<strong>Saturday evening, 7:37</strong>

Viggo and Ian trail down Cambridge Avenue, feeling the July evening cool toward night, the sun easing down below the dark bulk of the mesa on the west side of town. Viggo watches it lower, its gleaming half-disk flashing a show of bright rays into a turquoise and copper sky. He is just about to ask Ian to remind him what's the name of that fellow they're meeting for dinner's wife, and is that his real hair, and are those her real boobs, when he hears, coming quite clearly from the warmly lit doorway of Dooley's pub just a few paces ahead of them, "... and your fuckin' lazy, wankin', waste o' space brother as well!"

This is followed by cheering and shouts, then the raw sounds of bodies clashing together and the shattering of glassware.

What a Yorkshire accent is doing yelling insults in an Irish pub in Saint Arquette, California Viggo can't be sure, but the only explanation he can think of holds his full attention.

The next accent roaring above the cacophony of joyful mayhem within is of Irish origin, swearing that if they don't ALL fuckin' clear out right fuckin' now, he's callin' the fuckin' po-lice, and Ian pulls Viggo up short just in time to avoid the sudden maelstrom of local football leaguers boiling out of the pub, winners and losers arm in arm or hanging over one another's shoulders, promising pints at a more agreeable establishment further downtown, and cackling and whooping in various stages of semi-inebriated glee.

In the very midst of it all Sean pauses mid-stride to quickly light a dark cigarette, the fragrant smoke swirling around the brief match-glow of his face. Lean and quick and wholly unrepentant in a crimson-smudged white t-shirt and tattered jeans, he laughs and shoves happily at team mates equally disheveled, and clearly delighted to be alive and skinning their knuckles together for the cause.

He doesn't notice Viggo and Ian when he and his fellows first abandon Dooley's conservative establishment, but something makes Sean turn, and when he spots his friends he waves grandly, creating streamers of smoke and, still walking backward, hollers at them to come and join him.

"My dear boy," Ian enthuses as Sean beams at them from the retreating edge of the mob, "Nothing would delight us more than to share in this evening's barbarity, but insufferably dull people await us even now at a horribly snobbish and over-priced restaurant."

Sean's glow fades in a moment of sympathy. "That's fucked Ian, I'm sorry!" His joy returns with an eager, "Hullo Viggo!"

On the verge of laughter, Viggo asks him, "Who won today?"

Sean turns a smile on him spectacular in its inclusiveness. "We did, o'course!"

Someone in the crowd insists joyfully that they fuckin' cheated, thereby inciting a small, walking brawl to break out behind Sean, who glances back and roars with laughter.

With a final wave Sean turns his remarkable grin back to his lingering mates, and trailing spirals of his own cigarette smoke is gathered once more into the rough embrace of the traveling melee. Viggo watches Sean go, the last rays of the setting sun picking out the gilding in his scruffy hair and coppering the angles of Sean's happy face as he turns away, and something yearning and warm and certain settles into the center of Viggo's chest.

He and Ian, following too sedately to keep up &#151; they are stalling, really &#151; watch as the boisterous crowd of football lunatics turns a corner and heads down toward the busy Saturday night beachfront. Viggo supposes that asking Sean who won the match today was a bit of a fib, and he's not at all sure why he did it. He knows perfectly well who won the match. Viggo learned late this afternoon, keeping himself unobtrusive in the back of the crowd, like some sort of spy, that over the sprint Sean is not the fastest man on his team. There are plenty of younger men their coach might choose for outright speed, yet Sean was on the field for most of the game. Through fond memories of playing random games as a boy in Argentina, and through his artist's eyes now Viggo recognizes the reasoning. Sean's strengths lie in experience, agility, and solid endurance. On the soccer field Sean is fearless, devious and inexorable, and for some reason knowing that makes Viggo proud. He's not going to be worth much conversationally at dinner tonight, and that's just fine.

<hr>

<strong>1:15 a.m.</strong>

"Whazzat?" Dave gropes his way out of a sound sleep, scrabbling for the telephone as fears of someone having landed in the hospital or the police station race through his addled brain. He swipes at the bedside lamp, fumbles the handset to his ear, cursing at the racket. "'Lo?"

"David, I apologize for waking you, but I've got news."

"Gnng," Dave says, rubbing at his eyes "'Kay, yeah, Ian? 'm awake."

"It might be Viggo, David. The man Sean met at the museum," Ian says.

