Work Text:
The door swung open. Pip glanced up, as she’d been doing on-and-off for the past thirty minutes. Her gaze sliced through the midday cafe crowd with unerring ease, searching, and when she only found a stranger, she looked down again, at the last dregs of her coffee, her chest heavy with disappointment—but also relief.
It was day 698. Maybe it was hasty of them to arrange a meet-up so soon, but Pip had waited for nearly two years, and she wouldn’t wait a moment longer.
Reading the verdict scrolling by on a storefront TV, then on her phone, when Ravi texted, she’d hardly been able to believe her eyes. But another notification popped up. A classmate sent her a link to an article—someone must’ve written it in advance, lined up and ready to fire—with a tepid comment of, ‘your country town is crazy lol.’ Pip threw her head back and screech-laughed in public.
She knew, there and then, that it was over. It had become another unremarkable headline. Another murderer behind bars. Another crazy anecdote from Pip’s country town—nevermind how it wasn’t even that country. The general public would chew up the news, digest it, and move on to other things. Life would move on. Her life would move on.
She missed her bus that day, but that was alright. She hadn’t wanted to go to Harold’s book club anyway. She accepted the invite because she knew he kind of liked her, and the attention was a balm—would’ve been a balm—if Max Hastings wasn’t behind bars and Ravi hadn’t been texting her again.
So there she was, seated in a cafe near Cambridge uni, and worrying over the fact that she hadn’t asked if the location was convenient for Ravi. She hadn’t said a lot, besides telling him where and when they should meet. Talking to him still felt brazen; forbidden. And judging from the uncharacteristic curtness of his responses, he felt the same way. Or maybe it wasn’t uncharacteristic anymore? Twenty months was a long time.
Out of a lack of anything to do that wasn’t 1) watch the door, 2) watch the table, 3) fidget, she stood up to get another coffee. She thought better of it when she was waiting in line and her heartbeat nearly cracked her ribcage from the inside. Maybe she could get something… decaffeinated…? Ugh, perish the thought.
“Earl grey tea,” she told the dead-eyed girl behind the counter. She heard the door open, bringing with it a wave of sound—cars rushing by, footsteps on pavement—before it closed again. Her head began to turn, but she played it off by tossing her hair. It’d grown long enough for her to do that now. “No milk, please.”
“Having here or to go?”
Pip felt a prickling at the back of her neck. She was being watched. She wasted a few seconds blinking away her instinctive panic. “Uh. Having here.”
“Don’t sound so unsure about it,” said a male voice. “You suggested the place, after all.”
Before Pip could reply, the owner of that voice shoved his way to the front. A few people tutted behind them, but he didn’t seem to care. His hands were in his pockets, casual as anything, and he stood close enough for Pip to feel his body heat. “I’ll have milk with mine, and don’t hesitate when pouring, please.”
“Hey,” said Pip. It didn’t come out quite right. She cleared her throat and tried again, unable to control whatever stupid expression she was pulling, unable to keep herself from smiling at this queue-pusher like a deranged person, “Hey, asshole. There’re other people lining up, you know.”
Ravi turned around, and the sight of him broke over Pip like the first dawn of spring after a long, long winter. His hair was starting to obscure his eyes; he’d need a trim soon. He raised a hand—perhaps to brush it away, perhaps to touch Pip’s face—and forced it down just as quickly. His expression wavered, teetering at the edge of something vast and miserable, before it cracked right down the middle—into a smile.
“Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” he said. “I do apologize for the inconvenience, everybody.”
He swiped his card, paying for both of them, before Pip could utter a single word of protest. The girl at the counter just grunted when he thanked her. Her face hadn’t twitched throughout the whole strange interaction. The trajectory of Pip’s entire life had just changed, was changing, yet the rhythm of service work continued. It was something of a comfort.
She took Ravi’s arm on instinct—regretted it when she felt him tense up—and led him back to her table. Their table.
They sat on opposing seats. Pip had her nearly-finished coffee to fidget with. Ravi had nothing. He clasped his hands together and squeezed, his knuckles lightening from the force.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello.”
