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Connor wakes up in a bed that’s not his own.
He’s found there are different types of unpredictability. A suspect can rarely be expected to act the same way twice, especially when they know they’re under surveillance. The bus is delayed with no rhyme nor reason to the days it runs late. His mentor doesn’t always drink on the bad nights—sometimes he drinks on the good ones, although the probability of those nights ending with him passed out on the floor is significantly lower. Unanticipated factors at work are methodical and easy to handle; outside of his profession, they are slightly less so. Connor hasn’t quite mastered the art of keeping his pulse steady when the bus driver announces an alternative route.
Still, it’s rare, he will admit, for his personal life to take a completely unexpected turn. Wayward buses and missed AA meetings don’t quite count when he’s practically built protocols to handle them when they arise. Walk home. Make coffee. Talk about personal responsibility for the thirty-seventh time. On the other hand, those proverbial moments of truth are few and far between. Connor’s studies in the statistics of interaction call them critical divergences, points at which the variables involved have such a radical degree of separation, such an incredible difference in outcome, that the interactions that follow will have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. They are the moments that mean something, as Hank might say. Filter out all the other bullshit, and these are the ones that stick.
The very second he stirs, his brain is itching to run the numbers. It wants desperately to plot a course of percentages from three days ago to now and chart his every decision with the unforgiving mechanics of probability and chance.
He doesn’t let it. He shifts on his side and sits up, blinking as the room detects his movement and starts to lift the shade over the window. Sunlight spills across the carpet and warms Connor from the inside out. The sky is pale but clear, and the clock on the nightstand reads 6:30—he’s always been incapable of sleeping in. He calls it an internal alarm clock; Hank calls it an impressive effort to get them both up at the most ungodly hours possible. His mentor seems to think that Connor’s morning routine is a personal affront, and at this point, Connor has given up on correcting him.
One of the pitfalls of waking up early without fail: he’s fairly certain he’s the only one awake in the house. Connor gets dressed and sets Markus’s neatly folded t-shirt on the dresser—he’s been doing his best not to think about the fact that he’s wearing Markus’s t-shirt, which is a level of intimacy he hadn’t even come close to expecting. Other people’s clothes are wrong; they have the wrong scent, the wrong texture. Markus’s shirt is soft and just slightly too big for him, and it smells faintly of something metallic. Paint, Connor suspects.
Markus’s skin was speckled with paint. A work of art on a work of art. He’d even tasted slightly of paint fumes, sharp and thrilling against Connor’s sensitive tongue. The sensation was enough to make his head spin.
It still is, Connor thinks.
He leaves his jacket and coat laid out on the bed, which he makes just for good measure, and ventures into the hallway. The house isn’t technically Markus’s, Connor knows; it belongs to the painter, Carl Manfred, whose career fortune is more than enough to afford a property of this size. Besides, Markus doesn’t seem like the type to suspend the skeletons of extinct animals from the ceiling. Connor won’t pass judgment on someone he hardly knows, but that’s a particular type of eccentricity.
Still, he has to admit it’s a spectacular building. Everything is mahogany and rich embellishments, accented with expensive-looking art and the odd sculpture. Connor stalls as he goes, looking them over, wondering absently if any of them are Markus’s. He’d had a deep blue smeared above his wrist, and red spattered across his collarbone. Vivid colors. The paintings that line the hall look washed out and faintly yellow in the light.
He’s just made it to the top of the staircase when he hears something sizzling. Connor’s first thought is that sound carries admirably in this house; his second thought is that he is most definitely not the only one awake. He goes as quietly as he can down the stairs, not trusting the wood underneath to stay silent under his weight, and takes a hesitant turn into a sizable atrium. The night before hadn’t exactly afforded him much of a chance to look around, but now Connor can make note of the artifacts and extravagances spread out across the space. He runs a hand along a grand piano (dust-free, recently played) and pauses at one of the room’s high-reaching bookshelves (unevenly spaced, well-worn). A chessboard sits off to the side with its pieces in mid-play. Queen to rook five, Connor thinks.
The sizzling is coming from across the room, through a set of sliding doors that are standing open. He makes his way to the threshold, and there’s Markus, standing at the counter of a spacious kitchen, pushing scrambled eggs with a spatula. An old radio sits next to him and plays a lazy, lilting melody that he seems to know, because he hums right along and occasionally sings a few bars of the chorus. It’s barely audible over the stove’s incessant hissing, but just like everything else about the man, Markus’s voice is perfect.
