Ready Or Not

I Want Boring

**Theo**

Sleep was not a thing that happened for the three of us. I’d gotten more and more restless as the evening dragged on - and hungry.  There was nothing to eat in the fridge anymore, for good reason.

Dan had been holding me, while we occupied the length of Lydia’s couch like stones… like ghosts.  He ran his hands up and down my arms and my thighs. He didn’t want sex at the moment though; he was trying to calm me.  When I wasn’t up and pacing my legs were bouncing up and down, the angry energy building to levels I couldn’t contain. I just didn’t know what the fuck to do.  I think I was beginning to annoy Anna, too.

Anna, who alternated between standing by Lydia’s bed and staring stonily at the duvet - like Lydia was hiding underneath - and curled against Daniel’s side or in my lap as he held me.  As he held us. There wasn’t a lot of talking, but one of the things I love most about us; we know one another so well, we don’t really need to talk. I almost always know what’s on Daniel’s mind (doesn’t mean I don’t like to hear him say it), and Anna is an open book to me, even with her armor up. Because armor means inner turmoil.

At the moment, she’d let the armor down partway. When she was in Lydia’s room, she was thinking, feeling, probably doing the same thing I was doing- running over and over the night Olivia West was killed in her mind, wondering “what if”. Thinking about why Lydia hadn’t run (and getting more and more pissed- or maybe that was just me), and how we were going to get her out of this mess. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. When she was with me and Dan, she was soothing us, worrying over us, coddling us- but, frustratingly, not letting us do the same. Any time I tried, so brushed me off. Any time Daniel so much as made a sympathetic noise she made it about him or me again.

Daniel’s wheels were turning. He was somehow one hundred percent in the moment with us, and yet still thinking. I wasn’t sure how he was managing the juggling act, but in the time since we met, I’d learned that he was always in “lawyer mode”. I was afraid to ask what was on his mind. I didn’t think it was good news. If he’d had any sort of optimistic epiphany, he would have shared it with us.

I alternated between holding and being held and pacing the entire floor plan of Lydia’s place while I thought. If Lydia had been there, she would have put a stop to my movement long ago. But she wasn’t there. Even if Daniel’d succeeded in convincing her to run, she wouldn’t have been there. But at least then I would have had the assurance that we’d be together again soon. Daniel, Anna, and I would have packed bags, scrubbed the info that needed to be scrubbed, burned what needed to be burned, picked up our new identities (you’re stupid if you don’t think Lydia and I didn’t make sure we all had some ready to go- we always knew that at any time we might need to go back to the way things used to be; running away to new lives as necessary), and been on her trail.

Or maybe it would have been more complicated than that. Daniel had Melanie. Picking up and leaving would have been, at the very least, slowed by her presence in his life. In our life. But there was no sense in thinking about that now.

Or was there? Lydia didn’t stand much chance of getting out of VV’s grasp through legal avenues, as far as I could tell, despite trying my best to trust that Forsythe would find a way. Maybe it was time to think about busting her out and running. Of course, that would be damn near impossible. She was behind steel and concrete and who knew how many armed and armored officers, and was no doubt being fed what was more yew than blood (if they were smart), and she didn’t know about Hannah and so we’d have to break that to her before she’d run. My mind went around and around like that for hours, until the sun came up.

I had just gone back to the chances of her getting out of the situation legally when Daniel’s phone rang.

He looked at it, bleary eyed and blinking for a moment, before he grabbed it and answered.