They wasted a few seconds staring at each other. Ravi was first to break eye contact, scratching the back of his head, half-smiling at some point past Pip’s shoulder. Memory welled up like tears. Suddenly, Pip was seventeen again and tripping over the front step of a haunted house, beckoned in by a grieving brother, nearly losing her grip on a box of bribery muffins. She blinked. The present snapped back into place.
“You don’t look that different,” she said.
“Were you expecting me to?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. You’re wearing glasses.”
“Yeah,” he said with a slight wince. “I have to do it regularly now. Being a junior solicitor is not kind to the short-sighted. Or to anyone else, actually.”
“You’re a junior solicitor? Ravi, that’s amazing.”
“It’s less cool than it sounds, I promise,” he said. “I do policy work, so I spend my days reading, researching, editing, and re-editing until letters don’t even form words anymore.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“But the pay must be good, right…?”
His wince deepened. “Common misconception. All the money’s in corporate law, and the firm I work for is… decidedly not that.”
“Which firm is it?”
He told her the name, and she attempted to search it up, but between her slow typing—her thumbs were clumsy today, wonder why?—the lack of correct results, and the weight of his stare, she gave up.
“So, what have you been doing, all these years?” he asked.
“It’s just under two years, actually,” she said. “It’s not plural. Not technically.”
He blinked. With exaggerated patience, he repeated the question. Pip realised she’d insulted him by downplaying the amount of time they’d spent apart.
“I’ve been studying in Cambridge,” she said, flushing with embarrassment. “History and Politics. It’s a joint degree, and it’s a really interesting blend of history and international politics—well, obviously—but once I enter my third year, I’ll be expected to start job-hunting, which is kind of an issue, since…” She trailed off, unable to muster the will to say: “Since I expected to be in prison by then, I never thought about my career.”
“I get it,” said Ravi. Pip thought it was just a platitude until she saw the bleak look in his eyes. “I moved forward because it was the expected thing, not because I wanted to.”
“And now?” she asked. “Is it—was it easier for you, eventually? Did you remember how to want it?”
Ravi opened his mouth to answer, but the waitress came around to give them their drinks. Two empty cups and two mini-teapots, the tea leaves slowly blooming inside. Ravi’s order came with a small pot of milk. He emptied the whole thing into his teapot and shook his head in disappointment.
“It’s still brown,” he said, swilling it around, “like me.”
Pip suppressed an eye-roll. “Ravi.”
“It became easier,” he said abruptly. “I grew older. Made new friends. New obligations. My parents have started to believe in my love life again. Last week, dad said his coworker was coming around with his daughter for a totally random dinner, and could I sit next to her? No ulterior motives, beta, I promise.” He poured tea into his cup and took a long sip. He grimaced. “There were obviously ulterior motives. She kept trying to touch my arm.”
“Oh.” Pip swallowed back a hot surge of possessiveness. It was fine if he chose to move on. It was fine. “That’s—great.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah, because it means you’re living a normal life. That’s what I wanted for you. All I ever wanted.”
“But I didn’t want normal,” he murmured. “I just wanted you.”
Pip’s heart sunk somewhere down to the soles of her shoes, and lower still. “Wanted, past tense?”
“Sarge, what do you think?”
The inflection of her nickname was different. The Ravi she talked to every day, the Ravi in her head, was flush with the sweetness of youth and spoke to match it. He never truly sounded like that when she knew him. She’d imagined him younger, futilely, as if she could reach through the brambles of time to find him before he lost his brother, before anything happened, pull him through, unblemished and unbloodied, and steal a few years together. As if she could make up for time lost.
Ravi of the present had a deeper voice, paused more often, and—in that last statement—spoke with a calm finality. He sought out Pip’s gaze, and when he caught it, all her pretenses went up in smoke. His eyes were heavy with the weight of his emotion; his shoulders nearly bowed from it.
There’d been nothing to get jealous over. Pip had barged into his life, upended it, and bound them together with blood—how did she think he would move on from her? How did she think that she would—?
Ravi’s expression crumpled. “Hey. Hey, don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying!” she said, grabbing a napkin, “I’m just—it’s a lot right now, okay—”
“Let her down easy, dude,” said a passing teenager. “It takes a lotta courage to be true to your heart, yaknow?”