He turns and spots Connor, then, idling in the doorway and staring and not really doing much else. Markus’s eyes widen just enough to be noticeable, and all of a sudden Connor realizes how he must look—barefoot, in a dress shirt without a tie, hair freed of its daily gel and undoubtedly falling in loose curls across his forehead. His appearance isn’t typically something he leaves to the whims of the morning. There is no protocol for keeping his cool in front of a beautiful man when he himself looks like he’s just rolled out of bed.
But Markus doesn’t seem to care. He smiles, and it’s the soft, easy smile from the night before, the one that makes Connor feel as if he’s standing in liquid sunlight. His similes are starting to get troublingly nonsensical. “Well, good morning. You’re up early.”
“I’m accustomed to it,” says Connor, because he can’t really think to say anything else. He’s a little too preoccupied with the way light from the kitchen windows falls across Markus’s face and turns his eyes into tiny kaleidoscopes. “Would you like some help, with… with that?”
There’s a cutting board sitting next to the stove, with an uncut green onion and a few slices of ham. “Oh, no,” says Markus, hastily. “You’re a guest. You should just sit back and relax.”
The prospect of sitting back and relaxing makes Connor’s fingers twitch. “It’s no trouble,” he says. “I want to help. Really.”
Pleased surprise flickers across Markus’s face. He shifts unnecessarily but endearingly to the side, as if he’s trying to make room for Connor at the already expansive countertop, and gestures invitingly.
“One more kiss, dear,” the radio croons. “One more sigh…”
Connor sets about chopping the onion. He’s not the most skilled cook—most of his skills are learned out of necessity, because Hank seems to think a steady diet of order-in food counts as a diet to begin with—but it’s easy enough to dice the ingredients in front of him without fumbling. Markus, on the other hand, has an obvious expertise. He flips bacon with his spatula in one hand and seasons the eggs with another, and apparently thinks nothing of the speed and grace with which he does both. Despite all his attempts to act as normal as possible, Connor finds himself staring again.
Of course, Markus catches him, because he always seems to develop a peripheral when it’s the most inconvenient. He doesn’t say anything, though; instead he chuckles in a way that sends heat flaring along Connor’s neck. Even his laugh is more beautiful than it has any right to be.
“What?”
“Sorry, I just…” Markus shakes his head and looks down at the eggs. “It’s really sweet when you look at me like that. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed.”
When his gaze locks with Connor’s again, Connor finds he actually doesn’t mind at all. With the daylight pouring in behind them, he can make out the freckles dotting Markus’s cheeks and the stubble climbing up his chin. His eyes study Connor’s, then drop with almost polite subtlety to his lips.
After that, it’s a matter of proximity—namely, eliminating it altogether as Connor steps close and meets Markus with a featherlight kiss.
It’s soft and heady and warm, and something herbal lingers around Markus’s mouth. Tea, he thinks. Markus doesn’t strike him as a coffee sort of man. They draw apart almost as soon as they’d come together, but it feels right; domestic, Connor’s brain supplies. He’s smiling in a way that would feel uncharacteristic anywhere else, but is perfectly suited to here and now.
He really does have a crush.
Ya think? Hank would say.
“Hi,” Markus murmurs. His voice is soft and makes Connor feel a little as if he’s short-circuiting, despite the fact that (to his knowledge, at least) he’s not in possession of any circuits.
“Hi,” comes Connor’s dazed reply. He thinks offhandedly that it’s a good thing the green onion and ham is mostly chopped, because accessing his fine motor functions is going to be more difficult from here on out.
Despite his best efforts, the punch-drunkenness must be showing on his face, because Markus takes one look at him and breaks into another smile. “So that was okay.”
“Very okay,” says Connor, who has officially given up trying to maintain a semblance of composure around this man. He returns Markus’s smile with one of his own, albeit shyer, and says, “I wanted to thank you again. For letting me stay, that is.”
Markus huffs and turns back to the eggs, although he’s standing significantly closer and seems content to stay there. “I should thank North, really. Have I mentioned how sorry I am about all of that, by the way? Because I’m really just—I’m just incredibly sorry.”
“I’ve dealt with stranger.”
“I’m sure, but dealing with strange situations and dealing with North are two very different things.”
That’s accurate enough. Connor has come across his fair share of drunken park escapades, but his perp from the Sadler case made a unique impression. She’d shouted at him across the way and nearly made him go for his taser, which sat in one coat pocket and thankfully saw very little use. And of course it hadn’t just been North Durand—it was North Durand and company, as she’d introduced them. Her boys. (“We’re not her boys,” Simon had insisted, and Josh had simply put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Yes, we are.”) Connor had decided that the night really couldn’t get more bizarre from there, but of course, the universe was dead set on proving him wrong.
