A/N: Hey, all. This is going to be an epic ride, hopefully, and I'd love to have you with me the whole way. A few notes before we begin: there will be no ROMY in this story. Not because I don't love it, not because I won't write it, but because the storyline does not allow for it. If all goes well and there's a sequel, that will be chockfull of ROMY, so please be patient about that. Also, this is not a fluffy piece. I will say that again: THIS IS NOT A FLUFFY PIECE. It is plot-driven, though there will be some pretty intense romance once things get going, so don't be alarmed at angst and violence along the way. Ok, let's rock and roll.

-1: JOHN-

The plane bumped when it touched down, and the people in the body of it rocked forwards and settled. It taxied, turning widely, guided by glowing strips that shone like white gold in the dark. Inside, a woman with a little girl whispered something about the Empire State Building, and a man with a laptop coughed loudly two rows back. In the last row, scrunched up against the tiny panel of window with his legs painfully compressed by the seat in front of him, a lanky young man with a spiky shock of reddish blond hair and fine, angular features rubbed his eyes awake. Blue eyes, very bright, cut through the dim airplane lighting and flashed, the only movement in his still face, across his fellow passengers to rest on the exit sign towards the front cabin.

"Ladies and gentlemen," a distant, vaguely accented voice announced over the loudspeaker, "we've arrived in New York City right on schedule. The time is 11:34 PM, and it is a balmy 62 degrees. Please wait until the seatbelt signs above your seats are turned off before retrieving your carry-on luggage. On behalf of United Airlines, I hope you enjoyed your flight, and that you'll fly with us again soon." There was a pause, a dull waiting silence, and then the seatbelt light dinged off and there came a rush of motion that swept the plane.

St. John Allerdyce, who was called John or Johnny by those who knew him, and Saint by several smartass teachers, waited for the commotion to die down before unfolding his legs and, carefully, standing. He had been on that plane for hours, more hours than he cared to acknowledge, and the act of sitting still for such an awful length of time had numbed him, whittled him down to a near stupor. Standing sent blood rushing to places it hadn't been in ages (not as long as he thought, but longer than could possibly be healthy), and he almost smashed his head against the ceiling out of sheer dizzy vertigo. He managed, though, to step out from the seat area and to reach up into the ceiling compartment where his duffel bag lay. Inside this bag, knocking around with an extra pair of jeans and a few shirts, were several things: a wallet, not his own, with maybe three hundred dollars in cash; a passport, also not technically his own; a small wooden box containing a stack of Polaroid photographs, two fine charcoal pencils and a sharpener; and, hidden inside a cheap plastic case meant for a retainer, two equally cheap plastic dime store lighters. These were John's sole belongings, even those that were not strictly his, and they were the only things he brought with him from dusty, hot, crowded, glorious Australia.

Last in the line of passengers filing off the plane and into the free-standing tunnel that lead into the terminal, John was eyed by the pretty girl who pushed the cart of drinks all the way to the back before awkwardly turning around and returning the way she had come. He gave her a smile, his best oh-so-wicked grin, the sort of smile that tells a girl she just might be in trouble but she can bet it'll be the kind she'll enjoy, and she blushed attractively as he passed. He didn't look back at her, and as soon as he was in the tunnel he forgot her completely.

Slinging the duffel bag over his shoulder as he entered the terminal in New York, John inhaled as deeply as he could. His legs ached from the flight, his back was sore from the unforgiving seat, and his eyes hurt from gritty halfsleep… but he was here, in America, breathing United States air. When he reached Customs and was asked to pull out his professionally faked passport, John didn't even flinch.

It wasn't until he was outside of the airport, which was difficult enough considering the uncomfortable crush of humanity that seemed to fold in on itself as soon as he left the relative safety of the Customs hall, that John felt the first twinge of fear. Again, the thought came: he was here, in America… and he had absolutely nowhere to go. Three hundred dollars was all he was worth here, three hundred dollars and a bag of useless shite.

At that, John smiled reflexively. Useless to everyone else, perhaps, but certainly not useless to him. Moving to stand beneath the alcove of the airport building, John rifled through his bag until he found the retainer case. Without removing the case from the bag or the bag from his shoulder, he slipped a thumb under the plastic lid and popped it up, tipping one of the lighters out into his hand. It felt warm, and hard, and small, ridiculously so. Still, it comforted him, and he drew it out and zipped up the bag with a low sigh.

