#winterfic 2023 lumosinlove

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Five: Finn

Church Ruin

Athens, Greece

Finn couldn’t look away. He had bundled Logan in both of their coats, one unzipped and pulled up higher to cushion his head against the rough stone of the wall. He’d used one of Leo’s alcohol packets to clean his face. Everything was the same. The brush of his long eyelashes against his cheek, the tilt of his head against the wall and the soft curl of his fingers into his palm. The warm olive of his skin. The sound of his breathing in his sleep—or whatever this was. If Finn blinked, Logan was going to disappear again.

He kept choking up. Kept crying, silent, and then wiping at his cheeks when the wind chilled his tears. He kept touching Logan, careful to let him rest but needed to feel his warm skin. He wanted to crawl inside those doubled coats, press his cheek against his chest, listen to his heartbeat.

“Anything new?”

Finn sniffed from the cold as Leo crouched down beside him. He shook his head. “No. Just this.”

Leo made a sympathetic sound. “It’s good that you’re staying close to him. But I wanted to tell you, the boys think we should head to one of the islands. Hide out until we can figure out how to reach Remus. We can’t lie low here very well, not in a city.”

“But how…” The fear seized him again, his throat constricting. “Leo, what if he doesn’t wake up?”

“He will,” Leo said.

“What if he doesn’t know me when he does?”

“I hope he will.”

“What if he needs a doctor? What if he dies?”

“No,” Leo said. “I won’t let him.”

“You’re not a doctor. You’re a lot of things but you’re not that.”

“Don’t I know it, but they’ll be watching the hospitals, Finn. We can’t.”

Finn looked over at him. Leo’s face was taut, blue eyes taking Logan in. His eyes, his mouth, his hair, his hands. Finn liked that. He liked watching Leo look at Logan like that. Like he understood how precious Logan was. Logan could come across as a little rude, a little quiet, a little harsh. Sometimes Finn felt alone at the occasional faculty party Logan made it to. Like no one would ever understand how wonderful Logan was. His colleagues would clear their throat a little, taken aback after the initial attractive charm of how handsome Logan was. But Leo looked like he knew. Leo did know.

“I never thought I’d see him again,” Leo said in a small voice.

Finn nodded. He couldn’t speak, but he reached out and put his hand over Leo’s. Leo looked down at it. Slowly, he turned his hand around so that their palms fit together and their fingers laced. Finn squeezed hard, knowing they were both only trying to make sense of it all. It felt good to have something to hold onto.

“You know those notes,” Leo said, still looking down. “Your notes, in the hall at home? I mean, at your flat?”

Finn nodded again. He’d hardly been able to look at them but he hadn’t been able to take them down, either. Logan had framed them as a present after their wedding. Their little love confessions. Finn joked that they had said it more officially than that. Whispered into each other’s mouths after two years of knowing each other, wanting each other, kissing and kissing and kissing for the first time in the dark third floor of a Harvard library. He’d woken up the next morning, peaked just one eye open, to find Logan balancing a note on his bedside table against his water glass before sneaking out for his eight AM. He’d closed his eye in time to feel Logan, thinking he was still asleep, press the most tender kiss to his forehead.

“I don’t like that he doesn’t know they’re there,” Leo said.

Finn realized his eyes had closed, the ghost of the kiss laying over him like snow.

Framed love. In the lonely apartment. He had a photo of Logan somewhere, grinning crookedly as he put the nails in the walls, fresh off their honeymoon, tanned from the beach, hair honey highlighted by the sun. Sentimental. So sentimental.

Leo’s silhouette standing in the hallway, usually taking his coat off or putting it back on, was just as clear an image. Logan’s voice from the kitchen. Leo—Lay-oh, the way he said it. Finn loved every fucking sound out of his mouth—Leo, I’m burning your instructions, this water won’t boil. Leo, in no hurry, re-reading every word. Sometimes Finn wondered if he could tell what sentence, which frame, he was reading from just by the tilt of his head. Logan’s I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m yours now, or his own, I’ve loved you for so long, baby. So long.

“I know,” Finn whispered. He squeezed Leo’s hand again. He thought of Leo pressed all along his back after realizing that Logan was alive and had no idea who he was. “Hopefully…Hopefully we’ll all get to go home soon and all of this will just be a memory.” He sighed, watching Logan breathe. “One that we all remember and can all let fade.”

Leo’s thumb brushed over Finn’s knuckles. “Finn?”

“Hm?” Finn reached out again, pushing the top of the coat zipper away from Logan’s cheek. The metal would be cold. Logan was perfectly still. Finn looked up, though, when Leo stayed quiet. He had watched the gesture. “Yeah?”

Leo blinked. Shook his head. “Never mind. Um.” He pulled his hand away from Finn’s. “Fuck, okay, look.” Leo reached into his jacket and took out a gun. It was small, smaller than the ones Finn watched Leo and the others strap to their hips and backs.

“Whoa,” Finn said.

“I want you to take this,” Leo said.

Finn stared at the pistol. “Leo, I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to shoot that.”

Leo frowned. His eyes darted to Logan. “I always thought Logan might teach you.”

Finn shook his head. “No. I mean, we tossed the idea around, but we never…You know.” Finn shrugged one shoulder. “I was his break from it all.”

“Well, not anymore. Not after Jack. Take it now.” Leo put the gun into Finn’s hand. “Look. This is the safety. Keep that on at all times. And this—”

In the next moment, there was a tight pressure around his neck and Finn found the air knocked from his lungs as he was yanked backwards. For the second time that day, the mouth of the gun was pressed against him. His temple this time.

“Move and I kill him,” Logan’s voice said from behind him, right next to his ear.

“Lo,” Finn gasped out, clutching at Logan’s arm. Blood rushed in his ears at the pressure against his throat. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know you, he doesn’t know you. “Lo, please—”

“You,” Logan said, and Leo’s blue eyes widened, his hands raised away from his weapons. “What do you want from me?”

“We don’t want to hurt you, Logan,” Leo said and Finn was surprised by how even his voice came out. “Please don’t hurt him. Please, you don’t want to hurt him.” Leo’s eyes flicked nervously to Finn’s, and Finn clutched harder at Logan’s arm, coughing.

Holding onto Logan’s arm so tight, the music beginning. Trying not to watch his mom dabbing at her eyes. Logan’s soft smile when they faced each other at the top of the aisle. “You don’t have to hold on so tight, Rouge. I’m not going anywhere. Not ever.”

“Tell me who you are,” Logan said. The cold metal dug into Finn’s cheek. “Tell me. Why are they after me?”

“We’re your friends, Logan. Your teammates. We’re trying to figure that out, too,” Leo said. “You’re not alone. They’re after Remus, too. Do you know Remus?”

“Non,” Logan said.

Leo tried again, hesitantly. “Pascal?”

Finn badly wished he could see Logan’s face. All he could stare at was Leo’s blue eyes. Leo shook his head softly. “No? That’s alright.”

“Non. I…I don’t know—I don’t know anything,” Logan said, and Finn’s chest ached.

“We’ll help you,” Finn managed to say, and it was so stupid to feel relieved to be settled against Logan’s chest even with a gun to his head, but he was. “Logan, we’ll help you—”

But then he was being shoved forward, momentarily on his side before Logan had thrown a leg over his hips, pinning him to the ground with the gun right over his heart.

“You’re the one trying to get close,” Logan said. God, how many times had Logan looked down at him just like this, how many times had he been a weight over Finn, just like this…but not like this at all. “My husband. I don’t even know I was—”

Gay, was perhaps what he was about to say. Or, in younger Logan fashion, like that. Finn felt like he’d been slammed back nine years. Back to the very beginning. A reluctant Logan. A confused Logan. A young Logan, scared to admit to all the different ways he wanted Finn. Logan’s mouth pressed into a thin line, keeping the word in just like he used to. Finn had spent a good two years watching as Logan began to smile while using it—or at least, something like that word.

All I know is that I want a Finn O’Hara, Logan had laughed into his mouth that perfect summer. New York City. Burning sunset and dinner on a boat, humidity curling Logan’s hair and after dinner drinks on a rooftop. Before the agency had spotted Logan. Before any of it. And a Finn O’Hara wants me.

He still wants you, Finn wished he could say. I still want you. Do you still want me?

“My phone,” Finn whispered. “My phone, in my pocket.” He moved his eyes down to his left. “Right there.”

Logan looked, and Finn took the instant to look back at Leo, upside-down, and give his head a small shake. He won’t hurt me. Finn knew it in his bones. He can’t hurt me.

“You can’t trick me with—”

“You don’t have to open it,” Leo said. “Just look at the screensaver.”

That was better, Finn thought. He was going to have Logan look at pictures of their wedding, but this was better. It felt raw. Finn loved that photo. He hoped Logan could somehow feel that. Or even remember it. What had he done before? How had he broken through and why had it caused so much pain?

Logan, without moving the gun, dug into Finn’s pocket for the phone. Finn felt his hands search for weapons, too, briefly. Logan’s eyes caught on his when he found him completely unarmed. Finn couldn’t see the screen, but he could see Logan’s face as he took it in: Himself, soft as sunset. His brows drew together and he stared, and stared. When the screen went black, he tapped it to see the photo again.

“That’s you,” Finn said. “It’s you.”

Tentatively, Finn tried to sit up. It was a mistake. Logan flinched hard, renewing the angle of the gun, which had drifted some in distraction. He dropped the phone and pinned Finn’s hands above his head. He looked more panicked than before.

“Why don’t I know you? I should know you if that’s real—”

“It is,” Finn pleaded. He tried to free his hands. If he could just touch him. “Please, Lo, it’s me. It’s Finn.”

Logan was fighting him, gun digging in, hand back around Finn’s throat, but Finn didn’t care. He didn’t care.

“Finn.” Leo’s voice sounded far away. Panicked, but far away. “Stop. Stop it.”

“Harvard,” Finn choked out. He kept his eyes locked on Logan’s green ones. “Harvard, the third floor of the library.”

“What?” Logan said. “Who are you—” But he’d winced. Finn saw it, he winced.

Finn let out a low noise and renewed his efforts, settling all the strength he could find into keeping himself from shaking. The fact that it was a gun was beginning to settle in. Mostly though, he was afraid for Logan. Afraid he would do something that, if he ever came back to himself, he would regret.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Leo pleaded. “And you’re not our captive. Just let him talk to you, Logan—”

But Finn knew better than that. Logan was stubborn. When he had something set in his mind, it took months to undo it—sometimes years. Not minutes, especially not on such uneven ground as this. Finn would have to try and trip his wires again, jump him right back into himself, even if only for a few more seconds.

“The hot chocolate machine,” Finn said. “Third floor. Harvard. Library. You love it, I think it’s disgusting but you loved it and I brought you some while I was helping you study. The English was hard for you back then.”

Logan squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them wide again, like he had double vision.

“You know,” Finn said. You know. It’s in there. “Before you could speak ten languages.”

“Finn,” Leo said. “This isn’t the way. It’s hurting him.”

“I don’t speak ten languages,” Logan bit out.

Leo said something fast in a language Finn couldn’t even begin to identify. Russian? Logan’s eyes snapped up. He’d understood.

“I know it’s confusing,” Leo began to say, but then Logan was looking at Finn again.

“The library,” Logan repeated.

“Yes.” Finn wrapped his fingers around Logan’s wrist, the hand on his neck. He realized he was nodding, almost frantically. He could see them in that memory. Standing close together in the tiny, freezing corner with the vending machine. The flimsy paper cup filled with steaming, powdery hot chocolate. “I said, that’s too fucking sweet. I said that I didn’t know how you could stand it…And you said—”

“I’m—” Logan began, and then cut off. His eyes were wide, searching Finn’s face. It wasn’t the recognition that he’d seen before, not the real knowing, but it was something. It was finishing Finn’s sentence.

I’m sweet. I’m sweet.

And then Finn had kissed him for the first time. Terrified. Not sure Logan even wanted him to. But they had spent what felt like an eternity kissing in that freezing corner, alone on the library’s third floor. So long that all of the censored lights shut off and thrown them into blissful darkness—was that the same darkness at the edges of his vision now? Finn tried to blink the spots away. Air. He needed air.

Logan’s eyes fell shut, lips pulling back to reveal teeth grit in pain. He dropped his forehead to Finn’s chest. Finn realized he was sweating, they both were, despite the chill in the air.

And then Logan was gone. His weight, the warmth, the gun, the hand around his throat.

Finn coughed hard. Bitter bile in his throat, something rushing in his ears. His pulse maybe. His blood. Leo knelt beside him, tumbling against his side.

“Finn—” Leo began to say, but Finn was already pushing himself up, terrified, terrified that Logan would already be running. His back hurt. His head throbbed where it had hit against the stone, and Logan, Logan, Logan, gone again gone—

But he wasn’t. Logan had pressed himself back into the stone corner where he had been sleeping. He looked feverish, but he was looking at Finn so carefully that Finn didn’t dare move.

“Logan?” Finn whispered.

“What’s happening to me?” Logan looked down at the gun, like he had forgotten he was holding it.

“You’re memory, it’s been—wiped? Or something,” Leo said gently. “It’s not your fault. Logan, it isn’t your fault. You and Remus, we thought you both were dead. We only just found you.” Leo let out a shaky sigh. “We’re trying to figure out what happened, too.”

Logan just stared at Leo. “I can see the library. But I don’t remember…I don’t understand.”

“Me neither,” said a voice from behind them, and both Leo and Finn whipped around. It was like seeing ghosts. With the stone and the sea and the crumbling church, it was right out of a novel.

Remus was standing there, leaning against a far wall on the sea-side of the church. The wind coming off the water beat at his tawny hair and the brown, old looking jacket he wore.

“Remus,” Leo breathed.

“How do you know my name,” Remus said. He held no weapon that Finn could see, but the very sight of him held both Leo and Finn in place well enough, “but I don’t know yours?”

#winterfic 2023 lumosinlove #Christmas Eve will find me lumosinlove #finnlo #sunfish #lionfish #lelo #remus lupin #wolfstar #sirius black #James potter #Jily #spy au #amnesia au #ficmas

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Four: Sirius

Safehouse Somewhere in Athens

Athens, Greece

No one could know, but Sirius was fairly certain he was going insane. He dreamed of Remus. He glimpsed him in dark, dreamscape spaces and then in London. All of their familiar spots. But he was always turning a corner, or walking in front of Sirius who couldn’t seem to reach forward. His name always stuck in Sirius’ throat.

The dark safe house ceiling was no comfort when Sirius jolted himself away for the hundredth time.

“Do you ever wonder…” Remus had begun that sentence more than a year ago, and Sirius still believed that he wouldn’t have been able to guess what he was about to say.

They had been in London, at George’s, on their second beers and making their way through their chip wrappings. Some happy Irish song was bouncing around the shop, but Remus’ expression had been solemn. He’d chewed slowly, staring out the steamed up window. The fog made his brown eyes look like milk poured into coffee.

“What?” Sirius had prompted, knocking the necks of their bottles together.

He remembered being thrilled to have Remus all to himself this late into the night. He didn’t live near Sirius, but near his parents and his little brother, Julian. Sirius didn’t like thinking of them. He’d tried to look in a few times, but seeing ten-year-old Julian’s face had been nearly as horrible as watching Remus get dragged away. It’s my fault, he’d wanted to say. He’d wanted to beg for Julian’s forgiveness and also tell him that he didn’t deserve it, all at the same time.

“George,” Remus had called. “Can you turn this one up?”

The song was already loud, but George shrugged and dialed it up three more notches. Sirius’ neck prickled. He was worried about listening bugs.

Remus had looked around George’s fish shop before leaning a little closer. Freckles, Sirius always thought. Freckles like stars. “Do you ever wonder about them?”

Them. It was the word for Salazar.

“Wonder,” Sirius had repeated. “What do you mean?”

Remus pressed his lips together.

“Re.” Sirius shook his head. “Talk to me—”

Remus’ phone had started to ring. Sirius had caught a quick glimpse of the name before Remus had excused himself to take it outside.

Pascal.

The memory faded when James, laying beside him, reached over at patted his shoulder comfortingly.

Sirius sighed. “How did you know I was awake?”

“You breathe differently.”

“You’re just used to watching Harry sleep.”

“Maybe,” James said. “Maybe you need a little bit of babying, too, to make up for lost time.”

Sirius snorted. James knew about his parents. Cold, passionate people with their ideas in all the wrong places.

“Leo’s on watch?” Sirius asked.

“Yep. Think we can teach Finn a few tricks so we can all get more sleep?”

“Not a chance.”

James laughed softly. His phone briefly lit up the darkness as he checked the time and then groaned. “You’re right, but damn. We should be asleep while we can. You change over at dawn.”

“Honestly, I think I’ll be glad for the distraction.”

“What, you’re own head getting to you? You? Wow, I never would have guessed that.”

Sirius reached out blindly and whacked him in the chest. James hit him back, but they settled again. He tried to match his breathing to James to see if he’d noticed and received another pat.

“It’s something with their memory.” Sirius had to force the words out.

“Yeah.” James swallowed audibly in the dark. “I think so.”

“I don’t…” Sirius shook his head. “They’re killed—we saw them die, and then they show up and—”

Did Remus not know him? Sirius felt sick thinking of it. He tried to put himself in Finn’s shoes, who he’d left curled on his side with all of his clothes on, staring at the brick wall through his bedroom window. If they found Remus—or, like Logan, let Remus find them, would Remus not recognize him? Did he even know his own name?

“We saw them shot,” James said. “We never…We assumed they were dead. Their trackers went offline, we thought their bodies got thrown over—”

“What if whoever took them disabled the trackers?”

“We need to know for sure who we were dealing with six months ago at Sounion,” James said. “Black market and weapon dealing isn’t enough. We need names.”

Sirius could see the three faces they’d managed to track. The woman, and the two men—brothers, most likely.

“Why did Salazar call off the mission after we lost Lo and Re?” James hit the mattress with a harsh palm. “That’s what I can’t fucking wrap my head around. Why not get those fuckers?”

Do you ever wonder about them?

Sirius didn’t know how to say it to James. Had Remus meant Salazar? He’d refused to speak about it after the fact. But now Salazar wanted Remus shot on sight. He thought of whose safe house they were in, and whether it was really safe at all.

“I never asked before,” James continued. “Because I didn’t think it was any of my business…” Sirius knew what was coming when James turned towards him in the dark. “But did—”

“No,” Sirius said to the dark ceiling.

“You didn’t even hear my question” James asked.

Sirius reached out and grabbed James’ wrist, tapping twice on its inside. Their own code. Someone might be listening. He made something up and knew James would go along. “He wins enough money off me, he kills at poker.”

