Buckle up, folks, this one is a doozy. And in case you have forgotten, as I said at the end of the last chapter, this is the anthrax episode, and feels pretty much exactly like the world we are presently facing. Maybe take it steady and read it in chunks.
0o0
Essential Listening: Waste, by Foster the People
Revelling in the pull of her muscles against the water, Grace completed the last of the laps she had set herself. The doctor had warned her not to push herself too hard, too fast, and for the most part she had listened to her, with the exception of getting back to work as soon as she was able. Still, it had taken several months of physical therapy for her to feel comfortable in the water again.
She paused at the end of the lap to stretch and to let three older ladies who were swimming gently as a group and chatting the whole length of the pool and back pass her. She gave them a smile. The pool wasn't too full at this time of day, before the majority of people had got off work, but the usual groups of retirees and people with small children were there. Soon, it would fill up with older children, coming in for their swimming lessons.
Grace relaxed against the side of the pool. It felt good. She had finally been signed off at work, she had retaken her firearms certification (which was annual anyway, and used her other, dominant wrist, but you never knew what an injury might do), and now she was back up to her regular number of laps.
She had missed this.
Swimming was one of those activities that – like yoga or meditation – brought her focus to her body, without allowing the mind time to dwell on anything complicated. All there was, was the water and her – and avoiding the occasional collision with other swimmers. It was time to just be.
Perhaps she would be able to entice some of the rest of the team to a lake in the summer, she decided. Blow off some steam.
She caught her reflection in the window: gone were the dark circles and pale complexion that had haunted her face just as surely as Peach Tree City had haunted her dreams. She was herself again. The shorter hair suited her, she decided. What had begun as an exercise in making her daily grooming easier with a cast on had become one of her favourite parts of her appearance. She ran a hand through it, deciding it needed some more attitude.
She grinned at herself, contemplating 1920s asymmetrical styles. It was good to be alive.
0o0
It will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and will become boils breaking out with sores on man and beast through all the land of Egypt.
Exodus 9.9
0o0
A tray of little plastic cups containing Cipro. A large jug of water and glasses.
It was a bleak enough sight on a regular day, but today…
Grace picked up the plastic cup and rolled the tablets around, thinking about all the people who had been in the pool the previous afternoon. They wouldn't have the advantage of the Cipro – and if this really was a soft-target terror attack, any one of them could be targeted. She had been on the force in London when the ricin scare had happened. She had had training for an event like this: anthrax, sarin, ricin – the works.
It was difficult to keep the mind from racing at all the possibilities, and how each one might play out among the people she cared for. And they couldn't even tell anyone, or warn them to stay home – and what good would that do, if this was widespread enough? It would only cause a panic, which always made things worse. Her head reeled – but that was what the training was for. To anticipate that crisis of the mind, and provide a map for how to move forward, get the job done. She knocked back the Cipro and met JJ's pale, frightened eyes across the conference table.
They would put a stop to this.
They had to.
0o0
Nothing ever went as planned. It was something she supposed she ought to have learned by now, but standing in the home laboratory of a man who had cooked up a novel strain of anthrax, knowing that she and Reid had accidentally inhaled it was taking the biscuit.
Grace glared at the files she was reading through, hoping to find notation for a cure – or anything that might slow it down. Her mind felt thready. The fatigue was already beginning to build, and it had only been a few hours. Soon, the coughing and the chest pain would start, and after that, the lesions, both inside her body and out. And the aphasia. Oddly, of all the things that this particular strain of anthrax could do to a person, that scared her the most: the inability to be able to communicate or understand, especially at a time like this. Like being cut off from the rest of the world, just when you needed it the most.
She was vaguely hoping that if it came to it, she would be unconscious at that point.
Sighing, she placed the cool part of her forearm against her forehead. There wasn't much of a temperature yet, but it was there, just a few degrees outside of normal.
