anything he'd ever said or done in front of her besides, maybe, running headlong into unknown danger. For a moment it brought that strangely-boyish light back to his smile, as he'd had for her when someone he was pretending to be was asking her questions across a dinner table, trying and failing to get her to ramble about her job. But it was brief, faltering, and what was boyish went strangely childish, as he finally reached out and took the offered box. Perhaps he did this to avoid her angrily smashing it to the ground seconds later, given his next words. "Can we just - I want to just start over," he said impulsively. "Not because - I'm not trying to get in your pants or whatever. I never was, you know? - I mean don't get me wrong you're hot as hell but that's not - like that would have been ******** up, right? So ******** up. That first day I was kind of dreading maybe having to deflect you going in for - anyway - not even because Elaine uninvited me from her birthday party and the FOMO was, like, physically painful. I mean yes to that too," he amended desperately, "but that's not why. You don't have to pretend to like me. I'm not pretending to like you, by the way, but I guess you don't have any reason to believe that. You don't have to like me. But please tell me what I need to do to make you hate me less, at least. I understand why apologizing didn't work, I just - what will? Please," he added desperately, aware that maybe Mel was less susceptible to this word in a man's mouth than Elaine always was.
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2026 10:01 pm
Mel's expression settled into one of irritation at the sound of his laughter, though in stark contrast to that Lulu seemed to take to the energy and was on her feet again, tail wagging and looking happily, almost expectantly, up at Kay as though waiting him to say something fun and exciting to her, or perhaps even give her some kind of treat. "No," she said stiffly, and had, at that point, half a mind to drop the cake, turn around, and leave. He took it before she could, though, so she instead slipped her now free hand into her pocket and opened her mouth to then say goodbye when he cut her off with what proceeded to be something of a ramble. She was a little too surprised by the first line of it to cut him off in turn, and so wound up listening to the whole thing with her mouth slightly open for the first half, and then pressed into something of a thin line for the second half. It took her a minute to gather her thoughts even after he finished speaking, and by then Lulu had again taken a seat though was still looking expectantly up at the both of them now. "No," she repeated the word, her tone even despite the fact that she was boring her blue eyes into his gray ones now. "We can't 'just start over' because what you did isn't something anyone should be expected to forgive. I guess it is kind of a relief to hear you're not that ******** up, though, because getting into my pants like that definitely would have been." And honestly more humiliating for her if it had happened, and she doubted Elaine would have let her live it down. She took a step closer and jabbed a finger at his chest without breaking eye contact. "As far as anything else bad that happens to you socially, as far as I'm concerned you probably deserved it. For one thing, I hope Elaine never invites you to any of her parties because that last one was a banger—I'm pretty sure every party she throws is, birthday or not—and I'm glad to hear that the FOMO physically hurt you." Mel narrowed her eyes at him then, and it was weird to find that her forehead and brow line ached slightly with the effort of holding a relatively foreign expression on her face for as long as she had been at that point. "And I don't like you," she went on. "And I honestly doubt that that'll get better with time, but as for making me hate you less..." Honestly, it wasn't hard. Not for someone like him, if what she saw of him both times he'd powered up was any indication. She stepped back then, and visibly relaxed, as though finally saying the thoughts out loud and to him rather than simply about him helped unload some amount of burden from her shoulders. "I care about this city and the people in it. If you keep helping with that, that'll probably help. Probably enough that we can things kinda like how they are now. I could promise you another cake if you manage to get even stronger, if you want. Or maybe down the line we could even work together more than just at random.
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Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2026 2:36 am
His expression of despair was growing more concrete by the second, but when she arrived, at last, at the solution to his problem, it was replaced by one of strange, hardened aloofness. There were things that he knew, if he could not remember them, about the time Before when he had been someone else. One of them - one of the strongest - was that while as an agent he had been the object of contempt and the poster child for failure, as a person he'd flitted from one small charmed life to another, accruing friends everywhere he went and forming networks that, if temporary, at least fell for his bullshit thoroughly enough to keep him in good company. Until this moment it had not fully occurred to him that by finally realizing that he would not outrun his guilt, he had settled for an inversion of the situation. Maybe there was nothing left to love in the thirty year old shell of the man who had been Sawyer before, and only the seeds of something to respect in the man that was now Maus. "No," he said, not in disagreement, but in rueful confirmation. "That tracks." He laughed again, but the humor was all stripped out of it. He looked stupid as hell standing there holding a cake box on the sidewalk with that stupid stick in his mouth, but there was, at least, some sort of honesty to looking stupid. It was a hollow laugh of realization as, in front of her and compelled by her words, he connected the dots. "Kay isn't real," he said, a sentence of agreement, with just enough presence of mind to lower his voice. "I made ******** sure that I wasn't real. I did it on purpose. Didn't even choose my own name. So why the ******** do I care anyway? Thank you. I needed that." Another thought occurred to him in confirmation, and he laughed again. "No, no, this - yeah. Because why else spend weeks climbing up the ******** walls trying to get some kinda crumb of feeling like a human being and it only shows up for - for the other guy, right? Without even asking, got a girl crying on my shoulder - thanking me, grateful - genuinely just ******** trusting me to - ought to have been a real achievement for me but do you know," he burst out, "my selfish ******** a**, all I could do was watch her cry and think man, I bet that feels good as ******** was, as he said it, speaking with a tightness in his throat and a certain bright quality to his eyes. He had been for several seconds. And it became obvious, then, that this rant - made in the incongruous quiet voice of caution, not even at her but simply as a result of what she'd said - was nothing but his desperate attempt to court the tears that had threatened him and make them into actual relief. His frustration was palpable as he tried to shape words around the idea that had initially hurt, as if he could refine it into a weapon to turn against himself to finally ******** cry.