“That he does,” James replied without a beat, but he was tensed beside him. A moment later, he was pushing himself up. Dawn was beginning to make a faint orange line across the bedroom war, coming in through the kitchen.

“C’mon,” James said. “They’ll be setting up the markets. Leo’s on watch. Let’s bring him coffee and wake up our little passenger and go over that phone call radius.”

Sirius looked up at him in the dim light. “Logan always did like leaving at dawn.”

He was reluctant to rouse Finn. The room was freezing. They would have to do something about that. Finn’s suitcase was open on the floor and clothes half spilled out. There was no room for any sort of dresser—or maybe just no care for it. No one stayed long enough, perhaps.

“I’ll do it.”

Sirius turned to find Leo standing behind him. He looked tired, and cold. He was holding a cup of the coffee that James had made—way too strong.

Leo rolled his eyes a little at Sirius’ expression, then shouldered past him. “He’s stronger than he looks.”

“Really?” Sirius said. “I’d be a mess.”

He already was a mess. It had the intended effect, making Leo pause to look at him before settling on the edge of Finn’s bed.

“Finn,” Leo said gently. “Are you awake?”

“Are you awake?”

Sirius drew in a slow breath before opening his eyes. If anyone had told him, upon entering the academy, that his roommate would be a fucking talkative insomniac, he wasn’t sure what he would have done.

“I am now.”

Remus Lupin’s silhouette pushed up from his cot across the small room. “Are you hungry?”

Sirius could still see him there, half-silhouette and half moonlight. He hadn’t known that he would be entranced, for a long time, by how handsome he thought Remus Lupin was. He’d thought that from the very beginning.

“Sure. I’m hungry.”

Sirius went back into the kitchen. He didn’t want to watch this part. He didn’t want to watch Finn wake up and remember.

James looked at him. He was in his own dark, sleek winter jacket, had a black beanie pulled low, and his contacts in. He cupped his mug close to his chin and watched Sirius add milk to his own—how Remus took it. Sirius looked back at him once he was holding his own mug, too.

James’ single arched brow said all he needed to. Of course Salazar is listening. He darted his eyes around the room. This is their safe house.

Sirius nodded, but he didn’t know how to communicate, Remus was worried about something and I didn’t realize it soon enough in just one glance. He didn’t even know how to say it to himself. Salazar had been a part of their lives for the last decade. They’d got through training together, him, Remus, and James. And then had come Logan and Finn, two years later, and then, finally, Leo. Malfoy and the other higher-ups were old-fashioned and crude, but the work they did was important. Necessary. They were protectors.

James just sighed and took a sip of his coffee. “I miss her grilled cheese.” Lily. He wouldn’t give anyone else who might be listening a name. Just like how, for Logan, Finn was always Red, or Rouge.

What would Sirius have called Remus, if he were a civilian? If he weren’t always at his side. If they weren’t always in danger together. Would that have been better? Remus waiting at home for him? Sirius, waiting at home for Remus? He didn’t think so. He preferred Remus in his sightline. He preferred the option of diving in front of a bullet for him. Only distance prevented him from protecting Remus.

He should never have let Remus go down those cliffs without him.

James cleared his throat to get his attention. He had written something down on a napkin. In his scratchy handwriting,

TELL ME.

Sirius didn’t know what he was going to say, but he looked over his shoulder where he could hear Finn and Leo’s soft voices. He wrote quickly:

R X TRUST S?

James read the words and his reaction fell over his face. He flicked his eyes up to Sirius. Didn’t trust Salazar? Honestly?

Sirius shook his head.

Why?

Sirius shrugged and shook his head again. He’d never gotten Remus to say.

Leo was about to come down the hallway, Finn on his heels. “Are we ready?” Leo called.

James was still frowning, hazel eyes worried, as he stuffed the napkin in his remaining coffee to bleed the ink away.

“We’re ready,” James said, though Sirius didn’t feel it.

#Christmas Eve will find me lumosinlove #winterfic 2023 lumosinlove #wolfstar #spy au

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Three: Finn

Safehouse Somewhere in Athens

Athens, Greece

The jacket was where Sirius had said it would be, zipped into itself to form a little pillow. Finn slipped it on gratefully and tucked his nose into the collar. This didn’t smell like Logan. It smelled like the plasticky fabric it was made out of. Even the sweatshirt didn’t smell like him. Nothing much of their apartment did anymore. Finn had pressed his face into all of the pillows, all of the t-shirts and sweaters. It was his own fault that the scent was gone, he’d probably cried it away. Clutched it away. Shouted himself hoarse into the bedsheets and remnants of what had felt like always.

He inhaled anyway, and zipped it up to his chin. He wrapped his arms around himself and then pushed his hands into the pockets. Logan kept things. He was hopelessly sentimental, Finn was never allowed to throw anything away. Not tickets. Not even receipts sometimes. Logan was always picking up trinkets, everything from pretty antique cufflinks that matched Finn’s hair to acorns from the sidewalk as they walked, handing them to Finn. Finn had a whole box of everything Logan had ever handed him, all the way back to the shiny star gem sticker he had found on the sidewalk and handed Finn the second week they’d met. Fine. Maybe Finn was sentimental, too.

There was something in the pocket. Not a gem, or a stone, but a piece of paper. He pulled it out and unfolded it, recognizing his own hand.

I love you I love you I love you

Finn put a hand over his mouth and sunk back down on the bed. 

“What’s this?”

Logan had been doing what he usually did before a trip. He was sprawled on the couch. He had looked so soft. His brown curls damp from their shower—another tradition…A spine melting tradition that produced more heat between them than the steamy shower. Finn always felt a little tingly after goodbye sex. Logan kissed differently then. He touched differently. He started out gentle, peaked with rough holds and tight grips in Finn’s red hair, and ended gentle again, holding Finn close. But he had looked good. Really good. Fucked out and sated and smiling sleepily from Finn’s voice and the whiskey. Relaxed before the craze of whatever his next couple weeks might be. They were passing the whiskey back and forth, Finn was reading aloud from his favorite book and, with his free hand, he was rubbing Logan’s ankles. The next time Finn had passed the whiskey back to him, there had been a note between his fingers.

“Just a little truth for you to keep in your pocket.” Finn remembered smiling at the delicate way Logan had set the drink down and unfolded the note. He’d propped himself up on his elbow and read it over and over again. Finn just laughed. It was far from the first time they’d said it to each other.

“What, is my handwriting that bad?”

“Non.” Logan folded the note closed and held it against his chest for a moment. He set it carefully on the table and then crawled forward over Finn’s lap. Finn dropped the book to the floor and cupped the back of Logan’s neck.

Logan was already kissing him when he mumbled, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

The paper was worn soft, like Logan had been rubbing it between his fingers.

“Oh, baby…” Finn whispered. “Where are you?”

There was a slight knock on the door.

“Oh,” Leo said softly. “Finn? I’m sorry, I…”

“You don’t have to knock, Le,” Finn said, wiping at his cheeks. “This is your room, too.”

It was a freezing room, but it was a room, Finn guessed. A small window looking out against the brick wall of the house right beside it. A lamp on the side of the bed Finn had taken. The shade kept falling off at random times.

“Do you guys often stay in…In places that want to freeze your balls off?”

Leo laughed. “Well. Sometimes. Or, sometimes it’s a five-star hotel. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Finn nodded. “He only talked about the five-star. I didn’t know it was so…Like I guess I should have. I mean, I think Sirius and James think I don’t know they’ve been taking watch all night. I would offer but I—what would I—”

“Finn,” Leo said gently. “I’m glad you’re here. Don’t worry about any of that, we have a system down. We’ve been together for quite a while.”

“Right,” Finn said. He looked down at the note. God, there was so much he didn’t know. “Yeah.”

“What is that?” Leo asked gently.

“Just found it in the pocket of Lo’s coat.” He held it out. “I gave it to him. God—a while ago. Not the trip when he…Not the last trip here, to Greece. I don’t know where you guys went, but it was maybe a year ago.”

He couldn’t tell if Leo remembered or not. He nodded, unreadable. Or, maybe careful. Finn already knew more than he was technically allowed.

“He held onto anything from you,” Leo said softly.

Finn could only nod, throat tight. Maybe he should have given him more. More footholds, more things to hold onto. Maybe then he wouldn’t be—whatever he was now. Lost.

Leo squeezed a hand around his knee briefly. “C’mon. I’ll show you how I’m looking for them.”

Finn had expected to be able to help somehow once Leo showed him his set-up. He was a teacher, he should be able to learn something from Leo’s clear explanations.

“The odd part is,” Leo said. “I can’t track them.”

“Well… Isn’t that what they’re trained for? So no one can?”

Leo just raised his eyebrows and turned back to his computer. With two clicks, a satellite map popped up, along with three little red dots. Two stayed in place, close to each other, the other one was moving slowly down a street.

“Can you guess what you’re looking at?”

Finn frowned. “Um.” He looked over the map—and noticed the Greek street names. “Is that here?”

“Yep. And that’s James in his room. That’s me.” He pointed to the stationary dot. “And that’s Sirius out in the city.”

“But…” Finn frowned.

Leo reached out and settled a palm on the back of Finn’s neck, swiping his thumb just below his left ear. “Tracker. Right here.” He touched his own ear. “See?” He brought Finn’s hand to his own skin.

Finn let his fingers rest there. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Leo just covered Finn’s fingers with his. “No, no, but feel it? The little bump.”

Finn pressed gently and felt his finger pads catch on something. Round and right beneath the skin.  He caught some of the soft curls of Leo’s blond hair, too. Very soft. “Yeah. Yeah. So, are you saying…”

“Lo and Re had them,” Leo said. “But they’ve been disabled somehow. I figured—” Leo cut himself off, looking down to the screen of his computer. “I—Well. When they were…”

“Just say it, Leo. It’s okay.”

“They were shot on the beach and I still had them. When they were taken in the boat, I still had them. Then, far out in the ocean, I lost them. I figured…I figured it was because…” Leo sighed.

“The ocean,” Finn whispered.

Logan, gray ocean light, bleeding, darkness, can’t breathe, darkness darkness, he hates storms, drowning drowning—

Finn took his hand away from Leo’s neck. His eyes closed on their own.

“I’m sorry,” Leo said gently. “I know it’s so hard to think about…I think,” Leo rolled his eyes at himself. “I worry that we’re immune to that stuff sometimes. Too immune. Too used to it.”

“No,” Finn said. He gave his head a slight shake and rubbed at his eyes. “I mean, yes—I just.” Finn was a writer. He was academic, he argued, he should be able to put this into words, but all that came out of his mouth, haltingly and through tears, was, “He’s always just such a furnace when—when I hold him but now he would be—cold.” He tucked his chin into Logan’s down jacket. “Cold.”

Leo nodded, blue eyes sad. “I know. He’s—well. We don’t know anything yet.”

Finn nodded.

“Speaking of,” Leo said. “I’d like to be able to track you. If you’d agree.”

Finn rubbed at his neck before he could think too much about it. “Will it—like won’t Salazar—”

“It’ll just be for me,” Leo said. He clicked around a bit more and pulled up, surprisingly, a front file page of Finn. It was his University ID picture, his eye color, his date of birth, his brother’s name, even a picture of Alex, his parents’, his address, the last time he’d used his credit card to purchase water at the airport—

“Jesus,” Finn said.

“Well, this stuff is easy to get,” Leo said and Finn almost laughed. “But I didn’t know you would be here and I don’t like the idea of losing you when you aren’t supposed to be here in the first place.”

“Right. The stow-away.”

“True.”

“Well—Will it hurt?”

Leo shrugged. “Not too bad. A pinch. Maybe a sensitive area, but they trackers are small.”

Finn tried to think if he’d ever felt Logan’s. How often had he touched Logan’s neck, how often had Logan tilted his head for Finn to kiss him beneath his jaw?

“You’re so warm here,” Finn whispered. “All I want to do is tuck you against me and stay here forever.”

But Leo’s was pretty close to his ear, something no one would find easily. And Logan’s hair was a little longer than Leo’s—or it had been? Please be alive.

“Okay,” Finn said. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

James and Sirius walked in when Leo had Finn seated on a kitchen stool and the—what would Finn call it? A machine? A gun? Syringe-gun? Nothing very appealing.

“Leo,” Sirius said in a warning voice. His cheeks were flushed, as though he’d been running.

Leo rolled his eyes and put the hand holding the gun on his hip. “If he’s gonna be here, I’m gonna be able to find him.”

“You need the agency’s permission to administer one of those.”

“Not this one,” Leo said. “I made this one.”

Finn looked over his shoulder. “You can do that?”

Leo kept staring down Sirius. “Not legally.”

Sirius crossed his arms. “He’s a civilian.”

“Why, what a fantastic observation. He’s Logan’s husband, that’s what he is. You think they don’t know about him? If Remus is alive, and if Logan is whatever the hell he is, neither of them called in. Now, I don’t know if that means they’re being held against their will, but I do know that if they’re being held against their will and someone wants information from them, there’s one, o-n-e one thing that’s gonna make Logan snap and give them anything they want, anything in the entire fucking world. Let me know if you can guess what that thing is, Agent know-it-all, hm?”

Sirius sighed. “Leo.”

James just laughed. “Leo, your accent gets thick when you’re angry, you know that?”

“Let me know.” Leo narrowed his eyes at Sirius. “I’m waiting.”

“Ten bucks he sounds just like his mom right now,” James faux-whispered.

“It’s Finn,” Sirius said.

“Damn-fucking-right,” Leo said, and pressed a hand to Finn’s cheek, steadying him, then pressed the nuzzle of the syringe-gun to his neck and Finn made a startled shout when he felt the pinch of the tracker settle into his skin. Leo looked back at Sirius. “And I won’t let them get close. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

He sounded fierce. Even Sirius could see that.

“Shh,” Leo said—much more gently. He pressed an alcohol pad to the puncture wound. “You’re good. You’ll hardly feel it in a little bit.”

“Shit,” Finn laughed breathlessly. “Got some Leo hardware in my neck.”

James snorted, and when he stretched his arms above his head, Finn caught the flash of his gun strapped to his side. “You’re a weird one, O’Hara.” He nudged Sirius. “How’d it look out there? Anything?”

Finn didn’t register Sirius’ hesitation right away. He was busy watching Leo ease a bandaid over the wound, and then pull up Finn’s location on his computer. Finn stared at his very own red dot, right there within the cluster of Leo, Sirius, and James.

“What?” James said softly, and it pulled Finn’s attention back to them. “What’s wrong?”

Sirius had pulled off his hat. His dark hair was wild, his lips chapped. He still seemed out of breath and, now that Finn was looking, he had a cut across his palm. Leo noticed at the same time.

“Hey.” Leo reached out and picked up his hand. “What’s this?”

“I thought I saw him,” Sirius said quietly. “I really thought…”

Finn’s heart beat in his ears. “Logan?”

“Remus.” Sirius’ gray eyes looked unfocused when they met Finn’s. “I chased him.”

“Where were you?” James asked. “Hey, Sirius. Where were you?”

“I went—no where. Just a cafe. And I thought I saw him but I don’t know now. I don’t know.”

Finn looked out the kitchen window at the watery light. Maybe Remus was looking for Sirius. Maybe if he went outside then Logan would—

A hand on his shoulder. James. He gave a slight shake of his head. Not yet.

“I was being stupid,” Sirius said softly. “I was just… I just thought.”

And then Finn’s phone started to ring.

It made them all jump. Finn took a second to realize it was his.

Sirius’ hard expression was back in a flash. “I told you to turn that off.”

“And I told you I can’t,” Finn said.

“Why?” James asked.

“Because—” Because if he calls me, because if he calls me, because sometimes he calls me. “Uh, my mom would freak. She’s already weirded out that I’m not coming for Christmas.”

Sirius scoffed. “God, O’Hara. Maybe you should go then.”

James let out a low whistle. “Welcome to Logan’s life, Finn.”

Finn pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“Don’t,” Sirius said.

But Finn wasn’t listening. He pressed a hand to his chest and stood up. A strange number. Ringing, ringing. No one will know. No one but us. If you haven’t heard from me, you check here, and if I need you to know something, I will, too.

“Logan,” Finn whispered.

“No, Finn, don’t—” Sirius began to say, but Leo held up a hand.

“Let him,” Leo said.

“Leo,” James said haltingly.

“I’m right here, I can protect us if it’s something bad.” He was already on his computer. He gave Finn a nod. “Speaker phone.”

Finn stared at him for a second, and then answered with a shaking finger.

“Hello?”

The voice that replied was immediate, and harsh. “Who is this?” 

Everything in Finn stopped. His heart. His blood. He reached out and gripped the counter, near Leo’s computer where he could see, live, the sound waves of Logan’s voice. Because that was Logan’s voice. Lying in bed, the tiny dorm bed, Logan’s green eyes, laughing with his head on Finn’s bare chest. Rubbing his palm over Finn’s heart. “I love you, Rouge. You know that, right?” First time, first time, the way he breathed, the way he makes coffee, the way he comes home in the middle of the night sometimes and waking up to the feeling of cold air still on his skin. “Salut, I’m home.” Holding Finn around his waist so tightly and breathing out with relief. “It’s just me, I’m home.”

“Logan,” Finn whispered. “Logan.”

“Who are you?” Logan said. “Tell me.”

Finn put his fingers against his mouth and looked at Leo, who motioned for him to reply.

“Lo,” Finn said, confused. “It’s—What do you mean? It’s me. Baby, where are you, I thought—”

“Why do I keep thinking about this number?” Logan asked. “Who are you?”

Finn just stared at the sound waves, as if they could make anything make sense. “I…Lo, I don’t—Because you gave me the number, what do you mean?” Distantly, he was aware that Sirius and James exchanged a look.

“Logan,” Logan said. “Don’t try to find me again. You shot me once, and if I see you, I’ll return the favor.”

Finn felt like he was going to pass out. Nothing Logan was saying made any sense.

“No,” Finn sucked air in through his teeth and thought he would die. “No, what? Lo, I don’t—”

But the line went dead, a horrible click and the droning tone.

“No—” Finn clutched the phone. “No, no, Logan—”

“Oh God,” James said from beside him.

“That’s—” Finn might have been embarrassed in different circumstance. He was crying so hard, no one else was. “That’s traceable, right?” He rounded on Leo. “You can find him?”

“These things reply on signal,” Leo said, plugging Finn’s phone into his computer. “God. Fuck.”

“Why did he hang up?” James said. His eyebrows were draw together. “Are you sure—was it…?”