Really, it was one thing to feel the general, existential dread of there being an imminent biological attack in your area and quite another to be looking directly down the barrel of it, particularly with such a detailed knowledge of how it would progress, and how quickly.
She glanced outside, where Hotch, Morgan and anyone not presently setting up and equipping a decontamination tent were gazing forlornly at the house. The fact that the weather was so lovely almost seemed like an insult.
Who builds an anthrax lab inside a suburban home, anyway? Grace thought angrily, and then allowed her eyes to travel to the man who had, and who had been shot for his pains. Doctor Nichols was trying to stop something like this happening, she reminded herself, but managed to set it all off anyway.
Spencer, whose breathing was already laboured, was leaning against the desk on the far wall, taking a rest from what felt like a horribly forlorn and pointless search. He had Garcia on speaker phone.
As usual, Penelope's voice had helped stave off some of the darker thoughts that were beginning to creep in, but she wasn't her usual chipper self, right now – not with two of the team in such direct, biological peril. She was helping him record a message for his mother, in case he didn't make it, and Grace was having a very hard time as he told her how much he loved her and how proud he was.
She swallowed, which by degrees was becoming increasingly difficult to do, and then realised he had stopped speaking to his mum or Garcia, and was actually addressing her: "Do you want to –" He stopped, sounding a little breathless, and the tiny noise his lungs made as they reached for clean air made her heart clench. "Do you want to record something?"
"No," she said. "Them as need to know, do – and the team in London know how I feel."
"Okay," he said, struggling to disguise the emotion in his voice. "Thanks Garcia."
Grace held his red-rimmed gaze for a moment, hoping he could read what she needed to say to him from her micro-expressions. He nodded tightly, and they both had to turn away and scrub tears from their faces as Doctor Kimura and her team came in, wrapped tightly in their bright orange hazard suits.
0o0
Spencer had refused morphine, though it was as plain to Grace as it was to Doctor Kimura that he was really beginning to suffer, now. Grace had turned it down, too, though not as urgently or vociferously. Right now, her and Reid's best chance of getting through this was to profile Nichols and his student, and having two sets of eyes inside the lab would help immeasurably.
Assuming they could keep it together long enough, which was easier said than done.
It felt like the embers of a fire were spreading slowly through her lungs, burning and melting. Each breath was costing her more energy and hurting more – and the panic that came with the rising temperature and exhaustion was harder to control, particularly for someone who usually managed their more extreme emotions by moderating their breathing. There was the beginnings of a definite rattle at the bottom of each breath now, and that would only increase. Her head swam.
Still, as bad as Grace felt, Spencer looked ten times worse.
Letting Linda Kimura's team take the lab apart for the vaccine for a few minutes, she joined him beside the window. He gave her a forlorn little smile as she made an attempt to look like she was rummaging through the things on the table he was leaning against. Grace allowed herself to come to her stop, her hand resting on the counter beside him, not quite touching him – though she dearly wanted to.
There were too many people here.
Spencer coughed and vainly tried to clear his throat, swiping an arm across his forehead to clear some of the sweat and then folding his arms tightly across his front, the way he did when he felt particularly vulnerable.
Grace stared at her hands. This was torture.
He coughed again, and she couldn't stop the palm she placed on his forehead, which was hot to the touch, now. He closed his eyes, leaning into her cooler hand – and to her touch.
"God, why are you so much sicker than me?" she asked softly, and Spencer gave a defeated shrug.
"I don't know," he said, rather hoarsely. "I – I thought I knew everything about how this strain attacks the body, but for some reason..." He cleared his throat. "For some reason it seems to be accelerated in me, compared to the other victims." He glanced at her face, perhaps unwilling to include her in that category. "And compared to you."
Grace rested her hand on his for a moment, and – still with his arms crossed, and conscious of the sea of orange suited people around them – he rubbed the back of it with his thumb.
