the sweet taste of apple pie

by EFAW

The facts are these: there is a piemaker with an extraordinary gift, his alive-again childhood friend, a pie-loving private detectives, a skeptical medical examiner, and a cop and her dog. Pushing Daisies, Common-Law style. Ontshot.

Summary: The facts are these: there is a piemaker with an extraordinary gift, his alive-again childhood friend, a pie-loving private detective, a skeptical medical examiner, and a cop and her dog. Pushing Daisies, Common Law-style.

Warnings: Many mentions of death. Also un-death. Many food/pie mentions. Cute sappiness.

Disclaimer: I neither own nor am affiliated with Common Law in any way.

This is an AU based off the ABC series Pushing Daisies. It is a very cute series and I recommend you check it out if you can.

Also, in honor of Pi Day, there are pies. Yay!

OOOO

the sweet taste of apple pie

"If I could touch anything in the world right now, it would be your heart. I want to take that piece of you and keep it with me."

—Jessica Verday, The Haunted

XXXX

Eight weeks, four days, and nine hours after coming back from the dead, Travis Marks sits in the booth in the piemaker's shop and folds his hands together.

"Wes," he says seriously, which is a telling sign, as Travis Marks rarely speaks seriously at all. "Wes," he says, "I want to help your work."

Wesley Mitchell flinches, both from the suggestion and the proximity of his childhood, alive-again friend. "Making pies?" he asks, playing dumb to avoid the conversation he is being subjected to.

Travis sighs and gives Wes a look. This look says, I know what you are doing and you're not fooling me. "No, Wes," he says, semi-patiently. "Not making pies. I want to help your detective work."

Pale hands busy themselves straightening the sugar packets. "I don't do detective work," he says, not looking at his once-dead friend.

"You solve murders for a living," Travis points out in a fairly reasonably voice. "I think that's called detective work."

"I make pies for a living," Wes corrects. "I solve murders as a side job. A hobby, if you will."

"Dammit Wes." At this point Travis drops his head to the table. Wes cringes back, covering up the motion by shifting the sugar packet container. Luckily, seeing as Travis's eyes are face-down to the table, Travis does not notice.

"Wes, I'm dying here," Travis groans. "Again. I've got cabin fever. I need to go out!"

Wes, who is deeply unsettled by the idea of Travis dying again, but doesn't let it show on his face, finishes stacking the sugar packets and starts sorting the sugar substitutes.

All he says is a single, simple word.

"No."

XXXX

The sky is overcast, there is a chill bite in the air, and it is positively dreary this fourth day of the third month when the boy moves in across the street. He is not a boy, though he is, certainly, a boy. He is the boy, and he will become the most important person in Wes's life, a fact Wes will not realize for some time.

On this dreary fourth day of the third month, Wesley Mitchell, age twelve years, six months, twenty-one days, sits in his bedroom window and watches the boy climb out of the silver sedan, trailing a single ragged suitcase behind him. And he is curious, because there is something about the straight bearing of this lonely boy that draws the eye.

It is a well-known fact that Mrs. Danzinger across the street always has several foster children in her home. Wes's mother thinks this brings down the value of the neighborhood. Wes doesn't particularly care either way, but he has never had much reason to associate with the children under Mrs. Danzinger's care.

And he continues to have no reason for forty-two days, until the afternoon the boy called Travis Marks climbs up a tree.

It's a wonderful tree, with big, climbable branches and a thick green canopy of leaves. Wes, who learned several years ago that adults rarely look above their heads and has since always felt more comfortable up high, is tuck in the V between two of the thickest branches, curled up with a book. Every day he spends anywhere from one to three hours up there, entertaining himself until he makes his way home.

There's a rustle and a grunt, and a dark head pops up through the leaves. For a moment, both boys merely blink at each other in surprise. Wes, because no one has ever penetrated his arboreal sanctuary before; and Travis because he had almost certainly not expected to find a small blonde boy in the branches of the tree he was ascending.

Wes regains mobility first and opens his mouth. "What are you—"

"Shh!" Travis's finger comes up to cover his lips, and he scrambles into the tree. Perching on a branch, he stares down at the ground below, but his words are directed towards Wes. "Don't…make…a…sound."

Obediently, Wes snaps his mouth shut and goes still, eyes moving to glance below. Presently, three boys come racing by the tree, shouting angry words to each other. Wes recognizes them from the park down the street, older boys who stand in the corner with their hoods drawn over their heads like they're conspiring something. Wes's mother says they will grow up to be nothing more than drug dealers and hoodlums, and she warns him to stay away from the park down the street.

They are clearly angry, and they are clearly searching for something. It does not take Wes long to put together that they are searching for the boy in his tree. Wes, not wanting to invite their wrath upon himself, stays still and quiet.

They leave with aggrieved shouts, but it isn't until a full minute has passed that Wes dares to move, carefully closing his book. "Why were they chasing you?" he whispers, as though speaking too loudly may bring the boys back.

The boy in his tree turns and studies him with the brightest blue eyes Wes has ever seen. "They said some nasty things about my mom."

"Your mom." Except this boy lives across the street, with Mrs. Danzinger, and she… "But she's not—"

The boy in his tree stiffens, bristling in a very visible way. "She's not my birth mom," he says, "but she's still my mom."

And Wes, who very much doesn't want to get into a fight with the bigger boy, simply says, "Okay." He blinks, tucking his book into his bag. "They said some mean things. And you…?"

The boy gives him a bright white smile full of flashing teeth and dimples, and his eyes sparkle. "I punched one of them in the face."

And Wes falls a little bit in awe of this older boy who has no hesitation in attacking even bigger, older boys to defend someone he's not even related to. Wes can't imagine doing the same for his own family, and it's amazing.

You're amazing, Wes thinks, but he doesn't say it, because Wes Mitchell is a reserved little boy, and adorning perfect strangers with compliments is simply something he does not do.

Instead, he holds out his hand and primly says, "My name is Wes Mitchell," because his mother believes it's always important to introduce oneself with one's entire name.

The boy looks amused in a way that has the corners of his mouth turning up and the corners of his eyes crinkling, and he slides his hand into Wes's and gives it a good shake. "Travis Marks. Nice to meet you, Wes."

There is something about the way Travis Marks shakes his hand and says his name that makes Wes feel cozy and warm in his chest, and he decides he really must be getting home now. He gathers up his bag and says a hasty goodbye and carefully climbs down out of the tree, because haste makes waste and he definitely doesn't want to fall and possibly break his wrist in front of this boy he's only just met.

He's made it three steps away from the tree when the older boys who hang out in the park appear, surrounding him. "Hey kid," one of them sneers, the biggest and meanest looking one. His nose is big and puffy and there's a spot of blood on his lip. "You seen a guy run past? Leather jacket, dark skin?"

Wes blinks, and swallows, and grips the straps of his bag. He doesn't look at the tree, and he shakes his head.

"You sure?" another smaller-than-the-big-one-but-still-bigger-then-Wes boy asks, leaning in, and Wes just shakes his head again. The three boys sigh and stomp off, angry mutters passing between them. Wes takes another breath and starts walking, and he doesn't look back at the tree just in case the boys are looking and wondering why he's staring.

This is the start of a friendship between Wes Mitchell and Travis Marks, though Wes won't know that for twenty-four hours, when Travis climbs into the tree after school and sits in the branches and starts talking. It's a friendship that lasts for seven months, two weeks, and nine days, through the end of the school year and all the way to the end of summer.

It lasts right up to the day when Wes's father dies in the back yard, and then, for a few hours, comes alive. And then Mrs. Danzinger falls over dead in the driveway across the street, and just like that everything changes.

Wes briefly sees Travis the day after the funeral, when a woman in a blue skirt takes Travis and his ratty suitcase and loads him into a little red car. Wes watches from his bedroom window, thinking about that day seven months, two weeks, and nine days ago when he saw the boy arrive at this home, and he thinks he really ought to have made some sort of promise to keep in touch, possibly given Travis his address so they could write letters to each other.

But it is too late for that. The little red car turns the corner at the end of the street, and just like that the boy drives out of Wes's life, the same way he drove in.

XXXX

Jump forward nineteen years, five months, and twenty-one days, when Travis asks his childhood friend if he can help in his detective work, and Wes gives him a short, concise answer:

"No."

Then jump forward one more day. This is 'now.'

XXXX

"I need your help," Wes says as he slides into the booth.

David Paek, a.k.a. Paekman (a.k.a. the head detective at the Golden Eye PI Agency, a.k.a. Wes's sometimes employer-slash-mentor) lowers his newspaper. "You need my help? Isn't it usually the other way around?"

Wes shrugs because it's true and there's nothing much to say to that. "Travis is mad at me."

The newspaper goes back up. "Not my jurisdiction."

"Paekman."

The newspaper comes back down enough so Wes can see the detective's eyes. "Look, Wes, if you have a question about blood splatter or how many ways you can be stabbed without dying or how to legally stalk someone and take pictures for a divorce settlement, I'm your man. But relationship advice isn't really my thing."

Wes looks down and fiddles with the hem of his apron. "I need your help. Travis is mad at me."

There's a long, thoughtful silence. Then Paekman sighs and folds the newspaper and sets it aside. "Fine. Hit me. How mad is he?"

Travis chooses that moment to appear with a plate in his hand. Without looking Wes's direction, Travis slams the plate on the table and tosses a set of silverware beside it. Then he storms off, his usual smile replaced by a scowl.

Wes clears his throat. "Very mad."

"Right." Paekman unwraps his fork and takes an appreciative bite of his pie. "Let me guess. He wants to go out and do something. You said no."

"It's not safe," Wes says defensively. "If he helps with the reward work, he might get recognized. If someone realizes he's alive again it will bring people and questions." Wes has no intention of becoming a science experiment or a government secret, even if it means Travis is mad at him.

But Wes would really, really like for Travis to not be mad at him.

"How do I make Travis happy?" he asks, definitely not looking over where Travis is stomping around with the broom. And certainly absolutely not watching the way Travis's jeans hug his hips or how his back shifts as he sweeps.

"Oi, loverboy, eyes over here." Paekman snaps his fingers, and Wes blinks. "Okay, so I'm gonna just assume you mean right now and not in the, you know, general sense of things, cause yeah, I can't help you with that one."

Wes waits expectantly.

The detective sighs and stalls with a bite of pie. "Okay," he says, "okay, here's what you need to do. Apologize."

The piemaker bristles. "I've done nothing wrong."

"I know you think you've done nothing wrong, but in my experience you're wrong. About being wrong." The detective's brow furrows ever so slightly as he goes over that sentence. Then he moves past it. "Trust me. Apologies will go a long way."

Wes, whose relationship experience ended with Alex five years ago and whose experience with other people in general is limited to Paekman and Travis and no one else due to a certain magic finger he possesses, decides he really has no recourse but to trust Paekman in matters of the heart. "Alright," he nods, folding his hands on the table. "And then what?"

"I don't know, dude. Buy him a present."

"Like what?" Wishing he was taking notes, Wes leans forward. "What kind of present?"

Paekman waves his fork. "Flowers, chocolate. A puppy. I don't know. What does he like?"

Wes looks over at Travis, who is across the shop wiping tables down with sharp angry motions and pointedly not looking at their booth. He swallows hard.

"Travis likes being a cop."

XXXX

The facts are these:

Nine weeks, seven days, and nineteen hours ago, the piemaker picked up the newspaper from the stoop and was caught by the front page article. Normally, he merely skimmed the articles unless something caught his interest; this front page article, reading "Cop shot in undercover operation!" caught his interest.

The article did not say the name of the cop, for the cop in question was working undercover in a drug cartel, and repercussions were feared should his name get out. The article did say that this cop was killed, shot twice in the chest and found dead by the time the paramedics arrived.

There was nothing about the article itself that was particularly interesting, but Wes couldn't get it out of his mind. He thought about it for days: as he was baking pies, as he was sweeping the shop, as he was locking the door. He thought about the nameless cop, shot dead in a vacant lot, and something small and cold in his chest ached for the fallen man.

That was how he found himself leaving the shop in the very capable hands of his part-timer Dakota as he made his way across town to a lovely funeral home. He used his connection as the sort-of apprentice-slash-employee of Paekman to look up the service information, which was also where he learned the name of the dead cop.

Travis Marks.