“Yes,” the word tore out of Finn’s throat, but even as he said it, he wasn’t sure. Finn shook his head and crouched down to the floor. He’d never let this happen in front of other people. Something felt horribly, horribly wrong. Who is this? Did he just want it to be Logan?

“It was him,” Sirius said faintly. He was staring at the phone, too. “But he called Finn Logan.”

“What?” James asked.

“Logan said who is this and Finn replied Logan, as in talking to Logan,” Leo said. He looked stricken. “And then…And then Logan called Finn by his own name.”

The room was so silent. All Finn could hear was his own breathing. Logan. Logan.

“I need—” He gasped, but when he reached for the phone, Leo took his hand instead. He crouched down in front of him.

“Finn, don’t spook him,” Leo said firmly. “Let me work.” He squeezed Finn’s fingers and Finn looked up at him. His blue eyes were soft—maybe a little scared, too. But he repeated, firmly, “Let me work. Let me find him.”

#Christmas Eve will find me lumosinlove #winterfic 2023 lumosinlove #finnlo #o'knutzy #Leo knut #finn o'hara #Logan tremblay #spy au #christmas

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Four: Finn

Somewhere Between Christmas Markets and Heartbreak

Athens, Greece

Christmas was waking back up all around them. Finn felt Sirius’ eyes on him as he went up to an old woman heating pots of spicy smelling tea while another woman set up their stand. Her smile was rather toothless and her eyes were the sparkling kind of joyful. She gifted Finn a cup with a small spoonful of sugar, pushing away his money and putting a hand to his cheek.

You can charm anyone, Finn heard Logan say. Mon Rouge…mon bijou. Une perle.

“Sad,” the woman said in English, swiping a gentle thumb beneath Finn’s eye—he was sure he looked terrible then. Sleepless and red-eyed. “No more.”

Finn’s throat closed up all over again. “Thank you.”

He turned back to their group, watching his breath mix with the steam. The tea was good. Not to sweet and full of clove and cardamon. He felt it try to thaw out the center of his chest that rung with who are you, who are you?

There wasn’t really any point in denying it. For whatever reason, Logan hadn’t known who he was. He hadn’t recognized the number—or he had? Logan had called Finn. He had called Finn, only to ask who is this? Who is this?

Finn wasn’t sure what they were looking for, or how walking around the city was going to help them find Logan and Remus—especially if Logan and, maybe, Remus, didn’t even know them. Finn had to stop walking and close his eyes against the swaying, sickening sadness. He just wanted him back. Before, it had been the most horrible need, but now it might be even worse.

“Warm enough?” Leo asked, falling in at his side.

Finn didn’t bother opening his eyes right away. Leo had already seen.

“Yep,” Finn said. He sighed and looked over at him. “Yeah.”

“The tea is good?”

Finn nodded. He took a sip and let the spices give that chunk of ice another good knock. Nothing.

“I’m sorry none of us could have prepared you for that.”

“What,” Finn began. “The love of my life not knowing me?”

“Well—yes.”

“I’m not sure anything could have prepared me for that.”

Leo’s mouth pulled to the side. “Right…”

“Le,” James called. He was standing with Sirius by a cafe table and gazing up across the street. Finn followed their eyes. A security camera.

“This is where Sirius saw…” Finn began.

“Possibly,” Leo said. “Be right back.” He put a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “And don’t wander.”

Finn watched him cross. Guilt tugged at him. Leo had pressed himself all along Finn’s back last night, trying to stop him shivering. It seemed useless. Finn had shaken himself to sleep, gripping onto Leo’s hand. It had scared him, the tremors. He’d accidentally called Leo—

What’s wrong with me, Lo? he’d said through clenched teeth.

It’s shock, Leo had whispered. He hadn’t commented on the mistake, just held Finn tighter. Maybe he’d been holding Finn together. Finn hadn’t even woken again when Leo slipped out of bed for his turn to go on watch.

Finn too another sip of tea. Another attempted thaw. He caught a glimpse of his wedding ring and then couldn’t seem to look away.

The church was hushed as they entered together. Finn was glad he was holding onto Logan’s arm, glad he had Logan to lead him, because he couldn’t take his eyes off Logan’s face. In his dark green suit, he was gorgeous. Winter, Christmas, green, frozen pond, strength.

Logan’s mouth had fought a smile. “Don’t trip us up.”

Finn couldn’t even remember what music had played. Only holding Logan’s hands at the alter. His brother Alex’s happy brown eyes as he’d handed them the rings. A squeeze to his shoulder.

They knew Logan had—died. God, what would Finn say now? He shook himself, he tried to hold onto the memory. Logan’s hands had been so warm, leaning down to kiss the ring he’d just slipped on Finn’s fingers and drawing awes from the audience. Finn felt tears in his throat. He brought his own fist, the cold gold, to his lips.

In sickness and in health. For better and for worse. For richer and for poorer.

In memory and, what? Forgetting?

Until parted by death. Finn had done no such thing. No part of him had been severed from Logan when he’d thought he was dead. He’d simply been dragged, by his very soul possibly, there with him. It didn’t matter that he had been walking around and talking. He felt very much, upon hearing Logan’s voice, that he’d just taken his first breath in months.

Leo had told him not to wander, but Finn needed to look at something else other than his own mind.

Down a very narrow street, just a few steps away from where the others were gathered, a small bookshop rested, closed just then. It looked like it had been built right into the city’s stones itself. Finn walked towards its window display and crouched to read the Greek titles. Beautiful typography, even if he couldn’t read it. He could see the way the shelves turned and folded into a maze within. If he looked past his own faint reflection in the window—God, he did look horrible—he could see him and Logan there. He could pretend. He could turn the shop lights on in his mind and feel Logan’s hand in his. Logan would have let him drag him around the shelves. Would have pressed him up against one and kissed him. What Finn would do to feel the way Logan kissed again.

And then the memory snapped. The lights turned off and Finn shivered.

Something cold was pressing against the back of his head.

Finn didn’t know how, but he knew it was a gun.

“I told you to stop trying to find me.”

Logan’s voice was right behind him. Finn’s mouth parted. His eyes unfocused, shifting away from the shop’s interior and zeroing back in on his own reflection. His own surprised brown eyes. He looked up. Up, slow, up…

Standing behind him in the window’s watery mirror, there he was.

After months. Months of thinking he was dead. In the pale, grey light of the window, Logan looked unreal. A ghost, completely imagined. No hat, brown hair curling against his neck. Even like this, his eyes were vividly green. Black coat. His gun against the back of Finn’s neck, where Logan had kissed him so many times. Finn dropped the tea. It burned his knee through his jeans but he could hardly feel it.

Slowly, Finn began to turn his head.

The gun dug into his skull. “Don’t move.”

But Finn did. He dropped to his knees. He put his hands up and he turned. Logan could shoot him if he really thought he should. But in that case Finn needed to see him one last time.

“I said stop,” Logan said, but he let Finn turn. The gun was right at his chest now. Logan. Logan had a gun on him, and he was looking at Finn with an expression that Finn had never seen before or at least didn’t remember. Logan hadn’t looked at Finn like he didn’t know anything about him since that first handshake back at college. Ten years of knowing each other inside out and suddenly there was this. Tanned skin, broad shoulders.

“Logan,” Finn said. He didn’t know where this courage was coming from. Logan didn’t recognize him. For all Finn knew, Logan would shoot. “It’s me.”

Hesitation. At least Finn could still read that on Logan’s face.

“You’re Logan,” Logan said. “The phone number. I…I see your phone number.”

Finn shook his head. “No. You’re Logan. Logan Tremblay.”

The gun wavered. If Finn was really smart, or had any sort of training at all, he would try to get rid of it entirely. But it didn’t feel real. For the amount Finn had been around guns—never—it looked like a toy. In Logan’s hand, his Logan, it looked like a toy.

“I’m—I’m Logan,” Logan repeated haltingly. Questioningly.

Finn nodded. How didn’t he know his own name?

“Who are you?” Logan asked.

“Finn. I’m Finn.”

Logan seemed to remember the gun. He raised it back to Finn’s chest. “Why do I see your number?”

“Because you gave it to me.”

“No. No, I didn’t know where it would go.”

“Yes. You gave it to me for emergencies. So we could keep in touch in case… In case anything happened.”

“Why? Who do you work for?”

“I’m a professor of English Literature at King’s College. In London. I moved there for you.”

“Why?” Logan fired the questions like an interrogation, but Finn could see how curious he was.

“For your work.”

“No, why did you move for me?”

Finn thought of Sirius. There had been something said about not saying too much. That it was too much too soon. But just then, Finn couldn’t help it, he couldn’t stand it.

“Logan,” Finn said softly. His hands were still raised, and he hoped Logan would notice his ring. “Lo, we’re married.”

The gun flagged again. Logan just stared at him. His eyes flit to the gold on his left hand.

Finn eased that hand forward, palm up. “We’ve been married for five years. Lo, something’s happened to you—”

Finn broke off when Logan dropped the gun. It rattled on the floor. Logan’s face twisted up in pain. His hands went to his head and he dropped to his knees right in front of Finn with a low cry.

“Lo?” Finn reached for him. Logan sagged against his chest, gasping for air. “Oh God—Logan, what—”

Logan didn’t seem like he could support his own weight. His eyes were closed, teeth grit.

“Logan.” Finn gathered him close, cradling his back, getting his legs under him to pull Logan into his lap. He didn’t care if Logan didn’t know him, he wasn’t going to let him lay on the cold ground. “Logan, can you hear me?” He looked up, searching for Leo or Sirius.

“Finn.”

When Finn looked back down, Logan was staring at him. Finally, a shade of green he knew. A shade that knew him. Logan reached for him. “Finn. Rouge.”

Finn felt his eyes fill with tears. “It’s—It’s me. Oh God—Lo, it’s me.”

Finally, it felt like when Logan was looking at him, he actually saw him. He gripped onto Finn’s jacket and touched his face. Finn leaned his cheek into Logan’s palm.

“It’s me, it’s me,” Finn whispered. “Lo—”

“Listen to me. Listen to me. Salazar—” Logan said, and his face screwed up in pain again. A sound of pain broke in his throat and his back arched in Finn’s arms. He grabbed Finn tighter. “No, no, no, listen Finn, listen—”

“Logan.” Finn held him tighter. “You’re scaring me, you’re scaring me—”

Logan’s nose began to bleed, a thin red trail down his cheek bone, but his eyes opened again. “Tell Leo…” Logan’s fingers dug into the skin of his neck, but Finn didn’t care. He only cared that Logan was looking at him, talking to him.

“What,” Finn said. “Tell Leo what?” Finn’s voice went high through tears. He wiped the blood from Logan’s nose. “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened to you, why didn’t you come home, what can I do—”

“Pascal,” Logan said, and then his entire body went limp in Finn’s arms.

“No—” The word came out strangled. “Logan, Logan—”

“Let go of him, O’Hara.”

Finn’s head snapped up. A man was standing there. Sandy-hair and with a severe face. He had a gun trained on him, held with two hands.

“Throw the gun,” the man said, not lowering his own. “Get up. And no one will get hurt.”

Finn held Logan closer, tilting his face, the blood drying across his cheek, against his chest and away form the cold wind. “Who are you?”

“I said let him go.”

Finn picked up Logan’s gun and aimed it. “Don’t touch him. Who the fuck are you?”

The man just laughed. “You don’t even know how to point that thing correctly.”

“But I do.”

They both turned to see Leo standing there. He had his gun raised at the man, but his eyes went wide when his saw his face.

“Jack?” Leo said. “What the hell? What are you doing here?”

“Stay out of this Leo,” Jack said, and turned back to Finn and Logan. “Tell him to hand over Tremblay.”

“Jack,” Leo said again. “Put the fucking gun down! He’s a civilian.”

“Then he shouldn’t be handling a service weapon,” Jack said. He cocked his own gun. “Let go of him, Finn. Set him down and step away.”

“No,” Finn said. “No.”

Jack grit his teeth and fired a shot into the air. Finn flinched down, curving his body over Logan’s. He’d never heard a gunshot in real life before. At least not like this. His own hand flexed around the handle of Logan’s gun. Jack was right. He didn’t have a clue how to shoot this thing. What if he needed to and nothing happened? Wasn’t there a safety mode?He heard cries of shock from the distant main street at Jack’s shot and tried to imagine someone getting scared because of him.

“Get up,” Jack said.

“No.”

Another single shot rang out and all three of them, Finn, Leo, and Jack flinched. None of them had fired it. Jack looked around wildly and Leo raised his eyes towards the rooftops.

Sirius and James rounded the corner on each other’s heels with their guns raised.

“Jack,” Sirius said, then saw Leo with his gun and raised his, too. He flitted his eyes to Finn and stopped hard when he saw who Finn was holding. “Logan…”

“Who the fuck was that?” Jack demanded, rounding on Sirius. “Who are you working for? What did Lupin say to you?”

James was positioned just out of view behind the street corner, but Finn could see him. “You’re not making any sense, Archer.”

Jack Archer. Finn carded his fingers through Logan’s hair, trying to think if he’d heard that name. Too much of his mind was bleeding bleeding Logan bleeding to remember.

“Remus?” Sirius called out hesitantly, eyes also towards the sky. Had the shot come from the roof? Finn couldn’t tell. “Is that you?”

“We have to go,” Finn said, locking eyes with Leo. “He’s hurt. He’s…” He looked back down at Logan’s face. It was relaxed now, peaceful even, but Finn couldn’t get the feeling of the way his body had contracted in on itself. “Please don’t die,” Finn whispered. “Please, Lo, I can’t, I know I can’t without you.”

There was no reply from above, and Jack fired off four shots, making Leo scream at him to stop. When he didn’t, Leo ran up behind him and disarmed him cleaning in three deadly hits to his shoulder, and elbow.

“What’s going on, Jack?” Leo asked, holding both guns now, pointing them towards the ground.

Jack scowled, eyes on his gun.

“What would Remus have told us?” Sirius asked.

Jack began to back up. “Like I’d give up what we know.”

“Did you know he was alive?” Sirius strode forward fast, gun raised. “Did you?”

Finn didn’t think of Sirius as calm exactly, but he did think of him as collected. He didn’t seem either one just then. He had a snarl to his voice. He looked like he was seriously considering killing Jack if he answered yes to that question.

“Did you?” Sirius shouted, and fired a shot of his own, just beside Jack’s head. It sent Jack running, with no weapon of his own.

The last thing Finn saw of Sirius was the flash of his gray eyes as he gave chase.

“Finn.” Leo’s voice. Finn realized, as he stared at his hands gripping Logan to him, that he was shaking again. Leo’s gloved hands covered his own. He’d put his gun away and he was staring at Logan. Blue. God, his eyes were so very, very blue. Finn had always been a little struck by that. Like water, though water wasn’t blue, was it? Like the sky in water. Though the sky wasn’t blue. Like light.

“He wanted to shoot me,” Finn heard himself whisper.

“What?” Leo said breathlessly. Slowly, he took the gun out of Finn’s trembling hand. Finn let him. “Shoot you?”

“And then he knew me,” Finn said, and Leo’s eyes widened.

“He did?”

“For a second.” Finn stroked the blood off of Logan’s cheek. “For a second, he knew me. He said tell Leo…”

“What?” Leo’s hand tightened. “Tell me what? Tell me what?”

“Pascal,” Finn said. Logan’s eyes moved beneath his eyelids. Delicate. Alive. “And now he’s…” Alive. Alive alive. “Now he’s like this. He said Pascal.”

#Christmas Eve will find me lumosinlove #winterfic 2023 lumosinlove #wolfstar #finnlo #Leo knut #finn o'hara #Logan tremblay #spy au #christmas stories

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Six: Sirius

Church Ruin

Athens, Greece

Sirius knew him by voice, snatched by the wind as it was from his place on the cliffs with James. They were smoking. They almost never did it, but Sirius had seen death today—on himself and on others. They were allowed one.

Now, that cigarette was in danger of burning all of the grasses around them. He’d dropped it at the first word.

“Me neither,” he’d heard.

James hadn’t. He was studying his cigarette with a frown. “I’m not even sure I like these things—”

Sirius put a hand out and James was silent in a moment. He did, however, move his foot over and stamp out Sirius’ smoke.

Quiet. Quiet. Nothing. He’d imagined it. He’d imagined it. Sirius closed his eyes.

“How do you know my name,” the voice came again. “But I don’t know yours?”

“Oh,” James whispered.

Sirius eased himself into a crouch. He stared up at the wall. He could see someone’s shoulder. Brown jacket, no where near warm enough for the weather. Too big, like it belonged to someone else. The voice. That voice.

Leo said, “You know your name?”

Sirius crept forward just a little farther, rising back to his feet to see more clearly. Please. Every piece of him was begging.

Remus, smiling at him from across a table. “You’ll miss me during our next off-time. Don’t deny it.”

Remus with a steady hand on his bicep. “Just try and sleep, Si. Just try.”

“It was the first thing that came back,” this Remus said now. “Or I should say the only thing. The only sure thing.”

“But…how did you find us?” Leo asked the question gently, as if he thought Remus might bolt.

For all Sirius knew, he would. If Logan’s violence towards Finn was anything to go by, he could. But, then again, Remus had never been predictable. Not from the very first day they met. Sirius had thought he might be quiet and shy before that sharp grin came out of him. Both of Remus’ shoulders were in Sirius sightline now. He stood the same. His hair was a little longer, but the same color. The color Sirius had chased through the streets.

He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know you.

Now he could see into the alcove. Leo. Finn. Logan was awake and staring up at Remus from where he sat against the wall. Finn had bruises beginning to form around the pale skin of his neck and James made an alarmed sound. Those hadn’t been there an hour ago.

“Why?” Logan said. “I didn’t. I don’t know anything.”

“That’s not true,” Remus said. “Don’t tell me you never had dreams.”

Logan looked at Finn, lips parted.

“What were yours?” Leo asked. When Sirius looked at him, he found Leo looking back. It made Remus whip around. A large wave crashed below them and Sirius imagined he could feel the prickles of salt water.

A vision. An illusion. Fuzzy at the edges. The sea sounds bled into his heartbeat and Remus was standing there right in front of him with the light slanting across his eyes and turning them to glass. For a moment, Sirius thought he would sink. Right off the cliffside.

“You,” Remus said. He didn’t move. Not even a little. “I see you.”

His nose began to bleed. Sirius watched it trace near the corner of his mouth before he raised a thumb to wipe it away.

“You,” Remus said again. He stepped forward. One step. Two step. Sirius’ world tilted backwards, forwards, any which way just to keep him in focus. He realized he wasn’t breathing when his lungs burned, when Remus was right in front of him and Sirius could see body heat in the flush of his cheeks, pink against the cold. “Who are you?”

