A/n: Anyways as I mentioned in the tags I have literally not written Millennium fic since I was thirteen, but I've still held a candle for Jonasson/Salander over the years and recently rewatched The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I think I've become a better writer in the last four years. I hope so?
If you feel so inclined, the first part in this series (my thirteen year old self's original musings) is posted here (entitled Perplexing). It provides the premise for this installment and the origin of their relationship as I see it, but if you can't get through it, I understand. The short version: Anders Jonasson was Lisbeth's doctor in Hornet's Nest. I thought they had chemistry in the movie and the book, and so I made them get together. And here we are. There may even be more where this came from.
Thanks for reading!
Three days in, and Jonasson is still completely enamored with it, to Salander's chagrin. She had been anticipating some level of shock, he thinks, when she arrived home Tuesday afternoon with her hair shaved down to a gritty black buzzcut. Instead, all she's gotten is half a week of him following her around and running his fingers through the soft, peachy hair on her skull—until she slaps his hand away with a good verisimilitude of a genuine scowl.
At night, though, when they're lying spent and quiet, she's more tolerant—she even lets him run gentle, surgeon's fingers over the scar above her ear, where it's now visible to any who happens to glance at the side of her petite head. He suspects this is the reason for the new cut; Lisbeth has never been one to shy away from her battle scars. And, on perhaps a more self-centered note, he can't help but be reminded that the scar, in some ways, is the origin of their bond—a reminder of that night in Sahlgrenska. And she's chosen to show it off.
On Saturday night, they cross the bridge into Gamla Stan for dinner, because this is Anders's last week as a tourist and he wants to get ripped off like one. It's a balmy August night, and a breeze off the bay presses against their backs with every step as Fiskargatan fades behind them.
"What are you thinking?" he asks.
It's a question with many answers, especially given the coming days. She settles on, "Italian food," and he's happy to let matters lie. For now.
Even in the supposed Italian outpost, there's meatballs with potatoes and lingonberry sauce on the menu. Lisbeth is smirking at it, and Jonasson orders it just for the pleasure of her eyeroll. "I knew you were going to do that," she says, eyes crinkling beneath the charcoal encircling them.
Her lopsided grin fades when she catches sight of the elderly couple eyeing her from a few tables over. Even new hair, it seems, can't divorce her from the reputation that's pursued her in the four years years since her acquittal. It doesn't seem quite fair, from his vantage point. But then again, he's always been on her side, even when it didn't make much sense to be.
The couple continues to stare until they finish their meal, and as they pass Lisbeth on their way out she sends them the kind of look Jonasson thinks might have been on hair face when she went at her father with an axe, or a match. Afterwards, Anders gazes at her until the expression loosens from her face.
On the way back into Södermalm, they don't touch, even though it's the time of night when every other couple in Stockholm decides it's time to link hands, or arms, or lips. Instead, Lisbeth lets their shoulders brush with every other step, and as they stop at busy intersection, she presses against his side in a way that he's never seen her touch anyone else.
They arrive back in Söder with a wisp of the late summer sun still on the horizon, visible from Fiskargatan 9's bay window.
He had deduced, some time ago, that he loves Lisbeth. Her quirks and her silent affection and her power. He also suspects that she loves him, but will likely never say it, so he will know from gestures rather than words. The sign language of love. He can live with that.
But despite this, it's taken him a year for either of them to make good on her proposal for him to move in with her in Stockholm. Partly, it's a matter of logistics—the move from head of the Sahlgrenska trauma center to a new position at the Karolinska Institutet has taken time, and luck. Despite his Lund education, eyebrows still raise when he talks about his time as a welder, and though he considers it a strength it seems the Stockholm elite did not immediately agree. Still, he'd won them over eventually, leaving him with the personal side of making the transition from Göteborg to resolve. A feat he has yet to accomplish.
He looks to Salander, puttering around the kitchen in the twilight, running one hand absentmindedly through the fuzz on her head. She meets his eyes after pushing an old pizza box into the garbage, and lifts the corner of her mouth in a brave smile. He sheds his jacket, and approaches her on feet soft enough not to break the stillness of the room. Then there's a kiss on the edge of the mouth, then on the lips; hands gradually coming up to cup his cheeks.