But it couldn't be. Travis Marks was surely a common name, there was no reason to think this man had anything to do with the boy Wes had known so briefly when he was young. So he went to the funeral home, and he walked into the room of quiet, crying people in their black clothes, and he kept his hands very close to his sides as he walked to the front and pretended they weren't shaking.

There was a picture on a stand, but it wasn't until he looked into the coffin that he could admit to himself; this was that Travis Marks. The boy who'd been his friend. His jaw was a little sharper and his face a little older, but Wes had no doubt that if Travis opened his eyes, they would be the same mischievous blue, as mysterious and depthless as the ocean.

Travis would never open his eyes again.

Wes remembered falling in awe with Travis Marks. This was just like that, except in reverse, a dizzying rush of feeling that exploded out of him and left him aching, because oh, oh, of course he would realize this all when it was much too late to do anything about it. He'd fallen in awe, and then he'd fallen in like, and then Travis was gone, gone, gone, and nothing to be done about it.

Except Wes could say goodbye. He could give Travis one last, final goodbye, the one he'd been holding in his chest for nineteen years, three months and fourteen days as he watched Travis Marks drive away in that little red car.

So the piemaker sat in the back of the church with his hands folded in his lap, listening to people talking about a man he never knew and strangers crying quietly in the pews. He stood when the pallbearers lifted the coffin and he followed the crowd to the cemetery and he wondered what he was doing here, standing in this place surrounded by strangers for a boy who probably didn't even remember him anymore.

And then the first, ceremonial handful of dirt hit the grave and the crowd was trickling away and Wes waited. He waited until everyone was gone and the gravediggers had left him alone 'for one more minute, please, just another minute' and then he climbed into the grave and knelt on the coffin and didn't even care that his pants were getting dirty.

It took a moment to find the latch, but he managed and looked down at that face, Travis's face, eyes closed like he was sleeping except he wasn't, he was dead and nothing could change that.

Nothing except a touch.

Wes reached out, hand a fist except for one outstretched finger, and after a moment of indecisive hovering he touched and

Travis woke with a gasp, sitting upright so quickly Wes had to scramble back so their heads wouldn't crash together. He clutched at his hip, eyes wide and panicked, before he suddenly seem to notice his surroundings—that being in the bottom of a grave with a blonde man on top of the coffin he was lying in.

The piemaker was suddenly struck with the memory of their first meeting.

"Um," he said, because the words he'd planned while he waited seemed to fly out of his head when faced with those eyes, Travis's eyes, blue and brilliant and beautiful even with the panic in them.

Travis was a detective, so it didn't take long for him to put the pieces together. Seconds, maybe, but precious seconds because they only had sixty and time was wasting.

"I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Um," Wes said. "Yes. Kind of. It's complicated, and we don't have a lot of time. You probably don't remember me, but I'm Wes, Wes Mitchell, we used to know each other, and—"

"Wes?" Those sharp blue eyes zeroed in on his face, studying him, and then a bright smile flashed across Travis's lips. "Wes! Man, it's good to see you. How've you been?" He reached out, and Wes scrambled back as much as the space would allow. Travis's hand paused, mid-air.

"We don't have a lot of time," Wes repeated, heart jumping in his throat. "You're dead, and I—I just wanted to say goodbye. Properly this time, we never got the chance last time, and I've always wanted to…" He swallowed. "I'm sorry we never kept in touch."

Travis dropped his hand to his side and gave him a wistful sort of look that Wes couldn't decipher. "Yeah, man. Me too." There was an undercurrent to Travis's words, but there was no time to get into now. "How long do we have?"

Wes checked his watch. "Twenty seconds." He took a breath, stared at a spot just to the left of Travis's face because it was always easier to say these sorts of things without actual eye contact, and admitted, "I've missed you. You were…you were my best friend and I wish we'd had more time."

"Yeah." Travis's sigh sounded exactly like Wes felt, like there was a gaping ache in his chest for all the lost moments they could have had. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

Seven precious seconds slipped by in silence.

"So how does this work?" Travis asked, shifting. "Is there chanting or weird lights or—"

"Touch." Wes cleared his throat. "I just have to touch you." Ten seconds now.

"Okay." Travis smiled, somehow managing to convey everything he wanted to say in that one expression. "I'm glad we saw each other one last time."

Throat tight, Wes muttered, "Me too," scooting forward. His hand came out, hovering over Travis's cheek. All it would take was another few centimeters and Travis would be gone, gone forever.

Travis blinked, slowly, eyelids fluttering closed.

Gone forever, and they'd never make up nineteen years of apologies and heartache and laughter and Wes's hand trembled, and he couldn't do it. He couldn't move.

Time ticked away, five…four…

three…

two…

one…

zero.

Wes let his hand fall back to his side.

The detective's eyes cracked open. "Huh," he said. "Death looks a lot like life."

"We need to go." Wes stood, as far into the corner of the grave as he could. "We need to go right now. I promise I'll explain everything, but we need to go."

Travis looked down at himself, at his very-not-dead self sitting in an open coffin, and he nodded without hesitation. "Okay."

Which was how they found themselves scrambling out of the grave, the alive-again detective in his dress blues following the piemaker across the cemetery before anyone could see them.

And these are the facts. Wes has faithfully told every detail to Travis and Paekman, except for some minor ones: like the fact that he fell in like in that funeral home, or maybe he fell in like a long time ago and only realized it when he saw Travis lying there dead. And the fact that someone, somewhere, fell over dead when Wes didn't touch Travis one more time.

But those are little things. Hardly worth mentioning at all.

XXXX

There are certain problems apt to come up when two independent people who have lived alone for years begin sharing the same living space. Problems such as who uses the bathroom first in the morning, and whose turn it is to do dishes, and what sort of rules there are about sharing personal possessions seriously travis stop touching that it's mine you're getting greasy fingerprints all over it.

Adding the complication of not being able to touch even for an instant without disastrous results has resulted in some close calls, most of them involving doorways. During the first week alone, they nearly walk into each other within a doorway three times, resulting in the piemaker and the detective announcing 'Coming' or 'Going' as they enter or leave a room. It has become so engrained within the apartment that the piemaker has found himself announcing 'Going' even as he leaves the kitchen in his shop, to the bemusement of his regulars.

Today finds Wes neither 'Coming' nor 'Going', but merely standing in the hallway. Were Travis to exit the living room at this moment, he would be hard-pressed to keep from walking into his childhood friend, as Wes has not moved for nearly fifteen minutes.

He has a pie in his hands.

Apologize, he tells himself. Apologies go a long way. And then give him the pie. Wes is still not quite certain he has done anything to apologize for, but Paekman is certain this is the first step to mending the rift between them, and Wes is inclined to believe his friend in matters of the heart.

Go inside. Apologize. Give him the pie. Things will go back to normal. Wes takes a breath, urges his feet forward, and doesn't move.

There is a rustle of paper, and Travis sighs inside the room. "Will you just come in already, Wes? Your creeper act in the hallway is kind of freaking me out."

With that, Wes finally unsticks his feet from the floor and enters the room. "It's not—Coming—a creeper act. I was deliberating."

Looking highly amused, Travis sets his magazine down. "About what? Is that pie?"

Wes looks down at the pie in his hands. "Yes." It is indeed a pie, a very special apology pie he spent half a day getting just right. It is, quite possibly, the most perfect pie he has ever created.

"Wes," Travis says slowly, amused and a little concerned if the furrow of his brow is any indication. "Why are you standing in the living room with a pie?"

"It's for you," he declares, holding the pie out. He has taken the precaution to wear gloves, bright yellow rubber ones from the two-pack in the kitchen, so as to facilitate Travis's taking of the pie.

The furrow deepens, and Travis rises, carefully taking the pie from his hands. Their fingers brush, but there is no spark, no shimmer of excitement or feeling, because Wes is wearing rubber gloves and rubber is an excellent insulator in all things electrical, including matters of romance.

"Wes," Travis says slowly, in a tone used by people concerned for other peoples' sanity, "Why did you make me a pie?"

Wes shuffles back a few paces, uncomfortable in their sudden proximity even though Travis has made no move towards him, other than to take the pie. "It's…an apology. Pie. Apology pie. For you. Because I made you mad." He takes a breath and forces the words out, because they don't come easily. "I'm sorry."

Travis looks down at the pie. It's a chocolate crème pie, with a flaky brown chocolate crust and a perfect whipped swirl on top, and Travis looks at it as though it's an alien artifact. "I'm mad at you, so you baked me a pie?" He pauses, and his eyebrows jump. "Actually, on second thought, that kind of makes perfect sense."

Wes's hands twist the hem of his shirt. "Are you still mad?" It's an apology pie. Wes is hoping it has done its job, because if it hasn't, he's out of tricks and he'll have to try this again another day, after he can talk with Paekman some more.

Travis slowly sets the pie down on the coffee table, the slow descent a match for the sinking feeling in Wes's stomach that doesn't get any better when Travis sighs and says, "Wes, do you even know why I'm mad?"

"Um." Wes plucks at the fingers of his stupid yellow gloves and doesn't quite look at his friend. "Because I don't want you to help?"

"It's because you don't trust me." Travis runs his hand through his hair and he doesn't pace even though he probably wants to. (They learned that the first few weeks, because even though Wes will stand perfectly still Travis has a tendency to veer a little too close when he's pacing without thinking and it made Wes much too nervous.)

"Man, I was a cop," Travis grumbles, but there's also a plea in his voice, like he's trying to get Wes to see reason. "I know better than to blow my cover. It's not like I'll go running through the streets, shouting at the top of my lungs that I'm alive if you let me outside the door. I'm not stupid, Wes."

"I don't think you're stupid," Wes protests, because there are many things he thinks about Travis but stupid isn't one of them. "It just isn't safe—"

"I'm not a doll, Wes! You can't take me out of a box and put me in a slightly bigger box. That's not how it works!" He pauses, face twisting distastefully. "And if that is what you want, then I don't know…"

He doesn't finish the sentence, but Wes is perfectly capable of completing it himself. I don't know if I can stay, and the thought sends a flurry of panic down the piemaker's spine. Wes has done too much to have Travis here beside him (in a manner of speaking), including bringing his childhood friend back from the dead. If he screws this up now…

Travis sighs, moving towards the door. He doesn't take the pie. "Look, I don't really want to fight about this, so I'm just gonna—"

"Okay."

The former-detective pauses. "What?"

"Okay." Wes turns and doesn't move another inch. "The next case I get, you can come along. As long as, you know, you're careful."

Travis's face splits into a wide, bright grin, and if he sees this as the desperate attempt to keep Travis here as long as possible that it is, then he doesn't mention it. "Thanks, man. I swear, I got this. Nobody's gonna know I'm alive who shouldn't."

Travis's regard sends a fluttery sort of warmth through Wes, and he thinks it's most likely the sudden infusion of like he's feeling towards this man. Wes looks down and picks at his gloves and hopes it doesn't show on his face. His intent is to refrain from driving Travis away for any reason.

"That's…um, okay." The piemaker glances at the coffee table and worries his lip. "Um, the pie. Do you like the pie? I made it for you." Paekman was very insistent that Travis has to accept the apology gift or things aren't as okay as they seem.

Travis steps into the room, moving so close Wes can smell his cologne, and he picks up the pie. "Yeah, Wes, I love the pie." And his voice is soft and there's a sort of catch to it, but Wes isn't looking at his face so he has no hope of parsing it out.

The piemaker nods and wrings his hands together. "Good. That's…good." And, his sudden burst of bravery long gone, he flees the room ("Going!") and double-times it to his bedroom. It isn't until he's sitting on the edge of his bed, rubber gloves neatly placed on the side table and hand sanitizer liberally applied to his palms, that he begins to settle.

He hopes his next case doesn't come for a long time.

XXXX

"Got a case, bro," Paekman chirps, slapping a tan folder onto the table. "I need you to work your magic."

The piemaker glares at the private eye. "I hate you so much."

The P.I. rears back slightly. "Woah, dude, what's with the hostility?"

Wes says nothing, simply continues glaring at his so-called "friend".

Paekman's eyebrows go up. "Right. Whatever. You're weird, man." He looks around, brightening when he sees Travis at the counter, bent over the paper because it's ten in the morning and there's no one in the store buying pie. "Yo, Zombie Boy, pie me!"

Travis's response is to flash his middle finger without ever looking up from the paper. Wes coughs and starts straightening sugar packets. Paekman just laughs.