"I do know exactly how this thing progresses," he mused. "It feels – uh – very strange to be staring that knowledge directly in the face, with a… more practical dataset, as it were." He chuckled and that quickly devolved into choking coughs.
Doctor Kimura gave him the kind of look that suggested she was considering packing him off to hospital right then and there, but he waved her down.
"I wish I could hug you, right now," said Grace softly, when the coughing had subsided.
"Hah. Me too." He shook his head. "But I really wish you were out there with Hotch and Morgan, instead of in here with me."
"Where the hell else would I be?" She hadn't intended it to come out quite so fiercely as it had, but it was that sort of a day.
They were quiet for a few minutes, as Doctor Kimura's team continued their urgent search.
Grace became aware that he was looking at her obliquely, along his shoulder. His eyes were dark, behind his lashes, and it was curiously difficult to make out his expression. She held his gaze, shoulder to shoulder, then he cleared his throat again.
"I –" He paused, waiting for a hermetically sealed doctor to pass by. "I – I just wanted to – to tell you… In case we – in case I don't – in case I can't…" He stopped, swallowed, tried again. "H-ho-how much you – you make every day… better. Worth waking up for…"
Grace watched as he looked down and then back up at her, his Adam's apple bobbing furiously.
"I wanted to tell you how much you – I mean, how much I-I…" Spencer trailed off, trying soundlessly to form syllables.
Recognising the struggle, Grace laid her hand on his arm. "I know," she told him, and smiled sadly as his expression startled, then softened, knowing that she had taken his meaning. "Me too."
They shared a wry, wistful sort of look, then Grace's phone buzzed, and suddenly they were all business again.
0o0
They were, all of them, banking on Spencer being right about Nichols choosing to hide the antidote to his new strain of anthrax in an old, personal inhaler. It made sense: it was small, contained and able to be carried around with ease, and raising no suspicion whatsoever. The unsub wouldn't ever have thought of it.
Grace was hoping against hope that he was right, because if he wasn't…
They walked side by side along the tunnel of polythene the Hazmat people had erected, connecting the contaminated house to the decon' area, feeling his fingers brush against hers every few steps.
She was just about keeping a handle on her fear, though it was a hard won victory. This wasn't the simple fear of great winged things in the Pine Barrens, bright, urgent terror of having to face down a killer with more magic than sense, nor even the way she had felt with a shotgun pressed into the back of her neck. No, this was a slow, cloying dread, wrapping its digits around her heart and lungs, and gaining pace and power with every passing minute.
Her head felt oddly loud, like everything, even the passage of time, was being shouted.
Doctor Kimura ushered them into the first bay and Grace squashed the fear down as hard as she could. There were things to do that would protect other people, right now, and that was more important than being scared.
"Uh, we usually do this separately," said Doctor Kimura, looking mildly awkward. "But time is of the essence, and…"
"It's okay," said Grace, and Spencer nodded.
"Yeah, don't worry. We get it."
"Hey, at least you can tell people you've seen my tattoos," Grace joked, and Spencer cracked a painful, slightly helpless smile.
Doctor Kimura smiled, too, relieved to have terrified patients who could still cling to their senses of humour.
"Alright. Items that could be irradiated, here," she said, indicating a sealable box on a flimsy, temporary table. "Weapons, watches, jewellery, phones. I'm afraid your clothes will have to be burned."
"Oh man," Grace complained, compensating for the fear with humour as hard as she was able. "This is a really good bra!"
She was rewarded with a snort from Spencer, and chuckles from the Hazmatted guy behind the box.
They emptied their pockets in a jumble of guns, badges and electronic equipment. Grace slipped off the necklace and ear studs she had been wearing and then handed over her pocket watch.
"Take good care of this," she said, to the Hazmat-man. "It means a lot to me."
"We'll get it back to you, ma'am." He nodded, and sealed the box after Spencer added his own watch.
"Now, do either of you wear hearing aids, contact lenses or other hidden medical equipment?" Kimura asked.