It's moments like these where Stockholm still feels like a vacation. Maybe one that never ends.
Later, in bed, with one gentle thumb on the scar over her ear and her bony feet gliding over his leg hair beneath the covers, he says, "Göteborg tomorrow."
"I know," she replies, with the usual disdain she has for the obvious.
"I'm already feeling a bit homesick," he says, contorting into a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "But I don't know if it's for here or Sahlgrenska or...I dunno, Lund? Jönköping?"
She spends a long moment appraising him, impenetrable black eyes searching his patient face. The room is dark, but the whites of her eyes stand out starkly nonetheless. "It's for here," she decides, perfectly certain.
"Okay," he says, and he must look hesitant, because she kisses him again.
"Göteborg tomorrow," she murmurs, and it almost sounds like I love you.
m m m
In the morning, Lisbeth has an email waiting for her from Dragan Armansky, so by the time Jonasson stirs into consciousness she's already sitting up in a bed with her computer in her lap. Earphones on, fingers clicking across the keys. She's let the covers fall off her shoulders, her pale back exposed with the dragon tattoo arching across her spine. On a sleep-fueled whim, he reaches out one hand to run a finger over the bottom half of the design, but she jumps at the touch and sends him a scowl until he mouths an apology. Touch, with Salander, is a topic of some dispute, but most of the time he doesn't mind her setting the terms.
By noon, she's logged off, but is still twitchy in the way she always is when the real world intrudes so soon after the virtual one. They pack a small duffel bag each, but Anders spends a solid forty minutes dithering over what to put in his for no reason beyond what he suspects are just underlying nerves about what will be one of his last trips back to the life he had in Göteborg. Eventually, Lisbeth hustles him out the door, and then they're on the train and there's nothing to be done but accept it. Stockholm fades, and then it's just summery golden fields between stations.
Lisbeth is doing something complicated looking on her tablet, and though Anders has brought things to keep himself occupied on the three hour journey all he seems to be able to manage is a blank stare out the window. He aims for Salander's level of impassivity and, as per usual, falls short.
In Göteborg, they arrive to his half empty apartment—the remnants of what hasn't already made the transition to Stockholm with him over the last four years. Still, it feels like too much; instead of setting to work going through it all, he takes a heavy seat at the breakfast table and sighs. Lisbeth settles into the seat across from him, and surveys the room. How many times have they sat in this spot? It's where Salander first made her return to his life, after a few months off the map following her acquittal. It's where many an evening or morning was spent, post or pre-coital, Anders in a haze after coming off a thirty-six hour shift. His eyes fall on the dust gathered on the blinds, the off-white carpet. "Not exactly Fiskargatan, is it?" he asks, with a rueful smile.
"No," agrees Lisbeth. If there's any sentimentality in her eyes, it doesn't show.
In the freezer, he finds a bag full of Taiwanese bean buns he'd picked up from an Asian market a couple months back, and shoves a few into the microwave.
"It says here you're supposed to steam them," Salander says, inspecting the package.
"You're one to talk," he retorts, smirking. He has his bean buns and she has her Billy's Pan Pizza. Between the two of them they eat very little real food. It works, in the way that suspended adolescence for busy people only sort of does.
The afternoon wanes, and he finds himself knee deep in his bedroom closet, going through winter coats and pairs of identical scrubs and cobwebbed running shoes. He's not really sure he trusts Lisbeth to go through his things, so he's enlisted her to clean out the kitchen. He can hear her shuffling around from the other room, punctuated occasionally by something expired and frozen thudding into the trash.
At seven, his mother calls.
"All ready for the move, then?" she asks, something forced and chipper strangling every word.
"Um, sort of." He stands, and finds his bedroom has been taken over by two warring piles of clothes.
"I can always come over, if you need help," she persists. "There's no reason you've got to sort through it all on your own, love."
"No, no, I can handle it. I'm nearly done, actually." Again, his eyes land on the mess he's made, and then Lisbeth appears in the doorway with a raised eyebrow. He points to the phone and mouths mum. She narrows her eyes.