"Anyway," Paekman says, pushing the folder in front of Wes. "This case is—"

"We have to wait," Wes cuts in, words sharper than he intends due to the reason they have to wait. Travis is no longer mad at him. That is a plus. Wes still doesn't want him anywhere near his so-called 'detective' work and is not hesitant about showing it.

Paekman's eyebrows furrow. "Wait? For what?"

"For me," Travis announces, sliding in beside Paekman. "Scoot over and I'll give you pie." Paekman obligingly squishes into the corner and Travis plops the plate down in front of him. Wes very carefully tucks himself into the back of his seat and folds his hands in his lap.

"So what have we got?" Travis asks, pulling the folder in front of him. "Ooh, dead billionaire, nice."

Paekman pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth and his eyebrows rise in a clear What the hell, are you working on this? query.

"Travis is helping me," Wes says primly, itching to sort the sugar packets again but Travis is sprawled all over the table and he isn't comfortable moving.

"Helping you," Paekman says flatly. "You help me. What do you need him for?"

"Moral support," Travis quips, snapping the folder closed. He grins, practically bouncing in his seat, and Wes is struck by the thought that this is awfully cute behavior for a grown man. (He quickly schools his face so none of this shows.) "So when are we going?"

Gingerly, wary of even brushing their clothed legs together, Wes slides out of the booth. "Soon. But first I have to bake a pie."

XXXX

There's something relaxing about making pies. About rolling out the dough and cutting the fruit and carefully placing everything together to create a work of art that will feed people and bring a moment of joy to their lives. It's a routine he's done thousands of times, but he always finds a soothing rhythm to it.

"Don't you normally make pies in the morning?"

The voice breaks him out of his reverie, but the voice belongs to his childhood friend so the piemaker can't be too upset. He casts a flat glance at the other male and finds Travis perched on the counter, watching him.

"Get off the counter, you're contaminating it," he says calmly, rolling the dough out.

Travis rolls his eyes but hops off the counter. He snatches up an apple and takes a big bite, and, around a mouthful of fruit, asks, "So. Pie?"

Wes glares at him but continues working. "I make my pies for the shop starting at six in the morning," he says, to a horrified sound from his audience. "This is a special pie."

"And you're making the special pie instead of taking us to work on the case because…?"

"Because this is a necessary step." Carefully, Wes eases the dough into the pie pan, smoothing the corners in.

Wes is not looking but he can feel the way Travis rolls his eyes. "Wow, yeah, that's so helpful. Thanks for the edification there, babe."

The endearment sends a sharp, hot flutter through Wes's gut, and his reply falls off his tongue and slides down his throat in a nervous trickle. He bends over the counter and finishes pressing the dough into the pan and doesn't look at Travis.

The former detective slides around the kitchen, to where Wes can just barely see him if he turns his head. He doesn't turn his head. He is wishing for his calm piemaking reverie, and he can't be upset with Travis for breaking it, but that doesn't mean he's enjoying this right now.

"So," Travis says, because he is the sort of person who likes to fill silences with words, Wes has found. "How'd you get into piemaking anyway? I mean, I remember you being all 'lawyer lawyer lawyer!' when we were kids."

Wes pulls the little bowl of strawberries towards him and begins coring them. "I would have thought you'd be more interested in the case."

"I read the case file, nothing new there until we go and you do your magic." Travis wiggles his fingers in a way that is supposed to represent Wes's 'magic' touch, and Wes rolls his eyes. "I wanna get to know you. I mean, we've got nineteen years to catch up on."

…and five months and twenty-three days, Wes's brain supplies, numbers falling into place as easy as breathing. He holds them in with a breath and says, "Can you hand me those peaches?" as he drops the last cored strawberry into the bowl.

Obligingly, Travis hands over the peaches, dropping them into Wes's hands from a height. The piemaker silently curses himself for forgetting, because he's been so good about remembering but the one time he forgets is now, when he's being asked about himself.

(He's never liked talking about himself.)

Travis takes two steps back, as though he can sense the unease running through Wes, and casually continues munching his apple. "Did you just wake up one morning with a massive love for pies?" he asks, like the previous moment never happened.

Wes starts peeling the peaches and pretends not to notice his hands shaking from the close call. Don't forget. You can never forget. Forgetting is permanent. Forgetting means losing Travis forever, and that's unacceptable when Wes has only just gotten him back.

"It took a cooking class in tenth grade," he says, hands moving in the familiar rhythm of cooking and baking. The peace slips back, because if there's one place he's always been safe, it's in his own kitchen. "A pie I made won a contest. A Dutch apple pie." He smiles at the memory, at spending hours in the kitchen making that pie and finally feeling content for once in his life, and it was a peace he knew wouldn't last but for a brief moment in time it was his and it was perfect.

That memory is a treasure, like that summer with Travis nineteen years ago, one he keeps locked in his chest for the moments he needs it.

"After the contest," he continues, setting the second peeled peach down and coring them, "My mother told me that if I didn't want to be a lawyer, I didn't have to." He smiles ruefully. "I'd always wanted to be a lawyer because of my father, and after he died I was even more determined. So what she said…I thought it was a challenge, that she thought I couldn't do it, and I was going to prove her wrong."

Cutting the strawberries and peaches into neat little pieces is familiar and soothing in its own way too. Wes lets himself fall into the cadence of his knife and hardly thinks about what he's saying. "I got through college, I made it into law school. And law was…it was great, and in another life I probably would have pursued it. But I kept remembering that Dutch apple pie, and the way it felt so right, and I just knew law wasn't for me. That was about the time I realized what my mother had actually meant. So right after midterms, I dropped out. My mother helped me get this place started, and the rest, as they say, is history."

"The rest being, you meeting Paekman and using your magic necromancy finger to solve murders," Travis summarizes, sounding amused. Wes chances a glance, and the corner of Travis's mouth is turned up, eyes dancing. "Well, it's an interesting story, that's for sure. But hey, at least you're doing what you love. That's the best feeling in the world."

Wes hums a little, scooping the chopped peaches and strawberries into a bowl and adding the ingredients for the filling.

"What about you?" he asks after a minute. "How did things turn out for you?"

Travis shrugs, chucking his apple core in the garbage. "Well, I was a cop. It was all I ever wanted to do, and I got there. I did a lot of good. And going out the way I did…hey, if you gotta die, at least die taking a few scum-sucking drug dealers down with you, am I right?" He leans back with a satisfied sigh. "I worked and lived and died doing what I love. You can't complain about that."

Wes's hands pause, and he risks looking up at Travis. "And now?" Because Wes's so-called 'detective work' is sort of vaguely similar to police work, in the same way that frozen pies are vaguely similar to homemade pies, but it's not what Travis was doing before.

It has been eight weeks, six days, and fourteen hours since Travis came back from the dead, and Wes still isn't sure why he's stayed.

Travis stares at him, hands in his pocket, and a smile tugs at his lips. "Now? Well…I love pie. So that's gotta count for something, right?"

There is a moment the piemaker feels slip by him, an important moment he cannot grasp before it is gone, and he does not understand what that moment was but he is very aware that it is out of his reach now. Instead of confronting it, he swallows and looks down at the bowl of peaches and strawberries that will, in a short period of time, become delicious filling for a pie.

"Then it's a good thing you're living above a pie shop," he says, for lack of anything else.

He hears Travis sigh, and then, to Wes's great relief, move past it, circling the conversation back to its original topic. "So, what's so special about this pie? I know strawberry-peach isn't on the menu."

Wes focuses on stirring and not on the vague yet persistent thought that he has somehow disappointed his friend. "It's a bribe. Well, no, not really. I'm not stupid enough to bribe a government official. It's a gift." He carefully pours the pie filling into the pan. "Strawberry-peach is Jonelle's favorite, and it really just makes this whole process smoother."

There's a sharp, startled cough to his left. "Jonelle?"

"Jonelle," Wes confirms. "She's the medical examiner."

"No, I, uh, I know who she is." Travis coughs again, prompting Wes to glance over. The former detective scrubs at his face, eyes darting around the kitchen. "And we're, uh, we're gonna go see her?"

The piemaker frowns slightly. "In an hour or so. The pie has to bake."

"Right." Travis nods, pushing up from the counter. "Right. That's great. Um, I have to go…uh, prepare." He heads for the door at something just under a run. "See you in an hour or so!"

Wes blinks after him, and he honestly has no idea what just happened.

XXXX

Wes has just placed the strawberry-peach pie into the powder blue cardboard box when he hears the clomp of feet on the stairs. "Perfect timing," he says, looking up. "Now we can—"

The piemaker blinks.

The piemaker blinks again.

"What are you wearing?" the piemaker asks in stunned incredulity.

"You like?" Travis holds out his arms and does a runway-worthy spin. "I had Paekman bring me over some stuff. It's not quite the sad-hobo look I used on a case once, but it's close."

Travis has a trench coat on. A plain, beige trench coat that doesn't fit properly and covers him from his shoulders to his knees. He's also got on about three layers underneath the coat that bulk his body out, a beanie pulled low on his forehead, and some sort of fake facial hair that covers pretty much the entire lower half of his face. Wes had no idea facial hair could make such a difference.

"Why?"

"Why? Because I'm dead, sort of, and now…" Travis does another spin. "No one will recognize me. Especially when I pull out all the stops. For example." He hunches his shoulders and shuffles across the floor, and when he speaks, his voice is a rough gravelly rasp. "How ya doin?"

Wes stares at this person who doesn't seem at all like Travis Marks, even though Wes knows it's him, and he's a little bit amazed. "You're really good at that."

"Yeah, well." Travis goes back to himself with a bright grin. "I was undercover for like six months when I died, so I have some skills." He bounces on his toes, bright-eyed and eager like a puppy. "Shall we go?"

Wes nods and grabs his car keys. "You can carry the pie."

XXXX

"Wes. Paekman said you'd be by." The medical examiner strips off her gloves and washes her hands, giving him a smile. It's thin and sharp around the edges, but that's just because Jonelle is a generally sharp person. She's always been nice enough to him.

Of course, the pie he always brings her might help. That is why he brings the pie.

"How are you, Jonelle?" he asks, holding out the blue box. "Are you still taking those Pilates classes?"

"No, I ditched those. Got into spinning instead." She takes the box, lifting the lid and taking an appreciative sniff. "Mitchell, you do know the way to a girl's heart."

Then she spots Travis, hiding behind Wes, and one eyebrow goes up. "And who is this?"

Wes steps to the side and starts to say, "This is T—" And then he gets stuck, because it occurs to him that they never discussed who Travis was going to be. Disguises are all well and good, so long as everyone involved knows what's going on.

"Mark," Travis declares, in that gravelly, nothing-like-Travis voice. "My name is Mark." He keeps his head ducked and stays behind Wes, and Wes narrows his eyes.

"Mark," Jonelle repeats, the second eyebrow going up to join the first. "And he is…?" She looks to Wes now, and Wes thinks frantically.

"He's…my…assistant."

"Your assistant." Flat disbelief smoothes out her face. "Aren't you Paekman's assistant? Why do you need an assistant?"

"He's, uh…" Wes glances at Travis. Travis gives him a small thumbs up. "He's my…moral support."

"Riiiiiiiight." The medical examiner's eyebrows are nearly to her hairline now, but she seems content on not pushing the issue. "Whatever. I'm just gonna let you do your thing, then. I'll be in the back, starting in on this delicious pie. Call if you need me, and don't break anything, I have to fill out forms for that." She heads for her office in the back, tossing over her shoulder, "Your billionaire is in box 317, by the way!"

Then she's gone, and Travis visibly relaxes. "Wow," he says as he straightens, "That was fun. Let's totally not do that again."

The piemaker shoots his childhood friend a glower. "You know Jonelle, don't you?"

"I did." Travis moves through the room, looking for the correct drawer. "We, uh, yeah, we knew each other before. She's also probably the one who did my autopsy."

Wes feels something hot and annoyed bubble in his chest. But also something worried and afraid, because what if…? He casts a glance at the back room, but the door is closed and there's no indication she's listening or even cares about them. Still, what if…?

"Come on, Wes." Travis pauses with his hand on a drawer handle to give him a flat frown. "If you knew I'd known Jonelle, would you have let me tag along?"

"Of course not!"

"Well then, there you go." He pulls open the drawer, grinning down at the dead man inside. "And here we go."