"Hey!" He didn't notice at first, didn't hear, but then the shout came again and was more pointed. "Hey, kid! You looking for a ride?" John glanced over to the street, where a man with dark hair and dark eyes leaned out the window of a yellow cab. John straightened, gripping the lighter a bit more closely, and strolled over as casually as he could. No good to look unstable, here, now; no good at all. He got into the cab and pulled the door shut hard behind him, sliding over to where a seatbelt lay across the faux-leather like a dead snake. The cabbie settled back into his seat and eyed John through the rearview mirror. He had a faint scar just above one eyebrow; John couldn't tell if it was the left or the right. He couldn't remember which way mirrors distort things.

"Where to, my friend?"

"Cheapest pub you know, mate," John said, buckling himself in. The cabbie raised the scarred brow.

"You of age for that? Not that I care, mind you, but-" He broke off as John frowned, then realized.

"Oh. No. Pub, like, hotel," he clarified, having forgotten that, being in America, his language would betray him. Somehow, that thought stung John more than he'd expected and he had to clear his throat to make it go away. The cab driver nodded, comprehension making the brow fall back into place, and peeled away from the long line of taxis idling at the curb.

"What are you, Australian?"

"Yeah," John said shortly, because although he felt the question, and therefore the answer, to be unnecessary, he knew that not answering would probably annoy the driver. Ordinarily he wouldn't care, but he was too tired and too on-edge to deal with antagonism at the moment. Thankfully, the cabbie didn't ask anything else. Maybe it was the way John lets his head fall back against the seat and closes his eyes, or maybe it was just a New York sort of thing, but the rest of the drive was made in silence.

The cabbie dropped him off in front of a line of buildings all cramped into one narrow block, graffiti spilling down from the bricks onto the uneven pavement of the sidewalk. The vertical sign hanging from the panel of one building-front read 'La Belle Hotel', which made John smile faintly just because of the rhyme. He paid the driver and got out, stumbling over a jutting piece of broken concrete where something once smashed into the sidewalk. Catching his balance almost as quickly as he lost it, John hitched his duffel bag higher on his shoulder and strode up to the red door beneath the sign. The paint on the door was clean and fairly fresh, which seemed to be a good omen. He pushed it open and walked into a tiny lobby where a man barely older than John himself sat behind a blockaded desk with his feet on a line of shelves, watching a miniature television and sipping at a can of soda. When John entered, the man took his feet down but didn't let go of the drink.

"Help you?" he asked, not really looking up.

"How much for the night?"

"Thirty-five." John had $285 left after his cab ride. He took out his wallet and slapped a hundred dollar bill on the counter.

"As many as that'll buy me, then," he said. The man, whose nametag, John saw, read 'Edward', placed a hand on the bill and slid it across the dark wood until it fell off the other side and presumably into his lap. He did look at John then, sizing him up. John wondered what exactly Edward was seeing. Tall, just barely heavy enough to be considered lean instead of thin, exhausted wary face and messy bright hair. He didn't bother smiling.

"We've got a special for over two nights," Edward informed him lazily, bored with his inspection. He typed something into the computer on the lower level of the desk and a drawer sprung open with a snap. He dropped in the bill. "Takes the rate down to twenty bucks per. So this can get you five nights, as long as you're out by noon on…" He paused, craning his neck around to look at the tattered wall calendar behind him, "Saturday."

"Great," John said absently, already thinking of a mattress and a pillow and, dear god, just some real, worthwhile sleep.

"Name?" He almost said Allerdyce, but caught himself in time.

"Layman," he said instead, his accent making it sound like Lie-man. He had to spell it for Edward, who seemed to be the kind of person who types very slowly and has trouble actually reading the keys. "John Layman." Edward finished, and then asked for a form of picture ID. When John pulled out his passport for the second time that evening, Edward didn't check the photograph. He just keyed something in, handed the passport back, and spun away from the computer to slam his feet once again onto the shelves.