There isn’t a probability map under the sun that could lead him to where he is now, standing elbow-to-elbow with Markus Manfred, still a little dizzy on their kiss and a light haze of exhaustion clinging to his heels. Some things, Connor thinks, aren’t meant to be calculated.
“That’s true,” he concedes. “She’s definitely unlike anyone I’ve ever met.”
“That’s putting it politely.” Markus snags a bit of green onion off Connor’s cutting board and scatters it in the pan. “She’s had a difficult time. With people, life in general, you name it. She spent a lot of time figuring out what she wanted to do before activism, and now that she has a path in life, I think she’s trying to live freely and passionately to make up for what she’s missed.” His lips curl up affectionately. “It doesn’t always end up in her favor, but she tries.”
“And her friends, Simon and Josh?”
The smile lingers as Markus adds the ham and stirs it in. “They were all friends with each other before they were friends with me. Josh TAs for a history professor at Detroit University, and Simon works in communications for a local nonprofit. They’re a little less… hands-on,” he adds. “Josh especially. But we all care about the same things, and we all hold the same values. And they keep me sane.”
“Except for last night, I take it,” Connor quips.
Markus smirks. Mischief looks a little foreign on his face, but it’s definitely not unwelcome, especially when it sends a pleasant thrill down Connor’s spine. “Except for last night. Usually Simon is their designated driver, but I guess they wanted a change of pace.” He flips a bit of slowly congealing egg and says, “I rely on him more than I realize. He does his best to keep the peace when I’m not there, and he’s kind of taken on part of my work without me even asking him to. Like the speeches.”
“The speeches?”
“When I have to make a public appearance. We’ve figured out over time that I’m better at improvisation than putting together statements.” Markus grimaces as he turns off the stove and steps back to let the eggs cool. “Simon is essentially my speechwriter, even though he won’t let me compensate him. Sometimes I think I don’t deserve any of them or the things they do for me.”
He looks back at Connor, then, and says, “Like bringing you here.”
Connor isn’t accustomed to opening his mouth and being unable to produce sound, but under Markus’s affectionate gaze, that’s precisely what happens. He settles for a slightly dazed smile and a weak nod, because his coherency has apparently taken an impromptu vacation. It’s been happening more and more, recently. Usually that would bother him, but right now, he finds he doesn’t mind it all that much.
Of all the unexpected variables in the world, he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve a man whose little considerations and offhand remarks can render him speechless in seconds.
The silence stretches just enough to be noticeable, and then falls to pieces when someone shuffles through the doorway. “I want to die,” North announces, and immediately breaks off when she sees Connor and Markus at the counter.
“Oh,” she says, and then, “oh.”
That’s as far as she gets before Simon and Josh materialize behind her, looking about as hungover as it’s possible to be and intent on commandeering the coffeemaker. North clears her throat with unusual force and they stop in their tracks, squinting through the early-morning haze. Simon’s eyes widen as he takes in the scene.
“Oh,” he echoes.
Josh, in a refreshing change of pace, doesn’t appear to acknowledge the obvious. He brushes past North and heads for the coffeemaker with a mumbled greeting and a lethargic wave, and that, at least, is enough to quell some of Connor’s embarrassment.
“Well,” says Markus, finally. “Good morning to you, too.”
North blinks and seems to snap back to the present. “Holy shit,” she says, nudging Simon. “Markus’s new man is making hangover cures? I knew he was perfect, but I didn’t know he’d be this perfect.”
“Uh… yeah,” says Simon. He still doesn’t look quite as awake as North, but he’s clearly catching on. “Markus, you should take a page out of his book.”
“Excuse—” Markus flounders for a reply as they make their way to the table at the other end of the room. It’s the first time Connor has really seen him stammer, and however endearing it is, it feels good not to be on the receiving end of disbelief for once. “I made it. I’m literally standing at the stove.”
North hums, tipping her chair back and propping her feet on the table. “Sounds fake, but okay.”
“No feet on the table.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” she says, but she takes them off anyway. Connor watches them settle in around the table; Josh with a white-knuckled grip on his coffee mug, Simon massaging the dark circles under his eyes. North’s hair is loose of her characteristic braid, and it falls across her shoulders as she stretches her arms over her head and yawns. They all sport their clothes from the day before, albeit wrinkled and, in Simon’s case, unevenly buttoned, and yet they don’t seem to care. Their presence in Markus’s kitchen is natural—they belong here, and they hadn’t even batted an eye at Connor standing at the counter.