"Are you sure, honey? Really, it's no trouble," she says. "Moves like this are always stressful." She laughs; it's an unfortunate sound. "If it's too much, I'm sure Sahlgrenska will take you back."
He laughs, and wades through his worldly possessions toward where Lisbeth is making meaningful eye contact, her head cocked expectantly. He says, "Mum, I've really got to finish this up. I'll call you when I'm getting ready to go, yeah?"
She hangs up with the minimum of worried platitudes, and Lisbeth gives him an unimpressed look. He shrugs. "It's not the kind of thing you can tell a person over the phone."
She presses her lips together, eyes cold.
"It's not that I'm ashamed of you, obviously," he says, backpedaling awkwardly. "It's just going to take some explaining. And since you're not going to actually meet...I mean, unless you want to. Do you want to?"
Salander blinks, inscrutable, then turns back toward the kitchen.
Sometimes, Peter Teleborian's words rise to the top of his brain—fragments of what he'd tried to convince Jonasson was evidence of Lisbeth's sociopathy. Four years later, he's still uncovering the depth of that lie.
Lisbeth only shows you what she believes you want to see.
That's not true at all. She shows you only what she can't hide behind the pits of her eyes, and nothing else.
m m m
They make the first trip back to Stockholm with just a few heavy suitcases. The rest of his belongings are too large for the train and will have to be brought down using Lisbeth's Honda on Wednesday. They're back in Södermalm by Sunday evening, after he's spent the entirety of the afternoon agonizing about whether to call his mother back.
As it stands now, the extent of her knowledge is that Jonasson is moving to Stockholm because of an unbeatable, unsolicited offer from Karolinska. Her understanding of Lisbeth Salander is limited entirely to whatever she read in the papers four years ago and, as far as she's concerned, Anders's interactions with Lisbeth ceased the day she was transferred from Sahlgrenska to a Stockholm prison.
Until now, he has believed this to be a necessary illusion.
The lie, though, is beginning to feel cruel. Over the years, his mother, Signe, has migrated closer and closer to Göteborg from their native Jönköping, and now he's abandoning her. With his sister scraping by in Lapland with her deadbeat Finnish husband for the foreseeable future and his brother Nils lost to an overdose in 2001, Anders is the only Jonasson child that's made something of himself, and it feels undeniably selfish to realign himself in Stockholm without even offering up the real reason.
Still, he's never been able to picture Lisbeth as the "meet the family" type, and she's never shown him much evidence otherwise. The idea of explaining to his mother that not only has he secretly been in a relationship for four years, but that his partner has no obvious interest in being introduced, is almost too absurd a conversation to imagine.
As for Lisbeth, it seems she wants to be the best of both worlds—to be acknowledged as existing in Anders's life to one of his most important people without having to jump through the emotional hoops necessary for the stereotypical family introduction.
The situation, as it now, doesn't seem quite fair to any of them. Which is what leads Anders to an evening in the window seat with a cup of tea and the lights of Gamla Stan twinkling across the water. Lisbeth eventually wanders through, dusting off the tops of furniture with a rag as she goes. They're still struggling to make the apartment feel less cavernous, but the gradual migration of Jonasson's possessions is at least making an incremental difference.
"The fearsome Lisbeth Salander," he says, raising teasing eyebrows above his mug, "Reduced to domesticity of the tamest caliber."
The corner of her mouths tugs into a smile and she curls her fingers into a rude gesture. He cackles into his tea.
m m m
Monday morning, Salander heads off to some obscure archive to continue pursuing Armansky's assignment from Saturday, and Anders sets to work on a matter somehow even more delicate. After Lisbeth has sped off into the rainy morning, Jonasson finds himself on the landing in front of their door, looking at V. Kulla with something akin to melancholy. He'd always loved the Lindgren reference, but they've had a new plaque made to make it easier on the mail carrier.
Salander & Jonasson. A new era.
Lisbeth gets back just as he's securing the new plaque in place, and her eyes give nothing away. Once inside, though, he sees V. Kulla clutched in her small hand, then slid into the top drawer of her dresser when she thinks he isn't looking.