Sirius nearly closed his eyes. All the dread he’d been pushing down soared.

“Are you in pain now?” Sirius heard himself say.

“Yes,” Remus said.

Sirius thought of how affected Logan had been. Remus was hardly flinching.

“Who are you?” Remus asked again.

“Sirius.” 

“We work together.” James said. “All of us. Can you tell me where?”

After a moment of sizing James up, Remus shook his head.

Logan, from within the building, suddenly said, “Malfoy.”

All eyes went to him. Logan had his head back against the wall. His nose was bleeding, rather heavily, his eyes squeezed shut. Finn’s hands jumped towards him.

“Logan—”

“Malfoy,” Logan repeated through his teeth. “Malfoy, what does that…Is that a name?”

“Stop,” Leo said suddenly. He crouched down in front of Logan, then looked back at Remus. “Don’t push yourselves. We can’t have anyone passing out right now. Remus, sit down.”

Remus laughed, and it startled Sirius so much that he had to reach out and put a hand against the rough stone wall.

“I didn’t follow you here for you not to give me some answers.”

“About that,” Leo said. He had handed Logan a cloth for his nose. “How did you find us?”

“It started at the café,” Remus said. “I dreamed the name and…” He caught Sirius’ eye. And what? And what else? “And I saw you. And you saw me. And then you chased me.”

Sirius could only nod. He was still trying to breathe. “You ran.”

“The last thing I remember is waking up on a fishing boat with two bullets in my back.” Remus raised his eyebrows. “Yes. I ran.”

“I think we need to get out of here,” James said. “You know. We could memory lane somewhere a little safer, say, not this city where Salazar sent Archer for us.”

“Salazar,” Logan said softly. He was looking at Finn still. “But…not you. You’re different.”

Finn looked a little wide-eyed as he shook his head.

“Okay, I really don’t like all this blood,” Leo said. He looked up at James. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

+++

Sirius followed the others to the train station in a fog. He barely looked at the tickets he booked until they were walking down a narrow train that was on its way to Amsterdam. Far away, James had said.

“Two day train ride,” Finn said. He was walking very close to Logan, closer than even the small corridor required, but Logan didn’t seem to mind. There was none of the fight or flight that had been simmering within him for the last few days. He looked exhausted. Confused. “We don’t have our luggage.”

“Welcome to the life,” James said. “Don’t worry.” He shook a plastic bag at him. “I picked up the necessities.”

“I don’t know if I want to know what you think the necessities are,” Leo mumbled.

For Sirius, their words came through something like cotton.

Remus’ shoulders were right in front of him. Moving. Breathing. Shifting. Chin turning up to look for their sleeping car.

He’d come with them easily. Much easier than Logan. So easy that it made Sirius nervous—James, too, he could tell. Almost suspicious. He was quiet and watchful, but he seemed to believe that they were friend not foe. Maybe he knew enough, or felt enough from those memories to believe something. Remus stopped and turned around—and caught Sirius looking.

“These are our three cabins,” Remus said. He looked right at Sirius. It felt like a dare, but Sirius didn’t know what the dare was.

The doors were old-fashioned, painted a dark red. Through the small, golden-edged windows Sirius could see narrow bunk-beds for two, a small sink and mirror, and that the far wall was all window.

“Wow. Two a room, two a room,” James sing-songed, opening the far door. “Well, good Lord, come on over to my house Leo-Leo—oh, hey, this is very nice.”

Sirius’ entire mouth was dry. This was too strange. Remus alive. Remus—here. Remus, breathing and sleeping right beside him, all night, as they escaped to Amsterdam. Remus didn’t look back at him, though. He just went into the middle room, letting the door shut behind him. Sirius stared at it.

“If you’re my—” Logan said haltingly, opening the first door a crack by its shining brass handle. He looked at Finn. “I guess that means…us?”

“I—” Finn had a bright flush on his cheeks. “True. I mean yes.”

Sirius watched them go and listened to the door snick shut. A conductor called something out to the platform and Sirius looked down one end of the aisle, then the other. Nothing. No one was there. Still, the back of his neck prickled. Leo took a shaky breath from beside him.

“I can’t believe it,” Leo whispered. “I can’t…I can’t believe it.”

Sirius turned towards the window. The platform was clearing. No one. He saw no one.

“What’s happening?” he said softly to Leo.

Leo sighed, casting a glance towards the door Finn and Leo had disappeared into.

“There’s some sort of…God, I don’t even know what to call it, a signal block maybe? Controlling the memory. Caused before the tracker was taken out. Which,” Leo sighed. “I don’t know if they know who did that.”

“How’d Logan break through it do you think?” How do I get Remus to come back to me? He would take a minute. He would take a second of Remus looking at him. Sirius.

Leo blew out a breath, shaking his head. “I don’t know. The mind’s a powerful thing, memory most of all. I’d say Finn was a strong enough memory that something got through. But it triggered a lot of pain. That must be part of this. To… I don’t know, to keep the subject from trying too hard to remember.”

“Right.”

Leo’s eyes widened a little. “Not that—not that you’re not a trigger for Remus.”

Sirius slid his eyes over to the door. Remus was behind it, he had just seen him walk through, but was he? Or had he disappeared again. “I didn’t say I would be.”

“Sirius—”

“How do we stop the pain?”

“I wish I knew. I really…really don’t like the look of the blood.”

“Me neither,” Sirius said.

“Should one of us be with Logan instead of…I mean in case he tries to hurt Finn again?”

“I don’t think he will,” Sirius said. He was surprised to find that he believed it. Or maybe he was being too hopeful, wanting to stay with Remus. Wanting to never let him out of his sight again.

“Right,” Leo said slowly. “Well…I think you have to go in now.”

Sirius cleared his throat. “Mhm.”

“He dreams of you.”

Sirius closed his eyes. He took a breath. He looked down the hallway, both ways, then out at the platform. He checked his weapons. He opened the door.

#Christmas Eve will find me lumosinlove #winterfic 2023 lumosinlove #woflstar #remus lupin #sirius black #spy au #sirius/remus #remus/sirius #ficmas #finnlo

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Three: Sirius

Safehouse Somewhere in Athens

Athens, Greece

Sirius guessed he had expected heat in Athens. Just subconsciously. Instead, he zipped up his black Patagonia as he walked into the kitchen and pulled a knit hat down over his ears. He put the stove-top coffee on, hissing a little at the leap of the flame while igniting the gas.

It was a sagging, one story house. Narrow and tucked between two other ones just like it. The kitchen came first, a window looking out onto the street. They kept the curtains drawn. The living room was really just a small, thin-cushioned couch in the kitchen, and the three bedrooms were off of the single hallway. One bathroom. Sirius sighed as he waited for the water to heat. One bathroom had freezing or scalding water. But it was safe. At least for now. No bugs, both he and James had checked while Finn stood there nervously like he was afraid to move. They’d have Leo check again once he arrived, just in case.

The coffee began to bubble, the creme on the top thickened by the sugar. When they had been here last, Remus had taken strongly to the bittersweet drink, even the gritty taste of the fine coffee grounds in it. Sirius didn’t love it, but he needed something.

Because Remus was somewhere in this city. Somewhere on this Earth.

He checked the cupboards. At least those were somewhat stocked. The small fridge had cheese, eggs, bread. Olives, even a bottle of white wine. Leo would be able to work his usual magic.

“Morning.”

Sirius closed the fridge. Finn came out of the bedroom in a thick sweatshirt and pajama pants, rubbing his arms.

“Hey,” Sirius said. He’d feel better if Finn was dressed and wearing shoes, ready to ditch at a moment’s notice.

“Is there heat we can turn on?”

“No heat,” Sirius said, but took a second cup down from the sparse hooks on the wall. “Sorry. Space heater by the couch.”

“Ah,” Finn said.

“Are those Logan’s?”

Finn looked up from where he was standing curled in on himself in front of the rumbling, ancient looking heater. “What?”

“Your clothes.”

Finn brushed his fingers over the sweatshirt’s cuff. Turned his nose into the collar, or maybe he was just cold. “Yeah.”

“No coat?” Sirius plucked at his own. “It’ll be in a ball. Zipped up into itself, made small.”

“Um. I’ll look again.”

“Coffee?”

Finn nodded and Sirius poured.

“James isn’t awake yet?” Finn asked.

“He’s on watch.” Sirius didn’t think it would help anything if he told Finn they’d both been taking shifts throughout the night. Did Finn really think they would all just fall asleep? He had to keep reminding himself that Logan kept most of this life away from him, showing him only the happier aftermaths of long, well-deserved vacations together.

“Milk’s in the fridge if you take it,” Sirius said.

“That’s fine.” Finn held his mug between both hands. Logan’s sweatshirt fit him well. Where Finn rose above him in height, Logan made up in the width of his shoulders. It had no logo, nothing someone could identify anything by. Logan had said Finn once gifted him one of his own university sweatshirts to bring in his go-bag, and Logan had had to explain that he would never wear anything while working that could lead someone back to Finn.

I hate telling him the bad parts, Logan had said softly to Sirius one night when they had been in New York. Logan had been particularly mournful, having visited the city the most to see Finn’s family. I hate seeing how he tries not to show how much it scares him.

“What now?” Finn asked. “I mean…how do we do this? How do we start?”

Well first, please put some fucking shoes on. “Now we wait.”

“For what?”

“Leo.”

“Why didn’t he travel with you?”

Sirius sighed. He had not gotten enough sleep for this. “Sometimes that’s how it works. Leo’s on our team, but he’s not the same kind of agent as I am, or James.”

“Or Remus and Lo?”

Lo. God, it had been a long time since Sirius had heard Finn call him that. He really, really hoped that Finn hadn’t set his heart on anything changing. At least not all of it. Sirius had seen those shots. He’d seen Remus drop. He’d seen Logan’s head snap back with the force of a bullet. He’d seen them both go down. He’d seen them dragged into the boat off the Sounion beaches where their bodies had been, most likely, sent to the seafloor.

“Right,” Sirius said. “So, he’s on our team but he has other work, and it’s not always fieldwork like us.”

Finn seemed to mull this over for a moment. “So, does that mean he’s never in as much danger?”

Sirius took a long drink of his coffee. He held the thick graininess beneath his tongue before swallowing. “No. Not really. He can be tracked through cyber means as well as we could be followed on foot.”

“Oh.”

Sirius heard the door open and James’ two note whistle, letting him know it was just him.

“Speaking of, you should get dressed. You never know when we’ll have to go and bad guys don’t wait for laces.”

Finn blinked. “I—oh. Shit. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” James’ voice came as he walked into the kitchen. “Sirius is a worry-wart.”

“We’re here to track two agents who we saw get shot in the back.”

Sirius saw Finn shiver, curling closer to his cup.

“Okay, fair,” James said. “Leo’s arriving, saw him down the road. Coffee?”

“Yeah.”

James sniffed. “No tea?”

“If you wanted your perfectly made tea every day you should’ve gotten a desk job.”

James rolled his eyes and accepted a cup. “Is there milk in this joint, at least?”

“Yeah,” Finn said. “Fridge.” He pushed up from where he was leaning against the counter. “I could…make something. Eggs or—”

James raised his eyebrows as he poured milk into his cup. “Did you not hear me say Leo’s arriving? Why eat an apple seed when you could wait for the apple?”

Sirius snorted into his cup, and the door opened again. Two notes, exactly the same as James’.

“Hi,” Leo said. “I—” His eyes widened when he saw Finn.

“Hi,” Finn said. He looked sheepish, but he set his coffee cup down and faced Leo. “Hi.”

Leo looked properly spooked in Sirius’ opinion. Then again, James and Sirius had a quiet bet between them that Leo had quite the crush on Logan. Maybe, if they found him, Leo had been hoping for some time away from Finn. It can’t be all too fun to be crushing on a married man, James had said once. Let him have his fun. It’s harmless.

“What…” Leo set his bag down with a plomp. It was nearly identical to Sirius’ own—Dark, waterproof and unremarkable. “What are you doing here?”

Before Finn, or any of them, could even answer, Leo was striding forward and pulling Finn into a tight hug. Oh God, he heard Leo say under his breath and tucked his nose briefly into Finn’s neck.

Sirius and James looked at each other.

“I need to know if…” Finn’s voice wavered, chin on Leo’s shoulder. Leo didn’t need him to finish. It must be raining lightly, having just started because James was dry. Leo’s blond hair had little jewels of drops on the curls. Finn turned his face into them a little, water transferring in dew drops onto his cheek.

Leo pulled back and took Finn’s shoulders in his large hands. Leo rubbed his arm once, up and down. “Have you eaten?”

Sirius left them to it. Leo had whipped up buttery eggs and even heated some of the milk to combat James’ woeful coffee pleas. Leo would get set up, he’d share a room with Finn, and so he could answer the bulk of Finn’s questions for a while. They did spend more time together, after all. Sirius pulled his hat more firmly over his ears and made sure the door locked behind him.

It was a gray day, but the Christmas lights around every streetlamp broke through some of the gloom. The other people about the streets seemed untouched by it. It looked like a normal Saturday. The markets were out—soft breads and walnut cookies coated in powder sugar. Winter greens and roots, hot spiced drinks. Vendors calling back and forth to each other and little kids being chased between legs by their older siblings. Sirius tried to imagine it. Walking outside without his gun. Going shopping while holding someone’s hand.

He hadn’t known where he was going until he arrived, but there the table was. The cafe looked exactly the same. Two old couples at some of the tables outside, bundled in their coats and scarves and sipping espresso. A waiter nodded him into the third of the tables. Their table. Sirius sat down with a heart beating hard.

“Thank you,” Sirius said in Greek.

“Sir?”

“Espresso.”

“Very good.”

The marble top was stained the same—the two interlocking coffee rings. Those had been in front of Remus last time, which meant he was in Remus’ chair. The thought sent a prickle up his neck. Two days before he had died. How had they been sitting here, laughing, just two days before—well, not died. God, he wasn’t dead, he was somewhere in this city.

“Sir,” the waiter said. An espresso cup—tiny and thin—the creamy surface so perfectly serene. Sirius would leave the money on the table, just as the couple leaving did. This was the part that came with training. Don’t stand out. Don’t give yourself away by asking for the check or getting up and going inside. You sit, you drink, you talk, and you leave.

Of course, him and Remus had done much more than that. It had been eight at night, not eight in the morning, and the espresso had been Negronis. Remus had already been flushed by the heat, but the gin had given his smile a whole new light.

He’d leaned on his palm, cold rocks glass pressed against his cheek. “This heat. Makes you want to jump in the ocean, huh?”

They hadn’t. Not quite. But they’d paid for their drinks and picked up a chilled bottle of white wine instead. Sat on the steps of a church and laughed into each other’s shoulders. Remus’ mouth had brushed his neck at one point and Sirius knew Remus had felt his breathing change.

Remus had tucked a dark strand of Sirius’ hair behind his ear. “It’s nice to see you let loose a little.”

“Am I really as uptight as everyone says?”

Remus had just poured Sirius another inch of wine. “No. But usually when we give ourselves a day off while on a job, you act all guilty. Instead, you’re here laughing with me.”

Sirius should have kissed him that night. He really could have. Remus had looked right at his mouth.

Sirius had expected a kiss maybe. Instead, Remus had looked back at him and said. Sometimes I wonder what we’re doing. Sirius had thought he meant them, but then Remus had said, Who we’re doing it for.

Sirius tilted back his head to get the dregs of his coffee, eyes scanning the street, and he nearly dropped the cup. He sat up straight and set the cup on its saucer hard.

“Remus,” he whispered. He only just remembered to fish out money, but he didn’t take his spot off of where the flash of familiar blond-brown hair had disappeared.

It was just like him, and it did mean something was wrong. To show his face after all this time, luring Sirius back here, and then knowing that he’d retrace their steps, retrace himself back to that night.

Remus had looked right at his mouth. “We shouldn’t…I—Sirius, I want—We shouldn’t.”

Another glimpse. Shoulders, grey t-shirt. Another turned corner, and Sirius couldn’t help it anymore. He broke into a run. The markets weren’t as picturesque while trying to run through them. He dodged around families, locked-hands and stuffed grocery bags with green carrot tops spilling out. The person—Remus?—had yet to turn around. It was like he was leading him somewhere.

He should radio. He should tell James. He caught himself against the edge of a building as he turned a corner. It couldn’t have been more than a few moments after—after whoever this was, after whatever trick Sirius was playing on himself.

But nothing. Gone. The buildings dead-ended but he had been sure he saw him. Sirius was panting, sweating in his jacket and hat.

“Remus,” he whispered. He looked behind him, back the way he’d come, then at the wall. It had a gate on it, but Sirius couldn’t get the chains off of it with even the hardest tug. Remus wouldn’t have been able to get through and lock back up, not in the time it took Sirius to catch up.

Sirius leaned against the gate and closed his eyes. “Jesus.” He just wanted to find him. That was all. He just wanted to find him.

He was alive. Alive, alive, alive.

#Christmas Eve will find me lumosinlove #winterfic 2023 lumosinlove #wolfstar #spy au #finnlo #sunfish #lionfish

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Two: Finn

Finn and Logan’s Flat

London, England

They had emergency measures in place. Logan had sat him down one night. Finn had been in this exact chair. Whiskey in the glasses Logan had brought him back from Ireland. Beautiful crystal carved things with diamond-shaped clovers. Finn didn’t know why he had been in Ireland that time—or any other time—and he never would. Now that set of four haunted Finn’s liquor cabinet.

“No one will know,” Logan had said. “No one but us. If you need me—need me to know something, you call here, and if I need you to know something, I will, too.”

On Finn’s side of it, he had a phone number. Just four digits. He didn’t know how it worked or how Logan had set it up. He purchased a burner phone with cash—never at the same store—and dialed the number. No one ever answered. He left a message. He’d driven two hours before to get to far away corner stores. Just in case something might give Logan away. It was hard to be careful when he didn’t know what he was dealing with.

The burner phones now haunted his bedside drawer.

Finn had sent it maybe twenty messages since it happened. Make that fifty. He didn’t know how Logan got them—or how he used to get them. He didn’t know if it was accessible by computer or a cellphone somehow. He’d only really used it once, with a response, when he’d gone into the hospital with a bad concussion after falling stupidly on a patch of ice. Logan, somehow, had gotten to him in less than a nine hours. Finn had been expecting it to take a day or two at least. Logan had arrived with a neat beard, fuller than Finn had ever seen it, and brown contact lenses in for some reason, but it was Logan. He’d taken the contacts out in the hospital bathroom and flushed them down the toilet before the very surprised nurse had come in to check on Finn and found him with a visitor.

