Beauty & The Beast (Book 1)

21. Saturn Returns

(A/N: Season 1 Episode 5 -
"Saturn Returns")

Vincent couldn't sleep. He would lay on his back. Then his side. Then his other side. He'd flip around onto his stomach, his face in the pillow. Nothing worked to get him to relax.
He got up and did a few pushups, then he decided maybe a walk would tire him out. His mind was just too busy. With thoughts about Catherine.

He put on his shoes and just as he was putting on his shirt, JT came into his room.
"What the hell's going on? You're putting grooves in the floor." He'd heard his restless roommate from his room downstairs.

"I need to get some air."

"Open a window," JT deadpans. Vincent gives him an exasperated look. "What's got you so amped up?"
Vincent walks to the basin to grab his toothbrush. "Oh," JT nods. "You must have seen Cat." Vincent's head turns to him, toothbrush in his mouth.
"That's why you came home so late isn't it? You were with her."

Vincent finishes brushing his teeth. "For a little bit yeah," he nods. JT scoffs. "Look, I know what you're gonna say man but," Vincent looks up from rinsing his toothbrush, staring off in front of him. He smiles. "She makes me feel like," he shakes his head and sighs. He feels like a teenager with her. Alive and full of possibility. "Like I have a life again," he chuckles, looking at JT.

"Awfully dangerous for a guy who's supposed to be dead."

Vincent stops smiling and rolls his eyes. JT was way too dark for him to be around. He doesn't get what it feels like for Vincent.

"Seriously? Where are you going?" JT asks, watching Vincent put on a jacket.

"For a walk."

"Stick to rooftops where it's safe."

"I'll be back soon."

"Ah," JT shoots his arm out and Vincent stops, sighing. "If you're going out, I'm coming with you." He goes to get his own jacket.

"Oh no, no that is a bad idea," Vincent says. He was going to go to Catherine's apartment, maybe hang out on the fire escape. If JT came with, he'd have to do something else.

"That makes us even," JT says in passing and Vincent groans inwardly.

Their walk takes them down a few roads, just going nowhere. Vincent resigned himself to just walking, to get some air, his thoughts no longer on Catherine that much, but on JT.

"So that's why you won't ask that Sarah girl out right? Deligate stuff."
He'd been listening to JT talk about Sarah for weeks, not doing anything about how he felt.

JT glares at him as they walk. "That girl is a woman, who happens to be the associate chair of sciences  department, and I'm not asking her out because I live in an abandoned warehouse with a complicated roommate."

"You're afraid she's gonna say no." Vincent gives him a knowing look.

JT stares at him. He gives in. "Maybe I'm misinterpreting our eye contact at department meetings, I mean - "

Vincent blocks out JT's rambling, stopping midstep. He's hearing something else, someone being threatened with a gun and begging not to be shot...
He turns and runs down the alley to the left. He reaches the store being held at gunpoint just as the robber is yelling at the owner to open the register and not play hero.

He grabs the robber and throws him across the shop into the line of fridges in the back. He keeps his head down, the baseball cap hiding his face in shadow, and walks over to check on the robber. JT flings the door open just before he could reach the robber, having seen him run off and followed.