They're eating a lunch of lobster bisque from the bistro down the street, and trying to read the same newspaper while seated on opposite sides of the table, when the doorbell rings. Lisbeth looks up and frowns in a way that can only mean one thing.
"Kalle fucking Blomkvist," she says, and stands up to her full height before approaching the door.
"Sally," Mikael says, offering a brief smile in greeting. Regardless of their truce, she doesn't smile back. Maybe it's the nickname—it's one that Anders has not thought wise to co-opt. Personally, he's never gone beyond "Lis" when it comes to pet names, electing for self-preservation.
Over her head, Blomkvist sends Jonasson a brisk wave. "Good to see you again, Anders."
"Likewise," replies Anders, through a mouthful of soup. Though he doubts they'll ever be best friends, they do have a hearty respect for each other, borne from a shared goal. Four years ago, they were both trying to keep the buzzards back when Lisbeth was at her most vulnerable, and they've never really stopped trying to protect her, even as she does her best to protect them right back. There's an understanding of symbiosis, at the very least, between the three of them that keeps the tension out of the air. For the most part.
"What do you want?" Lisbeth asks, letting out an impatient sigh.
"I have a proposition for you."
Lisbeth doesn't blink, crossing her arms over her chest. Blomkvist is still standing on the threshold. Anders, from the table, asks, "Do you want tea or coffee or something, Mikael?"
"That's alright."
Lisbeth seems to wake up, and move aside, letting Mikael slip into the kitchen and drop his tote on the counter in a way that has Anders bringing up a napkin to make sure all the soup is out of his goatee. There is something unnervingly suave and hard to pin down about Blomkvist; Jonasson doesn't really know what to do with it.
Mikael is already surging ahead, pulling papers out of his bag and thrusting them toward Salander without looking. "There's a manufacturing plant in Linköping—components that go into engines for Airbuses. But every single part they've made over the last six months has been involved in some kind of aircraft accident. Nothing major yet, but enough to cause alarm. Aborted take-offs and taxi fires and the like. But nothing's been done, and the news is clearly being suppressed in Sweden—it was a friend in England who brought it to my attention, since I would've heard nothing otherwise."
"So?" Salander shrugs. "Not everything's a conspiracy."
"Except that it is." Mikael is almost grinning, and there's something a little morbid about it all, Jonasson thinks. "There are several high level government officials that have disproportionately large stakes in this factory and its parent company. There is no discernible reason why they should be this invested—but clearly they're pulling strings in the BEA and AAIB to keep themselves out of the suspicions of crash investigators."
Lisbeth's eyes are swiveling across the papers he's handed her, taking in the information voraciously. She's hooked, and everyone in the room knows it. Her tongue darts out to moisten her lips as she turns the page.
"Something is definitely going on below the surface here," Blomkvist says, after sucking in a long breath. "And it might be huge. Multi-national. Fucking dangerous."
"So now you're taking on the entire EU?" Anders says, trying for a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. The word dangerous has lodged jaggedly in his mind.
"Perhaps the United States also," Mikael replies absently, eyes on Lisbeth.
First it was Wenneström, then Säpo, now the international airline industry—it seems Mikael Blomkvist's fierce hunger for lies will only expand exponentially. Anders doesn't say anything, but the look on his face must have something sour in it, because Mikael says, "Look, there are lives at stake. If we don't uncover this, who will?"
Jonasson bites his thumbnail. "What does Monica think of this, then?"
There's not many people out there Anders feels truly intimidated by, but Monica Figuerola-Blomkvist is certainly one of them. And it's not even the fact that she could easily crush him, and just about anyone, in hand-to-hand combat so much as it is that she's managed to stay married to Mikael for a year now, despite the odds stacked against her. She, somehow, has tamed the wandering manwhore that Lisbeth has painted Mikael as being at his truest nature. The couple have been over to Fiskargatan a few times for dinner and to distract himself from Lisbeth's icy discomfort, he'd occupied himself with trying to figure out how Figuerola made her face so open and her thoughts so closed. It's possible that he just admires her ability to be unreadable in the same way he does Lisbeth—inscrutability has never been his strong suit.