"Right-o, pal," he said, reaching under the desk and coming up with an old-fashioned metal key. "You're room 13-B, one flight up." He chuckled. "Lucky number thirteen, huh?" John took the key without responding, and made his way to the elevator in the corner of the lobby. He rode it up leaning hard against the wall, because he'd never liked elevators, never liked being in such a small compartment where something like, say, a fire, would trap him there for ages. There was a song stuck in his head now, a little ditty that he used to sing with his brother when they were just tykes. He shook it away and got out of the elevator when it stopped, rickety and uncertain, at the second floor. Room 13-B was just down the hall, between two other doors. John locked the door behind him, dropped his bag on the floor and fell onto the bed without a second thought.

……….

In the morning, it was cool. He didn't expect it, so the chill in the air roused him, light and soft and strange against his cheeks and arms. He was still on top of the covers, sprawled in an ungainly diagonal across the mattress, the side of one hand pleasantly numbed by the angle of his opposite elbow pressed against the wrist. John sat up, supporting himself with his fully-awake hand, and shook out the sleeping one until the numbness shot through with sharp tingles that sparkled through the muscle and bone until, with a final convulsive shudder, he was fine.

For the first time, John looked around the room.

It was bigger than he might have thought, when he first saw the hotel. Maybe a solid fifteen feet across, twenty wide. There was the bed, which had a high wooden headboard and was fairly comfortable, and a dresser drawer across the room with a staring black television sitting atop it, and a desk with a phone, a pad of paper and a few cheapo ballpoint pens. He figured that the door to the right of the bed probably lead to a bathroom, which, when he dragged himself up and out and across, turned out to be small but functional. There was one window in this room, and it looked out on tight, dirty, fantastically-imagined buildings that encroached on each other like impatient oozing bricks of mud and loomed over the narrow busy street in a near-ominous fashion. He smiled. In short, the room was wonderful.

A phone rang, sharp and startling in the quiet, and John froze. His breath caught, and fear cut him, glassy, harsh, fragile breaking shards of it making each heartbeat hurt. Then he remembered that he was in New York, and that no one here knew him, and that even if they did they didn't know his real name, and it was just the hotel phone on the desk, anyway. He walked over, still in his sneakers from last night, and answered.

"Hello?"

"Mister, ah, Layman, we do a breakfast here that I forgot to tell you about." It was Edward from the concierge, which, he recalled absently, was the word for such things. "It's just past eleven, so you've got about half an hour before the buffet closes."

"That's included in whatever I paid last night?"

"Sure. Nothing special, just, like, your eggs and your sausage, but. It's in the café downstairs." Edward hung up, and John hung up, too. He stared at the phone for an instant, and then glanced at his watch. Sure enough, it was 11:02 in the morning. He'd slept for over ten hours, which was longer than he'd slept in what felt like years. It occurred to him that he had been on a day-long plane trip the day before, and that he'd slept in his clothes and his shoes, and that before that he hadn't showered in forty-eight hours, and John ducked into the bathroom without even grabbing for his bag of clothes.

He stripped awkwardly, trying to avoid hitting his elbows or his knees against the counter with the inlaid sink or the toilet directly across from it, and piled his clothing on top of his sneakers in the corner between the door and the wall. There were two thin white towels on a rack above the toilet and no bath mat, so he took one of the towels and spread it out in front of the shower, which was the kind with a yellowish plastic curtain around a whitish plastic base. These kinds of things, he noted, are always something-ish, never quite a distinct color all their own. The water, when he figured out how to use the push-pull-twist-turn on/off mechanism, came out freezing cold and then scorching hot. He waited for a happy medium, and then stepped in and just stood beneath the hard spray with his face angled up, letting the water pelt across it until he thought his features must have been erased. At that point, John lowered his head and ran his hands through his hair, slicking it back against his skull. He opened his eyes, blinking away the water, and squinted at the tray sticking out of the shower wall. There were two little bottles of hair product sitting there, unopened: one thick and green, one clearer. He washed his hair with them and then looked for the soap, remembered that this was a hotel and so there was probably a small cardboard-encased brick sitting on the sink, and decided it wasn't worth getting out for.

When he was clean and his digital, waterproof watch told him that it was now 11:16 AM, John got out of the shower and used the second towel to dry himself off, wrapping it around his waist and stepping out of the bathroom to find new clothes.