Still frowning, the piemaker moves to the other side of the drawer, staring down at the corpse. He's seen plenty of dead bodies, now that he's started working with Paekman more, but he never quite gets used to it. There's something about it, about the dead pale skin that used to house an entire person, and now it's just a shell on a metal tray.

(The piemaker cannot help glancing up at this point, thinking about that day eight weeks, six days and sixteen hours ago, when he stood in the funeral home and stared at the empty shell of his childhood friend.)

(And now Travis is here, and Wes finds he would do quite anything to keep him here, even if it means exposing himself, and he can't help thinking that's not a very safe way to live.)

"So what now?" Travis asks, leaning casually on the tray like it doesn't bother him at all, being so close to a dead body. Maybe it doesn't. He was a cop; he probably saw a lot of dead bodies.

"I have to touch it—him," he says, pulling his hand out of his pocket. He glances once more at the back room, but Jonelle's door is firmly closed. "Then we have sixty seconds to question him."

"Sixty?" The former detective frowns, glancing up. "There's a time limit? Why?"

And for a moment, Wes flounders, because this is one thing he has not told Travis, and he fears that if he tells the reason for the sixty-second time limit, he will tell the rest of it as well, and that is not an acceptable option. If Travis knows the entirety of the truth, he will leave.

Wes does not want him to leave. Above all else, Wes does not want him to leave.

"It doesn't matter." He makes a rolling motion with his hand. "Let's do this before Jonelle comes back."

"Right, yeah, of course," Travis says in a tone of voice that implies I know you're hiding something from me and I'm determined to figure it out later. He steps backs, crosses his arms. "Hit it."

Wes sets his watch and reaches out.

The deceased billionaire sits up with a gasp, blinking wide-eyed and startled. Upon seeing Wes and Travis, though, he immediately smiles and holds out a hand. "Well, hello there. Jeremy Bruckner III, at your service. What can I do for you boys?"

Travis looks mildly disconcerted at being spoken to by a man with a gaping head wound in the back of his skull. Wes, however, is used to it, and, mindful of the time limit, gets right to the point.

"Mr. Bruckner, do you know who killed you?"

The man blinks and frowns. "Killed me? I'm dead?" He looks down at himself, seeming to finally notice he's lying in a morgue tray. "I'm dead! What? How is this possible?"

Ah, yes, this part of it. Some people take it better than others. Wes sighs and tries to move forward. "Mr. Bruckner, please. Time is of the essence. Do you know who killed you?"

The man sighs and shakes his head. "No idea. They came up from behind. Next thing I know, I'm here. Dead, apparently."

Wes holds back a groan. Well, there goes that lead. Perfect.

With less than fifteen seconds left, he's about to touch the dead man once more and end this when Travis asks, "Did you hear anything? Right before you died."

The dead man thinks back, frown creasing his face as he tries to remember. "You know, actually, I do remember hearing something. High heels. No, stilettos." His face brightens. "That reminds me, I—"

Wes touches his shoulder, and Jeremy Bruckner III slumps back onto the table.

"Sorry," he mumbles apologetically, carefully draping the sheet back over the corpse like it was before. "We ran out of time."

"I see," Travis says, eyes going from Wes's hands to his face and back again. Wes wonders what he's looking at—then glances down and sees his skin touching Bruckner's, right in the middle of his chest. Wes is touching Bruckner, and Bruckner is still so very dead.

Wes snatches his hands away and looks for hand sanitizer. "We should, um, get going. Paekman will want to debrief."

"Right." Travis pushes the drawer in while Wes scrubs his hands, and when he falls into place at Wes's side, he carefully leaves a small bubble between them. It's a clear reminder that there's a very good reason they cannot touch again.

The second touch is permanent.

XXXX

"Do you know what happens," Paekman asks, standing dramatically in the doorway with his arms flung wide, "when a private detective solves a murder?"

There is silence in the pie shop for a minute. Then, hesitantly, one of the regulars raises his hand. "Uh, he gets paid?"

Paekman flings an exuberant pointer finger at him. "Correct you are, Mr. Dumont! And what," he continues, striding into the shop, "do you think happens when the victim is, in fact, a billionaire?"

Across the room, Rozelle's eyes light up. "You hit gold."

"I hit the motherlode, my dear!" Paekman crows, shuffling into the room. He spins in a delighted circle in the middle of the tile floor. "Today, the pie is on me!"

There are cheers all around.

Five minutes later, Paekman is lounging in the booth, a smug grin on his face, arm slung casually across the back of the booth. "Wes, my friend, you have outdone yourself this time." He digs into his jacket, pulls out a slip of paper. "This is for you. You'll be good for a while, I think."

Wes takes the check, eyes widening at the amount written. "Are—are you sure this is correct?" he asks, and his voice comes out a little strangled.

Paekman's grin widens even further. "Billionaire, my friend."

"So you did alright?" Travis asks, bringing a plate over for Paekman. He slides easily into the booth, not even seeming to care that he's pressed up against the detective's side. Wes pulls the sugar packets towards him and tries not to be jealous.

(It doesn't work very well.)

"Travis!" Paekman exclaims. "This is your share!" He thrusts another slip of paper into Travis's hands and immediately starts ingesting his pie.

Travis looks at the check and promptly coughs. "Are you sure this is right?" he croaks.

"Billionaire," Paekman mumbles around a mouthful of pie.

Travis's eyebrows are almost to his hairline. "I've never seen so many zeroes on one check in my life," he says in a daze, turning the check over in his hands as though he must confirm its reality. "This is for me?"

"Yup." At Wes's glower, Paekman dutifully swallows his pie and refrains from taking another bite before speaking. "You're the one who solved the case. Without your tip about the stilettos, we never would have got the girlfriend." He claps Travis on the shoulder. "So that, my friend, is my appreciation for your help."

Travis swallows and carefully folds the check. "My friend, I appreciate your appreciation," he mumbles, sliding it into his pocket. "Now I have to figure out what to do with it." He flashes a grin Wes's way that Wes belatedly realizes is meant to be teasing. "If I'm to be Wes's kept boy, I might as well have some spending money."

Paekman snorts. Wes keeps a steady gaze on the sugar packets and ignores the flush crossing his cheeks.

"No, but seriously." Travis leans back in the booth. "I could buy all sorts of things with this. Once one of you cashes it for me, since I am, technically, dead. Ooh, I could buy a bike!" His eyes brighten, going a little dreamy and distant. "I had a bike before, you know. She was a beaut. Could take me anywhere." He sighs, dropping his chin into his hand. "One of my foster brothers probably got her. I really hope they're taking care of her and didn't just sell her."

"What kind of bike?" Paekman asks.

Travis starts rambling on about horsepower and throttle, and Wes's hands freeze as he understands that Travis is talking about a motorcycle. He's thinking about buying a motorcycle.

Could take me anywhere.

Oh.

The piemaker abruptly stands, flinching minutely as two pairs of eyes turn to him. "I have to…go," he flounders, backing away from the booth. "Um. Check on the pies."

There are no pies currently in the oven. Wes suspects they both know this. That doesn't stop him from retreating into the kitchen anyway.

XXXX

It is three minutes and twenty-seven seconds past midnight when Wes finally gives up on sleep, turning off his alarm and climbing to his feet. He gets dressed in the dark, moving on autopilot while his mind roils in turmoil.

It runs through his brain over and over, spinning like spokes on a wheel until the words mean nothing. Travis can leave. Travis can leave. Travis can leave Traviscanleave canleavecanleaveTravisleavecanleave. Because Travis has money now, a paper check with a lot of zeroes, and he can go out and buy a motorcycle and just drive away if he wants to.

That day in the cemetery, Wes wasn't thinking of much beyond Travis is here and getting out of there before someone noticed that there was a not-so-dead corpse climbing out of a coffin. Every day after that has been a constant stream of keephimhere don'tlethimknow don'ttellhim until some days it's just easier to mutter monosyllabic words than keep up a conversation.

And now Travis can buy a bike and ride away, and Wes has never thought himself a particularly selfish person but the thought makes his stomach churn. Travis can just leave, and Wes has no way to stop him.

It's getting him nowhere, running this through his mind over and over again. Wes huffs and runs his hands through his hair. Then he slips into the hall ("Going," he whispers out of habit, though no one is around to hear it), and he does what he always does when he gets stressed.

He goes and bakes pies.

XXXX

Travis wanders down bleary-eyed at quarter to nine, a cup of coffee in his hands. "Morning, We—holy shit, what happened?"

Wes frowns as he sets the cherry pie onto the counter, next to a dozen other pies. "It's not that bad."

"Not that bad?" Travis waves a hand to encompass all thirteen pies sitting on the counter—as well as the tray of muffins and three dozen cookies, because Wes felt like branching out a little. "Dude, it's like two bakeries did the nasty and had little baby baked goods." He takes careful stock of the situation, then a slow sip of his coffee. "Everything alright, man?"

"Of course everything is alright," Wes retorts, pulling the oven mitts off. He washes his hands and, ignoring Travis's searching gaze, grabs a ball of chilled dough from the fridge and starts rolling it out. "Why wouldn't everything be alright?"

"Did I mention the baby baked goods?" Travis takes another sip of his coffee, eyeing Wes in wary amusement. "How early did you get up this morning?"

"Not so early."

"The small bakery in your kitchen calls you on that lie, buddy." He looks around one more time, then shrugs and seems to take it all in stride. "Whatever. Too bad, though. Should have had your little breakdown or whatever on the weekend."

Wes's rolling pin pauses. "Why?"

Travis laughs as he exits the kitchen. "Cuz it's gonna be hell to try and sell all those on a Tuesday!"

XXXX

"Seriously, man," Travis grumbles six hours later, shifting pieces of pie around in the display counter in order to try and get everything to fit. "What were you thinking? We're gonna have to hold a bake sale on the street corner just to get rid of all these before they go bad."

Wes merely shrugs and studies the tabletop in front of him, rubbing at a tiny scuff with his thumb.

Travis sighs, rolls his eyes, and stomps into the kitchen with half a pie in his hand.

Paekman leans forward, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper despite the fact that there is literally no one else in the room. "Okay, come on, dish. What's with all the pies?"

Wes attempts a nonchalant shrug. "No reason. I was in a pie-baking mood."

"Uh-huh. And the muffins and the cookies?" Wes's head snaps up, and Paekman nods. "That's right, Travis told me. You're a piemaker. I've never seen you make anything other than pies. So why the sudden change of heart?" The detective's eyes narrow. "Something is bothering you."

"I'm fine."

"You are my only source of pie and case-solving necromancy in the area, it's in my best interest to keep you in a good mood. So come on." He nudges Wes's leg under the table. Wes carefully tucks his feet beneath the booth to keep any such actions from repeating. "What's going on with you?"

"It's nothing." Under Paekman's steady gaze, Wes shrinks. "I just…didn't sleep well, is all."

"Because…?" Paekman prompts.

Unbidden, Wes's eyes flick toward the kitchen, but his childhood friend is nowhere to be seen. In fact, a moment later the soft sounds of Travis's muttered cursing can be heard emanating from the doorway, promising that whatever he's struggling with will take him a while to sort out.

Wes clears his throat and rubs at the scuff on the table. "I just…something he said yesterday. It bothered me." The detective's stare continues unabated; the piemaker shifts. "I don't…want him to go."

The detective sits back with a huff. "Oh, that's all?"

The piemaker bristles. "What do you mean, 'that's all'?"

"Well, of course you don't want him to leave." Paekman rolls his eyes. "I mean, that's obvious. I just figured it was something a little more, I dunno, immediate that was bothering you."

Wes feels like Travis suddenly thinking about possibly leaving and running off to the wilds of who-knows-where is pretty immediate, but he's more interested in Paekman's total disinterest to his upset. Wes has not had many close friends in his life, but he's pretty sure this is not the reaction one is supposed to have.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Paekman rolls his eyes. "Come on, Wes, really? You brought your childhood friend back to life and stuck him in your guest room. It's pretty obvious you don't want him to go." The detective's eyes seem to sharpen and zoom in on him. "Why do you think he would leave?"

Wes shifts and decides that he really rather regrets starting this conversation now. "He…was talking about getting a bike, is all."

"Ah." There's a wealth of meaning in Paekman's voice. The annoying thing is that Wes doesn't understand it. Like most things he doesn't understand, he ignores it and tries not to get annoyed. Like most things he doesn't understand, this strategy works about as well as usual. Which is to say it doesn't work at all and Wes just feels more annoyed.