“This isn’t a break-up conversation!” Ravi spluttered.
“Whatever, dude.”
Half-crying, half-laughing, Pip said, “It’s not past tense for me either.”
“I knew it,” Ravi cried, rising out of his seat, and what else was there for Pip to do but meet him halfway?
They didn’t even bother getting around the table; they embraced there and then, precariously stood over two steaming cups of tea, until Pip moved too suddenly and half of Ravi’s cup sloshed onto his shirt.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“Okay, well, if it needs to be dry-cleaned, I could—”
Ravi nearly stopped sidewalk traffic with how hard he laughed. “Yes, because my tiny non-profit firm pays me enough to buy wool blend jumpers.”
“I’m just trying to help!”
She tried to be annoyed, but his laughter was infectious, and when he held out an arm, she slotted herself underneath it, their bodies fitting together as if she’d never left. They were definitely holding up sidewalk traffic now.
“No, Pip, I buy most of my stuff from TK Maxx.”
“I don’t,” she said. “Thrifting’s fun.”
“Is it?” He peered down at her. “I’ve never done it. Little Kilton never had much of a thrifty scene. Or any other scene.”
“Well,” said Pip, “I hear they had a pretty big true crime scene.”
This time, her use of past tense was accurate. Their conversation lulled to a stop as they waited at a pedestrian crossing. Ravi was playing with the ends of her hair. Maybe it was presumptuous of him to touch her so familiarly so soon. Maybe it was presumptuous of her to let him. She couldn’t find it within herself to care.
“During the reopening of the DT killer investigation,” said Ravi, “there was a huge wave of true crime enthusiasts that descended on Little Kilton. Went around with mics and clipboards like somebody else I know.” His mouth twitched up in a smirk. “None of them were as tenacious—or cute—as you, though. At any rate, they weren’t here to do actual detective work, they just wanted to snoop around the old Bell residence. Dawn Bell had moved out by then, luckily. I heard she changed back to her maiden name and went to live with some relatives. I don’t know where she is now. I don’t think anyone in Little Kilton does.”
“Good,” Pip said quietly. “I’m glad she’s gotten a chance to get away from everything.”
“The Hastings also moved. People say they’re now living in a cottage in Italy or Majorca or whatever.” The light turned green, and they held hands while they crossed. Ravi continued, conversationally, “They had no choice but to leave the country. People kept finding out where they lived, smashing their windows, graffiting the walls, mailing death threats—all that fun stuff.”
“Very fun,” Pip echoed without humour. “Um, Ravi, do you know if Becca—?”
“Becca didn’t go with Dawn. I know she’s out of prison, but I don’t know where she ended up. Sorry.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll go investigate that myself.” Pip breathed in, long and deep, and exhaled. “I have a lot of things to do from here on out.”
Promises upon promises. She made lists of them in her head; she’d never dared to write anything down. In those early days at Cambridge, she strode through the campus green, early-morning dew clinging to her socks, while her mouth moved silently in recitation; she sat at the back of lecture halls, clicking her pen to the rhythm of her thoughts; she lingered in the common room at odd hours, sleep an elusive thing, chasing the spectre of her regrets round and round the room.
But that was all over now. She’d been granted her life back. Whatever force was watching over her—a god, the law, or just plain luck—had put a finger on the scales, tipping Max Hastings into a life sentence, and Pip Fitz-Amobi into freedom.
She would make her way down that list, slowly but steadily, and at the very end, maybe she would be someone who deserved this second chance. Maybe she could be good again.
Without thinking, Pip’s feet had taken them to a park. Once they passed through that first ring of trees, the sounds of cars and pedestrians faded away. All that remained were the shushing of leaves in the wind, Pip’s own heartbeat, and, if she listened close enough, Ravi’s too.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking,” he said quietly, “but not a lot of answering. Why couldn’t we have used burner phones? We could’ve easily gotten rid of them. We’ve done it before. Maybe you didn’t think of that, in your hurry to cut me off.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“Let me finish,” he interrupted, not unkindly. “We could’ve exchanged letters and disguised it as junk mail. Downloaded an online game and used the chat function. Hell, I went on a Reddit deep-dive about it and started downloading this sketchy text-disguising app before I came to my senses and stopped. There was no point. Whatever attempt I made at contact would’ve been a betrayal to you, and you’re way too smart to reply to—or believe—random letters and texts.”