Grace shook her head, and waited while Spencer removed his contacts.
"I can't see a damn thing," he confided, so she took his hand and guided him through to the next bay. "Well, I can, just not details, like raised edges on the floor…"
Morgan, who had been with them just before they had managed to expose themselves to a biological weapon, appeared at the see-through divide between the safe world and theirs.
"Hey," she said, and Spencer looked confused until Morgan greeted them both, in that calm, terse manner he had picked up from Hotch.
"Hey 007. How're you doing, Pretty Boy?"
"I've had better days," Spencer quipped, giving him a wave. The coughs were still small, but coming more regularly now, and Grace had started with the occasional bout herself.
"Shoes in here," said the doctor.
"I've got Rossi," said Morgan, waving his cell phone. "He says 'Eh, Bambini'."
Spencer rolled his eyes.
"Tell him he owes me a drink, for that," Grace said, sticking out her tongue.
She wished she hadn't, because it made her throat hurt all the more. Doctor Kimura and her team pulled Grace a few paces from Spencer, and briefly he grasped for her hand.
Morgan caught the movement and raised his eyebrows, but he didn't say anything. Then they switched on the water – it was icy at first, and Grace gasped, which set her coughing.
"Sorry," said the doctor. "It'll warm up in a minute."
Grace nodded, shivering. It felt very weird to be being hosed down in her clothes – weirder still with Morgan watching.
"Yeah," he said, into the phone. "Yeah, they're hosin' 'em down, now. Alright." He hung up and slipped the cell into his pocket. "They're checkin' out Brown's house."
"Go help Hotch," said Reid, sounding increasingly tired.
Grace could hear the tremor in his voice, too, though she wasn't sure if it was fear or chills.
"Hotch has plenty of people helpin' him," Morgan replied, shifting into his 'I won't be moved stance'.
"He needs you more than we do," Spencer retorted.
"Guys, I'm gonna see you off to the hospital."
"Beat it, Morgan. This is bad enough without an audience," Grace told him.
Spencer pulled a face. "We're about to get naked," he said. "So they can – scrub us down. Is that something you really wanna see?"
Grace's giggles, bordering on the hysterical, quickly turned into coughing again.
"Alright," said Morgan, giving them both long looks. "I'll check on you later. Oh," he said, as a parting shot before he left the tent, "No funny business, you two. Keep it clean."
"Know anywhere I can bulk buy itching powder?" Grace asked loudly, and heard him snort, outside.
Doctor Kimura's colleague, who had introduced herself as Catherine, helped Grace out of her shirt. Several feet away, Spencer was removing his tie.
This is right up there on my list of weird days, Grace thought.
Linda gasped, which got Grace's attention. "Doctor Reid, did you cut yourself?"
For a moment, everyone stopped and stared at the small, jagged tear on the back of Spencer's left hand. It was deep, and already blackening – displaying the first, tell-tale signs of a skin lesion.
He stared, wild-eyed at Grace. "The rose bush! I caught it on the rose bush on the way into Nichols' house!"
Oh fuck, thought Grace. It's been in his blood stream this whole time!
Spencer swallowed hard. "Well, at least we know why I'm sicker."
0o0
As soon as she had seen the cut on Reid's hand, Doctor Kimura had sped the whole operation of getting them decontaminated up. Now, the ambulance was racing through the streets, jolting them back and forth. There was only one stretcher, and Grace had flat out refused it, though she had let them strap her to the brace-chair.
Spencer on the other hand, had been hit by a wave of dizziness as soon as they had been provided with paper scrubs. There hadn't even been time to be shy about their nudity, or the space in their brains.
He was coughing constantly now, while Grace's chest gave regular gurgles of discontent, and both Linda and an EMT who had yet to introduce himself were dressing the wound on his hand and checking his vitals.