"Museum? Oh, the museum." He sits up against the headboard, shoving gently at a small grey cat that has adopted him. He really doesn't know where it came from, but it's been roaming his house for two weeks, and he keeps feeding it because it's hungry, which seems reason enough. "That was Viggo? Our Unwelcome Occurrence is Vig? Are you sure?"

"Not exactly."

"Ian!"

"Who else could it be? Viggo and I were downtown this evening, and we ran into &#151; nearly literally &#151; Sean and his football henchmen, and it appears that young Sean either remembers Viggo remarkably well from when they were introduced this spring, or they have encountered one another since."

"Did you ask Viggo about it?"

Ian sighs heavily over the telephone.

Never once in Dave's experience has a sigh such as that portended the hoped for result.

"Three times. Each time he made some obscure and singularly uninformative answer and changed the subject. Or seemed to. With Viggo it's so difficult to know for certain whether he's being intentionally obtuse or whether he's merely drifting. After times three I felt it would be too obvious to continue, so I retreated. Anyway, Sean's 'daft bloke' might just as easily be Viggo after all as anybody. I shouldn't worry one way or the other, David. Just pay attention, and see if either of them lets anything out."

"Right-o," Dave agrees sleepily. "Thanks for letting me know, Ian. False alarm, I suppose."

"No need to apologize for diligence, my boy," Ian praises. "I <em>am</em> sorry for waking you. Back to sleep now, my lad. Conserve your strength. Sean was looking especially vigorous this evening."

Dave snorts. "Tell me about it."

"You like him," Ian purrs.

"Mmf. Lunch tomorrow &#151; er, today?"

"I should enjoy that immensely. Shall I ring you elevenish, make certain you're coherent?"

"Very funny. Goodnight, Ian." Dave relocates the little grey cat down to the foot of his bed, and it curls up with a flicker of jewel green eyes and a reasonable facsimile of obedience.

<hr>

Ian clicks off his mobile and scritches Frederick under the chin. Ian is rarely bothered by being left alone for extended periods, but tonight he's got too much on his mind, and the house seems too quiet, and he's lonesome, and he wishes to hell Marton wasn't a world away somewhere out in the bush, far beyond a certain small wildlife research station, itself far out beyond the comfort of Kantishna, Alaska.

He ought to be happy, on the whole. Young Joshua has been safely seen off to a new master infinitely superior to his previous wretch of an owner, and there is obviously some sort of friendly rapport between Viggo and Sean. Ian doesn't know how extensive it is, thanks to Viggo's exasperating mental exile this evening, but the little Ian saw for himself is a good sign just the same.

What is bothering Ian tonight is that on Thursday afternoon, while he was wandering back from a chat with a friend in Theatre Arts he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of Michael. He couldn't be sure, as the man was just disappearing between Career Counseling and the tutoring lab, but for a few hard, fast heartbeats Ian's mind leapt to the memory of Viggo's face seven years ago, gaunt and resigned in the back seat of Marton's old Mustang as they brought him north to Saint Arquette from Los Angeles.

Ian tries to convince himself that the man he saw at school was merely some harmless doppelganger, but that would be an awful lot easier to believe if this was the first time this sort of thing has happened. It would be so much easier, if he could just hear Marton laugh and tell him he's being daft. Bloody Alaska.

<hr>

<strong>3:43 a.m.</strong>

Sean lies on his back in his bed, staring up at a dark ceiling. From downstairs he hears the jingle of Mycroft's i.d. tags as the big dog scratches and grumbles in the process of settling down for what's left of the night.

It seemed so easy with Viggo tonight. Was it because of where Sean was, there with Jake and Donal and Kinney and the lot, and Sean solidly himself? Ian's always known him this way, ever since he was a young idiot rampaging about Berkeley, so Sean never needs to pretend with Ian, and Viggo just didn't seem at all surprised.

'Who won today?' That's what Viggo said. No frozen look of surprise and dismay at the sudden apparition of Sean in his natural habitat. No restrained grimace, no forced smile at Sean's tattered friends, reeking of beer and rough happiness. Viggo just grinned back at them all with that half-mad full-on expression of delight that takes up his whole face, and wanted to know who had won the match; had <em>remembered</em>, in fact, that Sean plays on Saturdays. He feels his heartbeat speed up, and he suddenly doesn't know whether to hide beneath the covers and try to forget what all of that does to him, or just replay the moment over and over in his head, snuggled up in the lonely safety of his bed and dreaming about the possibilities. Is he just skirting the edge of another baited trap, or could it really be that easy, with Viggo?