His hand was getting tighter around hers, and she squeezed to let him know. He immediately relaxed his grip.
“You wanted to disappear utterly,” he continued. “You wanted to set me free of you. So you cut me off, same as you did with everybody else, and things would’ve stayed like that, had Max not been sentenced for life.”
“I know,” Pip said brokenly. “I’m sorry.”
Ravi turned to face her, all the good humour vanishing from his eyes, and for a moment, she saw a stranger. “Did you think I really wouldn’t have come back for you? Did you believe, even for a second, that everything was past tense to me?”
“Ravi, I…”
“Because it couldn’t be further from the fucking truth,” he hissed. “I relive that night all the time, Pip. I see it when I sleep, when I smell disinfectant, when I’m driving on a back road and it’s dark and hopeless and my girlfriend might be dead. Because she really might be. When she disappeared from my life, I had no way of knowing if she was safe, or if another psycho killer had her in his sights.”
Tears stung at Pip’s eyes, and her entire body shuddered with held-in emotion. This was too much; this was only a fraction of Ravi’s pain. She had to stand here and bear it with him. She hadn’t thought of that last point, had she? If the worst had happened during one of her nighttime walks, who would’ve looked for her? Who would’ve told Ravi?
“Sometimes, I dreamed”— his voice broke— “that your body was the one under that tarp.”
She flung her arms around him, fingers digging into his back, anguished. He hugged her back, squeezing to the point of pain. He’d also begun to cry.
“And I had—there was—I couldn’t—no one—” He spoke in fits and starts, his voice hitching. “Nobody could understand. Nobody could know.”
Love, misery, and relief welled up from within Pip. She turned her face into his neck, pressing her lips to the skin there. She kissed him, but she also mouthed a silent promise. One of the very first on her list: the promise to work every day to be the kind of person who deserved Ravi Singh.
“It’s alright now,” she told them both. “It’s alright. I’m back. And I’m never going to leave again.”
They walked around for a long time. Pip told Ravi about her loneliness, her paranoia, her persisting sleep issues. She told him about the lists she made, and how they shadowed her every waking hour. She didn’t tell him about the Ravi that existed in her head, whose sweet voice lulled her to a half-slumber on the darkest nights.
She showed him the contact list on her phone. Long absences from family group chats, a pitiful amount of friends, and acquaintances who ghosted her during group projects. Telemarketers were her most frequent caller. Ravi listened intently, and when he saw that her last message to Cara was sent six months ago, a curt I’m really busy with coursework right now, he sighed and pulled her closer. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even crack a joke.
He showed her the chat logs on his own phone. She drank in the details of it thirstily, as if it’d reveal new secrets to her, all the intimate details of his life during their separation, but all it showed was practicality. He talked to his parents and cousins. He talked to people associated with work; interviewers, referees, coworkers, a contact named ‘Thomas Boss’ who kept pushing him to take more hours.
A new text popped up. Shweta: Hi Ravi! Just checking in to see if your Saturday is still free…
Ravi swiped it away. “Don’t worry about it.”
His reaction had been quick. Too quick. “Your dad’s coworker’s daughter?”
“How did y—? Well, I guess it was obvious.” Ravi shrugged tightly. “She keeps angling to get a coffee with me. I turned her down nicely the first two times because I didn't want to cause trouble for dad, but…”
“You might want to take a firmer approach for the third time,” said Pip. “Can I write a response?”
“What? Why?”
“Because I want to.”
“Are you… is this…” He began to smile. “Are you jealous, Sarge?”
“No!”
“Aww, you so are,” he said, which made her blush, and he kissed her on the head, which made it worse. “This is hilarious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this side of you before.”
“Yeah, because you’ve never needed to!” she snapped, willing her face to cool down. “Here’s what you’ll say: Hi Shweta, you’re a kind person, but an old flame—”
“A what flame?”
