The Meridians(78)

"That was nice," said Lynette when they came up for air. She waited as though for him to respond, and when he didn't her face grew comically unsure. "Are you...okay with this?" she said haltingly.

Rather than answer with words, Scott kissed her again, the first time he had initiated a kiss with anyone in nearly a decade. Unfortunately, however, it turned out that kissing was a bit unlike riding a bicycle: he didn't just automatically remember how to do it, and do it well. Indeed, when he went to kiss her, Lynette turned a bit. Just a bit, just a fraction, but it was enough that instead of kissing her on the lips, Scott ended up kissing her nose - rather passionately, in fact.

She giggled. He loved the sound. It made the dim ambience of the poorly-lit office brighten significantly, and the same brightness illuminated some of the shadowed recesses of his heart, casting aside the darkness of loneliness and the gloom of isolation, replacing them with something that Scott had not felt in too many years.

A sense of connection. Of belonging. Of family.

And surprisingly, the feeling did not come with accompanying sentiments of guilt at the fact that he was, in fact, kissing someone other than Amy; had just watched a boy who was not his own son be tucked in for bed. Rather, they came with feelings of happiness, gratitude...

And peace.

This last almost shocked him into stopping the silly bliss of the nose kiss. Almost. Because he realized that he had known no peace since the day he had lost his family. No peace through the years of boredom, of drudgery, of trying to put one foot in front of the other as he trudged the doldrums of life. No peace until today, the day after seeing a boy save a young family from certain death, the day that he was hunted in the same fateful alley where he had lost his family almost ten years previously, the day that he was chased by a grim reaper named Mr. Gray who seemed determine to destroy him and these two people that he had suddenly discovered he held so dear.

I love them, he realized. That was what the feeling was. The generosity of soul that he felt when he was with Lynette and Kevin. It was not, he realized with some shock, a feeling that had originated from his nearness to Lynette or to her son, but rather a feeling that originated within him. He had thought he was dead inside, that his heart had become a tomb dedicated to the ever farther away memories of his wife and son, but if once dead, those parts of him had undergone a marvelous resurrection, and what was once a tomb was now a birthplace of joy and love.

He ended the kiss, and smiled. "I hope that answers your question," he said.

She smiled back, looking as starry-eyed and dreamy as any teenager having a first kiss. "What question?" she asked.

He laughed, and kissed her again.

Then grew serious once more. "As much as I hate to say this, we need to talk about what's happened tonight," he said.

"I already told you about how we found you."

"I know," he said. "Tell me again. Slowly and in as much detail as possible. We need to crack what's going on around us, I can feel it in my bones, somewhere deep inside. We need to figure out what's been going on, or else we're not going to make it through this."

So she recounted the way she had found him: the terrifying drive she had endured; the strange screams of her boy and another boy, another Kevin who was not her own. Scott felt himself grow colder and colder inside with every new moment of her description, with every passing word of what had happened.

It didn't help that in addition to complete exhaustion which threatened to overwhelm his consciousness at any moment, he also had to deal with the fact that he was finding it immensely difficult to concentrate on her story. Not that the words themselves were any more terrifying than was anything else that had already happened in recent hours, but he kept finding his thoughts wanting to slide away from the content of her words in favor of the feelings that watching her speak evoked: goodness, kindness, hope...love.

"You paying attention?" she asked on one of several occasions when he felt a wholly inappropriate smile spreading across his face.

"Yeah," he said, trying to stifle the smile in favor of a more situationally-appropriate frown, but finally giving it up as a bad job. "Sorry, I'm just...."

"I know," she said, her hand touching his in a fleeting gesture that he took as an invitation to kiss her once again.

This time, a sound stopped them.

"G-g-g-g-g...."

Both Scott and Lynette looked over to where Kevin was sleeping.

Only the boy was no longer sleeping. And Scott could now appreciate how frightening it must have been for Lynette to drive around Meridian looking for him, driven by the twin screams of her child and some other entity that, though it looked exactly like Kevin, was nevertheless some other being, some other creature not her son.

"G-g-g-g-g...."

The boy was phasing. That was the only word that came to mind for Scott when he looked at Kevin: the kid was a blurry, ever-shifting outline. As though he was both there in bed, and two inches to the side - two images, overlapping almost perfectly, but still leaving the slightest gaps between them.

One of the two images sat up in the bed, while the other one slept on, unmolested and completely unaware of what was happening around him. The one who awoke was speaking, the source of the strange stutter that had arrested their attention in the first place.

"G-g-g-g...," said the image.

Then, abruptly, it solidified. The image of the sleeping Kevin - the one that Scott knew somehow was the image of "their" Kevin and which had remained inert through this moment - suddenly disappeared completely.