Fingers through his hair. Logan kissing his temple—God, how was he losing that feeling? That was his favorite feeling. Mon Rouge…be careful. You have to be careful. Finn remembered smiling sleepily. But that’s what I’m always telling you.

Alive. He knew there should be a maybe somewhere in there but his brain wouldn’t add it. You’re alive.

Someone was letting themselves in. Key scraping in the door and footsteps Finn knew well. Leo took his coat off in the hall and paused long enough so that Finn knew he was reading the notes in the halls—even though he’d read them a thousand times before. Framed, creases and all. They were, what, nine years old now? A decade seemed so long, until it was cut short. Leo liked to read his and Logan’s love confessions to each other from when they were at school together.

“Chicken and dumplings,” Leo said from behind him. He put one container in the fridge and Finn couldn’t bring himself to turn around. The microwave went and what felt like seconds later, he had a steaming bowl in front of him.

Leo eased himself into a chair and, finally Finn looked up.

“So, they told you,” Leo said. His eyes were calm, but his face held worry.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was Remus,” Leo said immediately. “And I would never let you get your hopes up and then…” Leo pressed his lips together. “But I’m glad Sirius and James did.”

“You found the footage?”

“Yes.”

“And…And you’ve been looking?”

Leo nodded.

Finn pushed a spoon around the bowl, watching it sink into the thick broth. “Why?” It sounded crass but Finn might’ve driven himself mad if he had the capability to never stop looking for Logan. Instead, he was in a dark sea, unable to even know quite what had gone so wrong. So very wrong.

“Because I loved them, too. Or, love. God, who knows what to say.”

Finn nodded. Of course. Of course. He put his hand around Logan’s necklace.

“Make sure you eat that,” Leo said softly. He ducked his head a little until Finn looked at him. “Are you going to be okay here tonight?” Leo whispered. “Alone?”

Alone.

Sometimes Leo stayed. Sometimes, Finn didn’t know what he’d do with an empty bed every night and so sometimes Leo stayed. Just the weight of another person—but sometimes it tricked Finn. Sometimes he reached out and thought—and thought. Wrap his arm around Leo’s waist or, God, even worse, tuck his nose up against Leo’s neck. Finn felt so bad about it he could cry. But then there was Leo’s blue eyes, sorry and wishing he could take the pain away. They would both apologize, maybe squeeze hands, and roll over.

“I’ll be okay.” Finn really needed to be alone. He needed no one to know about his little phone habit. Not even Leo.

The second Leo was out the door, Finn covered his face with his hands and dug up the burner phone package from his desk drawer. He’d broken the rules, he’d gone four blocks over to a store he’d been to before but not for a long time. But he needed it. He needed the connection, no matter how broken it might be. He cut through the plastic with the blur of tears in his eyes. He assembled it, watched the green light of the screen blink to life. He punched in the familiar numbers. 1017.

It rang, tinny and lazy. Then, the familiar beep.

Finn’s mouth went dry. He’d always been able to say anything to Logan. Everything.

“Logan,” he whispered. “Lo, are…” He squeezed his eyes shut. He covered his face with his palm. “Are you alive?”

He always expected an answer. Breathing on the other end of the line. Maybe it was just the nature of holding a phone up to his ear. Reflex and expectation. Lately, Finn talked into the burner like Logan was there. Some horrible way of coping, he’d guess any doctor would say. Phone calls to a ghost, how fucking dramatic was that?

“It’s almost Christmas, you know,” Finn said. He traced a crumb around the table with his thumb. Who knew what it was from. “I’m supposed to go to New York. See Alex and…and everyone. Well, Jesus, not everyone. Not you.”

Finn didn’t realized his eyes had closed until he thought he’d been quiet for too long. He checked. Nearly twenty seconds had passed.

“It does feel cold enough to snow,” Finn said. “My classes are almost out. I think no one’s going to be there on Wednesday. I don’t even want to be there myself. Martha—you remember Martha? She…” Finn swallowed. “She asked about you the other day. She wanted to know if we were doing anything special.” Finn felt his lip tremble, let his eyes fill up. “Like—Fuck, like going to the beach or something.” His voice was pitching up in the way it did when he was trying not to cry. “And I thought about Spain.”

It had seemed like Logan hardly even had to look at people to get what he wanted. Those green eyes of his. That soft, nearly bashful smile. He’d been wearing what looked like a very expensive suit when he'd met Finn in the tarmac.

“Finn. Rouge.” Logan had kissed him so hard. Finn could feel the way Logan’s palm had curled them into each other. Logan had had a cut just above his lip. “I missed you. I missed you.”

Finn had clung to him, then laughed and looked him up and down. Linen shirt, open at the collar, fine-threaded tan jacket. So gorgeous. A little banged up maybe, but nothing serious. The barely there bump of his gun at his side, unreadable if Finn hadn’t felt it with how close Logan was holding him. What are we doing here? You can’t come home yet?

Oh, mon rouge. We are doing absolutely nothing, Logan had smiled, and taken Finn’s bags from him.

It hadn’t felt like nothing. It had felt like breakfasts of fruits and pastries. Watching Logan’s skin turn golden as they lay by the pool. Long nights of rocking into Logan’s body, pinning his hands up above his head in the way he liked and trying not to blush every time they came back to find their sheets changed and freshened. Running his fingers through Logan’s hair. Logan’s head on his chest, listening to Finn read aloud. Walking through small towns with curving, winding streets to get lost in. Buying a very expensive bottle of wine and drinking by the water. Kissing the flavor of Logan’s fig ice cream right out of his mouth. He was summer.

Now, Finn put his head into his hands and pressed the phone harder to his cheek. He could still feel him. Finn saw him everywhere.

“Remus is alive. Are you with him?” Finn let out a breath that was more a sob. He pressed a hand over his mouth. “Are you there? Because if you are, please—please come home. Come home.”

But no. If Logan could come home, he would have. No. He would have by now. Finn stood up so fast that the chair wobbled on its rear legs. No, no, no—

“No. I’m gonna come find you.” Finn knew he was probably breathing so heavy, crying too much maybe to even be understood. He sniffed and took a breath and said it again. “I’m going to come find you, baby, don’t worry. I’ve got you. Always, remember? I’ve got you. Yeah.” Finn wiped at his face with the sleeve of his sweater. One of Logan’s go-bags—a back up—was in the closet in the box with the spare sheets. “I’ve got you.”

“No,” Sirius said.

Finn’s ass was half frozen from sitting on his stoop, and he stumbled a little when he got up. “I’m coming with you.”

Sirius didn’t move. He just looked Finn over with those gray, unreadable eyes. For Finn, after the accident, it had been like losing friends, only without a fall-out or a fight. Finn was no longer privy to Sirius and James’ lifestyle. The connection was gone. He was exhausted. He missed Logan so badly that he wondered if he would die some nights, throwing on shoes and a scarf to do something, to go somewhere, because surely something was wrong in his chest for it to hurt this bad. Lily had come around sometimes, even James, but their faces had only hurt him. He’d thrown himself into his classes but without caring about them.

The only person left was Leo, knowing Finn was hopeless in the kitchen except for the occasional basic. But he was more than that. He was Logan’s closest friend on his squad. Maybe even Finn’s closest friend, too. They spent their evenings with Leo more often than not, and at first Finn had thought it was sort of like a rookie thing—Leo was a bit younger than them—and Logan thought he was lonely, but then he’d gotten to know Leo. When it wasn’t Finn and Logan, it was the three of them.

Sirius didn’t look the same. But Remus hadn’t exactly been his boyfriend. At least, Logan hadn’t thought so. He’d only been trying to get one of them to take the first step towards something more. But that was still something to be taken away.

“Jesus, Finn.” Sirius said. He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. “Finn. God. Maybe we shouldn’t have told you.”

“No.” He sounded childish, desperate. “Sirius, please. Please, I can’t do this. I can do—” He looked around him, but he wasn’t sure what for. “Life. World. Normal. Whatever you want to call it. I can’t do it without him and now I can’t do the waiting for him. Not alone. Please.”

“No.” Sirius pushed around him, keys jingling gently. Finn heard them scratch at the door. Smelled the fish and chips he was holding. A few doors down, carolers were singing.

“I’ve been swallowed whole by losing him,” Finn said softly.

Sirius stopped, one foot on the step above the other. A wind picked up, all sudden and rough, like it knew the air couldn’t be too still between them. If it was, it would solidify and they’d never get through this. Finn would never move again, not until Logan touched the back of his neck, his cheek, and brought him back to life. I’m right here.

“I mean…” Finn looked down. “Losing him. Dead. Gone.” His voice caught and he had to breathe through it. “If he’s not then—Sirius.”

Sirius’ back was tense. His jacket looked too thin for the weather and he wasn’t wearing a hat or a scarf. Finn watched his shoulders rise and fall. Finn looked one way down the street—carolers—then the other. He always did this. Imagined Logan was somewhere near by, half in shadow, watching him. Not dead.

Sirius’ dinner crinkled in his hand as he turned around.

“It’s not all luxury and glitz.” Sirius narrowed his eyes a little, wary. “I know that’s the part Logan treats you to, but it’s not.”

“Okay.”

“You gonna be fine with that?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we have to camp out on the roof of a building.”

Finn tried to hide his wince. “Okay.”

“All night.”

Finn grit his teeth. “I’ll do anything.”

“No food.”

“Will it help us find him?” Finn swallowed. “I mean them. Remus and Logan.”

“Maybe,” Sirius said. “Or just Remus. Logan might really be dead.”

Finn closed his eyes. That word. That word.

“Are you prepared for that?”

“No,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. That doesn’t mean I don’t want…I don’t know, his—his body.” But did he? Did he want to see that? It haunted him. Real, and true haunting. One second he’d see Logan’s smile and the next some horrible, gray version of his face.

“Most likely there won’t be a body. And if there was one, it would be…remains. Finn, it’s been months.”

“Then a confession. I don’t know. I just want—”

“I know what you want,” Sirius said. “I want it, too.”

“I have to come,” Finn pleaded. He took a step forward. “Sirius.”

Sirius took a step forward, too, meeting him on the steps. “These people we were dealing with when it happened—you cannot hope to understand them. They’re deranged. Worse than that, they’re wealthy and deranged, and we don’t know very much about them. We know they control a large blackmarket network and they’re only getting more powerful. We know they deal in weapons, and we know they have sleeper agents everywhere. Finn, you can’t trust anyone, do you understand? They got Logan, but who knows what Logan told you.”

“Are you saying I’m being watched?”

“Of course you are. By us and them.”

Logan never told him much. He let Finn smooth the crease in his brow. He let Finn bring him tea or his sugary, sugary coffee. He let Finn spoon up against his back and told Finn how that made him feel safe—one of the few moments in this world when he wasn’t worried about looking behind him. Logan let him make love to him, fuck all the weight of the world right out of him until he was weightless and slick with sweat and his own come. Let Finn hold his hand while they walked to dinner and home again. But he never told him anything. Not really. A country name here, a surname there. Nothing that meant anything to Finn. Never enough for him to put anything together.

They will never have a reason to need you, Logan would whisper in the dark. I will never give them one.

Who is they? Finn would wonder.

“No one can know you’re with us,” Sirius said. “You have to get your own flights.”

Finn nodded. “Okay, I can do that.”

“We leave tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“Hello there!” came a jolly voice from behind them.

Finn swore he saw Sirius’ mouth say fuck under his breath. Finn turned to see that the cluster of carolers had made it to them.

The man simply grinned at them, before turning and raising his hands in signal.

I’ll be home for Christmas… they began, and Finn turned back around fast, looking up at Sirius.

Sirius held a finger to his lips and, before they were even one verse in, turned and went inside.

You can count on me…

Tomorrow, Finn said. He didn’t even feel guilty about leaving the carolers mid-song. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

If only in my dreams…

#Christmas Eve Will Find Me lumosinlove #winterfic 2023 lumosinlove #finnlo #sirius black #spy au #Logan tremblay #finn o'hara #Leo knut #sunfish

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Two: Sirius

Grimmauld Club

London, England

“Do you want to go get a burrito from that place?”

Sirius looked up from his desk. There were miles of paperwork. Mounds of things to do. A five AM flight to catch. God, did he even want to think about it? No. No, he didn’t, not with Remus Lupin looking at him like that. A smile. Hopeful. Sirius wasn’t sure what kind of hope it was. Two friends getting a beer and a meal after a shift? Or—

“Yeah,” Sirius said. “Brilliant, love to.”

Sirius could see himself sitting there, could see the mess of salsa and chips on his plate. Beans and rice that had fallen out. Each time he went back to that tiny restaurant—alone, no one else could know about it, it was theirs—he’d kept looking at the door. He had to stop doing that, they would think he was going to make a run for it. It was ridiculous, him thinking that if he just stared long enough then Remus might walk in. Cash only here, forgot. Just popped to the machine. Flash him a smile. We’re set now.

They’d stayed too long that night. Far too close to their flight. They hadn’t had a thing to drink but Sirius had felt like he had by the end, cheeks hurting from smiling. They’d stood up at the same time, go-bags in hand. So sure of themselves. Such a team. We’ll have to find at least some time to see the sights in Athens—

“You with me, Si?” James’ voice said.

The waiter had just set their drinks down, vest nearly matching the blue-black velvet walls of The Grimmauld Club. Somehow, it was their favorite even though they were never dressed properly for it. Dirty looks for their lack of jacket and tie, but the whiskey was good, they could see all the exits, and the club had their own reasons for letting them get away with it. The club knew who they worked for, at least in theory.

On my way. Remus’ voice said in his mind. Then his own voice. I’ve got you from above.

“Yeah,” Sirius said. “Sorry.”

James had invited him to stay over at his flat last night. Finn, too. Finn had had too many questions and questions weren’t a good fit for a night alone. Sirius hadn’t slept well, squeezed onto the guest bed next to Finn. He’d had the thought that Finn probably hadn’t slept in the same bed as someone since Logan’s death, and then he just couldn’t shake it. Finn had slipped out early in the morning though, because when Sirius opened his eyes he was alone.

“Sorry I’m late,” said a voice from behind them. Accented. American, but not like Finn’s. Louisiana.

Sirius saw James look up first. There was a familiar flash of bright blond hair, a beat up looking computer bag was slung onto the ground, and Leo Knut sat in the chair beside him.

Leo looked between the two of them, then sent a skeptical roll of his eyes around the club. “Didn’t think they were going to let me in.”

James flashed him a small smile. “I think you still forget who you work for sometimes.”

“Oh? And who might that be?”

James’ smile turned wry. “Oh, traffic control of London, of course.”

“Of course.” Leo did laugh, but his eyes were steady when he looked at Sirius. “So, you’ve told Finn.”

“Yeah.”

“Right before wheels up?”

“Yeah.” Sirius knew he would have to go back to his apartment for his bag. But sometimes that one pot in the kitchen stared at him so vividly he thought he would die. Sirius, honestly, you can’t live on take away. Let me make you something.

“What did Finn say?”

“He had a proper freak, to be honest,” James said. “It hurt to watch.” He sent Sirius a sideways look. “He got his hopes up way to fast.”

“So did I,” Sirius said. “Didn’t you?”

James set his glass down hard. “Yeah, but off of a photograph. We’ve got nothing besides that.” Nothing on Logan, he meant.

Leo leaned forward. “Where is he now? His courses are all finished, you can’t just drop that—”

A waiter came up and looked primly at Leo. “May I get you anything, Mr. Knut?”

“Uh—” Leo blinked up at him. “I—just a—what they’re having.”

Sirius saw the waiter give Leo, and his baby face, a skeptical look, but he gave a slight bow and turned away.

“It wasn’t my idea to tell him,” James said. “Sirius insisted.”

“No,” Leo said. “I’m glad you told him, but you can’t just tell him and leave him in the dark.”

“He slept over,” James protested.

“What choice do we have?” Sirius said. “We don’t know anything else, and we’re going to be out of reach. He’ll have to wait.”

Leo scoffed. “Hey, your husband is alive, see you later?”

“May be. May be alive.”

“Before you go shouting at us,” James said. “What exactly are you doing to speed up the process?”

“All that I can,” Leo said. “My facial recognition program is what found Remus.”

Leo’s drink was set down before him, but Leo paid it no mind. He just sent a glance towards the hallway with a simple WC and an arrow on the wall in golden stencil.

That was the other good thing about Grimmauld. It had some very interesting rooms.

James sighed, but made to get up. “They really shouldn’t have put it near the bathrooms. It makes it look like we’re all going to go together.”

Leo’s back room was full of blinking lights and wide monitors.

“Look,” Leo said as he swung into his chair. He clicked around a bit, then pulled up a video file. “This is what the still you saw is from.”

Sirius leaned forward alongside James as Leo hit play. The video had been frozen on a crowded street, not as cropped as they had seen at Salazar. This time, they had to wait for Remus to walk into frame.

“There.” Leo pointed, but Sirius hadn’t needed to be told. He would recognize him anywhere, it didn’t matter how grainy the footage was. He would know his gait. He would know the tilt of his head. Remus eyes were more like blurs, even with Leo’s enhancing technology, but Sirius knew their gold color.

God, Sirius had missed seeing the way Remus walked.

Leo’s finger hit the space bar the moment Remus turned his head. It was close. They could have missed him. He’d only turned when he was almost out of frame, just looking before he crossed the street. Nothing strange, nothing unusual, besides the fact that he was a walking memory. Sirius scanned the background, looking for any eyes on him, but there was nothing. A fruit vendor. The bank whose camera it was. A man putting his wallet away. Someone sitting reading a newspaper at a café table. A mother holding the hands of two children, one of them crying.

“And Logan?” James asked.

“Nothing,” Leo said softly. His voice held some of the hurt that had been in Finn’s voice. Sirius wondered about that sometimes and ached for Leo. “He’s still a ghost. If they’re together, I can’t tell. Or Logan hasn’t been out like Remus has.”

Sirius and James exchanged a look. “Out?”

“If they had really been in Athens all this time, I would have seen them. A camera would have picked them up long before this. And they would have found us if they could.”

“So, what, you think they escaped some type of captivity?”

“Or just Remus. I don’t know. But it’s possible.” Leo frowned. “Why do you think they haven’t contacted us?”

James let out a tired breath and put a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “If we knew that, don’t you think you would know by now, too?”

They drew their chairs close together and stared the footage down, looking for anything to go on. They looked up shop names and got the street name. Lisiou. They clocked nearby hotels, but Remus could have been coming from anywhere, could have taken a bus or a car. He looked clean. Showered and shaven. They watched the footage over and over. Remus appeared from the South and turned his head just as he was almost out of frame, going North.

