"there's a fear in me, and it's not showing" (3 doors down)

[starandrea]

This is the seventh story in steering you home, and I dedicate it to... everyone! Just because. Also, I think they should go to Boston. Maybe in the next story. Ironically, despite the fact that Corinth is supposed to be located on top of Boston, I think they're going to have to fly.

If you can't remember what happened in the last story (I couldn't) it turns out that Dr. K got annoyed about Dillon brooding on the roof and went up there to stop it. She took Tenaya's key away from him and basically told him to follow her to bed. All this really accomplished was freaking Ziggy out and making Summer suspicious.


keeping you

He followed her down the stairs, but she didn't look back. She didn't acknowledge him in any way, even when she stopped at her station in the training room and sat down. She frowned at the screen. Then she started typing.

"Doc." He put one hand on either side of the screen and stared down at her. "Give me the key."

She spared him a brief glance. "If you're just going to interrupt me, you can wait in my room," she said.

"Why would I do that?" he demanded. "You're right here."

"And it will take me ninety seconds to reset the diagnostics," she said. "I don't understand why it's difficult to do nothing for a minute and a half."

"Why am I waiting?" he wanted to know. "What do you want with the key, anyway? It doesn't do anything. Believe me, I've tried."

"While I find it amusing that you assume no one could possibly think of something you haven't," she said, fingers flying over the keyboard as her gaze darted from one screen to the next, "I actually don't care about your sister's key. Or yours, for that matter."

"Great," he snapped. "Hand it over and I'll get out of your hair."

"I do, however, care about you," she continued without looking up. "Since anecdotal evidence indicates that having the second key in your possession makes you behave even more recklessly than usual, I've decided it will not remain in your possession."

"Yeah," he told her. "I think it will."

"I've anticipated your objection," she replied. The peripheral pattern of her fingers confirmed her diagnostic excuse. "I can't keep you without the key, nor can I keep the key without you."

She entered the final code for the last cycle's confirmation and took her eyes off of the screen for a second. "Therefore," she said, suddenly studying him instead, "the logical solution is to keep both you and the key."

She didn't usually look at him when she was telling him what they would do. Afterwards, yes, even immediately afterwards, as though anything less than instant agreement made her wonder what was taking him so long. But she rarely looked at him while she was explaining her conclusions.

"Ziggy said the shark zord was pulling to the right," he said.

She blinked. "Yes, I know. Diagnostics confirm a point oh two fluctuation in the lateral stabilizers."

Meaning she'd just absorbed and processed several megabytes of data in what was, at most, 27 seconds. He wasn't surprised. "You'll fix it," he said.

She didn't seem to take offense. Her expression told him she didn't even understand why he'd said it. "Of course."

"You're keeping me and the key by making me sleep in your room," he said, just to make sure. "You do know I have a roommate? I'm sure he'd notice if I snuck off in the middle of the night."

"He never has before," she remarked, turning back to the screens. "Ziggy's record of keeping you out of trouble is nonexistent."

He eyed her, amused but careful not to smile. He did have to take care: she was funny without even trying. "Doc, you have a negative record of keeping me out of trouble."

"Our metaphorical records are relative," she replied. "I send you into trouble with me, a field team, and a technological armada at your back. You, left to your own devices, run into trouble alone. In every sense of the word."

He considered that, but there was really only one response he could give. "I'm going to find her."

"I know," she agreed, eyes flicking over the security feed while her fingers programmed the reset. "The only question is whether you'll still be alive to meet her after you get her out."

"I think I can--"

The way she looked past him made him stop and turn. Ziggy was standing in the doorway from the kitchen, arms crossed, shoulder braced against the wall. He straightened as soon as Dillon saw him, dropping his arms and sliding his hands into his pockets--but she'd been watching for longer, and he hadn't moved.

He'd wanted Dillon to see him there.

"Oh, hey," Ziggy said, awkward shrug and surprised smile looking for all the world like he'd been caught off guard. "Sorry, just, uh, looking for Gem and Gemma. I thought they might have wanted more light for their journaling?"

She was giving him a look of utter incomprehension. "There's plenty of light in auxiliary control."

"C'mere," Dillon said. He figured for once he might understand the unspoken message. "Tell her I'm not gonna do something stupid if she doesn't watch me all night long."

"Uh, are you?" Ziggy came in anyway, looking from one of them to the other. "I mean, not that you do stupid things. Exactly. Well, I guess, by certain definitions--really? You're watching him?"

"Stupid," she said. "Characterized by a lack of mental acuity or an inability to learn. I submit that Dillon's actions are more willful than stupid, since his abilities are not in question. It's his tendency to use those abilities in service to reason that I find lacking."

"Wow," Ziggy said, wandering around behind the monitors to stare over her shoulder. "You're the master of the backhanded compliment. Or the mistress, maybe."

"I'm not attempting to deliver a compliment," she replied. "Backhanded or otherwise. I am, however... watching him."

Ziggy squinted at the screen above her hands. "You're not actually reading that, right?"

"I don't need to be watched," Dillon said.

"I don't want you on the roof," she answered.