"I tried to tell you then that it didn't matter who I acted like because I was never real anyway. Didn't know how else to - I meant that. Just realizing if that's the case I should have just hung up the entire trying to be a person game instead of trying to be someone else. My whole ******** life is just gonna be - putting on a uniform and trying to do ******** atonement math for what I can't even - Do you know what it's like to smell something on the collar of a coat you can't remember buying and you don't even know if it was yours or someone else's and why it makes you sick and lonely, just that you should know but it's good that you don't, and ********, for the love of God," he burst out, not at her, "just ******** cry already."
In the expectant rush, a single tear had dislodged itself, and he had been struggling towards what seemed like inevitable relief, ready to sob in front of her if it would alleviate some of the pressure that had been steadily building for months or maybe a decade.
It didn't come. He paused, waiting, and then quietly deflated. He still looked stupid standing there holding that box, but all the frustrated rage was gone and replaced with exhaustion, and he made a helpless little movement of resignation. The tears - the single tear - had dried up.
He was a man of certain habits, who had once been a boy of similar ones. He was, at least, able to recognize the sensation of climbing towards some sort of ecstatic relief, only to be denied at the last second by ineffable chemistry. Maybe all those other vices had dried up the parts of his brain that would have let him have this moment, too. He was, after all, still living with the consequences of all his other stupid decisions. Why not this one, too?
"Thanks for feeding me," he said listlessly. "I knew you wouldn't half-a** it. You're better than that. The other guy isn't going anywhere," he added, muted and without emotion or even shame for the outburst he'd just subjected her to. "He's still got that math to do. But I won't ask you for another one. I just don't wanna force my company on someone who doesn't like me. I'm too selfish for that. I'll cross the street, if I see you again like this, and if I see you the other way, I'll keep doing what I was already doing. It's fair enough."
He was already turning to go, tucking the box under his arm. It seemed like an ideal moment for him to choke out some kind of last-second reprieve in the form of a single sob. He didn't.
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Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2026 4:24 pm
Mel reached instinctively for his wrist as he turned to leave. Her eyes were burning, tears threatening through the anger that had now settled on her face. "I have no idea what you're tripping on to think that you aren't real, Kay," she said, her cheeks turning a somewhat blotchy red. "But you're real enough that whatever you're going through hurts, and you're real enough that you can hurt the people around you." Mel tightened her hold on his wrist as a thought occurred to her, though she had no reason to believe that was the case...and even if it was, all of what he'd just said still sounded like excuses. "For a lot of people that's usually proof enough." She paused then, and flicked her eyes down to catch Lulu's. The pup was blinking up at her and looking curious, or maybe concerned. "You're a grown man, though, so if you wanna use the excuse of 'not being real' as a reason to keep doing whatever it is you're doing, to stop trying and just live as that other guy and doing 'atonement math' or whatever you said for something you can't even remember anymore, that's up to you. You asked me what you could do to make me hate you less, but in case you hadn't noticed this city isn't full of just me." It was at that point that she finally let him go, sighed, and stuffed her hands back into her pockets. "Maybe try making 'Kay' real and go find yourself some real ******** friends. DC's huge, someone's bound to like you."
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Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2026 5:03 pm
He had looked at her hand on his wrist with a strange expression - somewhere between confusion and annoyance - but it was the look at her face and at the ******** tears that seemed to be taunting him for his lack of answering ones that held him. He hated her, in that moment, but it wasn't from anything she'd done so much as it was from sheer desperate envy. He let her say her piece, and give her little lecture that was unsurprisingly similar to Elaine's, and had been on the brink of gently retrieving his hand before she let it go. His eyes stayed on hers, and there was a moment during which he seemed to be calculating either what he could or ought to say, or maybe how he ought to say it. And he smiled, then, because smiling was always going to come easy to him in the same way, he suspected, crying must come to Mel, if that was all it had taken for her. He had that boyish smile, still, that seemed comfortable on his face even when it arrived now with exhaustion in it - the same boyish smile that ironically was going to be the first thing to rob him of his agelessness, because even now there was a little crease at the corner of his eyes with it, as there always is on the face of people who smile often, when they've had enough years to do it in. "Plenty of people like me," he said, neither sarcastic nor boastful nor even tired, exactly. He said it like he was holding it up to show how useless it was. But there was no use lingering on it, or trying to explain why what she said had only sunk him further into a conviction that rather than keep scrabbling for a self, he should turn away from it. He chewed the end of the worn-down stick in his teeth, and narrowly avoided a flinch when the toothache shot a pang through his skull. "Don't worry. It wasn't excuses. The opposite, really. Thank you again. And also for the reality check."
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