"She knows the risks," Mikael replies, narrowing his eyes like he's waiting for Anders to erupt in a way he never has and probably never will.
"So it really is worth the danger?" Anders asks, but it's hardly a question. He can't keep the resignation out of his voice—they will do whatever they please, and he'll wait for Lisbeth to come home and keep himself alive on the assumption that she always will. Monica knows the risks associated with these two, and he supposes he does too.
"Yes," says Lisbeth, finally looking up from her reading. She hands them back to Mikael, and he doesn't question that the information is now where it will be safest—inside her mind. "It's necessary." She turns her black gaze on Blomkvist. "Where shall we start?"
Things happen quickly, after that, and after a blur of activity and a few relatively civil goodbyes, Jonasson finds himself with a bowl of cold soup and an empty apartment.
m m m
Salander gets back late, smelling of cigarettes and old paper. Jonasson is in bed, his side lamp still on while he reads a magazine beneath the covers. It's a warm night, but the bedroom windows are open and a cool breeze is floating in off the water in starts and stops.
He watches her get undressed in the low light, the dragon undulating as she folds to pick her clothes off the floor and toss them toward the hamper. His eyes follow the tattoo, as they have a tendency to do when it seems to be taking up all the air in the room. By the time she crawls in beside him, though, his gaze is obstinately back on his reading.
After a moment of tense silence, she reaches out to brush her fingers over his neck. "You should get a wasp right here," she says, pointing to a spot just beneath his pulse. "So we can match."
Anders smiles a little, but doesn't meet her eyes. "People aren't generally interested in their surgeons having neck tattoos."
She shrugs, then drags a finger down the soft flesh of his inner bicep. "Maybe right here, then."
"Or I could get a dragon on my back," he retorts, and when he looks over her brow has furrowed. "How was it today, then? Manage to tear down the establishment yet?"
She sits up slightly in bed, fixing him with a cold stare. "I don't know what you want from me."
He lets his magazine fall to the floor with a papery thud, and uses his free hand to knead at the bridge of his nose. "I just don't ever want to see you duct-taped together again. I don't want to see inside your head anymore than I already have."
It's strange, he thinks—the night she'd come into Sahlgrenska taped together and drowning in blood, he'd felt nothing. It was a job, a procedure, another night. Now, just the thought of it makes him feel ill. He loses his nerve entirely at the mere image. It's weak—Salander would not be impressed if she knew.
"This is how it is," she says, softer. She could only ever be saying things like this at night, with the warm light of the lamp and the breeze off the bay. His eyes are still closed. She adds, "I can't make any promises."
Just by sharing this bed, though, it's clear she already has.
He's not sure what to say. His eyes latch onto the joint between the wall and the ceiling, and her eyes latch onto him. Eventually, she traces the pale skin of his inner arm again, where it's been exposed by the rearranging of the duvet. Jonasson lets out a long breath.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I'm just stressed—the move and the job and everything."
She presses her lips together in an expression almost sympathetic, and after a moment he stretches out an arm so she can lay against him, her head resting right on the spot where the proposed wasp tattoo would be. They're close enough that he can feel every intake of her breath, her skin expanding against his. He angles his face into the short spikes of her hair, and closes his eyes.
m m m
Tuesday, he takes the subway to Solna for his unofficial orientation at Karolinska. Most of the day is spent in HR, sprinkled with tours of the emergency department and ICU and meet and greets with the primary staff. It's a day that manages to be both dull and draining, even if his final conclusion is that his future there bodes well.
Lisbeth is still at home when he returns, smoking out the window while typing rapidly on her laptop with her free hand. "Hey hey," he calls when he spots her, dropping his bag and running a hand through his own thoroughly and perpetually mussed hair.
She looks up immediately, and raises a sardonic eyebrow. "Nice tie."
It's an unremarkable maroon thing, but he sends her a grin. "Thanks."
He enjoys the bewilderment that always seems to cross her face when he meets her sarcasm with chipper sincerity. Lisbeth has always had a disdain for the society's clothing-related conventions—it's a miracle she puts up with his jeans and t-shirts and plain anoraks. A miracle that, among other aspects of their life together, he doesn't question.