He glanced around the training room pointedly. "I'm not on the roof now."

The clicking stopped, no flourish, and she gave her screens a final scan. "And I'm done here. It's late; I'm going to bed."

"And you're, uh, taking Dillon with you?" Ziggy asked. He didn't step back when she spun her chair to stand up, which she had clearly expected him to. "Like, right now?"

She blinked at him. "Yes."

"No," Dillon said at the same time. "I already have a keeper, Doc."

"And if I trusted him to do the keeping," she retorted, frowning at Ziggy, "I would leave you to it. Unfortunately, the last three times you've decided to take off while under Ziggy's questionable supervision, you've taken him with you."

"Wait, what?" Ziggy looked over at him. "Did you just call me your keeper?" Glancing back at her, he added, "Did you just call me his keeper?"

"I sleep with Ziggy, Doc," Dillon said. "I think anything else is gonna raise a few eyebrows."

Ziggy made a sound that was somewhere between laughing and choking, but he got it together enough to interrupt. "Trust me, you guys are way past that. I already had to cover for you to Summer.

"Also, I don't know if you know how that sounds, but you don't sleep with me," Ziggy added. "Like, at all. In any way other than sometimes sleeping in the same room where I am also sleeping. Not that I'm saying I'd mind, but seriously. Summer is watching you like a hawk. Or a bear. Something big and smart, anyway."

"I don't see what Ranger Yellow has to do with this conversation," she said.

"You covered for us?" Dillon repeated.

Ziggy shrugged. "She wanted to know if you'd been, uh... if you were still sleeping in our room?"

"I don't know what your sleeping venue has to do with anything at all." She was starting to sound impatient. "Except in that I'm not letting Dillon out of my sight until he either drives me crazy or convinces me he isn't trying to get himself killed. I admit that the former is significantly more likely than the latter."

"I'm not sleeping in your room," Dillon told her. "Your floor is weird, and you have pink sheets. Come upstairs and sleep with us."

Her mouth was open, clearly ready to protest, but this last made her pause.

It was just enough time for Ziggy to say, "Again, can I just point out that you're totally abusing the whole 'sleeping together' concept. I only care because I'm your friend, and doing that could get you into a lot of trouble--"

"You can have my bed," Dillon added. "I'll sleep with Ziggy."

"Okay, no," Ziggy said. "That's a really bad idea."

"Why would I want your bed?" She seemed genuinely puzzled by this. "It's clearly inferior to mine. And besides, all of my things are down here."

"All my stuff's upstairs," Dillon countered.

"Oh, your toothbrush and your other t-shirt? I see how separating you from those things would be a great inconvenience."

"Bye, Doc," he said. "See you in the morning. If I'm still here."

He pushed away from her station and strode toward the door. She'd done it to him with the key; he could do it to her with the threat of disappearing. Apparently. At least he thought he could. It was one big game of chicken, and he wasn't even sure what they were gambling or how high the stakes were anymore.

"Don't worry," he heard Ziggy telling her. "I'll keep an eye on him."

Her sigh was just loud enough to hear as he crossed the threshold of the training room. "Thank you," she said, her voice drifting after him on his way to the stairs. "That's so reassuring."

He tried to tell himself he wasn't surprised when the knock came on their door a few minutes later. Ziggy let her in, and Dillon looked up from the floor where he was recreating her latest unsolvable proof. Her gaze went to the numbers--he had no doubt that she recognized them instantly, even upside-down and incomplete as they were--and then back to him.

She had a plush bunny rabbit under one arm, and she was still wearing the key around her neck.

Dillon waved in the direction of his bed. Brand new navy comforter provided by Ziggy last week, with a second pillow and another blanket that Ziggy claimed to have bought for himself and then changed his mind about. Dillon hadn't asked.

"Hey, uh..." Ziggy sounded casual as Dillon's bed was taken over by a stuffed bunny and a petite figure in alphabet pajamas. "You're not really going to sleep with me, are you?"

He noted the next line of the proof in washable ink on the floor, then sat back to assess its coherence. "Does it look like I'm planning to sleep?" he asked, not looking up.

"You forgot the extradimensional variable," she remarked. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, propped up on one elbow as she peered over the side of the bed at his math. Her math. Whatever.

"Okay, no," Ziggy said. "Work is for work time. Good night."

The lights went out seconds later, and Dillon could just make out Ziggy padding through the darkness to his bed. He waited almost a minute for his eyes to adjust, then went back to writing on the floor. They'd had this argument before, and as long as he didn't keep Ziggy up, it was a compromise they both could live with.

"Just because you're writing in a straight line doesn't make it good math."

The whisper found him in the shadows, but before he could answer Ziggy repeated firmly, "Good night. As in, sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite. Or I will sing you lullabies until you stop talking."

"He's not bluffing," Dillon remarked. He hadn't forgotten the variable; he'd left it out on purpose. He was trying to decide if it could be masking something else. "It's almost worth it."

No one answered. He managed to recreate the rest of the proof in peace, and by the time he was ready to solve the unsolvable part, they were both asleep.