Paekman takes pity on him. "Maybe," he says, enunciating every word like Wes will miss something if he doesn't speak clearly enough, "you shouldn't be asking why Travis would want to leave. Maybe the question you should be asking is why he wants to stay?"

Wes looks towards the kitchen. Travis is just emerging, wiping his hands on his apron and scowling mildly. (Wes rather hopes he hasn't left a mess in the kitchen.)

As soon as he sets eyes on his friend, Wes's chest explodes in a flurry of warm snowflakes and butterflies. He knows what this feeling is. He knows why he wants Travis to stay. He's in like with his friend and he's doing his best not to let it show, to keep from scaring Travis off.

But why is Travis staying? Wes can't even begin to guess.

He looks helplessly to Paekman. Paekman makes a motion with his chin. "Go ask him, you idiot, see what he says."

Normally, Wes would take offense at the insult. But there are more than a dozen pies that he probably won't be able to sell today because he couldn't sleep for worrying, so he merely stands.

The bell over the door rings, and Travis leaps over the counter like an acrobat, and Wes has no idea what just happened.

XXXX

Travis is a great people person. It's a talent he has in abundance, able to flirt and smile his way into friendship with everybody he meets. He's comfortable with the regulars, knows them all by name and always stops to chat when the store isn't too busy. He's close with the two part-timers, and he's more than happy to shoot the breeze over the counter and joke around with them. He has an uncanny ability to remember people's names, the names of their children, and the last conversation they had, and if he tried he could make people fall in love with the flash of a smile.

Wes has never had that ability. He's always been stiff and awkward, and it has very little to do with his magic finger. People are just strange, confusing things, and he's never had a handle on how to deal with them.

That's why having Travis work the front of the shop has been such a perfect solution. Travis gets to deal with the messy, people-related aspect of things, while Wes mostly stays in the back making pies. And in the nine weeks, three days, seven hours that Travis has been here, Wes has never once seen him shirk from that duty.

Until now.

For a moment, Wes can only stand there, blinking at the empty space where his alive-again friend used to be. When his brain finally stops whirring in confusion, he opens his mouth, only for Paekman to abruptly slice his finger across his neck. Wes instantly snaps his mouth closed, more confused than ever.

The confusion vanishes as soon as he turns around.

Jonelle is standing in the doorway, one arm around a teary-eyed woman. She gives him a small smile when she meets his eyes, squeezing the woman's shoulder.

"Hey, Wes. This is Randi. She could use some pie."

XXXX

Dealing with people is not Wes's area of expertise. That's what Travis is for. But Travis is not here, and he cannot be here because the pair in the doorway contains one person who absolutely must not know Travis is still alive and living in the apartment above the pie shop. Wes especially does not know what to do with a crying person, which takes a special brand of people-person skills that Wes does not possess.

Paekman comes to the rescue. He rises and heads to the doorway, muttering, "Get some pie," to Wes as he passes.

Pie. Pie is Wes's area of expertise. He flees.

Correction: He retreats sedately behind the counter and takes a moment to regroup.

Then he double-checks to make sure Paekman has engaged both women and checks beneath the counter. Travis is gone. Probably army-crawled his way into the kitchen when no one was looking. Wes desperately wishes to join him, hide out in the kitchen and not have to deal with this, whatever this is. But Paekman is making eyebrow motions that say Pie, dude, where's the pie already? and Jonelle is watching him expectantly and at this point running away really isn't an option.

Wes prepares a plate of apple pie and brings it over.

The woman named Randi sniffles and looks at the plate. "Thank you," she murmurs in a wobbly voice, making no move to pick up the fork. Wes hovers beside the table, feeling awkward and useless, and he has never more wished to better relate to people than now.

"Wes," Jonelle says, rising from the booth, "Can I talk to you?"

"Absolutely." Wes tries not to look like he is running away from the booth full of crying woman, even though in the most technical terms that is exactly what he is doing. He moves across the little shop, and Jonelle follows, leaning against the counter beside him.

"Randi is a K-9 cop," she says apropos of nothing. Her gaze goes across the room, to where Paekman is moving beside Randi and putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Yesterday during an operation, her dog, Hudson, was shot."

"I'm sorry," Wes says politely, because he's not sure why she's telling him this but that seems like the decent thing to say.

The medical examiner sighs softly. "Hudson survived," she tells him, waving aside his assumption. "They got him to the hospital and patched him right up. But Randi got a call this afternoon. Apparently there were some complications." Then, significantly, she looks at him. "They don't think he's going to make it."

"I'm sorry," he repeats again. Judging by the look on her face, that's not the reaction she was hoping for, but Wes still has no real idea why she's telling him this, like somehow she expects him to do something about it.

"There's nothing you can do?" she asks.

The piemaker shifts, uncomfortable with the intent gaze she's focused on him. "Well, I'm not a dog expert, and I'm sure the veterinarians at the hospital did all they could…"

"No, I mean…" She bites her lip, glancing at the booth, but Paekman is telling a story involving waving hands and Randi is nibbling a bite of pie. Neither of them are paying the slightest glimmer of attention their way.

So Jonelle leans forward, dropping her voice to a whisper. "I know what you can do, Wes."

And then, very gently, she reaches out with her index finger and touches his cheek.

Wes steps back. He doesn't even realize he's moving until his hip bumps into the counter. It's an instinctual reaction, his brain saying Danger! Danger! and his body reacting accordingly.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he protests, but it sounds weak to his ears. He can't quite keep the tension from his voice.

This has always been his worst fear, that someone would find out about what he can do. That a scientist would find out. Travis knows, of course, for obvious reasons. Paekman knows, and he exploits Wes's abilities, but Wes exploits Paekman at the same time, so it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

But this is different. Because Jonelle is a scientist (in a manner of speaking), and they're all about questions and finding answers and trying to solve the mysteries of the world. And Wes has a mystery right at the end of his fingers.

He has nightmares like this, where he's found out and taken away, poked and prodded and cut apart to see how he works.

It's worse that it's Jonelle, because Wes almost sort-of thinks of her as a friend, and he doesn't have many of those.

He swallows and tries to salvage this the only way he can: by playing dumb. "I really don't know what you're talking about."

She gives him a flat look. "Mm-hmm. You realize there are security cameras in the morgue, right?"

Wes did not know this.

She rolls her eyes. "Who do you think cuts the feeds when you come in?"

The piemaker twists his hands together and doesn't say anything. What is he really supposed to say?

Jonelle sighs, shoulders dropping. "Look, Wes, I know you don't have any reason to do this, and I know I'm not winning any points ambushing you like this." She looks across the room. "Randi is my friend. And if I could help…I've got to do what I can."

Wes's throat feels tight, and his pulse is racing, a nervous, thread hum under his skin. He can barely think for the panic running through him.

So he does the only thing he can.

He nods his head. "If you'll excuse me."

And the piemaker flees to the kitchen.

XXXX

If the piemaker thought there was going to be a reprieve in the kitchen, he is sorely mistaken, for as soon as he's through the doorway he is accosted.

"What's going on?" Travis demands, moving so quickly that Wes presses himself against the wall with his hands behind him. It's making him anxious, how close Travis is, and on top of everything else that's just making him feels sick.

"Why is Jonelle here?" Travis continues, taking no notices of Wes's emotional turmoil, and for a detective he's really oblivious sometimes. "Why is Randi crying? Why—"

"Travis!" He doesn't mean for it to come out as a shout, but it does, bursting out in a panicked rush the way the anxiety is dancing beneath his skin, a gale of anxiety and fear.

It does the trick. Travis pauses, takes stock, and jumps back three feet like he's been burned. Wes sags against the wall and pretends not to notice his hands are shaking.

"Shit, man, I'm sorry." Travis hand comes up like he wants to reach out, but he pauses when Wes flinches. "I'm really sorry." He backs up a few more feet, bumping up against a counter on the opposite wall.

They are literally as far apart as they can be in this room, and it still doesn't feel like enough.

Wes takes a slow breath. Then another. It helps, a little, the way a hot sunny day helps evaporate the ocean. Off-kilter, he pushes off the wall, bee-lining for the sink. Travis doesn't move, watching from his spot on the counter.

The minute he's washing his hands in the sink, he feels better. Not normal, but relatively better. He'd feel a lot better if he could rewind the last ten minutes, but since his magical power is not time travel, that's not going to happen.

When he pulls away from the sink and turns, Travis is still there, leaning against the counter as casual as can be, like he isn't standing there because he got a little too excited and almost death-ed himself.

"You good?" he asks.

Wes blinks. Nods. Twists his hands together and resists sticking them back in the sink.

Travis nods slowly. "Okay. What's going on out there, Wes?"

Wes takes a breath and tells him. About Randi and her dog, about Jonelle and her knowledge of secrets he wishes she didn't possess. At the end of it, Travis's eyes are wide, and he's leaning forward, gripping the edge of the counter as though he'll fly across the room and grab Wes if he doesn't hold himself back.

"Can you do that?" Travis asks, a note of pleading in his voice. "Can you go there and bring Hudson back, like you did me?"

"I—"

He could. Technically, Wes could go to the animal hospital and touch the dog and bring it back, and in exchange for some other animal it could come back and live. Just like Travis. He could.

The piemaker grips his elbows and bites his tongue. "I can't," he whispers, but he can tell Travis heard it from the way his face drops.

"You can't." Travis shifts, runs his hand through his hair. "Right, no, that's…you can't just be zapping dead people all over town, right. That would just be problematic. And it's your magic finger, so you get to choose what to do with it. And I can see not bringing back a dog for some woman you've never met."

That's not it, not entirely. That's part of the reason, but the other part… Something has to die to be brought back, that's the rule, and what if Travis puts the pieces together? He's a detective, he knows how to do that, and the last thing Wes wants is for Travis to put the pieces together because then he might leave.

Everything Wes has done since bringing Travis back had been to keep Travis from leaving.

"It's fine," Travis says in a voice that proclaims it's really not fine at all. "I get it. I do. It's just…" He sighs, runs a hand through his hair and stares at the ground. "I loved Hudson, you know? And now I won't even get to say goodbye."

The piemaker freezes.

won't even get to say goodbye

won't get to say goodbye

get to say goodbye

say goodbye

goodbye

goodbye

goodbye

A little red car driving down the road, and he doesn't even get to say goodbye.

"I have to go."

"Wes?" Travis straightens, concern sweeping across his face. Wes heads for the door. "Go where? Wes, wait—"

Wes sweeps out the door before he can hear the rest of the sentence, and Travis can't follow.

XXXX

He pulls Jonelle aside, brusquer than he means to, and simply asks, "Where is the dog?"

XXXX

The animal hospital is not as loud as Wes would have expected. It is still full of animals making noises and people talking in panic about their animals, but Wes expected a cacophony and this is merely a ruckus.

He lingers back as Jonelle talks to the receptionist, hands in his pockets. What am I doing here? he wonders, but on the heels of that thought is won't even get to say goodbye and the twisted frown on Travis's face, and his heart clenches and he just can't leave.

He doesn't know this dog, and he doesn't know Randi, but he's not doing this for either of them.

"Alright," Jonelle says, coming to his side. "The nurse says it'll be just a few minutes." She pauses. "She says he's not doing well."

Wes doesn't say anything. They both know why he's here. He doesn't need her to keep pointing it out. Luckily, she takes the hint and falls quiet.

It's only a few minutes before the vet comes out and leads them back. The farther they traverse into the animal hospital, the more Wes's hands sweat, and he keeps wondering what he's doing here. Stupid, stupid, being in like is making you so stupid, but if he backs out now he'll have to explain to Travis and that thought makes his stomach churn.

"Here we are." The vet pushes open a door, leading the way into the room. The dog is lying on a table in the middle, and Wes may not know much about dogs but he thinks this one looks absolutely miserable, ears drooping and eyes sad.

Jonelle moves right up to the table, gently caressing the dog's ears. The vet moves to the other side. "He's not doing well," she says softly, her voice full of sympathy that says I'm sorry for your loss even though the dog hasn't actually died just yet. "We did everything we could, but…well, he doesn't have long now."

"Thank you, doctor," Jonelle says, fingers slipping over black-and-tan fur. "If we could have a few minutes?"