“Pause it,” Sirius said suddenly. When Leo complied, he pointed. “There’s writing on his t-shirt. Can you make it out?”

“He could have picked it up from anywhere,” James said thoughtfully. “But it’s still something. He definitely wasn’t wearing it when…”

The room quieted, even chilled, until Leo cleared his throat and enhanced the image.

“Shit,” James said when half of a word came into view. “It’s all Greek to me.”

“It’s kind of twisted, but…” Leo frowned and pulled up the Greek alphabet. He went to work matching the letters, and, somehow, the bottom text box began matching them to the nearest English equivalent. “Pi…Piraeus. Piraeus?” Leo muttered the word to himself a few more times before typing it in. “It’s a myth—a city. It’s a bank—though not the one that caught him. And it’s a port.” He pulled up a separate map. “A harbor, there.”

Sirius leaned back. “That’s not too far. That’s a half hour ride at most.”

“We don’t know it actually—”

“We don’t know anything,” Sirius said. “But we start there.” He glanced at the computer clock. “We should get to the airport.”

As they made to go, Leo stopped Sirius with a hand on his arm. His blue eyes looked painfully young just then. Afraid. They weren’t supposed to show fear.

“Sirius,” Leo whispered.

James didn’t stop, too. He knew when someone needed a second. That was the beauty of James.

“I don’t know, Leo,” Sirius answered before Leo could ask.

Leo asked anyway. “Do you think Logan is…”

It wasn’t something he spoke about. It wasn’t something he wanted in his head more than it already was. He didn’t want the tragedy coating his tongue, he didn’t want it blocking his throat.

“I thought I saw both of them…” Sirius swallowed. Die. “Go. I thought…”

Sirius thought maybe Leo was going to press, but he didn’t. He nearly deflated a step backwards. He sank back into his chair with a nod.

“Okay.”

Sirius put a hand on the doorframe. “Are you…”

“I’m gonna stay here a bit.” Leo looked like he was already pulling up footage of the port. Lupin, Remus and Tremblay, Logan typed into a program and the slide of code running fast through the room.

In the hallway, James jingled his keys in his pocket. “Coming to mine?”

“I should go home,” Sirius said. He ran a hand through his hair. He would take hot water while he could. A long shower, alone in the quiet. Who knew when they’d see it again. Safe houses were always safe, that didn’t mean they were always comfortable. “Gotta get my things.”

+++

It was always strange, being in London the night before a mission. There was, of course, the pesky thought that he’d never see this city again. But it looked different, too. The street lights were brighter. The fresh rain on the pavement smelled better. He’d stop for whatever take away of his choosing. They all knew him, the restaurants, but they didn’t at all, did they? He could remember their names, could spot the different take out bags on other customers form a block away. He could say his work kept him up late and smile and laugh with them.

“George,” Sirius said when he entered the small fish and chips shop. It smelled like vinegar and salty chips, frying fish and the paper they got wrapped in.

“Ah, my friend.” George reached across the table to shake Sirius’ hand, then proceeded in getting his unsaid order ready. Strong, capable hands that went through the motions of his life by memory and touch. Watching him made Sirius wish badly for something that familiar. “How are things?”

No one knew about Remus. It was hard to grieve when the only souls he could tell were right there stuck with him.

“Fine,” Sirius said. “The usual.” At least that wasn’t a lie. “How did Matt’s maths test go? He was nervous on Tuesday.”

“Oh, Jesus, what a kid.” George folded the paper expertly, whipping down the sticker with the shop’s logo on it to hold it closed. “Fucking worries about everything. Takes after his mother in that way—and in the way of getting all the answers right.”

“Good.” Sirius smiled and looked down to his wallet, but when he went to hold out his crumbled bills, George put a hand out and simply slid the food over.

“It’s on the house.” When Sirius looked up, alarmed, George shrugged. “No, no, no. Nope. Blame Christmas.”

“I can’t let you do that.” George’s shop was beloved by the neighborhood—his whole family was—but that didn’t mean business was easy.

“You can.” George hesitated. He rubbed a hand on his red beard, blue eyes honest. “If you don’t mind me saying, you’ve not looked your best lately. Matty’s is worried you’re going to, ah, disappear again.”

Disappear. This is what George’s ten year old son Matt called it when Sirius had to work. He was vague about it to them, but honestly probably more up-front than he should be. Five months was too long to pass as a business trip and there were only so many of the agents that could fake trades that took them to archaeologic digs. Sirius didn’t have a family. He didn’t have friends. It was enough for Salazar to expect him to simply lay low. Maybe it was their fault, then, that he’d made this mistake with Matt. He could still see himself crouching down in front of him. With his mother’s dark hair, he looked a little like Regulus had when he was little.

Sometimes, Sirius had said. Sometimes I just have to disappear for a while.

“Just for a bit,” Sirius said softly. He put his money away and picked up his meal. “Tell…Tell him goodbye for me, all right?”

George’s mouth pulled to the side, but he nodded. “All right. And what about Remus? Will we be seeing him around? Matty’s taken a real shining to him, too. It’s been a while.”

Two days ago, Sirius would have had to leave without answering. No. He’s dead. He’s dead, he’s dead, and I never—I never told him that I—

“Maybe.” Sirius flashed him a brief smile. Please, please, maybe.

“Gonna be back for Christmas?”

“Maybe not,” Sirius said. He held up the packet. “Thanks. Really. I’ve got to run.”

“All right.” George sighed and it sounded almost resigned. “All right but… If you need anything…Okay?”

Sirius nodded. “Okay. You, too.”

The bell above the shop door sent him right back.

“I like them,” Remus said. He had already torn open his packet and was munching on a chip with a satisfied smile. He bumped their shoulders together. “I also like you with them.”

“What does that mean?” Sirius had asked.

It had been cold like this then, too. Remus had been wearing a green beanie, pulled low.

“You smile more with them.”

Usually, before a flight, he didn’t sleep at all. He could tell himself he would sleep as he walked down his familiar street. He could take his keys out of his pocket as he opened the low iron gate and tell himself he was going to take a shower and fall right into bed. He could say all of this to himself, but he knew he would end up on his couch, staring at nothing in particular until he had to go.

Remus had changed some of that. For a moment. For a second. Get some sleep. Laying down beside him, tucking his hand beneath his own pillow. Just close your eyes.

God, Sirius had a single glimpse of a moment where he had thought his life might change for the better.

He looked up, preparing himself to face that same room, empty now.

Finn O’Hara was on his stoop.

“No,” Sirius said before he could ask.

Finn looked just as restless. “I’m coming with you.”

#Christmas Eve Will Find Me #winterfic 2023 lumosinlove #woflstar #spy au #Leo knut

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me...

If only in my dreams...

(^Link to Ao3)

~

Sirius Black and Remus Lupin have spent their entire careers together—from training all the way to being assigned to the same team working for the secret intelligence agency, Salazar. Sirius has loved Remus for just as long, but has never told him.

Finn O'Hara is a university professor of English Literature with a spy for a husband. Logan Tremblay keeps his work mostly secret. Finn enjoys the perks of it—fancy vacations and long, luxurious homecomings. It almost outweighs the horrible waiting and worrying whether or not Logan will come home to him.

Sirius and Finn's worlds are ripped apart when a mission goes wrong and Remus and Logan are killed—or are they? When Remus' face shows up on security footage months later, hope blooms its dangerous and tedious flower once again.

#winterfic lumosinlove 2023

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

Six: Finn

Sleeper Car

Somewhere Just Outside of Athens

The setting sun turned their small cabin a brilliant orange as the train dashed along. They were well out of the city and in rocky looking grasslands. James had knocked on their door with sandwiches not too long ago—let’s lay low for the night. They’d found porcelain plates strapped up delicately within the bar cabinet. There was heat and an extremely tiny bathroom with hot water.

And there was Logan, taking up half of the space at all times. Each time they had to move, they would touch shoulders, or hips, or elbows. Finn could feel his body heat. They both were sweaty and in desperate need of a shower, but Finn had never wanted to crush himself against someone else more than he did when Logan’s back brushed across his chest as they switched places at the sink.

Finn looked at himself in the mirror. This would have been romantic. Unbearably so. He could picture it so clearly. Calling for ice, popping that half-bottle of champagne in the fridge, complaining a little about how tight a fit the bunk bed would be but losing any and all thoughts of needing extra space when their bodies fit together perfectly after dinner. Dinner in the room? No, Logan would have wanted to watch Finn get dressed up, would have taken him to the dining car, would have pressed their ankles together beneath the table.

Instead, Finn had purple circles beneath his eyes and much darker smudges around his neck. He touched a bruise lightly.

“Sorry,” Logan said. It was the first thing either of them had said in twenty minutes. The first thing at all save for little notes about the room. Fancy. Yes. Tiny shower. Yeah. Nice pillows. Definitely. Logan cleared his throat and gestured to his own neck. He was sitting at the small window booth in front of his sandwich. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Finn said. He took one more look, decided there was really nothing to be done, then sat down across from him. “I wouldn’t have known what to believe, either.”

Logan toyed with the parchment wrapping of his sandwich but didn’t open it.

“Maybe…” Finn swallowed. He looked down at his sandwich, pulling at the sticker that kept the wrappings closed. It looked good. Turkey and lettuce and tomato. “Maybe you still don’t. That’s okay.” At least, Finn was pretty sure Logan wasn’t going to snap and suddenly try to strangle him again while he slept.

They ate in silence, too, watching the sun go down and the world outside turn into racing silhouettes. They had never been this quiet. Not ever.

Finally, Finn couldn’t take it anymore. He turned around to the bar cabinet—so small was the room that he didn’t even have to get up—and took the champagne bottle out of the fridge. He held it up questioningly.

Logan blinked. “Oh. Should we?” 

Finn was exhausted. He was dirty. He was longing, he was ecstatic, he was terrified. “I, personally, need some champagne after today.”

Logan watched Finn in silence as he got out the glasses—flutes so thin that Finn feared they’d shatter in his hands. He thought of the clover rocks glasses back home.

“You know, I never really guessed how much you guys roughed it—I mean, not that the house was rough but.” He began undoing the wire. “It wasn’t this.”

“What house?” Logan asked.

“We were at a place in Athens. No heat. No hot water unless you wanted to burn your skin off.”

“Ouch.”

Finn popped the cork. A sound that felt entirely too merry. The way the bubbles fizzed up and nearly spilled out, the clean chill of the bottle in his hand as he poured. Logan watched and Finn thought of all the bottles they’d shared—Harvard rooftop, fancy room services, their wedding.

The question that had been trying to knock its way into his mind finally surfaced: If they had to start over, could they do it?

“Remus said he was on a boat,” Finn said. “When he woke up.”

Logan nodded. “Me too. But—but not together. I’ve never seen him before. It was me and the crew. They had been out for a month and said they’d been out for another. Their home port wasn’t Greece. They were transporting cargo. They said they found me in the water, thought I was dead or a runaway. Criminal. I don’t…” Logan picked up a piece of tomato that had fallen out of his sandwich and popped it into his mouth. “I don’t think they believed me that I couldn’t remember anything. At least not in the beginning.”

Finn shivered. Logan reached for his glass and inspected the golden liquid.

“So you were at sea for the first month?”

“Yes. Wait.” Logan tilted his head. “How…How long do you think I was gone?”

“Six months.” There was no thinking. Finn took a small sip of champagne, letting the bubbles fill his nose. He watched Logan mirror the gesture. There was nothing gone about it either. It had been so much more than gone.

“You’ve been looking for me for so long,” Logan said.

Looking. Finn wished. He would have done anything to have been looking.

“No,” Finn said. “I thought you were dead the whole time.”

Again—Strange to say that sentence over champagne. This wasn’t exactly a celebration. If Logan was ever to return home—and Finn had pictured it of course—memory had never factored in. Sometimes, he imagined a knock on the door came in the middle of the night. Logan wouldn’t have his key, so a knock made sense, but also other times Finn woke to Logan’s hand on his cheek. I’m right here.

Other times, he got a call from Sirius or James and he had to go and meet them somewhere. Some tarmac, some remote hospital. And there would be Logan, battered but alive and reaching for him.

“The others came home. Without you.” Finn swallowed. He’d never said this aloud. “Without—” 

“Finn. Finn listen.”

He had been able to tell from their faces. The very second. Telling him to sit down.

“Where is he? Where is he? Sirius.”

“Finn…Just sit down for a second. Please, Finn.”

“Where is he, why are you looking at me like that, where is he—”

“And I told your family. And my family. And you…And you were dead.” Finn drew in a breath. He rubbed at his jaw. “And I don’t know how I got through it. I really don’t know how.”

Logan had his head ducked down. Green eyes looking up at him through those lashes, sad and scared and surprised.

“I’m your husband,” Logan said. “And you thought I was dead for six months?”

Finn’s jaw went tight to keep the tears in and he hoped that was answer enough. He got up, rubbing at his eyes, and sat down on his bunk—Logan had already taken the top one when he’d followed him inside the cabin. He just needed a moment. Just a moment. He didn’t want to make Logan feel bad. It wasn’t his fault.

But then the mattress shifted and Logan was settling down right across from him. His green eyes were earnest. His knees almost touched Finn’s.

“Six months.”

“Yeah,” Finn said.

“Oh,” Logan whispered. “Finn.”

Logan said his name almost like he always had. Almost.

“You know, you broke through all of this once before,” Finn said. “In the alley, by the bookshop. Something happened, and then—well you know the rest. You passed out. But for a moment you knew me.”

Leo would probably be trying to coax some information out of Logan just now rather than ogling his eyes, and the way he had eaten his sandwich the same, and how he said Finn’s name.

“Do you know who Pascal is?” Finn asked. “That’s the name you said, and we can’t piece it together.”

Logan frowned. “Non. I said to Leo, I don’t.”

“I know…I know. I just—it’s the only thing you said to me.” And I wanted an ‘I love you’ so badly.

“Am I different?” Logan asked. “I mean…Yes probably. But am I?”

“Of course,” Finn said. “Nothing’s the same. But…I don’t know. You’re…” You. He wasn’t sure how to say it. Not when Logan didn’t know who you was.

“Tell me something,” Logan said. “I want to be able to think I know something about you without it making me want to rip by brain out. Tell me something.”

“Tell me something.”

Logan had pulled the sheets over their heads and it billowed above them like a tent with the Caribbean sunshine lighting him up in bronze.

Finn ran his hands up the back of Logan’s bare thighs, which straddled his hips. “Like what?”

Logan sat back against Finn’s palms, rolling his hips down in a slow push, then grinning at Finn’s gasp. “Like what it’s like being my newly wed.”

“Oh I’m yours, am I?”

Finn’s eyes went down to Logan’s hand. “You lost your wedding ring.”

Logan held out his hand between them, turning it backwards then palm forward again. “Oh.” He looked up at Finn, at the gold around his finger then his eyes. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Finn shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean…”

“All mine.” Logan’s smile was even in the kiss he pressed to Finn’s mouth. “All mine.”

“What did it look like?”

Finn tilted his head. He said nothing, just waited.

Logan started biting at his lip. That was the first sign. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingertips to his forehead. “Oh fuck. Fuck.”

And then there was the blood. Finn sat there frozen for a moment. This wound, strange and unexplainable, had no place in this memory or talk of their wedding. No place anywhere.

But this was Logan. This was Logan. This was his boy.

“Hey.” Finn reached forward and cradled Logan’s jaw, his other hand brushing his hair back from his forehead. “Shh. Hey, it’s all right, look at me. I’ve got ya, look at me.”

Logan opened his eyes, brows pulled together. His mouth was slack, surprised at Finn’s touch. But he was Logan. Brown waves falling across his forehead. He was so Logan, and he was warm, and so close to Finn’s arms.

“There you go,” Finn said. I’ve got you. I found you. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” 

“I don’t know,” Logan said.

“Let’s do this—You don’t try to remember anything. I just tell you.” He swiped a thumb under Logan’s nose without thinking. “There.”

“I’m sorry, that’s so gross.”

Finn didn’t know how to tell him that nothing about him could possibly seem gross. Loving someone this much, wanting them this badly, didn’t allow room for gross. Finn could’ve crawled in beside Logan’s heart and lived there.

“It’s not,” Finn said. He reached for one of the—very nice—cloth napkins. “See? Fine.”

Logan wiped his face, sniffing, but it looked like the pain had eased up. His eyes were clearer.

“This is the first time you’re seeing—that we’re seeing each other? After…”

Finn nodded, then paused. “If we don’t count the gun holding, sure.”

And there it was. A trace of a smile. Just half a raised corner of his mouth. Finn wanted to crawl inside that, too.

“You didn’t know,” he said before Logan could apologize again.

The bottom bunk felt small. Cozy. Fort-like. Logan folded the red on the napkin out of sight and set it aside. He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, rubbed at his eyes. Sleepy. He was tired.

Logan set his mug of tea down, pushed his hands through his hair, rubbed his eyes, and took Finn’s book, tossing it onto the floor and more or less falling into Finn’s chest.

“Sleep,” he mumbled.

Finn was about to ask, tea? when Logan spoke.

“Can I do anything?”

Finn frowned. “What do you mean?”

Logan hesitated. “I mean—we must…” Finn watched the way Logan wet his lips. His eyes darted down to Finn’s mouth. “Six months is a long time to think someone is dead. And we must’ve…kissed.”

Finn stared at him. And stared at him.

And then they were laughing, Logan with a flush on his cheeks.

“Yeah,” Finn laughed. “Yeah, we kiss.”

“Right.”

“You’re asking me if we should kiss?”

Logan shrugged, a hint of a smile back. “I’m—I don’t know. I…I mean. Was I a good…person? Did you miss me?”

“Oh…Oh, Lo.” Finn pressed a palm to Logan’s knee. “Baby, missing doesn’t even begin—I mean—”

Logan’s eyes had widened. “Is that what you call me?”

“I—Sometimes.”

“What else? Maybe I’ll…” Remember.

“Um. Lo. Tremz. Your last name—”

“Tremblay, you said.”

“Right.”

“And…” Logan was leaning forward now. Their knees were touching.

Finn bit his lip. “Yeah. Baby. Mostly Lo.”

Logan’s eyes snapped shut. He put a hand to his forehead. “Ugh.”

“Don’t—”

But Logan waved him off. “What do I call you?”

Rouge.

“Rouge,” Logan whispered. Finn felt a kiss against to his temple, a hand rubbing his back. “Baby, wake up, I have to go. I got called in, give me a kiss, come here.”