The logical conclusion, then: he belongs here as well.
It’s a leap, as conclusions go, but it feels right.
Markus, with an unexpected but rightfully beautiful pout to his lower lip, starts to plate the eggs. Connor takes the first two and brings them to the table, and Simon beams, sliding one towards a mostly unresponsive Josh. “Thanks,” he says, through a sleep-heavy grin. “Markus, he’s so considerate, right?”
“I don’t—” Markus breaks off with an exhausted sigh. He sets the third plate in front of North and pivots back towards the stove, but Connor stops him, blocking his way as politely as he can.
“You made breakfast,” he says. “Please, sit down. Let me get yours for you.”
If there’s such a thing as domestic instinct, Connor is sure he’s just experienced it. He goes back to the stove and makes a plate for himself and Markus, making sure his portion isn’t too significant; he rarely eats breakfast to begin with, and the only thing worse than refusing a beautiful man’s hospitality is taking advantage of it. When he brings them over, Markus’s smile is small and a little charmed, if wishful thinking isn’t getting the better of Connor’s powers of observation. At this point, he wouldn’t be surprised.
He takes a seat between Markus and North, whose grin is wide enough to bridge the gap between them. “So,” she says. “You two have a good time last night?”
“We had a good talk, yes,” says Markus, pointedly. “I apologized for your behavior, and Connor took it completely in stride.”
North, Connor thinks, is more skilled at being shameless than anyone he’s ever met. “Yeah, he’s great, isn’t he?” she says. “Helping you make breakfast and all. You don’t get a lot of morning afters like that, do you?”
Josh chokes on his coffee.
“It wasn’t like that,” says Connor, quickly—judging by the looks on everyone else’s faces, it’s a little too quick. “We just talked. Nothing more.”
Lying always comes more smoothly to him than he expects it to. Of course, his dreams of being a hostage negotiator aren’t based entirely in illogical desires. North doesn’t look convinced, which Connor knows is mostly by virtue of her own stubbornness, but she shrugs and takes a vigorous bite of egg. “Sure. ’Course. I’m glad you two had a good time.”
Across the table, Josh mumbles his assent. He’s left his eggs untouched in favor of leaning into his upturned palm, and Simon reaches out to rub his back soothingly. For them, Connor notes, touch is a casual thing. “How’s the hangover, Josh?”
“Mmh,” comes the reply.
Simon clicks his tongue and turns back to the rest of the table. “His have always been really, really bad,” he tells Connor, by way of explanation.
“Doesn’t keep him from getting wasted anyway,” North drawls.
He shoots her a look that doesn’t quite make it to glare status, but tries its best nonetheless. “Go easy, alright? We all got a little caught up last night. It didn’t help that you two were all set on playing a drunken game of Dare or Dare.”
She sticks her tongue out at him. Connor’s gaze flicks back to Josh. He doesn’t drink much—there’s something about the idea of losing control of himself that doesn’t sit well—but his experience with alcohol ranges from calculating BAC to dragging a hungover Hank out of bed in the morning. Those days usually get off to a rough start, but after a few tricky instances, Connor and his solutions have found a way to ease the transition. There’s no reason this particular situation can’t be treated the same.
“Markus?” he says. “Do you mind if I try something? I’ll just need a lemon and a bit of ginger. And a grater, if you would.”
Although he’s obviously a little lost, Markus obliges. He retrieves the ingredients as Connor measures out a few cups of water into a saucepan, then grates the ginger into the pan and adds fresh lemon juice. There’s a jar of what looks like fresh honey sitting on a shelf next to him, and he takes it, adding a few dollops as the pan starts to simmer. Making the concoction is practically reflexive at this point, and for a few short moments, he’s transported away from Markus’s sun-warmed kitchen, to the smaller stretch of counter in Hank’s house. The radio warbles on in the background.
After what he estimates to be five minutes, Connor pours the contents of the pan into Markus’s blender and sets it on low. He sets about putting the pan in the sink to soak and the utensils in the dishwasher—cleaning is a bit simpler than cooking, at least—and when he turns around, only then does he find everyone’s eyes on him, watching with vague disbelief.
The blender chimes. Optimal consistency detected.
“Do you have, ah… mugs?” The word filters through Connor’s brain and hangs on by a thread. He’s not sure if he’ll ever get used to being stared at.