John found the café, as Edward called it, with relative ease. Going down, he took the stairs instead of the elevator and had to squeeze past an elderly woman with strangely coiffed hair who glared at him with silent, weighty disapproval as he ducked around the corner of the landing. She lingered on his paint-stained Rolling Stones shirt, and he gave her a cheeky wave before immediately regretting it. It is not low profile to make a bad impression with your housemates. He imagined her talking to police, blue-suited clockwork men with melted, impossible faces and buzzing wasp-voices, saying Yes, yes, little bastard, gave me lip, he did.

The café, which was through a door on the opposite side of the lobby, was a plain hexagonal room with an unfortunate shade of maroon carpeting and a scatter of small round tables. There was a long buffet counter against one wall, covered with a sheet and laid with several large metal vats. There was no one else in the room, for which John was distinctly grateful. He wandered over to the buffet, and looked it over. Scrambled eggs, as promised (sickly yellow mush, but still); a pile of bacon in long, curling strips; something he could only assume was meant to be hash browns. They were brown and hashed, anyway. John picked up a plate, tapped the hard plastic edge against the tipped-up lid of the vat of eggs, and scooped some of each onto the dish. At the end of the counter, there was a cooler filled with mostly-melted ice. From that, John took a small elementary-school-sized carton of white milk.

He sat in the corner farthest from the door, so he could see anyone who should happen to enter. Not wasting time to prod at the food, however dubious it may have been, John ate his breakfast and considered. He needed work, was what he needed. Something vague and anonymous, something that would pay well enough to keep him off the streets but not well enough to give him a face here. He didn't know how things worked in New York, in America, but he didn't think chances should be taken. Not those kind of chances, anyway. Then, annoyed, John mentally smacked himself for the specification. No chances, he thought firmly, and drank the carton of milk. Especially not those.

In Australia, John had worked at a university library. He shelved the books and fixed small computer problems that popped up, and was generally well-liked by the librarians. They found his enthusiasm charming, his occasional depression worthy of a kiss on the cheek and a chocolate bar; it wasn't until it got out, what he was, that they realized that his enthusiasm was threatening and his occasional depression even more so. John resented them for that, because he'd been able to be fairly normal at the library and when they started treating him like a pariah, that one slice of regular interaction in his life had died without a fight. He did feel mildly guilty, though, for leaving as suddenly as he had. But circumstance, of course, had necessitated that particular social faux-pas.

So those were his skills: understanding the decimal system, tinkering with electronic devices until, most of the time, they worked again. He could write, too, and he could draw adequately, but none of these really leant themselves to steady work. He sighed, and reached into the pocket of his jeans where one of the plastic lighters- the red one- waited. He could feel it whispering to him, now that he was safe and almost relaxed and not hungry or tired, and he wished it were a real lighter, but understood it would never have gotten on the plane.

Maybe restaurant work. He could wait tables, surely? If he could surround himself with all that flammable material in Sydney without incident, then he could deal with impatient bastards in New York. John got up, leaving his empty plate on the table, and walked out of the room and past the desk where a different young man lounged, leaving the hotel and shoving his hands in his pockets. He liked to at least hold onto the lighter, even if he couldn't actually use it.

The road was flanked with parked cars, and he was startled by the sheer noise of it all. Going outside was like exiting a bubble, and suddenly there were screeching tires and shouting women and music blaring, construction sounds crashing against car horns in a blurry cacophony. He blocked it out, always good at that, and turned right. In his pockets, the room key clanked against the lighter, his fingers brushing against the wallet on the other side.

It wasn't hard, actually, finding a job. In fact, in this one instance, John thought that maybe he'd been blessed. There was a restaurant a few blocks down, a small place that served Italian and salads, and a man with a thick Irish accent hired him almost on the spot. The man, whose name was Jacky Finney, always both names in a quick run-together stream, clapped John on the back hard enough that he staggered, and laughed. He had a deeper laugh than voice.

"You have that look about you, boy," he told John, who didn't quite know how to react to this. Jacky Finney didn't elaborate, and set John to clearing off the little square tables without giving him any papers to sign. John understood that he would be paid in cash, and that there would be no record. He took the dishes from the tables and put them in the kitchen behind the counter where food was ordered from, where a girl with an exquisite set of blond dreads worked the cooking counters. Then he wiped the tables down as Jacky Finney talked to customers, and then he washed the dishes while the blond girl hummed to herself. She turned, having found a break in her rhythm, and stared at him.