Finn fell into his arms when calls were sudden. He didn’t let go all the way to the door. Never managed to crawl back into bed after. Slept on the couch for the first day or two, hoping that the front door opened and—“Rouge? I’m home, baby, where are you, where are you?”

No. He only wanted to hear Rouge again if—when Logan remembered.

“Lots of French things that I would just butcher. And sometimes Harzy, though that was mostly a college thing. Harzy because O’Hara. My name.”

“College.”

“Harvard. That’s how we met.”

Logan flinched hard, but he kept his eyes open. No blood. “The library.”

“Yeah,” Finn said softly. “The library.”

Logan pushed himself up from the bed. He rubbed at his eyes again. “This is so—God, it’s like I can—it’s like I know that I don’t know. So I should know.” He pressed his hands to either side of the sink. “Does that make any sense at all?”

“I think so. I can’t imagine what this is like for you but…I sort of make it a point of my life to make sense of you.”

Logan stayed quiet. He kept his gaze down, brow furrowed in pain. Finn would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking.

“I don’t want this to hurt you,” Finn said. “Maybe we should—do you want to sleep?”

Logan kept his eyes closed for another moment, then shook his head. “I think I want to shower first.”

Finn settled against the spark of familiarity. Of course. He should have known that.

“Then champagne,” Logan said. When Finn looked at him, he had that half-smile in place again.

“I’ll keep a spoon in it, then,” Finn said. He smiled, too, and then he realized all over again that he was smiling at Logan and he had to blink a couple times and pick up his glass to keep it together.

“Good,” Logan said, and then he peaked into the bathroom quickly before pulling his shirt over his head.

“Oh—” Finn dropped the glass. It bounced on the carpet but didn’t break. The champagne splashed over his feet.

Logan’s eyes met his in the mirror, surprised momentarily before he understood.

He had a round scar on the back of his shoulder, another near his lower back, and a third that grazed where his neck met the hard muscle of his shoulder. In the mirror, there were matching scars on his chest and stomach.

Logan touched the scar on his neck, gnarled like it had grazed the skin but left a gaping wound. I saw it, James had said. I saw it, they got him in the head.

Finn inhaled sharply at the thought, the memory of trying to picture it alone in their dark London flat. He squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again. Logan was still there. Still looking at him.

“Sorry,” Finn said. “I wasn’t—I didn’t think about…” It was a bit of a joke, really. After so long picturing it, how had it not even occurred to him that Logan’s body would have scars?

“Not very pretty, hm?” Logan said quietly. He ran a quick hand over his chest. He had a slight tan line at his neck and wrist, like he spent a lot of time outdoors. “I was maybe better when you last knew me.”

Finn wanted to touch him. The bullets looked like stage makeup. Movie set. Sort of like how all the guns looked to him. Like they’d shoot bubbles and air. Like Logan would emerge from the shower and the pink puckers of skin would be gone.

“Logan,” Finn said softly.

Logan would have asked quoi? had he even recognized how he used to speak. Instead he just turned towards him.

“Can I…” Finn realized he was reaching forward. Just a little.

Logan looked at his hands. He set down his crumpled shirt and faced him. “So there is something I can do.”

Finn nodded quickly. The tears were rising in his throat. “Right now, it’s just this.”

Logan let Finn come to him. Their movements were so careful at first, but the moment Logan’s chest was pressed against Finn’s sweater something snapped. He let out a harsh breath and put a scar under his palm like he could protect it.

Finn turned his head into the soft warm place, the nook of his neck. Finn’s place. Logan liked to be kissed there, and God did Finn almost do it, right over the other scar. He just held on, the familiarity of the broad shoulders beneath his hands making him feel airy, almost like he was going to pass out. But then Logan’s arms were around him, too, more hesitant than he would have been before. Lighter in touch. Discovering. He let out a little breath that Finn felt against his shoulder. Logan’s shoulders relaxed.

“Silver.” Logan pushed harder into Finn’s hold. “The ring was silver, wasn’t it?”

Finn kept his tears quiet this time, soft against his cheeks as he nodded. He drew back just enough to pull Logan’s fleur-de-lis from around his own neck and place it around Logan’s. It caught on his curls briefly before settling on his bare chest. “Silver like this.”

“What…” Logan looked down at it. His rested his temple against Finn’s shoulder and picked up the pendant.

“It’s yours,” Finn said. He touched Logan’s fingertips and the warming metal. “Wear it. It might help.”

#Christmas Eve Will Find Me lumosinlove #winterfic lumosinlove 2023 #ficmas #wolfstar #finnlo #sirius black #remus lupin #finn o'hara #spy au

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

One: Finn

King’s College

London, England

“So, to wrap up…”

It was nearly a half hour too early, but Finn was tired. This class wasn’t clicking with him, not like his 11:00 o’clock. Maybe it was because it was nearly Christmas holidays. Not even a week left. The students were sluggish. They were giddy. They wanted to go home so badly—homemade meals and presents and holiday markets—that it didn’t even occur to them to think anything other than that Professor O’Hara would want to do the same.

Finn didn’t want to go home. Home wasn’t there to go to. Just a building now. Just a room.

“Um.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I know this is the last reading of the semester guys, but let’s at least try to be a little comprehensive. Austen is badass, okay?” They laughed. Somehow, swearing always worked to crack open a class’ shell. And Finn was an expert. “Give the ending what it deserves.”

He looked up when no one said anything. Hands were on bags, poised to go, and it ticked something wrong inside of him. He wanted out, too, but he didn’t know where. “All right. See you on Wednesday for our final class.”

Even before he finished speaking, people were leaping out of their chairs. He’d expect half attendance. Tops. He tried to clean up his desk quickly. Tried not to forget anything here.

You’re always leaving something, mon amour, aren’t you?

“Professor O’Hara?”

Finn looked up. “Oh, hey, Martha.”

Martha. He could always count on Martha. She was a third year, took almost all of his classes. She was smart, if not a little eager and quick to cut her classmates off.

“I just wanted to say that I won’t be here on Wednesday. I have a pretty long way to go, and the flight was cheaper. I hope you don’t think I’m ditching.”

He could almost always count on Martha.

“Nah, of course not.” Finn picked up his books. “Have a good break.”

“Thanks. Um. And this is for you.”

She was holding out a tin. Cookies, probably. Or, biscuits, as they called them here. It was always something with her. Last year, she’d given him a scarf and he really had thought he’d have to sit her down and firmly say that, not only was he her teacher, but he had a husband.

Finn almost laughed. Almost.

Mon Rouge, they all have crushes on you. Don’t even pretend you don’t know that. Hands in his hair, familiar mouth on his cheek. But you always come home to me. All for me?

“Thanks that’s really kind of you.” He dredged up a smile. He took the tin. “Happy holidays.”

“Are you and your husband doing anything special?”

A strange cotton-buzz started up in his ears.

Martha blinked, a little confused, and pointed tentatively at the background on Finn’s phone, which had lit up with an email.

“That’s your husband right? You always mention him—or—sometimes you do. And he came to our class once, remember? Last year. I think he’d just gotten back from a business trip and he surprised you. It was so cute, everyone was talking about it for ages.”

Finn remembered that. Logan had been gone for a month. A month. Remember when he thought a month of spaced out phone-calls from strange numbers was difficult to deal with? Last week, someone had gotten a wrong number at 9:30 at night and Finn had sobbed himself to exhaustion on the kitchen floor. Hope was stubborn, it was so stubborn.

“Yes,” Finn said. “I remember.”

He stared at the phone background. Logan, early in the morning. About a year and a half ago now, Finn had received a ticket to Spain with a little heart drawn on it. It had brought him straight to Logan and the most luxurious hotel he’d ever set eyes on. Private suit. Private pool. A whole week, just the two of them. No sudden phone calls, no pulling the go-bag out from the back of their closet, no apologetic smiles, and no last kisses that Finn knew, despite all of his efforts, would fade eventually.

Logan, early in the morning. On the balcony, softer than the sunrise. Oh, that smile. Finn couldn’t do this. How was he doing this alone?

He needed to start telling people. More than their families, people in his daily life. He had been given a story by the agency and everything. It was the story given to Logan’s family. His parents. His three older sisters. God, Noelle’s voice on the phone, the two of them crying to each other. The one Finn had stumbled through for his brother Alex and his parents. He needed to. Logan Tremblay had died in a freak accident while overseas for work. He’d been killed on impact and had felt no pain. He had died overseas. Finn had seen the body, that was how the story went. Finn had seen it off the plane and he’d correctly identified him.

But there had been no body.

Only silence, which felt just as dead.

“I don’t know.” Martha shrugged. “Beach trip?”

Finn managed to shake his head. “No.” He swallowed. He put his hand against his chest. Logan’s necklace rested there. It was a ritual that he guessed was dead, too. Logan put the fleur-de-lis pendant, silver, around Finn’s neck every time he left. Finn placed it back around Logan’s every time Logan came home. “The usual.” That wasn’t really an answer at all. “Family.”

“Oh, lovely.”

He was planning on going to New York. His brother Alex and his family would be there. His parents. He thought his mom’s sister, too, maybe. What he would do there, he didn’t know. It would all be absences. One after another. Oh God.

“Have a great vacation, Martha,” Finn said. He grabbed his phone, and his notes, not bothering to even put them back in his bag. The tin of cookies. “Don’t worry about next class. You’re ahead anyway.” He didn’t know if that was true.

In his office, Finn shrugged into his jacket. He paused, looking at the green scarf on his office’s coatrack.

Two hands pulling him in.

“I didn’t know you were back,” Finn said against Logan’s mouth.

“No one ever knows where I am.” Logan smiled into their kiss. “That’s kind of the point.”

Finn came to—and it was like that, like waking up from a horrible sleep every time—from the force of catching himself with his palm against his desk. His chest hurt. He should tell someone about this. About losing time like this to memories he knew better than his own present. The tears came like this sometimes, too, unstoppable. He sent a glance towards the the small window in his door, but the blind was shut. He kept it that way now for this exact reason. The first breath heaved out of him and he sucked it right back in, dropping to a knee.

Happy holidays, happy holidays, happy holidays.

It was cold enough to feel like Christmas was coming. Finn hoped he didn’t look too horrible in the evening light as he made his way towards the Underground. His bag felt heavy and his eyes still felt warm from crying. Had it been crying? Part of him wondered—and sometimes he dreamed—that he was reliving Logan’s death somehow. Like if Logan had had to go through something, he needed to go through it, too. Maybe he had drowned. Or suffocated. Killed by someone? An accident? A cover-up, dragged through an backroad, buried in a shallow grave—Finn was about to get pulled under again, hand already against the brick wall, when a voice said his name.

He looked up, the wind brushing his hair off of his forehead. It was snowing, he realized, very lightly, and he had to blink against it to see who had called to him.

He actually didn’t recognize them at first. He supposed that was their job. Shifting shadows. A million different identities at once, depending on what they wanted a target to see. Not that he was a target. Their clothes were unimpressive, nothing to be remembered. No long dark coats, no hats. James didn’t have his glasses on and Sirius’ black hair was ruffling back in the wind. He might remember how handsome they both were, if he was a stranger.

But he wasn’t. Those were Logan’s team members, and Finn wasn’t supposed to know that.

Finn couldn’t look them directly in the eye as he approached. They waited for him.

“What are you doing here?” Finn asked. Logan?Logan?Logan?

James said nothing, but Sirius took something out of his pocket and handed it to Finn.

It was a photograph of Remus Lupin. Remus. Finn had really liked Remus, and so—he looked up at grey eyes—had Sirius.

“This was captured on a bank security camera in Athens,” Sirius said.

That’s where Remus and Logan had been. Accident. Not recovered. No more information. Back road? Shallow grave? Shot in the back of the head? Bruised wrists from tight ropes? Plastic bag struggle—

“What,” Finn began but had to cut off. It was happening—was it? Again. The panic. The sick sadness. The air just…went. Disappeared. Just like Logan. “Does this tell us what happened?”

He couldn’t stand the way Sirius hesitated. He reached out and gripped his arm. He didn’t feel like a ghost like Finn had expected him to.

“Does this tell us how they…” Finn whispered.

James stepped forward, hazel eyes looking so different without his glasses. “It was taken five days ago, Finn.”

#Christmas Eve Will Find Me lumosinlove #winterfic lumosinlove 2023 #finnlo #spy au

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

(cw in tags if you wish)

Five: Sirius

Athens, Greece

Sirius wasn’t reckless. He thought before he did—probably too much sometimes. He kept himself in line. Maybe it was a product of a strict upbringing. A smack on the cheek or hand at one wrong move. He used to think it was what made him so good for the agency. Salazar liked strict. They liked obedient. James, therefore, hadn’t quite made sense to Sirius as a candidate, at least not in the beginning. Not until he showed Sirius that it wasn’t just about following orders. It was about heart, too. Camaraderie. Remus had shown him that, too. Still, Sirius couldn’t always shake that rule-following kid.

But if Remus was on the rooftops getting shot at by Jack Archer, who had just been holding a gun to Logan and Finn’s heads, all bets were off.

Jack was smart though. He took Sirius right through the now bustling Christmas market. Small children strapped the the chests of fathers. Women in groups laughing and catching up over coffee. Carolers by a central fountain. Sirius caught glimpses of alarmed eyes as he ran, always keeping the back of Jack’s head just in sight. He tried not to add to the mess on the street, narrowly avoiding the cart Jack had carelessly rolled into his path. He sprinted past the pissed vendor. He knew he should hide his gun. Lights blurred beside him and the sun came out from behind a cloud, then went again. His feet pounded the pavement. The streets narrowed. Jack stumbled on the stones in front of a cafe, sending cups shattering to the cobblestones and making a shop owner run out and shout at him. For a second, Sirius thought he was going to catch up. He swiped forward at the fabric of Jack’s shirt, but Jack rolled and then was up on his feet again. Sirius lunged. He didn’t care who was watching. He didn’t care if they saw his gun. His arms wrapped around Jack’s waist and they both hit the cobblestones hard, rolling into another table. Sirius felt something hot splash against his neck, something sharp dig into the skin of his wrist.

Jack was up again in a moment, using a hard kick to Sirius’ ribs to knock the wind out of him. Sirius gasped, coughing as he scrambled up from the ground and away from the alarmed onlookers. He yanked the shard of ceramic out of his arm. Jack slipped around a bend in the street—but this was one Sirius recognized. He’d chased Remus—or the ghost of Remus—right into this corner.

When he held his gun up on Jack, Jack’s hands were around the bars of the very gate Sirius had run into their first day here.

“Dead end, Archer,” Sirius said. “Now tell me why you’re here.”

Jack at least knew when he’d been caught. His shoulders moved quickly, breathing hard as he rested his forehead against the gate.

“Did you know?” Sirius could hardly say the words. “Did you know they were alive?”

“Sirius—”

“Get the fuck down,” Sirius said, striding closer until they were both hidden in the alleyway. He risked a glance behind him. “On your knees.”

Jack went, knocking the damp hair out of his face with a jerk of his head. Sirius could see both of their breath fogging between them. “We didn’t know. Not until Leo found Remus.”

“And you want them dead.”

Jack’s mouth formed a thin line.

Sirius didn’t have time for this. His mind kept skipping back, trying to figure out who had been shooting from the roof. RemusRemusRemus.

“Why?” Sirius asked. “Why do you want them dead? They’re our own, what changed? And I swear to God, answer me, or I’ll bring you to James.”

James was sweet. James was funny. James was relaxed and kind and easy-going.

James could also get information out of anyone. He was their top interrogator, had been since the academy. How do you do it? Sirius had once asked. Sirius had never liked seeing terrified faces up close. James had gotten a sad, faraway look on his face. I pretend they have Lily. And Harry. And then I don’t feel so guilty. I just want them to talk. I make them talk.

Jack seemed to have heard the rumors because he paled. “Listen. This is Salazar. You’re here to find them and bring them in. That’s all I’m here for, too.”

Sirius thought briefly of telling Jack about Logan’s memory, but Remus’ careful hazel eyes filled his mind. Unsure. Untrusting.

“Why pull the gun?”

Jack’s eyebrow arched. “Tremblay was holding a gun on his own husband. Who, by the way…” Jack made a scornful sound. “Should not be here.”

It was Sirius’ turn to stay silent. It was a sensible response, but that didn’t mean Sirius believed him.

“What,” Jack laughed a little. “You think we wouldn’t know?”

“I couldn’t stop him.”

“Liar.”

“That makes two of us, then,” Sirius said. “Why are you here?”

“Is he turned?” Jack asked in a hushed voice, eyes dark. “Is Lupin?”

“Turned where? By who?”

Jack shook his head slowly. “Liar.”

“I’m not.” Sirius swallowed over a dry throat. At least, not entirely. Pascal. Pascal, whoever he was.

“You don’t want to get on our bad side, Black,” Jack said. His hand twitched, maybe towards a knife, and Sirius stretched his gun forward. Jack’s smile was tight. “I think Tremblay’s enough proof of that.”

Sirius stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

Jack opened his mouth to answer, but stopped as though his words had frozen in his mouth. He snapped his lips shut, then a strained cough escaped. A twitch went through his body, almost like a pulse of electricity, and he sat back against his heels. Sirius hesitated, watching Jack blink fast at the cobblestones before raising his eyes to Sirius.

“Who the hell are you?” Jack asked, eyes darting between the two guns. He scrambled backwards, the gate rattling when it hit his back. “What the hell?”

Sirius froze. He clicked the safety off on his own gun. “Don’t bullshit me, Archer.”

Jack blinked at him, eyes unfocused. “I…”

Another twitch, a strange pulse through his body. Jack gasped. A thin trickle of blood ran from his nose. He swayed where he was, and his hands went to his head. “Ah—” Sirius watched his face screw up in pain. Jack stared up at him. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Jack—” Sirius began to say, but then Jack fell against the pavement, as suddenly as if someone had pushed him, with a harsh thud.

Sirius felt something cold squeeze around his throat. Dread, maybe. Adrenaline. Slowly, he lowered the guns, tucking one into his belt and swinging the other behind him, doing a quick scan of what little of the street he could see. He raised it up towards the roofs, then crouched in front of Jack.

His eyes were open, lips parted, blood quickly drying on his skin. He was dead.

“Jesus,” Sirius whispered. “Jesus, fuck—” His hand went for his radio, and then he paused. It was Salazar’s radio.

If anyone had told Sirius just a week ago that that would make him pause, he would have laughed.

Sirius checked Jack’s pulse—nothing—and then cursed as he heaved his body up against the wall as best he could. There was no point in trying to move him, not with the city waking up. Someone would have to find him like this. Sirius turned Jack’s collar up, closed his eyes, and took the wires off of him. He took his knives—all the ones he could feel anyway—and the second, small gun he found tucked into his boot.