Markus navigates around the island to retrieve them, and Connor fills each about halfway, letting them froth and settle. He takes them to the table and sets them in front of North, Simon, and Josh, who lifts his head at the sudden movement.
And then he takes his seat, like he’d never left to begin with.
“It’s a tonic,” he says, feeling suddenly and inexplicably shy. “For hangovers. It’s meant to filter out the toxins and rehydrate your body. A home remedy, if you don’t mind that sort of thing. You’re welcome to try it if you like.”
An unnatural silence hangs over the table. Josh lifts his mug and takes a sip, and although his expression hardly wavers from its carved-in-marble misery, he sits up a little straighter and takes another. It counts as a good sign.
“That’s… really good,” he says, and then, “it’s really good. Wow.”
Simon blinks and turns to look at Connor, who can’t keep a tiny, pleased smile from flitting across his face. “You got hungover Josh to say actual words? How did you do that?”
“Shut up,” says Josh, through another sip of tonic. He levels a finger at Connor and says, “You’re good. This is good. You can come back here anytime you want.”
North sets her mug back down and releases a happy sigh. “Oh yeah. That hits the spot. Markus, no offense, but I think I might like your boyfriend better than you.”
Markus stiffens, and Connor adds the emotional equivalent of alarm bells to his steadily growing list of new sensations. The word BOYFRIEND!!! screams past his every other thought and paralyzes the part of his brain accustomed to making comebacks, and if he didn’t know any better, he would say his heart skips a beat.
North is being facetious.
But he can’t deny the part of him that jumps for joy at the thought of being Markus’s boyfriend.
Thankfully, before he can open his mouth and embarrass himself even more than he already has, Markus beats him to the punch. “North,” he says, with that same strangled rasp to his voice. “He’s not my—we haven’t talked about any of that, okay?”
North flutters her eyelashes with over-exaggerated innocence. “Right. Of course not. Anyway,” she says, reaching out to put a possessive hand on Connor’s wrist, “your friend here is our new best friend. You’ve been rejected. You can take your things and leave whenever.”
The indignant twist to Markus’s mouth makes Connor’s heart twinge. “This is my house!”
“Nope,” she sings. “Our house now.”
“Simon—”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” says Simon, with a hapless shrug. “Connor made us a hangover cure. I think that means we’re legally inclined to be his best friends now.”
Josh nods over the rim of his mug. “Definitely.”
“I hate you all,” Markus deadpans, but when he glances at Connor, the smile that tugs at his lips feels like sunshine.
Yes, Connor thinks; he might actually belong here after all.
After a fresh batch of lemon and ginger tonics, Markus’s hangover-stricken friends filter into the family room, bickering about the events of the night before. Connor is content to stay at the table—in part for plausible deniability, but also because Markus is still there, watching the sun rise from behind a wall of elegantly trimmed hedges. If possible, he’s even more striking in natural light. The dramatic shadows of the guest bedroom and the office's pale, unreliable glow don’t hold a candle to the way the morning turns Markus’s features to gold.
“I want a Sunday kind of love,” the radio sings. “A love to last past Saturday night…”
Markus’s eyes don’t break from the window as he says, “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
Connor tips his head, noncommittal. “I don’t, really. Unless I’m called in for a weekend shift.”
That’s the right answer, he can tell. Markus nods, and says, “Do you want to go get coffee?”
“You have coffee here.”
“No, like—” He breaks off with an amused huff and meets Connor’s gaze, and Connor decides he’ll never completely be over how beautiful Markus’s eyes are. “As in a coffee date, Connor. I’m asking if you want to go on a date with me.”
A date.
It seems a little redundant after everything else, but at this point, Connor couldn’t care less about redundancy. He can’t even begin to imagine how anyone could ever say no to this man, with all the soul in his expression and how easy it is to feel like everything in his presence.
“Yes,” he says, and smiles. “Yes, I’d like that.”
Markus grins, and this time, Connor is positive that his heart actually skips. He doesn’t pull away when Markus laces their fingers under the table, and it’s a softer gravity that has him leaning into Markus’s shoulder in return. The spontaneity of the night before is gone. This is slow, and easy, and right; like North and Simon and Josh bantering over breakfast, or cooking in Markus’s kitchen, or saying yes. It feels like something no probability map could ever pick up on.
It feels like Markus’s hand in his, heated with the promise of coffee dates and early mornings.
It’s unexpected—but Connor could get used to that.