They had already hooked him up to an oxygen line, and the nameless EMT had assured Grace she was next, but a large part of her didn't care, as long as Spencer would just stop coughing.
"How are you feeling, Doctor Reid?" Kimura asked, with medical calm.
"Um, my throat's a little dry," he replied hoarsely. "But other than that I feel fl… feel fin… I feel – I feel…" He broke off, frustrated. He was searching for words that refused to come.
"The aphasia," Grace guessed, sharing a frightened look with Doctor Kimura.
"It's okay, Doctor Reid," she said, trying to keep him calm. Then she turned. "Driver? Go faster!"
Coughing harder now – so hard that Kimura had to wipe blood from his mouth – Spencer reached helplessly for Grace.
"I know," she said, grasping his arm and feeling his fingers close tightly, desperately about hers. "I'm here. I've got you."
He couldn't talk now, so he didn't try. He didn't need to, it was clear from his eyes that he was scared out of his wits. So was Grace.
She leaned as close as she could, given the belt holding her in place and the lurching of the ambulance, and squeezed his arm. "I know you can understand me, even if the words have got a little lost," she said urgently, suppressing the urge to cough. "You're going to be okay. I'm not going anywhere, Spencer. I'm going to be right here when you wake up. I'm not going to leave you alone in your own head. That's a promise."
He held her gaze, so she kept a hold of his arm, right up until he lost consciousness.
"Doctor," she said, and started coughing again, trying hard not to panic and not entirely succeeding.
Kimura nodded, and beneath the professional calm, Grace read the same, deep-rooted fear she felt herself.
Hang in there, love, she thought. Just hang in there.
0o0
Catherine, who Grace recognised from the decon tent, met her at the door as Doctor Kimura and the EMT hurried Spencer away on a gurney. Grace watched him go, unable to quantify how she felt.
Was she shaking?
She lifted a hand to inspect it. Yes. Her fingers were trembling. That wasn't a good sign.
"How are you feeling?" Catherine asked, guiding her onto a second gurney which they had obviously had ready for her.
"Hot, shaky, scared as hell," said Grace. "Kind of feverish. Have they tested the inhalers yet?"
"They're doing it now," said the doctor, soothingly. "Lie down. I want to get you to isolation and get some oxygen into you. How's the chest?"
"Tight, burny…" Grace coughed hard and pressed a hand to her ribs. "I think I'll have those painkillers, now, please."
"Alright."
She watched, feeling strangely detached, as the ceiling of the hospital progressed above her at some speed, before coming to rest, presumably, in the isolation part of the ICU.
"I'm going to hook you up to a drip," said Catherine.
"Is Reid here?" Grace asked, and tried to sit up, but the doctor pushed her gently back down again.
"Your partner's right next door, but I need you to keep your head straight if you can," she told her. "We need to keep your airways clear."
"'Kay."
She surrendered herself to the doctor's ministrations. She was joined, after a minute or so, by two nurses, who arranged Grace in the best possible position, attached a drip, set up a breathing tube. She felt a tear slide down her face and drip into her ear. She flicked it away with the hand that wasn't attached to the drip. Clouds of painless warmth began to spread through her. The morphine, she realised.
"How are you doing?" Catherine asked again, gently sympathetic.
Grace cracked a smile that was probably more like a grimace. "I only just got signed off."
0o0
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Helen Keller
0o0
Spencer woke slowly, remembering the pain and the panic only as an afterthought.
They must have given me morphine, he thought groggily. I'll have to go through withdrawal again.
Then he woke up properly and opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was Morgan, sitting at the end of the bed and using his legs as a shelf for a sports magazine, eating jello out of a plastic cup. The second thing was Grace, wrapped in a hospital blanket, lying propped up across several chairs, on several pillows and apparently dozing. She was attached to a breathing unit and a drip, but it looked rather like she had dragged both into his room and set up camp. Which meant she was okay enough to be physically stubborn.