"What's after you?" she asked bluntly, and John met her eyes. He didn't answer. After a moment, she shook her head. "Clarissa," she said, and didn't hold out a hand.

"John." Because she was a girl and quite pretty, really, and because she was no longer looking at him so searchingly, he smiled at her. "Nice hair." Clarissa snorted and turned back to her stove, where she began to do something complicated with a pile of dough.

And this, then, is how it went for a week or two. John moved in tight, practiced circles: bed to shower, shower to breakfast, breakfast to work, work to dinner, dinner to bed. He didn't eat enough, he suspected, but that was okay because he'd never needed that much food anyway. Besides, not eating made things easier on him. It kept his mind on the fact that he was hungry, or tired, or both, rather than on the fact that he was surrounded by humans and he hadn't done anything since what happened in Australia. That was taxing, was the truth, more than he liked to admit. In the moments when he really had nothing else to occupy his attention, as the days stretched longer, John found himself jittery and on edge, playing with things near his hands and unable to concentrate. He wanted to burn something. He needed to burn something. It was a compulsion, a desire fiercer than he knew how to articulate, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold out being so, so good.

John didn't like the idea of being controlled by his power, of being helpless against its seductive pull. In fact, at the moment, he was trapped in a sick love-hate relationship with it, and he knew it. Without this thing, this hot wild crazy thing in him, none of what had happened over the past month would have happened at all. He would still be in Australia, working at the library, maybe saving up for proper university. Hell, he might even still be at home, with his family, instead of exiled not just from their house but from the town he was born in.

But no. The power was there, and he couldn't deny it, much as he liked to try sometimes. And, when he got right down to it, he would never choose to rid himself of it. It was part of him, and sometimes it was nearly all of him, and being anything else was impossible to imagine. Besides, John told himself briskly, he might still be in this situation even as a human. After all, Ed Bailey was no more special than the next boring flatline, and without him the heist never would have taken off.

Sometimes he worked late, closing up the restaurant (which, he registered only after getting the job, was called Finney's Finest), and these times he generally ended up talking to Jacky Finney and Clarissa. There was another man who worked occasionally, but it was mostly just the three of them. He found out that Clarissa was a graduate student at New York University, and studying film. They both found out that Jacky Finney had a wife who enjoyed being surprised with the small, ornately painted flat stones that Jacky Finney made during his free time. Clarissa and the Irishman found out nothing about John, except for the fact that he was obviously Australian and was not close to his parents.

On one such evening, while John swept the floor and Clarissa scrubbed the order counter, Jacky Finney banged out of his side office and held up his hands in triumph. They looked at him, pausing.

"I got it!" he declared, and strode over to grab John's hand and pump it vigorously. John blinked at him, and smiled uncertainly.

"Got… what, mate?" From the counter, Clarissa heaved a loud sigh.

"He means he got a gallery spot. For his little colored rocks." Jacky Finney broke off his handshake with John and turned to her, aghast.

"My 'little colored rocks'? Oh, lass, and you're meant to be an artist!"

"I'm not an artist," she objected, balancing the rag with which she was wiping on one extended index finger and twirling it until it wrapped around her hand. "I do movies."

"Film is art," Jacky Finney protested. He looked at John for backup, and Clarissa cleared her throat in an unsubtle warning. John looked from one to the other, opened his mouth, and then-- stopped. He felt his heart slowing, the air around him solidifying until each movement seemed to shake the room. He could feel it… and it was close.

"What?" Clarissa asked, frowning. "What's wrong?" John's heart sped up now, the recognition giving way to an almost feverish, disbelieving excitement. Without bothering to answer (what, couldn't she tell? Couldn't she smell it, hear it, sense it?), he dropped the broom and went to the front door. Clarissa hoisted herself over the counter and dropped down on the other side, catching Jacky Finney by the elbow and pulling him along as she followed John outside.

It was closer than he'd dared hope, closer than he ever would have dreamed.

In fact, it was right next door.

"Fecking hell," Jacky Finney breathed, and Clarissa just stared.

The club directly to their left, which John had seen, of course, but never tried to enter, was on fire.

Please let me know what you think!