"Of course." Nodding to them, the vet slips out, shutting the door behind her.

Jonelle leans over the table, murmuring soothing nonsense to the dog. Wes stares at a cat poster on the wall and tells himself he's doing this for the right reasons, even though there are many people who have done things in history for love, or even like, and it has not in fact been the right reason. When it comes down to it, love, and also like, are perhaps the worst emotions to base a decision around. It is an emotion that muddles the brain, that makes every mild day feel like the brightest sunshine and every overcast day feel like pouring down rain. It is foolish to do things based on love, because they are decisions based on emotion and not rational thought.

These are not the piemaker's present thoughts, but this is the underlying current running through his brain. He tells himself that he is doing this for the right reasons, but he feels he is perhaps not, except he cannot articulate why, and the big blue eyes of the kitten on the poster do not give him any answers.

XXXX

It is not long before the dog on the table breathes his last, and the medical examiner very quietly says, "Wes?"

The piemaker takes a breath, flexes his fingers, and moves over to the table. He takes a minute to look down at the dog, at a beloved pet that is now no longer, and for a moment, he wonders what that must be like.

As a child, Wesley Mitchell saw the neighbor kids walking their dogs, or he heard the children at school talking about their cats or hamsters or fish, and he longed for a pet of his own. But Mrs. Mitchell refused to have any creature in her home with fur that would shed or feet that would leave muddy prints, and Mr. Mitchell said that any scaled pet was a waste of time to a boy who needed to focus on his studying. It was an attitude that he internalized deeply, so that when the boy grew into a young man living on his own, he didn't even think to get a pet of his own.

He thinks, looking down at the dog on the table, that it would have been nice to have a pet.

Jonelle clears her throat. "Do you, um…want me to leave the room, or something?"

The piemaker shakes his head, reaching out with one finger. "No. This won't take long."

Not long at all. He reaches out, the pad of his finger gently pressing against a cold, black nose.

Then he scrambles back until he hits the wall, because he never actually been this close to a dog before, and he has no idea how an animal of the canine persuasion will react to suddenly coming back to life. Out of habit, he starts the stopwatch on his wrist, but he forces himself not to look at it.

The dog sits up with a vaguely confused sound, if dogs can be said to be confused about matters of life and death. Jonelle immediately begins scratching behind the dog's ears and cooing in that baby-talk people do when talking to dogs. "Well, hello there Hudson, who's a good boy? Who's a good, healthy, alive boy right now?"

She peers at Wes between the dog's perky ears. "Is he alright now?"

"I think so," Wes declares with all the confidence he can muster. Which isn't much. After these sixty seconds are up, Hudson will be only the third person Wes has ever brought back in this manner. His father, the esteemed Mr. Mitchell, lasted only a few hours when an erroneous pat on the head caused his second downfall, and Travis has been sequestered in the pie shop, in a place where he has had no chance to test death in any form.

(Perhaps, Wes thinks morbidly, perhaps Travis can no longer die, due to the influence of Wes's magic finger, perhaps Travis will continue living no matter what happens to him until the day Wes finally reaches out and touches him again, and he falls lifeless to the floor once more, permanently this time, an ending that has no respite.)

Jonelle gives him an odd look, but continues to scratch the dog's ears, and Wes is relieved. She doesn't push, doesn't interrogate him about his ability, and it is such a relief, in this moment, to not have to worry about such a thing happening because she is so utterly focused and consumed with the animal.

The piemaker glances at his watch, throat tightening as fifty-one seconds becomes fifty-five and then fifty-eight… And then sixty seconds pass, and he stops the watch, listening to the happy wuffling noises of the dog on the table.

His hands tremble.

"I'm going to step outside," he says, running his hands over his shirtfront. "I'll wait by the car." Jonelle watches him go, but she doesn't stop him or call him back. Wes appreciates that.

There is a small crowd in the lobby of the animal hospital, packed around the front doors and windows. The piemaker hesitates for merely a moment before mustering through in his quest to reach the parking lot. Along the way, he jostles a young man with a small birdcage in his hand, containing a small blue bird.

"Oh, hey, did you see?" the young man asks, pointing vaguely at the window. "A crow just, like, fell out of the sky. Just dropped dead right on the sidewalk." The young man shakes his head, slowly extricating himself and his birdcage from the crowd by the window. "That's, like, the stuff of horror movies right there."

Something imperceptible loosens in Wes's chest. He had not, until this very moment, realized how worried he was that he would be the inadvertent cause of the demise of someone's beloved pet. That it was merely a passing crow relieves the guilt a little.

He finally makes it through the small crowd, touching everyone as little as possible, and makes it into the fresh air (if by fresh he means polluted, smog-filled city air that is, at least, familiar). There is a man wearing a badge from the animal hospital, carefully cleaning the dead bird from the sidewalk.

Wes stares at the dead bird for a long minute, at the little body twisted this way and that and the black feathers scattered on the ground. Then he shoves his trembling hands into his pockets and stalks to the car.

XXXX

The ride is silent, filled only by the soft strains of twanging country guitar from the radio. Wes stares out the window as they drive and wishes he'd thought to bring some hand sanitizer with him. He resolutely does not think of the alive-again dog at the animal hospital or the very dead crow on the sidewalk or his childhood friend and the consequences of all that he has done.

Instead, he thinks about pies. He thinks about cherry pies and apple pies and meringues, and cream pies and meat pies and little mini pies that only last for three bites. Wes has spent many years thinking about pies, and he is well-versed in letting his mind wander around his mental kitchen, compiling pie after pie after pie. It is, when no kitchen or hand sanitizer is nearby, a welcome stress reliever.

The silence lasts only until the car stops in front of the pie shop. Jonelle turns off the car, and the radio goes quiet. Wes does not particularly like country music but he sorely misses the twanging guitars and low Southern drawls, and he desperately wishes to not hear whatever Jonelle is going to say next.

Perhaps, if he is very lucky, she will merely wish him a good day and drive off.

Wes is not very lucky.

"I'm sorry about all this," Jonelle says, waving her hand as though a mere gesture can encompass the complete betrayal she has exhibited today, along with the anxiety thrumming through Wes's veins and the nauseous, sick feeling in his stomach and the trembling in his hands he has not quite been able to halt. "But I'm glad you helped. Randi is a good friend."

The piemaker looks at his hands, twisting in his lap, and says nothing.

She sighs. "I'm not going to tell anyone, Wes. You know that, right? I wouldn't. We all have our secrets, and Travis…Travis was my friend too." She pauses. "Well. No, he wasn't. Actually, I kind of hated his guts, for reasons I'm not going into. But he was a good guy. If anyone deserves a second chance…" She shrugs, thumbs tapping on the steering wheel.

Wes does not ask how she knew Travis was alive, how she could see through Travis's disguise even though Wes had trouble and he knew it was Travis under there. He doesn't ask what her plans are, now that she knows. He doesn't ask her when she found out, or why she waited so long to mention it.

Instead, he says flatly, "I'm not doing this again."

She doesn't say anything. He lifts his head, and his gaze his cold and sharp. (Once upon a time he was going to be a lawyer, and he was good at it, and he still remembers.) "I'm never doing this again. Even if you come to me, begging, I will not do this. So don't even ask."

She clenches the steering wheel, and then she releases it, along with a slow breath. "I suppose that's fair."

She says nothing else. Perhaps she understands how this has damaged their rapport, that he will no longer bring her pies when he visits and he will not ask about her aerobics. Not for a long time. Because she was his friend (sort of) and then she betrayed that, and now Wes cannot trust her.

He reaches for the handle, wanting nothing more than to go inside and stand in his kitchen and wash his hands.

"Wes," she says quietly, and she does not look at him, staring at the dials on her dash. "Thank you."

He grips the edge of the door. "I didn't do it for you."

Very calmly, he closes the door and walks to his shop. He doesn't look back, even when he hears the idling car lingering at the curb, and he can feel her stare on the back of his neck, curious and probing but no longer in a position to ask for answers to the questions she has.

XXXX

The sign on the door has been switched to 'Closed!' The piemaker stares in bafflement for a moment, because today is Tuesday and regular store hours are from nine to eight, and it is only half past five now. Except for one day several years ago when he and Alex very genially parted ways, he has not closed the shop early since it opened.

And since, until this moment, he was not even in the pie shop for the past hour, he isn't sure who authorized such an action. With a frown on his face, he pushes open the door.

He is assaulted before the bell above the door stops ringing, a body rushing at him and two arms thrown about his neck. The piemaker's initial reaction is to freeze, completely immobile, assessing the situation and panicking that Travis has gotten much too careless in the short time they were apart.

But the body upon him does not instantly go limp and fall to the floor, so it is not Travis who is so exuberantly hugging him. As a matter of fact, upon further investigation, Wes spots his childhood friend across the room at the counter, watching with a wide grin on his face as he drinks from a mug proclaiming 'I Heart Pies!' with the heart in question being, in fact, a bright red heart.

Wes stays very still, afraid that if he makes any sudden movement Paekman will interpret that as reciprocation of the hug and will prolong the contact. "Paekman," he says slowly, "What are you doing?"

"Proxy hug." The detective claps him on the shoulder and pulls away, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "From loverboy there."

"You know, since I can't." Travis shrugs, sipping from his mug, and Wes is mildly disappointed as he extricates himself from Paekman's personal space. He did not particularly like the hug, but he thinks he might have liked Travis's hug. Therefore, he accepts the proxy hug as a poor substitute.

"Why?" he asks as he moves across the room, because while this may have clarified the manner of the hug, it did not clarify the purpose behind the hug. Wes likes to know the reasoning for these sorts of things.

Travis leans his elbows on the counter, grinning goofily at him. "For what you did for Hudson. For Randi. For me." The grin seems to spread, until Travis's face is full of the smile, until light seems to shine from his eyes from the force. "You're a little bit awesome, Wes."

A warm flush tingles through the piemaker. He coughs. "How did you, uh, know?"

"Randi got a call, what, ten minutes or so ago. Started crying and hollering 'cuz her dog was alive." Travis pulls another mug from below the counter—this one covered in a tiny black spiral, the infinity of pi repeating endlessly around and around white porcelain. "It was pretty fantastic."

He deposits the mug in the middle of the counter. Wes waits until Travis's hands are wrapped back around his own mug before reaching out. Upon reaching out, the sharp, bitter odor of alcohol assaults his nostrils. He hesitates before taking a sip. "This is…?"

"Scotch." Another mug is conjured for Paekman, who plops down at the counter and happily starts drinking. "Very fine scotch our friend here procured. We're celebrating, you see."

Travis winks and takes a sip from his mug. Another surge of warmth floods through Wes's body, and he looks down at the amber liquid in his mug.

Slowly, under Travis and Paekman's encouraging smiles, he takes a sip. It burns on the way down, strong and harsh, but once it settles in his stomach it glows, a rich warmth that slowly extends tendrils outward towards his fingertips and his toes that is so very similar to the effect Travis elicits inside of him.

He takes another sip. To which Travis grins and reaches for the excess pie in the counter. "Let's get this party started."

XXXX

Wes has not ever gotten drunk before. He has always been worried that, under the influence, he would start talking about certain magical fingers he possesses to the wrong people and would wake up in a white cell somewhere. Also, he is fond of control and does not relish the thought of losing any of his own to the effects of any kind of alcohol.

He is finding, however, that he is not hating this feeling, this cozy warmth running through him, wrapping around his bones and settling inside of him where he is coldest. Buzzed, is the word Travis laughs when Wes expounds on the sensation, pouring another finger of scotch into his mug. The word you're looking for is buzzed, babe, and you look like you're enjoying it.

Enjoying it? Yes, perhaps. The stool is a little unsteady beneath him and it's hard to focus, but he thinks that losing control is not such a bad thing, perhaps, in the right company.

He looks up, peering myopically at the man behind the counter. Travis, too, seems to be experiencing the effects of the drink, leaning across the counter and flirting teasingly with Paekman. Or maybe that's just the way Travis is. Wes isn't sure. He tries not to stare at his alive-again friend too much, in case Travis realizes.

It is very important Travis not realize.

"Oh, oh, there's that thing! Wes!" Travis turns to him, bright-eyed and grinning, and Wes cannot stop the smile that spreads across his face at the sight. His smile just makes Travis smile wider, until it appears the entire lower half is nothing but flashing teeth and mirth.

