"Crane, come on, we should go get some rest. We'll hit it again in the morning," Abbie pleaded again. He was hunched over the table, as he'd been for the past two hours, poring over some latin manuscript.
"I'll be fine here, Leftenant," he said flatly, just as he had twenty minutes ago. Abbie sighed, her patience was beginning to wear thin. She understood the trauma he'd been through, but killing himself over it wasn't going to help anybody.
"I'm not leaving without you," she said stalwartly, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Then it appears you'll be sleeping on the floor," Ichabod replied without looking up from his book. He scratched something down on the notebook next to it.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Abbie approached him and laid a hand softly on his arm.
"It's gonna be okay, y'know," she said quietly. She didn't know what else to do to help him. His pain was tearing her up.
Ichabod shot up out of his chair, throwing her hand off him. He whirled around and stalked back to the bookshelf. "Empty lies! Just leave me be, your presence only serves to distract me from my goal."
"Fine," she ground out, biting back the expletives she wanted to throw in his face, because damn that hurt so much more than she thought it could. "Sulk here and drive yourself crazy!" Abbie spat and stalked out, showing great restraint by not slamming the door behind her.
Ichabod stood, shaking, at the bookshelf a few moments longer, before letting the tension out in a great sigh and slumping back into his chair. It was wrong of him to shout at her, but she simply didn't understand the weight on his shoulders. The whole great mess of it finally hit him in the chest and he laid his forehead on his crossed arms on the table.
He found himself at the Leftenant's front door, without really knowing how he'd gotten there. It sounded and smelled like early evening, although he knew it should be far later in the night. Feeling compelled, he raised a fist to rap on the door, but it was already ajar. He scowled, intending to scold her for the oversight, and swung the door open.
"Miss Mills?" he called. Down the hallway, he saw Abbie poke her head out of the far bedroom doorway.
"There you are!" she exclaimed, a brilliant grin lighting up her face. Ichabod blinked beneath the power of it as she came bounding toward him. She leapt up into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and pressing her lips to his.
Beyond shocked, Ichabod braced her under her thighs, for lack of anything else to do. He'd gasped into her mouth, giving her opportunity to take his lower lip between hers and gently nip it. He felt her tongue swipe along it and his knees nearly buckled. After only a moment of unresponsiveness on his part, Abbie leaned back.
"Ichabod?" she asked, her dark brown eyes peering intently into his. "Why are you wearing your old clothes?"
The sound of his name on her lips threw him for another loop, and he could only stare at her pretty face, so close to his, for a moment or two.
"I-Miss M-Mills," he stuttered, "I think something's wrong here."
Abbie unhooked her legs from around him and slid down his long body to the floor. She was wearing a large shirt bearing the Sleepy Hollow Police Department brand, and shorts that ended well above mid-thigh. She was looking at him with such concern and...affection, his heart could hardly stand it.
"Am I dreaming?" he asked in a hushed voice, as if acknowledging it would make it disappear, and he wasn't quite sure he wanted that yet. Abbie moved to sit on the couch and Ichabod followed her. She sat facing him while he sat stiffly facing forward.
"Maybe," she said, musing. "Maybe you needed to have this dream to know that things're gonna turn out."
"Are they?" he asked, with a breathless laugh. He couldn't imagine such an ending to the tragedy that had become his life.
Abbie smiled softly at him and nodded. She reached for his hands, making him turn toward her. Holding his big hands between them in her small ones, tracing the ridges of his knuckles with the pads of her thumbs, Ichabod thought maybe she was right. Maybe things would be okay, as long as they worked together.
"We save the world," Abbie stated proudly. Ichabod didn't have the presence of mind to ask her how, but he'd wager she wouldn't have told him anyway. "The situation with your wife is resolved. We freed her, and she moved on. And we're happy, you and me," Abbie said, smiling. Ichabod's breath caught in his throat.
He couldn't have...would never have dreamed to be so lucky.
"And things aren't just okay. They're marvelous," she said dramatically, then laughed at herself. Ichabod thought he could drown in the sound.
"How long?" he asked her eagerly. She grinned again fondly, as if she'd known what he was going to say. She shrugged.
"I don't know, it's up to you I guess." Abbie stood, drawing him up with her and led him to the door. There, she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest tightly. Ichabod settled his arms around her shoulders and leaned his cheek onto the top of her head, closing his eyes to try memorizing every detail of the moment. He was vaguely worried it would slip away from him when he woke. That would be the cruelest trick yet, to have this hope drift away, without truly remembering it was ever there.
Ichabod pulled away only enough to bend his lips to her cheek. As he brushed the petal-soft skin, his eyes fluttered opened in the archive room.
Abbie was standing before him with a cup of coffee in each hand. She set one down in front of him.
"Leftenant," he murmured groggily, sitting up in his chair, "What time is it?"
"Four in the morning. I couldn't leave you here alone," she said unhappily, sinking in the chair across from him. Ichabod took a moment to look at her. She was obviously tired, and it filled him with guilt. But her eyes were still bright, and he was filled with hope.
"Miss Mills," he began softly, "Please allow me to apologize for my reprehensible behavior."
He could see the beginnings of a smile at the corner of her lips, and some of the fondness that Dream Abbie held for him in her eyes.
"I should never have raised my voice to you, and your presence is, as always, a comfort. Do forgive me," he pleaded softly. He longed to reach for her hand, but with the dream of her kiss so near, thought better of it.
"Yeah, alright," she said nonchalantly, though she had to bite her lip to keep from grinning. Ichabod smiled, relieved. "I know you've got a lot of heavy stuff to wade through right now, but we're in this together, like you said."
He ducked his head in acknowledgment, for once at a loss for words as his gratitude stuck in his throat.
"I believe you may be right, Miss Mills, that, despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation at hand, it may be alright in the end," he offered eventually.
Abbie took a sip of her coffee and rolled her eyes. "Only had to say it 600 times," she mumbled good-naturedly. Like the lady she was, she let it rest at that.
As Ichabod donned his coat and followed her out for breakfast, she asked him over her shoulder, "What makes you believe it, now?"
"Because you told me so," he answered.