He smiled, allowed his eyes to drift closed again, and fell back asleep.
The next time he came to he felt a lot less vague, and it felt like straps of hot iron were wrapped around his chest. The drugs were wearing off. He opened his eyes and found that the tableau he had witnessed earlier had not changed; Morgan had even found more jello – though this time it was red, rather than green.
"Are you eating jello?" he asked, through a dry, sore throat.
"Hmm," said Morgan, sounding pleased. "Hey kid." He flicked a plastic spoon – not the one he was presently using – at Grace, who stirred and gave him the finger. "Hey Doc," Morgan called into the hall. "Look who's back."
Doctor Kimura came into the little room, smiling. Spencer noted the lack of masks and sealed doors and was pleased at what this suggested.
"Is there any more jello?" Spencer quipped, half seriously. He wasn't sure he could have swallowed it if he tried.
"Hey, not so fast," said Kimura, beaming.
Spencer struggled into a marginally more upright position, and suddenly Grace – pale and dragging her IV – was there, putting one of her pillows in place so he could sit up. He took her hand and didn't let go, even though he knew both Morgan and the doctor could see it. She didn't pull away.
"Trust me, you don't want to eat yet," she said. "And the red stuff tastes like chemical cherries anyway."
"What happened?" he asked, peering up at Morgan.
"You're gonna be okay," his friend told him. "And we got Brown. It's over."
Spencer nodded, more feeling a measure of relief. "How's Abby?" he asked, thinking of the frail girl he had interviewed before they had gone to the house.
"She's on the mend," Linda replied. "So are the three others. You were right about where to look for his cure."
Spencer nodded, feeling Grace squeeze his hand; he tightened his grip in reply.
"Why was Doctor Nichols making anthrax in the first place?" he wondered aloud.
It had been bugging him the whole time, at the back of his mind. Why create the threat that you feared the most?
"He was trying to prove his point," said Grace, and her voice was gravelly, like his.
"He was a brilliant scientist, downgraded to workin' on the flu," Morgan speculated. "Brown comes along askin' for help with his thesis…"
"He's probably more than happy to share his knowledge," Spencer finished.
"There was no indication that Nichols had any idea what Brown was plannin'."
"He played him," said Grace, and Spencer felt her perch on the edge of his bed.
Good, he thought drowsily. Right where I want you.
But it didn't last.
"Alright, Agent Pearce, he's awake," said Doctor Kimura, with half-serious sternness that suggested there had been a battle of wills in the recent past. "Will you go back to your room, now? Please?"
"Yes, doctor," said Grace, meekly, and to Spencer's astonishment, she leant and kissed his forehead. "Be okay."
"I will, if you are," he said, and gave her fingers one final squeeze before she allowed Morgan to help her through the door, and into the next bay.
He could see her arguing good naturedly with him, through the glass.
"She wouldn't leave," Kimura told him, following his gaze with a smile. "As soon as we cleared you both of contaminants, she came through here and set up camp."
Spencer chuckled, which hurt his chest, but didn't rob him of breath the way it had before.
"Yes," he said, fondly amused. "Grace has her own peculiar variety of stubborn."
Linda laughed, and gave him a warm smile. "I think she would have broken down the door if we hadn't opened it. Keep hold of that one."
The blush started before he could stop it, and anyway, Doctor Kimura wasn't a colleague, and had spent enough time around them to guess that whatever their relationship was, was private.
"I intend to," he admitted, shyly. "I intend to."
0o0
"Hey."
Spencer looked up from the book he had been reading and smiled. Grace was leaning against the door of his room, wearing that green leather jacket and the jeans that he liked to stick his hands in the pockets of, and a grin that suggested she knew it.
"Heading home?" he asked, nodding at the bag by her feet.
They had been in the ICU for the better part of a week, now, and both of them were itching to get out, now. Grace more-so than he, since the anthrax had had less of a change to do damage to her, for which Spencer was intensely grateful.