"Wes, hey Wes, how long have I been alive again?"

The numbers do not come the way they normally do, flowing unsteadily into place after a moment's thought. Wes blames the alcohol. He scowls fuzzily at his mug; this slowness is very upsetting, and Wes isn't quite sure why but he is certain it has something to do with the potential loss of Travis's very bright smile.

"Nine weeks, three days and fourteen hours," the piemaker mumbles, still glaring at his mug.

Travis interprets this look entirely the wrong way and tips the bottle over the rim. Amber liquid sloshes into the glass.

Next to him, Paekman scoffs, much farther along than 'buzzed' and heading quickly into 'wasted'. "Well, 'course he knows you, dude," he chortles, aiming a smack at Travis's elbow and missing entirely. "I mean, c'mon 'ere. If it's 'bout you, then no duh."

This statement, in Wes's mildly-inebriated mind, seems to carry quite a bit of importance. He is not sure why.

Travis shakes his head. "Nu-uh. 's not just me. Watch. Hey Wes, how long've you known Paekman?"

These numbers, too, come slowly, but they line up in order, which is really all he can ask for. "Three years, six months and twelve days."

"And how long have you had the pie shop?"

"Seven years, ten months and nine days."

"And when's the last time you made…hmm…a Dutch apple pie?"

Wes has to pause, drunkenly sorting through the pies he's made most recently, before finally, slowly declaring, "One week, fourteen hours, and thirty-two minutes."

"Dude," Paekman breathes, staring at him with wide eyes. Wes flushes and ducks his head over his mug.

"I know, right?" Travis grins, draping lazily across the countertop. Normally, Wes would get upset about that, but they are celebrating and Wes is feeling in quite a good mood and does not wish to spoil it. Travis chuckles. "It's a little weird, but it's totally cool. It's like his superpower." He pauses, frowns. "Well. His other one."

"Cool, cool." Paekman tilts unsteadily on the barstool, reaching out to clap him on the shoulder. "We gotta talk more, man. This is cool shit."

Wes grins unsteadily into his mug and thinks that there are definitely one or two positives to losing control in this manner.

XXXX

It is after, when Paekman has been poured into a cab that will take him to his residence and the piemaker and his childhood friend have retreated to the living room upstairs. The bottle of scotch, mostly drunk except a few inches of liquid at the bottom, sits on the table, upon a sloppy square Wes created out of four coasters. Cuz it's important, Travis, or you'll get rings in the wood, so you gotta use coasters, and Travis had just laughed and put the bottle down, right at the intersection where the four coasters met.

Now they sit on opposite ends of the couch, backs against the arms so they can look upon one another. Their feet are touching, socks and jeans tangled together in the middle, not a single inch of skin bared for an accidental brush of flesh on flesh. It makes Wes nervous, but not enough to pull away.

"Thank you," Travis says, smiling at him from across the couch, and even from here it tingles over Wes's skin. "For what you did for Hudson. I didn't really get to say that earlier."

Wes hums a little, snuggling into the couch. This causes his socked foot to slide up Travis's jeaned calf. Wes would be flustered about that, except he's much too content to care right now.

(If this is the only way he can touch Travis, then he'll take what he can get.)

"Must be nice," Travis remarks, drawing the piemaker's attention back to him. "Doing what you do. Helping people like that."

"I suppose so," Wes mumbles, words coming out a little slurred. He's sleepy and cozy and a little drunk, and he doesn't even care.

It's a wonderful sort of feeling.

"I didn't do it for her," he adds after a minute, just because it feels like his previous statement was missing something.

Through half-lidded eyes, he sees Travis's eyebrows go up. "You didn't? Then why'd you do it?"

Wes hums again, letting his eyes fall closed and dropping his head back on the couch. "For you. And maybe a little for me." never got to say goodbye, and it still hurts, nineteen years, five months and twenty-seven days later. He didn't want Travis to feel that too, even if it was just a dog.

Travis is silent a minute before he says, "Still, it must have been nice, right? Helping like that?"

"I guess?" The piemaker shrugs, or tries to, hampered by his current half-reclined position. It's not like he cared about the dog or the cop either way. He cared about Travis and what Travis would feel, and that was it.

"Felt better when I saw the crow outside, though," he adds, and it seems a perfectly natural thing to add. They are talking about the feelings involved in his unnatural ability to raise the dead, and the relief upon seeing the little dead crow outside was a very large feeling indeed.

"The crow? What crow?"

"The crow outside." Wes waves a vague hand. "I was worried I'd go and kill someone's beloved pet, but it was just a bird flying by. I can be okay with a bird."

The reply, when it comes, is slow and confused. "I don't… Why would you kill someone's pet? Why the crow?"

"Because." Isn't it obvious? "That's how it works. It's equiva—equal exchange. Someone comes back, and someone has to die. Time limits." He cracks open one eye, squinting at the blurry figure at the end of the couch. "You can't tell Travis."

Another long pause. "Why not?"

" 'Cause." Wes closes his eyes again, snuggles back against the arm of the couch. "If he finds out, he'll leave. And I don't want him to leave, because I li—"

XXXX

Wes wakes up.

Wes wakes up on the couch, with a blanket draped over him. His head is pounding, his mouth is dry and tastes like rotten cheese, and opening his eyes is like having someone stab him in the corneas with hundreds of tiny needles. He groans, curling up into the couch and very barely resisting the urge to pull the blanket over his head and hide.

What happened? He remembers coming back and finding the shop closed, and the proxy hug from Paekman. And then Travis gave him a mug and things get a little fuzzy after that. Is this what alcohol does? Why would anyone continue drinking if this is how they feel in the morning?

After about fifty years, he slowly opens his eyes. The light isn't as painful if he takes it slow, though the illumination does nothing to ease the ache in his skull. Carefully, taking deep breaths to settle his stomach, he pushes himself into a sitting position.

On the coffee table sits a napkin containing two aspirin and a glass of water. The glass is on a coaster. Wes is unexpectedly moved. He quickly downs the tablets and empties the glass, wishing for instant relief that doesn't come. He hunches over on the couch, hands to his temples, and thinks back to last night.

What happened?

The shop was closed, and Travis offered him a mug full of alcohol. They drank, and they talked, and they laughed. Everything became soft and blurry around the edges, and he felt warm. And then Paekman went home in a cab and they—

Wes frowns, clenching his eyes, trying to remember.

They came upstairs, the piemaker and his friend, and they sat on the couch. Talking, words flowing over them like water, talking and talking and the words never seemed to run out. They talked about…

They talked about the dog.

Wes's eyes snap open. He stares at the floor and feels cold apprehension curl in his gut.

They talked about the dog. What else did they talk about? How far, in his fuzzy inebriation, when he had let go the tight reins of his control and allowed himself to relax, did he go? What did he reveal last night? Was it something he shouldn't have, the things he'd kept tucked away inside his chest, the secrets next to his heart?

He can't remember.

On wobbly, uncertain legs, the piemaker climbs to his feet.

XXXX

Travis is not in the apartment. He is not in the bathroom or his bedroom, or in the kitchen or even Wes's bedroom. There is half a pot of coffee left in the pot, and a plate with toast crumbs in the sink. But his leather jacket and boots are missing from his bedroom, and Wes feels an awful fear run down his spine.

He rushes downstairs in an ungainly clatter, hope and fear warring in his chest. Maybe Travis is simply downstairs, and he'll turn around when Wes comes out and he'll smile and say Good thing you made so many pies yesterday, since you didn't make any today, you sleepyhead, and maybe everything Wes is afraid he might have said never left his lips. Oh, please, please—

He into the main body of the shop and stops dead in his tracks. Dakota the part-timer looks up with a smile and chirps, "Morning, boss."

Wes's stomach clenches painfully. "Wh-where's Travis?"

She frowns a little, shrugging. "Not sure. He called me up, asked if I could come in. Said he couldn't open the shop today." The frown deepens. "Then he took off in a bit of a hurry. Is everything alright?"

Wes grips the doorway and the ground lurches under his feet, and he doesn't think he can answer.

He doesn't think he knows the answer.

XXXX

"I need you to find somebody for me."

Paekman looks up, torn halfway between amused and curious. "Yeah? That's new."

Wes holds Paekman's piece of peach pie hostage. "I need you to find Travis. He's not here."

The private detective's face twitches. The cold fear that has been Wes's constant companion this morning reaches up and strangles him, icy fingers clawing at his throat.

Paekman frowns at the look on his face. "Look, Wes, he came by this morning, asked if I could do him a favor. I figured there was no harm in it. So I helped him out."

"What?" Wes croaks, the words coming out tight. "What did you help him with?"

The detective shifts. "Look, it probably doesn't mean anything, I just figured he needed some Travis time, you know, it's probably not a big deal—"

"What did you do?"

Paekman grimaces. "I…uh, I bought him something. With his part of the reward from our last case." He swallows and drops his gaze. "I, um, I bought him a motorcycle."

The plate falls from numb fingers. Pie and porcelain shatter and splatter on the floor and his shoes. Wes doesn't even notice.

This is what he's been afraid of, ever since he woke Travis up, that Travis would leave and not look back and Wes would be all alone again (never got to say goodbye) and he'd have to spend another nineteen years by himself. If he could keep Travis here, selfish as it may be, then Travis wouldn't be able to leave, he would have to stay.

And Paekman bought him a motorcycle.

"Get out."

Paekman, rising out of his seat, and Dakota, rushing around the counter with broom in hand, both pause. "What?" the detective queries, disbelief in his voice. "What did you say?"

"Get. Out." Wes glares at the other man. He trembles, but he can't tell if it's from anger or fear. He feels like he's a mess; he can't even begin to parse out his own emotions. "Get out of my shop right now."

Paekman's face goes from concern to annoyance to troubled. "Wes, come on, I didn't—"

"Get the hell out." The piemaker points at the door, and his hand shakes. He doesn't even know what his face is doing, but it keeps Dakota behind the counter, clutching the broom with wide eyes.

Paekman watches him, and the worst part is that he doesn't even look upset. He just looks a little disappointed, and a lot frustrated. "Wes, he's going to come back."

The piemaker jabs at the door. "Then you can come back when he does." He doesn't mean it to come out as harsh as it does. It just sort of happens.

Paekman's eyes widen, and his jaw tightens. "Fine," he snaps, gathering up his coat. He steps around the mess on the floor and stalks to the door, but before he goes, he pauses, glaring at him. "You know, you couldn't have kept him here forever. He would have left sooner or later."

He slams the door on the way out, the cheery tinkling of the bell in the doorway a stark counterpart to the tension in the room.

His words hurt, like two bullets to the chest.

XXXX

It has been four days, twelve hours and forty-seven minutes since Wes woke up to find that Travis walked out of the pie shop and didn't return. However, those four days, twelve hours and forty-seven minutes have felt like an eternity.

Wes opens the shop. He bakes pies. He closes the shop and goes to bed. He opens the shop and bakes pies. On and on without end, days that drag without Travis's bright smiles and jokes to break the monotony. Days without Paekman sitting at the booth, eating pie and expounding on his latest case.

There are the regulars, and the part-timers, but it is not the same, and Wes feels the lack like a void.

It would have been better, he thinks, if he had never read that newspaper article ten weeks, five days and nine hours ago. If he had never gone to that funeral and seen his childhood friend, and thought I could say goodbye. It would have been so much better if he'd just left Travis in the ground, because then nothing would have ever changed. He'd continue on his days, never knowing what he was lacking, and he wouldn't feel like this, with his hollow space behind his sternum.

It would have been better, he thinks, but there's no conviction at all.

The part-timer is at lunch, and the shop is empty. Wes listlessly swipes a cloth across the counter, wiping the same area again, again, again. It's quiet in here, with no one around. It's empty, in more than just the lack of people. There's something missing, a brightness that should be here but isn't, because Wes got too drunk and too honest and he chased Travis away, so Travis could no longer bring that sunlight and warmth.

He wonders if this is how it's going to be for the rest of forever, and he thinks that it would have been better…

The bell above the door jingles. The piemaker looks up, vague disinterest on his face.

The vague disinterest quickly snaps into mildly-panicked focus when he realizes just who has walked through the door.

Randi smiles. "Hi." And the dog at her side wags his tail.

Wes swallows and tells himself there's an entire counter full of pie between him and the dog, so there is absolutely no reason to back up away from the creature. He plasters on a bland smile, wringing the washcloth in his hands. "What can I do for you?"

