Somewhere in this room, Bartholomew's phone was ringing. He ignored it.For the last...some number of hours...he'd been lying on the couch, the seat cushion pressing into the side of his face, watching the light change outside. Blue moon tonight. Because being forced into lucain shape once this month hadn't been enough, apparently. He didn't mind the shifting itself so much—he did it freely all the time, to his husband's occasional consternation—but the involuntary shifts in particular tended to fuck up his whole day, afterward with exhaustion and beforehand with a vague sense of dread that made it hard to focus on much of anything.
The buzz of his phone stopped for a full minute, then started again. He sat up all at once and scrabbled around for it. Rochester didn't call him except in an emergency, and Rochester was the only person who'd bother to try again if he didn't get through the first time.
It stopped ringing the second he found it, of course. He swiped the little missed call notification before it could start up again. "What—"
"There you fucking are," Rochester snarled into his ear. "What the hell have you been doing all this time?""Based on the fact that you are currently yelling at me for not finding my phone fast enough," Bartholomew said, "I am going to assume, for the sake of our marriage, that your life is in danger right now."
The silence that followed this statement felt about a million years long.
There was that crushing dread again, and somehow it didn't feel any better knowing there was a real reason for it this time. "Rory?"
Rochester gave a shaky, breathy, panicked laugh that made his whole body tense up, and said, "Yes. Yes, you seem to have put your finger on it. I appear to have—"
"Where are you?" Bartholomew was already on his feet, hunting around for his jacket, which he'd thrown over the back of the couch last time he came home rather than hanging it up like a normal person. The time had now come to regret that choice.
"I haven't even—"
"Does it matter? I'm coming. That's why you called, right?" There it was. He shoved his free arm into one sleeve and made for the door. "You can give me whatever background details you're overthinking about on the way."
"But—"
"I am starting the truck right now, Rory, and if the next words out of your mouth are not directions to your current location, I'm going to have to cover every street in the city one by one, and the gas money is coming out of your personal account."
"Stop making me laugh, I am trying to hide—" There was a muffled sound and a silence that made Bartholomew's heart stop, and then, in a whisper: "Sorry, sorry, I'm fine. Sort of. Let me give you directions."