He's stopped by the Asian grocery on Rinvägen to pick up three packages of red bean buns in preparation for the stress of the week ahead. Salander makes no comment on their sudden appearance, but her eyes follow as he finds a place for them in the freezer.
He strips off his jacket and tie, and rolls up the sleeves of the cheap dress shirt beneath. Their final journey to Göteborg begins tonight, and it'll be a ten hour round trip over the next day and night in Lisbeth's bare bones Honda. His mother will expect to see him, too, and he still hasn't figured out exactly what he's going to say or how he's going to say it. Lisbeth watches him muddle through packing a backpack, as though she's reading his thoughts.
They're on the highway by nine, and Anders falls asleep to the alternating light and dark of streetlamps passing over them at an even, soothing interval. Their initial agreement was for each to drive half, but Lisbeth doesn't wake him until they're pulling into the parking deck of his apartment building in Göteborg and she's smoked her way through a pack and a half of cigarettes. Jonasson barely manages to lumber inside before he collapses on the bare mattress in his former bedroom. He's vaguely aware of Salander curling up beside him before he succumbs to sleep again.
m m m
Sometimes, Salander looks at him like she's waiting for him to turn on her. Like she's balanced on the balls of her feet, awaiting the moment when he finally expects his kindness to be repaid in her suffering. It's a look that had injured him, at first—he'd actually been offended that she, on some level, believed that he would hurt her. Eventually, though, he'd come to understand. Salander's life has gifted her with the idea that everyone, at their truest nature, will destroy if given the opportunity. She's given them the opportunity too many times, and it will not happen again.
It's an old wound, for both of them. Anders feels it tug a little when, in the morning, he tells her he's heading to Signe's house in the suburbs, but not to tell her the whole truth. Not yet.
"I'll call her once we're back in Stockholm," he says. "Explain everything then."
"And that's somehow better than telling her face to face?" Lisbeth is perched on the edge of the bed, one leg folded under her and her arms crossed over her chest.
"If I'm still in Göteborg when I drop a bombshell like this, she'll find some reason to make me stay."
Lisbeth shrugs, and slips to her feet. "I think you're making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be."
He cocks his head in exasperation and looks her square in the eyes. "If it's not such a big deal, then why don't you come with?"
She sends him a warning look, but he doesn't back down. After a few long moments, she pads silently into the other room and puts the kettle on for coffee. It hasn't even begun to boil before Anders has slipped into his jacket and headed out into the brisk morning, alone.
m m m
The journey back to Stockholm is silent. Jonasson drives; Lisbeth doesn't offer to take over, and he's glad for the distraction of the road. When he'd returned from Signe's in the early half of the afternoon, Lisbeth had fixed him with a penetrating look and asked, "How did it go?"
He'd mumbled something along the lines of "Fine," and they'd spent the remainder of the day packing up what little of value remained in his apartment. His visit with Signe had not been terrible long, or terribly eventful—he'd caught a glimpse of the familiar pictures of Nils on the mantle and his mouth had gone dry enough to eliminate any idea he may have had of telling her about Lisbeth early. They'd chatted idly about Stockholm and Karolinska and his sister in Finland and he'd wondered the entire time if there were really any consequences if he simply never mentioned Lisbeth's existence at all and they were allowed to talk about nothing forever.
It's not a thought that persists very long, though, once he's back in Salander's presence—she's too big of an entity in his life to remain hidden, despite her tiny frame. To conceal her is to conceal a part of himself.
It's not right.
By midnight, they're hauling his last few possessions into the elevator: a few old welding projects kept around more for sentimental value than anything else, and a coat rack bigger than the flimsy one they've been subsisting on at Fiskargatan. Anders feels bone-tired in a peculiarly specific way, as if every stressor over the last few days has found its own particular home in each cell of his being. Still, his mobile is heavy in his pocket, as is Lisbeth's gaze on his back. The right time had probably been this afternoon in Göteborg, but now will have to do.
He calls Signe.
She answers on the first ring, and there's something a little bit sad about that. He doesn't let himself dwell on it—he's left her behind, the deed is done. She says, "How are you? All settled in the new place?"