"I was hoping to get a pie," the woman says. She reaches down and scratches the dog's head, and the grin almost splits her face. "Hudson just got out of the hospital. The doctors say it's a miracle he's doing so well, but I knew he'd pull through. So I was thinking about celebrating." She smiles at him. "And I've heard pretty good reviews about this place. Jonelle loves your pies."

Jonelle. The piemaker feels a little clench in his chest at the thought of the medical examiner. One more person who is no longer his friend.

He remembers when he didn't have any friends. It was an empty existence, then, but at least he didn't realize it.

"Well," he says, keeping his smile in place and none of his thoughts on his face. "If you're looking for pies, you've come to the right place. What can I get you?"

Randi hums thoughtfully, leaning over the counter. As she does, Hudson snuffles and leaps up, putting his front paws on the counter. Wes jerks back, stumbling over his feet in his haste to get away. He does not in any way need to explain to a detective why her dog dropped dead upon encountering him.

"Sorry, sorry," Randi apologizes, hauling Hudson back to the ground. "He's usually so well-behaved. I can leave him outside if he bothers you."

The piemaker's smile is shaken, but stays put. "It's fine. I'm…just not a dog person."

"Sorry. Hudson, sit." The dog obediently drops his butt to the floor, and Randi gives him an awkward smile. "I'll try to be quick." She returns to studying the selection of pies in the counter, and Wes takes a few deep breaths and tries to calm his heart. There is no danger here. There is nothing to worry about.

"Alright," Randi says after a few minutes have passed. "I think I know what I want. So—"

Before she can declare her pie choices, Hudson bounds to his feet and races around the counter. Wes presses himself against the counter, but the dog doesn't pay him any mind. The animal instead races through the swinging doors into the kitchen, and Wes grimaces at the thought of animal hair in his sacred baking space.

"I am so sorry." Randi moves around the counter, heading for the doors, and Wes is torn between keeping her out here and letting her get the dog. He certainly can't be the one to retrieve the animal, but Wes has certain rules about his kitchen—the main one being that only certain people are allowed back there, and Randi is not one of them.

"I really don't know what's gotten into him," the cop says, "but I'll take him outside right away. I'm—"

The kitchen doors swing open. Hudson comes out first, lips pulled back in a happy smile and tail wagging at full speed. Paekman follows in his trail, holding the dog's leash.

Wes bites back his initial reaction, which is some level of angry upset, and watches Paekman pass the leash to Randi. The private detective then gives the piemaker a hesitant, unsure smile and says, "I can take care of things out here, Wes. You should go check the kitchen."

Wes stares at him. "I don't need anything in the kitchen."

Paekman sends him a look. "You need to go check the kitchen. There's something there I think you'll want to see." He flicks his eyes to the kitchen in an extremely significant way, and something like hope flutters painfully in Wes's chest.

He said he didn't want Paekman to return until Travis did, and now Paekman is here, so doesn't that mean…?

He clears his throat. "I, uh, need to check the kitchen. Excuse me."

Heart in his throat, Wes walks through the doors.

XXXX

Travis is in the kitchen. Wes almost can't believe his eyes, for a minute, and he lingers in the doorway, drinking in the sight of the other man. Boots and jeans and leather jacket, and those brilliant blue eyes that can cut through the world and shine like the sun.

But there's a motorcycle helmet on the counter beside him and fingerless gloves on his hands, and Wes is abruptly brought back to earth. Travis left, and he came back but Wes cannot allow himself to hope that it's permanent. Not until he understands why Travis returned.

He swallows, and steps into the kitchen. "Travis."

Travis smiles, and it is not as intensely warm as his usual smiles, but it is not cold either. Wes supposes that's something. "Hey, Wes." The former detective leans casually against the counter, crossing his arms. "We need to talk."

Wes may not have much personal experience in relationships, but even he knows that any conversation starting with 'We need to talk' is one rife with emotional upheaval and hurt feelings.

(The last conversation he had with Alex started with We need to talk and ended with I'm sorry but I can't do this anymore, so Wes knows all too well the sort of pain that can come from these conversations.)

He puts on his best face and leans against the opposite counter. "Talk about what?" He tries to sound casual, like this is any other conversation they've ever had. He is aware he is horribly missing the mark.

Travis sighs. "Why'd you bring me back, Wes? If you knew it was going to kill someone, why'd you do it?"

This question. Wes supposed he really shouldn't be surprised. Travis has asked several variations of the same ever since he was brought back. Wes always managed to deflect it, and it was easy, then, when Travis didn't know about the exchange and thought bringing him back was no big deal. But now he does know, and he knows it was a very big deal indeed, so this question has a lot more weight than it ever did before.

Wes didn't want to answer it then, and he doesn't want to answer it now. Travis has already left. Why reveal the one thing that may send him flying away forever?

Travis watches him. His jaw tightens. He pushes up from the counter. "If you don't tell me why, I'll walk out that door and never come back."

He picks up the helmet.

"We never said goodbye!" The words blurt out of the piemaker's mouth, quite without permission, but panic has momentarily overridden all his preciously-held controls. Because there is Travis leaving, but possibly coming back, as seen by the man standing in his kitchen. And then there is Travis leaving and never coming back, and that is an entirely different matter.

Wes does not want to face the latter.

Travis pauses, and he slowly sets his helmet down. His eyes watch, burning like lazers through Wes, and the piemaker fidgets.

He fidgets, twisting his hands together, and he speaks (babbles). "We never said goodbye. That little red car picked you up and you drove away, and I never got to say goodbye to you. I thought about it, a lot. What I would have said. How I would have tried to keep in contact and… You were my best friend, my only real friend, and I didn't want to lose you. But I did."

The piemaker's gaze drops to the floor. "Then I saw the article in the paper. And when I found out it was you, I thought, This is my chance. I can say goodbye. That was all I wanted. To say goodbye, because we never got to, not properly. I swear, I wasn't going to do anything else. But then I was sitting there, and I thought about all the years we never had, nineteen years we could have had with conversation and laughing and tears, and I just couldn't touch you again. You were here and smiling and I just couldn't do it."

He looks up, gaze imploring Travis. "I didn't mean to let time run out. But then it did, and I figured the damage was done, there was no point in killing you again, so I brought you here. And I didn't tell you any of it because I realized I'm kind of in like with you, and I didn't want to make you leave, only I did, in the end, so I don't—"

The words spill out unimpeded, a jumbled mess in barely any order, and Wes has every intention of speaking until Travis stops him.

Travis does stop him.

With his lips.

The former detective strides across the room in the middle of Wes's garbled explanation, grabbing the roll of cling wrap from the counter. He yanks out a sheet, stomps right up into Wes's personal space, and mid-sentence presses their lips together, the cling wrap a barrier between them.

Wes has never been kissed through cling wrap before. He finds he is not adverse to the situation in any way. He also finds that this is a very acceptable way to make him stop talking, and he would not protest if Travis decided to do it again. He sighs, breath fogging up the plastic, and leans in.

When they pull apart, Travis doesn't move far, lowering the cling wrap and looking at him from mere inches away. Wes doesn't move, blinking, dazed. "What?" is the only intelligent response he can come up with. It seems fitting.

Travis smirks. "You said you're in like with me."

"Did I?"

"Oh, you definitely did." The smirk widens. "Well, guess what? Wesley Mitchell, I happen to be kind of in like with you as well."

The piemaker blinks again. "What?"

"Oh, come on now, you thought I stayed only for your amazing pies?" Travis sighs, shakes his head. "I mean, I guess I shouldn't really be surprised…"

That says things about Wes's attention to emotional details that would normally have Wes bristling, no matter how true they may be. At this moment, however, he is still working his way through the stunned shock brought about by extreme emotional revelations.

"You're in like with me?"

Travis gives him a fond, amused look. "Yeah, babe, I really am."

"So…" Wes frowns thoughtfully. "So we're…okay?"

Slowly, Travis pulls back, a contemplative look on his face. "Yeah, I suppose we are. I mean, we're going to have a long talk about this whole killing-people thing, but yeah. I think we're good."

"Right." Wes nods, barely resisting the urge to reach out and grab the leather jacket's sleeve. "So you're not leaving?"

Travis smiles, warmth filling his face and spilling into Wes. "No, Wes. I'm not leaving."

And really, what more can he ask for?

XXXX

It has been five days, twenty-one hours, and fourteen minutes since Travis returned to the pie shop, and he is still here. It is hard to believe his fortune, but Wes is slowly beginning to hope that this is permanent. Or as permanent as things can get when dealing with other people.

Travis is still here. In fact, yesterday morning he dragged himself down to the kitchen at seven and stared blearily at Wes making pies for an hour. At eight, after drinking copious amounts of coffee, he asked if Wes could teach him how to make a pie. Wes, of course, obliged. He can be hard-pressed to share his kitchen, but Travis is the exception.

That is why Travis is, at this moment, coming out of the kitchen with a fresh-baked pie in his hands. "Alright, here it is, let's see how it turned out." He cuts a slice and carefully sets it on a plate, bringing it over to the table where Wes is sitting. Wes looks at the plate, a small smile creasing his features.

"You made a Dutch apple pie."

"Because Dutch apple pies are delicious, are you kidding me?" Travis digs into his apron for a fork, vigorously wiping it down with a paper napkin. "Much superior to regular old apple pies, that's for sure. Alright, open up now." He gets a bite of pie on the fork, holding it above the table in front of Wes's face. "Tell me how fantastic I am at baking."

Slowly, Wes leans forward, wrapping his lips around the fork. The pie slides into his mouth, warm and sweet, the taste of home and the scent of comfort filling him. He chews, never breaking eye contact with the man across the table, and in his eyes is the first pie he'd ever baked in his mother's kitchen and the cling wrap kiss they shared a few days ago and that summer they spent together as best friends.

Travis sees it all in his eyes, and he leans back with a smile. "Hot damn, I'm good at this. Food Network, sign me up." He gets another bite, holding it up. "Here, have another."

"My god, this is disgusting."

Two pairs of eyes turn, and Paekman grins down at them. "I mean, seriously, it's gross. This is so sweet I'm getting diabetes just watching you."

Wes swallows and serenely says, "We're in like."

"Yeah, Paekman." Travis gives the detective a cheeky grin. "We're in like, so bugger off."

"You bugger off," Paekman retorts, flapping his hands like wounded birds flap their wings. "Go get me some pie. Or I won't let you in on this new case I just got."

"Case?" Travis perks up like a hound dog, setting the fork down and pushing the plate in front of Wes. "Yes, pie, I'll be right back."

Paekman takes Travis's vacated seat, still grinning. "So, looks like things worked out for you, eh?"

Wes folds his hands in his lap and says blandly, "Things are going fine."

"Yeah, I could tell. So, be honest." The detective leans forward, eyebrows waggling. "How are you two, you know. Since you can't touch."

"That's none of your business," Travis butts in, setting a plate down in front of Paekman. "Shut up and eat your pie."

Paekman pokes mournfully at his slice. "What, no Dutch apple pie filled with love for me?"

"I can revoke all your pie privileges," Wes says calmly. Paekman's eyes widen, and he hastily shoves a bite into his mouth, mumbling and making a thumbs up motion. Wes bites back a grin.

Travis slides into the booth beside him. This makes Wes's heart flutter anxiously, the way it always does when Travis gets too close, but he's learning to deal with it. (Besides, Travis said with a wink when he told him, my heart does the same thing when I'm around you. Maybe it's just what happens when people are in like.)

"So," Travis says, pulling on a pair of yellow rubber gloves. He settles into the booth, his clothed shoulder brushing Wes's, and he reaches out and takes Wes's hand in his, like it's no big deal. "What's this case about?"

Paekman starts talking, but Wes isn't listening, staring down at their linked hands. Gloves. A concession Travis didn't even think about, just simply did so they could hold hands.

Wes smiles, and takes a bite of his pie, and everything tastes sweet.

OOOO

I've only watched a couple of episodes of Pushing Daisies, but it's completely adorable. I never thought of doing an AU for it, until I read a Pushing Daisies/Avengers AU. And then I thought that it would make a pretty cute Common Law AU, and here we are.

This went through several permutations and revisions until it was finally done, and this is the version I'm most happy with. Let me know what you thought. Comments, reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome.

Happy Pi Day everyone!

Until next time~!