Several times, over the past few nights, he had woken, dripping with sweat, dreaming of scarlet blooming from her mouth and her body gasping for its last breath. The last time had been so bad that he had got up and padded into her room, and stayed there a few hours, just to watch the steady rise and fall of her chest as she slept.
"Doctor Kimura says I'm to take it easy," she told him, and came to sit beside him on the bed.
He wiggled out of the way to make room.
"I feel like I've spent the whole of this year doing that," she joked, but Spencer ignored her.
From where he was sitting he could wrap both arms around her waist with ease, so he did that instead, fiddling with the pocket of her jeans that usually held her pocket watch.
Grace smiled, running her hand up his arm. She leaned in to press a kiss against his forehead, the way she had when he had first awoken, and he tilted his head up at the last second, catching her unawares. Grace laughed, and kissed him properly.
It felt good – both to be alive, and to be able to do this.
"Did you mean – uh – that stuff we were not saying, before?"
Grace's smile broadened and she nodded. "Every unsaid word," she said, and Spencer felt his heart swell.
0o0
Emily strode up the corridor of the no-longer isolation ward, smiling at the nurses she had got to know by sight over the past week. It was good to be liberating one of her friends, if not both, and Reid had seemed much more himself when she and Garcia had visited them the day before. They had come so close to losing them both.
Emily was trying not to think about it.
It came as no surprise whatsoever that Grace was not in her room, but in Reid's, and not that much more shocking that she was perched on the side of his bed.
Emily slowed her pace a little, watching as Reid gave their friend a tight hug, which she returned. Nothing odd about that, on the surface, except that when they pulled apart again, neither of them dropped their hands from where they had been resting. There was – as there often was, with those two – something almost intimate about the way they were looking at one another.
She shrugged it off. They had both nearly died in quite a horrible way. If they needed to hug it out, in that weird, slightly-more-than-friends-but-we-don't-talk-about-it way they had, so be it.
Even so, Emily was loathe to intrude – but she only had a twenty minute parking ticket, and the hospital parking fines could be a real bitch.
"Hey, you ready to go," she asked, and tucked the sight of two pairs of ears reddening at speed away to think about later.
"Yep," said Grace, getting to her feet. "I'll catch you when you hit parole," she joked, and Spencer gave her a lopsided smile.
"You are so weird."
0o0
Holy Hannah, that was a thing. I suspect I processed some of my feelings for the world at large in this one. Sorry it jumps about so much, but I just couldn't face the whole thing. Hopefully I've done it justice without freaking too many of us out.
This is the end of this run! The next one, Watch Over Me, will take us into season five, and should be up the week after next. Hit the Follow Author button if you haven't already, and it'll drop right into your inbox on the 17th of April, universe willing. I'm taking Easter weekend off. It's been… I'd say a wild ride, except I had that massive, four month long hiatus, so I'll say it was a thing. I appear to have used my quota of words up on Grace and Reid xD
Anyway, immeasurable thanks to all the readers and reviewers, you make the rockin' world go round, and you keep me going when I feel like I should throw away my pen and learn how to herd goats, or something. Particularly my regulars (you know who you are), and all you quiet folks who show up every so often and say hello. It means the world to me. Especially this year, with all the disruption to the fic. I missed you all so much when I wasn't writing. I love you folks!
You can find more of my writing, if you're bored, on Amazon, or through my book of the face, insta ham and twitter accounts, all of which are under some variation of Lauren K. Nixon. I also have a Pat with a re and an on, which I don't entirely suck at updating, where you can get your hands on snippets, sneak previews, Q and As, flash fiction competitions and even the odd letter from a character. I also take pictures of stuff, including my cat, and they show up there, too.
Keep safe, people, and keep burning through the surface of this nasty little bastard with soap and disinfectant. Stay home, stay social on the web, and hold the line. See you on the flip side.
Parlanchina xx