"Yeah. Erm…except it's not really new, mum. I need to tell you something." He takes a deep breath. Lisbeth, from the window seat, is watching him carefully. "Do you know who Lisbeth Salander is?"
"Wasn't she that lesbian satanist woman from a few years back? I can't believe that let her free. One look at her in the papers and even I could see she was unstable." She lets out a flighty chortle, completely unaware. "Why do you ask, love?"
Jonasson grits his teeth. "She lives in Stockholm and I live with her."
There's a strange silence that follows, and then an onslaught of flustered noises, half-finished condemnations. Signe pauses to take a breath and he dives in. "I'm sorry for lying. That's all."
"You don't know what you're doing. This is what Nils did, too. Everything was fine until he started falling in with the wrong group of people, and that boyfriend of his—"
"Don't bring Nils into this. There's no comparison." He swallows hard, prepares to force something rational out of his throat, but she's already talking again.
"—before long they were both into all manner of unsavory things and had no money and you remember what that did to me. To all of us. You remember."
"It's not like that. She's not who you think she is." He balls his fingers into a fist, then uncurls it, only to ball it again and watch the tendons flex in his wrist.
"Then why lie to me all this time, Anders?"
His breath catches in his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he perceives Lisbeth slide off of her seat to approach him wordlessly. He's seated sideways in a chair at the breakfast table, and she settles cross-legged at his feet with a warm, comforting hand resting on his thigh. It's a visceral form of solidarity, and it steadies him, even if he's still not sure what to say. He meets her dark eyes just as Signe speaks again.
"That's how it started with Nils, also. Lying." She sighs, and there's something resigned in it. His throat tightens further. "But you remember that, too."
"I don't want to talk about Nils," he chokes out. His mind darts to the photo in his wallet of the two of them from the late eighties in Gotland, vacationing with their rich next door neighbors. Nils is almost seventeen in the picture; if you look closely you can already see the track marks on his arm. Anders knows instinctively not to reach for the image, that to look at it would only undo him further. "I have to go."
He can tell she wants to say more, wants to drag him back to Göteborg and Sahlgrenska and the halcyon past. He puts a hand over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut while she bids him a terse goodbye. The phone drops onto the table, and then his elbows follow. He swallows thickly.
"Nils?" Lisbeth asks. She's standing now, a light hand on his shoulder.
He gives a tight nod and hides his face.
She stays by his side until he's calmed a bit, then leads him to the window seat, maintaining a silence he's never been so grateful for. They arrange themselves until Lisbeth leans against the wall and he leans against her, her arms around him, their legs stretched out together. She places a hand on his forehead that eventually slides into his hair. Beneath them, the water seethes, and then Gamla Stan and Norrmalm beyond. A collection of golden light, standing guard against the north. His breathing evens out beneath her touch—a touch made all the more wonderful by its rareness.
"I love you," he murmurs. It's possible that hours have passed. His head rests against her collarbone, and he wants to reach up and trace the scar above her ear even though his arms feel limp and useless.
She just hums in response, and it rumbles against him where they're pressed together. It's enough.
m m m
In the early morning light, things are very, very still.
Neither of them are asleep. Across the pillows, Lisbeth makes dark, unwavering eye contact. They lie together, not quite touching—though their fingers are so close he can feel her heartbeat in the millimeter between them. She says, voice barely above a whisper, "Are you still homesick?"
He thinks back to that confession, the night before their first trap back to Göteborg. It's barely five days ago but it feels like weeks, if the weight of it on his shoulders is any indication. Lying here, though, it feels a little less pressing; his breaths are longer, his blinks slower.
"No," he says, because he knows that's what Lisbeth wants to hear. Because he hopes that soon, it'll be true.
It has the desired effect. Lisbeth smiles crookedly and reaches out to squeeze his hand. A moment later and she's rising into a sitting position, stretching her exposed torso, a ghostly silhouette against the night sky. Pale moonlight rebounds off the dragon, and the wasp. She runs a hand through her prickly hair and says, "I need some bean buns."
He smiles into his pillow as she slides from bed and pads into the darkness of the kitchen.