He walked in the opposite direction of the cafes, towards the still mostly sleeping residential streets. There had been no blood, not that much anyway, but Sirius checked his hands and front before calling out to a man sweeping the steps in front of his house with a cigarette between his teeth.

The man didn’t put up much of a fight, just handed Sirius his cellphone before waving him off and going back to the chore.

The line picked up immediately.

“Lion den,” Sirius said into the tone. It was their secure line. If Salazar knew about it, they’d be dead, but Finn’s tracker wasn’t the first illegal backup Leo had set up. James hadn’t seen the point, hadn’t seen what they’d ever have to hide any comms, but Leo had insisted. Now, Sirius was glad. After Archer and Remus and Logan, he didn’t know who to trust. A headache was building at the back of his skull.

“We’re not at the house,” Leo said instead of hello. “After Archer, I didn’t think we should go back there.”

“He’s dead,” Sirius said.

He heard Leo’s sharp inhale. “Sirius—”

“It wasn’t me,” Sirius said. “We were running, I got him. And then he didn’t recognize me all of a sudden. A minute later, he was dead.”

Sirius’ heart was going so hard he had to press a hand there. The sweeping man didn’t even look up. The gray light hurt his eyes.

“Where are you?” Sirius asked. “Leo. Are you all together?”

“He’s dead?” Leo asked. “But—how? And what do you mean he didn’t recognize you?”

“I don’t know, I thought he was fucking with me, because maybe he knew Logan—but how would he know Logan couldn’t remember? I…” Sirius pressed at his eyes. It was as though someone was shining a spotlight right in his eyes. It ached. “I don’t know, Le. Where are you? Where are you?”

“Sirius,” Leo said. “I can’t find—I can’t find you.”

“What?”

“I can’t find you—Jesus, here, I’m dropping this number our coordinates—but Sirius, your tracker’s offline.”

Sirius felt the phone vibrate with the incoming text. He looked, memorizing quickly. It would disappear entirely in a minute, erasing itself.

“He didn’t recognize you?” Leo asked. “He didn’t…”

“Leo,” Sirius said, and then dropped to a knee. God, his very bones ached. His skull.

“Oh God,” Leo said faintly, and then, a little farther away from the phone, he shouted. “James!”

Sirius ducked away from the gray light. The cold wind. His head was killing him. “Fuck.”

“Eh!” The man stopped sweeping, looking at him. He said something fast in Greek, but Sirius was hopeless to translate just then.

“Sirius,” Leo said, voice closer now. “You’re tracker. Cut it out right now.”

“What?” Sirius asked.

“Cut out your tracker right now,” Leo shouted. “You said Jack forgot and then he was dead, there’s nothing that would cause that except—” Leo cut off with a short cry.

“Leo?” Sirius said.

He heard Finn’s voice in the background. Leo! Oh my God—

Then Leo’s. Cut it out, Finn. Right there, remember, feel it? Finn, stop fucking staring, do it, do it, it’s going to kill me and James—

“Finish?” the man asked him, alarmed. He was holding out his hand for his phone, but didn’t look like he wanted to get much closer to Sirius. “Hey, finish? Finish?”

“Help,” Sirius said. “Please—” He pulled the Greek out but he didn’t know how. Autopilot, maybe. “Sir, please may I use your bathroom? It’s life or death.”

The man began to shake his head, but Sirius didn’t have time—he shouldn’t have even asked. The man shouted as Sirius hauled himself up and stumbled past him. He shouldered through the small, wooden door and found himself in a living room—tidy and smelling of cinnamon and coffee. It connected right with the kitchen, not unlike their safe house. The dim lamp by the sofa stung his eyes, glaring as if it were a sun. Sirius blinked hard, looking for something sharp, anything.

“Hey!” The man tried to grab his shoulder, but Sirius shook him off easily. There was a knife, small, laying beside a sliced lemon. Sirius grabbed it and all but fell against the sink. A small vase on the window sill above slipped and shattered into the basin.

The man’s protests was no more than a ringing in Sirius’ ear as he groped at the back of his own neck. What the hell are you doing? Are you insane? Are you sick? Hey, my wife and children will be back soon, come on, brother, don’t scare them. Put the knife down, put the knife down—

There. Sirius felt the bump. Was he imagining that it was hot to the touch? It didn’t matter.

He didn’t even feel the pain of the blade. His adrenaline was so high that it felt like nothing at all. Butter. A slip. Only the red on his hands let him know that he had succeeded. That, and the small, pill-like chip clutched between his fingers.

The pain evaporated and Sirius drew in a ragged breath.

No sooner had he dropped the tracker into the sink than did it let out a high-pitched sound and crack itself in half.

His hearing returned. He blinked his vision back to normal. He worked the pressure out of his jaw. The tracker released a thin trail of smoke.

Sirius, he tested. Sirius Black. He knew himself. He knew the coordinates.

When he turned, breathing hard and sweating, he grabbed an old, dirty looking cloth and pressed it to his neck. It didn’t look like anyone would miss it. The man was simply staring at him, eyes darting between his face and the device in the sink.

“Thank you.” Sirius breathed the words out. Greek, or at least half way there. “I am sorry. I am sorry.”

Without another word, Sirius raced out the door.

+++

The coordinates were an abandoned building right on the coast. Sirius could smell the salt. The cold air was made colder by damp. He had stopped the bleeding of his neck and turned up his collar to keep the rag in place. Everything felt wet and slippery now. Recent rain on the rocks beneath his feet as he walked up an old pathway.

There was nothing inside, it was merely a somewhat reasonable roof of their heads. Shelter, nothing more. Just broken down boards and stone walls now.

To anyone else, it looked empty.

Sirius whistled two notes.

Two notes returned from his left where the sea and horizon bled into each other, framed by a still standing window. It could have been a painting. A TV.

James appeared in front of it, wild hair haloed by the light.

“Fuck,” James said, and then they were hugging. Sirius face ended up near a slightly pink bandage on James’ neck, and he sighed his relief all over again.

“Fuck me, we had a bomb in our head the whole time, Si.” James reached up and brushed the bandage with light fingers. “Just an average day on the job.” His eyes went to Sirius’ neck. “What did you do it with?”

“Fucking kitchen knife, man. You?”

James’ laugh was shaky. “One of my daggers on Leo and I. Finn did it. Think he’s a little freaked, but he did it.”

“Oh Jesus, I should have…” Sirius shook his head. He had his own and he had Jack’s. “Didn’t have to traumatize this…God, never mind. I fucking broke into someone’s house.”

James laughed again, but he looked pale. “It’ll be fine. I was so scared I didn’t even feel it.”

“Same.”

James raised his eyebrows. “Jack?”

“I left him,” Sirius said. “Took everything off him. People will think…I don’t know. But there’s nothing to lead back to Salazar or us.”

James nodded, taking that in. “Salazar’ll be looking for us now that they can’t find us.”

Sirius nodded. “I know… I know they will. We have to move.” They began walking towards the sea window. “How did you end up here? Where are the others?”

“Finn and Leo are with Logan.”

Logan. God, Sirius hadn’t forgotten, of course he hadn’t forgotten, but what a strange thing to hear. After all these months, just a simple Finn and Leo are with Logan.

No sooner had James said it than did the Leo appear. He had an identical bandage to James and held one out to Sirius, along with an alcohol packet.

“Clean that,” Leo said.

Sirius tossed the bloody rag away. “Did yours smoke, too?”

“Yeah,” Leo said. “The second I started to get a headache—Finn said that’s what happened to Logan, too. Said he fell down in pain. But…” Leo frowned in the way he did when he was thinking something over, when something was so entirely perplexing to him that he was sure to pull an all nighter. Sirius had seen him many times after those. Blond hair a mess, coffee mugs lined up besides the water and the electrolyte packets.

“Where…” Sirius began to say. He’d only gotten a glimpse of Logan and it was beginning to feel more like a dream. His slack face. There had been blood? Hadn’t there?

Leo moved aside, revealing a half-collapsed hallway. No, it was more like an nave. Sirius looked up and realized that the remnant of a vaulted ceiling remained, stone and precarious. This had been a church.

Wind whistled through, a high note off the sea, when Sirius saw them. Finn and Logan were at the other end, a corner mostly intact and protected from the cold. Finn was awake, staring down at Logan’s face like he couldn’t stand to look away, not even for a moment. Logan was—asleep?

“Knocked out.” Leo filled in his thoughts. “Finn said he remembered him in the alley, but he’s been out ever since.”

“And his tracker?”

“It’s gone,” Leo said. “I checked.”

“But if Salazar wanted him dead…”

Leo nodded, already there. “Then whoever took it out probably saved his life."

“But he can’t remember us,” Sirius said.

Leo rubbed a hand through his hair, then pressed his fingers to his mouth, thinking. There was blood beneath his nails still, a crust of red even smeared along his jaw. Sirius had the sudden urge to wipe it away for him.

“You said Jack forgot who you were a second before he was killed,” Leo said. “I’m guessing—and this is only a guess—that this is some sort of…kill code put into place in Salazar’s tracker hardware. A memory wipe in case we get captured, and then a kill switch if there’s no hope or if we might crack and tell all.”

“Jesus,” James whispered.

“I’m guessing whoever took out Logan’s didn’t do it in time to prevent the memory wipe. And that’s calling it real close, I don’t know…”

Remus. Sirius could hardly breathe. If he hadn’t seen that footage for himself, he’d be on his knees all over again, desperate and afraid.

“Can you reverse it?” James asked. He was chewing on a thumbnail, looking down the hall. “God, please say you can Leo.”

Leo let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know.” He looked down the stone archways towards Finn. As the three of them watched, Finn reached out a hand and brushed Logan’s hair back from his eyes gently. “I don’t know.”

#cw: minor character death #cw: blood/wound mention #Christmas Eve will find me Lumosinlove #winterfic lumosinlove 2023 #wolfstar #sirius black #remus lupin #amnesia au #spy au #ficmas #Leo knut #finn o'hara #Logan tremblay #o'knutzy #finnlo #lelo #lionfish #sunfish

[lumosinlove]

Christmas Eve Will Find Me

One: Sirius

Salazar Headquarters

London, England

“This is the part that you’re not understanding Agent Black.”

Sirius had never been built for the cages of board rooms. Mahogany tables and whiskey glasses. Bottled water placed evenly at each leather chair. Suit and ties, pressed collars and eyeglasses that would show everyone in the room whatever files needed to be seen, privately. Sirius wasn’t build for the glasses, either. He didn’t like seeing the images so close, as if his very own brain had conjured them.

Especially not the one in front of him now. Familiar, but, then again, not at all. A ghost he saw every night, but never like this.

“Why don’t you try again then,” Sirius said to Lucius Malfoy, who sat opposite him, at the other end of the long table. His fair, nearly white hair was tied back low against his neck. Though he stared with dark eyes right at Sirius, they both looked at each other through the image screened in front of them. Through Remus’ brown eyes and bow of a mouth. Sirius was glad no pair of glasses would show the room how hard he was digging his fingernails into his palms below the table.

Malfoy drew an annoyed breath. “Agent Lupin, presumed dead after the Greece incident along with Agent Logan Tremblay—” He glanced to James, who was sitting very still. His usual glasses—a light, airy brown compared to these black frames—folded on the table in front of him. “Is alive.” Malfoy’s long fingers flicked. “For six months, Agent Lupin blinked out. Assumed dead. Now, there he is.”

The photograph had been pulled from a bank security camera in Athens. Remus wore no hat. He carried no bag. Supposedly no weapon, though it was hard to tell and Sirius had never known him to go without one. None of Salazar’s agents ever did.

“Right where we left him, it seems,” Malfoy said. “Greece. Athens.”

“And Logan?” James asked, leaning forward. “I—Agent Tremblay.”

“If we knew anything more, we would have said.” Malfoy had a way with coldness. “Would we have not?”

James said nothing. Sirius felt his stomach twist.

Something in Remus’ face was wrong. It was wrong. He couldn’t place it. Vacant. Shaken. No weapon, no phone. He’d looked nearly right up at the camera. He would never have done that if he was hiding, like Malfoy clearly thought.

“We bring him in.” Sirius’ eyes went to James again, who was looking back this time. “Agent Potter and I will make contact.”

Malfoy just shook his head and laughed. “So confidently said. Tell me this, then. Why did he not bring himself in?”

Sirius couldn’t deny that he had no answer. He couldn’t look away from Remus’ face. Too open. And if he was there in Greece—alive alive alive—where was Logan?

“No contact,” Malfoy said. “You will take a surveillance team. and you will follow him.”

“Follow him?” Sirius shook his head, just as James began to protest, too. “He’s not a target. This is Remus.”

“He is a target as long as I say he is,” Malfoy snapped. “He failed to report. He failed all protocol, and now, suddenly, here he is. Out in the open.”

“You think someone turned him,” James said softly. “That’s—that’s impossible—”

“Nothing is impossible,” said Lestrange from Malfoy’s left. Her curling hair fell elegantly over her wide-shouldered suit, but she was smiling as if this news gave her pleasure. “If he is no longer loyal, you can see why we would need to know, Potter.”

Remus. Remus, who he had thought he had lost. Who he had spent the last six months trying to bury without having a body or a reason. Remus, who he had never even gotten to kiss.

“Find him.” Malfoy arched his fair brows. “Find Lupin, Black.”

“And what?” Sirius said. “You already don’t trust him.”

Malfoy leaned his hands on the table. “If he is what I think he is, then you will kill him.”

+++

Sirius had a flat, but he wouldn’t have called it a home. James, at least, had Lily. Lily and their son, warm bodies and food to come home to, when he came home at all. Now, there was fried egg and ham sandwiches on the stove panini press, quiet jazz playing in the living room in the hopes of keeping the two year old Harry asleep, and Lily standing in front of him pouring whiskey—because he obviously looked like he needed it.

“Alive,” Lily kept saying. She set the bottle down hard. Her tears gained different intensities, but she hadn’t really stopped crying since they had told her. They weren’t supposed to tell her.

She had a dishcloth in one hand that was being used as a tissue, and a greasy spatula in the other. Her dark red hair was tangled, falling out of two braids, and she gave a great sniff before turning back to the stove.

Sirius gave himself a bit more Scotch. He shouldn’t have agreed to come for dinner. He needed to be alone. He needed to sit in his cold, black and gray, expensive as hell, too big penthouse and picture Remus’ face before that security footage.

It was wrong. Something about it was wrong.

“Alive,” Lily said again. “God bloody fuck. Fucking shit.” A sailor, she was, when Harry wasn’t around. She turned on Sirius. “And Malfoy really said—”

“Yes,” Sirius said.

And the sick part was, Sirius could feel the gun in his hand. He could feel how he would do it. Sometimes, Sirius tried to avoid seeing faces, or it simply needed to be done, sneaking up from behind. But he knew Remus’ nape. He knew Remus’ shoulders. Any part of him, any air movement around him, Sirius would know. He felt like he would know his blood. The blood that had been in the sea foam.

“You could never,” Lily said, and took a bite out of a slice of tomato.

He’d never get close enough to get a gun on him from behind. Remus had the instincts of lightning.

“You can’t, he has to know that.”

The second Remus looked at him, Sirius would be finished. Weak muscled and drowning. It didn’t matter what was in his hand, it didn’t matter what Remus had done. It didn’t even matter that he had left Sirius behind and in the dark. Sirius would need him, solid and real.

Lily was watching him silently when James walked into the living room from showering. His dripping hair was getting the neck of his t-shirt wet, and he looked just as grim as Sirius felt. Through the kitchen doorway, he saw him lean over where Harry was sleeping in his crib and reach down to stroke his hair.

“Well,” he said when he took the stool beside Sirius—and some whiskey, too. “Wheels up tomorrow night. We’re taking a red-eye.”

“They called?” Sirius asked.

“Hm.”

“I don’t understand.” Lily slid the sandwiches onto a serving plate and began cutting them in half. She reached for her whiskey and took a long sip, ice clinking. “Jesus. Do you want ice, Sirius?”

Sirius shook his head.

James couldn’t do it, either. Not if it came down to it. But, then again, he would do it just to save Sirius from having to do it. Sirius knew that. And if they found Logan…

“Finn,” Sirius said suddenly. He looked over at James, and Lily made a wounded sound. “We have to tell him.”

James paused from where he was using his shirt to clean water droplets off of his glasses. “Why the fuck would we do that?”

Sirius leaned forward. “Because—”

“One glimpse of Remus doesn’t mean that Logan—”

“But it could.”

“But it doesn’t.”

“But if it had been Logan we were shown on that screen, I would make assumptions about Remus, and I would be glad for that sort of hope.”

James fought through a beat of silence. Lily put a hand on his back. Sirius had seen James’ face in all sorts of ways. Easy, dinner party, happy. Focused, inches from death, or being caught.

“You should tell Leo,” Lily said.

Leo Knut. On their team, too. Hacker. Legend. So fucking young. Could get into absolutely anything.

“He probably already knows,” Sirius said. “Just because he wasn’t at the meeting, doesn’t mean anything. He’s a different department.”

James hesitated a moment before he admitted, “He found the footage.”

“What?” Lily exchanged a surprised look with Sirius.

“Leo,” James said. “He found the footage.”

Sirius sat up. “You mean they were still looking?”

James shook his head. “Not them. Leo.”

Sirius stared at him.

“Just Leo.”

“What…” Sirius swallowed. “Why would he…”

“I asked him to,” James said more quietly. His eyes darted to Lily. “Just…in case. But I’d given up hope months ago.”

It was a very James thing to do. Sirius shouldn’t have been surprised. But the thought of Leo Knut and his soft blue eyes keeping feelers out for two boys who were supposed to be dead made Sirius have to sit down. It was part of his job, sure, but Sirius had spent what felt like an eternity seeing Remus everywhere that he wasn’t. And Leo and Logan had been the closest. He knew how exhausting it was.

“He’ll be on our team, then. When we go.”

James nodded. “I’d say.”

“Good.” Sirius looked down at the sandwich on his plate. “That’s good.”

The next gap of silence was what movies left for something grand and encouraging and sure. We’ll bring them home. I know it. We’ll bring the goddamn love of your life home.

But James and Sirius both knew better.

#Christmas Eve will find me lumosinlove #finnlo #wolfstar #coops #winterfic lumosinlove 2023

[lumosinlove]

Hi Haz! I hope you’re having a lovely day! I was wandering if you are doing winterfic this year? 👀 💛

Yes indeed :) Little bit differently this year, but I hope all enjoy <3<3

#lumosinlove winterfic 2023