“—came back into my life, and she isn’t as kind, so I have no choice but to block you. Farewell.”
She almost didn’t make it to the end of her sentence, she was giggling so hard. Ravi feigned exasperation for a moment longer before he broke into laughter, shaking his head. “Fuck, it’s good to have you back.” He might’ve been blinking back tears. “It’s really good.” Pip didn’t get the chance to look closer, because he surged forward and grabbed her around the middle, hoisting her into the air. Her laughter broke off into a delighted shriek. He spun her in a shaky circle, and she almost lost herself to the thrill of it, before remembering: their first pretend-murder. Running through the streets. Crossing into the woods. Clawing through dirt, burying a pretend-body.
Another memory: their arms working in tandem to carry a real body.
When he put her down, there was a distant edge to his expression that told her he’d remembered too. Even so, he didn’t step away.
“I’m not sending that ad verbatim,” he said. “But I’ll tell her I’m not interested.”
“Okay.”
“Is there anyone in your life that you need to… turn down?”
“No.” Harold flitted through her mind. “Actually, maybe. But when I didn’t go to his book club, he would’ve gotten the message.” She paused. “Did we ever state, straightforwardly, what we want to be to each other from now on?”
“I think so.”
“No, we didn’t,” said Pip, flipping through her recent memory. “Okay, in case it wasn’t clear enough: I am your girlfriend, effective immediately, and we should come up with a reason for why I went no-contact for one-point-nine years, and why you accepted me back.”
“We don’t need to think of a reason for the second thing.”
“But, Ravi, people might think you’re—”
“What? Too attached to a girl?” He stroked her hair, smiling absently. “People take back their old flames all the time.”
Pip snorted. “How about this? I was traumatised by the experiences I went through for my podcast, and I wanted to separate myself from Little Kilton…”
They batted the story back and forth until it formed into something solid. By the time they were finished, the quality of sunlight had changed, turning darker, bluer, while the sky deepened to dusk. They had no choice but to stroll back to town and grab dinner. After dinner, it was easy to lead Ravi back to Cambridge, promising to give him the best tour ever, but they only made it to one location: Pip’s dormitory. It was easy to sneak Ravi into her single room, shut the door, and even easier to tumble into bed.
They lay awake for a while afterwards, chatting. The moonlight streaming through her half-open blinds made the room silvery and strange; dreamlike. But Ravi was a furnace of heat against her side. He was real. This was real.
“I’m going to have to go on an apology tour,” Pip said. “An apology odyssey, even.”
“Is this going to be a new thing with you? Classical references?”
“Maybe. Ugh, my family’s going to be so confused. Josh most of all.”
“He’ll come around,” Ravi murmured into her shoulder. “You have time now. You can spend as much of it with them as you like.”
“I don’t have time! What part of ‘apology tour’ do you not get? There’s my family, Cara, Naomi, Nat—she’ll be the least confused of all, thank God—and of course Connor and Jamie, and I’ll have to track down Becca too—”
“Pip,” he interrupted, “you can make an action plan in the morning.”
“I’ll make it whenever I want,” she said, and didn’t move. “Hey, tell me more about your work. Your policies.”
“My policies?”
“Who else’s would they be?”
“Ah, hmm, I’m not the one writing them—that’s for people more experienced than me. What I do is edit existing policies. My firm works in human rights, so we look at current legislation, find gaps and blind spots…”
His voice rolled over her, low and soothing, and she almost shuddered with the pleasure of it. For once, the Ravi in her head was silent. The loss panged—he’d been her companion throughout these long, lonely months. She still loved him, treasured him, but she didn’t need him anymore.
Eventually, the real Ravi’s voice grew quieter, his pauses more frequent, until he stopped talking entirely. Pip felt his sleep-heavy exhales against the nape of her neck. His arm was slung loosely around her, their legs tangled together. Her entire body sang with the rightness of it all.
Thank you, she thought out to the world, to whatever was listening, thank you so much.
Sleep didn’t come easily, but that was alright. She hadn’t expected it to. She lay there, alive and breathing, in the embrace of someone she loved, and waited for tomorrow to come.